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This Day, November 23, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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November 23

912: Birthdate of Otto the Great, founder of the Holy Roman Empire which was neither holy nor Roman. During his reign Rabbis living in the Rhineland addressed questions to the Rabbis in Palestine “concerning the reported appearance of the Messiah.” This report was based on information supplied by 12 century Rabbi Isaac ben Dorolo.

1221: Birthdate of King Alfonso X of Castile who had Yehudah ben Moshe translate several texts on magic into the national vernacular.

1248: In the long war to unite Spain, King Ferdinand III of Castile takes Seville from the Moors. Ferdinand is remembered as the king who refuses Pope’s demand that Jews be forced to wear special badge and clothing.  The reason given by the monarch is a fear that Jews would flee to Muslim Granada, which would be disastrous for the revenues of the kingdom. “The Jews have played a prominent part in Seville’s history since the 4th Century and after the Christian Reconquest, their community was concentrated in this part of the city and enjoyed a period of great prosperity until the end of the 14th Century. Jews were prominent bankers, tradesmen, doctors, writers, philosophers, and advisors to both Arab and Christian rulers. It is no coincidence that the Jewish quarter of Santa Cruz is located right next to the Royal Palace, the Alcázar. A street called “El Callejón de La Judería” (“The Little Street of the Jewish Quarter”) leads into the heart of the Santa Cruz neighborhood.”

1510: The Jews were expelled from Naples. Fifteen years earlier, the Spanish had conquered the island, and within a year had issued an order for the banishment of all Jews, which was never carried out. Now the community, which had existed since Roman times, was forced out. The only Jews remaining were the "New Christians" (who were to be expelled 5 years later) and 200 wealthy families who paid a new annual tax for such tolerance.

1584: Today, Giles Fletcher, the Eton and Cambridge educated “poet, diplomat and MP” who while serving as the English “minister of Musovy claimed to have discovered the Ten Lost Tribes among the Tartars” began serving as an MP “for Winchelsea, one of the Cinque Ports.”

 1584: The Sultan ordered an investigation into the number of synagogues in Safed. In his letter to the local administration, he wrote, "in the town of Safed there are only seven sacred mosques. But the Jews who in olden times had three synagogues have now thirty-two synagogues, and they have built their buildings very high."

1593: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Bucharest claiming the lives of many Jews.

1648: Coronation of old 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” [Editors’ note: A few years later, 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.”]

1700: Beginning of the Papacy of Clement XI who in 1704 issued a bull that “dealt with the education of potential converts, encouraged forced preaching to Jews, and emphasized the importance of providing financial assistance to Jews who converted” and “asserted that new converts were to be fully accepted into the Catholic community.”

1702(3rd of Kislev): Thirty six Jews were killed in an explosion in Lemberg, Poland

1777(23rd of Cheshvan): Rabbi Aaron Katzenellenbogen of Brisk, author of Minhat Aharon passed away.

1794: In Savannah, GA, Judith De Lyon and Joseph Abrahams gave birth to Rachel Abrahams.

1800: In London, Dinah and Henry Henoch Myers and Michael Meir Myers.

1800: In Charleston SC, Sarah and Abraham Moise gave birth to Isaac Moise, the husband of Hetty Lopez.

1801: In Philadelphia, Leon van Amringe, Isaiah Nathan, Isaac Marks, Aaron Levi, Jr., Abraham Gumpert, and Abraham Moses took title to a plot of ground to be used as a place of burial for members of the newly formed Congregation Mickvé Israel.

1801: In Bridgetown, Barbados, Eliezer Montefiore and Judith Montefiore gave birth to Jacob Barrow Montefiore who “entered into business with his brother Moses, and when in the early thirties the movement for the financing of Australian colonization from London was incepted Montefiore, who had been connected with the Colonial produce trade, became active in the various public schemes as a member of the South Australian Colonization Association, organized to settle South Australia on the Wakefield system. He was also appointed member of the first board of commissioners entrusted by the British government with the administration of the colony. He visited the colony in the year 1843 and again in 1854. His reception on his first visit by the governor, Sir George Grey, and the people was enthusiastic. During his visit to South Australia in 1843 he acted as an agent for the Rothschilds, at the same time holding a partnership with his brother Joseph Barrow in the firm of Montefiore Brothers of London and Sydney. The township of Montefiore, at the confluence of the Bell and MacQuarrie rivers, in Wellington Valley, was founded by the brothers, and they contributed actively to the establishment there of places of worship for all denominations. The organization of the Bank of Australasia was largely due to their efforts. In Adelaide there is a hill named after them. In 1885, at the request of the directors of the Art Union Gallery of Adelaide, Jacob sat for the artist B. S. Marks, the portrait being hung in that gallery

1804: Birthdate of Franklin Piercefourteenth President of the United States. Pierce is part of the unmemorable trio who served occupied the White House in the decade before the Civil War including Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan.  Among his few claims to fame is that he was the first and maybe the only President whose name appears on the charter of a synagogue. Pierce signed the Act of Congress in 1857 that amended the laws of the District of Columbia to enable the incorporation of the city's first synagogue, the Washington Hebrew Congregation.

1812: Miriam Keyser and London born Barent Solomon Gompertz gave birth to Charlotte Gompertz.

1825: Birthdate of Henriette Goldschmidt who married Rabbi Abraham Meyer Goldschmidt and was a leading educator, social worker and activists in the fight for the rights of German women.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldschmidt-henriette

1831: Jonas Engel married Sarah Louisa Barnett today.

1833: In Turek, near Kalish in Russian, Poland, Wolf Rosenthal and Esther Kolskey gave birth to “painter, engraver, etcher, lithographer and illustrator” and husband of Carolina Rosenthal who came to Philadelphia in 1849 where he pursued a career that included making illustrations of the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War for the United States Military Commission, producing a collection of five hundred historical portraits and providing illustrations for “The Legend of Ben Levi.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Rosenthal#/media/File:New_Masonic_Hall_Interior_1855.jpg

1836(14th of Kislev, 5597): Jacob Cohen Bakri, a wealthy French Jew who played a key role in the French acquisition of Algeria passed away today.

1838(6th of Kislev, 5599): Sixty-seven year old Bohemian native Samuel Hyman and the husband of Elizabeth Hyman passed away today in Plymouth, England.

1840: Sixty-six year old Louis Gabriel Ambroise Bonald, the anti-Semitic “French philosopher, politician and author” who believed that most Jews were “parasites” and that before they could be emancipated they must adopt Catholicism, passed away today.

1841: It was announced that Albert Goldsmid had been promoted to the rank of Lt. Col. In the British Army.

1843: One day after he had passed away, 31 year old Isaac Abrahams was buried at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1844(12th of Kislev, 5605): Fifty-three year old “Austrian financier and philanthropist Hermann Todesco passed away at his native Pressburg, Hungary today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_19910.html

1845: Paul Julius Reuter married Ida Maria Elizabeth Clementine Magnus in Berlin completing a series of changes that had begun a month before when he arrived had arrived in London.  In that time he changed his name to Joseph Josephat, converted to Christianity and then changed his name again to Paul Julius Reuter.

1845: Forty-six year old Michael Solomon Alexander, the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem passed away.  An ordained Rabbi, he converted to Christianity in 1825.

1845: Forty-six year old Michael Solomon Alexander, a convert to Christianity who became the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem passed away today.

1847: The Ladies of the Society for the Religious Instruction in Charleston, South Carolina passed a resolution of tribute at the passing of the British author, Grace Aguilar. Aguilar had died on September 16, 1847 at the age of 32. Aguilar's work had been championed by Philadelphia editor Isaac Leeser, who published Aguilar's books in the United States and included her writings in his monthly magazine, The Occident and American Jewish Advocate. As a result, Aguilar was in many ways better known in the Jewish community of the United States than in England. In addition to historical romances (e.g. The Vale of Cedars) and reflections on Judaism (The Spirit of Judaism, 1842) Aguilar's influential book, The Women of Israel (1844), contested the claims by numerous Christian authors that Judaism denigrated women. Aguilar argued for Judaism's ancient and contemporary regard for women by detailing the strong and admirable women who appear in Judaism's essential defining text, the Bible. Aguilar returned the feeling of kinship that American Jewish women bore her. She even responded to an 1843 request from Savannah to contribute to a fair that local Jewish women were holding to raise funds to hire a rabbi. Aguilar sent along 2 purses, 6 needle cases, and 12 pincushions on which she had done the needlework, along with additional needlework pieces gathered from some of her friends. In mourning Aguilar's passing, the Charleston women truly felt they had lost one of their own. Aguilar's death at a young age evinced a strong response. Leeser observed that “there has not arisen a single Jewish female in modern times who has done so much for the illustration and adornment of her faith as Grace Aguilar.” The Charleston women expressed their appreciation for the “power and effect” of the “pen of this champion of our faith, against that giant Prejudice, whose shadow blackens the earth.” Citing her as the “moral governess of the Hebrew family,” the women of the Society resolved that her death “must be regarded as a national calamity; and that no demonstration of respect, however high, can convey an adequate sense of the exalted estimation in which we hold her character or of the profound regret with which we received the tidings of her dissolution.”

1848(27th of Cheshvan, 5609): Twenty-six year old Hermann Jellinek, the younger brother of Rabbi Adolf Jellinek was executed today for his role in the Vienna Uprising in October, 1848

1848 (27th of Cheshvan): Rabbi Meir Benjamin Danon, author of Be’er ba Sadeh, passed away

1852: “Trial for Arson In the First Degree’ published today described the trial of Aaron Diamond on charges of arson. Mr. Morrison appeared as counsel representing Aaron Diamond, a German Jew who does not speak English in the case of the People vs. Aaron Diamond.  The case revolved around an allegation that Diamond and Joshua Feller had set fire to the dwelling of John Nally.  Morrison demanded that Diamond be tried separately. When several of the prosecution’s witnesses failed to show up, the District Attorney said that it would “unsafe” to convict the defendant and the Jury was directed by the court to render a verdict of not guilty.

1852: The discovery of Asteroid 21 Lutetia by Hermann Goldschmidt was published today.

1853: Two days after he had passed away, 99 year old Levy Alexander, the husband of Prussian born Fanny Alexander, was buried today at the “Exeter Jewish Cemetery.

1853: The Hebrew Benevolent Society celebrated its 32nd anniversary this evening with a dinner attended by 350 gentlemen at the Chinese Assembly Rooms on Broadway. 

1854(2nd of Kislev, 5615): Fifty year old Belarus native Meshulam Zalman Feiwel Friedland, of Slutsk, the “son of Shmuel Zanvil (Zavel) Friedland and Itke Friedland” passed away today in Latvia.

1855: Seventy-four year old French statesman Louis-Mathieu Molé the opponent of Jewish emancipation who was the official named by Napoleon to bring together the Sanhedrin in 1806 and 1807 passed away today.

1856: Isaac and Julie Judith Josephine Mautner gave birth to Rosa Perlhefter.

1863: Two days after she had passed away, Rachel (Isaacs) Ansell, the wife of Jacob Ansell with whom she had had eleven children, was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1867: Birthdate of Edgar D. Peixotto, the native New Yorker and son of Raphael Peixotto who became a successful lawyer in San Francisco, CA.

1868: In Chicago, Illinois, Julius Rosenthal and Jette Wolfe gave birth to attorney Lessing Rosenthal the graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Northwestern Law School and husband of Mrs. Lillie Frank Myers who combined a distinguished legal career with service to the Jewish community including serving as director of the Jewish Training School in Chicago.

1870: It was reported today that Thanksgiving Services will be held at the 44th Street Synagogue after which children from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum will enjoy a holiday dinner provided by the Trustees.

1870(29th of Cheshvan, 5631): Augusta Feuchtwanger nee Levy, the wife of Lewis Feuchtwanger, passed away today in New York.

1870: Lewis Hart married Adelaide Levy at the New Synagogue today.

1871: Birthdate of Morris Masskov, the native of Odessa who gained fame American character actor Maurice Moscovitch whose last film may have been his most famous – Charlie Chaplain’s “The Great Dictator.”

1871: Ignatz Ratzsky was released from Sing Sing Prison after having served nine years for the robbery-murder of a German Jew named Sigismund Fellner.  Ratzsky had originally been sentenced to death, but Governor Fenton commuted his sentence based his judgment that the conviction had been based on circumstantial evidence.

1873: In New York, founding  of the Société Israélite Française de Secours Mutuels de New York which met on the fourth Sunday of each month, provided money for sick, death and burial benefits and owned burial grounds at Bayside, Long Island.

1874: Carl Schurz will deliver a lecture this evening sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association on “Educational Problems” at Steinway Hall in New York.

1876: In Washington, DC, “Zody and Sarah (Ullman) Strasburger gave birth to Georgetown University trained attorney Milton Stasburger, the husband of Elsa Coblenzer who “served in the office of the Adjutant General during World War” and who was a member of Washington Hebrew Congregation.

1877: It was reported today that two men have been charged for their role in stealing furs from A.T. Stewart & Co. Robert Kyle was charged with stealing the first while Seligman Hirsch, who was described as a “Hebrew” fur dealer, was charged with receiving the stolen firs. Why or how the reported knew that Hirsch was Jewish is not stated nor is any reason given for not identifying any of the other characters by their religious affiliation.

1880: It was reported today the lower house of the Prussian Diet debated the proposals by the anti-Semitic party to limit the activities of Jews in Germany.  The anti-Semites reflected the views of Reverend Stecker, the Court Chaplin who wants legislation adopted that will “keep the Jews from any post of authority.”  The opponents including members of the Liberal Party defended the Jews and “contended that it was breach of the Constitution to deny that Jews were Germans.”

1882: In New York, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment distributed funds to a variety of charitable institutions including $1,680 to the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.

1883: It was reported today that Spanish in Morocco tried and convicted twelve Jews accused supplying guns to the Berbers.

1883: Henry Irving will play Shylock, one of his signature roles in tonight’s performance of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Star Theatre.

1883: According to a report that appeared in today’s edition of the Hebrew Standard, Hugh O’Neill is quoted as telling a Jew in New York, “We don’t want any of your people in our employ.”

1884: It was reported today that the friends of Mrs. Max Rosenberg, the former Miss Jennie E. Lyman, were surprised to hear that she has filed for divorce especially since most of them did not she had gotten married several months while visiting New York.  In her petition, Mrs. Rosenberg accused her husband of “extreme cruelty.”  Rosenberg disputes his wife’s claims and says that the cause of the problem is her father’s dislike for him because he was Jewish.

1885: Birthdate of Valerian Dovgalevsky, the Ukrainian born “son of Zaiwel Dovgalevsky and Berta Dovgalevsky, an “intimate of Lenin” and a participant in the October Revolution who served as the Soviet Union’s Ambassador to France in the 1920’s.

1885: Birthdate of Alexander “Alex” Trachtenberg the native of Odessa who was active in the Socialist Party of America and the Communist Party USA.

1885: It was reported today that this year’s Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Fair raised over $7,800.

1886: Warrants are expected to be issued today for those who have violated Massachusetts “Sunday Closing Laws.”  Several Jews and their customers are expected to be named since up until last week, it had been considered permissible for the Jews to operate their businesses on Sunday since they were closed on Saturday for their Sabbath observances.

1886(25th of Cheshvan, 5647): Sixty-four year old author and historian Leopold Kompert, best known for his role in the “Kompert Affair” in which he and Heinrich Graetz “were brought to court in Vienna for publishing ideas that were heretical to Catholic faith, in addition to contradicting Jewish tradition.”

1888:  Birthdate of Harpo Marx, one of the famous Marx Brothers.

1889: Jacob Levy arrived in New York City from Poland today and moved in with his brother at 83 Norfolk Street in NYC.

1889: Sanitary officers “seized some unwholesome meat and vegetables in the sidewalk markets in the Hebrew quarter in the Tenth Ward.”

1889: “The Red Hussar,” a comedy opera in three acts by Edward Solomon, with a libretto by Henry Pottinger Stephens, which opened at the Lyric Theatre in London tonight.  Solomon was the prolific Ango-Jewish composer and conductor who died prematurely at the age of 29.

1890: Seventy-three year old William III of Netherlands who in 1855 appointed Aron Mendes Chumaceiro chief rabbi of the colony of Curaçao and intervened on behalf of “the persecuted Dutch Jews of Coro, Venezuela” passed away today.

1890: Today’s New Publication List includes a review of a novel entitled The Jew, translated from the Polish of Joseph Ignatius Kraszewski by Linda Da Kowalewska

1890: “Catholic Spain” published today provided a detailed review of Chapters From The Religious History Of Spain Connected With The Inquisition by Henry Charles, a subject near and dear to the hearts of Jews in general and Sephardic Jews in particular.

1891: In Savannah, GA, founding of the Daughters of Israel whose members including Miss Maria Minis, Mrs. M.G. Ehrlich and Miss Maud Hendricks.

1891: Two days after he passed away, 73 year old Aaron Levy, the husband of the former Marianne Hart and the father Alexander and John Arthur Levy, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1892: In Romania, Rabbi Ezekiel Paneth, the son of R’ Moshe Paneth and Milka Paneth and his wife Rivka Paneth gave birth to Giza Paneth who would tragically pass away at the age of eight months.

1893: In Milikov, Karl and Rosa Low gave birth to Helene Low who became Helene Neubauer when she married Karl Neubauer and who died at Treblinka.

1894: At today’s meeting of the Tenement House Committed that was held in the Old Criminal Court Mr.Rice and Mr. Tuska of the United Hebrew Charity expressed their agreement with Reverend John B. Devins that tenement residents do not prefer filth, “that there should be public lavatories and that “every saloon should have an outside drinking fountain.  They also believe that tenements should be better lit, have water on each floor and house kindergartens.

1895: This evening in Richmond, VA, the Paradise Lodge of B’nai B’rith “began a movement for the Jews of the United States to give tangible evidence of the debt they owe to the memory of Thomas Jefferson as father of religious liberty” in the United States.

1896:”A Radical Chicago Rabbi” published today summarized the view of Dr. Emil G. Hirsh, the rabbi Temple Sinai on the Windy City’s south-side, including his beliefs that observing Shabbat on Saturday “and the hope of the return to the Holy Land” are “relics of an attractive tradition but entirely out of keeping with advance and progress of modern ideas.

1896: In Philadelphia, the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women hosted a reception for the National Board at the Mercantile Club.

1896(18th of Kislev, 5657): Forty-one year old Ella Heyman, the native of Wheeling, West Virginia, passed away today in St. Louis.

1897: The Ladies Committee of the Home and Hospital for Jewish Incurables met this afternoon in London.

1897: The Apprenticing Committee of the Jews’ Hospital and Orphan Asylum met at Hamilton House this morning.

1897: Charles Schapiro was being held in the Tombs today after having killed Louis Lieberman and wounded his girlfriend Yetta Gordon yesterday.   Gordon whose wounded eye was bandaged is being held in the House of Detention as a material.  She had rejected Schapiro because he did not earn enough money.  And he was angry because she would not return the twenty-five dollar ring he had “bought for her with money she had lent him.”

1898: Today “Marcus Aaron who worked for his father at the Louis I. Aaron Company and in 1911 would succeed his father at the Homer Laughlin China Company married Stella Hamburger with whom he had two children – “Marcus Lester and Fannie Hamburger Aaron.

1898: In Pécs, Hungary, the local cantor and his wife gave birth to opera singer Dezső Ernster who survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to perform at the Metropolitan Opera.

1899: Birthdate of Parisian Israel Moshe Blauschild, the son of Romanian immigrants who as Marcel Dailo the movie actor who spent WWII in Hollywood before returning to his native country to pursue his career.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/23/obituaries/marcel-dalio-83-film-actor-dead.html

1900(1st of Kislev, 5661): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1900:”The anti-Semites and a number of Conservatives have introduced a bill in the Reichstag against the immigration of Jews.”

1901: In Chicago, Edward Morris, the Jewish born son of Sarah and Nelson Morris and the President of the Morris and Company (Meatpackers) and the former Helen Swifts gave birth Wellesley College graduate and leading psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner Buttinger and wife of Joseph Buttinger whom she met while studying medicine at the University of Vienna.

1902: Birthdate of New York native Aaron Bank, the U.S. Army Colonel considered by some to be father of what eventually became “the Green Berets.”

1903: Forty-five year director of the Educational Alliance and future Manhattan Borough President Marcus M. Marks wrote a letter today to President Roosevelt in which he “discusses the Republican situation for the 1904 presidential campaign,” the potential for an “industrial depression,” “the economic impact of labor strikes, and the liberalization of liquor laws in New York.””

1904: The names of some of the prominent victims of the recent riots at Warsaw that have just been made known included “Baroness Hirsch who was shot while she was driving by in a carriage.”

1905(25th of Cheshvan, 5666): Sixty-eight year old German born American actor Daniel Edward Bandmann, the son of Solomon and Rebecca Bandmann turned Montana rancher passed away today after which he was buried in Missoula.

1905: As of today it was reported that the committee which is collecting funds for the relief of Jews suffering from the Russian massacres has raised $660, 756 including $51from the Orthodox Congregation of Erie, PA, $15 from the New London (CT) Ladies’ Aid Society and $720 from the citizens of Wheeling, West Virginia.

1905: “In view of the very great demand made upon the Jews of America to relieve the sufferings of the victims of the Russian savagery, the Committee on the Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the Settlement of Jews in the United States has resolved to abandon the project of a commemorative monument and will return to the donors to the monument fund all contributions thus far received” with the hope that the money will then be donated to help the Jews of Russia.

1905: In New York, “not a seat was to be had” during the matinee showing of “The Riots of Kishneff” (Kishinev) which raised $1,506.06 for the relief fund aid the Jews of Russia.

1905: Tonight, Jacob P. Adler oversaw a production of “King Lear” which raised $1,500 for the Jews of Russia.  Adler gave a speech at the end of the third act in which he asked how they could go with the play “when our minds are upon the atrocities committed our countrymen?  Will we leave out the fourth act?” to which the audience responded with cheers and cries of “yes, yes!”

1905: A “procession arranged by Joseph Barondess, Abram Wattman and Dr. Simonoff organized “what was probably the most remarkable demonstration that has ever been known on the east side…when fully one hundred thousand Jews turned out” today “to join a procession…formed to mourn the dead slain in the Russian anti-Semitic riots.”

1905: It was reported today that as the violence against the Jews has continued Percival Menken said “There is far more in this massacre of our race in Russia than is apparent on the surface.  Not until the Jews are restored to their native land and have their own armies and battleships will these persecutions cease. (This is nine years after the First Zionist Congress met and forty years before the Shoah came to an end.)

1905: It was reported from St. Petersburg, that “dispatches from Southwestern Russia indicate that the Zionist movement has obtained a powerful impetus from the anti-Jewish disorders.”

1906: The St. Petersburg correspondent of The Times of London reported that “the Reactionary threats of pogroms if concessions are granted to the Jews are treated by the Government with contempt” while “Premier Stolypin has forbidden the police to expel Jewish students from St. Petersburg.”

1907(17th of Kislev, 5668): Parashat Vayishlach

1907: “Rider Haggard In Mighty Deeds” published today provides a detailed reviews of Margaret, H.R. Rider Haggards set in the London of Henry VII and Spain that features a heroine who “is the daughter of John Castell, a London merchant of immense wealth whose father was Marano who concealed “his Jewish origin” and the Marquis of Morella whose main mission is “to ferret out wealthy and secretly faithful Jews so they can be turned over to the Inquisition.

1908: It was reported today that the “new annex to the Home of the Daughters of Jacob” cost $200,000.

1908: It was reported today that Max Stern and Johanna Posin were two of the speakers at the 20th anniversary celebration of the Kaiserin Elizabeth Lodge of the Independent Order of B’rith Abraham whose “400 women members” are led by their President Mrs. Samuel Sommers.

1909: The annual meeting of the Civic Federation which features a discussion of old age pensions by a panel including Samuel Gompers came to a close in New York City.

1910: Twenty-three year old Adelphi Academy trained painter and engraver Edmund Weill, the New York born son of Marx and Caroline married Carolyn Wenstock.

1911(2nd of Kislev, 5672): Eighty-five year old Rabbi Jacob Hamburger, “the sole author and editor of the first explicitly Jewish Encyclopedia” passed away today.

1911(2nd of Kislev, 5672): Seventy year old Imperial Councilor and Chief Cantor Josef Singer passed away today.

1912(13th of Kislev, 5673): Parashat Vayishlach

1912(13th  of Kislev, 5673): Seventy year old Wolfe Londoner, the New York City born son of Rachel Hearts and Herman Londoner and Republican Mayor Denver  who was forced to leave office because of election irregularities passed away today.

1912: It was reported in today’s edition of The Reform Advocate that Congressman Jefferson M Levy has announced that will combat the efforts now being made to acquire Monticello… which he owns, for the United States government and he will not and cannot be forced to part with is property.

1912: “This evening a memorial meeting for the late David Blaustein is scheduled to take placed at the Educational Alliance under the auspices of the Society of Jewish Social workers of Greater New York.

1912:  The British Consul in Jerusalem continued to complain to the British Ambassador in Constantinople about the British born Jews arriving in his city.  Of the latest batch of 20, only six had means to support themselves while twelve of them were living off of contributions supplied by local Jewish charities.

1912(2nd of Kislev, 5672): Ninety one year old General Sir Charles D’Aguilar, the son of Lieut. Gen. Sir George D’Aguilar who had “held high office at Bevis Marks” passed away today leaving  an estate valued at £200,000 to be shared by his two daughter.

1913: Supreme Court Justice Seabury has ordered the sale in foreclosure of the Bijou theatre property on Broadway in a suit brought by Felix M. Warburg, Isaac N. Seligman, Paul M. Warburg and Mortimer L. Schiff as trustees under the will of Alfred M. Heinsheimer against the Bijou Real Estate Company.

1914: During WW I “A Reuter dispatch from Constantinople by way of Sofia” says that the Porte (Turkish government) has decided to permit Russian Jews resident in Turkey to become Ottoman subjects provided that they do not revert to their former nationality at the end of the war.”  (This had special meaning for the Jews living in Palestine, since a large number of them had come from Russia and were viewed suspiciously by the Turks)

1914: Birthdate of actress Ellen Drew, the second wife of Ukrainian born author and screenwriter Sy Barlett, co-author of Twelve O”Clock High.

https://www.dustjackets.com/pages/books/6913/beirne-lay-jr-sy-bartlett/twelve-oclock-high

1914: In New York, The Evening Telegram reported that when German troops “reached the neighborhood of Pabiantze” they appeared to feel already at home” since it “is large people German colonists” and “the rest of the inhabitants are exclusively Jews.”

1914: The Petrograd (Russia) correspondent of the Morning Post wired London today about friction between the Germans and their Austrian Allies as could be seen by “a stormy council” presided over by the Kaiser during which after “mutual ruminations” had been exchanged the Germans “demanded that Austria should give up every man in defense of East Prussia” while the Austrians demanded “that the Germans should make a serious attempt to save Cracow.”  (Most people think about WW I as being fought in the trenches of the Western Front. Here is a reminder of the fighting on the Eastern Front – fighting which took an unbelievable toll on the Jewish populations of Russia and Austria since the combat was waged in the lands where they were living.)

1914: According to reports published today the American Jewish Committee contends that 5,000 Jews in Jaffa had applied for permission to become naturalized Turkish subjects out of a total of 25,000 Russian Jews living in the region of Palestine.

1915: In London, a French delegation led by François-Georges Picot, a professional diplomat with extensive experience in the Levant, and a British delegation led by Sir Arthur Nicolson met to discuss plans for the post-war partition of the Ottoman Empire which would eventually result in the Sykes-Picot Agreement.  (Editor’s Note – You cannot understand what is going on in the Middle East today if you do not understand the origins and nature of this agreement)

1915: In Patterson, NJ Edith Stern Levine and Jules C. Levine, a “business manager of The News,” gave birth to Robert Haines Levine, the longtime news editor of The Patterson News and husband of “the former Shirley Stapleton” with who had had five children - Robert, John, Marjorie, Elizabeth and Marianne.

1915: “Praise Sisterhood’s Work” published today included the positive comments made by Chief Magistrate McAdoo about the work done by Sisterhood of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue under the leadership of Mrs. Mortimer Menken “to help wayward Jewish girls in the police courts” as well as to aid neighborhood settlement houses in their activities.

1915: Twenty-four year old chemist turned violinist and orchestra leader Ben Bernie, the New York born son of Julius an Anna Bernie married Rose Harris today in New York City.

1915: It was reported today that based on information provided by Jacob H. Schiff and Dr. J.L. Magnes American Jews must raise at least thirty million dollars to aid the approximately five million Jews in who are suffering from the effects of the World War in Russia, Poland, Galicia and Palestine.

1915: In the manner of a Shiva Minyan, a memorial service will be held again this morning and this evening in honor of Professor Schechter of blessed memory which will be led by the students and faculty of JTS.

1915: Birthdate of Olmütz native Anton Hare, a passenger on board the St. Louis who survived because he was allowed to disembark in England.

1916: A wireless message of sympathy was sent by the executive committee of the American Federation of Galician and Bukowinian Jews and the American Federation of Hungarian Jews to the Austrian imperial family following the death this week of Emperor Franz Josef.

1916: “At a meeting this evening of the executive committee of the American Federation of Galician and Bukowinian Jews and the American Federation of Hungarian Jews it was decided to issue a proclamation calling upon all Jewish congregations and federated bodies to set aside the day of the burial of Emperor Francis Joes for the observation of appropriate services and exercise.”

1916: Birthdate of Rose Vessel, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland who gained fame as Rose Mattus who along with her husband Reuben founded Häagen-Dazs ice cream business.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/obituaries/01mattus.html

1917: As Imperial forces struggle with the weather and the Ottoman forces in the Judean Hills, the “60th(London) Division commanded by Major General John Shea arrived at Latrun to provide relief for the units that have been worn down by the elements and combat.

1917: In Roslavi, Russia eight Jews were killed and twenty were wounded during an anti-Semitic riot when the mob looted Jewish opened shops.

1917: Kozlov and Tiraspol, Russia were the site of “grave anti-Jewish riots.

1917: A pogrom in Tambov “leads to the total ruin of businesses established by Jewish refugees from the war zone lead the Jewish leaders to ask authorities to give official sanction to a plant to arm a Jewish self-defense corps.”

1917: Izvestia and Pravda published the full text of Sykes-Picot Agreement which exposed the plans of the French and British to carve up the Ottoman Empire after the World War ended. 

1917: It was reported today that the recipients of the funds raised by the Federation of Jewish Charites included Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, the Hebrew Technical Institute, the Jewish Big Brothers, the Motefiore Home, the Educational Alliance and many sisterhoods associated with local synagogues and temples.

1918: In New York Rose Gussin, a shopkeeper and her husband, gave birth to Zelma Gussin who gained fame as California architect Zelma Wilson

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-05-14/local/me-4057_1_michael-wilson

1918: After three days, the Lemberg Pogrom came to an end with 50 to 150 Jewish dead, hundreds more injured and untold loss of property thanks to looting carried out by Polish soldiers and local civilians.

1918: Felix M. Warburg, Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers, announced that organization's decision to hold its New York City campaign designed to raise $5,000,000 to aid Jewish war sufferers during the week starting on December 8 and ending on December 15.

1919: In Durham, NC, Fredrick and Loretta Koch gave birth to University of North Carolina and Princeton graduate and the holder of two Master of Fine Arts Degree Robert Alan Koch who was one of the “Monuments Men.”

1920: The New York section of the National Council Women is scheduled to meet today.

1920: Birthdate of poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan who used the pseudonym of Paul Antschel.

Death is a gang-boss aus Deutchland his eye is blue

he hits you with leaden bullets his aim is true

there's a man in this house your golden hair Margareta

he sets his dogs on our trail he gives us a grave in the sky

he cultivates snakes he dreams Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland

(from 'A Death Fugue')

1920: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to deliver “an address on ‘Henry Ford’s Challenge and a Jew’s Reply’” today at “the regular monthly meeting of the New York Section council of Jewish Women” being held at Temple B’nai Jeshurun.

1920: “Mrs. Frederick Wakeham, the historian of the Society for Political Study” is scheduled to deliver the first of a series of lectures to the New York Section of the Council of Jewish Women that will help them understand their role in voting.

1921: Churchill offers to send a warship to help Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner, collect the fines levied against the Arabs in Jaffa who had rioted and attacked Jews in villages surrounding the ancient port.

1922: The silent movie, Hungry Hearts  produced by the Goldwyn Company and based on a book of the same name written by Anzia Yezierska opened in New York City on Thanksgiving.

1922: At today’s session of the Conference of Lausanne which was supposed to modify the Treaty Sevres which dismembered the Ottoman Empire, Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary clashed with Ismet Pasha a member of the Turkish delegation that included Chief Rabbi Nahum.

1923: Birthdate of Jerrold Lewis "Jerry" Bock, an American musical theatre composer. He received the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Sheldon Harnick for their 1959 musical Fiorello! and the Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for the 1965 musical Fiddler on the Roof with Harnick.

1924: The Price of a Party featuring Dagmar Gadowsky the daughter of Leopold Godowsky.

1924: Herzliya was founded as a moshav. It has since become a flourishing town on the Mediterranean coast. 

1924: In Irvington, NJ, Fannie and Harry Yablonsky gave birth to sociologist Lewis Yablonsky.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/us/lewis-yablonsky-provocative-sociologist-dies-at-89.html

1925: In New York, opera singer Hannah Mandel and garment manufacturer Albert Mandel gave birth to award winning composer and arranger Johnny Mandel whose work include the theme for M*A*S*H ---“Suicide Is Painless”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/arts/music/johnny-mandel-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1926: At Kibbutz Ein Harod, “Noach Hantman, a farmer and poet and Yehudit Volwelsky, a social activist” gave birth to Rafi Eitan, the leader of the Mossad operation that led to the arrest and trial of Adolf Eichman.

https://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/state/personalities/pages/rafi%20eitan.aspx

1926:: Sophie Tuckers hit song “Some of These Days” began a five week stink at the top of the pop charts toda.

1928: In New Haven, CT, George Bock and the former Peggy Alpert gave birth to Jerrold Lewis Bock, the man who composed such Broadway hits as “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Fiorello!” and “She Loves Me.”

1929: After 407 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Whoopee!” a musical with lyrics by Gus Kahn and starring Eddie Cantor as “Henry Williams.”

1930(3rd of Kislev, 5691): Eighty-three year old Russian born American “Hebrew Poet” Israel Fine who was “an intimate friend of President Roosevelt” and the author of “Ode to America” which was “written in Hebrew on the occasion of the centennial celebration of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in 1914” passed away today.

1932: “Dr. Finley Honored As Friend of Jews” published today described banquet in which Dr. John H. Finely, the associate editor of the New York Times was awarded the American Hebrew Medal which goes to the American who has done most to promote better understanding between Chrisitians and Jews in the United States during 1932.

1932: “The Wonderful Day” a comedy film produced by the brothers of Bernard Natan and Emile Natan was released today in France.

1934: It was reported today that “in an effort to curb excessive rentals” the Municipal Council of Tel Aviv “passed a regulations for the fixing of a maximum rate of rent for all business and residential property in the community.”

1934: Today “while the rest of the team was playing in Omiya, Moe Berg went to Saint Luke's Hospital in Tsukiji, ostensibly to visit the daughter of American Ambassador Joseph Grew. Instead, Berg went up to the roof of the hospital, one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo, and filmed the city and harbor with his movie camera. This provided American intelligence with rare photos of the city

1935: In New York City, Milton and Abby Goldsmith gave birth to “critic and classical pianist” Harris Goldsmith.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/arts/music/harris-goldsmith-classical-pianist-and-critic-dies-at-78.html

1935: “Stars Over Broadway,” a musical produced by Samuel Bischoff, with a screenplay co-written by Jerry Wald and Julius Epstein was released in the United States by Warner Brothers.

1936(9th of Kislev, 5697): Sixty-two year old Samuel Jacob Jatzkan, the Lithuanian born rabbi turned publisher who was an early support of Herzl passed away today after suffering a heart attack in Paris.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E06E5DC173EEE3BBC4C51DFB767838D629EDE

1936: Life, the photo journalism magazine, created by Henry R. Luce, was first published. In the days before television, webcams, the internet and the myriad of other ways we have a recording and sending pictures, Life, with it large splash, creative or documentary like images was the major window on the world for millions of Americans.  It was the photographers who made Life the magazine it was and some of the most famous were Jewish including Alfred Eisenstaedt who shot “The Kiss,” Robert Capa who shot “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” as well as the first still photos of first wave at Omaha Beach, Cornell Capa who photographed Grandma Moses and Margaret Bourke-White who snapped “Working Atop the Chrysler Building.”           

1937: In the tenth day of the Arnold Bernstein’s trial before the Hamburg Emergency Court, the German-Jewish shipping magnate is charged by the the prosecution with “exchange irregularities in connection with 2,000,000 marks loaned by the Chemical National Bank of New York.  The trial was part of a ploy by the Nazi government to assume control of Arnold Bernstein & Red Star Line.

1938: In a memorandum to Winston Churchill correspondents in Europe quote Hitler as saying, “he wanted eliminate from German life the Jews, the Churches and suppress private industry.  After that, he would turn to foreign policy again.”

1938: It was reported today that, “The movement started only a week ago by Palestine Jewry to adopt children from Germany is spreading with amazing rapidity.  Following a suggestion made by Israel Rokach, Mayor of Tel Aviv…to members of the Jewish Women’s Labor Federation” have already “volunteered to adopt refugee children.”  The National council of Palestine Jewry had set a goal of adopting 5,000 children but given the quick positive response the goal will be met and exceeded.

1938: Violinist Mischa Elman played “Larghetto Lamentoso” during Leopold Godowsky’s funeral which was held in Manhattan today.  Godowsky was the composer of this piece of music. Music critic Leonard Liebling described the late composer as “a citizen of the world” and “a great and patient teacher of music…” (Godowsky, Elman and Liebling were all Jewish.)

1938: In a column published today Leopold Godowsky was described as “a unique figure among al his contemporaries: a phenomenal pianist and a musician of the most exceptional attributes.”

1939: At 2:30 pm WEVD is scheduled to present a program of “Jewish Melodies.”

1939: “Measure Meets Strong Opposition in Upper House” published today described the split in Hungary with House of Deputies approving the government’s Land Reform Bill which would first be felt by non-resident Jews whose estates would be the first to be broken up and those in the Upper House who oppose the bill that “would allot 1,500,000 acres to small tenants.”

1939: In Baltimore, at the annual convention of the Junior Hadassah, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise told his audience “that American Jews who really believed in democracy had no choice but to support the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.”

1939: “Jung Denies Link to Nazi Organizations” published today described testimony by Harry A. Jung, an American anti-Semite before the House Committee on un-American Activities in which he claimed never to have corresponded with Oscar C. Pfaus and Anna Bogenholm who wanted to start a paper called The National American Patriot that would play a key role “in recovering our country from control of the Jews..”

1939: “The National Catholic Welfare Council said today” that during the two years since January, 1937 the Episcopal Committee from Refugees from Germany has handled the cases of 2,756 refugees “the majority of whom “are of Jewish extraction.”

1939: In Nazi-occupied Poland, Frank ordered that “All Jews and Jewesses within the Government-General who are over ten years of age are required to wear . . . the Star of David.

1940: All Jewish professors of the Utrecht University were dismissed, among them the Dutch mathematician Julius Wolff.

1940: Newspaper people visited Abu Sinan, a village north of Nazareth, where they investigated reports that Helen Yussef Nicola, an 8 year old Arab girl whose parents are devout Greek Orthodox, has been responsible for miraculous healings including cures “of a crippled Arab boy and a crippled Jewish boy from Tel Aviv.”  Over the last two weeks, “hundreds of Christians, Moslems and Jews have visited Helen and come away allegedly convince of her curative capacities.”

1941:  Cherna Berkowitz describes the arrival of refugees at Dorohoi at Transnistria. "The deportations resumed. Women, elderly people and so many children in the freezing cold. With each passing day their numbers dwindle as more of them die.” Dorohoi, people say, “We send the children to give the newcomers some warm tea. They return with horror stories. The men were all at work when they deported the women and children. We have one woman with three small children, one of whom is not yet weaned. All she has are rags and a few pennies in her pocket. The soldiers round up the arrivals and order them to march on."

1941: Thirty thousand Jews are killed at Odessa, Ukraine. "

1942(14th of Kislev, 5703): Seventy-eight year old the Netherlands native Louis Sachs, the son of Jacques Löehman Sachs and Rebekka de Jonge and husband of Emma Sachs was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz

1942: After having been extracted at Port Miou during Operation Watchman, Captain Isidore Newman reached Britian today.

1942: Hitler: Man of Strife by Ludwig Wagner the first full-length biography about the Nazi dictator to appear in the United States since the publication of “Hitler” by Konrad Heiden in 1936 was published today.

1942(14th of Kislev, 5703): Two weeks after she had been transported from Berlin to Terezin, seventy-six year old Bertha Gottschalk was murder today at Terezin.

1942: “My Sister Eileen,” a comedy written by Joseph A. Field and Jerome Chodorov and produced by George S. Kaufman which had opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre, transferred to the Ritz Theatre where it opened tonight.

1943: One hundred and fifty Jewish partisans escape from Occupied Kovno, Lithuania, and head eastward into the Rudninkai Forest.

1943: In one of the most bizarre moments in WW II the following a British bombing raid on Berlin, the damage report of the police commissioner of the Nazi capital recorded a strike on the New Synagogue. 

1943: Birthdate of Andrew Goodman.  Goodman worked a volunteer in the voter right’s registration movement in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. He and two of his fellow volunteers would be murdered that summer in Neshoba County.  It would take years to finally bring their killers to justice.  This brutal murder was one of the many events that helped bring about the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.  That fall, Mississippi would show its displeasure with this change in events by voting for Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President who opposed the Civil Rights Act.  This election would mark a turning point in American history providing the Republican Party with its political base.  

1944: “Three Is a Family” a comedy based on a play by Henry and Phoebe Ephron was released in the United States today.

1944: In New York City, “Selma Judith (née Levy), a president of The League of Women Voters and a moderator of political debates on NBC and  Irwin Lionel Toback, a stockbroker and former vice president of Dreyfus & Company” gave birth to “screenwriter, director and author” James Lee Tobck

1944:Over the next four days, Swiss consulate officials Leopold Breszlauer and Ladislaus Kluger issue about 300 protective documents to Hungarian Jews gathered at the Hungarian-Austrian border.

1944: Birthdate of Joe Eszterhas, the Hungarian-American author, who cut his father out his life entirely what at age 45 he learned “his father had concealed his collaboration in the Hungarian Nazi government and that he had "organized book burnings and had cranked out the vilest anti-Semitic propaganda imaginable."

1945: Ruth and Moshe Dayan give birth to Asaf "Assi" Dayan, an Israeli film director, actor, screenwriter and producer.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/an-israeli-remake-heads-to-hollywood/

1945:  Birthdate of comedian Steve Landesberg.  Born in the Bronx, Landesberg is best known for his portrayal of Dietrich, the cerebral detective on in the television sitcom, Barney Miller.

1946(29th of Cheshvan, 5707): Parashat Toldot

1946: Fawi Husseini, cousin of Arab Higher Committee chairman, is killed by Arabs for selling land to Jews.

1947(1st of Cheshvan, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1947: Der Tog (The Day) began publishing a serialized version of Oyf Fremde Vegn (On Foreign Roads), a novel of Jewish life in America, today

1947:U.S. Army chaplain, Rabbi Mayer Abramowitz married Holocaust survivor Rachel Abramowitz married at Berlin.  They had first met at one of the DP camps General Eisenhower had established for Jewish survivors of the Shoah following clashes in camps shared between survivors and those they recognized as murderers. To Eisenhower’s credit, he found that “The situation was unbearable” and moved to remedy it.

1947:  Eliezer Sukenik an outstanding archaeologist and text expert on the faculty of Jerusalem's Hebrew University first received word of the existence of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The documents, dating between 200 BC and AD 70, had been accidentally discovered earlier that winter by two Bedouin shepherds in the vicinity of Qumran.  Sukenik was able to purchase three of the scrolls they had found, the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Scroll and a small Scroll of Isaiah.  The Great Scroll of Isaiah had already been purchased the Metropolitan Stephen, of St. Mark’s Church.  In one of the strange twists of fate, Yigal Yadin, Sukenik’s son, would arrange for the purchase of the Scroll of Isaiah and three other scrolls in 1954.  The purchase began with a simple newspaper ad in the Wall Street Journal, “Miscellaneous For Sale…Four Dead Sea Scrolls.” Yadin knew the importance of the items and arranged for a loan of a quarter of a million dollars (a large sum in those days, especially for the infant state of Israel) to bring them back to their ancestral home.  The secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls are still being unlocked by scholars to this day.  Considering that the acquisition of the scrolls began against the backdrop of the Partition of Palestine and the Israeli War for Independence, there is enough adventure here for an Indiana Jones style movie.

1948: In today’s session of the UN General Assembly's Political and Security Committee, Dr. Philip C. Jessup suggests that both Bernadotte and UN partition plans be considered in fixing Israeli boundaries. Israel would keep Galilee and pan: of Negev.

1948: Sharp tongued journalist H.L. Mencken whose diaries revealed a streak of anti-Semitism which did not keep him being “close friends” with Alfred Knopf and Ben Hecht, praising the work of Ayn Rand or that asserted that “books such as Caught Short! A Saga of Wailing Wall Street by Eddie Cantor (ghost-written by David Freedman) did more to pull America out of the Great Depression than all government measures combined” “suffered a stroke, which left him aware and fully conscious but nearly unable to read or write and able to speak only with difficulty.”

1948: During the War for Independence, Israeli forces launched Operation Lot in the “eastern Negev and Arava.”

1948: Aubrey S. Eban (Abba Eban) defended Jewish claims to both the Galilee and Negev.

1948: Israel forms a reserve forced made up of men aged 40 to 45.

1949: One day after he had passed away funeral services were for Dr. Nathan Krass, the rabbi emeritus at Temple-Emanuel, a congregation he had served for nine years.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/11/24/96478961.html?pageNumber=32

1949: Israeli forces made their way through the Negev Desert to the isolated outpost at Sodom (the Biblical Sodom) on the Dead Sea which had been cut off from any overland contact for more than six months.  Their success in reaching Sodom extended the boundaries of the new state of Israel 20 miles further south and east.

1950: As of this date 80,000 Jews were reported to be waiting to leave Iraq.

1950: In Brooklyn, exterminator Abraham Schumer and the former Selma Rosen gave birth to Charles Ellis Schumer better known as New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

1951: In London Diana, née Schneiderman and Mark Rapport, “a taxi driver” gave birth to David Stephen Rapport.

http://davidrappaport.co.uk/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/04/obituaries/david-rappaport-character-actor-38-seen-on-la-law.html?scp=8&sq=la%20law&st=cse

1951: “Superman and the Mole Men” a film directed by Lee Sholem and based on characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster was released in the United States today.

1952(5th of Kislev, 5713): Sixty-three year old Polish born Yiddish writer “Ber (Berl) Lapin” who split his adult life between the United States and Argentina passed away today.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2017/02/ber-berl-lapin.html

1953: “Three Sailors and a Girl,” a musical film based on George S. Kaufman’s “The Butter and Egg Man” produced by Sammy Cahn who created the music along with Sammy Fain and with a script co-authored by Devery Freeman was released today in the United States.

1954(27th of Cheshvan, 5715): Seventy-two year old Harry Affelder, the New York born son of Leopold and Rebecca Kahn Affelder, the brother of Jeanette, William and Minnie B. Affelder passed away today after which he was buried at Mount Neboh Cemetery in Glendale, NY.

1955(8th of Kislev, 5716): Today, on his way home from a boxing matching, sixty year old  Shemp Howard suffered a fatal heart attack and/or cerebral hemorrhage.

http://www.shemphoward.com/biography.html

1956 (19th of Kislev): Birthdate of Elliot R. Wolfson, author of Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menachem Mendel Schneerson

 1956(19th of Kislev):: On Friday night, Rabbi Schneerson, "The Rebbe," delivers "a learned discourse on kabbalistic themes to mark the 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev...the Lubavitch 'Day of Redemption.'"

1956: "An inflammatory proclamation was read in all mosques in Egypt declaring 'All Jews are Zionists and enemies of the State.'"

1957: “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein,” a “cult classic” co-produced by Herman Cohen and Iowa native Samuel Z. Arkoff was released today in the United States.

1958: Birthdate of Jerusalem native Izhar Ashdot, the singer-songwriter and co-founder of the rock bank T-Slam.

1958(11th of Kislev, 5719): Fifty-four year old comedian Harry Einstein, who had begun his career writing for Eddie Cantor died from a heart attack at a Friars Club of Beverly Hills Roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz today in Los Angeles, California.

1958: “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” a biopic for which Mark Robson “received an Academy Award for Best Director nomination” was released today in the United States.

1959: David Susskind produced The White Stage, this week’s selection for “The Play of the Week.”

1963: Congregants of Agudas Achim in Austin, TX who had been planning to dedicated their new building today – an event that was to include a visiting from Vice President Lyndon Johnson – “gathered to mourn the death of John F. Kennedy and pray for their old friend Lyndon Johnson;”

1963:  Birthdate of George Washington University graduate and magazine editor Deborah Needleman, the wife of political journalist and former editor of Slate Jacob Weisberg, the sister-in-law of JoeWeisberg and the daughter-in-law of Judge Bernard Weisberg and Lois Weisberg, “the first Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of Chicago.”

1964: “Bajour” a musical featuring Herschel Bernardi and Herbert Edelman opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre.

1964(12th of Kislev, 5681): Abraham Lieber, the father of Ronald and Dr. Leon Lieber passed away today in Ponca City, OK.

1967: Edward and Peter Bronfman made the opening statements at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim when the Library Museum, which was a gift in honor of their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Allan Bronfman was formally opened today.

1968: After 1, 234 performances, the curtain came down on the Broadway production of “Cactus Flower” a farce written by Abe Burrows.

1970: Birthdate of Oded Feher.  Born in Tel Aviv he lived there until he was age 18 when he joined the Israel Navy for 3 years. At the completion of his National Service duty, he went to Europe to pursue a business career but instead of business, he discovered acting. He went to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in England. Oded appeared as Don Juan in a production of Don Juan Comes Back From War at the Courtyard Theatre in London.  He has also appeared in both The Knock and Killer Net on British Television.  In his Breakout Role, Fehr played the role of Ardeth Bay in his first major screen role, The Mummy, a 1999 Universal release.

1972: Birthdate of Christopher James Adler,an American drummer, best known as a member of the metal band Lamb of God. He is the older brother to bandmate and guitarist Willie Adler.

1973(28th of Cheshvan, 5734): Mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel passed away. Leonard Bernstein paid her tribute in a eulogy at her funeral, saying, ‘when Jennie opened her mouth, God spoke.’”

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jul/09/1967/jennie-tourel

1973: Following a cerebral hemorrhage that he suffered on November 18, David Ben Gurion stopped improving and his condition began to deteriorate today.

1974: During the height of the Cold War and the fight to “free Russian Jews,” “at a meeting in Vladivostok, USSR, U.S. President Ford and Soviet leader Brezhnev negotiated arms control.”

1975: Dr. Mikhail Stern was reported to be seriously ill in prison.

1976: Soviet authorities searched the apartments of “the organizers of the symposium on Jewish culture including Benjamin Fain, Vladimir Prestin, Pavel Abramovich, Vladimir Lazaris, Iosif Begun and Eliyahu Essas.

1982(7th of Kislev, 5743): Forty-four year old Chicago born and Northwestern trained violist Ascher Mark Temkin, the music director of the Brockport Symphony passed away today.

1983: Seventy-nine year old tUkrainian poet Mykola Bazhan whose 1943 poem “Babi Yar” “explicitly depicted the infamous massacre in the ravine” but does not mention the fact that the victims were Jews passed away today.

http://polyhymnion.org/lit/bazhan/

1987: About 100 Soviet Jews, united by their inability to emigrate, crowded into a two-room apartment today to discuss state secrets: the secrets that keep them from leaving the Soviet Union, the secret process by which the holders of secrets are identified, and the reason the secrets themselves are secret. The gathering, the culmination of months of research by would-be emigrants from the ranks of Soviet scientific and technological professions, was an attempt to collate bitter individual experiences, an attempt by people whose professional lives were once permeated with logic to explain a fate they find irrational. ''State secrets have been a skeleton in a closet,'' Tatyana Ziman, one of the organizers, said in an interview after the meeting. ''We want to break the spell that hangs over this word 'secret.' We were thinking of the thousands of people who are hanging between earth and sky not knowing what will happen to them.'' Security considerations have been cited in the cases of the vast majority of Soviet Jews who have been denied exit visas this year. Estimate of Visa Denials It is not known how many Soviet Jews have been told they are security risks by visa authorities, who almost never provide written verification of what they say. Conference organizers put the number between 2,000 and 10,000. The Soviet authorities appear to have taken a more liberal attitude toward Jewish emigration this year, allowing more than 6,000 Jews to go so far in 1987, more than six times the total for all of 1986, and have announced creation of a high-level commission to review contested visa decisions. However, some Soviet Jews say they feel that ''state security'' is still being invoked to deny exit visas in many cases in order to justify an official approach that remains intentionally capricious. Many Soviet citizens seeking to emigrate have said in the past that the practice of keeping would-be emigrants in limbo for years, while taking away their jobs and sometimes hindering their children's education, serves to strongly discourage those toying with the idea of applying. Few Written Explanations Also, in the absence of written explanations for administrative decisions, which are almost never offered by visa authorities when they turn down an application, a would-be emigrant has great difficulty knowing exactly what knowledge in his possession is considered secret by authorities. ''I wish I knew what it is I know, so I could tell,'' Ida Nudel said several months ago, before she was granted the long-sought permission to emigrate to Israel in October. In an interview with French television in 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, said that the maximum term during which state security could be cited as a reason to deny permission for emigration would be 10 years. But in a news conference at the Foreign Ministry some months later, a leading Soviet spokesman, Gennadi I. Gerasimov, clarified Mr. Gorbachev's remarks saying that in some cases -he cited the case of Naum S. Meiman, a mathematician, in particular - the duration of the secrecy rule might have no limit. Classified Work in 1950's Mr. Meiman did classified calculations while working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in the early 1950's. Many of those barred from emigration argue that virtually any kind of work can make a person a ''security risk.'' During the seminar today, Mrs. Ziman read a paper drafted by her husband, Yuri, examining the differences between United States and Soviet emigration policies. To leave the Soviet Union, specific permission is needed, the difficulty of obtaining permission depends on the country of destination, and the decision-making process is done on an administrative basis with severely limited opportunities for appeal. In addition, Yuri Ziman's paper said, the Soviet Government claims a right to control the movements of its citizens overseas, including where they go and how long they stay. Leaving the country without permission is a crime, and attempts to do so are viewed as serious crimes, for which the death penalty can be invoked. According to one seminar organizer, Pavel Abramovich, the group wanted to analyze various aspects of the state security system that has kept them in limbo for 10, 13, or even 17 years. But the first question put to Mr. Abramovich after he finished his preamble reflected the group's success in gaining both attention and participants. ''Could someone open a window?'' asked a spectator from the middle of the rush-hour like crush in the two rooms.

1988: “Cocoon – The Return” a sequel co-starring Jack Gilford and Steve Guttenberg was released in the United States today.

1988: “Scrooged” a comedic version “The Christmas Carol” directed and co-produced by Richard Donner with a screenplay co-authored by Mitch Glazer and music by Danny Elfman was released in the United States today.

1989(25th of Cheshvan, 5750): Ninety-three year old art dealer Sidney Janis passed away today. (As reported by Grace Glueck)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E5DB153AF93BA35753C1A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=

1990: “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” a film version of the novel with the same name starring Paul Newman and featuring Melissa Newman was released in the United States today.

1991: “Israel Has Its Nuclear Demons” published today provides a review of The Samson Option by Seymour Hersh.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13217965.400-review-israel-has-its-nuclear-demons-/

1994(20th of Kislev, 5755): Eighty three year old Oscar winning orchestrator and conductor Irwin Kostal passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/02/obituaries/irwin-kostal-83-orchestrated-music-for-hollywood-films.html

1994: “The Pagemaster” an animated horror film co-starring Leonard Nimoy and with music by James Horner was released in the United States today.

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including Tuesday’s With Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom, Banjo Eyes: Eddie Cantor and the Birth of Modern Stardom by Herbert G. Goldman and A History of the Twentieth Century Volume 1: 1900-1933 by Martin Gilbert

2000(25th of Cheshvan, 5761): A powerful car bomb killed two Israelis and wounded scores during rush hour in the coastal city of Hadera this evening.

2000(25th of Cheshvan, 5761):Sgt. Samar Hussein, 19, of Hurfeish, was killed when Palestinian snipers opened fire at soldiers patrolling the border fence near the Erez crossing.

2000(25th of Cheshvan, 5761): Lt. Edward Matchnik, 21, of Beersheba, was killed in an explosion at the District Coordination Office near Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip.

2000(25th of Cheshvan, 5761): Sixty-nine year old Clarence Yale Palitz, Jr. the Chairman of the Board  of Financial Federal Corporation and patron of the arts who is survived by his wife Anka passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/classified/paid-notice-deaths-palitz-clarence-yale-jr.html

2001(8th of Kislev, 5762): Sixty-four year old major league pitcher Robert “Bo” Belinsky, whose mother was Jewish passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/sports/bo-belinsky-64-the-playboy-pitcher-dies.html

2001: An Israeli helicopter fired two missiles at a van in the West Bank, killing Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, a leading member of Hamas, the Islamic terror organization.

2002: “At least four people were killed today, including a United Nations official, in violence that flared in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” while “grieving Israelis buried the victims of a suicide attack on” November 20th.

2003: The Al Hirschfeld Theatre which had been renamed in honor of his talents and long career reopened on with a revival of the musical Wonderful Town. Hirschfeld was also honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

2003: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interest In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural Historyby Adam Bellow and The Media and The War co-edited by Marvin Kalb

2004(10th of Kislev, 5765): Seventy-five year old Rafael Eitan, a former Israeli Army chief of staff and government minister who was reprimanded after Lebanese Christian allies of Israel massacred Palestinian refugees in 1982, drowned today after being swept into stormy seas.. (As reported by Steven Erlanger)

2005: Labor Party MK Ophir Pines-Paz completed his service as Minister of Internal Affairs.

2005: Major General (Ret) Matan Vilnai completed his term as Science, Technology and Space Minister

2005: Ariel Sharon began his second term as Minister of Internal Affairs.

2005: Shimon Peres completes his term in office as Vice Prime Minister.

2005: Dalia Itzik, who will become the first women to serve as Speaker of the Knesset, completed her term as Communications Minister of Israel.

2005: Isaac Herzog completed his term as Minister of Housing and Construction.

2005: Eli Ben-Menachem completed his term as Deputy Minister of Housing and Construction

2005: After playing in the first ten games of the season, today, offensive lineman Lennie Friedman was placed on waivers by the Washington Redskins today.

2005:A decision by a Federal appeals court opened the way for settlement payouts for Austrian Jews. Deferring to US foreign policy interests, a federal appeals court has tossed out a class-action lawsuit by Austrian Jewish victims of the Nazi regime in a ruling that may clear the way for payouts from a 2001 settlement fund. 

2005: The IDF unveiled the tombstones of five soldiers including two American volunteers, who fell in a battle for Latrun in the War of Independence at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl military cemetery after positively identifying their remains which had been resting in a mass grave. The five soldiers being honored were Pvt. Menachem “Mendel’ Math, Cpl. Shlomo Berber, Pvt. Yehuda "Jerry" Kaplan, Pvt. Ya'akov Shnawiss (who changed his name to Sheleg Lavan), and Pvt. Moshe Hessman. Math and Kaplan were members of MACHAL.” During the War of Independence, some 3,500 volunteers from 37 different countries rallied to Israel's defense. These young men and women, Jews as well as non-Jews, were known as MACHAL (Mitnadvei Chutz-La'Arets) - the Hebrew acronym for overseas volunteers. Many of the volunteers had been members of Jewish underground movements in Palestine and abroad before the State was proclaimed, or had served as crew members on Aliya Bet ships running the British naval blockade to bring Holocaust survivors to the shores of the Land of Israel. Most overseas volunteers were veterans of World War II; their skills and expertise were crucial - often decisive - for the newly-formed Israel Defense Forces, on land, at sea and in the air. These men and women fought valiantly and served with distinction in every branch of the IDF, including infantry, artillery, armor, the air force, the navy, the medical corps and the signals corps, often in key positions. Overseas volunteers came with a high sense of purpose and a shared feeling of pride and privilege in knowing they were helping to create and to defend a Jewish homeland. After the war, most returned to their home countries, but about 500 settled in Israel and raised families. One hundred and nineteen overseas volunteers lost their lives in Israel's struggle for independence: four of them were women; eight were non-Jews. Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, said: "The participation of...men and women of other nations in our struggle cannot be measured only as additional manpower, but as an exhibition of the solidarity of the Jewish people...without the assistance, the help and the ties with the entire Jewish people, we would have accomplished naught...some of our most advanced services might not have been established were it not for the professionals who came to us from abroad..."

2006: Americans gather together to celebrate Thanksgiving. The holiday is based on two traditions: the English Harvest Home and the Biblical Sukkoth.  The Pilgrims were a deeply religious people who saw themselves as modern Israelites fleeing their own Pharaoh so they could worship their One true God.  The New World was synonymous with the Promised Land.  So it was only to be expected that when looking for a way of expressing thanks for a bountiful harvest, they would turn to the Bible and fashion a week long holiday in the manner of Sukkoth.

2006(2nd of Kislev, 5767): Betty Comden passed away at the age of 89.  She was a writer, who with longtime collaborator Adloph Green created the lyrics and the librettos for some of the most celebrated musicals of stage and screen

https://web.archive.org/web/20101023061431/http://songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C59

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/betty-comden

2006: “Nagasaki, an oratorio composed by Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke” the son of Frankfurt born Jewish journalist Harry Viktorovich Schnittke premiered in Cape Town, eight years after the composer had passed away.

2007: In Jerusalem, as part of the International Oud Festival, violinist and singer Sameer Makhoul performs with French double bassist Joelle Leandre.

2008: In a visit sponsored by Alive Productions, Randy Newman performs in Tel Aviv's Hamishkan Leomanuyot Habama (performing arts house).

2008:At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, following a dinner, Rabbi Lane Steinger, Regional Director, Union for Reform Judaism, Midwest Council, facilitates adiscussion will concerning interfaith families and the challenges they may face with the upcoming winter holiday season.

2008: In Chicago, on the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, the Spertus presents a lecture entitled “Calvin and the Jews” in which Dr. Dean Bell, Chief Academic University at Spertus, explores Calvin’s and his impact on Christian/Jewish Relations.

2008: At the Shirlington Branch Public Library, journalist Michaele Weissman discusses and signs her new book, God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee.

2008: The New York Times featured a the review of a biography of the Jewish born creator of the Follies entitled Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Businessby Ethan Mordden.

2008: The Washington Post book section included reviews of the latest addition to the Holocaust Literature genre, The Journal of Hélène Berr,translated from the French by David Bellos and two books that recount “the making of modern Hebrew”:Resurrecting Hebrew by Ilan Stavans and Yehuda Amichai” The Making of Israel's National Poet by Nili Scharf Gold.

2009 Lord Nigel Lawson became chairman of a new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a registered education charity

2009: The Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities and the Moline Public Library sponsor an address by Israeli Ambassador Asher Naim who will speak on “The Behind the Scenes Story of Operation Solomon: The Exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel”. Author, humanitarian, and retired Ambassador Asher Naim will speak about his work on behalf of Ethiopian Jews during his distinguished diplomatic career. From 1990-1991, Asher Naim served as Israeli Ambassador to Ethiopia. He was instrumental to the success of Operation Solomon, which ensured the rescue and resettlement of Ethiopian Jews. For his efforts in Operation Solomon, and his current work with Ethiopian Jews in Israel, Ambassador Naim was recently presented with the “2009 Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award” from the American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia.

2009 (6 Kislev, 5770): Eighty-year old Fred Silberstein, a survivor of Auschwitz who gave evidence at the Nuremberg Trials passéd away today in New Zealand. Silberstein, who was 14 when he was taken to Auschwitz in 1943, spent much of his life educating people in New Zealand about the horrors of the Holocaust and the subsequent dangers of racism. The president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, Stephen Goodman, described him as a righteous person. “For 60 years he worked tirelessly bearing witness to the horrors of the Holocaust,” Goodman said. “He was a modest and humble man.” Silberstein survived operations by Nazi “doctor” Josef Mengele, called the “Angel of Death,” and avoided near-certain death by telling camp guards he was 15 and able to do manual labor. His evidence at the Nuremburg Trials in 1946 helped to convict Nazi leaders such as Hermann Göring and Rudolf Heß. He moved to New Zealand in 1948.

2009 (6 Kislev, 5770): Ninety-one year old Max Eisen, a Broadway press agent from the days when feeding tidbits of gossip to columnists like Walter Winchell and staging stunts were standard practice for stirring up a bit more box-office appeal, passed away today.  (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/theater/01eisen.html

2009: Israeli author Naomi Frenkel is to be laid to rest on Kibbutz Beit Alfa at 2 p.m. today three days after dying at Sheba Medical Center on her 91st birthday

2010: Kathleen Straus is scheduled to be honored with the Jewish Community Lifetime Achievement Award by the Detroit American Jewish Committee.

2010: Dwight Garner’s list of the “Top 10 Books of 2010” included books written by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “ Simon Wiesentahl: The Life and Legends”  by Tom Segev, “Letters” by Saul Bellow; edited by Benjamin Taylor, “Cleopatra: A Life” by Stacy Schiff, Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance” co-authored by Nouriel Roubini, “Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, “Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory” by Ben Macintyre, one of the most successful disinformation operations of the 20th century which was masterminded by Ewen Montagu, a leading member of the UK’s Jewish community.

2010: This afternoon at JFK airport in New York City, a Holocaust survivor was reunited with the Polish man who rescued her from the Nazis, after not having seen one another for 65 years. They areWladyslaw Misiuna, 85, from Poland, and Sara Marmurek, 88, from Canada who have not seen each other since the war.

2010(16th of Kislev, 5771): Seventy three year old Ingrid Pitt,long celebrated as the first lady of British horror cinema, who starred in sanguinary classics of the 1970s like “The Vampire Lovers,” “Countess Dracula” and “The House That Dripped Blood,” died today in London. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/arts/25pitt.html

2011: The Israeli Folk Dance Thanksgiving Marathon is scheduled to begin at 9 pm at the 92nd St Y in Manhattan.

2011:Rabbi Nava Hefetz, Educational Director at Rabbis for Human Rights is scheduled to be the  guest speaker at the first session of the Adult Education series at the West London Synagogue.

 

2011:The IDF identified Beduin smugglers on the southern border trying to infiltrate Israel from Egypt, and a firefight erupted between the two sides tonight

2011: Recent archeological excavations in Jerusalem show that, contrary to popular understanding, King Herod was not solely responsible for constructing the Western Wall.

2011:The threat of another political murder exists in Israel, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch told the Knesset today

2012: “Oy Vey! The Play” a comedy about a wealthy widow, her three daughters, her son, her Rabbi is scheduled to be performed at The Lion Theatre in New York City.

2012(9th of Kislev, 5773): Seventy-four year old Devorah Krinsky “ the wife of Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, secretary to the late Lubavitcher rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson” whom she married in 1957 passed away. (As reported by JTA)

2012: "Seeds of Resiliency," a new film directed and produced by Susan Polis Schutz, the granddaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants is scheduled to open tonight at the Quad Cinema in NYC.

2012: Memorial services were held for Art Ginsburg, the American television chef known as Mr. Food, “were held at B'nai Aviv Synagogue in Weston” after which he was buried at Beth David Memorial Gardens in Hollywood, Florida

2012: National Yiddish Theater Presents "The Golden Land" at the Baruch Performing Arts Center

2012: Rain fell from the North to the Negev today morning with scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms forecasted to continue throughout the day.

2012: Hamas Islamists enforced a fragile two-day-old truce on today by evacuating Palestinians from a "no-go" border zone after IDF gunfire across the Gaza border killed one Palestinian and wounded several others.

2013: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host a performance of the Klezmer Nutcracker Holiday Concert.

2013: As part of the Murra Blackman Memoril Weekend, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman delivers a Shabbat sermon “What is the Most Important Verse in the Torah?” followed by an afternoon talk “The Two Happiest Days in Judaism – What are they? A Taste of Talmud” (As reported by the Crescent City Jewish News)

2013: Israeli soldiers “fired rubber bullets at a group of Palestinians who were throwing stones at them during a day in which three Arabs were arrested by Israeli forces near the security barrier separating the Jewish state from the Gaza after they had snuck across the border near Kibbutz Be'eri. (As reported by Gil Roen)

2013(20th of Kislev, 5774): Seventy-seven year old philanthropist and businessman Dov Lautman lost his battle with ALS today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/philanthropist-industrialist-dov-lautman-dies-aged-77/

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4456867,00.html

2013(20th of Kislev, 5774): Eight year old Peter B. Lewis, the former Chairman of Progressive Insurance Company passed away.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/longtime-progressive-ceo-peter-lewis-dies-at-80/2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of An Officer and a Spy, Robert Harris’ “novelization of the Dreyfus affair” and Memories of a Marriageby Louis Begley.

2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to present “Poetry & Prose Workshop” with Willa Schneberg.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “No One Remembers Alone: Memory, Migration, and the Making of an American Family.”

2014: Eighteenth annual UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2014: The Chabad Partners Conference is scheduled to be held at the Brooklyn Marriott Hotel

2014: A live broadcast from the Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, a group that includes Rabbi Pinchas Ciment who has been a lamplighter par excellence in Arkansas for over two decades, is scheduled to take place this afternoon.

2014(1st of Kislev, 5775): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

2014(1st of Kislev, 5775): Sixty-five year old Allan Kornblum, the founder of Coffee House Press passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/business/media/allan-kornblum-independent-publisher-dies-at-65-.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2014: By a vote of 14 to 6 “the cabinet approved a controversial proposal today to define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people in a constitutional Basic Law.” (As reported by Spencer Ho)

2014: “Riots follow Sakhnin’s 1:0 victory over Beitar in soccer match.

2015: In Potomac, MD, Congregation Har Shalom is scheduled to host a lecture by Rabbi Reuven Hammer on “Akiva: Living and Dying for Love.”

2015: The New England Patriots football team observed a minute of silence before its game tonight in memory of 18 year old Sharon, MA native Ezra Schwartz who was murder by a terrorist while distributing food packages soldiers to Israeli soldiers. (As reported by Raoul Wootliff and Marissa Newman)

2015: “Thanksgiving – A Holiday of Family and Foods

https://www.jhsgw.org/blog/thanksgiving-a-holiday-of-family-and-foods?utm_source=Thanksgiving+%2F+In+the+Press&utm_campaign=Thanksgiving%2FIn+the+media&utm_medium=email

2015: In London, The Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a talk by curator Joanne Rosenthal on the exhibition “Blood” which “draws together manuscripts, prints, Jewish ritual and ceremonial objects, art, film, literature and cultural ephemera to present a rich exploration of how blood can unite and divide, reflecting on over 2,000 years of history.”

2016(22nd of Cheshvan, 5777): Eighty-six year old British comedy start Andrew Sachs passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/arts/television/andrew-sachs-hapless-waiter-on-the-bbc-sitcom-fawlty-towers-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

2016: “The Tenth Man” and “The Last Laugh” are scheduled to be shown in Melbourne, Australia as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.

2016: “The Settlers” and “Alone in Berlin” are scheduled to be shown in Sydney, Australia as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.

2017: “The Heir” and “A Quiet Heart” are scheduled to be shown at the 21st UK International Jewish Film Festival.

2017: In the spirit of having something for everything, The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “Chinese Night” for the hungry preceded by a continuation of a discussion of  Masechet Megilla as part of the in depth study Gemara study program

2017: In the United States – Thanksgiving

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-thanksgiving

https://reformjudaism.org/blog/2014/11/21/whats-jewish-about-thanksgiving

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/is-thanksgiving-kosher/

https://www.jhsgw.org/blog/thanksgiving-a-holiday-of-family-and-foods?utm_source=Thanksgiving+%2F+In+the+Press&utm_campaign=Thanksgiving%2FIn+the+media&utm_medium=email

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Jonathan Sarna whose works included American Judaism: A Historyand When General Grant Expelled The Jews continues today.

2018: Paula Vogel’s “Indecent” a play which “recounts the controversy surrounding the play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, which was produced on Broadway in 1923” is scheduled to open at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC.

2018: “Professor Avigdor Shinan and invited guests” are scheduled to “join Israel Museum curators to bring the weekly haftarah to light.”

2018: The Village East Cinema is scheduled to host a screening of “Family in Transition” which tells “the story of a family in Nahariya…whose lives change after their parent comes out as a transgender woman.”

2018: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host the opening of the “9th Annual Sigid Celebration” where attendees will enjoy a traditional Kosher Ethiopian Shabbat Dinner.”

2018: While Israelis may not officially celebrate Thanksgiving, they are scheduled to hit the shops for “Black Friday.”

https://www.timeout.com/israel/news/black-friday-2018-the-complete-guide-to-all-the-best-sales-on-israeli-brands-112118

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Black-Friday-seems-to-be-a-thing-now-in-Israel-572391

2019: The UK Jewish Film is scheduled to host a screening of “Solomon and Gaenor” in Newcastle (no need to bring coals)

2019: The Peninsula Jewish Community is scheduled to host “Rabbi Lavey’s Joyous Learning Table,” a tisch filled with stories and song.

2019: As part of “Reconstructing Judasim Shabbatton, Or Zarua is scheduled to host a Shabbat Service with D'var Torah and Conversation with Rabbi Deborah Waxman.

2019: In Berkley, CA, St. John’s Presbyterian Church is scheduled to host “Roses and Almonds” with Tres Hermanicas and Aquila which includes a mix of “centuries-old Sephardic music

2019(25th of Cheshvan, 5780): Parashat Chayei Sarah

2020: Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies is scheduled to host a virtual Israel Studies Colloquium with Ben-Gurion U. professor Ayelet Harel-Shalev talking about her interviews with women in the IDF and her conclusions.

2020: Jewish Family Services of Columbus, OH is scheduled to host Zoom Movie where attendees will discuss Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”

2020: Live on Zoom, the YIVO institute is scheduled to host “Avrom Sutzkever: Ten Poems” during which a three person panel discusses the work of this giant of Yiddish poetry.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host the penultimate session “The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem.”

2020: The Jewish Museum in London is scheduled to host “Stories from the Stores” a tour via Zoom that provide a chance for a behind the scenes look at everything “from photographs of early 20th century lessons at the Jews’ Free School to unique items of Judaica.”

 


This Day, November 24, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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November 24

166 BCE: According to secular calculations this date marked “The Origin of Era of the Maccabees.”

655: The Ninth Council of Toledo which was held under the auspices of King Recceuith and would adopt a resolution “that all conversos, not only converted Jews also others who had come during the Migration Period, had to pass Christian festivals in the presence of their bishop so as to prove the veracity of their faith” and that “lack of compliance with this last rule would in flogging or forced fasting, depending on the age of the offend” came to an end today.

380: Theodosius I made his” adventus,” or formal entry, into Constantinople. Eight years later, in 388, Theodosius attempted to intervene unsuccessfully on behalf of the Jews of his Empire.  “The bishop of a town on the bank of the Euphrates was among those responsible for the burning of a synagogue by a Christian crowd”  When the governor of the province refused to punish the bishop, Theodosius exercised his imperial power and ordered the offending bishop to build the Jews a new house of worship.  However, Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan and a leader of the Christian Church, overruled the emperor and Theodosius folded like a cheap suit. This episode points to the worsening conditions of the Jews.  If a powerful Emperor like Theodosius could not stand up to the Church, how could one expect a lesser ruler to challenge the growing power of the prelates?

1105: Rabbi Nathan ben Yehiel of Rome completes Talmudic dictionary.  According to Heinrich Graetz, Ben Yehiel is the only Italian who made a contribution to Jewish literature during this period which was dominated by the Jews of Spain.  He published his dictionary under the name Aruch.  What this work lacks in originality it makes up for in thoroughness.  It became a standard text for Jews studying the Talmud during the Middle Ages.

1190: Isabella of Jerusalem marries Conrad of Montferrat at Acre, making him de jure King. This took place during the period when the Crusaders controlled the City of David.  Their “kingship” should not be confused with the reign of the Davidic Dynasty.

1275:  Edward I issued the Statute of the Jewry which placed a number of restrictions on the Jews of England. See http://www.heretical.com/British/jews1275.html. for a complete copy of the text.

1328: Levi ben Gerson finished “Sefer Tekunah” his work on astronomy today.

1358: Eleanor of Aragon-Gandia, the wife King Peter of Cyprus who sought to reconquer the Holy Land, was crowned Queen of Cyprus a year and half before she was crowned Queen of Jerusalem.

1359: Pierre I de Lusignan was crowned Peter I of Cyprus today five years before attended the Banquet of the Five Kings which included “a floor-show that was a re-enactment of the Crusaders taking Jerusalem.

1493: Gershon Soncino printed an edition of the Pentateuch at Brescia.

1533: Ercole II d'Este and Renée de France, the daughter of Louis XII of France and Anne of Brittany gave birth to Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara whom mathematician and archaeologist Abraham Colorni served as an engineer and who with his Simon “went to Mantua” to look after the Duke’s “private affairs.”

1615: Louis XIII, who reaffirmed the ban on Jews living in France that had been in effect since the fourteenth century, despite the fact that his mother had brought a practicing Jew to France to serve as Louis’ doctor when he was a child, married Anne of Austria, the daughter of Philip III of Spain

1631 (5 Kislev, 5392): Rabbi Samuel Eliezer Edels, also known by the acronym, “MaHarSha,” passed away. Born in 1555 in Krakow, he was one of the best known Talmudic commentators. His Chidushei Halachot is included in almost every publication of the Talmud. He believed that many of the Agadot (Talmudic legends) could be explained rationally and/or as parables. Edels also served as the chief rabbi in Lublin and Ostrog. As part of his commentary and explanation on the subject of guardian angel, Edels wrote, “In the way you wish to go in life, so you will be led by your Guardian Angels." According to the MaHarSha,” this passage explains that, in the way you wish to go in life, so you will be led by your guardian angels.  In other words  every action, word and thought that you do in this world creates an angel, so if you really want something good to happen in your life, create enough angelic good angels with kindness, loving thoughts and honest words . And then these angels you have attracted to you by your good thoughts, words and actions will indeed lead you to your goal.” As you can see from this commentary, all Rabbis living in Eastern Europe were not dry legalist.  Those of you who think of them in that manner will get a chance to re-consider that concept if you study this period of Jewish History.

1632: Birthdate of Baruch Spinoza (known also as Benedict De Spinoza). The life and philosophy of Spinoza are too complex for this brief daily blurb and you are urged to read more about him on your own) In brief Spinoza was born in Amsterdam to Sephardic Jews who had fled from the Inquisition in Portugal, Spinoza received a rigorous Jewish education including the study of such “modern” commentators as Maimonides and Ibn Ezra.   However his inquiring mind led to learn Latin and to study with so-called free-thinkers.  He became a disciple of Descartes and his rationalist philosophic approach to life.  Spinoza was a pantheist believing that God was within nature and not above nature with His own divine will.  To paraphrase Telushkin, Spinoza did not believe that God created nature, but that God is Nature.  In 1656, while still in his twenties, Spinoza was excommunicated (in Hebrew “kerem”) for denying the immortality of the soul and God’s authorship of the Torah.  On this latter point, Spinoza was a forerunner of modern Biblical critics.  He believed that the Torah had not been written by Moses, but by Ezra the Scribe.  The ban from the Jewish community was total.  Spinoza spent the rest of his life moving from place to place in Holland studying and developing his philosophical works.  At one point he joined a Mennonite sect and changed his name to Benedictus or Benedict. By the time of his death in 1677, Spinoza had developed a philosophy of rational pantheism in which to “know” nature is to know God.  Over the centuries, many Jews have expressed their displeasure over Spinoza’s excommunication.  In the 1950’s no less a figure than David Ben Gurion tried unsuccessfully to have the ban lifted.  From the writings of Spinoza: “As long as a man imagines a thing is impossible, so long will he be unable to do it.”  “Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all humankind.”  (Sounds like Hillel).

1750: Twenty-nine year old American patriot and future President of Congregation Sherith Israel in New York Hayman Levy, the Hanover, Germany born son of Moses Levy, was “naturalized” today in New York City.

1752: In Stratford, CT, “Isaac Menes Seixas and Rachel Franks Seixas” gave birth to Grace Mendes Seixas who married Simon Nathan and as Grace Mendes Nathan was the mother of four children

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/seixas-nathan-grace

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43058337.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

1767: In Germany, Ellen and Solomon Levi gave birth to Maier Levi, the husband of Juttle Trouble with whom he had elven children.

1767: IN London Ester Leon and Elias Judah Piza gave birth to Judah Elias Piza, the husband of Rachael Piza and the father of Elias Judah Piza and David Piza.

1768: Three years and 11 days after they were married in London, Ribca and Daniel Brandon Seixas gave birth to Daniel Seixas.

1772: Lancaster, PA native Shinah Solomon and Frankfurt native Elijah Etting gave birth to Elizabeth Etting, the wife of Robert Mickle.

1783: In Poland, Sarah and Fishel Chohen gave birth to Hartwig Cohen who had eleven children in South Carolina with his wife Deborah Marks.

1789: In a letter bearing today’s date, George Washington wrote to Lt. Colonel Solomon Bush who had served with him at the Battle of Brandywine thanking him for his letter of July 20 in which he congratulated his comrade in arms on being elected to the presidenc.

1799: In Prague, Judah Jeitteles and his wife gave birth to physician, poet and author Aaron Ludwig Joseph Jeittles

1824: Gabriel Gabriel married Esther Reuben today at the Great Synagogue.

1827: Middlesex, England, natives Hannah Levy and Michael Emanuel gave birth to Morris Emanuel.

1829: In Whitechapel, London, Mary Simha and David Isaac Joseph Belasco gave birth to Rebecca Belasco.

1835: Joseph Myers married Julia Isaacs at the Great Synagogue today.

1841: David Barnard married Kate Nathan today.

1841: Solomon Nathan, the son of Barnett Nathan and Julia Solomons and the husband of Betsy Isaacs with whom he had had five children, was buried today at the “Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.”

1841: In Charleston, Rabbi Poznanski officiated at the married Joseph H. Marks of Columbia, SC and Cecile Abrahams of Charleston, SC.

1843: Birthdate of David Zvi Hoffmann, a rabbi and Torah scholar who was active in the “Wissenschaft des Judentums” a German based movement that attempted to apply scientific methodology to all aspects of Judaism. His daughter Hannah married Alexander Marx who along with Max L. Margolis published “A History of the Jewish People” which was a classic work of the inter-war period. Rabbi Hoffiamn passed away in 1921.

http://seforim.blogspot.com/2012/01/rabbi-david-hoffmann-zl-by-eliezer-m.html

1843: Birthdate of Tammany Hall political leader Richard Croker, Jr. who recognized the importance of the Jewish vote in the municipal elections of 1898 when he threatened to get rid of all the leaders who did not do enough to deliver it to the Democratic Party machine.

1848(28th of Cheshvan, 5609): Seventy-eight year old Joseph Mendelssohn the German Jewish banker who was the oldest son of Moses Mendelssohn and the uncle of Felix Mendelssohn passed away today.

1851: "Acapulco" published today described the high cost of living in the Mexican city provided the unusual comparison that "a little crib not bigger than a Jew's clothing-shop in San Francisco, brings $50 a month."

1851: Austrian physician Jakob Eduard Polak entered Iran where he began teaching medicine at Dar al-Fonun

1853: The cornerstone for a new Jewish Hospital was laid this afternoon in a two hour long ceremony.  At 2 pm a procession including members of the Hospital Society, the Hebrew Benevolent Society and other dignitaries left the Crosby street synagogue and walked to the site of the new hospital on 28thstreet between 7th and 8th avenues.  At 3 pm, Henry Hendricks made a few opening remarks in Hebrew and handed the trowel to Sampson Simpson who also make a few remarks in Hebrew before actually laying the cornerstone.  Rabbis Lyon and Helsen then delivered prayers in Hebrews followed by an address given by Rabbi Isaacs in English.  During the talk Isaacs assured listeners, including NYC dignitaries that the hospital would offer its services to all – Gentiles and Jews alike.  Sampson Simpson donated the land on which the hospital is being built.  He has also promised that $30,000 bequest will made to the hospital at the time of this death.

1853: Rabbi Isaacs is scheduled to give a sermon this evening at 5 pm on the topic of Charity.

1855: An article published today entitled “The Merchants of London” described the financial activities of the various banking houses in London.  The House of Rothschild is reported to be very active in the affairs of Spain where it is represented by Mr. Weisler.  The Rothchilds hold large mortgages on the silver mines located in Spain

1858: Under the guidance of Max Maretzek, Adeline Patti made her operatic debut at age 16 in the title role of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Academy of Music, New York. (He was the Jewish impresario and concert master.  She was the native of Spain who went on to a brilliant career.) 

1858: A schochet named Aaron Friedman appeared before New York Mayor Daniel F. Tiemann and accused Abraham Joseph Asch, Pesach Rosenthal and Moses Levi of selling lottery tickets which is against the law.  Abraham Joseph Asch served as Rabbi at Beis Hamedrash Hagadol on Bayard Street. Founded in 1852, it was the first congregation founded by Russian Orthodox Jews.  Pesach Rosenthal was the founder of the Downtown Talmud Torah, Yiddish speaking school also founded in 1852.

1858: In New York City, Sergeant Birney and 12 officers of the law, armed with a warrant to search and seize lottery tickets arrested Rabbi Abraham Joseph Asch, Reb Pesach Rosnethal and Moses Levi.  Rabbi Asch was arrested while he was leading services at this synagogue.  All three were taken before May Tiemann to answer the charges lodged against them.

1858: Thanks to the efforts of Austrian born American-Jews impresario Max Maretzek, “Adelina Patti made her operatic debut in the title role of Donizetti’s “Luci de Lammermoor” in New York City.

1859: British naturalist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which explained his theory of evolution. Ironically, Hitler was greatly influence by Charles Darwin and his Theory of Evolution. Hitler believed that the German people were the most advanced race of people, and all others were inferior. For Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest to be true, all other inferior species had to die. Hitler was making sure the inferiors would die off rapidly, so his MASTER RACE would rule faster.

1862: Michel Levy publishes Gustave Flaubert’s "Salammbo." Levy (not Flaubert) was Jewish.

1862: One day after he had passed away, 42 year old Solomon Benjamin the son of Ephraim and Phoebe Benjamin and the husband of Sarah Harris was buried today at the “Wolverhampton Old Jewish Burial Ground.”

1863: During the Civil War, the 82nd Illinois Infantry under the command of Edward S. Solomon took part in the Union Army’s victory over the Rebels at the Battle of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN. Joseph B. Greenhut, an Austrian born Jew, served as Captain of Company K during the Battle.

1864: Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa and Adèle Tapié de Celeyran gave birth to artist Henri de Tolouse-Lautrec whose work included “Reine de joies.”

1867: In San Francisco, Augusta and Joseph Phillip Newmark gave birth to Samuel Mark Newmark, the husband of Carolyn C. Newmark with whom he had two children and who held a patent for “Newmark’s Pure,” a “coffee, cinnamon, tea and lemon extract used for food-flavoring purposes.”

1869(20th of Kislev, 5630): Jonathan Alexandersohn, a German born Hungarian rabbi, passed away passed away in the Jewish hospital at Altofen.

1869: Louis Moreau Gottschalk collapsed from having contracted malaria. Just before his collapse, he had finished playing his romantic piece Morte! (interpreted as "she is dead"), although the actual collapse occurred just as he started to play his celebrated piece Tremolo.

1869: During a concert in Rio de Janeiro, having just completed playing “Morte!” composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk collapsed from the effects of Yellow Fever.

1870: Rabbi S.M. Isaacs is scheduled to deliver the sermon at the Forty-Fourth Street Synagogue’s Thanksgiving Day services which will begin at 11 a.m. Children from Hebrew Orphan Asylum will attend the service after which they will be fed Thanksgiving Dinner paid for by the synagogues trustees.

1871: It was reported today that the Reorganization Committee meeting in St. Petersburg has been discussing whether or not to allow Jews to serve as officers in the Russian Army.  The majority of the committee favor postponing a decision until enough time has elapsed to evaluate the recent decision to allow Jews to hold civil service positions in the Russian government.

1873: Birthdate of Yuliy Osipovich Tsederbaum  the scion of Jewish family living in Constantinople who as Julius Martov became a leader of the Mensheviks during the Russian Revolutions.

1874: It was reported today that Jacob Cohen has donated a printing press, Hebrew type, non-Hebrew type and other printing office furniture to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York.  [The printing operation would prove to be a beneficial source of training an income for the male orphans.]

1875: Birthdate of Jana Fürnbergová, the resident of Prague who was murdered at Terezin.

1877(18th of Kislev, 5638): Eighty-three year old Rabbi Samuel Bondi of Mayence the son of Rabbi Jonas Moses Bondi and Bella Bondi and thus husband of Sophie Bondi passed away today.

1878: It was reported today that the Rothschilds in London have successfully gained the right to underwrite the “new Numidian loan” for which they will receive a premium commission.

1878: In New York Samuel Sachs and Louisa Goldman Sachs gave birth to Paul Joseph Sachs, the partner in Goldman Sachs and associate director of the Fogg Art Museum who enter American pop culture as one of the Monuments Men.

https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/sachsp.htm

https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/the-heroes/the-harvard-group/sachs-paul-joseph

1878: In Austria, Alfred Abraham Finzi and Rachéle Finzi gave birth to Isak Isidor Finizi

1878: It was reported today that Maggie de Rothschild has been receiving religious instruction from a Roman Catholic priest in Frankfort, Germany.  Conversion to Christianity is a condition set by the family of her future husband, the Duc de Guiche for their approval of the marriage.  The family has no objection to her Jewish money, just to her Jewish religion.  If the trend of intermarriage continues, the more numerous Christian will eventually absorb the Jews. “That is one way getting rid of the Jews…but one which will take time.”

1879: It was reported that a confidence man identified a Hebrew from New York has swindled several French businessmen out of 6,000,000 francs.

1879: It was reported today that Lord Beaconsfield has only been able to gain promises of “moral support from Austria and Germany” in the current conflict involving the Russian and Ottoman empires.

1879: Albert Lavergne, alias Abraham Levy, an Alsatian Jew, went to the 29thPrecinct in New York and confessed to having stolen $30,000 worth of diamonds in France in 1876.

1879: Birthdate of Yitzhak Gruenbaum the native of Warsaw who was a leader of Polish Jewry until he made Aliyah in 1933 and expanded his career to include a leadership role that caused the British to arrest him during their “leadership sweep” in 1946 and enabled him to become a signatory to the Declaration of Independence in 1948.

1880: “The German War on the Jews” published today noted that “the authorities are inclined to wink at, if not openly encourage, the movement for stemming the rising tide of Jewish power and influence and in the Empire.”  While Chancellor Bismarck has modified his view that used to include opposition of “the admission of Jews into office” the anti-Semitic movement has plenty of power as can be seen from the leadership supplied by Reverend Stoecker, one of the Kaiser’s Chaplains.” (Editor’s note: The emergency of the anti-Semitic movement paralleled the emancipation of Jews in Germany and was in full flower long before a Bavarian Corporal came to power.

1880: At today’s meeting of the New York State Senate Committee on City Affairs, Judge P.J. Joachimsen defended the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society from remarks made by Elbrdige T. Gerry

1881: J.S. Moore responded to the anti-Semitic attacks by Goldwin Smith, a Professor at Oxford that appeared in the October issue of the Nineteenth Century.”

1882 In Munich, Joseph Schülein, the son of Julius and Jeanette Schulen, and Ida Schulein gave birth to Franziska (Mimi) Heinemann, the future wife of Theobald Heinemann.

1882: In Cleveland, OH, Aaron and Theresa Hahn gave birth to Edgar Aaron Hahn, Western Reserve University trained lawyer and Cleveland civic leader who was the husband Irene Hahan with whom he had two daughters – Alice and Katherine.

https://case.edu/ech/articles/h/hahn-edgar-a

1882: In New York, incorporation of the Passover Relief Association which was founded in 1877 whose officers included Morris Silbertstein, President; Mrs. Fred Sobel, Vice President; Mrs. Eli Solomon, Treasurer and Adolph Schwarzbaum, Secretary which supplied 490 families with groceries for Passover.

1884:  Birthdate of Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, the second President of Israel.  After the death of Chaim Weitzman, Ben-Zvi was elected in 1952.  He served until his death in April of 1963.

1885: Henry M. Leipziger, the principal of the Hebrew Technical Institute presented a report at a meeting of the Industrial Education Association in New York today during which he described what his school had during the past 18 months to meet the needs of boys ages 12 to 14.

1885: In Manhattan, David and Wilhemina (Minnie) Cohen gave birth to Bluma Cohen who gained famed as Blanche Cohen Nirenstein, the wife of realtor Alexander Schlang and Ellick Nirenstein whose civic work earned the title of “Mother of Year” according to the RJJ School Ladies League.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/04/archives/mrs-blanche-nirenstein-official-of-mizrachi-87.html

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/nirenstein-blanche-cohen

1885: In Friend, Nebraska, Sydney Dix Strong and his wife gave birth to Anna Louise Strong, the wife Joel Shubin, the Jewish agronomist and “Soviet Deputy Minister of Agriculture.”

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/strong-anna-louise/index.htm

1886: Joseph Schülein, the Bavarian born son of Joel (Julius) Schülein and Jeanette Schülein and his wife Ida Schülein gave birth to Elsa Schulein who became Elsa Haas when she married Dr. Alfred Haas.

1886: At the Star Theatre in New York, in front of a packed house, Edwin Booth played Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” part to which he brings a unique portrayal.

1887: “La Tosca” a five-act drama by the 19th-century French playwright Victorien Sardou “was first performed today at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, with Sarah Bernhardt in the title role.

1887: In a moment of honesty, Reverend Armitage delivered a sermon at the Fifth Avenue Baptist church in which he “compared the American Thanksgiving feast with joyous ‘Feast of Tabernacles’ of the ancient Jews. This Jewish feast continued eight days, and commemorated the gather of fruits. With the Jews, it was a joyous outpouring of religious feeling and in this quality of their religion they set an example which will be followed by Christians.”

1887: On Thanksgiving, “bountiful dinners” were provided those under the care of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.

1887: Thanksgiving Services were held at Temple Emanu-El in New York City

1888: In Milwaukee, WI, Henry H. and Bertha (Feinberg) Rice gave birth to Vassar and St. Louis School of Social Economy Edna Rice who became Edna Rice Meisnner when she married Edwin B. Meissner and who was an active member of the Council of Jewish Women and Temple Shaare Emeth in St. Louis.

1889(1ST of Kislev, 5650): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1889: “Jews of Bagdad” published today described the mistreatment of the Jews of Mesopotamia during the recent cholera epidemic.

1889: It was reported today that The Conference of the Civic, Commercial, Industrial and Educational Bodies will be presenting a “silk banner” to the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society.

1890(12th of Kislev, 5651): Seventy-six year old August Belmont, a Prussian Jew who “came to the U. S. in the diplomatic service, became a representative of the Rothschilds founded the banking house, August Belmont & Co., made a vast fortune and kept a racing stable passed” away today.

1892: The SS Weimar a large number of whose 1,906 passengers are Russian Jews is still detained at the Cape Charles Quarantine facility at Baltimore in accordance with President’s order this matter.

1892: On Thanksgiving Day Mrs. J. P. Jonchimsen will deliver the opening speech at the dedication of the new Orphan Asylum of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York will take place at 2 p.m.

1894: According to figures provided by Charles G. Wilson, the President of the Board Health published today “the lowest death rate…is in the tenement wards where the Hebrew population is densest.”  Wilson attributed this fact to the observance of “the Mosaic laws regard cleanliness” and avoiding abuse of alcohol as well as the fact that Jews “observe certain religious rules and regulations requiring them to keep their apartments clean.”

1894: In London, premiere of “The Shop Girl” a musical comedy featuring "The Little Chinchilla" a popular song written by Paul Alfred Rubens.

1895: In St. Louis founding of the Prospect Club located at 2737 Locust which meets on the first and last Tuesday of the month.

1895: “Flora’s Beautiful Gifts” traces the role of flowers in various civilizations and cultures including the Hebrews who used the rose and the lily and whose King Solomon “was a botanist” as can be seen from his gardens “which are among the most ancient gardens of which we know.”

1895: Herzl expounds his plans at The Maccabeans Club, the first group to hear his ideas. (In his diary he wrote, "Abends bei den 'Makkabäern'. Mageres Dinner, aber guter Empfang." - In the evening with the 'Maccabaeans', skimpy dinner, but good reception.")

1896: As of today, it was reported that Mrs. Hannah Solomon is President of the National Board of the National Council of Jewish Women and Miss Laura Mordecai is President of the Philadelphia chapter of the organization.

1896: In Limirck, another of the sporadic attacks took place on the Jews of the city.

1897: In Chicago, Illinois, Leopold Godowsky and Frederica Saxe gave birth to silent film actress Dagmar Godowsky.

1897: “Thanksgiving Exercises for Orphans” published today described upcoming holiday plans for those at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum on Amsterdam Avenue.

1898: Birthdate of Pittsburg native Louis “Lou” Mervis” the Walter Camp All-American lineman who played tackle on the undefeated 1918 University of Pittsburgh football team.

1898 Simon Guggenheim and Olga Hirsch married today at the Waldorf Astoria; an event they celebration by providing 5,000 poor children with a Thanksgiving Dinner.

(Editor’s Note: The following four entries are examples of the Americanization of the Jewish Community in the best sense of the term.  It provides an indication of why American Jews believe that their experience is different from that in Europe, North Africa or the Middle East)

1898: Rabbi Silverman will deliver a sermon on “American Progress” at Temple Emanu-El during Thanksgiving Services that start at 11 a.m.

1898: Rabbi Rudolph Grossman will deliver the sermon at Temple Rodeph Sholom during Thanksgiving Services that start at 10:30 a.m.

1898: Shaarai Tephilla and B’nai Jeshurun  will hold a joint Thanksgiving Service at 10:30 a.m led by Rabbi Stephen G. Wise that will include “the reading of the of the President’s proclamation by Morris Wise, a speech by Washingtonian Simon Wolf and a performance by the brass band of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society Orphan Asylum

1898: “The Young Men’s Hebrew Association” is scheduled to hold Thanksgiving Services at 861 Lexington this morning starting at 10:30.

1899: Jacob Furth, the Jewish President of the Puget Sound National Bank of Seattle, Washington, described economic conditions in the Northwest to a group meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria. The seven banks in the area have more than 13 million dollars in deposits most of which has been investing in Eastern commercial paper since there is so little demand for money in the Pacific Coast region. Manufacturing and farming have been so profitable that there has been little need for borrowing. Furth concluded his remarks by saying that he saw an automobile for the first time while traveling through Chicago on his way to New York.  Furth is convinced that the Pacific Northwest is too hilly “for the successful operation of the horseless carriage.”

1900(2nd of Kislev, 5661): Parashat Toldot

1900: “Anti-Jewish Bill in Reichstag” published today described the introduction of a bill “against the immigration of Jews” by “the anti-Semites and a number of Conservatives.”

1901: “A Delightful Surprise to Connoisseurs” published today described the availability of moderately prices “Carmel Wines and Carmel Cognacs imported from Palestine” that won the Gold Medal in Paris in 1900.

1901: In “The Russian and the Turk” published today, F.S. Roes, Rear Admiral, USN concluded by saying that “the Eastern Question is approaching a crisis and it can only be solved by the expulsion of the Turk from Europe, Asia Minor and we may hope also from Palestine.”

1902: In a decision that was “aimed directly at the Jews who formed the majority of the lawyers and law clerks,” “the Disciplinary Council of the Rumanian Bar published a decisions that only Rumanian citizens may hereafter practice law or act as law clerks.”

1903: In Vienna, Carl and Emilie Popper gave birth to Hans Popper, “the founding father of Hepatology” who was fortunate enough to escape arrest by the Nazis during the Anschluss by making his way to the United States aboard the SS New Amsterdam.

1904: In New York City, Minnie Dasnin gave birth to Olympic gold medal winning discus thrower Lillian Copeland.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/copeland-lillian

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lillian-copeland

1904: It was reported today that the police in Warsaw are expecting more riots on November 27 of the kind which have already lead to the wounding of Baroness Hirsch who “was shot while driving by in a carriage.

1905 (26th of Cheshvan): Nahum Meyer Shaikevich (Shomer) Yiddish novelist and playwright, passed away

1906(7th of Kislev, 5667): Parashat Vayetzei

1906: “The threats of the reactionary parties that Jewish massacres will be organized if the rights of the Jews are enlarged are becoming more definite” as can be seen by the threats of the Central Council of the League of the Russian People.”

1907: “Roosevelt Seen by German Eyes published today provides a lengthy reviews From Cavalryman to President, by Dr. Max Kullnick, “the first German biography of President Roosevelt” which includes an anecdote about “a visit to America in 1895 of Herr Ahlwardt, the notorious German Jew-baiter” which quotes the then Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt as saying “the Jews are our most peaceful citizens.”

1908: Birthdate of Harry Kemelman, the Boston native who created the Rabbi David Small mystery novels.

1908: “Argument in the contest of the will of the late Sigmund Rosenwald, who was a wealthy importer of tobacco leaf, a Director of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, and a Vice President of the United Hebrew Charities, will be heard today in the Surrogates' Court.”

1908: Birthdate of Mosze Lifszyc, the native Kiev who gained fame as movie director Aleksander Ford.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080506105210/http://www.kinema.uwaterloo.ca/misi032.htm

1909: It was reported today that United Hebrew Charities “had in the last year weathered the severest period of stress in the thirty-five years of its existence, expending a larger amount than in the panic year of 1907, and on a smaller number of applicants.”

1910: Led by Center Albert Lorch “Al” Loe, known as the Yiddish Wildcat, George Tech defeated Clemson today in the final game of the season

1910: On Thanksgiving Day in Atlanta, GA, Leo Frank, who would be lynched in the single worse episode of anti-Semitism in U.S. history, married Lucille Selig, the daughter of Emil Selig.

1911: The Damascus newspaper Muktebisattacked Jews, and in response readers wrote letters to the Grand Vizier to condemn the attitude of the paper.  On the same day the editor of another newspaper, the Turkish Hikmet, insulted Jews in an 'open letter to the Sultan.' As a result of the letter the editor was banished from Constantinople.

1911: Lazarus Klein was elected a member of the Divisional Council in Cape Province, SA, for the district of Tulbagh.

1911: The members of the Monmouthsire Standing Joint Committee “strongly criticized the attitude of police “during the “recent riots in Tredegar, Wales.

1912: In Rochester, NY, David Kanin and Sadie Levine gave birth to screen writer and director Garson Kanin.

1912: In Antwerp Paul (Pinchas) Gluck-Friedman and Henia Shipper gave birth to Antoinette Gluk who would marry a young Swiss-born French rabbi named David Feuerwerker and who would become famous as a decorated hero of the Resistance and as a jurist in post-war France.

1912: In the presence of an audience of 600 persons, including all of the members of the Straus family, a memorial tablet in honor of Ida Straus was unveiled this afternoon at the Home of the Daughters of Jacob, an institution for aged men and women at 301 and 303 East Broadway. Impressive services marked the official dedication of the tablet, which has been mounted upon the wall of the large auditorium to the right of the main entrance. The large bronze casting bears the raised profile of Mrs. Straus upon the center, directly under the inscription; “The Ida Straus Memorial of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob.” On one side are the words “Her life was beautiful” and the date in the Hebrew calendar of Mrs. Straus’s birth, “Shebat 14, 5609.” On the other side is the inscription “Her death was glorious,” and the date of the Titanic disaster, “Nisan 28, 5672.” Below the profile are the words: To the everlasting memory of Mrs. Ida Straus, one of the noble and heroic daughters in Israel, the hospital wards of this home are dedicated. She perished on the high seas in the Titanic disaster, together with her husband, Isidor Straus, statesman, philanthropist, and merchant, persistently [sic] refusing to be saved that she might remain to cheer the last moments of her life’s companion. Beneath is this quotation from the Book of Ruth: Where thou Diest Will I Die, and There Will I Be Buried. Dr. Nathan Abramson opened the dedication services with a hymn, in which he led a selected chorus of sixteen voices. The Rev. H. Pereira Mendes delivered the opening prayer, in which he expressed the hope that the example of the heroic and devoted wife in whose memory the tablet was erected and to whose lasting fame the wards of the hospital were dedicated might be forever an inspiration to the women of her race and ancient creed. Dr. Henry Fleischman, President of the Educational Alliance, made the principal address. He lauded the modest charity and kindliness of Mrs. Straus and the great unselfish works of her husband in the public service. Other speakers were Joseph Barondes of the Board of Education, the Rev. Dr. Schulman, pastor of the Congregation of Beth-El; the Rev. H. Masliansky of the People’s Synagogue, and Gustavus A. Rogers, who acted as Chairman.The most impressive incident of the dedication occurred when the 186 inmates of the home, led by Supt. Albert Kruger, filed slowly into the auditorium and took their seats in the front rows. The oldest of the feeble and decrepit men and women was said to be almost 108, and the youngest in the procession more than 70 years old. Just before the close of the exercises they arose and with quavering voices chanted aloud in unison a prayer for the eternal happiness of their departed benefactress. Among those seated on the platform were Mr. and Mrs. Percy Straus, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar S. Straus, Mrs. Nathan Straus, Herbert Straus, Jesse I. Straus, Mrs. Weil, Mr. and Mrs. Lazarus Kohns, and Mr. Lee Kohns. At the close of the exercises the members of the Straus family group, together with a few intimate friends, made a tour of inspection of the new hospital wards of the home

1912: A meeting in honor of the late Dr. Morris Loeb is scheduled to be held today at the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York.

1912: Services are scheduled to begin at 10:30 in Chicago at Sinai Temple where Dr. Emil G. Hirsch will deliver a sermon “The Open Window.”

1912: In Chicago, Rabbi Joseph Stoltz is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “It Is Good to Give Thanks” at today’s service hosted by the Isaiah Temple.

1912: Gerson Levi is scheduled to deliver the sermon at The People’s Synagogue where services begin at 3:30 p.m. at the Ziegfeld Theatre.

1912: Rabbi M.J. Gries of Cleveland delivered a sermon today marking the 20th anniversary of his years of service followed by a special musical program.

1912: “The elections for the Executive Council of the Jewish community in London” which “for the last twelve years have given rise to heated quarrels” between the Zionists “and the so-called official party much to the delight of the anti-Semites are scheduled to take place today.

1913: A mass meeting was held in New York under the auspices of the Federation of Oriental Jews that reside $58,000 for the relief of Balkan Jewry.

1914: Today’s contributions to the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews suffering through the war amounted to $944.74 bring the total collected to day to $25,010.

1914: Today, Herman Bernstein, editor of The Day, a Jewish daily newspaper published in New York “made public telegraphic correspondence” between him and Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, the British Ambassador in Washington, D.C. in which the editor asks if England will give protection to German and Galician Jews living in Jaffa now that the British reportedly occupy the city formerly controlled by the Ottomans.  Spring-Rice responded ‘Jews of all nationalities who may come under British control can of course count on the same protection and liberal treatment which England has always extended to them.  I have, however, no information that Jaffe is in the hands of England.”  (The reality is that the Turks expelled the Jewish population and the British did not take the city until 1917).

1914: “Let Jews Become Turks” published today described the decision of the Ottoman government to grant citizenship to Russian Jews living in the empire – a decision that would mean a great deal to many of the Jewish settlers in Palestine because they came from Russia.

1914: It was reported to that “two members of the Serbian Legation who remained at Constantinople to assist Henry Morgenthau,” the Jewish philanthropist serving as the American Ambassador, “were ordered to leave the city within 48 hours.”

1914: On the Western Front during WW I, Lieutenant F.A. De Pass, a Jewish officer from London “led two of his Indian soldiers into the sap of a German trench that had been pushed out to within ten yards of the Indian line” and destroyed the sap after which de Pass carried a wounded comrade to safety – an action that led him to being the first Jewish officer to receive the Victoria Cross.

1915: As of today, “the contributions to the fund for the relief of the sufferes from the Russian massacres reached a total of $734,494.

1915: Birthdate of Aleksandr Yakovlevich Novakovsky, the native of St. Petersburg who gained fame as Alexander Nov, “a Professor of Economics at the University of Glasgow and a noted authority on Russian and Soviet economic history.”

1915: Jacob Bosniak, presided over a meeting of students at the Jewish Theological Seminary where “resolutions expressing their grief were adopted.”

1915: The faculty of JTS met today for the first time since the death of Solomon Schechter.

1915: In Manhattan, an exhibit sponsored by Bezalel that included rugs, silver filigree work, copper inlaid articles, Torah Bells and Meghilloths came to a close.

1916: At Temple Israel, Dr. M.H. Harris delivered a sermon on “The Fate of the Jew After the War’ in which he talked about the fate of 1,500,000 Jews in Poland and said he did not put any trust in Germany’s recent promise to create an independent Kingdom of Poland.

1916: The Greek government considers calling on Jews to serve in military; prior to this date they were exempt from service.

1916: Writing in The Jewish Chronicle, Dr. Joseph Kruk described his first meeting with Alexander Protopopov, the Minister of the Interior, “on whom depends the course of the policy towards the Jews of Russia” who said he believes “in equal rights for the Jews” but believes that the lack of a commercial treaty will be a hindrance towards his government reaching that goal.

1917: For the first time since the United States entry into WW I,  “With the cooperation of the Dutch government” which was neutral, the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Jewish Relief Committee began distribution “relief funds in territories occupied by Germany.”

1917: In London, Harry Rowson and his wife gave birth to Sefton Wilfred David Rowson who gained fame as Israeli diplomat and Professor of International Law, Shabtai Rosenne.

1917: “A mass meeting” designed “to enroll men and women in the International Zionist Organization” is scheduled to “held at the Morris High School” at eight o’clock this evening.

1917: “The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America announced today that Samuel Mason, as special representative of the organization, has started for Japan to investigate condions among the Jewish emigrants stranded in that country.”

1918: Felix Warburg outlines plans for a December campaign designed to raise funds for Jewish war suffers at a meeting of the People’s Relief Committee which represents the working class of New York Jewry.

1918: The Jewish Welfare Board met today.

1918: “After suspension of aid to Germany that began when the United States entered WW I, today, “with the cooperation of the Dutch government “distribution of relief funds in territories occupied by Germany was resumed by representatives of the JDC of the American Jewish Relief Committee.

1918: “The registration campaign” is scheduled to continue until today at which time the district elections for the ZOA are scheduled to be held.”

1919: In London, a poor Russian immigrant tailor, Louis Kossoff and his wife gave birth to award winning actor David Kossof  who also became “an anti-drug campaigner” when his son rock musician Paul Kossoff died as a result of drug abuse.

1921(23rd of Cheshvan, 5682): Seventy-one year old Isabel “Belle” Wolfe Baruch, the Winnsboro, SC daughter of Sailing and Sarah Cohen Wolfe, the wife of Dr. Simon Baruch and the mother of Hartwig, Bernard, Herman and Sailing Barcuh passed away today after which she was buried at the Flushing Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, NY.

http://www.gcdigital.org/digital/collection/p163901coll005/id/555/

1921: “Five congregations, three Christian and two Jewish held a union Thanksgiving service at Temple Israel in Far Rockaway this morning.

1922: Seventy-five year old Italian politician and Prime Minister Sidney Costantino Sonnino, the son of Isacco Saul Sonnino – a Jewish born son of a banker – who converted to Anglicanism passed away today.(Ironically, one of his big claims to fame is that he was regarded as unique because he was a Protestant in country almost completely dominated by Roman Catholic political leaders,)

1922: Birthdate of Claus Adolf Moser, the native of Berlin who was brought to England in 1936 where his contributions to the world of statistics led to his being made a Life peer with the title Baron Moser>

1922: In Akron, Ohio, Benjamin and Bertha Munitz Ovshinsky gave birth to Stanford R. Ovshinsky, the inventor of the nickel-metal hydride battery. (As reported by Barnaby J. Feder)

1924: In New York, Barbara Stettheimer and “Maj. Gen. Julius Ochs Adler, who was the president and publisher of The Chattanooga Times and the general manager of The New York Times from 1935 until his death in 1955” gave birth to Julius Ochs Adler, Jr “a business executive and public relations consultant who ran a popular independent bookstore in Manhattan for 16 years.” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden and Eric Pace)

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/20/nyregion/julius-ochs-adler-jr-78-businessman-publicist-and-bookseller.html

1928(11th of Kislev, 5689): Parashat Vayetzei

1928(11th of Kislev, 5689): Semei Kakungulu who founded the Abayudaya (Luganda: Jews) community in Uganda in 1917 passed away today.

http://puttivillage.org/history-of-abayudaya/

1928: According to dispatches from Bucharest received by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Julius Maniu, the National Peasant Premier of Rumania seems determined to maintain the promise he made…after assuming office to see to it that all minority races in the Kingdom including the Jews” will “enjoy the protection of the government in the exercise of their rights.”

1928: “Napoleon’s Barber” an early “talkie” written by Arthur Caesar and featuring Michael Mark was released in the United States today. 

1929: Georges Clemenceau, Premier of France during the final years of World War I passed away.  He provided the stamina that helped France stay the course and defeat the forces of the Kaiser.  For Jews, he will be remembered as a French politician who risked his career to support Emile Zola as he worked to gain justice for Colonel Dreyfus. 

1930: In Essen, Germany “a Jewish father who was the director of a textile company and a Lutheran mother gave birth to Inge Schönthal the photographer who was the wife of “Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.” (As reported by Elisabetta Povoledo)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/obituaries/inge-feltrinelli-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

https://lithub.com/remembering-inge-feltrinelli/

1930: One day after he had passed away, eighty-three year old Russian born American “Hebrew Poet” Israel Fine who was “an intimate friend of President Roosevelt” and the author of “Ode to America” which was “written in Hebrew on the occasion of the centennial celebration of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in 1914” was buried this “afternoon in the Baltimore Hebrew Cemetery.”

1931(14th of Kislev, 5692): On the day before his 51stbirthday William Andrew Saks, the Baltimore born son the former Jennie Rohr and Saks 5th Avenue co-founder Andrew Saks passed away today.

1932: A call to orthodox Jewry to unite to finish rebuilding Palestine as a Jewish homeland was sounded today by Rabbi Wolf Gold of Brooklyn, president of the Mizrachi Organization of America, at the opening session of the annual convention of that body held in Buffalo, NY.  “Detailing the Mizrahi’s program for Palestine which calls for a rebuilding along strict orthodox line, Rabbi “Gold held that the organization was the only one in the world which could accomplish the task of taking back to the homeland the ancient principles of Judaism.”  On a more practical note, “Rabbi Gold reported that…$40,000,000 has been invested in more than 63,000 acres of orange groves in Palestine.  Raising oranges is one of the chief industries of the homeland he said.”  Despite problems in the world economy, he reported that orange exports have “increased tremendously” over the last year.

1933(6th of Kislev, 5694): Seventy-three year old Russian born Rabbi Bernhard Rabbino who served congregations in several small towns including Keokuk, IA and Brunswick, GA, before becoming a lawyer and champion of the established of the “Domestic Relations Courts in New York” and who was the husband of “the former Anna Ladewig” with whom he had had four daughters passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/11/25/105822888.pdf

1933: The German Law Against Dangerous and Habitual Criminals adopted today allows for compulsory castration of “hereditary” criminals.

1934: Lillian Hellman's drama “The Children's Hour” premiered on Broadway today for the first of   691 performances

1934: In “Engels in the Volga German Republic of the Russian SFSR”, Frankfurt born journalist and translator Harry Viktorovich Schnittke and Maria Iosifovna Schnittke (née Vogel) gave birth to composer Alfred Schnittke, the grandson of philologist and translator Tea Abramovna.

1934: In New York, Birdie (Blakeman) and William Charnin, an opera singer gave birth to Martin Charnin, “best-known work is as conceiver, director and lyricist of the musical Annie.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/theater/martin-charnin-who-helped-create-annie-dies-at-84.html

1934: “In Engels, in the Vogla-German Republic of the Russian SFSR” Frankfurt born Jewish journalist Harry Viktorovich Schnittke and Maria Iosifovna Schnittke, gave birth to Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke, creator of the oratorio “Nagasaki.”

1935: Birthdate of Los Angeles native Mordicai Gerstein the Caldecott Medal winning illustrator whose works include The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

1936: According to testimony given today before the royal commission of inquiry by officials of the Palestine government including B.G. Harris, irrigation adviser to the development department; B.G. Harris, irrigation adviser to the development department, F.G. Salman, Commissioner of Land and Surveys and N.C. Bennett, assistant director of land surveys, “nothing has been done by the mandatory government to fulfill Article VI of the Palestine Mandate, calling for the facilitation of the settlement of Jews on government land.

1936: “About 600 University of Warsaw students, a third of them girls, locked themselves in the college building today and announced they would refuse to leave until the university agreed to segregate the Jews.”

1936: The Jerusalem Arab daily newspaper al-Liwa demanded the Peel commission should reach only one conclusion: ‘a National Arab Government’ throughout Palestine.

1937: The Reich is about to assume permanent control of the property of the Jewish shipping operator, Arnold Bernstein, without awaiting his conviction on "economic treason" charges. His trial before the Hamburg Emergency Court has been going on for ten days

1938(1st of Kislev, 5699): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1938(1st of Kislev, 5699): Seventy-nine year old Russian born Joshua H. Cohen, the Rabbi of the Woodbine, NJ Brotherhood Synagogue passed away from heart disease at the Jewish Hospital in Philadelphia,

1938: Winston Churchill condemned the British stewardship of Palestine in speech in the House of Commons.

1938: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Chicago native Sylvia Polisky, the daughter of Samuel and Sarah Braverman Polisky became Sylvia Padzensky today when she married Edward Padzensky in what became a “love affair that lasted for more than fifty years.”

1939: “Catholic Welfare Council Helped Jews and Others in Reich” published today described the organization’s efforts to refugees from “Germany and countries under the sway of the German Reich” which has included raising $285,486 to help those of Jewish extractions as well as “a large number of Catholics classified as ‘non-Aryans’”

1939: “Links Zionist Aims to Democratic Way” published today described Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s belief that those “who really believed in democracy had no choice but to support the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.”

1939: It was reported today that Junior Hadassah has raised “about $100,000 for its undertakings in Palestine” and that it will be a hospital for the children’s Village at Meier Shfeyah to be named for Miss Alice Seligsberger” who “was in charge of the Zionist medical unit which went to Palestine in the World War and established a network of hospitals and similar institutions.

1939: Due in part “to the continued sales of stocks formerly owned by Jews for the Reich’s account” in Berlin, “the share index advanced slightly to 102.07. (Anti-Semitism is good for business)

1940: Slovakia becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers. Regardless of the impact of Slovakian troops on the fighting on the Eastern Front, this move helped lay the groundwork for the Jewish community which saw 65,000 of its 77,000 shipped to the camps and their death by 1945.

1940: The Atlantic, with 1,783 illegal Jewish refugees on board was escorted into the harbor at Haifa.  How determined were the British to keeps Jews out Palestine?  Consider the following; at this time in 1940, Britain stood alone against the Nazis.  France had surrendered the previous June. The Soviet Union was still an ally of Hitler and would not enter the fray until June of 1941.  The United States would not enter the fight for another year.  The U-boat wolf-packs were sinking British ships in the North Atlantic.  Yet at a time when British merchant vessels need all the protection they could get. British warships were cruising the Mediterranean so they could keep a few thousand Jews out Palestine.  

1941: A ghetto was set up at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia in the old barracks and then in the walled town itself. All the 3,700 local inhabitants were moved out. Although Theresienstadt was set up as a "model settlement," its death rate reached 50% in 1942 through starvation and epidemics. During an investigation by the Red Cross in June 1943 the Germans changed the external appearance of the town and deported many so that there would be less overcrowding. All the interviews were carefully orchestrated and immediately after the visit most of the "actors" were then deported. In all 140,937 Jews were sent to Theresienstadt, of whom 33,529 died in the ghetto and 88,196 were deported to death camps. There were 17,247 persons left in the ghetto when it was liberated.

1941: After premiering last month in London, “49th Parallel,” a British war movie based on an original story by Emeric Pressburger who wrote the screenplay and starring Leslie Howard was released in the United Kingdom.

1941: "Life Certificates" were distributed to some Jews of the Vilna Ghetto. By now most of the Jews of Vilna had been slaughtered.  Only about 15,000 Jews held “yellow certificates” and these would do them little good.  By the end of the war, 96% of the Jews of Vilna would be dead.

1941: Karel Švenk “was one of the first artists to be deported to Terezín today, and was among the 342 young Jewish men sent to prepare the previously non-Jewish camp for the Jewish artist inmates to follow.”

1942: American born Zionist leader Rechaviah Lewin Epstein was buried in Rehoboth today.

1942: Dr. Stephen S. Wise presided over a memorial service for the late Rechaviah Lewin Epstein in the New York Offices of the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs

1942: During the Battle of Stalingrad Field Marshall Erich von Manstein “advised Hitler not order the break out by the 6th Army” because his forces could break through the Soviet lines and relieve the embattled group at the same time that Goring boasted that the Luftwaffe could resupply the force – two pieces of advice that Hitler wanted to hear but that sealed the fate of the German forces and led to the loss that was a turning point in WW II.

1942: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a founder and president of the World Jewish Congress, announces at a press conference that the United States State Department has confirmed that Europe's Jews are being slaughtered by the Nazis. Wise estimates that the Germans have already murdered two million Jews, which is an understatement;

1942: Birthdate of Earl Leslie Krugel, the West Coast coordinator of the Jewish Defense League.

1942: “Blood and Banquets: A Berlin Social Diary” by Bella Fromm is scheduled to be published today.  Fromm is a German Jewish reporter who left Germany just before the outbreak of World War II.  The book is based on her first-hand observations of the Nazi leaders in Berlin.

1943: Mordechai "Modi" Alon who had enlisted in the RAF in 1940 finally began his flight training today in Rhodesia.  Alon would one of the IAF’s first pilots and hero of the War for Independence.

1943: “Easy Aces” starring Goodman Ace and his wife Jane, two Jews from Kansas City, became a one-half-hour-per-week broadcast at 7:30 PM on CBS radio.

1943: In Washington, DC, Theodore Rosenberg who worked at the Pentagon and his wife Isabelle gave birth to Leslie Rosenberg, who gained fame as Leslie R. Wolfe, “a longtime leader of the Center for Women Policy Studies.” (As reported by Amisha Padnani)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/obituaries/leslie-wolfe-who-pursued-equality-for-women-dies-at-74.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1944: It was reported today the 21st annual conference of Junior Hadassan had condemned the assassination of Lord Moyne.

1944: Birthdate of former congressman and Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman.

1945(19th of Kislev, 5706): Parashat Vayishlach

1945: “The twenty-second annual convention of the National Labor Committee for Palestine officially opened this afternoon, starting a drive for $3,000,000 to be forwarded to the Histadrut, the Palestine Federation of Labor, for the promotion of agricultural and industrial projects in Palestine.”

1946(1st of Kislev, 5707): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1946: Fifty-one year old Hungarian born ”László Moholy-Nagy, “arguably one of the greatest influences on post-war art education in the United States” and convert to the Hungarian Reformed Church passed away today in Chicago.

1946: Today’s concert, during which Dame Julia Myra Hess played Beethoven’s Third Symphony with the NBC Symphony Orchestra “was preserved on transcription discs and later issued on CD by Naxos Records.”

1946: “The formal installation of Joseph Smith as the new rabbi of Temple B’nai Israel in Burlington, NJ is scheduled to take place this evening at 8 p.m. in the social hall.

1946: The Philadelphia Sphas led by Inky Lautman, Sol Schwartz and Bernie Opper are scheduled to play the Brooklyn Gothams tonight in American Basketball League game at the Broadway Brooklyn Arena.

1946: Birthdate of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, the New York born Sephardic Jew who became the director of New York University's Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy

1946: “Report on the Sanitary and Medical Organization of the Monowitz Concentration Camp For Jews (Auschwitz-Upper Silesia)” by Dr. Leonardo De Benedetti, Physician and Surgeon and Dr. Primo Levi, Chemist was published in the Turin-based medical journal Minerva Medica. The material will be republished in 2007 as Auschwitz Reportby Primo Levi.

1947: The Jewish Agency (part of the de facto Jewish government in Palestine) began registering “Jewish youths to work for and defend” the as yet undeclared and unrecognized Jewish state.

1947: Birthdate of Eli Ben-Menachem, the native of Bombay who made Aliyah in 1949 and has served as an MK and as Deputy Speaker of the Knesset.

1947: A group of writers, producers and directors, known later as the Hollywood 10, was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer a committee’s questions about alleged communist influence in the film industry. This was viewed as part of right wing America’s war against “Jewish Hollywood.”  This was actually part of the first round of what would later come to be called the Culture Wars which have always had a taint of anti-Semitism to them.

1947: The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to approve citations for contempt of Congress citations against the Hollywood Ten for the “defiance” of the mis-named House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).  “Of the Hollywood Ten, six - John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz and Samuel Ornitz — were Jews.”

1948: Dr. Maurice Finkelstein, the Professor at St. John’s University Law School and Chairman of the Temporary Housing Rent Commission which had been “set up to administer the local law freezing rents for permant guests of hotels, apartment hotels, and rooming and lodging houses” in New York resigned today “when an uproar followed sanction of hotel rent increases as high as 12 per cent.”

1948(22nd of Cheshvan): The seventy-one year old Odessa born “dean of the New York dance teachers” Louis H. Chalif who had been “ballet master of the Government Theatre in Odessa” before coming to the U.S. in 1905 and founding the Chalif Normal of School while raising six children – Edward, Selmer, Amos, Vitalis, Helen and Frances – with his wife, former Sarah Katzhof of Odessa, passed away today.

1948: The UN Truce Mission announces “a provisional…truce line” between Arab and Israeli forces.

1949: “Israel and Egypt signed an armistice whereby the Nitzana region, situated in Israel, was declared a demilitarized zone. The armistice agreement also stipulated that on the Egyptian side of the border "no Egyptian defensive positions shall be closer to El Auja than El Qouseima and Abou Aoueigila

1950: Guys and Dollsa musical by Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows opened at the 46th Street Theatre and enjoyed a run of 1,200 performances.

1951(25th of Cheshvan, 5712): Parashat Chayei Sarah

1951(25th of Cheshvan, 5712): Seventy year old Dora Shubert Wolf, the daughter of David and Gittel Shubert, the wife of Milton Wolf and the sister to theatre owning Shubert brothers passed away today.

1952(6th of Kislev, 5713): Forty-eight year old Rutgers alum and Columbia University trained attorney Alexander Feller, the “associate editor of Current Legal Thought passed away today in New Brunswick, NJ.

1953(17th of Kislev, 5714): Sixty-year old Abraham Krotoshinsky who earned a Distinguished Service Cross for his role in rescuing the “Lost Battalion” during WW I passed away today.

1954(28th of Cheshvan, 5715): Sixty-nine year old “internationally known cellist and founder of the Hambourg Tirio,” Boris Hambourg, the Russian born son of Michael and Catherine Hambourg, the brother of pianist Mark Hambourg and violinist Jan Hambourg, who settled in Canada in 1910 and was the husband of the former Maria Bachope passed away today in Toronto.

1956: After 1,063 the curtain comes down on the original Broadway production of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’ musical hit “The Pajama Game.”

1957(1st of Kislev, 5718): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1957(1st of Kislev, 5718): Seventy-eight year old Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, the Christian Oxford trained professor of “Jewish Descent” and Laborite who became a supporter of Zionism passed away today in Avon, CT.

1958: Yisrael Barzilai began serving as Minister of Postal Services in Israel.

1959: CBS broadcast “Merman on Broadway” featuring songs from “Gypsy,” the musical ‘with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents” that included an appearance by Tab Hunter (born Arthur Andrew Klein)/

1960: In London, Nigel Kneale and Judith Kerr, the Berlin born daughter of theatre critic Alfred Kerr and the former Julia Anna Franziska Weisman, gave birth to novelist Matthew Kneale, author of English Passengers’

1963: Today, Life magazine “purchased all rights” to Abraham Zapruder’s film of the Kennedy Assassination.

1963: Jack Ruby, born Jacob Leon Rubenstein, the Chicago born son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy. 

1967: Life published selected frames Abraham Zapruder’s film of the Kennedy Assassination.

1969: NBC broadcast the 1th episode of “My World and Welcome to it” created by Melville Shavelson, produced by Sheldon Leonard and Danny Arnold.

1970: ITV broadcast “A Pipe and A Moustache” an episode of “The Lovers” a British sitcom created by Jack Rosenthal who also served as the writer and director.

1973: Eighty-one year old Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes, “the first Allied Medical Officer to enter Bergen-Belsen” and gained fame for care and treatment of the victims passed away today.

https://www.bigredbook.info/hugh_llewellyn_glyn-hughes.html

https://www.befreiung1945.de/en/75-years-liberation/biografien/hugh-llewelyn-glyn-hughes/

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/45051132/brigadier-hugh-llewellyn-glyn-hughes-epsom-college-archive-

1973: “Scream, Pretty Peggy” featuring Allan Arbus as “Dr. Eugene Saks” and Tovah Feldshuh as “Agnes Thornton” was broadcast for the first time on ABC’s Movie of the Week.

1974: American nuclear physicist and “ufologist” Stanton Friedman married Stella M. Kimball today in Los Angeles

1974: Birthdate of Sam Kellerman, one of the four Kellerman brothers that included sportscaster Max Kellerman, an aspiring playwright who wrote “The Man Who Hated Shakespeare.”

1975: In Paris, Jews originally from Arab and Muslim countries...to establish the Tel Aviv-based World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC)

1976: Ninety-two refuseniks appealed to world Jewry for help in protesting searches in the apartments of the organizers of the symposium on Jewish culture.

1976: “Yevgeny Abezgauz, a leading Leningrad refusenik, received permission to emigrate to Israel.”

1982(8th of Kislev, 5743):  Seventy-seven year old Benny Friedman passed away. The University of Michigan football star was considered the first of the great professional passing quarterbacks.  After WW II, he served as the Athletic Director and Football Coach for Brandeis University

http://michigantoday.umich.edu/04/Fall04/story.html?passing

1983: The PLO exchanged 6 Israeli prisoners for 4,500 Arabs held by the government of Israel.  This would not be the last of such numerically disproportionate trades in which the Israelis would engage.

1984: On BBC One and BBC HD, today was the original network release of “Four Days in July” written and directed by Mike Leigh

1985(11th of Kislev, 5746): Ninety-five year old Maurice Podoloff, the native of Elzabethgrad, Russia who graduated from Yale Law School and was the first Commissioner of the NBA passed away today in West Haven, CT.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/26/sports/maurice-podoloff-dead-at-95-was-first-nba-president.html

1986:The original production of “Smile” “a musical with music by Marvin Hamlisch and book and lyrics by Howard Ashman opened on Broadway today at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

1986: Susan Sontag’s short story “The Way We Live Now” which “remains a significant text on the AIDS epidemic” was “published today in The New Yorker.

1986: In a letter written today “explore Laurens van der post, after a visit to the Gulf with Princess Diana” Prince Charles “implied that the ‘influx of foreign, European Jews’ to Israel was to blame for fueling the Israeli-Arab conflict, and lamented that US presidents were unwilling to take on the American ‘Jewish lobby.’”

1989(26th of Cheshvan, 5750): Seventy-seven year old Leonard Boudin the son of Jewish immigrants Clara (Hessner) and Joseph Boudin who was the St. John’s Law School trained civil liberties attorney whose clients included baby-doctor Benjamin Spock and Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame who was the husband of poet Jean Roisman and nephew of equally famous and controversial attorney Louis Boudin passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/26/obituaries/leonard-boudin-civil-liberties-lawyer-dies-at-77.html

1990(7th of Kislev, 5751): Parashat Vayetzei

1990(7th of Kislev, 5751): Eighty-two year old Brooklyn native, Robert “Buck” Halpern who “played guard at the City College of New York from 1926-1928” and “then played as a guard in the NFL with the Staten Island Stapletons in 1930” passed away today.

1993: “Josh and S.A.M.” a comedy produced by Martin Brest in which Noah Fleiss made his film debut was released in the United States today.

1994 Paul Grosz, president of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, opened library at the Jewish Museum in Vienna.

1994(21st of Kislev, 5755): Fifty-one year old David Patton Garfield who “became a successful cameraman and film editor” after he decided not to follow in the acting footsteps of his father John Garfield passed away today in Los Angeles.

1995(1st of Kislev, 5756): Rosh Chodesh KIslev

1995(1st of Kislev, 5756): Ninety-five year old Dr. Moses Paulson, professor emeritus of gastroenterology at the Johns Hopkins medical school and an expert on digestive diseases, passed away today.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-11-27/news/1991331025_1_gastroenterology-ulcerative-colitis-digestive-diseases

1997: As part of the process in which Zypora Frank, a Polish Jewess, learned that her family had owned part of the land on which the Auschwitz death camp stood, and where most of her mother's family perished she went to visit Auschwitz today. And there, in the records of the village that the Poles called Oswiecim, she found her grandfather's property -- now hers and her brother's. Fifteen square miles of what became the Auschwitz death camp had been his tile factory.

1999(15th of Kislev, 5760): David Kessler, the man most responsible for making the Jewish Chronicle the most respected Jewish weekly in the world passed away. He achieved this by dint of his unwavering desire for fairness, his belief that all sections of a community must be given a fair hearing, his insistence on total independence, accuracy, economic stability and the need for accepting modern progress. As chairman and managing director for 50 years of the newspaper, in which he and his family held the majority of shares, Kessler was able to ensure, at times after a struggle, that it followed his principles.

1999: American-Jewish economist Joseph E. Stiglitz announced that he would resign as the World Bank's chief economist after using the position for nearly three years to raise pointed questions about the effectiveness of conventional approaches to helping poor countries".

1999: Eight days after it had premiered, “End of Days” directed by Peter Hyams who also served as the cinematographer was released in the United States toda.

2000(25th of Chehsvan, 5761): Maj. Sharon Arameh, 25, of Ashkelon was killed by Palestinian sniper fire in fighting near Neve Dekalim in the Gaza Strip.

2000(25th of Cheshvan, 5761): Ariel Jeraffi, 40, of Petah Tikva, a civilian employed by the IDF, was killed by Palestinian fire as he travelled near Otzarin in the West Bank

2000(25th of Cheshvan, 5761): Ariel Jeraffi, 40, of Petah Tikva, a civilian employed by the IDF, was killed by Palestinian fire as he travelled near Otzarin in the West Bank.

2001(9th of Kislev, 5762): Eighty-three year old Jacob Landau, the Philadelphia native whose works can be found in in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery past away today.

http://nt.gmnews.com/news/2002-01-09/Front_page/027.html

2002: The New York Timesbook section features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interest including A Moral Reckoning The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repairby Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, The Punch by John Feinstein, Take on the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You to Know: What You Can Do to Fight Backby Arthur Levitt, Rising to the Light: A Portrait of Bruno Bettelheim by Theron Raines and The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany, 1743-1933 by Amos Elon.

2002: The government adopts Resolution 2793 which provides the criteria for The Israel Antiquities Authority and the Old Acre Development Company, in cooperation with the Israel Lands Administration, to begin a rehabilitation and conservation project in Old Acre. The area where the work is to be done is called Block 10 and is located in the northwestern part of the city and represents the first of its kind effort in Acre since the creation of the modern state of Israel.

2002(19th of Kislev, 5763): Eighty-year old Richard S. Lazarus who was ranked as one of the “one hundred most eminent psychologists of the 20th century” passed away today.

https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/12/04_lazarus.html

2003(29th of Cheshvan, 5764):Rabbi Abraham Karp, a pulpit rabbi in Rochester, N.Y., and prominent scholar in American Jewish history, passed away today at the age of 82. Rabbi Karp, who served as spiritual leader of Temple Beth El in Rochester from 1956 to 1972, was a professor of history and religion at the University of Rochester until he retired in 1991 and was named professor emeritus of Jewish studies. He moved that year to New York, becoming adjunct professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary of

2004: “Book Adds Layers of Complexity to the Schindler Legend published today provides a lengthy review of Professor David M. Crowe’s Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities and the True Story Behind the List, “an authoritative new biography of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis, clashes sharply with his idealized portrayal in the Oscar-winning 1993 Steven Spielberg movie "Schindler's List" and the 1982 historical novel by Thomas Keneally that inspired it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/books/book-adds-layers-of-complexityto-the-schindler-legend.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

2004: “Israel confirmed today that it would allow international observers to monitor the Palestinian presidential election on Jan. 9, as the Palestinians had requested.”

2005: The Israeli bobsled team, a.k.a. the “Frozen Chosen” has chosen to defrost this year away from the slopes.

2006: The Jewish Daily Forwardfeatured an interview with Rabbi Menachem Mendel Gershowitz.  The 26 year old Lubavitcher is the leader of the 5 Chabad Rabbis serving the needs of Kazakhstan’s 25,000 Jews. Rabbi Gershowitz stated that the treatment of the Jews of Kazakhstan bears no relationship to the images appearing in Sasha Cohen’s hit film “Borat.”  He is hoping that the movie never finds its way to Kazakhstan, as he fears it could hurt the warm relationship that the Kazakh president has with the Jewish community - and with Israel. ‘If he will think that the Jews are against him, and don’t like what he does, we will get the result,’ he said.

2007: After two months, the first major UK production of “Parade,” a “musical that dramatizes the 1913 trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank” came to a close today.

2007: Mark Dreyfus became a member of the Australian Parliament for the Division of Isaacs in the suburbs of Melbourne which was named after Sir Isaac Isaacs.

2007: In Jerusalem, as part of the International Oud Festival, Ladino singers Janet and Jak Esim close the musical event with a blend of Judeo-Spanish melodies and song.

2007: “David and Bat Sheba,” a new production of the COMPAS Dance Company premiers at Merkaz Habama, Ganei Tikva, Israel.

2007: A mild earthquake registering 4.1 on the Richter scale was felt in central Israel shortly after midnight between Friday and Saturday, days after a 4.2 tremor struck the northern Dead Sea earlier this week. Police said they had received no reports of injuries or damage. Reports of the quake were recorded, among other places, in Ra'anana, Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva, Rehovot and Jerusalem, Army Radio reported. Seismology experts said the epicenter of the earthquake was east of the city of Ramle, Israel Radio reported Saturday morning.

2008:As part of Works & Process at the Guggenheim in New York, a performance John Zorn’s Shir Ha-Shirim. Scored for five female voices and two narrators, Shir Ha-Shirim is John Zorn’s lush and sensitive setting of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s—perhaps the world’s first erotic verse. This romantic and lyrical project evokes feelings of love, eroticism, and spirituality and features a specially-commissioned dance work.

2008: Sports Illustrated magazine featured a “Jewish Triple Header” with stories about Rena Glickman, the Jewish grandmother recognized as the “mother of woman’s judo,” charges of insider trading leveled by the S.E.C. against Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban and plans by Lew Wolff to move the Oakland A’s to Fremont, CA where he has promised Bob Wasserman, the town’s Jewish mayor, he will be building a $500 million baseball stadium using his own money.  

2008; Empire poultry which has already expanded its Turkey production to meet the demands of the Thanksgiving holiday reportedly is to begin “increasing its production of poultry today by 50%, thus putting about 100,000 more chickens on the market each week.”

2008:The United States Department of Agriculture is now verifying and certifying “numerous” claims by livestock and poultry sellers for nonpayment, according to a court motion filed today by a U.S. attorney in New York. In an unusual action, the United States district attorney for the Eastern District of New York is asking a New York bankruptcy judge to send Agriprocessors’ bankruptcy case to Iowa. Criminal and regulatory actions in Iowa against the Postville kosher meat processor were one of the reasons he offered for moving the case. Under the Packers and Stockyard Act, Agriprocessors must meet strict payment schedules for the purchase of livestock and poultry from local sellers.

2008: A human resources worker facing federal charges for allegedly helping illegal immigrants get jobs at Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville has pleaded not guilty. Karina Freund had already pleaded not guilty to a charge of harboring illegal immigrants after being arrested in September. A federal indictment also charged her with conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants.

2008: “The Jerusalem Foundation launched Jerusalem 2010, a campaign celebrating 150 years of British involvement in Jerusalem, at a special private event at London's Bevis Marks Synagogue. Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill and author of the History of Jerusalem in the 19th Century, gave an address on 150 years of Britain and Jerusalem

2009: In “N.F.L. Head Injury Study Leaders Quit” published today “Pulitzer Prize nominated” New York Timesman Alan Schwarz continued his long-running coverage of the effect “of concussions among football players of all ages.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/sports/football/25concussion.html

2009: The British commission of inquiry chaired by Sir John Chilicot that was to examine the British role in the Iraq War which included Sir Martin Gilbert began its inquiry today,
 

2009: The oldest complete Spanish Torah scroll will be up for sale at Sotheby's Judaica auction today.

2009: In a program entitled “Above and Beyond attendees at the Washington DCJCC Learn over Lunch examine “The Origin of Ethics and Piety Out of the Pages of the Jewish Legal Tradition.”

2009(7 Kislev, 5770): Eighty-five year old Abe Pollin “the owner of the N.B.A.’s Washington Wizards, who built the sports arena that revitalized downtown Washington and was known for his wide-ranging philanthropy, passed away. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/sports/basketball/25pollin.html?_r=0

2010: The Yeshiva Beth Yehudah Annual Dinner is scheduled to take place at the Detroit Renaissance in Detroit, Michigan.

2010: Holocaust survivors of Greek extraction will soon have their Greek citizenship restored in an expedited process, the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitrios Dollis, who accompanied Prime Minister George Papandreou on his official visit to Israel in late July, told The Jerusalem Post today.

2010(17th of Kislev, 5771): Joel Daner, a West Orange, NJ man who devoted his life to Jewish communal service, died today at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, a few days after his 72nd birthday. He had been suffering from cancer for several years.

2010: Jonah Lerner and his wife Sarah Liebowitz bought the Shulman House (built of for photographer Julius Schulman) for $2, 250,000.

2011: The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress is scheduled to meet today at the King David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem where it is to elect businessman Vadim Shulman to be its new president

2011: Family and friends gather to celebrate the birthday of Bill Gasway, husband, father, grandfather, recent Bar Mitzvah and pillar of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community.

2011: Congressmen Ted Deutsch (D-FLA) and Steve Israel (D-NY) have asked US Comptroller-General Gene Dodaro to investigate the Palestinian Authority’s use of American funding, three weeks after MK Moshe Matalon (Israel Beiteinu) sent a letter informing the budget committees of the US Senate and House of Representatives of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s policy to pay murderers released from Israeli prisons $5,000 and build them new homes.

2011: A group of Palestinians and Iranians protested today against former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as he was speaking to members of the Jewish community at a synagogue in Bochum, Germany.

2012: Millinery Center Synagogue is scheduled to present “The Controversial, The Amazing, and The Mystical Ideas in Judaism"

 2012: East Midwood Jewish Center, a conservative synagogue, in Brooklyn is scheduled to host a benefit concert for the displaced victims of Hurricane Sandy this evening.

2012: Several armed groups belonging to Fatah in the Gaza Strip claimed today that they had also fired various types of rockets and missiles at Israel during Operation Pillar of Defense.

2012: Senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Zahar said today that Iran will increase the military and economic aid to Gazan groups because of the victory Hamas claims against Israel in Operation Pillar of Defense.

2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The State of Israel: ‘My Promised Land’ by Ari Shavit.

2013: The 55th Venice Biennale International art festival which includes a Vatican exhibit “Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation” based on the first 11 chapters of Bereshit is scheduled to come to an end today. (As reported by JTA)

2013(21st of Kislev, 5774): Eight-seven year old Mathew Bucksbaum, the native of Marshalltown, Iowa who went to become a successful realtor and mall developer passed away today,\.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/business/matthew-bucksbaum-mall-developer-dies-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

2013: The Alexandria Kleztet is scheduled to perform in Camp Springs, MD.

2013: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to Maurice Sendak’s “Pincus and the Pig” – “a Jewish version of Peter and the Wolf.”

2013: At Temple Sinai in New Orleans, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman is scheduled to deliver a lecture “Law or Love? What Are We All About?” as part of the Murray Blackman Memorial Weekend. (As reported by the Crescent City Jewish News)

2013: President Shimon Peres issued a special statement in which he addressed the deal signed last night between the P5+1 and Iran in Geneva.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host David Fishman’s presentation on the biographies of three gems of the YIVO archives that survived the Vilna Ghetto: Theodor Herzl’s diary, the minute-book of the Vilna Gaon’s synagogue, and an original manuscript of Jacob Gordin’s play Mirele Efros.

2014: In Melbourne, “The Last Mentsch and “Gett, the Trial of Vivian Amsalem” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.

2014(2nd of Kislev): Yarhrzeit of Rabbi Aharon Kotler, the Lithuanian born American rabbi who worked to persuade Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau to work to save the Jews of Europe and founded the Yeshiva at Lakewood, NJ.

2014: “Coalition leaders decided today to delay a vote on the controversial “Jewish state” bill by one week, as ministers vowed to continue to oppose the measure even if it meant their jobs.” (As reported by Spencer Ho)

2014: An officer sustained minor injuries this evening when “an Arab man driving a stolen car ran over him in Kikar Adam near Binyamin before fleeing the scene, security forces said tonight. (As reported by Ido Ben Porat, Cynthia Blank)

2014: Ira Glass appeared on the Here's The Thing podcast.

2014; “Israeli journalist and author Israel Zamir, the only son of Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer is scheduled to be buried at Kibbutz Beit Alfa, “his home for 77 years.”

2015: Director Steven Spielberg, Israeli violinist Itzhak Perlman, singer Barbra Streisand, and playwright Stephen Sondheim are among those scheduled to be presented with the 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony today.

2015: The U.S.-led peacekeeper force in the insurgency-wracked Sinai will remain unchanged after Egypt and Israel rebuffed proposals to trim it by about a fifth, an Egyptian official said today

2015: Eighty-three year old Rita Berkowitz, a native of Romania who made Aliyah in 1951 “won the third annual Miss Holocaust Survivors Beauty Pageant in Haifa” today.

2015(12th of Kislev, 5776): Ninety-one year old attorney M. Roland Nachman, the Montgomery, Alabama born son of a prominent department store owner, “who opposed The New York Times in a libel case that resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision establishing greater leeway for newspapers and individuals to criticize government officials and other public figures” passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

2015: A memorial evening to honor Sir Martin Gilbert, of blessed memory, is scheduled to be held this evening in Central London.

2016: Wildfires which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attributed to “natural and unnatural” causes “raged through central and northern Israel for a third day today, devouring forests, damaging homes and prompting the evacuation of thousands of people.”

2016: As we sit down to celebrate Thanksgiving we pause to remember the 8th anniversary of the Mumbai Massacre which occurred on Thanksgiving in 2008 and counted among its victims Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29; Rebbetzin Rivka Holtzberg, 28; Bentzion Kruman, 26; Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, 37; Yoheved Orpaz, 62 and Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, 50.

2016: Start of Jewish Book Month http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/about/jewish-book-month.html

In 2016, Jewish Book Month begins on November 24 and ends on December 24.  The Jewish Book Council is the driving force behind Jewish Book Month.  According to the Jewish Book Council “It is the only organization in the American Jewish community exclusively committed to promoting and advocating for Jewish literature.  The Council serves as a catalyst for the writing, publication, distribution, reading and public awareness of books reflecting the rich variety of Jewish experience.”

 

What is a Jewish Book?  Obviously our traditional texts such as the Bible, the Talmud, Prayer books, and Rabbinic commentaries (ancient as well as modern) are Jewish Books.  Then there are books by Jewish authors about Jewish topics such as Jewish history, Jewish customs, Jewish cooking and Jewish people (fiction as well as non-fiction).  They too would obviously qualify as Jewish books.  But what about books by Jewish authors about topics that are not Jewish.  For example, Leon Uris was a Jewish author who wrote Exodus, a novel about the creation of the modern state of Israel.  Obviously this would be a Jewish Book.  But what about Battle Cry a novel Uris wrote about Marines fighting in the South Pacific?  Is this a Jewish Book?  What about books by non-Jewish authors about Jewish topics?  John Hersey is not Jewish.  He wrote The Wall, one of the first and finest novels about the plight of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto?  Is The Wall a Jewish Book?  While the answers to these questions are open to discussion, for our purposes any book by a Jewish author or on a “Jewish topic” will be considered a Jewish Book.  After all, why limit your choices, when there is so much out there waiting to fill your intellectual appetites?

 

2017: Today, “Health Minister Yaakov Litzman informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he is stepping down after the government signed a deal for ongoing infrastructure work on rail lines to continue this Shabbat.”

2017(6th of Kislev, 5778): Eighty-four year old Rabbi Neil Gillman, the son of Ernest and Rebecca Gillman who was “one of the premiere theologians of the Conservative movement” passed away today.

 (As reported by Joseph Berger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/obituaries/rabbi-neil-gillman-theologian-of-conservative-judaism-dies-at-84.html

 

2017: The Oxford Jewish Society book club is scheduled to discuss Duties of the Heart this evening before services and the Shabbat dinner.

2017: Today, “The Trump administration backtracked on its decision to order the Palestinians’ office in Washington to close, instead saying it would merely impose limitations on the office that it expected would be lifted after 90 days.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Leo Rosten whose works included The Joys of Yiddish continues today.

2018(16th of Kislev, 5779): Shabbat Va-yishlach;

2018: In further testament to the vitality of small community Jewish Life, in Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host the baby naming during Shabbat morning services of Mila Rose O’Neill.

2018: The American Sephardi Federation and Chassida Shmella are scheduled to host the second day of an “authentic Ethiopian Jewish weekend.”

2019: The UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “The Operative,” “Leona” and “Solomon and Gaenor.”

2019: In San Francisco, the Church of the Advent is scheduled to host “Roses and Almonds” with Tres Hermanicas and Aquila which includes a mix of “centuries-old Sephardic music.”

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Man Who Saw Everythingby Deborah Levy and Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey by Mikhal Dekel

2019: Following last night’s demonstrations in Haifa and Bialik in favor of Netanyahu, Israelis will see if there are more of the same today in response to the Prime Minister’s call for his supporters to take to the streets.

2019: “Alti Rodal is scheduled to provide a multi-media overview of the long history of Jews on Ukrainian lands and their interactions with Ukrainians, and others, in the context of empires and changing political regimes, times of crisis, and centuries of co-existence and cross-cultural fertilization in music, language, folk art, folklore, literature, and cuisine” at the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco.

2019: The Center for Jewish History and the Jewish Genealogical are scheduled to host Mikhal Dekel, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center and Director of the Rifkind Center for Humanities and the Arts who is the author of Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey as she talks about “One of the Greates Untold Stories of WW II: A Decade-Long Quest After My Father and A Quarter Million Other Holocaust Refugees.”

2020: B’nai Jeshurun’s librarian, Dr. Rafi Simon is scheduled to host a reading “rendezvous in celebration of Jewish Book Month.”

2020: “Halleluya – The Nighttime Show In The City of David” is scheduled to begin at 8:15 pm.

2020: The B’nai Jershurun Congregation is scheduled to host via Zoom the Men’s Club Happy Hour where attendees “discuss topics of current interest along with a little comedy on the side.”

2020: The Jewish Book Club hosted via zoom by L’Chaim Events is scheduled to begin at 11:00 AM.

 

 

This Day, November 25, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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November 25

2348 BCE: According to Archbishop James Ussher's Old Testament chronology, the Great Deluge ("Noah's Flood") began on this date.

407 BCE: Yedanaiah petitioned Bagohi, the governor of Yehud to rebuild the Jewish Temple at Elephantine.

1120: The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of Henry I of England.  The sinking of the ship would lead to chaos since William was Henry’s only male heir. When Henry, who treated his Jewish subjects well, passed away civil war broke out betweenthe claimants to the throne. The crown went to King Stephen who was opposed by the Empress Matilda. Both monarchs raised cash from the Jews. Matilda had placed a levy on the Jews of Oxford and, on seizing the city, King Stephen demanded a levy three and a half times that of Matilda. The king forced payment by the simple expedient of burning the Jews’ houses one by one until the full sum was paid. On the other hand, King Stephen did protect his Jewish subjects from those who were going off to join the Second Crusade.  Things would improve for England and the Jews of England as well, when Henry I’s grandson, Henry II finally took the throne.

1177:  Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Chatillon defeats Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.  The Crusader victory was one of their last in the Holy Land and only delayed the inevitable return of Jerusalem to Moslem control.  For Jews, Moslem control was comparatively better than Christian control.

1215: During the Baron’s War, King John who signed the Magna Cart which contains the following reference to the Jews: “If anyone who borrowed from the Jews any amount, large or small, dies before the debt is repaid, it shall not carry interest as long as the heir is under age, of whomsoever he holds; and if that debt falls in our hands [i.e., the king’s hands, following the Jewish creditor’s own demise], we will take nothing except the principal sum specified in the bond” sent a writ to the justiciars saying "Send to us with all speed by day and night, forty of the fattest pigs of the sort least good for eating so that we may bring fire beneath the castle" at Windsor.

1277: Nicholas III began his papacy. “During his brief reign Nicholas displayed a considerable zeal for the conversion of the Jews. His bull Vineam sorce encouraged conversion through "sermons and other means." Copies of the document were sent (1278–79) to the *Franciscans and provincial priors of the *Dominicans in various provinces. Concurrently, however, he renewed the decisions of his predecessors forbidding the forcible baptism of Jews and protecting them from attacks by Christians. Nevertheless, several *Church councils and synods legislated against the free intercourse of Jews and Christians. It is not clear whether it was the supposed hostility of Nicholas or his mildness toward the Jews which prompted Abraham b. Samuel *Abulafia to announce his intention of visiting the pope to demand the release of captive Jews. (When he arrived, however, the pope was already on his deathbed.)” (As reported by Jewish Virtual Library)

1357: Charles IV issued an edict protecting the Jews of Strasbourg. Two years later, amidst rumors about well-poisonings, 1,000 Jews would be burned and the remainder forcibly baptized.  Rumor trumped Royal Protection

1420: Pope Martin V favorably reinstates old privileges of the Jews and orders that no child under the age of twelve can be forcibly baptized without parental consent.

1489:  A work popularly referred to as “Abudarham's Siddur” was published for the first time in Lisbon.  Actually the book was untitled by its author David Abudarham, a Jewish scholar who lived in Seville (Spain) in the first part of the 14th century.  He modestly referred to his work as “Ḥibbur Perush ha-Berakot we-ha-Tefillot."  In fact it was a commentary on the various prayers tracing their origins and providing information about their liturgical significance.  This volume proved to be so popular that it went through nine editions the last of which appeared in Warsaw in the middle of the 19th century.  The printer was Eliezer Alantansi who used a lion rampant on a shield as his printer’s mark. “In his first publication, the Tur Orah Hayyim (1485), it is framed in red; in his second book, the Tur Yoreh Deah (1487), the frame is black; in his third book, the undated Pentateuch [1487-88], the lion appears without a frame. The designer and cutter is probably Alfonso Fernandez de Cordoba, who, no doubt, created the beautiful types and ornaments for Alantansi's books.”

1491:  The siege of Granada last Moorish stronghold in Spain began. When the siege is over, Spain will be united as a Catholic nation and Jews will be confronted with the choice of conversion or expulsion.

1491: Muley Abdu-Abdallah, the last Moorish ruler of Granada signed a secrety treaty with Ferdinand and Isabella, in which he agreed to surrender the city and its surrounding territory at a future date (January, 1492).  Included in the terms was a provision that Jews were to be allowed the same rights of protection that were being extended to the Moors.  However, "relapsed Marranos" were given one month to leave the city.  After that time they would be turned over to the Inquisition.  Also, the Moorish King made the incoming Christian monarchs promise that no Jew would serve as an "officer of justice, tax-gather, or commissioner" if holding that position would mean that the Jew would have authority over any Muslim.

1622:  "Christian IV, King of Denmark, addressed a letter to the Jewish Council of Amsterdam asking them to encourage some of their members to settle in his state.  He promised them freedom of worship and other favorable privileges."

1626: Sixty year old Edward Alleyn the English actor who was the first to play the title role of “Barabas” in Marlowe’s “Jew Of Malta” passed away today.

1638: Birthdate of Portuguese noble Catherine of Braganza, the wife of King Charles II of England who employed Fernando Medes, the Portuguese born Jew as her personal physician.

1642(13th of Kislev, 5403): Rabbi Meir Hakohen Katz Ashkenazi, the Son of Rabbi Moshe Katz Ashkenazi, [Dayan Frankfurt] and Gella Katz Ashkenazi and the husband of Meir Katz Ashkenazi passed away today.

1642(13th of Kislev, 5403): Meir Katz Ashkenazi, the daughter of Rabbi Yitzhak Katz passed away today.

Father of Rabbi Yonah Menachem Nahum

1707(1st of Kislev, 5468):Jente Opennheimer passed away today in Vienna.

1738: Birthdate of German mathematician Thomas Abbt who in 1763 entered a competition that was sponsored by the Berlin Academy for an essay on the application of mathematical proofs to metaphysics that was won by Moses Mendelssohn whom Abbt “yearned” to have as “his close friend” and to whom he “poured out…the deepest meditations of his troubled soul.”

1744: Austrian soldiers killed an untold number of Jews in Prague.

1761(1st of Kislev): The first Jewish social and civic club in North America was founded in Newport, RI

1766: Abigail Sarzedas and Myer Polock gave birth to Isaac Polock who was buried in Newport, RI when he passed away.

1769: Lazarus Eliezer Leiser Joseph van Geldern the son of Joseph Jacob Juspa van Geldern and Braeunle Brunella van Geldern passed away in Duesseldorf where he had been born in 1695.

1783: American forces retake New York from the British. Jews who had fled the British were able to return. Jews who were loyal to the Crown left along with other Loyalists making their homes in Canada or returning to England. Many of the Jews had taken refuge in Philadelphia, including Raabi Gershom Mendez Seixas who returned to the pulpit at Shearith Israel.

1783: Rebecca Franks and Lucius Levy Solomons gave birth to Rebecca (Becky) Solomons

1795: In Dijon, France, Nathan Brunschwig and his wife gave birth to Colette Brunswick the wife of Joseph Bing-Jacob and the mother of Rosine, Celestine, and Elisa Alice Bing-Jacob.

1795:  Stanislaus August Poniatowski the last king of independent Poland, is forced to abdicate and is exiled to Russia.  This marks the last act in the third and final partition of Poland.  “Polish” Jews now live in Austria, Germany and Russia.  As a result of the partition of Poland, Russia ended up with millions of Jews.  The Czars had worked long and hard to make and keep their empire “Jew free.”  Their greed for Polish land created their “Jewish problem.”  The shift from Poland to Russia dealt a mortal blow to the welfare of the Jewish people for the duration of the 19th century and on into the 20thcentury.

1799(27th of Cheshvan, 5560): In Frankfurt am Main, Benedict-Benedikt Moses Worms and Schönche Jeanette Worms gave birth to Zerline Worms who became Zerline Beyfus after her marriage.

1799: York, PA native Solomon Etting and Rachel Gratz gave birth to Kitty Etting, the wife of Richmond native Benjamin I. Cohen.

1802: In Prague gave Michael Klapp, the son of Wolf Klapp and his wife Sara gave birth to Abraham Klapp

1806: Birthdate of French financier Isaac Pereire who was the grandson of Jacob Rodrigues Pereire. During the 19th century, the Pereires were financiers on a par with the Rothschilds.  Unlike the Rothschilds, the Piereires were Sephardim who traced their ancestry to Portugal. (As reported by Meyer Kayersling, Isidore Singer and Jacques Kahn) 

1818: Today’s “report of the Administration of the Margraviate of Saxony shows that it intended to expel Joseph Friedlander” effective November 1, 1819.

1823: Birthdate of Francis Joseph Schuster, the Frankfurt born merchant and convert to Christianity who moved to Manchester in 1866 to continue his career

1829: Henry Abrahams married Ann Barnett today at the Great Synagogue.

1829: In Zerbst, Jakob Hirsch, a merchant, and Bertha Elkisch Bendix gave birth to Jenny Hirsch wrote for the Bazarunder the pseudonym J. N. Heynrichs until 1864 when she became active in the cause of women’s rights.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hirsch-jenny

1830: Birthdate of Breslau native Lina Bauer, who gained fame Lina Morgenstern, the wife of Theodore Morgenstern whom she married in 1850 and who was a noted author, feminist, pacifist and a member of the German Peace Society as well as the mother of five children – Clara, Olga, Martha, Michael and Alfred.

1837: In London, Joseph and Jane Emanuel gave birth to George Joseph Emanue the husband of Elizabeth Emanuel with whom he had seven children.

1838: In New York Benvenida Solis and Leon Ritterband gave birth to Joseph Ritterband, the first of their seven children.

1839: In Germany, Caroline and Lazarus Joseph Cohn gave birth to Seligman Lazarus Cohn the husband of Sophie Cohn with whom he had seven children.

1838: In Dublin, Ireland, Caroline Ellen Picard and Isaac Abraham Harris gave birth to Hannah Harris, the wife of Henry Simmons.

1847: In Frankfurt am Main, Simon and Johanna Hertz Lenz gave birth Henrietta Lenz who became Henrietta Ungar when she married Adolph Ungar.

1850: Abraham Einstein and Helene Moos gave birth to Jakob Einstein a younger brother of Hermann Einstein.

1852: A banquet celebrating the 31st anniversary of the Hebrew Benevolent Society began at 8 pm in New York City’s Chinese Assembly Rooms on Broadway.  The evening raised over $5,000 in donations which ranged in amounts from $10 to $150.

1852: In Rome, NY, Benjamin Bloomingdale and Hanna Weil gave birth to Columbia trained attorney Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, the husband of Adele Bernheimer and President of the Retail Dry Goods Association who was a Republican presidential elector and director of the “Jewish Proctectory.”

1853: The New York Times reported that yesterday, which was celebrated as day of Thanksgiving by the people of New York, "the Jews laid the cornerstone of a new hospital for people of their persuasion."

1853: “The Jews In Europe” published today focused on the treatment of the Jews by the government of Austria. Reports “that the Austrian Government has revived the system of intolerance against the Jewish subjects” were misleading because “there was no need of a revival of the system of intolerance, because the Austrian Government have at all times been cruel and malicious against the unfortunate Jewish inhabitants.”

1856 (27th of Cheshvan): Danish philanthropist Simon Aaron Eibeschuetz passed away

1856: Four days after she had passed away, Anne Cohen, the wife of Abraham Cohen was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1858: Birthdate of Paul Haupt, the German born American Assyriologist who “projected and edited the Polychrome Bible, a critical edition of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and a new English translation with notes” and published critical texts of the following with notes: Canticles (1902), Koheleth (1905), Ecclesiastes (1905), Nahum (1907), Esther (1908) and Micah (1910)

1858: Today Solomon Beyfus was admitted to the Freedom of the City of London today “declaring that his father, Gotze Philip Beyfus late of Birmingham, was teacher of languages and had lived at 7 Bury Street in the City of London, a location adjacent to the Bevis Marks Synagogue.”

1859: Today, for the second time,  the Jewish Chronicle published an advertisement “for a German Lady to teach in her own language and to give instruction in Hebrew” from a “Ladies’ school” in Dover “where the number of pupils is small and where there are resident French and English Governesses

1863: Max Maretzek, the Moravian born American-Jewish maestro conducted the first performance of "Faust" in America

1863: During the Civil War, the Union broke the Confederate stranglehold at Chattanooga with the Battle of Missionary Ridge where Colonel Frederick “Knefler was in command of the combined 79th Indiana and 86th Indiana infantry regiments that led the unexpected charge up the center of the ridge and which led to his being “complimented” for the unexpected charge up the hill and for one of his fellow officers to write that Knefler ““richly merits a commission as brigadier-general for his gallantry displayed in the charging and taking of Missionary Ridge.”

1864:British statesman Benjamin Disraeli declared in a speech: 'Man is a being born to believe, and if no church comes forward with all the title deeds of truth, he will find altars and idols in his own heart and his own imagination.'  Disraeli had been baptized at his father’s insistence.  Disraeli was proud of his Jewish heritage and often vilified for it by his political enemies.

1865: In Cleveland, Ohio, founding of the Ungarischer Frauen Unterstutzungs Verein which meets on the “third Sunday of the month” and “pays a sick benefit.”

1868: Birthdate of Hungarian native Calvin Leichtman who in 1884 came to the United States where he settled in Hazeltown, PA and was a member of the Community Chest and B’nai B’rith

1869: New York businessman Daniel McFarland fatally shot New York Tribune reporter Albert Deane Richardson in front of Daniel Frohman, Jew from Ohio who was working as a clerk at the paper and would go to become a famous theatrical and film director.

1871: “The Bells, a play in three acts by Leopold Davis Lewis opened today at the Lyceum Theatre in London for the first of 151 performances.  “The Bells is a translation by Leopold Lewis of the 1867 play Le Juif Polonais (The Polish Jew) by Erckmann-Chatrian.”

1871: A pair of pantaloons which had been left hanging in front of a Jewish clothing store at No. 6 on Main Street in Brooklyn was stolen tonight.

1873: Birthdate of Russian born “Israeli engineer and businessman” Moshe Novomeysky who “was an early developer of the Palestine Potash Company.”

1874: Carol Schurz delivered a lecture at the Steinway Hall in New York as part of a course sponsored by the Hebrew Young Men’s Association.

1877: “Joseph II and the Jews” published today traces the history and impact of The Toleration Edict promulgated by the Austrian monarch.

1880: Rabbi de Sola Mendes delivered a talk in which he uses the “Passion Play” as an example of what he calls “Religion Out of Place.”

1880: In Offenburg, Germany David and Fanny Kahn gave birth to Adolf Kahn the husband of Bertha Kahn, both of whom were murdered during the Holocaust.

1880: In Baltimore, MD, the former Jennie Rohr and Saks 5th Avenue co-founder Andrew Saks gave birth to William Andrew Saks.

1880: In London, Marie (nee de Jongh) and Solomon “Sidney” Rees Woolf gave birth to author, publisher and civil servant Leonard Sidney Woolf, the husband of fellow author Virginia Woolf.

1880: It was reported today that Arthur Lieberman, the Jew who committed suicide in Syracuse was a Nhilist from Russia. He fled the country to avoid arrest after having written a pamphlet espousing his beliefs.  Apparently he shot himself because he was despondent over having to leave his family.

1881: Alexander and Ida Kursheedt gave birth to Jessie Millier

1881: Leopold and Rebecca Kahn Affelder gave birth to Harry Affelder, the brother of Jeanette, William and Minnie Affelder.

1881: Birthdate of Jacob Fichman the Moldavian born Hebrew writer who twice won the Biliak Prize and was awarded the Israel Prize for literature in 1957, a year before his death.

1881: Birthdate Angelo Roncalli.  Roncalli would enter history as John XXIII, the Pope of Reform who tried to improve relations between the Church and the Jewish People

1881: “A large number of” Jewish immigrants from Russia were among the 1,338 passengers who arrived at Castle Garden aboard the SS Silesia.

1882: In Odessa, Ukraine, “Nokhem Mayer Shaikevitsch, a novelist and playwright and Dinneh Bercinsky gave birth to Manya Shaikevitsch who gained as American “journalist, playwright and artist Miriam Shomer Zunser, the wife of Charles Zunsers and the daughter-in-law of poet Eliakum Zunser.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/zunser-miriam-shomer

1883: In Poland Norma (Klein) Blankstein and her husband gave birth to Brooklyn realtor Louis Blankensein, the husband of Hattie Tanz and active member of the Jewish community as can be seen by his membership in B’nai Moshe Joseph Synagogue, the Brooklyn Jewish Federation, the Brooklyn Jewish Center and Chovey Torah in Brooklyn

1883: “Peace in Galilee” published today described a visit to Bukeia, “an interesting community of Jews who maintain that they are the descendants of families who were not dispersed and that they are the only Jews in the whole of Palestine whose direct ancestors inhabited the same spot and cultivated the same land prior to the destruction of Jerusalem.”

1883: Pere Hyacinthe delivered a talk on “Catholic Reform in France” at New York’s Presbyterian Church during which he said that “Judaism is recognized in France and I am glad of it.”

1884: The Brooklyn Academy was the scene for tonight’s Grand Ball sponsored by the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1885: It was reported today that there are 70 boys enrolled in the Hebrew Technical Institute on Crosby Street.

1886: Mrs. Tillie Bernheimer (or Miss Lillie) provided Thanksgiving Dinner for the children at the United Hebrew Charities’ Industrial School on St. Mark’s Place.

1886: Birthdate of New Orleans native Percy Abraham Lemann, who matriculated at VMI in 1902 where he was part of the Class of 1906

1886: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and cigar manufacturer Day J. Apt the president of Jewish Welfaire Bureau in Miami.

1886(26th of Cheshvan, 5647): Seventy-two year old German born Babette Mandelbaum Sanger, the widow of Eli Sanger who had passed away in 1877 and with whom she had ten children passed away today after which she was buried at Beth El Cemetery in Ridgewood, NY.

1887: It was reported today that Dr. Joseph Silverman preached a Thanksgiving Day sermon at Temple Emanu-El entitled “Religious Liberty” in which he said “We meet today as Jews and Americans…as Jews in religion and as Americans in citizenship.”

1888: It was reported today that the Industrial School sponsored by the United Hebrew Charities plans to provide a Thanksgiving dinner at the school this year.

1889: Jacob Levy, a recent Jewish immigrant from Poland was beaten today when he mistakenly opened the door to the wrong apartment.

1890: Dr. H. M. Leipziger presented the claims of the Jews in Russia at today’s meeting of the New York Bureau of the Siberian Exile Petition Association a non-denominational group whose Executive Committee included Jacob H. Schiff.

1890: The funeral for Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery, the daughter of Juliana and Mayer de Rothschild was held at the Willesden Jewish Cemetery.

1890: In Bristol, England, Barnett (Dovber) and Hacha Rosenberg, native of Dvinsk gave birth to British poet Isaace Rosenberg who while serving as a Private in the 11th (Service) Battalion of The King's Own Royal Lancaster Regimentwas killed on the Western Front at the age of 27 on April 1, 1918.  He was the author of Poems from the Trenches which are considered by some to be among themost outstanding poems written during the First World War. “In The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell's landmark study of the literature of the First World War, Fussell identifies Rosenberg's Break of Day in the Trenchesas ‘the greatest poem of the war.’"

Break of Day in the Trenches

The darkness crumbles away.

It is the same old druid time has ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

A queer sardonic rat,

As I pull the parapet’s poppy

To stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver - what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins

Drop, and are ever dropping;

But mine in my ear is safe,

Just a little white with the dust.

He was killed on April 1, 1918 while fighting on the Western Front. His self-portrait hangs in the British National Portrait Gallery.

1892: Birthdate of Dresden native Max Ehrlich “one of the great comics of the pre-war Berlin whose last performance was reportedly at Auschwitz.

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/western-europe/westerbork/max-ehrlich/

1893: Herman Lottmann who has owned a saloon for years in Brooklyn “announced today that he intended to quit the liquor business because “I am a Jew” who has been harassed by a gang of Irish ruffians for the past year and the courts have been no help.  “Lottmann said his wife had threatened to leave him if he had license renewed.

1894(10th of Kislev, 5716): In Berlin, fifty year old Dr. Arnold Heinrich Bodek, “also known Aaron Chaim” the husband of Malwine Malva Bodek, passed away today.

1895: In Pittsburgh, PA, Noah and Paula (Fineberg) Grobstein gave birth to Carnegie Tech trained engineer and Washington College of Law graduate Albert Grobstein, the husband of Ethel Sobel, 2nd Lt. in Ordinance Department of the U.S. Army and settled in Washington, D.c.

1895:Herzl begins a two days visit Colonel Goldsmid, leader of the British Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) Movement, in Cardiff, Wales.

1896: After his return to Vienna, Herzl reworks the "Rede an die Rothschilds" and a new work finally emerges: Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage or in English The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question. “Theodore Herzl's pamphlet Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State, heralded the coming of age of Zionism….In The Jewish State, Herzl envisioned that diplomatic activity would be the primary method for attaining the Jewish State and he called for the organized transfer of Jewish communities to the new state. Of the location of the state, Herzl said, ‘We shall take what is given us, and what is selected by public opinion.’ Herzl's The Jewish State included social innovations such as the seven-hour working day. In general, he was interested in an economy where free enterprise and state involvement went hand-in-hand. It was to be a modern, sophisticated and technologically advanced and Europeanized society. The Jewish Stateestablished Herzl as the leader of Zionism, and the "father of the Zionist Idea." Zionist also provoked considerable opposition, in particular from the assimilationst Jews of Central and Western Europe. The book became required reading for all Zionists and was taken as the basic platform of political Zionism. In conclusion, he wrote: ‘And what glory awaits those who fight unselfishly for the cause! Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again. Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes. The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.’” 

For more information about The Jewish State and complete copy of the text see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/index.html, click on the icon “Israel” scroll down to Zionism, and then go to  Excerpts From Herzl's The Jewish State.

1897(30th of Cheshvan, 5658): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1897: Dr. Gustav Gottheil will deliver a sermon entitled “The Most Religious Day of the Year in America” during Thanksgiving Services at Temple Emanu-El which begin at 11 a.m.

1897: At New York’s Agudath Yesharim(Jersharim), Rabbi J.P. Solomon will officiate at the Thanksgiving Services starting at 3 p.m.

1897: Two days after he had passed away, 70 year old Morris Lack was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”

1897: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will lead Thanksgiving Services at Temple B’Nai Jeshrun beginning at 3 p.m.

1897: “The children of the Industrial and Sabbath Schools of the United Hebrew Charities will have a Thanksgiving Dinner today at 58 St. Mark’s Place at noon.

1897: The Cadet Corps of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum provide a full dress parade as part of the today’s Thanksgiving celebration.

1897: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum on Amsterdam will hold services 3 pm.

1897: Emile Zola addressed a letter to Le Figaro that might have been called “The Injustice of French Justice” since the author “intimated that he believed Dreyfus was innocent” and that he had the proof for this belief.  The letter ended “The truth is on the way; nothing can stop it.”

1897: “To Begin Its Receptions” published today described plans for a series of upcoming functions hosted by the Young Folks’ League of the Hebrew Infant Asylum.

1898: Birthdate of Regina Gotlop, the native of Tarnow, Poland who was part of Convoy 25 that left Drancy for Auschwitz on August 28, 1942

1898: “Former Counsel General…Opposes Expansion” published today provided the view Simon Wolf, the former United States Counsel to Egypt on how this country should deal with Cuba and the Philippines, countries that were part of the Spanish Empire until the recent U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War.  Wolf is opposed to annexation.  He thinks that we should develop a special relationship with both of them, in the way that England has with Egypt.  But he believes that we must make them independent and not annex them.  (The disposition of former parts of the Spanish Empire including Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines was “a hot political topic” at the end of the 19thcentury and is interesting that a leading Jewish statesman would take the stand for individual and national liberty as opposed to imperial expansion.)

1899: The final performance of “The Children of the Ghetto” will take place tonight at the Herald Square Theatre.

1899: Mme. Nevada’s final performance this evening at the Metropolitan Opera House was a fund-raiser for the benefit of the Hebrew Infant Asylum which is need of help to pay for the “recent heavy expenditures” resulting from the modernization and enlargement of its facility on Eagle Avenue and 161stStreet.

1899(23rd of Kislev, 5660): Eighty-seven year old Jewish merchant and philanthropist Marcus Nordheim whose assets amounted to 10 million marks part of which were used to establish the Nordheim Foundation, passed away today.

1900: At Cape May, NJ. Meyer S. Isaacs presided over the ceremonies held to dedicate De Hirsch Hall, the new dormitory of the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural and Industrial School at Woodbine.  Woodbine an agricultural colony founded 12 years ago.  With a population of 1,000, it is the most successful De Hirsch funded colony in New Jersey.

1901: It was reported today Marks Arnheim has spent the last three days looking for the person who has printed and distributed circulars urging a boycott of his tailoring shop on the corner of Broadway and 9thStreet in New York.

1902: Birthdate of Morris Lapidus, the Russian-born American architect who was responsible for the design of resort hotels in Miami and Miami Beach in the 1950’s.

1903: In Boston, the Sons of Zion is scheduled to host a ball today.

1903: Birthdate of New York City native Albert Gustavus Baum, the graduate of Columbia and the Jewish Institute of Religion who served as “acting rabbi of Temple Israel” before becoming the rabbi at “Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim” in Alexandria, LA.

1903: Birthdate of Henri Samuel Sack, the Swiss-born, American holder of a “doctorate in experimental physics who worked at Zurich University and was “a resident associate in applied physics at Cornell University” becoming a full professor in 1949 while working on “applied physics, supersonics, analog computers and the elastic properties of solids.

1904(17th of Kislev,5665): Seventy-four year old Henry Strauss, a native of Alsace who served in the 10th Mississippi Infantry and was buried in the Beth Israel Cemetery, passed away today.

1905: Soprano Lina Abarbanell, the Berlin born daughter of Paul Abarbanell, “a descendent of a prominent Sephardic Jewish family of Bulgarian descent, was a well-known Berlin musical director” made “her debut today at the Metropolitan Opera House as “Hansel” in “Hansel und Gretel.”

1905: Today, President Dabney of the University of Cincinnati spoke at Hebrew Union College during the celebration marking “the 250thanniversary of the settlement of Jews in America.”

1905: After 3 months, “Catch of the Season,” a two act musical produced by Charles Frohman was performed for the last time at Daly’s Theatre in New York.

1905: Mr. Arnold Kohn said today “that although the contributions at the State Bank” deposited into the fund for the Russian Jews “came mostly from the poor” $20,000 has been deposited in to the account.

1905: Jacob H. Schiff received a letter today from Jacob G. Schurman, the President of Cornell University in which he enclosed his check “for the fund in relief of the suffering Jews of Russia whose terrible condition appeals to the universal heart of mankind.”  Schurman, a native of Canada whose family came from the Netherlands wrote, “The atrocities of the Russian mob have been beyond all description or imagination.  Such an exhibition of bigotry, intolerance and racial hatred has seldom if ever, disgraced the history of the mankind.  And to crown the horrors of it, the fiendish mob invoke the name of Jesus of Nazareth, who preached good will to men…”

1906: “Threats of New Pogroms” published today reported that the authorities in St. Petersburg give credence to “the threats of the reactionary parties” to organize “Jewish massacres” “if the rights of the Jews are enlarged.

1907: Fifty-nine year Eernesto Nathan, the London born son “Sara Levi, an Italian from Pesaro, and Mayer Moses Nathan” who “obtained Italian citizenship in 1888” began serving as Mayor of Rome today, making him the first Jew to hold this position.

1907: The Neu-Isenburg orphanage for Jewish girls (Mädchenwohnheim Neu-Isenburg) founded by Bertha Pappenheim began operation today.

1908(1st of Kislev, 5669): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1908(1st of Kislev, 5669): A.M. Edelweiss passed away in Cuba.

1908: In Cedarhurst, NY, pathologist and Columbia faculty member Dr. Max Pappenheimer and his wife gave birth award winning “biochemist and immunologist” Alwin Max Pappenheimer, the brother of Harvard Professor John Pappehnheimer.

1909: In New York City, William and Gussie (Goldenberg) Feuer gave birth Columbia Law School trained attorney Mortimer Feuer, a “partner firm Hays, Feuer, Porter & Spanier” and the first vice president of the Amsterdam Democratic who married Louis Younker Gottschall with whom he had two sons – Thomas and Richard.

1909: Turks resolve to grant all requested privileges to Jewish soldiers, except kosher food

1910: Birthdate of Léon Poliakov, the Russian born French historian whose field of expertise was Holocaust and anti-Semitism. In November 1950, Poliakov wrote "The Vatican and the 'Jewish Question' - The Record of the Hitler Period-And After," in the influential Jewish journal Commentary which was the first article to consider the attitude of the papacy during World War II and the Holocaust.

1911: “Replying to inquiries from Mr. O’Grady, MP, Sir Edward Grey, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs” stated  “that the Government is aware of discrimination against English Jews practiced by the Russian Government in the matter of passports; that no agreement countenancing such discrimination exists between Great Britain and Russia; and that so long as the ‘Russian regulations respecting person of the Jewish faith are applied to all persons alike, irrespective of nationality, which His Majesty’s Government have reason to believe to the case, they have no treaty grounds for protest.”

1911: The “North Manchester Synagogue” adopted “resolutions regretting that invitations to the forthcoming conference on the Chief Rabbinate have been withheld from a number of congregations and declaring that no Chief Rabbi will be recognized as spiritual head of British Jewry who has not been chosen by votes of all Orthodox Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and Ireland.”

1912(15th of Kislev, 5673): Sixty-two year old Isidor Raynor who represented the Fourth Congressional District of Maryland from 1887 to 1889 and 1891 to 1895 and served as U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1905 until today, passed away.

1912: ‘The next regular meeting of the Junior Auxiliary of the Mother’s Aid of the Chicago Lying-In Hospital and Dispensary is scheduled to be held at 2 o’clock this afternoon in the vestry rooms of  Temple Isaiah in Chicago, Illinois.

1912: “Daughters of Jacob Honor Ida Straus” pulished today described the memorial ceremony commemorating the life of this Jewess who went down with her husband on the Titanic.

 In the presence of an audience of 600 persons, including all of the members of the Straus family, a memorial tablet in honor of Ida Straus was unveiled yesterday at the Home of the Daughters of Jacob, an institution for aged men and women at 301 and 303 East Broadway. Impressive services marked the official dedication of the tablet, which has been mounted upon the wall of the large auditorium to the right of the main entrance.The large bronze casting bears the raised profile of Mrs. Straus upon the centre, directly under the inscription; “The Ida Straus Memorial of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob.” On one side are the words “Her life was beautiful” and the date in the Hebrew calendar of Mrs. Straus’s birth, “Shebat 14, 5609.” On the other side is the inscription “Her death was glorious,” and the date of the Titanic disaster, “Nisan 28, 5672.” Below the profile are the words:To the everlasting memory of Mrs. Ida Straus, one of the noble and heroic daughters in Israel, the hospital wards of this home are dedicated. She perished on the high seas in the Titanic disaster, together with her husband, Isidor Straus, statesman, philanthropist, and merchant, persistenly [sic] refusing to be saved that she might remain to cheer the last moments of her life’s companion.

Beneath is this quotation:

Where thou Diest Will I Die, and There Will I Be Buried. RUTH

The Rev. Dr. Nathan Abramson opened the dedication services with a hymn, in which he led a selected chorus of sixteen voices. The Rev. H. Pereira Mendes delivered the opening prayer, in which he expressed the hope that the example of the heroic and devoted wife in whose memory the tablet was erected and to whose lasting fame the wards of the hospital were dedicated might be forever an inspiration to the women of her race and ancient creed.  Dr. Henry Fleischman, President of the Educational Alliance, made the principal address. He lauded the modest charity and kindliness of Mrs. Straus and the great unselfish works of her husband in the public service. Other speakers were Joseph Barondes of the Board of Education, the Rev. Dr. Schulman, pastor of the Congregation of Beth-El; the Rev. H. Masliansky of the People’s Synagogue, and Gustavus A. Rogers, who acted as Chairman. The most impressive incident of the dedication occurred when the 186 inmates of the home, led by Supt. Albert Kruger, filed slowly into the auditorium and took their seats in the front rows. The oldest of the feeble and decrepit men and women was said to be almost 108, and the youngest in the procession more than 70 years old. Just before the close of the exercises they arose and with quavering voices chanted aloud in unison a prayer for the eternal happiness of their departed benefactress. Among those seated on the platform were Mr. and Mrs. Percy Straus, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar S. Straus, Mrs. Nathan Straus, Herbert Straus, Jesse I. Straus, Mrs. Weil, Mr. and Mrs. Lazarus Kohns, and Mr. Lee Kohns. At the close of the exercises the members of the Straus family group, together with a few intimate friends, made a tour of inspection of the new hospital wards of the home.

1913: Birthdate of Robert Friend, the American born “poet and translator” who made Aliyah and became “a professor of English literature at Hebrew University.”

1914(5th of Kislev, 5675): While fighting on the Western Front during WW I, twenty-seven year old  Lt. F.A. De Pass, a Jewish officer from London died while he and an Indian soldier faced German machine-gun fire for two hundred yards, to bring in a badly wounded Indian lying in No-Man’s Land.

1914: “Zangwill Lauds Schiff” published today defends Jacob Schiff saying this his proposal “for a conference to end Prussian Militarism” does not make him a “mouthpiece of Berlin” but shows him as one who draws on his Jewish background and “speaks…with the voice of Jersualem.

1914: “Britain Will Protect Jews” published today provides the response of the British Ambassador to questions about the British protecting the rights of German Jews in lands they may conquer by saying that “Jews of all nationalities who may come under British control can of course count on the same protection and liberal treatment which England has always extended to them.”

1914: “For the Relief of Jews” published today provided a list of contributors to the fund including Rabbi J.S. Levy of Waco, TX , Joe Matz of Pocahontas, VA and Mrs. Charles Fryer of Muscatine, IA.

1915: According to a dispatch from the Associated Press the Russians dynamited much of Brest-Litvosk, destroying three quarters of the houses before retreating from the Polish city and leaving a mass of refugees most of whom were Jewish and were forced to seek refuge in the swamps where many of the “died of malignant diseases.”

1915: Max Meyerson, Commissioner of Education Isadore M. Levy, Magistrate Samuel D. Levy and Abram I. Elkus were among the speakers at the Thanksgiving exercises held by the Hebrew Sheltering Immigrant Aid Society tonight during which they explained “the newcomers what reasons they had for being thankful” including the fact that they were not being exposed to the “horrors in war-ridden Europe.”

1915: Today, following “a second consecutive poor harvest” and decrease in population of “almost two-thirds” the state of Utah order the termination of title of the Jewish agricultural colony at Clarion.

1915: On Thanksgiving, Jacob H. Schiff spoke to the 450 inmates at the Montefiore Home and Hospital for Chronic Invalids many of whom who “could not leave their cots “and asked them to be thankful that America was enjoying peace.”

1915: Philip Watenberger of the Bronx, presided over a meeting at McKinley Casion where “some 3,000 persons” heard “an appeal for aid for the suffering Jews of Poland, made homeless because of the war.”

1915: Months after Leo Frank was taken from the Milledgeville prison, members of the Knights of Mary Phagan burned a gigantic cross on top of Stone Mountain, reportedly inaugurating a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The group was led by William J. Simmons and attended by 15 charter members and a few aging survivors of the original Klan.

1915: It was reported today that among those being considered to replace the later Dr. Solomon Schechter as President of the Jewish Theological Seminary are “Dr. Buchler, head of the Jews’ College in London and Dr. Toznanski of the Jewish Institute in Petrograd.”

  1915: In London, The Times publishes a letter from Israel Zangwill takes issue with an interview it had published with Jacob Schiff in which its correspondent apparently made it seem like Schiff spoke for Germany.  Zangweill contends that he is “noblest of millionaires” engaged in “philanthropic work” who is one of the most patriotic Americans I have ever known.”  “Descended from a long-line of Jewish rabbis and scholars (one of his ancestors was Chief Rabb of the Great Synagogue of London in the eighteenth century) Jacob Schiff himself might sat to Lessing for a portrait of ‘Nathan der Wise.’”

1915: Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, the member of a prominent Anglo-Jewish family succeeded Winston Churchill as the Chancellor of the Duchy Lancaster in the government headed by Prime Minister Henry Asquith

1915(18th of Kislev, 5676): Eighty-three year old Michel Jules Alfred Bréal, the French philologist who was responsible for the marathon being part of the first modern Olympics passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03483.html

1916(22nd of Cheshvan, 5677): Parashat Chayei Sara

1916: According to an article written by a member of the Reichstag that appeared in the Tageblatt today, “the Prussian Government has also been lucky in solving the Jewish religious problem in Poland” because unlike the Czar’s Government, “the German Governor of Poland has granted the Jews of Poland far-reaching self-government respecting their religious institutions and has accorded them all the religious rights recognized by State.”  (Editor’s note – this is only one example of why some Jews in the United States did not want to enter the World War on the side of the allies because that would have been supporting the anti-Semitic government of the Czar.)

1916: Synagogues on New York’s east side are scheduled hold memorial services honoring Austrian Emperor Franz Josef who passed away earlier this week.

1916: The replacement of Boris Stürmer an anti-Semite “suspected of being pro-German” as Prime Minister in Russia with Alexander Trepov “was hailed by liberals” and those who were worried about Russia continuing the war against Germany.

1916: In Berlin, “during the course of the discussion of the budget before the committee of the Reichstag” it was suggested that Germany employ Jews in Poland while also looking using “the population of occupied territories for work in Germany.”

1917:The New York Section of the Council of Jewish Women dedicated the first shelter for “homeless and friendless” Jewish women discharged or paroled from New York City and New York state jails. Speakers at the dedication included the prominent rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Deaconess Young, who directed another home for “friendless women” in the same neighborhood. Although the home was founded to serve Jewish women, the president of the New York Council section affirmed that “no unfortunate woman of any race, creed or color would be refused aid if she needed it.”

1917: The Provisional Zionist Committee, chaired by Stephen S. Wise, “sent a cable message of greetings and congratulation to the Zionist mass meeting what held in London” celebrating the adoption of the Balfour Declaration. 

1917:  A mass meeting of Zionists attended by Lord Walter Lionel Rothschild, Chaim Weitzman, President of the British Zionist Federation and Rabbi Moses Gaster was held in London this evening designed “to celebrate the promise by the British Government ot support the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine.

1917: A contribution of $200 from Witty Brothers, the New York men’s clothing store was among those listed today by the American Jewish Relief Committee.

1917: Among the contributions listed today by the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering through the War included $1,436 from the committee in Dubuque, IA, $236 from the committee in Iowa City, IA, $135 from the committee in Keokuk, IA, $300 from the committee in Mason City, IA, $301 from the committee in Muscatine, IA and $286 from the committee in Ottumwa, IA.

1918: It was reported today that “the Administrative Committee for an American Jewish Congress will meet tomorrow to fix a new date for the” convening of the congress which is to deal with the questions of Jewish nationality in Palestine and the guaranteeing of equal rights for Jews in all  the countries of Europe.

1919: “Half Million Jews In Pogrom Protest” published today descried the observance a “Day of Sorrow” which included 25,000 men, women and children marched “in protest against the reported massacre of 100,000 Jews in Ukraine” and a mass meeting at Carnegie Hall where Secretary of the Navy Daniels, Mayor Hylan, Sentaro Medill McCormick of Illinois, Louis Marshall, Jacob Schiff, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle, Gustave Hartman and Morris Rothenberg spoke to the overflow crowd.

1920: Thanksgiving observed in the United States.

1920: The 23rd annual convention of the ZOA is scheduled to begin to in Buffalo, NY.

1920: The Young Women’s Hebrew Association is scheduled to “hold services dedicated to the memory of the late Jacob H. Schiff” this evening which the entire neighborhood is invited to attend.

1922: Wake University “under head coach George Levene” lost to North Carolina State for its third straight loss at home.

1924(27th of Cheshvan, 5685): Ninety-two year old Jules Worms, the French painter and engraver who was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1876 passed away today after which he was “buried in Paris Montparnasse Cemetery , Section 5.

1925: In Moscow, silent film actress Rachel Messerer-Plisetskaya and Mikhai “Misha” Plisetski, a diplomat, engineer and mine director, gave birth to ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress Maya Plisetskaya.

1926: In Brooklyn “Jewish immigrants Irene (Sperling) and Abraham Schisgal, a tailor, gave birth to playwright and screenwriter Murray Schisgal whose hits include Luv and Tootsie.

1927(1st of Kislev, 5688): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1927(1st of Kislev, 5688): Morris Ganss, who had been born in Maryland in August of 1865 and was the husband of Helen Peyer and father of Harold Ganss passed away today after which he was buried in the Hebrew Cemetery at Washington, D.C.

1927: Yehudi Menuhin was the soloist with New York Symphony Orchestra today where he played the Beethoven Violin Concerto. His performance won audience approval and critical acclaim and marked the start of tours through the United States and Europe.

1928: In Syracuse, NY, David A. Brown of Detroit, “the national chairman of the United Jewish campaign raise $25,000,000 Jewish activities” “declared tonight at the first joint gathering of Zionists and non-Zionists” that “Jews through the world will benefit from the agency recently formed in Palestine for relief work under the coordinating support of all Zionist movements.”

1928: A photograph of “Masons Hillsborough Lodge No. 25” published today included Henry Brash, Abe Maas and Isaac Mass provided evident of the level of acceptance of Jews in the Tampa community.

1931: In Freeport, NY, child psychiatrist Joseph Solomon and historical novelist Ruth Freeman Solomon gave birth to Stanford trained physician, “Dr. George F. Solomon, one of the first scientists to see a link between emotions and immunity and a pioneer in the field now known as psychoneuroimmunology…” (As reported by Carmel McCoubrey)

1931: According to figures released by the census authorities, of the 1,035,154 inhabitants of Palestine, 387,525 live in Palestine’s major cities including 90,526 in Jerusalem, 51,876 in Jaffa, 46,109 in Tel Aviv and 50,869 for Haifa.  “There is an almost equal number of men an women in nearly all the urban localities, the total being 197,307 males and 190,218 females.” Since the last census conducted in 1922, “purely Arab areas showed less than a 1 per cent increase in population…while the mixed Arab-Jewish residential localities showed a 30 per cent rise indicating a higher measure of prosperity during the past decade.”

1932: U.S. premiere of “Rockabye” a drama directed by George Cukor and produced by David O. Selznick.

1933(7th of Kislev, 5694): Seventy-three year old Sarah Hexter, a native of Brandeburg, German who was the wife of Max Hexter with who she had three children passed away today in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1933: Max Born received a letter from Werner Heisenberg in which he said he had been delayed in writing due to a “bad conscience” that he alone had received the Nobel Prize “for work done in Göttingen in collaboration — you, Jordan and I.” Heisenberg went on to say that Born and Jordan’s contribution to quantum mechanics cannot be changed by “a wrong decision from the outside.” Jordan was Pascual Jordan a physicist who joined the Nazi party and became a Brown Shirt. Heisenberg was an “Aryan” who stayed in Nazi Germany.  Born was a Lutheran who was classified as a Jew under Nazi Racial Law and would win his Nobel Prize in 1954.

1934: John Kenmuir reports that “not since the period immediately following the World War have so many new places claimed attention from mapmakers as in the last few months. Towns have seemingly appeared out of nowhere…”  Included in this category is Tel Aviv, “the second largest city in Palestine a country of age-old town.  This thriving metropolis of 70,000 did not even exist in 1909, its site being then a deserted area of rolling sand dunes north of Jaffa.

1934: Dr. George Landauer, the head of the Jerusalem branch of the Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews in Palestine and Dr. Martin Rosenbluth, from the London headquarters said today that “a minimum of 40,000 German Jews can settled in Palestine in a statement issued from offices of the UJA in New York.

1935: Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel who lost his seat in the elections of 1935 ended his leadership of the Liberal Party today.

1935: “One Way Ticket,” a cinema version of the novel by the same name which marked “the directorial debut” of Herbert Biberman was released in the United States today.

1936: Tonight, the police “stormed Warsaw University in order to clear the buildings occupied for two day by several hundred Fascist student” who were demanding that Jewish students be segregated from the rest of the student body.

1936: Dr. Chaim Weizmann began his testimony before the Peel Commission by dwelling “first on the tragedy of at least 6,000,000 superfluous Jews in Poland, Germany, Austria and other countries who before the war found an outlet in emigration to the United States and South Africa but who now find all gates barred to them” which “lends grave importance to the question of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the only spot in the world where Jews can turn their eyes with the hope of being saved from moral, cultural and economic stagnation” not to mention death.

1936: Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, an anti-communist treaty that will be the basis of the Axis alliance.  The treaty is another step towards World War II and the Final Solution. At the time, the treaty seemed to be one more diplomatic victory for Hitler, but the Japanese actually outsmarted the Little Corporal.  The treaty did not commit the Japanese to take military action against the Soviets.  Hitler fully expected the Japanese to attack Russia when he invaded the Soviet state forcing Stalin to fight a two front war.  The Japanese never budged.  Hitler was left to fight the Soviets on his own and it was this Soviet ability to have face only the Germans that helped chew up the divisions of the Wermacht. [If the Japanese had really been such dedicated anti-communists you would have thought they would have joined the Nazis in attacking the leading communist state of the time, the Soviet Union.  Of course the Japanese did not having been bloodied by the Soviets in the late 1930’s.  Even strange bedfellows do not always sleep together]

1936:Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the Archbishop of Muich, informed the Bavarian bishops that he had promised Hitler that the bishops would issue a new pastoral letter in which they condemned "Bolshevism which represents the greatest danger for the peace of Europe and the Christian civilization of our country." In addition, Faulhaber stated, the pastoral letter " will once again affirm our loyalty and positive attitude, demanded by the Fourth Commandment, toward todays form of government and the Führer."

1936: Fifty-five year old Sir Leon Levison, the son of Rabbi Nahum Levison, whose conversion to Christianity and service as the first President of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance did not prevent him from raising 200,000 English pounds to relieve the suffering Jews during the World War or being “a fierce opponent of the Nazis” passed away. 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the first death sentence was passed, under the recently promulgated Defense Regulations, by a military court on Sheikh Farhan e-Sadi, leader of a terrorist group, who was found guilty of carrying firearms and ammunition. The Arab Defense Party appealed for clemency.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a large number of Jews had been attacked and beaten in riots in Memel, Shavli and Wilkomir in Lithuania. This outburst of anti-Semitism took place two years before the outbreak of World War II.  This is an example of the inherent European anti-Semitism that helped to make the Holocaust possible and provided the Nazis with willing accomplices in completing the Final Solution.

1938(2nd of Kislev, 5699): Fifty-five year old Jessie Sampter who made Aliyah in 1919 which led her to work with Yemenite Jews and the establishment of “a vegetarian convalescent home at Kibbutz Givat Brenner” passed away at Beilinson Hospital where she was being treated for malaria and heart disease.

1938: “Submarine Patrol” a pre-war Naval adventure film written by Jack Yellen was released today in the United States.

1938: In Indianapolis, the former Ruth Frand and Marvin Cohen who “owned a jewelry store and golf course in Hollywood, FL” gave birth to University of Indiana graduate Stephen Frand Cohen, the husband of Katrina vanden Heuvel and “an eminent historian whose books and commentaries on Russia examined the rise and fall of Communism, Kremlin dictatorships and the emergence of a post-Soviet nation still struggling for identity in the 21st century…” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden))

1938(2nd of Kislev, 5699): Sixty-one year old Aaron Garber, the Lithuanian born Cleveland, OH, attorney, Zionist and “a leader in the Bureau of Jewish Education” who was “a founder and president of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools” passed away today.

http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/ins/garber/garber-history.htm

https://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/ins/garber/garber-obituary.htm

1938: In Owensboro, KY, a gold course owner whose father had emigrated from Lithuania and his wife gave birth Stephen Cohen, a product of the Russian Studies program at Indiana University and holder of PhD from Columbia who went to become a “Professor of Politics and Russian Studies at Princeton,” a prolific author and one of those who as of 2018, “continues to dismiss theories of Russian collusion” in the U.S. Presidential elections.

1939: There were 1,000 German Jews aboard the SS Vulcania as it left Italy tonight bound for New York City.

1939: Today is the deadline for the Jewish population of Teschen to leave the city.

1939: Today, playing on their home field Penn St. led by their Team Captain Spike Alter defeated cross-state rival Pittsburg.

1939: It was announced today that American “with relatives in the Upper Silesia and Danzig areas of Poland may send me to them through the Federation of Polish Jews in America at 225 West 34thStreet” in New York City.

1939: In the Bronx, the former Esther Gevarter and attorney Meyer Feldstein gave birth to Harvard and Oxford educated economist Martin S. Feldstein the husband of economist Kathleen Foley and the winner in 1977 of the John Bates Clark Medal.

1939: In New York, Dr. Samuel H. Goldensohn is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “The Sacrifices of Thanksgiving” on Saturday morning at Congregation Emanu-El.

1939: In New York, Rabbi William F. Rosenblum is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “How Would Your Rewrite the Bible” on Saturday morning at Temple Israel.

1939: In New York, Rabbi Nathan Stern is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “I Have Everything” on Saturday morning at West End Synagogue.

1939: In Baltimore, MD, “more than a thousand delegates to the Junior Hadassah convention passed by acclamation today a resolution condemning the British White Paper on Palestine and calling upon the British Colonial Secretary, ‘for the sake of the honor of Great Britain,’ to abandon it.”

1939: Mrs. David De Sola Pool of New York, national president of Senior Hadassah, Miss Nell Ziff of New York, president of Junior Hadassah and Rabbi Isadore Breslau, director of the American Zionist Bureau in Washington addressed today’s session of the Junior Hadassah Convention.

1939: In New York Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “Changing Our Name and Changing Our Character” on Saturday morning Congregation Rodeph Sholom

1939: The government in Bucharest published “the result of an investigation concerning the citizenship of the Jews” living in Rumania according to which only 63.5% of the Jews living in the country were really citizens.

1939: “Mrs. Isidor Achron of 45 West Eighty-First Street” said today she had received word from her aunt in London that her cousin Moijzesz Kusewitsky, chief cantor Poland who had been reported killed by a German bomb during the Nazi capture of Warsaw “had escaped with his family to Bucharest, Romania.

1940: The Patria, a steamer carrying illegal Jewish immigrants sank in Haifa port killing 250 of the passengers. The Patria was a French steamer chartered by the British to ship illegal immigrants who had previously made it to Palestine to detainment camps on the British island of Mauritius. This removal of the Jewish immigrants was part of a British campaign to placate the Arabs.  The plan was in violation of the terms of the Mandate.  The plant was also a violation of basic human decency since the Jews were seeking a safe haven from the advancing Nazi armies.  However, nobody has ever accused the British Foreign office or the Arab leaders of that time of having an overabundance of human decency when it came to dealing with Jews.  The explosion on board the Patria was caused by the Haganah who were attempting to disable the ship and force the British to let the refugees land.  Almost two thousand of the Patria’s human cargo would end up staying in Eretz Israel while another similar number would end up in internment camps.  This was but one small event in the combined British-Arab attempt to strangle the Yishuv.

1941: Following the German conquest of Belgium, the Jews “set up their own coordinating committee” which the Nazi Security Police replaced with the Association of Jews in Belgium or AJB.

http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205777.pdf

1941: German Jews were shipped east to Kovno.  This gave the SS new targets for their killing raids. In one day the Einsatzkommando reported the deaths of 1,159 men, 1,600 women and175 children. Four days later they reported killing another 693 men, 1,155 women and152 children.

1942: In the evening and continuing into the next day, the SS and Norway’s State Police began rounding up all woman and children. In all, 532 Jewish women and children in Norway are arrested and deported to Auschwitz. Although more than 700 Norwegian Jews were eventually sent to Auschwitz, about 930 found refuge in Sweden.

1942: Jews hiding in Piotrkow (Poland) were offered a chance to stay in the ghetto legally if they came out of hiding. Some did, and they were killed by Ukrainians upon doing so.

1943: World War II: Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is re-established at the State Anti-Fascist Council for the People's Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

1943(27th of Cheshvan, 5704): One of two dates given for the suicide of 65 year old actor Paul Otto in Berlin after his Jewish ancestry was discovered.

1944: Crematorium II at Birkenau was dismantled by the Nazis and its remains were buried in attempt to hide the evidence of the Final Solution. 

1944:  Birthdate of actor, self-styled political commentator and game show host Ben Stein

1944: According to some sources Himmler was responsible for the issuance today of a “general prohibition…concerning the further killing of the Jews” – a claim which would seem to fly in the face of the facts that an untold number of Jews continued to perish under the most brutal of conditions.

1944: Warner Brothers release “Arsenic and Old Lace” comedy that includes murder and mental illness produced by Jack Warner with a score by Max Steiner and a screenplay by Julius and Philip G. Epstein.

1945:Jewish underground attacks Palestinian coast guard; blows up two coast guard stations in retaliation for capture of Greek schooner Demetrios which brought 200 illegal immigrants to Palestine.

1946(2nd of Kislev, 5707): Ninety-year old Henry Morgenthau, Sr. the United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during WW I whose grandchildren included historian Barbara Tuchman and long-time NY DA Robert M. Morgenthau passed away today.

http://www.jta.org/1946/11/26/archive/henry-morgenthau-sr-dies-one-time-envoy-to-turkey-was-active-in-jewish-affairs

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/morgenthau.html

1947: The House of Representatives overwhelming vote to approve citations for contempt of Congress citations against the Hollywood Ten for the “defiance” of the mis-named House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).  “Of the Hollywood Ten, six - John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz and Samuel Ornitz — were Jews.”

1947: Funeral services were held today “Jeffers Community Chapel in Brooklyn for Isidor L. Marrow the president of the Harwood Manufacturing Company and director of the Israel Zion Hospital” and the husband of Rebecca Marrow with whom he had six children ---Alfred, Seymour, Ruth, Sylvia, Lucille and Blanche.

1947: The movie version of the novel “It Always Rains on Sunday” produced by Michael Balcon was released today in the United Kingdom.

1947: Following yesterday’s overwhelming vote to cite the Hollywood Ten for Contempt of Congress, the Hollywood studios blacklisted them. “Of the Hollywood Ten, six - John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz and Samuel Ornitz — were Jews.”  (As reported by Jennifer Lipman)

1947: “The Gangster” based The Low Company a 1937 novel written by Daniel Fuchs who wrote the screenplay and with music by Louis Gruenberg was released today in the United States today,

1948:Arabs announce they will not negotiate with Israel except through UN.

1948: UN mediator Ralph Bunche recommends to Political Committee that UN try another strong appeal for Israel and Arabs to get together. He urges Israel's admittance to UN.

1948: Israel's Provisional Government Council announces it will hold first general elections on January 25. Persons aged 18 years or more will be eligible to vote.

1948:  Birthdate of French born, American educated, film director Jonathan Kaplan

1949:Israel turns down the UN Palestine Conciliation Committee's plan for an international Jerusalem. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett says Jews favored UN control of Jerusalem at one time. They oppose it now, because if they lose Jerusalem they will have to rescue it from Arabs. They recommend that Jerusalem's old city be internationalized. Modern Jerusalem's holy places will be accessible to people of all faiths.

1959: Birthdate of Yaakov Edri, the native of Morocco who made Aliyah in 1959, earned two degrees from the University of Haifa and pursued a political career that including service as an MK and in several ministerial posts.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that fear for the safety of 2,500,000 Jews behind the Iron Curtain was voiced in the Knesset by Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett when he read the government¹s statement on the Prague trials of former leading Communists, accused of Zionism and espionage, which he called “a farce in the form of a trial.”

1952: Premiere of Hans Christian Andersen produced by Samuel Goldwyn, with a script by Moss Hart and starring Danny Kaye.

1953: “The Fake” a “British crime film” with music by Matyas Seiber was released today in the United Kingdom.

1955: “The Big Knife,” the film version of the 1949 play by Clifford Odets and co-starring Shelly Winters was released in the United States today.

1955(10th of Kislev, 5716): Fifty year old U.S. Chess Champion and International Master Herman Steiner passed away today.

1956: In Boston, Massachusetts, Senator John F. Kennedy addressed a dinner honoring Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel's Foreign Minister.

1957: U.S. premiere of “Bernadine” directed by Henry Levin with music by Lionel Newman.

1957: Today, CBS broadcast “Beyond This Place,” an adaptation of the novel of the same name directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by David Susskind and co-starring Shelly Winters.

1960: Today, CBS news broadcast “Harvest of Shame” a ground-breaking documentary about migrant farm workers directed by Fred W. Friendly.

1961: Negotiations between representatives of the Israeli government and King Hassan of Morocco came to an end with an understanding that would make it easier for the Jews to leave for Israel.

1963: Following the assassination of President Kennedy, “the Jewish Community Council held a memorial service at Washington Hebrew Congregation that included “a tribute delivered by Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.”

1964: Funeral services were held today for Brooklynite Pincus Joseph Greenberg, the husband of Sadie Greenberg with whom he had had five children.

1965(1st of Kislev, 5726): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1965(1st of Kislev, 5726): Seventy-five year old pianist “Dame Myra Hess who…became wartime a wartime hero though her morale-raising recitals at London’s National Gallery” passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hess-dame-myra

http://www.picturethispost.com/meet-dame-myra-hess-musicians/

https://www.duopianistscontiguglia.com/images/bbc_myrahess.pdf

1966: In a special edition on the Kennedy Assassination, Life magazine published frames of Abraham Zapruder’s homemade movie that is the photographic of this national tragedy.

1967: After 463 performance the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “The Apple Tree,” a musical with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, produced by Stuart Ostrow, directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Larry Blyden.

1967: A version of “Suszanne” a song  that Canadian born Jewish musician Leon Cohen created from his platonic relationship with Suzzanne Verdal which had “entered The Billboard Hot 100 chat in October “peaked at number 56 today.

1968(3rd of Kislev, 5729): Seventy-old Hartford, CT, native George Fine, the husband of Charlotte S Friedman Fine and the father of Irving Gifford Fine passed away today after which he was buried at the Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon, MA.

1969: Birthdate of Israeli actress and comedian Orna Banai

1970: “A Promise at Dawn” the film version of the 1960 novel by Romain Gary who co-authored the script with Jules Dassin who also directed and produced the movie and starring Assi Dayan, the son of Moshe Dayan, was released in the United States today.

 

1973: Three Arab terrorists hijacked a KLM jumbo jet headed for New Delhi and forced the pilot to land at Abu Dhabi.

1973(30th of Cheshvan, 5734): Forty-five year old debonair actor Laurence Harvey whose on screen persona was so different from what one would expect from Lithuanian born Jew named Hirsch Moses Skikne passed away today.

1974: Appeal in behalf of Soviet Jewish prisoners, signed by over 600 politicians, academics, musicians, writers, stage and film actors published in The Times in London.

1974: About 200 Riga Jews organize pilgrimage to Rumbuli on the anniversary of the liquidation of the Riga ghetto; several arrested.

1975: Suriname, a Dutch colony on the Northeast coast of South America gains its independence from the Netherlands. According to The Virtual Jewish Library, “the Jewish community of Suriname is one of the oldest in the Americas. Jews apparently arrived from Brazil (or Holland) and settled in Suriname as early as 1639, and there is an extant ketubbah, marriage contract, signed by a rabbi in 1643.”  For part of its history, the Jewish community was quite active and wealthy. By the end of the 20th century “200 Jews live in Suriname with the Nederlands Portugees Israelitische Gemeente overseeing the community's activities. The two 18th century synagogues in the capital, Paramaribo, have been restored. Neve Shalom is considered to be Conservative, and both synagogues hold weekly Shabbat services. The Ashkenazi synagogue has a sandy floor, which is symbolic of the 40 years in the desert, and was also supposed to have hidden the footsteps of the Conversos. Kosher food is available in Suriname and there is a community newspaper, Sim Shalomthat is printed in Dutch.

 For more information see www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Suriname.html.  

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat announced that his government had adopted the policy of promoting communications with Israel in order to establish a comprehensive Middle Eastern peace settlement. It was suggested that the proposed Israeli-Egyptian dialogue would be held in the UN Sinai buffer zone.

1978: Prime Minister Menachem Begin met German Ambassador Klaus Schuetz. This was the first time Begin had personally conferred with any German representative.  During the 1950’s Begin had been a vocal opponent of accepting reparations from the Bonn government.

1979: Robert Strauss completed his service as Special Envoy for the Middle East for President Carter

1979: Birthdate of Gerson Levi-Lazzaris,a Brazilian archaeologist, descendent of Italo-Slovenian immigrants. Most of the Lazzaris are from Forno di Zoldo, Veneto, from where most of them emigrated during the end of the XIXth century, and also after the Second World War to Argentina, Australia, Brazil and United States.

1979: As part of the Camp David Accords, Israel surrendered the Alma oilfields

1981(28th of Cheshvan, 5742): Seventy four year old actor Jack Albertson passed away.  Born to immigrant parents in 1907, this Bay State native was a multi-talented entertainer. Some of his more famous roles include a bit part as a postal worker in Miracle on 34thStreet, a starring role in the Broadway hit The Sunshine Boys and as the cantankerous elderly Anglo in Chico and the Man.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/26/obituaries/jack-albertson-versatile-star-of-stage-film-and-tv-series.html

1981: The Samuel Freeman House, designed by Rudolph Schindler was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument today

1983:Syria and Saudi Arabia announced cease-fire in PLO civil war in Tripoli.  There are a number of people who blame Israel for all of the problems in the Middle East.  There is a growing chorus on the both the Left and the Right in America who blame America’s problems in that region on United States support for Israel.  The Civil War in Lebanon is a reminder that turmoil and violence exist in that region without regard to the existence of Israel.  In fact the argument can be made that Arab violence against Israel is merely another manifestation of on-going Arab versus Arab conflicts.

1987: Eighty-six year old Genevieve Brown, who had been marred to All-American football player and Coach Ralph Horween (Ralph Horwitz) for 64 years passed away today.

1987(4th of Kislev, 5748): Terrorist who “flew” into Israel aboard hang gliders from Lebanon killed 6 Israeli soldiers and wounded six others.

1987(4th of Kislev, 5748: Eighty-six year old Genevieve (Brown) Horween who had been married to Ralph Horween, the All-American Harvard and NFL football player and lawyer who founded the Horween Leather Company with his brother, passed away today.

1987: U.S. premiere of “Three Men and a Baby” directed by Leonard Nimoy, photographed by cinematographer Adam Greenberg, co-starring Steve Guttenberg with music by Marvin Hamlisch.

1989(27th of Cheshvan, 5750): Ninety-four year old Professor Salo Wittmayer Baron, who was recognized as one of the century's great historical scholars for his sweeping multivolume history of the Jews passed away today. (As reported by Peter Steinfels)

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/26/obituaries/salo-w-baron-94-scholar-of-jewish-history-dies.html

1990(8th of Kislev, 5751): Four Israelis were killed and 26 more were wounded by an “Egyptian crossing the border.”

1990(8th of Kislev, 5751): Ninety-year old clinical psychiatrist Bettina Warburg Grimson, the graduate of Bryn Mawr and Cornell Medical School who was the wife of the musician Samuel B. Grimson passed away today in Manhattan.

1991: Birthdate of Mexican actor Joseph Sasson Entebi best known for his role in the “children’s soap opera, “Amy, The Girl in the Blue Backpack.”

1992: The Czechoslovakia Federal Assembly votes to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia from January 1, 1993. “After the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia in 1992, Slovakia gained its independence on January 1, 1993. Since Slovakia’s independence, such organizations as Maccabi and B’nai B’rith have become active in the communities… During the immediate post-Cold War period, the Czech Republic reopened diplomatic ties with Israel and Czech President Vaclav Havel became the first leader from a previously Soviet controlled Eastern European country to travel to Israel.”

1992: U.S. premiere of “Aladdin” an animated musical fantasy with Scott Weinger providing the voice of “Aladdin” and music by Alan Menken.

1992: “The Bodyguard,” a “romantic thriller written and co-produced by Lawrence Kasdan was released in the United States today.

1994: John Charles Walker, “an American agricultural scientist “and winner of the Wolf Prize an Israeli award funded by Dr. Ricardo Wolf, the former Cuban ambassador to Israel

1997: This morning, “Mrs. Esther Weinstein, the president of the JCC (Jewish Community Council of Cairo), together with Mr. Nabawi Sirag and Mr. Sasson Somekh representing the Higher Council for Egyptian Antiquities Department and the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo respectively, inaugurated, a library annex situated inside the compound of Old Cairo's historic and recently restored Ben Ezra Synagogue.”

1998(6th of Kislev, 5759): American philosopher Nelson Goodman passed away at the age of 92.

1998: “Very Bad Things” a very sick comedy directed by Peter Berg and co-starring Jeremy Piven was released in the United States today.

1998: “A Bugs Life,” starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, featuring Madeline Kahn, with music by Randy Newman and edited by Lee Unkrich was released today in the United States.

2000: “Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat spoke by telephone today and agreed to maintain field-level security links that Israel had threatened to sever a day earlier.”

2001: Peter Temes reviewed The Brigade: An Epic, Story of Vengeance, Salvation and World by Howard Blum which described the role played this Jewish unit in the British Army.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/books/books-in-brief-nonfiction-212652.html

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry by Sheila Isenberg, The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalemby Kanan Makiya, In The Shape of a Boar by Lawrence Norfolk and Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics byEdward Teller with Judith L. Shoolery

2002(20th of Kislev, 5763): Seventy six year old “Karel Reisz, a Czech refugee who became a leading director of the British New Wave before making "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and other Hollywood dramas” passed away today. (As reported by Rick Lyman)

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/arts/karel-reisz-director-of-films-including-the-french-lieutenant-s-woman-dies-at-76.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/28/guardianobituaries.filmnews

2002: Theo Epstein was appointed General Manager of the Boston Red Sox. In less than two years (2004) the Sox would beat the hated Yankees for the American League Pennant and then win the World Series thus breaking “the curse.”  The youthful Jewish executive would be hailed as part of a new generation of baseball executives.

2002: In a review of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Dvesti let Vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together) the first of two volumes devoted to the history of Jews in Russia from the third partition of Poland in 1795, when Russia, until then effectively without Jews, suddenly acquired one million Jewish subjects, Daniel Pipes discusses the Russian author’s attitude toward Jews and the role of Jews in Russian history.

2003: “The Bush administration, in a rare rebuke to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has decided to rescind $289.5 million in American-backed loan guarantees for Israel as a punishment for illegal construction activities in the West Bank, the Israeli Embassy announced” today.

2004: Twenty-eight year old Martin Wiese and three other neo-Nazis “have gone trial” for “planning to bomb a new Jewish cultural in Munich” on November 9, 2003, a date which corresponded to the 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

2005: “The Ice Harvest” directed by Harold Ramis which premiered at the Deauville American Film festival was released in the United States today

2005: “One Six Right: The Romance of Flying” a “film about the general aviation industry” starring Sydney Pollack and Hal Fishman was released in the United States today.

2005: In a reminder that even in the hell of the Holocaust, there were righteous people who did the right thing, Ruth Greiner, a Holocaust survivor and Joanna Zalucka, her Polish protector were re-united.

2006: The Jerusalem Quartet takes center stage marking the first time that Jerusalem Music Center musicians have abandoned the safety of their lofty haven and descended to the level of the man in the street by performing at the local YMCA auditorium.

2006: In an article entitled “A Torah for the Next Generation” The Washington Post reported on the efforts of members of Temple Emanuel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to write an entire Torah in time for the 150thanniversary of the congregation which was founded in 1857.

2007:The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra with conductor, Daniel Kossov, soprano, Keren Hadar, tenor, Yotam Cohen, and pianist, Yoni Fahri performs Humperdinck`s Hansel und Gretel: Vorspiel, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Mozart’s Symphony in A Major, no. 29, performs a special benefit concert.

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Canadian born Jewish commentator and social activist Naomi Klein.

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of A Pigeon and A Boy by Israeli author Meir Shalev, Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore and Dough: A Memoir by Jewish author Mort Zacht

2008: In Manhattan, the 92ndStreet Y presents a program entitled, “Rabbi David Wolpe in Conversation with Safran Foer” during which “Rabbi Wolpe, one of today’s leading voices of contemporary religion, discusses his personal journey through life-threatening illness, from the depths of darkness to the illuminating light of faith.

2008: David Korn-Brzoza’s documentary “L'affaire Finaly” which examined the effort to have two Jewish children who had been hidden by Catholics returned to their parents by David Korn-Brzoza, was also broadcast by France 2, today.

2008:Israel closed its cargo crossings with Gaza today because of Palestinians fired at least one rocket into Israel, just a day after Israel had allowed vital humanitarian supplies to shipped into Gaza

2008: Premiere of “The Nutty Professor” produced by Jerry Lewis, Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein and starring Jerry Lewis.

2008(27th of Cheshvan, 5769):Eighty-four year old Gerald Schoenfeld the chairman of the powerful Shubert Organization, the largest and most important theater owner on Broadway and in the United States passed away. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/theater/26schoenfeld.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

2009: At the Jerusalem Music Center, the final performance "The Bald Soprano": a chamber opera by Israel Sharon, based on a play by Eugène Ionesco.

2009: “The Jazz Baroness,” a documentary about Nica Rothschild by her great-niece Hannah Rothschild airs on HBO at 8 pm.

2009: In Jerusalem, Beit Avi Chai presents "One Spring for Me": The love story of Leah Goldberg.

Among the poems that will be part of the performance are “Shir ha-haflaga,” “Ve-lo haya beinenu ela zohar,” “Ani halakhti az,” “At telkhi ba-sadeh,” “He-halil,” “Laila,” “Selihot,” “Ha-har ha-yarok,” and many more.

2010: In Jerusalem, comedian David Kilimnick is scheduled to present his Thanksgiving Special, ‘My Family Made Me in America'

2010: The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, today strongly denounced a Palestinian Authority paper that denies any Jewish connection to the Western Wall, the iconic holy site and place of Jewish worship in the Old City of Jerusalem, describing the report as “reprehensible and scandalous.”  

2011: Downtown Shabbat, a Carlebach-inspired service led by Cantor Larry Paul and musician Robyn Helzner is scheduled to be held at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

2011:While tens of thousands of protesters are amassing in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the Sinai Peninsula is heating up. Egyptian security forces today raised the alert level to an unprecedented level in the al-Arish area in northern Sinai after they received information that Jihad members are planning on carrying out an attack on the local security headquarters, the Ma'an news agency reported today.

2012(111thof Kislev, 5773): Eighty-four year old “writer, composer, jazz fanatic and sweetheart” Sol Weinstein passed away today.

http://www.oy-oy-7.com/sol.html

2012: The Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) is scheduled to bestow an honorary degree on Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird (As reported by the Canadian Jewish News)

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Far From the Tree Parents: Children, and the Search for Identityby Andrew Solomon, Iron Curtain:The Crushing of Eastern Europe,1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum and Saul Steinberg: A Biographyby Deidre Bair.

2012: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Family Stories at the Center: Young Historians.”

2012: “Hava Nagila” is scheduled to shown tonight at the close of the Jewish International Film Festival in Australia.

2012: Syrian fire pierced Israel for the second time in a day Sunday night, as bullets fired from across the border struck next to a military vehicle near the border.

2012: Morethan 123,000 Likud members have the power today to shape the face of their party’s list for the 19th Knesset, and political analysts say they will use it to move the party further to the right.

2013 In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah is scheduled to host the community-wide Ecumenical Thanksgiving Service.

2013: The Black Institute, in partnership with Bend the Arc, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Russian-Speaking Community Council of Manhattan and the Bronx, Inc. (RCCMB), is scheduled to host a forum to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking in support of Jewish civil rights in the Soviet Union.

2013: “”The Silver Line, the only free confidential telephone helpline offering information, friendship and advice to older people in the United Kingdom” which “was established by Dame Esther Rantzen” was “launched nationally” today.

2013(22nd of Kislev, 5774): Ninety-eight year old “Alfred Feld, whose more than a eighty years of service at Goldman Sachs made him the bank’s “longest serving employee” passed away today. (As reported by Susan Craig)

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/alfred-feld-goldmans-longest-serving-employee-dies-at-98/

https://www.financial-planning.com/news/alfred-feld-goldman-sachss-longest-serving-worker-dies-at-98

2013: “A remarkable archaeological find in the Judean lowlands southwest of Jerusalem includes a six-millennia-old cultic temple and a 10,000-year-old house. The ancient sites were located in routine archaeological digs conducted ahead of a planned expansion of Route 38, the main access road to Beit Shemesh. The building is the oldest ever found in the area, and constitutes remarkable “evidence of man’s transition to permanent dwellings,” researchers said today.” (As reported by Hativ Rettig Gur)

2013: “President Shimon Peres awarded his Presidential Medal of Distincition to author Elie Wiesel today in New York City.” (As reported by JPost)

2014: In Melbourne, “Life as a Rumor” and “The Dove Flyer” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.

2014: In a speech Finance Minister Yair Lapid delivered this morning to the Sderot Conference for Society, he “slammed Likud saying the ruling party was ‘so detached that they are leading to us to completely pointless elections.’”

2014: Amir Benayoun, “a popular Israeli singer was disinvited today “from an upcoming event at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem after he released a song many saw as expressing racist sentiment against Arabs.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

2014: “Israel received a short reprieve from a wet, stormy week this morning, with more rain and wind expected throughout the rest of the week.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

2015: The 92nd St Y is scheduled to host its annual Israeli Folk Dancing Thanksgiving Marathon this evening.

2015: The Israel Antiquities Authorities announced today that it had granted eight year old Itai Halpern a certificate of honor for “discovering the head of a statue from the First Temple period and giving this important archaeological discovery to the Antiquities Authorities’ officials.

2015: In Toronto, Jars Balan, an author, editor, and literary translator who has published numerous scholarly and journalistic works on Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian themes delivered a lecture on “Rhea Clyman: A Forgotten Canadian Witness to the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933.”

2015: “An IDF soldier was seriously wounded in a stabbing attack at the Fawwar junction near Hebron shortly before noon today.”

2016(24th of Cheshvan, 5777): Ninety-one year old Sulzburg, Germany, native and State University of New York at Buffalo graduate Erich Bloch who helped developed supercomputers at IBM before serving as director of the National Science Foundation passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/technology/erich-bloch-who-helped-develop-ibm-mainframe-dies-at-91.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article&_r=0

https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/pr0230.htm

2016: “Maya Ben Zvi was hosting a wedding party at her popular restaurant, Rama’s Kitchen, in the Jerusalem hills community of Nata” today when the decisions was made to evacuate” just a short time before “the entire” went up in smoke – the victim of wildfires that have been burning out of control since the first part of the week.

2016: Untold thousands of Israelis have been forced to flee in the face of raging wildfires.

2016: “The People vs. Fritz Bauer” and “Sand Storm” are scheduled to be shown at Melbourne as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.

2016: “The Lion” produced by Harvey Weinstein is scheduled to be released today in the United States after having premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

2016: Sabra Éyal Hai is scheduled to perform at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg.

2017(7th of Kislev, 5778): Parashat Va-yaytay; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host Agnes

Schwartz, the native of Budapest, telling her story of how the “family maid, Julia Balazas” hid her from the Nazis and protected her the effects of Allied bombing.

2017: “Let Yourself Go!” and “No Pay, Nudity” are scheduled to be shown at the 21st UK International Jewish Film Festival.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books outside of our “comfort zone” including The Jews of Arab Lands, Among the Righteous and In Ishmael’s House continues today.

2018(17thof Kislev, 5779): Ninety-five year old American professor Randolph L. Braham, the author of The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary and the foremost expert on the genocide of the Jews in his home country of Hungary passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/obituaries/randolph-braham-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

2018: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Trinity, Louisa Hall’s based on the life of J. Robert Oppenheim, All-Of-A-Kind Family Hanukkah, a children’s book written Emily Jenks and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, Meet The Latkes by Alan Silberberg and We Can Save Us All by Adam Nemett.

2018: The Lior Milliger Quartet, featuring Lior Milliger , “an Israeli born Saxophone player, improviser and composer and  graduate of Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in composition and performance who has recorded and performed in Israel, Europe and New York City” is scheduled to appear this evening at “Rockwood Music Hall Stage 3.”

2018: This afternoon, “Chassida Shmella Ethopian Jewish Community,” in “collaboration with Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host “the 9th Annual SIGD Celebration” complete with “Ethiopian culinary specialties” and dancing in the Ethiopian style.”

2018: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Back to Berlin.”

2018: “Beit Avi Chai” is scheduled to host a lecture by Professors Haim Be’er and Hananel Mack on “Key Figures in the Mishna and the Talmud: Abaye, Homa and Rava.”

2018: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a walking tour of the V&A that “profiles its history and architecture before focusing on highlights with a Jewish association.

2018: AJEX, the Jewish Military Association of the UK is scheduled to feature a lecture by Paula Kitiching in which she “will explore the final year of the First World War and the role that Anglo Jewry played as the guns stopped firing and life returned to a peacetime footing.”

2019: In Bristol, the Watershed Cinemas is scheduled to host a screening of “Solomon and Gaenor” as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival.

2019(27th of Cheshvan, 5780): Yahrzeit of Deborah D. Levin, wife of Joseph B. Levin with whom she had three children – Judy, Mitchell and David.

2019: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to cede the four ministerial positions he holds, following his indictment by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit in three corruption cases.” (As reportedby Itamar Eichner and Kobi Nachshoni)

2019: Political America is expected to respond to Michael Bloomberg’s unorthodox run for the Democratic nomination for President which began over the weekend with a 23 million dollar media blitz.

2019: In San Francisco, the Jewish Community Library is scheduled to present “The Rediscovered Musical: Stempenyu” during which “a forgotten and never-staged novella-musical written by Sholem Aleichem is discussed by Cantor Sharon Bernstein and U. of Chicago Illinois professor Karen Underfill.”

2020: In Ohio, Congregation Tikvah is scheduled to host via Zoom the Midweek Mishnah Class with Rabbi Ronald.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Dr. Yosef Garfinkel lecturing on “The Evidence of the Bible as History.”

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to host Cedric Cohen-Skalli as he discusses his new book Don Isaac Abravanel: An Intellectual Biography

2020: B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host via Zoom a stud of the Mishnah, “the New Scripture with Rabbi Alan Lettofsky.”

2020: Israelis parents can begin making plans for the opening “high schools in green and yellow virus areas” on November 29 following yesterday’s unanimous vote by Israel’s coronavirus cabinet yesterday to allow for these reopenings..

 

 

This Day, November 26, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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November 26

43 BCE: The Second Triumvirate alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus ("Octavian", later "Caesar Augustus"), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony is formed. This power sharing arrangement would fall apart. Octavian would defeat Mark Antony and remove Lepidus leaving him as the sole ruler of the Roman Empire.  Initially, Antony’s defeat and Octavian’s victory did not change the situation for the Jews living in Judea.  Herod had made the mistake of backing Antony.  So if Antony had won, Herod would have kept his kingdom.  But Antony’s defeat did not cost Herod his kingdom.  In one of the history’s greatest acts of political audacity, Herod went to the island of Rhodes where he met with Octavian.  He admitted that he had supported Antony but convinced the young Caesar that this was a good thing because he now he would give Augustus the same level of support.  Impressed by Herod’s audacity (and in need of allies) he left Herod on his throne.  So the outcome for the Jews of Judea, in the short term, was the same no matter what.  In the long run, the Jews probably did well with the victory of Augustus since he would follow the same kind of comparatively benevolent policies followed by his uncle Julius including exempting the Jews from emperor worship and respecting Jewish laws by exempting Jews from appearing in court after dark on Friday or on Shabbat.

1346: Coronation of Charles IV whose decision in 1349 to turn over the taxes paid by the Jews of Frankfurt to the citizens of that city could not prevent the pogrom that followed his departure from the city, as King of the Germans.

1504: Queen Isabella I of Castile, the first Queen of united Spain passed away.  Born in 1451, Isabella is one of history’s more fascinating monarchs.  She was every bit as wiley, clever and effective as Queen Elizabeth of England, even though she does not get her share of credit for these traits.  Isabella did have Jewish advisors, physicians and financiers.  But in the end her devout Catholicism and need for funds to finance “crusades” against Moslems proved the undoing of her Jewish subjects.

1572: King Maximilian II expressed his intention “to expel the Jews of Pressburg (Bratislava), stating that his edict would be recalled only in case they accepted Christianity.”

1669: As events surrounding the blood libel that would lead to the death of Raphael Levi unfolded, two swineherds found the head and the neck of a child in the woods near Metz.  Despite the fact that two surgeons testified that the body parts came from a recently killed person, officials decided that this was the body of the Christian child that had been reported missing and killed more than a month ago.  These body parts would be used in the trial of Levi where he was found guilty.  He was buried alive, protesting his innocence to the end.  This blood libel was part of a series of persecutions aimed at the Jewish community of Metz and would end with their expulsion from the city.

1645: Today, Scottish Calvinist minister and Cromwell supporter John Dury who had met Manasseh ben Israel in 1644 and who favored re-admitting Jews to England “gave a well-known sermon to Parliament style “Israels Call to March out of Babylon into Jerusalem.”

1696: In London, Richea Asher and Moses Raphael Levy gave birth to Abigail Levy, the wife of Jacob Franks and the mother of Phila, David, Naphtali, Rachel and Moses Franks.

1715(30th of Cheshvan): Rabbi Joseph ben Mordecai Ginzburg, author of Leket Yosef passed away today.

1724(21st of Kislev, 5485): Portuguese born physician and son of Maranos Moses (Fernando) Moses who settled in London to serve as the physician for Portuguese noblewoman Catherine, the wife of King Charles II of England and  who along with his brothers Andreas and Antonio openly defined themselves Jews while becoming the father-in-law of Moses (Antonio) da Costa in 1698, passed away today.

1768: In Trois-Rivières, Canada, Aaron Hart and Dorothea Judah gave birth to shipping magnate and banker Moses Hart, the adopted father of Alexander Thomas Hart and the Uncle of Craig Hart.

1775: The American Navy began using chaplains within its regular service.  However, Rabbis were not allowed to serve as Chaplains until 1862 when President Lincoln sponsored legislation allowing ordained Protestant, Catholic or Jewish ministers to serve as Chaplains.

1783: In Jamaica, Abraham Rodrigues De Leon and his wife gave birth to Abigail De Leon, the wife of Joseph Henriques.

1789: Once the United States had been established as an independent nation, President George Washington proclaimed a day of national thanksgiving for November 26, 1789. Congregation Shearith Israel held a service on that first Thanksgiving Day (and has continued to do so each year since), at which time Rev. Gershom Mendes Seixas delivered an address. He noted that the Jewish community had reason to rejoice "as we are made equal partakers of every benefit that results from this good government; for which we cannot sufficiently adore the God of our fathers who hath manifested his care over us in this particular instance; neither can we demonstrate our sense of His benign goodness, for His favourable interposition in behalf of the inhabitants of this land."

1794: David and Elizabeth Levy were married today at the Great Synagogue.

1800: Salomon Rothschild married 18 year old Caroline Stern, the only daughter of Jacob Stern a wine seller.  As can be seen from the Ketubah (wedding contract) this was another beneficial marriage arranged by A.M. Rothschild.

1802: As the Jews of Maryland seek full equality On Nov. 26, 1802, a petition "from the sect of people called Jews" specifically stating their grievance, namely, "that they are deprived of holding any office of profit and trust under the constitution and laws of this state," was referred to the General Assembly, which read it and referred it to a special committee of five delegates, including the two Baltimore representatives, with instructions to consider and report upon the prayer of the petitioners for relief. A month later the petition was refused by a vote of thirty-eight to seventeen. The attempt to secure the desired relief was repeated at the legislative session of 1803; again proving unsuccessful, it was renewed in the following year.

1805: In London, Elizabeth Kahn and Samuel Gershon gave birth to Isaac Gershon.

1822: Seventy-two year old Karl August von Hardenberg who as Prime Minster of Prussia pursued many liberal policies including working to guarantee equal rights for the Jews, passed away today.

1832: In Finsbury, Esther and Joseph Moses Levy gave birth to Emily Levy.

1834: Birthdate of Isabella H. Polock, the wife Morris Rosenbach and mother of literary collector Abraham Simon Wolf (A.S.W.) Rosenbach.

1835: In Baja, Hungary, Baruch Asher Perles and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Joseph Perles, whose works included essays on the lives of Nachmanides, and Shlomo be Aderet, the Spanish sage known as the Rashba.

1837: Isaac Solomon married Mary Benjamin at the Great Synagogue today.

1840: In Italy Marco and Giustina Luzzati gave birth to Annetta Luzzati who became Annetta Foa when she married Giuseppe Foa, the Grand Rabbi of Turino.

1840: Sixty-five year old anti-Semite Karl von Rotteck who “wrote in 1828 that ‘the Jews had to be de-Jewified” and who “rejected Jewish emancipation with the argument that their religion was…antisocial as well as anti-national” passed away today.

1840: In Sebes, near Eperies, Hungary, Isaac Rubovits and Salie Klein gave birth to Edward Rubovits, a teacher in Hungary and husband of Mathilde Kiss who was in the “book, stationary and printing business in Chicago” while also serving as “vice president of Zion Congregation and Isaiah Temple.”

1841: The Voice of Jacob published “Alleged Progress of London Jews Towards Christianity” which reported that “the attempt of a few gentlemen, of the West End section of the town, to form a synagogue there, with certain omissions from the established liturgy, and in contravention of the regulations of one of the London congregations, of which they have been and are yet members… These gentlemen are not known as a congregation, but as an association, deeming itself qualified to abrogate the customs which Israelites have observed for centuries… While the almost universal feeling condemns this movement as the presumptuous attempt of a handful of laymen, and while therefore there need be no apprehension of the evil spreading, the only wise policy would be to treat the attempt as neither formidable by numbers, by status (at least theological), nor otherwise possessing a single element of union.” The Voice of Jacob was published fortnightly and was the first publication that provided “real-time” reports on events in the Jewish community.  The article refers to attempts to established London’s first Reform Congregation which became known as the West London Synagogue of British Jews

1842: The University of Notre Dame is founded as private Catholic University. Since 1992, Rabbi Dr. Michael Signer has filled the Abrams Chair of Jewish Thought and Culture and has served as the Director of the Notre Dame Holocaust Project. “The Notre Dame Holocaust Project promotes educational opportunities about the destruction of European Jewry during World War II for the university community.”  For more information about opportunities offered to Jewish students attending Notre Dame see http://campusministry.nd.edu/ecumenical-interfaith/jewish-resources

1843(3rd of Kislev, 5604): Seventy-one year old Hertz Salomon Schwarzschild, the son of Salomon Jacob Schwarzschild and Ester Maas passed away today.

1844: One day after she had passed away, “Simha Harris,” the wife of Michael Harris with whom she had had six children was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1848: Birthdate of Odessa native and “Yiddish-language folk poet and composer” who was encouraged in his work by Abraham Goldfaden and Sholem Aleichem.

1849(11th of Kislev, 5610): Julius Eduard Hitzig a German author and civil servant passed away. Born Isaac Elias Itzig) at Berlin in 1780, he was a member of the wealthy and influential Jewish Itzig family Between  1799 and 1806 he was a a Prussian civil servant, after which he became Criminal Counsel at the Berlin Supreme Court in 1815 and its director in 1825. In 1808 he established a publishing house and later a bookstore. He was very active in Berlin’s literary circles.  Heinrich Heine, of all people, reportedly made fun of his name change.

1852: At the Greene Street Synagogue, Rabbi Morris Raphall preached a sermon based on the opening words of the 92nd Psalm, “It is good to give thanks unto the Lord –to sing praise unto Thy name, O most high!” 

1855: Adam Mickiewizc, a noted Polish poet and ardent nationalist died today in Constantinople while working with his friend Armand Levy, to organize a Jewish legion, the Hussars of Israel, comprising Russian and Palestinian Jews.  The legion was supposed to join in the fight against the Russians during the Crimean War.  Polish nationalists believed that a Russian defeat would help undermine the authority of the Czar and help lead to the liberation of Poland.  [Mickiewizc was not Jewish and I have not been able to find an explanation why he was organizing a Jews for this fight.]

1858: James (Jacob) Seligman, the son of David and Fanny Seligman and Rosa Seligman gave birth to Jefferson Seligman

1858: In London, Barnett Abrahams, the principal of Jews’ College, and his wife gave birth to Israel Abrahams, the Jewish scholar whose works included A Companion to the Authorized Prayer Book and Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.

1858: It was reported today that Rabbi Isaac Leeser, head of Beth El Emet has written a series of articles about the Mortara Affair that have appeared in the Philadelphia Ledger and that “indignation meetings in reference to the Mortara Affair" have been held. For more about the Mortara Affair see:

1858: In New York, members of the Jewish community expressed their indignation over the tactics used by the police when arresting three of their co-religionists on charges of selling lottery tickets. Among other things they were protesting the fact that the police had arrested a rabbi who was leading his congregation in prayers. The three have posted $1,000 in bail

1859: In Philadelphia, David Hays Solis and Elvira Nathan Solis gave birth to Emily Grace Solis, who became Emily Grace Solis Solis-Cohen when she married her cousin Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen.

1861: During the Civil War, Samuel Alexander, who would later be killed in fighting at Dranesville, VA, completed a ninety day enlistment as an Assistant Surgeon with the 44th Regiment, part of the First Cavalry

1862: During the Civil War, Jonas H. Kaufman began his service as Assistant Surgeon with 151st Regiment of the Pennsylvania volunteers serving with the Union Army.

1862: Birthdate of Sir Marc Aurel Stein. Born in Budapest, Stein was a Hungarian Jewish archaeologist who became a British citizen. He was also a professor at various Indian universities. Stein was inspired by Sven Hedin's work, Through Asia.His travels and research in central Asia, particularly in Chinese Turkistan, revealed much about its strategic role in history.  In 1906, Stein uncovered a group of mummified corpses near Loulan, in Central Asia. Their well-preserved bodies were clad in woolen garments and they wore tall felt hats decorated with jaunty feathers. The men were bearded and their facial features seemed European. Stein dated them to c.100 BC. When the Dunhuang Caves, China, closed for centuries, were reopened, he discovered 15,000 manuscripts (1907), including the Diamond Sutra, reputed to be the first dated printed book (868 A.D.). He passed away on October 26, 1943.

1863:Thanksgiving was first observed as a regular American holiday. Proclaimed by President Lincoln the previous month, it was declared that the event would be observed annually, on the fourth Thursday in November.  While Thanksgiving is a secular holiday, it has it origins in the Bible.  The Pilgrims were students of what they called The Old Testament.  When they had enjoyed their first successful harvest at Plymouth, they looked to scripture for a way to express their joy.  They found the answer in the holiday of Sukkoth – a celebration of in-gathering; a celebration of thanks that took place after the harvest was completed.  There are reports that the first Thanksgiving was a week-long affair but I would avoid making any claim that this was intended to mirror the seven days of Sukkoth. 

1864: Corporal Benjamin L. Kauffman, transferred from Company D of the 90th Regiment to Company H of the 11thRegimet today.

1867: Birthdate of French political leader Abraham Schrameck who endured anti-Semitic attacks by the Action francaise starting at the turn of the century was interred by the Vichy government which did not turn him over to the Nazis thus making it possible for him to avoid the fate of most French Jews.

1868: On Thanksgiving Day, Rabbi Marcus Jastrow delivered a sermon at Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1869: Birthdate of Alfred Eicholz, M.A., M.D. and B.Ch. the graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and husband of Ruth Adler, the second daughter of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire who, among other things served as His Majesty’s Inspector of school for the Blind, Deaf and Mentally and Physically Defective in England and Wales and the Council and Education Committee of the Jews’ College while writing papers for the British Medical Journal

1871: Five days after he had passed away, 67 year old Emanuel Mocatta, the son of Jacob and Rebecca Mocatta, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1872: In St. Louis, MO, Ignatz and Anna (Kohn) Hartman gave birth to Washington University Law School graduate Judge Moses Hartman the husband of Carrie A. Scooler with whom he had three children and who was President of Congregation B’nai El

1872: In Baltimore, MD, Helen Guggenheimrer and Herman H. Cone, the brother-in-law of Jacob Adler and the co-owner of the dry goods store Cone and Adler gave birth to Julius Washington Cone, the husband of Laura Cone and the “founder of Proximity Manufacturing Company” which later became known as Cone Mills.

1874: In New York City,Arnold and Ida (Lagowitz) Tanzer gave birth to Ivy League (Harvard and Columbia) educated attorney Laurence A. Tanzer, a founding member of the Citizens Union and “the senior member of the law firm of Tanzer, Mullaney, Mitherz and Pratt and the husband the husband of the Florence Keller Tanzer with whom he had two daughters.

1876: Birthdate of Isadore Bernstein, the New York native who wrote scripts for 65 films from 1914 through 1938.

1876: It was reported today that the Hebrew Charities and Purim Association plan to sponsor a Hebrew Charity Ball next month at the Academy of Music.

1879: In Germany, Jakob and Ida Edelchen Baruch gave birth to Bertha Baruch who became Bertha Wallach when she married Joseph Wallach with whom she had two children, Ernst and Herbert.

1879: “The Man With The Evil Eye” published today described the exploits of “Albert Lavergene, alias Abraham Levy, an Alsatian Jew” who confessed to having stolen $30,000 worth of diamonds while living in France two years ago and who is known to his wife’s relatives as “the Jew” or “the man with the evil eye” because of the way he used to beat her.

1880: Luther R. Marsh will deliver a lecture entitled “On the Power of the Alphabet” at meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at Lyric Hall. (Marsh was prominent New York lawyer who developed an interest in Spiritualism.  He was not Jewish)

1880: “Disraeli’s Latest Novel” published today provided a detailed review of Endymion by the Right Honorable Earl of Beaconsfield.

1881: It was reported today that the influx of immigrants from Russia is overwhelming the resources of the United Hebrew Charities.  As many as 400 Jews have been arriving each week, most of whom are “destitute and helpless.”

1882: “Monmouth and the Wye” published today provides a brief history of medieval England that includes the reminder that “butchery of the helpless Jews at York, when the despairing wretches hurled their children from the battlements upon the howling murderers below and the slew each to the last man” “cannot drop from the memory of mankind….”

1883: The Baltimore Sun reported that the colony started for Russian Jewish immigrants in Middlesex County, Virginia has been abandoned.

1883: It was reported today that the current issue of the Nineteenth Century features Dr. Charles H.H. Wright’s Paper “The Jews and the Malicious Charge of Human Sacrifice” which “goes over the whole history of the recent outrages in Europe.”

1883: Robert Solomon, an Anglo-Jewish Cape Town diamond dealer arrived in New York this evening aboard SS Servia of the Cunard Line.

1883: It was reported today that “David Phillipson…who graduated from Hebrew Union College” last July “has accepted a call from a congregation in Baltimore, MD.

1884: It was reported today that three prizes – a diamond ring, a bracelet and a face pin – were awarded to the ladies who had sold the most tickets to this year’s grand ball, a charity event sponsored by the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society.

1885: During Thanksgiving services a large throng listened to an address by Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler at Temple Beth-El that reviewed the principles adopted by the Reform Rabbis at their meeting in Pittsburgh, PA.

1885: Birthdate of Heinrich Brüning, German Chancellor from 1930 to 1932 who, for whatever shortcomings he may have had, worked to keep Hitler from coming to power a stance that led to his self-imposed exile  to avoid being arrested by the Nazis.

1886: In Munich,Joseph Schülein, the of Joel (Julius) Schülein and Jeanette Schülein, and his wife Ida gave birth to Elsa Haas, the wife of Dr. Alfred Haas.

1886: The New York Times featured a review of The Land the Book by William Thomson, a book that examines the material in the scriptures with the information gained by explorations in Palestine through 1880. While some of the information in the Old Testament is “not borne out by facts…many more points” in the Scripture “have been corroborated”  that the results cannot have failed to find favor with Jews.

1888: As she went to visit her sister, eighteen year old Yetta Reiner, a Jewish girl who has been in the United States for two weeks, disappeared when she walked off with a Hebrew-speaking man on the corner of Norfolk and Hester Street who had offered “to get her a situation.” 

1888: Leo Bamberger the master of ceremonies, introduced Moses May, the Chairman of the Fair Committee who introduced Brooklyn Mayor Alfred C. Chapin who officially opened the charity fair on Clermont Avenue that will raise funds of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1888: “The Hebrews’ Thanksgiving” published in the Washington Post notes that the Jewish Feast of Lights, this year Falls on the same date as Thanksgiving.

1888: It was reported today that the son of the “sexton who dwells in the basement of the synagogue” on 8th Street in Washington is suffering from typhoid fever.

1887: In New York City, Michael and Rosalie (Berkowitz) Goldbaum gave birth to University of Pennsylvania trained chemist, Jacob Samuel Goldbaum, Ph.D., the instructor in electro-chemistry at his alma mater and author of numerous works on the subject who was the husband of Virginia Laib, a member of the board of trustees at Rodeph Shalom and a member of the board of governors of Hebrew  Union College.

1889: Police are expected to arrest Morris Kassofky who gave “a terrible beating” to Jacob Levy when the latter mistakenly tried to enter his apartment. They live in a building on Norfolk Street that is inhabited by Jewish immigrants from Poland.

1889: In Newark, NJ, founding of the Plaut Memorial Hebrew School which held classes daily from 4 to 7 p.m. and was led by Myer S. Hood, the Principle and Superintendent Myer S. Hood.

1890: “Friends of the Exiles” described the rejection of request made Jews to help their suffering co-religionists in Russia by the New York Bureau of the Siberian Exile Petition Association because “the work of the association…was done by petition” and “the work for the relief of the Jews required a different kind of effort.”

1890: Twenty-eight year old Leavenworth, KS native Eugene S. Benjamin, the President and trustee of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and vice president of the Allied Mutual Liability Insurance Company marred Miriam Gutman today.

1890: Birthdate of Newark, NJ, native and New Jersey Law School trained attorney, Judge William Unterman, “the chairman of the Ninth Ward Democratic Club” and “President of the Third District of B’nai B’rith who was the husband of Esther Untermann, the “first woman police judge in the City of Newark,

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1944/02/09/86846234.pdf

1891 (25th of Cheshvan): Rabbi Mordecai Gimpel Jaffe passed away.

1892: “In the Czar’s Family” published today described the hope that by naming the Crown Prince as President of the Russian State Council “the repression of Jews…will eventually be relaxed.”  (Things were always going to get better for Russian Jew – in the future!)

1892(7th of Kislev, 5653): Sixty year old Mortiz Wahrman the first Jew chosen to chosen a member of the Hungarian delegation and successful businessman who bequeathed 200,000 crowns to “benevolent societies and “600,000 crowns for the erection of a Jewish gymnasium (school) passed away today.

1892: In Baltimore, MD, “Simon and Jennie (Levy) Turk gave birth to University of Pennsylvania trained attorney and WW I Army veteran Mervyn Russell Turk, the author of Turk’s “Harvard Notes on Trusts” who was a member of B’nai B’rith.

1893: “Seen in Ceylon” published today described the commercial life of this island state including “the keen-faced Jews with long, black ringlets” who “preside over stores of shining gems.”

1893: Professor Felix Adler “gave the second lecture in his series on religious leaders” entitled “Moses and the Prophets” to an overflow audience at the Music Hall in New York City.

1893: “Jews Expelled from Besieged Meililla” described the decision of the Spanish General to order all Jews to leave the Moroccan city as he battles against the Riffs  -- a decision that is consistent with the behavior of "military commanders in Europe” who “rightly or wrongly” feel that the Jews are spies for their enemies.

1894: The will of Adolph Bernheimer which names his widow, his brother Lehman and William Rothschild as executors was filed for probate today.

1894: In Washington, DC, Solomon “Sol” Peyser and Eva Dux gave birth to Theodore Dux “Ted” Peyser who earned a law degree at the University of Virginia and served in WW I.

1894: Birthdate of “Ukrainian-born American trade unionist” Jacob Samuel Potofsky who served as president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America from 1946 until 1972.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E0CE2DA153EE732A25755C0A96E9C946890D6CF

1894:  In Columbia, MO, Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn gave birth to child prodigy and famed mathematician Norbert Wiener.  Among his many accomplishments, Weiner is known as the discoverer of cybernetics.  President Johnson awarded him with the National Medal of Science two months before his death in 1964.

1895: Today, “Judge Allison, in General Sessions…dismissed an indictment against” delicatessen dealer Peter Peiser “who had been arrested for selling sausage on Sunday.”

1896: The University of Wisconsin football team led by first year head coach Philip King, a Jewish native of Washington, DC played to a six-six tie against Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois.

1896(21st of Kislev, 5657): Joseph C. Wolf who was elected the State Assembly from the 16th District in 1892 and the State Senate in 1893 passed away today.  Born in 1849, the native of Besancon, France and graduate of Columbia Law School enlisted in the Second New York Light Cavalry at the start of the Civil War serving with the Army of the Potomac. 

1896: Temple Israel and the West End Synagogue will hold a joint Thanksgiving Service starting at 3 p.m.

1896: Temple Emanu-El will hold a Thanksgiving Service at 11 a.m.

1896: As part of day long holiday observance, the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society will hold a Thanksgiving Service at the synagogue on 11thAvenue and 151st Street.

1896: William Matthew Flinders Petrie married Hilda Urlin in London. This was the same year that he and his archaeological team were conducting excavations at Luxor when they discovered the “Israel’ or Merneptah Stele

1897: During the Dreyfus Affair, today the French minister of war “received the following anonymous letter: ‘Monsieur le Minstre: You will find in a chamber on the sixth story interesting document concerning the Dreyfus case’ signed “A Patriot”

1897: Through her lawyer Mr. Jullemier, Madame de Boulancy, cousin and former mistress of Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, had decided to avenge her lover and debtor and sent to Senator Auguste Scheurer-Kestner letters from this officer, including the famous "letter of Uhlan". Scheurer-Kestner showed the letter to Pellieux, military commander of Paris, in charge of the administrative inquiry on Esterházy

1898: The Emperor and Empress of German arrive at Potsdam this morning on their return from Palestine where the Kaiser met with Herzl.

1899: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a lecture this morning at Temple Emanu-El on “Are We Children of the Ghetto, or Children of the World?” which was a play on words using the name of the drama now appearing at a New York theatre.

1899: In Roxbury, MA, founding of the Helping Hand Temporary Home for Destitute Jewish Children at the corner of Fort Ave and Beech Glen.

1899: “Rosebery On Cromwell” published today provided the remarks made by Lord Rosebery at the ceremony celebrating the tercentenary of Oliver Cromwell including his observation that Cromwell “was the first Prince who reigned in England who welcomed and admitted Jews” a fact of which Jews and Englishmen are equally proud of as can be attested to by the presence of Sir Samuel Montagu, Lord Rothschild and Benjamin Cohen on the platform at the banquet honoring his memory.

1899: In Roxbury, MA, founding today of Helping Hand Temporary Home for Destitute Jewish Children located at Fort Avenue and Beech Glen.

1900: “De Hirsch School Enlarged” published today described the dedication ceremonies for the new dormitory of the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural and Industrial School at Woodbine which “has a population of one thousand and is the most successful of the De Hirsch colonies” in New Jersey.

1901: Dr. Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist at the Hospital for the Mentally Ill and Epileptics in Frankfurt, who had “married a Jewish widow, Cecilia Geisenheimer in 1894 after which they had three children, had his first meeting with the patient who would become the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.

1902: “Before an audience which completely filled the auditorium of the Educational Alliance Building the Rev. Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, rabbi of the Sinai Congregation in Chicago and Professor of Rabbinical Literature at the Chicago University, tonight delivered an address, the topic of which was "The New York East Side Problem” during which he urged Jews to leave the overcrowded East Side.

1903: On Thanksgiving Professor Richard Gottheil delivered a lecture on Zionism at a Temple in New York City which “was accorded a most cordial reception.

1903: Birthdate of Alice Herz-Sommer, also known as Alice Sommer-Hertz and Alice Sommer, “a Czech pianist, music teacher and survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/world/europe/alice-herz-sommer-pianist-who-survived-holocaust-dies-at-110.html?_r=0

1904:Clarence Isaac de Sola, the “son of Cantor Abraham de Sola and Esther de Sola, and his wife Belle Maud de Sola  gave birth to Jessica E. Mellor who was married to both Ronald David de Pass and Sir John Mellor.

1905: The First Jewish Colony on Manhattan Island published today described events that will be celebrated this Thanksgiving regarding “one of the most important events in Israel’s History” – the growth of New York’s Jewish population from 23 people to half a million.

1905: “The contributions to the fund for the relief of the Jewish sufferers from Russian massacres took another upward bound” today “under the impetus of additional collections from many cities, particularly Chicago, which by sending $20,000 more now leads in contributions outside of New York City, there have been forwarded from there in all $80,000.”

1905: It was reported today that the Jewish relief fund has raised $827,579 to help those suffering from the anti-Semitic violence sweeping Russia.

1905: When Blood Flowed Like Water at Odessa” published today provided an eye-witness account “of the awful scenes of carnage” when Russian gentiles attacked the Jews following the Czar’s proclamation granting the people a Constituion.

1906: Birthdate of “Rabbi Henry Enoch Kagan” the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and HUC who was “the first full-time rabbi to be licensed by New York State as a consulting psychologist” and who was a tireless worker for better relations between Christians and Jews which did not deter him from raising two sons – Jonathan and Jeremy – with his wife “the former Esther Miller.”

1908: Birthdate of award winning scriptwriter and playwright Leonard Spigelgass, the brother-in-law of photographer Sanford Roth and the brother Beulah Roth, a “speechwriter for FDR and Adlai Stevenson” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/16/arts/leonard-spigelgass-a-writer-for-broadway-and-hollywood.html

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1985-02-17-8501060212-story.html

1909: Sigma Alpha Mu is founded in the City College of New York by 8 Jewish young men.

1909: Birthdate of Moe Mizler the London born boxer who was the brother of “British lightweight champion Harry Mizler.

1910(24th of Cheshvan, 5671): Parashat Chayei Sara

1910: In what looked like a “Dress Rehearsal” for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, today “a  fire at a building in Newark, New Jersey, housing several factories, killed 24 women and girls employed by the Wolf Muslin Undergarment Company” which  “raised concerns about whether a similar disaster could happen” since lack of exits and the existence of fire hazards had led to this preventable tragedy.

1911: Birthdate of Samuel “Sammy” Herman Reshevsky, the Polish born Jewish-American chess grandmaster who was a strong contender in the World Chess Championship competitions for a thirty year span.

1912(16th of Kislev, 5673): Eighty-four year old Baron George De Worms passed away.

1912: In Chicago, “the first regular meeting of the K.A.M. Auxiliary is scheduled to be held this after in the vestry rooms of the Temple where attendees will hear speakers present “A Practical Symposium on the High Cost of Living.”

1912: Simon Bloom was elected Mayor of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

1912: Birthdate of playwright Eugene Ionesco. There is dispute about Ionesco’s Jewish origins. According to a sizeable body of evidence, Ionesco’s mother was a Romanian of Sephardic Jewish origin. 

1913: Birthdate of Josefina Grunfeldova, who in 1942 was deported from Prague to Ujazdow where she was murdered by the Nazis.

1913: In a letter from the Chief Rabbi of Salonica to Prince Nicholas of Greece, the rabbi denies truth of charges of excesses committed by Greek soldiers, and declares he has not sought protection of powers for Jews of Salonica. Three months later the Greek Prime Minister, Venizelos, assured the Chief Rabbi that the rights of the Jews would be continued.

1913: Jesse Laksy forms The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company in partnership with his brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later known as Sam Goldwyn) and his friend Cecil B. DeMille. The Squaw Man is the company’s first film and it is an instant hit.  It is also the first movie filmed entirely in Hollywood, California. 

1914: While fighting on the Western Front during WW I, Lt. F.A. De Pass, a Jewish officer from London “went forward to a sap-head in the front line to repair a parapet that had been damaged.   Seeing a German sniper at work, he tried to shoot him, but was himself shot through the head and killed.”  He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the British equivalent of the American Congressional Medal of Honor, for his bravery in the face of the enemy.

1914: Harry Baff charged today that his father Barnett Baff had been shot dead “at the instigation of a clique of retail poultry buyers” referred to as the “kosher killers.”

1915: It was reported today that there were 300,000 starving Jews in Poland and that “5 cents a day would provide succor for one war victim.”

1915: “Isadore Hershfield of New York” the official representatives of Jewish relief societies of America arrived in Berlin today “on a mission of relief for the Jews in the war areas of Poland and Galicia.”

1916(1st of Kislev, 5677): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1916: The list of contributions received by The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War published today including $22 from the Congregation Sons of Israel in Frostburg, MD, and $76 from the Congregation Sons of Israel in Dallas, TX.

1916: In “Half of War-Stricken Poland’s Population Destitute” published today, Dr. Judah L. Magnes reported that in Poland, “there is no work that a Jew can do…and thousands are starving.”

1916: This afternoon, Harry H. Schlacht of the East Side Protective Association announced “arrangements for a great peace meeting” which will be held at Public School 4 and whose attendees will include Jacob H. Schiff.

1916: According to an announcement made today the American Jewish Committee “a Russian Jew named Gershenovitz…who was sentenced in 1914 to six years of penal servitude because he was accused of have helped he Germans” was acquitted by the Chief Military Court based “on evidence gathered by O.O. Grusenberg, a lawyer.”

1916: During today’s meeting “of the Reichstag main committee it was pointed out that large numbers of Jews in Poland” who are not working “might be profitably employed in manufacturing” which help alleviate the shortage of laborers but would also prove beneficial to the Jews as well.

1917: It was reported today that Adolph Lewisohn has donated his home at 881 Fifth Avenue to house the bazaar which be hosted next month by Temple Emanu-El to reduce expenses so that the maximum amount of money can “go to the relief of Jewish war sufferers and for welfare work among American soldiers and sailors.”

1917: Jan Kucharzewski who would tell an interviewer from “the Jewish press” that he was not an anti-Semite became Prime minister of Poland today.

1917: In Great Britain, the Manchester Guardian printed the text of the Sykes-Picot Agreement – the secret document that determined how the Ottoman Empire would be divided between the UK and France after World War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement#/media/File:Skyes_Picot,_The_Manchester_Guardian,_Monday,_November_26,_1917,_p5.jpg

1918: Dr. Solomon Oppenheimer, the Superintendent of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum who has just returned from Palestine, gives a report on the condition of the Jews in Eretz Israel.

1918: Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow, a member of the Overseas Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board, wrote from France today, “There are so few Jewish workers here I regard it a duty to remain here as long as possible.  It has not been possible to do much for” for those who suffered from the tribulation of the War.

1919: “Madame DuBarry” a silent film biopic directed by Ernst Lubitsch was released today in Denmark.

1920: Two days after he had passed away, Robert Hodes, the husband of Leah Hodes, with whom he had had three children, was buried today at the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery in Northern Ireland.”

1921: The peace treaty between the United States and Austria which ended World War I between these two nations was registered with the League of Nations.  The separate treaty was needed because the U.S. Senate, in a further act of the isolationism that would indirectly lead to WW II, had “refused to ratify the multilateral Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919.”

1922: In an article entitled “Palestine Industries Thriving Capital and Settlers Needed” Dr. Arthur Ruppin notes the changes that have taken place since Herzl called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland 25 years ago at the first Zionist Congress.  While “towns of thousands houses have grown up on neglected ground” the need to develop irrigation projects and travel facilities represent the biggest challenge for future development as well as creating investment opportunities for foreign financiers.

1923: “The Wanters” a drama from the silent film ear directed by John M. Stahl, produced by Louis B. Mayer and co-starring Norma Shearer was released in the United States today.

1924: Birthdate of George Segal, sculptor lifelike mixed-media figures.

1924: Ted “Kid” Lewis (born Gershon Meneloff) lost both the British and European Welterweight crowns.

1925: Birthdate of pianist Eugene Istomin. He was an American pianist born in New York City of Russian-Jewish parents. He was famous for his work in the trio, with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose, known as the Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio, with whom he made many recordings, and particularly of music by Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert. He also played with them in orchestral music, with conductors such as Eugene Ormandy Bruno Walter and also as a soloist.  He passed away in 2003.

1926: In an article entitled “Palestine Industry Thriving,” Arthur Ruppin describes the social and economic progress that has been in Eretz Israel in the 25 years following Herzl opened the founding Zionist conference in Basel, Switzerland.

1926: Birthdate date of Albert Maysles, the native of Boston, who teamed with his younger brother David to produce award winning documentary films.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/movies/albert-maysles-pioneering-documentarian-dies-at-88.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below

1928: In Moscow, “Andrei Navrozov, a writer, and the former Dina Minz, a neuropathologist” gave birth to their only child “translator and Soviet dissident” Lev Navrozov who in more than one publication claimed that while serving as Israel’s Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Golda Meir “had given Stalin a list of Russian Jews who would fight for Israel” and who then “disappeared at the hands of Stalin’s organs of state security.”

1928: It was reported today that “Dr. Louis Finkelstein of the Jewish Theological Seminary” said “the condition of present-day Judaism” was like “a leaky ship” and that it was becoming apparent that the ship that was built tin the ghetto must undergo reconstruction for” use in America.

1928: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that evidence presented during the trial of a “communist named Teichman” the Druze Rebellion against the French mandatory government in Syria received financial and moral support from Communist groups in Palestine.

1931: Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Zionist leader, in a lecture today before the Keren Hajessod for the Rhineland and Westphalia on the present states of Jewry and Zionism, said the unhappy position of the Jews in Germany was really no different from their position everywhere in the world.

1932(27th of Cheshvan, 5693): Parashat Chayei Sarah

1932: “At a mass meeting in the auditorium of the City School of Commerce,” more than a thousand people heard the Palestine delegates to the eighth national convention for Jewish workers in Palestine reported on “the successful development of a working organization to lead youth into productivity” in agricultural endeavors.

1933: Funeral services were held today “at Temple Adath Israel, in the Bronx” for seventy-three year old Russian born Rabbi Bernhard Rabbino who served congregations in several small towns including Keokuk, IA and Brunswick, GA, before becoming a lawyer and champion of the established of the “Domestic Relations Courts in New York” and who was the husband of “the former Anna Ladewig” with whom he had had four daughters.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/11/25/105822888.pdf

1933: In "Two Contrasting Views of Palestine" published today Jacob Weinstein reviewed Modern Palestine: A Symposium edited by Jessie Sampter and Beside Galilee: A First-hand Survey of Zionism and Modern Palestine by Hector Bolitho.

1933: In an article entitled “Two Contrasting Views of Palestine,” Jacob Weinstein reviews Modern Palestine edited by Jessie Sampter with a foreword by Albert Einstein and Beside Galilee: A First-hand Survey of Zionism and Modern Palestine by Hector Bolitho.

1934: The cinematic version of Fannie Hurst’s novel Imitation of Lifedirected by John M. Stahl and produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr was released today in the United States.

1935: The Nuremberg Laws which were aimed Jews “were extended to ‘Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring.’”

1936: Birthdate of Yitzhak Yitzhaky, the native of Tiberias, the founder of and director of “Idud, a village for intellectually challenged children” who was an MK.

1936: Nathan D. Perlman was “appointed as a justice of the Court of Special Sessions of the City of New York” today, a position to which he was reappointed in 1945.

1936: For a second time, “the local rabbinical council protested to the Governor, Marshall Italo Balbo over the order that all shops in Tripoli are to remain open on all days of the week expect for Sunday which will force the Jewish merchants to violate their Sabbath or leave the new part of the city.

1937(22nd of Kislev, 5698): Fifty-eight year old Yakov Ganetsky, the son of a Jewish factory owner, who joined the Bolshevik movement and became a close associate of Vladimir Lenin “was executed today” during Stalin’s Great Purge which was designed to consolidate the Dictator’s power and which had a distinctly anti-Semitic tinge.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that three Jews were wounded when Arab terrorists shot at a crowded bus, traveling from Nesher to Haifa, and escaped.

1937:  In another example of the anti-Semitism that was endemic to European society, the Palestine Post reported that a large number of Jews were again attacked and beaten in various towns in Lithuania.

1938: “Angels with Dirty Faces” a gangster film with a twist directed by Michael Curtiz, produced by Samuel Bischoff and with music by Max Steiner was released in the United States today by Warner Bros.

1938: In Pittsburgh, during the annual convention of Junior Hadassah, four speakers each agreed that “Jewish young people of American must pool their energies in a ‘fight for democracy’ and promote Zionism.”

1938: Today “the National Republican Club adopted a resolution condemning the ‘relapse into barbarianism of the present rulers in Germany.’”

1939: “Inquiry In Rumania Finds 700,000 Jews” published today

1939: “Two Pioneers of Russian Music” published today provides Howard Taubman’s review of “Free Artist: The story of Anton and Nicholas Rubinstein by Catherine Drinken Bowen.

1939: Dr. Mordecai Soltes, Harry Grayer, Dr. Jacob I. Steinberg, Herman Z. Quittman and Nathan Seidelman are scheduled this afternoon’s meeting of the Order of Sons of Zion in Greater New York at the Hotel Astor.

1939: Dr. Henry G. Knight, Dr. Gabriel Davidson, Professor O.S. Morgan and Dr. Carl B. Woodward are scheduled to speak at the memorial service for Dr. Jacob Goodale at Temple Emanu-El.

1939: At Congregation Emanu-El in New York, Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer is scheduled to speak on “The Promise of American Life.

1939: At the Free Synagogue which holds services at Carnegie Hall, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to speak on “Happiness and Character: Do They Destroy Each Other?”

1939: At Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York, Rabbi Israel Goldstein is scheduled to speak on “Information Please: A Jewish Intelligence Test.”

1939: At Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York, Ludwig Lewisohn is scheduled to speak on “The Answer to Israel’s Enemies.”

1939: At the West End Synagogue in New York, “Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel will review John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath at a lecture-forum service.”

1939: In New York at the Astor Hotel “a resolution” introduced by Herman Z. Quittman, executive director of the Sons Zion, “calling on the British Government to admit 50,000 Jewish refugee families from Eastern and Central Europe into Palestine in the next twelve months was unanimously adopted” this “afternoon by 200 delegates to the annual conference of Eastern leaders of the Sons of Zion, a national Zionist group” described the desperate plight of Jews living in Nazi Germany where there has been no organized immigration for Jews since last year and where mothers and wives do not know the fate of their sons and husbands.  “Our people have been pushed back and forth over the borders.  Palestine is the only country in the world where the arrival of Jewish refugees is greeted with rejoicing and festivities.”

1939: “The third week of the 1939 merged appeal of the New York and Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities was ushered in” tonight “with a dinner in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel attended by 1,200 representatives of the radio, music, refrigeration and allied industries including  David Sarnoff, Arthur Murray and Benjamin Abrams.

1939: “1,000 Refugees on Vulcania” published today described the hopes of 1,000 German Jews fleeing the Nazis who have sailed from Genoa to settle in the United States.

1939: In Baltimore, MD, Miss Gisela Warburg, the niece of the late Felix Warburg, who has just returned from Europe where she helped with Youth Aliyah, told those attending the sixteenth annual convention of Junior Hadassah

1939: ‘More than a thousand members of the Jewish community of Teschen, Germany” have been given two more weeks to prepare for their deportation to Poland.


1939: In South Bend, Indiana, Gertrude and Herman Boorda, gave birth to Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda, “the 25th Chief of Naval Operations” and “the first American sailor to have risen through the enlisted ranks to become Chief of Naval Operations,” the top position in the United States Navy.

1939: “Death Decreed for Jews Who Fail to Wear Armbands or Ignore Curfew” published today described the edict issued in German occupied Poland that “any Jew leaving his home without a special permit between 5 pm and 8 am may be punished by death” and that Jews failing “to wear a broad yellow arm band” will also face the death penalty.

1939: “Cantor Kusewitsky Is Safe” published today brought word that Moijzez Kusewitsky, the chief cantor of Poland and the cousin of Mrs. Isior Achron has not been by the German bombing of Warsaw but has escaped with his family to Bucharest.

1939: “May Send Mail to Poland” published today described a cablegram from Arnold M. Kaiser, secretary of the Polish Fund of London that included the assertion that letters for those living in Upper Silesia and Danzig maybe sent through the federation which will forward them to Geneva before they reach their final destination in Poland.

1940: British Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Lloyd calls those who are working to save Jewish lives by illegally transporting them to Palestine "foul people who had to be stamped out."

1940: The Nazis forced 500,000 Warsaw Jews to live in walled ghetto.

1940: “Nearly 600 people, including leaders from the judiciary, education and Newark’s political and social life” attended a dinner-dance at the Essex House which was a celebration of Judge William Untermann’s fiftieth birthday.

1941: A fleet of six aircraft carriers commanded by Japanese Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo left Hitokapu Bay under strict radio silence. On December 7th, the world would find out that their destination was Pearl Harbor.  The arrival of the fleet would usher in America’s entrance into World War II and all that would flow from that. 

1941: The recapture of Rostov by Russian forces marked the first major setback suffered by Germany in World War II, 1941.  The German blitz had moved unchecked across the Soviet Union since June of 1941.  By stopping the Nazis at Rostov, the Soviets forced the German Army to suffer through a Russian Winter from for which it was ill-prepared.  The Germans would resume their offensive in the Spring of 1942 but the Wehrmacht would have been depleted just enough that it would fail a year later at Stalingrad which would mark the beginning of the end for the German military.  Unfortunately, none of these military setbacks would slow down the pace of the Final Solution. 

1942: A ship called the Donausailed from Oslo’s Pier 1 carrying 532 Norwegian Jews, now classified as prisoners all of whom would end up in Concentration Camps.

1942 Norwegian police forces under the direction of the Gestapo handed 532 Jewish prisoners to the SS at Pier 1 in Oslo harbor. The ship was under the command of Untersturmführer Klaus Grossmann and Oberleutnant Manig. Men and women were put in separate holds on the ship, where they were deprived of basic sanitary conditions and mistreated by the soldiers. Only 9 of the prisoners survived the Second World War.

1942: At dawn, in Norway, the Quisling police returned to the home of Isak Plesansky, the founder and proprietor of the Tonsberg Clothing School and arrested his wife, daughter and son.   All of them would be gassed at Auschwitz within the month.

1942: ''Casablanca,'' starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, had its world premiere at the Hollywood Theater in New York. The Jewish connections with this film classic are so numerous that this should only be considered a partial list. Jewish actors included Peter Lorre, S.Z."Cuddles" Sakall, and Leonid Kinskey.  Conrad Veidt was not Jewish but his wife was.  Michael Curtiz, a Hungarian Jew, was the director. The script was a product of Jewish writers Julius and Philip Epstein. The inspiration for the movie came from a play by Murray Bennett.  Bennett got the idea after going to Vienna to help Jewish relatives after the Aunschluss in 1938.  The score was written by Max Steiner…and that will have to do for now.

1942: Jews in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, who are lured from hiding places by Nazi promises of no retribution, are taken to a synagogue, locked inside, and subjected to random gunfire by Ukrainians.

1943: Birthdate of producer and director Bruce Paltrow, a native of Brooklyn, a graduate of Tulane University where he is a member of Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity and  a producer who was responsible for two of television’s best dramatic series - The White Shadow and St. Elsewhere.  He also directed several episodes of Homicide as well as full length motion pictures.  He died in 2002 after battling cancer.

1944: In an interview given today on the eve of his 70thbirthday, Dr. Chaim Weizmann said that “any blueprint for the future of what is left of the Jewish people should include allowing at least 100,000 refugees settle in Palestine annually and that this “must be undertaken by the United Nations as a measure of historic justice.  He said that this is the least that is owed to the Jewish people “whose agony in Hitler’s Europe during this war needs no elaboration.”  When he used the term “agony” Weizmann could have included the loss of his son Michael who died while serving with the RAF.

1944: Government officials announced that “twelve more arrests were made today in Tel Aviv and Haifa during continued police searches for suspects connected with” what they described as underground political terrorist groups.

1944: As World War II entered its last phase, the Germans decided to hide all evidence of the mass murders. On orders from Himmler the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz and Birkenau were blown up.

1945: 21st of Kislev, 5706): Sixty-seven year old Columbia trained civil engineer “and author of standard textbooks on the design of bridges, Myron S. Flak who served as a Major during WW I and who was the consulting engineer on the erection of Temple Emanu-El passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/11/27/88318255.html?pageNumber=23

1945: In a personal letter bearing today’s date Nathan Shilkret wrote to his wife about why he undertook the Genesis Project including the insights that “it was never intended to be a work of musical art” but rather a creation intended “to appeal to all record buyers.”

1945: Jewish underground blows up police headquarters and several electric power stations.

1945: Mandatory government sends troops to search for arms in Jewish settlements in Sharon and Samaria.

1945: Soviet Union proposes submission of the Arab-Jewish problem to Big Five Conference.

1945: Polish Jews announce in Italy that they intend to proceed to Palestine by any means.

1946(3rd of Kislev, 5707): Stephen Theodore Norman, the only grandson of Theodor Herzl, plunged to his death off a Massachusetts Avenue Bridge in Washington D.C. at the age of 28.  During WWII, Norman had served as a Captain in the British Army.  He visited Palestine in late 1945 and 1946.  Severe depression brought on by the Holocaust and the plight of the Jews after World War II ended led to severe depression which led to his final moments.

1946: Birthdate of Roni Milo, future Mayor of Tel Aviv

1946(3rd of Kislev, 5707): Sixty-six year old Dr. Elias Margolis, the Vilna born son of “Rabbi Isaac Margolis and Hinde Bernstein Margolis who in 1885 came to the United States where he received degrees from the University of Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College and Columbia, led several congregations while leading the Rabbinical Assembly of JTS and the Synagogue Council of America and raised five children with his wife Esther Molly Jacobson Margolis passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1946/11/27/91627984.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=25

1946: Jewish refugees in Haifa resist British attempts to ship them Cyprus.

 

1947: Louis Bromfield, co-chairman of American League for Free Palestine, charges that Arabs have obtained surplus U.S. arms.

 

1948: Bulgaria recognized Israel.

1948: Hans Möser: Ex SS-Obersturmführer and commander of the Protective Custody Camp at Mittelbau-Dora who had been condemned to death on 30 December 1947 for his involvement in the executions of camp inmates was executed in Landsberg prison today.

 

1948: Sixteen more Spitfires in Czechoslovakia were awaiting “an opportunity to fly to Israel.”

 

1948: Menachem Begin visited New York Mayor William O’Dwyer

 

1948: Abba Eban tells a meeting of the UN Truce Mission that Israel will not let a large force of Egyptians surrounded by the Israelis in the Negev retreat until the Arab’s accept the Armistice Resolution.

 

1949: Pasha el Mulbi says that the Jerusalem must be held by the Arabs to protect the surrounding Arab sectors.

 

1949: Jordan rejected the plan for an internationalized Jerusalem.

 

1949: Birthdate of Roni Milo, Israeli MK and cabinet minister who served as Mayor of his hometown, Tel Aviv from 1993 to 1998.

1949: Birthdate of Shlomo Artzi an Israeli folk rock singer-songwriter and composer. Born in Moshav Alonei Abba he has sold over 1.5 million albums, making him one of Israel's most successful male singers matching the success of his sister Nava Semel the author of Kova Zekhukhit (Hat of Glass) which was the first published work in Israel that addressed topics of the children of Holocaust survivors

1950: Rabbi Theodore Friedman is scheduled to speak at a Youth Aliyah Dinner-Dance at the Henry Hudson Hotel sponsored by The North Hudson New Jersey chapter of Hadassah

1951: The Tales of Hoffmann “a British Technicolor film adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann,” co-directed by Emeric Pressburger was released today in the United Kingdom.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that in the Knesset Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sharply attacked Mapam in the debate on the Prague trial, accusing it of duplicity and inability to face the truth about the Soviet regime. The Knesset, by an overwhelming majority, adopted a resolution expressing “its sense of shock at the trial now proceeding in Prague, which had struck at the Jewish people... and on the attempts to bring into disrepute the good name of the State of Israel.”

1952: In Bonn, “entrepreneur and tobacco industrialist Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma” and his wife gave birth to Jan Philipp Reemtsma “who hired a researcher” at the start of the 21st century to examine the art collection he inherited from his father to make sure that none of it had been looted by the Nazis from its rightful owners, many of whom would have been Jewish.

1952: “Time Out For Ginger” a comedy starring Melvyn Douglas (Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg) opened on Broadway today at the Lyceum Theatre.

1953(19th of Kislev, 5714): Seventy-nine year old Mary Grossmann Buxbaum, the daughter of Ignaz and Anna Rosenbaum Grossman and the wife of Louis Buxbaum passed away today after which she was buried in Mount Sinai Cemetery in Cuyahoga County, Ohi.

1954: Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, said that through the use of dense settlement and exploitation of natural resources Israel's southern Negev desert could be restored to its ancient prosperity.

1954: Birthdate of Rosalind "Roz" Chast, the Flatbush native who became an award winning cartoonist for The New Yorker.

http://jwa.org/people/chast-roz

1956:Sixteen-year-old Ellery Schempp refused to listen or to participate in the mandatory Bible-reading exercise of his high school in the Abington School District outside of Philadelphia. According to one source, Schempp was disciplined for reading from the Koran during his high school’s mandatory Bible reading time. After being severely disciplined by the district administrators, Ellery and his family initiated a lawsuit that would ultimately make its way to the Supreme Court of the United States. The defendants were the authorities of the Abington School District. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that religious recitations and prayers of any kind were in violation of the Constitution of the United States if practiced in public schools. Schempp was raised as a Unitarian. “The minor rebellion led to a landmark Supreme Court case that (much to the relief of many Jewish students) outlawed school-sponsored prayer.

1958: Birthdate of David Asper, a Canadian businessman and lawyer who has served as the  Executive Vice President of the Canadian media company CanWest Global Communications Corp and as Chairman of the National Post newspaper and a Professor at the Robson Hall Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba.

1959(25th of Cheshvan, 5720): Seventy-eight year old Austrian born Columbia University trained “physician and surgeon” Dr. Joseph F. Saphir, the former “chief of proctology at Manhattan State Hospital” and the husband of Elsa Saphir with whom he had had three daughters passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/11/27/80562443.pdf

1960: In Newark, Delaware Elaine "Leni", a social worker, and William Markell, who taught accounting at the University of Delaware gave birth to Jack Alan Markell, the 73rdGovernor of the state of Delaware.

1960: ITV network transmitted the last episode of “The Strange World of Gurney Slade” starring Anthony Newley who “devised the British comedy series.”

1960: Seventy-eight year old Mississippi Congressman John Rankin “the equal opportunity bigot” and outspoken anti-Semite who called Walter Winchell a kike while speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives and who attacked Albert Einstein passed away today.

1961(18th of Kislev, 5722): Anglo-Jewish Zionist leader Israel Cohen who “from 1909 to the beginning of World War II Cohen directed the English department of the Zionist Central Office in Cologne and later in Berlin” and whose exciting life was chronicled in A Jewish Pilgrimage: The Autobiography of Israel Cohen passed away today.

https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Jewish_Pilgrimage.html?id=-JMaAAAAIAAJ

1963(10th of Kislev, 5724): Sixty-seven year old Dr. Otto Saphir, the Viennese born “director of the Department of Pathology at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center” and husband of Ethel Saphir with whom he had had two children passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/11/27/121702046.pdf

1964(21st of Kislev, 5725): Sixty-nine year old “Dr. Joseph L. Fink, the Springfield, OH born son of “Rabbi Mendel and Tillie Kagen Fiinkelstein and husband of Janice Gutfruend and the rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo, NY passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/27/archives/dr-joseph-fm-rabbi-69-is-dead-spokesman-for-reform-jews-led-buffalo.html

 

1964(21st of Kislev, 5725): Sixty-one year old Herbert Solow the editor of the Menorah Journal who went from being a follower of Trotsky to an editor of Fortune passed away today.

1965(2nd Kislev, 5726): Eighty year old Sam Shapiro, the husband of Esther Shapiro and the father of Gustave and David Shapiro passed away today.

1965: “My Ship Is Comin’ In” a song written by Joey Brooks was released today in the United Kingdom.

1966(13th of Kislev, 5727): Parashat Vayishlach

1966(13th of Kislev, 5727): Seventy-six year old Galician Poland native Dr. Morris Teller, the son of Samuel and Annie Teller who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania after which he was ordained at JTS where he also received advanced degrees before serving as rabbi of the South Side Hebrew Congregation and who was the husband of “the former Nellie Ruby and the father of Sheldon Teller passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/11/28/90238888.pdf

1966: NBC broadcast “Fame Is the Name of the Game” a mystery movie directed by Stuart Rosenberg.

1967(23rd of Cheshvan, 5728): Eighty-three year old movie executive Albert Warner, the Polish born son of Benjamin "Wonsal" or "Wonskolaser," a shoemaker born in Krasnosielc, and Pearl Leah Eichelbaum, who was one of the four Warner brothers who co-founded Warner Brothers along with Jack, Harry and Sam and who married his second wife Bessie Levy after the death of his first wife Bessie Kreiger passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/11/27/94113016.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1968(5th of Kislev, 5729): Eighty-one year old prize winning novelist Arnold Zweig passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/11/27/89348588.html?pageNumber=47

1973: “Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don't You Ever Forget It)” with Ellen Greene in the title role has its first pre-Broadway performance tonight.

1975: An ABC show titled "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell" was cancelled today.

1976(4th of Kislev, 5737): Eighty-four year old Vanderbilt University Medical School graduate, Julius A. Haiman, “an ear, nose and throat specialist” and adjunct professor at Polyclinic Hospital passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1976/11/30/80207343.pdf

1976: The Organizing Committee of the symposium on Jewish culture appealed to a number of international organizations and public figures with a call for support.

1977: “A passage featured in Nelson Algren's 1983 book The Devil's Stocking was broadcast during the Southern Television hoax which generated international publicity when students interrupted the regular broadcast through the Hannington transmitter of the Independent Broadcasting Authority in England for six minutes” today.

1980: Two months are premiering in the United States, “Without Warning” a sci-fi film co-starring Martin Landau was released in France.

1981: Boris Chernobylskii, who had previously been “detained on the street” and kept in the police station for two days “was arrested in Moscow” today after which the Moscow Municipal Court sentenced him to 12 months of imprisonment.

1982: The New York Times reported that the number of Jewish day schools was “on the rise, especially among the Orthodox as they catered to the growing number of Orthodox youths, including the children of Soviet, Israeli and Iranian immigrants.”

1982:Howard Cossell called his last fight after being disgusted by the Larry Holmes-Tex Cobb mismatch.

1986: The New Yorker Magazine published "The Way We Live Now" a short story about AIDS written by Jewish author Susan Sontag.

1986: “Solarbabies,” a sci-fi film co-starring Jamie Gertz was released in the United States today.

1986: U.S. premiere of “The Mosquito Coast” produced by Saul Zaenta and featuring Jason Alexander who would gain fame as “George Constanza” on “Seinfeld.”

1986: The trial of John Demjanjuk opened in the Jerusalem District Court today.

1986: “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” directed by Leonard Nimoy who also co-starred in the film with William Shatner was released today in North America

1987: Five people were injured in the bombing of a military bus stop in Israel.

1988(17th of Kislev, 5749): Seventy-six year old Werner Julius Seligmann, the son of Frantz Seligmann and Erna Seligmann and husband of Irma Seligmann passed away today in Notevideo.

1989: The New York Times included a review of The Jews In America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter by Arthur Hertzberg.

1990(9th of Kislev, 5751): Ninety-three year old Samuel Noah Kramer the Ukraine born husband of the former Mildred Tokarsky and the award winning authority on Sumerian literature and culture passed away today. (As reported by John Noble Wilford)

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/27/obituaries/samuel-noah-kramer-93-dies-was-leading-authority-on-sumer.html

 

1991(19th of Kislev, 5752: Seventy-seven year old advertising man Norman B. Norman, “a founder and longtime chief executive of Norman, Craig and Kummel” the WW II Navy veteran and husband of the former Gail Snyder passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/28/nyregion/norman-b-norman-77-is-dead-former-ad-and-marketing-adviser.html

 

1992(1st of Kislev, 5753): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

 

1992: FOX broadcast the final episode of “The Heights” a short lived “musical drama series” created by Eric Roth.

1992(1st of Kislev, 5753): Ninety-year old Bernard M. Baruch, Jr., the son of the fame financier passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/29/obituaries/bernard-m-baruch-jr-financier-s-son-90.html

 

1993(12th of Kislev, 5754): Eighty-two year old Brazilian born American composer Bernardo Segall, the nephew of painter Lasar Segall passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-01/local/me-62674_1_bernardo-segall

 

1994: CTV broadcast the last episode of “Robo Cop” the television series produced by Jay Firestone, the son of Esther Firestone, the first female cantor in Canada.

 

1995: Showtime broadcast “Red Wind,” the final episode of “Fallen Angels” an anthology series developed by Steve Golin with theme music by Elmer Bernstein.

1996: Publication of The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York by Claudia Roden.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394532589/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0394532589&linkCode=as2&tag=thejewniverse-20&linkId=TAVEZJ3BH54L22AI#reader_B00358VHU6

 

 

1997: “Alien: Resurrection” a sci-fi horror film co-starring Winona Ryder and Ron Perlman was released in the United States today.

 

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest includingJulius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply Districtby Ben Katchor

 

2001(11th of Kislev, 5762): A Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and lightly wounded two Border Policemen at the Erez crossing point in the Gaza Strip.

 

2001: Eric Moonman “appeared at an ‘Executive Luncheon” hosted by the Centre for Counter Studies during which he said he thought the media had been, "highly responsible and supportive of U.S. and international efforts to root out terrorism" and that when it came to fighting terrorism “we can’t afford to abide by the Queensbury rules of war in the face of such a dangerous and unscrupulous threat."

2002: “Ala Sabaar, a commander of the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, an armed wing of the Fatah movement of Yasir Arafat, and Aimad Nasharta, an area leader of the militant group Hamas” were killed tonight when the house they were staying in exploded because according to the Palestinians who offered no evidence it had been attacked by an Apache helicopter or an IAF fighter plane.

 

2003(1st of Kislev, 5764): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

 

2003(1st of Kislev, 5764): Seventy-seven year old composer Myer Kupferman passed away today. (As reported by Allan Kozinn)

http://www.meyerkupferman.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/arts/meyer-kupferman-composer-in-many-forms-is-dead-at-77.html

2004: In “Nazi Defendants Venting” published today, William Grimes provides a lengthy review of The Nuremberg Interviews An American Psychiatrist's Conversations With the Defendants and Witnesses Conducted by Leon Goldensohn. Edited and introduced by Robert Gellately.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/books/nazi-defendants-venting.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

 

2005: Start of Jewish Book Month sponsored by the Jewish Book Council.  According to its website, “The mission of the Jewish Book Council is to promote the reading, writing and publishing of quality English language books of Jewish content in North America. To carry out its mission, the Jewish Book Council sponsors a variety of activities and programs. The most widely known are the National Jewish Book Awards, established in 1948/9, and the Jewish Book Month. Its publications include Jewish Book Annual and Jewish Book World.”

 

2005: Sharon Fichman defeated Pemra Özgen to win the tennis tournament at Ashkelon.

2005(3rd of Kislev, 5707): Children’s author and illustrator Stan Berenstain passed away.  He and his wife Jan are best known for creating the children’s book series, “The Berenstein Bears.”

2006: Juilliard instructor Samuel Zyman praises the talent of Jay “Bluejay” Greenberg during an interview on tonight’s broadcast of CBS News 60 Minutes.

2006: Just in time for Jewish Book Month, The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins by Amdanda Vail.

2006: The Sunday New York Timeslist of “100 Notable Books of the Year” includes the following volumes by Jewish authors or about Jewish topics: Everyman by Philip Roth, Golden Country byJennifer Gilmore, Intuition by Allegra Goodman, A Woman in Jerusalem by A. B. Yehoshua,Courtier and The Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern Worldby Matthew Stewart.Greatest Story Ever Told: The Decline and Fallof Truth From 9/11 to Katrina by Frank Rich,The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn,Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide by Jeffrey Goldberg andSweet and Low: A Family Story, by Rich Cohen.

2006:  In Auckland, New Zealand, The Governor-General of New Zealand, gives a speech at event celebrating one hundred years of the Auckland Chevra Kadisha and Benevolent Society attended by Hon Judith Tizard; President of the Auckland Chevra Kadisha and Benevolent Society, Sonny Beder; President of the Auckland Hebrew Congregation, Rabbi Jack Engel and former President, Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence.

 

2006(5th of Kislev, 5767): Eighty-eight year old Jeanne Lesser who had been married to Louis Lesser for more than 70 years passed away today.

2007: Holocaust denier David Irving and Nick Griffin anti-Semitic leader of the British National party are scheduled to speak at the Free Speech Forum sponsored by the Oxford Union.  Britain’s defense secretary Des Browne, three British lawmakers and Labour Party leader Denis MacShane have all refused to appear before the group because of Irving and Griffin.

2007: In Jerusalem the Uganda Pub hosts an Ethiopian evening – music, films, food, lectures and even Ethiopian beer - followed by DJ and dancing.

2007: Premiere of “Boy A” starring Andrew Garfield as “Eric Wilson / Jack Burridge.

2007(16th of Kislev, 5768): Ninety-four year old comedy writer Mel Tolkin, “the man who made Sid Caser funny” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/arts/27tolkin.html

 

2008: The OU Bicentennial Convention opens in Jerusalem.

2008: Premiere of “The Joy of Singing” a French film directed by Ilan Duran Cohen.

2008: The 92nd Street Y hosts an Israeli Folk Dance Thanksgiving Marathon.

2008: After months of delay, the Supreme Court is due to hear a petition regarding the 20,000 Subbotnik Jews of Russia, many of whom have found it increasingly difficult in recent years to get permission to make Aliyah

2008: Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz notified Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday that he planned to indict him on several criminal charges relating to the Rishon Tours affair.

2008(28th of Cheshvan, 5769): Bentzion Chroman, who survived an earthquake in China earlier this year, was killed when a terrorist invaded the Mumbai Chabad House where he had stopped briefly today for the afternoon minhah prayer. Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, who helped supervise kashrut was also killed in the attack. Other victims of the terrorist attack on the Mumbai Chabad House included Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, his pregnant wife Rivka and Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich.

2008: “Saul Steinberg: Illuminations,” a travelling exhibition, which will displayed original Steinberg works opened in London.

2008: “Milk” a biopic about Harvey Milk, the son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, produced by Bruce Cohen with music by Danny Elfman was released in the United States today.

2009: At the Sixth & I Lunch & Learn Rabbi Ethan Seidel leads a class studying unsettling stories containing elements of relativism, confusion, acknowledgment of chaos, and distrust of authority.

2009: Tikvat Israel Synagogue in Rockville, MD, features an evening of Israeli folk dancing.

2009: Hamshushalayim, a three-weekend-long festival, opens in Jerusalem.

2009: Minister of Culture and Sport Limor Livnat told Likud activists this evening that “I do not envy the prime minister because I know he is in distress. It isn’t easy to face an American President.” The Likud Minister was addressing a meeting of party activists in Be'er Sheva. Livnat was referring to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s press conference earlier where he announced that the government would temporarily freeze construction for Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. The official announcement came after several months of intense American pressure on Netanyahu to halt all Jewish development in Israel’s heartland. Livnat insinuated that the freeze will do nothing to advance the State of Israel’s interests but that the prime minister is being forced into the discriminatory policy by the government of the United States.

2009: This evening, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired five mortar shells toward the western Negev. The shells landed in an open field in the Eshkol region, causing no casualties or damage.

2009: Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks gave his first speech in the House of Lords during which he “apid homage to Britan an said it was a sense of indebtedness to the country that drives Jews to make the vast contribution they make to society.”

2009: Belgian attorney and politician Mischaël Modrikamen, the son of Marcel Modrikamen whose father was “a Jewish immigrant from Poland who had fled anti-Semitism” launched the People's Party (PP,) which, he claimed, was based on the values of justice, responsibility and solidarity.

2010: The New York Times Reviews Nora Ephron’s Last Book

http://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/26/2010/nora-ephron

2010: The National Museum of American Jewish History opens in Philadelphia, PA

2010: In Brussels, opening of Party Like a Jew a fun-filled weekend organized by the European Centre for Jewish Students (ECJS), the largest European organization for young adults in Europe.

2010(19th of Kislev, 5771): “Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism.” 

2010(19th of Kislev, 5711): Yahrtzeit of the Maggid of Mezritch, the successor of the Baal Shem Tov

2010: Alice Herz-Sommer turned 107 today and is the world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor, as well as being the second oldest resident of London, England.

http://www.nickreedent.com/index.htm

2011: Pianist Taiyuan Stepanov and clarinetists Alex & Daniel Gurfinkel are scheduled to perform “Clarient with a French Flavor at the Eden Tamir Music Center in Ein Kerem-Jerusalem.

2011: Penultimate performance of Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall” sponsored by Theatre J (an arm of the DC Jewish Community Center) is scheduled to take place tonight in Washington, DC.

2011: A Kassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel exploded in the Eshkol Regional Council area early today.

2011: The Israel Air Force struck two centers of terrorist activity in the southern and central Gaza Strip tonight in response to rocket fire into southern Israel, according to the IDF Spokesman's office.

2012: David Siegel, the Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles is scheduled to speak at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills.

2012: A scheduled screening of “Killing Kasztner, The Jews that Dealt with the Nazis” at the Upper East Side Chabad will be followed by a discussion led by the film’s director and Dr. Joseph Berger, Holocaust survivor saved by Kasztner.

2012: Ehud Barak, who over a half-century career became Israel’s most decorated soldier and held the nation’s trifecta of top positions — chief of staff of the military, prime minister and, since 2007, defense minister — announced today that he would soon “leave political life,” withdrawing from elections scheduled for Jan. 22.

2012: The French Consulate in Jerusalem recently hosted as a guest of honor a Palestinian terrorist, Salah Hamouri, who was convicted of plotting to kill Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, an Israeli newspaper reported today.

2013: Jewish Book is scheduled to come to an end today.

 

2013: Robert Levinson, “if he is still alive” today “become the longest held hostage in American history.”

 

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “The Reconquest of Jewishness in Post-War America: Will Herberg and Irving Howe

 

2013: Rabbi Jonah Layman is scheduled to lead the Greater Olney Interfaith Thanksgiving Service at Shaare Tefila.

 

2013: Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest living Holocaust survivor who is the subject of “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life” is scheduled to celebrate her 110th birthday

 

2013: Fifth anniversary of the Mumbai Massacre a terrorist attack on  Westerner and Hindus and institutions that they used including the Naiman House, the Chabad Center where Jews, regardless of their affiliation could always find comfort and a meal. The victims included Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, his pregnant wife Rivka, Israelis Bentzion Kruman and Yoheved Orpaz, Brooklyn Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum and Mexican Jewess Norma Rabinovich.

 

2013(23rd of Kislev, 5774): Sixty-six year old Guiora Esrubilsky, “a prominent Argentinian businessman bas in Florida” who “presided over last summer’s Maccabiah Games” passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/guiora-esrubilsky-maccabi-world-union-head-dies/

 

2013(23rd of Kislev): Seventy-four year old legendary Israeli performer Arik Einstein passed away today. (As reported by Elad Benari)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174509#.UpUsIZuA2po

 

2013(23rd of Kislev): Ninety-year old Israel Prize Winner Bracha Kapach passed away one day before the 96thanniversary of the birth of husband Rabbi Yosef Kapach.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/bracha-kapach-israel-prize-winning-charity-organizer-dies-at-90/

 

2013(23rd of Kislev, 5774): Eight-nine year old photographer Saul Leiter passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/arts/saul-leiter-photographer-with-a-palette-for-new-york-dies-at-89.html

http://www.gallery51.com/index.php?navigatieid=9&fotograafid=15

 

2014: In the UK The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide is scheduled to host “The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation?”

 

2014: In Melbourne, “The Israeli Code” and “Shtisel” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.

 

2014: “Interior Minister Gilad Erdan canceled the residency permit of the widow of one of the Har Nof synagogue killers today, effectively deporting her out of Israeli territory and stripping her of any financial or social benefits.” (As reported by Marissa Newman)

 

2014: “Torrential rains continued to sweep across much of Israel rasing the levels of the Sea of Galilee by 3.5 centimeters (1.37 inches) marking the highest one-day rise of the so for the the lake that is one of Israel’s key water sources. (As reported by Spence Ho)

 

2015: ”Lless than two weeks since the bride’s father Rabbi Yaakov Litman, and her 18-year-old brother Netanel were shot dead in a terrorist attack as they drove on Route 60 in the southern West Bank on November 13” Sarah Techiya Litman and Ariel Biegel were married this evening at the elevated plaza in front of Jerusalem’s International Convention Center. (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)

 

2015(14th Kislev, 5776): Sixty-five year old “Amir D. Aczel, a science writer who took readers on a mathematical mystery tour in “Fermat’s Last Theorem,” his account of how a famous 300-year-old problem in number theory was finally solved in the 1990s, and went on to write more than a dozen popular books on intriguing scientific ideas and discoveries” passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/science/amir-aczel-author-of-scientific-cliffhanger-dies-at-65.html

 

2015: The Chaplains of the Oxford University Jewish Society are scheduled to host Thanksgiving Dinner in their home with a traditional Turkey dinner, pumpkin pie “and all of the trimmings.”

 

2015: In London, Professor Roger Luckhurst, Birkbeck, University of London is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Blood Fractions: The Octoroon and Other Fantasies” at the Jewish Museum.

 

2016(25th of Cheshvan, 5777): Parashat Chayei Sara

2016: “Two Palestinians were arrested” this “morning on suspicion of starting a fire” that devastated the settlement of Halamish” but were later released.

2016: Standing amidst the ruins of their restaurant Rama’s Kitchen which had been by raging wildfire, Rama Ben Zvi and Maya Ben Zvi said they would re-build “but that it take time” in part because they were “still coming to terms with the loss.”

2016: “Monsieur Mayonnaise” and “Dark Diamond” are scheduled to be shown in Melbourne as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.

2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Wine Lover’s Daughter: A Memoir by Anne Fadiman and In Deadly Cure by Lawrence Goldstone.

2017: Marc “Trestman won his third Grey Cup with the Argonauts defeated the Stampeders, 27-24.”

2017: Rhe Studio of the Jerusalem Conservatory “Hassadna” is scheduled to host “Hineh ma Tov!” the annual concert of works by Israeli composer Emanuel Vahl.

2017: “The Calcalist business daily reported” today that “US e-commerce behemoth Amazon is preparing to launch retail sales activities in Israel and is in talks to rent 25,000 sq. meters (260,000 sq. ft.) of storage space in central Israel to provide the local market with products.”

2017: The 21st UK International Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Bernard Lewis whose works included Semites and Anti-Semites and  The Muslim Discovery of Europe continues today.

2018: Tobi Kahn, Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses and Rabbi Esther Azar are scheduled to lecture on “Artist’s Beit Midrash: Re-Reading Torah.”

2018: Tenth anniversary of terrorist attack on Hariman House in Mumbai.

2018: Biet Avi Chai is scheduled to host Professor Daniel R. Schwartz of Hebrew University lecturing on “Two Views of the Maccabean Revolt”

2018: In Israel businesses are scheduled to take part in Cyber Monday as can be seen by “Hazorfim’s Cyber Monday Sale” https://hazorfim.com/en/sale.htmland El Al’s Cyber Monday sales https://hazorfim.com/en/sale.html

2019: In Metairie, LA, the Slater Torah Academy is scheduled to host its Thanksgiving Dinner.

2019: As part of the UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to a host a screening “It Must Schwing! The Blue Note Story” at the City Screen Picturehouse at York.

2019: In Palo Alto, CA, the Oshman Family JCC is scheduled to host Rina Z. Neiman as she discusses Born Under Fire, “her debut novel based on the story of her mother, a child prodigy pianist in 1940’s pre-state Israel.”

2020: Virtual Tour with Josh Hartuv is scheduled to host “Sea to Sea Hike” an hour long version of the three day trek from the Mediterranean to Kinneret

2020: ““The Soul Experience” with Rabbi Baruch HaLevi (Rabbi B) and Ariela HaLevi (formerly of Congregation Shirat Hayam), a virtual, spiritual and healing service incorporating Jewish-inspired prayer, meditation, mindfulness practice, chanting, singing, yoga, mystical text study, guided visualization and more” is scheduled to take place today.

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, Temple Judea is scheduled to host a virtual Thanksgiving Minyan with Cantorial Soloist.

2020: Israelis today will see continued rainfall mostly in central and northern Israel, along with some thunderstorms in some areas. Southern Israel that so far this season has not seen a lot of rainfall, will see mostly local showers.

2020: Congregation B’nai Torah is scheduled to present “a festive family Thanksgiving day service”

2020: Thanksgiving

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-thanksgiving

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/is-thanksgiving-kosher

https://www.jewishboston.com/why-jews-love-thanksgiving/

 

 

 

 

This Day, November 27, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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November 27

176: Emperor Marcus Aurelius grant his son Commodus the rank of Imperator and makes him Supreme Commander of the Roman legions. To the world at large Marcus Aurelius was “the philosopher-king” or “philosophical but impractical” ruler, but to the Jews he was just Roman emperor who held them in contempt describing them as “’Stinking and tumultuous!’” to his companions as he traveled through Judea. The dissolute nature of Commodus has become well known to all through the film “Gladiator.” Commodus showed his ineptitude in his failed attempt to defeat the Parthians, Rome’s eastern enemy whose empire reached to the borders of Palestine.  Unable to defeat an armed enemy in the field, Commodus began fresh persecutions of the Jews living there denying them, among other things, the right to use their courts of justice.

602: Maurice, the Emperor of the Byzantine Emperor who in 592 punished “the entire Jewish community of Antioch after a Jew violated one his laws” passed away today

1095: First Crusade proclaimed by the Council of Clermont. By now everybody should be aware of the fact that the Crusades ushered in a period of death and destruction for the Jews of Europe and Eretz Israel.

1096: Following the Battle of Alcoraz in which the Zaragozan forces were defeated, Peter I conquered Huesca.

1198(Kislev, 4959): Rabbeinu Abraham ben David known by the abberviation RABaD (for Rabbeinu Abraham ben David) passed away.  Born in Provence, France in 1125, he was a Provençal rabbi, a great commentator on the Talmud, Sefer Halachot of Rabbi Yitzhak Alfasi and Mishne Torah of Maimonides, and is regarded as a father of Kabbalah and one of the key and important links in the chain of Jewish mystics

1308: Henry VII who “was presented with a scroll of the Law by a delegation of Jews from Rome which had gone to meet him began” began his reign as King of the Romans

1614: In Frankfurt, Vincenz Fettmilch, the ringleader of the Fettmilch Rising during which the Judengasse was attacked looted, was arrested along with 38 of his followers and “charged for their persecution of the Jews.”  (They would eventually be executed.  The authorities really were not upset about his attack on the Jews.  What got him into trouble was when he was perceived as a threat to the Emperor and the ruling order.

1688 (4th of Kislev): Rabbi Elijah Kovo of Salonika, author of Aderet Eliyahu, passed away

1703: In New York City, Etienne de Lancy, the Caen born son of Marguerite and Jacques de Lancy, and his wife Anna de Lancy gave birth to Colonel James de Lancy , the acting Governor of New York.

1710: Birthdate of Robert Lowth, the Bishop of the Church of England who 1754 was awarded a Doctorate in Divinity by Oxford University, for his treatise on Hebrew poetry entitled Praelectiones Academicae de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum (On the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews) which derives from a series of lectures that were published by George Gregory in 1787 as "Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews".

1755: An English merchant named Joseph Salvador bought 10,000 acres near Fort Ninety-Six, in the southern part of the Carolina Colony. In 1773, Joseph Salvador would send his nephew Francis Salvador to South Carolina to develop the land as an indigo plantation.  At the outbreak of the American Revolution the wealthy young aristocrat joined the fight for independence.  He died of wounds in August of 1776 while fighting the Cherokee allies of the British.  The following words were etched on his tombstone: Born an aristocrat he became a democrat, An Englishman he cast his lot with America; True to his ancient faith, he gave his life for new hopes of liberty and human understanding.”

1757: Birthdate of William Blake, English poet, painter and printmaker.Controversy surrounds Blake’s grasp of Jewish mysticism. It seems pretty clear that Blake’s art and writing invoke Kabbalah, but scholars debate how Blake accessed the Jewish mystical concepts he quoted. Some argue that the dozen or so Hebrew inscriptions in Blake’s etchings and watercolors show that Blake was fluent in Hebrew. But close analysis of the works, some of which are on exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum, reveals that Blake had not even mastered the letter alef. Reading Kabbalah in Hebrew without knowing the first letter of the alef-bet would be as implausible as tackling “Finnegans Wake” with barely a grasp of the English alphabet. Arguments that Blake knew Hebrew date back to Frederick Tatham, who cared for Catherine after Blake’s death in 1827. In a letter to bookseller Frances Harvey, Tatham said that Blake’s library included “well thumbed” books in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Italian, as well as works by Swedenborg and Christian mystic Jacob Boehme. “His knowledge was immense, his industry beyond parallel,” Tatham wrote. Modern scholars echo Tatham’s claim. Writing in the journal Modern Philology in 1951, David V. Erdman ascribed “some Hebrew” to Blake, particularly the knowledge that beth-lehem means “house of bread.” “We know that Blake knew a little Hebrew,” Anthony Blunt agreed, writing in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes in 1943, “for he wrote to his brother in 1803 that he was learning the Hebrew alphabet, and his etching of the Laocoön [a copy of the sculpture “Laocoön and His Sons”] bears a few words in Hebrew script.” In his book “The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (The Davies Group, Publishers, 2000), Thomas J. J. Altizer suggests not only that Blake knew Hebrew, but also that he was self-taught.But the work that Blunt cites as proof of Blake’s proficiency in Hebrew, “Laocoön” — a circa 1820 print depicting snakes strangling the famous Trojan priest and his two sons — is one of the best pieces of evidence that Blake did not know Hebrew. Writing “malakh Jehovah,” which he translated as “The Angel of the Divine Presence,” Blake inadvertently rotated the alef 90 degrees on its y-axis. He spelled “Lilit” (Lilith) correctly, but he miswrote “Jeshua” (Jesus) with another rotated letter, this time an ayin (the 16th letter). “Laocoön” does not appear in the Morgan show, but an etching from Blake’s Job series does. In an etching from Blake’s Job series, the artist again wrote “The Angel of the Divine Presence,” but this time he wrote the Hebrew “melekh Jehovah,” which means King Jehovah, rather than malakh (with an alef), the Angel of Jehovah. In “William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job,” S. Foster Damon says that Blake intentionally removed the alef to show that Job was worshipping a false God — mistaking an angel for the king. But could Blake really have known enough Hebrew to distinguish between “melekh” and “malakh,” when he revealed in “Laocoön” that he didn’t even know how to form the letter properly?  “Job’s Evil Dreams,” features a bearded figure with hooves encircled by a snake. The figure hovers above a reclining man and points with its right index finger to the Ten Commandments. Though Blake wrote out only two of the commandments in full, the inscriptions contain more than a dozen mistakes. One line contains a properly and an improperly formed alef, a further inconsistency suggesting that Blake was copying a language he did not understand. “Blake did study Hebrew with his one-time patron, William Hayley, but scholars are not agreed about his proficiency in the language,” explained Leslie Tannenbaum, associate professor of English at Ohio State University and author of “Biblical Tradition in William Blake’s Early Prophecies: The Great Code of Art” (Princeton University Press, 1982). According to Tannenbaum, the late Gerald Bentley, a Blake scholar who taught at Princeton University, implied in a biography that Blake was “fairly fluent” in Hebrew. But Tannenbaum also notes that Sheila A. Spector, whom he describes as “an extremely meticulous scholar and expert on Blake and the Kabbalah,” writes that Blake did not know the biblical language.In Blake’s preface to the chapter “To the Jews,” from the poem “Jerusalem,” Tannenbaum sees references to the kabbalistic concept of Adam Kadmon (the primordial man). Blake learned Kabbalah from Swedenborg’s writings on Boehme, who seems to have been influenced by Balthasar Walther, Tannenbaum adds, and Blake also identified with the Avignon Society, which sought science and reason “in such unlikely places as alchemical lore, cabbalistic numerology, mesmerist séances, Swedenborgian spiritualism, and (perhaps most surprising of all) the Scriptures.” In “Wonders Divine: The Development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Myth” (Bucknell University Press, 2001) Spector, an adjunct associate professor at New York University, agrees that Blake’s kabbalistic sources were Christian rather than Jewish, and English rather than Hebrew. Further, Blake was “unfortunately” influenced by his contemporary Anglo-Israelites, who thought that English derived from Hebrew “and that the language of the Jews was a spurious version in which the rabbis obscured the ‘true Christian’ message to be found in the Bible,” Spector said.“Under the circumstances, the question of whether or not Blake was fluent in Hebrew misses the point,” she added. “He rejected normative Hebrew in favor of the linguistic gymnastics that re-interpreted words to conform with some eccentric – to be charitable – interpretations that coordinated Hebrew and English, as well as Greek, etymologies to proffer a new interpretation of Scripture.” (As reported by Menachem Wecker)

1780: Birthdate of Bavaria native “Leser Lazarus Oschsenhorn,” the husband of Nanette Wexler with whom he had six children, several of whom shortened the family name to Ochs  when the settled variously in Chattanooga, Brooklyn, Louisville and San Francisco.

1785(25th of Kislev, 5546): Channukah

1798 (19th of Kislev, 5559):Rabbi Shneur Zalman founder of Chabad Lubavitch was released from a St Petersburg jail. He had been arrested on charges of high treason for allegedly sending money to the Czar’s enemy, the Sultan of Turkey. In reality he was sending money to Jews living in Eretz Israel which was part of Turkey at the time.  Shneur Zalman is the author of two works Tanya and Likkute Torah which describe the philosophy of the Chabad movement.  Chabad is an acronym for the Hebrew words Chokhmah (wisdom), Binah (understanding) and Da’at (Wisdom).  Lubavitch is the name of the town in which the Descendants of Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech, Shneur Zalman’s “teacher” settled.  In 1798, November 27 corresponded to the 19th day of Kislev.  Ever since then Chabad Lubavitchers mark YUD-TET KISLEV (19th of Kislev) as day of joy and celebration.

1804: Birthdate of Sir Julius Benedict, the German born highly successful English composer and conductor who was knighted in 1871.

1804: While serving in the United States Navy, today, Gershom R. Jacques was promoted from “Surgeon’s Mate” to “Surgeon.”

1814: Judah Elias Piza and Rachel Piza, the parents of David and Elias Piza were married today.

1815: Birthdate of Simon Hock, the Prague born businessman who created a history of the Jews of Bohemia.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Hock_Simon

1819: Leopold Zuns and Eduard Gans founded the Verein fuer Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, (The Society for Culture and Science of Judaism). It delved into Jewish history, culture and literature using scientific methods of criticism and assessment. The Society lasted less than five years. Gans and many others converted to Christianity.

1830: Joseph Mérilhou, the French official who successfully got the Deputies to adopt legislation treating Judaism on equal footing with Christianity when it came to public financial support for synagogues and rabbis completed his term as Minister of Public Education.

1834: Birthdate of Michael Bernays, the Hamburg born lawyer who displayed an expertise in matters pertaining to Shakespeare and Beethoven and who unlike his brother Jakob, converted to Christianity.

1837: Birthdate of Ludwig Loewe, who began as manufacturer of sewing machines and then became major arms maker whose employees included Georg Luger, the inventor of the famous “Luger” pistol.

1839: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Poznanski officiated at the marriage of Jacob Suares and Isabella Nathans.

1844: Five days after she had passed away in Paris, 32 year old Mary (Montefiore) Mocatta, the wife of Benjamin Mocatta, was buried today “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1846: A wagon train owned and commanded by Albert Speyer, a Prussian born Jew, arrived  at San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico, in time for the pre-Christmas fair where he sold his merchandize, “reloaded the wagons with Mexican goods – mainly silver curios and sugar – and returned to Chihuahua” Mexico.

1853: In London, Catherine Barnett and David Jonas gave birth to Elizabeth Jonas, the wife of Edward Joseph.

1853: An editorial entitled “The Arrest of Rabbi Asche” published today questioned the methods used by the authorities when they arrested Rabbi Asche and two other Jews on charges of selling lottery tickets.  The editorial supported the concept of law and order but thought the police could have used better judgment in exercising their authority.

1856; In London, Judah Cohen an Caroline Davis gave birth to Robert I. Cohen, a product of Westminster Jew’s School and husband of Agnes Lord who settled in Galveston, TX where he was a director of the Chamber of Commerce and President of Congregation B’nai Israel.

1856: Proof of the role of Jews played in settling the American Frontier can be found in the letters Thomas Gladstone sent to the London Times excerpts of which were published today.  In describing those traveling up the Missouri River Gladstone reports that his fellow passengers included “Border Ruffians, Abolitionists…Jews” and others who “completely” represent “the various classes of the population in Kansas.”

1858: It was reported today that two New York Rabbis have been arrested on charges of selling lottery tickets based on the charges brought by one of their co-religionists.

1860: In Paris, there are reports of a serious rift between Achille Fould, the Jewish financier who is a close advisor to Emperor Napoleon, and the Empress.

1861: Seventy-seven year old Jeanette Wohl the confidant of Ludwig Borne, the German Jewish writer who like so many of his contemporaries became a Lutheran but was not above characterizing his rival Heine as “a yeshiva student” whom he accused of “the Jewish trait of employing witticisms for their own sake,”

1863: Jacob Miller was wounded at Mine Run, VA, while serving at the 60thRegiment of the Third Cavalry.

1863: At the Wooster-street Synagogue, Thanksgiving Day services were held at 3 o'clock, embracing the usual afternoon prayers, conducted by Rabbi S.M. Isaacs the Prayer for the Government and appropriate hymns, after which an address was delivered by Meyer S. Isaacs, the Rabbi’s son He commenced with a reference to the peculiar significance of the present day of thanksgiving, observed as it was by all Americans, wherever resident, in response to the recommendation of the Executive. It was a grand spectacle, an entire nation united in offering up incense on an altar of a religion all alike profess -- thanksgiving and praise to the Supreme Being. Divesting themselves of social, political and religious distinctions, superior to the division of sentiment engendered by sectional ideas and antagonistic theories, they assembled in their respective places of worship, to pour forth praises to Him enthroned on hish. Actuated by these considerations, his audience had gathered together in their house of God, that they too might join in the grand anthem swelling upward to celestial heights. Israelite and Christian grasped each other's hand in cordial confidence, working together, fighting together the battles of the Union, pouring their blood on the battle-field in friendly rivalry for country's sake. There was no trace of religious intolerance or sectional feeling in the proclamation of the day; we were called upon to observe it as Americans, acknowledging special obligations to Heaven for the providences so graciously displayed in the progress of our struggle for national existence, and not unmindful of His divine favor in the daily blessings unintermittingly showered upon us, whose value we often fail to diiscern until we are deprived of them. He then took his text from Psalm c., verses 4 and 5, discussing it from its various points of view, and earnestly directing attention to the necessity of sincerity in this observance of National Thanksgiving. The stake was too mighty a one to permit even the semblance of insincerity in the history we were making, in our protestations of patriotism. It is understood now, that our love of country is not purely romantic, but that we were in earnest in our expressions of determination to reestablish the national supremacy, to permit no armed assemblage, however formidable, however desperate, to maintain an eternal antagonism to the constituted authorities.  Were we equally sincere in our observance of Thanksgiving, in our expressions of dependence upon God, of our own unworthiness and His eternal goodness and truth? This was to be the lesson of the day. He then illustrated his text by a reference to the peculiar benefits the Israelites of America enjoy in this land of thorough civil and religious liberty. We should enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise, "for here there was no distinction recognized between Jew and Gentile in the guaranty by the Constitution of protection in the enjoyment of the sacred rights of man.  Returning to the broader view of the subject, as Americans, we should signalize the sincerity of this observance by an amendment in those respects where we acknowledge national faults. Although we have demonstrated a stauncher patriotism than we ourselves believed to be inherent in American character, there may be more sacrifices to make, more selfish considerations to combat, more errors of administration to deplore and divest of their apparent danger to the State by a confirmed determination to strengthen the hand of those we have chosen to preside over our national destinies. In conclusion, he spoke of the favorable prospect before us, as contrasted with the gloom, astonishment and despondency at the culmination of the preparation for the war upon our flag. The ship of state, madly tossed upon an unknown sea, exposed to the dangers of the warring elements, her pilots surrendered to the guilt of the hour or sadly inexperienced, was now sailing majestically into a safe harbor, a clear head and a steady hand at the helm; but God be thanked for this great salvation -- no human wisdom or power hath accomplished this.  He closed with a fervent prayer for the continuance of Divine favor to the land, and its speedy restoration to peace and prosperity.

1867(29th of Cheshvan, 5628): Forty-five year old August Abraham Josephson, the Stockholm born son f Salomon Josephson and Beata Levin and H=usband of Augusta Hortensia Jacobsson with whom he had three children passed away today in his home town.

1867: In New York, the former Maria Phillips and David Davis the owner of the Washington Rubber Company gave birth to real estate mogul J. Clarence Davis, vice president of the West End Synagogue, director of the Bronx YMHA and patron of the arts who donated his collection the Museum of the City of New York

1868: The Philadelphia “Press” published an abstract of the Thanksgiving Day Sermon delivered by Rabbi Jastrow at Congregation Rodef Shalom.

1871: “A Tolerant City” published today quotes the Jewish Chronicle as saying that “Ireland is the only country where Jews were never persecuted.”  As proof of Irish tolerance, the Chronicle cites the case of a young Jewess named Miss Samuel, who, when she was on her death bed was the object of prayers of recovery offered both in Jewish synagogues and Christian Chapels.  Her funeral included thirty carriages that were filled with citizens of both faiths.

1871: In Philadelphia, Simon B. Fleisher and Cecelia Hofheimer gave birth to Samuel Stuart Fleisher the Wharton graduate, manufacturer of year and amateur artist whose works were displayed at American Art Society Exhibition in 1903 who also served Director of the Jewish Foster Home and Orphan Asylum and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Chautauqua Society.

1872: Two days after he had passed away, 62 year old Hyam Levy, the husband of the former Frances Naphtali with whom he had had six children was buried today at “West Ham Jewish Cemetery” on Buckingham Road.”

1873: The Charity Committee of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum has asked that an appeal be made during today’s Thanksgiving Day services for contributions of money, clothing and other items that can be used to aid Jews who are economically distressed due to the current depressed economy.

1874:  Birthdate of Zionist leader and Israel’s first President Chaim Weizmann. He first gained fame as the Russian-British chemist who used bacteria for the synthesis of organic chemicals. During WW I, a recent immigrant into Great Britain, he discovered a way to use a bacterium to synthesize acetone during the fermentation of grain. Acetone was important in the manufacture of cordite for explosives. Postwar, he modified the fermentation to produce butyl alcohol, suitable for uses such as lacquers. This was the forerunner of the deliberate use of microorganisms for a wide variety of syntheses. A generation later, penicillin and vitamin B12 were produced in this way.

1876: In New York City “Isidor and Ida (Blun) Straus gave birth to the Harvard educated R.H. Macy and Co vice president Percy Selden, the husband of Edith Abraham who was active in several civic and philanthropic organizations as can be seen by his service as President of the Jewish Agricultural Society and Chairman of the Business Men’s Council of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City.

http://research.frick.org/directoryweb/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=7815

1878: In Sumter, SC, Rabbi E.S. Levy officiated at the wedding of A. De Leon Moses of Burke Country, GA and Eliza Cohen, the daughter daughter of Max Cohen who used to live in Charleston, SC.

1879: Dr. Henry W. Bellows, a prominent Unitarian Minister, delivered the Thanksgiving Day Sermon at Temple Emanu-El, the New York Jewish house of worship led by Rabbi Gustav Gottheil

1880(24th of Kislev, 5641): In the evening kindle the first light of Chanukah.

1880: The New York Times reported today that “the celebration of the Jewish feast of ‘Chanuka’ will be commenced this evening by the Children of Israel throughout the world.” The Times goes on to provide an accurate description of the origins of the holiday and its modern observance including the fact that the events celebrated began “on the 25th day of the month of Kislev.” (This was written 15 years before the Ochs family acquired the paper

1880: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association hosted its “fourth entertainment” of the season tonight at Lyric Hall.

1881> On day after she had passed away, 72 year old Sophia Ford, the wife Amsterdam native Charles Ford and more of Henry and Rose Ford was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1881: At Rostov-on –Don Isaiah and Feodosia Chatzman to their daughter Vera, the future wife of Chaim Wiezmann, who was a leading Zionist in her own right. (As reported by Esther Carmel-Hakim)

1881: A meeting was held this morning at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum to discuss additional measures to be taken to meet the growing influx of Jewish immigrants from Russia which is overwhelming the resources of the United Hebrew Charities.  One solution is to establish “farming colonies” which will provide a livelihood for the impoverished new arrivals and avoid population congestion in a few east coast cities.

1882: A review of Natural Religion by Sir John Robert Seeley, the author of Ecce Homo, cites the author’s contention that “the Hebrew Scriptures express in poetic form and in language suited another age the spirit of modern science.  Notably the Book of Job contrasts the conventional and, as it were, orthodox view of the universe with the view which those obtain who are prepared to face it awfulness directly.” (Editor’s note – this comes at a time when there was a clash between science and religion so it is intriguing that an English author would find a harmony between the two in the Jewish section of his Bible.)

1882(16th of Kislev, 5643): Sixty-two year old Moses Soave, Italian “Hebraist” who “supported himself as tutor for Venetian Jewish families” while writing biographies of several Italian Jews including Sara Copia Sullam, Amatus Lusitanus, Abraham de Balmes, Shabbethai Donnolo and Leon de Modena passed awat today.

1883: “Clothing merchant” Simon Mandel, a resident of Merrill, Wisconsin and Carrie Mandel gave birth to Milton Simon Mandel who settled in New York where he registered for the Draft during WW I, married his wife Helen and became wholesale fur merchant as a partner in Mandel and Weinblatt located on West 27thStreet.

1883: “Hen” Rice, who had been a Deputy Sherriff is New York is being held on charges that he won $2,700 from Robert Solomon, an Anglo-Jewish diamond dealer, by cheating at card games they played while crossing from England to the United States aboard the SS Servia.

1883: “Russian-Hebrew Colony Broken Up” published today provided a brief history of an agricultural colony that had been established for Jewish immigrants from Russia in Middlesex County, Va.  Despite the contribution of several thousands of dollars from the Jewish community in Baltimore, MD, the experiment failed.  One family has asked to be sent back to Russia while the remaining men have been provide with jobs and several of the women are being taught to use sewing machines.  The Torah used by the colonists will be returned to the Hebrew Hospital Association which had lent it the newcomers.

1883: It was reported today that Herr Haumann one of the lawyers who represented the Jews unfairly charged with the ritual murder of Christian girl in Hungary, fought a duel with Herr Vay, the Police Commissioner.  The sword fight, during which Vay was “severely wounded in the chest,” resulted from the attorney’s accusation that the Police Commissioner had tortured the Jewish prisoners.

1885: “Judaism of the Future” published today provided a summary of Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler’s view of the principles adopted by Reform rabbis at their meeting in Pittsburgh.  He described it as a “Jewish Declaration of Independence” which no longer looks to the memories of ancient Israel, rejects tradition “but recognizes in Christianity and Islamism valuable helpers and co-workers in the direction of the fruition of the kingdom of virtue and truth.”  (Editor’s note – one cannot help but wonder what Rabbi Kohler would have to say about the Reform movement in the 21st century)

1887: In Bialystok, Leah Zuro and Louis Zuro “a Russian immigrant who became a producer of opera” gave birth to Josiah Zuro the American “music director for the Pathe Motion Picture Studio” who conducted numerous symphony orchestras and “organized his own opera company known as the Zuro Opera Company.”

http://www.vipfaq.com/Josiah%20Zuro.html

1887: In Great Britain, “Isaac Asher Isaacs and Hannah Zylberlast Isaacs” gave birth to Estelle Stella Isaacs who became Estelle Stella Jacobs when she married “Alexander Susman Susman Jacobs.”

1888: Today marks the second day of the fair sponsored by the Hebrew Orphan Asylum which is an annual fundraiser for this Jewish organization.

1888: The will of Moss Abadee, the husband of Kate Abadee was probated today.

1888: It was reported today that a new congregation “Zichron Osher” has been established on the west side of New York. Joseph Arthur Levy was the founder of the synagogue whose services will include congregational singing and the use of English for some of the prayers.  Rabbi H. Veld will lead the new congregation assisted by Rabbi J.I. De Young.

1889: It was reported today the United Hebrew Charities will be hosting a Thanksgiving Dinner this week

1890: At 3 p.m. the boys of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum held their annual parade” today, marching through the streets of Harlem.

1890: Birthdate of New York City native and Boston University trained attorney Samuel Barnett who was a county court judge in Massachusetts and an active Zionist

1891: In New York, Sarah Bernhardt appeared in the opening performance of “Pauline Blanchard” at the Standard Theatre.

1892: The Maccabeans, An Aggressive Club” published today described the formation of this club by London’s Jews in the wake of the Russian persecution of their co-religionists. “The meetings of the Maccabeans afford something quite novel to English Judaism – an arena in which all the social, ethical and theological questions which are bubbling so vehemently in the Jewish mind can be thrashed out freely and without prejudice.”

1892: The members of Shaary Zedek voted not to remove the bodies from the congregation’s old cemetery on 88th Street between Park and Madison and reinter them in the new Bay Side Cemetery on Long Island

1892:  It was reported today that Herman Ahlwardt, who is in jail because he was convicted of libeling a Jewish gun-making firm and is such “a shameless rogue” that he has been publicly disowned by “the anti-Semitic Party won a seat in the Reichstag by-election running three thousand votes ahead of his nearest opponent with campaign cry of “Down with the Jews.!”

1893: Seventy-eight year old Sebastian Brunner, the Austrian Catholic writer who was part of a group 19th authors whose “anti-Jewish propaganda had no equal…either for quantity or virulence and who was part of the infamous libel charges brought against Ignaz Kuranda and Heinrich Graetz passed away today.

1894: In Paris, the Grand Rabbi preached a lengthy sermon at a well-attended service during which he “lauded Alexander III’s peace and exhorted all to pray for his soul as well as for his successor Czar Nicholas, his wife and all their relatives.”

1894: The bequests of the late Adolph Bernheimer published today included “$10,000 in 3 per cent bonds” to the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum and Mount Sinai Hospital.

1895: In St. Louis, Caroline and Joseph Lazarus Kranson gave birth to Julius Kranson

1895: In a change of policy it was reported today that “a recent Ministerial order in Russia, Jews living in the interior who have been members of a first-class guild for five years are permitted to retain a permanent domicile in the place of their present habitation and this privilege will extend to their children.”

1895 Alfred Nobel established Nobel Prize.At least 167 Jews and persons of half-Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 22% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2004, and constituting 37% of all US recipients during the same period.  In the scientific research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Medicine, and Physics, the corresponding world and U.S. percentages are 26% and 39%, respectively.  (Jews currently make up approximately 0.25% of the world's population and 2% of the US population.)
 

·         Chemistry (28 prize winners, 19% of world total, 28% of US total)

·         Economics (21 prize winners, 38% of world total, 53% of US total)

·         Literature (12 prize winners, 12% of world total, 27% of US total)

·         Physiology or Medicine (52 prize winners, 29% of world total, 42% of US total)

·         Peace (9 prize winners, 10% of world total, 11% of US total)

·         Physics (45 prize winners, 26% of world total, 38% of US total)

1896: Frank Rorschach who served aboard the Puritan during the Spanish American War was appointed from Kansas today.

1896: Birthdate of Alexader Ubushone, the native of “the Ukrainian shtetl of Talne, who gained fame as “leader Charles S. Zimmerman.” (As reported by Joseph B. Treaster)

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/05/obituaries/charles-s-zimmerman-dies-at-86-longtime-garment-union-leader.html

1896(22nd of Kislev, 5657): Rav Israel Jaffe passed away today

1897: The Young Folks’ League of the Hebrew Infant Asylum will host a dance tonight at Terrace Garden.

1897: Following an anonymous tip, a Commissaire of Police “made of thorough search” at 3 Rue Yvon-Villareau in Paris where he was told to look for “interesting documents concerning the Dreyfus case. The apartments were occupied by Lt. Col. Picquart and what he found was not revealed to the public.

1897: Authorities searched for Madame de Boulancy, the cousin and former mistress of Ferdinand Esterhazy.

1898: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi B.A. Elzas officiated at the marriage of Louis Flanders and Jeannette Wetherhorn.

1898: In Chicago, $10,230 was raised during the auction of the boxes for the charity ball being held by the Young Men’s Hebrew Charity Association.

1898: Birthdate of Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, the native of Odessa who became an American economist and Soviet spy.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9A07E7DC1E3FEE32A25756C1A9669D946591D6CF

1898: “The Week At The Theatres” published today provided a detailed review “The Merchant of Venice” at Daly’s Theatre  starring  Sidney Herbert as Shylock and Ada Rehan as Portia which is described as being filled with “a few keen disappointments.”

1899(25th of Kislev, 5660): First day of Chanukah

1899: “Dr. Silverman On The Jew” published today provided the views of Rabbi Joseph Silverman on the survival of his co-religionist over the many centuries of mistreatment only to emerge triumphant in the 19th century where he “always feels himself a citizen of the in which he lives” but where “his religion is cosmopolitan.”

1900: Four days after he had passed away, “Nahum Salaman,” the husband of the former Amelia Bertram with whom he had had six children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Jewish Cemetery.”

1901: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi B.A. Elzas officiated at the marriage of William Rosenbaum and Rosalie Levy.

1901: It was reported today that “during the past few days the building of the Hebrew Sheltering and Guardian Society of which Samuel D. Levy is President has been increased by $6,700 bringing” the total raised to about $56,000 which is one third of the amount needed to build a new facility since “the present build is inadequate to the meet the demands of the more than 300 children and to house a much need library.

1902: Today, twenty-six year old Harvard educated R.H. Macy and Co vice president Percy Selden, the New York City born son Isidor and Ida (Blum) Straus, who was active in several civic and philanthropic organizations as can be seen by his service as President of the Jewish Agricultural Society and Chairman of the Business Men’s Council of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City married Edith Abraham.

1903: The trial of the rioters who attacked the Jews at Kishineff continued today.

1903: In a speech tonight, Lord Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, “expressed in pointed language the universal British apprehension of Russian aggression, especially in relation to India.”

1904: It was reported today that “the Jews of Kishineff and other parts of Bessarabia tendered a reception in the synagogue” at Kishineff “to Prince Ursoff and gave him a Bible as left to “assume the Governorship of Tver.”

1905: David Kosse, the President of the Temporary Odessa Societies Organization and Joseph Sanders were the marshals for today’s parade on the Lower East Side held in honor of the victims of the Odessa massacres which led by three men carrying flags – the American flag, the flag of Zion and a black flag edged in white.

1905: Samuel Simon wrote today, “I note with profound regret the fact that one of my co-religionists advances the theory that it would be wise to petition the Pope with a view toward his intervention with Russia in” behalf of the Jews “and with the idea of bringing to a cessation the terrible atrocities that have befallen our brethren that country” because he maintains “that it has already be demonstrated that our salvation lies in our own hands.”

1905: Simon Rasch presided over a mass meeting held by the First Odessa Benevolent Association at the Great Central Palace attended by over 2,000 people who raised “several hundreds of dollars” to fund to aid those suffering in Russia.

1905: At an executive meeting of the national committee collecting funds for the Russian Jews held in Jacob Schiff’s office it was “decided to use its utmost endeavors to inspire the country with the idea that there must be no let-up in contributions” since conditions are far worse now than they were when it was decided to raise $1,000,000.

1905: “Rabbi Adolph S. H. Radin of the People’s Synagogue, Congressman Henry M. Goldfogle and actor Jacob P. Adler” are scheduled to address a mass meeting on Clinton Street.

1905: A mass meeting is scheduled to be held tonight “in the open square made by the judge of Sheriff, Grand and East Broadway, in the vicinity of the Young Men’s Benevolent Association” to protest against the treatment of the Jews of Russia.

1905: As conditions of the Jews in Russia continued to worsen, it was reported that today that the United States Government is being urged “to enact a more liberal immigration law which would allow many of the Jewish people who are barred from entering this country at the present time to come to America where they could be protected by the Jewish people.”

1905: As of today it was reported that $878,511 has been raised by the national committee collecting funds to aid the suffering Jews of Russia.

1905: “According to a private telegram from an eminently trustworthy source” the violence in Sevastopol continues forcing the inhabitants, “especially the Jews” to flee the city.

1905: “Consular advices by cable received” in Washington report that fifteen Jews were killed at Rostoff during the recent riots in Russia.

1906: It was reported today, that the Educational Alliance, which “has demonstrated great efficieny in looing after the welfare of the Russian Jewish immigrants” is in need of additional funds and contributions can be send to Isidor Straus, at 34th Street and Broadway.

1907: Birthdate of Syracuse native Phoebe Brand, the daughter of the “chief mechanical engineer for Remington typewriters, the actress and acting teacher who was the wife of actor Morris Carnovsky and the mother of Stephen Carnovsky.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/theater/phoebe-brand-96-actress-and-group-theater-co-founder.html

1907: In Boston, Louis and Muriel Fisher gave birth to Golda Walters the wife of Charles H. Walters and Boston University lawyer who while serving as a “Massachusetts judge” lost out on a chance for a federal judgeship in 1941 when President Roosevelt decided to fill the two vacancies with two men and who was described as the “prettiest judge” in the January 31, 1939 of Look magazine.

1907: In Hesse, Germany, Isaac and Sophie Plaut gave birth to Alfred Plaut, the husband of Fanny K. Kasper.

1907: Sixty-four year old Cyril Flower, 1st Baron Battersea, the husband of Constance, the daughter of Sir Anthony de Rothschild passed away today.

1909(14th of Kislev, 5670): Parashat Vayishlach

1909(14th of Kislev, 5670): Noachm Schapiro passed away today.

1909: Birthdate of Alfred Lionel Piser, the native of Chicago and graduate of the University of Illinois who served in WW II and became a successful Ophthalmologist.

1910: “The Work of the Tax Department” published today described a lecture given on the subject of “Taxation” by Commissioner Lawson L. Purdy, before the Real Estate Class of the Young Men's Hebrew Association, Lexington Avenue and Ninety-second Street.

1910: “Rabbi Denounces Union Services” published today, described Dr. Samuel Schulman’s “attacks on the union services of worship instituted by Rabbi Stephen Wise of the Free Synagogue, Reverend Frank Oliver hall of the Universalist Church and Reverend Dr. John Hayes Holmes which appeared in the current issues of The American Hebrew in which the Rabbi of Temple Beth-El  “denounces the movement as undesirable from the standpoint of Jew and Christian alike, referring to it as a ‘sensation move’ and a ‘water away of Judaism.’”

1911: Birthdate of Newark, NJ native Jack Chernck, the Rutgers and U. of Chicago trained physicist who wrote The Nuclear Reactor Comes of Age.

https://www.amazon.com/nuclear-reactor-comes-age/dp/B000ORALVW

1912: In Chicago, Mrs. Hamburger is scheduled to give German readings after which Mrs. G.B. Levi will lead the singing of German songs at this afternoon’s meeting of The Willing Workers.

1912: A troupe of Yiddish language actors including Jacob P. Adler will begin performing this evening at the Haymarket Theatre.

1912: Professor Percy Homes Boynton of the University of Chicago is scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Chicago Hebrew Institute on “The Trend of American Fiction.”

1912:  In St. Louis, MO, Samuel Margulois, “a hand-to-mouth salesman and his wife Celia” gave birth to David Lee Margulois, the Washington University graduate and lawyer who gained fame as David Merrick, the theatrical producer best known for his production of “Hello Dolly.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/theater/david-merrick-88-showman-who-ruled-broadway-dies.html

1912: In Pueblo, CO, Romanian Jewish immigrants Samuel Cohen and Dora Inger who had been living in Denver gave birth to Rose Cohen who gained fame as actress Connie Sawyer.

https://www.jta.org/2018/01/25/news-opinion/united-states/connie-sawyer-oldest-working-actress-in-hollywood-dies-at-105

1912: Leopold Godowsky’s piano recital at Carnegie Hall today included a half dozen of Listz’s most difficult etudes.

1913: Anglo-Jewish featherweight/bantam weight Matt Wells defeated Owen Moran in Sydney, Australia

1914: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committeewas established by combining several separate organizations. Its original name was the Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers and was chaired by Felix M. Warburg. It campaigned and distributed funds wherever Jews were in need, especially in Eastern Europe. It is popularly known as the "Joint" or "JDC." During the First World War they spent almost 15,000,000 on relief efforts.

1914(9th of Kislev, 5675): Lt Frank Alexander de Pass of 34 Poona Horse, part of the Indian Expeditionary Force which arrived in France soon after the war began” and who first Jew to be awarded the Victoria Cross (posthumously) was killed today.

1914: In Brooklyn, Rabbi Alexander Lyons preached a sermon entitled “Prejudice in American Life” at Friday night services “in which he referred to the prejudice again Leo M. Frank that existed in Atlanta during the trial of Frank which resulted in a verdict convicting him of the murder of Mary Phagan.

1914: If the Supreme Court of the United States denies the application of Leo Frank for a writ of error, Georgia Governor John M Slaton told reporters at the Waldorf today that he will review all of the evidence and if Frank “is not guilty then he ought to be saved from the (death) penalty and shall not a victim of injustice because he is a Jew.”  As to his feelings towards Jews, the governor pointed out that Mr. Philips, his law partner for nineteen years is a Jew and that Jews have been an integral part of Georgia since the days of the Crown when the Minis family settled in the colony.

1914: “Following the second reversal at the hands of a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States” Leo Franks has issued a public statement “calling attention to several phases” of his case including the fact that the members of their jury feared for their lives because of “the dangerous…crowd which surrounded the jail” and that the “Supreme Court has never reviewed the question of his guilt or innocence” but has only responded to questions of procedural technicalities related to his appeal.

1915: The American Embassy in Berlin is working with the German government to get permission for Isadore Hershfield to go to Poland where, among other things he will try to make contact with Jews whose families in America would like to send them financial assistance.

1915: On Shabbat, at Temple Israel on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 120thStreet, Rabbi M.H. Harris delivered a sermon on “Thanksgiving in Tribulation” in which he made “an appeal to the Jews of America to give aid to their starving brethren in Galicia and Poland.”

1916: It was reported today that a Russian officer had made speech to the peasants the District of Lutsk in which “he said the Jews were enemies of the State and traitors and they must be expelled” and told them that they must come forward and testify as to how the Jews had welcomed and supported the Austrians.

1916: “Plain clothes men who arrest women on the streets were defended” tonight “by Justice Henry Herbert of Special Sessions at the annual meeting of the Sisterhood of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue – an organization which spends a considerable amount of time and money working among the “Jewish girls whom into the magistrate’s courts” with the intent of leading them away from criminal activity.

1916: It was pointed out at today’s session of the Reichstag that “the Jewish population of former Russian Poland amounts to 14 percent” of the work force and that this “large number of Jews in Poland might be profitably employed by” German manufacturers “to relieve the dearth of labor.”

1917: As revolution spreads across Ukraine and nationalist forces tried to take control of what had once been part of the Russian empire, it was reported today that that Jews in Skivira have been attacked in a pogrom.

1917: Turkish forces began four days of attacks against Allenby’s troops in futile attempt to keep the British forces from Jerusalem.

1917: At Petrograd, “a delegation of Jews appeared at the British Embassy today to express its gratitude for the action of the Entente Allies with reference to Palestine.”

1917: Birthdate of Yhyah Qafih, the native of Sana’a Yemin who was the son of Rabbi David Qafiḥ and the grandson of Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ, making him the third generation of leaders of the Yemenite Jewish community, first in Yemen and then in Israel.

1918: Birthdate of New Yorker Elliott Pershing Stitzel who gained fame as actor Stephen Elliott.

1918: Felix M. Warburg, the Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Suffers issued a statement tonight explaining why it was necessary “to raise $5,000,000 for Jewish relief” that began “The Jewish civilian populations throughout the war zones have been deprived of the opportunity to be self-supporting” and “the end of the war has not altered their state but has actually accentuated their misery” as can be seen by the fact that “in many countries the Jews will not receive the bread distributed by the government” unless it is done by the Jews themselves.

1918: Birthdate of Victor Elmaleh, the native of Mogador, who imported the first Volkswagens to the United States and “developed $7 billion worth of real estate.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/nyregion/victor-elmaleh-builder-and-entrepreneur-dies-at-95.html?rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article&_r=0

1919: Following the end of WW I, Bulgaria signed The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine which included guarantees of the rights of that country’s Jewish population.

1922: It was reported today that “a committee on local arrangements, composed of the presidents of important synagogues in New York and Brooklyn under the chairmanship of Daniel P. Hays” is already making preparations for the meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations which will be held on January 20, 1923.

1922: It was reported today that last week during the dedication of a memorial tabled to the men of Harlem who died in the World War, President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia and Congressman Isaac Siegel spoke out against the Ku Klux Klan – an organization which a large section of the population of New York led by the Catholics and Jews has declared “open warfare against.”

1922: It was reported today that President Harding has not yet appointed Congressman Isaac Siegel who did not seek re-election to the House of Representatives “to one of the vacant judgeships in the local United States District Court.”

1924: In the New York City the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was held.  Macey’s was not founded by Jews, but it was two Jews, Isidor and Nathan Straus, who took control of the store in 1896 who turned into what was then “biggest department store in the world.”

1925:  Birthdate of Ernest Wiseman, the English comedian who changed his name to Ernie Wise to further his career as an actor and singer in English music halls.  He was best known as one half of the comedy duo Morecambe and Wise, which became an institution on British television, especially for their Christmas specials.  He passed away in 1999.  Just as in American, English entertainers changed their names to get ahead and like Irving Berlin helped add luster to the Christian’s Christmas.

1925: In Paris Paulette (née Grobermann) and Armand Lanzmann gave birth to Claude Lanzemann, the French filmmaker who joined the Resistance at the age of 18 and fought the Nazis and later became “chief editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes, which was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.” Lanzmann's most renowned work is the nine-and-a-half hour documentary film Shoah (1985), which is an oral history of the Holocaust, and is broadly considered to be the foremost film on the subject.”

1925(10th of Kislev, 5686): Forty three year old Horace Andrew Saks, the son of Andrew and Jennie Sakes and the husband of Dorothy Isabel Sakes passed away today, who along with Bernard Gimbel had created Saks Fifth Avenue in 1924.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1925/11/28/98842905.pdf

1926: “The Miraculous Mandarin” “a one act pantomime ballet…based on the story by Melchior Lengyel” premiered today in Cologne, Germany where “it caused a scandal and was subsequently banned on moral grounds,”

1926: In the Bronx, Abraham Handleman, the Ukrainian born son of Joseph Yussel Handelman and Dobrish (Dora) Handelman, and his wife Anna (Boorstein) Handelman  gave birth to Arnold Handleman the husband of the former Greta Goldman with whom he had two chidren.

1928: “Blame for the recent riots at the wailing wall in Jerusalem was placed squarely on the Jewish community in a White paper issued today by the Colonial Office, containing a memorandum on the subject by L.C.M.S. Amery, Secretary of State for the Colonies” that “stated that officials intervened at the wailing wall only after the Jewish worshippers had violated the existing agreement by bringing chairs and benches or screens to the street pavement.”

1932: Today, three Jews were arrested in Lwow following the fatal stabbing of Jat Grotowski who was reported one of “sever youths” who having seen “a group of Jews in a café tried to eject them.”

1933: In Brooklyn, restaurant workers “Al Saperstein and Doris Bergman” gave birth to Burton Saperstein who gained fame as bibliophile Burt Britton. (As reported by James Barron)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/obituaries/burt-britton-a-book-lover-if-ever-there-was-one-dies-at-84.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1933: Birthdate of William G. Dever, the native of Louisville, KY who became “an archaeologist specializing  in the history of Israel and the Near East in Biblical times” whose works included What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?

http://www.centuries.co.uk/dever-review.pdf

1933: As Hitler moves to consolidate his control over German society Kraft durch Freude (KdF; Strength through Joy) is established to tie leisure activities of the German Volk (people) to the aims of the Nazi Party.

1933: A transfer company was established today in Tel Aviv to facilitate the immigration of German Jews along with whatever property they are able to bring with them. (Jewish Virtual Library)

1935(1st of Kislev, 5696): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1935(1st of Kislev, 5696): Sixty-seven year old Louisville, KY native Benjamin Edward Bensinger, the husband of Rose Frank Bensinger,  father of Yale graduate Benjamin Edward Bensinger, Jr. and Benjamin Edward Bensinger III passed away today in Chicago.

1936: Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels declares that film criticism is henceforth banned, freeing the Nazi-controlled German film industry to pursue its own agenda, which includes blatantly anti-Semitic films. During the same period in the United States, Hollywood is self-censored in that it fears dealing with Jewish issues because of the high level of anti-Semitism existing at the time in the United States.

1936: “Born to Dance,” a musical with a script co-authored by Sid Silvers who also played the role of “Gunny” Sacks was released in the United States today.

1936:  In a letter-to-the editor published today, Hendrik Willem Van Loon expressed his appreciation to the New York Times for printing a previous letter in which he “suggested that we do a little cosmic pinch-hitting and erect a statue of Felix Mendelssohn and keep it here until our German friends shall be able to once more to listen to his charming music without getting Aryan jitters. (This was a reference to the Nazi ban on the music of Mendelssohn whose Jewish origins did not spare him from a posthumous form of anti-Semitism)

1937: Opening performance of "Pins & Needles" a pro-labor musical revue produced by ILGWU

1938: Speaking before the National Council of Teachers of English in St. Louis, “Professor Clyde R. Miller of New York, the director of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis said today that America may expect increasing Nazi propaganda to justify the persecution of Jews, Catholics and Protestants in Germany” and that “the object of the Nazi propaganda was to break Americans up into dissenting groups – getting Christians hating Jews, Catholics hating Protestants, natives hating foreign born.”

1938: “Erich Rix, the president of the San Francisco unit of the German American League for Culture announced today that the group had adopted a declaration condemning the Hitler government for a regular pogrom against the Jews.”

1939: In New York, at the Hotel Astor, Dr. Kurt Blumenfeld, president of the German-Jewish Settlers Association in Palestine, Dr. Georg Landauer, head of the Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews in Palestine, Louis Lipsky, chairman of the Palestine Foundation Fund, Charles Ress and Dr. Ludwig Lewisohn addressed tonight’s meeting of the Palestine Foundation, the fiscal arm of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

1939: It was reported today that the rise in the price of stocks in Berlin is due “partly to the continued sales of stocks formerly owned by Jews for the Reich’s accounts” which “were taken in payment from former holders at prices considerably below their present values” and partly in anticipation of the next payment of 200,000,000 marks which the Jews must make in December.

1939: As of today, the new national officers of Junior Hadassah were President Nell Ziff, Vice Presidents Goldie Brenner of Newport News, VA; Sylvia Brody of Akron, Ohio; Claire Gottfried Jacobson of New York; Esther Brody, Brooklyn, NY; Secretary Ernestine Kirschner of New York and Treasurer Dorothy Hines of New York.

1939: George Z Medalie was reported to have “announced that during the upcoming week twenty-seven luncheons, dinners and group meetings” would be held as “part of the program to enlist support for” the 1939 Appeal of the New York and Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities.

1939(15th of Kislev, 5700): Seventy-six year old Alexander Harkavy, Jewish lexicographer, author and publisher of newspapers in Montreal and Baltimore passed away today at the Broadway Central Hotel in New York City.

1939:  It was reported today “that the German plan for the deportation of all Jews within the confines of the Greater Reich foresees the transportation of 150,000 Jews from the Protectorate, 60,000 from Austria, 30,000 from the conquered provinces of Posen and Western Prussia and approximately 200,000 from the old Reich territory to Eastern Poland.”

1941: The Jews were deported from Wuerzburg, Germany.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/november/09.asp

1941: Friedrich Jeckeln met with the leaders of Protective Police, “a branch of the German Order Police” who would be participating in the upcoming massacre of the Jews in Riga.

1941: The first of 19 trains leaves Germany to resettle thousands of Jews in Riga and Kovno. Yet, 1000 newly resettled German Jews were taken and killed at the same time.

1941: “The Palestine Symphony Orchestra has just announced the results of a competition open to composers in Palestine and the neighboring countries.”  Because of the volume and quality of the entries, four “winners” instead of just one were announced including, a Divertimento for Orchestra by Joseph Huttel, director of European Music at the Egyptian State Broadcasting, Cairo, Overture to a cantata by A. Daus of Tel Aviv, a Symphony of Variations for Soloists and Orchestra by Peter Gradenwitz of Tel Aviv and Fatum, a symphonic poem by J. Wohl of Haifa.

1942: From this date through August 1943 more than 110,000 Poles are expelled from their homes in the fertile Zamosc province so that the area can be resettled by ethnic Germans, SS troops, and Ukrainians. More than 300 villages are affected. Thousands of Polish children are deported from the area to Belzec and other death camps.

1942: Birthdate of poet Marilyn Hacker

1942: On Friday night, Rabbi Harold Saperstein delivered a sermon entitled “What Have We Jews to Be Thankful For?” on the day following Thanksgiving when the condition of American Jewry stood in stark contrast to the news “the papers have given the general public information about what is happening to the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe.”

1943: U.S. premiere of “Old Acquaintance” a comedy-drama directed by Vincent Sherman with music by Franz Waxman.

1943(29th of Cheshvan, 5704): Parashat Toldot

1943(29th of Cheshvan, 5704): Fifty-four year old Ukrainian born revolutionary Jacob Golos, a founding member of the CPUSA and spy for the Soviet Union suffered a fatal heart attack today.

http://documentstalk.com/wp/golos-jacob/

1944: In the weekly internal report of the War Refugee Board, it reported that the United States embassy had received from the Spanish Foreign Office: "Official confirmation that appropriate instructions have been sent to the Spanish Legation in Bern to seek the collaboration of the Swiss government in the efforts of the Spanish Embassy in Berlin to obtain the release and transfer to Swiss territory of the group of 155 Sephardic Jews at Camp Bergen Belson."

1944: "The Trial and Punishment of European War Criminals," a report by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Secretary of State Cordell Hull, is submitted to President Franklin Roosevelt. 

1944(11th of Kislev, 5705): Leonid Isaakovich Mandelshtam, Russian physicist, passed away.

1944(11th of Kislev, 5705): Albert Isaac Myers, “the proprietor of Myers & Co.” a bookstore specializing in “rare books, fine prints and choice early maps” who was described by Harold Laski as being “one of the most learned and helpful of booksellers” and whose activities in the Jewish community included serving on the Board of Management of the Dalston Synagogue and the committees for the Jewish Free Reading Room and the Home for Jewish Incurables.

1945: The American League for a Free Palestine, chaired by former Iowa Senator Guy Gillette, sent a telegram to President Harry Truman protesting recent beatings of Jewish displaced persons housed at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British military police.  According to the League, an unnamed German had told the British that the Jews planned to protest Ernest Bevin’s recent hostile comments about Palestine. British forces arrested the leader of the Jewish “prisoners’ and reportedly beat several of the women.

1945: In London, former U.S. Senator Guy Gillette, head of the American League for a Free Palestine, held a press conference after meeting with Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin in which he declared “that the United States was ‘thoroughly worked up’ over Palestine” and regarded the situational there as a testing ground for all the principles of Atlantic Charter.

1945: The American League for a Free Palestine submitted a memorandum to the British government calling for action by the Big Five Powers to deal with any violence that the British claim will occur if 100,000 Jews are allowed to immigrate to Palestine.

1946(4th of Kislev, 5707): Seventy –two year old Rabbi Solly Baron, who escaped to Germany in 1939 and arrived in Halifax in 1945 passed away today in St. Louis.

1947: Thanksgiving in the United States

1947: On Thanksgiving, “the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society fed turkey dinners to fifty children and to 200 newly arrived immigrants” to whom “the significance of Thanksgiving Day in the United States was carefully explained.”

1947: “The Palestine Government’s intention to sell Government land on the Haifa waterfront, which has aroused a storm of protest from the Jewish community” and which Mrs. Golda Myerson has described as “incomprehensible” “was confirmed today in the official Palestine Gazette.

1947: In Prague, Czechoslovakia Franci and Kurt Epstein gave birth to American author Helen Epstein.

http://www.helenepstein.com/

1948: Goldblatt’s a chain of discount stores owned by Nate and Maurice Goldbatt which operated in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, closed its store in Buffalo, NY which had opened in 1941 and had failed to perform at an acceptable leve.

1949: Eighty-six year old William H. King, the Senator from Utah who in 1927 “declared…that he favored the United States severing diplomatic relations with any country which failed because of anti-Semitism to protect its Jewish nationals” and “expressed the belief that eventually Palestine would be able to support a population of a million Jews” passed away today.

1950: A rummage sale sponsored by the Jordan Metropolis Chapter of the B’nai B’rith is scheduled to begin today in New York City.

1950: Mrs. Jack Kesselman is scheduled to address today’s meeting of the Jersey City, NJ chapter of Hadassah at the Jersey City Jewish Community Center.

1950:  Films of Europe and Israel are scheduled to be shown at tonight’s meeting of the Kinnereth Business and Professional Group of Hadassah meeting at the Henry Hudson Hotel.

1951: Today thirty year old produer/director Jospeh Papp married Salt Lake City, Utah native, Peggy Marie Bennion who earned an MSW from the Hunter College School of Social Work.

https://www.scribd.com/document/315097496/Family-Therapy-Pioneers-Peggy-Papp

1953(20th of Kislev, 5714): Seventy-seven year old French playwright Henri-Léon-Gustave-Charles Bernstein the victim of an anti-Semitic riot in 1911 whose play “Dreaming Lips” was made into a movie in 1932 and who spent WW II living at the Waldorf-Astoria passed away today after which he was  buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris.

1956: Senator John F. Kennedy addresses the Annual Banquet of Histadrut Zionist Organization, Baltimore, Maryland.

1956: In Amsterdam, Queen Juliana attended the opening performance of Goodrich and Hackett's “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

1956(18th of Kislev, 5654): Seventy-seven year old muralist Hugo Ballin whose works included a mural at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple that “encircles the main Sanctuary” that tell the story of the Jewish people from Bereshit until the time of its commissioning in 1929.

1956: The Jerusalem Post reported that Jews arriving by plane in Paris 'confirmed that expulsion orders were being issued to Jews in Egypt by the thousands.'

1956: Golda Meir, the Israeli Foreign Minister, "wrote the first of two letters to the UN Secretary General, protesting the 'action taken by the Egyptian Government against the Jewish Community in Egypt.'"

1957: “The Sad Sack” a comedy produced by Hal B. Wallis, starring Jerry Lewis and featuring Peter Lorre was released today in the United States.

1958: Polish born conductor Artur Rodziński passed away. Rodzinski was not Jewish but under the law of unintended consequences, he had major impact on the career of a Jew who was one of the musical icons of the 20thcentury, Leonard Bernstein.  “Rodzinski said that God told him to hire 24 year old LeonardBernstein, to be his assistant conductor. In the fall of 1943 Rodzinski decided to take a vacation, spend a little time with his goats, and called in Bruno Walter to conduct seven concerts in ten days. Only hours before one of those concerts (in the program, works by Schumann, Rosza, Strauss and Wagner) Walter fell ill. Rodzinski was only four hours away, in his farm. But he declined to come back to Carnegie Hall: "Call Bernstein. That's why we hired him." The concert was broadcast over radio and a review appeared on page 1 of The New York Times the next day: "Young Aide Leads Philharmonic; Steps in When Bruno Walter is Ill’" And the rest, as they say, is history.

1958(15th of Kislev, 5719): Seventy-five year old “artist, critic, author” and college professor Walter Pach passed away today at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/26746018@N03/3234018815/in/photostream/

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/walter-pach-papers-suppressed-old-digitized-microfilm-9852/more

1958: In Tel Aviv, “theatre actor Shmulik Atzmon” and his wife gave birth to actress and singer Anat Atzmon.

1960: Following the merger of Ohev Sholom and Talmud in 1958, the congregation’s “newly built synagogue building on upper Sixteenth Street, NW, Washington, DC, was dedicated” today.

1961: In New York, “Nathan M. Ohrbach, board chairman of Ohrbach’s, Inc. received the insignia of Officer of the French Legion of Honor from the French Consul General.

1962(30th of Cheshvan, 5723): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1962(30th of Cheshvan 5723): Fifty-one year old photographer Florence Meyer Homolka, the daughter of Eugene Meyer and actor Oskar Homolka, passed away today.

1963: Birthdate of three-time Ophir Award winner Ronit Elkabetz.

1964(22nd of Kislev, 5725): Seventy-one year old WW I Field Artillery veteran Abram Efroymson, the Indianapolis born son Harry and Hannah (Schiff) Efroymson who was President of the Terminal and Refrigeration Corporation, a leader of the Cleveland Jewish community and the husband of Sylvia Spira with whom he had two children – Alan and John – passed away today.

1964: In Montreal, Dr. Gina Shochat-Rakoff and Dr. Vivian Rakooff gave birth to “prize-winning humorist” David Benjamin Rakoff (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/books/david-rakoff-award-winning-humorist-dies-at-47.html?_r=0

1964: Birthdate of Ophir award winning Israeli actress and filmmaker Ronit Elkabetz, the native of Beersheba who oldest four children born “to a religious Moroccan Jewish family originally from Esaaouira.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9805E2DD123DEF3ABC4051DFB767838D609EDE

1965: “Gamera: The Giant Monster” a horror film featuring Alan Oppenheimer as “Dr. Ctonrare” was released today in Japan.

1967: At news conference today President Charles de Gaulle called Jews “elite people, sure of itself and domineering.”

1968: In Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France, “Eddie Vartan, a Bulgarian-born musician, and Doris (née Pucher) Vartan, a painter and artist gave birth to Franco-American actor Michael Vartan, the nephew of singer Sylvie Vartan.

1969(17th of Kislev, 5730): In Athens, one Greek child was killed and 13 others were wounded when two Jordanian terrorists attacked the El Al offices with hand grenades.

1972: Release of Free to Be You and Me, the album of non-sexist stories and songs that helped shape the self-understanding and worldview of a generation of children. Letty Cottin Pogrebin was the editorial project consultant for the album as well as the book and television special associated with the project, all of which were created by feminist and actress Marlo Thomas. Free to Be You and Me, which features such songs as “Parents are People” and “It's All Right to Cry,” is still enjoyed by children today. In addition to her work on Free to Be You and Me, Pogrebin was a founding editor of Ms. Magazine. She was a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, as well as the Ms. Foundation for Women and the International Center for Peace in the Middle East. She wrote the best-selling parenting guide to raising non-sexist children, Growing Up Free: Raising Your Children in the 80s (1980), as well as Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America (1991), Family Politics: Love and Power on an Intimate Frontier (1983), and Getting Over Getting Older: An Intimate Journey (1996). Pogrebin recently published her first novel, Three Daughters (2003).

https://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/27/1972/free-to-be-you-and-me

1973:Neil Simon's "Good Doctor," premieres in New York City.

1976: “Network” the Paddy Chayefsky written classic directed by Sidney Lumet. Lumet was nominated for an Oscar and Chayefsky won one for his screenplay was released today in the United States.

1978(27th of Cheshvan, 5739):  In San Francisco, California, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White. Milk was Jewish.  Moscone was succeeded by Jewish the head of the Board of Supervisors, Diane Feinstein. Feinstein would go on to be elected to the U.S. Senate where she and fellow Californian Barbara Boxer would become the first Jewish female duo to represent a state in the nation’s Upper Chamber.

1980: ABC broadcast the first episode of “Bosom Buddies,” a sitcom co-starring Wendie Jo Sperber today.

1981: “Ten Out of 10,” “the eighth studio album by 10cc” which marked the first involvement with the band by American singer-songwriter Andrew Gold and was co-produced by Graham Gouldman was released today.

1981: Eighty-three year old singer and actress Lotte Lenyam, the widow of Kurt Weil who although not Jewish herself, left Germany when the Nazis came to power passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/28/obituaries/lotte-lenya-singer-actress-in-us-and-germany-is-dead.html?pagewanted=all

1987(6th of Kislev, 5748): In Israel, two “internal security agents” were killed today.

1991: The New York Times published a review of Benevolence and Betrayal Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism by Alexander Stille.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/27/books/books-of-the-times-5-jewish-families-in-fascist-italy-on-both-sides.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1993(13th of Kislev, 5754): Marvin H. Bernstein, a businessman and philanthropist in New York for many years passed away today at the Miami Heart Institute. He was 66 and lived in Miami. Mr. Bernstein was the founder and for 34 years the president of the Variety Knit Corporation of Manhattan, which makes women's clothing and T-shirts. He also founded the Marvin Bernstein Oil Company, a petroleum exploration company with headquarters in Miami. Mr. Bernstein was a fund-raiser for and a contributor to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the Simon Weisenthal Center, Israel Bonds, the Weitzman Institute of Science, Tel Aviv University and other medical and religious groups.

1993: Birthdate of Argentine cyclist Gonzalo Joaquin Najar,

1994(24th of Kislev, 5755): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1995: Salah Tarif begins serving as the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs

1995: Uri Or began serving as the Deputy Minister of Defense.

1998: “The Slums of Beverly Hills” a comedy about “a teenage girl struggling to grow up in the late 1970s in a lower-middle-class nomadic Jewish family that moves every few months” starring Natasha Lyonne and Alan Arkin and featuring Carl Reiner and Eli Marienthal was released in the United Kingdom today, three months after premiering in the United States.

1999:  The left-wing Labour Party takes control of the New Zealand government with leader Helen Clark becoming the first elected female Prime Minister in New Zealand's history. In 2005, she opposed a visit by Israeli President Moshe Ktsav because of a dispute surrounding alleged Mossad agents and the issuing of fraudulent passports.

2000: Illusionist Dave Blaine began a stunt called “Frozen In Time” at New York’s Times Square

2001(12th of Kislev, 5762): Etty Fahima, 45, of Netzer Hazani was killed three others were injured when a Palestinian terrorist threw grenades and opened fire at a convoy on the road between the Kissufim crossing and Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday evening. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

2001(12th of Kislev, 5762): Noam Gozovsky, 23, of Moshav Ramat Zvi, and Michal Mor, 25, of Afula were killed when two Palestinian terrorists from the Jenin area opened fire with Kalashnikov assault rifles on a crowd of people near the central bus station in Afula. Police officers and a reserve soldier confronted them, killing the terrorists in the ensuing firefight. Another 50 people were injured, 10 of them moderately to seriously. Fatah and the Islamic Jihad claimed joint responsibility.

2002(22nd of Kislev, 5763): Eighty-nine year old Stanley Black, the conductor and composer born Solomon Schwartz passed away today in London

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/03/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

2003: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel warned Palestinians today to become more conciliatory or risk losing permanently some of the land they want for a state.”

2004: In “A Rhythmic Soundscape of Lives Caught in Conflict,” published today Margo Jefferson reviews Yuri Lane’s “From Tel Aviv to Ramallah” during which “alone on the small stage of the Makor/Steinhardt Center on West 67th Street, Mr. Lane gave us the sounds of life on both sides of the checkpoint.”

 2005:  In the topsy-turvy world of Israeli politics, Shimon Peres is seriously considering leaving the Labor Party and joining Ariel Sharon’s new Kadima Party.  This would mean the old lion of labor and the old lion of Likud could end their careers under a common political banner.  In yet an even stranger twist of fate, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak injected himself into the upcoming electoral campaign by declaring that Ariel Sharon was the only Israeli leader capable of making peace with the Palestinians. 

2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine by Harold Bloom and The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam.

2006: The Times of London reported Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former KGB agent had just returned from a trip to Israel.

2006: In New Zealand, John Key became the parliamentary leader of the National Party.

2006: Cartoonist Jules Feiffer began a stint “at the Arizona State University Barret Honors College” today.

2006: Seth Rudetsky starred in “Off-Off-Broadway production of “Torch Song Trilogy” which opened today.

2007: Batsheva Dance choreographer Ohad Naharin premiers his latest work, “Kamuyot” in Stockholm.  The premier will be followed by 100 performances before 20,000 students all over Sweden.  “Kamuyot” can be translated as “numbers of” or “characteristics.”

2007: The scheduled U.S. sponsored meeting of Israelis and Arabs at Annapolis, MD, comes to an end.

2007: YIVO Institute presents The Klezmatics: Up Close in downtown Manhattan.  The Klezmatics perform music drawn from their 2007 Grammy award-winning CD Wonder Wheel – Lyrics by Woody Guthrie, YIVO’s Max and Frieda Weinstein Sound Archives and their vast repertoire.

2007: "Operation: Last Chance” will be formally launched at a press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's "Operation: Last Chance" is targeted to find and bring to justice at least some of the thousands of Nazis still hiding in South America 62 years after the end of World War II.

2007: At the end of the Annapolis Conference, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni spoke of the relevance to any future Israeli-Palestinian agreement of the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab countries after 1948.

2008: As the Thanksgiving weekend begins, Secretsdirected by Avi Nesher premiers theatrically in commercial movie theatres.

2008: During the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, Indian army reported that it had secured the Jewish outreach center at Nariman House and liberated 60 people in the building.

2008:  Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger and Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar are calling for a mass prayer rally today in the hope that heavenly intervention will stem the global financial crisis.

2008: Final showing at the Jacob Burns Film Center of “One Day You’ll Understand” a film that portrays the reaction of French businessman’s reaction to the televised trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in 1987.

2008: Israeli sculptor Gideon Gechtman, a native of Alexandria, whose family made Aliyah in 1945, passed away today.

http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/results.asp?searchType=simple&words=Gechtman%2C+Gideon&ArtistE=on&Submit2=Search

http://www.imj.org.il/artcenter/default.asp?artist=272639

2008: Idina Menzel performed "I Stand" on the M&M Candies float as part of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

2009: A man accused of murdering Dutch civilians as a member of a Waffen SS hit squad said at his trial today that he was proud about being chosen to fight for the Nazis. Heinrich Boere, 88, made his first comments to the Aachen state court since his trial opened at the end of October.

2009: A Palestinian terrorist was killed this morning when the IAF struck a Gaza terror cell preparing to fire rockets into Israel, according to the IDF

2009: The Israeli Black Panthers hosted a special tour of the Musara neighbored in Jerusalem.  2009: Performance of “Lost in Yonkers” at the DC JCC.

2009: Paul “Godfrey was announced as the chair of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation” today,

2009: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa Noah Thalblum helps to lead Friday Night services as part of his Bar Mitzvah weekend.

2009: Abe Pollin’s funeral service is held at Washington Hebrew Congregation.

2010(20th of Kislev, 5771) Eighty-seven year old Irvin Kershner - who directed the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back, the James Bond film Never Say Never Again and Robocop 2 – passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/movies/30kershner.html

2010(20th of Kislev, 5752): Vilém Flusser a Czech-born Brazilian Jewish philosopher, writer and journalist passed away.

2010: In Michigan, the Young Adult Division of Jewish Federation is scheduled to sponsor the sixth annual Latke Vodka donor thank you event.

2010: A rock was thrown through the back window of the Helene G. Simon Hillel Center, which is located on campus, today. Earlier in the week, a rock was thrown through the back window of the Chabad Jewish student center located just outside the campus. Bloomington city police and campus police are investigating whether the attacks are related.

2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Something Urgent I Have to Say to You: The Life and Works of William Carlos Williams” by Herbert Leibowitz

2011:Ministerial Committee on Legislation decided today not to back a bill that would limit public access to High Court petitions, sponsored by MKs Danny Danon and Yariv Levin from the Likud

2011:Prominent Israeli singer Margalit Tzan'ani pleaded guilty  today to extorting her manager, and is expected to be sentenced to several months of community service.

2011: The New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2011 includes the following books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers: “The Free World” in which David Bezmozgis overturns clichéd expectations of immigrant idealism in his first novel, which follows a Soviet Jewish family awaiting visas in Rome in 1978; “The Grief of Others” by Leah Hager Cohen;  “Say Her Name” by Francisco Goldman, “Scenes From Village Life” by Amos Oz; “The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World” by Haifa-born physicist David Deutsch; “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India” by Joseph Lelyveld; “In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family Hitler’s Berlin,” Erik Larson’s account of the experiences of William Dodd, F.D.R.’s first ambassador in Nazi Germany; “Jerusalem: The Biography” by Simon Sebag  Montefiore; “The Memory Chalet” by Tony Judt; “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War” by Tony Horwitz; “Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark” by Brian Kellow; “The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World” by Jewish Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin; “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt; “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Israeli born Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman; “A Train Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France” by Caroline Moorehead

2011(1st of Kislev, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

2012: In Rmallah, the tomb of Yasser Arafat is schedule to be opened as the first step in process intended to determine if he was poisoned.

2012: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a program that will examine ”the Rothschild Baba Kama, an ornate and richly decorated manuscript written in 1721-22 by Anshel Moses Rothschild, the founder of the Rothschild dynasty.”

2012: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to present a program that will “explore how the image of a typical Israeli has been depicted in Israeli films from the 1960’s until today.

2012: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, members of the Jewish community are scheduled to meet to discuss ways to further the cause of Israel in the Hawkeye State.

2012: “The National Library of Israel signed contract with Pri-Or to preserve its archive of more than one million images.

2012(13thof Kislev, 5773): Fifty-eight year old French journalist Érik Izraelewicz “who was the director and editorial executive of Le Monde” passed away today.

2012(13thof Kislev, 5773): Ninety-five year old “Marvin Miller, an economist and labor leader who became one of the most important figures in baseball history by building the major league players union into a force that revolutionized the game, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan.” (As reported by Richard Goldstein)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/sports/baseball/marvin-miller-union-leader-who-changed-baseball-dies-at-95.html?hpw&_r=0&pagewanted=print

 

2012: The Taub Center released its annual State of the Nation Report for 2011-2012 this morning, which according to the organization, paints “a troubling picture of the way Israeli governments have thus far dealt with Israel’s primary socioeconomic problems.”

 

2013: In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah candle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/business/media/carve-the-turkey-and-pass-the-latkes-as-holidays-converge.html

 

2013: Chabad of Talbiya is scheduled to host its third annual Chanukah Menorah Lighting Festival at the entrance to the Mamilla Mall.

2013: The City of  Tel Aviv-Jaffa in collaboration with Heritage Fund for Israel in Tel Aviv are scheduled to host two candle lighting ceremonies – at Culture Square and Rabin Square.

 

2013: Former State Department official and ambassador Elliott Abrams argued in his Council for Foreign Relations blog today that the language used by the White House to discuss the Iran interim deal was largely “aspirational,” suggesting that much of the touted P5+1 deal with Iran had yet to be hammered out, a contention that appeared to be born out the statements of State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.(As reported by Rebecca Shimoni Stoil)

 

2013: Five teenagers from the Arab neighborhood of Issawiya in East Jerusalem were brought before the Jerusalem District Court today and charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at an IDF base in the capital.  (As reported by Stuart Winer)

 

2013: The Israel Antiquities Authority and the Netivei Israel Company “invited the public to visit the excavation site Eshtaol” which “includes a six-millennia-old cultic temple and a 10,000 year old house” today.

2014: In England, the chaplains (rabbis) of the Oxford University Jewish Society are scheduled to host “a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner” at their home for which there is a minimal £3 charge.

2014: In Melbourne, “Night Will Fall” and “Above and Beyond” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Festival.

2014: In an address marking the anniversary of the death of David Ben-Gurion, former President Shimon Peres bitterly criticized the “Jewish state” bill today, arguing that the legislation is designed for political gain and damages Israel’s democratic principles (As reported by Marissa Newman)

2014: An IDF fired back at Palestian gunmen inside the Gaza Strip who had opened fire on an IDF patrol operating on the Israeli side of the border fence. (As reported by Stuart Winer)

2014: “Members of a Hamas terror ring in the West Bank, run from the organization’s headquarters in Turkey, sought to carry out an array of major attacks, including on Jerusalem’s main soccer stadium and its light rail line, the Shin Bet security service said today.”

2014(5th of Kislev, 5775): Seventy-nine year old Paramount Pictures President, Frank Yablans, “who oversaw the release of “The Godfather” and its first sequel and whose writing skills were responsible for bringing one of my favorite sports novels, North Dallas Forty, to the screen passed away today. (As reported by Michael Cieply)

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/29/business/media/frank-yablans-film-executive-dies-at-79.html

2014(5th of Kislev, 5775): Ninety-four year old Newsweek editor and NBC television executive Lester Bernstein passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/nyregion/lester-bernstein-former-newsweek-editor-dies-at-94.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/lester-bernstein-wide-ranging-journalist-who-led-newsweek-dies-at-94/2014/12/02/533361ac-7984-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html

2015: In Atlanta, the Breman Museum offers exhibitions on The Story of Jewish Atlanta, “featuring a collection of 18 carefully selected objects, the Holocaust styled “Absence of Humanity” and for the children “Where the Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak In His Own Words & Pictures.”

2015: According to reports published today Israeli diplomate Rami Hatan is preparing to leave for Abu Dhabi where he will open Israel’s first diplomatic mission to the Arab country which will be part of IRENA, the UN’s International Renewable Energy Agency.

2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host another concert in its “Excellence of the Future Generation Series.”

2015: Six months after premiering at Cannes and one week after having been released in the United States, “Carol” featuring Carrie Brownstein as “Genevieve Cantrell” was released today in the United Kingdom.

2015(15th of Kislev): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (135 - ca. 220 CE), also known as Rabbi Judah the Prince.

2016(26th of Cheshvan, 5777): Ninety-three year old MIT professor Bruce Mazlish, the author of In Search of Nixon: A Psychological Inquiry, passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/books/bruce-mazlish-richard-nixon.html?_r=1

http://toynbeeprize.org/blog/bruce-mazlish-a-tribute/

2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Where Memory Leads: My Lifeby SaulFriedländer, An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitlerby Peter Fritzsche, The Hostage’s Daughter: A Story of Family, Madness and the Middle East by Sulome Anderson and the recently release paperback edition of As Close To Us As Breathing by Elizabeth Poliner as well as an interview with Amos Oz “whose most recent novel is Judas” and Calvin Trillin “on the Scariest Word” in the English language.

2016: “Alone in Berlin” is scheduled to be shown in Canberra as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.

2016: In Venice, the Biennale Architettura which has featured an Israeli pavilion since 1952 is scheduled to come to an end today.

2017: Dr. Diane M. Sharon is scheduled to present the final session of “Demagogues, Madmen and Cowards: The Failure of Leaders in the Book of Judges”’

2017: Martin Kaufman is scheduled to present the final session of “Judaism’s Ethics Committee” in which he examines “the role of ethics in Judaism through the lens of three highly influential thinkers whose work spans the 16th through 20th centuries: the Maharal of Prague, a towering theologian; Nachman of Breslov, a dynamic Chasidic master; and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, perhaps the greatest philosopher of Halacha of the Modern Era.”

2017: In the United Kingdom, the Chief Rabbi is scheduled to visit Oxford where he will speak to a student only audience, followed by the meal sponsored by the Oxford University Jewish Society and concluding with a session that is open to the entire community.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Bernard Lewis whose works included “Semites and Anti-Semites”and “The Muslim Discovery of Europe” continues today.

2018: Barbara Feller, a pillar of the Jewish community, is scheduled to read from her new publication Road to Waubeekat the Marion Public Library.

2018: In keeping with the Jewish tradition of “lifetime learning,” Yaffe Kaye is scheduled to offer another class in “Beginning Hebrew.”

2018: After week, an International Jewish Festival for Contemporary Culture that has featured such performers “Erez Lev-Ari and The Suits doing Ari San” is scheduled to come to an end today in Jerusalem

2018: As Americans are preparing to take part in Giving Tuesday, United Synagogue Youth has set up its fundraiser, #IAmUSY.

2018(19th of Kislev, 5779): Sixty-five year old Harold O. Levy, “son of Jewish refugees from Germany” and the husband of Pat Sapinsley, who chancellor of New York City’s public system from 2000 to 2002 passed away today. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/obituaries/harold-levy-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

2018: In Cedar Rapids, IA, the History Center, as part of its “Oral Histories Live!” series, is scheduled to host an evening with “almost centenarian” Herman Ginsberg whose family has been the jewelry business for almost one hundred while also being pillars of the Jewish community.

2018(19th of Kislev, 5779): On the Jewish calendar, “yahrtzeit of the Maggid of Mezrech (1710-1772), the successor of the Baal Shem Tov, who consolidated chassidic teachings into a structured, cohesive movement.” (As reported by aish.com)

2018(19th of Kislev, 5779): Chasidim and “friends of Chasidim” celebrated “Yud-Tet Kislev – Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism that commemorates the release of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the Alter Rebbe and founder of Chabad-Lubavitch  from his 53 days of imprisonment “in the Peter-Paul fortress in St. Petersburg.”

2019: The Saatchi Synagogue in St. John’s Wood, London, is scheduled to host “an international panel awareness event on” “Mental Health in the Jewish Community: Facing the Challenge Together.”

2019: Israelis brace for another rocket barrage from Gaza and more demonstrations held in response to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s call for his supporters to take to the streets.

2020: Temple Etz Chaim is scheduled to host online a “Virtual Erev Shabbat Service”

2020:  In Philadelphia, The Museum Store of the National Museum of American Jewish History for which Mitchell Levin is “an official content provider, is scheduled to be open today on Black Friday with curbside pickup available.

2020: In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host “Welcoming Shabbat Mindfulness,” a virtual exploration of “meditation techniques from a Jewish perspective.”

2020: Suburban Temple-Kol Ami is scheduled to host a virtual Shabbat service with Rabbi Allison Vann and Musical Director Deb Rogers.

2020: Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled to broadcast “Songs of Love and Madness” with soprano Daniela Skorka and harpsichordist David Shemer.

2020: As Israelis deal with winter storms, forecasters predict “local rain, especially along the coast” today.

2020: In the words of “crack office administrator” Carolyn Simon, Jews in Cedar Rapids can find relief from “Black Friday” by attending the virtual Friday night services at Temple Judah.

 

 

 

This Day, November 28, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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November 28

1058: Casmir I the Restorer who was “the de jure monarch of Poland starting in 1034” during whose reign there were Jews living in the capital city of Gniezno passed away today.

1095: On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appointed bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land. The call for the Crusade is based, in part, on false reports of atrocities committed by Muslims against Christian pilgrims.  The Crusades, which will begin in the following year, mark a dark chapter in Jewish history as those marching under the Sign of the Cross sack Jewish settlements in Europe and later slaughter Jews living in Eretz Israel.

1598: “In the archives of the city of Amsterdam, probably the oldest date dealing with Portuguese Jews is today, when there was entered in the "Puyboek," v. 22b, the announcement of the intended marriage of Manuel Lopez Homé and the above-mentioned Maria Nuñez”

1660: At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society. A British physician named Isaac de Sequeira Samuda or Isaac de Sequeyra Samuda was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1727, making him the first Jew to be so honored.

1680: Seventy-eight year old “Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher” who “found the best evidence of the Hebrew-first theory in the simplicity of the language’s triconsonantal roots” passed away today

1744: Frederick the Greattook Prague in the Wars of Succession and the populace ransacked the ghetto. He soon left and the Croats returned. They accused the Jews of treason and again their quarters were sacked. A few weeks later (December 18 and January 7) Empress Maria Theresa banished all the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. Due to the protests of the Jews and the governments of England and Holland, the decree was dropped everywhere but in Prague.

1752: Lisbon native Isaac Mendes Seixas and London born Rachel Franks Levy, gave birth to Grace Mendes Seixas, the wife of Simon Nathan and the mother of “Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan.”

1755(24h of Kislev, 5516): In the evening, Kindle the first Chanukah Light, at a time when Jews in New York are embroiled in clash between Solomon Hays and Congregation Shearith Israel.

1757: Birthdate of William Blake, English poet, painter and printmaker.Controversy surrounds Blake’s grasp of Jewish mysticism. It seems pretty clear that Blake’s art and writing invoke Kabbalah, but scholars debate how Blake accessed the Jewish mystical concepts he quoted. Some argue that the dozen or so Hebrew inscriptions in Blake’s etchings and watercolors show that Blake was fluent in Hebrew. But close analysis of the works, some of which are on exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum, reveals that Blake had not even mastered the letter alef. Reading Kabbalah in Hebrew without knowing the first letter of the alef-bet would be as implausible as tackling “Finnegans Wake” with barely a grasp of the English alphabet. Arguments that Blake knew Hebrew date back to Frederick Tatham, who cared for Catherine after Blake’s death in 1827. In a letter to bookseller Frances Harvey, Tatham said that Blake’s library included “well thumbed” books in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Italian, as well as works by Swedenborg and Christian mystic Jacob Boehme. “His knowledge was immense, his industry beyond parallel,” Tatham wrote. Modern scholars echo Tatham’s claim. Writing in the journal Modern Philology in 1951, David V. Erdman ascribed “some Hebrew” to Blake, particularly the knowledge that beth-lehem means “house of bread.” “We know that Blake knew a little Hebrew,” Anthony Blunt agreed, writing in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes in 1943, “for he wrote to his brother in 1803 that he was learning the Hebrew alphabet, and his etching of the Laocoön [a copy of the sculpture “Laocoön and His Sons”] bears a few words in Hebrew script.” In his book “The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (The Davies Group, Publishers, 2000), Thomas J. J. Altizer suggests not only that Blake knew Hebrew, but also that he was self-taught. But the work that Blunt cites as proof of Blake’s proficiency in Hebrew, “Laocoön” — a circa 1820 print depicting snakes strangling the famous Trojan priest and his two sons — is one of the best pieces of evidence that Blake did not know Hebrew. Writing “malakh Jehovah,” which he translated as “The Angel of the Divine Presence,” Blake inadvertently rotated the alef 90 degrees on its y-axis. He spelled “Lilit” (Lilith) correctly, but he miswrote “Jeshua” (Jesus) with another rotated letter, this time an ayin (the 16th letter). “Laocoön” does not appear in the Morgan show, but an etching from Blake’s Job series does. In an etching from Blake’s Job series, the artist again wrote “The Angel of the Divine Presence,” but this time he wrote the Hebrew “melekh Jehovah,” which means King Jehovah, rather than malakh (with an alef), the Angel of Jehovah. In “William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job,” S. Foster Damon says that Blake intentionally removed the alef to show that Job was worshipping a false God — mistaking an angel for the king. But could Blake really have known enough Hebrew to distinguish between “melekh” and “malakh,” when he revealed in “Laocoön” that he didn’t even know how to form the letter properly?  “Job’s Evil Dreams,” features a bearded figure with hooves encircled by a snake. The figure hovers above a reclining man and points with its right index finger to the Ten Commandments. Though Blake wrote out only two of the commandments in full, the inscriptions contain more than a dozen mistakes. One line contains a properly and an improperly formed alef, a further inconsistency suggesting that Blake was copying a language he did not understand. “Blake did study Hebrew with his one-time patron, William Hayley, but scholars are not agreed about his proficiency in the language,” explained Leslie Tannenbaum, associate professor of English at Ohio State University and author of “Biblical Tradition in William Blake’s Early Prophecies: The Great Code of Art” (Princeton University Press, 1982). According to Tannenbaum, the late Gerald Bentley, a Blake scholar who taught at Princeton University, implied in a biography that Blake was “fairly fluent” in Hebrew. But Tannenbaum also notes that Sheila A. Spector, whom he describes as “an extremely meticulous scholar and expert on Blake and the Kabbalah,” writes that Blake did not know the biblical language.In Blake’s preface to the chapter “To the Jews,” from the poem “Jerusalem,” Tannenbaum sees references to the kabbalistic concept of Adam Kadmon (the primordial man). Blake learned Kabbalah from Swedenborg’s writings on Boehme, who seems to have been influenced by Balthasar Walther, Tannenbaum adds, and Blake also identified with the Avignon Society, which sought science and reason “in such unlikely places as alchemical lore, cabbalistic numerology, mesmerist séances, Swedenborgian spiritualism, and (perhaps most surprising of all) the Scriptures.” In “Wonders Divine: The Development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Myth” (Bucknell University Press, 2001) Spector, an adjunct associate professor at New York University, agrees that Blake’s kabbalistic sources were Christian rather than Jewish, and English rather than Hebrew. Further, Blake was “unfortunately” influenced by his contemporary Anglo-Israelites, who thought that English derived from Hebrew “and that the language of the Jews was a spurious version in which the rabbis obscured the ‘true Christian’ message to be found in the Bible,” Spector said.“Under the circumstances, the question of whether or not Blake was fluent in Hebrew misses the point,” she added. “He rejected normative Hebrew in favor of the linguistic gymnastics that re-interpreted words to conform with some eccentric – to be charitable – interpretations that coordinated Hebrew and English, as well as Greek, etymologies to proffer a new interpretation of Scripture.” (As reported by Menachem Wecker)

1763: Ester Alvares and Bordeau native Daniel Nones gave birth to Isaac Nones.

1791: One day after he had passed away, Levi Levy, the son of Barnet Levi and Esther Elias was buried today at the “Falmouth Jewish Cemetery.

1809: Solomon Emanuel, Reuben Cantor and Anhalt Cothn became citizens of the United States today.

1810: Noah Davis married Catherine Levy at the Great Synagogue today.

1816(8th of Kislev, 5577): Eighty-six year old Benjamin D’Israeli, the Italian born Anglo-Jewish merchant who was the grandfather of the British Prime Minister of the same name passed away today.

1822: Ezekiel Moss married Elizabeth Moses at the Great Synagogue today.

1825: In Münster (Westphalia), Elias Marks and Alexander Grove Village founded The Marks Grove Village Foundation which funded programs to help train Jewish children and integrate them into German society.

1827 (9th of Kislev, 5588): On the secular calendar Dov Baer Schneersohn passed away.  Dov Ber succeeded his father Shneur Zalman of Lyady as the second Lubavitcher Rebbe.  Shneur Zalman was the found of Chabad, Dov Baer was known as the “Middle Rabbi” because he came between Shneur Zalman and the third Rebbe Menachem Mendel known as the Zemen Zedek.   Among other things, Dov Baer was responsible for starting a Chabad settlement in Hebron in 1823. In 1826, Dov Baer was imprisoned by the Czar on trumped up charges of sending money to support the Sultan of Turkey.  He was released on the tenth of Kislev which has been a day of celebration among Lubavitchers ever since.  “The only way of converting darkness into light is by giving to the poor.”  “Every act of kindness that God performs for man should make him feel not proud, but more humble and unworthy.”  

1827: Aaron Harris married Martha Benjamin at the Great Synagogue today.

1829: Birthdate of composer Anton Rubinstein. Rubinstein was quite a widely performed composer in his lifetime, but following his death, his works were largely ignored. Some have suggested that this was due to the anti-Semitism prevalent at that time in Germany, the musical hub of Europe.

1831: Birthdate of John William Mackay, the Irish born American industrialist and one of the four Silver Kings of the Comstock Lode who was greatly upset when in 1890 he was erroneously accused of “despising Jews.”

1839: According to a report issued today by the Ministry of the Interior, Joseph Friedlander was the only Jew living in Saxon outside of Dresden or Leipzig.

1839: Birthdate of Jacob Moser, the scion of the only Jewish family in Kappeln, Schlewsig who was educated in Hamburg before moving to “Bradford in 1862 where he became a wealthy woolen manufacture and exporter as well as leading member of the Anglo-Jewish community and active Zionist who among other things supported the Jewish hospitals in Leeds and Manchester as well as contributing the funds to build the Herzlia Gymnasium in Jaffa while being married to “his beloved wife,” the former Florence Julia Cohen.

1842(25th of Kislev, 5603): Chanukah

1856: Two days he had passed away, Moses Jacobs, the son of Henry Jacobs and Kitty Moses and the husband of Sarah Levy who with he had had five children, was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery” today.

1857: In Philadelphia, Elvira S. Solis, the New York born daughter of Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan and Sarah Mendes Nathan and her husband David Hays Solis, the Mount Pleasant, New York, born merchant who was a supporter of the Jewish Publication Society, gave birth to Jacob Solomon Solis

1860: Two days after she had passes away “Joseph, Rebecca (nee Hyams),” the wife of Samuel Joseph with whom she had had eight children was buried at “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1862: During the Civil War, after volunteering for duty, Theodore Minis Etting “received the appointment of acting Midshipman” today in the United States Navy.

1863:Thanksgiving was first observed as a regular American holiday. Proclaimed by President Lincoln the previous month, it was declared that the event would be observed annually, on the fourth Thursday in November.  While Thanksgiving is a secular holiday, it has it origins in the Bible.  The Pilgrims were students of what they called The Old Testament.  When they had enjoyed their first successful harvest at Plymouth, they looked to scripture for a way to express their joy.  They found the answer in the holiday of Sukkoth – a celebration of in-gathering; a celebration of thanks that took place after the harvest was completed.  There are reports that the first Thanksgiving was a week-long affair but I would avoid making any claim that this was intended to mirror the seven days of Sukkoth. 

1864: During the Civil War, Major Alfred Mordechai, Jr. was named Chief of Ordinance for the Union Army’s Department of the Cumberland.

1864: Jacob B. Eckerman, who had been wounded at Salem Height and during the Wilderness Campaign completed his more than two years of service with Company E. of the 139th Regiment.

1866: In Germany Heinrich and Regina Sedel Schafnner gave birth to Morris Schaffner who settled in Erie, PA where he was a member of the Fire Commission, a member of the Jewish Welfare Board and a supporter of B’nai B’rith’s Home for Friendless Children.

1865: In Troy, NY “Bennett and Pauline (Spero) Marks gave birth to music publisher and “member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Council for the Coordination of Industry, Edward Bennet Marks, the husband of Miriam Chuck with whom he had three children

1866: In San Francisco, Louise and Sigmund Wohlfeld gave birth to David Wohlfeld who gained fame as actor David Warfiled whose first appearance was at the Wigwam Theatre in San Francisco in 1899 and went to a career in New York that made him on of the richest performers of his times who the husband of May Gabrielle Bradt whom he married in October of 1899.

1873: In Kovno, Isaac and Cecilia (Jaffe) Ginzberg gave birth to Louis Ginzberg, husband of Adele Katzenstein who became a noted Talmudist, as a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, a leader of the Conservative Movement in the United States for half a century.

https://www.amazon.com/Legends-Jews-Four-Volumes-Complete/dp/1387998595/ref=pd_lpo_14_img_0/134-3570804-1757359?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1387998595&pd_rd_r=5de2b858-fbe8-498c-9fca-d90b31056053&pd_rd_w=FRi28&pd_rd_wg=0rIqX&pf_rd_p=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pf_rd_r=54MMKSMEQFX42MXHT8CW&psc=1&refRID=54MMKSMEQFX42MXHT8CW

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Ginzberg

1873: Birthdate of Lehmann (Leo) Katzenberger, the owner of several shoe shops in Nuremberg who guillotined by the Nazis for allegedly having an affair with an Aryan woman.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007908

 1873 “The Laundry Business” published today traced the history of laundering clothes from ancient to modern times reported that “the ancient Jews had great regard for cleanliness.  They never sat down to a meal or said a prayer without first washing their hands, and it is only fair to presume that a people who would be so particular in keeping their goodies clean would not be behind in keeping their garments equally spotless and free from taint, the more particularly as among these ancients white garments were the emblems of purity and holiness.

1874: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association hosted a musical and literary entertainment this evening at Number 112, West 21st Street in Manhattan.

 

1874: Rabbi Schneerson, an American citizen in Palestine, was attacked by a group of Jews at Tiberias. After robbing him, he was imprisoned, stoned, stripped naked and ridden through the streets, barely escaping with his life.

1878: A theatrical review published today shows the changing view of the Jew, at least in the theatrical community.  Unlike his famous predecessors, the great tragedian Edwin Booth portrays Shylock as man “of well and keen perception.”  “A certain class of critics” now seek Shylock “as a species of hero and martyr who is more worthy of our sympathy and pit than our contempt.”

1879: In Rochester, NY, Levi Adler and his wife gave birth to Harvard graduate Mortimer Adler, a vice president and co-founder of Levy brother, a leading clothing manufacturer and a present of Congregation B’rith Kodesh who was the husband of “the former Ida Lichtenstein” and the father of Robert, Ruth and Frances Adler.

1880(25th of Kislev, 5641): First Day of Chanukah

1880: It was reported today that meetings instigated by the anti-Semitic party are being held in Leipzig.

1880: It was reported today that the police have torn down placards in south-eastern Berlin “directly inciting the inhabitants to persecute the Jews.”

1881: New York Congressman Samuel S. Cox returned from his visit to Palestine today on board of the SS Republic. (Four years later Cox resigned his seat in Congress to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, replace Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur, the novel with the Jewish prince as its protagonist.)

1881: The articles of incorporation for the Hebrew Society for the Improvement of the Sanitary Condition of the Poor were filed in the County Clerk’s office today.

1881: “Aid For Hebrew Immigrants” published today described efforts to meet the rising and growing tide of Jewish immigrants Russia.  Leading Jewish citizens in New York have agreed to organize the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society which will be incorporated under the laws of New York State.  Jacob Schiff publicly expressed his opposition to the formation of the group, but most of his co-religionists including Charles L. Bernheim, Jacob Seligman and Frederick Nathan overcame his objections. Baron Maurice de Hirsch has pledged a million pounds to support the efforts of the society to assist in the establishment of agricultural “colonies” which will provide homes and a livelihood for the immigrants.

1881:  Birthdate of Austrian Stefan Zweig.  Although barely known today, in his time he was a noted poet, essayist and dramatist.  Although he was an assimilated Jew, he could see that Austria was no place for Jews and he fled the country in 1934.  Sadly, he and his wife committed suicide in Brazil in 1942.  They had come to the conclusion that the life was no longer worth living in a world that was spinning a downward spiral.

1883(28th of Cheshvan, 5644): “Russian Hebraist and author Mordecai Plugian” who was “a descendant of Mordecai Jaffe” passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15875.html

1883: It was reported today that “Sir Moses Montefiore is the first Jews that was ever elected to be Sherriff of London.  He was chosen a few days after the succession of Queen Victoria and received the honor of Knighthood at the hands of her Majesty when she visited the city on the following Lord Mayors’ Day.”

1884: “Hittite Inscriptions” published today provided a detailed review of The Empire of the Hittites by William Wright who contends that these ancient people were contemporaries of the ancient Israelites and were involved in the story of their enslavement in Egypt.

1884: Birthdate of Olean, NY native Benjamin M. Marcus the Columbia University trained “oil company executive.”

1884: It was reported today that Reverend Charles H. Eaton has told his congregation that “the sentiment of the Hebrew song sung at the Feasts of Tabernacles” has now come “naturally to our lips upon our Thanksgiving Day.” (Editor’s note – Nice to see that a 19th century Christian source acknowledge the Jewish origins of our most popular secular holiday)

1885: It was reported today that much to the surprise of her family, Mamie Curran, a Catholic girl, has secretly married a Jewish suitor, John Cohen.  Her father, Edward Curran, is so distraught over the news that he has gone to his room which is  over a local saloon and his refused to leave it.

1886(1st of Kislev, 5647): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1887: It was reported today that German-Jewish author and historian Jacob Auerbach has passed away.

1887: It was reported today that Daniel Greenleaf Thompson has dedicated his latest book, The Religious Sentiments of the Mind, to “my friend and partner, Oscar S. Straus…”  Straus was a leading figure in the American Jewish community who served as U.S Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

1888(24th of Kislev, 5649): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  This will not happen again until 2013.

1888: Baron Hirsch has made a donation of $5,000,000 for schools for Jews in Galicia and Bukovina

1888: In New York, police began looking for Yetta Reiner, and 18 year old girl who has been in this country for two weeks and has been reported as missing.

1888: Mrs. Julia Lind challenged the will of her late mother Jettie Lissauer, a Jewess who passed away in December of 1887.

1888: Today the cornerstone was laid for the new home of the Progress Club was had been designed the Jewish architect Alfred Zucker who was a native of Silesia.

1889: Two hundred and fifty-eight children who attend the Industrial and Sunday Schools sponsored by the United Hebrew Charities will be eating Thanksgiving dinner today at St. Mark’s Place in New York City.

1889: The Conference of the Civic, Commercial, Industrial and Educational Bodies will present a silk banner to the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society as its annual Thanksgiving festival today at 3 p.m.

1889: Samuel D. Levy celebrated his birthday today by sending a box of candy to each of the children who attend the schools sponsored by the United Hebrew Charities.

1889: The Washington Centennial Committee presented a banner to the youngsters at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in recognition of their “excellent marching in the civic parade” that had been held last Spring. Charles Freund accepted the banner on behalf of his schoolmates.  General William T. Sherman spoke to the boys complimenting them on their drilling.

1889: The cornerstone of the new Temple that will be used by Congregation Zichron Ephraim was laid this afternoon on 67th Street between Lexington and Third avenues.

1890: Herman Kertscher is under arrest following the accident at yesterday’s annual parade of the boys at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.  While driving his wagon, his horse crashed into the parade seriously injuring two boys.  Kertscher “made no effort to stop his horse either before or after the accident.

1890: A day following the national holiday, Temple Israel of Harlem will host a Thanksgiving Service where the topic of the sermon will be “The Ethics of Gratitude.”

1891: Today’s review of “Pauline Blanchard” which opened at the Standard Theatre in New York described the theme of the play as “well-worn” and “familiar” but praises the performance of Sarah Bernhardt in the title role saying that her “genius elevates this role” and that “her acting was incomparably fine and eloquent…played with all of her energy.”

1891: Birthdate of Berlin born physician Max Pinner who in 1928 became a naturalized citizen of the United States where served on the staff of the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Chicago and the faculty of the University of Illinois

1892: Engineer George Franjieh presented his plans for a tramway in Jaffa.  The plan, like his one for a new water supply system to Jerusalem, we rejected.

1892: Baron Hirsch was wounded in the hands and forearm by the explosion of his gun while hunting at Acheres in France.

1892: The French government was confronted by a demand that the coffin of Baron Reinach be exhumed amid rumors that his death was a sham and that the coffin does not contain his body.

1893: The Berlin Verein Zur Abwehr Des Anti-Semitismus, a Society to Combat Anti-Semitism, held its first general meeting today under the leadership of Rudolf Geniest, Heinrich Rickert and Theodor Barth at which it was reported that it had 13,33i members in 963 localities

1893: “New Bill At The Theatres” published a review of the “Merchant of Venice” which found Henry Irving’s portrayal of Shylock to be “fine, subtle, thoughtful” but not his greatest work since “he reached the zenith of his powers some time ago.”  (Irving was one of those who had made a career playing the Jewish banker, providing at one time, a powerful interpretation.)  As in so many earlier productions, Ellen Terry played Portia to Irving’s Shylock.

1894: “Russian Jews Forgive Russia” published today described a strange ceremony where 400 Jews having attended a memorial service for the late Czar in Paris swore allegiance to his successor, Nicholas II “in the presence of the Russian Consul and the secretary of the Russian Embassy.”

1894: General Mercier, the French Minister of War “declared in an interview with Le Figaro that Dreyfus’ guilt was ‘absolutely certain.’”

1895: Three hundred and fifty young ladies attended the Thanksgiving Day Dinner hosted by the Girl’s Industrial School of the United Hebrew Charities at St. Marks Place.

1895: Registrar Ferdinand Levy delivered a speech at the Thanksgiving Service held at the synagogue at 115 East 86th Street entitled “The Jews as a Citizen and Patriot.”

1895: Rabbi Silverman delivered a sermon at the Temple Emanu-El Thanksgiving Service entitled “The Ethics of American Patriotism.”

 

1895: Rabbis Mendes and Harris will speak at the West End Synagogue Thanksgiving Service to which The Young Men’s Hebrew Association and members of Temple Israel of Harlem have been invited.

1895: Half a dozen Jews including Rabbi Isaac Blankfort “rushed into the Madison Street (Police) State” tonight “and said that two loafers had assaulted them and pulled their beards on East Broadway.”  The police went out and arrested the two after they saw them “striking at every Jew they passed.”

1896: According to reports published, the Tenth Ward of New York, in spite of its being the most densely crowded area of its size in the world” has “a remarkably low rate” because “its population consisted largely of Hebrews, who were the first race in the world that learned the secret of the ‘length of days’ and have known what not to eat ever since the adoption of the Levitical codes, three or four thousand years ago.

1896: In New York City, Solomon Edman, “a shirt manufacturer” and Ricka Sklower Edman, gave birth to Irwin Edman, the Columbia University Phi Beta Kappa undergraduate who earned his PhD from Columbia where he spent his academic career rising to chair of the philosophy department in 1945.

1897: In Paris, “Le Figaro published a letter informing the public about the belief that Esterhazay was the doorway to France and its army.”  (By doorway, they meant that Esterhazy and not Drefyfus was the spy selling French military secrets to the Germans)

 

1897: Three days after she had passed away, Leah Coleman, the daughter of “Julia and Israel Coleman” was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”

1898: In Chicago, opening of a charity fair bazaar sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Charity Association the proceeds of which will split evening between Michael Reese Hospital and United Hebrew Charities.

1898: “Jewish Agrarian Colony In Bessarabia Russia” published today descried a law that “has just been promulgated in St. Petersburg for the establishment of a Hebrew agrarian colony on the estate of Baron Horace Guenzburg…which covers about 1,350 acres.”

1899: Birthdate of Louise Cohn, the wife of Arthur Benjamin Cohn and the mother of Arthur B. Cohn.

1899: At Petach Tikva, Taub (Yona) Margalit, the Bialystok born daughter of Elijah and Sara Golda Bloch, and her husband Moshe Dov Bear Margalit gave birth to Sara Margalit who became Sarah Mirkin when she married Moshe Arie Mirkin.

1900: “The Wedding” by Anton Chekov whose Jewish stereotypes in his “writing owe their orgin not so much to the anti-Jewish typology found in the Russian literary tradition or in the political rehetoric disseminated in the right wing press, but rather to the views of Jewish people as express in the medical and scientific discourses of his time,” “was given its first performance, making its debut at the Moscow Hunt Club.”

1900: Birthdate of Erich Klibansky, the native of Frankfurt am Main, husband of Meta David with whom he had three sons: “Hans-Raphael, Alexander and Michael” and “headmaster and teacher of Jawne, the first Jewish Gymnasium of Rhineland in Cologne” who was murdered by the Nazis in the woods in Minks

1901: This evening the New Era Club whose “membership is made up for the most part of Jewish young men of the east side between the ages of 18 and 25 led by its President, Dr. A.L. Wolborst celebrated Thanksgiving with festivities that were attended by most of the three hundred members and their sweethearts or sisters.

1902: In Berlin, Gertrude Sternberg, who was Jewish, and Dr. Oscar Jolles gave birth to Heinz-Frederic Jolles who gained fame as pianist and composer Henry Jolles.

1903(9th of Kislev, 5664): Sixty-five year old Jules Levy, “the most celebrated cornetist of the 19th century, passed away today.

http://abel.hive.no/trumpet/levy/

1903: Today’s dispatch from Kieff to The Times of London reported that “little progress has been made in the trial at Kishineff which began on November 19” and that several more days will be taken up with preliminaries” before evidence will be presented against those charged with attacking the Jews.

1903: Birthdate of Portland, OR, native Maurice Edward Dorfman, the hold of an “A.B. from Reed College” who went on to graduate school at the University of California and then worked as a “research chemist with Midway Gas Company.

1904: The Russian correspondent of The Times of London said “that Russian reservists continue to escape in large numbers into Austrian Poland” and that “most of them, especially the Jews, are provided with money and their escape is facilitated by the Russian frontier guards who freely take bribes for passing them across the border.”

1905: Sinn Fein founded today based on the vision of Arthur Griffith whose disciples included Michael Noyk the Lithuanian born Irish-Jewish lawyer who joined shortly after the “Easter Rising.”

1905: In a letter from U.S. Ambassador White of Morocco to the Algeciras Conference, he stated, "Concurrent testimony positively affirms the intolerance of the Mohammedan rule in that country toward non-Musselmans….Jews, especially, appear to suffer from painful and injurious restrictions."

1905: Four thousand Jews attended a meeting tonight in Berlin “to protest against the massacres in Russia.”

1905: It was reported today that $895, 225 has been raised by the national committee collecting funds for the relief of the Jews in Russia $103 from the “Jews of Decatur, Alabama, $50 from Congregation Emanuel, Talladega, Alabama, $395 from Congregation B’nai Israel, Monroe, Louisiana and $106 from Congregation B’nai Jacob, Charleston, West Virginia.”

1905: It was reported that “uprising against the Jews” have taken place in Bahmut, Luhgantz, Marianople Ghenitchesk and Ekaterinoslav.”

1905: Isidor Straus, the President of the Educational Alliance, presided over a meeting of fifty business and professional men at his home to discuss the future of the organization.

1905: Seventeen year old Boris Gorb, a Russian Jew “who recently arrived in New York after escaping from the Uligani in Ekaterinoslave received a letter” today “from one of his brothers…informing him that that their father, Simon Gorb had been mortally wounding in defending their 15 year old sister Dora” and after reading it fainted while in the presence of Isador Bader, the agent of the United Hebrew Charities at the Immigrants’ Home on Montgomery Street where he has been staying.

1906: It was reported today that “the Jewish Relief Society has come into possession of a secret report which Capt. Pjetnchoff, Chief of the Siedlce police sent to an assistant of the Governor General of Warsaw’ which is “a highly sensational statement of 4,000 words that shows that the Military Commander, Gen. Tichanowsky, not only was responsible for the pogrom at Siedlce last Summer, but also ordered the killing of innocent persons in a peculiarly atrocious manner. “

1907:  In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opened his first movie theater.  From these humble beginnings would come the famed studio MGM.

1907: At Birmingham, The Tennessee Volunteers coached by Izzy Levene lost the final game of the season to the University of Alabama leaving them with an over-all record of 7-2-1.

1908:  Birthdate of Claude Levi-Strauss.Born in Belgium, Claude Levi-Strauss was the son of an artist, and a member of an intellectual French Jewish family.  He was a popular French anthropologist most well-known for his development of structural anthropology.

1909(15th of Kislev, 5670): Jossel Schafir passed away today.

1910: In Brooklyn, Alter Abelson, a rabbi and poet, and of Anna Schwartz Abelson, a writer of short stories gave birth to Lionel Abel who won an Obie for his tragedy “Absalom.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/25/arts/lionel-abel-90-playwright-and-essayist.html

1911: It was reported today that “the success of the Jewish farmer in America was hailed as an indication that the Jews were coming into their own after forced and unnatural pursuits in commerce and finance, by both Mayor Gaynor and Jacob H. Schiff, during the third annual convention of the Federation of Jewish Farmers of America.”

1912: In Chicago, The Lenora Sewing Club which meets and sews every Thursday at Temple Sholem will not meet today because it is Thanksgiving.

1912: The Haymarket is scheduled to host another evening of Yiddish Theatre which may include “Every Woman,” “Madame X” or “The Jewish Crown.”

1912: “The annual ball of the B’nai Abraham Auxiliary whose officers are Charles D. Kaufman, President, Rose F. Ehrman, Financial Secretary and Clara C. Weil, Recording Secretary, is scheduled to be held “in the Louis XVI Room of the Hotel Sherman

1912: Birthdate of Morris Louis.  Born Morris Louis Bernstein, Louis became one of America’s leading abstract expressionist painters before his untimely death at the age of 49.

1913(28th of Cheshvan, 5674): Eighty-six year old Isaac Greensfelder, “the grand old man” of the Jewish people of Chicago and the founder “of the Associated Charities” passed away today in Chicago.

1914: It was reported today that Lemberg, a major city in Galicia which the Russian have captured from the Austrians has a population of 30,000 Jews, 50,000 Roman Catholics and 15,000 Greek Orthodox.

1914: “Palestine for the Jews” published today includes Israel Zangwill’s response to the following inquiry addressed to him by H.G. Wells: “And now what is to prevent the Jews having Palestine and restoring a real Judea?”

1914: William Jessup Hand, an attorney, writes from Scranton, PA that “it is plan that Leo Frank was denied…the highest and most vitally essential right of every person: a fair and impartial trial.

1914: “It was learned today that when counsel for Leo M. Frank asks leave of the Supreme Court of the United States on November 30 to file a petition for a writ of error a brief will be presented at the same time” due to the rules of procedure governing appeals of this sort.

1915: It was reported today that “$30,000,000 will be needed to rehabilitate the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe and to save the families, many of whom are dying of starvation.”

1915: Rabbi Herbert Goldstein and Commissioner of Education Joseph Barondess were among the speakers at today’s dedication of the new facility belong to the Jewish Day Nursery.

1915: “Seventy-five fatherless children…romped in a sunny playground at the new nursery” operated by the Harlem branch of the Jewish Day Nursery which opened today 61 East 107thStreet.

1915: The Bronx Relief Committee of the People’s Relief Committee for the Jewish Sufferers has divided the borough into 500 districts in which 1,500 volunteers are scheduled to sell tags during today’s fund raiser.

1915: It was reported today that the Dr. Julius Weiss will be presiding over the upcoming service sponsored by the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America to honor the memory of the late Professor Solomon Schechter.

1915: “A History of the Jews of Russia and Poland” published today provides a review of The Jews of Russia and Poland by Israel Friedlander in which the reviewer says the author “sketches a sympathetic yet faithful and carefully objective history of Jews of Russia and Poland lands which not harbor in their inhospitable and storm-tossed midst half the Jews of the world and upon whose mercies, in the future even as in the long pain-racked past, the fate of the Jews in the Diaspora must ever chiefly depend.”

1916: “Word that the Turkish Government has rescinded its previous agreement to allow several hundred Americans to leave the Turkish Empire via Jaffa reached the State Department” in Washington “today from Ambassador Elkus at Constantinople.”

1916: In Memphis, TN Josef Kalusner, the Hungarian born son of Chaim and Chana Klausner and Tillie Klausner, the Polish born daughter of Arron and Miriam Bienenstock, gave birth to David Klausner

1916: “Prominent Jews from all over the country attended a dinner at the Hotel Savoy honoring philanthropist and statesman Simon Wolfe who “for more than fifty has been the representative in Washington of American Jewry” on his 80th birthday.

1916: Screenwriter Samuel Ornitz and his wife gave birth to cinematographer Arthur J. Ornitz who directed “Wanted – A Master” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1936 for Best Short Subject (One-Reel).

1916: It was reported today that George Gothein, a Jewish member of the Reichstag, expressed the view that “it might not be advisable to grant the High Council” which is the highest Jewish authority in Poland “unlimited self-government at once” since the German government has only recently taken full control of the area from the Russians.

1917(13th of Kislev, 5678): Sixty-two year old German lexicographer Emil Levy whose son Frederich would die in a concentration camp, passed away today.

1917: Former President William H. Taft was among those who attended the production of “On the Road to Victory” which was under the direction of Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff was part of Jewish Relief Day, a fundraiser for the Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for Jewish War Relief.

1917:Sigmund Romberg’s revue "Over the Top," premiered in New York City.

1917: Andrei Ivanovich Shingarev, a physician and leader of the Kadets (Constitutional Democrat Party) who in March of 1916 took the unusual position of defending the Jews against charges of destroying the war effort, was arrested today by the Bolsheviks and “imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress” today.

1917: In London, General F.B. Maurice, Chief Director of Military Operations at the War Office said “Our troops are now in sight of Jerusalem but the Turks have had time to get up reserves and make a stand and it is problem that Jerusalem will not fall without another definite battle.

1917: The Ottoman forces continued to re-take the village of Nebi Samwil (Tomb of Samuel) which the British had conquered after a week of hard fighting as they continued their campaign to take Jerusalem.

1918(24th of Kislev, 5679): Thanksgiving feast is followed in the evening by the kindling the first light of Chanukah.

1918: On Thanksgiving, Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow is scheduled “to take part in services at a large Synagogue” in Paris.

1918: With Lou Mervis playing tackle, the U. of Pittsburgh Panthers defeated Penn St. at Forbes Field.

1918: The Jewish Guardian reported that on the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) declared, “Speaking entirely as a non-Jew, I look on the Jews as the natural importers of western leaven so necessary for countries of the Near East.”

1918: Eighteen days after crossing the border into Holland, Kaiser Wilhelm II who blamed the Jews for his defeat and who would send telegrams of praise to Hitler following his victories “issued a belated statement of abdication from both the Prussian and imperial thrones, thus formally ending the Hohenzollerns' 400-year rule over Prussia.”

1919: Birthdate of Faye Schulman, the Lenin born photographer who was one of only 26 people spared by the Nazis when they slaughtered the Jews of town including her parents, sisters and younger brother. They did not kill her because they wanted her to develop their pictures of the massacre

1920: Pianist and composer Mana-Zuca is scheduled to perform an original composition which will be heard in New York in the Hippodrome.

1922: “The Russian delegation arrived in Lusanne” where negotiations had already begun on settling the outstanding questions regarding the replacement of the Ottoman Empire, which had included Palestine, with what would become the modern nation of Turkey.

1922: In the Bronx, Sadie "Sonia" Birkenfeld and Harry Eidus, a Latvian born Jewish violinist gave birth to Arnold Eidus, “the first American violinist to win the Jacques Thidbaud Award

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/business/arnold-eidus-90-adman-with-stradivarius-dies.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1417065744-4e8cTch/2QhzJZfmmxE+kA

1924: French premiere of “Le Miracle des Loups” (The Miracle of the Wolves) the historical melodrama directed by Raymond Bernard.

1925: Today Chaim “Zhitlowsky's 60th birthday was celebrated at the Manhattan Opera House in New York” and “a Zhitlowsky memorial volume was published in Berlin containing articles and reminiscences of his intimate friends and disciples” with the proceeds from the sale of the work going to YIVO in Vilno.

 1926:Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a report to the Endowment on his observations in Egypt, Palestine and Greece, made public today, declares that the movement to colonize Palestine with Jews is "unfortunate and visionary," and will in the long run "bring more bitterness and more unhappiness both for the Jew and for the Arab."  According to Dr. Pritchett, “Zionist plans for a national Jewish home in Plaestine…have nothing to commend them and are bound to fail.”  He also wrote despairingly of any attempt to improve the economic conditions in Palestine; attempts which he said were doomed to failure. Nicholas Murray Butler, who is President of the Carnegie Endowment, was responsible for the report being published today.  As President of Columbia, Butler has advocated limiting the enrollment of Jews at Columbia where he has supported a strong quota system.

1926: British flyweight Moe Mizler fought and won his seventh bout today at Premierland, Whitechapel.

1926: In Jerusalem, Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim and his wife gave birth to Meir Benayahu, the researcher who devoted his life to the of Kabbalah, Sabbaticalism and the Sephardi Diaspora who was also the brother of MK Moshe Nissim.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/404349

1928: “London Blames Jews in Wailing Wall Issue” published today “concludes by explain that while the Palestine government is ready and anxious to act as an intermediary in obtaining a Moslem-Jewish agreement over the Wailing Wall, it cannot use compulsion to ring this about especially as the disputes have now ceased to be purely religious and have become political and racial also.” (Editor’s note – the irony is that nine decades later, the issue has now become one of Jew versus Jew as the Orthodox seek to exercise a hegemony over this holy site that denies access other Jews.)

1928: Birthdate of Shulamit Aloni. Born in Kfar Shmaryahu, Israel, Aloni served in the Palmach in the War of Independence and gained fame as an attorney, teacher, journalist and the winner of numerous awards including Honorary PhD in Humanities from Hebrew Union College (1994), Honorary PhD of Law from Kon-Kuk University in Seoul (1994),Honorary PhD of Philosophy, Weitzman Institute of Science (1999), Decoration of Honor from the International Academy for Humanism (1996), Honorary PhD from the Free University in Brussels (1997) and Israel Prize Honoree for special lifetime contribution to Israeli society (2000).

1929: In Chicago, Samuel “Sam” Rabinovitz, the Lithuanian born son of “Sholem Moshe Rabinovitz and Chaya-Leah Levy” and his wife Esther Hannah Callner gave birth to Myrtle Rabinovitz

1929: “Show of Shows” a Warner Brothers film that was unique because it was “a talkie” and in Technicolor featuring Carmel Myers was released today in the United States.

1929: “The Girl with the Whip” a comedy with a script by Walter Wasserman and filmed by cinematographer Otto Heller was released in Germany today.

1929(25th of Cheshvan, 5690): Sixty-seven year old Hannah Bachman Einstein a Jewish social worker who “was one of the founders of the Federation of Jewish women’s Organizations” passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/einstein-hannah-bachman

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

1930: “Father and Son” a German-Swedish film co-starring Martin Herzberg was released today.

1931: In their final game of the season, with Sid Gillman playing End, Ohio State lost to the University of Minnesota today.

1932: NBC’s Blue Network broadcast the first episode of “Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel” a situation comedy radio show starring Groucho and Chico Marx, and written primarily by Nat Perrin and Arthur Sheekman.

1932: Groucho Marx performed on radio for the first time

1933(10 of Kislev 5694): Sixty-seven year old Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein died in Jerusalem

http://matzav.com/rav-moshe-mordechai-epstein-ztl-on-his-yahrtzeit-today-4/

1934: The Gold Eagle Guy, written by Melvin Levy with a cast that included Luther Adler, Stella Adler, J. Edward Bromberg, Clifford Odets, Sanford Meisner and Jules Garfield opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre.

1935(2nd of Kislev, 5696): Frederick, Falk, MD, passed away today in Seattle, Washington

1936: “Alpha and Omega” a play written by two Jewish authors “was hooted off the stage” in Poznan, Poland by a group of anti-Semitic Students.

1936: In New York, at the Manhattan Opera House, Mayor La Guardia told the 20,000 delegates attending the convention of the National Labor Committee for the Jewish Workers in Palestine that “rulers of modern countries that seem to thrive on the persecution of minorities face the fate of the Romanoffs and the Hapsburgs.

1936: “The elimination of race prejudice and religious intolerance was advocated” today “by the Rev. Dr. Ralph W. Sockman, pastor of Christ Methodist Episcopal Church speaking as guest preacher at the Sabbath service of Central Synagogue which opened the ninetieth anniversary celebration of the congregation.”

1937(24th of Kislev, 5698): This evening Jews kindled the first Chanukah Candle.

1937: “Non-Stop New York” a sci-fi film with a script co-authored by Curt Siodmak and filmed by cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum opened in the United States today.

1938: Dr. Arthur H. Compton is scheduled to be installed as co-chairman to night during the dinner meeting of the New York Round Table of the National Conference of Jews and Christians at the Hotel Astor.

1938(5th of Kislev, 5699)

1938: The Henry Street Settlement and East Side Branch of the Progressive Women’s Council is scheduled to host a panel including Cecilia Razofsky, Reverend William B. Sperry, Louis Bart, Lena Finkelstein, Max Schenk and Helen Hall that will discuss “”What Can We Do to Help the Jews in Germany?”

1938: Dr. David de Sola Pool is scheduled to lecture on “Jewish Wanderings, Whither Today?” at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.

1939: The Nazi governor-general of Poland established the Judenrat. The Jews were ordered to set up Jewish Councils in every Jewish community in the General Government of Germany. Heydrich ordered that the deportation of 80,000 Jews and Poles should be carried out by December 17.

1939: In what was tantamount to a death sentence, “The authorities of Kaunas, Lithuania arrested” Polish refugee “ Maurycy Orzech, a correspondent for the Jewish Daily Forward and ordered him to return to the German-occupied territory of Poland.”

1939: During today’s meeting of the Good Neighbor Committee on the Émigré and the Community “Edward M.M. Warburg, chairman of the administration committee of the Joint Distribution Committee told of the tremendous burned placed on the Jewish community in this country and abroad by the refugee problem and warned that anti-Semitism was spreading in Europe.

1939: In Bucharest, Premiere George Tatarescu delivered a speech today in which he announced a new plan that “would facilitate the emigration of Jews who are not Rumanian.” 

1939: It was reported today that “70,000 Jews from Germany have been absorbed in Palestine since 1936” and that there are plans for “the immediate settlement of 25,000 Jewish refugees in Palestine.”

1939: As the case against Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the German American Bund who is charged with grand larceny came to a climax, Assistant District Attorney Herman J. McCarthy presented his summation to the jury challenging Kuhn’s contention that he was the victim of plot carried out by Daniel Kirchman, the young Jewish lawyer whom Kuhn says was a thief and the young Jewish accountant Irving Hest who is on the staff of District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey.

1940: The anti-Jewish film Der Ewige Jude, “The Eternal Jew,” was released.

1940: “The legal successor of the DIG, the Jewish Religious Association (Jüdischer Religionsverband in Hamburg), was forced to sell the building for the ridiculous sum of ℛℳ 120,000 to the Colonial Office (Kolonialamt; a legally dependent subunit of Hamburg).”

1941: “The Corsican Brother” a swashbuckler directed by Gregory Ratoff, produced by Edward Small with music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released in the United States today.

1941: In Riga the Jews responded in horror when the Nazis issued orders that separated the able-bodied men from the rest of the population because they knew that in Latvia a separation of population had preceded the murder of the Jewish population.

1941: “Walter Bruns, a Major General of Engineers, learned today that planned mass executions would soon take place in Riga

1941: The first transport of Laupheim (Germany) Jews left for Stuttgart, before being shipped to Riga.

1941: Hitler entertained Hajj Amin al-Husseini during which the grand mufti of Jerusalem pledges to cooperate in the extermination of the Jews and offers to enlist Arabs to fight for Germany.

1942: “Winter Soldiers,” a play “about saboteurs in Nazi-occupied countries” directed by Shephard Traube is scheduled to “open tonight at the Studio Theatre of the New School for Social Research.”

1942: “George Washington Slept Here” the film version of the stage play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, produced by Jerry Wald and starring Jacky Benny was released in the United States today by Warner Bros.

1943: The U.S. Army Medical Corps established a 500 bed hospital at Tlemcen, the Algerian city whose “most important place pilgrimage of all religions was the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town.”

1943:  Birthdate of singer Randy Newman known for a variety of off-beat ditties including Short People, I Love LA, andRaindrops.

1943: A testimonial is scheduled to be held tonight to celebrate the 70th birthday of Dr. Louis Ginzberg, the Polish born Talmudist and Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) who has been living in the United States for the last 44 years.  Dr. Louis Finnkelstein, President of the JTS is chairing the committee hosting the event; a committee that includes several notables such Dr. Butler, President of Columbia, Dr. Woodburn, Chancellor of New York University and Dr. Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire.

1944: As he tried to negotiate the rescue of Hungarian Jews Rudolf Kasztner followed the instructions of the Germans and left for the Swiss border.

1944: In Budapest, Hungarian Fascist gangs attacked a hospital of Jews, killing 28.

1945 During a luncheon hosted by Metropolitan region of the Women’s American ORT, Dr. Charles Bruggmann said “an estimated 250,000 European civilian and military refugees have entered Switzerland since the beginning of the Nazi regime

1945: Playwright Lillian Hellman told those attending todays ORT luncheon that “Jews must stop thinking of themselves as the only people who have suffered” and “work for groups afflicted through war and persecution.”

1946:Three Jewish refugee ships were reported off Haifa tonight, trying to run the Navy-Air Force blockade in a new challenge to British immigration policy.

1947:In Haifa, the British admit 1,450 Jews from Cyprus, ahead of immigration quota.

1947: The United Nations General Assembly “postponed a vote on the Palestine questions” today when it approved a resolution to delay the vote for 24 hours “to give the Arab representatives an opportunity to present a compromise plan as a substitute for partition.”

1948 (26th of Cheshvan): Moses Kleinman editor of Ha-Olam, passed away

1948: Lt. Col. Moshe Dayan and his Arab counterpart met at Government House in Jerusalem. Under UN supervision, the two military commanders worked out the terms of cease fire for the divided holy city.  Once the cease fire was announced soldiers of the Arab Legion danced with joy and Arab refugees returned to the Old City.  All attempts by Jews to pray at the Wall were rebuffed.  As the cease fire took effect Chaim Weitzman returned to the city for the first time in a year.  The first President of Israel comforted the people over the fact that Jerusalem was divided.  “All will come to pass in peace.”

1948: Birthdate of self-promoting political lobbyist Dick Morris.

1948: Birthdate of author Bruce Vilanch.

1948: The Polaroid Land Camera first went on sale, at a Boston department store. The 40 series, model 95 roll film camera went on sale for $89.75. This first model was sold through 1953, and was the first commercially successful self-redeveloping camera system. A sepia-colored photograph took about one minute to produce. Jewish inventor Edwin H. Land had previously demonstrated his invention of instant photography at a meeting of the Optical Society of America on 2 Feb 1947. His first commercial success came in 1939 with his invention of Polaroid filters for lenses in products such as ski goggles, sunglasses and slip-on sunglasses for optical glasses.

1949: Birthdate of Canadian born Mossad agent and author Victor John Ostrosky, the grandson Esther and Haim Margolin,, the Auditor General of the Jewish National Fund and the husband of artist Bella Ostrovsky.

1949: U.S. premiere of “Port of New York” directed by László Benedek, produced by Aubrey Schenk with music by Sol Kaplan.

1949: Birthdate of bandleader and David Letterman straight man Paul Shaffer.

1950: The New York Council of the Pioneer Women is scheduled to have its Chanukah meeting at the home of Mrs. David H. Panitz.

1950: Oscar Karlweis and Mrs. Irving M. Engel are scheduled to address today’s meeting of the Brooklyn Section of the National Council of Jewish Women being held at Temple Beth Elohim.

1950: Dr. Henry shoskes is scheduled to address todays meeting of the Abraham Herman Chapter of HIAS.

1950: The Passaic, NJ Section of Hadassah is scheduled to meet this evening at the Y.M.H.A.

1951: In France, re-release of “Le Miracle des Loups” the classic film directed by Raymond Bernard first shown in 1924.

1951: Arthur Wilson and the former Harriet C. Friedeberg gave birth Mary Jean Alexandra Wilson, who gained fame as British historian Mary Fulbrook, the winner of the “Wolfson Prize 2019 for Revelatory Holocaust Study Reckonings.”

https://www.midaspr.co.uk/news-stories/mary-fulbrook-wins-wolfson-history-prize-2019/

1953: In Elizabeth, NJ, Rabbi Gershon Baruch Chertoff (1915–96), a Talmud scholar and the former leader of the Congregation B'nai Israel in Elizabeth” and “Livia Chertoff (née Eisen), an Israeli citizen and the first flight attendant for El Al gave birth Harvard trained attorney Michael Chertoff, the grandson of Rabbi Paul Chertoff and Esther Barish Chertoff who served as the 2ndUnited States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009.

1954: For the first time ABC aired “What’s Going On?” a game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman.

1954: Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate passed away.  Fermi was not Jewish, but his wife was.  He left Europe in 1938 because he was afraid of the fate that awaited her and her family.

1961: One hundred five Moroccan Jews sailed from Casablanca for Nice on board the French steamship Lyautey.  This marked the beginning of a major exodus of Morrocco's ancient Jewish community.

1957(5th of Kislev): Dr. Pinchas Churgin, the first president of Bar-Ilan University passed away.

1962(1st of Kislev, 5723): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1962: Birthdate of Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz who gained fame as Jon Stewart host of the fake news program The Daily Show. Born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, the popularity of this late-night show has earned Stewart notoriety as “the most trusted name in fake news,” a sardonic reflection of his stature as the Walter Cronkite for a younger generation. He has also gained attention as an outspoken critic of established news media sources.

1963(12th of Kislev, 5724): Actress Karyn "Cookie" Kupcinet, daughter of columnist Irv Kupcinet is murdered.  The crime remains unsolved.

1963: Rabbi Stanley Rabinowitz delivered a sermon at the interfaith Thanksgiving Day service attended by President Lyndon Johnson who was making one of his first such appearances since the assassination of President John Kennedy.

1963: This evening, in a nationally televised address, President Johnson paraphrased the words Rabbi Rabinowitz had used early in the day, “speaking of how blessings can come from evil situations.”

1963(12th of Kislev, 5724): Seventy year old Abba Hillel Silver, who served as Rabbi of The Temple in Cleveland, Ohio and was an ardent Zionist passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E02EEDB103AE637A2575AC2A9679D946291D6CF

1964(23rd of Kislev, 5725): Fifty-six year old Hans von Halban, the French physicist who worked on the Heavy Water project related to the development of the Atomic Bomb passed away today.

1965: Two days after he had passed way, funeral services are scheduled to be held in Brooklyn for 80 year old Sam Shapiro, the husband of Esther Shapiro and the father of David and Gustave Shapiro.

1966: Birthdate of actor, writer and media commentator Sam Seder

1967: Morris Lasker was nominated to serve as a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Today.

1968: In today’s Village Voice, Alfred Leslie, revealed that “Pull My Daisy” directed by Robert Frank was not “an improvisational masterpiece” but “actually carefully planned, rehearsed,” before being shot “on a professionally lit studio set.’ (Frank was Jewish, Leslie was not)

1970: Birthdate of Ran Ben Shimon, the Israeli football (soccer) player who became the manager for Hapoel Tel Aviv.

1973: Donna Karen participated in today’s The Battle of Versailles Fashion today as an assistant to her mentor Anne Klein.

1974(14th of Kislev, 5735): Seven days after his 60thbirthday, Detroit lawyer, Archie Katcher, the North Dakota born son of Louis and Rebecca Katz Katcher who was an active member of the Anti-Defamation League passed away today.

1975(24th of Kislev, 5736): Seventy-three Jack S. Popick, a native of Kishinev who came to the U.S. in 1906 where he became a “business executive and Jewish communal and Zionist leader passed away today in Miami.

1980(20th of Kislev, 5741): Eighty two year old, Russian born, Israeli painter, sculptor and author Nachum Gutman passed away today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachum_Gutman#/media/File:HHGM_20121230_153928.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachum_Gutman#/media/File:Gutmanstudio.jpg

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/Gutman.html

1981: “Venom” a horror film produced by Martin Bregman with music by Michael Kamen was released in Japan today.

1982: The film version of Norman Mailers, The Executioner’s Song, co-starring Eli Wallach was released today in the United States

1982: Today, at a  “Delegates Conference in NYC, 65 elected representatives of New Jewish Agenda (NJA) chapters and at-large members from across US, consented on a National Platform” that included a general Statement of Purpose and specific statements on 18 issue areas

1984: Seventy-eight year old Hubertus, Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg the anti-Nazi German historian who came to the United States to warn against the danger of Hitler and the evil of anti-Semitism passed away today. (As reported by Eric Pace)

1985(15th of Kislev, 5746): Eighty year old Washingtonian and GWU graduate Joseph Henry Abel who had been a member of the American Institute of Architects since 1941 and married Marjorie B. Abel after the death of his first wife Dorothy passed away today in Washington, D.C.

1985: “Dispute Flares Over Book On Claims to Palestine” published today, described the controversy over From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters.

1989(30th of Cheshvan, 5750): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1989(30th of Cheshvan, 5750): Eighty-eight year old NYU trained attorney Meyer Pessin, “a former corporation counsel for Jersey City, NJ and former president of the Jewish National Fund of America passed away today in Caracas, Venezuela” where he had been living for the last four years.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1989/11/30/927489.html?pageNumber=114

1989: After having been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of his mother, actress Susan Cabot, her son Timothy Scott Roman “was sentenced to three years’ probation” today.

1990: Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind completed his service as Secretary of State for Scotland.

1990: Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind, began serving as Secretary of State for Transport

1993(14th of Kislev, 5754): Marvin H. Bernstein, a businessman and philanthropist in New York for many years, died today at the Miami Heart Institute. He was 66 and lived in Miami. Mr. Bernstein was the founder and for 34 years the president of the Variety Knit Corporation of Manhattan, which makes women's clothing and T-shirts. He also founded the Marvin Bernstein Oil Company, a petroleum exploration company with headquarters in Miami.n Mr. Bernstein was a fund-raiser for and a contributor to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the Simon Weisenthal Center, Israel Bonds, the Weitzman Institute of Science, Tel Aviv University and other medical and religious groups.

1993(14th of Kislev, 5754): Monroe Abbey passed away. Born in 1904, he was a Canadian lawyer specializing in mining law and a Jewish civic leader in Montreal. He was president of Canadian Jewish Congress from 1968 to 1971.He was married to Minnie Cummings. His daughter, Sheila Finestone, was a Member of Parliament and Senator. In 1978, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada in recognition for being "devoted community worker who has held office in every important Jewish organization in Montreal".

1994(25th of Kislev, 5755): First Day of Chanukah; in the evening kindle the second light

1994(25th of Kislev, 5755): Jerry Rubin, the 1960s war protester, died in Los Angeles at 56, two weeks after he was hit by a car.

1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including  A Life on the Stage: A Memoirby Jacob Adler, translated and edited by Lulla Rosenfeld, Carl Sagan: A Lifeby Keay Davidson and Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmosby William Poundstone.

2000(1st of Kislev, 5761): Rosh Chodesh Kislev)

2000: Workers cut away at the ice that has encased David Blaine since he began the Frozen in Time stunt 63 hours, 42 minutes and 15 seconds ago which was a world’s record.

2001(13th of Kislev, 5762): Kal Mann passed away.  Born Kalman Cohen, the Philadelphia native gained fame for writing lyrics to such rock and roll hits as Elvis Presley's "Teddy Bear," Bobby Rydell's "Wild One", and Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again."

2002(23rd of Kislev, 5763): Three suicide bombers detonated an SUV in the lobby of the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, killing 13 people and injuring 80. Among the dead were three Israeli tourists who presumably were the targets of the attack, and 10 Kenyans, mostly members of a dance troupe. About 20 minutes earlier, two surface-to-air missiles were fired at an Arkia Boeing 757 airliner carrying 271 people, narrowly missing the aircraft, which was taking off from nearby Moi International Airport. The plane was able to land safely in Tel Aviv.

2002(23rd of Kislevn 5763):Noy and Dvir Anter, aged 12 and 14, of Ariel, and Albert (Avraham) de Havila, 60, of Ra'anana were killed along with 10 Kenyans when a car bomb exploded in the lobby of the Israeli-owned beachfront Paradise Hotel, frequented almost exclusively by Israeli tourists, near Mombasa in Kenya; 21 Israelis were among the 80 wounded. Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, as well as for the simultaneous attempt to down an Arkia plane.

2002(23rd of Kislev, 5763): Haim Amar, 56; Ehud (Yehuda) Avitan, 54; Mordechai Avraham, 44; Ya'acov Lary, 35; and David Peretz, 48 - all of Beit She'an; and Shaul Zilberstein, 36, of Upper Nazareth, were killed and about 40 wounded when two terrorists opened fire and threw grenades at the Likud polling station in Beit She'an, near the central bus station, where party members were casting their votes in the Likud primary. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

2003: “The barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank is causing "serious socio-economic harm" to the Palestinian people and is undermining the Middle East peace process, Secretary General Kofi Annan declared in a report today.”

2004: Juilliard instructor Samuel Zyman praised Jay “Bluejay” Greenberg's talent during a CBS News 60 Minutes broadcast this evening.

2004: NBC broadcast “A Christmas Carol: The Musical” a television version of the stage musical co-starring Jason Alexander as the Ghost of Jacob Marley and with a score by Alan Menkin

2004: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special interest to Jewish readers including including High Noon In the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis by Max Frankel and Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire by Ann Norton.

2005: The Jerusalem Post reported from Budapest that the Israeli ambassador to Hungary, David Admon had recognized the efforts of 13 Hungarians and their families to assist Jews during the Holocaust by presenting them with the title of "the Righteous among the Nations."

 

 

2005(26th of Cheshvan, 5766): Ninety-five year old character actor Marc Lawrence (born Max Goldsmith) passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/arts/marc-lawrence-95-actor-whose-specialty-was-tough-guys-dies.html

2006: Fred Goldsmith was hired today to coach football at Lenoir-Rhyne University.

 

2006: Groundbreaking Ceremony for the New Schechter Institute Campus in Jerusalem.

2006:Today, in his maiden speech as National Party leader John Key talked of an "underclass" that had been "allowed to develop" in New Zealand, a theme which received a large amount of media coverage,

2006(7th of Kislev,5767):Seventy-nine year old “Elliot Welles, a Holocaust survivor who spent the years after World War II as a tireless hunter of Nazis, starting with the man who murdered his mother passed away today at the age of 79. [Information supplied by Margalit Fox, one of the great obituary writers for the New York Times.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/nyregion/03welles.html

2006: In a move that would earn him the appellation of “Bigot” from New York Mayor Ed Koch, Dennis Prager “wrote that Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, should not be allowed to take his Congressional oath using a Koran because ‘the act undermines American civilization.’” (Apparently Mr. Prager’s Jewish education did not include a study of the problems that Jews in England had in taking their seats in Parliament after being elected.)

2006(7th of Kislev, 5767): Ninety year old Rose Mattus who with husband Reuben created Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream passed away today.  (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/obituaries/01mattus.html

2007: “The Rothschild Egg,” a Fabergé egg Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild presented to Germaine Halphen upon her engagement to Béatrice's younger brother, Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild “was sold by Christie's auction house today for £8.9 million (including commission) which “set three auction records: it is the most expensive timepiece, Russian object, and Fabergé object ever sold at auction, surpassing the $9.6 million sale of the 1913 Winter egg in 2002.”

2007: “Yiddish Theatre: A Love Story” is shown for the last time at the Two Boots Pioneer theater in Manhattan.This new documentary film is about Zypora Spaisman the amazing woman who has kept the oldest running Yiddish Theater in America alive. Zypora Spaisman is a Holocaust survivor who conquers all hearts in her passion for art, life and Yiddish.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/28/2007/zypora-spaisman

2007: “The Land Was Theirs” is shown at the Highstown Memorial Library in Highstown, NJ. “An absorbing documentary about Farmingdale, New Jersey, one of many Jewish farming communities in the United States established with the help of the Jewish Agricultural Society. Spanning more than fifty years, the history of Farmingdale provides a perspective on the pressures, problems, and satisfactions of rural Jewish life as experienced in one community.”

2007: Social scientist Riane Eisler, Czech born Jewish American author of the influential The Chalice and the Blade, discusses her new book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C

2008(1st of Kislev, 5769): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

2008: Daniel “Barenboim made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.”

2008: Former government minister and civil rights activist Shulamit Aloni celebrates her 80th birthday.

2008: The centenary of the legendary French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss is celebrated in Paris. As a centenary celebration of a legend, however, it is rather unusual, as the birthday boy is very much alive and well at this time. (He passed away on October 30, 2009.)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-claude-levi-strauss4-2009nov04,0,890035.story

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/03/claude-levi-strauss-obituary

2008: Indian commandos were dropped by helicopter on the roof of the besieged Chabad headquarters in Mumbai as Indian snipers at the site opened fire early Friday morning. Sharpshooters in buildings opposite the headquarters of Chabad began shooting early Friday as a helicopter circled overhead. Meanwhile, there were at least three blasts in the building Friday, as militants were believed to be holed up inside - possibly with hostages - but the situation still remained murky. Approximately 5.000 Jews live in Mumbai. This does not include the large number of Jewish visitors to the city, including a large number of Israelis on their way to visit other tourist sites on the subcontinent. Where there are Jews, there is Chabad.  In this case the Chabad House is run by Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, from Brooklyn and his Israeli born wife.  In response to requests from Chabad, Jews around the world recite Psalm 20 as they wait for further word on the fate of their co-religionists facing this nightmare.

2009: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Noah Thalblum is called to the Torah as Bar Mitzvah at Shabbat Morning Services.

2010: Today Germany's main Jewish group elected its first leader born after the Holocaust, a 60-year-old businessman who promised to focus the organization more on contemporary Jewish life. Dieter Graumann was born in Israel in 1950, the son of Jewish refugees who moved to Germany two years later

2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Dealings: A Political and Financial Life by Felix Rohatyn and I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron.

2010: The Los Angeles Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes by Stephen Sondheim

2010: Party Like A Jew is scheduled to come to an end in Brussels, Belgium.

2010: Terrorists in Hamas-controlled Gaza resumed rocket fire on the Western Negev this morning, striking near Sderot..

2010(21st of Kislev, 5771): Eighty-nine year old “Samuel T. Cohen, the physicist who invented the small tactical nuclear weapon known as the neutron bomb, a controversial device designed to kill enemy troops with subatomic particles but leave battlefields and cities relatively intact, died today at his home in Los Angeles”  (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/us/02cohen.html?pagewanted=all

2011: The 92nd St Y is scheduled to host “Finding A Lost Tribe of Israel: The Bnei Menashe of India,” a program in which “the Bnei Menashe community, along with Shavei Israel founder Michael Freund, tell the remarkable story of how this lost tribe is finally coming home.”

2011: President Shimon Peres, under the instructions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left for Amman today to meet with Jordan's King Abdullah II, to discuss stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

2011: The IDF returned fire on the source of at least three rockets fired into northern Israel from Lebanon tonight,

2011(2nd of Kislev, 5772): Ninety-nine year old Brooklyn born, Cornell University graduate Charles Baker Schleifer, a World War II codebreaker who was the husband of Florence Schleifer and the father of Doctors Lawrence and Leonard Schleifter, passed away today.

2012: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington is scheduled to present its legislative agency at tonight’s “Northern Virginia Legislators’ Reception at the JCCNVa

2012(14th of Kislev, 5773): Ninety-six year old New York real estate and newspaper tycoon Jerry Finkelstein passed away today. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/nyregion/jerry-finkelstein-new-york-power-broker-dies-at-96.html?hpw&pagewanted=print

2012: The French Institute American Alliance Française is scheduled to host a reception prior to the opening of “Haim Shelley Part One & Two” which “presents works by Brigitte NaHoN from 1999 to the present, a period when the artist lived in New York and immigrated to Tel Aviv.”

2012: The convulsions of the Arab Spring may be driving the American public’s support for Israel to new highs, according to a poll released today by the Washington-based group The Israel Project.

2012: Today Germany announced its opposition to the Palestinian bid to upgrade its status at the United Nations to a nonmember state, but did not indicate whether it would vote against or merely abstain.

2013(25th of Kislev, 5774): First Day of Chanukah

2013(25th of Kislev, 5774): Ninety-three year old “Yiddish poet and songwriter “Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, the daughter of Lifshe Sschaecter and wife of Dr. Johan (Yoyne) Gottesman with whom she survived the Holocaust passed away today in the Bronx.

https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/beyle-schaechter-gottesman

2013(25th of Kislev, 5774): Eighty-eighty year old Joseph Bihari one of three brothers who “the founders of Modern Records in Los Angeles and its subsidiaries such as Meteor Records based in Memphis” passed away in Los Angeles. (As reported by William Yardley)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/arts/music/joe-bihari-who-put-early-rb-on-record-dies-at-88.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&rref=obituaries&hpw=&adxnnlx=1386825901-v1D73FX4K0JEKiQR41NRag&

 

 

2013: Thanksgiving – for the first time since 1888, the first day of Chanukah and Thanksgiving coincide.  In 1888 it happened on November 29.

2013: A Jordan-based scientific research center that counts as its members Iran and other Middle Eastern countries has named an Israeli physicist from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, Eliezer Rabinovici, as vice president, AFP reported.

2013: A two-year-old baby was seriously injured today when Muslim terrorists hurled rocks at the car she was in, at the entrance to the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood in southern Jerusalem.

2014: In Melbourne, “Orange People” is scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the Jewish International Film Festival.

2014: “Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, named tonight as the next IDF chief of the General Staff, firmly opposes Israeli military intervention to thwart Iran’s nuclear program unless Iran poses an immediate existential threat to Israel, an Israeli television report said.”

2014: “The highly anticipated trailer for the seventh installment of the Star Wars blockbuster directed by J.J. Abrams was screened today to film audiences throughout the United States.

2014: In Atlanta, GA, the Berman Museum’s store is scheduled to hold a “Black Friday Sale” offering “BIG SAVINGS.”

2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host Schumann-Brahms concert featuring Yevgenia Pikovsky, Elyakum Salzman – Violin; Dmitry Ratush, Vladislav Krasnov –Viola; Felix Nemirovsky – Cello and Marianna Sorkin – Piano.

2015: The Historic Sixth & I Synagogue is scheduled to host an evening with “Hot Tuna.”

2015(16th of Kislev, 5776): Shabbat Va-yishlach

2015: Today, the curtain came down on the final performance of  West Revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Gypsy” which had opened at the Savoy Theatre in April.

2016(27th of Cheshvan, 5777): Yahrzeit Deborah Dorfman Levin, the wife of Joseph B. Levin

2016: “Rabin In His Own Words” and “The Pickle Recipe” are scheduled to be shown at Melbourne as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.

2016: “The Shas party said” today “it would propose a bill that would make it illegal to hold pluralistic prayer services at the Western Wall plaza” which should it pass “would effectively end the negotiated agreement by the cabinet almost a year ago that decided on an egalitarian prayer plaza alongside the Orthodox-controlled one at the holy site”

2016: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Israel in Three Anthems” in which Michael A. Figueroa (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) addresses three anthems that have helped shape Israeli society—“Ha-Tikva,” “L’Internationale,” and “Yerushalayim shel Zahav,” analyzing these songs as performances of collectivity representing the multifaceted nature of Zionism and the shifting political landscape in Israel.

2017: Rich Recht is scheduled to appear at tonight’s JRR Donor Appreciation Concert.

2017: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to offer the second part of Yitzhak Lewis’ “Introduction to Gershom Scholem”

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Shabbat Candlestick Making Workshop preceded by a free dinner.

2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host the last session of Dr. Naomi Weinberger’s  “American Priorities in the Middle East.”

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Heinrich whose works included the classic and ground-breaking, multi-volume “History of the Jews” continues today.

2018: At the University of Michigan’s Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, the “Author’s Forum” is scheduled to host “A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture,” a conversation with “Samer Ali, an association professor of Arabic language and literature” and Shachar Pinsker, professor of Judaic studies and Middle East Studies and author of A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture.

2018: Today The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to “a screening of Duki Dror’s ‘Shadow in Baghdad’ in honor of the date date chosen by the Knesset to commemorate the Middle Eastern Jewish experience, including the exodus of Iraqi Jews after denationalization in 1950.”

2018: In London, the UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Diobedience.”

2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host the “State of Moral Emergency,” in which Daniel Altschuler, Stosh Cotler, Rabbi Jill Jacobs and Melanie Nezer, along with Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson discuss “the Jewish Response to the Immigration Crisis.”

2018: Beit Ave Chai is scheduled to host a lecture by Professor Zeli Gurevich on “The Language of Love in Shir HaShirim.”

2019: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Thanksgiving Dinner with the Chaplains.

2019: As Americans look at their tables for their Thanksgiving turkey, Israelis look to the skies to see if yesterday’s IDF action will mean there will be a day without more rockets being fired from Gaza.

2019(30th of Cheshvan, 5780): Rosh Chodesh Kislev;

2020(12th of Kislev, 5781): Parashat Va-yaytzay For more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 2020: Tiftereth Israel is scheduled to host a “Shabbat Warmup” which is a “Torah Talk with Sharon Barr Skolnik.

2020: The Cape Cod Synagogue is scheduled to host online “an evening of Jewish humor with Joel Chasnoff direct from Israel.”

2020: Israel braces for attacks by Iran or her proxies following the assassination yesterday Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear scientist dubbed the "father of the Iranian bomb.”

2020: B’nai Jeshurun is scheduled to host, online, “Starbucks, Bread and Torah.”

 

 

 

This Day, November 29, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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November 29

800: Charlemagne arrives at Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III. Leo and Charlemagne were allies.  Charlemagne would exonerate Leo of the charges and Leo would crown Charlemagne Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.  This was “good for the Jews” since Charlemagne was protective of his Jewish subjects at a time when many were using the sword of Constantine to advance the cause of the Cross of Christ.

1226: At the Reims Cathedral, coronation of Louis IX who at the request of the Pope Gregory burned “24 cartload of Jewish books in 1242, made plans to expel the Jews after confiscating their property and ordered them to wear a “Jew’s badge” and “to listen to missionary sermons”

1268: Pope Clement IV, who in 1264 “renewed the prohibition of the Talmud promulgated by Gregory IX, who had it publicly burnt in France and in Italy” and who “ordered that the Jews of Aragon submit their books to Dominican censors for expurgation” passed away today

1314: Although he would not be officially crowned un 1315, Louis X, who overturned the decision of his father, Phillip the Fair, to ban Jews from his realm began his reign as King of France.

1378: Sixty-two year old Charles VI, “the first King of Bohemia to also become Holy Roman Emperor” whose classification of the Jews in Frankfort as “vassals of the emperor” was not enough to halt the 1349 Pogrom in that city passed away today.

1378: Wenceslaus IV who as Emperor failed to continue the Imperial protection of the Jews of Luxembourg which led to their expulsion in 1391 began his reign as King of Bohemia today.

1394: Massacre of the Jews of Augsburg Germany.

1424: According to some sources, Anti-Pope Benedict XIII passed away.  In an attempt to curry favor and consolidate his position, Benedict conducted an aggressive program of forced conversion among Jews that included the issuance of a Bull that prohibited study of the Talmud, banned Jews from holding public office, practicing medicine, engaging in crafts, trading or bathing with Christians, wear a red or yellow badge and compelled them listen to at least three sermons a year during Advent.

1630: The future King John IV of Portugal who was erroneously reported to have employed the Jewish doctor Fernando Menes as his physician bean his reign today as the Duke of Braganza.

1655: The Brazilian/Dutch Jews of New Amsterdam make an application for a license to enter the fur trade.  It was later denied

1672(20th of Kislev, 5433): Moses Jacob Schiff-KaZ, z. Goldstein, the of Jacob (Jakew-Jaakow) Schiff-KaZ, z Schiff and Gutlin (Gitle) Schiff-KaZ and husband of Freidchen/Freudchen Schiff-KaZ passed away today at Frankurt-am-Main

1755(25th of Kislev, 5516): Parashat Vayehsev; Shabbat Shel Chanukah on the first day of the holiday.

1769: In Savannah, GA, Sara De La Motta and Levi Sheftall gave birth to Sarah Sheftall, the wife of Abraham De Lyon with whom she had ten children.

1777: San Jose, California, is founded as el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. Jews began to play an active role in the affairs of San Jose at the time of the Gold Rush in 1849.

 http://www.sanjose.com/history/jews/  San Jose History - San Jose's Jewish Community

1790: The Jews of Hungary handed a petition, in which they presented their claims to equality with other citizens, to King Leopold II at Vienna.  Written in Latin, probably at the behest of the Rosenthal family, “it read, in part ‘At long last, permit us to be citizens and useful taxpayers of the fatherland.  In the whole world, outside Hungary we have no fatherland, no other father than the King…no other brothers than those with whom we live and die one society.’”

1790: Birthdate of Amsterdam native Lewis Silver, the husband of Leah Abrahams.

1793(25th of Kislev, 5554): As the citizens of Philadelphia recover from a yellow fever epidemic that took the lives of 5,000 and France coped with the Reign of Terror and Jews experience life under two “Georges” (George Washington and King George III) Jews on both sides of the Atlantic celebrate Chanukah

1797: Seventy-four year old Reverend Samuel Langdon, the former President of Harvard College passed away today. As can be seen by a sermon he preached in the New Hampshire Legislature “The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States” who believed that the Old Testament and the ancient Hebrews provided the foundation of the democracy being championed in the newly formed United States.  He saw “Moses as a destroyer of tyranny” and the seventy men appointed chosen to assist Moses as the prototype for a “Senate.”

1803” Birthdate of Gottfried Semper who the German architect who designed a synagogue built in Dresden between 1838 and 1840 known as the “Semper Synagogue” that contained a “a silver lamp of eternal light” that caught the “fancy” of Cosima and Richard Wagner who spent a lot of money “to have a copy” of the lamp made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Semper#mediaviewer/File:Alte_Synagoge_Dresden_1860_2.png

1806: Napoleon wrote to Minister of the Interior Champagny, “[It is necessary to] reduce, if not destroy, the tendency of Jewish people to practice a very great number of activities that are harmful to civilization and to public order in society in all the countries of the world. It is necessary to stop the harm by preventing it; to prevent it it is necessary to change the Jews. [...] Once part of their youth will take its place in our armies, they will cease to have Jewish interests and sentiments; their interests and sentiments will be French.”

1807: Birthdate of Jonas Warburg, the husband of Bernhardine Wetzlar.

1809(21st of Kislev, 5570): Sixty-five year old New York native Moses Seixas, the eldest son of Isaac Mendez Seixas who was one of the founders (1795) of the Newport Bank of Rhode Island, of which he was cashier until his death and who addressed a letter of welcome in the name of the congregation to George Washington when the latter visited Newport, and it was to him that Washington's answer was addressed passed away today in Newport, RI.

1812: Isaac Isaacs married Elizabeth Davis at the Great Synagogue today.

1812:Napoleon's Grand Army crossed the Berezina River in its retreat from Russia which marked the beginning of the end for Napoleon and therefore also marked the beginning of the end of new found freedom that Jews had begun to experience in most of Germany, Italy and Russia when the French Armies marched across these lands bringing the message of “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality”  on the tips of their bayonets.

1813: In Alsace, France, Isaac Dreyfus, the Alsace born son of Jacob Dreyfus, and his wife Gertrude “Julie” Dreyfus gave birth to Gertrude Dreyfus who became Gertrude Bernheim when she married Leopold Bernheim with whom she had nine children.

1820:  In New York City, first publication of Israel Vindicated by an anonymous author who styled him or herself as “An Israelite.”   “The work was ‘a refutation of the calumnies propagated respecting the Jewish nation; in which the objects and views of the American Society for Ameliorating the Condition of the Jews are investigated.’” The original subtitle also contained the additional words “‘and reasons assigned for rejecting the Christian religion.’” In his monograph entitled “The Freethinker, the Jews and the Missionaries,” Professor Jonathan Sarna contends that the book was the work of a freethinker named George Houston who was assisted by a Jewish printer named Abraham Collins.

1830: The November Uprising also known as the Cadet Uprising begins in Warsaw when a group of Polish non-commissioned officers began an unsuccessful attempt to throw off the yoke of Russian rule. Josef Berkowicz, whose father had commanded a Jewish legion in the 1794 Uprising and who had fought alongside his father in the Battle of Kock, was a leader in what would prove to be another failed attempt to gain Polish independence.

1831(24th of Kislev, 5592): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1831(24th of Kislev, 5592): Poet Moshe Shmuel Neumann, the Hungarian born son of “a poor cantor” who overcame numerous hardships to develop “a master’s command of the Hebrew Language” and who also “compiled a geography, a Biblical history for the young and an elementary arithmetic” while raising a son, Asher Enshil Naiman the husband of Hadassah Naiman, passed away today.

1832: In Camden, SC, Hayman Levy, the son of Solomon and Rebecca Eve Levy, and his wife Almeria Levy gave birth to Rebecca Hendricks Samuel

1840: Two days after he had passed away, 70 year old Woolf Solomons was buried at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery” today.

1841: Birthdate of Josiah Cohen, the native of Plymouth England who became a successful American lawyer and Republican Party leader who was “appointed judge of the orphans’ court in Allegheny County (PA)” in 1901.

1843: Birthdate of London native, Deborah Aaron, the wife of Joseph Hobinstock Woolf.

1845(29th of Cheshvan, 5606): Parashat Tolodot

1845: After having been invited to address the congregation, Dr. M. Lilienthal, who had only recently arrived in the United States delivered a sermon in German at the Henry Street Synagogue in New York City after having been invited to address the congregation.

1846: Two days after she had passed away, 78 year old Hannah Abraham, the wife of John Abraham, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1849: In “Kollin, Bohemia,” Rabbi Bernhard Illoway and Katherine Schiff gave birth to Dr. Illoway, the Miami Medical College trained physician who was the “professor of Diseases of Children at the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surger and the visiting physician at the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati.”

1851(5th of Kislev, 5612): Parashat Toldot

1851(5th of Kislev, 5612): Jacob Lyon, the native of Poland who came to Richmond, VA, at the 18th of century where he became a successful merchant and whose third wife was Eliza White passed away today.

1853: Reverend Francis N. Vinton, D. D delivered a lecture entitled "The Merchant, or the Progress and Influence of Commerce" during which he stated that the Jews had invented the first bills of exchange in 1160.  This invention was so important that soon it would be impossible to transact business without using them.  Furthermore, the Jews created one of the first banks, at Boscoe, but it was used merely as depository for Gold. (Boscoe was probably a city in Italy.)

1854: In Charleston, SC, at the Hasell Street Synagogue, Rabbi Mayer officiated at the wedding of Israel Ottolengui to Rosalie C. Moise the youngest daughter of Mrs. R.C. Moise.

1855: Most of the Jews of New York City celebrated Thanksgiving today by “eating hearty dinners” and giving thanks “in private.”

 

1855: During his Thanksgiving Day sermon, Rabbi Morris Raphael rebuked New York’s Governor Clarke for issuing a proclamation inviting “only patriots and Christians to keep Thanksgiving.” At the same time, he commended Mayor Wood for inviting “all the people” to join in observing the holiday.

 

1855: Rabbi S.M. Isaacs delivered the sermon during Thanksgiving Day services at Shaaray Tefillah, the synagogue on Wooster Street.

1856: A pro-Zionist meeting was held in Great Britain at the Great Assembly Hall of Miles End. There was a "great rush into the building" with most seats taken quickly. The meeting was presided over by Dr. M. Gaster, Chief Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, and among those present were Sir Francis Montefiore.

1857: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and businessman Louis S. Levi, an “officer of the United Jewish Charities” and the member of the board of Hebrew Union College.

1858: It was reported from Boston that the Jews of that city have a held a meeting to express their outrage over what has happened in Bologna. “The theft of the child is an outrage of the worst kind and shows there are men in the old Church ready to go as far as did their predecessors of the old days, when the Inquisition was a great fact, and a very disagreeable one, too.”  [This refers to the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara which had taken place in Bologna and became known as the Mortara Affair.]

1859: Lazarus Simon, the son of English coal merchant Simon Magnus accepted a commission as a Captain in the newly formed 4th Corps of the 1st Brigade of the Kent Voluntary Artillery

1859: In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Abraham Printz and Rose Wohlgemuth Printz gave birth to Bert H. Prinz who came the United States in 1864 and opened several stores in Pennsylvania and New York before opening "Printz Company Men's Clothing and Furnishing in Youngstown, Ohio which became the headquarters of his commercial enterprises.

1860(15th of Kislev, 5621): In Belovar, Rumania, Joseph Hirsch and Feige Herman gave birth to Bayonne, NJ manufacturer of cloth caps and hats Jacob Herman who in 1885 came to the United States where he founded Herman Brothers, helped to found and/or organize Temple Emanu-El and the Roumanian Congregation of New York and married Rebecca Leah Vickoron with whom he had three sons and seven daughters.

1860: In San Francisco, “The Episcopalians, the Roman Catholics and the Jews, all opened their churches…” for the celebration of Thanksgiving.  The Jewish Church is probably a reference to Congregation Sherith Israel and Congregation Emanu-El. Sherith Israel which was founded in 1849 had about 110 members and consecrated its first synagogue which was located on Stockton Street in September of 1852. Emanu-El which followed the Reform minchag had about 260 members and dedicated it sanctuary in 1854.

 

1861: In New York Leopold and Kate gave to attorney David Gerber who became a partner of Judge A.J. Dittenhoefer. 

1862: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Louis and Emma (Goodhart) Heinsheimer gave birth to Stella Heinshier.  In 1894 she married J. Walter Freiberg, a partner in Frieberg and Workum, Distillers.  As Stella Heinshier Frieberg she pursued her two passions – “helping the arts flourish in her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, and furthering the growth of Reform Judaism—and the role of women in it—in the United States and Western Europe..” (As reported by Laura Lieber)

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/freiberg-stella-heinsheimer

1862: Phoebe Yates Levy Pember wrote a letter to her sister indicating that she was “to take charge of one of the hospitals at Richmond.” In December 1862, she reported for duty at Chimborazo, a hospital for the care of Confederate soldiers in Richmond, Virginia, reputed to be the largest military hospital in the world up to that time. Pember oversaw nursing services in one of the hospital's five divisions. In this role, she was responsible for the medical and dietary needs of over 15,000 men. Pember had grown up in a prosperous and acculturated family in Charleston, South Carolina. Along with her siblings, she was strongly identified with the Confederate cause and received the invitation to serve as matron of Chimborazo Hospital from the wife of the Confederate secretary of war. In A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond, published in 1879, Pember described daily life at Chimborazo, detailing the poor state of the Confederate medical facilities. Despite resistance to her authority, Pember's spirit and determination overcame many obstacles. At the end of the war in April 1865, Mrs. Pember stayed at her post so that her patients might be cared for during the transition from Confederate to federal control. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

1864(30th of Cheshvan, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1864(30th of Cheshvan, 5625): Eighty-six year Bordeaux born “musician and composer” Isaac Francis DaCosta who was the “first cornet at the opera in Paris and “vice-leader of the Musique des Gardes du Corps, under Louis XVIII” passed away today.

1867: Future Medal of Honor winner George Geiger “reenlisted with Troop M, of the 7th U.S. Cavalry, November 29, 1867 in St. Louis, Missouri.”

1872: George Gieger completed his enlistment and was discharged at Unionville, SC

1869(25th of Kislev, 5630): First Day of Chanukah; for the first time Jews celebrate the Festival of Lights under President Grant, who received a majority of the Jewish vote.

1870: It was reported today that Governor Hoffman will deliver an opening address at the upcoming Hebrew Fair designed to raise funds for Mount Sinai Hospital and Hebrew Orphan Asylum

1870: In New York, Henry Hissig, a German-born Hebrew went on trial for violating New York’s new seduction law.  He is accused of having seduced his cousin, Ida Schwab.

1872: In Odessa, Jacob Henry and Rachel (Avrick) Topkis gave birth to Louis Topkis who in 1881 arrived where he settled in Wilmington, Delaware,  became President of Topkis  Brothers Company and active member of the Republican Party while serving as President of the Wilmington Hebrew Charities Association while raising a family with the former Esther Krigtstein.

1873: Major Alfred Mordecai, Jr. begins serving as a member of the New Cavalry Outfit Board.

1873: Louis, duc Decazes, who used Bohemian born Franco-Jewish journalist to expose German plans to invade France, began serving as Foreign Minister today.

1873: It was reported today that members of Adas Jeshrun and Anshi Chesed, two Jewish Temples in Manhattan, have been meeting to discuss the possibility of consolidation. Anshi Chesed has over 100 members while Adas Jeshrun has approximately 300 members. Some of the sticking points revolve around finances with Anshi Chesed being in $110,000 in debt from the construction of a new sanctuary. The other points of contention revolve around ritual. Adas Jeshrun is not in favor of many of the reforms adopted by other Temples.  Prayer is in Hebrew and heads are covered during services.  Anshi Chesed favors reform.  Services are held in German and there is a movement to begin using English.  And heads are uncovered during services.

1874: “Influences of Judaism on Early Christianity” published today shows that acknowledging the Jewish origins of Christianity becomes a negative in the conflict between Protestants and Catholics.  “There is no question that the earliest Christian Church was a Hebrew Church. There is also no question that it was an offshoot from this Hebrew Church which planted itself with exceptional vigor at Rome; and that hence Roman Christianity from that time to this, has been strongly tinctured with Jewish elements, has blazed with Jewish intolerance, delighted in Jewish gorgeousness, and fallen a victim to Jewish realism; while Pauline or Augustinian or Protestant idealism has struggled manfully…to overcome the deep weight of these lower ingredients…and to assert for intelligence and freedom their true place in the Church.”

1874: The New York Times defended itself charges leveled in the Jewish Messenger that the paper’s use of the term “Jew” was one of derision or insult.  The Times contended that it was merely using it as an identification of national origin or ancestry in the same way that that it uses the term to American or Englishman.  The Times identifies lawbreakers as Jewish and does not do so with Christian lawbreakers, because absent the statement of distinction, it is assumed the criminal is a Christian.

1877: Birthdate of Ira Solomon Wile, the native of Rochester, NY who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1902 and “practiced as a pediatrician at Mt. Sinai Hospital” in New York City.

1877: Birthdate of Newark, NJ native and Jefferson Medical College trained physician and surgeon, Edwin Steiner, the father of three children – Edwin Jr, Dr. Charles and Grace – who served as Lt. Col. in the United States Public Health Service during World War II and practiced medicine for over half a century in Essex County, NJ.

1878: It was reported today that government of Romania has continued to fail to honor its pledges concerning the treatment of Jews given to the Great Powers when they met in Berlin. “Unless the some of the treat power can be induced” to take direct action “It is likely that the Romanian Jews will be no better off in the immediate future they have been in the past.

1879(14th of Kislev, 5640): Mr. S.L. Lewis passed away today in the Sandwich Islands. (This may be the first reported death of a Jew in what is now Hawaii).

1880: It was reported today that “a petition has been presented to Prince Bismarck to restrict the civil rights of the Jews and repeal the absolute equality enjoyed by them with German.” The petition sent to the Chancellor is filled with complaints that Jews “are rapidly getting rich as merchants, landed proprietors and capitalists” and that if left unchecked within a generation Jews “will be lording it over the Teutons” i.e. the true Germans. 

1881: It was reported today that I. Albert Engelhart is the President of the newly incorporated Hebrew Society for the Improvement of the Sanitary Condition of the Poor.  Uriah Hermann and Alfred Steckler are the vice presidents of the society which is dedicated to improving the living conditions of the immigrant and poor in New York.  Among other things, the society will work for the construction of “good tenements” that will be healthful home and to “prevent the adulteration” of their food.

1883: Miss Lillie Bernheimer treated 170 children attending the Industrial School of the United Hebrew Charities to turkey dinner in honor of Thanksgiving.

1884: In Cleveland, OH, newspaperman Maurice Weidenthal, the Bohemian born son “of Emanuel and Julie Weidenthal” and his wife Lida Weidenthal gave birth to Edward Weidenthal

1884(11th of Kislev, 5645): Fifty-seven year old, Levi Goldenberg  A native of Frankfort, he came to the Baltimore, MD in 1845 before eventually moving to New York where he became a leading lace merchant, as one of the principles of Goldenberg Brothers &Co.  Goldenberg was a noted philanthropist and was a founding member of Temple Beth-El

1885: It was reported today that there has been a clash between a band of Austrian Gypsies and a Jes living in village in Bessarabia.

1885: A review of The Religion of Philosophy or The Unification of Knowledge by Raymond S Perrin published today points out that the “Hebrew Religion has a chapter to itself.”

1886: It was reported today that there are approximately 6,300,000 Jews in the world today, two and a half million of whom live in the European part of the Russian Empire.  There are 63,000 Jews living in France while there are 562,000 Jews living in France.  Ironically, 39,000 of them live in Alsac-Lorraine which means the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War reduced France’s Jewish population by about one third.

1887: It was reported today the Reverend E. D. Simons of Bloomfield, NJ, will present a paper entitled “Why the Jews Crucified Christ” next week.

1887: A national meeting of Reform Rabbis came to a close in New York City today. 

1887: Seventy-eight year old Dr. Samuel Adler, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanu-El “gave a dissertation on the benedictions with which ritual is interspersed “tracing them back “Ezra and the return from the Babylonian Capitivty.”

1888(25th of Kislev, 5649): For Jews a double header – first day of Chanukah and Thanksgiving

1888: At Temple Beth-El in New York, Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler will deliver a sermon entitled “What does America owe to the Jews and what the Jew to America at today’s Thanksgiving  Services

1888: It was reported today that the late Mrs. Jette Lissauer named the Home for Aged and Infirmed Hebrews and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum as two of her beneficiaries in her will provided that the patients and students say Kaddish on her Yarhtzeit. 

1888: It was reported today that Yetta Reiner, an 18 year old Jewish girl who arrived in the United States two weeks ago was last seen on November 26 talking to a man on the corner of Hester and Norfolk Streets who promised to find her a job.

1888: It was reported today from Vienna, that “Baron Hirsch has made a donation of $5,000,000 for schools for Jews in Galicia and Bukovina.”

1889: It was reported today that one of “little girls” under the care of the United Hebrew Charities read a poem to Samuel D. Levy yesterday “congratulating him on having his birthday on Thanksgiving Day, so that he could celebrate with Turkey.”

1889: It was reported today that the new synagogue being built on 67thStreet between Lexington and Third avenue “will be known as the Ephraim Memorial in honor of the late Ephraim Weil,” whose sons have contributed heavily to the building fund.  In Hebrew, the congregation is called Zichron Ephraim.(The congregation lives on today as Park East Synagogue. The orthodox congregation is led by Rabbi Bernard Drachman.

1889: It was reported that the 600 children at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum “ate about six hundred pounds of turkey at their Thanksgiving dinner” and consumed “enough cake and ice cream and candy to freight a ship. (The reference to Turkey and ice cream makes wonder about the Kashrut at this esteemed institution supported by such Jewish luminaries as Jesse Seligman and Oscar Straus)

1892: In France, during the investigation of the scandal surrounding the failed attempt to build the Panama Canal the Chamber of Deputies heard testimony that Charles de Lesseps had said that among those whom he paid to influence the price of his company’s stock were the Jews who “offered to assist when new issues were announced” because they were “able to praise or decry according to the sums received.”  ( Frenchmen were always willing to blame Jews every time one of their financial bubbles burst and the public’s view of Jews as conniving manipulators was instrumental in creating the environment that gave birth to the Dreyfus affair).

1893: Plans were published today for the upcoming Thanksgiving Dinner sponsored by the United Hebrew Charities Society.

1894(1st of Kislev, 5655): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1894: Thanksgiving

1894: In Cleveland, OH, Marcus and Addie Fedder gave birth to Lloyd H. Feder, the husband of Jeanne Feder.

1894: “Three hundred and fifty little girls and boys pupils of the Industrial School of the United Hebrew Charities were entertained today at a Thanksgiving dinner at the schoolhouse on 85 St. Mark’s Place

1894: “To Humanity,” the new Hamilton place wing of the Montefiore Home was dedicated today in New York.  The Montefiore Home had been dedicated ten years earlier as part of the Centennial Celebration honoring Sir Moses Montefiore. Among the speakers were Jacob Schiff and Charles S. Fairchild who noted “how appropriate it was to have the celebration on Thanksgiving Day.”

1895: According to evidence presented today at the Harlem Court, Solomon Riens a resident of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews right to vote was challenged by Eugene Frayer because the institution received tax money which meant he was a public charge and this not eligible to vote. The unanswered question is why the other 12 residents of the Home were allowed to vote without any challenge.

1895: Twenty-seven year old Daniel Ryan and 36 year old Daniel Healy were charged with “Jew baiting” in Essex Market Court after the police observed them striking at every Jew they passed on East Broadway.

1895: It was reported today that attendance of the Girl’s Industrial School of the United Hebrew Charities averages 250 students a day.

1896(24th of Kislev, 5657): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1896: Several trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund visited the agricultural colony established by the fund at Woodbine, NJ for Jewish immigrants from Russia.

1896: The Jewish settlers at Woodbine, NJ dedicated their new house of worship this evening.

1896: James Loeb will deliver a lecture at the Hebrew Institute on “Civic Life in Greece.”

1896: The funeral for former State Senator Joseph C. Wolff will take this place this morning at Temple Ahawath Chesed at Lexington and 55th.

1897: Birthdate of Alfred K. Stern, the Fargo, ND, native who marred Martha Dodd Stern, the daughter of William E. Dodd FDR’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany. She became a foe of the Nazis and fascism and he joined her in her efforts which led to them being named as suspected spies for the Soviet Union.

1897: Herzl outlines his ideas for the "Jewish Colonial Bank" in a letter to Max Nordau.

1897: Birthdate of Troy, NY native Joseph Harris, who attended Rensselaer Polytechnic

1897: “Jews In United States” published today included information in the recently issued sixth publication of the American Jewish Historical Society that featured an article by Philadelphian David Sulzberger entitled “Growth of the of the Jewish Population in the United States.”

1898: The outbreak of measles among the children of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum which began on November 5 “has been checked” according to Superintendent Baar.

1898: Birthdate of C.S. Lewis

http://blog.beliefnet.com/kingdomofpriests/2010/02/jrr-tolkien-cs-lewis-on-jews.html

1898: Birthdate of Kovno native Louis Eliot Baker, the Massachusetts attorney who was active in the YMHA and B’nai B’rith

1898: Twenty-seven year old Wittenberg educated and Ohio State University trained physician Louis Syman, a specialist in the practice of internal medicine and the Cleveland born son of Ranks and Rebecca Syman who served as the “regimental surgeon of the 362nd Infantry, U.S. Army during WWI, married Bertha Reinheimer today.

1898: Birthdate of Morris Dicker who would be buried in the Agudas Achim Cemetery in Iowa City.

1898: In Camden, NJ, “Solomon Joseph and Rosa (Zuckerman) Goldstein” gave birth to University of Pennsylvania trained physician who specialized in obstetrics and gynecology and co-authored “Paget’s Disease of the Bones” and served as President of Beth-El Synagogue in Camden, NJ.

1900: Birthdate of Evansville, IN, native and newspaperman Arthur T. Weil, the holder of Bachelor’s in Journalism from University Missouri who wrote “Exploding the Myth of a Jewish Hierarchy which was published in the American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune which published in May of 1934.

1901: The Reverend William F. McGinnis, the President of the International Catholic Truth Society today received a letter from the Cardinal Secretary at the Vatican denying that shortly after the assassination of President McKinley “the Pope had advocated a crusade against anarchists, Jews, Christian Scientists, Spirituals and an number of other believers in creeds that widely differ from that of Rome.”

1901: It was reported today that Dr. A.L. Wolborst, “a well-known physician” is President of New Era Club, an organization made up mostly of young Jewish men from the East Side including A.H. Fromenson of the Jewish Way who is the Vice President and A.S. Solomon of the Baron de Hirsch Fund.

1902: In St. Louis, Morris and Eva Ostrich Bearman gave birth to their youngest son Leo Berman, the Vanderbilt trained attorney who practiced in Memphis where he was a pillar of the Jewish community.

http://www.jhsmem.org/bio/LeoBearman.pdf

1902:  In Turin, physician Ercole Levi and Annetta Treves, gave Italian painter and novelist Carlo Levi and nephew of Claudio Treves.

1903: It was reported today that “in the opinion of New York Butchers who kill cattle under rabbinical and State supervision, the order of the State Humane Society of Colorado stopping ‘kosher’ killing in that State will act as a boomerang as it did in New York and ultimately will result in the prohibition of cattle killing except by the ‘kosher’ method.’”

1905(1st of Kislev, 5666): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1905: On its editorial page, the New York Times published “the letter by a worthy Christian with a heart and soul full of sympathy” for the “poor suffering Jews of Russia” signed simply “W.H.S.”

1905: Jacob H. Schiff, the Treasurer of “the National Relief Committee which is collecting funds for the sufferers from Russian massacres” received a letter from Baron Horace Gunzberg which provided “the first word” of how the funds will be distributed once they get to Russia which he said will go to the Jews and those who have suffering by helping to protect the Jews.

1905: The Koinigsberf Hartugnsche Zeitung,  a German newspaper that is “usually reliable” printed “dispatch from Minsk” today  saying that a planned massacre of the Jews had been “averted through negotiations between the Jews and the priest who leads the anti-Semitic element” but that in reality, “the massacre has merely been postponed until next week.”

1905: Today, in Paris, “prices on the Bourse were feeble at the opening, but strengthened on a report that the Russian laws aimed against the Jews had been abrogated.”

1905: It was reported today that so far $920,000 has been collected by the National Committee for the Relief of the Sufferers from the Russian Massacres including $545 from Congregation Beth-El in Alexandria, VA, $114 from Temple Emanu-El in Vancouver, British Columbia and $43 from the “Jewish Community of Enid, Oklahoma.”

1905: “Russian Poles and Jews” who are seeking employment in Canada and “who were captured by the Japanese arrived” in Victoria, British Columbia aboard “the steam Iyo Maru” today.

1905: It was reported today that in Russia “all train service has been stopped so there is no means for the Jews to escape the slaughter” but “when the trains are running again the Jews will emigrate by the thousands and come to America.”

1905: It was reported today that four thousand Jews gathered at a mass meeting in Berlin where “strong resolutions were adopted” protesting against the violence in Russia.

1905: The Altamont Culture Club, whose members included Joseph Deane, Charles H. Schneer and Samuel Berman was “organized” today in Norfolk, VA.

1905: It was reported today that a committee consisting of Isidor Straus, Marcus M. Marks, Edward Lauterbach, Arthur K. Kuhn, Abraham Erlanger, Albert Stiglitz and Gustav Lindenthal will make an appeal to the public for additional funds on behalf of the Educational Alliance which is facing an “increased demand” for its services in “Americanizing the ignorant and destitute immigrants who are coming to” the United States in ever increasing numbers because of the “persecution now going on in Russia.

1906: Thirty year old Charles C. Simons, the Detroit born son of David W. Simon and University of Michigan trained attorney who was appointed by President Harding to serve as a U.S. District Judge married Lillian Bernstein today in Chicago.

1906: Birthdate of photographer Sterling Henry Nahum, the Clifton College and University of Manchester decorated WW II veteran, known as the Baron, who began his career of photographing the Royal Family thanks to having “earned the confidence Lord Mountbatten.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-jews-shot-their-way-into-britains-photographic-memory/

1907(23rd of Kislev, 5668): Sixty-four year old journalist, CSA veteran and three term mayor of Baton Rouge, Leon Jastremski, the Soulon, France born son of “Vincent Jastremski, a Polish Jewish emigre, where he had studied medicine” passed away today.

https://www.lib.lsu.edu/sites/default/files/sc/findaid/2951.pdf

1907: Birthdate of Italian-born British geneticist Guido Pontecorvo who fled from his homeland to Great Britain in 1938 to avoid growing anti-Semitism.

http://wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digital-collections/makers-of-modern-genetics/digitised-archives/guido-pontecorvo

1908: Birthdate of Harry Wagreich, the Professor of Chemistry at CCNY and brother of Dr. Samuel Wagreich and Dr. Paul Wagreich.

1909: It was reported today that Rabbi J. Leonard Levy explained the fact that sermons could be heard in the newly refurbished Rodolph Shalom Synagogue due to “something applied to the walls which absorbs surplus sound.”

1910: Birthdate of Austrian born Anglo-Jewish scholar Walter Ullman who specialized in “medieval political thought and legal theory.”

1911(8th of Kislev, 5672): Cleveland rabbi, Max Lakman passed away today.

1912: In Chicago Rabbi Katkoff and Cantor Millar are scheduled to lead Friday night services at the Institute.

1912: Yiddish theatre stars Jacob P. Adler, Leon Blank and Francis Adler are scheduled to perform tonight at the Haymarket in Chicago this evening.

1913(29th of Cheshvan, 5674): Parashat Tolodot

1913: The Daily Mail dispatch from Odessa said that Mayor of Kieff had said that his failure to float a municipal loan of $7,885,000 in London was attributable “to the evil repute into which Kieff had fallen on account of the trial of Melvin Bellis on the charges of ritual murder.”

1914(11th of Kislev, 5675): Sixty-four year old Gittel “Catherine” Helvich Schubert, the wife of the late David Schubert with whom she had six children passed away today after which she was buried in Salem Fields Cemetery.

1914(11th of Kislev, 5675): Lewis Seasongood, the Bavarian born son of “Mendel and Hannah Suessenguth, and the husband of Emma Seasongood with whom he had two children, who “settled in Cincinnati in 1851 after which he was appointed in 1873 “by President Grant Commissioner to the Vienna Exposition and “in 1882 appointed by Governor Foster Quartermaster of the State with the rank of General” passed away today in Atlantic City.

1914: Borough President Marcus M. Marks the delegates attending the sixth annual convention of the Federation of Jewish Farmers of America which is meeting in the Education Alliance building “that they ought to avail themselves of the free markets” thereby helping to reduce the cost of living among Jews living on the Lower East Side.

1914: A committee of 100 formed at a meeting of the Educational Meeting is scheduled to meet Solomon Rabinowitz who uses the pen name Sholom Aleichem when he arrives in New York today aboard the Frederik VIII from Copenhagen where he has staying “since his escape from Berlin.”

1914: The Day published an editorial entitled “Russian Promises and Polish Pogroms” by Herman Bernstein.

1914: It was reported today that “in Janow and Krasmk the Jews were accused of setting mines to destroy Russian soldiers” which was the justification for destroying the two towns and hanging Jews including children from telephone poles.

1914: “Poles Killing Jews” published today provides a summary of the attack first published in The Day “by George Brandes, the Danish critic on the anti-Jewish agitation in Poland.

1914: It was reported today that a brief will be presented to the Supreme Court that will include a challenge to the conviction of Leo Frank by on a suggestion “by Mr. Justice Homes that there was a denial of due process of law through the presence of hostile mob.”

1915: Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, the commander of the Zion Mule Corps fell ill and had to be evacuated to Alexandria and thence to London “leaving Joseph Trumpeldor in command.”  (Jewish Virtual Library)

1915(22nd of Tevet, 5676): Meyer London a native of Wolkovishk, Russia who came to the United States 47 years where he became so successful at baking “unleavened bread” that he was known as the Matzah King passed away today at this home on East Broadway.

1915: Mrs. Etta Fine the “President of the association of 1,200 mother who support and manage” the Jewish Day Nursery facilities which serve “fatherless children” was quoted today as saying that “it will take $25,000 to run the branches on Henry Street and East 107th Street.”

1916: Fifteen hundred of the six thousand Jews in the United States who have gone in for farming sent delegates” today “to the opening session of the eighth annual convention of the Federation of Jewish Farmers of America” where “they were welcomed by Louis Marshall, the President of the American Jewish Committee, eighty year old Simon Wolf of Washington, Rabbi Judah L. Magne and Cyrus Sulzberger.

1916: Jacob H. Schiff is among those who have been asked to address the “great peace meeting” scheduled to be held at P.S. 4 this evening whose supporters included Harry Schalacht of the East Side Protective Association.

1916: In the Dominican Republic, 57 year old Francisco Hilario y Carvajal completed his service as President of the Council of Secretaries of State.

1917: Former University of Michigan halfback Joseph “Joe” Magidsohn, “the first Jewish athlete to win a varsity ‘M’” who was the “first athlete known to have refused to compete on the Jewish High Holy Days” and his wife Jennie Magidsohn gave birth to their second child Dorothy Magidsohn today.

1917(14th of Kislev, 5678): Forty-one year old Dr. Sigmund Deutsch, a member of the army medical reserve corps passed away today in New York City.

1917: The Jewish National Workers Alliance of America which had been organized in 1912 held its annual conference today in Trenton, NJ.

1917: As the British continued their offensive to take Jerusalem, a combined force of the British and Australian Nos. 1 and 111 Squadrons, attacked the Tul Keram aerodrome in the morning and again in the evening “after German planes bombed the Julis aerodrome and hit No. 113 Squadron's orderly room.”

1917: Thanksgiving

1917: President Wilson received a pledge of the support of the Jews of the United States in his prosecution of the war at a Thanksgiving service of the Institutional Synagogue where “Representative Isaac Siegel…said that the pacifist views attributed to certain elements of the Jewish people did not represent the general attitude of the Jews of this country” since “there are 62,000 loyal Hebrews in the Army,” four thousand of whom “are already with General Pershing in France.”

1917: Standing on a platform at Cooper Union draped with the Stars and Stripes and the flag of Zionism Baruch Zuckerman, the General Secretary of the Peoples Relief Committee presided over a meeting tonight “of Zionist who are Socialists” and are celebrating the declaration of the British Government expressing support for “allowing the Jews to establish their national home in Palestine

1918(25th of Kislev, 5679): First Day of Chanukah and the first Chanukah celebrated after four years of World War.

1918: “Julian W. Mack, the President of the Zionist Organization of America and Louis Marshall, the President of the American Jewish Committee, issued a joint statement” today in which they said that the organizations they represent have received from authoritative and unprejudiced sources in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London and the Hague explicit cablegrams substantiating reports of pogroms in Galicia and various parts of Poland and Rumania.

1918: It was reported today that Dr. Stephen S. Wise will serve as chairman of the delegation that the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is sending to Europe to deal with “many questions concerning” the Zionist movement that have arisen in Europe.  The delegation includes Mrs. Joseph Fels, Louis Robinson, Dr. Shmarya Levin and the Chicago attorney Bernard Flexner. (This delegation was being sent as the world prepared for the Peace Conference at Versailles which was intended to formally end the World War and lay the groundwork for a new world order based on Wilson’s 14 Points. Among other things, the Jews wanted to make sure that the victors honored the promises of the Balfour Declaration and took measures to protect the Jews living in the former Austrian, German and Russian empires.

1919: In Montreal, Louis and Anna Weider gave birth to Josef Weider who gained fame as bodybuilder Joe Weider the creator of “an empire of muscle magazines, fitness equipment, doubtful dietary supplements and Olympic-style contests featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger.” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

1920: In New York City Richard Wolff, “a mechanical engineer” and the former Estelle Cohn gave birth to Robert Alfred Wolff, the sportscaster whom I first heard as the voice of one of the worst teams in baseball – the Washington Senators – and whom none of my friends at the time knew was Jewish.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/sports/bob-wolff-dead-sports-broadcaster.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article&_r=0

1921: “In the town of Soroke in Bessarabian Romania,” Rokhl and Elkhonen Gendler gave birth Arkady Gendler who became the “icon and paragon of the Yiddish Revival Movement.:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/131547/91-year-old-yiddish-rock-star

1921: Twenty-six year old Thea (Almerigotti) La Guardia, the first wife of  future Mayor Fiorello La Guardia whose father was a Catholic from Italy and whose mother was Jew from Trieste and who chose to follow in the faith of his father but dazzled New Yorkers with his ability to speak Yiddish on the campaign trail

1921: Eighty-five year old Augustus Hopkins Strong the author of Systematic Theology: The Doctrine of of God which “which presented an alternative explanation of all the alleged inaccuracies reflected in the Hebrew Bible” passed away today.

1922: In the Village of Ashmore in Dorset, Edith Edinger and Geoffrey Howard gave birth to Oxford historian Michael Elliot Howard the winner of the Wolfson Prize, which was established by Sir Isaac Wolfson, in 1972 for The Grand Strategy: August 1942 – September 1943

1923: Charlie Phil Rosenberg, a product of the Jewish Lower East Side in New York, met future Bantamweight World Champion Eddie Martin for the first of their three bouts today.

1924: Birthdate of Jane Niederhoffer the Flatbush native who gained fame as landscape artist Jane Freilicher.

1925: In Washington, DC, the Hebrew Home for the Aged dedicated a new 35 bed facility.

1925: Two days after he had passed way, funeral service were held for 43 year old Horace Andrew Saks, co-founder of Saks Fifth Avenue followed by burial in Brooklyn at Salem Fields.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1925/11/28/98842905.pdf

1926: In responding to publication of the report of Dr. Henry S. Pritchett of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who asserted that the movement to colonize Palestine with Jews is ""unfortunate and visionary," Congressman Emanuel Celler maintained that Dr. Pritchett went to Palestine to find a flare and was surprised to find success.  He said that disparage Palestine now was ‘childish,’ that it has been sanctioned and encouraged by the League of Nations. ‘To call the Jews an egotistical nation without capacity of cooperation, with the rest of the world, is akin to insult and belies the history and tradition of the Jews.’ [Editor’s Note:  An early version of anti-Zionism meets anti-Semitism.

1926: At tonight’s meeting of the Jewish National Fund at Cooper Union, Bernard A. Rosenblatt responded to “the adverse report of Dr. Henry S. Pritchett on Zionism in Palestine…declared that the fundamentals of economic prosperity exited in Palestine and they would be fully developed.”

1928: Thanksgiving

1928: “In a Thanksgiving address at Temple Ansche Chesed,” Senator Royal S. Copeland “traced the origins of Thanksgiving Day to the Jews of Biblical times saying: ‘I have no doubt that Elder Brewster and the Pilgrim Fathers consulted the Book of Books in preparing for the first Thanksgiving Day.’”

1928: In Manhattan, Irving Kaufman, a CPA and the former Sophie Smith gave birth to Charles Kaufman, the holder of a doctoral degree in musicology who “saved” the Mannes College of Music. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/nyregion/charles-kaufman-former-mannes-college-of-music-leader-dies-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1928: Birthdate of Shulamit Aloni an Israeli politician and left-wing activist. She is a prominent member of the Israeli peace camp, founded the Ratz party and was leader of the Meretz party and served as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1993.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/former-minister-shulamit-aloni-dies-at-85-2/

1929: ‘The Love Parade,” a musical comedy directed and produced by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Lillian Roth was released today in the United States.

1929: In Chicago, Arthur Mordechai Rabinovitz, the Lithuanian born son  of Sholem Moshe Rabinovitz and Chaya-Leah Levy, and his wife Anna Dorothy Silverstone gave birth to Abba Silverstone Rabinovitz

1930(9th of Kislev, 5691): Parashat Vayetzei

1930: In Randfontein, South Africa, Eli and Olga Goldblatt whose parents had fled European persecution gave birth to photographer David Goldblatt.

https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/exhibitions/david-goldblatt/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/oct/16/david-goldblatts-photographs-documenting-the-casual-horror-of-apartheid-south-africa

1930: This evening “a prominent member of the Revisionists’ Central Committee…said that Jabotinsky’s party would not agree to negotiate with the British Government on the basis of the present white paper. The Revisionists also will not negotiate with the Arabs as long as they continue to demand the abolition of the Balfour Declaration, revocation of the Palestine mandate and the denial of right Jews to repopulate Palestine as a national homeland.

1930: In Upper Clapton, London Jacob Edward "Jack" Cohen, the founder and owner of Tesco, and Sarah "Cissie" (née Fox), the daughter of a master tailor gave birth to Shirley Cohen who gained fame as Dame Shirley Porter, a leader of the Conservative Party in the UK and who “helped established the Porter Centre for Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University, which opened its iconic LEED Platinum-graded building in 2014.”

1931: In Philadelphia, PA the former Rose Schwartz and Harry Rosenberg gave birth to Allen Perry Rosenberg the Olympic rowing coach. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1932: Several Jews were injured in Lwow by Gentiles leaving the cemetery where Jan Grotowski while four young Jews who had previously been arrested were “tried in a summary court” as anti-Semitic outburst continued throughout the country.1935

1933: Birthdate of Dr. David Reubenauthor of Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex

1934: “While the rest of the team was playing in Omiya, Moe Berg “the intellectual baseball player turned spy’ went to Saint Luke's Hospital in Tsukiji, ostensibly to visit the daughter of American ambassador Joseph Grew but instead sneaked onto the roof of the hospital, one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo, and filmed the city and harbor with his movie camera. (These pictures would later be used by the Doolittle Raiders when they attacked Tokyo in 1942.)

1934: “A delegation representing the Vienna Jewish community was en route to Paris today to negotiate with leading Jewish organizations” including the American Joint Distribution Committee “for extensive loans to the community organizations” in Austria where the government has instituted a program “ousting Jews from the country’s economic system.

1935: In Cleveland, OH, Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner addressed the National Convention of Hadassah where he urged “this generation of Jews to make Palestine the homeland for hundreds of thousands of Jews who are being crowded out of many countries.

1936: Germany's Minister of Agriculture, Walther Darré, declared that democracy and liberalism were invented by the Jews and that “communism would not fail because of its theories but solely because it was Jewish.”

1936: It was announced today that “Governor Herbert H. Lehman and leading educators from parts of the country will participate in a series of meetings designed to ‘honor and evaluation scholarship in the fields of religion and Hebraic learning’ under the auspices of the Semi-Centennial Committee of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.”

1936: “The British Royal Commission now in Jerusalem inquiring into the administration of the Palestine mandate was asked today” through a “resolution adopted by the National Council for Palestine” which is composed of Jewish” leaders in the United States, “to embody in its findings the policies of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which pledged Great Britain to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.”

1936: Tonight in Moscow at the All-Union Congress of Soviets Premier Molotoff attacked fascism, declared Soviet democracy was superior to bourgeois democracy” and emphasized that equality of races was guaranteed in the Soviet Union” where “active anti-Semitism was punished by death” while “Chancellor Adolf Hitler used Jews as scapegoats for everything that went wrong in Germany.”

1936: “Air Minister Herman Goering…declared that Germany was now a stronger power than she was in 1914.” (See the above and the outlines of WW II become obvious as to why there were Jews who supported the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.)

1936: The National Council for Palestine adopted a resolution which was sent today to the British Royal Commission now meeting in Jerusalem ask that it “it embody in its findings the policies of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which pledged Great Britain to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.”

1937(25th of Kislev, 5698): First day of Chanukah; in the evening kindle the second light.

1937: Birthdate of Zuzana Goldmannová who in 1942 was deported from Prague to Ujazdow where she was murdered by the Nazis.

1937: Today’s edition of Time magazine describes the fate of Arnold Bernstein at the hands of his Nazi jailers.

Greying Arnold Bernstein, 47, son of an old-time Saxon shipper, served with distinction as a German artillery officer during the War, was decorated with the Iron Cross, First Class. Back in Germany after the War he evolved the scheme of fitting modern freighters with automobile elevators so that U. S. cars could be exported to Europe uncrated and unscratched. So successful was this that Bernstein "floating garages'' have long carried over 60% of all U. S. automobile exports, made enough money for sole Owner Arnold Bernstein to allow him to buy out the American-Belgian-British Red Star Line and incidentally bring into Nazi Germany thousands of dollars yearly in much needed foreign exchange. Bernstein passenger agents find their boats are "very popular with intellectuals who object to the snobbishness of Cabin Class." Partly because of his personal popularity and War record, Shipper Arnold Bernstein was left in control of his business much longer than most Jewish tycoons. Finally last January, Nazi extremists forced the Government's hand. Arnold Bernstein and four of his managers (three Jewish), were clapped into jail, charged with "economic sabotage" through infringing German foreign exchange regulations. While he sat in jail Bernstein's 21-month-old Palestine Shipping Co. went into receivership "because the Jews deserted me," says Prisoner Bernstein, and Japanese bought for $150,000 its auctioned steamer Tel Aviv. Last week in Hamburg the trial of Arnold Bernstein began. Of all the eight charges in a 88-page indictment against Shipper Bernstein the gravest was that several years ago he set aside in Manhattan banks a fund from the Arnold Bernstein & Red Star Lines' profits to be held for a rainy day of the two lines (whose two chief creditors are the Erie R. R. and Chemical Bank & Trust Co.). This entire sum was returned to Germany some months ago. Hamburg lawyers scoffed at news stories that Bernstein "faces death," expected him to get anything from a five-year jail sentence to pardon. Since the arrest of Arnold Bernstein, Herman Kollmar, the director of his Red Star Line and his executor, has been in amicable contact with Minister President & Economic Director Hermann Goring, seeking a pardon, showing Ford and Studebaker company letters urging clemency. Mr. Kollmar denied rumors that the German Government has taken or plans to take over the Bernstein Line, admitted these rumors have caused many cancellations.

1937: The Habima Hebrew Players open their third week of their season at London’s Savoy Theatre with a performance of “The Wandering Jews.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a police tender was ambushed and a British constable was killed near Nazareth. A Jewish worker was wounded when a bus was shot at near Nahalal, at the same spot where two Jewish shepherds were murdered and their flocks stolen a year earlier.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that there were very favorable, frequently enthusiastic reports on the series of performances given by the Habimah theater troupe on its visit to London. In the midst of Arab terrorism the Jewish community to develop its artistic, social and political institutions.

1938(6th of Kislev, 5699): Sixty-five year old school teacher Isaac Plaut, the German born son of Simon and Lina Plaut and husband of Sophie Plaut with whom he had had eight children was murdered today at Sachenhausen

1938: Establishment of the 29th“tower and stockade” kibbutz, Mishmar Zevulun which would be moved to a new site in 1940 and renamed Kfar Masaryk in honor of the first President of Czechoslovakia.

1939: “American numismatist,” Eric Pfeiffer Newman, the son of Samuel Elijah Newman and Rose Pfeiffer Newman married Evelyn Edison who “had two children, Linda N. Schapiro and Andrew E. Newman.”

1939: Heydrich commented on the first stages of the Final Solution declaring that "The factor determining the pace of the evacuation is the Evacuation Plan."   Nothing would slow down the ultimate march to the Death Camps.

1939: SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the death penalty for German Jews who refuse to report for deportation.

1939: Thanks to the “intervention by the United States and British consul execution of the order by the authorities in Kaunas that Maurycy Orezch, the correspondent for the Daily Forwardreturned to the German-occupied territory of Poland has been stayed and the British consul said he was ready to grant Orzech a visa to England if Estonia, Latvia and Sweden would grant transit visas.”

1939: “Premier Wladilas Sikorski of Poland issued a statement” in Paris tonight “vigorously protesting Nazi ‘atrocities’ in the western part of Poland” which have been incorporated into the German Reich.

1940: Levie (Louis) Hillesum, the father of Esther (Etty) Hillesum was dismissed as classics teacher and deputy headmaster of the gymnasium in Deventer “by the occupation government imposed by Nazi German following the invasion of The Netherlands.”

1940: On his own initiative, Dutch Physicist Leonard Ornstein withdrew his membership in the Dutch Physical Society

1940: “The Bank Dick” a comedy featuring Shemp Howard with music by Charles Previn was released in the United States today.

1940: Six months after having been released in the United Kingdom, “Contraband, “a spy film with a screenplay by Emeric Pressburger was released in the United States today.

1941: Fredrich Jecekeln  held a final planning session with is senior commander where he told them that “the extermination of the Jews was their patriotic duty” and that nobody would be excused from participating in the upcoming liquation of the ghetto.

1941: Karl Heise met with the Protective Police and told them of their role in tomorrows “resettlement of the Jews in the Riga Ghetto, a term they all knew meant a mass killing.

1941: The Latvian militia and police received their final instructions as to their role in the upcoming liquidation of the ghetto. (The Nazis could always count on local accomplices during the Shoah)

1941: In Riga, as of this morning “the Nazis had finished segregating the able-bodied men into the small ghetto.”

1941: In Riga, “while the columns of 1,000 were formed this morning, they were later dispersed, causing relief among the inhabitants, who believed that the entire evacuation had been cancelled

1941:“After returning from work today, Max Kaufman and his 16 year old son, did not return to the large ghetto, but were housed instead in a ruined building on Vilanu Street in the small ghetto

1941: The first transport of German Jews from Berlin arrived in Riga today.

1941: Jan Peerce (b. Yakob Perelmuth) “made his much acclaimed debut at the Met” at the same time when his brother-in-law Richard Tucker was trying to start a small business and working at Temple Adath Israel in the Bronx.

1941: Kovno Massacre of the Ghetto. Estimated 10,600 people would be killed over the next few days.

1942: The Jewish Fighting Organization of the Warsaw Ghetto assassinated the economic head of the Jewish Council who was an active German collaborator

1942: The U.S. Drum, a submarine serving in the Pacific, began its fourth war patrol with future Admiral Maurice Rindskopf serving as Torpedo and Gunnery Officer.

1942: Dr. Erich Blumenthal, a resident of Berlin who was born in 1883 was deported today and finally murdered in Auschwitz. (As reported by YNet)

1942: Helen Blumenthal, a resident of Berlin who was born in 1888 was deported today and finally murdered in Auschwitz. (As reported by YNet)

1942: Friedrich Rehmer, a member of the Red Orchestra, who was in the Brietz military hospital recovering from a severe war wound sustained on the Eastern Front was arrested today and taken from the hospital. Eventually, he would be killed for his role in the resistance.

1943: “50,000 Kiev Jews Reported Killed” published today provides a firsthand account of the slaughter at Babi Yar and the attempts to cover it up by the Nazis.  It is worth reading in its entirety because it puts the lie to the notion that people did not know about the slaughter of the Jews until after the war was over.

1944: Today, “four days after advancing into Holland,” Major Ronald Edmond Balfour, the lecturer at King’s College, Cambridge who had been serving with the British Army since 1940 and had joined the Monuments Men in 1944” “fractured his ankle in a traffic accident” after which he “outmaneuvered the medical staff at a hospital in Eindhoven” and thus avoided being ship back to the UK.

1945: “Carrying placards denouncing British treatment of the Palestine problem and chanting ‘We are with you, Jews in Palestine,’ four hundred member of youthful Zionist groups in” New York City today “paraded in an orderly fashion in front of the British Consulate at 25 Broadway.

1946: British Court in Palestine rejects a petition to prevent deportation of Jews to Cyprus

1946: Today, Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman delivered a tribute in memory of Dr. Solly Baron, the rabbi who had fled Nazi Germany and who passed at the age of 72 two days earlier in St. Louis.

1946: Today, for the second time, NBC cancelled “The Guiding Light,” a soap operated created by Irma Phillips which “was based on personal experiences.

1946: Szapsel (Shabtai) Rotholc, the Polish-Jewish boxer, “was expelled from the Jewish community for a period of two years; his civil rights in the community were rescinded for a further three years.” (As reported by Uri Talshir)

1947: In one of the most historic moments in Jewish history, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to accept the recommendation of the United Nations Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP).  UNSCOP recommended the partition of Palestine into two states – one Jewish and one Arab with Jerusalem to governed by an international authority.  The vote was thirty-three in favor, thirteen against and ten abstentions.  In a rare moment of Cold War solidarity, both the United States and the Soviet Union supported the UNSCOP plan which guaranteed the creation of the state of Israel in May of 1948.  One other recommendation of the UNSCOP plan was the opening of a port on February 1, 1948 to Jewish immigrants.  Almost three years after the ovens of the Holocaust had cooled, boatloads of displaced persons would finally have a final destination.  When news of the partition vote reached the public, “there were celebrations in New York, in Palestine, wherever Jews lived.  Traffic stopped in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as people danced in the streets until the early hours of the morning.”  In the words of Rabbi Isaac Herzog, “After a darkness of two thousand years, the dawn of redemption has broken.”  Arabs say they are not bound by decision and charge that U.S. and Soviet Union coerced smaller countries to vote for partition.[ Starting on the next day, the Arabs responded with violence that would continue until the end of the mandate and unfortunately has continued literally to this day in the 21stcentury]

1947: Edis De Philippe mounted a gala performance of selections from operas, which was soon followed by a full production of Thaïs in which she performed the title role (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)

1947: Despite having virtually no Jewish population or tie to the Yishuv, Iceland is among nations voting for the Partition Plan creating a Jewish state.

1947: The annual convention of Junior Hadassah, the young women's Zionist organization of America, at its concluding session today, received from Dr. Chaim Weizmaiin, former president of the World Zionist Organization, a call for young men and women, "who are nurtured in western methods and standards" to "further the building of the (Jewish) state."

1948: Israel applied for admission to the United Nations.

1948: Stanton Griffis was appointed Director of the UNRPR.

1948: In Encino, CA, Bernard and Ferne Milken gave birth UCLA trained lawyer and junk bond trader Lowell Jay Milken, the brother of crooked financier Michael Milken

1949: In Chicago, Illinois, print shop owner Irving Shandling and his wife pet store proprietor Muriel Estelle (née Singer) Shandling gave birth to Garry Emmanuel Shandling who was raised in Arizona and gained game as comedian Gary Shandling.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/garry-shandling-who-parodied-tvs-conventions-in-two-hit-comedy-shows-dies-at-66/2016/03/24/cc268cde-f1ff-11e5-85a6-2132cf446d0a_story.html

1949(8th of Kislev, 5710): Forty-seven year old Dallas native and Goucher College graduate Reba Wadel, “a former chairman of the National Women’s Division of the UJA” and the husband of Ernest G. Wadel was among the 28 people who were killed in plane crash at the edge of Love Field in Dallas, TX.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/11/30/96483635.pdf

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/11/30/96483598.pdf

1949: Israelis pause to celebrate anniversary of the United Nations partition resolution.  Zipporah Porath, a nurse working in Haifa, wrote to her parents living in the United States describing the proud parade of Israel’s newly minted soldiers.

1950: Birthdate of Hideo Levy, the son of a Polish-American mother and a Jewish father who “was honored with a Japan Foundation Special Prize in 2007 “for his contributions to the introduction of Japanese literature to foreign readers.”

1950(20th of Kislev, 5711): Sixty-five year old Czernowitz native Frederick Zelnik the prominent producer and director of silent movies in Germany who took refuge in the United States with the rise of Hitler passed away today in London.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/truusbobjantoo/6403915417

1951(30th of Cheshvan, 5712): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1951(30th of Cheshvan, 5712): Sixty-four year old Latvian born American expert on Russia Max Laserson, the husband of Mina A. Laserson and the father of Eliazar Laserson passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/12/01/89819503.html?pageNumber=9

1952(11th of Kislev, 5713): Parashat Vayetzei

1952(11th of Kislev, 5713): Sixty-six year old Latvian born, Cornell University trained neurologist, Dr. David M. Kaplan, the WW I Army Medical Corps veteran who “wrote papers and a book on endocrine subjects” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/12/01/84373185.pdf

1953(22nd of Kislev, 5714): Fifty-three year old, Joseph Burstyn, a Polish born Jew who came to the United States in 1921 where he gained fame as “the importer and distributor of foreign films” passed away today while flying over the Atlantic in a TWA aircraft.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/11/30/83865466.pdf

1953: As the holiday season begins, which in America means a meshing of Christmas and Chanukah, International Records has released “Holiday Time,” a record combining music from both holidays. The record is designed “to promote better human relations through an understanding of the general cultural significance of Christmas and Chanukah” while avoiding mentioning the theological differences between the two holidays.

1953: Birthdate of Moshe Igvy, the native of Casablanca, who has become one of Israel’s leading directors and actors.

1953: It was reported today that Kinor Records has released “Chanukah Music Box” just in time for the holiday season.  Designed as a participation record for children, it features music written and sung by Shirley R. Cohen, with narration by Eli Gamliel and musical accompaniment by Helen Schraeter.

1954:Birthdate of Joel Coen. Joel and Ethan Coen, commonly called The Coen Brothers, are Jewish-American film director best known for their quirky comedies such as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, as well as for darker film noir dramas such as Fargo and Blood Simple. The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, alternating top billing for the screenplay. Until recently, Joel received sole credit for directing the films, and Ethan for producing, but the two brothers work so closely together and share such a strong vision of what their films are to be that actors report that they can approach either brother with a question and get the same answer. The brothers are known in the film business as "the two-headed director."

1954: On this cold and rainy night Esther Borenstein was on duty when a "mosquito" plane was hit by lightning and crashed while landing. Esther ran towards the burning plane, rescuing the badly injured navigator. Although ammunition on the plane began to explode, Esther did not hesitate and ran in again to rescue the pilot, Ya'akov Shalmon. When they reached a hiding spot, the entire plane blew up. Esther was awarded a Badge of Courage for this operation by Moshe Dayan, then Highest in Command of the IDF. Esther was born in Bulgaria, and during the Second World War, her family was ousted to Italy. As early as her childhood, Esther always loved the Land of Israel, and at age 11, left her home in an attempt to come to Israel. At 16, she indeed arrived, with her brother, and shortly afterwards, in spite of her early age, joined the Israel Defense Forces.  She joined the Air Force, completed a medic's course, and viewed army service as an honor and not a duty. After completing her army service, Esther continued to work as a nurse with the Israeli Red Cross, and was the first female ambulance driver in the country. Later, she looked for a job that would express her love for the country and chose to be a tour guide. At that same time, the 6-Day War broke out, and Esther joined the paratroopers, where under constant fire and shelling, she tended to injured soldiers, receiving the nickname "Angel of the Paratroopers". She volunteered during the Yom Kippur war as well, and in 1973, she received the Medal of Honor for saving the pilot. In February 2003, she passed away during a trip to Italy, and was buried there at her family's request. In February 2005, Bridges of Viewpoint was built in memory of Esther Borenstein on a quiet corner on the banks of the Jordan River, opposite the basalt arches of the 2,000 year old Roman-era bridge.

1956(25th of Kislev, 5717): Chanukah

1956: The original Broadway production “Bells Are Ringing” with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, produced by Jerome Robbins and starring Jerome Robbins opened at the Shubert Theatre.

1956:  Birthdate of actor and comedian Howie Mandel

1957(6th of Kislev, 5718): ComposerErich Wolfgang Korngold passed away.Korngold was born in an assimilated Jewish home in Brno, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic), the son of the music critic Julius Korngold, and studied music under Alexander von Zemlinsky and Robert Fuchs. Gustav Mahler, upon meeting the young Erich, called him a "musical genius." He had success in Europe with his opera Die tote Stadt (1920) among other pieces before moving to the United States in 1934, where he wrote a number of highly regarded film scores. He continued to write concert music in a rich, Romantic style, with a violin concerto among his notable later works. In 1943, Korngold became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He died in Hollywood, California.

1957(6th of Kislev, 5718): Fifty-four year old Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl “a rabbi and shtadlan” who worked “to save the Jews of Slovakia” from extermination during the Shoah passed away at Mt. Kisco, NY.

http://www.oxfordchabad.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/1378317/jewish/A-Rabbi-from-the-Bodleian-Library-who-saved-Jews-from-the-Holocaust.htm

http://www.weissmandl.org/

1957:  The three-day dedication program of the nation's largest Orthodox Jewish synagogue, the Baron Hirsch Synagogue of Memphis, starts today.

1959: Birthdate of Rahm Emanuel the son of a former member of the Irgun and civil rights activist who went on to represent  the Fifth District of Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives  and serve as White House Chief of Staff under  President Barak Obama before being elected Mayor of Chicago.

1959: “Fiorello!” a Pulitzer Prize winning musical about the Yiddish speaking New York Mayor with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, a book by Jerome Weidman and co-starring Tom Bosley and Howard Da Silva opened on Broadway today at the Broadhurst Theatre.

1960: Birthdate of Jaqueline Laura Hoffman, the native of Queens, NY who gained fame as multi-talented comedian and actress Jackie Hoffman.

1962: Larry Blyden served as the director of “Harold” when it began its Broadway run today.

1962: Forty three year old Lwow native Perec “Peter” Rachman who escaped from the Nazis and the Soviets to serve with 2nd Polish Corps during WW II and then became an “infamous” landlord whose last name gave rise to the word “Rachmanism” which the Oxford English Dictionary describes “as a synonym for the exploitation and intimidation of tenants” passed away today after which he was “buried in the Jewish cemetery at Bushey, Hertfordshire.”

1962(2nd of Kislev, 5723):  Rav Aaron Kotler famed Orthodox Talmudic scholar passed away.

1963: Today’s issue of Lifemagazine “published about thirty frames of” Abraham Zapruder’s film of the Kennedy Assassination “in black and white.”

1963(13th of Kislev, 5724: Fifty-seven year Brest-Litvosk native and NYU graduate Frank Leff, the “director of special projects for the American Jewish Committee” and the husband of Johanna Leff with whom he had two children – Bernard and Naomi – passed away today “while on his way to work.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/11/30/89979923.pdf

1963: Today’s “episode of Miss Peach” a comic strip created by Mell Lazarus which had been prepared weeks ago “was pulled from syndication because one of the characters fantasized about saving the President of the United States' life—one week after John F. Kennedy was assassinated.”

1963: “Rabbi Silver Dies; A Leading Zionist” published today provides a summary of the life Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, of blessed memory.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E02EEDB103AE637A2575AC2A9679D946291D6CF

1965: “The Big T.N.T.” directed by Larry Peerce, the son of tenor Jan Peerce was filed before a live audience today at the Moulin Rouge in Los Angeles.

1968(8th of Kislev, 5729): Eighty-one year successful businesswoman and philanthropist Beatrice Fox Auerbach,  the  Hartford, CT born daughter of Moses and Theresa Fox and wife of George Auberach who turned the family owned G. Fox and Company into New England’s largest department and who established the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation through which “she became a leading philanthropist, particularly in helping college students” passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/auerbach-beatrice-fox

https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/beatrice-fox-auerbach

1969(19th of Kislev, 5730): Yakov Grigorevich Kreizer, a general in the Soviet Army passed away today at the age of 64.  His promotion to the rank of general “apparently made him the highest ranking Jewish military figure in the Soviet Union since Leon Trotsky organized the Red Army after the Bolshevik Revolution.”  Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Kreizer took command of the 1st Moscow Motorized Infantry and fought forces under Heinz Guderian to a virtual stand-still giving other Soviet forces a chance to regroup. He was designated a Hero of the Soviet Union for his efforts.

1969: In Massachusetts, the Marblehead School Department has banned all religious reference to Christmas and Hanukah in the town’s public school. The decision prohibits the exchange of gifts and any decorations in connection with either holiday.  The policy comes in response to complaints by the American Civil Liberties Union about the religious aspects of the Christmas activity and numerous complaints from Jewish parents protesting their children’s involvement in school holiday activities.

1972: A Hallmark Hall of Fame production of “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” the creation of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, was broadcast by NBC today.

1973(4th of Kislev, 5734): Eighty-nine year old Hungarian producer Josef Somlo who escaped to Great Britain when the Nazis came to power passed away today in Switzerland.

1974: “Ben-Gurion House,”  “an historic house museum in Tel Aviv which served as one of the residences of David Ben-Gurion between 1931 and 1968 was opened to the public today where visitors can take guide tours and participate in symposiums about the early days of Zionism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Gurion_House#/media/File:PikiWiki_Israel_4323_plate_in_bengurions_house.jpg

1975(25th of Kislev, 5736): Ze’ev Beret was killed when his F-4E Phantom II Jet spun out of control and crashed.

1975(25th of Kislev, 5736): First Day of Chanukah; light the second candle in the evening

1976(7th of Kislev, 5737): Eighty-five year old Lithuanian born Conservative rabbi, Phillip Reis Alstat who lived in a JTS dorm for 43 years and who was a columnist for the Jewish Week while also serving as a chaplain at the Manhattan house of corrections passed away today.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that in reply to President Anwar Sadat’s appeal, Israel named Eliahu Ben-Elissar and Meir Rosenne as members of the Israeli negotiating team to the proposed Cairo Conference, which was expected to prepare ground for the reconvened Geneva Peace Conference. Israel joined the fervent Egyptian appeal to Syria, Jordan and Lebanon for their participation, but they uniformly rejected Sadat’s initiative. The US continued to study the Egyptian invitation.

1978(29th of Cheshvan, 5739): Seventy-five year old Newport News, VA, native Mark Peyser Friedlander, the son of Charles Friedlander and Blanche Peyesr passed away today after which he was buried in the Hebrew Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

1979(9th of Kislev, 5740): Zeppo Marx, one of the Marx Brothers, passed away.

1980: Twenty-five year old Simon Shnirman a refusenik from Zaporozhye, was released after completing a two and a half year prison sentence on charges of evading military conscription.

1981(3rd of Kislev, 5742): Fredric Wertham, German-born, American psychologist passed away.  During the 1950’s, in what seems like a laughable episode half a century later, many Americans became convinced that comic books were the cause of juvenile delinquency.  “This anti-comic book sentiment led in the spring of 1954 to the publication of The Seduction of the Innocent,based on Jewish psychologist Frederic Wertham's seven-year-long study of the effects of comic books on America's youth. Dr. Wertham condemned most of the genre--especially crime and horror comics--for having contributed to juvenile delinquency. As the outcry following the publication of Seduction of the Innocent grew, so did the call for government intervention. The Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary opened in Manhattan federal court on April 21, 1954.” (Ed. Note: I must confess that my brother and I were eager consumers of comic books during this period.)

1984: Gotthard Günther German born, American philosopher passed away.  Günther was not Jewish but he was married to the Jewish psychologist Dr. Marie Günther-Hendel.  Together they made their way out Nazi Europe before WWII and finally made their way to U.S. 

1986: In Canada, CTV network began broadcasting “Sword of Giedon” a four hour miniseries “about Mossad Agents hunting down terrorists associated with the 1972 Munich Massacre  based on the book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas,

1988(20th of Kislev, 5749): Seventy-eight year old Washington “hostess with mostess” Gwendolyn Cafritz, the widow of realtor and philanthropist Morris Cafritz passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/01/obituaries/gwendolyn-cafritz-78-washington-hostess.html

http://www.cafritzfoundation.org/about

https://www.silverspringdowntown.com/go/montgomery-college-morris-and-gwendolyn-cafritz-art-center

1989(1st of Kislev, 5750): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1989(1st of Kislev, 5750): Robert W. Schleck, a former foreign service officer, teacher and research analyst who was second secretary at the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv during the Suez crisis in 1956 passed away today.

1991(22nd of Kislev, 5752): Ninety-six year old Rabbi Louis Eliezer Finkelstein, the Cincinnati born son of “Simon Isaac Finkelstein” and “Hannah Basha Finkelstein, the husband of Carmel Finkelstein. (As reported by Ari Goldman)

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/30/nyregion/louis-finkelstein-96-leader-of-conservative-jews.html

1991(22nd of Kislev 5752): Eighty-nine year old Neubrandenburg, Germany, born British mathematician Theodor Estermann, the son of “Zionist who named him in honor of Theodor Herzl” who was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of London and the brother of nuclear physicist Immanuel Estermann passed away today.

1993: At a press conference held today. Amos Schoken announced the closure of Hadashot, a daily newspaper that he had begun in March of 1984.

1993: A revival production of “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” which had been directed by Elmer Rice in its initial Broadway production opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

1993: Richard Danzig began serving as Undersecretary of the Navy.

1994: The New York Times featured a review of A Chosen Few by Mark Kurlansky.

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including Isaiah Berlin: A Lifeby Michael Ignatieff, The Crisis of Global Capitalism Open Society Endangered by George Soros and Indivisible by Four: A String Quartet in Pursuit of Harmonyby Arnold Steinhardt

2000: At the New York Public Library, a presentation byMarion Kaplan entitled “Friendship on the Margins: Jewish Social Relations in Imperial Germany” that asks the question, “With whom did the German Jews spend their leisure time?” This lecture examines the spectrum of friendships available to Jews in Imperial Germany (1871-1918), looking at extended families, friendships among Jews, and relationships with non-Jews. Those friendships could be intense or distant, intimate, or burdened by social and political anti-Semitism. Marion Kaplan is a social and cultural historian, with an emphasis on women’s history. Dr. Kaplan’s writings include Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, which won the National Jewish Book Award for 1998.

2001(14th of Kislev, 5762): Samuel Miloshevsky, 45, of Herzliya, Yehiav Elshad, 28, of Tel Aviv and Yehiav Elshad, 28, of Tel Aviv were murdered today and nine more people were injured this evening when a terrorist from either Fatah or Islamic Jihand (they both claimed credit) set off a bomb aboard an Egged bus traveling between Nazareth and Tel Aviv as it passed through the town of Pardes Hanna-Kaurkur.

2001: “In Jenin, about 3,000 Palestinians marched and celebrated the bombing an Egged bus.”

2002(24th of Kislev, 5763): In the evening, Kindle the first Chanukah light

2002: “Mary Christmas” a drama starring Tom Bosley was released in the United States today.

2003: Danny Elfman married Bridget Fonda. (He was Jewish, she was not)

2004*16th of Kislev, 5765): All-Star catcher Harry Danning, whose brother Ike played for the St. Louis Browns, passed away today in Indiana.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/sports/baseball/harry-danning-baseball-star-in-30s-dies-at-93.html

2004: Victor Brailovsky completed his term as Deputy Minister for Internal Affairs.

2004: Victor Brailovsky replaced Ilan Shalgi as Minister of Science and Technology.

2005: “Havoc” a crime film directed by Barbara Kopple, filmed by cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Robert Shapiro was released in the United States today.

2005(27th of Cheshvan, 5766): Forty-seven year old Wendie Jo Sperber lost her battle with Breast Cancer today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/movies/wendie-jo-sperber-actress-dies-at-46.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/02/local/me-sperber2

2005: The Seattle Reconstructionist congregation Kadima which, according to its Web site, “welcomes members from all backgrounds, including multicultural, gay, and lesbian households,” now is welcoming Ariel Sharon's adoption of its name.

2006(8th of Kislev, 5767): Seventy-seven year old “Leonard Freed, a prominent photojournalist and member of the Magnum Photography Collective who was known primarily for his in-depth coverage of African-Americans in the era of the civil rights movement” passed away. (As reported by Philip Gefter)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/arts/design/04freed.html?_r=0

2006: A Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s musical comedy “Company” opened today at the Ethel Barrymore Theare

2006: In Jerusalem, The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies awards the 10th Liebhaber Prize for Religious Tolerance to Deborah Goldman Golan, Director of the Bamidbar Center for Pluralistic Jewish Studies in Yeroham.

2007: A tribute was held in New York City in anticipation of poet Philip Levine's 80th birthday. Among those celebrating Levine's career by reading Levine's work were Yusef Komunyakaa, Galway Kinnell, E. L. Doctorow, Charles Wright, Jean Valentine, and Sharon Olds. Levine himself read several new and interesting poems. He thanked his students and asked them to refrain from asking for any more letters of recommendation.

2007: At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, television star Sarah Silverman, headlines “Comedy without Borders” a fund-raiser for the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, the ecological and coexistence center located at Kibbutz Ketura, near Eilat.

2007(19th of Kislev, 5768):  Ninety three year old “Victor Erlich, a path-breaking scholar of Russian literature, passed away today (As reported by Marissa Brostoff)

http://forward.com/articles/12194/victor-erlich--scholar-of-russian-literature-/

2007: USCJ International Biennial Convention opens in Orlando, FL.

2007: The Jerusalem Post reported that “Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni failed in attempts to set up meetings in Annapolis or Washington with colleagues from the Arab world, even though the summit was designed to show international support for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations… Israeli officials interpreted this as evidence that the Arab world had not changed its fundamental policy that there would be no warming of relations with Israel until after a deal, and that normalization was one of the Arab world's major bargaining chips.”

2007: Sixty one years after he was buried at a wind hilltop cemetery in southeast Washington, Stephen Theodore Norman, the only grandchild of Theodor Herzl was exhumed as the first step of trip that will lead to his burial in Israel.

2008: On this Shabbat when we recite “Av harachameem,” there will be special poignancy to the words as we mourn the passing Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, the beloved directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of Mumbai. “The Father of mercy who dwells on high in His great mercy will remember with compassion the pious, upright and blameless the holy communities, who laid down their lives for the sanctification of His name.They were loved and pleasant in their lives and in death they were not parted.They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions to carry out the will of their Maker, and the desire of their steadfast God.May our Lord remember them for good together with the other righteous of the world and may He redress the spilled blood of His servants as it is written in the Torah of Moses the man of God: "O nations, make His people rejoice for He will redress the blood of His servants. He will retaliate against His enemies and appease His land and His people". And through Your servants, the prophets it is written: "Though I forgive, their bloodshed I shall not forgive When God dwells in Zion" And in the Holy Writings it says: "Why should the nations say, 'Where is their God?'"Let it be known among the nations in our sight that You avenge the spilled blood of Your servants. And it says: "For He who exacts retribution for spilled blood remembers them. He does not forget the cry of the humble". And it says: "He will execute judgement among the corpse-filled nations crushing the rulers of the mighty land; from the brook by the wayside he will drink then he will hold his head high".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwom17kFOb0

2008: This afternoon authorities announced that the family of one of Israeli victims of the attack on the Mumbai Chabad House had identified her as being Yocheved Orpaz, aged 60. Another woman was identified as a Jewish resident of Mexico, whose name has not yet been released.

2008: U.N. Israel Partition Day – 61st anniversary of this momentous moment in Jewish history. “Three minutes that changed two thousand years of wandering.”

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEGUPlhtMWQ

2009: In Jerusalem, the opening of Whiskey Month at the Mia Bar featuring whiskey tastings and special winter dishes which go well with whiskey.

2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel and the recently released paperback edition of Friendly Fire: A Duet by A. B. Yehoshua.

2009: The Los Angeles Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta.

2009: Beachwood, Ohio declares today “Hudesa Gora Day” to mark the 100thbirth of this holocaust survivor who ran a successful fur business in Cleveland for many years.

2010: Roz Chast, Al Jaffee and Robert Mankoff are scheduled to participate in a program entitled “The Cartoonist Chronicles” at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

2010: Today Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named Mossad veteran Tamir Pardo as his choice as the new head of Israel's spy agency, to succeed Meir Dagan.  Pardo served in senior positions in the Mossad for many years, as well as in various operative units. He left the agency in 2009, before which he served as deputy Mossad chief.

2010(22nd of Kislev, 5771):  Sixty seven year old  “Steven N. Posner, who with his father, Victor, was caught up in a major corporate raiding case that led to the convictions of Ivan F. Boesky and Michael R. Milken, died today in a high-speed boat collision on Biscayne Bay, Fla. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

2010: At the 92nd Street Y in New York, Deborah Solomon interviewed actor Steve Martin about his new novel, An Object of Beauty, which is set in the art world. In response to emails received in real-time by the Y staff from viewers of the interview, a note was dispatched to Solomon on-stage, telling her to shift the conversation from art to Steve Martin's film career

2010(22nd of Kislev, 5771): Ninety year old “Richard N. Goldman, a San Francisco civic leader and philanthropist best known for co-founding the Goldman Environmental Prize, which is given to six grass-roots environmental activists every year, died  today at his home in San Francisco. (As reported by Daniel Slotnik)

2010(22nd of Kislev, 5771): Seventy year old “Stephen J. Solarz, a nine-term Democratic congressman whose concerns went beyond traffic lights and beach erosion in his Brooklyn district to nuclear weapons, the Middle East and his revelation that Imelda Marcos owned 3,000 pairs of shoes, died today in Washington. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

2011: David Kalender, the Senior Rabbi of Olam Tikvah in Fairfax, Virginia, is scheduled to deliver the first in a series of lectures on The Book of Ruth.

 

2011: In honor of the 10th anniversary of the JCC in Manhattan, the JCC is scheduled to screen the audience’s favorite film.

2011: “Sara Hurwitz, an Open Orthodox Jewish spiritual” from South Africa who was raised in Boca Raton, FL and “who received ordination from Rabbi Avi Weiss” was “featured in Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance's (JOFA) Mission Statement YouTube video uploaded” today in which she said “JOFA is trying to shape the young minds of children, to a gender sensitive curriculum that I worked on many years ago.

 

2011: The Tulane Hillel Board Meeting is scheduled to take place at Goldie & Morris Mintz Center for Jewish Life.

 

2011: In New Orleans, Rabbi Alexis Berk is scheduled to lead the Touro Synagogue Interfaith Chavurah Group in a discussion of “The December Dilemma.”

2011: Former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan said in a television interview today that if Israel attacks Iran, it will be dragged into a regional war. According to Dagan, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas will respond with massive rocket attacks on Israel.

2011: It was announced earlier today that former Mossad chief Meir Dagan will lead a group that will endeavor to immediately alter the system of government in Israel

2012: Yeruham Scharovsky is scheduled to conduct the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in a gala concert featuring young piano artists. (In a tribute to the courage and resiliency of the Jewish people, the flyer announcing this event went out at the same time that rockets were being filed on the capital city of Israel)

2012: Pianist Bill Charlap was the real piano player at the television wedding of “Liz Lemon,” a leading character on “30 Rock.”  He is a descendant of 16th century Italian Talmudist of Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph

2012: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to sponsor a screening of “Jew in the Warsaw Rising” followed by a Q & A with the film’s director Anna Ferens.  (This is a film about the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and not the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943)

2012: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present an evening with Montreal writer Julija Šukys, the author of  Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė,“which beckons back to life this quiet and worldly heroine, a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem's honored Righteous Among the Nations) and yet so little known.”

2012 Sixty-fifth Anniversary of the UN vote approving the creation of Jewish state in Palestine with independence to come within six months. Am Yisrael Chai.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEGUPlhtMWQ

2012: Sixty-five years to the day after the UN voted for the partition of mandatory Palestine – a move the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected – the same body overwhelmingly voted today to grant the Palestinian delegation the upgraded status of non-member observer state.

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=294029

2012: Labor members went to the polls today to elect the party’s list for the 19th Knesset, in a vote that will show how much influence party leader Shelly Yacimovich has, as opposed to the growing opposition within Labor led by MK Amir Peretz.

2013(26th of Kislev, 5774): Second Day of Chanukah

2013(26th of Kislev, 5774): Seventy-seven year old Pulitzer Prize winning historian Michael Kammen passed away today. (As reported by Matt Schudel)

2013: “Moses Montefiore: The Man Behind the Windmill,” an international conference at Mshkenot Sha’annaim is scheduled to come to a close.

2013: The Maccabees Festival near Modi’in, the site of the original Chanukah story, is scheduled to open today.

2013: “Closer to the Moon” a dark comedy based on the “exploits” of the Ioanid Gang “had its world premiere at the Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema Festival at the Lincoln Center” today.  (This is one of those must see flics)

2013: Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon expressed outrage at the incident reported in Israeli media that three Druze IDF soldiers were delayed entry to the Dimona nuclear reactor while there Jewish fellow soldiers were admitted. (As reported by JPost)

2013: An editorial published by the Washington Post today claims that “the White House is omitting key facts about the nuclear deal signed with Iran” (As reported by JPost and Washington Post)

2014: In Melbourne, “The Last Mentsch” and “Zero Motivation” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.

2014(7th of Kislev, 5775): Sixty year old Hillel Oscar of Ashdod died today at the hospital after being hit by the ball “while refereeing a cricket matching in the Israeli coastal city.”

2014: A fire broke out this evening in Jerusalem’s Pat neighborhood on the grounds of Hand in Hand a dual Hebrew and Arabic language school in southern Jerusalem, sparking suspicion of politically motivated arson.

2014: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a performance by the Amaya Trio.

2014: Shabbat Va-yaytzay

2015(17th of Kislev, 5776): Seventy-nine year old David Cohen, former president of Common Cause and voice for ethics in government passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/us/politics/david-cohen-pioneer-of-public-interest-lobbying-dies-at-79.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2015: “Seeking Justice: The Leo Frank Case”  an “800 square foot exhibit that examines the historical context surrounding 13-year old Mary Phagan's murder at the National Pencil Company as well as Jewish superintendent Leo Frank's trial, appeals, and eventual lynching that has been on display at the Southern Museum at Kennesaw, GA, is scheduled to close today.

2015: Today, while playing Guard for the New York Giants, Mitchell Schwartz, who had started all eleven games, sustained a broken leg during a loss to the Washington Redskins.”

2015: The National Appeal for Tzedakah, the major fund raising campaign of the Jewish Federation of France (FSJU) is scheduled to start today after having been postponed because of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

2015: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Complete Works of Primo Levi, a 3 volume work edited by Ann Goldstein and the recently released paperback editions of We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler and Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion by Harold Holzer

 

2016: As part of the “Meet The Author Series” Alice Hoffman is scheduled to “discuss her career, her novels and her latest book Faithful at the Skirball Center

2016: According to a report from Israel Radio. “a ceremony is scheduled to held tonight in the British Parliament tonight to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

2016: According to the Anti-Defamation League, today “the Huffington Post’s Arabic-language edition” contained “a blog post claiming a Jewish woman poisoned the Prophet Muhammad with arsenic.”

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host an “Intimate Concert with Jam Band Mr. Blotto: paying “tribute to iconic rock and roll producer and Holocaust survivor Bill Graham.”

2017: Followed by “a meal of burgers and hot dogs” (who knew the English ate such stuff) the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a screening of “Love Actually” as part of the popular “Movie Night.”

2017: Today, “in Norfolk, VA, the JWB Chaplains Council, a signature program of the JCC Association of North America” is scheduled to dedicate a Torah in memory of World War II” Army Air Corps “veteran Jacob Kamaras aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford.

2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host an evening of schmoozing with Joy Behar, Gretchen Carlson, Maureen Dowd and Jill Kargman.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Howard M. Sachar whose works included the classic “A History of the Jews in the Modern World” and “A History of the Jews in America” which might be the single best piece of Holocaust literature, continues today.

 2018:  The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a lecture on “History Matters: Defining Holocaust Memory in Poland” moderated by Northwest University Associate Professor Benjamin Frommer, Ph.D.

2018: The Village East Cinema is scheduled to host the final screening of Ofir Trainin’s “Family in Transition.”

2018(21st of Kislev, 5779): Fifty-five year old Lisa Miriam Schwartz, the NYU trained physician “who with her husband devoted her life to warning patients about the dangers of unnecessary medical tests and treatment and excessive diagnoses” passed away today.(As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/obituaries/dr-lisa-schwartz-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

2018: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final screening of “Back to Berlin.”

2018: The Hebrew University is scheduled to celebrated  the “100 years since the laying of its cornerstone” with a conference during which “the German Literature Archive Marbach together with the Hebrew University will explore the history of a century of German-Jewish culture and research.”

2018: In Manhattan, the Quad City Cinema is scheduled to host the final screening of Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah: Four Sisters – Ruth & Ada” and “Shoah: Four Sisters – Hanna & Paula.”

2018: Seventy-first anniversary of the UN General adoption of Resolution 181.

https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2017/11/who-saved-israel-in-1947/

2019: The Friday night dinner sponsored by the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to include a moment of mystery as diners get to “solve a confounding murder case.”

2019: Today Israel can look forward to an improvement in its international position following yesterday’s announcement that Bolivia has renewed diplomatic relations with Israel.

2019(1st of Kislev, 5780): Rosh Chodesh Kislev;

2020: The New York Times features reviews of varying length of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel,. Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime by Jennifer Taub and The Silver Arrow by Lev Grossman.

2020: “King Bibi” and “Gold” are two of the films which are available for viewing at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey’s Virtual Film Festival.

2020: Piano Cleveland is scheduled to present Daniel Shapiro.

2020: Congregation Or Atid is scheduled to present online “Together and Apart: The Future of Jewish Peoplehood.”

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is schooled to host a “Hannukah Special” which is episode four in “Sephardic Culinary History with Chef Helene, Jawhara-Piner.

 

 

 

This Day, November 30, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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November 30

1215: The Fourth Lateran Council which had been led by Innocent III came to a close. The Fourth Lateran Council made first official use of the term "transubstantiation," with reference to the Eucharist (Lord's Supper). The adoption of this concept would lead to anti-Semitic outbreaks based on charges that Jews had desecrated the Host i.e. the wafer that was seen as being the body of Christ.

1286 Pope Honorius wrote to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, reaffirming the decision of the Lateran Councils. He enlarged on the evils of relations between Christians and Jews and warned of the pernicious consequences of the study of the Jews’ Talmudgoing so far as to issue a bull condemning the Jewish text.

1518: Maria Lopez and her daughter Isabel were sentenced to death by the Inquisition after having been charged with “juadizing.  (As reported by Renee Levine Melammed)

1597: Sir Henry Finch, the author of The World's Great Restauration, or Calling of the Jews, and with them of all Nations and Kingdoms of the Earth to the Faith of Christ introduced a new bill into the House of Commons for the relief of the poor.

1631(5th of Kislev, 5932): Rabbi Samuel Eliezer ben Judah ha-levi Edels passed away.  Born in Cracow in 1555, Edels is known by the acronym Maharsha. He was known as outstanding Talmudist and master of dialectics whose commentaries were of such value that they were included in most editions of the Talmud.  Edels was a man of character as well as erudition.  “He attacked the misuse of rabbinic authority and the attempt made by wealthy individuals to monopolize communal offices.”

1654: Sixty-nine year old John Selden an English jurist and student of Jewish law whose writing included a 1646 treatise on marriage and divorce among the Jews entitled Uxor Ebraica, passed away today.

1654: Sixty nine year old English jurist and scholar John Selden, “the first Talmudist in England since the expulsion of the Jews…who recognized the humanness of Jewish marital law and found in Deuteronomy and the Talmud a model for the proper relationsip between the judicial and executive branches of government” and who wrote The Jewish Wife, a work “on the theory and practice of Jewish marriage and divorce law” passed away today.

1670: Birthdate of John Toland, Anglo-Irish author and philosopher. In 1714, at a time when Jews were still considered to be outsiders by many Englishman, Toland wrote “Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews” in which he advocated “full citizenship and equal rights for the Jewish people.

1718(OS): King Charles XII who had who had “incurred substantial debts with Jewish and Muslim merchants” while supply his army that was fighting in Bessarabia which led to several Muslim and Jewish creditors arriving in Sweden which led to Swedish law being altered to allow them to hold religious services and circumcise their sons

1725: Today Felix de Castro, a Spanish physician living at Agramunt “was condemned by the Inquisition for life for Judaizing.

1726: In Dusseldorf, Lazarus Eliezer Leiser Joseph van Geldern and Sara Lea van Geldern gave brith to Dr. Gottschalk van Geldern.

1748(9th of Kislev, 5509): Mordecai ben Jacob Ẓahalon, a doctor and rabbi who was part of a famous Sephardic family, passed away today in Ferrara, Italy. Among his many books were Megillat Naharot," describing the miraculous rescue of the Jewish community of Ferrara from the inundation that occurred in 1707

1774: Pamphleteer Thomas Paine whose opposition to Monarchy was based in part on his reading of the Bible where the Israelite kings had a propensity for leading their subjects into the evils of idolatry, arrived in Philadelphia on the eve of the American Revolution.

1778: The “40 year old wife of Abraham ben Simon” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1782:In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).

1790: King Leopold II forwarded the petition from the Jews asking for full equality with other citizens to the “chancelleries of Hungary and Moravia” to see if this change would be supported.

1790: Georgia Governor, Edward Telfair granted to Levy Sheftall, Cushman Pollock, Joseph Abrahams, Mordecai Sheftall, Abraham de Pas, Emanuel de la Motta, and their successors a charter of incorporation wherein they were declared to be "a body incorporates by the name and style of the 'Parnass and Adjuntas of the Mickve Israel at Savannah.'" This charter is still in the hands of the congregation and it is the document under which it operates to this day.

1790: Birthdate of Klingen, Germany native Samuel Weis, the husband of Agatha Klein and the father of Julius and Sophia Weis.

1803:  In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.

1805: In Chatham, Kent, England, Lazarus Magnus and Sarah Moses gave birth to Jacob Magus.

1813: In Paris, Alkan Morhange and Julie Morhange, née Abraham gave birth to Charles-Valentin Morhange, the descendant of Ashkenazi from Metz who gained fame as French pianist and composer Charles-Valentin Alkan.

1813: William VI, the future King William I who would play an active role in the reorganization of the Dutch Jewish community arrived at Scheveningen.

1817: Birthdate of German scholar and political leader Theodore Mommsen who denounced the anti-Semitic campaign being led by his colleague Heinrich von Treitschke and who descried the “position and influence of Jews in the Roman Empire” in his multi-volume History of Rome.

1822(16th of Kislev, 5583): Parashat Vayishlach

1822(16th of Kislev, 5583): Seventy-seven Shinah Solomon the Lancaster, PA born daughter of Bilah Myers-Cohen and Joseph Solomon who were married in London in 1738 and the wife of Elijah Etting with whom she had eight children passed away today in Baltimore, MD.

1823: Birthdate of German botanist Nathanael Pringsheim who “in 1882 established the German Botanical Society, which in twelve years included over 400 German botanists, and of which he was annually elected president until his death.”

1824(9th of Kislev, 5585):Sixty year old David David, the Montreal born son of Lazarus David and Phebe Samuel, the fur trader and militia officer who was the first Jew born in the Province of Quebec passed away today.

1825: In Liverpool, Sarah and Lyon Samson gave birth to Lewis Samson.

1828(24th of Kislev, 5589): The first Chanukah Candle was kindled for the last time during the presidency of John Q. Adams who had just lost a hotly contested election with Andrew Jackson.

1831(25th of Kislev, 5592): Chanukah observed for the first time since the end of the Polish-Russian War that had begun exactly a year ago with an uprising of the Polish officers.

1833: In London, Rebecca Jacobs and Michael Meir Myers gave birth to Maia Golda Myers.

1836: Today, “Mr. Danofsky, of King Street, St. James, Westminster married Mrs. Hughes, the widow of the late Mr. Moses Hughes at Margate.”

1841: Alsey Harris and Abraham Ellis gave birth to Nancy Ellis.

1845: Birthdate of Wisconsin Congressman Richard W. Guenther who worked with Congressman Ford during the 1880’s to conduct a series of hearing designed to exclude Jews from immigrating to the United States

1840: Birthdate of Ludovic Trarieux, the supporter of Dreyfus who founded the League of Human and Civil Rights

1852: Birthdate of Hermann Gollancz the Professor of Hebrew at University College.

1854: Between 300 and 400 people danced to the music of Dodsworth’s Band at the Hebrew Young Men’s Ball held in the New York City’s Chinese Assembly Rooms.  Proceeds from tonight’s event will be be given to the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society.

1856(3rd of Kislev, 5617): Marcus Cone, a Jew who had been living in New York, passed away today in Abbersweiler, Germany, his home town.

1856: The Manchester Guardianreported a "Great Fire" had taken place in Constantinople where 600 homes were destroyed, and another devastated Adrianople.

1856: Two days after he had passed away, 49 year old Joseph Abrahams was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1858: Today’s City Intelligence column reported that the recent stories about the arrest of three Jews for their role in selling lottery tickets were in error.  At least one of those arrested was identified as being a rabbi when in fact he made no claim to being a clergyman.  Apparently he is the leader of a “Bet Hamidrash” or House of Instruction which is attended by recently arrived poor immigrant Russian Jews who speak little or no English.  In Europe, the sale of lottery tickets is legal and apparently the immigrants had no reason to think that this was not the case in the United States.  Those preparing the original report were unaware of the fact that the term “Reb” merely implies that one is a “master” or an “instructor” and not a clergyman.

1861: Emmanuel Marks, who was killed while serving in the Union Army, began serving with Company K of the 28thRegiment.

1863: In Paris France, Sophie Neymarck and Elie Camille Spire gave birth to Ferdinand Espir.

1864(1st of Kislev, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1864: In Tennessee, Colonel Frederick Knefler commanded a brigade protecting the Union flank at the Battle of Franklin, one of the worst defeats suffered by the Rebels during the Civil War.

1864: Private Abraham Greenawalt, Company G, 104th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, served with such valor at the Battle of Franklin that he would be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for capturing the “corps headquarters flag” of the Confederates.

1867(3rd of Kislev, 5628): Fifty-two year old Wolf Alois Meisel, the Chief Rabbi in Budapest passed away while preaching a sermon that was “later published  by Simon and Wilhelm Bacher under the title Die Brunnen Isaak's”

1869: Two days after he had passed away, David Nathan, the husband of Mary Lazarus with whom he had four children, was buried today at the “Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.”

1870: E.B. Hart delivered the opening remarks at the Hebrew Charity Fair.  The lavish event was held to raise funds for the Mount Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.  In his speech Governor Hoffman of New York said praised both institutions saying that the latter was indeed populated primarily by Jewish children but that the former served all members of the community, regardless of their religion.

1871(17th of Kislev, 5632): Thirty-five year old Gaston Cremieux who along with fellow Jew Adolphe Carcassone headed the Revolutionary Commission of the Département Bouches-du-Rhône was condemned to death and executed today for his role in the revolt that had followed the Franco-Prussian Warin November 1871, the only one among the leaders of the Commune.

1873: The Jewish Maternity Association, originally known as Ezrath Nashim (Helping Women) was founded in Philadelphia, PA.

1874:  Birthdate of Sir Winston Churchill, the British statesman, orator and author who served as prime minister during World War II.  Churchill’s official biographer was the famous Jewish historian Martin Gilbert. Churchill often spoke of his support for a Jewish homeland.  During the war, his government studiously supported the White Paper which effectively banned Jewish immigration to Palestine.  Churchill’s supporters explained this as being a wartime necessity meant to ensure Arab support for the Allied cause.  Even if one accepts this argument, it does not explain Churchill’s support for the ban on Jewish immigration after the Nazis had surrendered in May of 1945. For more about Churchill and his relationship with the Jewish people, see Churchill and the Jews by Martin Gilbert.  Like all off Gilbert’s work it is well researched and highly readable.

1876: Rabbi Einhorn is scheduled to deliver the sermon at Temple Bethel’s Thanksgiving Services the first of which will be held at 10 AM followed by a second service at 11 AM.

1876: Rabbi Gottheil will deliver the sermon at this afternoon’s Centennial Thanksgiving Service at Temple Emanu-El. The service will include musical program by the congregation’s choir and a reading of the President’s Thanksgiving Proclamation.

1876: In Philadelphia, a ceremony was held today unveiling and dedicating a monument symbolic of Religious Liberty that was built with contribution from member of B’nai Brith from throughout the United States.

 

1876: It was reported today that the Ladies of the Forty-fourth Street Synagogue’s Hebrew Benevolent Society are seeking donations of goods and money for the fair they are holding during the last two weeks of December.

1877: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and 1900 Harvard University graduate Max Hirsch, the President of the Sachs Shoe Manufacturing Company, Democratic Party activist and “patron of Hebrew University” who married Marga Henie Hirsch after the death of his first wife Effie Wyler Hirsch.

1878: Solomon A. Levy and Dilah Horner Levy gave birth to Henry Horner, the first Jewish governor of Illinois.

1878: In the “Czech Republic,” Bertha and  Hermann Ullmann gave birth to Irma Ullmann who became Irma Hirsch when she married Albert Hirsch.

1879: C.J. Fishel of Mellis & Fishel read the opening prayer at the funeral of S.L. Lewis which was the first Jewish funeral to be held in the Sandwich Islands which we know as Hawaii.

1881: It was reported today that new regulations issued in Russia divided the Jews of Kiev into 8 different classes based on education and occupation.  Membership in a particular class determines your rights including where you can live in the area and for how long.

1881: It is reported today that at least one Jew in St. Petersburg has found a way to get around the government law forbidding Jews from changing occupations.  A Jew who began as a maker of ladies’ riding habits is now operating a counting house.  He just never changed the signage, something that everybody including the authorities is aware of

1881: In Brooklyn, the fair sponsored by Temple Israel will open today and last until December 10.

1882(19th of Kislev, 5643): Sixty year old merchant David Hays Solis, the Mt Pleasant, NY born son of Jacob da Silva Solis and Charity Solis and husband of Elvira S. Solis, a supporter of the B'nai Jeshurun Educational Institute the Hebrew Charitable Fund, the Jewish Publication Society and the Hebrew Educational who was the first president of the Congregation Beth-El Emeth, in Philadelphia, passed away today in Philadelphia.

1882: It was reported today that the United Hebrew Charities has contributed one hundred dollars to the Charity Organization Society, an umbrella organization that investigates applicants for charities in New York Society to make sure that they are really in need.

1883(1st of Kislev, 5644): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1883(1st of Kislev, 5644: In Rushville, Indiana, a violent quarrel, including fisticuffs and gunfire, between Jewish merchants Eli Frank and Jacob Block turned fatal when Frank was shot to death by Block’s son.

1883 In Zalal Lovo, Hungary, a peasant woman informed a Jewish merchant named Kohn
that “some bands had collect in the neighboring villages and that they “planed “an attack upon him tonight.  Kohn warned the Mayor who “strengthened the night watch” and the Jews prepared themselves for the worst.

1885: It was reported today that an unnamed Jew from Pittsburg stole $475 from a co-religionist in Newark, NJ.

1885: “Le Cid” a four act opera with a libretto co-authored by Adolphe d’Ennery was performed for the first time at the Paris Opera.

1885: It was reported today that New York Police Commissioner Stephen B. French, a Republican had several explanations for his party’s defeat in the recent election, including the fact that in Fourth Assembly there are “a great many Irish and a great many Hebrews.”  According to French, the Jews “are always nearly against” the Republicans and the Irish have reverted to voting Democratic after their apparent switch in the 1884 election. (Electoral post mortems are nothing new and misguided ones are certainly not.  Actually, in the post-Civil War United States, Jews in the North and Mid-West tended to vote for Republicans)

1886: The wife and daughter of a Polish Jew named Milkowski who has lived in Louisiana for the last 30 years took refuge in Lake Providence after a mob attacked their home in Caledonia.

1887: Based on information that first appeared in the London Truth, it is reported that there are no more than 100,000 Jews in France, but of the 86 prefectures (administrative chiefs) 60 are Jews.  Furthermore “Jews have the best places in the Treasury” and “merit was the last consideration when they were appointed.”  (Editor’s note: This sub-text of French anti-Semitism would play out in the Drefyus Scandal and continue into the darkest days of Vichy)

1887: It was reported today that the recently concluded conference of Reform Rabbis adopted a resolution introduced by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise to appoint a committee to “consider establishing a reformatory for Jewish children.”  According to Wise, there are more than 150 Jewish children in various reformatories and they are never visited by a Rabbi.

1887: It was reported that the next national meeting of The Jewish Ministers’ Association, an organization of Reform Rabbis will be held this Spring in Washington, D.C.

1888: It was reported today that there had been a record number of Jews attending Thanksgiving services and that the Thanksgiving Dinner served to 200 east side children by the United Hebrew Charities was further proof of Israelites enjoyment of this American holiday.

1888: Birthdate of Frank T. Fleisher who did not live to see his second birthday.

1891: Benjamin Berensen, a leading member of the Boston Jewish community disappeared.

1891: Birthdate of Chicago native and Kent College of Law graduate Benjamin Kahane who entered the motion picture industry as general counsel for what became RKO studios, after which he served as vice president of Columbia Pictures and president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences while being married to Mildred Kahane with whom he had two children – Shirley and Benjamin, Jr.

1891(29th of Cheshvan, 5652): Seventy-three year old Edwin de Leon, the native of Columbia, South Carolina who while serving as U.S. consul-general to Egypt during the Franklin Pierce administration “rendered conspicuous services in protecting American Missionaries in Jaffa,” passed away today.

1892: The Hebrew Orphans Asylum band – 45 boys under the direction of Martin Cohen – will perform at this evening’s session of the American Institute Fair.

1892(11th of Kislev, 5653): Julius D. Bemb, the Pittsburgh merchant and philanthropist who was a supporter of Pittsburgh’s Gusky  Home and Orphanage and “benefactor of Hebrew Union College” passed away today.

1893: Birthdate of author I.J. Singer the older brother of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Born in Poland, Singer gained fame as Yiddish writer.  He was the Polish correspondent for The Jewish Daily Forward.  He came to the United States in 1934.” Singer’s epic masterpiece Di Bruder Ashkenazi (The Brothers Ashkenazi) details Jewish industrial development before World War I.”

1893: “Three hundred children will be given a Thanksgiving dinner of Turkey, cranberry sauce and trimmings at the Industrial School of the United Hebrew Charities today at noon.”

1893(21st of Kislev, 5654): Sixty-six year old Phoebe Elizabeth Solis, the Mt. Pleasant, NY born daughter of Charity Hays and Jacob Da Silva Solis who were married in 1811, the wife of David De Moses Sarfaty and the mother of Moses and Charity Sarfaty passed away today in New Jersey.

1893: In the Reichstag, “toward the end of the budget debate” Dr. Foerster declared that “anti-Semitism was not a passing phenomenon” and that “it would endure as long as the Hebrew race.”

1894: Birthdate of Columbus, Ohio, native Donald Ogden the Academy Award winning screenwriter who during the 1930’s was Chairman of the Hollywood Ant-Nazi League “the first American anti-Nazi organization that was not overtly linked to American Jews” and that “served as the focal point of the film industry’s anti-Nazism from 1936 through 1939.”

1894: “Dedicated to Humanity” published today provided a description of the Montefiore Home’s  new additions which is a five story edifice that includes a new synagogue on the ground floor that will accommodate 500 worshippers as well “a vast kitchen and laundry in the basement” and quarters for servant

1894: As of today, there are “3,383 children between the ages of eight and fourteen years enrolled in the afternoon classes sponsored Hebrew Free School Association ; children who must attend public schools in the morning to able to take these classes in Hebrew and “religious subjects.”

1895(13th of Kislev, 5656): Parashat Vayishlach

1895: Birthdate of Samuel Norton "Sam" Gerson, the Ukrainian born Jewish-American wrestler who won a Silver Medal at the 1920 Olympics and helped to organize Philadelphia's Maccabi Sports Club.

1895: In New York, Daniel Ryan and Daniel Healy were each fined $10 for “striking at every Hebrew they passed on Broadway” which the court described as “Jew baiting.”

1895: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon entitled “One Touch of Nature, our Appeal in Behalf of Armenia” at Temple Emanu-El during Friday night services.

1896(25th of Kislev, 5657): For the last time during the administration of President Grover Cleveland, first day of Chanukah

1896: Prior to tomorrow’s start of the 15th Biennial Council of the American Hebrew Congregation in Louisville, KY, the Executive Committee met and chose temporary officers.

1897: “Ethnic Politics” published today described the difficulties that the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which is polyglot multi-national domain is having in creating a national identity as can be seen even in Vienna where political lines “are drawn between Jews and Jew-baiters.”  The rise of Jews in Viennese culture has been matched by a rise in Anti-Semitism which is opposed by the Emperor.

1897(5th of Kislev, 5658): Just 12 days before his 65th birthday Abraham Carl (A.C.) Wertheim, a partner in the Dutch banking house of Wertheim & Gompertz, the husband of Rosalie Marie Wertheim who was a member of States-Provincial for twenty and a leader of the Jewish community passed away today.

1897: Rabbi “Backowitz” (Berkowitz) of Philadelphia is scheduled to deliver a speech this evening at Temple Emanu-El in New York entitled “Jews’ Gifts to Humanity.”

1898: Leo M. Franklin an 1892 graduate of Hebrew Union College who was the Rabbi at Temple Israel in Omaha, Nebraska, “became the 11th rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Detroit, a position he would hold for the rest of his life.”

1898: As the measles epidemic at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum comes to an end 15 children ranging in age from 6 to 11, remain in isolation at the hospital

1898: Private Will Hu Freudenstein of St. Louis finished his military service when Light Battery A, Missouri Volunteers was mustered out at Jefferson Barracks, MO.

1899: One thousand pounds of turkey was consumed by the children under the care of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.  The daylong celebration included band music, a speech by Dr. Kaufman on the meaning of Thanksgiving and an afternoon of play preceded by the receipt of “a masquerade costume” for youngster.

1899: Four hundred children attended the 19th annual Thanksgiving Day Dinner at the Industrial School of the Hebrew Charities Society.

1899: In New York City, “Isidor Heldenstein and Rose Miller” gave birth to Columbia Law School trained attorney Herbert W. Haldenstein, the President of the Central Bureau for the Jewish Aged who married “the former Mrs. Jennie L. Whitehill” after his first wife Mrs. Marion Kaufman Haldenstein had passed away.

1899: One hundred children who attend the kindergarten sponsored by the Shearith Israel Sisterhood were provided with a free Thanksgiving Dinner.

1899: In Branchville, SC, Julius and Etta Karesh Levin gave birth to Sidney Levin, the future husband of Tina Levovitz Levin.

1899: Seventy-five year old philosopher and psychologist Mortiz Lazarus, “son of Aaron Levin Lazarus” celebrated “the fiftieth anniversary of receiving his doctorate.”

1900: It was reported today that industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carniege had been the main speaker at the Thanksgiving Day reception at the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invaldis.

1900: Oscar Wilde passed away.  The Picture of Dorian Gray, possibly his most famous novel, includes a Jewish character named Isaacs, a theatre manager. The author stresses both his Jewishness and his ugliness describing him as “a hideous Jew,” a “horrid old Jew” who had “greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond … in the centre of a soiled shirt.”

1901: In Watertown, WI, Sarah Johnson Woodward and Frank Elwin Woodward gave birth to Mary Woodward who gained fame as Mary Woodward Lasker, the art historian and designer who was the second wife of advertising executive Albert Lasker and the stepmother of Edward, Francis and Mary Lasker.

1902: Most of the national officers of the National Council of Jewish Women, “including Mrs. Henry G. Solomon of Chicago, the President; Mrs. Emanuel Mandel of Chicago, Second Vice President; Mrs. J.H. Seiz of Chicago, Treasurer; Miss Minnie Loeb of Chicago, Auditor; and Miss Sadie American of New York, Corresponding Secretary” arrived in Baltimore today a week before the start of their National Convention.

1903: In a case of literary matrimony, Else Lasker-Schuler married George Lewin, the author who used the penname Herwarth Walden.

1904: It was reported today that “the annual Charity Ball of the United Austrian Hebrew Charities Association will be held at Arlington Hall on December 18.”

1905(2nd of Kislev, 5666): Forty-two year old chess champion Samuel Lipschutz passed away today.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=39131

1905: It was reported today that the massacre of Jews in Minsk that was originally supposed to take place on November 26th will now take place on December 3.

1905: Jacob Schiff presided over “the great celebration in honor of the 250th anniversary of the settlement of the Jews in the United States… held in Carnegie Hall” this afternoon which “included the reading of a letter from President Roosevelt and “the singing in Hebrew of ‘Adon Olam’ by fifty members of the Downtown Cantors’ Association of New York accompanied by 250 members of the Choral Union and the New York Symphony Orchestra.”

1905: “John Hoar, an American jockey who has been riding for Prince Louborinski in Russia arrived “in New York today and described “the sights he witnessed” which “were so awful that he fainted” that included the gutters in that “ran red with blood.

1905: It was reported from Paris today that prices on the Bourse “have firmed” now that it has been confirmed that laws aimed at restricting the Jews have “been abrogated.”

1905: The Orphan Hebrew Asylum observed Thanksgiving and the 250th anniversary of the settlement of the Jews” in North America with a reading of a sketch by Harry Schneidermann on the history of the Jews in the United States followed by a dress parade and concert by the 400 member Cadet Corps and ending with a dinner for 1,030 children “provided by Emanuel Lehman.”

1905: Jacob Schiff presided at the Thanksgiving Day Services held at the Montefiore Home.

1905: Today, on Thanksgiving, “Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim gave dinners to the 272 resident of the Montefiore Home in honor of her son Robert’s wedding.”

1905: “The 1,245 immigrants detained on Ellis Island,” many of whom were Jewish enjoyed a turkey dinner with all of the trimmings followed by an evening of song that ended with the singing of the Star Spangled Banner.

1905: “A copy of a manifesto issued by the Odessa Zionist Central Committee” describing the murderous events in that city and the plans for a response was received in New York City today.

1905: It was reported today that to date the National Committee collecting funds to helping Jews being massacred in Russia has raised, $942,548.17 including $100 from the Societe Israelite Francais, $100 from Elihu Root, $543 from the Hebrew Benevolent Association of Binghamton, NY, $250 from Herbert Lehman, $100 from the Jews of Millville, NJ and $100 of Congregation Beth-El in Jersey City, NJ.

1906: On the lower east side, following yesterday’s strike by “patrons of little butcher shops, that included demonstrations in front of the shops owned by William Ehrenhadrt,  Abe Brochnor , Sam Goldberg and members of the Hebrew Retail Kosher Butcher’s Association, “many of the butchers “close their places today rather than take the headache” which is good news for the fish peddlers.

1907(24th of Kislev, 5668): Parashat Vayeshev; in the evening Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1907: As of the of the fiscal year which ended today, there had been “9,978 applicants for admission to Mount Sinai Hospital” of whom 6,173 were admitted.

1908: Birthdate of Bernard Bernstein, the economist who rose to the rank of Colonel in the U.S. Army during WW II where he “served as a financial adviser to General Eisenhower” until the Morgenthau Plan was rejected as post war policy for the treatment of Germany.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/07/obituaries/bernard-bernstein-aide-to-eisenhower-in-40-s-dies-at-81.html

1909(17th of Kislev, 5670): Seventy-one Bavarian born, New Orleans businessman Isidore Newman who founded the Newman Training School which became a leading private school and supported numerous secular and Jewish charities including Turo Infirmary and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association passed away today

1909: It was reported today that “A. De Sola Mendes, a son of” Rabbi “F. De Sola Mendes of the West End Synagogue who is the Vice President and General Manager of the Georgia Coast and Piedmont Railroad with headquarter at Savannah and Darien, GA, has been elected First Vice President of the Tampa and Jacksonville Railway Company which at the age of 26 makes him “one of the youngest railroad officials” in the United States.

1910: Lucille Selig the member of an “old” Atlanta Jewish family that had founded the city’s first synagogue, married Leo Frank who would come to a horrible end when he was lynched for a crime that he did not commit.

1910: Thirty-three year old University of North Carolina trained chemist and geologist Lionel Weil, the Goldsboro, NC born son of Solomon and Sarah Einstein Weil who was active in the civic affairs of his town as well as the treasurer of Oheb Shalom Congregation married Ruth Heyn today.

1911: “The right of the Jew to citizenship, not as a concession or gift grudgingly bestowed but freely granted because of the part he has taken in the forming of our Republic and his patriotic services to the State, was the subject of a sermon this morning by the Rev. Dr. Rudolph Grossman in Temple Rodeph Sholom, Sixty-third Street and Lexington Avenue.”

1911: Congressman Sulzer was a principal speaker” tonight” at the dinner of the Hebrew Veterans of the with Spain at the Palm Gardens.

1912(20th of Kislev, 5673): Parashat Vayeshev

1912: Rabbi Weil is scheduled to lead services at Temple B’Nai Jehoshua this morning in Chicago.

1912: Dr. A.B. Yudelson is scheduled to lead services this morning at the South Side Hebrew Congregation.

1912: Rabbi Abram Hirschberg is scheduled to lead services this morning at Temple Sholom in Chicago.

1912: In Chicago, Rabbi Israel Klein is scheduled to speak at this afternoon’s Shabbat Children Service at the Institute.

1912(20th of Kislev, 5673): Seventy-five year old Joseph Felsenthal, a Confederate veteran and communal leader passed away today in Brownsville, TN.

1912: Yiddish actors Leon Blank, Francis Adler and Jacob Adler are scheduled to perform at the Haymarket Theatre this eveing.

1913: Jacob H. Schiff, President of the Montefiore Home, presided at the dedication ceremonies of the new buildings at the institution located at Gun Hill Road and 210th Street, near Jerome Avenue.  The ceremonies included services at the synagogue located at the Montefiore Home.

1914: “To Meet Jewish Mark Twain” published today described the arrival of Solomon Rabinowitz, the author known as Sholom Aleichem, his wife and six children in New York who were making the second trip to the United States; the first coming in 1906 when  they were escaping the Kiev massacres.

1914: It was reported today that Sholom Aleichim will be lecturing in New York “on the part the Jews are taking in the Great War.”

1914: “Contributions to the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews suffering through the war reached a total of $28, 098.52” today.

1914: “Counsel for Leo Frank, who is under sentence for the murder of Mary Phagan, a factory worker at Atlanta, GA, last year will ask the United States Supreme Court at noon today for leave to file a petition for a writ of error which, if it should be granted would lead to a retrial of the case” and if it is denied it will be up to the Governor Slaton of Georgia to save this victim of a wave of anti-Semitism and lynch mob mentality that has swept the Peachtree State.

1914: At today’ session of the sixth annual convention of the Federation of Jewish Farmers being held in the Educational Alliance, “it was suggested’ that Jewish famers with holdings close to New York City should cooperate that they could ship their produce to the city at a lower rate and would then enable them to charge less when making sales on the Lower East Side.

1914: In response to an appeal for aid from Ambassador Morgenthau, at Constantinople the American Red Cross cabled $3,000 from its reserved contingent fund for relief work Mr. Morgenthau” the prominent Jewish American businessman and diplomat.

1915: It was reported today that several million rubles, much of which was donated by Jewish organizations, have been given to support the 250,000 to 350,000 destitute people living in war-torn Warsaw.

1915: A large gathering of Rumanian Jews held a special memorial service at the Manhattan Lyceum in honor of Dr. Solomon Schechter who had passed away on November 20.  While recognizing his leadership and scholarly skills, the Rumanians were also honoring one of their own and voted to name soon to be opened Jewish Home for Convalescents the “Professor Solomon Schechter Memorial.

1915: It was reported today that Meyer London’s matzah bakery which had originally been located on Bayard Street starting in 1871 is now located at 494 Grand Street in New York.

1916: “While the majority of the London and provincial newspaper” have kept silent “on peace topics, “the Northcliffe press today made its chief feature a denunciation of Jacob H. Schiff’s American Neutral Conference Committee.” A lengthy article by D. Thomas Curtin represents Schiff as “a deadly enemy of the Allies” and “an arch-intriguer on behalf of Germany” while “detailing his financial connections” with Kuhn, Loeb and Co which gives him access to Paul Warburg whose “membership in the Federal Reserve Board confers on Kuhn, Loeb at Washington an influence on government policy and national finance enjoyed by no other banking institution.”

1916: It was reported today that following the defeat of the Rumanians at Pitechti, a town sixty-five miles northwest of Bucharest, that while the majority of the wealthy residents fled, the town’s Jews “who are professedly friendly to the Germans” remained but did close their stores.

1916: It was reported today that Harry H. Schlacht of the East Side Protective Association has asked that any upcoming peace conference should have an “adequate representation of Jews” to ensure their religious, civic and political liberty “even if the Christian nations could not be induced to allow them re-establish an independent nation in Palestine.”

1917: According to an AP dispatch from Alexandria, Egypt, a German court-martialed hanged leaders in Jaffa after having used confessions obtained through torture to convict them of espionage

1917: The Australian Light Horse, part of Allenby’s forces, took the offensive against the Turkish forces blocking the way to Jerusalem resulting in the capture of 200 Turks while the remainder fell back toward the City of David.

1917: In Bieltsi, “two thousand Bolsheviki troops, deserters and Black Hundreds” began three days of looting Jewish owned shops.

1917: In Ostrog, gangs carried out attacks on Jews and their shops

1917: In reply to a deputation of Jews who asked him to use his influence to put an end to the pogroms, Leon Trotsky said “that as in Internationalist he sees no reason to defend the Jews.”

1917: Walter J. Finlay, an American engineer who has spent the last four years in Palestine and Syria arrived in New York today where he said that when he had “left Jerusalem in the early part of September”  there was no coal to be had I the city, the cost of food and clothing had increased by five hundred percent and “that the small loaf of common bread that cost one cent in normal times is now selling for twelve cents” while “a can of kerosene costs $30.”

1917: As victorious British Imperial forces approached Jerusalem, the Turkish governor began to make good on the promise that there were would be no Jews in the city to welcome the British.  Forty American Jews living in Jerusalem and several Zionists of Ottoman nationality were expelled from the city.  A staff member of the German Consulate in Jerusalem said that the Jews were driven out on foot and beaten like criminals as they made their way towards Jericho.

1917:  The Germans captured a British brigade headquarters and ammunition dump at Masnieres and Les Rues Vertes, France. Among those taken prisoners was the Captain Robert Gee, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Gee managed to escape and organized a party of the brigade staff with which he attacked the enemy, closely followed by two companies of infantry. He cleared the locality and established a defensive flank, then finding an enemy machine-gun still in action, with a revolver in each hand he went forward and captured the gun, killing eight of the crew. He was wounded, but would not have his wound dressed until the defense was organized. Gee was awarded the Victoria Cross for this action.

1918: All Night” a “silent comedy-drama film” co-starring Carmel Myers the San Francisco born daughter of an Australian rabbi and Austrian Jewish mother was released today in the United States.

1918: In New York, violinist Efrem Zimbalist, Sr. and soprano Alma Gluck gave birth to actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. who was baptized as a child in the Episcopal Church. 

1918(26th of Kislev, 5679): Seventy-two year old Jesse Lewisohn, the son of Leonard Lewisohn and the nephew of Adolph Lewisohn, all of whom made fortunes in the copper mining business fell victim to the infamous Spanish Flu Epidemic  and passed away today.

1919(8th of Kislev, 5680): Forty-nine year old Sir Lionel Barnett Abrahams the son of Mordecai Abrahams and the nephew of Barnett Abrahams, the civil servant, economist who worked with John Maynard Keynes and historian whose work included Jews from England in 1290 passed away today.

1920(19th of Kislev, 5681): Seventy-two year old Arthur Strauss, the British MP whose son George was a served as an MP for 46 and whose other son Victor was killed in 1916 while serving as a Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps.

1924:  Birthdate of songwriter and humorist Allan Sherman author of the famous camp song that began, “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.”

1924(3rd of Kislev, 5685): Fourteen year old William Hayes Block, the son of Meir S. Block and Carly Pierson Block passed away today in St. Louis.

1924(3rd of Kislev, 5685): Twenty seven year old Hannah Schnur passed away today.

1924: “Forbidden Paradise,” a silent film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky was released in the United States today.

1925: Josephine Bloomingdale Sperry married Walter David Yankauer today.

1925(13th of Kislev, 5686): Sixty year old New York native and Columbia Law School graduate “a former Judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals passed away today.

1926: Birthdate of Andrew V. Schally. Schally is a Polish-born American endocrinologist and co-recipient with Roger Guillemin and Rosalyn Yalow, of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Schally fled Poland with his family in 1939. Schally became a U.S. citizen in 1962.  He became senior medical investigator with the Veterans Administration in 1973. He was noted for isolating and synthesizing three hormones that are produced by the region of the brain known as the hypothalamus; these hormones control the activities of other hormone- producing glands. These accomplishments were the synthesis of TRH (thyrotropin-releasing hormone), the isolation and synthesis of LH-RH (luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone), and studies of the action of somatostatin.

1927: “On the Lower East Side of Manhattan,” taxi driver Henry Hollander and garment worker Ida (Burak) Hollander gave birth to “Irwin Hollander, an artist and a master printer who persuaded Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and other Abstract Expressionist painters to try their hands at lithography in his East Village workshop.”  (As reported by Roberta Smith)

1928: “10 Religious Groups Meet” published today described the “community Thanksgiving service” that had been held in Carnegie Hall that included participants from the Free Synagogue, the Central Synagogue, Temple Israel, Tremont Temple, Congregation Rodeph Sholom and the West End Synagogue.

1929: “It’s You I Have Loved” a German film compared by some to “The Jazz Singer” with a script by Walter Reisch was released today.

1929: In Phoenix, AZ, Pauline and Sylvan Ganz gave birth to Joan Ganz, who as Joan Ganz Cooney gained fame as the television producer who was one of the founders of the Children’s Television Workshop that created “Sesame Street.” She was the granddaughter of Emil Ganz, the German Jewish immigrant who served three terms as the mayor of Phoenix.

1930: At a meeting in London today, Dr. Chaim Weizmann “insisted…that he did not and would not accept the MacDonald Government’s White Paper.” While expressing his displeasure with the White Paper, the Zionist leader “cautioned the Zionists…against taking sides in politics, a reminder obviously directed toward the White-chapel by-election in the East End of London, where it is said the preponderant Jewish vote may make trouble for the Labor candidate.”

1932: Birthdate of Erich Dyner, who was living in Prague when he was transported to Ujazdow at the age of nine after which he was murdered.

1932(1st of Kislev, 5693): Rosh Chodesh Kislve

1932(1st of Kislev, 5693): Nancy Weiler Lazarus, the two month old daughter of Robert and Hattie Weiler Lazarus passed away today after which she was buried at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, OH.

1932: “The David Baazov Museum of History of Jews of Georgia, a principal museum of the Jewish history and culture in Tbilisi, Georgia was established by the decision of Administration of the "Georgian Committee for assisting the Poor" today as a departmental organization within the framework of cultural base of Jewish workers.”

1933: The David Baazov Museum of History of the Jews of Georgia “was officially founded by the order of People's Commissariat of Education of Georgia today, under the title 'Jewish Historic-Ethnographic Museum'.”

1933: Rabbi Jerome D. Folkman, of Temple Beth Israel, delivered the Thanksgiving sermon today at a joint service attended by Jews and Gentiles. The services were held in the First Baptist Church of which the Rev. Carl Winters is pastor. (JTA)

1934: Today, the “trustees of the Lena Socolow Palestine Scholarship announced the creating of a scholarship to awarded annually to a man or woman over” the age of 18 which enable the recipient to spend “several months residence in Palestine for study and direct contact with the creative forces of the country.”

1934: “The National Labor Committee for Jewish Workers and Pioneers in Palestine opened its tenth annual convention” tonight at the Hotel Pennsylvania with more than one thousand delegates from North America in attendance.

1934: “The Private Life of Don Juan” a British comedy directed and produced by Alexander Korda and with music by Ernst Toch was released in the United Kingdom today.

1935: “Palestine Honors Lehmans” published today described the receipt of a certificate from the women’s division of the Jewish National Fund by Governor and Mrs. Herbert H. Lehman “saying that 25 trees had been planted in the George Washington Forest in Palestine in honor of their 25th wedding anniversary” which “was celebrated several months ago.”

1935: Rosa and Avrom Shlavestein gave birth to their daughter Nina.in Berdichev in the Zhitomir District, USSR (today in Ukraine). Before World War II, Nina’s family lived in Moscow. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union Nina was vacationing in Klintsy in the Bryansk District of the Soviet Union, and was unable to return home because of the invasion. Nina perished during the Holocaust. Her mother Rosa survived and immigrated to Israel. Rosa submitted a Page of Testimony in Yiddish to commemorate her daughter Nina, probably in the 1950s. (As chronicled by Yad Vashem)

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/october/02.asp

1936:  In Worcester, MA, John Hoffman and Florence Schanberg gave birth to Abbot Howard Hoffman  known as “Abbie Hoffman”

1936: In Jerusalem, while testifying before the Royal Commission on the question of Jewish immigration especially as it pertained to laborers, Moshe Shertok, the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, “indicated that far from overcrowding the labor market, the lasts group of immigrants, accompanied as it was by new Jewish capital for investment…increased opportunities for Arab laborers” who “are far better paid in Palestine than in any neighboring country.”

1936: “An American flag, the gift of Mayor a Guardia of New York, was presented today to the municipality of Tel Aviv by the Maccabee soccer team” which had just returned from a tour of the United States.  “The Maccabee also presented a flag of New York Harbor to the new Tel Aviv port in ceremonies at the City Ha, where the athletes were officially welcomed after a parade.

1937: The Arab owner of a house in Nazareth where “two bombs and nineteen rounds of ammunition were found” yesterday remains under arrest today while awaiting trial “in the military court at Haifa.”

1938: According to Michael Hesemann, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – the future Pius XII – wrote a letter today urging Catholic archbishops throughout the world to apply for visas for "non-Aryan Catholics" and Jewish converts to Christianity who wanted to flee Germany

1938: Germany bans Jews from being lawyers

1938(7th of Kislev, 5699): Mrs. Jessie Fox Mack, the wife of Judge Julian Mack of the United States Court of Appeals passed away today “after an illness of several months.” (JTA)

1939: Just months after having divided Poland with its Nazi ally, the Soviet Union invaded Finland in hopes of scoring another quick victory that would re-establish Russian control of what was viewed as breakaway province from the old Imperial System.  The attack would further confuse the military and political situation in Europe during the period of the Phony War.

1939: Three months after the start of World War II, the Soviet Union invaded Finland marking the start of the Winter War in which 204 Finnish Jews fought for the country with 27 being killed.

1939(18th of Kislev, 5700): Seventy-seven year old Reuben Brainin, the Russian born Jewish journalist who was a delegate to the first Zionist Congress  passed away today.

1939: It was reported today that “there are already 45,000 Jews in the Lublin” ghetto” and that “more than 200,000 Lodz Jews will be sent there now that the center of the Polish textile industry has been incorporated into the Reich.

1939: It was reported today that “fifty thousand Jews have already been driven from their homes in Warsaw” and that while “Polish schools have been reopened” “Jewish schools are still closed.”

1939: In Paris, “Jewish circles are informed from Warsaw that the Nazis suggested the abolition of ghettos for” a payment of “1,000,000,000 zlotys” – an offer “Jewish leaders declined fearing the Nazis would not keep their promise.”

1940: “Lady with Red Hair,” a biopic directed by Curtish Bernhardt and produced by Jack Warner was released in the United States today.

1940: Anti-Jewish laws are established in Tunisia.

1940: “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” said today “that the idea of Volksgemeinschaft (a racially bound community) was unchristian and that the Holy Spirit goes wherever it wishes irrespective of whatever Volk.”

1940: After the “Patriaincident,” General Wavell, Britain’s top military officer in the Middle East complains vehemently to Sir Anthony Eden protesting the decision to let any Jewish refugees remain in Palestine. He contends that the decision to let 1,900 Jews remain in Palestine will undermine British relations with the Arabs.  The Mufti, who is Berlin with Hitler, will be strengthened.  Nazi sympathizers in Syria will be encouraged.  And fifth-columnist in Egypt will find it easier to gain support for the Germans.  At least Wavell was honest.  For him as for so many less honest Englishmen (and others) it was all about keeping the Arabs happy.    

1941: Start of the Rumbula Massacre, the liquidation of the Riga Ghetto, a killing spree exceeded only by Babi Yar.

1941: The first group of Jews from Berlin were the first group of Jews to die during the Rumbala Massacre - a crime that that the Nazis would later describe as “1,000 Berlin Jews had been ‘disposed of.’”

1941: Eduard Strauch “participated, with 20 men under his command, in the murder of 10,600 Jews of Riga in the Rumbula forest near the city for which he was promoted to commander in Sipo and the SD and transferred to Belarus.”

1941: Fifty-nine year old Max Kohn was deported from Prague to Terezin today.

1941: Jews began to arrive at Theresienstadt from Prague.

1941: “Two-Faced Woman” a romantic comedy directed by George Cukor, produced by Gottfried Reinhardt, with a script by S.N. Behrman and Salka Vertel, filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg and co-starring Melvyn Douglas was released in the United States by MGM.

1941:  Haj Amin, leader of the Palestinians was “ceremoniously received by Hitler.”

1942(21st of Kislev, 5703): Sixty-two year old Vilna born “coal and fuel dealer” Edward M. Gans, the co-owner of Harris and Gans, former Norwalk, CT, City Councilman and “Zionist” passed away today.

1942: Bernhard Bästleingave the Gestapo a written statement explaining why he had been and would remain a Resistance fighter.”

1943(3rd of Kislev, 5704):Esther "Etty" Hillesum a young Jewish woman whose letters and diaries, kept between 1941 and 1943 describe life in Amsterdam during the German occupation died at Auschwitz. They were published posthumously in 1981, before being translated into English in 1983.

1943(3rd of Kislev, 5704): One of two dates given for the death of 65 year old movie actor Paul Otto who committed suicide along with his wife in Berlin when his Jewish origins were discovered.

1943: All nine Palestinian Hebrew newspapers and the German-language daily issued at Tel Aviv re-appeared today after eleven days' suspension. “The suspension resulted from” the “simultaneous uncensored publication” by these papers “of identical accounts with uniform editorial comment on the search carried” out at a kibbutz named Ramat Hakovesh by British forces looking for arms.  The search turned violent resulting in the murder of one of the Jewish settlers. The articles in the newspapers had been part of the Jewish response which, among other things, continues to claim the right for Jews to be able to defend themselves.

1943: Italy's Interior Ministry orders the concentration of all Italian Jews in camps.

1944(14th of Kislev, 5705): Anna Dresden-Polak’s husband, Barend, died today Auschwitz. Anna, a member of the Dutch ladies’ gymnastic team that won the Gold Medal at the 1928 Olympics, had been killed the year before at Sobibor along with Eva, her six-year old daughter.

1944: More than 100,000 persons, more than half the population of the city, greeted Dr. Chaim Weizmann when he visited Tel Aviv today for the first time since arriving in Palestine two weeks ago.

1944: Cordell Hull completed his service as U.S. Secretary of State, a post he had held since FDR’s inauguration in March, 1933. Hull’s wife, Frances Witz, was the daughter of an Austrian Jew, something he worked very hard to hide.  He may have won a Nobel Prize for helping to create the United Nations, but for Jews, his policy opposing the entry of Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe, should have earned a large measure of contempt. 

1945: “Rudolf Hess dramatically told the tribunal at Nuremberg that he had faked amnesia, fooling Allied medical experts and his own attorney, but that he was now prepared to stand trial and "bear full responsibility for everything I have done.”

1945(25th of Kislev, 5706): First Day of Chanukah

1945(25th of Kislev, 5706): Fifty-six year old New York born, Bellevue Hospital trained physician Maurice Shapiro, the Bayonne, NJ dermatologist and father of Dr. Edward Shapiro, Lt. Samuel Shapiro of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and Betty Maybaum, passed away today;

1945: “Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, 29, German U-boat commander was executed as a war criminal for ordering his crew to shoot the survivors of the Greek merchant ship Peleus in March 1944.”

1946: Bombs are set off in Jerusalem.

1947: A day after the two-state solution is approved by the United Nations, Arabs begin attacking Jews in Palestine.

1947: Arab rifleman fired shots at an ambulance on its way to Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus.

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): Arabs armed with machine guns and grenades attacked a bus traveling from the coast to Jerusalem killing four Jews including Jerusalemites Hirsh Stark and Hanna Weiss and twenty year old Shoshana Mizrachi Farhi who had been on her way to Jerusalem to get married.

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): In another attack on a bus bound for Jerusalem, Arab gunmen killed Hehama Hacohen a pathologist at Hadassah Hospital.

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): Moshe Goldman, a twenty five year old from Jerusalem was shot dead at the Jaffa-Tel Aviv boundary.

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): Fifty-five year old director, actor, writer and producer Ernst Lubitsch passed away. Born in 1892, his urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch".”

http://www.lubitsch.com/

1947(17th of Kislev, 5708): Sixty-nine year old Ukrainian native William Edlin who came to the United States in 1891 where attended Stanford University where he acquired many of the Socialist ideas that would influence his career as a journalist, author and activist who “helped to found the Workmen’s Circle’ and serve as “president of the I.L. Peretz Yiddish Writers Union” passed away today.

1947: On the day after UN decree for Israel, Arabs attacked Jewish settlements. Even though the Jewish state would not officially declare its independence until May, 1948, this day marked the beginning of the Israeli War of Independence as a bus near Lydda (Lod) was attacked by Arabs killing five passengers. The Arabs proclaimed a general strike and attacked the commercial quarter near the Old City of Jerusalem. The Arabs, including those living outside of Palestine, were determined to destroy the Jewish homeland before the mandate officially ended.  Their efforts would include attacks on Jewish settlements throughout the Yishuv as well as a siege of the City of Jerusalem.  The Arabs were well armed and moved about with impunity.  The Jews were limited in their response by an international arms boycott and the presence of the British Army.

1947: Birthdate of David Mamet, an American playwright, screenwriter, director and poet born to a Jewish family in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois who first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross. In 2006 and who wrote The Wicked Son, an examination of self-hating and assimilated Jews.

1948: In Philadelphia, comedian and late night television host Joey Bishop and Sylvia Rzga gave birth to Larry Bishop who partnered with high school chum Rob Reiner, the son of Carl Reiner before pursuing a solo career in director, writing and acting.

1948(28th of Cheshvan): Seventy-three year old Brooklyn born realtor Joseph May, the recently “elected treasurer of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and husband of “Aimee D. Loeb” passed away today.

1948:Colonel Moshe Dayan of Israel and Lieutenant Colonel Abdullah el Tell of Transjordan Arab Legion sign cease-fire agreement “which included provision for a fortnightly convoy to Mount Scopus.”

1948:The American Council for Judaism asks Attorney General Tom C. Clark for a federal investigation of Menachem Begin’s U.S. activities.

1949: Birthdate of Matti Caspi, the member of Kibbutz Hanita who became a leading force in the Israeli pop music world.

http://www.matticaspi.co.il/home/index_eng.shtml

1950(21st of Kislev, 5711): William Ackerman, the rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi passed away opening the way for his widow, Paula Ackerman to become “the interim spiritual leader” of the congregation. (Jewish Women’s Archives)

1950: Birthdate of Danny Sanderson, the native of Kfar Blum, who began his musical in 1971 after leaving the IDF by recording  "The Left-handed Octopus" with the Egyptian-born musician Zouzou Moussa and the orchestra of Israel Radio Arabic.

1951: Birthdate of Christian Bernard, the former “Imperator of AMORC” who is the grandson of “French playwright, novelist, journalist and lawyer Tristan Bernard who was interred at Drancy but escaped deportation to Auschwitz.

1952: Birthdate of Semyon Mayevich Bychkov a Russian-American conductor who is the brother of the conductor Yakov Kreizberg, of blessed memory.

1952: In Chicago, “Doris "Doralee" (née Sinton), a homemaker, and Lester Patinkin, who operated two large Chicago-area metal factories, the People's Iron & Metal Company and the Scrap Corporation of America” gave birth to Mandel Bruce Patinkin who gained fame as Mandy Patinkin who attended Kenwood High and the University of Kansas before beginning his Broadway career that playing Che Guevara in Evita and a leading role in Stephen Sondheim's Follies.

1953: Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Uganda is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Cohen, Governor of Uganda. “Sir Andrew was from a distinguished Anglo-Jewish family. He was a descendant of Levi Barent Cohen, the founder of the oldest Ashkenazi family in Britain.”

1953: “Confessions of a Nervous Man” by George Axelrod which depicts a “playwright waiting anxiously in a theatre district bar for the newspaper reviews of his first play to hit the streets” was broadcast on the television drama show, “Studio One.”

1953(23rd of Kislev, 5714): Elvira Nathan Solis, “the daughter of David Hays Solis and Elvira Nathan Solis, sister of Emily Grace Soils Solis-Cohen and Isaac Nathan Solis, and a granddaughter of Jacob da Silva Solis” passed away today in New York

1954: As Churchill celebrated his 80th birthday, Moshe Sharett (formerly Shertok), sent the aging British statesman a telegram praising him for his leadership again the Nazis during World War II and for his steadfast support of Zionism in general and the Balfour Declaration in particular.

1954: The Alma Trio including pianist Adolph Baller, whose hands were crushed by the Nazis in 1938 after which his fiancée, Edith Strauss-Neustadt helped him to escape to the United States, performed the first of three Beethoven concerts tonight at Town Hall in New York City.

1955: Birthdate of Kiev native Peter Fishman who became a leading sculptor and painter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fishman#/media/File:Admiral_Makaroff.JPG

1955: “Pipe Dream” the seventh Rogers and Hammerstein musical opened on Broadway today at the Shubert Theatre.

1956(26th of Kislev, 5717): Second Day of Chanukah

1956: Thirteen year old violinist Paul Zukofsky, “a deadpan bundle of talent made his debut tonight in Carnegie Hall, “where “he went through a difficult program without turning a hair or moving a facial muscle.”

1956(26th of Kislev, 5717):Seventy-eight year old Budapest native Jean Schwartz, the songwriter who came to the United States at the age of 13 who wrote “Mr. Dooley” – a song “which was sung by the title character in The Wizard of Oz” passed away today.

1957: Eighty three year old Winston Churchill receives early Christmas presents – a case of Israeli oranges from Vera Weizmann, widow of Israel’s first President and longtime friend of Churchill and a Virginia Ham from American Jewish financer Bernard Baruch.

1958(18th of Kislev, 5719): Seventy-five year old Russian born Yiddish author and co-founder of the Sholem Aleichem Schools, Joshua Kaminsky who in November of 1937 “introduced the new Kinder Tsaytung (Children’s newspaper) with a “cover that features a buoyant impressionistic drawing by Nota Koslowsky” passed away today.

1959: Today’s broadcast of the Play of the Week featured the David Susskind production Sartre’s “Crime of Passion” translated by Lionel Abel, the Brooklyn born son of author Anna Schwartz Abelson and Rabbi Alter Abelson whom “Sartre called the most intelligent man in New York City.”

1960: Birthday of Hiam Abbass, the Israeli Arab actress and director born in Nazareth.

1961(22nd of Kislev, 5722): Ninety-one year old Louis Parnes, the chairman of the board of the Paul Parnes Corporation and a founder of the Brooklyn Jewish Center and the Louis Parnes Foundation passed away today.

1962: The United Nations General Assembly elects U Thant of Burma as the new UN Secretary-General. U Thant was the Secretary General who caved in to President Nasser’s demand to remove the UN peace keeping force from the Sinai.  The men in the Blue Helmets were the guarantee that Egypt would not remilitarize the Sinai.  U Thant’s spineless behavior, in violation of the understandings that had caused the Israelis to withdraw after the 1956 Sinai Campaign, set events in motion that would lead to war in June of 1967.

1962: Birthdate of actor Ben Stiller

1964(25th of Kislev, 5725): first day of Chanukah

1964(25th of Kislev, 5725): Ninety-four year old pediatrician Sidney Valentine Haas, the Columbia trained doctor who made great strides in the treatment of celiac disease passed away today.

1964: In Mexico City, actor and producer Muni Lubezki and his wife gave birth to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki Morgenstern.

1964: “The Diamond Ring” a song written by Al Kooper and Irwin Levine was recorded today.

1965: Ninety-four out the 100 prominent Washingtonians whom Charles E. Smith had invited to a dinner at the Mayflower listened to his vision of what would become a campus on Montrose Road in Rockville that would include the Wasserman Residence, the JCC and the Charles E. Smith Day School

1966: Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom. In 1667 “many Jews moved to Barbados to retain their British citizenship. Jews are believed to have been established in Barbados as early as 1628. In 1661, three Jewish businessmen requested permission to institute trade routes between Barbados and Surinam, which was still part of the British Empire. As will be seen repeatedly, even though the Jews had full legal citizenship and were allowed by the government to trade and conduct business, their success caused the other settlers to try to limit the scope of Jewish trade. British businessmen claimed the Jews traded more with the Dutch than the British, and the government did finally put limits on the Jews' ability to trade. They were not allowed to purchase slaves, and were required to live in a Jewish ghetto. By 1802, the colonial government in Barbados had removed all discriminatory regulations from the Jews living there. A Jewish community remained on Barbados until 1831, when a hurricane destroyed all of the towns on the island.” By the time Barbados gained its independence, there were approximately 80 Jews living in the country. In 1987, the Nidhei Israel Synagogue would be rededicated in a new location and the Old Jewish cemetery in Bridgetown would be restored. “The former Nidhei Israel building, which served as the synagogue, is today used for a library. The Jewish cemetery in Barbados is considered to be the oldest graveyard in the Western Hemisphere. A few of the graves date back to the 1660s and include Samuel Hart, son of Moses Hart, and Moses Nehemiah (the first Jew to live in Virginia). Today, approximately 40 Jews live on Barbados. It was the Jewish community of Barbados that initiated and maintains the Caribbean Jewish Congress.”

1966: Birthdate of Leonard “Lenny” Abrahamson, the native of Dublin whose films have twice won the IFTA award for best film.

1967: After having premiered in Hollywood in June, “The Happiest Millionaire,” a music al with a score b Jack Elliot and songs by Richard and Robert Sherman was released today Radio City Music Hall.

1968: “The Shakiest Gun in the West” a comedy written by Everett Greenbaum was released today.

1969:  In New York City,actress Susan Kohner and Berlin-born novelist/menswear designer John Weitz” gave birth Christopher John Weitz who “is best known for his work with his brother Paul Weitz” for their work on the films “American Pie” and “About a Boy.”

1970: Birthdate of Montclair, NJ native and Yale graduate Jodi Wilgoren who went from the New York Times to serving as editor of The Forward under the name of Jodi Rudoren, the wife of the former Gary Ruderman who is known as Gary Rudoren.

1971: In Montreal, Toby Gilsig who is Jewish and his wife Claire gave birth to actress Jessalyn Sara Gilsig who had a Jewish wedding when she married Bobby Solomon.

1972(24th of Kislev, 5733): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1972(24th of Kislev, 5733): Seventy-seven year old of University of Cincinnati and HUC graduate Samuel Wohl, the long-time rabbi of the Reading Road Temple, founder of the League of Labor Zionism and husband of Belle F. Meyers Wohl passed away today after which he was buried at the Montgomery United Jewish Cemetery in Montgomery, OH.

1974(16th of Kislev, 5735): Seventy four year old Bert Gordon (Barney Gorodetsky) whose career spanned the golden age of radio (Eddie Cantor Program) to the golden age of television (Dick Van Dyke Show) passed away today.

1974: In northern Israel, one Muslim was killed and another was wounded during a home invasion at Rihaniya.

1975: WABC-AM is scheduled to broadcast Message of Israel with an address by Dr. Human Judah Schachtel.

1975: WBAI is scheduled to broadcast “A Hanukah Offering – Shtetl on the Hudson with Issac Bashevis Singer, Leonard Michaels and Jerome Charyn, writers who transformed the Jewish experience from the old country to New York

1975: WMCA is scheduled to broadcast a 2 hour program featuring an interview of playwright Dore Schary.

1975: WNBC is scheduled to broadcast the long-running Jewish radio series, Eternal Light, with an appearance by Harry Kemelman, author of “Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red.”

1975: New York Senator Jacob Javits, the state’s most prominent Jewish Republican, is scheduled to appear on a broadcast of Focus on Youth.

1976(8th of Kislev, 5737): Eighty-five year old Philip Reis Alstat, the native of Lithuania and graduated of Columbia University and Jewish Theological Seminary who was a leading rabbi in the Conservative movement,  ardent Zionist and author for 40 years of “Strange to Relate,” a weekly syndicated newspaper column passed away today.

1977: In South Africa, Harry Schwarz began serving as “Shadow Minister of Finance.”

1977: U.S. premiere of Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl” directed by Herbert Ross, co-starring Richard Dreyfus in his Oscar winning performance as “Elliot Garfield.”

1978(30th of Cheshvan, 5739): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1979(10th of Kislev, 5740):  Seventy-eight year old Zeppo Marx, the youngest of the famed Marx Brothers, passed away.

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

https://www.biography.com/people/zeppo-marx-21181001

1979: Ted Koppel becomes anchor of nightly news on Iranian Hostages (ABC)

1979: Stephen Roy “Reinhardt was nominated by President Jimmy Carter today, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to a new seat authorized by 92 Stat. 1629.

1980:  Leonard Bernstein’s "West Side Story" closes at Minskoff Theater New York City after 341 performances

1980: “For the second successive Sunday police prevented Moscow refuseniks from attending the unofficial scientific seminar in the apartment of Victor Brailovsky.”

1981: “Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon arrived at the Pentagon today for a meeting with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on the strategic cooperation between Israel and the United States.”

1983(24th of Kislev, 5744): In the evening kindle the first Chanukah light

1983(24th of Kislev, 5744): Sixty-two year old New York born Florida, Miami and NYU trained attorney Philip E. Heckerling, a professor of law at the University of Miami for the past twenty years and husband of Ruth Kaufman Heckerling with whom he raised two children – Stephanie and Dale – passed away today.

1985(17th of Kislev, 5746): Ninety-four year old Israeli artist Joseph Zaritsky,  native of the Ukraine, who studied art in Kiev before making Aliyah in 1923, moved to Jerusalem in 1929 and finally settled Tzova, a kibbutz near Israel’s capital city, passed away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:313_69~Yossef_Zaritsky,_Safed,_c_1924_1.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zaritsky,_Yossef,_Painting,_1950-1~B74_0036.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zaritsky,_Yossef,_Painting,_1950-1~B74_0036.jpg

1988(21st of Kislev, 5749): Amiram Nir, who “was said to have been in Mexico on avocado business” “boarded a one-engine Cessna on a flight from Uruapan to Mexico” which ended “when the plan went down in the mountains” killing Nir.

1988(21st of Kislev, 5749): Seventy-four year old Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter (née Rothschild) the daughter of Charles Rothschild, a patron of Jazz and bebop passed a way today.

http://www.thejazzbaroness.co.uk/

1988: As Israeli political leaders continue try and form a government following the election held on November 1, today the Labor Party decided to end coalition negotiations with Likud. At about the same time, its leader, Shimon Peres, vowed that if a measure redefining who is Jewish under the Law of Return were put to a vote in Parliament, every Labor member would ''vote clearly against it.''

1988: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. buys RJR Nabisco for $25.07 billion. All three of the takeover kings were Jewish.

1993: “Schindler’s List,” the movie version Schindler’s Ark premiered in Washington, D.C. today

1994: Mark B. Cohen completed his service as “Democratic Whip of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.” Today.

1994(27th of Kislev, 5755): Eighty-six year old “Lionel Stander, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants whose gravelly voice and beetling brow made him a memorable presence on stage and screen and whose political beliefs in the era of the Hollywood blacklist earned him a long exile from American films, died today at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/02/obituaries/lionel-stander-dies-at-86-actor-who-defied-blacklist.html?scp=1&sq=Lionel+Stander&st=nyt

1997(1st of Kislev, 5758): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1997(1st of Kislev, 5758): Kathy Acker (née Karen Lehmann) “an American experimental novelist, prose stylist, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer” passed away.

1997: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including The Darkside of Camelot by Seymour Hersh and an essay by Alfred Kazin entitled “Missing Murray Kempton.”

1998: Michael Dobbs examines the interaction between major American companies and the Nazis in “Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration” published today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm

2000(3rd of Kislev, 5761):  Seventy-five year old Holocaust survivor Ilona Karmel who was remembered as the author of the novel, An Estate of Memory passed away today. It is considered one of the most significant novels in English to address the experiences of Jewish women during World War II. Born in Cracow in 1925, Karmel was interned along with her mother and sister in three different labor camps after the Nazi occupation of Poland. She sustained severe leg injuries during the war and required years of recuperation before immigrating to the United States in 1948. Within four years of arriving in the United States, Karmel graduated from Radcliffe College, won a fiction-writing contest sponsored by Mademoiselle Magazine, and completed her first novel, Stephania. Stephania focused on the physical and spiritual recovery of a young woman who had survived the Nazi concentration camps. In 1969, Karmel published An Estate of Memory, which was reissued by the Feminist Press in 1986. Reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review, it was one of the earliest significant literary treatments of Jewish experience in the Nazi camps and remains one of the most significant novels to address Jewish women's experiences during the Holocaust. Karmel taught creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for many years where an annual writing prize that she established has been renamed in her honor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/arts/ilona-karmel-75-who-wrote-of-holocaust.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/karmel-ilona

2000: Time of Favor (Ha-hesder) Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar's 2000 debut film, starring Aki Avni was released in Israel today.

2000(3rd of Kislev, 5761): Seventy-five year old Ilona Karmel, “literary chronicler of the Holocaust and author of An Estate of Memory, passed away.(As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

http://jwa.org/thisweek/nov/30/2000/ilona-karmel

2001(15th of Kislev, 5762): Ninety-three year old Syracuse native Robert P. Jacobs who served as the Rabbi at Temple Adas Emuno and Temp Beth Ha-Tephila before founding the Hillel House at Washington University in 1946 which he served as director until 1972, passed away today in St. Louis, MO.

2001: South African businessman Cyril Kern gave Gilad Sharon a loan to help cover the shortfall in the contributions being raised for his father’s campaign.

2002(25th of Kislev, 5763): First Day of Chanukah; light second candle in the evening

2003: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special interest to Jewish readers including In An Uncertain World: Tough Choices From Wall Street to Washington by Robert E. Rubin and Jacob Weisberg, Secrets of the City by Anne Roiphe, Primo Levi: A Life by Ian Thomson and Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait by Midge Decter

2004 An animal-rights group released grisly undercover videotapes today showing cows in a major kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessor in Postville, IA, staggering and bellowing in seeming agony long after their throats were cut.

2004: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's shaky government coalition survived three no-confidence votes in Parliament, though the opposition managed a strong showing.”

2005: Former Labor chairman Shimon Peres announced that he was ending his political activity in the Labor Party and would support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the upcoming March elections

2006: Haaretz reported that a small room in Kibbutz Merhavia which was once home to Israel's first woman prime minister, Golda Meir, has been renovated and refurbished  in the style of the 1920s when Golda lived there.

2006(9th of Kislev, 5767): Poet, songwriter and journalist Eli Mohar who wrote the “Goings On Around Town” column in the Tel Aviv weekly Ha’ir passed away from cancer at the age of 58.

2006: Sasson Somekh, visiting professor in Jewish Studies, opened the Jews Among Arabs conference at Vanderbilt with a lecture based on his memoir Baghdad Yesterday. Somekh grew up in the Jewish community in Iraq in the 1930s and ‘40s. He pointed out that some 250 Muslim Iraqis died in 1941 while trying to defend their Jewish neighbors being attacked by a pro-Nazi mob. About 150 Jews were killed in the incident, which launched the decline of Jewish community in Iraq, which had thrived there for 26 centuries. 

2007:John Strugnell, controversial Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, passed away.

2007: The Wall Street Journallisted Ramaz as one of the top schools for graduates entering the top eight universities in the country, with 10 out of a class of 100 (class of 2007) going to these schools. The Ramaz School is a coeducational, private Modern Orthodox Jewish prep school located on the Upper East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan.

2007: At The Sydney Jewish Museum an exhibition styled “Butterflies of Hope” comes to an end.. 

2007: The week long launch of "Operation: Last Chance” will continue with a press conference in Chile.

2007: The New York Timesreviewed The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood by Mark Kurzem.

2007(20th of Kislev, 5768): IDF Private Ma’ayan Rotenberg of Kibbutz Beit Haemek passed away as a result of an accident while training with a tank unit.  He died a week before his 19th birthday.

2007(20th of Kislev, 5678): Ninety-three year old Isaac Cohen who served as Chief Rabbi of Ireland from 1958 to 1979 passed away today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Windermere%27s_Fan_(1925_film)

2008: The Orthodox Union's National Conference meeting, at the Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem comes to a close.  Participants included Rabbi Metzger, Rabbi Lau, Rabbi Menachem Genack and Rabbi Herschel Schachter. The Keynote address was given by British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

2008: The International Conference on Contemporary Issues and Halacha, opens at Yeshurun Synagogue in Jerusalem.

2008: Four of eight soldiers wounded in terrorist attacks on the Nahal Oz Base Gaza crossing during the Sabbath remained hospitalized.

2009: “Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza” a play panned by The Sunday Times, condemned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and described as “a blood libel” by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic opened at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon

2009: "Pray for You" a song written by Joel Brentlinger & Jaron Lowenstein and recorded by American singer Jaron Lowenstein was released today.

2009: Amy Goodman, host of the radio and television program "Democracy Now!," discusses and signs her new book, Breaking the Sound Barrier, at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.

2009: AJWS and its President, Ruth Messinger join Congregation Emanu-El, Congregation Emanu-El’s Young Adult Community, Congregation Beth Sholom, Congregation Sherith Israel, Taube Center for Jewish Life at the JCCSF, The Hub of the JCCSF, The SF Bay Area Darfur Coalition and Congregation Sha’ar Zahav to cosponsor an advance screening of Reporter the new documentary featuring Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist.  Reporter documents Kristoff’s efforts to write about the gut-wrenching conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

2009:The opening of the John Demjanjuk trial today in Munich had to be delayed by over an hour because of the flood of visitors - including Holocaust survivors - who wished to observe what might be the last prosecution of an alleged Nazi war criminal

2009(13th of Kislev, 5770): Eighty-nine year old Columbia Law School graduate Charles Miller Metzner, the former “counsel to the General Jewish Council” and a federal judge starting in 1959 passed away today.

https://www.fjc.gov/node/1385066

2010:"My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish, and I'm Home for the Holidays!," is scheduled to have its first performance in Charlotte, NC.

2010: The 92nd Street Y in New York apologized for the way Deborah Solomon had conducted her interview of Steve Martin along with an offer to refund their money.

2010: The Shin Bet has arrested three Palestinian militants suspected of carrying out a shooting attack against two Israelis in late September, it emerged today The three Palestinians belong to the Abu-Moussa group, a splinter faction of Fatah; the head of the cell received his military training in Syria and Lebanon..

2010(23rd of Kislev, 5771): Eighty-four year old Cleveland native Lawrence E. “Larry” Gelfand, Professor-Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Iowa and husband of Miriam Ifland passed away today in Irvine, CA.

2010: Norman Lebrecht reviews “Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World.”

2010:Through the Gale,” the third album of Asaf Avidan & the Mojos was released in Israel today.

2011: The Chabad Jewish Center in Metairie, LA, is scheduled to host its monthly Rosh Chodesh event which this month is entitled “Impression & Expression: The Essential Woman.”

2011: In New Orleans, Temple Sinai is scheduled to host its final session of this month’s Adult Education Series, “The Major Message of the Minor Prophet!”

2011: David Schmahmann is scheduled to discuss his new novel “The double Life of Alfred Buber” at the final event of the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore’s Jewish Book Month.

2011:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top cabinet ministers approved the handover of $100 million in tax money to the Palestinian Authority today, despite the vocal opposition of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

2011:An errant volley of projectiles landed in the vicinity of a top Israel Defense Forces officer today, in what preliminary reports say was a severe mishap during a large-scale drill in Israel's south.

2012: Adi Neuhaus, first prize winner of the “Voice of Music Young” Artist Competition is scheduled to perform at noon today in Jerusalem.

2012: “A Late Quartet,” Israeli director Yaron Zilberman's engrossing drama about an illustrious string quartet, is scheduled to shown at several cinemas in New York City.

2012: “A Search for God Through Bluegrass and Klezmer” published today described the career of Andy Statman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/nyregion/andy-statmans-search-for-god-in-music.html?ref=music&_r=0

2012: In a clever combination of Mitzvot (Tzdekah and Shabbat) the Young Professionals Network is scheduled to host a Shabbat dinner where the attendees will make contributions toward the B'nai B'rith's Disaster Relief Fund for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

2012:Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, who delivered a supportive speech of Israel at the UN before its vote yesterday on the Palestinian statehood, said today "the bottom line is we will not let the Jewish people and the State of Israel stand alone when the going gets tough."

2012:  At a meeting of the Saban Forum, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed the Palestinians for the collapse of the peace talks in 2000, when she said, “I don’t care how many people try to revise that history, the fact is [Arafat] said no at Camp David.”  “The Palestinians could have had a state as old as I am if they had made the right decision in 1947,” she said. “They could have had a state if they had worked with my husband and then-Prime Minister Barak at Camp David. They could have had a state if they’d worked with Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Minister Livni.”

2013(27th of Kislev, 5774): Shabbat Chanukah

2013: Scheduled opening of the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: A Palestinian was shot to death this morning by Border Guard volunteers, who were searching after illegal aliens in the area of Yarkon Cemetery in Petah Tikva. The Border Guard stated that a policeman shot the Palestinian after the latter attempted to stab him. (As reported by Hassan Shaalan)

 

2013: Beduin Israelis and their supporters throughout the country staged protest demonstrations today against the controversial Prawer resettlement plan.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Modeling the Flood Story – from Ancient to Modern Times.”

2014: As part of UK Jewish Comedy Festival, LOCO and JW3 are scheduled to present “Time Travel” with Woody Allen

2014: In Melbourne, “King of the Jews” and “Magic Men” are scheduled to be shown at the Jewish International Film Festival.

2014: Thirty-one year old Gill Rosenberg, “an Israeli-Canadian woman who traveled to Syria to fight alongside the Kurds there earlier this month has been abducted by Islamic State fighters, Hebrew media reported today, citing Syrian jihadist-linked media

2014: According to a report published today in Haaretz, Jerusalem’s “is plumbing new depths to devise funerary solutions to Israel’s shortage of space, and has broken ground on two experimental crypts near the entrance to the city.

2014: “Rafi Eitan, the head of the Bureau of Scientific Relations in November 1985 that ran Jonathan Pollard confirmed Sunday for the first time that the prime minister Shimon Peres and defense minister Yitzhak knew full well that Israel had a spy within the US armed forces” who was in fact Jonathan Pollard.

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including  George Marshall by Debi and Irwin Unger with Stanley Hirschon and an essay “To Russia, With Tough Love” by Marsha Gessen

2015: Friends and family of Dr. Fred Goldblatt, whose incomparable contributions to the Cedar Rapids Jewish community include a willingness to share his considerable musical skills, prepare to celebrate his natal day.

 

2015(18th of Kislev, 5776): “Janet Wolfe — gleeful gadabout, archetypal Gothamite and the longtime executive director of the New York City Housing Authority Symphony” passed away today at the age of 101. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/nyregion/janet-wolfe-gleeful-gothamite-on-a-first-name-basis-with-her-era-dies-at-101.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

2015: Seventy-one year old Sheldon Silver “the son of a hardware store owner on the Lower East Side” who rose become “one of the most feared politicians in New York State was found guilty…of federal corruption charges” today.

 

2015: “Righteous Among Us: Two Who Defied the Nazis,” a film about how Waitsill and Martha Sharp worked to save Jews from the Shoah in 1939 is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, Illinois.

 

2016: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a memorial tribute for Elie Wiesel this evening.

2016: “For the first time in three months, Israeli jets reportedly struck targets in Syria early this morning, hitting a Bashar Assad regime military base and a Hezbollah convoy en route to Lebanon, according to foreign media.”

2016: “Army reported” today that “several leading rabbis have decided to campaign against moves by the IDF to further integrate women into combat units and plan to advise religious male soldiers to avoid orders relating to mixed-gender acivities.”

2016: During an interviews on CNBC today, future Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said that the Trump administration’s job is to “make sure that the average American has wage increases and good jobs” and “his priority was getting a sustained growth of GDP of 3% or 4%.”

2016: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “We Were Neighbors: Remembering Middle Eastern Jewish Communities” which will include “scholarly, first-person reflections by award-winning writers Lucette Lagnado (The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World) and André Aciman (Out of Egypt)

2017(12th of Kislev, 5778): Seventy-four year old Leslie Wolfe, the Washington born daughter of Theodore and Isabelle Rosenberg and holder of a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Florida who was a leader in the fight for equality of women through her work with the Center for Women Policy Studies passed today in Rockville, MD. (As reported by Amisha Padnani)

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a noon-time “chill and chat” with Rabbi Michael Rosenfeld-Schueler who also will be leading an “in-depth text-based Gemara learning” session before the weekday evening meal.

2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host Peter G. Weintraub’s first session of “Introduction to Judaism.”

2017: The Jewish Music Forum is scheduled to host a lecture by historian Daniel Jütte on “Gustav Mahler:  Jewish Identity and Nineteenth-Century Musical Culture”  followed by a concert featuring Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer Riehn’s chamber orchestra arrangement of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth)

2017: “The Jstyle Winter Premiere Party” is scheduled to take place at the StoneWater Golf Club in Highland Heights, Ohio.

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education is scheduled to host “An Evening of Unity”

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as David Fromkin whose works included the must-read A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East continues today.

2018: “The 10 Best Books of 2018” from the NYT included How To Change Your Mind: What the Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence by Michael Pollan, “the son of author and financial consultant Stephen Pollan and columnist Corky Pollan.”

2018: As of today, the Kfir Infantry Brigade has “completed an extensive two-month exercise simulating a war in the Gaza Strip against the Hamas terror group” prior to the unit being “stationed outside the coastal enclave” in 2019.

2018: “Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer who has twice pleaded guilty to crimes that have implicated Mr. Trump in illegal or questionable conduct, asked a federal judge late tonight that he be allowed to avoid prison when he is sentenced in less than two weeks.”(As reported by Benjamin Weiser and Maggie Haberman.

2018: The Israel Museum is scheduled to host a lecture on “Vayeshev” with “Noga Elias-Zalmanovitch” at 11:00 A.M.

2018: As American Jews prepare for Shabbat, they dealt with reports of arsonists being responsible for a fire at an Orthodox synagogue in Houston, the attack by vandals on the offices of Professor Elizabeth Midlarksy at Columbia who painted the walls with Swastikas and the ramifications of Michael Cohen’s plea deal that included claims that were diametrically opposite to President Trump’s description of the same events.

2019: Seventy-fifth birthday of University of Iowa, Ph.D. and “distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University who authored several tomes including Judas, A Biography;

http://www.indiana.edu/~jsp/faculty/profile_sGubar.shtml

2019: “The Israel Defense Forces said it had launched airstrikes against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza in the predawn hours this morning after weapons were fired at Israel from the Strip yesterday.” (As reported by Times of Israel Staff)

2019: In a testament to the vitality of Jewish life in the rural heartland, in Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host the “Baby Blessing Ceremony” of Juniper Josephine Kline, daughter of Jake Kline and Alice Baker and Ariella Rose Greenfield, the daughter of Andrea and Brandon Greenfield.

2019(2nd of Kislev, 5780): Parashat Toldot;

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host the fourth and final lecture by Martin Kaufman on “The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem.

2020: The jHUB Young Professionals are scheduled to host a monthly book club where they discuss books about Jewish themes, identity and experiences which this month is reading Naamah: A Novel by Sarah Blake.

2020: The Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey’s Virtual Israel Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2020: As more lockdown restrictions are scheduled to be lifted, Israelis face the reality that the national coronavirus infection rate has spiked to over 3%.

2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center of Jewish Culture is scheduled to host Kenneth D. Wald, author of The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism which seeks to answer the conundrum – “why Jews, one of America’s most afflu­ent and upward­ly eth­nic groups, have con­tin­ued to vote against what would appear to be their class interest. “

 

 

 

 


This Day, December 1, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 1

 

500: (Kislev 4428): This is the traditional date of the closing of the Talmudic era and the beginning of the Saboraic era. Saboraim is “the title applied to the principals and scholars of the Babylonian academies in the period immediately following that of the Amoraim.  The Saboraic Era lasted for approximately 200 years.

800: Charlemagne judges the accusations against Pope Leo III in the Vatican. Fourteen years later, with the crown firmly on his head Charlemagne would issue his Capitulary for the Jews. During his papacy, Leo III “introduced public disputations between Jews and Christians, resulting in forced conversions to Christianity.”

1081: Birthdate of Louis VI of France. “During his reign jurisdiction over the Jews (and their revenues) gradually passed from royal control to the hands of the Church. The Abbey of Saint-Denis, in 1112, obtained from the king judicial control over the Jews in the town. In 1119 Louis ceded half his income from the Jews of *Tours to the Abbey of Saint-Martin there; and in 1122 he granted five houses belonging to Jews to Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis.” (As reported by Bernhard Blumenkranz)

1135: Henry I of England passed away. During Henry's reign (1100–1135) a royal charter was granted to Joseph, the chief rabbi of London, and all his followers. Under this charter, Jews were permitted to move about the country without paying tolls, to buy and sell goods and property, to sell their pledges after holding them a year and a day, to be tried by their peers, and to be sworn on the Torah rather than on a Christian Bible. Special weight was attributed to a Jew's oath, which was valid against that of 12 Christians, because they represented the King of England in financial matters. The sixth clause of the charter was especially important: it granted to the Jews the right of movement throughout the kingdom, as if they were the king's own property (sicut res propriæ nostræ).  Henry died without a direct male heir.  The result was civil strife that was bad for England in general and the Jews in particular.  Peace would only come when Henry’s grandson, Henry II, took the throne.

1145: Pope Eugenius III issued “Quantum praedecessores” a papal bull calling for the Second Crusade – another disaster for the Jews of Europe and Palestine.

1145: Pope Eugene IIIsent a papal bull to the French King, Louis VII, proclaiming the Second Crusade. Led by Louis and Emperor Conrad III from 1147 to 1149, the crusade failed to accomplish its goal.

1291: Eight year old Infanta Isabella of Castile, the eldest daughter of Sancho IV, the ruler of Castile “who treated the story of the affair between Rahel la Fermosa, a Jewish woman from Toledo, and King Alfonso VIII as fact and not fable” married James II of Aragon.

 

1516: Jerusalem surrendered to Selim I, the Ottoman Sultan

 

1521: Forty-five year old Pope Leo X, one of those Italian Popes whose pursuit of other interests left him “no time to think of torturing Jews” passed away today. Bonet de Lates, a Jew from Provence served as Leo’s physician and unofficial advisor.  He was more of an aristocrat than man of the cloth who was more concerned about navigating among the competing temporal powers than matters of religion. His leniency towards the Jews may have stemmed from an attitude summed up by his statement that “It is well known how useful this fable of Christ has been to us and ours!”

 

1652: Manuel Fernando de Villa-Real, a distinguished Marrano who "conducted the consular affairs of the Portuguese court at Paris" was seized in Lisbon, gagged and executed.

 

1573(Kislev, 5334): This date marks the death of Solomon Luriawho was born in 1510 at Brest-Litovsk.  Luria is known as the "Rashal" or the Maharshal. A contemporary of Salomon Shakna, he represented an opposing view in Talmudic study, believing in plain but lucid methods. He was also the author of the Yam Shel Shlomo (Sea of Solomon), a commentary on several volumes of the Talmud, and Chokmat Shlomo (Wisdom of Solomon) in which he corrected many faulty readings in the Talmud, Rashi and the Tosophot.

 

1626: Ibn Farukh (Governor of Jerusalem) was deposed after harshly persecuting the Jews.

1652(Tevet, 5413): Portuguese Jewish statesman Manuel Fernando de Villarreal was executed by the Inquisition.

1676: Aaron Samuel Kaidanover the Chief Rabbi of Cracow, who lost two of his two daughters and had all his possession stolen during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, passed away today “while attending the Vadd HaGalil of Krakow.”

1742: The Jews living in “Great Russia” were expelled by order of Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great and Catherin I.

1742: Suleiman Pasha of Damascus ended the siege of Tiberias

1762: Lob Kann’s son, Moses Kann, the chief rabbi of Hesse-Darmstadat, passed away today.

1785: In German, Frommet Hajim and Aron Abraham Arnold gave birth to Mayer Arnold, the husband of Fannie Wolf with whom he 16 children.

1793(27thof Kislev, 5554): Third Day of Chanukah

1793: The day after he had passed away, “Abraham ben Jacob” was buried at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd.) Jewish Cemetery” today.

1820(25thof Kislev, 5581): Chanukah

1820: Hayman and Almeria Levy gave birth to their oldest child, George Levy

1825: Czar Alexander I passed away.  This anti-Semitic Russian monarch’s death coincided with a temporary cessation of the forced re-settlement of Jews in the Pale of Settlement.  The cruel re-settlement policy would be quickly reinstituted by his son and successor, Nicholas I. Prayer for the Czar: May the Lord keep the Czar…far away from the Jews.

1825:Nicholas I, the incompetent, reactionary Czar who led his nation to defeat in the Crimean War and promulgated a series of anti-Semitic decrees that included drafting under-age Jewish boys for 25 years of military service, the banning of Yiddish and the banning of Jews from several cities including Kiev.

1828(25thof Kislev, 5589): Channukah is observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.

1833: The music journal, Le Ménestrel which was a competitor with Maurice Schlesinger’s Gazette Musicale de Paris, first appeared today.

1834: Birthdate of Joseph Blumenthal, the native of Munich who became a successful New York businessman who served in the State Assembly and was instrumental in bring down the Tweed Ring.

1835: In Germany, Deborah Cohen and Solomon Stix who were married in 1815 gave birth to Nathan Stix, the husband of Ricka Iglauer Stix and the father of Alice, Aurelia, Louis, Solomon Charles and Albert Stix.

1839: In Breslau, Prussia, Simon Baruch Shefftel, the Breslau born son of Alexander Baruch Schefftel and Roeschen Schefftel, and his wife Henriette (Gitel) Schefftel gave birth to Rosalie Schefftel who became Rosalie Perles when she married Rabbi Joseph Perles.

1841: In Charleston, SC,Emanuel Nunes Carvalho married Caroline A. (Woolf) Carvalho.

1843: Birthdate of Leopold Lowenstein a German rabbi born from Gailingen, Baden. The son of a rabbi, he would eventually serve as the Rabbi for three districts located in his native Baden.

1844: In an election for Chief Rabbi of the British Empire Jacob Adler received 121 votes, Hirsch Hirschfeld 12, and Samson Raphael Hirsch 2.

1848: Birthdate of Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld, or Sonnenfeld, who was the Chief Rabbi and co-founder of the Edah HaChareidis, Haredi Jewish community in Jerusalem, during the years of the British Mandate of Palestine. 

1848: In Cornwall, UK, Amelia Jacob and Henry Joseph gave birth to Bessie Joseph.

1850: Birthdate of Hermann M. Kisch, the thirty-yearlong member of the Indian Civil Service diplomat who had earned an M.A. from Cambridge in 1879 and was called to the Bar in 1883 and was President of the Bristol Branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association.

1852(20th of Kislev, 5613): Sixty-seven year old Nanette Wexler, the wife of Leser Lazarus Ochsenhorn with she had eight children passed away today in Louisville, KY.

1852: A British ship, the Fitzjames under the command of Captain arrived at the Quarantine area in New York tonight.  Among the passengers were two Jews – a man named Drestner from Poland and Augustine Behr from Germany.  Apparently when the ship was about thirty miles from Sandy Hook (off the coast of New York) the two Jews had a discussion about religion that became so heated that Behr stabbed Drestner with his knife.  Drestner was taken to the hospital on Staten Island.  While the police are holding Behr in jail, U.S. authorities say they have authority in the case since the attack took place on British vessel in international waters.  The British Counsel has been notified and may send Behr back to England for a hearing.

1855: The U.S.S. Minnesota, on which Adolph Marix would serve in 1880, was launched today.

1859: In New York City Simon and Rosa Marx (the future Rosa Bloom) gave birth to Samuel Marx

1860: The New York Times correspondent wrote from Jamaica that “an Anti-Jewish feeling is brewing in the community, and I am very much afraid that, politically -- that is, speaking daggers, but using none, for we can never come to that -- a war of races will have to be fought. The colored classes who constitute the education, the planters who represent the wealth, and the blacks who have the force of numbers, are not going to rest satisfied while the Government and the patronage of Government are given up to the Jews, who are clannish enough to employ them to their own use, and to the detriment of all other classes. This is the state of things at present; but the difficulty is far from being settled, and I am afraid the Governor will, at the long run, be forced to retire.”

1861: E. Delafield Smith, the U.S. District Attorney, wrote a letter of introduction to President Lincoln on behalf of Rabbi Fischell “who has been appointed by the Board of Delegates of the Israelites of the U.S. to urge the modification of the laws in relation to chaplains, so far as they affect the practice, though I doubt not unintended exclusion of clergymen of the Jewish faith from acting in that capacity, even in regiments composed of persons of that faith. This class of our citizens has evinced loyalty to the Government, and I need not say is entitled to at least a hearing on this subject. Dr. Fischell is a gentleman of great worth and intelligence.”

 

1863: Birthdate of Dunedin, NZ native and attorney Matthew Lewis Moss, the grandson of Matthew Moss, the “choirmaster at the Great Synagogue of London” and husband of Katherine Lyson who served as a “member of the legislative Assembly of Western Australia” before moving to London in 1914 where he continued his legal career until his death in 1946.

 

1866: In St. Louis, “William Harris Sr., a founder of the Theatrical Syndicate in the 1890s and Rachel Harris (née) Freefield” gave birth to Henry B. Harris  “who assumed the general direction of the benefit for the Hebrew Infant Asylum of New York” which took place on July 25, 1903 which included performance by Sally Cohen and Minnie Seligman

 

1867: Birthdate of Ignacy Mościcki who in 1935 as President of Poland and despite the growing anti-Semitism in the country appointed Biblical scholar, historian and Jewish community leader Moses Schorr to serve in the Senate.

1868: Disraeli completed his first term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and became the leader of the Opposition.

1870: It was reported today that the Hebrew Charity Fair under the chairmanship of E.B. opened to a full house with a program that included a speech by the Governor of New York.

1870:  Attendance at the second day of the Hebrew Fair for the benefit of Mount Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was less than on opening night, but was robust enough to raise an additional $7,000.  When this total is added to the over $51,000 raised the first night, it means that in only two days the fair has already raise almost $60,000.

1870: Professor Singler’s Orchestra provided the music at tonight’s second annual ball of the Hebrew Young Men’s Literary Association which was held at the Apollo Hall in New York.

1871: The Hebrew Young Men’s Literary and Benevolent Association is scheduled to host an evening of entertainment at the Irving Hall.

1871: It was reported today that children at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum enjoyed a “splendid” Thanksgiving meal filled with “holiday pleasure.”

1871: It was reported today that in Brooklyn all businesses were closed for Thanksgiving except for “saloons and Jew clothing-stores.”

1874: In Simbirsk, Russian Empire, Eugenia Berliner and Gabriel Zon gave birth to Raphael Zon, the husband of Anna Puziriskaya, who in 1898 came to the U.S. where he pursued a 43 year career as a forest researcher.

1875: In Chicago, founding of Congregation Moses Montefiore which offered religious school classes on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and whose members included Rabbi Isaiah Agat.

1876: It was reported today that the Hebrew Charity Ball will be held on December 21 at the Academy of Music.

1876: It was reported that Rabbi George Jacobs delivered the invocation at yesterday’s ceremony in Philadelphia, PA during which a monument dedicated to Religious Liberty financed by the B’nai Brith was presented to the Centennial Committee chaired by A.L. Singer.

1877: The Hebrew Free School Association in New York is providing services to 701 students.

1878: The annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Association was held today at the schoolhouse located at Number 96 Bowery. As of this date, the association operates five schools, employs 17 teachers and serves 1,045 students.

1879: The Paula Markham troupe including Josephine Sarah Marcus, the future wife of Wyatt Earp arrived by stagecoach in Tombstone, supposedly on the same day that Wyatt and his brother arrived in the Arizona town

1880: Birthdate of Bucharest native and New York Eclectic College trained eye specialist Dr. David H. Alperin, the holder of a Ph.D.in biochemistry from Columbia and an “associate professor of ophthalmology at the New York Post-Graduate Hospital Medical School” who the husband of Esther Wexler Alperin with whom he had one daughter and a son, Dr. Benjamin J. Alperin.

1883: In Rushville, Indiana, Jewish merchant Jacob Block is suffering from the after effects of having been slashed with a razor by the son of his competitor Eli Frank while his is son is under arrest for fatally shooting Eli Frank.

1883: In the early morning hours, just after midnight, a troop of peasants from Budas armed with guns and axes attacked Jews living at Zala Lovo in southwestern Hungary.

1885: The new home of Congregation B’nai Jershurun on Madison between 64th and 65thStreets is scheduled to be dedicated today.

1885: Two days after he had passed away, John Hadkins, the husband of Maria Woolf with whom he had had five children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Jewish Cemetery.”

1886: The Wife and daughter of a Polish Jew named Milkowski who has lived in West Carroll Parish came to Lake Providence, LA to report that a mob made of people who owed him money had destroyed the family home and outbuildings at Caledonia.

1887: D. Burkmann, a Polish Jew arrived in New York aboard the Steamship State of Indiana along with Perl Cajesky who had promised him that her husband would repay him for her ticket as soon as they arrived.

1888: Mr. Harpman said today that $500 has been turned over to the committee for the benefit of destitute Jews in Dakota and “there is no longer any need for the money among the Jews” because “they are abundantly supplied” and he feels compelled “to request that nothing further be shipped.”

1890: In Latvia, Isaac and Ida Gelfand gave birth to Maurice Hirsh Gelfand, the Cleveland lawyer and WW I veteran who was the husband of Rachel Shapiro Gelfand and the father of Lawrence Emerson Gelfand.

1891: “Benjamin Berensen Disappears” published today described how Berensen, a Boston Jewish “dry-goods jobber” defrauded his co-religionist out cash and goods valued at $10,000 to $15,000 by using an elaborate check-kiting scheme before skipping town.

1892: Officials of the New York Health department were alarmed yesterday at the reappearance of typhus five months after dealing with the last epidemic which had begun with a group of infected Russian and Polish Jews who had arrived on the SS Massila,

1893: In Posen, Prussia, “Ida (Kohn) and Max Toller, a pharmacist” gave birth to Ernst Toller, a German-Jewish playwright and active anti-fascist, who fought for the Kaiser in World War I and whose sister and brother were to a concentration camp after which he hung himself at the Mayflower Hotel.  W.H. Auden memorialized him with a poem entitled “In Memory of Ernst Toller” published in 1940 in an anthology called Another Time.

 1893: It was reported today that among the dignitaries who had served Thanksgiving Dinner to the children at the United Hebrew Charities’ Industrial School were H.S. Allen, Dr. H.P. Mendes and Mrs. Louis Mendes.

1894: New Yorker A. M. Huntington has purchased University of Chicago Professor William I. Knapp’s 6,000 volume library that included the Ferrara Bible of 1443 which is known as the “Jews Bible.

1895: It was reported today that the Harmonie clubhouse at 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues “has already been the scene of some excellent affairs” and that “the club is deeply interested in the success of the Hebrew fair” which means the club “will not give any of its larger affairs until late December.”

1895: It was reported today “that mint sauce, the accompaniment of roast lamb is a survival of the Jewish custom of eating the Passover lamb with bitter herbs.”

1895: “Dr. Silverman On Armenia” published today provided a summary of the views of Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El on  “the Turkish persecution directed against the Armenians” as well  the Turkish persecution against Christian missionaries, and against those Americans residing in the Ottoman Empire. Silverman believes that Jews, given their own history of persecution, have an obligation to speak out when others persecuted.

1895: Despite the dismissal of an indictment against Peter Peiser, a delicatessen dealer, who had been arrested for selling sausage on Sunday, today the police will follow the instruction of Acting Police Chief Conlin and arrest today any violators of the Sunday law prohibiting sales after ten o’clock in the morning.

1896: The Fifteenth Biennial Council of the American Hebrew Congregations opened today in Louisville, KY, with a business meeting in the gymnasium of the Yong Men’s Hebrew Associations and ending with a “musicale” at Liederkranz Hall.

1897: Moritz Rosenthal is scheduled to “give his first piano recital…at the Academy of Music.”

1897: Le Figaro published a letter from Zola entitled “Le Syndicat” “in which the novelist defended the position of the Dreyfus faction.”

1898: The United States Consul at Beirut wrote a report today “The Jews in Palestine” which opened by saying “In view of the impetus given the Zionist movement by the second Zionist congress held at Basel in September and also by the Palestine journey of Emperor Wilhelm II, the present status of Jews in Palestine becomes a matter of general interest.”

1899: Forty-six year old Vaiben Louis began serving as the 21st Premier of South Australia.

1900(9th of Kislev, 5661): Parashat Veyetzei

1900(9th of Kislev, 5661): Joshua Ḥayyim ben Mordecai ha-Levi Epstein also known as "Reb Joshua Ḥayyim the Sarsur" who authored a “novella on the Midrah Rabbot” passed away today in his native Wilna.

1901: Birthdate of Budapest native and world class violinist Ilona Fehér who escaped a concentration with her daughter, fought with the partisans and made Aliyah in 1949 where she resumed and expanded her career which is forever memorialized by the foundation created in her name.

1901: The St. Louis World’s Fair which included a display of Conrad Schick’s final model, in four sections, each representing the Temple Mount as it appeared in a particular era, came to a close today.

1901: The St. Louis World’s Fair which included nine of the works of Moshe Maimon which were on display at the Russian Exhibition came to a close today.

1902 It was reported today the Mrs. Moses Goldenberg and Rabbi William Rosenau are scheduled to deliver the opening address at the Convention of the National Council of Jewish Women in Baltimore.

1903: In Russia, Nathan Bassok and his wife gave birth to Bessie Bassok who became Bessie Bassok Warshawsky when she married Samuel Warshawsky in 1923.

1903: Twenty-five year old Max Weinstein, the Russian born son of Samuel and Gertrud (Lipkind) Weinstein, the president of “Weinstein Brothers Coat House and a director of Beth Israel Hospital married Bertha Arbus today in New York City.

1904: It was reported today that Rabbi Joseph Silverman, Edward Mandel, Algernon S. Schaffer and Mayer L. Halff were among those who had attended “the first anniversary celebration of the Emanuel Brotherhood at Temple Emanu-EL

1905: A review of The White Terror and The Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia by Abraham Cahan said that “he revolutionary outbreaks in Russia, and particularly the rioting and massacre of Jews in Odessa seem to have been foretold in Abraham Cahan’s dramatic novel of revolutionary Russia in which the vivid pictures of the mob looting houses and assailing men, women and children while the gutters ran with liquor and the streets were strewn with household goods, affords a realistic idea of actual present conditions in the present centers of disturbance in Russia.”

1905: As of today it was reported that the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York is caring for over 1,030 children.

1905: As of today the national committee collecting funds for the relief of the Jews being attacked in Russia totaled $970,130 included contributions of $217 from the Community of Baton Rouge, LA, $510 from the “Israelites and friends of Augusta, GA and $158 from Congregation Mt. Zion in Jersey City, NJ.

1906(14th of Kislev, 5667): Parashat Vayishlach

1906: It was reported today that Mayor McClellan will be one of those attending the laying of the cornerstone of the new building of the Uptown Talmud Torah Association.

1906: Bernhard Rothschild, the German born son Sibilla Rothschild and his wife Henriette (Jetta) Rothschild gave birth to Elsa Rothschild Kindman

1907(25th of Kislev, 5668): Chanukah

1907: In Alpena, Michigan, the community’s Jewish women formed the Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society.

1909: The first Kibbutz, Degania, was established in pre-state Israel. Aaron David Gordon (1856-1922), one of its founders, was considered the "Apostle" of the kibbutz movement. Each colony was independent and democratically governed. Membership was voluntary and all earnings and expenses were shared.

1910: While “speaking at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at meeting called by the Educational Committee of the Jewish Community of New York City Jacob H. Schiff  “deprecated” “a recent occasion when Jews and Christians met in common worship” in New York City, “on the ground that it was likely to give false ideas of the t rue relations of different religions and expressed the opinion that while part of Christendom treats Jews with injustice and cruelty, it useless to declare that the kingdom of God has come>

1911: Peter Bercovitch, of Montreal was appoint “King’s Consul” today.

1911: The Queen of Holland appointed T.M.C. Asser as a “member of the committee formulating the Government’s proposals to the International Committee making arrangements for the third Peace Conference at the Hague.

1911: In Montreal, during a meeting of the Baron de Hirsch Institute, attendees expressed their opposition to “the forcible teaching of Christians Scriptures in schools largely attended by Jewish children.”

1912: Miss Kate Block is scheduled to perform as the soloist at the Seventh Sunday afternoon concert hosted by the Institute in Chicago.

1912: Yiddish theatre stars Jacob P. Adler, Leon Blank and Francis Adler are scheduled to perform for the last time tonight at the Haymarket in Chicago this evening.

1912: The People’s Synagogue Association held services this afternoon at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

1913: Birthdate of Hilda Hammerschlagova, who in 1942 was deported from Prague to Ujazdow where she was murdered by the Nazis.

1913: Crete, having obtained self-rule from Turkey after the First Balkan War, is annexed by Greece. “The Jews of Crete are first mentioned in 2 Maccabees and appear to have had a community at Gortys.”  “Toward the end of the 19th century, Crete was made into an independent republic under a Greek prince regent. A parliament was established, with several Jewish representatives, who managed to claim their constitutionally guaranteed seats with great difficulty. After Crete was formally annexed to Greece in 1913, Jewish emigration continued until, by 1941, there were only 364 Jews in Hania, 1 in Rethymnon, and 7 in Herakleion.”

 

1913(2nd of Kislev, 5674): Sixty-seven year old Rosa (Kahn) Hirschel, the daughter of Samuel and Henriette Kahn passed away today in Schopfen.

 

1914:  It was reported today that the “lack of adequate schools in the rural” areas of the United States “was given as the chief reason why more Jews did not take up farming” – a reality that is being overcome by some daring individuals including “Isaac Neleber the 25 year old owner of a 120 acre in Connecticut.”

1914: A list of contributors to the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews suffering through the war published today included I.L. Greenblatt, San Francisco; Congregation Augdas Achim, Little Rock, AR; Congregation Agudas Achim, Bessemer, Alabama; Congregation Agudas Achim, Braddock, PA; Congregation B’nai Zion, Farrell, PA and Congregation Eitz Chaim in Ellwood City, PA

1914: In Hlinski. Otto Taussig and Frederike, née Federer Taussig gave birth to Czech journalist Josef Taussig and “amateur trombonist” who used his musical skills to survive for almost two years at Theresienstadt before being shipped to Auschwitz and ultimately dying at Flossenburg.

1914: “Frank Appeals to Highest Court” published today provides a complete list of the pleadings made by the attorneys representing Leo Frank before the U.S. Supreme Court.

1915: First night of a “fete” held for the benefit of the Spanish and Portuguese Sisterhood which is chaired by Mrs. Mortimer M. Meken. 

1915: “The Joint Distribution Committee which represents the three largest of the American Jewish committees for the relief of Jewish sufferers in the European war zones voted” today to send those in need an additional $229,000 of aid.

1915: “The Spanish and Portuguese Congregation gave a series of historical tableaus in its synagogue” tonight “as part of a fair held by the Sisterhood to raise funds to aid Oriental Jews” who have been forced to come to the United States to seek refuge from the World War.

1916; “The Executive Committee of the Federation of Jewish Farmers was instructed by a resolution adopted” today “at the Convention of the organization held in the Education to petition President Wilson and Congress asking that no restriction be placed upon immigration” because “there is a dearth of farm labor at present which is a decided handicap to those who are operating farms.”

1916: Italian government declares an Italian, and not a native, be appointed as rabbinate in Tripoli. Arabs are in charge of local courts of justice and deal unjustly against Jews.

1916: While serving with the Australian Imperial Force on the Western Front, Leonard Maurice Keysor was promoted to the rank of Sergeant today.

1916: In Illinois, Betram Joseph Can and Irma B. Cahn gave birth to Bertram Joseph Cahn, Jr.

1917: In furious fighting at Nebi Samwill, Imperial forces repulsed numerous counterattacks by the Ottoman Seventh Army.

1917: As the British fought the Turks in and around Jerusalem, it was reported today that one Turkish airplane “was driven down out of control and one was damaged” when five enemy planes attacked three Allied aircraft.

1917(16thof Kislev, 5678): Just 28 days before his 63rd birthday Dr. Henry M. Leipzieger, whose twenty-five year career in New York City education culminated with his service as Supervisor of Lectures of the Board of Education passed away today.

1917: A fund raising campaign led by Jacob Schiff is scheduled to begin today in New York City.

1917:  The Bolshevik Armistice Commission, with two Jews, Adolf Jofee and Leo Kamenev (Trotsky’s brother in law) as chief negotiators left Petrograd for peace talks with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk.

 

1917: It was reported today that the “Turko-German artillery again made its objective the mosque erected on the traditional sit of the tomb of the Prophet Samuel” resulting in the destruction of the minaret “by this bombardment.”

 

1918: “The French expelled Harry Besslau from Stasbourg because he was a ‘militant-pan Germanist.’”

 

1918: Following the incorporation of Bessarabia and Bukovina, Transylvania united with Romania to form what will become known as Greater Romania. Greater Romania gained its legitimacy as a result of the Versailles Peace Conference that end World War I, during which 882 Jewish soldiers died defending Romania (and 825 were decorated). This enlarged state had an increased Jewish population. Based on treaties signed after the war, the government of Romania agreed to change its policy towards the Jews, promising to award them both citizenship and minority rights, the effective emancipation of Jews.

 

 

.

1918: The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is proclaimed.  The redrawing of the map of Europe by the Allied Powers following WW I was intended to break up the old European imperial system recognizing the aspirations of a variety of nationalities throughout central and eastern Europe.  The process may have looked very tidy in the drawing rooms of London and Paris.  But it was quite messy for those having to live it out and this very true for the Jews of the Balkans.  For a primer on the early days of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities in the political invention called Yugoslavia read the following:http://www.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/pdf/02_goldstein.pdf

1918:Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom. Jews were not officially allowed to reside in Iceland until 1855 when the parliament complied with the request of the Danish king to allow Jews to enter the little island and trade under the same terms as had been adopted in Denmark. By the end of 19th there were a small number of trading agents which represented firms owned by Danish Jews but there is no record as to how many of them, if any were Jewish.  A Jewish Danish merchant named Fritz Heyman Nathan moved to Iceland and pursued a successful business career in Reykjavik in the first two decades of the twentieth century.  He moved returned to Copenhagen to pursue his business interest, having found that Iceland was a hard place to follow a Jewish way of life.  Today, the Jewish population of Iceland is miniscule.

 

1919: Tonight, Rabbi Nathan Krass told the delegates at a meeting of the National of Federation Temple Sisterhoods from the ten societies in New York that “There is a need now for a great Jewish renaissance and it is up to the women of America who have done so much philanthropic work to band together on a national scale and carry on the work that is their duty to do.”

 

 

1920: In the House of Lords, Lord Crawford declared that “in the application of the Balfour Declaration the revival of Hebrew is legitimately considered to play an important part…and that the percentage of the Jewish population in Palestine speaking” classical Hebrew with such modifications as modern conditions require “is probably between 60 and 70” per cent.

1921: In South Philadelphia, Morris Wolinsky and the former Sadie Pincus gave birth to Sylvia Wolinsky who gained game as actress Sylvia Kauders. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/arts/television/sylvia-kauders-a-late-blooming-actress-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

1921: The additional recovery of the German mark on the London exchange “was assisted by optimism regarding the negotiations led by Walter Rathenau, the former German Minister of Reconstruction, regarding “Germany’s forthcoming reparations payment and the possibility of a moratorium. (Rathenau was the German industrialist who played a key role in putting the Kaiser’s economy on war-time footing which did nothing to ameliorate the Kaiser’s anti-Semitism and the victim of German assassin who murdered him as the “stabbed in the back” myth took hold in the 1920’s)

1921:Following an investigation into Sir Edgar Speyer's wartime conduct held in camera by the Home Office's Certificates of Naturalization (Revocation) Committee, his naturalization was revoked by an order issued today.

1922: Rabbi Joseph Stolz delivered the sermon at the Isiah Temple at Hyde Park Blvd and Greenwood Avenue.

1922(11th of Kislev, 5683): Thirty-four year old Dr. Moses Feinberg, the son of Barnett and Dora Kriss Feinberg passed away at which he was buried at Bayside Cemetery.

1923 Constitution of Romania sanctioned these requirements, meeting opposition from Cuza's National-Christian Defense League and rioting by right-wing students

1922: Rabbi S. Felix Mendelsohn led services at Temple Beth Israel on North Kedzie Blvd.

1924: “Lady, Be Good” a George and Ira Gershwin musical “premiered on Broadway at the Liberty Theatre tonight.”

 

1924: In Indianapolis, funeral services are scheduled to be held for 14 year old William Hayes Block, the grandson of William H. Block, president of the William H. Block, after which he will be interred in the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation Cemetery.

1925: “The Love Trap,” a silent movie filmed by cinematographer Heinrich Garnter who would be forced to flee Germany when the Nazis came to power because of his Jewish descent and featuring Johannes Reimann who became “a member of the Nazi party.”

1925: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for 60 year Julius M. Mayer, the New York born son of “on of J. Daniel and Fannie (Marshuetz) Mayer and Columbia Law School Graduate who had served as a Judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Southern District of New York.

Columbia Law School Graduate

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1925/12/01/100033339.pdf

 

1925: Mr. and Mrs. Abraham J. Cahan arrived in New York today aboard the SS Majestic.  Mr. Cahan is editor of the Forwards. They were returning from a month long visit to Palestine where Mr. Cahan had spent most of his time investigating the growth and development of the newly created city of Tel Aviv

1925: Birthdate of Martin Rodbell. Dr. Rodbell was an American biochemist who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery in the 1960s of natural signal transducers called G-proteins that help cells in the body communicate with each other. He shared the prize with Alfred G. Gilman, who later proved Rodbell's hypothesis, by isolating the G-protein, which is so named because it binds to nucleotides called guanosine diphosphate and guanosine triphosphate, or GDP and GTP. Prior to Rodbell's research, scientists believed that only two substances--a hormone receptor and an interior cell enzyme--were responsible for cellular communication. Rodbell, however, discovered that the G-protein acted as an intermediate signal transducer between the two.  [Ed. Note: I have note a clue as to what this really means.]

1926: “The Third Degree” the first American movie directed by Michael Curtiz which was based on the play by Charles Klein was released today in the United States.

1927(7th of Kislev, 5688): Sixty-Eight year old Isaac N. Fleischner, the son of Jacob and Fanny Fleischner and the husband of Tessie Golinsky of San Francisco whose business activities led him to spend “five years in Europe and Africa” and who “the first President of the Portland Lodge of the International Order of B’nai B’rith passed away today after which he was buried at Beth Israel Cemetery in Portland Oregon.

1927: Birthdate of Mordkhe Schaechter, a leading Yiddish linguist who spent a lifetime studying, standardizing and teaching the language.

1927: Birthdate Abraham Goodman, the native of Philadelphia who grew up in East Pittsburg and went to become American film writer and producer Abby Mann best known for his work on controversial subjects and social drama. His most famous work is the drama Judgment at Nuremberg, which was initially a television drama aired in 1959. Stanley Kramer directed the 1961 film adaptation, for which Mann received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In his acceptance speech, he said: "A writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives." Mann later adapted the play for a 2001 production on Broadway, which featured Maximilian Schell from the 1961 film in a different role. Working on television, he most notably created the television series Kojak, starring Telly Savalas. Mann was executive producer, but was credited as a writer also on many episodes. His other writing credits include the screenplays for the television films The Marcus-Nelson Murders, The Atlanta Child MurdersTeamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story, and Indictment: The McMartin Trial, as well as the film War and Love. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 80

1927(7th of Kislev, 5688): Sixty-eight year old Newton Fleishner, the Albany, Oregon, born son Bohemian natives Jacob Fleischner and Fanny who was an 1878 graduate of St. Augustine’s College, a partner in Fleischner, Mayer & Company, “the largest wholesale dry goods house on the Pacific coast” and President of the local B’nai B’rith Lodge and the husband Tessie Goslinsky with whom he had two daughter passed away today after which he was buried in the Beth El Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.

 

1927: “The False Prince” a film set in post-World War I Germany produced by Lothar Stark was released in the Weimar Republic.

1928: “A London reported received today by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency” said that the “Fascist press” in Italy had “taken exception to the terminology employed by the Italian Zionists during their recent convention.”

1928: “Dream of Love,” a silent film featuring Carmel Myers as “The Countess” was released in the United States today by MGM

1928: In New York, “Austro-Hungarian Jews, Samuel and Rebecca Thorne gave birth to Malachi Throne.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/malachi-throne-dead-dies-batman-actor_n_2885549.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/arts/television/malachi-throne-actor-in-it-takes-a-thief-dies-at-84.html

 

1929: Eleven months after premiering in Germany, “Pandora’s Box” featuring Siegfried “Sig” Arno opened today in New York City.

1929(28th of Cheshvan, 5690): Seventy-Nine year old German pharmacologist Louis Lewin who in 1886 “published the first methodical analysis of the Peyote cactus, a variant of which was named Anhalonium lewinii in his honor” passed away today in Berlin.

1929: Journalist Emil Ludwig (born Emil Cohn) interviewed Mustafa Kemel Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state.

1930: Birthdate of Joachim Hoffmann, the German military historian, who contended that the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust, was in the thousands and not the millions and who testified on behalf of Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf.

1930: The “so-called matzoh trust trial” where “the question to be answered was whether or not Horowitz Brothers & Margareten, Inc. of New York and B. Manishewitz Company of Ohio constituted a combination in restraint as charged by Rabbi Moses Winberger, Inc.” opened today,

1931: Twenty-five year old Eduard Strauch who would convicted as War Criminal for his role in the mass murder of the Jews of Riga became a member of the SS.

1931: Birthdate of Mervyn Taylor, the native of Dublin who became a solicitor and leader of the Irish Labour Party.

1932: “Fight Kosher Food Racket” published today described plans for the Kashruth Association of Greater New York to issue a new emblem to aid in combatting “racketeering in the production and sale of Kosher food.

 

1933: In Australia, Hyman and David Wolfensohn gave birth to Sir James David Wolfensohn the Australian who was the ninth president of the World Bank Group.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/business/economy/james-d-wolfensohn-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

 

1934(24thof Kislev, 5695): Parashat Vayeshev; in the evening kindle the first light of Chanukah

1934: Rabbi Joshua L. Goldberg led services as the Astoria Center of Israel in Queens.

1934: In the Soviet Union, Leonid Nioleav murdered Sergei Kirov, the head of the Communist Party in Leningrad providing Stalin with an excuse to start the five year long purge known as The Great Terror the first victims of which were two Jewish leaders, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev.

1935:  Birthdate of Woody Allen

1935: In Cleveland, OH, “checks and pledges for $75,000 for the Rothschild Hadassah University Hospital to be built in Palestine” which will cost nearly $700,000, “were given today at the final meeting of Hadassah.”

1936: “Dr. Isaac Herzog, the chief rabbi of Dublin, Ireland, was elected chief rabbi of Palestine today by a council of seventy elders, which is the modern equivalent of the Hebrew Sanhedrin.

1936: “At today’s session of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Palestine, Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Jewish Agency told of the work being done in European countries to prepare prospective immigrants for pioneer tasks in Palestine” the aim of which is to “forge both muscles and spirit so as to change university students and shopkeepers in farmers, artisans and manual laborers.”

1936: On behalf of “the Brooklyn lodge of B’nai B’rith, the largest Jewish fraternal organization in the United States” Postmaster Albert Goldman “presented an award” tonight “to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as the metropolitan New York City newspaper that had done most this year to promote ‘inter-racial amity and comity as well as good-will among the people of the United States.”

1937: This date marks the seventh anniversary of the Palestine Post, which would later become the Jerusalem Post.

1937(27thof Kislev, 5698): Third Day of Chanukah

1937(27thof Kislev, 5698): Seventy-nine year old attorney Eli Benjamin Felsenthal, the son of former school board member Herman Felsenthal and  Gertrude Felsenthal and husband of Nettie Goldsmith Felsenthal with whom he had five children who was “the last surviving of the charter members of the board of trustees of the University of Chicago” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/12/03/94469455.pdf

 

1937: “Courage of the West” a “B” movie of the singing cowboy genre, which marked the directorial debut of Joseph H. Lewis was released today in the United States.

 

1937: “The original Broadway production of ‘Hooray for What!’ with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg opened at the Winter Garden Theatre.

 

1937:  The Palestine Post reported that two members of a police patrol, a British sergeant and an Arab constable were killed by an Arab terrorist gang at Wadi Malak, near Haifa. A Public Works Department store was sabotaged and burnt out at Tulkarm.

 

1938: Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Haining, the General Officer Commanding British Forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan, reported secretly to the Cabinet that "practically every village in the country harbors and supports the rebels and will assist in concealing their identity from the Government Forces."

 

1938: Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht travels to London to propose to George Rublee, of the Intergovernmental Committee for Political Refugees, an extortionate scheme: German Jews could emigrate if they put up cash assets that would be transferred to the Reich upon emigration. This Schacht-Rublee plan will be abandoned in January 1939, when Schacht will be dismissed by Hitler after Schacht objects to the high cost of Germany's rearmament.

 

1938: The British Cabinet allows 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children into Britain in an action called the Kindertransport. (Britain, however, refuses to allow 21,000 more Jewish children into Palestine.) The rescued children come from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia with the help of British, Jewish, and Quaker welfare organizations. Because of the Holocaust, most of the children will never see their parents again, and many of the Jewish children will be converted to Christianity.

 

1939:  This date marked the final deportation of Jews from Poland to the Soviet Union. The Jews had been marched from Chelm to Hrubieszow, Poland.  Then 1800 Jews set off marching from Hrubieszow, Poland to the Soviet border. More than 1,400 were killed on December 4 on or near the Russian border.

 

1939: German Field Marshal Johannes Blaskowitz, commander-in-chief of the German Army Group East, reports that many Jewish children in transport trains are arriving at their destinations frozen to death.

 

1939: The Lipowa camp at Lipowa Street in Lublin, Poland, is established. It is initially an assembly point for Polish-Jewish POWs, and it will later be a Jewish work camp.

 

1939: Lódz (Poland) Ghetto administrator Friedrich Übelhör notes that ghettoization of Jews is only temporary. The final goal is to clean Jews out of Lódz, to "utterly destroy this bubonic plague."

 

1939: Publication date of Desert Democracy by Roy L. Smith, “the story of ancient Jews and how their struggles for freedom contributed to modern democracy.”

 

1940: Inside the Warsaw (Poland) Ghetto, Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum begins work on a secret diary of ghetto life.

1940: “Veteran song writer, actor and movie director Gus Edward” who “discovered Eddie Cantor, George Jessel and Groucho Marx” and Lillian Boulanger celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary today.

 

1941: Lew Zickman left Japan today aboard the Tatsuma Maru which was bound for the United States.

 

1941: The German Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories decrees that the destruction of Jews shall continue irrespective of economic considerations; i.e., the allure of unpaid Jewish labor will be ignored.

 

1941: During the murder of 5000 Jews at Novogrudok, Belorussia, 200 Jews resist and kill 20 Nazis before being gunned down.

 

1941: “Himmler issued strict instructions to Frederich Jeckelin that no mass murder of Jews shipped from Germany to the ghetto in Riga were take place without his express orders”

 

1941: Ten thousand Jews deported from Odessa, Ukraine, are murdered at camps at Acmecetka, Bogdanovka, and Domanevka, Romania.

 

1941: Mass murders of Jews in the Ukraine and Volhynia region of Poland are slowed when the frozen ground prevents the digging of execution pits.

 

1941: Fur coats belonging to Jews in eastern Germany are confiscated by the Nazis. They'll be used by German soldiers on the Eastern Front.

 

1941: The Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica, published in Rome under strict Vatican supervision,reminds Catholics that the Jews are supposedly those primarily responsible for murdering God and that the Jews repeat this crime by means of ritual murder "in every generation."

 

1941: For the next three days and nights, seven thousand Jews from Novogrudok, Belorussia, are forced to stand all day and night in frigid temperatures outside the municipal courthouse. Five thousand are taken away to their deaths on the 6th; the remaining 2000 are impressed into forced labor at suburban Pereshike

1941: According to an Einsatzkomando Report only 15% of Lithuanian Jews were left alive less than six months after the Nazis had invaded the Soviet Union.

1941: The German established a ghetto in Losice forcing all the Jews from surrounding areas to move there.

1941: Himmler issued “strict instructions that no mass murders of deported German Jews were to occur without his express orders.

1942: Birthdate of Israeli-American businessman Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, who owned Remington and Mavel Toys before become CEO of Marvel Entertainment.

1942: Birthdate of New Yorker world shotput champion Gary Gubner who switched to weightlifting and finished fourth at the 1964 Olympic Games.

1942:Ayn Rand, novelist and creator of Objectivism, delivered the completed manuscript of her novel The Fountainhead to her publisher

1942: Four hundred laborers were killed at Karczew a town near Warsaw

1942: Members of the Siemiatycze (Poland) Group of Jewish resisters kill a Polish peasant and his entire family as retribution for the peasant's capture and betrayal to the Nazis of three Jews.

 

1942: Nazis lock 1000 Gypsies in a Lithuanian synagogue until the prisoners starve to death.

 

1942 Ghetto resistance is organized at Czestochowa and Kielce, Poland.

 

1942: At Brody, Ukraine, Jewish resistance is led by Solomon Halberszstadt, Jakub Linder, and Samuel Weiler.

 

1942:  Jewish resistance at Chortkov, Ukraine, is led by Heniek Nusbaum, Mundek Nusbaum, Reuven Rosenberg, and Meir Wasserman.

 

1942: Jewish Resistance leader Dr. Yeheskel Atlas, a young Polish physician, is mortally wounded by Nazi troops in a battle at Wielka Wola, Poland.

 

1942: The Jewish ghetto at Lvov, Ukraine, is liquidated.

 

1942: The SS shuts down extermination activities at Belzec.

 

1942: A Sonderkommando plan to escape from Auschwitz is discovered, and the inmates are gassed.

 

1942: A forced-labor camp is established at Plaszów, Poland.

1942(22nd of Kislev, 5703): Partisan leader Hirsch Kaplinski, survivor of an August 1942 massacre of Jews at Diatlovo, Belorussia, is killed in combat during a German attack on the Lipiczany Forest.

1942: Roosevelt and Churchill issued a joint public statement revealing the dire facts of the Nazi extermination program aimed at the Jews and issuing a solemn warning that individuals engaged in it would ultimately would be tried as war criminals.

1943: Mussolini ordered the arrest of "all Jews living on the national territory."  As a result Italian police and carabinieri arrested thousands, who were promptly delivered to the Germans and deported to Auschwitz. Within Italy, 200 Jews were murdered by German Nazis and their Italian Fascist collaborators. “However, by now, many Italians did not follow Il Duce's bidding and 40,000 Italian Jews survived the war while another 8,000 died.

1943: United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau instructs assistants Randolph Paul and John W. Pehle to investigate the State Department's handling of the Jewish refugee issue.

1943: The Daman Yankee, a B-17 piloted by Bruce Sundlun was damaged by flack during a bombing run over Solingen, Germany.  The plane was so badly damaged that crew was forced to bail out over Jabbeke, Belgium.  Before bailing out, Sundlun turned the plane to make sure it crashed harmlessly into a turnip field instead of landing in the town, an act of derring-do that earned him the designation of honorary citizen in 2009. (Sundlun would serve the war and eventually served as the second Jewish governor of Rhode Island) 

1944: After three months' work at Lieberose, Germany, Nazis suspend slave labor on a vacation complex for German officers. They instead evacuate the Jewish workers 100 miles on foot northwest to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany. Of the 3,500 who began the march, only 900 arrived at the destination. Several hundred sick inmates who were unable to begin the march were shot in their beds.

1944: Birthdate of Eric Bloom of “Blue Oyster” fame.

1944:  American pollster Elmo Roper warns that anti-Semitism has infected the U.S., most strongly in and around cities.

1945:  Anti-Semitic Poles murder 11 Jews in the town of Kosow-Lacki, Poland, which is located less than six miles from the site of the Treblinka extermination camp.

1945: Oliver Cox, an American sociologist, concludes that Christians in the United States regard the Jew as "our irreconcilable enemy within the gates, the antithesis of our God, the disturber of our way of life and of our social aspirations."

1945: After having been “convicted and sentenced to by an American military tribune, a photographer was taken of German General Anton Dostler being “tied to a stake before his execution by a firing squad.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-171.jpg

1945: In Honolulu, Ruth (née Schindel), a seamstress and housewife, Fred Midler who worked at a Navy base in Hawaii as a painter, and was also a housepainter gave birth to University of Hawaii graduate Bette Middler the singer, actress and comedian who got her start singing in the Continental Bathhouse and is known as “The Divine Miss M.”

1946: Birthdate of the multi-talented Jonathan Paul Katz.

http://www.jonathankatz.com/homepage.html

1946: Anglo-Jewish teacher Esther Cailingold, who would die while defending the Old City from the Arab Legion in 1948, arrived in Jerusalem where she would teach English at the Evelina de Rothschild School.

1947: In response to the partition vote, the Arab High Committee declared that November 29 was henceforth to be “a day of mourning” and that it marked the beginning of the struggle against the Partition. 

1947: The Arab League plans to meet and discuss ways to resist the partition of Palestine into two states.

1947: Emanuel Neuman, President of the Zionist Organization of America, sought formal recognition of the Jewish volunteer defense units as being the Jewish militia in Palestine.

1947: In Cluj in Transylvania, Romania, Shmuel Grunzweig and his wife Olga who was a survivor of Auschwitz gave birth to Emil Grunzweig who made Aliyah in 1963 and after serving in several wars with the IDF became a teach and “a peace activist affiliated with ‘Peace Now.’”

1948: U.S. premiere of the “Adventures of Don Juan” a swashbuckler directed by Vincent Sherman and produced by Jerry Wald with music by Max Steiner.

1948: The Arab Congress names Abdullah of Trans Jordan, King of Palestine.  Abdullah earned this title because the Jordanian Army (known as the Arab Legion) had successfully crossed the Jordan River and seized what is now called the West Bank and the eastern section of Jerusalem. Under the partition plan, the area of the West Bank should have been part of an Arab State.  Apparently the Arabs saw things differently since they awarded it to Abdullah as “spoil” for his part in the war against the Jewish state.  Since it now held land on both sides of the Jordan, Trans-Jordan would officially change its name to Jordan.  Please note, there was no attempt to create an independent Palestinian state on this land for the almost twenty years it was occupied by the Jordanian Army.

1948: Riots break out in Damascus in response to King Abdullah of Transjordan being proclaimed king of Palestine at a meeting of central Palestinian Arabs in Jericho and Syrian premier Jamil Mardam Bey and his cabinet resign.

1949: The UN General Assembly's Political Subcommittee recommends an international Jerusalem despite objections of Israel and Jordan.

 

1950: Ten boxes containing thousands of documents describing life in the Warsaw Ghetto collected by Oyneg Shabbos which was part of what we call the Ringelblum Archive, name in honor of historian Emanuel Ringelbum who gave a whole new depth of meaning to the Biblical command “Zachor… Remember let you forget” was unearthed today. (For more see Who Wil Write Our History by Samuel D. Kassow)

1950: Today, during the Korean War, U.S. Army Corporal Morris Meshulam was captured in the Gaunlet near Kunu-ri and taken as a Prisoner of War.

1951(2nd of Kislev, 5712): Parashat Toldot

1953(24th of Kislev, 5714): First Chanukah Candle kindled for the first time during the Presidency of Ike Eistenhower.

1956(27th of Kislev, 5717): Parashat Miketz; Third Day of Chanukah\1956: The Dutch Kingdom officially recognized the Jewish community of Aruba.

1958: “The Buccaneer” a biopic about Jean Lafitte that made no reference to rumors of his Jewish origins co-starring Clare Bloom, written by Jesse Lasky, Jr. and with music by Elmer Bernstein was released today in the United States.

1958: Rogers and Hammerstein’s 8th musical, “Flower Drum Song” opened on Broadway today at the St. James Theatre with Larry Blyden playing the role of “Sammy Fong” which would gain him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

1959: NBC broadcast “Something Special: starring Red Buttons which was the 9th episode of “Ford Startime.”

1959: Publication today of The Mystery of the Chinese Junk a Hardy Boys mystery novel which was the basis for a 1967 film directed by Larry Peerce,.

1959: U.S. Premiere of “The Fugitive Kind” directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by Richard Shepherd and filmed by cinematographer Boris Kaufman.

1960: In “Simon Dubnow-A Revaluation” published today, Saul Goodman re-examines the life and the work of this Jewish historian as we mark the 100thanniversary of his birth.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/simon-dubnow-a-revaluation/

1960: “Cimarron” the film version of Edna’s 1929 novel with a screenplay by Arnold Schulman and music Franz Waxman

1961: Birthdate of Tel Aviv native, South African trained photographer Nadav Kandar who “began taking pictures when he was 13 on a Pentax camera, which he bought with his Bar Mitzvah money” and who gained a certain amount of additional fame (or notoriety) for his photograph of the 2016 TIME Person of the Year cover.

1961: “The Jungle,” episode 77 of the “The Twilight Zone” featuring Jay Adler was broadcast today.

1961: Jean-Marie Gaétan Déry began serving as Canada’s Ambassador to Israel.

1961: It was reported today that the late dress manufacturer Louis Parnes, chairman of the board of the Paul Parnes Corporation was survived by his daughter Mrs. Rose Ptechesky and his sons Paul, Samuel and Edward Parnes.

1962(4th of Kislev, 5723): Sixty-nine year old Jona von Ustinov, the native of Jaffa “who worked for MI5 during the time of the Nazi regime” passed away today.

1962: Ninety-two year old William Stiles Bennet, the member of the House of Representatives who in 1915 worked to help Jews raise funds to aid their brethren in war torn Europe passed away today.

1965: Although he lost his seat in the November elections, Fritja Zoaretz “returned to the Knesset as a replacement for Shabtai Daniel.”

1966: In response to competition from W & S an automated bagel factory that had begun operating in metropolitan New York, “the bagel bosses” presented baker’s union with a list of “radical demands,” including a 40% pay cut, a decrease in the number of paid holidays and a 50% cut in the number of bakers on each shift.

1966: Yad Vashem officially recognized Father Père Marie-Benoît as a Righteous Among the Nations for helping thousands of Jews to reach Switzerland and Spain from the South of France and continuing his work after escaping to Rome where he was pursued by the Gestapo.

1968: Near Amman, Jordan, Israeli commandos destroy four bridges.

1968(10th of Kislev, 5729): While on his way to the airport in Istanbul forty-seven year old musician and actor  Darío Moreno who began his career by singing at Bar Mitzvah in the Turkish Sephardic community suffered a heart attack and passed away.

1968: “Promises, Promises” a Burt Bacharach musical with lyrics by Hal David and a book by Neil Simon produced by David Merrick premiered today on Broadway at the Schubert Theatre.

1968: It was reported today that “Tel Aviv is building a huge five-level bus terminal with local and out-of-town platforms, shops and movie theatres. The terminal will be the world’s largest surpassing even the Port Authority Terminal in New York City.”

1969: NBC broadcast the 12th episode of “My World and Welcome to it” created by Melville Shavelson, produced by Sheldon Leonard and Danny Arnold and co-starring Harold J. Stone.

1970: In Manchester, NH, Beth Ann O'Hara and Donald Silverman gave birth to Sarah Kate Silverman of SNL fame.

1970(3rd of Kislev, 5731): Ninety-five year old David de Sola Pool the native of London who served as the rabbi of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel — often called the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue which is the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/02/archives/rev-dr-david-de-sola-pool-dies-at-85.html

1971: Jeff Goldbulum was part of the chorus when “the Broadway production of Two Gentlemen of Verona directed by Mel Shapiro opened at the St. James Theatre, where it ran for 614 performances and won two Tony Awards.”

1971: Birthdate of Berkley, CA native and Peabody Award winning write Akiva Schaffer, “a member of the comedy group The Lonely Island.

1972(25thof Kislev, 5733): Chanukah

1973: Today, Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don't You Ever Forget It), a musical featuring Ellen Greene is her “first starring role on Broadway” which had begun it Broadway previews on November 26 closed tonight “prior to it its official opening” earning it a place on the list of all-time Broadway flops.           

1973(6th of Kislev, 5734):  David Ben-Gurion, First Prime Minister of Israel, passed away.  There is no way that a short blurb can do justice to one of the greatest Jewish leaders in modern times.  Regardless of what one might think of his flaws, and he did have them, without Ben-Gurion there would have not been a modern state of Israel.  He was a walking contradiction:  an idealist and a pragmatist; a secular Jew who was an expert on the Bible and biblical history; a man whose hands were hardened from manual labor on a kibbutz who taught himself English and classical Greek; a seemingly autocratic political figure who believed in democracy even when the process when against him.    No matter how the revisionists work at it, nobody can take away his most monumental achievement – the Jewish homeland.  To paraphrase what was said about Maimonides, from David (the king) to David (Ben-Gurion) there was none like David.

1973:“A small notice in the local newspapers announced Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don't You Ever Forget It) starring Ellen Greene would be closing tonight, prior to its official opening.”

1974(17thof Kislev, 5735): Eighty year old Cooper Union School of Engineering alum and Fordham University trained attorney Henry J. Harkavy, the husband of “the former Fannie Gottlieb” with whom he had two daughters – Judith and Louis – passed away today.

1974: “In the Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate, published today, the Holy See's Commission recalled that "the step taken by the Council finds its historical setting in circumstances deeply affected by the memory of the persecution and massacre of Jews which took place in Europe just before and during the Second World War". Yet, as the Guidelines pointed out, "the problem of Jewish- Christian relations concerns the Church as such, since it is when "pondering her own mystery" that she encounters the mystery of Israel. Therefore, even in areas where no Jewish communities exist, this remains an important problem".

1975:Over 300 British doctors appealed for the release Dr. M. Stern who was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment by the Soviets.

1975: “Felix Dektor, co-editor of samizdat magazine “The Jews in the USSR”, was expelled from the Writers’ Union” today.

1975: Harold H. Saunders began servicing as 6th Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research today.

https://scrc.gmu.edu/finding_aids/saunders.html

1976: NBC broadcast the first episode of “C.P.O. Sharkey,” a sitcom starring Don Rickles, with music by Peter Matz that was created by Aaron Ruben.

1976: “Funeral services” are scheduled to “be held for 85 year old Philip R. Alstat, a leading Conservative Rabbi, “columnist for the Jewish Week and former chaplain of the Manhattan House of Correction.”

1977: Birthdate of guitarist Bard Delson.

1977: Three weeks into the Sadat peace initiative, the Carter administration had offered only the faintest approval for the Egyptian president’s visit to Jerusalem, and had not yet abandoned its support for Geneva in favor of the bilateral Egyptian-Israeli process that Sadat, Begin and Dayan were actively proposing.

1980: Yosef Mendelevich, the last of the Jewish prisoners form the First Leningrad trial who is still in prison, begins a hunger strike.

1980: During November, 1980, 789 Jews had left the Soviet Union.

1983(25thof Kislev, 5744): Chanukah

1983: “Scarface” a crime film produced by Martin Bergman, with a screenplay by Oliver Stone whose father was Jewish and featuring Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfieffer, Richard Belzer and Mark Margolis premiered in New York City today.

1984: Three people were injured when grenade throwing terrorists attacked a bus in Jerusalem.

1985: In an article entitled “First A State, Then A Nation,” Paul Johnson reviews Israel The Partitioned State: A Political History Since 1900 by Amos Perlmutter.

1985: In “Quarrying History In Jerusalem” Thomas Friedman described the impact of the excavations at Zedekiah’s Cave.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/01/travel/quarrying-history-in-jerusalem.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

1985:Zvi Kanar, an internationally known mime who survived six concentration camps “drew upon his experiences of the Holocaust in ‘Run Jacob, Run’ an autobiographical mimetic drama” while performing this afternoon at the Dramatis Personae Theatre at 25 East Fourth Street in New York.

1986: Ivan “Boesky was on the cover of Time magazine today

1987: One Israeli soldier was injured by a terrorist crossing into Israel from Egypt.

1988(22ndof Kislev, 5749): Seventy-eight year old Gwendolyn Cafritz a leading Washington hostess often referred to as “the Jewish Pearl Mesta) and the widow of real estate magnate Morris Cafritz passed away today. (As reported by Susan Heller Anderson)

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/01/obituaries/gwendolyn-cafritz-78-washington-hostess.html

1988: Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz gave birth to Zoe Kravitz.

1988: As Israeli politicians struggle to form a new government after the elections which were held on November 1, Shimon Peres signed a coalition agree with Agudat Israel even though his Labor Party and this Orthodox political party held different views on attempts to redefine who is Jewish under the Law of Return.

1988:Israeli and American women joined together and attempted to pray as a group at the Western Wall for the first time today.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/01/1988/western-wall

1988: Israeli and American women joined together and attempted to pray as a group at the Western Wall for the first time..

https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/01/1988/western-wall

1989: “Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge,” a horror film starring Jonathan Goldsmith and Pauly Shore was released in the United States today.

1991: Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory by Lawrence L. Langer, Maus: A Survivor's Tale II. And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman and Wartime Liesby Louis Begley are among the ten books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year

1991: After 469 performances at the Booth Theatre, the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Once on This Island,” a “musical with a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens.

1992(6thof Kislev, 5753): Eighty-three year old Rabbi Eli A. Bohnen passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/02/obituaries/eli-a-bohnen-rabbi-83.html

1993(17thof Kislev, 5754):Shalva Ozana, age 23, and Yitzhak Weinstock, age 19, were shot to death by terrorists from a moving vehicle, while parked on the side of the road to Ramallah because of engine trouble. Weinstock died of his wounds the following morning. Iz a-Din al Kassam claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that it was carried out in retaliation for the killing by Israeli forces of Imad Akel, a wanted HAMAS leader in Gaza.

1994: “A Christmas Carol” the musical version of the Dickens’ classic with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens who co-authored the book was performed for the first time at the Paramount Theatre

1994(28th of Kislev, 5755):An ax-wielding Islamic militant killed an Israeli soldier in a northern Israeli town today, officials said.

1995:Yigal Amir, the confessed assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, today denied suggestions that he had acted with the approval of a rabbi, and insisted that he had decided on the killing alone after careful deliberation.

1995: It was reported today that Alfred Lerner, the son Russian-Jewish immigrants and one of America's wealthiest men, with a net worth of $1 billion gained in real estate and banking has donated 25 million dollars to Columbia University in New York City.

 

1995: “Wil Bill” a biopic about the 19th century lawman co-starring Ellen Barkin as “Calamity Jane” was released in the United States today.

 

1996: In “Shulberg Tackling Fitzgerald Play Anew” published today Meryl Spiegel described his interview with Budd Schulberg in this last of “the living links to F. Scott Fitzgerald, talked about ''The Disenchanted,'' his fictional tale of their cataclysmic collaboration on a film script.Having lost favor with the literary world of the 1930's, the ''laureate of the Jazz Age'' was a shadow of his former self, Mr. Schulberg recalled. Deeply in debt, physically ill and desperately trying to stay sober, Fitzgerald grabbed the screenwriting job just to pay his bills and finance a return to his own work. The film, called ''Winter Carnival,'' was written in 1939, two years before the writer died nearly penniless at the age of 44. ''The Disenchanted'' was first written as a novel, published in 1950, and was later transformed into a play that opened on Broadway in 1958. Mr. Schulberg, 82, is probably most famous today for writing the screenplay for ''On The Waterfront,'' starring Marlon Brando, and for his first novel, ''What Makes Sammy Run?'' He has published many other novels, however, several works of nonfiction, and has seen his plays produced on Broadway.”

 

1996: Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw who converted to Judaism gave birth to Destry Allyn Spielberg.

1998(12th of Kislev, 5759): Forty-four year old Cleveland born “Yosef Y. Kazen, a Hasidic rabbi who pioneered the use of the Internet as a powerful recruiting and educational tool for the Lubavitch movement” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/13/nyregion/yosef-kazen-hasidic-rabbi-and-web-pioneer-dies-at-44.html

 

1999: Amidst report of NYPD bias, Eliot Spitzer is scheduled to release his 170 page report auditing and analyzing the methods of the NYPD from January 1, 1998 to March, 1999.

2000: Jews were cautious and quiet as Vicente Fox, Mexico’s first openly Roman Catholic president in more than a century” took the oath of office today.

2000(4thof Kislev, 5761): Eighty-eight year old Brooklyn born and Harvard trained economic Moses Abramovitz the holder of doctorate from Columbia, the husband of painter and sculptor Carrie Glasser and a founding member of the Department of Economics at Stanford passed away today.

https://news.stanford.edu/pr/00/abramovitz1213.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20070609121742/http://www-econ.stanford.edu/abramovitz/abramovitzm.html

2001(28th of Kislev, 5755): Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in back-to-back explosions at a downtown Jerusalem pedestrian mall, killing 11 bystanders.

2001(28thof Kislev, 5755): Eleven people including Assaf Avitan, 15; Michael Moshe Dahan, 21; Ya'akov Danino, 17; Yosef El-Ezra, 18; Sgt. Nir Haftzadi, 19; Yuri (Yoni) Korganov, 20; Golan Turgeman, 15; Guy Vaknin, 19; Adam Weinstein, 14; and  Moshe Yedid-Levy, 19 were killed and about 180 injured when explosive devices were detonated by two suicide bombers close to 11:30 P.M. Saturday night on Ben Yehuda Street, the pedestrian mall in the center of Jerusalem. A car bomb exploded nearby 20 minutes later. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

2002: In “Monsters in Fine Detail” published today Steven Heller reviewed Steven Luckert’s The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/books/books-in-brief-nonfiction-monsters-in-fine-detail.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSzyk%2C%20Arthur&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

 

2002: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including One World:The Ethics of Globalization by Peter Singer,The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945by Michael Beschloss and Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the Worldby Margaret MacMillan.  The last two may seem like general history texts but they deal with events that had a unique impact on the Jewish people

2002: Maxine Frank Singer, a leading biochemistry researcher and advocate of science education, stepped down, after 15 years as the president of the Carnegie Institution, a major national scientific research center.

2002(26th of Kislev, 5763): Ninety-three year old British bridge grandmaster Boris Schapiro passed away.

http://www.175heroes.org.uk/boris_schapiro.html

2003: Another GI was killed in Baghdad during the American war in Iraq which removed Hussein but left the Middle East much less stable and therefore threatening to Israel’s well-being.

2004: “Or” a film directed by Keren Yedaya was released to theatres in RAnce.

2004(18th of Kislev, 5765):  Dr. Jonathan A. Goldstein, former professor at the University of Iowa passed away. Among his scholarly works were his translations and commentaries on the Books of the Maccabees as part of the Anchor Bible.  He will be missed by all those who knew him. 

 

2005: A new defense system designed for civilian planes passed it its final test. The new anti-missile protectionsystem is designed to defend passenger jets from shoulder-held missile attacks. El Al will begin installing the systems as early as next week. 

2005: The Maryland/Israel Development Center and The Trendlines Group co-sponsored a conference in Tel Aviv on raising money for Israeli homeland security companies

 

2005: In France, Jean-François Copé began serving as Mayor of Meaux.

 

2006: “The Jews Among Arabs Conference” at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies comes to an end.

 

 

2006(10th of Kislev, 5767): Songwriter and journalist Eli Mohar passed away at the age of 58, of cancer. Mohar, considered one of Israel's best songwriters, was best known as the veteran columnist in the Tel Aviv weekly Ha'ir, which published his weekly column "Goings on Around Town."

 

2006(10th of Kislev, 5767): Character actor Sid Raymond passed away at the age of 97. The NYU dropout was famous for being the face people remembered but did not connect with any given character he portrayed. He was also “known” for being the voice of the cartoon character Baby Huey

 

2007(21st of Kislev, 5768):Ninety-five year old “Moses M. Weinstein, a Queens Democrat who served in the State Assembly, with stints as majority leader and acting speaker in the 1960s, and nearly two decades as a trial and appellate judge of the State Supreme Court, died on today at Memorial Hospital in Pembroke Pines, Fla. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/nyregion/03weinstein.html

 

2007: The Ninth Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival opens at the Jerusalem Cinematheque with the showing of Etz O Palestine, The Tribe, The Powder and the Glory, Toots, O Jerusalem and Song of David.

 

2008:The92nd Street Y presents  "Radical Islam and the Nuclear Bomb: Understanding Contemporary Genocidal Anti-Semitism" - A conversation featuring Dr. Charles Small, founder and director of the Yale University Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, and Bret Stephens, a writer and editor for the Wall Street Journal

 

2008 CSI star Marg Helgenberger has separated from her husband of nearly 20 years, actor Alan Rosenberg who is Jewish.

 

2008: Archbishop of Lublin, Josef Zycinski participates in a symposium entitled "Confronting a New Reality: The Polish Catholic Church, the Jews, and Israel."

 

2008 (4 Kislev 5769): Ninety-eight year old “Emanuel Rackman, the spiritual leader of the prominent Fifth Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan and an outspoken advocate of a more inclusive, intellectually open Orthodox Judaism passed away at his home in Manhattan (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/nyregion/05rackman.html

 

2009: Michael Rosen reads from What Else But Home, “a strikingly honest portrait of his unusual (Jewish) identity” at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, IA.

 

2009:Journalist Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time magazine and currently CEO of the Aspen Institute, discusses and signs his new book, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane, at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

 

2009:At Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, former Israeli Ambassador Asher Naim delivers a speech entitled “Ethiopian Jews then and now-from Operation Solomon-1991 to Israel 2009.”

Asher Naim has been the Israeli ambassador to Japan, Finland and Korea, is multilingual and has been active in working with Arab-Israeli relations.

 

2009:Knesset Member Ayoub Kara (Likud), who also is Deputy Minister for Development of the Galilee and Negev, is scheduled to tour the Dead Sea area this morning, accompanied by representatives of the Megilot Regional Council. He is promoting the Dead Sea as one of the 28 finalists in the contest for the New Seven Wonders of Nature, sponsored by the New Seven Wonders Fund.

 

2010:Dalia Tsuk Mitchell, a Professor of Law and History at The George Washington University, and author of a biography of Felix Cohen is scheduled to present a program entitled “Felix Cohen, Father of Federal Indian Law” at the Interior Department in Washington, DC. 

2010: Editor and writer Robert Gottlieb and New Yorker writer Judith Thurman are scheduled to speak at the 92nd Y in a program entitled “The Life of Sarah Bernhardt”

 

2010(24th of Kislev, 5771):  This evening Jews all over the world will be lighting the first Chanukah candle.

 

2010(24thof Kislev, 5771): Eighty-one year old Harold Elkins, the producer best known for “Oh! Calcutta!” passed away today.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-hillard-elkins-20101204-story.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/theater/07elkins.html

 

 

2010: Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) is scheduled to light the first Chanukah candle at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron this evening..

 

2010: In a world where the inmates seem to be running the asylum, today is the final day for students at Princeton to cast their ballot on a referendum that would allow brands of hummus other than Sabra to be sold in university stores.

2010: “Comedian Conversation Falls Flat at 92nd Street Y” published today provides Felicia R. Lee’s description of Deborah Solomon’s interview with Steve Martin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/nyregion/02refund.html?_r=0

 

 

2010: Today Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu defended his policies against opposition claims that he had not kept his promises in regard to the peace process

 

2010: Today, British Prime Minister David Cameron wished "Hanukkah Sameach" to the millions of Jews around the world who prepared to light the first candle of the Jewish festival of lights.

 

2010: Still Hilfe, or Silent Aid, an organization which provides help for Third Reich fugitives of justice, is funding the defense of Klass Faber, a Dutch Nazi living in Germany, the Daily Mirror reported today. 

 

2010: At Princeton University, the referendum on whether to ask the university's dining services to provide an alternative brand of hummus came to an end.  The referendum is anti-Israel championed by The Princeton Committee on Palestine, which is led by Yoel Bitran, an American-born Jewish student in attempt to dislodge Sabra brand hummus from the campus.

 

2010: In “Small-City Congregations Try to Preserve Rituals of Jewish Life” published today Jane Levere described the effort of the Jewish Community Legacy Project to help cities like Laredo, Texas; Sumter, SC; and Marion, Indiana deal with “an economic and social decline, shrinking synagogue membership and the eventual end of cemetery oversight.” http://jclproject.org/

2011: After about three months of operation Jerusalem’s light rail is scheduled to begin charging passengers today

2011: The 22nd Washington Jewish Film is scheduled to open with a screening of “Mabul” and a reception at the Avalon Theatre.

2011: The seventh annual Hamshoushalayim event begins today in Jerusalem

 

2011: Israel's Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch today condemned the recent "delegitimization campaign" carried out against the Supreme Court, saying Israeli politicians are responsible.

 

2011: “al-Qaeda claimed to be holding Warren Weinstein” a contractor who had been kidnapped while working in Pakistan.

 

2012: Clarinetists Alex and Daniel Gurfinkel are scheduled to perform at The Best of Chamber Music concert in Jerusalem

 

2012: The JCCNV is scheduled to host its 32nd Annual Fundraising Gala.

 

2012: Today, Amram “Mitzna joined Tzipi Livni's new centrist party, Hatnuah.”

 

2012: In Cedar Rapids, the traditional minyan observes Solidarity Shabbat, marking the 65th anniversary of the passage of UN Resolution 181, celebrating 65 years of American support for the Jewish state and memorializing those who were killed during the recent attacks on Israel

 

2012: Representatives of Jewish communities in Spanish-speaking countries are today and tomorrow in Miami to discuss the effects of recent political shifts on Jewish life in the Americas and Iberia.

 

2012: Today, Tzipi Livni’s newly founded Hatnua (The Movement) party began filling its ranks, ahead of next week’s deadline for submitting Knesset lists.

 

 

2013: The New York Times list of “100 Notable Books of 2013” includes the following books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers: Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, Half the Kingdom by Lore Segal, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff, The Two Hotel Francforts by David Leavitt. Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel, After the Music Stopped by Alan S. Blinder, The American Way of Poverty by Sasha Abramsky, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass, The Boy Detective by Roger Rosenblatt, Miss Anne In Harlemby Carla Kaplan, My Promised Land by Ari Shavit, The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox, The Town by Mark Leibovich,  and Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb and American Strategy by Kenneth M. Pollack

 

2013: In Little Rock, Chabad Lubavitch is scheduled to present “Latkes and Laughter” with Mike Niehaus (and if the Latkes are prepared by Mrs. Ciment, everybody is in for a real treat)

 

2013: “The Magic Flute” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host an evening of Sephardic songs set to tango entitled “SepharTango.”

 

2013: “LOX & VODKA the Washington, DC based Klezmer band” is scheduled to perform in Alexandria, VA.

 

2013: “The Temple Mount was closed to Jews today after a fight between Jews and Muslim worshippers broke out on the plaza. According to police, the scuffle began after Muslims took exception to a group of Jews at the site singing Hanukkah songs, Israel Radio reported.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

 

2013(28thof Kislev, 5774): Seventy eight year old “French-born American author, publisher and socialist passed away today in Paris.  (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/books/andre-schiffrin-publishing-force-and-a-founder-of-new-press-is-dead-at-78.html

 

 

2013: Israel’s Prime Minister took part in the candle-lighting ceremony at the Great Synagogue in Rome.

 

2013: The water bill for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upscale Caesarea house amounted to some NIS 72,000 (about $20,435) in 2012, and the cost of gardening services reached NIS 22,000 ($6,245), according to a report published by a government watchdog group today

 

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a screening of “Commissar” followed by a discussion led by Dr Jonathan Brent, Executive Director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

.

2014: The Crescent City Jewish news is scheduled to co-host Walter Issacson’s reading from his latest book – The Innovators – at the New Orleans Jewish Community Center on St. Charles Avenue.

 

2014: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to announce his decision on whether or not to “call for early elections” today.

 

2014: Gaithersburg, MD department store owner Sidney A, Katz, the grandson of Jacob and Rose Wolfson and the husband of Sally Katz began serving as a member of the Montgomery County Council from District 3.

 

2014: Rudy Wax is scheduled to perform at the UK Jewish Comedy Festival.

 

2014: Israeli television broadcast a documentary featuring Rafi Etian who covered a wide range of topics of which he had first had knowledge including Adolf Eichman and Jonathan Pollard. (As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)

 

 

2014: Labor MK Hilik Bar has proposed the adoption of “the Declaration of Independence with its call for equality for all citizens as part of Israel’s quasi- constitutional Basic Laws.” (As reported by Haviv Rettig Gur)

 

2014: Yehoshua Lorch, an Israeli woman, was stabbed south of Jerusalem by 22 year old Amal Taqatqa an “affiliate” with the Fatah movement who “tried to stab

 a soldier at the same location” in 2011.  (As reported by Lazar Berman)

 

 

2015: Nolan Altman, Vice President for Data Acquisition and Coordinator of the Online Worldwide Burial Registry project for Jewish Gen. is scheduled to talk about “JewishGen's Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) and the Importance of Jewish Burial Records.”

 

2015: An exhibition of new works by Michal Nachmany is scheduled to go on display at the gallery on 14th Street in New York.

http://www.michalnachmanyart.com/#!events/cmr3

 

2015: After breaking his leg in a game against the Redskins, Geoff “Schwartz was placed on season-ending injured-reserve” today.

2015(19thof Kislev):  On the Hebrew calendar birthday of Avraham Elimelech ben Yosef Dov

 

2015(19thof Kislev): On the Hebrew calendar “Yahrzeit of the Maggid of Mezrech, the successor of the Baal Shem Tov,

 

2015(19thof Kislev): The "New Year" of Chassidism

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/335659/jewish/19-Kislev-The-New-Year-of-Chassidism.htm

http://www.jewishcontent.org/cgi-bin/calendar?holiday=chanuka34

 

2016(1stof Kislev, 5777): Rosh Chodesh Kislev;

 

2016: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble which ”will perform Beethoven’s "Ghost" Trio in D Major, Op. 70, No.1, Schubert’s Fantasie for violin and piano D934, and Brahms’ Piano Quartet in C minor.”

 

2016: “Philip Sutton, reference librarian at the Schwarzman Building’s Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History, and Genealogy, is scheduled to provide an orientation to family history source materials in the various research divisions of the Schwarzman Building sponsored by the Center for Jewish History.

2016: In “Biography of Moses, the Man,” published today Clémence Boulouque reviewed Moses: A Human Life by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/books/review/moses-human-life-biography-avivah-gottlieb-zornberg.html

 

2016: In New York, “Harmonia” is scheduled to be shown on the opening night of the 10thAnnual Other Israeli Film Festival.

2016: “British and German tax investigators conducted a search of Ivanov's Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden” in what appears to be a raid connected to a tax dispute involving the Rothschild egg

2016: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education is scheduled to host a screening of “the Emmy Award winning documentary ‘A Walk To Beautiful.’”

 

2016: The morning news shows are scheduled to continue discussing Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees including Steven Mnuchin is slated to become Secretary of the Treasury in the new administration.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/us/politics/steven-terner-mnuchin-trump-treasury-secretary.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

 

2017: Rabbi Neil Blumofe and Cantor Magda Fishman are scheduled to lead Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv as the Conservative Movement begins its Biennial Convention.

2017: As part of Human Rights Shabbat, Stav Shaffir, “the youngest-ever female MK” is scheduled to speak from the bimah” tonight followed by “an extra celebratory oneg.”

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host the last Friday Night Dinner of the term.

 

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Anita Shapira whose works included the must-read Israel: A History and Ben Gurion: Father of Modern Israel continues today.

 

2018(23rdof Kislev, 5778): Parashat Va-yayshev; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2018: The College Band Winter Concert under the direction of Temple Judah’s own “music man” William S. Carson is scheduled to take place tonight and will include musical tributes to the 100th anniversary of the War to End All Wars.

2018: The Christine Park Gallery is scheduled to continue displaying the “first New York solo exhibition by Tel-Aviv based artist Yuval Shaul.

https://www.christinepark.net/yuval-shaul

2019: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Becoming RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Journey to Justice by Debbie Levy and Whitney Gardner and Believers: Faith In Human Nature by Melvin Konner.

2019: The Contemporary Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a “card embossing” workshop “with artists from the Painted Tongue Press.

2019: In Atlanta, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host a workshop offering “photography tips for taking fabulous photos” which considering the large number of famous Jewish photographers is a totally appropriate offering.

2019: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to participate in “Museum Store Sunday, “an international event with more than 1,000 museum stores participating across all 50 states, 15 countries, and four continents”

2019: The online auction sponsored by the Straus Historical Society is scheduled to begin today.

2019: Jason Alexander, the actor from“Seinfeld” is scheduled to discuss “stories of his life, career and social activism as part of the Jewish Luminaries Series” at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, CA.

2019: Participants of the Historic Jewish Tours series are scheduled to visit “The Temple, Atlanta’s oldest Jewish house of worship which was founded in 1867.

2020: The Sydney Jewish Writers Festival is scheduled to a live interview with Dani Shapiro conducted by Juliet Rierden.

2020: The FIDF is scheduled to host Ambassador David Friedman as talks about “Stories from the Secret UAE Peace Treaty Negotiations.”

2020: The Jewish National Fund is scheduled to present a “Virtual Breakfast for Israel in New England” that includes “a hilarious conversation between TV comedy writer and producer Phil Rosenthal and Steven Shalowitz, the host of the “IsraelCast” podcast…”

2020: The Seventh Annual Algemeiner Jewish 100 Virtual Gala featuring Jesse Eisenberg, Garry Kasparov, Yousef Al Ataiba, Masih Alinejad and Dana Arschin is scheduled to begin this evening at 7:00 PM EDT.

2020: The Consulate General of Israel in New York is scheduled to co-sponsor the webinar Artists and Writers Respond to Domestic Violence which is part of its “She’s Gone programming on domestic violence.

2020: Israelis will wake up to find that there has been a reduction to the capacity at malls because yesterday “ministers passed an amendment to a pilot for the opening of malls which will reduce maximum capacity from one person per 7 square meters (75 square feet) to one person per 15 square meters (160 square feet).” (As reported by Adir Yanko and Moran Azulay)

2020: Via ZOOM, in Columbus, OH, Congregation Tifereth Israel is scheduled to Host “a conversation about the history and meaning of the Torah service with Rabbi Alex Braver.”

2020: The Center for Jewish History in partnership with the National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to present a discussion The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City by historian Scott D. Seligman

2020: The S.F. Jewish Community is scheduled to co-present “SFSU Jewish studies professor Marc Dollinger talking about a new understanding of American Jewish participation in racial justice work.”

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present A Virtual Tour of the Bukharian Community Center/Synagogue in Queens, NY

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 2, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 2

127 CE: In a document drawn up on this date at a government office in Rabbatg, east of the Dead Sea, four date groves in Maoza were registered by their owner as part of a provincial census ordered by the Roman governor. The date groves abutted the property of Tmar, daughter of Thamous (Tamar, daughter of Thomas).  Record of this ancient document from an area the Romans called Palestine is proof that women did own property in their own right.  Who was Tamar?  Who was her father Thomas?  These are questions for which, as yet, we have no answers.

499: (Kislev, 4427): Ravina II (Bar Shemuel), the nephew of Ravina passed away.  According to tradition Ravina completed the final editing of the Talmud that had been begun by Rav Ashi about one year prior to this time.  According to some authorities, Ravina committed the Oral Law (the Talmud) to writing, despite protests that only the Bible should be written down. His death marked the end of the period of the Amoraimushered in the period of the Savoraim.

1264: In Sinsig, Germany, a convert to Judaism was arrested for preaching Judaism. Although tortured he refused to recant his belief in Judaism and is burned at the stake.

1523: Giles of Viterbo, who provided a safe haven for Elias Levita with whom he studied Hebrew and who studied Zohar with Baruch de Benevento was installed as Bishop of Veterbo e Tuscania.

1684: Twenty-six year old Samson Wertheimer, a native of Worms who became the chief rabbi of Hungary and Moravia and “a court Jew “ arrived in Vienna today following which he became an associate of banker Samuel Oppenheimer.

1692: Abraham Oppenheim, the Worms born son of Simon Wolf Oppenhim known as “Abraham zur Kanne” and “Shtadlan whose favorable with German princes did not protect him when he and his fellow Jews were forced to flee to Heidelberg which he died today.

1735: Birthdate of Savannah, GA native Mordecai Sheftall, the husband of Amsterdam native Frances Hart and the father of Shetall, Perla, Elias, Benjamin, Moses and Esther Sheftall.

1763: The Touro Synagogue opened in Newport, Rhode Island. Sephardic Jews in Jamaica, Surinam, London and Amsterdam sponsored the building of this first major center of Jewish culture in America.  It is the oldest synagogue in the United States.The new edifice introduced an important innovation in synagogue design. The women’s gallery of this traditional synagogue featured a low balustrade that offered women an open view of the rest of the sanctuary.Women’s galleries in other “new world” and “old world” synagogues generally were constructed with high or opaque barriers meant to keep women out of the sight of men within the sanctuary. The change in Newport represented less a reform of traditional practice than a reflection of colonial American expectations for female religious expression.The strong presence of women in colonial American churches was an important way in which women demonstrated the religious piety expected of them by their society. Observing the behavior of their non-Jewish neighbors, colonial American Jewish women seemed to understand that it was more important that they be seen in the space of public worship than had been the case in their previous communities. Early American synagogue records suggest that unmarried young women both attended and asserted their presence in the synagogue.The open gallery layout of the Newport synagogue demonstrates a changing consciousness of what women’s synagogue role should be. Moreover, the open plan was imitated by most of the early American synagogues that followed Newport.”

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/02/1763/newport-synagogue

 

1779(23rd of Kislev, 5540): Moses Joseph Dinis passed away today in Montreal.

 

1790: In Hungary, “the Diet drafted a bill showing that it intended to protect” the rights of the Jews as they had requested in the petition submitted to King Leopold II.

1790: In Charleston, SC, Frances and Humphrey Mordecai Marks gave birth to Mark Elias, “the physician and educator” who in 1828 founded “the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute, an institution for the higher education of women located outside of Columbia, SC” which “Marks called ‘Barhamville’ to honor his late wife and teacher Jane Barham.”

1795: In Nashville, TN, Hannah Hays and Benjamin Meyers gave birth to Sarah “Sally” Myers, the wife of Benjamin Etting Hays and the mother of David, Hannah, Michael, Benjamin, Jacob and Esther Hays.

1795: Michael Hart married Sarah Moses at the Great Synagogue today.

1795: In Savannah, GA, Sarah de la Motta and Levi Sheftall gave birth Abraham Sheftall.

1796: Ezekiel Hart, the first Jew to be elected to public office in the British Empire, and his brothers Moses and Benjamin went into partnership to establish a brewery in Trois-Rivières, the M. and E. Hart Company. By the terms of the agreement the three agreed to hold equal shares in the firm. They had the financial backing of their father. Ezekiel Hart later withdrew from the M. and E. Hart Company. Ezekiel sold everything to Moses, apparently soon after their father's death in 1800. Subsequently Ezekiel followed in the footsteps of his father, who was in every respect his model. He went into the import and export trade, kept a general store, never let a good business deal pass, and acquired property. Besides inheriting the seigneury of Bécancour, he bought a great deal of land, mainly at Trois-Rivières and Cap-de-la-Madeleine.

1798(24th of Kislev, 5559): The first Chanukah Candle is kindled for the second time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1807: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Jacob Suares officiated at the wedding of Hyam Moise to Cecilia Woolf, “the daughter of the late Solomon Woolf.”

1807: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Jacob Suares officiated at the wedding of Nathan Hart, a Charleston merchant and Rachel Hart, “eldest daughter of Daniel Hart.”

1818: In the Netherlands, James Abraham Cohen-Stuart, the London born son of Abraham Benjamin Cohen and Elisabeth Gompertz and his wife Petronella Wilhelmina Stuart gave birth James Abraham Theodore Cohen Stuart.


1820: Yitzchak Alter and Feigele Lipschitz gave birth to Nechemya Alter.

 

1824: Birthdate of Oswald Hönigsmann, the native Rzeszow, Austrian Galicia who “was a member of both the city and communal councils of Lemberg.

1825: Birthdate of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil. An opponent of slavery and a comparatively tolerant man, he was tolerant of both Jews and Muslims. “when asked why there were no laws against” the Jews of Brazil he answered: ‘I will not attack the Jews, as the God of my religion came from their people.’”

 

1825: In Frankfort, literary critic Karl Ludwig Borne who had converted to Christianity delivered an address in memory of the recently deceased author John Paul Richter.

 

1828(26th of Kislev, 5589): Second Day of Chanukah

 

1828(26th of Kislev, 5589): Birthdate of Simon Illich, the husband of Celia Illich and the father of Hannah, Amson and Julius Illich who when he passed away was buried in the Beth Emeth Cemetery in Loudonville, NY.

 

1832: Baruch Benjamin Berliner and Franziska Berliner gave birth to Abraham Berliner, the husband of Henriette Berliner with whom he had four children – Flora, Selma, Max and Paul.

 

1834: In Baiersdorf, Erlangen-Hochstadt, Bayern, Germany, David Isaak Seligman and Fanny Steinhardt gave birth to Isaak Seligmann who gained fame as Isaac Seligman, the brother who was in charge of the London branch of the “Seligman banking empire” and a leader in the Anglo-Jewish community.

 

1834: Fifteen year old Jacques Offenbach’s name was struck from the roll of students at the Paris Conservatoire indicating he had “left of his own free will.”

1837: Birthdate of London native George Joseph Emanuel, “at teacher of English and Latin at Jews’ College,” “a lecturer in Hebrew at Queen’s Theological College in Birmingham,” and staring in 1864, the Rabbi of the “Birmingham Hebrew Congregation.”
 

1839(25th of Kislev, 5600): Chanukah

1840: Isaac Phillips married Julia Hyman at the Great Synagogue today’

1844:Salomon Přzibram and Marie Przibram gave birth to Gustav Przibram the husband of Charlotte Przibram.

1846: Michael Nathan married Sarah Green at the Great Synagogue today.

1848: Franz Josef I becomes Emperor of Austria. Born in 1830, Franz Josef reigned until his death in 1916.  Most people think of him as the Austrian Emperor who declared war on Serbia in 1914 and started World War I.  From the Jewish perspective, the last of the Hapsburg monarchs was one of the better rulers under which to live.  Despite the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Josef saw himself as the protector of his Jewish subjects.  At one point he told his ministers, “I will tolerate no Jew-baiting in my empire!”  He described anti-Semitism as “an illness” whose “excesses were awful.”  He is reliably reported to have publicly walked out of a theatre when performers began a series of anti-Semitic songs.  In 1895, he moved to block the anti-Semitic rabble-rouser Karl Lueger (one of Hitler’s early role-models) from becoming burgomeister of Vienna. In 1869, Franz Josef visited Jerusalem where he met with a group of local Jews and contributed to the building of a new synagogue.  Austrian Jews spoke highly of the Emperor during his reign and at the time of his death.  But his enemies provided the full measure of the monarch’s attitude towards his Jewish subjects.  Behind his back, they called him the “Judenkaiser.”

1840: At Camden, SC, Dr. Lawrence L. Cohen of Charleston, SC, married Miriam Louisa De Leon, the daughter of Dr. De Leon of Camden.

1850: In London, Elizabeth Stevens and Benjamin Hurwitz gave birth to Charles Benjamin Hurwitz.

1851: Baron von Königswarter became deputy of the Seine department in the legislature, holding this seat until 1863 when he was defeated by Jules Simon.

1851: French President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte overthrows the Second Republic.

1851: In France, Adolphe Crémieux was arrested and was imprisoned for his opposition to Louis Napoleon. 

1852: Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Napoleon III. In one sense, he was a comic opera figure who used his name to gain power, Napoleon was not as weak as his enemies thought nor as wily a politician as he himself thought.  He did not dabble in anti-Semitism and counted Jews among his friends and supporters, especially if they were wealthy and successful.  His relations with the House of Rothschild were strained by the fact that the Jewish bankers had supported one of his opponents.  But Napoleon overlooked this since he needed their financial support.  On the other hand, Louis Napoleon was the sole supporter of reactionary Pope Leo IX who pursued a number of anti-Semitic practices.  However, this was more a case of power politics than personally held beliefs.  In the end the greatest impact Louis Napoleon had on the Jews was tangential. Louis Napoleon led France to defeat in the disastrous Franco-Prussian War in 1870.  The French desire to avenge this humiliation and regain its lost provinces was one of the contributing factors to World War I.  And of course, World I begot World War II and the Holocaust. 

1852: Today, “Wilhelm Hoffman one of the royal Prussian court preachers at the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church in Berlin, co-founded Jerusalem's Association (Jerusalemsverein), a charitable organization which helped Samuel Gobat, the second Protestant bishop of Jerusalem who did not spend time trying to convert Jews and Muslims but “spent it proselytizing among Christians of other, mostly Orthodox denominations.” (Gobat and his wife are buried on Mount Zion in Jersualem)

1855: Articles of Incorporation for the Judah Touro Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1856: In Vienna, Gustave and Rosa Freund gave birth to Dr. of Jurisprudence Arthur Freund

1857: The Melbourne Herald described the interment of 4 of the participants in the goldfields uprising at the Eureka Stockade including a German-born Jew, Edward (Teddy) Thoen.

1858: “The Papal Abduction” publication today described the response of the American government to the Mortara Affair.

1859: Abolitionist John Brown was hung after his unsuccessful raid on the armory at Harpers Ferry that was intended to be the first step in an uprising that would free the slaves. Three Jews – August Bondi, Jacob Benjamin and Theodore Weiner – had fought alongside Brown in his first armed attack that took place at Osawatomie, Kansas.

1861(29thof Kislev, 5622):Meïir Eisenstädter “one of the greatest Talmudists of the nineteenth century; died at Ungvár” today.

1863: Adolphus Alexander married Julia Cohen at the Great Synagogue today.

1863: In Cincinnati, OH, Moses and Sarah Waldheim gave birth to Aaron Waldheim the St. Louis furniture merchant and philanthropist who raised two children with his wife Hattie Sommers Waldheim

1867(5thof Kislev, 5628): Sixty-four year old German poet Lesser Ludwig upon whom King Frederick William III conferred “the gold medal for art and science and who wrote One thing to Life you owe: Struggle, or seek for rest. If you're an anvil, bear the blow; If a hammer, strike your best” passed away today in Berlin.

1867: Birthdate of Paul Cohnheim, the native of Labes, Pomerania who was educated at the gymnasium at Stettin and went on to become a physician in Germany.

1867: Two days after she had passed away, Maria Lyon was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1868: Disraeli’s first British government resigns.  Disraeli’s father may have had him baptized, but Disraeli’s enemies would never let him forget his Jewish ancestry.

1869: Birthdate of Jonas Cohen German-born, English philosopher.

1877(26thof Kislev, 5638): Seventy-five year old Michelangelo Asson the Verona born “physician and medical” author passed away today in Venice

1877: Over 500 people attended the annual meeting of the Society of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews. Mrs. P.J. Joachimsen, the President of the society, chaired the meeting.  The unusually large turnout was precipitated by concerns over financial irregularities combined with the election of officers. In her annual report, the President expressed her concern over financial irregularities involving other officers and the home’s superintendent.  Despite request that she serve another term, Mrs. Joachimsen has decided to end her service due to the contention she has had to deal with. 

1877: It was reported today that The Board of Delegates of American Israelites and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations have met and agreed to unite their organizations.  The new organization will meet every three years. A committee with 30 members from all four sections of the country will be empowered to handle administrative matters.

1878: The New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals is scheduled to hand down a ruling today in the case of Erie v Dringer which is on appeal from Vice Chancellor Van Fleet. Erie is the Erie Railroad.  Dringer is an Austrian born Jew who came to the United States in 1867 and went from driving a junk wagon in New York to owning his own junk yard in Paterson. He invented a unique machine for cutting up old iron which made it possible for him to buy large amount of scrap and made him the largest scrap dealer in the United States.  Eventually some of his less successful competitors brought suit against him, claiming among other things that he was effectively stealing scrap metal from the Erie Railroad.  The trial court ruled in favor of Dringer and his co-defendants.  The Plaintiffs appealed and now that case has been argued, a decision is awaited by all parties.

1880: Plans for Sarah Bernhardt’s final performances New York and opening performance in Boston were published today.

1881: It was reported today that the government in Belgrade will introduce a Jewish emancipation bill in Parliament in March that will conform to the Treaty of Berlin and that will place Serbian Jewish on an equal footing “with Jews who are Austrian subjects.”

1881: The fair sponsored by Temple Israel was suspended for this evening because it was erev Shabbat.

1881: “Riotous Doings In Hungary” described an attack on the Jews of Zalalövő in south-west Hungary.

1882(21stof Kislev, 5643): Seventy-two year old Leopold Stein, the rabbi at Frankfort-on-the-Main, a leader of the Reform movement who “composed the song "Tag des Herrn," to be sung to the music of "Kol Nidre" on the eve of the Day of Atonement” passed away today.

1883: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Hoboken (NJ) hosted an evening of entertainment including singing and recitation entitled “Spartacus” as the Odd Fellow’s Hall.

1883: “Herr Stocker” published today described the hostile reception Adlolph Stocker, the Jew-baiting German clergyman received on his recent visit to England. He was greeted by hostile mobs that were primarily made up German Socialist living in London who regard him “as the typical representative of that military tyranny under which they say the Fatherland is groaning.”

1883: It was reported today that the Adloph Stocker, the anti-Semitic clergyman is disliked by the younger members of the German court including the Crown Prince who has snubbed him on more than one occasion and by Chancellor Bismarck, “who has no sympathy with his Jew hating proclivities” as can be seen by his confidential relationship with Jewish banker Gerson Von Bleichroeder.

1883: “He Has No Such Prejudices” published today contains a denial by Hugo O’Neill that ever told a Jew that “We don’t want any of your people in our employ” using as proof that he employs Jews some of whom were recommended to him by Rabbi D.H. Nieto of the 19th Street Synagogue.

1883: “Riotous Doings In Hungary” published a report of a pogrom in south-west Hungary that was thwarted when police fired on a mob of thirty peasants armed with axes and guns killing two and arresting two more who gave up the name of their leaders.

1884: In New York, Jacob Asch, a formerly successful businessman, met an acquaintance, Jacob Starker, coming out of coffee house on the bowery and “complained to him of his bad luck and said he was broke.

1885:Die Königin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba) an opera in four acts by Karl Goldmark premiered in the United States at the Metropolitan Opera.

1885(24thof Kislev, 5646): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah candle.

1885: Rabbi Kohut delivered a sermon “on the victory of the Maccabees” at the Chanukah service at Ahavath Chesed at Lexington and 55th Street.

1888: J. Harpman the Treasurer of Temple Shaari Tov in Minneapolis, was reported to have responded to questions about the distribution of money an “unknown New Yorker” sent for the benefits of destitute Jews living in Dakota by saying that “there is no longer any need for the money among the Jews” because their needs have been met but he did object to the fact that when there was need for this money it “was held by the authorities in Bismarck.”

1890: As the cloak manufacturers were reported today to be strengthening their Cloak Manufacturers’ Association, many of the cloakmakers want Joseph Barondess to resume his role as leader of their union.

1890: Birthdate of Bohemian born German-American author Hans Janowitz whose military service in WW I turned him into a pacifist and who gave up his career in movies for the oil business.

1891: Based on information that firs appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, Joseph Pennell the American artist and photographer attributed his deportation from Russia to his photographing of the Jewish quarter of Kiev and not “his sketching of the Jews and poking about the Jewish quarters” which the authorities didn’t like either.

1892: In Jaffa, Magdalena and Born Plato von Usino gave birth to their old child Jonah Freiherr von Ustinow, the British anti-Nazi agent who was the father of actor Peter Ustinov.

1893: In New York City, “Nathan and Anna (Elson) Malzberg gave birth to Dr. Benjamin Malzberg, the Columbia trained statistician and epidemiologist and husband of Rose Hershberg with whom he raised three children – Judith and the twins Ruth Ellen and Amy Susan Malzberg.

1893: Birthdate of Russian-born, American composer Leo Ornstein who was one of the leading American experimental composers and pianists of the early twentieth century and who, although he gave his last public concert around the age of forty, continued to compose through his late nineties. He passed away in 2002.

1894: Among the “New Novels” listed today are Jewish Tales by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, translated from the French by Harriet Lieber Cohen.

1894: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El entitled “Why Do We Still Remain Jews?” in which he “declared that Judaism was a philosophy and not a system of creeds.”

1895: In Vienna, police dispersed an anti-Semitic mob that had gathered in the Prater to protest, in part the Emperor’s rejection of the anti-Semitic Dr Luger as Burgomaster of Vienna.

1895: Birthdate of Harriet Cohen, the native of Brixton who was the niece of Rabbi F. L. Cohen and the cousin of Irene Scharrer who also worked to help refugees from Hitler’s Germany which led to her becoming a Zionist.

1896: At today’s session of the 15th Biennial Council of the American Congregations, delegates are scheduled to elect officers, discuss the future of the Hebrew Union College and in the evening attend a banquet at the Standard Club followed by a ball.

1897: L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper, runs a story on the Dreyfus Affair explaining that Dreyfus' treason is only to be expected from Jews.According to the Catholic paper:"The Jewish race, the deicide people, wandering throughout the world, bearing with it everywhere the pestiferous breath of treason....  And so, too, in the Dreyfus case...it is hardly surprising if we again find the Jew in the front ranks, or if we find that the betrayal of one's country has been Jewishly conspired and Jewishly executed." (As reported by Austin Cline)

1897: Birthdate of Soviet economist Evsei Liberman, the husband of Regina Horowitz and the brother-in-law of pianist Vladimir Horowitz.

1900: Herzl First visit of the Turkish agent Eduard Crespi in Vienna.

1900(10thof Kislev, 5661): Thirty-two year old poet Ludwig Jacobowski passed away today “in Berlin from the effects of meningitis.”

Oh, our bright days

Glänzen wie wenige Sterne, Shining like a few stars,

Als Trost für künftige Klage As a consolation for future action

Glüh'n sie aus goldener Ferne. Glüh'n them golden distance.

Nicht weinen, weil sie vorüber! Do not cry because it over!

Lächeln, weil sie gewesen! Smile because they have been!

Und werden die Tage auch trüber, And also the gloomy days

Unsere Sterne erlösen! Our star redeem!

1901: “The Helmets of Navarre,” with Rose Eytinge in the role of “Princess De Retz” opened on Broadway.

1902: In order to renew the connection with Austrian Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber, Herzl sends him a copy of "Altneuland".

1902: The Convention of the National Council of Jewish Women is scheduled to open today at the Eutaw Place Synagogue in Baltimore, MD.

1903: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today the in Camden, Jews “are asking for contributions for the erection of a synagogue.”

1903: Today, “a non-Jewish lady” who became “interested in the Zionist movement” as a result of “a lecture” she heard “in a town in New York State” contributed “$90 for an entry in the Golden Book of the National Fund as a thanksgiving offering…”

1904(24thof Kislev, 5665): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1904: Today, Minister of the Interior Sviatopolk-Mirsky “received a deputation of Zionists” whom “he informed that he sympathized with the movement they represented and would withdraw the Governmental opposition hitherto existing in Russia.”

1905: “A Polish Jew” published today provide a review of a “melodramatic” novel Children of Fate: A Story of Passion by Adolph Danziger that “traces the career of a young man named Joseph, a Jew of Jobrzyn, in Poland including his love for a Christian noblewoman.

1905: “What Do the Zionists Want?” which first appeared in London advises that “if the Jews really want to found some sort of Hebrew State” they should the “very needy Sultan…a good sum down and a handsome tribute” for “a portion of Palestine under his suzerainty provided they are prepared to handsomely compensate its inhabitants for the expropriation.”

1905: Birthdate of Moses ("Moe") Asch, the founder of Folkways Records. He was the son of Yiddish language novelist and dramatist Sholem Asch and the younger brother of novelist Nathan Asch.

1905: “German Liberty” published today provided a review of Poultney Bigelow’s History of the German Struggle Liberty, a volume that includes a description of “the arrest in Munich of Saphir, a witty Austrian Jews and his subsequent expulsion from Bavarian territotry.”

1905: “Christians Urged to Contribute” published today included a statement by Samuel Goldstein, who has contributed $10 for the “poor suffering Jews of Russia, that “if every Christian” living in the United States read the recently published letters of Sherva Sandelman and Aaron Sheftshik, two Jewish children trapped in Russia “the amount sent in for the Jewish relief fund will be increased thrice the amount already received.”

1906:  Birthdate of award-winning engineer, Peter Carl Goldmark.  Born in Hungary, Goldmark came to the United States in the 1930’s.  Goldmark is best known for his invention of the l.p. or long-playing record which revolutionized the recording industry.  He also help develop the first commercial color television.  He passed away in December of 1977.

1906: The Cornerstone of the new building of the Uptown Talmud Torah Association, which will be a four story edifice that can accommodate “3,000 children in 28 room” is scheduled to be laid this afternoon.

1907(26thof Kislev, 5668): Second Day of Chanukah

1907: It was reported today that Reverend R.S. MacArthur suggested “that instead of reading the Bible in the public schools, a moral textbook composed of selections from the Bible, the Koran and the Talmud” should be studied instead.

1908: Daoud Effendi Molho, First Dragoman of the Imperial Divan, Constantinople was nominated to serve as a Senator in Turkey. The functions of the First Dragoman were mainly political; he accompanied the ambassador or minister at his audiences of the sultan and usually of the ministers, and was charged with the core of diplomatic negotiations

1909: “The wedding of Miss Florence Schafer, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel M. Schafer and Alfred Wolf of New York took place” this “afternoon in the Temple Emanu-El” and was then “followed by a dinner in the ballroom of Delmonico’s.

1910: A Jew, Jacob Effendi de Vidas, ex-Censor of the Jewish Press at Smyrna is appointed Inspector of Elementary Schools at Mitylene (Lesbos).

1911: Birthdate of Paterson, NJ native and mathematician Abraham “Abe” Gelbart who earned a doctorate from MIT and went on to be “the founding dean of the Belfer Graduate School of Science at Yeshiva University.”

 

1911: In the Bronx, Julius and Ethel (née Loewy) Fleischl gave birth to Harriet Fleischl who gained fame as attorney Harriet Fleischl Pilpel “the general counsel for both the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood.”

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/02/1911/birth-of-harriet-fleischl-pilpel-pioneer-for-right-to-privacy-and-free-speech

1911 Big Jack Zelig, a Jewish gangster murdered Italian gangster Julie Morrell at the Stuyvesant Casino. Zelig believed Jack Sirocco and Chick Tricker had hired Morrell to kill him so he struck first.  This killing was part of the fight by the Jewish dominated Eastman gang to control the Five Points section of New York.

1912: Today, at the annual meeting of Isaiah Temple in Chicago, Dr. Joseph Stolz, who spent eight years as the rabbi of Zion Congregation and seventeen years as the rabbi at Isaiah Temple “was unanimously elected Rabbi…for life along with an increase in salary.

1912: “Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in world” and “her French company are scheduled to make their “American debut in vaudeville” at the Majestic Theatre.

1913: President Woodrow Wilson, who appointed the first Jew, Louis Brandeis, to the Supreme Court and supported the Balfour declaration “delivered his first State of the Union address” today

1914: A committee headed by Joseph Barondess of the Board of Education met Solomon Rabinowitz who uses the pen name Shalom Aleichem when he and his wife and two children arrived in New York today from Copenhagen aboard the Frederick VIII.

1914: Lt. Hugo Gutman was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class today.

1914: “Appeal For Aid For Jews” published today described the appeal by the American Jewish Relief Committee for aid their co-religionist because “the disaster, in which the whole world shares, fall with disproportionate weight upon the Jewish people more than nine million of whom live in the coutries at war and over six million of these in the actual war zone in Poland, Galicia and the whole Russian frontier.

1914: It was reported today that the officers of the newly formed American Jewish Relief Committee are Chairman Louis Marshall, Secretary Cyrus L. Sulzberger and Treasurer Felix M. Warburg.

1914: A Committee composed of Joseph Barondess, Charles J. Minikes and Joseph Fallen met Solomon Rabinowitz (Sholom Aleichem) today

1914: Birthdate of composer of Adolph Green.  With his partner Betty Comden, he wrote numerous hits, including "New York, New York" (the version from the musical On The Town) and the screenplay for the film Singin' in the Rain.

1915(25thof Kislev, 5676): Chanukah

1915: Second night of a “fete” featuring historical tableaux held for the benefit of the Spanish and Portuguese Sisterhood which is chaired by Mrs. Mortimer M. Meken. 

1915:  Albert Einstein published the general theory of relativity.

1915: Representative Meyer London plans on submitting his proposal for a peace resolution to Congress which will include a request for $100,000 to help the neutral nations provide mediation between the belligerents.

1915: It was reported today that of the $229,000 being sent to aid Jews suffering in the war zones, $80,000 will go to Russia, $70,000 will go to that part of Poland under German control, $50,000 will go to Galicia, $25,000 will go to Palestine and $5,000 will go to Turkey.

1916: The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering through the War whose members include “Leon Kaimaiky, editor The Jewish Daily News; Rabbi Israel Rosenberg, Rabbi Meyer Berlin, Albert Lucas and Harry Fishcel” announced in a report made public today “that it has collected to date $1,455,132.96” with the money coming “from 26,321 separate sources.”

1916:Isaiah "Jacques" Pais married Kaatje "Cato" van Kleeff.  This union of a Sephardic Jew and Ashkenazi Jew produced a son named Abraham Pais, the famed Dutch born physicist.

 

1917: As the Battle for Jerusalem reached its final phase the British began to replace its weary front-line forces with fresh troops including sending in the XX Corps led by the 10th (Irish) Division to replace the XXI Corps.

 

1917: In New York Pauline (Weiss) Blagman and Abraham Blagman gave birth to Sylvia Blagman who gained fame as Sylvia Sims “one of the most admired pop-jazz singers of her generation.” (As reported by Stephen Holden)

 

1917: In Baltimore, MD, two meetings were held at the Hippodrome and Palace Theatres sponsored by the Baltimore Conference for Jewish National Restoration in Palestine heard an address by Jacob De Haas, a former secretary to Theodore Herzl, after which resolutions were “unanimously and enthusiastically approved” expressing support for “the declaration of the British Government, promulgated by Mr. Balfour, favoring the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.”

 

1917(17th of Kislev, 5678): In Shreveport, LA, sixty-eight year old William Winter, a member of the legislature, city council and school board passed away today.

 

1917: “The campaign by which $5,000,000 is to be raised in New York City by December 16 for the Jewish War Relief Committee and the Jewish Welfare Boarding, working among soldiers and sailors was opened” tonight “with a dinner given at the Astor by Jacob H. Schiff, the Chairman of the committee” for “the Captains and members of the forty-five teams” which will be in charge of raising this sum in the next two weeks.

 

1917: It was reported today that “the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, the clearing house through which thousands of Jewish refugees in the war stricken countries and in other lands have received news of their relatives in America has” recently “received hundreds of letters from those seeking word of relatives” in the United States and “in a majority of cases the society” which is led by President John L. Bernstein and Jacob R. Fain, the General Manager “has been able to find those sought.”

1918: Jacob Billikopf of the American Jewish Relief Committee, Dr. I. Edwin Goldwasser of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies and Charles S. Ward of the Y.M.C.A. were among those who attended a dinner at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Felix M. Warburg which “formally inaugurated” “the campaign to raise $5,000,000 in New York City for the relief of Jewish war sufferers.”

1919: Former Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote to Field Marshal August von Mackensen, denouncing his own abdication as the "deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a person in history, the Germans have done to themselves... egged on and misled by the tribe of Judah ... Let no German ever forget this, nor rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated from German soil!" Wilhelm advocated a "regular international all-worlds pogrom à la Russe" as "the best cure" and further believed that Jews were a "nuisance that humanity must get rid of some way or other. I believe the best thing would be gas!" (The Kaiser and His Court by John Rohl)

1920: A dispatch from Budapest today said that “the Jews of Hungary will deprived of all rights of suffrage under an understanding reached by the political parties of that country with a view to solving the Jewish problem.” (Editor’s note – the road that led to the Hungarian Jews being sent to Auschwitz began years before the Nazis arrived)

1921(1st of Kislev, 5682): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1921: Temple Israel, which is temporarily holding services at the Second Presbyterian Church while its new sanctuary is being built, began the celebration of its Golden Jubilee this evening.

1922(12th of Kislev, 5683): Parashat Vayetzei

1922” Rabbi Philip A. Langh led Shabbat morning services at Temple Anshe Emes.

1922: Rabbi Julian Gusfield led services at Temple Beth El in Chicago.

1922: Rabbi Abram Hirschberg led services at Temple Sholom in Chicago.

1922: Led by head coach George Levene, Wake Forest defeated Hampden-Sydney in its final game of the season.

1923:Arnold "Arnie" Horween “kicked a 35 yard field goal and his brother Ralph ran for a touchdown as the Chicago Cardinals beat the Oorang Indians 22 to 19.

1923:  Birthdate of Meshulam Riklis, chief executive of McCrory Corporation.  After serving in the military during World War II, Riklis majored in mathematics at Ohio State University.  He worked his way through college as a Hebrew teacher before starting out on his very successful business career.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/obituaries/meshulam-riklis-dead.html

1924(5thof Kislev, 5685): Seventy-one year old Sir Edward Elias Sassoon, 2ndBaronet, the younger son of Elias David Son and the father of Victor Sassoon passed away today.

1924: “Man Against Man” a silent drama with a script by Adolf Lantz was released today in Germany.

1924: Sigmund Romberg’s operetta “The Student Prince” opened at Jolson’s 59thStreet where it ran for 608 performances, making it “the longest running Broadway show of the 1920’s.”

1928: In Berlin, world première of Arnold Schönberg’s the Variations for Orchestra, op. 31.

1928: This morning, Rabbi Samuel Schulman delivered a sermon on “Liberal Religion, American Politics and the Jew” at Temple Emanu-El in which he decried “the ‘dragging’ of Judaism into the past political campaign and scoring a ‘certain prominent rabbi’ for explaining from his pulpit why he as a rabbi would vote for a Catholic President.”

1929: Today, Irving Berlin “first published” “Puttin’ On the Ritz” a song he had written in May 1927 and made famous in the movie “Blue Skies.”

1930: “Annie Christie” a German language film based on the play of the same name starring Salka Viertel was released today in the United States by MGM.

1930: Birthdate of economist Gary Stanley Becker, the native of Pottsville, PA who “was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.

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

1931: In the Weimar Republic, premiere of “Emil and the Detectives,” a “German adventure film with a script by Billy Wilder.”

1931: “The Trunks of Mr. O.F.” directed and written by Alexis Granowsky and co-starring Peter Lorre and Heddy Lamar premiered today in Berlin.

1932: “If I Had a Million” an anthology film produced by Emanuel Cohen and whose directors included Ernst Lubitsch, Norman Taurog and Lothar Mendes was released in the United States today.

1932: “Secrets of the French Police” the movie version of an unpublished novel by Samuel Ornitz, produced by David O. Selznick, co-starring Gregory Ratoff and with music by Max Steiner was released today in the United States.

1932(3rdof Kislev, 5693): Sixty-nine year old Philadelphia born, University of Pennsylvania trained attorney David Wallerstein, who gave speeches on behalf of FDR during the recent Presidential elections and who was the husband of Nellie Wallerstein with whom he had two sons, Edward and John Wallerstein and three daughters including Dr. Ruth C. Wallerstein, a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.

1932: “The Triangle of Fire,” directed by Edmond T. Gréville, who was, based on genetic testing done in 2017 a member of Ashkenazic family from Russia and with music by Casimir Oberfeld was released in France today.

1933: Release of “Dancing Lady,” a musical comedy that showed the Jewish involvement in the movie industry. It featured the Three Stooges (all Jewish) in one of their first film.  Louis Silvers provided the music and David O. Selznick coproduced this film that was distributed by MGM.

1934(25thof Kislev, 5695): Chanukah

1934: “English born American clergyman and newspaper writer” Samuel Parkes Cadman, who would “later called for the U.S. to boycott the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, because of the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies” today “wrote an article condemning the Nazi German government for the firing of theologian Karl Barth from a German university post as a result of the professor's outspoken opposition to the Nazi regime and adamant refusal to sign an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler.”

1934: Birthdate of Salomon Gottlob, who at the age of seen boarded Convoy 25 that left Drancy for Auschwitz on August, 28, 1942

1935: Among the things listed as “Verboten” in the official police periodicals is “For a German girl to sit in public with a Jew” and “for ‘Aryans’ to sell real estate to Jews when such real estate is important to he German national wealth.”

1936: “Compliments of Mister Flow” a French mystery directed by Robert Siodmak was released today.

1936: In Berlin, “the public learned further details today of the new exchange law empowering the Exchange Control Service to seize and administer the fortune and property of any citizens suspected of an intention to go abroad permanently” – a law that did not apply to Jews because for some time now, “Jews suspected of a desire to flee the Reich were ordered to deposit a certain percentage of their fortunes with a Reichsbank subsidiary” without the benefit of any legal protection.

1936: At a dinner honoring Dr. Arthur J. Brown, Chairman of the American Committee on Religious Rights and Minorities, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise “declared that the time is come for the public opinion of mankind, expressing itself either through the league of Nations at Geneva or through its great religious organizations to speak earnestly and solemnly with respect to the lawless violation of the rights of many minority peoples in Europe and most especially of Jewish minorities.”

1937: The Palestine Post reported that out of the three Arab constables ambushed and kidnapped by an Arab terrorist gang near Shfaram, two were "tried" and murdered. The third constable was released to inform the authorities of the murder and the "trial."

1937:  The Palestinian Post reported that scores of bullets hit the Haifa-Kiryat Haim bus, but no one was wounded. 

 

1938: “Flirting with Fate,” a comedy produced by David Loew and music by Victor Young was released today in the United States by MGM.

 

1938: “The first Kindertransport arrived in Harwich, Great Britain today bringing some 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin which had been destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogrom.”

 

1939: Birthdate of Yael Dayan. This daughter of Moshe Dayan has made a career in her own right including that of an Israeli politician.

 

1939: “The Return of Doctor X” a science fiction horror film directed by Vincent Sherman and co-produced by Hal Wallis and Jack Warner was released today in the United States.

 

1940: Prime Minister Churchill replied to General Wavell’s concerns about letting the survivors of the Patria remain in Palestine.  Churchill wondered if even the most militant of Arabs could find fault with what Churchill described as a humanitarian gesture.  He wondered if the Arab commitment to the cause of the fight against the Nazis was so slender that such an event as this could have such disastrous consequences.  At the same time, Churchill assured Wavell that there would not be a repetition of the Patria since all future illegal Jewish immigrants would be imprisoned in Mauritius for the duration of the war.

 

1940(2nd of Kislev): Fifty-five year old Rabbi Bernard Revel passed away. Born in Lithuania, he came to the United States after the Russian Revolution of 1905, entered NYU and received an MA in 1909. In 1915, he was named the first President of Yeshiva College, a position he held at the time of his death.  This blog cannot do justice to his life and contributions to the Jewish people.  You can begin to learn more about him at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/revel.html

1941: Release date for “Ball of Fire,” a comedic treatment of cloistered intellectuals produced by Samuel Goldwyn written by Billie Wilder.

1941: U.S. premiere of “All Through the Night” directed by Vincent Sherman, produced by Hal Wallis and Jerry Wald and based on a story by Leo Rosten with Phil Silvers play the “Waiter” and Peter Lorre as “Pepi.”

1942: Jews in 30 countries hold a day of prayer and fasting for European Jews.

1942: After being screened for the Office of War Information's Bureau of Motion Pictures today, George Cukor’s “Keeper of the Flame” “was disapproved by the Bureau’s chief, Lowell Mellet.

1942: The first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated in Chicago, Illinois. At the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi and his team achieved the world's first artificial nuclear chain reaction, in a makeshift lab underneath the University's football stands at Stagg Field. Work on the experimental pile had begun on 16 Nov 1942. It was a prodigious effort. Physicists and staffers, working around the clock, built a lattice of 57 layers of uranium metal and uranium oxide embedded in graphite blocks. A wooden structure supported the graphite pile. The chain reaction was part of the Manhattan Project, a secret wartime project to develop nuclear weapons, which initiated the modern nuclear age. This was a discovery that changed the world. 

1942: In Los Angeles, “television and film writer Maurice Zimring, better known by his stage name Maurice Zimm, and his wife Molly, a lawyer who passed the California Bar in 1933” gave birth to  “American criminologist, law professor, and the William G. Simon Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law,” Franklin Ester Zimring.

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/php-programs/faculty/facultyCVPDF.php?facID=127

 

1943: The first RSHA transport reached Birkenau from Vienna.

1943: In Toronto, Ontario MPP Allan Grossman and his wife gave birth to Larry Grossman who would follow his father into Parliament for what would be a 32 year stint of father/son legislative service.

1943:  One hundred Jews from Vienna arrive at Auschwitz.

1944: In Budapest, three Jews were killed when gangs attacked the building in which they were living even though it was under Swiss Protection. Some Swiss diplomats, like their Swedish counterparts, used the diplomatic concept of extra-territoriality to provide safe haven for Hungarian Jews.  Unfortunately, the various forces of anti-Semitism operating in the Hungarian capital did not always respect the niceties of international law.

1944(16th of Kislev, 5705):  Russian born painter and pianist Josef Lhévinne, whose birth name was Joseph Arkadievich Levin passed away in New York City just a few days before his 70th birthday.

1945: Today No. 342 Squadron in which author Romain Gary had flown over 25 missions as a “bombardier-observer” was transferred from the RAF to the French Air Force.

1946: While meeting in Atlantic City, today, “the United Jewish Appeal's national conference adopted a quota of $170,000,000 for its 1947 campaign for relief and rehabilitation in European countries, for refugee settlement in Palestine and for refugee adjustment in the United States.

1947: First day of a three-day general strike called by the Arab Higher Committee to protest the UN vote for partition.

1947: Birthdate of British businessman Michael Phillip Green who founded Carlton Communication with his brother David.

1947: Today “Joseph and Tilly Newman made their first trip to London their son’s MBE from the king who expressed his pleasure at being to acknowledge Isidore Newman’s gallantry in this way.”

1947: Bands of Arabs engage in violent protests and murderous attacks on the Jewish populace. Three Jews were shot dead in the Old City.  Hundreds of Arab youths marched towards Zion Square in the center of Jerusalem chanting “Death to the Jews.” Fighting broke out in Jerusalem’s Commercial Centre between marauding Arab mobs and Jews seeking to protect their property.

1947: On the second day of general strike called by the Arab Higher Committee 200 Arabs broke into the commercial center in Jerusalem, looting and burning Jewish owned shops.  The British troops made no effort to intervene.  They did prevent a platoon of Haganah troops from coming to the aid of the embattled Jews.

1948: The Iraq government “suggested” to oil companies operating in Iraq, that no Jewish employees be accepted.

1949: It was announced today that “The Workmen’s Circle…would work with the Norwegian Labor party in setting up a village in Israel in memory of the twenty child victims of an airplane crash near Oslo on November 21st.”

1950: NBC broadcast the last episode of “The Hank McCune Show,’ a sit-com produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff, the Iowa born lawyer turned film producer.

1951(3rd of Kislev, 5712): Fifty-nine year old lifetime Washingtonian and Georgetown University trained lawyer Lawrence Koenigsberger, “the sole member of the District of Columbia Board of Tax Appeals since 1943 who was a charter member of the new reform congregation Temple Sinai and the husband of “Dr. Irene Diner of New York.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/12/04/89473273.pdf

1951: "Borscht Capades" closes at Royale Theater in New York City after 90 performances.  Mickey Katz and his son Joel Grey both appeared in this short-lived musical.

1952: In Casablanca, Morocco, Elie and Esther Mimran gave birth to fashion designer Joseph Mimran.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/joseph-mimran/

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported on the new Israeli peace initiative which urged the scrapping of all old UN resolutions and provided for negotiations based on the consideration of all security, territorial, refugee, economic and regional questions, as well as scientific, cultural and technical cooperation.

1953: Eugene Ferkauf opened the first of E.J. Korvette Stores in what had been a Long Island potato field.

1954: The U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to censure Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI) for refusing to cooperate with a Senate subcommittee that was investigating his finances. This was a backdoor way for the Senate to express its displeasure over the abusive investigative tactics of the Senator which many Jews opposed.  On the other hand, the Senator’s right-hand man was none other than Roy Cohn, the Jewish lawyer from New York.

1954: “The Other Women” with a script by Hugo Haas who also directed, produced and starred in the film with music by Ernest Gold was released in the United States today.

1956: In Havana Lillian Samson Agostini, a schoolteacher whose father was a Jewish refugee from German and Esteban Echevarria gave birth to Esteban Ernesto Echevarría Samson who gained fame as actor Steve Bauer.

1957(9th of Kislev, 5718): Fifty-seven year old Dr. Manfred J. Sakel passed away.  Born in 1900, Manfred Joshua Sakel was a Polish born neurophysiologist and psychiatrist who introduced insulin-shock therapy for schizophrenics and other mental patients in 1927, while a young doctor in Vienna. Insulin-induced coma and convulsions, due to the low level of glucose attained in the blood (hypoglicemic crisis) improved the mental state of drug addicts and psychotics, sometimes dramatically. His findings indicated that up to 88% of his patients improved with insulin shock therapy. His method became widely applied for many years in mental institutions worldwide. He immigrated to the U.S. ahead of WW II. in 1936. "Sakel's Therapy" is still used in Europe, but in the U.S. it has been superseded by electroconvulsive therapy and other means of treatment.

1958(20th of Kislev, 5719): Seventy nine year old Harvard grad and Johns Hopkins trained neurosurgeon Ernest Sachs, the New York City born son of Julius Sachs and Rosa Goldman, and husband of “playwright and poet” Mary Parmly Koues with whom he had three children passed away today.

1959: “Five Finger Exercise,” a play by Sir Peter Levin Shaffer, opened at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway.

1961(24th of Kislev, 5722): Parashat Vayeshev’; Kindle for the first Chanukah Candle

1961(24th of Kislev, 5722): Seventy-one year old Oxford educated historian and WW I veteran of the Tank Corps Sir Basil Lucas Quixano Henriques, the British philanthropist who spent much of his life working with the underprivileged of the East End and who in 1916 married Rose Loewe, the author as Lady Rose Henriques published Years in Stepney, a biography of her husband.

1962: Birthdate of David Levi, the native of Tel Aviv who played soccer for Hapoel Ramat Gan before becoming a professional poker player who “has won over $2.6 million in live tournaments.”

1962: Police estimated that a crowd of 25,000 mourners attended the funeral service for Rabbi Aaron Kotler held the synagogue of Congregation Sons Of Israel Kalwarier on Pike Street between East Broadway and Henry Streets.

1965(8th of Kislev, 5726): Seventy-one year old German born Siegried Ullman, the “husband of Irma Ullman” passed away today in Palm Beach, FL.

1968: A funeral is scheduled to held today at Temple Beth Israel in Hartford, CT for eighty-one year successful businesswoman and philanthropist Beatrice Fox Auerbach,  the  Hartford, CT born daughter of Moses and Theresa Fox and wife of George Auberach who turned the family owned G. Fox and Company into New England’s largest department and who established the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation through which “she became a leading philanthropist, particularly in helping college students”

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/auerbach-beatrice-fox

https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/beatrice-fox-auerbach

beatrice fox auerbach - Google Search

 

1968: President Nixon names Henry Kissinger security advisor.  Kissinger was a surprise choice for the job for two reasons. He had supported Nelson Rockefeller and strongly questioned Nixon’s fitness for the job. And, as we have found out from the Nixon Tapes, Richard Nixon had an anti-Semitic streak that bordered on the paranoid. 

1968: In Arcadia, CA, Susan (née Franzblau), a psychology professor, and Martin Sofer, a Conservative Jewish rabbi gave birth to actress Rena Sofer who appears on the soap “General Hospital” and is “a descendant of Baal Shem Tov and of the Chasam Sofer through her father's family.”

1968: Madison Square Garden is scheduled to host one of the events marking the 125thanniversary of the found of B’nai B’rith

1970: Birthdate of comedic actress Sarah Silverman.

1971: Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Dubai, and Umm Al Quwain form the United Arab Emirates.

1972(26thof Kislev, 5733): Shabbat Shel Chanukah and Parashat Vayeshev

1972(26thof Kislev, 5733): Sixty-four year old Max Leonard Rosenheim, the British physician was honored by being named Baron Rosenheim passed away today.

https://renal.org/about-the-renal-association/history/obituaries/max-leonard-rosenheim/

 

1973: King Hussein of Jordan said that there could no peace in the area until Israeli forces had completely withdrawn from all lands taken in 1967 including all of Jerusalem

1973: French authorities forestalled a terrorists attack when they arrested 2 Palestinians, 1 Algerian and 1 Turk carrying weapons and explosive which had been brought into the country “for unknown purposes

1973: Yonatan Netanyahu wrote to his brother Benjamin: "We're preparing for war, and it's hard to know what to expect. What I'm positive of is that there will be a next round, and others after that. But I would rather opt for living here in continual battle than for becoming part of the wandering Jewish people. Any compromise will simply hasten the end. As I don't intend to tell my grandchildren about the Jewish State in the twentieth century as a mere brief and transient episode in thousands of years of wandering, I intend to hold on here with all my might.”

1974: As the Soviets crackdown on dissidents, including refusniks, author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was arrested in Moscow in the first step to his being deported and stripped of his citizenship.

1976(10thof Kislev, 5737): Sixty-five year old William Tannen who followed in the footsteps of his father Julius Tannen and pursued an acting career most notable for his reoccurring appearance in the Wyatt Earp television show passed away today.

1977:  In the aftermath of Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, Moshe Dayan and Hassan Tuhami, the Egyptian Deputy Prime minister held a second secret meeting in Morocco.  Dayan provided a proposal for the restoration of Egyptian sovereignty over the Sinai. Much to Dayan’s chagrin, Tuhami is less than thrilled with the offer.  It is obvious that there is big gap between Sadat’s spectacular flight to Jerusalem and his claims to want piece and the achievement of that stated outcome.

1977: Castle Hill, with a 59 room mansion designed by Chicago architect David Adler was placed on the National Register of Historic Places today.

1978:"You Don't Bring Me Flowers" featuring Neil Diamond & Barbra Streisand makes it to the top spot on the charts.

1981(6th of Kislev, 5742): Hershey Kay, American born composer and arranger, passed away

1981: In what “was seen as a rebuff to the Reagan administration, today Howard “Metzenbaum was one of four senators to vote against an amendment to President Reagan's MX missiles proposal that would divert the silo system by $334 million as well as earmark further research for other methods that would allow giant missiles to be based.

1981: Birthdate of Jaffa, Israel native and Tel Aviv University trained actor Shredy Jabarin whose film credits include “For My Father” and “The Savior,” “where he played Jesus.”

1982(16th of Kislev, 5743): Marty Feldman, the comedic actor featured in the film Young Frankenstein, passed away.

1983: Michael Jackson's Thriller, an American 13-minute music video for the song of the same name with music by Elmer Bernstein was released today,

1983: Birthdate of Flushing, New York native Arian Asllani the American rapper known as Action Bronson

https://www.thejewniverse.com/2017/this-muslim-jewish-rapper-drinks-manischewitz-and-raps-about-his-bris/

1983: Dr. Moisés Carlos Bentes Ruah and Catarina Lia Azancot Korn gave birth to Daniela Sofia Korn Ruah a Portuguese-American Jewish actress best known for playing NCIS Special Agent Kensi Blye in the CBS series NCIS: Los Angeles.

1984: Him With His Foot In His Mouth and Other Stories by Saul Bellowand Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella by E. L. Doctorow are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year.

1985: Jean Herly, who was the French Ambassador to Israel from 1973 to 1977 completed his service as the 15th Minister of State to Monaco

1987(11th of Kislev, 5748):Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich, a Soviet scientist who played a key role in the development of nuclear weapons in the U.S.S.R. passed away.

1988: Bank Leumi, Tel Aviv, named Moshe Zanbar chairman and David Friedman managing director.

1988: A man carrying the passport of a former Israeli official linked to the Iran-contra scandal was killed in a plane crash, Government officials said today. The man was tentatively identified by a passport found on his body as Amiram Nir, said a statement from the Attorney General's office in the state of Michoacan.

1988: “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” a police comedy directed by David Zucker, who wrote the script along with Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams was released in the United States today.

1990: The New York Times reported that Israel has undertaken an investment initiative designed to lure high-tech American and European companies to invest in its economy. The program was developed by Moshe Nissim, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade.

1990(15th of Kislev, 5751): Ninety year old composer Aaron Copland some of whose best known works include Rodeo, Billy the Kid, Fanfare for the Common Man and Appalachian Spring passed away today.http://www.milkenarchive.org/people/view/all/553/Copland,+Aaron

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/03/obituaries/copland-dean-of-american-music-dies-at-90.html?pagewanted=all

 

https://www.npr.org/programs/specials/copland/notes.html

 

1990(15th of Kislev, 5751): Terrorist conducted a deadly attack on a bus in Tel Aviv.

 

1991(25th of Kislev, 5752): Chanukah

1991(25th of Kislev, 5752): Seventy year old English biochemist Anne Beloff-Chain passed away today.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/beloff-chain-anne-1921-1991

 

1993: “Slaughter of the Innocents” directed and written by American investment professional James Glickenhaus was released in the United States today by Shapiro Glickenhaus Entertainment.

 

1994: Jury finds Heidi Fleiss guilty of running a call girl ring

 

1994:Tonight, “with a rousing encore of Johann Strauss Sr.'s "Radetzky March" that had a stadium audience of 14,000 people chanting for more, Zubin Mehta put the finishing touch to a long-standing ambition: bringing the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to India, and better still to Bombay, the hometown Mr. Mehta left 40 years ago to begin his musical career.

1997: MCI Center opens in Washington, DC, as the Wizards played the Seattle SuperSonics.  The Wizards are owned by Abe Pollin and the MCI Center, which helped to rejuvenate downtown Washington, was the product of this forty year fixture of the basketball and Jewish community.

 

1998: In Israel, one person was injured in a stabbing attack.

1999(24th of Kislev, 5760): In the evening, Kindle the first Light of Chanukah

1999(24th of Kislev, 5760): Eight-eight year old Joey Adams, the Brooklyn born comedian named Joseph Abramowitz and husband of gossip columnist Cindy Adams passed away today.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-12-03-9912040035-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-dec-04-mn-40320-story.html

https://peoplepill.com/people/joey-adams/

 

2000: As a result of the “Palestinian-Israeli violence that broke out in late September” it was reported today that Egypt’s “tourism boom is on the verge of going bust.”

2001: The New York Timeslist of the Best Books of 2001 contains the following works about Jewish related subjects or by Jewish authors including Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald and Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks a physician and author raised as an Orthodox Jew.

 

 

2001(17th of Kislev, 5762):A suicide bombing on an Egged bus #16 in Haifa shortly after 12:00 kills 15 people. The victims: Tatiana Borovik, 23, of Haifa; Mara Fishman, 51, of Haifa; Ina Frenkel, 60, of Haifa; Riki Hadad, 30, of Yokne’am; Ronen Kahalon, 30, of Haifa; Samion Kalik, 64, of Haifa; Mark Khotimliansky, 75, of Haifa; Cecilia Kozamin, 76, of Haifa; Yelena Lomakin, 62, of Haifa; Rosaria Reyes, 42, of the Philippines; Yitzhak Ringel, 41, of Haifa; Rassim Safulin, 78, of Haifa; Leah Strick, 73, of Haifa; Faina Zabiogailu, 64, of Haifa; Mikhail Zaraisky, 71, of Haifa. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

2001(17th of Kislev, 5762): One person was killed when terrorist fired on a car “near Elei Sinai.”

 

2002(27th of Kislev, 5763): Seventy-eight year old Edgar Sherick the movie and television producer whose most lasting contribution to American culture was his role in the creation of “ABC’s Wide World of Sports, passed away today. (As reported by Bill Carter)

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/07/arts/edgar-scherick-78-producer-for-television-and-movies.html

 

2003: It was reported today that Israel’s President Moshe Katsav has said “that Syria must stop supporting armed factions that attack Israel if it is serious about restarting negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights” while “President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, urged the United States to use its muscle to renew talks on the Golan.”.

2004: A Broadway revival of “Pacific Overtures,” a musical written by Stephen Sondheim, opened at Studio 54.

 

2004: “The Syrian Bride” directed by Eran Riklis, who also co-authored the screenplay, was released today in Israel.

 

2005(1st of Kislev, 5766): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

 

2005(1st of Kislev, 5766): American painter Nat Mayer Shapiro passed away at the age of 86.

 

2005:On this date Haaretzreported that thousands of Ethiopian immigrants gathered along the Sherover-Haas Promenade overlooking Jerusalem's Old City to celebrate Sigad - the Ethiopian Jewish holiday that for 2,500 years in exile marked the yearning for Zion.

2005: Nicholas F Taubman began serving as United States Ambassador to Romania.

 

2005: “60 years later, Task Force Baum succeeds” published today reminds of the events surrounding the attempt to rescue Lt. Col. John K. Waters, the son-in-law of General George Patton led by its namesake, Major Abe Baum.  (Baum was Jewish which was part of the risk for a mission that was going to work behind the Nazi lines)

http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051202/news_m1m02tfrbdo.html

 

 

2006: After 11 months, Kaddish is recited for the last time by the family of Judy Rosenstein, of blessed memory. 

 

2006: The Economist Magazine of this date reviewed Jonathan I. Israel’s Enlightenment Contested in which he contends that the Dutch led by Spinoza were the real “torchbearers of the enlightenment” and not the English of the time whom he describes as apologists for colonialism and enemies of equality.

20016: Jules Feiffer completed his academic residency “at the Arizona State University Barret Honors College” today.

 

2007: Jewish Book Month comes to an end.

 

2007: After 20 years of renovation work that cost US$20 million, and that was overseen by the non-profit Museum at Eldridge Street the Eldridge Street Synagogue reopened today to the public. It continues to serve as an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, with regular weekly services on the Sabbath and Holidays, and is also the Museum at Eldridge Street offering informative tours that relate to American Jewish history, the history of the Lower East Side and immigration

 

2007: In Kensington, MD, children's author and illustrator Sallie Lowenstein, author of Waiting for Eugeneand The Festival of Lights,discusses the evolving state of children's books. Lowenstein, also a keen book collector, will have a number of her treasures on display to help enliven the discussion.

 

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section features reviews of books on Jewish topics and/or by Jewish authors including A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman by veteran underground cartoonist Sharon Rudahl, Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan one of the founders of the Actus Tragicus collective of Israeli cartoonists and I Killed Adolf Hitler by the Norwegian cartoonist known simply as Jason

 

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section lists the Books of 2007 including the following books on Jewish topics and/or by Jewish authors including Lost Genius, by Kevin Bazzana, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein, by Martin Duberman, Einstein, by Jurgen Neffe, Calvin Coolidge, by David Greenberg, Ike, by Michael Korda, Opening Day by Jonathan Eig, Reality Show by Howard Kurtz, The Art of Political Murder, by Francisco Goldman, Power, Faith, and Fantasy, by Michael B. Oren, The Grand Surprise, edited by Stephen Pascal, Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks, A Tranquil Star: Unpublished Stories, by Primo Levi, Away, by Amy Bloom, Imposture, by Benjamin Markovits and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon.

 

2008: As part of the Oud Festival sponsored by Confederation House, Violet Salameh will perform a program of works dedicated to the three great divas of the classical Arabic music world - Layla Morad, Asmahan and Oum Koulthoum at the Jerusalem Theater

 

2008: In New York, AFHUS Einstein Award Gala Honoring Bill Gates. Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson will is the guest speaker. Proceeds will benefit pioneering research at The Hebrew University's Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, developing innovative solutions to feeding the world through sustainable agriculture.

 

2008: Hours after voting began this morning, the Labor party postponed the primary elections after computerized voting systems malfunctioned in several locales around the country.

 

2008: Throngs of mourners packed the funerals of the six Jews killed in last week's terror attack in India. The six died after gunmen struck the Chabad House, the Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch movement, last Wednesday. After a two-day standoff, four Israelis, an American Jew and a Mexican woman were dead. The dead included Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, his 28-year-old wife, Rivka, 38-year-old Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum, 28-year old Bentzion Kruman and 50-year-old Norma Shvarzblat-Rabinovich.

 

2009: The trial of Heinrich Boere, a man accused of murdering Dutch civilians as a member of a Waffen SS hit squad  and has said that he was proud about being chosen to fight for the Nazis is scheduled to resume today.

 

2009(15thof Kislev, 5770): Sixty-four year old Eric Wolfson the multi-talented musician who “was born into a Jewish family, in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow and raised in the Pollokshields area” passed away today.

http://www.ericwoolfsonmusic.com/

http://inlog.org/2009/12/03/r-i-p-eric-woolfson-alan-parsons-project-1945-2009/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8392805.stm

 

 

2009(15thof Kislev, 5770): Eighty-one year old “Harold A. Ackerman, a federal judge in New Jersey for three decades whose hundreds of cases included trials of crooked politicians, corrupt union officials and reputed organized crime chieftains, died today at his home in West Orange, N.J. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/nyregion/10ackerman.html

 

2009(15thof Kislev, 5770)L Eight-six year old Samuel Hirsch, the co-founder of the Greater New York Labor Religion Coalition and a life-long champion of civil rights and the rights of American workers passed away today.

 

 

2009: David Wessel, the economics editor at the Wall Street Journal and author of the Capital column, discusses and signs his new book, In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic, at the Arlington Central Library in Arlington, VA.

 

2009: Chabad and JCCNV present “Extreme Makeover: Spiritual Edition” featuring Laibl Wolf, noted Australian Mystic, author of “Practical Kabala” and originator of Mind-Yoga.

 

2010: Lynda Barry and Maira Kalman are scheduled to “show slides of their work, compare notes and talk about their experiences as creators in many genres” in a program entitled “Words and Pictures” at the 92nd Street Y.

 

2010: Jewish children's author Jacqueline Jules is scheduled to read from her book, The Ziz and the Hanukkah Miracle at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

 

2010: A huge brushfire was raging across the Carmel Mountains near Haifa this afternoon, resulting in the death of some 40 people and hurting dozens of others, among them prison guards and firemen.

 

2010: Two Palestinian terrorists were killed on the Gaza border this morning, when IDF troops opened fire on a number of suspects on the northern end of the Strip. The terrorists were apparently trying to infiltrate a kibbutz on the Gaza border. 

2010: In Gainesville, FL, The Lubavitch Chabbad Jewish Center celebrated the second of the eight day Hanukah holiday with a twelve foot Menorah filled with toys for hospitalized children

2010: Today marked the 30th anniversary the death of French-Jewish novelist Romain Gary,

 

2010: As Irving Picard sought to get control of funds related to the Madoff Ponzi Scheme non-profits targeted by clawback suits yesterday and today include the Joseph Persky Foundation, the Miles and Shirley Fitterman Charitable Foundation, and the Melvin B. Nessel Foundation. In all, over 20 charities and foundations were sued.

 

2011: The Heist Project is scheduled to perform works by Israeli choreographer Idan Sharabi

 

2011: David Skorton, the President of Cornell accompanied Billy Joel on flute, during Joel's rendition of "She's Always a Woman" at a concert at Cornell University's Bailey Hall

 

2011: U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called on Israel today to take diplomatic steps to address what he described as its growing isolation in the Middle East.

 

 

2011: Roni Fuchs and Zeev Frenkiel, the two Israeli businessmen sentenced to imprisonment in Georgia earlier this year for allegedly offering seven-million-dollars-worth of bribes to the Georgian deputy finance minister, returned to Israel today after being pardoned.

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including  A Kosher Christmas: ‘Tis the Season to Be Jewish by Joshua Eli Plaut, Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame, edited by Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy, A Ship Without a Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart by Gary Marmorstein, The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs by Michael Feinstein and Ian Jackman and We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy by Yael Cohen

 

2012: Those attending the ECLC Barnes and Noble Book Fair scheduled to take place in Fairfax, VA, will have a chance to have their picture taken “with a special Chanukah Dreidel.”

 

2012: In Minneapolis, MN, the Sabes Jewish Community Center is scheduled to sponsor, How Do You Spell Chanukah?? This is “a unique evening of comedy, fun, music and dreidel spinning and a FUNdraiser for the 2013 Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.”

 

2012: Ambassador Richard Schifter is scheduled to “speak about his childhood in Vienna, escape after the Nazi takeover, and his return to Europe as a Ritchie Boy” at today annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington  

 

2012: AFIPO is scheduled its annual Family Music Day!

 

2012: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz decided today to confiscate the tax revenues that Israel collected for the Palestinian Authority during the month of November, and use it to offset the PA's debt to Israel's Electric Corporation.

 

2012: “In a game against the Miami Dolphins” Julian Edelman of the New England Patriots “broke his right foot and was placed on injured reserve”

 

2012: Holocaust survivors gathered in front of the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem this morning to protest the Treasury’s handling of the budget allocated to the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, which reimburses survivors’ annual medical expenses.

 

 

2013: “Jerusalem on a Plate” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: The Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present “Welcome to America: Memories of a Bintel Brief.

 

2013: The Syrian war continues to spill over into Israel: IDF forces on the Golan Heights near the Syria border were shot at from a Syrian army outpost today. The IDF returned fire and identified a direct hit on a Syrian soldier. No IDF soldiers were injured. (As reported by Ari Yashar)

 

2013: “Seventy-five years after fleeing Nazi Germany for Britain the children of Kindertransport recall how they were saved from Hitler’s murder machine”

 

 

2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met this morning with Pope Francis at the Vatican and presented the pontiff with a copy of his late father’s book about the Spanish Inquisition. (As reported by Lazar Berman)

 

2014(10thof Kislev): Yarhrzeit for the first mass of Jews who were murdered during the Rumbula Massacre near Riga, Latvia that would ultimately claim the lives of more than 25,000 Jews.

 

2014: On “Giving Tuesday” the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to seek support for the Opportunity Scholarships program which “helps to ensure that all students, regardless of school means, have the opportunity to learn the Museum’s message of universal tolerance.”

 

2014: The YIVO is scheduled to present a lecture-concert “Klezmer Influences in American Jewish Music.

 

2014: The House of Representatives passed the No Social Security Act for Nazis today which ” closed a loophole that had allowed ex-Nazis who lied about their past when immigrating to the United States — and been identified and deported by the Justice Department — to continue receiving Social Security and other benefits.”

 

2014: “France voted to recognize Palestine as a state, which the Israeli embassy in Paris says sends “the wrong message to leaders and people in the region.”

2014: After overcoming a series of political hurdles the Senate voted to confirm Noah Mamet as the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina.

 

2014: “The ruling Likud faction has formally decided to vote in favor of opposition-proposed bills on the Knesset docket that would dissolve the Knesset and bring about early elections, party sources told The Times of Israel today.” (As reported by Haviv Rettig Gur and Ricky Ben-David)

 

2014: In Chicago, the Spertus Book Meetup is scheduled to discuss The Familyby David Laskin.

 

2015: “Singer-musician Judith Berkson is scheduled to present arrangements of cantorial music from YIVO’s sound archives” at the Center for Jewish History.

 

2015: The Consulate General of Israel in New York and the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue are scheduled to host a reception and panel discussion commemorating “The Exodus of Jews from Arab Countries.”

 

2015: In Florida, Boca Raton Synagogue is scheduled to host Jeffrey Goldberg, the National Correspondent for The Atlanticspeaking on “Battleground for Truth: Confronting Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial.”

 

2015(20thof Kislev): Day two of the Rosh HaShanah of Chassidus

 

2015(20thof Kislev): Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, the dean of the Chaim Berlin yeshiva in New York.

 

2016: “Hannah and the moonlit Dress” is scheduled to open at the 14th Street Y.

2016: “A Basel Appeals Court” “overturned the hate incitement conviction of” David Klein, “a Jewish musician who on Facebook described Muslims as ‘the Nazis of today’” after considering “his apology for words that he wrote about a video showing Arabs assaulting Jews in Jerusalem and the fact that he is the descendant of Holocaust survivors.”

 

2016: The 10th Annual Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to continue this morning at the JCC Manhattan followed this evening by the New Israel Fund’s New Generations and JCC 20s + 30s Shabbat dinner featuring conversations with guest filmmakers.

 

2016: Marina Rustow, the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East at Princeton University, is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Fatimid State Documents,

Serial Recyclers and the Cairo Geniza” at the Iowa Memorial Union on the campus of the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

2017(14th of Kislev, 5778): Parashat Va-yishlach

2017: Rabbi David Lerner delivered a sermon “Rabbi   Neil   Gillman,  z”l ,  and   What   Do   We   Believe?” following the death of “one of the premiere theologians of the Conservative Movement.”

https://templeemunah.org/images/sermons/Rabbi_David_Lerner/Previous_Years/5778/12-02-17%20-%20Va-yishlah%205778%20-%20Rabbi%20Neil%20Gillman%20and%20What%20Do%20We%20Believe.pdf

 

2017: In Atlanta, the second day of the USCJ Convention is scheduled to begin with Barry Mael leading a study session on Leadership Lessons from Pirke Avot.

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Pirke Avot study session followed by Ma’ariv and Havdallah.

2017: The Maccabeats are scheduled to perform in London today.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Sholem Asch whose works included the New Testament based trilogy The Nazarene, The Apostle and Mary continues today

2018(24thof Kislev, 5779): In the evening kindle the first light of Chanukah

2018: The Jewish Museum of London is scheduled to host a “Hanukah Family Day” where Lydia Hardwick will help attendees create their own clay lamp and the Yiddish Choir will perform “traditional holiday songs followed by a candle lighting ceremony.

2018: JW3 is scheduled to host two screenings of “Disobedience” in London.

2018: In Atlanta, “Conductor Juan Ramirez and Cantor Lauren Adesnik as members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Emanu-El Youth Choir” are scheduled to perform a very special Hanukkah concert, From Darkness to Light” which includes “highlights inspiring music from the Holocaust, melodic Sephardic tunes and uplifting Hanukkah favorites.”

2018: “The Israeli police recommended today that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on bribery, fraud and other charges, accusing him of trading regulatory favors for fawning news coverage, in what is potentially the most damaging of a series of corruption cases against him.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-bribery-charges.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

 

2018: The Yiddish Book Center is scheduled to host a screening of the Prince and the Dybbuk.

2018: The Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center, under the leadership of Rosh Yeshiva Joshua Kulp is scheduled to “start a new tractate of Talmud--Kiddushin, which is mostly concerned with the laws of betrothal.”

2018: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities and Other Stuff by Abbi Jacobson, Beastie Boys Book by Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz and The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created by Jane Leavy.

2019: The National Council of Jewish Women Executive Committee Meeting is scheduled to take place this evening in New Orleans.

2019: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience and Dahan Center are scheduled to present the International Conference on “The End of Jewish Communal Life in the Arab Lands.”

2019: The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players including violinist Itmar Zoran as scheduled to perform the music of “The Great Danes” at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church.

2019: The National Museum of American Jewish History Museum Store is prepared to accept on-line orders today as part of its Cyber Monday Sale.

2019: San Francisco State University is scheduled present “Juda, Judaism and Vampirism” during which “Jewish studies lecturer Vered Weiss tells on how Israeli TV uses horror and fantasy to analyze social boundaries and convey social critique.”

2019: “Hip NY rabbi stitches together Hasidic lifestyle with bespoke tailoring business” published today described how “after training on London’s famed Savile Row, Chabad Rabbi Yosel Tiefenbrun has set up shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he fits clients for their $4,500 suits.” (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hip-ny-rabbi-stitches-together-hasidic-lifestyle-with-bespoke-tailoring-business/

2020: The Book Festival of the MJCCA and the National JCC Literary Consortium’s “In Your Living Room” is scheduled to host an online presentation this evening with Ina Garten, author of Modern Comfort Food

2020: The Breman Museum is scheduled to present a book talk featuring Bruce Feiler, author of The New York Times bestseller Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, at 7 PM

2020: Hadassah Northeast is scheduled to present online “Zionism From Herzl to the Present” with Karen Bar-Or, national activism director of Israeli American Council.

2020: In Iowa, The Jewish Federation of the Corridor steering group is scheduled to meet this evening,

2020: The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County is scheduled present on ZOOM “Jewish Women in American Film: From Femme Fatale to Superhero” with John Kenrick.

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present Aviva Ben-Ur discussing her new book, Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651-1825.

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host Rabbi Yaron Kapitulnik talking about "The untold stories of the Maccabees – What can we learn from a direct reading of the Book of Maccabees"

2020: Today the Knesset is scheduled t”o vote on a motion of no confidence proposed by the opposition, normally a formaility that is voted down virtually automatically by the government” which might not be the case this time since Blue & White Chairman and Defense Minisiter Benny Gantz said his party will vote in favor of a bill, calling to disperse the Knesset and hold another election.”(As reported by Itay Blumenthal)

2020: The JDC is scheduled to host “the screening of two rare historic archival films: “A Tale of Two Worlds” and “A Day of Deliverance”

2020: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host Dr. Israel Finkelstein lecturing on “Reconstructing the History of Ancient Israel: The Bible versus Archaeology.”

2020: Historian Fred Rosenbaum is scheduled to talk “about the history of Argentina’s Jewish community and provides context for the film “Anita,” which the East Bay Int’l Jewish Film Festival is offering free online…”

2020: In Columbus, OH, Congregation Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host via ZOOM “Asking Deeper Questions: Judaism 201 Jewish Ethics Case Study on Crime and Incarceration which is part of a monthly “series focused on exploring some deeper questions about Jewish thought and practice, while also providing practical skills and advice for those looking to add more Jewish ritual to their lives.”

 

 

 

This Day, December 3, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 3

311: Sixty-sixty year old Emperor Diocletian passed away.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0005_0_05240.html

1368: Birthdate of Charles VI, the French king who would order the expulsion of the Jews from his realm in 1394. Unlike the orders of expulsion issued by some of his predecessors this one remained in force with Jews not returning to France until the 17th century.

1447: Birthdate of Bayezid II the Sultan who in 1492, issued a formal invitation to the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal and sent out ships to safely bring Jews to his empire.

1656: First entry in the diary of Thomas Burton which recorded the activities of Parliament during the era of Oliver Cromwell and provided a written record of “the assurance of the right of Jews to remain in England. “The Jews, those able and general intelligencers whose intercourse with the Continent Cromwell had before turned to profitable account, he now conciliated by a seasonable benefaction to their principal agent [Carvajal] resident in England.”

1685: King Charles XI of Sweden ordered the governor-general of the capital to see that no Jews were permitted to settle in Stockholm, or in any other part of the country, "on account of the danger of the eventual influence of the Jewish religion on the pure evangelical faith."

1747:Sir Alexander Schomberg, the son of Meyer Löw Schomberg a German-Jewish doctor who settled in England, and who was able to pursue a naval career only after converting so he could comply with The Test Act passed his examination for lieutenant today.

1754: In Philadelphia, Tabitha Mears and Mathias Bush gave birth to Samuel Bush.

1771: In a letter written today, Moses Mendelssohn described Johann Jacob Rabe, as a patient, “strong Talmudist” who “has translated into German the first three parts of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud” which are “ready for the printer” but for which no publisher can be found.

1779(24th of Kislev, 5540): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1779: Native New Yorker Zipporah Levy and Benjamin Mendes Seixas, a native of Newport, RI, gave birth to Abigail Seixas.

1791: Based on account that appeared in the Newcastle Courant, today “a marriage was celebrated at Sunderland according to the rites and ceremonies of the Jews between Lyon Hermann, dentist, of Edinburgh and Mrs. H. Pollock, widow of the late Mr. Pollock, a merchant in London.”

1792: One day after she had passed away, “Miriam bat Joseph” was buried today at the “Alderney Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1798(25th of Kislev, 5559): First Day of Chanukah observed on the same day that Federalist Robert Wain began serving as a member of the House of Representatives.

1800: Birthdate of  Émile  Péreire who along with his brother Isaac were leading French financiers who, among other things created the Crédit Mobilier bank and were considered the Sephardi equivalents of the Rothschilds.

1802: Last will and testament of Emanuel Abrahams, a “Jewish resident of Charleston, SC.”

1807: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Jacob Suares officiated at the wedding of Hyam Moise to Cecilia Woolf, the daughter of the late Solomon Woolf.

1807: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Jacob Suares officiated at the wedding of Aaron Moise to Sarah Cohen the daughter of the late Gershon Cohen.

1807: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Jacob Suares officiated at the wedding of Nathan Hart to the eldest daughter of Daniel Hart.

1809(25th of Kislev, 5570): First Day of Chanukah

1809: Birthdate Samuel Adler “a leading German-American Reform rabbi, Talmudist, and author” passed away. He was also the father of Felix Adler, the well-known founder of the Society for Ethical Culture.” Born at Worms in 1809, he came to the United States to serve as Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in New York; a position he held for seventeen years before accepting the position as Rabbi Emeritus. He was an outspoken opponent of slavery and a staunch supporter of Abraham Lincoln.  One of the happiest moments of his life came when saw Major Anderson, the Union officer who had defended Fort Sumter, in his congregation.  After service “he laid his hands on the soldier’s head and pronounced…the anciently priestly blessing…”

1811: In Berlin, Fanny Eleonore Bendemann née von Halle, a daughter of the Jewish banker Joel Samuel von Halle and banker Anton Heinrich Bendemann gave birth to painter Eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Bendemann#mediaviewer/File:Eduard_Bendemann_1811_-_1889_Selbstbildnis_1859.jpg

1818: Isaac Gompertz married Charlotte Florence Wattier today.

1818: Illinois becomes the 21st state admitted to the Union. “John Hays was the first Jewish pioneer in Illinois.  He served as county sheriff and collector of internal revenue before the territory became a state. German Jews built the first synagogue in 1851 in Chicago calling it the Congregation of the Men of the West. By the end of the decade Polish Jews had started their own congregation and a group of Reform Jews had split away from “the Men of the West” to form their own synagogue called Sinai Congregation.  The Jewish population of Illinois was large enough to provide over 1,100 volunteers to fight in the Union Army. 

1819: Birthdate of Daniel Abramovich Chwolson, the native of Vilna who became a distinguished Orientalist and defender of the Jews from the rampant anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia.

1827: Moritz Gottlieb Saphir “founded the Tunnel über der Spree literary society.”

1828(27th of Kislev, 5589): Third Day of Chanukah observed as Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia have their elections and choose their Presidential Electors in the closely contested presidential race between John Q. Adams and Andrew Jackson.

1830: Today, “the Alsatian Deputy Pierre Andre stated that before the Revolution, Jewis had not been allowed to open vocational schools” which was contradicted by others “at the same time who said “that before the Revolution the Alsatian leader Cerberr of Medelsheim and Berr-Isaac Berr of Nancy found agricultural colonies in order to mitigate the charge that Jews were not productive.”

1830: Two days after he had passed away, 72 year old Lyon Phillips, the husband of Elizabeth Phillips and the father of Joseph Phillips was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1831(28th of Kislev, 5592): Shabbat Shel Chanukah; Parashat Miketz

1831(28th of Kislev, 5592): Forty-eight year old Morocco native Solomon Ben Masud Ben Abraham Sebag, the husband of Sarah Goldsmid and “the father of Sir Joseph Sebag-Montefiore and Jemima Sebag-Montefiore passed away today in London

1831: Birthdate of German humor writer Julius Sttenheim.

1831: Birthdate of James Graham Fair, the Irish born American mining engineer who made a fortune in Nevada silver mines and served as United States and then left a $25,000 bequest “to the Hebrew asylums” in San Francisco.

1833: In Canterbury, Kent, Elizabeth Benjamin and Zvi ben Aharon gave birth to “Henry Jones”

1836: In Vienna, Ignatz Lieben and his wife gave birth to Austrian Chemist Adolf Lieben.

1839: Phillip Fama married Charlotte Lambert at the Great Synagogue today.

1842(30th of Kislev, 5603): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6thday of Chanukah

1842: Birthdate of Susan Joshua the wife of Edward Ferdinand Sichel.

1842(30th of Kislev, 5603): Seventy-four year old Samuel Levin Egers, who was appointed the Rabbi of Brunswick in 1809 and who did not “relax his labors” after losing his sight in 1836, passed away today.

1844(22nd of Kislev, 5605): Fifty-six year old Hamburg native Georg Hartog Gerson, the third generation of German-Jewish doctors and a member of  the 5th Line Battalion, King's German Legion who saw action in the Peninsula, in Southern France, the Lowlands and at the Battle of Waterloo” passed away today.

1845: Samuel Samuel married Elizabeth Mordecai today.

1846: Two days after she had passed away, “Sarah Kate Jacob (nee Simons)” the daughter of Samuel Simons and Rose Moses and the wife of Jacob Jacob wth whom she had had four children, was buried today at the “Falmouth Jewish Cemetery.”

1847(25th of Kislev, 5608): Chanukah

1850: In Padua, Samuel David Luzzatto and his wife gave birth to Beniamino Luzzatto, the Italian physician who became chief of the propaedeutic clinic of Padua University.

1852: The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli, delivered a major address today in the House of Commons on the subject of taxation.  The speech, which was well received, contained proposals to change the Tea Duties and the Income Tax.

1854(12th of Kislev, 5615: A German-born Jew, Edward (Teddy) Thonen was killed today when troops stormed the stockade during the goldfields uprising at Ballarat, Australia.

1857:  Birthdate of Dr. Carl Koller, a Czech-born American ophthalmic surgeon whose introduction of cocaine as a surface anesthetic in eye surgery (1884) inaugurated the modern era of local anesthesia. He was a colleague of Sigmund Freud, who in 1884 was interested in the use of cocaine to cure morphine addiction. Koller noticed cocaine had a numbing effect on the tongue and, after experimenting with animals, introduced it as a local anesthetic in ophthalmology. It was also quickly adopted for nose and throat surgery and for dentistry. He died in 1944. Koller was one of the so-called Vienna Trio made up of three Jewish doctors - Carl Koller (1857-1944), Sigmund Lustgarten (1857-1911) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). All three are characterized by several interesting similarities. In their early achievements in medical research they were pathfinders of the first successful local anesthetic: cocaine. All three became later victims of anti-Semitism.

1857: In Neustadt, Prussia, Josef Pinkus and Auguste Fränke gave birth to Max Pinkus, the husband of Hedwig Pinkus.

1858: After purchasing “a considerable number of Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts on behalf of the Bibliothèque Nationale” and being “elected secretary of the Consistoire Central des Israélites de France” today Salomon Munk “was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres” after which “he was appointed professor of Hebrew at the Collège de France.”

1859:At the Green-street Synagogue in NYC, Rabbi S.M. Isaacs “delivered a stirring appeal to his congregation on behalf of the Jews who have fled from Morocco and taken refuge at Gibraltar. Their suffering co-religionist were forced to take flight because of the fighting between the natives and Spain. Issacs acknowledged the help rendered by the British who had provided the refugees with tents and food.  He also expressed thanks for support from the local Christian population.  But he still urged his congregants and the rest of the Jewish community to come to the aid of the some 29,000 Jews who had been living along the Barbary Coast.

1860: Abraham Jonas “an Illinois businessman and politician” who had first me Lincoln “around 1843” wrote a letter to him today warning of an assassination plot.

1861(30th of Kislev, 5622): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1862: First Lieutenant Herman Hamburger, who would see action at the Battle of Gettysburg while serving as Assistant-Adjutant General of the First Brigade, of the Third Division began his service today with the 18thCavalry today.

1863: In Cincinnati, OH, Moses and Sarah Waldheim gave birth to Aaron Waldheim, the manager of St. Louis “outlet of May-Stern, a retail furniture store he started with David May and Harry Stern that was so successful it enable him to become one of the city’s leading philanthropists.

1870(9th of Kislev, 5631): Parashat Vayetzei

1870(9th of Kislev, 5631): Seventy-seven year old War of 1812 veteran Levi Charles Meyers Harby, who served in the “Texas Navy” during its war for independence and in the Confederate Navy during the Civil War while finding time to marry “Leonora Rebecca De Lyon, a member of the prominent Jewish family from Savanah with whom he had three children passed away today.

1871: In Martinsburg, W. VA, Newton Diehl Baker Sr. and Mary Ann (Dukehart) Baker gave birth to Newton D. Baker, Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of War who supported the nomination of Felix Frankfurter to the Supreme Court and was the 1930 recipient of the American Hebrew Medal for the Promotion of Better Understanding Between Christian and Jew in America.

1871: The annual meeting of the B’nai Jeshurun Ladies’ Benevolent Society and Home for Aged Hebrews took place today the 34th Street Synagogue.  Following the reading of the annual report the following officers were elected: Mrs. Henry Leo, President; Mrs. H. B. Hertz, Vice President; Mrs. Zion Bernstein, Treasurer; Judge P.J. Joachimsen, Honorary Counsel; Dr. Simeon U. Leo, Physician

1871(20th of Kislev, 5632): Sixty-four year old Jonas Königswarter who “in recognition of his public services, was decorated with the Order of the Iron Crown of the third class, and elevated to the knighthood; and in 1870 received the decoration of the second class of the same order, and was raised to the baronetage” passed away today.

1871: Charles Hart was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1872: Prime Minister William Gladstone was among those who heard George Smith read “his translation of the Chaldean account of the Great Flood” at today’s meeting of the Society of Biblical  Archaeology. Known as the Epic of Gilgamesh, this is another version of Noah’s Flood.

1873: The Oratorio Society, a choral music society founded by Leopold Damrosch gave its first concert today.

1873: Birthdate of Hungarian native Charles Gelman who in 1892 came to the United States where he settled in Glens Falls, NY where owned and operated “the dry goods firm of Merkel and Gelman” while raising his two daughters Elsa and Babette.

1873: In Lithuania Isaac Margolis and Hinde Margolis, the daughter of David Aryeh Leib Zirilstein and Kaila Bernstein gave birth to Bertha Barnett

1874: Birthdate of Vienna native Jacob Leon Wolff who gained fame as “pianist and composer Erich Jaques Wolff.”

1875: Birthdate of Father Bernhard Lichtenberg German clergyman, anti-fascist and outspoken defender of the Jews of Germany. For example, after Kristallnacht while the German churches kept their silence in face of the vicious attack upon the Jews, Lichtenberg was the only Church man to raise his voice publicly and fearlessly against Nazi brutality. “We know what happened yesterday, we do not know what lies in store for us tomorrow. But we have experienced what has happened today: Outside burns the temple. This is also a place of worship.” From that evening until his arrest in 1941, Lichtenberg continued to pray daily from his pulpit in the St Hedwig Cathedral for the both Jews and Jewish Christians as well as other victims of the regime. Following his two year imprisonment, Lichtenberg turned the Gestapo’s offer to leave him alone if he would stop speaking out against the regime.  Lichtenberg asked to be allowed to accompany the Jews and Jewish Christians being sent to the Ghetto at Lodz, Poland.  The Church refused his request because of his failing health. Instead the Gestapo ordered him to be sent to Dachau. The sixty-seven year old priest died on November 5, 1943 while waiting to be shipped to the concentration camp.

http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-blessed-bernhard-lichtenberg.html

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/lichtenberg.asp

1876: It was reported today that the “Czar has written a private letter to” Queen Victoria “in which he does not disguise his resentment at the treatment which he has received at the hands of her Prime Minister” Lord Beaconsfield better known as Benjamin D’Israeli.  (One cannot but wonder if part of the ruler of the anti-Semitic realm greatest resentment comes from having to deal with the son of London Jew.)

1876: “Touching the Jew” published today described a visit by an American journalist to the home of “a strict family of the chosen people” (Orthodox Jews) where they discussed the novel Daniel Deronda of which the Jews said the title character was “a weak visionary” and the character “Mordecai was a common madman.”  “And as for that wild notion which so many of you Christians entertain about Jerusalem, one of the Jews said let us “disabuse your mind of it.  The Jews don’t want to go Jerusalem; they wouldn’t if they could.”  “The very idea” of “being compelled to live in Jerusalem…is enough to make one shudder.”

1878:Settlers arrive at Petach Tikvah in what is now Israel.  Petach Tikvah is Hebrew for Gateway of Hope. The land was purchased by Jews living in Jerusalem from a Greek landowner after the Sultan of Turkey had thwarted their efforts to buy land near Jericho.  The village they built was in an area prone to malaria outbreaks.  In 1882, the settlers gave up the village, due in part to poor harvest.  At the time only 66 people were living in ten houses.

1880: The Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society “purchase the Devlin property at 10thAvenue, the Boulevard and 136th to 138th Streets for $138,000” with the intention of constructing a facility at this location.

1880: At Gottingen University, a group of students is preparing a statement for the Rector protesting the distribution of Court Chaplain Adolph Stocker’s “petition against the Jews.

1881: “Some Minor Foreign Facts” published today include estimates of the Jewish population that “have been prepared in Rome showing that there are 6,568,000 Jews in the world, 5,500,000 of whom live in Europe, 240,000 in Asia, 500,000 in Africa and 308,000 in America.

1881: After having been closed for Shabbat, the fair sponsored by Temple Israel in Brooklyn reopened tonight.

1882: “Notes On Art” published today described the discovery of  a“grotesque wall painting” called ‘The Judgment of Solomon,’ a veritable caricature of the famous Biblical  story” in a house at Pompeii that had been built by merchants from ancient Alexandria, a city “well acquainted with Jewish lore” which would have accounted for the artistic creation.

1884: On the day before he committed suicide in the New York park near the Farragut Monument, Jacob Asch, a Jewish native of Prussia who had operated a millinery story in Chicago where he had left his wife and family, met with Adolph Schwab and gave back to him the lace goods which Schwab had given to him sell on commission.

1885(25thof Kislev, 5646): Chanukah

1885: Birthdate of 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.

1885: “Lighting A Candle Each Day” published today described the celebration of Chanukah, a “festival that last eight days” where “at the beginning of each day the orthodox Hebrew family lights a candle until they eight candles burning.”

1886: A wealthy Jew named Altmayer who was serving time for embezzlement has escaped from the Mazas Prison using a “forged letter of release.”

1887: In New York, Judge Barrett has displayed Solomon in deciding “that the child about whose ownership the mulattoes William and Jennie Lee and the Russian Jews Bertha and Harris Brodsky have each been contesting is Nellie Lee and not Yetta Brodsky and has order the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to deliver her to the Lees.  The unanswered question is, what has become of the missing Yetta Brodsky

1888(29thof Kislev, 5649): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1888: Supporters of Boulanger rallied in Paris today shouting for an end to the Republic and chanting “Down with the Jews!”  (French anti-Semitism was a subset of right-wing hostility towards the Third Republic)

1888: In Łomża, Poland, the son of Liba Miriam (Cyrowicz) and Joel Leib Herzog gave birth to Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog who was the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, serving from 1921 to 1936 and then began servings as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine and of Israel until his death in 1959

1889: “In Wandsbek, which was then a town in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein (now a district of the city of Hamburg), Julius and Henriette (née Hirsch) Levy gave birth to Paul Levy who gained fame as American screenwriter, director and producer who was an assistant to his fellow co-religionist and movie maker Irving Thalberg.

1889: A party of fifty Jews from several cities including Ogden, Utah and Chicago, Illinois, passed through Pittsburgh, PA today on their way to Jerusalem.

1890(21stof Kislev, 5651): Leonard Arnheim, the four year old son of Ida and Lewis Arnheim, passed away.  Lewis Arnheim served in the Georgia State Legislature as a representative from rural Dougherty County and was the son-in-law of David Mayer of Atlanta. A native of Germany, he made a career in the law before taking an active role in state politics.

1891: The residence of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews are scheduled to enjoy a free evening of musical entertainment.

1891(2ndof Kislev, 5652): Ninety-year old Abraham Alexander Wolff, the German born Rabbi who spent most of his life leading the congregation in Copenhagen and as “the father of Danish homiletics” delivered approximately 5,000 sermons during his “career of 65 years” passed away today.

1892: The Moscow Chamber Commerce resolved “to exclude all Jews from the list of city merchants unless they” convert and become Greek Orthodox.

1892: In Chattanooga, TN, Harry Clay Adler and Ada Ochs gave birth to Julius Ochs Adler, the publisher of The Chattanooga Timesand general manager of The New York Timeswho had a distinguished military career in both World Wars.

1892: Judith Solis-Cohen began a ten year stint as the editor for “the weekly ‘Womanknd’ column in the Jewish Exponent.” (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

1893(24thof Kislev, 5654): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1893: “A Practical Charity” published today described the work of the East Side Relief Committee whose members included Mr. Spectorsky of the Hebrew Institute and is an example of what can happen when “Catholic, Protestant and Hebrew religious societies” work together.

1893: “Professor Felix Adler spoke” to “the usual large audience” “in Carnegie Music Hall this morning on the idea of God and the futurity as taught in the Old Testament.”

1893: “Jewish President of Each Board” published today described the lack of anti-Semitism in Lexington, KY a city of 30,000 that includes about one hundred Jews where a Jew was chosen to service as the President of the Boards of Alderman and the Boards of Councilmen.

1893: Much to consternation of French anti-Semites, David Raynal began serving as Minister of the Interior.

1894: In Hamburg,Bernhard Bästlein, Sr. of Thuringia and Cornelia Bästlein, née Kock, of East Friesland Bernhard Bästlein a leader of the anti-Nazi resistance who was executed “at Brandenburg-Görden Prison. (He was not Jewish.  But we do have an obligation to “Remember” those who stood against the Evil of the Darkest Night.”

1894: In Baltimore, MD, Jacob and Hilda (Kaplan) Sobeloff gave birth to Simon Sobeloff who served as Solicitor General of the United States and Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth District.

1894: Glass dealer Benjamin Rosenthal was assaulted by a gang of boys hollering “Sheeny, sheeny” at 34th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan.

1894: “A Philosophy And Not A Creed” published today described the views of Rabbi Joseph Silverman on Judaism stating that it “is not a system of creeds but a philosophy”  Unlike other religions, “Judaism has no symbol” but maybe it should adopt the question mark as one since “Judaism is an everlasting searcher after truth.” 

1895: Birthdate of Anna Freud, Austrian-born English psychoanalyst and daughter of Sigmund Freud.She was the founder of child psychoanalysis and one of its foremost practitioners. She also made fundamental contributions to understanding how the ego, or consciousness, functions in averting painful ideas, impulses, and feelings. She diverged from her father in emphasizing the role of the ego (as opposed to id forces) in psychological functioning. Her book The ego and mechanisms of defense (1936) laid the groundwork for ego psychology. She was one of the first psychoanalysts to work primarily with children. She passed away1982.

1895:”Vienna’s Anti-Semitic Mobs” published today described the response of the ant-Semites to the Emperor’s rejection of Dr. Luger as Burgomaster of Vienna which included “insulting and threatening passers-by and other persons in the cafes and shops whom they regarded as being Hebrews.”

1895: Birthdate of Jaujard Jacques, “the man who save Mona Lisa.”

1896: Birthdate of Mihály Maurice Bergsmann, the son of a practicing physician in Budapest who converted to Unitarian Christianity and gained fame as psychoanalyst Michael Balint.

1897: Starting today and for the next ten years Judith Solis-Cohen “edited the weekly “Womankind” column in the Jewish Exponent. In these columns, which covered such topics as “What Women Can Earn,” “Coeducation,” “Women Zionists,” “The Woman Suffrage Movement,” and “The Council of Jewish Women.” (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

1898: In “Zhyomyr, Haim Bardinstein and Miryam Bardinstein gave bortj to Shlomo H. Bardin the husband of Roth Bardin, with whom he had two sons – David and Hillel – “who studied at the University of Berlin, University College and Columbia University after which “he founded the Haifa Technical High School and Haifa Nautical School.

1900: In Great Britain, The Court of Appeal has rendered a decision upholding that of a Divisional Court in the suit of the Attorney General vs. the Jewish Colonization Association. The Crown claimed estate and succession duty upon the death of Baron Maurice de Hirsch. This victory means the Crown gains upwards of 1,250,000 English pounds.

1902: The Convention of the National Council of Jewish Women is scheduled to continue for a second day in Baltimore, MD at the Eutaw Place Synagogue.

1902: Birthdate of American artist Louis Leon Ribak, the husband of artist Beatrice Mandelman, who passed away at Taos, NM in 1979

http://www.mandelman-ribak.org/

1903(14thof Kislev, 5664): In Vilna, Deborah Romm who “took an active interest in the affairs” of the Romm Publishing House after her husband David died in 1860, passed away today.

1903:  Birthdate of mathematician John von Neumann.  Born in Hungary, von Neumann brilliant career included work on the project to build the hydrogen bomb as well and development of logical design.  This work was critical in the development of the modern computer.  He won the Medal of Freedom in 1956 a year before his death.

1903: Birthdate of Abe Pollin future owner of the National Basketball Association's (NBA) Washington Wizards, the National Hockey League's (NHL) Washington Capitals and Women's National Basketball Association's (WNBA) Washington Mystics. Pollin would use his own money to build a home for the Wizards that would revitalize a large section of downtown Washington, D.C.   He would also support a number of civic and charitable efforts that would do everything from rewarding public school teachers to feeding starving children in Africa. If the first question asked of a soul by the heavenly court is “How did you conduct yourself when doing business?” Pollin will pass with flying colors.

1904(25thof Kislev, 5665): Chanukah

1904: In St. Louis, MO, Charles and Rose Ellman Weissman gave birth to Ben Weisman, the husband of “Esther Polinsky Weisman” with whom he had two children – Harry and Sandra.

1904 (25th of Kislev, 5665):Rabbi Chaim Chizkiah Medini, the author of the Halachic encyclopedia Sdei Chemed passed away.

1905: In Minsk, “a hooligan disguised as a Jew is” supposed “to fire on a holy image in a religious procession” which is then to be followed by the killing of Jews; an act that will be made easier because the houses of the Jews “are to be marked with white crosses.”

1906: Following the reports given by Isidor Straus and Mrs. Morris Loeb, the President of the Women’s Auxillary at tonight’s annual meeting of the Educational Alliance and Women’s Auxiliary Samuel B. Hamburger, Adolf Lewisohn, Marcus Marks, Julius M. Mayer, William C. Popper, Solomon Schechter, Solomon Sulzberger, Felix M. Warburg, Louis Wiley and August Goldsmith were re-elected as directors serving a new three year term.

1906: William Greenspan of the Hebrew Harlem Butchers’ Association told meeting of 500 women attending a meeting protest against the high price of meat that “the butchers are not to blame” but instead blamed it on “the turst” which is forcing them to pay ten cents a pound “for the chuck steak” the butch are selling to their customers.

1907(27thof Kislev, 5668): Third Day of Chanukah

1907: Professor Franklin Giddings of Columbia who was lecturing on “The Jews in America” at the People’s Institute at Cooper Union was asked “whether the recent movement by the Jews to keep Christian ceremonies out of the schools was justified.

1908: “The Jewish Morning Journal announced” tonight “that it had received a cable dispatch from Russia by way of London announcing that the Council of the Government of Ekaternoslva, a province in Russia, had confiscated all the land of the Jewish agriculture colonists who had left for the Argentine Republic.”

1909: In Russia, Mary Sacks and Zangwell Mednick gave birth to Israel Mednick

1910(2ndof Kislev, 5671): Parashat Tolodot

1910(2ndof Kislev, 5671): Forty-seven year old Ida Dolce Foa Ghiron, the daughter of Giuseppe and Annetta Foa and the wife of Pacifico Ghiron passed away today after which she was buried next to her father in Piemonte, Italy.

1911: In Calgary, Canada, those attending a meeting at Tabor Hall there was a “protest against religious education in public schools.”

1912: Mrs. Mark A. Cohen performed a vocal solo accompanied by pianist Mrs. Justin Levin at “the third regular meeting of the Ladies’ Society of B’nai Sholom Temple Israel which took place this afternoon in Chicago.

1913: In New York City, Dr. Alexander Marx, the German born son of Georg and Gertrude Marx, and his wife Hannah Marx gave birth to Jakob (Jack) Marx.

1914:  In Boston, George and Charlotte S. Friedman Fine gave birth to composer Irving Gifford Fine.

https://www.irvingfinesoc.org/

1914: The American Jewish Committee appropriates $2,500 for an orphan asylum in Sophia, Bulgaria due to orphans of the Balkan War. This was at the request of the Chief Rabbi, Dr. M. Ehrenpreis.

1914: “Solomon Rabinowitz Here” published today described the arrival in New York of the 54 year old  author from Kiev called the “Jewish Mark Twain” who like Twain writes under a pen name which in this case is Sholom Aleichem

1914: It was reported today that Solomon Rabinowitz, who writes under the pseudonym “Shalom Aleichem” “was at a health resort near Berlin when Germany declared war on Russia” following which he was arrested and sent to Berlin under guard along with the Russian Minister of Education” and then 24 hours later was put on a train for Denmark.” (This is event has all of the irony of a Shalom Aleichem tale since the Germans did not see any irony in treat the Jewish author as a Russian – a view of his persona not shared by the Czar who ruled over him,)

1914: Among those listed today as contributor to the American Jewish Relief Committee were the Central Jewish Council of Denver, CO; Congregations Sons of Jacob, Galesburg, Il; Committee of Orthodox Jews, Lafayette, IN; Jewish Conference of Minneapolis MN; Jewish War Veterans Committee of Omaha Nebraska; Temple Mount Sinai, El Paso, TX and Alxxander Joske, San Antonio, TX who may have been related to Julius Joske who founded Joske’s the San Antonio based department store chain.

1915: Seventy year old Theodor Kohn, the seventh Archbishop of Olomouc whose grandfather was Jewish making him the first person of Jewish origins to hold the post passed away today.

1915: “Ford Has A Rival” published today described the plan of Representative Meyer London for mediating a peace in Europe which he will have presented to Congress before Henry Ford’s peace ship can reach Europe.”  (Did this loss of face tied to a Jewish legislator help to fuel Ford’s anti-Semitism?)

1915: In describing the hardships and challenges facing Russia’s war effort, Ernest P. Horrwitz wrote today that “it is not feasible to replace coal” with “timber which is abundant in the Russian forests because the timber trade is almost exclusively in the hands of the Jews and they have been decimated by the most cruel pogroms or expelled from the west and northwest which is the great forest land of Russia.”

1916: “The campaign to raise the final half million of the two million dollars need for the work of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies began” tonight “with a rally at the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre” where Dr. Moses Hyamson delivered the opening prayer, music was provided by the Russian Trio of Eugene, Michael and Arthur Bernstein and hundreds of the attendees responded positively “to the appeal of Leo Arnstein who asked for 2,000 volunteer workers to enlist 20,000 more subscribers in the course of this week.”

1916: Following three years of fundraising, the new annex on St. Mark’s Place of the National Orphan House opened today with a dedication ceremony that included remarks by Judge Gustave Hartman, President of the Israel Orphan Asylum who said that while Jews appreciated the efforts of Christians to care for Jewish orphans “it was incumbent upon the Jews to care for their own people and bring them up in the Jewish faith.”

1916: General Joffre, the commander-in-chief of the French army, who had “raised to the rank of corps commander, two Jewish generals, Cohen and Hyman” and conferred upon General Cohen, who had been wounded 27 times since the start of the war, the order of the Legion of Honor was replaced today by General Robert Nivelle.

1917(18th of Kislev, 5678): In Pine Bluff, AR, eighty-two year old Gabe Meyer who had served on the City Council and the School Board passed away today.

1917(18th of Kislev, 5678): Fifty-five year old Justine Dreyfus Levy passed away today after which he was buried in the Jewish Cemetery at Natchitoches, LA.

1917: In Austria, Rudolf and Helena Brasse gave birth to Wihlelm Brasse, the unwilling creator of the part of the photographic record of the Holocaust.(As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1917: At Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Joseph Silverman, assisted by Rabbi Simon Shlager and Dr. H.G. Enelow officiated at the funeral of “Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, “the founder of the public school lecture courses” in New York City” during which Daniel P. Hayes delivered the eulogy followed by an internment in Bayside Cemetery.

1917: Contrary to some reports the Ottomans had not abandoned their positions outside of Jerusalem as could be seen when the British suffered 300 casualties and were forced to withdraw from the Wadi Zeit because the Turks held the high ground.

1917: “The members of the forty-six teams of men and women who are working to obtain five million dollars before the end of next week for Jewish war relief in Europe and welfare work in the army and navy met at tea” this “afternoon in the Berkeley Arcade” on West 44th Street to review the two days of effort which has raised $1,120,418.50.

1918: Felix Warbrug, the chairman of the Campaign Committee of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Fund for Jewish War Sufferers announced tonight that the “official information gathered in Europe by the Food Administration is to be turned over to the Jewish War Relief for use in apportioning the fund of five million dollars now being” raised in New York City.

1919: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the French artist who painted “Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers” (most commonly referred to as Pink and Blue) passed away.  The painting portrayed the 2 daughters of the banker Louis Raphael Cahen d'Anvers, the blonde, Elisabeth, born in December 1874, and the younger, Alice, in February 1876, when they were respectively six and five years old. The artist produced many portraits for the families of the Parisian Jewish community at the time. Renoir was commissioned to paint many portraits for this family, which he had met through the collector Charles Ephrussi, proprietor of the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts."

1920: Sir Mathew Nathan, the second son of Jonah and Miriam Nathan began serving as the 13thGovernor of Queensland (Australia)

1920: Premiere of “Anna Boleyn” German historical film directed by Ernst Lubitsch starring Henny Porten who would refuse to divorce her Jewish husband when the Nazis came to power, as Anne Boleyn

1921(2nd of Kislev, 5682): Parashat Toldot

1921: Samuel Greenbaum, a Justice of the Supreme Court was among the speakers at a banquet tonight marking a continuation of the Temple Israel’s celebration of its golden jubilee held at the Hotel Astor where an additional $400,000 was raised for the congregation’s building fund.

1922: Birthdate of Henry Anatole Grunwald, an Austrian-born Jewish-American journalist and diplomat perhaps best known for his position as managing editor of TIME magazine and editor in chief of Time, Inc.

1922: Birthdate of Len Lesser, a veteran character actor best known for his recurring role in the 1990s as Uncle Leo on the hit NBC-TV comedy "Seinfeld."

1922: Ethel Jacobs is scheduled to present a paper on Upstream by Ludwig Lewinsohn followed by Aileen Paradise’s piano solo at the meeting of the Young Peoples Congregation of Temple Mizpah’s Studay circle this afternoon.

1922:Silent movie, Hungry Hearts produced by the Goldwyn Company and based on a book of the same name written by Anzia Yezierska opened in Los Angeles. In her short stories and novels, author Anzia Yezierska focused on the challenges faced by young Jewish women trying to navigate between their immigrant families and their desire to become part of America. After a long period of struggling to attain a public voice, Yezierska published Hungry Hearts, a book of short stories, in 1920. Once the book found public attention, it attracted interest from Hollywood. The Goldwyn Company paid $10,000 for the film rights and brought Yezierska to Los Angeles as a $200 per week screen writer. This was the first financial security Yezierska had ever experienced. Despite the excitement of finally being rewarded for her work as a writer, Yezierska was overwhelmed by her portrayal in the popular press as a “sweatshop Cinderella.” She also felt unable to draw upon authentic immigrant experience while ensconced in Hollywood luxury. She returned to New York after a few months. The film Hungry Hearts is notable for its attempts to portray the struggle of immigrant life and for its street scenes that were actually filmed on the Lower East Side. Still many reviewers and Yezierska, herself, objected to the sentimentality of the final script and to a tacked-on happy ending (described by the New York Times as “incredible and mushy”). In Hungry Hearts and her later stories and novels (e.g.Breadgivers, 1925), Yezierska was the first author to present the struggles of immigrant women to a broader American audience. Persea Books began publishing reprints of Yezierska's work in 1975.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/03/1922/anzia-yezierska

 

 

1923: In Pittsburgh, PA, Rabbi Wolf Leiter and his wife gave birth to photographer Saul Leiter.

http://www.gallery51.com/index.php?navigatieid=9&fotograafid=15

 

1923(25th of Kislev, 5684): Chanukah

1923(25th of Kislev, 5684): Seventy-five year old French historian and academic Gustave Blochwho was a professor of Roman history at the Faculté des lettres in Paris” and the father of historian Marc Bloch passed away today.

1923: Today President Calvin Coolidge “remitted the sentence of Controller Charles L. Craig who had been sentenced to “imprisonment for sixty days in jail for contempt of court by Judge Julius M. Mayer” whose ruling was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

1924: Today, “the United States and Great Britain entered into a convention with respect to Palestine” that “provided that no modification should be made in the League of Nation Mandate unless such modification had been assented to by the United State” and that “the mandate recited ‘the solemn pledge…to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

1925: George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F is premiered at Carnegie Hall.

1926(27th of Kislev, 5687): Third Day of Chanukah

1926(27th of Kislev, 5687): Forty-five year old “German writer and theatre critic Siegfried Jacobsohn passed away today.

1927: Birthdate of “Canadian novelist, humorist and lawyer” whose works include The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick and who is the father of actress of Sarah Torgov.

1927: Flyweight Pinky Silverberg lost a ten round unanimous decision in a non-title bout at the State Armory, in Bridgeport, CT shortly after which the NBA stripped of his Flyweight Championship making it “the only time that in boxing history that a champion was short of a legitimately won championship do to a poor performance in a non-title bout.”

1928: In Atlantic City, it was Jew versus Jew as featherweight Harry Blitman scored a victory over Wilbur Cohen’

1928: It was reported today that the Schuberts are the producers for “Make Boom Boom” a musical comedy that will begin its pre-Broadway tryouts in Wilmington, Delaware.

1929: In London, Moe Mizler fought his 35th bout which he won by KO’ing his opponent.

1930: Rodgers and Hart's musical "Evergreen" premiered in London.

1932(4thof Kislev, 5693): Parashat Tolodot

1932: In Lwow, Poland, following a series of anti-Semitic outbreaks, Colleges in the city were reopened today, “but Jewish students did not attend classes.”

1932: Thirty four students were arrested in Lwow today following “the smashing window panes in several newspaper offices and Jewish shops.”

1934: In what is said to be the first clinical conference in medical history devoted to chronic diseases opened this morning at the Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases, Gun Hill Road, the Bronx, and will continue through the week. The conference is the chief scientific feature of the observance of the hospital's fiftieth anniversary.  The hospital was named in honor of the great British born Jewish philanthropist and the original funding was largely raised by the Jewish community.

1935: “Two more ‘German-blooded’ men – to use the new Nazi term for ‘Aryan’” – were sentenced to prison today “for intimate relations with Jewish women.”

1936: “Thomas Mann, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929…was deprived of his citizenship tonight by Dr. Wilhelm Frick, Minister of Interior because “he has repeatedly cooperated in demonstrations of international, generally Jewish-influence, societies whose attitude of enmity to Germany is well known…”

1936: In Atlanta, GA,  social worker Arlene (Fox) Uhry and “furniture designer and artist” Ralph K. Uhry gave birth to Brown University alum Alfred Fox Uhry, who “received an Academy Award, two Tony Awards and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for dramatic writing for Driving Miss Daisy.”

1937: Birthdate of British attorney and businessman Stephen Rubin. The founder of Pentland, he struck it rich with Reebok and Adidas.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a large police unit accompanied by a detachment of Transjordanian Frontier Force, scoured Galilee in pursuit of Arab terrorists that had murdered two Arab policemen and apparently sought to escape to Syria. In London, Major C.S. Jarvis, the former British governor of Sinai, said that after he had seen what the Jewish settlers had done in various arid areas of Palestine, he would strongly recommend a large Jewish settlement of the entire Negev, which ought to be included in the Jewish state in any partition negotiations.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the total official population of Palestine was given at the end of September 1937 as 811,347 Moslems, 389,504 Jews, 108,433 Christians and 11,588 others.

1938: The German government decrees that all Jewish industries, shops, and businesses must be forcibly "Aryanized."

1938: At the Ambassador Theatre, the curtain came down on “You Can't Take It with You” a comedic play in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart that won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama after 838 performances.

1939: In Brooklyn, “Jack and Sylvia Israel” gave birth to Leonore Carol Israel who gained fame as forger Lee Israel.

1939: Among the patents issued this week was one issued to Rudoph Feige of Tel Aviv for “a tropical hat with a crown separated from the brim to provide and air circulating slot around the hat…”

1940: Heads of educational institutions and other prominent persons were among the 3,000 attending a funeral service for Rabbi Bernard (Dov) Revel, one of the founders of Yeshiva College which became Yeshiva University.

1940:  Debut of Bugs Bunny with the voice supplied by Mel Blanc. Bugs Bunny was not Jewish but Mel was.

1941: Amidst the misery of the Lodz Ghetto, a newly arrived Viennese Pianist, Leopold Birkenfeld held a concert for his fellow Jews. He played Shubert, Liszt and Beethoven brilliantly.

1942(24th of Kislev, 5703): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah candle.

1942(24th of Kislev, 5703): The Nazis shot three young girls who had escaped from Poznan labor camp

1942(24th of Kislev, 5703): One thousand Jews from Plonsk, Poland, are killed at Auschwitz.

1942(24th of Kislev, 5703): Salomon Malkes, an official of the Lódz Ghetto, commits suicide after becoming despondent over the deportation of his mother.

1942: Herbert Henry Lehman completed his service as the 45th Governor of New York.

1942: An unknown photographer took a picture of Jews in the Drancy assembly and detention camp which was the departure point for sending French Jews to Auschwitz.  The picture is part of the Yad Vashem Photo Archives.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/07.asp

1942: Birthdate of David K. Shipler “an American author who won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 1987 for Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land

1943: At a meeting with the German ambassador Francisco Franco said, “’Thank God a clear appreciation of dangers caused by Jews led our catholic Kings to insure ‘we have for centuries been relieved of that nauseating burden.’” Oddly enough, Franco actually protected that ‘nauseating burden’ from the clutches of the Final Solution.

1943: Popular American singer Dinah Shore (Frances Rose Shore) the graduate of Vanderbilt University where she was a member of AEPhi, the Jewish sorority, married her first husband today.

1944:Hungarian death march of Jews ends

1944: Beginning of the Greek Civil War in which pro-Soviet Communist forces attempt to destroy the pro-Western government.

1945:Abdul Azzam Bey, Arab League secretary general, announces that member states will boycott all Jewish-produced goods from Palestine beginning January 1, 1946.

1946: Today “The Joint Committee of Jewish Organizations, whose membership includes representatives of nine groups, praised the adoption of clauses by the Council of Foreign Ministers insuring restoration of rights and restitution of property to Jews in Hungary and Rumania in the proposed peace treaties.”

1947(20th of Kislev, 5708): While Jewish workers were evacuating undamaged goods from the Centre a group of Arabs attacked them, killing Yitzhak Penzo,

1947: Broadway Premiere of “A Streetcar Named Desire” which would be revived in London in 1974 with Claire Bloom playing “Blanche DuBois” – a portrayal that led the play’s author to state “I declare myself absolutely wild about Claire Bloom.”

1947: Arab violence continues with an attack on a synagogue in the Old City. Following threats by Arab gangs to burn their dwellings, “Eight Jews living in a house in the Musrara Quarter outside the Damascus Gate were forced to leave their homes”

1947: The Motion Picture Association of America issued The Waldorf Statement, a response to the contempt of Congress charges against the so-called "Hollywood Ten" drafters of which included Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn, Nicholas M. Schenck, Barney Balaban, Samuel Goldwyn, Albert Warner, William Goetz, Dore Schary and Mendel Silbergberg.

1948: Mission of the UN Mediator on the Palestine Disaster Relief Project meets with volunteer agencies. Dr. Pierre Descooeudres, chief of mission, reports that refugees in camps do not have good living conditions. More supplies are needed as well as a better system of transporting them. Refugees tend to feel frustrated and isolated, although the goal of the camps is to build a sense of social consciousness.

1949(12th of Kislev, 5710): Parashat Vayetzei

1949(12th of Kislev, 5710): “Yiddish actor, director and producer” Misha Fishzon, who was associated with “Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre” passed away today in New York

 

1950: Bessarabian born Opera singer Isa Kremer who included Yiddish songs in her repertoire appeared for the last time at Carnegie Hall today before retiring to Argentina to be with her husband, Buenos Aires psychiatrist Dr. Gregorio Bermann.

1951(4th of Kislev, 5712): Sixty-four year old Kovno born and JTS trained rabbi, C. David Matt, “the former president of the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis” and “former associate editor of The American Jewish World” who was the husband of Lena Matt and the father of J. Leonard, Joseph, Hershel, Zelda and Beulah Matt passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/matt-c-david

 

1952: At Rutgers University, “the Special Faculty Committee issued a reported stating that there should be no charges” brought against Moses Finley who had invoked the Fifth Amendment when called to testify before the House Un-American Activity Committee (HUAC) “and that the university should take no further action.”

1952(15th of Kislev, 5713): Rudolph Slansky, former secretary-general of the Czech Communist Party, Rudolf Margolius and 9 of their co-defendants were hanged after a show trial aimed at purging alleged Zionist conspirators.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported the Israeli denial that its troops crossed the armistice lines in the vicinity of Jerusalem and tried to lay mines in Jordanian-occupied territory. The Israeli spokesman complained, however, that Jordan failed to control the scores of infiltrators who crossed the armistice lines every night in order to rob and murder. Only a week earlier, infiltrators killed two Israeli watchmen in the Jerusalem 'corridor' and escaped over the lines to Jordan. At the UN Mexico urged Arab states to consider seriously the recent Israeli peace offer. The Mexican delegate, Dr. Luis Quintamilla, pointedly asked why the Arabs always 'see evil' and automatically reject any Israeli proposal in which there might be at least some good for all concerned.

1953(26th of Kislev, 5713) Second Day of Chanukah

1953(26th of Kislev, 5713): Seventy-two year old Charleston native and U. of West Virginia graduate and the Naval Academy Commander Hugo Frankenberger who was a classmate of Admiral Chester Nimitz and a veteran of both World Wars passed away today.

1954: Birthdate of Bronx native and New York State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz

1956: As part of the end of the Suez Crisis England and France pull troops out of Egypt.  Israeli forces remain in the Sinai.

1956(29th of Kislev, 5717): Fifth day of Chanukah

1956(29th of Kislev, 5717): Sixty-five year old “painter, sculptor, designer and photographer” Alexander Rodchenko passed away today.

http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/rodchenko1.html

1956(29th of Kislev, 5717): Seventy-eight year old German Jewish mathematician Felix Bernstein who went to the United States during the Hitler period passed away today in Zurich.

1957: “The Naked Truth” a British comedy co-starring Peter Sellers with music by Stanley Black was released in the United Kingdom today by J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors.

1958: Rabbi Ya’akov Moshe Toledano was appointed Minister of Religions.

1958(21st of Kislev, 5719): Terrorist killed one and injured thirty-one others in an attack on Gonen, a kibbutz in northern Israel in the Upper Galilee.

1959: “I Married A Woman” an American comedy directed by Hal Katner with a script by Goodman Ace was shown for the first time in Sweden.

1960: Lerner and Loewe’s musical hit Camelot opens for the first of 873 performances at the Majestic Theatre in New York City

1961(25th of Kislev, 5722): Chanukah for the first time during the Presidency of JFK.

1961: The Beetles meet their future agent Brian Epstein.

1962: “25,000 Mourners At Kotler’s Rites” published today described the funeral for Rabbi Aaron Kotler.

1964: Three days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning for ninety-four year old pediatrician Sidney Valentine Haas, the Columbia trained doctor who made great strides in the treatment of celiac disease.

1966(20th of Kislev, 5727): Parashat Vayeshev

1966(20th of Kislev, 5727): Eighty-six year old Morton David Cahn, the son of Joseph and Miriam Cahn and the husband of Julia Elizabeth Cahn passed away today in his native Chicago.

1967: Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christian Barnard, performed the first human heart transplant. Louis Washkansky lived 18 days with the new heart.  Washkansky was a Jew who had been born in Lithuania. 

1968: Hunter Hawker Jets of the Royal Jordanian Air Force attack IAF craft as they bomb PLO terror camps in Jordan.

1970: The world of detectives took on Jewish look when The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, written by I.A.L. Diamond and directed and produced by Billy Wilder appeared in theatres in the United Kingdom for the first time.

1972(27thof Kislev, 5733): Third Day of Chanukah

1972: Today Miss Florence Phillis Beechler married Dr. Louis Jerome Steinfelder, the son of Dr. Jacob Steinfelder who had served “as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Reserve Corps and was the “inspiration for the book Family Doctor.”

1974(19thof Kislev, 5735): Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism

1974(19thof Kislev, 5735): Netherlands native Cecile J. Seiberling, the daughter of Jacobus and Alice Berlage and the wife of Maurice Wertheim passed away today.

1974: As to the Soviet crackdown on all dissidents including refusniks, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was deported from the U.S.S.R. and stripped of his citizenship.

1974: Birthdate of “French journalist and television personality” Marie Drucker the daughter of television executive Jean Drucker and the niece of television journalist Michel Drucker.

1975(29thof Kislev, 5736): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1975(29thof Kislev, 5736): Ninety-two year old Solon De Leon, the son of labor leader Daniel De Leon, whose “most lasting contribution was The American Labor Who's Who which is a registry or directory of people involved in the American Labor Movement” passed away today in Ellenville, NY.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=De%20Leon%2C%20Solon%2C%201883-

1976: After premiering in New York in November, “Rocky” the boxing movie produced by Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff was released in the United States today.

1977: Six people were injured when terrorists set off a bomb in a Jerusalem market.

1977: President Tito of Yugoslavia began a two day tour of Romania during which he said "Israel exists for many years as a genuine fact, is recognized by the UN and is a member of it; any other view would be unrealistic. Thus, all the Arab states must recognize Israel as a state."

1979(13thof Kislev, 5740): Seventy-three year old of Minnesota trained physician and WW II veteran Stewart Theodore Ginsberg, the St. Paul born son of Jacob and Mollie (Balkind) Ginsberg who was  the “Clinical professor of psychiatry at Emory University and husband of Ada Leach Leach with whom he raised three children – Barbara, Janet and Mark – passed away today.

1981:Birthdate of Plainfield, NJ native and Brown University graduate Stephen Levin, a distant relative of Michigan political leaders Carl and Sander Levin who began serving as a New York City Councilman in 2010.

1983(9th of Kislev, 5745):Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin one of the leading Soviet mathematicians, working in the fields of topology, geometry and ergodic theory passed away.

1984(9thof Kislev, 5745): Sixty-five year old Soviet mathematician Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin passed away today

1985: Michael Dekel and Weizman Shiry began serving as Deputy Ministers of Defense.

1985: Jack Anderson described the work of Zwi Kanar, a mime who survived 6 concentration camps.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/03/arts/mime-zwi-kanar.html?pagewanted=print

1985(20th of Kislev, 5746): Eighty-four year old Rabbi Phillip S. Bernstein who worked to settle displaced Jews after WW II, passed away today.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-12-05/news/8503240224_1_rabbi-emeritus-jewish-institute-golda-meir

1988: Five Soviet hijackers seized a bus full of schoolchildren, exchanged their hostages for a cargo plane and more than $3 million in ransom, then flew here today and surrendered to Israeli authorities.

1989: Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama, From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East 1914-1922 by David Fromkin and The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick are among the thirteen books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year

1990(16th of Kislev, 5751): One Israeli was killed and five were wounded today in a stabbing attack aboard a bus in Israel, officials said. The police said three West Bank Palestinians climbed aboard the bus just outside Tel Aviv this morning, rode a few stops sitting in the back, then got up screaming "Allah Akhbar," or God is great, as they drew knives and stabbed four Jewish passengers.

1990: Birthdate of Canadian professional tennis player Sharon Fichman.

1992: The SEC filed a complaint against Salomon Brothers trader Paul Mozer “for filling false bids.”

1993: “A Dangerous Woman” a film version of the novel of the same name with a screenplay by Naomi Foner, co-starring Debra Winger and Barbara Hershey and featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal was released in the United States today.

1994(30thof Kislev, 5755): Rosh Chodesh Tevet and Shabbat Chanukah – three Torah scrolls

1994(30thof Kislev, 5755): Seventy-three year old German born Anglo-Jewish historian Sir Geoffrey Elton who specialized in the Tudors passed away today.

http://www.ucc.ie/chronicon/elton.htm

1995(10th of Kislev, 5756): Matityahu Shmuelevitz, a close aide to the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, passed away today at the age of 75.  Yehiel Kadishai, a longtime Begin spokesman, said that doctors at Tel Aviv's Tel Hashomer Hospital, where Mr. Shmuelevitz was taken after he collapsed on Saturday, reported that the cause of death was a blood clot. From 1980 to 1983, Mr. Shmuelevitz served as chief of the Prime Minister's office under Mr. Begin. The Polish-born Mr. Shmuelevitz immigrated to Palestine, then ruled by Britain, in 1938 and joined the Lehi, a right-wing Jewish underground group that was also known as the Stern gang. He was imprisoned by the British in 1940, escaped in 1943 and was wounded and recaptured in 1944. He was sentenced to death for firing at a British officer and carrying illegal arms. His sentence was commuted to life, but he escaped from jail in February 1948. He was a businessman for many years afterward.

1995:Zola: A Life by Frederick Brown, Sabbath’s Theatre by Philip RothOvercoming Law by Richard A. Posner are among the twelve books chosen by the New York TimesBook Review to the best books published in the country during the preceding year.

1995(10thof Kislev, 5756): Seventy-year old Max Posin, the owner of Posin’s Delicatessen, a Washington, DC landmark whose bagels, bialys and fresh bake onion rolls were an integral part of the author of this blog’s childhood passed away today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1995/12/05/max-posin-dies/44e332e0-bf0d-4725-8266-bde007ca684f/

http://jewishfoodexperience.com/posins-legen-dairy-dc/

 1997(4th of Kislev, 5758): Eighty-eight year old CCNY all-star basketball player Louis “Lou” Spindell who went onto play professionally in the American Basketball League in the 1930’s passed away today.

1997(4thof Kislev, 5758): Eighty-eight year old Russian-born American “social activist” Abraham Bluestein, who finally married his longtime “companion” Selma Cohen, passed away today. (As reported by Robert McG. Thomas, Jr.)

1997:Michael Abraham Levy, Baron Levy made his maiden speech in the House of Lords.

1998: U.S. premiere of “Shakespeare in Love” co-produced by Harvey Weinstein and Edward Zwick and co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow.

1999(24th of Kislev, 5760): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1999: “The End of the Affair” a cinematic version of the novel by the same name featuring Jason Isaacs with music by Michael Nyman was released today in the United States.

1999(24th of Kislev, 5760): Actress and comedian Madeline Kahn passed away.

http://jwa.org/discover/infocus/comedy/kahn.html

1999(24thof Kislev, 5760): Sixty seven “Lebanese Brazilian Jewish banker” Edmond J. Safra passed away in Monaco.

http://www.edmondjsafra.org/

2000: The New York Times list of the Best Books of 2000 contains the following works about Jewish related subjects or by Jewish authors including The Human Stain by Phillip Roth and One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate by Tom Segev.

2001(18thof Kislev, 5762): Ninety year old Gerhart Moritz Riegner theWorld Jewish Congress official who was the first to warn an incredulous world that Nazi Germany had formally decided at the highest levels to annihilate Europe's Jews” passed away in Geneva today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/obituaries/05RIEG.html

2001: After having received information about an impending government raid on the Holy Land Foundation, Judith Miller telephone the organization for a comment following which the New York Times published an article about it in the late edition.

2001: In the wake of bombings that killed 26 Israelis, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared war on terror.

2002(28thof Kislev, 5763): Fourth Day of Chanukah

2002: Following predictions by Israeli officials of a new tide of violence “coinciding with the end of Ramadan” today Israeli troops killed a terrorist who was wearing an Israeli Army uniform” and “carrying
an automatic rifle and grenades.”

2002: Graveside services are scheduled to be held day at Beth Israel Cemetery in Woodbridge, NJ for Robert M. Wolfe, the husband of Rita Winokur Wolf.

2003: A party was held in honor of Abe Pollin's 80th birthday at the Verizon Center. A slideshow was presented about the history of Abe's career as owner of the Bullets/Wizards. Tony Bennett also performed there as the guest entertainer.

2004: “The Merchant of Venice” a cinematic version of the famous play directed by Michael Radford was released today in the United Kingdom.

2004(20th of Kislev, 5765): Chaim Madar the chief rabbi of Tunisia's Jewish community, passed away today in Jerusalem.  His funeral services were held at the Beit Mordekhai Synagogue in La Goulette, Tunis, and the El Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba where he lived for most of his life. Among those extending their condolences was Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. According to some, the Jewish community dates back to the time of the destruction of the First Temple.

2005: Sharon Fichman was the runner-up in today’s tennis tournament at Rama HaSharon, “home to the Israel Tennis Center.

2005: Today, Israel reiterated threats made last week to block Palestinians from access to the Karni and Erez crossings if the flow of terrorists into Gaza continues.

2006: (12 Kislev): Yahrzeit for Rabbi Solomon Shechter. Schechter’s life is too richly textured to do more than just hit the highlights in this short blurb.  He was born in 1847 and died at the age of 68 in 1915 in New York City.  He gained fame in 1896 because of his work with the opening of the Genizah attached to the ancient Egyptian Ben Ezra Synagogue. In 1902 he moved to the US to head the new Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, which became the home of Conservative Judaism. He turned the struggle Rabbinic school into a first rate academic institution.  In 1913, he founded the United Synagogue of America, the umbrella organization of the Conservative Movement. By the time he died in New York in 1915, he had changed the face of American Judaism in attempting to find a middle road between Reform and Orthodox while raising the educational and cultural level for all Jews regardless of their level of observance or involvement.

2006: The Washington Post’s selections for best non-fiction in 2006 include:Sweet and Low: A Family Story, by Rich Cohen, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977, by Gershom Gorenberg, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan, Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide, by Jeffrey Goldberg,The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn; Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After the Holocaust, by Jan T. Gross, My Father Is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud, by Janna Malamud Smith.

2006: The Israel Cancer Research Funds’ “Celebration of Life-Tower of Hope Ball” is held at the Pierre Hotel.

2007: An exhibition styled “The Art of Rabbi Shnoi Labowitz” presented by The Jewish Museum of Florida comes to an end.

2007: “The Farnsworth Invention” a play by Aaron Sorkin about how David Sarnoff stole the original invention that made possible the transmission of television signals opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre with Hank Azaria in the role of Sarnoff.

2007:  Sixty one years after he was buried at a cemetery in southeast Washington, the exhumed remains of Stephen Theodore Norman, the only grandchild of Theodor Herzl will be flown to Israel following services at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C.

2008: Nicholas F. Tabman completed his service as the United States Ambassador to Romania.

2008:At Princeton. N.J., The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairspresents "Israel and Palestine at a Crossroad" - A panel discussion with Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University; former US ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer of Princeton University; and Itamar Rabinovitch, former Israeli ambassador to the US.

2008: In New York, The American Sephardi Federation presents a showing of Jews of Lebanon (Le Petite Histoire des Juifs du Liban) a film that recounts the demise of the Lebanese Jewish community over the last four decades when it went from a community of 8,000 in the 1960’s to a mere 60 at the start of the of the 21st century with most of its members now in “exile to many countries.”

2008:Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, a leading Orthodox thinker and an early champion of women's rights, who passed away on Monday at the age of 98 was buried in Jerusalem.

 

2009:Activist Greg Mortenson, author (with David Oliver Relin) of "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time," reads from and discusses his new book, "Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan," at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue.

 

2009: The Israel-America Chamber of Commerce presents “US & Israel: Confronting Challenges,” a daylong “symposium” that will identify current challenges in order to secure our economic future.”

 

2009: The Israel-America Award is presented to Kenneth J. Bialkin, Chairman, America-Israel Friendship League, for his continuous support of the State of Israel and his outstanding contribution to the economic growth between the US and Israel.

 

2009: Opening of the 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival.

 

2009: Alan Gross was taken into custody by Cuban authorities.  Although not formally charged, the Cubans reportedly are claiming that he is linked to espionage activities involving the Cuban Jewish community.

 

2010: As part of the 21st Washington Jewish Film Festival British filmmaker Rex Bloomstein is scheduled to present a program entitled “Humor, Identity and the Holocaust”

 

2010: At the 92nd Street Y Light the menorah and Shabbat candles, eat latkes and challah, and celebrate Hanukkah and Shabbat at the same time!

2010: “Is Greed Godly?” published today, David E.Y. Sarna examines the relationship between white-collar crime and Jewish law.

http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/is-greed-godly/

 

 

2010: As Alan Gross prepares to mark the first anniversary of captivity at the hand of Cuban authorities, the leaders of Cuba’s  two main Jewish groups both denied having worked with a jailed American contractor whose family says he was on the island to hand out communication equipment to Jewish organizations. 

2010: The Carmel fire was spreading late tonight from the direction of Haifa University towards the neighborhood of Denya in the city..

 

2010(26thof Kislev, 5771): Eighty-one year old “Elaine Kaufman, who became something of a symbol of New York as the salty den mother of Elaine’s, one of the city’s best-known restaurants and a second home for almost half a century to writers, actors, athletes and other celebrities” passed away today (As reported by Enid Nemy)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/nyregion/04kaufman.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

2010: A Princeton student referendum on whether to ask the university’s dining services to provide an alternative brand of hummus to Sabra was defeated. Some 1,014 students voted against the referendum and 699 students were in favor during the three days of voting last week, according to results announced today.

2010: After having served 43 months of six year sentence for “mail fraud, conspiracy to bribe public officials and tax evasion,” Jack Abramoff was released from prison today after which “he wrote the autobiographical book Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist which was published in November 2011.

 

2011: The first weekend of this year’s Hamshoushalayim is scheduled to come to an end.

 

2011: “Kaddish for a Friend” is one of four movies scheduled to be shown tonight at the 22nd Washington Jewish Film Festival.

 

2011: The JNF is scheduled to present “Modifying Afforestation Practices in Adaptation to Climate Change,” a program that demonstrates the techniques of JNF and Israel use to keep forests healthy in semi-arid regions, particularly when the regions encounter disasters such as last year’s Carmel fire.

 

2011: The traditional minyan at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA is to celebrate “Jewish Book Month Shabbat” with special honor to Living Jewish Literary Legends – Sir Martin Gilbert and Herman Wouk.

 

2011: Israel Police and the Knesset Guard assigned Meretz MK Zehava Gal-On a bodyguard today, following threats on her life.

 

2011: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on today that Iran is getting closer to developing a nuclear bomb, and that new and more crippling sanctions should be imposed on the Islamic Republic.

2012:The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to sponsor a speech by Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post columnist and Professor of Public Affairs and International Relations at George Mason University entitled “ The Voters Have Spoken: What Is Our Economic Policy Now?”

 

2012(19thof Kislev, 5773): Yud-Tet-Kislev sometimes referred to as the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism” celebrating the release Rabbi Schneur Zalman Liadi, the found of Chabad Chassidism from the prison of the Czar

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/335659/jewish/19-Kislev-The-New-Year-of-Chassidism.htm

 

2012(19thof Kislev): Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Dov Ber ben Avraham, the Maggid of Mezeritch who followed the Baal Shem Tov as the leader of the Chassidim.

 

2012: Bob Filner begins serving as the 35th Mayor of San Diego, CA.

 

2012: The Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins” “reunited for a special benefit performance.

 

2012: 2012: Australia’s largest natural gas and oil company, Woodside Petroleum, has taken a 30 percent stake in Israel’s Leviathan off-shore gas drilling operation, it was announced today. Located in the Mediterranean 130 km. west of Haifa, Leviathan is estimated to contain up to 17 trillion cubic feet of usable natural gas, making it one of the largest fields in the world.

 

2012: Israeli security forces continue to foil Arab road terror attempts, including an attempted axe-murderer and a briefcase bomb under a bridge.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/162797

 

 

2013(30th of Kislev, 5774): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

 

2013: “New Israeli ambassador to America Ron Dermer presented his credentials this afternoon to US President Barack Obama, officially taking over the role as the Jewish state’s top US envoy.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-envoy-ron-dermer-presents-credentials-to-obama/

 

2013: A letter was written today to Ontario MPP Peter Shuman admonishing him “for claiming mileage from his Niagara-on-the-Lake home to Toronto as an expense, something specifically cleared by the Legislative Finance Department.”

 

2013: Rabbi Yonah Grossman of the Chabad Jewish Center of North Dakota shows that he takes the appellation “lamplighter” literally at Grand Forks where he is scheduled to lead the community in the lighting of a Menorah in the Lincoln Drive Park Warming House.

 

2013: “Life of the Jews in Palestine: 1913,” documentary about First and Second Aliyah, is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: French forensic tests have concluded that former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did not die of poisoning, as had been suggested by an earlier report, a source who saw the conclusions of the report said today.

 

 

2013(30th of Kislev, 5774): Sixty-six year old actor and comedian Sefi Rivlin passed away today.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174778#.Up5uaJuA2po


2014: Dr. Brian Horowitz, the chairman of the Tulane University Jewish Studies Department is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Jabotinsky: The Final Years” tonight in New Orleans.

 

2014(11thof Kislev, 5775): Eighty-four year old psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden who was a partner of Ayn Rand’s in more ways than one passed away today.

 


2014: The Museum of the City of New York is scheduled to host Jeffrey Shandler speaking on “Coming of Age in Poland: Jewish Life Stories from the 1930’s.”

 

2014: “Palestinian teen stabbed two people and was shot by an off-duty security guard at a West Bank supermarket this afternoon in what Israeli police said was an apparent terror attack.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/two-stabbed-in-attack-at-west-bank-supermarket/

 

2014: “Knesset members voted overwhelmingly in favor of dissolving the current Knesset in a premliminary vote today.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-elections-called-for-march-17-2015/

 

2014: “Congress was poised to give its final approval this afternoon to a bill that supporters say will create a unique status for Israel and serve as a framework for increased partnership in a number of key sectors, particularly energy and defense

 

2014: The bris and baby naming ceremony for the son of Arik and Samarya Shalom is scheduled to take place at the Chabad Jewish Center in Little Rock under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment.

 

2015: Toronto Blue Jays President and CEO Mark Shapiro selected the sixth person to serve as the team’s general manager.

 

2015: Sixty-year old Monte Hanson a Jewish Montana man who had pleaded guilty to shoot a bartender and killing his dog because he was served a non-kosher drink (a beverage containing clam juice) was sentenced to 20 years in state prison today. (JTA)

 

2015: A trio consisting of “pianist Evgeny Kissin, violinist Itzhak Perlman, and cellist Mischa Maisky” is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan.

 

2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Chronicling a Dead City: The Fate of the Dubovo Shtetl in 1919” in which” Elissa Bemporad (Queens College, CUNY) examines the fate of the Ukrainian shtetl of Dubovo during the Russian Civil War in a micro study of one shtetl that sheds light on future conditions for Soviet Jewry, and the Holocaust in Ukraine.

 

2015: In New York, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is scheduled to host a lecture by Dr. Jehuda Reinharz on “Statesman Without a State: The Case of Chaim Weizmann.”

 

2015: In New Orleans, LA, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service, one of the most worthwhile agency of its kind in the United States, is scheduled to host “Latkes With a Twist” featuring the cooking of Chef Daniel Esses and the singing of Israeli Eleanor Tallie.

 

2016(3rd of Kislev, 5777): Shabbat Toldot;

2016(3rdof Kislev, 5777): Eighty-eight year old U.S. Federal Judge Leonard B. Sand passed away today in Sleepy Hollow, NY.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/nyregion/judge-leonard-sand-dead-yonkers-housing.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

 

2016: In Atlanta, GA, The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum is scheduled to celebrate its 20th anniversary with a gala dinner honoring Jarvin Levison “whose work with Elinor and Bill Breman was instrumental in the founding of the Breman Museum.”

 

2016: The 10th Annual Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to host a panel discussion on “The Power of Film at the JCC Manhattan followed by a screening of “The Writer.”

 

2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “an Educator Workshop on Elie Wiesel’s Night from the internationally-renowned Holocaust education curriculum, Echoes and Reflections.”

 

2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2006-2016 by Annie Leibovitz, Ali by Jonathan Eig, Sense of Occasion by Harold Prince, Bad Rabbi And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press by Eddy Portnoy and Jewish Comedy: A Serious History by Jeremy Dauber.

 

2017: In Coralville, IA, Dr. Robert Cargill is scheduled to lecture on “The Wisdom of Ben Sira:

Ethnical Reflections in Early Judaism” as part of the series examining “ancient books dropped from the Tanakh ‘in peer review.’”

2017: Fiona Murphy, the director of “Remember Baghdad” and Edwin Shuker a member “of Baghdad’s once flourishing Jewish community are scheduled to participate in “a Q and A at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley.

http://rememberbaghdad.com/

 

2017: The Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia is scheduled to meet at the Breman Museum,

2017: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present The Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe, “performed in a staged-reading version, adapted by and starring David Serero as Barabas and featuring Sephardi songs sung by the baritone opera star.”

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Frederic Raphael whose works included A Jew Among Romans: The Life and Legacy of FlaviusJosephus continues today.

2018(25thof Kislev, 5779): First Day of Chanukah

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/recipes-for-chanukah-orange-dreidel-biscuits/

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/recipes-for-chanukah-crispy-avocado-wedges/

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/recipes-for-chanukah-mini-cheese-arancini-balls/

2018: According to a “poll conducted by the Jewish People Policy Institute,” “73% of Israeli” Jews will be lighting their Chanukah menorahs.

2018: The Center Jewish History, the Jewish Studies Program of Cornell University and YIVO are scheduled to present a musical adaptation of I.L. Peretz’s “Monish” with “a score created by Sanford Margolis.

2018: In Chevy Chase, MD, Ohr Kodesh is scheduled to host the first session of “Well Red-Hebrew Poetry and Wine” where attendees “will discuss poems by Agi Mis'hol and Yehuda Amichai,”

2019: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a “Dine and Discuss led by the Chaplains” who will lead a discussion on “Tikkun Olam.”

2019: In Metairie, LA, the Chabad Jewish Center is scheduled to offer the class “Worrier to Warrior: Jewish Secrets to Feeling Good However You Feel.”

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Marriage Story” directed by Noah Baumbach.

2020: The Illinois Holocaust Museum in partnership with Pritzker Military Museum and Library is scheduled to host a virtual lunch and learn on “Pearl Harbor – The Surprise Military Strike That Led The US To War.”

2020: Tradition Kitchens and The Breman Museum are scheduled to present Carol Nemo as she teaches us how to make her delicious Toffee Matzah Crunch (Yum!) -- a winter holiday treat inspired by tradition!

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host the “Minyan with Cantorial Soloist Abbie Strauss.

2020: Co-founder Evan Bloom is scheduled to show how to make kimchi latkes and shares ideas for Hanukkah-oriented toppings in a video chat with S.F. Chronicle’s Janelle Bitker

2020: Live on Zoom, the Ackman and Ziff Geology Insitute and Yad Vashem are scheduled to host “Family History Today: What’s New on Yad Vashem’s Shoah Names Database.”

2020: The New England Conservatory is scheduled to present an online concert, “Forbidden Songs: Jewish Voices Uncensored.”

2020: The first virtual event in the Library of Congress Behind the Book series is scheduled to begin with a focus on Great American Editors featuring legendary editor Robert Gottlieb in conversation with one of his best-known writers, Robert A. Caro, author of the critically acclaimed biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson.

2020: Via Zoom Tiffany Harris, the Chief Program officer of the Moishe House is scheduled to present “The Colors of Jews: Being a Minority in a Minority.”

2020: NFTY is scheduled to present “NFTY East Area Open Space Youth Professionals.”

2020: The Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to begin today online.

2020: It would appear today that Israel is teetering on the brink of another political crisis following yesterday’s approval by the Knesset of “a bill to dissolve itself” which could lead to the fourth parliamentary election in less than two years.

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 4, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 4

771: King Carloman dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne King of the entire Frankish Kingdom.  Following the death of their father, King Pepin the Short, the two brothers had each ruled a portion of the realm.  The sharing was not a peaceful process.  For once the consolidation of political power in the hands of one monarch worked to the advantage of the Jewish people since Charlemagne was favorably disposed to his Jewish subjects even to the point of willingly defying the edicts of powerful prelates.

1075: Anno II, the Archbishop of Cologne passed away, an event reported to have been lamented by the Jews who lived in a Jewish Quarter first mentioned during his episcopate.

1110: The Syrian harbor city of Saida (Sidon) surrendered to Crusaders.  The Crusader success would prove to be only temporary. Sidon was one of the original Phoenician trading cities and it is the same Sidon from which Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel in the summer of 2006. 

1197: During the Third Crusade, the wife and daughters of Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah ben Kalonymous of Worms were murdered and his was mortally wounded.  Born in 1165 in Germany, Rabbi Eleazar was “a Kabbalist, Halachic scholar and religious poet. In Sefer ha Hokhmah (The Book of Wisdom) he described the loneliness he felt after the death of his family and his teacher Judah he-Hasid.  He passed away in 1230, leaving behind a body of writings that has influenced Kabbalists down to our own times.   

1259: Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agreed to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels. There was nothing positive in this for the Jews in this.  Louis IX attacked the financial well-being of his Jewish subjects, going so far as to expel them as a way of financing the Seventh Crusade. He also burnt 12,000 Jewish books including copies of the Talmud.  Henry also attacked the financial well-being of his Jewish subjects, milking them for all they were worth.  When the Jews sought to leave his kingdom, he stopped them as a way of protecting a valued source of tax revenue.

1334: John XXII, the second of the Avignon Popes passed away.  Sangisa, the sister of John XXII, urged her brother to ban the Jews from Rome.  At first he ignored her.  But finally, in 1321, He gave in and issued an order of expulsion. The Jews responded with fasting and “fervent prayers.  At a more practical level, they turned to King of Robert of Naples for support and sent a delegation to Avignon with 20,000 ducats for the Pope.  This combination of divine and temporal intervention worked since the Jews were allowed to remain in Rome.

1489: The Spanish army captured Baza from the Moors. The Battle of Baza was part of the lengthy conflict between the Catholics and the Moors.  Slowly but surely, they were driving the Moslems of Spain back across the Mediterranean to North Africa from whence they had come over seven hundred years before.    Within 3 years, the Moors would be driven from the Iberian Peninsula and Spain would be united as a Catholic Kingdom.  This would lead to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

1539(13thof Kislev, 5300): On December 4, the Ottoman Sultan known as Suleiman the Magnificent occupied Baghdad which meant an improvement for the condition of the Jews who had suffered during the Mongol period. During his reign Suleiman welcomed the Jews fleeing from the effects of expulsion from Spain and Portugal and encouraged them to settle in Palestine.  His rebuilding program in Jerusalem showed a sympathy and respect for Jewish history and culture.  His willingness to employ a Jew as his personal physician   and to use Don Joseph Nasi and Gracia Mendes Nasi as advisors demonstrated the extent to which Jews had found a haven and home in the lands of Suleiman, who for the Jews, was truly magnificent.

1629(29th of Kislev, 5390): Madeira island native Jacob Israel Belmont, who along with “Jacob Tirado and Solomon Palache” was “one of the founders of the Portuguese-Jewish Community of Amsterdam and husband of “Simḥah (Gimar) Vaz” passed away today,

1642: Cardinal Richelieu, the “power behind the throne” during the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV passed away.  The decrees issued in their name were probably the product of this churchman turned “chancellor” including Louis XIII reaffirmation issued in April, 1615 of the ban on Jews living in France and Louis XIV’s declaration granting the Jews of Metz the right to conduct business after the French took the city in 1632.

1655: Today, “following the arrival in London of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel from Amsterdam and his petition to the Council of State on behalf of the ‘Hebrew Nation,’ a conference was begun at Whitehall to discuss the readmission of Jews to England after a supposed absence of 365 years.”

1655: Oliver Cromwell convened a gathering of English notables at Whitehall to decide if the Jews should be readmitted to England.  Cromwell was a strong proponent of readmission as were most of Cromwell’s military and government leaders. Members of the Millenarian and Sabbatarian sects also favored readmission.  Opposition came from the merchants and the mainline Christian clergy. When realized that he would be unable to gain the complete support for his plan to readmit the Jews to England so he dissolved the Council rather than suffer defeat.  The conferees did agree that that there was no legal reason not to re-admit the Jews since they had been expelled by royal decree and not by an act of Parliament. In the meantime, Cromwell accomplished his goals through a round-about manner and by 1657 there were enough Jews in London who felt confident in being able to practice their faith in public that they purchased a private home to be used as a synagogue.

1655: Middelburg, Netherlands forbade the building of a synagogue.

1674: French Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette erected a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan, in present-day Illinois. His log cabin became the first building of a settlement that afterward grew to become the city of Chicago.  Chicago is of course, the home of one this country’s largest and most vibrant Jewish communities as well as some of the finest Jewish families around including that of my aunt and uncle, Dr. Jacob and Betty Levin and that renowned photographer and alum of the College of Jewish Studies, Harvey Luber and his wife.Just think, if it had not been for Marquette, there would not have been a home for Chagall’s Windows (the Art Institute) Sarah Lee Bakery or a Crate & Barrel (the latter two were founded by Jews in Chicago).

1679: Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher, passed away. Born in 1588, “Thomas Hobbes was foremost among the seventeenth century political philosophers who led the Western world across the fault line separating classical from modern political philosophy. In doing so, he, like his other colleagues, had to confront not only classical political philosophy but the Bible. From the first of his writings to the last he consistently confronted Scripture. Reading Hobbes reveals both the ambiguity and the ambivalence of his confrontation with the Bible. Hobbes wished to assault orthodox or conventional Christian belief but at the same time is drawn to the Hebrew Scriptures, not only because it is necessary for him to confront it for the sake of his argument or because of the Bible's own elemental and compelling power. His struggle foreshadows and is even paradigmatic of that of modern man. The most neglected aspect of Hobbes's attempt to solve the theological-political problem is his reliance on divine punishment of the iniquitous sovereign.”  He uses the murder of Uriah by King David to discuss this part of his political philosophy. In his writings, Hobbes elaborates a conception of the Messiah in his political treatises that is unusual because it seems to combine Jewish and Christian elements. He asserts that Jesus is the Messiah in the sense of being the earthly king of the Jews as well as the Son of God and king of heaven. To clarify Hobbes's position and to highlight its strangeness, it is compared with the views of Moses Maimonides and Blaise Pascal. Hobbes emerges from this comparison as a spokesman for a kind of "Jewish Christianity," whose purpose is not to return to the early Jewish sects that embraced Jesus as a new Moses but to humanize the Messiah and to redefine Christianity for a new age of secular happiness. Hobbes thereby inaugurates a new kind of biblical criticism which the Deists of the enlightenment era developed and which continues today. This incomplete entry about Hobbes reinforces the many different ways in which Jewish Culture as opposed to Jewish people influenced the development of Western Civilization.

1748: Birthdate of German native Judith Haimann, the wife of Moyses Einstein and the mother of Basilika, Elias, Vernoika, Leopold and Simon Einstein.

1750: Birthdate of Henri Grégoire who as Abbé Grégoire who was “considered a friend of the Jews” because during the French Revolution “he argued that in this anti-Semitic society the supposed degeneracy of Jews was not inherent but rather a result of their circumstances.”

1755(30th of Kislev, 5516): Rosh Chodesh Kislev; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1762: Catherine II of Russia permitted foreigners to settle and travel in Russia "Kromye Zhydov." However Jews were still forbidden to settle there. Catherine II may have been the Great to some Russian nobles but she certainly was certainly.

1772(OS): Birthdate of Dov Ber of Mezeritch, known as the Maggid, the leading disciple of the Baal Shem Tov and his successor as leader Chassidic Judaism.

1773: Reyna Levy and Isaac Moses gave birth to Moses Levy Moses who passed away in New York in 1843.

1779(25th of Kislev, 5540): Parsashat Vayeshev; First Day of Chanukah

`1787: Reyna Levy and Isaac Moses gave birth to Sarah (Sally) Moses, the sister of Moses Levy Moses

1790: The citizens of Trnava, addressed a petition to the Diet in Hungary at the same time as the Jews did asking that their rights be upheld.  The Diet approved the petition of the Jews and sent word to King Leopold II.

1791: In London, the first edition of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper was published. In 1891, Rachel Sasoon Beer, the granddaughter of David Sasoon and daughter of Sasoon David Sasoon  was named editor of the Observer making her the first female editor of a national newspaper. During her tenure as editor “The Observer achieved one of its greatest exclusives: the admission by Count Esterhazy that he had forged the letters that condemned innocent Jewish officer Captain Dreyfus to Devil's Island. The story provoked an international outcry and led to the release and pardon of Dreyfus and court martial of Esterhazy.”

1795: One day after he had passed away, 52 year old “Jacob Yechiel” was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1798(26th of 5559 Kislev): Second Day of Chanukah

1800: Solomon Levien married Harriet Salomons at the Hambro Synagogue today.

1802: In Bavaria, “Jacob Hirsch Kann and Jetta Kann gave birth to Jennette Kann who became Jeannette Goldschmidt when she married Benedict Hayim Salomon Goldschmidt.

1804: Birthdate of London native Elias Mocatta who married Rachel Goldsmid after the death of Augusta Goldsmid the mother of Constance August Mocatta. 

1805(13th of Kislev, 5566): Sixty-two year old German banker Philipp Samson, the founder of the Samson School in Wolfenbuttel passed away today.

1809(26thof Kislev, 5570): Second Day of Chanukah

1811 (18th of Kislev, 5572):Rabbi Baruch Mezhibuzher the son of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov’s daughter, Adel, and her husband, Rabbi Yechiel Ashkenazi passed away. He was born in 1753 in Mezhibuz, the town from which his illustrious grandfather led the Chassidic Movement. He was one of the Rebbes (Chassidic masters) in the 3rd generation of Chassidism, and had thousands of followers.

1816: Three days he had passed away. “Nachman bar Aaron” was buried today at the “Colby Gate Jewish Burial Ground in Great Yarmouth.”

1817(25th of Kislev, 5578): Chanukah

1825(24th of Kislev, 5586): The First Chanukah Candle was kindled for the first time during the right of Czar Nicholas I.

1826: In London Frances Cohen and Joel Benjamin gave birth to George Benjamin.

1828(28th of Kislev, 5589: Fourth Day of Chanukah observed the day after electors cast their votes in their respective state capitals during the highly contentious election between John Q Adams and Andrew Jackson

1829: A fired destroyed the building housing Congregation Mikveh Israel in Savannah, Georgia.  The building had been consecrated in 1820 making it the first synagogue to be built in “The Peachtree State.” Fortunately, the congregation’s Torah Scrolls were saved from the fire.

1830; “The Alsatian Deputy Pierre Andre stated that before the Revolution had not been allowed to open vocational schools” – a statement that was challenged by those who said that “before the Revolution…Berr-Isaac Berr of Nancy had founded agricultural colonies in order to mitigate the charge that Jews were not productive.”

1836(25th of Kislev, 5597): Chanukah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson.

1836: Two days after he had passed away, “Alexander Schomberg” was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery” today.

1839: Moses Joseph married Esther Samuel at the Great Synagogue today.

1839: In Charleston, SC, Jacob I. Moses of Columbus, GA married Rina Ottolengui, the daughter of Abraham Ottolengui.

1846” In Furth, Bavaria, Louis Loew Leopold Affelder, the Bavarian born son of Samuel Lazarus Affelder and Nanni Affelder, and his wife Regine Rosalia Affelder gave birth to Moritz Affelder

1847: In New York, Abigail and Asher Kursheedt gave birth to Grace Eloise Kursheedt.

1847: In London, Hester and L.M. Rothschild gave birth to Emma Dinah Rothschild, the wife of Ludwig Goldschmidt.

1849: In Canterbury, Fanny Nathan and Joel Abrahams gave birth to Benjamin Abrahams

1852: Today’s edition of the Times of London devoted sixteen columns to the speech given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli, on the subject of taxation.  The speech, which was well received, contained proposals to change the Tea Duties and the Income Tax. The lengthy article also included copies of the tables that Mr. Disraeli used.

1853:The "Shaare Zedek Hebrew National School," erected in the rear of the Henry-street Jewish Synagogue, was consecrated this afternoon. The congregation to which the School is attached has been in existence about sixteen years. The ceremonies began at 3 pm with religious services that included a sermon by Rabbi H.A. Henry who has been chosen to serve as the school’s superintendent. Services were followed by a “banquet” in one of the school’s room. Mr. Mendel Joseph, President of the Building Committee, addressed the attendees. The meal included the recitation of the proper Hebrew prayers both before and after eating.

1854(13th of Kislev, 5615): Sixty-four year old Hetty (Esther) Seixas, the Newport, RI born daughter of Jochabed Levy and Moses Mendes Seixas passed away today in New York.

1855(24th of Kislev, 5616): The first Chanukah Candle is kindled as the Governor of Kansas received a communication from Col. Edwin Sumner, the command of Ft. Leavenworth “to us all power under his command to enforce the laws” in dealing with pro-slavery forces during the Wakarusa War.

1858: A crowd of 2,500 Christians and Jews gathered tonight in New York City to express their indignation over what has come to be called the Mortara Affiar.  The event was chaired by Jonas Phillips, the ex-President of the Board of Common Councilmen. Among the resolutions passed were ones that recalled the response of the United States government to the Damascus Affair in 1840.  The speakers all separated the actions of those involved in taking of the Mortara family from the Roman Catholic religion and stated their respect for their fellow citizens who were adherents of that religion. Among those in attendance was Mr. A.M. Phillips Levi from Montreal who had traveled from Canada to express that Jewish community’s solidarity with the other Jewish communities that had expressed their outrage and called for a return of the Mortara child to his parents. The speakers included leaders of the Jewish community as well as prominent non-Jews including Chauncey Shaffer, Esq. and Reverend Blair, a Methodist clergyman.

 

1860: Birthdate of actress and singer Lillian Russell, the native of Iowa who married the Anglo-Jewish composer Edward Solomon in 1884, two years before he was arrested for bigamy.

 

1861(1st of Tevet, 5622): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1861: Today, Sir George Grey, who hired Samuel Joseph, an Anglo-Jew from London as his interpreter” began serving his second term as Governor of New Zealand

1862: Rosa Gottschalk, the Stuttgart, Germany born daughter of Joseph and Sarah Ullman, and her husband Albert Gottschalk gave birth to  Lillie Gottschalk, who became Lillie Fleischmann when she married Ernst Fleischmann with whom she had two son – Edwin and Albert.

1864: Romanian Jews were forbidden to practice law.

1864: A meeting was held today in Philadelphia, PA that resulted in the establishment of Maimonides College, “the first Jewish theological seminary in” the United States. The school which was designed to train rabbis for the numerous synagogues opening this country began operating in 1867.  It closed its doors 6 years later in 1873 due to a lack of support.

1865: Birthdate of Edith Louisa Cavell, the British nurse who was defended by Sadi Kirschen when the Germans arrested her and charged her with treason.  There was little that her Jewish defense lawyer, who would flee the Nazis when they invaded Belgium in 1940, could do for her since she confessed to helping British and French soldiers escape and the Kaiser’s army was in no mood to show leniency.

1866(26th of Kislev, 5627:Evelina Gertrude de Rothschild passed away during childbirth. She was a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of England. Her father Lionel assumed sponsorship of the first school for girls in Israel, opened in Jerusalem in 1864, renaming it the Evelina de Rothschild School.

1868: Two days after he had passed way, 93 year old “Henry Mordecai,” the father of “David Mordecai,” was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1873: It was reported today that last month’s overflow of the Tiber River created a novel situation in Rome.  Some of the Jews whose homes were flooded have been temporarily lodged in the Covent of Ara Caeli one of the religious orders recently disbanded by the new, republican government of Italy.  In the new Italy, including the formal Papal States, there is no distinction of citizenship based on religion.

1875: Mr. Emanuel B. Hart appeared before a special meeting of the Board of Police to request that anti-lottery laws not be enforced in matters pertaining to the Hebrew Benevolent Fair.  Hart told the board that if the laws were strictly enforced the fair would not be able to raise the funds to support local charities.  The members of the Board denied the request saying that the police would halt any drawing that violated the lottery laws

1876: Three days after she had passed away, “Priscilla Rees,” the daughter of Moses and Phoebe Davis and the wife of Daniel Rees was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1877: Birthdate of Morris Alexander, the Cambridge University educated native of Zinn, Germany who was “admitted to practice as an Advocate of the Supreme Court of Cape Colony where lectured on law, served on the city council and participated in Jewish communal life as an officer of the New Cape Town Congregation and the Jewish Philanthropic Society.

1878: Birthdate of  Dr. Alwin M. (Max) Pappenheimer the Columbia trained pathologist who was on the faculty at Columbia and who was the father of Dr. Anne P. Forbes, Dr. John R. Pappenheimer and Dr. Alwin M. Pappenheimer, Jr. of NYU who followed in his father’s footsteps.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1955/02/22/96627378.pdf

1878(8th of Kislev, 5639): Fifty two year old Danish banker and political leader David Baruch Adler was a partner in Martin Levin & Adler in London and D.B.Adler & Company in Copenhagen as well as the husband of Jenny Raphael the daughter of banker John Raphael, passed away today.

1878: It was reported today that Romanian leaders continue to oppose granting Jews full rights as citizens as promised by the Treaty of Berlin.  As non-citizens, Jews are not allowed to own land which means Romanian nobles can borrow money from Jews without fear of losing their estates when they default on the loans.  If Jews were citizens were made citizens, the nobles could no longer swindle them out of the money owed.

1880: It was reported today that in Germany, “The Jewish question continues to attract much public attention.  Newspapers are debating it, pamphlets are pouring forth, tumults are taking place among the students and an occasional fracas still occurs in the streets.”

1880: It was reported from Berlin that in light of the wave anti-Semitic agitation sweeping German, a large number of “eminent Jews” are meeting to consider ways of defending themselves including the establishment of a newspaper to support their position.

1880: It was reported that an article published in the Grenzboten seeks to refute that Chancellor Bismarck is sympathetic to the anti-Semitic movement championed by Court Chaplain Stoecker.

1880: Sarah Bernhardt is scheduled to give her last two performance in New York – a matinee during which “Hermani” will be repeated followed by an evening featuring “Frou-Frou,” “La Dame aux Camelias” and “En Passant.”

1881: The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published. Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company, including the LA Times, in 2007 making him the first Jewish owner of the paper.

1881: For unknown reason, the fair sponsored by Temple Israel in Brooklyn which opened on November 30 was scheduled to be closed this evening and to reopened tomorrow.

1882: U.S. Army Major Alfred Mordecai, Jr. a West Point graduate and hero of the Civil War was promoted to the permanent rank of Lt. Colonel.  He was brevetted to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the last months of the Civil War “for distinguished served in the field…” For those of you who know anything about the U.S. Army, this means the rank was “temporary” and that for official purposes he returned to the rank of Major when peace arrived. Promotion in the peace time army was much slower.  This promotion does reflect the high esteem in which Mordecai was held as will be seen when reaches the rank of full Colonel.

1882(23rd of Kislev, 5643): Twenty-three year old Mortiz Zuckerman, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, hanged himself today apparently because he had lost his job and was unemployed.

1882: In Aurich, German, Moses Jakob Cohen and Minkel Minka Cohen gave birth to Jakob Moses Cohen ,the husband of Hanna Cohen with whom he had five children and who died in the Minks Ghetto during the Holocaust.

1884: Mrs. Mandelbaum, the “fence” who disappeared from New York arrived at Oelan at three o’clock this afternoon with a package of lace that she tried to sell to several local “rich people.”

1884(16th of Kislev, 5645): An unidentified 5’9” Jew approximately 48 year in age committed suicide at 7 p.m. when he shot himself while sitting on a bench near the Farragut monument.

1888(30th of Kislev, 5649): Sixth Day of Chanukah and Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1888: In Romania, the lower house of the legislature defeated the bill which would have granted citizenship to businessman, banker and philanthropist Jacob Noisotz.

1888: Aline Caroline, daughter of Gustave Samuel de Rothschild and Sir Edward Albert Sassoon gave birth to Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, the grandson of Albert Abdullah David Sassoon.

1888: In Brooklyn the weeklong fair that is a fundraiser for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum is scheduled to come to an end this evening.

1889: Commissioner Hermann von Wissmann, the leading German official in East Africa met the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition and took it to Bagamoyo where a banquet of welcome was held. Emin Pasha was a Silesian born Jew named Isaac Edward Schnitzer who converted to Christianity and then to Islam so that he could further his career in the Ottoman Empire.

1889: In Nevada, MO, Alex S. and Rose (Levy) Greditzer gave birth to Washington University Medical trained urologist Harry G. Urologist who lived in University City, MO with his wife Rae Pereira while pursuing a career in St. Louis that saw him serving as the assistant urologist at the New Jewish Hospiital and serving as an instructor at his alma mater.

1889: In Johannesburg, Solomon Barnato Joel and Ellen (Nellie) Ridley gave birth to Doris Irene Kathleen Joel the wife of Arthur Walter.

1889: Members of a party of fifty Jews passing through Pittsburgh on its way to Jerusalem would not comment on the possible outcome of their “pilgrimage, saying that the future depends entirely upon the laws of the country, concessions which may be secured” and the desire for future settlement.

1890(22nd of Kislev, 5651): Fifty-six year old Isaac Shapira, the husband of Beyla Shapira and the son of Joshua Shapira passed away today in Petah Tikva.

1891: The Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway line reached Deir Aban (today's Beit Shemesh) as it made its way from the seacoast to the City of David.

1892: It was reported today that the Monetary Conference at Brussels is debating the plan presented by Albert de Rothschild.

1892: It was reported today that Charles Frohman will not be producing Lady Windermere’s Fan “the play of the season last year in London and has transferred it to another production company.

1892: It was reported today that those Jews who convert to Greek Orthodoxy in compliance with the Moscow Chamber of Commerce’s requirement for them to be able to do business in the city “will still be placed on probation for three years” and required to live in village five miles from Moscow.

1892: Birthdate of Francisco Franco. Whatever his other short-comings, Franco has a surprisingly positive record when it comes to the Holocaust.  For most of the war, he did not close the border with France to escaping Jews.  He did not return Jewish refugees to the Nazis and allowed many of his foreign legations to provide letters of transit making it possible for thousands to escape Hitler’s Henchmen.

1893(25th of Kislev, 5654): Chanukah

1893: It was reported today that Hebrew will be one of the languages the Professor Hughes will be teaching at the University of New York in a class “especially designed for missionaries intending to go to Turkey.”

1893: It was reported today that the German chancellor said that “anti-Semitism was the most dangerous form of Socialism” because “while pretending to attack only Jewish capitalists, it would menace eventually all capitalists.

1893: It was reported today that in Germany, Dr. Foerster interrupted a debate on the budget “to say that Anti-Semitism is not a passing phenomenon and would endure as long as the Hebrew race.”

1894: Alderman “Silver Dollar” Smith was arrested between 2 or 3 o’clock this morning on charges that he had attacked a saloonkeeper named August J. Gloisten. During his arraignment this morning Smith said that he had been born in Germany at which time he was named Charles Finkelstone. He got his nickname of “Silver Dollar” came from the fact that 1,000 silver dollar pieces were embeeded in the floor of his saloon at Essex Street.  “Silver Dollar” Smith was Charles R. Solomon a Tammany Hall leader of the 10th District.  His saloon “was one of the sites of operation for the Eastman Gang, run by Jewish gang leader Monk Eastman…and a member of the Max Hochstim Association, also known as the Essex Market Court Gang.” Besides the silver dollars, Smith was known for hosting Passover celebrations at the saloon.

1894: In New Orleans, Leo Levi of Galveston delivered the annual oration “at today’s meeting of the American Hebrew Congregations.

1894: “Among the passengers on the steamship Spree which is due here today is the noted German anti-Semitic agitator Dr. Ahlwardt of Berlin.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C02E6DD1E3DE433A25757C0A9649D94649ED7C

1894: “Assaulted In Open Daylight” published today described an attack by a group of boys who beat up Benjamin Rosenthal on Fifth Avenue who hollered anti-Semitic epithets as they beat him.

1895: Hermann Ahlwardt the German anti-Semitic agitator from Berlin is scheduled to arrive in New York today aboard the SS Spree.

1895: Birthdate of Syracuse, NY native Nathan Wesley Markson, the husband of “Maybelle Grody Markson” and the father of Lois and Audrey Markson who served as the “director of the Jewish Home for the Aged.”

1895: Reverend Henry Yates Saterlee, who in 1903 delivered a sermon in which he said, “The Jews are preserving the home and family better than we Christians are doing” and that while “I do not know how to account for this, but I do know it to be fact” was elected to serve as the First Episcopal Bishop of Washington.

1897: Today, at Temple Israel of Harlem, Rabbi Maurice H. Harris delivered a sermon that responded to the negative sermon delivered by Dr. Savage in which he attacked the “Old Testament” in general and “the God of the Old Testament” in particular.

1897: The merit examination for the position of official Supreme Court reporter in the First Judicial District, which requires a fluency in “Hebrew jargon” is scheduled to be given today. (Hebrew jargon refers to Yiddish)

1898: The Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum Band is scheduled to perform a fund raiser sponsored by the Ladies Aid Society at the Lexington Avenue Opera House.

1899: Dr. Isaac M. Wise, President of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati praised the late Baron Hirsch as ranking “among the greatest philanthropists of the century equaled only by his wife Baroness Hirsh.  He did all the good one millionaire could possible do, or ever did do, for the poor, neglected and persecuted.”  Wise was speaking in support of plans to build a statue in New York honoring Baron Hirsch.

1899(2nd of Tevet, 5660): Eighth of Chanukah, the end of the last celebration of the holiday during the 19th century.

1899(2nd of Tevet, 5660): Seventy-three year old Leopold Ullstein the founder and publisher of several successful German newspapers, including B.Z. am Mittag and Berliner Morgenpost passed away today.  The Nazis would take over his publishing empire in 1934 and his son Hermman Ullstein would flee the country in December of 1938.

1900: Birthdate  of Waldemar Levy Cardoso, the Algerian-Moroccan Jew born in Rio de Jenerio who became a Field Marshall in the Brazilian Army.

1900: Forty-seven year old Jacob Treiber, the German born son of Morris Trieber and the former Blume Brodek was nominated “to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas” by President McKinley.

1901: “The last Broadway production to be staged in New York’s Lyceum of which Gustave Froman was one of the builders, began its run

1902(4th of Kislev, 5663): Eighty-one year old Austrian Poet Heinrich Landesmann whose “first important literary production, Abdul, the Mohammedan Faust legend, in five cantos” was completed in 1843 and who was the brother-in-law of Berthold Auberbach, passed away today at Brno..

1903:Herzl reports in his diary: "The Russian members of the A. C., particularly Usshiskin, Jacobson, etc. are in open rebellion."

1903: In New York, Rabbi M.H. Harris preached a Friday night sermon on “Zionism and East Africa.”

1903: Birthdate of New York native Aaron Siskind, the school teacher turned documentary photographer.

http://m.theartstory.org/artist-siskind-aaron.htm

1904(26th of Kislev, 5665): Second Day of Chanukah observed on the same day that Arthur Balfour, of “Balfour Declaration” fame completed his services as Prime Minster of the United Kingdom.

1905: “The New York Board of Jewish Ministers and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of the United States and Canada have set aside” today “as a day of general mourning for the Jewish victims of the massacres in Russia.”

1905: Rabbi Joseph Silverman, Rabbi F. de Sola Mendes, Rabbi M.H. Harris, Rabbi Rudolph Grossman, Oscar S. Straus and Louis Marshall are scheduled to speak tonight at the memorial service being held at Temple Emanu-El.

1905: Rabbi Samuel Greenfield, Rabbi Henry S. Morais and Albert Lucas are scheduled to speak at tonight’s memorial service at Congregation Mount Zion on East 113th Street.

1905: Rabbis Joseph M. Asher, Bernard Drachman and M.M. Kaplan are scheduled to speak at the memorial service at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on East 85th Street.

1905: The Cantors’ Association of Mount Zion Congregation and Congregation Mickveh Israel are scheduled to take part in services held to honor the Jews who have been murdered in Russia.

1905: Rabbis Phillip Klein, H. Periera Mendes, Harris Maslinasky and Isidor Herschield are scheduled to speak at the memorial service being held at Congregation Ohav Zedek on Norfolk Street.

1905: The parade organized by the Jewish Defense Association in memory of the Jews murdered in Odessa is scheduled to start at noon today with Joseph Barondess serving as Marshall.

1905: Services memorializing the Jews who have perished in the Russian Massacres are scheduled to take place this afternoon and this evening at several locations on the Lower East Side.

1905: In Camden, NJ, Rabbi Gordon of Philadelphia and William spoke at the memorial services “for the murdered Jews of Russia” being held at the Synagogue of the Sons of Israel.

1905: Because the reports of the massacres of the Jews Russia have underestimated the suffering of their co-religionists, those attending a meeting a Temple Emanu-El tonight decided to issue an appeal for an additional million dollars in aid to go along with the one million dollars already raised.

1906: Birthdate of Manchester, UK native Sir Maurice Pariser, the Solicitor, WW II veteran and Laborite member of the Manchester City who was vice president of the Institute of the Jewish Studies and Knighted in 1965.

1906: It was reported today that while the Educational Alliance “contemplated a loss of $15,575 for the coming year,” it’s Women’s Auxiliary “had been able to return $3, 500 from its funds.

1907(28th of Kislev, 5668): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1907: It was reported today that Professor Franklin Giddings of Columbia had told a group attending a lecture at the People’s Institute in Cooper Union that he favors “the recent movement by the Jews to keep Christian ceremonies out of the public schools” and that while “he favored the Zionist movement, he feared that could not be made attractive to the Jews to be successful.

1908: Birthdate of Alfred Hershey, an American biologist who, along with Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1969. The prize was given for research done on viruses that infect bacteria. This was the famous "blender experiment" (1956).  Hershey used an isotope- labeled phage to infect a bacterial colony and begin to inject their genetic material into the host cells. Then he whirred them in a blender to tear the phage particles from the bacterial walls without rupturing the bacteria. Upon examining the bacteria, Hershey found that only phage DNA, but no detectable protein, had been inserted into them. This showed that the DNA was sufficient to transfer to the bacteria all the genetic information needed to produce more phage. He passed away in 1997.

1908: “Report Jews’ Land Seized” published today reported that the Government of Ekaternoslav, a province in Russia has confiscated the farm land which Jews who were moving to Argentina had sold to their co-religionist in violation of the land law passed in 1840.

1909(21st of Kislev, 5670) Parashat Vayeshev

1909(21st of Kislev, 5670): Sixty-seven year old Italian attorney and political leader who was the first Jewish Prime Minister of Italy passed away today.

1910: The New York Timesfeatures a review of The Life of Benjamin Disraeli: The Earl of Beaconsfield by William Money.  This is the first volume of a multi-volume work covering the years 1804 through 1837.  The book sold for three dollars.

1910: Birthdate of Chester, PA native Isadore Soifer who gained famed as Alex North, the often Oscar nominated composer who wrote scores for such films as Spartacus and “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

1911: The trial of the owner’s Triangle Waist Company, Max Blanck and Issac Harris who were represented by Max Steuer on charges of First and Second Degree Manslaughter began today.

1912(24th of Kislev, 5673): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1912: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Edward Fields, the Manhattan rug designer and manufacturer.

1912: Fifty-year old Archibald Gracie IV, the last survivor to leave the Titanic who spent much of his time on the cruise discussing the Civil War with Isidor Strauss passed away today.

1912: Jacob A. Cantor of New York City was a delegate to the Ninth Convention of Rivers and Harbors Congress opening today in Washington, DC.

1912: Birthdate of David Amato, second son of Abraham Amato and father of Leah Amato Franco.  A graduate of George Washington University, Amato had a successful career the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Board before accepting a position with the American diplomatic corps to help the Mexican government in the field of vocational rehabilitation.

1913: Birthdate of Mark Robson the Montreal native who began his career as an editor in Citizen Kane and went on to direct thirty-four films including two war movies with a strange twist – The Bridges at Toko-Ri and Von Ryan’s Express.

1913: Birthdate of journalist Jesse Zel Lurie who wrote for the Palestine Post and the Jerusalem Post before spending 35 years as the editor of Hadassah Magazine “turning it from an 8 page newsletter into a nationally known Jewish” publication.

1914: U.S. State Department informs American Jewish Committee that it will not expel Russian Jews who sought refuge in Turkey, but will permit them to become naturalized citizens.

1914: According to a report supplied by “Dr. Arthur Levy, a rabbi serving with the German Army,” this evening during Friday evening Sabbath services, the Russian “Governor appeared in Petrikau (Piortikow) with the police, ordered that the Scrolls of the Law be removed from the Holy Ark, and the Ark be searched for secret telephones which the Jews were charged with hiding there.”

1914: “Victim of Yellow Journalism” published today provided the views of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle of the case of Leo M. Frank of which it said “the state of public feeling being what it was he never had a chance for a fair trial.  His case was for all practical purposes tried in the newspapers anda verdict of guilty assured before the first witness was sworn.”

1914: “In Glescow, 150 Jews were arrested as spies and dragged to Warsaw” by Russian authorities.

1915: It was reported today that “a new Jewish theological seminary” which will train Orthodox rabbis, making it the first of its kind in the United States will be opening in Manhattan.

1915: Lt. Hugo Gutmann was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class today.

1915(27thof Kislev, 5676): Third Day of Chanukah; Parashat Miketz

1915(27thof Kislev, 5676): Fifty-five year old New York political leader Andrew Freedman passed away today.

1915: In Bayonne, NJ, The Bayonne Zionist is scheduled to hold a Chanukah Ball this evening at the Bayonne Opera House Hall, “the proceeds of which will be used to build up the Zionist library.

1916: It was reported today that an additional $2,500 has been raised “for further work at the Hebrew National Orphan House” on Seventh Street with an annex on St. Mark’s Place.

1916: Judge Julian W. Mack’s description of the success enjoyed by the Federation plan used by the Jewish community in Chicago for the last 17 years was published today.

1917: British forces under General Allenby “launched an assault on Turkish positions all around Jerusalem.”

1917: Birthdate of Olympic fencing champion Daniel Bukantz, the decorated WW II combat veteran who also had a successful career as a dentist and who was one the five members on the U.S. foil team at the 1956 Olympics which was made up entirely of Jews

1917: The Jewish Ministers’ Association of American which was organized in March and is led by President Aaron Yudelowitz of Boston held the opening session of its first annual convention in New York City.

1917: A total of $389, 941.50 was raised today on the “second day of the campaign to raise five million dollars for Jewish war relief and welfare work in the army and navy” meaning that in just two days, the campaign had raised $1,509,910.00.

1917: Today, while addressing “an assembly of Orthodox rabbis at the convention of the Jewish Minister’s Association of America the Young Men’s Hebrew Association Building, Nathan Strauss “condemned a resolution adopted by the rabbis in which they had expressed their gratitude to the British Government for ‘publicly declaring its sympathy with the Zionist movement and pledging itself to use it best endeavors to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine” because he feared that “any Zionist agitation at the present time would tend to stimulate antagonism against Jews in any of the enemy countries” i.e. Germany and the Ottoman Empire

1917(19th of Kislev, 5678): Seventy-one year old Rabbi Jacob David Kallen passed away in Roxbury, MA.

1918: In Atlantic City, NJ, Rhea and Alfred Ettigner, 2 immigrant Jews, gave birth to Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger, a science fiction writer and physics instructor whose idea of freezing the dead for future reanimation repelled most scientists…and persuaded at least 105 game humans to pay $28,000 each to have their bodies preserved in liquid nitrogen at his Cryonics Institute in suburban Detroit…” (As reported by Paul Vitello)

1918: Birthdate of Milton Charles Calechman, the “brother of Harold Calechman.”

1919(12thof Kislev, 5680): In Chicago, Paul Bittermann, the husband of Jessie Bitterman and the father of Pauline and Dorothy Bitterman passed away today.

1920(23rdof Kislev, 5681): Parashat Vayeshev

1921: It was reported today that Dr. Maurice H. Harris who has been the rabbi at Temple Israel for forty years of the fifty year old congregation said that he hoped his desire to see the new building fully paid for would not be seen as a lack of humility on his part but rather as what he would consider “the crowning glory” of his four decades of service.

1922: Birthdate of Isaac Neuman, the native of Zdunska Wola, Poland who survived the Holocaust who served as the rabbi at Sinai Temple in Champaign, Illinois and served as “spiritual leader for the Jewish community for 40 years.

1922(14th of Kislev, 5683): Centenarian Abraham Manning “the oldest Jewish resident of” Utica New York and a 25 year veteran of “the Russian Army” who “gained the unusual distinction of being made a member of the Russian Emperor’s body guard” passed away today.

1923: Sixty one year old anti-Semitic journalist August-Maurice Barres who wrote “That Dreyfus is guilty I deduce not from the facts themselves but from his race” passed away today.

1923:Premiere ofCecil B DeMille’s original version of the "Ten Commandments." 

1923: The Eveready Hour, which starred Nathaniel Shilkret as the conductor premiered today.

1924:”Greed” a silent film directed and co-produced by Erich von Stroheim who also co-authored the script and also co-produced by Irving Thalberg was released in the United States today.

1924: In the Bronx, “Harry Weinberg and Helen Jordon Weinberg” gave birth to Melvin Weinberg, the conman who was a key player in the Abscam Scandal.(As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

 

1926: Einstein sent Max Born a letter today in which he said, Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice” (This is often paraphrased as “God does not play dice)

1927: Birthdate of John McCandlish Phillips Jr, The New York Times reporter who wrote one of the most famous articles in the newspaper’s history — exposing the Orthodox Jewish background of a senior Ku Klux Klan official, Daniel Burros. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1927: In Poughkeepsie, NY, “Philip Morowitz, a newspaper and magazine distributor, and the former Anna Levine” gave birth to biophysicist Harold Joseph Morowitz. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/science/harold-morowitz-biophysicist-who-tackled-enigmas-big-and-small-dies-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1928, Goldman Sachs launched the Goldman Sachs Trading Corp. a closed-end fund with characteristics similar to that of a Ponzi scheme. “The fund failed as a result of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, hurting the firm's reputation for several years afterward.

1928:  Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn's musical "Whoopee" premiered in New York.  Kahn was one of a number of Jewish lyricists who created hit songs for Broadway and Hollywood

1928: Members of "Kvuzat HaHugim" and members of "Tnuat HaMahanot HaOlim" from Haifa and Jerusalem founded Beit HaShita, the kibbutz named after the biblical town of the same name, where the Midianites fled after being beaten by Gideon.  Eleven members of this idyllic Jewish community were killed during the Yom Kippur War meaning it lost “the largest number as a percentage of the population than any other community in Israel.”

1931(24th of Kislev, 5692): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1932: “Flying Gold,” a crime film directed by Steve Sekely who moved to Hollywood to escape the rise of fascism in his native country, was released today in Hungary.

1933(15th of Kislev, 5694): Emile Meyerson passed away.  Born in 1859, Meyerson was Polish-born French chemist and philosopher of science whose concepts of rational understanding based on realism and causalism were popular among scientific theorists in the 1930s. An anti-positivist, he argued, for example in Identity and Reality (1908) that scientific knowledge attempts to reach beyond mere descriptive and predictive laws to an understanding of the nature of the reality beyond appearances. The human mind seeks the permanent behind phenomenal change, the identity within diversity as exemplified in conservation laws, such as the law of inertia and the law of conservation of energy. And yet this identity which our reason apprehends (or perhaps constructs) cannot embrace the totality of reality, for there is also change.

1935: “With the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws,” eighty-five year old historian Ernst Bernheim lost his German citizenship today.

1936: The Palestine Post reported on the daily work of the Peel Commission and included the rumor that one or two of the Commissioners were starting to feel the pressure of their continuous and arduous work.

1936: “A list of 650 legal books by Jewish authors which are to be removed from all libraries in Germany and boycotted in the future has been withdrawn” because “several authors listed as Jews were found to be members of the National Socialist party” and “many writers who are really Jewish were not included.”

1937: In Norwich, CN, Asher and Annette Libo gave birth to Kenneth Harold 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” (As reported by Paul Vitello)

1938: Ghalib Budairi, a member of a prominent Arab family was found by British troops tonight lying wounded on a street in Jaffa, the apparent victim of Arabs who, as part of their uprising, have been attacking Jews, Englishman and Arabs who are not supporting their efforts.

1938:Father Charles Coughlin gave a national radio address in which he attacked the "Jewish international banking houses." (As reported by Austin Cline)

1938: Tehilla Lichtenstein first took the pulpit as the leader of the Society of Jewish Science in New York City, giving a sermon entitled “The Power of Thought.” Her topic reflected the Society’s idea, borrowed from Christian Science, that God’s healing power lies within each individual. With this service, Lichtenstein became the spiritual leader of the Congregation of Jewish Science in New York—the first woman to serve as the spiritual leader of any American Jewish congregation. Born in Jerusalem in 1893, Lichtenstein had left doctoral work in English at Columbia University to marry Morris Lichtenstein, a Reform rabbi, in 1920. Together, the Lichtensteins established the Society of Jewish Science in 1922. The Lichtensteins hoped to create a variant of Judaism that could offer the spiritual sustenance that they believed too many Jews were finding within Christian Science. They showed that through Judaism, as through Christian Science, one could emphasize spirituality, the goodness of God, and the effectiveness of prayer. Unlike Christian Science, Jewish Science did not deny the benefits of modern medicine. Rather, it attempted to harmonize Judaism with science. They believed that their program of meditation, affirmation and visualization would reveal that in its essence, Judaism was the highest of healing sciences. During the early years of the Society, Tehilla Lichenstein ran the Society religious school where she taught Hebrew and Bible and edited its monthly journal, the Jewish Science Interpreter. When Morris Lichtenstein died in 1938, Tehilla became the spiritual leader of the Society. Illustrating her view of Judaism as a practical religion, Lichtenstein’s early sermons included the topics “Seven Rules for Happy Living” and “When is War Justified?”. Although some of Lichtenstein’s teachings drew on her own experiences as a wife and mother and focused on interpersonal relationships, she also gave sermons taking up such issues as Soviet foreign policy and anti-Semitism in post-war America. In addition to her regular sermons, Lichtenstein continued to edit the Interpreter, taught classes in Jewish Science, and trained members of the Society to become spiritual healers. In the 1950s, she hosted a weekly radio program. She continued to preach from

1939: In Washington, DC, “the creation of an army of 200,000 Jews to be recruited in the United States, Palestine and other countries was urged tonight in a series of resolutions adopted at a conference called by Dr. Samuel Harden Church president of the Carnegie Institute and chairman of the new committee for a Jewish Army.”

1940:August Marian Kowalczyk, was arrested today while trying to cross the border with Czechoslovakia so he could join the Polish Army in France and sent to Auschwitz. (He would become the last survivor of the breakout attempt from that camp in June of 1942.

1941: Nazi ordinances placed the Jews of Poland outside protection of courts

1941: Himmler issued strict instructions to Frederich Jeckeln that no mass murders of deported German Jews were to occur without his express orders: "The Jews deported into the territory of the Ostland are to be dealt with only according to the guideline given by me and the Reich Security Main Office acting on my behalf. I will punish unilateral acts and violations.

1941: Betty Warner, the daughter of movie mogul Harry Warner and Milton Sperling gave birth to their first child Susan, today.

1942(25th of Kislev, 5703): Chanukah

1942(25th of Kislev, 5703): Fifty-nine year old Austrian “librettist, lyricist and writer” Fritz Löhner-Beda was murdered in Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp 

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/central-europe/buchenwald/lhner-bedafritz/

1942: During the Holocaust, two Christian women, Zofia Kossak and Wanda Filipowicz risked theirlives by setting up the Council for the Assistance of the Jews in Warsaw.

1942: “Thunder Rock” a movie version of the 1939 play of the same name featuring Lilli Palmer with music by Mutz Greenbaum was released today in the United Kingdom today.

1943: During World War II, in Yugoslavia, resistance leader Marshal Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile. Originally there had been two resistance movements in Yugoslavia – Tito’s which was multi-ethnic and included Jewish partisans and the Chetniks, led by a Serbian named Draza Mihailovich who would become an ally of the Axis and a practitioner of ethnic cleansing.

1943: In Manhattan, the former Bernice Landau and her husband, both of whom were “Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe” gave birth to Paul Jonathan Novograd the last owner of New York’s Claremont Riding Academy.

1944: The Kasztner transport carrying 1,361 Jews left Bergen Belsen heading for the Swiss border. For more see Gaylen Ross’ “Killing Kasztner” http://www.killingkasztner.com/

1945: By a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approves United States participation in the United Nations.  This was a sign that the United States would not retreat into Isolationism as it had at the end of World War I.  More importantly, by joining the UN, the United States was able to support measures that ended the British Mandate in Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.

1946: Guy M. Gillette, the former U.S. Senator from Iowa who is president of the pro-Zionist American League for a Free Palestine, denied charges by Rabbi Judah Magnes that “A Flag Is Born,” a play sponsored by the league, “makes an open appeal for funds for the purchase of arms for terrorist groups in Palestine.”  Gillette insisted that all funds raised by the Ben Hecht play go the Reparation Fund chaired by Hecht, Will Rogers, Jr. and Louis Bromfield.

1947: “The Judges' Trial ended in Nuremberg” with “10 of the 15 German jurists and lawyers on trial being found guilty of Nazi war crimes and given prison sentences of varying lengths, including life for four of them.”

1947: “The Egyptian government banned public demonstrations in Cairo after police clashed with 15,000 marchers protesting against the partition of Palestine.”

1948:The UN General Assembly Political and Security Committee passes a British-Canadian plan for a council commission on Palestine to negotiate a final peace settlement. The plan calls for (1) commission members to be appointed by Big Five; (2) an international Jerusalem; (3) a small UN guard to protect commission; and (4) aid to refugees. (The plan will be dead on arrival since it does not recognized the realities on the ground and the continued unwillingness of the Arabs to accept the creation of the Jewish state,)

1949: “Aubrey S. Eban, permanent delegate of Israeli to the United Nations, declared today that the economy of Israel was basically sound, otherwise it never could have sustained the simultaneous burdens of military defense and mass immigration.

1949: In Norwalk, CT, Barbara Freedman Berg and Dick Berg gave birth to Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Andrew Scott Berg.

1950(25th of Kislev, 5711): Chanukah

1950: In Passaic, New Jersey, Morris Goldberger and Edna Kronman gave birth to architect and Vanity Faireditor Paul Goldberger, the husband of Rutgers University trained attorney “Susan L. Solomon, the co-founder of the New York Stem Cell Foundation.”

1951: Having survived the ghetto in Kielce, Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, seventeen year old Thomas Buergenthal “emigrated from Germany to the United States” today where he pursued a legal education which led to him serving as a Judge of the International Court of Justice from 2000 to 2010.

1951: AaronCopland’s “Pied Piper," premieres in New York City.

1952: “Two’s Company” a musical revue with lyrics by Sammy Cahn, directed by Jules Dassin and choreographed by Jerome Robbins did not open on Broadway as scheduled due to the illness of one of the leading stars.

1952: “Million Dollar Mermaid” a biopic directed by Mervyn LeRoy was released in the United States today by MGM.

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the cabinet approved the resignation of Lt.-Gen Yigael Yadin, the second chief of General Staff, and appointed Maj.-Gen. Mordechai Makleff as his successor. Yigael Yadin was one of those amazing figures who helped to form Israel in the early days of the Jewish state.  A sabra, born in 1917, Yadin was the son of the famed Eliezer Sukenik of Dead Scrolls fame.  Just prior to, and during the War for Independence, Yadin was the acting chief of staff of the Jewish military forces.  After the war he was the first chief of staff of the IDF and created the mold for the military that is followed to this day.  After leaving the military, Yadin pursued a career in archaeology which was so successful that almost overshadowed his military successes. He passed away in 1984.

1953: Eighty year old Russian born NYU Law School graduate Alice Petluck, “the first woman lawyer to practice in the Federal District Court in the Southern District of New York and the first of her sex to argue a case in the Appellate Division, First Department who co-founded the Bronx Women’s Bar Association after the Bronx Bar Associated rejected her “because she was a woman and who was the husband of Dr. Joseph Petluck with whom she had three children – Charles, Ann and Robert – all of whom became lawyers passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/petluck-alice-s

1955(19th of Kislev, 5716): Seventy-one year old banker Benedict Joseph Lazar passed away today.

1956(30th of Kislev, 5717) Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1956(30th of Kislev, 5717): Eighty-four year old Charles Garfunkel, the husband of Lina Adler Garfunkel and he father of Sylvan and Benjamin Garfunkel passedawat tidat,

1956: A month after opening on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre, “Fanny” a musical with lyrics and music by Harold Rome and a book co-authored by S.N. Behrman transferred to the Belasco Theatre.

1959: “The Stranglers of Bombay” a horror movie written by David Zelag Goodman was released today in the United Kingdom.

1960(15th of Kislev, 5721): Seventy-four year old Austrian born City College alum and WW I Army veteran Jacob Field “a tax consultant, former I.R.S. revenue officer” and “regional director of the American Joint Distribution Committee in Minsk” who was the husband of “Mrs. Minna Field, the author of Patients Are People: A Medical-Social Approach to Prolonged Illness passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/12/05/99827816.pdf

1960(15th of Kislev, 5721): Fifty-seven year old composer and conductor Walter Goehr who was forced to leave Germany, like so many of his contemporaries because he was Jewish passed away today “in City Hall, Sheffield, United Kingdom, today immediately after conducting a performance of Handel's Messiah.”

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Goehr-Walter.htm

1967(2nd of Kislev, 5728) Ninety-year old Columbia graduate and American diplomat Lewis Einstein, the New York born son of the former Caroline Fatman and “wool magnate David Lewis” who counted Judah P. Benjamin among his relatives passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/12/05/82164138.pdf

1967(2nd of Kislev, 5728): Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz” passed away.  The famed actor changed his from Lahrheim to Lahr.  He was the last of the Jews in his family line.

1968: “Where Eagles Dare” the film version of the novel produced by Elliot Kastner and Jerry Gershwin was released today in the United Kingdom.

1970: “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” a film version of the novel by the same name produced by Arthur Cohn and Artur Brauner was released today in Italy.

1971: Birthdate of American screenwriter and producer Adam Horwoitz, creator of the “ABC fantasy series “Once Upon a Time.”

1972(28th of Kislev, 5733): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1972(28th of Kislev, 5733): Seventy-seven year old Israeli political leader Kadish Luz passed away at Degania Bet.

1973: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today at Temple Emanu-El for seventy year old “apparel manufacturer” whose philanthropic activities were of such a magnitude he was awarded the Medal of Merit by President Truman.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/11/29/archives/irving-geist-benefactor-dead-manufacturer-and-developer-70-promoter.html

1974: Birthdate of Irish cricketer Jason Molins the Dublin native who is a right-handed batsman

1975(29th of Kislev, 5736): Hannah Arendt passed away.

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

1976(12th of Kislev, 5737): Parashat Vayetzei

1976(12 of Kislev, 5737): Sixty-four year old Brooklyn born,  New York Medical College graduate  Dr. Irving Innerfield, “research professor of medicine at New York Medical College and a pioneer in the medical field of inflammation” and husband of “the former Jean Pozefsky” with whom he raised four children passed away today.

1976: In Israel, “three young Palestinian killed themselves while building a bomb.”

1976: In New York City, novelist Fred Waitzkin, the author of Searching for Bobby Fischer: The Father of a Prodigy Observes the World of Chess and his wife gave birth to chess prodigy Joshua Waitzkin.

1977:Neil Simon's "Chapter Two" premiered in New York City.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that President Anwar Sadat and the Egyptian government were disappointed by what they regarded as an insufficiently forthcoming Israeli response to Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem. Sadat was reported to be still expecting a 'dramatic' Israeli concession at the planned Cairo meeting which he hoped would advance the success of the reconvened Geneva peace conference. Prime Minister Menachem Begin arrived in Britain for a five-day official visit 'to renew the covenant signed by the British people and the Jewish people 60 years earlier on that unforgettable Lord Balfour Day, of November 2, 1917.'

1977: After 22 performances the curtain came down on Uncommon Women and Others the first play by Wendy Wasserstein.

1978: Dianne Feinstein is named the 1st female mayor of San Francisco.

1978(4th of Kislev, 5739): Samuel Abraham Goldsmithpassed away.  Born in 1902, Goldsmith was a Dutch-born U.S. physicist who, with George E. Uhlenbeck, a fellow graduate student at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, formulated (1925) the concept of electron spin. It led to recognition that spin was a property of protons, neutrons, and most elementary particles and to a fundamental change in the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics. Goldsmith also made the first measurement of nuclear spin and its Zeeman Effect with Ernst Back (1926-27), developed a theory of hyperfine structure of spectral lines, made the first spectroscopic determination of nuclear magnetic moments (1931-33), contributed to the theory of complex atoms and the theory of multiple scattering of electrons, and invented the magnetic time-of-flight mass spectrometer (1948).

1981: “Reds” with a historical film that included a portrayal of Julius Gerber, the Russian born American Socialist, and with music by Stephen Sondheim was released today in the United States

1982(18th of Kislev, 5743): Parshat Vayishlach

1982(18th of Kislev, 5743): Eighty-one year old Harry Mordecai Freedman, the Russian born son of Barnett Freedman and Beila Henah and husband of Rebecca Ginsberg who served as a rabbi in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States while establishing a reputation as a great Hebrew scholar passed away today in Melbourne.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/freedman-harry-mordecai-12510

1983: “Baby” the David Shire musical opened on Broadway today at the Ethel Barrymore Family.

1983:The Anatomy Lessonby Philip Roth, The Price of Power by Seymour M. Hersh and The Rosenberg Fileby Ronald Radosh are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review to the best books published in the country during the preceding year.

1985: “Les Misérables” a musical version of the French novel with lyrics and book by Alain Boublil “transferred to the West End’s Palace Theatre” today where it became “the longest-running musical in West End history.

1986: Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" premiered in New York.

1988(25th of Kislev, 5749): The First Day of Chanukah; in the evening, kindle the second light

1988: The five Soviet citizens involved in the hijacking of an Aeroflot plane to Israel on Friday were sent back to the Soviet Union today in two Soviet planes.

1988: Israel's stock market in Tel Aviv was hit by a 24-hour strike by employees today, and share trading was halted. Israeli news reports said the market was expected to reopen today. The strike was called after contract negotiations stalled over who would arbitrate a dispute about seniority benefits, the Haaretz daily said.

1989: Today, The Baltimore Evening Sun published excerpts from the “previously secret diary” of H.L.Mencken in which he “discloses virulent anti-Semitism, racism and pro-Nazi leanings…”

1990: An Israeli military court sentenced 12 Palestinian guerrillas today to 30 years in prison for a foiled seaborne raid in May that prompted Washington to sever its contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israeli forces killed 4 Palestinians and captured 12 in the attempted speedboat raid on beaches near Tel Aviv. The captured men were convicted last month of membership in a terrorist group, illegal possession of arms and attempted murder. The Palestine Liberation Front, a P.L.O. faction led by Abul Abbas, was behind the assault.

1993: Daniel Schorr delivered the eulogy for the late composer Frank Zappa today on NPR.

1993:Talal al-Bakri's living came from selling vegetables in Hebron. His death came from traveling past this neighboring Jewish settlement. Someone in a group of Israelis waving submachine guns here today put a bullet in his head. Five Israelis have been arrested in connection with the case.

1994: Tony Kushner’s "Angels in America-Millennium Approaches" closes after 367 performances.

1995(11th of Kislev, 5756): Seventy-seven year old Jack Rotman, who played at Boston University from 1938-1940 where he was a two-time All-New England selection passed away today.

1995:The confessed assassin of Yitzhak Rabin suggested today that one of the slain Prime Minister's bodyguards had been an accomplice in the shooting. The killer, Yigal Amir, asserted that if he told everything he knew, it "would turn the country upside down." Mr. Amir spoke to reporters before the start of a hearing at the Tel Aviv Magistrate Court, where he was ordered held in custody for four more days. Police officers and the presiding judge, Dan Arbel, cut Mr. Amir off, as they have several times in the past, to prevent him from using the courtroom as a platform for his opinions. Israel Radio did not even carry Mr. Amir's voice in its news roundups today, referring to his statements only as "abusive language."

1996: “Oui” a French comedy costarring Dany Boon as “Wilfried” was released today in France.

1997:"Diary of Anne Frank" opens at Music Box Theater New York City.

1997(5th of Kislev, 5758): Joseph Wolpe passed away. Born in 1915, Wolpe was aSouth African-born American psychotherapist who helped usher in cognitive behavioral therapy during the 1960s; he devised a treatment to help desensitize patients with phobias by exposing them to their fears incrementally. He worked on systematic desensitization with a methodology designed to treat people with extreme anxiety about specific events, situations, things, or people. His approach involved developing a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations, learning relaxation techniques, then associating these situations with relaxation, beginning at the bottom, or least anxiety-provoking, part of the hierarchy. He founded the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy and the Journal of Behavior Therapy.

1998: The Yogi Berra Museum, which would be the site of the 1999 reconciliation meeting between the former Yankee All Star Catcher and Manager and Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, opened today in Little Falls, NJ

1999(25th of Kislev, 5760): Chanukah

1999: Shanghai Jews were permitted to use Ohel Rache Synagogue for Chanukah services.

2000: It was reported today that Vice Presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman is the most enthusiastic supporter for Al Gore to pursue the case in Florida courts that could decide the election most remembered for “hanging chads.”

2001: The United States froze the financial assets of organizations allegedly linked to Hamas, the group that claimed responsibility recent deadly suicide attacks in Israel.

2001: Today’s search of the Home Land Foundation’s offices by the government led to a lawsuit with prosecutors claiming that the Judith Miller had queried the Islamic charity in such a way that it made the members aware of the planned searches.

2002(29th of Kislev, 5763): Fifth day of Chnaukah

2002:President Bush met with Jewish leaders in the Roosevelt Room. Jay Lefkowitz, an observant Jew who was chief of the president's Domestic Policy Council, remembered that one participant stood up and said that some 60 years earlier, his father had been part of a delegation of Jewish leaders who sought to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to urge that the U.S. bomb railroad tracks to impede the Nazis' ability to kill Jews in concentration camps. The Jewish leaders never got a meeting, and Roosevelt never took action to thwart Hitler's genocide. He said it would divert resources from the effort to win the war. "Mr. President," the man said to Bush, "I think I can speak for everyone in this room when I say that if you had been president, there would be millions more of us alive today."

2003: “In an unusual alliance, 32 prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders have started lobbying the Bush administration and Congress to intervene more actively in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pressing the peace plan known as the ''road map.''

2003: “Israeli officials have concluded that the Islamic movement Hamas has suspended its suicide bombing campaign in recent months, a senior Israeli military officer said today, citing that as one reason Israel has not suffered any deadly bombings in the past two months.”

2004: After only a week on the Job, Victor Bailovsky lost his job as Science and Technology Minister when his party left the governing coalition.

 

2004: Avraham Poraz completed his term as Minister of Internal Affairs.

 

2004: “Christmas at Water’s Edge” co-starring Tom Bosley was released today in the United States.

2004: Eliezer Sandberg completed his term as Minister of Energy and Water Resources.

 

2004: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ousted Avraham Poraz from his position as Interior Minister. Poraz was a member of the Shinui party.  When Shinui voted against Sharon’s budget, he removed all members of the party from his government.

2005: During his talk SPORT show today Charles Wolf described Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist who had been killed by an Israeli military bulldozer, as "scum." Ofcom would later rule this comment to be in breach of the "Generally Accepted Standards" section of the Broadcasting Code and stated it was "seriously ill-judged".

 

2005(4th of Kislev, 5766): Eighty-eight year old “German born Israeli woodcut artist and art collector” Jacob Otto Pins passed away today.

 

2005: Opening session of the Conservative movement’s biennial convention in Boston, MA where leaders will be unveiling a more a liberal and aggressive outreach program.

2005: In an interview with Time Magazine, movie director Steven Spielberg said his new film "Munich," the story of Israel's revenge for the killing of its athletes by Palestinian guerrillas at the 1972 Olympics, is "a prayer for peace."  The man who brought the world “Schindler’s List” and the “Shoah Project” is very proud of the fact that "Munich" doesn't demonize either the Israeli or Palestinian side.  Spielberg says that “the biggest enemy is not the Palestinians or the Israelis. The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence."  Such an evenhanded treatment does not seem to jibe with the facts.  Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic Village, seized the Israeli Olympic team and later murdered them.   

2006(13th of Kislev, 5767): Arthur Shimkin, Grammy Award winning producer of children’s records passed away at the age of 84.  In one of those cultural ironies that are part of Jewish History, Shimkin produced the Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer album sung by Jimmy Durante.

2006: While appearing on his late night television show, comedian Stephen Colbert jokingly took credit for the recent nuptials of two Jewish Democratic congressmen – Brad Sherman of California and Steven Rothman of New Jersey. Sherman married Lisa Kaplan, a State Department anti-Semitism expert.  Rothman found his new wife, Jennifer Beckenstein on JDate.com.  Jewish love- isn’t it grand?

2006: The Hebrew Free Burial Association (HFBA) “launched a Russian edition of their website to further reach out to members of that community.  The HFBA was established in 1888 as a free burial society for Jews living on the Lower East Side.  As Jews moved into other communities, the association widened its service area and today it is the largest burial society outside of the state of Israel.

2006: Dennis Prager continued to defend his contention that Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress should be allowed to take the oath of office using a Koran because “the act undermines American Civilization” 

2007: Michael Korda appeared at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Michael Korda has written the first major single-volume biography of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, exploring a great general and an important president—a man who won the war and kept the peace. Korda’s previous books include Charmed Lives: A Family Romance, Queenie,Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Heroand Journey to a Revolution: A Personal Memoir and History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

2007: The Center for Jewish History presents a special screening of “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation”, Brazil's Official Selection for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

2007: The Jewish Aggies, a student group at Texas A&M, lit the largest menorah in the state of Texas.

2008: Final night of the 2008 Oud Festival sponsored by Confederation House.

2008: At the Chabad House in Iowa City a genuine Simchah – the Brit Milah of the son of Avremel & Chaya Blesofsky

 

2008: The Labor Party is scheduled to hold its primary which was postponed after computerized voting systems malfunctioned in several locales around the country on December 2.

2008: A Kassam rocket landed near Sderot, causing no casualties or damage.

 

2009: “1943, A pause during the Holocaust” a film based on Angelo Donati’s rescue of 2,500 Jews trapped in Nice was “shown for the first

http://www.filmsdocumentaires.com/films/949-1943-a-pause-in-the-holocaust

 

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival features a matinee presentation of A Matter of Size (Sipur Gadol).

 

2009: At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA, Friday Night Services mark the start of the Third Season of Musical Shabbat.

 

2009: Police arrested a man from Baka al-Gharbiya for orchestrating an extorition attempt aimed at McDonald's of Israel.

 

2010:Shalshelet’s 4th International Festival at Congregation Ansche Chesed, New York City.

 

2010: “Gruber’s Journey,” “The Debt,” “Mary Lou” and “Phovidilia” are scheduled to be shown tonight at the 21stWashington Jewish Film Festival.

 

2010: Gabe Finn was called to the Torah as a Bar Mitzvah at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA.

 

2010: The 12th Jerusalem Film Festival opened at the Jerusalem Cinematheque

 

2010:Jerry Herman was among the five 2010 Kennedy Center Honorees who were feted at tonight's gala in Washington, D.C.

 

2010: In “'Candlelight': 2010's Hanukkah anthem” Monica Hesse traces the rise of the Maccebeats

The field of Chanukah music was  wide “open for the harmonizing Maccabeats, whose YouTube video of "Candlelight" (jauntily sung to the tune of Taio Cruz's "Dynamite") reached nearly 1 million views in less than eight days.

How a 14-Man A Cappella Group from Yeshiva University Created the Hanukkah Anthem of 2010:

Step 1: Flip your latkes in the air (sometimes)

"The whole message of Yeshiva University is that you can be an Orthodox Jew and participate in secular society," says Immanuel Shalev, who wrote the song's lyrics. The group had already covered Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," replacing the lyrics with Hebrew scripture. When Shalev found himself listening to Cruz singing "I throw my hands up in the air sometimes" and mentally replacing them with "I flip my latkes in the air sometimes, singing ay-oh, spin the dreidel," he knew he was onto something.

Step 2: Be resourceful

Uri Westrich, a medical student and Yeshiva grad, had made a video for the Maccabeats before - a rendition of "One Day" that reached a modestly successful 100,000 hits. The group asked him if he could direct their new idea. "I said, 'Let's add a reenactment! And let's add a Hanukkah party!'" He recruited three beefy friends to play the Greeks who battled the ancient Maccabees and rustled up some greenery for the Greeks' laurel wreaths.

"We basically wanted to hit our target audience of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York," Westrich says - the people who normally hired the Maccabeats for live performances. (From the Maccabeats Web site: "Having the Maccabeats is the perfect way to energize and enhance your Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Sheva Brachot, or simcha of any kind.")

Step 3: Achieve local, then national, fame

After the song was uploaded, Shalev was in the library when he noticed that everyone around him seemed to be whistling the song. He went to grab a slice of pizza, and the cashier congratulated him.

The video was widely blogged online, hitting influential ones like BoingBoing.net. The Maccabeats were invited on CBS's "Early Show," and the video appeared on "Today." The chief rabbi of London phoned to see about a possible video collaboration. They heard from Jay Leno's people, but that's still up in the air.

Meanwhile, "Every four minutes, I'm getting another request," says Maccabeat director and singer Julian Horowitz. "They keep asking, 'When are you going to be in Israel on tour,' or 'When are you going to be in London?" says Horowitz, pointing out that the group won't be going anywhere but to final exams. "It's like they think we're the Rolling Stones."

Step 4: Win your elders' respect

"Last night, we opened up for Matisyahu, you know, the first celebrity Orthodox reggae artist," Shalev says. The Maccabeats are all fans, so this was a huge honor.

And although the Maccabeats were supposed to be just the opening act, "It was obvious," Shalev says modestly, "that the crowd was very, very excited about us."

2011: “The Kissinger Saga: Walter and Henry Kissinger, Two Brothers From Feurth,” is among the films scheduled to shown on the second day of the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2011: The Temple Sinai Sisterhood Chanukah Bazaar is scheduled to take place a New Orleans’ largest Reform congregation.

2011: Soccer player Camille Levin, a graduate of the Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School in Irvine, CA set up the winning goal scored by her teammate which finally led to Stanford University winning the NCAA College Cup.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/04/2011/camille-levin

2011: “A commemorative plaque to Władysław  Szpilman in Polish and English was unveiled at 223 Niepodległości Avenue in Warsaw in the presence of his wife, Halina (Grzecznarowski) Szpilman, son Andrzej and Wilm Hosenfeld's daughter Jorinde Krejci-Hosenfeld

2011: As a sign of the vibrancy of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community Diane Handler and Robert Becker are scheduled to host Temple Judah’s first annual adult congregational cocktail party.

2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth and the Transformation of American Sports” by Mark Ribowsky, “Balzac’s Omeltte” by Anka Mulstein (the great-great-granddaughter of James de Rothschild) and “MetaMaus” by Art Spiegelman as well as three children’s books about Chanukah: “The Golem’s Latkes” by Eric A. Kimmel, “Chanukah Lights” by Michael J. Rosen and “The Story of Hanukkah” by David Adler.

2011:  The epicenter of an earthquake felt across northern Israel today was in the Hula and Sea of Galilee (Kinneret) area

2011: Israel’s decision to release frozen public funds to the Palestinians last week came after Germany insisted it did so as a condition for the completion of the sale of a submarine, a German newspaper reported today.

2011: A commemorative plaque to pianist and Holocaust survivor  Władysław Szpilman in Polish and English was unveiled at 223 Niepodległości Avenue in Warsaw in the presence of his wife, Halina (Grzecznarowski) Szpilman, son Andrzej and Wilm Hosenfeld's daughter Jorinde

2012: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to honor Baron David de Rothschild at its 87th Annual Benefit Dinner.

2012: Professor Jonathan Sarna is scheduled to discuss “When General Grant Expelled the Jews with Jonathan Karp, Executive Director, American Jewish Historical Society at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. (A book and an evening not to be missed)

2012: Rabbi Bruce Aft of Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to lead a discussion of “A Century Catholic-Jewish Relations” under the auspices of the JCCNV.

2012(20thof Kislev): For Chabad Chasidim “the 20th of Kislev is like the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Just as the two days of Rosh Hashanah are considered a single “long day” (יומא אריכתא ) so the 19th and 20th of Kislev are considered a single long day marking the redemption of the Alter Rebbe and a turning point in the history of Chassidut. The 19th of Kislev was the day on which the Alter Rebbe was released from prison and acquitted of the charges against him. But, what happened on the 20th of Kislev? Historically, after the Alter Rebbe was released, he was taken to S. Peterburg to the house of a wealthy local Jew. It seemed all good and well, but that house was the house of one of the greatest mitnagdim, those who opposed the Chassidic movement and were responsible for the Alter Rebbe’s incarceration in the first place. And so, the Alter Rebbe had to stay with this Jew and his family for a few hours until he left his house on the 20th of Kislev. (From the teachings of Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh)

2012: “Insular and Torn, Straight From Hasidic Brooklyn” published today provides a review of ‘My Name Is Asher Lev’ playing at the Westside Theatre.

2012: French police toda announced that they had arrested a man and a woman in connection with the Toulouse shootings in March, in which Mohammed Merah, a French-Algerian Islamist, killed a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school, several days after gunning down four French paratroopers in two separate attacks.

2012: Tzipi Livni, the head of the Hatnua (The Movement) party, today lambasted the government for its handling of the fallout from the Palestinians’ successful UN status-upgrade gambit, saying that its apparently punitive decision to construct thousands of housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, including in the controversial E1 corridor between the capital and the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, was detrimental to Israel’s security interests.

2013: In Coralville, Iowa, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its annual Chanukah Party.

 

2013(30th of Kislev, 5774): Ninety-two year old Lila Perl, “the award-winning children’s book Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story” passed away today.

http://www.slj.com/2013/12/industry-news/lila-perl-childrens-book-author-dies-at-92/#_

 

2013: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to sponsor Light Up the Night: Community Menorah Lighting at Mosaic District

 

2013: “The Art of Spiegelman” and “Through the Eye of a Needle,” a film about Holocuast survivor and artist Nisenthal Krinitz is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Hezbollah accused Israel of assassinating Hasan al-Laqis “a top operative” and“one of the main commanders of its rocket division.  Hezbollah did not say how it had eliminated Suunis who are upset with its involvement in the Syrian Civil War or other Moslem groups with which it is at odds.

 

2013: A group of more than 20 Christian leaders from Norway will be coming to the Knesset today to ask for forgiveness for the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians that began in their capital.

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Norwegian-group-coming-to-Knesset-to-apologize-for-Oslo-Accords-333876

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/books/review/isabels-war-by-lila-perl.html?ref=review

 

2013: NGO Monitor will be awarded the prestigious Begin Prize, "For the organization's efforts exposing the political agenda and ideological bias of humanitarian organizations that use the discourse of human rights to discredit Israel and to undermine its position among the nations of the world." Founded in 2002 by Professor Gerald Steinberg and the Wechsler Family Foundation, NGO Monitor is an independent research institute based in Jerusalem and the primary source of expertise on activities and funding of political non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict

 

2013: Today Warner Bros. revealed that Israeli actress Gal Gadot was cast in the role of Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

2013: In “Degenerate Hart and the Jewish Grandmother” published today Walter Laqueur described the events that led up to the discovery of an art collection that belonged to Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, “one of four dealers commissioned by the Nazis to sell their looted art abroad…

2014: “Three FREE masterclass conversations for everyone interested in comedy: The Joys of Podcasting with Helen Zaltzman (Answer Me This) and Stuart Goldsmith (The Comedian’s Comedian) Understanding the Industry with Steve Bennett (Chortle) and a top comedy agent Comedy Formats: TV, Theatre and Social Media with Dan Patterson (Mock The Week) are scheduled to take place at the UK Jewish Comedy Festival

2014: Today marks the 70thanniversary of 1,361 Jews of the Kasztner transport release from Bergen Belsen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAb71ZqswDA&feature=youtu.be

 

http://www.killingkasztner.com/

 

2014: The Discovery Channel is scheduled to broadcast “Biblical Mysteries Explained” which will examine “new scientific theories that support the extraordinary tale of Exodus.”

 

2014: “After only a two-month hiatus from politics, former interior minister Gideon Sa’ar is reportedly considering running against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the Likud party leadership next month, party sources said today.”

 

2014: “Over 80 people were treated for respiratory problems on both sides of the Israel-Jordan border this morning, amid warnings of an ecological disaster following a major oil spill overnight that flooded the highway leading into Eilat.” (As reported by Avi Lewis)

2015(22nd of Kislev, 5776): Seventy-five year old “long-term MK Yossi Sarid” passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/journalist-and-former-meretz-minister-yossi-sarid-dies-at-75/

 

2015: In Olney, MD, Shaare Tefila is scheduled it annual “Taste of Chanukah.”

 

2015: In Cedar Rapids, Shir Yehuda will lead Temple Judah in a “Musical Shabbat.”

2016(2nd of Kislev, 5777): Ninety-two year old Jacob “Jack” Rudin, the New York City born son of the former May Cohen and Samuel Rudin, who was a Bronze Star winning WW II veteran, real estate developer and member of Congregation Sheartih Israel passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/nyregion/jack-rudin-patriarch-of-family-of-new-york-developers-dies-at-92.html'

 

 

2016: Israeli-born composer and musician Eyal Vilner is scheduled to return “to Eldridge Street with his swinging sixteen-piece band which will perform Vilner’s new compositions, original versions of jazz classics and music from the Big Band’s new project “Sacred Swinging Sounds!”

 

2016: The New York Times features books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses and Liberation of Joan Rivers by Leslie Bennetts, The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History by Chris Smith, Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means by Michael Krasny, The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel by Steven Fine, Moses: A Human Life by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg and Jerusalem: 1000-1400 Every People Under Heaven edited by Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holocomb

 

2016: “Holy Zoo” and “Forever Pure” are scheduled to be shown at the 10th Annual Other Israel Film Festival.

2017: “LA folk singer Cindy Paley will perform with Issac Sadigursky on accordion, Miamon Miller on violin, Zinovy Goro on clarinet, and guest artist from Poland Menachem Mirski are scheduled to perform this evening at Valley Beth Shalom.

2017: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present a lecture by historian Jeremy Adelman on “Pariahs and Prophets: How Outsiders Help Insiders Think About the Wordl.”

2017:Global Jewish singer, superstar Yaakov Shwekey is playing live for one night only in London tonight as Mizrachi UK launch their “Israel 70 programme”

2017: Rabbi David Wolpe is scheduled to present the first session of “Lessons on Lust and Love From the Bible: Torah As A Dating and Relationship Manuel” at the Streicker Center.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Deborah Pessin whose works included History of the Jews In America,one of the first Jewish history books I ever read, continues today.

2018(26th of Kislev, 5779): Second Day of Chanukah

2018(26th of Kislev, 5779): Ninety-six year old Selma Wynberg one of the last two survivors of the Sobibor uprising passed away today. (As reported by Katharine Q. Seelye)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/obituaries/selma-engel-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

 

2018: The Temple Emanuel Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Jewish Lives, Jewish Legacies” during eight biographers discuss the lives of several prominent Jews including Rabbi Akiva – Sage of The Talmud; Barry W. Holtz, Professor of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; Barbra Streisand who redefined Beauty, Femininity and Power;Neal Gabler, award-winning journalist and historian; David Ben-Gurion – Father of Modern Israel; Anita Shapira, winner of the Israel Prize for History; Louis D. Brandeis – American Prophet; Jeffrey Rosen, President & CEO of the National Constitution Center; Emma Goldman for whom Revolution was a Way of Life; Vivian Gornick, celebrated critic and essayist; Hank Greenberg, America’s leading Jewish athlete; Mark Kurlansky, award-winning author of 32 works of fiction and nonfiction; Peggy Guggenheim;Francine Prose, award-winning author of 20 novels; Yitzhak Rabin – Soldier, Leader, Statesman and Itamar Rabinovich, Rabin’s ambassador in Washington and president of the Israel Institute

2018: Thousands of women are expected to take to the streets today to protest government inaction in addressing violence against women; cities including Tel Aviv, Haifa, Be'er Sheva and Jerusalem and many companies and organizations pledge support to campaign. (YNET)

2018: The Yiddish Book Center is scheduled to host Gerri Chanel in an “author talk” in which she talks about “Saving Mona Lisa.”

http://support.yiddishbookcenter.org/site/Calendar?id=7777&view=Detail

 

2019: In New Orleans, The Hillel at Tulane University, of which the author of this blog was once President, is scheduled to hold its board meeting.  (“History is what the people writing the history say it is.” Anonymous):

2019: In San Francisco, at Green Apple Books, Jewish author Michael Franks is scheduled to discuss his new novel What is Missing.

2019: In Oakland, CA, Temple Sinai is scheduled to present “Teaching Israel on Campus: the Cal Experience” during which “UC Berkeley professor Ron Hassner discusses Israel, Zionism and anti-Semitism at U.S. colleges, with a focus on his campus.”

2019: The American Sephardi Association, the World Jewish Congress and JIMENA are scheduled to co-host “Jewish Refugee Commemoration at the United Nations,” “Israel’s official day to commemorate Jewish refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.”

2019: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a “Toast the Term” celebration.

2019: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present “Rebecca Traister on the Power of Women’s Anger.”

2020: In Manhattan, the Marlene Myerson JCC is scheduled to host a second day of the Other Israel Film Festival which will featuring a “Shabbat Night Dinner program with a screening of My Dearest Enemy followed by a Q and A.

2020: Based on information made public yesterday, as of today “Israel is now due to receive two shipments of two million doses each, which are expected to arrive either by the end of December or the start of January.

2020: the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and the Jaxson Magazine are scheduled to co-host a celebration of  the contributions of Jacksonville’s Jewish community and its connections to renowned businessman and national philanthropist Julius Rosenwald through a screening of Aviv Kempner’s documentary film “Rosenwald.”

2020: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present online the start of its Burstein Scholar-in-Residence weekend with Robert Putnam.

2020: The Contemporary Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a talk about Levi Strauss’ journey to the West, his role in founding a new Jewish community and his philanthropy, by Lynn Downey, author of a 2016 book about Strauss.

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host a Chanukah Drive By Event For Adults with Rabbi Yaron, Rabbi Feivel, and Cantorial Soloist Abbie Strauss.

2020: In Columbus, OH, the Tifereth Israel Congregation is scheduled to complete its study of How to Read the Jewish Bible.

 

 

 

This Day, December 5, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 5

63 BCE: Cicero read the last of his Catiline Orations which exposed Cataline’s conspiracy to overthrow the government of Rome. There is no record of how Cataline felt about Jews, but Cicero said that Judaism was a barbarous superstition whose adherents were born to be slaves. 

220 (22nd of Kislev, 3981): On the secular calendar Rabbi Judah Hanasior Judah the Patriarch passed away.  Born in Eretz Israel in 138 (three years after the last rebellion against Rome) Judah, as the Nasi and head of the Sanhedrin, was both the religious and political leader of the Jewish community.    His greatest claim to fame was his role as the compiler of the Mishna. The Mishna is a compilation of Oral Law which would serve as the basis for both the Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud. The Mishnah is divided into six "orders": Zeraim - Seeds, Mo'ed - Festivals, Nashim - Women, Nezikim - Damages, Kedushim - Holy Matters, Taharot - Purity. There are a total of 63 "tractates." It was compiled in Hebrew and intended to be memorized. It served and still serves as a code for regulation of all Jewish life. Some of his more famous sayings include: “Be as punctilious in observing a light as a weighty commandment, for your do not know their relative reward.”  “Contemplate three things and you will avoid transgressions:  above you (in Heaven) is an eye that sees, an ear that hears and all your deeds are faithfully recorded.”  And the favorite of all those who teach, “I have learned much from teachers, more from my colleagues, but most from pupils.” 

663: Fourth Council of Toledo takes place. Among the other things the council adopted stringent measures that should be used against baptized Jews who had relapsed into their former faith.

1349:  During the Black Death Riots 500 Jews were massacred at Nuremberg.

1443: Birthdate of Pope Julius II, the prelate who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel.  Julius entrusted his health to a Jewish physician named Samuel Sarfatti.  “More importantly for Jews at large, the pope’s mind-set…did not include attacking Jews.  Benevolent neglect was indeed welcome.”

1484: Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and leads to one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history. Innocent VIII seemed to have a penchant for Inquisitions since he was successfully in getting the King of Portugal to establish one aimed at the Jews and Marranos who had fled Spain.  Those caught suffered long imprisonment or death by fire.

1496: King Manuel expelled the Jews from Portugal Manuel of Portugal befriended the Jews during his first year of reign, but his desire to unite the Iberian Peninsula through marriage to the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella changed all that. Four years after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, he ordered them expelled from Portugal within 11 months.

1497: King Manuel I proclaimed an Edict which demanded the Jews convert to Catholicism or leave the country. However, fearing most Jews would leave rather than convert, the Crown closed the ports, thus halting any potential Jewish sea escape.

1590: Niccolò Sfondrati was elected Pope and as Gregory XIV followed the comparatively benevolent policies of his predecessor Sixtus V including “allowing Jews to settle in the Papal States.

1633: In Bohemia, an order was issued “to the head of the administrative of the castle of Reichenberg: “The Bassewi Jews, who have the privilege to direct their business affairs in your town without any hindrance and a copy of whose privilege is in your possession, shall be supported and protected in the best way and shall have any support that they require to ensure their freedom.” (The Bassewi Jews refers to the family or followers of the “Prague banker and merchant Jacob Bassewi” who “was the first Jew in the former Austria to achieve the status of nobility.)

1678: Josel (Joseph) Witzenhausen and Joseph Athias defied warnings from powerful secular and religious leaders and today began printing their version of “a Judaeo-German edition of the TaNaCh.”

1755(1stof Kislev, 5516): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1757: “In Berlin, the head rabbi delivered a patriotic sermon of thanksgiving: following the victory of “the glorious King of Prussia over the united and far superior forces of the Austrians in Silesia.”

1707:The first informal meeting of the modern Society of Antiquaries, whose first Jewish member may have been naturalist Emanuel Mendes da Costa occurred today at the Bear Tavern on The Strand

1768(25thof Kislev, 5529): Chanukah

1776(24thof Kislev, 5537): For the first time the Chanukah candle is kindled in the newly independent United States.

1776:Phi Beta Kappa, the first and most prestigious American scholastic fraternity was founded at William & Mary College. Some of the Jewish members of the honor society include Bernard Baruch, Felix Frankfurter, Walter Lippmann, Jonas Salk, Daniel Boorstin, Betty Friedan, Henry Kissinger, Arlen Specter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Gloria Steinman, Robert Rubin, Nadine Strossen, Joseph Lieberman, Ben Bernanke, Eliot Spitzer and Daniel Pearl.

1779(26thof Chanukah, 5540): Second Day of Chanukah observed as General George Washington is establishing winter quarters for the Continental Army at Morristown, NJ.

1782: Birthdate of Martin Van Buren, eighth President of the United States, who intervened in the so-called Damascus Affair, seeking to use the good office of the Presidency to protect the lives and well-being of a group of Syrian Jews who had been falsely accused in another round of the “blood libel.”

1792: William Moultrie began his second term as Governor of South Carolina. Moultrie may have been the first Governor to attend the consecration of a synagogue.  In 1794, he was present for the consecration of the new synagogue housing Beth Elohim in Charleston, SC.

1792: Samuel Raphael married Charlotte Levy at the Great Synagogue today.

1792: In New York City, Leah Nathan and Joseph Naphtali Hart best birth to Esther Hart, the wife of Alexander Marks with whom she had fourteen children.

1792: Moses Jacobs, “a self-described bachelor” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.

1795(23rdof Kislev, 5556): Parashat Vayeshev

1795: In Manhattan, PhiladelphianativeLeah Thérèse Nathan Hart  and Bavarian born Jacob Naphtali Hart gave birth Esther “Hetty” Hart who became Esther Marks after she Alexander Marks in 1816 after which she bore him ten children.

1797: In Darmstadt, Germany, Sara Haas and Alexander ben Moses Billstein gave birth to Baruch Sender Billstein, the husband of “Beilie Wertheim” with whom he had eleven children.

1798(27thof Kislev, 5559): Third Day of Chanukah observed on the same day that the Peasants’ War, which was part of the French Revolutionary wars came to an end.

1799: In Frankfurt am Main, Gutle Schott and Moses Yantoff Oppenheim gave birth to “Sebastian Oppenheim,” the husband of Henriette Strauss with whom he had eight children

1805: Today, “was proclaimed a day of general thanksgiving for Trafalgar” during which  “All the Churches and Chapels were crowded, all distinctions of sects were done away and Christian and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, all united in the expression of one feeling of piety and gratitude to the Almighty.” “The Chief Rabbi, Solomon Hirschell, and the Haham (spiritual leader of the Sephardim), Raphael Meldola, jointly prepared “The Order of Service and Special Prayer of the Hebrew Thanksgiving”, recited in all London synagogues.  Hirschell, whose normal vehicle was Yiddish, preached a commemorative sermon at the Great Synagogue that was subsequently translated into English and printed; Meldola delivered one at the Sephardi synagogue, Bevis Marks.”

1807: In London, Matilda de Metz and Levy Salomons gave birth to Esther Salomons.

1809(27thof Kislev, 5570): Third Day of Chanukah.

1819: Joshua Poland married Esther Isaacs at the Great Synagogue today.

1824: Jacob Mandelbaum, a native of “Sachsen-Weimar” and Bella Epstein gave birth to their sixth and youngest child Vogel Mandelbaum today.

1820: In the UK, Emma Lyon and Abraham Henry gave birth to Julia Henry.

1825(25thof Kislev, 5586): Chanukah observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams

1828(29thof Kislev, 5589): Fifth Day of Chanukah celebrated for the last time during the presidency of John Q. Adams, who “like his father supported the rebuilding of Judea as an independent nation

1831: Forty-eight year old Samuel Ottenheimer, married his second wife Amalie Wimpfheimer today.

1832: Birthdate of Hamburg native Ernst Jacob Oppert, the merchant who traveled to Hong Kong in 1851, founded a business in Shanghai and traveled to Korea before returning to Hamburg, the hometown of his brother Jules Opert.

1834: In Binau, Germany, Sarah and Manassa Sheuerman gave birth to Rose Sheuerman who became Rose Adler when she married Leopoled Adler with who she had eight children.

1844: Birthdate of Penrose Felisher, who upon passing away in 1931 would be buried at Mt. Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia.

1832: Birthdate of Hamburg native Ernst Jacob Oppert, a German merchant who “went Hong Kong in 1851…founded a business in Shanghai…and traveled through Korea” in the 1860’s.

1839: In Charleston, SC, Jacob I. Moses of Columbus, GA, married Rinah Ottolengui, the daughter of Abraham Ottolengui.

1849(20thof Kislev, 5610): Baruch ben Judah Lob Lindau the native of Hanover who gained fame as a German mathematician passed away today in Berlin.

1850: Birthdate of Bernhard Baron, the Russian born husband of Rachel Baron and the father of Louis Baron.

1854: Solomon and Jane Green were married today at the Great Synagogue.

1855(25thof Kislev, 5615): First Day of Chanukah observed as pro and anti-slavery forces clash in what became known as Bloody Kansas

1859: Birthdate of Solomon Lazarus Lee, who gained fame as Sir Sidney Lee, the graduate of Balliol College, Oxford where he majored in modern history and rose to be the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography.

1860: Herman W. Hellman who arrived with his brother Isias in Los Angeles in 1859, today left the “forwarding and commission business of General Banning” and went to work in the “book and stationary business.”

1861: The Grand Jury of Monmouth County returned a bill of indictment charging a man named Radski with the murder of a German Jew named Sigismund Fellner.

1861: Birthdate of Benjamin J. Kohlman who was interred at the Springhill Avenue Temple Cemetery in Mobile when passed away.

1861: A detachment of Union troops reportedly under the command Gabriel Netter, a French born Jew who had settled in Kentucky, seized a railroad bridge at Whippoorwill, KY that was held by Confederate forces and burned it.

1862: Four days after he had passed away, 55 year old Solomon Joseph, the husband of Priscilla Samuel with whom he had had five children, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1868: “La Périchole an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach” was first seen outside of France when it was performed today in Brussels.

1868: Isaac Phillips and his second wife Miriam Trimble Phillips gave birth to Naphtali Taylor Phillips a lawyer he held various political offices, e.g.: he was member of the New York state legislature, served on the judiciary and other committees and as a member of the Joint Statutory Revision Commission of that body (1900); and deputy comptroller of the city of New York (from 1902). He also was a trustee of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and of the New York Historical Society. He served as treasurer of the Jewish Historical Society and has contributed several papers to its publications. For fifteen years he was clerk of Congregation Shearith Israel. In 1892 Phillips married Rosalie Solomons, daughter of Adolphus S. Solomons. Mrs. Phillips was an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

1869: In Memphis, TN, Sarah and Jacques Gaisman gave birth to multi-talented inventor Henry Jacques Gaisman, whose patented safety razor made him a wealthy man and who married his former nurse, Catherine “Kitty” Gaisman when he was eighty years old

1871: In Sulzburg, Sara and Baruch Dukas gave birth to Julius Dukas, brother of Moritz, Charlotte and Eduard Dukas.

1871: Birthdate of Pittsburgh, PA, native Louis J. Affelder, the U. Pittsburgh educated civil engineer, “assistant division manager of the American Bridge Co, civic leader and husband of Estelle May Affelder with whom he had one son and two daughters.

1874(26thof Kislev, 5635): Parashat Vayeshev; Second Day of Chanukah

1874(26thof Kislev, 5635): Thirty-one year old Edudora H. Hart, the Charleston, SC born daughter of Hetty Maria Gomez and Hyman Hart and the wife of Gratz Nathan with whom she had two children, Constance and Frank, passed away today in New York.

1875: An interview of the three men waiting to be hung for the murder of Abraham Weissburg, a Jewish peddler, was published today.

1875: It was reported today that an English missionary named Dr. Stern appeared before the Jews of Yemen claiming “that he was the bearer of happy tidings.”  The Yemini Jews accepted him as a co-religionist until he attempted to convince them that Messiah was the founder of the Christianity at which point they told him to leave their community.  The missionary complained to the Sultan who told the Jews “Listen ye Jehuds, you are a miserable people.  You pray in your synagogues that Allah may send you the Messiah and now when the good tiding is brought to you that he has come long ago, you ridicule the report as you have ridiculed and slandered our nebbi (prophet). In punishment for your conduct you shall pay double the head tax this year.” [The nebbi refers to Mohammed] This episode an unnamed Jewish teach to proclaim that God had ordered him to gather all the Jews and lead them Jerusalem.  Large numbers of Jews across Arabia flocked to his leadership and viewed him as the Messiah promised in the TaNaCh.  At the same, Yemen was conquered by Turkey and this unnamed Messiah gave up his leadership role rather than face the Ottomans.

1875(7thof Kislev, 5636): Abram Kurtz, William Lasser, William Meyers, Abram Dietz and Aaron Dietz were among the 278 people who perished in the Brooklyn Theatre Fire.

1875: Birthdate of Chicago native Edwin Frank Mandel, the chairman of the family business – Mandel Brothers Department Store – and philanthropist who donated untold millions to Michael Reese Hospital.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2755.html

1877: In Kensington, London, Florence Justina Cohen and Abraham de Mattos Mocatta gave birth to Effie Bertha Mocatta.

1878: In Boston, founding of the Hebrew Women’s Sewing Society which was “affiliated with the Federation of Jewish Charities.

1880: It was reported today that the library of the late Baron James De Rothschild of Paris will soon be sold at auction.

1880: It was reported today that Trubner & Co has just published Early Hebrew Life: A Study in Sociology by John Fenton

1881: It is reported today that Russian Jews are excited by the prospect of Count Schovaloff replace General Ignatieff as Minister of the Interior given the former’s enlightened attitude towards deal with the Jewish population.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9402E4D91730E433A25756C0A9649D94609FD7CF

1882(24thof Kislev, 5643): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1882: It was reported today that “five soldiers of a regiment of dragoons…have been condemned to 15 years at hard labor in the mines…for taking part in riots against the Jews.”

1882: A warrant procured by Bernard Jaworower of the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society for the arrest of Hahal and Abraham Bronstein, two Jewish immigrants from Russia living at Ward’s Island was given to the Harlem Police so they could take them into custody.

1884: “Virchow and Herr Stoecker” published today described the electoral contest between liberal democrat Rudolf Virchow, the renowned pathologist and “the Jew baiting Court Chaplain Adolph Stoecker” in which Virchow appears to have won thanks to the support of the Socialists.

1884: Mother Mandelbaum, the noted “receiver of stolen goods” and her son Julius arrived in Montreal tonight where they are staying with a Jewish family that used to live in Brooklyn.

1884: Customers at Kaplan’s Coffee House identified the man who shot himself in the park last night as Jacob Asch a native of Posen who came to the United States 20 years ago where he went into the millinery business, married, had four children and moved to Chicago. He had come back to New York in what proved to be a futile attempt to improve his fortune; a failure that apparently led to his death.

1887: Reverend E. D. Simons of New Bloomfield, NJ, is scheduled to read a paper today entitled “Why the Jews Crucified Christ”

1888(1stof Tevet, 5649): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh day of Chanukah

1888: Birthdate of Berezino, Russia native Joseph George Cohen who in 1891 came to New York City where he earned a Ph.D. from NYU and became the director of the graduate division of Brooklyn College.

1889: The Hebrew Free School Association held its annual meeting today at the house of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association

1889: It was reported today that Mayor Hugh Grant will preside at the official opening of the upcoming Hebrew Educational Fair in New York City.

1890: In Vienna, Anton Lang and the former Pauline Schlesinger, a Jew who had convert to Roman Catholicism gave birth to director Fritz Lang whose trouble with the Nazis stemmed as much from his art as did the fact that under the Nuremberg Laws he was Jewish.

1890: Plans were published today for the upcoming meeting of The Hebrew Free School Association in Manhattan.

1890: In Birmingham, “Polish Jewish immigrant leatherworker Abraham Bomberg and his wife gave birth to Painter David Garshen Bomberg, one of the “White Chapel Boys” who received assistance from “The Jewish Educational Aid Society which enabled him to go to the Slade 1911-13, winning the Tonks Prize for a drawing of fellow student Isaac Rosenberg and who in the 1920’s lived in Palestine where he worked for the Zionists and furthered his painting career

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/david-bomberg

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/the-whitechapel-boys

1892: Birthdate of Al Boasberg, the native of Buffalo career who began his career doing vaudeville with Jack Benny before pursuing a career writing scripts for films, the most of which might have been the Marx Brothers, “A Night at the Opera.”

1892: Jacob Gerber arrived back in Omaha, Nebraska after having spent the last 18 months in Siberian Exile to which he had been condemned when he returned to Russia to help his family leave the Czar’s domain.

1892: The secret documents that had been presented in camera at the libel trial of Hermann Ahlwardt which showed the 520 of the 939 Loewe rifles tested required repairs were read in open court today.

1892: Pasot Hermann Ahlwardt, an avowed anti-Semite, who is “on trial for slandering Herr Loewe, the Hebrew small arms manufacturer” was elected to Germany's Reichstag.

1893(26thof Kislev, 5654): Second Day of Chanukah observed for the first time under President Grover Cleveland.

1894: The Young Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s League of the Montefiore Home held its first annual reception in the recital chamber of the Music Hall. The League’s purpose is to aid in raising funds for the Montefiore Home.

1894: “An enthusiastic and appreciative audience” representing some “of the best elements” of Jewish society attended the fundraiser hosted by the Monte Relief Society tonight at the Lexington Avenue Opera House.

1894: In New Orleans, LA, today’s session of the convention of American Hebrew Congregations (Reform) a group of rabbis led by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, the President of the Hebrew Union College protested the opening speech by Leo Levi Galveston in which he asserted that “reformed Judaism” was “endangering the very edifice of the Israelite faith.”

1895: Birthdate of David-Zvi Pinkas, the native of Sopron who was active in Zionist youth groups before making Aliyah in 1925 which led him to a political career that included service in the First Knesset and as the first Minister of Transport.

1895: In La Jolla, CA, Esther and Morris Starrels gave birth to HUC and University of Cincinnati graduate Solomon Elihu Starrels, the first rabbi to lead Congregation B’nai Jershurun in Lincoln, Nebraska  and the husband of Gertrude Starrels.

1895: Hermann Ahlwardt, a member of the Reichstag who is about to commence a speaking tour in the United States said that he stands “on the grounds of racial, not religious anti-Semitism” and the he is “striving to unite the working people and the artisans against the Jews” who “achieve nothing through their own honest efforts.”

1895: Dr. S. Solis Cohen of Philadelphia is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Judaism a Living Force,” the second in a series of talks sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association followed by a performance of the Amateur Philharmonic Orchestra.

1896: Oscar Altman and Rose Wachtel became engaged according to information she later included in her breach of promise suit filed against Altman.

1897: Birthdate of Gerhard Scholem, the German born Israeli-Jewish philosopher and author who gained fame as Gershom Scholem who served as the  firs t Professor Of Jewish Mysticism at Hebrew University where he pursued his ground-breaking academic study of the Kabbalah.

1896: Birthdate of Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori who was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology, in 1947, which was shared with her husband, Dr. Carl F. Cori, and Dr. B.A. Houssay of Argentina. Austrian born biochemist.

1898: “Gen. Porter and the Dreyfus Case” published today contains Henri Rocherfort’s accusation that General Horace Porter, the United States Ambassador “recently said England had financed the Dreyfus syndicate with a view of dividing and weakening France” followed by Porter’s response that “that the statement was a fabrication, pure and simple.”

1900: Today Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy signed a treaty providing that their navies would work together in the event of an attack on either nation by France or Russia which was yet another of the interlocking treaties that led to WW I, the disaster for so many European Jews that led to that even greater disaster, the Shoah.

1901: In Chicago, Illinois, Elias and Flora Disney, gave birth to father of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck – Walt Disney whom some have accused of being an anti-Semite despite the fact that he “donated regularly to Jewish charities and “was named 1955 Man of the Year by the B’nai B’rith Chapter in Beverly Hills.”

1902: The Convention of the National Council of Jewish Women continued for a fourth day at the Eutaw Place Synagogue in Baltimore, MD.

1902: In Miskolc, Hungary,  Kálmán Pressburger, estate manager, and his second wife, Kätherina (née Wichs gave birth to Imre József Pressburger who gained fame as movie director Emeric Pressburger who won his only Oscar in 1942,for Best Writing for the original story of The Forty-Ninth Parallel.

1903(16thof Kislev, 5664): Parashat Vayhislach

1903: It was reported today that in Russia “no new rules have been issued in connection with admission of Americans or other Jews” and that “visas are still declined to Jews of all nationalities in accordance of long-standing policy.”

1903: Leopold Greenberg and Herzl hold consultations about the line of activity to be pursued in England. Herzl has the impression that the British government is withdrawing the East African offer. Greenberg is to press once more for Sinai and El-Arish.

1904(27thof Kislev, 5665): Third Day of Chanukah observed for the first time in the UK under the leadership of Prime Minister Sir Henry Bannerman, the successor to Arthur Balfour of Balfour Declaration fame.

1905: Representative Goldfogle of New York introduced a resolution in the United States House of Representatives condemning the massacre of the Jews of Russia, expressing the sorrow of the House over these killing and asking the President to intervene with the Russian government.

1905: “In Perth Amboy, NJ, “at a meeting at Temple Shaarey Tefiloh, fifteen hundred friends of the victims of the Russian massacres became so wrought up by the addresses made that they threw watches and jewelry into the contribution basket when relief funds were asked for.”

1905: It was reported today that Louis Marshall told those attending a mass memorial service for the Jewish victims of Russian violence that “how in 685 communities within the Russian pale, 25,000 human beings had been trampled into the soil on which for five centuries their ancestors had dwelt, and 100,000 unfortunates had been maimed, disfigured and disgraced.

1905: It was reported today that in addition to all of the memorial services that had been held in synagogues in New York, the actor Jacob P. Adler spoke to those attending the Grand Theatre about the plight of Russian Jews.

1905: Mr. Simon Wolfe, the Jewish communal leader, sent a letter today to the National Committee working to relieve the suffering of the Russian Jews from Carl Schurz in which the famous German born American reformer wrote, “Let me congratulate you on the word you are doing for the Jews in Russia.  Nothing in modern times has been more terrible than their situation and to save them a fight has to be carried on not only against the barbarism of the Russian government, but, what is far worse, the barbarism of the populace.”

1905: “Camden Hebrews Memorial Service” published today described the service held the Sons of Israel Synagogue at 8th and Sycamore Streets to honor the Jews who had been murdered the Odessa Pogrom.

1905: It was reported today that the Sons of Israel in Camden, NJ has raised over $700 to be sent to the Jews in Russia who have suffered from a wave of pogroms.

1905: In “Wiznitz, Austria-Hungary (present-day Vyzhnytsia, Ukraine),” “Josefa (née Fraenkel) and Markus Preminger” gave birth to producer/director Otto Preminger whose credits include “Luara” and the film adaptation of Leon Uris’ best-selling novel, Exodus.

https://www.biography.com/people/otto-preminger-9446387

1906: Birthdate of New York City native and CCNY graduate Harry Louis Levy, the holder of a doctora from Columbia, the classical scholar who served dean of Students at Hunter College and Vice Chanceller of City University in New Yorlk

1907(29th of Kislev, 5668): Fifth Day of Chanuakah

1907: “Aaron and Esther (Enteen) Rabinowitz” gave birth to Brooklyn trained attorney and Democratic Party activist Samuel G. Rabinor.

1907: As part of a determined effort to have the public see the Department of Commerce and Labor as an entity that can improve “commercial operations” in the United States, Oscar Straus, the recently appointed Secretary of that department and the first Jew to hold a cabinet post is scheduled to host a meeting today in Washington “of representatives of the various Boards of Trade, Chambers of Commerce and other commercial organizations.”

1908: Birthdate of Estelle Strossman, the wife of Brooklyn native Samuel L. Multer and the mother of Rhode Island basketball star Barry Multer.

1908: Birthdate of”Shobha Magdolna Friedmann Nehru, a Hungarian Jew who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, married into India’s leading political family.” (As reported by Ellen Barry)

1909: Birthdate of New York native Harold Joseph Huberman who gained fame as Harold Huber the NYU graduate and began his career on Broadway with an appearance in “A Farewell to Arms” in 1930.

1909: Many of New York City’s most prominent Jewish leaders took part in a memorial meeting this afternoon in honor of the Rabbi Joseph Mayer Asher, Professor in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and rabbi of the Orach Chaim Synagogue, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 37 on November 9. It was held under the auspices of the Jewish Community of New York City in the auditorium of the Hebrew Charities Building, at Second Avenue and Twenty-First Street.

1910: In New York City, “Russian Jewish immigrants, Henry and Rebecca (née Rosoff) Polonsky gave birth to Abraham L Polonsky, an American born writer and director, whose political views led to him being blacklisted following World War II.  After being “rehabilitated” he made one of his most famous works, “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here.”

1911(14thof Kislev, 5672): Eighty year old Leopold Seligman, seventh of the eight Seligman brothers and co-founder of the Anglo-Californian bank and “who with his brother Isaac” headed “the well-known banking firm in London of Seligman Brothers” passed away today in the English capital city.

1911:Birthdate of Polish pianistWładysław Szpilman.  He worked as pianist for Polish radio in Warsaw until 1939.  He was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto where continued playing while helping to smuggle weapons into the ghetto.  When the rest of his family was sent to Treblinka, Szpilman escaped.  Eventually he was captured by the Germans.  However, thanks to Wilm Hoseneld, a Wermacht Captain who had become disillusioned with the Nazis, Szpilman survived the war. His autobiography became the source for the script of the 2002 film entitled “The Pianist.”

1911: Forty-six year old Russian born painter and portrait artist Valentin Alexandrovich Serov passed away. For a display of his work including his self-portrait seehttp://www.tanais.info/art/en/serov.html

1912(25thof Kislev, 5673): Chanukah

1912(25thof Kislev, 5673): Forty year old Hoboken, NJ philanthropist A.E. Solomon passed away today at Jacksonville, FL.

1912: In Warsaw, “David Grobsmith, a shoe designer, and Lonia Grobsmith née Babicz, a corsetiere” gave birth to Kaila Grobsmith, who gained famed as Hunter College graduate and author Kate Simon who married Robert Simon after the death of Stanley Goldman.

1912: Two days after he had passed away, 70 year old Sigmund Pollitzer, the husband of Rebecca Pollitzer with whom he had had four children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1912: Today, “Rabbi Schanfarber addressed the Jews of Michigan City” today “and “urged the formation of Sabbath School.

1912: The ninth convention of the Rivers and Harbors Congress which Jacob A. Cantor is attending as a delegate from New York continued for a second day in Washington, D.C.

1912: Birthdate of Senetta Punfud, the native of Fürth, Germany who gained married Giroa Yoseftal and gained fame as Israeli political leader Senetta Yoseftal, a founder of Kibbutz Galed and Knesset Minster.

1913: According to a report published in “La America” after the sisterhood’s old Neighborhood House “became inadequate” the facility was moved to Orchard Street.

1914: “War Hits Zionism, Says Zangwill” published today provides the views of the Israel Zangwill of the war on the Jewish people.  Among other things he believed “that the present war will for some years make it impossible to have German, English, Austrian and Russian Jews meet on a common basis, that the establishment of a national home in Palestine will not solve the problems of discrimination faced by most Jews and that at this time he will work to have Lord Gray, the British Foreign Secretary, pressure the Russians to improve the conditions of Russian Jewry.

1915: “A new Jewish theological seminary which is to be called the Rabbinical College that has been established by the Yeshibath Etz Chaim and the Rabbi Isaac Elchana Seminary” for the purpose of training Orthodox rabbis located at 9 and 11 Montgomery Streets” is scheduled to be formally dedicated this morning in New York City.

1915(28thof Kislev, 5676): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1915: A hoped for 5,000 volunteers were scheduled to take part in Zion Flag Day which was supported by numerous organizations including David Wolfsohn Zion Club in Manhattan, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in the Bronx and the Young Judean Club in Brooklyn

1915: The New York Chapter of Hadassah is scheduled to host a Chanukah celebraton this eveing at the Hotel Majestic to raise money for the Emergency Fund providing aid to the suffering Jews of Palestine which will feature “a program of Hebrew and Yiddish Songs” and “a dramatic reading by Miss Jennie Mannheimer of Cincinnati.

1915: As previously decided by the Executive Committee of the Federation of American Zionists, Flag Day is scheduled to be celebrated today.

1915: It was reported today that in Russia “it is not feasible to replace coal with timber, which is abundant in the Russian forests, because the timber trade is exclusively in the hands of the Jews and they have been decimated by the most cruel pogroms or expelled from the west and the northwest which is the great forest land of Russia. (Given a choice between anti-Semitism or winning the war, it looks like the Czar preferred the former to the latter.)

1915: “Four hundred members of New York’s police force headed by Commissioner Arthur Woods attended the annual service in memory of their departed brothers of the Jewish faith at Temple Emanu-El where they were greeted by Chaplain Blums, heard music from the police band and the temple choir and listened to an address by Rabbi Joseph Silverman on “Our Duty to the City.’”

1915: “At the opening session of the seventh annual convention of the Federation of Jewish Farmers of America held in the auditorium of the Education Alliance Building” tonight “Jacob H. Schiff predicted that after the war there will be a tide of immigration of European Jews to” the United States “because of the persecutions they are undergoing in Russia and Poland” and “plans must be made to accommodate these people in” rural areas because the cities are already overcrowded with immigrants.

1915: Among those listed today as having made contributions to the American Jewish Relief Committee to provide funds for those living in the war zones include $104 from the Fargo, North Dakota, Association of Jewish Charities, $200 from the Calgary, Canada Jewish Relief Fund, $1,000 from the Des Moines, Iowa Jewish Community and $100 from the Jewish Conference of Minneapolis, MN.

1916: Birthdate of Hilary Koprowski the Polish-born Jewish virologist and immunologist, and inventor of the world's first effective live polio vaccine. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1916: Twenty-four year old University of Pennsylvania attorney, Louis E. Levinthal, the Philadelphia born son of Bernhard and Minna (Kleinberg) Levinthal who became a member of the National Executive Committee of the ZOA and member of the board of trustee of JPS married Lenore Chodoff today.

1917: As Imperial forces battled their way to Jerusalem, the advanced guard of the 53rd (Welsh) Division also known as Mott’s Detachment moved three miles north of Hebron under the cover of darkness.

 

1917: At a time “when the Turks under German control are deporting Jews wholesale from Palestine,” The Frankfurter Zeitung published an account supplied by Count Ernst Graf zu Reventlow “of a secret anti-Semitic movement which is collecting funds for a violent German campaign against Jews” which is “to open directly after peace is concluded.” (Reventlow was an anti-Semite who joined the Nazis)

1917: The Jewish Ministers’ Association of American which was organized in March and is led by President Aaron Yudelowitz of Boston held the opening session of its first annual convention in New York City.

1917: Rabbi Joel Blau of Rochester, NY delivered an address on “Israel After War” at the meeting of the Menorah Society in which he declared that “Jewish freedom can mean only one thing: not merely freedom everywhere, but a free Israel in its own land, Palestine.”

1917: The convention of the Association of American Jewish Rabbis that has been meeting at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association adjourned today after reaffirming its previously adopted motion express thanks to the British government for the promulgation of the Balfour Declaration.

1918: Lord Curzon chaired a meeting of the Cabinet Eastern Committee attended by General Jan Smuts, Lord Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, General Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, T. E. Lawrence and representatives of the Foreign Office, the India Office, the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Treasury at which the status of Palestine was discussed. (Editor’s Note – This list of attendees should prove that the issue of the future of Palestine was one of major concern to the British as they prepared to deal with the post-war world.)

1919(13th of Kislev, 5680):  Clara S. Kraus, the wife of Louis Kraus and mother of Muriel Kraus passed away today in Chicago where she was a member of Temple Sholom.

1919: Mortimer L. Schiff, Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Jewish Welfare Board was among the passengers on board the SS Mauretania that set sail for Great Britain today. Schiff was accompanied by George W. Perkins, Chairman of the Finance Committee of the War Work Council of the YMCA.  The trip which representative of kind of inter-religious harmony unique to the United States, was the first step in assessing how the funds collected by these two organizations could best be used to alleviate the suffering in post-war Europe.

1919: A delegation of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Mrs. Joseph Fels, Louis Robinson and Bernard Flexner set sail from New York for London where they will meeting with leaders of other Zionist organizations, including the Zionist Political Committee.

1919: The Turkish Minister of War issues a decree releasing all Jews (as well as Greeks and Armenians) from obligation in the military.

1920: “Captain Anthony de Rothschild unveiled the War Memorial in the churchyard of All Saints Church at Wing, Buckinghamshire honoring his brother” “Evelyn who died of combat injuries suffered at the Battle of Mughar Ridge”  “and his Wing comrades killed in World War I.”

1921(4thof Kislev, 5682): Eighty-nine year old Austrian feminist Ottilie Bonday, the daughter of Johanna and Dr. Aloys Isidor Jeitteles passed away in Munich.

1922: At the Conference of Lusanne, Russia pursued its goal to control the Dardanelles which has had a long running effect on the Middle East, by demanded “the closure of the straits, in peace and war, to the warships and aircraft of all nations except Turkey.

1922: In London, Major Harry Louis Nathan, 1st Baron Nathan and Eleanor Joan Clara Nathan gave birth to Captain Roger Carol Michael Nathan, 2nd Baron Nathan

1922: Birthdate of Lois Ruth Mell, who would become known as Casey Ribicoff, the wife Abraham Ribiccoff a great liberal Democrat and decent man who served as U.S. Senator from Connecticut and Secretary of HEW.

1922(15th of Kislev, 5683): Benjamin Levinsky was shot and killed this morning “by William Lipshitz while entering a Broadway loft building where he was employed as a cutter for the Levinson Brothers.

1923: American Jews absorbed the warning reported yesterday that Chaim Weizmann said “a wave of anti-Semitism sweeping over Eastern Europe is endangering the lives of eight million Jews.”

1924: In Baltimore, MD, “the former Florence Decker, an amateur painter” and her husband Gustave gave birth “comic-book artist” Samuel Joseph Glanzman. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

1925 After 319 performances on Broadway, the curtain came down on “Louis XIV” featuring the music of Sigmund Romberg.

1925(18th of Kislev, 5686): Yehuda Leib Levin, oldest of the Hebrew poets in Russsia, known for more than half a century under his pen name ‘Jahalel,’” passed away today in Kiev.  Born in Minsk in 1844, Levin studied Talmud, worked as a teacher before serving as a treasurer for local flour and sugar mills. The first collection of his poetry was published in 1871 under the title Sifte Raananim.”  In 1877, “Kishron Massech” his poem “devoted to a description of the social conditions of Russian Jews” was published.  In a case of Jew meets Jew, Levin translated Disraeli’s Tancred into Hebrew.

1926: Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin," debuted.  Eisenstein was a famed Russian director whose father was a Jewish architect.  As a “child of the Russian Revolution,” Eisenstein did not profess a belief in any religion.

1927: In the Czech Republic, Ernst Löw the Czech born son of Karl Löw and Rosa Löw and his wife Rosa / Růžena Rosalie Löw gave birth to Herbert Löw,

1928: “According to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch sent today from Warsaw “an anti-Jewish boycott has been started in Upper Silesia threatening 6,000 Jewish peddlers with economic ruin.” (Editor’s note – so much for the myth that the treatment of the Jews by the Poles during the Holocaust was because “the Germans made them do it.”

1928: At the opening meeting of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, Dr. S. Parkes Cadman said “that he considered himself radio minister to Jews and Gentiles as the committee in charge of the programs was not confined exclusively to Christians.”

1929: “Jewish Honor Roll Lists 4 Christians” published today reported that the soon to be published “annual Who’s Who issue of the American Hebrew will list four Christians” – Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia; Dr. A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard; Dr. W.H.P. Fuance of Brown and John D. Rockefeller, Jr – “among those listed as having performed outstanding work the Jewish people in 1929…”

1930: The Baltimore Jewish Times reported that Cantor Abba Yosef Weisgal’s Adolph Coblenz was his “first rabbi in Baltimore, MD.”

1930: In Los Angeles, “a jeweler and an actress” gave birth to Frederick Lawrence Kert who gained fame as singer Larry Kert, best known for playing the lead in Leonard Bernstein’s Broadway hit “West Side Story.”

1930: “The Blue Angel,” a tragi-comedy directed by Josef von Sternberg who also co-authored the script with music by Friedrich Hollaender and Franz Waxman was released in the United States today.

1931(25thof Kislev, 5692): Chanukah

1931: The False Madonna, with a screenplay co-authored by Arthur Kober was released today in the United States.

1932(6thof Kislev, 5693): Eighty-one year old German born Cincinnati businessman William Ornstein, an officer with B’nai B’rith passed away today.

1932: Birthdate of Farhat Ezekiel Nadira, a member of a prominent Baghdadi Jewish family who gained fame as Nadria, a leading Indian movie actress.

1932: “German” physicist Albert Einstein was granted a visa.  Einstein was the kind of German who had to use his visa to flee to the United States where he could continue his work and, more importantly, continue to stay alive.  To history he may have been a “German” but to the Germans he was one more candidate for the Final Solution.  As those who studied Jewish History on Monday nights at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids learned, “who writes history often determines what the history is.”

1932: In New York, Jewish immigrants Bella (Rubin) and Lewis Gluchovsky, a plumber gave birth to Sheldon Glashow who developed the Electroweak Theory and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979.

1933:Edith Frank-Holländer and her daughter Margot join their father Otto in Amsterdam. Her sister Anne will leave Germany and join them in February of 1943

1933(17th of Kislev, 5694): Fifty-eight year old Columbia trained physician Alfred Fabian Hess, the husband of the former Sara Strauss, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Strauss with whom he had four children and the developer of the Hess Test which came about while studying “the role of nutrition in scurvy and rickets” passed away today.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/1176548

https://library-archives.cumc.columbia.edu/obit/alfred-fabian-hess

1933: Utah becomes the 36th State to ratify the 21st Amendment marking the end of Prohibition at the federal level in the United States.

http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1991_43_02_00_sprecher.pdf

1934: In response to questions from Labor MP Colonel Josiah C. Wedgwood, “Colonial Secretary Sir Phillip Cunliffe-Lister” told the House of Commons “that between January 1 and November 24, 627 Jews were deported from Palestine” at cost unknown to him at this time.

1935: Birthdate of Auckland, New Zealand native Maxwell Harold “Max” Gimblett the American artist and the husband of Canadian born scholar Barbara Kirsheblatt-Gimblett.

1935: In Kansas City, MO, Edythe and Abe Trillin gave birth to Calvin Trillin, the journalist, humorist novelist and creator of comic verse, best known for his writing about cooking and food.  A few of his famous one-liners include: “Following the Jewish tradition, a dispenser of schmaltz (liquid chicken fat) is kept on the table to give the vampires heartburn if they get through the garlic defense.” “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”

https://www.thenation.com/authors/calvin-trillin/

1936: It was reported today that Dr. Wildhagen, an Aryan who “sits on the bench of the Leipzig Supreme Court” was among those whose books were banned the National Socialist Party because they erroneously identified him as being Jewish.

1937:The Palestine Post reported that Sir Alfred MacMichael, governor of Tanganyika since 1934, had been appointed to replace Sir Arthur Wauchope as the High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief of Palestine and the High Commissioner for Transjordan.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that in Jerusalem Abraham Perlman, 20, was shot dead and two young girls were wounded when they strolled together towards the King David Hotel.

1937: An article published today entitled "A Trio by the Thames" described the opening of a four week season of the Habima Players in London.  By November 19, at the end of the first of the four weeks, the Palestinian troupe had displayed "the Habima Method" in a faultless performance of the Dybbuk.

1938: Following Kristallnacht, 18 year old Helmut Newton fled Germany today with the intention of going to China but ended up in Singapore where he pursued his career as a photographer :first for the Straits Timesand then as a portrait photographer”

http://www.helmutnewton.com/

1938: Birthdate of Stepney native and “footballer” Mark Lazaurs whose career reached a high point “when he scored the final goal for QPR against West Bromwich Albion in the 1967 League Cup Final at Wembley Stadium.”

1938: As the Arab uprising intensified, Abd el Bader Abu Saleh, an Arab leader was shot dead by Arab terrorists.  Snipers attacked Jewish settlements as well as military and police installations in Gaza.  Damage done to the railroad running between Lydda and Tel Aviv was repaired within hours after having been discovered.

1938: The following article entitled “Germany: Ad Nauseam” published today proves the world was not ignorant of the fate of German Jewry.

How 62 prosperous German Jews were forced to run a bloody gantlet at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp was reported last week in the Liberal News Chronicle of London. Two long ranks of Adolf Hitler's personal Schutzstaffel formed the gantlet, down which the 62 Jews were forced to run. "As they approached between the ranks, a hail of blows fell on them," said the News Chronicle. "As they fell, the Jews were beaten further. The orgy lasted half an hour. . . . Twelve of the 62 were dead, with skulls smashed. All the others were unconscious, some with eyes out and faces flattened in. ... Police, unable to bear the cries, turned their backs." This nauseating atrocity, whether or not the honest News Chronicle was correctly informed as to exactly what happened, is undoubtedly the truth in the sense that such atrocities do occur today in many parts of Germany, especially the countryside. The case for antiSemitism, as it appears to strong-stomached Nazis, was taken last week before the bar of German public opinion. It is to be kept there for many weeks, with more than 1,500 major anti-Semitic mass meetings, scheduled throughout Germany, plus countless anti-Semitic lectures—all under the showmanship of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. Dr. Goebbels is sometimes described in print as a barking, brawling, screaming propaganda maniac. Actually the Minister for Propaganda & Public Enlightenment is one of the great political orators of this century. He opens suavely, is restrained most of the time, mellifluent, knows how to whip a point over with the sting of humor, a trifle crude at times—or very crude if Dr. Goebbels is radiorating to the masses. The importance in Dr. Goebbels' mind of the "educative campaign" he was starting last week caused him to summon 2,000 of his picked Nazi stooge-orators to meet him in the Kroll Opera House. "I have never made anti-Semitic propaganda in the outside world," said Orator Goebbels softly. "The dear Jews have done that for themselves. . . . Anti-Semitism is latent among all peoples. The Jews awaken it. ... All we have done is to eliminate Jews from public life in Germany. Let the English say what they will, what we do is our business! . . . After five-and-one-half years of National Socialism, the Jews still have in Germany proportionately four-and-one-half times as much wealth as the Aryans!" From this Dr. Goebbels proceeded to an economic attack on the Jewish Question. According to him, if the average German owned as much as the average German Jew still owns today, the national wealth of the Reich would be not as at present some 200 billion marks but over 900 billion marks. As though for a Liberty Loan Drive, the Ministry for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment rushed to German "educative meetings" Dr. Goebbels' brand new "educational film" prepared weeks ago—Jewry Without The Mask. This was not all, by any means. With typical German thoroughness, Dr. Goebbels forced the Jewish Theatre of Berlin, which wished to remain closed, to re-open last week and ordered a Jewish director Fritz Wisten brought directly from a concentration camp to put on a comedy, The Wind And The Rain—or else. A policeman then noted in his little book and reported back to his Nazi superiors what was also noted by the Associated Press correspondent: The bedraggled Jewish audience "occasionally applauded" this comedy which they were obliged to sit through by Dr. Goebbels so that his 2,000 orators can "truthfully" tell the German people such things as this: "There is right now a Jewish theatre going full blast in Berlin and playing comedies at which the rich Jews laugh and applaud while poor Jews are starving!" Such despotic acts of State are the most effective form of 1938 streamlined propaganda, but Orator Goebbels of course uses many first-rate German orators—as well as his 2,000 regimented speakers. First-rate Orator Dr. Robert Ley, führer of the Labor front of 20 million German workers (who have to take him as their trade union boss whether they like him or not), declared last week: "The resurgence of the German people had three stages: first, unification under a Führer; second, the bursting of the Versailles bonds; third, exposure of the Jewish enemy and the battle with him."* Dr. Ley did not forget that he was addressing, among other German workers, many more or less devout Catholics, all of whom know that Pope Pius XI has taken the strongest stand against anti-Semitism and inferentially against Naziism (TIME, Aug. 14). Attacking His Holiness directly, Labor Front Ley blasphemed: "The Pope is wrong because he recognizes only one Catholic race. But Almighty God was not so papal as the Pope. He made differences among races! There are positive and negative elements in the human race and the negative can exist only as parasites—as witness the Jews!" Herren Hitler, Goebbels, Ley et al. are the remorseless leaders and directors of the Nazi program to liquidate the Jews. But the merciless hand of 185,000 who eagerly carry out their orders to the hilt and then some are the 185,000 bullyboys of the Reich—the Schutzstaffel, the vicious elite of the Nazi storm troops. Their organ, and that of the Gestapo (secret police) is Das Schwarze Korps. This Party paper recently stated it as a fact that international Jewry had declared war on Germany. Last week Das Schwarze Korps, descended from appalling generalities to particulars. It proposed this program to destroy Germany's Jews as follows: first impoverish them; this will end in the Jews' having no other means of livelihood than to descend to criminality; "at this stage of development we should therefore face the hard necessity of exterminating the Jewish underworld in the same fashion in which ... we exterminate criminals generally—by fire and sword. "Because it is necessary, because we no longer hear the world's screeching and because, after all, no power on earth can hinder us, we will now bring the Jewish question to its totalitarian solution," declared Das Schwarze Korps. "The program is clear. "The Jews must be quartered in streets and housing blocks where they will be among themselves and come into touch with Germans as little as possible." No one of the ghettos which would be Stage 1 of the Schtitzstaffel's plan had yet been set up in Germany last week. But the laws to put Jews outside Germany's social and economic life were being promulgated daily. No German Jew may enter any non-Jewish place of entertainment or education. No Jew may conduct any commercial business or service. The professions had not been entirely closed to them. That would come later. Meantime, blustering Reich Master of the Hunt Hermann Göring withdrew all Jewish hunting licenses. *Newshawks who few weeks ago reported that Germany's famed folk song, Heinrich Heine's Lorelei, had been banned because its author was a Jew, discovered that Dr. Ley had nonetheless named his newborn daughter Lore Ley.

1939: German authorities seize Jewish property in Poland. Items that are appropriated include businesses, homes, furniture and other household goods, currency and bank accounts, art, jewelry, and other valuables. Now economically helpless, the Jews have virtually nothing with which to sustain themselves.

1940: British government official Sir John Schuckburgh wrote that "the Jews have no sense of humor and no sense of proportion."

1940: “The Thief of Bagdad” a fantasy produced by Sir Alexander Korda, with contributions by Vincent and Zotlan Korda, the other two siblings of this fascinating trio of Hungarian born Jews was released in the United States today.

1941: “Jewish Army Urged To Win Just Peace” published today described plans for a volunteer force of 200,000 Jews that would be trained in Canada and receive equipment under lend-lease  that was supported by, among others, Colon John H. Patter, the English Commander of the Jewish Legion in World War I who “had long advocated the formation of a Jewish army because he knew it would help win the war and second because he believe that that without such an army there will be no just peace, no any true democracy after the war.”

1941: The Nazis collected 7,000 Jews in the town courtyard at Nowogrodek, Poland. After a night in the court yard, the Jews were selected to the left for work, or to the right for death. Five thousand of the Jews went to the right.

1941: Two days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, “Mr. Bug Goes to Town,” the film that ended the partnership between Max and Dave Fleischer had a limited release.

1942: Four days after his 38th birthday Czech journalist Josef Taussig and his parents – Otto and Frederike, née Federer, Taussig – and “at least five of his other relatives” were shipped to Theresienstadt.

1943: The New York Times reported today that 34 of the Jews arrested by the British during their search for arms at Ramat HaKovesh were released during the last weekend in November, 1943.

1944: In “Bids Jews of U.S. Take Judaism Lead” published today, it was reported that Dr. Ignacy Schwartzbart of the Polish National Council told the American Jewish Conference “the destiny of the Jewish people throughout the world now rests with active and responsible leadership from the American Jews.”

1945(1stof Tevet, 5706): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1945: “1,000 at Hanukah Dinner” published today described a dinner at the Hotel Commodore sponsored by the JNF where each of the attendees have given enough money to purchase one dunam or a quarter of an acre of land in Palestine.

1945: Birthdate of Moshe Katsav, future President of Israel.

1946: “Till The Clouds Roll By” a musical biography of Jerome Kern, produced by Arthur Freed and featuring Dinah Shore was released in the United States today by MGM.

http://emanuellevy.com/review/till-the-clouds-roll-by-9/

1947: Cartoonist and Chairman of Marvel Comics Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) married Joan Clayton Boocock today.

1947: The U.S. State Department announced that no arms will be sent to the Middle East. [This American arms embargo worked to the advantage of the Arabs who had standing, well-armed militaries the best of which was the Arab Legion, the Jordanian Army supplied by the British with equipment and officers.]

1947: “The Jewish Agency announced the call-up of all men and women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five for national service.”  This was part of the Yishuv’s response to the immediate increase in Arab violence following the vote to adopt the UN back partition plan.

1948: “An Act of Murder” based on a novel by Ernst Lothar, an Austrian Jew who escaped the Nazis and a screenplay by Michael Blankfort was released in New York City today.

1948: At its meeting in Tel Aviv, the Knesset publicly declared the Jerusalem was the capital of the new Jewish state. 

1948: First day of Operation Assaf, a campaign by the IDF to secure the western Negev by dislodging the Egyptians who had invaded the area out the outbreak of the war. The first day was a success for the IDF which captured several Egyptian positions without sustaining serious casualties.

1949: “Prime Minister proclaimed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that it was decided to proceed with the release of accounts held by Arab refugees in banks in Israel. Arab states made no such offer of releasing funds of Jewish refugees held in Arab banks in such places as Morocco or Yemen. At the UN Britain joined Canada in urging the Arab states to enter into direct peace negotiations, without any preconditions, with Israel.

1954: Birthdate of music promoter Ruth Polsky,

https://www.commdiginews.com/entertainment/death-and-the-limelight-the-tragedy-of-gurl-nineteen-ruth-polsky-91723/

http://thejewniverse.com/2017/this-jewish-punk-heroine-died-tragically-young/

1956: During the Suez Crisis, Golda Meir addressed the General Assembly. In part of her speech Mrs. Meir compared Israeli treatment of Jews who had been forced to flee from Arab countries with the pitiful conditions under which Arab nations forced the refugees in Gaza to live.  “While Israel ‘fed those babies and cured their diseases, the fedayeen were sent in to throw bombs at children in synagogues and grenades in baby homes.’”

1956: Tonight in front of 15 million viewers, Charles Van Doren, the epitome of WASP New York defeated Herb Stempel, the Brooklyn born CCNY grad on the quiz show “Twenty-One” in what was a totally rigged event that Stempel, out of anger, exposed during that Quiz Show scandal which in those simpler days rocked the nation.

1957: “Sayonara” a film adaption of the novel produced by William Goetz, with music by Franz Waxman and co-starring Red Buttons was released in the United States today Warner Bros.

1957:New York City passed the Fair Housing Practices Law making it the first city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in the housing market. A decade after the Holocaust, it was still legal to keep a people from buying a house because they were Jewish.

1958(23rdof Kislev, 5719): Sixty-five year old Frampol, Russia native Aaron Maiberg who served with the 39th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and “was one of the first settlers of Shechumat Borochov” and who established his home at Idofit passed away today.

1959:  “Operation Petticoat” a comedy with a script co-authored by Stanley Shapiro, co-starring Tony Curtis and music by David Rose was released today in the United States.

1960: Jewish Ministers Cantor Association of America & Canada held its 60thAnniversary Concert at Madison Square Garden.

1962: Comedian Lenny Bruce “was arrested at the legendary Gate of Horn folk club in Chicago.

1962(8thof Kislev, 5723): Thirty-six year old author Edward Lewis Wallant, whose best-known work may have The Pawnbroker which was made into moving film starring Rod Steiger, passed away today.

1963(19thof Kislev, 5724): “New Year of The Chassidim”

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/335659/jewish/19-Kislev-The-New-Year-of-Chassidism.htm

1963(19thof Kislev, 5724): Eighty-five year old Herbert H. Lehman, the former governor of New York passed away today.

https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=erpn-herleh

1963” “Charade” a film based “The Unsuspecting Wife” by the screenwriter Peter Stone, directed and produced by Stanley Donen and co-starring Walter Matthau was released today in the United States.

1965(11thof Kislev, 5726): Fifty-seven Russian born and Columbia trained physician Dr. Sidney Tarachow, the former member of the faculty of Iowa State University and director of the division of psychoanalytic education of the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and clinical professor of psychiatry passed away today.

1965(11th of Kislev, 5726): Joseph Erlanger passed away.  Born in 1874, Erlangerborn was an American physiologist who discovered that fibers within the same nerve cord possess different functions. In 1910 he accepted the chair of physiology at Washington University in St. Louis, which he held until his retirement in 1946. While his department became one of the major research centers in physiology in America, Erlanger continued his work on cardiovascular physiology. During WW I, he carried out research on the problem of shock. In 1921 he shifted his interests to neurophysiology, and began joint work, with colleague Herbert Gasser, on the amplification and recording of nerve action potentials with the cathode ray oscilloscope, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944. 

1967: PoetAllen Ginsberg was arrested protesting Vietnam War

1968: “Jimmy Shine,” a play with music written by Murray Schisgal and starring Dustin Hoffman in the title role opened on Broadway today at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

1969: Four mid-eastern terrorists were arrested thwarting an attack on a plane the London airport

1969: In landmark case involving “Dr. – Patient Confidentiality” Dr. Joseph Lifschutz who had “refused a court order to testify about one his patients” was cited for contempt of court “and sent to the San Mateo Jail.

1969: Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, the mother of the Duke of Edinburgh and the mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II passed away. During World War II, “After the fall of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in September 1943, the German Army occupied Athens, where a minority of Greek Jews had sought refuge. The majority (about 60,000 out of a total population of 75,000) were deported to Nazi concentration camps, where all but 2,000 died. During this period, Princess Andrew hid Jewish widow Rachel Cohen and two of her five children, who sought to evade the Gestapo and deportation to the death camps.[40] Rachel's husband, Haimaki Cohen, had aided King George I of Greece in 1913. In return, King George had offered him any service that he could perform, should Cohen ever need it. Cohen's son remembered this during the Nazi threat, and appealed to Princess Andrew, who with Princess Nicholas was one of only two remaining members of the royal family left in Greece. She honoured the promise and saved the Cohen family.”

1972(29thof Kislev, 5733): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1972: “Five former Gestapo agents received prison terms today of up to five and onehalf years for assisting in the 1942 killings of about 5,000 Jews in Germanoccupied Poland.”

1973: U.S Premiere of director Sidney Lumet’s crime classic “Serpico”  co-produced by Martin Bergman with a script co-written by Norman Wexler and filmed by cinematographer Arthur Ornitz.

1974: “Premier Yitzhak Rabin said today that Israel was prepared to Make farreaching territorial compromises with the Arab nations in return for peace, but he ruled out a return to the borders that existed before the 1967 war.”

1975(1stof Tevet, 5736): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1975(1stof Tevet, 5736): Eighty year old pioneer Zionis and five time member of the Knesset passed away today.

https://jwa.org/people/idelson-beba

1976: “Bound for Glory” a cinema adaption of the autobiography of the same name produced by Harold Leventhal, filmed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler and featuring Bernie Kopell was released in the United States today.

1976(13thof Kislev, 5737): Seventy-three year old Bessie Bassok Warshawsky, the Russian born daughter of  Nathan Bassok, the wife of Samuel Warshawsky  whom she married in 1923 and the mother of Irving Warshawsky passed away today in Lowell, MA after which she buried in the Montefiore-Israel Brotherhood Cemetery in Pelham, N.H.

1977(25thof Kislev, 5738): First Chanukah during the administration of Pres. Jimmy Carter.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's warning that if Israel wanted the previous month's mutual non-aggression pledge to stand, it had better bring a softened negotiating position to the planned Arab-Israeli talks in Cairo.

1977: “Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?” a documentary film narrated by Henry Winkler was released in the United States today.

1977:  In response to the Declaration of Tripoli Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen. The Declaration of Tripoli was part of an Arab attack on Sadat for his visit to Israel and his willingess to recognize the Jewish state.

1979(15th of Kislev, 5740): Sonia Delaunay, one of the foremost painters of her day and one of the last survivors of the Parisian art world before 1914 died today in Paris at the age of 94. (As reported by John Russell)

1982: Rabbi Louis Stein officiated at the marriage of Debra Michele Freedman and Andrew William Sideman at the Westbury Hotel.

1982(19th of Kislev, 5743): Eighty-year old English critic, novelist, and journalist Carly Brahms passed away.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/invisible-ink-no-74-caryl-brahms-and-s-j-simon-2273984.html

1982: Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally and Years of Upheaval by Henry A. Kissinger are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review to the best books published in the country during the preceding year.

1983: For the first time NBC broadcast “Choices of the Heart” starring Melissa Gilbert as a nun who was brutally murdered “by a Salvadoran death squad.”

1986(3rdof Kislev, 5747): Seventy year old Moshe Baram who first served as an MK for Mapai and who served both as Minister of Labor and Minister of Welfare, passed away today.

1984: Beverly Hills Cop an American action comedy film directed by Martin Brest, co-produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and featuring Paul Resier as “Jeffrey” was released in the United States today.

1989: “Mencken Was Pro-Nazi, His Diary Shows” published today described the negative views author and columnist H.L. Mencken had where it came to Jews and Blacks.

1990: Responding to growing fear over a rash of Palestinian knife attacks on Jews, the police broadened surveillance of Arab workers in Israel today with spot checks, searches and a new network of roadblocks along the West Bank.

1991: "Catskills on Broadway" a comedic celebration of a slice of Jewish culture, opens at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City for the first of452 performances.

1991(28thof Kislev, 5752): Eighty-four year old Sir Raphael "Roy" Welensky whose father was a Jew from Lithuania and was “the second and last prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland” passed away today

1993(21st of Kislev, 5754): David Mashrati, a reserve soldier, was shot and killed by a terrorist attempting to board a bus on route 641 at the Holon junction. The Islamic Jihad Shekaki group claimed responsibility for the attack.

1993:Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy by John Gross is among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review to the best books published in the country during the preceding year.

1994(2nd of Tevet, 5755): Jacob Kaplan, the former Grand Rabbi of France, died in his home in Paris today. He was 99 years old. Rabbi Kaplan was known both for his openness to dialogue with the Christian churches of France and for his staunch support of Zionism. He spoke out during World War II against anti-Jewish measures adopted by the collaborationist Vichy Government. Rabbi Kaplan, who was born in Paris on Nov. 7, 1895, was wounded in action during World War I and received the Croix de Guerre. He completed his rabbinical studies after the war and served as a rabbi in Mulhouse in eastern France from 1922-29 and then in Paris. He became the Grand Rabbi of Paris in 1950, and was elected Grand Rabbi of France in 1955, serving as spiritual leader of France's 700,000 Jews until his retirement in 1981.

1994(2nd of Tevet, 5755): 8th day of Chanukah

1994: Outfielder Brian Kowitz “was again drafted by the Minnesota Twins as part of the Rule 5 draft…”

1994(2ndof Tevet, 5755): Eighty-four year old “Academy Award-winning film designer” Harry Horner the father of Oscar winning composer James Horner, scenic designer Christopher Horner and pediatric immunologist Anthony Horner, M.D., passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/08/obituaries/harry-horner-84-designer-of-films-plays-and-operas.html

1995: “Bush v. Vera” a voting rights case in which Edward Blum was one of six plaintiffs “challenging 24 of the State of Texas’ 30 congressional districts as racial gerrymanders” was argued before the Supreme Court Today.

1997: “Dedication of the Hanns Sachs Library at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society “on the 50th anniversary of his death” which “was also the 65thanniversary of his invitation to become” the society’s “first permanent training analyst.”

1999: The New York Times list of the Best Books of 1999 contains the following works about Jewish related subjects or by Jewish authors including Reading the Holocaust by Inga Clendinnen and An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton
by Richard A. Posner.

1999: ABC broadcast “Tuesdays with Morrie” the movie version of Mitch Albom’s book based on “the time he spent with Professor Morrie Schwartz of Brandies University.

2000:In Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum began serving as “Secretary of the Environment of the Federal District” today.

2000: The funeral for Neale D. Katz, who served as “Israel Representative and Director General of the United Israel Appeal and who played a role in the success of Operation Moses is scheduled to be buried in Jerusalem.

2001: A suicide bomber exploded a powerful bomb shortly after 7:30 AM on King David Street in Jerusalem. A number of people waiting at a nearby bus stop were lightly injured. The terrorist was killed in the blast. Police are investigating whether the bomb, packed with nails and shrapnel, went off prematurely. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

2001: A Villager article published today about Grand Street co-ops selling briskly after going market rate noted that Harold “Heshy” Jacob “prided himself on having operated the complexes without increasing carrying charges for nine years.”

2002(30thof Kislev, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

2002: In what would prove to be one of the most destabilizing statement in modern history for the Middle East and the World “The White House…said President Bush has ‘solid’ evidence (that) Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.”

2003:The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington (JHSGW) joins Adas Israel in honoring the memory of synagogue member Arthur Welsh (z'l), an aviation pioneer who flew for the Wright Brothers. The presentation in the Kogod Chapel will feature a rendition of “the relatively unknown story of Arthur Welsh's role as an aviation pioneer, his relationship with the Wright Brothers, and his life as a member of Washington, DC's Jewish community.” Welsh is buried in the synagogue's Alabama Street cemetery in Southeast Washington. The evening’s presentation will also “include a discussion of Welsh's life as a Jewish Washingtonian as well as the milieu of early aviation. Several never-before- seen photographs and mementoes of Welsh's work from the JHSGW archives, including a small black and white photograph depicting Welsh preparing for a two-hour test of the Wright military planes on June 3, 1912, will be on display.”

Welsh became interested in aeronautics after he observed Orville Wright's flights at Ft. Myer, VA, in 1909. In 1910, Orville and Wilbur Wright accepted him into their first flying class, where he worked closely with them, first as a student and, subsequently, as a pilot and instructor at the Wright Flight School in Dayton, OH. Among the people Welsh trained were Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, who later became a five-star general and U.S. Army Air Chief of Staff during WWII. In 1912, the Wrights sent Welsh to the U.S. Army Signal Corps in College Park, MD, to serve as a civilian test pilot for a new plane for the War Department. On June 11, 1912, Welsh, accompanied by Signal Corps Lt. Leighton W. Hazelhurst, was attempting to complete final military tests of the Wright Model C airplane when the airplane buckled under its 450- pound load. Both men were killed instantly, the first-ever fatalities at College Park. The Washington Times, Jewish Forward, and various aviation publications, including Fly and Aero: America's Aviation Weekly, covered Welsh's death.

2004:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the Jews of Oudtshoorn, South Africa, celebrated the 120th anniversary of their town, which was known as the "little Jerusalem of Africa."

2004: The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with commentary by Robert Alter appears on the New York Timeslist of "100 Notable Books" of 2004 and the Washington Post listing of the "best books of 2004."  The Cedar Rapids Gazette had previously published a review praising this volume describing it as a great gift for either Christmas or Chanukah.  Considering the text itself and the nature of the commentary this is another reminder that despite oft repeated reports of the demise of the Jewish people, Am Yisroail Chai.    

2005(4th of Kislev, 5766): Five people were killed and 50 wounded after a suicide attack at a Netanya shopping mall. The five known dead are Eliyah Rozen, 39, of Bat Hefer, Daniel Golani, 45, of Nahariya, Haim Amram, 26, of Netanya, Keinan Tzoami, 20, of Petah Tikva and Alexandra Zarnitzki, 65, of Netanya.  Islamic Jihad proudly took credit for the attack on the northern seaside town.

2005: Frits Phillips, the former head of the Dutch electronics giant Philips, who helped save the lives of hundreds of Jewish workers during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, passed away at the age of 100. During the war years, when Philips supplied electronics to Germany, he secured positions at his factory in the Vught prison camp for as many Jews as possible, delaying their deportation to the Auschwitz death camp. Frits Philips was imprisoned by the Nazis after a strike during the war. He was awarded the Yad Vashem medal by Israel in 1995 for his efforts to save Jewish workers - almost 380 prisoners survived out of 496 who started work. He said he was no hero and that many others had helped to save lives. According to the staff at Yad Vashem, "Frits Philips, in risking his life to save Jews during the Holocaust, showed extraordinary courage in the face of terrible circumstances."

2005: A London production of “Once in a Lifetime” by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman opened at the Royal National Theatre.

2006: Haaretz reported on the development of new flavors and styles of sufganiyot.  The original red jam filling has been replaced by a variety of baked and deep-fried “delicacies including ones filled with Roquefort cheese, chocolate and halva cream.  (Can chocolate chip latkes be far behind?)

2006(14th of Kislev, 5767): Chess grandmaster David Bronstein passed away at the age of 82.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/shattered-illusions-genna-sosonkos-the-rise-and-fall-of-david-bronstein

 

2007: The Maymana dance troupe produces “Adraba” for its seventh Chanukah celebration at Heichal Hatarbut in Rishon Letzion.

2007: Eli Nissman and Ashdod’s municipal cultural organization put on the children’s song festival, “Yeled Pele” (Wonder Child) as part of the Chanukah celebrations in Ashdod.

2007:  Sixty one years after he was buried at a cemetery in southeast Washington, the exhumed remains of Stephen Theodore Norman, the only grandchild of Theodor Herzl will be buried on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem, thus finally joining his famous grandfather in his famous resting place.

2007(25th of Kislev, 5768): First Day of Chanukah

2007: “The Golden Compass,” directed and written by Chris Weitz was released today in the United Kingdom.

2008: At the Ma’ariv service being reciting הכרבל רטםו לט (Dew and rain) for a blessing.  Normally this is done at Ma’ariv on December 4, but when it is leap year on the civil calendar, then the change is made on December 5.  [Editor’s Note: I have not been able to find out why this change is tied to the civil calendar instead of the Jewish calendar.]

2008: Lital Levy, assistant professor of comparative literature at Princeton presents "Israel, Interrupted: When Arabs Write Hebrew and Jews Write Arabic as part of the Friday lunch works-in-progress seminar sponsored by the Princeton University Program in Judaic Studies.

2008: Palestinian rocket fire on the western Negev continued today, with five Kassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip throughout the day. One rocket landed in Sderot, and the other four landed in open areas near the city. No casualties or damage were reported in the attacks. Also today, two mortar shells fired from the northern Gaza Strip landed in the Eshkol region. No casualties or damage were reported.

2008 (8 Kislev 5769): Richard Topus, a pigeon trainer in World War II, passed away at the age of 84.

2008 (8 Kislev 5769): A. Bernard Ackerman, a founding figure in the field of dermatopathology who trained a generation of doctors to recognize skin diseases under the microscope passed away today at his home in Manhattan at the age of 72.

2009: In Cedar Rapids, Saturday morning traditional minyan at Temple Judah is dedicated to Jewish Book Month.

2009(18thof Kislev, 5770): Levi Yitzchak Horowitz, the second Rebbe of the Bostoner Chasidim (Boston Chassidic Sect) passed away today in Israel. According to some sources the Bostoner Chasidim are the first Chassidic organization to have started in the United States as opposed to having here from Europe.

2009: Mark Eliyahu and percussionist/clarinetist Daniel Yaakov Zol will be accompanying Wieder-Magen and the TCJ when they perform at Mishkenot Sha'ananim at 9 p.m.

2009: In Washington, D.C., the 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival includes screenings of “Camera Obscura,” a film about life among a colony of 19thcentury Argentinean Jews and “My Mother’s Courage,” in which the renowned Hungarian Jewish playwright, director and actor George Tabori who passed away in 2007, tells the true story of what happened to his mother Elsa (Pauline Collins), 50 years earlier during the deportation of the Hungarian Jewish community.

2009: Opening of the 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival. The opening gala honors Elliott Gould with 2009 IFF Lifetime Achievement Award; Donald Krim with the 2009 IFF Visionary Award; Paul Schrader with the2009 IFF Achievement in Film Award.

2010: "My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish, and I'm Home for the Holidays!," is scheduled to have its final performance in Charlotte, NC.

2010: Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to presents its “Chanukah Extravaganza!”

2010: After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United is scheduled to have its DC premier at the 21stWashington Jewish Festival.

2010: The LA Times includes a review of Job by Joseph Roth, translated from the German by Ross Benjamin. “Here are the tribulations, the Angela's ashes of Mendel Singer, a God-fearing man, a poor teacher in Russia at the precipice of World War II. You can picture him like a folded crow, his black frock coat flapping as he hurries home to his suffering wife and their four children. The two oldest, who are boys, go off to war—one defects, however, to America, where he becomes wealthy and writes for his family to join him. The third, a daughter, runs off with a Cossack and ends up in an insane asylum. The fourth, Menuchim, is crippled. His mother believes what the rabbi told her, that she must never leave him. When she goes with her husband and daughter to join their son in America, leaving Menuchim wailing on the threshold, she believes her sin has destroyed them. Like the story of Job, Mendel's life is one endless test, with a twinkling possibility for miracles. His god's capriciousness beats like black wings through the novel, driving the characters, scattering their fates. Yes, there is a moral here, but not necessarily the one on the marquee in the biblical tale.”

2010: The Washington Postfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Scorpions:The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman and The Witness House: Nazis and Holocaust Survivors Sharing a Villa During the Nuremberg Trials by Christiane Kohl.

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including They Live by Jonathan Lethem

2010: The New York Times“100 Notable Books of 2010” list includes the following works by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick,  Freedomby Jonathan Franzen, Great House by Nicole Krauss,  The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2010 by Edward Hirsch, The Long Song by Andrea Levy, The Three Weissmanns of Westportby Cathleen Schine, To The End of The Land by David Grossman, Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, Finishing The Hate: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotesby Stephen Sondheim, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic by Michael Scammell  and The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time by  Judith Shulevitz

 

2010: Cuban President Raul Castro celebrated Hanukkah today with Cuba's tiny Jewish community, a heavily symbolic act at a time when his government is holding a Jewish-American subcontractor on suspicion of spying.

 

2010: Shalshelet’s 4th International Festival at Congregation Ansche Chesed, New York City came to an end today.

 

2010(28th of Kislev, 5771): Ninety-one year old “Heda Margolius Kovaly, a Czech writer and translator whose memoir, “Under a Cruel Star,” described her imprisonment by the Nazis during World War II and her persecution by the Communists in the 1950s and became a classic account of life under totalitarianism, died today at her home in Prague.” (As reported by William Grimes)

2010: Evelyn Selig, 64, a Laredo retailer and widow and Irving Greenblum, an 81-year-old investor and retired furniture store owner plan to enjoy a Chanukah party with 50 other co-religionists at the conservative synagogue in Laredo, Texas.

2011: Tony Kushner, the Jewish Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter, and polarizing political voice, is scheduled to be awarded $100,000 for “Creative Citizenship” at The Nation Institute’s Annual Gala in New York. 

 

2011: The Tulane University Hillel Executive Committee is scheduled to meet at the Goldie & Morris Mintz Center for Jewish Life.

 

2011: Today “Kraft announced that Irene Rosenfeld would stay on as chairperson of the $31 billion global snacking company, which will be called Mondelēz International, Inc.”

 

2011: “Through the Eye of the Needle,” “The Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz,” “Letters Home” and Yizkor are four of the films scheduled to be shown today the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

 

2011: Lebanon filed a complaint in the United Nations against Israel today for its retaliation to Katyusha rockets fired into Israel late last month, Lebanese newspaper the Daily Star reported.

2011: Israel's Education Ministry issued an unusual order today forbidding any school trips to take place around the southern Israeli city of Eilat, following warnings against a possible terror attack on the Israel-Egypt border, Channel 10 reported.

"We are working hard to complete the security fence along the Egyptian border," he said. The fence is significant in terms of security in light of the rising instability in the Sinai Peninsula."

 

2011(9th of Kislev, 5772): Muriel Kadoorie, the widow of Lawrence Kadoorie, Baron Kadoorie passed away today.

2011: Today Kraft announced that Irene Rosenfeld would stay on as chairperson of the $31 billion global snacking company, which will be called Mondelēz International, Inc. making her one of the most powerful Jewish businesswomen in the world.

2012(21st of Kislev, 5773): Eighty-four year old Felix Weinberg, who survived the death camps to eventually become Emeritus Profess or Combustion Physics at Imperial College London passed away today.

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/117808/tribute-felix-weinberg/

2012: Dalia Itzik announced she was “taking a break from politics.”

 

2012: Ya’akov Erdi, a member of Kadima, announced he would not be taking part in the upcoming elections.

 

 2012: Professor Bob Moore of the University of Sheffield is scheduled to deliver an address entitled “Integrating Self-Help into the History of Jewish Survival in Western Europe´ at the Weiner Library.  Moore is the author of 'Survivors: Jewish Self-Help and Rescue in Nazi-Occupied Europe'.

 

2012: The Joint Distribution Committee is scheduled to sponsor “Una Noeche: An Inside Look At Cuba’s Jewish Community” at the Maritime Hotel in New York City.

 

2012: Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean & Founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is scheduled to introduce “It’s No Dream: The Life of Theodore Herzl” before it is shown at The Jewish Center on West 86thStreet.

 

2012: United Nations forces based inside Syria to monitor a longtime ceasefire between Syria and Israel will bring in armor to reinforce their security because of a threat posed by an influx of Syrian rebels, the UN peacekeeping chief said.

2012: Police appealed to the public today to help in locating a missing soldier amid fears he may take his own life. Liraz Benbenishti, 20, left his base near Gedera yesterday and police said he was seen on Medinat Hayehudim Street in Herzliya later that day. However, since then he has vanished without a trace.

2012: With polls indicating “Kadima either barely getting into the Knesset or not even passing the threshold” in the upcoming elections Marina Solodkin announced that she would not be a candidate.

2013(2nd of Tevet, 5774): 8thDay of Chanukah

2013(2nd of Tevet, 5774): Eighty-five year old General Danny Matt, the native of Cologne who made Aliyah in 1934 and fought in five wars starting with the War for Independence and climaxing with the Yom Kippur War passed away today

 

2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present a lecture by Dr. Peter Hayes entitled “Antisemitism and Homophobia in Nazi Germany: Commonalities and Differences”  

2013: The Holocaust Education Program & Adult Jewish Education is scheduled to host the opening reception of “Raoul Wallenberg: Modern Day Hero.”

2013: Ohad Meromi is scheduled to present his recent video Worker! Smoker! Actor! (2012), for its debut screening in NYC, followed by a conversation with curator and artist Naomi Lev at the ICI Curatorial Hub.

2013: The Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present “Joy of Israel with Jamie Geller.”

2013: NPR’s Larry Abramson is scheduled to moderate a panel discussion “Discovery and Recovery: Eyewitness Accounts” that looks at the retrieval “of water-logged treasures from Baghdad’s Jewish past.”

2013: Nelson Mandela passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/nelson-mandela-was-close-to-jews-resolutely-loyal-to-palestinians/

 

2013: The Houston Rockets’ Omri Casspi, the first Israeli hoopster to ever play in the NBA, relished the honor of meeting US President Barack Obama today (As reported by Spencer Ho)

 

2013: A wet and cold winter storm hit Israel this morning, bringing welcome rain to much of the country and raising the Sea of Galilee by one centimeter in a matter of hours.

2014: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear at the Music Box in Atlantic City, NJ.

 

2014(13th of Kislev, 5775): Sixty-two year old “culinary historian” Gil Marks passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/books/gil-marks-historian-of-jewish-food-and-culture-dies-at-62.html?hpw&rref&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2014(13th of Kislev, 5775): Ninety-six year American photographer Arthur Leipzig passed away today.

http://www.arthurleipzig.com/

 

 

2014: The UK Jewish Comedy Festival is scheduled to host “Friday Night Supper Club” where attendees “will learn how to improve their joke-telling skills and learn gags they'll be dining out on for months to come.”

 

2014; Gal “Mekel signed a two-year, non-guaranteed contract with the New Orleans Pelicans

2014: “Starting today, when Digital Einstein is introduced, anyone with an Internet connection will be able to share in the letters, papers, postcards, notebooks and diaries that Einstein left scattered in Princeton and in other archives, attics and shoeboxes around the world when he died in 1955.”

 

2014: “Reports indicated today that the Labor Party headed by Isaac Herzog and the Hatnua party led by former justice minister Tzipi Livni were considering running together in the March 2015 elections.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/labor-hatnua-parties-consider-alliance/

 

2014: “Frenchman Mehdi Nemmouche, suspected of killing four people at Brussels’ Jewish Museum in May, was remanded in custody for another three months today, judicial officials said.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/brussels-jewish-museum-suspect-killer-remanded-in-custody/

 

2014: Talya Lavie’s “Zero Motivation” is scheduled to be shown at the Film Forum in New York.

 

2015: In Alexandria, Beth El Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to host “Songs in the Key of Light” an evening of song with Cantor Jason Kaufman, Eric Schnobrick and Leo Morris.

 

2015(23rd of Kislev, 5776): Shabbat Va-yayshev

2015(23rd of Kislev, 5776): Eighty-eight year old literary agent Timothy Seldes passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/books/timothy-seldes-literary-agent-dies-at-88.html

 

2016: “A.K.A. Nadia” and “Nazareth Cinema Lady” are scheduled to be shown at the 10th Annual Other Israel Film Festival.

 

2016: The Center for Jewish History, Forward, American Jewish Historical Society, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Jewish Book Council are scheduled to host “Have I Got a Story for You: More than a Century of Fiction from the Forward,

 

2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “Jewish Voice, “an annual event with readings by prominent Jewish poets and writers.”

 

2016: Today, “Gimlet Media announced” that Arnold Stephen “A.J.” “Jacobs would be the host of Twice Removed, a podcast focused on genealogy.”

2016: “Atlanta Collects” which celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Breman Museum by highlighting diverse pieces from Jewish collectors in and around Atlanta” is scheduled to open today.

2016(5thof Kislev, 5777): Yahrtzeit of Talmudic commentator Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer Edeles (MaHaRSHA) who passed away on the 5th of Kislev, 5392

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111910/jewish/Rabbi-Shmuel-Eliezer-Edeles.htm

http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/history.php?startyear=1550&endyear=1559

2016: The Marcus Foundation, established by Bernard Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot and his wife Billi said today “it would make a $38 million donation to a new Hillel staffing initiatives – Talent Grants.”

2017: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to offer the third part of Yitzhak Lewis’ “Introduction to Gershom Scholem”

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Rufus Learsi whose works included The Jews In America: A Historyone of the first Jewish history books I ever read, continues today.

2017: The USCJ Convention is scheduled to come to an end today in Atlanta.

2018(27th of Kislev, 5779): Third Day of Chanukah

2018: Fifty-six year old Claudia Sheinbaum, “the second daughter of chemist Carlos Scheinbaum Yoselevitz and biologist Annie Pardo Cemo  and a graduate of UNAM began serving as “head of the Government of Mexico City.”

2018: “Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London are scheduled to speak tonight at “this year’s Chanukah in the Square celebrations in London.”

2018:  85thAnniversary of the repeal of prohibition which among other things put an end to Welch’s ill-fated attempt to sell grape juice as “kosher unfermented wine” and provided the Bronfmans, with “a unique marketing opportunity because, unlike most of its American competitors, their Seagram Distilleries had large supplies of aged whiskeys on hand” with which to quench the thirst of those in “the lower 48.”

2018: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Disobedience.”

2018: Beit Avi Chai is scheduled to host a performance of “A First Candle Tale,” “a play inspired by Nathan Alterman’s poem, ‘This Happened in Hanuka’.”

2019: Pianist Yefim Bronfman is scheduled to join the New York Philharmonic in a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4.

2019: In San Francisco, the Herbst Theatre is scheduled to host a performance of Handel’s “Judas Maccabaeus.”

2019: In Berkley, CA, Congregation Beth El is scheduled to host “Israel’s Elections: An Endless Cycle? “during which Koret visiting scholar Tomer Persico and J. editor-in-chief Sue Fishkoff discuss what has shifted in Israeli society/politics, what hasn’t and what the future might hold.”

2019: In New Orleans, “at historic St. Augustine Hight School,” “the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans” is scheduled to host “the Federation's second annual Alex Schoenbaum Jewish Scholarship Fund award ceremony and assembly.”

2019: The Yeshiva University Museum and the American Sephardi Federation are scheduled to host “Elad Kabilio and the MusicTalks ensemble featuring Ariella Edvy” in a celebration of “the music of Yemenite Israeli singers including Ofra Haza, Izhar Cohen and Gali Atari.”

2019: The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host “Reconsidering the Catholic Church and the Holocaust” including a “special film screening followed by discussion.”

Special Film Screening and Discussion

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the last screening of Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story.”

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Anita Hill: Speaking Truth to Power.”

2019: Today “in this year's Pfeffer Family Forum, leading 20th-century political propaganda scholar David Welch, Director of the Center for the Study of Propaganda and War at the University of Kent (England) is scheduled to speak to the power and perils of propaganda throughout history, and why combating hateful rhetoric today is so critical.”

2019: In La Jolla, CA, Congregation Beth El is scheduled to host “Crying Hands: The Deaf Experience under Nazi Oppression.”

2020: This evening The Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Til Kingdom Come
 followed by a Q and A.

202019th of Kislev): On the Jewish calendar, The “New Year” of Chassidism.

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/335659/jewish/19-Kislev-The-New-Year-of-Chassidism.htm

2020: This evening, the San Francisco Yiddish Combo is scheduled to perform a “streaming concert by a group that blends klezmer, jazz, blues, folk and hip-hop.”

2020: Jewish Family and Children’s service is scheduled to present on an “Inclusive Torah Study with Jewish life coordinator Alex Maslow.

2020(19th of Kislev): In one of those calendar quirks, the Hebrew and secular birthdates of Avraham Elimelch ben Yosef coincide making him the same age as they “in the streets and in the Shul.”

2020(19th of Kislev): On the Jewish calendar Yahrtzeit of the “Maggid of Mezrech (1710-1772), the successor of the Baal Shem Tov.”

https://www.aish.com/dijh/Kislev_19.html

 

2020(19th of Kislev, 7801) Parashat Vayishlach; For more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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 DECEMBER 6

1060: Béla I of Hungary is crowned king of Hungary. In 1061 Bela changed the Market Day from the traditional Sunday to Saturday which may have been part of an attempt to remove the Jews from the commercial activity of the kingdom.  Given the anti-Jewish decrees of his immediate successors, there is reason to believe such was the case.

1185: Alfonso I the Conqueror, king of Portugal passed away at the age of 76.  Alfonso’s connection with Jewish history is indirect.  Until he proclaimed himself king, Portugal was part of Spain.  Alfonso’s successful secession came only after bitter fighting between him and the Spanish.  This delayed the attempts by the Spanish monarchs to drive the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula. Also, Portugal offered a haven for Jews and Conversos in 1492.  This haven proved to be short-lived but sometimes any port in a storm is better than no port at all.

1285: Birthdate of King Ferdinand IV of Castile who would earn the enmity of the Dowager Queen for employing a Jew as his treasurer and close advisor.

1352: Pope Clement VI who in 1342 had had a portion of Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem, ("The Wars of the Lord") by Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides) containing “an elaborate survey of astronomy” translated into Latin passed away today.

1424: Don Alfonso V of Aragon grants Barcelona the right to exclude Jews.

1496: Isaac Abravanel completed "Ma'yene ha-Yeshu'ah" (Sources of Salvation)

1570: The Council of Worms issued ordinances “regulating Jewish affairs” today.

1576: “King Stephen Bathori relieved the Jews of Brest from all taxes on account of serious losses sustained by them through fires.”

1672: King John II Casimir of Poland passed away. King John allowed the Jews to continue living in the fortified city of Kamnets where they had taken refuge during Khmelnytsky (Chmielnicki) Uprising. He also granted the Jews of Szydlowiec several privileges including the right to make and sell whiskey.

1675: Seventy-three year old John Lightfoot, the English minister who studied with Hebraist Sir Rowland Cotton “and became the best Hebrew scholar in his nation without speaking to a Jew” passed away today.

1766: Sampson Gideon, the grandson of West India merchant Rowland Gideon and the son of Sampson Gideon, the successful financier who had “ceased all connection with the Portuguese synagogue at Bevis Marks in 1753 but never join the Christian church,” married “the daughter of Chief-justice Sir John Eardley Wilmot” whose surname he assumed so that he could be elevated to a peerage.

1776(25thof Kislev, 5537): As Washington’s army freezes in Pennsylvania having escaped across the Delaware River from the British, first day of Chanukah

1779(27thof Kislev, 5540) Third Day of Chanukah observed on the same a group of Spanish soldiers defeated the Apaches at what is now modern Tucson, AZ.

1785: In Buchau, Germany, Johanna Ullmann and Jacob Dreifus gave birth to Marianne Miriam Dreifus, the wife of Israel Mayer with whom she had seven children.

1786: In Baltimore, MD, Hannah Levy and Eleazar Lyons gave birth to Esther Lyons, the husband of Isaa Lazarus.

1792: In The Hague,King William I of the Netherlands and Wilhelmine of Prussia gave birth to William II who followed in his father’s footsteps when became king of not abrogating the rights of the Jews gained while the French ruled the Netherlands.

1793(3rdof Tevet, 5554): 8th Day of Chanukah observed a the Reign of Terror raged in France.

1794: Newport, RI native Hannah Isaacks and London born Jacob Phillips gave birth Esther Phillips, the wife of Isaac Hendricks with she had six children.

1795(24thof Kislev, 5556): The first Chanukah Candle is kindled for the first time under “The new Constitution of the Year III.”

1797: In Baden Germany, “Judel Loew” and Moses Herz Wimpfheimer gave birth to Amalie Wimpfheimer, the wife of Samuel Ottenheimer and mother of Lazarus Ottenheimer.

1798(28thof Kislev, 5550): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1798: In Bonfeld, Germany, Schoenle Lazarus and Lazarus Ruben gave birth to “Sara Lazarus Ottenheimer” the wife of Lamle Strausburger with whom she had ten children.

1806(25thof Kislev, 5567): Chanukah and Shabbat

1808: Issachar ben Baruch married Sarah bat Ephraim Gumprich today at the Western Synagogue.

1809(28thof Kislev, 5570): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1809: Jacob Henry, the son Joel and Amelia Henry, who had been elected to the North Carolina state legislature despite the state constitution forbidding the “holding of public office by those who denied the "truth of the Protestant religion" or the "divine authority" of the New Testament” “delivered a rousing speech about religious liberty to the General Assembly.

1812: Birthdate of Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman, the Baltimore born American actor and manager. Bateman was the manager of Henry Irving when the British actor gained his greatest success by playing Mathias in “The Bells” a play based on a translation of “The Polish Jew.”

1815: Emperor Frederick William III of Prussia closed the first Reform Temple in Berlin.

1817: In London, Rebecca Levy and Victor Abraham gave birth to Joseph Abraham, the husband of Sara De Youn

1817 (27th of Kislev, 5578): Rabbi Chaim of Tchernovitz, a disciple of the Maggid of Mezritch and of Rabbi Yechiel Michel of Zlotchov passed away on the third day of Chanukah which was also Shabbat Shel Chanukah.  He authored Be'er Mayim Chayim("Well of Living Waters"), a commentary on Torah.

1818: In Hanover, Germany, Gershon Hirsch Treuenfels and Rachel Treuenfels gave birth to Abraham Treuenfels the husband of Bertha Budge.

1820: US President James Monroe re-elected.  In 1850, a U.S. Senate Committee investigated the role played by Chaim Solomon during the American Revolution.  According to a report issued by the committee James Monroe was one of several leaders of the Revolution who received financial assistance from Solomon.  Like the other leaders listed, Monroe did not repay Solomon proving that while some may have talked about “pledging their fortunes” to the cause of liberty, Solomon actually did give his fortune.

1823: In Dessau, Germany, lyric poet Wilhelm Muller and the former Adelheid von Basedow gave birth to German linguist and Oriental scholar Friedrich Max Müller who challenged the claim of Nicolas Notovitch, a Russian Jew, that the Life of Issa” was a legitimate work depicting the life of Jesus (Issa) which had Him leaving the Galilee and studying with Buddhists and Hindus in India before returning to Judea.

1825(26thof Kislev, 5586): Second day Chanukah observed for the first time during the presidency of John Q. Adams, who was technically the commander-chief of Uriah P. Levy.

1827: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi S.C. Peixotto officiated at the marriage of Hyam Cohen and Mrs. Esther Moise.

1828(30thof Kislev, 5589): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams a supporter of the Jews return to Judea.

1832” Amsterdam natives Adelaide and Jacob Cohen – De Solla gave birth to Benjamin De Solla.

1834(4th of Kislev, 5595): Dutch lawyer Jonas Daniel Meyer passed away at the age of 54.  In Amsterdam, the Jonas Daniel Meyer Square was the center of the Jewish religious life.  

1834: Birthdate of Dr. Hermann Senator the medical professor who was a native of Gnesen.

1840: Birthdate of S.H. Friendly, the New York native who moved to California in 1863 before settling in Eugene, Oregon where his success in business led to his being chosen President of the Board of Trade, Mayor and eventually a member of the Board of Regents for the University of Oregon.

1843: Jacob Hyman married Fraces Phillips today at the Great Synagogue.

1844(25thof Kislev, 5605): Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Tyler, the first Vice President to take office after the death of the President.

1849: Simon Hyam married Rebecca de Pass today at the New Synagogue.

1850: Birthdate of Russian native Simon Marcus, the husband of Ellen Albertine Kann.

1852(25thof Kislev, 5613): Chanukah

1852: In Jersey City, Jersey, the committee that had been appointed to make arrangements for the lectures of Mr. Matthew A. Berk on “The Conditions of Jews” decided that they would begin this week.  There will be no charge for admission but a voluntary collection will be taken to support the lectures. In 1846, Berk published The History of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity to Present the Present Time.

1854: Birthdate of Jacob Aaron Cantor, New York attorney and political leader who served in the U.S. Congress for one term from 1913 through 1915.

1854: In Australia, three days after the Eureka Stockade Massacre, Charles Dyte and Henry Harris both of whom are members of the Ballarat Hebrew Congregation took part in drafting “the Eureka Resolution.”

1855(26thof Kislev, 5616) Second Day of Chanukah

1855(26th of Kislev, 5616): Amschel Mayer Rothschild, the second child and eldest son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, passed away. On the death of Mayer Amschel in 1812, Amschel Mayer succeeded as head of the bank at Frankfurt-am-Main, which was the original Rothschild house in the House of Rothschild.

1855: Birthdate of Nina Morais Cohen—the daughter of Sabato Morais, a prominent Orthodox rabbi and a leading exponent of traditional Judaism— who established her own strong voice as an advocate for women's rights within Judaism and American society. Born in Philadelphia where her father served the congregation Mikveh Israel, Nina Morais grew up very involved in her father's work and concerns. As a young woman she published widely on the subject of women's rights and roles in Judaism in both the Jewish and secular press. After her marriage to attorney Emanuel Cohen in 1885, she moved to Minneapolis, where she became a leader in the woman suffrage movement and in the Jewish community. She participated in the 1893 Jewish Women's Congress in Chicago and returned to Minneapolis to found a local section of the newly formed National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) in 1894. She served as section president until 1907. For 13 years she drew upon her extensive Jewish education to lead study sessions for local NCJW members in her home on Saturday afternoons (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)

1856: In Navahrudak, Hrodna Province, Belarus, Tsvi Hirsch Lamport and Esther Lamport gave birth to Nathan Lamport, the husband of Sarah Lamport and the father of Arthur Lamport.

1858: The second session of the 35th United States Congress in which Philadelphian Henry Myer Phillips served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives opened today in Washington, DC.

1858: Birthdate of Ferdinand A. Weil who was buried in Savannah when he passed away.

1859: Rabbi A. Fishcell presented a paper entitled “The History of the Jews in America” at tonight’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting of the New York Historical Society.  He traced their history from the expulsion from Spain in 1492 to their settling in New Amsterdam.  He concluded by reading the letter from George Washington to the Jews of Newport Rhode Island in which he praised the Jews for their patriotism.

1861: Birthdate of Sigmund Berliner, the husband of Paula Berliner with whom he had eight children before passing away in 1919.

1862: In Davenport, IA, the members of Congregation B’nai Israel which had been formed in 1861 accepted and approved a constitution and by-laws.

1863: Eide and Ephraim Leib Moshewitz gave birth to Max Moshewitz.

1864: A meeting was held in Philadelphia “which resulted in the establishment of the first Jewish theological seminary in America. The need of such an institution was strongly felt, as there were numerous synagogues in the country, but few persons capable of filling the rabbinical office. The seminary was established under the joint auspices of the Hebrew Education Society and the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, and was named Maimonides College." The school began operating in 1867 with Isaac Leeser as its provost. The school ceased operations in 1873 due to lack of support and funds.

1864: In Chicago, the former Joseph Brumer and Abram Lipman, “a loan broker” gave birth actress and playwright Clara Lipman, the wife of fellow thespian Louis Mann.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lipman-clara

1870: Birthdate of New York native Rudolph Block, the “editor of the comic supplements of the Hearst newspapers” who under the pen name Bruno Lessings helped to create “The Katzenjammer Kids” and raised two sons Rudolph Jr and Arthur with his wife Verda.

1870: It was reported today that the Hebrew Fair has raised $75,000 so far and the sponsors are sure that they will reach the goal of $100,000. Over 450 items have been raffled off so far including a $200 silver service.  Mrs. Joseph Steiner won a canvas on which Constant Meyer will paint the winner’s portrait.

1871: “In Schweinfurt, Germany, Philipp Salzer and Lina Fuchs gave birth to Gustave Salzer, the husband of Hedwig Gtunbaum.”

1873: According to a report published today there were 73,265 Jews living in the United States in 1870 as compared with 34,412 living in the U.S. in 1860 and 18,871 living in the U.S. in 1850. These figures come from a religious census that reported on the religious preferences of 21,665,062 people living in the United States in 1870 out of a total population of 38,555,983 as tabulated by the U.S. Census Bureau.

1873: In Paris, Alfred and Jeanne Neymarck gave birth to Auschwitz victim Henriette Neymarck who became Henriette Mayer when she married Germain Lucien Mayer.

1874: The annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Association was held today at Metropolitan Hall in New York. The association supports five afternoon and evening schools with 519 students, 375 of whom were boys and 144 were girls.

1874: In Chattanooga, TN, Bernard and Theresa (Ehrman) Stern gave birth to Western Reserve University trained surgeon Walter G. Stern, the assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at the Cleveland College of Physicians and Surgeon and an orthopedic surgeon at the Jewish Orphan Asylum in Cleveland.

1874: Mrs. P.J. Joachimsen was elected President at today’s annual meeting of the Society of the Home for the Aged and Infirm Hebrews located on Lexington Avenue. The number of residence has increased from 300 to 700 in the last year.  The total assets of the society are $18,361.39.  The President expressed the hope that before the lease has expired on the current facility the society will have built a suitable building of its own.

1875: A fund raiser for the benefit of Mount Sinai Hospital is scheduled to be held today at Gilmore’s Garden.

1875: The Hebrew Charity Fair, a fund-raiser for Mt. Sinai Hospital opened tonight at the Hippodrome, the pleasure palace erected by P.T. Barnum in Manhattan.

1875: The sister of Abram and Aaron Dietz identified their burned bodies at the City Morgue today.  The two Jewish men were among the victims of yesterday’s Brooklyn Theatre Fire which claimed the lives of 278 people.

1876(20thof Kislev, 5637):Isaac Elijah ben Samuel Landau who began serving as a rabbi and a dayyan at Wilna in 1868 passed away today.

1876: In London, the former Adelaide Soman and Herman Klein gave birth to composer Manuel Joachim Klein whose “five brothers included Max, a violinist; Charles, a playwright; Herman, a music critic and music teacher; Alfred, an actor; and Philip.

1877: First publication of The Washington Post.  In 1933, The Post would be purchased in a bankruptcy auction by Eugene Meyer, who restored the paper's health and reputation. Philip L. Graham, Meyer's son-in-law, would work his way up to become publisher upon Graham's death in 1959.  After Graham’s death, his widow Katherine would take over the paper and the communication conglomerate that would include Newsweek Magazine the Washington affiliate of CBS.

1877: Birthdate of New York native and surgeon Dr. Henry M. Kalvin, the husband of Pauline Kalvin with whom he had one son who served “as a physician in the Army induction center at Grand Central Station” and “who hobby was capturing wild animals with a lariat.”

1877: Fifty-nine year old German poet and historian Theodore Creizenach, who converted to Christianity in 1854 passed today in Frankfurt.

1878: At 11:30 this morning, a fire broke out in the basement of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York.  The fire was quickly extinguished by the staff.  None of the 50 children in the building at the time were in any danger and little damage was sustained to the structure.

1878(10th of Kislev, 5639): Sixty-four year old Dutch born French economist Louis Jean Königswarter who founded the "Prix Königswarter" (1,500 francs), to be given every three years by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques for the best work on the history of law” passed away today in Paris.

1880: It was reported today that at a meeting hosted by Socialists in New York City where the speakers were all refugees from political oppression in Germany, Carl Welki enumerated a list of grievances including Prince Bismarck’s support of the attacks on the Jews.

1880: Sarah Bernhardt is scheduled to begin performing at the Globe Theatre in Boston, MA.

1880: It was reported today that in Germany, “the Provincial School Commission has recommended the Government to dismiss two teachers for displaying animosity against the Jews.”

1880: “The German Anti-Jewish War” published today described the decision of the Provincial School Commission in Germany to recommend the dismissal of two Jews “for displaying animosity against the Jews.”

1880: In New York, “Max Mansfeld, editor of the Hanover Tageszeitung, delivered a lecture” this evening at Steinway Hall on the modern persecution of the Jews in Germany.”

1881: Today “Diamond broker” Ernest David Leverson married Ada Esther Beddington who gained fame as the author Ada Leverson.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/leverson-ada

1882(25th of Kislev, 5643): Chanukah

1882: Mrs. Abraham Bronstein remained in the custody of the Harlem Police today after having been arrested yesterday.  Her husband, whom the police were still seeking, remained at large.  The Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society had requested the police take the couple into custody because they refused to leave the barracks at Ward’s Island despite the fact that Mr. Bronstein had a job and could have provided for his family without further assistance from the Jewish charity.

1883: Among the organizations receiving funds today to cover expenses for the month of October were The Hebrew Shelter - $2,628. 29 and Ladies’ Deborah - $2,047.14

1884: Rabbi Louis Grossman gave his inaugural sermon at Temple Bethel in Detroit, a congregation he would serve for 14 years.

1884: Mother Mandelbaum, the New York “fence” who has fled to Montreal is trying to reach Germany

1884: Birthdate of Rose Schneiderman who served as New York State Department of Labor Secretary from 1937 through 1944.

1885(28thof Kislev, 5646): Sixty-four year old German physician and political reformer Wolfgang Strassmann passed away.

1885: Twenty-six year old leather decorator Mendel Planko, the Warsaw born son of Benjamin Jacob and Rica (Cantor) Planko, who in 1880 came to the United States where his hobbies included “the study of comparative religion” married Russian born Sarah Ravich with whom he lived in Chicago, Illinois.

1886: Birthdate of Chicago native and member of the Hyde Park High football and basketball teams, Robert S. Harris who played under legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg at U. of Chicago before join the Army in WW I where he served “as captain with the Rainbow Division” and retired as Colonel after WW II.

1887: Sigismund Schloss, the husband of Rebecca Mocatta with who he had three children and the husband of Catherine Elkin with whom he had two children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemtery.”

1888(2ndof Tevet, 5649): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1888: Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs was among the clergymen who met with New York Mayor Hewitt to plan the religious component of next year’s celebration of the Centenary of the Innauguaration of George Washington as President of the United States.

1889: Jacob Adler and Dinah Shtettin gave birth to Celia Feinman Adler “an American Jewish actress known as the ‘first Lady of the Yiddish Theatre.’”

1890(24thof Kislev, 5651): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1890: Birthdate of 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.

1890: Plans for the upcoming performance of “Ein Konigreich um ein Kind” sponsored by the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum were published today.

1890: The New York Times reported that Baron Hirsch is considering a plan to settle Russian Jews in agricultural settlements in Argentina. Hirsch has sent a commission to the South American republic to investigate the feasibility of the plan to which he is reportedly willing to spend $20,000,000 to bring it to a successful conclusion.

1891: In Eisenheim, Bavaria, Karoline and Leopold Scholoss gave birth to Bruno Henry Sloss

1891: Twenty-eight year old Maurice Enriquez, a native of Smyrna and the son of Joseph Enriquez married to Wilma Fuchs, the daughter of Hermann Fuchs and Charlotte Mandel.

1891: “Some Tales of Two Cities” published today described common threads between New York City and Charleston, S.C. including the move of New York literary critic Rufus Griswold following his second marriage to Charlotte Myers, a wealthy and prominent Jewess with whom he “enjoyed” a tempestuous relationship.

1892: The trial of Pastor Hermann Ahlwardt, the leading anti-Semite who is charged with slandering Herr Loewe, the Jewish arms manufacturer, continues today. A representative of the army testified that while some the new Loewe rifles required repair, the number was not unusual for such weapons contrary to Ahlwardt’s charge that the Jews had bribed the army to accept faulty weapons.

1893(27thof Kislev, 5654): Third Day of Chanukah

1893: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Brooklyn School of Law trained attorney Max Lawrence Kane, a member of the school board in Brooklyn and an officer of the East New York Jewish Center.

1893: “The Walsh School Plan” published today described a proposal that would have allowed a certain amount of the funds intended for the public schools to be diverted to parochial schools where the money would be used to fund the teaching of secular subjects. 

1894: According to reports published today the fund raiser at the Lexington Avenue Opera House raised $2,000 for the Monte Relief Society.

1894: Today the twelve Jewish members – Max J. Lessauer, Jacob H. Schiff, Simon Sterne, James Speyer, Isaac H. Klein, Julius Sternberg, Julius J. Frank, E.W. Bloomingdale, A.C. Bernheim, Dr. A. Jacobi, Henry Rice and Professor E.R.A. Seligman -  of the Committee of Seventy, a political reform group that took on the Tweed Ring, “sent regrets to the Committee of the Union League Club which had invited them to attend tonight’s reception for the Governor-elect and the Mayor-elect.

1895: “Young Men’s Hebrew Association” published today described the latest lecture sponsored by the Jewish organization delivered by Dr. Solis Cohn on “Judaism, a Living Force.”

1895: Birthdate of Max Kadushin, the native of Minsk who became a successful American Rabbi in the Conservative Movement.

1895: Two days after he had passed way, Abraham Abraham, the son of Victor Abraham and Rebecca Levy was buried today at “The Walnut Hills Jewish Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.”

1895(19thof Kislev, 5656): Abraham Frederick Ornstein, the son of Phineas Ornstien and the father of Philip Ornstein  who was the rabbi at the Portsea (Portsmouth) Congregation and the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation passed away today in Cape Town, South Africa.

1895: Today, New Yorkers displayed “no excitement over the fact that” Hermann Ahlwardt “the zealous anti-Semitic agitator had come to their city where “he has awakened no interest and cause no stir.

1895: In his sermon today, Dr. W.W. Rainsford of St. George’s Church preached a sermon in which he sought “to correct some grave misconceptions as to the condition of the Jews at the coming of Christ” saying they “were not a nation of ignorant, irreligious and immoral people” and that they “were always religious and patriotic” “given to high ideals of morality and civic virtue.”

1896:  Birthdate of Ira Gershwin.  The brother of George Gershwin, Ira carved out his own career as a lyricist for Broadway and Hollywood musicals.  He passed away in 1983.

1897: The defense by Dr. Maurice H. Harris of Harlem’s Temple Israel the concept of God presented in what Christians called the Old Testament published today ended with the statement that “the essential idea of God as against the earlier beliefs – that He is just and not partial, that He is the ‘power making for righteousness’ and that therefore, morality is inseparable from religion – these vital truths were caught and for all time by the prophets of Israel.”

1898: In Richmond, VA, Simon Wolf “delivered the oration” at today’s meeting of the “Sixteen Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations

1898: When the Reichstag convenes today it will have to deal with several contentious issues and factions including “the anti-Semites” who “are clamoring for measures against the Jews.”

1898:  Birthdate of Alfred Eisenstaedt, “father of photojournalism." Born in West Prussia, he was one of the first to use the 35mm camera.  He came to the United States in 1935 where he became

http://www.cctvcamerapros.com/Alfred-Eisenstaedt-Camera-Photography-s/392.htm

http://life.time.com/alfred-eisenstaedt/

1899: Birthdate of Vilna native Joseph Buloff, the Yiddish actor and husband of Luba Kadison whose American career began when he was brought to the United States in 1927 as a replacement for Paul Muni.

1900: Birthdate of New York native and Columbia University trained economist Asher Achinstein who married Martha Levitsky after the death of his first wife, Betty Comras.

1901: The Mount Sinai Hospital and Training School properties, on the east side of Lexington Avenue, Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh Streets, have been sold, through Brokers Henry D. Winans May, to David H. Hyman

1902(6thof Kislev, 5663): Parashat Veyetzei observed as the National Council of Jewish Women are holding their convention in Baltimore, MD.

1904(28thof Kislev, 5665): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1904: Birthdate of Regina Alsterova, who was transported from Prague to Terezin in 1942 and then to Auschwitz in 1944 where she was murdered at the age of 39.

1905: It was reported today that the Jews of Perth Amboy, NJ, have raised more than $1,200 for the relief fund that is provided assistance to the Jews suffering from the most recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks in Russia.

1905: The resolution aimed at seeking relief for the Jews of Russia introduced by Congressman Goldfogle which was published today ended with “Be it further resolved that the President of the United States is hereby respectfully requested, if he finds it not incompatible with the public interests, to use such good and friendly offices with the Russian Government as the traditional and unbroken friendship between the two nations may justify as may secure such by the Russian Government as may tend to prevent recurrence of such outrages in the future.”

1906: Abraham “Abe” Reuef the political boss of San Francisco was indicted today.

1907(1stof Tevet, 5668): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1907: General Boufal, the new Governor General said to he was “bending every energy to restore absolute quite in Odessa” where there have been reports of anti-Jewish disorders.”

1908: In Milan, Ing. Nino Sacerdoti and Margherita Donati, daughter of Lazzaro Donati, gave birth to “Italian insurer and university professor” Piero Sacerdota.

1909: Morris and Rose Gershwin gave birth to Frances “Frankie” Gershwin, the younger sister of George, Ira and Arthur Gershwin and the wife of Leopold Godowsky, Jr.

1909: In response to the complaints by the Alliance Israelite Universelle on behalf of the Jews in Fez, the Sultan calls for the chief rabbis, then tells them the Jews will never again have to suffer injustice again, and that Sabbaths and festivals will be respected.

1910: Birthdate of Jersey City native Mortimer Taube, the holder of a B.A. from U. of Chicago and Ph.D from UC, Berkley the innovator in the field of information who was listed as one the “100 most important leaders” in his field during the 20th Century.

1911: With the passing of Leopold Seligman, it was reported today that Isaac Seligman, the head of the London branch of the family business and James Seligman of J & W Seligman & Co. are the two surviving brothers of the banking clan that played a key role in helping the Union afloat financially during the darkest days of the Civil War.

1911: Birthdate of Jersey City native Walter “Walt” Wallace Singer who played football and baseball at Syracuse University with is twin brother Milton before going to a career in the NFL with the New York Giants.

1912(26th of Kislev, 5673): Second Day of Chanukah

1912(26th of Kislev, 5673): Rabbi Abraham J. Schiff passed away today in New York.

1912: In Washington, DC the Ninth Convention of Rivers and Harbors Congress which Jacob A. Cantor has been attending as a delegate from New York came to a close.

1912: Rabbi Rappaport is scheduled to deliver the sermon tonight at services at the Chicago Hebrew Institute led by Cantor Millard with the assistance of “a trained choir.”

1913(7th of Kislev, 5674): Parashat Vayetzei

1914: The part that the Jews are taking in the European war was discussed tonight at the meeting of the Judeans at the Hotel Majestic” where they had as their guests the delegates to the sixth semi-annual council of the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis including Dr. Henry M. Leipziger who  presided at the meeting and announced that the general topic would be "The Jew as a Citizen in the Country of His Domicile."

1915(29th of Kislev, 5676): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1915(29th of Kislev, 5676): Sixty-nine year old Sarah (Sally) Maness Ritterband, the fifth child of Benvenida Solis and Leon Ritterband passed away today in New York City.

1915: A Denial of charges there is discrimination against Jews at the West Point Military Academy was made in a letter written by Secretary Garrison to Representative Walter M. Chandler of New York.

1915: The evening, an open forum will be held in the auditorium of the Educational Alliance on “The Second Generation in Jewish Farming.”

1916(11th of Kislev, 5677): Eighty-nine year old portrait painter Barnett Samuel Marks the Cardiff, Wales born son of watchmaker and Jewish community leader Mark Lyon Marks and Ann Michael, passed away today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Samuel_Marks#/media/File:Barnett_Samuel_Marks_self_portrait.jpg

1916: Dr. Cyrus Adler who had succeeded Dr. Solomon Schechter as head of the Jewish Theological Seminary after his unexpected demise in 1915, “delivered as short address” after Kaddish had been recited in Schechter’s memory at a synagogue located at JTS on West 123rdStreet.

1917: “A contribution of $100,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation topped the list of pledges turned in” today by those “who are raising the five million dollars fund for Jewish war relief and welfare work among Jewish soldiers and sailors.

1917: During World War I, British forces entered Hebron as Allenby continued his advance on Jerusalem.

1917: Birthdate of ice cream mogul Irvin Robbins, the back part of Baskin & Robbins. According to family legend the Canadian born entrepreneur used money from his Bar Mitzvah to fund the start of the legendary “31 Flavors.”

1917: Finland declares independence from Russia. With the establishment of an independent state of Finland, Jews living in Finland were finally granted rights of full citizenship, something that had not been possible under Swedish and Russian rule.

1918: Based on reports received by the Jewish Press Bureau today in Stockholm, so far “956 victims of the anti-Jewish outbreak in Lemberg, Galicia have been buried.

1918: The committee of inquiry appointed by the Polish Liquidation Committee to examine the events surrounding the riots in Galicia “has arrived at a full agreement with the Jewish Council as regards” to the procedures it will follow.

1918: Today, the government order 17,000 “Galician war refugees to leave Bohemia,.

1919(14th of Kislev, 5680): Parashat Vayishlach

1919: In Albany Park (Chicago), the bazaar sponsored by the Sisterhood of Temple Israel is scheduled to begin this evening.

1919: Birthdate of Philadelphia native television producer Jerome Toobin, the husband of television news anchor Marlene Sanders and the father of CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

1919: Birthdate of Paul de Man, the Belgian born literary critic who, after his death, we found to have been a Nazi collaborator and an anti-Semite.

1920(25th of Kislev, 5681): Chanukah

1920(25th of Kislev, 5681): Eighty-eight year old Ottilie Bondy, the wife of Ignaz Israel Bondy and daughter of Alois and Johnanna Jeiteles passed away in München, Bayern, Deutschland.

1920: Twenty-two year old Edwin Herbert Samuel, the eldest son of Sir Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner to Palestine married Hadassah Grosovsky who was born and educated in Palestine.

1920: Birthdate of American Jazz great Dave Brubeck, the non-Jew who created “The Gates of Justice.”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/reviews/Brubeck.html

1921: Birthdate of George Frederick Beurling, Canada’s leading pilot during WW II, who lost his life in a plane crash in 1948 while flying as a volunteer for the Israeli Air Force.

1922:  Birthdate of Benjamin Gilman of New York who served in the House of Representatives from 1973 through 2003.

1922: The Sinai Center Players are scheduled to perform “The Magic Touch,” a two act play this evening at the Sinai Social Center accompanied by the Sinai Symphony Orchestra.

1922: Birthdate of Abdallah Hay Simon, the Baghdadi born Jew who became the longtime chairman of the Seagram Chateau & Estate Wines Company was a commanding figure in the American wine trade and a leading importer of fine Bordeaux to the United States.

1923: Calvin Coolidge, who while Vice President had supported the Congressional endorsement of the Balfour Declaration, gave his first State of the Union Address today.

1923: Winston Churchill whose relationship with the Jewish people is well documented by Sir Martin Gilbert lost his seat in Parliament in today’s General Election.

1923: In today’s General Election, Liberal MP Edward Albert Lessing won his seat in the Commons.

1924: Labor leader Samuel Gompers collapsed today in Mexico City “while attending a meeting of the Pan American Federation of Labor.

1927: Birthdate of Chicago born, Yale educated James Emanuel “Jim” Fuchs the winner of bronze medals in shot put at the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics passed away today in New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/sports/18fuchs.html

1928:Sir Harry Charles Luke completed his service as the acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Palestine.He had previously served as Assistant Governor of Jerusalem and was appointed a member of the Haycraft Commission which was established by Herbert Samuel to investigate the cause of the riot which started in Jaffa in May of 1921.

1929: In Brooklyn, garment workers Julius Silverstein and the former Lee Lastfogel gave birth to “Emmy Award-winning documentarian”  Morton Silverstein. (As reported by Anita Gates)

1929: “The annual Who’s Who issue of the American Hebrew” that lists those who have performed outstanding for the Jewish People in 1929 includes names you would expect including Henry Morgenthau, Jr, Bernard Baruch, Sidney Hillman and David Sarnoff and others you would not expect like John D. Rockefeller who was “cited for his activity in financing a School of Religion at the University of Religion at the University of Iowa where Professorships of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism have been established.”

1931: A World Islamic Conference opened in Jerusalem under the Mufti who had succeeded in characterizing the Jews as the enemy of Islam in Jerusalem.

1931: In its Sunday edition, the New York Timesreported on plans by Jews throughout the world to celebrate the upcoming 100th anniversary of the birth of Baron Maurice de Hirsch on Wednesday, December 9.

1932: Today Herman G. Handmaker, the Louisville born son of Julius Handmaker and Agnes (Jacobstein) Handmaker, the lawyer and member of the Kentucky State House of Representatives married Esther Marie Jacobson

1933: Amid waving Nazi flags, Dr. Hans Luther, the German ambassador to the United States addressed 20,000 people in Madison Square Garden attending a Nazi propaganda event “German Day.”

1933: U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that the novel Ulysses by James Joyce was not obscene.  The novel features Leopold Bloom a Jewish advertising agent. 

1934: As a result of decision made today in Geneva, Germany agreed that any Jews living in the Saar Basin Territory as of December 3 would be able to “leave the territory within a year after the establishment of a definitive regime by the plebiscite after giving six months’ notice of that intention” and that during the coming year Germany promised that that there would be no “discrimination because of race or religion.”  (They must have had their fingers crossed because they sure did not mean it)

1935: “The Synagogue Council of America, representing practically all shades of Jewish religious thought in” the United States, appealed today "to the moral forces of the world to defend the rights of religious minorities in Germany against the forces that seek to destroy them.”

1936: Nearly one thousand people attended the at the Hotel Biltmore celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Central Synagogue where Governor Herbert H. Lehman told the attendees that he deplored “the present age as one of ‘expiring faith and religious indifference’” and “called upon American Jewry to take a leading part in a revival of faith in God that, couple with the scientific advances of today, would ‘effect a solidarity in human society expressed in terms of universal justice and peace.’”

1936: “Hats Off” which marked Samuel Fuller’s “first credit as a screenwriter” was released in the United States today.

1936: While speaking at a dinner tonight “marking the 25th anniversary of the Mizrachi Organization of America” Senator Royal S. Copeland “sharply criticized” Great Britain “for failing to suppress Arab demonstrations against Jews in Palestine.”

1936: Seventy year old to John Dickson-Poynder, the first Baron Islington who in 1922 and 1930 condemned the mandate in Palestine because he said it favored the Jews whom he described as “undesirable” passed away today.

1937(2ndof Tevet, 5698): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1937(2ndof Tevet, 5698): Eighty seven year old clothing merchant Charles David Axman, the New York born son of David and Savina Axman and the husband of social activist Sophie Cahn Axman passed away today.

1937: The Palestine Post reported on the visit to Damascus of the Nazi German youth leader Baldur von Schirach, accompanied by a large entourage. There was little doubt that the Syrian Arab youth seemed to be particularly vulnerable to this latest Nazi effort to spread their propaganda throughout the entire Middle Eastern area. Shots were fired at the Beit Alfa and Kfar Baruch settlements.

1937: The Jerusalem Post’s leading economists found it rather strange that while the Palestine government's highly satisfactory yearly budget of £6,900,000 was due in most part to the participation of Jewish capital and investment, the official policy was marked by apathy and an almost total lack of encouragement for further progress in investment and economy. On the contrary, the government was slowing down further successful development by a continuous curtailment of the Jewish immigration and a half-hearted struggle against the Arab terror.

1938:William Cooper of the Yorta Yorta tribe and members of the Australian Aborigines League were denied entry to the German Consulate where they had come to protest the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis.

1938: Prime Minister  Fumimaro Konoe,  Foreign Minister  Hachirō Arita,  Army Minister  Seishirō Itagaki,  Naval Minister  Mitsumasa Yonai, and  Finance Ministry  Shigeaki Ikeda decided to prohibit the expulsion of the Jews in Japan, Manchuria and China despite the growing alliance with Nazi Germany.

1938: Fourteen year old Ernest Stock and his ten year old sister leave Frankfurt to stay with friends in Alsace, France.  Ernest’s mother sent the children out of the country following Kristallnacht, a night which was made double horrific for the Stocks because Ernest’s father was arrested and taken to Buchenwald. In response to the worsening situation in Germany following Kristallnacht, the mother of 14 year old Ernest Stock sent her son and his 10-year-old sister Lotte to family friends who lived in Alsace, France.

1939: As an example of its policy of blocking all Jewish escape routes in Central Europe, the British Foreign Office warns Bulgaria that if it ships its Jews to Palestine, the British will "expect the Bulgarian government to take the immigrants back."

1939: Ernest Gruening began serving as the 7th Governor of the Alaska Territory; a job he would hold for fourteen years.

1939: Israeli pioneers including members of “Kvutzat Krit” enjoyed a holiday to celebrate Kibbutz Kfar Menahem.

1940(6thof Kislev, 5701): Seventy-one year old  artist and author Ernest Peixotto, the scion of San Francisco Sephardic Jews who used his artistic skills while serving with the AEF during WW I passed away today.

https://bancroftlibrarycara.wordpress.com/ernest-clifford-peixotto-1869-1940/

https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2015/12/01/world-war-i-artist-ernest-peixotto/

1940: In ChicagoHyman Reznick and Sheindel Reznick gave birth to Naomi (nee Reznick) Blumberg

1941(16thof Kislev, 5702): Jews read Parshat Vayishlach on what would prove to be the last Shabbat before the United States entered WW II and the world changed forever.

1941: The Final Solution comes to Tunisia as French President Petain allows the Germans to take control of this section of North Africa.

1941: As a Japanese task force steams towards Pearl Harbor Jews gather in their synagogues to hear Parashat Vayishlach

1941: At West Side Institutional Synagogue, Rabbi Emanuel Lifschitz reassured his congregation that although “World society is standing at the crossroads in the grip of a titanic struggle raging between the forces of good and evil, it is most heartening to know that in the midst of such tension throughout the nation, men and women and children of every faith, color and creed from every walk of life will rededicate themselves – their very souls – to the Bible.” 

1941: At Temple Rodeph Sholom, Rabbi Hyman J. Schachtel “asserted that the finding of the Gallup poll that interest in religions was declining was ‘misleading, because many are religious who are uninterested in the institutions of religion.’”  But they would also hear sermons relating to the war being fought in the rest of the world; but a war in which the United States was not involved, because as the isolationists told us, we were protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans which created a giant moat.

1941: At Shaare Zedek, Rabbi Morris Goldberg asserted, “We must not pause in our struggle until we ourselves are willing to be a blessing unto those very forces against which we are fighting. While at the Montefiore Synagogue Rabbi Jacob Katz forecast, “From the present world war will come equality of nations and there not be too much difference in the standards of living amongst all the nations of the world.  Judeo-Christian ethics will not be the object of destruction because they will have become the object of international social legislations. 

1941: At Temple Ansche Chesed, Rabbi Joseph Zeitlin spoke approvingly of the economic sanctions on Japan:

1941: At the West End Synagogue Rabbi Louis Newman stuck a strident note when he declared that “to restore the ‘good old days’ ‘we must work and if need be, die in the combat to protect and regain the liberties of freeman, the people of Israel included, if not for ourselves, then for our posterity.” 

1942: Today, “. A group of villagers from around Ciepielów near Radom including Piotr Skoczylas and his 8-year-old daughter Leokadia were burned alive by a police battalion” because they had sheltered Jews.

1942: Today, “another barn full of people was set on fire in nearby Rekówka, and 33 Poles saving Jews were burned alive including the families of Obuchiewicz, Kowalski, and 14 Kosiors”

1942: The Germans locked 23 Poles suspected of helping Jews in a cell. They then burned it to the ground.

1942: In Parczew, Poland, the Germans undertook a four day manhunt for hidden Jews.

1942: Germans in Salonica steal all the marble tombstones so they can line a swimming pool for their soldiers.  

1942: In New York City, premiere of “Cat People,” a horror film produced by Val Lewton whose Jewish parents had converted to Christianity and edited by Mark Robson.

1943: Birthdate of Richard Anthony Goldman, the adopted son of Charles and Tillie Goldman, “whose investor’s eye for spotting battered neighborhoods prime for rejuvenation led him to help revive SoHo in Manhattan in the 1970s and South Beach in Florida in the ’80s.” (As reported by Leslie Kaufman.

1943: In one of the last major Italian deportations, 212 Jews from Milan and Verona were sent to Auschwitz. In all, out of a population of 35,000 before the war, approximately 8500 Jews were killed. An estimated 2000 Jews fought with the partisans, five of them winning Italy’s highest medals for bravery.

1944: A Liberty ship bearing the name of the late Isaac Mayer Wise was launched this afternoon at the St. John's River Shipbuilding Company yards, with his son, Rabbi Jonah B. Wise of the Central Synagogue of New York City, as the principal speaker on the christening program.

1944: Birthdate of Arnon Milchan, the native of Rehovot, Israel whose multi-faceted career led him to become one of Hollywood’s leading movie producers.

1945: In London, premiere of “The Rake’s Progress” a comedy starring Lili Palmer

1945: In a speech delivered at the commencement exercises of Hebrew University, Dr. Judah B. Magnes, president of the university, “declared that the aims of Jews in Palestine, namely the establishment of a national home, could not be achieved by acts of terrorism.  He urged passive resistance rather than the resort to force.”

1945: Former Iowa Senator Guy Gillette, Judge William S. Bennet of New York and Representative Andrew L. Somers of Brooklyn, leaders of the American League for A Free Palestine held a press conference during which they expressed the belief that the committee’s approach to solving the problem of displaced Jews in Europe and the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had had a positive effect on changing British policy.  In discussing their aims they stated that “The Hebrews of Europe must be saved at once.”

1946: Birthdate of Asbury Park, NJ native and Goddard College, JTS and Columbia University trained historian of religion Daniel Boyarin

1946: “Kings County Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz” left by plane today for Basle, Switzerland where he will be attending the 22nd World Zionist Congress.

1947: Members of the Haganah and Arab soldiers clash

1947: “Usually informed sources expressed today the hope that Britain would use her influence with Bong Abdullah of Trans-Jordan to help bring about a partition of Palestine without an outbreak of serious fighting.”

1948: On the second day of Operation Assaf carried Israeli forces captured another important position, thus completing all the operation's objectives. However, the Israelis met stronger resistance at another position (which was not captured) and were forced to stop their advance when they hit a minefield in another location. On the same day, the Egyptians counter-attacked the captured positions from their main positions in the west, with an infantry battalion, a tank company and some accurate artillery. The attack came very close to breaking the Israeli defenders, but broke off at dusk. The IDF’s Operation Assaf was designed to clear Egyptian troops from the Western Negev.

1948: Representatives of Israel and Iraq sign a cease-fire agreement. The Iraqi troops were the largest contingent of troops from an Arab state with no contiguous border with Israel to take part in the war aimed at crushing the Jewish state.  The Iraqi failure to defeat the Jews of Israel led to their attacking their own Jewish population forcing them to flee.  Most of the refugees came to Israel.

1949: Demobilised Palmach soldiers founded Gan Yoshiya, a moshav near the Green Line.  It was named in honor of the Anglo-Jewish leader Josiah Wedgewood.

1951(7thof Kislev, 5712): Forty-seven year old Joseph Edward Bromberg, the movie and stage actor passed away today “not long after the Hollywood blacklist had destroyed his career.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070611201736/http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/the/pdf/thebromb.pdf

 

1953: Laura Kugler, the wife of Victor Kluger – one of those who helped who helpd to hide Anne Frank and her family – passed away today

1953:Mordechai Maklef completed his service as Chief of Staff of the IDF.

1953: After five years, “Nabokov finished” his masterpiece Lolita which Baron George Weidenfeld, “a life-long Zionist” published in the United Kingdom.

1953: At Ben-Gurion’s insistence, Moshe Dayan was appointed Chief of Staff of the IDF.

1953: Thanks to a “major addition” the Hebrew Home for the Aged expanded its capacity to 165 while the “medical panels provides care at no charge to residents.”

1954: In Highland Park, Illinois, Newton Minow, and his wife, Josephine (Baskin) Minow gave birth to Martha Minow the 12th Dean of Harvard Law Schol.

1955: New York psychologist Joyce Brothers won "$64,000 Question" on boxing

1956(2ndof Tevet, 5717): 8th day of Chanukah

1956: In Chattanooga, TN, the former Ruth Sulzberger “the Jewish daughter of long-time Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger and granddaughter of Times owner and publisher Adolph Ochs” and Ben Hale Golden, who was not Jewish and who was President and Publisher of the Chattanooga Times, gave birth to Harvard and Columbia trained writer Arthur Sulzberger Golden, the author of Memoirs of a Geisha, husband of Trudy Legg and father of Nays and Tess Golden.

1956(2ndof Tevet, 5717): Eighty-two year old French economist Albert Aftalion who co-founded the academic journal Revue économique in 1950 passed away today.

1956: “Hollywood or Bust” a comedy produced by Hal B. Wallis, starring Jerry Lewis and featuring Maxie Rosenbloom was released today in the United States.

1959: ABC broadcast “In Memoriam,” an episode The Rebel directed by Ivrin Kershner.

1961: “El Cid” a sweeping historic epic set in medieval Spain produced by Samuel Bronston with a screenplay premiered in London this evening.

1962: Birthdate of journalist and professor of communications Anya Schiffrin the wife of Nobel Prize-winning economist and author Joseph E. Stiglitz.

1964(1stof Tevet, 5725); Rosh Chodesh; Eighth Chanukah

1964(1stof Tevet, 5725): Eighty-year old “stove manufacturer and philanthropist” Bertrand Berthelot Kahn passed away today in his home town of Cincinnati, OH.

1965(12thof Kislev, 5726): Sixty-nine year old “Rose Pesotta (1896–1965) was an anarchist, feminist labor organizer and vice president within the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union passed away today.”

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05928.html

 

1966: Zvi Dinstein was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense.

1967: In Flushing, Queens, real estate developer Maury Aptatow and the former Tamara “Tami” Shad, the daughter of music producer Bob Shad gave birth to director/producer Judd Apatow.

1967: In Eugene, Oregon Danna (née Wilner), a writer and instructor at Portland Community College, and Dr. Benson Schaeffer, a child psychologist gave birth to actress Rebecca Lucile Schaeffer.

1967: When Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz removed the heart of a brain-dead baby and implanted it into the chest of a baby with a fatal heart defect, he became the first doctor to perform a human heart transplant in the United States.

1968(15thof Kislev, 5729): Eighty-eight year old Rabbi Eliezer Premesky, the Lithuanian born son of Yaakov and Pearl Predmesky and husband of Esther Premesky with whom he had three children who had been the “spiritual leader of the Bronx Tremont Hebrew School, a member of the presidium of the Rabbinical Board of New York” and executive vice President of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada passed away today. Most important of all, he was among those who marched in Washington in 1943 in a public demonstration demanding government action to “help save the Jews of Europe.”

1972(1stof Tevet, 5733): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1973: Gerald Ford, who as President promised Prime Minister Rabin that he would honor all commitments that had been made to Israel, became Vice President of the United States today.

1974(22ndof Kislev, 5735): Two Israelis were injured when terrorists raided Rosh Hanikra Kibbutz.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s declaration that as peace with Israel was forthcoming, he was not concerned about being isolated in the Arab world. Consequently Egypt had severed diplomatic ties with Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and South Yemen.

1977: In London, Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced that while Israel would refuse to consider the establishment of a PLO-dominated state on the West Bank, it wished to solve the problem of the Palestine Arabs “in justice and dignity.”

1978: Seventy-seven year old Adolf Dassler, the founder of Adidas who was an early member of the Nazi Party and the Hitler Youth who was “declared a Belasteter, the second most serious category of Nazi offenders, which included profiteers” but whose “status to Mitläufer (follower), relieving him of most of his civil disabilities” passed away today.

1981: Philip C. Habib, President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, arrived in Israel tonight from Saudi Arabia. The Government said he would meet Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Jerusalem on Monday.

1981: Birthdate of Haifa native and mentalist Lior Suchard.

1981: Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number by Jacobo Timerman and Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review to the best books published in the country during the preceding year.

1982: It was reported that “The U.S. failure to start negotiations for the withdrawal of Israeli, Syrian and Palestinian forces from Lebanon is worrying senior Reagan Administration officials. They said that because of the impasse it was now virtually impossible that the troops would leave by the end of the year, the date set by the State Department.”

1982: It was reported that “Israel cleared a close Lebanese ally of any involvement in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut last September. The state commission investigating the massacre said it had no evidence that forces of Maj. Saad Haddad, leader of a Lebanese Christian militia, had participated in the killings.”

1983(30th of Kislev, 5744): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1983: A bomb planted on a bus in Jerusalem explodes, killing 6 Israelis

1985:In Santa Monica, California to Jody and Taylor Kasch film and t.v. actor Joseph Maxwell “Max Kasch.

1985: “Spies Like Us,” a comedy directed by John Landis, co-produced by Brian Grazer, with a screenplay by Lowell Ganz and music by Elmer Bernstein was released in the United States today by Warner Bros.

1987: “On the eve of a Gorbachev-Reagan summit 250,000 marched in support of Soviet Jews.  Among themr were 50,000 Jews from the Washington area’s Jewish community. (As reported by Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington)

1987: The Counterlife by Philip Roth, The Embarrassment of Riches An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age by Simon Schama and More Die of Heartbreakby Saul Bellow are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year

1988(27thof Kislev, 5749): Yigal Cohen, the native of Tel Adashim and a member of the Palmach’s first brigade who was a Likud MK passed away today.

1988: Yassar Arafat meets with “prominent American Jews” in Stockholm, Sweden.

1990: “The End of Innocence” directed by Dyan Cannon who co-starred in the film along with Rebecca Schaeffer was released in the United States today.

1990: In Los Angeles, premiere of “Edward Scissorhands” co-starring Winona Ryder and Alan Arkin with music by Danny Elfman

1991(29thof Kislev, 5752): Seventy-four year old Hungarian political leader György Aczél (born Henrik Appel) passed away today in Vienna.

1991: “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” directed by Nicholas Meyer who co-wrote the screenplay and co-starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy was released in the United States today.

1991(29th of Kislev, 5752:Charles A. Levine, who became aviation's first trans-Atlantic passenger in 1927 when he sponsored an attempt to beat Col. Charles A. Lindbergh to Europe, died today at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. He was 94 years old and had moved to Washington from New York City this fall. Mr. Levine flew into history with Clarence D. Chamberlin at the controls of a monoplane designed by Giuseppe Ballanca and owned by Mr. Levine, then a millionaire businessman. Their 225-horsepower craft, named Columbia, had been ready for weeks. But the race to be the first to fly the Atlantic was lost to Colonel Lindbergh when a suit filed by one of Mr. Chamberlin's would-be co-pilots, Lloyd Bertaud, marooned the Columbia in its hangar at Roosevelt Field on Long Island. Mr. Levine got a sheriff's attachment quashed hours after Lindbergh, in the Spirit of St. Louis, lifted off from the same airfield. Lindbergh's arrival in Paris on May 21 astounded the world and overshadowed the Chamberlin-Levine venture. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

1991: Four months after premiering in the United Kingdom, “Young Soul Rebels” a film that marking the acting debut of future Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo was released in the United States today.

1992: Kissinger:A Biography by Walter Isaacson is among the nine books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year

1993(22nd of Kislev, 5754): Mordechai Lapid and his son Shalom Lapid, age 19, were shot to death by terrorists near Hebron. Hamas publicly claimed responsibility for the attack

1995(13thof Kislev, 5768): Seventy-eight year old Georgia Tech Melvin Krazenberg who specialized in the history of technology passed away today. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)

1995:Today, Dennis Ross, the chief Middle East mediator in the United States State Department, held talks with President Hafez Assad of Syria to assess his reactions to initiatives for peace talks made by Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Mr. Ross returned to Jerusalem later in the day to talk with Mr. Peres. Details were not immediately known, though the Israeli coordinator of talks with the Arabs, Uri Savir, cautioned at the outset that "there is curiosity, but I wouldn't say any great expectations at this stage."

1995:Prosecutors filed charges of premeditated murder against Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin today as Israel marked the end of the 30-day mourning period for the slain Prime Minister. In addition to the murder charge against Yigal Amir, indictments filed by the District Attorney at Tel Aviv District Court also charged Mr. Amir's brother Hagai and their friend Dror Adani with conspiring to kill Mr. Rabin and to attack Palestinian Arabs. The only other charge brought so far was against a soldier, Sgt. Arik Schwartz, who was indicted by a military court on Monday for supplying stolen arms and ammunition to the Amirs.

1996(25thof Kislev, 5757): Chanukah

1996(25thof Kislev, 5757): Eighty-one year old Alex Schoenbaum, the Ohio State University football player who founded Shoney’s Restaurant chain passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/15/us/alex-schoenbaum-81-founder-of-shoney-s-restaurant-chain.html

1998: The New York Times list of the Best Books of 1998 contains the following works about Jewish related subjects or by Jewish authors including Titan:The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow and To End A Warby Richard Holbrooke.

1998: The New York Times book section featured a review of Hot Seat:Theater Criticism for the New York Times-1993by Frank Rich.

1999: Ninety-four year old Martha Dickie Sharp Cogan “the guardian angel of European children” during WW II and one gutsy lady, passed away today.

2000: Emmy award winner Werner Klemperer passed away.  Oddly enough, Klemperer gained his greatest fame as Col. Klink, the German head of a POW Camp on the television hit Hogan’s Heroes.

2001:A fire and subsequent fire-fighting efforts severely damaged the roof, ceiling, mural paintings and decorative plasterwork of the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol in New York City.

2001(21stof Kislev, 5762): Ninety-five year old Brooklyn native Alexander Sidney “Sid” Roth, the “All-American guard” on the 1938 Cornell football team and varsity lacrosse player who is the namesake for “the Sid Roth Award” given annually to Cornell’s “most valuable lineman” passed away today.

2002(1stof Tevet, 5763): Seventh Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2002: Actress Winona Ryder (born Winona Laura Horowitz) was sentenced to community service as part of a probationary term for stealing more than $5,500 worth of merchandise from a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills.

2002: U.S. premiere of “Analyze That” directed by Harold Ramis, co-produced by Barry Levinson and co-starring Billy Crystal and Lisa Kudrow.

2003: “Responding to criticism from Jewish groups, European lawmakers and others, a European Union institute has made available the text of a previously withheld report that lays a major share of the blame for the much noted rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Europe with Arab and Muslim extremists.”

2004:  As a result of a law suit growing out of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a federal jury ruled in favor of developer Larry Silverstein giving him an additional $1.1 billion from nine insurers, declaring the attack to be two "occurrences"

2004:  “In Good Company” a comedy in which experience triumphs over youth directed, produced and written by Paul Weitz was released today in the United States.

2005: Malcolm Rifikind completed his service as Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

2005: The United States Ambassador to the United Nations announced that Algeria prevented the release of a statement by the UN Security Council condemning Monday's suicide bombing in Netanya. Algeria objected reportedly because the proposed condemnation mentioned that the instructions for the attack came from Damascus. Earlier in the day, a senior Islamic Jihad figure in Gaza City denied that the organization had offices in Syria, claiming that their secretary general Ramadan Shalah left the country months ago. However, the Islamic Jihad, who took responsibility for the bombing openly admitted that it received its orders from Syria.

2006: A panel of rabbis gave permission today for same-sex commitment ceremonies and ordination of gays within Conservative Judaism, a wrenching change for a movement that occupies the middle ground between orthodoxy and liberalism in Judaism.

2006(15th of Kislev, 5767): Photojournalist Leonard Freed passed away at the age of 77. Born to immigrant parents in Brooklyn, Freed often chose subjects related to his Jewish ancestry, including a study of Orthodox Jews around the world published in 1980.

2006(15th of Kislev, 5767): Robert Rosenblum, an influential and irreverent art historian and museum curator known for his research on subjects ranging from Picasso to images of dogs, passed away at the age of 79 at his home in Greenwich Village.

2006: Jerry Stiller entertains at the Center for Jewish History’s Board of Overseers and Board of Governors dinner.

2006: The New York Times publishes Alex Witchel’s latke recipe.

http://www.marthastewart.com/348886/potato-pancakes

2006: CBS broadcast the 1st episode of the 9th and final season of “The King of Queens” co-starring Jerry Stiller.

2007: As part of Chanukah festivities, the Givatayim Theatre stages a festival of children’s plays including “Stories of Itamar and of Ruthie” and a new musical, “Puss in Boots” directed by Adi Leviathan 

2007(26th of Kislev, 5768):Eighty-four year old “Murray Klein, who helped transform Zabar’s from a typical Jewish delicatessen on the Upper West Side of Manhattan into a culinary and cultural landmark, died today in Manhattan. (As reported by Julia Moskin)

2007: Israel’s Radio Kol Chai reported today, that in response to a request by France’s Chief Rabbi Yosef Sitruk, Shimon Peres has agreed to keep Shabbat this week (for the first time in his life) as part of an outreach campaign by European rabbis. The initiative was started by Rabbi Yosef Sitruk to try and unite Jews all over the world to preserve that Sabbath day. Even more incredibly, Peres announced he will officially call upon all Jews worldwide to observe Shabbat preceding Israel’s Independence Day, and to pray for peace.

2008: In Cedar Rapids, Jewish Book Month Shabbat at Temple Judah is usurped by a gas leak that causes those who braved the snow flurries and frigid temperatures to go home early.  It was the first time in the history of Cedar Rapids that more than a minyan gathered and the Torah was not read.

2008 (9 Kislev): Yahrzeit of Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch, the son of and successor to the founder of Chabad Chassidism, Rabbi Schneur Zalman·of Liadi.

2008: In Washington, D.C., Itzhak Perlman performs with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.

2008: Tonight Arabs fired rockets into Ashkelon and Sderot.  IAF aircraft then carried out two air-strikes against Palestinian rocket-launching squads in the Gaza Strip.

2008: Today, Egyptian police found a massive arms cache in Sinai, according to the Falastin al-Youm news Web site. 

2008: Today, The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund warned that Gaza's severe cash shortage might cause local banks to collapse.

2009(19thof Kislev): Ninety-seven year old attorney and WW II veteran Leonard Rubenfeld passed away today.

2009 (19 Kislev): The 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev is celebrated as the "Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism." It was on this date, in the year 1798, that the founder of Chabad Chassidism, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), was freed from his imprisonment in Czarist Russia. More than a personal liberation, this was a watershed event in the history of Chassidism, heralding a new era in the revelation of the "inner soul" of Torah. For more about the Lubavitch view of their leader see http://www.arjewishcenter.com/library/article_cdo/AID/63817

2009 (19 Kislev):Yom Hillula (יום הילולא) of the Maggid of Mezritch, the successor of the Baal Shem Tov. Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch passed away in December of 1772.  For more see www.JewishEncyclpolida.com orhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggid_of_Mezritch

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival includes screenings of a documentary entitled “Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist” and “Filmed by Yitzhak,” a documentary composed of hitherto unseen 8mm movies filmed by Yitzhak Rabin during the 1960’s that include images from his years as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States.

2009:The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival includes screenings of “A History of Israel Cinema, Part I” and “Adam Resurrected” starring Jeff Goldblum.

2009:Ensemble a la Carte, featuring bassoonist Robin Gelman, holds its fifth annual concert, at Congregation Sha'are Shalom, in Leesburg, Virginia.

2009: Writer, composer, actor, director, and producer Mel Brooks is among those who receives 32nd Annual Kennedy Center Honors this evening in Washington, D.C.

2009: The Israeli Cabinet voted to appoint Yehuda Weinstein as the next Attorney General of Israel.

2009: David Mamet's "Race" opened tonight at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York.

2009: After 12 previews and 65 performances a revival production of David Mamet’s two character play “Oleanna”closed at Broadway’s John Golden Theatre.

2010:American Sephardi Federation and Yeshiva University Museum in collaboration with the Sephardic Music Festival are scheduled to present a program entitled Sepharad: Voices From Across the Strait as part of the Sephardic Music Festival Scholar Series.

2010:Ezra Klein, The Washington Post and Newsweek economics and domestic affairs columnist, is scheduled to speak at Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston, VA.

2010: The Jewish Study Center of Washington is scheduled to offer a course entitled “Biblical Themes in Literature, Opera, Art and Film” which will trace the use of biblical themes across a wide variety of Western cultural masterpieces, old and new, with examples including John Milton's poetic drama "Samson Agonistes" (1671), Rembrandt's painting "The Binding of Isaac" (1635), Arnold Schoenberg's opera "Moses und Aron" (1932) and Cecil B. DeMille's movie "The Ten Commandments" (1956).

2010(29th of Kislev, 5711):Lester Ziffren, 85, an attorney and civic leader who was devoted to his alma mater, UCLA, and many other causes, died today of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his family said. “After earning his law degree in 1952 from UCLA, Ziffren served as a deputy attorney general from 1953 to 1959 under California Atty. Gen. Pat Brown.

2010(29th of Kislev, 5711): In Cedar Rapids, IA, Rose Becker passed away at the age of 92.

2010(29th of Kislev, 5711):Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav said "you were always on the front line," in remarks at  Tomer's funeral in the military cemetery in Haifa

2010:A 14-year-old resident of Usfiya was arrested today on suspicion of throwing a piece of charcoal from a water pipe into a forest clearing near the village on Thursday morning, witnessing the ignition of a large fire and running away. Police suspect the boy’s actions led directly to the Carmel forest inferno.The youth confessed to the allegations against him and reenacted his suspected actions today, police added.

 

2010; At Temple Reyim in Newton, MA, Amy Eilberg met for the first time with Sally Priesand, the first Reform female rabbi, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, the first Reconstructionist female rabbi, and Sara Hurwitz, considered by some to be the first Orthodox female rabbi. They and approximately 30 other women rabbis lit Chanukah candles and then spoke about their experiences in an open forum

2010: Brian Emanuel Schatz  begins serving as the 11th Lt. Gov. of Hawaii.

 

2011: The New Orleans Jewish community is scheduled to kick off Jewish Book Month today with a noon-time program at the Uptown JCC.

2011: “Who Shot My Father? The Story of Joe Alon” a documentary about the Israeli Air Force Attaché who was murdered in 1973, is scheduled to be shown at the 22nd Washington Jewish Film Festival

2011:  Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz welcomed an announcement that discussions between medical residents and the Finance Ministry had produced positive results and a final draft agreement had been drawn up.

2012: The Center for Jewish History and the Jewish Book Council are scheduled to present “Culture Brokers: Publishing – The Book Trade” in which a distinguished panel explores “Jewish participation in the dramatic changes that transformed the book publishing industry in the post-War era from a sleepy "gentlemen's club" into a dynamic and tumultuous industry.”

 

2012: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present a speech byNoted Holocaust scholar and Northwestern University faculty member, Dr. Peter Hayes entitled "What Took So Long?  The Wrangle Over Holocaust Restitution Since 1945."

 

2012: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to sponsor “Wine While We Wrap,” a fundraiser that lowers the holiday stress level by allowing shoppers to enjoy a l’chaim while Chanukah helpers wrap their gifts.

 

2012: Sources in the European Union today played down a report in the Hebrew daily Maariv that Europe was seeking to pass a series of harsh sanctions against Israel following Jerusalem’s announcement last week of plans to expand settlement construction. That move by Israel came in response to the upgrading of the Palestinians’ status the previous day at the UN. According to Maariv, new restrictions would include marking and boycotting goods made in Jewish settlements over the Green Line. David Kriss, the press manager for the EU delegation to Israel, unequivocally dismissed the report.

2012: Coming out of a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she and Netanyahu had “agreed to disagree” on the issue of West Bank settlements.

 

2013: The Edent-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a noon-time concert featuring the Young Master Pianists of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance Conservatory.

2013: The day after he passed away, eighty-five year old Major General Danny Matt “was buried at Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv.”

 

2013: “Strudel in Tehina” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Temple Judah hosts its popular Musical Shabbat featuring Shir Yehuda.

 

2013: Submission deadline for The #MakeItHappen micro-grants initiative (As reported by JTA)

 

2013: Ninety-five year old Irish cricketer Louis Jacobson who was “a right-handed batsman from Dublin” passed away today.

http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Players/26/26789/26789.html

http://www.cricketireland.ie/news/article/death-of-louis-jacobsen

2013: Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are committed to continuing peace talks, despite grumblings over a lack of visible progress in almost five months of negotiations, US Secretary of State John Kerry said today

http://www.timesofisrael.com/kerry-we-are-closer-to-peace-than-we-have-been-in-years/

2014: The Jewish Folk Arts Festival Chanukah Concert Dedicated to Human Rights is scheduled to take place at Temple Beth Ami in Rockville, MD.

2014: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Music Box in Atlantic City, NJ.

2014: The Hava Nagiggle & JW3 Jewish Comedian of the Year Competition 2014 are scheduled to take place this evening at the UK Jewish Comedy Festival.

2014: Shabbat Va-yishlach

2014: According to a poll published today by Channel 2 “almost two-thirds of Israelis do not want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead the next government.

2014: “A plane flying from Tel Aviv to Philadelphia was forced to make an emergency landing in Rome today after two passengers and 11 members of the crew were taken ill.”

 

2015: The funeral for “former Mertz leader, long-term MK and journalist Yossi Sardi” is scheduled to take “place at 3 p.m. at the cemetery in Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.”

 

2015: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host The Ruth Spector Memorial Maj Jong Tournament.

 

2015: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present a lecture by theatre scholar Wendy Arons on “Exile in the Spotlight: Kurt Hirschfeld and German- Language Theater at the Schauspielhaus Zurich.”

 

2015: The Chicago YIVO Society is scheduled to celebrate “the memory of music teacher Sarah Lazarus with a concert featuring multi-instrumentalist Michael Alpert.

2015: For the second time in two days, today, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired at an IDF vehicle along the strip between the Jewish state and the “Hamas-controlled territorty.”

2015: Jewish Book comes to and end for 5776/2015

2015: In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.

 

2015: In Cedar Rapids, members of Temple Judah are scheduled to gather this evening to usher in Chanukah by eating the creations of the “Latke King” – Brian Cohen

 

2015: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The 613 by Archie Rand, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik and Dietrich & Riefenstahl:  Hollywood, Berlin and a Century in Two Lives by Karin Wieldand

 

2015: The New York Times list of the 100 most notable works for 2015 published today included The Complete Works of Primo Levi, edited by Ann Goldstein, The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne by Anna Bikont, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman, Jonas Salk: A Life by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs and Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel by Dan Ephron

 

2016: In cooperation with the Center for Jewish History, the American Joint Distribution Committee is scheduled to host “The Flavor of Jewish Life: An Exploration of Cooking, Culture and International Connection” featuring Danielle Rehfeld, the chef and founder of The Inherited Plate.

2016: “The 90 Minute War” and “Land of the Little People” are scheduled to be shown at the 10th Annual Other Israel Film Festival.

2016: Despite the objection of some Jewish groups and leaders, “Richard Spencer who recently railed against Jews at an alt-right conference in Washington, DC during which audience members gave Nazi salutes” is scheduled “to speak at a private event on the Texas A&M Campus today” – an event that the school said it had no choice but to allow to take place even though a spokesman “said that the university did not agree with Spencer’s views. 

2016: Today, the Israeli military “posted a map of southern Lebanon to Twitter on which it marked Hezbollah positions, infrastructure and armaments along a section of the Israeli border.”

2016: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host “We’re All In This Together: The Art of Embracing Life While Preparing for the End of Life” which will include a discussion of Jewish burial and mourning customs as well as views on reincarnation, resurrection and the afterlife.

2017: In Cedar Rapids, IA, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to discuss Don’t Ever Look Back by Daniel Friedman.

2017: In Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum completed her service as Mexico’s “Chief of delegation of Tlalpan” today.

2017: Today “WNYV” which had launched the Jonathan Channel in 2013 “announced that Jonathan Schwartz” was “being on leave pending investigations in allegations of inappropriate conduct.”

2017: Lisa Heineman is scheduled to lecture “on the subject of Holocaust memorials in German, Polish and Israeli settings” at the University of Iowa.

2017: The URJ Biennial is scheduled to open today in Boston, MA.

2017: The Maccabeats are scheduled to appear at Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, NJ.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as James Kugel whose works included the innovative How to Read the Bible and In The Valley of The Shadow, continues today.

2018(28th of Kislev, 5779): Fourth Day of Chanukah

2018: “Yiddish New York, an annual, month-long celebration of Yiddish music, language and culture, is proud to collaborate with City Lore on this year’s art exhibition, which is scheduled to begin today.

2018: Authors Lauren Groff and Jonathan Lethem are scheduled to talk about new books tonight at the 92nd Street Y.

2018: “The Young Friends of the Gershman Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival and award-winning

filmmaker Yoni Brook are scheduled to host “an evening of shorts, latkes, and vodkas” featuring screenings of “The Love Letter,” “The Outer Circle,” “Shabbos Kallah” and “Who Sank Your Ships?”

2018: The Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series is scheduled to present “Sweet Is Thy Voice: The Song of Songs in Concert.”

2018: In Iowa City, Rabbi Avremel and Chaya Blesofsky are scheduled to host Chabad’s Community Chanukah Party.

2019: The USCJ Convention is scheduled to open today in Boston.

2019(8th of Kislev, 5780): Eighty-two year old Ron Liebman, the Manhattan born son of Murray and Grace (Marx) Liebman and husband of actress Jessica Walter whose six decade career as an actor including a Tony Award winning performance as Roy Cohn passed away today. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/theater/ron-leibman-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

 

2019: In Los Altos, CA, Congregation Beth Am is scheduled to host “Argentinian Rabbi Shabbat” with a service led by “Rabbi Robert Graetz and Hernán Rustein of the IberoAmerican Institute for Reform Rabbinical Education” followed by a community dinner.

2019: In San Francisco, Congregation Emanu-El is scheduled to host a dinner and discussion with “Rabbi Jill Jacobs of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.”

2019: In Atlanta, the Bremen Museum is scheduled to present “The Role of Influence in Photography” during which “Phillip Mosier, one of Atlanta’s leading photographers will share how the work and influence of Lisette Model, an Austrian-born American who taught photography at the New School for Social Research, shaped the direction of two of the greatest photographers of the twentieth-century, Diane Arbus and Vivian Maier.”

2019: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau for the first time, tor the first time today at which time she will “participate in a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, whose purpose is to preserve the authenticity of the site.”

2020: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including V2by Robert Harris, What Becomes A Legend Most: A Biography of Richard Avedonby Philip Gefter, and  Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters by Rosanna Warren

2020: The ADL’s In Concert Against Hate is scheduled to take place this evening.

2020: The Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Golda”

2020: The Pfeffer Family Forum is scheduled to host “Lessons from Elie Wiesel for Today.”

2020: The Harvard University Hillel is scheduled to present Israeli film director Avi Nesher as he discuss the reignited controversy surrounding his 1984 film “Rage & Glory” (“Za’am v’Tehila”) following its restoration by the Israel Film Archive and the Jerusalem Cinematheque.

2020: The Oshman Family JCC is scheduled present four panelist discussing their experience s Jews of color, sharing strategies to combat prejudice and how to move from being welcomed to belonging.

2020: The Mandel JDS Head of School Jay Leverman is scheduled to moderate the Global Chanukah event in which attendees learned about Chanukah tradition from around the world.

 

This Day, December 7, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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DECEMBER 7

43 BCE: The famous orator Marcus Tullius Cicero died.  Cicero was a Patrician, member of the Senate and opponent of Julius Caesar.  Following Caesar’s assassination, Mark Anthony and Octavian executed those whom they viewed as enemies of the state.  Cicero fell into that category.  Based on his public utterances, Cicero had no use for the Jews. "The Jews belong to a dark and repulsive force. One knows how numerous this clique is, how they stick together and what power they exercise through their unions. They are a nation of rascals and deceivers." While serving as defense counsel at the trial of Flaccus, a Roman pro-consul accused of diverting one hundred pounds of gold bound for the Temple in Jerusalem, Cicero described the Jews as a people born to slavery who had become far too intrusive in the affairs of Rome. Was Cicero an anti-Semite?  Or was he merely a member of the old order who resented the changes in society (sort of a Roman version of Henry Adams or Gore Vidal); a person who demonized Jews because they were different?  Regardless of the cause, the statements speak for themselves. 

1158: Abraham Ibn Ezra, under the influence of an inspiration or vision he had on that Shabbat day, decided to defend the traditional reckoning of the Jewish holidays and Sabbaths against the trend to begin them only at day break rather than the previous night. Immediately after the Sabbath he began to write his Iggeret Shabbat("Shabbat Letter") in which he used both religious and astronomical sources to defend his position. He wrote it while visiting England, making it one of the few Hebrew works composed there prior to the expulsion of the Jews in 1290.

1237(Kislev, 4998):Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon the son of Maimonides aka the Rambam who followed his father as the leader of the Egyptian Jewish community passed away.

1254: Pope Innocent IV passed away. During his papacy, Innocent “denounced the Blood Libels as unfounded.”  In 1247, Innocent agreed to grant a request from the Jews by issuing a declaration stating “that the Talmud was an absolute necessity for the Jews, if Judaism were to continue to exist as a separate religion, and that the burnings of the Talmud were to cease.” These actions certainly make him stand out from many of those who served as the Vicar of Christ in Rome.

1383:Wenceslaus IV who as Emperor failed to continue the Imperial protection of the Jews of Luxembourg led to their expulsion in 1391 began his reign as Duke of Luxembourg today.

1626: In Stockholm, Gustavus Adolphus and Mary Eleanora of Brandenburg gave birth to Christian Augusta the philo-semitic Queen of Sweden.

1279(O.S.): King Boleslaus V of Poland passed away. In 1264, Boleslaus V issued a charter that allowed for Jewish residence and protection, hoping that Jewish settlement would contribute to the development of the Polish economy. This charter was similar to one that had been granted to the Jews of Austria in 1244.  While Jews were not granted the same degree of protection as other citizens and while Jews were excluded from privileges afforded Christian merchants and burghers, the charter did  include recognition of legal testimony of Jews, fines for harming Jews or Jewish property, prohibition of blood libels, and equal commercial rights.  Even though the charter was not always followed, it marked a major improvement over conditions that Jews were living under in other parts of Europe and helped encourage a major eastward migration of the Children of Israel.

1655: A special Conference which had been established by Cromwell and the Council of State to consider all of the issues pertaining to the Jews and their readmission to England which had already decided “that there was no law which forbade the Jews’ return into England” today began to consider the question, if it be lawful to allow the Jews to live in England, “upon what terms it meet to receive them?”

 

1742: Talmudist Judah Lob Mokiach, the son of Mordecai Mokiah the father of “David Berlin (Mokiach) and Isaiah Berlin (Mokiach), known also as Isaiah Pick” passed away today in Pressburg.

 

1701(6th of Kislev, 5462): Joshua de Fonseca, a physician in Hamburg and the son of Hakam Abraham de Fonseca passed away today.

1707(24th of Kislev, 5468): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1765(24th of Kislev, 5526): Parashat Vayeshev; Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

 1771: “Jacob de Beer was employed today by the Dutch East India Company.”

1776(26th of Kislev, 5637): As Jews observe Shabbat and prepare to kindle candles for the third night of Chanukah, Washington’s Army successfully finishes crossing to the south bank of the Delaware River, thus escaping destruction by the British who chased the revolutionary army from New York down the entire state of New Jersey.

1779(28th of Kislev, 5540): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1784(24th of Kislev, 5545): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1787: Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.  Delaware abolished religious tests for public office in 1792.  For more about the history of the Jews of the “first state” see http://www.hsd.org/DHM_exhibit_Half_A_Chance.htm.

1789: Hannah Manuel and New York City native Gershom Mendes Seixas gave birth to Grace Seixas, the wife of Manuel Judal and the mother of Abigail, Louisa and Gershom Judah

1793(4th of Tevet, 5554):Herz Cerfbeer of Medelsheim the military contractor and philanthropist passed away today at Strasbourg.  Born Naphtali Ben Dov-Beer at Alsace in 1730, he was granted citizenship rights by Louis XVI in 1775. A spokesperson and supporter of the Jewish community he published rare Hebrew books including Lechem Setarim by Solomon Nissim Algazi the 17th century Talmudist who served as a rabbi by Smyrna and Jerusalem.

1795(25th of Kislev, 5556): Chanukah

1796: Elias Jacobs married Elizabeth Lazarus at the Great Synagogue today.

1797: In New York City, Leah Nathan and Jacob Naphtali Hart gave birth to Lyon Hart.

1797: In New York City, Philadelphia born Leah Nathan and Bavaria born Jacob Naphtali Hart gave birth to Nathan Hart.

1798(29th of Kislev, 5559): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1802: Birthdate of German poet and editor Lesser Ludwig who wrote, “One thing to Life you owe: Struggle, or seek for rest. If you're an anvil, bear the blow; If a hammer, strike your best” and who was supporter of the Reform movement.

1809(29th of Kislev, 5570): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1815 Birthdate of Louis Bernheim the husband of Emma Simon and father of German historian Ernst Bernheim and father-in-law of Amalie ("Emma") Henriette Jessen.

1819: Today’s “report of the Privy Council of relates that Joseph L. Friedländer came to Bautzen in March 1813 and in the year 1819 had already left his birthplace Mühlendorf in Hungary 46 years earlier.  Concerning his family, it further relates that his “child is weak and not more than 2½ years old,” and his wife is pregnant.  The Bautzen city administration found a place for the Jewish family to reside because it had work for Friedländer in translation service for 1813-1816.”

1820: Three days after he had passed away, 56 year old Phillip Cohen, the husband of Hannah Cohen, was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1822(23rd of Kislev, 5583):Rabbi Yosef ben Moshe Mammon, the native of Morocco who taught at the Yeshiva in Safed before settling in Burkhara in 1793 because the people needed strong Jewish leadership, passed away today.  Among his descendants is the Dorit Moussaieff, the First Lady of Iceland.

1822: In Breslau, Amalie Kempner and Salomon Silberstein gave birth to Emma Silberstein, the future wife of Louise Loewe and the father of James Loewe.

1823: In Liegnitz, Silesia, Isidor and Johanna (née Prausnitzer) Kronecker gave birth to German mathematician Leopold Kronecker

1827: One day after he had passed away “Joseph ben Chaim Schwab” was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1828(1st of Tevet, 5589): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1828: Birthdate of “Herford, Germany” native Ferdinand Falk, the husband of “Jeannette Levy Falk” and father of “Arnold, Gustave, Myron and Gertrude Falk.”

1830: Birthdate of Judah Leib (Ben Asher) Gordon, the native of Vilnius also known as Leon Gordon, who became a leading Hebrew poet of the 19thcentury.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Gordon_Yehudah_Leib

1833: Birthdate of Louis-Norbert Carrière the anti-Dreyfusard “government commissioner who successfully pled at Rennes for Dreyfus’s second conviction even if it meant misrepresenting evidence.

1834: Two days after she had passed away, “Kenadel Goldsmid,” the widow of Nathan Goldsmid was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1839: Birthdate of Polish native Louis M. Falk, the husband of Hattie Goodhart Falk with whom he had three children – Morris, Estella and Harry.

1841:Michael Solomon Alexander, a convert from Judaism was ordained as Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem at Lambeth Place.  He would arrive in Jerusalem in the first month of the following year

1842: The New York Philharmonic gave its first performance.  Numerous Jewish musicians and conductors have been involved with the Philharmonic in its 163 year history.  One of the most famous Jews connected with the Philharmonic was not a musician.  In 1909, Minnie Utermyer, wife of prominent businessman and lawyer Samuel Untermey led a group of philanthropist in guaranteeing the future financial solvency of this great American musical institution.

1844:Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (a Singspiel in three acts by German-Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer was first performed today at the Hofoper, in Berlin.

1847: Birthdate of Solomon Schechter.  “Solomon Schechter was born in Rumania into a Chabad Chassidic family. His Chassidic upbringing did not satisfy him, however, and, in 1879 he went to study at the Berlin Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums and at the University of Berlin. In 1882 Schechter was invited to be a tutor in Rabbinics in London. He quickly rose to prominence as a rabbinic scholar and spokesman for Jewish traditionalism. In 1890 he was appointed lecturer in Talmudics and in 1892 reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge University. In 1899 he also became professor of Hebrew at University College, London. He gained international fame as a scholar when he discovered and brought back to London more than 100,000 pages of rare manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza. Beyond sorting and filing the documents, Schechter wrote on the newly-found Ben Sirach materials, unknown until then. Schechter accepted the invitation to become president of the Jewish Theological Seminary and succeeded in attracting an outstanding group of scholars to teach. The Jewish Theological Seminary became a recognized center of Jewish learning. In 1913 Solomon Schechter was instrumental in founding the United Synagogue of America, the umbrella organization of all Conservative congregations. Though a staunch traditionalist, Schechter admitted that there could be change in modern Judaism. However, he felt that changes should not be introduced arbitrarily or deliberately. Rather, ‘the norm as well as the sanction of Judaism is the practice actually in vogue. Its consecration is the consecration of general use—or, in other words, of Catholic Israel.’ Although it may be apocryphal, my favorite quote from Solomon Schechter is, ‘Gentlemen, in order to be a success in the American rabbinate, you must be able to talk baseball.’"

1849: In Freudental, Germany, Simon and Babette Horkheimer gave birth to Morris Horkheimer, the husband of Cecilia Horkheimer with whom he had four children.

 

1852: Reverend Edward Robinson, DD read a lengthy paper based on his recent visit to the Holy Land at the regular monthly meeting of the New York Historical Society. After Reverend Robinson finished his presentation Dr. Adams said that to some such a detailed report of such a distant place “was not the most appropriate for the New York State Historical Society.  But on reflection every man should feel that Palestine was not a strange land to us. It was our home, ‘Jerusalem is the mother of us all.’ …They therefore felt thankful to the Doctor for his laborious research.”  [This is an early manifestation of philo-Semitism that would be beneficial to the Zionist movement.]

1857: Birthdate of Sigmund Kohlman who was buried at Springhill Avenue Temple Cemetery in Mobile when he passed away.

 

1857: The first session of the 35thUnited States Congress in which Philadelphian Henry Myer Phillips served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives opened today in Washington, DC.

1857: Birthdate of Sigmund Kohlman, the secretary and treasurer of The New Orleans Foundry Company and husband of Julia H. Kohlman.

1859: Lewis Emanuel married Mary Sampson at the Great Synagogue today.

1860: A column published today entitled “The Commercial Relations Between the North and South,” reviews the impact that Southern Secession would have on the business operations in what has been the United States of America using the ability of Jews and Christians to engage in commercial activities as its template:

 

“How, then, is New-York to lose its Southern trade? If at all, from political considerations alone; South Carolina says, "I do not like your political sentiments, and will have nothing to do with you." She is not as tolerant as the Jew who would buy and sell with the Christian, but not eat or drink with him. But will, or can she deliberately persist in any course in violation of her own interest? No! The thing is impossible. It has not an example in all history. If there be a law unerring in its action, and firmly engraved upon the popular mind, it is that "men will sell in the dearest market and buy in the cheapest," and will always take the shortest and most convenient method to accomplish their ends. South Carolina can no more stay away from us than matter can refuse to obey the laws of gravity, which is not a whit stronger in its way than is the law of self-interest with the individual.”

 

1865: Birthdate of Hamburg, Germany native Otto John Beit, “the younger brother of Alfred Beit” who “went to England in 1888” where he became a successful stockbroker and then went on to South Africa to play “an active role” in the diamond and gold mining industries before return to England where he became active in cultural and artistic affairs while becoming a British citizen in 1898.

1867: In Germany, Abraham Elzas and Henrietta Lowenthal gave birth to Barnett Elzaa, the graduate of Jews College, the University of Toronto and the Medical College of South Carolina who was the husband of the former Annie Samuel London and the Rabbi of K.K. Beth Elhoim in Charleston, SC.

1868: In San Francisco, Joseph M.Brandstein, and Jane Jeannette Brandenstein gave birth to Henry Ulysses Brandestein

1871(24th of Kislev, 5632): Light the first Chanukah candle.

1871(24th of Kislev, 5632): Seventy-three year old Orthodox German rabbi Jacob Ettlinger passed away today at Altona, Prussia.

1873: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Rebecca and William Jacob Mack gave birth to Millard William Mack, the husband of Lydia Mack and father of William Jacob Mack – all part of the Cincinnati Mack dynasty.

1873: Birthdate of Olga Lehmann who was transported from Berlin to Terezin in 1942 and from Terezin to Auschwitz in 1944.

1874: Two days after she had passed away, “Simha Toledano” a native of Gibraltar was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1875: Today’s session of the Hebrew Charity Fair raised over $12,000 for the Mount Sinai Hospital.

1875: “The Society for Providing a Home for Aged, Infirm and Destitute Israelites in the city of Albany, NY” which meets on the second Sunday of each month, was incorporated today

1875: It was reported today that the bodies of Abram and Aaron Dietz, William Meyers, Abram Kurtz and William Laser who died in the Brooklyn Theatre Fire which claimed the lives of 278 people were taken from the City Morgue by representatives of the Brooklyn Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society and taken to Temple Israel.  The bodies were so badly charred that identification of the victims has been so slow and difficult

1876: In Curacao, Jacob Baiz, the son of “Isaac and Rachel Pereira Baiz” and his wife “Rebecca Baiz” gave birth to Angela Baiz.

1877: In Raleigh, NC, Michael and Regina (Einstadter) Grausman gave birth Columbia trained physician and surgeon Philip M. Grausman, who “was attached to the Red Cross in WW I” and who used his surgical skills at the Hospital for Joint Diseases and the Jewish Maternity Hospital” while enjoying a membership in the Harmonie Club.

1878: In Brooklyn, Harris Alexander and the former Betsy Harris gave birth to David Alexander, the husband of the former Iren Schwab and graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College who served as the rabbi of Temple Israel in Paducah, Kentucky and the Akron, OH, Hebrew Congregation.

1879: Based on information that originally appeared in an article entitled the “History of Money” by famed numismatist Sir John Lubbock, it was reported today that the ancient shekel is one of the most popular coins among collectors possibly because of its Biblical connection.  However, it is the most frequently counterfeited ancient coin and “of so-called shekels found among collectors, over three-fourths of them are forgeries.

1879: “The Prussian Press and Bismarck” published today describes the government’s control of the content of newspapers in Germany which is under the direction of a Privy Councilor named Hahn, who is a convert from Judaism. (This will not be the last time that the Jews are accused of controlling the media in Germany or elsewhere)

 

1879: President Abraham Oettinger chaired the 15th annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Association. The association operates 5 schools and is planning to open a sixth.  The school employs twenty teachers, five of whom are women. The association serves 1,129 students. All of the students must attend public school during the day since the association’s schools are intended to supplement and not supplant public education offerings.  Two of the association’s schools conduct Saturday morning services which draw approximately 600 worshippers.

1879: The formal incorporation of Or Chaim takes place in New York City with the adoption of its constitution and by-laws at its first meeting attended by two of its first members, Sigmund Arnstein and Marcus J. Cohen.

 

1880: “Modern Persecution of the Jews” published today described the outbreak of anti-Semitism sweeping across Germany.  It is based on the premise that a million and half Jews are trying to control the lives of forty million Germans. German nationalist hate Jews because they do not engage in manual labor while the Socialists hate them because they are all millionaires.  The outbreak of anti-Semitism coincided with the economic downturn that came after the bubble created the victory over France came to an end.

1880: It was reported today that German Jews do not serve in the army because they are prevented from rising above the rank of 2nd lieutenant.

1880(5th of Tevet, 5641): Seventy-nine year old Lob Oppenheimer, the husband of Bina Oppenheimer and the son of Rachel and Abraham Oppenheimer passed away today.

1880: It was reported that German Jews do not serve in the German navy or the merchant marine because they have no hope of ever serving as captain of a vessel.  This based on “an old German superstition that a Jewish Captain would sink his vessel.”

1881: A four-act version of “The Tales of Hoffmann an opéra fantastique by Jacques Offenbach with recitatives was staged at the Ringtheater today”  

1881: It was reported today when Chester A. Arthur sent his Presidential message to Congress he took note of the fact that the Senate resolutions expressing condolence at the time of the assassination of Czar Alexander II had been sent to the Russian government which he hoped would improve the treatment of American Jews visiting that empire.  The Russians, Arthur wrote, had a tendency to treat American Jews in the same manner they did Jews living under the Czar

 1882: During the Tiszaeszlár Affair, a Hungarian blood libel, the body found in Tisza was exhumed and reexamined by three professors of medicine from the University of Budapest.  They would conclude that the original autopsy “had no scientific basis” and showed “grows ignorance” on the part of the examiners.

 

1882:Marianne Trenel and Rabbi Simon Debré gave birth to French pediatrician Robert Debré

 

1884: According to reports published today L’Académie française has admitted its first Jewish member, Ludovic Halévy who has agreed to focus only on writing novels from now on.

 

1884: The list of Holiday Books published today included Our Young Folks Josephus: The Antiquities of the Jews and Jewish Wars simplified by William Shepard which is a simplification of the works of Josephus with illustrations by Dore.

 

1885: In an attempt to thwart the efforts of the members of St. Bernard’s Church to stop construction of a side track on Van Rensselaer Street on Sundays, the attorney for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company says he will hire eight Jews “to test the question  whether a Jews breaks the Sabbath by working on Sunday.”

 

1886: According to reports published today, a society has been formed at Minden, Germany to promote marriages “between Christians and Jews.

 

1887: A Polish Jewish immigrant named Burkmann was pulled from the water when he attempted to kill himself by jumping off the pier at Castle Garden.

 

1887: Birthdate of Austrian composer Ernst Toch whose works ranged from the classical to the Hollywood musical scores, the most famous of which was for the 1937 classic Heidi.

 

1888: In a case of Jew versus Jew, 19 year old Ernestine Nolfen sued Noach Soenfeld in Minneapolis, MN for “breach of promise.”

 

1888: Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs was reported today to have been among the clergymen who met with Mayor Hewitt today to discuss plans for the celebration of the Centenary of the Inauguration of George Washington as President of the United States which is scheduled to take place on April 30, 1889.

 

1888: It was reported today that Rabbi Wolf Berger of Anshe Chesed has sued the brothers of the late Mr. Kingsburgh who owned a stationary and tobacco store near the local post office for twenty five dollars.  Berger claims he is owed the money for teaching the decedent’s sons the appropriate prayers for mourning their father and for composing the inscription on his tombstone.

 

1889: Today Vanity Fair magazine published a picture of French journalist Henri Blowitz who “predicted the collapse of the French empire during the Franco-Prussian War” and whose “most famous achievement was in 1878, when he managed to obtain the text of the Treaty of Berlin and publish it at the very moment that the Congress of Berlin was finally signing it”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Blowitz#/media/File:Henri_de_Blowitz,_Vanity_Fair,_1889-12-07.jpg

 

1890(25th of Kislev, 5651): Chanukah

 

1890: M.S. Isaacs presided over the annual meeting of The Hebrew Free School Association, an organization dedicated to “Americanizing” Jewish immigrants.

 

1890: “Baron Hirsch To Send Jews To The Argentine Republic” published today described plans that Baron Hirsch has for settling some of the half million Jews expelled by Russia in the South American country; a plan for which he is ready to spend twenty million dollars and which has the support Argentine President Carlos Pellegrini who has a Jewish brother-in-law.

 

1890: It was reported today that Dr. George Allan Heron’s “”newly- published work on the communicability of consumption dwells on the well-ascertained  immunity from tuberculosis of carefully-conforming Jews whose meat is inspected in a manner which would require the rejection of an entire carcass if any speck of tubercle were discovered.” (In other words he is making a positive connection between the observance of Kashrut and immunity from Tuberculosis.  At the same time, opponents of immigration in the United States demonized Jews as carriers of TB.)

 

1891: In New York, seven Russian Jews – Hirsch Bachletsky, Susman Wilkisky, Elias Chyot, Benjamin Soldofsky, Adolph Baum, Solomon White and Jacob Schwartz – “appeared before the British Consulate on State Street and made formal charges against a foreman of the cattlemen employed on the steamship France after having tried to report their theft and abuse to the local police and the United States Commissioner.

1891: In Albany, NY, Max and Dora Ettelson Aronowitz gave birth to Dartmouth undergraduate and Albany Medical College trained surgeon Milton Aronowitz, the husband of Gretchen Aronowitz.

 

1892: Birthdate of Max Michaelis Ehhrlich, the multitalented Berlin born entertainer who would be murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1944.

 

1892: As a result of a campaign led by Joseph Barondess Governor Fowler pardoned cloakmaker Frank Rheingold who had been convicted of 2nd degree burglary as a result of actions taken during the cloakmaker’s strike at Benjamin & Caspary.

 

1892: In Washington, DC, the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations came to an end with a report by the financial committee that the Union has raised $26,539 with $22,804 going to support the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

1892: During Hermann Ahlwardt’s trial for slandering a Jewish arms manufacturer the presiding Judge fined self-professed anti-Semite’s counsel 100 marks when he attempted to resign following rulings from the bench that he did not liked

 

1892: In describing the changing population mix in New York, Reverend William T Elsing was quoted today as saying that the east side below Houston Street has become “a great Hebrew center.”

 

1892: Eighty-four year old Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, whose work provide one of the “earliest surviving records of the lands of the east Mediterranean including Palestine and Jerusalem passed away today.

 1893(28th of Kislev, 5654): Fourth Day of Chanukah

 

1894: Silver Dollar Smith, the Jewish Tammany politician and saloon keeper is scheduled to appear in court today where he must answer charges that he assaulted August J. Gloistein, the operator of another nearby saloon.

 

1894: Max Lissauer explained that the Jewish members of the Committee had not attended the reception at the Union Club for Mayor-elect William Strong, even though they had “worked as hard as they could for his election” because they did not feel comfortable at the Union Club which refused membership to a co-religionist, Theodore Seligman who had been blackballed because he was Jewish.

1895: Birthdate of Peretz Davidovich Markish, the Russian poet whose language of choice was Yiddish whose wife Esther and his sons, literary scholar Shimon Markish and prose writer David Markish sought to redeem his reputation after he was murdered in the Stalin purge “Night of the Murdered Poets.”

http://yiddishkayt.org/view/peretz-markish/

1895: Financier Henry Clews who organized the “Committee of 70” was quoted today as saying that “the best thing that” German anti-Semite Hermann “Ahlwardt can do is to go home.”  “The Jews as a class are good citizens.  They respect the laws and benefit business and society.” Ahlwardt, “may as well understand that he is a most unwelcome visitor.”

1897: In Shanghai, David Haimovitch of Shanghai married Berth Gersburger of Alsace-Lorraine at the Beth El Synagogue. 

1898: In Chicago the fair and bazaar sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Charity Association which is raising funds for Michael Reese Hospital and the United Hebrew Charities is scheduled to come to an end.

1899: Vanity Fair magazine published a picture of Bohemian born Jewish journalist Henri Blowitz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Blowitz#/media/File:Henri_de_Blowitz,_Vanity_Fair,_1889-12-07.jpg

1899: As a result of his participation in today’s Battle of Anguillan, Dr. Joseph M. Heller who served as surgeon with the 24th U.S. Infantry during the Philippine Insurrection received a Silver Star Citation

1901(26th of Kislev, 5662): Parashat Vayeshev; Second Day of Chanukah

1901: In New York, Frederick Margareten, the Hungarian born son or Rabbi Joel Margaraten and Julia Margareten, and his wife Regina Margareten gave birth to Lilian Rose Margaretten who became Lilian Rose Sikolow when she married Moe Sokolow.

1902: After having preached his first sermon on Zionism two weeks ago in which he said that Zionism was a dream utterly impossible of realization and that it was only believed in by a small minority of the Jews all over the world” Rabbi Joseph Silverman preached his second sermon Zionism in which he that “his solution of the Jewish question” was “Evolution and Assimilation.”

1903: The first New York Company of the Boy’s is scheduled to meet today for the first time at rooms provided by B’nei Zion under the leadership of Drill Instructor Lebensohn

1903: Today, the correspondent of The Times London at Tangiers says that “Jewish refugees from Tesa gave a heartrending account of the barbarities by the Government troops after their reoccupation of the town” where ‘few of their women escaped the brutality of their soldiers “and where the Jews are “absolutely destitute” because the soldiers “robbed them their possessions.”

1904(29th of Kislev, 5665): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1904: In New York City, Benvenida Solis Davis and Goodman Richard Davis gave birth to Goodman Richard Davis, Jr, the “brother of Walter Alan Davis.”

1904: Birthdate of New York naïve Viola Regina Philo, the New York College of Music trained operatic soprano whose career included appearances at Radio City Music Hal and the Metropolitan Opera.

1905: In a letter to the editor published today, Lucien Wolf replied “to the allegation that the massacre at Odessa originated with the provocative attitude of the Jews and that had they not been armed and organized the efforts of the reactionaries and local authorities to stir up the populace against them would have failed.”

1905(9th of Kislev, 5666): Eighty-two year old Julius Freiberg, the husband of Duffie Frieberg and father of UAHC president Julius Walter Freiberg, passed away today in Cincinnati.

1905: Birthdate of Leonard Goldstein who would become President of the American Broadcasting Companies in 1968.

1905: According to reports received today in Vienna at least 8,000 people of have been killed in Odessa since the attacks on the Jews began in that Russian city.

1906(20th of Kislev, 5667): Isaac Samuel Isaacs, the second son of Rabbi Samuel Myer Isaacs and Jane Symmons, and Columbia trained lawyer who “was a member of the firm of M.S. & I.S. Isaacs” which “is counsel for the Baron de Hirsch Fund” who was the long time President of the West End Synagogue passed away today in New York City.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43057806?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

1907(2nd of Tevet, 5668): Parashat Miketz; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1907: In Chicago, Leon Oboler and Clara Oboler, Jewish immigrants from Riga, Latvia, gave birth to Arch Oboler an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer, and director who was active in radio, films, theater, and television.

1907: Birthdate of Frija Zoaretz, the native of Libya who made Aliyah in 1949 and served “as a member of the Knesset for the National Religious Party between 1955 and 1969.

https://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mk_eng.asp?mk_individual_id_t=403

1907: Conductor Arturo Toscanini and his wife Carla De Martini gave birth their daughter Wanda, a Catholic who became Wanda Horowitz in 1922 when she married “pianist Valdimir Horowitz.”

1907: Birthdate of Lithuanian native Fred Rosenberg who moved to Canada and as Fred Rose gained fame as a labor organizer and Canadian communist politician.

1907:The Trustees, Faculty, and students of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America gave a "surprise party" to Dr. Solomon Schechter, the President of that institution, in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. Dr. Schechter has only been in this country five years, having been summoned by the Trustees of the seminary from his position as Reader in the Rabbinic in Cambridge University, England, and Professor of Hebrew in the University of London.

1908 It was reported today that at a meeting of the Judeans, Nathan Straus who had worked so hard to established pasteurized milk depots “took direct issued with Dr. Koch’s contention that bovine tuberculosis was not to be feared in so far as lung infection is concerned.

1909: It was reported today that Isidor Sacks has been appointed chairman of committee of the newly created Manhattan Central Improvement Association whose members include Oscar Straus which will examine the issues surrounding the widening of 34thStreet.

1910(6th of Kislev, 5671): Fifty-five year old Rabbi Hirsch Hildesheimer, the son of Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer and Henriette (Jettchen) Hildeshiemer and the husband of Rosa Therese Hildesheimer passed away in Berlin

1910: Birthdate of Richard Franko Goldman conductor, educator, author, music critic, and composer who was the son of Edwin Franko Godman.  The son followed the father as conductor of the Goldman Band of New York City.

1911(16th of Kislev, 5672): Seventy-eight year old Sir George Lewis passed away.

http://www.fivenine.co.uk/family_history_notebook/source_extracts/obituaries/george_henry_lewis.htm

1911: Cambridge University conferred an honorary LL.D. degree on Lord Rothschild.

1911: Arthur M. Myers were re-elected to serve as a “member for Auckland City, East New Zealand.”

1912: It was reported today that Adolf Kraus, President of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith has received an urgent appeal by cable from the President of the Grand Lodge in Turkey requesting speedy financial assistance to aid Jewish sufferers from war and cholera” as well as a similar appeal from the President of the Grand Lodge of Romania on behalf of the Jews of Bulgaria.

1912: Rabbi Tobias Schanfarber is scheduled to speak to the “children of the Sabbath School at the Hebrew Institute this afternoon.

1913: It was reported today that “Henry Green, organizer of the Jewish-American Rumanian Jewish Committee” is scheduled to set sail for Southampton on December 11 so he can attend an informal meeting of delegates who are, like him protesting against the Rumanian Government’s treatment of the Jews and who will be attending the International Conference at Berlin in January.

1914: The Federation of Oriental Jews organized the Oriental Jewish Community of New York. They plan to establish and maintain their own institutions, burial grounds, Talmud-Torahs, etc., and to care for the poor and sick Ladino speaking community.

1915: Abraham Shalom Yahuda of Madrid is appointed ordinary professor "Catedratico numberario" of rabbinic literature at the Central University. The appointment came despite the fact that there no synagogues in Spain and that there had not been one in the country since 1492.

1915: The seventh annual convention of the Federation of Jewish Farmers being held in the auditorium of the Educational Alliance building on East Broadway goes into its third day with a morning discussion on “educational and social problems on the farm,” an afternoon business session and a dinner in the evening at the Broadway Central Hotel.

1915:  In “Red Hook, Brooklyn” Polish-Jewish immigrants “Abraham and Bertha (Schorr) Wallach gave birth to Eli Herschel Wallach the graduate of the University of Texas who earned a Master of Arts degree from CCNY before serving in the United States Army during WW II and gaining fame as act Eli Wallach one of his best was as the Mexican outlaw leader in The Magnificent Seven.

1916: In New York City, “Jewish immigrants Isaac Sackler” and the former Sophie Greenberg gave birth to Dr. Mortimer D. Sackler, a psychiatrist who was a co-owner of the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, makers of the controversial painkiller OxyContin, and whose lavish gifts to the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia University made him one of New York City’s most prominent benefactors. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1916: During World War I, David Lloyd George becomes Prime Minister and forms a new government.Lloyd George re-invigorated the British War effort and helped ensure the Allied victory over the Kaiser.  Lloyd George was the Prime Minister when the Balfour Declaration was issued and continued to fight for the Zionist cause after the World War when other British leaders were determined to break their war-time commitment to the Jewish people.

1916: Herbert Louis Samuel (the Viscount Samuel) completed his first term as Home Secretary in the UK.

1917: As the Egyptian Expeditionary Force of the British Empire on one side and the Yildirim Army Group of the Ottoman Empire and German Empires prepare for the climactic fight for control of Jaffa, “three infantry divisions of the British XXI Corps, under the command of Lieutenant General Edward Bulfin, began moving their units into position on the coastal plain.”

1917: The U.S. government, which had declared war on Germany in April, declared war today on its ally the Austro-Hungarian Army.

1917: The 53rd (Welsh) Division of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, also known as Mott’s detachment, which was supposed to cut the road between Jerusalem and Jericho captured “Solomon’s Pools to the south of Bethlehem” this evening.

1917: “The forty-six teams which are collecting subscriptions for the five million dollar fund for Jewish war relief and welfare work in the army” stopped their work tonight at sunset tonight because the start of the Sabbath but will resume their activity tomorrow afternoon.

1917: Supreme Court Justice Irving Lehman, Chairman of the Jewish Welfare Board said that “the Jews of America have furnished the army and navy 50,000 of their finest young men” and the Jews “who cannot serve it as fighters” owe to their country to contribute so that their spiritual needs can be met – in the same that the supports of the YMCA and Knights of Columbus have already done.

1917: In Kostroma, the Jews formed a “self-defense corps.”

1917: In Odessa, “the general in command of” the city’s “garrison announced that he would suppress attempts to attack Jews” while “a large part of the garrison openly declared its ‘neutrality’ in events of a pogrom.”

1917: Pogroms took place in “Belgorodsk, Skuria and Rezev.”

1917: On the Western Front, the Battle of Cambrai in which the German forces that included Carl Anker, drove back a British forced led by the Mark IV Tank.

 

1918:  As Allied troops march into Germany and establish zones of occupation under the terms of the Armistice signed on November 11, German born Zionist Arthur Ruppin wrote in his diary, “Never indeed, in the history of the world has a people been confronted with such terrible armistice terms and admitted its complete defeat, although no enemy has yet set foot on its soil and on the contrary, its armies are still deep within the territories of its enemies.  The simple man in the street cannot understand what has happened so suddenly and feels completely lost.”

 

1918: Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, writes a letter to Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Vatican Secretary of State, apparently complaining about what he considered the disproportionate power of Jews in Poland. "There are about 600,000 Protestants and about 2 million Jews, but their religious importance is negligible, outside of the fairly frequent conversions to Catholicism.  But by contrast their economic, political, and social importance (especially that of the Jews) is large and indeed tremendous." (As reported by Austin Cline)

 

1918: “Camden Jews opened the great drive of the Federation of Jewish Charities of Camden with a mass meeting at the Towers Theatre” tonight.

1919: In Albany Park (Chicago), the bazaar sponsored by the Sisterhood of Temple Israel is scheduled to come to an end today.

1919: Mrs. Morris S. Rosenwald is scheduled to perform for the Symphony Concert at the Chicago Hebrew Institute.

1920(26th of Kislev, 5681): Second Day of Chanukah

1920(26th of Kislev, 5681): Seventy-year old Esther Cohen, the Melbourne born daughter of Michael And Elizabeth Cashmore and the wife of Henry Cohen with whom she had eight children passed away today in her home town,

1920: “Jews To Work With League” published today described the arrival of a delegation of prominent Jews led by Lucien Wolf, “representing the Jew Board of Deputies in the British Empire” in Geneva where the plan “to place before the League of Nations a memorandum regarding he question of the protection of minorities and finding some remedy against pogroms.”

1921: The graduation of the nursing class from Hadassah hospital, which had been postponed due to Arab attacks in November, took place.  The graduation address was given by Dr. Eder, a distinguished British Jew and member of the Zionist Executive who spoke in English.  Dr. Eliezer Ben Yehuda, one of the pioneering fathers’ of Modern Hebrew, walked out in protest.

1922: Professor George L. Scherger is scheduled to lecture on “George Bernard Shaw” this evening at the Sinai Social Center in Chicago, Illinois.

1922: In Manhattan, Walter and Marion Pollak gave birth to Louis Heilprin Pollak, “a federal judge and former dean of two prestigious law schools who played a significant role in major civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case” (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1923: Birthdate of Professor Sir Abraham Goldberg who became Regius Professor of the Practice of Medicine at the University of Glasgow

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12772438.Sir_Abraham_Goldberg/

1924: In Frankfurt am Main Gustav and Toni (née Koch) Fleischmann gave birth to Ernest Martin Fleischmann who fled the Nazis and eventually became “imperious impresario who ran the Los Angeles Philharmonic for nearly three decades, helping to elevate its stature to that of an orchestra of the first rank.”

1925: Birthdate of Brooklynite Max “Slats” Zaslofsky the St. John’s college basketball player who played for “the Chicago Stags of the newly organized Basketball Association of America, the forerunner of the National Basketball Association” after which he coached “for two seasons in the American Basketball Association with the New Jersey Americans/New York Nets.”

1925: In Great Britain, movie mogul G.B. Samuelson and his wife gave birth to Sir Sydney Wylie Samuelson who was appointed as the first British Film Commissioner in 1991 and the first President of the UK Jewish Film Festival.

1926: Author Alfred Döblin and his wife gave birth to their third son Stefan

1927: It was reported today that “John D. Rockefeller, Jr. has given $50,000 to the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies” which “is the large largest ever made by a non-Jew to any local Jewish philanthropic cause.”

1928: Birthdate of Noam Chomsky.

1928: The annual Who’s Who issued of the American Hebrew Magazine published today revealed that John D. Rockefeller, Jr. who contributed $500,000 toward Jewish colonization in the Soviet Union was one of “four Christians among the twenty-six persons who have merited special distinction because of achievements in spheres of mutual endeavor among Jews and Christians in American during the year 1928.”

1929: “Glorifying the American Girl,” a musical comedy with songs by Irving Berlin and featuring a cameo appearance by Eddie Cantor was released in the United States today.

1930(17th of Kislev, 5691): Edward David Cowen, the newspaper man whose articles and life were chronicled in Newspaper career of E.D. Cowen, with biographic sketches by Charles A. Murray, Slason Thompson, R.E.M. Strickland, C.E. Arney, Hugh Hume, Frank M. Dallam, Jr passed away today.

1930(17th of Kislev, 5691): On his 65th birthday German born British financier and patron of the arts Otto John Beit, 1st Baronet, the husband of Lilian Carter with whom he had two sons, passed away today.

1930: Pauline “Koner's first choreographed piece was presented today] at the Guild Theatre.”

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/koner-pauline

1931(27th of Kislev, 5692): Third Day of Chanukah

1931:Although Beth El in Camden, NJ, had been organized in 1920, the tenth an­niversary was celebrated by Sisterhood at a special meeting” today which was held in conjunction with Hadassah and Council of Jewish Women and featured Dr. Israel H. Leventhal of New York's Brooklyn Jewish Center, the son of Philadelphia's "Chief Rabbi", Bernard Leventhal, as the guest speaker.

1932: “Walk A Little Faster,” “a musical revue with sketches by S.J. Perelman…and lyrics by E.Y. Haburg” which included the famous song “April in Paris” opened on Broadway today at the St. James Theatre

1932: In Warsaw, “three Jewish Deputies, members of the government bloc, called upon the Minister of the Interior today to protest against the anti-Semitic disturbance in Lwow.”

1933: Premier of the cinematic version Elmer Rice's play 'Counsellor-at-Law”' starring John Barrymore. Rice was Jewish.  Barrymore was not.

1934: “Exiled Jews In Saar Relieved At Accord” published today described an interim agreement that appeared to protect the rights of Jewish refugees in the territory but which would prove to be worthless because they were based on a Nazi officials promise not to discriminate against Jews.

1935(11th of Kislev, 5696): Parashat Vayetzei

1935(11th of Kislev, 5696): Fifty-nine year old Herman Morris Adler, the son of Dr. Isaac Adler, the nephew of Felix Adler and the husband of Frances Porter who graduated from Columbia and Harvard Medical School who went on to a career as a “psychiatrist and criminologist” passed away today in Boston.

1936: Birthdate of Robert Belinsky, the native of New York’s Lower East Side who gained fame as major league pitcher Bo Belinsky who was better known for his off the field antics than his on the mound skills.

1936: It was reported today that Senator Royal S. Copeland declared that “the British Government’s lack of any definite policy in administering its League of Nations mandate in Palestine was responsible for the Arab rioting” and that because of a special treaty with Great Britain, the United States “is under a solemn obligation to see to it that Great Britain carries out its duties.

1937: Pianist and composer Alexander Tansman married Colette Cras, a pianist of repute who was the daughter of the composer Admiral Jean Cras and the mother of his two daughters, Mireille and Marianne.

1940: In Brooklyn, Sol Frank Steinhardt and his wife gave birth to Michael Steinhardt the hedge fund manager who founded Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co.

1941: A ship from Lisbon arrives at Ellis Island arrives carrying Wanda Landowska.

1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the home base of the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, an act that led to America's entry into World War II.  Approximately 500,000 Jews served during World War II.  This was about ten per cent of the Jewish Population in the United States, which would have made it higher than the average for other ethnic groups.  The numbers put the lie to the anti-Semitic slur that Jews were nothing but black market profiteers.  Approximately 52,000 of the Jewish service personnel were decorated during the war. 

1941: Time Magazine correspondent Theodore White dropped slips of paper down twenty-nine floors to the street from Time offices at Rockefeller Center to inform bewildered Christmas shoppers below that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. This young Jewish Harvard graduate would go on to write The Making of the President 1960, a classic which would change the nature of political literature while helping to create the Kennedy Legend and the Concept of Camelot.

1941:  SS and Latvian firing squads began a slaughter of the Jews of Riga.  Between December 7 and December 9, 1941, 25,000 Riga Jews were put to death by firing squads. Combined with previous actions by the SS and their Latvian allies, only 20% of original Jewish population in Riga now remained. This ghetto was now ready to house German Jew deportees. Among the victims is a preeminent Jewish historian, 81-year-old Simon Dubnow.

1941: While “writing bulletins for The Times’s radio affiliate, Lester Bernstein was the first staff member to report the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.”

1941: At Pearl Harbor, Ensign Nathan Asher, a graduate of the Naval Academy took command U.S.S. Blue since the skipper was ashore and in a harrowing trip lasting one and half hours guided the ship out to open waters and safety while Ensign Milton Moldane, a graduate of Washington University Law School “took charge of the forward machine guns” fighting off the attacking Japanese aircraft.

1941(17th of Kislev, 5702): During the attack at Pearl Harbor, Radio Mechanic 3rd Class Rosenthal gave his life aboard the U.S. S. California.

1941(17th of Kislev, 5702): Private Louis Shleifer, a native of Newark, NJ, serving with the U.S. Army Air Corps was mortally wounded as he helped his comrades move planes into hangars to avoid having them be destroyed by attacking Japanese aircraft.

1941(17th of Kislev, 5702): Lee Goldfarb, a native of Jersey City, NJ, serving as a 3rd Class radioman aboard the U.S.S. Oglala lost his life when a Japanese torpedo struck and sunk his ship.

1941: The attack at Pearl Harbor brings the U.S. into WW II during which approximately 200 Jews from Utah would serve in the various branches of the Armed forces.

1941: According to the Glenn Flower, German-Dutch landowner Johannes Steel who fled to the United States after the Nazis came to power was one of the few who “predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a week before it occurred.”

1941: The Tatsuma Maru whose passengers included Lew Zikman, which had left Japan on December 1st bound for the United States, turned around today and returned to Yokohaman.

1941: The Nazis begin gas-van extermination operations at the death camp in Chelmno, Poland

1942( 28th of Kislev, 5703): Eighty-three year old Hannah Greenebaum Solomon the celebrated founder of the National Council of Jewish Women which was the first national association of Jewish women and also an important force for reform in Chicago around the turn of the twentieth century” passed away today. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/07/1942/hannah-greenebaum-solomon

1942: Today, “during the pacification action around Ciepielów, a group of 14 Christian Poles were shot by the gendarmes for hiding Jews including Wojciech Skrzak, Marianna Skwira, Barbara Stefanek, the Wdowiak family including Benedykt (58), Aleksandra (17) and Marianna (94); as well as the Wojewódka family with Ignacy (50), his wife Marianna (45) and children Wacław, Jan, Stanisław, and Józef, age 7. (Editor’s note – The price for being a “righteous gentile” was high, a grim reality that should be factored in when studying the response to the Nazis and their allies during WWII)

1942: “Went the Day Well?” a British war film directed by Michael Balcon, the youngest son of “Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe was released today in the United Kingdom.

1942: German troops enter the Polish village of Bialka and murder 96 villagers suspected of shielding Jews fleeing the anti-Jewish Aktion in the nearby Parczew Forest.

1942: United States State Department official G. Robert Borden Reams, an "expert" on the Jews in the Division of European Affairs, advises that the United States government remain silent concerning details of the Holocaust.

1942: British official John Cecil Sterndale Bennett is upset because Bulgarian Jewish children may be allowed into Palestine.

1943: Eighty-two year old Baltimore born ophthalmologist Charles Henry May, MD, who had earned a degree in Pharmacy before pursuing his medical career, passed away today.

https://bjo.bmj.com/content/bjophthalmol/28/6/313.full.pdf

1944 (21st of Kislev, 5705):Satmar Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum rescued. The Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum was rescued from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, along with 1,368 other Jews, through the efforts of Rudulf Kastner, head of the Zionist rescue operation in Hungary (an earlier transport of 1,686 Jews had been rescued on Av 29). The Satmar community celebrates the 21st of Kislev as a day of thanksgiving.

 

1944: USS Drum (SS-228) a Gato-class submarine which has been under the command of Maurice H. Rindskopf set out on 12th war patrol

 

1944: The Kasztner transport’s 1, 361 Jews who had left Bergen Belsen on December 4 crossed the border into Switzerland today. For more see the work of Gaylen Ross at http://www.killingkasztner.com/where you can order a copy of “Killing Kasztner)

1945: Irvine Robbins opened his first ice cream store -- called Snowbird because he couldn't think of anything else – on the day after his 28thbirthday. Robbins used $2,000 he saved and cashed a $4,000 insurance policy his father had given him at his bar mitzvah at Seattle's Temple DeHirsch Sinai to finance the venture. Robbins had 21 flavors then, and his cousin bought $39 of the first day's $53 total ice cream sales.

1946: U.S. Secretary of state James “Jimmy” F. Byrnes said endorsed the creation of a Jewish state when he said that partition was the best solution to the Palestine Problem.

1947(24th of Kislev, 5708): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1947: During a meeting of the Jewish World Congress, it was charged that anti-Jewish incidents are taking place in Iran

1947: Sir Alan Cunningham, the British High Commissioner asked David Ben Gurion to meet with so that he could tell him that the British "had decided to evacuation Palestine as soon as possible." 

 

1947(24th of Kislev, 5708): Eighty-one year old French author and lawyer Tristan Bernard whose health was broken during his imprisonment at Drancy passed away today,

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tristan-Bernard

 

1947(24th of Kislev, 5708): Pessia Lev, a nineteen year old student nurse was killed by Arab snipers when the eight bus convoy she was riding in was attacked as it made its way to Jerusalem.  Lev was going home to celebrate Chanukah with her family.

1948: Birthdate of Hartford, CT native and winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Mark Kurlanksy whose works include Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea.

1948: President Truman announced that he would ask Congress for money for the Palestinian refugees.  This would appear to be at odds with the British who want to furnish supplies and money for the refugees from UN working capital funds

1948: The Transjordan cabinet gives its consent to crowning of King Abdullah as king of united Palestine and Transjordan.  [In other words, having crossed the Jordan River, seized what is called the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem, the Jordanians were staking their claim to the land as opposed to turning it over to the Palestinians for a state of their own.]

1948: On the third and final day of Operation Assaf, the Egyptians prepared to counter-attack and drive the Israelis back. “However, Israeli Air Force reconnaissance revealed the Egyptian preparations in the morning. The Israeli assault battalion was sent to the Egyptian's north (left) flank and stormed their forces southwards, then chased the retreating Egyptians westward, eventually stopping in face of strong anti-tank Egyptian positions.” With the end of Operation Assaf, the Israelis cleared the area of mine’s and built defensive lines in case the Egyptians came back, before being withdrawn to take part in Operation Horev. 

1949: It was reported today, that Meyer W. Weisgal, the Chairman of the Executive Council of the Weizman has said that “while India has not yet recognized the Government of Israel, overtures have been for scientific relations between the two countries.

1950(28th of Kislev, 5711): Sixty-six year old, the Labor Zionist leader “served as the secretary of the World Union of Poalei Zion” passed away today in Haifa.

1951: An instrumental version of “Charmaine" co-composed by Lew Pollack reached the top spot on Billboard today.

1952: Yigael Yadin resigned today, over disagreements with prime minister and defense minister David Ben-Gurion about cuts to the military budget, which he argued should be at least one third of the national budget

1952:Mordechai Maklef became the I.D.F.’s Chief of Staff

1953(1st of Tevet, 5714): Sixth Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1953: Comdr. Hugo Frankberger, (USN Ret) a native of Charleston, W.VA, and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy is scheduled to be buried this morning at Arlington National Cemetery after funeral services at Fort Myers, Va.

1953: To the amazement of the Israeli public, Ben-Gurion resigned as Prime Minister and retired to the small farming community of Sde Boker in the Negev.

1956: “Rock, Rock, Rock!” produced by Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky who also co-wrote the screenplay and music for the film which was released today in the United States today.

1957: NBC broadcast the last episode of “Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion” produced by Harry Saltzman.

1957(13th of Kislev, 5718): Eighty-eight year old  NYU trained attorney and Tammany Hall politician Morris Cukor the Hungarian born son of Joseph and Victoria Cukor and the “husband of Cora Cukor” passed away today in Los Angeles.

1959: The Broadway production of “Saratoga” Harold Arlen’s musical adaptation of Saratoga Trunk by Edna Ferber “opened at the Winter Garden Theatre where it ran for 80 performances.”

1959: David Susskind produced “Simply Heavenly” on The Play of the Week.

1960: In New York, Julian Frieden, the chief of coronary care at Montefiore Hospital and New Rochelle Hospitals in New York and his wife gave birth to Thomas R. Frieden, “the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” under President Obama who in 2008 was arrested “and charged with groping a woman in his apartment in 2017.”

1964(2nd of Tevet, 5725): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1965(13th of Kislev, 5726): Sixty-nine year old Ukrainian born American labor activist  and leader of the ILGWU,Roe Pesotta, the third women to serve as a vice president of labor union passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/pesotta-rose

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pesotta-rose

1967(5th of Kislev, 5728): Eighty-seven year old “former New York Supreme Court Justice Meier Steinbrink, who served as chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith from 1946 to 1952” passed way today. (JTA)

1967: “Rabbi Jay Kaufman, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith, charged today that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) had permitted its facilities to be used to “subvert minds and poison hearts” against Israel in its “desire to remain acceptable to the host Arab countries.” (JTA).

1967:How Now, Dow Jones a musical comedy by Academy Award winner Elmer Bernstein, Tony Award nominee Carolyn Leigh and Max Shulman opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre

1969(27th of Kislev, 5730): Third Day of Chanukah

1969(27th of Kislev, 5730): Sixty-eight year old NYU trained lawyer who “was a past president of the Educational Alliance, treasurer of the Jewish Education Committee” and “a founder with Herman Wouk of the Fire Island Synagogue” passed away today in Beth Israel Hospital.

1969(27th of Kislev, 5730): Seventy-eight year old New York born, Harvard grad Howard Joseph Sachs, an investment banker with Goldman, Sachs passed away today.

1970(9th of Kislev, 5731): Cartoonist Rube Goldberg passed away. The winner of the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for cartooning made his name synonymous with complicated ways to perform simple tasks.

http://www.rubegoldberg.com/

http://mousetrapcontraptions.com/history-4.html

1972(2nd of Tevet, 5733): Seventh Day of Chanukah

1972(2nd of Tevet, 5733): Eighty-nine year old German born composer and conductor Klaus Pringsheim, Sr. the father of “Klaus Pringsheim, Jr., who attended Bunce Court School, a German-Jewish refugee school in Kent, England during World War II” and the brother-in-law of Thomas Mann passed away today in Tokyo.

1972(2nd of Tevet, 5733): Eighty-two year old Cornell trained neuropsychiatrist Dr. Louis Hausman, the husband of “the former of Esther May” who spent much of his career teaching at his alma mater passed away today.

1973(12th of Kislev, 5734): Seventy-three year old Benn Wolfe Levy, the playwright and Member of Parliament passed away today.

1976(15th of Kislev, 5737): Odessa native Boris Pragel, who partnered with his younger brother Alexander to become a leading dealer “in uranium and other radioactive elements and who was the husband of painter Alexandra Pragel passed away today.

1977(27th of Kislev, 5738): Peter Goldmark passed away.  Born in Hungary in 1906, Goldmark was an engineer who played a major role in the development of the long-playing record and the first commercial color television.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/goldmark_article.html

1979(17thof Kislev, 5740): Ninety year old “Walter A. Haas, Sr. the former chairman of the board of Levi Strauss and Company passed away today.

http://www.jmaw.org/hass-jewish-los-angeles/

http://www.jmaw.org/hass-jewish-san-francisco/

http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/haas/about/WHaas.html

1979(17thof Kislev, 5740): Eighty-one year old Edward “Eddie” Gottlieb the native of Kiev for whom the NBA Rookie of the Year Trophy is named and whose dominate role in the early days of the National Basketball Association earned him  election to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame passed away today.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20220522__Mr__Basketball___Eddie_Gottlieb__memorialized_at_his_South_Phila__alma_mater.html

1980: It was reported today that “most of the emigres” from the Soviet Union “came to America ‘to escape the ignominy of being Jews’ and to take advantage of material freedoms in the United States” and that while “care little for spiritual instruction…they placed a high value on” secular “education for their children.

1981: Philip C. Habib, President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, is scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Jerusalem today.

1983: “Romantic Comedy” the movie version of the play by the same name, directed by Arthur Hiller, co-produced by Walter Mirisch with music by Marvin Hamlisch and co-starring Ron Leibman was released in the United States today.

1984: “City Heat” a crime film directed by Richard Benjamin and co-starring Madeline Kahn was released in the United States today by Warner Bros.

1984: In his review of the new four hour made for television film version of “The Sun Also Rises” John J. O’Connor reminds us that “the anti-Semitism in Hemingway’s work clearly remains a problem” as can be seen by the depiction of the fictional “Robert Cohn.”  He is “the New York Jew who is never quite swell enough to be fully accepted into…the special inner circle of” Jake Barnes and who “emerges as an obnoxious whiner with a pronounced streak of nastiness.” (Hemingway is but one of a series of noted American writers whom critics felt dabbled in anti-Semitism, something that was not mentioned when Pappa was busy “fighting fascism” during the Spanish Civil War.)

1986:Arab and Jew:Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K. Shipler is among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year.

1986: NBC broadcast the first of the two part series “Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna” written by James Goldman and co-starring Amy Irving.

1987: About 10,000 Israelis held a rally today to demand that the Kremlin open the gates for Soviet Jews to emigrate.

1988: Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.  Given what transpired afterwards including the Second Intifada, he must have had his fingers crossed.

1990: In “Abroad at Home; A Broken Dream” published today Anthony Lewis described the anguish of Yuval Neria, a decorated war hero and poet who became a clinical a psychologist and author the semi-auto-biographical bestselling novel entitled “Fire.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/07/opinion/abroad-at-home-a-broken-dream.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1991(30th of Kislev, 5752): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1991(30th of Kislev, 5752): Seventy year old Brooklynite and movie producer Herb Jaffe who began his career as literary agent for such notables as Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose and Joseph Heller, passed away today.

1992(12th of Kislev, 5753: Hamas murders three Israeli soldiers and proclaims the killings to be acts of heroism.

1993(23rd of Kislev, 5754):Palestinian gunmen killed a Jewish settler and his son today and wounded three other sons near the West Bank town of Hebron,

1994:In a sign of Washington's mounting frustration with Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said today that Israel cannot be expected to withdraw its army from the occupied West Bank until Palestinian attacks on Israelis come to an end.

1997:Inbal Segev, a world-renowned female cellist who grew up in Israel,made her Carnegie Hall debut today where she performed the Carnegie Hall premiere of Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher for solo cello by Henri Dutilleux

1997: The New York Timeslist of the Best Books of 1997 contains the following works about Jewish related subjects or by Jewish authors including American Pastoral by Phillip Roth and The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick.

1998: “Louis B. Mayer: Lion of Hollywood” published today provides Budd Schulberg’s view of the movie mogul and the world he created.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,989771,00.html

1998: In “Beauty Queen,” published today, Grace Mirabella described how Estee Lauder “turned cosmetic into a big business”

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,989786,00.html

1998(18th of Kislev, 5759): Dr Martin Rodbell an American biochemist who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine passed away. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

1999: “The international panel released its finding today on the assets of Holocaust victims in Switzerland” which “concluded that while the actions of some individual banks had been misleading there had not been a conspiracy or organized to deprive survivors of Nazi Germany of their funds.”

2000: Austrian born, American investment banker Felix Rohatyn completed his services as “U.S. Ambassador to France and Monaco.”

2001: Mr. Abu Sway, who had failed to kill anybody when the explosives wrapped around his body detonated prematurely in Jerusalem “was praised by his wife and children today as martyr who have his life for God and Country.”

2002(2nd of Tevet, 5763): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah

2002: “The Kenyan police today found the two missiles that were fired at an Israeli airliner, buried in a cornfield about six miles from the spot where the attackers launched them.”

2003: The New York Timesbook section featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including The Complete Lyrics of Frank Loesser Edited by Robert Kimball and Steve Nelson

2003: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is scheduled to “honor the lifetime achievements of San Francisco born philanthropist William “Biily” Veprin and his wife Tootsie

2004:In his talk, "The Royal Court Preacher and the Hebrew Book: Early Enlightenment and Hebrew Publishing in Prussia, 1700-1750," Menachem Schmelzer examined the role of an influential figure in the Prussian court, the Christian theologian and scholar D.E. Jablonski, who founded the Hebrew press in Berlin in 1690. Schmelzer discussed Jablonski's life, work and his activities as the publisher of Hebrew books in order to shed light on the spread of secular culture and the ideals of Enlightenment and religious tolerance among the Jews of the time.Menachem Schmelzer is Senior Distinguished Scholar at the Library's John W. Kluge Center. Schmelzer has published books, articles and reviews in the fields of medieval Hebrew literature and Jewish bibliography and was the editor of Aron Freimann's "Union Catalog of Hebrew Manuscripts and Their Location," Alexander Marx's "Bibliographical Studies and Notes on Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America" and the poems of Isaac ben Abraham Ibn Ezra.

2004: “An IDF soldier of the Oketz canine unit was killed by a bomb, along with his dog, when a booby-trapped chicken coup exploded northwest of the Karni Crossing. Four soldiers were wounded in the exchange of fire while evacuating him. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.”

2005: Two days after the murder of five Israelis at a shopping mall, an IAF helicopter destroyed the car carrying a PRC leader.  The PRC is part of Hamas.  The attack is part of a targeted response designed to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank.

2006:  Zachor? Who will remember that today is the 65th anniversary of “The Day that Will Live Infamy”?

2006: The House of Representatives gave final passage to a bill aimed at forcing the Palestinians' ruling Hamas government to accept Israel and join negotiations toward a Palestinian state in formerly Israeli-occupied territory.

2007(27 Kislev, 5768): Harvey David Luber, 71, son of Nathan and Anne Luber, passed away today. Born July 20, 1936 in Chicago, IL, he shared 52 years of marriage with his beloved wife, Elaine Roberta Barg, and was blessed with 4 children, 7 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren, son and daughter-in-law, Philip and Jackie Luber; daughter and son-in-law, Karen and Mark Mackey; daughter and son-in-law, Gayle and Steve Mink; and son, preceded in death, Sheldon Luber. While Harvey was justifiably proud of being graduate of Northwestern University with a double major in Chemistry and Biology with a minor in Humanities and he was even prouder of having earned MSJS (Master of Science in Judaic Studies) from Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago, Illinois. As a member of Temple B’Nai Israel and previously Congregation Agudith Achim, Harvey devoted 40 years of his life to educating young people and serving in many board positions within the community. He also served as Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Arkansas for many years. He believed in education as a way to understand one another, speaking to schools about the Holocaust and church groups about comparative religion. He shared his love and knowledge of photography and Judaism by teaching at the Arkansas Art Center and UALR. He was an outstanding teacher, role model and friend and touched many people’s lives of all ages. He was my friend, a chever in the truest sense of the term.  As long as a camera shutter clicks, his students open books or one of us chuckles over the memory of unique “Harvey moment” he will always live amongst us.

2007: After having premiered in London, “The Golden Compass,” directed and written by Chris Weitz was released today in the United States.

2007:  As a testament to the strength and creativity of small town Judaism in the 21st century, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah hosts a Shabbat Chanukah potluck complete with latkes and apple sauce.

2007: On Friday, the fourth day of Chanukah, four Jewish subway riders were approached by a group of ten people who offered holiday greetings.  When the Jews responded with greetings of Happy Chanukah, they were pelted with anti-Semitic remarks before being beaten.

2008: The First Annual Goldstein Lecture in memory of Jonathan Goldstein is presented by David Schoenbaum on Sunday afternoon at Agudas Achim. Schoenbaum’s topic is "Fiddlers on the Roof: How They Got Up There, and How They Got Down.” Professor Jonathan Goldstein was a long time member of Agudas Achim and had a joint appointment in the UI History Dept and Classics Dept. He was an ordained rabbi and his research was in Jewish Studies. He was considered the expert on the Hasmonean period.

2008: Barbara Streisand is among those honored by the Kennedy Center for her contribution to Arts in America.

2008: In The Washington Post, critic Jonathan Yardley’s list of the fifteen best books he reviewed in 2008 include For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder That Shocked Chicago, by Simon Baatz and The Spies of Warsaw by Jewish author Alan Furst.

2009(22ndof Kislev, 5770): Roy Solomonoff, a pioneer, in Artificial Intelligence, passed away today. (As reported by John Markoff)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/science/10solomonoff.html?_r=0

2009: Poets and writers from Israel and all over the world come together in Jerusalem at Beit Avi Chai and  Mishkenot Sha'ananim, for the opening session of the third annual Kisufim Conference,  which aims to "encourages encounters between Israeli creativity - in Hebrew and other languages - and world Jewish creativity that is both multilingual and multicultural," according to the organizers. Some of the issues to be tackled in the meetings include the writer's identity, the meaning of exile today, the identity of text and place and the function of translation in a literary work with a Jewish identity. "It is no coincidence that the Hebrew acronym for this gathering is Kisufim (yearnings). Jerusalem has been the heart of yearning in Jewish literature for many generations," the organizers said. This year's participants include Miriam Anisimov (France), Jonathan Rosen (USA), Dara Horn (USA), Rodger Kamenetz (USA), Linda Grant (UK), Marcelo Birmajer (Argentina), Ilan Stavans (Mexico/USA), Emmanuel Moses (France) Robert Schindel (Austria), Esther Bendahan (Spain), Lucette Lagnado (Egypt/USA), Lisa Ginzburg (Italy), Geza Rohrig (Hungary/USA), Angel Wagenstein (Bulgaria), Alessandro Piperno (Italy) and Norman Manea (USA).

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival includes a screening of “Human Failure,” a film that “documents the bizarre competition that developed between bureaucrats as to how to organize the robbery of the German Jews before they were ever expelled or sent to their deaths.”

2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival includes a screening of “The Voice of Jerusalem,” a documentary that examines the city’s “glorious feature” and “bleak future.”

2009: Galilee police arrested two additional suspects in an attempt to extort millions of shekels from McDonald's Israel.

2009: A four day conference entitled "A Century of Yiddish: 1908-2008" opened in Jerusalem

2009. The third annual Kisufim Conference opened at Beit  Avi Chai and at Mishkenot.

2009: Ambassador Michael Oren addressed a breakfast session at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism's biennial convention during which he "bashed" J Street as being "out of the mainstream."

2010: Dozens of Israel's municipal chief rabbis signed on to a religious ruling that forbids renting homes to gentiles, and more specifically to Arabs.  

2010: The East Coast Premier of Jews In Space is scheduled to take place at the 21st Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2010: The Jewish Study Center is scheduled to present a program entitled The Military Siddur — and Soldiers’ Prayers in which Michael Bloom will look at the special prayerbook for Jewish members of the Armed Services and the unique prayer for and about military personnel and our national security.

2010(30thKislev, 5711): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2010: Eighty-seven year old Dr. Samuel I Mintz, a Fulbright Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow who was Professor Emeritus of English at CCNY and CUNY Graduate Center passed away today.

2010(30thKislev, 5711): Eighty-six year old “Arnold Hans Weiss, who fled to the United States from Nazi Germany as a 13-year-old and returned as an American soldier during World War II, becoming a principal in the investigation that led to the discovery of Hitler’s last will and political testament, died today in Rockville, Md. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/world/02weiss.html

2010: A farewell ceremony was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Jerusalem today for the international firefighting forces that assisted Israel in putting out the recent fire in the Carmel Forest region. Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon spoke at the ceremony and gave each delegation a certificate that a tree was planted on their behalf by the Deputy Foreign Minister.

2010: Former European Union Commissioner Frits Bolkenstein said that Jews have no future in the Netherlands and recommended that they emigrate to the US or Israel, Dutch magazine Elsevier reported today.."

2011: The Israeli documentary “I Shot My Love” is scheduled to be shown tonight at the 22nd Annual Jewish Film Festival in Washington, DC.

2011: The Northern Virginia Legislative Reception complete with “light kosher buffet” is scheduled to take placed at the JCC of Northern Virginia in Fairfax, VA.

2011: The post-Chicago national tour of Nora and Delia Ephron’s “Love, Loss and What I Wore” began today.

2011: Seventieth Anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor.  How many will remember “the day that will live in infamy”?

2011: Israel's Yav Vashem Holocaust memorial said today it has received its largest private donation ever - a $25 million gift from U.S. casino mogul Sheldon Adelson

2011: Today, a representative body of medical residents voted in favor of a draft deal with the Finance Ministry to end a months-long labor dispute..

2011: Moshe “Katsav arrived at Maasiyahu Prison in Ramla to begin serving his seven-year sentence.”

2012: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to sponsor “First Friday Book Group.”

2012: In Fairfax, VA, Gesher Jewish Day School is scheduled to sponsor a Sheldon Low Concert

2012: “Human Rights Shabbat” is scheduled to start this evening at Adat Reyim in Springfield, VA.

2012: Jewish Book Month comes to an end.

2012: Roei Fridman, Elyasaf Bashari, Netanel Lesser, Yishai Ben Yaaov and Yishai Tsarfaty are scheduled to perform “Hamshushalym” at the Eden-Tamir Music Center.

2012: 71st anniversary of “The Day of Infamy.”

2012: Two IDF soldiers and a border policeman were injured lightly this afternoon when a group of about 40 Palestinian protesters threw stones in their direction in the northern West Bank town of Kafr Qaddum.

2012: As Israeli politicians shift alliances as part of the current election campaigns, her two neighbors conduct politics in a different style.  The world watches and wonders about the possible use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons on its own citizens in a civil war that has claimed the lives of mostly innocent civilians.  At the same time, mobs in Egypt clash over President Morsi’s new Islamist constitution and his granting to himself (temporarily of course) of sweeping powers that make his actions immune from judicial review.

2012: “Anarchy in the U.S.A.” published today provides a review of Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman by Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/sasha-and-emma-by-paul-avrich-and-karen-avrich.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

2012(23rdof Kislev, 5773): Seventy-three year old Saul Steinberg the Wharton graduate who tried to use Leasco as the base on which to build a financial empire based on a series of acquisitions passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

2012(23rd of Kislev, 5773): Eighty-two year old Table Tennis champion Marty Reisman passed away today (As reported by Douglas Martin)

 

2013: JOFA’s 8th International Conference of Feminism and Orthodoxy is scheduled to open this evening at John Jay College in New York.

2013: The Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present “An Evening in Honor of Yehuda Amicahi.”

2013: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to present “Jackie Hoffman’s A Chanukah Charol.”

2013: The IDF said today that an Israeli military vehicle damaged by a bomb attack set off by Syrians on the Golan Heights was the first “targeted bombing of Israeli forces” since the start of the Syrian civil war. (As reported by Reuters and Forwards)

2013: The Traditional Shabbat Minyan remembers those who answered the call to service as it observes “Pearl Harbor Shabbat” at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2013: Kansas-raised Jew Paul Rudd is scheduled to host Saturday Night Live this weekend. (As reported by Jordan Hoffman

2013(4th of Tevet, 5774): Eighty-three year old Jack Fishman “who helped develop naloxone, a powerful medication that has saved countless people from fatal overdoses of heroin and other narcotics” passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)

 

2013(4th of Tevet, 5774): Eight-two year old Olympic gold medal winning coxswain and rowing coach Allen Rosenberg passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

 

2013: Germany’s Bild newspaper reported today that “German has signed a multimillion arms deal with Israel” which will provide the Jewish state with two guided missile destroyers that can be used her natural gas pipelines. (As reported by Yifa Yaakov)

 

2013: Acclaimed Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin is scheduled to be granted Israeli citizenship in a special ceremony this evening in Jerusalem.

2014: In Bethesda, MD, Ruth Marcus, “an op-ed columnist and member of the editorial board of The Washington Post” is scheduled to speak at the 54th annual meeting of Congregation Beth El.

 

2014(15th of Kislev, 5775): One hundred year old William “Billy” Salomon the former head of Salomon Bros. passed away today.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-william-salomon-20141210-story.html

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/william-r-salomon-100-who-transformed-fathers-bank-dies/?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

 

2014: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host The Ruth Spector Memorial Mah Johngg Tournament.

2014: The UK Jewish Comedy Festival is scheduled to “Comedy Club 4 Kids.”

2014: The funeral for Gil Marks is scheduled to take place today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-food-historian-gil-marks-dead-at-62/

 

 

2014: On day after the story of Dinah is read as part of the weekly sedrah, Lifetime is scheduled to broadcast the first in a two part series based on The Red Tent, a novel that “took the shards of Dinah’s story, told in a fairly short chapter of Genesis, and recast them as a layered tale of sisterhood, friendship and love.” (As reported Debra Nussbaum Cohen)

2014: “Prominent Israeli authors Amos Oz, David Grossman, and A.B. Yehoshua were among 800 Israeli signatories to a letter sent to the Belgian parliament today, calling on it to recognize a Palestinian state.”

2014: Israel did not respond to charges by Syria of air attacks the IAF, which according to other sources were an attack on a weapons cache destined for Hezbollah. (As reported by Ave Issaccharoff)

France’s interior minister vowed today to make the fight against anti-Semitism a “national cause” after a couple was attacked apparently because the man was Jewish.”

La Scala’s gala season premier “Fidelio” today marks Daniel Barenboim’s final opening-night bow as musical director as Italian opera enters one of its most tumultuous seasons in memory.”

2014: The New York Times list of “100 Notable Books of 2014” published the following works by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers: American Innovations by Rivka Galchen, Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck, Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel by Anya Ulinich, The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman, A Replacement Life by Boris Fishman, American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Solomon, Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murder by Bettina Stangneth, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein, Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart, The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein, Thirteen Days In September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein and World Order by Henry Kissinger.

 

2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a screening of “The Unvanquished” the 1945 film was the first Soviet cinematic depiction “of the mass murder of Jews and one of the first ever Holocaust films” which “includes scenes of mass executions that were filmed on location in Babi Yar” followed by a discussion led by Anna Shternshis, University of Toronto and Olga Gershenson, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

 

2015:  The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education is scheduled to offer special incentives marking National Human Rights Month.

 

2015: Librarians at the Martin Luther King Librarians and staff from U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are scheduled to work with “citizen historians to research how Washington, DC area newspaper reported on several events during the Holocaust.”

2015: In what was later described as “just a joke,” Rick Kriseman, “The Jewish mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida made it known today that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was unwelcome in his city, following Trump’s suggestion the same day that the United States prevent all Muslims from entering the country.” (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)

 

2016: “The a-Sham Arab Food Festival in which 45 leading chefs from the Arab (Muslim, Christian and Druze) and Jewish sectors will showcase the culinary treasures of the region passed down through generations, but with modern twists” is scheduled to open in Haifa today.

 

2016: “Big: The Musical” featuring music by David Shire and with a book by John Weidman, the son of Jerome Weidman is scheduled to open at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin.

 

2016: “Beyond the Mountains and the Hills” and “Sand Storm” are scheduled to be shown at the 10th Annual Other Israel Film Festival.

 

2016: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor Emeritus of the Jewish Theological Seminary and President Emeritus of LBI, who will discuss his new biography of Leopold Zunz, “a key figure in the 19th-century development of the academic study of Judaism.

 

2016: On the seventy-fifth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor we remember those who fought there on that seemingly long-ago Sunday morning including Philadelphians Alex Sherman on board the U.S.S. New Orleans, Ben Lichtman on board the U.S.S. West Virginia and Irvin Greben serving at the Naval Air Station in Kaneohe Bay as well as Stan Levitt from Overland Park, Kansas on board the U.S.S. Rigel and Bernard Rubien from Rancho Mirage, CA serving at Hickam Field. (Courtesy of Florida Atlantic University)

2017: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host the final session of David Wolpe’s “Lessons on Lust and Love from the Bible.”

2017: The Breman Museum is scheduled to host a “tour of the Fox Theatre and learn about founder William Fox, born Wilhelm Fuchs and his imprint on the entertainment business.”

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to lecture by Dr. Gideon Grief, the author of We Wept Without Tears on “Confronting Murder: The Jewish Sonderkommando of Auschwitz Birkenau.

2017: The URJ Biennial is scheduled to continue for a second day in Boston.

2017(19th of Kislev, 5778): CALENDER COINCIDENCE – December 7, 2017 the anniversary of the Attack on Pearl, coincides with the 19th of Kislev this year on the Jewish calendar which is the “Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism.”

http://www.arjewishcenter.com/library/article_cdo/aid/335659/jewish/19-Kislev-The-New-Year-of-Chassidism.htm

2017: “Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America,” was among those who attended “a ‘Hanukkah Nightcap’ party” at the Trump International Hotel, which “was hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition, the organization funded by the casino magnate and Republican superdonor Sheldon Adelson, and America First Action, a political action committee staffed by Trump allies.

2017: The American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History are scheduled to host a ‘book talk to launch…the new English translation of Ruby Namdar’s The Ruined House.

2017: Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat “said late this morning in a speech on the Senate floor that he would resign “in the coming weeks” “following accusations of sexual misconduct by several women.”

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as David Schoenbaum whose works included The United States and The State of Israel, continues today.

2018(29th Kislev, 5779): Fifth day of Chanukah

2018: “A menorah may been the cause of a house fire on Bellair Avenue in Fair Lawn, NJ which burned tonight on Shabbat and the sixth night of Chanukah.

2018:  Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame is scheduled to perform at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center this evening.

2018: Professor Avigdor Shinan is scheduled “to bring the weekly haftarah to light” at the Israel Museum.

2018: “Dr. Rachel Tzarfati, the Senior Curator at the Jewish Art and Culture Wing of the Israel Museum is scheduled to lead a discussion of “Miketz.”

2018: The Bloomfield Science Museum is scheduled to host another day of Games of Fire where “visitors will have a rare opportunity to meet with firefighters, to learn firsthand about firefighting and rescue operations and their importance, to see the equipment used by firefighters and, above all, to ask the firefighters all the questions they have always wanted to ask.”

2018: The “25th Anniversary Re-release” of “Schindler’s List” is scheduled to take place today.

2019(9th of Kislev, 5780): Parashat Va-Yaytzat;

2019: “Hanukkah in Paris,” the “sixth annual party hosted by Adam Swig and Adrian Goddard” is scheduled to take place in San Francisco.

2019: The “Family Gala 2019: Blue Jean Ball,” a celebration of the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s “Levi Strauss: A History of American Style,” an exhibit on the founder’s Jewish immigrant story, the origins of the blue jean and how it defined American style. Includes performances, art-making and games” is scheduled to take place this evening in San Francisco.

2019: In Boston, the USCJ and the Rabbinical Assembly is scheduled to end Shabbat with a Havdalah concert and Melaveh Malkah featuring Deborah Sacks Mintz, Hadar’s Rising Song Institute and rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary.”

2019: “Last Tree in Jerusalem” and “A Page of Talmud,” two plays by Dani Horowitz are scheduled to be performed this evening at the “TheaterLab” in New York City.

https://twentyfoursix.weebly.com/

2019: As Israelis greet the new day, they will be looking to the skies to see if yesterday’s rocket attack from Gaza was an apparition or the start of new wave of terror.

2020: J-Loft is scheduled to present online a Hanukah Party for Teens”

2020: In last part of the three-part series, “Global Response to the Holocaust Series,” writer and educator Irene Shaland is scheduled to discuss “The Islands and the Boot: Cuba, Calabria/Italy, Malta, and Corsica”

2020: The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to present online “Finding the Hidden Light.”

2020: The Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to host a class on “Arabic as a Cultural Bridge.”

2020: The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines is scheduled to host an “AIPAC Club event for our most invested activists.”

2020: 79th anniversary of “The Day Will Live in Infamy.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


This Day, December 8, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 8

1292: John Peckham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose insistence that the closure of “chief synagogues of the Jews of London” was not enough, causing the few remaining Jewish houses of worships to be suppressed in 1282, passed away today.

1522:David Reubeni left Khaibar today “and went to Nubia in northern Sudan, where he claimed to be a descendant of Muhammad. When he spoke to audiences of Jews, he told of large Jewish kingdoms in the east, possibly referring to the Jewish community at Cochin. The Portuguese had just conquered Goa.”

1596(Kislev, 5357): In Mexico, Luis de Carvajal el Mozo, his mother, and three sisters were burned at the stake together with five other Crypto-Jews who were all accused of Judaizing.

1609: “Biblioteca Ambrosiana” opens its reading room, the second public library of Europe.  Located in Milan, this library has been cited as a valuable repository for documents about the Jews of Italy including the Ashkenazic Ambrosian Bible which contains a graphic depiction of Ezekiel’s heavenly chariot.

1612(14th of Kislev, 5373): Printer Isaac Prostitz (Isaac ben R. Aaron passed way today.

1732: Birthdate of New York native Aaron Franks and the son of Jacob Franks who passed away when he was five years old.

1765(25th of Kislev, 5526): First Day of Chanukah observed as the United Kingdom prepares to enforce The Stamp Act, one of the “roads that led to the American Revlution.”

1779(29th of Kislev, 5540) Fifth Day of Chanukah observed as the Continental Army remains in winter quarters at Morristown, NJ.

1780: George Washington issued General Orders from his headquarters at New Windsor, NY in which he said he was “pleased to accept and approve” the report of Enquiry which said “that every part of Major David S. Frank’s conduct was not only unexceptional but reflects the highest Honor on him as an officer, distinguishes him as a Zealous friend to the Independence of America and justly entitles him to the Attention and confidence of his Countrymen” and thus exonerated him of any role in the treason of General Benedict Arnold.

1783(13th of Kislev, 5544): Isaac Touro, the native of Amsterdam who served as “hazzan” for Jesuath Israel, the Sephardic synagogue in Newport, RI. Unlike most American Jews, Touro was a loyalist.  After the war he moved to Kingston where he passed away. For some his biggest claim to fame is that he was the father of Judah Touro.

1784(25th of Kislev, 5545): Chanukah

1785: In Savanah, GA. Abraham Doughlass, who arrived there on November 1, and his wife gave birth to Jacob Doughlass

1795(26th of Kislev, 5556): Second Day of Chanukah observed as George Washinton delivered his Seventh Annual Message to Congress.

1798(30th of Kislev, 5559: Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah observed as John Adams delivered his Second Annual Message to Congress

1805: Rachel Cohen and Isaac Lyons where were married in Philadelphia, PA gave birth to Henry Lyons the husband of Elizabeth Wolff.

1809(1st of Tevet, 5570): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1812: In Germany, Jeanette Hirsch and Isaac Weil gave birth to Joseph Weil, the husband of Hannah Greenbaum and the father of Isaac, Julius, Theresa and Libbie Weil.”

1813: Birthdate of August Belmont, the German born financier who “immigrated to New York City in 1837 after becoming the American representative of the Rothschild family's banking house in Frankfurt.”  Belmont carved a niche in American finance and became a leading member of the Democrat Party. Prominent socially, he gave his name to the famed New York racetrack, Belmont Park as well as the third leg of the Triple Crown, “The Belmont Stakes.”

1816: Birthdate of Austro-Hungarian writer and political leader Adolf Fischhof.

1817: John C. Calhoun, who as Secretary of State would appoint philo-Semite Warder Cresson (and future convert to Judaism) to serve as U.S. Consul to Jerusalem, began serving as Secretary of War today.

1822(24th of Kislev, 5583): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1822(24th of Kislev, 5583): Fifty-five year old German author, published and bookseller Saul Ascher, passed away in Berlin.

1828(2nd of Tevet, 5589) Eighth Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.

1829: Birthdate of “Abenheim, Germany” native Marcus M. Spiegel, the brother of “Joseph Spiegel, founder of the Spiegel Catalog, who reached the rank of Colonel of the 120th Ohio Volunteer infantry whom he commanded during the Battle of Vicksburg where he was wounded and in the Red River Campaign where he was mortally wounded in 1864.

1832: In Bavaria, Solomon Houseman, “a merchant and manufacturer of silk and cotton goods” gave birth to Julius Houseman, the first Jew to settle permanently in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he enjoyed a successful business career for thirty years while pursuing a political career that included being elected Mayor and a Congressman from the 5th District of Michigan.

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

1839: Birthdate of Danzig native and University of Berlin trained medical doctor “Julius Bernstein, the son of Arron Bernstein who gained fame as a German physiologist and medical writer” (According to some sources he was born on December 18)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7427583_Julius_Bernstein_1839-1917_Pioneer_neurobiologist_and_biophysicist

1841(25th of Kislev, 5602): Chanukah

1845: Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell, who supported full political rights for the Jews of the United Kingdom suggested a program to ameliorate the suffering caused by the Irish Potato Famin.

1850: Seventy year old anti-Semite Georg Svedrup, the Norwegian political leader who “felt that it would be incompatible with Judaism to deal honestly with Christians, writing that ‘no person of the Jewish faith may come within Norway's borders, far less reside there’” passed away

1851: An article published today entitled “Religious Freedom” reported that the U.S. Department of State has replied to a letter from Rabbi Lilienthal who is the spiritual leader for three congregations in New York concerning a proposed treaty with the Swiss Confederacy.  The State Department assured Dr. Lilienthal that the United States would ratify any treaty with the Swiss Confederacy that discriminated against citizens of the United States who were Jewish.

1851: In New York City, Rabbi Raphall delivered a lecture tonight on the history of Hungary and the Hungarian people.  The talk would cover that nation’s whole history and would not be a recap of its recent efforts to gain its independence.

1854: Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogma of Immaculate Conception which holds that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin. This is the same Pope Pius IX who was responsible for the 1858 abduction of a six-year old Jewish child in what became known as the infamous Edgardo Mortara Affair.

1855(28th of Kislev, 5616): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1856: Count Pawel Strzelecki sent a message from Istanbul to London that the Ottoman government “was not willing to provide the land for the construction of” a railroad between Jaffa and Jerusalem which would delay construction for years to come.

1859(12th of Kislev, 5620): Eighty year old Markus Bär Friedenthal a German banker who devoted his “free time” to Jewish studies passed away today at Breslau.

1859: Two days after he had passed away, Barnett Levy, the son of “Joseph Levy” and “Hannah Isaacs” was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1860(24th of Kislev, 5621): Parashat Vayeshev; Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1860: Birthdate of Edmund H. Hinshaw, the Congressman from Nebraska who in 1906 attended a mass meeting at Belasco’s Theatre in Washington, D.C which a protest against the atrocities begin committed against the Jews of Russia. (Editor’s note – no explanation for his attendance; certainly not courting the “Jewish vote” in his home district.)

1861(5th of Tevet, 5622): Jacob Pinhas, the son of miniaturist and “court painter to the Elector of Hesse –Cassel, Salomon Pinhas, who became a journalist and publisher and who was instrumental  in the drafting of the law which gave full citizenship to such Jews as were willing to abandon petty trading” passed away today in Cassel.

1862: Today Philadelphian, Milton Sultzbach began serving as a Quartermaster with the 167th Regiment.

1865: In Versailles, “Amédée Hadamard, of Jewish descent, and Claire Marie Jeanne Picard, Hadamard” gave birth to Jacques-Salmon Hadamard developer of the Prime Number Theorem who was Jewish enough to have flee Vichy France.

1869: In Rennes, France, Emile Worms and his wife gave birth to Rene Worms the academic who was a member of the “Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France” and who “was a devoted adherent of Judaism.”

1869: In New York, Rabbi Moses Mielziner and Rosette Mielziner gave birth to portrait artist Leo Mielziner, the husband of Ella M. Friend who served as “first vice-president of the American Art Association” in Paris while making busts of such notables as “Dr. I.M. Wise and Israel Zangwill.”

1871(25thof Kislev, 5632): First Day of Chanukah; light the second candle in the evening.

1871(25thof Kislev, 5632): Seventy-three year old Jacob Ettlinger, the Orthodox Rabbi “referred to as the Aruch la-Ner” and who “headed the protest of the one hundred and seventy-three rabbis against the Brunswick Conference of 1844” passed away today.

1871: On Friday evening, a Shabbat Chanukah party was held at Concordia Hall on Avenue A in New York City.

1875: Several thousand people came to the Hebrew Fair at Gilmore’s Garden today.  The fair is a fundraiser for Mount Sinai Hospital and so far has been quite successful in reaching its goal.

1876: Funeral services were held today for William Meyer, Aaron Dietz and his brother Abram Dietz at Temple Israel on Greene Avenue in Brooklyn. The three were among the victims of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire that claimed almost three hundred lives.  Following the service, the young men were buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery.

1876: A deck hand named Dixon murdered a Jewish peddler named Bachman on board the Fair Play, a steamboat that was entering the mouth of the Old River as it traveled between Faisonia and Vicksburg, MS.  The packs belonging to the 45 year-old Bachman had been rifled two nights earlier and Bachman had accused Dixon of the theft.

1878: It was reported today that New York City is home to 375 houses of worship, 25 of which are Jewish.

1879: Birthdate of Hungarian native “Samuel Solomon Eisner” who came to the United States where he trained as a dentist at NYU and served on the “national committee of the American Jewish Dentists.”

1880: According to “Nervous and Mental Pathology,” Dr. Edward Sptizka’s pamphlet that studies “the comparative pathology of insanity as illustrated by the different races in the New York City Asylum for the Insane” only 10.29% of the Jews suffer from paralytic insanity as compared to 13.29% for Anglo-Saxons. Jews, who “values intellectual culture…enjoys a comparative immunity from paralysis.”

1880: In Wilmington, NC, Esther Jastrow and Rabbi Samuel Mendelsoh gave birth gave University of Pennsylvania trained Professor of History and Classical Languages and a Captain in the Army during WW I whose unit was responsible for breaking German secret codes.

1881: It was reported today that discussion at Constantinople concerning plans for Jews to settle in Syria has brought forth a counter-proposal from the Spanish Ambassador.  He offered a plan that would allow Jews to settle on “Crown lands in Castille” and a promise that “any Jew who goes to Spain will be treated with the utmost liberality.”  (Considering the history of the Jews of Spain, this is peculiar entry to say the least)

1882: The Hebrew Leader a theologically conservative New York weekly newspaper edited by Jonas Bondy published its last edition today. The paper which first appeared in May, 1850, was unique in offering a department dedicated to Masonic News.

1884: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil officiated at the marriage of Belle Glazier, the daughter of Mr. S.W. Glazier to Jacob S. Bernheimer at the bride’s home on East 67th Street in Manhattan.

1884: Adolph Cohn wrote a letter from Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts, challenging the contention of the New York Times that Ludvoic Halevy is the first Jew elected to the French Academy.  “Although of Jewish descent of his father’s side” (Leon Halevy and Uncle Fromental Halevy composer of La Juive) he is no more Jewish than his half –brother Lucien-Anatole Prévost-Paradol who was also the son of Leon Halevy.

1885: Birthdate of Joseph Sprinzak who served as Chairman of the Knesset for the first ten years of its existence (1949-1959)

1886: Birthdate of Philadelphian Reba Fleisher Block

1886: The American Federation of Labor was founded at a convention of union leaders in Columbus, Ohio.  The driving force behind the AFL was Samuel Gompers who would serve as the group’s long time President.

1887: Perl Cajesky and another woman to whom her husband is allegedly married are being held as witnesses at Ward’s Island in an alleged Jewish love triangle. 

1888: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and WW I veteran Schachne Issacs who did post-graduate work in psychology at Johns Hopkins where he later served on the faculty while also “working with the NY State Training School for Boys. (He is not be confused with the Lithuanian born rabbi of the same name.)

1888: It was reported today that Ernistine Nolfen wants to be paid five thousand dollars by Noach Soenfield because, after paying for her passage from Poland and proposing marriage, he has changed his mind and does not want her for a wife.

1889: “In Russia’s Holiest City” published today, recounted the traditional myth of how the ancient ruler of Kiev chose Orthodox Christianity. He heard representatives from all four major faith groups before making his decision.  Judaism was rejected because their representatives “were forced to confess” that “that they had been…from their country and were outcasts and wanders on the face of the earth” because of their sins.

1890: “Literary Notes” published today described plans to commemorate “the thousandth anniversary of Saadia” in 1892 by publishing a collection of his works under the direction of Professor Joseph Derenbourg of the French Academy which will included a biography of Sasdia by Dr. Abraham Eliyahu Harkavi of St. Petersburg, Russia.

1890: The Directors of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of Brooklyn purchased property at Ralph and Howard Avenues for $32,000 which will be the future home of a facility that will replace the current building on Stuyvesant Avenue which is too small to meet the society’s needs.

1890: It was reported today that the American Committee planning the millennial anniversary of the birth of Saadia Gaon include Cyrus Adler of Johns Hopkins, Richard J.H. Gottheil of Columbia, Morris Jastrow, Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania and Jacob Schiff who will serve as treasurer.

1891: Birthdate of Berlin native and refugee from Hitler’s Germany Albert Salomon who became a Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research.

1891: In Russian Devorach and Abraham Baer Litsky gave birth to Rose Litsky who became Rose Pacal when she married Joseph Pascal

1892: In the province of Kovno, Perez and Ida Tarshish gave birth to Jacob Tarshis, the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College who served as the rabbi at “congregations in Columbus, OH, Allentown, PA and Miami, FL” while also gaining from his weekly broadcasts that earned him the title of “The Lamplighter” and who was the husband of Golda Tarshish with whom he had one son and two daughters.

1892: The trial of Hermann Ahlwardt who is charged with slandering the Jews weapons manufacturer Ludwig Loewe was adjourned for the day when the anti-Semite’s doctor provided a certificate saying he was suffering from an attack of catarrh and could not appear in court.

1892: The delegates at the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations who have met with President Harrison were reported today to have decided to hold their next meeting in New Orleans, LA.

1892: In Kovno, Perez and Ida Tarshish gave birth Rabbi Jacob Tarshish, the husband Golda F. Friedman Tarshish who was a radio personality known as “The Lamplighter.”

1893(29th of Kislev, 5654): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1893: In Anniston, Alabama, Congregation Temple Beth El dedicated its sanctuary which is‘the oldest building in the state continuously and currently being used for Jewish worship.’

1895: In New York, Temple Emanu-El was filled this morning “by those who went to hear an address on “The Debt Humanity Owes to Heinrich Heine,” by Assistant Rabbi Joseph Silverman.

1895: “The Great Hebrew Fair” published today described plans for the upcoming city-wide fund raiser under the leadership of Isidor Straus, President and Vice Presidents James Hoffman and Joseph B. Bloomingdale.

1895: It was reported today that “the upcoming “ball of the Young Ladies and Gentlemen’s League of the Montefiore Home promises to eclipse all former events of the kind given by this organization”

1895: In New York, “an advertisement published today read ‘Wanted – Enlightened men who deprecate the attempt to raise race prejudice by Hermann Ahlwardt, to welcome the fanatic with ancient eggs”

1895: “The anti-Semitic group in the Reichstag has laid upon the table of the chamber a proposal to forbid the free immigration of Jews and for the adoption of regulations under which their expulsion may be accomplished.”

1896: “The Girl from Paris,” an English musical comedy starring Ada Reeve, the daughter of Harriet Seaman and Charles Reeves, an actor whose given named had been Samuel Isaacs, in the role of The Gay Perisienne, opened today at the Herald Square Theatre in New York.

1897: Three days after he had passed away, “Zadoc Isaacs” the husband of Julia Garcia, with whom he had had nine children, was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1898(24th of Kislev, 5659): In the evening, Kindle the first Chanukah Light

1898: Albert H. Vitenheimer who had been promoted to the rank of Sergeant in May was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rdRegiment of the Connecticut Volunteer Infantry

1899: Forty-six year old Vaiben Louis Solomon completed his service as the 2st Premier of South Australia,

1900: Herzl met with Arminius Vámbéry in Budapest where discussed the Turkish loan.

1900: Birthdate of Columbus, Ohio native Mose Hirsch Solomon, the New York Giants outfield who was nicknamed the “Rabbi of Swat.”

http://www.jewsinsports.org/profile.asp?sport=baseball&ID=60

1900: Birthdate of Pittsburgh native J. Marshall Taxay, the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College  who served as the Rabbi at Temple Israel in Bath, OH from 1945 to 1953 and  at Temple B’nai Israel in Pinellas Count from 1960 until his retirement in 1969.

1900: Birthdate of Pittsburgh native J. Marshall Taxay, the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College  who served as the Rabbi at Temple Israel in Bath, OH from 1945 to 1953 and  at Temple B’nai Israel in Pinellas Count from 1960 until his retirement in 1969.

1900(16th of Kislev, 5661): Eighty-seven year old singer, composer and pianist Henry Russell who was a great-nephew of the British Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschel and whose sons were “conductor Sir Landon Ronald Russell and impresario Henry Russell, passed away today.

http://www.pdmusic.org/russell.html

1901(27th of Kislev, 5662): Third Day of Chanukah

1901: Birthdate of Doris Caroline Abrahams who gained fame as Caryl Brahms “an English critic, novelist, and journalist” who specialized in the theatre and ballet and who also wrote film, radio and television scripts.”

1901: In New York City, Goldie and John J. Jonas gave birth to Dr. Joseph Quincy Jonas, the husband of Irene Jonas.

1901: Having come to New York City from Lockport, NY, David Goodman, the future president of Bergdorf-Goodman, opened his first store today, “a small one-story structure” on lower 5th Avenue.

1902: It was reported today that at their triennial convention in Baltimore, The Council of Jewish Women had adopted a resolution expressing appreciation to Secretary of State Hay expressing appreciation ‘for his efforts in behalf of humanity, as shown by his recent letter to the powers of Europe regarding the Rumanian Jews.”

1903: An announcement was “made by the Directors of the Jewish Hospital” in Brooklyn that an anonymous gift of $25,000 thousand has been made to the hospital through Abraham Abraham “which is dependent on the raising of a like amount with a year from other sources.”

1904(30th of Kislev, 5665): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1904: Tonight in address styled “Zionism and England’s Offer, “Israel Zangwill urged the Jews of” the United States “to exert themselves in behalf of colonizing and developing a land which they could call their own” which in this case did not mean Palestine but a 5,000 square mile part of East Africa that the English wanted colonized by Europeans, even if meant Jews.

1905: In London, this morning The Times published “a long letter signed by Lord Rothschild, Sir Samuel Montague, David L. Alexander, Leonard L. Cohen, Benjamin L. Cohen and Stuart M. Samuel in which a strong argument is present both against Zionism and also the scheme of the Jewish Territorial Organization.”

1905: It was reported today according to sources in Bucharest, that “almost all of the factories and Jewish homes in Rostoff have been destroyed.”

1905: The National Committee raising funds for the relief of the Jews being massacred in Russia is scheduled to meet today in the offices of Jacob H. Schiff where they will make plans for the next national fund raising appeal which will be made easier because the Western Union Telegraph Company is sending the telegrams containing the appeals at no charge.

1905(10th of Kislev, 5666): Zadoc Kahn, the Alsatian born Chief Rabbi of France passed away. A noted scholar, he was active in Jewish communal affairs including leading the Alliance Israélite Universelle and serving as President of the Société des Études Juives, an organization that he had helped to found.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_10603.html

1906(21st of Kislev, 5667): Parashat Vayeshev

1906: Today, The Hochi Schimbun welcomed “the coming appointment of Oscar S. Straus as Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor” because the newspaper “believes that his political influence and acknowledge fairness will aid the cause of Japan,”

1907(3rd of Tevet, 5668): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1907: Three days after she had passed away, Sarah Solomon, the daughter of “Nathan Marcus Adler” and “Henrietta Worms” and the wife of “Henry Solomon” with whom she had had ten children, was buried today at the “Willesden Cemetery.”

1907: Birthdate of Paul Ross, the husband of Ann Ross, the New York born daughter of Pauline and Max Margulies

1908: President Roosevelt, who as Police Commissioner had shown his support for the Jews in conflict with a visiting German anti-Semite and who had Jewish soldiers serving with him in the Rough Riders, delivered his final State of the Union Address to Congress.

1909(25th of Kislev, 5670): First Day of Chanukah; Kindle the second light in the evening.

1909: As Russian society slowly sunk in the chaos that would lead to more anti-Jewish outbreaks and eventually to the Russian Revolution. To the “director of Russia’s secret police” was killed by a bomb planted by a Bolshevik infiltrator.

1910: “Salome” an opera based on Jewish author Hedwig Lachman’s German translation of the French play “Salomé” by Oscar Wilde was performed for the first time in London.

1911: In New York, Kate (Neilecht) and Benjamin (Benzion) Jacob, a compositor for a foreign-language newspaper, gave birth to Leo Jacob who gained fame as actor Lee J. Cobb whose many screen triumphs included roles in ”On The Waterfront,” “Three Faces of Eve” and “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.”  He passed away in 1976.

1911: Lionel Abrahams, C.B. of the India Office was “appointed as a member of the Committee on West African Currency by the Secretary of State for Colonies.

1911: The Emperor appointed Hungarian scholar József Bánóczi to serve as “Ordinary Professor of Hungarian Literature and History at the University of Budapest.

1911: Jews in Palestine organized the Red Magen David society with the purpose of sending doctors and nurses to Tripoli. Earlier in the week the Anglo-Palestine Company in Jaffa donated 1,000 Francs for a fund for injured Turkish soldiers in Tripoli.

1912(28th of Kislev, 5673): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1912: Tenor Ralph Errolle is scheduled to be the feature soloist at tonight’s 8th Sinai Orchestral Concert at Temple Sinai in Chicago.

1912: The Chicago Home for Jewish Orphans is scheduled to host a Chanukah celebration this afternoon.

1912: “Over 1,000 people gathered at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to hear Boston writer Mary Antin” author of the recently published The Promised Land, “a memoir of her emigration from Russia to Boston's South End” “make a plea for more aid to support Jewish immigrant girls arriving alone in the United States.” 

https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/08/1912/this-week-in-history-immigrant-mary-antin-packs-house-at-waldorf-astoria

1912: Founding the Congregation Staff of Aaron Synagogue in Yonkers, NY.

1912: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today at the Isaiah Temple in Chicago for sixty-two year old Simon Hartman, the husband of the former Emma Able and the father of Emanuel S., Edward A. and Louis H. Hartmen and Mrs. Edward Mayer.

1912: In San Francisco, founding of a Chevra Kadisha

1913: Birthdate of poet Delmore Schwartz. The prolific poet won the Bollingen Prize in 1960 and was the inspiration of the title figure in Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift.

1913: In France,Louis-Lucien Klotz completed his service as Minister of the Interior.

1913: Eernesto Nathan, the London born son “Sara Levi, an Italian from Pesaro, and Mayer Moses Nathan” who “obtained Italian citizenship in 1888,” the first Jewish Mayor of Rome completed serving his term as mayor of the “Eternal City.”

1914: Irving Berlin's musical "Watch your Step" premiered in New York.

1914: In Bayonne, NJ, Benjamin and Mollie Pinkowitz gave birth to George Pinkowitz, the husband of “Cecelia Glick Pinowitz.”

1915: Today, “the American Jewish Relief Committee, of which Louis Marshall is chairman…launched a campaign to raise another $1,000,000 for relief of Jewish war sufferers in Europe not only during the” World War “ but also in the lean days after peace” comes.

1915: In an attempt to follow Jacob Schiff’s recommendation that Jewish immigrants coming to the United States after the World War should be settled outside of big cities, “it was decided to arrange a conference between representatives of the federation and organizations such as the B’nai B’rith and the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America” which will arrange a program designed to develop education in agriculture and general citizenship.

1915: This evening, in Brooklyn, meetings were held at Congregation Beth Jacob and at the Willoughby Avenue Synagogue to make plans for a “Tag Day” to raise money for the Jewish Volunteer Relief Fund “which is aiding war victims in Europe.”

1915: In New York Gertrude and Paul E. Lehman gave birth to American screenwriter Ernest Lehman whose credits include the scripts for “The King and I,” “North by Northwest,” “The Sound of Music,” and “Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf?”  He passed away in 2005. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1916: In Brooklyn Essie (née Goldstein) and animator/producer Max Fleischer gave birth to director Richard Fleisher whose films include the Oscar winning documentary “Design for Death” as well as the “Boston Strangler” and “Tora! Tora!”

1917(23rd of Kislev, 5678): Parshat Vayeshev

1917: Despite the fact that today is Shabbat, “the captains and the workers” raising funds for Jewish War Relief and to aid the soldiers and sailors in the military is scheduled to meet this afternoon including Team 22 led by Mortimer L. Schiff which has raised the most money and Team 4 headed by William Goldman which is in second place.

1917: British troops began to bombard Turkish positions west of Jerusalem marking the start of the final assault to seize the City of David from the Ottomans.

1917: The American Jewish Relief Committee (for sufferers from the war) was listed today as one of the organizations that had submitted “satisfactory audited financial statements” to the Bureau of Advice and Information of the Charity Organization Society.

1917: In the evening, the Ottoman Seventh Army retreated leaving Jerusalem open to the advancing British and Imperial forces.

1917: Contributions to the $5,000,000 fund for the Jewish war relief and welfare work in the army and navy reached a total of $2,400,000 today. The largest individual contributions received today were $15,000 from Mr. and Mrs. S.R. Travis, $10,000 from the Altman Foundation and $5,000 from Michael Friedsam, President of B. Altman & Co.

1918: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today that Rabbi R. L. Levental, a national leader among Orthodox Jews, Rabbi Riff of the Sons of Israel Synagogue in Camden, NJ, Philadelphia attorney Max Hertzberg and William Leaf were among the speakers who addressed mass meeting that marking the opening of fund drive for the Federation of Jewish Charities in Camden.

1918: Felix M. Warburg, Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers, announced that organization's decision to hold its New York City campaign designed to raise $5,000,000 to aid Jewish war sufferers during the week starting on December 8 and ending on December 15.

1919: Yitak Jacov Liss who had been 16 years old when he enlisted completed his service as a member of the British Jewish Legion 38th Battalion Royal Fusiliers. (The diary he kept provided an eyewitness account of the service of the Jewish soldiers serving in Palestine during World War I)

1919: Birthdate of Mieczysław Weinberg, a native of Warsaw who lost most of his family in the Holocaust and who became a major Soviet composer after he moved there in 1939.

1919: Birthdate of Sidney H. Radner an amateur magician who became the unlikely steward of a trove of Harry Houdini artifacts, which he built into one of the world’s largest Houdini collections.

1920(27th of Kislev, 5681): Third Day of Chanukah

1920: It was reported today that “The Minister of the Interior of the Georgian Government has inform the Jewish community that Jews from Russia may through the territory of the republic on their way to Palestine” but these “emigrants must not make an extended stay” in Georgia.

1922: In Brooklyn, “Ethel (Kornblum) Yaged” and property manager Isidore  Yaged, who bought his son his first clarinet, gave birth to “Jazz Man” Solomon William Yaged. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

1921: Nahum Sokolow the head of a Zionist delegation continued his visit to the United States following festivities that included a luncheon at the Hotel Brevoort “arranged by the publishers of The Jewish Morning Journal, The Day, The Jewish Daily News and The Zeit.”

1922: In Berlin, Lucie Brasch and Ernst L. Freud gave birth to Lucian Freud, the German-born British realist painter who was the grandson of Sigmund Freud. (As reported by William Grimes)

1922: Birthdate of historian and self-styled left-wing activist Howard Zinn who wrote A People’s History of United States.

1923: As Germany slipped further into the economic and social chaos that made the Weimar Republic ineffective and brought the Nazis to power, to “The Reichstag passed another enabling act, giving Chancellor Wilhelm Marx the power to implement emergency economic and welfare measures.”

1924: It was reported today that “In the three years since its inception, the Palestine Foundation Fund, of which Samuel Untermyer is the President, has spent more than $6,900,000 on the rebuilding of the Holy Land…”

1925: Birthdate of the multi-talented entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.

http://www.biography.com/people/sammy-davis-jr-9268223#personal-life-and-death

1925: Today marked the start of the culmination of the Hadassah drive to raise $15,000 “to provide luncheons for the school children in Palestine.

1926: In Berlin, “Johannes Fest, a conservative Roman Catholic and staunch anti-Nazi schoolteacher who was dismissed from his post when the Nazis came to power in 1933” and his wife gave birth to Joachim Fest the German authorbest known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including an important biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and the German Resistance to Nazism.”

1926(3rd of Tevet, 5687): Ninety year old Hannah Conquy Abecassis, the daughter of Fortunato (Messod) Abecassis and Júlia Conquy Abecassis, the wife of Abraham Abecassis and the mother of Júlia Abecassis passed away today in the Lisbon.

1926(3rd of Tevet, 5687): Fifty-four year old Julius Ephraim Mastbaum, the son of “Fannie (née Ephraim) and Levi Mastbaum”, whose Stanley Company of American “became the largest movie theatre chain in the world in 1926” and who was the husband of “Etta Wedell Mastbaum, the daughter of Rachel P. Lit who founded the original store that became Lit Brothers” and the brother-in-law of two sons of “Adam Gimbel, the founder of Gimbels department store” passed away today.

https://www.jta.org/1926/12/09/archive/jules-e-mastbaum-phila-jewish-leader-and-philanthropist-dies-at-54

1927: “The Transformation of Dr. Bessel” silent film directed and produced by Richard Oswald and featuring Otto Wallburg was released in Germany today.

1928(25th of Kislev, 5689): Chanukah and Parashat Vayeshev

1928: Today marked the start of the culmination of the Hadassah drive to raise $15,000 “to provide luncheons for the school children in Palestine.

1929: “Suppression of Judaism and persecution of Zionists in Russia by the Soviet Union were vigorously denounced by speakers today at a conference of the American Jewish Congress in the Hotel Pennsylvania.”

1930: The Cleveland Rosenblums, a professional basketball team organized and owned by “Clelveland department store owner Max Rosenblum dropped out of the American Basketball League today.

1930: Birthdate of Shepsel Ber Nudelman, the Bronx native who gained fame as Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland

1931(28th of Kislev, 5692): Fourth day of Chanukah

1931: Birthdate of Robert Arum, the native of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights and graduate of Harvard Law who founded the professional boxing promotion company known as Top Rank.

1932: Political activist and social reformer Belle Moskowitz broke several bones when she fell down the steps in front of her home in New York today.  This accident would lead to a fatal embolism which would bring about her premature death in January of 1933 at the age of 55.

1933: “High and Low” a French drama filmed by cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan was released today.

1933: “Girl Without a Room” a comedy featuring Mischa Auer as “Walsky” was released today in the United States.

1933(20th of Kislev, 5694): Eighty-one year old Louis Lehmann Berr, the French born son Mathilde and Alphonse Henrion Berr, and husband of Henritte Alice Berr with whom he had two sons – Maurice and Raymond – passed away today in Paris.

1933: In “John Barrymore in a Pictorial Conception of Elmer Rice's Play 'Counsellor-at-Law'” published today Mordaunt Hall provides a description of the successful efforts to move this drama from Broadway to Hollywood.

1934: “Babbitt” a cinematic version of the novel of the same name produced by Samuel Bishcoff was released in the United States today.

1935: “Anti-Jewish rioting in the heart of Bucharest” which was reportedly observed by the Chief of Police and “several high officials who took no effect measures to restore order,” “broke up balloting by the Rumanian Bar Association” five hundred of whose Jewish members were kept from casting their votes.

1936: “The German press, led by Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s own Voelkischer Beoabachter, has started a violent campaign technically directed ‘against world Jewry and against bolshevism,’ but obviously designed to exert pressure on the judges at Chur, Switzerland” who are getting to preside at the “trial of David Frankfurter who is charged with killing Swiss Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff at Davos last February.

1936: “Hundreds of Nazis” including “many members of the German Legation at Berne” “and anti-Nazis thronged” into Chur, Switzerland tonight “on the eve of the trial for murder of David Frankfurter, the “27 year old Jewish medical student” charged with killing Wilhelm Gustloff whose status as a Nazi icon was cemented when Adolf Hitler delivered the funeral oration at his formal.

1936: Today, “Eliahu Epstein continued his testimony before the British inquiry commission regarding illicit Arab immigration stressing that this caused an economic grievance because unskilled Arab immigrants worked for 35 to 50 cents” but “spent only 15 cents daily and accused the government and government contractors of “encouraging this influx” because they employed these illegal immigrants.

1936(24th of Kislev, 5697): Thirty-eight year old David Freedman – “The King of the Gagwriters” passed away today.

http://www.david-freedman.info/

1936: As tensions grew over regulations designed to force Jewish businesses to stay open on Saturday and close on Sunday in Tripoli, “two Jews were flogged in the market place in the presence of a large crowd” while “a third who had been condemned to a similar punishment” was sent to prison for three months since his doctor said his physical condition left him “unequal to a flogging.”

1937: Falastin, an Arabic newspaper which had gained fame as the leading sports journal in Ottoman Palestine, is scheduled to print a report tomorrow describing “a compromised that has been reached between Jewish leaders, led by Chaim Weizmann, and Arab leaders led by Nuri Pasha as-Said, the former premiere of Iraq that will put an end to the current wave of violence.

1938: A campaign to raise funds for the immediate relief for Jews who have suffered from the anti-Semitic measures in Germany was launched today by the Christian Committee for the Relief of Jewish Refugees chaired by New York State Attorney General John J. Bennett, Jr.

1939: Six Jews and 25 non-Jewish Poles, accused of committing acts of sabotage, are shot in Occupied Warsaw.

1940: Jewish immigrants who had entered Eretz Israel illegally aboard the Atlantic were told that those aboard the Patria would stay in the country but they would be deported.

1941: The Nazis brought 700 Jews to Chelmo for final experiment of the new method of killing. In groups of 80, the Jews were driven around the woods in a special van, gassed to death by the fumes of the exhaust. A thousand Jews a day for the next four days go through the same test.  While this was seen as in improvement over the other forms of murder used by the Nazis, it was not efficient enough.  These mobile vans would give way to the gas chambers. 

1941: Four thousand Jews of Novogrudok, Belorussia, are killed.

1941(18th of Kislev, 5702): As the Riga Ghetto was being liquidated 81 year old Jewish historian Simon Dubnow was murdered in Riga because he was too old and sick to travel to Rumbula where he would have been massacred with other Jews. There is no way this blog can do justice to this Jewish Intellectual Giant.  The tragedy is that a mind like this lost its life in the mud of Nazi murder spree. Even as he faced death he expressed his faith in the value of history when he told the Jews of Riga, "Yidn, shreibt un fershreibt"("Jews, write and record"). 

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/dubnow.html

http://digifindingaids.cjh.org/?pID=1413626

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/simon-dubnow-a-revaluation/

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Themes/About_Jewish_History/Emergence_of_Jewish_History_I/Emergence_of_Jewish_History_II/Simon_Dubnow.shtml

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Dubnow_Simon

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

 

1941(18th of Kislev, 5702): Second day of the Rumbula Massacre during which 25,000 Jews were murdered

http://www.rumbula.org/remembering_rumbula.shtml\

1941: The Imperial Japanese Army took control of the rest of Shanghai, including the British and American controlled sections of the city which meant that “monetary aid and all communications from American Jews to the Jews of Shanghai ceased due to the Anglo-American Trading with the Enemy Act and that Baghdadi Jews living in Shanghai, many of whom were British subjects, were interned as enemy nationals.”

1941(18th of Kislev, 5702): Rabbi Moses Parzen passed away today in New York City.

1941: FDR called for a declaration of war against Japan on the same day Germany was entering into the most horrific stage of the Final Solution.

1941: The Screen Writers Guild responded to yesterday’s attack on Pearl Harbor by forming the Hollywood Writers Mobilization Against the War, a body to organize writers for the war effort chaired by Robert Rossen.

1941: Williams College undergraduate Bruce Sundlun who would become the second Jewish Governor of Rhode Island volunteer to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces Aviation Cadet Program.

1941: Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal enlisted in the United States.  His request for combat training led to him becoming a much decorated B-17 pilot who flew more than twice the required missions over German.

1941: Today, Freiberg, Germany native Frederick Mayer, the son of a German Army veteran and recipient of the Iron Cross, who came to the United States at the age of 16 enlisted in the Army where he eventually he would be dropped behind enemy lines as part of operation Greenup in 1945.

1942(29thof Kislev, 5703) Fifth Day of Chanukah

1942(29thof Kislev, 5703): Albert Kahn, the Prussian born son of German Rabbi who became America’s leading industrial architect passed away today.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-0420?rgn=main;view=text

1942(29thof Kislev, 5703): Sixty-five year old Anna Mehrbach, the wife of Albert I. Mehrbach and the mother of Elliot and Albert M. Mehrbach passed away today.

1942: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, met with other Jewish leaders and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to discuss the recently revealed plight of European Jews. “In the Abandonment of the Jews author David S. Wyman points out that this gathering the Oval Office was ‘the only one concerning the Holocaust that FDR ever granted to a group of Jewish leaders’ Estimates of two million Jewish dead were given to him.  Roosevelt responded by saying that official U.S. sources …’have given us proof that confirms the horrors discussed by you.’” Based on this meeting, FDR knew but did nothing except allow his previous made comments about ‘doing all in our power to be of service to your people in this tragic moment.’”

1942: The German SS organized the last deportation of Ternopil Jews to death camp in Belzec, when 1,400 Jews were sent there. The chief of the Gestapo, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Müller, bore overall responsibility for the mass murder of the Jews of Ternopil and Berezhany which were located in the western Ukraine.

1943: “Speaking before the Council of Christians and Jews” in London today, “the Most Reverend William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury declared that it was of ‘utmost importance’ that the sufferings of the Jews ‘be kept in full view’ of all people so that the spirit of indignation and compassion in them will not  die out.”

1944: “Guest in the House” a film noir which Lewis Milestone began directing but could not finished due to appendicitis was released in the United States.

1945: In Berkley, CA, Julius Heldman, the 1936 National Tennis Junior Champion and “Gladys Heldman the founder, editor, and publisher of World Tennis magazine and the founder of the women's pro tour in 1970” gave birth to Stanford grad and UCLA trained attorney Julie Heldman, the American tennis player “who won 22 women’s singles titles as well as “three gold medals at the 1969 Maccabiah Games and was the author of “a memoir, Driven, A Daughter’s Odyssey.”

1945(4th of Tevet, 5706): Parashat Miketz

1945(4th of Tevet, 5706): Random, Poland born Yiddish writer David Goldblatt who lived in South Africa before coming to the United States in 1916 where he was an editor of “The General Illustrated Encyclopedia passed awa today.

1945: Birthdate of Russian volleyball player Valdimir Patkin, who competed for the Soviet Union in the 1972 Summer Olympics and 1976 Summer Olympics” before becoming “the Secretary General of the Russian Volleyball Federation.”

1946: In Los Angeles, California, Aniela Młynarska who was Roman Catholic and Polish-born Jewish concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein gave birth to actor and composer of John Rubinstein.

1946: Dan Keinan photographed “a typical ship carrying illegal immigrants to Mandatory Palestine.”

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.540099

http://www.dankeinan.com/

1947(25th of Kislev, 5708): First Day of Chanukah; in the evening, kindle the second light.

1947: Birthdate of Chava Albersteinan Israeli singer, lyricist, composer, musical arranger and an actress who is one of the most important Israeli singers, with a career spanning more than forty years.  In 2007, she released her latest work “Shvil HeChalav” or “Milky Way.”

1947: As the Arabs tighten the noose around the Jewish community in Jerusalem, trucks arrived carrying 60,000 eggs. 

1947(25th of Kislev, 5708): Tragedy struck when Yehoshua GLoberman, a senior Haganah official was gunned down when his car was stopped at Latrun.  This is the same Latrun that was the fortress held by the Jordanian Arab Legion cutting off the city of David from Tel Aviv.

1947: Egypt and Lebanon asked to be heard during the UN debates.

1947: The UN rejects the request by the Jewish Agency to address the Security Council since the organization did not want to set a precedent that allowed an entity other than a country to participate in UN debates.

1948: During the War for Independence, Uri Avnery, age 25, who would describe his view of the war sixty years later in 1948: A Soldier's Tale, the Bloody Road to Jerusalem is wounded while serving as a private soldier

1948: Jordan annexes “Arabic Palestine.”  The Kingdom of Trans-Jordan (Across the Jordan) will drop the “Trans” prefix in recognition of its holdings on both sides of the Jordan River.  Obviously, there was no thought to creating a state of Palestine on the part of the Arabs since the only thing that changed this illegal land holding was the war in 1967.

1948:Britain demands that the Security Council’s Negev subcommittee implement sanctions against Israel because Israel continues to surround an Egyptian force in the Negev.  The British did not seem to be bothered by the fact that the Egyptian force was part of an act of aggression taken to contravene a resolution of the United Nations.

1948: At Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, Ya'akov Morris, an Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet and Sadie Morris, a journalist gave birth to historian Benny Morris.

http://www.meforum.org/2769/benny-morris-1948-islamic-holy-war

1948: Isaac Don Levine “provided testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee today” during which, according to Karl Mundt, the Republican from South Dakota, Levine named Laurence Duggan as being communist spy.

1948: At kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet Ya’akov Morris and journalist Sadie Morris, Jewish immigrants from Great Britain gave birth to historian Benny Morris.

1948:King Abdullah denounces Arab League-sponsored Palestine Army regime in Gaza.

1948:Egypt announces dissolution of Moslem Brotherhood, a fanatical national religious organization. [I guess they didn’t do such a good job since the Brotherhood came out on top in the elections of 2011.]

1949: Birthdate of Raymond “Ray” Shulman, “a British musician and the youngest of three brothers that were in the innovative British progressive rock band, Gentle Giant.”

1949: In Philadelphia, “Irving Meyers, an executive at a voting machines manufacturer, and Patricia Meyers (née Lemisch), an interior designer who also worked as a volunteer with the Head Start Program and the Home for the Blind” gave birth to Nancy Jane Meyers “an American film director, producer and screenwriter” who “is the writer, producer and director of several big-screen successes, including The Parent Trap (1998), Something's Gotta Give (2003), The Holiday (2006), and It's Complicated (2009). Her second solo venture, What Women Want (2000), was at one point the most successful film ever directed by a woman, taking in $183 million in the United States.

1949: Burma recognizes the state of Israel.

 

1949: “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” a Jule Styne musical with a book by Joseph Fields opened on Broadway today at the Ziegfeld Theatre.

1949: Red Buttons (Aaron Chwatt) married Helayne McNorton

1949: In a ground-breaking precedent, the United Nations established UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees with a budget of $54,900,000.  Thus the UN played a key role in creating Palestine Refugee Problem.  No comparable UN organization was established when Jews were forced to flee from a variety of Moslem and/or Arab nations.

1949: U.S. premiere of “On the Town” a cinematic adaptation of the Leonard Bernstein Broadway musical of the same named with a screenplay by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, co-directed by Stanley Donen, co-produced by Arthur Freed co-starring Jules Munshin as “Ossie” and featuring Hans Conried as ”Francois, the head waiter.”

1950: In Nevada, Gus Greenbaum “lobbied the Clark County Commission to create the unincoported township of Paradise” today

1951(9thof Kislev, 5712): Parashat Veyetzei

1952: Yitzchak ben Zvi was elected the second President of Israel succeeding Chaim Weitzman, who had died in office.

1953:Maryla Husyt, who “grew up in Warsaw, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps” and “Zacharias Finkelstein, active in Hashomer Hatzair, and a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp” gave birth to Dr. Norman Finkelstein, the holder of a Ph.D from Princeton and college professor whose unconventional views as can be seen  by his book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering in which he “argues that Elie Wiesel and others exploit the memory of the Holocaust as an "ideological weapon".

 1955: “The Ladykillers” produced by Michael Balcon, filmed by cinematographer Otto Heller and starring Peter Sellers who was, on his mother’s side, a descendant of prizefighter Daniel Mendoza, was released in the United Kingdom today.

1956: The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, which were boycotted by Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon “in response to the Suez Crisis” that had been precipitated by the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal, came to a close today.

1958: “Everybody’s Broker” published today described the powerful role played by 67 year old Sidney J. Weinberg the partner at Goldman, Sachs & Co who is modern day version of Bernard Baruch.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,864550,00.html

1959: NBC broadcast “My Three Angels” the tenth episode in the Startime series for which Music Corporation of America under the leadership of Lew Wasserman got performers who did not usually do television to perform on the small screen.

1960: U.S. premiere of “The Sundowners” directed by Fred Zinnemann, with a score by Dimitri Tiomkin.

1960: A special television version of “Peter Pan” with music by Jule Styne, Mark Chartap and Trude Rittman and lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Carolyn Leigh was broadcast today.

1962(11th of Kislev, 5723): Parashat Vayetzei

1962: Birthdate of Martin Adam “Marty” Friedman, “the lead guitarist for the heavy metal band Megadeath.”

1962(11th of Kislev, 5723): Fifty-six year old “Romanian-born French producer” Émile Natan,” the brother of Bernard Natan, the head of Pathé-Natan” passed away today in Paris.

1963: “The Girl Who Came to Dinner” a musical with a book by Harry Kurnitz and “directed and choreographed by Joe Layton” opened on Broadway today at The Broadway Theatre.

1963: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this afternoon for Senator and Governor Herbert Lehman at Temple Emanu-El in New York

https://www.jta.org/1963/12/06/archive/herbert-h-lehman-dies-in-new-york-mourned-by-jewry-funeral-sunday

1965: Abe Burrows'"Cactus Flower" premiered in New York. (Would there be theatre in America without the Jews?)

1966(25th of Kislev, 5727): Chanukah

1966: Birthdate of Georgian born Israeli director and screenwriter Dover Koshasili.

1967: In Queens, NY, Peter Madoff, the brother of Bernie Madoff, and his wife gave birth to attorney Shana Diane Madoff who became Shana Madoff Skoller Swanson when she married Eric Swanson whom she had met while he was investigating her uncle and who had played no part in what maybe the biggest Ponzi scheme ever pulled off in the United States.

1968(16th of Kislev, 5729): Parashat Vayishlach

1968(16th of Kislev, 5729): Sixty year old Ft. Worth Texas native Philip Jacob “Phil’ Handler the TCU guard who went on to a professional career with the Chicago Cardinals and the Chicago Bears passed away today.

https://www.profootballarchives.com/coach/hand00800coach.html

1969: NBC broadcast the 13th episode of “My World and Welcome to It” a droll sitcom created by Melville Shavelson.

1969: Three days after having been cited for contempt of court and sent to the Mateo Jail, Dr. Joseph Lifschutz who had “refused a court or testify about one of his patients” in a landmark case involving the issue of “Dr. – Patient Confidentiality” was “released pending resolution of the case.”

1972(3rd of Tevet, 5733): 8th Day of Chanukah

1972: Mahmoud Hamshari, the PLO representative in France, believed to be the leader of Black September in France was mortally wounded today in Paris.

1973: After 296 performances, the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Seesaw” a musical with lyrics by Dorothy Field and music by Cy Coleman

1974(24th of Kislev, 5735): Kindle the first Chanukah light in the evening

1974(24th of Kislev, 5735): Eighty-eight year old Joseph Pearl, the Polish born holder of Ph.D. from NYU who was the “chairman of the classical languages department at Brooklyn College” passed away today, just eight days before his next birthday.

1974: Anti-Zionist trials begin in Moscow today.

1976: “Deputy Minister of Culture Popov warned organizers of the symposium on Jewish culture” of “the unacceptability of the” event.

1976: U.S. premiere of “A Star is Born” starring Barbra Streisand who also co-produced the film.

1976(16th of Kislev, 5737): Ninety-five year old Rabbi Julian Morgenstern passed away today in Macon, GA.

1976: “Silver Streak,” a comedy directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Gene Wilder was released today in the United States.

1977: Sir Zelman Cowen was sworn in as Governor-General of Australia.

1977:Rosalyn Yalow became the first American-born and American-trained woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science when she accepted the Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work in the development of radioimmunoassay, a technique that allows scientists to measure minute amounts of hormones and other substances in human blood.(As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/08/1977/rosalyn-s-yalow

1978(8th of Kislev, 5739): Eighty-year old Golda Meir, passed away.  A Russian immigrant to the United States, this former Milwaukee school teacher would make aliyah in the 1920’s. She would become one of the most influential leaders of the Zionist movement whose career included raising the funds that made it possible for Israel to purchase arms at the time of its creation, clandestine negotiations with the King of Jordan designed to avert war in 1948 to serving as Israel’s Foreign Minister and Prime Minister.  One of her most memorable quotes came when Sadat made his visit to Jerusalem.  In this one statement she showed a depth of understanding rare in world leaders.  “Long after we have forgiven you for killing our children, we will still be trying to forgive you for turning our children into killers.”  As a socialist and an idealist she believed in and sought peace.  As a pragmatist, she understood the necessity of self-defense even if it meant war. 

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

1978:Force 10 from Navarone,” the movie version of the novel by the same name with a story created by Carl Foreman was released today in the United States.

1979(18th of Kislev, 5740): Parashat Vayishlach

1979(18th of Kislev, 5740): Sixty-nine year old “Joseph Wohl, founder and president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America’s Universal Brotherhood Movement” passed away today.

1979: Aaron Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Parisian born Jew who converted to Catholicism in 1940 at the age of 13 “received episcopal consecration …from Cardinal François Marty”

1980: While on assignment for Rolling Stone, Annie Leibovitz took the last photos of John Lennon who was shot and killed five hours after she finished.

1980: Today “during a Monday Night Football game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, Howard Cosell shocked the television audience by interrupting his regular commentary duties to deliver a news bulletin of the murder of John Lennon in the midst of a live broadcast

1981: Birthdate of Dov Yosef Tiefenbach, the native of Toronto whose first big acting break came in 1994 “playing the role of 'Josh Avery' in the television series RoboCop”

1982(22nd of Kislev, 5743): Sixty-three year old General Haim Laskov, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, passed away.

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

1982: “The Verdict” the movie version of the play by the same name directed by Sidney Lumet who also wrote the screenplay and starring Paul Newman was released in the United States today.

1982: “Sophie’s Choice,” an adaption of the novel with the same name Directed , Produced and written by Alan J. Pakula, starring Kevin Kline whose father Robert was Jewish and featuring an Academy Award nominated score by Marvin Hamlisch was released today in the United States.

1983(2nd of Tevet, 5744): 8th Day of Chanukah

1984: “Biloxi Blues, a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon premiered at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles.”

1984(14th of Kislev, 5745): Eighty-four year Luther Adler, a stage and screen actor who starred in ''Fiddler on the Roof'' on Broadway, died today at his home in Kutztown, Pa., after a long illness (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

1985(25th of Kislev, 5746): Chanukah

1985:The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 by David S. Wyman and The Periodic Table by Primo Levi; translated by Raymond Rosenthal are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year

1986: The second and final segment of “Anastasia” produced and directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, written by James Goldman and with music by Laurence Rosenthal was broadcast today.

1987: Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories began an intifada, or uprising.

1987: Sir Joshua Abraham Hassan completed his second term as Chief Minister of Gibraltar.

1988:The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a comedic adventure film featuring music by Michael Kamen was released today in the West Germany.

1988: “Yasir Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the existence of the state of Israel. His statement, which he presented as a milestone, was immediately dismissed in Israel and greeted coldly by the United States.

1989(10th of Kislev, 5750): Sixty-nine year old St. John’s University trained lawyer, WW II navy veteran and former Speaker of the New York State Assembly Stanley Steingut, the Crown Heights born son of Kae Kaufmann Steingut and Irwin Steingutt who had also served as Speaker of the New York State Assembly and husband of Madeline “Madi” Fellerman with whom he had three children – investment banker Robert, attorney Theodore and architect Ilene passed away today.

1990(21st of Kislev, 5751): Director and playwright Martin Ritt passed away.

1991: “Nick & Nora” a musical written by Arthur Laurents with music by Charles Strouse based on character from The Thin Man opened on Broadway.

1992(13th of Kislev, 5753):  Journalist William Shawn passed away. Born William Chon in 1907, the Chicago native was the editor of the New Yorker Magazine from 1952 to 1987.

1993: Upon being named today as budget director by New York’s incoming Mayor, Abraham Lackman said “he hoped to bring some new approaches to budget balancing…so the city can avoid tax increases.”

1994(5th of Tevet, 5755):  Israel Aaron Maisels, popularly known as “Isie” Maisels, passed away at the age of 89. He was fondly remembered as a leading member of the bar and a respected leader of the Jewish Community in South Africa.

1994: Secretary of State Warren Christopher met with Yasser Arafat to express the Clinton Administration’s displeasure with the failure of the Palestinian Authority to provide the level of security that will make possible the transfer of territory to PA control.

1996: “Ragtime” a musical based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel of the same name “had its world premiere in Toronto, where it opened at the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts (later renamed the Toronto Centre for the Arts) today, the brainchild of Canadian impresario Garth Drabinsky and his Livent Inc., the Toronto-production company he headed

1996:  Michael and Susan Dell attend the groundbreaking for the Dell Jewish Community Campus.

 

1996: In “Symbol on a Hill” Serge Schmemann reviews a series of recent books about Jerusalem including “City of Stone:The Hidden History of Jerusalem” by Meron Benvenisti, “Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths” by Karen Armstrong, “ City of the Great King: Jerusalem From David to the Present” edited by Nitza Rosovsky, “Jerusalem In 3000 Years” by Nachum Tim Gidal and “Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century” by Martin Gilbert

1997(9th of Kislev, 5758): Eighty-nine year old Sarah Abrams passed away today in Pittsburgh, PA.

1997(9th of Kislev, 5758): Eighty-seven year old Leon Poliakov, a historian of anti-Semitism who testified at major war crimes trials, died today in France.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-12-11/news/9712110257_1_nazi-war-crimes-leon-poliakov-trials-of-nazi-leaders

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-leon-poliakov-1288107.html

1997: A Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s “Sunshine Boys” starring Jack Klugman as Willie Clark and Tony Randall as Al Lewis opened at the Lyceum Theatre.

2000(11th of Kislev, 5761): Seventy-six year old documentary filmmaker Lionel Rogosin, the son of textile mogul and philanthropist Israel Rogosin and the grandson of Samuel Eliezer Rogosin who had come to the United States to raise funds for a Yeshiva in Eastern Europe passed away today.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/dec/15/guardianobituaries.filmnews

https://www.lionelrogosin.org/AboutLR.html

 

2000: “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” a film nominated for 10 Oscars with a script co-authored by James Schamus was released today in the United States.

2001(23rd of Kislev, 5762): Parashat Vayeshev

2001: In the fight against Arab terrorism, Israeli “helicopter gunships attacked Palestinian security buildings in Rafah, Gaza.

2001: “Black Hawk Down” a cinematic version of the book by the same name produced by Jerry Bruckheimer with music by Hans Zimmer was first shown in the United States today.

 

2002: The New York Times list of the Best Books of 2002 contains the following works about Jewish related subjects or by Jewish authors including White Christmas': Irving Berlin's Dream by Barry Gwen.

 

2002: Final performance of Jewish playwright Clifford Odets’ masterpiece Awake and Sing at the Timleline Theatre in Chicago, Ill. The play is as robust, emotional and gritty as the Great Depression itself. As Odets describes it, each of the characters shares a fundamental activity: a struggle for life amidst petty conditions. Crowded together in a cramped Bronx tenement and laid low by the Great Depression, this moving portrait of a Jewish family is both funny and heartbreaking as they cope with survival and cling to dreams of a brighter future.

 

2003: A special two day lighting tribute began marking the 110th anniversary of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) with illumination of the Empire State Building with the organization's colors of blue and green. The illumination marked the founding of the Council at the Jewish Women's Congress held at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The New York section of NCJW took a strong role in its early years sending volunteers to Ellis Island to look after the welfare of single Jewish women who arrived alone in the New World. Today with 90,000 members, NCJW continues to advance Jewish values by working for social change, acting nationally to improve the quality of life for women, children, and families and to advance individual rights and freedoms. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

 

2004(25th of Kislev, 5765): First Day of Chanukah; kindle the second light in the evening.

 

2004(25th of Kislev, 5765): David Brudnoy, Boston radio talk show host, passed away. Born in Minnesota, Brudony was living proof that one could be a popular radio personality, discussing controversial subjects while maintaining a basic level of civility.

 

 

2004: U.S. premiere of “Blade: Trinity” directed and written by David S. Goyer based on a character created by Marv Wolfman.

 

2005: Delegates to an international conference have accepted a new Red Cross emblem, paving the way for Israel to join the humanitarian movement after nearly six decades of exclusion, officials said Thursday. The 192 signatories of the Geneva Conventions approved the new "red crystal" emblem. A number of Muslim countries again tried to block Israel's path into the Red Cross movement by voting against the proposal after three days of negotiations in Geneva. "The most important thing is the result," said Noam Yifrach, head of the Magen David Adom, after receiving a congratulatory call from Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, chairman of the board of governors of the American Red Cross.

 

2005: Avi Saig a member of the IDF who died when his APC rolled over during a training exercise was laid to rest in Holon’s Military Cemetery.

 

2005(7th of Kislev, 5766): Sixty-nine year old Kalman Ruttenstein,”the fashion director for Bloomingdale’s” passed away today. (As reported by Eric Wilson)

2005: Rick Moranis’ ‘The Agoraphobic Cowboy was announced as a nominee for the 2006 Grammy for Best Comedy Album.’

2005: Israeli mathematician Robert Auman shared the Nobel Prize in Economics with Thomas Schelling.  Auman was recognized for his research into game theory.

 

2005: “Leonard Woolf’s Quiet Complexity” published today provides a review Victoria Glenddinning’s biography of the man some know only as the Jewish husband of Virginia Woolf.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/arts/08iht-IDSIDE9.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

2006: “The Holiday,” a “romantic comedy written, produced and directed by Nancy Meyers” and starring Jack Black and Eli Wallach and with music by Hans Zimmer was released today In the United States and the United Kingdom

2006: On her 39th birthdate, Shana Madoff became engaged to Eric Swanson whom she might while he was investigating her Uncle Bernie’s financial activities.

2006: “Blood Diamond,” “co-produced and directed by Edward Zwick was released today in the United States.

2006: Macmillan Reference USA and Israel’s Keter Publishing unveil the new edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica with 22 volumes containing more than 21,000 entries about Jewish life.

 

2007(28th of Kislev, 5768): Amy Elizabeth Rosenblatt Solomon, the wife of Dr. Harrison Solomon, mother of Jessica, Sammy and James, and daughter of Ginny and Roger Rosenblatt passed away.

2007: In Jerusalem, a screening of “Children of the Sun” a documentary about the first generation of sabras born on kibbutzim to the parents of parents who immigrated to Eretz Israel with the hope of creating a new society.

 

2007: In the Chicago Tribune a Jewish literary double-header:  E.L. Doctorow reviews a memoir by Studs Terkel entitled Touch and Go.

2008: Amy Goodman was named as a recipient of the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize"— the first journalist to be so honored. The Right Livelihood Award Foundation cited her work in "developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media."

2008:Prof. Aliza Lavie of Bar-Ilan University discusses her compilation of traditional prayers for women, A Jewish Woman's Prayer Book at the Ivry Lounge in the Schottenstein Cultural Center in New York City.

 

2008: At the 92nd Street Y Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Hillel president Wayne Firestone discuss the complications facing Jewish life on campus today, from anti-Israel activity and Holocaust denial to outright anti-Semitism in a presentation moderated by Thane Rosenbaum, professor of law at Columbia University.

2008: Today “Web series release” of “Children’s Hospital co-developed by David Wain and co-starring Henry Winkler.

2008: “Rabbi Professor Daniel Hershkovitz, a mathematician from the Technion, was chosen to head” the newly formed Jewish Home Party.

2008: Time magazine includes reviews of “Defiance, “a film based on Defiance: The Bielski Partisans which chronicles the exploits of the largest of all Jewish partisans fighting against the Nazis and Milk,“a biopic” that chronicles the exploits of Harvey Milk as he “organized gay society…into a politcally effective community as well as a laudatory obtiurary of Irving Brecher which like so many articles about the famed comedy writer, fails to mention the fact that he is Jewish and was part of a whole generation of Jewish comedy writers who fueled the funnybones of America during the 20thcentury.

2009: A public memorial service is held in honor of Abe Pollin at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “In Search of the Bene Israel” which documents “the filmmaker travels to India to reconnect with her grandmother's Bene Israel community” and “From Swastika to Jim Crow,”a film that includes “the lost stories of the ‘refugee scholars,’ Jewish academics who fled Nazism to the United States and found employment at historically Black colleges.”

 

2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival includes a screening of “Israeli Cinema, Part 2.”

 

2009(21st of Kislev, 5770):Yosef Haim Yerushalmi, a groundbreaking and wide-ranging scholar of Jewish history whose meditation on the tension between collective memory of a people and the more prosaic factual record of the past influenced a generation of thinkers, passed away today at the age of 77. (As reported by Joseph Berger)

2009:Mr Matthew Gould MBE has been appointed Her Majesty's Ambassador to the State of Israel in succession to Mr Tom Phillips CMG.  He is the first Jewish person to hold this post

 

2010: “Celebrating the First Lights of Women Rabbis” by Elizabeth Imber published today.

http://jwa.org/blog/celebrating-the-first-lights-of-women-rabbis

 

2010: Yael Perlov is scheduled to present a program entitled David Perlov: Pioneer of Israeli Cinema at the 21stWashington Jewish Film Festival. The scheduled presentation will include the U.S. premier of “In Jerusalem” and “Diary: Chapter 1 (1973-1977)”

 

2010: Keshet Eilon students and teachers are scheduled to perform works by Schumann on WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase at 9 pm in New York City.

2010(1st of Tevet, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2010: Funeral services were held today for Rose Becker, of blessed memory, in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2010: Four to five mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip into the Eshkol regional council tonight night hitting an area resident.

2011: The Booklover’s Luncheon, a part of Jewish Cultural Arts Month, is scheduled to be held at the Upton JCC in New Orleans, LA.

2011: The second weekend of Hamshoushalayim is scheduled to begin today.

 

2011: “Eichmann’s End: Love, Betrayal, Death” is scheduled to be shown at the 22nd Jewish Film Festival in Washington, D.C.

 

2011: An Israeli air strike in central Gaza killed a Palestinian militant planning a terrorist attack on the Egypt border, the IDF Spokesperson said today

2011(12th of Kislev, 5772): Ninety-two year Sir Zelmann Cowen who was the 19th Governor-General of Australia passed away.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/02/sir-zelman-cowen

 

2011: David Stern asserted his power as Commissioner of the NBA by vetoing a three-team trade that he thought would have undermined the integrity of the game.

 

2012: An outdoor menorah lighting ceremony is scheduled to take place the Virginia Gateway Town Center in Gainsville, VA.

2012: Parshat Vayeshev – this is the same Torah portion that was read on December 13, 1941, the first Saturday after Pearl Harbor.  You have to wonder how the Rabbis of the day tied the story of Joseph to the events of the day.  Maybe they related the darkness of Joseph’s pit to the darkness that America was facing at the start of WW II.

2012: A second Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” opened today at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre

2012(24th of Kislev, 5773): In the evening, Kindle the first light of Chanukah.

2012: The Sephardic Music Festival is scheduled to open with performances by Copal, Cannibal Animal Machine and The Sway Machinery at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn

2012: Tonight, President Obama “congratulated Jews around the world on the first night Chanukah.” (As reported by the Times of Israel)

2012: In Westport, CT, the Jews are scheduled to find two uses for potatoes at “Vodkas and Latkes.”

2012: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, making his first ever visit to the Gaza Strip, vowed today never to recognize Israel and said his Islamist group would never abandon its claim to all Israeli territory.

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=295102

2013: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football by Nicholas Dawidoff, The Most of Nora Ephronby Nora Ephron and Wonders of Wonders: A Cultural History of “Fiddler on the Roof” by Alisa Solomon

 

2013: Out-of-town tryouts for “If/Then” starring Idina Menzel came to an end at the National Theatre in Washington, DC.

2013: The Yiddish film “American Matchmaker” is scheduled to be shown at the Westside Neighborhood School.

2013: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to host a service rededicating its 200 year old Holocaust Torah that had belong to a congregation in Sedlacany, Czechoslovakia that was destroyed by the Nazis.

 

2013: “Voices of the Vigil,” an exhibition that “tells the story of the Washington Jewish Community’s “role in the struggle for Soviet Jewry” is scheduled to open at Washington Hebrew Congregation.

 

2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education is scheduled to host a screening of “Mrs. Miniver” followed by a discussion of this Oscar winning account of English bravery during the Battle of Britain that buttressed the cause of those believing America should enter the war to fight the Nazis.

 

2013: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the attack on Greek Orthodx Priest Garbriel Nadaf’s son at today’s cabinet meeting, saying that Israel will not tolerate threats of physical attacks against Christians, Muslims and Druse who “want to link their fate even more to the State of Israel and want to serve in the IDF (As reported by Ariel Ben Solomon and Herb Keinon)

 

2013 A right-wing political group accused former Knesset speaker and Jewish Agency head Avrum Burg of treason today in a letter to law enforcement officials for statements Burg made last week that appeared to confirm that Israel possessed nuclear and chemical weapons. (As reported by Gavriel Fiske)

 

2013: The American Zionist Movement, the World Zionist Organization and Consulate General of Israel in New York City is scheduled to host a conference on Anti-Zionism and Ant-Semitism

http://www.azm.org/the-devil-that-never-dies-antisemitism-program/

 

2013: “The London Review of Books published an online article by Seymour Hersh alleging that President Obama had "omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts" in his assertion during his televised speech of 10 September that Bashar Al-Assad regime had been responsible for the use of sarin in the Ghouta chemical attack of 21 August 2013 against a rebel-held district of Damascus.

2014: Willa Schneberg is scheduled “to read from her recent collection Rending the Garment at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.

2014(16th of Kislev, 5775): Ninety-five year old Sylvia Padzensky passed away today at Cottage Grove Place in Cedar Rapids.

http://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2014/Dec/Sylvia-Padensky/

2014: The second and final episode of “The Red Tent” is scheduled to be broadcast on Lifetime.

 

2014: “The Rothschild egg which “Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild presented this egg to Germaine Halphen upon her engagement to Béatrice's younger brother, Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild” was given to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg during the celebration of the 250thanniversary of the museum.

 

2014: “Arabic media reported today that two alleged Israeli airstrikes the day before had targeted advanced Russian-made air-defense missiles bound for Hezbollah.”

2014: “Irritability and Sever Temper Outbursts” Helping Parents Help Their Children” was the topic of today’s Dr. Samuel Kahn Memorial Lecture presented by the Westchester Jewish Community Services organization and NewYork-Presbyterian, Westchester Division.

2014: A new HBO documentary, “Regarding Susan Sontag” airing tonight charts the way Sontag’s approach to the issues of her day allowed her to become a new kind of American public intellectual.

 

2014: The 19th Knesset’s final day began today with a meeting of the Finance Committee where the agenda “consisted of the long-planned funneling of some NIS 3.6 billion ($902 million) to the Defense Ministry. “

2015: “Shmattes” an exhibition that “surveys the numerous ways in which hip, secular, young American Jews wear their Jewishness on their sleeves, literally” and that features a display of  “contemporary, funny, edgy Jewish-themed t-shirts” is scheduled to open at the Center for Jewish History.

 

2015: In what was later described as “just a joke,” Rick Kriseman, “The Jewish mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida made it known today that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was unwelcome in his city, following Trump’s suggestion the same day that the United States prevent all Muslims from entering the country.” (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)

 

2015: “Young (Mostly), Hip (Mostly), Adrift in 2 Worlds” published today provides a review of New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 by Shelly Oria.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/books/new-york-1-tel-aviv-0-stories-by-shelly-oria.html?ref=books&_r=0

 

2015: Chef Michael Solomonov, the chef/owner of the popular Zahav restaurant in Philadelphia is scheduled to teach the “Master Chef Class” at the Skirball Center.

2015: “A Carved Stone Block Upends Assumptions About Ancient Judaism” published today described the impact that the discovery of “The Magdala Stone” has had on views of life during the final decades of the Second Temple.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/world/middleeast/magdala-stone-israel-judaism.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=wide-thumb&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below

 

2016: The YIVO Institute for Jewish research is scheduled to present “Yiddish Open MIC” hosted by Shane Baker for an evening filled with the sounds of a language that at one time had been written off as dead as the proverbial dodo bird.

2016: The New York premiere of “Personal Affairs” is scheduled to be shown on the last night of the 10th Annual Other Israel Film Festival.

2016: Singer Yael Naim, the daughter of Sephardic Jews from Tunisia born in Paris and raised in Israel is scheduled to perform at the Highline Ballroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhE7QMXRE1g

 

2016: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present a tutorial in which senior reference librarian Moriah Amit provides the lay person with guidance on how to use a searchable online map of New York’s historical synagogues synagoguemap.cjh.org recently established by the Ackman and Ziff Family Genealogy Institute.

2017(20th of Kislev, 5778): Observance of the second day of the Rosh HaShanah of Chassidus.

2017: “Dozens of letters from Jews to Oskar Schindler’s wife Emilie thank her for her role in their liberation are scheduled to actioned in south-west England” today.

2017: Today’s session of the URJ Biennial in Boston is scheduled to include a Shabbat Dinner followed by Kabbalat Shabat and Song Session.

2017: Sixty-seven year old United States Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski was accused of “sexual misconduct” today.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Rabbi Leo Trepp whose works included The Complete Book of Jewish Observancecontinues today.

2018: In London, the “Conference of Aegyptiaca, the Journal of the History of the Reception of Ancient Egypt” hosted by the Warburg Institute is scheduled to come to an end today.

2018: At the Lumberyard in Catskill, NY, “The Day” is scheduled to be performed by Wendy Whelan and “world renowned Israeli-American cellist Maya Beiser.”

2018: “The Mlotek family and The National Yiddish Theatre - Folksbiene honored the memory of Chana Mlotek z"l as people from all walks of life from the YIVO Institute to multiple personalities of the Entertainment Industry shared their stories in celebrating the life & accomplishments of the beloved author, archivist, lifelong activist for the preservation Yiddish music and culture.

2018(30th of Kislev, 5779): Triple Header Shabbat; Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

2019: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present Yale Professor David Sorkin speaking on “Emancipation, Then and Now” which examines “the ongoing story of how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel.”

2019: In San Jose, CA, Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host “Latkes and Laughs” during which “comedians Jeff Applebaum, Rachael Berman and Scott Blakeman serve up the jokes to go with freshly made potato pancakes.”

2019: In Atlanta, GA, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host Murray Lynn as he describes being a 14 year old “when he, his mother and three brothers, who were later murdered were shipped in cattle cars to Auschwitz.

2019: In San Francisco, Congregation Beth Shalom is scheduled to host Ephraim Margolin as he talks about “The Education of One Israeli—1936 to 1945.”

2019: The Shoshana S. Cardin Leadership Awards for 2019 are scheduled to be present today at the USCJ-RA Convention in Boston.

2019: In Albany, CA, Local Jewish artist, author and poet Marcia Falk is scheduled to discuss and reads from her latest book, Inner East: Illuminated Poems and Blessings.

2019: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to Elizabeth Rosner as she talks about her latest book Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory. 

2019:  As Israelis awaken this morning, they will be looking to the skies to see if last night’s rocket barrage from Gaza was an apparition or the start of a new wave of terror.

2020: In act of Tikun Olam, Temple Judea, whose leadership includes Rabbi Feivel Strauss and Cantorial Soloist Abbie Strauss, is scheduled to participate in the “Help Feed the Hungry” where congregants make homemade sandwiches for St. George’s Kitchen which “distributes 300 sandwiches a day.”

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present “A Virtual Tour of the Bukharian Jewish Heritage Museum “

2020: The Jewish Council for Public Affairs is scheduled to present its first virtual benefit from 7 to 8 p.m. during which U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., and community advocate Harvey Reiter of Washington, D.C., will be honored with JCPA’s 2020 Tikkun Olam Award.

2020: “JewishColumbus” is scheduled to host “We Shine Together,” a free 20 minute virtual community celebration that will feature stories of impact, showing how JewishColumbus’ work affects many people within the community.

2020: Israelis are awakening to positive news on the Pandemic front –

the first shipment of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in Israel on Thursday, while a larger shipment is also slated to arrive on Friday with some 4 million doses of the vaccine expected to arrive in Israel by the end of the month.(As reported by Adir Yanko and Itay Blumenthal)

2020: Chabad is scheduled the first session of “And Then There Were eleven,” a course in which participants “will dive beyond the text and learn about the truth behind Yosef and his brothers and discover that there is much more to this story of betrayal than meets the eye.”

2020: Congregation Or Atid is scheduled to present on line “Exploring Black and Jewish Experience: A Conversation About “Convergence”

2020: The FIDF is scheduled to host Lt. Colonel Jonathan Conricus speaking on “Fighting Media Bias against Israel.”

2020: In Manhattan, the Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Ma’abarot” followed by a Question and Answer session.

 

 

This Day, December 9, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 9

 1212: In Mainz, coronation of Frederick II as King of Germany during whose reign the Jewish “community of Austria began to flourish” due to his “recognition that the Jews were a separate ethnic and religious group, and were not bound to the laws that targeted the Christian population.”

1437: Sigismund of Luxemburg, who “drained the Jews of their wealth whenever he could, he protected them from some of the worst excesses,” passed away today. (History of the Jewish People)

1491: Following the burning at the stake of six conversos and two Jews in conclusion of an inquisition that was part of the blood libel that gave rise to the “Holy Child of La Guardia,” the Jews of Avila were granted “a document of protection” which they had requested.

1565: Pope Pius IV who issued a bull that improved the conditions of the Jews passed away today. 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. 


1657 (Kislev 5418): Manasseh ben Israel passed away. Manasseh ben Israel was born in 1604 in Holland, A Marrano at birth; he became an outstanding man of letters. He was mystically inclined and believed that Jews should dwell in every country before the Messiah could come. It is from this platform that he approached the religiously-minded Cromwell with a petition for the resettlement of Jews in England. He was assisted by Antonio Carvajal, the first "denizenized" (foreigner granted residence and some other rights) Jew in England under Charles I. Although Manasseh was later offered a job in Brazil, he remained in Amsterdam. Cromwell eventually had his way despite the fact that England and the Dutch states were at odds, and in spite of the opposition of English clergy and merchants.

1641: Forty-two year old Sir Anthony van Dyck, who painted “The Portrait of Adriaen Moens” which had been returned to “Marei von Saher, the sole heir of Jacques Goudstikker, a Dutch dealer who fled the Nazis in 1940” passed away today.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dr-oetker-restitutes-van-dyck-831605

1612: One day after he had passed away, Isaac ben Aaron Prostitz, the native of Prostejov who was sent to Venice by his father to learn the printing trade passed away today after retiring from his crdaft.

1666(12thof Kislev,5427): Three months after Shabbati Z’vi cast off his Jewish garb and converted to Islam, the Rabbinical Council of Constantinople acted to stamp our this heresy that threatened their peaceful place in the Ottoman Empire by excommunicating Nathan of Gaza, one of his foremost "prophets
1669: Pope Clement IX passed away. The year before his death, the Pope modified the custom of having the Jews run through the streets of Rome as part of the carnival festivities by allowing them to pay heavy fines to avoid the race. This ended two hundred years of humiliation that had been introduced by Pope Paul II in the 15th century.

1677: Birthdate of William Whiston “an English theologian and historian” who “is now probably best known for his translation of the Antiquities of the Jewsand other works by Josephus.

http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/

1712(Kislev, 5473): Simon Moses Ben Israel, the Dutch rabbinical scholar who was the father of Moses Frankfurter the Dutch printer who lived from 1672 to 1762, passed away today.

1738: The Jews were expelled from Breslau Silesia.

1765(26thof Kislev, 5526): Second Day of Chanukah observed as the American colonists protest against the Stamp Act.

1773(24thof Kislev, 5534): Kindle for the first Chanukah Candle

1779(30th of Kislev, 5540): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1783: After the British were driven from New York and General George Washington entered the city late in 1783, exiled New Yorkers including the Jewish exiles began to return home. Today Myer Myers joined two other leaders of Shearith Israel as a delegation that was to convey the loyal greetings of the Jewish community of New York to Governor Clinton.

1784(26thof Kislev, 5545): Second Day of Chanukah

1792(24thof Kislev, 5553): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1792: Birthdate of Max-Théodore Cerfberr, the native of Nancy who may have been one of the first Jewish career officers in the French Army and who also served as “president of the Consistoire Central Israelite de France.”

1793: In Germany, Fromet and Nathan Baldauf gave birth to Leopold Loeb Baldauf, the husband of Ella Kahn and the father of Henry, Morris, Regina and Nathan Baldauf.

1795(27thof Kislev, 5556): Third Day of Chanukah observed for the first time during the Directorate wjem a five member governed France.

1797: In Philadelphia, PA, Rebecca Lyons and John Moss gave birth to Sarah Moss, the wife of Isaac Phillips and the mother of Barnet Phillips.

1798(1stof Tevet, 5559): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1799: Birthdate of Baden, Germany native Heinrich Moses Moos, the husband of Fanny Mayer and the father of Jeannette Moos.

1804” A Ukase (Czarist proclamation) issued today “allowed Jews for the time to purchase land in Russia for farming settlements

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_agricultural_colonies_in_the_Russian_Empire

1807: In Charleston, SC, “David Lopez and the former Priscilla Moses” gave birth to Priscilla Lopez who became Priscilla Lopez Moïse when she married Dr. Edwin Warren Moïse in 1835 and then moved to Woodville, Mississippi where he practiced medicine and she gave birth to three children – Cecilia, Sallie and Theodore.

1809(2ndof Tevet, 5570): Parsashat Miketz; Seventh Day of Chanukah
1809: Birthdate of Jules Isaac Mires, the son of Sephardic watchmaker from Bordeaux who became a successful banker, Managing Director of the Gas Company of Aries and was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor by Napoleon III in 1860.

1813: Birthdate of John Addison Gurley the Congressman from Cincinnati, Ohio who arranged for Cesar Kaskel to meet with President Lincoln so that Jewish Kentuckian could protest the issuance of General Order 11.

1818: In Montego Bay, Jamaica, Isaac Simon and his wife gave birth to Sir John Simon, the English barrister and member of the Liberal Party.

1818: Alfred Phillips married Rebecca Moses Samuel at the Great Synagogue today.

1819: In Frankfurt am Main Malchen and David Philipp (Feist) Schloss gave birth to Sophie Schloss
1821: In Bavaria, Ella and Wolf Goldmann, “a former schoolteacher and cattle dealer” gave birth to 
Marcus Goldman, the German-born American businessman and entrepreneur who immigrated to the United States in 1848 and was the founder of Goldman Sachs, which became one of the world's largest global investment banks.

1822(25thof Kislev, 5583): Chanukah

1825(29thof Kislev, 5586): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1831: Birthdate of Maurice de Hirsch who would gain fame as Baron Hirsch one of the greatest philanthropists of his time.

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

1833: Jacob ben Naphtali HaCohen married Beila bat Judah at the Western Synagogue today.

1835: In Gedern, Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany, Lob and Bina Oppenheimer gave birth to David Oppenheimer.

1840: Twenty-five year old haberdasher Michael Cashmore, “the first Jewish settler in Melbourne” and business partner of Samuel Emmanuel,married Elizabeth “Betsy” Solomon before board the PS Clonmel which would sink, causing him considerable business losses.
1840: David Benjamin married Esther Solomon in Hobart, Australia today.

1843: Birthdate of Corporal Isaac Gause who won the Medal of Honor during the U.S. Civil War.

1847: In Natchitoches, LA, Samuel Myers Hymas donated the land for the cemetery “to the Society of Israelites.”

1855(29thof Kislev, 5616) Fifth Day of Chanukah

1856: In “Temesvár (then Hungary, now Timisoara in Romania)  Rosalia Engel Katscher and Ignaz Katscher, who had married in 1852 in Makó, Hungary gave birth to Bertha Katscher (or Berta Kácser) the sister of “Leopold Katscher, noted pacifist, lawyer and journalist, and Helen Kohlbach.”

http://archives.nypl.org/mss/17921

1857(22ndof Kislev, 5618): Seventy-eight year old Jacob de Samuel Baïz y Frois, the Bayonne, France born son of Samuel Baiz and Hanna Frois and the husband of Leah Oliveira Isidro passed away today in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands
1858: Three days after she had passed away, Charlotte Styer nee Levy, the wife of Abraham Styer and mother of Mathew Styer was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1860(25th of Kislev, 5621): First Day of Chanukah observed as leaders in South Carolina, who were displeased with the outcome of the Presidential election prepare their ordinance of secession.

1861: Rabbi Arnold Fischel arrived in Philadelphia and met with Jewish leaders working to make it possible for Jews to serve as chaplains with the Union Army. Fischel was on his way from New York to Washington, D.C.
1861: Philadelphia native Myer Asch was promoted to First Lieutenant and Adjutant of Company H, First Cavalry, New Jersey Volunteers.
1861: Today’s edition of the Louisville-Nashville Courier gave the following details concerning the burning of a bridge at Whippoorwill on the Memphis Branch Railroad. A detachment of fifty or sixty federal soldiers “under the under command of a Dutch Jew peddler named Netter” fired “a volley of over one hundred rounds from Sharp’s revolving rifles” at the Confederates who guarding the bridge. Two were killed and the rest surrendered. The Federals then burn the railroad bridge. “Netter” was probably Gabriel Netter, a French-born Jew living in Kentucky who within a year would rise to the rank of Lt. Colonel before being killed in fighting near Owensboro.

1864: Louis Rosenberg, who would rise to the rank of Corporal, began serving with Company K of the 82nd Regiment.

1868(25thof Kislev, 5629): Chanukah is observed for the last time during the Presidency of Andrew Johnson.
1868: Birthdate of German-born Chemist Fritz Haber who synthesized ammonia and won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918.

1868: Austen Henry Layard, the archeologist who excavated Nimrud and Niniveh as described in Discoveries at Nineveh began serving as the First Commissioner of Works during the reign of Queen Victoria.

1869: In London, Mordecai Abrahams, secretary to the Initiation Society and his wife gave birth to economist and civil servant Sir Lionel Barnett Abrahams, the husband of Lucy Joseph and the father of Arthur Charles Lionel Abrahams.
1870: The Society of Biblical Archaeology was founded in London "for the investigation of the archaeology, history, arts, and chronology of ancient and modern...biblical lands...."

1872: Birthdate of Edward Lazansky  the native of Brooklyn who “was a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court from 1917 to 1926, and a Justice of the Appellate Division from 1926 to 1943” and who “was  a founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital.”

1874: In Chicago, Isaac and Hannah (Bachrach Weil gave birth to University of Minnesota trained attorney Jonas Weil and husband of Caroline Weil who was president of Temple Israel in Minneapolis, Secretary and Member of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Family Welfare Association of Minneapolis and a member of the board of directors of the Talmud Torah of Minneapolis.

1875: Birthdate of Louisville native and architect Samuel Edward Gideon who studied “architecture at M.I.T. and Harvard, as well as a degree from the School of Fine Arts (Fontainebleau, France)” after which he taught at Texas A&M and M.I.T. before becoming a professor at the University of Texas in 1913.

1875: Today’s session of the Hebrew Charity Fair raised over $7,000 for the benefit of Mount Sinai Hospital.

1878: In Falmouth, Jamaica, “two parents were of Afro-Jewish descent” gave birth to journalist and author Herman George de Lisser who wrote for the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, of which his father was editor, as a proofreader” and who “was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.”

1878: A fair for the benefit of Shaare Rachmim is scheduled to open tonight at Tammany Hall.

1878: Joseph Pulitzer bought the St Louis Dispatch for $2,500.

1879(24th of Kislev): In the evening the first light of Chanukah was kindled.

1879: It was reported today in New Jersey, that Chancellor Runyon has decided not to grant Rachel Blumenthal, young Jewess from Canada, a divorce from Moses Tannenholz an older Jew living in New Jersey. In 1875, when she was only 17 she participated in what she thought was a betrothal ceremony with Tannenholz Much to her amazement she discovered that the ceremony was a marriage ceremony. According to testimony offered during the divorce hearing, Blumenthal’s parents had declined Tannenholz’s offers to end the marriage for a cash payment. The Chancellor sensed that Tannenholz had been perpetrating a fraud in the matter of the marriage. But he declined to grant the divorce because Miss Blumenthal was a minor when she moved to New Jersey from Canada so that she could establish residence (a requirement for filing for divorce) and since she was a minor she could not file for divorce under New Jersey state law

 

1880(7thof Tevet, 5641) Seventy-three year old Isabella Cowen, the daughter of Isaac Tobias,  the daughter-in-law of Rachel Aarons and Joseph Tobias and the mother of six children – Augustus, Brginius, Colleton, Sara, Marion and Sophie – passed away today.

 

1881: It was reported today that at least one Russian newspaper has taken issue with President Chester A. Arthur’s criticism of the Czarist Empire’s treatment of its Jewish citizens.

 

1881: Samuel Shrimski began serving as a Member of the New Zealand Parliament for Oamaru.

 

1882: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Associations is planning on holding its annual meeting this month.

 

1882: Some Jewish businessmen who had obtained a temporary injunction were able to keep their stores open today.  The Jews, who observe the Sabbath on Saturday, have taken the matter to court.

 

1883: In Eichstetten, Leopold Bloch, the son of Samuel and Jeanette Bloch and his second wife Klara Bloch gave birth to Leonie Bloch

1883: R. Heber Newton delivered a lecture on “The Book of Genesis” during when he said the book “purported to be a Jewish work, giving the traditions of Jewish antecedents in prehistoric times…”

 

1885(1stof Tevet, 5646): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

 

1885: Thirty thousand people, including the adjutant of the Crown Prince who been sent as a representative of the royal family attended the funeral of Herr Strassmann, the President of the Berlin Municipal Council

 

1886: Birthdate of Irma Levy, the daughter of a New York assimilated anti-Zionist German Jewish family who gained fame as Irma Lindheim, a member of Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)

1888: In Bialystok, Mordecai Perlman “a Jewish merchant who supplied yarn and thread to home weavers and was a friend of Maxim Litvinov's father” and his wife gave birth labor economist Selig Perlman who taught at the University of Wisconsin for over four decades and was also “a visiting Professor at the” highly prestigious Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania.

1888:”Old New York Churches” published today featured a history of the houses of worship on Manhattan’s Norfolk Street including one building on the corner of Broome Street that housed a Baptist Church, followed by a Methodist church and is currently being used as a synagogue and another one on Stanton Street that had been a Presbyterian Church but is now a synagogue.

1888: In Brooklyn, a caucus of Republicans met today and decided that Ernst Nathan, a Twenty-third Ward politician must be stopped “at all cost” from gaining any power in their party.

1889: The Hebrew Education Fair opened this evening at the American Institute Building. This two long fund raiser officially began at 8:45 this evening when Eben’s Band began playing the grand march as New York City Mayor Grant and A.W. Lilienthal took their places on the stage.

1889: In Chicago, President Benjamin Harrison dedicated the Auditorium Building which had been designed the architect Dankmar Adler.

1891: In what may have been one of the most important events in this year’s social season for the Jewish community in New Orleans, at Temple Sinai, Rabbi Max Heller officiated at the marriage of Cincinnati native Julia Seeman, the daughter of George and Caroline (Carrie) Goodhart Seeman, to Felix J. Dreyfous which was attended by Isidore Schooler, Harry Hyman, Leon J. Schwartz, Henry Friedman, Leon Kaufman, Charles Godchaux, Morriss Levy, E.I. Johns, the bride’s sister, Mary Seeman and the groom’s sister Blanch Dreyfous

1891: In London, Polish Jewish immigrants, Louis Gertler and Kate "Golda" Berenbaum gave birth to British painter Mark Gertler.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gertler_(artist)#mediaviewer/File:Mark_Gertler,_by_Mark_Gertler.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gertler_(artist)#mediaviewer/File:Mark-gertler-queen-of-sheba-1922.jpg

1891: In the wake of the passage of the May Laws and increased persecution of the Jews of Russia during a speech delivered to Congress today, President Benjamin Harrison said: This government had found occasion to express in a friendly spirit, but with much earnestness, to the government of the tsar its serious concern because of harsh measures being enforced against the Hebrews."

1891(8thof Kislev, 5652): Sixty-nine year old Russian physician Leon Pinsker, an early Zionist and the author of “Auto-Emancipation” passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/pinsker.html

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

1892: One day after she had passed away, 70 year old Hannah Levy, “the widow of the late Moses Levy” with whom she had had six children was buried today in the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1892: Reports published today describe the spread of anti-Semitism among Germany’s political parties as can be seen by “a violent anti-Jewish article” in “the Catholic organ Germania” that the parties “desirous of annulling the emancipation of the Jews are growing daily.”

1892: Reports published today describe efforts to “invalidate Hermann Ahlwardt’s election to the Reichstag on grounds of corruptions and intimidation of opponents” including the beating of a member of the Radicals who is “suspected of being a Jew.”

1893(30thof Kislev, 5654): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1893: Birthdate of Chicago native and Tufts Medical School graduate Dr. Benjamin, the ophthalmologist and member of the faculty of Tufts and Harvard who was the husband of Bessie Cushing Sachs and father of Baruch J. Sachs and Tikvah Sachs Portnoi.

1894: “Finances and Russian Alliance” published today described changes in British policy toward the new Czar’s government including the arrangement of loans by London’s financiers along with the expectation of “decent treatment of the Jews.

1894: As the former Belle Glazier and her new husband Jacob S. Bernheimer left on their wedding trip the bride’s father gave a dinner for the children of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1895: N.S. Rosenau of the United Hebrew Charities was among those who attended today’s conference where ways were discussed “promote prosperity among the farmers” during the current agricultural depression.

1895: “The great Hebrew fair…one of the most extensive enterprises” that the Jews of New York have undertaken is scheduled to open tonight at Madison Square Garden. This fundraiser which has booths sponsored by every Jewish congregation and organization in the city is expected to raise $250,000 for Educational Alliance and the Hebrew Technical Alliance.

1895: “When the doors of the Madison Square Garden opened this evening for the great Hebrew fair the visitors saw much that in splendor will rival what has been depicted by the authors of ‘The Arabian Nights’ and like fiction, in which spectacular wonders abound.”

1895: Birthdate of Vivian de Sola Pinto the British poet and literary critic who was a close friend of Siegfried Sassoon with whom he served in WW I and who became one of the great authorities on D.H. Lawrence.

1897: Birthdate of Philadelphia native Edwin Israel “Hughie” Black, the first capital of the Philadelphia Sphas basketball team.

http://probasketballencyclopedia.com/player/hughie-black/

1897: One day after she had passed away, 75 year old Rachel Fishman was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1897: Birthdate of Hermione Gingold. Born Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold in London, she was the daughter of a high-class Austrian-born Jewish financier. The British actress known for her sharp-tongued, eccentric persona, an image enhanced by her sharp nose and chin, as well as her deepening voice, a result of vocal nodes which her mother encouraged her not to remove. She appeared on stage, on radio, in films, on television, and in recordings. Gingold passed away in 1997. 


1897: Two days after she had passed away, 22 year old Leah Lipman, the daughter of John and Rose Lipman was buried at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.

1898(25thof Kislev, 5659): First Day of Chanukay
1898: The Jewish Messengerreported Meyer Dannenberg a member of Or Chaim in New York City passed away. He "...was an Israelite of the olden school...he was truly pious and he leaves to his descendants and friends the priceless legacy of a good name."

1899: “The Children of the Ghetto” is scheduled to open at the Adelphi Theatre in London.

1900: Birthdate of New York City native and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of CCNY Albert Weisbord who joined with his wife Vera to becoming Communist activists.

http://www.weisbord.org/

1901(28thof Kislev, 5662): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1901: In the Bronx, Moritz and Fannie Kahn gave birth to Irene Kahn who became Irene Jonas when she married Dr. Joseph Quincy Jonas.
1902: When Oscar Straus escorted ex-President Grover Cleveland into the meeting of the National Civic Federation, the attendees erupted with a round of applause.
1903: It was reported today that the divorce of Solomon Cohen, the managing director of Cohen and Co. Ltd, of Cootamundra and Stockinbingal and Mabel Lillian Cohen has been finalized.

1904(1stof Tevet, 5665): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1904: In Richmond, VA, members of Congregation Beth Ahavah (House of Love) dedicated their new home what is popularly known as the Franklin Street Synagogue, probably because it is located on West Franklin Street. The congregation is one of the oldest in the United States tracing its origins back to 1789. The building which is still in use is on the National Historic Registry.

1904: Birthdate of University of Cincinnati alum and drama critic Louis Kronenberg who worked at the New York Times and Time magazine before become a professor at Brandeis.

1905: “Salome” an opera based on Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of the French play Salomé which was dedicated to Sir Edgar Speyer “was first performed at the Hofoper in Dresden.”
1905: The French law on the Separation of the Churches and State (Loi du 9 décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des Églises et de l'État) was passed by the Chamber of Deputies today. From now on, the functionaries of all religions in France - Catholic, Protestant and Jewish - ceased to receive state funding and no longer conducted their affairs under state supervision. France had become a secular nation thanks to the backlash from the Dreyfus Affair.

1905:  The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that in New Jersey, “the Camden Hebrew Relief Fund has reached $694.38. (Ed. Note – the money was being raised for the victims of the Pogroms that had taken place in Russia earlier in the year.)

1905: Birthdate of New York native Leo S. Palitz the CCNY basketball player and physician who was married to “Lillian Nassau, the doyenne of New York antique dealers”

1905: It was reported today that at a time when the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the Jews in what is now the United States is being celebrated, “the account given in the Jewish Encyclopedia, the twelfth and last volume of which is about to be published by Funk & Wagnalls” makes for interesting reading.

1906: “Zionism,” “an argument against the ambition for separate national existence, a plea for devotion to the idea of common humanity” by Count Leo Tolstoy was published today.

1906: “Peculiar Trade That Dates from the Days of Moses” published today described the origins of Kosher slaughtering which has its origins in the Torah.

1906: It was reported today that “there are nearly 4,000 kosher butchers in New York” which “is bought exclusively by at least 75 per cent of” New York City’s “Hebrew population.”

1906: It was reported today Switzerland is the only country in which cattle are not slaughtered in the kosher manner because “the government has forbidden the killing of cattle with a knife on the theory that the latter is an inhuman instructed and that by employing it the Hebrew shochat is guilty of cruelty to animals.”

1907: Birthdate of Philadelphia native, Jules Cohen, the attorney who was President of the Association of Jewish Community Relations Workers and a member of The Jewish Community Relations Council of Philadelphia which was founded in 1939

1908: Three days after she had passed away, “Louisa Sophia Goldsmid,”  the widow of “Sir Francis Henry Goldsmid and the daughter of Eliza Solomon and Moses Ashe Goldsmid, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1909(26thof Kislev, 5670): Second Day of Chanukah

1909: In New York City, Philip and Bessie Borwick Halprin gave birth to Portsmouth, NH grocery store owner  Harry Halprin the husband of Betty Weiner whom he married 1934 and the father of Arthur Halprin.

1909: Birthdate of Chicago native and University of Chicago trained Social Worker Harry Barron

1910: Congressman-elect Jefferson M. Levy, the nephew of Uriah P. Levy, was reported today to have joined publisher William Randolph Hearst and Admiral Dewey in resigning “from the American Boy Scout organization” because they “did not approve of the (organization’s) management” and they “think a great deal of the funds have been raised through false representation and in other manner” of which they heartily disapprove.

1910: Birthdate of Troy, NY native and Cornell undergrad Harold I. Saperstein, the Jewish Institute trained rabbi and spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El in Lynbrook, NY for “nearly half a century” while raising to sons – Rabbis March and David Saperstein – with his wife Marcia.
1911(18th of Kislev, 5672): Rabbi Haim Covo of Salonica passed away at age the age of 68.

1912(29thof Kislev, 5673): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1912: Max Schulman is scheduled to address adult attendees at Chanukah celebration hosted by the Chicago Hebrew Institute.

1912: Funeral services are scheduled to held at noon today at the Waldheim Cemetery for seventy year old Augusta (Meyers) Sultain, the wife of Bernet Sultan with whom she had six children.

1913(10th of Kislev, 5674): Seventy-four year old “French pianist and composer” Élie-Miriam Delaborde who was reputed “to be the illegitimate son of the composer and pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan” the Franco-Jewish “composer and pianist” passed away today.
1914: Birthdate of Samuel Katz, who was a close adviser to Menachem Begin, Israel’s prime minister in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but who later became a vociferous opponent of Begin’s peace efforts with Egypt and the Palestinians. The son of Alexander and Luba Katz, Katz was born in Johannesburg and moved to Palestine in 1936 He changed his first name to Shmuel and soon joined the Irgun. For several years, he was secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, one of the founders of the Irgun. Mr. Katz and Menachem Begin became comrades in arms in the 1940s when both rose to leadership positions in the Irgun, the right-wing underground militia that battled the British Mandatory government of Palestine and later Arab forces in Israel’s 1948 war for independence. In June 1948, Mr. Katz helped organize the voyage of the cargo ship Altalena, which was carrying weapons and Irgun fighters to Israel when it was sunk off Tel Aviv by the newly formed Israel Defense Forces. In May 1977, Begin, the longtime leader of the Herut Party, was elected prime minister of Israel’s first right-wing government in 29 years; Herut later merged with the Likud bloc. Begin chose Mr. Katz as his adviser for information abroad and sent him to several countries, including to the United States for meetings with President Carter, to counter perceptions that Begin was a wild-eyed terrorist and reactionary. But Mr. Katz had resigned to protest Israeli concessions by the time Mr. Carter brought Begin and Sadat together at Camp David in September 1978; at the White House the next year, they signed a treaty returning Sinai to Egypt and calling for Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. In June 1979, Begin was re-elected to a 13th term as chairman of Herut, by a vote of 1,340 to 8. The 8 votes went to Mr. Katz. In Mr. Katz’s view, peace with the Arabs was illusory; in his view, Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for much of the West Bank, should be annexed as part of the “land of Israel,” and pressure from Washington could be ignored. It was a position Mr. Katz took in many books and opinion articles that he wrote in the years after he left the government. Among Mr. Katz’s books are Jabo, a biography of Mr. Jabotinsky; Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, about the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict and what Mr. Katz considered the deep connections between his nation and the biblical land of Israel; and The Aaronsohn Saga, an account of a Jewish spy ring that worked for the British against the Ottoman Turks. He passed away in May of 2008 at the age of 93 in Tel Aviv.

1915: It was reported today that the one million dollars already raised to aid the Jews suffering in war-torn Europe, the American Jewish Relief Committee knows now that it “was only a small part of what was needed” and that a new campaign must be waged to raise additional funds – a campaign that will benefit from the expertise of “Manny Strause of Cincinnati, an efficiency expert” who will devote sixty days of his time to this endeavor.

1915(2ndof Tevet, 5676): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1915: Tisa Hanna Maltinsky, “the beloved daughter” of the former Gertrude Kunst and Samuel Maltinsky “chief proprietor, President and Treasurer of the Crescent City Jewelry Company” in Pittsburgh, PA and granddaughter of Hyman and Sarah Maltinsky, passed away today.

1915: It was reported today Irving I. Lipsitch of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society delivered an address on “How Can Jewish Farmers Be Assisted in Getting Their Naturalization Papers?” at the last meeting of the Federation of Jewish Farmers of America which has gone “on record as opposing legislation using a literacy test to restrict immigration.”

1916: “The Women’s Proclamation Committee, the national women’s organization for Jewish war relief of which Mrs. Samuel Elkeles is Chairman, announced” today “that it had established new branches in Baltimore, MD and Memphis, TN” and that steps were being taken to establish branches in Milwaukee, Dayton and Kansas City, MO.

1916: In London, a Polish born English watchmaker and jeweler who wrote in Yiddish under the “pen name of Moseh Oved” and his wife gave birth to Isadore Jacob Gudak who gained fame as Cambridge trained mathematician Irving John Good, also known as I.J. or Jack Good, the Bletchley Park cryptologist.

1916: In Amsterdam, New York Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch gave birth to Issur Danielovitch who gained fame as Kirk Douglas, who has played everything from Doc Holiday in Gunfight at the OK Corral, to deranged Naval officer in In Harm’s Way to Colonel Mickey Marcus in Cast a Giant Shadow.

1916: “A wireless statement from Alfred Zimmermann, Germany Secretary for Foreign Affairs” sent “in reply to an inquiry made through the German Embassy by Dr. S. M. Melamed, the editor of the Amerian Jewish Chronicle” received today in New York declared “that the new constitution granted to the Jews of Poland gave them far-reaching self-government and a chance to develop their own educational system.” (Editor’s note – A scant thirty years later the Jewish population of Poland would be almost non-existent thanks to another German regime.)

1917: In New York, Frederick Margareten, who was a graduate of CCNY and a kosher food manufacturer and the Manhattan born so of Regina (Horowitz) Margareten and Ignatz Margareten and his wife Mary Magareten gave birth to Cecilia Margareten.
1917(24th of Kislev, 5678): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah
1917: According to reports published today, “this evening the celebration of Chanukah, the Feast of Dedication, will begin among Jewish people and continue for eight days. Although rated in the traditional calendar as a minor festival, compared with the Biblical festivals and holy days, it is known also as the Feast of Lights, and is of great significance, as it commemorates one of the most heroic struggles and final victory for the Jewish fatherland and faith.”
1917: Just after midnight, Turkish troops began the final evacuation Jerusalem. According to one report, it was fitting that the Turks should be leaving Jerusalem for the last time on the same day that the Seleucids left the city since this day coincided with the celebration of the holiday of Chanukah.
1917: The Turkish mayor of Jerusalem surrenders the city to 2 British soldiers - Sergeants Sedgwick and Hawcombe.

1917: “O.A. Glazebrook, the United States Consul, who recently returned from Jerusalem, predicted in an address” at the Institutional Synagogue today predicted that “starvation and untold suffering” awaited “the Jews in Palestine unless very active steps were taken by” Jews in the United States to send money to the region and “that Germany had begun a complete reorganization of the Turkish Army and to that end was commandeering all resources of the Turkish Empire regardless of the needs of the civilian population” which only made the position of the Jews all the more perilous.

1917: A delegation of notables including the mayor of Jerusalem, the chief of police and several imams, rabbis and Christian clergy met with British forces just north of the city and surrendered the “keys of the city.”

1917: Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein delivered a sermon to members of the Institutional Synagogue who met at Mount Morris Theatre urging “liberal support” for the drive to raise funds for Jewish war relief.

1917: Among the contributions reported today to have been made to The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews suffering Through the War were $222 from the American Graphaphone Company, “one of the earliest names in recorded sound” which was founded in 1887 and $222 from the Cannonsburg, PA, Hebrew Association.

1917: It was reported today that the upcoming issue of The Menorah Journal will carry a story about the invitation to Israel Zangwill to come to the United and address the Menorah Quintennial Convention, including “Zangwill’s eloquent, if regretful replay to the invitation.”

1917: Today, “the Provisional Zionist Committee announced that Justice Louis D. Brandeis of the United States Supreme court has received letter of congratulation from the Armenian United Association of London on the British declaration in favor of the establishment of a national Jewish home in Palestine to which the Cabinets promises that ‘his Majesty’s Government will exert its best endeavors.’”

1917: Forty seven year old Shreveport, LA native and playwright Arthur Lee Kahn, some of whose plays “show the influence of his southern heritage and indicate something of the nature of the struggle of the southern-born playwright” passed away today.
1917: At the Rockford Hall, in Rockford, Illinois, the Young Peoples’ Jewish Congress is scheduled to host an “entertainment and dance” in honor of the Jewish soldiers at Camp Grant who are being granted a furlough so they can attend the event.

1918: In the Bronx, Austrian immigrants Asher and Ida Tannenbaum gave birth to Gertrude Tannenbaum who gained fame as Gertrude Schimmel whose police career was all the more challenging because of her gender – a challenge she repeatedly overcame rising to become the first female chief in the NYPD. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)

1918: Victor Berger went on trial today on charges that he had violated the Espionage Act of 1917 by publicly opposing America’s entry into WW I.  Berger was a Socialist who opposed all war.

1919: Mrs. Henry Hershkovitz is scheduled to deliver a report at today’s regular meeting of the Hungarian Charity Society Women’s Auxiliary in Chicago.

1920(28thof Kislev, 5681): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1920: Thirty days after the death of Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport whose pen name was S. Ansky, passed away, “The Dybbuk” was performed at the Elyseum Theatre in Warsaw.

1921: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning at Sam Rothschild’s Funeral Chapel for 53 year old Alfred Loeb, the husband of the former Edith Marx and the father of Richard Loeb.

1922: The North West Young Women’s Hebrew Association is scheduled to host “their third informal dance” this “evening at the Cameo Room in Chicago’s Morrison Hotel.

1922: Mrs. Andrew Roth is the chairperson for the Beth Israel Sisterhood’s charity bazaar which is scheduled to open tonight.
1922: Cleveland banker and philanthropist Maurice J. “Moses” Mandelbaum, the son of Jacob and Amelia (Lehman) Mandelbaum married his third wife, Florence Burnet today.
1923(1st of Tevet, 5684): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1923: Sigmund Israel, the rabbi leading the Temple at Poughkeepsie, NY passed away today.
1923(1st of Tevet, 5684): Seventh day of Chanukah; in the evening Kindled the 8th candle

1923: Hadoar resumes publication
1923: The Jewish Welfare Board sponsored a special Army and Navy Chanukah Service that was held at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Manhattan. During his address to the attendees, Rear Admiral Charles P. Plunkett, commander of the Third Naval District and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, said that “There are more kinds of hatreds both religious and social in the world today than ever existed. This country has been open to the world, a haven of safety, but we have no room here for those who cannot be assimilated. They cannot bring their hatreds here..”
1923: In address to the first meeting of the National Council of the Keren Hayesod at the Hotel Astor, Dr. Arthur Ruppin said that “the housing shorate in Palestine has been relieved to a considerable estnet by the establishment of the General Mortgage Bank of Palestine which has invested more than $300,000 in mortgages enabling the construction of 300 house in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Tiberias.
1924: In the presence of in the presence of Sir Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Ronald Storrs, Governor of the Jaffa district in Jerusalem, and Raghib al-Nashashibi, the Arab mayor of Jerusalem a street in Jerusalem that crosses Ben Yehuda Street and Hillel Street was named King George Street or Rechov HaMelech in dedication ceremonies held today. The street was named in honor of King George V in honor of the seventh anniversary of Lord Allenby’s conquest of Jerusalem during World War I.

1926: Birthdate of Newcastle upon Tyne native Lionel Kopelowitz, the University College Hospital trained physician and RAF veteran who “was President of the European Jewish Congress from 1989 and 1991.

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/sadness-over-death-of-communal-father-figure-lionel-kopelowitz-1.486860

1925: In Wilkes-Barre, PA, “Morris and Gussie (Levy) Facher gave birth Penn State journalism graduate and Harvard trained lawyer Jerome Facher who gained famed from his depiction in A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr.

1926: It was reported today that The American Christian Fund for Jewish Relief has announced that the Protestant-Catholic-Jewish mass meeting at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine last Sunday night had been followed by many contributions and offers to cooperate in raising the $25,000,000 sought by the United Jewish Campaign, of which $19,000,000 has already been subscribed, to relieve the suffering of 5,000,000 Jews in Eastern Europe.”

1927: “The Private Life of Helen Troy” a silent film about the famous beauty directed by Alexandra Korda and starring his wife Maria in the title role premiered in New York City today.

1927(15thof Kislev, 5688): Eight-two year old Max Landsberg, the Berlin born son of Rabbi Meyer Landsberg, a graduate of  the Jewish Theological Seminary of Bresalau who became Rabbi at B’rith Kodesh at Rochester in 1871 where he served for 44 years passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1927/12/10/98425024.pdf

1928: A Chanukah celebration is scheduled to be held this afternoon at the Bronx Jewish Center under the supervision of Talmud Torah’s principal, Rabbi J.J. Charlot

1928: It was reported today that “in the hope of putting an end to anti-Semitic rioting in Rumanian universities, the Minister of Education has notified the rectors…that students guilty of participating in anti-Jewish demonstrations to such an extent as to break the peace will be drafted into the army at once…”
1929: During an interview today Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the Jewish son-in-law of Mark Twain, commended the music program started last week at Hebrew University. Based on first-hand knowledge gained by his visit to Palestine last Sring, Maestro Gabrilowitsch spoke highly of the accomplishments of the Jewish musical community and identified the areas in most need of growth.
1930: Birthdate of Buck Henry. Born Henry Zuckerman, Henry is known as an actor, writer and the satirical wit who helped to make SNL into a hit show.

1930: “In the presence of over 200 representatives of many faiths from various points in the country gathered at a dinner concluding the Seminar on Human Relations between Protestants, Catholics and Jews, held at the Hotel McAlpin, Newton D. Baker, former Secretary of War, was presented tonight with the American Hebrew Medal for the Promotion of Better Understanding between Christian and Jew in America.”
1931(29th of Kislev, 5692): Fifth Day of Chanukah
1931: Jews throughout the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Birth of Baron Hirsch
1931: Supporters of the Grand Mufti distributed “fake photographs” to delegates to the World Islamic Conference showing Jews armed with machine guns attacking the Dome of the Rock. This was part of the mufti’s plan to inflame relations between Jews and Arabs while cementing his role as leader of the Arabs in Palestine.

1932: “The Jews of this country, in a new era of Jewry, must become the bene-factors of America, it was declared tonight by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, speaking before more than 1,200 members of the Congregation Rodeph Sholom, in the synagogue at 7 West Eighty-Third Street.”

1933: Seventy-three year old Eugenie Wottitz Wartski, the daughter of Marie and Dr. Simon Spitzer who was married to Moritz Wottitz and then Zygmunt Wartski passed away in her home town of Vienna.

1933(21stof Kislev, 5694): Fifty-four year old German silent screen actor Julius Falkenstein passed away today in Berlin.
1934: In a response to a request from Churchill, Leonard Montifore, a member of the Central British Fund, sent the British statesman a translation of the recently promulgated Nuremberg Laws, commentary from The Times on these anti-Jewish laws and a pamphlet describing the conditions in Germany just before the laws were passed.

1935: “Paradise Lost” a drama written by Clifford Odets, directed by Harold Clurman and starring Stella Adler and Morris Carnovsky opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre.
1935: Walter Liggett, Minnesota newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder. After writing newspaper articles connecting between the mobster Kidd Cann and Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson, Ligett was gunned down, reportedly by Kid Cann. Kid Cann was Isadore Blumenfeld a leading Jewish mobster living in the Twin Cities. He was tried for the murder but “beat the rap.”

1936:  “Dr. Arthur Ruppin, an agricultural and colonization expert for the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Maurice B. Hexter testified before the Royal Commission in Jerusalem, where among other things, they worked to refute the criticism of the Jewish National Fund’s land-purchasing policy made by commission member Sir Laurie Hammond.

1936: In Chur Switzerland, 27 year old Yugoslav Jewish medical student who has admitted killing Wilhelm Gustloff, the Swiss Nazi leader testified “that he had decided not to assassinate Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, ‘because it would cause too great suffering among the Jews in Germany.’”

1936: “The New York Ladies Auxiliary of the Jewish Consumptives Relief Society of Denver, Colorado announced” today ‘that it had begun a drive for $45,000” which will “be used to provide a new dining hall and kitchen for the 300 patients at the society’s sanitarium in Denver.
1937: The Palestine Postreported that in Jerusalem two bombs were thrown by Arab terrorists at the houses of Arabs known to oppose the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who was hiding from the authorities in Lebanon.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that in London the Colonial Office refused to accede to Colonel J.C. Wedgwood’s request to circulate the names of 137 officials of the Palestine government and judiciary who, on June 30, 1936, sent a memo critical of the establishments’ activities and policy.

1938: “Undaunted by efforts to intimidate them, fifty-six of Hollywood’s most prominent stars, directors, writers and studio heads gathered at HANL activist Eddie Robinson’s Beverly Hills home” today “to discuss the worsening situation in Germany and western Europe” which led to a sign “The Declaration of Democratic Independence” a petition “which they sent to the President and Congress calling for a boycott of all German products until Hitler stopped persecuting Jews and other minorities.
1938: As the level of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany increases and Hitler pursues a more aggressive foreign policy, Churchill gave a speech reminding his constituents that four years earlier he had called for a four-fold increase in spending for the RAF and that if those who are criticizing him now would have heeded his advice then Britain would not be dealing with the Germans from a position of weakness.
1938: “Dramatic School” a “romantic drama” produced by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Luise Rainer and Paulette Goddard (Marion Levy) was released today in the United States today.

1938: Bessie (Basha) Riff, the wife of Rabbi Naftali Riff, who had arrived at Ellis Island in 1923 “became a naturalized citizen in the Common Pleas court of Camden, NJ today.

1939: Dr. Henryk Szoskies, vice president of the Jewish community in Warsaw, who escaped last month and is now in Paris has provided first-hand information on the desperate situation of the Jews living in the German-occupied zone of Poland. “Jews all over the German part of Poland live in constant fear of new persecutions and new orders making life even harder.” He reported that the Gestapo had ordered the establishment of a ghetto in the middle of November allowing only three days to transfer an additional 160,000 Jews into the Nalewiki district increasing the population in this small area to 366,000. “Jews all over Poland face an extremely hard winter…since merchants are not allowed to trade and all their property has been confiscated. Dr. Szoskies has “presented a detailed report to Premier Wladislas Sikorski and other members” of the Polish government in exile in Paris.
1940: The British deported illegal Jewish immigrants from Haifa to Mauritius. This was part of the British enforcement of the White Paper that effectively ended Jewish immigration to Eretz Israel. When you consider how strapped the British were for resources in fighting Hitler, it is amazing that the government in London could find the resources to intercept vessels sailing to Palestine.
1940: Jewish immigrants who had entered Eretz Israel illegally protested their deportation by lying nude in their bunks, refusing to dress in an act of spontaneous, and ultimately futile, civil disobedience,
1940: A German soldier leaps from a car in the Warsaw (Poland) Ghetto and strikes a Jewish boy in the head with an iron bar, killing him.

1941(19thof Kislev, 5702): “Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism”

1941(19thof Kislev, 5702): Seventy-six Hart O.Berg “a pioneer in the manufacture of machine guns, guns automobiles and submarines” whose most notable accomplishment was helping the Wright Brothers promote their flying machines during their first European tours passed away today.

1941(19thof Kislev, 5702): Following two days of killing known as the Rumbula Massacre, an additional 500 Jews were murdered in the “small ghetto” at Riga. The Nazis used buses supplied by the Riga municipal authorities to transport the Jews to the Bikernieki forest where “they were murdered and buried in mass graves.

1942: “Winter Soldiers,” a play “about saboteurs in Nazi-occupied countries” directed by Shephard Traube is scheduled to have its final performance tonight at the Studio Theatre of the New School for Social Research.”
1942: Seventy-six year old Maximillian Pick was transported from Pardubice to Terezin where he was murdered in January.
1942: German troops in Tunis, Tunisia, seize 128 Jews and march them to a labor camp. One young Jew who drops from exhaustion is shot and killed.

1942: Hannah Karminski was brought to the extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_10774.html



1942: Christian Century, an American Protestant journal, attacks Rabbi Stephen Wise, claiming he has lied about the Holocaust in his recent press conference. Christian Century further argues that even if what Wise has to say is true, to make the facts of the Holocaust public serves no purpose.

1943: “Setback For Hitler” published today includes the views of the President of the National Conference of Christians and Jews that while there have been race riots in several U.S. cities, that despite the murmurings against Catholics and Jews, “there has arisen a general conviction that we must labor together if or national life is to be maintained.”

1944(23rdof Kislev, 5705): Parashat Vayeshev
1944: According to a survey completed today, the fate of at least 2,091 Roman Jews “deported to the north by the Germans is still unknown.

1945: “Yeshiva…always has endeavored to blaze a new trail in the field of higher learning, and now that it has become a university will continue to do pioneering work in the field of divine and human knowledge, Dr. Samuel Belkin  President of Yeshiva University declared tonight at the 17th annual Yeshiva College dinner.”
1946: “The Doctors' Trial,” the trial for crimes committed in Nazi human experimentation during World War II, began in Nuremberg, Germany.
1946: Chaim Weizmann calls for a Jewish state in Palestine.
1947: The Security Council tables a debate on partition after Syria reports that Arabs will question legality of such a partition.

1948: In Tel Aviv, “Israel Friedman, who was executive vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, and the former Rivka Hershman” gave birth to Bracha Friedman who gained fame as “whistle-blower Bracha Graber.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/nyregion/bracha-graber-dead-whistle-blower-in-foster-care-fraud-case.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
1948: Iraq is asked by Britain, U.S., and France to reopen oil pipeline from Iraq to Haifa The promise made that oil refined in Haifa will not be furnished to Israel.
1948: In British ruled Aden eighty-two Jews were killed during a savage attack on the Jewish citizens and their property. Other such riots took place in Beirut, Cairo, Alexandria and Aleppo.
1949: The UN General Assembly voted to put Jerusalem under permanent UN rule. This a repeat of what was in the resolution adopted on November 29, 1947.
1949: Arab states support the adoption of the motion to put Jerusalem under permanent UN rule because they are suspicious of King of Abdullah of Jordan who has annexed the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem.
1949: Britain opposes the UN plan to put Jerusalem under permanent UN rule.
1949: The United States opposes the UN plant to put Jerusalem under permanent UN rule. It favors a compromise put forward by Sweden and the Netherlands under which only the city’s religious shrines would be under UN Control instead of the whole city
1949: Chile abstained from voting on the UN resolution in favor to the internationalization of Jerusalem
1950: Harry Gold was sentenced to thirty years in jail for stealing United States nuclear weapon secrets for the Soviet Union. Gold’s testimony led to David Greenglass which in turn led to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed after being convicted of espionage. Gold only served about half of his sentence.

1951: “Dr. Earl James McGrath, United States Commissioner of Education, said today that Jewish culture had become "increasingly a part of the whole American pattern," and that if anti-Semitism "is again to become a threat it will menace the whole of the American people, the whole of American democracy."
1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Knesset elected Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the 68-year-old Labor Zionist leader, as the second President of Israel. He was elected on the third ballot when he won 62 votes. The other candidates were Rabbi M. Nurock, who received 40 votes, and Mr. Y. Gruenbaum who won five. There were five blanks and eight abstentions.

1954: “Deep In My Heart” biopic about Jewish composer Sigmund Romberg directed by Stanley Donen, was released today in the United States by MGM.

1956(5thof Tevet, 5717): Sixty-two year old painter and poet Uriel Birnbaum passed away.

http://www.jhm.nl/cultuur-en-geschiedenis/personen/b/birnbaum,+uriel

http://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/The-Gate-of-Death/36C13293CEA88220

1957: The first Japanese ambassador to Israel arrived in the Jewish state.

1958: Robert Welch, Jr. founded the John Birch Society.

http://www.jta.org/1966/02/18/archive/group-of-jewish-members-of-john-birch-society-form-organisation

1959: Bartley Cavanaugh Crum, the lawyer who “was a member of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine in 1945 that advised President Harry Truman to support the opening of the British Mandate of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration and to ease restrictions on Jewish land purchases” and authored Behind the Silken Curtain a Personal Account of Anglo-American Diplomacy in Palestine and the Middle East published by Simon & Schuster in 1947.
1961: An Israeli court found Adolf Eichmann found guilty of war crimes.

1961: Ferenc Molnar, a Hungarian author who escaped to the United States to avoid the persecution of Hungarian Jews and passed away in 1952 was retroactively granted the status of “returning resident.”

1962: Premiere of “Station Six-Sahara” a British-German film produced by Holocaust survivor Gene Gutowski and co-starring Carroll Baker who converted to Judaism when she married Holocaust survivor Jack Garfein.
1965: In Tokyo, world premiere of “Thunderball,” the fourth film in the James Bond series featuring Leonard Sachs
1966: Birthdate of Gideon Moses Serchanski, the Tel Aviv native who gained fame as Gideon Sa'arl, a Likud MK and Minister of Education.

1966: Seventy-one year old poet Lazarus Leonard Aarronson, a native of London’s East End who converted to Christianity and published Christ in the Synagoguein 1930, passed away today.

1968: In the U.K. premiere of “The Birthday Party” directed by William Friedkin, produced by Max Rosenburg and Milton Subotsky with a script by Harold Pinter.

1969: Thanks to newly supplied Soviet radar, the IAF suffers a “bad day” when Egyptian aircraft shoot down two Mirages and one F-4 Phantom Jet.

1969: The Nixon Administration publicizes the “Rogers Plan” named for the U.S. Secretary of State that “calls for Egyptian ‘commitment to peace’ in exchange for the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai.”  (This plan follows a pattern all too common to these negotiations over the decades – Israel gives up something tangible for an Arab promise)
1969: Birthdate of musician Jakob Dylan, son of Bob Dylan.

1970: The 6th Asian Games in which Esther Roth-Shachamorov won golds in 100m hurdles and pentathlon and a silver in long jump opened in Bangkok.
1970(11th of Kislev, 5731): Eighty-two year old London born, Columbia University trained Professor of Chemistry, Benjamin Harrow, Ph.D. passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/11/archives/benjamin-harrow-dies-at-82-professor-and-science-writer.html

1971: Dr. Ralph J Bunche passed away. Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful role in negotiating an end to the fighting between the Israelis and the Arab states in 1949.

1972: Ninety-two year old  gossip columnist Louella Parsons , the daughter of Joshua Oettinger, a German Jew, who was raised as an Episcopalian passed away today in Santa Monica, CA.

1972: Helen Reddy’s "I Am Woman" tops the charts

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/09/1972/helen-reddy

1973: A revival of “The Pajama Game,” the Richard Adler/Jerry Ross musical starring Hal Linden opened at the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre.

1973: “After only 37 performances and 16 previews,” “In the Boom Boom Room” directed by Joseph Papp and co-starring Madeline Kahn who “won the Drama Desk Award” for her performance closed on Broadway today.

1974(25thof Kislev, 5735): First Day of Chanukah

1974: Howard Cossell (who was Jewish) interviewed John Lennon as part of a breakaway segment during tonight’s Washington Redskins football game.

1976(17thof Kislev, 5737): Sixty-five year old  Barnard College graduate “Aleen Ginsberg Schacht, a national vice president of Hadassah and wife of steel construction executive Lawrence Schact with whom she raised two children – Michael and BarDara – passed away today.

1976: Funeral services for Dr. Julian Morgenstern, President Emeritus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, are scheduled to be held at the college this afternoon.

1977(29thof Kislev, 5738): One day before her 57th birthday Brazilian author Clarice Lispector passed away today.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egypt had returned to Israel the bodies of three unidentified Israeli soldiers who were killed during the Yom Kippur war.
1977: In Cairo tens of thousands of Egyptians demonstrated, carrying placards and chanting slogans of support for President Anwar Sadat's drive for peace. While Egypt severed relations with Arab states, King Hussein of Jordan arrived in Cairo for a visit. Hussein seemed to be ready to agree to the Jordanian participation in the joint Israeli-Arab meeting in Cairo, suggested by Sadat, preparatory to the reconvening of the Geneva Peace Conference.
1980: In Los Angeles, actor Sandy Helberg and casting director Harriet Helberg Simon Maxwell Helberg, American actor and comedian best known for his role as Howard Wolowitz in “The Big Bang.”

1981: The Moscow Municipal Court sentenced refusnik Boris Chernobylskii “to twelve months of general regime imprisonment “for resisting the police while performing their official duties.”

1981: “Lady in the Dark” a musical with music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book and direction by Moss Hart had its premiere UK performance at the Nottingham Palace.
1982(23rd of Kislev, 5743): Polish born Dutch violist Paul Godwin [Goldfein] passes away at the age of 80.
1982(23rd of Kislev, 5743): Activist Norman Mayer threatens to blow up the Washington Monument, before being killed by United States Park Police.

1983: U.S premiere of “Scarface” produced by Martin Bregman.

 

1983: After premiering in November, “Terms of Endearment” a comedy directed, produced and written byJames L. Brooks and co-starring Debra Winger was released U.S. wide today by Paramount Pictures.

 

1983: “The Dresser” the movie version of the play written by Ronald Harwood who also wrote the script for the film was released today in the United Kingdom.

1985: The funeral for 83 year old “Abraham M. Adler, “co-founder of the Hirschl and Adler art gallery are scheduled to be held today

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/09/arts/abraham-adler-83-is-dead-co-founder-of-an-art-gallery.html



1987: The First Intifada began in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. (Editor’s note – such catchy names for the various waves of Arab violence.  This event falls at a time when we are tracing events of 50 years ago when there was another wave of Arab violence that resulted in the infamous White Paper that closed Palestine to Jews fleeing the Holocaust.)

 

1988: “My Stepmother Is an Alien” a sci-fi comedy directed by Richard Benjamin and featuring Jon Lovitz was released today in the United States.

 

1988: “Mississippi Burning” a film based on the investigation of the murder of three civil rights workers, two of whom – Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner – were Jewish featuring Stephen Tobolowsky as “Clayton Townley” was released in the United States today.

1988: Today the major daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot published a survey indicating that 80 percent of Israelis now want President Chaim Herzog to continue urging Labor and Likud to form a new coalition. And 76 percent want that coalition to include no other partners - especially not the religious parties.

1990: In New York, Congregation Ansche Chesed sponsors a concert by folk singer Richie Havens. The concert is a fund raiser for the building fund and is part of the synagogue's 10th annual Hanukkah Arts Festival, which also offers a bazaar of gift items and refreshments.

1991: In a case of a Jewish critic evaluating the work of a Jewish authors and a Jewish composer, Frank,Rich reviewed “Nick & Nora.”

http://www.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9D0CE6D91539F93AA35751C1A967958260&_r=2&



1993: A revival of Lerner and Loewe’s "My Fair Lady" opens at Virginia Theater New York City for the first of 165 performances

1996(28thof Kislev, 5757): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1996(28thof Kislev, 5757): Sixty-one year old Raphael Elkan Samuel, the Marxist and Professor of History at the University of East London who left the Communist Party when the Soviets crushed the Hungarians in 1956 passed away today.

https://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/obituary-raphael-samuel-5588939.html

1998: “For the first time in more than half a century, the United Nations General Assembly decided today to list anti-Semitism as a form of racism.”

1999(30thof Kislev, 5760): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1999: It was reported today that “With negotiations at an impasse over a German fund to compensate Nazi-era slave laborers, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder has dismissed demands to improve Germany's latest offer.”

2000: “Ten people were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in one of the deadliest days of violence since the current Palestinian uprising began more than two months ago.”

2001: In “Music’s Dangers and the Case For Control” published today Richard Taruskin examined “The Death of Klinghoffer” an opera which its critics, including the family of the murdered Leon Klinghoffer, distorts a brutal act of murder in which an old Jew is thrown from his wheelchair into the Mediterranian.
2001(24th of Kislev, 5762): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.
200I: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced he would resign and call a special election.
2001: The New York Times book section featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Collected Stories by Saul Bellow, Letters To A Young Lawyer by Alan Dershowitz and Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered by Ruth Kluger.
2001: A suicide bomber exploded a powerful bomb near a bus stop at the Checkpost Junction in Haifa shortly after 7:30 AM. About 30 people were injured, most lightly and suffering from shock. A second explosive device was found and detonated nearby. The terrorist was killed.

2002: Yale undergrad and Harvard trained lawyer Ellen L. Weintraub began serving as Member of the Federal Election Commission.

2002: An International Symposium entitled "Jewish identity and anti-Semitism in Central and South Eastern Europe sponsored by the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities, the "Goldstein-Goren" Hebrew Studies Center, Bucharest University and Bucharest History Museum opened in Bucharest.
2002: Susan “Sontag continued to theorize about the role of photography in real life in her essay "Looking at War: Photography's View of Devastation and Death", which appeared in today’s issue of The New Yorker in which she concludes that the problem of our reliance on images and especially photographic images is not that "people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs ... that the photographic image eclipses other forms of understanding – and remembering. ... To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture"

2003: The Shin Bet captured Mahmud Amru, the sniper who murdered ten-month-old Israeli infant Shalhevet Pass and wounded her father as he blazed away at a busy playground.

 

2003: For the second night in a row, The Empire State Building offered a special tribute to the 110th anniversary of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), when it was illuminated by the organization’s colors of blue and green..

 

2004: The first Broadway revival of “La Cage Aux Folles a musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein and lyrics and music by Jerry Herman opened at the Marquis Theatre.

 

2004: Birthdate of Mile High resident Judah Ruscha.

2005: “Chrisie Watts” played by Tracy-Ann Oberman made her final appearance today in the “BBC soap opera ‘EastEnders.’”

2005: Sgt. Nir Kahane, 20, the military policeman who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian attacker at the Kalandia checkpoint, was buried in the Kiryat Tivon military cemetery.

2006: Haaretzreported that Germany condemned a planned Iranian conference on the Holocaust. The German Foreign Ministry told a top Iranian official that attempts to question the Nazis' murder of Jews were "shocking and unacceptable." Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said "We condemn all past and future attempts of anyone who gives a platform to those who relativize or question the Holocaust. Ploetner stressed that "the German government finds all statements that question the right of Israel to exist or the Holocaust shocking and unacceptable."

2006: The Chicago Tribunepublished an “edited” version of a “letter to the editors” describing one Jew’s view of the annual office Christmas Party, and if you read between the lines, a whole lot more.

2006: Shuttle Discovery launches on the STS-116 mission at 8:45 P.M. Space Shuttle Discovery Commander Mark Polansky took a replica of "Refugee" with him on the shuttle's mission. Each astronaut is invited to take a few items into space. Polansky took the replica of "Refugee" and an image of a Darfurian child in a refugee camp in Chad taken by Museum staff member Jerry Fowler. “Refugee” is the name of the stuffed bear that comforted Holocaust survivor Sophie Turner-Zaretsky when she is a refugee following World War II.

2007: The Center for Jewish History, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America present “A Legacy for the Future: Celebrating the Life and Teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on the Centennial of His Birth 1907-2007

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section reviews of books by Jewish authors or on topics related to Judaism or Jewish culture including The Rowing Lesson by the South African Jewish author Ann Landsman, Touch and Go: A Memoir by Studs Terkel and Bernard Malamud: A Writers Life by Philip Davis.

2007: The Washington Post list of Best Books for Young People included Leaves by David Ezra Stein.

2007(29th of Kislev, 5768): In Little Rock, AR, Harvey Luber, a man whose talents, gifts and accomplishments are too numerous to mention is laid to rest. To say he was a pillar of the Jewish community, a teacher, a photographer, a first class raconteur and lifelong learner as well as a proud father and great Zeda does not even begin to capture the essence of the man. To say that he was a friend to all both great and small regardless of rank or status says much about the basic decency of the man. If one were to write more in this vein, it would cause Harvey to laugh all the more. Suffice it to say that God apparently was in need of a great photographer, a memorable laugh and sage if slightly twisted discussion on matters of Judaica and only Harvey could give Him all that and more in one soul. He will me be missed and never forgotten.

2007: “Bagels & Barbeque: The Jewish Experience” opens at The Tennessee State Museum in Nashville. Bagels & Barbeque:

 

2007: Funeral services for Harvey David Luber, of blessed memory were held in Little Rock, AR this afternoon.

 

2008: Police provided the name of the 10 Pakistani terrorists who attacked various targets in Mubain last month including the Chabad House.

2008: At Adas Israel, a three day conference entitled "Zionism, Israel and Human Rights" with Avram Burg, author and former Speaker of the Knesset and Sari Nusseibeh, President of Al Quds University moderated by Kathleen Peratis, Board Member Emeriti of Human Rights Watch comes to an end.

2008 (12 Kislev): Yahrzeit of Solomon Schechter.

2009: Rabbi Addin Steinsaltz is scheduled to produce tractate Niddah, which deals with the laws that a married woman must adhere to during menstruation.

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival includes a screening of “Divided We Fall,” which tells the story of a childless couple living in a small Czech village during World War II who hide their former neighbor, a young Jewish man who has managed to escape from the death camps after losing his entire family.
2009: Funeral services are scheduled to held at the First Hebrew Congregation of Peekskill today for 97 year old Fordham trained attorney, WW II Army combat veteran and State Supreme Court Justice Leonard Rubenfeld, the husband of the former Amelia Kooperstein.
2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival includes a screening of “Legends in the Dunes,” Ya’akov Gross’ new documentary prepared in honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Tel Aviv that follows the development of the building of the new city across from the ancient city of Yaffo.

2009(22nd of Kislev, 5770): Gene Barry passed away. Born Eugene Klass in 1919, he enjoyed successful career performing on the stage, in films and on several successful television series. His marriage to Betty Kalb lasted 58 years, making him a success in his personal as well as professional life.

2010: “Tango, A Story With Jews” is scheduled to make its Mid-Atlantic Premiere at the 21st Washington Jewish Film Festival. The film highlights the role played by Russian musicians who fled to Buenos Aires in the 19th century in creating this icon of Argentine culture.

2010: Funeral services for Dr. Samuel I Mintz, the husband of the former Eleanor Streichler, English Professor and WW II veteran are scheduled to take place in Hackensack, NJ.

2010: The YIVO is scheduled to present a program entitled "This Theatre is a Battlefield: How Antifascist and Zionist Performance Forged a New Jewish- American Identity, 1939-1948.”
2010(2nd of Tevet, 5711): Eighth Day of Chanukah

2010(2ndof Tevet, 5711): Ninety-nine year old Brooklyn born violin prodigy and Syracuse University basketball player who co-founded the Famous Artists Broadway Theater Series passed away today.

http://blog.syracuse.com/entertainment/2010/12/murray_bernthal_dies_at_99_col.html

2010(2nd of Tevet, 5711): Dov Shilansky, Holocaust survivor and former speaker of the Knesset passed away at the age of 86.
2011: “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is one of three films being screened today at the 22nd Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2011: Craig Breslow was part of a multi-player trade that sent him from the Athletics to the Diamonbacks.
2011: As part of the Scholars in Residence Weekend at Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, Dr. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, a professor in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago is scheduled to address the issues of terrorism, counter-terrorism and religion.
2011: Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is scheduled to host one of its ever-popular Musical Shabbats.

2011: Gaza militants launched several rockets toward Israel's south today, hours after an Israeli air strike in central Gaza killed a Palestinian militant planning a terrorist attack on the Egypt border.

2011: Thousands of Israelis marched in Tel Aviv today to mark International Human Rights Day.

2012(25th of Kislev, 5773): Chanukah

2012(25th of Kislev, 5773): Eighty-five year old “Charles Rosen, the pianist, polymath and author whose National Book Award-winning volume The Classical Style illuminated the enduring language of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven” passed away today.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman by Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich

2012:Bein Hashmashot (Between the Suns), the official youth choir of Beit Shemesh, is scheduled to perform the JCC of Northern Virginia.

2012: The Sephardic Musical Festival is scheduled to continue tonight with “Sephardic Story Slam” at Lolita Bar in NYC.

2012: Chabad of North Dakota led by Rabbi Yonah Grossman is scheduled to host a public menorah lighting complete with Latkes and Sufganyot (Is there any place where the lamplighters of Lubavitch are not to be found?)

2012: In Cedar Rapids, Brian Cohen, champion Shofar Blower, shows that he is a “man for all festivals” as he leads his latke flipping team in preparing the potato delights for Temple Judah’s annual Chanukah Dinner.

2012: Israel should define its borders, even if this means doing so unilaterally, and separate from the Palestinians, former IDF chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said today.

2012: “The Gatekeepers,” a film by Israeli director Dror Moreh, was named best documentary today by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, whose prizes are among a flurry of year-end honors that help sort out the Academy Awards race. The French-language drama “Amour” was chosen as the year’s best film.

2012: Agovernment proposal to allow 1,300 haredi yeshiva students to enlist in the civilian service program instead of serving in the military was approved today but was greeted with widespread outrage from IDF draft reform advocates.

2012: The Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to open tonight in Israel’s capital city.

2012:Yoram Marciano re-entered the Knesset.

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present a roundtable discussion “French and Jewish: Defining a Modern Jewish Identity in the 19th Century.”

2013: “Trembling Before G-d” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: On the advice of his doctor “nonagenarian President Shimon Peres” will not be traveling to South Africa to attend Nelson Mendela’s funeral which Israel will be represented by Knesset Speark Yuli Edelstein.

2013: The trial of five former employees of the great goniff Bernie Madoff resumes today.

2013: In a rare instances of unanimous agreement “Both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and senior Palestinian spokesmen doused any optimism today that the US-led Israeli- Palestinian talks were on the verge of a breakthrough. (As reported by Herb Keinon)

2013: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority were set today to ink an agreement to build a long-anticipated pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, part of an initiative that would produce millions of cubic meters of drinking water for the parched region and slake the critically dwindling Dead Sea (As reported by Stuart Winer)

2013: Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of the Israeli Religious Action Center is scheduled to deliver a talk entitled Between the Stones and a Hard Place: The Challenge to Gender Equity & Pluralism in Israel at the Lawrence Family JCC. 

2103: Peter Shurman announced that he would resign as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario representing the riding of Thornhill effective at the end of the year.

2014: LBI is scheduled to present “Fighting for Kaiser and Fatherland” German-Jewish Soldiers and the Quest for Integration, 1914-1935”

2014(17th of Kislev, 5775): Ninety year old landscape painter Jane Freilicher passed away today.

2014(17th of Kislev, 5775): Seventy year old Russian violinist Lydia Mordkovitch passed away today in London.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11290327/Lydia-Mordkovitch-obituary.html

2014: Kirk Douglas, “the son of an immigrant Russian Jewish ragman marked his birthday today by celebrating the launch of his 11th book.

2014: A group calling itself "Guardians of Peace" hacked into Sony's computer system – a hack which would eventually lead to the dismissal of Amy Pascal as the Chairperson of the Motion Pictures Group of Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and Co-Chairperson of SPE, including Sony Pictures Television.

2014: “Zero Motivation, a zany, dark comedic portrait of everyday life for a unit of young, female Israeli soldiers” is scheduled to be shown at the Washington Jewish Film Festival

2014: “French police arrested five men suspected of making threats online to attack a synagogue.”

2014: While praying at Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn 2wenty-two year old Levi Rosenviat, an Israeli man studying for the rabbinate in New York was stabbed by Calvin Peters who entered the Chabad building shouting “I will kill the Jew! I want to kill the Jew!” (JTA)

2014; “Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said today that there appeared to be a lull in the recent wave of terror attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem, but added that it was far from certain that the calm would continue.

2015: The American Jewish Historical Society in collaboration with Moscow Museum is scheduled to present the documentary film "Alyad" about the Refusenik Movement.

2015: In his criticism of Education Minister Naftali Bennett, Chief Rabbi David Lau said that the Conservative of Masorti movement “distances Jews from the path of the Jewish people” – a distancing that does not include avoiding soliciting funds from Conservative Jews.

 

2016: In Haifa, the a-Sham Arab Food Festival “in which 45 leading chefs from the Arab (Muslim, Christian and Druze) and Jewish sectors have showcased the culinary treasures of the region passed down through generations, but with modern twists” is scheduled to come to an end today.

2016: “Jackie” with Natalie Portman starring in the title role is scheduled to be released in the United States today.

2016: “On the Map” a film that “tells the against-all-odds story of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s 1977 European Championship, which took place at a time when the Middle East was still reeling from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1972 Olympic massacre at Munich, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv” is scheduled to open at the Cinema Village.

2016: In Memphis, TN, a Ruach Preneg Concert is scheduled to kick-off the observance of Shabbat.

2016: Actor, director, producer, author, philanthropist and most surprising of all Torah Student, Kirk Douglas is scheduled to celebrate his 100th birthday today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/kirk-douglas-to-celebrate-100th-birthday-in-star-studded-bash/

2017(21stof Kislev, 5778): Parashat Va-yeishev;

2017: Eighty-eight year old Marshall Loeb, the Chicago born son of Monroe Harriman Loeb and “the former Henrietta Benjamin and University of Missouri trained journalist who “was managing editor of Forbes and Money magazines” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/obituaries/marshall-loeb-editor-who-shaped-money-and-fortune-magazines-dies-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2017: Kirk Douglas is scheduled to observe his 101st birthday.

http://www.kirkdouglas.com/

2017: One hundredth anniversary of the British capture of Jerusalem during WW I.

2017: Attendees at the URK Biennial are preparing to deal with the first major winter snow storm scheduled to strike Boston as they observe Shabbat.

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Rabbi Eugene Borowitz whose works included The Mask Jews Wear and Liberal Judaism continues today.

2018(1stof Tevet, 5779): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 7th day of Chanukah

2018: The Lior Milliger Quartet led by saxophone player Lior Milliger whose “music is influenced by traditional jazz as well as ancient Jewish music and Israeli folklore” is scheduled to appear at the Cornelia Street Café.

2018: “The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, the Iowa Jewish Historical Society, and the United Nations Association of Iowa” are scheduled to host Dr. Emile Schrijver, the Director of the Amsterdam Jewish Museum as he lectures on “Amsterdam’s Jewish Golden Age.”

2018: In Amherst, MA, the Yiddish Book Center is scheduled to host a screening of a newly restored prinf of “Der Dibuk” (The Dybbuk)

2018: In Washington, DC, Adas Isreal is scheduled to host the annual meeting of the “Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum.”

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education is scheduled to a performance of “Everyday Things” – “a play weaving Survivor testimonies and treasured objects from Stories of Survival.

2018: In Chevy Chase, MD, Ohr Kodesh is scheduled to host “The 5th Annual Dreidels and Drink” featuring everything from latkes to “dreidel drinking games.”

2018: The New York Times published reviews by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005 by Zachary Leader and The Politics of Petulance: America in an Age of Immaturity by Alan Wolfe

2019: In Boston, the Convention of USCJ and the Rabbinical Assembly is scheduled to host a Monday Night Concert with Josey Weisenberg and the Hadar Ensemble.

2019: The National Council of Jewish Women of Greater New Orleans is scheduled to host its board meeting this evening.

2019: The Center for Jewish History and the American Jewish Historical Society are scheduled to host “a conversation moderated by Rabbi Joseph Black of Temple Emanuel in Denver, in which Amanda Kinsey speaks with Annie Polland, Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society and Ann Kirschner, author of Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp about the soon to be made “feature length documentary ‘Jews of the Wild West.’”

2019: In San Francisco, the Chase Center is scheduled to host the 15thannual Warriors Jewish Heritage Night as Golden State takes on the Memphis Grizzlies in an NBA matchup.

2019: In Palo Alto, CA, the Oshman Family JCC is scheduled to host a “discussion with Professor Rivka Carmi, the first and only female to serve as president of a public university in Israel, Ben Gurion University of the Negev.”

2019: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Rabbi David Wolpe as he lectures on “Isaac Luria, the Mystics of Safed and the Beginning of Creation.”

2019: In Washington, Dr. Jean-March Dreyfus is scheduled to deliver the 2019 J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Annual Lecture on “At the Margin of the Holocaust? Writing the Biography of Mischling in the German Foreign Office: Vollrath von Maltzan.”

2019: In the wake of the killing of three people at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, by a Royal Saudi Air Force on a training assignment who accused the United States of being anti-Muslim and complained about U.S. support for Israel, U.S. government officials are scheduled to continue a review of the security component of a program that trains thousands of foreign airman in the use of American aircraft purchased by their countries.

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to host the last session of “Learn Arabic with Professor Daniel Tsadik”

2020: The ASF Institute is scheduled to host Aviva Ben-Ur discussing her new book, “Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651-1825.”

2020: In Cedar Rapids, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to meet over Zoom to discuss The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks.

2020: The Illinois Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a “Coffee with a Survivor” session with Sharrel Titelbaum.

2020: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to “an object talk about the Jews Free School.”

2020: In Manhattan, the Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “One More Jump” followed by a Question and Answer session.

2020: Havurah on the Hill is scheduled to present online “Sabbath Breads From Around the Jewish World,” an “interactive workshop” which explores “the diversity of the global Jewish experience through bread.”

2020: The Great YNY Clothing & Computer Drive is scheduled to come to an end today.

2020: The Jewish Family Services of Columbus is scheduled to host a virtual program featuring Julie Remer and Paula Weinstein where attendees will  learn how to make oven fried latkes and easy microwave applesauce for Chanukah.”

2020: The Breman Museum is scheduled to host the Joe Alterman Trio performing live via Zoom, Jazz Standards “inspired by photographs from “A Jazz Memoir: Photography” by Herb Snitzer

2020: MK Gideon Sa'ar, long seen as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's main rival within Likud who had announced yesterday evening that he was leaving the ruling party to launch a new right-wing political movement and run for prime minister against Netanyahu” is scheduled to “resign from his post as a member of parliament” today. (As reported by Moran Azulay)

 

 

This Day, December 10, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 10

1475: Seventy eight year old Italian artist Paolo Uccello passed away. Like many artists of his time, Uccello produced what today would be called anti-Semitic art.  Among his works was “Miracle of the Host”

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

1508: The League of Cambrai is formed by Pope Julius II, Louis XII of France, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and Ferdinand II of Aragon as an alliance against Venice. From a Jewish point of view, this item presents a mixed bag. Ferdinand ruled over a kingdom that had expelled its Jews and was home to the inquisition. But Pope Julius employed a Jewish physician, Samuel Sarfatti and practiced a policy of “benign neglect” when it came to dealing with the Jewish people. While Venice had enacted its share of ant-Jewish laws (and in 1516 would create the first Ghetto), it was a better place for Jews to settle than other parts of Europe. This is attested to by the fact that many of the Sephardim who had been expelled from Spain made their new home in the city of canals, including Isaac Abravanel.

1520: Martin Luther, who would condemn the “inhuman treatment of the Jews” in 1523 before turning anti-Semite in 1536, to responded to the Papal Bull of excommunication by burning it (Exurge Domine) “along with the book of church law and many other books by his enemies in Wittenberg” at a spot now known as the Luther Oak.

1675: A German Jew, Alexander Polak, became a citizen of The Hauge. He was the progenitor of the Polak Daniels family, and gave the congregation a cemetery in 1697.

1758: Martha Lampley and Philadelphian Samson Levy gave birth to Joseph Levy who died in infancy.

1762(24th of Kislev, 5523): The first Chanukah Candle was kindled for the first time during the reign of Catherine II who reluctantly ended up with a large number of Jewish subjects thanks to the partitioning of Poland.

1765(27th of Kislev, 5526): Third Day of Chanukah

1765: In Philadelphia, Rebecca Meyers-Cohen and Mathias Bush gave birth to Richea Bush.

1768: Birthdate of “Christian Orientalist and theologian Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmuller” who among other things “brought out a pocket edition of the Hebrew Bible in 1822.”

1773(25th of Kislev, 5534): Chanukah

1774: After just a little over three months of Austrian rule, General Gabriel Freiherr von Spleny reported on the conditions at Czernowitz including a description of the Jewish population whose presence in the city dated back to the 15th century during the reign of Moldavian Prince Alexander the Good.

1776: Birthdate of Abraham Mendelssohn, the son of Moses Mendelssohn and the father of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. A successful banker, he would change his name to Abraham Ernst Mendelssohn Bartholdy and change his religion to Christianity. "Once I was the son of a famous father, now I am the father of a famous son."

1776: Birthdate of Sarah Coates, the wife of Philadelphian Samson Levy and the mother of Sophia and Margaret Maria Levy.

1779(1st of Tevet, 5540): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah observed for the fourth time since the Americans took up arms against the British.

1784(27th of Kislev, 5545) Third Day of Chanukah

1789: Birthdate of Rosetta Micholls, the Jamaica born wife of Edward Emanuel Micholls, with whom she had eight children.

1792(25th of Kislev, 5553): Chanukah

1795(28th of Kislev, 5556): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1798(2nd of Tevet, 5559): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1799: In Germany, Frommet Weil and David Hirsch Lindauer gave birth to Mayer Hirsch Lindauer, who married “Senftele Cronheimer” after the death of his first wife Kehle Lindauer with whom he had four children.

1803(25th of Kislev, 5564): Chanukah

1804: In Philadelphia, PA, Rebecca Lyons and John Moss who had been married in 1797 gave birth Joseph Lyon Moss, the husband of Julia Levy with whom he had eight children.

1804: Birthdate of German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. Jacobi was the German mathematician who, with the independent work of Niels Henrik Abel of Norway, founded the theory of elliptic functions. He also worked on Abelian functions and discovered the hyperelliptic functions. Jacobi applied his work in elliptic functions to number theory. He also investigated mathematical analysis and geometry. Jacobi carried out important research in partial differential equations of the first order and applied them to the differential equations of dynamics. His work on determinants is important in dynamics and quantum mechanics and he studied the functional determinant now called the Jacobian. He passed away in 1851.

1805: In Furth, Bavaria, “Samuel Lazarus Affelder and Nanni Nanette Affelder gave birth to Louis Loew Leopold Affelder, the husband of Regine Rosalie Affelder and the “father of Isidor, Jacob, Moritz, and Jette Affelder.”

1806: Aharon ben Yevzlah Hollander married Esther bat Zemel at the Great Synagogue today.

1807: In Bavaria, “Lob Moses Mack and Henriette Samuel Mack” gave birth to Moses Loeb Mack

1809(3rd of Tevet, 5570): Eighth Day of Chanukah is observed for the first time during the Presidency of James Madison who had written approvingly during the American Revolution provided by Chaim Solomon

1814: Birthdate of Sebastian Brunner, the Benedictine trained priest who was one of a group of authors including Anton E. von Roasa, Count Ferdinand Schirnding and Albert Wiesinger and who launched a libel case against Ignaz Kuranda and Heinrich Graetz.

1816: Birthdate of Dr. Albert Lowey, the rabbi who led the West London Synagogue of British Jews, the “first reform synagogue in England.”

1817: Mississippi was admitted to the union as the 20th state. The Jewish community in Mississippi dates back to the 1840’s. There are Jewish houses of worship and cemeteries dotted in many towns across the state including Jackson, the state capital, Greenwood and Vicksburg. The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE) is located in Utica, Mississippi. Utica is also the home to Henry S. Jacobs Camp, the summer destination for thousands of southern Jewish youngsters in the last forty years. The Mississippi Jewish community has produced several prominent individuals including Shelby Foote and Rabbi Fred Davidow.

1818: Alexander Barnet Gompertz, the son of Barent Solomon Gompertz and the former Miriam Keyser got married today in London.

1822(26th of Kislev, 5583): Second Day of Chanukah

1825(30th of Kislev, 5586): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.

1826 (10 Kislev 5587): Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch was released from prison after being arrested the week after Sukkot on slander charges.

1827: Bolette Salomonsen and Zacharias Isaac Levy gave birth to Isaac Zacharias Levy, the husband of Isabella Salomonsen.

1831: In Middlesex, Phoebe and Ephraim Benjamin gave birth to Sarah Benjamin.

1833: Ameilia Joel and Solomon Marks gave birth to Aaron Marks, the husband of Sarah Jacobs and the father of Laurence Marks.

1836: Emory College was chartered in Oxford, Georgia. Today Emory University is located in Atlanta, Georgia. One third of the undergraduate student body is Jewish and in 2005 Hillel received a three million dollar grant to upgrade its services and facilities on campus. The university offers a two year graduate degree in Jewish Studies.

1837: In Bavaria, Babette True and Isaac Jacob Bamberger gave birth to Rosa Bamberger.

1837: In Bloomsbury, David Quixano Henriques and Rebecca Henriques gave birth to Edward Micholls Henriques, the husband of Rose Emily Henriques with whom he had eight children

1839: Rachel N. Cardoza, the Easton, PA born daughter of Sarah Hart and Isaac Nunez Cardozo married her second husband, Joseph Phillips, today in New York after which they had two children – Isaac and Ellen.

1847(3rd of Tevet, 5608): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1847(In Kovno, Rachel and Bernard Mark gave birth Bessie Mark, one of the first Jews to settle in St. Paul, MN where she organized the Jewish Shelter Home of St. Paul, founded the the Jewish Home for the Aged of the Northwestern and “laid the cornerstone of the Temple of Aaron Synagogue which was named in honor of Aaron Mark, her deceased husband.

1848: Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte won a four-way race and was elected President of France today which led Michael Goudchaux to withdraw his support of the government.

1850: Judah Leib "Leopold" Löw was installed as the rabbi at Szeged, Hungary

1851: At Friedland, Germany Miriam Lessler and Wolf Schreier gave birth to Eugene Schreier who was married Martha Kasprowicz and who was the “first president of the reorganized Congregation Jeshuat Israel” for which he procured a charter from the State of Rhode Island in 1894.

1854: In Berlin tax-collector Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Henrici and his wife Wilhelmine gave birth to Carl Ernst Julius Henrici the anti-Semitic leader who founded the Social Nazi Party in 1881

1855(1st of Tevet, 5616): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1855: Birthdate of Mrs. James (Selina) Levi. The Dubuque native was the daughter of the founder of Iowa Jewry and one time held the record for being the oldest Jewish woman born in the Hawkeye State.

1858: The Executive Committee of the Representatives of the United Congregations of Israelites of the City of New York sent a letter to President James Buchanan which described a public meeting held on December 4 in which Jews and non-Jews gathered to demand the return of Edgardo Mortara to his parents. Those attending the meeting also petitioned the President to join with the several European nations who were protesting the kidnapping of the youngster by representatives of the Pope. This letter was a follow-up to a communication sent by the same group on November 20, 1858.

1858: Caleb Lyon delivered his second lecture on The Holy Land under the auspices of the Mercantile Library Association at Clinton Hall this evening. His lecture included a description of the mountains of Moab, the Dead Sea and “the silvery Jordan River.” He described his trip to Jerusalem which he said was populated by six thousand Jews as well as a visit to the Siloam Springs, the Wailing Wall and attendance at a Jewish wedding.

1860(26th of Kislev, 5621): Second Day of Chanukah as South Carolinians prepared to secede from the Union.

1861: An article entitled “Sold by a Jew Peddler” reported that John H. Bornisky had filed a complaint before Judge Osborne claiming that a Jewish peddler name August Seligman had sold to him seven pieces of linen, for the sum of $38 50. The sale was made by sample, and the complainant had paid the money upon the promise of Seligman to deliver the goods immediately. Since the goods were not delivered Seligman was arrested and held because bail had not been posted.

1861: Rabbi Arnold Fischel arrived in Washington, D.C. this evening. He hopes to meet with government leaders including President Lincoln in an attempt to change the law so that Jews can serve as chaplains with the Union Army.

1861: Moses Grinnell wrote a letter of introduction to President Lincoln on behalf of Rabbi Arnold Fischel.

“Sir, permit me to present to you Rev .Dr. Fischell of this city who visits Washington as a delegate from the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, having been selected as chaplain to the Jews of the army around Washington estimated at about 8000. Dr. Fischell is of high literary abilities and greatly esteemed by distinguished men of all religious denominations. Believe me, etc.”

1864: Sherman’s Union Army reaches Savannah in what history will call “Sherman’s March to the Sea.” Among those with Sherman was Major General Frederick Knefler. The native of Hungary was the highest ranking Jewish officer in the Union Army. He was commander of the 79th Indiana regiment before he was promoted to brigadier general for his performance at the Battle of Chickamauga and then to major general during his service with Sherman on his march through Georgia.

1864: While serving with Company A, of the 65thRegiment-Fifth Cavalry, Max Armhold was taken prisoner and held until the following April when the Confederates surrendered to the Union.

1864: While the Union forces were besieging the Army of Northern Virginia, Abraham Schloss of Company E, 65th Regiment-Fifth Cavalry was wounded at Richmond.

1865: The reign of Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, who was friendly enough with the Rothschilds to have stayed with Carl von Rothschild at his villa in Naples came to an end today.

1869: Ellen Cohen, the daughter of Louis Cohen and Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling gave birth Louis Samuel Montague, the 2ndBaron of Sawyling, “the merchant banker and communal leaders who “in 1911 became the first professing Jew to inherit a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords..

1869(6th of Tevet, 5630): Fifty-four year old Rabbi Maier Zipser passed away at Rohonc.

http://www.balassagyarmatizsidosag.hu/en/maier-zipser

1870: It was reported today that ground has been broken for a new synagogue located at Lexington and 55th in Manhattan. Henry Fernbach who was the architect for the 34th and 44th street synagogues as well as one of the architects who worked on Temple Emmanuel, designed this building which he estimates will cost $180,000, [Today this synagogue is the Central Synagogue which was formed from the merger in 1898 of Shar HaShomayim (meaning Gate of Heaven), founded in 1839 by German Jews, and Ahawath Chesed (meaning Love of Mercy), founded in 1846 by Bohemian Jews. Its name was changed to Central Synagogue in 1920 symbolizing not only its location, but also its change to Reform Judaism.”]

1870(16th of Kislev, 5631): Parashat Vayishlach

1870(16th of Kislev, 5631): Russian born author Joseph Schonhak, whose leading worked was Toledot ha-Arez passed away today.

1871: In Leipzig, Henriette Goldschmidt “founded the Association for Family and Popular Education (Verein für Familien- und Volkserziehung) today.

1871: It was reported today that the Jewish Messenger has a published “a very discriminating criticism on the character of Shylock as a representative of the Hebrew nation.” According to the Messenger, “as an embodiment of the Jewish people Shylock stands forth strong in his love of religion, family and neighbors but impotent to remonstrate against injustice or to resent it.”

1873: Philadelphian and veteran of the Union Army Myer Asch was elected Commander of the George G. Meade Post, Number 1 of the Grand Army of the Republic today.

1874: During today’s meeting of the Board of Alderman in New York, a resolution authorizing the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Society to sub-let the property they obtained from the City was referred to the Committee on Law.

1875: Birthdate of Russian native Benjamin Duberstein who owned the Dayton (Ohio) Mineral Water Company and was named as a defendant in 1917 “infringement of trade-mark suit” brought by the Coca-Cola Company against him and several defendans.

1875: Today’s session of the Hebrew Charity Fair which closed at 4 o’clock because of erev Shabbat raised $1,155.65

1875: In Philadelphia, Clara Einstein and Hyram Coriate gave birth to Tufts Medical trained physician Isador Henry Coriat, a pioneer in the field of psychoanalysis who married Etta Dann in 1910.

 

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1876(24th of Kislev, 5637): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.

1876: Birthdate of Baltimore native Ernest Wise Keyeser, who like his uncle Ephraim Keyser was a sculptor who was a member of the “National Sculpture Society” and whose work include a statute of Sir Galahad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Wise_Keyser#/media/File:Sir_Galahad_statue.jpg

1876: It was reported today that the Purim Association will manage the upcoming Hebrew Charity Ball which is fund raiser for the United Hebrew Charities.

1876: It was reported today that New York’s Hebrew Free School Association is serving 580 students and that the association’s President has announced that additional efforts will be made to provide more facilities for the youngsters.

1876: Rabbi Lukskar officiated at the funeral of 27 year old Abraham Stettaner (sp) at the Cypress Hills Cemetery. He was one of the victims of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire.

1878: Birthdate of Niezin, Chernigov native Isdore Fine who in 1892 came to the United States where he married his wife Bessie with whom he had four children – Jesse, David, Leo and Blanche – and whose activities in the Jewish community including founding The Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation.

1879: The New York Times published a lengthy article about the history of Chanukah which begins with the erroneous statement, “The Jewish feast called Chanukah or the Feast of Dedication will be honored by the adherents of the ancient faith on the 16th.” On the evening of December 16th, Jews will be lighting the 8th candle

1879(25th of Kislev, 5640): First Day of Chanukah

1879: Birthdate of Maltz, Poland native Samuel Olshevsky, who in 1912 came to the United States where he served as the Rabbi at “Beth Hamedresh Hagadol” in the Bronx before become a Professor of Talmud at REIT and Yeshiva College while raising his son Louis Cort with his wife Gussie Olshevsky.

1880: It was reported today that a fundraiser is to be held to benefit the 44th Street Synagogue.

1881: It was reported today that the Young Men’s Hebrew Association is planning on hosting a ball in celebration of Chanukah at the Academy of Music that will feature several tableaus depicting events in Jewish history.

1881: In Brooklyn, the fair sponsored by Temple Israel which opened on November 30 is scheduled to close this evening.

1881:Birthdate of Cleveland merchant  Myron Albert Cohen, the husband of Edna (Stone) Cohen with whom had two daughter, Marian and Eleanor and active member of the “Jewish Welfare Association.”

1882: The annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Associations is scheduled to take place at ten o’clock this morning in Manhattan.

1882: Four days after she had passed away, Adele (Fermi) Foa, the wife of Octave Foa, with she had had six children, was married today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1882: It was reported today that Alfred Steckler has obtained an injunction preventing the police from arresting several Jewish shopkeepers and workers for violating the Sunday Closing Laws.  The injunctions were based on Section 264 of the Penal Code which permits people to work on the first day of the week if they “uniformly keep another day of the week as holy time” and that their labor does not disturb those “observing the first day of the week as holy time.”  (In our world where everything it is 24-7-365 it seems hard to remember that Sunday Closing Laws were the norm and vestiges of them still exist such as the prohibition on buying and selling vehicles in Iowa on Sunday.)

1882: Birthdate Austrian-born British philosopher Otto Neurath, the Marxist radical and refugee from Hitler’s Europe who  passed away in 1945.

1882: It was reported today that the Jews are one of only “religious sects” (the others being Catholics, Episcopalian and Presbyterians) who have founded one or more hospitals in New York City.

1882: It was reported today that that the Prefect of Police has ordered the expulsion of all Jews “residing within the boundaries of St. Petersburg without official permission.”

1883: Birthdate of Shakhne Epstein the native of Vilna who came from a long line of “distinguished rabbis and maskilim.”

http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yt/lex/E/epstein-shakhne.htm

1883: In London, Rabbi Isidore Harris, the spiritual leader “of the West London Synagogue and editor of the Jewish Year Book” and his wife gave birth to Sir Archibald Isidore Harris, a partner in the timber firm of Louis Bamberger and Sons and a decorated officer who saw active service in France during WW I who had the distinction of being knighted and being awarded the United States Medal of Freedom.

1884: It was reported today that the state of Connecticut has had a law on the books “designed to exempt Jews and Seventh Day Baptists who conscientiously observed Saturday as a day of religious worship from the penalties apply to a violation of Sunday laws.

1884(22nd of Kislev, 5645): Abraham Placzek, the chief rabbi of Moravia, passed away today.

1887: In “Shemele, Russia (Belarus), “Ya’acov Abraham Davidowitz” and “Taube Hinda Schwartzman” gave birth to Harry Hirsch Davidowitz, the Columbia and JTS trained rabbi “severely wounded by shrapnel” while serving in France during World War I as the chaplain of the 78thDivision and who was the husband of Ida Chaya Bloom with who he had one son and two daughters.

1888: “He Wants To Be A Boss” published today described moves by Ernst Nathan to take control of “the Republican machine in Kings County (NY)” by asserting his role to dispense patronage following the election of Benjamin Harrison to the Presidency of the United States.

1889: In Brooklyn, founding of Congregation Mikro Kodesh Anshey Klodower which was served by Rabbi S.L. Westman and President Jonas Cohn.

1889: In the U.K. Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, and Alice Edith Cohen gave birth to Gerald Rufus Isaacs, 2nd Marquess of Reading the WW I veteran, British barrister and MP who was the son-in-law of Alfred Moritz Mond and the father-in-law of Solly Zuckerman.

1889: It was reported today that the Montefiore Home Fair of 1887 which raised $158,000 was the most successful fundraiser sponsored by the Jewish community to date.

1889: It was reported today that this year’s Hebrew Educational Fair is being sponsored by the Hebrew Free School Association, the Aguilar Free Library and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. Funds raised during this two long event will go the Hebrew Institute.

1890: In London, The Lord Mayor presided over a meeting at the Guildhall today “to consider the condtion of the Jews in Russia and to take action to secure some alleviation of their distress.”

1890: A benefit performance of the play “Ein Konigreich um ein Kind” presented by Amberg’s company “for the benefit of the building fund of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum” will take place tonight at New York’s Lexington Avenue Opera House.

1890: The forty-piece juvenile orchestra of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum performed at the Teacher’s Bazaar, an event designed to raise funds for teachers’ pensions.

1890: In New York the State Senate Committee on Finance whose members included Jacob Cantor met today to “consider what disposition should be made of the 121 acres of land on Ward’s Island” which had been the entry point for untold thousands of immigrants including Jews from Russia and Poland.

1890: In New York, William Lesser who was accompanied by Jacob Finkelstone of the United Hebrew Charities Organization, identified the corpse of Maximillian Laski just before it was about to be dissected in the amphitheater of the University Medical School

1891: Two days after shad had passed away, 80 year old Barbara Cohen, the wife of I.M. Cohen and mother of “Meyer, Mina and Alida Cohen” was buried today at the “Stockton Jewish Cemetery.”

1891: Birthdate of Nelly Sachs. Born in Berlin, Sachs was a German poet and dramatist who was transformed by the Nazi experience from a dilettante into a poignant spokesperson for the grief and yearnings of her fellow Jews. Sachs found sanctuary in Sweden in 1940. When, with Shmuel Yosef Agnon, she was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, she observed that Agnon represented Israel whereas "I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people." She passed away in 1970 and was buried in Sweden.

1891: Sixty-three year old Abraham Kuenen, “a Dutch Protestant theologian” who specialized in the Hebrew Bible including as can be seen by his text on the Hexateuch” passed away today at Leiden.

1891: “Our Foreign Relations” published today noted that President Harrison’s “references to the persecution and expulsion of the Russian Jews are just and temperate.” The President showed a “practical as well as a humane and sympathetic interest in persuading” to “abate her cruelties” when dealing with the Jews.

1892: Lucius Weinschenk, a member of the firm of Bryan, Weinschenk & Hirschel and prominent member of the Chicago Jewish country fled the United States “leaving a shortage in his accounts…of about $20,000.”

1893(1st of Tevet, 5654): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1893: Professor Felix Adler delivered an address at Carnegie Hall this morning on the teachings of Jesus Christ which began with a comparison between Jesus and “the older prophets of Israel.”

1893: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil delivered a sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El on “Who Are the Enemies of Judaism?”

1894: “Cheap Loans A Success” published today described the activity of the Provident Society, which had been established to lend money to the needy at a rate far below of the pawnshops whose founders included August Belmont and Jacob Schiff, had made half of its loans to Jews with the rest going mostly to “Americans and Germans.”

1895: Today, twenty-four women organized the Tri-City Section of the National Council of Women which included Davenport Port, Iowa, Rock Island, Illinois and Moline, Illinois.

1895: Large crowds visited all of the booths and displays at the Hebrew Fair in New York City. Isaacs S. Isaacs is editor in chief of the Fair Journal. Rebecca Kohut is the business manager of the Fair Journal.

1896: A secretary for President-elect William McKinley wrote a letter to Rabbi Emanuel Schwab in response to one that Rabbi Schwab had sent to him congratulating McKinley on his election and telling the former Civil War major that he had voted for him.

1897: Two days after she had passed away, 42 year old Rosie (Levy) Sampson, the wife of Nathan Sampson with whom she had had eleven children was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1897(15th of Kislev, 5658): Charles Louis Fleischmann passed away. Born in 1835, he “was an innovative manufacturer of yeast and other consumer food products during the 19th Century. In the late 1860s, he and his brother Maximilian created America’s first commercially produced yeast, which revolutionized baking in a way that made today’s mass production and consumption of bread possible.”

http://www.breadworld.com/history

http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1000563

1898(26 of Kislev, 5659): Shabbat shel Chanukah; Parashat Vayeshev

1898(26th of Kislev, 5659): Seventy-three year old Josef Pick, “the son of Markus and Elisabeth Sara Pick” and the “husband of Eleanor Pick” passed away today in Vienna.

1898: The Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the Spanish-American War. Following the war, a number of Jewish veterans settled in Cuba. By 1904, they were able to establish a synagogue in Havana.

1899: The National Jewish Hospital for Treatment of Consumptives opened today in Denver, Colorado.

1900: “Judaism and the World” published today described the sermon given Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago in which he said, “Judaism has never been a religion of dogma” and that “the Jew has the right to think out the highest themes of life in terms of his own.”

1901(29th of Kislev, 5662): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1901: The first Nobel Prizes were awarded. In 1905, Adolph von Baeyer, a German chemist, became the first Jew to win a Nobel Prize. He won it in Chemistry for his work in synthesizing dye indigo.

1902: In Amsterdam, Jacob Querido, the Dutch born son of Abraham Querido and Schoontje / Ribca Gosler and his wife Anna Heilbron gave birth to Rudolph Querido

1903: “The Early and the Girl” a two-act musical comedy for which Jerome Kern would write the song “How’d you like to spoon with me?” opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London.

1903(21st of Kislev, 5664): Fifty-three year old Baron Arthur de Rothschild, a member of the French branch of the famous banking family who collected stamps, was an active yachtsman and who bequeathed part of his art collection to the Louvre passed away today in Monte Carlo.

1904(2nd of Tevet, 5665): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah

1904: In New York City, Eugene E. Sperry and Rosalie Stanton Bloomingdale gave birth to Josephine Bloomingdale Sperry.

1905: Sir Edward Grey, who in 1914 when asked by MP Herbert Samuel “about a homeland for the Jewish people” replied “that the idea had always had a strong sentimental appeal to him and he would be prepared to work for if the opportunity arose” began his 11 years of services Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

1905: The Jews of Manchester, England called for a meeting to publicly protest the treatment of Russian Jews as typified by the Kishinev Pogroms.

1905: “Five hundred Jews who fled from Russia because of the massacres arrived” in New York today aboard two separate steamships and are awaiting approval from the immigration authorities to enter the United States.

1905: The Janitors’ Society held a meeting at the Educational Alliance auditorium tonight and “took up a collection for the relief of the Jews sufferers in Russia.”

1905: It was reported today that $1,111,183 has been contributed to the fund for the Jews suffering from the Massacres in Russia including $100 from I. Gothstein of Muscatine, Iowa, $500 from G.A. Efroymson of Indianapolis, Indiana, $1,547.84 from Leo K. Steiner of Birmingham, Alabama and $100.50 from Herman J. Nathanson of Virginia, Minnesota.

1906: Albert Lowey, the retired Rabbi of the West London Synagogue of British Jews, “the first reform synagogue in England” celebrated his 90th birthday today “in the full possession of his mental faculties.”

1906: U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize. Roosevelt never intended to keep the money that was part of the prize. Finally, in 1918, he was able to donate the money to a variety of charities. Among those receiving funds was the Jewish Welfare Board, which received $4,000 for War Activities. The funds were to be handled by the treasurer, Mr. Walter E. Sachs.

1907: Birthdate of Michael Blankfort, the New York native who gained fame as the author and screenwriter who converted his novel The Juggler into of the earliest Holocaust movies, “The Juggler” and who risked his career to see to it that the Blacklisted Albert Maltz was able to continue his career as a screenwriter.

1908: The trial of San Francisco political boss Abe Reuf ended today “with a verdict of guilty and the maximum sentence for bribery—14 years in San Quentin.”

1909(27th of Kislev, 5670): Third Day of Chanukah

1909(27th of Kislev, 5670): Mrs. Rose Samuelsohn passed away today.

1909: Bessie Ida Ginsberg married Jesse Lasky, the co-founder of Paramount Pictures.

1910(9th of Kislev, 5671): Seventy-seven year old Michael Friedländer passed away.  Born in Posen, and educated in Germany, he moved to England in 1865 when he back principal of Jews’ College in London, a position he held until three years before his death.  His English translation of Maiimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed is considered to be a classic.  He was the father-in-law of Moses Gaster.

1910: German-Jewish author and translator Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1910: Sir Edward Grey, the man who signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement which has had such a significant impact on the Middle East and Israel, began servicing as Secretary of State For Foreign Affairs.

1910 Birthdate of historian Jack D. Foner. (As reported by William H. Honan)

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/16/arts/jack-d-foner-88-historian-and-pioneer-in-black-studies.html

1911: The Emperor appointed Dr. Desiderius Markus as Judge of the Royal Curia, “the highest Court of Justice in Hungary.”

1912(30th of Kislev, 5673): Rosh Chodesh Tevet and 6th day of Chanukah

1912(30th of Kislev, 5673): Thirty-eight year old Harry Milton Samson, the husband of Sarah C. Samson, “the son of Lena Samson and the brother of E.J. Samson and Mrs. Victor J. Lowenthal” passed away today.

1912: Isidor Schuman married Ida Schiff today at the Ashland Club House today.

1912: Funeral services are scheduled to be held at the Rosehill Chapel today for the mother of Mrs. J.S. Kimmelstiel, Yetta Ballenberg who passed away “in her 91st year.”

1913: “In the Richmond Hill section of Queens, NY, a Viennese born real estate agent and his Russian born wife gave birth to composer Morton Gould.

http://mortongould.com/biography.html

1913: In London, Charles Rothschild and his wife, Hungarian baroness Rozsika Edle von Wertheimstein, daughter of Baron Alfred von Wertheimstein of Transylvania gave birth to Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild “a British-born jazz patroness and writer.”

1914: Under the caption “The Kaiser’s American Agents,” The Times of Londonprinted a letter from Israel Zangwill in which he wrote “I should add that since receiving Sir Edward Grey’s assurance that England’s sympathies lay with the emancipation of the Russian Jews I have had a number of applications from Jews – Rumanian and English as well as Russian Jews living outside of Russia – anxious to enlist in the Jewish Territorial Organization under the idea that is a branch of the British Army.” (Gray was the British Foreign Minister who is credited with the lines as he walked out of his ministry on the evening that Britain declared war on Germany – "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”

1915: Moise Cohen of Constantinople was appointed professor of finance at Ottoman University.

1916: Sir Edward Grey, who in 1914 when asked by MP Herbert Samuel “about a homeland for the Jewish people” replied “that the idea had always had a strong sentimental appeal to him and he would be prepared to work for if the opportunity arose” completed his 11 years of services Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

1916: Alfred Mond began serving as First Commissioner of Works under Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

1917(25th of Kislev, 5678): First Day of Chanukah

1917: Four days after he had passed away, 76 year old Isaac Henry Samuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1917: Sydney L. Nyburg of Baltimore, MD, the author of the Chosen People is scheduled to speak at this afternoon’s meeting of the Council of Jewish Women at Chicago’s Sinai Temple.

1917: Today, “Andrew Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced in the House of Commons today that Jerusalem after being surrounded on all sides by British troops, had surrendered and that British, French and Mohammedan representatives were on the way to Jerusalem to safeguard the holy places.”

1917: “There was an outburst of applause which lasted for several minutes” today at the gathering of those leaders working to raise the five million dollar fund for Jewish war relief and welfare work in the Army and Navy when Henry Morgenthau talked about the “recapture of Jerusalem from the Turks” saying that “We ought to be particularly happy today, for apart from all political considerations the capture of Jerusalem by the English is a momentous occasion in the history of the Jews.

1917: As of today the team contributions made to the fund for the Jewish War Relief and Welfare Work in the Army and Navy included $231,888.00 from Mortimer L. Schiff’s Team 22,  $179.026.00 from H.D. Rosen’s Team 18, $177,483.70 from William Goldman’s Team 4 and $173,798.00 from S. G. Rosenbaum’s Team 19

1918: “The Jewish War Relief campaign” designed to raise five million dollars “to aid the suffering Jews of Europe passed the two million dollar mark today” as it reached an actual total of $2,005, 840.

1918: Under the baton of conductor Modest Altschuler, the Russian Symphony Orchestra Society which he had organized in 1903, gave the premiere performance of Sergei Prokofiev Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10, at Carnegie Hall this evening.

1919: A delegation of “prominent Jews from New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Newark and other cities representing the American Jewish Congress” meeting with Secretary of State Lansing and described to him “the terrible situation in the Ukraine” and protested “against the recent pogrom in which 40,000 Jewish men, women and children had lost their lives in that region.”

1920(29th of Kislev, 5681): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1920: In Chechelnyk, Podolia, a shtetl in what is today Ukraine Pinkhas Lispector and Mania Krimgold Lispector gave birth to Chaya Lispector, the youngest of their three daughters, “the Brazilian author” whom some describe as “the most important Jewish writer since Franz Kafka.”

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-true-glamour-of-clarice-lispector

1921(9th of Kislev, 5682): Parashat Kislev

1921: “Council of Jewish Women Benefit” published today described plans for the upcoming concert and dance at the Astor Hotel sponsored by “the New York Section of the Council of Jewish Women.”

1922: Due to travel problems, Albert Einstein was unable to attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony and deliver his Nobel Lecture.

1922: Mrs. William Ratzenstein is the chairman responsible for tonight’s “entertainment and dance to be given by the Milton Vehon Charity Workers” at Chateau Hall.”

1922: The charity bazar sponsored by the Sisterhood of Temple Beth Israel is scheduled to continue for a second night.

1923: Dr. Arthur Ruppin tells the Keren Hayesod Council that “the housing shortage in Palestine has been relieved to a considerably extent by the establishment of the General Mortgage Bank of Palestine, which has invested more than $300,000 in mortgages, enabling the construction of 300 houses, chiefly in Tel-Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Tiberias.”

1923: In Schenectady, NY, “postal worker” Louis Goldestein and part-time state health department employee gave birth Albany Teachers College grad and WW II Army combat veteran Harold Vernon Goldstein who earned a Ph.D. in theatre at Cornell where he met his wife Lea Vernon and who gained fames as Harold Gould, one of those character actors whose face you know but name you don’t as can be seen in such films as Harper and The Sting, both of which he made with Paul Newman.

1924: In Cincinnati, OH, William Jacob Mack, Sr. the son of Lydia and Millard William Mack and Harriette L. Segal gave birth to Leon Meyer Mack

1925: “The question of restriction in the Jewish attendance at Hungarian universisites to nine-tenths of the Jewish proportion of the population of the country, which the League of nations has been condsider for the past four years at the request of the Jewish Association of London, was postponed again today and it appears that the Permanent Court of International Justice at the Hague will be asked to give an opinion on whether the action of the Hungarian Parliament is contrary to the stipulations of the Treaty of Trianon which defines Hungarian nationals and provides equality before the law and enjoyment of the same civil and political rights without distinction or language.’

1926: In Hamburg, Germany, Solomon Birnbaum, the son of Nathan Birnbaum, and his wife gave birth to Jacob (Yaakov) Birnbuam who survived the Holocaust thanks to the Kindertransport and formed the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry”

1927: Seymour “Cy” Schindel fought his 20th bout which would prove to be his last victory even though he fought three more times before retiring.

1927: Birthdate of Danny Matt, the native of Cologne who made Aliyah in 1934 and in 1943 began a military career that stretched from the Jewish Brigade through the Yom Kippur and led him to the stars of a general in the IDF.

1928(27th of Kislev, 5689): Third Day of Chanukah

1928(27th of Kislev, 5689): Sixty-one year old Joseph Handelsman passed away today after which he was buried in Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, NY>

1928: WOR and nineteen other stations are scheduled to broadcast the Jubilee Hour this evening featuring soprano Isa Kremer.

1928: According to a report made public today by Bernard Flexner, the President of the Palestine Economic Cooperation, “extensive development in Palestine is provided for in the budget of $1,010,000 authorized at the executive committee meeting of the corporation” which was held last week.

1929: Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the Jewish son-in-law of Mark Twain, conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a concert at Carnegie Hall tonight.

1929: Twenty year old flyweight Moe Mizler fought his 36thbout which he lost on points.

1930: As the U.S. economy moved further into what we now call The Great Depression, the savings bank in which many members of the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood in New York had placed their money closed and no funds were made available to depositors. The collection of dues began to fall off at an alarming rate, and there was a high demand for financial aid from the Secret Relief Fund.

1931(30th of Kislev, 5692): Rosh Chodesh Kislev; Sixth Day of Kislev

1931: “Baron De Hirsch Centenary” published today traces the life of Jewish philanthropist who is all but unknown to modern generations.

http://www.jta.org/1931/12/10/archive/baron-de-hirsch-centenary

1931: U.S. Premiere of “The Struggle” based on a novel by Emile Zola, the defender of Capt. Dreyfus which was filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.

1931: U.S. premiere of “Men in Her Life” a drama with a script co-authored by Robert Riskin.

1932: “Central Park” featuring Harold Hubert as “Nick Sarno” was released today in the United States.

1933: “Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of the American-Jewish committee, presented the organization's twenty-seventh annual report today to delegates from thirteen States gathered at the Hotel Astor

1934: By today, which marked the end of the weekend, “more than 350 arrests had been made in Bucharest and the provinces” as “members of the anti-Semitic Iron Guard” resisted the dissolution of their organization which had been decreed by the government.

1934: Birthdate of Howard Martin Temin. Temin was American virologist who in 1975 shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with his former professor Renato Dulbecco and another of Dulbecco's students, David Baltimore, for his co-discovery of the enzyme reverse transcriptase. In 1961, Temin's formed a provirus hypothesis that cancer cells affect genetic material. The protein coat of certain viruses contains an enzyme that facilitates the copying of viral genes into the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the host cell. In 1970 he and Baltimore both independently isolated the enzyme, now called reverse transcriptase. The viruses that contain the enzyme are known as retroviruses. Temin also investigated how genetic information in the provirus transforms a normal animal cell into a tumor cell. He passed away in 1994.

1934: A dramatization of Charge It to Me written by Sara Smith, who “learned Yiddish to become a newspaperwoman” is scheduled to open today in Baltimore under the name “Pied Piper.”

1934: Birthdate of Ryszard Przecicki, who as Richard J. Pratt, became one of the richest men in Australia.

1935(14th of Kislev, 5696): Sixty-seven year old Bella (Epstein) Unterberg, the wife of philanthropist Israel Unterberg who founded the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in her home in September of 1902 passed away today.

https://jwa.org/media/ywha-bella-unterberg-still-image

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/young-womens-hebrew-association

1936: Jewish settlers erected the first of the “Tower and Stockade” settlements,Tel Amel which is now known Nir David. These settlements on remote parcels of land purchased by the Jewish National Fund were set up overnight with the help of prefabricated towers and walls. They were usually put up overnight with the help of hundreds of volunteers. Eventually 118 of this type of settlement were erected throughout the Galilee, Bet-She'an Valley and the Jordan Valley. The secretive construction method was one way of avoiding Arab attacks.

1936: In Jerusalem, at the morning session of the royal commission, Earl Peel, the chairman said that in his “opinion the Jewish Agency should have pressed its claim for State domains to which it is entitled according to the mandate” while Dr. Maurice B. Hexter “said that in the last six or seven years he did not recall that any pressured was exerted by the Jews on the Palestine Government in connection with the mandatory’s duty to allot suitable portions of State domains for Jewish coloniziation.” (Translation – the mandatory government did not give the Jews the arable land to which they were legally entitled.)

1937: The Palestine Post reported on the brazen attack carried out in the heart of Haifa's Hadar Hacarmel. An Arab terrorist first exploded a bomb and then fired two shots, seriously wounding 13-year-old Elimelech Gromet. Another bomb was thrown in the Tel Arza quarter of Jerusalem, next to the Weismann carpentry.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Sir Charles Teggart, who won his reputation as an indefatigable anti-terrorist fighter in Bengal, arrived in Jerusalem, to advise the government and police on new anti-terrorist tactics.

1937(6th of Tevet, 5698): Eighty-one year old Abraham Isaak the Russian born anarchist who worked as a journalist and founded Aurora Colony with his in California which was based on his anarchist belief

1938: Thanks to the effort of Mrs. Gertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer, a Dutch organizer of Kindertransporte, who had been active in this field since 1937,” a train filled with 600 children left Vienna today.

1939: Friedrich Ubelhor, governor of the Kalisz-Lodz district, issued a secret order for the establishment of a ghetto in the northern section of Lodz, where the Jewish Baluty slum quarter was situated. "Needless to say [stated his order] the establishment of a ghetto is only a provisional phase...the ultimate goal must be the total purge of this scourge."

1940: It was reported today that one million Jews “fifty countries have been aided by” the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee during 1940.”

1941: In the dark days of WW II, Japanese bombers sank the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS Repulse, the last major battleships that would be able to standup to an invasion of Australia, which had sent most of its troops to the Middle East to fight against the Nazis.

1941: As of today, in the last 100 days an additional 600 Jews had been shot to death in and near the city of Liepāja

1942(2nd of Tevet, 5703): Seventh Day of Chanukah

1942(2nd of Tevet, 5703): Seventy-five year old businessman and philanthropist Louis E. Kirstein, the Chairman of the Board of Filene’s Department Store, President of the Graduate School for Jewish Social Work and husband of Rose Stein with whom he had three children passed away today.

1942: A transport of Jews from Germany arrives at Auschwitz.

1942: At Wola Przybyslawska, Poland, near the Parczew Forest, Nazis shoot seven Poles accused of aiding Jews.

1942: The Polish ambassador to Britain informs Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that the Polish government-in-exile can confirm that the German authorities are systematically exterminating the entire Jewish population of Poland and the rest of Europe.

1943: As Soviet troops began to break through German lines, the Germans (and local Rumanians) tried cover up their actions by killing the surviving inmates of the labor camp and destroying the camp itself in Tarasika Rumania. This type of action was repeated over and over as Soviet troops moved toward Germany.

1943: In Brooklyn Elaine and Arthur Niederhoffer gave birth to Victor Niederhoffer “a hedge fund manager, champion squash player, bestselling author and statistician” who is the older brother of Roy Niederhoffer.

1943(13th of Kislev, 5704): Seventy-three year old Dr.William Salant, the 1899 graduate of Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, the pharmacologist who taught at Cornell University passed away today.

1944(24th of Kislev, 5705): In the evening, Kindle the first Light of Chanukah

1944: “Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the ZOA said today that ‘we are closer than ever before to the actual restoriation of Israel as a people’” and he called for “the total mobilization of American Jewry and its resources in the final effort to establish the Jewish Commonwealth in an undivided Palestine…”

1945: Birthdate of James Lee “Jimmy” Kessler, the founder of the Texas Jewish Historical society and the “first native Texan to serve as Rabbi of B’nai Israel, in Galveston Texas.

1945: The cover of Timefeatures a montage of Nazi leaders standing trial at Nuremberg under the title “Hitler’s Heirs”

1945: Timepublished “War Crimes: Day of Judgment” describing the trial of Hermann Göring, Alfred Jodl, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, Julius Streicher and Rudolph Hess

1945: "The Chalice of Nurnberg," published today by Time described the purposed of the trials in the words US. Prosecutor Robert Jackson who defined the need for individual responsibility and the establishment of a rule of International Law that would prevent such crimes from happening again

1945: “Treason: The Seeker” published today described the condition Ezra Pound, the expatriate American poet who relished giving anti-Semitic and anti-American broadcast from his home in Italy.  The latter earned him the dubious distinction of being one of the few Americans indicted for treason because of his radio broadcasts.

1945: President Truman names six U.S. members to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. London announces six members

1945: SS Captain Theodore Dannecker, a henchman of Adolf Eichmann committed suicide after having been arrested by the United States Army.

1946: Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver criticizes President Truman, expresses his opposition to Partition and recommends resistance to the British Mandatory Government.

1947: British leaders will not alter the Jewish quota that limits the Jewish immigrants 1,500 a month.

1947: Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori became the first Jewish woman, as well as the first American woman, to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences when she received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine on. She won the prize jointly with her husband, Dr. Carl F. Cori, and Bernardo A. Houssay. The scientists were honored for their research in identifying the "Cori Cycle" which explained how the body converts carbohydrates into sugars that supply muscles with energy. This research was particularly important in leading to the understanding and treatment of diabetes. Dr. Gerty Cori was born in Prague in 1896. Encouraged by her family, she enrolled at the Medical School of the German University of Prague, receiving her Doctorate in Medicine in 1920. Together with her husband, Cori immigrated to the United States and became a citizen in 1928. Carl took a position at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo, NY and Gerty was hired as an assistant pathologist. The Coris persisted in working together despite the discouragement of many institutions that sought to hire only Carl. In 1931, they moved to St. Louis where Carl became the chair of the pharmacology department at Washington University School of Medicine. Gerty was offered a position as a research assistant. When Carl was made chair of a new biochemistry department in 1946, Gerty was finally promoted to full professor. They won the Nobel Prize the following year. In 1952, President Truman appointed her to the Board of Directors of the National Science Foundation.

1947: A detachment of Palmach soldiers was attacked while paroling the water pipeline near the Arab village of Shu’ut in the Negev. The commander of the Palmach assured his men that they had nothing to worry about since the head man of the village had been a friend of his. But in the Arab’s undeclared war on the yet to be born Jewish state, friendships did not always matter.

1948: Speaking in the House of Commons as leader of the Opposition, Winston Churchill raised the question of why the British government continued to refuse to recognize the state of Israel since nineteen other countries including the United States and the Soviet Union had already done so. He appealed to Parliament to end its “sulky boycott” of the Jewish state

1948: Despite opposition from some of his ministers, Ben Gurion pressured the cabinet into committing to move the Israeli government to Jerusalem “without further delay.” Ben Gurion dismissed the fears of his opponents that the move would anger world opinion by pointing out that the occupation of the Old City and the West Bank by the Jordanians had changed the equation.

1948: Israel agrees to UN truce mission's request to let a trapped Egyptian force withdraw from Faluja in Negev. Was it only 6 months ago that the Egyptians invaders were bombing Tel Aviv and heading toward the “Jewish city” with the intent of driving the Jews into the sea.

1948: The Israelis devised Operation Horev, a new offensive plan designed to drive the Egyptian army out of the remaining areas of Mandatory Palestine south-west of Beersheba, along the western edge of the Negev.

1948: Moshe “Dayan gave a sealed letter to Abdullah el-Tell to be delivered to King Abdullah. Before delivering the letter el-Tell discreetly lifted the seal and made a photo-static copy of its contents, which was an invitation from Elias Sasson to King Abdullah to restart the negotiations which had been led by Golda Meir before the outbreak of war.

1949(19th of Kislev, 5710): Parashat Vayishlach

1949(19th of Kislev, 5710): Fifty-eight year old Russian born and Columbia University trained bio-chemist William Alexander Perlzweig, the “professor of biochemistry and department chair at the Duke University Medical School” best known for his work in the field of nutrition passed away tonight in Durham, NC.

1949: Birthdate of Harry Michael, a Labour Party MP, critic of Israel and according to the Daily Telegraph, “one of the MPs who allegedly made improper claims for expenses.”

1950: Ralph J. Bunche was presented the Nobel Peace Prize. Bunche was the first black American to receive the award. He was honored for bringing an end to the war between the Israelis and the Arabs that began in 1948 when the Arabs began their unsuccessful attempt to drive the Jews into the sea.

1951(11th of Kislev, 5712): Sixty-five year old Yampol native Solomon Pincasovich, the product of the Slobodka Yeshivan and the Odessa Conservatoire who became the cantor of the New Synagogue in Manchester, UK in 1921 and a lecturer at Jews College in 1947 passed away today.

https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/johannesburg/Pinkasovitch.html

1952: Members of the Jewish Education Committee of New York are scheduled to attend today’s funeral for “teacher and author” Abraham Epstein.

1952: Yosef Sprinzak, the first Speaker of the Knesset, completed his service as President of Israel which had begun following the death of Chaim Weizmann.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that at the end of the 30-day mourning period for the first president of the State of Israel, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, his successor, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, took the pledge of office.

1953: Seventy-five year old Polish born, NYU trained attorney Henry Lasker, the former President of the Board of Alderman in Springfield, MA where he served as the first president of the local B’nai B’rith Lodged and was a founder and President of the Spring Young Men’s Hebrew Association passed away today.

1955(25th of Kislev, 5716): Chanukah

1955: “An Israeli police approaching the Sea of Galilee’s northwestern shored was fired on by Syrian guns” in the latest of a series of Syrian violations of the truce agreement.

1956: Seventy-two year old Moses “Mosey” King, the Yale lightweight who coached the boxing team for forty-six year and “was Connecticut’s first boxing commissioner” passed away today.

1956(6th of Tevet, 5717): David Shimoni, Israeli poet, writer and translator, passed away.

1959: Israeli political leader of Shulamit Aloni and her husband Reuven Aloni gave birth to painter and filmmaker Udi Aloni who “promotes replacing Israel with a binational state in Israel-Palestine, and he supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against Israel.”

1961: Birthdate of Oded Schramm, who melded ideas from two branches of mathematics into an equation that applies to a multitude of physics problems from the percolation of water through rocks to the tangling of polymers.

1962: In New York City, actress and author Carol Grace, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and award winning actor Walter Matthau gave birth to actor and director Charles “Charlie” Matthau, “one of three founding nonprofit Board of Directors for the Maria Gruber Foundation, a charitable foundation based in Beverly Hills, California”

1963: In Chamberlin v Dade County Board, the Florida State Supreme Court heard “new arguments in a challenge to public school students in Miami, Florida, being required to read passages from the Bible and recite the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of every school day” (As reported by Austin Cline)

1964: In Israel, the government resigned when “Ben-Gurion demanded that members of the Supreme Court Investigate the Lavon Affair.

1964: “Father Goose” a WW II comedy which won an Oscar for its screenplay co-authored by Peter Stone and with music by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh was released today in the United States.

1965: Birthdate of “Gary “The Kid” Jacobs the Scottish boxer who “wore a Star of David on his trunks and who “held the British Commonwealth and European (EBU) welterweight titles.”

1966: “A musical version of the Mossinsohn play, ‘Casablan’ starring Yehoram Gaon, opened today on the Alhambra Stage in Tel Aviv.”

1966(27th of Kislev, 5727): Shabbat Shel Chanukah; Parashat Miketz

1966(27th of Kislev, 5727): Seventy-seven year old Irving W. Halpern, the Russian-born school who rose from being a “probation officer with the Jewish Protectory and Aid Society” to serving as chief probation officer of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan” as well as a college lecturer on criminology while raising a family with his wife, “Judge Caroline K. Simon of the State Court of claims, passed away today.

1966: Israeli Samuel Yosef Agnon and German-Jew Nelly Sachs shared the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1967: “Bedazzled,” a comedy directed and produced by Stanley Donen was released in the United Kingdom today.

1969: “They Shoot Horses, Don't They?” a movie version of the novel of the same name directed by Sydney Pollack, produced by Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler and featuring Al Lewis was released in the United States today.

1970: A small group of local Jewish activists gathered on the International Union of Electrical Workers plaza which was across the street from the Soviet Embassy. The group was protesting the verdicts of treason and death sentences of 11 Soviet citizens, 9 of them Jewish.

1970: First Human Rights Day on which “a daily Soviet Jewry Vigil is launched across from the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC” which will last for twenty years.

1971: Dr. Gunter Kahn and one of his colleagues “went to Upjohn’s headquarters in Kalamazoo where they briefed scientists and executives” on minoxidil telling “them that he drug was a potential ‘gold mine.’”

1972: U.S. premiere of “Sleuth” the film version of Anthony Shaffer’s Tony Award winning play directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

1972(5th of Tevet, 5733): Forty-seven year old Tibor Szamuely, the Russian born English historian who was the nephew of Tibor Szamuely and the father of journalist George Szamuely, passed away today.

1974(26th of Kislev, 5735): Second Day of Chanukah

1974: As Jews prepared to kindle the third Chanukah light, The U.N. General Assembly adopted Resoultion 3275 declaring 1975 “International Women’s Year.”

1975: Activist Andrei Sakharov is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, accepted by his Jewish wife, Yelena Bonner.

1976: The KGB increased pressure on the organizers of the symposium on Jewish culture by questioning “the main activists” responsible for the event.

1978: The New York Times features reviews of children’s books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “My Noah’s Ark” by M.B. Goffstein and “Hanukah Money” by Sholem Aleichem with illustrations by Uri Shulevitz.

1978: Richard Shepard reviews “The Girl From Tel Aviv,” a throwback to “the Yiddish musical theater of bygone years, the type of theater that provided escapism for the Lower East Side, which always enjoyed ‘tzoress’ on stage and had more than enough of its own waiting at the exit.”

1978: In Oslo, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat accepted the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. The two men earned the prize for breaking the cycle of violence. More to the point, their work has stood the test of time. These two certainly earned their award.

1978: “Superman” the movie that brought to the big screen the comic hero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster and directed by Richard Donner (born Richard Donald Schwartzberg) opened in Washington, DC today.

1980: Future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer began serving as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

1980: Two people were injured when a terrorist bomb “exploded under a car” in Jerusalem.

1981: Jules Pfeiffer’s "Grownups" premieres in New York NY.

1982(24th of Kislev, 5743): In a double header of light, in the evening light the first Chanukah candle followed by lighting the Shabbat candles.

1982: “Hyman Belzberg, one of Canada's wealthiest men, was freed unharmed by his kidnappers today and flew to Vancouver to visit with family members.”

1984: In “Jewish Federation Shifts Policy on Hospital Gifts” published today Ronald Sullivan described changes the organization is making in its distribution of five million dollars to local medical facilities

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/10/nyregion/jewish-federation-shifts-policy-on-hospital-gifts.html?pagewanted=print

1986: Michiko Kakutani reviewed “Letters from Westerbrook” the posthumously published diaries of Etty Hillesum that describe life in Holland under the Nazi occupation. Westerbrook, where Miss Hillesum and a large number of Dutch Jews were held, was, in reality a transit camp with the next stop being Auschwitz

1986: Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel accepted the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.

1986(8th of Kislev, 5747): Fifty-nine year old Susan Cabot (Harriet Shapiro) the actress who oddly enough was rumored to have had an affair and a child with Jordan’s King Hussein was beaten to death tongith.

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-10-11/local/me-58_1_involuntary-manslaughter

1987(19th of Kislev, 5748): Yasha Heifetz passed away. Born in 1901 in what is now Lithuania, Heifetz joined a long list of world class Jewish violinist.

http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/about/

1989: The Intifada enters into its third year today.

1989: In “The Arab Uprising After Two Years: Voices From Both Sides” published today, Joel Brinkley examines the impact of the Intifada on average Arabs and Israelis.

1990: In Canada, Herb Gray, a member of the Liberal Party stepped down as the leader of the Opposition

1990(23rd of Kislev, 5751): Ninety-two year old Oil Tycoon Armand Hammer passed away today. (As reported by Eric Pace)

1992: In “Hafetz Hayim Journal; The Rabbis' Almanack of Seventh-Year Farming” Clyde Haberman described the implementation of the Sabbatical Year in modern day Israel

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/10/world/hafetz-hayim-journal-the-rabbis-almanack-of-seventh-year-farming.html

1994: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. Arafat betrayed Rabin, Peres and all who supported the peace process as can be seen by his continuing support of violence in the Middle East up until the day of his death.

1994(7th of Tevet, 5755): Eighty-seven year old Philip “Phil” Piratin who was one of the leaders of “Battle of Cable Street” in 1936 and one of two members of the Communist Party elected to Parliament in 1945 passed away today.

1995: Vice President Al Gore, Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Leah Rabin, addressed a crowd of nearly 15,000 people crowded into Madison Square Garden today to honor the memory of Yitzhak Rabin.

1995(17th of Kislev, 5756): Eighty-eight year old Philip Piratin, the circulation manager of The Daily Worker who was one of the first members of the Communist Party of Great Britain to be elected as an MP.

1996: Three hundred Palestinian students “suddenly barged onto the walled campus of Hebron University, closed by the Israelis since last March, and declared that they would stay until it was reopened.”

1997: New York City native and George Washington University Law School graduate Barbara Pariente began serving as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

1997(11th of Kislev, 5758): Eighty-five year old Kalmen Kaplansky who was described as   "the zaideh" (grandfather) of the Canadian human rights movement” passed away today.

http://www.historyofrights.com/bios/kaplansky.html

1999(1st of Tevet, 5760): Eighty-nine year old Jack D. Foner, the black-listed historian who was the Eric and Thomas Foner passed away today on his birthday.

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/foner-obit.html

1999(1st of Tevet, 5760): Rosh Chodesh is observed for the last time in the 20th century.

2000: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak submitted his resignation.

2000: The New York Times book section includes a review of Open Closed Open by Yehuda Amichai whose “poems capture the joy of ordinary experience.”

2000: The Manhattan Theatre Club’s final performance of “Class Act” a musical “based on the life of composer-lyricist Edward Kleban” who had passed away in 1987 at the age of 48 took place at Stage II.

2001(25th of Kislev, 5762): Chanukah is celebrated for the first time in post 9/11 world.

2002: Former President Jimmy Carter, who gained fame for the Camp David accords but later became a vocal critic of Israel, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize today in Oslo.

2001: “It was reported today that “Israel has successfully vaccinated more than 15,000 soldiers and public health workers against smallpox on a voluntary basis since July with virtually no severe side effects, senior Israeli officials say.”

2003: “The Big Fish” a cinematic version of a novel of the same name co-produced by Bruce Cohen was released in the United States today.

2004(27th of Kislev, 5765): Third Day of Chanukah

2004: Actor Jeffrey Michael Tambor and “his wife Kasia gave birth to Gabriel Kasper today.

2005: Deputy Chief Gertrude D.T. Schimmel, “the second highest ranking woman ever in the New York Police Department described her training in 1940 when she wrote today “we didn’t box or do the two-mile rue but other than that the police academy training for women was the same as for men.”

2005: Deputy Chief Gertrude D.T. Schimmel, “the second highest ranking woman ever in the New York Police Department described her support for the Knapp Commission because as she wrote today that while she was aware that “police officers were openly accepting money” “she was steadfastly again the taking of bribes or any other unethical behavior on the part of the police.”

2005: The first Asiatic elephant to be conceived in Israel through artificial insemination was born at the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens in Jerusalem.

2006: Reflections from the Heart, an exhibition of the works of CHIM (David Seymour) at the Albin O. Kuhn Library came to an end today.

2006: The curtain came down on an Off-Off-Broadway production of “Torch Song Trilogy” starring Seth Rudetsky.

2006: Celebration of Yud-Tes Kislev, the 19th of Kislev. “The 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev is celebrated as the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism. It was on this date, in the year 1798, that the founder of Chabad Chassidism, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi was freed from his imprisonment in Czarist Russia. For Chassidim this event is more than a personal liberation. They see this as a watershed event heralding a new era in the revelation of the ‘inner soul’ of Torah. This is also the celebration of the birthday of Avraham Elimelech ben Yosef Dov, the Coca Chef.

2006: Under the title of “The Schindlers of the Middle East” The Washington Post book section features a review of Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands by Robert Satloff.

2006: Actor Jeffrey Michael Tambor and “his wife Kasia gave birth to their second child, Eve “Evie” Julia today.

2006: Today, The New York Times named The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan as one of the best nonfiction books of the yeaer.

2007(1st of Tevet, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2007: Publication of the Hebrew paperback edition of Sefer Ateret Yehosua.

https://www.amazon.com/Ateret-Yehoshua-Hebrew-Zambrowsky-Joshua/dp/B00166S82O

2007: “President George W. Bush and Laura Bush invited Ruth and Judea Pearl, parents of Daniel Pearl to the White House Chanukah reception, to light the menorah that once belonged to Daniel's great grandparents, Chaim and Rosa Pearl, who brought it with them when they moved from Poland to Israel in 1924 to establish the town of Bnai-Brak.”

2007: The New Republicfeatures a review of The Book of Psalms: A Translation With Commentarytranslated by Robert Alter. Over the centuries, The Book of Psalms has gained popularity with a wide variety of religious groups and leaders. However, this has led to translations and interpretations that fit their different agendas and often has meant drifting far from the original meaning of the words. Alter attempts to release this trend. “He has deliberately set out to evacuate these covert (and usually christological) assumptions” that distort or completely alter what the Psalmists actually created.

2008: Peter Yarrow, the Peter in “Peter, Paul and Mary” appears at the Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids, Iowa as he promotes “The Peter Yarrow Songbook Series.”

2008:J. Ezra Merkin informed investors in his $1.8 billion Ascot Partners fund that he was among those who suffered substantial personal losses, since all of the fund's dollars were invested with Madoff, a fact that Merkin had tried to conceal as can be seen by his lying to a client bysaying that he had not connection with Madoff and that the investments were with Morgan Stanley and therefore fully protected.

2008: Baal teshuvah Andy Statman who is at home with Klezmer and Country music joined Bela Fleck and the Fleckstone in a concert at the University of Buffalo.

2008: The month-long exhibition “The Nature of Dreams: Israeli photographs, selection from the collection of Yosefa Drescher Fine Art” has its final showing at Trinity College in Hartford. Artists featured during the exhibition included Noa Ben Shalom, David Harris, Menahem Kahana, Joel Kantor, Alex Levac, Shimon Lev, Tamir Sher, Ilan Spira, and David Rubinger. According to Yosefa Drescher, a well-known Israeli documentary photographer “The land in which [Israeli photographers] live and work is replete with gripping visual scenes, and striking images both human and landscape. The challenge is at once to do justice to the external reality and not attempt to usurp the power of the place and moment, while giving reign to deeply personal comment and reaction to the subject.”

2008 (13 Kislev): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrzeit of Ravina II who passed away in 475 CE the same year in which he finished editing the Gemara portion of the Talmud Bavli ("Babylonian Talmud"), completing the work of his teacher Rav Ashi.

2008: At Princeton University, Dennis Ross former special Middle East Coordinator under the Clinton administration and consultant for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy delivers a speech entitled "Whither the Middle East?"

2009: The third annual Kisufim Conference which aims to "encourages encounters between Israeli creativity - in Hebrew and other languages - and world Jewish creativity that is both multilingual and multicultural," comes to an end.

2009: Screenwriter Steven Karras discusses and signs his first book, The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military in World War II, at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, in Washington, D.C.

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival includes a screening of “Brothers,” a film that depicts the struggle of 2 brothers who struggle to come to terms with their political and religious beliefs when they reunite in Israel after years of silence.

2009: “Avatar,” the science fiction film co-produced by Jon Landau premiered in London.

2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival includes a screening of “Achziv,” a film that documents the unique story of Eli Avivi, President of "Achziv Land," from the time of the War of Independence when Eli appropriated a deserted Arab village called A'Ziv.

2009: The Israel Aerospace Industries made the first delivery of the Heron UAV to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) today. The ten unmanned aerial vehicles will be used in Afghanistan in the coming weeks.

2009: The third annual Kisufim Conference, a series of special workshops and meetings in Russian, English, French, Hungarian, Serbian and Spanish which aims to "encourages encounters between Israeli creativity - in Hebrew and other languages - and world Jewish creativity that is both multilingual and multicultural," comes to an end in Jerusalem.

2009: A four day conference entitled "A Century of Yiddish:1908-2008" came to a close in Jerusalem

2010: On Human Rights Day, the community is scheduled to hold a ceremony that will remember the Soviet Jewry Struggle and commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Washington, D.C. Vigil that became part of efforts to make it possible for Russian Jews to leave the Soviet Union.

2010: Daniel Burman, who lives and works in Argentina as one of its leading filmmakers today, and Jorge Gurvich, also an award-winning filmmaker who left Argentina for Israel are scheduled to present a program entitled “Argentina’s Jewish Community Through Filmmaker’s Eyes at the 21st Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2010: The 12th annual Jerusalem Festival is scheduled to come to a close. During this year’s festival, Frans Weisz, a Holocaust survivor who directed “Polonaise” (1989), “Qui Vive” (2001) and “Happy End” (2007) – a trilogy, about two Dutch Jewish families he co-wrote with playwright Judith Herzbergrecipient received this year’s Life Achievement Award.

2010: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Kadima chairwoman and opposition leader Tzipi Livni at the State Department in Washington today, only a few days after the U.S. and Israel announced that talks between Jerusalem and Washington over a new freeze on West Bank settlement construction in exchange for a set of U.S. guarantees had hit a dead end.

2010: Rain began falling on different parts of Israel this afternoon, beginning what was expected to be a stormy weekend. Tel Aviv received its first raindrops early in the afternoon, along with Haifa, Netanya, Ra'anana and Kfar Saba.

2010: Thousands of people participated in a march celebrating International Human Rights Day in Tel Aviv this morning.

2010: Hundreds of people attended the funeral of former Knesset speaker and Holocaust-survivor advocate Dov Shilansky at the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv this morning.

2010: Memorial services were held this morning for Lawrence E. “Larry” Gelf, the Professor-Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Iowa at Agudas Achim in Iowa City.

2011: As part of the Scholar-In-Residence Weekend at Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, Dr. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita of the University of Chicago is scheduled to lead the Shabbat Torah Study.

2011: Producer Aviva Kempner is scheduled to see the 2011 WJFF Visionary Award recipient at the 22nd Washington Jewish Film Festival followed by a screening of her documentary “Partisans of Vilna” the theme of which is "We will not allow them to take us like beasts to the slaughter."

2011: The second round of weekend events that are part of Hamshoushalayim are scheduled to end today.

2011: Israeli professor Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in Stockholm today, and said that scientists have many duties, including keeping an eye on politicians

2012:The Sephardic Music Festival is scheduled to continue today with performances by Zion 80,Hasidic New Wave with Yakar Rhythms, and Mika Karney

2012(26thof Kislev, 5773): Second Day of Chanukah

2012(26thof Kislev, 5773): Eighty-six year old landscape architect Dan Zur, the partner of Lipa Yahalom, passed away today.

2012(26thof Kislev, 5773): Ninety-seven year old economist Albert O. Hirschman who helped to rescue artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)

2012(26thof Kislev, 5773): Zoltan Zinn-Collis, who was born at High Tatras in 1940 and “was one of only five living survivors of the Holocuast in Ireland” passed away today “in his Athy home.”

2012: The Washington Jewish Festival and the Hebrew Language Table are scheduled to present a screening of “There Was Once,” a film by Gabor Kalman, the focuses on the work of a high school teacher in Kalocsa, Hungary to teacher her students about the once thriving and now non-existent Jewish community that existed in their city.  She does this against the backdrop of a rising tide of right-wing extremism.

2012: The Sephardic Scholar Series is scheduled to continue this year with a free concert at the CUNY-Graduate Center with the New York Andalus Ensemble. 

2012: Nechemya Weberman a 54 year old unlicensed therapist who is a prominent member of the Satmar Chasidic community in Williamsburg was convicted “of repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl who had been sent to him for help.” (As reported by Sharon Otterman)

2012: After nightfall, Jews worldwide will celebrate the third of the winter festival’s eight nights at which time those in Jerusalem can see a Hanukkah menorah made from the ornamental headgear of a soldier of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

2012: The Palestinian Authority  today granted Hamas permission to mount a 25th anniversary celebration in the West Bank in growing signs that Fatah and rival Hamas are working to end the five-year schism between them, Ma'an News Agency reported.

2012: Todayin Stockholm, the Royal Academy of Sciences is scheduled to present the Nobel Prize in chemistry to Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, and the Nobel in economics to Alvin Roth. (As reported by Mark Shulte)

2013: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to sponsor a reading and discussion of The Reason I Jump by Naokj Higashida.

 

2013: “The Congress” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Keren Kayemet LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) is scheduled to begin distributing free Christmas Trees at Nazareth.  (This is not a typo or a joke)

 

2013: “Hundreds of haredi men from radical sectors of the ultra-Orthodox community rallied once again in Jerusalem tonight in protest at the ongoing detention of two yeshiva students by the army, and against enlistment to the military and national service programs in general.” (As reported by Jeremy Sharon)

 

2013: “Emergency services across” Israel “were put on high alert as a major storm hit the region which is expected to last through the weekend.  Mt. Hermon is already experiencing high winds and snow according to the Israel Metrological Service (As reported by Gavriel Fiske)

 

2013: Israeli-American chemists Arieh Warshel and Michael Levitt were officially awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, today. The two, along with Martin Karplus, won the award “for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. (As reported by Adiv Sterman)

 

2014: At the Historic 6th& I Synagogue is “Rabbi Shira” is scheduled to present “What It Takes To Officiate at Your Friend’s Wedding.”

 

2014: “Lester L. Wolff, Civil Air Patrol veteran and former member of Congress, spoke today during a Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony for World War II era Civil Air Patrol members, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C.’

 

2014: Rabbi Todd Thalblum officiated at the funeral of Sylvia Padzensky.

http://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2014/Dec/Sylvia-Padensky/

 

 

2014: The IDF bolstered security measures across the West Bank this evening amid fears that tensions could escalate after a senior Palestinian official died en route to a Ramallah hospital earlier in the day following clashes with Israeli troops.

 

2014: “Poland’s constitutional court today overturned a ban on the ritual slaughter of animals which had affected the Jewish and Muslim communities.”

 

2014: Today, Israeli novelist Amos Oz saw “a film documenting the journey of Haifa University historian Fania Oz-Salzberger, the author’s daughter, to the region in north-western Ukraine, which was populated by more than 350,000 Jews on the eve of World War II.”

 

2014: Today, Noah Mamet was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to Argentina.

 

2014: “As part of its Righteous Among the Nations project, the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra has commissioned an original orchestral piece, “His Finest Hour,” from composer Moshe Zorman in tribute to Perlasca which will have its debut at concert today in Raanana in the presence of Perlasca’s son Franco and daughter-in-law Luciana Amadia.”

 

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to sponsor a tour of its exhibition “Echoes of the Borscht Belt: Contemporary Photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld.

http://www.marisascheinfeld.com/Video-&-Interviews/The-Jewish-Daily-Forward/1/

 

2015(28th of Kislev, 5776): Fourth Day of Chanukah

 

2015(28th of Kislev): On the Hebrew calendar “Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Chizkiyah Da Silva, commonly known as the Pri Chadash, the name of the commentary he authored on the Code of Jewish Law.”

 

2015(28th of Kislev, 5776): Eighty-seven year old basketball pioneer Dolph Schayes passed away today. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)

 

2015: Jonathan Birnbaum, of JBirnbaum which is located on 47th in the heart of Manhattan’s famous diamond district reported today that diamonds worth between five and ten million dollars have been stolen from is safe.

 

2015 Final performance of “Indecent,” “a play by Paula Vogel that “recounts the controversy surrounding the play “God of Vengeance” by Solomon Asch which was produced on Broadway in 1923.

2015: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host an evening with Dr. Danny M. Cohen, the author of Train “which follows the story of six teenage who try to escape Nazi round-ups.”

 

2015: Catholics should not try to convert Jews and should work with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said today in a major new document that drew the Church further away from the strained relations of the past.

 

2015: In Kensington, MD, Temple Emanuel is scheduled to host a presentation by The Foundation for Jewish Studies “Home and Homelessness: European Jews in 1948.”

 

 

2015: The Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “acclaimed Israeli pianist Daniel Gortler as he presents a unique chamber music concert featuring Brahms's Die schöne Magelone along with other 19th- and 20th- century classics dedicated to the word.”

 

2015: Sheldon Adelson purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal

 

2015: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to “The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai” a celebration of the poet and his works with Robert Alter, Hana Amichai, Jonathan Galassi, Chana Kronfeld, Stanley Moss, Philip Schultz and Leon Wieseltier.

 

2016: Nobel laureates including Bob Dylan are scheduled to be honored today at ceremony on the anniversary of the death of Alfred Noble – a ceremony that Dylan will not be attending but for which he has sent a speech to be read aloud by somebody else.

 

2016(10th of Kislev, 5777): Shabbat Va-yaytzay

 

2016(10thof Kislev, 5777): Chabad Chassidim are scheduled to party today in celebration of the release of Dovber Schneuri, the second Lubavitcher Rebbe, by the Russians on the 10th of Kislev, 5587.

 

2016: Israeli sculptor Oren Pinhasi’s solo exhibition is scheduled to open at Temp Rubato.

 

2016: Everyone is scheduled to continue saying prayers on behalf of Rav Adin ben Rivkah Leah – Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz – who is recovering from a stroke.

 

2016: The Israeli Consulate is scheduled to host “special screening of ‘On the Map” followed by a discussion with Israeli filmmaker Dani Menken.

 

2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Remarkable Story of an Italian Mother, Her Two Sons and Their Fight Against Fascism by Caroline Moorehead, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek, The Education of Eva Moskowitz: A Memoir by Eva Moskowitz and  the recently released paperback edition of The Fortunate Ones by Ellen Umansky

2017: The URJ Biennial is scheduled to come to an end today in Boston, MA.

2017: The Breman Museum is scheduled to host a lecture by Warsaw native George Rishfeld who “as an infant he was thrown over the barbed-wire fence of the Vilna Ghetto into the waiting arms of Halinka, the daughter of a man that worked for George’s father.

 

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a lecture in which Dr. Ian Hancock, a Professor at the University of Texas, “discusses the experience of the Roma during the Holocaust, the persistence of prejudice, and the current struggle of the Romani peoples.”

 

2017: The Center for Jewish History and the Jewish Genealogical Society are scheduled to present a lecture by New York journalist Marisa Fox entitled “By Thread – A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother’s Hidden Identity” in which she examines the life of her mother Tamar Fromer Fox.

 

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as military leader and archeologist Yigael Yadin whose works included Bar-Kochba: The Legendary Hero of the Law Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome continues today.

 

2018(2ndof Tevet, 5779): Eighth Day of Chanukah

 

2018: Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present “The Displacement of Jewish Communal Life in Islamic Lands and Cultural Reconstruction in Israel”

 

2018: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Reclaiming Citizenship: Stories of a New Jewish return to Germany during which “Donna Swarthout, editor of a volume of essays by authors who reclaimed German citizenship as the descendants of persecuted Jews, discusses her story with historian David Sorkin (Yale), whose research on Jewish Emancipation illuminates the meanings of citizenship in Jewish history.”

 

2018: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening in London of the award winning “Three Identical Strangers.”

2018: As an example of the diversity of activities American Jewish congregations must offer in the 21st century, in Chevy Chase, MD, Ohr Kodesh is scheduled to host the Second Annual Mentsch Club Charity Bowling Tournament.

2018: As part of its Chanukah celebration, The Museum of Islamic Art is scheduled to host a production for children of “Shmulik the Hedgehog.”

2018: As part of its Chanukah Festival celebrations “for the whole family, The Bible Lands Museum is scheduled to host the final “interactive tour and creative workshop, The Mystery of the Hidden Pitcher.”

2018: In London, Jewish Museum is scheduled to present “Philippe Sands and Adam Wagner on Jewish Human Rights Heroes” as part of an evening that “celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the lives of the Jewish Human Rights heroes behind it.”

2019: San Francisco State University is scheduled to host “Jewish studies lecturer Alexis Herr” as he discusses “Voice of Genocide, Echoes of the Holocaust.”

2019: In New Orleans, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service, one of the most worthwhile of such organizations that provides meaningful service, is scheduled to hold it Executive Committee Meeting at the Uptown JCC.

2019: The joint convention of the Rabbinical Assembly and the USCJ is scheduled to come to an end today in Boston, MA.

2019: Dizzy’s Club is scheduled to host an “Israeli Jazz Celebration” featuring the Yuval Cohen Sextet.

2020(24thof Kislev, 7801): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

 

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, Temple Judea is scheduled to host via zoom a Chanukah candle lighting with Rabbi Yaron from Israel and Cantorial Soloist Abbie Strauss

 

2020: Ofer Fohrer, the Minister for Economic Affairs at the Israel to UK is scheduled to participate in a special Question and Answer Event during the celebration of the first night of Chanukah.

 

2020: The Naomi Less Band is scheduled to present, “Any Way You Light It” a live rock musical featuring her band who can’t figure out what is THE story of Hanukkah

 

2020: The Jewish Museum of London is scheduled to host Noami Dickson, the CEO of Jewish Women’s Aid as the first of its 8 Digital Nights of Hanukah.

 

2020: The Jewish Film Institute which is marking its 40th anniversary with 8 nights of films for Hanukkah is scheduled to host a screening “at the Fort Mason Flix pop-up drive-in of the U.S. premiere of “Howie Mandel: But, Enough About Me,”

 

2020: In Little Rock, AR Chabad led by that lamplighter par excellence Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host the annual public menorah lighting.

 

2020: In Ohio, the Columbus Kollel is scheduled to begin the virtual celebration of Chanukah with “Lighting a Flame of Unity.

 

2020: In Manhattan, the Other Israel Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

 

2020: The FIDF is scheduled to host Col. Yuval Moshe, Chief of the IDF Engineering Corps, Southern Command speaking on “Unearthing Terror’s Tunnels.”

 

2020: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present online the “First Night Dreidel Tournament.”

 

2020: “The government was to hold a special session at 8:30am today to discuss limiting movement during the eight-day Hanukkah holiday in order to stem the spread of the coronavirus and was expected to announce nighttime closures in predominantly Jewish communities.”

 

 

 

This Day, December 11, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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DECEMBER 11

321: A letter from Emperor Constantine the Great regarding special taxes of this date provides the first evidence of Jews along the Rhine.

361: Emperor Julian, referred to as Julian the Apostate, entered Constantinople as the sole ruler of the Empire. The appellation was affixed to him because unlike his predecessors he did not embrace Christianity and was willing to see a return to previous pagan practices.  His “toleration” of other religions would be seen in 363, when, on his way to find the Persians, he announced that the Jews would be allowed to re-build their Temple.  The plan was thwarted by an earthquake in the Galilee and by his untimely death at the hands of an assassin.

1474:The Reign of Henry IV as King of Castile, during which “the condition of the Spanish Jews was one of comparative peace and comfort, came to an end today when he passed away at the age of 49.

1475: Birthdate of Pope Leo X.  To the Christian world, Leo was one of the Popes criticized by Luther for selling indulgencies and perpetuating other non-spiritual practices.  To others he was a patron of the arts and one of the Renaissance Popes.  In fact, Leo “fostered tolerance of Jewish learning as another aspect of the Renaissance cultural scene.”  During a dispute over the Talmud, Leo refused to have the Talmud burned.  Instead he had a Christian printer published the text in its entirety without censorship.  “Leo confirmed privileges accorded Jews in French papal territory despite protests from the local bishops.” He ended the wearing of Jew Badge in French papal territories and did not enforce the requirement in Italy.

1563: In a war between the Poles and the Russians, Ivan the terrible captured Polotsk and “according to eye witnesses” ordered the approximately 300 Jews who refused to convert to drown in the “Duna.”

1747: After having passed his examination for lieutenant eight days ago, Alexander Schomberg , the son of the Anglo/Jewish physician Meyer Low Schomberg, who had become an Anglican so he could pursue a career in the Royal Navy, “entered the sloop Hornet” today before moving to the sloop Speedwell in 1750.

1751: Birthdate of Christian Wilhelm von Dohm a friend of Moses Mendelssohn, “a staunch advocate for Jewish emancipation, who published On the Civil Improvement of the Jewish.

1758: Birthdate of German composer and music teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter whose students included Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn and Gioaccomo Mayerber, an unlikely trio given their ethnic background and the conditions in Germany at that time.

1761(15th of Kislev, 5522): Moses L.I. zur Kahn, the son of Rabbi Lob Issak zur Kahn and the husband of Sara Wertheimer, who was the daughter of Samson Wertheimer and Frumet Brülle passed away today.

1762(25th of Kislev, 5523): Chanukah

1772: Birthdate of Buchau, Germany, native Rosechen Obermayer, the wife of Jacob H. Wallersteiner and the mother of Samuel and Henriette Wallersteiner.

1773(26th of Kislev, 5534): Parashat Vayeshev; Second Day of Chanukah

1778: Birthdate of Schopfloch, Germany, native Roesle Salomon Joseph, the wife of Leopold Einstein with whom she had had eleven children.

1779(2nd of Tevet, 5540): Parshat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah meaning the holiday has been observed for three straight years as Americans fight the British.

1784(28th of Kislev, 5545): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1789: The University of North Carolina is chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly. The first Jewish student group, the Hebrew Culture Society, appeared on campus in 1912. Despite objections, the secretary of the YMCA, Frank Porter Graham, gave them meeting space in his building. In 1936, Jewish community leaders and students organized the Hillel Foundation, one of eleven across the nation.Jewish students began their own fraternities because the existing organizations excluded them. The first Jewish fraternity at Carolina was Tau Epsilon Phi, organized in 1924. By 1926, it had twenty-one members. Notable among them was Harry Schwartz, who starred on the football team, and Emanuel J. Evans, who competed on the track, basketball, and debate teams. Zeta Beta Tau appeared on campus in 1928. In 1951, Evans was elected mayor of nearby Durham, the first Jew to hold that office in North Carolina. Carolina students in 1958 elected their first Jewish student body president, Eli Evans of Durham, whose father had attended the university during the 1920s. Evans published a memoir, The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, in 1973. According to recent figures 1,000 of Carolina’s 16,000 undergrads are Jewish and 200 of the 10,000 graduate students are Jewish.  The school offers approximately 30 Jewish studies courses including a minor in Jewish studies.  From a personal point of view, the school’s greatest claim to fame is that Larry Rosenstein, of blessed memory met Judy Levin, of blessed memory while they were both attending Carolina.  They married and produced three sons all of whom are proud Tar Heels.

1792(26th of Kislev, 5553): Second Day of Chanukah

1795(29th of Kislev, 5556): Fifth Day of Chanukah observed during the final phase of the French Revolution known as the Directory.

1800(24th of Kislev, 5561): First Chanukah Candle kindled for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1803: According to the JCR-UK Jewish Communities & Records, birthdate of Nathan Marcus Adler, who served as Chief Rabbi from 1845 to 1890.  (The Jewish Encyclopedia shows January 15, 1803 as the birthdate)

1807: In Bremerhaven, Marcus and Henritte Hertz Schwabe gave birth to Johanna Schwabe who married David Mortiz Goldschmidt who gained fame as Johanna Goldschmidt the leader in the fight for women’s right who was the mother of Otto Goldschmidt and the mother-in-law of famed singer Jenny Lind.

1809: Birthdate of Theodore Griesinger, a German clergyman, author and leading anti-Semite.

1813: In the Netherlands coronation of King William I who “began to regulate the Jewish community's internal affairs, by effectively disbanding the Netherlands kehilla, instituting compulsory secular education for Jewish children and waging “a determined battle against Yiddish, which resulted in the Jews' widespread adoption of Dutch.” The efforts of the government were aided by those of the Dutch maskilim, who were of course in favor of integration. (Jewish Virtual Library)

1816: Indiana became the 19th state to join the Union. “In Indiana, towards the end of the 1840’s, there were small organized communities in Fort Wayne, Lafayette and Evansville.  The first congregation was organized in Indianapolis in 1856.” During the Civil War, over five hundred Jewish Hoosiers fought for the Union.

1817: Birthdate of Sheerness, Isle of Sheppey Kent native Frances Russel, the wife of Nathaniel Samuel Jacobs.

1817: Sixty five heads of families joined The New Israelite Temple Society (Neuer Israelitischer Tempelverein in Hamburg) which was founded today.

1822(27thof Kislev, 5583): Third Day of Chanukah

1825(1stof Tevet, 5586): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Eighth Chanukah Candle kindled for the first  time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.

1826: Birthdate of William Henry Waddington, the future Prime Minister of France, who as Foreign Minister provided Laurence Oliphant with a letter of recommendation he could take to the Sultan to further his plan to settle  large numbers of Jews in Palestine.

1828: Birthdate of George Lewis Lyon, the native of Portsea, England who served as the secretary of the Portsmouth Hebrew Benevolent Institution and then moved to London where he “secretary of the Jews' and General Literary and Scientific Institution.”

1830(25thof Kislev, 5591): Chanukah

1833: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Cohen officiated at the wedding of Ziporah Cohen and Joseph Soria of New York City.

1835: Birthdate of Adolf Stoecker, the Lutheran theologian and Court Chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm II who became an outspoken leader of the anti-Semitic movement in Germany.

1838:  Birthdate of Emil Rathenau.  A German industrialist, Rathenau was cofounder of the German Edison Company which later became the electrical and telephone giant AEG.  He was the father of Walter Rathenau, the famous German statesman from the World War I era.

1839: Alexander Solomon married Alice Barnett at the Great Synagogue today.

1840: In Charleston, SC, Esther G. Barrett Poznanski and Reform Rabbi Gustavus Poznanski, Sr. gave birth to Isaac B. Poznanski the violinist and composer and brother of Joseph, Sarah and Gustavus Poznanski, Jr. who died while serving as a private on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War.

1843: In Furth, Bavaria, Mina Gerstle and Anton Pickert gave birth to Lehman Pickert, the husband of Bertha Kaufman, who came to the United States in 1858 where he first settled in Cincinnati before finally settling in Boston in 1875.

1848(16thof Kislev, 5609): Forty-two year old Mauriz Jacobsson, the “son of Abraham Jacobsson and Regina von Halle and the husband of Carolina Weslig with whom he had two children passed away today.

1854: A Jew named Rosenthal was arrested in Louisville, KY today on charges that he had obtained goods valued at $60,000 under false pretenses while in Philadelphia, PA. He left for Philadelphia today in the custody of law officer who had been dispatched from the City of Brotherly Love.

1855(2ndof Tevet, 5616): Seventh Day of Chanukah

1856: Joseph Cohen married Catherine Joseph at the Great Synagogue today.

1857(24thof Kislev, 5618): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1860(17thof Kislev, 5621): Third Day of Chanukah

1860: Birthdate of Louis Ostheim, the Philadelphia native and son of Philip Ostheim who was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy in 1878.

1861: “Jewish Chaplains” published today reported that Rabbi Arnold Fischel, of New York, “had an interview today with the President, to urge the appointment of Jewish Chaplains for every military Department, they being excluded by an act of Congress from the volunteer regiments, among whom there are thousands of Israelites. In the meantime the Doctor will take charge of the spiritual welfare of the Jewish soldiers on the Potomac. The President assured him that the subject will receive his earnest attention, and expressed the opinion that this exclusion was altogether unintentional on the part of Congress.”

1861: In his own words, Rabbi Arnold Fischel “called this morning at ten o’clock at the White House where hundreds of people were anxiously waiting for admission, some of whom told me that they had been for three days awaiting their turn. I was, nevertheless, at once invited to his room and was received with marked courtesy. After having read the letter of the Board and delivered to him several letters of introduction, he questioned me on various matters connected with this subject and then told me that he fully admitted the justice of my remarks, that he believed the exclusion of Jewish chaplains to have been altogether unintentional on the part of Congress, and agreed that something ought to be done to meet this case. I suggested that he might do for the Jewish what he had done for the Christian volunteers and take upon himself the responsibility of appointing Jewish chaplains for the Hospitals. He replied that he had done that at a time when Congress was not in session deeming the subject to require immediate attention, but that after the Meeting of Congress he would not be justified in taking the responsibility upon himself. Finally, he told me that it was the first time this subject had been brought under his notice, that it was altogether new to him, that he would take the subject into serious consideration, that I should call again tomorrow morning and if he has five minutes to spare he would receive me and let me know his views. I thanked him for his kind reception, and expressed to him my best wishes for his welfare. In the course of my remarks, I gave him clearly to understand that I came to him not as an office seeker but to contend for the principle of religious liberty, for the constitutional rights of the Jewish Community and for the welfare of the Jewish volunteers, which he seemed fully to appreciate.”

1861: Levy Duis married Phoebe Neuberger today in Amsterdam, Holland.

1862: Union troops including the 59th New York Volunteer Regiment which had been formed by Lt. Colonel Phillip J. Joachimsen began crossing the Rappahannock River at the start of the Battle of Fredericksburg, the military disaster led by General Ambrose Burnside.

1866(3rdof Tevet, 5627): Hirsch Kolisch, the philanthropist from Nikolsburg who established a school for deaf-mutes passed away today in Vienna.

1872: Philadelphia native Myer Asch who was taken prisoner while fighting with his cavalry unit “in front of Richmond” and was “brevetted Major of United States Volunteers” was elected for a third time to serve as Senior Commander of the George G. Meade Post Number 1 of the Grand Army of the Republic today.

1875: Birthdate of religious leader Yehuda Leib Maimon who served as an Israeli cabinet minister.

1875: Edward Levy, who had assumed by Royal license of Lawson in addition to and after Levy making him Edward Levy-Lawson, today legally changed the name of his to Harry Lawson Webster Levy-Lawson

1875: According to today’s issue of the British Medical Journal, The Jews’ Deaf and Dumb Home which “was founded in 1863 by Baroness Mayer de Rothschild as a school where resident Jewish children could learn to speak” has been moved from its original location in White Chapel to Walmer Road, Notting hill.

1876: It was reported today Boston police have arrested several notorious female shoplifters included a Lena Nugent a Jewess known as “Black Lena.”  Nugent and one of her accomplices, an English woman named Tilly Miller are wanted by authorities in Brooklyn, NY on charges of shoplifting and jail breaking.

1876(25thof Kislev, 5637): First day of Chanukah

1876: In Surry, England, Sir Henry Hildyard and his wife Annette gave birth to decorated war hero and diplomate General Sir Reginald John Thoroton Hildyard who in 1939 when some British leaders thought they could make a deal with Hitler and when anti-Semitism was a known factor among certain members of the British upper crust, told a meeting of the English-Speaking Union in Bermuda that “ “our hatred of what” Hitler “has done, our hatred of the way he has treated the Jews, has made” America and Great Britain “very close.’

1876: The Hebrew Charity Ball is scheduled to take place tonight at the Academy of Music in New York City.  The Executive Committee responsible for this fundraising activity includes H.S. Allen, Henry Rice, J.F Bamberger, L.S. Levy, M.H. Moses, S.B. Solomon, C.C. Allen, Joseph Koch and J.S. Isaacs.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C0CE4DC133AE63BBC4852DFB467838D669FDE

1880: Birthdate of Berlin born “theater critic, author and co-founder of the Jüdischer Kulturbund” Julius Bab who fled the Nazis and finally settled in New York City in 1940.

1880: A fair that will raise funds for the Ladies’ Lying in Relief Society and the Forty-fourth Street Synagogue is scheduled to open at the Metropolitan Concert Hall in New York City.

1881: In Poland, Jacobi Bornstein, the son of Aron and Sara Bornstein, and his wife Tehelka Bornstein gave birth to Elise Besser

1882: “Literary Notes” published today contains a brief review of Jews of Barnowby Karl Emil Franzos. “This collection of Jewish stories” based on life in Eastern Galicia  “is certainly one of the most valuable contributions made during this century”  in helping us to understand the customs of Polish and Russian Jews.

1882: It was reported today that several ministers in New York have spoken out on the subject of the Sunday Closing Laws. Reverend Charles H. Eaton spoke of the need to remember the spirit of the law and not just the letter of the law. “The Jew who closed his store on Saturday kept his Sabbath according to his conscience and it would be wrong to compel him by force to change the Sabbath of his faith. (Strangely enough, this comes at a time when leaders of the Reform movement were trying to substitute Sunday services for the traditional Shabbat Saturday morning service.)

1882: A fire in Kingston destroys Spanish and Portuguese and Ashkenasic synagogues along with many other buildings

1882: In Bresalu, Gretchen Kauffmann and Gustav Jacob Born gave birth to Max Born, pioneer in the field of quantum mechanics.  The German born physicist won the Nobel Prize in 1954, with Walther Bothe of Germany, for his statistical formulation of the behavior of subatomic particles. His studies of the wave function led to the replacement of the original quantum theory, which regarded electrons as particles, with a mathematical description He also won the Max Blanc Medal and the Hughes Medal. He passed away in 1970. Born was a Jew who converted to the Lutheran faith in 1914.

1882:  Birthdate of Fiorello H. La Guardia, Republican Congressman and three term mayor of New York City.  The flamboyant reformer had a Jewish mother and an Italian father. At one point in his career, the Democrats ran a Jewish candidate against La Guardia.  According to legend which may be fact, La Guardia countered by insisting on debating his opponent in Yiddish.  While the “Little Flower” was conversant in the tongue of Eastern European Jewry, his opponent had to beg off since he wasn’t.

1883: Birthdate of Gustav Althoff, the Prague resident murdered at Terezin in 1944.

1883: Birthdate of Philadelphia born “yarn manufacturer” Alex Van Straaten, the “President of Northern Liberties Hospital.”

1884: In New York, the Sixth Precinct Station House was filled with a variety of clothing, haberdashery and furnishings that had been taken from the house of Marx Cohen a Jew is, “an alleged receiver of stolen goods.”

1885: “Victoria’s Fifty Years of Reign” published today says that if the celebration of the British Monarch’s time on the throne is to be “a Jubilee” it should follow the pattern of the Jubilee described in Leviticus.  Based on the words of the ancient Israelites the celebration should be a year-long affair that should actually begin with the 49th year of her ascension to the throne. (Another example of the indirect impact that Jewish culture has had on the world)

1886: One day after she had passed away, “Kendal bat Jacob” was buried at the “Bancroft Road (Maiden Lane) Jewish Cemetery.

1886: Birthdate of Nice native Marcel Lattès the French movie composer who was murdered at Aushwitz.

1887(25thof Kislev, 5648): Chanukah

1887: In St. Louis, MO, Caroline and Joseph Lazarus Kranson gave birth to Willie Lewis Kranson

1887: Judge M.S. Isaacs presided over the annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Association in New York City.

1888: Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler officiated at the wedding of Miss Fannie Foster, the daughter of Myer Foster and Jonas F. Emanuel in New York City.

1888: This evening, Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler officiated at the wedding of Miss Ophelia V. Herman daughter of Simon Herman and Leon Sonneborn.

1889: Birthdate of Russian born “clothing merchant” Samuel Kappel who came to the United States where he co-founded the clothing chain of Howard Stores” and was active in numerous Jewish Philanthropies while raising a family of four daughters with his wife Minnie Kappel.

1889: It was reported today that the actor M.B. Curtis will be appearing a newly written and as yet unnamed comedy in which he will a Jewish matchmaker who marries one of his clients when he is unable to find her a match.  (Curtis is no stranger to playing Jewish roles since he began his career playing a Polish immigrant traveling salesman in “Sam’l of Posen. As reported by Harley Erdman)

1890(29thof Kislev, 5651): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1890: According to reports published today a committee has been organized to convey the views of several prominent Englishmen including Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Westminster and Lord Ripon concerning the treatment of the Jews to the Czar. They declare “that the renewed sufferings of the Jews in Russia from the operation of the sever and exceptional edicts against them and the disabilities placed upon them are deeply to be deplored and that in this last decade of the 19th century religious liberty is a principle which should be recognized by every Christian community as among natural rights.”

1890: Among those who arrived at the Barge Office aboard the SS Noordland today were three Russian Jews, Moses Winterstein,  his “18 year old wife and 22 year old daughter” who were destitute be who claimed that any of Winterstein’s other three children who were already in this country would vouch for them.

1890: “Russian Anti-Jewish Laws” published described new anti-Jewish laws that will be promulgated in 1891 including the extension of provisions already in place in Poland that prohibit the selling, leasing or mortgaging to Jews of any real estate in any part of the empire and that dispossess the Jews of any real estate they may already hold.

1890: Simon Ascher who employed Maximillian as “a confidential clerk” said that that Maximillian Lasker probably committed suicide because of “overwork.”

1890(29thof Kislev, 5651): Sixty-one year old Henry Nordlinger, the native of Wurtemberg who came to New York about 40 years ago where founded the importing firm of Henry Nordlinger & Co. along with his brother J.D. Nordlinger died suddenly while along Chambers Street.  He was a supporter and/or member of the Harmonie Club, Temple Emanu-El the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, the Hebrew Technical Institute, the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews, Mt Sinai Hospital, the Montefiore Home, the United Hebrew Charities and the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children.

1891: Three days after he had passed away, 83 year old Samuel Mocatta, the son of Moses Mocatta and Abigail Lindon and the husband of Miriam Mocatta with whom he had had six children, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1892: Members of the Hebrew Free School Association elect officersed at the annual meeting this morning after discussing Jacob H. Schiff’s plan for “consolidating all the branches of the Hebrew educational system in the Educational Alliance.”

1892:  Birthdate of Leo Ornstein.  Born in Russia, the son of a Cantor, this composer’s early works showed the influence of Jewish liturgical music as well as the influence of Armenian chants.

1892: Reports published today claimed that embezzler Louis Weinschenk, the prominent member of the Chicago business and Jewish communities has fled to New Orleans as he tries to make his way to Mexico City where he hopes to avoid the consequences of his “extravagant living.”

1892: Four hundred people had signed up for the new singing classes at the Hebrew Institute at Jefferson and Broadway organized by Frank Damrosch.

1892: It was reported today that a meeting of the Conservative members of the Reichstag turned “itself into a frenzy of Jew-baiting zeal” where “too much Judaism” was blamed for the lack of success of people living in rural areas.

1892: It was reported that approximately “1,500 people mostly wealth and all well-educated and refined” will be affected by the new royal decree calling for the immediate of Jews from Moscow unless they agree to be baptized in the Orthodox Church.

1892: It was reported today “that the Russians will do their best to foment the anti-Semitic outcry in Paris” in retaliation for the refusal of the Rothschilds to take up a  new loan desired by” Minster of Finance Sergei White.

1892: It was reported today that “the anti-Semitic propaganda in Austria has received fresh energy” as can be seen by “a mass meeting recently held at the Vienna Town Hall” where Prince Alois Lichtenstein advised a crowd that included 2,000 working people “to boycott Jewish tradesmen.”

1892: It was reported today that “Sarah Bernhardt me with a cool reception in Moscow because she is a Jewess” and that season-seat holders offere their tickets for her series at any price.

1893(2nd Day of Tevet, 5654): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1893: “The Proposed Tax On Bourse Transactions Approved by the Masses” published today described the willingness of the Reichstag to pass new, increased taxes on Bourse transactions because most people are not affected by them and because those who will suffer the greatest loss will be “the Jews who dominate the Frankfort and Berlin Bourses.”

1893: “Enemies of Judaism” published today provided Rabbi Gustav Gottheil view that the two greatest threats to the survival of the Jewish people came from missionaries who “desired to close the doors of the synagogue and make it a church” and “Jews who have reached a lofty position” and say that “this religion might been all right once, but it is not now.”

1894: “The body of Abraham Keyser, a retired grocer, was found in the Hutchinson River, near Pelham Bay Park in Westchester County” New York today.

1895: In “Kremenchuk, Poltava, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)”, a Jewish cantor and his wife gave to long lived avant garde composer and pianist Leo Ornstein.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1387072/Leo-Ornstein.html

1895: The attendance at the today’s session of the Hebrew Fair “was much larger than on the previous day” and the receipts collected almost eclipsed the total collected on the opening night of the event being held at Madison Square Garden.

1898(27th of Kislev, 5659): Third Day of Chanukah

1898: The former Harriet “Hattie” Freeman and Sime Silverman, “the founder and publisher of Variety” gave birth to Sidne Silverman who followed in his father’s journalistic footsteps and whose son Syd the son of his wife Marie Saxon followed in his.

1898(27th of Kislev, 5659): Seventy-nine year old Max Grünbaum, a German orientalist who specialized in Ladino and Yiddish literature passed away today in Munich.

1898: During the winter social season, Baron Hirsch leads hunting parties at his estate in Norfolk.

1899:The crisis between the Neue Freie Presse and Herzl comes to an end. Herzl is paid the highest salary at the "Neue Freie Presse" and is given the exclusive editorship of the entire literary section.

1899: In Denver, the first patient, “a Protestant Swedish woman from Minnesota,” entered the National Jewish Hospital for Treatment of Consumptives one day after it had opened.

1899: In Charleston, SC, Etta Goodman married Jacob J. Goldstein of New York City.

1900: Dr. Adolph M. Radin of the Society for the Aid of Jewish Prisoners delivered a well-received speech at a mass meeting “at Cooper Union” sponsored by the City Vigilance League in which he “maintained that the immigrants had not corrupted New York, but that New York had corrupted the immigrants.”

1901(1st of Tevet, 5662): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1901: “Elizabeth Loeb, the daughter of Jacob L. Loeb who had married Benjamin Vogel Becker on June 20, 1900 gave birth to John Leonard Becker.

1902: Nathan Straus was among those who arrived in New York aboard the North German liner Kronprinz Wilhelm

1903: It was reported today that Baron Arthur de Rothschild, who had died while visiting Monte Carlo was a Parisian residing at Cornay-la-Ville, Department of Seine-et-Oise, France.

1903:Herzl asks for an interview with the Austrian Foreign Minister Agenor Goluchowsky. He writes to Wenzel von Plehve and repeats his request that the Russian ambassador in Constantinople be directed to give his support to the Zionist demands. He also pursues his efforts to open a branch of the Jewish Colonial Trust in St. Petersburg.

1904: In Hanover, GermanyRahel and Philipp Nussbaum gave birth to “surrealist painter” Felix Nussbaum.  Unfortunately, being the son of a German patriot and a veteran of the Kaiser’s WW I Army did not save Felix from death at Auschwitz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Self_Portrait_with_Jewish_Identity_Card_-Felix_Nussbaum_-_1943.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Felix_Nussbaum,_Stazione_ferroviaria_di_Alassio,_1933.jpeg

1905: Birthdate of award winning Anglo-Jewish author Robert David Quixano Henriques

1905: Establishment today of Russkoye Znamya, a newspaper “notoriously known for its anti-Semitic bias which was the organ of the Union of the Russian People

1905: Workers in Kiev rise in revolt and issue a manifesto that among other things calls for “national emancipation of …Jews” and “the immediate end to the Jewish pogroms, which embarrasses our people.”

1905: Today, “at Ellis Island…500 Russian refugees” including “Jews…who had hidden in the darkest corners of Odessa to escape certain persecution or probable death” “told the United States immigration officials” “of the horrors they had seen and declared that the conditions were so terrible that no news dispatch could have possibly exaggerated the actual situation.”

1905: Representative Sulzer introduced a resolution in Congress today condemning and deploring “the cruel outrages, the unspeakable brutalities, and the unwarranted and wholesale assassinations of Russia’ Jewish citizens” and calling for an immediate end to them.

1905: “The reports of the terrible conditions prevailing in the Czar’s domain and the frightful massacres of the Jews by the mobs” were all verified today by the five hundred Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York yesterday.

1905: It was reported today that in response to a request for “small change contributions” in one evening the Janitors’ Society, most of whose members lived on the Lower East Side, raised $150 to provide relief for the Jews trying to survive during the current wave of massacres in Russia.

1906(24th of Kislev, 5667): In the evening kindle the first light of Chanukah.

1906: Two hundred and twenty-five retail kosher meat butchers went on strike because of the increase in the price of beef. There were more meat riots tonight in the Brownsville district of Brooklyn and several butcher shops were destroyed. Additional police had to be called out to deal with the mob.

1907: Birthdate of Berlin born lawyer Axel Rosin who came to the United States when the Nazis rose to power where he married Katharine Scherman, rose to the presidency of the Book-of-the-Month Club and became head of the Scherman Foundation.

1908: Birthdate of Ruth Weiss, the native of Vienna who moved to China where she witnessed World War II, the end of Chiang Kai-Shek, the rise of Mao Zedong and the Communist takeover.

1908: In New York, Paula (née Schoenberger) Eilers, who was Jewish and her husband Hio Peter Eilers who was Irish gave birth to actress Sally Eilers.

1909(28th of Kislev, 5670): Parsashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1909(28th of Kislev, 5670):Ludwig Mond, German-born, British chemist and industrialist who was the founder of Mond Nickel Company, the husband of Frida Lowenthal and the father of Robert and Alfred Mond passed away today.

1909: Birthdate of Abraham Marcovich who gained fame as radiologist Abraham W. March.

1909: At the Reichstag, a debate on the budget gave way to a discussion of a speech Ambassador Bernstorff had delivered in Philadelphia which was attacked by Herr Zimmerman, of the Anti-Semites, who expressed displeasure at disparaging remarks about the Pan-German movement.

1909 Luigi Luzzatti, who would become the second Jew to serve as Prime Minister in Italy, began his service as Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Trade.

1910: In “The English Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures” published today, Cyrus Adler described a meeting at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America of the Jewish scholars who are engaged in the preparation of a new English translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

1911: In Manhattan, “Joseph and Anna Seidman Topolsky gave birth to Seymour Topolsky, the Univesity of Missouri School of Journalism graduate and WW II U.S. Army officer who gained fame as “Seymour Topping, the chronicler of the rise of China and the Cold War in Europe and Asia and as the correspondent who shaped the crowning years of print journalism as an editor of The New York Times, and led the charge into the internet age in the classrooms of Columbia University.” (As reported by Robert D.  McFadden_

1912(1st of Tevet): Seventh Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet observed for the last time during the Presidency of William Howard Taft, the only person to serve as President of the United States and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1912: In San Francisco, founding of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1913: Two days after he passed away Franco-Jewish composer and pianist Elie-Miriam Delaborde “was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery today.

1913: In Providence, RI, Madeline (Talamo) and David Dworkin gave birth to Harvard and Oxford trained legal scholar Ronald Dworkin.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/law-obituaries/9873847/Professor-Ronald-Dworkin.html

1913: Harry Green, the organizer of the Jewish-American Rumanian Jewish” who is promoting a protest against the Rumanian Government’s policy is scheduled to sail today for Southampton so that he can attend a meeting of like-minded people before going on to Paris and then to Berlin where he will attend an International Conference on the subject.

1914: Hahambashi Nahum calls upon the Ottoman government in Palestine to protect the Jews in the face of an anti-foreign movement.

1915(4thof Tevet, 5676): Parashat Vayigash

1915(4thof Tevet, 5676):  German born and German trained Rabbi Meyer Elkin who served congregations included those in Liverpool, UK, Philadelphia and the UK before serving Congregation Beth Israel in Hartford, CT and about whom there is some debate as to old he really was, passed away today.

1915: After having been notified today by “Russian military authorities that he must present himself at once for” military training, pianist Aaron Kaufman and 10 other men left for America via Siberia after having gone home and discussed the matter with his wife Etta who urged him to flee, packed his bags and slipped their live savings into his pocket while he was kissing his son Joseph good-bye.

1915: It was reported today that violinist Mischa Elman played a concert “for the benefit of the Jewish sufferers from the war” which raised “a considerable sum” thanks to “the sale of lowers, programs and souvenirs.”

1916: The St. Louis branch of “the Women’s Proclamation Committee, the national women’s organization for Jewish war relief of which Mrs. Samuel Elkeles is President” held a bazaar today which enabled them to send the national committee “a draft for $1,000.”

1916: While the Senate was debating an immigration bill “which specifically barred Japanese immigration” Senator Gallinger asked whether this could lead to Jews being barred from immigrating to the United States, Senator Reed said, “The Jews by race and by blood have been civilized for thousands of years.  They spring from the race that gave us our religion and the fundamentals of our laws….It is plain that we should make an effort to protect our citizenship of undesirables and keep out all not capable of thorough amalgamation.”  (Editor’s Note – In fact future immigration bills would effectively bar most Jews from coming to the United States.)

1917(26thof Kislev): Second Day of Chanukah

1917: Mrs. Hannah Solomon and Mrs. Israel Cowan are scheduled to speak today at “the third regular meeting of the K.A.M. Auxiliary” which meets in “the vestry rooms of the Temple.”

1917: British troops under General Allenby make their way into Jerusalem, defeating the Ottoman Turks and liberating Judea. The whole city turned out to greet the General, as did the Chief Sephardic and Ashkenazi Rabbis. The Jaffa Gate was opened after years of disuse to enable Allenby to enter on foot and also to enable him to enter into the city without making use of the gap in wall created for Kaiser William in 1898.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jerusalem#/media/File:Capture_and_occupation_of_Palestine_by_British.jpg

1917: Henry Morgenthau wrote today, “The fall of Jerusalem…is surely an event of the greatest significance to us all” and that “for the whole civilized world the 10thof December, 1917, will be remembered as a day of profound historical interest, and, I hope also of large meaning for the future.”

1917:Corporal Louis Isaac Salek, a Gallipoli veteran from New Zealand, flew the first Jewish flag ever to fly over Jerusalem since the city’s fall to the Romans 2000+ years ago.” The flag was made by an Egyptian-Jewish department store owner named Moreno Cicurel with the assistance of a tailor from Alexandria named Eliezer Slutzkin. Unlike Israel’s present flag, Salek’s version was blue and white, the top half blue, the bottom half white with a Magen David in the center, but within the triangles there were rounded edges. Salek planted Moreno’s flag “atop the Tower of David - the Citadel - where it flew for 20 minutes before being removed by the British who had just conquered Palestine from the Turks.”

1917: On the second day of Chanukah, the Atlanta Constitution headline read, "Jerusalem Falls into the Hands of British Troops; Jerusalem Is Freed from Turk after Virtually we Centuries - British Capture the Holy City.

 

1917: “Although the campaign for the five million fund for Jew war relief and welfare work in the army and navy brought in $266,700” today “with a total of $2,866,000” having been raised today, the leadership was not satisfied because even with the promise of anonymous donation of one million dollars the drive will have to take in over $400,000 a day and currently the average daily collection has been a little under $300,000.

 

1917: The Times of London “says it understands” that “no attempt will be made to define the future position of Jerusalem until a general peace comes” and that the in the meantime the city wll be treated as in British military occupation and will be under martial law.”

 

1917: “A committee of the American Union of Rumanian Jews” including Dr. P.A. Siegelstein, the President, Leo Wolfson, Counselor Abraham L. Kalman, Executive Secretary Edward Herbert, Philadelphians Dr. M.Y. Belder and A.B. Goldenberg and Washingtonian Reuben Fink met with President Wilson today “and asked him to use his good offices with the present Rumanian Government to obtain civil rights for the Rumanian Jews.”

 

1917: “A Hanukah musicale and dance” is scheduled to “be given in Earl Hall” today “by the Council of Jewish Societies of Columbia” University in New York City.

 

1917: On the same day that it reported on the fall of Jerusalem to the British, the Atlanta Constitution carried a story entitled "Jerusalem's Fall Brings Happiness to Atlanta Father" which told of how Abraham Amato now believes that "he will be able to bring his wife and children" who are living to Jerusalem to the United States.  Amatao was a Sephardic Jew born on the isle of Rhodes, who had lived in Jerusalem before coming to Atlanta.

1918: “Felix M. Warburg, the Chairman of the Campaign Committee for the Jewish Relief drive” which has a goal of raising five million dollars “announced tonight that that the close of the day, $2,203,300 had been raised.”

1919: In Philadelphia, PA, “Louis and Rose (Pogost) Masteroff” gave birth to Joseph “Joe” Masteroff, the Tony Award winning playwright who gave the world “Cabaret.” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

 

1919: “Andrew Bonar Law, the spokesman for the Government, announced in the House of Commons today that dispatches had been received corroborating a report that Cossacks and a volunteer corps had carried out a pogrom in which several hundred Jews were killed in the suburb of Podol when the Bolsheviki evacuated Kiev” in October.

1919: Miss Gladys L. Baruch, the daughter of Mrs. Joseph Baruch and a cousin of financier Bernad M. Barcuch married Harold Marian Iseman, who fought overseas with the Rainbow Division during the World War, this evening at the Hotel St. Regis.

 

1920(30th of Kislev, 5681): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Miketz; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1920: Birthdate of Austrian born American violinist Eric Rosenblith.

 

1920: Birthdate of Frank Blaichman (Ephraim Blaichman), the native Kamionka, Poland who fought to save Jews during WW II and was the leader of at least one group of partisans.

http://www.jewishpartisans.org/mini_bio1.php?&pageName=mini+bio+short+bio+1&jus=4lbibi5n21hu1t83uvlavpkn32&vqf=F&parnum=1

http://www.amazon.com/Rather-Die-Fighting-Frank-Blaichman/dp/B003D7JTCM

http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/2011/FrankBlaichman_studyguide.pdf

1921: The Executive Committee of the American Jewish Committee met today.

1922: In Kamionka, Poland, grain merchant Chaim Israel Blajchman and Ita Lewin gave birth to Franek Blajchman, known as Frank Blaichman who became a teenage leader of a band of anti-Nazi fighters during WW II.

1922: This evening a dinner in honor of the national president and officers of the Council of Jewish Women is scheduled to held at the Standard Club as part of National Council Day when President Rose Brenner of Brooklyn addressed an afternoon meeting at the Sinai Social Center.

1922: “Professor Owen R. Lovejoy of New York” is scheduled to speak on “The Child and Progress: A Study in Modern Civilization” this evening at Temple Sinai in Chicago.

1922: In the Bronx, Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside gave birth to Grace Goodside who gained fame as   Grace Paley, author, feminist and "somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist,” She has written three highly acclaimed collections of short fiction including Later the Same Day (1985) and Enormous changes at the Last Minute(1974), as well as three poetry collections. She contributes fiction to many prominent periodicals. She has taught at City College of New York as writer-in residence, as well as at Sarah Lawrence College. Raised in a socialist family by parents who had been arrested by the Russian czarist regime, Paley's progressive stances and concern for the underdog often emerge in her writing. Her political activism as an adult began with her work with the PTA at her children's school. She has been and remains actively involved in anti-war, anti-nuclear and feminist movements. Her more controversial activities include a visit to North Vietnam in 1969 and her role in co-founding the Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of the Left Bank and Gaza in 1987. Paley has been the recipient of many grants and awards including a Senior Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in recognition of her life-time contribution to literature in 1987. In 1986, Governor Mario Cuomo named Paley as the first official New York State Writer.

1923: “In present day Hungary,” Benjamin and Rose Lenovitz gave birth to Lillian Lenovitz who gained fame as Lillian Cahn, who along with her husband Miles “founded the Coach Leatherware Company.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)

1923: Birthdate of pianist Menahem Pressler. A native of German, he immigrated to Palestine in 1939 before finally settling in the United States where, among other accomplishments, he help to found the Beaux Arts Trio.

1924: “Fresh outbreaks of anti-Semitic demonstrations by students have caused authorities to order the closing of the University of Jassy” but authorities in Bucharest checked similar demonstrations today in Bucharest.

1925: Birthdate of Bronx County, NY native and WW II Army Air Corps veteran Alvin A. Achenbaum he the holder of an MBA from Columbia who held senior positions with four major advertising agencies while founding the Achenbaum Institute of Marketing.

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=177480876

1925(24thof Kislev, 5689): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.

1925: Birthdate of Paul Greengard, the American neurologist who was awarded a share of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Arvid Carlsson of Sweden and Austrian-American Eric R. Kandel) for their discoveries concerning how drugs affect the brain and recognizing drug addiction as a brain disease. Greengard traced the biochemical reactions that occur in nerve cells in response to neurotransmitters such as dopamine. Abused stimulants, such as methamphetamine, alter nerve cells' exposure or reactions to neurotransmitters, which produce feelings of pleasure and leads to addiction. Greengard's continuing research on how cocaine and amphetamine change neurotransmitter function may make possible medications to prevent or treat the addictive effect.

 

1926(6th of Tevet, 5687): Parashat Vayigash

1927: “Thirty More Are Hurt in Rumanian Riot” published today described how “several hundred students held anti-Semitic demonstrations in Jassy yesterday and how thirty members of a congregation were beaten and severely injured” while attending Shabbat morning services.

1928: Joseph C. Hyman, the secretary of the Joint Distribution Committee who has just returned to New York this week from a trip to Berlin and Moscow said today “help must be obtained in America if the relief societies for Jews in Russian cities and towns are to remain active.”

 

1928: One thousand men and women who had paid “$100 a couple for their seats” for a dinner at the Hotel Astor tonight heard Mayor Jimmy Walker “praise the public spirited work of the Jews in New York” who have supported “the Bronx Home of the Daughters of Jacob” which provides care for the destitute aged.”

 

1929: In the Bronx, Irving Sperling, a Broadway ticket broker and Peggy Sperling, a milliner, gave birth to Donald Seymour Engel “a lawyer who helped pop stars like Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer and the Dixie Chicks wrest greater control of their careers from their record companies.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

 

1930: Two Englishman named Kirby and Macartney who have been operating in the Akaba region of the Red Sea coast, must be feeling quite a bit wealthier today after having been granted the concession “to exploit the valuable mineral deposits regarded as equal in importance to those in the Dead Sea Area.”

1931 In Camden, NJ, Rabbi Grayzel was the guest services at Friday night services during which Congregation Bethel continued the celebration of its “tenth anniversary.”

 

1931: In Providence, Rhode Island Madeline (Talamo) and David Dworkin gave birth to legal scholar and philosopher Ronald Dworkin.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/law-obituaries/9873847/Professor-Ronald-Dworkin.html

 

 

1932: “The support of more than 100 Jewish organizations representing social, religious, educational and welfare interests with a combined membership of more than 100,000 in New York City was pledged today to the Zionist movement, with which the groups had not previously been affiliated.”

1933: Following the death of the incumbent mayor, the city council named Sam Frank as Mayor of Reno, Nevada, a position held for two years while also serving as the manager of the Reno Municipal Airport. Frank was the first Jew to serve as Mayor.

 

1933: In Providence, Rhode Island, Madeline and David Dworkin gave birth to Ronald Dworkin, the legal scholar and philosopher of Jurisprudence.

 

1933: “Counsellor-At-Law” a film about poor Jew from the East Side who became a successful lawyer directed by William Wyler, produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr. and with a screenplay by Elmer Rice was released today in the United States.

 

1933: Birthdate of Louis Lentin, the Irish “theatre, film and television director’ who was the husband of Ronit Lentin, a Sabra who moved to Ireland in 1969.

1934: It was reported today that “that the American Jewish Congress” has “requested the AAU to set up a board of review to keep close check on the extent to which Germany is adhering to her proises of fair treatment to Jewish athletes in connection with the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.”

1935: One day after she had passed away, funeral services were held today for sixty-seven year old Bella (Epstein) Unterberg, the wife of philanthropist Israel Unterberg who founded the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in her home in September of 1902.

https://jwa.org/media/ywha-bella-unterberg-still-image

 

1936(27th of Kislev, 5697): Third Day of Chanukah

1936: “Pagliacci” a film adaptation of the opera produced by Max Schach, starring Richard Tauber with music by Hanns Eisler was released today in the United Kingdom

 

1936: “The annual ‘Who’s Who” issue of The American Hebrew published today listed 299 Jews and six non-Jews who had distinguished themselves for their efforts toward better understanding between Christians and Jews for citation including Supreme Court Justice William T. Collins, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Albert Einstein, civic leader Harry F. Guggenheim, producer Max Gordon, Governor Herbert H. Lehman, actor Paul Muni, actress Alla Nazimova, clubwoman Mrs. William Dick Sporborg, philanthropist Felix M. Warburg and author Edna Ferber.

 

1936: In a statement issued today, “the New York Board of Jewish Ministers…urged the support of the people of all faiths in a campaign now being carried on to aid oppressed Christian exiles from Germany.”

 

1937:At Yeshiva College, Governor Frank Murphy of Michigan speaks at the opening session of a two-day national conference of Jewish organizations which is attended by more than 600 delegates.  Dr. Bernard Revel, President of Yeshiva College also addresses the delegates.

 

1938: In West Vancouver, British Columbia Ethel (nee Frankel) and Sol Horowitz gave birth to Michael Horowitz who has the dubious distinction of being “a former lose associate of Timothy Leary” and is the father of Winona Ryder and Uri Horowitz.

 

 1939: All Jews living within General Government of Germany were held liable for two years of forced labor.

 

1940: R.A. Butler, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs told questioner in the House of Commons today that the sinking of the Jewish refugee liner Patria” resulted in 55 known deaths with 190 persons missing” out of a total of 1,711 refugees who were aboard the ship that exploded and sank in Haifa on November 25.

1941: Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.  This has to rate as one of the topic strategic blunders in history.  Under the terms of the Axis treaty, the Germans did not have to declare war on the United States.  But Hitler was so “angry” with the United States and so convinced of his own invincibility that he blundered into war with America. If it had not been for Hitler’s hubris, the United States would have found itself fighting only Japan. 

1941: A Jewish ghetto is established at Lutsk, Ukraine.

1941: Over the next two days, more than 14,000 Jews are murdered by Einsatzkommandos in Simferopol, Ukraine.

1942(3rdof Tevet, 5703): Eight Day of Chanukah (Yes, the dates for Chanukah can float depend on whether or not Kislev has 29 or 30 days)

1942(3rdof Tevet, 5703): Seventy-five year old Samuel Mark Newmark, the son of Augusta and Joseph Phillip Newmark and the husband of Carolyn C. Newmark with whom he had two children and who held a patent for “Newmark’s Pure,” a “coffee, cinnamon, tea and lemon extract used for food-flavoring purposes” passed away today.

1942: In Paris, Etienne began a multi-day auction of “the George Via Impressionists” which was attended by Nazi occupation officials who were in the business of confiscating art, much of it owned by Jews, for collections in the Reich.

1942: Jewish inmates of a labor camp at Lutsk, Ukraine, are informed by a Christian woman that the camp is about to be liquidated. The Jews quickly planned a revolt.

1943(14thof Kislev, 5704): Thirty-nine year old Ricardo Reuven Pacifici, the Italian Rabbi who refused to desert the Jews of Genoa was murdered at Auschwitz today after betrayal led to his capture by the Nazis.

1944(25th of Kislev, 5705): Chanukah

1944: As Jews kindle the candle for the second night of Chanukah, the 1,361 Jews aboard the Kasztner transport found refuge in Caux, Switzerland.  For more see Gaylen Ross’ www.killingkasztner.com

1944: Yehuda Amital, the Romanian born rabbi, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion and Minister without Portfolio, arrived in Palestine after having survived a Nazi concentration camp.

1944: The surviving 2,000 Jews of Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III, lit candles on Chanukah in remembrance of the 12,000 who perished.

1945: The Palestinian Arab Council (Higher Committee) announces opposition to the Anglo-American inquiry into Palestine. Arab League has offered cooperation.

1946:Dr. Emanuel Neumann, vice president of Zionist Organization of America says Jews of Palestine will have to rely on U.S. and armed strength since they cannot rely on the British.

1947: “Ten Jews were killed when their convoy, carrying food and water to the Etzion Bloc settlements, was ambushed just south of Bethlehem.”

1947:The British government announces its intention to terminate its responsibility under mandate on May 15, 1948.

1947: Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech-Jones of Britain appeals to UN to speed up its partition plans.

1947: In a six hour battle, Haganah troops fought off a major Arab attack on the Old City of Jerusalem, home to 2,500 Jews.

1948: The UN General Assembly established the Palestine Conciliation Commission with primary responsibility for preparing for the international governance of Jerusalem.  Of all the lame committees, panels and commissions created by the UN this had to be one of the lamest.

1948:King Farouk of Egypt and Syrian foreign minister disclose that they had warned King Abdullah of Transjordan not to annex Palestine.

1948: Elias Sasson, an Israeli representative at the ceasefire negotiations, “met Abdullah el-Tell and Shawkat al-Sati “King Abdullah's confidant and personal physician”

1949(20th of Kislev, 5710): J. Isaac Friedman, a native of Natchez, Louisiana, the son of Samuel and Caroline S. Friedman and the brother of Leon Friedman with whom he served the Louisiana State Legislature passed away today.

1950(2nd of Tevet, 5711): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1950(2nd of Tevet, 5711): Seventy-two year old Louisville, KY native Herbert Marcus, Sr., the husband of Minnie Marcus and father of Harold Stanley,  who with his brother A.L. Neiman found Niemen-Marcus Department Store in 1907 passed away today in Dallas.

https://lakewood.advocatemag.com/2011/11/08/the-dallas-house-of-westlake-avenue-was-built-for-herbert-marcus/

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/12/14/317445162.pdf

1951(12th of Kislev, 5712): Sixty-eight year old University of Pennsylvania graduate Morton F. Leopold, the Duluth, MN born son of  Henry F. and Caroline NIrdlinger Leopold and  author of “Lining Up Our Silent Salesman” passed away today after which he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported after the festive Knesset inauguration ceremony, President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi was made a Freeman of Jerusalem. The new president signed pardons for 25 prisoners, all of whom had nearly completed their sentences.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that 184 new students had been admitted to the new Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School. The majority were Israelis who had previously studied medicine abroad and graduates of Israeli secondary schools.

1952:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the Post’s Toy Fund started the distribution of Hanukkah toys and sweets at over 100 ma’abarot and new-immigrant centers throughout the country.

1955: Operation Olive Leaves which was designed to put an end to Syrian shelling attacks on Israelis in around the Sea of Galilee began this evening with an artillery barrage “elements of the 890th Paratroop Battalion, augmented by units of Aharon Davidi's 771 Reserve Paratroop Battalion as well as units from the Nahal and Givati Brigades commenced” “a complex two pronged attack” “on Syrian emplacements along Kinneret’s northeastern shoreline.”

1957: “Wild is the Wind” directed by George Cukor, produced by Hall B. Wallis, written by Arnold Schulman and with a score by Dimitri Tiomkin was released today in the United States.

1957: Birthdate of Orly Silbersatz Bania, the Israeli singer and actress who has won two Ophir Awards.

1957: “Peyton Place,” a movie version of the novel directed by Mark Robson, produced by Jerry Wald and with music by Franz Waxman premiered in Camden, two days before being shown in the rest of the United States.

1958(29thof Kislev, 5719): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1958(29thof Kislev, 5719): Eight-six year old London born Sephardic Jew and author Samuel Levy Bensusan, the husband of Marian Lallah Prichard who served as Press Chief of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and “is best known for the 24 books and 6 plays that he wrote about the Rural marshland area of Eastern Essex surrounding Mote Cottage” passed away today in “a nursing home at St Leonard's on Sea in Sussex.”

1958: “J.B.” a three-act play based on the Book of Job with sets designed by Boris Aronson and which won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1959 Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Direction premiered today at the ANTA Playhouse in New York City.

1960(22ndof Kislev, 5721): Eighty-five year old “Mrs. Estelle May Affelder,” the widow of Louis J. Affelder, the U. Pittsburgh educated civil engineer, “assistant division manager of the American Bridge Co and civic leader” who was “a member of the National Federation of Settlements” and the mother of two daughters and one son – Paul B. Affelder, the music critic of the Brooklyn Eagle – passed away today in Rye, NY.

1961:  Melvin Calvin, the son of Jewish immigrants was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies related to the process of photosynthesis.

1961: Adolf Eichmann was found guilty.

1963(25thof Kislev, 5724): Chanukah observed during the national mourning for John F. Kennedy.

1964: In Jerusalem, Leonard and Ricki Waldman gave birth to author Ayelet Waldman, the wife of Michael Chabon.

1967(13thof Kislev, 5728): Eighty-four year old Sir Adolphe Abrahams, the brother of Harold Abrahams (of Chariots of Fire fame) and husband of Adrienne Walsh who was the medical adviser to the International Athletic Board and the British Olympic team as well as president of the British Association of Sports and Medicine passed away today.

1968:A French adaptation of Man of “La Mancha” with a book by Dale Wasserman and music by Mitch Leigh premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées today.

1970: Premiere of “The Aristocats” a Disney animated film with music by Richard and Robert Sherman.

1970:  Birthdate of actress Jennifer Conelly.  She won a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the film A Beautiful Mind.

1971:  The Libertarian Party of the United States was formed.  According to The Libertarian Party News, Irv Rubin, leader of the Jewish Defense League, signed up with the party in 2000.

1972: In New York, premiere of Man of La Mancha a film adaptation of the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman, with music by Mitch Leigh, directed by Arthur Hiller and co-produced by Hiller and Saul Chaplin.

1973: After premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, “The Hourglass Sanatorium” the movie version of the novel by Bruno Schultz was released today in Poland.

1974(27th of Kislev, 5735): In Tel Aviv, one person was murdered and 66 others were injured when a terrorist set off a bomb in movie theatre.

1976(19th of Kislev, 5737): Sixty-seven year old Major-General Sir Henry Joseph "Harry" d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, 2nd Baronet the decorated war hero who severed as an MP alongside his younger brother James passed away today.

1977(1st of 5738): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1977(1st of 5738): Eighty-two year old Isidore Pick, the husband of Corinne Frada and father of Albert and Gladys Pick passed away today in Chicago.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that President Ephraim Katzir proclaimed the opening of the 30th anniversary of Israel's independence.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said that the preliminary talks between Egypt and Israel should be expanded to foreign ministers’ level. Sadat warned the PLO that their recent, hard-line Tripoli conference canceled the resolution of the 1974 Rabat talks which called for peace negotiations. This, in Sadat's opinion, could affect PLO status as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that President Jimmy Carter said he would be willing to come to the Middle East to support the current peace initiatives. Cairo sources revealed that King Hessian of Morocco had played an active role in promoting Sadat’s historic visit to Israel.

1978: NBC broadcast the miniseries “A Woman Called Moses” produced by Henry Jaffe and Michael Jaffe today.

1979:Funeral services were held today for Joseph Wohl, founder and president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America’s Universal Brotherhood Movement” who “for 27 years had been a member of the Seminary’s Board of Directors and in that capacity had chaired major committees in the areas of finance, development, real estate and building.”

1979(21stof Kislev, 5740): Sixty-one year old historian and rabbi Bertram Korn who led Congregation Keneseth Israel in Philadelphia for thirty years while rising to the rank of Rear Admiral while serving as a chaplain in the United States Navy passed away today In Israel.

1980(4thof Tevet, 5741): Eighty-four year old Belarus native Rabbi Gershon Hadas who was one of the organizers of the Rabbinical Association in Kansas City in 1939 and the husband of Anne Isenberg with whom he had two children, passed away today after which he was buried in the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Raytown, MO.

1981: Release date of “Buddy Buddy” a film “loaded with Jews” including director Bill Wilder, co-star Walter Matthau and writer I.A.L. Diamond. The film was based on a screenplay by French writer Francis Verber whose father was Jewish.

1981: U.S. premiere of “Pennies From Heaven” directed by Herbert Ross with music by Marvin Hamlisch.

1982(25thof Kislev, 5743): Chanukah

1982: CBS broadcast the last episode of “Gilligan’s Planet,” a cartoon show created by Sherwood Schwartz

1984: “Airlift to Israel Is Reported Taking Thousands of Jews from Ethiopia” published today described the resettlement of Ethiopia Jews in Israel saving them from famine, war and prejudice.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/11/world/airlift-to-israel-is-reported-taking-thousands-of-jews-from-ethiopia.html?pagewanted=print

1984(17thof Kislev, 5745): Eighty-four year old David Glick, the husband of  Rose Shanis Glick and the father of Stephen Jack Glick passed away today after which he was buried in Woodlawn, MD.

1984: The funeral of Luther Adler, a stage and screen actor who starred in ''Fiddler on the Roof'' on Broadway, was scheduled to take place this afternoon at the Riverside Chapel in New York City

1984: German-born American literary scholar, poet, and writer of children’s stories, Oskar Seidlin, passed away

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Seidlin

1986:  The Jewish National Funds Annual Tree of Life Awards are held atSheraton Premiere Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

 

1988: In an article published today entitled “On the Red Sea, Israel’s Answer to Key West,” reports that Eilat is to Israel what Key West is to the United States - a hot, lazy, bohemian and (to be honest) tawdry little resort town at the nation's southern tip, physically and emotionally far removed from the commotion to the north. Eilat has no Arab community and no significant religious population, facts the city's boosters like to point out. ''This is a resort area; the religious, they like to stay in the center of the country,'' Mayor Avi Hochman says. That removes any possibility for the two greatest sources of tension here - Arab versus Jew, religious versus secular. ''We're tolerant here,'' said Rina Maor, head of the state tourism office. ''If people want to go to the synagogue it's O.K.; if people want to go topless it's O.K.'' Most female visitors seem to choose the latter option.” (As reported by Joel Brinkley)

 

 

1988: The New York Times featured reviews of the following books written by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers which were recently released in paperback edition including Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywoodby Leonard J. Leff and Café Nevo by Barbara Rogan which is set in a Tel Aviv bistro during the war in Lebanon.

 

1990: Dr. John Strugnell, a Harvard divinity professor whose verbal attacks on Jews, Judaism and Israel included statements describing Judaism as “racist,” and “not a higher religion” and saying that that the state of Israel “is founded on a lie” led to his dismissal as chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the celebrated documents illuminating the evolution of Judaism and the origin of Christianity, scholars and others close to the controversy said today.

 

 

1991: “Hook” film tied to the tale of Peter Pan directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Dustin Hoffman in the title role was released in the United States today.

 

1991(4th of Tevet, 5752): Robert Q. Lewis passed away at the age of 71.  Born Robert Goldberg, this son of Jewish immigrants gained fame on radio and television primarily as a game show host. His dark black glasses and gravelly voice provided him with two distinctive trademarks.

 

1991(4thof Tevet, 5752): Seventy-one year old movie and television producer Mathew Rapf, the Dartmouth College graduate and Navy veteran who worked on such television hits as “Kojak” and “Ben Casey” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/18/obituaries/matthew-rapf-producer-71.html

 

 

1992: U.S. premiere of “A Few Good Men” the film based on Aaron Sorkin’s play of the same name directed by Rob Reiner with music by Marc Shaiman.

 

1992: U.S. premiere of “Forever Young” written by J.J. Abrams with music by Jerry Goldsmith.

 

1992: The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany issued a statement detailing the criteria for eligibility of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution for German Government compensation under an agreement concluded in November. (As reported by David Binder)

1994(8thof Tevet, 5755): Eighty-six year old Brooklyn born and Hunter College alum Lillian Poses, one of “the first women to graduate from NYU Law school and the wife of Jack I Poses passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/13/obituaries/lillian-poses-86-new-deal-lawyer-and-philanthropist.html

 

 

1995: In “Thousands Pay Tribute to Rabin And Listen to Appeals for Unity” published today Carey Goldberg described the rally at Madison Square Garden that featured speakers from the U.S. and Israel including Yitzchak Rabin’s widow, Leah.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/11/nyregion/thousands-pay-tribute-to-rabin-and-listen-to-appeals-for-unity.html?ref=leahrabin

1996(1st of Tevet, 5757): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Chanukah

1996(1st of Tevet, 5757): Ninety year old Seattle born and John Hopkins undergrad Louis L. Jaffe, the Harvard trained lawyer who clerked for Justice Brandeis and taught for years at his alma mater passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/15/us/louis-l-jaffe-90-noted-legal-scholar.html

 

 

1996: Presentation of the 14th Annual Harold U. Ribalow Prize

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBygO5LCf14

 

 

1997:  Neil Simon’s "Sunshine Boys" opens at Lyceum Theater in New York City.

 

1998: After having premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival “A Simple Plan,” the movie version of the novel of the same name directed by Sam Raimi and music by Danny Elfman was released today.

 

 

1998: “The Parent Trap” an inane comedy directed by Nancy Meyers who also co-authored the script was released in the United Kingdom.

 

1998: “Jack Frost” a comedy produced by Irving Azoff and Mark Canton, with music by Trevor Rabin and featuring Eli Marienthal as “Spencer” was released in the United States today.

 

1999(2nd of Tevet, 5760): Eighth Day of Chanukah marking the last time the holiday is celebrated in the 20th century.

 

2000(14th of Kislev, 5761): Seventy year old Don Devlin (born Donald R. Siegel) who made the transition from actor to writer/producer whose most famous effort was the screenwriter “Harry and Walter Go to New York” starring two Jewish actors – James Caan and Elliot Gould.

2001: The DVD of “The Mists of Avalon,” a mini-series co-starring Juliana Margulies was released today.

 

2000(14th of Kislev, 5761): Eight-seven year old N. Richard Nash (born Nathan Richard Nusbaum) the author, playwright and screenwriter whose work included “The Rainmaker” passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/dec/23/local/me-4001

http://www.nrichardnash.com/

 

 

2002: Barry Strauss published “What, You Consider Ant-Semitism? How Very One-Sided” which provides an interesting view of Jewish treatment on college campuses.

2002:  In Bucharest, anInternational Symposium entitled "Jewish identity and anti-Semitism in Central and South Eastern Europe sponsored by the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities, the "Goldstein-Goren" Hebrew Studies Center, Bucharest University and Bucharest History Museum came to an end.

2003(16thof Kislev, 5764): “Three people died and up to 18 were injured today in an explosion at a money-changer's shop in a crowded Tel Aviv business district” which police attribute to local criminals and not terrorists.

2004(28thof Kislev, 5765): Parshat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

2004: The Sixth Annual Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival features a screening of the film שיחה מקומית/ Local Call/ Quittez Pas!

2005: In a reversal of what happened during the Hitler people period, German church leaders spoke out in defense of the Jewish state.

2005: In the tops-turvy world of Israeli politics, Shaul Mofaz ended his attempt to lead Likud, left the party and joined Kadima, the new political party started by Ariel Sharon.

 

2006: End of a two day conference sponsored by the government of Iran designed to support the Iranian contention that the systematic killing of some 6 million Jews a "myth" and "exaggerated."

 

2006: Despite David Stern’s support for a new basketball, the NBA announced today that it would in fact switch back to the leather ball starting on January 1, 2007

 

2007: Six days of performances including productions of “The Jester” and “The Mutual Note” come to an end at The Orna Porat Theater in Tel Aviv.

2007: Haaretz reported on a study that finds Maine has the highest intermarriage rate in the United States.

2007(2ndof Tevet, 5768): 7th Day of Chanukah

2007(2ndof Tevet, 5768): Eighty-four year old theatrical agent and producer Freddie Fields passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/arts/13fields.html

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/people/2007-12-12-freddie-fields-obit_N.htm

2007: After a little more than a month, Robert Rubin stepped down as acting Chairman of Citigroup.

2007: David “D'Or released Live Concert, an album for which he composed most of the songs including "Kiss from a Rose" (in English), "Sri Lanka" (instrumental), and an Arabic song

2007: The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution proposed by Israel. The UN passage of an Israeli resolution on agriculture is the first time a nonpolitical Israeli resolution has been adopted by the international body, and signifies a breakthrough in Israeli-UN history.

 

2008: In one of those anomalies that is unique to the American cultural scene, Jewish composer Marvin Hamlisch conducts the National Symphony Orchestra’s Pops Happy Holidays concert in Washington, D.C.

 

2008:Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States, chats with journalist Daniel Schorr, whose career has spanned decades at both CBS News and National Public Radio, about his recent collection of essays, Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium, as part of the "American Conversation" series at the National Archives. Schorr holds the unique distinction of being the only American reporter to have been kicked out of the Soviet Union and been on Richard Nixon’s enemies list.

 

2008: Bernard Madoff, who founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on alleged fraud,

 

2008 (14th Kislev, 5769): Robert Chandler,a Creator of the ’60 Minutes’ Format, passed away at the age of 80.

 

2008(14th of Kislev, 5769): Forty-eight year old “voice actress” Maddie Blaustein passed away unexpectedly from “acute stomach failure.”

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSmcid=47541371&GRid=85663250&

 

2008: In response to the humanitarian crisis in Postville, Iowa the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines establishes Postville Relief Fund to which concerned Jews and non-Jews can send contributions at Postville Relief Fund, Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, 910 Polk Boulevard, Des Moines, IA   50312.

2008: Today, Australian cricketer Michael Klinger, known as “the Jewish Bradman”  “posted his highest individual score in one day cricket, with an unbeaten 133 off just 128 balls” which “guided South Australia to victory in their high-scoring match against the Tasmania Tigers at the Adelaide Oval.”

2009(24th of Kislev, 5770): Kindle the first light of Chanukah in the evening

2009(24th of Kislev, 5770): Eighty-four year old New York City native Katharine Scherman Rosin, the daughter of Harry and Bernadine Scherman and husband of Alxel Rosin the Swarthmore trained author and editor at “Book of the Month Club” passed away today.

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=137434177

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=katharine-rosin&pid=137434177

 

2009: As Jews light the first candle for Chanukah, Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, hosts its annual Chanukah Pot Luck Dinner and Latke extravaganza.

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival features a screening of “The Imported Bridegroom” and “Black Over White.”

2009:President Barak Obama and first lady Michelle Obama extended warm wishes Friday to Jews around the world who are observing Hanukkah.

2010:Daniel Burman is scheduled to receive the WJFF Visionary Award at the 21stWashington Jewish Film Festival. A screening of Lost Embrace is scheduled to be part of the special ceremony. The award “recognizes and pays tribute to courage, creativity and insight in presenting the diversity of the Jewish experience through the moving image.”

2010: “Expectations,” a piece of video art by Shahar Marcus is scheduled to be shown at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn.

2010: In Columbus, Ohio, Congregation Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host Minyan Chadash,an alternative service featuring lots of singing, congregant participation, interactive learning, and a sense of Shabbat ruach! 

2010(4th of Tevet, 5771):Mark Madoff, the older of Bernard L. Madoff’s two sons, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment today, the second anniversary of the day his father was arrested for running a gigantic Ponzi scheme that shattered thousands of lives around the world.  “Mark Madoff took his own life today,” Martin Flumenbaum Mark Madoff’s lawyer, said in a statement today. “This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy.”  One city official said that the first notification, via 911, was at 7:27.18, this morning, and the call was for a, “possible suicide.” The call came from a fourth-floor, private house at 158 Mercer Street – a 13-story building.

2010(4th of Tevet, 5771):A 30-year-old Israeli man was pronounced dead today after being hospitalized with swine flu. The man, a resident of east Jerusalem, was checked into the Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center on Thursday suffering from severe flu symptoms, after a blood test revealed the potent flu virus strain was present in his blood stream. The man was quarantined by hospital personnel while he was treated intensively for the disease, but despite their best efforts, the man passed today.

2010: Rabbi Chaim Brovender will discuss: "Why Couldn't Yosef 'Hold Back' (Hitapek)?" and talk about his activities at ATID and WebYeshiva at a shiur and reunion in Silver Spring, MD.

2010: Diane Kaplan showcases material from her latest album, Like an Olive Tree, at the Jacob’s Ladder Festival at its Nof Ginosar venue by the Kinerret.

 

2011: Temple Judah is scheduled to host it annual Chanukah Potluck Dinner where they will enjoy Latkes prepared under the supervision Linn County Latke Maven Brian Cohen

 

2011: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Jerusalem: A Biography” by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

 

2011: Closing night of the 22nd Washington Jewish Film Festival.

 

2011:One person was injured in southern Lebanon today when a rocket apparently fired towards Israel hit a Lebanese border village, security sources in Lebanon said.

 

 

2011:Iran's ruling clerics could use nuclear weapons to strengthen their grip on power and the world must urgently impose crippling sanctions to prevent them from building such arms, Israel's defense minister said today.

 

2012: “Oded the Wanderer” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival

 

2012: Vanessa Paloma and the Lev-Yulzari Duo are scheduled to perform at Congregation Shearith Israel as part of the Sephardic Music Festival.

 

2012: Kevin Youkilis signed a one year contract with the New York Yankees for $12 million to play third base.

 

2012: “Punk Jews,” the “documentary film that follows an underground Jewish community expressing their identity in unconventional ways that challenge stereotypes and break down barriers” is scheduled to have its world premiere at the JCC of Manhattan

 

2012(27th of Kislev): Yahrzeit of Harvey David Luber who will be remembered as long as people laugh and take pictures.

 

2012:The IDF has acquired tens of thousands of doses of a drug used to combat nerve agent chemical poisoning and will distribute them to all combat medics in the coming months, according to a report in the new issue of the army’s Bamahane weekly magazine

 

 

2012: Israeli students from all sectors of society registered dramatic increases in test scores in all subjects, the Education Ministry announced today.

 

2013: The Union for Reform Judaism Biennial is scheduled to open in San Diego, CA

 

2013: “The Best Offer” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: Les “Wexner was awarded the Women's Wear Daily Beauty Inc. Visionary award”

 

2013(8thof Tevet, 5774): Eighty-four year old Barbara (Weidman) Branden, the novelist, author of The Passion of Ayn Rand and wife of Nathaniel Branden, the lover of Ayn Rand, with whom she wrote Who is Ayn Rand? passed away today.

 

 

2013: The Lawrence Family JCC is scheduled to the opening reception for “smART: The Art of Jewish Educators.”

 

2013: “Heavy amounts of rain drenched the Galilee, the Sharon region and the Gush Dan…cause Lake Kinneret’s water level to rise by centimiere this morning (As reported by Sharon Udasin, LIdar Grave-Lazar and Ben Hartman)

 

2013: Ian Paul Livingston, Baron Livingston of Parkhead began serving as Minister of State for

Trade and Investment

 

2013: According to the Wall Street Journal and Israel’s Channel 2 “former Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer is the top choice to become vice chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank” which would mean that the two top slots at the Fed would be held by Jews.

 

2014: Scholar Eddy Portnoy is scheduled to team up with puppet theater company Great Small Works to present a reinterpretation of the scripts of Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler, who in the 1920s formed Modicut, a bitingly satirical Yiddish puppet theater troupe as part of YIVO’s Artists and Scholars Series.

 

2014: LBI is scheduled to present “From the Shtetl to the Lecture Hall: Jewish Women and Cultural Exchange.”

 

2014: “France’s upper house of parliament today urged the government to recognize Palestine as a state, following a similar and highly symbolic vote in the lower house.

 

 

2014: “The Palestinian Authority will freeze security cooperation with Israel in the wake of the death of a senior Palestinian official after a clash with Israeli troops, a top aide to PA President Mahmoud Abbas said today.”

 

 

2015(29thof Kislev, 5776): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2015: In Coralville, IA, Alex Cicelsky: "The Pied Piper of Sustainable Living in Israel" Founder Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan is scheduled to talk about Jews and Arabs collaborating together during an Oneg Program at Congregation Agudas Achim.

2015: The second season of “Transparent” starring Jeffrey Tambor premiered today.

2015: Harry Pregerson assumed the status of Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today.

2015: “When President Reuven Rivlin met” today “with leaders of America’s three main Jewish denominations at an event hosted by UJA-Federation of New York” “both Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Union of Reform Judaism and Rabbi Steven Wernick of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism called on Israel to grant equal rights to non-Orthodox Jews on matters concerning marriage, divorce, conversion and worship at the Western Wall.” (As reported by Uriel Heilman)

 

2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax, The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu by Neill Lochery, A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East by George J. Mitchell and Alon Sachar, Looking For “The Stranger”: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic by Alice Kaplan and Judas by Amos Oz

 

2016: The Symphony Chorus of New Orleans is scheduled to host a performance of Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus at Temple Sinai with Cantor Joel Colman, Betsy Ushkrat, Monika Cosson and Jonathan Yarrington appearing as the featured soloists for the work.

 

2016: At Iowa City, former Congressman and U. I. Law Professor Jim Leach who in the 1990’s “held four years of unprecedented hearings on Holocaust theft issues after new evidence identified Swiss banks as intermediaries for Germany during World War II, and how they benefited from Nazi policies” is scheduled to lecture on "Where Greed Reigned: An Inquiry Into a Shadowy Corner of the Holocaust."

 

2016: “Anigina Pectoris” a satire “about an Israeli Defense Minister who finds himself in need of a heart transplant” is scheduled to be performed at Symphony Space.

2016: B’nai Emunah Congregation, Tulsa’s Conservative Jewish synagogue, yearlong celebration of its centennial is scheduled to come to an end today.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/religion/b-nai-emunah-celebrating-th-anniversary/article_12b570da-8135-5673-9d6f-0e88a1812a2e.html

2016(11thof Kislev, 5777): Eighty-two year old record executive Bob Krasnow passed away today. (As reported by Ben Sisario)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/arts/music/bob-krasnow-revitalizer-of-elektra-records-dies-at-82.html?_r=0

 

2016: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present the Annual Chanukah concert featuring Yiddish folk and theatre songs, a Chanukah sing-along and “a special story read by Emmy-Award winning actress Ellen Gould.”

2016: Ninety-six year old Marion Pritchard, a Dutch national who risked her life to save Jews during the Holocaust passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/world/europe/marion-pritchard-rescuer-of-jews.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/marion-pritchard-dutch-rescuer-of-jewish-children-during-the-holocaust-dies-at-96/2016/12/20/d5ca50e0-c61b-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_obit-pritchard-0950pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.4c3fd46ca522

http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/others/marion-pritchard-dutch-savior/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marion-pritchard

 

2016: At the 56th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, “celebrity chef Pati Jinich of Pati's Mexican Table (WETA) is scheduled to speak about her Jewish-Mexican roots and her new book, Mexican Today: New and Rediscovered Recipes for Contemporary Kitchens.

 

2017: “The submission period for the 2019 Natan Book Award” “which is run in partnership with the Jewish Book Council” is scheduled to open today.

 

2017:  Twenty-seven year old Akayed Ullah, a resident of Brooklyn “of Bangladeshi origin” detonated a bomb “in a tunnel connecting the Times Square subway station with the Midtown Manhattan transit hub during this morning’s rush hour” acted because he was upset by actions taken by the IDF in Gaza - action taken in response to terrorists attacks from the Hamas controlled enclave.

2017(23rdof Kislev, 5778):Eighty-four year old Vera Katz who went from fleeing Hitler’s Germany to serving three terms as Mayor of Portland, Oregon, passed away today.

 

 

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Franz Kafka whose works included The Metamorphosis and The Trial continues today.

2018(3rdof Tevet, 5779): Ninety-two year old Alter Weiner a Nazi concentration camp survivor died today in Hillsboro, OR after being “struck and killed by a car while crossing a street near his home.” (As reported by Cnaan Liphshiz)

 

 

2018: In Ann Arbor, The Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan is scheduled to host “Ant-Jewish Pogroms in Lithuania under the Tsars.”

https://lsa.umich.edu/judaic/news-events/all-events.detail.html/53368-13349565.html

 

2018: The Jstyle Winter Premiere Party is scheduled to take place in Shaker Heights, OH.

https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07efs5jdhw82e4da98&oseq=&c=&ch=

2019: “The Knesset is expected to dissolve tonight, confirming the failure of both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to form a governing coalition following the inconclusive September election.” (As reported by TOI)

2019: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host Maggie Schreiner is the Manager of Archives and Special Collections at the Brooklyn Historical Society who will lecture on “Personal Archiving – Preserving You Digital Memoires.

2019: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to co-sponsor “An Evening of Music and Song From Al-Andalus and North Africa.”

2019: In Deerfield and Chicago, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host “What Were Watching? Americans’ Responses to Nazism through Cinema, Radio and Media.”

2019: In San Francisco, the Commonwealth Club is scheduled to host Arye Carmon, founder of the Israel Democracy Institute who talks about Israel’s struggles and his new book Building Democracy on Sand: Israel without a Constitution.

2020(25thof Kislev, 7801) First Day of Chanukah

2020: Congregation B’nai Torah is scheduled to present online a Shabbat Hanukkah Family Service.

2020: SFJazz’s “Fridays at Five” series is scheduled to present a concert recorded in 2015, with the band playing music from their album “Happy Joyous Hanukkah

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host virtual Shabbat services with Rabbi Feivel Strauss and Cantorial Soloist Abbie Strauss.

2020: The National Museum of American Jewish, for which Mitchell Levin is an official content provider, is scheduled to close its Museum Store which has been open since November 27.

2020: Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled to broadcast “Winter Journey” featuring Schubert’s’ great song cycle sung in Hebrew and translated by Ido Ariel

 

This Day, December 12, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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 December 12

 

456 BCE (1st of Tevet, 3305): Ezra opened convocation on the problem of intermarriage.

 

627: A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeats Emperor Khosrau II's Persian forces, commanded by General Rhahzadh at the Battle of Nineveh. This meant that The Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire regained control of the Middle East, including Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Heraclius, the Byzantine Emperor did not keep his promise to his Jewish allies to give them control of David’s City and its environs.

 

1098: During the First Crusade, Christian forces breach the walls of Ma'arrat al-Numan in Syria and massacre about 20,000 inhabitants. Some view this is as a “dress rehearsal” of the massacres that took place when the Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem and slaughtered the Jewish and Moslem inhabitants

 

1204(20th of Tevet, 4965):  Maimonides passes away. His name says it all.  Nothing that can be said here would do him justice.   Maimonides followed the Rabbinic injunction that a man should have a job and study Torah unlike some who today insist that their “studying’ exempts from having to earn a living. “From Moses to Moses, there as none like Moses”  

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/75991/jewish/Maimonides-His-Life-and-Works.htm

 

1254: Alexander IV, the prelate “responsible for launching the Inquisition in France” began his papacy today.

1347: Today, Charles IV sold “his royal rights concerning the Jews: to the /count of Ottingen.

 

1474:Isabella crowns herself queen of Castile and Aragon in what will become a milestone on the road to end of the Jewish Community in Spain in 1492. Ironically two of the people who would help her come to power and/or consolidate her crown were Don Isaac Abravanel and Don Abraham Senior.

1479: The Jews were expelled from Schlettstadt, Alsace by Emperor Frederick III

1484: At Soncino, Italy, Joseph Solomon Soncino printed the first copy of “Beḥinat ha-'Olam” (The Examination of the World) by Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi a Jewish poet, physician and philosopher. Born in 1270 at Béziers, he was the son of Abraham Profiat, another French-Jewish poet. He passed away in 1340. Beḥinat ha-'Olam (The Examination of the World), called also by its first words, "Shamayim la-Rom" (Heaven's Height), a didactic poem written after the banishment of the Jews from France (1306), to which event reference is made in the eleventh chapter. The 37 “chapter” poem concludes with an expression of Bedersi’s admiration of Maimonides.

1505: In Ceske Budejovice, Czechoslovakia, ten Jews were tortured and killed after being accused by a local shepherd of killing a local girl. Years later on his deathbed, the shepherd confessed that he made up the whole story.

1524:  Pope Clement VII approved the organization of a Jewish Community in Rome

1561: According to a document of this date, Nahum Pesakohovich, a Jew living in Pinsk filed a complaint against Grigori Grichia, the estate owner in the district of Pinsk for failure to honor the terms of their mortgage agreement.

1574: Selim II, Ottoman Sultan, passed away. During his reign, Selim appointed Joseph Nassi as the Duke of Naxos.  He appointed his physician Solomon Nathan Eskenazi to serve as ambassador in Venice where he participated in negotiations for a treaty between the Turks and the Spanish. When Turkish forces took Cyprus, Selim had five hundred Jewish families settle on the island.  This was a way of improving the economic environment on the island while ensuring the presence of a loyal local population.

1586: Stephen Bathory the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, “who was the friend of the Jews” living in Grodno “passed away today.

1626: Inquisitional authorities arrested Francisco Maldonado de Silva, after his sister (a devout Catholic) turned him because he told her he believed in Judaism, as their father had. His passion for Judaism came after studying a book written in 1391 by the Bishop of Burgos. The Bishop, a convert Jews who was born as Solomon Halevi, wrote the book to defend the Catholic faith. Halevi's words put doubt into Francisco's mind about Catholicism, and brought him closer to Judaism-the religion Francisco's father had already been following. In the end Francisco went to his death January 23, 1639 for his faith in Judaism.

1653: The Short Parliament was dissolved today leaving Oliver Cromwell, who held the title of Protector of the Realm, as the king-like ruler of England.  This may have actually helped Manasseh ben Israel in his effort to gain readmission of the Jews since Cromwell, unlike some of his allies, actively supported the Jews attempts to return to the British Isles.

1655: A special Conference which had been established by Cromwell and the Council of State to consider all of the issues pertaining to the Jews and their readmission to England which had already decided “that there was no law which forbade the Jews’ return into England” today continued to consider during a second session held today the question, if it be lawful to allow the Jews to live in England, “upon what terms it meet to receive them?”

1670: Today the Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam acquired the site to build a synagogue

1762(26th of Kislev, 5523): Second Day of Chanukah

1762: In Philadelphia, Mordecai Moses Mordecai and Zipporah "de Lyon" Mordecai gave birth to their first daughter Esther who became Esther Mordecai Russell when she married Dr. Philip Moses Russell in 1780.

1785: Today, King Frederick II suspended the legal action that had been undertaken to punish Joseph Abraham Stelicki for converting from Catholicism to Judaism which was a capital crime.

1787: Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Religious qualifications for holding state and local office were abolished in 1790.  Jews had been part of Pennsylvania even before the coming of William Penn.  The community had its start with Jewish traders who operated in what would be the southeastern corner of the soon to be founded colony.  Mikveh Israel (Hope of Israel) the Philadelphia’s first synagogue was established in the 1740’s.  When an enlarged Mikveh Israel, under the leadership of Gershom Mendes Seixas was dedicated in 1782, a wide variety of public officials attended.  Jews were earlier settlers of Lancaster where a Jewish burial plot was established in 1747.  The size of the Jewish population was exaggerated due to that fact that the English confused Yiddish speaking Jews with the German speaking Pennsylvania Dutch.

1789(24th of Kislev, 5550): Parshat Vayeshev; the first Chanukah candle is kindled for the first time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1794(20th of Kislev, 5555): Isaac De La Motta, the husband of Sarah De La Motta, with whom he had six children, passed away today in Charleston, SC.

1800(25th of Kislev, 5561): First Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1802: “Eight-year old Abraham Bar Naphtali” as buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

 

1805: Birthdate of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, a collection of whose papers are found at Brandeis University.

http://brandeisspecialcollections.blogspot.com/2011/10/william-lloyd-garrison-collection.html

 

1806: Birthdate of Rabbi Isaac Lesser, one of the most important leaders of the 19thcentury American-Jewish community whose accomplishments included completing the first translation of the Bible from Hebrew in English published in the United States.

1809: Lewis Gompertz married Ann Hollaman in London today.

1821: Birthdate of Gustave Flaubert, the French author whose works included “Herodias” set in the court of Antipater in which the author writes “The Jews were tired of Herod’s idolatrous ways.”

1825(2ndof Tevet, 5586): Eighth Day of Chanukah observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.

1827: Eliezer ben Moshe HaCohen married Yacht bat Moses Israel at the Western Synagogue today.

1827: Abraham Moise of Charleston, SC, married Caroline Agnes Moses, “the third daughter of Isaac C. Moses.

1831: In Jamaica, a tankard was presented to Moses Delgado in recognition of his work on behalf of Jewish rights.

1832” Birthdate of Sophie Schriesheimer Waldstein, the German born wife of Henry Waldstein with whom she had four children.

1832: Birthdate of Abraham Carel Wertheim, the native of Amsterdam whose role as banker, politician and leader of the Jewish community can be seen in his partnership in Wertheim & Compertz, membership in the Dutch Senate and “presidency of the Jewish community.”

1837: Birthdate of Rabbi Moritz Framer, the native of Rybnik, Prussian Silesia who wrote numerous articles and served as the editor of a Jewish literary magazine while leading congregations in Thorn and Magdeburg.

1838(25thof Kislev, 5599): Chanukah

1838: Three days after he had passed away, 73 year old “Plymouth wine merchant” Samuel Hart was buried today in the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1841: Jacob Frankfort arrived in Los Angeles as part of the Rowland-Workman party.  Frankfort, one of the earliest Jewish settlers in New Mexico had been living in Taos when he hurriedly left town because authorities believed he was part of a group of Texans seeking to take control of the territory.  He and some of his confederates joined a scientific expedition and traveled with them to California. 

1851:  “Interesting Hebrew Relic” published today reported that in Washington, DC, Colonel Lea, the Commissioner of Indian affairs has in his possession “four small rolls or strips of parchment, closely packed in the small compartments of a little box or locket of about an inch cubical content.  On these parchments are written, in a style of unsurpassed excellence, and far more beautiful than print, portions of the Pentateuch, to be worn as frontlets and intended as stimulants to the memory and moral sense.”  The item was brought to Washington from the Pottawatomie Reservation on the Kansas River by a man named Dr. Lykins. Lykins got them from a member of the tribe name Pategwe who had gotten them from his aged grandmother.  Originally there had been two boxes, but one of them had been lost long ago when the Indians were crossing some river rapids.  The Indians believed that the lost box contained a description of the creation of the world.  Nobody seems to know how the boxes first came into the possession of the Indians.  They cannot remember a time when they did not have them in their possession.  The article concludes, “The question occurs here, does not this circumstance give some color to the idea, long and extensively entertained, that the Indians of our continent are or less Jewish in their origin?”

 

1853: Rabbi Raphall delivered the last in a series of lectures on “The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews” in New York City.

 

1855(3rd of Tevet, 5616): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1857(25th of Kislev, 5618): First Day of Chanukah is observed for the first time during the Presidency of James Buchannan, the chief executive who was willing to cave in to secession and the destruction of the United States of America.

 

1858: In Cleveland, OH, Samuel and August Lasker gave birth to Henry Lasker who settled in Little Rock, AR where he was buried.

1860(28th of Kislev, 5621): Fourth Day of Chanukah observed as South Carolinians are going forward with their plans to destroy the United States of America.

1861: In Houston, TX, Bennet and Bertha Cowen gave birth to Northwestern University trained lawyer Israel Cowen, the Cook County Judge and Democratic Party member who served as President of District No. 6 of B’nai B’rith and “a member of the executive committee of the Hebrew Sabbath-School Union.”

1861:At today’s regular meeting of the Board of Councilmen the report in favor of donating $30,000 to the Hebrew Benevolent Association was finally adopted.

1862:  Twenty-eight year old Louis Manly Emanuel who had graduated as M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1860 went from Assistant Surgeon to Surgeon while serving with 82nd Regiment during the Civil War.

1862: During the Civil War, 19 year old Richmond born Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman, the resident of Philadelphia who had been serving with Company G of the 119thRegiment was among those who crossed the Rappahannock at the start of what would become the ill-fated Battle of Fredericksburg.

1865: Birthdate of the Pinsk native and “Jewish Menshevik” who came to be known as Aleksandr Martynov, one of those became more radicalized after the October Revolution and became a member of the Communist Party in 1923.

1866: Birthdate of Dr. Edward Alsworth Ross, who had been fired by Stanford University for his racist views when it came to Chinese and Japanese immigration, stirred up similar controversy at the University of Wisconsin when wrote magazine articles attacking the Jews including “Jews of Eastern Europe in America” which contains the charge that Jews in America “are the greatest criminals.”

1869: In Germany, Lazarus Gossel Funk and Diertjen Jette Fischer gave birth to Louis (Lazarus) Funk, the husband of Rosa Funk and the father of Ivan Funk; Conrad Funk and Leo Funk

1869: In Breslau, Silesia, Helene von Heimburg, a former opera singer, and conductor Leopold Damrosch gave birth to Clara Damrosch, whose grandfather was Jewish which would make her a Jew under Nazi race laws and who gained fame American music educator Clara Mannes.

1872: In Paris, Ludovic Halevy, who had turned his back on his family proud Jewish tradition when he became a Protestant and his wife gave birth French historian Daniel Halevy.

1872: Today “French law introduced the system of universal suffrage in the election of the consistories, “the bodies governing the Jewish congregations of a province or of a country”

1874: It was reported today that it appears Russian government has ordered to the managers of the nation’s railway companies to fire all of the Jews in their employ and not to hire any Jews in the future.

1875: During the past week, the Hebrew Charity Fair raised $66, 421.19 for Mt. Sinai Hospital.

1875(14th of Kislev, 5636): Pesach N. Rubenstein, the husband of Elke Rubenstein of Jerusalem, “murdered Sara Alexander in a cornfield” in what “is now a portion of the 26th ward.”

1876(26th of Kislev, 5637): Second Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant, the first President to attend a synagogue service.

1877: Birthdate of Centerville, MD native and University of Maryland trained physician Dr. Howard Kahn who served on the faculty of the University of Maryland.

1878: Joseph Pulitzer begins publishing "St Louis Dispatch."  Pulitzer’s father was Jewish.  His mother was Roman Catholic.

1880(10thof Tevet, 5641): Asara B’Tevet

1880: Today, Abraham Marcus who had been born in Prussia in 1851 and came to the United Sates in 1870 married Sophia Marcus who had come to the United States from Germany in 1875 which created a union that produced three children – Henry, Bertha and Retta Marcus – the most of whom was “Pulp publisher Henry Markus.

1880(10thof Tevet, 5641): Fifty-year old Hyman Vollenburg, a Jewish tailor was found dead in his room on Baxter Street in New York.  He was said to be so observant that he refused to accept anything which had been purchased from Jews who worked on Shabbat.

1880: It was reported today that among Mrs. Jacob Hess, Mrs. A.H. Allen, Mrs. J.J. Bach, Miss Alice Solomon and Miss Essie Content (who portrays the Biblical Rebecca at the well) are among the young ladies the Mrs. Isaac Phillips has enlisted to work during the ten day long Hebrew Charity Fair in New York.

188!: In the Polish part of the Russian Empire, Benjamin Wonsal and Pear Leah Eichelbaum gave birth to Hirsch Moses Wonsal who came to the United States in 1889 where he gained fame as Harry Morris Warner, one of the Warner brothers who formed the film studio of Warner Brothers.

1881: According to reports published today the burial of the victims of the theatre fire in Vienna that claimed the lives of 580 people was public ceremony that began with speeches by a Rabbi, a Catholic Prior and an Evangelical Provost. The Jewish victims were the first to be buried with their ceremonies beginning at daybreak.

1881: In Krasnosielc, “a village a short distance from Warsaw”Benjamin Wonsal, a shoemaker born in Krasnosielc, and Pearl Leah Eichelbaum gave birth to Hirsch Moses Wonsal who gained fame as Harry Morris Warner, one of the Warner brothers who created Warner Bros. a major studio during the early days and golden era of motion pictures.

1882: Sarah Bernhardt had a major marital row with her husband Jacques Damala during she which she would no longer support his dissolute lifestyle.  This marital breakup came while she was starring in the hit play Fedora by Victorien Sardou.  Sardou refused to let him have a part in the play so Sarah let him serve as manager of the theatrical company, a position that he was totally unfit to hold.  Following his dismissal he turned to drugs and humiliating her at every turn.  The role of “Mr. Sarah Bernhardt” was one that he could not play.

1882: The settlers at Rosh Pina experienced “their first significant rainfall of the year which meant they could now sow their first crop.”  Some use this date as marking the founding of Kibbutz which is not totally accurate because an earlier attempt had been made 1878.

1882:  Birthdate of famed chess player Akiba Rubenstein.

1884: In New York, Marx Cohen, who has already been charged with receiving “$7 worth of goods” stolen from Bates, Reed & Cooley, is expected to be charged with more serious crimes today.  According to the police, is a Fagan-like figure who organizes youngsters into gangs of thieves and then fences the stolen merchandize.  The Jewish store owner has denied all allegations.

1884: It was reported that in Russia, the Minister of Interior, Count Tolstoi, “has ordered the expulsion of all Jews living in Odessa, Kiev and other cities” if they hold foreign passports and do not have special permits from the government.  This has caused a great deal of concern for Jews doing business in this city who are afraid the new rules will force them into liquidation.

1884: It was reported today that fighting has broken out among Jewish and anti-Semitic university students in Vienna

1885: In New York, Rabbi S. Schocher, of Russ, a city near Memel, Prussia gave a lecture at Or Chaim in the classical style of the old-fashioned Derashot.

1886: In New York, four undercover officers arrested for Polish Jews for selling dry goods in violation of the Sunday Closing Laws.

1887: Philip Stein and Matilda Beave of Manchester gave birth to Leonard Jacques Stein OBE “a British Liberal Party politician, writer, barrister and President of the Anglo-Jewish Association.”

1887: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association which had been providing services to 520 students in 1876 had grown to providing 2,581 students ten years later (1886).

1887: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association had chosen new officers for the following year including: President – M.S. Isaacs; Vice President – Uriah Herman; and Treasurer – Newman Cowen.

1888: Birthdate of Lieutenant General Sir Philip Neame who served as Commander of the Palestine Command “which was formed with objective of controlling all British forces in Mandatory Police from 1940 to 1941.

1888: “Four Couples Made Happy” which was published today reported that two Jewish couples were among what was described as the four “fashionable weddings” that occurred in New York City.

1889: Birthdate of Phillip Carl Katz, the San Francisco native who earned the Medal of Honor while serving as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army

1889: Poet Robert Browning the author “Rabbi ben Ezra” passed away today. The poem is based on the life Abraham ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra lived from 1092 until 1167 and was a leading figure in what was known as the Golden Age in Spain.  Ibn Ezra was second only in fame to Rashi as Torah commentator.  He was the first two attribute that the last section of Deuteronomy describing the death of Moses was written by Joshua.  He was also the first two attribute the last 26 chapters of the Book of Isaiah to a different writer now known as the Second Isaiah.  The poem begins with the famous line “Grow old along with me!  The best is yet to be…”  The belief that “Jewish blood coursed in his veins” was so common that a biography written two years after his death began by disproving this theory which was based on Browning’s “interest in Hebrew language and literature and his friendship for many members of the London Jewish community.”

1889: Birthdate of Lithuanian native “Frances Naomi Harrison” who come to the U.S in 1893 where after studying at NYU, Columbia and New York School of Social Work went on to a career that including serving as the “assistant director of the Graduate School for Jewish Social Work.

 

1890(1st of Tevet, 5651): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, sixth day of Chanukah and erev Shabbat.

 

1890: In New York, The Board of Estimates and Apportionment appropriated $12,700 the work of converting the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Building into a school.

1890: In Duluth, MN, Samuel and Anna (Karon) Mark gave birth Marquette and University of Wisconsin trained physician Louis Mark, the tuberculosis specialist and Republican who was the husband of Fanny Karon with whom he had three children – Charlotte, Rae Louise and Roy Lloyd.

 

1890: As Americans seek a way to register their displeasure with Russian treatment of the Jews, several prominent Jews met at the home met at the home if Rabbi Jacob Joseph where “it was suggested that instead of hold a mass meeting, a meeting of the leaders of the synagogues and Jewish benevolent intuitions should be help to consult as to the best means to adopt to put a stop to the persecutions.”

 

1890: The eldest of Moses Winterstein’s children who were living in New York came to the Barge Office and agreed to assume responsibility for his Russian Jewish father and his family so that they could enter the country instead of being denied entrance because they would become “public charges.”

 

1890: Harris and Rachel Moldofsky gave birth to Samuel Moldofsky, the cabinet maker turned rifleman who was killed during the Third Battle of Ypres during WW I.

1892: When Treasury agents searched a ship appropriately named the Wandering Jew in Boston today they found boxes of cigars and opium.

 

1892: A list of the newly elected officers of the Hebrew Free School Association published today includes President Albert F. Hochstadter, Vice President Henry Budge and Treasurer Newman Cowen

 

1892: “Curious Novel of Jewish Life In London” published today provided a review of Children of the Ghetto: Being Pictures of a Peculiar People by Israel Zangwill.

1893:  In Bucharest, Sarah (née Guttman) and Morris Goldenberg gave birth to Emanuel Goldberg known to American movie audiences as Edward G. Robinson who came to the United States in 1902 and gained early fame playing in gangster movies including the classic Little Caesar and Key Largo but whose worst performance is oddly enough when he portrays the grumbling Jew in “The Ten Commandants.” http://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/27/archives/edward-g-robinson-79-dies-his-little-caesar-set-a-style-man-of.html

1894: At the convention of the American Federation of Labor in Denver, President Samuel Gompers “announced the committees on Resolutions, Organization, Grievances and Local Federated Bodies.

1895(25th of Kislev, 5656): Chanukah

1895:In New York, the Hebrew Fair continued to draw “immense crowds” and enjoy three days of increasing financial success.

1895: Rector Herman Ahlwardt, “who is proud of his German title of anti-Semitic agitator” dodged eggs as he delivered his first address at Cooper Union where among other things he referred to the Jews as “a disease.”

1895: Birthdate of prolific Russian born American Yiddish author Saul Saphire who was a graduate of Columbia University’s Teachers College and the husband of the former Bessie Rubin with whom he raised a son, William.

 

1895: Policemen carried Louis Silverman out of Cooper Union and locked him up in the East Fifth Street Police Station after he threw eggs at Herman Ahlwardt, the German anti-Semite  who was speaking at Cooper Union.

1895: The investigation into charges of voter fraud brought by Eugene Frayer, a member of the Good Government Club that revolved around the residents of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews resumed today.

1896: In Russia, Nehemiah and Bailey Gitelson gave birth Moses Leo Gitelson, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, holder of a doctorate from NYU and WW I veteran who was a partner in Nehemiah Gitelson and Sons, a member of the “board of overseers of JTS and the husband of Miriam Silverman.

1897: Anti-Jewish violence broke out in Bucharest, Romania. 

1897: The Katzenhammer Kids comic strip which Rudolph Block, the “editor of the comic supplements of the Hearst newspapers” who under the pen name Bruno Lessings helped to create appeared for the first time today.

1900: Birthdate of Warsaw native and Yiddish author Yoysef Vinyetski.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2016/06/yoysef-vinyetski-jose-winiecki.html

1901: Birthdate of Howard E. Koch, playwright, screen writer and victim of the Hollywood Blacklist.

1901 Rabbi B.A. Elzas officiated at the wedding of Ida Maude Mose, the “youngest daughter of the late B.F. Moise” and “Moise De Leon of New Orleans, LA at the home of the bride’s mother in Charleston.

1901: In New York City, Katherine (nee Moden) and artist Frederick William Menken gave birth to Helen Menken

http://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/28/1966/this-week-in-history-death-of-helen-menken-notorious-and-accomplished-actress

1902(12thof Kislev, 5663): Seventy year old Edwin Warren Moise passed away in his native South Carolina. 

http://sc150civilwar.palmettohistory.org/edu/people/Moise-EdwinW.htm

1903(23rd of Kislev, 5664): Solomon Loeb, one of the founders of the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb &Co., passed away this evening in New York City at the age of 74.

1904: Birthdate of Nicolas Louis Alexandre, Baron de Gunzburg the Parisian native who served as editor at Vogue, Harper’s Bazar and Town & Country.

1904(9thof Tevet, 5665): Sixty-nine year old Jacob Caro the German Jewish historian who wrote extensively about the history of the Jews Poland passed away today at Breslau where he been serving as history professor at the University of Breslau.

1904(9thof Tevet, 5665): Fifty-four St. Petersburg native Emanuel Schiffers who became a leading Russian chess master passed away today in his home town

1905: In Ireland, Leba Rubin Cohen and Joseph Morris Cohen gave birth to Mark “Mike” Cohen, the brother of Louis Nathan Cohen.

1905:Birthdate of Manès Sperber an Austrian born French novelist, essayist and psychologist who also wrote under the pseudonyms Jan Heger and N.A. Menlos. He was also the father of Italian historian Vladimir Sperber and French anthropologist and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber.

1905: Birthdate of Iosif Solomonovich Grossman who gained fame as Soviet author and journalist Vasily Semyonovich Grossman.

1905: A dispatch from the Neue Freie Presse today reported that “the town of Elizabethgrad, Russia, has been burning and that a mob has been killing and plundering in the Jewish quarter.”

1905: Most of the five hundred Jews who recently arrived in New York after escaping Russia are expected to be admitted into the United States today.

1906(25thof Kislev, 5667): First Day of Chanukah

1906(25thof Kislev, 5667): Sixty-five year old Italian musician and composer Frederico Consolo, the author of “Libro dei Canti d’Israele” passed away today in Florence. (There is some confusion about the date of his death.  Source is The Year Book of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.)

1906: The Brownsville Retail Kosher Butcher’s Association was meeting at the same time that the women of Brownsville were holding a mass meeting designed to gain support for a boycott of the Beef Trust. The mass meeting was chaired by Israel Reichman. There were 350 butchers at the Kosher Butcher’s meetings, 100 of whom have closed their shops in support of the attempts to end the Beef Trust.

1906: Leopold Greenberg, owner of a successful British advertising agency, publisher of “The Jewish Yearbook” and an ardent Zionist writes Jacobus Kann, his friend a Dutch Zionist, that “The Jewish Chronicle” is for sale and he has begun negotiating for its purchase.

1907: One day after he had passed away, Abraham Simon Freeman, the husband of Rhoda Freeman with whom he had had five children, was buried today at the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery” in Northern Ireland.

1908: Five immigrants from Russia – Miriam, Blumah and Michael Wolf, Pesach Leib Ronin and Schije Kuperstein -- bordered the SS Ashton at Antwerp on what they thought was the next leg of their trip to the United States.

1909: Birthdate of Hans Alex Keilson, “a Jewish German/Dutch novelist, poet, psychoanalyst, and child psychologist who wrote about traumas relating to what happened in Europe during WWII. In particular, he worked with traumatized orphans. Some of his novels deal with the same time period, though his first one was published in 1934. He was also active in the Dutch Resistance. Francine Prose has called him one of ‘the world’s very greatest writers.’" (As reported by William Grimes)

1909: Birthdate of Chicago native and University of Chicago alum, Louis Cowan the husband of the former Pauline Spiegel of Spiegel catalogue fame whose success in radio and television led him to the presidency of the CBS television network.

1910: Julian “Mack was nominated by President William Howard Taft to a joint appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the United States Commerce Court, both new seats having been created by 36 Stat. 539.”

1911: The Council of Jewish Women, which was organized in September, 1893 and is led by President Marion L. Misch, the husband of Caesar Misch of Providence, R.I. held its sixth triennial convention doay in Philadelphia, PA.

1911: During the days of the British Empire, Delhi replaced Calcutta as the capital of India. Shalom Aaron Cohen who came to India from Aleppo in 1790 was one of the first Jews to settle in Calcutta.  The arrival of Jews from Baghdad during the 19th century marked an upturn in their economic and social power that lasted until the power World War II rise of Indian nationalism.

1911: Dr. Gustav Steinbach who had passed away at the age of 63 on December 6 was laid to rest today.

1912(2ndof Tevet, 5673): Seventy-seven year old Baltimore, MD merchant Isaac Strouse passed away today.

1912: James Creelman, the national famous American journalist and Vice President of the Citizens’ Committee to Protest Against Russia’s Discrimination said today, in response to Russia on-going refusal to recognize the passports granted to American Jews said today “Russia has got to come to a decision very soon in agreeing to a new treaty which makes no discrimination against citizens of the United States, regardless of where they were born or what their religious views.”

1912: Mrs. Joseph Fish presided over this afternoon’s meeting of the Deborah Woman’s club whose attendees included Miss Marion Stadcker.

1912(2ndof Tevet, 5673): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1912(2ndof Tevet, 5673): Fifty-seven year old Barry Dantzig, the husband of “Anna Kasor Dantzig” passed away today and we buried in the Sheffield Cemetery in Kansas City, MO.

1913:Hebrew language officially used to teach in schools located in Eretz Israel.

1914(24th of Kislev, 5675): Parashat Vayeshev

1914(24th of Kislev, 5675): In the evening Jews kindle the first Chanukah light during World War I.

 

1915: Birthdate of Frank Sinatra.Sinatra “may have been one of America 's most famous Italian Catholics, but he kept the Jewish people and the State of Israel close to his heart, manifesting life-long commitments to fighting anti-Semitism and to activism on behalf of Israel . Sinatra stepped forward in the early 1940s, when big names were needed to rouse America into saving Europe's remaining Jews, and he sang at an "Action for Palestine” rally (1947). He sat on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and he donated over $1 million to Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, which honored him by dedicating the Frank Sinatra International Student Center. (The Center made heartbreaking headlines when terrorists bombed it in 2002, killing nine people.) As the result of his support for the Jewish State, his movies and records were banned in some Arab countries. Sinatra helped Teddy Kollek, later the long-serving mayor of Jerusalem but then a member of the Haganah, by serving as a $1 million money-runner that helped Israel win the war. The Copacabana Club, which was very much run and controlled by the same Luciano-related New York Mafia crowd with whom Sinatra had become enmeshed, happened to be next door to the hotel out of which Haganah members were operating. In his autobiography, Kollek relates how, trying in March 1948 to circumvent an arms boycott imposed by President Harry Truman on the Jewish fighters in Eretz Yisroel, he needed to smuggle about $1 million in cash to an Irish ship captain docked in the Port of New York. The young Kollek spotted Sinatra at the bar and, afraid of being intercepted by federal agents, asked for help. In the early hours of the morning, the singer went out the back door with the money in a paper bag and successfully delivered it to the pier. The origins of Sinatra's love affair with the Jewish people are not clear, but for years, the Hollywood icon wore a small mezuzah around his neck, a gift from Mrs. Golden, an elderly Jewish neighbor who cared for him during his boyhood in Hoboken, N.J. (Years later, he honored her by purchasing a quarter million dollars' worth of Israel bonds). He protected his Jewish friends, once responding to an anti-Semitic remark at a party by simply punching the offender. Time magazine reported that Sinatra walked out on the christening of his own son when the priest refused to allow a Jewish friend to be the godfather. As late as 1979, he raged over the fact that a Palm Springs cemetery official in California declared that he could not arrange the burial of a deceased Jewish friend over the Thanksgiving holiday; Sinatra  again -- threatened to punch him in the nose. Sinatra famously played the role of a Jewish pilot in Cast a Giant Shadow, the 1966 film filmed in Israel and starring friend Kirk Douglas as Mickey Marcus, the Jewish-American colonel who fought and died in Israel's War for Independence (Sinatra dive-bombs Egyptian tanks with seltzer bottles!) He donated his salary for the part to the Arab-Israeli Youth Center in Nazareth, and he also made a significant contribution to the making of Genocide, a film about the Holocaust, and helped raise funds for the film. Less known is Sinatra in Israel (1962), a short 45-minute featurette he made in which he sang "In the Still of the Night "and "Without a Song". He also starred in "The House I Live In" (1945), a ten-minute short film made to oppose anti-Semitism at the end of World War II, which received an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe award in 1946.”

 

1916:No vote will be taken on the bill limiting immigration to the United States, which if passed would have a negative impact on Jews, who after the World War, will seek to escape the persecution being suffered in various parts of Europe by coming to the United States.

1917: Four days after the British arrival in Jerusalem, Dr. Yaakov Thon, convened a meeting of Jewish leaders with an eye toward establishing a City council of Jerusalem Jews.

1917: While working in the Judean hills to build a temporary breastwork “enjoyed fresh meat, bread, vegetables, and rum” for the first time in a long time. 

1917: It was reported today that Al Jolson told the leaders of the drive to raise five million dollars for Jewish war relief and welfare work in the army and navy that “he remembered enough of his early life in Shrednik near Kovno to realize how much the money was needed” and then closed by telling William Fox that he was raising his contribution from one thousand dollars to two thousand dollars.

1917: A bazar “given under the auspices of Temple Emanu-El” which is designed to raised fund to go to the “relief of Jewish war sufferers and for welfare work among American soldiers and sailors is scheduled to open tonight at the home of Adolph Lewisohn at 881 Fifth Avenue – a location made possible do to Mr. Lewisohn’s generosity which means none of the funds raised will have to be spent on renting a hall for the activity.

1917: With only two days to go, the committee trying to raise five million dollars for Jewish war relief suffered its worst day for collections today when it raised only $161,900 which means they have raised $3,048, 252 leaving them almost two million dollars short of their goal.

1917: Birthdate of Worcester, MA native and Methodist minister John Stanley Gruel who served  aboard the “Exodus” in 1947 and who earned the praise of Golda Meir for his testimony before the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine which was critical in the their support for the Partition Resolution of November 1947.”

1918: “Reports of the team Captains and workers at the headquarters of the Jewish War Relief, in the Hotel Biltmore indicated that” as of tonight, “almost one of the five million dollars sought for the suffering Jews in Europe had been raised.”

1918: It was reported today that the Y.M.H.A. of Washington Heights had raised $1,143 to aid the suffering Jews of war torn Europe while a soldiers’ committee at Camp Hancock had raise an additional $108.35 for the same cause.

1919: Victor Cross winner Leonard Maurice Keysor who had enlisted in 1914 and served in Egypt and Gallipoli before fighting on the Western Front was discharged today.

1919: Birthdate of Abraham Hirschelf, the native of Tarnow, Poland, who became a successful real estate investor, producer and New York City political candidate.

1920: Over a year after premiering in Germany, “Madame DuBarry” a bio-pic directed by Ernst Lubitsch opened in the United States.

1920(1stof Tevet, 5681): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1920: “The Seventh Annual Flag Day of the Jewish National Fund” is scheduled to be held today.

1920: Dr. Wise is scheduled to deliver an address on “Breathes There a Jewish With Soul So Dead” at “the Union Maccabean Service of the Free Synagogue.”

1920: The Union of American Hebrew Congregations are scheduled to sponsor “two big mass meetings” this evening, one in Brooklyn and one in New York, for the purpose of bringing “the message of Judaism in its modern aspects to the Jews…”

“Two big mass meetings” are scheduled to be held this evening – one in New York and one in Brooklyn –

1920: Terese L. Nathan, the daughter of New Yorker Mr. and Mrs. J.P. Nathan is scheduled to marry Joseph M. Sydeman after which the couple will honeymoon “on the Continent and the Far East.”

1920: The Histadrut Ha-ovdim(General Labor Federation) was founded in pre-state Israel. Its founder, Berel Katznelson, a disciple of Ber Borochov, combined various labor groups to form a federation.

1921: Birthdate of Anita Nathan Bayer the mother of Carole Bayer Sager Daly and Grandmother of Christopher Elton Bacharach.

1922: Ralph E. Heilman, the Dean of the Northwestern School of Journalism is scheduled to “give his first of a series of lectures on ‘The Newer Ideas in Business and Industry’” today “at the first monthly tea sponsored by the Educational Department of the Chicago Woman’s Aid.”

1922: Sisterhood President Mrs. Gerson B. Levi is scheduled to oversee an exhibit and sale of work made the blind at B’nai Sholom Temple Community House in Chicago.

1922: Thirty-one year old Maurice Bloch the NYU trained attorney and New York State Assembly married Madeline Neuberger today.

1924: In the Bronx, Yetta (or Joyce, née Silpe) and Louis (Leib) Koch, immigrants from Uscieczko in Eastern Galicia gave birth to Edward Irving “Ed” Koch who served as Mayor of New York City from 1977 to 1989.

1924(15thof Kislev, 5685):In Berlin, fifty-seven year old  Alexander Israel Helphand, the man who negotiated with the German’s during World War I to gain Lenin’s return to Russia from Switzerland which brought about the Communist Revolution and took Russia out of World War I passed away.  

1925(25thof Kislev, 5686): Parashat Vayeshev; First Day of Chanukah

1925: Birthdate of Russian composer Vladimir Shainsky.

 

1925: The Majlis of Iran votes to crown Reza Khan as the new Shah of Persia. The new Shah removed “removed restrictions on Jews and other religious minorities.’  He prohibited the mass conversion of Jews and “Jews were allowed to hold government jobs.”  But the Shah’s sympathetic view of Nazi Germany, along with an under-current of anti-Jewish sentiment, left the community with a sense of discomfort.

 

1926: “Palestine Comes Into the Modern Word” published today provides a detailed review of Palestine Awake: The Rebirth of a Nation by Sophie Irene Loeb.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1926/12/12/98526538.html?pageNumber=43

 

1927: “Jerusalem Ten Years Ago” published today marks the decennial of Allenby’s entrance into Jerusalem.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1927/12/12/96683923.html?pageNumber=22

 

1928: In Manhattan State Supreme Court Judge Alfred Frankenthaler and his wife Martha gave birth to abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Helen_Frankenthaler-1956.jpg

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/12/1928/this-week-in-history-soak-stain-artist-helen-frankenthaler-is-born

1931: Dr. Alexander Rosenfeld, vice president of the World Maccabee Association, spoke this afternoon over WLPH from the Lyric Theatre, Brooklyn.  He talked about the forthcoming Maccabee Jewish Games which will be held in Tel Aviv in March, 1932 and in which more than 3,000 Jewish athletes from all parts of the world are expected compete.

 

1932: “Biography” a play written by S.N. Behrman premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre.3.

 

1932: The NBC Blue Network broadcast episode number three of “Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel” starring Groucho and Chico Marx,

 

1933: In Strasbourg, Polish born Rabbi Oscar (Ovadia) Eisenberg and his wife gave birth to French television producer Josy (Yossef ) Eisenberg.

 

1934: In New Orleans, the sale of the Roosevelt Hotel to The New Orleans Roosevelt Corporation headed by Seymour Weiss was finalized today.

 

1935: Heinrich Himmler begins the Lebensborn Project.

 

1936(28thof Kislev, 5696): Parashat Miketz; Fourth day of Chanukah

 

1936: At Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi Nathan Perilman is scheduled to deliver a sermon “A Strange Call to Arms.

 

1936: At West End Synagogue, Rabbi Gustave Falk is scheduled to deliver a sermon “Synagogues, Old and New.”

 

1936: At Temple Rodeph Sholom, Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “What Is Worth Dying For?”

 

1936: At Temple Israel, Rabi William F. Rosenblum is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “One Drop of Blood and Many Drops of Water.”

 

1936: In Chur, Switzerland, Dr. Eugence Curti, the attorney for David Frankfurter who has been charged with murdering the leader of the Nazi Party in Switzerland, delivered his summation which included a plea for mercy saying that “the sentence of eighteen years demanded by the prosecution was ‘too severe’ and pleaded with the court of ‘justice and humanity.’”

 

1936: U.S. premiere of Camille, “an American romantic drama directed by George Cukor and produced by Irving Thalberg and Bernard H. Hyman.

 

1937: Jewish writer Arch Oboler caused more controversy with his script contribution to today’s edition of The Chase and Sanborn Hour. In Oboler's sketch, host Don Ameche and guest Mae West portrayed a slightly bawdy Adam and Eve, satirizing the Biblical tale of the Garden of Eden. On the surface, the sketch did not feature much more than West's customary suggestive double-entendres, and today it seems quite tame. But in 1937, that sketch and a subsequent routine featuring West trading suggestive quips with Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy cause a furor that resulted in West being banned from broadcasting and from being mentioned at all on NBC programming for 15 years.

 

1937: The Palestine Postreported numerous assassinations, attempted murders, hold-ups and robberies perpetrated by Arab terrorists all over the country. In Haifa, Elimelech Gromet, 13, the victim of a terror attack in the Hadar Hacarmel quarter, died of his wounds. Sheikh Khatib, an Arab notable, and his bodyguard were murdered in the town's Arab quarter. In Jerusalem all gates of the Old City, except for the well-guarded Jaffa and Damascus gates, were closed from early in the evening until late the following morning.

 

1937: The Polish Dombrowski Brigade (part of the 13th IB) formed a Jewish Company from the 2nd PalafoxBattalion (Palafox was a Spanish patriot from the Napoleonic invasion), called The Botwin Company, today at Tardadientes, and named after Naftali Botwin (a famous Polish Jewish radical, executed in 1924 for assassinating a Polish Secret police agent).

 

1938: Friedrich Münzer, the German classical scholar who had lost his teaching position and most of his friends after he was classified as a Jews and who would eventually die at Theresienstadt wrote to his colleague Ronald Syme at Oxford University “that the changed situation ‘deeply depressed’ him, but that he still considered himself better off than many others.”

 

1938: Birthdate of David Gurfinkel, the Tel Aviv native who became a leading Israeli cinematographer.  

 

http://www.cinematographers.nl/PaginasDoPh/gurfinkel.htm

 

1939:In eastern areas of Greater Germany, two years of forced labor is made compulsory for all Jewish males aged 14 to 60.

 

1939: Jews are expelled from Kalisz in the Warthegau region of Poland; many flee to Warsaw.

1940: The Salvador, a ship that set out from Varna, Bulgaria, a month ago, with 350 Jewish refugees aboard sinks in the Sea of Marmora with 250 Jewish refugees, including 75 children being drowned. T. M. Snow, head of the British Foreign Office's Refugee Section, notes that "there could have been no more opportune disaster from the point of view of stopping this [Jewish refugee] traffic [to Palestine]."

1941: “The Wolf Man,” a horror film written by Curt Siodmak was released today.

1941: Adolf Hitler announced plans for the extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery

1941: In the second action in two weeks, the Germans killed another estimated 12,000 inhabitants of the Riga Ghetto.

1941: The German Army of Occupation began a house to house search in Paris looking for Jews.

1941:The SS Struma set sail from Constanţa, on the Black Sea

1941: Romania declared war on the United States.

1942(4thof Tevet, 5703): Parashat Miketz

1942(4th of Tevet, 5703): Fifty-nine year old Benjamin Pinkowitz, the husband of Mollie Finkelstein Pinkowitz and the father of George Pinkowitz, the World War II veteran who supplemented his income as a teacher by working as a pharmacist after having married Cecelia Glick Pinkowitz, passed away today after which he was buried at the Baron Hirsch Cemetery on Staten Island.

1942: MGM released “White Cargo” starring Hedy Lamarr to the cinematic audience.

1942: The Jews of Volhunia revolt against a German round-up.

1942 Jewish prisoners at a labor camp in Lutsk, Ukraine, armed with knives, bricks, iron bars, acid, and several revolvers and sawed-off shotguns, revolt against Germans and Ukrainians. The uprising is crushed.

1942: The U.S. Army Medical Corps established an evacuation hospital at Tlemcen, the Algerian city whose “most important place pilgrimage of all religions was the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town.”

1943: The chairman of the Jewish Council in Wlodzimierz Wolynski, Poland, the site of street massacres in 1942, assures the remaining ghetto residents that they will be safe

1943(15th of Kislev, 5704): The day after his 57th birthday, Nice born, French composer Marcel Lattès was murdered at Auschwitz today.

1943: Birthdate of Hana Spitzer, the native of Kfar Pines who gained famed as Rabbi Hanan Porat, Israeli educator and MK.

1943(15thof Kislev, 5704): Thirty-six year old Wanda Abenaim Pacifici, the wife of Riccardo Reuven Pacifici who was murdered at Auschwitz, was murdered today at the same death camp.

1944(26thof Kislev, 5705): Second Day of Chanukah

1944(26thof Kislev, 5705): Forty-two year old Regina Jonas, the Berlin native who was “the first woman ordained as a rabbi, was murdered at Auschwitz today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/commentary-obscure-no-more-worlds-first-woman-rabbi-receives-recognition/2014/07/25/f0efe7dc-1433-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906_story.html

1944(26thof Kislev, 5705): Sixty-seven year old Columbia trained lawyer and life-long music aficionado Lewis Montefiore Isaacs, the son of Meyer and Maria Solomon Isaacs and the husband Edith J. Rich “the editor of Theatre Art Monthly, who found time to serve as the Borough President of Manhattan and to write guides to “Koenigskinder” and “Hansel and Gretel” passed away today.

1944: “After sustaining very heavy casualties from enemy artillery fire and the cold weather, the entire First Division,” including Samuel Fuller of the 16thInfantry Regiment “was sent to a rest camp today.”

1945: The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution of U.S. aid to open Palestine to Jewish refugees.

1946: Arabs call for a general strike to protest the alleged abduction of an Arab in Salame, Palestine by the Haganah.

1946: Two illegal Arab Armies were merged by the Arab High Committee into the Arab Youth Movement.

1946: Birthdate of Steve Goldsmith, Harvard professor and former mayor of Indianapolis, Indiana.

1947: Gordon P. Merriam, chief of Division of Near Eastern Affairs, refers Dr. Irving E Medoff of New Jersey to the United Nations after he had written to the U.S. State department concerning his interest in organizing an air force group to operate in Palestine.  Merriam’s referral is based on the U.S. view that matters pertaining to Palestine are under the control of the UN.

1947: Birthdate of Irving Azoff, the native of Danville, Illinois who went from booking bands while in high school to being named the “most powerful person in the music history” in 2012.

1947: King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia promised that the Arabs will protect and maintain American oil operations at the same time expressing the hope that the U.S. will correct its “mistake” on the issue of Palestine Partition

1947: British foreign minister Ernest Bevin asks the Jews for a moratorium on “illegal immigration” while the mandate is still in power.

1947:UN Trusteeship Subcommittee announces that internationalized Jerusalem will only have a police force which can call on UN Security Council if more order is needed. Legislature is legally "rigged" so a minority group will keep a balance of power between Jewish and Arab factors.

1947: The Arab League voted to provide funds, weapons and volunteers for an impending Palestine war designed to thwart the United Nation’s partition vote.  An Arab Liberation Army under the command of an Iraqi staff officer named Ismail Safwat Pasha established its headquarters outside of Damascus and gave field command to Fawzi al-Qawujki a veteran terrorist leader of the uprisings during the 1930’s.

1947(29th of Kislev, 5708): An Arab gang stopped a BOAC truck leaving Lydda Airport.  The Arabs told the Arabs on the truck to run away.  The three Jews – Yitzhak Jian, David Ben Ovadia and Joseph Litvak - were then shot dead.

1948: “Bicycle Thieves” an Italian film was released today in the United States thank to the distribution efforts of Joseph Burstyn and Arthur Mayer through their company Burstyn-Mayer, Inc.

1948: Israel and Transjordan let Christians travel to Bethlehem for Christmas pilgrimages

1948: “Less than two weeks after the signing of the final cease-fire, the ‘Valor Road’ was opened by Ben-Gurion as a secure by-pass for travel from Jerusalem to the coast.  The road replaced the famous ‘Burma Road’ and made it possible for Jews to travel the fifteen miles from the Judean hills to the coastal settlements without having to brave Arab sniper attacks.

1949: The U.S. asks Israel and Jordan not to do anything which would disrupt relations with other Arab states or the Vatican.

1949: Birthdate of Anglo-Jewish historian David Samuel Harvard Abulafia, the 2020 winner of the Wolfson History Prize for The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans who is married to another famous historian Anna Sapir Abufia. (Can you imagine what a Shabbat dinner would be like at their house?)

https://www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk/past-winners/2020-winners/boundless-sea/

1950: One day after he had passed away, funeral services were held for 72 year old Herbert Marcus, Sr. the Louisville, KY born son of Jacob and Delia Marcus and high school troop, who after moving went from janitor in a Hillsboro, TX general store, to life insurance salesman in Dallas to being the co-founder of Neiman-Marcus Department Store and philanthropic community leader as can be seen by his service as President of Temple Emanuel, founder of the Southwestern division of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and “primary fund raiser for S.M.U

 

1950: Paula Ackerman became the interim "spiritual leader" of Temple Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi after her husband, who was the congregation's rabbi, passed away. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/12/1950/paula-ackerman

 

1951:  Yosef Sprinzak, the Speaker of the Knesset became acting President of Israel when Chaim Weizman became so ill he could not fill the position.

 

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Political Committee of the UN General Assembly passed, by 32 votes to 13, with 13 abstentions, a strongly-worded resolution calling for direct Arab-Israeli negotiations.

 

1952: As HUAC continued its investigation of Rutgers Professor Moses Finley, the Board of Trustees adopted a resolution declaring "It shall be cause for immediate dismissal of any member of faculty or staff to fail to cooperate with government inquiries.”

 

1952(24th of Kislev, 5713): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1953: Birthdate of Ben Shalom Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

1955(27th of Kislev, 5716): Third day of Chanukah; kindle 4thcandle in the evening.

1955: “The Rose Tattoo” a film version of the play by the same name written by Hal Kanter, directed by Daniel Mann and produced by Hal Wallis was released today.

1955(27th of Kislev, 5716): Operation Olive Leaves, under the command of Ariel Sharon came to a successful conclusion with the destruction of all the Syrian gun emplacements attacked by the IDF. Among the casualties were ten wounded including Rafael Eitan and six dead including Yitzchak Ben Menachem, a hero of Israel's War of Independence “who was killed by a Syrian hand grenade.” “Casualties in the operation included Rafael Eitan (wounded in his stomach) and Yitzhak Ben Menachem (surnamed “Gulliver” because of his height), an Independence War hero who had replaced Motta Gur as Company Commander.

1956(8th of Tevet, 5717): Sixty-four year old German born screenwriter and director E.A. (Ewals Andre) Dupont who fled to the United States when the Nazis came to power passed away today in Los Angeles.

1957(19th of Kislev, 5718): Sixty-nine year old Harvard educated lawyer and veteran of the American Expeditionary Force Arthur E. Manheimer, “the former president of the National Jewelers Association” and husband of Ruth Manheimer with whom he had two sons – William and Kent – passed away today.

1960(23rd of Kislev, 5721): Eighty-five year old to Estelle A. May Affedler, the wife of Louis J. Affelder, the Pittsburgh civil engineer and civic leader with whom she had three children Mrs. Emanuel, Mrs. S. Lewis Merritt and Paul B. Affelder, the music critic for the Brooklyn Eagle passed away today.

1962: U.S. premiere of “Freud: The Secret Passion,” an “American biographical film drama based on the life of the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud” with music by Jerry Goldsmith and featuring David Kossoff as “Jacob Freud.

1963:  Kenya gains its independence from the United Kingdom. Jews began to settle in Kenya in the early years of the 20th century.In 1904, The Nairobi Hebrew Congregation was established in 1904 and the 20 families living in Nairobi built the country’s first synagogue in 1913. The community saw some growth after World War II. In 1955, “Israel Somen, the president of the Board of Kenya Jewry, was elected mayor of Nairobi.” A small Jewish community has continued to exist which has not been always been the case of former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa.  Israel and Kenya continue to enjoy positive relations.

1963: “The Cardinal” the movie version of the novel with the same name directed by Otto Premininger, with music by Jerome Moross and promotional posters by Saul Bass was released in the United States today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cardinal#/media/File:The_cardinal.jpg

1964: “Casablan,” or “Kazablan” a film adaptation of a play of the same name that substitutes Ashkenazim and Sephardim for Montagues and Capulets, premiered in New York.

1965 A memorial service is scheduled to held this morning in the Blumenthal Auditorium of Mount Sinai Hospital for fifty-seven year old Russian born and Columbia trained physician Dr. Sidney Tarachow, the former member of the faculty of Iowa State University and director of the division of psychoanalytic education of the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and clinical professor of psychiatry

1966: A 27 year member of Local 338 writes to the national union headquarters expressing his despair over the deteriorating conditions in the bagel industry which are leading to cuts in pay, benefits and the number of jobs available for bakers.

1966: “A Man for All Seasons” the film version of the Broadway play directed and produced by Fred Zinnemann was released in the United States today.

1967(10th of Kislev, 5728): Forty-nine year old City College graduate and WW II Marine Corps Veteran, Irving Gitlin, the New York born son of Jacob and Celia Gitlin who was a leading producer of documentaries for CBS and NBC passed away today.

1968: In response to repeated terrorist attacks against Israeli aircraft “a heliborne paratroop force raided Beirut Airport and destroyed Lebanese aircraft today.”

1970(14th of Kislev, 5731): Parashat Vayishlach

1970(14th of Kislev, 5731): Just days before his 81stbirthday “Russian and Soviet avant-garde artist, Cubist painter, stage designer and book illustrator” Nathan Isaevich Altman passed away today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Altman#/media/File:Natan_Altman_(selfportrait,_1911,_GRM).jpg

 

1970: Birthdate of Jennifer Connelly who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress 2002 for A Beautiful Mind and the 2002 Golden Globe 2002 for same role.

 

1971(24th of Kislev, 5732): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.

 

1971(24th of Kislev, 5732): David Sarnoff, CEO of RCA and founder of NBC, passed away. Born in Russia 1891, Sarnoff reportedly studied to be a rabbi before joining the Marconi Wireless Company as a telegraph operator.  He became the leading figure in the creation of RCA.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989773,00.html

 

1971(24thof Kislev, 5732): Sixty-two year old philologist and linguist Yechezkel Kutscher, the native of Sloavkia who made Aliyah in 1931 and pursued a career which earned him the Israel Prize in 1961 passed away today

 

1973: “The Last Detail” featuring Gilda Radner and with music by Johnny Mandel was released today in the United States.

 

1973(17thof Kislev, 5734): Seventy-three year old Warsaw born composer Chemjo Vinaver passed away today in Jerusalem.

 

1974: Thirteen people were injured lightly or moderately In Jerusalem when an explosive device went off in Ben Yehuda Street

 

1974: “The Godfather Part II” featuring Less Strasberg, James Caan and Abe Vigoda and edited by Peter Zinner premiered in New York City.

 

1975(8thof Tevet, 5736): Eighty-nine year old Elias H. Margolis, the Polish born son of Abraham Isaac Margolis and Chaya Feigel "Fanny" Margolis, and husband of Dora / Dorothea Margolis passed away today in Akron, OH.

 

1975:  In San Diego, CA, Barry Bialik and Beverly Winkelman gave birth to actress Mayim Bialik, who played Blossom Russo on “Blossom” and Amy Farrah Fowler on “The Big Bang.”  “Hayim Nahman Bialik, Israel's national poet, was Mayim Bialik's great-great-grandfather's uncle”

 

1977(2nd of Tevet, 5738): 8th day of Chanukah

 

1977(2nd of Tevet, 5738): One person was killed and 25 were injured during a grenade attack at Beersheba.

 

1977(2nd of Tevet, 5738): Eighty-six year old French filmmaker Raymond Bernard passed away today/

 

1978(12th of Kislev, 5739): American painter Norman Raeben died of heart attack in the lobby of his apartment.  Born in Russia in 1901, he was “the youngest of the six children of Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem.” “The pen-name 'Raeben' is probably derived from his family-name 'Rabinowitz'.  Raeben moved to New York City with his family in 1914. He studied painting from Robert Henri, George Luks and John French Sloan, who all belonged to the Ashcan School. His studio was on the 11th floor of Carnegie Hall. His students include Bob Dylan, Bernice Sokol Kramer, Carolyn Schlam, Andrew Gottlieb, Janet Cohn, John Smith, Diana Postel, Lori Lerner and Rosalyn (Roz) Jacobs. Raeben's mission was to teach the art of painting through intuition and feeling, instead of through conceptualization.”

 

1979(22nd of Kislev, 5740): Elka de Levie, the only Jewish gymnast of the triumphant 1928 Dutch ladies’ gymnastics team, which won the Olympic title in Amsterdam in 1928 to survive the horrors of the Holocaust, passed away.

 

1986: “¡Three Amigos! “ a spoof the Magnificent Seven directed by John Landis, produced by Lorne Michaels who wrote the script along with Randy Newman who in turn created the music along with Elmer Bernstein was released in the United States today.

 

1986: Frank Rich’s review of “Dream of a Blacklisted Actor” Conrad Bromberg’s play about his father, Edward Bromberg whose career was destroyed during the McCarthy era was published today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/12/theater/stage-dream-of-a-blacklisted-actor.html

 

 

1988:Foreign Minister Shimon Peres urged the Palestine Liberation Organization today to direct its diplomacy toward Israel rather than the United States.

 

1988: European countries are pressing the Palestine Liberation Organization and its Arab allies to moderate plans to seek United Nations recognition of an independent Palestinian state, diplomats said today..

 

1989: In “Soviets Trying to Become Team Player in Mideast” published today, Alan Cowell describes the change in Russian Middle East policy from one of confrontation to “partnership with Washington in the diplomacy of the region.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/12/world/soviets-trying-to-become-team-player-in-mideast.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

 

1990(25th of Kislev, 5751): Chanukah

 

1990: A fund-raising dinner and dance is held at the Pierre to further the restoration of the Eldridge Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side.  The event also honors the founders of the Eldridge Street Project, who include Brooke Astor, Joan K. Davidson, Simon Rifkind and Joanna and Daniel Rose.

 

1990: The 1991 fund-raising campaign of the UJA-Federation of New York opens with the Lawyers Division annual Proskauer Award Dinner during which Ira M. Millstein, a senior partner in the New York law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, receives the award.

 

1990: The Young Professionals of the American Friends of Tel Aviv University sponsor a concert at Steinway Hall to raise money to help replace the instruments Soviet émigré musicians in Israel could not take from the Soviet Union. The pianist Dina Joffe and her husband, the violinist Mikhail Vaiman, and the pianist Byron Janis, an officer of American Friends, are among those who help to provide the evening’s entertainment.

 

1991(5thof Tevet, 5752): Israeli artist Moshe Elazar Castel, the native of Jerusalem born in 1909 and son or Rabbi Yehuda Castel and his wife Rachel passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04040.html

 

 

1993: Today Mr. Rabin and Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, agreed in Cairo that they needed more time to resolve complex security issues before self-rule could begin in roiling Gaza and placid Jericho, and they gave themselves at least another 10 days.

 

1993: Rabbi Helene Ferris officiated at the wedding of Robert Stanley Bannister and Celia Ingrid Farber, the freelance author who wrote extensively about HIV and AIDS and is the daughter of radio talk show host Barry Farber.

 

 

1993: Under attack by some political leaders for dealing far less firmly with Jews who commit acts of violence than with Palestinians, the Israeli Army today ordered soldiers to take "strong action" against law-breaking settlers in the occupied territories, including possible arrests and curfews.

 

1994(9thof Tevet, 5755): Yosef Harmelin, the native of Vienna who came to Israel as a teenager in 1939 and served two tours as director of Shin Bet passed away today.

 

1994: Israel and Jordan fleshed out their new peace treaty some more today, opening temporary embassies in each other's country and saying they would exchange ambassadors next month

 

1995(20thof Kislev, 5756): Rabbi Moshe-Zvi Neria, the native of Łódź who became an Israeli educator and MK passed away today.

 

1995(20thof Kislev, 5756): Eighty-seven year old David Saul Marshal “a politician and lawyer from Singapore who served as Singapore's first Chief Minister from 1955 to 1956” passed away today in Singapore.

1995: Israeli PM Shimon Peres addressed both houses of the US Congress.

1996: “After only 14 months at Disney, Michael Ovitz was fired” today.

1997: “Hugo Pool” a comedy featuring Richard Lewis was released in the United States today.

1997: “Deconstructing Harry” a comedy directed and written by Woody Allen, co-produced by Letty Aronson and starring Bob Balaban, Richard Benjamin, Billy Crystal, Amy Irving and Julia Louis-Dreyfus among others was released today in the United States.

1997: John Marks, the former Berlin bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report wrote an essay cautioning against letting the hunt for the stolen assets hoarded by the Swiss and other European dangers overshadow the reality of the primary villain of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany.  “’No one would argue that German evil absolves Swiss cupidity or French collaboration.  But it would be a very odd paradox indeed if the partial eclipse of German culpability became a permanent historical fixture” as the heirs of the Holocaust seek to regain the property of their progenitors.

1999: The New York Times book section includes a review of Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership by Naomi W. Cohen.

1999(3rd of Tevet, 5760): Author Joseph Heller passed away.  He is best remembered as the author of Catch-22. a book whose title has entered the English language (As reported by Richard Severo and Herbert Mitgang)

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/14/books/joseph-heller-darkly-surreal-novelist-dies-at-76.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2000: “Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker” featuring Michael Rosenbaum was released in the Uited States today.

2001: Yasser Arafat bowed to long-standing Israeli demands by ordering the closure of the offices of the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad.  The supposed closing had no effect in ending the terrorism which enjoyed Arafat’s continued support.

2001: Four people were injured when at Neve Dekalim as a result of Hamas bombing.

2001: Irv Rubin, JDL Chairman, and Earl Krugel, a member of the organization, were charged with conspiracy to bomb private and government property.

2001(27thof Kislev, 5762): Three terrorists attacked a #189 Dan bus and several passenger cars with a roadside bomb, anti-tank grenades, and light arms fire near the entrance to Emmanuel in Samaria at 6:00 p.m. Ten people, including two teenagers, were killed and 30 others were injured. The victims: Yair Amar, 13, of Emmanuel; Esther Avraham, 42, of Emmanuel; Border Police Chief Warrant Officer Yoel Bienenfeld, 35, of Moshav Tel Shahar; Moshe Gutman, 40, of Emmanuel; Avraham Nahman Nitzani, 17, of Betar Illit; Yirmiyahu Salem, 48, of Emmanuel; Israel Sternberg, 46, of Emmanuel; David Tzarfati, 38, of Ginot Shomron; Hananya Tzarfati, 32, of Kfar Saba; Ya’akov Tzarfati, 64, of Kfar Saba. Both Fatah and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

2002:Austria failed in its attempt to block a lawsuit by an 86-year-old American citizen who fled the Nazis in 1942 and whose uncle owned the works. In a promising ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that Austria was not immune from a suit in American courts when the interests of justice outweigh the inconvenience to a foreign country.

2002: New York native and Columbia Law School graduate Stephen Friedman, a long-time partner of Goldman Sachs became the 5th Director of the National Economics Council today.

2003: “Something’s Gotta Give” a delightful if improbable romantic comedy directed, produced and written by Nancy Meyers with music by Hans Zimmer was released in the United States today.

2003: Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, president of the European Union, proclaimed the body’s deep concern at the increase in instances of anti-Semitic intolerance and strongly condemns all manifestations of anti-Semitism, including attacks against religious sites and individuals.”

2003:Irwin Cotler, Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until the Liberal government of Paul Martin lost power following the 2006 federal election was sworn into Cabinet today.

2004: The New York Times features a review of A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz; translated by Nicholas de Lange

2004(29thof Kislev, 5765): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2004(29thof Kislev, 5765): One hundred-one year old “Bernada Bryson Shan, the widow of painter Ben Shahn” passed away today.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/arts/16shahn.html?_r=0

http://whitney.org/Collection/BernardaBrysonShahn

2005:Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. honored Gerald Schoenfeld and four city leaders at his annual Jewish Heritage celebration today.

2005: The Israeli government voted to increase financial help for needy Holocaust survivors.  The aid comes in the form of increased rent subsidies and 75% discount on drug purchases.

2006:Germany hosts a Holocaust conference in Berlin featuring Raul Hilberg, considered one of the leading experts on Holocaust studies who wrote the comprehensive multi-volume book, "The Destruction of European Jewry."

2007: As part of Chanukah festivities, the last of 18 performances of “Around the World in 80 Days” directed Yaron Kafkafi takes place at the Nokia Stadium in Yad Eliahu.

2007: Opening session of the 46th Assembly of Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) in San Diego, California.

2007:Union for Reform Judaism 2007 Biennial Convention opens in San Diego, CA.  On the eve of the conference, Meir Azari, rabbi of the Beit Daniel synagogue in Tel Aviv, expressed his concern over the future of relations between the Reform Movement in the United States and Israel.

2007: The New York City Police arrested ten individuals suspected of carrying out an anti-
Semitic attack against four Jewish students on the previous Friday night, the fifth night of Chanukah.

2008: “Nothing Like the Holidays” co-starring Debra Messing was released in the United States today.

2008: USA Network broadcast the final episode of “The Starter Wife” starring Debra Messing who was Bat Mitzvahed in 1981.

2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah Friday Night Services features, the Second Musical Shabbat of the 2008-2009 Season.

2008: “Adam Resurrected” which follows the life former Berlin magician and circus impresario Adam Stein opens at the Quad City Cinema in New York City.

2008:The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation based in Salem, Mass., shut its doors after saying it had lost all its money -- $8 million -- by investing with Bernard Madoff self-confessed creator of the largest Ponzi scheme in history

2008:Reacting to an increasingly perilous economic outlook, the leader of the Reform movement proposed that some of the movement's synagogues could consider merging with Conservative congregations as a cost-saving measure.

 

2009 (25 Kislev, 5770): First Day of Chanukah.

 

2009: The estate of songwriter Jack Lawrence which includes memorabilia from S.S. Andrea Doria which sank off the coast of Nantucket in 1956 with the kind of fanfare connected to the sinking of the Titanic is scheduled to go on sale today.

 

2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival features a screening of “The Wedding Song,” a film that tells the story of two adolescent girls – one Jewish, one Moslem – living in Tunis in 1942 when the Nazis occupy the city.

 

2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival features screenings of “A Matter of Size” and “Adam Resurrected” starring American actor Jeff Goldblum

 

2009: Opening night of the Sephardic Music Festival in New York City.

 

2009: The Hub of the JCCSF and San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum present “Super 8 Hanukkah Festival.”

 

2009:Five Hamas men were arrested today, while trying to infiltrate Israel from Egypt, carrying explosives, a gun, a silencer and $15,000 in counterfeit bills, according to the announcement.  During the arrest, two of the operatives were wounded.

 

2009: A tour to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Les Misérables the tuneful version of the 19th century novel with music by Claude-Michel Schonberg, French lyrics by Alain Boubil and English Lyriscs by Herbert Kretzmer began today, at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.

 

2010:The Women's League Convention 2010 is scheduled to hold its opening session at the Marriott Waterfront located in Baltimore, MD.

 

2010: Andy “Samberg and the other members of the Lonely Island debuted their next digital short, titled "I Just Had Sex."

 

2010: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alan Riding.

 

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of Ayn Rand and The World She Made by Anne C. Heller.

 

2010: “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen, .Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, “Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, ­Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes

by Stephen Sondheim are listed  on The New York Times list of the 10 Best Books of 2010

 

2010(5th of Tevet, 5771): Eighty-eight year old “Dan Kurzman, who wrote military histories that illuminated little-known incidents in World War II and an exhaustively reported account of the first Arab-Israeli war, passed away today Manhattan. (As reported Daniel E. Slotnik)

 

2010(5th of Tevet, 5771):Eighty-two year old “Jacob Lateiner, a concert pianist renowned for his interpretations both of Beethoven and of 20th-century music, passed away today in Manhattan. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/arts/music/14lateiner.html?_r=0

 

2011: Gabriel Bass, Rabbi Joanne Heiligman and Nina Bonos are scheduled to participate in “Objects and Spaces that Influence Jewish Memory” a panel discussion presented by Shaare Tefila in Olney, Maryland.

 

2011(16th of Kislev, 5772): Seventy-eight year old Bert Schneider who produced such hits as “Easy Rider” “Five Easy Pieces” and “The Last Picture Show” passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/14/local/la-me-bert-schneider-20111214

 

 

2011: The Israeli daily Israel Hayom reported that Rabbi YonaMetzger had received an offer to serve as Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs ends his term of office in 2013.

 

2011: The ReGroup Theatre Company staged 2 sold-out staged readings of Kurt Weill’s “Johnny Jonson today at the 47th St Theatre, in New York

 

2011: “A Happy End” Israeli playwright IIddo Netanyahu’s play that follows acclaimed Jewish physicist Mark Erdmann, head of the atomic lab at the University of Berlin, and his wife Leah through the arduous decision of whether or not to leave Germany following the notorious elections of 1932 is scheduled to be performed at the Martin E.. Segal Center at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

 

2011: Israel's new ambassador to Egypt arrived in Cairo today, Egyptian airport officials told the Associated Press, three months after rioters ransacked the Israeli Embassy in the Egyptian capital.

 

2012: In New York, Jonathan Karp, the Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “Culture Brokers’ Music Produces and Labels” a program that “traces the history of small independent record labels that pioneered new forms of popular music from the 1960s to today, including rock & roll, Latin pop, and hip-hop.

 

2012: A public menorah lighting is scheduled for the Ped Mall in Iowa City, Iowa

 

2012: Sufganyot and latkes will be served at the scheduled pubic menorah lighting at the Grand Cities Mall in Grand Forks, North Dakota

 

2012: “Football is God” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival. (Attention American readers – this is a movie about you call soccer, not the pigskin game)

 

2012: Mika Karney and the Kol Dodi Ensemble, Zion80 + Hasidic New Wave & Yakar Rhythms are scheduled to perform at the Sephardic Music Festival’s closing event.

 

2012: Pedro Hernandez “pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one count of kidnapping the case of Etan Patz.

 

2012: “Settlement ends bitter battle over Mel Simon Estates” published today”

http://www.ibj.com/articles/38466-settlement-ends-bitter-battle-over-mel-simon-estate

 

 

2012: King Abdullah II of Jordan announced that Jordan would host Israeli-Palestinian meetings in February with the backing of the European Union and the United States, a leading Arab daily reported today.

 

2012: Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday condemned two “price-tag” vandalism acts carried out overnight in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

 

2013: The Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism is scheduled to sponsor a discussion led by Professor Mary Fulbrook and Professor Jane Caplan entitled “A Small Town near Auschwitz – Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust.”

 

 

2013: Five U.S. families who were victims of the Iran-backed suicide bombing that took place on Ben Yehuda Street in 1997 were “awarded $9 million in federal court.”

 

2013: “Ex-FBI agent who disappeared in Iran was on rogue mission for CIA, officials say” published today provides an update on the status of Robert Levinson.

 

 

2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present a panel discussion “Do Words Kill?  Hate Speech, Propaganda & Incitement to Genocide”

 

2013: “The Herd” and “Guilt by Fire” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Today’s meeting of the URJ Biennial is scheduled to end with a Biennial Music Festival that will include performances by Larry Milder and Rocky Mountain Jewgrass at Taste and Thirst and Rick Recht and Max Jared performing at the Old Spaghetti Factory

 

2013: The 20-state council of CERN, the Center of European Nuclear Research that operates the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss- French border, voted unanimously tonight to accept Israel as a full member. (As reported by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich)

 

2013: As snow falls in Jerusalem, Arab youth find a way to turn it into a terrorist event by throwing snowballs wrapped around a stone at Jews. (As reported by Gil Ronen)

 

2013: Due to “snow and the danger of skidding” “Highways 1 and 443, which connect Jerusalem to the coastal plain, were closed today by police to traffic in both directions until 6:00 a.m. (As reported by Gil Ronen)

 

2014: Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” which is scheduled to open in movie theaters across the United States today “will include, most famous of all biblical miracles: the parting of the Red Sea. But its depiction will look quite different from the one in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 classic “The Ten Commandments.” (As reported by Bruce Parker)

 

2014: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present a performance by The Singers of the Israeli Opera’s Meitra Opera Studio.

 

2014: The Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to “Birth of a Neighborhood: The History of Battery Park City”

 

2014: “Seven people, including a family of five with young children, were lightly wounded in the West Bank this afternoon when a Palestinian man hurled acid into their car, before being shot and seriously wounded.”(As reported by Itmar Sharon)

 

2014: “Unidentified assailants opened fire on the Israeli embassy in Athens with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in the early hours this morning but no injuries or damage were reported.”

 

 

2014: “Monologues from the Kishke,” a Yiddishpiel Theater musical celebrating Eastern European food and culture “is scheduled to be performed at Tel Aviv’s Beit Hatfusot.

 

2015: In Arlington, VA, Congregation Etz Hayim is scheduled to host Ein Lanu Z’man, the official band of Agudas Achim and Jewish radio rock star Hannah Spiro.

 

2015: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host a new tour “Women of the Holocaust”

 

2015: Stage 48 is scheduled to host Dor Chadash and Hadag Nahash - one of Israel's most popular hip-hop bands - for an unforgettable Hannukah party!

 

2015: A memorial service is scheduled to held for today in honor of Christopher Duggan, the author of Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy

 

2015(30thof Kislev, 5776): Parashat Miketz, 6th day of Chanukah, Rosh Chodesh Tevet I 

 

2015(30thof Kislev, 5776): Seventy-one year old former school teacher, “Evelyn Lieberman, who was the first woman to serve as deputy chief of staff to a president” passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

 

2016: Israel received the first shipment of the advanced F-35 which is part of the on-going to American commitment regardless of administration to help the Jewish state maintain a technological edge over its hostile neighbors.

 

2016: At the JCC in Manhattan, Lorraine Aronowitz Danzig is scheduled to facilitate a “stimulating, breezy discussion of Hell and Good Company (The Spanish Civil War and the World it Made) by Richard Rhodes

 

2016: Congress is scheduled to “formally end its session” this afternoon “without taking acting on a bill targeting campus anti-Semitism” which had been unanimously passed by the Senate but which Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte, “chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary did not advance…through his committee.”

2017(24thof Kislev, 5778): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah – Party On!

2017: Dikla Katz is scheduled to deliver a noon-time lecture at The Simon Dubnow Insitute.

2017: Janet Yellin is scheduled to preside over the Federal Reserve’s penultimate meeting of 2017.

2017: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to offer the fourth and final part of Yitzhak Lewis’ “Introduction to Gershom Scholem”

2017: Jewish Book Month is scheduled to come to an end today.  (Editor’s note – There is no better way to end this event than by considering the works of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez the authors Foxbats over Dimona which provided a unique view of the Six Day War.  Their latest work, The Soviet-Israeli War 1967-1973 takes advantage of their unique understanding of the Soviet and Middle East cultures and the documents made available due to the fall of the Soviet Union to create a thought-provoking tome which proves that just when you think you know all there is to know about a subject, somebody comes along and opens a new window.)

2018: In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to “Dinner, Drinks and Drash” during which Rabbi Ale Braver will lead a discussion on “The Meaning of Kaddish.”

2018: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host The Orchestra of St. Lukes performing “Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.”

2018: “Israeli security forces apprehended four Palestinians today suspected of conducting a shooting attack this week outside the West Bank settlement of Ofra…”

2018: While Jews in Toledo, OH are digesting the thwarting of an a planned attack on their synagogues pattered the slaughter in Pittsburg, James Alex Fields, Jr. the white supremacist who ran over a counter-protestor at the Neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA is starting to serve his life without parole sentence after having been found guilty by a jury in the college town tightly connected to Thomas Jefferson, the President who coined the phrase “separation of church and state.”

2018: In, London, Stephen Laughton’s “One Jewish Boy” which is doubly controversial because it deals the issue of rising anti-Semitism in the UK and because the author “has arranged for a collection be made at the end of each performance Medical Aid for Palestinains, Rabbis for Human Rights and Yad Vashem is scheduled to be shown for a second night at the Red Lion Theatre in Islington.

2018: The GPJFF and the National Museum of American Jewish History are scheduled to host a screening of “The Ancient Law” at the Museum of American Jewish History.

2018: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled “Roman Vishniac Rediscovered,” a curator’s tour that examines “the behind scenes story” of his “extraordinary photographs.”

2019: In Silver Spring, MD, Leisure World Clubhouse II is scheduled to host a screening of “The Spy Behind Home Plate,” and Aviva Kemper film.

2019: In San Francisco, the JCRC is scheduled to kick off its “yearlong Democracy Initiative with a resource fair and sets by “You’re Funny But You Don’t Look Jewish” comedians Joe Nguyen and Samson.”

2019: At the URJ Biennial in Chicago, Rabbi Neil is scheduled to lead a session on “Community Organizing: Running an Effective Social Justice Campaign.”

2019: In Los Gatos, CA, the Addison-Penzak JCC is scheduled to host a “group construction of what organizers say will be California’s largest Lego menorah.”

2019: The opening night reception for Utopia: Visions and Traditions, an exhibition co-curated byDeborah Ugoretz and Tine Kindermann to see how visual artists grapple with diverse traditions of envisioning a better future is scheduled to take place this evening in Manhattan at the Stanton Street Shul.

2019: In the wake of the failure to form a government, today “the people of Israel are left without a functioning government, resulting in stagnation, red tape, unbearable bureaucracy, underpaid paid workers” and a dysfunctional health system whose lack of funds poses a threat to the very lives of some of the society’s most vulnerable people. (As reported by YNET)

2019: In the wake of the anti-Semitic attack on Jews in a Jersey City kosher market, Jews are left to shopping at a grocery store to the list of deadly Jewish activities which have included going to the synagogue and wearing a kippah.

2020: In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host a virtual “Chanukah Under the Stars” complete with Havdalah, Chanukiyah Light and games with the Tifeeth Israel Family.

2020: The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present a “Hanukkah Concert” which will be “a live goulash of Jewish, Yiddish and Klezmer sounds, folk songs and sing-alongs—featuring rising musicians Rebekkah on violin, Mateus on accordion, and Adah Hetko, a Yiddishist, singer/songwriter, and lead vocalist with the Western Massachusetts klezmer-band Burikes.”

2020: On it’ Third Digital Night of Hanukah, the Jewish Museum in London is scheduled to a presentation by Dr. Beverley Jacobson, CEO of Norwood.

2020:PJ Library and the Addison-Penzak JCC are scheduled  to lead a Havdalah celebration and then read stories in Russian, Hebrew and English for children eight years and younger wearing their pajamas in what may be the first ever virtual “Pajamukkah Party.”

2020: The National Museum of American Jewish History, for which Mitchell Levin is an “official content provider,” is scheduled to co-host a “magical evening where Harry Houdini and David Copperfield are inducted into the Ed Snider Only in America Gallery Hall of Fame.”

2020(26thof Kislev, 7801): Shabbat Shel Chanukah; Parashat Vayayshev; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

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