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This Day, March 14, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 14
 
388: A law prohibiting mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews which is defined as adultery, is promulgated as part of the Theodosian Code.

1181: King Philip Augustus of France ordered the seizure of all Jews of Paris attending synagogue and had them detained for ransom

1473(14th of Adar): Marranos massacred in Cordova, Spain

1489: The Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, sells her kingdom to Venice. Jews had been living on this Mediterranean island since Roman time.  At the time of the Venetian acquisition, a considerable number of Jews were leading merchants in the port of Famagusta. 

1492: Queen Isabella of Castile orders her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.

1535: David dei Rossi a Jewish merchant from Italy, who set out for the Orient in 1534, writes his wife Sarah the following observation of life in Ottoman Palestine, "Hatred of the Jew is, in contrast to our homeland, unknown here, and the Turks hold the Jews in esteem. In this country and in Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs.

1543: During the Counter Reformation, Paul III issued entitled “Injunctum nobis,” a papal bull that affirmed certain Catholic teachings, including the authority of the Pope, in the face of Protestant challenges. This came a year after Paul III had launched an Inquisition that was designed to stamp the Protestant revolution begun by Luther.  “Judaizing” was one of the crimes that the Inquisition was empowered to investigated and punish. 

1630: In Przemysl, Poland, Moses the Braider, a Jewish merchant, was accused of conspiring to desecrate the host and was burned alive.

1647: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm during the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War coincided with the great Cossack Uprising.  Jewish refugees from these two calamities reversed the eastward migration of Jews.  A trickle that would eventual became a comparative “torrent” began moving Westward settling in Holland and England. 

1682: Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael, the Dutch landscape painter whose works include “The Jewish Cemetery” passed away today.


1750: In New Amsterdam (New York City), Isaac Mendes Seixas, a native of Lisbon and Rachel Franks Levy, a native of London gave birth to Abraham Mendes Seixas who would be buried in Charleston, SC when he passed away at the end of the 18th century.

1774(2nd of Nisan, 5534): The Jews of Basra, Persia celebrated a special Purim, Yom Ha Nes

1791: Sixty-five year old Johann Salomon Semler the Lutheran historian and biblical commentator who “was the first to take due note of and use for critical purposes the opposition between the Judaic and anti-Judaic parties of the early church” passed away today.

1794(12 of Adar II, 5554): Elias Issak Wetheim, who had moved to Frankfurt in 1769 and was the husband of Merle Cahn passed away today.

1799: The French Army under Napoleon leaves Jaffa after conquering the city and “continued its march northwards towards its goal, Acre.”

1805(13th of Adar II 5565): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim

1805(13th of Adar II, 5565): Solomon Harby, the London born son of Isaac Harby and the husband of Rebecca Moses Harby passed away today in Charleston, SC.

1808(15th of Adar, 5568): Shushan Purim

 

1820: Birthdate of Victor Emmanuel II, the first King of a unified Italian state.  He reigned from 1861 until 1878.  How big a difference did the emergence of the modern Italian nation make to the Jewish people?  “Historian Howard Morley Sacher puts it this way: ‘In 1848 there had been no European country save Spain where the restrictions placed upon Jews were more galling and more humiliating than in Italy.  After 1860, there was no country on the continent of Europe where conditions were better for Jews.’”

1821: Thirty-two year old Sarah Marks, the daughter of Michael Marks married Samuel Lyons today.

1827(15th of Adar, 5587): Shushan Purim

1831: Two days after she had passed away, 20 year old Charlotte Rees, the daughter of Woolf and Hannah Rees was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemtery.

1832: In Edinburgh, Helen and Sir Charles Fergusson gave birth to Sir James Fergusson who during a Parliamentary debate in 1890 “said that the British Charge d’Affiares at St. Petersburg had telegraphed the Foreign Office that no fresh measures were under consideration by the Government aiming to deprive the Jews of any of the privileges they now enjoy.”

1841: Birthdate of Moritz Rosenhaupt, whose father was the rabbi at Offenbach on the Glan (Prussia) who served as a cantor at Speyer and Nuremberg.

1845: The state of Massachusetts granted a charter of incorporation to Congregation Ohabei Shalom (Lovers of Peace) giving form anal possession of land to the Jewish Community. Organized by German Jews living in Boston, this large Reform congregation is now located in Brookline, MA. It is the only Jewish congregation in the Bay State and the second oldest in New England.

1851: While traveling from London to Philadelphia, Rabbi Sabato Morais arrived in New York

1853: British Parliament debates a Jewish Disabilities Bill. Lord John Russell said that “his object was to complete the edifice of religious toleration by permitting the Jewish subjects of Britain the same rights and privileges of British subjects as were a presented enjoyed by Protestants, Dissenters and Roman Catholics.” He could see no danger to Christian institutions to allow “a small number of believers in a different faith and who were otherwise good citizens and not given to proselytizing” to hold civil office. Among the opponents, the famed Robert Peel claimed that “it was incompatible with the dignity of Christians to admit Jews into almost every office.” One member of the House called for a definition of Parliamentary Christianity because “he could not understand what doctrine of the Christian religion was involved in Parliamentary Christianity. While another opponent said that Jews were as bad as atheist, Mr. O’Connell came to the defense of the Jews.  As a Roman Catholic he had suffered discrimination and felt it was his duty to speak up on behalf of another group suffering the same fate.  The Bill would be defeated.  Victory would not come until 1848.

1853: Sixty-six year old Julius Jacob von Haynau, the Austrian general who pardoned Judah Leib "Leopold" Löw after he had been arrested following the Revolutions of 1848.

1854(14th of Adar, 5614): Purim

1854: Birthdate of Nobel Prize Winner and medical scientist, Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis.  He died in 1915 at the age of 61. How does a Jew become a German scientist? - By winning the Nobel Prize.  Interestingly, the obituaries of both of these men (see Einstein below) identify them as Germans even though in the case of Einstein he was forced to flee by the Germans just before the Brown Shirts ransacked his home and office.

1855: Four years after protesting “against the ratification of a treaty between Switzerland and the United States on the ground that the former government discriminated against his co-religionists,” Jacob Ezekiel, a prominent Richmond, VA Jew and the brother-in-law of Jacob A. Levy wrote to Dr. Isaac M. Wise suggesting “the establishment of a Zion Collegiate Institute in Cincinnati and a Union of the Israelites in America in which all could co-operate in matters of religion.”

1855: In New Orleans, Foundingsof the Association for the Relief of Jewish Widows and Orphans whose members came to included Gabe Kahn, Rabbi I.L. Leucht, F.J. Dreyfous and Joe Trautman.

1859: Birthdate of Adolf Cardinal Bertram the archbishop of Breslau and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who in 1933 refused the request of an inter-faith group to take part in the protest of the boycott of Jewish businesses organized by the Nazis and who “ordered Church celebrations upon Nazi Germany's victory over Poland and France, with order to ring bells all across Reich upon the news of Nazi capture of Warsaw in 1939.”

1860(20th of Adar, 5620): Lewis Charles Levin passed away.  Levin was the first Jew elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was the American Party candidate from Pennsylvania in 1844. He was born in Charleston South Carolina, on November 10, 1808. He graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) with a law degree. He was a founder of the Native American Party and published and edited the Philadelphia Daily Sun. Levin was reelected twice before being defeated in 1850. He then returned to the practice of law in Philadelphia.

1861: It was announced at today’s meeting of the Board of Charities and Corrections that the Hebrew Orphan and Half orphan Asylum was among the organizations that received a portion of the $645 dollars recently raised at benefit held to raise funds for the benefit of New York’s widows and orphans.

1865:The fourth annual masquerade ball of the Purim Association took place this evening at the Academy of Music. The society is composed exclusively of Jews, and the proceeds are to be devoted to charitable purposes.

1862: Aaron Katz, a native of Philadelphia, PA who had been working as a clerk in Mecklenburg County, NC, enlisted in the Confederate Army today

1865: “The Hebrew Purim Ball” one of the highlights of the New York social season was held this evening at the Academy of Music.

1866: Seventy-six year old American historian and former President of Harvard Jared Sparks who had taken an interest in the life of Haym Solomon passed away. When others were attempting to denigrate Solomon’s role, Professor Sparks “wrote to the effect that Solomon’s association with Robert Morris ‘were very close and intimate and that a great part of the success that Mr. Morris attained in his financial schemes was due to skill and ability of Hyam Solomon.”

1868(20th of Adar, 5628): Shabbat Parah

1868(20th of Adar, 5628): Solomon Ben Baruch Salkind, the Lithuanian born poet who wrote in Hebrew passed away today.

1871: The group that would eventually become the Personal Rights Association in which “English author and economist’ Joseph Hiam Levy played a major role, met for the first time today in Manchester, UK.

1871: In a lecture delivered tonight at Rutgers Female College entitled “The Bible in the Rocks,” Professor Egleston said that the Bible was written for “Hebrew bondsman, so all of the illustrations are of a simple nature and can be comprehended by the most unenlightened.  Yet these illustrations are perfectly consistent with the latest discoveries of modern science.”

1873(15th of Adar, 5633): Shushan Purim

1874: “The History of Hats” published today traces the men’s headgear from ancient Tibet to modern day France.  According to the author, Jews have not made any contribution to what he calls “hatology” claiming that he cannot find a Hebrew word hat and that Jews have “entirely discarded that useful article of dress.”

1876: A full dress reception sponsored by the Purim Association will be held at Delmonico’s this evening in New York City. This event marks the fifth and final day of receptions, suppers and other festivities marking the celebration of Purim.

1879: In Ulm, Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch gave birth to Albert Einstein. Forced to flee Germany during the Nazi era, Einstein continued his career at Princeton where he died in 1955.  He published four scientific papers in his spare time while he worked as an examiner in the Swiss Patents Office. Each one had revolutionary implications for the field of physics. Among them was his special theory of relativity. Einstein said, "If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." It was Einstein who warned Roosevelt of the dangers of Nazi Germany building the Atomic Bomb - a warning headed by the United States.  Einstein's views on religion were not exactly Jewish, but he was Jewish enough to be offered the Presidency of the infant state of Israel - a position he reluctantly declined.


1881: According to Mrs. Berthold Riese, she was married to Berthold Riese, a Jewish clairvoyant on this date.  During a trial in 1887, in which he faced charges of having abandoned his wife, Riese would deny the validity of the document which said the he, a Jew, was married to Catholic by a Lutheran minister.

1883: Karl Marx passed away.


1884: Birthdate of Maxwell Zwerbach the American gangster known as Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach who led the Eastman Gang.

1888: This morning, at Coosaw, SC, Rabbi David Levy officiated at the wedding of Maurice Emanuel of St. Augustine, FL and Mary E. Seixas at the home of A.M. Lopez.

1890: In Omaha, Nebraska, Harry and Anna (Bank) Marowitz gave birth to U. of Michigan trained attorney Arthur Marowitz, the husband of Esther Epstein who served as the Director of the Assoc. Jewish Charities, the Secretary of the Jewish War Victims Relief committee and the organizer and president of the El Dorado Lodge of B’nai B’rith

1892(15th of Adar, 5652): Shushan Purim

1892: Police Recorder dismissed the charges that had been lodged against two Jewish grocers who had been arrested last week for doing business on Sunday.

1893: Two members of a gang in Kansas City, MO that uses a Jewish fence named Morantz were captured this morning.

1894: In Vienna, burial of eighty-four year Bohemian born medical doctor Ludwig August Ritter von Frankl-Hochwart, the student of Zecharias Frankel who served as secretary and archivist of the Vienna Jewish community where he practiced medicine and was active in the Revolution of 1848. (As reported by Singer and Mannheimer)


1894: Among the charities that received money from the Mayor’s Committee of Five which was distributing funds that had been raised   to aid those who have lost their jobs during the current economic distribution was the United Hebrew Charities which was given $2,700.

1895: Three days after he had passed away, 89 year old Eleazer Myers was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1895: In Ekaterinoslav, Russia, Mark and Hannah Malifsoff gave birth Columbia and NYU trained biochemist William Marias Malisoff, the husband of Sally Juster and father of Marias, Eda and Vera Malifsoff.

1896: The Hovevei Zion in Vienna decides to call on Herzl to work for the fulfillment of the program of a Jewish state.

1896: The Jewish children whose families live on the upper east side of New York City gave a ball and carnival tonight at the Central Opera House.

1896: The Sutro Baths, the “largest indoor swimming pool establishment” which were built by Adolph Sutro, opened “on the western side of San Francisco” today.

1897: “The Old Dutch Records” published today described the impact of “the city of New York” to publish “the records of its municipal ancestor, Nieuw Amsterdam. Included in the documents is a report of the arrival of 23 Jews in 1654 who “were ordered to depart March 1, 1655.  The Patroons of the West India Company decide, however that as the Jews owned most of the stock in that organization, they would be let alone.”

1897: “Austria’s Extraordinary Politics” described the electoral climate in the polyglot empire where “the Clerical Party” which “style themselves as Christian Socialites but are better known as anti-Semites” “is led by the lower clergy in defiance” of the Bishops “but which has the benediction of the Vatican” has again won victory in Vienna.

1897: In Brooklyn, Father Sylvester Malone of the Church Saint Peter and Saint Paul spoke in praise of “Mrs. Nannette Marks, a Jewish lady who has become famous throughout Brooklyn for her benevolent acts” irrespective of the creed of those in need.

1897: Emma Frohman was in charge of the entertainment presented by the Hebrew Institute on East Broadway this evening.

1897: A service was held in memory of Morris Goodhart, the late President of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society who passed away in February.

1897: Seventieth anniversary of the birth of Mrs. Philip J. Joachimsen, the native of Bristol, who fund the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.

1898: Felix Adler addresses the Mother’s Congress this afternoon.

1899(3rd of Nisan, 5659): Seventy-five year old Ludwig Bamberger who was a revolutionary in 1848, a patriot during the Franco-Prussian War who was elected to the first German Reichstag that met in 1873

1899(3rd of Nisan, 5659): Seventy five year old Hyman Steinthal, the brother-in-law of Moritz Lazarus, who was “a German philologist and philosopher” passed away today.

1899: In Albany, Edward Lauterbach appeared before the state Senate Cities Committee to voice his opposition to a bill that would establish St. Nicholas Park because the park would encompass grounds on Amsterdam Avenue that had been previously granted to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1899: “Certain Phases of Zionism” published today described the view of Professor Thomas Davidson that the Jewish return to Palestine because of selection by “a Supreme Being” is “illogical and unfair.”  “Jew must cast off the swaddling clothes of supernatural and superstition” for “the new Zion of religious freedom.”

1899(3rd of Nisan, 5659): Émile Erckmann, co-author of the 1869 play “Le Jeuf Polonais” (The Polish Jew) passed away today.

1899(3rd of Nisan, 5659): Seventy-five year old “German philologist and philosopher” Heymann Steinthal, the brother-in-law of Moritz Lazarus and “privat-dozent in critical history of the Old Testament and in religious philosophy at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, or Higher Institute for Jewish Studies” passed away today.

1899: “Topics of the Times” published today described the career of Dr. Isaac Mayer Wise, “the oldest American rabbi now in active service and generally and cordially recognized as the most eminent of them” who will be honored at the upcoming session of the Central of American Rabbis.  According to the article he was born on March 14 while other sources show his birthdate as March 29, 1819.

1899: The member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis presented Dr. Isaac M. Wise with an ivory gavel mounted in gold as part of the celebrations honoring his 80th birthday which included a dinner at the Phoenix Club in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1899: Birthdate of Des Moines, IA native and Yale University graduate Elliot E. Cohen the founding editor of Commentary magazine.


1900: Morris and Rose Gershwin gave birth to future stock broker and composer Arthur Gershwin

1900: In Philadelphia, Joseph and Eva Biberman gave birth to blacklisted screenwriter and director Herbert J. Biberman, the brother of Edward Biberman.


1903: Birthdate of American painter Adolph Gottlieb an original member of “The Ten” a group of mostly expressionist and mostly Jewish avant garde artists.  Gottlieb abandoned figuration for a new style, “abstract expressionism.”



1904: Pope Pius X accepted the resignation of Theodor Kohn as Archbishop of Olomous who had been forced to resign according to some because his grandfather was Jewish.

1905: Birthdate of Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron, “a French philosopher, sociologist and political scientist, well known for his lifelong, often critical friendship with Jean-Paul Sartre, and for his skepticism of the post-war vogue in France for ideologies that largely took their inspiration from a Marxist tradition.” The son of a Jewish lawyer who witnessed Nazi book burnings, he passed away in 1983.

1906: In St. Petersburg, “the government announced that it will take measures to stop the incitement to murder Jews” which has given rise to a rumor that the government plans to abolish all of the reactionary organizations.

1906: Flora Krichefski the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. Krichefski of Jersey married Hyman Appleberg, the son of Mr. and Mrs. A.L. Appleberg at the Great Synagogue.

1906: In St. Petersburg, the Police Prefect to Premier Witte that he did not know how a “proclamation calling for the extermination of the Jews was printed in the official printing office attached to his department.”

1906: Beth Israel Hospital is scheduled to host its annual ball tonight at Madison Square Garden.

1907: Today, in New York, “telegrams reached the Sephardic community directly from the capital of the Turkish empire” saying “that the Hakam Bashi, Jacob Mair, had been deposed and that Rabbi Elihyahu Panizeel had been appointed to” replace him which meant that the Turkish government had stepped in and resolved the dispute that arisen following the death of the former Hakam Bashi.

1909: In “Rabbi Lyons Urges Reform Judaism,” published today Rabbi Alexander Lyons of Temple Beth Elohim in State Street, Brooklyn expressed his opposition to the formation of a Jewish federation in New York City. His opposition is based, in part, on his strongly held belief that Reformed Judaism is “the religion of the Jewish future” and that Orthodox Judaism is doomed. Furthermore he believes that such a federation would be futile attempt to paper over the social, economic and ideological differences in the Jewish community and that such an organization would separate the Jewish people from their fellow Americans.

1910: Birthdate of Harry Blitman, the featherweight boxer from Philadelphia who began his boxing career at the age of 16.

1911(14th of Adar, 5671): Purim

1912: In Dusseldorf, Germany, Gustave Cohn, the son of Levi and Eva Regina Cohn and his wife Paula Cohn gave birth to Lore Cohn

1913: According to Dr. Maurice H. Harris who spoke tonight at Congregation Temple Israel, “the Jewish citizens of America were caricatured unjustly by Burton J. Hendrick in his article ‘The Jewish Invasion of America” published in the March issue of McClure’s Magazine>.

1913: The Annual Conference on Child Labor to which Leon Schwarz of Mobile, Alabama had been appointed as a delegate continued for a second day in Jacksonville, Florida.

1913: The funeral was held today in Chicago for Victor B. Strelitz, a member of the firm of Strelitz Brothers – David I., Isaac D., Maurice and Arthur V. – who had died suddenly in New York City at the age of forty two.

1914: In Asbury Park, New Jersey, Ethel and Mores Hess, a kosher butcher, gave birth to Leon Hess, “the founder of the Hess Corporation and owner of the New York Jets professional football team.

1914: “While the extraordinary motion hearing was pending, the Journal called for a new trial, saying that to execute Frank based on the atmosphere both within and outside the courtroom would "amount to judicial murder". Other newspapers in the state followed suit and many ministers spoke from the pulpit supporting a new trial.

1915: Birthdate of L.B. Stein, the native of Chatham, Mississippi, the “first cousin once removed” of Greenville, MS, born and Tulane University educated Rabbi Fred Victor Davidow and “historian”  who ministered to the spiritual needs of many members of the Jewish community in Philadelphia, PA.

1915: A benefit performance sponsored by the Krakauer Charity and Aid Society is scheduled to take place tonight at the Lyric Theatre. The money raised by this event will used to buy Matzoth which will be distributed among the city’s poor Jews for their use during the upcoming celebration of Passover.  The famous singer and actress, Lillian Russell has volunteered to serve as the announcer for the event. [The Krakauer Charity and Aid Society was one of the many organizations established by Jews from Cracow, Poland.  No reason is given for Lillian Russell’s having volunteered her services for the event.  However, she was married to Edward Solomon, the English composer whose family was Jewish.]

1915: “Nearly 3,000 delegates assembled” today at “the sixth annual meeting of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aide Society” which “was held” this “afternoon in the auditorium of Public School 62” at the corner of Hester and Essex Streets.

1915: The United States collier Vulcan set sail today from Philadelphia bound for Jaffa carrying supplies for “the relief of the needy of the Holy Land” as well as supplies for the United States battleships North Carolina and Tennessee.

1915: “About 250 persons” attended “a rally of the Bronx Young Men’s Hebrew Association” that was held this afternoon at Morris High School chaired by Assemblyman M. M. Fertig.

1916: “An enthusiastic demonstrations for preparedness was made” in Philadelphia “tonight when the Maccabean Regiment, the first Jewish military corps in the United States was formed preparatory to any call that might arise for the nation’s defense.”

1916: “Representatives of the Union of Orthodox Congregations and of the New York Board of Jewish Ministers appeared at Albany” today to express “opposition to the pending bill providing for the compulsory reading from the Bible in the public schools” of New York.

1917: Fifty-six year old Fernand-Gustave-Gaston Labori, French attorney who defended Émile Zola in 1898 in the Dreyfus trial and Captain Alfred Dreyfus at the court martial in Rennes in 1899 passed away today.

1917: “Turn Flowers To Charity” published today described Henry Morgenthau and Louis Marshall’s support for the suggestion of I. Edwin Goldwasser, the Director of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies that people stop sending flowers for funerals and contribute the money in the name of the deceased to a charity of their choice.

1918: Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow who served “as a member of the Overseas Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board, which went to France in July, 1918” wrote today that it was his “good fortune” be in Paris after the signing of the Armistice and that “the People don’t seem to be able to find a way to express their joy” over the “marvelous victory of the Allies.”

1918: The first edition of the New York Weekly Jewish News edited by P.M. Raskin and Saul J. Cohen complete with “brief and authoritative articles, lively fiction, a woman’s page, children’s’ sections and cartoon” is scheduled to makes it appearance it today.

1918: In keeping with orders issued by the U.S. Army last week, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniel has instructed all naval commanders that it is within in their discretion “to give forty-two hours leave being with the evening of March 27 to men of the Jewish faith in the navy so that they may observe Passover.”

1918: A dinner hosted by Judges Otto A, Rosalsky and Moses H. Grossman was held tonight at New York’s Savoy Hotel in honor of Judge Julian W. Mack of Chicago during which sixty thousand dollars was raised to go to a fund for establishing a Jewish State in Palestine.

1919: Birthdate of St. Paul, MN native Maximillian Shulman the humor writer who gave us loads of off-beat laughs in the tales of Dobie Gillies, “The Tender Trap” and Rally Round the Flag Boys and was married to Mary Goodman Shulman, the mother of Martha Rose Shulman.


1920: Hayyah and Zevi Kempner gave birth to Vitka Kempner the Jewish resistance fighter who married famed poet Abba Kovner.


1921: Two days after he had passed away, Abraham Genn, the husband of Fanny Genn with whom he had had six children, was buried today at the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery” in Northern Ireland.

1921: In New York, Leah Rosenthal Landman and Dr. Michael Louis Landman gave birth to Ada Louise Landman who as “Ada Louise Huxtable, pioneered modern architectural criticism in the pages of The New York Times, celebrating buildings that respected human dignity and civic history — and memorably scalding those that did not…” (As reported by David Dunlap)

1921: Arthur Shelby Levinsohn who had been serving as lieutenant in Quartermaster Corps since January was promoted to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army today.

1921: Alice Edith Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading (née Alice Edith Cohen) was appointed Companion of the Order of the Crown of India today.

1921: Lionel Leopold Meyer was promoted to the rank of Captain in the United States Army today.

1921: Eustace Maduro Piexotto who had been serving a lieutenant in the Infantry was promoted to the rank of Captain in the United States Army today.

1921: Ralph Hirsch was promoted to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army today.

1921: Lester Abraham Harris was promoted to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army today.

1921: Nathaniel L. Simmonds was promoted to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army today.

1921: Joseph Philip Kohn was promoted to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army today.

1921: Charles Wells Jacobson was promoted to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army today.

1921: Milton Lowenberg was promoted to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army today.

1921: Eugene Meyer, Jr. was “appointed director of the War Finance Corporation” today.

1922(14th of Adar, 5682): Purim

1922: In London, Joe Pole “a refugee from the Ukraine who was Head of Publicity for the United Arts and Phoebe Louise Pole (nee Rickards) a suffragette, school-teach and Labor Party member of Finchley Council gave birth to historian Jack Richon Pole whose works included Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic and The Pursuit of Equality in American History.

1923: In New York, David Nemerov and Gertrude Russek Nemerov, the owners of Russek’s department store gave birth to Diane Nemerov who gained famed as photographer Diane Arbus.


1923: Birthdate of Meyer Zarodinsky the Bessarabian native who made Aliyah in 1925 and gained fame Meir “Zarro” Zorea an IDF general and member of the Knesset

1925(18th of Adar, 5685): Parashat Ki Tisa; Shabbat Parah

1925(18th of Adar, 5685): Sixty-three year old Harvard and Columbia Law School trained corporate attorney Alfred Jaretzki, the New York born son of Gustave and Henrietta Jaretzki and the father of Maud, Alice, Alfred Jaretzki, Jr. who was a member of Sullivan and Cromwell, “trustee of the Mount Sinai Hospital, a director of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and a director of the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society” passed away today.


1925: One day after he had passed away, 84 year old David Jacob Cohen, the German born son of Jakob and Hannah Cohen and the husband of Dina Berger was buried at Yokneam, Israel today.

1926: At the Hotel Astor, Judge Otto Rosalsky was among the speakers during a dinner that raised $25,000 as the opening event for a fund to build the Jewish Center of University Heights which will require at least $150,000.

1926: During “an executive meeting of the American Jewish Congress held today at the Hotel Biltmore, William Filderman described the anti-Semitic conditions in his home country of Romania including a measure which “disenfranchise 15,000 Jews.

1930(14th of Adar, 5690): First Purim of the Great Depression

1930: A four day series of events tied to the dedication dediction of the new Temple Rodeph Sholom at 83rd Street and Central Park are scheduled to begin this evening with Shabbat services.

1930: Racecar driver Woolf Barnato, the son of Barney Barnato, “reached Dale Bourne's club (the Conservative) in St James's,” thus making good on his boast that he could reach London before the French “Blue Train” reached Calais

1930: In his editorial column “Today” published in the New York American Arthur Brisbane recommended “Judge Benjamin Cardozo of New York for the U. S. Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Sanford,” (Editor’s note – Cardozo would have to wait for two years to finally get to the High Court.)

1930: Premiere of Die letzte Kompagnie (The Last Company) a German War movie directed by Curtis Bernhardt and produced by Joe May.

1932(6th of Adar II, 5692): Benjamin N. Cardozo joins his fellow Jew Louis Brandeis as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.


1935: Birthdate of “Jack Keil Wolf, an engineer and computer theorist whose mathematical reasoning about how best to transmit and store information helped shape the digital innards of computers and other devices that power modern society.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1936: The campaign for contributions to an “Albert Einstein Fund for Palestine” that began today on Dr. Einstein’s birthday has the unique rule that “no one will be permitted to more than one dollar” which is designed to encourage a massive outpouring affection for the scientist.

1936: Members of Mount Neboh Temple, which last night heard speeches from “former Judge Jeremiah T. Mahoney, Rabbi Israel Goldstein of B’nai Jershurun and Dr. Robert A. Ashworth, educational secretary of the National Conference of Jews and Christians continued celebrating the congregation’s Silver Jubilee today.

1936: According to reports published today, “an appeal to relatives in the United States and Canada for assistance in emigration from the district” where anti-Semitic riots are taking place “ was made by the 700 Jewish families of Przytyk where” the violence has left three dead and at least 22 people with serious injuries.

1936: Milton Brown, “a furniture salesman” and his wife gave birth to Herbert Brown, the University of Vermont alum and head coach of the NBA Detroit Pisons who was the older brother of Larry Brown

1937: Pope Pious XI issued an encyclical condemning racism. This was one of the few times the Vatican made a public statement against the Nazi regime. The next pope, Pious XII, did even less.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Shlomo Gafni, 28, and Hanoch Metz, 24, of Kfar Hahoresh were stabbed to death and their flock of 320 sheep and 70 goats stolen by Arab murderers. A bomb was thrown in Tiberias and there were various shooting incidents in Galilee. In Safed, a self-constituted Arab "National Committee" confined Jews to their quarter, subject to a rigid boycott. "We are like prisoners over whom hangs an indeterminate sentence," one Safed Jew complained. In London the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine heard further evidence from Sir Winston Churchill and other important British personalities.

1938: In its first response the “German conquest of Austria” Prime Minster Chamberlain today “foreshadowed a new kind of national service” which was voluntary for now but which later might become “compulsory” which “would make Britain a nation in arms for the first time since 1918.”

1938: “William Ormsby-Gore, Secretary of State for. Colonies, today announced another stop-gap quota for Jewish immigration into Palestine, which probably will maintain the flow at about the same reduced level as at present for another six months instead the approximate figure of 8,000 Jews permitted to enter Palestine during the eight months from August through the present month.”

1938: Time published “GERMANY: Vivid Satisfaction!”


1939: “Emil Hácha, the apolitical jurist who unluckily became president of Czechoslovakia shortly before the German occupation” “was placidly having lunch with a bishop when he was ordered to Berlin to meet with Adolf Hitler” to learn of Hitler’s decision send German troops to occupy the rest of his country in direct violation of the agreements reached at Munich.

1939: Sara Adler’s fifty years of work on the stage were celebrated in a gala event at the National Theater during which she performed the third act of Tolstoy's Resurrection.

1939: “Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia and became a separate pro-Nazi state”

1939: German troops fully occupy the Czechoslovak provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. This was a gross violation of the Munich Agreement that Chamberlain had negotiated.  This was the last step on the road to war in Europe and the Final Solution.

1939: “Hours before Hitler dismembered the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia as a German “Protectorate,” the first 20 children left Prague on a train” that had been arranged for by Nicholas Winton.

1939: As the Nazis advance on Prague, Martha and Waitstill Sharp decided to remain in the Czech capital and continue their work of rescuing refugees from Hitler’s murder machine.

1941: The Nazi occupiers of Holland forbade Jewish owned companies.

1942: Lehmann (Leo) Katzenberger, a Jewish businessman and leading member of the Nuremberg Jewish community who was accused of having an affair with a young "Aryan" woman was sentenced to death during a “notorious show trial” known as the Katzenberger Trial.

1943:  In Krakow the deportation of Jews continued. Children younger than three years were flung into baskets and emptied like trash into ditches. They were buried alive. One child, Shachne Hiller, who survived due to the efforts of a Polish couple, was taken by them to a Polish priest for baptism. The Priest refused, thinking that it would be unfair to the wishes of the child's parents. The child survived. The Priest went on to become Pope John Paul II.

1943: Aaron Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man” was played for the first time in New York City with George Szell conducting

1944: Australian Lt. Col. Paul Alfred Cullen arrived at Port Morseby today.

1944: Hanna Szenes Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstein were parachuted into Yugoslavia and joined a partisan group.

1945: Winston Churchill wrote to Laura Wingate, widow of Orde Wingate the British officer who had helped trained Jewish fighters during the 1930’s telling of her plans to build a memorial to her late husband on the grounds of Hebrew University.  Wingate had been killed while fighting the Japanese in Burma during the war.  At a time when the British officer corps ranged from pro-Arab to anti-Semitic Wingate stood out as a “chever” (friend) to the Jewish people in the truest sense of the term.

1945: Special services were held in many American synagogues today as Jews here and abroad marked the end of a week-long period of mourning for the millions of Jews who had been murdered by Hitler and his cohorts. 

1945(29th of Adar, 5705): Fifty-one year old German born actor Alexander Granach who fled from Hitler and then Stalin before settling in the United States where his first screen appearance was in the comedy “Ninotchka” passed away today.


1945: Palestine’s 600,000 Jews ended their week of mourning for the millions of their co-religionist who have been murdered in what would come to be known as the Holocaust or the Shoah by observing a solemn day of fasting where they abstained from normal commercial and social activities.  Among other things, “factories, workshops, schools, restaurants and places of entertainment were closed for hours beginning at 9 o’clock this morning.”

1946(11th of Adar II, 5706): Ta’anit Esther

1946: “As part of the illegal immigration to Eretz Israel ("Aliya Bet"), the “Wingate” sailed from Italy with 238 maapilim ("illegal immigrants") on board, mostly from Eastern Europe.”


1947: Birthdate of Judith Plaskow, “the first Jewish feminist to identify herself as a theologian.”


 1947:  At Doctor’s Hospital in Manhattan “Helen (née Gabler), a housewife, and Jack Crystal, who owned and operated the Commodore Music Store, founded by Helen's father, Julius Gabler” gave birth to William Edward Crystal who gained fame as the multi-talented “Billy” Crystal who has made us smile and laugh in several different venues.


1947: According to reports received in Jerusalem, today’s attacks on oil pipelines at Haifa were the work of the Stern Gang and not the Irgun. 

1947: U.S. premiere of “The Lost Moment directed by Martin Gabel and produced by Walter Wagner

1947: Canadian actress Frances Bay and her husband Charles gave birth to their only so Josh (Eli Joshua) today.

 

1947: In an interview today that expressed frustration with both terrorism and the British government, Moshe Shertok, a leader of the Jewish Agency said that “terrorist groups and White Paper government are vying with each other in ruining the Yishuv.”

1947: A photo the SS Ben Hecht appeared on the front page of today’s edition of the Bergson Group’s newspaper, The Answer.

1948: Today, “at Doctors Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,” “Helen (née Gabler), a housewife, and Jack Crystal, who owned and operated the Commodore Music Store, founded by Helen's father, Julius Gable” gave birth to the William Edward Crystal who gained fame as the multi-talented funny man Billy Crystal.



1948: “Jewish witnesses failed to identify three absentee British police constables at an identity parade at Jerusalem police headquarters today as being connected with the recent Ben Yehuda Street Bombing in Jerusalem.”

1948: In Cairo, the Foreign Ministers of the Arab countries said tonight that they would meet in Lebanon to “act on the Palestine question.”

1949: The IAF flight school graduated its first class. Among the graduates was Mordechai "Mottie" Hod, the commander of Israel’s Air Force during the Six Day War.

1950: It was announced today that “Dr. Walter Clay Lowdermilk, American expert on soil erosion and pioneer of the Tennessee Valley Authority,” has been appointed to serve as an adviser to the Israeli government.

1950: The burial of Dr. Mordecai Eliash, who was serving as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom when he passed away, is scheduled to take place today in Jerusalem.

1950: Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, the 75 year old conduct emeritus conduct of the Boston Symphony who is currently on a sixteen concert tour in Israel has donated “his entire music library to Hebrew University.”

1950: “Am Able Southern Editor” published today described the life of the late Louis I.Jaffe, the editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, the winner of the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for courageously writing and publishing an anti-lynching editorial.


1951: “Bird of Paradise” starring Jeff Chandler and featuring Maurice Schwartz was released in the United States today.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from the US that President Harry Truman¹s $7,000m. Mutual Security Program listed $196m for the Middle East, $76m.for Jewish refugees in Israel and $65m for Palestine refugees. .

1952: U.S. premiere of “Deadline – U.S.A.” produced by Sol C. Siegel and directed by Richard Brooks who also wrote the script.

1953(27th of Adar): Essayist and journalist Chaim Greenberg passed away.

1954: “Salt of the Earth” directed by Herbert J. Biberman and produced by Paul Jarrico both of whom were blacklisted and with music by Sol Kaplan who was fired after his appeared before HUAC was released in the United States.

1957: Edgar D'Arcy McGreer began serving as Canada’s Ambassador to isreal.

1960(15th of Adar, 5720): Shushan Purim

1960: Walter Mathau appeared in the role of James Hyland and Jacob Ben-Ami appeared in the role of Dr. Jacobson in tonight’s Play of the Week – “The Rope Dances” – produced by David Susskind.

1960: Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer met to discuss mutual problems. Adenauer was trying to build a "new Germany" and his work to establish a positive relationship with the state of Israel was part of an attempt to remove the Nazi Stain.  Ben-Gurion, ever the realist, saw West Germany as a source of financial support (war reparations and other aid) as well as political support in a world in which the new Jewish state had few friends.  Ben-Gurion was criticized by many Jews both in and out of Israel for his work with West German and Adenauer.

1961(26th of Adar, 5721): Akiba Rubinstein world famous chess player passed away at the age of 78.

1964: A jury in Dallas, Texas finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of John F. Kennedy.  The man who shot JFK was not Jewish.  The man who shot the man who shot JFK was Jewish.

1968(14th of Adar, 5728): Last Purim celebration during the administration of Lyndon Johnson, a true friend of Israel and a supporter of Civil Rights.

 

1968(14th of Adar, 5728): Seventy-five year old art historian Erwin Panofsky who came to the U.S. from Germany in 1934 passed away today.

https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/panofskye.htm 
1969(24th of Adar, 5729): Painter Ben Shahn passed away at the age of 70.


1970: In Italy, premiere of I girasoli (Sunflower) co-produced by Arthur Cohn and Joseph Levine

1970: In Malibu, CA, Gary Salenger, DDS and his wife Dorothy, an interior designer gave birth to actress Meredith Dawn Salinger.

1971: Barbra Streisand appears on "The Burt Bacharach Special" on CBS TV

 1972: A small New York study group using the name "Ezrat Nashim", founded in 1971 to study the status of women in Judaism, presented Conservative rabbis with a manifesto for change at the Rabbinical Assembly convention.

1977: The New York Times reported that Ezrat Nashim (part of the Conservative movement) was about to publish a booklet entitled "Blessing the Birth of a Daughter: Jewish Naming Ceremonies for Girls."

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that upon his return from the US, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared that President Jimmy Carter said nothing to indicate a reversal of his pre-election stand, which said that Israel ought not withdraw from Jerusalem or Golan Heights. Israel made it clear to the US that it would never return to the 1967 lines and was sufficiently strong to accept Carter¹s opinion, or to disagree with him on this issue.

1977: Asher “Yadlin pleaded guilty to some of the charges, involving bribes totaling I£ 124,000, but claimed that he had handed over I£ 80,000 of the money to Labor party funds, adding that he had raised "millions" for the party” – a claim the judge did not accept so he “sentenced him to five years' imprisonment and a fine of I£ 250,000. “

1978:  The Israeli Defense Force, in retaliation for a terrorist attack three days earlier, invades and occupies southern Lebanon, under codename Operation Litani, resulting in the evacuation of at least 100,000 Lebanese, approximately 2,000 deaths, as well as the creation of United Nations Interim Forces In Lebanon (UNIFIL)

1979(15th of Adar, 5739): Shushan Purim

1979: Birthdate of actor Chris Klein

1980(26th of Adar, 5740):  Politician Allard Lowenstein passed away at the age of 51.  He was the Democratic Congressman from New York’s Fifth District.

1982: The New York premiere of ''Genocide,'' a film about the Holocaust narrated by Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles, opened at the Ziegfeld Theater preceded by a cocktail party given by Samuel and Frances Belzberg in the Parker Meridien and followed by a wine and cheese reception at the theater honoring Simon Wiesenthal the guest of honor at this fundraising benefit for the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Yeshiva University of Los Angeles. (As reported by Ruth RobinsonP

1986: U.S. premiere of “Gung Ho!” based on a story by Edwin Blum and Lowell Ganz with a screenplay co-authored by Lowell Ganz.

1991: In Boston, MA, “Elazer Edelman (a notable biomedical engineer, physician, professor, and inventor)” and attorney Cheryl Edelman gave birth to Adam (AJ) Edelman the MIT graduate and skeleton competitor who “competed for Israel at the 2018 Winter Olympics.”



1991(28th of Adar, 5751): Forty year old lyricist Howard Ashman passed away.  Born Howard Elliot German in 1950 in Baltimore, Maryland, Ashman teamed with Alan Menken on several scores for Disney movies including Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.  He won two Grammies, and two Oscars for Best Song.


1993: “After 402 performances and 30 previews” the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Conversations With My Father,” a play that “presents the saga of a first generation of American Jews who came of age in the Depression and were assimilated at a high price during and after World War II.”

 

1996(23rd of Adar, 5756): Seventy-seven year old philanthropist and successful businessman Alfred P. Slaner passed away today. (As reported by Robert Thomas, Jr)


1996: An exhibition, Synagogue for the Arts, featuring the works of Fritz Ascher, opened today.

1997(5th of Adar II, 5757): Eighty nine year old Austrian-born director Fred Zinnemann, passed away


1997(5thof Adar II, 5757): Fifty-nine year old Jurek Becker, the survivor of the Lodz Ghetto and two concentration camps who was the author of Jakob the Liar which was the basis for a film of the same name that was one of the most improbable and yet “must-see” Holocaust movies.


1997: A decision was reached by the Israelis to begin work on a building project at Har Homa in southern Jerusalem.

1997: Sandy Berger completed his services United States Deputy National Security Advisor and began serving as the 19th United States National Security Advisor.

1999(26thof Adar, 5769): Eighty-five year old John Broome (born Irving Broome) the writer for DC Comics who created the Flash passed away today while swimming in Thailand.


1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man by Howard Pollack and Sex and Social Justice by Martha Nussbaum.

2000: “Israel deployed the first battery of Arrow missiles.”

2000: “Susan’s Plan,” a dark comedy directed and written by John Landis who also co-produced the film co-starring Rob Schneider and featuring Lisa Edelstein “was released straight to video” today.

2001: President George Bush issued an Executive Order adding the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organization.

2002: Avigdor Lieberman completed his service as National Infrastructure Minister

2003(10th of Adar II, 5763): Jack Goldstein passed away at the age of 57. Born in 1945, he was one of the first graduates of the California School of Fine Arts; Jack Goldstein was known for his experiments in film, sound and performance art. In 1974, he moved to New York where he had his first show in 1981. He often made use of commercial production techniques or isolated bits of Hollywood films such as creating a continuous loop of the roaring MGMlion. In the late 1970s, he focused on painting and did works ranging from images of lightning storms, volcano eruptions and World War II battles to abstractions based on astronomy.

2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including A Sportswriter’s Life: From the Desk of a New York Times Reporter
by Gerald Eskenazi.

2005: During the Cedar Revolution hundreds of thousands of Lebanese went into the streets of Beirut to demonstrate against the Syrian military presence in Lebanon and against the government. This entry serves as a reminder that there is a lot of violence in the Middle East that has nothing to do with Israel.  It also serves as a reminder that the late President Assad wanted to create “Greater Syria” which included territory now known as Lebanon, Jordan and much of Israel.

2006(14th of Adar 5766): Purim

2006(14th of Adar, 5766): Ninety-two year old Nathan “Nat” Frankel who played college basketball for Brooklyn College before turning pro with the Pittsburgh Ironman of the Basketball Association of America passed away today.

2006:  National Public Radio profiled Allan Sherman on “All Things Considered.”

2006: The IDF launched Operation Bringing Home the Goods to prevent Hamas from making good on their threats to release terrorists held in a Jericho prison.

2006: “People & Politics” published today described the switch of Mark Leibovich from the Washington Post to the New York Times.

2006: Eric Lichtblau was a co-winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for coverage of the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.

 

2006:  Haaretzreported that Rome's chief rabbi paid a landmark visit to the capital's mosque yesterday, calling for greater dialogue between Jews and Muslims to promote peace. Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni's visit to the sprawling mosque on Rome's outskirts, one of the largest in Europe, was the first by a chief rabbi of Rome since it opened in 1995.

2007(24th of Adar, 5767): Lucie Samuel (Bernard) Aubrac, French history teacher and member of the French Resistance passed away. In 1939, Lucie Bernard married a French Jew named Raymond Samuel. After WW II began, Samuel changed the family name to Aubrac in response to the anti-Semitism so prevalent at the time.  Lucie and Raymond were both active in the Free French Resistance and kept the name Aubrac even after hostilities came to an end in 1945.

2007: The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) ended its annual meeting which was held in Atlanta, Georgia.

2007: Israel Singer, one of the heads of the World Jewish Congress and a leading figure in the Jewish world for the past 30 years, was dismissed in an unexpected move from all his posts in the WJC.

2007: An exhibition styled “Notes from the Underground, Subway Portraits by Joseph Solman” opened at the Danforth Museum in Framingham, MA. Joseph Solman was, with Mark Rothko, a co-founder of The Ten, a group of expressionist painters who worked in New York City in the 1930s.

2008: At the Newberry Library in Chicago, NextBook presents A Gateway to Jewish Literature, Culture, and Ideas featuring author Sara Paretsky.  Sara Paretsky published her first story in The American Girl at the age of 11, but didn't turn to detective fiction until her 30s. Troubled by the way women were traditionally portrayed in that genre, Paretsky created V. I. Warshawski, a tough, independent female private eye, now one of the best-known characters in crime fiction. Growing up in a small eastern Kansas town, where she and her brothers were the only Jewish kids in school, Paretsky discusses how her Jewish upbringing has informed her life and her writing. Sara Paretsky's papers are in the collections of the Newberry Library. Chicago Illinois,

2008 The Paris book fair, one of the major events on the European literary calendar opens with Israel as the ‘guest of honor.”Several Arab countries are boycotting the prestigious annual fair, because it honors Israeli writers.

2008: Austria honors the work of the kinder transport and those who helped with the rescue mission that took place in the months leading to the outbreak of World War II, with a special ceremony on at the Westbahnhoff, Vienna railway station. Austrian Minister of Transport Werner Faymann will unveil a statue to commemorate the kinder transport and a plaque to honor Britain, which took in nearly 10,000 Jewish children from Europe. The commemoration honors the different rescuers, including Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld, a British rabbi who personally rescued thousands of Jews, and the role of the Quakers and the Christadelphians. The statue is the work of Flor Kent, a Jewish Venezuelan artist living in London. Following the unveiling ceremony and speeches, a kosher celebratory meal will be served on the station platform.

 2008: The commemoration of the kinder transport and those who helped with the rescue mission continues at the Vienna Synagogue with special Friday evening services led by Austrian Chief Rabbi Chaim Eisenberg. The Vienna Synagogue was built in 1824 and was the only synagogue to survive the Nazis,

2009: Shabbat Parah

2009: In Little Rock, AR, a special Kiddush is given by Rabbi Pinchus and Estie Ciment in honor of the most recent addition to the family of these august Lamplighters who joined the Ciment Clan in the evening between Purim and Shushan Purim.

2009: Opening night of the Hartford Jewish Film Festival featuring the Connecticut premiere of “The Little Traitor, the beautiful story of an implausible 1947 friendship between amiable British Sergeant Dunlop and spirited 12 year old Proffy Liebowitz, starring Alfred Molina, Ido Port and Theodore Bikel.

2010: HBO broadcast the first episode of the mini-series “The Pacific” featuring theme music by Hans Zimmer, over-seen by executive producer Steven Spielberg and featuring Ashley Zukerman and Jon Bernthal.

2010: Israeli forces caught Maher Udda, the Hamas terrorist who participated in several attacks “including the Café Hillel bombing”

2010: Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to host a Community Women’s Seder (age 13+) using a Haggadah honoring the role of women in the Passover tradition while giving the participants a chance to lead a reading, join in the singing and discussion and share favorite recipes at a pot-luck dairy dinner of Passover foods.

2010: Magen David Sephardic Congregation is scheduled to host special afternoon of Israeli Art & Culture featuring the works of Ilan Hasson and Avi Biran. Ilan’s artistic themes are based on Jewish subjects from the Torah, Talmud, Passover Haggadah, Kabbalah, and landscapes of Israel. Avi has produced a large array of Judaica using a broad variety of materials.

2010(28th of Adar, 5770): Ninety-three year old Chimen Abramsky, the Professor of Jewish Studies at University College London passed away today.


2010: More than 70 years after its synagogue was destroyed by Nazi rioters, the German town of Herford dedicated a new Jewish house of worship.

2010: The LA Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power “by James McGrath Morris.

2011: Fallen Heroes – Remembering the Jewish casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan published today. 


2011: Zemer Chai (Living Song), “The Jewish Community of Chorus” is scheduled to perform at the National Theatre as part of the Washington Sings: Festival of Song.

2011:The Commonwealth Club's Middle Eastern Forum and JIMENA are scheduled to present “Last Jews of Yemen” with linguist, journalist and blogger, Josh Berer.

2011: Next Year in Bombay, a documentary about the Bene Israel, is one of the films scheduled to be shown today at the 15thNew York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2011: Albert Einstein will go digital in the coming months, as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem begins a project to digitize the German-Jewish physicist's archives. The digitization is expected to take around one year and then the over 80,000 documents will be available on the Albert Einstein Archives website.

2011:The Jewish New Media Innovation Fund announced over half a million dollars in grants today for nine digital media projects intended to engage people between the ages of 18 and 40 with Jewish life.

2011: Sixty-nine year old Neil Diamond was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight during a ceremony at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria.  The Jewish Diamond was introduced by another Jewish musical icon – Paul Simon.  Two other Jews were among the evening’s honorees –Art Rupe founder of Specialty Records and Jac Holtzman, founder of Elektra Records, the label that recorded numerous LP’s by Theodore Bikel.

2011(8th of Adar II): Seventy-six year old Canadian Larry Zolf, who was a popular CBC journalist, passed away. Zolf was a self-described product of the Jewish ghetto of North Winnipeg. He is the father of famous poet Rachel Zolf.


2012: In Washington, DC, Theatre J is scheduled to a Backstage Discussion entitled “A Spinozian Sense of Justice: Crime and Punishment in a World According to Spinoza.”

2012: “The Pioneer Jewish Film Festival” which is held in Amherst and Springfield, MA is scheduled to open today.

2012(20th of Adar, 5772): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrzeit of Yoel Sirkes Rabbi of Krakow and author of the Bayit Chadash ("Bach"), a commentary on the great Halachic work, the Arba'ah Turim. (As reported by Chabad Lubavitch)

2012(20th of Adar, 5772): Ninety-five year old Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, the leader of the Viznitz Hasidim pass away today.(As reported by Joseph Berger)


2012: TIP's Alan Elsner is scheduled to host Dr. Emily Landau who will be speaking about "Iran's Nuclear Challenge and Israel's Possible Responses.”

2012: Marbin, an improvised music duo consisting of Israeli-American guitarist Dani Rabin and Israeli saxophonist Danny Markovitch.  is scheduled to perform at the Newton Theatre at Newton, NJ.

2012: Azerbaijan authorities have arrested 22 people suspected of plotting to attack the Israeli and American embassies in the capital Baku, AFP reported today.

2012: A Jerusalem Court acquitted an antiquities collector on most counts of forgery today eleven years after the case was first opened.

2013: The Wiener Library is scheduled to present “I'll Never See You Again: A Story of Survival and Reconciliation” featuring 92 year old Holocaust survivor Margot Barnard.

2013: “Melting Away, “ an Israeli film that “follows the story of a Tel Aviv family drawn into crisis after the parents discover their son is secretly a cross-dresser and expel him from home” is scheduled to have its Minnesota Premiere at the Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival..

2013: LABAlive is scheduled to present “Drunk,” an evening of learning, art and performances on the heavens and hells of intoxication in ancient Jewish tradition.

2013: Alast-minute glitch delayed final completion of coalition negotiations today, with the prime minister’s wife reportedly at its center.

2013:  The white smoke had barely dispersed from over the Vatican this morning when President Shimon Peres invited the new pope for a visit to Israel, asking him to contribute to peace as a spiritual, rather than a political, leader.

2013: Today the Israel-based Shem Olam Holocaust and Faith Institute showcased items that may have been used for Passover rituals at the Chelmno death camp in western Poland. The items were discovered during excavations of the site in pits containing prisoners’ belongings

2014: Rebecca Kushner is scheduled to lead Musical Shabbat at Augdas Achim in Coralville, Iowa.

2014: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host a Purim themed Shabbat Dinner complete with costumes.

2014: Rabbi Hillel Cohen, the head of Hatzallah emergency services in Ukraine was recovering from the wounds suffered yesterday when he was beaten and stabbed in Kiev by Russian speaking youths. (As reported by Times of Israel)

2014: The Israeli Air Force struck seven targets in the Gaza Strip early this morning in response to another day of rocket fire on southern Israel.

2014: Michael Hiltzik reviews The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC – 1492 AD by Simon Schama


2014(12thof Adar II, 5774): Eighty year old courageous and controversial Israeli war hero Meir Har-Zion, a man Moshe Dayan once called “the greatest Jewish warrior since Bar Kochba,”  passed away today.


2014: After three days of rocket attacks in the region, Chief Askenazi Rabbi David Lau and Mayor Alon Davidi visited several centers in Sderot including the Sderot Yeshiva after which they distributed Purim baskets to the IDF soldiers manning the Iron Dome defense system. (As reported by Ari Yashar)

2014: Benjamin Schwarz review of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy by Shlomo Ben Ami published today.


2015: “Netanyahu and the Settlements” published today described the unique bond between the Prime Ministers and the residents of what some call the West Bank.


2015: Following services at Shaare Tefila, Laura Apelbaum is scheduled to deliver a lecture “Candlesticks, Charm Bracelets & Protest Signs.”

2015: “God’s Slave” is scheduled to be shown at the 18th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival

2015: A peace ring created by Danish Muslims is scheduled tobe formed today “at the central Copenhagen shul, or Krystalgade Synagogue.” (As reported by JTA and Times of Israel)

2015: As negotiations designed to halt the Iranaina nuclear program appear to be reaching a climax, “Iran today formally inaugurated what it said was mass production of a long range anti-ship missile.” (As reported by Justin Jalil)

2015(23rdof Adar, 5775): Ninety year old Lia Van Leer, “the founder of the Haifa Cinematheque, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, the Israel Film Archive and the Jerusalem Film Festival” passed away today.


2015: Seventy-one year old Robert Durst was arrested today in New Orleans by the FBI which claimed to have new evidence linking him to the murder of Susan Berman in 2000.

http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/susan-berman

2015: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Kirkwood Community College is scheduled to host “Voices of the Generations: Stories from the Holocaust” with Julie Kohner, whose mother Hanna was Holocaust survivor.


2016(4th of Adar II, 5776): Eighty-six year old “Geoffrey H. Hartman, a literary critic whose work took in the Romantic poets, Judaic sacred texts, Holocaust studies, deconstruction and the workings of memory” passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)


2016: Migdalei haYam haTichon is scheduled to host “Around the World, At the Speed of Sound” with guitarist Jean-Robert Ben Danan and pianist Eliah Zabaly

2016: “Very Semi-Serious” and “To Life” are scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2017: The Lysander Piano Trio - Itamar Zorman, Violin; Michael Katz, Cello; Liza Stepanova, Piano – is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall.

2017: Catherine Hickley examined how German art collectors answer the question “Do I Own Nazi Loot?”


2017: Former Arizona Wildcats basketball player Josh Pastner, the ACC coach of the year, led his Georgia Tech against Indiana in the first round of the NIT.

2017: “The La Hora newspaper reported” today that “the Guatemalan government partnered with the local Jewish community to launch an educational project to study the Holocaust” as part of a project design “to promote the values of tolerance and respect.” (As reported by TOI and JTA)

2017: The YIVO Institute, The Center for Jewish History and the Leo Baeck Institute are scheduled to sponsor a presentation by  András Koerner and Victor Karady on “How They Lived: The Everyday Lives of Hungarian Jews 1867-1940.

2018(27thof Adar, 5778): Eight days after his 89th birthday historian and author David Sword Wyman, the grandson of Protestant ministers who “was chairman of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies passed away today.


2018: Chef Alon Shaya is scheduled to “speak about his newly released memoir/cookbook” Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey back to Israelthis evening at the JCC in New Orleans

2018: “Bye, Bye Germany is scheduled to be shown today at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Two Zions: The Living Legacy of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon” is scheduled to be shown at the 21st New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2019: The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Coco” “followed by a Moroccan Costumed After Party” as a celebrating for comedian and actor Gad Elmaleh, the star of the film.

2019: The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is scheduled to host it’s “largest annual evening of relationship-building and inspiration will feature special guest, former U.S. Secretary of State and U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright.”

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Jews and the Anti-Renaissance: The Medici Archive Project” during which Dr. Alessio Assonitis and Dr. Gabriele Manusco “consider hows Jews and Jewish culture have been situated in both categories – as contributors to the construction of The Renaissance canon and as fostering ‘anti-Renaissance’ phenomena.”

2019: In Iowa City, Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz of Congregation Agudas Achim is scheduled to participate in a panel entitled “Resurgent Antisemitism and the Importance of Historical Remembering at the Iowa City Public Library and not at any facilities of the University of Iowa.

 

 

 

This Day, March 15, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 15

457 BCE (12th of Nisan, 3303): Ezra and his followers departed from the River Ahava on their way to Jerusalem.

44 BCE: Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate. The Jews supported Caesar in his fight for power against Crassus and Pompey. Pompey had seized Jerusalem, violated the Holy of Holies and shipped thousands of Judeans off to the slave markets. Eight years later, Crassus came to Jerusalem and stole the Temple Treasury. As a reward for Jewish support, Caesar returned the port of Jaffa to Judean control. He instituted a more humane tax rate that took into account the Sabbatical Year. He allowed the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt and he allowed Jewish communities in the Italian peninsula, including Rome itself, to "organize and thrive."

351: Constantius II elevates his cousin Gallus to Caesar, and puts him in charge of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. During his rule, Gallus had to deal with a Jewish rebellion in Judea/Palestine. The rebellion, possibly started before Gallus' elevation to Caesar, was crushed by Gallus' general, Ursicinus, who ordered all the rebels slain.

1391: “A Jew hating monk” is responsible for starting anti-Jewish riots in Seville, Spain. These riots marked the start of a wave of violence throughout Spain and Portugal which claimed 50,000 lives within less than a year. Many Jews escaped death by converting to Christianity. This marked the emergence of Marranos who were said to number 200,000.

1545: Opening session of the Council of Trent. At the Council of Trent in the 16th century, the Roman Church stated as a theological principle that all men share the responsibility for the Passion—and that Christians bear a particular burden. "In this guilt [for the death of Jesus] are involved all those who fall frequently into sin..." read the catechism of the council.” This guilt seems more enormous in us than in the Jews since, if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; while we, on the contrary, professing to know him, yet denying him by our actions, seem in some sort to lay violent hands on him."

1672: Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence. This declaration was part of the jockeying for power between Roman Catholics, Anglicans and non-Anglican Protestants. Religious rights for Jews were not a part of this measure. Oliver Cromwell, the Protestant civil ruler who temporarily replaced the Stuarts allowed the Jews to re-enter England. Charles II continued his policy and actually expanded the rights and protection for the growing Jewish population. Charles II’s, his successor King James II and the last Catholic King of England further expanded the royal protection of the Jews. Both monarchs appreciated the financial support they received from Jewish bankers. By the time William and Mary had replaced James on the English throne, Jews were too well established in England to ever again be candidates for expulsion and exile.

1773: The South Carolina Gazette reported that Moses Lindo purchased a stone which he believed to be a topaz of immense size, and that he sent it to London by the Right Hon. Lord Charles Greville Montague to be presented to the Queen of England.” Lindo was a native of England who settled in South Carolina where he prospered in the trade of indigo.

1776: South Carolina becomes the first American colony to declare its independence from Great Britain and set up its own government. The Jews played an active role in the political affairs of South Carolina from its earliest days. As early as 1702 they were voting in the colony’s general elections. Francis Salvador began serving in the Provincial Congress in the year before the Palmetto State declared her independence

1795: Birthdate of Samuel Moses Marx, the son of a Jewish doctor in Halle who, when baptized in 1819, changed his name to Adolf Bernhard Marx who gained fame as a German composer and critic.

1800: Birthdate of Joseph Wetheimer, who joined his father’s business in 1821 and who was “the founder of Jewish Alliance in Vienna.

1801: Birthdate of Joseph Levin Saalschütz, the native of Konigsberg who was the first Jew to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Konigsberg.

1809: Philip Lazarus married Amelia Barnes today at the Great Synagogue.

1817: Birthdate of Samuel Naumbourg, the native of Bavaria who served as Chazzan at Besancon and choir director at a Strasburg synagogue before becoming the leader “of synagogue of the Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth at Paris, where he became professor of liturgical music at the Séminaire Israélite” in 1845.


1820: Just a year after Rebecca Gratz established the country's first Female Hebrew Benevolent Society in Philadelphia, Richa Levy led a group of women that established a Female Hebrew Benevolent Society at New York's Shearith Israel congregation. At that time, Shearith Israel was the only synagogue in New York City.

1820: The King of Saxony granted “Jewish tradesman” Joseph Friedländer permission to remain at Bautzen.

1820: Maine becomes the 23rd state to join the Union. Today Maine has a small but active Jewish population. There are ten congregations in the state. There are Hillel chapters at the University of Maine, Colby, Bates and Bowdoin. Statewide organizations include the Jewish Community Council of Bangor, Main, the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Main, The Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and the Maine Jewish Film Festival. The mission of the Maine Jewish Film Festival is to “provide a forum for the presentation of films to enrich, educate and entertain a diverse community about the Jewish experience.” Since 1998, we have fulfilled this mission by presenting over 145 films about all facets of Jewish life and culture to nearly 17,500 people. Our annual Festival takes place over nine days in mid-March, and each year we bring a rich selection of films to Maine that otherwise wouldn’t get seen by audiences anywhere else in the state or even Northern New England. The Festival serves filmgoers of all ages and backgrounds, both Jews and non-Jews alike. Maine is one of the smallest cities in the United States to host an independent Jewish film festival and each successive year we attract increasing numbers of attendees (over 3,000 in 2006).

1827: The University of Toronto is chartered. The first Jewish community did not develop in Toronto until the 1840’s. Today the Toronto University has 3,000 Jewish students among its 40,000 undergraduates and 500 Jewish students among its 10,000 graduate students. The University offers approximately 35 courses in Jewish Studies and a minor in Jewish studies. The Hillel chapter is located at the Wolfond Center for Jewish Life.

1830: Birthdate of Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse, the first Jew to win the Nobel Prize for Literature

1839: In Württemberg, Germany, Bernhard Frankfurter, the son of Moses Levi Frankfurter and Mirjam Landauer, and his wife Esther Frank gave birth to Henriette Emma Frankfurter

1840: Ephraim Alex married Catherine Jones today the Great Synagogue.

1849: Birthdate of Emanuel Rich, who with his brother Morris, founded Rich’s Department Store.

1848: Birthdate of Ignace Ephrussi, the native of Odessa, who was a member of a family of famous Jewish bankers that included his brother Charles.  The family moved their operations from Odessa to Paris and Vienna.

1848: Birthdate of Toby Edward Rosenthal, the native of New Have CT, whose family moved to San Francisco in 1855 where he began his art studies which led him to pursue a career as painter whose worked include “Morning Prayers In Bach’s Family” which was purchased by the government of Saxony and hung at the museum in Leipzig.

1851: Birthdate of Hungarian attorney and Diet Member, Arthur Jellinek.

1854(15thof Adar, 5614): Shushan Purim

1855: Birthdate of Bohemian native Eduard Glaser, a ground breaking Arabist and archeologist.



1855: Pauline Koch and Hermann Einstein the parents of Albert Einstein gave birth to their youngest child Friederike, nicknamed “Rika.”

1855: Birthdate of Henry Wallenstein, the husband of Gisele Wallenstein, the father of Henry Wallenstein and a member of Temple Emanuel in Wichita, KS.

1856: Following the creation of the Company Ports of Marseille, Franco-Jewish financier Jules Mires formed a partnership with Talabot Paulin to rebuild the docks of this major French Mediterranean port.

1859: Abramo Volterra, a cloth merchant, and Angelica Almagià, the parents of Italian mathematician and physicist, Vito Volterra were married today.

1860: Birthdate of Count Moïse de Camondo, a native of Constantinople whose Sephardic family owned one of the largest banks in the Ottoman Empire and who became a leading French banker and art collector.

1860: Birthdate of bacteriologist Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine, the native of Odessa who refused to convert to further his career choosing instead to immigrate to France where he continued his work that led to vaccines against cholera and the bubonic plague.


1862:  “Treason in Embryo: A Remarkable Document” published today contained excerpts from correspondence written by David Yulee in January of 1861. At the time, Yulee was a United States Senator representing Florida. The correspondence described the meetings of U.S. Senators from several southern states and the role they would be playing the secession movement and the establishment of the Confederate States of America.

1864(O.S.) Birthdate of Sergei Zubatov. “the head of the Czarist Secret Police in Moscow” who “convinced” the imprisoned Manya Shochat to form “tame” workers “organizations that would work for reform rather than the overthrow of the government” which would supposedly “help achieve rights for Jews” – a supposition which the policeman knew was false and which the Jewish leader came to see as a “pipe dream.”

1865: The activities surrounding “the fourth annual masquerade ball of the Purim Association” which was held last night was described in an article published today entitled “The Purim Ball--Grand Masquerade at the Academy of Music.” According to the article “The Purim Ball is held to commemorate one of the great epochs of Jewish history -- the deliverance of the chosen people from the machinations of Haman, Prime Minister to King Ahasuerus, of Persia. “The Purim Association raised approximately $9,000 for its charitable activities through the sale of 900 tickets at $10 each. The society also published the Purim Gazette, a paper which is printed at each recurrence of the Purim ball.1867: The Amusements Column, in an item styled "Last of Shylock" reported that this evening marked the next to the last performance of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Winter Garden Theatre. There would be one more Saturday matinee and then "farewell to the Jew for the Season. “The Merchant of Venice” featuring Shylock reportedly was the first Shakespearean play to have been performed in United States; a performance that took place in colonial Virginia.

1867: In Russia, Jacob Baruch Abramowitz and his wife gave birth Odessa trained cantor Jacob Abramowitz who in 1919 came to the United States where he served congregations in Chicago and Buffalo, NY before accepting a position with Congregation Sons of Halberstamm in Philadelphia.

1869: Prussia does away with the Oath More Judaico or Jewish Oath

1876: It was reported today that the Earl of Aylesford was in such dire financial straits that if he paid all of the money he owed to various English Jews, “he would have scarcely had a income to support himself.”

1877(1st of Nisan, 5637): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1877: In New York, Caroline and David L. Einstein gave birth to Columba educated American diplomate and author Lewis Einstein, the husband of Helen Ralli, a well-connected English lady who served in several posts in the Ottoman Empire as well as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

1877(1st of Nisan, 5637): Sixty-two year old Albert Cohn, the Hungarian born French philanthropist and scholar who enjoyed a “lifelong connection with the Rothschild” and worked to improve the condition of Algerian Jewry passed away in Paris.


1879: Birthdate of Warsaw native Yakov Ganetsky, “also known as Jakub Furstenberg” the Bolshevik Revolutionary who reportedly was one of those who negotiated with the German General Staff to send Lenin back to Russia so he could complete the revolution and take Russia out of the war so that the Kaiser would be able to defeat the Allies in the West and win World War I.

1880: It was reported today that Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen by Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner “bristles with attacks on Jews.”

1881(14thof Adar II, 5641): Purim

1881: Birthdate of Russian native Harry Handler, the NYU Law School graduate who morphed into a Jewish educator who was the husband of “the former Esther Liskowsky.”


1881: The Purim Masquerade Ball will be held today at the Academy of Music in New York City.

1882(24th of Adar): Rabbi Eliezer Lipmann Silbermann founder of Ha Maggid, the first weekly Hebrew newspaper, passed away today.

1884(18thof Adar, 5644): Shabbat Parah

1884(18thof Adar, 5644): Seventy-nine year old Mary Moss, the daughter of Solomon and Rebecca Eve Levy and wife of Eleazer (Eugene) Moss passed away today in Philadelphia.

1884: In Podolia, Hana and Boksir Dov Sharfshtein gave birth to author and linguist Zvi Scharfstein who came to the United States in WW I where he continued his work.

1886: In New York, formation of the Jewish Immigrants’ Protective Society1886: Birthdate of Morris Schulman, the Russian native who gained famed as American actor Michael Mark who enjoyed a forty career in films

1886: Yeshiva Etz Chaim was founded in New York. It was the first American yeshiva to include the study of Talmud.

1887: Birthdate of Polish born “Yiddish scholar, novelist and poet J.J. Trunk, a protégé of I.L. Peretz who was in 1941 was brought to the United States where he joined the staff of The Jewish Day.


1887: In Valozhyn, Samuel Eliezer and Hanna Rogosin gave birth to American textile manufacturer Israel Rogosin who opened a plant in Israel at the request of the Israeli government and who was the father of documentary filmmaker Lionel Rogosin.

1889: Birthdate of “Nivki” native Moshe Bassin, who in 1907 came to the United States where gained fame as Yiddish poet and anthologist Max Bassin the husband of Miriam Berman Bassin and the father of Milton and Eugene Bassin.


1889: Simon Cook was promoted from Ensign to Lt. Jr. Grade in the USN.

1889: Birthdate assigned to Melech Epstein by his parents. The native of Belarus moved to the United States where he wrote Labor in U.S.A. and The Jew and Communism 

1890: In Sutter, CA, Charles and Amanda Dannenberg gave birth to Otto Oscar Dannenberg, the husband of Iceophine Elsie Zimmerman.

1891: General H.B. Carrington delivered four lectures today a Syracuse University including one entitled “Hebrew History.”

1891: “New York University” published today described the upcoming free lectures that would be offered by The School of Pedagogy including Rabbi Leight on speaking on “Old Hebrew Education.”

1892: Birthdate of Jacob Bartfield, “an Austrian-born Jew nicknamed "Soldier" because he served in the American army after emigrating to the USA” who “boxed as a welterweight and middleweight in the 1910s and 1920s” and who passed away in September of 1970.

1892: “Sunday Not Recognized By Jews” published today described the grounds on which John Besher dismissed the charges that had been lodged against two Jewish grocers for doing business on Sunday. Bsher accepted their position that “Sunday being recognized by their race as an ordinary week day, they were entitled to keep their stores open for business” but only if they observe Saturdays as their Sabbath.

1892: As the business operations of J.E. Guenzburg crumbled today in St. Petersburg, it was announced that the Jewish bankers had liabilities totaling six million rubles. It had been thought that the assets of his firm which dates back to the Crimean War were closer to ten million rubles.

1892: In Paris, the Bourse closed down based on reports of the failure of J.E. Guenzburg’s banking interests in St. Petersburg.

1892: Birthdate of Lithuanian native Henrikas Rabinavicius, a graduate of the “Universities of Dorpat, Leningrad and London” who in 1927 was forced to resign as Counsel General of Lithuania in New York because Premier Waldemara wanted his country to be represented by “a Lithuanian, not a Jew.” (Editor’s note: this 1927 expression of anti-Semitism might help to explain the success of the Final Solution in the Baltic States.)


1892: Word of the failure of J.E. Guenzburg, a leading Russian banker had little effect on the financial markets in London

1892: In Berlin it is believed that the failure of Guenzburg was the result of governmental animosity. The Czar’s government objected to the power of a Jewish banker and his involvement with German bankers since Russia is now allying itself with France. Creditors have good reason to believe that Guenzburg will pay all of his creditors.

1893: Birthdate of Jules Salvador Moch, the French politician who was the grandson of Colonel Jules Moch and the son of Captain Gaston Moch who was born and died in the same year as Captain Alfred Dreyfus whose cause he supported.

1893: Arthur Reichow, a representative of the committee connected with the Baron Hirsch Fund, returned to New York City tonight after having spent the day investigating conditions at the Jewish colony at Chesterfield, eight miles from New London, CT. “Instead of starvation” Reichow said “he found a comparatively contented people with only six families of the thirty two” at the colony were “really in need of assistance” and two of the families refused to accept any help unless it was in the form of loan.

1893: In Manhattan Henry and Barbetter Lashanska gave birth to operatic soprano Hulda Lashanska, who was also known as Hulda Rosenblum after she married Harold Rosenblum with she “had two daughters – Lenore and Peggy.”


1893: It was reported today that a Jewish peddler named Morantz has been fencing stolen goods for several gangs in the Kansas City area.  Morantz has a daughter named Mollie who takes the goods from the thieves when her father leaves the city “to sell the plunder.”

1893: Citing information that has appeared in German newspapers, “Andrew D. White, the United States Minister to Russia” has written to the State Department warning “that it is the intention of the promoters of the Baron Hirsch fund…to renew the immigration of Russian” Jews “to the Argentine Republic.”  “Only the better class of” Jews “will be sent to the South American republic and that those of an undesirable class will be sifted out and sent to the United States.”  White did not comment on the credibility of the reports saying only that U.S. immigration officials should vigilant about the appearance of such undesirable immigrants.

1895: Alfred Dreyfus arrived at the Iles de Sault, “a small archipelago situated twenty-seven miles (43 km) off Cayenne, opposite the mouth of the River Kuru” best known for Devil’s Island where the disgraced officer was to be imprisoned.

1896: In Rochester, NY, founding of the Congregation of Tailors (Chevra Chayteem) whose members included Nathan Rubenstein and which held services three times a day, operated a daily religious school and used Mt. Hope Cemetery.

1896: Seventy-eight Jewish veterans of the Union Army met in New York City's Lexington Opera House to form the Hebrew Union Veterans, the precursor group to the Jewish War Veterans of the USA. The veterans gathered in an attempt to refute claims in Harper’s Weekly and the North American Review that Jews had not fought in the war. (As reported by Seymour “Sy” Brody) The same charge was also made by Mark Twain which would prove to be unusual on two counts. Twain’s brief flirtation with the war had come on the Rebel side and his daughter would end up marrying a Jews.

1896: In Knyszyn, Poland “Reb Eli Novodvorsky, a Jewish scholar, and Chaya Tserel Novodvorsky, a small goods store owner” gave birth to Shimeon Novodvorsky, better known as Jim Novy,  the Austin, TX businessman and leader of the Jewish community who worked to save Jews from the Holocaust and was close friend of Lyndon Johnson.


1896:”Russia and Religious Liberty” published today described the treatment of non-Orthodox treatment in the Czar’s empire including his five or six million Jewish subjects who are subject to “Jew baiting” in which the government has “appealed to what is worst in human nature.  “The harrying of the Jews is generally admitted to be one of the cause of the growth of poverty” among the Russian people.  “After the expulsion of the Jews from Moscow, the rate of interest in private pawnshops rose from 25 to 200 per cent per annum. (So much for the myth of the avaricious Jewish moneylender)

1897: It was reported today that a performance of “My Uncle’s Will” by the students of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts was the main entertainment provided at an event hosted by the Hebrew Institute.

1897: Eighty-two year old English Mathematician James Joseph Sylvester, the son of Abraham Joseph who was awarded the Copley Award, the highest honor of the Royal Society passed away today.

1897: “Eulogies of Mr. Goodhart” published today described the speeches made by Dr. Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Dr. F. de Solo Mendes and Dr. Hermann Phillips the religious director at the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society all of which spoke movingly of the contribution of the late Morris Goodhart.

1897: The Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia, whose “annual report showed that it had an income of $9,114 last year” celebrated its 49thanniversary today.

1897: “Ephraim Lederer” has volunteered to continue giving “weekly lectures on the Constitution of the United States and the requirements for the proper performance of the duties of a citizen” in Philadelphia.

1897: “Catholic Praises of Jewess” published today described the praise Reverend Sylvester Malone, State Regent and Pastor of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Brooklyn had for “Mrs. Nannette Marks, a Jewish lady who has become famous throughout Brooklyn for her benevolent acts, irrespective of creed and who walked to the altar rail and presented a bouquet of flowers” to Reverend Maurice Ryan, the Paulist missionary.

1898: Two days after he had passed away, 39 year old Abraham Rosenberg was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1899: Today the General Conference of American Rabbis discussed a paper entitled “The National Idea in Judaism with Especial Reference to the Zionistic Movement” presented by Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago, Illinois.

1899: In Riga, “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Taub” gave birth Harry Taub, the Columbia University trained pharmacist and professor of pharmacology at his alma mater Harry Taub, the president of Bayside Jewish Center and brother of Abraham Taub, a fellow faculty member of the Columbia College of Pharmacy who was the husband of Mildred Taub with whom they raised two children – Robert and Sylvia.


1899: Three hundred forty-five guests attended the celebration of the 80thbirthday of Rabbi Isaac M. Wise which included a dinner at the Phoenix Club in Cincinnati, Ohio hosted by the General Conference of American Rabbis.

1899: It was reported today that the next musicale and tea sponsored by the Woman’s Committee of the Hebrew Technical Institute will take place next month at Sherry’s

1900: Parts of the body of Ernst Winter, a student who had disappeared in Konitz, West Prussia were discovered in a nearby lake and an arm was found in a cemetery.

1900: Following the death of a student in Konitz, Poland, local Jews are faced with another “blood libel” episode. While Count Plucker promoted riots against the Jews, Wolf Israelski was accused and arrested. After Israelski was proven innocent, two other Jews, Moritz Lewy and Rosenthal, were arrested on the same charge. Rosenthal and Lewy were acquitted, yet Lewy was sentenced to four years for denying he knew the victim. All the evidence was based on the testimony of a petty thief named Masloff who later received only one year for perjury.

1901: Benjamin and Rose Ratner gave birth to Samuel Augie Ratner, the resident of Minneapolis who was the husband of Betty Ratner and the father Cornell College (Mt. Vernon, IA) graduate Rochel Rachel Kingman

1903(16thof Adar, 5663): Shushan Purim

1903(16thof Adar, 5663): Sixty-four year old Adolph Loeb the native Bechtheim, Germany, the son of Jakob and Ester Loeb and the husband of Johanna Loeb passed away today in Chicago.

1905: Birthdate of Nat Perrin, the lawyer turned gag writer whose career spanned Marx Brothers Movies to “The Addams Family” – a 1960’s sitcom.

1905(8thof Adar II, 5665): Seventy-seven year old Meyer Guggenheim, the native of Switzerland, who came to the United States in 1847 where he made his fortune in mining and smelting and became the patriarch of the Guggenheim clan consisting of his wife Barbara and ten children, passed away today.

1906: While delivering a speech at Chesham on the question of the excluding aliens from settling in the British Isles, The Honorable Lionel Walter Rothschild, Member of Parliament for the Aylesbury Division of Buckinghamshire, “referred to the number of poor Russian refugees excluded from Great Britain in the last few months.” Based on what he considered to be “irrefutable evidence,” Mr. Rothschild, the son of Lord Rothschild, reported that those Russians who were forced to return to their native land were shot at the border without being given any kind of trial.

1907: The Jewish Chronicle reported that, a departure from Jewish burial customs, “at the cemetery of the United London Synagogue” a minister officiated at the burial of ashes.

1908: With Passover a month away, the baking of Matzoth has become a full time operation in New York with large moving vans having to be used to take the boxes of unleavened bread from the bakeries to the various distribution centers around town. A bakery on 33rd Street between Second and Third Avenues is actually having to work around the clock to keep up with the worldwide demand for Matzoth.

1912: The Turkish Ministry of the Interior to the Governor of Jerusalem issued a decree permitting the Jews to place benches and light candles in front of the Western Wall.

1913: The Annual Conference on Child Labor to which Leon Schwarz of Mobile, Alabama had been appointed as a delegate continued for a third day Jacksonville, Florida.

1913: It was reported today that “the will of the late Moses Strauss, a Polk County, Iowa, pioneer and financier bequeathed $75,000 to charities in Des Moines, IA.

1914(17thof Adar, 5674): Eighty year old Prussian born Canadian artist, a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts passed away today in Montreal.



1914: Birthdate of New York native, high school drop-out and singing water Joseph Roszawikz the USAA Corps veteran who gained fame as Joe E. Ross best known for his role in the ridiculous sitcom “Car 54.”


1915: Birthdate of Joe E. Ross, borscht belt comedian and star of such television sitcoms as “Car 54 Where Are You?”

1915: Vilkovishky, Lithuania. Rabbi Simon Eisenstein Barzilay and Taube (Rosenthal) Barilay gave birth to American historian and educator, Isaac Eisenstein, the husband of and father of Sharonah and Joshua Barzilay.


1915: Birthdate of Bronx native Theodore Wilentz “who with his brother, Eli, owned the Eighth Street Bookshop, a bustling bibliophilic beehive in the 1950's and 60's.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)


1915: It was reported today that the “relief cargo” being carried by U.S. collier Vulcan, “represents an expenditure of $150,000 by the American Jewish Relief Committee” and the flour is the primary staple in the shipment.

1915:Birthdate of Dr. David Wilfred Abse, the native of Cardiff ,Wales  and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia from 1962 until 2000 whose siblings included poet Dannie Abse and Welsh Labor Member of Parliament Leopold “Leo” Abse.

1915: It was reported today that L. H. Levine and E.W. L. Epstein of New York will direct the distribution of relief supplies once they arrive at Jaffa.

1915: It was reported today that the membership in the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society had grown from 15,357 in 1913 to 46,023 in 1914 and that the society had raised $112, 988 last year and spent $110,869.

1915: It was reported today that Jewish immigration had fallen form 130,237 in 1913 to 66,557 in 1914.

1916: It was reported today that in Philadelphia, the newly formed Maccabean Regiment has “unanimously elected Jacob D. Lit, one the owners of Lit Brothers department store which had been founded as dress and millinery shop by his sister Rachel, as Colonel” and “Isidore Stern, a prominent attorney as Chairman.”

1916: An expeditionary force under the command of General Pershing crossed into Mexico in an attempt to capture Pancho Villa – a military action that would include enough Jews that Rabbis were sent to the Mexican border by the Army and Navy Committee and the Central Conference of American Rabbis to conduct services for the High Holidays and Sukkoth.

1916: As part of the ceremonies marking the dedication of “the new Temple of Sinai Congregation of the Bronx” the Sinai Auxiliary Societies are scheduled to host a reception tonight complete with music and speakers.

1917: “Herman Bernstein, the editor of the American Hebrew…predicted” tonight “that equal rights for the Jews would be one the important results of the Reactionary Party.”

1917: Czar Nicholas II abdicated bringing an end to the Romanov dynasty which had caused so much suffering for the Jewish people.

1918: In Lemberg, the police searched the “headquarters of the Paolie-Zionists and Union Jewish Workmen and arrested several leaders.”

1918: In Frankfort, a “conference of Orthodox Jewish organizations resolved that the support of a Jewish settlement in Palestine is the religious duty of all Jewry and pledged itself to work for the emancipation of Jews everywhere.”

1919(13thof Adar II, 5697): Parashat Vayikra; Shabbat Zachor; Erev Purim

1919(13th of Adar II, 5679): Albert, (Avraham) Harkavy passed away. Born in Belarus in 1835, Harkavy led an unusual life for a Russian Jew. After getting a Yeshiva education he received two degrees from the University of St. Petersburg before gaining a doctorate while studying abroad. In a country wracked by anti-Semitism, he was appointed head of the Oriental Division in the Imperial Public Library, a position he held until his death.

1919: This evening, Drs. David Philipson of Cincinnati, Samuel Schulman, Joseph Silverman and Ambassador Abram I. Elkus were among the speakers at Temple Emanu-El where the campaign to raise funds for organizations created by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise as a way of “commemorating the centenary of his birth” was formally begun.

1919: In Connecticut, Michael and Rose Abitz gave birth to Irving Abitz, who served with Patton’s Third Army during WW II and who was the husband of Ruth Abitz.

1919: “Ex-Ambassador Henry Morgenthau” sailed for Europe today where “he will assist in Red Cross work…and help to arrange the international convention” of the Red Cross” which will be held in Geneva after the peace treaty ending the World War has “been promulgated.”

1919: The New York office of the Jewish Correspondence Bureau opened today as a New York Corporation with a total capitalization of $26, 650.

1921: Birthdate of John Patrick Kenneally, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer, who won the Victoria Cross for his bravery on April 29 and April 30, 1943, while fighting in Tunisia.

1922: After Egypt gains nominal independence from the United Kingdom, Fuad I becomes King of Egypt. This is the same King Faud I who declared in 1917, when he was the Guest of Honor at the opening of the Zionist Movement in Cairo and Alexandria that: "You Jews of Egypt, will always be protected by us, until you go back to your land, the Land of Israel"

1923: Birthdate of Rostam Bastuni, an Arab Christian who was the “the first Arab citizen of Israel to represent a Zionist party in the Knesset.”

1923: “Old Heidelberg” a silent film starring Eugen Burg and directed by Hans Behrendt who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.

1924: Birthdate of Michael Harsegor an Israeli historian and a professor for history at the Tel Aviv University who specialized in the history of Europe in the late Middle Ages.

1924: Birthdate of Richard Topus, who gained fame as pigeon trainer during World War II. Born in Brooklyn, Topus was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Growing up in Flatbush, he fell in love with the pigeons his neighbors kept on their rooftops in spacious coops known as lofts. His parents would not let him have a loft of his own — they feared it would interfere with schoolwork, Andrew Topus said — but he befriended several local men who taught him to handle their birds. Two of them had been pigeoneers in World War I, when the United States Army Pigeon Service was formally established.

“In January 1942, barely a month after Pearl Harbor, the United States War Department sounded a call to enlist. It wasn’t men they wanted — not this time. The Army was looking for pigeons. To the thousands of American men and boys who raced homing pigeons, a popular sport in the early 20th century and afterward, the government’s message was clear: Uncle Sam Wants Your Birds. Richard Topus was one of those boys. He had no birds of his own to give, but he had another, unassailable asset: he was from Brooklyn, where pigeon racing had long held the status of a secular religion. His already vast experience with pigeons — long, ardent hours spent tending and racing them after school and on weekends — qualified him, when he was still a teenager, to train American spies and other military personnel in the swift, silent use of the birds in wartime. World War II saw the last wide-scale use of pigeons as agents of combat intelligence. Mr. Topus, just 18 when he enlisted in the Army, was among the last of the several thousand pigeoneers, as military handlers of the birds were known, who served the United States in the war. Pigeons have been used as wartime messengers at least since antiquity. Before the advent of radio communications, the birds were routinely used as airborne couriers, carrying messages in tiny capsules strapped to their legs. A homing pigeon can find its way back to its loft from nearly a thousand miles away. Over short distances, it can fly a mile a minute. It can go where human couriers often cannot, flying over rough terrain and behind enemy lines. By the early 20th century, advances in communications technology seemed to herald the end of combat pigeoneering. In 1903, a headline in The New York Times confidently declared, “No Further Need of Army Pigeons: They Have Been Superseded by the Adoption of Wireless Telegraph Systems.” But technology, the Army discovered, has its drawbacks. Radio transmissions can be intercepted. Triangulated, they can reveal the sender’s location. In World War I, pigeons proved their continued usefulness in times of enforced radio silence. After the United States entered World War II, the Army put out the call for birds to racing clubs nationwide. Tens of thousands were donated. In all, more than 50,000 pigeons served the United States in the war. Many were shot down. Others were set upon by falcons released by the Nazis to intercept them. (The British countered by releasing their own falcons to pursue German messenger pigeons. But since falcons found Allied and Axis birds equally delicious, their deployment as defensive weapons was soon abandoned by both sides.) But many American pigeons did reach their destinations safely, relaying vital messages from soldiers in the field to Allied commanders. The information they carried — including reports on troop movements and tiny hand-sketched maps — has been widely credited with saving thousands of lives during the war. Mr. Topus enlisted in early 1942 and was assigned to the Army Signal Corps, which included the Pigeon Service. He was eventually stationed at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, one of several installations around the country at which Army pigeons were raised and trained. There, he joined a small group of pigeoneers, not much bigger than a dozen men. Camp Ritchie specialized in intelligence training, and Mr. Topus and his colleagues schooled men and birds in the art of war. They taught the men to feed and care for the birds; to fasten on the tiny capsules containing messages written on lightweight paper; to drop pigeons from airplanes; and to jump out of airplanes themselves, with pigeons tucked against their chests. The Army had the Maidenform Brassiere Company make paratroopers’ vests with special pigeon pockets. The birds, for their part, were trained to fly back to lofts whose locations were changed constantly. This skill was crucial: once the pigeons were released by troops in Europe, the Pacific or another theater, they would need to fly back to mobile combat lofts in those places rather than light out for the United States. Mr. Topus and his colleagues also bred pigeons, seeking optimal combinations of speed and endurance. After the war, Mr. Topus earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business from Hofstra University. While he was a student, he earned money selling eggs — chicken eggs — door to door and afterward started a wholesale egg business. In the late 1950s, Mr. Topus became the first salesman at Friendship Food Products, a dairy company then based in Maspeth, Queens; he retired as executive vice president for sales and marketing. (The company, today based in Jericho, N.Y. and a subsidiary of Dean Foods, is now known as Friendship Dairies.) In the 1960s and early ’70s, Mr. Topus taught marketing at Hofstra; the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University; and the State University of New York, Farmingdale, where he started a management-training program for supermarket professionals. In later years, after retiring to Scottsdale, he taught at Arizona State University and was also a securities arbitrator, hearing disputes between stockbrokers and their clients. Though the Army phased out pigeons in the late 1950s, Mr. Topus raced them avidly till nearly the end of his life. He left a covert, enduring legacy of his hobby at Friendship, for which he oversaw the design of the highly recognizable company logo, a graceful bird in flight, in the early 1960s. From that day to this, the bird has adorned cartons of the company’s cottage cheese, sour cream, buttermilk and other products. To legions of unsuspecting consumers, Andrew Topus said last week, the bird looks like a dove. But to anyone who really knew his father, it is a pigeon, plain as day. Mr. Topus passed away in December of 2008.

1925(19th of Adar): Mordecai Spector passed away

1926: James N. Rosenberg of New York, the Vice Chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee conferred today in Washington with Secretary Herbert Hoover who “expressed great interest in the plans” of the committee to provide relief for the Jews in Russia and said “he would assist the committee as far as circumstances permitted.”

1926: David A. Brown, the national chairman of the national campaign to raise fifteen million dollars for the relief of Jews in “Russia, Poland, Palestine, Eastern and Southeastern Europe” is scheduled to address the first meeting of the Women’s Division of the New York campaign chaired by Mrs. Abram I. Elkus, the wife of the former ambassador and supported by Mrs. Jacob Schiff, the honorary chairman.

1927: In Vienna, violinist Max Rostal and his wife gave birth to psychologist Sybil Bianca Giuliett Eysenck the psychologist and editor of “Personality and Individual Differences” whose husband Hans was raised by a grandmother who, although a devout Lutheran, died in a concentration camp because “she ‘apparently’ was from a Jewish family.”

1927: “The Csarda Princess” a romance film directed by Hanns Schwarz and with music by Artur Guttman was released today in Germany and Hungary.

1926: Birthdate of Sheldon Jerome Segal, “who led the scientific team that developed Norplant, the first significant advance in birth control since the pill, and who also developed other long-acting contraceptives…”

1927: The libel suit that Aaron Sapiro brought against Henry Ford’s newspaper, the laughably named Dearborn Independent(it was published in Dearborn, but hardly independent since nothing was published in it that did not reflect the views of Ford) began today.

1928(23rdof Adar, 5688): Sixty-four year old Charles Alexander Loeser, the Harvard graduate and husband of pianist of Olga Lebert Kaufman who created one of the great collection of “early Renaissance art furniture” while living in Florence.

http://museicivicifiorentini.comune.fi.it/en/palazzovecchio/donazione_loeser02.htm




1930(15thof Adar, 5690): Parashat Tetzaveh

1930: Dedicatory exercises for the Temple Rodeph Sholom’s new home in Manhattan continue for a second day.

1931: In what was “the first split in the US Troytskyist movement” Albert “Weisbord and his wife launched an independent Marxist group, the Communist League of Struggle, which existed until 1937.”  (Editor’s note – this intermural fights seemed so important at the time, but in the great scheme of things have proven meaningless like so much else.)

1932: In an article datelined London, the Associate Press describes “the Jewish Olympiad at Tel Aviv, Palestine” as one the “four great athletic competitions of 1932” putting it in the same category as the world’s Tenth Olympic Games to be held in Los Angeles. “More than mere physical contests, the Jewish games serve both body and soul. They recall the protest of ancient Maccabees against the Greek Olympiads which glorified Athenian physique.”

1933: In Brooklyn, Nathan and Celia (née Amster) Bader gave birth to their second daughter, Ruth Joan Bader who gained fame as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.


1933: Three Jews were arrested by Storm troopers in Breslau were beaten and bloodied.

1934: “Romance of Ida” a film based on a book by the same name directed by Steve Sekely was released in Hungary today.

1935: Bernard S. Deutsch, New York’s President of the Board of Alderman, met with the team of Jewish athletes that will be representing the United States at the World Maccabiah Games

1935: According to a statement issued today by Dr. E.L. Sukenik, Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, twelve pieces of broken pottery found on the site of ancient Lachish destroy the very foundations of biblical "higher criticism."

1935: Birthdate of actor Judd Hirsch best known for his role in the hit sitcom, “Taxi.”

1936: The Joint Distribution held a memorial meeting at the Commodore Hotel where tribute was paid “to the memory of Paul Sandor, statesmen, member of the Hungarian Parliament and leader in the organization and legislation to preserve Hungarian Judaism.”

1936: In Tel Aviv, shops were closed “as a sign of grief for the plight of the Jews of Poland said to be the victims of renewed pogroms.” The economic protests “coincided with a mass meeting called by the Jewish National Council of Palestine.” According to published reports, Polish Jewry is facing a threatened prohibition of kosher slaughtering in the Polish republic.

1936: “The Ages-Old Battleground of Conflicting Faiths” published today provides a detailed review of The Battleground: Syria and Palestine by Hilaire Belloc. (Eighty years later to the day, sounds like this book was published to match today’s headlines.)

1936: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held at Temple Emanu-El for seventy-six year old attorney Henry Wollman which will be led by Rabbi Samuel H. Goldman and will be attended by Julian Mack and Albert Ottinger.

1936: In London, Doctor Chaim Weizmann is scheduled to address a meeting that will mark the start of an appeal “to British Jewry to raise one million English pounds for the expatriation of Jews from Germany.”

1936: “Mass Lesson In Charity” published today described plans for the upcoming pageant at the Roxy Theatre that “will portray historical episodes illustrating the evolution of the tradition of Jewish charity from Old Testament times to the present.”

1936: Birthdate of Howard “Howie” Greenfield, the Brooklyn native who formed a successful songwriting partnership with Neil Sedaka with whom he co-wrote four songs performed his Sephardic Jewish friend that reached first place on Billbaord.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that after Shlomo Gafni and Hanoch Metz were murdered and robbed near Nazareth, Gedaliah Geller, 36, Moshe Zalman Ben-Sasson, 33, and Yehuda Eliovitz, 28, of Yavne¹el were murdered nearby. Police dogs followed the tracks to Tiberias. Ammunition disappeared from a sealed government armory at Kfar Tavor and there was sporadic shooting all over Galilee. Dr. Chaim Weizmann accepted a donation of £5,000 for the Yishuv¹s security and development from the British Synagogues Federation.

1937: Dr. James Bryant Conant the President of Harvard is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “the ideals of scholarship and academic freedom” which is the third in a series of lectures sponsored by the Semi-Centennial Committee of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

1937: Based on a cablegram from Gordon Loud, who was leading the Megiddo Expedition sponsored by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, to Dr. John A. Wilson, Director of the Institute, an announcement was made that gold, gems and vessels hidden at Megiddo dating back to 1400 BCE had been discovered. It is speculated that the treasure was hidden there by some hitherto unnamed “Prince of Megiddo.”

1938: As the Nazis took over Prague Martha and Waitstill Sharp who were running one of the most successful refugee rescue operations in Europe finished burning their notes to keep any information from failing into the hands of the SS.

1938: Today, “all over Austria,” as “excited crowds are cheering the union” with Germany, “the Jews of Austria” who have been “loyal citizens” “now find themselves disfranchised, barred from public office, deprived of their citizenship, harried and beaten in the streets.”

1939: Felix Weltsch left Prague with Max Brod and his family on the last train out of Czechoslovakia. In Palestine, Weltsch worked as a librarian in Jerusalem until his death in 1964.

1939: Following today’s occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Germans, Czech diplomate  Egon Hostovský left Brussels, “emigrated to Paris” then moved on to Portugal before finally arriving in New York in 1941.

1939: German troops marched into Prague in what was the last act of German aggression before the start of World War II. It also brought the Jews of Czechoslovakia under the control of the Nazis

1939: In Slovakia, Alexander Mach became commander of the Hlinka Guards, the Slovak Nazis who helped deport the Jews to Auschwitz.

1939: Today, one day after “Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia and became a separate pro-Nazi state” “Carpathian Ruthenia proclaimed its independence” three days before it would be swallowed up by Hungary.  (The unraveling of central Europe just before WW II was more than just a case of Hitler on the march.)

1939: The family of historian Dr. Yehuda Bauer left Czechoslovakia for Palestine. Bauer’s life reads like some character out of one of those historic fiction novels that Leon Uris would write. It spans everything from membership in the Palmach to a distinguished academic career.

1940: In the Bronx, Benjamin Faerstein, a dentist, and “the former Rose Rosenberg,” “Jewish immigrants from what is now the Ukraine” gave birth to Florence Ina Faestein who gained fame as poet and translator Chana Bloch. (As reported by William Grimes)


1940: Birthdate of Judith Rose Fingeret, the Pittsburgh native, who, as Judith F. Krug, led the campaign by libraries against efforts to ban books, including helping found Banned Books Week, then fought laws and regulations to limit children’s access to the Internet.

1941: In Amsterdam, Etty Hillesum a young woman studying Slavic languages at Amsterdam University recorded her rage of the deportations (of the Jews) writing in her diary “The whole German nation must be destroyed root and branch. They are all scum.”

1942: The First Dünamünde Action, a murderous assault designed “to execute Jews who had recently been deported to Latvia from Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia” conducted by the Nazis and their Latvian collaborators began today in the Biķernieki forest, near Riga, Latvia.

1942: In Brooklyn, bookkeeper Eleanor Friedman and insurance salesman Alan Jacob Friedman gave birth to Alan Jacob Friedman “a physicist who specialized in communicating the tenets of science to nonscientists and as the director of the New York Hall of Science in Queens oversaw its growth from a moribund museum to one of the city’s formidable educational institutions.”


1942(26thof Adar, 5702): Seventy year old Viennese born composer and conductor Alexander von Zemlinksy passed away today in the United States.



1943: In Toronto, Canada, “Esther (née Sumberg), a musician, and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor’ gave birth to David Paul Cronenberg  a Canadian film director and occasional actor who is one of the principal originators of what is sometimes known as the "body horror" genre, which explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection.





1943: The deportation of the Jews from Thrace began. When Hitler was dismembering the Balkans, he gave Thrace to Bulgaria. The price was for the Nazis largesse was the extermination of the local Jewish population. The Jews of Thrace ended up at Treblinka. At the time of the deportation, Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Minister was meeting in Washington with the Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State. Hull raised the issue of rescuing the Balkan Jews. Eden cautioned against this. After all, Hitler might offer the Allies the Jews of Poland and Germany as well and there simply were not enough ships available for such an effort.

1943(8th of Adar II, 5703): At the Theresienstadt Ghetto, Trude Neumann died of starvation. She was the daughter of Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement.

1943: “The Silver Fleet,” a British war movie co-produced by Emeric Pressburger and filmed by cinematographer Erwin Hillier.

1943: In Cleveland, Ohio, “Helen (Smolen) Moss, a schoolteacher, and Nelson Nathan Moss, a lawyer and small-business owner: gave birth to Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter.


1943: “In the aftermath of the Stalingrad disaster, Hitler informed Joseph Goebbbels that the liquidation program should not ‘cease or pause until no Jew is left anywhere in the Reich.’”

1944: Fort Ontario, an 80 acre federal reservation on Lake Ontario, was closed today, only to be re-opened later in the year as the European refugee center that would be known as “Safe Haven.”

1944: Birthdate of Josef Joffe, the native of Łódź, Poland who grew up in West Berlin and became editor of Die Zeit, a weekly German newspaper before moving onto a career in academia in the United States.

1944: Abba Berditchev parachuted into Yugoslavia. His “mission was to assist the Jews, gather intelligence and help rescue members of the air forces who were captured or had parachuted into Romania. He did not succeed in reaching Romania, instead returning to Bari, Italy. In August 1944 Berditchev traveled to Slovakia, where he participated in the Slovak National Uprising. After two months of fighting in the mountains, Berditchev was captured by the Germans and transferred in December 1944 to Mauthausen along with other captives, where he was brutally tortured and murdered by the Nazis.”

(As chronicled by Yad Vashem

1944:  Bowing to international criticism led by the British and Americas, Turkey abolished the “Varlik Vergisi” or “Wealth Tax” levied on that nation’s non-Muslim population including the Jews.

1944: Birthdate of Adèle Geras, the native of Jerusalem, wife of Norman Geras and author Sophie Hannah who gained fame as author specializing in works for “young children and teens and winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Golden Windows.


1945: Birthdate of New York politician Mark J. Green

1945: The exact date of the death of Anne Frank has not been established. According to one source, on this date Anne Frank died in Bergen Belsen concentration camp from Typhus shortly before the liberation. Anne was born in Frankfurt but spent most of her life in Holland. Once the deportations began Anne and her family moved to a hiding place and stayed there from July 9, 1942 until August 4, 1944 when they were betrayed. Anne had hoped to become a writer and succeeded beyond anything she could have imagined when her diary was published after World War II

1946: British premier Attlee agreed to India's right to independence. This decision had a major, if under-reported effect on the future of the Jews in Palestine. Once the British decided to give up India, the need to protect the Suez Canal, the British lifeline to India, had greatly diminished. The British had wanted the Palestine Mandate primarily to protect this lifeline. Now that this would no longer be needed, the British were prepared to give up the Palestine Mandate which led to the creation of the state of Israel two years later.

1947: For the first time, British authorities have shipped “authorized immigrants” from Palestine to Cyprus on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. The immigrants are Jews who had come to Palestine aboard the Susannah.

1948: Birthdate of Kate Bornstein, American transgender author.

1948: “The meeting of the United Nations Security Council scheduled today for consideration of the Palestine question was postponed until 2:30 P.M. tomorrow as a result of an eleventh-hour decision by the United States, China and France to ask Jews and Arabs whether they would agree to a truce in the Holy Land,”

1948: “A spokesman of the Jewish Agency protested today that the seven-day curfew on road traffic which imposed on Jewish settlements in the Upper Galilee was ‘inconsistent’ with the neutrality that British security forces had professed to maintain.”

1949(14thof Adar, 5709): Purim

1949(14thof Adar, 5709): Emma Menko, the wife of Jake Menko and the daughter of Charles Wessolowsky, an earlier supporter of B’nai B’rith in Alabama, passed away.

1950: “Tarzan and the Slave Girl,” another film about the Jungle man directed by Lee Sholem, produced by Sol Lesser and written by Hans Jacoby was released today in the United States.

1952: In Tangiers, a Muslim demonstration supporting union with Morocco turned violent and "many Jewish-owned shops were among those looted and burned."

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from Egypt that a political battle was shaping up in Cairo between Palestine hard-liners and moderates over the future of the Palestine Liberation Organization¹s role in the Middle East and its relations with Jordan and Syria.

1953(28th of Adar, 5713): Eighty year old Herman B. Baruch, the brother of financier and Presidential adviser Bernard Baruch who was both a doctor like his father and a former Ambassador to the Netherlands   and Portugal passed away today.


1953(28thof Adar, 5713): Seventy-six year old Democratic Party leader and “chairman of the board of trustees of Yeshiva University Samuel Levy, the St Patrick Day born NYU trained lawyer and husband of Sadie Vesell Levy with whom he raised two children – Bernice and Lawrence – passed away today.


1956: "My Fair Lady" opened on Broadway. The lyrics were written by Alan J. Lerner and the music was composed by Frederick Lowe. These are but two Jews connected with that unique American entertainment creation - the musical comedy. Some other names include the team of Rogers and Hammerstein, Moss Hart, Leonard Bernstein, Frank Loesser, Jerome Kern and the Gershwin Brothers, George and Ira.

1957(12th of Adar II, 5717): Twelve days after having been shot by Zeev Eckstein, Rudolf Israel Kastner succumbed to his wounds and died today in Tel Aviv.




1957: Birthdate of David Silverman, American animator best known for his work on the television “The Simpsons.”

1959: In Irvine, CA, Austrian born Holocaust survivor and former resident of Israel Eric Teltscher and his wife, a native of pre-state Israel gave birth to American tennis pro Eliot Teltscher.


1962(9th of Adar II): Seventy-four year old Minsk native Daniel Persky who “had been a columnist for the Hebrew weekly Hadoar” since 1921 and columnist for Haaretz as well as the winner of Louis LaMed Prize winner for the best Hebrew book of 1948 for writing Ivri Anokhi (I Am a Hebrew) passed away today in New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital.

1965: President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress to ensure everybody's right to vote regardless of any race, religion, sex, etc. This landmark legislation which was heavily supported by Jewish voters and politicians would be known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It would change the landscape of American politics forever. And it was a true act of political and physical courage for Johnson to make and support such a proposal.

1966(23rd of Adar, 5726): Abe Saperstein founder of the Harlem Globetrotters passed away at age 63.



1967: ABC broadcast the last episode of “The Monroes” created by Milt Rosen and co-starring Barbara Hershey.

1967: “In Like Flint,” a spy spoof produced by Saul David, co-starring Lee J. Cobb, featuring Herb Edelman and with music by Jerry Goldsmith was released in the United States today.

1969: US Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigned under a cloud of scandal. Fortas was a close friend and advisor to Lyndon Johnson. According to some accounts, when Johnson told Fortas that he was going to appoint him the "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court, Fortas, cautioned against this. He told Johnson that neither he, nor the Jewish community, would consider his appointment as fulfilling that role. Apparently, Fortas saw himself only nominally as a Jew and did not see this accident of birth as a stepping stone to power. Johnson ignored him and made the appointment later.

1970: “After 28 previews, the Broadway production” of Purlie directed by Phillip Rose who also wrote the book for this musical by Louis Johnson, opened at The Broadway Theatre.

1972: “Slaughterhouse-Five” a movie version of the novel by the same name co-starring Ron Leibman was released in the United States today.

1972: “The Godfather,” a movie version of the novel by the same name produced by Albert S. Ruddy and co-starring James Caan and Abe Vigoda opened at the Loew’s State Theatre.

1973(11thof Adar II, 5733): Ta’anit Esther

1973: An attack on the Israeli and Jordanian embassies in Paris” was “forestalled” today when “2 Arabs were arrested by French police at the French-Italian bordered, leading to the arrest of one Palestinian and one English doctor in Paris.”

1973: André Bettencourt, who like so many Frenchmen of his generation had a checkered pass, as can be seen by his service as cabinet under President Pierre Mendès France after having written during the days of Vichy France that Jews were “hypocritical Pharisees whose race has been forever sullied by the blood of the righteous” for which “they will be cursed” began serving as French Foreign Minister.

1974: “President Nixon stated that  the rise in the number of Jews permitted to leave the USSR is due to his personal contacts with Soviet leaders; passage of his trade bill necessary for continuing dialogue with Russians and further emigration.”

1974: “Senators Henry Jackson and Abraham Ribicoff told Dr. Kissinger that Soviet assurance of more than 35 thousand Jewish emigration permits annually are the condition for considering compromise on the Jackson Amendment.”

1974: Funeral services were held today in Brooklyn, for Judge Harold W. Cohn, the husband of Lillian Cohn and father of Steven and Michelle who was a long-time board member of the Williamsburg YM/YWHA.

1975: In a case of Jews playing Jews, U.S. premiere of “Funny Lady” with Barbara Streisand as Fanny Brice and James Caan as Billy Rose.

1976(13thof Adar II, 5736): Ta’anit Esther and Erev Purim

1976: Just days before his 75th birthday, Jewish born set designer Jo Mielziner who converted to Catholicism passed away today. (As reported by Albin Krebs)


1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that at his press conference in Washington US President Jimmy Carter suggested how Israeli and international troops, assisted by listening stations, might possibly man Israel¹s "defense line" which would be outside of the sovereign border. He refused, however, to say where the "line" would be. He warned that further Israeli settlement in the administered territories hampered the peace effort.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Knesset Law Committee discussed legislation which would introduce partial constituency elections in Israel.

1977: The Religious Torah Front, a political alliance in Israel composed of Agudat Yisrael and Poalei Agudat Yisrael that held five seats in the Knesset split with Agudat Yisrael taking three seats and Poalei Agudat Yisrael two.

1977: The Hadash movement which included Rakah and Non-Partisans parliamentary group was formed in preparation for the 1977 elections.

1978(6thof Adar II, 5738): Fifty year old “Milton Perlmutter, president and chief executive officer of the Supermarkets General Corporation” passed away today.


1978: “House Calls,” a comedy based on a story by Julius J.Epstein and Max Shulman, directed by Howard Zeiff and co-starring Walter Matthau and Richard Benjamin was released today in the United States.

1979: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Carolyn and Mike Youkilis, a wholesale jeweler, gave birth to professional baseball player Kevin Youkilis.

1980: “The Union of Council for Soviet Jews convened an international consultation in London and in Israel, meeting with officials and local groups to coordinate efforts and discuss strategies and programs to defend Soviet Jews.”

1982: Paul Saginaw, Michael Monahan and Ari Weinzweig founded Zingerman's, a kosher-style delicatessen, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

1983: “Over 1,000 delegates from 30 countries attended the opening session of the Third World Conference on Soviet Jewry in Jerusalem.”

1984: Ninety-one year old Henning Linden, the Brigadier General who led a group of reporters including Marguerite Higgins and a detachment of the 42nd (Rainbow) Infantry Division as the soldiers liberated Dachau, generating international headlines by freeing more than 30,000 Jews and political prisoners, passed away today.

1985: “Lost In America” a comedy directed by, written by and co-starring Albert Brooks was released in the United States today.

1987: In an article entitled, “For Israel and U.S., A Growing Military Partnership,” David K. Shipler describes how the relationship between the two nations continues to thrive despite the Jonathan Pollard fiasco.

1987: Today an Israeli newspaper quoted Rafael Eitan, named as the spymaster in the Pollard case, as saying that his superiors had known of the operation, contradicting the Government's position. Mr. Eitan later denied having made such a statement.

1988: CBS brought the series “My Sister Sam” featuring Rebecca Schaeffer as “Patricia Russell” back to the air today due in part to letters from fans and the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike which affected the production of other television series for CBS and the other two major television networks. (Schaeffer would be murdered by an obsessive, stalker a year later)

1990: The first London production” of “Sunday in the Park with George, a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim” “opened at the Royal National Theatre today, and ran for 117 performances, with Maria Friedman as Dot

1990: Haim Bar-Lev complete his terms as Minister of Public Security

1990: Yitzhak Rabin completed his term as Minister of Defense.

1990: Gad Yaacobi completed his term as Minister of Communications

1990: Ezer Weizman completed his term as Minister of Science and Technology.

1990: The Labor Alignment left the National Unity Government leading to the defeat of Likud’s Yitzchak Shamir.

1990: Yitzhak Moda'I and four other MKs (all of them former members of the Liberal Party) broke away from Likud to form the Party for the Advancement of the Zionist Idea, later renamed the New Liberal Party.

1992: In “Separating the Men From the Apes” published today Frans B. M.de Waal reviewed The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animalby Jared Diamond.


1994(3rd of Nisan, 5754): Arthur Taubman, a self-made businessman who built the Advance Stores auto parts chain into a multimillion-dollar business passed away at the age of 92. During World War II, Mr. Taubman also helped about 500 European Jews reach the United States by filing affidavits with the immigration authorities saying the Jews were relatives. When questioned by Federal officials, he said any Jew facing death in Nazi-occupied Europe was his first cousin. In addition, he was the founding chairman of Alliance Tire and Rubber Company Ltd., which he and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion of Israel established in 1953. The company, based in Hadera, Israel, became the largest such manufacturer in the Middle East. Mr. Taubman, who was born and reared in Astoria, Queens, went to work as a stock boy in a New York department store at the age of 13 after completing the sixth grade. He served in the Navy in World War I and later began an auto parts chain in Pittsburgh. When the business failed in the early 1930's, he moved to Roanoke, Va., and started over, making a down payment on three failing auto-parts shops. This time he achieved success. The chain, Advance Stores, a privately held family business based in Roanoke, now has 370 stores. Automotive Marketing magazine estimated its 1992 sales at $320 million. Mr. Taubman was president of the chain until 1969, when he became chairman. He retired in 1973 but was vice chairman until 1985.

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including The Children by David Halberstam and Persian Brides by Dorit Rabinyan

2000: Barbra Streisand opened her concert at the Colonia Stadium in Melbourne.

2002: Three Israelis made the Forbes list of 500 Billionaires - Cruise ship heiress Shari Arison Dorsman, shipping magnates Sammy and Yuli Ofer and software kingpin Gil Schwed are the world's richest Israelis. Jewish billionaires featured on the list include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a media mogul turned Republican politician, whose $4.4 billion fortune ranks him at No. 72. Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, is No. 413 with $1.1 billion

2005: Dignitaries from all over the world attended the opening of Yad Vashem's new History Museum in Jerusalem.

2006: Attorney David Etra stays overnight at the White House on the day after Purim When asked to explain the holiday’s meaning, Etra summed it by saying, “It was a about a crazy guy in Iran who wanted to kill all the Jews” which caused President Bush to remarked that “not much has changed.”

2006: 15th of Adar 5766 – Shushan Purim. This day points out one of the differences between the Jews and those who sought to conquer or destroy them. There are still Jews around to celebrate Purim and Shushan Purim. Where are the Romans who must “Beware of the Ides of March”?

2007(25th of Adar, 5767): Stuart Rosenberg an American film and television director whose notable works included the movies Cool Hand Luke), Voyage of the Damned ,The Amityville Horror, and The Pope of Greenwich Village passed away at the age of 79.


2007: As part of its program to republish out of print “classic works” Amazon published a paperback edition of Chronicle of An American Crusade by Rabbi Samuel S. Mayerberg.


2007: “Stan Lee Media's new president, Jim Nesfield, filed a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment for $5 billion, claiming that the company is co-owner of the characters that Lee created for Marvel.”

2007: USA Today reported that Businessman Jimmy Delshad is set to become the first Iranian-American mayor in the USA. The sixty-sixty year old Delshad, who immigrated to America at the age of 19, will assume the top job in Beverly Hills, California. As the article points out, 8,000 of the city’s 35,000 residents are of Iranian descent. Just as America benefited from the German Jews who fled Hitler in 1933, so it would appear that America is benefiting from the Iranian Jews who fled the Ayatollah in 1979.

2007: The Canadian Jewish News reported that Zahal Square, the barren space just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, is to be rebuilt by Canadians, Jewish and non-Jewish, into an attractive public gathering place and site of national celebrations and cultural events, under a joint project of the Jerusalem Foundation, the municipality and leading Israeli businesspeople.

2008: Shabbat Zachor, 5768

2008: The Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities and The Iowa Arts Council present Israeli Pianist Ofra Yitzhaki at the Galvin Fine Arts Center, St. Ambrose University. Ms. Yitzhaki is a recipient of the Vladimir Horowitz Scholarship at Julliard and the winner of the Van Cliburn Institute Concerto Competition.

2008: In Washington, D.C. The National League of American Pen Women hosts author Cynthia Polansky presenting a lecture, "Why a Holocaust Novel? The Far Above Rubies Journey," delving into the real-life story that inspired her novel.

2009: Soviet-born Israeli-American pianist “Yefim "Fima" Naumovich Bronfman “performed Brahms's Second Piano Concerto with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.”

2009: In an event that is part of the Chaim Kempner Author Series and is co-sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute Robert Zweig discusses and signs Return to Naples: My Italian Bar Mitzvah and Other Discoveries at the D.C. Jewish Community Center.

2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman

2009(19th of Adar, 5769): A Palestinian terrorist shot Israeli Senior Warrant Officer Yehezkel Ramzarkar, 50, and Warrant Officer David Rabinowitz, 42, as they patrolled near the northern Jordan Valley town of Massua. The so-called Imad Mughniyeh Group claimed responsibility for the murder, which occurred when a terrorist cell staged a vehicle breakdown and then shot at a police car that had stopped to assist, killing the two policemen inside.

2009: Over 600 Jewish professional from across North America who are attending the National Young Leadership Conference in New Orleans took a break from lectures and learning opportunities to work on restoring Archbishop Hannan High School in St. Bernard Parish which had been abandoned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

2009(19 Adar, 5769): Twenty-four year old Sgt. Robert Weinger was killed near Bati Kot, Afghanistan, when his vehicle struck an explosive device.

2010: After a nearly 62-year hiatus, the renowned Hurva synagogue inside the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City has been rebuilt and is again an operational house of prayer.Hundreds of people, braving the wind and an unexpected Jerusalem chill, crowded into a courtyard opposite the outer walls of the synagogue tonight to take part in an official rededication ceremony for the newly-rebuilt shul – which stands in the exact spot it did before its destruction at the hands of the Jordanian Arab Legion during the War of Independence in 1948. Huvra’s first incarnation came in 1701, when it was constructed by disciples of Judah Hahasid. Its first destruction came some 20 years later, when those same disciples lacked the funds to repay local creditors, who in return burned the Hurva to the ground.It was nearly 150 years before the Hurva stood again, but in 1864, after a massive construction project was approved by the Ottoman Turks and funds were procured from Jewish communities the world over, a neo-Byzantine Hurva was soon towering over the rest of the Jewish Quarter. However, that Hurva, which hosted the likes of Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky before the creation of the state, also met with ruin. The Jordanian army took Jerusalem’s Old City in May of 1948, loaded the building with explosives and set off a blast whose smoke cloud could be seen miles away.

2010: The New York Philharmonic is scheduled to present “Sondheim: The Birthday Concert” marking the 80th anniversary of the birth of Stephen Sondheim.

2010: Phillips-Van Heusen (the Phillips part of the name goes back to a Moses and Endel Phillips a 19th century that sewed shirts and sold them in a pushcart in Pennsylvania) was “acquired by Tommy Hilfiger today for three billion dollars.”

2010: Actress Isla Fisher who took the Hebrew name “Ayala” when she converted in 2007 married actor/comedian Sacha Baron Cohen”

2010: An Israeli lawmaker told a delegation of American Jewish leaders that he would consult with Diaspora Jewry on issues involving conversion. David Rotem, the author of a bill that will allow local rabbis in Israel to perform conversions to Judaism, made his comments today during a meeting in the Knesset with Diaspora Jewish leaders led by Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky and Jewish Federations of North America Senior Vice President Rebecca Caspi.

2011(9thof Adar, 5771): Fifty-one year old “Yakov Kreizberg, an internationally known conductor praised for the depth and intensity of his interpretations” passed away today.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)


2011: “Action Bronson's debut studio album Dr. Lecter was independently released under Fine Fabric Delegates” today.

2011(9th of Adar II): On the Jewish calendar anniversary of First Dispute Between Two Schools of Torah Thought (1st century CE). According to Chabad-Lubavitch,

2011: The five finalists for the Sami Rohr Prize in fiction for Jewish Literature are scheduled to meet with judges in New York City. The winner is expected to be announced shortly after these meetings.

2011: “Yolande: An Unsung Heroine” is one of the films scheduled to be shown today at the 15th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2011: Samuel Heilman is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Lubavitchers: What Do They Want, and Who Sent Them?” at Ohev Shalom – The National Synagogue.

2011: Nissim Reuben, the American Jewish Committee’s Program Director for Indian-Jewish American Relations is scheduled to deliver a lecture about the Jewish community in India, Jewish Indian Americans, their relationship with Israel, and his personal story at Congregation Beth Emeth.

2011: The IDF seized a freighter ship with dozens of tons of weaponry from Iran headed for Hamas in the Gaza Strip today. The ship, known as Victoria, was flying a Liberian flag, and was seized by the navy in the Mediterranean Sea, 200 miles off of Israel's coast. The Victoria was boarded by commandos from the Israeli Navy's Flotilla 13, also known as the Shayetet, arrived in the Ashdod port this evening.

2011: At 11:00 AM this morning, people throughout the country stopped, observing five minutes of silence in honor of Gilad Schalit.

2011: The Tel Aviv Museum of Art announced the selection of painters Asaf Ben Zvi and Michael Halak as the winners of the 2011 Rappaport Prize. This is the sixth prize awarded since its establishment in 2006 in honor of Ruth and Baruch Rappaport.The prize is awarded annually to two painters, an established painter (Ben Zvi ) and a young painter (Halak ). Beyond the monetary sum given to the painters, the prize funds two solo exhibitions at the museum as well as the production of the catalogs accompanying the exhibitions. (As reported by Daniel Rauchwerger)

2011: Egyptian security officials said that Egypt's army captured five vehicles smuggling weapons into the country from Sudan, and apparently heading to Gaza, AP reported.

2012(21stof Adar, 5772): Seventy-four year old “Jerome Albert, who with his father, Dewey, created and operated Astroland, the space age-themed amusement park that breathed new life into the Coney Island Boardwalk in the 1960s” passed away today. (As reported by Denis Hevesi)


2012: Noa (Achinoam Nini) and Mira Awad, two of Israel’s most beloved singing stars and coexistence advocates are scheduled to perform their concert “Two Voices, One Vision.”

2012: Political Stand-up Comedian Jeremy ‘Political’ Man is scheduled to appear at the Off The Wall Comedy Basement in Jerusalem.

2012: “Non-practicing” Jewish authoress Jodi Picoult is scheduled to discuss the moral dilemmas presented in her new novel “Lone Wolf” at the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

2012: New York Congressman Gary L. Ackerman a flamboyant Jewish Congressman from New York and a supporter of Israel announced today that he will not seek re-election.

2012: The Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted a Grad-type Katyusha rocket fired by Gaza militants toward the southern city of Ashdod today, following hours of relative calm along Israel's border with the coastal enclave. Two more projectiles hit an open field in the Eshkol and Ashkelon regional Councils; no wounded reported.

2013: In Olney, MD, Shaare Tefila is scheduled to sponsor “Shabbat Alive!”

2013: “FDR: Anti-Semite or friend of the Jews?” published today


2013: In Tel Aviv, the city’s annual marathon will not be run today because of the expectation of unseasonably high temperatures.  Other races, including the half marathon, are scheduled to be run as planned. (As reported by Adviv Sterman)

2013: Yotam Ben Horin and Sarai Givaty are scheduled to perform at SXSW 2013 in Austin, Texas.

2013: Playwright Jonathan Garfinkel has probably gone where no Canadian Jewish writer has gone before — Pakistan and Afghanistan — to create his new play, “Dust.” Premiering  today at the Enbridge play Rites Festival in Calgary, the drama centers on three women — Canadian, Pakistani and Afghan — and how their lives are affected by the War on Terror. It’s based on hundreds of pages of interviews conducted by Garfinkel and Christopher Morris, the play’s director, in each of those countries.

2013(4thof Nisan, 5773): A participant in the Tel Aviv half marathon collapsed and died Friday morning, and more than 20 others were hospitalized due to extremely hot conditions.The deceased runner, Michael Michaelovitch, was a 29-year-old IDF sergeant from the settlement of Tene, south of Hebron


2013: The Jewish Home and Yesh Atid parties signed a coalition agreement with Likud-Beytenu this afternoon, paving the way for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to swear in his new government early next week


2014: The Desert Film Society is scheduled to show “The Sturgeon Queens.”

2014(13thof Adar II, 5774): Shabbat Zachor

2014: “My Best Holiday” is scheduled to have its New York Premiere at the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2014: Today, Masha “Gessen wrote in the Washington Post that Putin's popularity had been restored thanks to the Sochi Olympics and invasion of Ukraine, which had played on the longstanding notion "that Russia is a country under siege, surrounded by enemies and constantly on the brink of catastrophe" and added that "the only way to continue shoring up his popularity is to escalate war rhetoric and the war effort," to paint "the Western/fascist/Ukrainian enemy as ever more dangerous and the Russian invasion of Ukraine as ever more important

2014: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to host a Purim Pasta Party.

2014: In the evening, Ilan Caplan is scheduled to chant the Megalith Esther at Shir Chadish in Metairie, LA.

2014: Four Border Police soldiers were hit by a car, driven by a Palestinian, at a roadblock near Beit Ummar in Gush Etzion in what the driver claimed was an accident. (As reporterd by Yoav Zitun)

2014(13thof Adar II, 5774): Seventy-eight year old comedian David Brenner passed away.



2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday and Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage by Barney Frank.

2015: “The kosher supermarket in Paris attacked by a jihadist gunman linked to the shootings at Charlie Hebdo magazine in January re-opened today.” (Times of Israel)

2015: World premiere of “Khoya: Jewish Morocco Sound Archive” is scheduled to take place at the 18th Annual NY Sephardic Film Festival.

2015: In Chicago the Lyric Opera is scheduled to perform “The Passenger” which tells the story of a former SS officer who thinks she sees one of her former prisoners on an ocean liner.

2015: “Two days ahead of the general election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog today continued to vie for the premiership, with the former addressing a right-wing rally in Tel Aviv in the evening and Herzog saying he was willing to form a national unity government under his own leadership.” (As reported by Marissa Newman)

2015:  “Breaking Silence, Survivor Sets Out to Meet Holocaust Past” published today


2016: In Washington, DC Dr. “Pamela Nadell -- the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women's and Gender History, Chair of the Department of History, and  Director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University – is scheduled explore the lives of Jewish women who immigrated to the United States as she lectures on “Tevye’s Daughters in America.”

2016: “The Man in the Wall” and “Baba Joon” are scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival

2016: “Hiker finds rare gold coin in Israel” published today described Laurie Rimon’s discovery in the eastern Galilee of “a 2,000 year old coin with the face of Emperor Augustus…who ruled from” 27 BCE to 14 CE.


2016: Mosh Ben Aris, an Israeli from a Yemenite Iraqi family, is scheduled to perform at B.B. King Blues Club in New York.

2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host an  “Educators' Open House  which is open to teachers and educators from around the region and is a chance to learn directly from OJMCHE staff about renowned photojournalist Ruth Gruber's importance to the topics of 20th century history.

2017: “Henryk Ross’s Grim Photos Document Life in the Lodz Ghetto” published today provides a description of an exhibition entitled “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross” scheduled to open at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.


2017: The Jerusalem Unity Prize, which was “launched in 2015 in memory of three slain Israeli teenagers” -- Eyal Yifrach, 19; Naftali Fraenkel, 16; and Gil-ad Shaar, 16 – included Limmud, “the international network of Jewish learning communities” among the winners announced today.

2017: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present fabric artist Ita Aber and curator Bonni-Dara Michaels leading a tour of Yeshiva University Museum’s Uncommon Threads exhibition, featuring garments, textiles and jewelry from the Museum’s collection, including Aber’s 1970s customized Israeli flag.

2017: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “The Jewish Response to Racism” presented by April N. Baskin the Union for Reform Judaism’s Vice President of Audacious Hospitality, Stosh Cotler the CEO of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice and longtime U.S. civil rights strategist Eric Ward.

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host “If Not Now, When – Impact and Response to the Rohingya Genocide.”

2018(28thof Adar, 5778): Seventy-eight year old Robert Samuel Grossman, the son of silk-screen printing shop owner who gained fame as a leading illustrator passed away today.  (As reported by Neil Genlinger)



2018: “Journey from Tunisia” and “Remember Baghdad” are scheduled to make their premiere showing on the final night of the 21st NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Saving Neta” and “Winter Hunt” are scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2018: The Chabad Rosh Chodesh Society is scheduled to meet in Metairie, LA.

2018: Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz—cofounders of Gefilteria and coauthors of The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods -- are scheduled to host “All About Gefilte Fish” at the Streicker Center.

2019: In Metairie, LA (suburban New Orleans), Congregation Beth Israel is scheduled to host Community Dinner featuring a talk by Jessie Wilson, author of Under Water.

2019: Despite yesterday’s rocket attacks, Balkan Beat Box, fronted by Tomer Yosef, is scheduled to perform at the Barby in Tel Aviv.

2019: Edlavitch Jewish Community Center of Washington DC is scheduled to co-host a production of “The Jewish Queen Lear,” an “1898 Yiddish play be Jacob Grodin” officially titled “Mirele Efros”

2019: Washington Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to host “District Shabbat” at the Southwest Waterfront featuring “internationally celebrated musicians Dan Nichols and Alan Goodis.”

2019: Following yesterday’s rocket attack aimed at Tel Aviv, “a rocket fired at the Eshkol Regional Council from the Gaza Strip overnight landed in the coastal enclave, failing to reach Israeli territory.” (YNET)

This Day, March 16, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 16
 
597BCE (2ndAdar): On the secular calendar, according to certain archaeological calculations, the first conquest of Jerusalem by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar occurred. In the Bible, the event is recorded in 2 Kings 24:1ff. and in 2 Chronicles 36:5-8. It is also implied in the early chapters of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

37: Caligula becomes Roman Emperor after the death of his great uncle, Tiberius.  Caligula was a challenge to all those he ruled, including the Jews, because he was “crazy.” Among other things, he appointed his favorite horse to the position of Consul.  He did present a special problem for Jews because he believed he was a god and expected to be worshipped by his subjects.  Fortunately, he never succeeded in having his golden image installed in the Temple of Jerusalem.  After a bizarre meeting with a delegation of Jews from Alexander that included the famous Philo, Caligula said of the Jews, “They’re not so bad after all.  They’re just a poor, stupid people unable to believe in my divinity”

455: Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor passed away. During his reign, the position of Jews continued to worsen. Under one imperial decree, Jews were excluded from government service and were prohibited from practicing law. Another decree made it possible for the children of Jews who converted to Christianity to inherit the property of their Jewish parents. 

1021:The first documentary reference to Jews living in Cologne after 331 occurs during the time of Archbishop Heribert of Cologne who passed away today.

1190: On the Sabbath eve before Passover ("Shabbat Hagadol") in York, England, a group made up of clergy, barons indebted to the Jews, and crusaders waiting to follow Richard, set Jewish houses on fire and stole all their valuables. The Jews under Josce, a prominent Jew of York, and their Rabbi, Yom Tov of Joigny (a contemporary of Rabbenu Tam and author of the Yom Kippur Hymn "Omnam Ken"), fled to the castle. Richard Malebys (a noble who owed large sums to Jewish moneylenders) commanded the attackers. For 6 days the Jews held out. A monk who came each morning to celebrate mass and inflame the crowd was killed by a stone thrown from the tower. Facing the choice of baptism or death, most chose death. (Josce killed his wife and two children, and was in turn killed by the Rabbi). The vast majority killed themselves after destroying their belongings. Josce was the last to die. The few who remained opened the gate and requested baptism. They were massacred anyway. Over 150 Jews died.

1421: Chomutov, a Czech city which was declared “Judenrein” a week before the occupation by Germany in 1938 and was the home to the Seligman family “was sack and burned” today by the Taborites, a sect of Catholic heretics.

1523: Birthdate of Antoine Rodolphe Chevaillier, the French born English Hebraist who learned the language from Francis Vatablus and who tutored Elizabeth I in the Biblical tongue while producing translations of several books in both the New and Old Testaments.

1547:François Vatable who got the chair of Hebrew at what “became known as the Collège de France” where “he procured Hebrew editions of the Bible for scholarly use” and whose lectures were attended by Parisian Jews passed away today.

1711(25thof Adar, 5471): Isaac Spira, the son of Eliezer Spira and the father of Nathan Spria, passed away leaving behind a text entitled Elef ha-Magen.

1716: Birthdate of Pehr Kalm, the Swedish-Finnish explorer who visited North America in 1740’s and described “the Jews of New York” as having “formed a considerable portion of the population”  having “stores and fine houses and ships and flourishing synagogue” while enjoying “all the privileges of the other citizens.”

1722: The new "Aeltesten-reglement" (Constitution of the Jewish Community) was issued today in Prussia. It was intended to do away with the evils that had become apparent in the administration of the community, and which, in order to be brought home more thoroughly, was to be read every year in the synagogue. Under this constitution the administration consisted of two permanent chief elders, five elders, four treasurers, and four superintendents of the poor, and assistants; new officers were to be elected every three years by seven men chosen by lot from among the community. The committee was to meet every week in the room of the elders, and to keep the minutes of their proceedings; resolutions, passed by them, becoming law by a majority vote. The exclusion of a member of the community from the Passover was made dependent on the unanimous vote of the committee; the ban could be pronounced only with the consent of the rabbi; and both of these measures were to be subject to ratification by the Jews' commission. The elders were held responsible with their own money for the proper collection of the taxes, but could proceed against delinquent payers. Every year the entire board had to report to a committee of five chosen by the community. The college of rabbis was to consist of a chief rabbi, a vice rabbi and two or three assessors. Other taxes were soon added to the existing ones; e.g., on pawnshops, and calendar money for the Royal Society of Science, and marriage licenses. The income from the last was paid into the treasury from which enlisted men received their pay, and its amount (4,800 thalers a year) soon became a permanent tax upon the whole community.

1743: The New-York Weekly Journal reported that a Jewish funeral procession in New York was attacked by a mob. According to "one learned Christian" witness to it, the mob had, "insulted the dead in such a vile manner that to mention all would shock a human ear."

1751: Birthdate of James Madison author of the Federalist Papers and 4th President of the United States.  Madison was also the President during the War of 1812.  He was the first President to appoint a Jew to a diplomatic post.  “In 1813, President Madison appointed Mordecai Manuel Noah as Consul to Tunis in the Barbary States, where he obtained the release of Americans who had been captured and sold into slavery by the Barbary pirates. It was a difficult task requiring considerable adroitness, but he spent more than his allotment for the purposes and his commission was revoked, the letter of recall affirming that his religion was deemed to disqualify him for the post…In time, however, he got a clean bill of health in the conduct of his mission and the sums he advanced in performing it were reimbursed.”  While Noah’s name is known but a handful today, he was considered to be “the most conspicuous figure in the American Jewish community in the period between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War (1846).” When he returned from Tunis, Noah became a power in New York politics.  At one point he was elected High Sheriff of New York.  One angry citizen complained about Noah saying “What a pity that Christians are to be hung by a Jew.”  Noah replied, “What a pity that Christians should have to be hung.” 

1789: Benvenida de Isaac Solis, the daughter of Isaac Henriques Henriques Valentine and Simha Mandil and Solomon da Solis gave birth to David Solis.

1794: In Mayence, “R’Jonas Moshe Bondi” and “Bella Bondi” gave birth to “Rabbi Samuel Bondi one of the founders of the orthodox congregation of Mayence and the progenitor of the largest branch of the Bondi family.”

1796: Robert Reuben married Esther Solomons at the Great Synagogue today.

1802: The United States Military Academy West Point is established.  According to recent figures, there are 85 Jewish Cadets among the 4.200 members of the Corps of Cadets.  There is an accredited Hillel Chapter at West Point and a Jewish Chaplain.  “The West Point Jewish community provides a warm, supportive, nondenominational family to all West Point Jewish cadets and cadet friends. Family night services are very popular. The choir practices once per week and travels several times per semester to other university Hillel Houses and community functions for relaxed overnight trips. The community celebrates nearly all Jewish holidays and the West Point Hillel sponsors parties, retreats and service field trips.” The completion of the Jewish Chapel in 1984 culminated a twenty year undertaking. The organization responsible for the project was the West Point Jewish Chapel Fund a private, non-profit civilian organization. This group raised more than 7.5 million dollars to erect and furnish the facility. In 1986 the Jewish Chapel was deeded to the Academy. Led by a military chaplain, the congregation serves the needs of various branches of Judaism represented in the Armed Forces. In close connection with the Jewish Welfare Board worship resources are designed to meet the broad spectrum of our faith. The Chapel contains an extensive Judaica collection, a fine library, and special exhibits. Sabbath services are held every Friday evening during the academic year at 7:00 p.m.” 

1806: Israel Jacobs married Elizabeth Abrahams at the Great Synagogue today.

1813(14th of Adar II, 5573): As Americans fight the British  and the Canadians fight what is known in the United States as the War of 1812, Jews on both sides observe Purim.

1817: Four days after he had pass away, 58 year old Levy Nathan was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1817: Two days after he had passed away, was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1818: Birthdate of Germain Sée the native of Ribeauvillé who graduated from the Sorbonne in 1846 after which he became a leading Parisian physician.

1828: In Grebenstein, Germany Meyer (Meier) Goldschmidt and Lea Goldschmidt (Katzenstein) gave birth to Selig Meier Goldschmidt.

1831: Three days after he had passed away, Israel Isaacs, the husband of Breina Isaacs, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1832(14th of Adar II, 5592): Purim

1843: In Moravia, Jakob Brüll and his wife gave birth to “rabbi and scholar” Nehemiah Brüll

1852: Two days after she had passed away, 7 week old Mina Braham, “the infant daughter” of Sophia and Lewis Henry Braham was buried today at the Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1855: Bates College in Lewiston, Maine is founded. According to recent figures, this small liberal arts college has 150 Jewish students among its 1,700 student body.  The school has a Hillel Chapter.  The environment on campus is described as follows. “Bates is very supportive of the Jewish Community. Jewish students gather weekly for Shabbat services and dinner at the Multicultural Center. Films, lectures, holidays, and parties are frequent. Highlights include Sukkah Building and campout, Tu B`Shvat Seder, and Parent's Weekend Bagel Brunch. Bates has a Klezmer Band, Gefilte Dog, and speakers are brought to campus for forums and discussions often. Hillel also presents a visiting Rabbi retreat. Programs are also held with students at Colby and Bowdoin. Bates students volunteer at the local synagogue, Temple Shalom.”

1859: Emperor Alexander II granted Jewish scholars, wholesale merchants and manufacturers the right to live outside of the Pale1860: Based on reports from the Halifax Sun, “an extraordinary event in the history of the German Jews has just taken place. In the free City of Hamburg, where a Jew, ten years ago, was not even eligible for a night constable, a Jew, by the free suffrages of the citizens, has lately been chosen a chief magistrate, next in station to the highest dignity in that Republic. The gentleman elected is a distinguished juris-consult and writer, Dr. Gabriel Reisser who was Vice-President of the German Parliament that sat at Frankfort in 1848.” Born in 1806, Gabriel Riesser “was the first Jewish judge in Germany and an advocate of the emancipation of the Jews in Germany.”

1862: Birthdate of Ruben ben Mordecai Brainin the native of Belarus who gained fame as Reuben Brainin (Some sources show March 15, 1862 as his birthdate)

1864: In Baltimore, MD, ”Elkan Bamberger, who had emigrated from Bavaria in 1840, and Theresa (Hutzler) Bamberger, who was heir to a large Baltimore department store” gave birth to Caroline “Carrie” Bamberger, the fifth of their six children who became Caroline Frank when she married Louis Frank and Caroline Frank Fuld when she married Felix Fuld the name under which became a noted philanthropist  who provide the initial endowment of five million dollars for “what became the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton.”

1866(29th of Adar): Rabbi Solomon Ha-Kohen of Radomsko, author of Tiferet Shelomo passed away.

1866: Philipp Salzer, “the son of Maier Salzer and Silah Malzer gave birth to Sofie Salzer.

1868: “Affairs In England” published today described the reaction to Benjamin Disraeli who was a member of the Conservative or Tory Party, to being selected to serve as Prime Minister.  Generally speaking, the “Radical press” has congratulated Disraeli on the appointment and wish him well in his new position. The “Conservative press” has responded coldly, showing distinct dissatisfaction with Disraeli’s appointment.  For them, Disraeli’s appointment is not a triumph for the Tories but “a blow to their prejudices and principles.”  Instead of being led by Duke or an Earl, the party is now being led by a commoner who “is not an Englishman by descent” but rather by a man “whose grandfather was a Jew of Venice, whose father was a man of letters” and who himself was the editor of a newspaper.

1872: Birthdate of  Philip King, the native of Washington, DC, who played quarterback for Princeton before going on a coaching career at the University of Wisconsin and Georgetown University.

1872: Emily Catherine and Josiah Wedgwood gave birth to Josiah Clement Wedgwood the British political leader.  During the 1930’s Wedgwood took the politically unpopular positions of opposing the appeasement of Hitler and the limitations on Jewish settlement in Palestine that climaxed with the White Paper of 1939. Although he passed away in 1943, the Jewish people honored his memory by naming several things in his honor including Moshav, an INS destroyer and streets in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.

1873: Two days after he had passed away, 64 year old Abraham Marks, the husband of Louisa Aarons with whom he had had ten children was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1873(18th of Adar, 5633): Seventy-seven year old Joseph Salvador a member of a distinguished French Sephardi family whose mother was Roman Catholic, the author of Paris, Rome, Jerusalem ou la Question religieuse au XIX siècle  who was angered by the anti-Jewish riots in German and was considered a ‘proto-Zionist” passed away today.

1874: It was reported today that the Germania Theatre Company will be performing at the Terrace Garden Theatre in two days for the benefit of the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society

1875(9thof Adar II, 5635): Eight-five year old Zipporah Hart, the daughter of Jacob Hart and Leah Nathan and the wife Eleazar Lazarus passed away today in New York City.

1875: Mayor Wickham Chamberlain Tappan was among the dignitaries who attended tonight’s charity ball organized by the Purim Association. The event raised $13,000 for the various Hebrew charities in New York City.

1876” Birthdate Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet official Solomon Lozovsky, who would like many others, find out that Russian anti-Semitism was stronger the Communist brotherhood when he was executed by Stalin in 1952 along with other members of the Jewish Ant-Fascist Committee.

1878: On Shabbat Zachor, rabbis at several synagogues addressed the appeal that has been issued by the Board of Delegates of American Israelites to raise funds to aid their suffering co-religionists trapped in war torn Eastern Europe and parts of the Ottoman Empire.  They did not make a direct appeal for funds. Instead the urged them to respond to the appeal that has been sent to all congregations by the Executive committee of the Central Relief Committee whose members include Meyer S. Isaacs, Moritz Ellinger, Jacob H. Schiff, Leonard Lewisohn and Hyman Blum

1879: “Mendelssohn and Lessing” traced the improvement in the situation of the Jews of Germany reminding readers that when these two met, “the country where the Hebrew race has since attained the highest honors – where a galaxy of Jewish names, Heine, Borne, Rahel figure among the glories of national distinction – the Jew was then looked on like a spotted leper, against whom were shut the doors not merely of the aristocracy and of fashion, but actually of all public schools and public office” and were excluded “from social position and civic right” in a manner worse than now found in Romania.

1882: The Tenth Assembly District Republican Association met tonight to decide if Civil Justice Alfred Steckler, Charles Steckler, and Julius Harburger should be expelled because they had supported Steckler over the association’s chosen candidate. (In the 19th century the majority of Jews voted Republican)

1883: Sir George Jessel, who was fighting a variety of chronic illnesses, sat as the Master of Rolls for the last time.  He was the first Jew to hold this important judicial position.

1885: Birthdate of Sydney Chaplin, half-brother of Charlie Chaplin

1887(20th of Adar, 5647): Eighty-seven year old Joseph Ritter Von Wertheimer whose good works included the founding of the first kindergarten in Vienna, the founding of a Jewish children’s school in the same city in 1834 and the establishment of the Society for the Education of Jewish Orphans in 1860 while fighting for the full emancipation of the Jews, passed away today.

1889(13th of Adar II, 5649): Shabbat Zachor; erev Purim

1889(13th of Adar II, 5649): Sixty-four year old Dr. Alfred Edersheim the Austrian born Jew who would later convert to Christianity passed away today. He was made an A.M. at Oxford in 1881 where he lectured on Biblical topics and wrote Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.

1890: The Mageburg Israelitishes Wochenblatreported “that a petition is in circulation among the rabbis of Europe and America begging the Pope to end the calumny that the Jews use human blood in religious sacrifice by ordering a formal denial throughout the Catholic churches.”

1890: Two days after he had passed, Ferdinand May, the son of Isaak Withelm Mayer and Jentle Del Banco Hamburg and the husband of Kettchen Landauer was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1890: Birthdate of Solomon Mikhoels, Soviet actor and chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Solomon Mikhoels was a Soviet Jewish actor and director in Yiddish theater and the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Born Shlioma Vovsi in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils), Latvia, Mikhoels studied law in Saint Petersburg, but left school in 1918 to join Alexander Granovsky,s Jewish Theater Workshop, which was attempting to create a national Jewish theater in Russia based on the Yiddish language. Two years later, in 1920, the workshop moved to Moscow, where it established the Moscow State Jewish Theater. This was in keeping with Lenin's policy on nationalities, which encouraged them to pursue and develop their own cultures under the aegis of the Soviet state. Mikhoels, who showed outstanding talent, was the company's leading actor and, as of 1928, its director. He played in several memorable roles, including Tevye in an adaptation of Sholom Aleichem's comic short stories about Tevye the Milkman (which were adapted for an American audience as Fiddler on the Roof) as well as in many original works, such as Bar Kochba, and translations. Perhaps his most noted role was as King Lear in a Yiddish translation of the play by William Shakespeare. These plays were ostensibly supportive of the Soviet state, however, closer readings suggest that they actually contained veiled critiques of Stalin's regime. It is noteworthy that two of the Shakespearean plays put on by the theater company were King Lear and Richard III, both studies in tyranny. It is now believed that the Ukrainian director Les Kurbas contributed to the original King Lear production after he was ousted from his Berezil theater in 1934. He seems to have had a lasting influence on Mikhoel's directing style. By the mid-1930s, Mikhoels' career was threatened because of his association with other leading intelligentsia, who were victims of Stalin's purges, notably author Isaac Babel. Mikhoels actively supported Stalin against Hitler, and in 1942, he was made chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In this capacity, he travelled around the world, meeting with Jewish communities to encourage them to support the Soviet Union in its war against Nazi Germany. While this was useful to Stalin during World War II, after the war, Stalin opposed contacts between Soviet Jews and Jewish communities in non-Communist countries, which he deemed as "bourgeoisie." The Jewish State Theater was closed and the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested - all except for two were eventually executed in the purges shortly before Stalin's death. Mikhoels was the most visible of the intellectual Jewish leadership, and a show trial would have cast aspersions on Stalin's rule. Such claims lead most people to a suggestion that Stalin had him assassinated in Minsk in January of 1948 masking his death as a car crash, and Mikhoels received a state funeral. According to documents unearthed by the historian Gennady Kostyrchenko, the organizers of the assassination were L.M. Tsanava and S. Ogoltsov, and the "direct" murderers were Lebedev, Kruglov and Shubnikov. Mikhoels' brother Miron Vovsi was Stalin's personal physician. He was arrested during the Doctors' plot affair but released after Stalin's death in 1953, as was his son-in-law, the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg.

1892: Based on information that first appeared in the Hartford Courant and the New Haven Evening Post it was reported today that when he is not lecturing on military topics Professor Charles Totten of Yale, devotes his time to Biblical work including study of the Hebrew Prophets. Furthermore, this early supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestine says in the preface to the published copy of his Yale Military Lectures that “the whole series was written in the spirit of Anglo-Saxon identity with the ten lost tribes of Israel.”

1892: In Albany, GA, Julia and Morris Weslosky gave birth to their daughter Blanche who became Blanche Adler when she married Ben Adler

 

1892: “A Russian Banker Fails” published described the impact of the failure of the Russian-Jewish banker J.E. Guenzburg. The firm dates back to the Crimean War when Guenzburg’s father supplied “vast quantities of spirits to the Russian Army.  While Guzenburg currently has extensive holdings in lands and mines, his financial setbacks are due in no small part to “the expulsion of the Jews who were employed in the firm’s immense sugar factories” and the hostility of the current government towards its Jewish citizens.

1893: In Cincinnati, OH, “Aleck and Aggie (Salaway) Vigransky gave birth to attorney and A.E.F veteran Nathan Vigran the husband of Bertha Cohn who was “elected to the 87th Ohio General Assembly and was a member of Congregation Keneseth Israel in Cincinnati.

1893: Two days after he had passed away, 48 year old Edward Joseph, the son of Abraham Joseph and Sarah Falcke and the husband of Elizabeth Jonas was buried today at the “Balls Pond Jewish Cemetery.”

1893: “A Contented Colony” published today described conditions “in the Jewish colony at Chesterfield” which is eight miles from New London, CN. Contrary to previously published reports the colonists are not destitute and that most of the 32 families are “comparatively contended people” The colony already has 180 cows which will provide milk for the new creamery; something that will produce “considerable revenue.” The colony is supported by the Baron Hirsch Fund.

1895: Lt. Moses G. Zalinski who had been serving with U.S. Army artillery units since 1885 transferred from the 4th Artillery to the 2nd Artillery

1897: It was reported today that “a recent and clever English novel represents the rector of a struggling parish as having a written a book assailing the moral character of the Hebrew patriarchs.” The purpose of the novel is to acquaint the reader with “higher Biblical criticism” and demonstrate “that Moses did not write the Pentateuch.”

1898: One day after he had passed away, 25 year old Harris Liberman was buried at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1898: Oscar S. Straus said today that the “a large sum of money that had recently” been received by the Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch funds “was not a new gift “but the second installment of $1,000,000 which the Baroness had promised him last year” to help “the Jews in the crowded districts of New York.”

1898: The recital of Aristide Franceschetti in the Carbon Studio on West Sixteenth Street began “with an evening prayer,’Vegna reba’ in the Hebrew text, which preserved by tradition in the synagogue of Leghorn.”

1898: At today’s meeting of the School Board for the Boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, the commissioners voted 11 to 5 to set aside “the full week in which Good Friday” and “some of the Passover days occur” as Spring Vacation.

1899: Those attending the meeting of Rabbis belonging to the Reform Movement in Cincinnati will have to decide if this conference “will supersede the conference which” had been scheduled to be held in Boston this year. While the current conference has included several general reports, its primary purpose was to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Rabbi Wise, who favors holding the Boston conference.

1899: “Credit Men Meet At Dinner” published today described the event sponsored by the New York Credit Men’s Association which included the statement by one of the speakers declared that “No man in business life respects” Jewish merchants “more than I do.  I have lost less money by them than by Gentiles, at the ratio of 4 to 1.  They often pay 100 cents on the dollar when they fail.

1899: Simon Wolf of Washington, DC delivered a lecture at Temple Israel in New York at a meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association entitled “American Jewish Philanthropy.”

1899: Ant-Jewish riots begin in Nikolayev, Russia

1900: Herzl, in his never ending quest to have the rich and powerful support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Eretz Israel, had a luncheon with Eulenburg-Hertefeld, the German ambassador in Vienna.

1904: Birthdate of Mississippi native Buddy Myer, the infielder for the Washington Senators from 1925 through 1941 except for two years spent with the Boston Red Sox.
1906: Birthdate of Henny Youngman.  Born in London, England, this comedian was known for his signature line, 'Take my wife, please. Youngman was had to drop out of school as a youngster and was not Bar Mitzvahed at age 13.  When he was well past the age of seventy, Youngman studied and proudly participated in the rites that he had missed out on as a youngster.

1906: The Jews of Vladivostok were ordered to leave the city within the next three days.

1907: Brooklyn, “George Wiener, an attorney who had emigrated from Russia in 1903, and Mollie (Zuckerman) Wiener” gave birth to Dr. Alexander Solomon Wiener whose many accomplished included the discovery of the Rhesus factor and who was the 1946 recipient of the Lasker Awaard.


1908: The New York Times reported that the Passover Relief Association has arranged to buy 10,000 pounds of matzoth, 3,000 pounds of coffee, 5,000 pounds of sugar and 500 pounds of tea which will be distributed among the city’s poor Jews at a distribution center at the Continental Hall during the week prior to the celebration of Passover which begins on the evening of April 15.

1908: In Haifa, "bitterness against the Jews led to a clash between Jews, Ottoman soldiers and local Arabs in which thirteen Jews were injured, some of them severely."

1911: Election for Grand Council of the Jewish Community of Constantinople takes place. Ashkenazim boycott the elections. Five Ashkenazim who were elected by the votes of Sephardim do not accept office.

1911: The American Jewish Committee which had organized in 1906 was incorporated in New today.

1911: Birthdate of Josef Mengele.  This is was a dark day in history, marking the birth of the German Nazi doctor at Auschwitz extermination camp.  To make matters worse, Mengele escaped justice and lived out his days in South America.  He died in 1979.

1911: In Pittsburgh, PA, Oscar William Oppenheimer, the President of the Steel Drum Company and Claude Seisel gave birth to Louise (Oppenheimer) Levin

1912: In New York City, “Drs. Pauline (a psychiatrist) and Maurice (an ear, nose and throat specialist) Rosenthal” gave birth to Jean Rosenthal “one of the pioneers of theatrical lighting design.”


1913: Birthdate of Natalie Goldstein the native of Chicago’s south side who gained fame as Natalie Goldstein Heinmen, “a pioneering national champion for children’s welfare and respected community and national leader, changed the lives of thousands of children through her innovative and thoughtful leadership.” (As reported by Pastora San Juan Cafferty)

1913(7th of Adar II, 5673): Sixty-two year old Abraham H. Fisher, the Maryland Judge who was a founder of what is now Nusiinov Smith LLP, attorneys at law, passed away today in Baltimore, MD.

1913: The Annual Conference on Child Labor to which Leon Schwarz of Mobile, Alabama had been appointed as a delegate came to a closed today  in Jacksonville, Florida.

1914: Dr. Franz Opphenheimer, a lecturer on political economy at the University of Berlin told a mass-meeting in Cooper Union about agricultural cooperation in Palestine, saying that “the colony which I have founded in Palestine is on the plain of Jezreel, with fifty people working 1,000 acres and is “of the pure co-operative kind.”

1915: “Tried to Drive Jews Out” published today described an attempt by the Russians to force the Austrians soldiers to accept the 1,500 Jewish families being expelled from territory in and around Namiona and Tysmieniczany into their lines and to not shoot them as they made their way forward.

1915: “The American Jewish Committee announced today that it had decided to contribute $5,000 to the International Pro-Falasha Committee which has been endeavoring to spread knowledge of Judaism among the Falashas, or Black Jews, of Abyssinia.”

1916: Felix M. Warburg, Dr. Morris D. Waldman of the United Hebrew Charities and Judge William M. Cohen are scheduled to address today’s meeting at Temple Emanu-El where plans will be discussed “to federate” the Jewish charitable organizations in New York City.

1916(11th of Adar II, 5676): Rabbi Moses Guedalia passed away at the age of 76.  Born in Gibraltar, Guedalia lived in Brazil before coming to New York City when he was nine years old.  This “prominent Jewish scholar” was the founder of the Moses Montifore Congregation and during “the last few years of his life served as the lay-reader for the Free Synagogue established by the Spanish-Portuguese congregation.

1917: At Temple Israel of Harlem, Dr. M.H. Harris is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Cleanliness and Godliness” at services this evening erev Shabbat,

1917: It was reported today that Herman Bernstein, the editor of The American Hebrew, believes the condition of the Jews would improve under the revolutionary government that has taken control of Russia. He also believes that the new government will seek a separate peace with Germany while seeking to sign a treaty with the United States that guarantee the Russian government would allow all Americans to visit and do business in Russia.

1917: Provisional government of Russia voided many anti-Jewish laws and restrictions.  This was the so-called Kerensky Government which replaced the Czar.  Unfortunately, Kerensky and the forces of democracy were overthrown by Lenin and his Bolsheviks.

1918:  Birthdate of Frederick Reines winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1995.

1918: Dr. Joseph Silverman, the rabbi of Temple Emanuel is scheduled to be one of the speakers when “leaders in the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities take their place side by side tonight at the Hippodrome to start the campaign in New York state to raise funds for the kings of Columbus Camps and Over-Seas Service Program.”

1919(14th of Adar II, 5679): Purim

1919(14th of Adar II, 5679): Yakov Mikhaylovich Sverdlov, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic(SFSR) passed away at the age of 33. 

1919: The Isaac M. Wise Centenary Meeting at Temple Emanu-El where attendees paid tribute “to the Americanism of Dr. Isaac M. Wise” marked the inauguration of “the campaign which will last all this week for the” purpose of raising $300,000 for the support of the institutions founded Dr. Wise.”

1920: Birthdate of Avron Zalmon Fleischman, the native of Brooklyn who gained game as author Albert Sidney “Sid” Fleischman.

1921: Birthdate of welterweight Daniel Kapilow, the founder of Ring 8 “which was founded to offer health coverage and aid to retired aging boxer and President of Teamsters Local 966 who was the husband of Natalie Kapilow.

1923: “The Covered Wagon” a film version of the novel of the same name produced by Jesse Lasky with music by Hugo Riesenfeld and Josiah Zuro was released today in the United States.

1925(20th of Adar, 5685): Fifty-nine year old August Paul von Wassermann, the Bamberg native, who developed the Wassermann test that remains “a staple of syphilis detection” passed away today.

1925: Seventy-five year old  “French sculptor Charles-Henri Cordier who in 1862 created a bust called “Jewess from Algiers,” which portrays a striking woman cloaked in Eastern garb; a striped headdress covers her hair, and her shoulders are draped in a voluminous and intricately detailed white cloth,” passed away today.


1926:Mrs. Abram I. Elkus, wife of the former United States Minister to Turkey, was appointed chairman of the Women's Division of the New York drive in the United Jewish Campaign. Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff heads the Division as its honorary chairman, according to an announcement made by William Fox, chairman of the New York drive. An organization meeting will be held today at the Hotel Biltmore, where headquarters of the New York drive are located. Fifty women, leaders in women's clubs, professional groups, synagogue organizations, and others making up a representation of all varied women's interests in the Jewish life of the city, will be present. They will be addressed by David A. Brown, national chairman of the United Jewish Campaign. Each of these fifty will head a unit of workers in the active drive, which opens April 11th. Mrs. Elkus served in the great Jewish War Relief Campaign of 1918, and led a group of 1,000 women workers in the Red Cross Drive of that year. Her life abroad in the years immediately after the war in Eastern Europe brought her into personal contact with the tragedy precipitated by the war upon European Jewry. (As reported by JTA)

1926:  In Newark, NJ, Daniel Levitch and Rachel ("Rae") Levitch (née Brodsky) gave birth to Joseph Levitch who gained fame as Jerry Lewis who teamed with Dean Martin to form one of the most popular comedy duos of the post-war period.  After the team broke up, Lewis honed his comedic craft and is especially loved by French audiences.  He is best known for his Labor Day MDA Telethons which have raised untold millions for research and care of those suffering from this disease.

1930(16th of Adar, 5690): Shushan Purim

1930: It was reported today that “the main difficulty in connection with the report of the Palestine Inquiry Commission centers around the land question…” (As reported by JTA)

1933: Birthdate of Sandy Weil financer and CEO of Citigroup until 2003.  The son of Polish immigrants, Weil became one of the wealthiest individuals in America.  Recent revelations have shown that while Weil made a lot of money, some his methods were of a questionable nature.

1929: New York Hakoah of the Eastern Soccer League defeated a touring team from Budapest today thanks to two goals scored by Moritz Haeusler. (Bob Wechsler)

1930: Ceremonies marking the dedication of the new sanctuary of Temple Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan continued for a third day.

1933: “A Love Story” based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler and directed by Max Opuls was released in France today.

1934(29th of Adar, 5694): Sixty-eight year old Gertrude Aronson, the “daughter of Joseph and Theresa Deutsch” and the first wife of Louis Vincent Aronson, the inventor of the Ronson lighter passed away today.

1934: In its first international football (soccer) match the team from Mandatory Palestine (the future Israel) lost to Egypt 7 to 1.

1935: After 237 performances the curtain comes down on the original Broadway production of “Life Begins at 8:40,” “a musical revue with music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and E.Y. Harburg.”

1935: Fourteen Jewish American athletes and their manager David White set sail on the SSConte di Savola.  The athletes will participate in the Maccabiah, the Jewish Olympics, scheduled to open in April in Tel Aviv.  Due to unexpected financial difficulties, it was not known until the last minute if the team would be able to go.  Thirty teams are expected to compete in the games up from the twenty-five teams that competed in the inaugural games held in 1932.  

1935(11th of Adar II, 5695): Aron Nimzowitsch passed away.  Nimzovichor Niemzowitsch was born in Latvia in 1886 when it was part of the Russian Empire. He was a chess grandmaster and was the foremost figure amongst the hypermoderns. Nimzowitsch came from a wealthy Jewish family and learned chess from his father. He travelled to Germany in 1904 to study philosophy, but began a career as a professional chess player that same year. After tumultuous years during and after World War I, Nimzowitsch moved to Copenhagen in 1922 and lived there until his death. He is buried in Bispebjerg Cemetery in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1936: Jews in Palestine protested the worsening conditions under which the Jews of Poland were living.  Polish Jews were dealing with everything from a government threat to end Kosher slaughtering to actual Pogroms.  The Jewish National Council of Palestine conducted a mass protest meeting and the Jews of Tel Aviv shuttered their shops for one day.

1936: The U.S. Secretary of the Interior “spoke at a joint banquet” held tonight by the United Synagogue of America and its women’s auxiliary where he told the attendees “Like those forefather of yours, we of America today are wandering the desert even though it is a social and not a physical desert.”

1936: Magistrate Anna Moskowitz Kross and Mrs. David E. Goldfarb are scheduled to speak a tea being held today that has been organized by Mrs. Benjamin Antin and Mrs. Edna Crane which will mark the opening event of the Bronx Women’s Division of the United Palestine Appeal.

1937: In New York, “Catholic, Protestant and Jewish speakers” including Rabbi Elias L. Soloon and Rabbi Morris M. Goldberg joined in tonight’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of Congregation Shaare Zedek which was also marked by President Roosevelt and Governor Lehman who “sent letters of feciliation…”

1937: Birthdate of cognitive psychologist Amos Tversky.  Born in Haifa, Amos Tversky, a Stanford psychology professor and his longtime colleague, Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman, jointly won the 2003 Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. The $200,000 prize, awarded for the third time by the University of Louisville in Kentucky, recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of psychology. Working as a team for nearly three decades, Kahneman and Tversky revolutionized the scientific approach to decision making, ultimately affecting all social sciences and many related disciplines. Tversky died of cancer in 1996.  His untimely death prevented him from sharing in a Nobel Prize with his longtime colleague, Daniel Kahneman. 

1937: Police fired on a crowd in Clichy which provoked a crisis that the opponents of Leon Blum used in an attempt to gain a vote of no confidence in his Popular Front government.

1937: Thanks to intervention by United States consular representatives, Boris Smolar, a correspondent for JTA who was ordered to leave Germany on March 12, “has received permission for an indefinite stay I Berlin.”

1938(13th of Adar II, 5698): Fast of Esther

1938: Tonight, Harold Jacobi, the chairman of the New York United Palestine Appeal, joined with leaders of Hadassah in using a Purim theme to call upon American Jews to support the drive to provide aid for the “more than 200,000 Jews in Austria who have come under the rule of the Nazis” on the eve of the holiday when Persian Jews were faced with possible destruction.

1938: Jewish professors were kicked out of Austrian universities

1938: In his review of Goodbye Wester Country by Henry Williamson, Ralph Thompson described the author’s interpretation of the Nazi revolution as being “the most naïve interpretation of the Nazi revolution ever put to paper.

1938: During the Spanish Civil War the four day battle at Belichite in which the Botwins, a company of Polish volunteers named after political radical Naftali Bortain, had almost been wiped out.

1938: Adolf Eichmann went to Austria to begin the removal of Jews

1939: Emil Hacha, who had been the last President of an “independent” Czechoslovakia bowed to personal pressure from Hitler and became the “State President of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” where, regardless of what else he did to help or combat the Nazis, he did sign “into law legislation modeled after the Nuremberg Laws that meant the Jews were no longer Czech citizens in any sense of that term.

1939: As Arab violence continues unabated, 3 Arabs were killed today and another 250 were arrested by British forces who also seized a large quantity of rifles, ammunition and explosives.

1939: “Myron C. Taylor, the United States representative on the Evian inter-governmental refugee committee, who is en route home, arrived in London and spend the day discussing with the leaders in the City problems connected with the mass emigration of Jews from Germany if the recent Nazi proposals are carried out.”

1940(6th of Adar II, 5700): Samuel Untermyer passed away. It is difficult to do justice to the life and career of this lawyer, self-made millionaire and leader of the Jewish community born in Virginia who found success in New York City. The following lengthy obituary in the New York Times provides a picture of his life and accomplishments

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F40A16FF3C54117A93C5A81788D85F448485F9  Untermyer was the grandfather of Samuel Untermyer II. Born in 1912, he was “a United States nuclear engineer who theorized that steam bubble formation in a nuclear reactor core would not produce unstable reactions but would instead result in an inherently stable and self-controlling reactor design. He was responsible for the BORAX Experiments and in recognition of his fundamental development work on safe, water-cooled reactors the American Nuclear Society now has an award named after him for work in this field.” He won the Newcomen Medal in 1980 and passed away in 2001.

1942: The first 1,600 Jews were deported from Lublin to Belzec. Another 10,000 would follow the next week.

1942: “The American Federation for Lithuanian Jews, of which Sidney Hillman is honorary president, today issued an appeal to all Jews from the Baltic countries now in the United States to come to the aid of Lithuanian Jews who succeeded in escaping from the Nazis into Soviet territory.” (As reported by JTA)

1943: Birthdate of actress Susan Linda Bay who is the widow Leonard Nimoy.

1943: In Manhattan, attorney Jacob Goldberg and “the former Etta Herman, a department store coat model and homemaker” gave birth to Michael Harris Goldberg “the general counsel of the upstart American Basketball Association during its final years in the 1970s and the head of the N.B.A. coaches’ union for nearly four decades…” (As reported by Richard Sandomir)


1943(9th of Adar II, 5703):  An SS officer was killed by a Jew named Kotnowski at Lvov. In reprisal, the Germans hung 11 Jewish policemen from the balconies overlooking the main street of the Ghetto. Also over 1,000 Jews were taken away and shot.

1944: Following reports that Prime Minister Miklós Kállay was putting out feelers to the Allies about a possible capitulation, “Hitler summoned Admiral Miklos Horthy to a meeting” where he pressured him to stay in the work and “to assist in the kill of more of Hungary’s Jews.”

1945: Approximately 90% of Wurzburg, a city that had shipped its Jewish population to concentration camps from 1941 through 1943, was destroyed today when 225 British heavy bombers attacked the city in a 17 minute period.

1946(13th of Adar II, 5706): Parashat Vayikra; Shabbat Zachor; erev Purim

1946: Today The Acheson-Lilienthal Report Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy was published.  Lilienthal is David Lilienthal who had gained fame as the creator of TVA. His involvement in how the United States should deal with Atomic Energy in the post-war world is another example of Jewish involvement in a whole raft of issues dealing with the creation and use of both the Atomic and Hydrogen bombs.

1947: “The Red House,” the film version of the book by the same name, starring Edward G. Robinson was released today in the United States.

1947: The British announce plans to end Martial Law in Tel Aviv and adjacent areas effective tomorrow. 

1947(24th of Adar, 5707): Sixty-three year old Copenhagen born Waldemar Holberg, the world welterweight champion in 1914 who boxed for in the 1908 Olympics for Denmark passed away today.

1947: An explosion ripped through press room and tourist information center in the Jerusalem offices of the Jewish agency.  While some said the attack was the work of “Jewish terrorists” and highlighted the split between Yishuv and militant extremists, the Irgun denied responsibility and said the attack may have been the work of the British.

1948: “In a day of comparatively little violence in Palestine, a spokesman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine said today that the Jews ‘would welcome any truce under any conditions.’”

1948: As Arab forces waged a war of terror designed to undo the UN Partition Resolution, the Palmach attacked al-Husayniyaa in response to the explosion of land mine.

1949:  In London, Ontario, Joe Garber and Hope Wolf gave birth to Canadian actor Victor Garber

1951(8th of Adar II, 5711): Eighty-three year old Laura Bearden Leigh, the wife of John Marion Leigh and the daughter of Louis Alexander Gratz, the Mayor of North Knoxville, TN and a Major in the Union Army and Elisabeth “Lizzie” Trigg Gratz passed away today in San Antonio, TX.

1952:  Birthdate of French American businessman, Philippe Kahn, founder of Borland Software Corporation

1954(11th of Adar II, 5714): Tonight unknown assailants attacked an Egged bus traveling between Eilat and Tel Aviv killing the driver Efraim Firstenberg, eight male passengers and two female passengers following which the killers spat on and abused the bodies of the dead before leaving with loot they had collected.

1957: “Robert Briscoe, the Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, carrying his Talis bag from Dublin visited and prayed at the Park East Synagouge on Shabbas morning.

1958: In Croatia Slavko Goldstein and his wife gave birth to Ivo Goldstein, the historian who is ‘the former president of Bet Israel, a Jewish community in Zagreb, which he founded with his father” with whom he also worked on “the reconstruction of the Zagreb Synagogue.”

1959: Birthdate of Scott L. Schwartz, the native of Philadelphia who used “his size and agility at 6"10 and 303 pounds (137 kg)” to carve out careers in law enforcement, acting and wrestling.

1962: It was reported today that Daniel Persky, the brother of Eliah Persky, had the motto “Eved L’Ivrith Anokhi” (A slave unto Hebrew am I) on his business cards.

1962: The “Golani Brigade raided Syrian outposts to the north of the Sea of Galilee in order to stop Syrian shelling of Israeli Villages.  Seven Israeli soldiers and thirty Syrian soldiers were killed during the battle.”  The raid did not end the shelling.  It would continue sporadically until 1967 when the IDF heroically took the Golan Heights. 

1963: “Personality: Boom is Loud for Lesser” published today provides a profile of Louis Lesser and his real estate empire.


1964: Premiere of “Nothing But the Best,” a British comedy with a script co-authored by future Oscar winner Frederic Raphael.

1965: Israel Votes to Have Diplomatic Relations with West Germany

1965: As bagel bakers clashed over how to deal with the changing world of Bagel Baking, Morris Skolnick was defeated in his bid to be elected business agent for famed local 388.

1966: When David Dubinsky announced his retirement today from the International Ladies Garment Workers he told fellow union officers, ''I didn't have a life, I had a union life. You know my nature. If I'm president I can't only be president from morning till night. It has to be from morning until the next morning.''

1968(16th of Adar, 5728): Italian Jewish composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedescopassed away. Born in Florence in 1895, he was descended from a prominent banking family that had lived in the city since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Like many artists who fled fascism, Castelnuovo-Tedesco ended up in Hollywood, where, with the help of Yasha Heifetz, he landed a contract with MGM as a film composer. Over the next fifteen years, he worked on scores for some 200 films there and at the other major film studios. He was a significant influence on other major film composers, including Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, Nelson Riddle, John Williams, and André Previn. His relationship to Hollywood was ambiguous: later in life he attempted to deny the influence that it had on his own work, but he also believed that it was an essentially American art form, much as opera was European. In the United States, Castelnuovo-Tedesco also composed new operas and works based on American poetry, Jewish liturgy, and the Bible.

1972(1st of Nisan, 5732): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1972(1st of Nisan, 5732): Sixty-eight year old Swiss born physicist and Cornell University Professor Henri S. Sack passed away today.


1973(12th of Adar II, 5733): Seventy-seven year old Samuel L. Calman, the Russian born husband of Fannie Calechman  who in 1897 moved to New Haven, CT where he was active in business and the Jewish community passed away today after which he was buried at the B’nai Jacob Memorial Park in his adopted home town.

1976(14th of Adar II, 5736): Purim observed for the last time during the Presidency of Jerry Ford.

1978(7th of Adar II, 5738): Eighty year old Keene, NH native “Dr. Samuel L. Saltzman, an ophthalmologist and medical historian” who served as a volunteer with the Israeli Army in 1948 and was married to Rose Saltzman with whom he raised two children – Suzanne and Jonathan – passed away today.


 

1979(24th of Adar, 5739): Sixty-six year old University of Minnesota trained attorney and WW II U.S. Army veteran Julius E. Davis, the “son of Isadore and Molly (Edelman) Davis, the husband of Lillian Stacia Kropman and father of Lawrence and Stephen Davis passed away today

1980(28th of Adar, 5740): Eighty-two year old Harvard trained New Orleans, LA, businessman Edward Bernard Benjamin, Sr. the Little Rock, AR born son of “Emanuel V. Benjamin and Rachel Goldsmith and WW I U.S. Army veteran who was the husband of Blanche Sternberger of Greensboro, NC with whom he had three children passed away today in New Orleans after which he was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Greensboro.

1982: In case of Jew on Jew, in “Rudnick’s Poor Little Lambs’ of Yale” Frank Rich reviewed Paul Rudnick’s ''‘Poor Little Lambs,’ a no-holds-barred account of a year in the life of the Whiffenpoofs singing group.”


1983: The Third World Conference on Soviet Jewry continued to a second day in Jerusalem.

1984: William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later dies in captivity.

1985:  Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut.

1985(23rd of Adar, 5745): Shabbat Parah

1985(23rd of Adar, 5745): Olga Ginsburg (nee Bessman) who had been born in 1894 and was the wife of Joseph Binsburg and the mother of the multi-talented Serge Gainsbourg passed away today.


1987: Israel radio reported today that the Israeli Government has helped to pay the legal bills of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American intelligence analyst sentenced to life in prison last month for spying for Israel. The radio said ''state elements in Israel'' transferred $80,000 by unspecified indirect means to the defense of Mr. Pollard and his wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard. Mrs. Henderson-Pollard was sentenced to five years for helping her husband to pass hundreds of top-secret American documents to the Israeli Government. The couple's total legal expenses were reported to be somewhere between $120,000 to $200,000. The radio report did not say when the transfer took place or whether the Israeli Government planned to make additional payments to the Pollards. Israel radio said the funds were provided to James Hibey, a Washington lawyer, whom it described as the lawyer for Mr. Pollard and his wife.

1987(15th of Adar, 5747): Shushan Purim

1987(15th of Adar, 5747): Eighty-seven year old Estonia native Samuel H. Shapiro, the second Jew to serve as Governor of Illinois passed away today.



1987: Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin today denied reports that Israel may still be spying on the United States. Mr. Rabin was responding to a story in The Washington Post which said American investigators became suspicious during their questioning of Mr. Pollard that Israel had another agent working in an American intelligence operation.

1987: Doctors discovered and removed a tumor from the brain of Jazz Drummer Buddy Rich. (As reported by James Barron)

1988(27th of Adar, 5748): Eighty-five year old Austro-Hungarian Empire native Paul Kohner, a dominating talent agent, the brother of novelist Frederick Kohner and father of actress of Susan Kohner passed away today.


1991: "Underground," a new work by the Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol, directed by Adrian Hall, is scheduled to have its last performance today at the Yale Repertory Theater.

1991: “Trabbi Goes to Hollywood” a comedy film directed by Jon Turteltaub and featuring Milton Berle was released in Germany today.

1992: Loretta Weinberg began serving as a Member of the New Jersey General Assembly from the 37th Legislative District,

1995(14thof Adar II, 5755): Purim

1997: In “Cabaret That Shocked, Shocked the Nazis” published today David Mermelstein Ute Lemper’s plans to “perform relatively obscure cabaret songs banned by the Nazis.”


1998: The Vatican expressed remorse for the cowardice of some Christians during the Holocaust, but defended the actions of Pope Pius XII.

1998:At a press conference today Cardinal Cassidy, President of the Holy See's Commission For Religious Relations With the Jews, presented for publication the document, We Remember: A Reflection On The Shoah. Joining him in the presentation were Bishop Pierre Duprey, Vice President of the Commission, and Father Remi Hoeckmann, O.P., its Secretary.

1999(28th of Adar, 5759): Rhoda Mendelson Faffer passed away today at the age of 87.  The deceased was the wife of the late Samuel Faffer and the late, well-known Chazan, Cantor Nathan Mendelson of Montreal Canada. 

2000(9th of Adar II, 5760): Eighty-one year old Georgia born, University of Chicago trained attorney Morris B. Abram the fighter for human rights and President of Brandeis University passed away today. (As reported by William Honan)



2001: More than 30 Jewish student journalists from across the United States studied with Pulitzer Prize-winners Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Frankel, the editor of The Washington Post Magazine, as well as editors of leading American Jewish publications as part of the Journalism Track of the 2001 Charlotte and Jack J. Spitzer B'nai B'rith Hillel Forum on Public Policy.
2002: “The Last Days of Pompeii,” a solo exhibition of the works of Eleanor Antin came to a close.

2003: On the eve of the United States' invasion of Iraq, Pastor John Hagee took to the pulpit to warn of the coming Antichrist. In his sermon, "The Final Dictator," Hagee described the Antichrist as a seductive figure with "fierce features." He will be "a blasphemer and a homosexual," the pastor announced. Then, Hagee boomed, "There's a phrase in Scripture used solely to identify the Jewish people. It suggests that this man [the Antichrist] is at least going to be partially Jewish, as was Adolph Hitler, as was Karl Marx." This "fierce" gay Jew, according to Hagee, would "slaughter one-third of the Earth's population" and "make Adolph Hitler look like a choirboy."

2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the Newsby Eric Alterman

2005:  In yet another exchange of land for a promise of peace, Israel officially hands over Jericho to Palestinian control

2006: Excavations at Tel Arad in the Negev were photographed today

2006: In an interview at the time, repeated on BBC2's Newsnight today Michael Levy stated that "Over the years I have paid many millions of tax and, if you average it, each year it comes to many hundreds of thousands of pounds. In that particular year, I was giving my time to the Labour Party and the voluntary sector, and I just lived off capital.

2007: While serving as Chief Rabbi of France, Joseph Haim Sitruk “was selected as Commander of the Legion of Honor.”

2007: The Jewish Post reported that “Hadarom, the Rabbinical Council of America’s annual Torah journal, is now available on the Internet. The 50-year-old journal, which deals principally with matters of Jewish law and biblical and Talmudic exegesis, is accessible at www.rabbis.org.”

2008: The New York Times book section features reviews of Why We’re Liberals:A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America by liberal Jewish columnist Eric Alterman and The Best American Erotic Poems From 1800 to the Presentedited by David Lehman.

2008: Within a week of the near collapse of Bear Stearns led by President and COO Bear Stearns and merger withJP Morgantoday, “the shares were trading at $5.33 per share which eventually prompted a reportedly angry confrontation between Schwartz and senior trader Alan Mintz in the company gym 

2008: “Black Rabbi Reaches out to Mainstream of His Faith” published today described the life and work of Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr. (prounced fun-AY) the spiritual leader of Chicago’s Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation.


2008:About two dozen Holocaust survivors, including some saved by German industrialist Oskar Schindler mark the 65th anniversary of the Nazi's liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow.

In just two days in March 1943, German soldiers emptied the ghetto of its estimated 16,000 Jewish residents, shipping them to a forced-labor camp in nearby Plaszow and to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where most were killed in the gas chambers. Those left behind were executed, with some 2,000 Jews killed. By the end of World War II, just 3,000 Jews who lived in the ghetto survived. About 25 survivors _ some returning to Poland for the first time since the war's end _ will march through the Podgorze district in Krakow to the grounds of the former camp in Plaszow where around 8,000 people, including Poles, perished during the war. Just 60 of the Jews Schindler saved are alive and a dozen are expected for the march, said Andrzej Skotnicki, who helped bring back Schindler's Jews for the anniversary events and recently published a book on Jews from Krakow that were saved by Schindler."  They lost many members of their families, so its not easy for them," Skotnicki told The Associated Press. The Plaszow camp was the setting for Steven Spielberg's 1993 Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List," which chronicled the German businessman's efforts to shield more than 1,000 Jews from Nazi death camps by hiring them to work in his Krakow factory. Since the release of Spielberg's film, tourists to Krakow have sought out the place where Schindler kept the emaciated, frostbitten Jews, claiming their work was essential to the survival of his metal works factory, where prisoners produced enameled pots and pans. Schindler spent his fortune feeding the Jews he saved. After the war, he emigrated to Argentina with his wife, Emilie, but returned to Germany in 1958 where he died in 1974. He was buried in Jerusalem at his own request.

2008:A bomb alert today at the Paris Book Fair, which this year honors Israeli writers, prompted the evacuation of thousands of people but appeared to be a false alarm,

2009: In Albany, NY, a screening of Etgar Keret’s film “Jellyfish” followed by Q&A with the famed Israeli author.

2009: After The New Republic published ‘Wasting Away in Hooverville” today, Jonathan “Chait appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report to counter conservative arguments that the New Deal was a failure.”

2009:As part of Lillian Goldman Literary Seriesthe American Jewish Historical Society, the Center for Jewish History and Jewish Heritage present: “The Lifecycles of New York Jews: Love and Loss,” the second in an already widely praised series of staged readings that explores the experiences of love, well-being and loss through the eyes of New York Jewish authors.

2009: A 29 year old Israeli man connected with Jerusalem’s haredi “modesty squad” was sentenced to four years in prison today for the brutal gang assault of a woman in her apartment last year. The Justice Minister announced that the group’s ringleader and other alleged cell members were never charged in the case due to a lack of evidence.

2009: Ninety-six year old song writer Jack Lawrence passed away today.




2010: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski “released a National Broadband Plan, titled “Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan”.

2010: Rosh Chodesh Nisan, 5770

2010: According to the Vilna Gaon, construction of the third temple is scheduled to begin on this day.

2010: As part of its series “Far Flung Jews: Jewish Cultures Around the World,” the Jewish Study Center is scheduled to offer a program describing “The Resurgent Jewish Community of Berlin” at Adas Israel in Washington, DC.

 

2010:A senior Israel Defense Forces officer said today that despite the violence that erupted across Jerusalem in response to Hamas' declaration of a "day of rage”, neither the Palestinian Authority nor Israel was interested in seeing a renewal of conflict. 2010:Avner Netanyahu, 15, son of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Sarah Netanyahu, received the top honor in Israel's national Bible Quiz championship for youth today. The girls' champion was Or Ashual of the Bnei Akiva Amana Academy in Kfar Saba.

2010: David Sofer, “the Jewish Israeli businessman living in London” whose property would be part of a dispute in 2018 between Israel and the Greek Orthodox Church, and his wife Cindy attended the “opening reception of the Jewish Museum in London” today.

2010: “Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson…helped” to “re-launch the London Jewish Museum” today “after a two year closure. “2011: The 15th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2011(6th of Adar II, 5871): Seventy-five year old actor Al Israel who was best known for his role in two Al Pacino gangster films – Scarface and Carlito’s Way—passed away today.

2011: Final screening of Human Resource Manager, a film based on a novel by A.B. Yehoushua, is scheduled to take place at the Cinema Village in New York.

2011: Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi are scheduled to appear “in concert for the opening of the exhibit on Ketuvot at The Jewish Museum.

2011: The Israel Air Force fired two missiles at a security compound in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip today, killing two Palestinians, Palestinian medical officials said. The IDF Spokesperson confirmed the attack in an official statement, saying it was a direct hit and that the airstrike was launched response to rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli territory earlier Wednesday.

2011:Jewish youth held an artistic and educational ceremony to memorialize the victims of the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires Israeli pop star Ivri Lider, who was invited to Argentina by the "Autumn Festival” of music, performed at the event. Youth media professionals specializing in video and film prepared a video called “Justice will not stay buried under the rubble” about the attack memorials.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt-AhWWL4nc

2011:The northern California home of Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the progressive Tikkun magazine, was vandalized for the third time in less than a year. The attack came a day after Lerner presented the Tikkun Award for ethics to South African Justice Richard Goldstone at a celebration of Tikkun’s 25th anniversary attended by more than 600 people at the University of California, Berkeley. (As reported by JTA)

2011: The Chief Rabbinate, Interior Ministry and State Attorney’s Office are currently drawing up new procedures to determine the validity of Orthodox conversions for the purpose of aliya, Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar said today.


2012: “Nina Menkes Retrospective: Cinema as Sorcery” featuring personal appearances by the famed filmmaker whose parents are Holocaust survivors is scheduled to come to an in New York City.

2012: The Friars Club is scheduled to present a tribute to Jerry Lewis at the 92ndStreet Y. The program will include a “screening of a new documentary, Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, followed by a talk/tribute with Jerry Lewis on the occasion of his 86th birthday.”

2012: Jerusalem hosted its second annual marathon today.


2013: The Alexandria Kleztet is scheduled to perform in Rockville, MD. 

2013: “The Day I Saw Your Heart” is scheduled to have its Minnesota Premiere at the Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival.

2013(5thof Nisan, 5773): Sixty year old former MK Marina Solodkin suffered a stroke and passed away while attending a conference in Riga, Latvia.


2013: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to a the Virginia Virtuosi performing an evening of Jewish classical music celebrating Freedom.

2013: The Philomusica Quartet – Nadia Weintraub, Yelena Tishin, Avraham Leventhal, Dmitri Golderman – is scheduled to perform at the Eden-Tamir Music Center

 2013: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu presented the new government to President Shimon Peres tonight.

2013:MK Tzipi Livni, Israel’s newest Justice Minister, stressed today that she would not support the basic law bill “Israel is the national state of the Jewish people,” whose promotion is part of the new coalition agreements with the Jewish Home party. In the absence of a constitution, The Basic Laws of Israel (Chukei Hayesod) deal with the formation and role of the principal state’s institutions, and the relations between the state’s authorities.

2014(14thof Adar II, 5774): Purim

2014(14thof Adar II, 5774): Eighty-six year old Tony award winning composer Mitch Leigh whose work also included the “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee “ jingle  passed away today. (As reported by Anita Gates)


2014: Eden Rose Strauss, daughter of Rabbi Feivel and Abbie Strauss and granddaughter of Dr. Bob and Laurie Silber is scheduled to be the youngest person in Bexley, Ohio “celebrating” what for will be her first Purim

2014: The Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a family concert by The Dirty Sock Funtime Band.

2014: “The Jewish Cardinal” and “Suskind” are scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2014: The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Joann Sfar Draws From Memory” which “tracks his odyssey through the Algerian and Eastern European Jewish heritage that serves as the wellspring of his work.”

2014: Ilan Caplan, the Chazan for the Traditional High Holiday Services in Cedar Rapids is scheduled to chant Megalith Esther at Shird Chadesh In Metairie, LA which when it was the Conservative Congregation of New Orleans gave Mitchell Levin who davens in Cedar Rapids, his first teaching job. (Don’t you just love Jewish Geography?)

2014: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa Temple Judah is scheduled to host a Religious School Purim Carnival followed later in the day by a Megillah Reading with attendees including adults in costumes.

2014: In Israel, Channel 2 reported that Israel has tightened security in its airspace following the the dissiappearance of Maylasian Airlines flight MH370. (As reported by Times of Israel)

2014:”Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s top negotiator in talks with the Palestinian Authority, chastised Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Sunday evening over comments he’d made the previous day dismissing the viability of peace talks, saying “grumbling and despairing is easy…our responsibility is to change reality.”  (As reported by Itamar Sharon)

2014: “Hundreds of east Jerusalem residents held a demonstration in Jerusalem’s Old City near the Damascus Gate this evening, with several demonstrators throwing rocks at a police car, breaking its windshield.” (As reported by Itamar Sharon)

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and or of special interest to Jewish readers including  Bernard Malamud: Novels and Stories of the 1940s and 50s: "The Natural,""The Assistant,""Twenty Stories,""Posthumously Published Stories edited by Philip Davis, Bernard Malamud: Novels and Stories of the 1940s and 50s: "The Natural,""The Assistant,""Twenty Stories,""Posthumously Published Stories edited by Phillip Davis and The Wherewithal, A Novel in Verse by Philip Schultz as well as the publication of an interview with Philip Roth.

2015: “Solomon Schechter Symposium” with Dara Horn is scheduled to be presented by the Herbert D. Katz Center Advanced Judaic Studies.

2015: Rabbi Denise Eger read the Torah today during installation as CCAR president.

2015: Jack Goldberg is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Middle East Chaos: From Civil Wars to Disintegration of States” in San Diego.

2015: Orient Stier is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Hidden and the Revealed: A God’s-Eye View of the Landscape of Holocaust Postmemory” at the Jewish Museum of Florida.

2015: “Los Angeles County prosecutors filed a murder charge today against real estate scion Robert Durst in the December 2000 killing of his longtime friend Susan Berman, who was found shot execution-style in her Benedict Canyon home on Christmas Eve.”

2015: “Under pressure on the eve of a surprisingly close election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel today doubled down on his appeal to right-wing voters, declaring definitively that if he was returned to office he would never establish a Palestinian state.”

2015: “The Allied Powers’ Response to the Holocaust Conference” is scheduled open today.


2016: “Shore of Love” and “Arabic Movie” are scheduled to be shown at the 19thNew York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2016: “Women’s Night Dinner” and “A La Vie” are scheduled to shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2016: During a speech in the Rose Garden this morning “new U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland credited his Jewish grandparents, who he said fled to the United States from anti-Semitism in Russia, for putting him in position to be nominated”

2016: The YIVO Institute for Jewish research is scheduled to present a lecture on “Yiddish Culture and Interwar Paris: The 1937 World's Fair & the Modern Jewish Culture Pavilion.”

2017: Mobster Myron Sugerman, the son “Barney Sugerman, a man who partnered in the gambling business with such notorious mob figures as Meyer Lansky and fellow Jerseyan Abner “Longie” Zwillman” and who “followed his father into the world of illegal gambling and wound up serving 19 months at the Federal Correctional Complex in Allenwood, Pa., after being convicted on gambling charges” “regaled the crowd at Congregation Beth Israel with his own take on the Jewish involvement in famous crime syndicates. (As reported by Alan Smason) Editor’s Note – wonder when the congregation will yuck it up with tales of the Purple Gang.


2017(18thof Adar, 5777): Ninety-one year old neurologist, Dr. Lewis Rowland passed away way today. (As reported by Denise Grady)


2017: The Princeton Tigers (23-6) led by senior forward Spencer Weisz, “a Maccabiah Games gold medalist” and “the Ivy League’s Player of the Year are scheduled to face off against Notre Dame in the opening round of the NACC Basketball Tournament.

2017: JW3 is scheduled to host the last screening of “Denial,” a film based on the libel trial in which professor Deborah E. Lipstadt squared again Holocaust denier David Irving.

2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Hidden Mysteries and Magic: Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism in Renaissance Florence.”

2018(29thof Adar, 5778): Sgt. Netanel Kahalani, left, and Cpt. Ziv Daos, have been identified as the soldiers killed in an apparent car-ramming terror attack that took place today.

2018(29thof Adar, 5778): Ninety-five year old rabbi Mordechai Hager passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)


2018: The New Jersey Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present a screening of “The Children of Chance,” the story of a Jewish boy surviving the Holocaust in Paris.

2018: The Fifth Edition of the Socially Relevant Film “featuring Israeli films The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Shira Gabay, The Girl by Lihi Sabag, Jerusalem In Line by Amir Har-Gil and Hotel Everest by Claudia Sobral.” Is scheduled to open in New York City.

2018: Following a services at the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel and a Shabbat dinner, scholar-in-residence Rabbi Marc D. Angel is scheduled to deliver his first lecture.

2018: Limmudfest is scheduled to begin this evening in New Orleans, LA.

2018:Collecting for the Nation: The 75th Anniversary of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Gift of Prints and Drawings to the National Gallery of Art” is scheduled to begin at noon at The National Gallery of Art.

2018: Following its release in Berlin and the United Kingdom, “Seven Days in Entebbe” is scheduled to be released in the United States today.


2019(9th of Adar II, 5779): Shabbat Zachor; begin reading from the Book of Vayikra

2019: The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “The Lost Crown” a documentary about the Aleppo Codex created by “Avi Dabach, the filmmaker and great-grandson of the Crown Keeper who navigates the dark corridors of hidden history, archival documents and rare testimonies reveal an astonishing story involving an Israeli president, Mossad agents, passionate rabbis, and antique dealers.”

2019: In the wake of massacre of Muslims in Christchurch on March 15, “Synagogues across New Zealand are to remain closed over Shabbat” because, as “the Auckland Hebrew Congregation told members of ‘concern about the security’ of the community.” (As reported by Mathilde Frot)

2019: In New Orleans, Temple Sinai, the oldest reform congregation in the Crescent City is scheduled to host its annual Spring Gala.

2019: Joshua Nelson, “the Prince of Kosher Gospel” and The Kosher Gospel Singers ae scheduled to perform this evening at the Osher Marin JCC.

 

 

 

This Day, March 17, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 17

796 BCE (1stof Nisan, 2956): Based on computations using the Bible and archaeology, possible date for the death of Jehoash, King of Judah.

45 BCE:  Julius Caesar defeated the forces of Pompey at the Battle of Munda.  Caesar’s victory put an end to the Pompeian attempt to rule Rome. Considering the way Pompey treated the Jews, Caesar’s victory was the preferable outcome.

180: Antonius Marcus Aurelius Emperor of Rome passed away at the age of 58.  The author of Meditations was known as a wise philosopher-king.  However, he had little use for the Jews.  While traveling in Judea, he described the Jews as "Stinking and tumultuous."  He reportedly expressed a preference for the Teutonic barbarians whom he was fighting on the border between Gaul and Germania.

455: Petronius Maximus becomes emperor of the Western Roman Empire after murdering Valentinian III and forcing the Empress Eudoxia to marry him.  The Empress wrote to Genseric the Vandal asking him to come to Rome to avenge her. According to Theophanes he came and sacked the city and reportedly carried off the treasures from the Second Temple that had been seized by Titus in 70.

763: Birthdate of Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid caliph who sent Jewish teachers to France at the request of Charlemagne.

1190: The Crusaders completed the massacre of Jews of York England slaughtering 500 Jews on this particular day.

1398: Today “The city council of Worms enacted an ordinance that every Jew or Jewess over twelve should pay one old tournois in Leibzoll, but not one farthing more.”

1406: Seventy-three year old Tunisian born Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun whose writing about the history of the Berbers described the conversion of Kahina, the 7th century “warrior queen” to Judaism.

1526: After making “major concessions to Charles V” Francis I who had no Jewish subjects but had a strange interest in the Hebrew language as can be seen by his unsuccessful attempt get the Hebrew grammarian Elias Levita to move to his realm, was freed today.

1616: In Holland, under the rule of Prince Maurice of Orange, it is decided that each city could decide for itself whether or not to admit Jews. In those towns where they were admitted they would not be required to wear a badge of any sort identifying them as Jews.

1636: Urban VIII issued “Cum allias piae” a Papal Bull that ordered the “Synagogues of the Duchies of Ferarri and Urban, to pay a tax of 10 ecus.”

1654: Alexis Mikhailovich, the second Romanov Czar, issued an edict today instructing “a party of Lithuanian Jews to proceed from Kaluga to Nijni-Novgorod” under the protection of an “escort of twenty sharpshooters.”

1733: “Deborah,” an oratorio by Handel based on Chapters 4 and 5 of the Book of Judges premiered at the King’s Theatre in London.

1749: “Solomon,” an oratorio by Handel based on the Biblical account of the Israelite King had its first performance at the Theatre Royal in London.

1762: The first St. Patrick’s Day Parade is held in New York City.  The parade was organized by Irish soldiers serving in the British Navy.  “Corned beef and cabbage is the traditional meal enjoyed by many on St. Patrick's Day, but only half of it is truly Irish. Cabbage has long been a staple of the Irish diet, but it was traditionally served with Irish bacon, not corned beef. The corned beef was substituted for bacon by Irish immigrants who came to America and who could not afford the real thing i.e. bacon. According to one version of this tale, the Irish immigrants learned about the cheaper alternative, corned beef, from their Jewish neighbors.” Are we to believe that traif bacon gave way to kosher Corned Beef?  Only in America!

1757: Following a dispute with other members of the Bet Din in London, Isaac Nieto wrote a letter today resigning as ab bet din.  Nieto was the son David Nieto and he had served as the Haham of Bevis Marks and as the first Rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Gibraltar. He had been serving as the ab bet din since 1751.

1798: Birthdate of Jacob Ettlinger, the native of Baden who became a leader of Orthodox Judaism and served as Chief Rabbi in Altona from 1836 until his death in 1871

1789: Birthdate of Edmund Kean, the great 19thcentury Shakespearian actor who first gained fame for his portrayal of Shylock.  The portrayal of the Jew from Venice was a difficult role and a career-maker for those few who did it successfully.

 

1801: In Galicia, Rabbi Shebah ha-Levi and his wife gave birth to Orientalist Simchah Pinksker, the father of Leon Pinsker.

1805: The Italian Republic, a creation of Napoleon, was transformed in the Kingdom of Italy with the French emperor serving as King.  The Jews of Italy benefited from the appearance of the French revolutionary armies. Between 1796 and 1798, they had liberated several ghettos, most notably the Rome Ghetto in 1798.  The Jews will be forced to return to their ghettos with the return of Italian reactionaries but Napoleon would have one last success when he freed the Jews of Florence from their Ghetto in 1808.

1807: Birthdate of Mendel Hess the Chief Rabbi of the Grand Duchy of Weimar (Germany).

1808: Today an imperial edict was issued that “divided the Jews living in French countries into consistories. Brussels (Belgium) was included in the consistory of Crefeld. Since 1794, the French had controlled Belgium.  By the time of the issuance of that edit, this meant Napoleon was the one issuing the orders. On the overthrow of Napoleon, Belgium was united with Holland; and the Jewish community of Brussels became the head of the fourteenth religious district of Holland. After the revolution of 1830 Brussels became the head of the Belgian consistories, and a chief rabbi was nominated.”

1808: The Infamous Decree (decret infame) of Napoleon canceled all debts owed to Jews by those serving in the military or by women if it was signed without the approval of their husbands or parents. It also abolished freedom of trade of the Jews by forcing them to acquire permits (which were almost never given) from the local prefects, and it prevented Jews from settling in the area of the Upper and Lower Rhine.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infamous_Decree

1808: Establishment of the Central Consistory of French Jews.

1811: Birthdate of Karl Gutzkow, the author “Uriel Acosta” which was first performed in Yiddish in 1882 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Odessa starring Abba Schoengold whom Jacob Adler described as "the god of the Yiddish public, the god, indeed, of all who saw him on stage... the handsomest man in the world. Tall. Blue eyes. Golden hair. An Apollo."

1811: The Austrian Emperor denied Simon Edler von Lämel permission to purchase a house in Vienna but “in the same year elevated him to the hereditary nobility” as a reward for his assistance in supplying the Army during the Napoleonic Wars.

1815: In Darmstadt, Reina (Rachel) Oppenheimer and Abraham Oppenheimer gave birth to Myer Oppenheimer.

1818: “A restrict measure, which Napoleon had enacted in 1808, -- to continue in force for ten years only, on his assumption that such a ten years’ term was necessary to enable the Jews to conform to the conclusions of his Sanhedrin to become good citizens of the country of their domicile and to be an alien nation expired” today “by its own limitation.”

1819: Abraham Solomon married Ellen Levy at the New Synagogue today.

1832: Birthdate of Moncure Daniel Conway the Unitarian clergyman and author whose works include The Wandering Jew and Solomon and Solomonic Literature

1836: In Charleston, South Carolina, Isaac and Babetta Dittenhoefer, gave birth to Abram Jess Dittenhoefer. His parents were immigrants from Germany who lived in Baltimore and Charleston before settling in New York where his father became a successful merchant.  A graduate of Columbia Law, young Dittenhoefer would become a practicing attorney and successful judge. Oddly enough, this Jew who was born in the Cradle of the Confederacy would be one of the electors from New York who would cast a vote for Abraham Lincoln in the Electoral College.


1840: Henry Benjamin married Marian Alexander at the Great Synagogue today.

1840: Birthdate of Henri Didon Louis Remy, the Dominican friar who spoke “approvingly of Renan’s closing work, History of the Jews which depicts “Christianity as the flower, masterpiece and glory of Judaism.”

1841: Harris Barnett married Leah Levy at the Great Synagogue today

1848: Eight years before the death of his father Jacob Steinschenider, Moritz Steinschneider “after many difficulties succeeded in becoming a Prussian citizen” in “the same year” that “he was charged with preparation of the catalogue of Hebrew books in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.”

 

1848: By the time the time that Carl Heinrich Spitzer, a 17 year old Moravian Jew studying at the Vienna Polytechnic who had been the first one shot down by imperial troops two days ago was laid to rest today, Emperor Ferdinand had “had acceded to the students’ demands for a national guard, a freed press and the promise of a constitution.”

1851: Rabbi Sabato Morais arrives in Philadelphia with the expectation of becoming the spiritual leader of Congregation Mikveh Israel.

1852: In Germany, Lazarus Siegel and Zerlin Koch gave birth to Henry Siegel, who married Marie Vaugh Wilde after his first wife Julia Rosenbaum passed away and came to the United States in 1867 and opened a series of progressively more successful department stores starting in Parkersburg, West Virginia and climaxing with purchases of emporiums in Chicago and New York.

1852: In Eubigheim, Lazarus Siegel and Zerlina Koch gave birth to Henry Seigel, the German immigrant who came to United States in 1852 where he established and/or acquired a series of increasingly successful department store including Siegel, Hartsfield & Co., the Siegel Cooper Company, Simpson Crawford Company in New York, and the Schlesinger and Mayer Company in Chicago.

1854: Mr. and Mrs. Moses Ley Maduro Peixotta gave birth to Daniel Levy Maduro Peixotto, a leader in the New York State Militia who died as a result of fever contracted during the Spanish-American War.

1857: Paul Reuter, a Jew by birth who would become one of the first of the modern Press Lords as the founder of Reuters legally became a British subject.  Reuter had already shed the Jewish part of his origins when he converted in November of 1845, a month after he had moved to London.

1859: In Frankfurt, Selig and Clementine Goldschmidt gave birth to their second child Flora.

1861: The Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed. The ghetto walls came tumbling down and the Jews were fully emancipated.  Jews played an active part in the creation of the modern Italian state and they enjoyed a level of social and legal acceptance that was second only to that enjoyed by the Jews of Great Britain.

1862(15th of Adar II, 5622):Shushan Purim

1862: A group of wealthy young men who formed what would be known as the Purim Association held the first Purim Ball in New York City.

1862(15th of Adar II, 5622): Composer Jacques François Fromental Élie Halévy passed away.  Born in 1799, Halévy composed the tragic opera La Juive and the comic opera L'Éclair. These works are his major claim to artistic fame.

1864(9th of Adar II, 5624): Abraham David Meijer, the brother of Jonas Daniel Meijer (the first Jewish lawyer in the Netherlands) passed away today.

1865(19th of Adar, 5625): Seventy-one year old Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer, the native of Copenhagen passed away today in Vienna.


 Born in Copenhagen in 1793, he was “the son of a chazzan who began the study of the Talmud at an early age, though not to the neglect of secular studies. On completing the course of the cathedral school at Copenhagen, he took up philosophy, Oriental languages, and theology at the university there, at the same time continuing his studies in Talmud and Jewish science. When the Jews of Denmark were emancipated in 1814, confirmation was made obligatory, and the office of catechist was instituted by the state, Mannheimer being the first incumbent (1816). The first confirmation took place May 1817. In 1821 Mannheimer went to Vienna, where there was then no congregation, the community being divided into two opposing parties. Mannheimer, who was welcomed by both factions, soon succeeded in organizing a congregation, drafting a program and ritual on the traditional basis and harmonizing the views of the two parties. He returned to Copenhagen in December of the same year. Failing in his attempt to secure a new synagogue for Reform services, he accepted a call to the pulpit left vacant by Zunz in Berlin. German services, however, were interdicted in that city; the temple formerly under the ministry of B. Beer was closed, and the royal cabinet order of 26 December 1823, obtained by the Orthodox party, frustrated the attempt to adapt the old ritual to new forms by delivering German sermons in the chief synagogue. Mannheimer therefore left Berlin and took temporary charge of the pulpit of Hamburg, preaching also at Leipzig during the fairs. In 1824 he married Liseke Damier, and in November of the same year he was called to the new synagogue of Vienna. As he could not receive the title of preacher or rabbi, he was inducted, in June, 1825, as "Direktor der Wiener K. K. Genehmigten Oeffentlichen Israelitischen Religionsschule"; he dedicated the new temple in April, 1826, and officiated there until 1829. Mannheimer's success was due in great measure to his oratorical gifts. His sermons were, for their time, models (Geiger, Einleitung in das Studium der Jüdischen Theologie, in Nachgelassene Schriften, ii. 31). His German translation of the prayerbook and of the fast-day prayers, and his arrangement of the fast-day liturgy, are of permanent importance for the ritual, the conservative spirit in which this work was undertaken leading to its adoption by many communities.In 1848 Mannheimer was returned by Brody to the Austrian Reichstag, where he delivered two memorable speeches, one on the Jewish tax (5 October 1848) and the other on the abolition of capital punishment (29 January 1849). On his seventieth birthday the city of Vienna conferred honorary citizenship upon him. He devoted the gifts bestowed by the community upon him on that occasion to a foundation for the aid of rabbis, preachers, and teachers, which still bears his name. Mannheimer published the following works: Prædikener Holdte ved det Mosaiske Troes-Samfund's Andagts-Övelser i Modersmaalet i Sommerhalvaaret 1819 (Copenhagen, 1819); Gottesdienstliche Vorträge Gehalten im Israelitischen Bethause zu Wien im Monate Tischri 5594 (Vienna, 1834); Gottesdienstliche Vorträge für die Wochenabschnitte des Jahres, vol. i, Genesis and Exodus (ib. 1835; partly translated into Hebrew by E Kuttner, ib. 1865); a translation of the prayer-book and of the fast-day prayers according to the ritual of the Vienna Temple (1840; frequently reprinted). His polemics and responsa include: Gutachten für das Gebetbuch des Hamburger Tempels (1841); Gutachten Gegen die Reformpartei in Frankfurt-am-Main in Angelegenheit der Beschneidungsfrage (1843); Einige Worte über Juden und Judenthum (supplement to the Oesterreichische Medicinische Wochenschrift, 1842, No. 34), directed against Professor Rosa's statements in reference to the Jewish Question (1848). Two numbers of his Gottesdienstliche Vorträge appeared posthumously, edited by

1869: In Baghdad, Heskel Shalma Ezra Shlomo-David, Hakham and Messouda/Massoda/Massouda Shlomo-David gave birth to Sir Sassoon Eskel, who following WW I became Iraq’s finiance minister and who was the father of Rahel Cohen and Meir Eskel

1869: Louis and Bluma Joseph were married today at Cavendish Square.

1870(14th of Adar II, 5630): Purim

1870(14th of Adar): Rabbi Dov Ber ben Isaac Meisels of Cracow, author of Hiddushei Mahardam passed away


1870: Since the Purim balls in New York appear to have lost their popularity, tonight’s Purim celebrations will not consist of any “grand demonstration” but will be limited to some unpretentious entertainments.

1873(18th of Adar, 5633): Seventy-seven year old Joseph Salvador a member of a distinguished French Sephardi family whose mother was Roman Catholic, the author of Paris, Rome, Jerusalem ou la Question religieuse au XIX siècle  who was angered by the anti-Jewish riots in German and was considered a ‘proto-Zionist” passed away today,

1873: Three days after she had passed away66 year old Catherine “Kate” Collins (nee Isaacs) the wife of Solomon Collins and the mother of Adelaide and William Collins was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1874:  In Budapest, Dr. Aaron Wise, the future rabbi of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes in Brooklyn, New York and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, the grandson of Rabbi Joseph Hirsch Weiss and Móric Fischer de Farkasházy, the founder of the Herend Porcelain Company.

Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise declined to accept the pulpit of New York's largest Reform Congregation if it meant he could not speak out in favor of Zionism and he became the President of the Zionist Organization of America.  Wise was one of several Jews who attended the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I.  In 1922, Wise founded the Jewish Institute of Religion "in an attempt at sectarian non-partisanship, so that its graduates might serve any one of the [Jewish] religious groupings" in the United States.



1876: Birthdate of New York City native Samuel Levy, the lawyer, the New York Board of Education and Manhattan Borough President who married Sadie Vesell with whom he had one son Lawrence, the husband of Betha Rothafel, “the daughter of theatrical impresario and entrepreneur Samuel Roxy Rothafel.

1879: In Paris, Noémie and Adolphe Bloch gave birth to Jules André Albert Bloch

1877: According to a report published today in The Times of London the “Jews’ Deaf and Dumb Home” “was founded in 1863 by Baroness Mayer de Rothschild as a school where resident Jewish children could learn to speak.”

1878: “Ethical Culture” which was published today describes the growth of The Society for Ethical Culture which was founded only two years before by Felix Adler.  The author gives due consideration to Adler’s Jewish origins and the effect that has had in creating the increasingly popular movement.

1878: The Jewish owner of the coffee and cake saloon at number 7 Fulton Street failed in his effort to get Justice Murray to find that his employee was not guilty of violating the city’s ordinance against throwing oyster shells, after shucking them, into the street. 

1878: The annual Purim reception at the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews began this morning at 11 o’clock.  Due to the inclement weather, the turnout was smaller than normal.  The reception ended at 6 in the evening.

1878: Cohen Davis, an elderly glazier, was tried for perjury today in the General Sessions Court.  The prosecutor charged that he had lied under oath during the trial of Abraham Freeman and Charles Freeman who have been convicted of arson in the first degree. 

1880 In New York City, “Isaac Jacobs and Rachel Strauss gave birth to boxing Promoter Michael “Uncle Mike” Jacobs whose career spanned an era the ran from Jack Dempsey’s reign to the retirement of Joe Louis, two of the greatest heavyweight champions of the world during boxing’s so-called golden age.

1880: It was reported today that the annual ball sponsored by the Purim Association had raised $18,585.80 for the New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital.

1880: It was reported today that George Kessler is among those selling tickets the Concord Society’s first grand annual charity ball which is a benefit for the Young Ladies’ Charitable which is an adjunct of the United Hebrew Charities.

1882: In Chicago, “Abraham and Anna (Hinde) Shemerinsky” gave birth to Gertrude Shemerinsky who married Jacob Kaplan and as Gertrude Kaplan gave birth to five children.

1882: “Justice Steckler Expelled” published today described the decision to expel Alfred Steckler and some of his associates from the Tenth Assembly District Republican Association.  Steckler and his associates were not expelled because they were Jewish but because they had failed to support the Republican candidate.

1882: Birthdate of Polish native Max Cline, who in 1885 came to the United States where graduated from MIT and became “the chief chemist of the International Paper Company’s research division.

1884: Birthdate of Dr. Nahum Nir, the native of Warsaw who made Aliyah in 1925 and was one of the signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

1884(20th of Adar, 5644): Benjamin Gratz passed away in Lexington, KY.  Part of the famous Gratz family, he was born in Philadelphia in 1792.  After serving in the Army during the War of 1812 he moved to Kentucky where he practiced law and served as trustee of Transylvania University.

1885: Three days after she had passed away, 24 year old Constance Baumann, the daughter of “David and Sarah Baumann” was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1884: After moving to Kansas City, MO and working “at the law firm of Lathrop, Smith and Marrow in 1884, today William J. Berkowitz “and his brother founded Berkowitz and Company Printers the forerunner if what is now called the Tension Corporation.


1886(10th of Adar II, 5646): Ninety-one year old Leopold Zunz also known—"Yom Tov Lipmann Tzuntz" passed away. Born in 1794, “he was a German Reform rabbi and writer, the founder of what has been termed the "Science of Judaism" (Wissenschaft des Judentums), the critical investigation of Jewish literature, hymnology and ritual.”

1888: In Bloomfield, NJ, Mr. and Mrs. Eli Harris gave birth to WW I veteran and President of the Young Men’s Building and Loan Association Harvey E. Harris, the Postmaster of Bloomfield who was the brother of Jerome, Irving and Hazel Harris.


1888: In Yemen, Bohemian born linguist Eduard Glaser began his third journey from Sanaa to Ma’rib

1889(14th of Adar II, 5649): Purim

1891: Birthdate of New York native and CCNY graduate Max Gewirtz, the hold of a Masters from Teachers College at Columbia and Doctorate from NYU who retired as an assistant superintended “of a district in Queens in 1961 and became “head of a religious school at Temple Israel in Lawrence, L.I.

1892(18th of Adar, 5652): Fifty-seven year old Moravian native Max Srakosch, “an impresario and agent” who was the brother of Maurice Strakosch passed away today in New York.

1892: It was reported today that Rabbi Stephen S. Wise will be addressing the congregants at Temple Israel in Harlem.

1892: In Seattle, WA, founding of the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society which met on the first Wednesday of each month and whose members included Ida Davis who served as the society’s secretary.

1893: “Russia’s Securities May Suffer” published today described an appeal made by the London Russo-Jewish Committee that has been “sent to every Jewish banker, bank director, bank manager, stock broker, and “agent de change” in Europe calling on them” to boycott Russian loans and Russian financial transactions in general. “The appeal is in retaliation” for the continued severe treatment of the Russian Jews by the Czar

1894: Moritz Kepes, a Jewish saloon owner, was beaten up today by John Fuchs and his son who owned a nearby saloon.

1894: A fire broke out today in a tenement house on Jefferson Street this morning that is owned by Abraham Doworsky and is occupied by Russian Jews.  Some of the tenants told Doworsky that they would be starting a newspaper in the building’s basement, but the fire exposed the fact that they were operating an illegal still.

1894: “The Germans and their Fatherland” published today provides a detailed review Germany and the Germans by William Harbutt in which the author devotes one chapter to the anti-Semitic party and another chapter the criminal activities in which Jews engage.  The author does raise and does not answer the question “What do the anti-Semites propose to do with the Jews and what would do without them

1894: The United Hebrew Charities reported today that between October 1, 1893 to March 1, 1894 that they had over 18,000 applicants for assistance.  During those five months, the charity had spent over $103,000 for clothing, medicine burials, coal and operating the industrial schools.  For the same period a year ago, they had spent a little more than $46,000 which is indicative of the losses caused by the depression that began in 1893.

1895: Three days after she had passed away, 58 year old Esther Nyman, the wife of Abraham Nyman was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1895: Contrary to what is listed in Wikipedia, today, in Brooklyn Solomon and Jennie Horwitz gave birth to Samuel Horwitz who gained fame as Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges.


1897(13thof Adar II, 5657): Ta’anit Esther; erev Purim

1897: Birthdate of Charles Levine, the son of Massachusetts scrap metal dealer, who was a pioneer in the field of aviation.  A contemporary of Lindbergh, he was on the second plane that flew from America across the Atlantic.  Unlike Lindbergh who was heading for Paris, Levine was trying to make Berlin.  Although he had to land one hundred miles short of his distance, he had actually out-distanced the Lone Eagle.

1897: Samuel Simon Leibowitz arrived in America with his parents from Romania.  Born in 1893, he would become a famous defense attorney and New York Judge.  He is best known as attorney who took the lead in defending the Scottsboro Boys.

1898:”The Baron De Hirsch Fund” published today described the efforts to build “model tenements” and erect “suburban homes” to relieve the overcrowding on the Lower East Side.  Some of the money had already been used to purchase 12 lots across the Harlem River where “model tenements” will be constructed. These efforts are not to be confused with other efforts financed by the late Baron Hirsch and his widow to develop “agricultural colonies” including the one at Woodbine, NJ.

1899: “Jewish Philanthropy” published today described Simon Wolf’s view of Jewish generosity.  According to him, “We take care of our people and we help others.”  “In the largest cities in the United States” Jews have collected $64,000,000 for philanthropic purposes, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of such mean as Oscar Nathan, Isidor Straus and Adolphus S. Solomon.

1899: On Chicago’s South Side, Rabbi Isaac M. Wise dedicated the sanctuary of The Reform Congregation of Isaiah Temple which had been designed by Dankmar Adler.

1900: Birthdate of American film composer Alfred Newman, a major Jewish-American composer of music for films. He received 45 Academy Award nominations (a record in the music categories, now shared with John Williams), winning 9 times; in 1940 he was nominated for 4 different films. He also composed the familiar fanfare which accompanies the studio logo for 20th Century Fox, where he headed the music department. He was active until the end of his life, scoring Airport shortly before his death. Between 1930 and 1970, he wrote music for over 200 films of every imaginable type, including a score for the newsreel made from the World War II footage of the Battle of Midway

1901: In Philadelphia, PA, a federation of Jewish charities including the Jewish Hospital Association, Jewish Foster Home, Society of United Hebrew Charities, Hebrew Education Society, Orphans' Guardians, Jewish Maternity Association, Jewish Immigration Society, Young Women's Union, and Hebrew Sunday-School Society was formed today with Jacob Gimbel as President

1902: Two days after she had passed away, 76 year old Louisa Levy, the husband of Charles Levy with whom she had had eight children was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1902: Herzl is authorized to obtain three letters of credit, each for a million francs, from banks in Paris, Berlin and London. The funds are to be deposited in Turkish banks.  Several members of the Actions Committee including Avraham Menachem Mendel Ussishkin are opposed to the plan. Ussishkin and Herzl were both fervent Zionists but they had different views as to the goal of establishing a Jewish home in Eretz Israel could be accomplished. Born in 1863 in Russia, Ussishkin would become an early Zionist leader and first President of the Jewish Nation Fund or JNF.In his youth,he became an enthusiastic reader of the works of contemporary Hebrew writers in his teens, and from then on the revival of the Hebrew language was one of the main goals of his life work. Like many other early Hibbat Zion members, he was shocked by the Russian pogroms of 1881, which emphasized to him the necessity for Jewish emigration. Ussishkin then began working actively for several Zionist groups. After graduating as a technical engineer from the Technological Institute in Moscow, he became active in Hebrew educational work as well as in Zionist propaganda and fund-raising in Russia. Ussishkin was a "practical" Zionist who viewed agricultural settlement in Eretz Israel as the first and most important step toward attaining a Jewish state. He was thus active in recruiting youth for pioneer work and for agricultural settlement of the land. He was a delegate to the First Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1893, and was appointed Hebrew secretary of the Congress. At the Seventh Zionist Congress (1905), he was among the leaders of those who forced the abandonment of the Uganda Scheme, and he then proposed a program of Zionism which was later adopted by the Zionist movement. Under his influence the Zionist movement actively supported the establishment of agricultural settlements, educational and cultural institutions, and a Hebrew university. In 1919 Ussishkin himself settled in Eretz Israel, and in 1923 he was chosen to head the Jewish National Fund, a position he held for nearly twenty years.

1904: Birthdate of Alfred Henry “Truck” Miller the native of Boston who played who played for Harvard before spending one year as a profession with the Boston Bulldogs.

1904: Birthdate of Chaim Gross an Austrian born American sculptor. Gross began exhibiting both his sculpture and graphic art in 1935, and was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. Gross was a practitioner of the direct carving method, with the majority of his work being carved from wood. Gross was a professor of printmaking and sculpture at both the Educational Alliance and the New School for Social Research in New York City, as well as a member of Artists Equity, the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He served as President of the Sculptors Guild of America.  He passed away in 1991 at the age of 84. (As reported by John T. McQuiston)

1905: In Chelsea, MA, Joseph A Strauss and Ida (Chayah) Kasriels of Russia gave birth to Harry Strauss who married Cecile G Pofcher in 1931.

1906: Adolf Kraus of Chicago, the President of the Executive Committee of B’nai B’rith received a cablegram from the Russian Premier, Count Witte in response to his letter inquiring what measures had been put in place to protect the lives and property of Jews during a planned Easter massacre in which Witte said his government does not approve of violence and that all measures will be taken to protect “peaceable inhabitants without regard to nationality.”

1906: It was reported today that “two high officials of the Ministry of the Interior, one of whom has been arrested” were “the authors of the pamphlet inciting the people to murder the Jews”

1907(2nd of Nisan, 5667): Gotlieb Schmelkes the husband of Henriette Schmelkes and the father of Markus and Rachel Schmelkes passed away today

1908(14thof Adar II, 5668): Purim

1909: Welterweight Joe Hirst fought “his first big fight today in Philadelphia which was a six round bout that was a draw.

1909: Sixty-four year old Marim Myers was buried today at the Belfast Jewish Cemetery in Northern Ireland.

1910: Alma Gluck is scheduled to appear in a matinee performance of the opera “Werther” at The New Theatre in New York.

1910: Birthdate of David Abraham "Sonny" Werblin the Flatbush native who gained national fame for his purchase of the New York Jets and the signing of Joe Namath – an act which helped to force the NFL to merge with the AFL.


1911: In Vienna “artisan Jakob Goldsand and his wife Helene” gave birth to American classical pianist Robert Goldsand.



1911: Birthdate of Moshe Baram the native of Zdolbuniv who made Aliyah in 1931 and after Independence served as an MK and cabinet minister.

1913(8thof Adar II, 5673): Forty-four year old glass manufacturer Jacob H. Werbelowsky passed away today in in Brooklyn, NY.

1915: Birthdate of Wolfgang Doblin the son of German author Bruno Alfred Döblin

1915: The Russian official press bureau tonight issued a statement tonight denying claims by the Austrians that Russian soldiers have “committed outrages on the Jewish populations in Galicia, Bukowina and Russian Poland.”

1915: “The American Jewish Relief Committee announced” today “that letters to person in Russia should be written in either Russian, English or French” since owing to the strict censorship in force in Russia…letters written in Yiddish or any other language than those named had little or no chance of being delivered.”

1915: As of today, the American Jewish Relief Committee has collected $573,267.00.

1915: Today, Professor A.T. Fowler of the Biblical Department of” Brown “University and a member of the Advisory Board of the” Menorah “Society spoke on ‘The Bible as a Literary Document.’”

1915: As of today it was reported that there are an estimated 50,000 Falsahas (Black Jews) living in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and that Dr. Jacques Faitlovitch, a French Jew is working on developing an educational program for them.


1915: Tonight, in Washington, DC, “the Austro-Hungarian Embassy…made public a dispatch from the Foreign Office in Vienna” that the “Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army under the pretext that populating sympathizing with Austrians and Germans…has ordered that Jews are forbidden to remain in districts occupied by the army and are forbidden to enter the country east of Jaroslau.” (Editor’s Note – Jaroslau is a town in southeast Poland on the border with Russia where Jews had lived since the 15th century and whose pre-WW I population was 25% Jewish.  On the Eastern Front all warring parties accused the Jews of being spies or worse and used this as an excuse for indiscriminate killing and expulsion.)

1916(12thof Adar II, 5676): Julia Frankau, the Dublin born Jewish daughter of photographer Hyman Davis and wife of Arthur Frankau who used the penname Frank Danby during her writing career which began with the publication of a novel that was a “social satire” of Anglo-Jewry passed away today.


1916: Birthdate of Dr. Albert M. Kligman, a dermatologist who invented the widely used acne medication Retin-A but whose experiments involving prisoners raised ethical questions that dogged his career.

1916: During the expedition to capture Pancho Villa, a military action that involved so many Jewish soldiers that Jewish chaplains were dispatched to the theatre of operation and High Holiday services were held at several locations, General Pershing established his main base at Colonia Dublan.

1917: One hundred and ninety Jews from Palestine migrate to Cyprus on an Ottoman mail steamer.

1917: Birthdate of Karel Švenk, the native of Prague and multi-talented entertainer – “cabaret artist, comedian, songwriter and writer” – who was shipped to Terezin and then to Auschwitz before weeks before the war ended on a transport to Mauthausen.

1917: Dorothy Cohen Schwartzman, Ida Bienstock Landau, Minna Goldsmith Mahler, Eva Effron Robin, and Sylvia Steierman founded Delta Phi Epsilon (ΔΦΕ or DPhiE) is an international sorority at New York University Law School.

1918: It was reported today that “as a result of their on Washington’s Birthday the 62,000 members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union have contributed $140,000 to the American Jewish Relief Committee.

1918: The British Army including the Jewish battalion captured Amman.

1918: It was reported today that the American Jewish Relief Committee chaired by Louis Marshall continues to receive contributions from committees across the country including $1,000 from Nashville, TN and $174 from Richmond, Indiana.

1919: In Paris “President Wilson conferred today with Bernard Baruch and others who are serving as economic experts with the American mission and approved their proposals of no trade discrimination against enemy countries after the war.”

1919: Today, “leaders of the Isaac M. Wise Centenary Fund Campaign expressed themselves as highly pleased with the result of the first day’s work in the campaign…which will endeavor to raise $100,000 among the Jews of New York for the furtherance of the work of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.”

1920: St. Louis Rabbi, Goodman “George” Lipkind wrote a one act comedy, “Wanted a Housekeeper.”

1921: Birthdate of Meir Slutzki who as Meir Amit gained fame as an Israeli politician, general, and Director of the Mossad.

1921: The Constituent Assembly ratified the constitution of the Polish Republic which granted equal rights to the Jews.

1921: Thirty year old Barney Sedran led the Trenton Bengals to victory over the Wilkes-Barre Barons.

1921: At the Cairo Conference attended by Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence (better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”) it was agreed that Transjordan (an Arab State) should be separated from Palestine “thus enabling Britain to fulfill its wartime pledges to both the Arabs and the Jews.”  The decision reinforced the right for Jews to “be able to settle the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, from the Galilee to the Negev.” (“This comprised the area of both Israel and the West Bank today.”)

 1925: Three days after he had passed away, funeral services were scheduled to be held this morning at the Ethical Culture Meeting House in Manhattan for sixty-three year old Harvard and Columbia Law School trained corporate attorney Alfred Jaretzki, the New York born son of Gustave and Henrietta Jaretzki and the father of Maud, Alice, Alfred Jaretzki, Jr. who was a member of Sullivan and Cromwell, “trustee of the Mount Sinai Hospital, a director of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and a director of the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society”  followed by burial at Mt. Pleasant, NY.


1926: Rodgers and Hart's musical "Girl Friend" premiered in New York.  This is but one example of a Jewish team providing a hit musical comedy for Broadway.

1926: Seventy two year old Alexsei Brusilov, the Chief of Staff who approved the appointment of Jewish Chaplains to serve in the Russian Army in 1917 passed away today.

1926: As of today members the Women’s Division of the Harmonie Club which is helping to raise six million dollars for the United Jewish Campaign include Mrs. Felix M. Warburg, Mrs. Rebekah Kohut, Mrs. Ira Hill Bamberger and Mrs. Charles J. Liebman.

1927(13thof Adar II, 5687): Fast of Esther

1927: A man identified as “Prince Michel Obolensky, scion of a noble but impoverished Russian family celebrated by St. Patrick’s Day by” delivering “an oration” attacking the Jews on the corner of 14th Street and Avenue which touched off neighborhood brawl.

1928: In Manhattan “Benjamin Kaufman, the chairman of Kaufman Management, and the former Stella Cohen, a fashion designer known as Brownie” gave birth to George Stewart Kaufman, “the real estate magnate”  who helped to make the Queens a place for movie and television production. (As reported by Sam Roberts)


1929: The Flonzaley Quartet which had played the String Quartet No. 1 by Erin Schulhoff performed for the last time in a public concert at The Town Hall in New York City.

1929: On St. Patrick’s Day, flyweight Moe Mizler fought his 29th bought in London.

1930: The four day dedication exercises “of the new Temple Rodeph” in Manhattan were scheduled to come to an end today.

1930: It was reported today that “King Alexander has accepted patronage over the Jewish National Fund bazaar which the Jews of Zagreb are organizing” and that “he is also making a personal donation to the King Peter Forest which the Jewish National Fund is to plant in Palestine.”

1933: Victor Klemperer writes in his diary, “on Friday, unfortunately, Thiemes was here. It was frightful . . . such enthusiastic conviction and support. The phraseology of unity. Progress piously repeated. Grete (his wife) said, "Everything else failed, now we have to blow this horn." He corrected her vehemently. "We didn't have to." In really free elections he has voted for the right cause. This I can't forgive him. The poor dog may be frightened for his job. He must howl with the wolves. But why in front of me? . . . Naked violence, breach of law, terrible hypocrisy, unmitigated barbarism poses as law.

1933: The Chevrolet Program starring Jack Benny is broadcast for the first time on NBC Radio

1935(12thof Adar II 5695): Mary Goldsmith Prag, the mother of “Florence Prag Khan, the first Jewish congresswoman” passed away today.


1935: The Palestine Maccabee Association announced that it would not participate in the 1936 Olympics to be held in Germany because of that country’s treatment of its Jewish citizens.

1936: “Louis Lipsky, vice president of the American Jewish Congress and honorary president of the Zionist Organization of America returned” today “on the Cunard White Star line Berengaria from Paris and London where he attended several conferences with Jewish leaders and foreign statesmen on the situation of the Jews in many countries including Germany and Poland.”

1936:”Resolutions condemning war as a means of settling international disputes and calling upon the United States Government to ‘reiterate its renouncement of war’ made in the Kellogg-Briand pact were adopted at the closing session today of the biennial convention of the United Synagogue of America.”

1936: “Wolf’s Clothing,” a British comeday co-starring Lilli Palmer, the daughter “Dr. Alfred Peiser, a German Jewish surgeon” and his wife Rose, “an Austrian Jewish stage actress” was released today the United Kingdom.

1936: In response to the receipt of a copy of Victor Gallancz’s The Yellow Spot: The Extermination of the Jews in Germany from Harold Laski, Churchill wrote Laksi urging the Laborite to find a way to gain support from the Labor Party for the re-armament program designed to thwart the threat of the Nazis.

1936: Following a series of Pogrom-like attack on Jews in central Poland, a mass demonstration of Polish Jews, left-wingers, and liberals was held to protest anti-Semitism in Poland.

1937: Three days after his 18th birthday, Brooklynite Bernard Abramofsky arrived in Spain today and served with Abraham Lincoln Brigade until “he was executed behind the lines in May, 1938.

1937: “One Jewish policeman was seriously injured and sixteen other Jews were slightly hurt tonight when a bomb was thrown in to a bus on Jaffa Road, Jerusalem’s main thoroughfare.”

1937: The Palestine Post reported that in addition to five young Jews who were murdered by Arabs during the past few days, there were two more victims: Samuel Gottfried, 26, of Rosh Pina and an Arab villager who defended his flock from robbers.

1937: “At about 10:30 P.M.,” Meyer Levin discovered two large swastikas painted in black enamel on the door of Ahavath Chesed in Brooklyn and four smaller ones in chalk on the side doors of the synagogue and then notified Abraham Beier, the president of the synagogue “who then asked the police to place a guard on the building.”

1937: The Palestine Post reported that The Jewish Agency Executive in London submitted a memorandum to the British government which claimed that the Arab disturbances which began on April 19, 1936, did not end on October 12, 1936, as claimed by the government and the Arab Higher Committee, but continued uninterruptedly, claiming many Jewish lives.

1938(14thof Adar II, 5698); Purim

1938: “In a message read during the Purim Festival program sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee” the national radio audience heard the words of President Roosevelt who said “enteral vigilance is the price of liberty” and “the defeat of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews…is one of the milestones in mankind’s long and bloody struggle to achieve freedom.”

1938: Among the “Books Published Today” were An Open Letter to Jews and Christians: A discussion of Jesus in relation to Jews today by John Cournos and the Selected Works of Israel Zangwill including “Children of the Ghetto,” “Ghetto Comedies” and “Ghetto Tragedies.

1939: At a meeting in Tel Aviv today, “the National Council of Palestine Jews…decided to a call a 24 hour strike” to start on Monday, March 20th “  “as the first step in its program of ‘drastic political action’ against Great Britain’s plan” for Palestine.  “The Council condemned the plan as ‘the liquidation of the Jewish national home and strangulation of the Jewish settlement.’”

1939: Erich Otto Sonnheim arrived in the United States from Germany.


1940: Fritz Todt, who escaped being tried at Nuremberg because he died during WW II was named Riech Minister for Armaments and Ammunition today.

1941: According to a death certificate issued by the Soviet government and made public in 1954 this is date of the death of Isaac Babel. It would not be until the 1990’s that this would be exposed as a lie. Babel had actually been executed by the Soviets on January 27, 1940.

1941: Hans Frank, General Governor of Occupied Poland, had a meeting with Adolf Hitler about the fate of Jews in Europe. Afterwards, Frank informs the General Government's undersecretaries of state, police and SS chiefs, district governors, and department directors that the Jews are to be eliminated.

1942: The 60,000 Jews in Tunisia are restricted to publishing only one newspaper.

1942: It was reported today that “despite the fact that Jews constitute about three percent of the population in the United States, they total eight percent of the 75 recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross so far in this war, among American forces.” (JTA)
1942: In eastern Poland, the Belzec Concentration Camp opened as 1,500 Jews arrive from the Lviv Ghetto in the western Ukraine.  At that time 30,000 Lublin Polish Jews were transported to this death camp.


1942: The deportations which began in Lublin would not until 30,000 had been shipped to Belzec by April where most of them were murdered.


1942: Birthdate of South African born educator Meyer Feldberg the Dean of the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University and the Dean of the Columbia School of Business

1942(28th of Adar, 5702): In Pochep, Russia, 1,816 Jewish villagers were massacred in an anti-tank ditch.

1943(10th of Adar II, 5703): More than 1200 Jews from Lvov, Ukraine, were killed at Piaski, Poland, as retribution for the March 16 murder of an SS trooper by a Jewish man. Eleven Jewish policemen were hanged in the ghetto, 1000 Jewish slave laborers were executed, and an additional 200 Jews were murdered.

1943:Today,”the National Gallery of Art marked its second anniversary with the announcement of an extraordinary gift from print collector and former Sears, Roebuck and Company chairman Lessing J. Rosenwald: Rosenwald's print and drawing collection, which ultimately numbered more than 22,000 works at the time of his death.

1943: Dimitur Peshev and 40 other members of the Sobranje, the Bulgarian parliament, sign a petition demanding that deportations of Jews from Bulgaria to Occupied Poland end. Archbishop Kiril of Plovdiv sends a telegram to Tsar Boris III informing him of his intention to lie down on the tracks in front of any trains transporting Bulgarian Jews.

1944: Al Bummy Davis (Abraham Davidoff) lost a bout to the former lightweight chamption today.

1945(3rdof Nisan, 5705): After enduring six months of imprisonment at Buchenwald sixty-one year old Henri Paul Gaston Maspero, the French sinologist died today just weeks before the camp was liberated by Patton’s Third Army.


1945: Birthdate of mathematician Valery Senderov, the native of Moscow who risked his life and career “in the struggle against state sponsored anti-Semitism.”

1946(14thof Adar II, 5706): Purim

1946: Some of the members of “Kibbutz Buchenwald” set sail for Palestine from France today on the Maapilim boat the “Tel-Chai”.


1947: The Palestine police issued a “broadsheet” today “offering an unspecified reward for information leading to the arrest of 18 wanted men” described as “terrorist chiefs.”  The list which includes photos and physical descriptions is in alphabetical order beginning with Menachem Begin of the Irgun.  The penultimate spot on the list goes to Nathan Friedman Yellin, Abrahm Stern’s successor as head of the Stern Gang.  The last name on the list is Itshak Yexernitsky who has been captured by the British but has escaped their custody.

1947: Leaders of the Arab League are scheduled to meet in Cairo today where they will map out their propaganda program to oppose the creation of a Jewish state  and how best to present their case at the upcoming meeting of the United Nations.

1947: “Just before noon today an Army officer blew his whistle” in Jerusalem marking the end of martial law in several areas including Mea Shearim.

 

1948: In Jerusalem, the British abandoned their compound on the grounds of Schneller Orphanage which the Etzioni Brigade would “use at its base of operations during the Israeli War of Independence.

1948: While speaking at a news conference of the American Fund for Palestinian Institutions, Moshe Pomorok of the Palestine Maritime League said that “90 per cnet of Palestine’s export and import trade went to foreign shipping companies” which led him to call for the “establishment of Palestine’s sea power.”

1948: Dr. Alexander Rosenfeld of the Hebrew World Union described “an underground movement to teach Hebrew in Syria and Iraq where the language has been banned.”

1948: The Naval Service, which became the Israeli Sea Corps, was formed today and the members for the Plugat HaYam (the naval arm of the Palmach) were ordered to join.

1950: The Jewish Agency for Palestine announced tonight that it was prepared to receive 20,000 refugees from Iraq.  This issue has taken on a great deal of urgency for Iraq’s 150,000 Jews, since the Baghdad government has given them a year to leave the country for Israel.  As part of the price of departure, the Jews must basically leave behind most of their possessions and wealth for use by the Iraqi’s. 

1950(28th of Adar, 5710): Eighty-four year old Ellis Gimbel, Sr. the last surviving of the Gimbel brothers who has served as Chairman of the Board of Gimbel Brothers, Inc since 1936 passed away today

1953(1stof Nisan, 5713): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1953: The “Life Saver’s” luncheon of the Combined Jewish Appeal chaired by Mrs. Saul Herman is scheduled to be held at the Saxony Hotel with Mme. Helene Benator, a “heroine of the French underground, a lawyer and an authority on the Jews of the Moslem world” delivering the featured talk.


1953: With the help of Anna Sokolow, “Camino Real” starring Eli Wallach opened on Broadway today.

1954(12thof Adar II, 5714): Sixty-six year old Dr. Hyman I. Goldstein, the Baltimore born son of Solomon and Rose Zuckerman Goldstein and University of Pennsylvania and Vienna trained physician who discovered “Goldstein’s Toe Sign,” served in the Medical Corps, USA, during WW II and was part of a family of doctors – Dr. Leopold Z. Goldstein, Dr. Henry Z. Goldstein and David E. Cooper, the husband of his sister who earned his DD.S from the University of Pennsylvania and who was pre-deceased by his wife Joan and children – Joan, Alice and Louis – passed away today in Philadelphia after which he was buried at the New Camden Cemetery in Camden, NJ.


1954: Following last night attack in the Negev, where an Israeli bus was ambushed by “a group of Palestinian Arabs who had infiltrated into Israel from Jordan in which the driver and ten passengers were killed “Israeli trackers assisted by police dogs and accompanied by UN observers followed the attackers' tracks to a point 6 miles west of the Jordanian border, where the tracks were lost”

1957(14thof Adar II, 5717): Purim

1957: “Great Philosophy in Small Packets” included a review of The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth Century Philosophers, Selected with introduction and commentary by Isaiah Berlin.

1962(11thof Adar II, 5722): Shabbat Zachor

1962(11thof Adar II, 5722): Ninety-four year old “Rabbi Clifton H. Levy, the oldest past president of the New York Board of Rabbis and a leader of the Reform rabbinate” passed away today. “Together with the late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Rabbi Levy was a founder in 1922 of the Association of Reform Rabbis of New York City and Vicinity. Born in New Orleans, LA, Rabbi Levy received his ordination from the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He was the author of a book, Judaism Applied to Life, and of pamphlets and articles on Biblical archaeology and art.” (As reported by JTA)

1967: “Mourning Becomes Electra” a three act opera composed by Marvin David Levy premiered at the Met in New York City.

1968: Israel defeated Ceylon today in the Olympic Games soccer qualifier thanks to the play of Mordechai Spiegler.

1969: Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel. A dedicated Zionist and Socialist, Mrs. Meir devoted her entire life to creating a national homeland for the Jewish people where we could flourish in peace and safety.  Her life reads more like a novel with all of its twists and turns ranging from the gritty determination of the 1920's when she was a pioneer in primitive Palestine, to the clandestine trips she made to meet the King of Jordan in an attempt to avert war in 1948, to her fund raising in the United States so the unborn state would have some weapons with which to face the invading Arab Armies, to...well I think you get the idea.  She certainly is worthy successor to the memory of Miriam and Deborah and Moses and David as well.

1972: “The Time of Your Life” a revival of which in 1969 was directed by John Hirsch was revived again today in Los Angeles co-starring Richard Dreyfus, Lewis J. Stadlin

1973(13thof Adar II, 5733): Parashat Vayikra; Shabbat Zachor; erev Purim

1973: “Lost Horizon” a musical version of the pre-war movie and novel of the same name produced by Ross Hunter, with a script by Larry Kramer and music by Burt Bacharach and Hal David was released in the United States today.

1974(23rd of Adar, 5734): Seventy-three year old architect Louis Kahn passed away.



1974: “The Ford Foundation allocated $250,000 to help resettle Soviet émigré scholars and writers in America.”

1974: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for Albert H. Godwin, the husband of Gertrude Godwin at the Riverside Chapel in the Bronx.

1977:The Jerusalem Postreported that Leah Rabin, wife of the prime minister, admitted that she had closed her dollar account in Washington and transferred the money totaling $2,000, as a donation to a charity for autistic children which she headed. Events surrounding this bank account would lead to Prime Minster Rabin’s political downfall, end the Labor Party’s domination of Israeli politics and bring Menachem Begin and Likud to power for the first time since the founding of the state in 1948.

1977: “The Cadaver in the Clutter” the second episode of “Lanigan’s Rabbi” starring Bruce Solomon as Rabbi David Small was broadcast tonight.

1978: Reuven Schmeltzer, who had been orphaned at the age of 13 and was “one of the 1684 Jews who escaped Nazi-controlled Hungary on the Kastner train and spent time in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp before being released in Switzerland” and his wife gave back to their 11th child Lipa Schmeltzer, the “singer, entertainer, and composer” who is popular among Hasdic and “modern Jewish communities.”

1978: Jack Klugman was roasted on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast on NBC

1983: In Jerusalem, the Third World Conference on Soviet Jewry came to an end.

1983: Actor Dustin Hoffman and Lisa Hoffman give birth to their daughter Rebecca Lillian Hoffman

1983: The Third World Conference on Soviet Jewry which had been attended by over 1,000 delegates from 30 countries came to an end today in Jerusalem.

1984: Billy Crystal hosted SNL for the first time tonight.

1984: “Entertaining God” published today provided a complete review The Life and Times of Cotton Mather by Pulitzer prize-winning historian Kenneth Silverman


1985: Abraham Sutzkever, who “wrote poems as underground fighter crawling through the sewers un the Vilna ghetto to elude the Nazis,” “while fighting the partisans in the forest of Lithuania outside Vilna” and even “while hiding inside a coffin” is scheduled to “read some of his poems at a YIVO gathering at the Society for the Society for the Advancement of Judaism” this afternoon in Manhattan.


1989: The Broadway production of “Chu Chem,” a musical inspired by “a trip to Kaifeng Fu (prefecture), China, the site of a major Jewish migration in the 10th century” with music by Mitch Leigh opened at the Ritz Theatre.

1989: “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” a fantasy comedy with music by Michael Kamen was released in the United States today.

1991: “The Substance of Fire” written by Jon Robin Baitz opened Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons with a cast that included Ron Rifkin and Sarah Jessica Parker

1992 (12th of Adar II, 5752): The Islamic Jihad used a truck bomb to attack the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires Argentina killing 29.

1994(5th of Nisan, 5754): Ninety-four year old German born English zoologist and geneticist Charlotte Auerbach, the daughter of Friedrich Auerbach and the granddaughter of Leopold Auerbach passed away today.


1995: Premiere of “Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh” a horror film with music composed by Philip Glass.

1995: “Bye Bye, Love” directed by Brandeis grad Sam Weisman, co-authored and co-produced by Gary David Goldberg and co-starring Paul Reiser and Rob Reiner was released in the United States today.

1997: Janet Rosenberg Jagan, the Chicago born Jewess, began serving as Prime Minster of Guyana.

1997: Eighty-one year old Joe J. Heydecker who as a German soldier created a secret photographic record of the Warsaw Ghetto, which, after being published in 1981 provided “evidence of Nazi atrocities and inhumane living conditions in the Ghetto passed away today.


1999: HBO released the final episode of “Tracey Takes On…” starring Tracey Ullman

1999(29th of Adar, 5759): Seventy-seven year old Ernest Gold the Austrian-born Jewish-American Academy Award winning composer of the theme from the movie Exodus, the creator of 100 film/television scores between 1945 and 1992, including the Hawaii Five-O theme and the composer of a 1968 Broadway musical "I'm Solomon" passed away today.



2000: Barbra Streisand continued her Timeless tour with a concert at Melbourne’s Colonial Stadium.

2002: At the Jewish Museum in New York an exhibition entitled ''The Emergence of Jewish Artists in 19th-Century Europe'' comes to a close.

2002: Twenty-five people were injured in a terrorist bombing of Egged Bus 22 in Jerusalem.

2003(13thof Adar II, 5763): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim

2003(13thof Adar II, 5763): Eight-seven year old historian Herbert Aptheker passed away. (As reported by Christopher Lehman-Haupt)


2005(6th of Adar II, 5765): Seventy-eight year old college and professional basketball player Norman Clifford "Norm" Mager who was involved in a point shaving scandal passed away today.


2005: “The Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces issued a military order prohibiting Israeli citizens not living in the Gaza Strip settlements from taking up residence there.”

2006: The Forwards reported that the Aleph Institute, an organization linked to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement was approved by the Department of Defense to endorse chaplains. 

2006: Premiere of “Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan” a documentary directed and produced by Manfred Kirchheimer.

2006(17thof Adar, 5766): Eighty-year old Henry Thalsheimer, a relative of Nicaragua native Maria T. Thalsheimer and Achille Thalsheimer passed away today after which he was buried at Hebrew Rest Cemetery in New Orleans.

2007: Shabbat Ha-Chodesh

2007: At the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, an exhibition styled “Adi Nes: Bible Stories” opens to the general public. The series contains fourteen works of staged photography created by Adi Nes between 2003 and 2006. The large-scale photographs are all anchored in the Bible stories: Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, David and Jonathan, Saul and Samuel, Job, Elijah, Ruth and Naomi. Chosen as “actors” and background for each shot were individuals and landscapes from here and now; the emphasis is placed on godforsaken places and on figures on the fringe of Israeli society: a woman beggar on a street corner, an old and barefoot homeless person. The photographs are charged with enriching references to the history of art and masterpieces, including Caravaggio’s “Abraham,” “Ivan the Terrible Murdering His Son” by Ilya Repin, or the famous and impressive portrait taken by Dorothea Lange – “Migrant Mother.”

2008: In “How Hamas Is Playing the Spoiler,” published todayU.S. News & World Reportdescribes how the latest Hamas rocket attacks on Ashkelon pose a new strategic threat to Israel and the limited options available to the Israelis in responding to this latest downward spiral in the Middle East.

2008: Today, David Gregory began hosting “a show on MSNBC weekday evenings.”

2008(10 Adar II, 5768): Ronald E. Arnall, French born American businessman who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands and was a “friend” of Chabad-Lubavitch passed away.

2008: Sports Illustrated describes the pending confrontation over allegations that Patriots coach Bill Bilichick illegally videotaped his opponents.  This could turn into a Jew versus Jew situation since the probe into the matter is being spearheaded by Arlen Specter, the Jewish Republican Senator from Pennsylvania and the Patriots are owned by Jewish businessman and philanthropist Robert Kraft.

2008: Israel and Germany upgraded their ties approving a host of joint projects and agreeing to hold annual government consultations, in one of the highlights of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's three-day visit.

2008: Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar announced that Ethiopian immigrants should be able to convert to Judaism in their native land and make Aliyah under the Law of Return.

2008:  Haaretz reported that Elie Wiesel has told the Prime Minister’s office that he will not take part in the torch-lighting ceremony marking the 60thanniversary of Israel’s Independence due to prior commitments. 

2008: Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute.

2009: “For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism” a 2009 documentary co-starring Stanley Kaufman and featuring appearances by Manny Farber, Harland Jacobson, Leonard Matlin, Pauline Kael and Gene Siskel.

2009: At The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Dr. Ellen Kellman of Brandeis University delivers a lecture entitled “Educating ‘Moyshe’ or Corrupting Him? Polemics around the Novel Saninin the American Yiddish Press ca. 1908” in which she discusses the role of serialized fiction in the American Yiddish press which was the subject of rancorous debate from its beginnings. Critics lambasted socialist-oriented papers for printing romance novels instead of serious fiction in translation. Yet some works, such as the Russian novel Sanin, proved to be even more controversial than those originally written in Yiddish.

2009: Services are held at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield for Detroit Pistons owner Bill Davidson, a noted philanthropist who was inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame last year and passed away on March 13, 2009 at the age of 86.Among the causes he funded were Hadassah University Medical Center, the Israel Antiquities Authority,the Jerusalem Archaeological Park,the Wexner Foundation and the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

2009: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said today that her surgery for pancreatic cancer was successful and that she is scheduled to undergo a precautionary round of chemotherapy starting later this month.

2010(2nd of Nisan, 5770):  Ninety-one year old Albert J. Rosenthal who had served as Dean of the Columbia Law School passed away.


2010(2nd of Nisan, 5770): One the day after his 90th birthday, award winning author Albert Sidney “Sid” Fleischman passed away today in Santa Monica. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



2010: In Jerusalem, Hama'abada is scheduled to present "Janana," by Yiftach Klein.

2010: Cookbook author Judy Zeidler is scheduled to offer tips on prepping for your Seder and mastering your grocery list, along with recipes for new and traditional Seder dishes in a program entitled “Passover: Cooking with Judy” sponsored by the American Jewish University.

2010:Some 3,000 officers were put on high alert on today after Hamas called for anti-Israel protests.

2010: “Sin,” a play by Mark Altman opened at the .Baruch Performing Arts Center.

2010:Veteran IPO subscribers enjoy a memorable evening as Itzhak Perlman performs with Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

2011:Tamar Hirschl is scheduled to show a suite of paintings and recent resin works “in the inaugural Artist Project in New York City, a fair for independent artists.”

2011: The Hadassah Mahj Tournament, sponsored by Hadassah of Greater Detroit, is scheduled to take place at Hadassah House in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

2011(11th of Adar II): Ninety-year old Betty Sarah Wouk, “the wife and literary agent of bestselling writer Herman Wouk” passed away.


2011(11th of Adar II): Ta’anit Esther

2011(11th of Adar II): Eighty-one year old Gabrial Laderman, a painter of figurative art, passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)


2011: President Shimon Peres said today that the Navy's seizure of the cargo ship Victoria earlier this week proves that Syria is providing weapons to Hamas in Gaza and to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

2011: Sacramento Kings and Israel National Basketball Team forward Omri Casspi may temporarily sign to play with Maccabi Tel Aviv in the event of an NBA work stoppage, he said in an interview with Army Radio today. The second-year NBA player, who formerly played with Maccabi Tel Aviv, said that there had already been some discussions about him possibly rejoining the team in the event of a lockout.

2011: Alaska Airlines apologizes today for the misunderstanding that occurred earlier this week on board one of their flights, in which flight attendants issued a security alert when three Mexican Jews began praying with Tefillin.

2011: “Suzie’s Grill keeps Houston Jews Kosher, Connected” published today described and the culinary and business skills of Susan Goldstein who operates “one of the only kosher-drive throughs in the country.”


2012: Twentieth Anniversary of the Iranian bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina.

2012(23rd of Adar, 5772): Yahrzeit of Yitzchak Meir Alter the first Rebbe of the Ger Chasidic Dynasty who was born in 1799 and passed away on March 10, 1866.

2012: “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts” is scheduled to be shown at the Schenectady JCC Jewish Film Festival at Niskayuna, NY

2012(23rd of Adar, 5772): Anniversary of the first assembling of the Mishkan on Adar 23 (1321 BCE)

2012: The Eilat Chamber Music Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2013: The Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to present “Deconstructing Woody Allen: Humor, Identity, Judaism” with Dr. Daniel Fainstein

2013: The Theatre at the 14thStreet Y is scheduled to present a puppet show “Lost & Found In Israel” written and performed by Zvi Sahar and Leat Klingman.

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Yellow Sneaker and "The Matzah Time Crunch"

2013:“Samson and Delilah,” sung in French (with English supertitles) will be presented today at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts in New Orleans featuring Cantor Joel Coleman “as the Old Hebrew.”

2013: The Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2013: Today, “Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras vowed to crack down on neo-Nazi groups in a landmark speech marking the 70th anniversary of the first deportations of Thessaloniki’s Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.” (As reported by JTA)

2013: Minutes released today by the Israel State Archive revealed details of tense and nearly failed meetings between then-prime minister Menachem Begin and former US president Jimmy Carter during the latter’s visit to the country in 1979, as the two leaders tried to hammer out the last details of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

2013: Likud MKs met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his office in Jerusalem -today receive their marching orders for the next Cabinet and other government roles.

2014: Film critic Shlomo Schwartberg is scheduled to present the final lecture in the series “Defining Greatness – Director Steven Speilberg at the Miles Nadal JCC.

2004: Professor Yair Reisner of the Weizmann Institute of Science is scheduled to be recognized for his work in bone marrow transplant therapy when he receives his Rapport Prize today. (As reported by David Shamah)

2014: Dr. Yaakov Nahmias of Hebrew University is scheduled to receive the Rapport Prize today for identifying a grapefruit molecule that can block viruses. (As reported by David Shamah)

2014: “Brave Miss World” is scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Once Upon a Time at 55th and Hoover,” a documentary about the 300 Sephardic families from Rhodes who emigrated to Los Angeles (USA) and established a Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) language neighborhood in the area around 55th St and Hoover, in South Central Los Angeles” is scheduled to be shown at the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2014: Grammy-award winning performer Ron Levine is scheduled to share stories from his fantastic career, including touring with nationally renowned recording artists and his award-winning work on the motion picture Urban Cowboy, at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa this evening.


2014: During his visit to the White House today “US President Barack Obama urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to make tough decisions and take risks for peace with Israel, saying he hoped to see progress in US-brokered negotiations in coming weeks.”

2014: Today New York State Senator Lee “Zeldin voted against the New York Dream Act.

2014: Today, Jordan condmenned what is call Israeli ‘escalation’ in the flashpoint Temple Mount in Jerusalem after Housing Minster Uri Ariel “deputy leader of the hardline national-rligious Bayit Yehudi party visited the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem’s Old City yesterday.

2015: The Jewish Community Relations Council and The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington are scheduled to host “a real time analysis of the results of the Israeli elections as they unfold” in North Bethesda, MD.

2015: “The Iranian Americans” and “Before the Revolution” are scheduled to be shown at the 18th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2015: In San Diego, Jack Goldberg is scheduled to deliver a lecture on American Dilemmas in the "New" Middle East: The Elusive search for Coherent Strategies;”

2015: A Vanderbilt University official said that the spray painting of three swastiskis on fraternity house belong to the Tau Chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi is being investigated as a hate crime.

2015: For those looking for a Jewish connection to St. Patrick’s Day consider “St. Patrick’s Day, Kosher Style.”


2016: “How to Win Enemies” and “Sabena Hijacking” are scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2016(7thof Adar II, 5776): Seventy-one year old Meir Dagan, the Director of Mossad from 2002 to 2011 passed away today, (As reported by Isabel Kershner)


2016: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host its 2016 Humanitarian Awards Dinner.

2016: Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court visited Capitol Hill today where he was warmly greeted by Democrats while facing the opposition of Republicans who said they would not hold any hearings in a move which was unprecedented in American history, calling into question the claims of the GOP being the party of Conservatives i.e. those who protect the values of the past.

2016: New York premiere of “Iraqi Night” at the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2016: Thirteen month after disclosed “that he had treatable prostate cancer” today Arthur M. Blank, the co-founder of The Home Depot and the owner of the NFL Atlanta Falcons  “announced that he was cancer-free following treatment.”

2017: Thousands of runners took part in the 2017 Jerusalem Marathon today.


2017: The “Ma’agan Michael II”, “a replica of a 2,500 year old trading ship found off the coast of Israel was christened this morning ahead of its first voyage…”


2017: Charlemagne Palestine’s Bear Mitzvah in Meshugahland is scheduled to open at the Jewish Museum in New York City.


2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to Kabbalat Shabbat followed an hour later with a Shabbat Friday night dinner and hour later.

2017(19thof Adar, 5777): Eighty-two year old Gershon Kekst, the founder of Kekst and Company passed away.



2017: “Rima Khalaf, a Jordanian who served as executive secretary of the Beirut-based Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia” resigned today “after the body she led was ordered by the UN secretary-general to remove from its website a controversial report that charged Israel has established an “apartheid regime” guilty of “racial domination” over the Palestinians.

2017: In honor of St. Patrick's Day, one national bagel chain has advertised "green bagels" while supplies last. 

2018(1stof Nisan, 5778): Triple header Shabbat – Shabbat HaChodesh, Rosh Chodesh Nisan, start reading the book of Vayikra. 

2018: As many Irish people and people who wish they were Irish celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Jews can contemplate their Irish connection including Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Ireland and the second Ashekanzi Chief Rabbi of Palestine and his sons Chaim Herzog, the sixth President of Israel and Yaakov Herzog, the Haganah member and Israeli diplomat as well as the father and son team of Robert and Ben Briscoe, both of whom were Lord Mayor Dublin, author Julia Frankau who died on St. Patrick’s Day, 1916  and of course “Leopold Bloom,” the protagonist in Ulysses by James Joyce.

2018: “Humor Me” and “Love is Thicker Than Water” are scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2018: Temple Rodef Shalom's Rabbi Amy Schwartzman is scheduled to ashare her experiences as a woman rabbi as part of “To the Bimah: Women's Activism Enters the Synagogue.”

2018: The “Cake Maker” is scheduled to be shown at the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.

2018: Distant Cousins is scheduled to perform as part of LimmudFest Saturday Night in New Orleans.

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish readers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including I.M.: A Memoir by Isaac Mizrahi, Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler by Lynne Olson and the recently released paperback edition of To End A Presidency: The Power of Impeachment by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz.

2019: The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host the New York premiere of “Pepe’s Last Battle” and the international premiere of “Labor, Rebellion, Upheaval from the Ancestral Sin Series.”

2019: “From salt beef sandwiches and Rachel Riley, to making one’s own Jewish News front page” there are plenty of reasons to visit The Big Family scheduled to open this morning in Hendon.

2019: In New Orleans, the JCC is scheduled to host the annual Community Purim Carnival.

2019: As the Irish and all those people who want to be Irish (which is just about everybody) prepare to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, examine the connection between Jewish and Irish cuisine. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/the-secret-jewish-history-of-corned-beef-and-cabbage/

This Day, March 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 18
 
37: The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius' will and proclaims Caligula emperor. Caligula ruled from 37 until his death in 41. From the Jewish perspective he was not so much an anti-Semite as a lunatic whose crazy behavior affected the Jews. The biggest problems rose from his belief that he was a god and his insistence that the Jews, along with the rest of the Empire worship him. The Jews did not which led to a major confrontation. Additionally, Caligula wanted to place a huge statue of himself in Jerusalem. Fortunately he died before this travesty could take place.

1123: Opening of the First Lateran Council.  Unlike later councils, this meeting did not deal directly with issues related to the Jews. However Canon Eleven did give renewed impetus for the Crusades. “For effectively crushing the tyranny of the infidels, we grant to those who go to Jerusalem and also to those who give aid toward the defense of the Christians, the remission of their sins and we take under the protection of St. Peter and the Roman Church their homes, their families, and all their belongings, as was already ordained by Pope Urban II.”  Canon Eleven also equates going to fight in Spain with going to Jerusalem because Spain was under control of the Moors and the Church sought bring an end to this.

1160: Hamza ibn Asad abu Ya'la ibn al-Qalanisi an Arab politician and chronicler passed away in Damascus. His writings provide one of the few contemporary accounts of the First Crusade from the Moslem point of view including a description of the sacking of Jerusalem. The Jews had fought alongside the Muslims to defend the city against the attackers.  At the end, according Ibn al-Qalnisi, "The Jews assembled in their synagogue, and the Franks burned it over their heads.’ (The Franks was the terms easterners used to describe the Crusaders)

1190: Crusaders killed 750 Jews in Bury St Edmonds England. The logic of the Crusaders was why wait to kill infidels in the Holy Land when you can kill them right here at home. Just because these infidels were Jews and the infidels holding the Holy Land were Moslems did not seem to bother these noble Christian knights and their supporters.

1229: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor declared himself King of Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade. In what be lesson for modern times, Frederick’s use of diplomacy succeeded where the use of force by others had failed. His sixth crusade was not a military venture; a fact which drew the ire of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, after landing in Palestine, he negotiated with the Moslems and gained control of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem for a period of ten years.

1389: A priest living in Prague, Czechoslovakia was hit with a few grains of sand by small Jewish boys playing in the street. He became insulted and insisted that the Jewish community purposely plotted against him. Thousands were slaughtered, the synagogue and the cemetery were destroyed, and homes were pillaged. King Wenceslaus insisted that the responsibility rested with the Jews for venturing outside during Holy Week.

1478: In Spain, a group of Jews and conversos gathered for a Seder on the first night of Passover. “A young cavalier” discovered the group and reported the matter to the authorities. Since it was holy week, the Spanish decided that the Jews had gathered to “to blaspheme the Chrisitian religion.” When Alonso de Hojeda, the prior of the Convent of San Pablo in Seville and enemy of the Jews and New Christians heard of the event he took the news to Ferdinand and Isabella. Supposedly this was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and the two monarchs petitioned the Holy See to issue a Bull authorizing an Inquisition. The Bull would be granted and the road to the expulsion of 1492 opened up like a superhighway.

1540: Today “R. Isaac Porto ha-Kohen obtained from the Duke of Mantua permission to build an Ashkenazic synagogue.”

1580 (2nd of Nisan): Rabbi Benjamin ben Moses of Lemberg, author Tavnit ha-Bayt passed away

1584: Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible passed away. Ivan was terrible for the Jews as well as for everybody else. He did all that he could to bar them from Russia, spreading the calumnies of the day, and, when he had the chance, giving them the choice between conversion or a cruel death.

1607: As the Inquisition prepared to take action against “Jorge de Almedia, a Portuguese residing in Mexico, the husband of Dona Lenor de Andrada who was convicted by the Holy Office having kept observed the dead Law of Moses, document were posted on the door of the Cathedral in the next step to bringing him to “justice.”

1609: At Haderslev in Denmark, Christian IV and Anne Catherine of Brandenburg gave birth to Frederick III, who said of the Jews, they “have stolen into Denmark contrary to long-standing custom, [since the days of the Reformation, the Lutheran creed had, according to the laws of Denmark, been compulsory throughout the kingdom], and have dared to traffic with jewels and the like” which led him “to order that no Jew should enter Denmark without a special passport ("Geleitsbrief"), and that those who were already in the country should be heavily fined if they did not leave within fourteen days” passed away today. [Editors’ note: A few years later, however, the tables were turned. Frederick III., being in need of funds for his wars, borrowed money from the Jew Abraham (or Diego) Teixeira de Mattos of Hamburg (known through his relations with the Swedish queen Christina), and gave as security crownlands in Jutland. Teixeira thereupon made such good use of his influence with the Danish king that, as early as Jan. 19, 1657, "the Portuguese professing the Hebrew religion" were permitted to travel everywhere within the kingdom, and to trade and traffic within the limit of the law. Teixeira himself gained little by his transaction with the Danish monarch. As his loan was not returned, he took instead the estates he held as security, selling them later at a great loss. The king acted similarly in his dealings with the De Lima family, who were in possession of the Hald estate from 1660 to 1703.”

1655: Dutch Minister Johannes Megapolensis wrote a letter to the Amsterdam Classis, a ruling body in the Reform Church attacking the Jews who had recently arrived in New Amsterdam.

1669: In Halberstadt which had been annexed Brandenburg as part of the Peace of Westphalia, a mob aided by the military demolished a synagogue in the Joeddenstrasse. The people claimed that the Jews had built the synagogue without permission from the government. For some time after, the hammer that was used to break the door of the synagogue was “preserved in the parish house.”

1722(13th of Adar II, 5532):Ta'anit Esther

1723: Birthdate of Daniel Itzig, the native of Berlin, who became the “Court Jew” of Kings Frederick II the Great and Frederick William II of Prussia.



1762(23rd of Adar): Rabbi Judah ben Eliezer passed away

1767: Myer Myers married Joyce Mears, a cousin of his first wife, Elkalah Myers Cohen of blessed memory. Myers first wife bore him five children and his second wife bore him eight children.

1792: One day after he had passed away, Gabriel Samuel was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”

1797: In Nancy (France), Gerson-Jacob Goudchaux and his wife gave birth to Michel Goudchaux, “a French banker and politician who was twice Minister of Finance during the French Second Republic and who as a “firm Republican refused to accept the government of Napoleon III.”

1799: Haifa was captured by Napoleon. This marked “high-water mark” in Napoleon’s conquest of Palestine. The next day French forces reached Acre. It was defended both by British warships and local townspeople including the Jewish inhabitants. By June, Napoleon would give up and return to Egypt.

1812: Three days after he had passed away, Jacob Phillips was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1817(1stof Nisan, 5577): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1819: Daniel Joel and Elizabeth Cohen were married today at the New Synagogue.

1824: Two days after he had passed away, 68 year old Joseph Benjamin was buried todayat the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1831: Birthdate of Joshua Glaser, the Postelburg native who trained as a lawyer before converting to Christianity to advance his career.  At that time, he changed his name to Jules Glaser, the name by which he gained renowned as a jurist and statesman.


1836: Forty-one year old Mary (Harris) Jessel, the wife of Zadok Jessel and the mother of Henry, Edward, George and Amelia Jesse was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1837: Birthdate of Grover Cleveland, the only man to be elected President of the United States, defeated in his bid for re-election and then to be victorious over the man who had beaten him. In 1887, during his first term, Cleveland appointed Oscar Solomon Straus, “the ranking Jew in America,” envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Turkey. In 1897, during his second term, Cleveland vetoed a bill that contained a literacy test for immigrants. The bill was an attempt to halt immigration from southern and Eastern Europe. If it had passed it would have a detrimental impact on the Jews of Russia, Romania and the Austro-Hungarian Empire seeking to come to America. Cleveland spoke out against the treatment of the Jews at Kishinev and work to raise money for them after the Pogrom in 1903.

1844: One day after she had passed away, Phoebe Isaacs, the wife of Isaac Isaacs and the mother of Abraham and Henry Isaacs was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemtery.”

1852: In Paris, Augustus Glossop Harris and his wife gave birth to Sir August Harris British theatrical impresario whom “all of London” called “Gus” and who “was of Hebrew family and properly proud of his race.”

1857: In Pittsburgh, PA, Louis and Henrietta Berkowitz gave birth to Henry Berkowitz the educator and reform rabbi.

1858: Two days after he has passed away, 86 year old Isaiah Jones, the husband of Esther Jones and the mother of Edward A. Jones was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road ) Jewish Cemetery.

1858: Birthdate of Marcus M. Marks, the New York businessman and politician who “was President of the Daylight Savings Association,” the brother of illumination engineer Louis B. Marks and the uncle of Johnny Marks “who wrote ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’”


1859: In Philadelphia, Henry Cohen and Matilda Samuel Cohen gave birth to sculptor Katherine M. Cohen.



1861: The New York Times reported today that the “story floating around the Northern papers” about a rich Jew named Mordecai “declaring himself insolvent, after paying a small per centum to his New-York, Boston and Philadelphia creditors, is a falsehood, cut out of the whole cloth.”

1862: Judah P. Benjamin began serving as Secretary of State for the Confederacy; a position he would hold until the end of the war.

1863: In Opava, Czech Republic, Charlotte and Samuel David Klauber gave birth to Mathilde Bock

1864: Birthdate of Aberdeen, Scotland native “Major Frank Lang Collie, M.D. the second husband of The “Poem A Day Lady,” Ruth Jacob, the “granddaughter of the Rabbi of the Great Synagogue in London.”

1866(2nd of Nisan, 5626): Fifty-four year old Frederick Goldsmid, the MP for Honiton passed away today.

1869: Birthdate of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who signed the infamous Munich Agreement with Hitler. He returned to England with the words, “I bring you peace in our times.” Instead there was war within the year. At the same time Chamberlain’s government followed a pro-Arab policy in Eretz Israel which resulted in the infamous White Paper that effectively ended Jewish immigration at the time when the Jews needed a homeland more than ever in their entire history.

1870(15thof Adar II, 5630): Shushan Purim

1874: The Germania Theatre Company will perform tonight at New York’s Terrace Garden Theatre for the benefit of the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society.

1875(11thof Adar II, 5635): Fast of Esther observed since the 13th of Adar falls on Shabbat.

1877: It was reported today that during 1876, the strength of the British Army averaged 184,669 officers and enlisted men of whom 131 were Moslems, Hindus or Jews. 

1878(13thof Adar, II, 5638): Fast of Esther

1879: “The New Exodus” published today described how the Biblical motif was used in events was used in events leading up to the emancipation of the slaves and how there is the need for “a New Moses” to liberate the former slaves now living under the oppression of what came to be known as Jim Crow.

1879: The defense was scheduled to present its case in attempt to prove that Cohen Davis, an elderly Hebrew glazier, had not committed perjury in the recent trial of Abraham Freeman and Charles Bernstein, two convicted arsonists.

1880: In New York, Dr. J. P. Newman will deliver a lecture at Chickering Hall sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1881: In St. Francisville, Illinois, Samuel and Hannah Morgenstern gave birth to Julian Morgenstern the biblical scholar who was the President of Hebrew Union College.


1881: German born French Orientalist Jules Oppert “was made a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres, succeeding the Egyptologist Mariette.”

1884(21st of Adar, 5644): Basha Ruchama Twersky, the wife of Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach and the mother of Aharon Rokeach, the fourth Rebbe of the Belz Hasidic dynasty passed away today.

1886(11thof Adar II, 5646): Ta’anit Esther

1886(11th of Adar II, 5646): Leopold Zunz, also known as Yom Tov Lippman, a German-born Jewish intellectual passed away at the age of 91. Born in 1794, Zunz came of age in post-Napoleonic Germany when Reform Judaism was gaining power and many Jews were converting to Christianity to gain acceptance in the New Europe. Zunz was a scholar with a strong Jewish education. He became "the principal of a teacher's seminary established by the Jews of Berlin.” As can be seen from his teaching and writings including The Religious Discourses of the Jews Zunz emphasized the importance of prayer and instruction while contending that Judaism was a religion that had constantly been reforming itself. Zunz also believed that for the most part, Judaism and Jewish culture had been at a higher level than the societies that surrounded it.

1886: In Radin, Lithuania, Chaim Yehoshua Heshel Poupko and Bluma Abramowitz gave birth to Eliezer Poupko, the Rabbi sentenced to two years in Siberia for “defying the religious policies of the Soviet Union and husband of Pesha Chaya who, thanks to the intervention of American rabbis came to the United States in 1931 where he led to congregations and raised a family that played a prominent role in the world of American Orthodox Judaism.


1886: Birthdate of German-born Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka who moved to the United States

in the 1920’s where he taught at several colleges and universities including Wisconsin and Smith.

1887: Birthdate of Abraham Abelson


1887: Two days after he had passed away, John Coleman Isaac, the husband of Sarah Isaac, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1890: Louis Levene represented the Shirtmakers’ Union at the arbitration hearing being held today in an attempt to end the strike.  Most of the workers are Jewish as are many of the contractors on the other side.

1891: A five-story tenement building at the corners of Hester and Allen Streets which is located in a neighborhood crowded with Polish Jewish immigrants burned today.  At the time of the fire eleven Jewish families composed of forty-nine persons were asleep in the building.

1891: The Trustees managing the funds sent to the United States by Baron Hirsch for the aid of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania are scheduled to meet today in New York.

1892: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise will deliver a lecture entitled “The Jew, Past, Present and Future” this evening at Temple Israel of Harlem.

1892: Jose S.K. Mitrachee, the Syrian Jewish beggar who shot Rabbi Mendes on March 5th, returned to New York from Philadelphia today in the custody of Detective Sergeants Jacobs and Heidelberg.  The prisoner was immediately taken to the rabbi’s home where Dr. and Mrs. Mendes and their 3 servants positively identified as the attacker.

1893(1stof Nisan. 5653: Rosh Chodesh Nisan and Shabbat HaChodesh

1893(1stof Nisan, 5653): Two Russian Jewish immigrant peddlers – Isaac Rosnewig and Harris Blank murdered 18 year old Jacobs marks on Dutch Mountain in Wyoming County, PA. (At the time of their execution for the crime the two were described as “the only people of the Jewish faith ever executed for murder in this country.”)

1895: New York Mayor Strong appointed Jacob W. Mack, the secretary and treasurer of Nathan Manufacturing Company, to serve as a School Commissioner.

1897(14thof Adar, 5657): Purim

1897: Two days after he had passed away, 38 year old Charles Mark Simmons, the son Mark George Simmons and Caroline Lazarus was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1897(14thof Adar, 5657): Seventy one year old Ignatz Grossman, the native of Trencsen, Hungary who arrived at Brooklyn in 1873 where he officiated at Temple Beth Elohim and Congregation B’nai Abraham passed away today.

1897: A.S. Solomons, the manager of the Baron de Hirsch Fund oversaw today’s Purim Celebration for the students which was held in the auditorium of the Educational Alliance Building.

1897: The feast of Purim was celebrated today with “the formal opening of the new wing of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews” which was attended by 200 visitors.

1898: In Queens, Joseph Meltsner and Sarah Bach gave birth to Adele Meltsner, the wife of Charles Pores.

1898: In Albuquerque, NM, Dr. William H. Greenburg of London who had responded to an advertisement “for a rabbi in The American Israelite,” held the first service for fifty members of Congregation Albert today.

1899: In a letter to the editor published today “A.C.” takes issue with the statement that Henry Irving plays the part of the Polish Jew in “The Bells.”  Irving actually plays the part of Mathias, the murder of the Polish Jew which “is not quite the same thing.”

1899: It was reported today that “some of the French journals intimate that anti-Semitism is at the bottom of the new movement, which is that no Jew is to be permitted either to adopt a career in art, or, having painted a picture, to exhibit it.”

1899: “The Colored Race and Illiteracy” published today provides a summary of an article by Wallace C. Hamm in The North American Review that includes the notation that “The Russian and Polish Jews are never illiterates.” (This stands in stark contrast of the portrait painted of the Jews of Eastern Europe being semi-literate disease laden parasites)

1899: Edward Breck, who was not Jewish, expressed his displeasure with the way that United States was complying with Russian laws that discriminated against American Jews and praised Julius Goldschdmidt, the U.S Counsel General in Berlin for his protest over the American government’s behavior in this matter.

1903: Herzl begins a trip to Egypt that lasts until April 9.

1903: Birthdate of Louis Gross, the Chicago native who was an outstanding scholar/athlete when he played tackle for the University of Minnesota “Golden Gophers” from 1922 to 1924.

1905: Birthdate of Mollie Parnis. Although she never had any formal education in design, Mollie Parnis became an influential women's fashion designer whose prestigious Seventh Avenue firm provided dresses for first ladies Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Lady Bird Johnson, and Patricia Nixon. Parnis was raised on New York's Lower East Side. She started working in fashion at age eighteen, when she was hired as an assistant saleswoman for a wholesale blouse manufacturer. Her ability to tailor and add distinctive finishing touches to blouses for retail customers earned Parnis her first recognition. She moved from the blouse business to a dress house, but in 1933, she opened an independent designer dress firm with her husband, Leon Livingston. Although she could not cut and sew fabric or draw, Parnis's acute eye for detail and perceptive knowledge of what women wanted allowed her to provide the creative vision for the company. Even in the midst of the Great Depression, the Parnis Livingston label was successful. Parnis's designs were said to combine elegance and beauty with form and function, and they were frequently featured in the style pages of magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and Life. After Livingston's death in 1962, Parnis reshaped her company to cater to a new demand for more informal clothes. New labels targeted working-class women and young professionals. She closed the doors of her business in 1984.Throughout her life, Parnis was as dedicated to humanitarian work as she was to fashion. In 1971, she funded a program to clean up New York neighborhoods and establish small parks throughout the city. A similar program for Jerusalem followed two years later. She also contributed scholarships to fashion schools, and created the Livingston Awards, which honor young journalists in memory of Parnis's son. Mollie Parnis died in 1992.

1904: Two days after she had passed away, Frances (Salomons) Bergel, the wife of Samuel Bergel and the mother of Charles, William and Herbert Bergel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1905: Birthdate of Benny Friedman the native of Cleveland, Ohio known as “the Jewish Johnny Unitas” who played quarterback for the University of Michigan before going to a career as a head coach.

1906: As conditions worsened in Bialystok, two policeman named Rubansky and Syrolevich were killed, probably by anarchists. This was part of the unraveling situation that would lead to a pogrom in June of that year.

1906: Birthdate of Isadore Polier, the native of Aiken, SC who gained fame as civil rights lawyer Shad Polier, the husband of Justine Wise Polier, the daughter of Rabbi Stephen Wise.



1906: A dark day in history since it marked the birth of Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo officer who contributed so much to the Final Solution. Eichmann is the only person to ever be executed by the state of Israel.

1907: As the peasants of Romania rose up against the landed gentry, the government declared a state of emergency and began a general mobilization of the army.  The revolt was tainted by anti-Semitism because in some parts of the country the Jews collected the rents from the Christian peasants for the Christian landlords.  The Jews, of course, could not own the land.

1907: As the investigation into the graft and corruption surrounding the rebuilding of San Francisco following the earthquake, “all of the Supervisors confessed before a grand jury to "receiving money from Abe Ruef in connection with the Home Telephone, overhead trolley, prize fight monopoly, and gas rates deals.  In exchange, "they were promised complete immunity and would not be forced to resign their offices. The grand jury then returned 65 indictments against Abraham “Abe” Ruef for bribery of the supervisors.

1910(7th of Adar II, 5670): Adolphus Simeon Solomons passed away in Washington, D.C. Born in 1826 John Solomons, a native of London who emigrated to the United States in 1810, Julia, daughter of Simeon Levy, “Solomons was educated in the University of the City of New York, and entered the employ of a firm of wholesale importers of stationery and fancy goods, becoming within two years its head book-keeper and confidential man. At the age of fourteen he had enlisted as a color-guide in the Third Regiment Washington Greys (New York State National Guard); he was promoted sergeant five years later” “In 1851 Daniel Webster, then secretary of state, appointed him "Special Bearer of Despatches to Berlin." On his journey he visited for the first time a Jewish ward in a hospital, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and determined to establish a similar institution in New York. Upon his return home he became a member of a committee of young men who arranged a ball for charity in Niblo's Garden. The sum of $1,034 realized therefrom was, upon Solomons' motion, placed in the hands of Simpson Simson of Yonkers, who, with others, had recently taken out a charter for a Jewish hospital in New York, the present Mt. Sinai Hospital. In 1859 Solomons established the publishing-house of Philp & Solomons in Washington, D. C., which held for a number of years the government contracts for printing. Solomons was in 1871 elected a member of the House of Representatives for the District of Columbia, serving as chairman of the committee on ways and means. As a representative of the central committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Solomons at a public meeting held in New York advocated the establishment of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of Sir Moses Montefiore's birth. As trustee and, subsequently, as acting president of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association of New York, he was influential in bringing about a successful reorganization of the society's finances. In 1891 he became general agent of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and director of its many activities in America; and in 1903, when relieved of active work, he was made honorary general agent. Solomons was an incorporator and for seventeen years an active member of the National Association of the Red Cross, and was also one of its two vice-presidents. President Arthur appointed him and Clara Barton as representatives of the United States government in the International Congress of the Red Cross, held at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1881; and Solomons was elected vice-president of that congress. He was one of the five original members of the New York executive board of the Red Cross Relief Committee, which board was in session during the Spanish-American war and consisted of twenty-five members presided over by Bishop Potter. Solomons has been a member of the central committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and its treasurer for the United States. He has been for twenty years a director, and for some time treasurer, of the Columbia Hospital and Lying-in Asylum in Washington, D. C.; he is also a charter member of the Garfield Memorial Hospital, acting president of the Provident Aid Society and Associated Charities, founder and president of the Night Lodging-House Association, and trustee of the first training-school for nurses in the District of Columbia; he has been identified also with nearly all the prominent charities in the United States capital. Solomons has taken active part in all inauguration ceremonies” starting with Abraham Lincoln.

1913(9thof Adar II, 5673): Eighty-nine year old merchant Aaron Goodman passed away today in Baltimore, MD.

1913(9thof Adar II, 5673): Bahr Sheideman, a merchant who had resided in Santa Rosa with his wife Sophie and was the Treasurer of the Jewish Alliance of California passed away today in San Francisco.

1913: The King of Greece was assassinated at Salonica. False charges ran in the Greek newspapers that the killer was Jewish. The killer would turn out to be a Greek who was not Jewish but who was reported to be mentally ill.

1913(9th of Adar II, 5673): Seventy-eight year old merchant Bahr Scheideman, the husband of Sophie Scheidman who replaced George Aronson as superintendent of the religious school at Congregation Sherith Israel, passed away today in San Francisco.

1915: Among these listed today as contributors to the American Jewish Relief Committee were Zadok Lodge, I.O.B.B., Selma, Alabama;  Ohev Sholem Sisterhood, Harrisburg, PA; Agudath Jacob Ladies Aide Society, Waco, TX; Akron (Ohio) Hebrew Relief Association and the Women’s Aid Society, Fargo, ND. (Editor’s Note – These contributors give an idea of how many different places that Jews were living and that these places all had active Jewish communities.)

 

1915: The text of ‘what purports to be the text of a Russian military order on the strength of which wholesale massacres of the Jews in Poland were carried out ‘under Government auspices’ which was sent by the Foreign Committee of the General Union of Jewish Workers of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, commonly as the ‘Bund’” was received in New York today.

1915: As the Allies attempted  use their navies to force their way through Dardanelles, three ships were sunk and three more were disabled meaning that troops, including the fabled Zion Mule Corps, would have to be used to accomplish the strategic goals first framed by Winston Churchill.

1915: According to reports published today “the Commander-in-Chief” of the Russian Army has given “orders for the taking of hostages” which provides for their hanging – which will be used as pretext for hanging Jews on the eastern front.

1916(13thof Adar II, 5676): Shabbat and Erev Purim

1916(13thof Adar, II, 5676): Fifty-eight year old Adolph Goldberg, the husband of the former Theresa Pollack passed away today at his home on Iowa Street in Chicago.

1916: A dance is scheduled” to be held at Burland Casino which is a fundraiser for Sinai Congregation of the Bronx which has just dedicated a new Temple.

1917: “Hailing the Russian upheaval as the greatest world event since the French Revolution, Louis Marshall said in an interview tonight that the revolt again autocracy might be expected to Germany and asserted that the emancipation of the Russian Jews would be as great a boon to their country as to themselves.”

1917: A meeting of Jews held today at the Manhattan Opera House “under the auspices of the People’s Relief Committee” adopted resolution calling for a “self-imposed income tax” to raise funds that will be distributed “among the Jews in the war-stricken countries.

1917: Today, in churches and synagogue throughout New York City leaders hailed the Russian revolution “as great blow for the freedom of a race” including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise who said “he regretted that the American people had not done more to help the cause of liberty in Russia.”

1918: Isaac Nachman Steinberg completed his term as People’s Commissar for Justice.

1918: It was reported today that Jacob H. Schiff was one of those who supported the drive to raise $2,500,000 for the war activities fund of the Knights of Columbus, along with Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El who publicly pledged the support of the Jews in help the Catholics reach their goal.

1918: In London, the Jewish community celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Chevra Kadisha.

1919: It was reported today that the provision in the League of Nations covenant dealing with religious discrimination that “was intended to benefit the Jews” may be a casualty of the Japanese proposal for “an amendment guaranteeing racial equality.”

1919: Birthdate of Hempstead, NY, native Milton “Mickey” Rutner the third baseman who played in 12 games for the 1947 Philadelphia Athletics


1920(28th of Adar, 5680): Seventy-year old Moriz Benedikt, the “long time editor of Neue Freie Presse” passed away today.

1922: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Aaron Shikler, the renowned portrait artist whose works included the official portrait of JFK, Senator Mike Mansfield and Lady Bird Johnson in what looks a hymn to the Hill Country, (As reported by William Grimes)





1922: In Cairo, the first meeting was held between a Zionist Delegation and representatives of the “Executive Committee of the Congress of Parties of the Confederation of Arab Countries.”


1922: Judith Kaplan, age 12, became the first American to celebrate a bat mitzvah. Judith was the oldest daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Believing that girls should have the same religious opportunities as their brothers, Rabbi Kaplan arranged for his daughter to read Torah on a Shabbat morning at his synagogue, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. The Kaplan bat mitzvah marked a turning point for Conservative Judaism in America. Always torn between tradition and modernity, the movement struggled for many decades with women's roles in the synagogue. Judith Kaplan herself was not allowed to read from the Torah scroll, as modern bat mitzvah celebrants do; instead, she read a passage in Hebrew and English from a printed Chumash (first five books of the Bible) after the regular Torah service. Still, Rabbi Kaplan's innovation gained followers, and about a third of Conservative congregations held bat mitzvah ceremonies by 1948. By the 1960s, bat mitzvah was a regular feature of Conservative congregational life; today it is a mainstay in synagogues from Reform to Modern Orthodox. After her ground-breaking bat mitzvah, Kaplan Eisenstein (she married Ira Eisenstein who became Kaplan's successor in leading the Reconstructionist movement) went on to a successful career in Jewish music. After studying at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Julliard School) in New York, she attended the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) Teachers Institute and Columbia University's Teachers College, where she earned an M.A. in music education in 1932. She later earned a Ph.D. in the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). Kaplan Eisenstein taught music pedagogy and the history of Jewish music at JTS, HUC-JIR, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College for many years. She also created the first Jewish songbook for children, Gateway to Jewish Song (1937). Her other published works include Festival Songs (1943) and Heritage of Music: The Music of the Jewish People (1972). In 1987, she created and broadcast a thirteen-hour radio series on the history of Jewish music. In 1992, at age 82, Kaplan Eisenstein celebrated a second bat mitzvah, surrounded by leaders of the modern Jewish feminist movement. This time, she read from a Torah scroll. Kaplan Eisenstein died on February 14, 1996.

1922: Birthdate of sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, the co-author of Jews and the New American Scene in 1995.


1924: Birthdate of Irmgard Neumann, the native of Kleinsteinach, who was among the last nine members of the town be shipped to the death camps in 1942.

1925: “Athletes” a silent film with a script by Hans Behrendt was released today in Germany.

1926: Chairman William Fox announced today that cotton goods merchant Samuel C. Lamport and clothing manufacture Joseph Frankel have each contributed $25,00 the United Jewish Campaign of New York.

1927(14thof Adar II, 5686): Purim

1927: Thanks to the effort of New York Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, Purim was celebrated by “Jewish patients in all the city hospitals on Welfare Island.”

1927: In Leipzig, German, Herman Menasche, a lingerie merchant and the former Erna Feiner gave birth to Lilli Menasch who gained fame as Lillian Vernon. Vernon fled with her family first to Amsterdam and then to New York to escape Hitler. In the U.S., her father manufactured leather goods, which would become the base of Vernon's first foray into mail-order commerce. Married and pregnant, Vernon began the business that would become Lillian Vernon, Inc., in 1951. She took $495 out of her wedding gifts to place an advertisement for personalized belts and handbags in Seventeen magazine. Her father's company manufactured the belts and bags, and Vernon embossed, packaged, and shipped them. The ad brought in over $32,000 worth of sales, and Vernon's company was born. She mailed her first catalogue two years later. Taking monogramming as its trademark, and catering mainly to women, Lillian Vernon mail-order grew rapidly, generating $200,000 in sales in 1956, the year Vernon opened her first manufacturing plant. By 1990, sales had risen to $238 million, and the mailing list had grown to 17 million names. After pioneering her successful mail-order business, Vernon continued to keep the company at the forefront of commercial changes. She began opening retail outlets in 1985, and went online a decade later. Hers was also the first woman-owned business to be listed on the American Stock Exchange. The company continues to introduce new catalogs regularly, and now produces special lines of items for children, teens, and gardening, as well as its traditional products for the home. Vernon has used her wealth to support over 500 charities, and has been recognized by, among others, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, which awarded her its National Hero Award. She has also received the NAACP Medal of Honor, and has been inducted into the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame. In 1997, she was named one of 50 leading women entrepreneurs by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners. Though she no longer embosses items herself, Vernon is still active as the CEO of her company and as its main spokesperson.

1927: “Praises Palestine Idea” published today described a plea made today “to the Christian world” by Colonel Sir Wyndham Deedes, the former Chief Secretary of the Palestine Government “to banish all prejudices against the Jew, to wipe the slates clean and start with clean slates, as Jewish history is being re-written in Palestine.”

1927: In Kansas City, MO, Harold S. Kander and his wife gave birth to Broadway composer and dance arranger John Kander whose credits include “Chicago” and “Cabaret.”

1928: The New York Times described the controversy surrounding the decision of a court in Jaffa to fine a storekeeper for violating local ordinances concerning the observance of the Jewish Sabbath.

1929: In Białystok, Poland, to David and Helaina (née Suchowolski) Pisar gave birth Samuel Pisar American lawyer who survived seven different concentration camps.


1930: In New Orleans, Rabbi Louis Binkstock officiated at the wedding this evening “Miss Lenore Lebach, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart J. Lebach of New York” and Tulane alum  Edmond Nathanial Cahn, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Cahn

1930: Eight one year old Arthur James Balfour, a prominent British politician who served as Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905 passed away today. During World War I, Balfour served as Foreign Minister. It was while serving in this position that he gained his place in Jewish History by giving his name to the Balfour Declaration, which read in part, "His Majesty's Government view with the favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object..." The Balfour Declaration came to be one of the basic documents in the Jewish diplomatic efforts to establish what would become the modern state of Israel.

1931: “Is Charlie Chaplin Jew?” published today reported that that both of Charlie Chaplain’s parents were Jewish.


1932: Birthdate of Alan Rosenthal the native of Manhattan and Harvard graduate who was director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University from 1974 to 1993. (As reported by Kate Zenike)

1936: “These Three” a drama directed by William Wyler, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, with music by Alfred Newman and “a screenplay by Lillian Hellman based on her 1934 play ‘The Children’s Hour.’”

1936: The basic plans for the upcoming meeting of the World Council for German Jewry “which plans to supervise the emirgration of 100,000 Jews from Germany in the next four years” which “will be attended by 300 delegates” including 70 from the United States were published today.

1937: As “the Arab attacks on the Jews in Palestine continued to increase,” “a bomb exploded early this morning in the hands of an Arab near the Jewish quarter in Kerem seriously injuring him and three Arab workmen”

1937: “Pledges Protection to Jews” published today described a visit of Benito Mussolini to Tripoli, Libya where he “openly rejected the policy of anti-Semitism” and assuring the Jews “of his protection.”

1937: The Palestine Post reported that 17 Jews, two policemen and one British soldier were injured by a bomb thrown at the Egged bus terminal on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road. Two Arabs were detained on suspicion. Later four Arabs were injured when bombs were thrown into Arab-frequented cafes on Mamilla Road and in Romema. Police dogs picked an Arab farmer, Mohammed Kamel, as the murderer of Samuel Gottfried, 26, of Rosh Pina.

1938: “Notes of the Advertising World” published today described the appointment of Julien J. Proskauer, the president of William C. Popper and Co. to serve as chairman of the printing and allies trades division of the Joint Distribution Committee which is “raising funds to aid Jews in Germany, Austria and Poland.

1938: “An order issued by Hitler’s representative in Austria “that no changes shall be carried out in the personnel of private businesses” essentially “prohibits reduction of staffs by Jews whose property rights curtailed and whose customers are being frightened away by propaganda and the badge ‘Jewish shop.’”

1939: Just after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, in Brno, Syme Rysavy “invited her parents and younger brothers, Ned and Michael, over to her house for a special family dinner” during which she told her brothers they must flee immediately – a decision that saved their lives – and she would stay with their aged parents.

1939(27thof Adar, 5699): Parsahat Vayakhel-Pekudi; Shabbat HaChodesh

1939(27thof Adar, 5699): Forty-eight year old Bert Adler, the secretary of the Department of Public Works who “served in the motion picture section of many Red Cross drives and was Chairman of the Stars Committee of the Hoover Central Europe Relief Drive passed away today at New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital.

1939: Rabbi Harold Mashioff is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler” at the Temple of the Covenant.

1939: Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a sermon “The Willing Heart” at West End Synagouge.

1939: Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Static Versus Dynamic Religion” at Temple Emanu-El.

1940: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom. [Editor’s Note – For some strange reason, Italy was never held accountable for its role as Hitler’s willing ally and all that that meant.]

1941: This week, 200 Jews would die from hunger in Warsaw ghetto. The prior week, 400 died of hunger.

1941: In a move that would to a notorious show trial and the execution of the defendant, Leo Katzenberger was arrested today under the so-called Rassenschutzgesetz, or Racial Protection Law, one of the Nuremberg Laws, which made it a criminal offence as Rassenschande ("racial defilement") which prohibited Aryans from having sexual relations with Jews

1942: Forty-five year old Charles A. Levine who was “the first trans-Atlantic plane passenger” was in front of a federal judge in Los Angeles over a $500 fine that had been levied against him over a violation of immigration law.

1943(11th of Adar II, 5703): Fast of Esther observed since the 13th of Adar is on Shabbat.

1943(11th of Adar II, 5703): The hiding place of Dr. Julian Charin, age 30, of Lapy, Ukraine, was betrayed to the Nazis, and Charin was shot.

1943(11th of Adar II, 5703): At Auschwitz, 26-year-old underground fighter Lonka Kozibrodska died of typhus.

1943: “After Midnight with Boston Blackie,” part of the series of crime movies produced by Sam White was released in the United States today.

1943: “Keeper of the Flame” a movie version of the novel with the same named directed by George Cukor was released today in the United States.

1944(23rdof Adar, 5704): Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei and Shabbat Parah

1944(23rdof Adar, 5704): H.J. Freedman passed away in the service of his country after which he was bured in the Willesden Jewish Cemetery.

1944: Birthdate of Amnon Lipkin-Shahak the 15th Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Member of the Knesset and Minister of Transportation and Tourism.

1944: Hitler summons the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Horthy for talks. Horthy guaranteed the delivery of 100,000 Jewish workers for the German war effort. Yet he was still hesitant about a general deportation of the rest of the country's 750,000 Jews. At 9:30 that evening, German troops begin to enter Hungary.

1945: Birthdate of Eric Norman Woolfson, the native of Glasgow where his family owned a furniture, who became “a Scottish songwriter, lyricist, vocalist, executive producer, pianist, and co-creator of The Alan Parsons Project.”

1946(15thof Adar II, 5706): Purim

1946(15thof Adar II, 5706): Seventy-nine year old Maurice Falk, he Greensberg, PA born son of Charles and Sara Falk and the founder, with his brothers of Weirton Steel who married Selma Wertheimer after his first wife Laura Klinordlinger passed away and who, with his brother “established the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies at Pittsburg in 1912 passed away today.



1946: Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill was “the guest of honor at a dinner given by” Jewish financier and unofficial advisor to numerous Presidents, Bernard Baruch.

1946: Birthdate of Wolf “Willy” Lindwer the native of Amsterdam “best known for his films on the Holocaust, Israel and the Middle East and Judaism.”


1946: In Sweden, premiere of “Deadline at Dawn” directed by Howard Cluman with a script by Clifford Odets.

1947: Birthdate of Steve Schiff the Chicago native who became a Congressman from New Mexico’s First District.

1947: Birthdate of Deborah Esther Lipstadt , the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University who defeated Holocaust denier David Irving in an English court.


 

 

 

1947: Efforts to overturn the death sentences of Dov Rosenbaum, Eliezer Kashani and Mordecai Kashani suffered a setback today when the “Palestine High Court rejected an application for an order for the commissioner of prisons, the British commanding general, the attorney general and the chief secretary to show cause” for why the sentence should not be set aside.

1948(7thof Adar II, 5708): Seventy three year old Gedaliah Bublick, the Grodno born son of Aaron Bublick “the writer and Zionist who drifted from Paris to Argentina to New York where he became editor-in-chief of the Yiddishe Tageblatt passed away suddenly tonight.

Hempstead, NY, native Milton “Mickey” Rutner the third baseman who played in 12 games for the 1947 Philadelphia Athletics passed away today in Georgetown, TX.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rutnemi01.shtml

1948(7th of Adar II, 5708): Rabbi Chaim Isaac Block, author of Divrei Hibbah passed away.

1948(7thof Adar II, 5708): Sixty-four year old Hungarian native Louis J. Moss, the son of Michael and Jennie Moss, “a lawyer specializing in real estate and trust law” and the President of the United Synagoes of American from 1931 to 1941 who was the husband of the former Bryna Finegold with whom he had three children passed away today.

1948: Today in Tel Aviv, David Ben-Gurion said “that the Jews and Arabs would make peace in the Holy Land if the United Nations implemented the decision on partition.”

1948 President Truman met with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and assured him of the United States' support for Jewish statehood. 

1949: After having been released in Germany and the United States in 1948, “Long Is he Road” – “the first German-made film to directly portray the Holocaust.”

1949: James Grover McDonald was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Israel by President Harry Truman.

1949: Moshe Dayan, Abdullah el-Tell and King Abdullah of Jordan began “a series of meetings today” which would lead to an armistice agreement.

1950: “Dr. George Josephthanal, director of the Absorption Department of the Jewish Agency” announced “that a sea and air operation aimed at moving 90,000 Jews out of Iraq into Israel would be initiated next month at a cost of sixty million dollars.”

1951: Birthdate of Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Empire.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Agriculture Minister Levi Eshkol promised self-sufficiency in animal fodder, increased tobacco production, and intensification of cattle raising for meat, as the immediate policy goals of his ministry. He noted a general improvement in fruit production, although he warned that it could take a couple of years until the full impact of last year¹s planting was felt on the market.

1956(6th of Nisan, 5716): Sixty-eight year old Benjamin Glazer, the Irish born director and Oscar winning writer who “was one of the founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences passed away today.



1961:The New York Times reports that the French government awarded Rabbi Simon Langer the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur for his "...extraordinary contributions to the advancement of better French-American relations before and after the Second World War. He is credited with rescuing many French children from the Nazis." His tireless work with Bikur Cholim continues.

1962: The Evian Accords put an end to the Algerian War of Independence, which began in 1954. The end of the Algerian War marked the beginning of a change in French policy towards the Arabs, and therefore, towards Israel. While fighting the Arab nationalist in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, the French saw the Israelis as allies. This accounts for French willingness to supply the IDF with military equipment including jet fighter planes and to join in the Suez War of 1956. Once De Gaulle decided to end French fighting with Arab nationalist, he sought to create a French sphere of influence among its former colonies. Supporting Israel was now a detriment to French policy aims. In 1967, De Gaulle would oppose Israel’s right to defend itself in what would become the Six Days War going so far as to deny delivery of naval vessels to the Israelis for which the Jewish state had already paid.

1963(22ndof Adar, 5723): Eighty-two year old Harry Schwartz, the maternal grandfather of Rabbi Fred Davidow and native of Ukraine who settled in Mississippi where he and his wife Fannie Stein ran a dry-goods store and meat market and raised a family that included Fred’s mother Thelma Leah, passed away today.

1964(5th of Nisan, 5724): Sixty-nine year old American mathematician Norbert Wiener passed away. Born in 1894, he was known as the founder of cybernetics. He created the term in his book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948), widely recognized as one of the most important books of contemporary scientific thinking

1965(14thof Adar II, 5725) Purim

1965: “Do I Hear a Waltz?” a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Richard Rodgers, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim opened on Broadway at the 46thStreet Theatre.

1965: Death of King Farouk, former ruler of Egypt. While King of Egypt, Farouk led his country to war against Israel in 1948. The defeat of Egyptian forces along with his total corruption, led to Farouk’s overthrow in 1952 in a coup masterminded by Nasser.

1967: Thirteen year-old Alan Smason became a Bar Mitzvah at New Orleans Congregation Beth Israel. He celebrated the event with a major party at the newly-opened Jewish Community Center that night

1968(18th of Adar, 5728): Sixty year old Harry Kurnitz who wrote over forty movie scripts as well as detective stories and plays passed away today.


1968(18thof Adar, 5728): “Two people were killed and 28 children were in landmine attack on a school bus in the Negev north of Eilat.”

1969(28thof Adar, 5729): Sixty-two year old Zena Maisel Pollack, the administrative director of the Jewish Guild for the Blind for the last 35 years, “known to her associates as Sis” and wife of “retired toy manufacturer Sidney E. Pollack” passed away today at University Hospital.

1969(28thof Adar, 5729: Seventy-two year Harvard alum and Navy Veteran from WW I and WW II Kassel Lewis, the founder of Crown Fabrics and husband of “the former Syliva Surut who is the director the YMHA/YWHA nursery” with whom he raised a daughter and a son – Anthony Lewis of the New York Times.


1973(14thof Adar II, 5733): Purim

1973: “Two People” a dramatic film with music by David Shire was released today in the United States.

1973: The Cy Coleman musical “Seesaw” opened today on Broadway at the Uris Theatre.

1974: In Tucker, GA, “Leslie (Diamond) and Charles Lowenstein gave birth to twin brothers Evan Mitchell Lowenstein and Jaron David Lowenstein, the musical duo who perform as “Evan and Jaron.”

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported from Cairo that Yasser Arafat made it clear that the PLO had no intention of giving up its aim of creating a "secular state" in Palestine ¬ its roundabout expression for the destruction of Israel. In Washington, despite Israeli repeated requests, the State Department declined to say what President Jimmy Carter had in mind when he called for a Palestinian "homeland." Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was reportedly worried by Carter¹s statement that there had to be a homeland provided for Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years.

1978: “Straight Time,”  “a crime drama directed by Ulu Grosbard,” produced by Tim Zinnemann and starring Dustin Hoffman was released in the United States today.

1978: “Two London Jewish tourists, who visited Leningrad, reported that after meeting with refuseniks, they were attacked and beaten up by a gang of hooligans.”

1979(19th of Adar, 5739): Seventy year old Sylvan N. Friedman who served in the Louisiana State Legislature from 1944 until 1972,  a long-time member of Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim and the father of Sam Friedman, the attorney who reopened the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, passed away today.


1979: Birthdate of Adam Levine an American singer-songwriter and guitarist who is the frontman for the pop rock band Maroon 5.

1979: “Fast Company” a racing movie directed by David Cronenberg who co-authored the script was released today in Canada.

1980(1stof Nisan, 5740): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1980(1st of Nisan, 5740): Seventy-nine year old Eric Fromm passed away.



1980(1stof Nisan, 5740): Eighty-year old German born “British neurologist” and founder of the Paralympics in the UK passed away today



1982: In Livingston, NJ, Caryn and Steven Pally gave birth to actor and comedian Adam Saul Pally.

1983(4th of Nisan, 5743): Eighty-nine year old New York Republican Party leader Samuel Greenwald, the Hungarian born son of Judah and Marjem Greenwald and husband of Szeri Greenwald pass way today.

1984(14thof Adar II, 5744): Purim

1986(7th of Adar II, 5746): Seventy-one year old author Bernard Malmud passed away. The prolific author may be best known for The Fixer for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and The Natural which was made into a movie starring Robert Redford. The movie and the book have different endings. The film version makes Hollywood happy. The book ends in a manner consistent with Malmud’s view of life. (As reported by Mervyn Rothstein)


1988: “The Milagro Beanfield War” featuring Daniel Stern and with music by Dave Grusin who won an Oscar for Best Original Score was released today in the United States.

1988(29thof Adar, 5748): Eighty-four year old Gerald Abraham, the President of the Royal Musical Association passed away today.

1990(21stof Adar, 5750): Ninety-four year old Manhattan born, Harvard Grad and WW I U.S. Navy Ensign Walter S. Mack who made Pepsi he nation’s number 2 cola, behind number 1, Coke, passed away today. (As reported by Peter B. Flint)


1991: In “Resisting the Vortex By Living a Life of Books and Anger” published today Frank Rich reviewed a new Holocaust play – “The Substance of Fire” by Jon Robin Baitz.”


1992: Leona Helmsley was sentenced to 4 years for tax evasion.

1993: The Sisters Rosensweig a play written by Wendy Wasserstein opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

1994: In Canada, CTV broadcast the first episode of “RoboCop” a series produced by Jay Firestone based on the movie of the same name

1995: “Opening the Fed’s Door From Inside” published today provides an insight to the fiscal and monetary philosophy of Alan S. Binder, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve.


1997: It was reported today that President, Chancellor, Boards of Governors and Overseers, faculty, administration and students of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion record with profound sorrow the death in Jerusalem of Dr. S. Zalman Abramov, Chairman of the Board of Overseers of our Jerusalem School.

1997: The Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the Pike Street Synagogue (Congregation Sons of IsraelKalwarie), and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site


1999: Marcel Marceau day is established in New York City.

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation by Edwin Black and The Voice of Memory: Interviews 1961-1987 by Primo Levi; edited by Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon

2003(14thof Adar II, 5763): Purim

2004: In Israel premiere of “Walk on Water” directed by Eytan Fox.

2004(2ndof Nisan, 5764): Seventy-two year old Tony Award winning Broadway producer Joan Cullman passed away today. (As reported by Ben Sisario)


2006: Shabbat Parah

2006: The family and multitude of friends of Betty Levin gather in Chicago to celebrate her birthday. Wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, teacher, pillar of the Jewish community and so much more – she is the complete package. She redefines the term Ashesh Chayil giving the term a meaning far beyond anything that Solomon could have possibly imagined.

2007: The Jerusalem Circus performs at the Gerard Behar Center as part of the Jerusalem Arts Festival.

2007: At Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y, Zvi Gotheiner and Dancers present the last performance of “Gertrud,” a tribute to Gotheiner’s late teacher, Gertrud Kraus.

2007: The Sunday New York Times features a review of Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein.

2008: Eric Alterman, a professor of English and journalism at the City University of New York, discusses and signs Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America at Borders Book Store in Washington, D.C.

2008: German Chancellor Angela Merkel becomes the first foreign head of government to address the Knesset. In the past, the honor has been reserved only for heads of state and monarchs.

2008: A special meeting of the Committee for the Advancement of Women will be convened to mark International Agunah Day, led by the new chairperson of the committee - Knesset member Lia Shemtov.

2008(11th of Adar II, 5768): Henry A. Fischel, a “professor emeritus of Near Eastern languages and cultures at Indiana University,” passed away. “Fischel was an influential figure in founding the Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. Under his direction, the Lilly Endowment gave the university a grant in 1972-73 to develop a Jewish Studies Program.”

2008(11thof Adar II, 5678): Seventy-eight year old the heavyweight literary editor who was a “noted for his distinguished list of authors, tweedy attire and accomplished renditions of Bach preludes and fugues on the piano” passed away today.



2008: “Yael Naim, the self-titled second studio album by Yael Naïm” that features the single "New Soul" was released today in the United States in Canada today.

2008: A 49 year old Israeli rabbi identified as Rabbi Yechezkel Greenwald was stabbed and wounded by an Arab assailant near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem.

2009: The Leo Baeck Institute hosts “Regina Resnik Presents: Covert or Convert” a film that pays “homage to composers who converted to Christianity but who wrote on Jewish themes, and to composers who did not convert, but wrote on Jewish themes in secret, often at the risk of their lives. Presented and narrated by the legendary mezzo-soprano Regina Resnik, the film shares the proud and often difficult history of such composers as Anton Rubinstein, Otto Klemperer, and Felix Mendelssohn, whose statue outside the Gewandhaus in Leipzig was destroyed by the Nazis.

2009: Book World columnist Michael Dirda discusses and signs his most recent book, Classics for Pleasure, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville, Md.

2009: The Orange Prize, given annually to a female fiction writer, announced its list of 20 contenders, including Allegra Goodman author of “Intuition.”The finalists for the Man Booker International Prize, a lifetime achievement award given every other year, have been announced including E. L. Doctorow and Joyce Carol Oates.

2009: "The North American United Jewish Communities, in cooperation with the State Department...set funds aside to absorb 110 Yemenite Jews in to the United - more than a third of all the Jews remaining in Yemen."

2009(22ndof Adar, 5769): Terry Schwarzfeld died of brain injuries today, two weeks after being airlifted to a hospital in Ottawa from Barbados where she had been brutally by Curtis Joel Foster while on vacation with her daughter-in-law.  At the time of the attack she had just started her term as president of Canadian Hadassah WIZO and was executive director of Ottawa's largest synagogue, Agudath Israel.

2010: Jacques Pépin, author of more than a dozen cookbooks and host of a trio of celebrated cooking shows, is scheduled to serve as a celebrity judge today during the finals of the Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off, hosted in New York City by the kosher food giant. The kosher recipe contest will award prizes worth $25,000. Open to contestants from across the country, the competition is limited to original recipes that are kosher, can be prepared in less than an hour and contain no more than 8 ingredients including one of the three varieties of Manischewitz’s new, kosher, all-natural broths. The winner of the fourth annual Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off will get a trip to New York, a kitchen’s worth of new appliances — at a value of roughly $25,000 — as well as a check for $5,000 and a gift card for groceries.

 

2010: An auction of several rare early American Jewish books is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. in New York. Among the offerings at the sale being conducted by Swann Auction Galleries is an early Jewish-American cookbook and the first Hebrew Bible printed on American soil. A first edition of Esther Levy's 1871 Jewish Cookery Book is expected bring bids ranging from $10,000 to 15,000. “This first Jewish cookbook published in North America offers a glimpse into late-19th-century Jewish life and food trends, when mutton was popular and husbands expected special Sunday dinners. Also for sale is an extremely rare Liber Psalmorum Hebraice from 1809, the first Hebrew version of the Bible printed in the Americas. No other complete copy has been seen at auction since 1998, according to the auction catalogue. The book is valued at $9,000 to $12,000. Other items of interest include 200 books, manuscripts and other papers from the family archives of Abraham Moses Hershman, who became rabbi of Detroit's Shaarey Zedek synagogue in 1907, and an early edition of Isaac Leeser's The Form of Prayers According to the Custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, dating from about 1852.

2010: Itzhak Perlman joins the IPO for a performance in Concert in Jeans Series in Tel Avi.

2010: As part of The Levin/Rosenstein Lecture Series held in Memory of Mr. & Mrs. Joseph B. Levin, Dr. Jacob L. Levin, and Larry and Judy (Levin) Rosenstein, The Jewish Studies Program at Tulane University is scheduled to present “From Berlin to New York: Jewish Culture in Pre-Nazi Germany and Jewish Culture in Post-War America.”

2010: A migrant worker in the northern Negev was killed by a rocket fired by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The rocket struck Moshav Nativ Ha'asara this morning, killing a 30-year-old Thai man working in a hothouse. It was third rocket fired from Gaza in 24 hours.

2010: Israeli actor and television host Eyal Kitzis and his wife Tali gave birth to their first son.

2011: In Buenos Aires, Argentina Jewish leaders, “Jewish school groups, local and federal government officials met in the square where the embassy once stood, to remember the attack on the Israeli Embassy which took place on March 17, 1992, killing 29 people, and injuring 242. The attack was the work of Iran.

2011: The Five finalists on the Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off who have won an all-expense paid trip to Manhattan are scheduled to compete today at the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan. A panel consisting of food media and other culinary experts will judge the contestants. Chef Jacques Pepin, the celebrity guest of honor, will act as emcee, head judge, and prize awarder. The cooking contest has a $25,000 grand prize package including a GE Profile kitchen appliances and cash.

2011: Lorin Sklamberg with Dublin-born chanteuse Susan McKeown and guitarist Aidan Brennan are scheduled to present Saints and Tzadiks, a program of rare songs from the Yiddish and Irish traditions in Bielefeld, Germany.

2011(12 Adar II, 5771): Sixty-seven year old Knesset Member and educator Ze'ev Boim passed away today.

2011(12 Adar II, 5771): Sixty-seven year old Knesset Member and educator Ze'ev Boim passed away today.


2011(12 Adar II): On the Hebrew calendar, anniversary the “Dedication of Herod’s Renovated Temple” in 11 BCE. For those who know how Herod lived his life the Talmud’s declaration that "He who has not seen Herod's edifice has not seen a magnificent edifice!" is difficult to understand.

2011: Projectiles land in open areas with no injuries, damaged reported; shots fired at IDF soldiers near southern Gaza border.  

2011: In “In Novels, an Ex-Spy Returns to the Fold,” Jules Bosman describes the upcoming literary efforts of Valery Palme Wilson, the CIA employee who happened to Jewish and who was identity was scandalously exposed by those upset with her husband.


 2012: The annual Jewish Women’s Archive Luncheon is scheduled to take place at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

2012: The final in a three part lecture series “Agnon’s Eretz Israel” presented by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks is scheduled to take place today.

2012: “The Last Jews of Libya” is scheduled to be shown at the New York Sephardic Film Festival.

2012: The NoVA International Film Festival is scheduled to begin today in Fairfax, VA.

2012(24th of Adar, 5772): Eighty-seven year old real estate developer Melvyn Kaufman passed away today.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)


2013: At Shaaray Tefila, Rabbi Dagan is scheduled to present a “special program where he will share gorgeous melodies that track his personal musical journey from an Israeli Sephardi synagogue to a Reform rabbinate in Haifa.

2013: After almost six years of service, Ehud Barak stepped down as Minister of Defense.

2013: Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present “Beer, Art and Revolution: Jewish Life in Munich, 1806-present”

2013: Gideon Sa’ar replaced Eli Yishai as Minster of the Interior.

2013: Moshe Ya’alon replaced Ehud Barak as Minister of Defense.

2013: Ayoob Kara completed his term as Deputy Minister for the Development of the Negev and Galilee

2013: The ministers of Israel’s 33rd government were sworn in this evening in the Knesset in Jerusalem.

2013: Israel and a European human rights official criticized Hungary today for presenting an award to a television journalist they accuse of anti-Semitism.

2013: An Israeli was lightly injured in a drive-by attack near the West Bank settlement of Kedumim this morning. A Palestinian shooter opened fire on the man, 71, who was on foot, at the Kedumim Junction, slightly injuring him in the leg. 

2014(16thof Adar II, 5774): Ninety-five year old Doris Kanter, “the widow of comedy writer-produceer-director Hal Kanter passed away today.


2014: The New York Premiere of “Shadow in Baghdad” is scheduled to take place at New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

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

2014: Twenty-four Medals of Honor were awarded by President Obama to Army veterans who were denied their honor due to prejudice including Private First Class Leonard Kravitz and Sargent Jack Weinstein who were killed during the Korean War. (As reported by Jim Kunhenn)

2014: The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD by Simon Schama is scheduled to go on sale today. This is the first volume of a two volume study of Jewish history which is the source for the PBS series, “The Story of the Jews which is scheduled to premiere on Tuesday, March 25

2014: Four IDF soldiers wer wouned when an explosive device detonated along Israel’s border fence with Syria this afternoon in the area south of the Druze village of Majdal Shams. (As reported by Yoav Zitun)

2014: Hezbollah sources said today that an explosion on the Golan Heights that injured three IDF soldiers had been an attempt to kidnap soldiers. (As reported by Uzi Baruch)

2014: IAF planes fired on the sites in Syria that terrorists used to attack and wound IDF soldiers earlier in the day.

2014: “Tales From Tel Aviv and Upper West Side” published today provided a review of The Unamericans by Molly Antopol

2015: The Canadian Haggadah Canadienne is scheduled to go sale in Toronto.

2015: Today, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “released a feminist reading of the Passover story” “which focuses on five women at the center of the Exodus narrative” and was put together by…the American Jewish World Service.

2015: World premiere of “God’s Honest Truth” is scheduled to take place this evening as part of Theatre J sponsored by the Washington, DCJCC.

2015: In San Diego, Jacob Goldberg is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Israeli-Palestinian Stalemate: Status Quo, Intifada, or Interim Agreements?”

2015: “Los Angeles Police Department detectives say several handwriting experts link Robert Durst to an anonymous letter tipping authorities to the slaying of writer Susan Berman in 2000, according a search warrant made public today.”

2015: “With some 99 percent of the votes counted by early Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party appeared set to win a resounding victory in the general election, with 30 seats, compared to the Zionist Union’s 24”.

2015: “Jews & Money” and “24 Days” are scheduled to be shown at the 18thNew York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2016: Approximately 25,000 runners from 61 countries took part in today’s Jerusalem Marathon.

2016: LimmudFest is scheduled to begin in New Orleans, LA.

2016: Seventeen year old “Israeli ice skater Daniel Samohin won first placed in the World Skating Championship held in Hungary today.

2016: “Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History is scheduled to open at the Jewish Museum.

2016: The Television Project: Some of My Best Friends is scheduled to open today.


2016: Masterpieces and Curiosities: The Fictional Portrait is scheduled to open today.


2017(20thof Adar, 5777):  Shabbat Parah; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2017: In London, the South Social Film Festival is scheduled to host a tribute to women and Jewish culture as attendees “dive into Jewish culture” in “an immersive experience showcasing indie film, with live Klezmer music with TANTZ trio, and food celebrating Jewish culture.

2017: On the secular calendar, 50th anniversary of the Bar Mitzvah of Renaissance man Alan Smason, the founder of the Crescent City Jewish News. http://www.crescentcityjewishnews.com/

2018: “Jewish Blind Date,” “Kosher Love” and “The Setup” are scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.

2018(2ndof Nisan, 5778): Ninety-one year old English born, University of London trained physician Dr. Samuel Epstein who articulated the need to deal with the political, economic and social aspects of cancer passed away today.  (As reported by Sam Roberts)


2018: “House of Z” and “Keep the Change” are scheduled to be shown on the final day of the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2018: LimmudFest is scheduled to come to an end today in New Orleans.

2018: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide by Cass R. Sunstein, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America by Cass R. Sunstein and the recently released paperback edition of Why?: Explaining the Holocaust by Peter Hayes

2018: The Society for the Advancement of Judaism is scheduled to sponsor “Too Good To Passover” which includes a “cookbook talk, book signing and charoset tasting.

2018: “The Israeli military today announced that it destroyed two attack tunnels, one that entered Israeli territory and another inside the central Gaza Strip, the latest in a series of underground structures have been demolished by Israel in recent months.”

2018: Congregation Shearith Israel is scheduled to host “Passover and the American Imagination.”


2018: Twenty year old Sgt. Netanel Kahalani, 20, from Elyakim in northern Israel, the victim of a terroirst car ramming attack was buried early on today in the cemetery in his hometown, with thousands in attendance, according to Hebrew reports.

2018: Twenty-one year old Captain Ziv Daos, a platton commander from Azor who was killed in a terrorist car ramming attack is scheduled to be buried today at noon today at the military cemetery at Holon.(As reported by TOI)

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host a screening “The Best of Enemies” followed by a discussion moderated by Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson.


2019: Shir Gal Kochavi, the “Magnes museum curator” is scheduled to discuss “the impact of ritual Jewish objects on Polis artist Arthur Szyk’s work.”

2019: After having been “granted an 11th hour reprieve from the auction block, Marc Chagall’s La Tour Eiffel which has been on display at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in Ottawa” is scheduled to be returned to storage today.

This Day, March 19, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 19

235: End of the reign of Severus Alexander, the 26th Emperor of the Roman Empire

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1153-alexander-severus

1191: Eighty Jews were burned at Bray, France for trying to execute a vassal who had killed a Jew. The Jews were not a lynch-mob. They had the permission of the local ruler which is more than one can say for those who killed the Jews.

1227: Election of Pope Gregory IX “a prominent opponent of Judaism during his life, condemning it as "containing every kind of vileness and blasphemy". In the 1234 Decretals, he invested the doctrine of perpetua servitus iudaeorum – perpetual servitude of the Jews – with the force of canonical law. According to this, the followers of the Talmud would have to remain in a condition of political servitude until Judgment Day. The doctrine then found its way into the doctrine of servitus camerae imperialis, or servitude immediately subject to the Emperor's authority, promulgated by Frederick II. The Jews were thus suppressed from having direct influence over the political process and the life of Christian states into the 19th century with the rise of liberalism” (Dietmar Preissler, Frühantisemitismus in der Freien Stadt Frankfurt und im Großherzogtum Hessen (1810 bis 1860), p.30, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1989, ISBN 3-533-04129-8 (German).

1406: Seventy three year old Tunisian born “Arab historiographer and historian” Ibn Khaldun who described the Jarawa or Jrāwa, a Berber Zenata tribal confederacy that flourished in northwest Africa during the 7th century were Jews.

1497: In an effort to prevent the Jews from fleeing Christian persecutions, King Emanuel, secretly ordered the baptism of all children between the ages of four and fourteen.

1590: Birthdate of William Bradford who served as governor of Plymouth Colony for over 30 years. Bradford was typical of so many of his ilk who saw a connection with their lives and what they called “The Old Testament.”  Bradford studies the Hebrew language because, as he put it, “Though I am growne aged, yet I have had a longing desire to see with my owne eyes, something of that most ancient langue and holy tongue, in which the Law, the oracles of God were write; in which God, and angels spake to the holy patriarchs, of time; and what names were given to things, from the creation…for my owne contente.” (William Bradford: Plymouth’s Faithful Pilgrim by Gary D. Schmidt)

1640(24th of Adar): Rabbi Chaim Algazi of Constantinople, author of Nesivot ha-Mishpat passed away today. A native of Ismir, Turkey, Chaim Algazai served as the rabbi of Rhodes before returning to his home town to serve as Chief Rabbi.  B’nei Chayay, his commentary on the Four Turim, was edited by Rabbi Araron Alfandri, his granddaughter’s husband and the author of Yad Aaron (As reported by Aryeh Kaplan)

1684: Birthdate of Jean Astruc, the French Catholic doctor and descendant from a medieval Jewish family “who wrote the first great treatise on syphilis and venereal diseases” and one of the founders of “modern Pentateuch criticism” who contended that Moses and the copyists created a book that was based on two separate sets of documents – one that used Elhiom for the name of the divinity and the other that used YHWH for the name of the divinity.

1721: The Papacy of Clement XI, who issued a bull extending the rights of converts over their Jewish families, ended today.

1772(14th of Adar II, 5532): Purim

1800: Montague Levoi married Catherine Chapman today at the Great Synagogue.

1803 :( 25th of Adar): Rabbi Moses ben Abraham, author of Meliz Yosher passed away today.  

1804: Sir Alexander Schomberg, the son of Meyer Löw Schomberg a German-Jewish doctor who settled in England, and who began his distinguished naval career in 1743 after becoming an Anglican passed away today

1806: Jacob Hirsch Kann, the son of Miriam and Isaac Jacob Kann and his wife Jetta Kann gave birth to Theresie Wetheim, the wife of Bernhard Wertheimer

1807: Birthdate of Louis Félicien Joseph Caignart de Saulcy the French archaeologist who made several trips to Palestine and Syria from 1850 to 1869 where among other things he “sketched the first map of Masada,” “identified Tell es-Sultan as the site of ancient Jericho” and “conducted the first archaeological dig” at “the Tombs of the Kings in Jerusalem.”

1817: Aaron Goldsmid married Sophia Salomons at the Great Synagogue today.

1821: In Devon, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton and Martha Baker gave birth to Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton one of those eccentric 19thEnglishman who dabbled in the military, exploration and writing. Among his many works was The Jew The Gypsy and El Islam

1822: Seventy-four year old Johann Ludwig Ewald an advocate for Jewish emancipation “who wrote two pamphlets in defense of the Jews” and who “argued that the Jews were not worse than others, that their shortcomings were the result of persecution, and that no one had a right to expect them to improve until they had been given equal rights with other citizens” passed away in Carlsruhe.

1822: Boston, Massachusetts, incorporated as a city. “The earliest mention of a Jew in Massachusetts bears the date May 3, 1649, and there are references to Jews among the inhabitants of Boston in 1695 and 1702; but they can be regarded only as stragglers, as no settlers made their homes in Massachusetts until the Revolutionary war drove the Jews from Newport. In 1777 Aaron Lopez and Jacob Rivera, with fifty-nine others, went from Newport to Leicester, and established themselves there; but this settlement

did not survive the close of the war. A number of Jews, including the Hays family, settled at Boston before 1800. Of these Moses Michael Hays was the most important. In 1830 a number of Algerian Jews went to Boston, but they soon disappeared. The history of the present community begins with the year 1840, when the first congregation was established.”

1831: Birthdate of Joshua Glaser, who gained fame as Julius Anton Glaser who converted to Christianity and became a leading Austrian jurist “and liberal politician.”

1832: “Baltimorean Mendes I. Cohen,” who while on his six year tour of Europe and the Middle East become “one of the first American citizens to visit to Palestine” wrote a letter to his mother Judith while in Jerusalem.

1832: Birthdate of Hungarian Hermann Wamberger who gained famed Ármin Vámbéry whose son Rusztem “briefly served as Hungary’s ambassador to the United States after WW II.”

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Vambery_Armin

http://tabriz-rugs-tabriz-carpets.com/History/Arminius_Vambery.htm

1839: A “pogrom, known as the Allahdad, broke out in the Iranian city of Mashhad. At the time of the pogrom, the city of Mashhad was home to about 2,500 Jews. The event devastated the Jews of Mashhad, who were violently forced into converting to Islam. The ruler of Mashhad ordered the authorities to attack the Jews. A large mob went on to the Jewish quarter and proceeded to burn down the synagogue, destroy Jewish homes and businesses, abduct Jewish girls, kill about 40 Jews and injure many more. The Jews had knives held to their throat and were forced to renounce Judaism and accept Islam. While some of the Jews left Mashhad following the incident, others stayed and would go on to lead a secret Jewish life. While adopting Muslim customs in public, most would maintain Jewish tradition in the privacy of their homes. There are no Jews left in Mashhad today. Most of the descendants of Mashhad's Jews live in Israel.”

1843: Three days after she had passed away, 79 year old Jane (Mordecai) Friedeberg, the widow of Benjamin Friedeberg was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1848(14thof Adar II, 5608) Purim

1848: Birthdate of Wyatt Earp. Born in Monmouth, Illinois, this fabled lawman gained fame as the Marshall of Deadwood, Dodge City and Tombstone, Arizona. Much of Earp's life was spent as a gambler, prospector and failed businessman. He was not Jewish, but his third wife was. While living in Tombstone, Earp took up with Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp, daughter of practicing Jewish family living in San Francisco. Despite her claims that they married, no written record existed. However, they remained together, if nothing else in common law marriage until Earp's death in 1929. Earp's ashes were buried in the Marcus Family Plot at Jewish Hills of Eternity Cemetery in Colma, California, south of San Francisco. While Ms. Earp did not live among Jews for most of her adult life, she too chose to rejoin her people in death and is buried alongside her famous husband. For more about this interesting marriage you can read I Married Wyatt Earp,Mrs. Earp's book about their life together.

1848: One day after she had passed away, 42 year old Mary (Emanuel) Drukker, the wife of Simon Drukker was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1849: Joseph Ansell Spier married Catherine Hyam today.

 

1853: Things turned violent in Jerusalem today, Palm Sunday. Greeks and Armenians fought in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and 24 Protestant missionaries from London scuffling with a group of Jews in the streets of the City of David.

1860: The "Wealth, Power and Enterprise of the Hebrew People, as evidenced by the Building of King Solomon's Temple," was the subject of a lecture delivered this evening in Temple Hall by Rabbi Raphall.

1862: The New York Timespublished a letter today in which took issue with that paper’s characterization of Senator David Levy Yulee as being Jewish. “In your well-merited rebuke of the traitor Yulee … you were led into an error which I am sure you will correct, as it reflects unjustly upon the loyalty of a large religious body of the community. You speak of Yulee, (the Ex-Senator) and Finegan (the ex-contractor) as "Jew and Irishman," thus placing the supposed religious belief of Yulee in juxtaposition with the nationality of his co-traitor. The facts are. Levy is an American, and foreswore the religion of his father’s many years ago, married a Christian lady of wealth, was baptized a Christian and had his name changed by the Legislature of his State to ‘Yulee’ thus adding to the many proofs, that a bad Jew will never make it good Christian.”

1864: In Jerusalem, “Yehoshua Yellin, one of the founders of the founders of the Nahalat Shiv'a neighborhood in Jerusalem and his wife Serah, the daughter of Shlomo Yehezkel Yehuda, an educator from Iraq” gave birth to David Yellin, the brother of Shlomo Yellin, the husband of the former Ita Pines whose son Avinoam “was murdered during the Arab Revolt” and whose Zionism found expression in his work to advance the Hebrew Language as can be seen by his founding of “the first Hebrew College for Teachers” and co-founding “the Hebrew Language Committee.”

1867: In Detroit, members of Congregation Beth El gave the trustees of Tabernacle Baptist Church $17,000 for their property which would be home to Beth El for the next 36 years.  D.J. Workum, President of the congregation and Martin Butzel were leaders of in the negotiations on behalf of Beth El.

1867: The Ashkenazim of living in Palestine sought permission to slaughter their own meat. The Ashkenazim appealed to the British to intervene on their behalf. In the formal letter of request to the Consul, it stated that both the Muslims (and the Sephardim) “understood that the Ashkenazim were not true Israelites." This concerned the Ashkenazim because they made money selling certain cuts of meat to the Muslims, and if the Muslims did not consider them Jews, they would not buy their meat.

1868: In Butrimonys, Albert and Judith Valvrojenski gave birth to Senda Valvrojenski who gained fame as Senda Berenson Abbot, a pioneer in the game of women’s basketball.  She was also the “sister of the art historian Bernard Berenson and a great-great-aunt of the photographer Berry Berenson and the actress and model Marisa Berenson.”

http://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/tag/senda-berenson-abbott

1868: Birthdate of Josef Schlussselberg, who in 1942 was transported from Prague to Terezin where he was murdered at the age of seventy-four.

1872: In Lithuania, David and Gittel Schubert gave birth to Fannie Shubert, a sister of the famous “Shubert brothers” who was the wife of Isaac Isaacs and William H. Weissager.

1873(20thof Adar, 5633): Sixty year economist Wilhelm Stahl who was elected to the Frankfort Parliament in 1848 and became a professor at the University of Giessen 3 years later passed away today.

http://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/tje/view.cgi?n=13960

1874(1st of Nisan, 5634): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1875: In New York’s Part II of the Marine Court Chief Just Shea presided over breach of contract brought by Jennie Jonas, a Polish Jewess against Victor Goldstein for his failure to marry him. Jonas was represented by famed litigator Samuel Hirsh. In the end, the jury found for the plaintiff and awarded her $75 in damages.

1875: Baruch and Fanny Rothschild gave birth to Hedwig Rothschild who became Hedwig Gutman when she married Bernhard Gutmann

1876: Sam and Sarah Nelken gave birth to their son William.

1877: It was reported today that the Marquis de Compiegne, the famous French explorer had died in the interior of Africa after having been mortally wounded during a duel he fought “with a German Jews named Mayer.” The duel was brought on by a dispute over geographic matters and insults to Mayer’s girlfriend.

1878(14th of Adar II, 5638): Purim

1878: In Mohileff, Russia, Tobias Weinshenker and Elka Markman gave birth to Esther T. Weinshenker who came to the Unied States in 1886 where she organized the Clara de Hirsch Society in Chicago and became the national chairman of the Ladies’ Organization of the Federation of American Zionists whose sixth and seventh conventions she attended as a delegate.

1880: It was reported today from Madrid, the Jews of Morocco are planning to honor the United States Minister who interceded on their behalf so that they would be protected by the Sultan.

1880: According to a review of “Sunshine and Storm in the East” published today, Lady Brassy reported that one of the difference between the Jews and Moslems of Morocco was that the Moslem women “were muffed up to the eyes and waddled along like animated bundles of dirty clothes” the Jewish women were “gorgeously draped” and their faces were uncovered.

1880: In New York the Board of Estimate and Apportionment allocated funds to be paid to charities taking care of youngster committed to their care by the Police magistrates including $1,691.43 for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.

1884: Birthdate of Galicia native Yiddish American playwright Sholem Perlmutter.

1887: Seventy four year old Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, the author of The Jew a romantic novel in which, “the Jews are made to stand as a kind of buffer between the Russians and the Poles and when the collision comes” between these two “it is generally the Jews who suffer” passed away today.

1888: Birthdate of Peretz Naftali, the native of Berlin who made Aliyah in 1933 and served in Israel’s first Knesset

1888(7th of Nisan, 5648): Forty-five year old Salomon Abendana Belmonte, the Hamburg born attorney who was editor of the Hamburger Reform and sever as a member of the Hamburg starting in 1877 passed away today.

1890: “Slaves of the Sweater” published today summarized the arbitration hearings between the striking members of the Shirtmakers’ Union and the contractors for whom they work. The workers claim they work fourteen hours a day for as little a four dollars a week.  The contractors claim that the workers only labor from 7:30 am to 6 pm with half an hour for dinner and that “a good female operative could make $9 a week and man $13.”  The work used to be done by “German, American and Irish girls” but they have been driven out by the Jews who are now on strike.  The manufacturers, most of whom are Jewish, claim they know nothing about working conditions because they deal only with the contractors.

1891: It was reported today that Solomon Goldstein and his three sons were among those fortunate enough to have survived the fire at the tenement building at the corner of Hester and Allen Streets but one of them, Abraham, was injured and had to be taken to Gouvernor Hospitals. 

1892: Jose S.K. Mizrachee, the Syrian born Jew charged with shooting Rabbi Mendes in New York City, is being held at Police Headquarter and is scheduled to make his first appearance in Part I of the Court of General Sessions this morning.

1893: An altercation broke out in New Haven, CT today after carpenters came to work on a house on Rose Street which was being converted to a synagogue.  The current occupants of the house claimed that the workers would disturb their Sabbath peace, this being Sunday and began attacking the workers and the Jews who accompanied them. 

1893: Following regular services at Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi Silverman delivered a lecture on “Popular Errors About Intermarriage” which is part of series of lectures he is delivering “on popular errors concerning the Jews.”

1894: Mrs. Charles Krumm took $20 out of the safe and saw her husband give it to Policman Charles Levy $20 (in what was either a bribe or payoff)

1894: Birthdate of Jiří (Georgo) Mordechai Langer

http://tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/186696/kafka-langer

1896: “Polish Jews Going to Cripple Creek” published today described the passage of 80 families, numbering 260 Polish Jewish immigrants who passed through Fort Worth Texas on their way to Cripple Creek where they going to begin life as farmers.

1896: In Albany, the State Board of Regents held its regular quarterly meeting during which it granted an “unregistered provisional charter to the Hebrew Free School” in Syracuse, NY.

1896: “The auction sale of seats and boxes for the performance of ‘The Heart of Maryland’ for the benefit of the Hebrew Infant Asylum was held at the Herald Square Theatre this afternoon.”

1897: It was reported today that new wing of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews which was completed six weeks ago cost $75,000 and allows the institution to care for as many as 300 people.

1897: The ladies of the Sewing Society of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum hosted an afternoon of entertainment for children at the facility on Amsterdam Avenue.

1897(15thof Adar II, 5657): Shushan Purim

1897(15thof Adar II, 5657): Seventy-one year old Ignaz “Ignatz” Grossman, the Hungarian born rabbi and husband of Anna Rosenbaum Grossbaum who came to Brooklyn in 1873 to lead Congregation Beth Elohim and later Congregation B’nai Abraham passed away today.

1897: Two days after she had passed away, Elizabeth Levi, the daughter of John Fileman and Mary Levy and the first wife of Henry Levi was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery

1897: It was reported today that the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia had raised $9,114 last year to support its programs that include weekly lectures by Ephraim Lederer on the U.S. Constitution.

1897: Four days after he had passed away, 82 year old James Sylvester was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1898:Benjamin "Ben" Schlesinger the native of Lithuania who would become the nine-time President of International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union became a United States citizen in Chicago today.

1898: Three Jewish children, Celia Bogin (11), Louis Begin (9) and Kate Bogin (4) whose mother had died two weeks ago in Denver were taken to headquarters of the United Hebrew Charities in New York by a cabman who found them on the street.

1899: Florence Prag a teacher at Lowell High School in San Francisco married Julius Kahn, a former Broadway actor, state legislator, and, at the time, a first-term U.S. Representative from San Francisco. The couple had two sons, Julius, Jr., and Conrad. She would later serve five terms in the U.S. House of Representative as a Republican after succeeding her husband in office following his death.

1900: Herzl has another meeting with Austrian Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber.

1901: In Paris, Leo Mielziner, an artist and the son of a Rabbi and the former Ella Friend gave birth to “American theatrical scenic and lighting designer” and convert to Catholicism Joseph “Jo” Mielziner, the “brother of actor-director Kenneth MacKenna.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/16/archives/jo-mielziner-dead-at-74-pioneering-set-designer-dozens-of-hits-a.html?_r=0

1901: Gladys Helen Rachel Goldsmid and Louis Samuel Montagu, 2nd Baron Swaythling gave birth to Captain (Hon) The Hon. Ewen Edward Samuel Montagu, RNR, the man who played a key role in the creating the subterfuge that helped make the landings for Operation Husky a success. After the war, Montague filled vital leadership roles for the Jewish community in the United Kingdom.

1903: In Lviv, Isaac Gruss, “a Talmudic scholar and a banker” and his wife gave birth to American financier and philanthropist Joseph Saul Gross, the husband of attorney Caroline Zelaznik, the father of Martin David Gross and Dr. Evelyn Gruss Lipper and the father-in-law of producer Kenneth Lipper.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/05/obituaries/joseph-gruss-91-philanthropist-who-supported-jewish-schools.html

1905(12th of Adar II): Yiddish novelist Isaac Moses Bader, the husband of Helen Bader and the father of playwright and journalist Gershon Bader passed away today.

1905: Governor N.C. Blanchard and Charles F. Buck, Grand Master of the Masons were among those delivering addresses of welcome at the opening of the meeting in New Orleans of “The Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith.”

1905: In Mannheim Luise Máthilde Wilhelmine (Hommel) and Albert Friedrich Speer gave birth to “Hitler’s architect” Albert Speer the member of the Nazi inner circle who beat the hangman by convincing people that he did not know about the fate of the Jews.

1906: A brief note had been received from French journalist Francis de Pressensé describing the demise of the six year old French weeklyL’European which provided Europeans with, among other things, an accurate account of events in Russia including “the Jewish massacres” and which included the prediction that following the Russian defeat by the Japanese, “one does not have be a prophet…to predict that it will be the Jews who will be called to account” and that the “Russian dupes” will release “the fury of revenge on the Jews.”

1906: “The Beauty of Bath” a musical comedy produced by Charles Frohman opened at the Aldwych Theatre.

1906: Cyrus L. Sulzberger told a group of Jewish women meeting at the home of Mrs. Benjamin Stern that “there a 700,000 Jews” living in this city but that only “only 4,000 contribute to Hebrew Charities”

1909: The Sultan ratifies election of the Hahambashi Haim Nahoum who had had an audience with the Turkish ruler.

1911(19thof Adar, 5671): Seventy year old Rabbi Immanuel Manchem Adler, the son of Rabbi Joseph Gabriel Adler and the husband of Judith Adler passed away today in Bavaria

1911: International Women’s Day was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire alone, there were 300 demonstrations. In Vienna, women paraded on the Ringstrasse and carried banners honoring the martyrs of the Paris Commune. Women demanded that women be given the right to vote and to hold public office. They also protested against employment sex discrimination.

1913: Lucille Lefurgey is scheduled to deliver a lecture this evening on “Hamlet” at the Chicago Hebrew Insitute.

1915: “The Jewish Weekly, edited by Herman Bernstein published a statement by the famous Danish author, Georg Brandes” describing the pogrom-like environment facing the Jews in Russian Poland.

1915: Reports published today estimate that there are between 250,000 and 400,000 Jews fighting in the Russian Army.

1915: As attempts were being made to form a Jewish fighting force in the British Army, Joseph Trumpeldor held a meeting of all the volunteers that was attended by senior British military leaders including Major-General Alexander Godly during which “theyheard how it would be the first time in British history that non-Britons or non-colonials were to be admitted as a unit into the British forces. Patterson explained that the soldier who carries ammunition and supplies to the trenches requires no less courage than the man who fires a rifle and Godley declared that ‘Today the English People have entered into a covenant with the Jewish People’ (As described by Martin Sugarman)

1915: The Young Men’s Hebrew Army and Navy Association announced today that it has obtained leave of absence for all Jewish sailors and soldiers attached to army and navy posts in and around New York for three days during Passover. Fifteen hundred sailors and soldiers will be able to celebrate the holiday with leaves of absence effective March 29, 30 and 31.

1916(14thof Adar II, 5676): Purim

1916(14thof Adar II, 5676): In Chicago, Henrietta Baach, he wife of Sigmund Baach passed away today.

1916: Birthdate of novelist Irving Wallace. His first best seller was the Chapman Report which caused a minor scandal for its time since it focused on a group of that was conducting a survey of sex habits. Other novels included The Man about the first African-American to become President and The Fan Club. Wallace passed away in 1990.

1916: At the Orpheum Theatre, the Jews of Baltimore responded to an appeal by Herman Bernstein on behalf of the “war sufferers in Poland” with “a shower of gold, banknotes and jewels” the proceeds of which will be turned over to the American Jewish Relief Committee.

1916: In New York City, the funeral for Rabbi Moses Guedalia was held followed by interment at Mount Neboh Cemetery, Cyprus Hills.

1916: This morning Rabbi Samuel Schulman, Felix M. Warburg, Judge Julian W. Mack and Abraham Shiman addressed those attending a celebration at Temple Beth-El marking the second anniversary of the founding of the Metropolitan League of the Young Men’s Hebrew and Kindred Associations.

1916: “One hundred and ten delegates from twenty cities in Pennsylvania met at the Arch Street Theater” in Philadelphia today” and chose delegates to represent the state at a conference to arrange for the “inaugural meeting of the American Jewish Congress” which will be held later this summer.”

1917: The new government ins Russia has accepted in principle reforms that will lead to
the re-enactment of the commercial treaty with the United States” which had not been possible under the Romanov dynasty because of “the insistence of Russia in applying to naturalized American Jews the same rules as to those Jews who are Russian subjects.”


1917: It was announced today that 8,000 tickets have been sold for a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden where “for the first time in the history of” New York City “thousands of Jewish refugees will assemble to cheer a Russian government.

1917: With Associate Justice Louis Brandeis voting with the majority, the US Supreme Court upheld the Adamson act which provided an 8-hour work day for railroad employees.

1918: Birthdate of Irving Schlossenberg, the native of Baltimore who was a photographer for the Washington Post and served with distinction as a combat photographer with the Marine Corps during five different Pacific landings.

1918: The Jewish Welfare Board announced today “that Jewish families in the vicinity of army cantonments would act as host to Jewish soldiers and sailors on March 27 and March 28 when most of them will have leaves of absence for Passover.”

1918: Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau, the semi-official voice of the German government sent out an account of the discussion held in the Main Committee of the Reichstag concerning the Lichnowsky memorandum written by the former German ambassador to Great Britain which was denounced as indiscreet and treasonable. Wolffs was founded by Bernhard Wolff, the son of a German Jewish banker. It was ironic that the British and German press services were both founded by German Jews. But Reuters, unlike Wolff, left his native home and his native religion.

1920: The United States rejected the Treaty of Versailles for the second time. This rejection helped paved the way for World War II and therefore for the Holocaust. At one level, the rejection signaled a turn to Isolationism which meant the United States would not do anything to curb the rise of fascism during the 1930’s. Rejection of the treaty also meant that the United States would not be joining the League of Nation which would render that international body d.o.a.

1922: Birthdate of Camden, NJ native Herbert Harvey Pollack, the graduate of Philadelphia’s Simon Gratz High and Temple University and NBA statistician who created the “Harvey Pollack NBA Statistical Yearbook.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/sports/basketball/harvey-pollack-a-statistician-in-nba-from-day-1-dies-at-93.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1923: In Lodz, Poland, Jewish socialists Josef and Golda Morgentaler gave birth to Henryk Morgentaler who survived and gained fame as Canadian Doctor Henry Morgentaler.

1924(13thof Adar II, 5684): Ta’anit Esther; erev Purim

1924: Birthdate of Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, a nationally prominent Reform rabbi known for his progressive, sometimes provocative public stances, including opposition to the Vietnam War, a speech at Yale accusing the University of a history of anti-Semitism and early political support for his neighbor Barack Obama. His mother was a social worker; his father, a tailor, died when Arnold was 7. For several years, starting when he was about 10, Arnold acted in national radio dramas broadcast from Chicago on the Mutual Broadcasting System. After receiving an associate’s degree from the University of Chicago, Arnold Wolf earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Cincinnati in 1945. He received his ordination from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1948 and later served as a Navy chaplain with United States occupation forces in Japan. In choosing his vocation, Rabbi Wolf had been greatly influenced by an uncle and a great-uncle, both Reform rabbis. (The great-uncle was the leader of the KAM congregation, a precursor of KAM Isaiah Israel. Founded in 1847, KAM took its name — an acronym for the Hebrew phrase “Kehilath Anshe Ma’arav,” “Congregation of the People of the West” — in tribute to its frontier origins.) In 1957, Rabbi Wolf became the first full-time rabbi of Congregation Solel, a Reform synagogue in Chicago. Guest speakers there over the years included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Chicago Seven, the seven defendants charged with inciting to riot and other offenses stemming from protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1965, the rabbi marched in Alabama with the civil rights leader John Lewis. Two years later, he led a group of congregants to Washington to lobby against the Vietnam War. Starting in the early 1960s, Congregation Solel conducted an annual weekend of Holocaust remembrance, among the first synagogues in the country to do so. In 1973, Rabbi Wolf helped found Breira, an organization of progressive American Jews that advocated a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The organization, whose name means “alternative” in Hebrew, was a target of frequent, bitter public attacks by American Zionists. It disbanded in 1977. Beginning in 1972, Rabbi Wolf spent eight years at Yale as a chaplain and the director of the university’s chapter of the Hillel Foundation, the Jewish student organization. In 1980, when he was preparing to leave Yale and return to Chicago, he delivered a blistering Yom Kippur sermon in which he charged the university with a “long and dishonorable history of anti-Semitism” and accused its administration of “callousness” toward the needs of Jewish students and faculty members. The sermon, and the university’s subsequent denial of Rabbi Wolf’s accusations, attracted wide public attention. At his death in 2009 at the age of 84, Rabbi Wolf was rabbi emeritus of KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation in Chicago, where he had served as rabbi from 1980 until his retirement in 2000.

1925: Sixty-five year old Hermann Volrath Hilprecht, the Assyriologist who was “in charge of the University of Pennsylvania Babylonian expedition to Nippur which provided a great deal of information about the civilization that produced Abraham.

1926: Birthdate of Jerold Rosenberg, who as Jerry Ross would gain fame as “an American lyricist and composer whose works with Richard Adler for the musical theater include The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, winners of Tony Awards in 1955 and 1956 respectively in both the "Best Musical" and "Best Composer and Lyricist."

1926: Birthdate of Avrom Isaacovitch, who as Avrom Isaacs became a leading Canadian art dealer.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/av-isaacs-leading-art-dealer-in-contemporary-canadian-art-dies-at-89/article28231438/

1926: The Möller Organ Company of Hagerstown, MD signed a contract in which it “agreed to build a three-manual organ with 64 registers” for Temple Israel of Washington Heights.

1927: “According to Palestine correspondence printed” today “in the Jewish Day” “nearly 271 years afer Baruch Spinoza…was excommunicated by the Jewish community in Amsterdam, the ban was revoked when Dr. Joseph Klausner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem uttered the formula of release at a meeting of the university faculty” in February.

1928: In Epinal, France, two refugees from Poland, gave birth to Marceline Loridan-Ivens, the survivor of Drancy and Auschwitz who make them the subject of cinematic work. (As reported by Alissa J. Rubin)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/obituaries/marceline-loridan-ivens-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1930: Birthdate of Eugene Bleecher Selznick, the native of Los Angeles who was captain of the United States men's national volleyball team for 17 consecutive years (1953–67 during which time he team won two Volleyball World Championships.

1930: The former Lenore Lebach and Edmond Nathaniel Cahn the son of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Kahn, who were married yesterday by Rabbi Louis Binstock are scheduled to set sail today from New Orleans for a Havana honeymoon after which the couple will reside in New York.

1930: Harry Warner and his wife the former Rea Levinson “became the legal guardian of Lita”, the daughter of his late brother Sam “through a $300,000 settlement in Lita’s trust fund.”

1933: In Newark, NJ, Herman Roth, a frustrated life insurance agent and “the former Bess Frankel” gave birth to award winning novelist Philip Milton Roth, author of Portnoy’s Complaint. His writings can be loaded with sex, guilt, humor and plenty of pathos. Two of his more famous novels were Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye Columbus. He won the National Book Award for Goodbye Columbus in 1955 and Sabbath's Theatre in 1995. As somebody once, Roth is funny until you realize that Portnoy and you have the same mother. (As reported by Charles McGrath)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/obituaries/philip-roth-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1933(21st of Adar, 5693): Phillip Jaffe, the father of Hyman Jaffe and Pulitzer Prize winning editor Louis Jaffe passed away today.

1933: Estee Lauder gave birth to her son Leonard who became Chairman Emeritus of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

1933: The state of Nevada legalized gambling. One of the results of this would be Bugsy Siegel’s building of the Flamingo which led to the creation of Las Vegas, the gaming capital of the United States.

1934: The New York Times features John Chamberlain’s excellently written review of "The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger. He describes the text as being “that rare thing, a novel…that is both good propaganda and first-rate dramatic writing.” The novel paints a picture of a well-to-do German Jewish family confronting the rise of Hitler. In his concluding lines, Chamberlain writes, “You won’t discover the reasons for Hitler in the Oppermanns, but you will discover Nazism’s ghoulish incidence in the wreckage of many human lives and hopes.”

1935(14thof Adar II, 5695): Purim

1935: Birthdate of actress of Phyllis Newman

1936: Hitler placed an American citizen, Fritz Julius Kuhn, as the head of the Nazi organization that became known as party the German American Bund.

1936: In Warsaw, “a government amendment to the proposed bill on ritual slaughtering permitting this method of killing for the consumption of members of religious denominations requiring was approved the Sjem Committee on Adminstration.”

1936: “A group of 115 Jewish exiles from Germany, the second large group to reach” the United States as quota immigrants with the last two weeks arrived” today on the United States liner Manhattan.

1936: Approximately 5,300 children from the Jewish religious schools in New York are scheduled to attend a pageant portraying “historical episodes illustrating the evolution of the tradition of Jewish charity from Old Testament times to the present” at the Roxy Theatre sponsored by “the young men’s and women’s division of the federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies and the Jewish Education Association.”

1937: The Jerusalem Post reported on widespread violence and that a curfew was imposed in Jerusalem. Four Arab building workers were injured when an Arab, who was caught later by police, threw a bomb at them on their construction site in the Mea She’arim quarter. There were many other shooting and stabbing incidents. The Arab Higher Committee issued a statement calling for calm in a period in which "enemies of the nation were striving to incite Arabs by provocations."

1937: After spending six weeks in the United States where he worked to help the Palestine Appeal “raise $4,500,000 for the settlement of Jews of Poland, German and other lands” it was reported today that Eliezer Kaplan, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency for Palestine has set sail on the Normandie on the first league of his return trip to Jerusalem.

1938(16thof Adar II, 5698): Parashat Tzav

1938: In his sermon today Temple Rodeph Sholom, Rabbi Louis I. Newman said President Roosevelt “should voice his disapproval of the oppression of monitories and summon freemen throughout the the world to hold together for the preservation of civil rights.”

1938: Rabbi William Margolis the “spiritual leader of the United Jewish Community in Ottawa delivered a sermon at the Jewish Center of New York in which he said, “America, paragon of democracy must in the current human crisis take the lead and set the example for other civilized nations.”

1938: Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein delivered a sermon at Congregation Kehilath Jeshrun warned of the danger that Russia was the only nation calling for “a world conference against dictatorships’ and called on the United States to take the lead in the endeavor.

1939: Dr. Armin a Holzer of Seattle, the founder of the Palestine Prayer Fellowship is scheduled to deliver a speech on “The Resurrection of Biblical Ant-Semitism and the Solution of the Jewish Problem” at a rally at the Hotel Sharon in New York.

1939: “Signs forbidding Jews to enter plastered man restaurant and shop doors” as celebrations took place today in Nazi controlled Danzig marking the German conquest of Czechoslovakia.

1939: Birthdate of Judy Rae Glassman, the native of Cambridge, MA, who gained fame as Judith Daniel, the founding editor-in-chief of Savvy magazine.

1940: In what must have seemed to have been a miraculous rescue, Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe arrives in New York. The Friediker Rebbe was a man of great physical and spiritual courage. He battled the Bolsheviks on their home ground and then stayed with his Chassidim when the Nazis invaded Poland. When he arrived in the United States, he immediately opened the first Lubavitch Yeshiva in the United States despite warnings that he would fail because America was so different from Europe. The Rebbe preserved against great odds. The small community that he had the fortitude to start in Crown Heights became the Chabad Lubavitch movement that today circles the globe.

1940: Vladimir Jabotinsky addressed a crowd of more than 5,000 supporters in New York demanding the “restoration of a Jewish state” in the area under British Mandate.

1941(20th of Adar, 5701): Rafal Krzepicki, aged 34, was shot dead by a sentry at the Lodz ghetto

1942: “Levine Asks for Tine Payment” published in the Los Angeles Times described Charles Levine’s last brush with the law.

http://www.jewishmag.com/123mag/jewish-aviators/jewish-aviators.htm

1943: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem broadcast from Rome to the “Arab World.” It was the birthday of the Prophet and Haj Amin used the occasion to try to stir up anti-Jewish hatred. His speech included the reading of a pledge from German Foreign Minister Jachim von Ribbentropt that “the obliteration of what is called the Jewish National Home was a basic tenet of German policy.”

1943:Dimitar Peshev, who would be honored as a “Righteous Among the Nations”introduced a parliamentary resolution to halt the deportation of the Jews.

1944: Martha Nierenberg and her entire family go into hiding with a friend in Budapest when the Nazis invaded her native Hungary.

1944: During World War II, the Wehrmacht occupies Hungary. Hungary had been a willing ally of the Germans. By 1944, the Hungarians saw the signs of impending defeat and attempted to surrender. The Nazis realized what was happening, occupied the country and made sure that a sympathetic Hungarian government stayed in power. This shift marked the beginning of the end of the Hungarian Jewish community. Thanks to the Hungarian government, the Jews of Hungary had been spared the Final Solution. Now Eichmann and his henchmen were on their way and “The Night” would become reality.

1944: The Germans arrested 200 Hungarian Jewish doctors and lawyers. This was Germany's first independent action in that Country. The Gestapo then set up activities in hundreds of Hungarian towns. They threatened thousands of prosperous Jews with death if they did not pay “a homage” of valuable belongings and money to the Gestapo.

1945:Mrs. Z. H. Rubinstein President of the Brooklyn chapter of Hadassah announced today that the group had met its goal of raising $200,000 which will be used to fund five projects underway in Palestine.

1945: As World War II was coming to an end “Adolf Hitler issues his "Nero Decree" ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed.”

1946: Economist Elisha Friedman writes to Winston Churchill telling him how deeply he had been moved to hear the British leader refer to himself as a Zionist.

1947(27thof Adar, 5707): Seventy-nine year old Abraham L. Saltzstein, who in 1884 came from his native Poland to the United States, finally settling in Milwaukee where he became a “general agent for the New Mutual Life Insurance Company of Wisconsin” passed away today.

1947: At a meeting of editors held in Tel Aviv today, journalists discussed the warnings of terrorist groups not to publish an offer of a reward by police that was designed to lead to the capture of 18 wanted terrorists. Names on the list include Menachem Begin head of the Irgun and Nathan Friedman head of the Stern Gang. In a letter delivered to 12 Jewish newspapers, the terrorists said that publication would be treated as collaboration and dealt with accordingly. Because they were afraid for the safety of their staffs, the editors agreed no to voluntary publish the list but said they would have no choice but to comply under the law if requested to do so by the government.

1948(8thof Adar II, 5708): Eighty-nine year old Helen Goldmark Adler, the widow and “helpmate” of Dr. Felix Adler whose “book An Outline for Child Study, Intelligently Directed Observation for Mothers was one of the first manuals of its kind” and who was the mother of Waldo, Laurence, Eleanor and Margaret Adler passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/03/21/96588695.pdf

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/adler-helen-goldmark

1948: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Warren Austin told the Security Council “that the United States no longer viewed the partition plan as viable.”  (The only problem was that nobody had told President Truman who would express his anger over what he considered an end-run around the White House by the State Department.

1948: “British military authorities urgently strengthened patrols late tonight as both Arabs and Jews agreed that the United States proposal to abandon partition would bring a blood bath to the Holy Land.”

1950: Leah and Yitzhak Rabin gave birth to Israeli attorney and MK Dalia Rabin-Pelossof

1951: Herman Wouk's Caine Mutiny was published. The popular Jewish author has two great loves – the U.S. Navy and Judaism. This affection shows in his literary efforts.

1952: Birthdate of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax

1952: The Jewish Agency announced that Jews emigrating from East European countries would be admitted to the country without any restrictions imposed by the new, selective immigration policy.

1954(14thof Adar II, 5714): Purim

1954: The Jewish Chronicle reported on plans for an exhibition entitled “Manchester and Israel – a city’s contribution to the birth a State” which coincided with the 50th anniversary of Chaim Weizmann’s arrival in the English industrial city.

1954: Birthdate of Jill Abramson, the first woman to serve as executive editor of The New York Times.

1955: U.S. premiere of “Blackboard Jungle” a movie that gave suburban America one of its first cinematic looks at inner city schools directed by Richard Brooks who also wrote the script, produced by Pandro S. Berman and featuring the film debut of Vic Morrow.

1957: Producer David O. Selznick sent a memo to John Huston expressing his concerns with the filming of “A Farewell To Arms” – concerns that would lead to Huston resigning and being replaced by Charles Vidor. (Vidor and Selznick were Jewish.  Huston was not.  But this had nothing to do with the dispute)

1959:First Impressions, a musical with music and lyrics by George Weiss and Bo Goldman and a book by Abe Burrows, who also directed the musical” opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre.

1960: After 452 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Redhead,” a musical with music by Albert Hauge, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, who along with Herbert Fields and Sidney Sheldon also wrote the book.

1959: “Shaggy Dog,” a Disney comedy based on a novel by Felix Salten, featuring Jack Albertson and featuring an opening narrative by Paul Frees was released today in the United States.

1960(20thof Adar, 5720): Shabbat Parah

1960(20thof Adar, 5720): Seventy-one year old Russian-born American screenwriter Sonya Levien passed away today.

https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-sonya-levien/

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/levien-sonya

1961: In Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, “Clair (née Sims), a concert pianist, and Leonard Friedman, a violinist for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra” gave birth to three time Olivier Award winning actress Maria Friedman.

1962(13thof Adar II, 5722): Fast of Esther.

1962: Bob Dylan's self-titled debut album was released. The five time Grammy winner was born Robert Zimmerman.

1962: Funeral services were held to in New York for “Rabbi Clifton H. Levy, the oldest past president of the New York Board of Rabbis.” (As reported by JTA)

1962: The Broadway production of “All American,” “a musical with a book by Mel Brooks and music by Charles Strouse opened at the Winter Garden Theatre.

1964: U.S. premiere of “The World of Henry Orient” co-starring Peter Sellers and Tom Bosley, with music by Elmer Bernstein and filmed by cinematographer Boris Kaufman.

1965: Two days before the Selma march was scheduled to begin, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel received a telegram from Reverend Martin Luther King, inviting him to join the marchers in Selma, Alabama who are seeking the right to vote for all Americans regardless of race, religion or creed. Heschel will go, “praying with his feet.” These demonstrations will help Lyndon Johnson to secure passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most sweeping and far-reaching pieces of legislation passed in the history of the United States.

1968: CBS broadcast the last episode of “Good Morning World,” a sitcom whose creators included Carl Reiner and Sheldon with some of the episodes written by James L. Brooks and Saul Turtletaub and co-starring Goldie Hawn.

1969: One day after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held in NYC for seventy-two year Harvard alum and Navy Veteran from WW I and WW II Kassel Lewis, the founder of Crown Fabrics and husband of “the former Syliva Surut who is the director the YMHA/YWHA nursery” with whom he raised a daughter and a son – Anthony Lewis of the New York Times


1970(11th of Adar II, 5730): Ta'anit Esther

1970(11thof Adar II, 5730): Sixty-four year old motion picture attorney Isadore H. Prinzmetal, the son of Harry and Anna Stein Prinzmetal and the brother of Myron Prinzmetal who “was a founding member of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara and had served on the Citizens” and “the national vice president of the American Jewish Council as well as the President of the Los Angeles Hillel Council passed away today.

1970: Writer and activist Grace Paley was among 182 people arrested in New York City for protesting the Vietnam War draft

1970: In Canada, Bora Laskin began serving as Pusine Justice of the Supreme Court.

1973(15thof Adar II, 5733): Shusahn Purim

1975: U.S. premiere of “The Yakuza” directed and produced by Sydney Pollack, featuring Herb Edelman

1976(17thof Adar II, 5736): Seventy-five year old Harvard and Oxford education David Wainhouse, “international lawyer, author and Deputy Assistant of State” who was the husband of the former Katherine Cohen” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/21/archives/david-wainhouse-a-lawyer-diplomat.html

1977: "Side by Side by Sondheim" closes in New York City after 390 performances

1978: UN Security Council Resolutions adopted resolutions 425 and 426. They called upon Israel to immediately cease its military action and withdraw its forces from all Lebanese territory while establishing the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Like so many UN resolution, this one failed to address the reasons that forced the Israelis to take action in the first place.

1981(13thof Adar II, 5741): T’anit Esther and erev Purim occur for the first time during the Presidency of Ronald Regan.

1983: In German, TN, at Temple Israel, Rabbi Harry Danziger officiated at the Miriam Gerber and Dr. David Bertram Kaplan.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/20/style/miriam-gerber-marries-dr-bertram-david-kaplan.html

1985(26th of Adar, 5745): Eighty-seven year old Dr. Philip Reichert, M.D, who had married Helen Reichert in 1939, passed away.

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/23/nyregion/dr-aaron-feder-dies-internist-and-professor.html

1985(26thof Adar, 5745): Sixty-nine year old NYU Alum and University of Maryland Medical School trained physician Aaron Feder the internist and Cornell Medical School professor who was the husband of “the former of Beatrice Wallance” with whom he raised two daughters – Carol and Jane – passed away today.

1986:Jack Mathieu Émile Lang completed his first term as Culture Minister of France.

1987(18th of Adar, 5747): Arch Oboler, “an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer and director who was active in radio, films, theater and television, passed away. He generated much attention with his radio scripts, particularly the horror series Lights Out, and his work in radio remains the outstanding period of his career. Praised as one of broadcasting's top talents, he is regarded today as a key innovator of radio drama. Radio historian John Dunning wrote, "Few people were ambivalent when it came to Arch Oboler. He was one of those intense personalities who are liked and disliked with equal fire." A native of Chicago, Oboler was the son of Leon Oboler and Clara Oboler, Jewish immigrants from Riga, Latvia.”

1989: “Marvin Hamlisch to Marry Ms. Blair, Producer in May” published today reported on the plans of independent television producer Terre Blair the daughter of Marie and Dr. William B. Blair to marry Oscar winning composer Marvin Hamlisch, “the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Max Hamlisch of New York” to wed in two months.

1993: Arnold Resnicoff “delivered the prayer for the commissioning of the first of a series of new Israeli missile boats (Sa'ar 5), jointly built by the U.S. and Israel, in Ingalls Shipyard, Pascagoula, Mississippi.”

1998: As Ronald Perelman worked to finalize his purchase of Sunbeam a press release was issued that Sunbeam would not meet sales expectations.

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback editions of Max Frankel’s "The Times of My Life: And My Life With The Times" and Thane Rosenbaum's "Second Hand Smoke", a “novel about the son of Holocaust survivors who grows up in a home dominated by his tormented mother and later becomes a Nazi-hunting lawyer.”

2001:Patrick Balkany began serving as Mayor of Levallois-Perret

2002: 1st Lt. Tal Zemach, 20, of Kibbutz Hulda, was killed and three soldiers were injured when Palestinian terrorists opened fire on them in the Jordan Valley. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

2003: A West End revival of “Ragtime,” a musical based on the book by E.L. Doctorow produced, by Sonia Friedman opened at the Piccadilly Theatre today.

2003: David Tepper announced that he would make a single donation of $55 million to Carnegie Mellon University's business school

2003: The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors sends a letter to the Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Canada addressing the next steps to be taken in the distribution and use of funds from the Claims Conference that has worked to gain additional restitution for the victims of the Holocaust.

2003: Mahmoud Abbas became the new Palestinian Prime Minister. His appointment was supposed to mark a new phase in peace negations. Without Arafat's support, he, like the peace process at that time, was doomed to failure. He finally resigned.

2003: Zion Boshirian, 51, of Mevo Dotan was shot and killed while driving in his car between Mevo Dotan and Shaked in northern Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

2004: “George Khoury, 20, a Christian Arab and the son of well-known veteran attorney Elias Khoury of Beit Hanina, was shot to death from a vehicle while jogging in the north Jerusalem neighborhood of French Hill. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which claimed responsibility for the attack, later published an apology.” (Jewish Virtual Library)

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including "The Doctor’s Daughter" by Hilma Wolitzer and "Anna of All the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova" by Elaine Feinstein

2006: The Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace began in Seville, Spain.

2007: While the world's cricketing powers are engaged in the World Cup, history is being made today when for the first time an Israeli team steps out onto the cricket fields of India.

2007: The lawyers for Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was charged with murdering Daniel Pearl, “cited the confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who said he had “decapitated…the American Jew Daniel Pearl” as proof that while their client had been involved he had not done the actually killing and therefore should not be executed.

2008: "Regina Waldman, an executive committee member of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, appeared before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where she testified about her family' flight from Libya after the Second World War."

2008: Eric Alterman, a professor of English and journalism at the City University of New York, discusses and signs Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America at Prose Bookstore, in Washington, D.C.

2008: In New York, the 92nd Street Y features a presentation by Edward Kaplan entitled “Spiritual Radical: On Abraham Joshua Heschel.”

2009: As part of the Blavatnik Chamber Concert Series, The Center for Jewish History and the Leo Baeck Institute present: “Women in Song: From Baroque to the Present” performed by the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble under the direction of Vassa Shevel and Inessa Zaretsky. The evening features songs by Felix's sister Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel along with other women composers from Germany, France and America.

2009: Elena Kagan completed her service as the 11th Dean of Harvard Law School.

2009: By a vote of 61 to 31, the United States Senate confirmed the appointment of Elena as Solicitor General of the United States, making her the first woman to hold this position.

2009: A revival of the 1950’s musical “West Side Story” opens on Broadway directed by Arthur Laurents, the 92 year old Brooklyn born Jew whose views about the world of American theatre are readily available in his recently published book, Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals”

2009: An anonymous American Jewish investor celebrated his eldest son’s Bar Mitzvah which took place this morning at the Western Wall by contributing a Torah scroll to the Samarian outpost community of El Matan, next to Ma’aleh Shomron and Ginot Shomron. The name of the community means “G-d’s Gift” in Hebrew, and the donor, a man of Moroccan descent, said that the mitzvah of giving the holy scroll is all the recognition he needs.

http://www.capeverdejewishheritage.org/old_site/uploads/Cape_Verde_Jewish_Heritage_Project_Launched_-_JTA_-_Jewish___Israel_News.pdf

http://capeverdejewishheritage.org/

2009:  “Cape Verde Heritage Project Launched” published today described “an effort to preserve the Jewish heritage in Cape Verde” that “was formally launched in Washington.”

2010: Itzhak Perlman, the IPO and Emmanuel Halperin perform together this morning in Tel Aviv.

2010: Previews of “Sondheim on Sondheim” are scheduled to begin Studio 54.

2010: Elephant Parade, one of an unprecedented eight bands imported from Israel for the sole purpose of taking part in this year’s SXSW (South by Southwest) festival is scheduled to play at Stephen F’s Bar.

2010: The opening reception for "My Father's Microcosm, Tel Aviv", a photographic installation by Israeli photographer Yossi Guttmann and curated by Eva Grudin is scheduled to take place this evening at The Williams Club of New York.

2010: The Air Force hit six targets in Gaza early this morning in response to recent rocket attacks on southern Israel.

2010: Israeli-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has succeeded in acquiring German generic drug maker Ratiopharm for $4.9 billion, beating out U.S. drug firms Pfizer and Actavis of Iceland in the bidding that ended today.

2010: David Adelman was confirmed as United States Ambassador to Singapore. Adelman holds a B.A. from the University of Georgia in 1986, a JD from Emory University in 1989 and an MPA from Georgia State University in 1995. He is a former Democratic member of the Georgia State Senate, representing the 42nd District from 2002 to 2010. He was Minority Whip.

2010(4thof Nisan, 5770): Ninety-five year old George Lane, the husband of Miriam Rothschild, who earned the rank of Colonel while serving as a commando with SOE in WW II passed away today.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary-colonel-george-lane-1-798235

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/7528727/Colonel-George-Lane.html

 

 

2011: Civilian areas in southern Israel were heavily shelled by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza this morning, when more than 50 mortars were fired at the regional councils of Sha'ar Hanegev, Eshkol and Sdot Hanegev.

2011: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman instructed Israel's United Nations envoy to lodge a formal complaint with the organization after Israel was hit by over 50 mortars fired from Gaza this morning.

2011: “Yiddush Cup” is scheduled to play tonight at Park Synagogue in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

2011(13th of Adar II, 5771): Shabbat Zachor

2011: In the evening, the Megillah is read as Purim celebrations begin.

2011(13th of Adar II, 5771): Sixty-three year old Larry Friedlander who founded Reason Magazine passed away today.(As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/us/07friedlander.html

2012: The Women’s Conference sponsored by Temple Torah is scheduled to open at West Boyton Beach, Florida.

2012: “Mabul” and “Little Simco’s Big Fantasy” are scheduled to be shown at the 16th New York Sephardic Film Festival.

2012(25thof Adar, 5222): Eighty-three year old Belgian born American director and producer Ulu Grosbard passed away today in New York,.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/arts/music/ulu-grosbard-broadway-and-film-director-dies-at-83.html?_r=0

2012: In Jerusalem, The Off The Wall Comedy Club is scheduled to host “Jerusalem Blend,” featuring Elazar ‘Dr. Jazz’ Brandt & Benny Firszt ‘Jerusalem’s Poet’

2012(25thof Adar, 5222): In Toulouse, Mohamed Merah opened fire on two Jewish pupils, their father and the headmaster’s daughter at Otzar Hatorah which is now called Ohr Torah School.

2012(25th Adar, 5772): Yahrtzeit for those who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

2013: The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Distinguished Speakers series is scheduled to present “Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man” featuring Walter Stahr and Louis P. Masur

2013(8thof Nisan, 5773): Eighty-nine year old ”the matriarch of the last of the grand Catskill resorts, who greeted guests with a “Welcome home,” made sure the regulars got rooms facing the lake, entertained them with comedians and filled them with blintzes and stuffed cabbage” passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/nyregion/helen-kutsher-matriarch-of-a-catskills-resort-dies-at-89.html?_r=1&


2013:The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, newly installed as Pope Francis I, opened his speech at today’s Papal inauguration with a nod to the Jewish community, saying say he was speaking “with the permission of the diplomatic corps, the Jews who are with us and all the rest,” according to Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. A delegation of leaders of Jewish communities from around the world, including Rabbinate Director General Oded Weiner, was on hand at the Vatican today when Bergoglio officially took office as the leader of the world’s more than 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. (As reported by Sam Sokol)

2013:The remains of 17 bodies, discovered at the bottom of a well in the city of Norwich in 2004, were given a Jewish burial in Earlham Cemetery in Norwich today.

2013: A day after being sworn into office, Israel’s incoming ministers today celebrated a series of changing-of-the-guard ceremonies at their respective ministries, ushering in Israel’s 33rd government. The first ceremony took place at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, where incoming minister Moshe Ya’alon replaced Ehud Barak at the helm.

2013: The Jerusalem Art Festival is scheduled to present “Cairo Circus”

http://www.jerusalem.muni.il/jer_sys/ArtCenter/ArtFestival/alle.htm

2013: In New York, the Anastasia Photo Gallery is scheduled to host its first show featuring the works of Israeli photographer Natan Dvir

http://www.natandvir.com/

2014: In a sign of the changing times for Jewish institutions, in Olney, MD. Jewish Social Service Agency is scheduled to host an evening on “The Secrets to a Successful Job Search” at Shaare Tefila Congregation.

2014: “La Verite si Je Mens #3” (“Would I Like to You #3”) is scheduled to be shown at the New York Jewish Sephardic Film Festival.

2014: “”Aftermath” is scheduled to be shown at the Houston (TX) Jewish Film Festival.

2014: Ninety-five year old Robert S. Strauss, the Texas born Washington insider and diplomat passed away today.


2014: Seventieth Anniversary of the German Occupation of Budapest.


2014: The IAF attacked serval sites on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights overnight that “had aided and abetted the attack against IDF soldiers and included artillery batteries and a training camp belonging to the Syrian army.” (As reported by Elad Benari)

2014: “A bill that would allow local rabbis to oversee conversions to Judaism in Israel passed the Kneseet’s Constituion, Law and Justice Committee today.”

2014: “Two former senior IDF officers were held by police for questioning today on suspicion of deliberately destroying evidence connected with the Harpaz affair, a corruption scandal involving Israel’s political and military leaderships during 2009 to 2011.

2014: Russell Crowe, the star of “Noah” who had been pushing for a meeting with the Pope got his wish granted, sort of, today when he, producer Darren Aronofsky and Paramount Pictures Vice President Rob Moore were “on hand for the pope’s general audience” today followed by a “short meet-and-greet with the Pope.”  The trio hopes that the visit with the Pope will still some of the controversy created by a call for a boycott of the film by Muslims and Evangelicals.

2015(28th of Adar, 5775): Seventy-two year old Boston radio “gadfly” Danny Schechter passed away today.


2015: The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a talk “featuring Steven Fenves, who survived internment in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald before being liberated by American soldiers.”

2015: “A new documentary ‘Philip Roth: Unmasked’” is scheduled to be performed for the last time at New York City’s Film Forum.

2015: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “an eveing of live music and feminist Torah celebrating the release of Girls in Trouble’s new album, ‘Open Ground.’”

2015: The 18th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end in NYC.

2015: The Jewish Theological Seminary is scheduled to host a lecture on "Race, Bias and Equal Justice in America"

2015: The Canadian Haggadah Canadienne is scheduled to go on sale in Ottawa.

2016(9thof Adar II, 5776: Parahsat Vayikra and Shabbat Zachor;

2016(9thof Adar II, 5776): Three Israelis – Yonathan Shuer, 40; Simha Dimir, 60; Avraham Goldman, 69 – were killed and another 11 Israelis were wound in a terror attack today in Istanbul.

2016(9thof Adar II, 5776): Eighty-five year old Bob Adelman, the photographer best known for the images he captured of the Civil Rights struggle passed away today.



2016: The tour “Jews in the American South” is scheduled to begin today in Charleston, SC.

2016: “Rock in the Red Zone” is scheduled to be shown at the Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.

2016: “Remember” and “Serial Bad Weddings” are scheduled to shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2016: In New Orleans, the second day of Limmudfest is scheduled to begin with services at Gates of Prayer.  For more information see the Crescent City Jewish News, the leading source for news about the Jewish Community from Lake Pontchartrain to the Gulf Coast. http://www.crescentcityjewishnews.com/category/limmud-nola/

2016: As Jews observe the first Shabbat after Merrick Garland has been nominated to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the sense of communal pride is enhanced by the memory that it was just 100 years ago, in the winter of 1916 that President Wilson nominated the first Jew – Louis Brandeis – to serve on the Supreme Court.  At the same time this may be considered a case of third –time is the charm.  Benjamin Cardozo was nominated by President Hoover to serve on the High Court during an election year (1932) making Garland the third Jew to be chosen in such a manner.  George Washington, who made the Jews feel like welcomed members of the American community, was the first President to nominate a Justice to the High Court during an election year and he actually did it twice in 1796 when he was a “lame duck.”

2017: The New York Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel the recently released paperback editions of Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo by Boris Fishman, Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein and Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics and the Sterilization of Carrie Bucky by Adam Cohen

2017: Am Kolel in partnership with the Jewish Folk Arts Festival, Yiddish of Greater Washington, The Foundation of Jewish Studies, and the Jewish Study Center is scheduled to sponsor “The Great Yiddish Writers Festival” at B’nai Israel in Rockville, MD.

2017: A surprise drill began today in which “2,000 reserve soldiers were called up…to simulate war in the Gaza Strip.”

 2017: Former Arizona Wildcats basketball player Josh Pastner, the ACC coach of the year, led his Georgia Tech to victory against Belmont in the NIT.

2017: The Breman Museum / Theatrical Outfit / Atlanta Jewish Music Festival are scheduled to present “Baby That Is Rock ‘N’ Roll: The Leiber/Stoller Era.”

2017: The Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana (JEF) is scheduled to mark half a century of service to the Greater New Orleans Jewish community with its Annual Event today in the Grand Ballroom) of the Westin Canal Place.

2018: “Beneath the Silence” is scheduled to be shown this evening at the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.

2018: The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players which was founded by Jens Nygaard who directed the Washington Heights YW-YMHA concerts for 25 years is scheduled to perform “Rooted in Russia today

2018(3rdof Nissan, 5778): Sixty-nine year old Dr. Arnold Richard Hirsch, the Chicago born son of Nathan Hirsch and Mollie Shulman and the University of Illinois trained historian best known for chronicling the story of housing segregation passed away today. (As reported Sewell Chan)


2018: “Romain Franck, a French employee of France’s Consulate in Jerusalem” “was indicted today for using a diplomatic vehicle to smuggle dozens of guns from Gaza to the West Bank.”

2018: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” in London

2018: Mayim Bialik, the holder of a doctorate in neuroscience who gained fame a “Amy Fowler-Farrah” on “The Big Bang Theory” is scheduled to address The Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism which is scheduled to begin today in Jerusalem.


2019: In Cedar Rapids, IA, the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Education Fund is scheduled to host “From India to America: Routes of the Roma“presentation at the National Czech and Slovak Museum & Library during which Ian Hancock (professor emeritus at UT, Austin) “one of the world’s foremost scholars on Romani history will discuss the history of the little known but often persecuted people.

2019: In Des Moines IA, at Temple B’nai Jeshurun,Grinnell Professor Katya Gibel Mevorach is scheduled to speak about “The Challenge of Addressing Anti-Semitism Today” and Rabbi Yossi Jacobson is scheduled to speak about “Encountering Antisemitism in London” and “The Current Series of Attacks on Chassidim in Brooklyn” as part of the JCRC Antisemitism Forum.

2019: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “Searching For Survivors: The Fate of the St. Louis Passengers” during which “Scott Miller, former Director of Curatorial Affairs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will discuss his decades-long search to uncover the fate of every passenger from this tragic journey and JDC’s historic role in striving to rescue them.”

2019” The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a screening of “Black Honey: The Life and Poetry of Avraham Sutzkever” which tells the story of the Yiddish poet and his impact on Jewish history and literature.

2019: The Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host the “Palm Beach Country” premiere of “From Cairo to the Cloud” The World of the Cairo Geniza.

2019: In London, the exhibition of “Jews Money Myth” is scheduled to open at the Jewish Museum.

This Day, March 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 20
 
43BCE: Birthdate of the Roman poet, Ovid. In “The Art of Love, Part One” Ovid wrote "And do not miss the festival of Adonis, mourned of Venus, and the rites celebrated every seventh day by the Syrian Jews." Apparently Ovid knew about Jewish customs and, at least when it came to love, thought well of them (the Jews and the customs)

1191: The papacy of Clement III “who reissued the bull Sicut Judaeis, protecting the Jews at the time of the Third Crusade” came to an end today.

1488(28th of Adar, 5248): Celebration of the first “Cairo Purim”

1602: The Dutch East India Company is established. “By the middle of the seventeenth century, Jewish diamond merchants helped finance the Dutch East India Company, which organized its own trade route to India. So Amsterdam then replaced Lisbon as the port of entry in Europe for India's diamonds.”
1619: Sixty-two year old Matthias, the Holy Roman Emperor who as Archduke had acceded to the wishes of the Dutch and “established religious peace” in their provinces which helped to turn the Netherlands into a place of refuge for the Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal, passed away today.
1693: Talmudist Gerhson Ashkenazi, whose many followers including David Oppenheimer passed away today in Metz.

1705: In Great Britain, Hambro Synagogue founded (there are other claims that this now defunct synagogue was found variously in 1702 or 1707)

1764(16th Adar II, 5524): Salomon Nathan Maas, the husband of Hewle Meise and the father of Nathan and Salomon Maas passed away today and was buried in Frankfurt am Main.
1725: Birthdate of Abdul Hamid I, the Ottoman Sultan who employed two Jews from Salonica, Doctor Joseph and Doctor Cohen.
1799(13th of Adar II, 5559):Ta'anit Esther

1799: French forces under the command of Napoleon began the siege of Acre. This was part of Napoleon’s campaign that stretched from Egypt through Palestine. Napoleon’s campaign in the eastern Mediterranean marked the start of serious Western involvement in the land that would eventually become the modern state of Israel.
1800: Birthdate of Gottfried Bernhardy, who was “professor and director the philological seminary at Halle.
1806(1st of Nisan): Rabbi Joseph Harif of Zamosc, author of Mishnat Hakhamim passed away today
1810(14th of Adar II, 5570): Purim
1815: After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule. In a 1930’s movie about the Rothschilds, Nathan Rothschild agrees to pledge his entire fortune to defeat Napoleon. In exchange for his generosity, he demands that the Austrians and Prussian remove their restrictions against the Jews. “There is a legend told that on the day of the Battle of Waterloo, Nathan Mayer Rothschild came to the floor of the London Stock Exchange, leaned against a pillar, and started selling. It was well known that the Rothschilds had their own independent sources of information and intelligence, and nobody knew the results of the battle, so when he began to sell, everyone thought that England had lost, and they began selling, too. That forced a panic in the market. As much as 15%-20% of the value of the stocks fell in about three hours. And after they had fallen so low, Rothschild turned around and began buying. It is said that he knew all along that the Duke of Wellington had defeated Napoleon and that the British market would go up. And when the official news came the next day that the British had won, the market went up 1000 points, making Rothschild even wealthier. It is reputed that on that coup alone, a substantial amount of the Rothschild fortune was made.”

1816: Miriam Marks, a native of Sing Sing, NY and the daughter of Michael Marks married her first husband Jonas Barnett today.
1816:  Montague Marks married Hannah Moses at the Great Synagogue.
1825(1st of Nisan, 5585): Rosh Chodesh Nisan
1826: Jacob Tenachem ben Yedediah Shmuel married Beila bat Asher at the Hambro Synagogue today.
1836: Birthdate of Sir Edward John Poynter, the English painter who drew on the Bible as topics for his works as can be seen by his paintings “King Solomon,” King Solomon’s Temple,”  “The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon” and “Israel in Egypt.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1867_Edward_Poynter_-_Israel_in_Egypt.jpg

1837(13th of Adar II, 5597): Ta’anit Esther; erev Purim

1837: “Mr. Isaac Abisdid was appointed Chazan today” but would not please the congregation and he would lose the job in September of the same year.
1848(15th of Adar II, 5608): Shushan Purim
1848(15th of Adar II, 5608): Twenty Jews were killed in riots and street fighting that took place in Berlin. Anti-Jewish riots also spread to Bavaria, Baden, Hamburg and many other cities. This marked the start of the Revolution of 1848 that swept the states of Germany. In the end the liberals would lose, sparking a large migration of Germans including many German Jews to the United States. These freedom loving liberals would arrive in the United States just in time to support the infant Republican Party and provide a major element in the coalition that saved the Union during the Civil War.
1857: The New York Times reported today that "Jews are always scrupulously careful about the solemnization of marriages. Two witnesses, two men of character and unconnected with the parties by relationship have to sign the marriage document and ten adult males must be present to participate in the" ceremonies.

1854(20thof Adar, 5614): Sixty-three year Moses Montefiore Ancona, the London born of Moses Ancona and the former Hannah Montefiore, who lived in Barbados and Jamaica before settling in Pennsylvania where he used the first name of Moses, married Mary Ann Knapp, and practiced medicine passed away today, after contracting pneumonia.
1859(14th of Adar II, 5619): Purim


1863: Nathan and Regina Ullman Stern brought their fourteen year old son Leopold Stern, who would become “known as the dean of diamond importers in American” and “three time Republican Presidential elector in New York” to the United States today.
1863:After have transferred to the 120th Volunteer Ohio infantry in 1862 and “promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel, today Marcus M. Speigel “was officially commissioned as a Colonel” while taking “formal command of the regiment which would serve under General Grant during the campaign to take Vicksburg.
1865: Birthdate of Charlottenbrug, Prussia native Hermann Picha, the German-Jewish actor whose career spanned two decades starting in 1914 and ending in 1935.
1870: “The Board of Directresses” of "B'nai Jeshurun Ladies' Hebrew Benevolent Society," met today in the 34th Street Synagogue. Mrs. Leo Henry, the President and one of the founders of the society, “presented a report calling attention to the number of destitute aged and infirm Hebrews in the city, who were constantly making application for relief which the society was unable to confer; also urging the ladies to devise some practical measure which, when adopted, might furnish permanent relief to these distressed and suffering co-religionists, without interfering with the original objects of the organization.” The society had been formed in 1848 to provide relief for “indigent females.”
1871: In The Hague, Johanna and Maurice Kann gave birth to Emma Louise Kann
1878(15th of Adar II, 5638): Shushan Purim
1878:  Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli “gave away the bride” when Hannah Rothschild married Philip Archibald Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery.  The Prince of Wales attended the ceremony that made her the Countess of Rosebery.
1879: It was reported today that Dr. Henry S. Jacobs will deliver a lecture this weekend at the Norfolk Street Synagogue sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Union.
1880: J W Seligman & Company are parties to a suit to be heard this morning by Judge Thayer concerning creating a receivership for financially troubled Memphis, Carthage and Northwestern Railroad Company. Jesse Seligman is one the trustees for the railroad’s bond holder
1880: Tonight, the Concord Society is sponsoring a charity for the benefit of the Young Ladies’ Charitable Union which is part of the United Hebrew Charities. This first annual event is being held at New York’s Lexington Avenue Opera House.

1881: Birthdate of Parisian Eugene Paul Louis Schueller, the founder of the cosmetic and beauty company L’Oreal and employer of Efrayim Khahneman, whom he rescued from the Nazis which meant that Efrayim and his wife Rachel could give birth to Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.
1883: In Warsaw, Siegmund Simon Epstein and Sarah Sophia (Lurie) Epstein gave birth to Russian-American mathematical physicist Paul Sophus Epstein.
http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/pepstein.pdf

1885: The Yiddish theater season opened in New York with an operetta by Abraham Goldfaden

1886(13th of Adar II, 5646): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Zachor; Erev Purim
1886: Birthdate of Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, the native of Galicia whose life of crime included time with Al Capone on the south side of Chicago.
1886: Birthdate of Philadelphia native Jefferson Medical College trained physician who in 1917 was named an “assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Jefferson Medical College.
1886: In Philadelphia, Emily Grace Solis and Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen gave birth to “prize-winning poet, author, translator, historian, and communal leader Emily Solis-Cohen.” (As reported by Arthur Kiron)
1887: Birthdate of Hartog Hamburger the Amsterdam diamond polisher and baseball who died after being hit in the head with a line drive.
1890(28th of Adar, 5650): A Hebrew school teacher named Nathan Wisskerz “committed suicide” this evening “by turning on the gas in his room” at 51 Henry Street.
1890: in Gelsenkirchen, Julius Hess, an attorney and his wife Elisabeth gave birth to Ernst Mortiz Hess, “ the baptized German Jew who “commanded the company of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 in which Adolf Hitler served during WW I.”
1890: Leo von Caprivi began who was an opponent of the anti-Semitic parties, began serving as Chancellor of Germany and Prime Minister of Prussia

1891: Fifty-two year old American actor Lawrence Barrett who portrayed the character of Shylock “with force, sincerity and at times splendid effect” but was still not on the level of Edwin “Eddy” Booth whose portrayal of Shakespeare’s Jew was considered to be the best of them all.

1892: Birthdate of Newcastle-on-Tyne native Irving J. Caplan who came to the United States in 1902 at the age of ten, became a successful businessman in Troy, NY, married Marie Caplan and served as a director of the United Jewish Services.
1892: “Ivory in the Past” discussed the two sources of this item in ancient times.  While the exploits of Hannibal and others points to an African source the fact that the ancient Hebrews and those living on the Indian coast and in Ceylon use the same word for Elephant (habba) and the similarity between the Hebrew word for Monkey (koph) and Sanskrit word for monkey (kapi) are two of the indications that India which was home to elephants was the other source for ivory along with the proven fact that Solomon conducted trade with the orient.
1893: “Errors About Intermarriage” published today provided the views of Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu El on this subject.  According to Silverman, the Bible only prohibits marriage to seven Canaanite tribes and as can be seen from the examples of Moses and Solomon allows for marriage to non-Jews.
1893: William F. Wharton completed his services Assistant Secretary of State during which he had asserted “that the Department of State is without an information respecting the alleged suspension of the Russian edict against the Jews.”
1894: As the Board of Health struggles to combat the dangers of tuberculosis, it is having 15,000 copies of instructions on how to deal with consumptives printed in a variety of languages including Hebrew. (Apparently, the city officials did not know that Yiddish would have been a better choice for the immigrants from Eastern Europe)
1894: The Ladies’ Bikur Cholim Society hosted a Purim celebration for youngsters at their industrial school.
1895: In Brooklyn, Louis Grunhurt and his sister Mrs. Mary Ballowa appeared in surrogate court to contest the will of the their brother, the late Dr. Bernhard Grunhurt who was reportedly lost at sea last August.
1895: The German Societies in New York asked that the fountain in memory of the poet Heinrich Heine be placed at 59th street and 5thAvenue entrance to Central Park.
1896: The list published today of those institutions that the Board of Estimate and Apportionment has given money to from the theatrical and concert license fund includes Beth Israel ($100); United Hebrew Charities of the City of New York ($1,000) and Montefiore Home ($500)
1896: “The Hebrew Infant Asylum Benefit” published today described the successful auction conducted by Maurice Barrymore and Cyril Scott for boxes and seats at the upcoming performance of The Heart of Maryland, the proceeds of which will go to the Jewish charity.
1896: Speaking of the Jubilee Celebration being held to mark the 50thanniversary of the founding of Shaaray Tefila, Rabbi De Sola Menes who has led the congregation for 18 years, said today. “The congregation Shaaray Tefila in the half century of its existence has occupied a unique position among the Jewish congregations of this city” because “it has held the mean between the radical reform and the ultra-orthodox” making “haste slowly” while moving “sedately with the times.”
1896: Dr. M.H. Harris delivered his second and final lecture today on the Inquisition at Temple Israel in Brooklyn, NY tonight.  During the lecture he defended himself against charges of “ignorance, prejudice and falsifying history” made by Revered Brann of St. Agnes’s Roman Catholic Church made after the first lecture. “The Catholic Church would like to rid itself of this blog upon its annals.  The fact is the Inquistion was a religious institution, but was mixed up with civil affairs…The fact that the Inquisition was instituted to investigate heresy is the best proof of its religious character.”  (Holocaust deniers were preceded by Inquisition deniers)
1897: Yeshiva Rabbi Isaac Elhanan opened in New York as an Orthodox rabbinical seminary. It later expanded into Yeshiva University, with both Jewish and secular studies, a medical (Einstein) and a graduate school (Ferkauf).
1897: Oscar S. Straus, formerly the United States Minister to Turkey, returned to New York from Europe today.
1897: It was reported today that Mrs. Joseph B. Bloomingdale and Mrs. Edward Fridenberg had been responsible for the recent party given for those staying at the Amsterdam Street facility of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. Mrs. Bloomingdale is the wife of the founder of Bloomingdales Department Store.
1897(16th of Adar II, 5657): Seventy-four year old Dr. Ignatz Grossman the native of Hungary who was ordained as a rabbi forty years ago passed away today in New York City.
1897: Birthdate of Polish born and Columbia and JTS trained rabbi, Max Artz, the Vice Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary and husband the former Esther Podolsky with whom he raised three children – Miriam, Raphael and David Artz.
1898: Two days after he had passed away, Lewis Hart, the son of Joseph and Rosetta Hart, the husband of Elizabeth Hart and father of Mary and Hannah Hart, who then married Adelaide Levy with whom he had had seven children was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1898: Yetta Firber took the three children of David Bogin, who were her grandchildren home from the police station after it appeared they had been abandoned their father. It turned out that they their mother had died in Denver and they had gotten lost on their way to join their father in East Hartford where he had gone for work.  (Such was the chaotic life of the children of the “immigrant generations.”)
1898: Three days after she had passed away, Jane Abrahams, the daughter of Phillip Levy and Elizabeth Davis and the wife of Isaac Abrahams with whom she had had six children was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.
1899: Herzl established the Jewish Colonial Trust as the financial arm of the World Zionist Organization. Its goal was to encourage Jewish settlement and projects which would “advance the Zionist cause.” One of its subsidiaries, the Anglo-Palestine Company, later became Bank Leumi. Other investment helped create the Israel Electric Cooperation and Bank Hapoalim.
1899: Private Joseph Weinstein, Joseph Polskey, George C. Hahn, Phillip Isaacs, Julius C. Meyer and Harry Newburg were among those who completed their military service with the Third Regiment of the Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was mustered out of the U.S. Army at Savannah, GA.
1900: Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, a play in one act by David Belasco premiered today at the Herald Square Theatre in New York City.
1901: Russian bank director Levontin presents his plan to buy up the shares of the Jaffa-Jerusalem railroad. Levontin will become the assistant manager of the Bank in London.
1902: Birthdate of Baltimore native David Lasser, the science fiction writer and social activist. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)


1903: Lady Sybil Grant the daughter of the 5th Earl of Rosebery and Hannah de Rothschild, the only child of Mayer Amschel de Rothschild and a granddaughter of Nathan Mayer Rothschild married Charles John Cecil Grant.
1903: Birthdate of
South African explorer, stockbroker and chess champion Albert Sidney Pinkus passed away today in New York City.


https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/06/obituaries/albert-s-pinkus-80-40-s-chess-champion.html

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=39243
1903: American author and humorist Charles Godfrey Leland passed way.  In his memoir, Leland recounted the following exchange with George Eliot concerning her one novel about Jews.  “One day she told me that, in order to write Daniel Deronda she had read through 200 b00s.  I longed to tell her she had better have learned Yiddish and talked with 200 Jews and been taught as I was by my friend Solomon the Sadducee the art of distinguishing Fraulein Lowenthal of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Arguado of the Sephardim  by the corners of their eyes.
1905: The Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith continued to meet for a second day New Orleans.
1906: Almost two years after the death of Herzl, Sir Edward Gray wrote to Leopold Greenberg rejecting the proposal for a Jewish settlement in Sinai for the third and last time.


1906: Birthdate of Rockford (Illinois) High School star basketball player Luis Beher, the first Jew to win Kenneth Sterling Day Award while playing for the University of Wisconsin where his young brother Sammy was “a star football player.”
1906(23rd of Adar, 5666): Fifty-five year old Isaac Gellis the successful businessman and Jewish community leader who came to the United States thirty-five years ago who has served as a trustee of the Hebrew Sheltering Arms Society and the Montefiore Home passed away today at his residence on Henry Street.
1906: In London, “Esther (née Goldfarb) and Philip Birnbaum, Jewish immigrants from Poland who fled Warsaw” gave birth to Abraham David Birnbaum who at the age of three months came to New York where, as Abraham “Abe” Beame became the city’s first Jewish mayor.  


1907: Southern African financier Solomon Barnato Joel, the son of Joel and Catherine Joel, Ellen (Nellie) Ridley, gave birth to their daughter Eileen who married John Rogerson and became Eileen Daphne Solvia Rogerson.
1907 (6th of Adar, 5667): Birthdate of Moshe Aharon, the sixth child of Shoshe and Rabbi Avraham Halevi Shapiro, whom the sainted Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, zt"l, pronounced to be an ilui (child prodigy)
1909: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and San Francisco physiatrist Meyer Aaron Zeli

http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~law00092
1909: In Rotterdam, Moses and Bertha (Haas) Geleerd gave birth to University of Leyden trained physician Elisabeth Rozetta Gelreed the psychiatrist who fled Nazi Europe to work at the Menninginer Clinic in Topeka, Kansas who raised one son, Richard with her husband Rudolph Lowentstein.



1911: In Berlin, “Austrian theater director Max Reinhardt manager of the Deutsches Theater, and his first wife Else Heims” gave birth to Gottfried Goldman, who gained fame as producer-director Gottfried Reihnardt.
1911: Birthdate of Milo Sperber, the “Polish born English actor, director and writer” who was the brother of Manès Sperber.
1911: “The body of a thirteen year old boy, Andrei Yustschinksi was discovered near a brick factory on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.” This simple statement describes the first event in what will eventually become The Case of Mendel Bellis, one of the most infamous episodes of anti-Semitism in Czarist Russia.
1913(11th of Adar II, 5673): Ta’anit Esther

1913(11th of Adar II, 5673): Sixty-nine year old Confederate Army veteran Henry Lazarus passed away today in Camden, Arkansas.

1915: American Jewish Relief Committee apportions $30,000 for Jews in Palestine, $1000 per month (for 6 months) for Palestinian soup kitchens, and $3000 per month (for 10 months) to Turkish Jews outside of Palestine.
1916(15th of Adar II, 5676): Shushan Purim
1916: Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity in a journal called Annalen der Physik. (And that is much as I know about it except to refer you to Dr. Joe Rosen, the only person I know who understands it.)

1916: As of today “gifts valued at close to $100,000 and ranging all the way from a sticks of candy, to a grand piano, a seven passenger touring car and even building sites in the Bronx and Staten Islands have been received by the People’s Relief Committee which is organizing the bazaar and fair for Jewish suffers to be held at the Grand Central Palace” starting in the last week of March and continuing into April.

1916: Today, it is estimated that the gold and jewels given by the Jews of Baltimore at a mass meeting held “under the auspices of the American Jewish Relief Committee” are worth at least $3,500.00.

1917: In what must have seemed like a momentous occasion at the time for all Russians, including her Jewish citizens a manifesto issued by the new Russian Provisional Government published today began “Citizens: The great work has been accomplished.  By a powerful stroke the Russian people have overthrown the old regime.  A new Russia is born.  This coup d’etat has set the keystone upon long years of struggle.” (In less than a year, the Bolsheviks would sweep the forces of democratic reform aside and create a dictatorship every bit as vile as the Czars.)

1917: In Jerusalem, ”noted archeologist Eleazar Sukenik and educationalist and women's rights activist Hasya Sukenik-Feinsod” gave birth to Yigal Sukenik who as Yigael Yadin gained fame fighting in the War for Independence, serving as the second Chief of Staff for the IDF and becoming a first-rate archeologist. If you did not know he was a real person, you would swear that some novelist had invented this fascinating person.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yigael-yadin

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/obituaries/yigael-yadin-famed-israeli-dies-was-archeologist-and-war-hero.html

1917: Tonight’s mass meeting in Madison Square Garden which “has been arranged with the co-operation of the Forward Association, the Bund, the Russian Social Democrats, the Jewish Socialist Federation of America, the Workingmen’s Circle, the United Hebrew Trades and the New York local of the Socialist Party” and for which 8,000 tickets have been sold, will mark “the first time in the history of” the city of New York that “thousands of Jewish refugees will assemble to cheer a Russian government.”

1917: In an exclusive interview given to the Associate Press today the new Foreign Minister of Russia said that “there now appear to be no obstacles” to “a new commercial treaty between Russia and the United States” since “all the disabilities governing Jews” from America coming to Russia “have been removed.”

1917: Following the sinking of several U.S. ships by German submarines, President Wilson met with his cabinet who voted unanimously in favor of going to war four days before Rosh Chodesh Nisan.
1917: Two days after she had passed away, 63 year old Fanny Levy was buried today at “the Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1918(7th of Nisan, 5678): Fifty year old Richmond, VA native Mitchell H. Mark who moved to Buffalo where he opened a hat store and then with his brother Moe “founded the Vitascope Theatre…one of the first permanent movie theatres” built anywhere in the world.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D04E5D6113FE433A25752C2A9659C946996D6CF


1918: Birthdate of comedian and television game show host, Jack Berry. Jack Barry met and teamed up with Dan Enright in Borscht Belt clubs. They started Winky Dink and You, a children's show known for the special transparent covers children had to put over the TV screen so they could draw the "hidden pictures" during Winky's adventures. Barry and Enright were also instrumental in producing and hosting early game shows, such as Concentration and Tic Tac Dough. Barry is best remembered as the host on the game show “21” which went from sensational television hit to be the symbol for corruption in the communications industry.

1918: It was reported today that based on information supplied by the Jewish Welfare Board, “Jewish families in the vicinity of army and navy cantonments” are scheduled to act as hosts for Jewish soldiers and sailors” who will have leaves so they may observe Passover.
1921; In Vienna, Béla Schwimmer and Marie Karp gave birth to Vilma Mitzi Schimmer who came to the United States in 1935 and married Edward James in 1944 in Brooklyn.

1921: In New York City, two hundred delegates at a preliminary meeting of the Provisional Committee for an American Jewish Congress adopted resolutions that were intended to make this a permanent organization.
1922: Birthdate of actor Werner Klemper. The German born refugee from Hitler’s Germany was the son of Otto Klemper. Ironically, Werner gained his greatest fame as the bumbling Colonel Klink on “Hogan’s Hero” the sitcom set in a German POW Camp.
1922: In the Bronx, Jewish immigrants Bessie (née Mathias) and Irving Reiner gave birth to comedian and writer Carl Reiner who first gained fame as “the second banana” on the Sid Caesar comedy show “Your Show of Shows” and is also remembered for his work with the 2000 Year Old man and the Dick Van Dyke Show.
1924(14th of Adar II, 5648) Purim
1924: Birthdate of British Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby, the grandson of Rabbi Chaim Maccoby and the librarian of Leo Baeck College whose area of expertise was the relationship between early Christianity and first century Judaism including the contention that the last two thousand years of western anti-Semitism had its origins in the drive of early Christian leaders to separate their religion and followers from the Jews.


1925: The new Hebrew University is scheduled to be dedicated on Mt. Scopus with Lord Balfour and Dr. Chaim Weizmann in attendance.

1925: Charley Phil Rosenberg (Charles Green) won the World Bantamweight Championship today.

1926: In New Orleans, the former Anna Leibof gave birth to Tulane University engineering graduate Harold Allen Rosen, “a driving force in the invention of modern communication satellite technology.


1926: “The Fiddler of Florence” a comedy written and directed by Paul Czinner and co-starring Grete Moseheim was released today in Germany.
1927(16th of Adar II, 5687): Shushan Purim observed because the 15th falls on Shabbat

1927(16th of Adar II, 5687): Eighty-three year old Harold Solomon Gerstner, the Polish born son of Hyman and Fannie Gerstner and first husband of Sarah Blumberg Parnes passed away today after which he was buried at the Baron Hirsch Cemetery on Staten Island.

1927: “More than 3,000 children attended the first rally of the New York Jewish Religious Schools which had been organized by Rabbi Jonah B. Wise of the Central Synagogue.”
1927: Birthdate of Manhattan native Lawrence Seymour “Larry” Phillips the Princeton University History major who became a top executive in the family owned Phillips-Van Heusen clothing business and a leading Jewish philanthropist.
1928: Birthdate of Anthony Bernard Blond “a British publisher and author” who was a cousin of Harold Laski. He passed away in 2008. You can learn more about Blond by reading his autobiography Jew Made in England, which was published in 2004
1930: Birthdate of Arthur Schneir, the native of Austria who survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest who has been Senior Rabbi at Park East Synagogue since 1962 and who founded the Appeal of Conscience in 1965.
1931: Birthdate of actor Hal Linden. Born Harold Lipshitz, the Bronx native gained his greatest fame in the title role of the police comedy “Barney Miller.”
1933: “German Fugitives Tell of Atrocities at Hands of Nazis” published today provided readers of the New York Times with accounts from Americans arriving in Paris from Germany of “outrages and cruelties in racial purging” and “Jews fleeing persecution.”
1933: At the initiative of the Jews of Vilna, an anti-Nazi boycott began. It eventually spread all over Poland and to many countries in Europe. Yet within 6 months Poland itself signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler which called for the cessation of all boycott activities.
1933: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that “the hoisting of Nazi swastika banners over the German consulates at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv has greatly disturbed the feelings of the Jewish public.” Fearing hostile demonstrations, British police and detectives are guarding the German buildings.
1933: The Nazis completed building Dachau, the first of the infamous concentration camps.
1933: Darius Paul Dassault born Darius Paul Bloch reached the rank of Brigade General in the French Army today.
1936: Founding of Kol Israel (Voice of Israel).

1936: “Chancellor Adolf Hitler has assumed himself a 100 per cent majority of all the valid votes cast in the” upcoming “Reichstag election” in which Jews will not be allowed to vote “by creating a ballot that leaves the voter only choice of voting for him or invalidating the ballot.”

1936: “In Palestine, establishment of a legislative council continued to occupy the minds of both Arab and Jewish leaders” with the “latter being adamant in their refusal to participate in the council on the basis of representation in proportion to population which would make the Jews a permanent minority.”

1936: “Polish Jews have strongly criticized” a government bill to ban ritual slaughtering “which they said would eliminate their method of kosher slaughtering.”

1936: The daughter of a Viennese rabbi who was employed in Berlin “as a religious instructor by a Jewish community center” has been released after six months of imprisonment and “ordered to leave Germany as an undesirable alien.”

1937(1st of Nisan, 5697): Parashat Vayikra; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh

1937: Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Religion of the Psalms” at Temple Emanu-El this morning.

1937: Rabbi Hyman J. Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Eternal Road” today.

1937: Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon “Benjamin Franklin and the Jews” this morning at Rodeph Sholom.

1937: The Luncheon of the Women’s Division of the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan (Soviet Union) is scheduled to take place this afternoon at the Hotel Astor.

1938: In his sermon today at the North Baptist Church in New York, Rev. Francis K. Shepherd said “God will save the Jews from Hitler as He saved them from Haman.”

1938(17th of Adar II, 5698): Fifty-seven year old Rebecca Schweitzer, the Russian born daughter of Hirsch and Hannah (Levine) Garbovitsky and the wife of Peter J. Schwietzer, “the largest importer and exporter of cigarette paper in the United States who used their fortune for philanthropy and support of the embryonic Zionist movement passed away today.



1939: Seven thousand Jews fled German occupied Memel, Lithuania.
1939: A 24 hour strike was scheduled to begin a 5 A.M. in Palestine to protest Great Britain’s latest plan that would, according to The National Council Of Palestine Jews, would lead to the “liquidation of the Newish national home” and strangle Jewish settlement in Palestine.
1939: Rabbi Milton of Steinberg of the Park Avenue Synagogue spoke to the Brooklyn Chapter of Hadassah at the Waldorf-Astoria where 2,000 women heard chapter president Mrs. Joseph L. Horowitz announced that “$60,000 has been raised since last October” to help to support projects in Palestine.
1939: Approximately 5000 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, including many done by Jewish artists, deemed "degenerate" by the Nazis were burned on an enormous pyre in Berlin.

1940: Birthdate of Mary Ellen Mark, the Philadelphia native who became “one of the premier documentary photographers of her generation.”




1941: At Baumann and Berson Children's Hospital in the Warsaw Ghetto, nurse D. Wagman writes that she is helpless to prevent death.
1942: After having been turned over to the Nazis today George Politzer, the Marxist philosopher was tortured – treatment that would last until his execution in May
1943(13th of Adar II, 5703): Parashat Vayikra; Shabbat Zachor; Erev Purim
1943: On Purim Eve in Czestochowa, Poland, over 100 Jewish doctors and their families were taken away and shot. The meaning behind the factor-of-ten chosen was revenge for the ten sons of the Jew hater Haman who were hanged in Biblical times. Victims include 56-year-old gynecologist Dr. Kruza Gruenwald, 30-year-old general practitioner Dr. Irena Horowicz, and 44-year-old neurologist Dr. Bernard Epstein. Czestochowa is the home of the “Black Madonna.”
1943: “Bulgarian military police, assisted by German soldiers, took Jews from Komotini and Kavala off the passenger steamship Karageorge, massacred them, and sunk the vessel.”1943(13th of Adar II, 5703): Eighty give year old Jeanette Isaac Davis who wrote the “foreword to the second edition The True Boundaries of the Holy by her father Samuel Hillel Isaacs and husband of Benjamin Davis passed away today in Chicago.
1944: One day after the Nazis took control of the Hungarian capital, the SS seized control of The Budapest University of Jewish Studies and turned it into a prison
1944: “Cover Girl” a musical directed by Charles Vidor with songs by Jerome Kern, Ira Gershwin and E.Y. Harburg was released today in the United States.
1945: Erhard Auer, the Socialist political leader who was physically attacked by the Nazis in the 1930’s and who was imprisoned at Dachau for his alleged role to kill Hitler in 1944 died today.
1945(6th of Nisan, 5705): An Allied air raid killed Jewish women in a camp at Tiefstack, Germany, near Hamburg.

1946: Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, the President of the ZOA, today told members of the national executive committee that while in England he had met with former Prime Minister Winston Churchill who assured him that “he has always been a Zionist and still is a Zionist.”  (Editor’s note – too bad he did not act that way when he was enforcing the White Paper during WW II)
1948: “David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, speaking in Tel Aviv today, stigmatized United States abandonment of partition as "surrender" and rejected a United Nations Palestine trusteeship "even for the shortest time."
1948: Laura Z. Hobson’s “Gentleman’s Agreement” wins the Oscar
http://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/20/1978/laura-z-hobson-s-gentleman-s-agreement-wins-oscar

1949: Israeli forces took control of Ein Gedi on the western shore of the Dead Sea. This move helped to secure the western border of the newly created Jewish state and to protect Israeli interests in an area that would be beneficial to the chemical and tourist industries.
1950: Moshe Sharett, Israel’s Foregin Minister, “called upon the seven member nationas of the Arab League today to make peace with Israel by direct negations.” He said that Israel only wished “to consolidate its present position…There will be no further war if the Arab world does not will it.”
1951: After opening in New York,“Royal Wedding” the Alan Jay Lerner musical comedy directed by Stanley Donen premiered today in Los Angeles
1952(23rd of Adar, 5712): Rabbi Armand Bloch passed away.
1952(23rd of Adar, 5712): Seventy-nine year old Racie Adler passed away.
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/adler-racie
1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Executive Branch of the US government made it known that experience in Israel suggested that technical cooperation could succeed there in specific objectives: "Namely to aid in reducing the present economic crisis, to contribute significantly to the development and to increase productivity." The Presidium of the Conference of Jewish Claims Against Germany announced that Moses A. Levitt, executive of the American Joint Distribution Committee, would lead the delegation to The Hague Conference on Jewish Claims and Reparations. In the House of Commons Selwyn Lloyd, Minister of State, announced that Britain was contributing £4,452,440 for the first year of the three-year international program (the Blandford Plan) to resettle 800,000 Arab refugees from Palestine in various parts of the Middle East. In addition Britain announced that it was proposing an interest-free loan of £1,500,000 to Jordan to contribute indirectly to the same purpose.

1953: “Destination Gobi” an off-beat WW II movie produced by Stanley Rubin with music by Sol Kaplan was released in the United States today.
1954(15th of Adar II, 5714): Joe Levin, a founder of B’nai Abraham in Brenham, Texas and the father of Jewish Texan historian, Rosa Levin Toubin passed away
1954: In Madison, Wisconsin, Morton Wagner and Bernice Maletz gave birth to author and screenplay writer Bruce Alan Wagner whose work includes “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.”
1956: Under the leadership of Habib Bourghiba, Tunisia gained its independence from France. Bourghiba was well disposed to the 100,000 strong Jewish community, appointing a Jew to his first cabinet. But he was not able to stem the tide of "Islamic extremism" that would take hold in subsequent years.
1956: In Lambeth, South London Sally Oppenheim-Barnes, Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes and her husband gave birth to Phillip Oppenheim, who when he became an MP became part of what have been the only Parliamentary Mother-Son duo in English history
1958: “Merry Andrew,” a musical starring Danny Kaye, directed by Michael Kidd, produced by Sol C. Siegel and written by Isobel Lennart and I.A.L. Diamond, was released for showing to the movie going public.
1962(14th of Adar II, 5722): Purim1964: Ernest Lehman completed his final draft of the script for “The Sound of Music” today.
1965: Rabbi Heschel flew to Selma from New York tonight as civil rights leaders planned to try another march from Selma to Montgomery. Previous attempts had been stopped by violence so the aged sage was literally risking his physical well-being to help "the widow, the orphan and the stranger in our midst." The march was part of the fight to gain passage of what became known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the second most important piece of Civil Rights legislation ever adopted in the United States.

1967(8thof Adar II, 5727): Seventy-two year old Breslau native Kurt Peiser, who in 1907 came to the United States where after earning his college degrees “served as executive director of Jewish federation and welfare funds successively in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Detroit and Philadelphia” and who helped to “set up relief programs in North Africa” during WW II after the Allies had driven the Italians and Nazis back across the Mediterranean Sea” passed a way today.
1968: In New York City, Attorney Arnold Jacobs Sr. and Ellen Kheel gave birth to journalist and author Arnold Stephen “A.J.” Jacobs, Jr. the husband of Julie Schoenberg with whom he had three sons – Jasper, Zane and Lucas – and cousin of legal scholar and fellow author Cass Sunstein.
1970: The funeral services for Isadore H. Prinzmetal, the motion picture industry attorney and a leader in Jewish community service, were conducted today at Hillside Memorial Park.
1970: In New York, June Brody and David Rapaport gave birth to “actor, director and comedian” Michael David Rapaport.

1973(16thof Adar, II, 5733): Seventy year Martin Codel, the “biological son of Samuel Braverman” who was raised by his mother Sarah Codel and adopted father Morris Codel and the father of Ella Codel who was the author of Radio and Its Future and who along with Sol Taishoff and Harry Shaw founded Broadcasting which is now published as Broadcasting and Cable passed away today

1974: “The Super Cops” based on a book of the same name starring Ron Leibman was released in the United States today.

1975: Aharon Uzan replaced Yitzhak Rabin as Communications Minister

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the French Foreign Minister, Louis de Guiringaud, said that Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist was a prerequisite of any Middle Eastern settlement. Israel, he continued, would have to withdraw from occupied areas, but this did not mean a complete withdrawal from all territories captured in 1967. In Cairo the mainstream and hard-liners of the members of the Palestine National Council struggled over the wording of a declaration of a political stance of the PLO. In Haifa the president of the Technion, Amos Horev, deplored the lack of a long-term industrial planning in Israel.
1978(11th of Adar II, 5738): Dr. Meyer Aaron Zeligs, whose defense of Alger Hiss, Friendship and Fratricide, stirred controversy when it was published in 1967 with the conclusion that Whittaker Chambers was a psychopathic personality died today on his 69th birthday at his home in Sari Francisco.”
1981: In California, Actor Dustin Hoffman and Lisa Hoffman gave birth to Jacob Edward "Jake" Hoffman who has gone on to develop an acting career of his own.

1981(14th of Adar II, 5741): Purim

1981(14th of Adar II, 5741: Seventy-four year old Olympic Gold Medal winning speed skater Irving Jaffee passed away today.


1981: “Omen III: The Final Conflict” based on characters created by David Seltzer with music by Jerry Goldsmith and featuring Mason Adams was released today in the United States.

1981(14th of Adar II, 5741): Seventy-three year old businessman, Morris Abrams, the holder of patents for the Arrows brand staple gun the husband of Flo Abrams and the father of Allan, Louise and Isabel Abrams passed away today in Englewood, NJ.


1993: 27th of Adar, 5753): Shabbat HaChodesh
1993: 27th of Adar, 5753): In separate incidents, two Israeli soldiers – Sergeant Gitai Avisor and Sergeant Yossi Shabtai – were killed.
1993: “Barbarians at the Gate” a movie version of the book by the same name that described Henry Kravis’ efforts to buy RJR Nabisco with a script by Larry Gelbart was broadcast today by HBO
1993: A third meeting between Arabs and Israelis began in Oslo, Norway.
1996: UPN broadcast the first episode of “The Sentinel” a Canadian television series created and written by Danny Bilson.
1997: A “special edition” of “Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold,” a movie version of the novel produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan was released today
1998(22nd of Adar, 5758): Yemina Avidar-Tchernovitz, the native of Vilna who arrived in Palestine as a twelve year old in 1921 and went on to become an author of children’s books written in modern Hebrew passed away today.
http://www.ithl.org.il/page_13612

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/tchernovitz-avidar-yemima
2001: President Bush welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the White House.
2002(7th of Nisan, 5762): Seven Israelis died when an Islamic terrorist blew himself up in a packed bus.
2002: Seven people were killed and about 30 injured, several seriously, in a suicide bombing of an Egged bus #823 traveling from Tel Aviv to Nazareth at the Musmus junction on Highway 65 (Wadi Ara) near Afula. The victims: Sgt. Michael Altfiro, 19, of Pardes Hanna; St.-Sgt. Shimon Edri, 20, of Pardes Hanna; SWO Meir Fahima, 40, of Hadera; Cpl. Aharon Revivo, 19, of Afula; Alon Goldenberg, 28, of Tel Aviv; Mogus Mahento, 75, of Holon; and Bella Schneider, 53, of Hadera. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
2004: The treasure hunt, David Blaine's $100,000 Challenge, devised by game designer Cliff Johnson, creator of The Fool's Errand, was solved today.
2005: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of topics of special interest to Jewish readers including "Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics" by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, "Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System" by Sharon Waxman and "The Angel of Forgetfulness" by Steve Stern.
2005(9th of Adar II, 5765): Eighty-four year old “businessman and philanthropist Sir Leslie Porter passed away today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sir-leslie-porter-6149848.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1486217/Sir-Leslie-Porter.html
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/mar/24/guardianobituaries.rogercowe
2006: The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Jonathan Pollard’s appeal “to overturn a federal appeals court ruling that denied his attorneys access to classified information used in his trial” that they claim “are needed to make Pollard’s case for clemency.”
2006: “The Valet” starring Gad Elmaleh and directed by Francis Verber, whose father Pierre-Gilles Verber and grand-uncle Tristan were Jewish but who was baptized at birth was released in France today.
2006: The WB broadcast the final episode of “Related” created by Marta Kauffman and starring Lizzy Caplan.

2006(20th of Adar, 5766): Ninety-six year old “Sophie Gerson, a legendary figure in the history of textile union organizing in the South and a lifelong fighter for peace, justice and socialism” passed away today. (As reported by Deborah Gerson and Tim Wheeler)
2006: Haaretzreported that Archaeologists have uncovered underground chambers and tunnels constructed in northern Israel by Jews for hiding from the Romans during their revolt in 66-70 CE.
2007: An exhibition featuring documents from the Otto Frank as well as other material from the YIVO archives pertaining to the Holocaust in the Netherlands, which has been on display on the Batkin Mezzanine level, at the Center for Jewish History comes to an end.
2007: The Association for Jewish Theatre in conjunction with the Jewish Theatre of Austria hosts a three day international conference for Jewish theater professionals, artists, and aficionados.
2007: Avraham “Hirchson was investigated for seven hours by Israeli police regarding an alleged embezzlement at a non-profit organization while serving as the chairman of the National Workers Labor Federation.”

2007(1stof Nisan, 5667): Rosh Chodesh Nissan

2007(1stof Nisan, 5667): Eighty-four year old music executive Hyman Y. “Hy” Weiss passed away today. (As reported by Ben Sisario)


2008 (II Adar 13 5768): Feast of Nicanor – “Judah Maccabee’s defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor was originally celebrated as a minor festival on 13 Adar (I Macc.7:49), this ‘Day of Nicanor’ being specifically mentioned in the Apocrypha as occurring immediately before Purim, ‘the day of Mordecai (II Macc. 15:36). In time, the Feast of Nicanor gave way to the Fast of Esther.” [Editor’s note: In another of the many oddities connected with the Purim celebration, a joyful celebration of a real historic event gave way to a fast connected to what is at best a piece of historic fiction.]

2008 (II Adar 13 5768): Fast of Esther
2008: In Washington, veteran broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr discusses his new book, "Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium."
2008: The state of Iowa issued Agriprocessors Inc. of Postville 39 citations with proposed penalties of $182,000 for allegedly violating state workplace safety and health standards
2009: On Friday night, members of Mount Kisco’s Jewish community gather at Mount Kisco Hebrew Congregation in an unparalleled display of Jewish revitalization and Jewish unity as they take part in the 13th Shabbat Across America Program.
2009: Today “an appellate court denied Bernie Madoff’s request to be released from jail and returned to home confinement until he is sentenced to prison in June. (Talk about Chutzpah)
2009: “I Love You Man,” a comedy directed by John Hamburg and starring Paul Rudd, Jason Segal and Andy Samberg was released today in the United States.
2009: Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu met with President Shimon Peres at 10:30 this morning to ask for more time in which to form a coalition. Peres agreed to the request, and gave Netanyahu an additional two weeks.
2010: The Washington Postfeatures a review of "The Irresistible Henry House" by Lisa Grunwald, the daughter of the late Henry Grunwald.
2010: Meeskeit and A Matter of Size are scheduled to be shown at 14th Annual Mandell JC Hartford Jewish Film Festival.
2010: Today two rockets were launched at the Ashkelon district, north of Gaza, another landed in Shaar HaNegev, northeast of Gaza and fourth rocket was fired at Shaar HaNegev.
2010: A weak earthquake was felt in northern Israel tonight; no injuries or damage was reported. The Seismological Institute reported that the quake measured 3.6 on the Richter scale. It occurred just north of the Kinneret Sea (Sea of Galilee), near the Arik Bridge, at 8:45 PM, for about ten seconds. Residents reported feeling it. The Arik Bridge is named for Aryeh Shamir, an IDF a paratroopers officer who fell in the line of duty. It was built in 1976. Just ten days ago, a 3.4 earthquake was felt in northern Israel. Its epicenter was off southern Lebanon, in the Mediterranean Sea. Just a day before that, a level-6 quake hit Turkey, north of Lebanon, killing dozens.The Kinneret currently stands at 212.81 meters below sea level, 19 centimeters above the recommended red line. Israel's rainy season is nearing its end.
2010: The color version of “Forbidden Zone” which had marked Danny Elfman’s debut as a director when it was released in black and white in 1980 was shown for the first time today at the Museum of Modern Art.
2010: For the first time in 62 years, hundreds gathered for emotional Sabbath prayers at the renewed, majestic Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.
2011: Ilana Cravitz is scheduled to appear at Klezmer Workshop in Cambridge, UK.
2011: Israeli vocalist Yasmin Levy is scheduled to appear at the SF Jazz Spring Session where this daughter of “a revered Turkish cantor” will explore a forgotten treasure trove of songs dating back to 16th century Spain.”
2011(14th of Adar II): Purim]
2011(14th of Adar II): Fifty-four year old Robert Spiegelman, who accompanied the high school band he directed to the 2011 Rose Bowl Parade despite a serious illness, passed away today. Speigelman grew up and lived in the St. Louis area. The school’s jazz ensemble, under his direction, traveled to Paris in 1997 to play in the 50th anniversary of the school's namesake’s renowned flight from New York to Paris. (As reported by the Eulogizer)
2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Modigliani: A Life” by Meryle Secrest and "Jerusalem, Jerusalem" by James Carroll.
2011: The Los Angeles Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “New and Selected Stories” by E.L. Doctorow and “Lee Krasner: A Biography” by Gail Levin. In describing herself, Krasner said, "I happen to be Mrs. Jackson Pollock, and that's a mouthful. The only thing I haven't had against me was being black. I was a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you, and a little too independent."
2011: 22-year-old IDF Armored Corps officer was stabbed during an attempt to steal his weapon in Jaffa this morning. An unknown masked assailant stabbed the soldier in his chest and made off with his weapon.
2012: “Underdogs: A War Movie” is scheduled to be shown at the Gainesville Jewish Film Festival in Gainesville, FL.
2012(28th of Adar, 5772): One-hundred-one year Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg passed away today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/religion-obituaries/9161424/Rabbi-Chaim-Pinchas-Scheinberg.html

2012: In Philadelphia, PA, Congregation Mikveh Israel's 3rd Annual Sephardic Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2012: “400 Miles to Freedom” is scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the 16th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival. 
2013(9th of Nisan, 5773): Ninety-nine year old mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens who Jewish mother, “the former Sadie Mechanic, recognized Risë’s vocal talent early and was an enthusiastic steward of her youthful career” passed away today.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/arts/music/rise-stevens-opera-singer-dies-at-99.html?hpw&_r=0
2013: Ruth Thomson, author of Terezín, A Story of the Holocaust is scheduled to deliver a lecture at The Wiener Library in London. 
2013: “Jailed Unjust in the Death of a Rabbi, Man Nears Freedom” published today described events the events surrounding the two decades old murder of Rabbi Chaskel Werzberg
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/nyregion/brooklyn-prosecutor-to-seek-freedom-of-man-convicted-in-1990-killing-of-rabbi.html
2013: Israeli soldiers provided medical care to four wounded Syrians on the Golan Heights border
2013: A special screening of “The Flat” is scheduled to be hosted UKJF
2013: President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conveyed broad consensus on Israel’s top security priorities in a statements following a meeting in Jerusalem.
2013: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to presents “Louis Marshall and the Founding of Modern American Judaism”
2013: Barak Obama is scheduled to begin his first trip to Israel as U.S. President.  He had previously visited while serving as a U.S. Senator.

2014: Violinist Pinchas Zuckerman and cellist Amanda Forsyth are scheduled to join the IPO conducted by Zubin Mehta in a Benefit Concert held in honor of the late Marvin Hamlisch.
2014: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host its 2014 Humanitarian Awards Dinner.
2014: “Wagner’s Jews” is scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.
2014: The 17th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2014: The Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to open with a screening of “When Comedy Went to School.”
2014: A Jewish teacher is attacked leaving a kosher restaurant in Paris. After breaking his nose, the assailants drew a swastika on his chest
2014: “The Israel Air Force showed off its new cutting-edge training aircraft, the M-346” today. (As reported by Marissa Newman)
2014: Meir Kin, who has refused to give his wife Lonna Kin a get married Daniela Barbosa tonight in Las Vegas in what was a very public reminder of the inequity in Jewish divorce law.


2014: Eight of 11 families of Iranian Jews missing since the 90s were told this evening at the Center for Intelligence Heritage that their relatives were murdered on their way to Israel. (As reported by Orli Harari)
2014: “A German panel ruled against the heirs of four Jewish art dealers today in a complicated case of a monumental collection of medieval religious art known as the Welfenschatz, or Geulph Treasure.” (As reported by Amanda Borschel-Dan)
2015: The exhibition “Lincoln and the Jews” which was inspired by the publication of Lincoln and the Jews by Jonathan Sarna sponsored by the New York Historical Society is scheduled to open today.
2015: “The Green Prince” directed by Nadav Schirman is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2015: Today “Empty Mirrors Press published Howard Epstein's political memoir Rise Again: Nova Scotia's NDP on the Rocks an account of his 15 years in provincial politics, the history of the New Democratic Party in Nova Scotia, and his analysis of the successes and failures of the Dexter NDP government during its term in office.
2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Music Box in Atlantic, City.
2016: In Atlanta, the Breman is scheduled to host Henry Birnbery, the German born American G.I. who will describe his experiences as one of the “first American eyewitnesses to the devastation of the Nazi concentration camps.”
2016: “Wedding Doll” and “A Night at the Opera” are scheduled to be shown on the final day of the Houston Jewish Film Festival.
2016: “A Tale of Love and Darkness” which marked the directorial debut of Natalie Portman “in this adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Amos” is scheduled to be shown at the Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.
2016: LimmudFest New Orleans 2016 is scheduled to come to an end today.
http://limmudnola.org/schedule/

2016: Hadassah of Greater Washington is scheduled to host High Tea and Harmony, a fundraiser offering attendees a multi-dimensional musical experience along with a traditional “High Tea.”
2016: As part of “Jews in the American South” Rhetta Mendelsohn is scheduled to lead a walking tour of Old Charleston “with special emphasis on significant architecture, garden culture and sites of Jewish interest” followed by dinner with Eli Hyman, the “great-grandson of W.M. Karesh, a Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe who started a wholesale dry-goods business in the city in 1890.”
Read more:
http://go.forward.com/jews-in-the-american-south/#ixzz43JSZOcOI
Read more:
http://go.forward.com/jews-in-the-american-south/#ixzz43JSHRXoX]
2016: The annual AIPAC Policy Conference is scheduled to open in Washington, DC.

2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen, Carry Me by Peter

2017: “Israel’s David’s Sling anti-missile battery will go operational within the next two weeks, providing the finishing touch of the Jewish state’s multi-tiered missile defense array, a senior Israeli Air Force officer said today.” (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)

2017(22nd of Adar, 5777): Eighty-seven years old Robert B. Silvers, the son of James J. Silvers a salesman, sometime farmer and small business owner, and Rose Roden Silvers a music critic for The New York Globe and one of the first female radio hosts for RCA, who founded The New York Review of Books passed away today.



2017: A surprise drill began today in which “2,000 reserve soldiers were called up…to simulate war in the Gaza Strip.”

2017(22nd of Adar, 5777): Eighty-seven year old psychotherapist George Weinberg passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)


2017: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of The Second Time Around, an improbable tale of love involving Isaac Shapiro, “a grumpy Polish tailor

2018: “The 6th Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism” is scheduled to continue for a second day in Jerusalem.

2018: The Evelyn Rubenstein JCC Houston is scheduled to host “Get Cultured: Short Film Night” at the Axelrad Beer Garden.

2018: “End Game” and “Keep the Change” are scheduled to be shown at the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.

2018: In Jerusalem, Mercaz Hatarbuyot is scheduled to host concert pianist Eliahou Zabaly.

2018:Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “The Unlikely Nazi Hunters: A Rare Conversation with Serge and Beate Klarsfeld


2019(13th of Adar II, 5779): Fast of Esther; at night read the Megillah; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2019: The New York Sephardic Jewish Festival is scheduled to come to an end with the New York premiere of the documentary Photo Farag and presentation of the Pomegranate Award to “director Lisa Azuelos.”

2019: In Florida, the Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “Working Woman,” “Joseph Pulitzer” and “A Fortunate Man.”

2019: In Metairie, LA (suburban New Orleans) Congregation Beth Israel, JNOLA and the Jewish Community are scheduled to host “a very Lego Purim Party” that will include services and a Megillah reading for the whole family.

 

 

 

 

This Day, March 21, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 21

456 BCE: The convocation summoned by Ezra on intermarriage came to an end

629: Byzantine Emperor Heraclius marched into Jerusalem at the head of his army with the support of Jewish inhabitants. The Jews who had previously fought with the Persians against Byzantine rule decided to support him in return for a promise of amnesty. Upon his entry into Jerusalem the local priests convinced him that killing Jews was a positive commandment and that his promise was therefore invalid. Hundreds of Jews were massacred and thousands of others fled to Egypt. Thus, much of the rich Jewish life in the Galilee and Judea came to an end.

1349(1stof Nisan): Three thousand Jews were killed in Black Death riots in Efurt Germany.

This was one of only a series of wholesale murders of Jews that took place in Germany in 1349. The Jews provided a convenient scapegoat for the Black Death. In some places they were accused of poisoning the wells which supposedly caused the plague. Since The Black Death provided an interesting excuse of murdering Jews, the following few summary will prove useful when we get to it our study of Jewish History during the Middle Ages. "A Genoese trading post in the Crimea was besieged by an army of Kipchaks from Hungary and Mongols from the East. The latter brought with them a new form of plague. Infected dead bodies were catapulted into the Genoese town. One Genoese ship managed to escape and brought the disease to Messina, in Sicily. From this time forth the disease became an epidemic. It moved over the next few years to northern Italy, North Africa, France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, the Low Countries, England, Scandinavia and the Baltic. There were lesser outbreaks in many cities for the next twenty years. An estimated 25 million died in Europe and economic depression followed."

 

                                                      or there is this version

 

1349: After a mob marched into the Jewish quarter in Erfurt, Germany, carrying a flag with a cross the Jews tried to defend themselves without success resulting in the murder of one hundred Jews including Talmudic sage Alexander Suslin HaKohen and the burning of most of the ghetto.

1475: Simon of Trent disappeared from Trento, Italy. The disappearance led to a blood libel that led to 8 Jews being hung by local authorities for their part in a plot use the blood of this Christian child in the making of Matzah.

1497: On the evening of the Seder, all Jewish children in Portugal between the ages of four and fourteen were actually baptized.

1542: Paul III issued “Cupientes Judaeos” the Papal Bull dealing with the treatment of Jews who converted to Christianity including the strictures that the assets of converted Jews could no longer be confiscated, converted Jews could no longer live with Jews, and that converted Jews must be treated the same as other free citizens.

1548: The Vatican found a house used to convert Jews to Catholicism which the Jews were compelled to support with their taxes.

1694: “According to the reported of Jesuit John Edler Simon Abeles was killed today by his father Lazarus Abeles, because he persisted in his desire to embrace the Christian religion. The father, who was thrown into prison, strangled himself with his tefillin.  Söbl, or Levy Kurtzhandl, was imprisoned as an alleged accomplice, and put to death with horrible tortures. The body of Simon was buried in the Teyn Church of Prague with great pomp and with the honors due a martyr. The report of the Jesuit is naturally one-sided, full of miracles and many improbabilities. An impartial investigation of the sources is still lacking.

1697(28th of Adar, 5457): Amsterdam Rabbi Abraham Cohen Pimentel passed away. A student of Saul Levi Morteira, he served as hakham of the synagogue in Hamburg and was initially a signator to a letter of approbation for Sabbatai Zevi. He was the author of the “Minchat Kohen,” published in 1668.

1758: The councilor of the Holy Office, Lorenzo Ganganelli , the future Pope Clement XIV, who had been charged with investigating the blood libel against the Jews of Yanopol, Poland, presented "Non solis accusatoribus credendum," to the congregation of the Inquisition  which showed that not only were these charges groundless but demonstrated that “all the principal cases of blood accusation since the 13thcentury were groundless.

1759: A letter was received in New York at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue from Newport, Rhode Island. It was a request from the congregation at Newport asking for funds to help build a synagogue. New York sent financial assistance, and on May 28 the congregation at Newport sent a letter of thanks, signed by 10 of its members, back to New York.

1776: The President of Congress, John Hancock, arranged to send George Washington $250,000 cash to be used to maintain the siege of Boston. Hancock wrote in the letter that accompanied the funds sent that he had selected three "gentlemen of character whom I am confident will meet your notice." One of these men was the Jewish patriot, Moses Franks of Philadelphia.

1791: In Inowraclaw, Prussia, Rabbi Levin Isaac Auerbach and his wife gave birth to Isaac Levin Auerbach a supporter of making reforms in Judaism who served as the “preacher at the Jacobsen Temple where sermons were delivered in German, teaching at the Jewish girl’s school in Berlin and finally officiating at the temple in Leipzig for more than 25 years.”

1799(14th of Adar II, 5559): As the British, French and Turks fight it out for control of Egypt and Eretz Israel and Syria, the Jews celebrate Purim

1803: Jacob Hays who “was born in May, 1772 in a Jewish home in Bedford, NY and whose father was a soldier in Washington’s Army” and began his career as law enforcement as a New York Marshall in 1798 was appointed today as a “Captain of the Third Watch District” in New York’s “fledgling police force.”

1807(11th of Adar II, 5567): Shabbat Zachor

1807(11th of Adar II, 5567): Chaim Joseph David ben Isaac Zerachia Azulai passed away. Born in 1724, he was “known as the Chida (by the acronym of his name, חיד"א) and was a rabbinical scholar and a noted bibliophile, who pioneered the history of Jewish religious writings.”

1809: Ralph Harris married Rachel Shannon at the Great Synagogue today.

1811: Birthdate of East Prussian novelist Fanny Lewald who converted to Christianity at the age of 17.

1822: In Venjle, Joseph Joel Ballin and Hanne Behrend, born Peiser gave birth to Danish engraver Joel Ballin.

1827: Birthdate of Anglo-Jewish communal worker Manuel Castello.

1831(19th of Adar II): Chaim ben Naphtali Coslin, author of Maslul, passed away

1837(14thof Adar II, 5597): Purim

1837: Birthdate of Gustave-Hippolyte Worms, the Parisian born actor who made his debut as Achille in “Duc Job” in 1850. He retired from the stage in 1901.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/15018-worms-gustave-hippolyte

1841: Aaron Lazarus married Maria Myers today at the Great Synagogue.

1841: John Fileman married Mary Levy today at the New Synagogue.

1844: The Bahá'í calendar begins. This is the first day of the first year of the Bahá'í calendar. “The Bahá'í Faith has its administrative centre in Haifa on land it has owned since Bahá'u'lláh's imprisonment in Acre in the early 1870s by the Ottoman Empire. Pilgrims from all over the world visit for short periods of time. Apart from the circa six hundred volunteer staff, Bahá'ís do not live or preach in Israel”

1847: “The Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel,” the largest congregation in Philadelphia, was organized” today. “Its first rabbi was B. H. Gotthelf, who held services in a hall at No. 528 N. Second Street.”

1848: The ghetto pillars of Ferrara were destroyed by the professors and students of the Athenaeum.

1850: Birthdate of Gittel “Catherine” Helvich Shubert, the German born American wife of David Shubert with whom she had six children, including the famous Shubert brothers of theatrical fame.

1860: Birthdate of Sigmund Freud’s sister Regina Debora

1861: A Jew by the name of Guranda who is the Editor of the Ost Deutsche Post was among those whom the city of Vienna has chosen to serve in the Provincial Diet.

1864(13th of Adar II, 5624): Fast of Esther

1864: In Baltimore, MD, George Hexter and Amanda Kann gave birth to Victor Henry Hexter, the graduate of University of Virginia and husband of Minnie May Wertheimer who began practicing law in Dallas in 1887 and has served on the Dallas Board of Education for six years.

1867(14thof Adar II, 5627): Purim

1867: Five days after she had passed away, Jeanette Salomons, the daughter of Solomon Cohen and Hannah Samuel and the wife of David Salomons was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1869: Birthdate of Florenz Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld was born in Chicago. His father was a successful doctor and patron of the arts. He encouraged Ziegfeld's flair for showmanship. Eventually, young Florenz moved to New York where he gained fame for lavish productions "celebrating" the physical aspects of the American female. The Ziegfeld Follies launched the careers of many showgirls and comedians including Will Rogers and Eddie Cantor. Ziegeld was one of the first in a long line of Jews who were connected with the musical theatre. Ziegfeld married the famed Billie Burke and later moved to Hollywood. He passed away in 1932.

1869: In Rhaunen, Prussia, Rabbi Joseph Kahn and his wife Rosalie gave birth to Albert Kahn, one of the foremost industrial architect of his times who created several of the signature buildings in Detroit, Michigan, including the General Motors Building, the Detroit News Building, the Willow Run Bomber building, the foremost production site of B-24 bombers during WW II and Temple Emanuel.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/auto-factory-architect-albert-kahn-dies?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1208-12082016&om_rid=ce90181b0c3c1c3ceab4056c1ed1ff02d824a1fe06338d33baf4a5faf2c54d96&om_mid=119395340&kx_EmailCampaignID=8555&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1208-12082016&kx_EmailRecipientID=ce90181b0c3c1c3ceab4056c1ed1ff02d824a1fe06338d33baf4a5faf2c54d96%20&os_ehash=44@experian:ce90181b0c3c1c3ceab4056c1ed1ff02d824a1fe06338d33baf4a5faf2c54d96

1869: Today San Francisco attorney and Democratic politician Joseph Naphthaly, the Prussian born son of Samuel and Julia Naphthaly married Sarah Schmitt, the daughter of “Blaize L. and Pauline Schmitt with whom he had two children – Samuel and Leon.

1870(18th of Adar II, 5630: Chanokh Heynekh HaKohen Levin of Aleksander passed away. Born in 1798, “he served as the rebbe of a community of thousands of Hasidim during the "interregnum" between the Chidushei HaRim of Ger and the Sfas Emes. Heynekh was one of the leading students of the Rebbe Reb Simcha Bunim of Pshischa. After the latter's death he became one of the most prominent followers of Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Kotzk and the senior disciple of Chidushei hoRim. Following the death of the Chidushei hoRim in 1866, the bulk of his numerous chasidim chose Rabbi Chanokh Heynekh as the next rebbe. Chanokh Heynekh served as the Rabbi in the Jewish communities of Aleksander from 1837 (or earlier) till 1853, Nowy Dwór from 1853 to 1859 and Przasnysz from 1859 to 1864 (or 1866). After his tenure In Przasnysz he retired from the rabbinate and settled in Aleksander[7], where he lived during his period of leadership as rebbe. His teachings are collected in Chashovoh leToivo (first published in 1929[, and are quoted widely. While few may know his name today, his successor was the renowned Yehudah Aryeh Leib which means he must have been quite a personage in his own right.

1871: Twenty-six year old Max Landsberg, the Berlin born son of a rabbi and graduate of the Breslau Jewish Theologicial Seminary began serving as the Rabbi at B’rith Kodesh Temple in Rochester, NY – a position he held for forty-four years.

1871: Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the German Empire. In the 1840’s, when Bismarck began his political career he held the views of a reactionary Junker “who could not accept Jews serving in the name of his ‘holy majesty’” and who opposed legislation offering Jews full emancipation. By 1869, Bismarck was the leader of a government that passed an emancipation law stating, “All still existing limitations of the…civil rights which are rooted in differences of relgious faith are hereby annulled.” Bismarck explained the change in views by stating, “Man grows with his goals.” In Bismarck’s case the goal was elimination of Austria as Prussia’s rival for leadership of a modern unified Germany. Bismarck turned to his personal banker, a Jews named Gerson Bleichroeder, to supply the financing for the war which drove Austria from the German equation and allowed him to modernize the German Army. Bismarck realized that Jewish support was necessary for his nationalistic goals. But in working with Jews, he came to see them as human beings, and as human begins capable of making a major contribution to the new Germany. All of these elements helped to make the new chancellor a more enlightened leader when it came to matters concerning the Jews. Evidence of this new enlightenment would be seen in 1878 when he took the side of the Jews at the Congress of Berlin when dealing with Czar Alexander II over the question of the horrible treatment of the Jews of Romania.

1872: It was reported today that the Jews of Cahul in Romania have endured three days of attacks by the local citizens. There are 1,000 Jews living in this town of 7,000. Two of the synagogues have been desecrated and property losses are valued are 49,000 ducats

1872(11th of Adar II, 5632): Fast of Esther observed because the 13th of Adar II falls on Shabbat

1872(11th of Adar II, 5632): Russian Talmudist Samuel ben Joseph Strashun, also known as Rashash (רש"ש) passed away today in Vilna. As we shall see, he embodied the concept of not making a profit from the crown of the Torah. Born in 1794, he was educated by his father, married at an early age, and settled with his wife's parents in the village of Streszyn, commonly called Strashun (near Wilna), where he assumed his last name. The distillery owned by his father-in-law was wrecked by the invading French army in 1812, and the family removed to Wilna, where Samuel established another distillery and became one of the most prominent members of the community. His wife conducted the business, as was usual in Wilna, and he devoted the greater part of his time to studying the Talmud and to teaching, gratuitously, the disciples who gathered about him. The Talmud lectures which for many years he delivered daily at the synagogue on Poplaves street were well attended, and from the discussions held there resulted his annotations, which are now incorporated in every recent edition of the Babylonian Talmud (Hagahot v'Chiddushei HaRashash). His fame as a rabbinical scholar spread throughout Russia, and he conducted a correspondence with several well-known rabbis. Strashun was offered the rabbinate of Suwałki, but he refused it, preferring to retain his independence. His piety did not prevent him from sympathizing with the progressive element in Russian Jewry, and he was one of the few Orthodox leaders who accepted in good faith the decree of the government that only graduates of the rabbinical schools of Wilna and Jitomir should be elected as rabbis. He wrote good modern Hebrew, spoke the Polish language fluently, was conspicuously kind and benevolent, and was highly esteemed even among the Christian inhabitants of Wilna. Besides the above-mentioned annotations, he wrote others to the Midrash Rabbot, which first appeared in the Wilna editions of 1843-45 and 1855. Some of his novellæ, emendations, etc., were incorporated in the works of other authorities.

1873: In Hessen, Germany, Simon and Lina Plaut gave birth to Isaac Plaut, the “husband of Sophie Plaut” with whom he had eight children.

1875: The Anshe Bikur Cholim Society hosted a Purim Ball tonight at Irving Hall in New York City.

1875’ Three days after he had passed away, 67 year old Morris Jewell, the husband of Sophia Jewell and the father of  Julian, Nathaniel and Caroline Jewell was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road Jewish Cemetery.

1875: Over 200 contributors signed the “Silver Book of Life” at this evening’s Purim reception at the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews in New York City.

1875: Rachel and Moses Isaac Binion gave birth to Martha Esther Binion who became Martha Esther Cahn when she married Edward Cahn.

1877(7thof Nisan, 5637): Fifty-eight year old Moritz Kohner who in 1869 founded the Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeindebundpassed away today in Leipzig.

1879: A Jewish peddler from New York was beaten and robbed by 3 men while walking along the railroad tracks between Norton and Stamford, Conn.

1880(9th of Nisan, 5640): Just six days short of his 60th birthday, Indian businessman Elias David Sasson passed away in Ceylon.

1882: Birthdate of Friederike Massarik, the native of Vienna who gained fame opera singer Fritzi Massary.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/massary-fritzi

1882: Birthdate of Max Aronson, the Little Rock AR native who gained fame as Gilbert M. Anderson

 an early silent screen actor, appearing as Bronco Billy in that famed 1903 hit, “The Great Train Robbery. “Anderson also was a promoter of the new industry and was one of the first to move his operation to California where he made at least one film featuring the famous Ben Turpin.

1883(12th of Adar II, 5643): Sir George Jessel, the son of a Jewish coral merchant who became on the U.K.’s most influential jurists passed away.

1886(14thof Adar II, 5646): Purim

1887: Birthdate of Erich Mendelsohn “a German Jewish architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.”

1888(9thof Nisan, 5648): Zebi Hirsch Ornstein the son of Mordecai Zeeb Ornstein, and grandson of Jacob Meshullam Ornstein, who served as the rabbi at Rzeszow and Lemberg, passed away today.

1890: A law was issued today which defines Austrian Jewish communities and “regulated the conditions of Jewish congregations.”

1890: In Sokolow, Austria, Henry Pomeranz and Anna Kivowitz gave birth to Max Pomeranz the Brooklyn dentist who came to the United States in 1900 and is the grandfather of singer/songwriter David Pomeranz.

1890: Based on information that first appeared in the London Daily News“Sobriety Among Jews” which was published today espouses the theory that the Jews have survived despite having been oppressed “by cruel laws” and forced to live “in abodes where others must have died” because “they lead, as a rule, simple lives and are mindful of the expressive maxim in Proverbs, ‘wine is a mocker.’” In other words, while Jews do not refrain from drinking, they drink in moderation and condemn intemperance.

1891: “The members of the Baron de Hirsch Club opened their clubhouse at 208 East Broadway” in New York City today.

1893: Hermann Ahlwardt delivered “a rabidly anti-Semitic speech” in the Reichstag in which “he declared that he had eleven documents which showed that while Prince Bismarck was Chancellor, fraudulent contracts had been made repeatedly with Jewish financers…”

1893: “For Jewish Working Girls” published today provided the efforts of the Jewish Working Girls’ Vacation Society to provide a summer time respite by renting a house in the country where they can spend a few restful days at no charge.  The environment will be moral and all dietary laws will be observed. The society, led by Mrs. A.L. Freudenthal rented a house in Westchester County last year and provided two week vacations for 125 young women.

1894: It was reported today that the Don Quixote Club will host a fundraiser for the United Hebrew Charities at the Manhattan Athletic Club.

1894: It was reported today that the industrial school in New York is only one of the institutions supported by the Bikur Cholim which is currently under the leadership of Mrs. Emma L. Toplitz.

1895: Birthdate of Jack Arons, the native of Balia, Roumania who was a “member of the first group of” members of the Jewish Legon” from Toronto who “served as an instructor in the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers” who, after WW I, “returned to Toronto and enter the catering business.” (As reported by Leon Cheifitz who as an 18 year old living in Montreal, joined the Legion.)

1895: “Contest of the Grunhut Will” published today described the attempts by Louis Grunhut and Mrs. Mary Ballowa, the son and daughter of the late Dr. Bernhard Grunhut, who are trying to break the will of the descendant.  They are contending that the Doctor had not married Eva L. Jacobs who claims to be his widow and that the couple had not had a baby which died after only 15 deaths. As matters stand now she will inherit his entire estate less $50,000 that has been left to Mount Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew Benevolent Society.

1896: For the first time Shaaray Tefila will use the Union Prayer Book which was recently adopted by the Union of American Congregations.

1896: The celebration Shaaray Tefila’s Jubilee will continue this morning with an address delivered after Shabbat morning services by “Henry Morrison, a veteran lawyer who as a youth delivered an address at the dedication of the first synagogue..

1896: “Inquisition and the Jews” published today summarized the views expressed by Dr. M. H. Harris. In speaking of the long-term consequences suffered by the perpetrators of the Inquisition, he concluded that “Spain brought upon itself its own punishment.  In driving out the Moors and Jews it drove out its best citizens. ..Spain is the most insignificant of nations.  It is no longer a first-rate power.  In driving out the Moors and Jews it wrote its own epitaph.”

1897: A Purim Reception today marked “the formal opening of the new building and the improved hospital wards of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews at West 106thStreet.

1897: Cantor David Cahn will officiate at today’s funeral for Rabbi Ignatz Grossman which will be held at Rodef Sholom.  Rabbis Kaufman Kohler and Joseph Silverman will deliver eulogies.

1897: The Superintendent of the Montefiore Home For Chronic Invalids hosted its annual Purim Masquerade Ball tonight.

1898: In Mulhouse, Alsace, France, Constance Kenendel Lang and Baruch Kahn gave birth to Samuel Kahn

1898(27thof Adar, 5658: Sixty-two year old Babbette Frankfurt, the wife of Moses Frankfurt passed away today following which she was buried in the Hebrew Cemetery in Norfolk, Va.

1898: In Albany, Governor Black signed into law a bill introduced by Senator Cantor incorporating the Hebrew Charities Building in New York City.

1898: When the Austrian Reichsrath reconvenes today legislation will be introduced to exclude “from the privilege of suffrage all Jews and those remotely connected with that race either by marriage or remote ancestry.

1899: Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor delivered an address on “The Working Day” tonight at the People’s Home in New York City.

1899: The first plenary session of the Supreme Court of Appeals, with all three Chambers sitting jointly and Charles Mazeau presideing.

1902: Birthdate of Hamburg native and actor Carl Jaffe who used the stage name Frank Alwar while performing in his native Germany which he left in 1936 with the rise of the Nazis and settled in London where he pursued a long running career in films and television.

1902(12th of Adar II): Sixty-three year old Abraham Shalom Friedberg (Har Shalom) who went from watchmaker’s apprentice to tutor, author and editor whose works included Emek ha-Zasim , a Hebrew language “adaptation of  Grace Aguilar's Vale of Cedars" passed away today in Warsaw.

1902: Four days after she had passed away, Henriette De Jongh, the wife of Nathan Jacob De Jongh and the mother of James and Benjamin De Johngh was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery

1902: Birthdate of Holocaust survivor Jermie Adler. A poor Jew born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he and his wife moved to Liege, Belgium during the 1930’s where he ran a tailor shop that provided a living for him, his wife and their three children. The family hid successful for four years during the brutal German occupation. Tragically, while Adler was sick in the hospital, the Gestapo came and arrested his family including his nephew. They all perished except for one daughter, who, along with Adler survived the war.

1903: Birthdate of journalist and movie producer Mark Hellinger.

http://alankrode.com/public/vigorish/Mark%20Hellinger.pdf

1905: Albert Einstein publishes his theory on special relativity.

1905(14thof Adar II, 5665): Purim

1906: This morning, the funeral for Isaac Gellis is scheduled to take place at Congregation Kahal Adath Jeshurun the synagogue which he served as President.

1906: Birthdate of Benjamin Samberg, the New York native who gained fame as singer-songwriter Benny Bell.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165717

1906: Abraham Frankel, a cousin of Israel Levin who had come to St. Thomas in 1897, became part of the Sephardic merchant community today when he married Rebecca Sasso, the daughter of Abraham Sasso, who soon after they were married moved on to Colon, Panama.

1909: In Austria, David (Aubie) Kinsbruner and Nettie Kinsbruner gave birth to Max Kinsbrunner who as Mac Kinsbrunner,  the New York City High School graduate who began his college basketball career at Syracuse before transferring to St. Johns where he “was a member of the famed ‘Wonder Five basketball team that won 68 of 72 games from 1929 through 1931.

1913: Birthdate of Max E. Youngstein the New York born lawyer turned movie producer

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/11/business/max-youngstein-84-helped-run-united-artists.html

1913(12thof Adar II, 5673: Fifty-six year old philanthropist Louis Feist passed away today in Frankfort, Germany.

1913(12thof Adar II, 5673): Chicago merchant Victor Strelitz, a member of Chicago’s Sinai Congregation passed away today.

1913(12thof Adar II, 5673): Eighty-year old journalist Charles A.D. Meyerhoff passed away today in New York City.

1913(12thof Adar II, 5673): Samuel A. Lass who “became rabbi of the Ohel Congregation twenty-six years ago and three years later accepted the pulpit of the Keneseth Israel Congregation passed away today in Minneapolis, MN.

1914(23rdof Adar, 5674): Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudey: Shabbat Parah

1914(23rdof Adar, 5674): Fifty-seven year old Isidor Langsdorf, of Antonio

Roig and Lansdorf, the manufacturer of the Roig cigars and leading member of Rodeph Shalom passed away today in his hometown of Philadelphia, PA.

1914: London native Redcliffe Nathan Salaman, the son of Myer and Sarah Salaman and Nina Ruth Salaman gave birth to Esther Salaman who became Esther Sarah Hamburger when she married Paul Hamburger

1915: “The American Jewish Relief Committee for Sufferers from the War, the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War and the Provisional Committee for General Zionist Affairs issued a joint appeal today to Jews in American to make special contributions for relief of Jewish war sufferers.”

1915: “Plans to raise $100,000 with which to build a home for Jewish orphans in the Bronx were discussed today by the Federation of Bessarabian Organization today” at the meeting in Public School 62.”

1915: “A protest against the violation by Rumania of the political and civil rights provided for the Jews of Rumania by the Treaty of Berlin in 1877 after the close of the Russo-Turkish War was made by the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America tonight at its dinner at Trotzky’s Kosher Restaurant in the Broadway Central Hotel at Bond Street and Broadway.”

1915: “Supreme Court Justice Samuel Greenbaum, President of the Education Alliance delivered an address tonight at celebration marking the 25th anniversary of the found of the alliance in which he “reviewed the history of the organization and outlined its purposes.”

1915: State Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo and several former directors of the Educational Alliance and members of the Women’s Auxiliary were among those who attended a reception given in honor of Mayor John P. Mitchell by the Education Alliance.,

1916: Birthdate of Novelist Harold Robbins. There seems to be some dispute about this since May 5, 1916 is also given as his birthdate. An orphan, Robbins was also known as Francis Kane and Harold Rubin. Some of his more famous works included The Carpetbaggers and The Betsy. While not critically acclaimed, Robbins was a hit with the public. According to one source, his books have sold more than fifty million copies and some of them have been turned into popular Hollywood films. Robbins died in 1997.

1917: The President of the American Jewish Committee sent a cablegram to Professor Paul Miliukov the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government established by the Revolution in which he said, “Every Jew hails free Russia’s advent with prayer thanksgiving, and pledges for co-operation.”

1917: Henry Morgenthau, of the American Jewish Relief Committee, announced” today “that $10,000 must be raised in the United States by June 1” if the millions of “Jews in the eastern war zone were to be saved from starvation.”

1917: In Jerusalem, ”noted archeologist Eleazar Sukenik and educationalist and women's rights activist Hasya Sukenik-Feinsod” gave birth to Yigal Sukenik who as Yigael Yadin gained fame fighting in the War for Independence, serving as the second Chief of Staff for the IDF and becoming a first-rate archeologist. If you did not know he was a real person, you would swear that some novelist had invented this fascinating person.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yigael-yadin

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/obituaries/yigael-yadin-famed-israeli-dies-was-archeologist-and-war-hero.html

1918: After calling on Jews to support “the Catholic war drive” Jacob H. Schiff led by example when he made a one thousand dollar contribution to the charitable activity.

1918: Today, on Delancey Street, Rabbi M.Z. Margolies blessed “the members of the second contingent of the Jewish Battalion before its departure for Canada.”

1919: The National Jewish Council in Constantinople asked the British High Commander for the discharge of all Jewish soldiers from the Ottoman army. They stated that the Jewish soldiers endured terrible suffering, as they were used to build roads across Anatolia. Thousands died due to lack of food, illness, insufficient equipment and cruel treatment.

1919: In Budapest, Zsigmond Kunfi, minister of education in the newly formed Hungarian Social Democratic government met with Bela Kun chairman of Hungary’s Communist party at the Marko Street Jail. Kunfi was seeking Kun’s support in the formation of coalition government. The irony is that Kun and Kunfi whose name was Kohn, were both Jewish.

1920: In a move that would end up keeping Jews from getting to the United States during the Holocaust, President Harding pushed Congress to limit immigration.

1920: In Vienna, the police and municipal guards dispersed a parade of several hundred young men that had been formed in front of city hall despite a ban on anti-Jewish mass meetings.

1920(2nd of Nisan, 5680): Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe passed away. There is no way that this simple blog can do justice to this leader of Chabad and we urge to check elsewhere for more about his life and contributions to the Jewish people.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/110470/jewish/A-Brief-Biography.htm

1921: In Dublin, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, who was serving as Chief Rabbi of Ireland and his wife gave birth to Yaakov Herzog who made Aliyah when his father became the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi and who, after being ordained earned a law degree and became a member of the Israeli diplomatic corps.

http://www.magalbooks.com/herzog.html

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/this-is-how-we-ruined-toynbee-s-theory-1.210993

1921: Karl and Helene Neubauer gave birth to Kurt Neubauer who was murdered at Treblinka in late 1942.

1922: Winston Churchill cautions Zionist Pinhas Ruttenberg against ordering machinery for the newly approved power project for Palestine from Germany when unemployment is still a major problem in Britain. Ruttenberg took the hint and re-channeled his purchases of heavy equipment accordingly.

 

1924: Birthdate of Dov Shilansky an Israeli politician and who served as Speaker of the Knesset from 1988 to 1992.

1924(15th of Adar II, 5684): Shushan Purim

1924(15thof Adar II, 5684): Less than a month before his 40th birthday, Lithuanian born, University of London trained “Hebraist and Arabist” passed away today in Philadelphia where he was a Professor at Dropsie College and an editor for the Jewish Publication Society.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/halper-benzion

1924(15th of Adar II, 5684): Eighty-three year old Samuel Ullman the native of German who settled in Birmingham, Alabama where he became a successful businessman, poet and humanitarian passed away today.

https://www.uab.edu/ullmanmuseum/

1925: Viking Press was founded by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim. “The firm's name and logo—a Viking ship drawn by Rockwell Kent—were meant to evoke the ideas of exploration and enterprise implied by the word ‘Viking’".

1925: In the Poconos mountain town of Stroudsburg, PA, Benjamin Wilkins, a Russian immigrant tailor and the former Rose Katz gave birth to hotel-man Morris Benjamin Wilkins who “installed the Poconos’ first heart-shaped bathtub.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/us/morris-wilkins-dies-at-90-lured-lovers-to-poconos.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1926: In New York, William Fox announced today that realtor Benjamin Winter had contributed $50,000 to the United Jewish campaign which is working to five fifteen million dollars to help Jews living abroad.

1926: In Brooklyn Bernard Gantmacher and the former Rebecca Rose gave birth to Elliot Bernard Gantmacher who as Elliot Gant, along with his brother Elliot, gave us that epitome of collegiate fashion – the” button-down” shirt and created their brand – the famous Gant shirt. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/business/elliot-gant-marketer-of-the-button-down-shirt-dies-at-89.html

1926(6thof Nisan, 5686): Seventy-seven year old Dr. Philip Klein who served for thirty-five years as the rabbi “of the First Hungarian Congregation Ohab Zedek passed away today.

https://www.jta.org/1926/03/23/archive/dr-philip-klein-aged-new-york-rabbi-dies1927(17th of Adar II, 5687): Seventy year old Anglo-American archaeologist Sir Charles Walston, the son of Henry and Sophie Waldstein who changed his name to Walston married Florence Einstein Walson with whom he had one side – Henry David Leonard George Walston -- and  whose works included The Jewish Question and the Mission of the Jews passed away today

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography/Waldstein,_Charles

https://www.nature.com/articles/119534a0

https://www.jta.org/1927/03/25/archive/sir-charles-walston-noted-anglo-jewish-scholar-dies-at-71

1927: As the Ford-Sapiro Libel case continues to be heard in Detroit, letters are arriving from all over the country including one sent by an unnamed correspondent  to Senator Reed, Mr. Ford’s attorney in which he state “every Jew is sworn to knock out three teeth of a Christian when kissing him.””

1929: Birthdate of Jules Bergman, ABC television’s news space and science reporter. When the world of space flight was considered the province of the geeks, Bergman took on the beat and made it intelligible to the average American.

1929: A West End production of the Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar musical “The Five O’clock Girl opened at the London Hippodrome.

1932(13thof Adar II, 5692): Ta’anit Esther; erev Purim

1932: Birthdate of Walter Gilbert winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980.

1932: “Dumb Dicks,” a comedy starring Benny Rubin was released today in the United States.

1932: Birthdate of violinist and conductor Joseph Silverstein the Detroit native who has enjoyed a distinguished career that has included both the concert hall and the world of academia.

1932: The American athletes who will compete in the upcoming Jewish Olympics are re-united in Trieste where they begin the last leg of their trip to Tel Aviv.

1933: The German government opens its first concentration camp at Dachau.

1933: The New York Times reported on the increased number of German immigrants arriving in Palestine. “Oscar Kahn, who was a (German) State Secretary in 1918 and who had been threatened by the Nazis” was among the many German families who reached Eretz Israel this week.

1934(5th of Nisan, 5694): Just two days before his 56th birthday Austrian composer passed away in Berlin after having suffered a stroke in December of 1933.

http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/franz_schreker/

1935: “The Man Who Knew Too Much” produced by Michael Balcon and co-starring Peter Lorre was released in the United States three months after being released in England.

1936: According to reports published today, “both the police and the Storm Troopers are under instructions to see it that every registered voter goes to the polls” in the upcoming elections “except for the Jews.”

1936: In Marlborough, CT, Sam Boardman and his wife gave birth lightweight boxer Larry Boardman.

1936:Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, the High Commissioner of Palestine is reported today to be persisting in pressing forward with establishment of a legislative council even though the Jews are adamant in their refusal to participate because it would them a permanent minority subject to Arab and British control

1937: As the wave of terror continues, Dov Zemel, the chauffeur of the Meshek Haotzar, is in critical condition in Tel Aviv hospital after having been shot by an assailant firing from an Arab owned orange grove.

1937: As of today no arrests have been in Jersey City “where two large signs derisive of Jews were painted across the façade of Ahavas Achim” an orthodox synagogue on Myrtle Avenue.

1937(9th of Nisan, 5679) Sixty-four year old British born historian and Zionist leader Jacob De Haas the secretary of the First Zionist Congress, a close confidant of Theodore Herzel and after moving to the United States in 1902, the first secretary of the Federation of American Zionists from which position he recruited Louis Brandeis to the Zionist cause passed away today at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Of-Palestine-Thousand-Years/dp/1406709301

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/03/22/94345411.pdf

1937: The Palestine Post reported that "unfettered discretion" had been conferred upon the High Commissioner to make the Defense Regulations under a new Palestine (Defense) Order-in-Council effective. The proclamation, published in Gazette Extraordinary, had also empowered the High Commissioner to delegate his powers to the General Officer, Commander of all Forces in Palestine. It was reported from London that the Palestine (Peel) Commission was drafting its final report.

1937: Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to speak on “Jews Under Protest and Jews by Faith” at Temple Emanu-El’

1937: At this morning’s Jewish Youth Service, Rabbi I.B. Hoffman of B’nai Jershurun is scheduled to speak on “Jewish Youth – Awake and Live.”

1937: At the Free Synagogue, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to speak on “Gains or Losses in Religion: Have We Lost or Found Faith?”

1937: Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Healing Through Religion” at the Jewish Science Society.

1939(1st of Nisan, 5699): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1939: Birthdate of Joseph Raz the Israeli philosopher whose works include The Concept of a Legal System and The Morality of Freedom.

1939: A 24 hour strike protesting Great Britain’s latest plan to deal with the situation in Palestine was scheduled to come to and at 5 A.M. today. According to The National Council Of Palestine Jews, the plan would lead to the “liquidation of the Newish national home” and strangle Jewish settlement in Palestine

1940: Paul Reynaud becomes Prime Minister of France. Reynaud would be the Prime Minister when the Germans would end the Phony War and come crashing through the Ardennes in May of 1940. Within six weeks, France would suffer a crushing military defeat. Reynaud was one of the leaders who wanted to continue the fight against the Nazis from France’s overseas colonies. He was overruled. To his credit, Reynaud refused to sign an Armistice with the Germans, a role that fell to the willing hands of Marshall Petain. Petain’s shameful behavior led to the active betrayal of the Jews of France by their non-Jewish countrymen.

1941: “Sea Wolf” co-produced by Jack L. Warner co-starring Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield (Jacob Julius Garfinkle) and featuring Howard Da Silva as he leading mutineer was released in the United States today.

1942(3rdof Nisan, 5702): Parashat Vayikra

1942(3rdof Nisan, 5702): Sixty-nine year old Galician born, Berlin trained rabbi Jacob Lauterbach who in 1903 came to the United States where he became a professor at Hebrew Union College and a prolific contributor to the Jewish Encyclopedia passed away today.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0186/ms0186.html

1942: Bernhard Lichtenberg “the single most well-known Catholic cleric who openly disagreed not only with the persecution of baptized Jews, but of Jews in general” today “was found guilty of a treacherous attack on state and party and sentenced to a two-year imprisonment.”

1943(14th of Adar II, 5703): Purim

1943: At Radom, Poland, Jewish physicians were removed from the ghetto and executed at nearby Szydlowiec.

1943: Eight members of the Jewish intelligentsia were taken from Piotrków, Poland, to a Jewish cemetery and shot, along with the cemetery's caretaker and his wife. The Germans engineer these killings to total ten, in a macabre reference to the biblical story of the hanged ten sons of the Jew-hating Haman--a crucial character in the Purim story.

1943: During the Jewish festival of Purim, 2300 Jews from Skopje, Yugoslavia, were deported to Auschwitz.

1943: An attempt to assassinate Hitler when visited a display of captured Soviet weapons at a military museum in Berlin failed because Hitler’s schedule was changed and Colonel Gersdorff did not have time to detonate the bomb.

1944: Eichmann went to Hungary to oversee German interests in a country that was still hesitant about deporting its Jews. The Hungarians would soon capitulate to German demands. The Hungarian Arrow Cross would be an enthusiastic participant in the Nazis roundups.

1945: At the end of the “Flossenberg March,” the remaining survivors of the march were crammed into cattle cars over a three day period and awaited further transport. Many died of thirst. They were sent to Belsen. Only 200 of the original 1000 women survived the entire trip.

1945: Red Army troops entered the Pruszcz, Poland, camp near Stutthof. Only about 200 women prisoners, out of an original 1100, remained alive.

1945: Dozens of small concentration camps in Germany were liberated by the Red Army.

1946: “The Kid From Brooklyn” a musical comedy produced by Samuel Goldwyn and starring Danny Kaye was released in the United States today.

1946: It was reported today that “Dr. Stephen S. Wise, President of the American Jewish Congress and Walter White, Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People” had “sent a joint appeal to /Governor Thomas E. Dewey urging him to publicly endorse the Falk-Andrews Bill which would outlaw restrictive covenants on real estate.”

1947: According to reports published in Tel Aviv today, a combination of loans and the Jewish Agency has been able to obtain a direct allocation of $500,000 have made it possible to reopen five diamond plants. The plants had been closed for the past ten weeks. Seven more plants are scheduled to reopen next week. The money will be used primarily to purchase rough-cut diamonds which the Palestinians can cut, polish and sell or be used to create jewelry. About five hundred polishers will be employed in these efforts.

1947(29th of Adar, 5707): Philip Lehman an American investment banker passed away. Born in New York City to Emanuel and Pauline (nee Sondheim), his father, was a co-founder of investment bank, Lehman Brothers. Philip became a partner in the family-owned firm in 1887 and was the firm's managing partner from 1901 to 1925. He was also the first chairman of the board of the Lehman Corporation. [1] Lehman was notable as one of the first financiers to recognize the potential of issuing stock as a way for new companies to raise capital. Lehman began collecting major artworks in 1911, the bulk of which he willed to his son Robert. His collection today forms part of the exhibition in the Robert Lehman Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9406E1DB173CE13BBC4A51DFB566838C659EDE

1947(29thof Adar, 5707): Fifty-one year old Solomon “Sol” Tarlow, the Russian born son of Wolf and Odessa Tarlowski who emigrated to the United States in 1914 under the sponsorship of his brother-in-law Sam Stolaroff the owner of the dry goods store in Roswell, NM where Sol was employed as a tailor while raising three children with his wife Audra, passed away today after which he was buried at South Park Cemetery in Roswell.

1947: In Parliament, Churchill mocks the Labor government’s willing to “scuttle everywhere” surrendering Egypt, India and Burma but continuing to waste treasure on a barren Palestine policy.

1948: “Peace in Europe depends largely on the solution there of the displaced persons problem, Lieut. Col. Dayton H. Frost, former deputy director of the Civil Affairs Division of the United States Army in Germany, told 1,500 delegates at the sixty-third annual meeting of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society today in the Astor Hotel.”

1948: Two days after Ambassador Warren Austin to the UN Security Council said that the U.S. no longer viewed the partition as viable, an exasperated and angry President Harry Truman wrote "The striped pants conspirators in the State Department had completely balled up the Palestine situation."  President Truman overruled the Arabists, oil industry and self-described foreign policy pragmatist and continued his support of the creation of a Jewish state.

1949: “The Undercover Man,” a film noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis and produced by Robert Rossen was released today in the United States.

1950: In New York City, Jackson T. Holtz of Boston, national commander of the Jewish War Veterans (JWV) presented a 32 passenger bus to Adolf Robison, board chairman of Material for Israel, Inc. The bus will be used to take disabled veterans from “Tel Hashomir Hospital in Israel to” their worksites in Tel Aviv which is seven miles away.

1951: During the Cold War Red Scare, actor Larry Parks testified before the strangely named House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) saying "I don't think this is American justice to make me...crawl through the mud...this is what I beg you not to do.""Despite his confessions and informing, Parks was blacklisted."

1952: Jewish born DJ and producer Alan Freed presented the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egypt had joined the Islamic Union.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that preliminary secret reparations talks between the Israeli-Jewish and German delegations had begun at The Hague.

1952: The Jerusalem Post was happy to announce, that together with all other Israeli newspapers, it would no longer appear as a two-page issue, but would be able to return to four pages daily and eight pages on Friday.

1953: Edward H. Weiss, president of Weiss & Geller spoke at Emory University’s advertising clinic in Atlanta, GA.

1954(16thof Adar II, 5714): Shushan Purim

1956(9thof Nisan, 5716): Ninety year old Edwin Thanhouser, the Baltimore born son of Samuel and Julia Thanhouser and actor who went on to start the Thanhouser Film Coporation in New Rochelle, NY while raise his son Lloyd with his wife the former Gertrude Homan passed away today after which he was buried at the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY.

1957: Before filming of “A Fairwell to Arms” began John Huston (who was not Jewish) quit the project in a dispute with producer David O. Selznick who replaced him as director with Charles Vidor.

1958: Seventy-four year old Hans Ehrenberg, who converted to Christianity in 1911 and founded the Confessing Church passed away.  He was forced to flee to England by the Nazis because under their laws he was Jewish. ” Hans Ehrenberg was one of the few German Protestant theologians, even within the Confessing Church, to publicly express his vehement opposition to the anti-Semitism of the Nazis and publicly declare his support of the Jewish people. He strongly urged the Protestant church to take the same stand. He criticized Christian anti-Semitism and emphasized the similarities between Judaism and Christianity.”

1960: David Susskind was the Executive Producer for tonight’s broadcast of “The Master Builder,” this week’s “Play of the Week.”

1961: "A law was passed that sequestered for the Government 'all goods and property in Libya, belonging to organizations or persons resident in Israel or connected to them by professional affiliation”

1961: Sixty year old feather-weight 5’ 7” David Frush Jr., a native of London who fought his first fight in 1917 passed away today in Cleveland, Ohio.

1961: Art Modell “bought the old Cleveland Browns” which became the Baltimore Ravens.

1962: U.S. premiere of “Sweet Bird of Youth” produced by Pandro Berman, directed by Richard Brooks who also wrote the screenplay, starring Paul Newman.

1963: “The Balcony,” a film version of the Broadway play starring Shelly Winters, Peter Falk, Leonard Nimoy, and Lee Grant was released in the United States today.

1964: Mayor Wagner was among those who spoke at the celebration marking the 30thanniversary of Aufbau which was held at the Hunter College Assembly Hall and to which “President Lyndon Johnson sent greetings.”

1964: In Philadelphia, the pre-Broadway run of “Anyone Can Whistle,” a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim came to an end.

1964: Birthdate of Bruce M. Mesner, the New York City native who anchored the defense for the University of Maryland Terrapins before spending one season playing pro-ball with Marv Levy’s Buffalo Bills.

1965: Martin Luther King Jr leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Among those in the front rank is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who prays with his feet as he joined King and other civil rights leader on the march which is part of the campaign to pass the Voting Right’s Act.

1966: Sixty-nine year old professional boxer Danny Frust, he husband of Binnie (Cohen) Frush passed away today.

1967: “Thoroughly Modern Millie” produced by Ross Hunter with music by Elmer Bernstein was released today in the United States.

1967: “The Honey Pot, a crime comedy-drama film written for the screen and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz” was released in the United Kingdom today.

1968: Israeli forces crossed the Jordan River to attack PLO bases. The organizational names may change but the war against the terrorists has been going on for decades.

1968: Seventy-one year old German born Gerhart Eisler whose father was Jewish and mother was Lutheran and was a Communist Party operative who worked in several countries passed away today.

http://spartacus-educational.com/Gerhart_Eisler.htm

1969: Funeral services for Mrs. Zena Maisel Pollack, a graduate of the University of Nebraska and the administrative director of the Jewish Guild for the Blind are scheduled to be held this morning in Manhattan.

1969(2ndof Nisan, 5729): Seventy-three year old Joseph Varbalow, the Russian born son of Hyman and Sadie Stillman Varbalow and Univesity of Pennsylvania trained attorney who went on to serve as District Court Judge in Camden, NJ where he raised a family with his wife Dorothy passed away today after which he was buried at the Crescent Memorial Park in Pennsauken, NJ.

1969: On the Upper West Side Lucianne Cummings, the Episcopalian literary agent whose involvement with Monica Lewinsky helped launch her son’s career and Sydney Goldberg gave birth to right-wing pundit Jonah Goldberg who was raised in the faith of his father.

1970(13thof Adar II, 5730): Start reading Vayikra on Shabbat Zachor which will be followed by the reading of the Megillah in the evening.

1970: Eighty-nine year old Somerset native George Eric Rowe Gedye who had served as a foreign correspondent for a dozen years in the 1920’s and 1930” and was the author the 1939 tome Betrayal in Central Europe which was highly critical of Prime Minister Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement and who provided an eyewitness of the “brutalities and persecutions” of Jews in Austria

1971(24thof Adar, 5731): Eighty year old Peretz Bernstein, “of the signatories of the Israeli declaration of independence” and MK passed away today.

1971: “making it” produced by Albert S. Ruddy, written by Peter Bart, starring Kristoffer Tabori and Bob Balaban and with music by Charles Fox was released today in the United States.

1973: U.S. premiere of “Godspell” with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz starring Victor Garber.

1974: “Naum Olshansky renounced Soviet citizenship and turns in his medals to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.”

1974: “Jewish activist Valery Kukui who in June of 1971 had been sentenced “three years in a labor camp was released today which will enable him to leave for Israel in April.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the 293 members of the Palestine Council ended their 13th session in Cairo with an endorsement which called for the eventual dismantling of the State of Israel.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had told the nation that there were major differences with Washington on two key issues: Israel¹s final borders and the Palestine question.

1978: Operation Litani, which was designed to dislodge the PLO from its bases in southern Lebanon came to a successful conclusion.

1980: “Forbidden Zone,” a musical comedy directed and produced by Richard Elfman who also wrote the story was released in the United States today.

1981(15th of Adar II, 5741): On Shabbat, Soviet film director Mark Semyonovich Donskoy passed away.

1981: Jewish journalist Jessica Savitch married Donald Payne.

1983: After almost nine years, NBC broadcast the final episode of the popular series “Little House on the Prairie” starring Michael Landon, who along with Leo Penn directed serval episodes, Melissa Gilbert and Jonathan Gilbert.

1984: In New York City, author Marion Hess Pomeranc and stockbroker Abe Pomerance gave birth to “child actor” and chess champion Max Pomerance.

1987(20thof Adar, 5747): Parashat Ki Tisa; Shabbat Parah

1987(20thof Adar, 5747): Sixty-four year old Viennese native Jacob Tabues, the husband of Susan Tabues and instructor on Jewish studies at “Harvard, Columbia and Princeton” passed away today in Berlin.

https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2672/i-am-impossible-an-exchange-between-jacob-taubes-and-arthur-a-cohen/

1989(14thof Adar II, 5749): First Purim during the Presidency of George Bush.

1994(9th of Nisan, 5754): Estelle Sommers passed away. Sommers got her start in the dance world when she transformed her husband's Cincinnati piece-goods retail store into a dancewear specialty shop. Passionate about dance since taking ballet and tap lessons in childhood, Sommers remained committed to the dance world both professionally and personally until her death. After a divorce and a move to New York, Sommers married "Mr. Capezio," Ben Sommers, and her career was thereafter linked to his. As owner-manager of Capezio Fashion Shop, designer-owner of Estar, Ltd., and as vice president and head administrator for six Capezio Dance-Theatre Shops nationwide, she achieved success in various branches of retail dancewear. Along the way, she introduced Antron-Lycra/Spandex, then a new fabric, into Capezio's dancewear, revolutionizing the industry. Due to the nature of her business, Sommers could not support or publicly promote any one dance company over others, but she was deeply involved in general dance causes. She served on the boards of the Joffrey School of Ballet, the International Dance Alliance, the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries, and the Center for Dance Medicine. She was also committed to projects in Israel, serving on the boards of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Israeli Dance Institute. Her greatest impact may have been made as the U.S. Chairwoman of the International Committee for the Dance Library of Israel. In this position, which she held from 1979 until 1994, Sommers helped to establish the Tel Aviv library as the second most important dance collection worldwide.

1995(19thof Adar II, 5755): Eighty-six year old “biochemist and immunologist” Alwin Max Pappenheimer, Jr. passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/24/obituaries/alwin-m-pappenheimer-jr-86-shed-light-on-bacterial-toxins.html

1997: After premiering in Canada six months ago, “Crash” a film based on a novel of the same name directed, produced and written by David Cronenberg was released in the United States today.

1997(12thof Adar II, 5757): On the eve of Purim, a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered Michael Avrahimi, 32; Yael Gilad, 32 and Anat Winter-Rosen, 37 when he set off a bomb at a Tel Aviv coffee shop.

1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “Years of Renewal” by Henry Kissinger, “The Jewish Lover” by Edward Topol and “Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land” by Victor K. McElheny.

2000: “Pope John Paul II arrived in Israel, for a historic five-day visit, during which he visited the holy sites of the three major religions and met with Israel’s political leaders and Chief Rabbis.”(As reported by Mitchell Bard)

2002: In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three other suspects are charged with murder for their part in the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

2002(8thof Nisan, 5762): Yitzhak Cohen, 48, of Modi'in, Tsipi Shemesh, 29 (who was 5 months pregnant with twins) and Gadi Shemesh, 34 were murdered and 47 people were injured when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated a bomb outside a clothing store and toy shop on King George Street in Jerusalem

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/21/israel2

2003: U.S. premiere of “Dreamcatcher” directed and co-produced by Lawrence Kasdan with a screenplay by William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan.

2003:  Six months after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, “Evelyn” co-starring Julianna Margulies was released today in the United Kingdom.

2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including “Codex” by Lev Grossman and the recently released paperback edition of “The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror” by Bernard Lewis.

2006: The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu probably entered Israel from Egypt, sources at the Agriculture Ministry said

2007: “Hungarian Folk,” an exploration of the Jewish-Hungarian musical traditions featuring Magyar Khasene with Jacob Shulman-Ment and Joshua Cohen reading from his novel A Cadenza for the Schneiderman Violin Concerto, takes place at the Eldridge Street Synagogue.

2007: At the Shankar School of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gat, an exhibition styled “There’s No button without a Buttonhole” comes to a close.

2007: Raleb  Majadele replaced Yuli Tamir as Minister for Science and Technology

2008: Purim, 5768

2008: In New York, the 92nd Street Y presents an evening with David Grossman one of Israel’s best known authors.

2008: Three Kassam rockets fired from Gaza landed in open areas in the Sdot Negev region as Purim festivities were underway in the area.

2008: “The Band’s Visit,” the Israeli film about an Egyptian band stranded in a village in the Israeli film opens in a most unusual venue, the Fleur Cinema & Café in Des Moines, Iowa.

2009: Shabbath Hahodesh - The Sabbath of the Month; Completion of Shemot, the Book of Exodus.

2009: The 92nd Street Y presents Erev Shira, tuneful evening where members of the audience sing along to their favorite Israeli hits and classics of the past 60+ years, accompanied by a singer and live band! Erev Shira is part of the Merchav Ivri Hebrew programming initiative.

2009: Police foiled a terror attack at a Haifa mall on tonight.

2009: Idina Mentzel “was an Honorary Chair of the Imperial Court of New York's Annual Charity Coronation Ball, Night of A Thousand Gowns

2009: An air disaster was narrowly averted this afternoon when an Iberia passenger plane came dangerously close to a Cargo Air Lines jet as the two aircraft were preparing to land at Ben-Gurion International Airport.

2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History” by David Aaronovitch, “Backing Into Forward: A Memoir” by Jules Feiffer, and “Blooms of Darkness” by Aharon Appelfeld

2010: Keshet is scheduled to host its 22nd Annual Rainbow Banquet.

2011: Gina Waldman is scheduled to speak at Congregation Edmond J. Safra where she will discuss “how her experience of anti-Semitism growing up in Libya, and her family’s expulsion from their ancestral home there, led her to become a human rights activist.”

 

2011(15th of Adar II, 5771): Shushan Purim

2011(15th of Adar II, 5771): Seventy-six year old movie executive Joe Wizan passed away.(As reported by Dennis McLellan)

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/25/local/la-me-joe-wizan-20110325

2011: The field hospital Israel is establishing in Japan is the first to be set up by any nation offering outside assistance, Israel’s Ambassador to Japan Nissim Ben Shitrit said today, and the Japanese are extremely appreciative. Ben Shitrit said the hospital was being established at Minamisanriko, a fishing city 290 miles north of Tokyo, that was utterly overwhelmed by the quake and tsunami and where some 10,000 people are dead or missing.

2011: An Israel Air Force fighter jet struck a Gaza tunnel running along the border with Israel, as well as Hamas militants in the northern Gaza strip today, an IDF statement confirmed.

2012: The Sy Kushner Klezmer Ensemble is scheduled to perform as part of the East Village Klezmer Series

2012: Yael Shahar - Director at Israel’s Institute for Counter-Terrorism is scheduled to present "Cyber-Terrorism: Threats and Counters" sponsored by The Israel Project.

2012: “Obsession” is scheduled to be shown tonight at the 16th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2012: After signing a one year contract with the Minnesota Vikings, Geoff Schwartz played right guard for 13 games.

2012: Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present 5th Annual Writers on View featuring artist Sebastian Mendes and writers and poets Terese Svoboda, Willie Perdomo, Ken Chen, Janet Kaplan, Aldina Vazão Kennedy, Matthew Thorburn, Rachel Zucker, Tracy K. Smith and Sima Rabinowitz

2013: Dr. Elliot Lefkovitz, Loyola University and Spertus Institute faculty member is scheduled to review and discuss Bernard Wasserstein’s On the Eve:  The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War, a 2012 National Jewish Book Award finalist. 

2013: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a lecture by Professor Melissa Klapper author of Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890-1940

2013: Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon’s “The Sounds of Silence” was named as one 25 recordings selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.

2013(10thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-five year old Rabbi Hershel Schacter, who was serving with the U.S. Army’s VIII Corps when it liberated Buchenwald making him the first  U.S. Army chaplain to enter the camp where he would later conduct services passed away today.  Among those whom he personally rescued was 7 year old Yisrael Meir Lau, the future chief rabbi of Israel.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/first-rabbi-to-enter-liberated-buchenwald-dies/

2013: The Kubbeh Project hosted by Zucker Bakery on East 9th Street is scheduled to come to an end.

2013: President Obama visited the Israel Museum seeing the Dead Scrolls at first hand and delivered an address to young Israelis in Jerusalem.

2013: The Memphis State University “Tigers defeated Saint Mary's 54–52, giving Mark Pastner his first NCAA tournament victory as a head coach.”

2013: Four rockets were fired at Israel out of Gaza this morning, as red alert sirens rang out in south, breaking a tense several month calm in the area.

2013: “Dominican Ambassador Aníbal de Castro will joinedLatino and Jewish communal leaders in Washington DC today for a special screening of the film Sosúa: Make a Better World as part of an effort by the American Jewish Committee to promote inter-communal dialogue.”

2014: “The Real Inglorious Bastards” is scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2014 In Jerusalem, traffic is scheduled to come “to a standstill from 5:30 am through 1:30 pm as runners race through the streets in a marathon with “a finish line on Haim Hazaz Boulevard alongside Sacher Park.” (As reported by Jessica Steinberg and Rebecca McKinsey)

2014: Coe College is scheduled to host a lecture by Dr. Waitman Beorn, the Louis and Frances Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at University of Nebraska – Omaha entitled “Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocuast in Belarus.”

2014: The Tulane Jewish Studies Department under the Chair of Dr. Brian Horowitz is scheduled to host the annual Strug Lecture delivered this year by Dr. Robert Abzug on "'Not in Our Town': Christians, Jews, and Skinheads in Billings, Montana, 1993-94"



2014: “The Israeli military announced today that it had uncovered a tunnel from Gaza into Israel meant for carrying out a terror attack, and rejected a Hamas claim that the find was an old tunnel.”

2014: “Kenyan Ronald Kimeli Kurgat became the fastest ever person to run the Jerusalem Marathon.”

2015: “Arlo and Julie” is scheduled to be shown this evening at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2015: Captain Jerry Yellin, who “flew the final combat mission of WW II” visited Iowa Jima today at which time he paid homage to his wingman a nineteen year old Jewish pilot 2ndLt. Philip Schlamberger who was the last airman killed in combat during WW II.

2015(29th of Adar, 5775): Ninety-two year old Miriam Bienstock of Atlantic Records fame passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/business/miriam-bienstock-co-founder-of-atlantic-records-dies-at-92.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2015: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host Angela Schluter speaking about “The Nazi Officer's Wife: How one Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust”

2015: The 5th J Street National Conference is scheduled to begin today.


2016: Donald Trump is scheduled to address the AIPAC conference this evening because “It is of paramount importance that our community develops a constructive relationship with whomever wins their respective party nomination and thus could be elected president,” according to an AIPAC official.

2016(11thof Adar II, 5776): Seventy-nine year old Hungarian native Andy Grove who survived the Nazis and the Communists to become the CEO of Intel passed away today.


2016(11th of Adar II, 5776): Seventy-seven year old entertainment lawyer and television host Leon H. Charney passed away today.


2016: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “Bridge to Beethoven III” with violinist Jennifer Kohn and pianist Shai Wosner.

2016: As part of the Jews in the American South tour Rhetta Mendelsohn will lead a “Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, the country’s fourth oldest congregation (founded 1749) and the birthplace of Reform Judaism in the United States, at its 1840 Greek revival temple” followed by a meeting with “Dr. Dale Rosengarten, curator of the Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston to learn more of the story of 300 years of Charleston Jewish life and a visit to the Coming Street Cemetery, resting place of the largest and wealthiest Jewish community in colonial America.”  (Editor’s note: Hopefully including these items will help people see the broad sweep of the American Jewish experience and not think of it as something confined to New York and its environs.”

2017: The YIVO Institute is scheduled to sponsor a lecture by Jack Jacobs on the “Political Thinkers Of East European Jewry” where he “will focus on the ideas of Dubnow, Zhitlowsky, Pinsker, Ahad Ha’am, Syrkin, Borochov, Scherer, and Jabotinsky.”

2017: “As part of the the Home Front Command exercise, the incoming missile alert system in southern Israel was tested this morning” (As reported Judah Ari Gross)

2017(23rdof Adar, 5777): Seventy-seven year old Chicago Bulls’ general manager passed away today. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)


2018: Due to the fourth major snow storm to hit the northeast in the last several weeks, the Streicker Center canceled all events and classes today including “Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.”

2018: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present Professor Eric H. Cline, author of Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction and Kristin Romey, the archaeology editor of National Geographic Magazine discussing “Mysteries of the Bible: Biblical Archaeology.”

2018: The 6th Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism is scheduled to come to an end today in Jerusalem.

2018: Despite “a Federal Government shutdown due to a snow emergency,” Morris “Moe” Berg and Eugene Polinsky were among the 13,000 men and woman of the OSS who “finally received the Congressional Gold Medal today during a ceremony at the U.S. Capital building.


2018: The Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan host a live recording of “Unorthodox, Tablet’s flagship podcast featuring guest appearances by Bart Campolo and former Senator Joe Lieberman.

2018: In Cedar Rapids, IA the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to discuss The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain.

2019: Forbidden Music, “an exploration of forgotten masterworks written by composers living under the shadow of oppressive regimes and perished in the Holocaust” is scheduled to open tonight in the San Francisco Bay area.

2019: “For the second time in its 165 year history, Levi’s, “the maker of denim and Cockers which traces its roots to the Calfiornia Gold Rush,” is scheduled to start trading on the public markets today. (As reported by Sapna Maheshwari)


2019: The Federation-Goldring-Woldenberg Major Donor Dinner is scheduled to take place this evening in New Orleans

2019: The Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “The Interpreter,” “The Jewish Underground” and “A Rose in Winter.”

2019: In Little Rock, AR, Chabad, under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment, Shaliach par excellence, is scheduled to host a “Royal Purim Feast and Masquerade Party complete with a multimedial megilla reading.

2019(14thof Adar II, 5779): Purim; read the megillah; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

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

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March 22

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

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

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

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

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

1500: A huge fleet under the command of Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, accompanied by Gaspar da Gama, a Polish born Jew whose slave name had been Yusuf ‘Adil before being forcibly converted to Christianity reached Cape Verde, a Portuguese colony on Africa’s West Coast as it made its way towards India.

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

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

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

1599: Birthdate of Antwerp native and “English court painter” Anthony van Dyck whose “Portrait of Adriaen Moens” was stolen from the Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker by the Nazis.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dr-oetker-restitutes-van-dyck-831605

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

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

1753(16thof Adar II, 5513): David Israel Athias, who had served as “Hakam of the Portuguese community at Amsterdam” since 1728, passed away today.

1781(25thof Adar, 5541): Fifty-eight year old Samson Levy, the son of Moses Raphael Levy and Grace Mears passed away today in Philadelphia.

1797: Birthdate of German-Jewish jurist Eduard Gans.

1798(5thof Nisan, 5558): Isaac Jacob Gans , the Lower Saxony born son of Jacob and Ferude Katz Gans and husband of Pesse Pauline Leah Gans who became a wealthy tobacco merchant and note philanthropist passed away today.https://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/3701

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

1798 Aarau, the city in which Albert Einstein “attended the Argovian cantonal school (gymnasium) in 1895 and 1896 to complete his secondary schooling” was declared the capital of the Helvetic Republic making it “the first capital of a unified Switzerland” and another site for a failed attempt to effect the emancipation of the Jews in that country.

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

1805: Birthdate of Kassel native and convert to Christianity Franz Ferdinand Benary, the orientalist and University Berlin associate professor of Old Testament exegis who “was the older brother of classical philologist Agathon Benary.”

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

1815: Napoleon reached Paris. Soon King Louis has fled, and all Europe has become mobilized. In June, after a number of victories by Napoleon, the stock exchange in London goes through a panic, and rumors circulate that it may close. To prevent the closing, which would mean the collapse of English credit, Nathan stubbornly continues to buy amid rumors of Wellington's defeat, until the war ends with Wellington's victory at Waterloo. Sometime later, Julie and Fitzroy are reunited, and Nathan is made a baron by the King of England, who expresses the country's gratitude to this "adopted" son whose generosity and courage brought victory and peace to England

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

1822: In Vejle, Joseph Joel Ballin and Hanne Behrend gave birth to Danish engravier John Ballin.

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

1818(14thof Adar II, 5578): Purim

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

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

1837(15thof Adar II, 5597): Shushan Purim

1837: Phillip Levy married Elizabeth Davis at the Great Synagogue today.

1838: Joseph “Perl wrote a letter suggesting that the government censor Jewish libraries, prohibit meetings in Jewish ritual baths and close traditional Jewish schools, which he called "a place of refuge for vagabonds, thieves . . . a nest of demoralization and of . . . nefarious, scandalous deeds."

1842: Isaac Sanguinetti married Harriet Nathan today at the Great Synagogue.

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

1845: In Liverpool, “John R. Isaac, one of the Liverpool Commissioners of the 1851 and the engraver to” to Prince Albert and his wife gave birth to Benjamin Yates’ great-grandson Percy Lewis Isaac, the “naval architect marine engineer” who in 1867 was “appointed to supervise work in connection with the ‘Great Eastern’ steamship” and was the “author of Historical Notes on Shipping which contains references to early Anglo-Jewish history.”

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

1853: James (Jacob) Seligman and Rosa Seligman gave birth to De Witt J. (David) Seligman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1865: Joseph Magnus married Louisa Eve Finsterer today.

1865: In Natchez, Mississippi, the Hebrew Ladies’ Aid Association was founded today

1866: Three days after he had passed away, fifty-four year old Frederick David Goldsmid, the son Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid and Isabel Goldsmid, the husband of the former Caroline Samuel with whom he had had nine children was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

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

1868: Elizabeth and George Joseph Emanuel gave birth to Blanche Emanuel who became Blanche Abrahams when she married Samuel Abrahams.

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

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bells_(play)

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

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

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

1878: In Frankfurt Flora Goldschmidt married Emil Schwarzschild the son of Emanuel Schwarzschild and Rahel Fraenkel

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

1883: Seligman, MO, a town which had been named in honor of financier Joseph Seligman shortly after his death, suffered its second major fire of the year when “the stables of the Seligman and Eureka Springs Stage Coach Company burned down” today.

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

1885: In London, Meyer Adam Spielman, the son of Adam and Marian Spielman and his wife Gertrude gave birth to Edgar Raphael Meyer Spielman

1885: Birthdate of Reb Aryeh Levin.

1886(15thof Adar II, 5646): Shushan Purim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1892: In London, The Times reported that “after the death of his father Samson Wertheimer, Ashe Wertheimer took over his Bond-street premises” and operated his business “from this address until his death in 1918.”

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/21424

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

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

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

1893: Banker, philanthropist and leader of the Jewish community Maurice J.Mandelbaum, the Cleveland born son of “Jacob and Amelia (Lehman) Mandelbaum took the first of his three trips to the alter today when he married Amanda Mayer today.

1893: Arabs attack Jews at Rehovot

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

1894(14thof Adar II, 5654): Purim

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

1895:Operatic sopranoSelma Kurz was first heard in Vienna at a student concert of Ress pupils

1896: “Easter Cookery” published today included a description of Chad Gad Ya, “The Kid of Passover,” which it compared to “The House That Jack Built.”

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

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

1897: Four day after she had died, 32 year old Julia Fisher was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

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

1897: Two days after he had passed away, 20 year old Moses Levy, the son of Aaron and Miriam Levy was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

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

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

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

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

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

1899: Seventy-eight year old Beila Geitel Felber was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

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

Institute

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

1901: In Camden, NJ, Rabbi David Shane, with the assistance of Rabbi Banet Leventhal of Philadelphia officiated at the wedding of Annie Pauline Alberts, the daughter of Isaac Alberts to Philip Sihisky at the Sons of Israel synagogue.

1902: Birthdate of French actress Madeleine Milhaud.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/madeleine-milhaud-actress-wife-of-the-composer-776120.html

1903: In Brooklyn “Louis and Lena (Betz) Pomerantz gave birth to Brooklyn Law School trained attorney

Abraham Louis Pomerantz,, the husband of Phyllis Cohen and father of Dan and Charlotte Cohen who served as deputy chief counsel at the Nuremburg Trials.

1903: In Cherkassy, Russia, Max and Bessie (Leshinsky) Olanovsky gave birth to Lemel Olanovsky who gained fame as Levi Arthur Olan whose accomplishments including serving as the Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, Texas from 1949 to 1970.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0181/ms0181.html

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

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

1905(15thof Adar II, 5665): Shushan Purim

1905: In Hoboken, NJ, two Austrian immigrants gave birth Columbia trained attorney Burton A Zorn, a labor lawyer, partner in the prestigious law firm of Proskauer, Rose, Goetz and Mendelsohn and “chairman of the American Jewish Committee’s civil rights section who raised two children – Stephen and Karen – with his wife Fay.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/02/23/77172613.pdf

1905: Birthdate of Nathaniel “Nate” Weinstock who “played tackle at Western Maryland College from 1925 to 1927” and whose breakout game came against Holy Cross in 1926 when he was a junior.

1905: In New Orleans, during an executive session of the Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith, Jacob Singer of Philadelphia “maintained that time was not ripe for taking the step” of “abolishing the secrecy of the Order.”

1906: It was reported today that “Jewish merchants and their families are leaving” Moscow “in haste owing to fears of a massacre at Easter time.

1906: It was reported today that “the first appearance of anti-Jewish disorders” have been “reported from Theodosia, in the Crimea, where a crowd broke into a synagogue and destroyed the altar, religious emblems and pictures.

1906: In Petach Tikva, Moshe Dov Bear Margalit and Taube (Yona) Margalit, the Bialystok born daughter of Elijah and Sarah Golda Bloch gave birth to Avraham Margalit.

1906: It was reported today that Nicolas Notovitch, a Jewish newspaper editor has been imprisoned “for one year in a fortress for the publication of articles against the” Czar and the army.

1908: In London, “Sir Oscar Emanuel Warburg, businessman and later chairman of the London County Council, and his wife, Catherine née Byrne” gave birth to “English botanist Edmund Frederick (E.F) Warburg. The husand of Primrose Barrett.  (Great first name for the wife of a botanist)

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

1910: Eugene Foss who would be one of the leaders in the fight to save the life of Leo Frank, began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts’s 14th Congressional District.

1910: “Impresario” Max Rabinoff married his first wife, singer Marie La Salle, today.

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

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

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

1913(13thof Adar II, 5673): Parsashat Tzav; Shabbat Zachor; Erev Purim

1913: Rabbi Julius Rappaport led services at Beth El Temple in Chicago.

1913: Rabbi Felix A. Levy led services at Temple Emanuel today.

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

1913: In Cleveland Ohio, Isaac Wasserman and Minnie Chernick gave birth to Lewis Robert “Lew Wasserman, the MCA chairman who was a true “tinsel town” mogul.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/business/lew-wasserman-89-is-dead-last-of-hollywood-s-moguls.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

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

1913: “Under the leadership of Mrs. Minna Solomon and Mrs. Grete Hirsch” the women of Emanuel Congregation enjoyed an afternoon of entertainment at the Kaiser Garten in Chicago.

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

1915: “A New Palestine If The Allies Win” published today

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9503E1D91238E633A25751C2A9659C946496D6CF

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

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

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

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40F16F9395C13738DDDAD0A94DB405B858DF1D3

 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/sabsovich-h-l

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

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

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

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

1917: Today, “Julius Rosenwald, President of Sears, Roebuck and Co. of Chicago” sent a telegraph “to the American Jewish Relief Committee” in New York City saying “that he would contribute $100,000 for each $1,000,000 collected by the committee in its campaign to raise $10,000,000 by June 1 for the benefit of Jews suffering from the war.”

1917: “It was announced that the State Department had given assurance that in the event of war between” the United States and “the Central powers, American diplomats in neutral countries would carry on interruptedly the work of feeding Jewish noncombatants” using fund raised by the American Jewish Relief Committee which is expecting a fresh impetus to its activities that’s to the Russian Revolution.”

1918: In Lodz, the “municipality” has agreed “to maintain a college for Jewish teachers” where Hebrew will “be the language of instruction for Jewish subjects” and Polish will be the language of instruction for all other subjects.

1918(9thof Nisan, 5678): Second Lieutenant Crispian Asabel de Pass who was Wellington College before the war died today while serving with the Tank Corps.

1920: In Cologne, German, conductor Otto Klemperer and soprano Johanna Geisler gave birth to actor Werner Klemperer who played Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/arts/werner-klemperer-klink-in-hogan-s-heroes-dies-at-80.html

1921: In, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic, “Erwin Schwenk, an organic chemist and the former Rascha Shapiro, a pediatrician” gave birth to Lili Schwenk who gained fame as Lili Horning, the holder of a Ph.D. from Harvard who played a significant role in the Manhattan project and was the wife of fellow scientist Donald Hornig.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/obituaries/lilli-hornig-96-dies-a-bomb-researcher-lobbied-for-women-in-science.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=region&region=region&WT.nav=region&_r=0

1922:  Birthdate of screenwriter Stewart Henry Stern, the New York native and nephew Adolph Zukor whose most famous script was the one he wrote for cult classic “Rebel Without a Cause.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/movies/stewart-stern-92-screenwriter-of-rebel-without-a-cause-dies.html?_r=1

1922: “Ludwig II” a biopic about the Bavarian king directed by Otto Kreisler and written by Alfred Deutsch-German was released today in Austria.

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

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

1923: Birthdate of Eva Kleinova who in 1942 was transported from Prague to Ujazdow where she was murdered.

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

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

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

1924: Birthdate of Michael Hamburger, the Berlin native who moved with his family to Great Britain in 1933 where he became a “translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic.”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jun/11/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries

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

1926: The funeral for 77 year old Dr. Philip Klein who has been the rabbi of the First Hungarian Congregation Ohab Zedek for the past 35 years is scheduled to take place this afternoon at the family home.

1926: Chairman William Fox announced that the United Jewish Campaign had received a $30,000 contribution from Paul Baerwald and a $50,000 contribution from Louis Marshall who attached a letter “in which he described the misery now” being endured by Jews in Europe and urging “the Jews of New York City to give unstinted support” to the fund raising drive.

1927: Approximately nine hundred people, including Zionists and non-Zionists attended a dinner at the Hotel Biltmore this evening that had been arranged by Judge Irving Lehman to celebrate “the accord which now exists” among most Jewish factions regarding “the up-building of Palestine.”

1927: In Detroit, the libel case brought by Aaron Sapiro against Henry Ford, Stewart Handley, a member of the Ford legal staff testified that stories published in Ford’s Dearborn Independent from 1920 to 1922 “cast aspersions on the whole Jewish race.”

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

1928: “Spione” (Spies in English) directed and written by Fritz Lang was released today in Germany

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

1929: “Diary of a Coquette” silent drama directed by Constantin J. David and produced by Seymour Nebenzal was released in Germany today.

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

1931: “In the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montréal, Québec, Canada Ann (née Garmaise) and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacture” gave birth to William Shatner best known as Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. (Editor’s note – Kirk and Spock never talked about their bar mitzvahs in any of the episodes I ever saw)

1931: In Brooklyn “Fanny (Pollack) and Abraham Richter, a textile worker” gave birth Nobel Prize winner in Physics and the “director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/obituaries/burton-richter-a-nobel-winner-for-plumbing-matter-dies-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

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

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

1932(14thof Adar, II, 5692): Purim

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

1932: “One Hour With You” a musical comedy directed by George Cukor and Ernst Lubitsch who also produced the film which was written by Samson Raphaelson and with music by Oscar Straus was released in the United States today.

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

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

1936: An article published today previewing the upcoming tourist and cruise season, reported that a spring fair in Tel Aviv will attract large crowds “from overseas and Near Eastern cities.”

1936: “The Polish Government was charged with ‘deliberate violations of its pledges made in the treaty of June, 191 in which the Jews, together with other minority groups, were assured full equality of rights and status’ by an emergency conference at the Hotel Edison today attended by delegates from nearly 500 Jewish organizations.”

1936: At the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall, Lewis Browne is scheduled to speak on “What Makes A Jew?”

1936: Professor Louis Finkelstein is scheduled to deliver an address on “The Jewish Problem in the Perspective of History.”

1936: At Temple Rodeph Shalom, Rabbi Louis I Newman is scheduled to deliver a message on “Women’s Grievances Against Men and Men’s Grievances Against Women.”

1936: Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “When the Heart is Hungry” at the Jewish Science Society.

1936: A letter from President Roosevelt in which he commended Rabbi B. Leon Hurwitz as a leader in Brooklyn interfaith activities was read this afternoon at the Ninth Street Temple during the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Congregation B’nai Shalom.

1936: Sir Oswald Mosley, Britain’s leading fascist delivered a speech to a packed house at Albert Hall where he delivered a speech calling for peace between Germany and Britain while deliver “one of the most violent denunciations of the Jews” that he has made to date.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1943:  While flying with a group of six Yak fighters, Lydia Litvyak shot down a Junker 88 bomber and a Messerschmitt fighter and then, after having been wounded, managed to land safely despite being in severe pain and suffering significant loss of blood.

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

1943(15thof Adar II, 5703): Shushan Purim

1943(15thof Adar II, 5703): Seventy-seven year old Dr. Lucian Mayer Langbank died today at Theresienstadt Ghetto.

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

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

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

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

1945: In New York City, “Miriam "Mimi", a teacher, studio executive, and radio writer, and Leon Roth, a university teacher and film producer” gave birth to Eric Roth who “won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Forrest Gump” in 1994.

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

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

1946: “Gotthilf Wagner, former mayor of the German colony of Sarona, near Tel Aviv,” a pre-war S.S. Group Leader “and one of the leading Palestine Nazis, was today shot to death as he journeyed from Sarona to Wilhelma, another German community.”

https://www.jta.org/1946/03/24/archive/sarona-mayor-prominent-palestine-nazi-and-s-s-leader-shot-to-death-near-tel-aviv

1946: Birthdate of Tel Aviv native Rivka Golani, the daughter of Holocaust survivors who became a world class viola player.

https://www.naxos.com/person/Rivka_Golani/249.htm

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

1947: “Mr. and Mrs. Bert Adler” of Woodmere, LI, “announced the engagement of their daughter Joan,” a graduate of Goucher College “to Norman A. Lish the son of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Lish” who is studying at Hobart College.

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

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

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

1948: “Twenty Jews…were reported killed today in two battles at Nitzanim, near the Mediterranian coast in the land of the ancient Philistines.”

1948: Today, while introducing “a joint resolution to authorize the shipment of arms and munitions to Jews in Palestine,” Representative Jacob K. Javits “argued that failure to ship arms would leave 700,000 Jews in Palestine defenseless and ripe for slaughter by the thousands of Arab fanatics who are being armed and supplied, as all the world knows, by the surrounding Arab States.”

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

1948: Birthdate of Australian author Dr. Stephen Skinner.

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/240084/was-the-author-of-the-voynich-manuscript-the-literary-worlds-greatest-mystery-a-jew?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=0050ff72bf-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_07_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-0050ff72bf-206644398

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

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

1951(14thof Adar II, 5711): Purim

1952: Birthdate of sportscaster Bob Costas

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

1955: “Yellowneck,” a film set in the Everglades of 1863 with music by Laurence Rosenthal was released today in the United States.

1955: Twenty-nine year old Max “Slats” Zaslofsky playing in his second to the  last season with the Fort Wayne Pistons providing the winning margin in the playoff game with the Lakers.

1956: In London, Royal World Premiere of “Alexander the Great” a Hollywood “epic” directed, produced and written by Robert Rossen and co-starring Claire Bloom.

1956: The Broadway production of “Mr. Wonderful” a musical starring Sammy Davis, Jr with music and lyrics by Jerry Bock and George David Weiss and a book co-authored by Joseph Stein opened today at The Broadway Theatre today.

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

1957(19thof Adar II, 5717): Sixty-one year old Geoffrey Joel, the son of Woolf Joel, and husband of Edith Joel passed away in Johannesburg

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

1958(1stof Nisan, 5718): Forty-eight year old Art Cohn, the husband of Marta Cohn and the Oakland Tribune sports journalist who wrote the column “The Cohn-ing Tower” died today in the same plane crash that claimed the life of Mike Todd.

http://tribunegogetters.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_26.html

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

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

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

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

1959: In New York, Yaakov Moshe Friedman, “an administrator at the United Lubavitcher Yishiva in Crown Heights” and his wife gave birth to Avraham Shabsi Hakohen Friedman “better known by his stage name Avraham Fried.”

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

1961(5thof Nisan 5721): Eighty-eight year old Frederick Z. “Fred” Salomon, the Greeley, CO, born son of Adolph and Mathilde Salomon, the husband of Helen Salomon and the father of Fred, Jr who helped to create what is now the Famous Barr Co. passed away today in St. Louis.

https://www.geni.com/people/Frederick-Salomon/6000000078555675279

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

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

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

1965(18thof Adar II, 5725): Eighty-four year old University of West Virginia tackle who “during several games away from home heard he cry of ‘Kill the Jew’” and who went on to a career in law and politics which took him to U.S. House of Representatives passed away today in Cleveland.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/benjamin-louis-rosenbloom

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000441

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

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

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

1966(1stof Nisan, 5726): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1966(1stof Nisan, 5726): Sixty-one year old Austrian born and Prague trained award winning biochemist Heinrich B. Waelsach, a professor at Columbia’s Collee of Physicians and Surgeon and the husband of Dr. Salome G. Waelsch, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine with whom he raised two children – Peter and Naomi – passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/03/23/79985075.pdf

1967: “Thunder Alley” produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff and co-starring Jan Murray was released in the United States today.

1969(3rdof Nisan, 5729): Begin the Book of Vayikra

1969: Three days after he had passed away, memorial services are scheduled to be held at the Princeton University Chapel for 31 year old Sociology Professor Dr. Ian Weinberg, the son of Mrs. Golda Weinberg.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/03/19/90071779.pdf

1969(3rdof Nisan, 5729): Seventy-eight year old Ernst Deutsch, the Austrian actor, who spent the war in the United States ironically playing “Nazi and German officers” and who is best known for his role in the classic spy film “The Third Man” passed away today in Berlin after which he was interred in that city’s Jewish Cemetery.

1970(14thof Adar II, 5730): Purim

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

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

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

1977(3rdof Nisan, 5737): Seventy-six year old Henry Calechman, the “son of Joseph Calechman” and the husband of Gertrude Calechman passed away today after which he was buried at B’nai Jacob Memorial Park in New Haven, CT.

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

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

1979: The Wes End production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” a musical with a “book” co-authored by Murray Horwitz opened today at Her Majesty’s Theatre

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

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

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

1984(18thof Adar II, 5744): Fifty six year old Harvard and Princeton trained economist Otto Eckstein, the German born son of Hugo and Hedwig Eckstein, best known as the co-founder of Data Resources Inc. passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/23/obituaries/otto-ecktein-educator-who-led-in-economic-forecasting.html

http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/eckstein.htm

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

1989(15thof Adar II, 5749): Shushan Purim

1990: “Ambulance,” an off-beat comedy written by Larry Cohn who also produced and directed the film co-starring Red Buttons was released in the United States today.

1992:The original Broadway production of “Conversations With My Father,” a play that “presents the saga of a first generation of American Jews who came of age in the Depression and were assimilated at a high price during and after World War II” opened at the Royale Theatre.

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

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

1998: “Escape: Human Cargo,” co-starring Sasson Gabai was broadcast for the first time in the U.S. on Showtime television network.

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

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

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

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

2002(9thof Nisan, 5762): Seventy-nine year old Josef von Stroheim, the son of director Erich von Stroheim passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/30/local/me-vonstroheim30

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

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

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

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

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

 

2006: Haaretz reported that a string of anti-Semitic incidents in the aftermath of the torture and murder of a young Jewish vendor is fueling concerns that anti-Jewish feelings are spreading in France's black community.

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

2007: In a move opposed by the family of Bess Houdini, Harry “Houdini's grand-nephew (the grandson of his brother Theo), George Hardeen, announced that the courts would be asked to allow exhumation of Houdini's body, to investigate the possibility of Houdini being murdered by spiritualists, as suggested in the biography The Secret Life of Houdini.

2008: Shushan Purim, 5768

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today in Covina, CA for actor Al Israel, Jr. who was survived by his children Kathleen and John and his grandchildren Johnny and Lizzy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011: Palestinians reported that four people were killed, including several children, and several others were injured when IDF shells hit a house east of Gaza City this afternoon.

2011: Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin slammed the “dangerous” military conversion bill, while calling on the rabbinate to increase and enhance its conversion efforts as a countermeasure to the massive assimilation taking place in Israel. (As reported by Isaac Harari)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2013: Barack Obama ended his first presidential visit to Israel and headed off to Jordan today, after another packed day. He visited Mount Herzl, and the tombs of Theodor Herzl and Yitzhak Rabin — meeting with Rabin’s family — as well as the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum. He held a longer-than-scheduled meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made a brief private visit to Bethlehem, and then headed to the airport for his flight to Jordan. “Israel does not owe its existence to the Holocaust but its existence prevents another one from happening, U.S. President Obama said on the third and final day of his first presidential visit to Israel.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

2015: “Letter to Afar, “ an exhibition “based on films taken by Jewish immigrants who traveled from New York back to Poland during the 1920’s and 1930’s came to a close today at the Museum of the City of New York.

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

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

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

2016: The annual AIPAC conference in Washington, DC is scheduled to come to an end.

2016: The “Jews in the American South” is scheduled to visit Hobcaw Barony, the on-time hunting retreat of Wall Street Investment Maven and Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch, who contrary to the popular caricature was a native of Camden, South Caroline where his father practiced medicine.

2016: “Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC Manhattan

2017: Today “Yahya Sinwar said Hamas would not allow the State of Israel to exist on even a “morsel” of land.”

2017: Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely: "Israel expresses its deep shock at the terror attack in London today and its solidarity with the victims and with the people and government of Great Britain. Terror is terror wherever it occurs and we will fight it relentlessly."

2017:Producer, keyboardist, lyricist, composer and performer Idan Raichel, a global music icon and “leader of The Idan Raichel Project is scheduled to perform this evening at City Winery in New York.

2017: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host an Israeli Wine Tasting and a discussion led by Rabbi Feivel Strauss on “The Role of Wine in Judaism – From the Bible Through Prohibition.

2018: JW3 is scheduled to host the final screening in London of “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.”

2018: Weather permitting, the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “Across the Line” and “Operation Wedding.”

2018: "Bal Ej: the hidden Jews of Ethiopia" is scheduled to be shown at Beit Oleh America Netanya AACI, Israel followed by a Q and A with filmmaker Irene Orleansky.

2019: The Meyerson JCC is scheduled to host “Shabbat Shabbang” featuring a world premiere concert by Joanie Leeds and Matthew Check.

2018: Fifty years after the publication of his controversial book The Population Bomb, biologist Paul Ehrlich warns overpopulation and overconsumption are driving us over the edge.”

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich

2019: As Jews prepare for Shabbat, one question they may be asking is if President Trump’s twitter about the Golan Heights is venting, like his recent attacks on Senator McCain who has been dead for seven months or if they represent an official change in U.S. policy.

2019 The Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “Fractures” and “Waldheim Waltz.”

2019: In San Jose, the 3Below Theaters and Lounge is scheduled to host “An Evening with Groucho” as in Groucho Marx.

2019: Forbidden Music, “an exploration of forgotten masterworks written by composers living under the shadow of oppressive regimes and perished in the Holocaust” is scheduled to continue for a second night in the San Francisco Bay area.

 

 

 

 

 

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

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March 23

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

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

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

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

1555: Paul IV issued the Papal Bull “Dudum postquam”

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

1714: Duke Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Courland

1766: In Lower Saxony, Germany, wealthy tobacco merchant and philanthropist Isaac Jacob Gans, the “son of Jacob Salomon Gans and Freude Katz Gans and his wife Pesse Pauline Leah Gans gave birth to Abraham Isaak Gans

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

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

1806: Rachel and Moses David Friedman gave birth to Zanwel Friedman.

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

1811: Birthdate of German medical doctor Carl Friedrich Stahl.

1820: Abraham Wiesel Gompertz, the father of Harriet Gompertz was buried today.

1827: Marcus De Vries married Kaat Van Rook

1830: One day after he had passed away, Trespole Myers was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1831: Eighty-eight year old Christian-Hebraist Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi passed away.

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

1836: Birthdate of German native Gertrude Hyman Felsenthal, the wife of Herman Felsenthal with whom she had six children – Eli, Judith, Flora, Hannah and Emily.

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

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

1847: Samuel Joans married Esther Cashmore, the daughter of Moshe Kashman at the Great Synagogue.

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

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

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

1854: In Louisville, KY, Adolph and Frederick Brandeis gave birth to Alfred Brandeis, the husband of Jennie Brandeis and brother to Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1856: In Philadelphia, Isaac and Henriette Kohn gave birth to Sophie Kohn who became Sophie Pfaelzer when she married Philadelphia jewler Morris Moses Pfaelzer

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

1862: In Hungary, “Pauline and Dr. Jacob Jacques Heinrich Hirschfeld” gave birth to Adele Amalie Hirschfeld who became Adele Amalie Schmidt when she married August Schmidt.

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

1862: Eighty-one year old Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, the Russian foreign minister who successful thwarted the plan of Jacques Isaac Altaras to settle 40,000 Russian-Jewish families in Algeria passed away today.

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

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

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

1865: In Philadelphia, Joseph and Louisa Berg gave birth to Hart O.Berg, “a pioneer in the manufacture of machine guns, submarines, automobiles and airplanes” who married the former Lena Willets and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by France in 1901.

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

1867: Birthdate of Arthur Bornstein, the native of Breslau, Germany who was a dentist by training but whose real passion was writing as can be seen by the volumes of short stories he published starting in 1894.

1867: In Vienna, Dr. Michael Reiner and Agnes Reiner gave birth to Dr. Maximilian Max Reiner, the husband of Paula Reiner and the father of Herbert and Heinrich Reiner.

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

1868: In Cardiff, Esther Lyons, “18 year old Jewess” who was running away from her family “knocked on the door of Croome Villa, Roath, the home of the Reverend Nathanial Thomas, minister of the Baptist Tabernacle” in what would be the first act of a cause celeb that would sour relations between Jews and Baptists in South Wales “for years to come.{

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

1869: In Pila, Sieradz, Poland, Szaja Pilichowski and his wife gave birth to painter Leopold Pilichowski.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15770.html

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pilichowski_Leopold

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

1870: Herman W. Hellman, who in 1866 sold out his interest in a book and stationary business and then went into business for himself “sold his entire stock and fixtures to Harris and Jacoby” and left for a trip to Europe.

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

1872: “Persecution of Jews In Romania” published today the reporter compared the attacks on the Jews with the suffering “in England in the days of Isaac of York” and calls upon the European Powers to intervene on behalf of the Jews if the government of Romania will not stop the attacks on its Jewish citizens.

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

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

1877: Isaac Artom “was elected senator of the kingdom” today making him “the first Jew to sit in the Italian legislative body.”

1878: In Monaco Jewish court photographer Ignaz Schrecker and his wife Eleonore von Clossmann gave birth to Austrian composer and conductor Franz Schreker.

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

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

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

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

1882: In Erlangen, Bavaria, mathematician, Max Noether and his wife gave birth to mathematician Amalie Emmy Noether.

https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/noether.htm

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

1886(16thof Adar II, 5646): Eighty-two year old Bina Oppenheimer, the daughter of David and Schiele Kahn and the wife of Lob Oppenheimer passed away today in New York City.

1886: Birthdate of Austrian native Benjamin Waxelbaum and the husband of Dorothy Waxelbaum who in 1893 came to the United States where he became a “publishers’ representative with offices at 180 East Broadway in New York, worked for 14 years as the advertising manager of New York Jewish Morning Journal and became a founding partner in Keilson and Waxelbaum

https://books.google.com/books?id=BCzwbV-L7D4C&pg=RA2-PA98&lpg=RA2-PA98&dq=Benjamin+Waxelbaum&source=bl&ots=CdFNA2WdM8&sig=ACfU3U3NZrxVxW0pp-thRD86VrKfr9UKHA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDy9Ws9ZbhAhVM0YMKHTbECjEQ6AEwC3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=Benjamin%20Waxelbaum&f=false

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

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

1887(27th of Adar): Seventy year old Posen bornRabbi Eliezer Landshuth, author of Amudei ha-Avodah passed away today at Berlin.

http://newspaperslibrary.org/articles/eng/Leser_Landshuth

https://www.virtualjudaica.com/Listing/Details/639179/Siddur-R-Hirsch-Edelmann-Eliezer-Leser-Landshuth-Koenigsberg-1845

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

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

1891: Alice Goldmark, the niece of composer Karl Goldmark, married Louis Brandeis at her parent’s home in New York City and the moved “Boston’s Beacon Hill district” where their two daughters – Susan and Elizabeth – were born.

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

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

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

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6153-fischhof-adolf

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

1893: W.H. Helm of Dumfries and his wife gave birth Sir Alexander Knox Helm, the United Kingdom’s first ambassador to Israel.

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

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

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

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

1896: Birthdate of Jacob “Jake” Friedman, the native of Bridgeport, CT who in 1926 played “end” in three games for the Hartford Blues, an NFL team that existed for only year.

1896: Congregation B’nai Shalom which held services on “Sabbath and holidays,” included a Ladies Hebrew Association as an “auxiliary society” and was served by Rabbi Max Lewinthal was founded in Brookhaven, Mississippi today.

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

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

1897: Birthdate of Jackson, MS native and Millsap College graduate Julian B. Feibelman, the Hebrew Union College trained rabbi who was the long-time leader of Temple Sinai in New Orleans where he could be seen striding up St. Charles Avenue in spats sometimes accompanied by his wife, the former May Anna Fellman.

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

1897: One day after he had passed away, 36 year old Julius Pearl, the son of Haskel and Miriam Pearl was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

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

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

1900: Birthdate of Erich Seligman Fromm, the German born American psychoanalyst

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

http://www.erichfromm.net/

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

1905: Penultimate session of the convention of the Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith meeting in New Orleans.

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

1907: Birthdate of Solomon “Sol” Furth, the Brooklyn born track star nicknamed “Happy” who competed in the 1932 Olympics.

1907: Today, in Paris, Dr. Max Nordau told a meeting of French Zionists “that it was necessary to immediately prepare for the next Zionist Congress” and that they need “to organize the plans for the future of the Zionist movement.”

1907: Birthdate of Latvia native Moses Cyrus Weiler, the HUC trained rabbi referred to as “an unsung hero of the struggle for black emancipation in South Africa.

http://www.unitedsisterhood.org.za/index.php/about-us/rabbi-moses-cyrus-weiler

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0215/ms0215.html

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

1910(12thof Adar II, 5670): Hume, Germany native Joseph Brandestein, the San Francisco tobacco and cigar merchant and leader in the Jewish community as can be seen by his service to the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Mt. Zion Hospital Association and Congregation Emanu-El who married Jane Rosenbaum with whom he had eleven children including Max, Manfred and Edward passed away today.

http://www.jmaw.org/brandenstein-jewish-san-francisco/

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

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

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

1913(14thof Adar II, 5673): Purim

1913: Eighty year old Civil War veteran Adam Mayer passed away today in New Orleans.

1914: Birthdate of Spencer Bernard Witty, the native of Waccabuc, NY who with his four brothers Frederic, Ephraim and Arthur, and a cousin, Irving expanded the business created by their grandfather David Witty into a “chain” of six store that sold classy, high end clothing for men.

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

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

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

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

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

1915: According to family legend, today, in Brooklyn “Louis and Sarah Rabinowitz, Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia” gave birth to Jacob Rabinowitz who gained fame as producer and talent-maven Jack Rollins. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/obituaries/jack-rollins-dies-at-100-sharpened-talent-like-woody-allens.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1916: In St. Louis, at Rabbi Masliansky and Rabbi Abranowitz told those attending “a relief meeting” at “B’nai Emuno Synagogue” about “the sufferings of the Jews in the war zones” “more than $1,000 was raised through the sale of certificates bearing the recent proclamation of President Wilson naming a Jewish Relief Day.”

1916(18thof Adar II, 5676): Seventy-two year old Colonel Felix Rosenberg, the Civil War veteran who “came to Cleveland after the Civil War, was a brevet colonel in the Spanish-American War” and the “editor of Town Topics, a weekly publication devoted to local high society news” passed away today in Cleveland.

1917: As of today, it was reported that the People’s and Central Relief Committees are raising funds for the relief of Jews in war-torn Europe along with the American Jewish Relief Committee led by Henry Morgenthau, Louis Marshall and Herbert Lehman.

1917: The United States Ambassador to Russia today sent a cablegram to the State Department stating “that the new Russian Government had taken its first important step toward the emancipation of the Jews by removing the education restrictions previously imposed under the old regime.”

1917: In a letter to the British and French Ambassadors to the United States, Oscar Straus, Chairman of the Public Service Commission expressed the opinion that “the great majority of the Jewish citizens of the United States are pro-Ally and not pro-German.”

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

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

1918(10thof Nisan, 5678): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1918: Rabbi Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver the sermon this morning at Temple Beth-El on 5th Avenue.

1918: Rabbi Krass is scheduled to deliver a sermon “A Lesson from The Copperhead” at Central Synagogue.

1918: Rabbi Enelow is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Basic Doctrines of Reform Judaism” at Temple Emanu-El.

1918: Rabbi M.H. Harris is scheduled to deliver a sermon “The Great Sabbath” this morning at Temple Israel of Harlem

1918: Today’s issue of The Publisher’s Weeklyincluded Jewish Fairy Stories by Gerald Friedlander and illustrated by Beatrice Hirschfeld among its listings.

https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Fairy-Tales-Gerald-Friedlander/dp/0486419827

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

1919: Birthdate of Marvin “Mickey” Rottner the Chicago native who played guard for the Loyola University basketball team from 1939 to 1942 after which he played professional basketball from 1945 to 1948.

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=105722874

1919: Birthdate of Henry Foner, the native of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood who was a decorated veteran of the United States Army whose labor organizing activity included serving as president of the Joint Board of Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union.

http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_254/

http://ilgwu.ilr.cornell.edu/archives/oralhistories/henryfoner.html

1921(13thof Adar II, 5681): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim

1921: Today is the second day of “The Palestine Bazar” organized by the Manchester Branch of the Jewish National Fund Commission for England

1921: The Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary held commencement ceremonies today.

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

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

1922(23rdof Adar, 5682): Eighty-one year old Harav Moshe Nachum Wallenstein who was born in Pupa, Hungary, in 1841 and moved to Israel in 1864 where he served the community as a rabbi passed away today.

1922: In Pittsburgh, PA, Louis and Elsie Alpern gave birth to Morton Alpern who gained fame as comedian Marty Allen.(As reported by Peter Keepnews)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/obituaries/marty-allen-wild-eyed-comedy-star-is-dead-at-95.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

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

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

1926: Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff, the Honorary Chairman of the Women’s Division of the United Jewish Campaign of New York hosted a tea at her Fifth Avenue home for “the women who are organizing teams of workers for the campaign to raise six million dollars that will start in April.

1926: Birthdate of Norman Clifford ‘Norm” Mager whose accomplishments with the CCNY and the Baltimore Bullets of the NBA were over-shadowed by his involvement in the point shaving scandal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/sports/ncaabasketball/norman-mager-78-player-tarnished-by-gambling-scandal-dies.html?_r=0

1927: In Detroit, anti-Semite and automobile manufacturer Henry Ford and his Dearborn Independent was an important point today in the trial of Aaron Sapiro’s libel suit…when Judge Raymond banned a series of letters” that proved Mr. Ford and his weekly newspaper had been warned of the “falsity of the articles which are the basis for this trial.

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

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

1930:  The front page of the New York Times sports section featured a picture of Penn State Boxer David Stoop knocking out his opponent as Penn State University successfully defended its intercollegiate title.

http://images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/3.90.2015/image078.jpg

1931: In Warsaw, Mordechai Bernstein, a journalist and “the former Zelda Goldin, a seamstress and Spanish teacher” gave birth to Masha Bernstein who survived the Holocaust and Siberia to gain fame as Masha Leon, “the society columnist for The Forward.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/nyregion/masha-leon-dead-society-columnist-for-the-forward.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1932(15thof Adar II, 5692): Shushan Purim

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

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

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

1933: The Jewish War Veterans (JWS) launched a boycott of German goods in the United States today making it the first organization in the U.S. to launch such an economic action

1933: Birthdate of Shlomo Ofek the native of Poland who perished aboard the Submarine Dakar in 1968.

1933: Birthdate of Abraham “Abe” Cohen who after playing football and wrestling at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga went to play professional football for the CFL Hamilton Tiger Cats and one season for the newly minted AFL Boston Patriots in 1960.

1936: Darius Paul Dassault was promoted to the rank of Division General (général de division) in the French Army.

1936: In Hackensack, NJ, “the Board of Education voted unanimously at its meeting tonight not ban the ‘Merchant of Venice’ from the second year high school English course because of complaints” voiced “by Rabbi Irving Silman of the Hackensack Hebrew Institute.”

1936: “David J. Schweitzer, vice chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee outlined the problems facing the committee which is engaged in a $3,500,000 drive in this county, $1,500,000 of which” is supposed to come from New York,

1937: Two days after he had passed away funeral services were held today for sixty-four year old British born historian and Zionist leader Jacob De Haas in his home where per his request Rabbi David De Sola Pool of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue officiated at a simple, private ceremony followed by burial at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens, NY.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Of-Palestine-Thousand-Years/dp/1406709301

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/03/22/94345411.pdf

1937: The French Fascist, led by “La Cagoule” were thwarted in their attempt to overthrow the Third Republic when Leon Blum’s Popular Front government avoided a vote of “no confidence.”

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

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

1938: “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” a romantic comedy directed and produced by Ernst Lubitsch and a screenplay co-authored by William Wilder was released today in the United States.

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

1939: Erich Maria Remarque, the author of All Quiet on the Western Front whose books were burned by the Nazis arrived in New York today and “said he had come here to study America, learn the language and write a book dealing with the persecution of the Jews

1939: “Eleven members of the old and prosperous Italian Fornari family,” including forty year old Raffaele , his wife Celesete and their two children Vitoria and Alberto, “that traces its history in Rome back for 300 years arrived yesterday on the Italian liner Rex as refugees from the recent anti-Semitic edicts of the Fascist party.”

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

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

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

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

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

1943: The Gestapo arrested Henri Krasucki, his mother and other members of the French resistance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1944: Birthdate of Michael Laurence Nyman the native Stratford, London the multi-talented musician who has done it all from concert pianist, to composing movie scores and to the creation of operas.

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

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

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

1948: “The Search” a “film directed by Fred Zinnemann which tells the story of a young Auschwitz survivor and his mother who search for each other across post-World War II Europe” was released today.

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

1949: “Detective Story” a three act play by Sidney Kingsley opened on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre.

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

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

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

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

1951: After premiering in New York City and Los Angeles, “Royal Wedding, the Alan Jay Lerner musical comedy directed by Stanley Donen was released throughout the rest of the United States today.

1954: Mathematician Jacob Bronowski, the father of Lisa Jardine, “delivered his own Conway Memorial Lecture today.”

1956: New York State Supreme Court Justice Henry Epstein officiated at the wedding of actress Rita Gam, to Yale Graduate and WW II Marine Corps veteran “Thomas H. Guinzburg, the son of Harold K. Guinzburg, publisher of the Viking Press” today.

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

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

http://www.justborn.com/

1960: Seventy-eight year old Franklin Pierce Adams, the Chicago born son of Moses and Clara Schlossberg Adams and writer known simply as F.P.A. who was a member of the famous Algonquin Round Table passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/03/25/105423068.pdf

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

1962: Arthur Fiedler and his wife visited the Marshal Space Flight Center today.

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

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

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

 

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

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

1969: Birthdate of Donte Phillip Spector, one of three children adopted by Phil Spector and his second wife.

1970(15thof Adar II, 5730): Shushan Purim

1970: Birthdate of Justin Craig Duberman, the native of New Haven who after growing up in Highland Park Illinois went on to play ice hockey for the University of North Dakota and made it to the NFL as a right wing for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

1971: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Julia,” the ground-breaking sitcom created by Savannah native Hal Kanter, co-starring Ezra Stone and with music by Elmer Bernstein.

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

1972: In Paris, “a psychoanalyst whose parents were Holocaust survivors from Poland and Russia” and his wife, a child therapist gave birth to author and actress Judith Godreche, the wife of French actor Danny Boon.

1973: CBS broadcast the last episode of daytime soap opera “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” created by Chicago native Irna Phillips.

1974: Senator Ted Kennedy arrived in Moscow today where he spoke with Brezhnev about the Middle East and immigration, two topics of importance to Jews in the United States and Israel.

1974: “”Leonid Zabelishensky was released from prison today.”

1975: In “Major Book on Holocaust” published today, Gerald F. Lieberman described the negotiations that are “under way between Israel and an American company for the publication of The Diary of Adam Czerniakow,” a document that a leading Jewish scholar in Brooklyn College termed of major importance in understanding the near destruction of European Jewry under the Nazis.

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

1979(24th of Adar, 5739): One person was murdered and 13 more injured in a terrorist bombing at Zion Square in Jerusalem.

1979: Abraham David Sofaer began serving as Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,

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

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

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

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

1981(17thof Adar II, 5741): Ninety-five year old German born American Chess champion Edward Lasker who had been trained as an engineer and was a close friend of fellow chess champion and distant relative Emanuel Lasker passed away today in New York.

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

https://worldchesshof.org/hof-inductee/edward-lasker

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

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

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

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

1985: Jewish singer Billy Joel wed supermodel Christie Brinkley

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

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

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

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

1987: CBS broadcast the first episode of the long running soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” which would feature Tracey E. Bregman in the role of “Lauren Fenmore.”

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

1988(5th of Nisan, 5748): Fifty-eight year old “Jim Jacobs, a boxing historian and a co-manager of Mike Tyson, the heavyweight champion” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/24/obituaries/jim-jacobs-tyson-s-co-manager-and-handball-titlist-dies-at-58.html

1989: In Philadelphia, Dr. Richard Cohen, who played tennis for the University of Pennsylvania and played professional tennis for two years and his wife gave birth to professional tennis player Julia Cohen, the sister of All-American tennis player Josh Cohen.

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

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

1992: “Broadway Bound” a made for television movie based on Neil Simon’s play co-starring Jonathan Silverman, featuring Jerry Orbach and Michele Lee and with music by David Shire was broadcast for the first time tonight.

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

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

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

1994: “Above the Rim,” “a sports film co-written, stored and directed by Jeff Pollack” was released in the United States today.

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

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

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

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

1998(25thof Adar, 5758): Eighty-one year old American poet Hilda Morely and cousin of Isaiah Berlin passed away today.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/hilda-morley

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

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

2001(28thof Adar, 5761): Eighty-seven year old Janice Levin, the art collector and philanthropist whose husband attorney Philip J. Levin passed away in 1971, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/janice-levin-87-philanthropist-of-the-arts.html

2002(10thof Nisan, 5762): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

2002(10thof Nisan, 5762): Seventy-three year old Oscar Winning set designer Richard Sylbert passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/movies/richard-sylbert-73-designer-of-oscar-winning-film-sets.html?scp=1&sq=richard%20sylbert&st=cse/

2003(19th of Adar II, 5763): Fritz Spiegl the Austrian-born musician, journalist, broadcaster, humorist and collector who fled to England in 1939 to escape the Nazis passed away today.

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

2004: Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the New York Department had increased uniformed and plainclothes patrols at synagogues and in predominately Jewish neighborhoods following an attack on Sheik Ahmed Yasssin, a founder of Hamas, in Gaza City.

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

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

2005(12thof Adar II, 5765): Seventy-three year old Naftali Halberstam “the grand rabbi of the Bobov Chasidic Sect” passed away today.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/obituaries/naftali-halberstam-dies-at-74-bobov-hasidims-grand-rabbi.html

2005(12thof Adar II, 5765): Eighty-five year old award winning British actor David Kossoff passed away today in Hatfield, Hertforshire, England.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1486283/David-Kossoff.html

2006: Judith Martin, known professionally as “Miss Manners” today “was a special guest correspondent on The Colbert Report, giving her analysis of the manners with which the White House Press Corps spoke to the President.”

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

http://paulcohen.org/

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

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

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

2008: An exhibition organized by guest curator Murray Zimiles entitled “Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel has its last showing at the American Folk Art Museum. From gilded lions to high-stepping horses, the sacred to the secular, and the Old World to the New, "Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel" traces the journey of Jewish woodcarvers and other artisans from Eastern and Central Europe to America and the unsung role they played in establishing a distinct Jewish culture in communities throughout the United States.

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

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

2008(7thof Nissan, 5778): In Paris, 85 year old Holocaust survivor was murdered allegedly by Yacine Mihoub and Alex Carrimbacus who shouted “Allah Akbar” as they stabbed her.

2008: As pilots began undergoing tests for cancer, a team of technical personnel from the Israel Air Force flew to Fort Worth, Texas, for consultations with their American counterparts and Lockheed Martin concerning the recent discovery of carcinogenic material in an Israeli F-16I. The discovery of the material prompted OC IAF Maj.-Gen. Elazar Shkedy to ground all F-16I training flights until the investigation is concluded.

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

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

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

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

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

2010: The AIPAC Policy Conference comes to a close.

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

2010: The Temple Mount Human Rights Group has scheduled a gathering for today in front of the Mashbir department store in Jerusalem. The theme of the gathering is, "The time has come for our liberation - to be a free people on our mountain" which plays on the chorus of the national anthem Hatikvah, which talks about the Jews being "a free people in our land". The group will call for freedom of religion for all groups on the Temple Mount, including the Jews. The group's chairman, Yehuda Glick, says the state, in response to the Supreme Court, determined there was no preventing freedom of religion at the site but was concerned about the security consequences. He added, "We will come with lambs and goats and demand that we be allowed to offer a Pesach sacrifice on the Temple Mount.

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

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

2010: As German authorities pursue suspected Nazi war criminals to the last, a court in Aachen convicted an 88-year-old former SS soldier today on charges of killing three Dutch civilians in reprisal for attacks by Dutch resistance fighters in 1944. The case against the former soldier, Heinrich Boere, who is now a stateless person, was depicted by German analysts as one of the last major war crimes trials. Court proceedings began last November in another case, against John Demjanjuk, 89, who was accused of helping to force 27,900 Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust. The verdict in Aachen on Tuesday against Mr. Boere came more than six decades after he was found guilty by a Dutch court in 1949 and sentenced to death. That sentence, passed in his absence, was later commuted to a life imprisonment, but he fled to Germany after the war and did not serve it. The German court sentenced him to the maximum permissible sentence of life imprisonment on Tuesday, as the prosecution had demanded, rejecting a defense plea for the case to be dropped under European Union regulations covering due process. Defense lawyers said they would appeal the court findings, a process that could take years. Court-appointed doctors will also examine Mr. Boere to ascertain whether he is medically fit to serve a prison term. Before his trial he lived in a nursing home. Mr. Boere was not taken into custody after the sentencing, pending his lawyers’ appeal and the medical tests. The court ruled that he was unlikely to be a flight risk. Gerd Nohl, the presiding judge, described the killings as “murders that could hardly be outdone in terms of baseness and cowardice — beyond the respectability of any soldier,” The Associated Press reported. Mr. Boere attended the proceedings in a wheelchair and seemed to show no obvious reaction to the sentencing. The trial began in October. Mr. Boere admitted killing the owner of a bicycle shop, a pharmacist and another civilian when he was part of a Nazi execution team. The prosecution said he had willingly joined the so-called Feldmeijer squad in 1940 when German forces overran the Netherlands. The squad was composed mainly of Dutch volunteers, who carried out reprisal killings against compatriots considered to be anti-German. During the trial, he said he had no choice but to follow orders to carry out the killings. “I always regarded these assignments as military orders which I had to carry out,” the German DPA news agency quoted Mr. Boere as saying in a statement though his lawyer. “Today, 65 years after what we did, I obviously see it from a different point of view,” he said. But he did not apologize, DPA reported. On two occasions German courts refused to extradite him or force him to carry out the Dutch life sentence in Germany. Mr. Nohl, the presiding judge, said Mr. Boere had lived “undisturbed” in Germany since 1955.

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

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

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

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

2011: “Two rockets exploded in Beersheba this morning, and ten mortar shells fell in the Sha'ar Hanegev and Eshkol Regional Councils. A siren was heard as a rocket fell in an open field in Beersheba at 9:40 a.m. this morning.

2011: Seventy-nine year old actress Elizabeth Taylor who converted to Judaism in 1959, had two Jewish husbands (producer Mike Todd and crooner Eddie Fisher) and was such an ardent supporter of Israel and Jewish causes such as the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate, that her films were “were banned by Muslim countries throughout the Middle East and Africa” passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/23/local/la-me-elizabeth-taylorlong-20110324

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/23/elizabeth-taylor-obituary

2011(17, Adar II, 5771): “One woman died and 50 were injured after an explosion took place at a bus station in central Jerusalem this afternoon. Police said that a bomb exploded outside Egged bus number 74 at a station opposite the Jerusalem Conference Center (Binyanei Ha'uma) in the center of town. Fifty people were injured in the attack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2013(12thof Nisan, 5773): Shabbat HaGadol

2013: “After the Houston Astros put him on waivers,” today “the Oakland A’s picked up Nate Freiman, “the 26-year-old first baseman, who dominated opposing pitchers during Team Israel’s World Baseball Classic bid last year and who hit .278 for Houston during Spring Training, with 1 HR, two doubles, no walks and 7 whiffs in 36 at-bats.

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


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

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

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

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

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

2014: “Billionaire diamond magnate Lev Leviev” one of the “most successful Bukharian Jews” and “Israeli philanthropist” was photographed today “writing in a Torah scroll with Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov and defense minister Moshe Yaalon.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2016: The Jews in the American South is scheduled to stop in Beaufort, South Carolina, for a visit to Beth Israel Congregation – formerly Orthodox, now “all-inclusive” – to talk with community members about maintaining religious traditions and Jewish identity in a small town.

2016: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “France, Jewish Identity and the Holocaust: Yellow Stars of Tolerance and Cojot.”

2016: YIVO is scheduled to present “Mixed-Sex Dancing in Yiddish Culture.”

2016:Hadassah Humanitarian Mission to Cuba is scheduled to begin today.

2016: “Next Stop” a “play that follows two Israelis humorously navigating the confusion of dating life in New York City” is scheduled to open at the Broadway Comedy Club.

2016(13thof Adar II, 5776): Fast of Esther; in the evening read the Megillah – for more see

2017: The ten day Israel Culinary Trip to Israel sponsored by the Streicker Center is scheduled to begin today.

2017: “A months long wave of bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the United States that prompted evacuations, heightened security and fears of rising anti-Semitism gave way to an unexpected twist” today when a Jewish 18 year old who holds dual Israeli and American citizenship who reported has a brain tumor was arrested and “His father was ordered held for eight days on suspicion that he might have been aware of the threats…”

2017: Today “The Republican-led Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's pick to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, ignoring objections from Democrats that David Friedman lacked the temperament for such an important diplomatic post.”

2017: The American Society for Jewish Music is scheduled to present “Your New House: Wedding Songs, Gender and Memory in an Indian Jewish Community.”

2017: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to host George Prochnik speaking on “Stranger in a Strange Land – Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem.

2018(7thof Nisan, 5778): Eighty-six year old Lawrence K. Grossman, the former President of PB and head of NBC news passed away today. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)


2018: Daylight saving time begins at 2:00 A.M in Israel

2018: A Hebrew language performance of the Israeli play “Scoop” is scheduled to take place this evening at the Roy Arias Theatre in New York City.

2018: This morning, the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.”

 2018: BowTie theatres in Hartford and New Haven, CT. are scheduled to host screenings of “Itzhak,” a film about the life of violinist Itzhak Perlman.

2019(16thof Adar II, 5779):  Parashat Tzav; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2019: The Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host the “East Coast US premiere” of “The Bird Catcher” which tells the tale of Jews fleeing the Nazis in Norway.

2019: In Jerusalem, the Bible Lands Museum is scheduled to host the last day of its special gallery displays designed to celebrate Purim.

2019: The Bloomfield Science Museum is scheduled to host the final day of “Mirror Image – A Purim of Mirrors and Reflections.

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is schedule to host “Running Breathless: An Untold Story of WWII and the Holocaust.

https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/MAMTAKOGUL0319

 

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

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March 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112346/jewish/Rabbi-Isaiah-Halevi-Horowitz-The-Sheloh.htm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1816: Sampson ben Abraham married Pescha bat Shermari Solomon at the Western Synagogue.

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

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

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

1822: Birthdate of Solomon Cohn, the native of Zülz, Prussian Silesia who followed in the footsteps of his grandfather Meshuallam Solomon Cohn of Furth and served as a rabbi of several congregations in Germany.

1824: George Aarons married Elizabeth Davis at the Western Synagogue.

1830: Joseph ben Moses HaLevi married Esther bat Eliyakum Goetshlik HaCohen at the New Synagogue.

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

1843: Birthdate of  Siegmund Salfeld, the 1870 graduate of the University of Berlin who in 1880 began serving as a rabbi in Mainz where he passed away in 1926 at the age of 83.

 

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

1852: Selig Salomon Philipp married Eveline Albu today in Berlin.

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

1857: Boston physician John Warren Gorham who had been nominated by President Franklin Pierce as “the first American consul to serve in Jerusalem” arrived in that city today after which “he set up the consulate in a rented building on Mount Zion near the Jaffa Gate.”

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

1859: In Laupheim, Germany, Samuel Heilbronner and Emilie Einstein gave birth to Pauline Heilbronner who became Pauline Heilbronner Hirschfeld when she married Leopold Hirschfeld with she had two children—Laura and Bella.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1874: In Budapest Cecilia Stein and Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz gave birth to Eric Weisz who gained fame as contortionist, acrobat and escape artist Harry Houdini.

https://www.thegreatharryhoudini.com/

https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3711.html

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

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

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

1883: In “Kiviska, Russia, Hersh and Brucha Schriber gave birth to Mordechai “Max” Yohlin, the husband of Esther Pressie with whom he had six children – Betty, Mary Rose, Harry and Sylvia – with whom, in 1925 he “immigrated to Philadelphia where he began serving as a congregational rabbi and cantor.


1886(8thof Nisan, 5626): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

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

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

1889: Twenty-three year old Frankfurt, Germany native Meir Selig Goldschmidt married Selma Cramer, the daughter of Salomon Cramer and Therese (Röschen) Oppenheimer.”

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

1891: In South Carolina, Joseph F. Brannon married Rebecca Cecilia Wolfe today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1896: Birthdate of Lower East Side native Moses Polakoff, the WW I Navy veteran and NYU trained attorney who worked in the United States Attorney’s office before going into private practice where some of his most notorious clients were Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/14/obituaries/moses-polakoff-is-dead-at-age-97-was-lawyer-for-lucky-luciano.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10351-mandelkern-solomon-b-simhah-dob

1903: Sarah Alexander, the daughter of Henry Woolf and Sarah Jane Asher and the wife of Oscar Alexander with whom she had had nine children was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

1903: Birthdate of “Polish novelist and educator Igor Newerly” who was imprisoned by the Nazis for his efforts to rescue Jews – efforts which earned him commendation from Yad Vashem.

http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=4044056

1905: The Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith ended its week long meeting in New Orleans.

1908: Albert Lowy, the husband of Gertrude Lindenthal with whom he had had eight children was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

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

1910: Birthdate of Gyula Ortutay, the anti-fascist political leader who while serving as the country’s Minister of Religion and Education in 1947 “visited Jewish grammar schools and in a brief address to the students, expressed sympathy and understanding for the sufferings of the Jews under previous pro-Nazi regimes, but pleaded for “forgiveness and cooperation in the reconstruction of Hungary.”

1911: Birthdate of Tyler Kent, the anti-Semitic son of an American diplomat who used his position as cypher clerk to steal and share secret documents the anti-Semitic Right Club, that if exposed would have helped destroy efforts by FDR and Churchill to fight the Nazis before America entered WW II.

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

1912: Birthdate of Isaac Edward Lending, the son of Bronx owner of a textile trimmings business who reversed the order of his name to Edward Issac Lending – the name he used as a journalist and a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

1913(15thof Adar II, 5673): Shushan Purim

1913(15thof Adar II, 5673): Forty-six year old Viennese native Dr. Maximilian Max Reiner the son of Agnes and Dr. Michael Reiner and husband of Paula Reiner passed away today in Italy.

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

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

1915: An eyewitness account of the Austrian surrender of Przemsyl to the Russians sent from Petrograd to London today described the destruction of fortification but reported that except for the outskirts, “town itself” most of whose occupants were Jews who had stayed during the fight was “intact.”  (Editor’s note – The Jews stayed because they had not place to go and they were subject to anti-Semitic outburst by those on both sides of the fight.)

1915: The Jews are among the many groups fleeing Constantinople today based on a fear of Russian invasion of the Ottoman capital.

1916: Final arrangements were completed today “for the bazaar for the benefit of the Jewish war sufferers of Europe” which opens tomorrow in the Grand Central Palace” and “is one of the largest undertakings yet attempted by the Jews of New York to raise funds for the relief of their suffering co-religionists in Europe.

1916: In New York, “The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War” received word today that a successful meeting had been held last night at B’nai Emuno Synagogue in St. Louis where “many wept when Rabbi Masliansky and Rabbi Abranowitz described “the sufferings of the Jews in the war zones.”

1917: Based on reports that the political and religious emancipation of the Jews are about to be removed along with “the passport restrictions which have rendered it impossible for American Jews to travel in Russia” the U.S. “State Department has already received a number of applications from American Jews” wishing to go to Russia.

 

1917: In an interview given today, Dr. Israel Friedlaender, the Professor of Biblical Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary predicted that as a result of the Russian Revolution there would be a “great diminution in the volume of Jewish emigration from Russia to the United States and the return of many thousands of recent emigrants” to Russia “which now offers them the liberty in search of which they had fled” to the United States and “Russian-American Jews” would “play a great part in the industrial upbuilding of their native land.”

1917: According to a letter from Oscar S. Straus published today, “Now that the magnificent uprising of democracy in Russia appears to have opened a new and glorious future for that country with equal rights for the oppressed nationalities, Jewish sentiment in America in favor of the Allied cause may be safely counted upon to become unanimous.”

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

1918: At the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall, Dr. Wise is scheduled to speak on “Vies and uses, Right and Wrong, of Friendship and Love.”

1918: Samuel Bayer was elected President today “at a special meeting of the Board of Directors of the Uptown Talmud Torah.

1918: Congressman Julius Kahn is scheduled to address the Institutional Synagogue meeting at Mt. Morris Theatre on “American In and After the War.”

1918: “Resolutions were adopted” today at the annual meeting of the Trustees of Mt. Sinai Hospital “complimenting Geroge Blumenthal, the President, on the successful execution of the duties of the various offices he has held with that institution during the last twenty-five years.”

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

1918: At Temple Beth-El is scheduled to speak on War and Democracy at 11 o’clock this moring.

1919: On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, North Carolina native Louis Heilbroner, the founder of a successful “chain of men’s clothing stores” and Helen Heilbroner gave birth to American economist Robert Heilbroner, the author of some twenty books, best known for The Worldly Philosophers published in 1953, which is a survey of the lives and contributions of famous economists, notably Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/obituaries/robert-heilbroner-writer-and-economist-dies-at-85.html

https://s-usih.org/2014/05/marginalized-economists-revisiting-robert-heilbroner-guest-post-by-rachel-m-cohen/

1919: Alvey A. Adee, the Second Assistant Secretary wrote to Dr. Pierre Siegelstein, the President of the Rumanian Hebrew Aid Society that the State Department had “received a message…from the Union of Native Jews of Rumania” in Bucharest asking that Rumanian Jews in America do everything in their power to “send money, food, underwear, clothing and shoes” because “misery is very great with all.

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

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/world/europe/19pemper.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8578020/Mietek-Pemper.html

1920: The annual convention of Sigma Epsilon Delta Fraternity whose member incuded Samuel Hess, Ben Horn, and Milton Bermas to place today in New York City.

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

1921: “The Palestine Bazar” organized by the Manchester Branch of the Jewish National Fund Commission for England for which Winston Churchill, MP acted as patron was scheduled to come to an end today.

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

1922: “Ludwig II” a silent biopic directed by Otto Kreisler was released today in Austria.

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

1923: In Baltimore, MD, Robert Debuskey, “a wine salesman” and “Freda (Blaustein) Debuskey gave birth to Basil Merle Debuskey the press agent who was a major influence on the productions of Joseph Papp.  (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/obituaries/merle-debuskey-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1924: In Philadelphia, Samuel Feld and Edna Rosenfeld gave birth to Norman Noah Feld, the native of Philadelphia and WW II veteran who gained fame as actor Norman Fell whose most lasting role came as Mr. Roper in the television hit “3’s Company.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/16/nyregion/norman-fell-74-actor-known-for-tv-role.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-norman-fell-1191859.html

1924: Birthdate of Michael Hamburger the native of Berlin whose family settled in the United Kingdom in 1933 where he attended Oxford, served in the British Army during WW II after he which he pursued an academic career which was noted for his translation of the works of several authors from German into English.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jun/11/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries

1926: “The New York Board of Jewish Ministers” under the leadership of Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach met at Temple Emanu-El today and “endorsed the appeal to raise $50,000 for the New York Public Library” where “a collection of rare material depicting the history of Jews in Oriental countries” is about to go on display.

1926: Mrs. Joffe of the Women’s Branch of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America wrote a letter today to arrange for out of town students studying in New York to be placed in homes at no charge where they will “be furnished all meals during the coming Passover holidays.”

1927: “Out of the Mist” a silent film produced by Karl Freund and featuring Vladimir Sokoloff as “Poleto” was released today in Germany.

1927: The “campaign workers for the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities” met at the Unity Club on Bedford Avenue where “Supreme Court Justice Mitchell May, President of the Federation” said “that a recent influx of Jews into Brooklyn had increased the demands on the Federation” and it as announced that so far $125,000 had been raised in the drive to raise $2,500,000.

1928: Birthdate of Bronx native and Iowa Hawkeye alum Melvin “Mel” Rosen who went from being a successful collegiate middle distance runner to being the highly successful track coach at Auburn University.

http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=140

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/sports/mel-rosen-coach-of-powerful-92-olympics-track-team-dies-at-90.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1932: Birthdate of New York native and Yale graduate Lawrence Jerome Schniderman, the Harvard trained physician and husband of pianist Barbara Goldman with whom he had four children –Rob, Claudia Heidi and Tanya.

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

1933: Three weeks after premiering in New York City, “King Kong” with music by Max Steiner premiered on the West Coast today in Los Angeles.

1934: “Once to Every Woman” a movie version of short story by the same name with a script co-authored by Jo Swerling was released in the United States today.

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

1936: Polish Charge d’Affaires Wladyslaw wrote a letter to Dr. Cyrus Adler explaining that his country’s newly adopted Slaughter Reform Bill, which put an end to kosher slaughtering was really just a way to “adjust the abnormal conditions existing in the Polish cattle meat industry” which are caused by the differences in the way Christians and Jews consumer meat.

1936: Mrs. Leo Sulzberger is scheduled to president over today’s open meeting of the New York section of the National Council of Jewish Women is being held in the synagogue at Welfare Island.

 

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

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

1937: “The work of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem may help to bring about a better understanding between the two racial groups of the Palestine Population, Professor Hugo Bergman,” the chair of the modern philosophy department and rector of the university “declared” tonight “at a dinner given in his honor by the American friends of the Hebrew University at the Waldorf-Astoria” in NYC.

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

1938: “More than 450 persons attended a luncheon today at the Hotel Astor marking the opening of the Greater New York campaign of the United Palestine Appeal, the $4,500,000 national campaign for the settlement in Palestine of Jews of Germany, Austria, Poland, Rumania and other lands.”

1938: “Joseph Buerckel, Nazi leader from the Saar, who is in charge of the Anschluss plebiscite in Austria, April 10, opened the plebiscite campaign tonight with a speech delivered, at the Vienna Konzerthaus” which consisted mainly of an “incitement against the terrorized Austrian Jews.”

1939: “Wuthering Heights” the movie version of the novel by the same name directed by William Wyler, produced by William Wyler, with a script co-authored by Ben Hecht and music by Alfred Newman premiered in Hollywood tonight.

1939: New York Governor Lehman praised Young Judaea “on its thirty-first anniversary celebration” taking place this month.

1939: In response to “Britain’s threat stop land purchases by Jews in Palestine,” “Hadassah…contributed $25,000 today to the Jewish National Fund ‘to assure the immediate purchase of land areas now held under option in the Jewish National Home.’”

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

1941: After receiving a transit visa from the United States, poet Anna Seghers, her husband, László Radványi and their children left France where they could no longer stay because of the Nazi occupation for America today.

1941: In Chicago, Ester Huff and William Masser gave birth to Michael William Masser, the Chicago born stockbroker turned popular music composer.

1942: “To the Shores of Tripoli” a paean to Patriotism featuring Max “Slapsie Maxie” Rosenbloom with music by Alfred Newman was released in the United States today.

1942(6th of Nisan, 5702): Agronomist and journalist Joel Shubin, who was “an alleged Communist International representative to the American Communist Party” and the Soviet Deputy Minister of Agriculture” passed away today either from “lung disease” or as the victim of a political liquidation.

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

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

1944: Following the refusal of Elias Barzilai, the Chief Rabbi of Athens, to provide the Germans with a list of Jews, “the Germans lured Jews into Beth Shalom Synagogue” today with an offer of “free matzoth for Pesach.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

1947: Birthdate of Minneapolis native and Northwestern University trained journalist Alan Wiseman, the husband of sculptor Beckie Kravetz.

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

1948(13thof Adar, 5708): Ta’anit Esther and Erev Purim

1948: Seventy-four year old Russian philosopher and author Nikolai Berdyaev whose The Meaning of History “credits the Jews with being the first people to contribute the concept of ‘historical’ to world history thereby discharging ‘the essence of their specific mission’” and further contended that Jews did not merely grasp “the significance of the past and present” but “were also the first people to link these up with the future” as can be seen in The Book of Daniel which “is one of the first well-defined expressions of the true philosophy of history.

1948: It was announced today the Israel “Rogosin, president of the Beaunit Mills, Inc., has been appointed chairman of the $600,000 fund raising campaign of the American Memorial to Six Million Jews of Europe, Inc.” which plans to erect “a memorial as a symbol of brotherhood and peace on Riverside Drive, in New York City.”

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

1950(6thof Nisan, 5710):Thirty-four year old Brooklyn born NYU basketball star Simon Boardman who was appointed “director of physical education at the Atlantic City Technical High School after his service in WW II passed away today, leaving his wife Harriet and his mother Rose to mourn his passing.

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

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

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

1953(8thof Nisan, 5713): Archie L. Cohn, the husband of Edith Cohn passed away today in New York City.

1954: Birthdate of actress Donna Pescow, the Brooklyn native who played “Annette” in the disco classic “Saturday Night Fever.”

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

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Eighty year old Polisn native Martha Esther Cahn, the daughter of Rachel and Moses Isaac Binon and the wife of Edward Cahn passed away today.

1955: “Man Without A Star” a movie version of a novel by the same name produced by Aaron Rosenberg and starring Kirk Douglas was released today in the United States.

1955: Eighty year old Martha Esther Cahn, the daughter of Rachel and Moses Isaac Binion and the wife of Edward Cahn

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

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Terrorists threw hand grenades and opened fire on a crowd at a wedding in the farming community of Patish, in the Negev, killing a young woman and wounding 18 others.

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

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Three days after celebrating her 80th birthday, Martha Esther Cahn, the daughter of Rachel and Moses Isaac Binion and wife of Edward Cahn with whom she had three children – Alma, Ruth and Joshua – passed a ay today.

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

1956: Actress Rita Gam, to Yale Graduate and WW II Marine Corps veteran “Thomas H. Guinzburg, the son of Harold K. Guinzburg, publisher of the Viking Press” began their “European wedding trip.”

1956: In Detroit, Frederic Henry Ballmer, the Swiss born “manager at the Ford Motor Company” and Beatrice Dworkin, whose Jewish family had come from Belarus gave birth to Steve Ballmer, Vice President of Microsoft.

1958: Seventy-eight year old Seumas O’Sullivan the husband of Irish artist Estella Francis Solomons the daughter of Maurice Solomons “an optician whose practice in 19 Nassau St., Dublin, is mentioned in Ulysses” and the brother-in-law of Bethel Solomons, a physicians who was a supporter of the 1916 Easter Rising.

1959(14thof Adar II, 5719) Purim

1960: An English production of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song” opened today in London’s Palace Theatre where it “ran for 464 performanes.

1961(7thof Nisan, 5721): Ninety year old Brooklyn born Columbia law school grad Mitchell May whose political career included serving as a member of the House of Representatives and serving 18 years as a Justice of the New York Supreme Court.

1961: “Town Without Pity” starring Kirk Douglas and with music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released in West Germany today.

1964: “The Fall of the Roman Empire” produced by Samuel Bronston and with a score by Dimitri Tiomkin was released today in the United Kingdom.

1965: In Chicago, “Lynn Straus and news anchor Walter Jacobson gave birth to Brown University trained actor Peter Jacobs best known for his portrayal of “Dr. Chris Taub.”

1965: “The Sucker” a comedy directed by Gérard Oury was released in France today.

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

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

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

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

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

1969: Birthdate of Munir Amar, the Druze general and Head of the IDF Civil Adminsitration whose life was cut short at the age of 47 in a tragic plane crash.

1970: “King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery To Memphis” a documentary produced by Ely Landau and Richard J. Kaplan and co-starring Paul Newman was released today in the United States today.

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

1971: ABC broadcast the final episode of “The Young Lawyers” a legal drama starring Lee J. Cobb and with music by Lalo Schifrin.

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

1972: Nine days after premiering in New York City, “The Godfather” produced by Albert S. Ruddy and co-starring James Caan and featuring Abe Vigoda was released across the United States today.

 

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

1974: Henry Kissinger arrived in Moscow for a four day visit.

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

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

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

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

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): Shabbat HaChodesh

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

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): Sixty-three year old British actress Yvonne Mitchell passed away today in London

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): One person was killed and 13 people were injured, most of them lightly, when an explosive charge blew up in a trash can in Zion Square in Jerusalem.

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

1981: Today Saudi Arabia rejected a suggestion by the Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres that he would try to explore the possibility of peace with the Saudis if his Labor Party wins the Israeli general elections on June 30.

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

1983: “The City Council committee on consumer affairs held today the second hearing in City Council history on kosher food prices and recommended that the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs and State Attorney General Robert Abrams investigate widespread charges of price fixing in Kosher-for-Passover products. (JTA)

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

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

1984(20thof Adar II, 5744): Seventy-one year old Judah Cahn, “the founding rabbi of the Metropolitan Synagogue of New York and past president of the New York Board of Rabbis” passed away today. (As reported by David Bird)

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/26/obituaries/judah-cahn-founding-rabbiof-metropolitan-synagogue.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1998: Today Howard Epstein “was elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for the New Democratic Party representing the provincial riding of Halifax Chebucto.”

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

2002(11thof Nisan, 5762): Seventy-four year old Noble prize winner Cesar Milstein and husband of Celia Prilleltensky passed away today in Cambridge, England.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1984/milstein-bio.html

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

2003(20thof Adar II, 5763): Eighty-eight year old Academy award winning screenwriter Philip Yordan passed away today in La Jolla, CA.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/apr/09/guardianobituaries.film

2004(2ndof Nisan, 5764): Eighty –three year old former Congressman Joshua Eilberg passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/mar/27/local/me-eilberg27

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008: The New Yorker published “The Region of Unlikeness” by Rivka Galchen.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/03/24/the-region-of-unlikeness

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “A Festival of Hebrew Literature,” with David Grossman, Etgar Keret, Meir Shalev and Zeruya Shalev. To mark Israel's 60th anniversary, contemporary Israeli writers, including David Grossman and Meir Shalev, read from their work. Grossman recently described Israel, in his Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, as a "land that is tortured, frantic, drugged by an overdose of history, excessive emotions that cannot be contained by any human capacity, extreme events and tragedies, enormous anxiety and paralyzing sobriety, too much memory, failed hopes and the circumstances of a fate unique among all nations."

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

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

2009: In an event co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel, Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret, author of the short story collections “The Nimrod Flipout” and “The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories,” as well as creator of the award-winning film "Malka Red-Heart," discusses the relationship between the short story and film as part of the Nextbook series at the D.C. Jewish Community Center.

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

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

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

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

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

2010: The Washington Post featured a review of a memoir entitled "Devotion" by Dani Shapiro, a successful writer who’grew up with difficult parents: a father whose devotion to Judaism was the only sustaining force in a disappointing life, and a bitter, angry mother.’

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

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

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

2011: “The Book of Mormon” the musical that earned Josh Gad a Tony Award nomination as best leading actor in a musical opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2013: The Jewish Cardinal, a French television film directed by Ilan Duran Cohen was broadcast for the first time today on RTS Deux 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2014: Today “a woman complained that Silvan Shalom had sexually harassed her at work more than 15 years before” which led to an investigation that was closed because the statute of limitations had been reached even though other women came forward with similar charges

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

2015: “London-based attorney Christopher Marinello, who works for the Rosenberg family,” “a Jewish family trying to retrieve a long-lost Matisse painting (Seated Woman) looted by the Nazis said” today that “a deal had been signed with the German government for its restitution.”

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

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

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

2015: Today, at a Simon Wiesenthal Center Dinner, Harvey Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax “urged Jews in the fight against anti-Semitism to “stand up and kick these guys in the ass.” (JTA)

2015(4thof Nisan, 5775): Eighty-six year old Israeli diplomat and ministerial adviser Yehuda Avner passed away today in Jerusalem.


2016: Ninety-eighth anniversary of the birth of Joseph B. Levin aka Yosef Dov ben Avraham Elimelech without whom, literally, this blog would not exist.

 

2016: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “The Music and Life of Irving Berlin.”

2016: The Jews in the American South is scheduled to be in Beaufort, South Carolina visiting with Mayor Billy Keyserling, “the grandson of Lithuanian immigrants” who escaped from Czarist Russia and graudate of Brandies University who has been active in state politics for several decades.

2016(14thof Adar II, 5776): Purim

2016(14thof Adar II, 5776): Sixty-six year old television comedy writer Garry Shandling who was best known for “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” passed away today.



2016: Ninety-four year old former MK Esther Herlitz, the native of Berlin who was Israel’s first female ambassador passed away today.


2017(26thof Adar, 5777): Seventy three year old Columbia University grad Paul Novograd, “the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe” and  who had reluctantly closed the Claremont Riding Academy ten years ago passed away today.  (As reported by Sam Roberts)


2017: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to turn Shabbat into a family affair with a Ruach Preneg followed a by a “L’dor Vador Shabbat Service.”

2017: Former Penn State President Graham Spanier was convicted today for his role in “hushing up the suspected child sex abuse” by a Penn St assistant football coach.

2017: Approximately 5,000 “Israelis and foreigners got filthy and battled through miles of obstacles” today took part in Israel’s first “Mud Day” race in Tel Aviv.

2017: Kibbutz Beit Oren is scheduled to host “Believe Fairy Festival,” Israel’s first “fairy festival.”

2018: Iowa City author and photographer Ina Loewenberg is scheduled to sign copies today of her new memoir A Life à la Carte at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City.

2018: “The Chop” and “The Cousin” are scheduled to be shown at the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.

2018: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host a performance this evening of “Irving Berlin: American.”

2018: Members of USY are scheduled to follow in the footsteps of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel by “praying with their feet” as participants in the #MarchForOurLives rally in Washington, DC.

2018: One hundredth anniversary of the birth of Joseph B. Levin, who in one of those calendar coincidences was Bar Mitzvahed on Shabbat HaGadol which is observed today in 2018.

2018(8thof Nisan, 5778):  Parashat Tzav and Shabbat HaGadol;

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel by Matti Friedman and Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents and a Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes) by Boris Fishman.

2019: The AIPAC Policy Conference, where the self-important gather, is scheduled to open today in Washington, DC.

2019: For the first time since the arrest of Robert Kraft, Pats owner, the NFL owners are scheduled to begin their annual meeting.

 

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

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March 25

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

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obadiah_ben_Abraham

1510: Birthdate of Normandy native Guillaume Postel the linguist, diplomat and Cabbalist who “became the first scholar to recognize the inscriptions on Judean coins from the period of the Great Jewish Revolt as Hebrew written in the ancient "Samaritan" character” and who collected Latin translations of the Zohar, the Sefer Yetzirah, and the Sefer ha-Bahir, the fundamental works of Jewish Kabbalah” as well as other Cabbalistic texts, such as his own commentary on the Cabbalistic significance of the Menorah, which he published in 1548 in Latin and subsequently in Hebrew.”

1525: Three years after the fall of Rhodes, the janissaries revolted against Suleymann, ransacking the palace of Ibrahim Pasha and looting the Jewish Quarter of Constantinople.

1541: Birthdate of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany whose son would turn Tuscany into a haven for Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition.

1584: “Queen Elizabeth I granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter for the colonization of an area in North America” that would lead him to recruit Joachim Gans to join the expedition which make Gans “the first recorded Jew in Colonial America.”

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

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

1601: More than 100 people appeared in the sanbenito at the auto de fe in Mexico today.

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

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

1762: In Philadelphia, PA, Prague native Mathias Bush and Tabitha Bush gave birth to David F. Bush

1790: In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Madel-Mathilda Cohen, the “daughter of Isaac Jacob Gans and Pesse Pauline Leah Gans” and her husband Abraham Herz Cohen gave birth to Philip Abraham Feibusch-Cohen

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

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zevi-hirsch-kalischer

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

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

1810(19thof Adar II, 5570):Jochem (Jochanan) David de Mets-Maarsen who had been born in Amsterdam in 1728 and married Marianne Abraham passed away today in the Netherlands.

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

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

1829: Birthdate of Maria Levy (Miriam bat Nathan ben Yehdua HaLevi, the native of York Place Queens Elm

 

1831: “The Colonial Act of William IV which passed the Legislature “today” removed any restraint or disabilities under which persons professing the Hebrew religion” in Barbados “then labored and subjected them like other persons to fines and penalties for the non-performance of duties.

1838: In Albany founding of Congregation Beth-El which in 1885 joined with Anshe Emeth to form Congregation Beth Emth whose members included Julius Laventall, Henry W. Lipman and Isaac Brilleman.

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

1839: Birthdate of Solomon Hirsch, “one of the early leaders of Portland, Oregon’s Jewish Community who “with Jacob Mayer and Louis Fleischner, Hirsch was one of the founders of Fleischner, Mayer and Co., the largest wholesale dry goods company on the West Coast” and the “Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Ottoman Empire from 1889–1892”

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

1845(16thof Adar II, 5606): Fifty-seven year old Isaac Russell, the son of Philip and Esther Russell and the husband of Perla Sheftall Russell passed away today after which he was interred in the Mordecai Sheftall Museum in Savannah, GA.

1846: Sir Walter Charles James, 1st Baron Northbourne and “Sarah Caroline, the daughter of Cuthbert Ellison” gave birth to Walter James, 2nd Baron Northbourne the Liberal political leader who in 1906 called on the British government to make public “any consular or other reports concerning the anti-Jewish outrages in Russia” because “he thought the publication of any such reports might indirectly have some effect in inducing the Russian Government to do its best to remedy conditions that outraged the civilization of the twentieth century.” (Editor’s note - I have not been able to find a reason why this member of the British aristocracy spoke out on behalf of the Jews during the Pogroms in Russia.)
1848: In Germany Marx Mordechai Pfaelzer and Karoline/Gitel Pfaelzer gave birth to Morris Moses Pfaelzer, the Philadelphia jeweler who married Sophie Pfaelzer with whom he had two children – Frank Pfaelzer and Henrietta Stern


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

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

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

1863: Barcuh Castello married Sophia Woolf today.

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

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

1865: Captain Leopold Meyer of Philadelphia, completed his three year enlistment as a member of Company C of the 113th Regiment – Twelfth Cavalry.

1866: Two days after she had passed away, the former Rebecca Arrobas, the wife of David Hyams and the mother of Rachel and Abrahm Hyams was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery.

1867: In Saxe-Weimar, Germany, Nathan Riesman and Sophie Eisman gave birth University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania educated doctor David Riesman, the professor of Clinical Medicine at the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine and visiting physician at the Philadelphia General Hospital and Jewish Hospital who edited the American Text-Book of Pathology and was the father of sociologist David Riesman, the author of the best-selling The Lonely Crowd.

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

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

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

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

1871: in the Suwałki Governorate of Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire Duvvid Schubart and Katrina Helwitzin gave birth to Levi Schubart who gained fame as  Lee Shubert, the “American theatre owner/operator and producer and the eldest of seven siblings of the theatrical Shubert family.”

http://www.shubertfoundation.org/about/brothers.asp

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

1873: Birthdate of agronomist Selig Suskin, a native of the Crimea who was one of the founder of Be’er Tuvia, and a delegate to the Sixth Zionist Congress.

1874(7thof Nisan, 5634): Leading Hungarian tobacco merchant Simon Wolf Schossberger De Torna, “who in 1862 became the first Hungarian Jews elevated to the nobility by Emperor Francis Joseph I” and whose son “Sigmund von Schossberger was the first Jew to be created a Baron in Hungary” passed away today.

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

1875: La Périchole,“an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach” was part of a triple bill that opened today at the Royalty Theatre in London.

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

 

1877: Birthdate of Milton Moses Portis, the native of Riceville, Canada who came to the U.S. in 1880 where he earned a B.S. from the University of Chicago and an M.D. from Rush Medical College.

https://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/luna/servlet/detail/NLMNLM~1~1~101439778~192222:-Milton-M--Portis-

1878: Birthdate of Samuel Goldstein, the native of Odessa who gained fame as Sidney M. Goldin “an American Jewish silent film director as well as a prominent writer, actor and producer for Yiddish theater during the early 20th century” who worked with such luminaries as “Molly Picon, Maurice Schwartz and Ludwig Satz.”

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

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

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

1880(13thof Nisan, 5640): Fifty-nine year old Ludmilla Assing German-born Italian author, the daughter of Dr. David Assing and Rose Marria Assing passed away today in Florence.

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

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

1881: Rabbi Nahum Levison of Safed and his wife gave birth to Sir Leon Levison, a convert who became the “first president of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance,” founded “the Russian Jews Relief Fund” and the “Palestine Jews Relief Fund” and married Kate Barnes, the daughter of John Barnes, with whom he had four children and made his home in Edinburgh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1892: Two days after she had passed away, the former Cecilia Samuels, the wife of Phillip Joseph Salomons with whom she had had five children before marrying Sir David Salomons, MP was buried today at the Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

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

 

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

1894: In San Francisco, Isadore and Jennie Baruh Zellerbach gave birth Harold Lionel Zellerbach, the graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, who was a senior executive with the Crown Zellerbach Corporation, patron of the arts and husband of “the former Doris Joseph a daughter, Mrs. Stephen N. Loew Jr.” with whom he had two sons, Stephen and William.

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/31/archives/harold-lionel-zellerbach-83-dies-an-industrialist-and-patron-of.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1903: Herzl met Lord Cromer and Boutros Ghali in Cairo.

1903: In London, “Rosa Enoyce and George Barnes” gave birth to Gertrude Maud Barnes, the actress known as “Binnie Barnes.)

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/30/arts/binnie-barnes-95-actress-known-for-her-feisty-roles.html

1903: The Zionist Commission led by Leopold Kessler and including Selig Soskin, Dr. Hillel Yaffe, and Colonel Albert Goldsmid returned to Suez.

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

1904: Anatole Leroy Beaulieu visited Hebrew Union College.

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

1906: In Pleschen, Ruschka and Alfred Pinczower gave birth Dr. Kurt Pine, the refugee from Hitler’s German who earned an M.A. and Ph.D from Yale while developing into a noted social worker and raising a family with his wife Bessie Miriam Pine.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/21/94102891.pdf

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

1910(14thof Adar II, 5670): Purim

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

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

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

1911(25thof Adar, 5671): In New York City, 146 garment workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire in a time when there were no effective pesky regulations regarding the health, welfare and safety of workers. 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1912: Birthdate of Louis Pollock, the husband of Marian Pollock, who passed away at the age of 90, just a month after his wife had passed away.

1914: Sixty-seven year old Theodore Samson Samuel, the London born son of Isaac Samuel and Fanny Heilbronner was buried today at the “Pere Lachaise Cemetery” in Paris.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1915: After two and half years, “Mortche” Goldberg is scheduled to be arraigned today in General Sessions where he will face an indictment charging that he, along with his wife Rosie Goldberg, Louis Barusch and Gussie Cohen were the officials of the Vice Trust which maintained forty “resorts” in New York City which divided nearly $1,250,000 a year in profits and $400,000 yearly for protection to the police.

1915: “Judge Leonard S. Roan of the Court of Appeals of Georgia who sentenced Leo Frank to death in 1913 is scheduled to be buried at the Fairburn Cemetery in Fairburn, GA.

1916: A bazaar organized by the People’s Relief Committee to raised fund for Jews suffering in the war zones is scheduled to begin today at the Grand Central Palace where attendees will have a chance to purchase items valued at more than $100,000.

1916: A preliminary conference where plans for the proposed Jewish Congress will be discussed is scheduled to begin today in Philadelphia.

1917: “Editors and publishers of Jewish daily newspapers” published in New York City “met at the Summer home of Samuel Untermyer at Greystone, on the Hudson, this afternoon “and organized the Jewish League of American Patriots.

1917: In Philadelphia at the 29th annual meeting of the Jewish Publication Society, President Simon Miller, officially announced the “publication of a new Jewish Bible” which will appear in two editions – “a popular edition designed for congregations and Sabbath schools and an India paper edition, interleaved with blank pages for the use of scholars and students.”

1917: Today, the formal pledge of loyalty adopted by the Mayor’s Committee was sent to the membership of The Independent Order of Israel so it can be recited at “a patriotic mass meeting which will be held at the Floral Garden so “that the Jews of Greater New York may give joint public expression of their loyalty and devotion to the flag.”

1917: The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War of which Harry Fischel is the Treasurer received contributions from committees in Cincinnati ($400), Meridian, Mississippi (391), Salt Lake City ($101) and San Francisco ($1,500).

1917: A review of The Chosen People by Sidney L. Nyburg was published today.

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t0tq5rk8z;view=1up;seq=7

1917: Today “a cpmferemce was held in the rooms of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association” “for the purpose of securing for Richmond proper representation in the congress to be held in Washing which will consider how the religions and political rights of the Jews in the warring nations of Europe can be best procured” which marked the first that delegates “from all three congregations” in Richmond, VA, participated in the same meeting.

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

1918: It was reported today “that the unleavened bread obtained for the Jewish soldiers here during the Passover season cannot be used because” it was “handled by those of another faith” so “it will be made into pudding” while the Quartermaster Department will be the expense of obtaining a new supply.

1918: In Winston-Salem, NC, Isidore Cohen and Nellie Rosenthal Cohen gave birth to Howard Cosell, a Brooklyn trained lawyer who gained fame as a sportscaster and was part of the trio of on-air talent that made Monday Night Football a national event. As to being Jewish, Cosell once said he remembered "going to school in the morning, a Jewish boy. I remember having to climb a back fence and run because the kids from St. Theresa's parish were after me. My drive, in a sense, relates to being Jewish and living in an age of Hitler. I think these things create insecurities in you that live forever, and your desire to offset them is a drive to accumulate economic security."

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/24/obituaries/howard-cosell-outspoken-sportscaster-on-television-and-radio-is-dead-at-77.html?pagewanted=all

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

1919: Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov completed his second term as a full member of the Politburo

1921(15thof Adar II, 5681): Shushan Purim

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

1921: It was reported today that “Eugene Meyer, Jr. of New York” has been “elected Managing Director of the War Finance Corporation” which “will be an important factor in promoting foreign trade” during the administration of President Warren Harding.

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

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

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

1925: Bantamweight Herman “Kid” Silvers” (Herman Silverberg) fought his 8thbout which resulted in his second professional loss.

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

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

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

1926: It was reported today that “a committee of presidents of the Jewish women’s organizations” in New York City are scheduled to “meet at Temple Emanu-El to discuss plans to raise the $500,000 quota of the women’s division the United Jewish Campaign

1927: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, the son of the late Rabbi Isaac M Wise and Dr. Nathan Krass, the rabbi at Temple Emanu-El delivered ‘the principle addresses” at services tonight marking the observance of the 80th anniversary of the found of The Central Synagogue at Lexington and 55th Street.

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

1929: Der rote Kreis (The Crimson Circle) a British-German crime film directed by Frederic Zelnik and starring Otto Walberg was released in Berlin today.

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

1933: “Along with Julius Brodnitz, Heinrich Stahl, Kurt Blumenfeld and Martin Rosenblüth, Max Naumann was one of the Jewish activists who were summoned to a meeting with Hermann Göring” today where the Number 2 Nazi tried to enlist their help in preventing a rally against Nazi antisemitism which was planned in New York City for 27 March.”

1933: “Daring Daughters,” based on a story by Sam Mintz was released today in the United States.

1934(9thof Nisan, 5694): Sixty-six year old George Joseph Stern, the son of Pinkus and Ida Stern and the wife Husband of Bertha Elisabeth Stern passed away today.

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

http://www.gloriasteinem.com/

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

http://www.rabbiwein.com/

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

1935(20th of Adar II, 5695):  Poet and translator Alice Julia Lucas - the sister of C.G. Montefiore, the wife of barrister Henry Lucas and the sister-in-law of Sir Arthur Lewis – who was the founder and President of the Jewish Study Society whose works included Translations from the German Poets of the 18th and 19th Centuries, published in 1876 and Talmudic Legends, Hymns and Paraphrases published in 1908, passed away today.

1936: Funeral services for Mrs. Alice Davis Menken, “whose efforts did much to establish a more humane trend in the field of penology” and the widow of New York attorney Mortimer M. Menken are scheduled to be held at the Riverside Memorial chapel followed by “burial in the Spanish and Portuguese Cemetery at Ridgewood, Queens.”

1936: “Jews from almost forty countries found homes in Palestine during 1935, according to a report made public” today “by the United Palestine Appeals which seeks $3,500,000 for settlement work this year.”

1936: “An explanation of the Slaughter Reform Bill and a defense of the attitude of the Polish Government…were included in a letter to Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of the American Jewish Committee made public today by the Polish Embassy” in Washington, D.C. (Editor’s note – Jews in Poland saw this bill as an attack on Kosher slaughtering and another manifestation of the anti-Semitism gripping parts of that country.)

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

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

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

1937: “The Seventh Heaven” starring Simone Simon, whose father would die in a concentration camp and featuring Gregory Ratoff and J. Edward Romberg was released today in the United States.

1938: Birthdate of Decatur, AL, native and Auburn University graduate Alan Goodman Koch, the right handed pitcher with the Washington Senators and Detroit Tigers who perused a legal career after the Major Leagues.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/kochal01.shtml

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

1939(5thof Nisan, 5699): Parsahat Vayikra

1939: Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Self-Preservation and the Moral” at Temple Emanu-El.

1939: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Life of Isaac M. Wise” at the Central Synagogue.

1939: Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Judaism and Democracy” at the West End Synagogue.

1939: “Blackwell’s Island” a crime thriller starring John Garfield was released by Warner Brothers today

1939: Birthdate of Carolyn Goldmark Goodman the Bryn Mawr College graduate who married Oscar Goodman whom she followed as Mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada.

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

1940: Birthdate of “Larry Rosen, the music producer and digital-audio entrepreneur who was best known as a founder of the pop-jazz record label GRP…”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/arts/music/larry-rosen-digital-audio-pioneer-dies-at-75.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1941: Today’s agreement by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia to join forces with Germany led to a coup thwarting the alliance which triggered an invasion of Yugoslavia. (from “The History of the Jewish People”)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1944: The Germans plan to start deporting the Jews of Volvos today were thwarted thanks to a warning received by the town’s Archbishop, Joachim Alexopoulos who work with the chief rabbi, Moshe Pessah “to find sanctuary for the city’s Jews in the mountainous villages of Pelion.” (As reported by Amanda Borschel-Dan)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


1948(14thof Adar II, 5708): Purim

1948: “Two mines exploded under an unescorted Jewish convoy north of Gaza,” killing one unidentified Jew.

1948: As fighting continued today “along the Jaffa-Tel Aviv border” ten Jews were wounded when “four mortar shells fired by Arabs fell in southern Tel Aviv and “squads of the Haganah resumed shellfire at dawn” aimed “at Arab positions.”

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

1950(7thof Nisan, 5710): Parashat Vayikra

1950: Young Judeans from East Chicago attended an Oneg Shabbat at the B’nai B’rith Club Rooms in Gary, Indiana where the community has just announced to settle ten “displaced families.”

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

1951: “Rawhide” a western featuring George Tobias and with a music by Sol Kaplan and Lionel Newman was released today in the United States.

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

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

1953: Four days after she had passed away in Miami Beach, funeral services are scheduled to be held in Brooklyn for Lena Shapiro, the wife of Karl Shapiro, Director of the Infants Home of Brooklyn and mother of Solomon A. Shapiro and Yetta Sultan, a member of the Sea Group of Hadassah.

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

1955: “Interrupted Melody,” a musical biopic  directed by Curtis Bernhardt, with a screenplay by Sonya Levien and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg was released in the United States toda.

1955: “Strategic Air Command” a Cold War paean to SAC produced by Samuel J. Briskin was released today in the United States.

1955: “The Big Combo” a film noire directed by Joseph H. Lewis, with a screenplay by Philip Yordan and featuring Michael Mark had a special screening in New York City today.

1956(13thof Nisan, 5716): Seventy-four year old of Vilna native Arthur Lyon Malkenson, who in 1896 came to the United States in 1896 where he graduated from CCNY and earned a laws degree from NYU after which he pursued a care in journalism which led to him serving as “president and publisher of “The Jewish Morning Journal” while raising a family of five children with his wife “Freda Friedkin Malenson” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/03/26/84880944.pdf

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

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

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

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

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

1965: Birthdate of actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

1965: The opera “Lizzie Borden,” with mezzo-soprano Brenda Lewis singing the lead premiered today in New York City.

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

1974(2ndof Nisan, 5734): Seventy-five year old Dr. Arthur Frederick Abt passed away.

https://prabook.com/web/arthur_frederick.abt/1112936

1974: Barbra Streisand recorded the album "Butterfly"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lasker

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

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

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

1982: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Cagney and Lacey” a ground-breaking cop-buddy television series produced by Barney Rosenzweig and co-starring Al Waxman “as Cagney and Lacey's good-natured and sometimes blustery supervisor, Lt. Bert Samuels.”

1983: “Bad Boys,” a coming of age movie directed by Rick Rosenthal was released in the United States today.

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

1986: 'The Arthur Frank Collection of Scientific Instruments' which had been created by his father Charles Frank, a Lithuanian born resident of Glasgow  who was an optical and scientific instrument maker, was sold today at Sotheby's Auction House

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

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

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

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

1988: “A New Life” a comedy produced by Martin Bregman and co-starring Hal Linden was released in the United States today.

1988: “The Fox and the Hound” an animated film version of the novel by the same name featuring the voice of Jack Albertson, Paul Winchell and Corey Feldman was re-released in the United States today.

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

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

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

http://thehobophilosopher.blogspot.com/2010/08/jews-god-and-history-by-max-i.html

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jews-god-and-history-by-max-i-dimont/

1994: In Albuquerque, NM, Sam and Jackie Bregman, both of whom are lawyers gave to Houston Astros infielder Alex Bregman who was part of long line of Baseball Buffs including his grandfather Stan Bregman, the general manager of the Washington Senators and his uncle Ben Bregamn.

1994: “D2: The Mighty Ducks” the second in this hockey comedic trilogy directed by Brandeis graduate Sam Weisman was released in the United States today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2001: “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport” won the Oscar tonight for the “Best Documentary Feature.”

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

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

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

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

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

2004: NBC broadcast the last episode of “Good Morning, Miami” a sitcom created by David Kohan and Max Mutchnick and starring Mark Feuerstein.

2005(14thof Adar II, 5765): Purim

2006: Shabbat Hachodesh.

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

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

2007: The curtain came down today on a production of“The Farnsworth Invention” a play by Aaron Sorkin that examines how David Sarnoff’s relationship to the “invention of television signal at the La Jolla Playhouse.

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

2008: Israeli artist Sigalit Landau opens a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The MOMA exhibition, which was conceived in the wake of a recent show she did at the KW Gallery in Berlin, includes works from the "Dead Sea" series, and a selection of old and new video works.

2008: Israel's UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman, slammed the "trend" of equating the "lawful actions" of a state defending its citizens with the "violence of terrorists," in a bitter exchange at the Security Council's monthly session on the Middle East.

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

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

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

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

2009: The Palestinian youths from a tough West Bank refugee camp stood facing the elderly Holocaust survivors today, appearing somewhat defiant in a teenage sort of way. Then they began to sing  The choir burst into songs for peace, bringing surprised smiles from the audience. But the event had another twist: Most of the Holocaust survivors did not know the youths were Palestinians from the West Bank, a rare sight in Israel these days. And the youths had no idea they were performing for people who lived through Nazi genocide - or even what the Holocaust was.

2010: The Annual Downtown Seder is scheduled to be celebrated tonight at the City Winery in New York. The City Winery is “the brainchild” of Michael Dorf, a well-known Jewish entrepreneur. “The Seder brings together an eclectic mix of artists, political figures, thinkers, and comedians to offer a one-of-a-kind interpretation of the ancient Passover Story.” It is celebrated 4 days before Passover starts, so that attendees can bring many of these important messages to their own Seder. The Seder meal is described as “vegetarian” with the “exception for chicken Matzah ball soup.

2010: Moshe Peretz won the prize פרס אקו"ם For "Best achievement in music".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011: New York City Marks the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42273592/ns/business-us_business/#.VvSgeo-cF9B

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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

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




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

2015: Publication of “From A Woman’s Thoughts to Welcoming the Ladies”


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

2015: Auschwitz museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told the AP today “that historians have no doubt that” a list “of 15 Polish and Jewish inmates of the Nazi death camp” that had been “found last inside a 1923 Polish book on the history of warfare” was authentic. (As reported by Monika Scislowska)

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

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

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

2016(15thof Adar II, 5776): Shushan Purim

2016(15thof Adar II, 5776): On the day after his 47th birthday Brigadier General Muni Amar “died in a plane crash” this afternoon.


2016: As the Jews in the America South reaches Savannah, GA, “local expert Harriet Meyerhoff is scheduled to lead a tour that will include to Mickve Israel, one of the nation’s oldest congregations and its museum.

2016: One-hundred fifth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.



2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to begin today.

2017: “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross,” which was organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, is scheduled opened today.


2017(27th of Adar, 5777): TRIPLE HEADER SABBATH

 Shabbat HaChodesh; Complete reading the Book of Exodus; Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

 2018: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present “Pomegranates and Palm Trees For Passover.”

2018: The American Society for Jewish Music, The American Jewish Historical Society and the American Sephardi Federation are scheduled to host “Songs of Devotion and Desire” which examines “the music heritage of Jewish Spain.”

2018: JNOLA and Jewish Community Day School are scheduled to host their 3rd annual Chocolate Seder

2018(9thof Nisan, 5778): One day after his 90th birthday, Bronx native and Iowa Hawkeye alum Melvin “Mel” Rosen who went from being a successful collegiate middle distance runner to being the highly successful track coach at Auburn University while raising two daughters – Laurie and Karen – with his wife, “the former Joan Kinstler, passed away today.

http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=140


2018: The funeral for Belle Lipsky is scheduled take place today followed by internment at Eben Israel Cemetery in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2018: The World Premiere of “Hero Among Us, that tells the story concentration camp liberator John Gaultier is scheduled to take place in his hometown of Vinton, IA this afternoon.

2018: The 18th Annual New Jersey Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2018: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including That’s What She Said:What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Togetherby Joanne Lipman andAmerican Innovationsby Rivka Galchen.

2019: The Center for Jewish History, the American Jewish Historical Society and MALA are scheduled to host a screening of “RBG,” the documentary about Justice Ginsburg followed by a discussion with RBG director Julie Cohen and associate producer Nadine Natour.

2019:  In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Driver,” a tale of an ultra-Orthodox father raising his daughter as single parent after his wife leaves him.

2019: The annual AIPAC Conference is scheduled to continue meeting for a second day in Washington, D.C.

 

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

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March 26

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


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

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

1481: “Seventeen Marranos perished at the stake on the Quemadero (place of burning) in Seville, Spain followed by enough other similar killings that by the end of November, “300 had perished at the stake” while another 79 were spared but sentenced to life imprisonment. (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03483.html

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

1851: Louis Kyezor married Julia Joseph today.

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

1852: In Eiger, Hungary, Eduard and Josefine Zeisler gave birth to Rabbi Joseph Zeisler whose congregation included B’nai Zion in Danville, PA where he served from September of 1905 to August of 1906.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1861(15thof Nisan, 5621): Pesach

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

1861: Birthdate of Uchimura Kanzō, the philo-Semitic Japanese minister.

https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/4136

1862: In New York, Henriette and Isaac David Walter gave birth to cotton-goods manufacturer and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia graduate William Israel Walter, the husband of the former Florence Bernheimer with whom he raised two children – Marjorie and Florence – who supported such worthy causes as the “children’s clinic at Mt. Sinai Hospital and the History Department at Bryn Mawr College

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1944/11/05/85081531.pdf

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

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

1863: According to a report published today, during the month of February, there 7 Jewish children staying at the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers in New York City.

1866: “On the initiative” of fifty-three year old “Dutch physician and economist” Samuel Sarphati “the Amstel Hostel was built today in the street later named after him.”

1867: In Opava, Czech Republic, Charlotte and Samuel David Kaluber gave birth to Dr. Arnold Klauber

1868: The Orphans' Guardians or Familien Waisen Erziehungs Verein was organized in Philadelphia “chiefly through the efforts of R. Samuel Hirsch of the Congregation Keneseth Israel. Instead of keeping the children together in one institution, this society endeavored to find homes for them among respectable Jewish families.

1869(14th of Nisan, 5629): Erev Pesach

1870: Birthdate of Isaac Elias Itzig as Julius Eduard Hitzig worked as a civil servant and author in Germany.

1871:Leó Frankel “was elected as a member of the Paris Commune.”

1872: In New York, Hirsh Bernstein came to the D.A.’s office where he posted bail after having been indicted on charges of libeling Rabbi Ahrenson. The dispute revolves around a dispute about the sale of wine which may or not be considered “kosher.”

1873: William F. Nast and he former Esther A. Benoist gave birth to Conde Nast, who while serving as publisher of Vogue in 1938 forced British photographer Cecil Beaton  to resign because of comments made by him “that were critical of the Jewish race.”

1875: In Danzig,Moritz Abraham and Selma Moritzsohn gave birth to German physicist, Max Abraham

1875: E.G. Holland delivered his lecture on “The Hebrew Race” this evening at a meeting of the Liberal Club in Plimpton Hall.

1876(1st of Nisan, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1877: In Grodno, Russia, Judah Judson and Hannah Rosenberg gave birth to New York resident Solomon Judson the editor of Me’et Le’et and author of Agadot ve-Dimyonot who married Minnie Shapiro,

1880(14th of Nissan, 5640): Ta’anit Bechorot

1882: In Denver, CO, John and Winona Edson gave birth to press agent Elie Edson.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/22/archives/elie-edson-89-dies-stage-press-agent.html

1882: In Black Hawk, CO, Isaac Shwayder and his wife Rahel gave birth Jesse Shwayder, the founder of Samsonite

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/25/archives/jesse-shwayder-of-samsonite-dies-founder-of-luggage-firm-in-denver.html

http://www.jmaw.org/shwayder-jewish-samsonite-denver/

1882(6thof Nisan, 5642): Seventy-nine year old German born dramatist Leopold Feldman passed away today in Vienna.

1884: Two days after she had passed away, 73 year old Caroline Woolf, the widow of Lewis Woolf and the mother of Emily Francis Woolf was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1884: Mr. and Mrs. Joseph C. Bloch were married today.

1888(14th of Nisan, 5648): The New York Times reported that “the Jewish feast of Pesach, or the Passover, will begin at sunset this evening, and continue for eight days. This feast was ordained to commemorate the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt, under the leadership of Moses after they had been held in bondage for upward of 400 years…There is a peculiar observance connected with the first evening of the festival on which occasion the head of the household gathers about him at the table all the members of the family, including servants if they be Hebrews, and with ancient rites and ceremonies he recounts the story of the deliverance of his forefathers from the bondage under which they had been held by the Egyptian Pharaohs for so many years.”

1891: It was reported today that Joseph Abrahamson had changed his name to Joseph Abraham Edson because he was getting ready to marry a young Christian girl “and that both…were desirous that his surname should have every semblance of a Jewish named removed.”

1892: The Brooklyn Chess Club will host Willliam Steinitz, the Prague born Jewish chess champion.

1892: The Oratorio Society presented the Biblical opera “Samson and Delilah” under the direction of Walter Damrosch the German born conductor whose paternal grandfather was Jewish.

1893: Arthur Reichow of New York notified Louis Hahn that a check for $800 would be sent to him to meet the needs of the Jews living in Chesterfield, Connecticut.

1893: The Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith was organized today

1893: “Suffers in Russia” published today described the worsening conditions of the Jews living in the Pale.  They cannot find work in the Pale and the government will not allow them to leave the Pale to find jobs.  Only the charity of English Jews has prevented a larger number of deaths.  The Minister of the Interior is waiting for a report from the Governor of the Pale on the possibility of further Jewish immigration.  (This is further evident of the infamous 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 Policy of the Czarist governments)

1893: Members of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York heard a presentation by Reverand Hermann Warazawiak on the origins, customs and practices of Passover. Warazawiak spoke with an air of authority since he had been raised as an Orthodox Jew in Poland before converting in 1889.

1894: “Of The Jews and Their State” published today provided a detailed review of The Jewish question and the Mission of the Jews, an anonymous work published by Harper & Brothers.

1895: “Russia’s New Business Rules” published today described the additional restrictions placed on “Foreign commercial travelers of the Jewish persuasion” which do not apply to non-Jewish businessmen.

1895: Four days after she had passed away, 55 year old Sarah Barnett, the daughter of Morris and Fanny Barnett was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1896(12th of Nisan, 5656): Fast of the First Born observed since the 14th of Nisan falls on Shabbat

1896: The "Sion" society in Sofia adopts an enthusiastic resolution proclaiming Herzl as their leader.

1896(12thof Nisan, 5656): Fifty-two year old Hungarian communist Leó Frankel passed away today in Paris.

1896: Among the books on art sold by Bangs & Co in New York was The Gentile and the Jew, a two volume work by J.J. Dollinger published in London in 1862 that included 113 engravings by Bartolozzie which cost $10.

1896: In “Persecution Under Nero” published today L.D. Burdick questions the reliability of the Roman historian Seutonius who incorrectly identified Chrestus, who had been crucified in Judea by Tiberius as the leader of rebellion by the Jews of Rome that took place later of who was a leader of the New Christians.

1897: Birthdate of Polish-born, French movie director Jean Epstein

1898: Birthdate of Henri Palacci who was deported from Istanbul to France in 1942.

1898: Isaac Blond went to the Barge Office to greet his wife Liebe and their four children who arrived today aboard the SS St. Paul but was told by authorities that he could not see them and that they would probably be sent back to Europe because “two of the children had a contagious disease and could not land.”

1898: In Albany, New York, the Assembly passed a bill introduced by Senator Cantor that exempted the real estate of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association from assessments and water rates.

1898: New York State Senator Jacob A. Cantor addressed a meeting organized by the Merchant’s Association of New York where he spoke against transferring the control of the canal system of the State to the Federal Government and in favor of a passage of the seven million dollar appropriation bill, known as the Cantor-Hill bill, which would preserve the states control over its canal properties which are estimated to exceed a hundred million dollars in value,

1899(15th of Nisan, 5659): Last Pesach of the 19th century.

1899: It was reported today that Ferdinand Blumenthal “recently described to the Academie des Sciences of Paris a process of making sugar from albumen which throw light  on the obscure disease known as diabetes.”

1899: The New York Times reported that “the Jewish Feast of the Passover began with sundown last evening. Services were held in all synagogues and also many private residences the festival will last one week, during which time services will be held daily.”

1900(25th of Adar II, 5660): Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise passed away at the age of 80. The German born Wise is remembered as the father of Reform Judaism in the United States. He was instrumental in founding the three basic organization of the movement: Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873, Hebrew Union College in 1875 and the Central Conference of American Rabbis in1889.

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

1900: Today’s passing of Rabbi Wise marked “the beginning” of a drive “to raise an Isaac M. Wise Memorial Fund” in the amount $500,000 “to endow the Hebrew Union college and the other activities ofhte Union of American Hebrew Congregations.”

1902: Zalman Shapira and Rosa Krupnik gave birth to Israeli political leader Haim-Moshe Shapira

1902: The Rumanian government prohibited Jews from engaging in handicrafts or trade.

1902: “Mayor Low, Borough President Cantor and Jacob H. Schiff spoke” tonight” at the dedication exercises of the Luas A. Steinam School of Metal Working, at 225 East Ninth Street which has been erected for the Hebrew Technical Institute by Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Steinam in memory of their son Lucas.

1904: Funk and Wagnalls published the sixth volume of the Jewish Encyclopedia, a compendium of knowledge that will eventually consist of twelve volumes. The volume includes articles ranging from “God” to “Istria.”

1904: The New York Times featured a review of "The Seder Service" a new Haggadah by Lillie Goldsmith Cowen which was published by her husband Philip Cowen. This edition of the Haggadah contains the Hebrew text, a revised English translation and notes by Dr. Solomon Schechter, the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The Haggadah is decorated with reproduction of pages from older Haggadot some which were printed four hundred years ago.

1905: Eveline Bethsabée Lattès ép. Mayrargue the daughter of Israël-Vita Lattès and Marie ép. Lattès and her husband Henri Danie Marague gave birth to Jeanne Mayrargue ép. Kunian

1905: Birthdate of Viktor E. Frankl, famed psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor and author of one of the greatest books ever written, Man’s Search For Meaning. What makes Frankl’s work and philosophy so powerful is that he took them with him into the camps and came out with his philosophy intact. There would be no better way to celebrate this centennial than read or re-read this slender tome. Viktor Frankl in his own words: “The best of us did not return.” “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Quoting Nietzsche he wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” “Man, however is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!” “Man needs something for the sake of which to live. The first goal of most people “was finding a purpose and meaning to their lives.” “Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success; you have to let it happen by not caring about it…Success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/frankl.html

1906: As unrest gripped Russia, it was reported that “Count Witte’s steadfast friendship for the Jews has subjected him to constant attacks” including accusations that he was a Jew and/or “bought by the Jews”

1906: It was reported today that in Russia, “the Government cannot assume responsibility for promulgating a law of equality” and that it must be left to Parliament to “decide the question of the status of the Jews.’

1906: It was reported today that Count Witte, who is serving as Premier, is taking every precaution from not allowing “anti-Semitic manifestations this Easter” turned to violent attacks on the Jews.

1907: Today marked the last day of this year’s distribution of free Matzoth and Matzah flour by the East Side Business Men’s Protective Business Association the poor Jews of the lower east side.

1907: Colonel Ernest Albert Rose married Julia Eda Lewis the daughter of Annette and Samuel Eleazer Lewis were married today at the Princess Road Synagogue in Liverpool, England.

1908: Birthdate of Samuel Bronshtein, the Bessarabian born nephew of Leon Trotsky who gained fame movie producer Samuel Bronston.

1911: Birthdate of Sir Bernard Katz who shared in the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

1911: In London, two actions are to be heard before Justice Darling in a libel suit "in which Baron de Forest, adopted son of the late Baron Hirsch and Lady Gerard are principals."

1912: Osip Brik married Lila Kagan

1913(17thof Adar II, 5673): Forty seven year old Rabbi Joseph Chuckrow passed away in Troy, NY.

1913: In Budapest, Jewish mathematics teachers Anna and Lajos Erdős (formerly Engländer) gave birth to mathematician Paul Erdos who was one of the century's greatest mathematicians, who posed and solved thorny problems in number theory and other areas and who founded the field of discrete mathematics, which is the foundation of computer science. He was also one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, with more than 1,500 papers to his name. And, his friends say, he was also one of the most unusual.”. “Never, mathematicians say, has there been an individual like Paul Erdös.” (I make no claim to understand anything about any of his work.)

1913: On the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City Nathan and Sophie Riesel gave birth to crusading journalist Victor Riesel.

1914: The siege of Adrianople which had begun in October, 1913, came to an end. Both poor and middle class Jews were affected with three thousand seeking shelter in schools and 9,200 being left “completely helpless.”

1915:  According to reports published today the Russian forces that have taken the town of Przemysl from the Austrians are calling up the “panic stricken Jews” who have fled the town to return and are reassuring the civilian population that remained, most of whom were Jews, that they have nothing to fear.

1915: “Ex-President Taft delivered a lecture before members of the National Geographic Society in Washington on the subject of his mission to the Vatican in 1902” where he conducted delicate negotiaons with Leo XIII, the Pope whose papers in France and the Vatican assured readers that Dreyfus was guilty because he was Jewish.

1915: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the officers of Congregation Ahev Zedak in Camden, NJ were Bernard Levin, President; Jacob Tarter, Vice President; Louis Levin, Secretary and Max Greenberg, Treasurer.

1915: Dr. Nathan Blaustein who delivered the infant of Mrs. Sadie Mager, a widow who died of a heart attack last December is now seeking a family to adopt the girl saying tonight “that the only thing he demanded was those who would adopt her would prove to him they were in a position to give her a good home and that they should be Jews.”

1916: Birthdate of Christian Anfinsen winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

1916: In New York, 20,000 people attended the great bazar that opened tonight “in the Grand Central Palace” which was a fund raiser sponsored by the People’s Relief Committee for Jewish War Sufferers.

1916: In Johannesburg, Eva, née Kirkel and Israel Rabinowitz gave birth to composer and conductor Harry Rabinowitz whose most famous score may be the one he wrote for “Chariots of Fire.”

1916: Birthdate of bandleader Vic Schoen. There is no evidence that Schoen was Jewish but he played a key role in the creation of the era of Yiddish Swing. Schoen was the bandleader whose featured singers were the Andrews Sisters. Lyricist Sammy Cahn gave the Yiddish song “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” English lyrics and turned it over to the singing sisters. Schoen had a notion of how to swing it. The Andrews Sisters' debut 78 rpm for the Decca label hit almost immediately. The era of Yiddish swing had begun.

1916: Birthdate of Mort Abrahams who gained famed as the producer of Dr. Doolittle and Planet of the Apes.

1916 In St. Louis Fred Zadek Salomon, the son of Adolph and Matilda Salomon, and his wife Helen gave birth to Fred Zadek Salomon, Jr. the longtime manager of the Famous Barr Department store and the husband of Darlane Salomon with whom he raised two daughter – Edith and Candace.

1916: Louis D. Brandeis is scheduled to speak on “Jewish Rights and Congress at the opening session today of the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia, PA whose delegates included Rabbi Wolf Gold, Samuel Lippman and Henry Eiser.

1916: According to “advices received at the Russian Embassy” in Washington, DC, “absolute equality of Jews in Russia with all others to own property, to reside in any place, to serve in the army and navy, to participate in educational advantages and at the polls has been officially proclaimed” by the new government.

1917:Abraham Isaac "Abe" Shiplacoff, a Socialist New York assemblyman won a temporary victory when he objected, on procedural grounds, to a resolution that had been introduced “urging the United States Congress to a pass a measure known as the Chamberlain bill, requiring the United States to prepare for entry into” the World War.

1917: Plans for the upcoming patriotic mass meeting of the Independent Order of Free Sons, which “has plans for raising a regiment in case of war” were published today.’ (Editor’s note – this outburst of patriotism came at a time when the United States was strongly considering entering WW I on the side of the Allies; something that would become a reality in less than a month.)

1917: One of the advantages of the Russian Revolution was seen today when it was reported that the publication of the second volume of Simon Dubnow’s History of the Jews in Russia and Poland would soon be a reality that to the disappearance of the censors who had been part of the Czar’s government. (The brilliant mind of Dubnow would perish in 1941 when he was murdered by the Nazi in Riga.Yidn, shraybt un farshraybt  "Jews‎, write and record’)

1917: In World War I, British troops are halted after 17,000 Turks blocked their advance at the First Battle of Gaza. The setback would prove to be temporary and the British would later resume their drive to take Palestine from the Ottomans.

1918: “A message from the representatives of the Jewish colonies in Palestine was received at the Zionist headquarters” in New York today which “said that the Jewish Administrative Commission organized by the International Zionist Organization” were expected to arrive in Palestine this week.

1920: Eugen Schiffer completed his term as Minister of Justice in Germany.

1920: In Vienna, the Jewish community made a “public appeal for help” in re-building “the communal synagogue in Leopold Strasse” which had been destroyed by fire two years ago.

1920: In Göttingen, Germany, mathematician Richard Courant and Nerina Runge Courant gave birth to American physicist Ernest Courant

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/bulletin/2007/bb051807.pdf

1920: Shabelsky-Bork, a “supporter” of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" tried to assassinate Pavel Milyukov (former leader of the Cadets, who fled Russia in 1918) at a meeting of Russian refugees. Instead, he killed Vladimir Nabokov and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. After only staying in prison for a short time, he was released and befriended by Alfred Rosenberg, the "Nazi philosopher".

1921(16thof Adar II, 5681): Parashat Tzav

1921: In the Bronx, the Montefiore hosted a “Purim entertainment” that included a Purim play and a Hebrew sketch.

1923(9th of Nisan, 5683): Actress Sarah Bernhardt passed away. She was born in Paris as Henriette Rosine Bernard, the eldest surviving illegitimate daughter of Judith van Hard, a Dutch Jewish courtesan known as "Youle."

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Museum/Posters/Entertainers/Bernhardt/

1925(1st of Nisan, 5685): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1925: Lord Balfour visited Rishon L”Zion where he said “he rejoiced at this opportunity to visit the oldest Jewish settlement in Palestine.

1926: Today when Harvard announced plans for the incoming freshman class it issued a denial that religion or race would be a considered which “was in answer to a report that members of recent entering classes at Harvard were 25 per cent Jewish” and 150 Jews “would not be admitted to Harvard in the three years who otherwise would have been enrolled…”

1926(11thof Nisan, 5686): Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin passed away today after which he was buried at the Clover Hill Park Cemetery in Birmingham, MI.

https://kevarim.com/rabbi-judah-leib-levin/

1926: Premiere of “The Fiddler of Florence,” a German silent film directed and written by Paul Czinner.

1927: Colonel Herbert H. Lehman, the acting chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee announced today that “the Jewish community of Salonica, Greece has issued an appeal for relief” that was sent to Dr. Bernard Khan, the European Director of the Committee.

1928: On New York’s Lower East Side, Philip and Pola Young “Jewish immigrants from Poland” gave birth to Israel Goodman Young who gained famed as Greenwich Village folklorist Izzy Young, the man responsible for Bob Dylan’s first New York concert.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/obituaries/izzy-young-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1928: Cellist Gdal Saleski, the author of Famous Musicians of Jewish Origins performed a concert at Steinway Hall that included Joseph “Achron’s ‘Fragment Mystique’ which “is based on a Hebrew theme.”

1929(14thof Adar II, 5689): Last Purim before the Great Depression

1929: The dirigible Graf Zeppelin appeared over three cities in Palestine. At five in the afternoon it circled Jaffa where the large colony of German settlers waved flags of welcome. At six, the airship appeared over Tel Aviv where it became a welcome partner in the city’s Purim celebrations. As night descended the German craft circled Jerusalem for an hour before heading north towards Syria.

1930 In London, Lord Melchett, Chaim Weizmann, Oscar Wasserman, Felix Warburg and Max Warburg will meet this afternoon in an “attempt to reach a settlement regarding the functions of the Administrative Committee and the Jewish Agency's Executive, the immediate raising of an internal loan of $5,000,000, and Lord Melchett's demand that before any larger colonization scheme be undertaken in Palestine, the 1,500 Chalutzim in Palestine for many years be settled on the land.” (As reported by JTA)

1931: In Boston, MA, Dora (née Spinner) and Max Nimoy gave birth to Leonard Simon Nimony, Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame. Do you remember the hand gesture that went with the Vulcan credo - Live long and prosper? In case you missed it, it is the same gesture as that made by the High Priest when giving his benediction. And now you know why.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/television/leonard-nimoy-spock-of-star-trek-dies-at-83.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=1

1931: Arab leaders in Palestine urged Moslems not to participate in the celebration Maier Dizengoff’s seventieth birthday. Dizengooff is the Mayor of Tel Aviv.

1934: Twenty-eight year old Nathan N. Rosen was officially installed as the Rabbi at Temple Petach Tikva in Brooklyn. (As reported by JTA)

http://archive.jta.org/article/1934/03/27/2808902/rabbi-nathan-r-rosen-28-years-old-installed-at-petach-tikvah-temple

more for 2014

1934: Hitler agreed to a nationwide boycott of Jewish businessmen and professionals to be known as “Boycott Day” which would take place on April 1. The boycott is designed to last indefinitely or until the Jews have been completely eliminated from the German economy.

1934: In Brooklyn Beatrice (Wortis) and David I. Arkin gave birth to actor Alan Arkin who has played a myriad of roles during his long career including the lead in the famed anti-establishment film “Catch-22.”

1936: According to reports published today of the 61,541 Jews who entered Palestine in 1935, 27,291 came from Poland; 3,596 came from Rumania; 2,122 came from Greece, 1,967 from Lithuania; 1,638 from the United States; 1,425 from Southwestern Arabia; 1,397 from Czechoslovakia; 1,042 from Latvia; 1, 021 from France; 961 from Austria, 764 from Turkey and 7,747 from Germany.

1936: In Warsaw, “the Senate enacted today a law prohibiting Jews from selling vegetables and dairy products” which had been passed by the Sejm (lower house) last week.”

1936: In New York, at a luncheon of the New York chapter of Hadassah, Eddie Cantor “announced that if the members of Hadassah would raise sufficient funds to provide for five hundred children” who were refugees from journey and part of the Youth Aliyah movement “he would provide for an equal number.”

1936: In Poland, “the Jewish community’s offices in the town of Nowysacz were bombed today.”

1936: In Poland, a synagogue was damaged at Wilno as anti-Semitic disorders gripped the country.

1937(14thof Nisan, 5697): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish Ghaffir (supernumerary policeman) was wounded, an Arab brigand killed and a number of Arabs taken prisoner during a battle with a terrorist gang which attacked Jewish settlers plowing their fields at the foot of Mount Tabor. Jewish settlers were assisted by police reinforcements which arrived from Afula and Nazareth.

1938: “Archaeological discoveries expected to shed light on the life, customs and general history of the Holy Land of 2,000 years ago were listed today by Edward M. M. Warburg of the executive committee of the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem” “in a report prepared in connection with the thirteenth anniversary of the founding of Hebrew University” which “cites the finding of the long missing Third Wall of Jerusalem and…certain important Jewish cemeteries.”

1938: “Speaking at the opening session of the second annual convention of the United Galician Jews of America at Mecca Temple,” “May La Guardia told 3,000 Jews of Eastern European origin tonight that recent events in Europe had brought more misery than civilization had ever previously experienced.”

1939: At Atlantic City, NJ, “Reginald T. Kennedy, the executive director of the New York roundtable of the National Christians and Jews today declared that all religions must cooperate in teaching faith in democracy and present a united front to propagandists who are attempting to align one against the other” and who are trying to convince the public that “a Catholic is probably a Fascist, a Jew is a Communist” and “that the Protestant majority is indifferent to the minority rights” of Jews and Catholics.

1939: Dr. Samuel Goldenson is scheduled to lecture on “Racialism and Humanity” at Temple Emanu-El.

1939: Louis Lipsky, Robert Szold, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Dr. Solomon Goldman, the president of the ZOA are scheduled to lecture on “The Jewish National Home: Is the London Palestine Conference Ended?” at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall.

1940: In the Bronx the former Sophie Falkenstein and Arthur Caan, refugees from Nazi Germany gave birth to James Langston Michael Caan known to American audiences as the movie and television actor James Caan

https://www.biography.com/people/james-caan-9542410

1941: “The German Army High Command gives approval to RSHA and Heydrich on the tasks of SS murder squads (Einsatzgruppen) in occupied Poland.”

1942(8thof Nisan, 5702): At Jungfernhof concentration camp, Rudolf Seck, the commander sent 1,840 to be “resettled” today which meant they were shot to death at the Bikernieki forest.

1942(8thof Nisan, 5702): Fifty-nine year old Rabbi Joseph Hirsch Carlbach was murdered near Riga today.

http://www.jci.co.il/?cmd=aboutus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Carlebach#/media/File:Carlebach_in_Altona.jpeg

1942: The Second Dünamünde Action, part of a murderous assault designed “to execute Jews who had recently been deported to Latvia from Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia” conducted by the Nazis and their Latvian collaborators began today in the Biķernieki forest, near Riga, Latvia.

1942: Birthdate of Erica Jong, author of Fear of Flying

1942: The first "Eichmann transport" began moving to the camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau

1942: The first of 700 Jews from Polish Lvov-district reached the concentration camp at Belzec

1942 The first Jewish transportation arrived at Auschwitz under the command of Rudolf Hoss, containing 1000 Jews from Slovakia and 1000 women from Ravensbruk. According to a conservative estimate from March 1942 until the liberation on January 27 1945 over 750,000 Jews were gassed within its gates. Hoss himself estimated it at 1,135,000

1943: Wilfrid B. Israel, a German born Jew and ardent Zionist departed London for Lisbon. Once in Portugal he stayed in the Iberian Peninsula for two months, where he found over 1,500 stateless Jews in Spain. He issued 200 of them certificates to go live in Palestine, and did what he could to intervene on the other's behalf.

1944: The twenty-third Beth El Ball was held this evening at the Walt Whitman Hotel in Camden, NJ. It was dedicated "to our fighting allies".

1944: The New York Times includes a review of "Dangling Man" by Saul Bellow

1945: General Patton sent 307 officers and men in tanks, half-tracks and support vehicles under the command of Captain Abraham J. Baum on a mission to liberate approximately 1,300 POWS being held at a camp near Hammelburg, Germany. The group of POWs included Patton’s son-in-law who had been captured during fighting in North Africa. In the words of historian Stanley Weintraub, “Nine GIs in Baum’s small column were killed and 31 others were wounded and captured – a hairy business for Baum as his dog tag identified him as Jewish.”

1946: Today twenty-year old Berlin born American screenwriter Don Mankiewicz married his first wife Ilene Korsen with whom he had two children – Jane and screenwriter John Mankiewicz.

1946: “Millionaire businessman and philanthropist Sir Charles Clore and the former Francine Halphen gave birth to philanthropist Dame Vivien Louise Duffield, the sister of Alan Evelyn Clore and the wife of ‘British financier John Duffield” with whom she had “two children, Arabella and George.

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/meet-dame-vivien-duffield-londons-super-philanthropist-and-step-granny-to-that-wild-beauty-cara-8699777.html

1946: In Cleveland, Judge and Mrs. Joseph C. Bloch celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary.

1946(23rdof Adar II, 5706):“Phineas Horowitz, veteran Zionist leader, and vice-president of the British Zionist Federation, passed away today in London.” (As reported by JTA)

1948(15thof Adar II, 5708): Shushan Purim

1948: “Alleging that the Arabs intended to try to seize Jerusalem after the British withdrawal, spokesman for the Jewish Agency for Palestine confirmed today that the Agency had proposed that 10,000 Norwegian and Danish troops be brought from Germany to maintain order in the city.” (Considering the fact that the city was already under siege with Arabs blocking convoys from the coast and attacking the Old City, this was not Paranoia but a response to a real threat.)

1948: Before leaving the United States today with his wife Lou, Austrian born composer Hanns Eisler who had fallen afoul of HUAC read a statement that included: “I leave this country not without bitterness and infuriation. I could well understand it when in 1933 the Hitler bandits put a price on my head and drove me out. They were the evil of the period; I was proud at being driven out. But I feel heart-broken over being driven out of this beautiful country in this ridiculous way.”

1949: Birthdate of Helene Middleweek who as Valerie Hayman, Baroness Hayman, became the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

1950: Lafayette College in Easton, PA announced that its round the world student tour this summer which is designed to increase their “intellectual, cultural and spiritual horizons” will include a stop in Tel Aviv.

1950: It was reported today that the government of Israel is using the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research under the direction of Dr. Uriel G. Foa to deal with a variety of problems facing the infant Jewish state including assisting immigrants in adjusting to life in “their new homeland.”

1951: Final broadcast of the ABC panel show “Can You Top This?” co-starring Harry Hershfield.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the anti-reparations demonstration in Tel Aviv, organized by the Herut political party, lasted two hours and passed off quietly after a week of general tension. At The Hague the Conference on Reparations started discussing the respective Jewish claims on Germany. The German delegation contested the Jewish claim for $500 million as "exaggerated," while the Jewish delegation claimed that the sum was "only a fraction" of the heirless property actually remaining in German hands.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Knesset debated the final reading of the Nationality Bill and the principle of dual nationality, held by a number of Israeli citizens.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Israeli-Jordanian Mixed Armistice Commission reaffirmed the Israel-Jordan demarcation line in the Kalkilya area. The line was marked by a deep ditch, dug by a tractor to prevent further infiltration and other incidents.

1953: “The Story of Three Loves,” a romantic anthology film with a script co-authored by George Froeschel and co-starring Kirk Douglas was released in the United States today.

1956: In Sweden, premiere of “The Rose Tatoo” with a script adapted by Hal Kanter and directed by Daniel Mann.

1957(23rdof Adar II, 5717): Fifty-four year old Max Ophüls, the German Jewish movie director who spent the war in France and the United States passed away today in Hamburg.

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/max-ophuls

1957(23rdof Adar II, 5717): Sixty-six year old London born American munitions maker and convicted war profiteer died today “penniless and homeless in a Bellevue Hospital ward today” after suffering a brain hemorrhage following a fall.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/03/28/84909966.pdf

1960: In Manhattan, Academy Award winning actor and stage star Joel Grey and his wife Jo Wilder gave birth to actress Jennifer Gray, the star of “Dirty Dancing” who isthe granddaughter of comedian and musician Mickey Katz.

1960(27thof Adar, 5720): Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei and Shabbat HaChodesh

1960(27thof Adar, 5720): Eighty-two year old Russian born Rabbi Leon Album, the University of Chicago and Stanford University alum who was the husband of Amelia Album with whom he raised two children – Selma and Manuel – passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/03/27/119099940.pdf

1960: Birthdate of Steve Feinberg the Princeton graduate who is the co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management.

1961: “The Hoodlum Priest” directed by Irvin Kershner and filmed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler was released today in the United States.

1961: Birthdate of Mitchell Simpson, who gained fame as Amanda Simpson.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/amanda-simpson-test-pilot-mitchell-simpson-senior-post-commerce-department-article-1.460198

1961: “Dondi” a movie based on the comic strip co-created by Irwin Hansen was released in the United States today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/arts/irwin-hasen-comic-book-artist-and-dondi-illustrator-dies-at-96.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1964: Birthdate of comedian Todd Barry

https://www.toddbarry.com/

1964: Two days after opening in the UK, “Fall of the Roman Empire” produced by Samuel Bronston, with a script co-authored by Philip Yordan and music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released in the United States today.

1964: "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand opens at Winter Garden Theater in New York City for the first of 1,348 performances

1967(14thof Adar II, 5727): Purim

1967: Production of “Ciao! Manhattan” co-directed, produced and written by David Weisman began today.

1967(14th of Adar II, 5727): Joseph Jacobs, president and founder of Joseph Jacobs Organization, a merchandizing and advertising organization that specializes in the Jewish mark and “has been credited with being responsible for the wide currency of kosher symbols on food labels” passed away today at the age of 75. A 1911 graduate of City College, Mr. Jacobs taught school while doing graduate work at Columbia before going to work as an advertising salesman for the Daily Forward in 1919, the same year that he founded his own company. Mr. Jacobs’ most lasting contribution to American Jewry is the famous Maxwell House Hagaddah.

1970: "Minnie's Boys" opened at the Imperial Theater. Minnie’s boys were better known as the Marx Brothers.

1970(18thof Adar II, 5730): Seventy-seven year old artist Fritz Ascher passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/if-not-for-the-nazis-he-may-have-been-the-next-leonardo/

1970(18thof Adar II, 5730): Seventy-six year old Brooklyn born Columbia trained physician WWI veteran Dr. Frederic D. Zeman the geriatric specialist and husband of “the former Madeleine Arnold” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/27/archives/frederic-zeman-geriatrist-dies-headed-medical-services-at-jewish.html

1971: NBC aired “Gideon,” a play by Paddy Chayefsky based on the Biblical Judge with Peter Ustinov in the title role.

1971: Outbreak of the nine month long Bangladesh Liberation War. A Jewish military leader, Lieutenant General JFR (Jacob-Farj-Rafael) Jacob gained fame in his homeland when he headed the Indian armed forces that vanquished the Pakistani army in the war that broke out between the two countries over East Pakistan which after the war became the independent state of Bangladesh).

1973: It was reported today that Arthur Hertzberg, “head of the American Jewish Congress” had called “for providing American Jews with a basic Jewish education and a deep sense of identification with the Jewish People.”

1973: In East Lansing, Michigan Dr. Carl Page and Computer Professor Gloria Page, who was Jewish, gave birth to Lawrence “Larry” Page who along with Sergey Brin co-founded Google.

1974: Birthdate of Rockford, Illinois actress and comedian Natasha Leggro, the graduate of the Stella Adler Conservatory who “converted to Judaism as an adult.”

1976: In Chicago, the Dearborn Station, which has been designed by Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) today.

1979: Nineteen people were injured today during a terrorist bombing in a market at Lod.

1979: Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty at the White House. This historic event ended three decades of fighting including three major wars. It took Sadat to break the “Gordian Knot” and come to Jerusalem. It took Begin to gamble that the Egyptians would keep their word and not turn the Sinai into a springboard for another war. And it took Carter's tenacity to keep the talks on track. All Arabs are not the same. Likud, right wingers, are willing to make peace. And American Presidents can provide the leverage for agreement. Critics say it has been a cold peace. But the border between the two has comparatively remained tranquil and the armed forces of the two nations have not clashed in a quarter of century. Hatikvah - hope.

1982: “I Ought To Be In Pictures” a film based on the Neil Simon play of the same name directed and produced by Herbert  Ross, starring Walter Matthau and with music by Marvin Hamlisch was released in the United States today.

1984(22ndof Adar II, 5744): Seventy-one year old Bora Laskin passed away while serving as the 14th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Canada.

http://www.ottawajewishbulletin.com/2017/04/canada-150-bora-laskin/

http://www.cjnews.com/culture/canada-150/remembering-bora-laskin-giant-supreme-court

1985: “Anna Karenina,” a made-for-television adaption of the famous novel with a script by James Goldman was released today in the United States.

1987: U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited Jerusalem. Former Prime Minister Begin who has been living in virtual seclusion for years declined Carter’s request for a meeting. Begin did visit with the President by phone.

1991: David Wolfson who as knighted in 1984 was “created a life peer with the title Baron Wolfson of Sunningdale, of Trevose in the County of Cornwall” today.

1993(4thof Nisan, 5753): Seventy-nine year old psychologist and chess champion Reuben Fine passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/27/obituaries/reuben-fine-american-chess-giant-dead-at-79.html

1995: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950 by Jenna Weissman Joselit and Jews and the New America Scene by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab.

1997: In Stockholm, Budapest native Eva Löwenthal was interviewed by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute.

1997: A week after premiering in New York, “The Devil’s Own,” a film that pits two Irish institutions – the IRA and the Boston Police Department -- against themselves directed by Alan J. Pakula  was released today in the rest of the United States.

2000: U.S. President Bill Clinton meets with Syrian President Hafez Assad.

2000: Pope John Paul II ended his trip to Israel by visiting the Western Wall and, in keeping with a centuries-old tradition left a message in one of its cracks.

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood by Tom King and The Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice That Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Lawby Alan M. Dershowitz

2001: Dalia Rabin-Pelossof became the only member of New Way to remain in the Knesset when two other New Members resigned from the Israeli Parliament.

2001: Three days after she had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held for eighty-seven year old Janice Levin, the art collector and philanthropist whose husband attorney Philip J. Levin passed away in 1971.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/janice-levin-87-philanthropist-of-the-arts.html


2001(2ndof Nisan, 5761): Ten month old Shalevet Pass was murder this afternoon by a Palestinian sniper belong to the Tanzim terrorist group while sitting in his stroller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shalhevet_Pass#/media/File:Shalhevet_Pass.jpg

2002(12th of Nisan, 5762): Chaike Belchatowska Spiegel, one of the last surviving combatants of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis, died in Montreal at the age of 81. She had been hospitalized for about two years, her family said. Probably no more than 10 other combatants from the uprising are still alive, said her son-in-law, Eugene Orenstein, who teaches modern Jewish history at McGill University in Montreal. In January 1943, Chaike Belchatowska joined the Jewish Fighting Organization, known by its Polish acronym ZOB, which had been formed the previous year to resist the deportation of Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp by the Nazi forces that had overrun Poland in 1939. On April 19, the first night of the Jewish feast of Passover on the secular calendar, a Nazi force, equipped with tanks and artillery and under the command of Col.Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, entered the ghetto to resume the deportations, which had been suspended in January after running into stiff resistance. This time the Nazis were repulsed from the ghetto altogether, suffering heavy losses at the hands of the ZOB and other resistance groups, all of them poorly armed with only a few smuggled guns, little ammunition and homemade gasoline bombs. Colonel Sammern-Frankenegg was relieved of his command and replaced by Gen. Jürgen Stroop, who attacked again. But the Nazi forces found themselves blocked once more by fierce Jewish resistance after several days of vicious street fighting. The Germans then changed tactics and, using flame throwers, began systematically burning down the houses of the ghetto. The ZOB headquarters fell on May 8, but sporadic resistance continued into June and July. Meanwhile, Ms. Belchatowska, together with her husband-to-be, Boruch Spiegel, the leader of a ZOB fighting unit, and some 50 other Jewish resistance fighters, managed to escape from the ghetto to the forests outside Warsaw; from there, they continued to harass the Germans until the end of the war. After the Germans were driven from Poland by Soviet troops, Ms. Belchatowska and Mr. Spiegel moved to Sweden, where they married and where their son Chil, or Julius, was born. In late 1948 they went to Montreal after failing to obtain a visa for the United States. Chaike Belchatowska Spiegel, who was often known in English as Helen, was born in Warsaw. Her parents separated shortly afterward, and she was raised by her mother, who was an active Jewish socialist. She inherited much of her mother's political philosophy, becoming a member of the Jewish Labor Bund, an organization founded in Czarist Russia to promote a brand of Marxist socialism that would provide cultural autonomy for Jews. After the first mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto in the summer of 1942, she encouraged Jews to resist being moved by every means possible. She helped circulate a Yiddish-language paper warning that their real destination would be Treblinka and that the Nazis were lying when they encouraged volunteers by promising them more food and greater freedom. In November of that year, she herself was herded onto a train bound for Treblinka but managed to break out of a cattle car and escape back to the ghetto. After moving to Montreal, Mrs. Spiegel and her husband ran a business making purses and other leather goods. She is survived by her husband; their son, Julius, who is the Brooklyn parks commissioner, and their daughter, Mindy Spiegel of Montreal.

2003: Rabbi Janet Marder was named president of the Reform Movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis. This meant that she had become the first woman to lead a major rabbinical organization.

2005: Robert Iger reassigned Peter Murphy, the Disney’s chief strategic officer, and pledged to disband the company's strategic planning division. Iger also vowed to restore much of the decision-making authority that the division had assumed to the company's individual business units.

2006: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) strongly condemned the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, for remarks urging two leading Jewish property developers to "go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs, if they don't like the planning regime or my approach." The two property developers, brothers Simon and David Reuben, are of Iraqi Jewish origin and were born in India. Both are British citizens. Mr. Livingstone has refused calls for an apology. Instead, he stated: "I would offer a complete apology to the people of Iran to the suggestion that they may be linked in any way to the Reuben brothers. I wasn't meaning to be offensive to the people of Iran."

2006: The New York Times featured a review of "My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud" by Janna Malamud Smith.

2007(7thof Nisan, 5767): Ninety-two year old Leon Banov, Jr. the Charleston born son of Minnie and Dr. Leon Banov and  the Medical College of South Carolina trained proctologist who was the husband of Rita Landesman Banov and father of Jane and Alan Banov passed away today.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/charleston/obituary.aspx?n=leon-banov&pid=86978509&fhid=6051

2008: In Jerusalem, The Bible Lands Museum English lecture series presents: "The Classical Islamic Attitude to Jerusalem," by Professor Moshe Sharon of Hebrew University

2008: Haaretz reported that in a rare departure from government practice, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is planning to convene an interfaith conference for Muslims, Christians and Jews, according to the Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper. The call for religious dialog to include Jews is the first by the monarch, whose country's regulations prohibit the importation of non-Muslim religious objects including crucifixes and stars of David.

2008: Two people were lightly wounded and nine were in shock after Palestinians fired a volley of Kassam rockets at Sderot. Six rockets were lobbed at Sderot, two of them landing inside the town. Security forces were trying to locate the other four rockets.

2008:Richard Anderson Falk began serving as “a United Nations Special Rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967."

2008: The Israel Defense Forces captured a senior Hamas terrorist who helped mastermind the 2002 suicide bombing at a Passover Seder at Park Hotel in Netanya, in which 29 people were killed and nearly 150 others wounded. Omar Jabar, who headed Hamas' military wing in the West Bank city of Tul Karm, was among seven wanted Palestinians already detained by the IDF.

2008: Students at Haifa University expressed their anger today after the university decided to schedule tests on the Holocaust Memorial Day, some during the siren that marks a moment of silence.

2008:Double Sextet" a composition by Steve Reich was performed for the time in Richmond.

2009 (1st of Nisan 5769): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

2009: Israeli culinary writer Janna Gur gave a lecture on the Cuisine of Israel at the College of Technology in New York City accompanied by a cooking demonstration by students

2010: Keren Ann Zeidel is scheduled to perform at The City Winery in New York City.

2010: In Washington, D.C., Robyn Helzner, one of the leading interpreters of world Jewish music, and Cantor Larry Paul are scheduled to lead a Carlebach-inspired service at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue.

2010(11th of Nisan,5770): Major Eliraz Peretz 31, from Kiryat Arba, who was the deputy commander of the Golani battalion and Staff Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky, 21, from Rishon Letzion were killed during fighting on the Gaza border today. Peretz’s brother had been killed while fighting in Lebanon.

2011: In Rockville, MD, Tikvat Israel Congregation is scheduled to sponsor an old fashioned Sock Hop.

2011: “The Infidel” and “Vidal Sasoon: The Movie” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “Berlin '36” is scheduled to be shown on opening night of the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2011(20th of Adar II): Eighty-six year old “Stanley Bleifeld, a figurative sculptor whose bronzes adorn the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Navy Memorial in Washington and museums including the Museum of the City of New York” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/arts/design/stanley-bleifeld-sculptor-for-navy-and-baseball-hall-of-fame-dies-at-86.html

2011(20th of Adar II): Ninety-four year old internet pioneer Paul Baran passed away. (As reported by Katie Hafner)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/technology/28baran.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Paul%20Baran&st=cse

2012: The 16th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a “Book and Film” event commemorating the Kindertransport.

2012: Publication of “Three Roses for Women’s History Month.”

http://jewishmuseummd.org/2012/03/three-roses-for-women’s-history-month/

2013(15thof Nisan, 5773): First Day of Pesach

2013:: “At dawn this morning, a large group gathered on a mountain in the Negev desert to reenact the moments leading up to the Israelites exodus from Egypt.” (As reported by Andrew Esentein)

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/african-hebrew-israelites-reenact-exodus-in-passover-tradition.premium-1.512309?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.212%2C2.214%2C

2013:In the evening numerous congregations are scheduled to host community Seders including Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Agudas Achim in Iowa City and Kol Ami in Arlington, VA

2013: Bahrain’s lawmakers voted today to label the Lebanese militia Hezbollah a terrorist organization, the Lebanon-based news outlet Now Lebanon reported.

2013: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s telephone conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the start of the process of improving Israeli-Turkish ties, not the end of it, a government official said today.

2014: In Fairfax, VA, Gesher Jewish Day School is scheduled to open its 6th annual Used Book Sale.

2014: “Igor and the Cranes' Journey” is scheduled to be shown a the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: In Portland, the Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Night of the Maggidim” when real life becomes a Chassidic Tale.

2014: Bowing to pressure from Arab states UN Human Rights Council President Remigiusz Henczel rejected the candidacy of Georgetown Law lecturer Christina Cerna as the of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories choosing instead Indonesian Makarim Wibisono, “an outspoken critic of Israel.” (As reported by Times of Israel)

2014: The Israeli Navy fired on two Palestinian boats this morning and a third one tonight that were thought to be involved in smuggling operations between Egypt and Gaza.

2015: In Turkey, the Grand Synagogue of Edrine which had first been used Erev Pesach, 1909 and which was abandoned in 1983 “after most of the Jewish community left the city, emigrating to Israel, Europe, or North America” was re-opened under the leadership of Rabbi David Azuz who oversaw the “celebration and a Shacharit, morning prayer service, attended by a large number of Jews including Ishak Ibrahimzadeh, leader of the Jewish Community in Turkey, Rav Naftali Haleva, deputy to Hakham Bashi (Chief Rabbi) Ishak Haleva, Bülent Arınç, Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey, and some other Turkish high officials.”


2015: Holocaust survivor Halina Peabody is scheduled to speak at the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum today as part of its “First Person Series.”

2015: “The human rights group Amnesty International said in a report issued today that armed Palestinian organizations committed war crimes during the 2014 Gaza-Israel conflict, by killing both Israeli and Palestinian civilians using indiscriminate projectiles.”

2015(6thof Nisan, 5775): Naomi Weisstein whose "Kuche, Kirche, Kinder: Psychology Constructions the Female" is part of the Women's Liberation canon as was her path- breaking research on visual perception” passed away today and is mourned by “loving husband Jesse Lemisch” and the members of “History in Action, an intergenerational network of feminist writers and activists.”


2015: The Jewish Film Festival of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host a screening of “24 Days” which “offers a gripping and carefully-plotted thriller that tells the true story of the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi in a Paris suburb by The Gang of Barbarians, who expect a huge ransom as they assume that all Jews have money.”

2015: In New York, Eléonore Biezunski is scheduled to deliver a lecture on Creating Songs in Boiberik: Singing Peace at "Felker Yontev" in which she “examines the structure of these pageants and how they continue to impact the music scene in Yiddish today.”

2016: “Tikkun” a prizewinning film at the Jerusalem and Locarno Film Festivals directed by Avishai Sivan is scheduled to be shown at the Museum of Modern Art this evening.

2016: The Jews in the American South is scheduled to come to an end in Savannah, Georgia where the Jewish community dates at back to 1733.

2016: During his weekly Saturday night lecture, “Israel Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef “said non-Jews could live in Israel only if they observe the seven Noahide Laws, which include prohibitions against idolatry, blaspheming God, murder, forbidden sexual relations, stealing and eating the limb off a live animal, and which proscribe the establishment of a legal system” and that “Non-Jews, Yosef are in Israel only to serve Jews.”

2016: “Baba Joon” is scheduled to be shown at the 20th annual Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival  is scheduled to host a brunch featuring Matzoh Momma's delicious spread of Jewish soul food, klezmer music by The Klez Katz!, and coffee by Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters of Olympia before a screening of the “Last Laugh.”

2017: The AIPAC Policy Conference is scheduled to begin today in Washington, D.C.

2017: “Hundreds of teen singers from the U.S. and Israel” are scheduled to perform on the stage of the “Metropolitan Opera House when HaZamir holds its gala concert.

2017: Friends and family send best birthday wishes to Joan Thaler, one of the grand ladies of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community is contributions are too numerous to recount.

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a performance of Chilean-American writer and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman's “Speak Truth to Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark.”

2018: The Center for Jewish History, Jewish Studies Program of Cornell University and American Jewish Historical Society are scheduled to host the “Triangle Fire: See You in the Streets” featuring Cornell University Professor Nick Salvatore and author/artist Ruth Sergel in a lively discussion of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “An Wit Chef Alon Shaya” the Tel Aviv-born, Philly-raised chef moved to New Orleans and won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in America.

2018: “Red Trees” and “In the Land of Pomegranates” are scheduled to be shown at the Jacob Burns Film Center during the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Bal Ej: the hidden Jews of Ethiopia” is scheduled to be shown at the Eli Cohen Center in Nahariya, Israel.

2018(10thof Nisan, 5778): On the Hebrew Calendar, observance of “Aliyah Day,” “an official day of national celebration in which Jewish immigration to Israel is honored and noteworthy immigrants are recognized for their contributions to the nation.” (As reported by Debra Kamin)

2019: Prime Minister Netanyahu will not be making his scheduled speech at the meeting of AIPAC because he was flying back to Israel to deal with the rocket attacks “from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip” which have struck to areas north of Tel Aviv.

2019: In the wake rocket attacks from Gaza, schools under the control of the Regional Council of Chof Ashkelon are scheduled to be closed today.

2019: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “At the Crossroads of Sephardic, Mizrahi, and Russian-Speaking Worlds: A Three-Part Learning and Cultural Series on the Greater Sephardic Communities of the Former Soviet Union.”

2019: Public shelters in Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva are scheduled to be open today

2019: Friends and family of Joan Thaler, the most gracious and modest of Eishes Chayils prepare to wish her the happiest of birthdays.

 

 

 

This Day, March 27, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 27

347: Traditional birthdate for Jerome, the priest and theologian best known for the creation of the Vulgate Bible, the Latin translation of the text and the author of correspondence with Augustine of Hippo that frequently mentioned the Jews living in Africa.

538 BCE: Cyrus was crowned “King of Babylonia and King of All Lands.”  Cyrus was the King who made it possible for the Jews to return to Judea marking the end of the Babylonian exile.

196 BCE: Ptolemy V ascends to the throne of Egypt. Ptolemy was one of the Greco-Egyptian rulers who fought with Antiochus for the control of Judea.

972: In Orleans, “Hugh Capet and Adelaide of Aquitaine” gave birth to Robert II who “conspired with his vassals to destroy all of the Jews who would not accept baptism” and who “inspired mob violence against the Jews including the learned Rabbi Senor.

1188: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, who was comparatively protective of his Jewish subject “took up the Cross” and joined what would become the Third Crusade.

1191: Pope Clement III who was one of the Popes locked in a power struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV in which the Jews were mere pawns, passed away today. Henry considered the Jews to be his subjects and beyond the control of the Church. During the First Crusade, the hordes going through Germany killed and robbed the Jews. At the same time, many Jews were forced to convert. Henry was in Italy and much to the dismay of the Pope, when he heard what was going on in Germany, the Emperor set about punishing those of the perpetrators who were still around including at least one archbishop. He also ordered that any Jew who had converted under duress should be allowed to return to the faith of their fathers. Clement over-ruled the Emperor on this one. He did not how people were brought to Jesus, but once they were there, there was no going back.

1309: Pope Clement V, who in 1305 became the first pope to threaten Jews with an economic boycott in an attempt to force them to stop charging Christians interest on loans, excommunicated Venice and all its population.

1378: Gregory XI, the last of the Avignon Popes, passed away. In 1375 Gregory had issued an order “to compel” Jews to hear sermons.  The order would later be vacated and replaced by the older formula allowing one to “exhort” the Jews to listen. (For more see Popes, Church and Jews in the Middle Ages by Kenneth Stow)

1625(OS): The reign of King James I of England, Ireland and Kings James VI of Scotland who had Henry Finch arrested because a work he had published “predicted in the near future, the restoration of the temporal dominion to the Jews” and who was responsible for the King James Bible came to an end today.

1639: In Rome, a child is forcibly baptized after his father jokingly remarked that he would not mind it, on the condition that the Pope acted as godfather. The Jews rioted and were violently crushed. As a result, two of his children were taken, one a baby, and were carried in a ceremony by the Pope.

1775(25th of Adar): Rabbi Chaim Ben David Abulafia, author of Nishmat Chaim passed away.

1786(27th of Adar, 5546): Based on tombstone found in the original Jewish cemetery in Ghent, date on which an unnamed Jew passed away. This unknown Jew or Jewess was the first Israelite to be legally buried in the city under the reign of Joseph II.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6652-ghent

1797: Birthdate of Aaron Emanuel Scharff, the native of Essingen, Germany, the husband of Magdelanna Roos and the father of Nicholas Scharff.

1798: Today, “Moses Myers, the consignee of four and half hogsheads of brandy lost his case in” United States District Court after which “permission was granted to him to petition the Secretary of Treasury for a reversal of the decision” as long as Myers paid the costs.

1802: Raphae (Nathan Bischoffsheim and his wife Helene, the daughter of Herz Moses Cassel, gave birth to their daughter Amalie who married was married in August 1818 at Mayence.

1816: Gabriel Gabriel married Rebecca Marks today at the Great Synagogue.

1820: In Baghdad, David Sassoon and Hannah Joseph gave birth to businessman Elias David Sassoon.

1820: Woolf Davis married Rachel Meyer at the Seel Street Synagogue in Liverpool, England.

1827(28th of Adar): Rabbi Samuel ben Nathan Ha-Levi author of Mahat-zit ha Shekel passed away

1827: Birthdate of Wolf Frankenburger, the native of Obbach who became a successful lawyer and represented the Constituency of Middle Franconia in the Reichstag.

1836: In Kecskemét, Hungary, Maria (nee Hacker) and Samuel Goldstein gave birth to cantor and composer Josef Goldstein who “was chief cantor at the Leopoldstädter Tempel in Vienna, Austria from 1857 until his death” in 1899.

1836: During the Texas Revolution, an untold number of Jews died when Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texas POW's who had fought under James Fannin at Goliad, Texas.

1839 (12th of Nisan, 5569): On March 27, 32 Jews living in Meshed, Persia were massacred and the remaining 100 families were forced to convert to Islam.

1839(12thof Nisan): The Jews were forced to convert in Meshed, Iran. Influenced by other anti-Jewish riots under the Kajar Dynasty in Iran, the local community attacked the Jewish quarter. The Synagogue was destroyed, over 30 Jews killed and the rest of the community threatened with annihilation. Moslem leaders offered to prevent further riots on condition that the Jews convert, which they did. The Jews became known as Jadid al-Islam or New Moslems thus ending the presence of the Jewish community. They continued to practice their Judaism in secret and fled the city with their families whenever an opportunity for escape presented itself.

1847: Birthdate of German born chemist Otto Wallach. In 1910, he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

1850(14thof Nisan, 5610): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1850(14thof Nisan, 5610): Fifty three year old banker and astronomer Wilhelm Wolff Beer for whom the crater Beers on Mars is named and who is the brother of Giacomo Meybeer  passed away.

1860: Birthdate of Eugene C. Kahn, one of the first, if not the first, Jewish child to be born in Morgan City, a port city on the Atchafalaya.

1861: The New York Times reports a drop in the sale of livestock this week due to Lent and the observance of Passover.

1861: Charles August Lauff, the German native and California businessman, and his wife, Maris J. Sebran, the daughter of Gregorio and Ramono Briones, gave birth to Charles A. Lauff.

1862: Captain Nathan Davis Menken, a merchant from Cincinnati who was serving with Company A, 1st Ohio Cavalry in the Union Army served with distinction today at the Battle of Kernstown in Virginia.

1863: In response to the “recommendation by the President of the Confederacy” that this be a Day of Prayer, Rabbi M. J. Michelbacher, of the German synagogue Bayth Ahabah in Richmond, Virginia, preached a sermon, "to which he added a prayer for the Confederate States of America "to crown our independence with lasting honor and prosperity," and for its president, Jefferson Davis, "grant speedy success to his endeavors to free our country from the presence of its foes." [On a personal note, it never ceases to amaze me that Jews could support slavery. How does one go to a Seder after reciting such a prayer?]

1869: The New York Times reported that “At sundown last evening the Jewish Feast of Passover commenced. It was instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of God's chosen people from Egypt, in bondage, and the passing over by the destroying angel of those families the doors of whose dwellings were marked with the blood of the Paschal Lamb.”

1869(15th of Nisan, 5629): First Day of Pesach; in the evening count the Omer for the first time.

1869(15th of Nisan, 5629): In New York Temple Emanuel and the Nineteenth-street synagogue were among the Jewish houses of worship holding services on the first day of Passover.

1876: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association moved from its temporary quarters to the Harvard Rooms at Forty-Second Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City.

1877: In New York City, “Sigmund and Pauline Ullman gave birth award winning impressionist painter Eugene Paul Ullman whose son Paul was shot and killed by the Gestapo while secretly working for the Allies in WW II and for which Eugene “accepted France’s Corix de Guerre on Paul’s behalf.

https://library.newschool.edu/archives/findingaids/KA0042.html

1877: In New York City, Justice Murray dismissed charges filed against Henry Sollinger for having obtained money under false pretense from Mrs. Jane Ferguson. Sollinger was born Jewish but claimed to have converted to Christianity at which time he began using the alias Frederick E. Hall.

1878: In Cleveland Ohio, Falk Vidaver, the son of Nathan Vidaver and his wife Anna gave birth to Ruth Vidaver who became Ruth Dodge when she married Dr. Henry Washington Dodge, Sr.

1879: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association has received $10, 840.60. The money was raised by the Purim Association at its dress ball that had been held on March 6th.

1880(15th of Nisan, 5640): First Day of Pesach

1880: In Albany, NY, Joseph and Matilda Anker gave birth to Edward R. Anker, the long-time newspaper editor and husband of Frances Freund Anker

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/12/08/113173280.pd

1880: It was reported today that Baron James de Rothschild is President of the newly formed society established in Paris to promote Jewish studies.

1882: In New York, Benjamin Arnheim, the son of Walter and Sophia Arnheim and his wife Henrietta Arnheim gave birth to Walter B. Arnheim

1883: In Teplitz, Rabbi Adolf Aharon Rosenzweig and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Arthur Rosenzweig who passed in Prague in 1935.

1884(1st of Nisan, 5644): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1887: “The first organized effort on the part of” Jews in Brooklyn “to tender a public tribute to the late Henry Ward Beecher too place” today” at the Kane Street Temple where…a large number of prominent Israelites met ‘in order to co-operate with other creeds and societies in raising a fund for a statue and free library to perpetuate the memory of the great friend of humanity and champion of religious liberty --- Henry Ward Beecher.’”

1888(15thof Nisan, 5648): Pesach

1889: In Rheinhessen, Germany, Abraham Beckhardt and his wife gave birth WW I ace Fritz Beckhardt who scored 17 kills while flying for the “Fatherland” which later attempted to erase his record when the Nazis came to power.

1890(6thof Nisan, 5650): Emanuel Berhnheimer a native of Germany who came to the United States in 1844 and formed a partnership with August Schmid that led to formation of Lion Brewery, passed away today. 

1891: The Citation for First Sergeant Jacob Trautman Medal of Honor was issued today.

1892: The Biennial Convention of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association was held at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1893: The Bowery Amphitheater “reopened as a Hebrew theatre under the management of Sigmund Magulesko, Isidore Lindeman and Joseph Levy.

1893: Birthdate of sociologist Karl Mannheim, author of "Ideology and Utopia." Born in Hungary, he passed away in London in 1947.

1893(10th of Nisan, 5653): Solomon Beyfus, the son of Hamburg born language professor Gotz Philip Beyfus and Plymouth born Cippy Beyfus and the husband of Charlotte Abrahams, “the daughter of Esther and Henry Abrahams, a jeweler of Bevis Marks in the City of London” with whom he had ten children passed away today “leaving £81,326” and tribe of children who became successful in the law and theatre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Beyfus_(1820-1893)#/media/File:Solomon_Beyfus_A_Ready_Lender.JPG

1893: “Jews and Intermarriage” published today contains a refutation by Rabbi Mendes of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of previously published sermons that Jewish law does not prohibit intermarriage between a Jew and his earnest request that further discussion of this topic be limited to the Jewish press.

1894: Birthday of Israel B. Padway, the native of Leeds, England who came to the United States in 1906 where he graduated from Marquette Law School and began practicing law as well as serving as President of the Board of Jewish Education.

1895: Professor Felix Adler delivered a lecture tonight at the Hebrew Institute on “The Influences of Organized Labor.”

1898: The Excelsior Club which meets every Sunday and whose members include William Weinbeck, Ben Harvey, Frank Eggelton, Harry Hartman, Edgar Rosenthal and Jack Lipschutz was founded today in Philadlelpia.

1898: “In Algeria the sixth paper devoted to anti-Semitism, L'Anti-Juif Algérien, appeared, with an illustrated supplement”

1898: “Austro-Hungarian Polity” published today described the some of the cause of that have led to unrest in certain agrarian districts including “a marked contempt and dislike for commerce and trade” among Hungarians, “so that the industry of this country is to a large extent, in the hands of the Jews.”

1899: New York Mayor Van Wyck met with six boys from the Hebrew Institute at Jefferson and East Broadway.

1899: Birthdate of Polish born physician Hyman Edward Canter, who moved to Pittsburg in 1913 where he practiced obstetrics.

1900: Herzl had a meeting with Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber about sanctioning the Viennese electoral reform. He requests that the “Neue Freie Presse” should not oppose the reform too massively.

1901: Anti-Jewish riots began in Smyrna, Turkey. The riots were triggered by the reports of the disappearance of a child who was said to have been slaughtered by the Jews for 'ritual murder.' Though the riots continued for four days, the child was eventually found and paraded through the streets to show he was indeed alive.

1901(7thof Nisan, 5661): Seventy-seven year old “German manufacturer and philanthropist” Heinrich Blumenthal was “for a quarter of a century Blumenthal was a member of the city council, and for more than two decades the president of the Jewish community of Darmstadt” passed away today.

1902: Birthdate of screenwriter Sidney Robert Buchman, the native of Duluth, Minnesota and Columbia University graduate who served as President of the Screen Writers Guild of America who ended up on the infamous Hollywood Blacklist.

http://zenithcity.com/thisday/august-23-1975-death-of-duluth-screenwriter-sidney-buchman/

1902: It was reported today that President Theodore Roosevelt had sent a letter of regret expressing his disappointment at not being able to attend the dedication of the Lucas A. Steinam School of Metal Working which is new addition to the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York.

1903: The Zionist Commission met Herzl in Cairo.

1904(11thof Nisan, 5664): Colonel Albert Edward Goldsmid the distinguished British officer who founded the Jewish Lads’ Brigade and the Maccabaeans passed away.

1905: The Pall Mall Gazette published “The Truth About the East End” by Meyer Jack (MJ) Landa the native of Leeds who worked as journalist in London where he also wrote plays including “The Shylock Myth.”

1905: Birthdate of Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff a German military officer who played a role in two unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Hitler, and who, thanks to the bravery of his tortured comrades remained undiscovered and thus survived the war.

1906: At the insistence of the Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria, the Minister of the Interior of Bulgaria issues a circular to his governors to take every form of precaution against anti-Semitism over Easter.

1906: Oscar S. Straus and former state Supreme Court Justice William N. Cohen, who spoke on “The Function of the Synagogue in America” were among those who addressed the first meeting of the Temple Beth-El Club which was held at the sanctuary on 5thAvenue and 76th Street.

1906(1st of Nisan): First publication of Der Yiddisher Kemfer, a publication American Labor Zionism

1909: In Munich, author Thomas Mann and his Jewish wife Katia gave birth to their third child,Angelus Gottfried Thomas Mann who gained fame as historian Golo Mann.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/09/obituaries/golo-mann-85-historian-dies-was-2d-son-of-thomas-mann.html

1913: Birthdate of SS Captain Theodore Dannecker, one of Eichman’s underlings who was a “ruthless” participate in the Final Solution.

1912: A Jew, for the first time, receives an appointment as an officer in the Ottoman Turkish Army upon graduation from the Imperial Military Academy.

1914: Birthdate of Budd Schulberg, the novelist and screenwriter whose credits include “What Makes Sammy Run” and “On the Waterfront.”

1915: Starting today, Dr. Nathan Blaustein will accept applications at his office from 3 to 6 pm for those who wish to adopt the three month old daughter of Sadie Mager who died while giving birth to the child.

1915: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon at Temple Emanu-El this morning “choosing as his text ‘And Abraham bowed down to the people of the land’” in preparation of the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Dr. Isaac Meyer Wise, the found of Hebrew Union College and the driving force behind the Reform Movement in America.

1915: As the celebration of Passover approaches, the American Jewish Relief Committee for the Suffers from the European War sent out a special appeal to American Jews.

1916: In Philadelphia, at the Hotel Walton, the conference that is making plans for the convening of the first American Jewish Congress, which is being attended by more than 400 delegates from the United States entered its second day

1916: Approximately 15,000 people attended the third day of the bazaar sponsored by the People’s Relief Committee for the Relief of the Jewish War Suffers at the Grand Central Palace which was capped off by Russian Night and resulted in an additional $20,000 being added to the fund which now totaled $75,000.

1916: Three hundred people including New York Governor Whitman attended a dinner tonight at the Savoy Hotel “where nearly $75,000 was collected for a home for aged, blind and crippled Jews” which is to be erected by the Daughters of Jacob in the Bronx.

1917(4th of Nisan, 5677): Seventy-two year old Civil War veteran and sculpture Moses Jacob Ezekiel passed away in Rome, Italy

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ezekiel.htm

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

1917: Now that all “absolute equality” has been granted to the Jews in Russia, it was reported that “there will be no further restrictions upon the issue of passports to Russian or American Jews who desire to visit Russia than those common to other persons.”

1917: According to telegrams received in Copenhagen today Maxim Vinaver and Oscar Gruzenberg have been appointed to the Russian Senate and Supreme Court making them the first Jews “who ever obtained a seat in a Russian tribunal.”

1917: The Army and Navy Bulletin of the Young Men’s Hebrew and Kindred Associations stated that during the upcoming Passover festival “Jewish soldiers will be able to participate in Seder and synagogue services” and that plans are being made for all those serving on “every one of the big vessels” in the Navy including the battleships Missouri and New York to have the same opportunity.

1917: “Leo Motzkin of Kiev, one of the leading Zionist publicists and the head of the international press bureau which had much to do with the acquittal of Mendel Bellis of the charge of ritual murder” said in New York today “that he was confident that the Russian revolution would mean the ultimate liberation of the Jews and unprecedented progress for the Zionist movement.”

1917: The editors and publishers reported today to have attended the recent meeting at the home of Samuel Untermeyer where it was decided to form the Jewish League of American Patriots which would “enlist the moral and physical support of every loyal American Jew in the event of war” included Israel Friedlkin publisher and Peter Wiernick, editor the Jewish Morning Journal; Morris Weinberg publisher and William Edlin, editor of The Day; Herman Paley, publisher and Isidore Conikman, editor of the Warheit; Leon Kamaliki publisher and Odalia Bublick, editor of the Jewish Daily News and Judge Aaron J. Levy also of the Warheit

1918: Henry Adams passed away. To many he was part of the last generation of the distinguished Adams family. For Jews he was that and a little more or should I say a little less. In 1894, Henry Adams organized the Immigration Restriction League to limit the admission to America of "unhealthy elements" -- Jews being first among these. In his famous book, The Education of Henry Adams, he wrote about those he was trying to keep out of America: "Not a Polish Jew fresh from Warsaw or Cracow - not a furtive Jacob or Isaac still reeking of the Ghetto, snarling a weird Yiddish to the officers of the customs..." He found many supporters for his cause, but he did not win

1918(14th of Nisan, 5678): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1918: Based on information supplied by the Jewish Welfare Board, “Jewish families in the vicinity of army and navy cantonments” are scheduled to act as hosts for Jewish soldiers and sailors” who will have leaves so they may observe Passover.

1918:  “Jewish Soldiers in the British army held a Seder at” Beit Yehudayoff, known as the ‘palace’

1918: Rabbi Barnet Siegel and John L. Bernstein presided over the Seder sponsored by the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Society which was attended by 1,000 people.

1918: For what may have been the first time in history a Seder was conducted at Yokohama, Japan for Jewish immigrants most of whom were women and children.

1918: Having secured the territory around Jerusalem, the British moved across the Jordan and began what was the opening of the First Battle of Aman.

1921: During his fact finding visit to Palestine, Winston Churchill went to the British Military Cemetery on the Mount of Olives to attend a service of dedication honoring the sacrifice of Allied soldiers who had fought against the Turks.

1922: In San Francisco, Joseph and Lillian Kurzman gave birth to military historian Daniel Halperin Kurzman whose works included include Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire. (As reported by Daniel Slontnik)

1923: Birthdate of British impresario Victor Hochhauser who, along with his wife, promoted numerous events including those for the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.

1923: Lord Grey, who “had been the foreign secretary during the McMahon-Hussein negotiations”, addressed the House of Lords today.  During his speech, “he made it clear that he entertained serious doubts as to the validity of the British government's interpretation of the pledges which he, as foreign secretary, had caused to be given to Hussein in 1915.

1923(10thof Nisan, 5683): Sixty-seven year old Felix Daus, “the inventor of the Daus duplicator and hectograph” died suddenly this afternoon while visiting his lawyer Herman Brasch and was buried later at the Mt. Zion Cemetery in Queens.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1923/03/28/105105033.pdf

1923: Sidney and Helen Livingston Weinberg gave birth to Sidney J. Weinberg, Jr. who would become a senior director at Goldsman-Sachs.

1923: Birthdate of Prof. Nahum M. Sarna, z"l the father of Jonathan Sarna and a noted scholar in his own right

https://www2.bc.edu/~langerr/NMSarna/

1926: “For Jewish Students in the City” published today described plans by the Women’s Branch of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations to provide home hospitality for during Passover for Jewish students attending colleges in New York which “is not charity or philanthropy” but is an expression of a “deeper love” that come when opens their doors.

1927: Banker and philanthropist Nathan Jonas was the guest of honor at a banquet tonight at the Hotel Biltmore where 1,000 guests gathered to “mark the completion of his three decades of service in behalf of Brooklyn Jewish Charities.

1927: In New York City, Kassel Lewis and Sylvia Surut gave birth to New York Times correspondent Anthony Lewis, the author of Gideon’s Triumph

1927: “Out of the Mist” a silent film produced by Karl Fruend was released in Germany Deutsche Fox, the German subsidiary of the William Fox’s film company

1927: “Mr. Antin Write a Stark Book on State Politics published today provides a review of The Gentlemen From The Twenty-Second: An Autobiography by Benjamin Antin which is described as “an autobiography you could waltz to.”

1928: It was reported today that Cellist Gdal Saleski, the author of Famous Musicians of Jewish Origins has performed a concert at Steinway Hall that included Joseph “Achron’s ‘Fragment Mystique’ which “is based on a Hebrew theme.”

1928(6th of Nisan): Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzki, son of Rabbi Chaim Yitzchak Ber Plotzker of Kutno, the President of Kollel Polen and a prolific author whose works included Chemdas Yisrael on Sefer ha-Mitzvot passed away today. When Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzki visited America, he “pronounced Manischewtiz matzah to be thoroughly reliable – ‘there is none more faithful to be found’ – citing “constant supervision of one of the sages of Jerusalem,” Rabbi Mendel M. Hochstein.

http://books.google.com/books?id=kOQwPXh2xZIC&pg=PA282&lpg=PA282&dq=Rabbi+Meir+Dan+Plotzki&source=bl&ots=iHW35wJsTf&sig=OxNCzfyOTDL510RUUarrnYdn3Tc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YV4zU8XsLo3YyAHOkoDgDw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Rabbi%20Meir%20Dan%20Plotzki&f=false

1930: Birthdate of actor David Janssen. Born David Meyer, Jansen gained fame playing the lead in the long running TV drama, “The Fugitive.”

1930: Flyweight Moe Mizler fought his 39th bout at Whitechapel, London, UK

1930: “The meeting of the Administrative Committee of the Jewish Agency ended this morning after a short session with Felix M. Warburg, chairman, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Agency, expressing their satisfaction with the work that had been accomplished. There was a general feeling among the participants that the meeting had been fruitful of practical results for Palestine, and there was particular gratification that the complete budget of three and a half million dollars was confirmed.” (As reported by JTA)

1931:  English novelist Arnold Bennett, the confidant and advisor of Anglo-Jewish pianist and advocate for refugees from Nazi Germany Harriet Cohen whom she described as my “dear friend and mentor of my youth” passed away today.

1931: Charlie Chaplin received France's distinguished Legion of Honor

1932: It was reported today that Chief Judge Cuthbert W. Pound of the New York Court of Appeals will preside at the regional finals of the National Oratorical Contest, replacing Benjamin Cardozo, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court who was his predecessor as the Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

1933: A gigantic anti-Nazi protest rally, organized by the American Jewish Congress, was held in New York City. 55,000 people attended and threatened to boycott German goods if the Germans carried out their planned permanent boycott of Jewish-owned stores and businesses.

1933: Rabbi M.S. Margolis, the President  of the Orthodox Jewish Congregations delivered a speech “at a mass demonstration in Madison Square to protest again the Nazi persecution of German Jews.

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa8388

1933: In “Germany: Scared To Death,” Time reported that “To say that most German statesmen and politicians outside the Government's charmed circle were scared to death last week, would be understatement. Panic made cowards of the bravest of brave German Socialists and Communists. Even Catholics trembled—except Dr. Hans Luther. It was accurately said that in less than two weeks Chancellor Hitler has reduced his opponents to a lower level of groveling fear than did Premier Mussolini in the two years after the March on Rome, Oct. 30, 1922.”

1935(22ndof Adar II, 5695): Sixty one year old Croatian architect Rudolf Lubiniski who designed the Croatian State Archives, passed away today in Zagreb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Lubinski#/media/File:Sove_HDA_2_1009.jpg

1936: From Windsor, Ontario, novelist and critic Dr. Ludwig Lewisohn named “the ten greatest living Jews” who are Professor Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, French philosopher Henri Bergson, Martin Buber, Chaim Wiesmann, gynecologist Dr. Bernard Zondek, author Scholom Asch, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Justice Louis D. Brandeis and composer Arnold Schoenberg.

1936: It was reported today that Eddie Cantor warned, that based on “information he had received recently, ‘a pogrom will follow the Olympic Games in Germany’” and that “he and members of his family had been threatened” which led to his belief that it is “necessary for Jews to have some form of unity.

1937(15th of Nisan, 5697): First Day of Pesach.

1937: In New York, at Shaarey Tefilah “two fires occurred simultaneously in the basement of the synagogue and caused minor damage. Later that same morning, at 10 o'clock, 700 persons assembled to celebrate the second Seder of the Passover. A few hours after the congregation had gone, a third fire was reported at 3:15 o'clock. This fire damaged the Ark of the Covenant and destroyed 18 hand-illuminated Torah kept in the Tabernacle. The $25,000 pipe organ was badly damaged and the entire south end of the synagogue was wrecked by flames, smoke and the axes of the firemen. After investigations by the Fire Marshall, it was discovered that the incendiary fires had been set by the synagogue's caretaker. The synagogue was reconstructed and remodeled to designs of S. Brian Baylinson, and a four-story synagogue house was added.

1937: The Joint Distribution Committee announced today that France, Belgium, England Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland had ratified the Geneva agreement granting German citizens (including Jewish refugees from the Nazis) who were in foreign countries prior to July 4, 1936 refugee certificates “good for one year” which meant they had “the right of residence.”

1938 After meeting him while performing with the Phil Harris orchestra, Leah Ray married MCA executive and future Jets owner Sonny Werblin with whom she had three sons during their fifty year marriage.

1938(24thof Adar II, 5698): Sixty-six year old William Louis Stern, the Berlin born son of Joseph Stern and “husband of Clara Joseephy” who fled the Nazis and continued his work in the field of psychology at Duke University passed away today.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060319004052/http://www.bh.org.il/Names/POW/Stern.asp

1938: Miss Henrietta Szold, 77-year-old founder of Hadassah, the Woman's Zionist Organization of America sent a cable from Jerusalem to Hadassah headquarters in New York describing her efforts to arrange for the transfer of Jewish children from Austria to Palestine. “The change is described as vital and as being the only hope for the youngsters to ever lead normal lives.”

1939: Dr. Max Danzis, the chief of medical staff, appealed to Newark Beth Israel’s board a their meeting today “to exerts all possible influence on behalf of “refugee physicians fleeing Nazi Germany.

1940: Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz concentration Camp in southern Poland

1941(28thof Adar, 5701): Forty-five year old Russian born David Alper who married Minnie “Manya” Isiomin after he had been married to Frieda Alper passed away today after which he was buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, NY.

1941: A Yugoslav government that was sympathetic to the Nazis “was toppled by an anti-German military coup” which lead to a Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April.  This would prove to be disastrous for the Jews of the Balkans since it would bring them into the grasp of the Final Solution.  Ironically, the long term effect of this would lead to the ultimate defeat of the Germans in WW II.  The invasion of the Balkans delayed the German invasion of Russia.  That delay meant the German army would be mired in the Russian Winter, which was a major factor in handing the Nazi war machine its first defeats on the eastern front.

1942: On day after the start of the deportation of Slovokian Jews, Slovakia’s Chief Rabbi Micahel Weissmand and the Slovokian Zionist leader Gisi Fleischann sent a message of SS Captain Dieter Wisliceny offering him a bribe stop the shipment of the Jews to the death camps.

1942: Goebbels described in his diary, Belzec and the cremation of the Jews, "The procedure is pretty barbaric, one not to be described here most definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. . . fully deserved by them."

1943: “Blue Ribbon Town” featuring Jewish comedian Groucho Marx was heard for the first time on CBS Radio

1943: The CKC resistance movement including Jewish cellist Frieda Belinfante “organized and executed the bombing of the population registry in Amsterdam today, which destroyed thousands of files and hindered Nazi attempts to compare forged documents with documents in the registry.”

1944: Several of the leaders of the Yishuv including executives of the Jewish Agency and General Council of Palestine Jews, Tel Aviv Mayor Israel Rokach and the municipal councilors of Tel Aviv and Mayor Joseph Saphir of Petak Tikvah met in Jerusalem this morning to deal with the latest outbreak violence by “the small terrorist group whose sabotage activities have led to a new and grave situation.” Among those calling for action to end the violence were chief Rabbis Isaac Herzog and Bension Uziel.

1944: In A Children’s Aktion, the Nazis collected all of the Jewish children of Lovno.

1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Forty Jewish policemen were shot by the Gestapo in the Riga Ghetto.

1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Two thousand Jews were murdered in Kaunas Lithuania

1944: One thousand Jews left the Drancy Concentration Camp in France for Auschwitz Concentration Camp

1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Resistance fighter Abraham Geleman, born in Lodz was killed in Belgium.

1944: As the Red Army approached Riga, Kovno and Vilna, Germany picked up the pace with actions against the surviving inhabitants of the ghettos. Children everywhere were being seized and driven off to their death. "The Children's Action" in Kovno resulted in the death of thousands of children under the age of 17. Most of them were shot. In order to spare their children from such horrors, some parents poisoned them. In Lodz, a mother killed her severely handicapped boy with a lead pipe across the head instead of allowing him to meet his fate with the Germans.

1945: Task Force Baum, the unit under the command of Captain Abraham Baum that had been sent behind enemy lines to liberate camp OFLAG XIII-B, near Hammelburg whose POW’s included the son-in-law of General Patton broke through the bridgehead at Aschaffenburg and “arrived in sight of the camp” by the afternoon.

1945(13th of Nisan, 5705): Jacob S. Kahn, the president of the Refrigeration Maintenance Company passed away today at the age of 62. Kahn had been a builder during the 1920’s, who erected the Hyde Park Hotel.

1945(13thof Nisan, 5705): Seventeen year old Lily Freedman, the daughter of Ray and Simon Freeman, was “killed by enemy action” today.

1945(13th of Nisan, 5705): Sixty-five year old Moshe Avigdor Amiel, the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv passed away today.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~szwetch/Stamps.of.Israel/6.html

1946:USCGC Northland (WPG-49), a cruising class of gunboat especially designed for Arctic operations that served in World War II was decommissioned today by the U.S. Coast Guard which would lead to its eventual acquisition by a Jewish group who would renamed it Jewish State and use it to transport refugees to Palestine.

1946: Today “the steamer Tel Hai, carrying 736 passengers, was intercepted by the destroyer HMS Chequers 140 miles out at sea as it approached Palestine.”

1946: In Cleveland, Dr. and Mrs. Gittelson celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary today.

1947: A.H. Weaghorn, a British police sergeant who is an expert on Jewish political affairs was attacked by three men outside of Tel Aviv’s central police station. Two of the men opened fire and one threw a bomb. The sergeant, who was wounded, returned fire along with several of his comrades.

1948: Twenty-two year old Algerian Avraham Abarzel, the son of Albert and Diamantine Abarzel, who had survived the Nazi occupation of France arrived in Israel today and “immediately joined the IDF” which later transferred him “to the French Commando Company of the Palmach Hanegev’s 9th battalion.”

1949(26th of Adar): Russian born Hebrew poetess Elisheva Bikhowsky passed away

 

1949: The Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, co-sponsored by Herbert Aptheker came to a close today.

1950(9th of Nisan, 5710): Sixty-four year old Harvard graduate and founder of Wertheim and Co., Maurice Wertheim, the son of Jacob and Hanna Wertheim and the husband of Cecile J. Seiberling passed away today.

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2016/HUM11c/exhibits/show/cultural-space/maurice-wertheim--investment-b

1950: After having been "rebuffed" by Levi Eshkol, the Treasurer of the Jewish Agency, Shlomo Hillel, "one of the Israeli organizers of the Iraqi Jewish emigration""went to see Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion who was totally supportive of the mass emigration from Iraq.’Tell them to come quickly,' Ben-Gurion said to Hillel...'What if the Iraqis change their minds and rescind the law? go and bring them quickly.'" Hillel would return to Iraq and try to expedite matters but the Jewish Agency "held the purse strings" and insisted on slowing down the immigration movement to what it considered were more manageable numbers.

1950: Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, the 75 year old conduct emeritus conductor of the Boston Symphony is scheduled to leave for Europe today after having conducted 16 concerts in Israel.

1950: Anglo-Israeli financial negotiations on problems dating from the days of the mandate are scheduled to come to a successful conclusion today with the planned signing of an agreement in London.

1950: The New York Times publishes a picture of Charlotte Johnson, The American Red Cross representative in Israel, watching as Jewish children who have arrived in Tel Aviv from Europe receive clothes made from textiles donated by the Brooklyn Chapter of the American Red Cross.

1950: An adaptation of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” a comedy written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart was broadcast on the Lux Radio Theatre.

1951: “Odette,” a biopic about British agent who was not executed at Ravesnbruck filmed by cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum was released today in the United States.

1952(1st of Nisan, 5712: Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Jewish Agency decided to send 100 disgruntled immigrants from India, who had been squatting outside the agency's offices in Tel Aviv, back to where they came from, announcing that this should not serve as a future precedent insofar as other immigrants were concerned.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Ministry of Health had announced that every Israeli between the ages of four and 60 would be inoculated against typhoid.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that at The Hague the German delegation to the Reparations Conference expressed surprise at the extent of the Jewish request of the sum of $500 million, to be paid within five years. They expected a smaller sum, but agreed to recognize all claims as "urgent" and had "shown willingness" to meet them. Jewish delegates pointed out that they didn’t want to wait until all the Nazi victims were dead, but intended to help the living.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli delegation in London held extensive talks on possible oil deliveries and economic cooperation.

1952: New York premiere of “Singin’ in the Rain,” a musical comedy directed by Stanley Doenen written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

1955: Birthdate of Susan Neiman, the Atlanta, GA, high school dropout and Ph.D. recipient from Harvard whose memoir Slow Fire described “her life as a Jewish woman in Berlin” during the 1980’s.

http://www.susan-neiman.de/

1956: “Patterns” a film noire co-produced by Jed Harris (Jacob Hirsch Horowitz) was released in the United States today.

1958: A less than laudatory review Edna Ferber’s Ice Palace published today described “her story as too repetitious and disorderly to win a prize in the world of literature” but then mockingly said it might provide immeasurable help in the campaign “to win statehood for Alaska.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=990DE0DB163DE53BBC4F51DFB5668383649EDE

1958: “Run Silent, Run Deep,” a WW II submarine thriller with music by Franz Waxman and featuring Don Rickles in a non-comedic role was released today in the United States.

1959: Twenty-seven year old "Elizabeth Taylor took the Hebrew name Elisheba Rachel and converted to Judaism."

1961(10th of Nisan, 5721): Eighty-seven year old Moshe Novomeysky the Siberian native and engineer who developed the Palestine Potash Company passed away today.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/this-day-in-jewish-history/.premium-1.711008

1965(23rdof Adar II, 5725): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Parah

1965(23rdof Adar II, 5725): Sixty year old New Jersey born, Columbia Ph.D. “Israel E. Drabkin, chairman of the department of classical languages and Hebrew City College who married Miriam Frideman after his first wife Norma Lowenstein died passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/03/28/97189720.pdf

1970(19thof Adar II, 5730): Seventy-nine year old thrice married medium and author Viola Brothers Shore the eldest child of Abram and Minnie Epstein and one of the many called as witness by HUAC passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Shore-Viola-Brothers

1974: “Mame” a cinematic version of Jerome Lawrence Broadway musical directed by Gene Sakes with music by Jerry Herman and co-starring Bea Arthur was released today in the United States.

1974: “Concrack,” a marvelous adaption of The Water is Wide directed by Martin Ritt and with a screenplay co-authored by Irving Ravetch was released today in the United States.

1975(15thof Nisan, 5735): Pesach

1977: In Allentown, PA, Donald and Melina Kohn gave birth to Sally Rebecca Kohn founder and chief education officer of the Movement Vision Lab, a contributor to Fox News and “a distinguished Vaid Fellow at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute.”

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the week-long port workers’ go-slow strike continued and ships were loaded at half the normal rate. Angry citrus farmers called on the government to allow them to load their fruit by themselves. The Bank Leumi strike ended and its 300 branches opened for business. The hospital doctors’ strike was called off at the last moment. But radio and TV broadcasts were halted for seven hours as the result of a strike by the Broadcasting Authority administrative staff.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that in New York US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance promised Jewish leaders that during his forthcoming visit to Moscow he would discuss the problems of Soviet Jewry at the Kremlin.

1979(28th of Adar, 5739): One person was killed and 14 were injured during a terrorist bombing in downtown Tel Aviv.

1980: The Louisville Free Public Library which had been co-designed by William G. Tachau who designed buildings for Congregation Mike Israel, Graz College and Dropsie College was placed on the National Register of Historic Places today.

1981: “Thief,” a crime film directed by Michael Mann who also produced and wrote the script, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring James Caan was released in the United States today.

1982: ABC broadcast the last episode of “Bosom Buddies” costarring Wendie Jo Sperber and featuring Billy Joel’s “My Life” as its opening theme.

1983: “The neo-Nazi National Democratic Party will not be able to use “a city-owned public hall” for its party congress which is scheduled to open today in Frankfurt thanks to a change announced by the mayor of the German city that came about because of protests that came from several groups include the Social Democratic Party.

1984: “Terrible Joe Moran” a made-for-television film co-starring Ellen Barkin and featuring New York political leader Edward I. Koch as “Moe” was released today.

1986: Birthdate of Vania Heymann, the native of Jerusalem who creates novel video including commercials for PepsiMax.

1990(1stof Nisan, 5750) Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1990(1stof Nisan, 5750): Ninety-two year old Morris Holman the captain of the 1918 CCNY basketball team and the brother of Nat Holman who coached CCNY in 1920 passed away today.

1990: “Rent Collection” a “genre piece” by David Monies was sold by Sotheby’s London today.

1991: Isaiah Berlin met with author Lewis M. Dabney, a professor of English at the University of Wyoming in London at the Athenaeum Club. Dabney was editing Edmund Wilson's last journal, ''The Sixties,'' and had begun a biography. Dabney wanted Berlin to fill out the account of Wilson he had begun in a short memoir published a few years earlier. In the course of their conversation, Berlin told Dabney two “funny stories” about Wilson’s visit to Israel. Wilson “went to Jordan and when he came back he had to pass through the Mandelbaum Gate. The Israeli passport officer looked at his passport, noticed it was Edmund Wilson, then said: ''I think your dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls is not quite right. I think it should have been 50 years before.'' And Edmund answered, and the chief officer said: ''Stamp Mr. Wilson's passport. You can't discuss the scrolls here, not on the Government's time.'' He talked to me about that afterward, saying, 'Only in Israel would I find a passport officer who wished to question the date of the scrolls.'’ That amused him. It pleased him. Then he went to see the man he most admired in Israel, who was a scholar called Flusser (David Flusser) in Jerusalem, who talked to him about the Bible and the scrolls. Edmund asked him what he thought of Israel. Flusser said: 'Israel est un tres petit pays. Et je ne suis pas patriote.’ He was delighted with that. Anybody who said he wasn't a patriot went straight to his heart.”

1994(15th of Nisan, 5754): First Day of Pesach

1996: The New York Times featured a review of Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

1996: Final broadcast of “Dream On,” the HBO sitcom created by Marta Kaufmann and David Crane.

1998: After meeting with Israeli Defense Minister  Yitzhak Mordechai in the U.S. today U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen indicated that Washington has agreed to expand the joint Arrow anti-missile project and provide $45 million in funding for a third battery of missiles for Israel.

1998: The Times of London included a review of John Murray’s biography of Edmund de Rothschild entitled "A Gilt-Edged Life."

2000: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urges Israel to return the annexed Golan Heights to Syria.

2000: U.S. premiere of “The Audrey Hepburn Story?” in which “Emmy Rossum appears during early scenes of the film playing Hepburn in her early teens.”

2000: Jack Lang began serving as Education Minister of France for a second time today.

2001: Islamic Jihad took credit for a bombing in the Talipot industrial zone in which 7 people were injured.

2001: Hamas took credit for the bombing an Egged bus at French Hill in which 28 were injured in Jerusalem.

2002 (14th of Nisan, 5762): A suicide bomber killed 29 Israelis during a Passover Seder in Netanya, Israel. The stark statement speaks for itself.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1389228/Hotel-blast-survivors-relive-the-Passover-massacre.html

2002 (14th of Nisan, 5762): Milton Berle passed away. Born Mendel Berlinger on July 12, 1908, Berle's career began at the age of five when he modeled as Buster Brown. He starred in a variety of entertainment mediums. But he gained his greatest fame as Uncle Miltie, star of the Texaco Milton Berle Show. The show began airing in 1948. It was the first national television hit and became a must see every Tuesday night. Berle was also one of the first to learn that television was a devouring medium that used you up and spit you out. Although his career would last for another half century, he would never know the success he gained with his Tuesday night television triumph. Berle died at the age of 93, smoking cigars and stealing other people's material almost to his last day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/28/arts/milton-berle-tv-s-first-star-as-uncle-miltie-dies-at-93.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2002(14th of Nisan, 5762): Director Billy Wilder passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/29/us/billy-wilder-master-of-caustic-films-dies-at-95.html

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/mar/30/guardianobituaries

2004: Eighty-one year old Dr. Sabina Zimering sat in the audience at the Great American History Theatre in Saint Paul, MN and watched the remarkable story of her own survival in Nazi Europe unfold on stage.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/27/2004/sabina-zimering

2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of topics of special interest to Jewish readers including "Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages" by Jaroslav Pelikan and the recently released paperback edition of "Someone to Run With" by Israeli novelist David Grossman; translated by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz.

2006(27th of Adar, 5766): Eighty-one year old  Rudolf Vrba, who as a young man escaped from Auschwitz and provided the first eyewitness evidence not only of the magnitude of the tragedy unfolding at the death camp but also of the exact mechanics of Nazi mass extermination passed away at a hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/world/europe/07vrba.html

2006: Ehud “Banai sang a duet with David D'Or on D'Or's CD, Kmo HaRuach ("Like the Wind"), which was released” today.

2006: The New Yorker published “Allice Off the Page” an essay in which Calvin Trillin “discusses his late wife.”

2007(8th of Nisan, 5767): Ninety-nine year old Berlin native Axel Gerhardt Rosin, the long-time president of the Book-of the-Month club, note philanthropist and husband Katherine Scherman passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/obituaries/28rosin.html

2008: “The Lemon Tree,” an Israeli film directed, produced and written by Eran Riklis was released today in Israel.

2008: Sammy Ofer donated £20 million to London's National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, as part of a £35 million program of expansion.

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents a lecture by Professor Robert Seltzer a professor of history at Hunter College and Director of the Hunter Interdisciplinary Program in Jewish Studies who answers the questions “Why was the State of Israel needed? What were the reasons behind its establishment by the Jewish Diaspora?”

2008: Haaretz reported that two of its writers Shmuel Rosner and Or Kashti were recently named winners of the B'nai B'rith World Center Award for Journalism for 2007 on the basis of their work for the paper. Rosner was awarded a certificate of merit for his current series, "The State of Judaism," which surveys trends among Jews in the United States. Kashti was awarded a certificate of excellence for a series on Jewish education in the U.S., France and Ukraine

2008: As President Georgi Parvanov of Bulgaria’s visit to Israel came to an end, Bulgaria accepted responsibility for the genocide of more than 11,000 Jews in its jurisdiction during World War II. The 11,000 Jewish victims were residents of Thrace in Greece and Macedonia in Yugoslavia, areas annexed to Bulgaria in April 1941.

2009: In Baltimore, Maryland B’nai Israel Synagogue presented a Friday night event featuring Philip J. Tulkoff, President, Tulkoff Food Products who delivered a talk entitled “Memories of Horseradish Lane and the Growth of Tulkoff Foods” in which he reminisced about “the good old days.” Thanks to the efforts of Lena and Harry Tulkoff that began in the 1920’s Tulkoff Horseradish Products Company became one of the nation's largest manufacturers of prepared horseradish products.

2009(2 Nisan, 5769): Eighty-six year old Irving R. Levine whose ever-present bow tie was his unique visual signature while he covered business and the economy for NBC News passed away. Unlike the blowhards and blow dried talking heads who read this news beat today, Levine understood the subject matter and conveyed it a low keyed professional manner. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/business/28levine.html

2010: Shabbat HaGadol

2010: Sidney Ferris Rosenberg, the radio personality who is the cousin of former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman “returned to WFAN hosting a show in Port St. Lucie before the New York Mets faced the Washington Nationals.”

2010: the Jewish Ensemble Theatre is scheduled to present Wendy Kesselman’s newly adapted version of The Diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, MI

2010: Opening of the “Legacy of the Shoah Film Festival” at John Jay College in New York City. The opening night features Forgotten Transports: Women’s Stories – Estonia, Children of the Night by Marion Wiesel and a discussion with the award-winning director Lukas Pribyl.

2011 Dr. Jane Katz “was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Commack, New York for her pioneering athletic contributions to the field of aquatics”

2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest including “Great Soul Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India” by Joseph Lelyveld and the recently released paperback edition of” Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” by Lori Gottlieb

2011: YU Center for Israel Studies, Yeshiva University Museum, YU Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies presented Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine.

2011: “Norman Gorbaty: To Honor My People,” exhibition at the Walsh Art Gallery is scheduled to come to a close at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Conn.

2011: “The Chosen” is scheduled to be performed at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC under the sponsorship of Theatre J.

2011: The Harry Houdini Exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York is scheduled to come to an end.

2011: The second annual Limmud Conference is scheduled to take place in Chicago, Illinois.

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor A Walking Tour of Old Jewish Alexandria.

2011: Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story and God & Co.are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “The Infidel” and “The Human Resources Manager” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “The Whipping Man,” featuring a Seder on the first night of Pesach as its dramatic hook, is scheduled to have its last performance at the City Center State in New York.

2011: Six gunmen in Sinai targeted the pipeline that carries natural gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan today, overpowering a guard and planting an explosive device before fleeing, The Associated Press reported.

2011: Bank Leumi and Hashava – The Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets ended months of arbitration by signing an agreement in which the bank will pay the company NIS 130.8 million, the two sides announced today. The money will go to heirs of Holocaust victims and toward projects that help Israeli Holocaust survivors – more than a quarter of whom live under the poverty line, according to government estimates.

2011(21st of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-five year old Bernard B. Roth; founder of South Gate-based World Oil Corporation passed away today.(As reported by Shan Li)

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/31/local/la-me-bernard-roth-20110331

2012: The 16th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end with a reception and a tango party.

2012: The Andy Statman Trio is scheduled to perform klezmer music at the Charles Street Synagogue.

2012(4thof Nisan, 5772): Eighty-two year old Baltimore born poet Adrienne Rich, whose father was a Jewish doctor passed away today (As reported by Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-and-author-dies-at-82.html?_r=2&hp

2012: Peter Guber became a minority owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers through his affiliation with Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC

2013(16thof Nisan): Second Day of Pesach

2013(16thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-five year old screenwriter Fay Kanin, the partner and wife of Michael Kanin, both of whom were blacklisted, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/arts/fay-kanin-95-writer-for-movies-and-tv.html?_r=0

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/31/fay-kanin

2013: “Jews of Egypt” a “controversial documentary on Egypt’s expulsion of its long-resident Jewish population opened” to at three movie theatres in Cairo and Alexandria “despite an initial effort by the Egyptian government to block its release.”

2013: The 23rdannual Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival is scheduled to open at the Haifa Municipal Festival Theatre Complex.

2013: Bulgaria will provide more evidence that Hezbollah planned the airport bus bombing that killed five Israelis in Burgas last year, and to use that proof to pressure the European Union to formally label the Iran-backed Islamist group a terrorist organization, Reuters reported today

2013: Some of Israel’s most sensitive computer information is stored on servers in a building above ground in the south of the country, acutely vulnerable to attack or natural disaster, a TV investigative report said today.

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

2014: In Boston, attendees of the Keshet Cabaret are scheduled to have the opportunity to bid on a personal voicemail from Sarah Silverman.

2014: “For the first time since 1993, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is scheduled to perform at Jones Hall in Houston.”

2014: “Malmö police arrest two teenagers, out of a gang of five, who attempted to break into the local Jewish community center. When they were stopped by security at the gate, they voiced anti-Semitic slurs, according to the police. They were also seen filming and taking pictures of the building before their arrest.” (As reported by Yair Rosenberg)

2014: Leon Botstein , the president of Bard College and the music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra for whom he is scheduled to conduct Max Bruch’s ‘Moses’ at Carnegie Hall

2014: Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism in partnership with the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London and The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is scheduled to host “No Stab in the Back!” Race, Labour and the National Socialist Regime under the Bombs, 1940-45”

2014: “The Israel Anti Fraud Unit said today that it is investigating former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is suspected of obstructing justice and witness tampering.”

2014:The IDF Northern Command announced today that it was changing its orders regarding opening fire in areas along the Golan border fence. Anyone from the Syrian side who comes near the fence should expect to be shot, the IDF said.

2014: Pears Institute for the study of Anti-Semitism in partnership with the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London and The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is scheduled to host the opening session of “Labour and Race in Modern German History”

2014: In commemoration of “the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the nationwide mass deportations in Hungary, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a screen of “Free Fall” a documentary that “explores the unique circumstances of the Holocaust in southern Hungary.”

2015: “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2015: “Cupcakes” a film “set in contemporary Tel Aviv” is scheduled to open at the Quad Cinema in NYC.

2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear in Westhampton Beach, NY.

2015: “The European Union kept Hamas on its terrorism blacklist today despite a controversial court decision ordering Brussels to remove the Palestinian Islamist group from the register.”

2015(7thof Nisan, 5775): Ninety-two year old George Spitz who made the New York Marathon what it is today passed away today.


2016: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host “New World Haggadah: A Passover Story for a Diverse America” featuring Ilan Stavans “one of today’s foremost interpreters of Jewish and Ladino cultures.”

2016: “A Tale of Love and Darkness” a cinematic adaptation of Amos Oz’s autobiographical novel is scheduled to be shown at the 20th annual Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.

2016: Tal Nitzán, “an Israeli award winning poet, writer, editor and a major translator of Hispanic literature” and “author of six poetry books, one novel and four children's book, and editor of three poetry anthologies, among them the ground-breaking anthology With an Iron pen": Hebrew Protest Poetry” is scheduled to appear at a bilingual poetry reading at the Cornelia Street Café.

2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Best Place on Earth: Stories by Ayelet Tsabari, Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America by Douglas Brinkley and Girls and Sex:Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein.

2017: JTS is scheduled to host “Wondering Jews: Abigail Pogrebin and Joseph Telushkin in Conversation.”

2017: “Almost a decade after losing billions of his clients’ money in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, hedge fund financier Charles Murphy leaped to his death today from the twentieth floor of Midtown Manhattan’s luxury Sofitel Hotel, in what is being described as a suicide” proving that the evil of this ultimate con man never seems to end. (As reported by Daniel J. Solomon)

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Shalom Italia” a film about “Italians brothers who reunite in the Tuscan mountains searching for the cave that save their lives.”

2017: In New York, “Re’ut Ben-Ze’ev, mezzo soprano, and the Beatrice Diener Ensemble-in-Residence at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University are scheduled to perform the work of Jewish composers with music by Martin Boykan, Edward Jacobs and the world premiere of Concertino No. 1 for Guitar and Chamber Ensemble by YU faculty composer David Glaser.”

2017: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present for talk by “Efrat Yerday on the contemporary parallel struggles of Ethiopian Jews in Israel/Palestine and Black Lives Matter in the US and on the struggles of black people against racism from a transnational perspective” entitled “Between Yosef Slamsa and Martin Luther King” The Ethiopian Jewish Struggle in Comparative Perspective.”

2018: Columbia Professor Todd Gitlin is scheduled to present “A 50-Year Perspective on the American Left” as part of the History Matters lecture series at the Center for Jewish History.

2018:  “Bye Bye Germany” and “1945” are scheduled to be shown at the Jacob Burns Film Center as part of the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2018: A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the leader was taken to hospital on Tuesday for tests following an illness.

2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled host a presentation by Rabbi Jerome K. Davidson and Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson on “All In The Family” which examines the relationship between Abraham and Isaac.

2018: From Israel to Iowa friends and family of Giora Neta celebrate the birthday of this staunch Zionist and a person of uncompromising beliefs.


2019: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present curator Jacob  Wisse as he leads “a tour of ‘Lost and Found,’” which explores “the remarkable story of a pre-war family photo album that was owned by a woman who was deported from the Kovno Ghetto in 1943.”

2019: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to “a book launch of Avrom Goldfaden and the Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theatre” featuring a talk by author Alyssa Quint.


2019: Robert Kraft and his attorney are scheduled to make a court appearance today in connections with charges with two charges of solicitation that allegedly took place in a Florida massage parlor.


2019: Following yesterday’s assault of incendiary balloons, Israelis are preparing to face another day of what is now a two pronged threat of violence from Gaza.

This Day, March 28, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 28

364: Roman Emperor Valentinian I appoints his brother Flavius Valens co-emperor dividing the Roman Empire between two rulers. Valens, The Emperor of the East “was an Arian and had suffered too severely from the powerful Catholic party to be interplant himself. He protected the Jews and bestowed honors and distinction upon them. Valentinian, who was Emperor of the West, also “chose the policy of tolerance in the struggle between Catholics and Arians, and permitted the profession of either religion without political disadvantage…” He extended this level of toleration to his Jewish subjects as well.

1038(20th of Nisan): Ravi Hai Gaon passed away

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112498/jewish/Rav-Hai-Gaon.htm

1193: On his way back from the Crusades, King Richard I of England becomes the prisoner of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. When it came time to pay his ransom, the Jewish community was forced to contribute 5,000 marks to the total.  This was more than three times the amount contributed by the entire City of London.

1285: Pope Martin IV passed away. “In 1281, Pope Martin IV” reminded “inquisitors that Jews should not be accused of encouraging converts to return to Judaism if all that was known that the Jews and converts had been engaged in conversations.” (For more see Between Christian and Jew by Paola Tartakoff)

1482: Lucrezia Tornabuoni the wife of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici passed away.  She was doubly unusual for a woman of her time.  First because she wrote poetry that was published and second because one of the subjects of her sonnets was Jewish – the Biblical figure of Esther.

1487: In Naples, Joseph Günzenhäuser printed “Psalms” with a commentary by Kimhi

1515: In Spain, in an example of how the Jews were treated,  Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda whose father “Juanito de Hernandez, was a marrano (Jewish convert to Christianity) and was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith” and his wife gave birth to Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada the future St. Teresa of Ávila

1537(16th of Nisan): King Sigismund I of Poland issued a decree granting a monopoly of importation and publication of Hebrew books to the Helitz brothers who had established the first Hebrew printing press in Poland. The Jews resisted the edit since the Helitz brothers had converted to Christianity.

1592: Birthdate of Czech educational reformer John Comenius. Three hundred years later, the imperial government would thwart plans by Czech nationalists to celebrate his birth which would lead to mob violence that would eventually be directed against the Jewish quarter of Prague.

1610(4th of Nisan): Rabbi Ben-Zion Zarfati of Venice passed away.

1744: In New York City, Isaac Mendes Seixas and Rachel Franks Levy gave birth to Moses Mendes Seixas.

1737: Joseph Suess Openheimer (Jud Suess), former confidential adviser to Karl Alexander, duke of Wuerttemgerg, was interrogated for the first time by a judicial examiner preparing an indictment on charges of high treason, violation of the constitution, and oppression of religion.” Although the charges were totally bogus, he would be convicted and hung. He died a proud Jew reciting the Shema as he climbed the scaffold to his death. (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)

1763: In Philadelphia, Tabitha and Mathias Bush gave birth to Isaiah Bush

1795: As part of the Third Partition of Poland, the Polish Duchy of Courland ceased to exist when it became part of Imperial Russia. From 1772 until 1795 there were three successive partitions of the land that included Poland and Lithuania. The partitioning powers were Prussia, Austria and Hungary. Russia had gone to great lengths to limit its Jewish population. However, when it acquired its portion of Poland, it acquired a large Jewish population that it greeted with increasingly vicious anti-Semitism.

1797(1st of Nisan): Rabbi Saul Shiskes of Vilna, author of Shevil ha-Yashar passed away

1807: In London, Soloman and Sarah Polack gave birth to Joel Samuel Polack, the first Jew to settle in New Zealand (1830).

https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1p18/polack-joel-samuel

1818: Birthdate of Wade Hampton III the Confederate General and governor of South Carolina with whom Edwin Warren Moise served during the war.  In 1876, Moise supported Hampton in his run for governor and ran successful for the position of adjutant general on Hampton’s ticket.

1820: Birthdate of Italian author Moses Soave, the native of Venice who wrote biographies on 16th century Jewish poet Sara Copia Sullam, 16thcentury Portuguese physician Amatus Lusitanus, 16th century Italian physician Abraham de Balmes, 10th century Italian physician Shabbethai Donnolo and 16th century French born Italian scholar Leon de Modena.

1824: In Nachod, Bohemia, Joseph and Sulamith Mautner gave birth to Isaac Mautner.

1824(28thof Adar II, 5584): Ninety-five year old Solomon Pinto, the Yale graduate, soldier in the American Revolution and member of the Society of Cincinnati who was the son of Jacob and Thankful Pinto and the husband of Clarissa Pinto passed away today.

1825(9th of Nisan): Rabbi Jacob Zevi Yales, author of Melo ha-Roim, passed away

1826(19th of Adar II): Rabbi Jacob Kahana of Vilna, author of Ge’on Ya’akov passed away.

1827: In Mayence, Germany, Rabbi Samuel and Sophie Bondi gave birth to Hugo Bondi

1832(26th of Adar II, 5592): Sixty-nine year old mathematician Lazarus Bendavid passed away today in Berlin.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Bendavid,_Lazarus

1832: In Mlečice (modern day Czech Republic) Marcus and Maria Lobl gave birth to Jacob Lobl.

1840: Birthdate of Eduard Carl Oscar Theodor Schnitzer the German born Jewish doctor who converted to Islam and gain fame as Mehmed Emin Pasha, a prominent leader of the Ottoman Empire who served as governor of Egypt.  During his service, he would be captured by rebels and the international Emin Pasha Relief Expedition led by the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley would come to his rescue.

1843: In Heidingsfeld, Germany, Joseph and Nanny Rosenheim gave birth to Julius Rosenheim, the husband of Ida Rosenheim.

1849: Birthdate of French orientalist James Darmester

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4906-darmesteter-james

1850(15thof Nisan, 5610): Pesach

1851: In Neuilly-sur-Seine, Nathaniel de Rothschild and Charlotte de Rothschild (née de Rothschild) gave birth to Baron Arthur de Rothschild who bequeathed his artworks to the Louvre and “provided the prize money for the America’s Cup.”  (This date is provided by the Jewish Encyclopedia which conflicts with other sources.

1854: Great Britain and France declared war on Russia marking the start of the Crimean War. The Paris Treaty of 1858, concluding the war, granted Jews and Christians the right to settle in Palestine, forced upon the Ottoman Turks by the British for their assistance in the war effort. This decision opened the doors for Jewish immigration to Palestine.

1854: Two days after she had passed away, Hannah (Woolf) Falcke, the wife of Jacob Falcke with whom she had had ten children was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1857: According to reports published today, the Jews Hospital in New York has enough beds to care for 170 patients. Currently, approximately 50 of those beds are in use.

1858: Birthdate of Imar Boas, he native of Exin, Prussia, a specialist in abdominal medicine who also authored several works on the topic.

1861: "The Hebrew Son" is scheduled to be performed at the Winter Garden in NYC, “for the special delectation of our Judaic brethren.”

1863: During the U.S. Civil War, two Jews were arrested today on the Thomas A. Morgan while she was sailing from Fortress Monroe to Yorktown, on charges that they had a load of contraband goods in their possession

1864: In New York, the Assembly adopted a bill “authorizing the conveyance of property to the Hebrew Benevolent Society.”

1865(1stof Nisan, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1865: Thirty-four year Philadelphia native Myer Asch who had been serving with the Union Army since September of 1861 “was honorably discharged and mustered out with the rank of brevet Colonel of United States Volunteers” after spending most of the war with cavalry units of the Army of the Potomac except for the six months he spent as a prisoner in several Confederate prisons.

1865(1stof Nisan, 5625): Sixty-eight year old Leopold "Löbl Jünger" Strakosch the husband of Julia Strakosch passed away in Brno, Moravia.

1866: Birthdate of Leon Kahn who was interred in the Jewish cemetery at Morgan City, LA when he passed away.

1867: A meeting was held today in Richmond, VA where the participants expressed their indignation at the decision by the insurance companies “to take no more ‘Jew Risks.’” Those in attendance, many of whom were Jews, adopted resolutions stating that they would not do business with any company that took such action. The Mayor of Richmond, Joseph C. Mayo, told the meeting that he had been in the insurance business for several years and had most of his dealings with Jews whom he described as upright and “honest in their conduct.” While serving as prosecuting attorney, he could only think of three Jews who had been brought before and while sitting with them while serving in the City Council “he had found them trustworthy.”

1868: In Chicago, Charles and “Fanny Louise (Powers) Hapgood” gave birth to Norman Hapgood, the author of The Inside Story of Henry Ford’s Jew-Mania


1868: Birthdate of Simon Oscar Pollock, the native of Minsk who was forced to flee the United States in 1890 because of his political activities along with his wife Julia Moschowitz where he pursued a career as a lawyer, author and counsel to the Political Refugees Defense League.

1869(16th of Nisan, 5629): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer.

1873: After accusations of ritual murder surfaced in Turkey, letters were sent to the Christians leader in Marmara, Gallipoli, Bursa , Salonica, Smyrna, Manisa, Chios, Adrianople, Janina, Silistria and other cities to warn of this behavior. The letters were formulated by the Turkish Jewish leadership in conjunction with the Greek Patriarch.

1873: Three days after he had “died at Matlock Bath Derbyshire,” Abraham Mocatta, the son of Daniel Mocatta and wife of Evelina Mocatta was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1875: It was reported today that Rabbi Brettenheim of Baltimore’s Howard Street Congregation recently officiated at the wedding of Rosa Stern, daughter of the later Bernhard Stern and Mr. Solomon Hochschild.

1876(3rd of Nisan, 5636): Eighty-year old Hungarian born violinist Joseph Böhm “who was a member of the string quartet, which premiered Beethoven's 12th String Quartet” and “a director of the Vienna Conservatory” passed away today.

1877(14th of Nisan, 5637): Fast of the First Born

1878: In New York City, “Babetta (née Newgass) and German-born immigrant Mayer Lehman, one of the three brothers who cofounded the Lehman Brothers investment banking firm” gave birth to Herbert Henry Lehman who served as Lt. Gov., Gov. and U.S. Senator from New York.

http://library.columbia.edu/locations/rbml/units/lehman/biography.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/nyregion/herbert-lehman-biography.html?_r=0

1878: Birthdate of Abraham Walkowitz, the Siberian born “American painter grouped in with early American Modernists.

http://rogallery.com/Walkowitz_Abraham/Walkowitz-bio.htm

http://www.askart.com/artist/Abraham_Walkowitz/30115/Abraham_Walkowitz.aspx#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Walkowitz#/media/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Isadora_Duncan_29_-_Abraham_Walkowitz.jpg

1880(16th of Nisan, 5640): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1880: Birthdate of Louis Wolheim the multi-lingual Cornell football player who was fluent in Yiddish who gained fame as an actor in silent films, Broadway and finally in talkies including “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

1880: It was reported today that in Tula, Orel, and Kharkoff , the Russian government has “ruthlessly expelled” the Jews who have established businesses over the last several years.

1880: It was reported today that instead of improving the conditions of his Jewish subjects, the Czar has begun treating them with “increased severity.” The Jews have been forced to claim that they are Protestants to avoid be expelled from St. Petersburg by the police.

1880: It was reported today that an international conference is going to be held at Madrid aimed at adopting measures to protect the Jews of Morocco.

1880: It was reported today that the Jewish Messenger has expressed its gratitude for the influence the United States has exerted on behalf of the Jews of Morocco. The paper views the United States diplomat serving in Morocco as “the best and most powerful friend the Jews of that country have.”

1881: Rabbi Nachum Levison of Safed, Palestine, and his wife gave birth to Sir Leon Levison, “the first chairman of the board of directors of the publishing house of Marshall, Morgan and Scott, the founder of relief funds for Russian Jews and Palestine Jews and the first President of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance who in 1908 married Kate Barnes, the daughter of John Barnes.

1882: A pogrom begins in the largely Jewish town of Balta, in Podolia, Russia.

1883: Jennie E. Lyman, a young gentile girl from Cleveland, Ohio, married Max Rosenberg while studying in New York City unbeknownst to her parents.

1884: Samuel Shrimski completed his term as a member of the New Zealand Parliament of Oamaru.

1889: Birthdate of Russian native Harry Cassman the prominent Atlantic City lawyer and “longtime leader of Beth Israel “who, in late 1923, founded what is now Jewish Federation of Atlantic & Cape May Counties with a group of local Jewish leaders and who was the husband of Celia Cassman and the father of Elaine Cassman McGee.

http://www.jewishvoicesnj.org/news/2015-09-16/Voice_at_the_Shore/I_will_always_have_sand_in_my_shoes.html

1890: Birthdate of Joseph Irving Pascal the native of Kovno who came to New York City in 1901 where he earned two degrees at Columbia before graduating from the Rochester School of Optometry.

1890: Rabbi Gottheil will officiate at the funeral of Emanuel Bernheimer one of the oldest members of Temple Emanu-El and Rabbi Silverman will officiate at the graveside services when the deceased is interred in the Salem Field Cemetery.

1891: Edward Lawrence Levy of England won the first World Weightlifting Championship which had been organized by the International Weightlifting Federation.

1892: The newly elected officers of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association are Joseph Blumenthal, President; M.I. Asch of Philadelphia, Vice President; Simon Heizig, Vice President; Daniel P. Hays and Jacob Singer of Philadelphia, Secretaries. 

1892: L'Osservatore cattolico, reported that a leading German anti-Semite has thanked them and their extensive reporting on the crimes of the Jews "for having furnished him with such good scientific material" to him and his conservative political party.

1893: Joseph H. Senner was appointed Commissioner of Immigration at New York which means he will be charge in Ellis Island, the entry point for tens of thousands of eastern European Jews – a position formerly filled by Colonel Weber.

1893: Birthdate of Arnold Rice Rich, the native of Birmingham, Alabama, graduate of U. Va. And Johns Hopkins Medical School who served as Chairman of the Department of Pathology and pathologist-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital  from 1944 to 1958 during which time he was married to “pianist and composer Helen Jones with whom he had two children – Adrienne and Cynthia.

1895: The Monte Relief Society hosted a grand cakewalk at the Terrace Garden tonight.

1896(14thof Nissan, 5656): Shabbat HaGadol; In the evening, the first Seder

1896: Over 150 poor Jewish immigrants from a variety of European countries took part in a Seder at the Hebrew Sheltering House on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. There was no charge for the Seder. The Hebrew Sheltering House also provided meals throughout the holiday at no charge.

1896: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil conducted Passover services this evening at Temple Emanu-El.

1896: Herzl took part in the Seder of the Zionist student association "Unitas".

1896: “Mll. Marsy’s Testimony” published today described the appearance of one of the key witnesses in the case brought by the state against ten conspirators including Armand Rosenthal to blackmail Max Lebaudy, the son of a wealthy sugar refiner.  Before his arrest, Rosenthal used the pen name Jacques Saint Cere in his role as correspondent for Le Figaro and The New York Herald.

1897: M.S. Isaacs, the President of the Board of the Baron de Hirsch Fund presided over a meeting held at Temple Emanu El in New York which was also attended by Emanuel Lehman (Tea surer), Julius Goldman (Secretary), Henry Rich, James Hoffman, William B. Hackenberg and Judge Myer Sulzberger of Philadelphia.

1897: “Mucha’s famous Sarah Bernhardt cartoon” is among the works that will be shown at the poster exhibit sponsored by the Albany Club that is opening today.

1897: Birthdate of Lewis Coleman Cohen a “Labour councilor on the Brighton Borough Council”

1897: “The United Brothers,” a Jewish fraternal organization, celebrated its 50thanniversary “at the Grand Central Palace…with a reception this afternoon and a banquet followed by a ball this evening.”  Among the speakers were Marks Fishel, George Hahn, Judge Joseph E. Newburger and Jacob Marks.

1899: Three days after she had passed away, Dinah Solomons, the widow of Morris Solomons was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1899: “Boys Call On The Mayor” published today described an unscheduled visit six Jewish boys paid on the Mayor of New York. The boys were members of the City History Club of the Educational Alliance and they hold “his honor” that they were studying the history of the city and they thought they “would like to meet its ruler.” The mayor gave them each an autograph and then had a policeman give them an escorted tour of city hall.

 

1900(29th of Adar II, 5660: Mendel Hirsch, the eldest son of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch passed away. Born in 1833, he Bible teacher and commentator as well as a poet. After receiving his PhD in 1854, he taught at a school founded by his father. Several of his articles were published in the monthly magazine Jeshrun. His daughter Rachel Hirsch was the first woman to be appointed as a professor of Medicine in Prussia.

1900: Joseph Solomon, the “Deal, Kent” born son of Moses and Sarah Solomon was buried today at the “Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.”

1901(8th of Nisan, 5661): Eighty three year old German physician turned poet and dramatist Max Ring who “in 1856 married Elvira Heymann, the daughter of publisher Karl Heymann passed away today in Berlin.

1901: Birthdate of Charles E. Smith, a Russian immigrant who became a successful real estate developer in Rockville, MD where he is philanthropies included the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School

1902: Birthdate of violinist Paul Godwin. Born Pinchas Goldfein in Poland, Godwin first gained fame playing under that name in his native country. He moved to the Netherlands where his career flourished under the name of Godwin. Godwin miraculously survived the Holocaust. A virtuoso in his day, his works are largely unknown to modern audiences.

1903: As part of another meeting with the Commission, Herzl, Goldsmid and Stephens visit Lord Cromer. He states that the Zionists should now demand the concession from the Egyptian government. He recommends that they engage lawyer named Carton de Wiart, to assist in this endeavor.

1903: In Bohemia, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mordko Serkin and his wife gave birth to pianist Rudolf Serkin who first performed in the United States in 1933 before making it his permanent home in 1939

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/10/obituaries/rudolf-serkin-88-concert-pianist-dies.html

1904(12th of Nisan, 5664): Dr. Abraham B. Arnold, a graduate of Washington University School of Medicine who was “granted a certificate to practice in California in 1890” passed away today in San Francisco

1905: Birthdate of Baltimore native Eli Baer, the University of Maryland trained attorney who was active in the Democrat Party, B’nai B’rith and the National Conference of Jews who lived to the age of 99.

1905: In Pittsburgh, PA, Henry Berman who served as a general manager at Universal Pictures and his wife Julie gave birth to producer Pandro Samuel Berman.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-pandro-s-berman-1329133.html

https://www.geni.com/people/Pandro-Berman/6000000009487972908

1906: “Judge Cohen Tells Jews of Their Weaknesses” published today included a warning from the New York jurist that “rich Jews…can get to be a pretty arrogant sort of person” who need to avoid being “purse proud” while Oscar Straus countered that Jews are sometimes mistaken as being materialistic because they “have been so hard-pressed and have had to struggle so hard” to make a living when in fact “the Jew was remarkable for his high ideals.”

1906: Birthdate of Stanley “Tex” Rosen, the captain of the Rutgers University football team and tailback for Buffalo Bisons in the embryonic days of the NFL who went on to coach at Perth Amboy, NJ.

1907: Jews on the Lower East Side sponsored a benefit performance in a Bowery theatre this evening with the funds to go to starving people in China. Local Chinese had raised thousands of dollars to relieve the suffering of Russian Jews and the Jews were responding in kind. The turnout was less than expected because many of the Jews were preparing for Passover which begins tomorrow night and since the performance was in Yiddish, Chinese patrons would not have been able to understand the performance.

1907: As violence bordering on revolution continues in Romania, the peasants in Northern Moldavia are reportedly prepared to renew their plundering and pillaging at the start of Passover, if the government does not fulfill all of its promises. This does not give the government much time to act since Passover begins tomorrow evening, March 29, 1907.

1908: Ein Walzertraum (A Waltz Dream) an operetta by Oscar Straus opened at the Hicks Theatre in London today.

1908: Birthdate of Isaak Kikoin the physicist who won both the Stalin and Lenin prizes and who played a key role in the development of the Soviet atomic program. He was born at Žagarė the same town that was the birthplace of Rabbi Israel Salanter and American labor leader Sidney Hillman.

1909: Birthdate of Hynek Abraham who was deported from Prague to Terezin in 1942 and in 1944 from there to Auschwitz where he was murdered.

1909: In Detroit, Michigan, Goldie (née Kalisher) and Gerson Abraham gave birth to Nelson Ahlgren Abraham who was raised in Chicago where he gained fame as author Nelson Algren.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/books/review/nelson-algren-biography-mary-wisniewski.html?ref=headline&nl=bookreview&emc=edit_bk_20161111&_r=0

1911: Jacob Z. Lauterbach was “elected” as a Professor of Talmud at Hebrew Union College.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0186/ms0186.html

1911: Max Florin’s black and white photo was printed in thumbnail size, along with a one-paragraph story” published today under the headline, “His Friends Think He Was Rescued.”

1912: Constantin C. Arion, who as the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs would say that his “Government would grant rights to the Jews in accordance with the peace treat” and that the Government “would completely abolish Article 7 of the Rumanian Constitution” which states that “Jews in Rumania are aliens and that naturalization is only possible for them individually” began serving as Minister of Administration and Interior of Romania today.

1913(19thof Adar II, 5673): Thirty-eight year Viennese born pianist and composer Erich Wolf passed away in New York City today.

1913(19thof Adar II, 5673): Forty-four year old Rudolphn Beck, a Professor of Surgical Anatomy at the Chicago College of Dental Surgery passed away today.

1914: Birthdate of Oscar winning screen writer Edward Anhalt

1914: Birthdate of Philadelphia native and NYU undergrad Samuel J. Gelman, “the executive vice president of the Jewish Hospital and Medical Center of Brooklyn who had “received his medical degree from Anderson College in Glasgow,” served and in the British military during WWII and raised three children – Leonard, Sheila and Joyce – with his wife, “the former Judith Fabian Brieger.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/08/03/archives/samuel-gelman-hospital-official-vice-president-of-jewish-medical.html

1915: Birthdate of Jacob Harold Levison, the native of McDonald, PA, who gained fame as Oscar winning song writer Jay Livingston.

1915: During World War I, The Holland-America liner Maastendyk arrived in Amsterdam today from New York carrying ten pounds of Matzoth which were to be shipped to Rabbi Bernard Pressen in Berlin. As part of the laws adopted to conserve resources for the war effort, the German government had issued an order banning the use of wheat for making Matzah, so the Rabbi was depending on this shipment from the United States for his Seder. At this point in the war, both the Netherlands and the United States were neutral so no laws were being violated by sending goods to Germany.

1915: Judge Nathaniel E. Harris, who will become Governor of Georgia on May 1stcommented on the Leo Frank case saying “the Supreme Court will not be through with the case until some days after I take office and it is quite possible that I may never be asked to pardon Frank.”

1915: The American Jewish Relief Committee issued a special appeal for funds needed to alleviate the suffering of Jews caught in war-torn Europe. With Passover starting tomorrow evening, the committee invoked holiday motifs in its appeal. Responding to the appeal would be a fitting response to the words of the Haggadah, “let all who are hungry come and eat; let all al that are needy come and celebrate the Passover.”

1915: In “Russia of Today and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” published today French author Jean Finot presents a portrait of a “civilized Russia” that has been erroneously portrayed as Cossack barbarians by Germans – a portrait that includes the statement that “Jews, Moslems and Christians live together in harmony” and that “Jews” among others “should feel convinced that their martyrdom will cease when normal life is resumed and Germany decisively defeated” – statements that stand at odds with those who know a different reality of the Russian Jewish experience.

1916: In South Africa, Nathan Adelstein and Rosie Cohen gave birth to Dr. Abraham Manie “Abe” Adelstein “who became the Chief Medical Statistician of the United Kingdom.”

http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/31

1916: “Only one young man took the competitive exam today for the appointment to United States Naval Academy from Representative Isaac Siegel’s Congressional District” which is a bit unusual because in the past there have been six or seven candidates to take the exam.

1916: “Relics from Palestine” and several European art works were on sale at tonight’s sessions of the Jewish relief bazar which has raise $100,000 as of tonight.

1917: As the British forces advanced in Palestine, the Jews of Tel Aviv and Jaffa were expelled by the Turks. The Turks were sure that the Jews were secret (and not so secret) allies of the British Army. Tel Aviv had been founded by Jews eight years earlier and was truly the only all Jewish city in existence at the time.

1917: Leo Motzkin of Kiev, “one of the leading Zionists publicists and the head of the international press  bureau” which played a key role in gaining an acquittal of Mendel Bellis said today in New York “that he was confident that the Russian Revolution would mean the ultimate liberation of the Jews and unprecedented progress for the Zionist movement.”

1917: Dr. B.E. Shatzky told a group of American businessmen “at a luncheon give under the auspices of the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce at the Hotel Biltmore” “aroused great enthusiasm when he declared that ‘through a glorious bloodless reconstruction all class and racial barriers, including discriminations again the Jews in Russia had disappeared forever at one blow. The Jewish question is now settled by Russian democracy, once and forever.’”

1917: The second concert of the Schola Cantorum given tonight at the Carnegie Hall included “two traditional Yiddish songs” – “Auram” and “Eili,” an “incantation sung by Russian, Polish and New York Jews based on” synagogue melodies.

1917: “The Times Riga correspondent wrote today, “I am grieved to state that the Jews are not behaving well.  They have become citizens of free Russia but they do not display a sense of responsibility befitting their new positions.  Similar complaints had reached me at Petrograd.  Hotheaded, hysterical Jewish youths are playing into the hands of worse than demagogues and Russia’s external enemies….If anarchy comes to Russia, there bound to be reaction in which the Jews will be the first sufferers.” CF

1918(15thof Nisan, 5678): The last Pesach of World War I

1918: While serving with the 1st Australian Infantry Brigade, thirty-two year old Leonard Maurice Keysor who had already earned a Victoria Cross was wounded was wounded today during fighting on the defensive Méricourt-Sailly-Le-Sec line and temporarily evacuated

1918: During World War I, as Jews begin to observed Passover they will have to deal with food shortages brought about the food conservation rules of the United States Administration which means that there is a thirty percent reduction in the amount of matzoth and increase in the cost of mutton which has risen from six to seven cents a pound in 1917 to 11 to 12 cents per pound this year.

1918: Based on information supplied by the Jewish Welfare Board, “Jewish families in the vicinity of army and navy cantonments” are scheduled to act as hosts for Jewish soldiers and sailors” for a second day so they may observe Passover.

1918: At Temple Israel of Harlem, Rabbi M.H. Harris delivered a sermon “Passover and the Present Crisis.

1918: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and CCNY grad Harry Minkoff, the veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, founder of Gift-Pax and husband of Ruth Minkoff with whom he raised three children – Jane, Larry and George – and who was an active member of Temple Beth El in Great Neck and the UJA Federation of New York.

1918: During Passover services today at Ohab Zedek Synagogue, Rabbi Bernard Drachman “appealed to the Jews of America to give their adopted land their assistance and full cooperation.”

1919: Birthdate of composer Jacob Avshalomov. Born in Tsingtao China, Avshalomov, was the son of the famous Russian composer Aaron Avshalomov. Avshalomov moved to the United States in 1937 where he pursued his musical career. He also provided a haven in the United States for his more famous father after World War II.

1919: Today Captain J. M. Loughborough, a member of the committee preparing for the return of the 77th Division, “praised the record made by Jewish boys from the east side whose deeds…had been rewarded by official recognition in many cases from their divisional commander and General Pershing” and “declared that New York should be proud of the 14,006 Jewish boys in the Metropolitan Divison.”

1921(18th of Adar II, 5681): Fifty-two year old Julia Wormser Seligman the former of wife of Jefferson Seligman from whom she had been divorced for several years, passed away today in New York City.

1921: In Chelsea, Massachusetts, “Abraham Fradkin, who came from Russia, and the former Eva Steinberg, from Poland” gave birth to their seventh and young child Irving Fradkin the optometrist who founded the Dollars for Scholars Program. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/irving-fradkin-died-scholarship-america.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

1921: In Hanover, Germany, Sendel and Riva Grynszpan gave birth to Herschel Grynszpan the alleged assassin of Ernst vom Rath whose death was the pretext for Kristallnacht.

1921: Birthdate of Jerzy Bielecki the Polish member of the resistance who was named a righteous gentile by Yad Vashem. (As reported Dennis Hevesi)

1921: In Jerusalem, Churchill met with Abdullah ruler of Transjordan who sought to have an Arab Emir (himself) appointed to rule Palestine saying that this was the best way to avoid violence between Arabs and Jews. Churchill sought to reassure the Abdullah, that his fears were groundless. He told him that if Abdullah would not oppose Jewish settlement west of the Jordan, he would not have to worry about Jewish settlements east of the Jordan in Transjordan.

1926: “Jews of Poland Again Face Periods of Want” published today described the “adverse economic condition that have undone much the past relief work which has left one million people in need of aid that can only met by charitable giving from the United States.

1927: Six years before the Nazis came to power Fraud Ludendorff, the wife Erick Ludendorff, the Quartermaster General of the Kaiser’s army in WW I took the lecture platform in Berlin where she declared that “Freemasonry and Jesuitism are adding the Jewish race to subdue and enslave the Germans and all the Nordic races.”

1928: The Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for Komzet of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews." The decree meant "a possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the territory of the called region.

1928(6th of Nisan): Rabbi Dan Plotzki, author Kelei Hemdah, passed away

1928: In Berlin, Johanna "Hanka" Grothendieck, Johanna "Hanka" Grothendieck, the Chassi turned anarchist gave birth to French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/math-great-grothendieck-son-of-jewish-nazi-victim-dies-at-86/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/world/europe/alexander-grothendieck-math-enigma-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1930: In Paris, “English political activist Marion Cave and Carlo Rosselli, the scion of “a wealthy Tuscan Jewish family” and “anti-fascist activist” gave birth to poet Amelia Rosselli, the granddaughter of Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, a Venetian Jewish feminist, playwright, and translator from a family prominent in the Italian Risorgimento, the movement for independence.

1930:  In Chicago, Russian Jewish immigrants Lillian Warsaw and Selig Friedman, “a sewing machine salesman gave birth to Jerome Isaac Friedman, the physicist who co- discovered the quark and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990.

1930: Birthdate of Albert S. Ruddy, the native of Montreal who was raised in New York and began work in film and television only after finding out that a career in architecture and construction was not for him.

1932: The first Maccabiah athletic games took place in Tel Aviv with representatives from 14 countries.

1933: The German Bishops' Conference bestowed a new level of acceptance of Hitler and the Nazis when the church leaders “conditionally revised prohibition of Nazi Party membership.”]

1934(12thof Nisan, 5694): Sixty-nine year old Russian born Louis Zuro, the younger brother of textile Aron Surasky, the father of the late Josiah Zuro, the music direct at Pathe motion picture studio and the husband of Leah Zuro, who began working on productions of Hammerstein’s grand operas in 1910 and organizing free Sunday concerts in 1924 passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/03/29/95038244.pdf

1934: Word of “Boycott Day” leaks out causing prices on the Berlin Stock Exchange to drop. Responding to economic reality Hitler decides that Boycott Day will go forward, but will last only for one day instead of serving as the kickoff day for an on-going boycott of Jewish businesses and professionals designed to destroy the economic well-being of Germany’s Jewish population.

1934: Rogers and Effie D. Pinner sold their house at 39 Riggs Place in South Orange, NJ.

1935: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia attended the formal opening of Reuben’s Restaurant and Delicatessen on East 58th Street in New York City.

1936: “The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee estimated” today that “the number of refugees from Germany to various European countries since the beginning of the Hitler regime totaled 58,837” of which 25,000 went to France and 5,837 went to Holland.

1936: “Poland Passes Meat Act” published today described the passage by the Polish Senate of a government bill designed “to break a Jewish monopoly in meat butchering” by permitting “the ritual slaughtering of animals to the extent of the amount necessary for Jews.”  (Editor’s note – considering the blatant anti-Semitism of the Polish government including their attempts to ‘deport’ their Jewish population the motives of this bill expressed by the government are disingenuous to say the least.)

1936: “The high-geared Nazi party machine has undertaken” measures “to compel every eligible voter…to go the polls” tomorrow where only “yes” votes will be counted.

1937(16th of Nisan, 5697): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1937: Twenty-six Polish Jews who was been arrested “for communistic activities” were sent to concentration camps today.

1937: “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of New York, the President of the American Jewish Congress and Canon Anson Phelps Stokes of Washington Cathedral…agreed tonight in a panel discussion at the Town Hall of Washington that knowledge and faith were the great requisites for combating religious persecution.”

1937: In “Birobidjan Called Place of Promise” Jacob M. Budish “one of the founders of Ambijan, an organization supporting the settlement of Jews in Biro-Bidjan, in eastern Siberia” described progress being made in this region where American Jewish organizations have received permission to settle one thousand families.  (Editor’s note – This Jewish region was an attempt by the Soviets to compete with the establishment of the Jewish home in Palestine and came before Stalin returned to the anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia.)

1938: Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen had a formal opening at 6 East 58th Street which was attended by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in attendance. It stayed at this location for three more decades until it was sold in the mid-1960s, afterwards moving to a location at 38th Street and Madison Avenue.

Arnold Reuben, a German immigrant, had first opened the restaurant in 1908 on Park Avenue Eight years later, the restaurant moved Broadway and in 1918 it moved again, this time Madison Avenue.

1938: Birthdate of businessman Leonard Stern former owner of the Village Voice and head of Hartz Pet Supply.

1938(25thof Adar II, 5698): Six Jewish passengers were killed by Arabs while traveling from Haifa to Safed.

1938: Bronislaw Huberman leaves The Hague as he prepares to move to Tel Aviv where he will conduct the newly formed Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra.

1941: Birthdate of Jacques Masson, a French Mizrahi Sephardic Jew of Bukharian ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger the product of an Ashkenazi family gave birth to Jeffrey Masson, the author of The Assault on Truth, a controversial book about Freud and psychoanalysis.

1942: The first transport of French Jews to Auschwitz began. This represented one of the first transports of Western Jews to the Death Camps. The Jews were from Paris and were rounded up with the help of the French Police. One of the popular myths of World War II was that the French people were united in the Resistance to the Nazi occupation. In truth, there plenty of collaborators both in Vichy and the German occupied zones. This had tragic consequences for the Jews of France as well as Jews from other parts of Europe who had sought refuge there before the outbreak of the war.

1943: In San Francisco, Huntington Sanders Gruening, the son of Ernest Gruening, and his wife gave birth to Alaska politician Clark S. Gruening.

1942: Major Paul Alfred Cullen, who had changed his name from Cohen to Cullen while serving in the Middle East in 1941, arrived in Ceylon today.

1942: Anne Frank wrote a poem today that began

If you did not finish your work properly,

And lost precious time,

Then once again take up your task

And try harder than before.

If others have reproached you

For what you have done wrong,

Then be sure to amend your mistake.

That is the best memory one can make.

 

1944(4th of Nisan, 5704): Rabbi Chayyim Most, Maggid of Kovono, was killed by the Nazis. Apparently Rabbi Most was a leader of outstanding character although there is little about him in the official records that I have found so far. He appears to have not been killed with most of the other Jews of Kovno; but met death at the same time that the remaining youngsters of the ghetto were slaughtered.

1944: Anne Frank and her family hear Gerrit Bolkestein, Education Minister of the Dutch Government in exile; deliver a radio message from London urging his war-weary countrymen to collect "vast quantities of simple, everyday material" as part of the historical record of the Nazi occupation. "History cannot be written on the basis of official decisions and documents alone," he said. "If our descendants are to understand fully what we as a nation have had to endure and overcome during these years, then what we really need are ordinary documents -- a diary, letters."

1944: The Irgun issued a statement today claiming credit for the attacks on police stations in Haifa, Jerusalem and Haifa. It also claimed that it had called ahead and left warnings about the impending attacks. The Irgun denied responsibility for shootings in Tel Aviv and blamed those on the Stern Gang.

1944: Colonel Paul Alfred Cullen, who would eventually reach the rank of Major General, today returned to Cairns where he was attached to the Headquarters of the New Guinea Force.

1945(14th of Nisan): Fast of the first born

1945(14thof Nisan): While serving with the Middlesex Regiment, Lt. Basil Seymour Cornell, the brother of Sgt. Michael Cornell of blessed memory, was “killed in action” while fighting in Germany.

1945: After having sustained a nighttime attack by a superior German force, Captain Baum and the remnants of his ill-fated  task force suffered further losses as they tried and failed to make their towards American lines.

1945: Birthdate of Israeli law professor Ruth Gaviszon.

1945: Members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8th Army celebrated a Seder in Faenza, Italy.

1945: Members of the Jewish Brigade's First Camouflage (PAL) Royal Engineers celebrated Pesach in Libya using” a specially designed haggadah of their very own. The cover page of the soldiers' haggada bears their unit's emblem - a long-tailed wolf, outstretched in the center of a Magen David, the tail protruding between a couple of the star's corners. On either side of the insignia is written the unit's name, in English on one side and in Hebrew on the other, the letters sitting in what looks like fluttering ribbons.” (As reported by Lydia Aisenberg)

1946: “The State Department released the so-called Acheson-Lilienthal Report which was co-authored by David Lilenthal, the Illinois born son of Jewish immigrants who was head of the TVA that “outlined a plan for international control of atomic energy.”

1947: As Jerusalem prepared for its 17th night under a twelve-hour curfew, Haim Salomon and Dr. Jacob Thon, representing the Jewish Community Council, met with Brigadier General J.F. Bedford-Roberts in attempt to get him to lift the ban on Jewish movement and commerce.

1947: An explosion and fire rocked the Iraq Oil Pipeline near its terminal in Haifa Bay today. Five youths dressed as Arabs whom authorities believe were really Jews are assumed to be responsible for the attack.

1947: Lt. Gen Sir Alan G. Cunningham, High Commissioner for Palestine and LT. Gen. G.H. Macmillan, commander of the British troops in Palestine, left London for Palestine this morning after having conferred with Prime Minister Atlee on a new “get tough” policy for Palestine.

1947: In Minsk, Genia and Hayim Wohlberg gave birth to Yosef Nezer Wholberg who made Aliyah in 1957 and perished aboard the INS Dakar at the age of 21.

1947: An announcement was made today that the United States has given its approval for a special session of the United Nations General Assembly to deal with the issue of Palestine. U.N. officials think that the session could take place sometime during the month of May.

1948(17thof Adar II, 5708): “Twenty-five Jews were killed and twenty-four were wounded in a thirty-hour fight” when 3,000 Arabs ambushed their convoy “south of Bethlehem in the Solomon’s Pools area”

1948(17thof Adar II, 5708): This afternoon “250 Arabs” armed “with two-inch mortars and light machine guns…ambushed a convoy of five truck and an armored car killing 45 Jews “at Kabriri, a village each of Nahariya.

1948: In a refugee camp at Prague, Samuel Freilich, a lawyer and rabbi from Munkács, in the Carpathian Ruthenia and Ella (Wieder) Freilich, who along with her husband had survived both Auschwitz and Dachau gave birth to Hadassah Freilich who gained fame as Hadassah Lieberman, the wife of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman who ran for Vice President on the ticket with Al Gore.

1948: On his radio show, Jack Benny hits the laughter jackpot with the immortal “Your money or your life” bit.

1949: James Grover McDonald, the first United States Ambassador to Israel presented his credentials today

1950(10thof Nisan, 5710): Sixty-year old Mathematician Ernst David Hellinger, the Silesian born son of Emil and Julie Hellinger who was rescued from Dachau and fortunate enough to join the faculty of Northwestern University in suburban Chicago passed away today.

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095929484

1950(10th of Nisan, 5710): Fifty seven year old WW I Veteran and American Diplomat Laurence Adolph Steinhardt died in a plane crash today while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Canada.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/lasteinh.htm

1956(16thof Nisan, 5716): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1956(16thof Nisan, 5716): Sixty-seven year old Tilly Newman, the wife of Joseph Newman passed away today and was buried in the Ella Street Cemetery.

1958: “Satan’s Satellites” a film version of the 1952 serial “Zombies of the Stratosphere” which featured Leonard Nimoy in one of his first cinematic roles was released today.

1959: “Davy Jones’ Locker” a musical with lyrics by Mary Rogers opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre.

1960: Birthdate of Uri Orbach, the native of Petah Tikva who became an author and politician who served as Pensioner Affairs Minister.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-jewish-home-minister-uri-orbach-dies-at-54/

1960: The Philadelphia Inquirer described the presentation of a Kiddush Cup to Rabbi Harry B Kellman by congregation president Morris E. Albert marking the 40thanniversary of Congregation Beth El in Camden, NJ.

1961: “Funeral services were held today for Brooklyn born Jewish communal leader Mitchell who “served in Congress in 1899 to 1901” and who was also a justice of the New York State Supreme Court.

1962: “In a speech at the Golden Anniversary Banquet of the Institute of Radio Engineers at the Waldorf Astoria,” “David Sarnoff, chairman of the board of the Radio Corporation of America urged…that the West organize what he called a free world community of science to meet and defeat the challenge of Communist bloc technology.”

1963: “The first Broadway production of ‘Mother Courage,’” a play written “in response to the invasion of Poland in 1939”  directed by Jerome Robbins and featuring Gene Wilder opened today at the Martin Beck Theatre.

1965: One day after he had passed away, “a funeral service is scheduled to be held this afternoon at the Jewish Memorial Chapel in Hackensack” New Jersey for sixty year old New Jersey born, Columbia Ph.D. “Israel E. Drabkin, chairman of the department of classical languages and Hebrew City College who married Miriam Frideman after his first wife Norma Lowenstein had died.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/03/28/97189720.pdf

1966: Birthdate of James Douglas Bennet, an American journalist whose mother was Jewish and who became editor-in-chief of the Atlantic in 2006.

1966(7thof Nisan, 5726): Sixty-four year old actress Helen Menken, the first wife of Humphrey Bogart, passed away today.

1969(9th of Nisan, 5729): Rabbi Aryeh Levin passed away. Born in 1895, Reb Aryeh, was an Orthodox rabbi dubbed the "Father of Prisoners" for his visits to members of the Jewish underground imprisoned in the Central Prison of Jerusalem in the Russian Compound during the British Mandate. He was also known as the "Tzadik ("saint") of Jerusalem" for his work on behalf of the poor and the sick.”

1969: President Dwight D Eisenhower died in Washington DC at the age of 78. Eisenhower was President during the Suez Crisis of October, 1956. In a rare of Cold War harmony, Ike sided with the Soviets. He allowed the Russians to threaten the British and the French with atomic attack if they did not withdraw from Suez in effect supporting the Nasser, the Egyptian dictator. After the fighting ended, he threatened the Israelis with economic destruction if they did not withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza. Gaza was a base from which Egyptian supported terrorists attacked Israel. The Israelis wanted to trade withdrawal from the Sinai for and to the Egyptians illegally barring Israeli vessels or vessels that stopped at Israeli ports from using the Canal. None of this seemed to matter to Eisenhower. Instead he chose to take actions that bolstered Nasser who repaid Ike’s kindness with an even more virulent anti-Western, pro-Soviet policy. At the same time, it should be noted that Eisenhower was horrified by what American troops found when they liberated the concentration camps during World War II and insisted that all of it be filmed immediately so that nobody could ever denied what had happened.

 

1969: In Miami Beach Marsha Pratts and Ronald Ratner gave birth to director Bret Ratner who was raised by restaurateur Alvin Malnik

1970(20thof Adar II, 5730): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Parah

1970(20thof Adar II, 5730): Eighty eight year old Nissen Telnshkin, the long rabbi at Congregation B’nai Yitzchok and leader of the Orthodox rabbinate passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/03/archives/rabbi-telushkin-88-orthodox-scholar.html

1970(20th of Adar II, 5730): Natan Alterman “an Israeli poet, playwright, journalist, and translator who - though never holding any elected office - was highly influential in Socialist Zionist politics, both before and after the formation of the state of Israel” passed away.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/natan-alterman

1974: Isaac Poltinikov, the “retired military ophthalmologist who was deprived of pension and rank following an application for exit visa for Israel two years ago and threatened by KGB with a trial on charge of parasitism” appealed to the American Congress of  Ophthalmologist’s.

1974(5th of Nisan, 5734): Sixty-eight year old Dorothy Fields “one of the great Broadway lyricists, who wrote popular songs for revues, films and shows for nearly 50 years” passed away  today.

http://www.dorothyfields.org/home.htm

1974: For English MP’s of the All-Party Parliamentary Committee for the Relief of Soviet Jewry today refused visas to Russia.

1975(16th of Nisan, 5735): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.

1975: Two bus bombing in Jerusalem resulted in 13 casualties in one case and none in the other as terrorists struck on that was holy to Christians and Jews – Good Friday and Pesach.

1975(16th of Nisan, 5735): German born political scientist Ernst Frankel passed away.

1977: Birthdate of Lauren Weisberger, the native of Scranton, PA author of The Devil Wears Prada which was later made into a successful movie.  (A book about a Jewess in the clothing industry – how novel a novel)

1977: The annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee opened today in Venice.

1978: The PLO leadership finally ordered a ceasefire today, after a meeting between UNIFIL commander General Emmanual Erskine and Yasser Arafat in Beirut

1980: The Eldridge Street Synagogue was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places

1980: U.S. premiere of “When Time Ran Out,” a disaster epic produced by Irwin Allen, with a script co-authored by Carl Foreman, with music by Lalo Schifrin and co-starring Paul Newman.

1981(22ndof Adar II, 5741): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Parah

1981(22ndof Adar II, 5741): Seventy-five year old Isaiah Trunk, the Polish born award winning author and “chief archivist of YIVO” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/01/obituaries/isaiah-trunk-author-of-a-history-of-jews-during-the-nazi-era.html

1981(22ndof Adar II, 5741): Fifty-nine year old Polish born and Boston University trained psychiatrist Dr. Jacob Swartz, the U.S. Army veteran and husband of Elinor Swartz with whom he raised four children – Marvin, Howard, Carol and Leslie – passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/01/obituaries/jacob-swartz-psychiatrist-dies-professor-wrote-widely-in-field.html

 1984: “The Last American Virgin” directed by Boaz Davidson and produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan was released in Norway today.

1985: Neil Simon's "Biloxi Blues" premiered in New York. The Jewish author wrote a hit play (and later successful movie) based on the clichéd collision between New York Jews and the U.S. Army during World War II.

1985(6th of Nisan, 5745): Marc Chagall passed away. Born on July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus), Chagall studied in St. Petersburg and then moved to Paris before World War I. He returned to Russia where he served for a time during the 1920's as art director for the Moscow Jewish Theatre. He left the Soviet Union in 1923 and moved back to France. Distinguished for his surrealistic inventiveness, he is recognized as one of the most significant painters and graphic artists of the 20th century. Many of his paintings draw upon his life as a Jew and use Jewish themes of which the Praying Jew is one of the most famous. His twelve stained glass windows at the Hadassah Hospital-Hebrew University Medical Center are another example of Chagall's open identification with his Jewish heritage. There are numerous cites where you can find out more about him and view his works. I cannot do justice to him in this limited space.

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

http://www.artnet.com/artists/marc-chagall/

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Marc-Chagall-1887-1985-6891

1986: 20thCentury Fox releases Lucas an “American teen tragicomedy film directed by David Seltzer and starring Corey Haim.”

1988: In Northridge, Los Angeles, Steven and Eileen Plata Kalish gave birth to major league outfielder Ryan Michael Kalish.

http://www.jewishbaseballnews.com/players/ryan-kalish/

1994(16th of Nisan, 5754): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.

1994(16th of Nisan, 5754): Russian born Playwright Eugene Ionesco passed away in Paris. Two of his more noted works were the Bald Soprano and The Rhinoceros.

1995(26th of Adar II, 5755): Eighty-six year old Sidney “Sid” Goldin the star basketball and tennis player at Georgia Tech and WW II Bronze Star winning Naval Officer “was a member of both the Georgia Tech Athletic and Georgia Tech Engineering Halls of Fame” passed away today.

1996: The Shamgar commission, the official Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, submitted its findings today.

1998: Arab Israeli politician, Haj Yahia entered the Knesset today as a replacement for Moshe Shahal. Upon taking his seat, he resigned his position as mayor of Tayibe.

1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback editions of "Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years Later" by Yehudi Menuhin and "Barney Polan's Game: A Novel of the 1951 College Basketball Scandals" by Charley Rosen.

1999: “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” a cinematic treatment of Jane Yolen’s novel of the same name that was turned into a screenplay by Robert J. Arech produced by Murray Schisgal and Fred Weintrub with an introduction by Dustin Hoffman was shown on Showtime for the first time this evening.

2000: The police recommend filing corruption charges against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara

2001: Canadian born Jazz musician and composer Moe Koffman passed away. He was accomplished on at least three woodwind instruments including flute, saxophone and clarinet.

2001(4th of Nisan, 5761): Itzhak Mr. Yaakov, known as the father of the Israeli technology industry, was quietly taken into custody by a special security division of the Defense Ministry

2001(4thof Nisan, 5761): Fifteen year old Eliran Rosenberg-Zayat and 13 year old Naftali Lanskorn were murdered by Hamas during a bombing at Mifgash HaShalom.

2002(15thof Nisan, 5762): Pesach

2002(15thof Nisan, 5762): “Rachel and David Gavish, 50, their son Avraham Gavish, 20, and Rachel's father Yitzhak Kanner, 83, were killed when a terrorist infiltrated the community of Elon Moreh in Samaria, entered their home and opened fire on its inhabitants. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.”

2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including "Bobby Fischer Goes To War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time" by David Edmonds and "John Eidinow and Hirschfeld’s Harlem with Illustrations" by Al Hirschfeld.

2005: “The Knesset again rejected a bill to delay the implementation of the disengagement plan by a vote of 72 to 39. The bill was introduced by a group of Likud MKs who wanted to force a referendum on the issue.”

2006: Delta Airlines launched a route from Ben-Gurion International Airport to Atlanta and is also competing on the Tel Aviv-Newark route with El Al and Continental Airlines.

2006: Publication of the paperback edition of Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany by Marthe Cohn whose sister was sent to Auschwitz and who was a decorated member of the “Intelligence Service of the French 1st Army.”

https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Enemy-Lines-French-Germany/dp/0307335909

2007: Shai Agassi resigned his position as President of the Products and Technology Group (PTG) at SAP AG. to pursue interests in alternative energy and climate change. In October 2007 would found a company named Project Better Place, focusing on a green transportation infrastructure based on electric cars as an alternative to the current fossil fuel technology

2008: In Jerusalem, The Bible Lands Museum in conjunction with the Rubin Academy of Music present Hot Slavic Winter – The Passion of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and more, as part of the Opera in the Morning series.

2008: With a theme of “Shake it up on Shabbat with your Shabbat Egg Shakers!” Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa sponsors its second Musical Shabbat. This is a testimony to the vitality of this small but vibrant outpost of the “whole house of Israel.”

2008: “21” a crime film based on Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich with a screenplay by Allan Loeb was released in the United States today.

2008: Three Kassam rockets were fired at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip, one of them hitting the outer wall of a preschool in one of the kibbutzim in the Sha'ar Hanegev region moments after the children were taken inside by their teacher.

2009(3rdof Nisan, 5769): Eighty-eight year old Janet Rosenberg Jagan, the wife and political partner of Cheddi Jagan who held numerous political offices in Gyuana including the presidency passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world/americas/30jagan.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/30/janet-jagan-guyana-america-marxist

2009: Jews all over the world begin reading the Book of Vayikra (Leviticus)

2009: In Iowa City, the U of I Hillel sponsors “Blintzes, Bubbly & Bingo” an enjoyable evening of food, drink, good company...and fabulous prizes!

2009: The Chicago Tribune reviews “Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb” by David Kushner

2010: An episode of the “Simpsons” titled "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed," is scheduled to be shown this evening. The episode includes scenes of Homer and Bart at the Western Wall with their Israeli tour guide, who will be voiced by British comedian Sascha Baron Cohen, of Borat and Bruno fame. In the episode, Homer gets "Jerusalem Syndrome" and believes that he is the Messiah. Also, the tour guide bickers and exchanges political barbs with Marge. In one scene, tour guide Jacob (Baron Cohen) presses the Simpsons for positive marks on a comment card. When Marge accuses him of being “pushy,” he snaps back, “Try living next to Syria for two months and see how laid back you are.”Ned Flanders, the Simpsons’ neighbor who has taken it upon himself to redeem Homer, is the one who invited the Simpsons on a Christian tour of the Holy Land.“[Flanders] feels that when Homer sees the sacred sites that he’ll become a good person,” Jean said in a phone interview. When the family visits the Western Wall, Bart reads some of the notes and responds, “Nope, not gonna happen.” At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Homer’s behavior gets Flanders banned for life. It is the Israeli hotel’s opulent breakfast buffet that appeals most to Homer. In the end, Producer Al Jean said, “Homer tries to unite the faiths through a message of peace and chicken because everybody eats chicken, no matter what religion they’re in.” “The Simpsons” have delved into Jewish subject matter in the past, including an adult bar mitzvah for Krusty the Clown (nee Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofski) and a 2006 “Treehouse of Horrors” segment titled “You Gotta Know When to Golem.” "This is an episode that people from all three religions will be equally offended by," said Simpsons producer Al Jean.

2010: Kathe Goldstein, “the musical voice” of Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is scheduled to hold a piano recital for the enjoyment of the senior citizens living at Meth-Wick House who would otherwise be bereft of such cultural pleasure.

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including "The Sabbath World" by Judith Shulevitz and "The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2010" by Edward Hirsch.

2010: The second and final day of The Legacy of the Shoah Film Festival is scheduled to take place at John Jay College in New York City featuring “Forgotten Transports: Family Stories – Latvia,” “Forgotten Transports: Men’s Stories – Belarus,” “Forgotten Transports: Fighting to Survive - Poland” and “Distant Journeys” by Alfred Radok

2010: Two Israeli soldiers killed in a firefight with Palestinian terrorists in the southern Gaza Strip were buried in separate ceremonies today. Thousands attended the funeral for Maj. Eliraz Peretz, who was on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. He is the father of four young children. His brother was killed in action in 1998. Staff Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky of the Golani Brigade, Staff Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky of the Golani Brigade, was buried later in the day.

2011(22ndof Adar II, 5771): Eighty-nine year old born author Abraham Rothberg, the holder of a masters in literature from the University of Iowa whose works included The Sword of Golem and the autobiographical novel The Song of David Freedand the husband of Esther Conwell passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/books/abraham-rothberg-who-wrote-of-golem-and-stalin-dies-at-89.html

2011: “The Simon Wiesenthal Center posthumously awarded Hiram Bingham IV their Medal of Valor in New York City with a film tribute” that showed how US Vice-Consul Bingham saved lives as the Nazis marched across western Europe.

 2011: A ruckus broke out in the lobby of the Supreme Court on today when right-wing activists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel hurled insults at Balad MK Haneen Zoabi as she came out of the courtroom. The judges had been debating the legality of a Knesset decision to strip her of some of her parliamentary rights.

2011: Evergreen is scheduled to perform a concert “Enchanted Celtic Music from Israel” sponsored by The Embassy of Israel, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and Sixth & I Historic Synagogue.

2011: “An Article of Hope” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts” and “Eichmann’s End: Love, Betrayal, Death” are scheduled to be shown at The Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: Under legislation approved unanimously today by the Maryland House of Delegates, SNCF must catalog and put online records relating to its transportation of 76,000 Jews and other prisoners from the suburbs of Paris to the German border from 1942 to 1944. (As reported by JTA)

2011: The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to host a lecture by Michael O’Hanlon entitled “The Limits of Foreign Policy: Reconsidering the Future Role of the U.S. In World Affairs

2012: Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and President of The Israel Project, is scheduled to discuss "The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership" with its author, Ambassador Yehuda Avner.

2012: In New York City, The Center for Traditional Music and Dance's An-sky Institute for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present the year's first installment of the Tantshoyz Yiddish Dance Party series, as part of the Sixth Street Community Synagogue's klezmer series.

2012(5thof Nisan, 5772): Eighty-two year old “Irving Louis Horowitz, an eminent sociologist and prolific author who started a leading journal in his field but who came to fear that his discipline risked being captured by left-wing ideologues” passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/nyregion/irving-louis-horowitz-sociologist-dies-at-82.html?_r=1&hpw

2013: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present Boris Sandler's Film "Yosef Kerler"

2013: The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Distinguished Speakers Series is scheduled to present “Those Angry Days’ Roosevelt, Lindberg, and America’s Fight Over World War II” featuring Lynn Olson and Tom Brokaw.

2013: Artists Ben Schacter and Yona Verwer are scheduled to lead a discussion of “It's a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond´ at the Yeshiva University Museum.

2013: “Jewish dead lie forgotten in East L.A. graves” published today” described a snapshot of a forgotten world as seen through Mt. Zion Cemetery

2013: The traditional Birkat Kohanim mass priestly blessing took place this morning at the Kotel.

2013: The escalation of Palestinian violence in the West Bank is reminiscent of the second intifada, but has not yet turned into a third one, Judea Brigade Commander Col. Avi Baluth told The Jerusalem Post today.

2014: “Finding Vivian Maier” a documentary about the photographer “executive produced by Jeff

Garlin” and co-starring Joel Meyerowitz which had premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival was released today in the United States today.

2014: In Chile, “an art school that promotes Nazi ideology scheduled to open today in the southern island of Chiloé.”

2014: Paramount is scheduled release the biblically based epic film “Noah” to the general movie-going public.

2014: Israel told the Palestinians it will not free the final batch of prisoners they had been expecting alongside US-brokered peace talks, a senior Palestinian official said today.

2014: This afternoon, “Under the Same Sun” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2015(8thof Nisan, 5775): Shabbat Hagadol

2015: In a speech given today the Grand Synagogue in Jerusalem, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin used language that led to accusations that he had compared President Obama to “Haman” – a comparison that did not negatively affect his career since three months later his “term as Chief Rabbi of Erfat was extended by five years.”

2015: In keeping with its annual tradition Congregation Agudas Achim is scheduled to hold Shabbat morning services at the home of Joseph and Kineret Zabner, to honor the Torah scroll which is a long-time family possession.

2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Garden of Laughs Benefit in NYC.

2015: “The Green Prince” and “Magic Men” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Film Festival.

2015: Sonia Kaplan, author of My Endless War, is scheduled her experiences during the Shoah at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015(8thof Nisan, 5775): Shabbat Hagadol

2015(8thof Nisan, 5775): Ninety-three year old Tony Award winning director Gene Saks passed away today.



2016: Today, “American Jewish comedian Roseanne Barr is scheduled to participate in a conference in Jerusalem about fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement.”

2016: Center for Jewish History, American Sephardi Federation, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to host a screening of “Watching the Moon at Night” a “documentary inspired by the historian Walter Laqueur explores the causes and consequences of terrorism and anti-Semitism around the globe.”

2017(1stof Nisan, 5777): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

2017: Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, “the leader of the so-called Jewish Faction, spoke during a rally in Jerusalem against the draft of the ultra-Orthodox community today.”

2017: The Jewish Women’s Archive sponsored “Good Girls and Nasty Women: Gender in American Jewish History” featuring Bonnie S. Anderson Lynn Povich, Rebecca Traister and moderator Bari Weis.

2017: The YIVO Institute sponsored a lecture by Jack Jacobs on the “Political Thinkers Of East European Jewry” where he “will focus on the ideas of Dubnow, Zhitlowsky, Pinsker, Ahad Ha’am, Syrkin, Borochov, Scherer, and Jabotinsky.”

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of the Women’s Balcony, a film about “a close-knit congregation that fractures along gender lines” in a “battle of the sexes.”

2018: Holocaust survivor Fritz Gluckstein is scheduled to tell “his story” at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

2018: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Semitism: Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.”

2018(12thof Nisan, 5778): Ninety-nine year old Budapest born Peter Munk, “the Canadian who built the world’s largest gold-mining company, passed away today. (As reported by Ian Austen)


2018: David Shulkin completed his service as the 9th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

2018: “Broadway Chicken – A Performance from the World’s Greatest Musical” is scheduled to open at the Bascula arts center in Tel Aviv this evening.

2018: “Beneath the Cortex – The Human Theatre” is scheduled to premier this evening at Yung Yidish TLV.

2018: William “Kristol, founder and editor at large of The Weekly Standard, is scheduled to discuss “American Politics In the Age of Trump” this evening in the Kimmel Theatre at Cornell College which marks what he described as his first springtime visit to Iowa since he usually comes for the January Presidential Caucuses.

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host Susan Warsing and Martin Weiss as part of their “First Person” series.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final two screenings of “Driver,” that tells the tale of an ultra-Orthodox acting as a single parent to his daughter after his wife leaves him.

2019: The Yehsiva University Museum is scheduled to present a performance by “the Ensemble-in-Residence of Stern College for Women” “of the 20thcentury and contemporary Jewish composers” t

2019: As Major League Baseball opens its 2019 season today, Jews might be taking an interest in teams with Jewish owners, executives and or managers including the Chicago Cubs, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Yankees.

 

This Day, March 29, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 29

835 BCE (1st of Nisan, 2926): According to some Joash assumed the throne as King of Judah

1188: Emperor Frederick was convinced (both diplomatically and financially) by Moses bar Joseph Hakohen of Mayence to issue a decree declaring “that anyone who wounds a Jew shall have his arm cut off, he who slays a Jew shall die. This decree succeeded in preventing most of the excesses of the pervious crusades in the third crusade soon to follow.

1244(11th of Nisan, 5004): Rabbi Meir Abulafia Halevi (Ramah), noted Talmudist, masorete, and poet passed away today at Toledo, Spain at the age of 74. (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

1349: Emperor Charles IV “declared that the city of Speyer had no blame for” the riots in January, 1349 during which “the Jewish community was totally wiped out.”

1366: Coronation of Henry II as King of Castile and Leon. Henry denigrated his rival Peter by portraying him as a friend of the Jews; a portrayal that including calling him “King of the Jews.” Henry exploited Castilian animosity towards Jews by instigating pogroms and forcing them to convert to Christianity.

1516: Today, the government created the Venetian Ghetto which according to some was the oldest ghetto in the world and would survive until the arrival of Napoleon at the end of the 18th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/mar/30/500-years-venetian-ghetto-jewish-italian-history

1559: Polish King Sigismund II granted the Jews a charter despite opposition of the local authorities at Przemysl.

1602: In Stoke-on-Trent, Vicar Thomas Lightfoot and his wife gave birth to clergyman John Lightfoot who authored several books on the Old Testament and its positive relationship to Jesus as well as such works as A Handful of Gleanings out of the Book of Exodus

1614(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Joshua Falk ben Alexander Katz of Lemberg author of Sefer Me’irat Einayim, passed away today.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5994-falk-foreignchars-v05p332001-jpg-foreignchars-joshua-ben-alexander-ha-kohen

1629: Birthdate of Alexis Mikhailovich, the second of the Romanov Czars. He reigned during the period marked by the Chmelnicki Uprising that decimated eastern European Jewry and the appearance of Sabbati Zvi. Considering the fact that we have records of the Czar ordering sharpshooters to protect Jews on their travels, sending Jewish merchants abroad to purchase wine and allowing Jews living in territory he acquired under the Treaty of Andrussev to continue living there as Russian citizens, he is considered to have been “kindly disposed toward the Jews.

1632: The Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629. Return of the city to French control would keep Jews from settling in Quebec for another 130 years. The French gave up Canada to the British in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War, known in America as The French and Indian War. Once the British were in control, Jews began to openly settle in the former French colony.

1664: Consecration of Giulio Rospigliosi to whom apostate Jew Giovanni Battista Jona, dedicated a Hebrew translation of the New Testament when he became Pope Clement IX

1714(13th of Nisan): Rabbi David ben Solomon Altaras, author of Kelalei ha-Dikduk passed away.

1719(9th of Nisan): In Venice, Rabbi Jacob Pardo of Ragusa and his wife gave birth to David Pardo who accepted the position of Chief Rabbi at Sarajevo in 1764 and passed away in Jerusalem in 1792.

1744(16th of Nisan): Rabbi Hayyim ben Jacob Abulafia of Smyrna, author of Ez ha-Hayyim passed away.

1773: Pope Clement XIV confirmed the bull issued by Clement VII concerning “Jus Gazaka” which the Jews viewed positively since it dealt with their right to rent houses in the ghetto of Rome. “Another token of Pope Clement XIV’s benevolence toward the Jews was the confirmation today of the bull of Clement VIII concerning the Jus Gazaka, which was of very great importance to the Roman Jews.

1790(14thof Nisan, 5550):Ta'anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1790(14thof Nisan, 5550): Sixty-seven year old Mathias Bush, the native of Prague whose sons served with the American Army during the Revolution passed away today in Philadelphia.

1793: In a decree issued today, the restriction on Austrian Jews “farming rural property” was modified to allow for it on “the estates of noblemen” “and even then hereditary tenancy or acquisition was prohibited.”

1797(2ndof Nisan, 5557): Mrs. Rachel Marks, the wife of Levy Marks passed away today in New York City.

1801(15th of Nisan, 5561): Pesach is observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1814: The King of Denmark officially allowed Jews to find employment in all professions and makes racial and religious discrimination punishable by law.

1819: In Moravia, Rabbi Leo Wise, a school teacher and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, one of America's most influential Jewish leaders during the 19th Century. His major achievements were the establishment of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873, the Hebrew Union College in 1875, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1889. This brief summary can in no way do justice to the life a man who had such an impact on the American Jewish community.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/isaac-mayer-wise

1819: In Larraine, France Simon and Pauline Levy gave birth to Kalmus Calmann Levy.

1821: Birthdate of engraver and publisher Frank Leslie whose Illustrated Newspaper carried pictures of Jewish events including a Hebrew Purim Ball and Chanukah Celebration.

http://www.israeldailypicture.com/2014/03/a-purim-treat-from-archives-of-library.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IsraelsHistory-APictureADaybeta+%28Israel%27s+History+-+a+Picture+a+Day+%28Beta%29%29

 1829: Six days after he had passed away, 43 year old Joel Abrahams was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1832: Birthdate of Austrian philosopher Theodore Gomperz, the native of Brno, who “was elected a member of the Academy of Science, received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa from the university of Königsberg, and Doctor of Literature from the universities of Dublin and Cambridge.”

1833: As a result of the damage sustained to its building in 1831 during a hurricane, a new synagogue was consecrated by Kaal Koadosh Nidhl Israel on Barbados.

1840: In Essingen, Germany, Sarah Adler and Rabbi Joseph Gabriel Adler gave birth to Rabbi Immanuel Manchem Adler, the husband of Judith Adler and father of Pinchas Adler.

1848: In Great Britain, Samuel Joseph Rubinstein married a daughter of David Moses Dyte, a London quill merchant.

1848: A decree issued today granted civil rights to the Jews of Alessandria, Italy which allowed to serve in the army and hold government jobs.

1849: Adolphus Alexander married Violet Abrahams today at the Pilgrim Street Synagogue in Liverpool, England.

1849: Lewis Nathan married Regina Kisch today at the Great Synagogue.

1855: In what became the Czech Republic, Josef Pick, he son of “Markus and Elisabeth Pick” and Eleanor Pick gave birth to Siegfried Pick

1858(14th of Nisan): Jews who had served in the Russian army received the right of residence in the province of Abo-Bjorneborg, Finland upon its annexation today.

1859: A new lodge of the Sons of Israel which was the first one outside of New York City was “instituted” today.

1860: Todays "Personal" column reported that “The Cincinnati papers notice the arrival in that city of Mr. Israel J. Benjamin, author of Eight Years in Asia and Africa -- a Jew, who is making the tour of North America to examine the condition of his race. His design is to cross the Plains, spend a short time in the Rocky Mountains, and thence proceed through California to Asia.

1860: In Donaldsonville, LA, Michael Blum and Louise Meyer gave birth to Sam Blum, a product of the New Orleans public school and businessman who was President of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association for six years and “trustee of the Touro Synagogue for several years.”

1861: Opening night at the Winter Garden for “The Hebrew Son” a play designed to appeal to the Jews in the audience.

1862: “After the repeal of the majority legal restrictions on Jewish citizens, today the Israelitische Kultusverein (literal: Israelite Cultus Society) was founded by 12 members.”

1862: Birthdate of Swiss born American portrait painter whose work includes a painting of Isaac Newton Seligman that has disappeared and one of his five year old son Joseph L. Seligman which was done in 1891 and first exhibited in January of 1892.

1863: “New From Fortress Monroe” published today reported that two Jews were arrested while on board the SS Thomas A. Morgan which was making her trip from this Fortress Monroe, VA to Yorktown, VA. The Jews had “a lot of contraband goods” in their possession. [The implication of the article is that the Jews were trading with the Rebel forces further upriver.

1863: The New York Times reported that Colonel Crane and a group of Union soldiers captured a schooner towing a lighter filled with cotton in Florida. Of the 12 men aboard the schooner, 10 were rebels while the others were a man named Titus from Rhode Island and “a Jew from New York named J. Cohen.” [The correspondent does not say how he ascertained that Cohen was a Jew or why his was the only one whose religion was mentioned.]

1866(22nd of Adar II, 5646): Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch passed away. Born in 1789, Rabbi Menachem Mendel was the grandson of the first Chabad Rebbe and was the third Chabad Lubavitch Rebbe. "He was also known as the Tzemach Tzedek (Righteous Sprout), the name for a voluminous compendium of Jewish halachah that he authored. He also authored Derech Mitzvotecha (Way of Your Commandments), a mystical exposition of Jewish law." According to some sources, the seventh Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson was named in honor his illustrious predecessor. This brief summary can in no way do justice to the life and writing of this illustrious sage.

1867: “Affairs In Illinois” published today reported on the victimization of the insurance companies by a series of fraudulent claims. The article concludes by stating “And the fire insurance companies have been so frequently victimized by Jews practicing arson, that many of them are declining Israelitish risks.’ The article does not contain any details about these Jewish arsons.

1867: “The Purim Ball” published today reported that this event is different from the other balls that make up the New York Social Season. Unlike the other festivities, the Purim Ball is rooted in the national traditions of the Jews and calls for form of costume and masquerade that makes it a unique event.

1870: Philip Magnus married Kate Emanuel today.

1873(1st of Nisan, 5633): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1875: Two days after she had passed away, the former Caroline Simon, a native of Jamaica and the wife of Phineas Abraham with whom she had had eight children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1875: It was reported today that there is a dispute among the members of New York’s Beth-El congregation over how to deal with the remains of those buried at the two cemeteries owned by the congregation. Beth-El was formed by a merger of Anshei Chesed (Norfolk Street Synagogue) and Adas Jeshurun which is why Beth-El has two cemeteries.

1877(15th of Nissan, 5637): First Day of Pesach

1878: Birthdate of Albert Gumm, the Indiana native who gained fame as a songwriter under the name of Albert Von Tilzer, the author of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.”

1880: Myer Stern represented the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society at today’s meeting of the New York State Board of Charities meeting.

1880(17thof Nisan, 5640): Sixty-year old Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim, the scion of a Jewish banking family who served as editor of the liberal Die Reform (The Reform) who served in the German Reichstag.

1880: Birthdate of pianist Rosina Lhévinne whom Juilliard president Peter Mennin called "quite simply one of the greatest teachers of this century." Born in Kiev, she began her piano studies at age six and entered the Moscow Conservatory at age nine. Over the next nine years, she perfected her piano technique, graduating in 1898 with the school's gold medal. Among her classmates at the Conservatory were Sergei Rachmaninoff and Josef Lhévinne, whom Rosina married after her graduation. After getting married, Lhévinne abandoned her fledging solo performance career in order to keep her husband, also an accomplished pianist, in the spotlight. However, she did not abandon the performance circuit, often playing two-piano concerts with her husband. The Lhévinnes toured the U.S. for the first time in 1907, and moved permanently to New York immediately after World War I. In 1924, they joined the faculty of the newly established Juilliard Graduate School, where they shared a studio. After Josef Lhévinne's death in 1944, Rosina continued to teach at Juilliard, where her students included such promising musicians as Van Cliburn, David Bar-Ilan, James Levine, and Arthur Gold. As her students made their mark in national and international piano competitions, Lhévinne's fame grew. However, it was only in 1956, at the age of seventy-six, that Lhévinne resumed her own solo piano career. Her first concert was with the Aspen Festival Orchestra; she went on to perform with orchestras around the country. In 1963, she appeared in four performances with the New York Philharmonic, under Leonard Bernstein's direction. Despite a busy performance schedule, Lhévinne continued to teach at Juilliard until she passed her ninety-sixth birthday.

1880: In Kempen, Rabbi Adolph Moses Radin and his wife gave birth to American legal scholar Max Radin.

http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb9g5008vb&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00006&toc.id=

1881: In Leadville, CO a fire broke out in the Pioneer Salon which spread to the next door liquor business owned by the Schloss family.

 

1882: A two day Pogrom in the largely Jewish town of Balta (Russia) comes to an end leaving nearly half of the homes and shops in ruins.

1882: “Near Bolanda, Mississippi,” the former Venola Rutledge and Thomas Braxton Rankin gave birth to sixteen term Mississippi Congressman John Elliott Rankin the noted bigot who accused Einstein of being a Communist and while speaking on the floor of the House called Walter Winchell “the little kike.”  (Editor’s note - his record against Blacks was far worse)

1884: Mrs. Max Rosenberg claimed that on this day her husband forced her to pack her trunk, leave their New York apartment and stopped providing her with financial support. (Rosenberg would subsequently deny these claims, citing proof that she left of her own volition, that he continued to support her, that she still loved him and that the cause of their problems was that he was Jewish – a fact resented by her gentile father.)

1887: In Leadville, CO, Simon Schloss “was a member the committee of arrangements for the eighth annual Purim Masque Ball held at the Tabor Opera House today

1888(16thof Nisan, 5648): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1888: Five days after he had passed away, Abraham Hammond Solomon was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1888(16thof Nisan, 5648): Seventy-four year old composer and pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan whose “Op. 31 set of Préludes includes a number of pieces based on Jewish subjects, including some titled Prière (Prayer), one preceded by a quote from the Song of Songs, and another titled Ancienne mélodie de la synagogue (Old synagogue melody)

1890(8th of Nisan, 5650): Shabbat HaGadol

1890: Birthdate of daughter Pauline Herzl, daughter of Theodor Herzl who passed away in 1930.

1890: “Emanuel Bernheimer” published today listed the philanthropies and charities supported by the founder Lion Brewery including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home for the Chronic Invalids.

1890: It was reported today that in St. Petersburg, university students have presented Professor Menelieff with demands that entrance fees be reduced and the restrictions against Jewish admission be removed.

1890(8th of Nisan, 5650): Forty-five year old Morris Eising, a Jewish immigrant from German was found dead in his boarding house at West 24th Street.

1891: Following the appointment of the Grand Duke Sergei as Governor of Moscow, the Jews found out today about the plan to expel 20,000 of them from the city.

1892: The Russian government published the edict that expelled 14,000 Jews from Moscow. Two thirds of Moscow’s Jewry were disposed and violently removed to the Pale of Settlement.

1892(1st of Nisan 5652): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1892: Three days after she had passed away, the former Emily Bethiah Meikleham, the widow of Joseph Cohen was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1892(1st of Nisan 5652): Rabbi Elimelech Szapira of Grodzhisk passed away. Born in 1832, he “was the leading Hasidic rebbe of his time in Poland. He was a chosid (follower) of the Rizhiner Rebbe. After the death of his father, the Sorof of Mogelnica, he assumed leadership of the chasidim, who eventually numbered ten thousand. His sons-in-law were the Kozhnitser Rebbe and Rebbe Osher the Second of Stolin-Karlin.”

1893: In Boston, Judge Ely dismissed charges against Tavia Angus, the defendant charged by the police with illegally possessing wine and liquor which his co-religionists from Adat Israel claimed he was holding for them and which would be distributed prior to Passover which begins at sundown on March 31. The Jews will now be able to get their wine and brandy back from the police in time for the first Seder.

1893: “New Immigration Commissioner” published today described Secretary of Treasury John G. Carlisle’s appointment of Joseph H. Senner as the Commissioner of Immigration at New York. (Carlisle was not Jewish; Senner was)

1894: Birthdate of Bohemia born painter turned photographer Franz F. Planer the Oscar award nominated cinematographer whose works spanned from the big out door western “The Big Country” to the Manhattan stylishness of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

http://www.cinematographers.nl/GreatDoPh/planer.htm

http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-Ni-Po/Planer-Franz.html

1895: “Grand Cake Walk For Charity” published today described the fund raiser sponsored by the Monte Relief Society which began with an address by the founder and President Sofia Monte-Loebinger. The society which is named for its founder was founded by a handful of Jewesses and provides financial aid to the city’s destitute.

1895(4th of Nisan, 5655): Bernhard Bernhard, a benefactor to many Jewish charities including the Hebrew Benevolent Association, passed away today at his home on East 62nd Street in New York leaving behind two children

1896(15th of Nisan, 5656): First Day of Pesach

1896(15th of Nisan, 5656): The New York Times reported that “Pesach, or the Feast of the Passover, with which the Israelites celebrate the deliverance of the Jews from bondage in Egypt, was inaugurated at sundown yesterday. The feast continues eight consecutive days and will close with the setting of the sun next Saturday.”

1896(15thof Nisan, 5656): Fifty-two year old Hungarian born revolutionary Leó Frankel who took part in the Paris Commune of 1871 passed away today.

1896: In Amsterdam, “Abraham Jessurun Cardozo and Marie Serlui, gave birth David Abraham Jessurun Cardoza, the assistant rabbi at New York’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and senior rabbi at Philadelphia’s Congregation Mikveh Israel who in 1953 became the first rabbi to publicly hold High Holiday services in Spain since the expulsion in 1492,

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/05/archives/rabbi-cardozo-dies-a-sephardic-leader.html

1896: It was reported today that Lucien L. Bonheur is chairman of the committee planning the 19th annual Strawberry Festival sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. He is being assisted by Isaac Newton Lewis, Falk Younker, Levi Hershfield, Edwin M. Schwartz and Dr. Louis S. Rosenthal. Percival S. Menken is President of the Association.

1897: “Millions For Charity” published today described a “stupendous project” to be underwritten by the Baron de Hirsch Fund that will “relieve the congested district of” New York’s “east side by building homes and establishing industries in the suburbs.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F2081FF63E5811738DDDA00A94DB405B8785F0D3

more for 2014

1897(25thof Adar II, 5657): Sixty-six year old David Weinberg, a retired furrier, passed away at his home leaving behind a widow and four children in New York.

1897(25thof Adar II, 5657): Forty-nine year old Louis Israel, “proprietor of the one of the largest livery stables in Brooklyn” passed away today.  A native of Brooklyn, he was President of the Hebrew Benevolent Society and a member of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Israel, the King Solomon Lodge and the B’nai Sholom Benefit Society.

1898(6th of Nisan, 5658): Rabbi Emanuel Schwab who was 101 years old passed away today in New York City.  A native of Frankfort on Main he came to the United States 53 years ago where he served as rabbi of congregations at Schenectady, NY and Bridgeport, Conn.  He was preceded in death by his wife the former Miss Sophie Hirsch whom he had married in 1862.

1899: Baroness Hirsch the widow of the late Jewish philanthropist is reportedly to be critically ill.

1899: The Jewish Colonial Bank in London begins to accept subscriptions.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/jct.html

1900: The American Israelite announced the death of Isaac Mayer Wise.

1903: Herzl meets with the Belgian born barrister Leon Constant Ghislain Carton de Wiart now living in Egypt. Herzl tells him that “We will give up the word 'Charter' but not the thing itself."

1905: At 07:00 today Dorothy Levitt “departed from the De-Dion showroom in Great Marlborough Street London, and arrived at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool at 18:10, having completed the 205 miles in 11 hours” thus establishing “a new record for the longest drive achieved by a lady driver.”

1907(14th of Nisan, 5667): On Ellis Island, Rabbi Adolph Radin joined 180 Jewish immigrants in a Seder this evening which marked their first Passover in the United States.

1907: As of today 140,000 soldiers had been recruited to help quell the Romanian Peasant Revolt. The peasants were revolting against the Christian nobles who were the landowners responsible for their exploitation. An untold number of Jews fell victim to the peasants because they were the one who collected the rents. Once again, a dispute between groups of Christians results in dead Jews.

1910: Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé a 19th century French archaeologist and author “who is known for his architectural studies of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the surrounding areas. (For more see Digging Through The Bible by Richard A. Freund)

1911: Birthdate of Paris native and Sorbonne attendee Dr. Nathan Edlemean, the CCNY undergrad and hold of a Ph.D. from Columbia, who taught French at two colleges and wrote Attitudes of 17th Century France Toward the Middle Ages.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/16/archives/nathanedelman-iexpertohfrehgh-teacher-at-oolumba-dead-wrte-major.html

1912: By decree of the King of Italy, Jews in Tripoli can now organize as a community.

1912: Painter and Professor Max Liebermann received an honorary Doctor Philosophy degree for the University of Berlin.

1912(11thof Nisan, 5672): Sixty eight year old “communal worker,” Tobias Weinschenker passed away today in Chicago.

1912(11thof Nisan, 5672): Fifty-seven year old merchant Jacques Loeb passed away in Montgomery, Alabama.

1913: Birthdate of Fivel Feldman, the Brooklyn native gained fames as comedian Phil Foster who gained lasting fame as Frank De Fazio on the 1970’s sitcom “Laverne and Shirley.”

1913: It was reported today that “there was a debate concerning Shechitah” “in the Landtag of Darmstadt, the capital city of the Duchy of Hesse” where, as expected the anti-Semites attacked the Jewish form of slaughter as being inhumane but unexpectedly defenders of the practice “were found in the Catholic party.”

1913(20thof Adar II, 5673): Shabbat Parah

1913(20thof Adar II, 5673): New York “communal worker” David H. Lieberman passed away today.

1913: Birthdate of Hyman Bloom. Born into an orthodox Jewish family in southern he emigrated to the United States with his family in 1920, at the age of seven. He lived for most of his life in Boston, Massachusetts and at a young age planned to become a rabbi, but his family could not find a suitable teacher. Bloom and Jack Levine, another Jewish painter from Boston, received scholarships in the fine arts given by the famous Harvard art professor Denman Ross. Bloom, along with Levine and another painter, Karl Zerbe, eventually became associated with a style named Boston Expressionism. He passed away in 2009.

1914: In Mulhouse, Baruch Kahn and Constance Kenendel Lang gave birth to Louis Joseph Kahn

1915: Emanuel Beckerman, an interpreter in the Bronx Municipal Court was pleased to learn today that the ten pounds of matzoth that he had shipped to Rabbi Bernard Pressen for his Seder in Berlin had arrived in Amsterdam and should have made it to Berlin in time for the Seder. Beckerman had met Pressen in 1907 did not want his co-religionist to go with unleavened bread because the Kaiser’s government had banned using wheat to make matzoth.

1915: “More than 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors along with Admiral Charles Sigsbee who had commanded the Battleship Maine, were the guests tonight at a Seder hosted by the Army and Navy Y.M.H.A.

1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): Ninety men and one hundred and five women ranging in age from 67 to 110 held a Seder at the Home of the Daughters of Jacob in New York City. Nissen Rosen, 105 years old, will sit at one end of the table where he will face 110 year old Ethel Rosenstein. It will be a double celebration for Hannah Perlaeur who was born on the night of the Seder 95 years ago.

1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): One hundred Jews who had recently arrived from Jerusalem were among those who participated at a Seder at the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society’s home on Broadway.

1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): Dr. M.J. Leff conducted a Seder for the staff at the Beth Israel Hospital in New York City.

1915: As Jews ran their last errands in preparation for the Seder at Ostrolenka, Russia, German planes began bombing the city with what appeared to be a decision by “the enemy to raze the city to its foundations.”

1915: It was reported today that Judge Nathaniel E. Harris, the governor-elect of Georgia believes “the bitterness against Leo Frank has largely passed away and there are now many who take the view that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice” while “on the other hand, there are plenty of them who do not.”

1916: Alexsei Brusilov, who as the Chief of Staff approved the appointment of Jewish Chaplains to serve in the Russian Army “was given command of the Southwest Front.”

1916: Bronx Borough President Douglas Mathewson and Bronx County Register were among the thousands of people who attended “Bronx Night” at the Jewish Bazar being held at the Grand Central Palace.

1916: Three days after he had passed away, 25 year old Corporal George Jessel Issacs, the “son of Harry and Mria Isaacs” was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1917: Jacob Schiff, Adolph Lewisohn and Oscar S. Straus are expected to attend the meeting of the Jewish League of American Patriots at the Broadway offices of Samuel Untermyer where plans will be made “to spread the movement” throughout the United States.

1917: “Hadassah…announced” today “that $30,000 has been raised for a medical until which it” will “establish in Palestine at the earliest possible moment to combat typhus and other plagues now reported to be prevalent in that country.”

1917: “The Independent Order of Free Sons of Israel” which has eighty-one lodges throughout the United States is scheduled to “hold a patriotic mass meeting” tonight at the Floral Garden so “that the Jews of Greater New York may give joint public expression of their loyalty and devotion to the flag.”

1917: “President Wilson sent a telegram to Julius Rosenwald today endorsing the raising of a $10,000,000 fund for the relief of Jewish war sufferers.”

1918(16thof Nisan, 5678): Second Day of Pesach

1918: Captain Albala of the Serbian Commission to the United States, Professor Mordecai M. Kaplan, Sol M. Sroock and Colonel Maurice Simmons are scheduled to be speakers tonight at “a public celebration of Passover” at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls to which young Jewish service men have been invited

1918: In The Hague, “the Central Jewish Aid Committee sent 540,000 marks to Poland for the relief of Jewish communities and institutions.”

1918(16thof Nisan, 5678): Second day of Pesach

1918(16thof Nisan, 5678):  Eighty-year old Assur Henry Moses the Secretary of the Assoication for the Oral Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb from 1870 to 1915 and the father of singer Alice Moses who used the stage name Alice Mandeville passed away today.

1919: “The centenary of the birth of the late Dr. Isaac M. Wise” is scheduled to “be celebrated by the Jews of America” today according to Rabbi Joseph Silverman.

1919: The celebration of the ceremony of Conferring Rabbinical Degrees on five students at The Yeshiva began today with services being held in orthodox synagogues throughout Greater New York under the direction of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis.

1921: Birthdate of Bronx native Abraham H. Baum, who would lead the raid commanded by Blood and Guts Patton to rescue his son-in-law from a German POW camp.

1921: Winston Churchill, British Colonial Secretary, is greeted by 10,000 Jews on Mt. Scopus in Palestine. Both the Chief Sephardic and Ashkenazic Rabbis were in attendance. They gave him a Sefer Torah. Churchill planted a tree on the future site of Hebrew University and spoke in support of the Zionist endeavors in Palestine.

1921: Birthdate of Howard “Howie” Leonard and Lenny Rader, twin brothers who played basketball for LIU and then went to careers with the pros.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/nbl/players/r/raderho01n.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/nbl/players/r/raderle01n.html

1921: It was reported today that the late Julia Wormser Seligman was a native of San Francisco who was the only daughter of the late Isidore Wormser from whom she inherited two million dollars.

1923(12th of Nisan, 5683): Fast of the First Born observed because the 14th of Nisan falls on Shabbat.

1923: Birthdate of Jack David Dunitz the Glasgow born British chemist and widely known chemical crystallographer who was a Professor of Chemical Crystallography at the ETH Zurich from 1957 until his official retirement in 1990 and is the husband of Barbara Steuer as well as the father of Marguerite and Julia Gabrielle Steuer

1925: While visiting Palestine, Lord Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, “reads the lessons in the Anglican Cathedral of St. George.”

1926(14thof Nisan, 5686): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1926: An exhibit of “valuable literary material” including a letter signed by Moses Maimonides, a little booklet that is the “only known fragment of the great Book Precepts of Yaliach” and “a wealth of material relating to the synagogue at Kai Fung-fu” that illustrates “Jewish life in Oriental countries” opened today at the New York Public Library where Dr. Joshua Block is chief of the Jewish Division.

1926: In Kecskemét, Hungary, Solomon and Margaret Sandberg who were murdered in 1944 gave birth to Gusztáv Sandberg who gained fame as Dachau survivor and Israeli economist Moshe Sanbar.

1926: Rabbis from more than fifty congregations throughout New York City that included representatives of liberal, reform, conservative and orthodox synagogues “have joined in signing a proclamation calling upon the Jews of New York to do their share toward answering the call of suffering millions of their destitute co-religions in Eastern Europe.

1927: Birthdate of Martin Fleischmann. A chemist at the University of Utah, Fleischmann (and his partner Stanley Pons) claimed to have discovered Cold Fusion in 1989.

1927(25th of Adar II, 5687): Eight-six year old Luigi Luzzatti, the second Jew to serve as Prime Minister of Italy passed away today.

1930: The first American convention of the promoters and adherents of the Yiddish language, literature and culture opened this evening at the Irving Plaza Hall in New York City. Eight hundred people from the United States and Canada attended the opening session of a convention working to foster Yiddish Culture.

1931: Birthdate of Evelyn de Rothschild. Rothschild headed the English branch of the family and its banking business for twenty-one years. In 2003, the English and French branches merged and Baron David de Rothschild, head of the French branch assumed the new leadership position. The Rothschilds continue to be "one of the world's largest private banking dynasties."

1932(21stof Adar II, 5692): Sixty-one year old poetess Ida Goldsmith Morris, the daughter of Lambert and Frances Goldsmith and the wife of Herman Morris passed way today after which she was buried at Temple Cemetery in Louisville, KY.

1932: At the first Jewish Olympic Games, officially known as the Maccabiah, American Sybil Koff of New York, finished first in the semi-final of the 100 meter race while the American team finished second in the semi-final of the relay race. The opening contests in which American Jews played a prominent part took place “in the newly built stadium situated at the junction of the Yarkon River and the Mediterranean Sea” before a crowd estimated to exceed the venue’s 25,000 seat capacity.

1932: Jack Benny debuted on radio. This legendary Jewish entertainer moved from vaudeville to the electronic medium - radio, the movies and finally television.

1933: The front page of the Nazi newspaper, Volkisher Beobachter, stated "Let Jewry Know Against Who it Has Declared War".

1933: “In an act of anticipatory obedience to the Nazi regime, the management of UFA, a leading German motion picture production company, decided to fire several Jewish employees.”

1934: ): Sixty-nine year old Russian born Louis Zuro, the younger brother of textile Aron Surasky, the father of the late Josiah Zuro, the music direct at Pathe motion picture studio and the husband of Leah Zuro, who began working on productions of Hammerstein’s grand operas in 1910 and organizing free Sunday concerts in 1924 was buried today at Mount Lebanon Cemetery one day after his death.

1934(13th of Nisan, 5694): Otto Hermann Kahn passed away. Born in Germany in 1867, this noted banker, collector, philanthropist and patron of the arts moved to the United States in 1893. He joined the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company and continued to add to his fortune. He was a founder and President of the Metropolitan Opera Company. He bankrolled numerous artists including Hart Crane, George Gershwin and Arturo Toscanini. Kahn uttered the following warning, “The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. Liberty is not foolproof.” To work “it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable, and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change.”

1934: Birthdate of Ehud Netzer, the native of Haifa who became a leading Israeli archeologist.

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-me-ehud-netzer-20101106-story.html

1935: In Brooklyn, Abraham M. and Belle Lindenbaum gave birth to Samuel H. Lindenbaum, who was widely considered New York City’s top zoning lawyer and who was credited with doing as much as any of the powerful developers among his clients to shape the modern skyline of Manhattan…” (As reported by David W. Dunalp)

1936: The SS guard formations were renamed SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-Death's Head Units). They provided guards for concentration camps.

1936: In St. Louis, MO, “Prince Hubertus zu Loewenstein said “While there are so many visitors in Germany because of the games, Hitler is on his good behavior so far as internal policies are concerned but almost certainly there will be a new reign of terror for the Jews and other oppressed groups after the Olympics are concluded.”

1936: In Poland, the Jews opposed the new law that gives the minister of agriculture control over the Polish Dairy industry “on the ground that it menaces the Jewish milk trade.”

1937: Birthdate of Moacyr Jaime Scliar a Brazilian writer and physician who passed away in 2011.

1937: It was announced today that the Zionist General Council that was to be held in London on April 13 will be held on April 17 in Jerusalem.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the body of Jacob Zwanger, an engineer who had disappeared some 18 days earlier, was found near Rehovot. He was apparently strangled. A Jew and his Arab partner were arrested, both suspected of Zwanger's murder.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Arab brigands held up and robbed drivers near Jenin.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a plea was made in the House of Commons to reduce the British tariff on Palestine oranges which was devised to protect the South African citrus industry.

1938: A total of $20,000 was contributed tonight to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.

1938: The New York Times reported that Dr. Sigmund Freud has been denied a passport so that he cannot leave Vienna for the Netherlands. A delegation that included Princess Marie Bonaparte had gone to Vienna to make Freud aware of the warm welcome that would await him in what would be his new Dutch home.

1938: A total of $20,000 was contributed tonight to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.

1939: Birthdate of Roland Arnall, the French native who became a successful American businessman, diplomat and financial contributor to the well-being of Chabad-Lubavitch.

1939: The Soviet NKVD secret police arrested Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, the father of the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson for his outspoken efforts against the Communist Party’s efforts to eradicate Jewish learning and practice in the Soviet Union. After more than a year of torture and interrogations in Stalin's prisons, he was sentenced to exile to the interior of Russia. He died there in 1944. Rabbi Schneerson was a distinguished Kabbalist. Some of his writings have been published under the name Likkutei Levi Yitzchak. Most of it, however, was burned or confiscated by the Soviet authorities and has yet to be returned to the Chabad movement.

1940: NBC Radio, broadcast the final episode of “I Love a Mystery” which was sponsored by Fleischmann’s Yeast founded by Charles Louis Fleischman in 1868.

1941: In France, establishment of the Commissariat of Jewish Affairs.

1942: SS Captain Dieter Wislicey wants $50,000 in cash as the price for stopping the deportations of Slovakian Jews to the death camps. He will get the money, but the deportations will continue

1942: Founder's Day in honor of Isaac Mayer Wise, founder of Reform Judaism, was observed this afternoon in the Central Synagogue, with a special service under the auspices of the Greater New York City Alumni of the Hebrew Union College

1943: In Philadelphia, Mark and Lillian Shapiro gave birth to Harvard Law School Ronald M. Shaprio, a leading sports agent, author and co-founder of the Shapiro Negotiations Institute.

http://www.shapironegotiations.com/ron-shapiro/

1943: Third and final shipment of Macedonian Jews from Skopje to Treblinka.  Of the 7,144 Jews shipped there over three days only about 200 survived the war,

1943: “Hans Neumann, Leo Drabant, his wife along with eight other anti- Nazi resistance members were arrested by the Gestapo” today.

1944: Anne Frank mentions in her diary that Gerrit Bolkestein, Education Minister of the Dutch Government in exile, delivered a radio message from London urging his war-weary countrymen to collect "vast quantities of simple, everyday material" as part of the historical record of the Nazi occupation and writes "Ten years after the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding."

1944: Tel Aviv was declared off limits to all military personnel today, including those who have family living in the city. The ban was in response to attacks on police stations in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem for which the Irgun has taken public credit.

1945(15th of Nisan, 5705: First Day of Pesach

1945(15th of Nisan, 5705): On the first day of Pesach at least 58 Jews were murdered in a forest near the Austrian village of Deutsch Shuetzen, in what would come to be called the Deutsch Shuetzen Massacre. SS sergeant Adolf Storms SS sergeant Adolf Storms was among the perpetrators of the killing.

1945: In the evening, members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8thArmy serving in Italy took part in a Seder at Faenza.

1945: Birthdate of Yehuda Ezekiel Berkowitz native who gained fame as Yehuda Barkan, the “Israeli actor, film producer, film director and screenwriter.”

1945: The ill-fated and ill-conceived mission ordered by General Patton to rescue his son-in-law John K. Waters under the command of Captain Abraham Baum came to an ignominious end with Baum who had been shot in the groin joining the wounded Walters in a German hospital for POWS.

1946: Birthdate of Miami native Bruce Weber, the noted fashion photographer.

http://www.bruceweber.com/

1946: U.S. premiere of “Night Editor” directed by Henry Levin

1947: Clifton Daniel interviewed Jewish refugees at Caraolos, a British run displaced persons camp outside of Famagusta, Cyprus. “An appeal for the outside world to consider their plight was the first and only formal proposal addressed” to him by these immigrants. Currently, there are 11,000 Jews living in camps like this all across Cyprus. If the British stick to their policy of releasing 750 Jews a month to go to Palestine, it will take at least fourteen months to empty these camps.

1947: “A ship carrying 1,600 Jewish unauthorized refugees was intercepted tonight off the northern coast of Palestine by the Royal Navy.” The ship which was known as the Patria or Moledeth was taken to the harbor at Haifa.

1947: Slaih Jabir, who in 1950 would introduce the “Supplement to Decree 62 of 1933 which effectively forced Jews to leave all their property behind and go to Israel” began serving as Prime Minister.

1947: At a mass meeting in Tel Aviv, Golda Meyerson, the head of the Jewish Agency’s political department “assailed the underground extremists’ warfare today in these words: ‘Terrorism is assisting Palestine’s British administration it has put Palestine Jewry on the defensive, whereas but for terrorism the Zionists could have pursued a more vigorous line in their political efforts…we don ot want to embark on internal warfare, but if it be thrust upon us we shall finish with the terrorists, although without cooperating with the Government in doing so.’”

1948: Today “Dr. Hussein el-Khalidi, secretary of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine, rejected  proposals for a truce in Jerusalem, for an international force to pro tect the city and for a trusteeship for the Holy Land.”

1949: In a meeting with Zionist leaders in New York, former Prime Minister Winston Churchill offers assurance that his commitment to the Jewish state is as solid as it has ever been.

1949: “The Set-up” a boxing film written by Art Cohn, co-starring George Tobias and featuring a cameo appearance by photographer Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig was released in the United States today

1950: The United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine issues a memorandum designed to “meet the Israeli demands for direct negotiations and the Arab desire that the commission act as mediator.”

1950: The “first contingent of ‘hard core’ cases from the refugee camps in German and Austria arrive in Israel” three days before Pesach. “These unfortunates, the halt, the lame and the blind were brought in by the combined efforts of the international relief organizations, the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Israeli Government.” Their arrival is an example of David Ben Gurion’s belief that Israel is the home for all Jews regardless of their condition.

1951: Judy Holliday, born Judy Tuvim, won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Billie Dawn in the film “Born Yesterday.”

1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage. The prosecutor in the case and the judge who would pronounce the death sentence were also Jewish. However, right-wing politicians would overlook this and use the Rosenberg case as further proof that the Jews were part of the Communist Conspiracy.

1953: Birthdate of Samuel Elliott Chwat founder of the Sam Chwat Speech Center.

1953: While serving with the First Marine Division during the Korean War, Jewish chaplain Samuel Sobel who had been “commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1945” “was hit by shrapnel today in the battle of Vegas” which would lead to him being sent back to Paris Island, SC and being awarded a Purple Heart.

1954: In “Massacre at Scorpion’s Pass” published today the Time correspondent described the terror attack that took place south of Beersheba.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,819663,00.html

1956: Syria returned 4 Israeli soldiers who had been held captive for fifteen months in return for an the prisoners the Israelis had taken during Operation Olive Leaves.

1956: Be'er Sheva or Beersheba was linked to Israel's railway system. Yes, this is the ancient city mentioned connection with Abraham and Isaac. This is just one example of how the young state of Israel was developing its economy and infrastructure while confronting on-going threats of Arab attacks as well as the reality of cross-border raids by fedayin (the name given to the terrorists of those days.)

1959: Birthdate of Nouriel Roubini, the Turkish born son of Iranian Jews who became a leading American advisor on economics and the chairman of Roubini Global Economics.

1959(19thof Adar II, 5719): Yiddish author and playwright David Pinski’s wife Adele (Hodel) passed away five months before he passed away in August.

1959: Birthdate of Perry Farrell, lead singer of Jane’s Addiction

1959: Release date for “Some Like It Hot” a great comedy film directed, produced and co-authored by Billy Wilder.

1959: Birthdate of Nouiel Roubini, the Turkish born son of Iranian Jews who spent part of his youth living in Israel, who would gain fame as the economist who predicted the financial crisis that would engulf the world’s economy starting in the fourth quarter of 2008.

1959: Today “on Easter Sunday in 1959, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rose in the pulpit of his Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, to deliver a sermon that focused on his just-completed visit, with his wife, Coretta, to Jerusalem and its holy sites.”

1963: “Miracle of the White Stallions” directed by Arthur Hiller was released today in the United States.

1965: In the United Kingdom, premiere of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” with a script by Ernest Lehman.

1965(25thof Adar II, 5725): Fifty-five year old Stanley Irving Posner, the Massachusetts born “son of Benjamin and Fanny (Libby) Posner, the Harvard trained attorney holding degrees from Amherst and the University of Chicago who was the husband of Lillian Kahn and the father of James, Elizabeth and Lawrence Posner passed away today.

1965: Birthdate of Elisheva Greenbaum. In June of 2003, at the Metulla Festival of Poetry, Ellisheva was awarded the prestigious "Tevah" prize in poetry. Earlier, in 2002, Elisheva was awarded The Prime Minister's prize for poetry.

1966:It's A Bird... It's A Plane... It's Superman is a musical with music by Charles Strouse” which “is based on the comic book character Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and published by DC Comics” “opened on Broadway” today “at the Alvin Theatre.”

1967(17th of Adar II, 5727): Israeli author, Isaac Dov Berkowitz passed away. Born in Belarus in 1885 he made aliyah in 1928. The son-in-law of Sholom Aleichim, he was a two-time winner of the Bialik Prize and a winner of the Israel Prize for literature in 1958.

1968: “Madigan” a police movie directed by Don Siegel, with a script co-authored by Abraham Polonsky was released in the United States today.

1969: The original production of “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?” produced by Philip Rose came to a close today at the Belasco Theatre.

1970: One day after he had passed away funeral services were held at the Talmud Torah of Flatbush under the leadership of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein for Rabbi Nissen Telushkin.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/03/archives/rabbi-telushkin-88-orthodox-scholar.html

1970: Eighty-four year old Anna Louise Strong, the American born journalist best known for her support of Communism in the USSR and China who was the wife and political sole mate of Joel Shubin, the Jewish agronomist and journalist who served for a time the Deputy Minister of Agriculture in the USSR.

1970: Eighty-four year old Heinrich Brüning, the Chancellor of Germany who tried to save the Weimar Republic in the wake of the anarchy created by the Communists and the Nazis and sought to thwart Hitler’s rise to power passed a way today.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/82225/Heinrich-Bruning

1972(14thof Nisan, 5732): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1972(14thof Nisan, 5732): Ivan Salomon who with his wife Sophie was a“Yeshiva University Guardian who helped to established YU’s Sephardic Studies Program” and was the father of Professor Herman Salomon, “the former editor of The American Sephardic Journal” passed away today.

1973(25th of Adar II, 5733): Ida Cohen Rosenthal, the woman who created the modern brassiere industry passed away.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197610

1974: Four months after premiering in France, “The Three Msketeers” directed by Richard Lester and co-produced by Alexander Salkind and Ilya Salkind was released today in the U.S. and the U.K.

1977: Robert Strauss began serving as United States Trade Representative.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, said that he would allow the early reconvening of the Geneva Peace Conference without PLO participation. The conference might later decide on the PLO's eventual participation.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Egged management threatened to withdraw public transport service to and from Lod due to hooliganism, personal attacks, theft and other difficult conditions at the Lod Central Bus Station.

1979: Real Life” the first feature film directed by Albert Brooks who co-authored the script and co-starred in the picture along with Charles Grodin was released today in the United States.

1980(12thof Nisan, 5740): Parashat Tzav and Shabbat Gadol

1980(12thof Nisan, 5740): Ten days after his 68th birthday, New York born, Columbia trained attorney Joseph Walker an executive with S. Klein Department Stores, passed away today.

https://forgotten-ny.com/2016/03/s-klein-stores/

1981: The New York Times reviews "The Geneva Crisis" by Matti Golan, an Israeli diplomat writing about a fictional attempt by idealistic Jews who are duped when they attempt to work for peace with Palestinian rebels.

1981: The Broadway production of “Woman of the Year” a musical with a book by Peter Stone and starring Lauren Bacall opened today at the Palace Theatre.

1983(15thof Nisan, 5743): Pesach

1984: In Amsterdam, the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee met for the last time.

1986(18thof Adar II, 5746): Seventy-eight year old Harry Ritz, one of the famous three Ritz Brothers passed away today.

1987: Yitzhak Shamir was re-elected chairman of right wing Herut Party. Born in Poland in 1915, Shamir moved to Palestine in 1935. While attending Hebrew University he joined the Irgun. He later left the Irgun and joined what was the Stern Gang. Shamir would later rise above what some people might think of a rather dubious past to become Prime Minister in 1988. To his credit, in May 1991, Shamir ordered the airlift rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jewry, codenamed "Operation Solomon." In September, Shamir provided living proof that people can change, when he represented Israel at the Madrid Peace Conference which brought about direct negotiations with Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians.

1987: Tonight Colonel Aviem Sella, the Israeli Air Force who was indicted earlier this month in the United States for his role in recruiting Jonathan Pollard as a spy, said that he was giving up his recent promotion to the rank of general because of “the problems it had caused between the United States and Israel.”

1987: An American Rabbi, Arthur Schneier, said that “that the Soviet Union has agreed that future Jewish émigrés will be sent to Israel by way of Rumania.” In the past, those Jews who were allowed to leave the Soviet Union traveled through Vienna where many of them obtained visas for the United States even though they had said they were leaving to go to Israel. Schneier hopes the change will lead to an increase in the number of Jews who are allowed to leave the Soviet Union. The Rumanians have asked that the transit cite in their country not be identified so that it will not become a target for terrorists.

1991(14th of Nisan, 5751): The Kesim celebrated the last Pesach for their community at the Israeli embassy in Addas Abba, Ethiopia.

1991: “The Unborn” a horror film directed by Rodman Flender and co-starring Lisa Kudrow was released today in the United States.

1993: Billy Crystal served as host at the 65th Academy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles. Elizabeth Taylor was co-winner of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award

1993: Simone Veil began serving as Minister of Health in France

1993: Jack Lang completed his first term in office as Education Minister of France.

1994(17th of Nisan, 5754): During Chol Hamoed Pesach, Yitzhak Rothenberg, age 70, of Petah Tikva, was attacked on a construction site by two residents of Khan Yunis by axe blows to the head. He died several days later of his wounds.

1995:Police Insp. Nitzan Cohen, 22, of Jerusalem and Sgt.-Maj. Jamal Suwitat from Makr village in Western Galilee were killed when a Palestinian driver rammed his truck into their jeep in a convoy east of the Netzarim junction in Gaza.

1996: Actress Rebecca “Schaeffer's life and death became the topic of the first E! True Hollywood Story episode, which originally aired” today.

1997(20thof Adar II, 5757): Parashat Vayikra; Shabbat Zachor; Erev Purim

1997(20thof Adar II, 5757): Seventy-nine year old geneticist Ruth Sager passed away today.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/11/ruth-sager/

https://jwa.org/thisweek/feb/07/1918/ruth-sager

 

 http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/11/ruth-sager/

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/04/us/dr-ruth-sager-79-researcher-on-location-of-genetic-material.html

1998: The 27th Nabisco Dinah Shore Golf Championship was played today. The namesake of this major LPGA event was born Frances Rose Shore in Winchester, Tenn. in 1917. She adopted the name Dinah from a hit 1930's tune of the same name that was her signature song in the early days of her career.

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “Diplomacy for the Next Century” by Abba Eban, “Clement Greenberg: A Life” by Florence Rubenfeld,” The Castle: A New Translation, Based on the Restored Text” by Franz Kafka; translated by Mark Harman and “Getting Away With Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System” by Susan Estrich.

1998: Famed basketball player Henry "Hank" Rosenstein Rosenstein was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame

1999: In the ever-changing revolving door of Israeli party politics, Eliezer Sandberg”s HaTzeirim faction joined Shinui.

1999: Emanuel Zisman left the Third Way political party and served the rest of his term as an independent MK.

2000: Israel's high court orders that about 700 Palestinians be allowed to return to their traditional homes in caves in the southern West Bank.

2000(22nd of Adar II, 5760): Ninety-year old choreographer Anna Sokolow passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/30/arts/anna-sokolow-a-modern-choreographer-known-for-studies-in-alienation-dies-at-90.html

2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Second Day of Pesach and 1st day of the Omer.

2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): “Tuvia Wisner, 79, of Petah Tikva and Michael Orlinsky, 70, of Tel-Aviv were killed Friday morning, when a Palestinian terrorist infiltrated the Neztarim settlement in the Gaza Strip.” (Jewish Virtual Library)

2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Rachel Levy, 17, and Haim Smadar, 55, the security guard, both of Jerusalem, were killed and 28 people were injured, two seriously, when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the Kiryat Yovel supermarket in Jerusalem. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. (Jewish Virtual Library)

2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Lt. Boaz Pomerantz, 22, of Kiryat Shmona and St.-Sgt. Roman Shliapstein, 22, of Ma'ale Efraim were killed in the course of the IDF anti-terrorist action in Ramallah (Operation Defensive Shield. (Jewish Virtual Library)

2002: In response to the suicide bombing at a Seder in the Park Hotel that claimed the lives of 30, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield.

2002: U.S. premiere of “Clockstoppers” a “science fiction comedy film” with a script co-authored by David N. Weiss.

2002: U.S. premiere of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” a comedy directed by Harry Shearer who also wrote the script.

2002: “Death to Smoochy” a comedy written by Adam Resnick and co-starring Jon Stewart and Harvey Fierstein was released in the United States today.

2002: In the U.K. premiere of “Invincible” a drama based loosely on the life of Jewish vaudeville strongman and circus performer Siegmund “Zishe” Breitbart.

2003: In her presidential installation sermon on Rabbi Janet Marder spoke about the need to develop and sustain progressive Judaism in Israel, and about "developing an inner life — about personal prayer, about seeking the Holy One, and quiet hours inside a book, and the solitude that is essential for a life of clarity and integrity."

2005: The New York Times reported that “as Columbia University awaits a report on charges of intimidation of Jewish students in classes in Middle East studies, a group of graduate students began circulating a petition calling for the resignation of Columbia’s president, Lee Co. Bollinger, because he ‘failed to defend our faculty, thereby nurturing an environment of fear and intimidation throughout the university.’” Columbia’s faculty has been divided about Mr. Bollinger’s performance ever since the showing of a videotape last fall that demonstrated some professors of Middle East studies intimidating Jewish students in classes and on campus.

2006: Shlomo Benizri “was charged by the State Prosecutor's Office with accepting bribes and breaching the public trust.”

 

2006: With 95 percent of the ballots counted, the election results for the 17th Knesset appeared as follows:

Kadima: 28 Knesset seats

Labor: 20

Shas: 13

Likud: 11

Israel Beitenu: 12

NRP / NU: 9

Pensioners: 7

United Torah Judaism: 6

Meretz: 4

Balad: 3

Hadash: 3

United Arab List: 4

While it appears that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party gained the largest number of seats, it was fewer than had been estimated in earlier polls. Once the results are final, Olmert will probably be asked to form a government. If the total holds at or around thirty seats, Kadima will have to gather another 31 seats to gain the 61 seats necessary to control the Knesset and govern the country.

2007: The Tel Aviv Museum of Art presents, for the first time in Israel, a retrospective selection of works by Mark Rothko, one of the pillars of the New York School artists, identified in the late 1940s and early ‘50s as the painters of Abstract Expressionism.

2007: Three days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held at K.K. Beth Elohim in Charleston, SC for Leon Banov, Jr. the Charleston born son of Minnie and Dr. Leon Banov and the Medical College of South Carolina trained proctologist who was the husband of Rita Landesman Banov and father of Jane and Alan Banov.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/charleston/obituary.aspx?n=leon-banov&pid=86978509&fhid=6051

2008: Shabbat Parah, 5768

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “Gershwin Brothers’ Dream of a Great American Opera: Porgy and Bess and beyond” the third lecture in a series entitled “Music as Melting Pot Mosaic: The Gershwins.”

2009: In the 2nd of a four part lecture series marking this special year of Hakhel Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of England a noted author and lecturer delivers a talk on Unity and Redemption - Celebrating Freedom Together.

2009: MAD Magazine posted “Happy 80th Birthday, Mort Drucker” today.

https://www.tomrichmond.com/2009/03/29/happy-80th-birthday-mort-drucker/

2009: Model Matzah Baker takes place at Lubavitch Chabad of Northbrook with participants learning about Passover and enjoying the thrill of baking their own Matzah.

2009: The Chicago Tribune reviews “The Kindly Ones” a Holocaust novel by Jonathan Littell which the reviewer calls a “helpless narrative” and “missed opportunity.”

2009: The Times of London reported today that the Israel Air Force used unmanned drones to attack secret Iranian convoys in Sudan that were trying to smuggle weapons to Palestinian militant organizations in the Gaza Strip. Defense officials were quoted as saying that the trucks were carrying missiles capable of striking as far as Tel Aviv and the nuclear reactor in Dimona.

2009(4thof Nisan, 5769): Ninety-five year old American photographer Helen Levitt passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/arts/design/30levitt.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1427511695-KVhjlQzyQlYzOLiARUxbMg

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-helen-levitt1-2009apr01-story.html#page=1

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/apr/03/helen-levitt-obituary

2010: Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted a performance in London by the acclaimed Jerusalem Quartet. Today’s lunchtime concert, which was being broadcast live on BBC Radio, was taken off the air in the middle due to the disruption, the Jewish Chronicle reported. The quartet completed its program. About five protesters took turns disrupting the concert with anti-Israel epithets at 10-minute intervals throughout the performance at Wigmore Hall, according to reports. They were removed from the audience. Protesters in other countries also have disrupted the quartet's performances. In a statement, the quartet noted that all four musicians served in the Israeli army as musicians and not in combat, and also perform as regular members of Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which brings Israeli and Arab musicians together. "We no more represent the Government of Israel than the audience at the Wigmore Hall represented the Government of the United Kingdom," read the statement. Only one of the four musicians is a native Israeli; one lives in Portugal and another in Berlin

2010: In New York, a week long program entitled The New Israeli Cuisine is scheduled to come to an end.

2010(14th of Nisan, 5770): Fast of the First Born

2010(14th of Nisan, 5770): In the evening, Jews around the world sit down to the Seder. Have a zissen Pesach

2010(14thof Nisan, 5770): Seventy-five year old author Alan Isler whose works included The Prince of West End Avenue, a novel “set in a Jewish old person’s home” which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize passed away.

2011: “Nora’s Will” and “Precious Life” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: President Obama nominated Daniel B. Shapiro to serve as the Ambassador of the United States of America to the state of Israel.

2011: Center for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute presented “Romantic Piano Trios: Schumann and Rachmaninoff.”

2012: The Andy Statman Trio (Andy on mandolin and clarinet, Jim Whitney on bass, Larry Eagle on drums & percussion) is scheduled to wrap up the season at the Charles Street Synagogue.

2012: Al Munzer is scheduled to moderate “Spinoza, Superstar of the millennium?” as part of Theatre J’s backstage program.

2012: Senator Gary Peters delivered a speech in honor of Joel E. Jacob, Chairman of the Board of MAZON.

http://capitolwords.org/date/2012/03/29/E508-2_to-honor-the-leadership-of-joel-jacob-as-chairman-/

2012: Jon Lebowitz was confirmed for a second term as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

2012: “Footnote” is among the films scheduled to be shown today at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2012(6thof Nisan, 5772): Seventy-four year old “Kenneth Libo, a historian of Jewish immigration who, as a graduate student working for Irving Howe in the 1960s and ’70s, unearthed historical documentation that informed and shaped World of Our Fathers, Mr. Howe’s landmark 1976 history of the East European Jewish migration to America” passed away today. (As reported by Paul Vitello)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/books/kenneth-libo-historian-of-jewish-immigration-dies-at-74.html

2013: The Ruach Minyan at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. is scheduled to host a Pesach Shabbat dinner.

2013: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a concert “Passion and Fire in the 20th Century.”

2013(18thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-one year old linguist John H. Gumperz passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/education/john-j-gumperz-linguist-of-cultural-interchange-dies-at-91.html?hpw&_r=0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._Gumperz

2013: The 23rdannual Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2013: The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Classic Film Series is scheduled to present “That Hamilton Woman” the classic directed by Michael Korda.

2013: “The Jewish Cardinal,” a “French television film directed by Ilan Duran Cohen was broadcast today on Arte.

2013: Forty year old Michael Steinberg, a SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager who had worked for discredited billionaire Steven Cohen, was arrested by federal agents today.

2013: A man claiming to represent the hackers behind one of the biggest attacks in Internet history made anti-Jewish statements.

2014: “Fountains of the Deep: Visions of Noah and the Flood” is scheduled to be shown for the last time in a pop art space at 462 West Broadway.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/darren-aronofsky-says-mideast-boycott-of-noah-is-sad/

2014: “Labor and Race in Modern Germany,” co-sponsored by the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism is scheduled to come to a close today

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

2014: “A Jewish woman and her partner were among the first same-sex couple ever to be officially married in Britain today, after a law authorizing same-sex marriages went into effect throughout the country. Twenty-nine-year-old Nikki Pettit, who is Jewish, married Tania Ward, 28, in a Jewish ceremony in Brighton, on Britain’s south coast.”

2014: “Trebilinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine is scheduled to air tonight on the Smithsonian Channel.



2014: Israel did not conduct the fourth stage of the prisoner release tonight,

2014: “New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson today for using the controversial term "occupied territories," saying he "misspoke" during his speech to a Republican Jewish Coalition event, Politico and CNN reported.”

2014: “Rabbi Yousef Hamadani Cohen, chief rabbi of Iran since 1994, who passed away over the weekend was laid to rest” today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-chief-rabbi-yousef-hamadani-cohen-dies/

2015: Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a screening of “Defiance.”

2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Country of Ice Cream Starby Sandra Newman

2015: Suite Française a film “based on the best-selling book by Irène Némirovsky, written by her during the Nazi occupation and before she was sent to Auschwitz is scheduled to be shown today as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival

2015: “A Happy End” by Iddo Netanyahu is scheduled to be performed for the last time at the June Havoc Theatre in Manhattan.

2015: The 64th Annual Israel Folk Dance Festival and Festival of the Arts is scheduled to take place in NYC.


2015: Professor Derek J. Penslar is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “1948 as a Jewish World War” in Miami Beach.


2016: Today, “Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef walked back his statement that non-Jews should not live in Israel, calling the comment “theoretical.”

2016: “Stolen Heart: The Theft of Jewish Property in Berlin’s Historic Center, 1933 – 1945” an exhibition that explores the critical issue of the state-sponsored “Aryanization” and plundering of Berlin’s Mitte (city center) and the murder of many of its former property owners is scheduled to open today.

2016: “Hitler’s Commando Lt. Col. Otto Skorzeny ‘Worked as an Assassin for Israeli Intelligence” published today described Mossad’s employment with a notorious Nazi.


2016: “Following a public backlash,” “Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef walked back his statement that non-Jews should not live in Israel, calling the comment “theoretical.”

2016: The Skirball Center is scheduled to host Lord George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury (Ret.), as he presents a Christian perspective on anti-Semitism, its root causes and the current situation in Europe and the UK as well as the BDS movement and its attempts to delegitimize Israel.

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host “Ave Maria” a film in which “a Jewish family asks Palestinian nuns to break their vow of silence to help them on Shabbat.”

2017: As part of the observance of Women’s History Month, Lauren B. Strauss, Scholar in Residence at American University and Executive Director of the Foundation for Jewish Studies is scheduled to “discuss her role in the Civil Rights movement and how her early experiences shaped her later life” with Holocaust survivor  Marione Ingram, the author of The Hands of Peace.

2017: The Vice President of the United States administered the office to “bankruptcy attorney David Friedman, the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

2017: “A telegram from senior Nazi Heinrich Himmler to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, probably dating to 1943,” which “contains a promise to support the Mufti in his fight to control Palestine, was published today on website of Israel’s National Library,

2017: Dr. Michael Bornstein, “one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust” is scheduled to return to the University of Iowa where he earned his Ph.D. and “worked in pharmaceutical research and development for more than 40 years” to share his life story and discuss his new memoir, Survivors Club.

2018: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to “a concert of piano music presented by the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble celebrating the music of Oxana Yablonskaya.”

2018: Rona Kenan is scheduled to return to Zappa Tel Aviv with the band for a performance this evening.

2018: The Westchester Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

2018: Two days after his 87th birthday, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the Yale trained attorney and husband of Ramona Ripston with whom he had had three children – Mark Justin and Dana – passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)


2018: Holocaust survivor Louise Lawrence Israels is scheduled to tell her first person story of survival at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

2019: After having premiered in Los Angeles earlier this month, “Dumbo,” the timeless tale of elephant co-starring Alan Arkin and with music by Danny Elfman is scheduled to be released today in the United States.

2019: “Great British Jews: A Celebration” an exhibition that examines the contributions Jews have made to the United Kingdom, including “fish and chips” and “Marks and Spence” is scheduled to open today at the Jewish Museum in London.

2019: As part of its Shabbat observance, in New York, Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host eight students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the Valentine’s Day massacre who will “perform ‘Shine,’  their tibute to the friends they lost and to speak about their experience and how activism, music and the arts are helping them to heal.”

2019: “Believe,” the latest album by Neshama Carlebach is scheduled to be released today.

 

This Day, March 30, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 30

1135: On the secular calendar, birthdate of Maimonides (Moses Ben Maimon) in Cordova, Spain. According to Jewish tradition he was born Erev Pesach. "From Moses to Moses there was none like Moses.' This folk saying sums up the greatness of the man. There is not space enough to do justice to his amazing life. Such were his intellectual capabilities that one person said, if you did not know that Maimonides was the name of the man you would think that it was the name of a university. He is most noted for his codification of Jewish Law called the Mishneh Torah (Review of the Torah) and his philosophic work Moreh Nevuchim (Guide To The Perplexed). But for some the true measure of the man is the lesser known Letter of Consolation and Letter on the Sanctification of God. He wrote both of these to reassure the Jews of Fez that to encourage them in their steadfastness to Judaism and to emphasize the fact that God hears our prayers and that our sins do not detract from our good deeds. He wrote a great deal more including medical books. Maimonides refused to "make a profit from the crown of the Torah" so while he served as the leader of the Jewish community in Egypt; he earned a living as a leading physician. Maimonides died in Egypt in December, 1204 or Tevet, 4965. He is buried in Tiberias and many make a point of visiting the grave of this sage. If you do the math this is the 870th anniversary of the birth of Maimonides. This would make this an especially auspicious year for Jews to devote study time to this sage who has influenced non-Jews as well as Jews eight centuries.

http://www.amazon.com/Maimonides-Biography-Abraham-Joshua-Heschel/dp/0374517592

http://huc.edu/faculty/faculty/marmur/Heschel's%20Two%20Maimonides.pdf

1191: King Philip II of France set sail from Sicily to begin his campaign against Saladin in what is called the Third Crusade. Throughout his reign, Philip persecuted his Jewish subjects by variously holding them hostage for ransom, releasing Christians from paying their debts to the Jews and expelling them so he could seize all of their property and assets.

1218: Henry III of England enforced the Yellow Badge Edict. The badge was a piece of yellow cloth in the shape of the Tablets of the Law and was worn above the heart by every Jew over the age of seven.

1296: Edward I sacks Berwick-upon-Tweed, during armed conflict between Scotland and England. This is the same King who expelled the Jews from England in 1290. He expelled them so that he could finance his various wars against the French, the Welch and the Scots.

1432: Birthdate of Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed’s reign was a positive period for the Jews. After he conquered Constantinople in 1453, he allowed Jews from today's Greek Islands and Crete to settle in Istanbul. His declaration of invitation said, in part, "Listen sons of the Hebrew who live in my country...May all of you who desire come to Constantinople and may the rest of your people find here a shelter". After fighting off a crusade led by Jean de Capistrano, Mehmed invited the Ashkenazi Jews of Transylvania and Slovakia to the Ottoman Empire. The invitation may have been as a sign of appreciation for fighting prowess of a Jewish regiment called “the Sons of Moses.” Mehmed ordered that various synagogues that had been damaged by fire should be repaired and several Jews held positions at Court.

1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella signed a decree expelling the Jews from Spain.

1526: In Antwerp, Belgium, Emperor Charles V issued a general safe-conduct to the Portuguese "New Christians" and Marranos allowing them to live and work there. Although they still had to live under cover they were safe from the Inquisition.

1581: Pope Gregory XIII issued a Bull banning the use of Jewish doctors. This did not prevent many popes from using Jews as their personal physicians.

1690: Alexander VIII issued “Animarum Saluti,” a papal relating to the neophytes in the Indies.

1739(20th of Adar II): Rabbi Moses Meir Perles of Prague, author of Megillat Sofer passed away.

1771: In New York City, Abraham Isaac Abraham and his wife gave birth to “Feglah” Abrahams who died in infancy.

1773: In Newport, Ezra Stiles, the future President of Yale invited Hebron born Rabbi Chaim Isaac Caregal and Aaron Lopez to his home for a meeting that would be the beginning of strong friendship that lasted for the next 6 months when the Rabbi left town to continue his travels.

1801(16th of Nisan, 5561): Second day of Pesach; The Omer is counted for the first time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson.

1804: Birthdate of Salomon Sulzer the Austrian Chazan and composer whose "Shir Tziyyon" a work in two volumes that “established models for the various sections of the musical service—the recitative of the cantor, the choral of the choir, and the responses of the congregation—and contained music for Sabbaths, festivals, weddings, and funerals which has been introduced into nearly all the synagogues of the world.”

1804: Birthdate of Austrian Chazan and composer Salomon Sulzer who so successful “as an interpreter of Schubert” that he was made “a knight of the Order of Francis Joseph I and a maestro of the Reale Accademia di St. Cecilia in Rome.”

1816: In Moravia, Jacob Steinschneider and his wife gave birth to Moritz Steinschneider “a Bohemian bibliographer and Orientalist who passed away in 1907.

1820(15thof Nisan, 5580):  As Americans enjoy political season of “good feelings” Jews observe Pesach

1831(16thof Nisan, 5591): In Mayence, Rabbi Samuel Bondi and Sophie Sueschen Bondi gave birth to Marcus Meir Bondi.

1839(15thof Nisan, 5599): Pesach

1840: Jonas Ellis married Sarah Jacobs at the New Synagogue today.

1849: In New York, Isidor Bush published the first edition of Israel’s Herald, “the first Jewish weekly in the United States” that folded after only 3 months.

1851: Thirty year old Prussian born cigar dealer Samuel Gluckstein the son of Lehman Meyer Gluckstein and Helena Horn who had come to Britain ten years ago was now living at  9, Freeman Street, Tower Hamlets, London

1853: Simon ben Moses married Elkla bat Joseph at the Great Synagogue today.

1853: Birthdate of Cincinnati, OH native Gustavus Henry Wald the Dean of the University of Cincinnati Law School.

1853: Samuel Cohen married Rosetta Menser at the New Synagogue today.

1856: In Hoboken, NJ, Henry and Sophie Waldstein gave birth to Charles Waldstein, the native of New York who became a leading Anglo-American archaeologist who was knighted in 1912 and changed his name to Walston in 1918 so he became known as Sir Charles Walston, husband of Florence Seligman.

https://www.jta.org/1927/03/25/archive/sir-charles-walston-noted-anglo-jewish-scholar-dies-at-71

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclopædia_of_American_Biography/Waldstein,_Charles

1856: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War. One of the stranger aspects of the conflict that most remember for “The Charge of the Light Brigade” was the creation of Mickiewicz’s Jewish Legion. A Polish nobleman and nationalist who was living in exile in Paris at the start of the war, Mickiewicz went to Constantinople where he and Armand Levy organized a military unit made up of Jews from Poland and Palestine. The group was also called the Hussars of Israel. Mickiewicz died before he could lead them into action.

1856: The attempts of the Turkish sultan, Abed Almagid, to ally his kingdom with the west came to fruition today when the Ottoman Empire “was officially included among the European family nations’ today during the Congress of Paris.  Abed Almagid had showed his support for the cause of the Jews when he issued a decree in 1840 absolving the Jews of Rhodes from the charges of having killed a Christian child so his blood could be used in making matzah.

1858: Printer Hyman Lipman, a Philadelphia Jew who played a key role in the early development of the postal card patented the lead pencil.

1862: In Brooklyn, Congregation Beth Elohim dedicated its new facility on Pearl Street which gave rise to its nickname “the Pearl Street Synagogue.”

1863: During the Civil War, President Lincoln issued a proclamation proclaiming Thursday, April 30, 1863 as a National Day of Fasting.

1864: Birthdate of German- born sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, the father of Hillel Oppenheimer, a professor of botany at Hebrew University. After a distinguished career in Germany, Oppenheimer passed away as a refugee in Los Angeles in 1943.

1866(14thof Nisan, 5626): Ta’ant Berachot; Erev Pesach

1867: In what was then  Lötzen, East Prussia and is now Giżycko, Poland, Mortiz Davidson and his wife gave birth to movie producer Paul Davidson.

1873(2ndof Nisan. 5633): Eighty-eight year old Count Abraham Camondo passed away. Born in Istanbul, he “was a Jewish Ottoman-Italian financier and philanthropist and the patriarch of the Camondo family.”

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3949-camondo

1877(16th of Nisan, 5637): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1879: “Egyptian Influence on Hebrew Names” published today described the work of Dr. Brugsh that there is no Hebrew derivation for the names Moses, Aaron or Miriam but they do contain Egyptian roots. Also, the name Pinchas (the famed slayer in the Book of Numbers) comes from an Egyptian term for “the Negro” which was applied to dark-skinned men in Egypt

1880: It was reported today that a new opera, “The Queen of Sheba” by Goldmark has been successfully performed in several German cities.

1881: In Leadville, CO, the liquor business owned by the Schloss family was determined to have sustained $250 in damages in a fire that began last night.

1882: Birthdate of Austrian-born English psychoanalyst and child psychologist Melanie Klein. Klein developed methods of play technique and play therapy in analyzing and treating child patients. She passed away in 1960.

1883: Two days after he had passed away, 63 year old Nathan Mayer Montefiore, the son of Abraham Joseph Montefiore and Henrietta Rothschild, the husband of the former Emma Goldsmid and the father of Alice, Leonard, Charlotte and Claude Montifiore was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery in what must have been a gathering of some of England’s most prominent Jews since it involved the Montefiores, Rothschilds and Goldsmids.

1883: Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Westmount, a Reform synagogue in Westmount, Quebec, the oldest “Liberal” or “Reform” synagogue in Canada, was incorporated today.

1884: In Kozlov, Czech Republic, Adolf Neubauer, the son of Karl and Theresia Neubauer, and his wife Karla gave birth to Ida Neubauer who became Ida Simon when she married Carl Simon.

1888: In Trock, Poland, “Hyman Ely and Sarah (Rodberg) Cohen gave birth to the husband of Mildred Ruth Park and MIT trained engineer Samson Kalmon Cohen who was commended by Col. George Goethals for his work in building the Panama Canal, served with the Engineers in WW I and was an active member of Temple Israeli in Boston.

1888(18thof Nisan, 5648): Forty-one year old “German Jewish physician and Arctic explorer” Dr. Emil Bessels suffered a stroke today and passed away in Stuttgart, Germany.

1890: Ida Levy of New York will marry Henry Naftal of Asbury Park today.

1890: Authorities concluded that Morris Eising, German-Jewish immigrant who had been found dead in his rooming house had died by his own hand.  Apparently he was despondent over the loss of his job which meant he could not send money back to his wife in Bavaria.

1890: This morning Rabbi Gustav Gottheil is scheduled to officiate at the funeral Emanuel Bernheimer, “one of the owners of the Lion Brewery” and one of the oldest brewers living in New York.  Born in 1817, he learned his craft in his native Germany before coming to the United States in 1844.  In 1850 he and August Schmid formed the Constanz Brewery and in 1860 they took over and enlarged the Lion Brewery.  Bernheimer was one of the oldest member of Temple Emanu El and a patron of several charities including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids. After the funeral, Dr. Silverman will officiate at the burial in the Salem Field Cemetery.

1890: “The Theatrical Week” published today provides highlights of current and upcoming productions including  “The Shatchen,” a new play by Charles Dickson and Harry Dobbin whose protagonist is Myer Petooksy  a peddler who also works as “an unlicensed marriage broker.”

1891: “New Books” published today contains a complete review of The Persecution of the Jews in Russia that includes an “appendix containing a summary of special restrice laws, a map showing the pale of Jewish settlements.”

1892: It was reported today that Prague after police quelled a riot by a mob upset by the Imperial authority’s refusal to allow a celebration of the anniversary birth of a medieval educational reformer, John Comenius.  When the rioters were thwarted by authorities, they cried “Let’s make for the Jews!” followed by calls to head for the Jewish quarter where they could “vent their fury on the inoffensive Hebrews.” The mounted policemen wanted an end to the rioters and drove them from the streets including those in the Jewish quarter. (Yes, this mindless anti-Semitic attack took place in the supposedly civilized confines Prague.  The anti-Semitic outburst that consumed Paris during the Dreyfus affair was really not such an aberration after all.)

1892: A cable was received today in Toronto from London describing the death of sixty nine year old Canadian Jew Mark Samuel

1892: Birthdate of Erwin Panofsky, the husband of Dorothea (Dora) Mosse, the German art historian who was forced to pursue his career in the United States after the rise of the Nazis.

https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/panofskye.htm

1894: Birthdate of Samson Raphaelson the New York born graduate of the University of Illinois whose extensive writing career included creating a short story based on an episode in the life of Al Jolson which he then he expanded into the Jazz Singer, a successful Broadway play and the first “talkie.”

1895: Birthdate of Pierre Péteul, who as the Capuchin Franciscan friar Père Marie-Benoît saved approximately 4,000 Jews from the Shoah.  He was was honored with the Medal of the Righteous among the Nations and was known as Père des juifs  (Father of the Jews.

1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1896: Benjamin Kossman completed more than five years of service with the U.S. 6thCavalry.

1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Citizens are required to return their census papers in London. While most citizens are required to return their census papers today in London, the Jews have been given an extension and do not have to return them until tomorrow since today is the second day of Passover and the English respect the need to observe the holiday.

1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Fifty-one year old Rabbi Aaron Wise who had gone to Rodelph Sholom to officiate at Passover Services this morning, complained of being ill and went home after consulting with Benjamin Blumenthal without preaching lay down on a longue in the basement dining room as passed away before medical help could arrive.

Born in Hungary in 1844, Wise was educated in the Talmudic schools of Hungary, including the seminary at Eisenstadt, where he studied under Dr. Hildesheimer. Later he attended the universities of Leipzig and Halle, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution. He assisted Bernard Fischer in revising the Buxtorf lexicon, and was for several years a director of schools in his native town. He was for a time identified with the Haredi party in Hungary, acting as secretary to the organization Shomere ha-Datt, and editing a Judaeo-German weekly in its support. In 1874 Wise emigrated to the United States, and became rabbi of Congregation Baith Israel in Brooklyn; two years later he was appointed rabbi of Temple Rodeph Shalom in New York, which office he held until his death. Wise was the author of Beth Aharon, a religious school handbook; and he compiled a prayer-book for the use of his congregation. He was for some time editor of the Jewish Herald of New York, and of the Boston Hebrew Observer; and he contributed to the yearbooks of the Jewish Ministers' Association of America, as well as to other periodical publications. He was one of the founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the first vice-president of its advisory board of ministers. Wise founded the Rodeph Shalom Sisterhood of Personal Service, which established the Aaron Wise Industrial School in his memory. He was the son of Chief Rabbi Joseph Hirsch Weiss, and father of Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise.

1897: Colonel Goldsmid asks Herzl to stay away from the Zionist Congress in order to prevent a split in the ranks of the Hovevei Zion.

1897: Dr. Adler, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, and Moritz Güdemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna, led anti-Zionist attacks. They were known as the "Protestrabbiner" - "Protest Rabbis".

1897: “In Memory of General Grant” published today described the units that will be marching in the parade to honor the late President and Civil War hero including a contingent from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Cadets under the command of Major Martin Cohen and Adjutant Max Saltzman.

1897: In New York City’s Lower East Side, Bessie and Jakob Riskin gave birth to “screenwriter and playwright Robert Riskin who won an Oscar for the timeless comedy “It Happened on Night” as well as “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” – an example of the American cultural myth actually created by Jewish immigrants and their children in Tinsel Town.

1898: Liebe Blond and her four children who had arrived in the United States were put on a ship bound for Europe after authorities refused to let her husband who has been working here see her or listen to his entreaties to let them stay in the United States.

1899(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Hayyim Leib Tiktinski, head of the Mir Yeshivah for 49 years passed away

1899: It was reported today that when Baron Hirsch passed away he left a fortune estimated at 125 million dollars, most of which was tied to railroad companies.  Both before and after his death, Hirsch had given large sums to the poor including 10 million dollars for the Jewish Colonization Association of the United States.

1899: It was reported today that since the death of her husband, Baroness Hirsch has been very generous in providing aid to the poor including $1,500,000 to the need of Paris and an even large amount to the Educational Alliance which assists the Russian Jews.

1899: Birthdate of movie producer Irving Thalberg, an early pioneer in the film industry. His brief career (he died of pneumonia at the age of 37) left such a mark on the world of cinema that a year after his death the Academy of Motion Picture Artists created a special award in his name that is given annually at the Oscar Presentations. Thalberg was the inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Last Tycoon. In explaining why his name did not appear in the film credits, Thalberg said, “if you’re in a position to give yourself credit, you don’t need it.”

1900: In Princeton, NY, “Classics professor Charles A. Robinson” and his wife gave birth to

Charles A. Robinson, Jr. the Professor of Classic at Brown University who married Celia Sachs, the daughter of art historian Paul J. Sachs who played a key role in planning to save and retrieve works of art in World War II.

1901: Birthdate of Sydney David Piece the member of the Canadian track and field team at the 1924 Paris Olympics and McGill University graduate who served as “Canada’s ambassador to Brazil, Belgium and Luxembourg.”

1903: Birthdate of Sol C Siegel, journalist turned movie producer who helped to create such hits as “High Society,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “No Way to Treat a Lady,” “Alvarez Kelly” “Three Coins In A Fountain” and “A Letter to Three Wives” the last two which were nominated for Oscar’s as Best Picture.

1903: As part of negotiations to secure land for a Jewish homeland, Carton de Wiart talked to a lawyer with the Egyptian government who recommends that the concession should be in the form of a lease, not a freehold. Herzl demands a 99-year lease.

1904(14thof Nisan, 5664): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1904: It was reported today that the children of the late Mayer Lehman, who was a Director of Mount Sinai Hospital for 19 years, have given $93,000 to cover the cost of constructing the Dispensary Building which is to be dedicated in memory of their father.

1904(14th of Nisan, 5664): At Ellis Island, three hundred Jewish immigrants who “have been detained while awaiting inspection” held a Seder on the first night of Passover. The meal was served on dishes that were brand new having been brought straight from the storeroom. All of the utensils used in the kitchen were also brand new and the meal was prepared under the supervision of the Jewish immigrants. The meal included chicken soup, roast goose, apple sauce, mashed potatoes, black tea, oranges and, of course, Matzah and ground horseradish.

1904: Alice Weinberg, the twelve year old daughter of Max Weinberg was reported missing by her father. The girl had gone to play with her friends this morning while her family prepared for tonight’s Seder. The family called off its Passover celebration so it could search for Alice.

1905: Birthdate of St. Louis native and Columbia Law School trained Attorney Phillip W. Haberman, Jr.the WW II veteran of the 8th Air Force who was active in New York State Republican politics and the husband of Helen Haberman with whom he raised two children – Charles and Norma.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/19/archives/phillip-w-haberman-jr-dies-lawyer-served-city-and-state.html

1906: Birthdate of Belarus native Morris Adler, the husband of Goldie Adler, and the leading Detroit Rabbi who was mortally wounded by a congregant during Shabbat services

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2016/02/12/rabbi-morris-adler-shaarey-zedek/80186614/

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/my-grandfathers-assassin-and-me/

1907(15thof Nisan, 5667): Pesach

1908: Lightweight Leach Cross (Louis Charles Wallach) fought is third bout in the month of March and his 29th career bout today.

1909(8th of Nisan, 5669): Mrs. Michla Shilotzdky passed away this morning at the age of 106. The cause of death was pneumonia. Mrs. Esther Davis, 115 years old; Mrs. Rosei Aaronwald, 108 years old; and Mendel Diamond, 107 years old were at her bedside at the Daughters of Jacob Home in New York.

1909: Official opening of the Queensboro Bridge which two Jewish boys from Queens named Simon and Garfunkel would immortalize in the 1960’s hit "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"

1910: The Mississippi Legislature founds The University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg, Mississippi. At the time of the founding of USM, there was a small Jewish population in Hattiesburg including Maurice Dreyfus who operated a saw mill and Frank Rubenstein who opened a department store called “The Hub.”

1911: After a year, Luigi Luzzatti completed his service as the 20th Prime Minister of Italy.

1913: B’nai Israel Congregation was founded in Greensburg, PA.

1913(21st of Adar II, 5673): Seventy-two year old merchant Bernard Wolf passed away today in Chicago.

1913: Ahavas Achim Congregation was founded in Buffalo, NY.

1915(15thof Nisan, 5675): Pesach

1915: Rabbi Aaron Elseman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “America the Hope of Humanity” this morning at Temple Beth Israel in Manhattan.

1915: The 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors who attended last night’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Nay Y.M.H.A. which also provided a night’s lodging at the Hotel Roland are scheduled to worship at Temple Beth Israel at Lexington and 72ndStreet.

1915: The Secretary of War, the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City have been invited to attend tonight’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Young Men’s Hebrew Association for the benefit of 300 of the 8,000 Jews serving in the military which is being held at Vienna Hall on Lexington and 58thStreet.

1916: Dr. Henry Moskowitz introduced former President Teddy Roosevelt to the crowd attending the Jewish Bazaar at the Grand Central Plaza where the former Rough Rider “delivered an address in which he urged boh rich and poor to contribute to help the victims of the European War.”

1917: It was explained today by those who had formed the Jewish League of American Patriots “that in mobilizing ‘the forces and resources of the Jewish race in America’ no attempt would be made to separate the Jews a unit of patriotism but arouse Jews to full co-operation with other Americans.”

1917: President Wilson’s telegram to Julius Rosenwald published today read, in part “Your contribution of $1,000,000 to the $10,000,000 fund for the relief of Jewish war suffers serves the democracy as well as humanity…Your gift lays an obligation even while it furnishes inspiration.”

1917:  Those listed as being the largest contributors (and the amount of their contributions) to the Hadassah medical that will soon be on its way to Palestine included Mrs. Julius Rosenwald ($1,000), Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim ($500), Mrs. Nathan Straus ($500), Rosie Bernheimer ($500) Mrs. Max Richeter ($250) and Mrs. Robert Hirsch ($250).

1917(7thof Nisan, 5677): Eighty-one year old Gertrude Hyman Felsentahl, the German born wife of Herman Felsenthal and mother of Eli, Judith, Flora, Hannah and Emily Felstenthal passed away today after which she was buried at the Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum in Chicago.

1918(17thof Nisan, 5678): Shabbat Pesach

1918: As part of the appeal to raise funds for the Third Liberty Loan a special appeal was sent to the Jewish community signed by several leaders including Dr. Solomon T.H. Hurwtiz of the Rabbinical College of American and editor of the Jewish Forum, Rabbi Henry Guiterman of Scranton, PA, and Dr. Samuel Buhler, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Ministers’ Assoication.

1919: Birthdate of Oscar Benjamin “Ossie” Schectman the Queens born son of Jewish immigrants who won the NIT while playing basketball for Long Island University and “is credited with having scored the first basket in what became the National Basketball Association.

1919: Simon Wolf, Dr. Joseph Silverman, Daniel P. Hays and Dr. Nathan Krass were among those who spoke at  Temple Emanu-El this evening at ceremonies marking the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Isaac Mayor Wise, leader in America of Reform Judaism and the founder of the Hebrew Union College and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

1919: “The Ceremony of Conferring Rabbinical Degree to five students of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanah Theological Seminary today at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.

1920: A British soldier digging a trench in Syria uncovered ruins of Dura Europus which would include the discovery a synagogue that dated back to 244 “making it one of the oldest synagogues in the world.

1920: In Baranovichi, Poland, Brakha née Sokolovsky and Shraga (Feivel) Tunkel gave birth to Yaakov Tunkel who would gain fame as Yaakov Banai, a leader of Lehi also known as the Stern Gang.

1921: The body of Richmond native Sir Moses Jacob Ezekiel, the graduate of VMI and Confederate veteran who became “a world famous sculptor and died in Rome in 1917” is scheduled to be brought to the National Cemetery at Arlington, VA today for final interment.

1921: “In Lindau, Bavaria, physiotherapist “Ella (Norden) Kalischer” and psychoanalyst Hans Kalischer gave birth to Clemens Kalischer, the American photographer whose skill raises the question “What is there about Jews and cameras?”

http://forward.com/articles/175376/photographer-clemens-kalischer-survived-holocaust/?p=all

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/obituaries/clemens-kalischer-97-refugee-photographer-of-humanity-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1921: Churchill visits Tel Aviv where he delivers a speech praising what the Jews have accomplished in the last twelve years since the city was first founded.

1921: Winston Churchill visits the “39 year old agricultural colony of Rishon le-Zion where he spoke approvingly of the accomplishments of the Zionists and the positive affect their activities have had on the surrounding Arab population.

1921: British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill completes his fact finding trip to Palestine and leaves Jerusalem for Egypt.

1925: Birthdate of Edward Sidney Finkelstein, the native of New Rochelle, NY, “a master merchandiser who turned Macy’s into one of the nation’s smartest, fastest-growing department store chains.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/business/edward-s-finkelstein-89-is-dead-took-macys-to-its-highs-and-lows.html?hpw&rref=obituaries

1925: Time magazine published the following account Rabbi Solomon Goldman’s attempt to make changes at his synagogue in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

In spite of generations of prophets and reformers, Jewish ritual with all its shrilly "orthodox" punctilio has lived with few radical changes. In Cleveland, Ohio, some months ago, Rabbi Solomon Goldman, spiritual head of the local "Jewish Center," proposed to rid his congregation of some bits of orthodoxy. In particular, he decided that men and women might sit in the same pews. Here was reform indeed! Not since Solomon built his great temple had the thoroughly orthodox Jewess sat with the thoroughly orthodox Jew at worship. She had been relegated to one side of the temple, or to the gallery, or to a seat in the rear behind a curtain. It was custom not merely Jewish, but Pan-Asiatic. Muhammadan women do not squat with men folk in the pit of the Mosque. And even in the new Christian Churches in China, Japan and elsewhere, women have always, until very recently, sat in a special section railed or curtained off for them. Now Rabbi Goldman of Cleveland has changed all this in his congregation. At once A. A. Katz, one of Rabbi Goldman's flock, cited him to appear before the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of America to answer for his ecclesiastical liberality. Rabbi Goldman refused to appear. In this, he was supported by his congregation. When the week ended, it was still the turn of the Jewish Fundamentalists to move. It should be noted that departure from Jewish orthodoxy is not equivalent to becoming a Reformed Jew. The latter class, whose most prominent leader is Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, disregards many customs from which Rabbi Goldman is not likely to depart, among which are:

Blessing - At each service, men are called up before the congregation to say a blessing before and after portions of the Torah, which is read— on all Sabbaths and holidays. In congregations where Jewish customs are meticulously observed, this privilege is auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Music - No instrumentation is permitted. Weird half-shouted chants, led by a slippered cantor, are the only melodies.

Costume - Both men and women must wear hats. The enthusiastically orthodox wear skullcaps, shawls. Men also wear the talis, a fringed scarf, draped over the shoulders.

1926(15thof Nisan, 5686): Pesach

1926: Birthdate of Warsaw native Eugenia Rotsztejn, the Holocaust survivor who became Eugenia Unger when she married David Unger and emigrated to Argentina in 1949 where she was bat matizvahed in 2017.

1926: “Our Daily Bread” a silent drama directed by Constantin J. David and written by Hans Behrendt and Mutz Greenbaum who also served as cinematographer  was released in Germany today.

1926: In Manhattan, “Harold K. Guinzburg, the publisher and co-founder of Viking Press” and his wife gave birth Thomas Guinzburg, an editor and publisher who helped create The Paris Review, and who later became president of Viking Press, the publishing house founded by his father.

1926: In New York, “many rabbis devoted their sermons to appeals in behalf of their suffering co-religionists in Eastern Europe” and asked their congregants “to support the United Jewish campaign of Greater New York, of which William Fox is Chairman and Louis Marshall and Felix M. Warburg are Honorary Chairmen.”

1927: At luncheon at the Astor Hotel, Utah Senator William H. King told the members of the Brooklyn Women’s Division of the United Palestine Appeal “that he favored the United States severing diplomiatic relations with any country which failed because of anti-Semitism to protect its Jewish nationals.”

1928: While serving in the final year of her term as President of Hadassah Irma Levy Lindheim the American women's Zionist organization, declared that the administration of the ZOA was "not an effective instrument for the achievement of world Zionist aims for the up-building of Palestine." In so doing, she asserted her opposition to the leadership of ZOA President Louis Lipsky. Although Lindheim was careful to note that she spoke as an individual and that Hadassah had no quarrel with the World Zionist Organization led by Chaim Weizmann, she came under attack for her comments from both ZOA leadership and other Hadassah members. During her presidency, Hadassah was in frequent conflict with the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which wanted to control and dispense the funds raised from the Hadassah membership. The Hadassah-ZOA conflict had roots dating back to 1918, when Hadassah (founded in 1912) first joined the umbrella organization, giving up some of its organizational authority. Seven members of the Hadassah board had been expelled in 1920 when the organization's Central Committee refused to raise money for the ZOA fund Keren Hayesod. Despite Hadassah's loss of autonomy, the organization's membership steadily increased even as general ZOA membership declined.

1928: Birthdate of American Jewish author Carl Solomon.

1929: U.S. premiere of “Chinatown Nights” based on the story “Tong War” by Samuel Ornitz and produced by David O. Selznick.

1929: In New York City “Clair and Dr. Abraham George Sheftel gave birth to Judy Sheftel who became Judy Feiffer when she married Jules Feiffer.

https://www.mvtimes.com/2016/07/06/judy-feiffer/

1929(18thof Adar II, 5689): Shabbat Parah

1929(18thof Adar II, 5689): Sixty-nine year old Maximillian “Max” Heller who served as Rabbi at Temple Sinai in New Orleans from 1887 until 1829 passed away today.

http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Rabbi-Max-Heller,870.aspx

1929: Birthdate of actress Shirley Stoler, the Brooklyn born daughter of “Russian Jewism immigrant owners of a used furniture store who appeared on Broadway, in films and on day-time soaps passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/28/nyregion/shirley-stoler-69-actress-hailed-for-her-role-in-seven-beauties.html

1929: It was reported today that Hadassah has acquired a portrait of Nathan Straus painted by Eward Salzan which will be hung in the Straus Health Center currently under construction in Tel Aviv.

1930: Birthdate of Gene Selznick, the native of Los Angeles who helped to make volleyball the popular sport in southern California.

http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-gene-selznick-20120612,0,4439222.story#axzz2x2Jxl7y2

1930: It was reported today that if the government’s case against New York’s Century Club ever reaches the Supreme Court on appeal, Justice Benjamin Cardozo would be one of the one the judges who would have to recuse himself because he had been a member of the exclusive New York social organization.

1930: A citrus tree was planted on the 140 acre plot purchased in 1926 under the direction of Mrs. Ada Maimon marking the official founding Ayanot, a women’s farm that took its name from the two springs located on the acreage. For the next two years, the women workers lived in Ness Ziona and came to Ayanot every day to cultivate the soil. In 1932, Ada Maiomon and ten girls would begin living on a cowshed on the property.

1932: Birthdate of A. J. (Arie) Zuckerman, Dean of the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine. Zuckerman’s area of expertise is the study of hepatitis.

1934(14thof Nisan, 5694): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach

1934:Blue Moon” a classic popular song written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart was “registered for copyright as an unpublished work” today.

1936: Among the teams competing for a slots to represent the United States at the Olympics are Temple which has three Jews in its starting line-up and the Hollywood Universals which has two Jews – a fact that seems at odd with the determination of some Jews to boycott the “Hitler” Olympics.

1936: Twenty-eight year old Walter Sievers “was sentenced to death today for having killed a Jewish tradesman name Zirpkowski in his shop last July” as the court dismissed his claim that he had shot the victim “in a moment of political excitement” finding instead “that the crime had been committed in cold blood with the purpose of robbery.”

1936(7thof Nisan, 5696): Seventy year old David Eder, a British psychoanalyst who treated soldiers for mental problems during World War I and served as President of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain passed away today.

1936: “The first words heard from the Palestine broadcasting station which was opened” today “by the High Commissioner “This is Jerusalem calling.”

1937: In Chicago, “the former Dorothy Gurevitz” and her husband, electrician Max Hirsch gave birth to Charles Sidney Hirsch, the graduate of the University Of Illinois College Of Medicine in Chicago and “the New York City chief medical examiner who raced to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and returned to the morgue with every rib broken to face the monumental forensic challenge of identifying the 2,753 victims of the attacks…”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/nyregion/charles-s-hirsch-new-yorks-chief-medical-examiner-on-9-11-dies-at-79.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1937: Based on information that first appeared in Juedische Rundschau,“a journal of the Zionist Federation in Germany” relying on a study prepared by Ernst Karn, “996 teachers and professors have left Germany” since the Nazis came to power with “239 of them settling in the United States”  where 21 are working at Harvard and 12 are at Yale.

1937: According to a press announcement “principals of the Jewish School of Music in Pinsk face court proceedings because students sang “the first act of Puccini’s opera ‘Tosca’ which takes place in a Catholic Covent” in Yiddish “outraged Christian feelings and profaned religion.”

1938: Mrs. Joseph Stroock, a member of the national Youth Aliyah committee of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America announced that a total of $20,000 was contributed last night to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.

1940: At today’s meeting of its stockholders, The Workers Bank, Ltd. Of Tel Aviv, the central bank of the cooperatives in Palestine, declared the tenth annual dividend of 4 per cent on its common stock.

1940: President Roosevelt met with Victor Perlmutter today at the White House from 1:23 to 1:27 after which he dined alone.

1942: After being open for only two weeks, the Belzac Concentration Camp has processed 15,000 Jews most of whom were from the Liviv Ghetto.

1944: Moshe Sertok, the head of the international department of the Jewish Agency, asked Oliver Stanley, the Colonial Secretary to allow any Jew reaching Istanbul from Nazi-occupied Europe to be admitted to Palestine.

1945(16th of Nisan, 5705): SS Sergeant Adolf Storms reportedly shot “a Jew who could no longer walk during a forced March in from Deutsch Shuetzenn to the village of Hartberg.”

1945(16th of Nisan, 5705): Nine women tried to escape from Ravenbruck. They were caught and executed.

1946: “St. Louis Woman,” a Harold Arlen musical opened its Broadway run at the Martin Beck Theatre

1946: Birthdate of Lesley Sue Goldstein who gained fame as recording star Lesley Gore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/arts/music/lesley-gore-teenage-voice-of-heartbreak-dies-at-68.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1947: Benjamin Teller, who is managing the Hapoel’s American Tour announced today that the soccer team is scheduled to fly out of Tel Aviv on April 6 and arrive in New York on April 10.

1947: The Rabbinical Council of Palestine called on the terrorists to halt their actions and “issued a strong denunciation of terrorism as ‘completely contrary to Jewish religious feeling.’”

1947: The 18 Americans who made up most of the crew of the SS Ben Hecht, formerly the Abril, boarded the Marine Carp, an American ship headed for New York. The British had declined to press charges against the crew.

1948: Because no supply convoys have reach Jerusalem from the Tel Aviv area with commodities since March 24 because of attacks by Arab troops, there has been a “growing shortage of fresh food for the Jewish inhabitants of the city resulting in the “introduction” today “of bread rationing and the restricting of the amount of butter given to children.

1948: In pre-state Israel, in response to Arab aggression, the Yishuv extended the call to active duty to “men and single women” between the ages of 26 and 25.

1949: Husni al-Za'im who had become Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Army in May 1948, seized power today in a bloodless coup that would de-stabilize Syria with ramifications that have lasted into the 21st century for both Israel, the region and the world as a whole.

1949: Yigal Yadin and Walter Eytan returned to King Abdullah’s villa at Shuneh to try and reach final armistice terms with the Jordanians.

1950: In Ottawa, Canadian attorney and CFL owner Sam Berger and his wife gave birth to Canadian MP David Berger.

1950(12th of Nisan, 5710): Seventy-seven year old Léon Blum French, the former French premier, passed away. Leon Blum was born in Paris, France, on April 9, 1872. The son of Jewish parents, he studied law at the Sorbonne. He became active in politics as result of the Dreyfus Affair. Blum became a leader of the Socialist Part. He was part of a group of left-wing parties in France known as the Popular Front that opposed Hitler in the 1930's. As leader of the Popular Front and head of the Socialist Party, Blum became Prime Minister of France, the first Jew to hold that position in the history of France. Blum lost his post before the outbreak of the war over the issue of the Spanish Civil War. After the Germans invaded France, Blum was arrested by the Petain Government which tried him along with other officials of the Third Republic on charges of betraying France. He was found guilty in 1942 and held by the Germans until 1945. Blum briefly returned to public life after the warhttp://jbuff.com/c031110.htm

For more see Leon Blum: From Poet to Premier by Richard Stokes

http://books.google.com/books?id=T8fSuMogggoC&pg=PA270&lpg=PA270&dq=Prime+minister+leon+blum+obituary&source=bl&ots=rockzz3E_L&sig=LWk1kL-fs3g1EBjDto1KANL1Sps&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ExBWUaOkBpDY9ATpkoDwBA&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=Prime%20minister%20leon%20blum%20obituary&f=false

1951: Louis “Lou” Lipman, the Army veteran and star Long Island University basketball player

1951: Neve Shalom, a new synagogue, was dedicated in Istanbul,.The building holds more than 1,000 people, and the 400,000 Lira it cost to be built was raised by the Jewish community of Galata, Pera, and Chichli.

1953(14th of Nisan, 5713): Ta'anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1953: “Jeopardy” a film noir with music by Dimitri Tiomkin, based on “A Question of Time,” “a radio play by Hebrew Hawkeye Maurice Zimm” was released in the United States today.

1953(14th of Nisan, 5713): Yiddish novelist and poet Abraham Reisen passed away “was arrested in connection with a point-shaving scandal that had gripped college basketball” and eventually received a suspended sentence  “for violating New York penal code #302 in connection with tossing a game against Duquesne in January, 1949”

1953: Albert Einstein announced his revised unified field theory.

1957: "The Libyan government began to enforce a law forbidding any individual or corporation in Libya 'to make personally or indirectly an agreement of any nature whatsoever with institutions or persons residing in Israel.' The penalty was eight years in prison and a heavy fine."

1957: In New York City, Helen and Sam Reiser gave birth to Paul Resier whose credits include “My 2 Dads,” “”Diner, “Aliens” and “Mad About You.”

1958: Syrian forces attack Israelis at Lake Hula.

1958: “Strong Men Face to Face” published today provided a highly negative review of Edna Ferber’s latest novel Ice Palace which is described as a plot that is “absent minded to the point of being ramshackle” and which readers who have an “affection for fiction” will regret to find this work “billed as a novel.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9D0CEEDD1139EF3BBC4850DFB5668383649EDE

1962(24thof Adar II, 5722): Seventy-one year old Boston born, NYU trained career educator Harold Fields, the WW I veteran and executive director of the National League For American Citizenship who raised a son, Arthur, with his wife Edith passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/03/31/83493361.pdf

1962: “It’s Trad, Dad!” a musical comedy directed by Richard Lester, produced by Max Rosen and Milton Subotsky, who also wrote the screenplay and starring Helen Shapiro was released today in the United Kingdom.

1962: “Delousing of Harry Bogen” published today reviewed “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” starring Elliot Gould as Harry Bogen and introducing Barbra Streisand as Miss Marmel-stein.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,895977,00.html

1965: In Los Angeles “Mission Impossible” stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain gave birth to actress Juliet Rose Landau

1966: In Hartford, CT, Rabbi and Mrs. Abraham N. AvRutick announced the engagement of their daughter Naiomi to Harold L. Rosenbaum, the graduate of Yeshiva University who is enrolled at the New Jersey College of Medicine.

1967(18thof Adar II, 5727): Linguist Uriel Weinreich of whom Dovid Katz said, "Though he lived less than forty-one years, Uriel Weinreich ... managed to facilitate the teaching of Yiddish language at American universities, build a new Yiddish language atlas, and demonstrate the importance of Yiddish for the science of linguistics” passed away today.

1970: “Applause,” the Tony Award musical “with a book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Charles Strouse  and starring Lauren Bacall (Betty Joan Perske) in her Tony Award winning portrayal of “Margo Channing” and featuring Bonnie Franklin opened on Broadway today.

1972(15thof Nisan 5732): Pesach

1972: Larry Blyden began playing the role “Hysterium” in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” for which he earned the “Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

1973: Birthdate of Adam Michael Goldstein, the native of Philadelphia known as DJ AM who found fame and fortune in Los Angeles.

1975(18thof Nisan, 5735): Fourth Day of Pesach

1975(18thof Nisan, 5735): Eighty-three year old Nancy Cullen the wife of Selfton Louis Cullen, the sister of Marjorie Cohen and the daufhter of Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs and Lady Deborah Isaacs passed away in Sydney, Australia.

1975: Agudas Achim, the Orthodox congregation in Little Rock, AR, breaks ground for its new building which is located in western Little Rock.

1976: Israeli Arabs hold their first Land Day which was public held a protest strike against the expropriation of lands in the Galilee "for purposes of security and settlement."

1976: Five Israeli Arabs were killed by security forces during mass protests in Nazareth, Israel. As a result of this deadly incident congregants of Mishkan Israel, a synagogue in New Haven, raised $10,000 so that their rabbi, Bruce M. Cohen, could go to Israel to promote peace. Three weeks later, while giving a speech in Jerusalem, Rabbi Cohen was approached by a young Israeli Arab, Farhat Agbaria, who shared his dream. Together they founded Interns for Peace.

1976: The first season of “One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin ended tonight.

1977: In Vienna, the annual International meeting of Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee whose theme had been “Mission and Witness of the Church” came to an end.

1979: “The Silent Partner” a crime film starring Elliot Gould was released in the United States today.

1979: Birthdate of Berkley, CA, native and currnt Oakland, CA resident Michael David Lukas, the holder of an MFA from the University of Maryland and author of The Oracle of Stamboul whose other works include The Watchman of old Cairo, “The Hypocrisy of Hanukkah” and “From Cairo to Kolkata.” (Editor’s note – he might be worth the read since he appears to be an author who sees Judaism as culture thousands of years old which is more than just a three-legged stool of Anti-Semitism, Israel and the Holocaust, as important as those things might be)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/opinion/sunday/the-hypocrisy-of-hanukkah.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/travel/jewish-history-cairo-tunis-kolkata.html

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-18116-0

1980: Yakov Kreizberg made one of his first public appearances as conductor today, when he led an orchestra at the Marble Collegiate Church in a performance of Haydn's Symphony no. 88.

1981: In the United Kingdom, premiere of “Chariots of Fire” based, in part on the life of Harold Abrahams with a score conducted by Harry Rabinowitz.

1981: In his review of ‘Woman of the Year” published today Frank Rich praised the work of Lauren Bacall whom she said “is a natural mutual musical-comedy star.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/30/theater/stage-lauren-bacall-in-woman-of-year.html?pagewanted=all

1981: “The Geha Interchange which is the confluence of Highway 4 and Road 481 in Israel,” which “is named after the Geha Mental Health Center” and which “frms the border between Petah Tikva to Bnei Brak” was opened to traffic today.

1983(16th of Nisan, 5743): Second Day of Pesach

1983(16thof Nisan, 5743): Seventy-six year of Austrian born American high profile photographer passed Lisette Model, away today. (As reported by Walter H. Waggoner)

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/31/obituaries/lisette-model-a-photographer-is-dead-at-76.html

1984: “Misunderstood” a movie version of the novel by the same name directed by Jerry Schatzberg was released today in the United States.

1984: In Albuquerque, NM, Sam and Jackie Bregman, both of whom are lawyers gave birth to Alex Bergman, who played baseball for LSU before signing with the Houston Astros.

1985: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Double Trouble” a sitcom starring Jean and Liz Sagal.

1988: U.S. premiere of the Geffen Film Company’s “Bettlejuice,” costarring Winona Ryder with music by Danny Elfman.

1993: The International Monetary Art Forum featuring the works of Fritz Ascher opened today in Washington D.C.

1993: Simone Veil completed almost fourteen years of service a Member of the European Parliament for France today.

1994: The two terrorists who attacked Yitzhak Rothenberg, age 70, of Petah Tikva with axes yesterday were arrested today.

1995(28th of Adar II, 5755): Fifty-nine record producer Paul A. Rothchild passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/03/obituaries/paul-rothchild-record-producer-59.html

http://www.examiner.com/article/remembering-paul-rothchild

1997: The New York Times includes a review of "The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century" by Alan M. Dershowitz

2000: At least 23 Israeli and Palestinian Arabs were injured in clashes with Israeli security forces during an annual day of protests.

2000: In Great Britain, Channel Four broadcast the first episode of “Da Ali G Show, a British satirical television series created by and starring English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.”

2001: “Someone Like You,” a comedy based on a novel by Laura Zigman, directed by Tony Goldwyn and featuring Ellen Barkin and Peter Friedman was released in the United States today.

2002(17thof Nisan, 5762):Border Policeman Sgt.-Maj. Constantine Danilov, 23, of Or Akiva was shot and killed in Baka al-Garbiyeh, during an exchange of fire with two Palestinians trying to cross into Israel to carry out a suicide attack. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility.

2002: Al Aqsa terrorists took credit for today’s bombing of an Allenby Street coffee shop in Tel Aviv.

2002: Joelle Fiasham, a member of the CPUSA, was among those who endorsed the call today for a national holiday honoring Cesar Chavez.

2003: Het Parool, which began “as a resistance paper during the German occupation of the Netherlands” “became the first newspaper in the Netherlands to switch from broadsheet to tabloid format.”

2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including "The New Face of War: How War Will Be Fought in the 21st Century" by Bruce Berkowitz and the newly released paperback edition of SOROS: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire by Michael T. Kaufman.

2003: Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference

2003: A suicide bombing in the pedestrian mall entrance of a cafe in Netanya wounded more than 40 people. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it a “gift to the Iraqi people.”

2004: “Response to Benny Morris’ ‘Politics by other means’ in the New Republic” published today provided Ilan Pappe’s response to the views of this long time Israeli historian.

https://electronicintifada.net/content/response-benny-morris-politics-other-means-new-republic/5040

2005: Release date of “Live and Become” a French film about an Ethiopian Christian boy who disguises himself as a Jew to escape to Israel was directed by Romanian born Jewish director Radu Mihăileanu

2005(19th of Adar II, 5765): Ninety-one year old high hurdler record holder Milton Green who protested against Hitler by not participating in the 1936 Olympics passed away today.

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/MiltonGreen.htm

2005: Eli Aflalo began serving as Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor.

2005: Ruhama Avraham, a member of Kadima began serving as Deputy Internal Affairs Minister.

2006(1st of Nisan, 5766): Three Israelis were killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car after nightfall at the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, located west of Nablus

2006: Lisa Kron's sparkling autobiographical play "Well” opened on Broadway when it premiered tonight at the Longacre Theater.

2006: Haaretz reported on how a piece of a Torah scroll passed from a former Nazi offer to a “holy man.” Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman was sitting yesterday in his home in Migdal Ha'emek and touching, for the umpteenth time, the parchment cut over 60 years ago from a Torah scroll in an Eastern European synagogue.

2007: “After the Wedding” a Danish movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film directed by Susanne Bier who co-authored the script was released in the United States today.

2008: In Jerusalem, as part of the Contemporary Music Concert at the Jerusalem Music Centre The Israeli Contemporary Players perform music by Josef Bardanashvili, Tristan Murail and Arnold Schoenberg.

2008: The Sunday New York Times featured a review of "The End of the Jews" by Adam Mansbach.

2008: In Washington, D.C., Aaron David Miller, a 20-year veteran of the State Department (most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations), discusses his new book, The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace at Politics and Prose Bookstore.

2008: Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House, a Jewish delicatessen located at the intersection of 172nd Street and Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, which opened in 1954 and closed today. Sporting a large neon sign in the front, the building was designed in the 1950s "MIMO" style (Miami Modern) which is common too much of the northern precincts of the Miami-area beaches. The neon sign makes a brief appearance at the beginning of the video for "Night Fever" by the Bee Gees. Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House was not the same as the original Wolfie's, another famous Jewish deli and restaurant in Miami Beach, also started by Wolfie Cohen, on the corner of 21st Street and Collins Avenue (closer to South Beach). For several years, Wolfie's featured a sign that read "The only thing that needs to come dressed is our chickens!" (meaning dining was casual, not clothing optional). That restaurant closed in 2001. Cohen also founded a third Jewish deli, Pumpernik's, at 67th Street and Collins Avenue, which also closed. (Personal note: One of the great joys of my childhood was eating at Wolfie's and Pumperniks - escpecially the latter. It was billed as the home of the pumpernickel bagel which for lovers of dark bread was indeed a delight)

2009: Reuven Rivlin was chosen to serve as the Speaker of the Knesset when he got 90 out of the 120 possible votes.

2009: Yeshiva University hosts the first day of the Israel and India International Conference styled "A Relationship Comes of Age" which includes the following presenters: Nathan Katz (Florida International University), Amit Kapoor (Management Development Institute, India), Efraim Inbar (Bar-Ilan University), Shlomo Mor-Yosef (Hadassah Medical Organization), Maina Chawla Sing (University of Delhi), P R Kumaraswamy (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Gadi Ariav (Tel Aviv University).

2009(5th of Nisan, 5769): Fifty-two year old Frank Stein, 'the face of Australian Jewry in Israel passed away today. (As reported by Raphael Ahren)

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/news/frank-stein-the-face-of-australian-jewry-in-israel-dies-aged-52-1.273264

2010: 80th anniversary of the founding of Ayanot

2010(15th of Nisan, 5770): First Day of Pesach

2010: A Chabad house in Budapest was stoned during a Passover Seder. The home of Rabbi Shmuel Raskin was stoned twice during the Seder on tonight, according to Israel Radio.

2011: “The Matchmaker” and “Seven Minutes in Heaven” are two of the movies scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2011: James Steinberg completed his term as the 16th United States Deputy Secretary of State.

2011:”Norman Mailer: The American” and “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: A memorial service for George Einstein is scheduled to be held at the Sandestin Beach Club in Sandestin Resort, Fl.

2011: Today the World Jewish Congress lauded Colombia’s decision not to recognize a Palestinian state, saying it showed courage in the face of pressure from neighboring countries.

2011: “The United States District Court in Lower Manhattan dismissed a case brought by Steven’s ex-wife Patricia Cohen based on charges of racketeering and insider trading.

2011: “Israel Air Force jets struck a group of Palestinian militants in southern Gaza, killing one gunman and wounding another as they rode a motorcycle. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed carrying out the dawn strike, saying it targeted Palestinians who had launched a short-range rocket across the border yesterday. No one was hurt in that attack, which followed a surge in fighting around Gaza this month.”

2012: One World One People, an exhibit of the works of renowned photographer Arnold Newman, is scheduled to come to an end at the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee.

http://www.jewishmuseummilwaukee.org/index.php

2012: “The Kid With a Bike,” “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” and “Footnote” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Film Festival.

2012: Shabbos Zingt - A Bay Area Yiddish ensemble that has created a new kind of Shabbos service, with Yiddish melodies and a Klezmer feel – is scheduled to appear at Shir Hadash in San Francisco.

2013: In Coralville, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host Shabbat Yeladim

2013:  An ensemble consisting of violinists Anna Ioffe and Alina Keitlin and harpsichordist Natilie Rosenberg is scheduled to perform at the Edin-Tamir Music Center.

2013: "The ( * ) Inn”, an early touchstone for experimental theater in Yiddish, is scheduled to be performed at the Abrons Arts Center in New York.

2013:Natural gas flow from the Tamar natural gas field began flowing this afternoon

2013: In Memphis, TN “Paul Goldenberg, the burly former cop who runs the Secure Community Network, the security arm of the national Jewish community” has played a key role with the Jewish community including Cantor Rick Kampf in preparing for today’s scheduled rally by the KKK. (As reported by JTA)

2014: “Thousands of French Jews attended an information fair today in Paris about moving to Israel amid an unprecedented spike in immigration to the Jewish state and a wave of anti-Semitic attacks.”

2014: The musical “If/Then” starring Idina Menzel as “Elizabeth” is scheduled to official open on Broadway at the Richard Rogers Theatre.

2014(28thof Adar II, 5774): Seventy-one year old Rivka Haut, a founder of the Women at the Wall and fighter for the rights of women within traditional Judaism passed away today.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york/rivka-haut-71-champion-agunot

http://forward.com/articles/195683/rivka-haut-quiet-warrior-who-battled-for-orthodox/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%202014-04-02&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29

2014: “Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story” is scheduled to be shown on the last night of the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Pittsburg Jewish Film Festival and the New Jersey Film Festival.

2014: “If/Then,” a musical starring Idina Menzel as “Elizabeth Vaughn” opened on Broadway at the Richard Rogers Theatre.

2014: “The Jews of Ioannnia gathered…to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the destruction of the community by the Nazis.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/greeces-romaniote-jews-face-extinction-70-years-after-auschwitz/

2014: The 6thannual Gesher Jewish Day School Used Book Sale is scheduled to come to an end in Fairfax, VA.

2015: “The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer” is scheduled to be shown at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, PA.

2015: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to host a faculty colloquium featuring historian Elisha Russ-Fishbane on “Maimonidean Controversies in Egypt.”

2015: Dr. Derek Penslar is scheduled to speak on “Dreyfus Was Not Alone: Jewish Military Officers in the Modern World” at FIU.

2015: At the Center for Jewish History, Jeffrey S. Gurock, author of The Holocaust Averted is scheduled to deliver a lecture that asks the question “What might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred?What might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred?

2015:Carolyn Starman Hessel is scheduled to retire as Director of the Jewish Book Council.

2015: The festive opening of The Gazelle Valley Urban Wildlife Park took place this afternoon with birdwatching workshops, music and theater, and art projects.

2015(10thof Nisan): “According to the Book Of Joshua” that date on the Jewish calendar “of the first-ever mass Aliyah with the Biblical narrative relating that the Israelites crossed the Jordan River” today “ending their 40 years of wandering in the desert.” (As reported by Deborah Kamin)

2016: Yosef Garfinkel, Shalom Holtz and Lawrence Schiffman are scheduled to lead a discussion about the excavations and discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa (Elah Fortress) near Jerusalem and what they suggest about the era and figure of King David and our understanding of the Bible presented by the American Jewish Historical Society.

2016: Na’ama Gold is scheduled to facilitate Café Ivrit at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia.

 2016: The Hadassah Humanitarian Mission to Cuba is scheduled to come to an end today.

2016: The Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to host the final performance of “Dudu Fisher in Jerusalem.”

2016(20th of Adar II, 5776): Eighty-eight year old USC law school alum and entertainment ‘super lawyer” Seymour Lazar passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/business/seymour-lazar-flamboyant-entertainment-lawyer-dies-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2016: Rabbi Rachel Cowan is scheduled to moderate “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” at the Skirball Center.

2016: Geoff “Schwartz signed a one-year contract with the Detroit Lions.

2017(3rdof Nisan, 5777): Eighty-six year old Emerson College grad, successful businessman and philanthropist Ted Cutler passed away today.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/31/ted-cutler-premier-arts-patron-boston-dies/9YWb9gm7H5IpyPojsNtqYN/story.html

https://www.jta.org/2017/04/02/united-states/ted-cutler-boston-philanthropist-businessman-and-arts-patron-dies

2017: The biannual conference of Jewish Voice for Peace which will feature a speech by convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmeach Odeh is scheduled to open in Chicago.

2017: The Counsellor to King Mohammed VI of Morocco, Mr. André Azoulay, is scheduled to receive the American Sephardi Federation’s Pomegranate Award for Lifetime Achievement on the opening night of

The 20thAnnual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

 2017: “False Flag” and “The Origin of Violence” are scheduled to be shown at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

2017: Louis Black is scheduled to bring his unique brand of humor to the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2018: In Tel Aviv, Pele is scheduled to host what some consider an oxymoron --- A Vegan Seder.

2018: France J. Pruitt is scheduled to talk about her book Faith and Courage in a Time of Trouble “a memoir of a Belgian-Jewish girl and her family who were saved during the Nazi occupation of France through the compassion and heroism of French peasants from the southern part of the country” this afternoon at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

2018: Due to delays announced by Israel Railways “multitudes of Jews” will not be traveling to Jerusalem “this Passover” as promised by Transportation Minister Israel Katz.

2018: In New Orleans, LA, Temple Sinai is scheduled to host the Young Professionals Seder.

2018(14thof Nisan, 5778): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach

2018(14thof Nisan, 5778): Ninety-four year old Herbert Kaiser, the Brooklyn born son of Nettie Slavititski and house painter Max Kaiser , the WW II Navy Veteran, Swarthmore College graduate and Foreign Service Officer who in retirement raised millions of dollars for training medical personnel in South Africa passed away today.(As reported by Bart Barnes and Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/herbert-kaiser-diplomat-and-philanthropist-who-helped-train-black-medical-professionals-in-s-africa-dies-at-94/2018/04/03/6807bc68-368c-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html?utm_term=.8787602ef49d

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/obituaries/herbert-kaiser-94-health-care-champion-in-south-africa-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018(14thof Nisan, 5778): Eighty-four year old Michael Applebaum, the Newark born student of violinist of Efrem Zimbalist who reportedly had him change his name to Michael Tree, the name under which he founded the Guarneri String Quartet passed away today. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/obituaries/michael-tree-a-founder-of-the-guarneri-quartet-dies-at-84.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

https://www.violinist.com/blog/scottslapin/20184/25758/

2018(14thof Nisan, 5778): Eighty-four year old “corporate raider and philanthropist” Samuel Belzberg, the Calgary born son of Polish monger and  the husband of Frances Belzberg with whom he had four children – Marc, Lisa, Wend and Sherry – passed away today. (As reported by Brooks Barnes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/obituaries/samuel-belzberg-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/remembering-sam-belzberg/

2019: In a week marked by the final end of the ISIS hold on territory in Syria and President Trump’s declaration that the Golan Heights is part of Israel, the question arises as to what impact this will have on President Assad, the Russian puppet ruler of the state that provides a home to Hezbollah.

2019: In New Orleans, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service is scheduled to host the Jewish Roots of Fashion Gala.

https://jcrs.org/events/jewish-roots-annual-gala/

2019(23rdAdar II, 5779): Parashat Shemini; Shabbat Parah; for more http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

This Day, March 31, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 31

1084: Henry IV, who had been embroiled in a conflict with the Papacy, was crowned Emperor by Clement III, called by some an anti-Pope. Within six years after this second coronation, Henry granted the Jewish community of Worms , the privileges of free commerce and exemption from taxation” and “designating the Jews as ‘subjects of his treasury,’”  placing  “them under his immediate protection, so that neither royal nor episcopal functionaries could exercise any jurisdiction over them” including the power of taxation.

1146: Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade. Unlike the First Crusade, the Second Crusade is led by two monarchs - Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. The “German connection” led to more suffering for the Jews of the Rhineland. Thanks to the incitement by one monk, the town of Wurburg was demolished during the massacres of Jews living along the Rhine River. As had happened during the First Crusade, the Christian warriors decided to slaughter the Infidels in their midst as they moved to free the Holy Land from the Infidels. The growing class of Christian merchants benefited from the violence since the destruction of the Jewish community destroyed their Jewish competitors. All Christians did not engage in this anti-Semitic behavior. Bernard himself tried to protect the Jewish population. His message of Crusade was heard. His message concerning the Jews was not.

1283: Massacre of the Jews of Mayence in Germany.

1310: At the auto da fé held at Paris today, a converted Jew who had returned to Judaism also died at the stake.

1324: In his 53rd year, Henry II, “the last ruling and first titular King of Jerusalem” (part of the Christian fiction of control dating from the Crusades) passed away today.

1381: During a popular uprising in France known as The Revolt of the Maillotins, Jews in France were murdered and their property plundered for next three or four days. The regent exercising royal power for the youthful Charles VI was unable to save the Jews or gain them indemnification for their loss.

1387: Sigismund of Luxemburg, who “drained the Jews of their wealth whenever he could, he protected them from some of the worst excesses,” was crowned King of Hungary and Croatia today.

1492: Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon issued the Alhambra Decree or Edict of Expulsion, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. Jews, unlike conversos and Marranos, were not subject to the Inquisition. So, the Church leveled a ritual murder accusation against them in Granada and was thus was able to call for the expulsion of both Jews as well as Marranos from Spain. The Marranos themselves were accused of complicity in the case so both groups were ordered to leave within four months. Torquemada, the director of the Inquisition (and incidentally of Jewish descent), defended this against Don Isaac Abarbanel. The edict was passed, and over fifteen thousand Jews had to flee - some to the Province of Aragon and others, like Abarbanel, to Naples. Still others found temporary sanctuary in Portugal.

1499: In Milan, Bernardino de' Medici and Clelia Serbelloni gave birth to Giovanni Angelo Medici, who as Pope Pius IV issued a bull that improved the conditions of the Jews passed because it allowed them to stop wearing their yellow cap, buy land up to the value of 1,500 ducats and to trade in things other than old clothes. While they could speak with Christians, they could not have Christian servants. He also allowed the Jews to publish the Talmud as long as they did not use that word in the publication.

1547: Francis I, for whom Agostino Giustiniani, the first person to occupy a chair of Hebrew and Arabic at the University of Paris, became a pensioner passed away today.

1547: Henry II succeeded his father as King of France on his 28th birthday. Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno, the Italian Rabbi dedicated his commentaries on “The Song of Songs” and “Ecclesiastes” to the French monarch.

1596: Birthdate of Rene Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher who was one of the two main sources from which Spinoza derived his view of the world.

1647: Ralph Cudworth who had been Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge since 1645 and who “maintained an extensive correspondence” with Isaac Abenda the hakam of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in London preached a sermon in the House of Commons that advocated “principles of religious toleration and charity.”

1648: In an attempt to explain the drop off in the production of vanilla, Commander Beekman of Essequibo and Pomeroon wrote the following letter to his superiors in Amsterdam today

“The Jew Salomon de la Roche having died some 8 to 9 months ago, the trade in vanilla has come to an end, since no one here knows how to prepare it, so as to develop proper aroma and keep it from spoiling. I have not heard of any this whole year. Little is found here. Most of it is found in Pomeroon, whither this Jew frequently traveled, and he sometimes used to make me a present of a little. In navigating along the river, I have sometimes seen some on the trees and picked with my own hands, and it was prepared by the Jew....I shall do my best to obtain for the company as much as shall be feasible, but I am afraid it will spoil, since I do not know how to prepare it.” [The letter is illustrative of the vital role Jews played in the production of vanilla.]

1688: The German Jews received permission to participate in the tobacco industry “but only on condition that they would build houses in Christianshavn, a suburb of Copenhagen on the island of Amager.

1722: Fifty –two year old Campegius Vitringa, the Elder, “a Dutch Christian Hebraist” whose works included a dissertation on the Synagogue and a “Commentary on Isaiah” passed away today at Franeker.

1745: The Jews of Prague were exiled.

1779(14thof Nisan, 5539) As the American Revolution dragged on for its fourth year, Jews observed the Fast of the First Born and prepared to sit down to a Seder this evening.

1781: Today “the Hungarian government issued a decree known as the Systematica gentis Judaicae regulatio, which wiped out at one stroke the decrees that had oppressed the Jews for centuries. The royal free towns, except the mining-towns, were opened to the Jews, who were allowed to settle at leisure throughout the country. The regulatio decreed that the legal documents of the Jews should no longer be composed in Hebrew, or in Yiddish, but in Latin, German, and Hungarian, the languages used in the country at the time, and which the young Jews were required to learn within two years.”
 1783: Emperor Joseph II issued a proclamation allowing the Jews to live in so-called "Royal Cities" including Pest, which would later be the “Pest” in Budapest. By 1787 81,000 Jews would be living in Hungary. The Hungarian Jewish community would grow large and prosper but would all but perish in the Holocaust. Tragically, it was the Holocaust that produced Hungary’s most famous post-War Jew, Elie Weisel.


1796: Birthdate of Hermann Hupfeld, the German Biblical commentator who specialized on ‘the Old Testament” and whose writings “included a treatise on the early history of Hebrew grammar among the Jews” published in 1846.

1797: : Benvenida de Isaac Solis, the daughter of Isaac Henriques Henriques Valentine and Simha Mandil and Solomon da Solis gave birth to Samuel Solis.

1799(24th of Adar II, 5559): Lorenzo Bertran was subjected to an auto-da-fe ("act of faith," in reality the public ceremony when the sentence of the Inquisition was read and carried out) in Seville. Supposedly he was the last person to be punished for attempting to lead others to Judaism in Spain. It was not the end of the auto-da-fe; a ceremony that was reported to have taken place in Mexico in isolated instance in the early 19th century.

1805: Founding of the Syrian Society which morphed in the Palestine Association whose members sought “to promote the study of the geography, natural history, antiquities and anthropology of Palestine and the surrounding areas, "with a view to the illustration of the Holy Writings”

1808: In Westphalia, which was ruled by Jerome Bonaparte a Jewish consistory “was introduced by decree.”

1808: Jacob Lazarus and Elizabeth Lazarus were married at the Great Synagogue.

1808: The French created Kingdom of Westphalia ordered Jews to adopt family names

1810: Birthdate of Hayyim Selig Slonimski a native of Byelostok, who was “a Hebrew publisher, astronomer, inventor” and a pioneer in providing Jews of Eastern Europe with a scientific education.

1817(14th of Nisan, 5577): Ta'anit Bechorot

1821: Abolition of the Portuguese Inquisition. The Inquisition was established in 1531 meaning it lasted for 290 years.

1825(12th of Nisan, 5585): Ta'anit Bechorot

1838: Two days after she had passed away, 16 year old Betsy Jacob, the daughter of Jacob and Sarah Kate (Sinons) Jacob was buried today at the “Falmouth Jewish Cemetery.”

1843: Birthdate of anti-Semitic political leader Bernhard Forster, the brother-in-law of Friedrich Nietzsche.

1851: Birthdate of Sir Francis Henry Dillon Bell, the first native of New Zealand and the first Jew to serve as Prime Minister of the land of the Kiwis.

1854: Birthdate of Joseph Schulen, the Munich banker who went into the brewery business in 1895, when he took over Munich’s bankrupt Unionsbrauerei and in 1904 “acquired Münchner Kindl, another failing brewery in Munich.” (As described by Yardena Schwartz)

1853: In Hungary Michael Heilprin and his wife gave birth to Angelo Heilprin “an American geologist, paleontologist, naturalist, and explorer.”

1856: 40 Harmonia, a large main-belt asteroid was discovered today by German-French astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt

1856: The Jews of Belarus or White Russia were denied the right to wear any distinctive garments that would mark them as different from the rest of the citizenry. At the time White Russia was part of the Czar's Russia with Poland and Lithuania to the west, Ukraine to the South, and Russia to the east. Minsk, home to a large Jewish population is today the capital of an independent Belarus.

1857: In San Francisco, Jesse (Isaias) Seligman and Henriette Seligman gave birth to Henry Max Seligman the husband of Adeliade (Addie) Seligman.

1858: One day after she had passed away, Louisa Collins, aged 2 years and 9 months and the daughter of John and Adelaide Collins was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1863(11thof Nisan, 5623): Abraham Abraham, a native of Bath and an “optician and scientific instrument maker” who was the son of optician Jacob Abraham, and who served as President of the Liverpool Jewry’s Philanthropic Institute and Warden of “the Old Hebrew Congregation” passed away today.

1863: “The Will of Commodore Levy--The Bequest of the Monticello Estate to the People of the United States Void” published today described the litigation surrounding attempts to “break” the late Jewish naval hero’s will. “This was an action to obtain a construction of the will of Commodore Levy, in respect to the bequest of the People of the United States of a farm owned by him, and 200 acres adjoining it, at Monticello, Virginia, and also in respect to a bequest of $1,000 to the Jews' Hospital in this City. The Court now rendered the following judgment, declaring the devise and bequest of the Monticello estate, and the 200 acres adjoining, to the people of the United States void, and that said portions of the estate descended to and vested in the heirs at law and next of kin of the testator; also that the Jews' Hospital of New-York are entitled to have their bequest." Such was the endorsement upon the papers.”

1865: During the American Civil War, Philadelphian Morris Schlesinger, the First Sergeant of the Twelfth Regiment, USA was mortally wounded at the Gravelly Run, Virginia today.

1865(4th of Nisan): Rabbi Jacob Zevi ben Gamaliel Konigsberg author of Ha-Ketav ve-ha-Kabbalah passed away

1865: The new Synagogue of the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, (Gate of Heaven), in Rivington-street, between Ludlow and Orchard, was formally consecrated this afternoon. The building, which was erected in 1835, was occupied by a Presbyterian congregation until last November, when it was sold to its present occupants.

1866(15thof Nisan, 5626): Second Day of Pesach and Shabbath

1867: “The Insurance Companies and ‘Jew Risks’”published today reported on a meeting where members of the community including the mayor or Richmond expressed their anger over the decision of insurance companies to no longer accept ‘Jew Risks.’ The mayor, who had been in the insurance business for years, told the crowd that he had numerous dealings with Jews over the years and found them to be honest. No reason was given for the decision of the insurance companies.

1875: Henry Moss married Matilda Leopold today.

1876: Birthdate of William Henry Dieterich, the anti-Semitic and “somewhat pro-German” Senator from Illinois who lost his bid for re-election in 1938 thanks in part to the efforts of Henry Horner, the states Jewish governor.

1878: It was reported today that “foreign Jews trading in Russia” are now have the same legal standing as native Russian merchants.

1871: A poem in Hebrew about the Western Wall by Henry Vidaver, who served as a rabbi at Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, United Hebrew Congregation in St. Louis, B’nai Jeshrun in New York and Sherith Israel in San Francisco, appeared in the newspaper Havatzelet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Vidaver_poem_1871.jpg


1878: “The Order of B’Nai Brit” published today traces the history of the history of the Jewish fraternal organization which was founded 35 years ago in New York City.

1878: It was reported today that “foreign Jews trading in Russia” are now have the same legal standing as native Russian merchants.

1878: Birthdate of University of Chicago undergraduate and Harvard trained attorney Benjamin Samuels, who rose to the Presidency of the Yellow Cab Company in his native Chicago while serving as the President of B’nai B’rith and founding “Leo N. Levi Memorial Hospital in Hot Springs, AR where the treatment of arthritis was of primary concern and raising his son Robert with his wife Martha.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/05/31/101465856.pdf

1880(19thof Nisan, 5640): Fifth Day of Pesach

1880(19thof Nisan, 5640): Forty-four year old Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski the son of Tadeusz Wieniawski, who converted to Catholicism before he earned his medical degree and Regina Wolf, “the daughter of a noted Jewish physician from Warsaw” passed away today.

1880: Alexander II of Russia was assassinated, and with him his half-hearted liberalism. He was succeeded by Alexander III who, devoted to medievalism, urged the return to Russian civilization. The most influential person during his reign was Pobestonostov, his financier and procurator of the Holy Synod, who earned the title "the Second Torquemada."

1882: One of two birthdates (the other being March 21) of Friederike Massaryk, the native of Austria, who converted to Protestantism in 1903 and gained game as actress and soprano Fritzi Massary.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/massary-fritzi

1885(15THof Nisan, 5645): Pesach

1885: The New York Times reported that “the Jewish festival of Pesach, or Passover, instituted to commemorate the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, commenced last evening and its celebration will be continued among the orthodox Hebrews throughout the world for the next eight days. This festival is also known as Hag Ha’Matzos, or the fest of the unleavened bread.”

1889: The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated. One of Chagall’s most famous paintings was “Eiffel Tower, Serenade.”

1890: The New York Times reported that “the diary of Sir Moses Montefiore and Lady Montefiore which the Belforde Clark Company published in two octave volumes covers the period from 1812 to 1883. The papers of Sir Moses were left to his Secretary, Dr. Lowe, for arrangement and publication, but Dr. Lowe died upon completing the work and son of Sir Moses, now a resident of this country, then carried it forward.”

1891: In Bilgoraj, Pinchas Mendl Zinger, a rabbi and author of rabbinic commentaries, and Basheva Zylberman gave birth to Hinde Ester Singer Kreytman, the sister of Joshua and Isaac Bashevis Singer who gained fame as Yiddish author Esther Kreitman.

1892(1stof Nisan, 5652); Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1892: It was reported today that 69 nine year old Mark Samuel, a former resident of Toronto, has passed away in London. He had found M & L Samuel in 1855 and helped found the Toronto branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association.  He was a supporter of efforts to settle Russian Jews in the Northwest Terriotories.

1892: The SS Massilia, the steamship which had previously brought several Jews from Russia who were infected with typhus is scheduled to arrive in New York today.  Health authorities will be paying close attention to the passengers since they are similar to the ones brought here before.

1893(14th of Nisan, 5653): Ta'anit Bechorot

1893(14th of Nisan, 5653): Alexander Levi one of the earliest settlers and earliest Jewish settlers of Dubuque, Iowa, passed away today.

1893: A group of Boston Jews belonging to Adath Israel petitioned Judge Ely for the return of wine and brandy which the Judge had previously ruled had been wrongfully seized by the police. Passover begins tonight and the Jews need the wine for the Seder. While the Judge said he would do all that he could to help with the return, “he could find no authority to order the wines returned before May.”

1893: The New York Times reported that “the celebration of the feast of Pesach, or the Passover, will be begun by Jewish people throughout the world at sunset this evening and will be continued for eight days by the Orthodox Jews. Those who have accepted the reform ritual, among them a large number of the Jews in America, continue the celebration only seven days, the first and last days of that period being alone regarded as of special significance and celebrated as holy days.”

1894: It was reported today that Russia is changing its rules about naturalizations and that “foreign Jews will be excluded” from applying for citizenship in the Czarist Empire.

1894: “For the Jews in Palestine” published today described the appeal made by Abraham Neurmak, the rabbi at New York’s Orach Chaim to provide aid for those living in Eretz Israel.  “The North American Relief Society” under the presidency of Myer Isaacs has already responded with a donation of one hundred dollars.

1894: As of today there are about 4,000 Polish Jews living in Zarephath, Hebron, Tiberias and Jerusalem. They came to Palestine to seek refuge from Russian persecution.

1895: “Cider in Etymology” published today traces the origins of the English word “cider” which according to Sir George Birdwood has its origins in the Hebrew word “Shekar.”

1895: Four days after he had passed a way, Roman native Giuseppe di Rubino Moro, the husband of the former Rachel Montefiore and father of Arthur and Sarah Moro was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1896: In New York, the Herald Square Theatre will host a special performance of “The Heart of Maryland” that is a fundraiser for the Hebrew Infants’ Asylum.

1896: “More than 1,000 pushcart vendors” attending a meeting tonight at the Hebrew Institute which was held under the auspices of the City Vigilance League and presided over by New York May Strong.

1896: In New York, Palmer’s Theatre was the site of fundraiser for the benefit of the A.C. Sisterhood, a Jewish organization headed by Rebecca Kohut, the wife of the late Dr. Alexander Kohut that “supports a kindergarten, day nursery, relief bureau and employment bureau.”

1897: The improbably named “Jack the Jew” that went off at odds of 9 to 10 won the first race on a sloppy track in New Orleans.

1897: Funeral services for the late Louis Israel, the owner of one of the largest livery stables in Brooklyn, will take place at Temple Beth Elohim today.

1897: Massachusetts Congressman introduced the following resolution in the House of Representatives:

“Resolved, That the Secretary of State be requested to demand from the Russian Government that the same rights be given to Hebrew –American citizens in the matter of passports as now are accorded to all other classes of American citizens and also to inform the House of Representatives whether any American citizens have been ordered to be expelled from Russian or forbidden the exercise of ordinary privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants because of their religion.”  (Editor’s Note – This champion of Jewish rights is John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald who provided the name for his famous grandson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy)

1898: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at Temple Beth-El will officiate at the funeral of the late Rabbi Emanuel Schwab. Cantor Hass of Adas Israel will preside over the internment in the Machpel Plot at Cypress Hills Cemetery

1899: Rumania barred Jews from professional and agricultural schools/

1899: Birthdate of Alexander Solomon, the native of Toronto and member of the Jewish Legion who served in Palestine before returning to Canada where he practiced law for 27 years.

1904(15thof Nisan, 5664): First Day of Passover

1904(15thof Nisan, 5664): Sophia Karp, born Sara Segal in Romania, who became a leading performer in the New York Yiddish Theatre working with such giants as Abraham Goldfaden, Israel Grodner and Sokher Goldstein passed away today at the age of 42 or 43

1904: The New York Times reported that “at sunset last evening the Jewish people throughout the world began the celebration of the festival of "Pesach," or the Passover. This festival was instituted to celebrate the deliverance of the children of Israel from their long bondage in the land of Egypt, and, lasting for eight days, is a season of peculiar observances.”

1905: Dorothy Levitt, the first English woman ever to compete in a motor race drove from the Adelpi Hotel in Liverpool, to Coventry and then on to the De-Dion showroom in Great Marlborough Street in London, retracing the 205 mile trip she had made the day before.

1910: Sidney Sonnino, whose father Issacco Saul Sonniono was an Italian Jew who converted Anglicanism, completed his service as Prime Minster of Italy.

1910: Luigi Luzzatti began serving as Italy’s 31st Prime Minister making him the second Jewish person to hold the position; the first being Alessandro Fortis.

1912: It was reported that “Interesting archaeological discoveries, showing the observance as far back as 430 B.C. of the Jewish Passover, the festival commemorative of the exodus from Egypt, which Jews throughout the world will celebrate for a week beginning the evening of April 1, are described in the current issue of The American Hebrew.”

1912: The Patriotic League of America, an organization dedicated to helping Jewish young men pursue careers in the army and navy has invited 200 service men stationed in and near New York City to be its guests at Seders for the first two nights of Passover at the Tuxedo Hall in New York. Adjutant General A.F. Ladd of the War Department has responded positively to the League’s lobbying efforts on behalf of the Jewish servicemen and has directed commanding officers to allow the Jewish soldiers to have furloughs so that they can observe the holiday which begins on the evening of April 1.

1912: It was reported that Leopold Plaut, President of the United Hebrew Charities has issued a circular asking that the families of deceased Jews donate the money normally spent for flowers at a funeral to his organization. The organization will send acknowledgements to the donor and the family of the deceased, acknowledging the gift without mentioning the amount.

1913: “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, a play with music by Louis F. Gottschalk “opened at the Majestic Theatre in Los Angeles” today.

1915(16thof Nisan, 5675): Second Day of Pesach

1915: Lord Oxford and Asquith wrote in his diary “I think I have already referred to Herbert Samuel’s dithyrambic memorandum, urging that in the carving up of the Turk’s Asiatic dominion we should take Palestine, into which the scattered Jews would in time swarm back from all the quarters of the globe and in due course obtain Home Rule.” “Curiously the only other partisan of this proposal is Lloyd George, who, I need not say does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it will be an outrage to let the Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of agnostic, atheistic France” (As reported by JTA)

1915(16thof Nisan, 5675): Seventy-four year old Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, the eldest son of Baron Lionel de Rothschild and the grandson of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the founder of the English branch of the famous banking family passed away today.

1915: In Egypt,  Colonel John Henry Patterson swore in the new volunteers for the Zion Mule Corps and invited them to ‘Pray with me that I should not only, as Moses, behold Canaan from afar, but be divinely permitted to lead you into the Promised Land’

1916(26thof Adar II, 5676): Fifty year old Maurice Rothschild, a member of the New York Exchange passed away today.

1916: The Jewish War Sufferer’s Bazar which is being held in the Grand Central Palace closed at six o’clock this evening because of Shabbat and will reopen tomorrow evening at six o’clock when a record breaking crowd is expected to attend the fair.

1917: “The latest official cablegram” received tonight at the United States State department “regard the torpedoing of the British steam Crispin stated that out of the sixty-nine Americans on board two appear to have been killed by an explosion and eighteen…more are still missing. (This is the latest report of the what those who wanted the United States to enter the war on the side of the Allies called “unrestricted submarine warfare” which would in fact lead to the U.S. going to war in April with all that that would mean for Americans in general and American Jews in particular.)

1918(18thof Nisan, 5678): Fourth Day of Pesach

1918: “Jews in Newark, NJ,” are scheduled to hold a parade “this afternoon to celebrate the arrival in Palestine of the Jewish Administrative Commission”

1918: The members of Young Judea, “who have organized to help in the collecting the fund of one million dollars for the restoration of the Jewish homeland in Palestine” are scheduled to meet in cities across the United States “where plan for the restoration of a Jewish republic in Palestine will be discussed.”

1918: Members of the British Expeditionary Force were forced to cross back to the west bank of the Jordan River after having been defeated by Ottomans during the first Battle of Amman, the first leg of a British offensive following the capture of Jerusalem which was designed to eventually end with the capture of Damascus thus ensuring Britain’s post-war control of the region.

1918: Today, Dr. H.G. Enelow reviewed Jewish Theology Systematically and Historically Considered by Dr. Kaufman Kohler, the distinguished New York Rabbi and President of the Hebrew Union College.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C03E7DA1E3FE433A25752C3A9659C946996D6CF

1919: The Alumni Association the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary is scheduled to meet in New York today and “discuss the future of Judaism in America and special religious work in Palestine.”

1919: It was reported today that “Dr. David Levine has been chosen” to serve as the rabbi for “newly-formed Progressive Synagogue of Brooklyn”

1919: It was reported today that “Edmond A Guggenheim…has been appointed a special deputy police commissioner” who “will have charge of police affairs in the Bronx.

1920: According to the Treaty of Versailles as of today the Reichswehr (German Army) was to have army no more than 100,000 men in a maximum of seven infantry and three cavalry divisions which the Allies thoughts would make it impossible for the Germans ever to threaten the peace of Europe with an offensive action.

1920: In the aftermath of the Arab riots, some contended that today, Colonel Bertie Harry Waters-Taylor, Allenby’s Chief of staff had told Haj Amin al-Husseini that if he rioted during Holy Week, it would serve as proof that Arabs would never allow a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1921: Albert Einstein lectured in New York on his new theory of relativity.

1922: In Detroit, Michigan, “Sarah (née Applebaum) and David T. "D.T." Nederlander” gave birth to James M. Nederlander, the brother of Harry, Robert, Fred, Joseph; and Frances Nederlander who founded Nederlander Organization “one of the largest operators of legitimate theatres and music venues in the United States.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/theater/james-nederlander-theater-magnate-dies-at-94.html?_r=1

1922: In Berlin, American-born German movie producer Seymour Nebenzal and his wife Lisbeth Mary Else Nebenzal gave birth to producer and novelist Harold Nebenzal who “was in charge of foreign film production for many years for MGM, and also worked on many of the films of Billy Wilder.

1922: Birthdate of Lionel Davidson

1923(14th of Nisan, 5683): Shabbat HaGadol and Erev Pesach

1923: “Paganini” a silent bio-pic directed by Heinz Goldberg and featuring child actor Martin Herzberg was released today in Germany.

1923: Birthdate of Shoshana Damari
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/damari-shoshana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaL7mllWVG4


1925: The town of Afula was founded in the Jezreel Valley. Afula means The Town of Jezreel and it was started with the support of the American Zion Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the town never lived up to the original expectations with the settlers in the Jezreel Valley preferring to go to Haifa for rest and relaxation. The hospital at Afula did prove to be of lasting importance. Afula is a friendly crossroads town with numerous small stores selling what the locals claim to be the "best pistachio nuts in the world."

1926(16thof Nisan, 5686): Second Day of Pesach

1926: Jacob Adler, who had suffered a stroke in 1920 and had been in declining health ever since, suddenly collapsed today.

1926: Despite Arab threats of a general strike, the French High Commissioner visited Jerusalem today where all of the stories owned by “Arabs and Christians” were closed “in sympathy with the Syrian rebels” and the Jewish shops were closed because of Passover.

1927: While deliver an address today on “The Jew in Industry and Finance” President Frederick B. Robinson of City College said that “the alleged Jewish conspiracy in international industry and finanace is a figment of ill-informed persons.”

1928: Real birthdate of Jacob Lateiner, Cuban born American pianist. His father would not get around to registering his birth until May of 1928 which has led to confusion about when he was really born.

1928: Today Jewish and Gentile business men in Jerusalem and Haifa told a reporter today “that while the Government remained in the hands of the British they did not fear trouble with the Arabs or Bedouins who were more afraid of Lord Plumber than they had been of Hebert Samuel,” his civilian and Jewish predecessor as British High Commissioner.

1929: Birthdate of Ilya Piastetski-Shapiro, famed math theorist who clashed with Soviet authorities. He passed away at the age of 79 on February 21, 2009 in Tel Aviv.

1932: At Tel Aviv, on the final day of the first Jewish Olympics, Americans captured the lion’s share of the victories Sybil Koff of New York “won the women’s triathlon and the high jumps. Gus Hemann … won the men’s 100 meter dash…Leslie Flaksman won the 500 meter race…and Harry Schneider won the javelin, shooting, discus-throwing and men’s triathlon contests.” Victories by European teams included an Austrian first place finish in the 400 – meter race and first place finish by the a team from the Middlesex Regiment in the relay race that earned it the High Commissioner’s Cup.

1933: Adolf Bertraim, archbishop of Breslau rejected the request of Oskar Wasserman for aid in protesting against the boycott of Jewish business organized by the Nazis but this was refused as he regarded it as purely an economic matter”
1934(15th of Nisan, 5694): Pesach


1935: German mathematician Felix Hausdorff who would later commit suicide when ordered to report to a concentration camp, was granted emeritus status today.

1935: Hebrew novelist Samuel I. Agnon was awarded the Bialik Prize in Hebrew Literature. The Bialik Prize was established in memory of the dean of Hebrew literature, Chaim Nachman Bialik and is considered the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. S.I. Agnon is considered by sum to be a worthy candidate for the Nobel Prize.

1935: The Italian liner Roma arrived in Haifa carrying 1,650 passengers, which is believed to the largest number of people ever brought to Palestine on one ship. Most of the passengers are believed to be headed for Tel Aviv, site of the upcoming Maccabiad.

1935: In the Bronx, “Joseph Perelman, a textile official and Dorothy Shapiro Perelman, a public schoolteacher” gave birth to Judith Louise Perelman who gained fame as novelist Judith Rossner, the author of Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/aug/13/guardianobituaries.books

1935: The Palestine police (an instrument of the British mandatory government) “issued an order today prohibiting a parade of athletes participating in the Maccabiah, the world Jewish athletic games.” The parade was scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv on April 1. The police reportedly were responding to threats of violent outbursts by the Arab populace.

1936: Birthdate of poet, playwright and novelist Marge Piercy who grew up in the racially divided city of Detroit, where her Jewishness made her the target of bullies. One grandparent was Yiddish-speaking and Orthodox; another was a union organizer murdered for his activism. These influences, together with grief over relatives murdered in the Holocaust, aroused Piercy's political activism. They also strengthened her commitment to remaining involved with issues and matters of Jewish importance.

1936: In New York, The Friends of the New Germany, whose members are “supporters in the United States of Nazi philosophy, announced the organization would now be known as the German-American League or “Amerikadeutscher Bund” which is dedicated to combating “the Moscow-direct madness of the Red world mean and its Jewish bacillus carriers.” 

1936: Mrs. Judah Dresner presided over the closing session of the 14thconvention of the New York State Conference of the National Council of Jewish Women at the Jamaica Jewish Center in Queens where Mrs. Maxwell Ehrlich of Staten Island was elected president.

1937: “The anti-Jewish demonstrations begun before Easter continued” in the Free City of Danzig where “Jewish shops were picketed today.

1937: The Palestine Post reported from Glasgow that the International Labor Party conference deplored the bloodshed in Palestine by terrorists and called upon Jews to resist all attempts by Arab reactionary elements, sometimes supported by the British authorities. The first regulation made by the High Commissioner under the New Palestine Orders allowed the authorities to seize and retain accommodation and food, as they thought fit for the execution of their duty.

1938: As of today, “an eight month limit of 8,000 Jewish immigrants being allowed to enter Palestine will have expired.

1938: According to reports published in the New York Times, Dr. Sigmund Freud cannot leave Vienna and move to The Hague because “the authoritieis have refused to give him a passport.” In other words, the Nazi Austrian government has madet the prominent Jewish psychiatrist a prisoner.

1938: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Arthur B. Rubenstein, the composer of countless scores to television and movies including “Whose Life Is It Anyway” and “Lost in America.”

1939: The Campbell Playhouse broadcast a non-musical version “Showboat” based on the novel by Edna Ferber on CBS Radio.

1939: The cinema version of “The Hounds of the Baskerville” with music by David Raskin was released today in the United States.

1940: Nuri Said was replaced as Prime Minister of Iraq by Rsahid Ali who a year later would lead an anti-British pro-Nazi coup that would lead to the Farhud, a pogrom that was the beginning of the end for the ancient Jewish community of Iraq.

1940: Birthdate of Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank.

1940: Benjamin V. Cohen met with Franklin Roosevelt in the White house from 5:10 pm to 6:45 pm.

1941: After 7,500 Jews arrived from Vienna, a decree was issued to establish a ghetto at Kielce

1941: With encouragement from the Axis powers (Italy and Germany) Rashid Ali al-Gaylani led an anti-British revolt in Iraq much to the detriment of the Jewish population.

1941: After 7,500 Jews arrived from Vienna, a decree was issued to establish a ghetto at Kielce

1942(12th of Nisan, 5702): Eighty-three year old Washingtonian, Aline Esther Solomons, the daughter of Rachel Phillips and Adolphus Solomons passed away today.

1942: The Gestapo “disbanded” the Neu-Isenburg orphanage and deported the girls living there to Theresienstadt.

1942: 1939 Naval Academy graduate Nathan “Fred” Asher married Selma Straus with whom he had three children – “Dennis, Karen and Jeffrey.”

1942: In the western Ukraine, the Gestapo organized the first deportation of 5,000 Jews from Stanislawow ghetto to Belzac death camp.It was one of the biggest transports to Belzec in the first phase of the camp.

1942: Birthdate of radio personality Michael Savage

1942: Six thousand Jews from Eastern Galicia were deported to Belzec and gassed to death.

1943: This was the deadline the Germans gave Spain to repatriate any Spanish nationals of the Jewish "race."

1943: Broadway premier of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical “Oklahoma.” Yes, it took a team of Jews to create this most famous of all American musical comedies. This is yet another example of how it was Jews who helped to create what some call "the American myth." It was this ability and not some Jewish plot that explains, in part, the success of Jews in various parts of the American entertainment industry.

1943: Crematorium II at Auschwitz begins operation.

1944(7thof Nisan, 5704): Sixty-seven year old Lothar Stark the German born movie producer who took refuge in Copenhagen in 1933 when his Jewish heritage was discovered  died in Sweden today after having been rescued along with most of the Danish Jewish population in 1943.

1944: It was announced that every Jew in Hungary would be required to wear a yellow badge as of April 5th

1945: Mother Maria of Paris, a Russian nun who had saved many French Jews by hiding them, was killed by the Nazis.

1945: The deportation of Jews from Slovakia comes to an end. In all, German and Slovak authorities deported about 70,000 Jews from Slovakia; about 65,000 of them were murdered or died in concentration camps. The overall figures are inexact, partly because many Jews did not identify themselves, but one 2006 estimate is that approximately 105,000 Slovak Jews, or 77% of their prewar population, died during the war.

1946: Birthdate of Gabe Kaplan in Brooklyn, New York. The comedian and actor gained famed as the teacher in “Welcome Back Kotter,” a television show that launched the career of John Travolta.

1946: Hungarian born American layer and Nazi war crime prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz married his wife Gertrude today in New Yor.

1946(28th of Adar): Yiddish author and translator Leon Kobrin passed away
http://books.google.com/books/about/Fun_Deitmerish_Tzu_Yiddish_In_Amerike.html?id=Z8bNPgAACAAJ


1947: Birthdate Israeli archaeologist Ronny Reich who shifted his focus from the Iron Age to the Early Roman period in the late 1970’s/

http://archlgy.haifa.ac.il/staff/reich.htm

1947(10thof Nisan, 5707): Sixty year old Hot Springs, AR native and NYU trained attorney who had been appointed the United States District Court by President Coolidge in 1925 passed away today New York.

https://www.fjc.gov/node/1385426

1948:In Brooklyn, New York Philip Perlman “a Polish immigrant who was a manager at a doll parts factory and Adele Perlman, “a bookkeeper” gave birth to Comedic Actress Rhea Jo Perlam who gained fame for her roles in the television comedies “Taxi” and “Cheers” where she worked with her sister, producer and scriptwriter Heide Perlman.

1948: as part of Operation Balak, “the airlift to Israel of fighter planes and military supplies” a Skymaster “flew directly from Prague to an airstrip near Be’er Tuivah, landing there today” with equipment immediately used in Operation Nahshon.

1948(20thof Adar II, 5708): Sixty-two year old journalist, rebel and communist Egon Erwin Kisch died today two years after returning to his native Czechoslovakia.

http://spartacus-educational.com/Egon_Erwin_Kisch.htm

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kisch-egon-erwin-10755

1948: Today, the New York Times received memoranda,” including a letter from Shmuel M. Katzneslon that “set for the bitter position of the Jewish political detainees” being held at a the special British camp in Gilgal, Kenya

1949: The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada. There were somewhere between 215 and 360 Jews living in Newfoundland at this time. “The real history of the Newfoundland Jewish community began with the arrival in St. John's of Israel Perlin from the United States. He was instrumental in founding the first synagogue in Newfoundland, the Hebrew Congregation of Newfoundland, in 1909. The census of 1935 reported 215 Jews living in Newfoundland. The census of 1971 showed that that number had grown to 360.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel had become the ninth nation to ratify the agreement to eliminate trade barriers on the import of educational, scientific or cultural materials, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Forty tons of Jerusalem stone, hewn from the Castel quarry, went into the building of the UN headquarters in New York as Israel's contribution to the project. The stone was sufficient for 300 sq.m. of flooring. Israel purchased 40,000 tons of wheat from South Africa.

1953: The number of Israeli unemployed as of this date was 16,350.

1953: New York premiere of “Fear and Desire” “directed, produced and edited by Stanley Kubrick” with a script by Howard Sackler.

1953(15th of Nisan, 5713): First Day of Pesach

1953: Birthdate of New York native and author Harold Augenbraum, “the former Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, and former member of the Board of Trustees of the Asian American Writers Workshop, and former vice chair of the New York Council for the Humanities.”

1953: Birthdate of Ehud Banai, an Israeli singer and songwriter.

1954: As tensions grew between Jordan and Israel due to the attacks by terrorists based in Jordan, the British cabinet discussed military options for responding to a possible strike by Israel into Jordan.

1956: In Boston, Albert Sinofsky and his wife gave birth to Bruce Jeffrey Sinofsky who grew up in Newton, Mass and pursued a career as documentary film maker.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/movies/bruce-sinofsky-documentary-filmmaker-dies-at-58.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1958: The US Navy formed an atomic submarine division. Admiral Hyman Rickover is considered the “father of the atomic Navy.” Thanks to his efforts, America developed a fleet of nuclear submarines that provided the United States with its strongest strategic edge during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

1959: In one of those uniquely American cross-cultural experience Don Devlin (Bronx born Jew Donald R. Siegel) “appeared as an Indian, Dixon White Eagle” in an episode of “Sugarfoot.”

1960: “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” a movie version of a book by the same name produced by Joe Pasternak was released today in the United States.

1961(14thof Nisan, 5721): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach and erev Shabbat

1961: “Just two months after Arthur Goldberg’s appoint as Secretary of Labor” Arthur and Dorothy Goldberg hosted a Seder to which the President, Speaker of the House, Chief Justice, the President of the AFL-CIO and both senators from the state of Illinois were invited.

1963(4thof Nisan, 5723): Eighty-seven year old Samuel Paley, the native of Kiev who came to the United States in 1888, founded the United Cigar Company in 1896 and financed the purchase of what today is CBS by his son William, passed away today in Miami Beach.

1963(4thof Nisan, 5723): Sixty-eight year old New York song writer Harry Askt who began his career playing piano for such vaudeville performers as Al Jolson and who began his partnership with Irving Berlin while they were serving at Camp Upton during WW I passed away today in California.

https://www.songhall.org/profile/Harry_Akst

1966: It was reported that Harold L. Rosnebaum, the grandson of Rabbi Moses A. Poleyeff, a professor of Talmud at Yehisva’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary will be married this summer to Naomi AvRutick, the daughter of Rabbi Abraham N. AvRutick, a past president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

1968(2ndof Nisan, 5728): Forty five year old Mt. Vernon, NY native and Harvard trained city planner Stanley Tankel who crossed swords with Robert Moses passed away.

http://www.nypap.org/preservation-history/stanley-tankel/

1969(12thof Nisan, 5729): Eighty-eight year old Dr. William Seigman Ehrich, the Georgetown, SC son of Louis and Cornelia Ehrich, “who for most of his career was a surgeon at Evansville State Hospital” passed away today after which he was buried at the Beth Elhoim Cemetery in his native Georgetown.

1975: Boris Tsitlionok and Mark Nashpits were the defendants in the Soviet anti-Zionist trials that began today.

1976: U.S. premiere of “W.C. Fields and Me” directed by Arthur Hiller, produced by Jay Weston, written by Bob Merrill, featuring Allan Arbus and Milton Kamen.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that West Germany protested to Israel that it had not been told for more than a year of the arrest of two young West Germans, Brigitte Schultz and Thomas Reuter, who planned, on January 18, 1976, to shoot down an El Al plane in Nairobi. Five terrorists were arrested by Kenya: two Germans and three Arabs. Israel announced that they would soon be tried in camera, by a military court.

1978: In New York City, Joseph Cross and his wife gave birth to actor turned businessman Harley who went from making such cult films “The Believers” to co-founding Hint Mint, a breath mint candy company.

1979: In Jerusalem, Israel, Gali Atari &; Milk and Honey win the twenty-fourth Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing "Hallelujah.

1981: The annual International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee began today in London.

1981: “The Yellow Star - The Persecution of the Jews in Europe 1933-45” lost out for an Oscar tonight as Best Documentary Feature.

1983: NBC broadcast the final episode of the first season the hit sitcom “Cheers” co-starring Rhea Perlman as an Italian waitress supporting a multiplicity of offspring as a single mom.

1985: After 122 performances the curtain came down the Off Broadway production of “Diamonds” a musical revue directed by Harold Prince with lyrics and/or music by Howard Ashman, Cy Coleman and Comden and Green

1989: Six months after premiering in ItalyHeathers” a comedy starring Winona Ryder (Winona Laura Horowwitz) who also served as narrator was released in the United States today.

1991: The 1960 television version of “Peter Pan,” with music by Mark Charlap and Jule Styne and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, Betty Comden and Adolph Green which had become a classic was re-broadcast today.

1993:  “Family Prayers” a dramatic film starring Paul Reiser and featuring Tzvi Ratner-Stauber and Allen Garfield was released in the United States today.

1993: The “first season” of “Homicide: Life on the Streets” a television adaptation of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon whose creators included Barry Levinson came to an end.

1993: With Israel reeling from its worst wave of Arab violence in years, including the shooting deaths of two policemen this morning, the Government indefinitely closed the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip today.

1994: Yosef Zandani, age 28, of Bnei Ayish, was found killed in his apartment near Gedera. Near the body was a leaflet of the DFLP "Red Star", explaining that the murder was carried out in revenge for the shooting of one of its members by an Israeli citizen. The Israeli acted in self-defense

1995: Al HaMishmar, a “paper owned by and affiliated with Hashomer Hatzair as well as the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party of Palestine and Mapam” which was first published in 1943 ceased publication today.

1996: “Who Owns The Dreyfus Affair?” published today provides an advance look at the opera based on the life of the famous French Captain.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/31/arts/classical-music-who-owns-the-dreyfus-affair.html?pagewanted=print

1997: The Union of Orthodox Rabbis issued “A Historic Declaration which stated Reform and Conservative are not Judaism at all. Their adherents are Jews, according to the Jewish Law, but their religion is not Judaism...we appeal to our fellow Jew, members of the Reform and Conservative movements: Having been falsely led by heretical leaders that Reform and Conservative are legitimate branches and denominations of Judaism, we urge you to be guided by this declaration, and withdraw from your affiliation with Reform and Conservative temples and their clergy. Do not hesitate to attend an Orthodox synagogue due to your inadequate observance of Judaism. On the contrary, it is because of that inadequacy that you need to attend an Orthodox synagogue where you will be warmly welcomed

.1998(4th of Nisan, 5758): Former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug passed away at the age 77 (As reported by Laura Mansnerus)

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0724.html

1999(14thof Nisan, 5759): Ta-anit Bchorot; Erev Pesach; Deb Levin hosts her first Seder in what will become a tradition that will eventually be highlighted in the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

1999: Did you ever wonder how Jews celebrate Pesach, the holiday of “Spring,” in the Southern Hemisphere where it is really Autumn? In “An Argentine Passover, Then and Now,” Joan Nathan gives us some sense of the celebration.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/31/dining/an-argentine-passover-then-and-now.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2000: “Whatever It Takes,” a comedy co-starring Marla Sokoloff and James Franco and produced by Paul Schiff was released today.

2000: “High Fidelity” a movie version of the novel directed Stephen Fears and co-starring Jack Black, Lisa Bonet and Sara Gilbert was released today in the United States.

2000: “Rules of Engagement” a combination war and legal movie directed by William Friedkin, produced by Scott Rudin and featuring Mark Feuerstein was released in the United States today.
2001: Uzi Landau replaced Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as Energy and Water Resources Minister of Israel


2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of "Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History" by James Carroll and "Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses" by Bruce Feller.

2002(18thof Nisan, 5762): 4th day of Pesach and 3rd day of the Omer.
2002(18th of Nisan, 5762): Fourteen “people were killed and over 40 injured in a suicide bombing in Haifa, in the Matza restaurant of the gas station near the Grand Canyon shopping mall. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The victims: Suheil Adawi, 32, of Turan; Dov Chernevroda, 67, of Haifa; Shimon Koren, 55; his sons Ran, 18, and Gal, 15, of Haifa; Moshe Levin, 52, of Haifa; Danielle Manchell, 22, of Haifa; Orly Ofir, 16, of Haifa; Aviel Ron, 54; his son Ofer, 18, and daughter Anat, 21, of Haifa; Ya'akov Shani, 53, of Haifa; Adi Shiran, 17, of Haifa; Daniel Carlos Wegman, 50, of Haifa. Carlos Yerushalmi, 52, of Karkur, died the next day of wounds sustained in the attack.” (Jewish Virtual Library)


2002(18thof Nisan, 5767): Hamas took credit for today’s attack at the Erfat Medical center where four people were injured.
2003: Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman gave birth to their youngest child, Abraham “Abie” Wolf Waldman


2003(27th of Adar II 5763): Eighty-five year old Sidney Greenberg, one of the Conservative movement’s leading rabbis, passed away.

http://forward.com/articles/8526/rabbi-sidney-greenberg--wrote-on-prayers-holi/

2003: National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice addressed the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference.

2004: An updated version of “Baby” the David Shire musical opened at “the Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, New Jersey today.

2005: While Lewis Wolff may be the head of the group buying the Oakland Athletics, reports published today claim that John J. Fisher son of GAP founder Donald Fisher, is he one putting up most of the money for the purchase.

2005: As of today Hans “Berliner still had by far the highest International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) rating of any player in the United States, at 2726, 84 points above the second-highest rated player.”

2005: ABC News reported that Ted Koppel will leave that organization when his contract expires in December of 2005. Mr. Koppel has been with the network for 42 years and has hosted the popular late night news program “Nightline” for the past twenty-five years. Nightline provided a hard-news late night alternative to the talk shows hosted by the two other networks. Nightline’s audience would always grow during periods of crisis such as the seizure of the American embassy in Teheran and the prolonged hostage seizure that followed.

2005: At the Jewish Museum in New York, a distinguished panel of speakers, including exhibition co-curators Emily Bilski and Emily Braun, as well as Whitney Museum curator Elizabeth Sussman and Union College professor Brenda Wineapple, consider the contributions of women such as Gertrude Stein, Margherita Sarfatti, and Florine Stettheimer to literature and the visual arts from the late 18th century through the 1930s.

2007: Shabbat Ha Gadol.

2007: In Cedar Rapids, the show “Remnants of Memories” Interpretations of the collage by artists Tom Lee and Elizabeth Levi sponsored by Ginsberg’s Jewelry comes to a close.

2008: Hillel receives a $10.7 million grant, from the Jim Joseph Foundation which the college oriented organization says is the largest in its history.

2008: In New York, The Center for Jewish History presents a lecture by Dr. Atina Grossman entitled “Close Encounters: Jews and Germans in Occupied Germany during which she will discuss the story of the "close encounters" in Allied occupied Germany between Jewish survivors of the Nazi Final Solution who found themselves on "cursed German soil" after the German surrender, and the defeated Germans with whom they continually interacted.

2008: End of Women’s History Month.

2008: In Vancouver, B.C., the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “Samuel Bak: Painter of Questions.”

2008: “New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656” was among the nominees for the 23rd annual Lucille Lortel Awards, celebrating excellence in Off-Broadway theatre,

2008(24thof Adar II, 5678): Ninety-six year old movie director Jules Dassin the son of Russian immigrants who began his career as a Yiddish actor and was a victim of the infamous Hollywood Blacklist, passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/movies/01dassin.html?_r=0
http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.aspx?n=jules-dassin&pid=106710732
2008(24th of Adar II, 5768): Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, a dominant figure in American Jewish philanthropy during Israel’s formative years, passed away at his New York home at the age of 89. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/nyregion/04friedman.html?_r=0

2009(6th of Nisan, 5769): Ruth Fredman Cernea, 74, a cultural anthropologist who wrote on topics that included the Jews of Myanmar and the annual mock debate at the University of Chicago on the respective merits of Jewish holiday foods such as latkes and hamantaschen, died today of pancreatic cancer.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-04-07/news/36922526_1_jewish-humor-sephardic-jews-jewish-community

2009: Danny Ayalon began serving as Deputy Foreign Minister.

2009: Moshe Kahlon replaced Ariel Atias as Communications Minister.

2009: Gideon Sa'ar was appointed Minister of Education

2009: Yeshiva University hosts the second day the Israel and India International Conference which features the theme "A Relationship Comes of Age." Presenters include Nathan Katz (Florida International University), Amit Kapoor (Management Development Institute, India), Efraim Inbar (Bar-Ilan University), Shlomo Mor-Yosef (Hadassah Medical Organization), Maina Chawla Sing (University of Delhi), P R Kumaraswamy (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Gadi Ariav (Tel Aviv University).

2009: Gottschalks, a chain of department stores that was founded by German Jewish immigrant Emil Gottschalk in 1904, “announced it would liquidate its remaining stores.”

2009: Silvan Shalom replaced Yaakov Edri as Minister for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee

2009: Ayoob Karab began serving as Deputy Minister for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee.

2009: Ariel Atias replaced Ze'ev Boim as Minister of Housing and Construction

2009: Ya'akov Margi replaced Yitzhak Cohen as Minister of Religious Services

2009: Eli Yishai replaced Meeir Sheetrit as Minister of Internal Affairs

2009: Uzi Landau replaced Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as Minister of Energy and Water Resources.

2009: Daniel Hershkowitz replaced Raleb Majadele as Minister of Science and Technology.

2010(16th of Nisan, 5770): First Day of the Omer; Second Day of Pesach

2010: “Rethinking the Holocaust and Genocide with Michael Thaler”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPMJyjbz_nE


2010: An exhibition presented by the American Jewish Historical Society entitled “Pages from a Performing Life: The Scrapbooks of Molly Picon” featuring the 22 scrapbooks keep by Molly Picon and her husband Jacob Kalish chronicling their extraordinary 50-year career, is scheduled to come to an end.

2010(16thof Nisan, 5770): “Internationally known Columbia archaeologist Samuel Paley, the “head of the Judaic Studies at the University of Buffalo” who has “excavated sites in Cyrus, Israel and Turkey” lost his battle with brain cancer and passed away today.

2010(16th of Nisan, 5770): Steven Zilberman died while serving his country. “Miroslav Zilberman, a Navy pilot known to his friends as Steven, moved with his parents from Ukraine to Columbus, Ohio, in the early 1990s. His parents, Anna and Boris, did not want their son to be forced into military service in their native land. AP reports describe Zilberman as grandson of Gregory Sokolov, a major in the Soviet Army in World War II. Zilberman decided to follow his grandfather’s footsteps and joined the Navy after graduating from Bexley High School in 1997. He went on to graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he majored in computer science. Zilberman’s plane, an E-2C Hawkeye, was returning to the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower following a mission supporting operations in Afghanistan when the plane experienced a malfunction. Zilberman ordered his crew mates to eject before going down with the plane into the North Arabian Sea.”

2011(25th of Adar II, 5771): Eighty-three year old Henry Taub, found of ADP, passed away. (As reported by Duff Wilson)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/business/05taub.html

2011: Yosef Begun a former Soviet Prisoner of Conscience is scheduled to speak at noon today in Washington, DC.

2011: Performance of “Steve Reich’s masterpiece Tehillim” today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjnVN6-Wx08

2011: The 14th annual Main Jewish Festival opens in Portland, Maine.

2011: “The Army of Crime” and “Hidden Children” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “The Human Resources Manager” is one of the films scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival

2011: In Jerusalem, the Old City Flavors Festival comes do an end.

2011:  David “Deutsch’s second book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World, was published” today further enhancing the reputation of the Haifa born British physicist who atteneded both Cambridge and Oxford.

2011: “How Israel Won the Six-Day War” published today described Operation Yated and the role an Egyptian agent “turned” played in the miracle of June, 1967.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/how-israel-won-the-six-day-war-1.353213?localLinksEnabled=false
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/how-israel-won-the-six-day-war-1.353213?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.225%2C2.239%2C


2012(8thof Nisan, 5772: Parashat  Tzav and Shabbat Hagadol - 81st anniversary of the Bar Mitzvah of Joseph B. Levin, of blessed memory who was Bar Mitzvahed on Shabbat Hagadol

2012: This evening Emily Bount married Michael Signer, the son of Robert and Marjorie Singer, who as Mayor of Charlottesville worked on plans to remove Confederate statues from his cities which led to violent protests from white supremacists and Nazi.

2012: “Footnote” and “Salmon Fishing in Yemen” are scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2013: Jeremy Piven stars in “Mr. Selfridge” a Masterpiece Classics min-series that is scheduled to aire for the first time tonight on PBS.

2013: The Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, also known as the Jobar Synagogue was erroneously reported to have been destroyed by Syrian forces operating in Damascus today when in fact it was only seriously damaged by mortar fire from either government or rebel forces.

2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Retrospective by A.B. Yehosuha and Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Lifeby Jonathan Sperber 

2013: President Shimon Peres today congratulated Yitzhak Tshuva, the controlling shareholder of the Tamar natural gas field which was first put into use Saturday, for pumping the gas into Israel four years after the deposit was first discovered — adding, however, that the pumping should not have begun on the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest.

2013: Pope Francis and Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni exchanged greetings to mark Passover and Easter.

2014: In Little Rock, Lubavitch of Arkansas under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host an evening with “author, comedian, journalist and musician David Nesenoff.”

2014:Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was convicted today of receiving bribes to facilitate the construction of the Holyland housing project in Jerusalem a decade ago.
2014: In their never-ending quest to get something for nothing “The Palestinians today gave US Secretary of State John Kerry 24 hours to resolve a dispute with Israel over prisoners after which they will resume moves to seek international recognition.

2015: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to lead Passover shopping expedition to Moti’s Market in Rockville, MD.

2015: In Philadelphia, The National Museum of Jewish History is scheduled to host the VIP Opening Reception for “Richard Avedon: Family Affairs” which “features more than 70 portraits by the famed photographer.

2015: The first part of “The Dovekeepers” a dramatization of events at Masada is scheduled to be shown on CBS.


2016: Steven Gimbel, the professor of philosophy at Gettysburg College and author of Einstein: The Man is scheduled to lecture at Johns Hopkins University’s Baltimore campus.

2016(21st of Adar II, 5776): Eighty-six year old Hungarian Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Laureate Imre Kertesz passed away today.


2016: Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Raise the Roof"– a documentary about the building of a replica of the “mural covered wooden synagogues of the 18th century” that were destroyed by the Nazis.

2017: Bidding for the mineral rights on five blocks in the Mediterranean ‘including areas that lie in waters disputed by Israel” is scheduled to come to an end today in Beirut.

2017: ABC broadcast the final episode of “Last Man Standing” a sit-come co-starring Molly Ephriam as the ditzy daughter Amanda “Mandy” Baxter.

2017: “Norman Lear,” a film about “the life, trailblazing shows, and political activism of famous TV writer/producer Norman Lear: is scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

2017: Release of “The Zookeeper’s Wife.”


2018: France J. Pruitt is scheduled to talk about her book Faith and Courage in a Time of Trouble “a memoir of a Belgian-Jewish girl and her family who were saved during the Nazi occupation of France through the compassion and heroism of French peasants from the southern part of the country” this afternoon at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

2018(15th of Nisan, 5778): Pesach

2019: The New York Times features books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest Jewish readers including A Weekend in New York by Benjamin Markovits, America’s Jewish Women: A History From Colonial Times to Today by Pamela S. Nadell, The Age of Disenchantments: The Epic Story of Spain’s Most Notorious Literary Family and the Long Shadow of the Spanish Civil War by Aaron Shulman, Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keefe, Paul Strand and Rebecca Salsbury by Carolyn Burke and the recently released paperback edition of Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America’s Fifty-Year Fall and Those Fighting to Reverse It by Steven Brill.

2019: In Ames, IA, the Iowa Jewish Historical Society, the Ames Jewish Congregation, Hillel at ISU, Chabad at Ames and the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines are schedule to present “Second Chance” during which Celina Karp Biniaz, “one of the last survivors from Schindler’s List,” and the “only Schindler Juden to graduate from high school and college Iowa” “tells her personal story.”

2019: In Atlanta, at the Breman Museum, Daniel Horowitz Garcia is scheduled to lecture at today’s meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society.

2029: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present a panel discussion on “Immigration Matters: Jews, Other Immigrants and America.”

2019: Today is the deadline for submitting SEFER Center awards grants for Research on Russian Jewry.

http://yiddish-sources.com/news/call-applications-sefer-center-grants-research-russian-jewry-–-2019

This Day, April 1, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 1
 
515 BCE:  The Second Temple was inaugurated in Jerusalem (As reported by Jona Lendering)

527: Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne. This was a “lose-lose” proposition for the Jewish people. When Justin I assumed the throne he adopted a policy of rigorously enforcing the anti-Jewish laws promulgated by Theodosius including excluding Jews from “all posts of honor” and banning the construction of new synagogues. “Justinian began persecuting the Jews immediately after his accession” as can be seen from the adoption of anti-Jewish legislation in the very first year of his reign.

1205: Amalrik II King of Cyprus/Jerusalem, died. This was the period of the Crusades when followers of Islam and Christians from Europe jockeyed for control of Eretz Israel and Jerusalem.

1315: Louis V “suspended the collection of the debts owed to” the Jews “which were still outstanding from their expulsion in 1306 as part of his plan to eventually allow the Jews to France.

1548: Sigismund II Augustus, the Polish King who allowed “Jews to settle in Vilna without restriction” and who issued “the ‘Magna Cara of Jewish Self-Government’’ “which permitted Jews to elect their own chief rabbi and judges” began his reign as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.

1557(1st of Iyar):  Iggeret Ba’alei Hayyim, a book on zoology translated by Kalonymus was printed for the first time in Mantua, Italy.

1662(12thof Nisan, 5422):Isaac ben Abraham Uziel a Spanish physician, poet and grammarian, born at Fez” who became rabbi of Neveh Shalom in Amsterdam in 1610 when Judah Vega passed away died to in Amsterdam who left behind several literary works including “a Hebrew grammar, Ma’aneh Leshon.”

1779(15thof Nisan, 5539): First Day of Pesach

1782: The certificate authorizing Solomon Etting of Lancaster, PA to serve as a shochet was issued today making him the first native born American to receive this distinction

1798(15thof Nisan, 5558): As Washington’s Ary continues to “winter in Middlebrook” Jews observe the first day of Pesach.

1815: Birthdate of Otto Von Bismarck. A Prussian, he served as Chancellor from 1866 to 1890 making Germany into a united modern nation. His record concerning the Jews was mixed, He was Chancellor in 1869 when emancipation legislation was enacted removing limitations on civil rights based on religion. His personal physician was Jewish and there were Jewish department heads in the government. In his earlier years, Bismarck had been opposed to Jews as government ministers. Once again, as his career drew to a close and it fit his political needs Bismarck distanced himself from the Jews but did not adopt the rabid anti-Semitism that appeared in Germany during the 1880's.

1817(15th of Nisan, 5577): First Day of Pesach

1823: In Alsace, Charlotte Aron (Loew) and Alexandre Aron gave birth to Achille Aron

1828: In Cassel, Germany, Moses Mordecai Büdinger gave birth to Austrian historian Max Büdinger who served as chair of the history department at the University of Vienna from 1872 until 1902.

1829: Jacob ben Naphtali HaCohen married Beila bat Solomon HaCohen at the Western Synagogue.

1835: Samuel Samuels married Esther Benjamin today at the Great Synagogue.

1840: Lazarus Walter married Hannah Aaron at the Great Synagogue today.

1845: In Trieste, Elisa Morpurgo and Giuseppe / Joseph Baron von Morpurgo gave birth to Louise Cahen d'Anvers (de Morpurgo)

1852: Fire broke out in San Francisco destroying a boarding house owned by Abraham Abrahamsohn that boasted a “French cook, three waiters and a dishwashers.” Abrahamsohn would have tried his hand unsuccessfully in the gold fields and as tailor in Sacramento had made the money for the boarding house by working as a mohel. One can only assume that there was a good sized and prolific Jewish population in San Francisco for him to have earned enough capital from performing ritual circumcisions. This latest setback forced Abrahamsohn to head to Australia where he again failed as gold miner, but met with modest economic success when he returned to his original profession – baker – and began providing food for the hungry miners.

1853: When an apprentice named Herman who was working for a boot and shoe shop was arrested on charges of theft that covered the last 9 months, he claimed that he was regular selling eighty dollars’ worth of merchandize of an un-named Jew for twenty-five dollars.

1857: Joseph Abrahams married Betsie Mesner today at the Great Synagogue.

1858(17thof Nisan, 5618): Third Day of Pesach.

1858: The New York Times reported that one of the reasons for a drop in business at the local cattle markets this week was the absence of Jewish butchers who were observing Passover.

1861: An English play entitled “Babes in the Wood” opened at the Winter Garden Theatre.  According to the reviewer, the play is based on the all too common practice of the impecunious English gentleman who borrows money from “a friendly Hebrew” for which he pays “a liberal interest” so that he may pursue a life style that includes “a generous supply of wine,” cigars and a marriage which all too often does not turn out to be solution to his problems. [It would appear that 3 centuries after the creation of Shylock, the English still are writing about the poor gentile victimized by the Jewish moneylender.]

1861: In Cincinnati, OH, “Lewis and Emma (Goodhart) Heinshiemer gave birth to businessman Edward Lewis Heinsheimer, one of the first students to enroll at Hebrew Union College which he supported for the rest of his life as can be seen by his service as a member of the board of governors and President and who was the husband of the former Sally Workum Freiberg and the father of Emma, Duffie and Stella Heinsheimer.

1862(1st of Nisan, 5622): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1863: Two days after he had passed away Alexander Isaacs, the husband of the former Sophie Levy with whom he had had twelve children was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1864: In Cincinnati, the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society which was the ladies’ auxiliary of the Congregation Adath Israel was founded today.

1865(5thof Nisan, 5625): In the waning days of the American Civil War, Sergeant Morris Schlesinger of Philadelphia who had been wounded yesterday at Gravelly Run, VA, died today.

1865: Union forces defeat the Confederates at the Battle of Five Forks which effectively sealed the fate of Robert E. Lee’s Army and therefore the Confederacy.  The rebels were forced to abandon Richmond which would lead to the involvement of Raphael Moses, the native of Columbus, GA who had been with Lee at Gettysburg in the bizarre episode concerning the disposal of the Southern government’s bullion supply.

1865: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, later known as Leslie’s Weekly published a picture of the annual Purim Ball held in New York in March.


1866(16thof Nisan, 5626): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1866: In a column entitled "Southern Jottings" published today described conditions in Charleston, South Carolina, including the observation that "the Hebrew element is largely represented here and speculators are as abundant as tea stores on Vesey Street."

1866: Under the simple heading of “Nathan Meyer Rothschild of London” the New York Times published a lengthy article tracing the history of the family from its earliest beginning to its present prominent role in the world of finance as well as the role of other Jews in the financial growth that has occurred in Great Britain since “the days of the South Sea bubble.”

1870: “April Fool” published today traces the origins of April Fool’s Day in which the author claims that the prophet Haggai “makes allusion to it in the third chapter of his book.” He also contends that Solomon recognized “the fool” in his writings and even references a specific day for fools in the 29th verse of the 17th chapter of Proverbs, “The fool has his day and the simple man his season…”

1870(10th of Nisan, 5631): Shabbat HaGadol

1870: Sixty-two year old physician and author Moses Philippson passed away today in Breitenfeld.


1871: "Green Street Synagogue” was founded today by a small group of Jews in Baltimore, Maryland.

1872: Sixty-two year old Rose Jacobs, the wife of John Jacobs and the mother of Julia Jacobs was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1872: Birthdate of Conrad Gröber, the Catholic cleric whose eventual opposition to the Nazi regime did not include opposition to the Holocaust.

1872: Today, the United States Postal Department authored the establishment of a post office in the community which would eventually be known as Seligman, MO.

1874: Birthdate of Kuppenheim, Germany native Max Dreyfus who at the age of 14 came to the United States where he became a successful musical publisher.



1874(14th of Nisan, 5634): The New York Times reported that “this evening the Jewish festival of ‘Pesach’ or the Passover will be inaugurated with the observances and ceremonies incident to its celebration. This festival is one of the most important in the Hewish calendar, and was instituted to commemorate the miraculous deliverance of the children of Israel from the vile system of slaver imposed upon them during their sojourn in the land of Egypt. The festival begins at sundown this evening and continues for eight days…and is distinguished from all festivals by the banishment of all leavened bread from the houses of the pious Israelites…”  

1875:  Actress “Polly” Richards gave birth to , Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace whose works would banned by in Germany “because of rumors that the writer was of Jewish extraction” – a charge vehemently denied by his daughter Mrs. Frere Reeves.

1876: It was reported today that I.S. Nathans, a Jew who has become an Episcopalian has been authorized by his church to led a mission to convert the Jews of New York which the church number at 110,000.

1876: Sigmund Dringer, an Austrian born Jew, had acquired 4,000 tons of scrap iron and 1,700 tons of car wheels said to be worth one hundred thousand dollars.  This made Dringer the largest scrap medal dealer in the United States supplying foundries and rolling mills from Boston to Cincinnati.

1880: This morning, Shearith Israel, located at West19th Street near 5thAvenue in New York City, celebrated the 150th anniversary of its consecration with special services led by Rabbis Nieto, Lyon and Pereia-Mendes.

1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jerusalem.

1881: Today marked the beginning of a three month exodus of Jews from Russia that would include “not less than 225,000 Jewish families” or “over a million souls.”

1881: “Le tribut de Zamora, an opera in four acts” with a libretto by Adolphe d’Ennery premiered today “at the Opéra's Palais Garnier.”

1882: A blood libel in Tisza Eszlar, Hungary began. “A week and a half before Easter, a fourteen year old Catholic housemaid, Esther Solymossy, left her employer’s home to buy paint. She did not return.” When a week long search failed to turn up any evidence of the missing girl, two prominent Hungarian anti-Semites named Onody and Istoczy began making claims about “ritual murder” forcing the local sheriff to pursue this blatantly false line of accusation. Fifteen Jews were ultimately charged and tried for "murder" for which there was no real evidence. After a year of futile effort, the fifteen were acquitted.

1883: In New York, David Holtz and Pauline Moses, whom he had known for a brief time, were engaged to be married.

1883: Birthdate of Rumanian native Emil Armin, the grandson of a sofer who in 1905 came to the United States where he joined his brother, enrolled in night art classes after which he became a leading American painter.



1884: In Galveston Morris and Nettie Lasker gave birth to their second child and first daughter Florina Lasker “the chairman of the National Council of Jewish Women’s immigrant aid section,” the co-author of Care and Treatment of the Jewish Blind in the City of New York” and a board member of the ACLU.

1887: Birthdate of Leonard Bloomfield an American linguist whose influence dominated the development of structural linguistics in America between the 1930s and the 1950s. He is especially known for his book Language published in 1933 that described the state of the art of linguistics at its time. Bloomfield was the main founder of the Linguistic Society of America.

1888: Three days after his death composer and pianist Charles-Valntin Alkan was buried today in the “Jewish section of Montmartre Cemetery, Paris,” in a tomb which would later be the burial site for his sister Celeste and which was “not far from the tomb of his contemporary Fromental Halévy.”

1888: At Temple Beth-El in New York, Rabbi Kaufman Kohler delivered a lecture entitled “The Wandering Jews.”

1889: Caroline and Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman gave birth to Eustace Seligman.

1889: Birthdate of Bryn Mawr grad and pioneering psychiatrist Sadi Muriel Baron, the wife of Dr. David Raskind and the mother of Dr. Richard Raskind who gained fame as Dr. Renee Richards.


1890: Three Russian Jewish immigrants – Ed Myers, Isadore Lowenstein and Ike Edeliman – have been charged with arson and are locked up the Central Police Station in Louisville, KY.

1890: Nathan Birnbaum leader of Kadima and the publisher of the journal Selbst-Emanzipation created the term Zionism. Birnbaum was actually a Zionist before Herzl popularized the concept. Unfortunately, Birnbaum was not able to find a "home" in the movement as it grew. In a total role reversal he advocated the development of the Jewish community in the Diaspora, Yiddish instead of Hebrew and orthodoxy over secularism.

1890: Fifty women formed The Beth El Society of Personal Services was formed with the intent of lessening the burden being placed on the United Hebrew Charities.

1892: Grover Cleveland addressed a large crowd of Russian Jews in New York City.

1892: In Great Britain, Mr. Balfour told the House of Commons that the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg had based his expectation that a large number of Jews would be coming to the UK because he believed that the United States was about to put an end to the immigration of Jews from Russa.

1892: In Brooklyn, the Republican faction opposed to Ernst Nathan sent out a call for meeting.

1893(15th of Nisan, 5653): First Day of Pesach

1893: According to “the books of the Jewish shelter on Leman, Street, White Chapel,” London, today marked the start of the expulsion of Polish Jews that would totally 38 by the end of the month.

1893: Meyer Lyask received an order warning “him to quit his lodgings in the village of Gmina (Poland) within seven days.

1893: Nathan Straus, Isidor Straus and Simon F. Rothschild bought out Joseph Wechsler’s interest in Wechsler and Abraham and renamed the store Abraham and Straus which at that time had 2,000 employees.

1893: German’s celebrate the 78th anniversary of the birth of Otto Von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor who changed the face of Europe in ways too numerous to mention here.


1894: Professor Felix Adler delivered a lecture on “The Influence of Woman” at the Music Hall in New York City.

1894: “Over In Camden” published today described the purchase by the Sons of Israel of “a portion of the New Camden Cemetery for use as a cemetery for Jews in the New Jersey city.

1894: It was reported today that there may have been a period of time when the Queen Insurance Company of New York did not insure Jews

1894: “All Fool’s Day” published today attributed to the origins of April Fool’s Day as being tied to the fact that Noah made the mistake of “sending the dove out of the ark before the water had abated on the first day of the month” on the Jewish calendar which correlates “our 1st of April.”  Since then people would be sent on “fool’s errands” on this date in the foolish manner of Noah sending out the dove.”

1894: “Godfathers and Godmothers” published today described the origins of this popular custom among Christians but for which “doubtless” began with the Jews.

1895: Interview with Alphonse Daudet, French anti-Semitic writer, for whom Herzl translated an article. Herzl unfolds his views on the Jewish question, which produce a deep impression on Daudet. Daudet feels that Herzl should write a novel about his ideas.

1895: First appearance of The "American Jewess," the first English-language publication published by and for American Jewish women.

1895: In Columbia, “George Henry Issacs, an English Jew originally from Jamaica” and his wife gave birth to Jorge Isaacs Ferrer whom Isaac Goldberg described as “a half-Jew” who is “Spanish America’s most famous novelist.”

1896: It was reported today that the recent benefit production of “The Heart of Maryland” raised about two thousand dollars for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum who had just celebrated 21 years of service to the Congregation.

1896: The funeral for Rabbi Aaron Wise is scheduled to be held this morning at Rodeph Sholom, at Lexington and 63rd Street in Manhattan

1896: “Promises For Peddlers” published today described a meeting between 1,000 pushcart vendors led by Abraham Benowitz, President of the Fish Peddlers’ Association  and New York leaders including Mayor Strong and President Teddy Roosevelt of the Police Board to discuss plans for how their business would be conducted on Hester Street on the Lower East Side.

1897: Birthdate of Harry Joseph Passon, the brother of Herman and Nathan Pass and who “long with friends Eddie Gottlieb and Hughie Black organized a basketball team sponsored by the South Philadelphia Young Men’s Hebrew Association which became known by the acronym SPHAS.”


1897: “Rights of Hebrew Americans” published today described the efforts of Congressman Fitzgerald of Massachusetts to have the Secretary State ensure that American Jews are not discriminated by the Czar’s government when they are doing business in Russia. (Congressman Fitzgerald is the grandfather of JFK)

1898: In New York, Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D. and Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M.D. gave birth to child-prodigy and math wizard, William James Sidis

1898: Birthdate of Joseph A. “Joe” Alexander the Syracuse native and three-time All-American guard on the Syracuse University football team who “was the first player signed by the original New York Giants” and who went on to a successful medical career when his playing days were over.


1898: Louis and Clara Asia Parnes gave birth to Paul Parnes the husband of Fay Parnes and the father of William and Arlene Parnes.

1898: Moses Samuel Zuckermandl who was the rabbi at Pleschen, Prussia “was appointed lecturer at the Mora-Leipziger Foundation at Breslau” today.

1898(9thof Nisan, 5658): Sixty-eight year old German lawyer Hermann Makower who also served as President of the Board of the Jewish Community of Berlin passed away today.

1899(21stof Nisan, 5659): 4th day of Pesach and Shabbat

1899(21stof Nisan, 5659): Three weeks short of the third anniversary of the death of her husband, Baron Maurice de Hirsch; sixty-five year old Clara Hirsch, the Baroness de Hirsch passed away today in Paris. The daughter of Belgian banking family, she knew the personal tragedy of loss when her daughter died in infancy and her son died at the age of 31.  She threw herself into a variety of charitable efforts and after her husband’s used the family fortune to provide for a myriad of causes including settle Russian Jews in agricultural communities and establishing training schools for young girls so that they could learn a trade and be self-supporting.

1899: Philip Michael Ritter von Newlinski, a Polish nobleman whom Herzl wanted to use his contacts with the Ottomans to promote the Zionist cause, dies in Constantinople.

1899: In “Closing of the Schools” published today, “Vox Populi” defends the decision of the school board closing the schools at this time of the year since it coincides with Easter and Passover which means that Christian and Jewish students would not be in school.  Such a decision is not an unwarranted intrusion of religion in public education but an acknowledgement that in the United States we enjoy religious freedom that enables to honor the customs of Christians and Jews.

1899: Despite a total lack of evidence, Leopold Hilsner was sentenced death today in Polna, Bohemia in another case of a Blood Libel. His sentence was later commuted and in 1916, Hilsner received a full pardon. It should be noted that his life was saved thanks to the activities of T.J. Masark, Czech patriot and the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia.

1899: Austrian author Karl Kraus an advocate of Jewish assimilation and a critic of Theodor Herzl renounced the “faith of his fathers” today.

1900: The executors of the estate of Abraham Wolf, a partner in the banking firm of Kun, Loeb & Co turned the estate over to the trustees Mrs. Addie Kahn and her son Gilbert W. Kahn

1902(23rdof Adar II, 5662): Sixty-five year old David Oppenheimer, the German born son of Lob and Bina Oppenheimer and the husband of Johanna Oppenheimer passed away today in New York City.

1902:“Leo Fresh, the well-known auctioneer, called at the police barracks tonight and stated that a fine hen, which he had been fattening for the Jewish Passover, had been stolen by a woman who lives at 83 Jenkins Street.”

1902: Birthdate of Russian native and Cincinnati, OH raised Philip “Cincy” Sachs, the basketball coach for Lawrence Institute of Technology, the Detroit Gems and the Detroit Falcons.


1903: Birthdate of Chess Champion Salo (Salomon) Landau, the Galician native who died in Auschwitz.

1903: Herzl meets McIlwraithe, the legal adviser of the Khedive. Herzl presents the Zionist proposal. McIlwraithe promises that the government will make a counter-proposal.

1904(16thof Nisan, 5664): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1904(16thof Nisan, 5664): Eighty year old Gustav Freund, the husband of Rosa Fruend passed away today in Vienna.

1905: Tonight over a thousand Jews watched as two Torah scrolls were carried to the First Zolyner Congregation Anshe Sefard from the home of Sigmund Yokel, the President of the Congregation. After a brief ceremony during which the scrolls were placed in the Holy Ark, “the marchers celebrated at a big banquet.”

1905: The New York Times reported that the third edition of “The Seder Service,” a Haggadah prepared by Mrs. Phillip Cowen and published by her husband is now in available.

1906: Birthdate of Nusyn Glass the Polish born actor who gained fame as Ned Glass known for his portrayal of Uncle Moe in “Bridgette Loves Bernie.”

1906: Professor Ivan Michaelovitch Zanchevsky , the Rector of the university in Odessa, who has been “charged with organizing the student militia which defended the Jews during the massacres last November” is scheduled to “be place on trial before the Senate.

1908: Birthdate of Abraham H Maslow, renowned psychologist and Brooklyn native who was the oldest of seven children of Russian Jewish immigrants. In a manner typical of this immigrant generation, Maslow's parents pushed him to succeed academically. Maslow studied law at CCNY and Cornell. He then married his cousin Bertha and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin where he began his study of psychology earning his doctorate in 1931. Maslow is most famous for developing his Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow was a professor at Brandeis from 1951 until 1969. He died in 1970. In examining Maslow's life and work, one commentator found a connection between Maslow's Jewish background and his scientific work. Just as Judaism tries to bring order of a chaotic world, so Maslow sought to develop a unifying structure that would enable people to bring order to their chaotic lives.

"Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be." Abraham Maslow.

1909: Birthdate of Abner Biberman. Born in Milwaukee, Biberman gained fame as an actor and movie director. His films included “Gunga Din,” “Bridge At Saint Luis Rey,” “Winchester 73” and “Viva Zapata.” His oriental appearance made him a natural for the role of the Japanese officer in several war movies made during WW II, the most famous of which was “Back to Bataan.” He passed away in June, 1977.

1912(14thof Nisan, 5672): Ta’anit Bechorot observed for the last time during the Presidency of William Howard Taft.

1912(14th of Nisan, 5672): For the first time, the Patriotic League of America sponsored a Seder tonight at Tuxedo Hall for Jewish soldiers and sailors stationed in the New York metropolitan area.

1912(14thof Nisan, 5672): Sixty-one year old Felix Pinner, the Berlin born son of “Sara and Isidor Lewin Pinner passed away today in his home town.

1912(14th of Nisan, 5672): In what appeared to be a classic SNAFU, 17 Jewish soldiers on Governor’s Island were assigned to guard duty tonight meaning that they could not attend the Seder at the Tuxedo. This was in direct violation of The Secretary of War’s had order that all soldiers in the New York area would receive a furlough to celebrate the holiday. When authorities found out about the mistake they corrected it so the soldiers could attend the Seder.

1913: Mrs. Moses L. Purvin was elected President and Mrs. Benjamin Auerbach was elected Vice Presidents at the annual business meeting of The Chicago Woman’s Aid which will “continue its policy of having paintings of Chicago artists on view in the Library of the Sinai Centers

1913: “The regular meeting Ladies Society of B’nai Sholom Temple Israel” took place this evening where the attendees he a program on “Our Holidays” that included a presentation on Passover by Mrs. Carrie H. Geil.

1913: “New York fruit merchant” Joseph Kozinsky and his wife gave birth to Frank Kozinksky who would change his name to Frank King and along with his brothers Maury and Herman King Productions, the film company that had the courage to hire blacklisted writers during the McCarthy Era.

1914: Birthdate of Philip Yordan, the native of Chicago and law school graduate who an Academy Award for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story for Broken Lance and who worked to thwart the effects of the infamous Hollywood Blacklist system.



1915: Sam Lazarus and Annie Stein Lazarus gave birth to Jacob Mendel Lazarus who would be buried, for a Jew, in the unlikely location of Valdosta when passed away more than nine decades later.

1915: Based on a resolution adopted today in Chicago, Orthodox Jews will be able to exercise their franchise in the upcoming elections scheduled for April 6, the last day of Passover. Since the Orthodox cannot write on the holiday, the resolution empowered judges and clerks of the election to mark the ballots for the observant Jews.

1915: In Berlin an anti-war protest was held led by Rosa Luxemburg, an act for which she was imprisoned.

1915: As “The Mule Corps swears allegiance to the British army” Jabotinsky refuses to serve “because its duties only involve transportation” and does not fulfill his demand for the establishment of a fighting legion.

1916: The Federation of Rumanian Jews dedicates the new Jewish Home for Convalescents, which formally opens today at Grandview, Rockland County as a permanent memorial to the work of Dr. Solomon Schechter. Schechter was the noted Hebrew scholar and head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, who died on November 20, 1915.

1917: Professor Richard Gottheil of Columbia University introduced Major General Leonard Wood to the members of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity tonight “on preparedness and the obligations of alien-born citizens to their adopted country with regard to service in the army in war or peace.”

1917: In Bavaria, Elsa Haas, the daughter of Joseph and Ida Schulein and her husband Dr. Alfred Haas gave birth to

1917: “A declaration signed by sixty-eight Jewish citizens issued in support of the letter which Oscar S. Straus recently wrote to the British and French Ambassadors at Washington in which Mr. Straus contended that a majority of the Jews of the United States sympathize with the cause of Allies was issued” today “under the caption,” ‘A Declaration by American Jews.’”

1917: Birthdate of Melville “Mel” Shavelson who gained fame a writer, director and producer of dozens of films featuring such stars as Lucille Ball, Jimmy Cagney and Frank Sinatra. He was nominated for two Oscars and created two Emmy Award-winning television series, "Make Room for Daddy" and "My World and Welcome to It."


1917: Baron Alexander Gunzberg sent a cable from Petrograd to Louis Marshall in New York in which he wrote that the new Government be publishing  “a decree canceling all laws and paragraphs adversely affecting Jews” and that the “Russian Jewry, liberated from the yoke, in grateful appreciation of never-failing helpfulness stretch out their hand to their free-born American bretheren.”

1917: As leaders work on the plans for the calling of “The American Jewish Congress” a special meeting of the Executive Committee was held today in New York where the a resolution was adopted setting the rules for calling a meeting the Congress on September 2, 1917.

1918(19thof Nisan, 5678): Fifth Day of Pesach

1918: In New York, one hundred thousand people are expected to participate in the celebration of the establishment of the Provisional Jewish government in Palestine which will include parades and a mass meeting in Carnegie Hall that will include a speech by Dr. Stephen S. Wise.

1918: Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist Commission, arrived in Palestine. The Commission had been established by the British to help carry out the promises of the Balfour Declaration. The Commission actually arrived before the war had ended and the Mandate had been established. The British had intended that the Commission be its official contact with the Jewish community (Yishuv) and help in setting policies concerning post-war settlement and development including immigration. Unfortunately this positive start did not pre-sage a continuation of British support during the inter-war period.

1918: Following the capture of Jerusalem in December of 1917, the 7thIndian Division relieved the 52nd Division which had been transferred to the Western Front.

1918: Three days after he had passed away, 18 year old Sidney Benjamin Flaum, a “rifleman with the 17th Battalion” and the son of Maurice and Phoebe Flaum was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1918: One day after she had passed away, the former Esther Van Praag, the wife of David Abrahams and the mother of Sarah Abrahams was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1918(19th of Nisan, 5678): Isaac Rosenberg, a leading Anglo-Jewish poet, is killed on April Fool’s Day while fighting on the Western Front.

1919: In Grodno, Yitahak and Dvora Livni gave birth to ham "Eitan" Livni who made Aliyah in 1925, served with the Irgun and became a Likud MK.

1919: Birthdate of Jabr Muadi, the Israeli Druze politician who served in the Knesset for three decades from 1951 to 1981

1920: The emergence of the Nazi Party. (This happened on the anniversary of the day that Haman published his decree of extermination of the Jews.)

1920: Jewish merchant Henry Dix wrote to Mrs. Israel Unterberf, the President of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association about a gift he proposed giving to the association of a property he owned at Mt. Kisco as well as the establishment of trust fund for maintain the property.

1921: In the United Kingdom, Alfred Moritz Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, completed his service as First Commissioner of Works and began serving as Minister of Health in a cabinet headed by David Lloyd George.

1921: Beth El Hebrew School, “the second of a series of Hebrew schools to be established in the Bronx under the auspices of the New York committee of School Extension of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations” which has a capacity for five hundred students and is led by principal Louis E. Goldstein opened today.

1921:  Marius Ranson who has been serving as assistant to Dr. Schulman at Temple Beth-El is scheduled to become the Rabbi at Temple Beth Emes in Albany, NY today  filling a pulpit at the congregation that has been vacant since the death of Rabbi Eli Mayer.

1921: The United Relief Organization of Brownsville and East New York’s campaign to raise fifty thousand dollars “for war relief work” is scheduled to come to an end today.

1921: In “Upholds Palestine Plan; Churchill Tells Arabs that Balfour Declaration Must Stand,” published today described“further details of Winston Churchill’s visit to Jerusalem.” Churchill met with a delegation of Arab Congress which had been held much earlier in Haifa and which “asked for the withdrawal of the Balfour declaration. Churchill declared…that the government was determined to keep to the Balfour declaration in both of its parts, namely, the establishment of the Jewish national home and the protection of the non-Jewish population.” Later, when he met with a Jewish delegation, Churchill concluded his remarks “by saying that the British taxpayers could not bear the expense of the establishment of the Jewish national home and that Jews must therefore make greater efforts to obtain the necessary funds.”

1921: Lightweight Leach Cross (Louis Charles Wallach) fought his 140thbout in Los Angeles.

1922: Sir Edgar Speyer “and his remaining partner in the London bank dissolved Speyer Brothers.

1923(15th of Nisan, 5683): Pesach I

1924: Otto Preminger’s theatrical career began today when he “appeared as a furniture mover in Reinhardt's comedia staging of Carlo Goldoni's ‘The Servant of Two Masters.’1925: Amid much pomp and circumstance, Hebrew University was opened in Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. Chaim Weizman beamed with pride as he saw his 25 year old dream come to life. Lord Arthur Balfour, of Balfour Declaration Fame, represented the British government. Much of the funding came from the American philanthropist Felix Warburg. The first chancellor of what this first class educational institution was Dr. Judah Magnes, a native of San Francisco. The cornerstones had originally been laid in 1918 when fighting was still going on between the British and Turkish forces in Palestine. Talk about Jewish optimism and dedication to learning.

1925: Chanina Karchevsky, “The Tel Aviv Nightingale,” conducted the Gymnasisa Herzliya Choir in what has been termed an “unforgettable performance” on Mt. Scopus at the ceremony marking the dedication of Hebrew University.

1925: Birthdate of Bialystok born and University of San Francisco grad Sala Galanta who gained fame as Sala Burton, the wife of Congressman Phillip Burton whom she followed in office when he passed away.



1926(17th of Nisan, 5686):Acting giant Jacob Pavlovich Adler passed away in New York City.  Born in Russia in 1855, he was a dominate figure in the Yiddish Theatre in Odessa, London and New York City. A name unknown to most, he is remembered as the father of the actor Luther Adler and Stella Adler who coached Marlon Brando.

1926: Hebrew Book Day is mounted in Tel Aviv.

1927: The HaShomer HaZair kibbutzim and training groups establish a national organization in Haifa called "HaKibbutz Artzi" - "National Kibbutz". The Kibbutz Artzi is a federation comprising 85 kibbutzim founded by the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. In 1998 it numbered around 20,000 members and its entire population (including children, candidates, parents of members etc.) totaled approximately 35,000.

1928: Birthdate of Herbert G. Klein newscaster and President Richard Nixon’s press secretary.

1928: Konrad von Preysing, a Catholic prelate who would play a key role as an anti-Nazi activist during World War II was made a canon today.

1929: In Chicago, Morton David Chan and Julia Elizabeth Cahn gave birth to Mary Elizabeth Cahn who became Mary Elizabeth Wolf when she married Stephen Louis Wolf.

1930: “Blue Angel” a movie that was filmed simultaneously in English and German versions” directed by Josef von Sternberg, with a script co-authored by Robert Liebman

1930: In Melbourne, Australia, a group of Jews interested in forming a “Liberal Community” met for the first time.

1931: Birthdate of Rolf Hochhuth. This non-Jewish German playwright wrote The Deputy which portrayed the role of the Pope during the Holocaust.

1932: “The Miracle Man” with a script co-authored by Samuel Hoffenstein was released in the United States today.

1932: Adolph Eichman joined the Nazi Party

1932: The New York Times described the closing day activities at the Maccabiad. “An emotional crowd of 25,000 watched the conclusion of the first Jewish Olympics…The Palestine High Commissioner participated in the ceremonies as did other officials and representatives of foreign governments. There were tears in the eyes of many as the exhibits reached their close. Among the Maccabee displays were those of scouting, gymnastics, motorcycling, bicycle riding and horseback riding led by Abraham Shapiro, the hero of Petch Tikva…A procession of 5,000 Maccabeans led the way to the graves of Achad Ha’Am , Maz Nodeau and the victims of Arab riots, where wreaths were placed. …The procession marched through the main streets of Tel-Aviv” before dispersing at the “Herzlia Gymnasium where the march of the Maccabeans had begun.”

1933: In Brooklyn, Philip Weinstein, a garment industry work, and “the former Shirley Bisnoff, a homemaker and jazz pianist” gave birth to Stanley Alan Weinstein who gained fame as Sam Weston, “the father of G.I. Joe” action figure.


1933: German violinist (and non-Jew) Adolf Busch repudiated Germany altogether and in 1938 he boycotted Italy. 

1933: Nazi Germany began its persecution of Jews by boycotting Jewish businesses. Less than a month after coming to power, the War Against the Jews began in earnest. This puts the lie to those who portray Hitler's policies against the Jews as only being an incidental part of his plans and programs.



1933: At Lauphehim, members of the SA enforced the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses “positioned themselves in front of Jewish shops in order to intimidate potential customers and prevent them from entering” while the windows were broken in at least one shop.

1933: As part of the Nazi boycott against Jewish businesses, uniformed men “placed themselves in front of Jewish shops in Cologne” to prevent customers from entering.

1933: In response to the Nazi boycott, in Cologne Jewish merchant Richard Stern, who had fought in the First World War, distributed a leaflet against the boycott and placed himself wearing his Iron Cross near the SA-poster in front of his shop.

1933: In Berlin “SA paramilitaries” carrying signs that read “Germans! Defends yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!” “blocked the entrance to a Jewish owned shop.”


1933: In Constantine, Algeria, Abraham Cohen-Tannoudji and Sarah Sebbah gave birth to French physicist, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize.

1934(16thof Nisan, 5694): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.

1934: Chevrolet ended its sponsorship of the Jack Benny Program. Benny continued the show with General Tire as the sponsor.

1934: In Mishnietz, Poland Nechama Laska and Hiam Yehuda Giladi gave birth to Israel Giladi

1935: The New York Times reported that “the American team is favored to retain the track and field title in the Jewish world games which open tomorrow…The strongest challenge for the Americans is expected to come from the German, French, Czech and Austrian teams.

1935: “Storm Over the Andes” an adventure film co-authored by Dore Schary was released in the United States today.

1935: Democratic leader General Hugh S. Johnson denounced “Father Charles Coughlin, comparing the Catholic priest to Adolf Hitler” because of the anti-Semitic pronouncements on his radio show

1935: Anti-Jewish legislation in the Saar region was passed.

1935:Israelitisches Familienblatt (Israelite Family Paper) began appearing in Berlin and became the organ of the Reichsvertretung

1936: French conservatives condemned French Socialist leader Léon Blum because of his Jewish ancestry and his strongly anti-Nazi orientation. A popular slogan at the time condemned the future French premier: "Better Hitler than Blum."

1936: “An injunction suit against Cantor David Katzman was filed in the Supreme Court” today “ by the First American Rumanian Congregation” that seeks to restrain the can from breaking a contract to officiate during the Passover holidays in the plaintiff’s synagogue…and going the Laurel-in-the-Pines Hotel at Lakewood, NJ.”

1936: One hundred ninety Jewish exiles from German who had boarded the Cunard White Star line Berengaria at Cherbourg and Southampton arrived in New York today.

1937: Birthdate of Sylvia Rafael, the Pretoria native who made Aliyah in 1963 and became an agent for Mossad.


1937: The Palestine Post reported on the festive opening of a new road connecting Hadar Hacarmel and Mount Carmel in Haifa. The new road was 3,100 meters long and 10 to 15 meters wide - the asphalt width was six meters. It was expected that this new road would help to develop Mount Carmel.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that according to the Palestine Review Jews contributed financially at least four times as much to the Arab economy as Arabs returned to the Jews.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a provision was made in the Pension Ordinance for officials in the Civil Service to retire, under special circumstances, on attaining the age of 50.

1938: Fritz Löhner-Beda, the Bohemian born librettist, lyricist and writer was arrested and deported to Dachau Concentration Camp.

1938: “Number 111” a thriller directed by Steve Sekely was released in Hungary today.

1939: The Spanish Civil War came to an end marking another victory for fascism. Oddly enough, despite the support Franco got from Hitler and Mussolini he remained neutral during WW II, which proved quite advantageous to the Allies. As far as Franco’s treatment of the Jews, the record appears too mixed but consider the following as one piece of the puzzle.


1939: At the age of 13, Raul Hilberg who would gain fame as Dr. Raul Hilber a world renowned Holocaust scholar fled Austria with his family a year after the Anschluss, for France, where they embarked on a ship to Cuba. From Cuba the family would make their way to the United States, where Hilberg, after serving with the U.S. Army in Europe would come home and build his academic career.

1939: U.S. premiere of “Dodge City,” a western directed by Michael Curtiz, produced by Hal Wallis with music by Max Steiner.

1940: The Institut für deutsche Ostarbeit (Institute for German Work in the East) was founded to study Polish Jewry.

1940: Shanghai, China, accepted thousands of Jewish refugees.

1941: A ghetto was established at Kielce, Poland. German overseers of the ghetto renamed some of the streets. New names were Zion Street, Palestine Street, Jerusalem Street, Moses Street, Non-Kosher Street, and Grynszpan Street.

1941: In Iraq, Rashid Al led a successful anti-British, pro-Nazi coup that would lead to the pogrom known as the Farhud in June that was the beginning of the end for the ancient Jewish community in that Arab country.

1941(4th of Nisan, 5701): German troops executed 250 members of a Jewish youth group in Subotica, Yugoslavia, who have been carrying out acts of sabotage.

1941: A men's annex was established at the Ravensbrück concentration camp located in Germany,

1941: Seven Warsaw Jews smuggled themselves into Bratislava, Slovakia, and from there to safety in Palestine.

1941: A pro-Axis officer clique headed by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani seized power in Iraq, and prepared airfields for German use.

1941: The Farhud, a pogrom aim at the Jews of Baghdad “inspired by both the Nazis and the Grand Mufti of Jersualem, Haj-Amin Al Husseini, began today.

1941: The first Croatian concentration camp began operation, at Danica. Four more Croat camps were opened, at Loborgrad, Jadovno, Gradiska, and Djakovo.

1941: Lillian Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine", premiered in New York City. A native of New Orleans, Hellman's father was "of German Jewish ancestry." Hellman was a staunch supporter of the Communists. Many right-wingers mistakenly took her ancestry and her political beliefs, tied them together and used Hellman as an example of the Jewish/Communist Conspiracy to overthrow America.

1941 Bess and Rubin “Honest Joe” Goldestein gave birth to Eddie Goldstein whom Dallas knew as swap shop owner “little Honest Joe King Edward.”

1941: Birthdate of Bonnie Sherr Klein, the Philadelphia native and Stanford graduate who went to Canada with her husband Michael Klein as part of an anti-war protest where she developed into a filmmaker and social activists.

1942: Sobibór death camp was nearly operational; gassings would begin in May.

1942: At the beginning of the first week in April, more than 4400 Jews died of starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto

1942: At the beginning of April, the first transports of Jews arrive at the camp at Majdanek, Poland, which will begin gassing Jews later in the year.

1942: During the first week of April, Sunday Times of London published, but did not highlight news items about the Nazi executions of 120,000 Romanian Jews.

.1942: During the first week of April, Jews were mocked and hanged at Mlawa, Poland.

1942: The Nazis deported 965 Slovakian Jews to Auschwitz.

1942: In occupied Poland the Nazis created the Łachwa Ghetto when the town's Jews were forcibly moved into a new ghetto consisting of two streets and 45 houses, and surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The ghetto housed roughly 2,350 people, which amounted to approximately 1 square meter for every resident

1943: By the beginning of April, Nazi killing squads had murdered almost two million Jews in Eastern Europe.

1943: Starting in the first week of April, the Germans forced Jewish prisoners to burn the bodies of 600,000 Jews exterminated at Belzec.

1943: During the first week of April, the Germans launched an offensive against Jewish partisans active in the Parczew Forest, Poland.

1943: During the first week of April, Resistance members derailed a death train in Belgium.

1943: Pope Pius XII complained that Jews are demanding and ungrateful.

1943: Dr. Julian Chorazycki, a former captain in the Polish Army and a leader of inmate resistance at the Treblinka death camp, took poison when the camp's deputy commandant discovered the stash of currency Chorazycki had planned to use to buy small arms.

1944: Having lost 95 bombers, in last night’s attack on Nuremberg, which was the worst single night of loss since the bombing campaign, leaders of the RAF consider how to continue their attacks.  (This should serve as a reminder that it is only in hindsight, that victory over the Nazis seemed inevitable.)

1945: On Easter, Jan M. Komski, who was not Jewish, was among the 20,000 prisoners marched from Hersbruck to Dachau

1945(18thof Nisan, 5705): Fourth Day of Pesach

1945(18thof Nisan, 5705): Twenty-seven year old Karel Švenk, the Czech entertainer who :was one of the first artists to be deported to Terezin in 1941 died today en route to Mauthausan.


1945(18thof Nisan, 5706: Ninety-six year German immigrant Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, the founder of I.W. Harper, the premium bourbon whiskey passed away today.


1945: Father Giuseppe Girotti, a Catholic theology professor at the Saint Maria della Rose Dominican Seminary of Turin, who acted to save many Jews by arranging safe hideouts and escape routes from the country died at Dachau. He had been arrested and sent to the camp after having been betrayed by an informer and caught in the midst of helping a wounded Jewish person. It is reported that while in Dachau, he continued to write his unfinished commentary on the biblical book of Jeremiah.

1946: It was reported today that Ian Morris Heilbron was to be “the first non-American to honored with the Priestly Medal.


1946: Sholom J. Kahn reviewed Star of the Unborn by Franz Werfel.


1947: The first Jewish immigrants disembark at the port of Eilat. Eilat is a port the southern end of Israel on the Gulf of Aqaba. Ben-Gurion was determined to make this part of the new state of Israel. The tale of the race for Eliat in 1948 is a tale of daring-do that would worthy of Rambo or James Bond. Ben Gurion realized how important this southern port would be to the development of trade, among other things. The reality has exceeded his vision.

1948: As the military situation for the Yishuv reaches a crisis status, Ben Gurion holds an urgent meeting with his senior Jewish Agency colleagues and forces them to adopt “a single blow offensive.”

1948: Arabs attacked Beit Alpha, a kibbutz near the Gilboa Ridge, with mortars.

1948: The first major report of Ralph Asher Alpher’s work describing the Big Bang Theory appeared in the periodical Nature.

1948: During Operation Nachshon, three large convoys broke through the blockade of Jerusalem bringing food and arms to the beleaguered Jewish population.

1949: Mordechai Maklef wаѕ appointed Head οf one of tһе General Command Departments in the IDF.

1950(14th of Nisan, 5710): Shabbat Hagadol

1950: At sundown, Israelis sit down to celebrate the second Pesach since the creation of the state of Israel. A Seder is being held on Mt. Scopus for the 118 Israelis taking care of the Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University campus that have been cut off from the rest of Jewish Jerusalem. The climaxing word of the Seder “Next Year in Jerusalem” take on special meaning for the 80,000 newly arrived immigrants who will be eating their Matzah and Maror in transit camps.

1951: Following the issuance of an order by David Ben Gurion, the “Central Institute for Coordination” or Mossad became operation under directorship of Reuven Shiloah.


1952: The Jerusalem Post   reported that an acceptable formula had been reached at the London External Debts Conference on the eventual Israel-German reparations agreements. At The Hague, however, the German reparations delegation announced that it had no authority to assume any commitments towards Israel or World Jewry's representation. A woman who refused to accept a $10,000 inheritance from her sister, who died abroad, was charged with infringing Israel's financial regulations.

1952: “Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick” produced by William Perlberg and co-starring Dinah Shore was released in the United States today.

1952:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the deepest well in Israel, 565 m., was dug at Karkur and had produced 360 cu.m. of excellent water per hour.

1952(6th of Nisan, 5712): Hungarian born dramatist and novelist Ferenc Molnár passed away today in New York.


1953(16th of Nisan, 5713): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1953: One day after premiering in New York City, “Fear and Desire” “directed, produced and edited by Stanley Kubrick” with a script by Howard Sackler was released in the rest of the United States today.

1953: In New York City Irene “Kelly” Kellerman, “an art teacher” and “Sonny Sonnenfeld, a lighting salesman, educator, and architectural lighting designer” gave birth to Barry Sonnenfeld director of the comedies “Men In Black” and “When Harry Met Sally.”

1955(9thof Nisan, 5715): Sixty-six year old David Kass, the New York born son of Ida and Abraham Kass who was the founder and “President of the Overland Trading Company, Director of the Trade Bank of New York, President of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun and husband of Sadie Kass with whom he had two daughters – “Helen Joy and Babette” passed away today.


1957: Birthdate of Representative Peter Deutsch, from Florida’s 20th Congressional District.

1957: First Jewish immigrants to arrive by ship disembarked at Eilat.

1958: U.S. premiere of “Teacher’s Pet” a romantic comedy produced by William Perlberg with a script by Fay and Michael Kanin.

1959: An IDF drill for calling up the reserves turned into a fiasco that became known as The Night of the Ducks.


1961(16thof Nisan, 5721) Second Day of Pesach

1961(16thof Nisan, 5721): In Cincinnati, Ohio, seventy-six year old Julian A. Pollak, the president of the Pollak Steel Company from 1944 to 1957 and Chairman of the Board from 1957 until today who had been a member of the Cornell University football team from 1905 to 1957 and major philanthropist in his hometown passed away today.

1962: Two days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held today at Temple Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan for seventy-two year old Boston native and New York University educated teacher Harold Fields the WW I Army veteran whose activities in the field of immigration including helping “to frame the National Origins Act of 1924,” participating in two conferences of Governor Roosevelt on immigration and working as a “consultant” on the topic for the famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow.


1965: The London Borough of Tower Hamlets which is the home of Field Street Great Synagogue founded in 1899, was created today.

1965(28th of Adar II, 5725): Helena Rubinstein US cosmetic manufacturer passed away. Her age was not accurately determined, but she was reported to be 89 at the time of her death.


1968(3rd of Nisan, 5728): Russian physicist Lev D Landau passed away at the age of 59. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1962 for his pioneering theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium He is also admired for a prolific series of textbooks on theoretical physics, co-authored with E. M. Lifshitz.

1969: Holocaust survivor Fred Kort opened Imperial Toy Corp. on Seventh Street in downtown Los Angeles. His inaugural product: the hi-bounce ball. Kort's sons from his first marriage, Jordan, Steve and David, all joined their father's business.

1973: In Castro Valley, CA, Elaine Maddow (née Gosse) and Robert B. “Bob” Maddow gave birth to MSNBC anchor and news personality Rachel Maddow whose paternal grandfather was from an Eastern European Jewish family named Medwedof but who is herself not Jewish.

1973: In Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Talmud shiur at Yeshiva University we completed learning the first chapter of Talmud Bavli Tractate Hullin. The Rav gave a dvar Torah at the Siyyum. He explained the meaning of the recitation of the hadran alakh, the prayer that promised upon the completion of learning a Talmud chapter or Tractate that we would return to study you – speaking to the text – again

1974: The Interim Report of the Agranat Commission published today “called for the dismissal of a number of senior officers in the IDF and caused such controversy that Prime Minister Golda Meir was forced to resign.”

1976(1stof Nisan, 5766): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1976(1stof Nisan, 5766): Eighty-two year old NYU trained lawyer Charles Marks, the supporter of the YMHWHA and the controversial State Supreme Court Justice who presided over the Malcom X murder trial and who was the husband of “the former Beatrice Engelhart Rubin” and the father of three children – Howard, Lester and Lucille – from his first marriage to the former Paula Unger passed away today


1976(1st of Nisan, 5736): Eighty-four year old Max Ernst “the self-taught German-painter who formed a Dada group in Cologne, Germany, with other avant-garde artists and pioneered a method called frottage, in which a sheet of paper is placed on the surface of an object and then penciled over until the texture of the surface is transferred” passed away today.



1976: “Looking at the Law” featuring attorney Neil Lewis Chayet debuted today on WBZ.

1977:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the visit to Israel of the French foreign minister, Louis de Guiringaud, ended with "normalization," if not an improvement of strained relations.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that while visiting Washington King Hussein of Jordan declared that he was ready for a "full peace" with Israel, but would never give up East Jerusalem.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the ambitious Netivei Ayalon highway system in Tel Aviv had been revised owing to enormous expenses.

1977:Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure” an animated feature film with the voices of Didi Conn as “Raggedy Ann,” Arnold Stang as “Queasy and Sheldon Harnick as “Barney Beanbag” was released today in the United States.

1977: U.S. premiere of “Hot Tomorrows” directed and produced by Martin Brest and starring Ken Lerner

1978: Rafael Eitan was promoted to the rank of General and was appointed by Ezer Weizman to be the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

1978: CBS broadcast the final episode of “The Bob Newhart Show,” a sitcom co-starring Suzanne Pleshette, the daughter of Jewish immigrants.

1980(15thof Nisan, 5740): Jews observe Pesach as Ronald Reagan sought to unseat Jimmy Carter.

1981: In London, the annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee continued to meet for a second day.

1981: An Israeli communique said today that one Israeli soldier had been wounded in the fighting in southern Lebanon.

1982: “Efim Goldberg, of Riga, was warned to stop teaching Hebrew.”

1982(8thof Nisan, 5742): Eighty-two year old Jack I. Poses the “president and founder of Parfums D'Orsay Company, a founder of Brandeis University and a sponsor of the Poses School of Fine Arts at Brandeis” passed away today.

1982: It was reported today that “289 Jews had left the Soviet Union in March.”

1982: In trucks and vans loaded with furniture and farm equipment, most Jewish settlers completed their departure from northern Sinai yesterday, leaving behind a hard core of several hundred militants who vowed to defy the deadline imposed by the army for leaving the area.

1984: The long-term efforts of Arnold Resincoff, a Conservative Rabbi and former military chaplain, to convince the United States Department of Defense to participate in the national annual program for the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust took a significant step forward today when “Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger signed a memorandum to the military services, urging the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military commanders to participate in the annual program for the first time”

1987: Opening of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair whose offereings have included The ''Twenty Four Books of the Holy Scriptures,'' the first edition in English of what was for generations the standard Jewish-American Bible, translated and annotated by Rabbi Isaac Leeser and published in Philadelphia in 1853 ($1,750) and the first complete, corrected, printed film script of ''The Wizard of Oz,'' dated May 4, 1938, in its original blue wrappers from the files of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ($7,500).

1988: “Beetlejuice” with music by Denny Elfaman and co-starring Winona Ryder, which opened theatrically in the United States today earned $8,030,897 in its opening weekend.

1991: Ehud Barak began serving as Chief of the General Staff of the IDF during a time when the first Oslo Accords were being implemented and the negotiations were going forward that would lead to a peace treaty with Jordan.

1992: Daniel Goldin begins serving as the Administrator of NASA making him the first Jew to serve as head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

1993: Five months after premiering in the United States, “Toys” a “fantasy comedy directed by Barry Levinson” who co-produced and co-wrote the script, filmed by cinematographer Adam Greenberg and with music by Hans Zimmer was released today in Australia.

1994: “Clifford,” a comedy co-starring Charles Grodin and co-produced by Larry Brezner was released today in the United States.

1996: In an article published today entitled “Challenging a View of the Holocaust,” Danita Smith discusses the new information provided by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust."

1997: “--Lancit Media Entertainment, Ltd. (Nasdaq: LNCT), a leading creator and producer of high quality children's and family programming, today announced that Susan L. Solomon has been named Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, effective immediately.”


1998: “Israel today formally accepted a 20-year-old United Nations Security Council resolution calling on it to withdraw from Lebanese territory. But the Israelis said any pullback would be made only on the condition that Lebanon assume control over the region and prevent its use for attacks on Israel.”

1999(15thof Nisan, 5759): Final Pesach of the 20th century.

1999: Publication of “A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey” by Merle Feld.

1999: In Denmark, premiere of “The One and Only,” a Danish romantic comedy directed by Susanne Bier.

2000: Marvin Miller is inducted into The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.

2001: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Stet: A Memoir” by Diana Athill.

2001: Six days after she was killed by Palestinian gunfire, 10 month old Shalhevet Pass was buried today.

2001(8thof Nisan, 5761): Forty-two year old Dina Guetta was stabbed to death by a terrorist today on Ha’atzmaut Street.

2002: In response to the increasing violence or Arab terrorists that climaxed with the suicide bomber murdering 30 people at a Seder in the Park Hotel, the IDF made preparation for Operation Defensive Shield.

2002 (19th of Nisan, 5762) Fifth day of Pesach

2002(19thof Nisan, 5762) Tomer Mordechai, 19, of Tel-Aviv, a policeman, was killed in Jerusalem, when a Palestinian suicide bomber driving toward the city center blew himself after being stopped at a roadblock. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

2002: “Using doctored pictures purportedly from the Hubble telescope, NASA ‘proved’ that the Moon was made of green cheese an expression that came from a fable that Reb Meir,Rashi, the Iraqi Rabbi Hai Gaoan and the Petrose Alponsi an apostate Spanish Jew helped to popularize.

2003: “A rumor that” Chilean television personality Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld known to his public as “Don Francisco had died surfaced around the New York and New Jersey area. The rumor proved false, but sent many of his fans into a panic until it was revealed as an April Fool's joke.”

2003(28th of Adar II, 5763): Late in the evening, sixty-two year old  Robert M. Levine, Gabelli Senior Scholar in the Arts and Sciences, Director of Latin American Studies, and professor of history at the University of Miami, died after a determined and ever-optimistic fight against cancer.

2003(28thof Adar II, 5673): Eighty-eight year old Edward L. “Ed” Kweller who played college basketball for Duquesne before playing two years as professional in the pre-war National Basketball League passed away today.

2004(10thof Nisan, 5764): One-hundred-one year old Colonel Aaron Bank, a veteran of the OSS and founder of the “Green Berets” passed a way today(As reported by Richard Goldstein)


2004: A revival of “Sly Fox” a comedy by Larry Gelbart featuring Richard Dreyfus opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre today.

2005(21stof Adar, 5765): Sixty-eight year old composer and song writer Jack Keller, the Brooklyn born son of Mal and Reva Keller who worked with fellow Jewish artists Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield and whose musical skills ranged from writing the theme music for television hits like “Bewitched” to writing country and western music for Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn passed away today in Nashville, TN.

2005: Lewis Wolff was among those purchasing the Oakland Athletics baseball team today

2005:A sign was dedicated today in Deadwood, South Dakota by the Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission in conjunction with the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation which records information about the purchase of Hebrew Hill and some of those buried there.

2006(3rdof Nisan, 5766): In an interesting calendar coincidence, April Fool’s Day coincides with the reading of the first portion from the Book Vayikra (There’s a sermon topic in there some place)

2007: The Sunday Washington Post reviewed two books designed to “untangle Biblical tales” that have just appeared in paperback: “David and Solomon In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings And the Roots of the Western Tradition” by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman and “Jesus and “Yahweh: The Names Divine” by Harold Bloom.

2007:The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of “Jesus and Yahweh: The Divine Name” by Harold Bloom.

2007: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of the US Representatives addresses the Knesset in what is her first address to a foreign government legislature. She is the highest ranking American woman to speak before the Knesset.

2007: Based on stories in the secular press, the world of Kashrut is alive and well. The Washington Post featured an article entitled “A Doughnut Shop's Change Leaves a Hole” that tells about the consequences of four Dunkin Donut stores in the Washington area to give up their kosher certification. The Chicago Tribune featured an article entitled “China Firms Clamor To Go Kosher: Businesses covet certification that lets them tap $150 billion market.”

2007: “Gefilte Fish Chronicles” airs at 7 p.m. on New York’s Channel 13. The DVD has its own website 2007(13th of Nisan, 5767): Eighty-two year old Abraham Louis Limmer who gained fame as Lou “Boomie” Limmer the major league first baseman who overcame the effects of having broken his neck and suffered temporary blindness “while sliding into third base in the Western League” to play for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1951 and 1954 passed away today.

2007(13thof Nisan, 5767): Ninety-four year old Rabbi Josef Hirsch Dunner passed away today.


2007: German Chancellor Angela Merkel received an honorary doctor of philosophy degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "in recognition of her lifelong dedication to the principles of democracy and in appreciation of her warm and constant friendship for the people and State of Israel."

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “The Year of Living Biblically,” featuring author A.J. Jacobs who discusses his most recent book, The Year of Living Biblically, in which he recounts his fascinating, enlightening and delightfully strange year trying to follow all 613 commandments in the Bible.

2008: In Washington, D.C., Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor in the Clinton White House, discusses and signs “The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party” at a Barnes and Noble book store.

2008: Idina Menzel “kicked off her 2008-2009 "I Stand Tour" in support of her new album performing 4 sold out legs.”

2008: Shlomo “Benizri was convicted of accepting bribes, breach of faith, obstructing justice, and conspiracy to commit a crime for accepting favors worth millions of shekels from his friend, contractor Moshe Sela, in exchange for inside information regarding foreign workers scheduled to arrive in Israel.”

2008(25th of Adar II, 5768): Radio broadcaster and actress and Shosh Atari passed away at the age of 58 after suffering a serious illness. Atari was born in Rehovot, and grew up in the central town. She spent her military service in Army Radio, and after her discharge from the Israel Defense Forces worked at Channel 1 television. In the 1970s Atari joined Israel Radio as a presenter. In the 1980s, she became one of the stars of Reshet Gimmel radio, where she hosted popular music chart shows, and other programs with Tony Fine as her editor. Atari was also famous as the moderator on the "Pitzuhim" game show on the Israel's educational TV channel. At the end of the 1990s the broadcaster joined Lev Hamedina Radio. A few years ago Atari underwent a kidney transplant operation after suffering from a kidney illness. Following the operation she moved again to Reshet Gimmel, but then returned to broadcast a daily program on Lev Hamedina radio. The broadcaster also performed on the stage at the Be'er Sheva theatre. In 2004, Atari's book "Secrets and Lies" was published. In 2007 she returned to television, starring in the "It's all honey" drama series on Channel 2.

2008(25th of Adar II, 5768): Actor Mosko Alkalai, 77, died of respiratory failure. Alkalai was hospitalized and underwent surgery in Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center several weeks ago, but was unable to recover. Winner of the Israeli Film Academy's 2003 Lifetime Achievement Awards, Alkalai graced the stage and silver screen in a career spanning 21 years, appearing in dozens of theater plays and motion pictures. He also took part in various public activities and was the chairman of the Israeli Union of Performing Arts a member of the Israeli Arts Council and a member of the Israeli Film Academy.

2009:Avigdor Lieberman replaced Tzipi Livni as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

2009: Yitzhak Aharonovich replaced Avi Dichter as Minister of Internal Affiars.

2009: The Center for Jewish History, PEN, Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York and Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival co-sponsor a PEN World Voices entitled “Evolution/Revolution: Meir Shalev in Conversation with Daniel Menaker” featuring Israeli writer Meir Shalev the author of more than 16 highly praised works, spanning fiction, non-fiction and children's books and Daniel Menaker, the former Random House Editor-in-Chief.

2009: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah hosts a congregational meeting as it begins a search for its next Rabbi.

2009: The Centennial Conference for Urban Sustainability opens at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center.

2009: A new exhibition by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw that has brought together photos and documents depicting the rich history of 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland goes on display today at the European Parliament in Brussels and will run nearly a week

2009(7thof Nisan, 5769):Marcos Moshinsky “a Mexican physicist of Ukrainian and Jewish origin whose work in the field of elementary particles won him the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Investigation in 1988 and the UNESCO Science Prize in 1997” passed away today.

2009: “Picturing the Shoah,” a film festival sponsored by YIVO that explores how movies have represented the Holocaust from radical, provocative, and unexpected angles opens with a showing of “Schindler’s List.”

2010: An exhibition entitled “From Dream to Reality: Zionism and the Birth of Israel” presented by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to come to an end today.

2010: An exhibition entitled “Folk Art Judaica by Herman Braginsky” presented by Yeshiva University Museum featuring carved ritual objects made of fine and aged woods, including tzedakah boxes, Torah pointers, mezuzot, dreidels, Torah arks, spice containers, and other works created by self-taught craftsman Herman Braginsky who was born in 1912 and passed away in 1999 is scheduled to come to an end today

2010:A ceremony officially classifying the Machpelah Cave in Hevron as a National Heritage Site is scheduled to be held today, as tens of thousands visit the city for a Hol Hamo'ed celebration

2010: The New York Times features a review of “Jenniemae & James: A Memoir in Black & White” in which Brooke Newman writes about her father, the famous mathematician James Newman,”the son of Jewish immigrants “who “had an I.Q. of 175.”

2010:During a visit to Damascus, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reiterated US misgivings about the flow of weapons through Syria to Hizbullah and told reporters the US view is that this is "something that must stop" for there to be peace.

2011: Eatliz, one of Israel’s leading alternative rock bands, is scheduled to perform at the City Winery in New York City.

2011: The Arizona Diamondback hired former basketball front office maven Jerry Krause as a scout today.

2011: “Nora’s Will” and “Anita” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011:A loud explosion was heard outside the house of opposition leader Tzipi Livni today. The blast was apparently a result of a firecracker thrown at the security stand outside Livni's Tel Aviv home. Livni was not at her house when the explosion occurred.

2011:Residents from all over Israel reported that they felt an earthquake this afternoon.Israel's Geophysical Institute said the earthquake, which occurred over 800km from Israel, was mostly felt in the north of Israel, including the towns of Safed and Nahariya. At the same time as residents in Israel reported buildings shaking, a deep 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck in the sea 76 miles (120 km) east-northeast of Iraklio, a town on the Greek island of Crete, on Friday, the US Geological Survey said.

2011:Britain's first Jewish ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould and his wife Celia had their first sabra baby girl today. Baby Rachel Elizabeth was born early this morning at the Lis Maternity Hospital in the Tel Aviv Medical Center.We are both incredibly happy and proud new parents," Gould said. "We are very grateful for the fabulous care we've received and all the mazel tovs we've been sent."

2011:“Lillian Bassman: Lingerie,” is scheduled to be published by Abrams today.

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘Enemies: A History of the FBI’  by Tim Weiner and ‘Mudwoman’ by Joyce Carol Oates.

2012: Aluf Ram Rothberg, commander of the Israeli Navy reportedly “ordered senior commanders to prepare for a complex, 10-day exercise in Italy with the US and Italian navies” as part of an April Fool’s Day prank that got out of hand.

2012: Anthony Russell, “an exciting new talent in the world of Yiddish music” is scheduled to perform at Temple Beth Emeth in Brooklyn.

2012: “Footnote” and “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2012(9th of Nisan, 5772): Eighty-year old “Edmund L. Epstein the literary scholar who saved Lord of the Flies” passed away today. (As reported by Bruch Weber)


2012: “Spinozium” is scheduled to take place today at Theatre J in Washington, DC.


2013(21stof Nisan, 5773): Seventh Day of Pesach; Reform Jews recite Yizkor

2013(21stof Nisan, 5773): Seventy-year old William H. Ginsburg, the California civil lawyer who was thrust into the national spotlight when he represented Monica Lewinsky, passed away today.


2013: Those visiting the symphony bar are scheduled to have a chance to “experience Leopold Bloom's passage through Dublin in a dramatic episode from James Joyce’s masterwork Ulysses.”

2013: In New York, Larry Schwartz and Beth Sandweiss are scheduled to offer a course in Jewish mindfulness which is designed to integrate the knowledge and practice of Judaism with mindfulness practice and key ideas that support that practice.

2013: Beginning this morning, Israel “was hit by strong winds and dust” which led to “high levels of air pollution causing breathing complications.” (As reported by Yoel Goldman

2013: In Ancient Fear Rises Anew Lisa Abend describes the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Hungary.


2014: The Hebrew Language Table at the Library of Congress is scheduled to co-sponsor a presentation by Professor Gabriel Weimann entitled “Terrorism in Cyberspace: The Next Generation.”

2014: Episodes 3, 4 and 5 of “The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama,”are scheduled to be shown this evening.



2015: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “Its Yiddish Time” with Alex Lieberman.

2015: “Woman in Gold” is scheduled to open today in U.S. theatres.

2015: “Joy of Life: Paintings by Dolorosa Rubens Margulis” is scheduled to open at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.

2015: “Jewish Oklahomans” by Phil Goldfarb, Ed Harris and Katherine Frame was filed today.


2015: Anna Sapir Abulafia, the wife of historian David Afulafia, was appointed the Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions in the faculty of theology and religion at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford tday

2015: In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of New York City’s Landmarks Law, architectural historian and preservationist Samuel D. Gruber is scheduled to lecture on “Synagogues of New York: History, Architecture, and Community” at the Center for Jewish History.

 

2015: Ninety-three year old “James Venture, one of the last survivors of the infamous Train de Loos, which carried French resistance fighters, Communists and Jews from a prison in the northern French village of Loos to concentration camps in Germany in September 1944” passed away today.


2015: The second and final episode of “The Dovekeepers” a fictional account of the final days at Masada is scheduled to be shown on CBS.


2016: Kate Hinz, daughter of Stephanie and Daniel Hinz and Ben Binder, son of Janice Binder, begin their B’Nei Mitzvah weekend by helping to lead Friday night services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2016: “Beyond the Balcony: the Works of Michal Nachmany is scheduled to open today in New York City.

2016: In Fairfax, VA, the “First Friday Boaok Group” is scheduled to discuss Honeydew by Edith Pearlman.

2017(5thof Nisan, 5777): Parashat Vayikra

2017: For the second time this week Arab terrorists struck in Jerusalem today when two teenaged boys were stabbed in the Old City.

2017: In Buenos Aires, 91 year old Holocaust survivor Eugenia Unger, who usually displays the number tattooed on her arm by the Nazis, covered it with her Shabbat clothes and her talit when she celebrated her bat mitzvah today. (JTA/TOI)

2017: Bob Dylan finally received “his Nobel Literature diploma medal…during a small gathering this afternoon in a hotel” in Stockholm, Sweden. (As reported by David Keyton)

2017: In New Orleans the Jewish Children Regional Services is scheduled to host its annual gala “Jews Roots of Past, Present and Future, honoring the former and current leadership of JCRS.

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a showing of “Past Life,” “a suspenseful, twisty, true tale from Israeli master Avi Nesher.”

2017: Sixty-eight year old Rabbi David Saperstein, who “for the law two years served as the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom” is scheduled to “return to the Union of Reform Judaism’s senior staff” today.

2018: The New York Times published books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century by Robert D. Kaplan and (((SEMITISM))):Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump

by Jonathan Weisman

2018(16thof Nisan, 5778): Pesach; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2018(16th of Nisan, 5778): First Day of the Omer

2018: In Jerusalem, the Tower of David is scheduled to host a performance of “Jerusalem in My Heart” which tells “the story of Nissim, a Jew who is coming to Israel from Spain on his way to the Western Wall

2018: “The Kushners Saw Redemption in the White House. It Was a Mirage” published today described the relationship of the family of Donald Trump’s Jewish in-laws.


2019: In Tel Aviv, 18 Bar Kochva is scheduled to be the site for the monthly “Women Wine and Wisdom”

where the women of Israel’s largest city “join together to explore inner freedom based on lessons from Passover and to celebrate Rosh Chodesh Nisan.”

2019: The Tel Aviv LGBTQ Center is scheduled to host “Everything you wanted to know about Israeli elections but were afraid to ask” a non-partisan event with appearances by Anat Nir, Idan Roll and Merav Ben Ari.

2019: The Center for Jewish History and the American Jewish Historical Society are scheduled to present a conversation with journalist Peter Beinart and Yale Professor Jason Stanley, the author of How Fascism Works, The Politics of Us and Them

2019: At Tifereth Israel in Des Moines, IA, the Iowa Jewish Historical Soceity is scheduled to host “Memories and Melodies of Auschwitz,” “featuring Schindler’s list survivor Celina Karp and pianists Alex Biniaz-Harris and Ambrose Soehn, “composers of ‘Melodies of Auschwitz.’”

2019: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to host curator Ilona Moradof’s tour of “Kindertransport – Rescuing Children on the Brink of War” which illuminates “the organized rescue efforts that brought thousands of children from Nazi Europe to Great Britain in the late 1930s.”

 

 

This Day, April 2, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 2

742: Birthdate of Charlemagne. Charlemagne was both King of the Franks and the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite pressure from the Catholic Church and the mighty Pope Gregory, Charlemagne treated his Jewish subjects and they played a prominent part in his realm. Unfortunately, after his death in 814, his successors were unable to continue to his policies towards the Jews of Christian Europe.
1118: Baldwin I, who arrogantly styled himself King of Jerusalem.  For Jews nothing more be said then that he was a brother of Godfrey of Bouillon and a leader of the bloody First Crusade.
1279(Nisan, 5039): A number of London Jews were martyred following ritual charges. You will note that during the Easter Season there is a significant increase in these reports for several centuries in different parts of Europe.
1453: Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople. The siege would lead to the downfall of the Byzantine capitol which would improve the lot of the Jews living in the city as well as opening it up to settlement by Jews living Crete, Transylvania and Slovakia.
1473: Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, under whose reign the condition of the Jews improved, and his mistress, Barbara Edelpöck gave birth to John Corvinus
1550: The Jews were expelled from of Genoa.
1678(10th of Nisan): Rabbi Judah Ashael ben David del Bene author of Kisot le-Bet David passed away
1738(12thof Nisan, 5498):  Joseph Oppenheimer was hanged. Oppenheimer, the finance minister, was arrested after the sudden death of Prince Karl of Wurttemberg. He was offered a pardon on condition of agreeing to be baptized. Although not a practicing Jew, he refused and was placed in a cage in the center of Stuttgart declaring "I will die as a Jew; I am suffering violence and injustice." He died while shouting Shema Yisrael.

1756: Benjamin D’Israeli, the Anglo-Jewish merchant who was grandfather of the British Prime Minister married his first wife, Rebecca Mendez Furtado.

1755(21st of Nisan, 5515):Aryeh Leib ben Saul Lowenstam passed away in Amsterdam. Born in Cracow this Polish rabbi was a member of long line of Jewish sages including his grandfather Rabbi Hoeschl of Cracow and his father Saul who served as rabbi of Cracow from 1700 to 1704,

1770(7th of Nisan): Rabbi PInchas Zelig of Lask, author of Ateret Paz passed away

1779(16th of Nisan, 5539): During the American Revolution France, the ally of the United States, was ten days away from signing “a secret treaty with Spain to wage war against Great Britain” Jews observed the Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1787: Ephraim Hart “he was registered as an elector of the Shearith Israel congregation” in New York City.

1791: Forty-two year old Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (known simply as Count Mirabeau) a leader of the French Revolution who was an admirer of Moses Mendelssohn and whose support of Jewish emancipation can be seen in his statement “Confer upon” the Jews “the enjoyment of civil rights and they will enter the ranks of peaceful citizens, passed away today.

1806: Birthdate of Gabriel Riesser, youngest son of Lazarus Jacob Riesser and an advocate for the emancipation of the Jews of Germany.

1817(16th of Nisan, 5577): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1825(14th of Nisan, 5585): Shabbat HaGadol; Erev Pesach

1825: “The special privileges granted to the Portuguese Jewish citizens of Suriname were terminated by order of the Dutch crown. Thenceforth, Jews in the Dutch colonies were accorded the same rights as the other inhabitants, and all privileges, concessions and exceptions of whatever nature were abolished.” (As reported by the Suriname-Jewish Community)

1826: In Ancona, Italy, “Anna Costantini, a young girl, was torn from her family and forced into baptism.”

1827: Birthdate of English painter William Holman Hunt who moved to Palestine in the 1850’s to find inspirations for his painting and whose house at No. 64 Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem would be the future home of Hebrew language poet Rachel Bluwstein.

1840: Birthdate of Émile Zola. This non-Jewish French author would become a leading player in the Dreyfus Affair. His J”Accuse would be an indictment of the French military establishment and the anti-Semitic forces that swirled around this entire act of injustice.

1844:"The building” housing the Great Synagogue in Sidney “was consecrated today with the music for the ceremony in the hands of Isaac Nathan, father of Australian music, who was also associated with the music at St Mary's Cathedral. For the occasion Nathan composed settings for Baruch Habba ("Blessed be he that cometh") and Halleluyah.

1846: The last letter in the correspondence between Grace Aguilar and “the philanthropist Miriam Moses Cohen who acted as an agent for her publications in America” was sent today.

1848: Two days after he has passed away, Barnet Barnett was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1857(8thof Nisan, 5617): Sixty-year old University of Heidelberg trained jurist Mortiz Wilhelm August Briedenbach, the Offenbah-on-Main born son of Wolf Breidebenbach who held a number of positions in the government of Hesse and served “as the principal author of its penal code” passed away today.

1862: Abraham Crawcour married Catherine Rebecca Hart today.

1863: During the Civil War, food shortages cause hundreds of angry women to riot in Richmond, Virginia and demand that the Confederate government release emergency supplies, in what became known as the Richmond Bread Riots. In her honor’s thesis entitled The Richmond Bread Riot of 1863: Class, Race, and Gender in the Urban Confederacy, MIDN 1/C Katherine R. Titus wrote that while the rioters targeted speculators and government offices “Richmond citizens also targeted foreigners and Jews. The city had a tradition of blatant anti-Semitism. Once the War erupted, many Richmond citizens openly blamed the Jews and foreigners in the city for speculation and charged them with disloyalty. Sallie A. Putnam, for instance, believed that the Jews in Richmond profited from the war. She exhorted, “They were not found, as the more interested of the people, without the means to purchase food when the Confederate money became useless to us from the failure of our cause.” Major John W. Daniel contended that local stereotypes allowed the rioters to target Richmond Jews. After the War, he reminisced, “certain people down there were credited with great wealth. It was said that they had made barrels of money out of the Confederacy, and the female Communists went at them without a qualm of conscience.”

1863: Two days after he had passed away, Abraham Abraham the husband of Sarah Abraham was buried today in the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1865:Twenty Jewish men signed a constitution that became the framework that would guide the future of Reform Jews in Akron, Ohio.

1865: Founding of the Akron Hebrew Congregation which holds services on holidays and Friday evenings.

1865: In Montgomery, Alabama, “Abraham J. Schiff, the best Hebrew scholar in Wolosin” who served as rabbi in Montgomery until moving to New York where he became rabbi at Beth Hamedresh Hagodl  and Sheve Kapaln gave birth to I.O. Schiff who “opened his first dry goods store at 105 Essex Street” and married Stella Newmark with whom he had three children.

1866(17thof Nisan, 5626) Third Day of Pesach; second day of the Omer

1867: Birthdate of Mrs. Henry Gottdiener

1869: Michael Henry became editor of The Jewish Chronicle– a position he would hold until his death in 1875.

1870(1st of Nisan, 5630): Rosh Chodesh Nisan/Shabbat HaChodesh

1871 In Baltimore, MD founding of Congregation Chizuk Amunah whose members included by M.S. Levy, Joseph Levi, and Milton Fleischer and has been served by Rabbi Henry W. Schneeberger and Canto Herman Glass.


1874(15thof Nisan, 5634): Pesach

1877(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Chaim Bezalel of Bielitz, Poland, author of “Derekh Yivhar” passed away.

1878: In New York City, Austrian Jewish immigrants Fanny Ritterman and Bernard Kasner gave birth to their sixth child mathematician Edward Kasner.



1878: In Oswego, NY, Bernard and Pauline Bandler gave birth to Maurice Edward Bandler, a graduate of Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

1881: It was reported today that the population of Thessaly, which is moving from Turk to Greek rule includes 50,000 Jews and Muslims as well as 300,000 who are classified as Greeks.

1882:The New York Times reported that “the feast of Passover will commence tomorrow evening at sundown in accordance with the rabbinical ordinance which lays it down that it shall be celebrated from the evening of the 14thof Nisan and continues for eight days. It is regarded strictly as a feast of rejoicing and it’s a pleasant illustration of the liberalizing tendency of the age that many Jews make it a custom to send small presents of unleavened bread to the Christian friends”

1882: The New York Times publishes an excerpt from “Domestic and Artistic Life of Copely” by Martha Babcock Amory in which the author describes a dinner with Baroness Lionel Rothschild in 1857.

1883: In Łódź, Poland, Rabbi Adolph Moses Radin and his wife gave birth to anthropologist Paul Radin, the holder of a Ph.D. Columbia who studied the people called “Indians” and served as the chair of the Anthropology Department at Brandeis while married to his wife Doris.


1883: After telling him that it was customary for newly engaged couple to announce their intention to become man and wife before an official at City Hall, the relatives of Pauline Moses to David Holtz to City Hall where an alderman performed a marriage ceremony; a fact not understood by Holtz because of his limited knowledge of the English language.

1886(26th of Adar): Rabbi Aryeh Leib Yellin, author of Yefeh Einayim passed away today

1887(8th of Nisan, 5647): Shabbat HaGadol

1887(8th of Nisan, 5647): Sixty-one year old Austrian mathematician Simon Spitzer who became a professor of analytic mechanics at the Vienna “Handelsschule” in 1870 passed away today.

1890: The Passover Association distributed free matzoth to over four thousand poor Jews this evening at the Goodfellow’s Hall on Essex Street in New York.

1890: The New York Times reported that the American Hebrew will be publishing a special Passover edition this Friday.

1890: It was suggested at today’s meeting of the New York Board of Estimate and Apportionment that the old Hebrew Orphan and Asylum on 77th Street could be used for the proposed new offices of the city’s Board of Education.

1891: Birthdate of Max Ernst founder of surrealism who with his Jewish wife Luise Straus gave birth to painter Jimmy Straus and who was briefly married to Peggy Guggenheim at the end of 1941.

1892: “Russian Jews Not Wanted” published today

1892: Simon Schafer, M.H. Moses, Judge M.S. Isaacs and A.L. spoke at tonight’s meeting of the Purim Association which was held at the Hoffman House tonight.

1892: “Want To Hear Cleveland” published today described the ex-President’s popularity in New York as can be seen by warm reception his supporters receive when they address rallies of Russian Jews.  The Russians barely understand English, but the sound of Cleveland’s name is enough to bring out shouts of approval..

1893(16th of Nisan, 5653): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1893: At Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Silverman is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Crucifixition.”

1893: It was reported today that in German “the Conservatives have definitely thrown over Rector Hermann Ahlwardt the Jew baiter and libeler.”  However, their rejection has not stopped him from making public speeches and holding anti-Semitic rallies.

1893: “Fine British Weather” published today described the social and political events taking place in the UK including plans by “an organization of progressive young Jews…to propose at all annual meetings of the synagogue throughout England, most of which are held next week, a resolution that it is not desirable to elect a man engaged in money lending as President of the congregation.”

1893: Dr. Silverman is scheduled to give an address at Temple Emanu-El on “The Crucifixion.”

1893: The New York Times reported that “an organization of progressive young Jews has arranged to propose at all annual meetings of the synagogues throughout England, most of which are held next week, a resolution that it is not desirable to elect a man engaged in money lending as President of the congregation.”

1894: It was reported today that approximately 50 Jews, many of them women attended the evangelistic service at the Thalia Theatre Auditorium although there was no report of any of them coming forward to convert.  (These services were part of a concerted effort by some Christians to convert Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century)

1896: The will of the late Charles S. Friedlander was filed with the Surrogate today for probate.

1896: The funeral for Dr. Aaron Wise was held this morning at Temple Rodolph Shalom, the New York congregation he had served as Rabbi for several years.

1896(19thof Nisan, 5656): Leonard Friedman, who is approximately 52 years old, passed away today at Lakewood, NU.  A native of Germany, he came to the United States and after fighting his way out of poverty established Leonard Friedman & Co which over the last twenty years has become one of the leading tobacco houses in the United States.

1896: Funeral services were held for Dr. Aaron Wise, who had been rabbi at New York’s Temple Rudolph Shalom at the time of his death. The services at the Lexington Avenue Temple were attended by so many mourners that “not one half could gain entrance to the synagogue.” Several of New York’s leading clergy took part in the ceremony including Dr. Rudolph Grossman of Temple Beth-El, Dr. Kaufmann Kohler also of Temple Beth-El who delivered an address in German and Dr. Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanuel who delivered a eulogy in English in which he said of Wise, “The spirit of his words cannot die. The influence of the teacher has not limits as to time or space.” Burial followed the service in Union Field, Cypress Hills Cemetery.

1897: Reverend John Hall delivered a lecture on “Judaism and Christianity” in which he said “There is a distinction between Judaism as described in the Bible and the Judaism of the present generation.”

1897: A school designed to teach students how to cook food according to the laws of Kashrut opened today in Brooklyn in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population.

1897: In New York, Governor Frank Black appointed Jewish philanthropist and Republican Party activist Edward Lauterbach to serve as a member of the State Board of Charities.

1897: In Austria, Count Casimir Badeni resigned during a government crisis that was precipitated, in part, by his clash with the anti-Semitic parties.

1897: Julius Goldschmidt who had been Consul General in Vienna under President Harrison began serving as Consul General to Berlin

1898(10thof Nisan, 5658): Shabbat Hagadol

1898(10thof Nisan, 5658):Austrian pathologist and histologist Salomon Stricker passed away.

1899” In Richmond, VA, founding of the Hebrew Sheltering Aid Society which “furnishes shelter and means of transportation to strangers and whose members included E.C. Meyer, Philip Hirshberg, S.I. Hirshberg and D.S. Sharove.

1899: At the Hebrews Sheltering Guardian Society Orphan Asylum, Chaplain Joseph Kauffman officiated at service were a “bronze tablet in memory of Samuel Lewisohn” was unveiled.

1899: “Disraeli and the Suez Canal” published today provided a summary an article by Arnold White that appeared in Harper’s Weekly describing the British leader’s role in facilitating the purchase of this vital waterway from which he gained no financial advantage.

1902: “Controversy Over Hen Fattened For Passover” published in today’s Atlanta Constitution described a complaint filed by Leo Fresh with police to retrieve the chicken that he was preparing to take to a “shocket” which had mysteriously ended up in the yard of a neighbor lady who planned to have it killed in a manner not consistent with the laws of Kashrut.

1903: The High Court of Australia sits for the first time. In 1930, Isaacs Isaacs would become the third person to fill this position and the first Jew to serve as Chief Justice of Australia.

1903: Herzl meets McIlwraithe, the legal adviser of the Khedive where he finds out that an immediate counter-proposal is out of question. The size of the land and the duration of the contract are discussed.

1904(17thof Nisan, 5664): Shabbat shel Pesach

1905: The Executive Committee presented “the policy with regard to the granting of the degree of Doctor of Divinity and the degree of Doctor of Hebrew Literature as well as the formal requirement for the granting of these degrees was presented today to the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

1905: President N. Taylor Phillips presided over “the second annual meeting of the New York Branch of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where the nominating committee composed of Dr. Cyrus Adler, Julius Dukas and Simon was formed and the following were chosen to service as officers – Edgar J. Nathan, President; Isaac J. Danziger, Vice President; Daniel Guggenheim, Treasurer; and Joseph B. Abrahams, Secretary.   

1906: During the conference at Algeciras, Morocco, “Mr. White, the chief of the American delegation and the Duke of Almodovar raised the question of “the unfavorable situation of the Jews in Morocco.”     

1906: Tonight, in Clinton Hall, “at the installation of the newly elected officers of the Zionist Council of Greater New York, Dr. J. L. Magnes, the Secretary of the American Federation of Zionists read…a copy of a proclamation issued against the Jews in Russia” which he said practically meant that there would be another Pogrom in Ekaterinoslov.

1907: In Brooklyn, movie producer Louis B. Meyer “and his first wife Margaret Shenberg gave birth Irene Mayer Selznick famed as the producer of Street Car Named Desire and the younger sister of Edith Selznick who was born in 1905

1909: Ahmed Riza Bey, President of Turkish Parliament, offered Russian and Romanian Jews who were suffering tremendous persecution and attacks a chance to come settle in Turkey.

1911: The newly formed Grand Council of the Jewish Community of Constantinople expresses loyalty of all Jews of all parties to the Ottoman Empire.

1911:Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, gave a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House today to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League in which she used the Triangle Fire as an argument for factory workers to organize:

1912(15thof Nisan, 5672): As TR and Taft battled for control of the Republican Party, observance of Pesach observed the first day of Pesach.

1912: Today “two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying 4 "Ahuza" members, 3 laborers and 2 armed watchmen. After a 5 hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Ra'anana which has grown to become a city of almost 70,000 people living in Israel’s Central District.

1912(15th of Nisan, 5672): Fifty women attended a Seder tonight at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association building on Lexington Avenue. The attendance was limited by the size of the building underscoring the need to build a new facility.

1913: Isador H. Weinstock, the Cantor of the Plum Street Synagogue in Cincinnati, presented a program on “The Music of the Synagogue” at “the seventh regular meeting” of the Isaiah Woman’s Club.

1913: Funeral services were held today for Bernard Wolf, the husband of Amalia Wolf and “father of Mrs. Numa Lachman and Mrs. Isador Brown” at K.A.M. Temple in Chicago followed by burial at Mount Maariv.

1913:Today, Jews living in New York City brought copies of letters from family members living in Anatolia describing persecution by Greeks living in that part of the Ottoman Empire to the attention of the American Jewish Committee. They called upon the committee to intervene on the behalf of their co-religionists and to organize a protest against these outrages.

1914: The officers of the Jewish Soldiers and Sailors Passover Committee met at the Broadway Central Hotel in New York. After the meeting, Henry Berlin, Chairman of the Arrangements Committee, reported that Secretary of War Garrison and Secretary of the Navy Daniels had sent letters announcing that Jewish soldiers and sailors would receive furloughs to celebrate Passover this year.

1914(6th of Nisan, 5674): Paul Heyes, the first Jew to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away today at the age of 84. A native of Bonn, “he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1910 ‘as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories.’ One of the Nobel judges, said that ‘Germany has not had a greater literary genius since Goethe.’" [Considering what would happen to the Jews of German two decades after his death, this praise has a strange ring to it. Also, Heyes is living proof that winning a Nobel Prize is no guarantee to lasting fame, even among his co-religionists.]

1914: In New York, Mr. and Mrs. Percy Salomon gave birth to William Roger Salomon who would become a long time managing partner of the bond trading house Salomon Bros.


1915: Today “Henry Fischel, the Treasurer of the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering through the War” “received a donation of five dollars from Leo Frank” who faces the death penalty in Georgia” and who compared “his own suffering with that now being borne by Jews in the war zones.”

1916: At ninth anniversary services of the Free Synagogue led by Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau talked about plans to move the congregation from its home in Carnegie Hall to a temple building to be built in the center of Manhattan that will be better suited to the religious mission. 1916: Grand Master Samuel Goldstein presided over the convention of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Judah in the Bronx today which was attended by approximately “450 delegates representing 18,237 member of the Jewish fraternal organization” who heard Rabbi Joseph Rosenblatt lead a memorial service for Jews who have been killed during the war in Europe.

1916: “Joseph H. Cohen, President of the Beth Israel, today announced a plan to build a West Side Jewish Community Center” on 88th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues which “contain a synagogue, a library, a gymnasium, kindergarten, public hall, roof garden and class rooms for educational work.”

1917(NS): Today “the Provisional Government—in power until a Constituent Assembly could be called to determine the character of the successor Russian state—abolished all the legal restrictions on ethnic and religious communities, including Jews” which meant that “for the first time since they had been admitted to the Russian Empire, Jews gained full equality with all other citizens” which stood in mark contrast to the era of the “tsarist regime which had confined Jews to the Pale of Settlement and had severely restricted their opportunities in agriculture, the professions, military service, education” and governmental or civil unless Jews agreed to convert to Christianity.

1917: According to a cable message received today by Louis Marshall, Chairman of the American Jewish Relief Committee from Baron Alexander Gunzburg in Petrograd, “all laws of Russia which are adverse to the Jews there are to be repealed by a decree of the provisional Government.”

1917: President Wilson asked the United States Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. This was the first official step towards America’s entry into World War I as a combatant on the side of the Allies. While American Jews supported the war effort and served in all branches of the armed forces, there was an unintended downside for the Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe. It was easier for American Jews to get aid to their suffering co-religionists when the United States was a “neutral.” Once it joined the Allied side, the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) it would be much more difficult to get help to those living in the war torn areas under the control of these nations.

1918: In Bohemia, the Emperor pardoned Leopold Hilsner a shoemaker who was serving a life term after having been convicted “on the charge of ritual murder” in 1900.

1918: At Vienna “in an address to a deputation of the City Council…the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that in the peace negotiations between the Central Powers and Romania, the Jewish question will be solved with equal rights being guaranteed to the Jews of Roumania.

1918: One day after his death on the Western Front, a letter written by poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg which had been written three days earlier arrives in London. In the letter he describes life in the trenches.

1919: Dr. Rudolph I Coffee delivered a speech on “Peace Treaty” at the Teachers Institute of Boone County “under the auspices of the Illinois Branch of the League to Enforce Peace.”

1919: In Chicago, Lillian Mitnick and Abe Diaman of Kansas City, MO were married at the Ashland Clubhouse.

1919: In Chicago, Blanche Mosbach, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Mosbach married Maxwell Glassner at the family’s home on Michigan Avenue.

1921: Professor Albert Einstein held a press conference aboard the steamship Rotterdam today in New York Harbor. During the conference Einstein talked about his Theory of Relativity and his support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1921:Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, began serving as Viceroy and Governor-General of India.

1923(16th of Nisan, 5653): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1922: “Two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying 4 "Ahuza" members, 3 laborers and 2 armed watchmen. After a 5 hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Ra'anana, a city in the heart of the southern Sharon Plain of the Central District of Israel with a population of 68,300, as of 2009.”

1923(16thof Nisan, 5683): Second day of Pesach

1925: According to a cable message that was made public today by Judge Jacob S. Stahl, President of the American Palestine Line steamship company, the SS President Arthur has arrived in Haifa. The liner with 500 prominent American Jews from all parts of the United States sailed on March 12 on her maiden voyage to inaugurate a regular service between New York and the Holy Land.

1925: At “the groundbreaking ceremony of the Hebrew University on April 2, 1925 Edmund Landau lectured in Hebrew on the topic Solved and unsolved problems in elementary number theory.

1925: The Vatucan’s Holy Office published a decree saying that the Catholic Church, whatever its other views on Jew maybe, “condemns hatred against the people elected by God, a hatred that today is vulgarly called anti-Semitism.” (For more see Under His Very Windows by Susan Zucotti)

1926: “Gdal Saleski, the Russian violoncellist” “who is a graduate of the Petrograd Conservatory of Music” “gave a recital” this “evening at Steinway Hall” accompanied by violinist Yasha Fishberg and pianist Lazare Weiner.

1926: In Leipzig, “David Hilsenrath, a furrier, and Anna (Honigsberg) Hilsenrath” gave birth to Holocaust survivor and author Edgar Hilsenrath whose works included “a celebrated farce, The Nazi and the Barber which tells the story of an SS officer and mass murderer who kills his Jewish best friend from childhood, assumes his identity, flees to Palestine and is transformed into an ardent Zionist.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)


1926: It was reported today that according to the census taken by The Christian Herald “numbers the members of Jewish congregations at 357,135” but notes “that these are chiefly heads of families.

1926: “The twentieth anniversary of the Palestine Maccabee Sport was celebrated in Tel Aviv” today where Lord Plumer distributed the prizes.

1927: Samuel Untermyer arrived in Jerusalem after a “rough” flight from Cairo that included “a detour of thirty miles over the Mediterranean to avoid a sand storm.”

1927: It was reported today that Aaron Sapiro who has been testifying in the libel suit he brought against Henry Ford will spend the weekend in Chicago on personal business before returning to the stand on Monday to continue answering questions from James A. Reed, the Senator from Missouri who is representing Henry Ford, the anti-Semitic car maker.

1927: “Service for Jewish Patients” published today described the services available “to Jewish patients in all of the city hospitals on Welfare Island” including the presence of Jewish social workers who can help the Jewish patients “in a non-Jewish institution.”

1928: Birthdate of actress Rita Gam who was the wife of director Sidney Lumet and publisher Thomas Guinzberg (not at the same time) and the mother of producer Kate Guinzburg

1928: In Paris Olga (nee Bessman) and Joseph Ginsburg gave birth to Lucien Ginsburg who gained fame as Serge Gainsbourg, a poet, singer, songwriter, actor, director and finally controversial guest on French television talks shows.

1929: The rabbinical commencement exercises of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva College, the first in three years and the first in the new building of the institution, were held today. Dr. Bernard Revel delivered an address in which he warned of the dangers of “religious illiteracy and urged that synagogues become centers of faith. Among those receiving diplomas were forty-one newly minted rabbis and 45 teachers.”

1930: Birthdate of Highland Park, Illinois (Suburban Chicago) native and Goucher College graduate Rosaline Fox Solomon, the award winning photographer.



1930: Isaac Isaacs completes his service as Puisine Justice of the High Court of Australia and begins serving as the as Chief Justice of Australia.

1930: Haile Selassie is proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia. Part of his title included the honorific “Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah” which is tied to the contention that the Ethiopian rulers traced their origin to a relationship between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. During World War II, Orde Wingate would aid the king in his fight against the Italians. This is the same Orde Wingate who was stationed in Palestine before World War II. He was one of the few British officers who was supportive of the efforts of the Jews to defend themselves against the Arab who were attacking them. Wingate reportedly provided training for the Zionists in basic military tactics and weapons usage.

1931(15thof Nisan, 5691): Pesach

1931: “The Street Song,” “a musical crime film” directed and produced by Lupu Pick was released in Germany today.

1931: “The Cleveland Indians picked” Moe Berg up today when “Chicago put him on waivers.”

1931: U.S. premiere of “Skippy” directed by Norman Taurog who won an Academy Award, with a script co-authored by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sam Mintz.

1931: As Jews gathered to observe the second Passover of the Great Depression Rabbis focused their holiday talks on the worsening economic conditions of the day and the need for reform. Sermons mixed holiday motifs and symbolism with the rise in unemployment and deteriorating social conditions. Using the Ten Plagues as his point of departure Rabbi Rosenblum of Temple Israel “declared that the unsettled economic condition of the world was the greatest plague of our era and that the leaders of government and business were responsible for the chaos and misery. Capitalism seems to be a Pharaoh…If Pharaoh listens he will not suffer ten plagues. If he does not, the very first plague will yet come to pass. It will be a revolution and blood.” At Temple Rodeph Shalom, Rabbi Newman “said that Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, commemorated the release of the Israelites not only from political bondage but economic enslavement as well.” Rabbi Samuel Schulman broadened the scope a bit by pointing out the “power of religion to free or enslave man and emphasizing that real freedom required economic freedom which would allow for just and equal opportunity for every individual to use his powers in accordance with his ability and to receive just rewards.” (Sounds a bit like Marx and Moses meeting on New York’s fashionable east side.) But it was left to Rabbi Jonah Wise preaching at New York’s Central Synagogue to pull all elements of religion including Christianity together with the great crisis facing the nation. “Men are trained by loyalties to country, church and self to refuse to share life with foreigners, non-conformists and competitors. We shall never have security and morality until we learn to live at peace. We are making occasional breaches in the Chinese wall of creeds, tariffs and prejudices. Passover and Easter are supposed to be feasts of freedom and salvation. They are farces in the face of humanity starved in the presence of plenty and condemned to hatreds in fact while applauding love in theory.”

1933: “The Nazis Begin To Dodge Anti-Semitic Boomerang” published today examine the effects of the government’s boycott of Jewish stores in Germany.


1934:Birthdate of Paul Joseph Cohen famed mathematician who developed a technique he called “forcing.” He won the Fields Medal in 1966.


1935: In Tel Aviv, the second Maccabiah Games opened “before 40,000 spectators at the Maccabiah Stadium. The German contingent marched flagless amid the fluttering colors of the other teams entering the venue. The American team including Janice Lifson, Doris Kelm and Lillian Copeland, placed “fourth in the “Tel Aviv Prepares Its Greatest Fair” published today Joseph M. Levy describes plan for the upcoming Levant Fair slated to open at the end of this month.

1936(10thof Nisan, 5696): Eighty year old Mrs. Ethel “Etta” Yaroshev Cutler, the native of Ukraine and wife of Isaac Cutler who was the mother of Colonel Harry Cutler, the Chairman of the Jewish Welfare Board who had passed away in 1920, passed away today after which she was buried in the Sons of David and Israel Cemetery in Providence, R.I.

1936: Birthdate of Shaul Paul Ladany, the Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ben Gurion University and two-time Olympian who survived Bergen-Belson and the 1972 Munich Massacre.


1936: The “formal presentation of the 1935 American Hebrew Medal for the Promotion of Better Understanding between Christian and Jews in America” is scheduled to “be made to Roger Williams Straus” the co-chairman of the National Conference of Jews and Christians at ceremonies being held “in the auditorium of the College of the City of New York.”

1936: The list of ten true or false questions that was created by a professor at the Rhode Island State College for a test that will demonstrate “the amount of scientific thinking done by the person taking the test included: “The Christian faith is the only true one” and “Any nation that persecutes the Jews, as Germany has done recently be totally uncivilized.”

1936: “Edwin Goodman, president of Bergdorf-Goodman was named” tonight “as chairman of the dress division of the Greater New York Campaign of the Joint Distribution committee for the Aid of Jews in German, Central and Eastern” at a dinner at the Harmonie Club.

1936: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise spoke to a dinner at the Metropolis Club, where “a group of members reported that they had raised $30,000” which will go toward meeting the $75,000 quota set by the Joint Distribution Committee.

1937(21st of Nisan, 5697): Seventh day of Pesach

1937(21st of Nisan, 5697): Nathan Birnbaum passed away. Born in Vienna in 1864, Birnbaum coined the terms Zionists and Zionism in 1890. He was active with Herzl in the First Zionist Congress. However, he later drifted away from the movement becoming more concerned with a renaissance in Jewish culture and traditional Judaism. He left Germany after Hitler came to power and moved to the Netherlands where he continued his writings.

1937: In Warsaw, “the Minister of Education issued a decree today dissolving the militant ant-Semitic Nationalist students’ organizations in” universities in Warsaw and Vilna.

1937: On the outskirts of Warsaw at Sokolow and Lukow, “all the Jewish market stands were smashed and many Jews were injured and driven from the marketplaces today by a stone-hurling mob.”

1973: Twenty-five year old New York City native Edward Isaac Lending arrived in Spain where he would fight with the Lincoln Brigade against the fascist forces of Franco.

1937: In Albania, the Jewish community was granted official recognition by the government. The largest Jewish populations were located in Kavaje and Vlora. Approximately, 600 Jews were living in Albania prior to World War II, 400 of who were refugees. At the beginning of World War II, hundreds of Jews arrived in Albania seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in other regions of Europe.

1938(1stof Nisan, 5698): Rosh Chodesh Nisan and Shabbat HaChodesh

1938(1stof Nisan, 5698): Moise Micha Sapir the fourth commander of the Botwin Company (named for Naftali Botwin, the Polish Jewish radical executed in 1924) was killed at Lerida today during the Spanish Civil War.

1941: In what would prove to be a prelude to the Farhud in June, today “Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani, an anti-British nationalist politician from one of the leading families in Baghdad, carried out a military coup against the pro-British government in Iraq” which “was supported by four high-ranking army officers nicknamed the “Golden Square,” and by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni.

1941: Hungarian Premier Count Pál Telecki committed suicide rather than collaborate with Germany. This is only one small chapter in the complex story of Hungary’s involvement in World War II. For much of the war, Hungary’s Jewish population would remain comparatively untouched by the raging Holocaust. Only in the final year of the war would the final solution come to this eastern European state.

1942: Birthdate of Larry Selman whose life would captured in documentary “The Collector of Bedford Street.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)


1942: “My Favorite Blonde” a comedy based on a story by Melvin Frank was released today in the United States.

1943:At the Thirty-eighth Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which opened its three-day meeting in the Hotel New Yorker today,speakers declared that only through the creation of an international structure of mutual responsibility will the world obtain a lasting post-war peace period.

1943: “Flight for Freedom” based loosely on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, directed by Lothar Mendes, one of the many refugees from Nazi Germany, was released today in the United States.

1944: Today, 90 Jews who were captured by the Nazis at Chalcis, a port on the Greek island of Euboea are shipped to Auschwitz.

1944: In Haifa, British police discovered a cache of arms belonging to the Stern Gang following a bombing which caused the death of a Jewish constable and wounded a British policeman.

1944: At night, British authorities arrested more than sixty individuals many of whom were reported to be “members of the Jewish revisionist party known as the New Zionist Organization.”

1945: In a letter to Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Peter Bergson provides a description of the efforts of the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation (H.C.N.L.) to save the Jews of Europe and create a Jewish state.

1945: After more than three years of service, Laurence A. Steinhardt left his post as Ambassador to Turkey.

1946: In Cleveland, Ohio, Mrs. Henry Gottdiener celebrated her 79thbirthday today.

1948: U.S. premiere of “B.F.’s Daughter” produced by Edwin H. Knopf and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.

1948: British Forces arrive at the air field south of Beit Darass looking for arms that had been delivered to the Jews. They found nothing since the Jews had hidden the weapons in the surrounding collective settlements.

1948: In response to Soviet order to restrict shipments of goods to Berlin by the Allies General Lucius Clay ordered that all supplies be sent by air marking the actual start of the Berlin Airlift. (Editor’s note – this entry serves as a reminder that the events surrounding the creation of Israel took place at the same time that Russia was pursuing a ruthless policy of imperialism across Europe.)

1950(15th of Nisan, 5710): First Day of Pesach

1951(25thof Adar II, 5711): Fifty-four Odessa born American pianist Simon Barere who survived the Bolsheviks and the Nazis so he could make his Carnegie Hall debut in 1936 and who was the husband of Helena Vlashek, “suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while performing the first bars of Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 in Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy, had suddenly collapsed and died backstage shortly this evening.”


1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset passed the Nationality Act which was expected to confer automatic Israeli citizenship on all Jewish residents, and some of the non-Jews, on July 14, 1952. The vote was 43 to 17. The Knesset defeated, by a vote of 25 to 16, a proposal made by Herut which would require all persons holding dual citizenship to give up one nationality within two years after becoming Israeli citizens.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that a report from The Hague stated that the German delegation to the reparations talks left for Germany for further consultations. The Israeli delegation denied that there was any "crisis" in the talks and explained that the preliminary, informative stage of deliberations drew to a close, and a formula for further talks had been agreed upon. The delegation hoped that this would allow for good progress in the further discussions and actual negotiations. A small letter bomb, containing 40 grams of modern explosives, was sent to the leader of the German reparations delegation at The Hague. It failed to explode when opened in the mail room of the German Embassy.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF had completed "Operation Ma’barot," the winter-long assistance extended by various army units to new immigrants in their camps.

1954: In Hong Kong, a Centenary Dinner was held celebrating the 100 anniversary of the founding of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps which from 1932 through 1942 included Company H or “The Jewish Company.”

1955: Today, “six weeks after being sacked from a managerial position at AC Mila,” Hungarian born Jewish “soccer legend” Bela Guttman “lost control of a car he was driving, killing one teenager and seriously injuring another.”

1958: Release date for “The Young Lions,” the cinematic treatment of Irwin Shaw’s novel of the same named produced by Al Lichtman one of the main protagonist of which is “Noah Ackerman”

1961(16thof Nisan, 5721): Second Day of Pesach

1961: ABC broadcast the first episode of “The Asphalt Jungle” created and produced by Mel Epstein.

1961: It was reported today that Cincinnati industrialist Julian A. Pollack is survived by his second wife, Gertrude, “a daughter, Mrs. Morton A. Rauh of Yellow Springs, Ohio and two sons, David Pollack of Cincinnati and Julian Jr. Pollack of Arlington, VA.

1962:Frieda Caplan opened her specialty produce company, Frieda's Inc., which has introduced a wide array of exotic produce to the American market.

1965(29thof Adar II, 5725): Eighty-three year old Hebrew Union College graduate Dr. Abraham Cronbach, the son of Marcus and Hanna Itzig and husband of Rose Hentil who began his rabbinical career at the Reform congregation of Temple Beth Elin South Bend, Indiana” passed away today.


1965: Birthdate of Rachel Freier, the daughter of Chasidic Jews from Borough Park and the wife of David Frier who when she “was elected as a Civil Court judge for the Kings County 5th judicial district in New York State” became the first Hasidic Jewish woman to be elected as a civil court judge in New York State and the “first Hasidic woman to hold public officein United States history.”

1965: Hochhuth’s play "Stellvertreter" was banned in Italy. In English, the play is called "The Deputy." It was a sensation at the time for its dramatic portrayal of the negative role Pope Pious XII played during the Holocaust in terms of saving the Jews from the Holocaust and resisting the Nazis.

1970: An Israeli Phantom jet piloted by Pini Nahmani was shot down over a Damascus suburb. Nahmani was imprisoned in the al-Mazza Prison in Damascus.

1972(18thof Nisan, 5732): Fourth Day of Pesach

1972(18thof Nisan, 5732): Sixty-two year old Chemistry Professor and patent holder Dr. David Perlman passed away today.


1972: Actor Charlie Chaplin returned to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist in the early 1950s during the Red Scare.

1973(29thof Adar II, 5733): Seventy-four year old Jascha Horenstein, a native of Kiev who became a leading American conductor passed away today.


1974: Tonight, at the 46th annual Academy Awards, Marvin Hamlisch won three Oscars “including Best Song and Best Dramatic Score for The Way We Were along with the award for Best Song Score and/or Adaptation for The Sting.”

1977: “The Ascent” a Russian film set in WW II with music by Alfred Schnittke, the son of Frankfurt born journalist Harry Viktorovich Schnittke and grandson of “philologist and translator” Tea Abramovna Katz was released in the Soviet Union today.

1978: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Dallas” a five-part mini-series created by David Jacobs that proved so popular it became a regular weekly show that lasted until May of 1991.

1978: Birthdate of Nicholas Evan “Nick” Berg “the American freelance repairman” who was beheaded by Islamist terrorists in Iraq who were so proud of the act that they put the video on the internet.


1979: Menachem Begin visited Cairo, Egypt. The historic visit followed the historic peace treaty that Begin and Sadat had signed. Begin was the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit Egypt.

1980(16thof Nisan, 5740): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1981: In London, the annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee came to an end today.

1981: “Seventy-five British academics signed a letter to Soviet Minister of Culture Petr Demichev protesting the repeated harassment of Hebrew teachers and students in the Soviet Union.”

1981: “Anatoly Shcharansky, the Jewish Prisoner of Zion, who is serving a sentence in a Urals labor camp, informed his mother that in January 1981 he was sentenced to six months’ solitary confinement, and deprived of family visits in 1981.”

1982: “Ivan Kovalev, 28, one of the last active members of the Helsinki Group of dissidents monitoring Soviet abuses of human rights, was sentenced by the Moscow City Court to five years in a labor camp followed by five years’ internal exile.”

1982:Jewish militants opposing Israel's withdrawal from Sinai tried to reach the area by boat today after the army closed it to unauthorized civilians and set up roadblocks

1987(3rd of Nisan, 5747): Famed drummer and orchestra leader Buddy Rich passed away at the age of 69. According to some sources, only Rich’s father was Jewish. However, on the official Buddy Rich Website, Rich’s religion is listed as Jewish


 

1987:Theater of the Riverside Church offered a rare look at Israeli Experimentalist Theater and dance when it presented Tmu-Na today. The Tel-Aviv group, founded in 1982 by Nava Zukerman, takes its name from the Hebrew word for moving pictures. And that, essentially, is what this good-looking company presents on stage. But the work Tmu-Na chose for this New York debut engagement is a disappointing one. ''Five Screams,'' loosely based on ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being'' by Milan Kundera, sets a group of men and women on a journey through five ''screams'' that program notes identify as ''signals of disagreement with the absurdity of existence.'' The 90-minute work, which is set to snatches of music composed by everyone from Laurie Anderson to Johann Strauss, opens with ''The Journey'' and moves on to ''Anticipation.''''Obedience and Rebellion'' is next, then ''The Kitsch: The Total Acceptance of Existence.''''Five Screams'' ends with ''Resignation.'' There is nothing so mystifying, often, as elucidating program copy.What we actually see are somber encounters and separations that form a kind of cool if anguished ritual of surviving. There are moments when the performers' individual qualities shine through and give it all a fleeting poignancy or element of surprise. But there is something very familiar in the scattered chairs, the women's flowing hair and drab dresses, the men's casual and inexplicable brutality and the air of unspecified angst that hangs over ''Five Screams.'' Tmu-Na has clearly been influenced by Pina Bausch, who has had great success in Israel.This is diluted Bausch, however, and it says little about the lives and gifts of the performers who helped to create ''Five Screams,'' which was adapted and directed by Ms. Zukerman and Koby Meydan. The performers are Amnon Doyeb, Netta Moran, Phina Bradt, Rama Ben-Zvi, Yael Bechor, Mr. Meydan, Yael Sagi and Yossi Pershitz. ''Five Screams'' will be performed again tonight and tomorrow night at Riverside, 120th Street and Riverside Drive.

1988(15 of Nisan, 5748): Pesach

1989(26th of Adar II, 5749): Jack Ruby Lindo whose tombstone in the Anglican cemetery in Ocho Rio has a “large six-pointed Star of David” passed away today.


1992: Bernard Kouchner began serving as Minister of Health of France.

1992: Jack Lang completed his second term as Culture Minister of France.

1993: “The Crush” directed and written by Alan Shapiro and starring Alicia Silverstone was released in the United States today.

1993: “Jack The Bear” a film based on the novel of the same name directed by Marshall Herskovitz was released today in the United States.

1993: “Cop and a Half” a comedy directed by Henry Winkler was released in the United States today.

1993: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Good Advice” a sitcom with scripts co-authored by Max Mutchnick.

1995: Two members of Hamas blew themselves up in Gaza City while preparing for an attack on Israel.

1995: In an article entitled “Central Synagogue; A $500,000 Restoration of an 1872 Masterwork,” Christopher Gray traces the history of Central Synagogue, one of the most spectacular houses of worship in New York City, is a rare surviving example of early Victorian religious architecture. Construction sheds are now going up for a $500,000 restoration of the building's 1872 stone exterior. Central Synagogue, which was originally called Ahawath Chesed, was founded in 1846 by immigrants from Prague and the nearby regions of what was then Bohemia.

1996: “The Dreyfus Affair” is scheduled to have its American premiere at the New York City Opera this evening.


1997(24thof Adar II, 5757): Forty-nine year old Hedi Kravis, the Brooklyn born daughter of psychiatrist Bernard Shulman, the first wife Henry Kravis, passed away today. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)


 

1998:”Israel Offers Pullout if Lebanon Bars Raids” published today described the conditions under which Israel will leave its neighbor to the north.


2000: James Rubin completed his service as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs

2000:The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “I Will Bear Witness:A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945by Victor Klemperer; translated by Martin Chalmers and the recently released paperback edition of “Playing for Keeps:Michael Jordan and the World He Made”by David Halberstam

2000:Columbia University and the Jewish Campus Life Fund celebrates the dedication and cornerstone-laying, of the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life, a new $11.5 million building that fulfills the long-held goal of creating a permanent home for Columbia's vibrant and diverse Jewish student community. The building is named for the family of Robert K. Kraft, a 1963 graduate of Columbia College and University Trustee since 1991. His lead gift in 1993 launched the building campaign for the Center.

2001: Scott Schoeneweis was awarded the honor of being the Angels' opening day starter today (his first such assignment) and he pitched effectively, yielding 3 runs and 8 hits in 7 innings; but Anaheim lost to Texas, 3-2.

2001: Pitcher Tony Cogan played in his first major league game as a player with the Kansas City Royals.

2002(20thof Nisan, 5762) Sixth Day of Pesach; 5th day of the Omer

2002(20thof Nisan, 5762)

2002: As part of Operation Defensive Shield, the IDF entered the booby-trapped camp at Jenin and ”surrounded the headquarters of the Preventive Security Force in nearby Beitunia.”

2002: Israeli forces surrounded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem after 200 Palestinian terrorists took refuge inside. Instead of storming the church, the IDF surrounded the building a laid siege to the armed killers.

2002: Frieda Caplan's specialty produce company, Frieda's Inc., which has introduced a wide array of exotic produce to the American market, celebrated forty years in business.

2003: Milwaukee Brewers Pitcher Matt Ford appears in his first major league baseball game.

2004: “Home on the Range” an animated musical western featuring the voice or Roseanne Barr was released in the United States today.

2005: Pope John Paul II, “the Polish Pope” whose efforts to improve relations with the Jewish people included the first Papal visits to Auschwitz, a synagogue and Yad Vashem as well as his decision to recognize  the state of Israel and serving as host of “The Papal Concert to Commemorate the Holocasut” passed away today.

2005: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that “the search for a new rabbi for Temple Judah has ended with the hiring of Rabbi Aaron Sherman.” Rabbi Sherman and his wife Stephanie Alexander recently purchased a home in Cedar Rapids. A graduate of Brown University, Rabbi Sherman has a Masters in Hebrew Letters and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2000.

2006: At about 1 am today “a man at a party in Hollywood, a man argued with Paula Abdul grabbed by the arm and threw her against the wall” resulting “in a concussion and spinal injuries.”

2006: Haaretz reported that Poland is going to probe 1940s murder after Israeli meets alleged killer.In 1943, at the height of World War II and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry, Gitl Lerner, a 45-year-old Jewish woman, hid with five of her children in the home of a Polish farmer. The six managed to escape a transport to the Majdanek death camp and found shelter along with two Jewish youths. On the night of October 30, Polish farmers in the area stabbed Lerner and the five children to death. Sixty years later Roni Lerner, an Israeli businessman and Gitl's grandson, set out to track down his family's murderers. In the course of his investigation, Lerner, pretending to be a historian, met the sole surviving murderer and uncovered the horrific case, which the prosecution in Poland has now reopened as a result. Under Polish law, there is no statute of limitations on murders committed during World War II or the country's Communist era. However, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who assisted Lerner in his contacts with the Polish prosecution, says that despite admirable Polish willingness to bring criminals to trial, the proceedings drag on and convictions have been exceedingly few, in view of the number of suspects still alive. With the help of an Israeli film crew and local researchers, Lerner managed to locate the last remaining suspect in the murder. The suspect,Joseph Radchuk, a 92-year-old farmer, led Lerner and his people to the place where the victims were buried 60 years ago. Lerner is going to Poland today at the head of a delegation to exhume the skeletons and bring them for burial in Israel, alongside his father's grave. "I won't leave my family members in that cursed land of Poland," he said before departing Israel. Researchers from Poland's Institute for National Commemoration (IPN) are slated to meet with Lerner tomorrow and to be present for the exhumation of the victims' remains, if found, at the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. The eight victims are Gitl and her five children (Miriam, 22; Hannah, 20; David, 17; Zvi, 15; and Haim, 13) and two young Jewish men known only by their surnames: Zefrin and Pomerantz. They were stabbed to death at their hideout in the small village of Pashgalini, near the family's hometown of Komarovka in eastern Poland, not far from the city Lublin. The family arrived at the hideout in April 1943, after a Polish farmer named Jan Sadovski found it for them. While the family was in hiding, Lerner's father, Yitzhak, was living in Warsaw under an assumed identity. He heard of his family's murder from a Polish friend who lived in the village. In November 1944, after the Red Army had conquered the area from the Germans, Lerner went to the village to investigate. His testimony, preserved in the Jewish archives in Warsaw, states that the murder was perpetrated by Sadovski and four other farmers - one of them being Joseph Radchuk. The testimony stated that the murder had been committed to steal the Lerner family's possessions and those of their two friends, who were wealthy people. Lerner Sr. met with Radchuk, who said he had witnessed the murder and admitted taking many of the family's possessions. Lerner Sr. filed several complaints with the Soviet authorities, but later learned that aside from Sadovski, who was tried and executed, nothing was done to his accomplices. After the war Lerner Sr. fled to Sweden and from there immigrated to Israel. He remarried, to a Holocaust survivor from a neighboring town in Poland and lived with her in Moshav Hibbat Zion. Lerner began investigating his family's tragedy in July 2003, when he accompanied his daughter's school trip to Poland and tracked down his father's testimony at the archives in Warsaw. On returning to Israel, Lerner decided to commemorate his father's life with a book and a documentary film, and headed back to Poland. He kept Israel's ambassador, David Peleg, and his deputy, Yosef Levy, apprised of all his movements there. He also made contact with the local Jewish community and Monica Kravchuk, chair of the Jewish heritage foundation in Poland. Research led to the home of the Ozdovski family, on whose land the Lerners' hideout had been located. The family, whose father apparently participated in the murder, said that the bodies were initially buried near the hideout, but were moved a year later to an unknown location because neighbors complained the place had become haunted. Lerner says that during an unannounced visit to the family's home, he spotted a Singer sewing machine that had belonged to his family and was mentioned in his father's testimony. Last October the researchers located Radchuk, who showed them where the bodies were reburied at the edge of the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. If the skeletons are found there, they will be flown to Israel on Tuesday and the funeral will take place in Hibbat Zion at the end of the week.

2006: Jaclyn Leibson Mintz, daughter of Dale Mintz, the national director of women’s health and advocacy for Hadassah and editor of “The Hadassah Jewish Family Book of Health and Wellness” and Stephen A. Mintz were married in a ceremony officiated at by Rabbi A. Rothman.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development” by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton and the recently released paperback edition of “Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel by Rebecca Goldstein.”

2007: “Nightrise” the third book in The Power of Five series, by Anthony Horowitz was released in the United Kingdom today.

2007(14thof Nisan): Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the Jewish calendar

2007 (14th of Nisan): In the evening, Pesach begins with the first Seder.

2007: The New Republic Magazine featured a review of George Konrad’s autobiography, “A Guest In My Own Country: A Hungarian Life.” Konrad, like the more famous Elie Weisel, survived the Holocaust in Hungary, but spent his adult life in the land where he had faced almost certain death.

2007: Erev Pesach, Newsweek Magazine featured an article entitled “American Jews: The List—Choosing the Chosen” in which three American Jewish multi-millionaires list the top fifty rabbis in the United States. Following the criteria used by this trio, the Rabbis we read about Bnei Berak in the Haggadah would not have made the list.

2007: Chicago real estate billionaire Sam Zell “has won the auction for the Tribune Co.” The 65 year old native of Highland Park, Illinois has bought the company whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune.

2008: In Vancouver, B.C., the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “Jewish Luck.” which was among the first Soviet Yiddish films to be released in the US during the 1920s.

2008: The Rosenbach Museum and Library received an official State Historical Marker by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in recognition of the lasting contributions of museum co-founder, Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach.

2009: Television financial personality and Harvard Law School graduate Jim Cramer has license to practice law suspended today “for failure to pay the registration fee” for the New York Bar.

2009: Professor Amy-Jill Levine, of Vanderbilt University, delivers an address at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, entitled “Misunderstanding Judaism/Misunderstanding Jesus.”

2009: “The Teddy Bear was born in Bedford Stuyvesant” published today described the role of “Rose and Morris Michtom, two Russian Jewish immigrants who lived in Brooklyn” in creating this iconic American stuffed animal.


2009: Centenarian Andrew Steiner, the Czech born architect who saved Jews as a leader in the Bratislava Working Group and settled in Atlanta, GA after the war passed away today.


2009(8th of Nisan, 5769): A terrorist infiltrated Bat Ayin in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank and killed Shlomo Nativ, a 13-year-old Israeli boy, by striking him in the head with an axe. The terrorist also attacked a 7-year-old boy with the axe, hitting and wounding him in the head. He was taken to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and is in moderate condition. Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and an organization calling itself the Imad Mughniyeh Group claimed responsibility for the attack, although this has not been confirmed.

2009: Today in an interview to the Radio Liberty Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg denounced the FSB as an institution harmful to Russia and the ongoing expansion of its authority as a return to Stalinism

2010: Krista Tippe, host of American Public Media's Speaking of Faith and author of , Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit, is scheduled to appear with Michel Martin, host of NPR's Tell Me More are scheduled , to get together for a dialogue about the role of faith in their lives at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall in Washington.

2010: “Musical Shabbat” is scheduled to return to Friday Night Services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2010: After premiering at the Locarno Film Festival “Breath Made Visible,” a “documentary film about modern dance legend Anna Halprin” was released in the United States

2011:Professor Yosef Shiloh, of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Medical School, the first Israeli to receive the prestigious Clowes Award presented by the American Association for Cancer Research is scheduled to be honored at the AACR Annual Meeting that opens today in Orlando, Florida. The prize includes a $10,000 grant, a commemorative plaque, and funding to attend this prestigious event.

2011:Former Israel Olympian, Shaul Landry, a surviving member of the 1972 Munich delegation, is scheduled to celebrate his 75th birthday today by walking his age in kilometers.http://www.jpost.com/Sports/Article.aspx?id=212351

2011(27th of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-two year old Morris Parloff, a member of the "Ritchie Boys," a German-speaking unit of the U.S. Army that did intelligence work and psychological warfare in World War II, and who later became a psychotherapist, researcher and an administrator at the National Institute of Mental Health, passed away today. Parloff was among the surviving members of the Ritchie Boys featured in a 2004 documentary.


2011(27thof Adar II, 5771): In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Traditional Saturday Morning Minyan celebrated Shabbat Ha-Chodesh.

2011(27thof Adar): Yahrzeit of Zedekiah “the last king of the royal house of David to reign in the Holy Land. He ascended the throne in 434 BCE, after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia (to whom the kingdom of Judah was then subject) exiled King Jeconiah (Zedekiah's nephew) to Babylonia.In 425 BCE Zedekiah rebelled against Babylonian rule, and Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem (in Tevet 10 of that year); in the summer of 423 BCE the walls of Jerusalem were penetrated, the city conquered, the (first) Holy Temple destroyed, and the people of Judah exiled to Babylonia. Zedekiah tried escaping through a tunnel leading out of the city, but was captured; his sons were killed before his eyes, and then he was blinded. Zedekiah languished in the royal dungeon in Babylonia until Nebuchadnezzar's death in 397 BCE; Evil Meroduch -- Nebuchadnezzar's son and successor -- freed him (and his nephew Jeconiah)” today. Ironically, Zedikiah died on the same day on which he was freed.

2011: “The Matchmaker” is scheduled to be shown at the West Chester Jewish Film Festival.

2011:Early this morning, in the southern town of Khan Yunis, IAF aircraft bombed a car carrying four senior Hamas operatives who, according to Israel, were on their way to Sinai with plans to kidnap or attack Israelis vacationing on the peninsula.

2011: The Israeli Counter-Terror Bureau urged Israelis today to leave the Sinai Peninsula immediately, after revealing that Israeli intelligence agencies had obtained concrete information of plans by terrorists to kidnap or attack Israeli nationals vacationing there over the upcoming Pesach holiday.

2011:Naama Shafir, a Sabbath-observing Israeli, scored a career-high 40 points to power the University of Toledo women's basketball team to the school's first national postseason championship in any sport.. (As reported by JTA)

2012(11th of Nisan, 5772): Ninety-seven year old “Mauricio Lasansky, an Argentine-born master printmaker who was equally well known for a series of drawings depicting the horrors of Nazism” passed away today at his home in Iowa City, Iowa. (As reported by Margalit Fox)


2012(11th of Nisan, 5772): Ninety-year old Borscht Belt tumbler Lou Goldstein passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)


2012:Hillel C. Neuer and Bari Weiss are scheduled to discuss “From Eleanor Roosevelt to Qaddafi: An Insider's Account of Human Rights at the UN” at the 92nd Street Y.

2012: “Kosher deli in England a Titanic survivor’s legacy” published today tells the story of restaurant started almost a century ago by a Jewish survivor of the aquatic disaster.


2013(22nd of Nisan, 5773): Final Day of Pesach

2013: Elem, a non-profit organization for runaway homeless and neglected Israeli and Arab youth in distress is scheduled to host an evening of dinner and drinks to support Israeli Jewish and Arab Youth at Risk prepared by some of New York’s finest chefs.

2013: Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon toured the Golan Heights this afternoon, and vowed that Israel would prevent the proliferation of weapons "that could threaten us in the future" to radical elements in Syria


2013:Israel launched its first airstrike on the Gaza Strip today since the Egyptian-mediated truce ended November’s eight-day bout of fighting.

 2013: Following the shots fired from Syrian territory into the Golan Heights today, IDF tanks returned fire at a Syrian military target across the border, successful destroying whatever had been doing the shooting.

2013: As of today Supercentenarian Evelyn Kozak became “the seventh oldest person living in the world” an honor she held until her death in June of 2013.


2014: The Jewish Theological Seminary is scheduled to present “Mah Nishtanah: Posing New Questions, Telling New Stories – An evening of inspiring Passover learning.”

2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Chai Fantasy” – a panel discussion about fantasy literature and Judaism.

2014(2ndof Nisan, 5774) Ninety-four year old David Werdyger, the Chasidic Chazan and Holocaust survivor passed away today.


2014(2ndof Nisan, 5774): Seventy eight year old pianist and critic Harris Goldsmith passed away today. (As reported by Vivien Schweitzer)


2014(2ndof Nisan, 5774): Seventy-eight year old Sandy “Grossman, who won eight Emmys, directed broadcasts of 10 Super Bowls, 18 N.B.A. finals, 5 Stanley Cup finals and Olympic hockey” passed away today.


2014: Pierre Moscovici completed his service as Minister of Finance for France.

2015: Alex Schiffman Shilo is scheduled to speak today the “First Person 2015 Series” sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015: WQXR is scheduled to broadcast “A Musical Fest for Passover with Itzhak Perlman.


2015: “At a White House news conference today, President Barack Obama said that the United States and the five other world powers negotiating in Switzerland had reached a “historic understanding with Iran” on a deal that, if fully implemented, would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” (As reported by JTA)

2016(23rdof Adar II, 5776): Shabbat Parah;

2016: At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, celebration of the B'nei Mitzvah of Kate Hinz and Ben Binder is scheduled to take place this morning.

2016: “Firebirds” is scheduled to be shown at the Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.

2016: The new Nadav Remez Quintet is scheduled to perform for the first time at Rockwood Music Hall

2017: “On the Map” a film about “the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team's historic win” is scheduled to be shown on the final day of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

2017: “A new Israeli system designed to intercept medium-range missiles became operational today after it was unveiled at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US defense officials.” (As reported by Tama Pileggi and Stuart Winer)

2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character by Marty Appel and Blitzed:Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler

2017: As part of Spring Break, the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to let “kids and students” enter without an admission charge.

2018(17th of Nisan, 5778): Third Day of Pesach, first day of Chol Hamoed; second day of the Omer

2018: In Jerusalem, the Tower of David is scheduled to host a performance of “The Riddle of the Queen of Sheba.”

2018: “The Unorthodox Matchmaker” published today described the role of Yocheved Lerner-Miller in the love life of the Observant.


2018: Gary David Cohn completed his service as Donald Trump’s Direction of the National Economic Council.

2018: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in an interview published today, recognized Israel’s right to exist and extolled the prospect of future diplomatic relations between his kingdom and the Jewish state.

2018: In Jerusalem, the Begin Center is scheduled to host “Map and Matza”

2018(17th Nisan, 5778): Seventy-three year old reporter Connie Lawn passed away today. (As reported by Daniel E. Slotnik)


2019: The voters of Chicago are scheduled to go to the polls where they will decide which of two African American women will replace Rham Emanuel as the city’s chief executive.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Humor Me.”

2019: With The Kinneret having risen have risen 15.5 since Friday including an 11 centimeter in a single day, today’s forecast calls for local rainfall in northern Israel.

2019: A week before its national elections, Israelis consider the impact of yesterday’s reported by researchers Noam Rotem and Yuval Adam that there is “a network of hundreds of fake Twitter accounts that promoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and attacked his political rivals…”

 

 

 
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