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This Day, December 13, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 13

522 BCE: Darius I, the Persian monarch who allowed the Jewish people to re-build the Temple at Jerusalem strengthened his hold on his kingdom when he defeated Nebuchadnezzar III in a battle at the Tigris and that at the Euphrates.

519 BCE: According to some sources this is the day that, the foundations for the Second Temple were laid during the second year of the reign the Persian ruler, Darius with the support of Haggai and Zachariah. It would take four years to complete the project.

1124: End of the papacy of Callixtus II who issued an updated version of Sicut Judaeis, the papal bull that reiterated the need for protecting the Jews of Europe “in the wake of the persecutions of the First Crusade”

1250: Frederick II passed away.  During his reign as Holy Roman Emperor Frederick created a secular government in Palermo, feat without parallel in the middle ages, with a written constitution that guaranteed the rights of his subjects, be they Christian, Arab, or Jew, and the religious freedom that went along with it.” When he founded the University of Naples in 1224, “he took care that its faculty included Christians, Muslims and Jews, and that all of these languages were taught, together with the laws and literature of these cultures. Equally remarkable considering the times was Frederick's edict ordering religious toleration for Christians, Muslims and Jews throughout his realm.” During the Sixth Crusade, he dealt with the issues through negotiations and not military action.  His rule of Jerusalem was marked by a period of “religious toleration for Muslims, Christians and Jews.”

1360: “Emperor Karl IV confirmed the right of the Austrian dukes to keep Jews in all places in their dominion, and made a treaty with the dukes of Austria, in his capacity as king of Bohemia, that neither party would allow Jews who had left their country to settle in that of the other.”

1521: Fifty-two year old Manuel I the Portuguese monarch who released all the Jews imprisoned by his predecessor John II and during whose reign Levi ibn Habib, also known as HaRaLBaCh, was “compelled to submit to Baptism” passed away today.

1495: The reign of Manuel I the Portuguese monarch who released all the Jews imprisoned by his predecessor John II came to an end today.

1521: King John III succeeded his father as King of Portugal.  Like his predecessors, John III maintained the ban on Jews living in his kingdom and persecuted conversos and marranos alike.  The only time he wavered in this policy came in 1525 when he was negotiating with David Reubeni, the Jewish adventurer who was seeking a fleet and an army from the monarch so he could fight Selim I.

1521: Manuel I, the Portuguese monarch who “decreed that all Jews had to convert to Christianity or leave the country without their children passed away. In 1496, he “exiled thousands of Jews to São Tomé, Príncipe, and Cape Verde.”

1521: Birthdate of Sixtus VI, who from the point of the Jews, was one of the better Popes.  He issued a bull that lifted the restrictions his predecessors had placed on the Jews.  He gave them permission to live in all of the cities in the Papal States. He ordered the Knights of Malta to stop enslaving Jews traveling by sea to and from the Middle East.  He allowed Jews physicians to treat Christian patents and made provision for new printing of the Talmud. 

1532(Tevet, 5293):Solomon Molcho, ("Solomon His Angel"), originally Diogo Pires, passed away.  He was a "New Christian" who converted back to Judaism, declared himself the Messiah, and was burned at the stake for apostasy. Molcho was born a Christian to Marrano parents in Portugal about 1500. His baptismal name probably was Diogo Pires. He held the post of secretary in one of the higher courts of his native country. When the Jewish adventurer David Reubeni came ostensibly on a political mission from Khaibar (Peshawar) to Portugal, Molcho wished to join him, but was rejected. He then circumcised himself, though without thereby gaining Reubeni's favor, and emigrated to Turkey. Intellectually talented, a visionary and believer in dreams, he studied the Kabbalah with Joseph Taytazak and became acquainted with Joseph Caro. He then wandered, as a preacher, through the Land of Israel (then a province of the Ottoman Empire), where he achieved a great reputation and announced that the Messianic kingdom would come in 1540. In 1529 Molcho published a portion of his sermons under the title Derashot, or Sefer ha-Mefo'ar. Going to Italy, he was opposed by prominent Jews including Jacob Mantino ben Samuel who feared that he might mislead their co-religionists, but he succeeded in gaining the favor of Pope Clement VII and of some Judeophile cardinals at Rome. He is said to have predicted to the pope a certain flood which inundated Rome and various other places. After his many cabalistic and other strange experiments, Molcho felt justified in proclaiming himself the Messiah, or his precursor. In company with David Reubeni, whom he came across in Italy, he went in 1532 to Ratisbon, where the emperor Charles V was holding a diet. On this occasion, Molcho carried a flag with the Hebrew word Maccabi, the four letters מכבי which also signify an abbreviation for Exodus 15:11 "Who among the mighty is like unto God?". The emperor imprisoned both Molcho and Reubeni, and took them with him to Italy. In Mantua an ecclesiastical court sentenced Molcho to death by fire. At the stake the emperor offered to pardon him on condition that he return to the Catholic Church, but Molcho refused, asking for a martyr's death.

1545: The Council of Trent which produced The Tirdentine Mass begins. The Tridentine Mass, a Latin ritual the rubrics of which were set by the Council of Trent in the 16th century. The mass reflected the traditional Christian goal of converting Jews to Jesus including “praying on Good Friday that God "lift the veil" from "Jewish blindness.”  This changed at the time of Vatican II, with the declaration "Nostra Aetate," which condemned the idea that Jews could be blamed for the murder of Jesus, and affirmed the permanence of God's Covenant with Israel. The "replacement" theology by which the church was understood as "superseding" Judaism was no more. Corollary to this was a rejection of the traditional this version of the Mass would be discontinued as the Catholic Church affirmed a more positive view of Judaism and the Jewish people. The Vatican would reintroduce the Tridentine Mass in 2008 with Catholics praying that God "enlighten" the hearts of Jews "so that they recognize Jesus Christ, Savior of all mankind."

1585(Kislev, 5346): Eliezer (Lazer) ben Elijah Ashkenazi who first became a rabbi in Egypt before making his way to Europe via Cyprus where he led congregations in Cremona and Posen before moving to Cracow where he passed  away today.

1619: “Under the rule of Prince Maurice of Orange, it was decided that each city could decide for itself whether or not to admit Jews. In consequence, the position of Jews differed greatly between cities In those towns where they were admitted, they would not be required to wear a badge of any sort identifying them as Jews.” (As reported by The History of the Jewish People)

1642: A Dutch explored named Abel Janszoon Tasman reached New Zealand. Jews would not reach New Zealand until the 1830’s when it was under British control.

1663: Mattahthias Calahora, “a renowned physician” was “accused by Friar Servatius of ‘blaspheming the virgin.’ Although there was no testimony aside from the Friars, he was tortured and burned at the stake. His ashes were dispersed to prevent him from having a proper Jewish burial. Despite this, enough of his remains were found for a burial to take place” (As reported by The History of The Jewish People

1748(22nd of Kislev 5509): Mozes Marcus Mordechai Drukker passed away in Amsterdam and was buried in the Muiderberg Cemetery.

 

1754; Mahmud I, Ottoman Sultan passed away. During his reign, two Jewish doctors, Isaac Tchelebi and Hekim Joseph were appointed to serve at his palace. In 1739, Mahmud signed the Treaty of Belgrade that gave citizenship rights to the Ottoman Jews. Austrian Jews were so impressed with the grant of rights that many of them applied for citizenship in Mahmud’s empire.

1756: Birthdate of Muehlbach native Loeb Jacob Fleischer, the husband of Hindel Seligmann and the father of David Loeb Fleischer.

1762(27thof Kislev, 5523): Third Day of Chanukah

1762: In German Juettle and Jakob Weil gave birth to Frommet Weil, the wife of David Hirsch Lindauer and the mother of Jakob, Bessie and Mayer Lindauer.

1765(1stof Tevet, 5526): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1769: Dartmouth College founded by the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock.  Today Dartmouth has approximately 450 Jewish students out of an undergrad population of over four thousand students.  There are approximately 100 Jewish students among its 1,300 grad students.  Dartmouth offers ten courses in Jewish studies. Dartmouth also has a special Hebrew Studies semester transfer credit arrangement with the Hebrew University and with Oxford University.

1770(26th of Kislev, 5531): Second Day of Chanukah

1770: As Jews prepared to kindle the third light of Chanukah, in Boston, the four civilians accused of killing Americans during the Boston Massacre were tried today and later found not guilty.

1773(28th of Kislev, 5534): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1773: As Jews prepare to kindle the fifth Chanukah candle, Americans are making plans for the “Boston Tea Party” which will take place in three days.

1774(10th of Tevet, 5535): Asar B’Tevet

1774: As Jews fasted on the 10th of Tevet, Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth, NH to warn the patriots that the Britsih were coming which led to the Colonials seizing Fort William and Mary the next day and distributing its military supplies among various units of what would become the Minute Men who faced the British the following year to start the American Revolution.

1775: In Buchau, Helena Neuburger and Heinrich Maendle gave birth to Rosalie Maendle.

1776(3rd of Tevet, 5537): In London on a day of national fasting proclaimed by King George III the Portuguese and Spanish Congregation offered a special prayer in they “implored forgiveness for our sins” and asked for “divine assistance” to help our forces on sea and land to “restore peace and prosperity to these kingdoms” followed by a sermon given by Moshe Cohen d’Azevdeo.

1778(24th of Kislev, 5539): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah candle.

1778: On the same day that Jews prepared to celebrate Chanukah, with the Revolution entering into its fourth year Abigail Adams wrote her husband John, a future President of the United States, that “this year has not been a very glorious one to America” but that “our Enemies however have nothing to boast of since they have not gained one inch of territory more than they possessed a year ago.”

1779(4th of Tevet, 5540): Zipporah bat. Menahem, wife of Issachar ben Abraham 'from the Holy Congregation of Edinburgh' passed away today.

1791: Esther Lucka and Benjamin Wolf Bondi gave birth to Elias Bondi, the husband of Caroline Lichtenstadt.

1797: In Dusseldorf, Peira (known as "Betty"), née van Geldern and Samson Heine, a textile merchant gave birth to the first child author and poet Heinrich Heine. The German author converted in 1825.  Heine said, “The baptismal certificate is an admission ticket to European culture.”  Unfortunately for Heine, things did not work.  Christians saw him as an opportunist.  Jews saw him as a turncoat and in the end, he supposedly regretted his decision.  “It is extremely difficult for a Jew to be converted, for how can he bring himself to believe in the divinity of another Jew?”  “Experience is a good school, but the fees are high.”  “The Jews trudged around with the Bible all through the Middle Ages, as with a portable fatherland.”  And in words that almost seem to foretell the coming of the Nazis he wrote, “Where men burn books, they will also burn people.”

1797: In the first attempt to remove the qualification that office holder’s in Maryland had to be Christians, a petition signed by Solomon Etting, Bernard Gratz, and others was presented to the General Assembly at Annapolis; the petitioners averred "that they are a sect of people called Jews, and thereby deprived of many of the valuable rights of citizenship, and pray to be placed upon the same footing with other good citizens." The petition was read and referred to a committee of three persons, who upon the same day reported that they "have taken the same into consideration and conceive the prayer of the petition is reasonable, but as it involves a constitutional question of considerable importance they submit to the House the propriety of taking the same into consideration at this advanced stage of the session." This summary disposition of the petition put a quietus upon further agitation for the next five years. (As reported by Cyrus Adler and J. H. Hollander)

1800(26th of Kislev, 5561): 2nd day of Chanukah; Shabbat; kindle three candles in the evening

1800(26th of Kislev, 5561): Saul ben Meir Margolith who was a rabbi at Zbaraz, Galicia, Komorn, and Lublin and was the father of Zebi Hirsch, passed away at Lublin today.

1807: Birthdate of Levi Bodenheimer, the native of Karlsruhe who served as a rabbi at Krefeld and Hildesheim.

1807: Birthdate of Charleston, SC, native Philip Philipps who opposed nullification while practicing law in his home town, moved to Alabama where practiced law and served as a member of the U.S. House Representatives before finally settling in Washington, D.C. where he resumed his practice of law.

1807: Thirty-four year old Joseph Philipson, opened his general merchandising store and permanently settled in St. Louis. Joseph was reportedly the first Jew to settle in St. Louis, He was the first Jewish merchant to settle in St. Louis and the first American merchant to establish a permanent store in St. Louis. In 1808, Joseph's brother Jacob arrived in St. Louis and established his own store. Their remaining brother Simon remained in Philadelphia, traveling occasionally to St. Louis. Until 1816 the Philipsons were the only Jews known to live in St. Louis. Jacob died about 1858, buried in the City Cemetery

1813: Birthdate of David Spangler Kaufman.  Kaufman was the first Jewish Congressman from Texas. He died in 1851.  Kaufman County, Texas and the city of Kaufman, Texas are named for him.

1815: In New York City, Sarah Seixas and Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan gave birth to Rachel Seixas Nathan who married Montague M. Hendrick in NYC in 1836 and with whom she had nine children.

1815: Birthdate of Arthur Stanley, the Dean of Westminster who wrote “Lectures On The History of the Jewish Church”.

1816: In Gehaus, Germany, Jacob Mandelbaum and Bella Epstein gave birth to their third child, David Mandelbaum.

1819(25thof Kislev, 5580): As the Unites States endures its first peacetime major economic and financial crisis, known as the Panic of 1819, Chanukah is observed.

1820: Michael Moses married Julia Davis today at the Great Synagogue.

1821: In Tomaszów Lubelski, Kingdom of Poland, Simchah Pinsker, a Hebrew language writer, scholar and teacher and his wife gave to Leon Pinsker, a physician by training and a “lover of Zion” best known for writing “Auto-Emancipation.”

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/pinsker.html

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pinsker_Simhah_and_Lev

1827(24thof Kislev, 5588) Kindle the first Chanukah candle.

1831: In Jamaica, Aaron Gomes DaCosta was named to be an Ensign.

1845: In Sulzburg, Samuel and Hina Henritte Kahn gave birth to Rosa Kahn who after her marriage became Rosa Hirschel.

1847: The Portuguese congregation of New Orleans held its first annual meeting.

1852: Birthdate of Moravian native Emanuel Schriber, the Hungarian and German educated Rabbi who filled several pulpits in the United States including one in Little Rock Arkansas from 1889 to 1891 before finally settling in at Congregation Emanu-El in Chicago

1855: During the thirty-fourth session of the United States Congress, a special act was passed, which provided that all the rights, privileges, and immunities heretofore granted by the law to the Christian churches in the city of Washington be and the same hereby are extended to the Hebrew Congregation of said city.”

1856: Birthdate of Albert Hessberg, the native of Albany, N.Y. who became a partner in the law firm of Peckham, Rosendale and Hessberg and who served as president of the Albany Jewish as well as Recorder of Albany for two terms.

1856: Birthdate of Abbott Lawrence Lowell, who served as President of Harvard from 1909 to 1933. Thanks to reforms Lowell made in the admission policies where merit was the driving factor, Jewish enrollment rose from 6% in 1908 to 22% in 1922.  Lowell had not intended for his reforms to bring this many Jews to his university and he worked vigorously and successfully to institutionalize other criteria that drove down the Jews representation to the point that when he left in 1933 Jews made up less than 10% of the undergraduate student body.  Lowell also was an outspoken critic of Wilson’s decision to nominate Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court.  Like so many of his ilk, Lowell did not limit his bigotry to Jews – he had no use for African-Americans or homosexuals either.

1857(26th of Kislev, 5618): Second Day of Chanukah

1857: In Berlin, Paul Alexander Franz* von Mendelssohn and Marie Antoinette Enole Mendelssohn gave birth to Robert Georg Alexander von Mendelssohn,

1860(29th Kislev, 5621): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1860: The New York Times reported that “A private letter from Jerusalem states that an American Jew at New Orleans has bequeathed £10,000 for the building and endowment of almshouses for infirm and destitute Israelites in the Holy City. An agent had already arrived to carry out the bequest, and the houses intended to be used for the purpose mentioned are expected to be ready for occupation before the expiration of the coming winter.”

1861(10th of Tevet) Asara B’Tevet

1862: During the Civil War, Army of the Potomac suffered one of its worst defeats at the Battle of Fredericksburg where they were commanded Ambrose Burnside. Company C of the 82nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment which had been formed by a group of Jewish volunteer soldiers under the name of the Concordia Guards was one of the units engaged in the battle. The regiment would be commanded by Colonel Edward S. Salomon, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, who may have been Chicago’s first Jewish lawyer and was the alderman for the Sixth Ward when the war broke out. Among other Jews serving during the battle was Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman, a native of Richmond, who was a solider with the Union Army and was wounded at Fredericksburg.

1862: Nineteen year old Richmond born Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman, the resident of Philadelphia who had been serving with Company G of the 119th Regiment was wounded today during the Battle of Fredericksburg.

1862(21stof Kislev, 5623): Parashat Vayeshev

1862(21stof Kislev, 5623): Philadelphia Joseph A. Davidson of Company I, the 134thRegiment was among those killed today during the Battle of Fredericksburg while fighting to preserve the Union.

1863(3rdof Tevet, 5624): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1865(25thof Kislev, 5626): Chanukah is celebrated for the first time in four years without the sound of cannons and the hollering of the wounded and dying.

1866: Birthdate of Philadelphia native Olga Simon, the wife of Solomon Grinsfelder with whom she had two children – Joseph and Flora Grinsfelder.

1866: Mesoda and Abraham Aloof gave birth to Simony “Simha” Aloof , the “sister of Judah and Grace Aloof.”

1869: In Lida, Russia, Bernard and Aida Pollock gave birth to David B. Pollock the “editor and manager of Zion Messenger, the official organ of the Knights of Zion” in Chicago, Illinois, who organized the Junior Knights of Zion Military Band of Jewish Boys to provide “a musical education for Jewish children without means.

1873: It was reported today that most of the Jews of Paris attended the funeral of French banker and philanthropist Louis Raphael Bischoffsheim which was held last month.  The large filled the synagogue and then followed the coffin to the cemetery. A native of Germany, this highly successful financier founded schools for Jewish children, established hospitals and asylums for the general population and supported soup kitchens every winter.

1874: Birthdate of Joseph Arkadievich Levin, the Russian pianist who gained fame as Josef Lhévinne, a name given to him by his manager.

1874: Birthdate of Halifax, NC native and UNC alum Dr. Lee Cohen, the University of Maryland School of Medicine trained plastic surgeon and Captain in the Medical Corps during WW I.

1876(27th of Kislev, 5637): Third Day of Chanukah celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant, a close friend of Jesse Seligman

1877: In “Chernihiv, Ukraine, Chana and Naphthalia Hertz Shiplacoff gave birth to Abraham I. Shiplacoff, the husband of “Yetta Ettle Itta ‘Henrietta’ Shiplacoff who moved to the United States where he became a labor leader and the first Socialist to be elected to the New York State Assembly.

1880: A charter was granted today marking formally incorporation of Hebrew Union Congregation in Greenville, MS.  Twenty-five to thirty families had been acting as a congregation since 1870 going so far as to hire a Charles Rawitzer of Memphis as their Rabbi.  HUC built their first temple in 1881 and hired Joseph Bogen as their Rabbi. In 1962 H.U.C. was the largest Jewish congregation in the state of Mississippi with almost 200 families. At last report, the Temple is home to about 50 Jewish families in the area.

1881: A Pogrom begins in Warsaw that leaves approximately 1,500 Jewish homes, shops and synagogues in ruins.

1882: Jacques Damala left for North Africa today after his wife, Sarah Bernhardt told him she would no longer support his dissolute life-style. He left her to pay off his debts that arose from, among other things, gambling and drugs.

1885(5th of Tevet, 5646): Sixty-eight year old “Russian Talmudist” and author Mathias Strashun who “spent a great part of his considerable fortune in collecting a magnificent library” and whose “house became a rendezvous for scholars and students from all parts of Europe” passed away today.

1885: Birthdate of Romanian born University of Michigan Professor of Economics Max Handman who had earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Oregon and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1917 after which served as a professor of sociology and economics at several universities including Texas and Minnesota

1885: It was reported today that the funeral of Wolfgang Strassmann, a member of a prominent Jewish family who was the President of the Municipal Council in Berlin “was made the occasion of a demonstration against Jew-baiters.” Thirty thousand people attended the funeral and the Emperor sent two wreaths. (The Emperor would seem to be somewhat conflicted since one of his court chaplains was a leader of the anti-Semitic forces)

1885: The New York Times published a review of The Rabbi’s Spell: A Russo-Jewish Romance by Stuart C. Cumberland

1886: As police are arresting merchants selling goods on Sunday in violation of the Sunday Closing Laws, the question is asked how can a Jewish peddler “arrested on the Sabbath” who pleads that he has kept the previous day holy, be punished under a law that allows a businessman “to select the one day out seven on which to abstain from business.”

1888:Telemachus (Telemaque) Thomas Timayenis, the author of The Original Mr. Jacobs: A Startling Exposé,‎ was charged with grand larceny by Mrs. Emma Dickson his partner in the Minerva Publishing Company. (Timayenis denied reports that he was Jewish and his books were decidedly anti-Semitic in nature.

1889: It was reported today that the B’nai B’rith has taken a leading role in the education fair currently taking place at the American Institute Building in New York City.

1889: Moritz Ellinger, editor of the Hebrew Standard delivered a lecture entitled “A New Departure” in New York City

1890: The “juvenile orchestra” of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum is scheduled to perform at the Teachers’ Fair today.

1890: Rabbi Jacob Joseph delivered a sermon at the Beth Hamedrasch Hagol, an Orthodox synagogue on Norfolk,  in which he addressed “the persecution of the Russian Jews and said that necessary steps should be taken to urge the United States Government to use its influence with the Czar for the cessation of the persecution.

1890: Rabbi Kaufman Kohler, a leading Reform rabbi, delivered a sermon at Temple Beth EL, in which he said “that Jews had proved that they were the equals of the highest races of the age in all countries except Russia where they had been subjected to the greatest hardships.”

1891: Jacob Rubino, a New York Life Insurance policy holder filed suit again a trustee of New York Life who is also a member of the Finance Committee seeking the return of “exorbitant commissions.”

1892(24thof Kislev, 5653): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1892: In Duluth, MN, founding of Congregation Tifereth Israel whose members included Jacob Levine, Joseph Oreckovsky, Henry Caploiv, William Goldstein and Isidra Lieberman.

1892: Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Straus and Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lauterbach and their daughter were among those who attended a meeting of the Nineteenth Century Club where they listened to a lecture on “The Significance of the New-England Transformation.

1893(4thof Tevet, 5654): Raphael Dreyfus, the father of Alfred Dreyfus passed away today.

1893: Justice Ryan of the Essex Market Police court committed “three destitute little children” ranging in age from 7 to 2 to the Hebrew Children’s Guardian Society because their mother Sarah Polskie could not care for them.

1894: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum of Brooklyn won a competition among all the orphanages in Brooklyn and New York sponsored by the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany of Brooklyn by 700 votes which means it will receive “100 dressed dolls and other toys.”

1894: This evening members of the University Settlement Society heard the report of Helen Moore, the librarian at Guild House in which she noted that the young Jewish readers show “discrimination” “always wanted the best literature.  They always have the library’s 83 histories of the United States checked out but they “show a passion for stories about…patriotism and fairy tales. (The purpose of the society is “to being men and women of education into closer relation with the laboring classes so that they might meet on a common ground for education purpose.”)

1895: In Chicago, “three drunken poles” attacked Abraham Mar, a Jewish vegetable peddler, and hung him three times with a clothes line, threatening him each time with death unless “he prayed according to the Christian fashion.”

1895(26thof Kislev, 5656): Second Day of Chanukah; in the evening kindle three candles

1895: Two days after she had passed away, Sarah Davis, the wife of David Marcus Davis and the father of Alice and Ernest Davis was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1895: Today’s session of the Educational Fair sponsored by the Jewish community opened at 2:30 this afternoon and closed at 5 p.m. because this evening is the start of the Sabbath.  Although it was only open for 2 and one-half hours, the fair was so well attended that the total receipts for the fair has now risen to over one hundred thousand dollars.

1895: It was reported that during this past month the average attendance in the industrial school supported by the United Hebrew Charities was 238 girls who produced 175 garments while learning sewing and dressmaking.

1896: Four days after he had passed away, Elias Mocatta, who was married twice, first to Augusta Goldsmid and then to Rachel Goldsmid was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1898: Privates James W. Rosenberger and Taylor H. Rosenberger of Winchester were among the members of Company who were mustered out of U.S. Service after having served with the 2nd Virginia Volunteer since May of 1898.

1899: Birthdate of publisher Harold Guinzburgfounder of Literary Guild and head of Viking Press.

1899(11thof Tevet, 5660): “Commerzienrath Julius Isaac” passed away today at Berlin.

1899: Thirteen year old Michalina Araten was kidnapped and taken to convent in Cracow where she was raised as a Catholic

https://www.amazon.com/Michalina-Daughter-Rachel-Sarna-Araten/dp/0873064127

https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/excerpts/woh-ex-0003556/woh-ex-0003556

1900: In Ograda, Romania, Victor Perlea and Margarethe Haberlin gave birth to conductor Jonel Perlea who spent part of WW II at the Mariapfarr Concentration Camp.

http://www.soundfountain.org/rem/remperlea.html

1900: Birthdate of New York native and composer Arthur Herzog, Jr. who collaborated with the legendary Billie Holiday on several songs including “God Bless the Child and was the father of author Arthur Herzog III and grandfather of playwright Amy Herzog.

1900: Birthdate of Budapest native László Radványi whose escape from Nazi Europe led to his becoming a labor activist and university professor in Mexico.

1901(3rdof Tevet, 5661): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1901: An “appeal by the defendant Joseph Sonberg from a judgment of the Supreme Court in favor of the plaintiff was entered in the office of the clerk of the county of New York” today.

1902(13thof Kislev, 5663): Parashat Vayishlach

1902: “A Mission Wanting Power” published today which provides a review of A Century of Jewish Missions by A.F. Thompson, contains the insight that there “are so many way in which the money spent on conversion of the Jews could be more advantageously spent since only 204,540 Jews have been converted to Christianity in the last one hundred years.

1903(24thof Kislev, 5664): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1903: At today’s meeting of the United Zionists of Greater New York a resolution was adopted that expressed opposition to trying to establish a Zionist colony in Uganda.  The 250 delegates expressed their dissatisfaction with Israel Zangwill and expressed their support that the Zionist dream could only be fulfilled in Palestine

1903:  Isidor Strauss read the eleventh annual report at tonight’s meeting of the Educational Alliance.  Andrew Carnegie attended the meeting and engaged in light-hearted banter with Strauss, who is the President of Alliance.

1903: In New York, the B’nai Zion is holding its “annual ball in Tammany Hall.

1903: Four hundred guests attended the Carmel Chanukah dinner tonight which sponsored by the Carmel Wine Company.  The sponsors of the dinner were trying to develop support for the Jews who are working to establish agricultural settlements in Palestine.  Professor Richard Gottheil and Cyrus L Sulzberger were among the speakers at the event.

1904: “Oscar S. Straus, President of Trade and Transportation, received  telegram today from Secretary Metcalf of the Department of Commerce and Labor announcing that he would grant a hearing to a committee of the board on the new steamboat inspection regulations.

1905: “Russian City Burning: Jews Being Massacred” published today described the attacks on the Jews of Odessa and Elzabethgrad.

1905: In London, “The Times, this morning published a long letter signed by Israel Zangwill, the President of the Jewish Territorial Organization and other officials of the organization in which they reply to the recent letter of Lord Rothschild and others relating to Jewish colonization.”

1905: It was reported from St. Petersburg that “the League of Leagues has passed a resolution demand equal rights for the Jews.”

1905: It was reported today that William Ellis Corey, President of the United States Steel Corporation “has already given $20,000 to the persecuted Jews of Russia” but plans on donating an additional $100,000 to the Jewish Relief Fund.

1905: It was reported today that the Pope has described as “excesses, unworthy of a civilized people” the “massacres of Jews which are condemned and detested by evangelical law.”

1906(26th of Kislev, 5667): Second Day of Chanukah

1906: “To Send More Jews” published today, described a meeting in Chicago between Judge Julian W. Mack and Jacob Schiff during which Schiff discussed his plan to organize a association financed by him and others that would provide all “all poor Jews wo arrive at New York and other Atlantic ports to go to cities and town in the South and West” where they might avoid the congestion conditions in the Jewish quarters of those cities.

1907: The Council of Jewish Institutions which was formed last night at meeting of the delegates from the Hebrew charitable and education institutions in New York City is scheduled to meet this afternoon for the first time where officers will be elected for the first year of its existence.

1908: In Austria, Gershom Bader, the son of Izaak Moyzesz Bader and Helene Bader and Etta (Joanna) Bader) gave birth to Milton Bader

1908: Birthdate of Berlin native Wolfgang Reinhardt who was “nominated for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay in 1962 for the film Freud.”

1909(1stof Tevet, 5670): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1909(1stof Tevet, 5670): Thirty-nine year old Ezra Hurwitz, the Lithuanian born son of Nachum and Freida Leah Hurwitz and the husband of Bertha Hurwitz passed away today in New York City.

1910: Four days after she had passed away, “Rachel Mocatta” the daughter of Alexander Goldsmid and Eliza Israel and the wife of Elia Mocatta with whom she had one child – Percy Mocatta – was buried to at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1910: Birthdate of Sol Saks, who is most famous for writing the first episode of the highly popular sitcom “Bewitched.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1910: In Boston, Katie Silverman and Arthur Rutstein gave birth to Lillian Rutstein who gained fame as the actress and singer Lillian Roth, who would convert to Catholicism in 1948 although “she later said she could really forget her Jewish heritage.

1911: A mass meeting held tonight in the Assembly Chambers under the Chairmanship of Gov. Dix, recorded its protest against the Russian Government's refusal to honor passports held by American Jews.”

1912(3rdof Tevet, 5673): “Mrs. Minna Glaser, the wife of the late Julius Glaser of New York City” with whom she had three children was interred today Washington Cemetery following her funeral.

1913(14th of Kislev, 5674): Abraham J. Laredo a prominent Gibraltar merchant passed away.

1914(25thof Kislev, 5675): Chanukah

1914: Birthdate of Larry Park, the native of Joliet, Illinois  who starred in the film biography of Al Jolson before falling victim to the Hollywood Black list.

1915: Birthdate of Vilnius native Yitzhak Zuckerman, a deputy commander  of the ZOB who survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, helped smuggle refugees in Palestine  founded two kibbutzim with his wife Ziva and other survivors,testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann and was the grandfather of Roni Zuckerman, “the Israeli Air Force's first female fighter pilot.”(Please read the items below.  There is no way for me to do justice to this man)

https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206398.pdf

https://spartacus-educational.com/2WWzuckerman.htm

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Zuckerman_Yitshak

1916: In Philadelphia, Jacob da Silva Solis-Cohen, Jr married Marion Gimbel Labe with whom he had two daughters, Mary and Ann Solis-Cohen Rosentahl the wife of Charles Rosenthal.

1917: In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, textile company owner Abraham Shapior and his wife, “the former Jrena Fromberg, a founder of the Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America,” gave birth to Rhoda Shapiro who gained famed as children’s author Rhoda Blumberg. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

 

1917: The Bazaar sponsored by Temple Emanu-El which was being held to raise money for the fund providing relief for “the Jewish war sufferers and for welfare work among American soldiers and sailors” continued for a second day at the Manhattan mansion of Adolph Lewisohn.

1917: “Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshal, Jacob Wertheim, Cyrus Sulzberger” and the other leaders of the campaign to raise five million dollars for Jewish war relief gave “three cheers for the labor unions of the east side” today following the announcement that the Jewish labor unions have agreed to contribute one day’s pay to the fund which will mean a total contribution of $1,250,000.

1917: After meeting with officials of the State Department yesterday, “Henry Morgenthau, the former Ambassador to Turkey announced” today “that American consular officers were to be sent at one to Jerusalem to supervise the distribution of relief funds collected by American Jews for their coreligionists in Palestine.”

1918(10thof Tevet, 5679): Asara B’Tevet

1918: Jacob H. Schiff received a cable today from Rabbi Sternberg in Vienna describing “attacks made on Jews in Western and Central Galicia” in which “the Jewish population has been murdered, robbed and the women ravished.”

1918: Dr. I Edwin Goldwasser, the direct of the Jewish Relief campaign said tonight he especially appreciated the services of the volunteer workers – “both Jews and non-Jews” --- who have been untiring in the efforts and asking “nothing but a chance to help.”

1919: Per the instructions of the British government, as described Andrew Bonar Law, the British Military Mission in Russia is doing call it can do “in its power to prevent” further attacks on the Jews like the ones the Pogrom carried out by the Cossacks outside of Kiev.

1920(2ndof Tevet, 5681): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1920: Rabbi Naftali Riff “submitted his intentions papers in the Common Pleas Court of Camden County, NJ to become a U.S. citizen” today which “stated that he was 5’ 8” tall, weighed 115 pounds, had black hair and brown eyes and lived at 507 Mt. Vernon Street in Camden.

1920: Today, the House of Representatives ignored the objections of Congressman Isaac Siegel and his allies and passed the Johnson Immigration Bill by a vote of 293 to 41.  (Editor’s note -  Those engaged in the immigration debate of the 21st century, especially Jews, might find it instructive to study the history of this legislation.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

1921: An order was issued by King George V for Sir Edgar Speyer to be struck off the list of the Privy Council.

1921: “One of the largest charity social affairs of the season” is scheduled to take place this evening at the Astor Hotel, when the New York Section Council of Jewish Woman host a concert and dance with the proceeds going to the organization’s Americanization work.

1922: Professor Frederick Starr of the University of Chicago is scheduled to deliver a lecture on Japan at the Washington Boulevard Temple.

1922: For a third night in a row the Jewish People’s Institute offered assistance to those filing papers seeking to help relatives gain admission to the United States.

1922: In Des Moines, Harry Levine, a butcher and his wife gave birth to Bernard Levine, the WW II veteran and husband of Ruth Nagorner who owned and ran two Ben Franklin variety stores.

1922: “A Jewish Manifesto to the Arabs” published today contains the second statement by the Jewish National Council of Palestine in which it pleads for a peaceful co-existence between Jews and Arabs.

http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/ZIONIST_Manifesto_British-Palestine_growth_pdf

1923: This evening, an anti-Jewish open air meeting was held by Royalist students in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Copies of "L' Action Francaise", the Royalist Organ, were on sale. The speakers denounced the Jews as the chief obstacle to the restoration of the Monarchy in France. The Jews, they declared, were Communists; the Jews were the counselors of President Wilson and were responsible for his Fourteen Points, which had brought about the isolation of France. The first step towards the destruction of the Republic must be the annihilation of the Jews. (As reported by JTA)

1923: Birthdate of William Bernard Kannel  a cardiovascular epidemiologist whose work helped to identify and sought to rout the culprits behind heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1923: “Two Jews Innocently Imprisoned in France Seven Years” published today described the fate of two Jews who were falsely imprisoned during World War I.

1924(16th of Kislev, 5685):  Seventy-four year old Samuel Gompers, the famed American labor leader, passed away.

http://www.aflcio.org/About/Our-History/Key-People-in-Labor-History/Samuel-Gompers-1850-1924

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1747.html

1925(26thof Kislev, 5686): Eighty-year old Caroline von Gomperz-Bettelheim, the sister of Anton Bettelheim and the wife of Julius Ritter von Gomperz who was an “Austrian court singer and member of the Royal Opera in Vienna, passed away today.

1925: Birthdate of painter Itshak Holtz, the son of a Polish “hat maker and furrirer who made Aliyah in 1935 and who “has stated that his artwork, which primarily but not exclusively depicts scenes of Jewish spirituality and tradition, is driven by his Orthodox Jewish beliefs”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itshak_Holtz#/media/File:Itshak_Holtz_Yerusalem_Wedding_2010.jpg

1926: “Shave Cost Homes” published today described how “the management committee of Sharrei Hesed ,a Jewish suburb of Jerusalem has instructed its tenants to eject from their premises ‘all occupants having shaven chins or shorn sidelocks or committing similar offences against strict orthodoxy.”

1927: In Philadelphia, Joseph Needleman, a furniture salesman and “former Sonia Shupak…who family owned a pickle business” gave birth to Herbert Leroy Needleman, the doctor who sounded the alarm when it came to children’s exposure to lead. (As reported by Benedict Carey)

1928: “Catholics, Jews and Protestants joined in a good-will meeting” tonight “at Temple Emnau-El under the auspices of the Congregation’s Men’s Club which was the “final meeting in the old Temple at 5th Avenue and 66thStreet.

1928: George Gershwin's musical work ''An American in Paris'' had its premiere, at Carnegie Hall in New York.

1929: Ted “Kid” Lewis won his bout tonight on a TKO.

1929: “Katharina Knie” a silent film featuring Vladimir Sokoloff was released today in Germany.

1930(23rdof Kislev, 5691): Parashat Vayeshev

1930: In Berlin Norbert Seitelbech, “a well-off German Jew who managed a family business” and Clementine Seitelbach, “an Italian Catholic” gave birth to Henry Seitelbach who gained fame as “Natan Zach, a cherished Israeli poet who helped revolutionize Hebrew poetry by spurning the formality of his more established contemporaries in favor of plain-spoken, loose-limbed verse.” (As reported by Joseph Berger)

1930: At City Hall this afternoon, Mayor Jimmie Walker welcome Professor Albert Einstein and gave him the keys to the city.

1931: Author and journalist Emil Ludwig (born Emil Cohn) interviewed Joseph Stalin.

1931: After a week of celebration, festivities marking the 10thanniversary of Congregation Beth El in Camden, NJ came to a close with a banquet this evening.

1932: “Dr. Arthur Kraus, an instructor in philosophy at City College’ was scheduled to continue his hunger strike begun two days ago “in protest against the apathy of intellectuals toward anti-Semitic excess in Polish universities.”

1933: In a foretaste of what was to come in Hungaryd, Zoltan Mesko and Count Alexander Festetis, leaders of rival Hungarian Nazi sections, attacked Premier Goemboes in Parliament today for an anti-Nazi statement in a speech yesterday at a meeting of the Governmental party.

1934: “Music in the Air” a movie “based on Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Broadway musical of the same name” directed by Joe May was released in the United States today

1935: “Para Vigo me voy” (Say Si Si) with English lyrics by Al Stillman was record today.

1935: Birthdate of St. Louis native and University of Wisconsin educated “real estate developer” Lewis N. Wolff, the holder of an MBA from Washington University who used his wealth to buy the Oakland Athletics and who was the husband of Jean Wolff with whom he had “three children.”

1935: Jews were excluded from the medical profession in Germany.

1935: “Your Uncle Dudley” with a screenplay by Dore Schary was released today in the United States.

1936: Andy Devine appeared on the Jack Benny (Benjamin Kubelsky) where he scored the longest laughter pause in the history of the program.

1936: It was reported today that Rabbi Harry Halpern of the East Midwood Jewish Center will deliver a talk entitled “The Significance of Chanukah” at the upcoming meeting of the Women’s League of the United Synagogue of America.

1936(29thof Kislev, 5697): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1936: “More than 1,000 members or guests of the Jewish Education Association attended the fifteenth annual Chanukah dinner held” tonight “at the Hotel Astor” where they “heard Supreme Court Justice Samuel I. Rosenman urge a ‘rebirth of interest’ in Jewish religious education” and “Mark Eisner, chairman of the Board of Education called for the mobilization of all ‘Jewish forces in America, to give Jewish education its proper status in relation to the life of the whole American community.’”

1936: After leaders in the effort to provide financial relief for European Jewry meeting at the Hotel Astor “heard speakers describe the plight of Jews in foreign lands” the “five hundred delegates from 25 states voted” today “to increase the 1937 quota of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to a figure ‘much higher’ than the $3,500,000 set as the goal of the campaign ending this month.”

1936: At Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “How a Big City Tests Characters.”

1936: At Temple Rodeph Sholom, Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Divorce, Remarriage, the Church and the State: Are New Morals Possible Today?”

1936: At Temple B’nai Jeshurun, Rabbi Israel Goldstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Courage to Be Yourself.”

1936: This morning at the Free Synagogue in Carnegies Hall, Dr. Abram Leon Sachar is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Five Patterns of Jewish Life.”

1936: At the Jewish Science Society, Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Source of Jewish Energy.”

1936: The Women’s League for Palestine is scheduled to hear an address this evening by Henry Schorr at their meeting in Carnegie Hall.

1936: “The Metropolitan Conference of Temple Brotherhoods” is scheduled to “hold its tenth annual Hanukkah dinner” this “evening in the Hotel Pennsylvania.”

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Solomon Baum, 23, a student at the Hebrew Teachers' Seminary, was seriously wounded by an Arab assailant in the Beit Hakerem quarter of Jerusalem. British troops and police fought a gang of 50 Arab terrorists in Galilee. The same gang was reported to have murdered and robbed an Arab villager living in  Kafr Kara who refused to hand over the requested sum of money.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that n Paris the Council of German Jews, headed by Viscount Samuel, announced that during the first half of 1937, 3,641 Jews left Germany, including 1,363 for Palestine. Four hundred of them made their aliya on the strength of the "capitalist" category immigration certificates, obtained by the committee.

1938: One hundred deportees from Sachsenhausen build the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg.

1938(20thof Kislev, 5699): Just 13 days before his 84th birthday, Leopold (Lehmann) Schloss, the husband of Karoline Schloss was murdered today in Wurzburg, Germany

1939(1stof Tevet, 5700): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1939(1stof Tevet, 5700): In the evening, kindle the 8th Chanukah light

1939(1stof Tevet, 5700): In New York, Joseph Josephs passed away.

1939: Hans Frank issued order of the establishment of Jewish councils in Polish Jewish communities over 10,000. Jews referred to these councils as the “Judenrat.”

1940: U.S. premiere of “Comrade X” a American spy-spoof co-starring Hedy Lamar, filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg with a script co-authored by Ben Hecht and Herman J. Mankiewicz.

1941: For two days 14,300 Jews were killed in the Crimean city of Simferopol by the Einsatzkommando.  The killing started on December 13 and ended on the 15th.

1941: The last six Jews living in Warendorf, Germany, are deported to Riga, Latvia, and killed.

1941: Jews living in Muenster, Germany were deported to the Riga Ghetto in Latvia today.  [A photo of this is part of the Yad Vashem archives]

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/05.asp

1942: Borough President Edgar J Nathan Jr., Jacob O. Zabronsky, J. David Delman, and Rabbi Leo Jung spoke at the annual Chanukah celebration of the National Council of Young Israel at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

1942: German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels complains in his diary about Italy's halfhearted persecution of Jews.

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 Broadway Theatre where it opened tonight.

 1943: As the SS began its extermination of the local population of Vladimir-Volynski, Poland, they were attacked by 30 armed Jews. A number of the SS officers were killed as well as half of the attacking force. The remainder fled to the forests to join the partisans.

1943: In Greece, Nazis murder all males over age 14 in the village of Kalávrita.

1943: Birthdate of Victor G. Kac, a Soviet and American mathematician at MIT, known for his work in representation theory. Kac received a Sloan Fellowship in 1981 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986.

1944(27thof Kislev, 5705): Third Day of Chanukah

1944(27thof Kislev, 5705): Sixty-six year old Gustav Cohn, the German born son of Sophie and Seligman Lazarus Cohn and husband of Henriette Cohn passed away today in Buenos Aires.

1944: “The bestknown production staged by the Bernard HartJoseph Hyman team was “Dear Ruth,” which opened at Henry Miller's Theater today” and  “played more than 700 performances during the next two years.

1945: Thirty-six of the 40 defendants in “the Dachau Camp Trials” were sentenced to death today “including the former commandant Martin Gottfried Weiss and the camp doctor Claus Schilling.”

1946: Jewish political leader Léon Blum was chosen French premier.

1946: Future Nobel Prize winner Joshua Lederberg married Esther Miriam Zimmer today.

1946: Cessation of hostilities between the United States and Germany was announced by US President Truman

1946: Moshe Sneh, the reputed head of Haganah, repudiates activities of Irgun and Stern Group. He calls for a responsible resistance. He urges Zionists to stay away from London conference.

1947(30thof Kislev, 5708): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1947(30thof Kislev, 5708): Seventy year old Austrian born David Alter the “publisher of Jewish weekly magazines in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Youngstown and Toledo” passed away today in Pittsburgh, PA.

1947: The Jewish Agency, representing a majority of Palestinian Jewry denounced the rising tide of Irgun reprisals, calling them spectacular acts to gratify popular feeling.

1947: Several Irgun members driving in two cars near the Damascus Gate bus station hurled two bombs into the crowd and opened fire with automatic weapons killing five Arabs including a fourteen year old boy.

1947: The Arab League tells U.S. and Britain that partition would be considered a hostile act toward Moslems.

1947: The Zionist Organization of America urges that the U.S. provide ships for Jews going to Palestine and help arm Jewish Agency defense forces.

1948: The Transjordan Parliament authorizes King Abdullah to accept sovereignty over Arab Palestine and Transjordan defying a warning by council of Ulemas (a group of scholars and highest spiritual authority in Moslem

1949: Knesset votes to transfer Israel's capitol to Jerusalem.

1950: James Grover McDonald, the first U.S. Ambassador to Israel, left his post today.

1951: Foreign Service Officer John S. Service, who was not Jewish fell victim to the right wing anti-Communist witch hunt that destroyed the careers of so many Jews in several fields of endeavors, when he was dismissed today “from the Department of State following a determination by the Civil Service Commission’s Loyalty Board that there was “reasonable doubt” concerning his loyalty to the United States.”

1951: Movie producer Walter Wanger shot his wife’s agent and lover today.

1952(25thof Kislev, 5713): First Day of Chanukah

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the government announced an ambitious settlement program ­ the establishment of some 100 new villages within one year.

1952: In Ramat Gan, “a Romanian-born diplomate and a mother who came from Russia” gave birth American educated and Sayeret Matkal veteran Avi Nesher the Israeli producer, director, screenwriter and actor whose works “Rage and Glory” which tells the story of Lehi and the husband of Iris Nesher.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that ten infiltrators from Jordan crossed the border, wounded the guard of a defense post and stole arms and ammunition. Elsewhere, on the same border, two marauders were killed and 26 arrested within one week. Israel demanded an emergency meeting of the Israeli-Jordanian Mixed Armistice Commission.

1953: Birthdate of economist Ben Shalom Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

1954: Eighteen year old Michael Rabin made his first London today when he played the Tchaikovsky Concerto in D at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/michael-rabin-mn0001203069/biography

1955(28th of Kislev, 5716): Third Day of Chanukah

1955(28th of Kislev, 5716): French author Leon Werth, the son draper Albert Werth and Sophia Rauh, who had a son name Claude with his wife Suzanne and was the inspiration for The Little Princepassed away today.

1955: A cinematic version “Richard III” produced by Alexander Korda, co-starring Clair Bloom and filmed by cinematographer Otto Heller was released today in the United Kingdom.

1956: “The Rainmaker,” the movie version of the Broadway play by N. Richard Nash (Nathan Richard Nusbaum), produced by Hal Wallis and with an Oscar nominated score by Alex North (Isadore Soifer) was released today in the United States.

1957: “Peyton Place” the movie version of the novel of the same name directed by Mark Robson, produced by Jerry Wald, with music by Franz Waxman was released today in the United States.

1961: Beatles sign a formal agreement to be managed by Brian Epstein.  Yes, there is a Jewish connection to Ringo, Paul, John, et al.

1961: In London, world premiere of “The Young Ones” a musical choreographed by Hebert Ross whose suggestion to have Barbra Streisand star in the film was rejected by

1961: In Jerusalem, prosecuting attorney Gideon Hausner demands death penalty for Adolf Eichmann

1962: “In Washington, D.C. “progressive activist Marcus Raskin—a former staff aide to President John F. Kennedy on the National Security Council and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies—and Barbara (née Bellman) Raskin, a journalist and novelist” gave birth to Harvard Law School graduate and “constitutional law professor, James Ben Raskin, a “Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland's 8th district” and the husband Harvard Law School graduate Sarah Bloom Raskin.

1965: “A Thousand Clowns” the movie version of the Broadway play featuring Martin Balsam as “Arnold Burns,” Barry Gordon as “Nick Burns” and Gene Saks as “Leo ‘Chuckles the Chipmun’ Herman and filmed by cinematographer Arthur Ornitz was released today in the United States.

1967: In Canada, premiere of “The Fox” directed by Mark Rydell with music by Lalo Schifrin.

1968: “Urban Picaresque” published today provides a review of Murray Schisgal's Jimmy Shine

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,839680,00.html

1970: Neil Simon's "Gingerbread Lady" premieres in New York NY

1970(15thof Kislev, 5731): Eighty-three year old Baruch Zuckerman, a long time Zionist leader who was one of the founders of Yad Vashem passed away today in Jerusalem.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E00E2DE1431EE34BC4D52DFB467838B669EDE

1971(25thof Kislev, 5732): Chanukah

1971: “Nicholas and Alexandra” a film version of the novel produced by Sam Spiegel with a screenplay by James Goldman and co-starring Janet Suzman was released today in the United Kingdom.

1971:Milton Glick, 15th president of the University of Nevada, Reno, became a father for the second time when his wife Peggy gave birth to his son Sandy.

1971: Two months after opening in the United Kingdom, “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” a musical fantasy with a score by Robert and Richard Sherman was released today in the United States.

1972(8thof Tevet, 5733): Seventy-two year old cellist Maurice Eisenberg suffered a mortal heart attack at the Juilliard School.

http://www.cello.org/heaven/bios/eisenap.htm

1973(18thof Kislev, 5734): Fifty-one year old American microbiologist Wolf Vladimir Vishniac, the Berlin born son of photographer Roman Vishniac and husband of Helen Vishniac passed away today.

1975: As the Russians continue their offensive against the refuseniks, “the French Communist Party challenged the Soviet authorities to deny the existence of forced labor camps for political prisoners in the USSR.”

1976: Release date for “Victory at Entebbe” a made for television movie based on the raid that had taken place in July of 1976.

1977(3rdof Tevet, 5738): Seventy year old Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons graduate Dr. Alvan Leroy Barach, the so-called “father of oxygen therapy” and the husband of “the former Fredrick Pisek” with whom he had two children – Jeffrey and John Paul – passed away today.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that a top-level Israeli team, leaving for Cairo, was told by Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan that President Anwar Sadat of Egypt expected, and had to gain, an early success in the forthcoming negotiations. An 82-man Arab delegation left the Gaza Strip for Cairo while their mayor, Rashid Shawwa, said that Sadat ought to be praised for strengthening moderate Arabs. However, US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance failed to persuade King Hussein of Jordan to join the planned Israeli-Egyptian conference in Cairo

1979: Roger and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!" opens at the Palace Theater in New York City for the first of 301 performances.

1984: In a seemingly never ending fight to nibble away at the doctrine of the separation of church and state which is critical to the Jewish community in the United States, Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department filed a friend of the court brief in support the state of Alabama in Wallace v Jaffree, a case that would decide the mandated moment of silence at the start of each school day.  The Supreme Court would declare the Alabama statute unconstitutional because it violated the “first prong of the Lemon Test i.e., that the statute was invalid as being entirely motivated by a purpose of advancing religion.

1985(1st of Tevet, 5746): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1985(1stof Tevet, 5746): Eighty-four year old Washingtonian and featherweight Wilburn Cohen who fought a seemingly amazing 130 bouts passed away today.

1987(22ndof Kislev, 5748): Eighty-one year old Yonah Ephraim Caplan, the Montreal born son of “Shlomo Chaim Caplan and Chaya Bluma Routtenberg” and the husband of Lena Herman passed away today in New York.

1988: Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. chairman, is to be the main speaker today when the U.N. General Assembly holds its first meeting in Geneva.

1990(26thof Kislev, 5751): Second Day of Chanukah

1990: Eighty-one year old Konigsberg, native Hanoch Jacoby, one of the many German musicians whose career was ended by the Nuremberg laws and who immigrated to Palestine as part of the Fifth Aliyah where he pursed a musical career that included playing viola with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra while raising four children - Hava Nir (deceased), Ilana Yaari, Rafi Jacoby, Michal Preminger – with his wife, the former Alice Kennel passed away today.

https://www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il/content/hanoch-jacoby

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jacobi-hanoch

1991: “Bugsy” a movie based on the life of Jewish gangster Bugsy Siegel directed and co-produced by Barry Levinson and featuring Elliot Gould, Harvey Keitel and Bebe Neuwirth was released in the United States today.

1991: Birthdate of Jay "Bluejay" Greenberg composer of “Overture to 9-11.”

1992: In a daring challenge to Israel's authority in the occupied territories, Islamic militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier today and threatened to kill him unless the army quickly released the imprisoned founder of a dominant Muslim group in the Gaza Strip. The abductors' deadline passed tonight with their demand unmet, but there was no sign that they had carried out their threatened slaying.

1992: The New York Times published the following letter from Rabbi Harold M. Kamsler of Phoenixville, Pa. entitled “It May Help to Be Jewish to Love Turkey” which claimed that the word “Turkey,” the fowl of Thanksgiving fame was rooted in Hebrew.

May I add another linguistic note to the colorful "One Strange Bird" by Margaret Visser (Op-Ed, Nov. 26)? The concurrence of the voyages of Columbus and the expulsion from Spain of its Jewish population after centuries of mutually advantageous co-existence has been widely aired in this 500th year of commemoration of both events. One of the key personnel making the first voyage was Luis de Torres, employed by Columbus as an interpreter since he had wide knowledge of Chaldean and Arabic, the languages of the areas they expected to reach. A "Converso," one of the Jews who had converted to Catholicism under the pressure of the Inquisition but remained a secret adherent of his own faith, de Torres also knew Hebrew well. It was natural that de Torres was in the first boats sent to shore on Oct. 12, 1492. In a letter written to a friend in Spain, he described the strange bird seen in this new land. As Ms. Visser notes, during the courting season the bird gobbles, struts and puffs, and his tail feathers display in the manner of a peacock. De Torres gave it the name that appears in the biblical book of I Kings, 10:22, the Hebrew word for peacock: tuki. Surely there is a much more direct line to "turkey" than the various other speculations at hand.”

1992:Islamic militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier today and threatened to kill him unless the army quickly released the imprisoned founder of a dominant Muslim group in the Gaza Strip.

 

1994(10th of Tevet, 5755): Asara B'Tevet

 

1994(10th of Tevet, 5755): The day before his 84thbirthday labor historian and professor Philip Sheldon Foner passed away today. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/15/obituaries/philip-s-foner-labor-historian-and-professor-84.html

1995(20th of Kislev, 5756): Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, a scholar on religious and governmental issues who was a Marine Corps chaplain during the battle of Iwo Jima, died at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He was 85. He was the first Jewish chaplain the Marine Corps ever appointed. Rabbi Gittelsohn was rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel in Boston, where he served from 1953 to 1977. From 1936 to 1953, he served the Central Synagogue of Nassau County in Rockville Centre, L.I. He was awarded three combat ribbons for his service with the Fifth Marine Division on Iwo Jima. His sermon at the dedication of the division's cemetery, titled "The Purest Democracy," attracted wide attention and was read by many radio and television announcers during and after the war. In February, Rabbi Gittelsohn gave the benediction at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, Va., at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the landing. Rabbi Gittelsohn was appointed by President Harry S. Truman to a committee studying civil rights issues. Later, he studied and lectured on United States involvement in Vietnam, and on euthanasia, Israeli politics and family relationships. He wrote numerous articles and books on civic and religious issues. He was president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis from 1958 to 1960; president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis from 1969 to 1971, and president of the Association of Reform Zionists of America from 1977 to 1984. A native of Cleveland, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Western Reserve University in Cleveland in 1931. He studied at Columbia University and Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and was ordained in 1936.

1996: The president of Reform Judaism's synagogue organization has called for expanding the movement's small presence in Israel, to develop a liberal religious alternative within a nation overwhelmingly dominated by secular and Orthodox Jews.

1996: “The Preacher’s Wife” a movie version of Robert Nathan’s novel and with music by Hans Zimmer was released today in the United States.

1997: A revival of “Chips with Everything” a play by Arnold Wesker came to a close at the Royal Nation Theatre.

1998(24th of Kislev, 5759): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah.

1998(24thof Kislev, 5759): Ninety-one year old Lew Grade who went from being Lithuanian immigrant Louis Winogladsky to being media mogul and impresario The Right Honorable Lord Grade passed away just days short of his 92ndbirthday.

http://www.economist.com/node/180361

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/14/nyregion/lew-grade-91-flamboyant-shaper-of-british-tv-and-movies.html

 

1998: An historic and emotion-filled event took place in Jerusalem on the eve of the first day of Hanukkah. The restored synagogue of Shimon Hatzadik (Simon the Righteous) in the Jewish neighborhood of Shimon Hatzadik in eastern Jerusalem was rededicated in the presence of former residents of this and surrounding neighborhoods. According to tradition, the high priest, who was among the last members of the Great Assembly, was buried in a cave built into these sloping Sheikh Jarrah hills, where dozens of Hassidim can be found praying and learning throughout the day. The land surrounding the burial caves had lain barren of inhabitants for almost two millennia. The graves, however, were continuously visited by Jewish pilgrims. In modern times, Jews started this neighborhood in 1895 and lived there until they were evicted by the British army during the Arab riots in 1947, says a source in Lomdei Shalem, an organization responsible for the renewed Jewish presence in the area. In the interim, the Jordanian government took over the land and permitted Arab families to move into the Jewish homes, where many still remain. After acquiring power of attorney from the Sephardic Community Council, the original owner of the property, MK Benny Elon shepherded a group of young yeshiva students to the old synagogue. They cleaned it up and began to study there regularly. The rededicated synagogue has also become a kollel, where men study Torah on a daily basis.

1998: The New York Times book section included a review of Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmudsby Donald Harman Akenson.

2000: Al Gore who received 79% of the Jewish vote conceded defeat to George W. Bush in the most contested Presidential election in U.S. history.

2000: In a seemingly never ending fight to nibble away at the doctrine of the separation of church and state which is critical to the Jewish community in the United States, the city of Elkhart, Indiana in Elkhart v Brooks was told today by the U.S. Court of Appeals said that the city had acted unconstitutionally when it accepted a Ten Commandments Monument from the Elks.
 
2001(28th of Kislev, 5762): Charles Michael "Chuck" Schuldiner singer, songwriter, rhythm and lead guitarist of the band Death passed away as a result of a rare form of cancer.
 
2001: Hollywood premiere of “A Beautiful Mind” the academy award winning film co-produced by Brian Grazer, with a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman and featuring Judd Hirsch.
 
2002: Three months are premiering at the TIFF, “Evelyn” co-starring Julianna Margulies was released in the United States today.
 
2002: “Drumline” produced by Wendy Finerman and Jody Gerson who fourteen years later would be “honored as one of Universal Music Group’s female executives named to Variety’s Power of Women L.A.”
2004(1st of Tevet, 5765): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah
 
2003: In Germany, Parliament agreed to pay $600,000 to build a memorial in central Berlin which will be the site of the Holocaust memorial under construction for thousands of gay men killed or persecuted by the Nazis. 
 
2004: “The obituary and photograph” of Harry Danning who “played his entire Major League career as a catcher for the New York Giants” appeared in today’s Sports Illustrated.
https://www.si.com/vault/2004/12/13/8215557/for-the-record
 

2005: Israel's consul-general in Los Angeles criticized Steven Spielberg's "Munich," saying that the new film drew an incorrect picture of the Mossad's hunt for the PLO terrorists who carried out the 1972 Olympic massacre, and taking the legendary director to task for morally equating the Israeli agents and their Palestinian terrorist targets.. 

2006: Sotheby’s annual sale of Judaica in New York includes a collection of the 18thcentury ritual silver objects from the Jewish community of Amsterdam and an 18thcentury decorated manuscript honoring physician and poet Dr. Isaac Luzzato.

2006: The Sci Fi Channel broadcast the final episode of “The Lost Room,” a min-series co-starring Julianna Margulies and Peter Jacobson.

2006: Prime Minister Ehud Omert met with Pope Benedict XVI during the Israeli Prime Minister’s visit to Europe.

2007:  In Jerusalem, a screening of The Jews in the Warsaw Uprising. This 57 minute long documentary explores the subject of the Jewish involvement in the struggle and includes Interviews with witnesses that are enriched by the archive materials and the historian reports.

2007: In New York City, the 92nd Street Y hosts cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Kirill Gerstein as part of the Distinguished Artist Series.

2007: Greek historian Costas Plevris was sentenced to 14 months in prison for inciting racial hatred with the publication of The Jews: The Whole Truth, a book that denies the Holocaust took place. 

2008: Jeff Marx “premiered a new song he wrote, ‘White Kwanzaa,’ on the CNN show D.L. Hughley Breaks the News”

2008:Itzhak Perlman plays chamber music at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

2008: The 10th Annual Jerusalem Film Festival opens. Highlights of this year's festival include:
Daniel Burman's new film, “The Empty Nest,” a premiere screening of the acclaimed PBS series, “The Jewish Americans,” and a tribute to Meyer Levin, the American-Jewish journalist and filmmaker who made “The Illegals” and “My Father's House.”.

2008: In Washington, D.C. the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue (formerly the home of Adas Israel), hosts Shalshelet's 3rd International Festival of New Jewish Liturgy.

2008 (16 Kislev 5769) Ann Gilbert (Chana Zylberstajn), 84, of Cedar Rapids and Los Angeles passed away in Cedar Rapids at the age of 84. Ann is survived by her husband of 62 years, Fred; a son, Jack Gilbert of Albany, Calif.; and two daughters, Doris (Gary) Gilbert-Stieger of San Francisco and Lena Gilbert of Springville. She was preceded in death by her parents; and brothers and sisters, who all perished during World War II. Ann was born in Szydlowiec, Poland, to Josek and Laja Zylberstajn. Ann was a Holocaust survivor. She spent over four years in concentration camps and was liberated in April 1945. She married Fred Gilbert (Felek Gebotszrajber) on Jan. 2, 1946, in Scwabisch Hall, Germany. Ann was a consummate homemaker, an accomplished seamstress, and devoted to her family. She and Fred lived in Cedar Rapids from 1949 to 1986, where she was an active member of Temple Judah and in the community. She was a lifetime member of Hadassah. From 1986 to 2003, Ann and Fred lived in Los Angeles, where she was a much sought after seamstress to film and motion picture stars. Ann and Fred were also very active in the survivor community. They were regular speakers at the Simon Wiesenthal Center-Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. She and Fred lectured frequently about their experiences. In 2003, she and Fred returned to Cedar Rapids to be near to Lena. Ann remained a constant source of inspiration and will be greatly missed.

2009: In Iowa City, the Agudas Achim Players present ”Zayda Was A Cowboy” which, along with a catered Latkes dinner adds to the enjoyment of the third night of Chanukah.

2009:Adele Steiner read from her work as part of the Iota Poetry Series held at the Iota Club & Café in Arlington, Virginia.

2009: Closing night of the 20th Annual Washington Jewish Film Festival includes a showing of “The Gift of Stalin” and a Chanukah Party.

2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival comes to a close with the screening of several cinematic offers including “Jaffa,” the featured closing night film.

2009: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Why The Dreyfus Affair Mattersby Louis Begley and Emancipation:How Liberating Europe’s Jews From the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance by Michael Goldfarb.

2009: Wonderland Express Hanukkah Dinner and Concert featuring the local Jewish band Spirit Orchestra takes place at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Illinois

2009: In Philadelphia Chana Rothman, Naomi Less and Sarah Aroeste are the featured musicians in Lights Ignite Change at the World Café.

2009: At the Sephardic Musical Festival it is Ladino Night featuring Rivka Amado & Elie Massias at the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue.

2010:Damon Linker is scheduled to present a program entitled “The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders” at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

2010: Mollie Berch is scheduled to deliver a talk entitled “American Jews and the Great Depression” in Silver Spring, MD.

2010: Lord Sacks’ retirement as Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom was announced today

2010: In a story entitled “Faith in The Game,” Sports Illustrated reviews Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, “a new film that illuminates the Jewish to the national pastime.”  Written by Ira Berkow, narrated by Dustin Hoffman the film includes a rare interview with Dodger great Sandy Koufax and Al Rosen, the Cleveland all-star third basemen who spoke frankly about dealing with anti-Semitism.

2011: “Grace Paley: Collect Shorts” is scheduled to be shown at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA.

2011: “Tea and Talmud” sponsored by the Touro Synagogue Sisterhood is scheduled to take place in New Orleans, LA.

2011: Anat Hoffman, Director of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center in Jerusalem for the past ten years, is scheduled to deliver a talk on the struggle for equality and women’s rights in Israel at the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston, VA.

2011: Jerry Abramson “took office as the 55th Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky.”

2011: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an emergency discussion with Israeli defense officials today, following an attack by right-wing activists on an IDF base in the West Bank.

2012: “Susan Sontag – The Glamour of Seriousness” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival today.

2012: Under the leadership of Lena Gilbert, a Chanukah Menorah Lighting Ceremony is scheduled to take place in Springville, Iowa.

2012: In what is the third and final public menorah lighting in North Dakota, this ceremony is scheduled to take place tonight at Bismarck, the state capital.

2012:Violinist Pinchas Zukerman, cellist Amanda Forsyth and pianist Angela Cheng are scheduled to perform in Palm Beach, FL at a benefit sponsored by the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

2012(29thof Kislev, 5773): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2012: “UCLA announced that David Geffen had donated another $100 million in addition to his 2002 donation of $200 million, making him the largest individual benefactor for the UC system.”

2012(29thof Kislev, 5773): Ninety-three year old French mountain climber Maurice Herzog passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

2012: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman denied that he was guilty of charges brought by Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein that he was guilty of fraud and breach of the public trust.

2012: The border policewoman who fatally shot a Palestinian teen in Hebron today is content with how she performed her duty, even as it emerged that Muhammad al- Salaymeh was armed only with a toy pistol. Nobody has explained why he was carrying a toy pistol, let alone why he would point it at the Border Police.

2012: President Obama is scheduled to host a Chanukah party in the White House. Per the request of the President, “a 90-year-old menorah from a temple on Long Island that was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy will be displayed at a Hanukkah party…as a symbol of perseverance and hope for the holidays.” (As reported by Michael Schwirtz)

2013: In Iowa City, Penfield Books is schedule to host a reception for several local authors including three members of Agudas Achim : Arthur Canter for his World  War  II memoir, Flap Dog: A World War II Odyssey of a Communications Interceptor, Miriam Canter for her newly revised cookbook Dazzling Desserts and ,and Vida Brenner author of the book for children The Magic Music Shop.

 

2013 The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band is scheduled to perform at the UIHC.

 

2013: In keeping with its annual tradition, Keren Kayemet LeIsrael-Jewish National

Fund (KKL-JNF) is scheduled to start distributing Christmas trees at Ras El E'ain next to Kfar Rama (Wadi Salama)

 

2013: “Copying Beethoven” and “Bethlehem” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013(10thof Tevet): Asarah B'Tevet,

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/102698/jewish/10-Tevet.htm

http://www.ou.org/chagim/roshchodesh/tevet/fast.htm

 

2013(10thof Tevet, 5774): Yarhrzeit Judith “Judy” Rosenstein (nee Levin) a woman of valor – gone too soon but always remembered

 

2013(10thof Tevet, 5774): Eighty year old Hugh Nissenson whose “books were immersive journeys that often explored religion, particularly Judaism” passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/books/hugh-nissenson-novelist-dies-at-80.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=1&

 

 

2013: US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Prime Minister Benjamin this morning in Jerusalem amid a severe winter storm which has left thousands without power and stranded hundreds of travelers on roads leading to and from the capital.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/kerry-to-meet-netanyahu-follows-meeting-with-abbas/

 

 

 

2014: Shabbat Va-yayshev

 

2014(21stof Kislev, 5775): Ninety-five year old photographer Phil Stern passed away today.

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/phil-stern-dead-photographer-1201379157/

http://www.philsternarchives.com/

 

 

2014: The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio is scheduled to perform at the 92ndStreet Y.

 

2014: At NYU’s Kimmel Center The Workmen’s Circle is scheduled to host its Annual Winter Reception where it will honor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “distinguished professor, scholar, author, and Program Director of the brand-new Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.”

 

2014: “The Israeli bridge delegation won the gold medal at the Sportaccord World Mind Games in Beijing today. (As reported by Roi Yanovksy)       

 

 

2014: “A Palestinian driver slammed his car into a concrete barrier at a hitchhiking post popular with IDF soldiers near a military post in the southern West Bank.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-man-slams-car-into-concrete-barrier-near-military-post/

 

2015(1stof Tevet, 5776): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

 

2015(1stof Tevet, 5776): Eighty-nine year old “Donald Weinstein, one of the pioneering postwar American historians who made the Italian Renaissance a premier area of study” passed away today in Tucson, Arizona

http://www.rsa.org/blogpost/856879/235182/Donald-Weinstein-Historian-of-Civic-Religion

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/books/donald-weinstein-influential-historian-on-the-renaissance-dies-at-89.html?_r=0

 

 

2015: In North Bethesda, MD, B’nai Israel Congregation is scheduled to host a meeting of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington which will included a presentation by Barry Nove on “The Ellis Island Immigrant Experience.”

 

2015: US, Canadian, and Israeli envoys in Budapest joined a crowd of Jewish organizations today protesting the erection of a statute of Balint Homan “ an interwar period historian and politician, known for his eight volume history of Hungary, the drafting of the anti-Jewish laws adopted in Hungary, and his support of the German invasion of the USSR in 1941.

 

2015: Stage 48 is scheduled to host Dor Chadash and Hadag Nahash - one of Israel's most popular hip-hop bands - for an unforgettable Chanukah party!

 

2015: The 47th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies is scheduled to open at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston, MA.

 

2015: Donald Burris is scheduled to deliver an address on “Unresolved Issues of the Twentieth Century - The Quest for the Repatriation of Nazi-Looted Art” at the 55th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington.

 

2015: “In a lecture-concert, Orin Grossman (Fairfield University) and the artists of the Sidney Krum Concert Series are scheduled to explore three giants of American music and the Jewish influences on their work: Aaron Copland (1900-1990), George Gershwin (1898-1937), and Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990).”

 

2015: Curator Shiri B. Sandler, U.S. director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, is scheduled to present a gallery talk in conjunction with the visiting exhibit A Town Known as Auschwitz at the Yiddish Book Center.

 

2016: The YIVO Institute is scheduled to present “The Yiddish Theatre in America and Poland Between the Two World Wars” during which “Scholar-in-Residence, Alyssa Quint, will share her impressions of YIVO’s vast Esther Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum Archive and will offer insights about the colossal achievement of the trans-Atlantic interwar Yiddish stage, focusing on the most important theater centers in New York, Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna.”

 

2016: The Foundation for Jewish Studies and the Jewish Historical Society are scheduled to present a screening of “Bulgarian Rhapsody,” that tells “a story of teenage love and friendship told against the backdrop of the Holocaust, which was Bulgaria's submission for the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film” as part of the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2017: Janet Yellin , “the first woman to serve as the head of the Federal Reserve Board” is scheduled to preside over the Board’s “last meeting of the year.”

2017(25th of Kislev, 5778): As rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel, observance of the first day of Chanukah

2017(25th of Kislev, 5778): Eighty year old Bette Howland, a “recently re-discovered author” who was a protégé of Saul Bellow passed away today. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/obituaries/bette-howland-author-and-protege-of-bellows-dies-at-80.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

2017(25th of Kislev, 5778) Eighty-four year old historian and author Gerald Tulchinsky passed away today in Kingston, Ontario.

https://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/gerald-tulchinsky-historian-canadian-jewry-dies-84

2017: Ninety year old New Orleans born producer Martin Ranshoff who was responsible for one of the best movies ever – “The Americanization of Emily” – as well as some of the corniest sit-coms passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/arts/martin-ransohoff-producer-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

 

2017: Six13 and The Maccabeats are among the groups scheduled to perform at Temple Emanu-El Chanukah Party

2018: Thanks to support of the Stravinsky Institute Foundadtion and the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Unique Voices: Songs and Piano Trios”  featuring the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble.

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host “The Holocaust and North Africa, during which “Dr. Boum, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCLA, and a native of Morocco, will discuss this little known, yet pivotal episode of the Holocaust, as it unfolded off the European continent across North Africa.”

2018: Prof. Anita Norich (2018-19 NEH Senior Scholar at CJH, University of Michigan) is scheduled to deliver keynote lecture, “If Not Now, When? Turning to Gender in Jewish Studies” as a part of the colloquium “The Gender Turn in Jewish Studies” at the New School.

2008: The world premiere of Academy Award winner Aaron Sorkin’s new play, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, is scheduled to take place this evening at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre in New York this evening.

2018(5th of Tevet, 5779): Ninety-two year old “Noah Klieger, a journalist for the Yedioth Ahronoth daily and an Auschwitz survivor who wrote for decades about the Holocaust” passed away today.

https://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/Holocaust-hero-Noah-Klieger-as-I-remember-him-575934

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-journalist-and-holocaust-survivor-noah-klieger-dies-at-92-1.6744272

 

2018:As Jews arise this morning, they can contemplate the dizzy events of the last twenty-four hours that included burial of “an infant boy” who had been delivered prematurely after his mother had been wounded in terrorist attack last weekend, the sentencing of Michael Cohen and the declaration by the rioters in France that Jews are the cause of all their woes (except in Salzburg where a Islamist gunman attacked the city’s famed Christmas market).

2019: In Boston, “the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center in partnership with the Jewish Arts Collaborative is scheduled to host “Growing up Jewish Indian: A Shabbat Experience with Siona Benjamin.”

2019: In Chicago, this evening, the URJ Biennal is scheduled to include Kabbalat Shabbat, followed by Shabbat Dinner and Song Session.

2019: In Boston, “Shabbat at TimeOut Market” is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.

2019: It was reported today, that yesterday, Gurbir Grewal, the New Jersey Attorney General has said the attack on the kosher market in Jersey City “is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.”

2020(27thof Kislev, 7801): Third day of Chanukah

2020: STANDWITHUS is scheduled to present on the “International Live Gala: Standing Together Against Anti-Semitism.”

2020: YIDDISHKAYT Los Angeles is scheduled to be live-streaming a memorial event along with the Yiddish Book Center, featuring David Schneer’s  many musical and scholarly collaborators, including Jewlia Eisenberg, Anna Shternshis and Psoy Korolenko, as well as some of David’s teachers, friends, and students.

2020: “This year’s Festival des Andalousies-Atlantiques which will be virtual with the Festival’s original dynamic and world-class artists” is scheduled to begin this afternoon.

2020: In London, as part of its 8 Digital Nights of Hanukah, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to present Rabbi Mendy Korer of Chabad Islington.

2020: In Little Rock, Chabad is scheduled to host its Chanukah Menorah Car Ride.

2020: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish authors including the recently released paperback edition of Life Isn’t Everything Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends, edited by Ash Carter and Sam Kashner.

2020: The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines is scheduled to host a virtual Chanukah Celebration with a Beit Seer Shalom Chanukah Event.”

2020: The Book Festival of the Marcus JCC of Atlanta and the National JCC Literary Consortium are scheduled to present Peter Frampton, author of the memoir “Do You Feel Like I Do?”

2020: In Sydney, Australia, Shalom is scheduled to host “Adamama Turns 1, “an event marking the first anniversary of this farming project.

 


This Day, December 14, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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DECEMBER 14

164 BCE (3597): On the secular calendar date on which Judah Maccabee restored the service in the Temple in Jerusalem.

1243: “King Henry III turned a confiscated synagogue into the chapel of St. Mary. Many other synagogues were also confiscated and turned into churches, including one which became St. Thomas' Hospital.”

1293: The reign of Al-Ashraf Khalil, the eighth Mamluk Sultan best known for driving the Crusaders from Palestine when he captured Acre came to an end today when he was attacked and murdered while “walking with his friend Emir Shihab ad-Din Ahmad.”

1503: Birthdate of Michel de Nostradame, the native of St. Remy de Provence better known as Nostradmus who, according to some sources was born Jewish but later baptized as part of forced conversion commanded by the King of France or who was not born Jewish because his grandfather had converted under duress

https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/historical/biography/nostradamus_prediction.html

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nostradamus

https://www.amazon.com/Nostradamus-Revealer-Lost-History-Prophecy-ebook/dp/B004OA6L3M

 

1546: Birthdate of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe who spent time with Jewish astronomer David Gans while visiting in Prague and who wrote Path to God which Franz Rosenzweig said “should be considered a ‘Jewish book’” but which said should be called a “Jewishlike book.”

1584: According to a document with this day’s date, “Isaac (Isaiko) Shachovich, a Jew of Brest, visited Moscow on business in 1581, notwithstanding the prohibition of Ivan the Terrible, and en route stopped in Mohilev at the house of his friend, the tax-collector Isaac Jacobovich.”

1655: “Some must have changed concerning the re-admission the Jews to England because today, “John Evelyn wrote in his diary, ‘Now were the Jews admitted.”

1670: In Denmark, “The privilege of 1657,” under which “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 “was specially ratified in an open letter today, at the instance of Gabriel Gomez, who was in the service of the king.”

1754: Mahmud I, Sultan of Turkey, passed away at the age of 58. Under the reign of Mahmud I, the treaty of Belgrade was signed (September 18th, 1739). This gave rights to the Ottoman Jews. Their situation was so good that Austrian Jews applied for Ottoman citizenship.

1760: The Board of Deputies of British Jews was composed of elected Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews was founded today.

1762(28th of Kislev, 5523): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1763: In New York, Jessie Jonas and Samuel Judah gave birth to Sarah Judah, the wife of Samuel Myers.

1765(2nd of Tevet, 5526): Parashat Miketz; Seventh day of Chanukah

1755: In New York City, Benjamin Myers and his wife gave birth to Benjamin Myers, who married Hannah Hays, the mother of Sarah and Abigail Myers, after having first been married to Rachel Hays.

1773(29th of Kislev, 5534): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1778(25th of Kislev, 5539): Chanukah

1780: Birthdate of Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, the Russian foreign minister who successfuly thwarted the plan of Jacques Isaac Altaras to settle 40,000 Russian-Jewish families in Algeria.

1790: Two days after he had passed away, Abraham ben Nathan was buried at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery” today.

1792: In New York, Zipporah Levy and Benjamin Mendes Seixas gave birth to Hayman Levy Seixas, the husband of Abigail Nunez Cardozo with whom he had nine children.

1798: Abraham bar Samuel was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1798: “Hancah (Hannah) Weil and Hirsch Weil gave birth Sophia Loeser who was married in Kentucky where her parents had moved to from their respective homes in Germany and France.

1799: Alexander Hamilton, the native of Nevis who according to some was the son a Jewess Rachel Levine and who attended the island’s Jewish school before leaving for North America,  began service “as the inspector general of the United States Army” during which he “was the de factor head of the army.”

1799: President George Washington whose letters of acceptance to Jewish communities in the early days of the United States set the tone for acceptance that has made it possible for the Jewish community to flourish passed away today.

1800(27thof Kislev, 5561): Third Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1803: In Georgetown, SC, Savanah, GA merchant Isaac Minis married the “eldest daughter of Solomon Cohen.”

1807: In Hamburg, Israel Abraham Meyer and his wife gave birth to Meyer Isler who wrote a these on the Greek poet to earn his doctorate and who was a follower “of the new science of Judaism” as presented by Leopold Zunz and Isaak Markus Jost.

1808(25thof Kislev, 5569): Chanukah celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson

1808(25thof Kislev, 5569):Abraham ben Elijah of Vilna the son of Elijah, the Vilna Gaon passed away today in Vilna.

1812: In Bavaria, Nanette Wexler and Leser Lazarus Ochsenhorn who were married in 1803 gave birth to Maier Ochs, the husband of Agatha Ochs and the father of Mathilda, Nannie, Flora and Louis Ochs.

1812: With Napoleon having “abandoned his army on December 5 to deal with the aftermath of an attempted coup d'état in France” the shrunken “the Grande Armée” left Russia – a move that would lead to the downfall of the French Emperor and an to many of the reforms made possible in the aftermath of the French Revolution that were beneficial to the Jews of Europe.

1814(1stof Tevet, 5575): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1814: Alexander Solomon married Esther Lyons today at the Great Synagogue.

1816(24thof Kislev, 5577): Parashat Vayeshev; Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1816: Birthdate of Ban, Hungary, native Abraham Hochmuth, the “principal of the newly founded Jewish school at Miskolcz who served as the rabbi in Kula and Veszprim while playing a prominent role in the Hungarian Jewish Congress.

1819(26thof Kislev, 5580) Second Day of Chanukah

1819: Alabama becomes the 22nd state to join the Union.  For those of you who think that Jews only made a contribution on the eastern seaboard, please take note.  Abram Mordecai came to Alabama in 1785 and is credited by some with the founding of Montgomery, the state capital.  He was described as “’an intelligent Jew who lived fifty years in the Creek nation.’” (The Creeks were an Indian tribe made famous by their battles with Andrew Jackson and Davey Crockett.) He traded with the Creeks, married a Creek woman and found what he considered proof positive that the Creeks were descendants of the ten lost tribes.  The first congregation in Alabama was formed in Mobile in 1844 and a second congregation was founded in Montgomery in 1852.

1825: A group of disgruntled Russian Army officers began what is now known as the Decembrist Revolt, an uprising against the newly installed Czar, Nicholas I.  The Jews had nothing to do with the revolt.  The officers were animated by the tainted road to throne followed by Nicholas and their desire for a more liberal regime.  The unsuccessful revolt reinforced the despot’s drive to follow in the reactionary footsteps of his father.  Among other things he increased the drive to remove the Jews from Russian society by forcing growing numbers into the Pale of Settlement and by enforcing draft laws that forced young Jewish boys to serve 25 years in the Russian Army.

1827(25th of Kislev, 5588): First Day of Chanukah.

1827: Three days after she had passed away “Rosetta Cowan,” the wife of George Cowan was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1828(8thof Tevet, 5589): Forty year old Charleston native Isaac Harby, the son of Solomon and Rebecca Moses Harby and the husband of Rachel Harby, the editor of the Charleston Mercury and playwright whose “Alberti” premiered with President Monroe in the audience passed away today while living in New York.

1829: A day after he had passed away, 29 year old Mark Benjamin was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1831: Birthdate of Zevi Hirsch Dainow, the native of Russia and magid (teacher) who settled in London.

1834: Two days after she had passed away, 66 year old Maria Isaacs, the wife of Samuel Isaacs was buried at “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1842: David Woolf Marks married Cecilia Sarah Woolf in London today.

1846(25thof Kislev, 5607): Chanukah is observed for the first time during the Mexican-American War.

1846: Birthdate of Isidor Abisdid, the resident of London and husband of Flora Henriette Raphael.

1849: Following the revolution in Hungary during which he had been arrested Rabbi Judah Leib "Leopold" Löw was pardoned by General Julius Jacob von Haynau

1850: Birthdate of Jean (Jan) Taubenhaus, the native of Warsaw who became a “French chess master.” He was the brother of Godfrey Taubenhaus and Joseph Taubenhaus both of whom would become rabbis in the United States.

1851: Rabbi Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia gave a speech “to more than a hundred people at United Hebrew temple on Fifth Street in St. Louis” in which “he pointed out the absurdity of” the St. Louis Jewish community “maintaining three separate congregations” which led to the merger of B’nai B’rith Congregation, Congregation Emanu-El and United Hebrew in 1852.

1852(3rdof Tevet, 5613): Seventy-one year old Rebecca Hayms the daughter of Sarah Sarzedas and Colonel David Maysor and the wife of David Hayms with whom she had three children passed away today.

1852: In Curaçao, Sarah Jesurun De Leon and Daniel de Leon, the descendant of Spanish-Dutch Jews gave birth to Daniel De Leon the future lead of the Socialist Labor Party of America.

1853: Three days after she had passed away, Hanna Schloss, a native of Bamberg, Bavaria, and wife of Joseph Schloss was buried today at “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1854(23rdof Kislev, 5615): Just 12 days before his 71st birthday Emanuel Baruh Lousada a West Indies merchant and member of prominent Sephardi family that had settled in England in the 17th century who developed Sidmouth, in Devon, as a popular resort passed away today leaving an estate valued at one hundred thousand pounds.

1856: In Syracuse, NY, Zilli Strauss and Jacob Marshall gave birth to Louis Marshall, prominent lawyer and leader of the United States Jewish community. 

http://www.jrbooksonline.com/intl_jew_full_version/ij76.htm

http://syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/fall-2012/louis-marshall.html

1857(27thof Kislev, 5618): Third Day of Chanukah observed for the first time during the Presidency of James Buchanan.

1860(1stof Tevet, 5621): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah observed as South Carolinians prepare to secede from the Union because they did not like the outcome of the Presidential election.

1861(11thof Tevet, 5622): Parashat Vayechi

1861: Today Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Rabbi Arnold Fischel who “was instrumental in getting the United States military chaplaincy law changed to allow for inclusion of Jewish chaplains” that “I find that there are several particulars in which the present law in regard to Chaplains is supposed to be deficient, all of which I now design present to the appropriate Committee of Congress” and “I shall try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites.” 

1862: Following the crushing Union defeat at Fredericksburg caused by the ineptness of General Burnside, Lieut. G.L. Snyder, Company B, of the 104thN.Y. was among the group of Jewish members of the Army of the Potomac who were buried near the hospital that had been set up across the river from the battlefield.

1865(26thof Kislev, 5626): Second Day of Chanukah

1868: A Hungarian Jewish Congress was convened today which created Neolog Judaism a “mild reform movement” that was concentrated in the “Hungarian speaking regions of Europe”

1869: In Pittsburgh, PA, Mina and Louis Israel Aaron gave birth to Marcus the Aaron, the husband of Stella Aaron, the brother of Charles Aaron and the father of Marcus Lester Aaron and Fanny Friedman.

1870: Birthdate of South Carolinian Julius Levin, the husband of Etta Karesh Levin and the father of Sidney L. Levin

1870: A large number of Jews and Christians including several governmental dignitaries attended today’s cornerstone laying ceremony for Ahavath Chesed on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan  In his introductory remarks, Ignatz Stein traced the history of the congregation which began with a few Jews from Bohemia holding High Holiday services at house on Ludlow Street. The congregation’s real growth began in 1848 when large number of Jews fled Europe following the failure of the liberal revolutions.

1873: In Egeln, Germany Selig and Juliane Blumenthal gave birth to Oskar Michael Blumentahal the husband of Dora Blumenthal with whom he had two children – Margot and Ilse – who died at Theresienstadt.

1874: One day after he had passed away, Prussian born Lewis Haines, the wife of Catherine Haines, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1876(28thof Kislev, 5637): Fourth Day of Chanukah observed as the United States deals with the disputed outcome of the Presidential Election that would like to the Compromise of 1877

1877: Cesare Porec helped to engineer today’s resignation of the Interior Minister in Italy.

1877: It was reported that the few Jewish families who had fled last summer as the Russian Army crossed into the Balkans last summer have been proven right in fearing the treatment they could expect from the Czar.

1879: Four days after he had passed away, 67 year old French born Lambert Samuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1879: Mr. Isaac Rosenwald chaired the annual meeting of the Society of the Home for Aged and Infirmed Hebrews in New York City today.  The home is providing shelter for 44 women and 32 men. The election of officers was held which included the re-election of Mr. Rosenwald as President

1880: Mrs. Lizzie Wenke appeared in Essex Market Police Court today to answer charges that she had horse-whipped Isaac Stern, a Jewish tenant living in the same tenement.

1881: Birthdate of Nicholas M. Schenck, the Russian born American movie mogul who headed MGM.

1882: Julius W. Kaskel, an early Jewish settler of Leadville, was an active member of the Reception Committee for the charity ball held today in the Colorado bootown

1883(15th of Kislev, 5644): Ignatz Fischl, a 23 year old German Jewish immigrant was found dead in his room at the Great Northern Hotel, in the Bowery.

1883(15thof Kislev, 5644): Naphtali Mendel Schoor, the “Galician Hebrew writer” who in 1861 founded a Hebrew weekly who wrote a three part history of the Medieval Jews.

1883: In Rochester, NY, for the first time in the history of Berith Kodesh, Rabbi Max Landsberg led the Friday night service using the newly printed English language order of service. (They prayed in \English and not Hebrew.  One of the tenants of Reform Judaism was that people should pray in the vernacular – Germans in German, French in French, Americans in English)

1884: The Hebrew Free School Association held its annual meeting today at their building on East Broadway.

1884: Professor Felix Adler delivered an address at Chickering Hall where he condemned the conditions of those living in tenements on the Lower East Side, blamed them on the landlords and called for the establishment of inspection committees as the first step in improving conditions.

1887: It was reported today that of the twenty-eight hospitals in New York represented by The Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association, two of them have “a Jewish connection,” “are of distinctively Jewish origin and depend for their maintenance almost exclusively upon Jewish support.”

1888(10th of Tevet, 5649): Asara B’Tevet

1888: Rabbi Gustave Gottheil of Temple Emanu-El was among the clergymen appointed by Elbridge T. Gerry to organize the church services to be held on April 30, 1889 as part of the Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of George Washing as President of the United States.

1888: In New York, Justice Patterson is scheduled to hear evidence on the charges that Telemaque T. Timayneis “doctored” the books of Minerva Publishing Company.  The complaining witness in this case of grand larceny is his partner, Emma Dickinson.  Timayenis is the author of three very popular books aimed at discrediting the Jewish people - The Original Mr. Jacobs: A Startling Exposé, ‎The American Jew: An Expose of His Career‎, and Judas Iscariot: An Old Type in a New Form.

1889: Birthdate of Leopold Philipp who was buried at Adath Jeshurun Cemetery in Philadelphia when he passed away in 1982.

1889: “New Departures” published today summarized the views of newspaper editor Moritz Ellinger which included the advocacy of “a departure from many of old forms and ceremonies used by Hebrews for centuries, some of which characterized as superstitions.  Mr. Ellinger felt that such reforms were the only to attract the “new blood” needed to strengthen Jewish congregations.

1890: “The Jews In Russia” published today described “the mass meeting recently held in London to protest against the persecution of the Jews in Russia” which was attended by many prominent Christian Englishman who “made speeches denouncing the obnoxious laws” aimed at the Jews which American Jews hope will emulated in this country including outspoken support by prominent Christian Americans.

1890: The residents of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews will be able to attend an afternoon of music starting at 3 p.m.

1890: In Poland, “Abraham Solomon Taxon and Gruna (Hailperin) Taxon gave birth to Morris Nathan Taxon the REIT trained rabbi who got his secular education at CCNY, Ohio State and Omaha University and who held several pulpits starting with Augudas Achim in Columbus, OH, before settling in at Shaareth Israel in Dallas where he also served President of the Texas State Zionist Association and as amember of the directorate of the Jewish Federation for Social Service in Dallas while raising a family with the former Edyth Irene Schotenstein.

1890: In Berlin, the stock marked “closed weak” today due to many chaotic situations in Europe included the “stringent measures” taken against the Jews.

1891: “An Indictment of Russia” described the abusive treatment of the Jews in the Czar’s empire including their recent expulsion from St. Petersburg that came without warning.  Among those affected were “Moses Mordechai Feinberg, a gold and silversmith whose right of residence” in St. Petersburg “dated from 1871 and Eidel Solomon Gissing, whose permit extended back to 1868” reducing them and there co-religionist “to beggary.”

1891: Birthdate of Jozef Hecht, the native of Cracow who gained fame as “painter and printmaker” Joseph Hecht.

https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/984/Hecht/Joseph

1892(25thof Kislev, 5653): Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of Benjamin Harrison.

1892: In Decatur, GA, Henry and Mathilda Hamburger Bachrach gave birth to Louis Bachrach, a graduate of Decatur High School who had gone to work in a department store in Philadelphia where died tragically at the age of twenty.

1893: Sarah Polskie, whose three children were turned over to the Hebrew Children’s Guardian Society by order of the court, said that she had been unable to provide for the youngsters since her husband had been sent to the penitentiary and she had been out of work for five weeks.

1894: Birthdate of New York native Barney Pressman, the founder of the famous Barney’s clothing store.

1895: The Allen Memorial Church on Rivington Street played host an overflow crowd that come to protest the visit to American by Hermann Ahlwardt the German anti-Semite who has been delivering speeches in New York.

1895: “Against Cuba’s Rebels” published today described a pamphlet that has been circulated among members of Congress that demonizes their leaders including Carlos Roloff “the most inhuman and ferocious of them all” a Polish born Jew who is “a Nihilist and dynamiter.” (According to Ben Frank, Roloff was “a Ukrainian Jewish adventurer” and “became the first finance minister of Cuba after she gained her independence who supported the revolt against For more see “Carlos Roloff:A Cuban Jewish Patriot” by Isidoro Aizenberg in the Judaica Philatelic Journal

1895: After Shabbat, the charity fair sponsored by leading Jewish New York families reopened this evening at 8 p.m.

1895: At the charity fair sponsored by the leading Jewish New York families, the Aguilar Library book was given one of the first copies of The American in Paris by Eugene Coleman Savidge which it would be able to sell to raise funds.

1895: At the Hebrew Charity Fair, Mrs. Joseph L. Buttenweiser has raised $5,650 at the Candy Booth.

1895: Birthdate of King George VI of the United Kingdom, whose reign covered the dark days leading up to World War II and the war itself. According to documents published in the Guardian in 2002, in the spring of 1939 George VI instructed his private secretary to write to Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax: “Having learnt that ‘a number of Jewish refugees from different countries were surreptitiously getting into Palestine’, the King was ‘glad to think that steps are being taken to prevent these people leaving their country of origin.’” Halifax’s office telegraphed Britain’s ambassador in Berlin asking him to encourage the German government ‘to check the unauthorized emigration’ of Jews.” Halifax’s telegraph in 1939 initiating the request that Hitler not allow “unauthorized” Jews to leave Germany was thus a direct result of George VI’s letter to him. “When it came to anti-Semitism, King George VI did not stutter at all!” King George Street in Israel is named for George V not George VI.

1895: A copy of the Hebrew Scriptures is among the items placed in the bronze box which is in a cavity of the cornerstone of the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science which the mayor will lay this afternoon at 3 p.m.

1897: In Riva del Garda, Tyrol, Austria-Hungary, Austrian General Artur von Schuschnigg and his wife gave birth to Kurt Schuschnigg, the last Chancellor of an independent Austria whose opposition to the Anschluss earned him imprisonment at Dachau until the end of the war.

1898(1stof Tevet, 5659): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6th day of Chanukah

1898: Two days after he had passed away, 65 year old Emanuel Thierman was buried at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1898(1stof Tevet, 5659): David Marks, the benefactor of many Jewish charities, passed away today in New York City.

1900: In Romania, the issue of Lazăr Șăineanu's naturalization was also revisited by the lower chamber, and the proposal defeated with 44 votes to 31 (from an insufficient quorum of 75) despite the fact that he had converted to Christianity to facilitate the process.

1900: Six days after she had passed away, the former Sophia Goldsmed, the “widow of David Viscount de Stern” with whom she had had five children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1900: Max Plank publishes his study on quantum theory.  His greatness as a scientist is transcended as his greatness as man.  He protested Hitler’s treatment of Jewish scientists.  At great personal risk he resigned in protest but stayed in Germany.

1901(4thof Tevet, 5662): Parashat Miketz

1901: Birthdate of Cincinnati, OH native and Harvard Ph.D Charles Louis Kuhn, the expert on German art who served with Naval Intelligence during WW II before becoming one of “The Monuments Men.”

https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/the-heroes/the-monuments-men/kuhn-lt.-cdr.-charles-l.

1902: Julie Dent Grant, the widow of Ulysses S. Grant, whose general officers during the Civil War included several Jews and who was the first President to attend the dedication of a synagogue (Adas Israel) passed a way today.

1902: In the aftermath of a major snowfall, many New Yorkers gave up their fancy automobiles for horse drawn transportation including Nathan Straus who was “driving his old trotting favorite Cobwebs” in what was his “first appearance on the road since his return from Europe” and then later “drove the pacer Quadriga.”

1903(25th of Kislev, 5664): First Day of Chanukah

1903: Herzl explains his position on Uganda in a letter to Sir Francis Montefiore, President of the English Zionist Federation.

1903: The United Zionists of Greater New York continued its semi-annual meeting today. The 250 delegates representing 74 Zionist societies were scheduled to deal with “routine business.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9905E4DD1539E433A25757C1A9649D946297D6CF

1903: Belle Mandel, the daughter of Simon Mandel who with his brothers Solomon, Leon and Emanuel formed Chicago’s Mandel Brother’s department store married Ben Altheimer, the Arkansas born lawyer and philanthropist who was the driving force behind the creation of Flag Day. (Carolyn Gray LeMaster)

1904: It was reported today that the Carnegie Institution had made a minor grant “for archeological investigations in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Nubia

1904: It was reported today drove “the old Speedway favorite, Cobwebs to a hooked featherweight cutter” today.

1905: In Lodz, this afternoon “a band of roughs attacked Jewish shops and residences in Zielczna Street.”

1905: Thirty-two year old NYU trained attorney, John L. Bernstein, the Russian born son of “Leib-Ber and Dina Schurr) Bernstein married Celene J. Richter today in New York.

1905: During a session of the Reichstag, Adolf Stocker called “the Jews a revolutionary element which is responsible for socialism.

1906(27thof Kislev, 5667): Third Day of Chanukah

1906(27thof Kislev, 5667): Sixty-five year old Ancona native Federico Consolo, the “Italian violinist and composer who created “the national anthem of San Marino” passed away today.

1907(9thof Tevet, 5668): Parashat Vayigash

1907: According to a dispatch from London today, “a special commemoration will be made next July of the fiftieth anniversary of the admission of Jews to the British Parliament.

1908:  In Chicago, “Max and Jennie (Finder) Amsterdam, Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary” gave birth to Moritz Amsterdam who gained fame as comedian Morey Amsterdam.

1909: Marcus M. Marks, President of the Tuberculosis’ Prevenotrium at Lakewood, NJ met with Samuel Untermeyer, counsel for Max Nathan in an attempt to reach an agreement on the disposition of Mr. Nathan's share of the Lakewood Hotel Property which is valued at $300,000.

1910(13thof Kislev, 5671): Sixty-six year old Aaron E. Greenewald the husband of Sallie Gimbel passed away today after which he was buried at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia.

1911: Roald Amundsen, of whom Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the author who described the ill-fated trip of his rival Robert Scott wrote “The truth was that Amundsen was an explorer of the markedly intellectual type, rather Jewish than Scandinavian . . .” reached the South Pole today.

1912(4thof Tevet, 5673): Parashat Vayigash

1912: Dr. Hirsch “spoke at the annual meeting of the Education Alliance of New York” today.

1912: It was reported today, that plans are being made to move the Jews’ College from London to either Oxford or Cambridge so that students may combine university courses with their “rabbinical studies.”

1912: Birthdate of “rubber technologist” and “Labour MP for Bolton and Bolton West” John Lewis.

1912:  It was reported today that “synagogue of the Bikur Cholim Congregation in Seattle Washington, on which construction work was stopped two years ago due to lack of funds will soon be completed now that the necessary moneys have been raised.

1913: A very pregnant Myra Lyons Rukeyser was one day away from giving birth to her daughter Muriel.

1913: Rene Cohen, a descendant of Eliahu Hadar Cattaui was married today.

1914(26thof Kislev, 5675): Second Day of Chanukah

 

1914: Dr. Nathan Blaustein was unable to save Mrs. Sadie Mager a widow who was brought to the Flower Hospital after having suffered a heart attack, but thanks to his quick thinking was able to save her unborn child by performing a Caesarian operation and then alternately immersing her in basins of hot and cold water for 30 seconds at a time until she was able to breath on her own.

1914: Birthdate of Jack Donald Foner and Philip S. Foner two brothers who were both academics and activists in the labor and social movements.

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/foner-obit.html

 

1914: In an address given this afternoon to students of the Atlanta Law, Hooper Alexander, the United States District Attorney and “an authority on constitutional law” said “that Leo M. Franks still has a ground of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States on a writ error.”

 

1914: Solomon Rabinowitz who writes under the name of Shalom Aleichim and is known as the “Jewish Mark Twain” is scheduled to lecture at Cooper Union where last spoke in 1908 when he his family had come to the United States to escape the anti-Semitic violence in his native Kiev.

1914: Birthdate of Solomon Spiegelman, an American microbiologist and geneticist who discovered that only one of two strands of molecules that make up DNA, carried the genetic information to produce new substances. The carrier was called ribonucleic acid (RNA). In 1962, he developed a technique that allowed the detection of specific RNA and DNAmolecules in cells. This technique, called nucleic acid hybridization, is credited for helping to lay the groundwork for current advances in recombinant DNA technology. Much earlier, his Ph.D. thesis (1944) was the first work to establish that genes are activated and deactivated by compounds that he called inducers, which thus radically affect the pattern of proteins that a cell fabricates without actually altering the genes themselves. He passed away in 1983. 

1915: The Allies were making preparations to evacuate from Gallipoli, where the Zion Mule Corps had served with distinction.

1915: Having prepared to launch the first gas attack of WW I, the Germans spent today waiting for favorable weather. (Editor’s note – the effect of gas was so horrible that nobody used it in combat during WW II but it was not horrible enough for Hitler, who had suffered from a gas attack, to use it on the Jews)

1916: The Senate voted 64 to 7 in favor of the highly restrictive Burnett Immigration Bill that had sparked a debate on whether Jewish immigrants could be exempted from the literacy requirement.

1917(29thof Kislev, 5678): Fifth day of Chanukah

1917: Abram I. Elkus, the former Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, “issued a special plea for aid for sufferers everywhere, especially in Turkey” in which he said he wished he could find the words to make the plight of the sufferers more “vivid” for those living in New York.

1917: Congregation Temple Rodeph Sholom is scheduled to begin the celebration of its 75th anniversary today.

1917: After Montrose Strassburger spoke at the Palace Theatre “he was showered with silver” to donated to the fund trying to raise five million dollars for Jewish relief.

1917: Today, the Palace Theatre, the Bushwick Theatre in Brooklyn and the Morris Theatre in Harlem gave their total receipts to the Jewish relief fund.

1917: Harry H. Rosenfeld, the assistant executive director of the American Jewish War Relief Committee which is raising ten million dollars across the United States reported that in Tulsa, OK, where oil man Marion Travis has led the campaign, $150,000 has been raised including contributions from Travis himself.

1917: A Reuters’ telegram to Amsterdam reported that the population of Palestine is suffering terribly; and that the population has been reduced to one third because of hunger, sickness and distress. Only 23,000 of the 60,000 Jews are left in Jerusalem.

1917: In Warsaw, “municipal authorities took control of all bakeries and declined to allow Jewish bakeries to close on Saturdays and work on Sundays.”

1917: In Kharkov, “in response to appeals from rabbis,” the local military commander posted guards at Jewish burial grounds “to prevent Bolsheviki and deserters from molesting funerals ton the pretext that Jews bury hidden stores” in their graves.

1917: In Moghilev, peasants who are dividing “pasture ground” allotted “land to Jews possessing cattle with the proviso that Jews work on the land themselves and do not hire” laborers.

1917: Today in Russia, “Jewish communal leaders in many towns appealed to educational authorities to excuse Jewish pupils from writing on Saturday when secondary schools are open.”

1917: the Franfurter Zeitung reported today about preparations “by ant-Semitic organizations for a strong anti-Jewish campaign after the war.”

1917: In Germany hundreds of thousands of copies of “a work entitled A Knife for the Jews are being distributed”

1918: “Rabbi Samuel Schulman preached a sermon” today at Temple Beth-El “in which he point out the American Jewish Congress” which begins its meetings tomorrow “has of uniting the Jews in the United States on behalf of the great work of complete emancipation of their co-religionists in the world by presenting a perfect solidarity of opinion before the” Peace Conference which is going to convene to settle the issues of the World War.

1918: Today, “the Federation of Russian Societies ended the second day of its three day convention” in New York where “the Jews were both reviled and defended.”

1919: Tonight, “at a meeting of the Judeans in the Hotel Pennsylvania,” “Henry Morgenthau, who head President Wilson’s special to Poland to investigate” reports of Pogroms described “the horrors which had been revealed to the commission and also some of the constructive proposals which he had made to the Polish Government in order to save the people, thousands of whom he predicted will die of starvation this Winter.”

1920: In San Antonio, TX, Morris Stern was elected President of the Chamber of Commerce.

1920: In “Bryan on the Protocols” published today, the failed Democratic Presidential candidate and former of Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan wrote “The libel that is being circulated against the Jews, based on the so-called ‘protocols’ is absurd as well as cruel” and that “it is astonishing that anyone would build upon an anonymous publication an indictment against one of the greatest races in history.”

1921: Members of Gdud HaAvoda, “a socialist Zionist work group” went to work at Tel Yosef to help develop the fledgling Kibbuz.

1922(24th of Kislev, 5683): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1922: In New York City, “Frieda (née Pike) and Ely S. Hewitt” gave birth to Donald Shepard “Don” Hewitt, the creator of Sixty Minutes.

1922: The Anshe Emes Sisterhood is scheduled to host a theatre party this afternoon at the DeLuxe Theatre in Chicago with all proceeds going to the Building Fund.

1922: In Berlin, Leo and Lotte Jachmann gave birth to their first son Isadore Seigfried Jachman the Baltimore raised U.S. Army Staff Sergeant who killed in 1945 after “defending the town of Flamierge in Belgium” – an action for which received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

1923: Sir William Graham Greene wrote Churchill congratulating him on finally being cleared of charges that he issued misleading reports about the Battle of Jutland that benefited Jewish financiers to whom Churchill owed a greater allegiance than he did to the British people.

1924:Dedication of the Beth El’s new synagogue took place today in Camden, NJ. Participating in the ceremonies were Mayor Victor King of Camden, Dr. A. A. Neuman of Philadelphia's Adath Jeshurun, Judge William M. Lewis of Philadelphia and Rabbi Samuel Freedman of Beth EI in Philadelphia. Rabbi Grayzel and Cantor Mickleman officiated at the service. The Cantor was accompanied by a choir under the direction of Gedalia Rabinowitz.

1924: Martin Henry Glynn, the first Irish American Roman Catholic governor of New York and a staunch defender of the rights of Jewish immigrants living in his state, passed away.

1925: At Atlantic City, in a case of Jew versus Jew Benny Shwartz defeated featherweight Wilbur Cohen

1925: “Wozzeck,” an opera which Alban Berg had completed in 1922, was performed for the first time today in Berlin.

1926: Louis Marshall is honored on his seventieth birthday for his success as a lawyer, a philanthropist who raised millions, supporter of forest conservation and immigration reform, statesman and champion of Jewish causes.

1926: Birthdate of German native Arnulf M. Pins, the “director for the Middle East Region of the Joint Distribution Committee, and associate director of JDC-Israel…”

1927: President Coolidge his express “sympathy with the Zionist movement” in its attempts “to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine” when he met with “Rabbi Uzziel, a patriarch of the Jewish synagogue in Palestine.”

1928: “Nathan Chanin, the Secretary of the Jewish Socialist Ferband of America who has just returned from Russia where he visited the Jewish agricultural colonies said in an address at the Rand School” tonight “that the Jews in Russia were on the verge of starvation.”

1929: After 519 performances the curtain came down at the Casino Theatre on the original Broadway production of “The New Moon,” “an operetta with music by Sigmund Roberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II…”

1930(24th of Kislev, 5691): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1930: 74thanniversary of the birth of Louis Marshall.

1930: Dr. Nathan Krass delivered a sermon at Temple Emanu-El “on the significance of the festival of Chanukah and on the problem of human suffering.”

1930: Murray Seasongood, the Jewish former Mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio and Rabbi Samuel S. Cohen of Hebrew Union College are two of the speakers scheduled to address tonight’s fourth annual dinner of the metropolitan conference of Temple Men’s Club at the Emanu-El Community House in New York City

1931: In New York, Fay and Rita Gelman gave birth award winning chemist Charles Gelman the holder of a BS from Syracuse and MS from the University of Michigan, who after serving in the United States Army founded Gelman Instrument Company led to being a “recipient of the Michigan Science and Technology Trailblazer Award.”

1932: “The possibility of Palestine becoming a source for supply of oil for the British Navy was raised today in the House of Commons in a question by Sir Alfred Knox.” (JTA)

1932(15th of Kislev, 5693): Dr. Angel Pulido y Fernandez, Spanish researcher of the Sephardim passed away. In 1904 he wrote Espanoles sin Patria (Spaniards Without A Home) which sparked the idea of the Sephardim returning to Spain. He became a member of the Spanish Parliament, and later the King made him a Senator. He spent the latter part of his life writing, holding meetings and passionately advocating for the return of the Sephardim.

1933: Forty-five year old composer Max Steiner and Audree Van Lieu whom had married in 1927 were divorced today

1934: In Nuremberg, Julius Streicher, “the Franconian Nazis leader” “demanded new anti-Semitic legislation” tonight saying that “sexual intercourse between a Jew and a non-Jewish woman must be punched with death.”

1935(18th of Kislev, 5696): Science fiction writer Stanley G Weinbaum passed away.

1935:Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour" is banned in Boston.

1936(30th of Kislev, 5697): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1936: “Crack-Up” a dramatic film written by Sam Minz, with music by Samuel Kaylin and starring Peter Lorre was released in the United States today.

1936: “You Can’t Take It with You” a comedy written by those two Jewish giants of the stage, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, opened at the Booth Theatre for the first of what would prove to be 837 performance.  The play won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

1936:The original production of You Can't Take It with You” a comedic play in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart opened at the Booth Theater tonight and played for 837 performances. The play won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

1936: Twenty-seven year old Jewish medical student David Frankfurter began serving an 18 year prison sentence tonight after having been found guilty of murdering Wilhelm Gustloff the Nazi leader in Switzerland.

1936: Tonight, “the German press announced” that now that the verdict has been handed down at Chur, Switzerland in which David Frankfurter was convicted of leading the Swiss Nazi leader, “Germany will now undertake an its own investigation of the case” with the aim of doing “something” about “the hidden men behind Frankfurter who are alleged to have been responsible for the murder.”

1936: Dr. Maurice B Hexter “summed up Jewish grievances when testified before the Royal Commission.  These include a complaint that survey and settlement of titles to land take too long to be completed are required and a demand to accelerate the pace of the work.

1936: The Palestine Post reported that despite official assurances further instances of violence and arson were carried out by various Arab armed bands throughout the country. There was arson in Tel Aviv port, bus passengers were robbed on roads, and trees in Jewish settlements were uprooted. Moslem youth boycotted the Christian-owned National Bus Company, claiming that it had offered assistance to the British army and police during the Arab strike. But both the Jerusalem Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, and the Arab Higher Committee appealed to both Jerusalem's Moslems and Christians to settle their differences.

1937: It was reported today, that the “American Joint Distribution Committee has said that as of January 1, 1937, there was 39,000 Jewish school children still in Germany” and that “of this total, 23, 670 were attending special Jewish Schools.

1938: “The Novel of Werther” a film based on a 1774 French novel directed by Max Ophuls, with music by Paul Dessau was released in French today.

1939: Raymond Samuel married Lucie Bernard today “after he warned her that it might be dangerous for her to marry a Jew.” He would take the nom de guerre of Raymond Aubrac. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1939: Heydrich issued a modified directive ordering all rural and small-townJews in the General Government (occupied Poland) to be transported to the larger Polish cities where they would be quarantined from the rest of the Polish population and kept under tight SS surveillance.

1939: The League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union for its attack on Finland in what is known as the Winter War which would result in Jewish soldiers fighting on the same side as the Wermacht.

1940: British military intelligence confirmed that the effect of the Patria decision on the Arabs had been “remarkably small.”

1941: The German military commander of Kharkiv, Ukraine ordered the Jewish population to move to the city periphery within 2 days and to occupy the barracks of the works of a machine factory. In the next days, 15.000 Jews were shot at Drobitsky Yar.

1941:Jews by the hundreds are dying from hunger and the cold in the Warsaw Ghetto. Two Jews were shot dead at a funeral for a friend

1941: A Jewish ghetto at Kharkov, Ukraine, is established.

1942: In a letter made public today, “Representative Hamilton Fish told Secretary of State Cordell Hull that he was ‘profoundly shocked’ by statements of the ‘alleged slaughter of 7,000 Jews daily by the Nazis in conquered territories’ and asked ‘Is there not some action that may be taken by the United States Congress and the Administration that will these pogroms of Jews in Poland and Eastern Europe?’”

1943(17thof Kislev, 5704): Fifty-eight year old New York born and Columbia trained gynecologist Samuel H. Geist, the husband of Juliet Beecher Geister and father of Joyce B. Jacobson passed away today.

1944(28thof Kislev, 5707): Fourth day of Chanukah

1944(28thof Kislev, 5707): 1st Lt. Joseph Levine, a bombardier with the 20thAir Force was killed today.

1944(28thof Kislev, 5707): 1st Lt. Chester E. Paul, a co-pilot was killed today while flying with the 20th Air Force.

1944: A funeral service is scheduled to be held this morning for 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”

1944: Birthdate of Mitchel Jay Feigenbaum, a mathematical physicist whose pioneering studies in chaos theory led to the discovery of the Feigenbaum constants. In 1983 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, and in 1986, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics "for his pioneering theoretical studies demonstrating the universal character of non-linear systems, which has made possible the systematic study of chaos".

1945: Josef Kramer known as "beast of Belsen", and 10 others were hanged for crimes committed at the Belsen and Oswiecim Nazi concentration camps.

1945(10th of Tevet, 5706): Asara B'Tevet

1945(10th of Tevet, 5706):  Ten years after her husband passed away, Lucie Hadamard Dreyfus passed away. She had remained in France at the behest of her granddaughter who worked with the Resistance.  Ultimately she took refuge in a convent in Valence where her benefactors did not know her identity.  Her death so close to the end of the Shoah served as a reminder that the road to Vichy and Drancy had begun a half century before when her husband was convicted because he was Le Juif, the Jew

1945: The Broadway production of “Dream Girl” by Elmer Rice opened at the Coronet Theatre

1945: Ruth (Pincus) Koch and Howard Winchel “Hawk” Koch, Sr. gave birth to movie producer Howard Winchel “Hawk” Koch, Jr.

1946: Birthdate of Michael S. Ovitz, the Chicago native who began as a talent agent and rose to serve as President of the Walt Disney Company.

1946: After almost a month, the curtain comes down on the final performance of “A Flag Is Born” at the Broadway Theatre.

1947(1st of Tevet, 5708): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1947: Oswald Rothuag, the Nazi jurist who sought to provide over the trial of Leo Katzenberg whom he gladly sentenced to death, was sentenced to life imprisonment today after being found guilty of “crimes against humanity.”

1947:  Birthdate of entertainment mogul, Michael Ovitz.

1948: At a meeting today with Jordanian commander Abdullah el-Tell, Elias Sasson “recorded el-Tell saying ‘strike the Egyptians as much as you like. Our attitude will be totally neutral.’

1949: In keeping with a resolution adopted by the Knesset, the Israeli government moves from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

1951: Birthdate of Norton A. Schwartz, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, the 19th Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force and the first Jew to hold this position.

http://www.af.mil/information/bios/bio.asp?bioID=7077

1951: The Jerusalem Post announced that for the third successive year the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Palestine Archaeological Museum refused to admit the participation of Prof. E.L. Sukenik of the Hebrew University, the board's sole Jewish representative, to its deliberations. Since the museum was located in the Jordanian-occupied part of Jerusalem, Prof. Sukenik suggested that meetings should be held at the Mandelbaum Gate, on the border, but his offer was turned down.

1952: In Little Rock, Arkansas, on the third day of Chanukah, Agudas Achim dedicated its new synagogue.

1952: "Makin' Whoopee!" a jazz/blues song, first popularized by Eddie Cantor in the 1928 musical Whoopee!” with lyrics by Gush Kahn was re-released today.

1952:“Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl” a radio drama written Jewish journalist Meyer Levin who had visited the concentration camps after the war and had contacted Anne's father Otto Frank to request the rights to create a play based on the diary of Anne Frank, appeared on The Eternal Light series, produced by the Jewish Theological Seminary on the NBC network.

1952: In Manhattan, Hugo Levy, who had been a textile merchant before fleeing the Nazis after which owned a hardware store in New York and his wife Alice gave birth to Harold Oscar Levy, the Citicorp executive who served as “chancellor of New York City’s public school system. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

1953: The Brooklyn Dodgers signed pitcher Sandy Koufax.

1954: Governor Stratton is scheduled to speak at a dinner meeting of the Jewish Federation of Chicago in the Morrison Hotel where 600 people are expected to be in attendance.

1955:Arthur M. Loew, the son of Marcus Loew, succeeded Nicholas Schenck as the President of MGM, although Schenck remained Chairman of the Board

1957: U.S. premiere of a remake of “Farewell To Arms” the cinematic version of the novel of the same name directed by Charles Vidor produced by David O. Selznick with a screenplay by Ben Hecht.

1957: At Adas Israel in Washington, DC, Bar Mitzvah of Avraham Elimelech ben Yosef Dov

1957: The City of Paris awarded the Gold Medal of the City of Paris to David Feuerwerker the French Rabbi and Jewish historian who fought against the Nazis as a member of the French Army at the start of WW II and then joined the Resistance after Petain and Vichy came to power.

1957: “Bridge On The River Kwai” a WW II epic produced by Sam Spiegel with a script co-authored by Carl Foreman was released in the United States, two months after first being shown in the United Kingdom.

1959: “The World of Sholom Aleichem” produced by Henry T. Weinstein was broadcast as “The Play of the Week.”

1960: U.S. premiere of “Esther and the King” an Italian made movie based on the Book of Esther starring Joan Collins whose father was Jewish in the title role.

1960(25th of Kislev, 5721): Chanukah is observed for the last time during the Presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower.

1960(25th of Kislev, 5721): Sixty-three year old Gregory Ratoff, the Russian born American actor and director best known for his role as “Max Fabian” in “All About Eve” and as director for the film “Oscar Wilde” passed away.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gregory-Ratoff

1961: Louis Jacobs who had been named the rabbi at the New West End Synagogue in London in 1953 was forced to resign from the staff of Jews’ College.

1961: “El Cid” an epic film produced by Bessarabian born American Jew Samuel Bronston who was a nephew of Leon Trotsky, directed by Anthony Mann and with a script by Yordan was released in the United States today.

1962(17th of Kislev, 5723): Fifty-one year old Robert Clyde “Bob” Katz whose “entire major league career consists of 6 appearances for the 1944 Reds” in a season which he was 0-1 passed away today.

1963: Gustav Machatý, the movie director who gave Hedy Lamar her big break in “Ecstasy” passed away today.  He was not Jewish but she was.

1965: Simon and Garfunkel recorded “Homeward Bound” which appeared on the album “Sounds of Silence” in the UK and “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” in the U.S.

1965: Simon and Garfunkel re-recorded Paul Simon’s “I Am a Rock” which had originally been “recorded and released” the previous August.

1966: “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum” based on the play co-authored by Larry Gelbart, produced by Melvin Frank who also co-authored the screenplay, with music by Stephen Sondheim and starring Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford and Phil Silvers was released today in the United Kingdom.

1967(12th of Kislev, 5728): Fifty year old University of Michigan basketball and baseball player Herman Fishman, the co-founder of Camp Michigama and Director of the Detroit Pistons passed away today.

1967: U.S. premiere of “In Cold Blood” the movie version of the novel of the same name directed and produced by Richard Brooks who also wrote the screenplay and edited by Holocaust survivor Peter Zinner.

1967: The first synthesis of biologically active DNAin a test tube was announced at a press conference by Arthur Kornberg who had worked with Mehran Goulian at Stanford and Robert L. Sinsheimer of MIT.

1968: Birthdate of Franklin High (New Orleans) and Brandeis graduate Theodore H. “Ted” Frank the University of Chicago trained lawyer who helped launched the national career of Sarah Palin when he wrote the vetting report on her for Senator John McCain.

1969: “John and Mary” the movie version of a novel by Mervyn Jones starring Dustin Hoffman was released in the United States today.

1969: “La Strada,”  “a musical with lyrics and music by Lionel Bart, with additional lyrics by Martin Charnin” and featuring Larry Kert as “Mario” opened today on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatres.

1970: Joseph B. Levin represented the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, Inc. when arguments opened before the Supreme Court in INVESTMENT COMPANY INSTITUTE et al., Petitioners, v. William B. CAMP, Comptroller of the Currency, et al. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECURITIES DEALERS, INC., Petitioner, v. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION et al.

1971: “Diamonds Are Forever” one of the James Bond movies co-produced by Harry Saltzman with a screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz was released in Germany today.

1971: “The Hospital” directed by Arthur Hiller, a Canadian born Jew for which Paddy Chayefsky won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and featuring Stephen Elliot was released in the United States today.

1973(19th of Kislev, 5734):  Composer Yitzhak Edel passed away.

http://www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il/thesaurus6fe4.html?cat=9&in=9&id=649&act=view

1974(30th of Kislev, 5735): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1974(30th of Kislev, 5735): Eighty-five year old American journalist and political philosopher Walter Lippmann passed away. (As reported by Alden Whitman)

1974: In New York, WNYC is scheduled to broadcast “The Story of Chanukah” adopted by Pearl Klein

1975: “The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother” a musical comedy film with Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn and Gene Wilder who also wrote the script and directed the film was released in the United States and the United Kingdom today.

1975: “A National Council on Soviet Jewry was established at the conclusion of the first National Conference on Soviet Jewry held in Great Britain.”

1976: “Sly Fox” a comedic play by Larry Gelbart premiered on Broadway today at the Broadhurst Theatre with a cast that included Jack Gillford.

1976:The Jerusalem Post reported from Washington that the US State Department, Pentagon and industry were becoming concerned over Israeli use of foreign military sales credits (from the US) not only to obtain US weapons for its inventory, but also to import technical data packages that eventually could be exported in competition with American products. Syrian troops moved into East Beirut where two Christian militias continued to fight each other.

1976: “A new wave of searches and interrogations of members of the organizing committee of the symposium on Jewish culture in Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad, Gorky, Minsk, Tbilisi and other cities” which would last until December 20 began today.

1977: U.S. premiere of “Saturday Night Fever” based on “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night” a New York Magazine article by Nik Cohm with a screenplay by Norman Wexler with Donna Pescow as “Annette” and Fran Drescher as “Connie.”

1977: Representatives of Egypt and Israel gathered in Cairo for their first formal peace conference.

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 the United Kingdom today.

1978: After having been first premiered in the United States, “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 Kingdom.

1979(24thof Kislev, 5740): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1979(24thof Kislev, 5740): Seventy-five year old Milton Harold Bren, the St. Louis born son of Sadie Simon and Henry Simon the movie producer whose most famous work was the screw-ball comedy “Topper” who was married to actress Claire Trevor passed away today.

1980(17thof Tevet, 5741): Seventy-seven year old Isadore Efron, the son of Morris Efron passed away today after which he was buried in the Sons of Israel Cemetery in Aiken, SC.

1981: Israel annexed the Golan Heights which had been captured from Syria in 1967.  The Syrians had shelled Israeli farmers from the Golan Heights for almost twenty years.  The IDF took the heights in an amazing exercise of physical courage at the end of the Six Days War.

1981: “Silkwood,” a biopic directed and co-produced by Mike Nichols with a script co-authored by Nora Ephron was released in the United States today.

1984:Howard Cosell retired from Monday Night Football. The Carolina Israelite via Brooklyn was no longer the third man in the booth.

1986: It was reported today that “whatever the fate of day schools among the non-Orthodox” attendance at the afternoon Hebrew schools in the New York City which had reached a high of 96,000 in the 1960’s “ was no steadily declincing.”

1988: “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” a comedy directed by Frank Oz, with music by Miles Goodman was released in the United States today.

1988: U.S. premiere of “Torch Song Trilogy” written and co-starring Harvey Fierstein, produced by Ronald K. Fierstein with music by Peter Matz.

1989:Joel Brinkley, writing in the New York Times, reported that Soviet Jews are leaving at a record pace, with many of them opting to settle in Israel.

1990(27thof Kislev, 5751): Third Day of Chanukah

1990: U.S. premiere of “Look Who’s Talking Too” directed by Amy Heckerling

1990: “Captain America” a film based on the Marvel comic super-hero created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby produced by Menahem Golam and Stan Lee and with music by Barry Goldberg was released in the United Kingdom today.

1991(7thof Tevet, 5752): Parashat Vayigash

1991(7thof Tevet, 5752): Eighty-nine year old Hartford, CT native Edward Allen “Ed” Suisman who played as a guard and forward for Yale from 1923 to 1925 passed away today.

1993:As a closely watched target date came and went with no change in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin suggested today that there could be still further delays in withdrawing Israel's soldiers and introducing Palestinian self-rule.

1993: In Pittsburgh, PA, Miron Bisnowaty a Sabra raised in Rishon Lezion “who came to the U.S. at the age of 27” and his wife Randi gave birth Adam Bisnowaty who played tackle for the University of Pittsburgh before going to the NFL with the New York Giants.

1994: Alfred Moses presented his credentials today as the U.S. Ambassador to Romania.

1995: “After a private audience with Pope John Paul II,” Leah Rabin, the widow of Yitzhak Rabin said today that the Pope “had acknowledged Jerusalem's "double role" as capital of Israel and a holy city to Jews, Christians and Muslims”

1997(15th of Kislev, 5758): Seventy-nine year old musical comedy “second banana” Stubby Kaye, passed away.  Two of his more famous film credits were “Guys and Dolls” and “Cat Baliou.” (As reported by Myrna Oliver)

http://articles.latimes.com/1997/dec/16/news/mn-64593

1997: The New York Times book section included a review of Gloria Steinem by Sydney Ladensohn Stern

1998: President Clinton stood witness as hundreds of Palestinian leaders renounced a call for the destruction of Israel.  Based on what has happened since then, the deeds did not match the word.

1998(25th of Kislev, 5759): First Day of Chanukah

1998: A Chanukah celebration was held this evening “at the Chaar Hachamayim Synaogugoe on Cairo’s Adly Pasha Street.”

1998(25th of Kislev, 5759): Actor Norman Fell passed away.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-norman-fell-1191859.html

1998(25th of Kislev, 5759): Seventy-four year old Annette Strauss, the former Mayor of Dallas, passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/21/us/annette-strauss-74-former-mayor-of-dallas.html

1999: U.S. and German negotiators agreed to establish a $5.2 billion fund for Nazi-era slaves and forced laborers.

2000: Marty Glickman underwent heart bypass surgery.

2000: “The Family Man” a comedy directed by Brett Ratner, with a script by David Diamond and David Weissman and music by Danny Elfman was released in the United States by Universal Pictures.

2000: The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation presented the Raoul Wallenberg 2000 Award. This award, which is being offered for the first time, was presented to Oscar Vicente, CEO of Perez Companc Holding and Peter Landelius, Swedish Ambassador to Argentina. This new distinction was created with the purpose of recognizing the exemplary conduct of individuals with rectitude and outstanding performance in their respective occupations as well as their thorough and continuous support of non-governmental organizations.

2001:In what some considered an unusual turn of events, the men who gathered for the funeral of a local boy killed by a Palestinian attack spoke little about revenge or military reprisals. Instead the talk was about God's mysterious ways and about what many saw as a divine signal that Jews had strayed from their faith in their own land.

2002(9thof Tevet, 5763): Seventy-eight year old multi-talented actress and native of Des Moines, IA, Ruth Kobart passed away today in San Francisco.

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/12-2002/ruth-kobart-of-forum-and-how-to-suceed-fame-dies-i_2919.html

2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jewsby Melvin Konner and The Conspiracy Club by Jonathan Kellerman.

2004(2ndof Tevet, 5765): Seventh Day of Chanukah

2004: “I, Robot” a sci-fi thriller based on the work by Isaac Asimov, with a screenplay co-authored by Akiva Goldsman and featuring Shia LaBeouf was released today on VHS and DVD.

2004: Molly Tambor gave birth to Mason Jay Moore Jeffrey Michael Tambor’s first grandchild.

2004: Gary Shaprio reviews Ron Rubin’s book on the New York City Marathon's co-founder, Anything for a T-Shirt: Fred Lebow and the New York City Marathon, the World's Greatest Footrace .The book - the first biography of Lebow - has been published on the 10th anniversary of his death.

2005(13th of Kislev, 5766): Israeli archaeologist Ruth Amiran passed away.  Born in 1914 she was the author of Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land: From Its Beginnings in the Neolithic Period to the End of the Iron Age and a 1982 recipient of the Israel Prize.

2005(13th of Kislev, 5766): Eighty-one year oldDr. Herman Roiphe, a psychoanalyst who explored the notion of sexual identity in early childhood development, passed away today.(As reported by Jeremy Pearce)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/obituaries/26roiphe.html

2005(13th of Kislev, 5766):Nathalie Babel Brown, a daughter of Isaac Babel, the illustrious Russian-Jewish storyteller of the Soviet era, whose literary work she edited, died  in Washington at the age of 76. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/arts/13babel.html

2006: The Jerusalem Post reported that Ha’eda, the official organ of th fiercely anti-Zionist Eda haharedit, characterized those Jews attending the Teheran Holocaust denial conference as a ‘tiny group of insane people, who are liable to incited hatred agiainst hareidi Jews.’ The paper’s editor lambasted them for having ignored the ‘opinion of Torah Sages’ in pursuit of their distorted anti-Zionist zealotry.

2006: In Boston, The Improv Asylum presents its new production, "Andy Warhol's Christmas Special, or, How Hanukkah Stole Christmas."It's a story narrated by Andy Warhol about a sick, young Jewish woman who makes a wish for Hanukkah to replace Christmas. Sadly, it comes true.

2006: The Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of “The Apple Tree” a Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick musical of began today.

2007(5th of Tevet, 5768): Eighty-eight year old Hank Kaplan, an American boxing historian and writer who was the founder and editor of Boxing Digest, passed away today, at his home in Florida. (As reported by Matt Schudel)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/15/AR2007121501821.html

2007: In New York City The 92nd Street Y School of Music presents a recital by pianist Laura Barg as part of its series of one-hour faculty concerts in the Weill Art Gallery.

2007: The Washington (D.C.) Jewish Community Center continues “Theater J,” its successful series of informal play readings, with a presentation from “Forgiveness”by David Schulner, directed by Daniella Topol, featuring Tim Getman, Conrad Feininger, Helen Hedman, Kimberly Gilbert and Julia Proctor.

2008: Final performance of The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater production of “The Very Sad Story of Ethel & Julius, Lovers and Spies, and About Their Untimely End While Sitting in a Small Room at the Correctional Facility in Ossining New York.”

2008: In Washington, D.C., the 3rd Shalshelet International Festival continues for its second and final day when the composers and performers will provide a day of free creative workshops beginning at 10:00 am, also at the Sixth & I historic Synagogue.

2008: At the Chabad House in Little Rock, AR, Rabbi Pinchas Ciment facilitates the beginning of the writing of a Sefer Torah as part of this special year of Hakhel. . This momentous occasion will take place as Mrs. Ruth Itzkowitz will be celebrating her 90th birthday and is being partially underwritten by the Itzkowitz family in loving memory of Bob Itzkowitz (obm). 

2008: The Washington Post book section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics uniquely related to the Jewish people including The Alchemy of Air:A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler  by Thomas Hager Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean byEdward Kritzler and American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem by Jane Fletcher Geniesse.

 

2008: Funeral services are held for Holocaust Survivor and long time resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Ann Gilbert (Chana Zylberstajn) at Tempe Judah with burial at Eben Israel Cemetary.

 

2008: Avraham Infeld, President of the Chais foundation confirmed today that the California-based foundation that doles out about $12 million per year was forced to close as a result of the securities scheme orchestrated by Bernard Madoff, The Chais Family Foundation, which gives away approximately $12.5 million annually to Jewish causes in Israel, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, closed Sunday because all of its assets were invested with Madoff. The United Jewish Communities and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee were among its main beneficiaries.

 

2008: Jack Black hosted the Spike Video Games.

2009(27thof Kislev, 5770): Third Day of Chanukah

2009(27thof Kislev, 5770): Ninety-three year old Sol Price who as the founder of PriceSmart is considered the pioneer of stripped down bargain warehouse store passed away today.

 

 

2009(27 Kislev, 5770): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of Harvey David Luber.  He will always be missed and never be forgotten.

 

2009: The Center for Jewish History, American Sephardi Federation and Center for Traditional Music and Dance present: “Ilyas Malayev: Remembering the Poet Laureate of the Bukharian Jews.”

2009: Gary Schmitt and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius take part in a discussion of "The Essential Herman Kahn: In Defense of Thinking" with one of the book's editors, Kenneth Weinstein, at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.

 

2009: Israel's top-ranked player won the 2009 Chess World Cup. Boris Gelfand, a grand master from Rishon LeZion, defeated former world champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine in a playoff today in the Russian town of Khanty-Mansiysk to take the $120,000 top prize

2009: Kinky Friedman announced “that he was leaving the gubernatorial race and would the Democratic nominated for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.”

 

2010: The Historic 6th& I Synagogue is scheduled to present “Food for Thought: Digesting Ethics, Mysticism, and Philosophy” with Rabbi Yosef Edelstein of MesorahDC

 

2010: In New York, the YIVO is scheduled to present a program entitled “Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in the Aftermath of the Schwarzbard Trial.”

2010: In Hawaii, The Kahului Union Church is scheduled to host a program entitled “A Voice for Israel” featuring Nora Finberg the wife of Pastor Robb Finberg of Grace Church in Pukalani.

 

2010: Today Israeli officials canceled a ceremony planned to honor the Palestinian firemen who assisted in battling the Carmel fire last week, after a number of crew members were refused permits to cross the border.

 

2010: It was reported today that Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is off to an early lead in the race for Chicago mayor, but there is plenty of room for other contenders in the crowded field as the fluid contest takes shape, a new Tribune/WGN poll found

 

2011: Opening session the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial is scheduled to take place today at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Session in suburban Maryland.

 

2011: “Yiddle with His Fiddle” is scheduled to be shown today at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, Ohi

 

2011: Arsonists set fire to a deserted mosque in central Jerusalem during the night.

 

2011: Dozens of right-wing activists clashed with police officers in Jerusalem today, amid attempts to arrest suspects linked to recent so-called price tag attacks.

2012: Ninety-eight year old “Joe Simon, a writer, editor and illustrator of comic books who was a co-creator of the superhero Captain America, conceived out of a patriotic impulse as war was roiling Europe,” passed away today (As reported by Bruce Weber)

 

2011(14thof Kislev): Ninety-eight year old “Norman Krim, an electronics visionary who played a pivotal role in the industry’s transition from the bulky electron vacuum tube, which once lined the innards of radios and televisions, to the tiny, far more powerful transistor” passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

 

2012(1stof Tevet, 5773): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth day of Chanukah; Kindle the 7 candles.

 

2012(1stof Tevet, 5773): Six year old Adam Posner was the youngest of the victims murdered today at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.

2012(1stof Tevet, 5773): Seventy-two year old China scholar and UCLA professor Richard Baum passed away today. (As reported by Meg Sullivan)

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/prominent-china-scholar-richard-241975.aspx

 

2012: “Call me a Jew,” a documentary about Austrian treatment of Jews during World War II is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012: Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis is scheduled to bring her unique message to members and guests of Park East Synagogue.

 

2012: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host its second Musical Shabbat in the 5773 season.

 

2012: Report of ’80s Sexual Abuse Rattles Yeshiva Campus

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/nyregion/report-of-sexual-abuse-rattles-manhattan-yeshiva-campus.html

 

2012: Avigdor Liberman announced today he would resign from his position as foreign minister and vice premier in the current government in light of a pending indictment against him for fraud and breach of public trust

 

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=295946

2012: Bob “Benmosche announced that the U.S. government and American taxpayers received their full investment in AIG, plus a $22 billion positive return.”

 

2013: Two days before his 90th birthday, Israeli pianist Menahem Pressler is scheduled to perform on the Tully stage of the Lincoln Center

 

2013: Weather permitting, “Francis Ha” and “Life Sentences” will be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: The Union of Reform Judaism Biennial Convention is scheduled to host a centennial celebration “Extraordinary Women Shaping Reform Judaism: A celebration of the 100th anniversary of Women of Reform Judaism” followed by a concert featuring Neshama Carlebach and Josh Nelson.

2013: As thousands of Gazans suffer from record flooding, Israel relaxes restrictions at the border crossing to allow the shipment of water pumps and gas for heating to relieve the human misery.

 

2013: Israel faced another freezing night, with fears of icy roads nationwide, but the worst storm in decades was winding down. Late tonight, much of Jerusalem and northern Israel were still deep in snow, the authorities were working to open roads in and out of the capital, and much of the rest of the country was still grappling with stormy conditions.

 

2014: Musician David Broza is scheduled to perform in the Mintz Auditorium of the Uptown Jewish Community Center as part of the Community Chanukah Celebration in New Orleans.

 

2014: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host a program with Ruth W. Messinger, President of the American Jewish World Service

.

2014: At the Berman Museum, Emory Professor and WW II veteran Dr. Mort Waitzman is scheduled to speak in third installment of the Bearing Witness series.

 

2014: After today’s performance of “Fiddler on the Roof” Miriam Isaacs who taught Yiddish at the University of Maryland for 15 years is scheduled to speak on the literary antecedents to the show based on Sholom Aleichem's "Tevye" short stories.

 

2014: Ambassador Mal Berisha is scheduled to deliver “a talk on the role of U.S. Ambassador Herman Bernstein (1930-1933) in championing positive Albanian Jewish relations and how this set the stage for Albania sheltering its Jews during the war.

 

2014: “State Aid Formula Said to Hurt in a District Where Most Go to Yeshivas” published today described the behavior of an Orthodox Jewish community in Rockland County.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/nyregion/state-aid-formula-said-to-hurt-in-a-district-where-most-go-to-yeshivas.html?hpw&rref=education&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

2014: “The Labor Party voted unanimously in favor of merging with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party this evening, sealing the deal for a rotation premiership in a bid to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a large center-left bloc.” (As reported by Marissa Newman)

 

2014: In a statement issued today, the Women of the Wall said that Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbinic authority of the Western Wall and holy places, denied its request to hold a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony in the women’s section of the holy. (As reported by JTA)

 

 

2014: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Jby Howard Jacobson and Gangsterland by Tod Goldberg.

 

2014(22ndof Kislev, 5775): Eighty-year old Rabbi Dr. Yitzchok Meyer Abramson, the Chicago native who was the husband of Ruth Abramson passed away today in St. Louis, MO.

 

2014(22ndof Kislev, 5775): Ninety-one year old Sy Berger, “the father of the modern-day baseball trading card” passed away today.

 

2014(22ndof Kislev, 5775): Ninety-year old Bess Myerson, the first Jewish “Miss America” passed away today.

 

2014: Today’s New York Times list of the 10 Best Books of 2014 included Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright.

 

2015(2ndof Tevet, 5776): Eighth Day of Chanukah

 

2015(2ndof Tevet, 5776): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of Rabbi Aharon Kotler.

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Kislev_2.html

 

2015(2nd of Tevet, 5776): Eighty-eight year old Lillian Vernon, the refugee from Nazi Europe who made her name into a women’s fashion brand passed away today. (As reported by Lynn Povich)

 

2015: Today, “just after the new government voided the Argentine pact with Iran to jointly investigate the AMIA attack,” prosecutor Paul Plee “filed a request today to reopen the case with the Federal Criminal Cassation Court” in which “the late special prosecutor Alberto Nisman had charged that former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner covered up Iran’s role in the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing.” (JTA)

 

2015: The American Sephardi Association is scheduled to host “The Silk Road Experience: a Night of Food, Fashion and Music.”

http://cjh.org/event/2745

 

2015: Juilliard faculty member and alumnus Itzhak Perlman is scheduled to lead “the Juilliard Orchestra in a brilliant program of iconic Tchaikovsky masterworks for their only Geffen Hall appearance of the season.”

2015: At the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia Susan Barocas, Founding Director of the Jewish Food Experience is scheduled to “share stories of several immigrant families from diverse backgrounds who all lived in the same tenement building — 97 Orchard Street — on the Lower East Side of New York, between 1863 and 1935. Their stories will be told through the foods they ate.”

 

2015: “The Dove Flyer” and “The Guardians of Remembrance” are scheduled to be shown this evening at the AJS 47th Annual Conference in Boston, MA

 

2016: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel, Rabbi Feivel Strauss is scheduled to enlighten attendees with the teachings of Reb Meir.

2016(14thof Kislev, 5777): Ninety-seven year old “Edwin Goldwasser, a physicist who co-founded the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., and helped build one of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator” passed away today.

https://apnews.com/efef70a5f94a4918af0e61fb825fd248/fermi-lab-co-founder-physicist-dr-edwin-goldwasser-dies

 

2016: In “Klezmer: Music, History and Memory” Walter Zev Feldman is scheduled to discuss the emergence in 16th century Prague of klezmer which “became a central cultural feature of the largest transnational Jewish community of modern times.”

 

2016 Alon Oleartchik who “is considered among Israel's most important and inspiring musicians, with an exciting and creative career spanning more than 40 years” is scheduled to “perform his greatest hits from all time including; "Ba La Schuna Bahur Hadash" , "Hi Holechet Badrachim", "Eretz Melach" and many, many more” at the Highline Ballroom.

2017: In Omaha, the Chanukah Art and Soul Festival The Annual Menorah Parade at Boys Town.

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Center is scheduled to host a screening of “Summer of Love” followed by discussion “led by Michael J. Kramer, Professor of history and American Studies at Northwestern University.”

2017: “Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. said today it plans to cut 14,000 positions globally – over 25 percent of its total workforce – over the next two years.”

2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host another session of Peter G. Weintraub’s “Introduction to Judaism.”

2017: Omri Tubi, “a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department at Northwestern University and the recipient of the 2017 Martin and Rhoda Safer/JDC Archives Fellowship” is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “What Can Malaria Eradication Teach Us about the History of Israel?” at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

2017: The professional conference “The Book and the Desert” at which the import of recently discovered Hasmonean era coins, pottery and ritual baths was to be discussed was held today at the Susya Tour and Study Center.”

2017(26thof Kislev, 5778): 2nd day of Chanukah

2018: In Georgia, Or VeShalom, a congregation “established by refugees primarily from Turkey and the Isle of Rhodes, is scheduled to host its Congregational Shabbat Dinner.

2018: In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host a “conversation between two feminist theologians, Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ, as they debate the nature of divinity in the world, beginning from the premise that the transcendent, omnipotent, male God of traditional theologies must be re-understood.”

2018: And in one final example showing the ways American congregations make erev Shabbat special, in Chevy Chase, MD Ohr Kodesh Congregation is scheduled to host “USY Friday Night Lights.”

2019(16thof Kislev, 5780): Parashat Vayishlach;

2019: In Boston, today’s session of the URJ Biennial includes a full schedule of Shabbat related activities beginning with a Sabbat Breakfast and end with “Havdalah and a Song Session.”

2019: In San Jose, CA, Addison-Penzak JCC and Silicon Valley Federation are scheduled to co-host “Legacy Project Shabbat,” “a service for a program that aims to strengthen local synagogues, Jewish agencies and the community.

2019: The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to host its “Family Chanukah Party” complete with “latkes, dreidels, donuts, singing, live music and more.”  (Editor’s note – never sure what “more” consists of)

2019: In Walnut Creek, CA, Congregation B’nai Shalom is scheduled to host a screening of “Defiant Requiem,” a 2012 documentary that “uses archival footage and animation to tell the story of Terezin inmates learning and performing Verdi’s “Requiem” during the Holocaust.”

2019: In Los Gatos, CA, the Addison-Penzak is scheduled to host “Vodka and Latkes,” a Chanukah party featuring a “7-piece band, dreidel spinning, libations, sufganiyot and latke bar with toppings.

2019: “The Grant Monument Association is scheduled to commemorate the 117thanniversary of the date of Julia Dent Grant today. For more about her husband and the Jewish people see  When Grant Expelled the Jews by Jonathan Sarna

2020(28thof Kislev, 7801): Fourth Day of Chanukah

2020: “Robin Mencher is scheduled to replace Avi Rose as executive director of Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay starting today.

2020: As part of its “8 digital nights of Chanukah,” in London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to Karen Pollock, the CEO of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

2020: The Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action is scheduled to present online “Chanukah Celebrations: Hearts, Minds and Stomachs.”

2020: In Cleveland, B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host online a “Chanukah NIte Live and Congregation Candle Lighting” which is a celebration of the 5thnight of the holiday featuring songs, stories, teachings and “a few surprise guests.”

2020: Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Bay Area philanthropist Tad Taube, in his capacity as honorary consul of Poland, are scheduled to be honored today at the American Jewish Committee’s virtual Hanukkah gala, “Diplomacy at 75: Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the United Nations and AJC San Francisco.”

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 15, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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DECEMBER 15

37:  Birthdate of Nero Claudius Augustus Germanicus 5th emperor of Rome.  While legend remembers him as the emperor who fiddled while Rome burned, Jews will remember him as the ruler who was emperor when the Great Revolt began in 66.  Nero had appointed several of the incompetent governors who had helped create the conditions for the revolt.  He also chose Vespasian as the general to put down the rebellion.  Nero died in 68 during the rebellion.  His untimely death bought the Jews some breathing space as Vespasian broke off the combat to take part in a coup that would put him on the throne.  It was his son, Titus who actually destroyed the Temple when combat.

921(6th of Tevet, 4682): Rav Saadiah Gaon cautioned today cautioned the Jews of Egypt to reject the religious calendar adopted by Rabbi Aaron ben Meir, head of the Palestinian yeshiva in Ramleh

1467: Stephen III of Moldavia who “treated the Jews with consideration” and appointed Isaac ben Benjamin to successively more responsible positions defeated Matthias Corvinus of Hungary at the Battle of Baia.

1565: Five years before he was Regius Professor of Hebrew of at Oxford, Thomas Kingsmill, the son of Sir John Kingsmill “was appointed public orator and “orated for the visit of Elizabeth I of England to Oxford in 1566, during which he gave a very long historical speech.

1583(30thof Kislev, 5334: Fifty-year old Judah Abravanel, the grandson of Judah Abravanal and the brother of Jacob Abravanel passed away at Ferrara. (He is one of a long line of Sephardic Jews to have this name which is not unusual given the naming customs used by the Jewish people)

1640: Coronation of King John IV of Portugal.  Don Fernando Mendes, a Marrano, was his court physician.  He was also the court physician to Catrina, King John's daughter who married King Charles II of England.  Don Fernando also served the English King making him one of the few physicians to ever serve three reigning monarchs.

1647(18thof Kislev, 5408):  Isaac de Castro was put to death at an auto-de-fe by the Inquisition for the crime of teaching Judaism to conversos. De Castro had arrived in Bahia (then under Portuguese control) from Amsterdam through Dutch Brazil. After being ‘recognized as a Jew he was arrested by the Inquisition and sent to Lisbon.”  On the day of his death he “was led, together with five fellow-sufferers, to the stake. In the midst of the flames he called out in startling tones, "Shema' Yisrael! [Hear, O Israel!] The Lord our God is One!" With the word "Echad" (One), he died.”

1734: Daniil Pavlovich Apostole who was the Hetman of the Cossacks on both sides of the Dnieper River passed away. When Catherine I expelled the Jews from the Ukraine in 1727, Apostol led a move to modify the law.  He and the other Cossacks had learned the hard way that they needed Jewish merchants if their economy was to grow.  Thanks to his efforts, the edict was modified so that the Jews could participate in the various fairs held in the area.

 

1751: Benedict XIV issued “Probe te memisse,” a papal bull establishing the rules for baptizing Jews. In case there was any doubt about this Pope’s attitude towards Jews, 4 years later he published “Beatus Andreas” which beatified Andreas von Rinn a child who was the alleged victim of a ritual murder committed by Jews in 1462. The allegation of ritual murder was the key requirement for this beatification,

1762(29thof Kislev, 5523): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1762: As Jews prepare to kindle the sixth Chanukah, Benjamin Franklin wrote to James Bowdoin today expressing his “great pleasure” with the College Poems that his future comrade in the American Revolution had sent him.

1765(3rdof Tevet, 5526): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1767(24thof Kislev, 5528): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1772 (19th of Kislev, 5533): Reb Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritchsecond leader of the Chassidic movement, successor to the Baal Shem Tov and spiritual mentor of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, known for his scholarship, piety, and asceticism passed away. There is no way that we can do justice to the contribution of this sage and urge you to spend time studying about him.

1773(1stof Tevet, 5534): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah observed as Colonials in Boston decide what to do about the tea laden ship sitting in the harbor.

1778(26thof Kislev, 5539): Second Day of Chanukah observed for the third time during the American Revoltuion.

1779: While “serving as a volunteer in Captain Verdier's regiment under Count Pulaski during the siege of Savannah” Benjamin Nones, the native of Bordeaux who had moved to Philadelphia, “received a certificate for gallant conduct on the field of battle” today.

1787: The Bristol Journal reported that Lord George Gordon, the English noblemen who converted to Judaism with the name of Yisrael bar Avraham Gordon, has been living in Birmingham since 1786 where “unknown to every class of man but those of the Jewish religion, among whom he has passed his time in the greatest cordiality and friendship...he appears with a beard of extraordinary length, and the usual raiment of a Jew... his observance of the culinary preparation is remarkable.” Furthermore, “He was surrounded by a number of Jews, who affirmed that his Lordship was Moses risen from the dead in order to instruct them and enlighten the whole world...It appears that (he) has officiated as a chief of the Levitical Order..."

1791: The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, took effect following ratification by Virginia. From a parochial point of view, the First Amendment with its statement on religion was the most important of the ten amendments to the Jews of the new nation.  Unlike Europe, with its deeply rooted anti-Semitism, acceptance of Jews was a given from America’s earliest days.  Jews have been very vigilant in using the First Amendment to ensure separation of church and state.  Unfortunately, there are some shortsighted Jews who have been willing to blur the line for short term political or financial gains.

1797: In Germany, Eva Katz and Salomon Reiss gave birth to “Salomon Reiss” who died at the age of three.

1800(28thof Kislev, 5561): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1800(28thof Kislev, 5561): Three year old Salomon Reiss passed away today.

1806: Rothschild wrote to the Landgrave pledging his support to the German prince and offering to intercede on his behalf when Napoleon visits Frankfurt.

1810(18thof Kislev, 5571): Parashat Vayishlach

1810: Birthdate of Philadelphia publisher Abraham Hart who later went into the manufacture of “button-hole” machines after marrying Rebecca Cohen Isaacks and who was President of Congregation Mikvah Israel,

1812: Dover Schneuri began serving has the leader of Chabad Lubavith, following the in the footsteps of  his father Shenur Zalman of Liadi

1812: In London, Helena Moses and Moses Levy gave birth to Joseph Moses Levy the editor and publisher who turned the failed Daily Telegraph & Courier into the famous and highly successful Daily Telegraph.

1814(1stof Tevet, 5575): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1816(25thof Kislev, 5577): Chanukah is celebrated in the United States for the last time under President James Madison as the country enters into “the era of good feelings.”

1819: Birthdate of Daniel Abramovich Chwolson the native of Vilna who became a noted Orientalist with a proficiency in Arabic. He also was a staunch defender of his co-religionists especially when it came to Blood Libel accusations at Saratov and Kutais which spurred several of his works including “On Several Medieval Accusations Against The Jews.”

1820: In London, Esther Daninos and Solomon Abecasis gave birth to Aaron Abecasis, the husband of Esther Rodrigues Brandon.

1824: Lewis Jacobs married Ranyer Simmons at the Great Synagogue today.

1826: Dr. Daniel Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto, Amsterdam born son of Cantor Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto, Cantor Judith van Samuel Peixotto and his wife Rachel Lopes Menes Peixotto gave birth to  Isabela Peixotto who became Isaebella Seixas when she Benjamin Hyman Seixas.

1827(26thof Kislev, 5588): Parashat Vayeshev; Second Day of Chanukah

1827: Birthdate of Joseph Halévy, the native of Adrianople who gained famed as a French Orientalist and traveler

1828: In Newington, London, Amelia and Morris Harris gave birth to Louisa Harris

1831: Seventy-six year old Hannah Adams, a Christina author who wrote History of the Jews in 1812, passed away in Brookline Mass.

1831: Joel ben Moses HaCohen married Shprintze bat Ashe HaLevi today at the Western Synagogue.

1835: Two days after she had passed away, Alice Abraham, the wife of Michael Abraham and mother of Samuel Abrahams was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1837: Wilhelm Wolfsohn began the study of medicine in Leipzig today.

1849: The third lodge of the Free Sons of Israel was formed under the name Ruben Lodge No. 3.

1854(24thof Kislev, 5615): The first candle of Chanukah is Kindles as the Allies lay siege to Sevastapool during the Crimean War.

1857(28thof Kislev, 5618): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1857(28thof Kislev, 5619): David Jacob Felsentah, the German born on of Leah Wolf and Jakob Isaak Felsenthal who was the husband of Johana (bas) Abram Grunebaum with whom he had six children and Beier Grunebaum with whom he had another six children passed away today.

1857: The opera “Travatore” was performed tonight in New York with proceeds for the evening going to the Hebrew Benevolent Society.

1857: In Spitafields, London, Jane Silver and Henry Woolf gave birth to Charles Woolf.

1858: Abraham Freedman married Maria Jacobs today at the Great Synagogue.

1858: During “The Mortara Affair,” the New York Times published a letter U.S. Secretary of State Cass had written to Mr. Hart in which he compared President Buchanan’s decision not to join with the nations of Europe to bring pressure on the Catholic Church to return the boy to his parents with the activisits behavior of the United States during “the persecution of the Jews of Damascus” in 1840.

1859: Birthdate of Dr.Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, the Russian born Jewish linguist who created Esperanto.

1860(2ndof Tevet, 5621): Parashat Miketz; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1860: In Manchester, England, Marcus and Rebecca (Vogel) Myers gave birth to Radcliffe graduate Esther Myers who became Esther Myers Andrews when she married Julius Andrews and who was active in the Council of Jewish Woman and Republican politics in Boston, MA.

1861: President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Arnold Fischel of New York's Congregation Shearith Israel, saying “"I find there are several particulars in which the present law in regard to chaplains is supposed to be deficient, all which I now design presenting to the appropriate Committee of Congress. I shall try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites." Fischel had gone to Washington to get Lincoln’s support to change the law so that Jews could serve as Chaplains in the Union Army.

 

1862: During the Civil War, Army of the Potomac commanded by Ambrose Burnside suffered one of its worst defeats at the Battle of Fredericksburg which came to an end today. Company C of the 82nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment which had been formed by a group of Jewish volunteer soldiers under the name of the Concordia Guards was one of the units engaged in the battle. The regiment would be commanded by Colonel Edward S. Salomon, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, who may have been Chicago’s first Jewish lawyer and was the alderman for the Sixth Ward when the war broke out. Among other Jews serving during the battle was Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman, a native of Richmond, who was a solider with the Union Army and was wounded at Fredericksburg.

1863: In Poland, Joseph I and Zipporah Uttenberg gave birth to  Israel Unterberg, who came alone to the U.S. in 1910 to join his parents and went on to become the “president of the National Butchers and Drovers Bank” and the president of the Jewish Education Association” while raising two sons and four daughters with his wife Bella Epstein,

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/05/02/94520698.pdf

 

 

1864: During the Civil War, the Battle of Nashville (TN) begins.  Among the Union units are the 79thIndiana commanded by Colonel Frederick Knefler.

1865(27th of Kislev, 5626): Third Day of Chanukah observed for the first time during the Presidency of Andrew Johnson.

 

1866: In Greensberg, PA, Charles and Sara Falk gave birth to Maurice Falk the founder, with his brothers of Weirton Steel who married Selma Wertheimer after his first wife Laura Klinordlinger passed away and who, with his brother “established the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies at Pittsburg in 1912

1867: Esther Hellman Wallenstein, the founding President of the Hebrew Infant Asylum in New York and Solomon Wallenstein gave birth to Max Wallenstein.

1869: Esther Hellman Wallenstein, the founding President of the Hebrew Infant Asylum in New York and Solomon Wallenstein gave birth to Joseph Solomon Wallenstein

1870: Sir Saul Samuel completed his first term as Treasurer of New South Wales.

1871(3rd of Tevet, 5632): 8th day of Chanukah

1872: Eighty-year old Mary Anne Disraeli, 1st Vicountess Beaconsfield, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield passed away today.

1873: It was reported today that The Jewish Chronicle has expressed support for conferring peerages on Sir Moses Montefiore and Baron Lionel Rothschild

1874: Birthdate of Russian native Michael Sherbrook, the actor known as Michael Shewzik who came to England at the age of 12 and “made his debut as an actor in productions of the Elizabethan Stage Society in 1898” before marrying Alice Isaac the second daughter of H.P. Isaac in 1903.

1875: Birthdate of Salt Lake City native William G. Watters, the owner of the Hospital Supply Company and the Watters Laboratories who was married to Lucille Watters with whom he had two daughters – Margaret and Ann.

1875: Birthdate of Kiev native Samuel Paley, the founder and long-time president of the Congress Cigar Company and the father of William S. Paley, the chairman of the board of C.B.S.

1876(29thof Kislev, 5637): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1876: It was reported today that a translation of the Greek New Testament into Hebrew is about to be published at Leipzig “for the use of the Orthodox Jews of Eastern Germany and Poland.” [No mention is made of why an Orthodox Jew would want a copy of the New Testament.]

1877: Birthdate of Bernhard Maissner, the Russian born ancestor of Cantor Benjamin Maissner  and his nephew Israel Alter who was also a Cantor.

1879(30thof Kislev, 5640): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1879: It was reported today that the Young Men’s Hebrew Association will celebrate Chanukah with a reception at the Academy of Music.

1880: It was reported today that “the third reception” hosted by “the Young Men’s Hebrew Union will be held on Christmas evening.”

1880: Justice Kilbreth ordered Mrs. Lizzie Wenke to post a $200 bond to guarantee her good behavior or more specifically, that she would not attack Isaac Stern again.

1880: Birthdate of Rumanian native Mois H. Avram, the NYU trained engineer who in 1899 came to the United Sates where as President of Fox Brothers International Corporation “took part in planning the reconstruction of the Port of Versailles” wrote several books including Patenting and Promoting Inventions while raising a son and two daughters with his wife Ernestine.

1881: “A very large assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, representing the best class of the Hebrew population” of New York “gathered in the Academy of Music” this “evening at the annual ball commemorating the celebration of Chanukah” sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association who raised over $6,000 for their building fund.

1881: Jacques Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffman” was performed for the one hundredth time today at the Salle Favart.

1881: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association hosted its annual Chanukah Ball this evening at the Academy of Music. (The celebration was held today, a Thursday, because Chanukah in 1881 began on Friday night and you could not have a ball on Shabbat)

1882: Birthdate of Helena Rubinstein famed American cosmetic manufacturer.

1883: Birthdate of David Abel, the native of Amsterdam who was the husband of Eva “Chava” Rayevskyand who served as cinematographer for over 110 films for RKO Pictures.

1883: Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the President of the Hebrew Union College delivered a lecture tonight on the subject of intermarriage in which he said “such marriages are not forbidden Mosaic law.”

1883: In Rochester, NY, Sabbath morning services at Berith Kodesh will be conducted in English for the first time.

1883: In a note published today, Ignatz Fishcel, a 23 year old unemployed German Jewish immigrant blames his decision to commit suicide on his sister and her husband

1883: In Paris, French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero and his wife gave birth to Henri Paul Gaston Maspero the sinologist who died in Buchenwald.

1884: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association is now serving 1,959 children as compared to the 520 that it served when it began in 1876.

1884: It was reported today that newly elected officers of the Hebrew Free School Association included President M.S. Isaacs, Vice President Uriah Herrmann and Secretary Henry S. May.

1884: It was reported today that while speaking at event marking the 16thanniversary of the Presbyterian Hospital in New York, Reverend John Paxton said, “We are indebted to the Jews for many things, for human law and their teaching of the sacredness of life but not for hospitals.  These are the sole creation of Christianity.” And then, in what can only be considered a bit of genteel anti-Semitism, he said that the “first hospital was founded…by the good Samaritan.”

1884: It was reported today that the officers of the newly formed Tenth Ward Society include: Joseph Blumenthal – President; Isaac Bernheimer and E.R.A. Seligman – Vice Presidents; Frederick Nathan – Treasurer; Lee Kohns – Secretary.  The society will be conducting an audit of conditions of tenements in an area surrounded by Houston Street, Division Street, Norfolk Street and the Bowery.  A report of the needed improvements and/or the failure to make them will be sent to the Board of Health and the Grand Jury.  (This was part of an over-all attempt to improve conditions for immigrants. This particular ward had a large Jewish population which may have accounted for the makeup of the officers.)1884: It was reported today that Ludovic Halevy, the son of Leon Halevy, has been elected as a member of the French Academy.

1885: Birthdate of  Lithuanian native Rebecca Kushner Paiewonsky, the wife of Isaac Paiewonsky and the mother of Ralph and Isidor Paiewonsky who was buried at the Altona Jewish Cemetery in the U.S. Virgin Islands when she passed away in 1963.

1885: In New York, Barnett and Dora Kriss Feinberg gave birth to Celia Feinberg who became Celia Rosenthal when she married Harry Rosenthal in 1913.

1885: The Ladies’ Fair, a fund-raiser designed to raise money for the Kindergarten and Industrial Schools of the Hebrew Free School Association opened this evening at the Metropolitan Opera House.

1886: “Hattie Kahn,” a “young and pretty French Jewess disappeared mysteriously from her employer’s residence at No. 46 West One Hundred and Twenty-sixth street” today.

1885: Thirty-one year old Carbondale, PA born lawyer and Phi Beta Kappa member Emanuel Cohen who is currently practicing in Minneapolis married Nina Morais today

1887: Birthdate of Lithuanian native and educator Saul Galinsky who in 1941 was brought to the United States by the Jewish Labor Committee after which “he became a teacher in the Workmen’s Circle School system” and the executive director the Jewish Encyclopedia while raising his son Victor with his wife Luba.

1887: Morris L. Kramer and Rcahel Elka Stikan gave birth to Sadie Kramer.

 

1887: It was reported today that in London a barber named Serne who is a Flemish Jew is on trial having been charged with setting fire to his shop on the Strand to collect on the insurance.  Unfortunately, both of his sons died in the fire as well.

 

1888: “The model of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Canal which had been built by Vauix Carter, a Professor of Mechanics at the Hebrew Technological Institute”  in Brooklyn has proven to be one of the most popular items on display at  the annual fair sponsored by the American Institute.

1888: In “Kovno, Poland,” “Abraham Gershon and Rose (Glizer) Menacker gave birth “educator, author and Zionist Jacob Judah Ackerman the husband of Channa Emma Ginsberg who worked taught Hebrew School in Portland, ME and New Bedford before becoming the principal the Hebrew Institute in Wilkes-Barre, PA while “authoring a book of Biblical poems” and writing a “dramatic version of the Book of Esther.”

 

1889: “Musical Notes” described the upcoming performance of Halevy’s “La Juive” in New York as being “novelty of the week.”

 

1890: “Literary Notes” today described the upcoming publication of Memoirs of My Mayoralty, an illustrated work complete with photographs by Sir Henry Isaacs, the former Lord Mayor of London.

 

 

1890: Louis “Brandeis defined modern notions of the individual right to privacy in a path-breaking article he published with his partner, today in the Harvard Law Review on "The Right to Privacy."

 

1890: “Stringent orders have been sent to Russian Government officials in the Caucasus for the expulsion of all Jews who are not authorized to reside there.”

 

1891(14th of Kislev, 5652): Thirty-six year old accountant and author Jacob Judelsohn, a native of Marionpol, Russia and a resident of the United States since 1879 who served as Secretary of the Jewish Immigrant Protective Society and became a leader in the Jewish community taking an active role in meeting the needs of the newly arrived immigrants from Russia and Poland, passed away today in New York City.

1891: In Louisville, KY, Erna and Hilmar “Hillel” Ehrmann gave birth to Herbert Ehrmann, “the husband of Sara R. Ehrmann” who was the Harvard educated lawyer responsible for defending Sacco and Vanzetti which was the subject of his book The Untried Case.

1891: James Naismith introduces the first version of basketball, with thirteen rules, a peach basket nailed to either end of his school's gymnasium, and two teams of nine players. While Basketball may have had quintessential gentile origins it quickly became a part of Jewish life.  According to Peter Levine, “Jewish involvement in basketball, especially between 1900 and 1950 was greater than in any other sport.”  “By the late 1930’s...sportswriter identified it as the ‘Jewish’ game.  According “Paul Gallico, the longtime sports editor the New York Daily News ... ‘Jews flock to basketball by the thousands’ because it placed ‘a premium on an alert, scheming mind… flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart alikeness’’ traits naturally appealing to the ‘Hebrew with his Oriental background.’”

1892(26th of Kislev, 5653): Second Day of Chanukah

1892(26thof Kislev, 5653): Sixty-one year old Boston clothing store owner Leopold Morse and Democratic Party leader who represented Massachusetts in the House of Representatives passed away today.

1892: A petition is being circulated to gain the endorsement of prominent businessmen and professionals for the candidacy of Jacob P. Solomon, editor of the Hebrew Standard, to fill “the vacancy left on the police bench by Police Justice Daniel O’Reilly.

1892: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to meet in Philadelphia at which papers will be read by Professor Charles Gross of Harvard, Professor Cyrus Adler of the National Museum and Henrietta Szold from Baltimore.

1892: The Monetary Conference at Brussels which has considered a plan put forth by Austrian banker Albert de Rothschild is scheduled to come to an end without resolving any of the issue surrounding bimetallism.

1893: Plans for the upcoming meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society at Columbia University were published today.

1893(6thof Tevet, 5654): Thirty-three year old Gottlieb Adler who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1882 and who served as a professor there while working on matters related to electricity and magnetism, passed away today.

1894: In Jerusalem, Moshe Peretz and his wife gave birth to Haym Peretz, who fled to the United States in 1917 when the Turks discovered he was an Allied intelligence agent and after graduating from Johns Hopkins pursed a career in Jewish social work and education that included serving as the UJA director for the Bronx while raising his son Don with his wife Josephine.

1894: Register Ferdinand Levy, Justice Alfred Steckler and Emanuel Friend were among those who attended the 20th“annual reception and ball of the New York Hebrew Mutual Benefit Association at the Central Opera House on East 67thStreet.

1894: Sir Julian Goldsmid a member of the House of Commons for the South Division of St. Pancras presided at a meeting of the Russo-Jewish Committee today where “private communications with relation to the condition of the Jews in Russia were presented.”

1894: A revival of “Quite an Adventure,” a one-act comic opera by Edward Solomon opened at the Savoy Theatre.

1894: Birthdate of Minsk born American feminist Fania Esiah Mindell, a pioneer in the movement to give women control over their own reproductive organs.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/oct/26/1916/fania-mindell-arrested-for-distributing-birth-control-material

 

1895: “The Hebrew Mechanics Association” is reported to be the sponsor of tonight’s concert at the Thalia Theatre in the Bowery.

1895: “A crowd of indignant men and women lined the sidewalk and the street in front of the Thalia Theatre tonight” upset by the additional charges being added for the tickets they were holding to see “a grand popular concert” given by the Hebrew Mechanics Association under the management of Maxz Hirsch.

1895: Among those performing tonight at “the second of the season’s concerts of the Arion” was Louis Blumenberg “who played for his first solo Max Bruch’s transcription of ‘Kol Nidre’” which with “his breadth of tone and smooth legato brought out the full sentiment of this sacred composition.”

1895: Those working at the booths of Educational Charity Fair sponsored by leading members of the Jewish community will have the day off today because Madison Square Garden, the venue where the fair is taking place, will be closed for the day.

1895: Excise Commissioner Julius Harburger of New York and Colonel W. L. Strong spoke at the dedication of the newly erected Temple Ahavath Sholom Beth Aaron in Brooklyn

1895: Plans were published today for a fund raiser to be held later this week for the benefit of the Hebrew Technical Institute.

1895: Birthdate of Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho

http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/128555/oscar-niemeyer-israel-and-two-jews-named-jacob/

1895: “Herter’s Heine Fountain” published today described the decision of the citizens of Dusseldorf and aMayence to reject a fountain in honor of the poet “because he was a Jew.”

1895: “Herr Ahlwardt Denounced” published today described the meeting at Allen Memorial Church where speakers including Methodist minister George Van Alystayne and Episcopal minister Frank M. North spoke out against the visiting German anti-Semite and defending the role of Jews as American citizens.

1896(10thTevet, 5657): Asara B’Tevet observed for the last time during the Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

1897:The Federation of American Zionist Societies of New York, (FAZ) was formed today with Richard Gottheil as President and Herman Rosenthal and Rabbi Joseph T. Bluestone as vice presidents. Most remarkable and fortunate for the nescient American Zionist movement was the choice of secretary for the FAZ. Gottheil had been advisor, sponsor and friend to a young Columbia student who energetically and dynamically became the first Zionist secretary. His name was Rabbi Stephen Wise. For the next 45 years, Wise would become one of the enshrined, respected leaders of the American Zionist and World Zionist movements.

1899:  Birthdate of Harold Abrahams, English athlete and Olympic gold medalist.  Abrahams passed away in 1978.  Abrahams gained posthumous fame when his Olympic exploits were portrayed in the film hit “Chariots of Fire.” 

1899: Lieutenant General Sir Louis Jean Bols, the “Chief Administrator of Palestine” for the first six months of 1920 served today at the Battle of Colensco during the Boer War.

1900(23rdof Kislev, 5661): Parashat Vayeshev

1900: Birthdate of Paris native and CCNY graduate and teacher Percy Max Apfledbaum, the holder of Ph.D. from Columbia who was professor of organic chemistry and “found president of City College’s teaches union.

1900: In Hungary, following yesterday’s preliminary vote, members of the lower chamber of the parliament cast the “definitive vote” denying Lazăr Șăineanu's naturalization even though he had converted to facilitate his bid for citizenship.

1901: “PROF. ADLER CONVERTED TO SUNDAY OPENING” published today described an address delivered by Prof. Felix Adler before the Society of Ethical Culture at Carnegie Hall in which he stated that he had gone form “being a believer in keeping the saloons closed on Sunday” to taking the opposite view.

1902: Birthdate of Kiev native Nuta Kotlyarenko who gained fame as American fashion designer Nudie Cohn

http://www.nudiesrodeotailor.com/

.1902: Robert Georg Alexander von Mendelssohn and Giulietta von Mendelssohn gave birth to Angelica von Mendelssohn

1902(30thof Kislev, 5678): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1902(30thof Kislev, 5678): Sixty-three year old Solomon Hirsh, “one of the founders of Fleischner, Mayer and Co., the largest wholesale dry goods company on the West Coast,” president of the Oregon State Senate and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Ottoman Empire who along with his wife Josephine were early leaders of the early Portland, Oregon Jewish community passed away today.

1903: Funeral services for Solomon Loeb who passed away on December 12th are scheduled to be held at his residence in New York at 9:30 this morning.

1904: In Brooklyn, Zemad and Annie Groden Bloomgarden gave birth to Kermit Bloomgarden, the CPA who became a successful producer.

1905: It was reported today that in Lodz, Cossacks dispersed the rioters who attacking Jewish shops and residences.

1905: The Jewish Chronicle reported today that “John Burns charged the Jews with oxlike submission to authority.

1905: As the violence against the Jews continues to escalate, a bomb was thrown at the postal telegraph offices at Radom, Poland.

1906(28thof Kislev, 5667): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1906: Today,the National Geographic Society of the United States, which was primarily known for publishing a popular magazine, certified Peary's 1905-6 expedition” the crew of which included the surgeon Dr. Louis J. Wolff of Silverton, Oregon who had given up his work at the Cornell Dispensary and the Bellevue Dispensary to serve as the medical officer “with its highest honor, the Hubbard Gold Medal.”

1906: During the strike aimed at breaking the Beef Trust the butchers in Brownsville who have been on strike will continue to keep their shops closed today if the Williamsburg Retail Kosher Butchers and the New York and Harlem Retail Kosher Butchers have joined in the strike.

1907(10th of Tevet, 5668): Asara B'Tevet

1907: It was reported today that “The Jewish Historical Society is considering the question of a publish a commemorative volume containing a complete history Jewish emancipation in England” as part of the upcoming celebration of the 50thanniversary of the admission of Jews to Parliament.

1907: In Helsinki, Finland, future Russian Foreign Minister Nikolai Avksentev and his wife gave birth the artist Alexandra Pragel the wife of Alexander Pregel, an international dealer in radium and uranium and the sister-in-law of Boris Pregel.

1909: In New York City "Miss Julia Richman, Superintendent of Schools on the Lower East Side has sent out an appeal for clothing for school children."   Miss Richman is concerned that children lack warm clothing which is contributing to poor health.

1911: “In recognition of his scientific research and services in advancement of medical sciences,” the Directorate of International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden” awarded Dr. Myer Coplans, the Demonstrator in Public Health and Bacteriology at the University of Leeds” with an honorary diploma today.

1911: In Commemoration of his coronation, the King conferred “baronetcy on Sir Jacob Sassoon and appointed Robert Nathan, C.I.E., companion of the Order of the Star of India.

1912: In Philadelphia, founding of Shaari Shamayim Synagogue.

1912: Birthdate of “Monuments Man” Wolfgang Maehler.

https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/maehler-sgt-wolfgang

 

1912: Jacob P. Adler is scheduled to appear for the final time this evening at the Haymarket Theatre where he and his fellow Yiddish actors have be performing such works as “The Wild Man,” “Men and Women,” “The Stranger” and “God’s Punishment.”

1913: Two days after he had passed away, 54 year old Solomon Michaelson, the husband of Leah Michaelson whom he had wed in Russia and with whom he had had four children was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1913: The Georgia Supreme Court heard Leo Frank’s appeal for a new trial.

1913:Birthdate of Muriel Rukeyser a challenging poet whose work mixed together radical politics and a spiritual quest. Rukeyser grew up in a middle-class home in New York City that for her was marked by silences and the absence of books. Rukeyser sought to experience the richness and messiness of life and to depict that richness and mess in her poetry. Her father's bankruptcy during the Great Depression cut short her college education, but in 1935, at the age of 21, she won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, Theory of Flight. Her poetry brought her much success and much criticism. Embracing left-wing politics, she covered the second Scottsboro Boys trial and the Spanish Civil War. She traveled to North Vietnam and Korea and was jailed for protesting the war in Vietnam. She confronted the red-baiting of the McCarthy era and the strictures of conventional sexuality. Her poem "Letter to the Front" (1944) presented the challenge of modern Jewish identity with these words:

To be a Jew in the twentieth century

Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,

Wishing to be invisible, you choose

Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.

Accepting, take full life.

1914(27thof Kislev, 5675): Third Day of Chanukah

1914: It was reported today that “the Jewish Relief Committee’s Executive Committee has appropriated $100,000 for immediate transmission for war relief as follows: $50,000 for Russia, $25,000 for Galicia and $25,000 for Palestine.

1914: When a Russian cruiser appeared outside the port of Jaffa today all “non-Moslems were ordered” by the Turkish government “to stay in their dwellings under the pain of death.”  (This order really applied to the Jews many of whom were of Russian origins and whom the Turks did not trust because they feared the Jews were a “fifth column” that would help their Czarist enemies.)

1914: Birthdate of Anatole Abragam, the Latvian born French-physicist who wrote The Principles of Nuclear Magneism and 1982 winner of the Lorentz Medal.

1914: “Entire Nation Behind Frank” published today quotes an opinion from the Houston Chronical that “there is in the heart of the American people an inherent love of justice and fair play, and they are stirred with indignation if they believe any citizen has not received a square deal in the courts” and “the case of Leo M. Frank strikingly illustrates the truth of this statement” since “it is essential to recognize the right of any man to a fair trial  -- which Leo Frank assuredly did not get.”

1914: “Frank Can Appeal Again, Says Lawyer” published today provided the opinion of Hooper Alexander the United States District and “an authority on constitutional law” that “Leo M. Frank can take his case before the United States Supreme Court on a writ of error from the first decision” by the Georgia Supreme Court.

1915: A fund raising campaign headed by Jacob Schiff is scheduled to come to an end.

1915: Allied forces began a full retreat from the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, ending a disastrous invasion of the Ottoman Empire during which the Zion Mule Corps served with distinction along with individual Jewish soldiers including Sir John Monash of Australia.

1915: Birthdate of New York native Gilbert Kanter, an attorney who was an active member of the Federation of Jewish Philantrhopies.

1916: Greeks call up all Jews ranging from age19 to 30 for military service. The response was overwhelming.

1916: The Senate passed an immigration bill today that did not contain the exemption for the victims of religious discrimination – Armenians and Jews from Russia and Rumania – which had been part of the bill passed by the House of Representatives.

1916: French troops defeated the Germans at the Battle of Verdun during World War I. In the 1930’s monuments were erected to Jewish and Christian soldiers who were killed at Verdun. In May of 2004the memorial to Jewish soldiers who died in the Battle of Verdun was vandalized. Nazi slogans and symbols were scrawled on the memorial. In November 2004, a 22-year-old man was sentenced to a year in prison for perpetrating the attack. In June of 2006, a concert by the Ensemble Musique Oblique was held at the Verdun synagogue in memory of the Jewish soldiers of Verdun. French forces were commanded by General Petain.  The victory at Verdun cemented his position in the pantheon of French military prowess.  Petain would use this reputation to make peace with the Germans in World War II and to lead the government at Vichy which actively collaborated with the Nazis in bringing the Holocaust to France.

1916: Following a meeting of the Joint Distribution Committee it was reported today that all synagogues and temples would hear sermons on Shabbat calling for contributions for the fund to aid Jews suffering from the war.

1917(30th of Kislev, 5678): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1917: In New York City, Pauline “Paula” Munwies and David Ben Gurion “went before the clerk at City Hall… and were married in a brief, civil ceremony” which was not attended by any of their family or friends.

1917: Thanks to the half million dollars raised today which included a contribution of $41,421 from Jacob Schiff, “the campaign to raise $5,000,000 in New York for Jewish war relief and welfare work in the army and navy came to a triumphant close” today “when at the end of two weeks of labor, the five million was in hand with a slight margin over and more to come.”

1917: “According to a cablegram received” today in New York “by the Jewish Daily Forward from its Petrograd correspondent” that “Sholem Jacob Abramowitch, known to Jews all over the word as the ‘grandfather’ of modern Jewish literature, a title given to him by the late Sholem Aleichem” and who wrote under the the pen name of Mendele Moikher Seforim died last week in Odessa at the age of 81.

1917: Russia concluded an armistice with the Central Powers. Over 350,000 Jews served in the Russian army and an estimated 70,000 were killed during World War I.  This armistice would take the new Communist Russian government out of the war.  It would help ensure the Communist rule over Russia and all that that meant for Russian Jewry. At the same time, it enabled the Germans to move their troops to the Western Front where they made one last push to defeat the Allies.  This effort failed which led to the defeat of Germany, the Versailles Treaty, the rise of Hitler and the Final Solution.

1917: “The successful close” today “of New York’s campaign for $5,000,000 for Jewish war relief and welfare work in the army and navy also bring to a successful conclusion the national campaign for $10,000,000 for war relief, to which total fourth of fifths of the money in New York is to be devoted.”

1917: John L. Bernstein, the President of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America said today that in almost every case that the people seeking news about family and friends living on the Eastern front and those they are seeking are, all “in dire distress.”

1917: Congregation Temple Rodeph Sholom is scheduled to continue the celebration of its 75th anniversary for a second day.

1917: “In the village of Komorow, near Lublin, Poland, Irving and Rachel Edelstein, gave birth Harry Edelstein, the husband of “the former Frances Trost” with whom he had two children and shared the ownership of the Polish Tea Room. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1917: In Bromberg, the Province of Posen which was part of Germany at this time, Elizabeth (Freundlich) and Alex Zadek gave birth to opera star Hilde Zadek.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2019/02/27/hilde-zadek-first-jewish-opera-singer-appear-vienna-state-opera/

 

1918: In Brooklyn, Anna (née Herman) and Phillip Grossel gave birth to their only child Ira Gossel who gained fame as Jeff Chandler the classically handsome matinee idol played everything from the Indian chief Cochise Broken Arrow to the workaholic skipper in the World War II thriller Away All Boats.  To paraphrase one critic, goyisha face on a yiddisha kup.

1918:  First meeting of the American Jewish Congress.  An advocacy group, the American Jewish Congress supports a variety of causes including civil rights for all minorities and women as well as causes one might normally associate with a Jewish organization.

1918: Efforts to break the monolithic opposition to Zionism of Jerusalem’s Orthodox community met with success at the founding meeting of a group of senior rabbis, who in defiance of the ultra-Orthodox rabbis set up a Joint Sephardic - Ashkenazi Council which was the first breach in the Orthodox community’s strong and united opposition to Zionist institutions.

1918(12th of Tevet, 5679): After 21 years of marriage, Clara Engels the wife of German classical scholar Friedrich Münzer passed away during the Influenza Epidemic.

1918: Addressing the campaign workers for the $5,000,000 Jewish War Relief drive at the Hotel Biltmore, Felix M. Warburg, Chairman of the Campaign Committee, advocated that campaigns of a sectarian character be hereafter abolished and announced that the drive would be extended for two days.

1919: Birthdate of Max B. Yasgur, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants whose farm was the site of the famous Woodstock Happening in 1969.

1919: “Felix M. Warburg, Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee for American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers announced that a commission of three Americans will leave shortly for the Ukraine to investigate conditions of the Jews there and to take steps toward carrying out relief.”

1920: Today, Bishop Bonaventure F. Broderick wrote a letter expressing his “abhorrence of the anti-Jewish campaign now being conducted in this country” which is surely an “attempt to stir up race and religious prejudices.

1921: In Providence, Rhode Island, Jack and Sadie Davis gave birth to Maurice Davis, the Reform Rabbi active in the Civil Rights movement and combating the impact of cults who was the husband of Marion Cronbach, the son-in-law of Rose Hentil and Abraham Cronbach.

1921(14th of Kislev, 5682): Just 19 days before his 39th birthday, Edward Isaac Ezra, “a wealthy Jewish businessman who was the first Chinese-born member of the Shanghai Municipal Council” passed away in Shanghai.

1922(25th of Kislev, 5683): Chanukah

1922: Birthdate of DJ Alan Freed, the man who claimed to have coined the term “rock-n-roll” and who lost out in the payola scandal of the 1950’s.

1922: Birthdate of Professor Phillip Rieff, author of Freud: The Mind of the Moralist and the father of author David Rieff.

http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/ead/detail.html?id=EAD_upenn_rbml_PUSpMsColl1006

1922: Birthdate of Buffalo, NY native and Indiana University graduate Elliot Joseph Cohen who gained fame as novelist and screenwriter Elliot Baker, author of A Fine Madness.

1923: In Bavaria, Rachel Hellman, the daughter of Rabbi Isaac Seckel Bamberger and Julie Judith Bamberger and Mortiz Hellmann, gave birth to Norbert Hellman

1923:Birthdate of Gotthard Glass who would gain famed as Uziel “Uzi” Gal. The German-born Israeli gun designer best remembered as the designer and namesake of the Uzi submachine gun. Gal was born in Weimar, Germany. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 he moved first to England and later, in 1936, to Kibbutz Yagur in the British Mandate of Palestine. In 1943 he was arrested for illegally carrying a gun and sentenced to six years in prison. However he was pardoned and released in 1946, serving less than half of his sentence. Gal began designing the Uzi submachine gun in 1948, shortly after the Israel War of Independence. In 1951 it was officially adopted by the Israeli Defense Force and was called the Uzi after its creator. Gal did not want the weapon to be named after him but his request was ignored. In 1955 he was decorated with Tzalash HaRamatkal and in 1958, Gal was the first person to receive the Israel Security Award, presented to him by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion for his work on the Uzi. In 1975 Gal retired from the IDF, and the next year he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so that his daughter Tamar, who had serious brain damage, could receive special medical attention. Gal continued his work as a firearms designer until his death from cancer in 2002.

1924: Birthdate of Polish-born British violinist Ida Haendel.

1925: “The Plastic Age” a silent film produced by B.P. Schulberg was released in the United States today.

1926: Sixty-seven year old Paul Haupt, the German born Professor of Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University 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. A unique feature of this edition is the use of different colors to distinguish the various sources and component parts in the Old Testament books” passed away today in Baltimore, MD

1927: In Pottstown, PA, Max Strom, “a foreman at a bakery” and his wife Bessie gave birth Earl “Yogi” Strom the Coast Guard Veteran who in 1957 began his career as an NBA referee – a role in which he was considered to be one of the best of all times.

http://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/earl-strom/

1927: The struggle for work turned violent during the citrus harvest in Petah Tikvah. Jewish workers, seeking employment, protest against the hiring of Arab labor by the farmers. Demonstrations and an attack on the Agricultural Committee lead to the intervention of the British police. Workers are beaten and injured. Some are arrested and sentenced to several weeks’ imprisonment.

1928(2nd of Tevet, 5689): Parashat Miketz; 8th Day of Chanukah

1928: Birthdate of Ida Haendel, the native of Chelm who became a world-class violinist in Great Britain where she played for factory workers and military personnel

http://www.thirteen.org/publicarts/violin/haendel.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGXArQJA3Po

1928: In New York City, Anna and Irving Rosenthal gave birth to Stanley Herbert Ross, the producer-engineer who co-founded Hollywood's Gold Star Recording Studio, which has a storied place in rock history as the home of Phil Spector's innovative "Wall of Sound" technique.

1929: In Manhattan, Bernard K. Marcus, the President of Bank of the United States, a lower East Side financial institution and the former Libby Phillips gave birth to James S. Marcus the future chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera.

1930(25th of Kislev, 5691): As the Great Depression worsens, the first day of Chanukah

1930: Seventy-five year old Meier Dizengoff sought re-election as Mayor of Tel Aviv in contest that pits him against Laborite Joseph Aronwitz.  Dizengoff was one of the original founders of the city in 1909 and is noted for donating his salary to municipal projects not funded by the city.

1932:  Birthdate of Bronx native Elain Radoff, who gained fame as composer and music educator Elain Barkin, the wife of George J. Barekin with whom she had three sons – Victor, Jesse and Gabriel

1932: It was reported today Dr. Israel H. Levinthal of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, Rabb Israel Goldfarb of Beth Israel Anshe Emeth and Rabbi Joseph Miller of Congregation Shaare Torah of Flatbush have issued “a call for a conference of Brooklyn rabbis, presidents and representative of Brooklyn congregations” “which will have as its purposed the organization of Brooklyn congregations for united activity in dealing with some of the more difficult problems facing Jewish religious life in the borough.”

1933(27th of Kislev, 5694): Third Day of Chanukah

1933(27th of Kislev, 5694): Fifty-one year old Louis Seigman Ehrich, the son of Corenlia C. Sampson Ehrich and Louis Seigman Ehrich , the husband of Florence Loeb Ehrich and the father of Louis and Benjamin Ehrich passed away today after which he was buried in the Beth Elohim Cemetery in Georgetown, SC.

1933:”The Tunnel” a “French-German science fiction film directed by Curtis Bernhardt” was released in Germany and France today.

1933: After having already been released in the United Kingdom, “I Was a Spy,” a “British thriller” produced by Michael Balcon with music by Louis Levy was released today in the United States

1933: Five hundred people including Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg of Easton, PA and Rabbi Harry Caplan of Allentown, PA attended the ceremonies marking the installation of Rabbi Samuel Perlman as the new spiritual leader of the Brith Sholom Community Center of Bethlehem, PA.”

1933: After premiering in the UK in September, “I was a Spy” a British thriller produced by Michael Balcon was released in the United States today.

1934: Birthdate of Maquoketa, IA native Henry George von Mauer, a member of the family that founded the department store chain that bore the family name.

https://qctimes.com/news/local/obituaries/henry-g-von-maur/article_670797bf-6f78-5ea3-9f48-7f51c673ad03.html

1934: “Murder in the Clouds” which “was notable as the screenplay and original story was written by Dore Schary” the future head of production at MGM and produced by Samuel Bischoff was released in the United States today by Warner Brothers.

1935: Portrait painter Harry Solon, the San Francisco born son of Bertha and Meyer Solon, sailed from Argentina today to resume his work in the United States after a four year stay in Buenos Aires where he enjoyed great success.

1935: “Disorder Spread in Poland” published today predicted that “anti-Jewish riots in the Fall may become a tradition in Warsaw colleges” since “new students just out of his school still drunk with their newly won freedom are easy prey to nationalist anti-Semitic propaganda.

1936(1st of Tevet, 5697): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1936: “A conference of Christian leaders interested in finding a refuge in Palestine for Jews suffering persecution abroad” is scheduled to “take place in the Hotel Astor from 1:30 to 5 P.M. under the auspices of the Pro-Palestine Federation of America.”

1936: “The Pro-Palestine Federation of America, a Christian organization, criticized British policy” in Palestine “in a resolution adopted” today “at a luncheon conference on ‘the Jewish problem’ at the Hotel Astor.”

1936: “Zionist worries over one of the two dangers confronting the future development of the Jewish national home -- the proposed law restricting Jewish land purchases, a danger equal only to the suggested curtailment of Jewish immigration in Palestine -- loomed large at today's session of the British Royal Commission. Dr. Bernard Joseph…testified that he believed there was no justification for restricting the sale of land by small holders…He that in fifty years Jews had bought about 5 per cent of the total area of Palestine. At that rate…it will take 150 years to buy half the land in the country if Beersheba is excluded.” 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that 13 Jews were wounded when Arab terrorists ambushed a bus between Haifa and Nahalal. Another bus was fired on near Castel. Arab terrorists tried to kill the mayor of Nablus, Suleiman Tukan.

1937: A Jewish guard, Haim Berger, was wounded in Tiberias, and Eliahu Gadi was shot and wounded near Kibbutz Ramat Rahel. Two Arabs were sentenced to death for the murder of Mendel Mintz on February 1, 1937

1938 David Robert Altman, the Milwaukee born son of Robert and Jeanette Altman who in 1937 “had entered the International Brigade where he “served with the XV BDE, Mackenzie-Papineau BN” “returned to the US today aboard the Paris.”

1938: The Dutch government closed its border to refugees which had an especially detrimental effect on Jews seeking to escape from Hitler’s Germany, its next door neighbor.

1939: Gauleiter Hans Frank launched an action aimed at shipping rural Jews to large Polish cities where they would be the tight control of the SS.  Tens of thousands of Jews would be rounded up, transported or force-marched into specially designated urban ghettos.

1939:  World premiere of "Gone with the Wind" in Atlanta, Georgia.  This is another example of Jews creating a pop culture icon.  Consider the following: David O. Selznick was he Producer.  Leslie Howard played Ashley Wilkes.  Ben Hecht helped to write the screenplay.  And Max Steiner wrote the music.  There may be more but this is all that I could find for sure. Leslie Howard was an English Jew born Leslie Howard Steiner who was reportedly involved in anti-Nazi activities including clandestine work for British intelligence that may have been the cause for his civilian aircraft being shot down by the Nazis over the Bay of Biscay. Hecht was a Zionist whose work to aid the suffering Jews of Europe included two notable efforts “We Will Never Die” and “A Flag is Born.”  Such were his efforts that one of the ships smuggling supplies to pre-state Israel was the S.S. Ben Hecht.

1939: In his continued challenge of the White Paper, Churchill, who is now a member of the British War Cabinet, wrote to Malcolm MacDonald seeking to limit the “draconian restrictions on future Jewish land purchases” contained in the new Land Ordinance.

1939: The Jews are required to pay “an additional installment of 200,000,000 marks” to the Reich which will probably be paid, in part, in shares of stock.

1940: “Led by Inky Lautmean who scored 10 points, the Philadelphia Sphas defeated the New York Jews in American Basketball League game at the St. Nicholas Palace tonight.

1940: Birthdate of Gabriel Oliver Koppell the Bronx native and the son of refugees from Nazi Germany who served on the New York City Council and as New York State Attorney General.

1941(25th of Kislev, 5702): First Day of Chanukah; in the evening kindle the second candle

1941: Bill of Rights Day Proclamation which read “Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate December 15, 1941, as Bill of Rights Day.  And I call upon the officials of the Government, and upon the people of the United States, to observe the day by displaying the flag of the United States on public buildings and by meeting together for such prayers and such ceremonies as may seem to them appropriate” was issued today.

1941: After Germans and “local Ukrainian nationalists” had killed 1,000 intellectuals and professionals in August, and “10,000 more on the night of October 12,” the Germans established a ghetto today at Stanislawow which would lead to the extermination of a Jewish population that had lived “in the town since 1662.”

1941: Members of a Latvian SD guard platoon, units of the 21st Latvian police battalion, and members of the Schutzpolizei-Dienstabteilung (German security police) under the command of the local SS and Police Leader Fritz Dietrich began a two day killing spree during which they murdered almost 3,000 Jews at Skede, Latvia. (As recorded at Yad Vashem)

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/06.asp

1941: In Latvia, “the largest of the Liepāja massacres” began today.

1941: On this first day of Chanukah, 15 Jews are shot to death in the courtyard of the Warsaw Ghetto prison.

1941: Forty Polish Jews were shot by the Nazis on Chanukah in Paris.

1942: Faked, upbeat postcard messages arrive at Jewish homes in Holland from friends and relatives interned at Auschwitz and the Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, camp/ghetto.

1943: It was reported today that “Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner, the administrative chairman of the Committee on Army and Navy Religious Activities of the National Jewish Welfare Board” has said that the “morale among troops he has visited is surprisingly good’ and that although “they have their gripes, none of them are serious”

1944: The Keys of the Kingdom, the movie version of the novel by the same name directed by John Stahl and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz who also co-authored the script and with music by Alfred Newman was released today in New York.

1944:In a speech given on the floor of the United States Senate, Guy M. Gillette of Iowa urged that all possible steps be taken to rescue the approximately 1,500,000 Jews whom he said were still living in territory held by the Axis.  Senator Gillette also urged that the Allies adopt a resolution making crimes against Jews in Europe punishable as war crimes

1945: Birthdate of Fiamma Nirenstein, Italian born journalist who, although a resident of Gilo would be elected to the Italian Parliament in 2008.

1945: Robert Merrill (born Moishe Miller) made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Germont” today.

1945:  At approximately 1:45 P.M., about 20 fighters of the Haganah - the pre-state underground Jewish militia - seized a British truck south of Acre. The men, armed but wearing civilian clothing, confiscated about half a ton of documents, packed into eight sealed steel containers and 12 sacks of diplomatic mail. The documents had been sent from the British legation in Beirut to Haifa Port, from which they were to be transported to Britain. The truck was taken to an unknown location. The driver and armed guards were later found in an abandoned building near Kiryat Ata. The British tried to minimize the importance of the captured documents, claiming that most of them concerned economic matters of the British Mission in Beirut, headed during World War II by General Edward Spears. But the reaction of the British, the French and the Haganah itself to the event clearly suggests that the papers removed from the truck were, in fact, of far greater consequence. Immediately after the incident, the French consul in Jerusalem came to Tel Aviv. The French were given classified documents from the truck that were of great operational importance to them. The British Mandate authorities censored reports of the event, prohibiting Hebrew or British newspapers from publishing any details about the Haganah operation. The documents were eventually returned to the British, but about one percent of them remained in the hands of the Haganah. The French considered the remaining so documents to be so valuable that they entered into with the Yishuv to get more of them.  The British were so determined to get their hands on the remaining documents that they attempted to seize them through clandestine military action in May and June of 1948

 

1946(22nd of Kislev, 5707): Eighty-four year old Maud Nathan passed away. Born in 1862, she was an American social worker, labor activist and suffragist for women's right to vote. “She came from a prominent New York family, descended from Gershom Mendes Seixas, minister of New York's Congregation Sherith Israel during the Revolutionary War. Her sister was the author and education activist Annie Nathan Meyer and her cousins the poet Emma Lazarus and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo. Her nephew was the author and poet Robert Nathan.”

 

1946: The World Zionist Congress suspends six members of Zionist Revisionist Union of America for unauthorized request to UN for discussion of Palestinian problem.

1946: Six weeks after premiering in London, “A Matter of Life and Death,” co-directed, co-produced and co-written by Emeric Pressburger was released today in the United States.

1947:Nearly 25,000 children, the number brought to Palestine through the Hadassah Youth Aliyah immigration movement since its inception thirteen years ago, will enter Palestine in the coming year, Dr. Vera Weizmann, wife of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, scientist and Zionist leader, said today

1948: A flight of Spitfires took off from Czechoslovakia as part of a clandestine operation to bring modern aircraft to Israel.

1948:Israel breaks off negotiation for local truce agreements and demands future peace talks for all of Palestine.

1949: The UN Trusteeship Council proposes to censure Israel for moving its government. It also asks Israel to help UN draft charter for city.

1950: Birthdate of Jeffrey Katzenberg, former Disney executive who help found DreamWorks.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli army headquarters compiled a list of all US citizens serving in the IDF who would lose their US citizenship on December 24, 1952, in accordance with the McCarran Act. The army announced that all such reservists would be released and all other cases would be judged on their merits. Many soldiers applied to the US Consulate for guidance and were supplied with letters endorsing their plea for an immediate release.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Dov Shilansky was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment for trying to bomb the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Jerusalem in protest against the acceptance of German reparations.

1952: “Two’s Company” a revue “directed by Jules Dassin and choreographed by Jerome Robbins” opened at the Alvin Theatre where it ran for 90 performances.

1953(9th of Tevet, 5714): Fifty-two year old Everett, MA native Abraham Theodore Alpert who earned was awarded an A.B. from Harvard in 1922 passed away today.

1954: “The Country Girl” the movie version of Clifford Odets play produced by William Pearlberg had its world premiere tonight at the Criterion Theatre in New York City.

1955: A torch commemorating the victory of the Maccabees over their Syrian oppressors was kindled at a special Hanukkah festival at Madison Square Garden.

1955: The annual to raise $250,000 for the Federation of the Handicapped of which Milton Cohen is executive director is scheduled to come to an end today.

1955: “The Man with the Golden Arm” the movie version of the Nelson Algren’s award novel of the same name directed and produced by Otto Preminger, with music by Elmer Bernstein and co-starring Arnold Stang was released in the United States today.

1958(4th of Tevet, 5719): Wolfgang Pauli passed away.  Born in 1900, Pauli was an Austrian-born American winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945 for his discovery in 1925 of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which states that in an atom no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. This principle clearly relates the quantum theory to the observed properties of atoms. 

1959: NBC broadcast “Cindy’s Fella” the eleventh 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: Premiere of “Exodus” at the Warner Theatre in New York.

 

1960: In a testament to the popularity the products produced by Isaac Heller and his company Remco, it was reported today that ‘while the snow fell this morning paralyzing New York City, a little boy climbed in Santa’s lap and piped ‘I wanted Fighting Lady battleship by Remco.’”

1961: United Artists released “One, Two, Three” a comedy written by I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder and directed and produced by Wilder.

1961: Former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death by an Israeli court.  Eichmann had been convicted of crimes against humanity and would be the only person sentenced to by Israel to date.

1962: Final production of “Harold” directed by Larry Blyden.

1963: Birthdate of actress Helen Slater.  Born Helen Schlacter she is best known for her work in Supergirl.

1964: U.S. premiere of “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte” the successful horror film with a script co-authored by Lukas Heller.

1964: “I Had a Ball” a Jack Lawrence and Jerome Chodorov musical starring Buddy Hackett “opened on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre.”

1965: “The Flight of the Phoenix” a movie version of the novel of the same name with a screenplay by Lukas Heller was released in the United States today by 20thCentury Fox.

1968(25thof Kislev, 5729): As the country awaits the transition from Lyndon Johnson to the newly elected Richard Nixon, first day of Chanukah

1969: NBC broadcast the 15th episode of “My World and Welcome to It” a sitcom created by Melville Shavelson.

1969: Shlomo Hillel replaced Eliyahu as Minster of Public Security.

1969:Ze'ev Sherf succeeded Mordechai Bentov and Minster of Housing and Construction.

1969: Yosef Goldschmidt became an MK as a replacement for Yosef Burg.

1970: Joseph B. Levin represented the petitioner National Assn. of Securities Dealers, Inc before the Supreme Court today.

1970: “There’s a Girl in My Soup” co-starring Goldie Hawn and Peter Sellers, a descendant of Daniel Mendoza was released in the United States today.

1970:Sylva Zalmanson and Eduard Kuznetzov were among those who went on trial today in the Soviet Union because they wanted to hijack a plane so they could fly to Israel and live “freely as Jews.”

1971(27th of Kislev, 5732): Paul Pierre Lévy passed away. Born in 1886, he was a French mining engineer and mathematician. He contributed to probability, functional analysis, partial differential equations and series. He also studied geometry. In 1926 he extended Laplace transforms to broader function classes. He undertook a large-scale work on generalized differential equations in functional derivatives.

1972(10th of Tevet, 5733): Asara B’Tevet

1972: One day after he had passed, funeral services are scheduled to be held at Temple Sinai in Summit, NJ for seventy-two year old cellist Maurice Eisenberg who had suffered a mortal heart attack at the Juilliard School.

1973: Under the leadership of newly elected president Dr. Alfred M. Freedman, the board of trustees the American Psychiatric Association voted 13 to 0, with two abstentions, in favor of the resolution, which stated that “by itself, homosexuality does not meet the criteria for being a psychiatric disorder.” This was a landmark step on the path to declaring that homosexuality was not a mental illness.

1974(1st of Tevet, 5735): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1974(1stof Tevet, 5735): Seventy-two year old Anatole Litvak, Ukrainian-born, American filmmaker passed away. “Anastasias” – a film based on the myth that one of the Czar’s daughter survived starring Yul Brynner, Ingrid Bergman and Helen Hayes – was one of his more lasting cinematic efforts.

1974(1st of Tevet, 5735): Cartoonist Harry Hershfield, the native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa who was called “the Jewish Will Rogers” passed away at the age of 89.

http://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/herschfield_h.htm

1974: U.S. premiere of “Young Frankenstein” directed by Mel Brooks, written by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, and starring Gene Wilder, Mary Feldman and Madeline Kahn.

1974(1st of Tevet, 5735): Erich Walter Sternberg German-born Israeli composer passed away in Tel Aviv at the age of 83.  The Berlin native was one of the early contributors to what would become the Israeli musical world having begun his work in the pre-state days of the 1930’s and 1940’s.

1975: Dr. Immanuel Jakobovitz, the Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, began a nine day visit to the Soviet Union.

1975: Today Fred “Freiberger was confirmed as both script editor and producer for the second series of the British science-fiction TV series Space: 1999, recruited in part to make the series more appealing to the American market.”

1977: Today, the Detroit Pistons fired Herb Brown, the brother of legendary coach Larry Crown, “after a 9-15 start to the 1977-1978 NBA season

1978:After having premiered five days ago in Washington, DC,  “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) was released throughout the United States today.

1979(25thof Kislev, 5740): Parashat Vayeshev  First day of Chanukah

1979: Two Palestinians connected to the Munich Olympics Massacre, Ali Salem Ahmed and Ibrahim Abdul Aziz, were killed in Cyprus

1979: Birthdate of actor Adam Bordy whose film credits include “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and “American Pie 2.”

1980: Through a Warranty Deed, James A. and Betty J. McClellen conveyed the Temple Israel property in Leadville, CO to Harvey/Martin Construction.

1983: In Tiberias, Israel, Brigadier General Richard Heaslip who was serving with UNIFL and his wife gave birth to Irish rugby player Jamie Heaslip.

1983(9th of Tevet, 5744): Sixty-one year old “Nat Shapiro, a writer, record producer and artist manager who was active in numerous aspects of the music and recording fields, died” of an apparent heart attack today. (As reported by John S. Wilson)

1983: “Gorky Park” film version of the book by the same name co-produced by Hawk Koch and Uri Harkham was released in the United States today.

1983:Wendy Wasserstein's "Isn't It Romantic" premiered in New York.

1983: Refusnik Vladimir Albert went on trial today.

1983: After being released more than eight weeks ago in the United States “Never Say Never,” one of the films in the James Bond series, directed by Irvin Kershner and produced by Jack Schwartzman was released in the United Kingdom today.

1984(21stof Kislev, 5745): Sixty-five year old Bernard Lebovitz, the Toledo, OH, born son of “Adolph and Charlotte ‘Sadie’ Lebovitz” passed away today in Los Angeles.

1984(21st of Kislev, 5745): Eighty year old cantor turned operatic tenor Jan Peerce passed away today. (As reported by Harold C. Schonberg)

1987(24thof Kislev, 5748): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah.

1987: It was reported today that “Manhattan's most troubled families often wind up in Family Court before Judge Judith B. Sheindlin” who would gain fame as television’s Judge Judy

1989: “We’re No Angels” a comedy with a script written by David Mamet was released in the United States today.

1989(15thof Kislev, 5750): Seventy-nine year old scriptwriter and victim of the “blacklist” Ben Barzman passed away today.

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/tender_comrades.htm

1990(28thof Kislev, 5751): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1990: In “Candles In Saudi Arabia” Ari L. Goodman described the observance of Chanukah in the desert oil kingdom.

Tonight is the fifth night of Hanukkah and, in a few select spots in Saudi Arabia, American soldiers who are Jewish will be discreetly lighting candles on their menorahs to celebrate the holiday, as they have since Hanukkah began Tuesday night. In accordance with military policy, celebrations of Hanukah as well as Christmas will be muted in deference to the Muslim nation's beliefs. There are from 500 to 800 Jewish soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen in the American force in Saudi Arabia, according to Rabbi David Lapp, director of the JWB Jewish Chaplains Council. He said there are currently two Jewish chaplains on the land and two at sea in the Persian Gulf area. Hundreds of menorahs, candles and Hanukkah gifts were sent by Jewish organizations, schools and individuals in advance of the holiday, although, again out of deference to the Saudis, some were careful not to ship products made in Israel. The Saudis have allowed the shipments. Margery Wise, the owner of the Jewish Quarter, a Judaica shop in White Plains, N.Y., that shipped 300 menorahs to members of the armed forces, said she got the idea after watching a news program about Christmas gift packages being prepared for shipment. "People don't think there are many Jews in the military, but there are a lot more than we think," she said. "And because the whole celebration is low key, we wanted to be sure they wouldn't get lost in the shuffle."

1990: Three Israelis were stabbed and killed in an aluminum factory in Jaffa today, the police said, and widespread anti-Arab rioting followed. The police set up roadblocks and closed off an area surrounding the factory in this city adjacent to Tel Aviv, saying they were looking for two Palestinian assailants from the occupied Gaza strip whom they refused to identify.

1991: In “The Man in The Glass Closet,” published today, Andrew Sarris reviewed a biography of the Hungarian born Jewish director George Cukor – George Cukor: A Double Life by Patrick McGilligan.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/15/books/the-man-in-the-glass-closet.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

1992(20th of Kislev, 5753): Hamas terrorists kidnapped Nissim Toledano, an Israeli Army Sergeant. 

1992(20th of Kislev, 5753):Ninety-six year old “Simon M. Jaglom, a New York businessman and financier, died today at New York University Medical Center.

1993: Rena Sofer appeared for the first time on “General Hospital” in the role of Lois Cerullo, a part she would play for almost three years.

1993: After having premiered in Washington, DC in November, “Schindler’s List” was released in the United States.

1994: As part of free phone lines set up for the holidays by the Teleport Communications Group, 91 year old Ann Kaufmann was able to call friends in Israel today.Through her call, Olga Reichman learned that she had become a great aunt, her niece in Tel Aviv having given birth three weeks ago to a daughter, Noa.

1994: In Ireland, Mervyn Taylor began serving Minister for Equality and Law Reform.

1995: “Heat” a crime film directed, produced and written by Michael Mann was released in the United States by Warner Bros.

1996(5thof Tevet, 5757): Eighty-eight year old mystery writer Harry Kemelman creator “Rabbi David Small” passed away today. (As reported by Eric Pace)

1996(5th of Tevet, 5757): Ninety-five year old “Joseph Ades, a self-made businessman and investor who was a leading supporter of Sephardic Jewish life and philanthropy in Israel and the New York City area, passed away today at his home in Kings Point, L.I. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

1997: Janet Rosenberg Jagan, the widow of Cheddi Jagan and the daughter of middle class Jewish parents from Chicago was elected President of Guyana

https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/15/1997/janet-jagan

1998: “The Very Best of Carly Simon: Nobody Does It Better” “singer-songwriter Carly Simon's 23rd album” was released today.

1999: In a press release issued today, Eden Springs said that the agreement to sell up to 25 percent of the company to Aqua International Partners, a $300 million investment fund in San Francisco, happened to be made public on the day peace talks between Syria and Israel began in Washington was “a mere coincidence.” Eden Springs Israel's biggest water-bottling plant last and is located on the Golan Heights.

2000(18th of Kislev, 5761): W. (Bill) Birnbaum, Professor Emeritus of mathematics and statistics at the University of Washington passed away at his home in at the age of 97.

 

2000: “What Women Want” a romantic comedy directed and co-produced by Nancy Meyers and featuring Bette Midler, Mark Feuerstein, Lisa Edelstein, Logan Lerman and Eric Balfour was released in the United States today.

 

2000: “Quills” a biopic based on the life of the Marquis de Sade directed and co-produced by Philip Kaufman

2001: “In a new form of Israeli counterterrorism, stealthy troops swept though Salfit before dawn today in a lightning raid, overwhelmed astonished Palestinian security forces, killing six, and then went door to door arresting several suspected militants.”

2002: The New York Times book section featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Girl Meets God:On the Path to a Spiritual Lifeby Lauren F. Winner and Jew In America:My Life and a People's Struggle for Identityby Arthur Hertzberg.

2003: Hamodia revolutionized the American community with its introduction of a daily edition.

2003: New York-based Bank Leumi USA, a subsidiary of Israel's Bank Leumi le-Israel, announced it opened an office in Los Angeles as part of its expansion. The new Los Angeles office, together with the bank's already existing operations in Beverly Hills and Encino, will aim to bring the bank's international, private and commercial banking services to the Los Angeles community, a bank statement said.

2004(3rdof Tevet, 5765): 8th and final day of Chanukah

2004: “Calling the death of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat "an opportunity we should not miss," the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, called today for both the Palestinians and the Syrians to show they are ready for peace with Israel.”

2005: Today Jeff “Zucker was promoted by NBC to Chief Executive Officer of NBC Universal Television Group.”

2006(24th of Kislev, 5767): In the evening, Jews all of the world light the first candle marking the start of Chanukah.

2006: The owners of Bens De Luxe Delicatessen and Restaurant agreed to sell to SIDEV Realty Corporation and officially announced the closure, bringing the restaurant's long history to an end. Ben and Fanny Kravitz had opened what would become a Montreal landmark famous for its smoked meat sandwich in 1908.

2007: In Jerusalem, a screening of a documentary entitled “Sendler’s List” It tells the story Irina Sendler  a compassionate Polish nurse who endangered her life to save 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII and the three American high school students who heard about Ms. Sandler’s heroic acts decide to travel to Poland in order to meet her.

2007: In Brooklyn, NY, at Congregation B'nai Avraham, a screening of “Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy.” Directed by award-winning American filmmaker, actor, and scriptwriter Paul Mazursky, “Yippee” chronicles the director’s whirlwind journey to Uman, a small Ukrainian town that is the site of a unique, annual gathering of Jewish men making pilgrimages to the burial place of Rabbi Nachman (1772-1810).

 

2007:  In his Shabbat morning sermon at the San Diego Biennial Convention of the Reform Movement, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie calls for a return to more traditional observances in general while calling for a renewed commitment to attending Shabbat Moring Services.

 

2008 (18 Kislev): On the Hebrew Calendar, Yahrzeit of Rabbi Abraham Maimuni HaNagid who passed away on the 18th of Kislev of the Hebrew year, 4998, which corresponds to the secular year 1237. Called "Rabbi Avraham ben HaRambam" he was the only son of Maimonides. Born in 1185, he succeeded his father as the leader of the Jewish community in Fostat (old Cairo), Egypt, at the young age of 19. He wrote many responses and commentaries explaining and defending his father's writings and Halachic rulings.

 

2008: Time magazine reports that Linda Lingle, the first Jewish governor of Hawaii has endorsed plans for California based battery maker Better Place to build more than 70,000 recharging stations for electric vehicles by 2012.  Better Place which is headed by Tel Aviv entrepreneur Shai Agassi, is seeking a similar deal with other countries including Israel where there is a real “drive” to became an electric car nation.

 

2008: President Bush recalled Harry Truman's legacy at a reception marking Hanukkah.

Bush's Hanukkah reception, his last, featured the hanukkiyah David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, gave to Truman in 1951, three years after the the then-U.S. president was the first world leader to recognize Israel. "A decade after President Truman received this gift, he visited Prime Minister Ben-Gurion for one of the last times," Bush said before the hanukkiyah was lit by Clifton Truman-Daniel and Yariv Ben-Eliezer, the grandsons of both leaders.  "As they parted, Ben-Gurion told the President that as a foreigner he could not judge President Truman's place in American history, but the president's courageous decision to recognize the new state of Israel gave him an immortal place in Jewish history." Attending the event were Jewish Bush administration officials and Republican Jews whose loyalty to the president has been unflagging, including Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate and major donor to the party and to Jewish causes.

 

2008: The Washington Post featured a review of Bones by Jonathan Kellerman (the latest in the Alex Delaware series)

 

2008: The IPO and counter tenor David De’or perform a special concert dedicated to the 70th anniversary celebration of Reuth a non-profit organization located in Tel Aviv that coordinates the activities of various medical centers

 

2009: The 1935 production of prominent Yiddish playwright Jacob Gordin’s 1892 play “The Yiddish King Lear” will be screened in Manhattan at CUNY’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center today.

 

2009: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry would receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award in March 2010.

2009: Opening of “Letters of Conscience: Raphael Lemkin and the Quest to End Genocide” an exhibition organized jointly with the American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History that “focuses on the activities and legacy of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-American Jewish lawyer who coined the term genocide, working relentlessly and inventively to protect the rights and survival of specific groups targeted for destruction.” The exhibition presents a fascinating array of original correspondence and documents, serves as a stirring and important reminder of an individual's ability to better humanity and the future.

2009: A King County jury this morning found Naveed Haq guilty of eight counts, including aggravated first-degree murder, in the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.

2009: The Google logo was draped in a green flag today to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of L.L. Zamenoff.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/ll-zamenhof-and-the-shadow-people

2009(28th of Kislev, 5770): Ninety-five year old “Dr. Herbert Spiegel, a New York psychiatrist who treated pain, anxiety and addictions by putting people into a trance,” passed away today.  (As reported by Benedict Carey)

2010: A memorial garden in honor of William Cooper of the Yorta tribe is scheduled to be unveiled at the national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem today.  Cooper was an Aboriginal elder who protested the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis.  Cooper was 77 years old when he led a small march to deliver a petition to the German consul general in Melbourne just weeks after Kristallnacht. Although Cooper and his Australian Aborigines League were denied entry to the consulate their protest did not go unnoticed, even though they were half a world away from Europe. He died in 1941 at the age of 80. He will become the first indigenous Australian to be honored by Yad Vashem.

2010: Israeli classical pianist, Ran Dank is scheduled to perform at the Morgan Museum and Library in New York City.

2010: The Women’s League Convention is scheduled to come to an end.

2010: Center for Jewish History, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to  present: “Living Record: Prewar Poland Preserved on Film”

2010: It was reported today that Time magazine had named Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year for 2010.

2010: According to reports published today, "The stormy weather that hit Israel this week had an unexpected consequence when an ancient Roman statue was unearthed on an Ashkelon beach. A passer-by noticed the headless marble statue, thought to be at least 1700 years old, after the storm left it exposed in the sand. The white marble figure, which is 1.2 metres tall and weighs 200 kilograms, is wearing a toga but no longer has arms.  A spokesman for the Israel Antiquities Authority said that what was thought to be part of a Roman bathhouse was also unearthed. The violent winds were believed to have caused some damage to the ancient Roman ruins further north in Israel at Caesarea.

 

 

2011(19thof Kislev, 5772): “Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism.” 

2011(19thof Kislev, 5772): Yahrtzeit of Rebbe Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, the successor to the Baal Shem Tov

h

2011: The third weekend of Hamshoushalayim is scheduled to begin today.

2011: Second day of the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial is scheduled to take place in suburban Maryland

2011: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice denounced the treatment Israel receives in the United Nations today, adding that American support of Israel's security was an "essential truth

2011: The Israel Defense Forces is forming a command to supervise "depth" operations, actions undertaken by the military far from Israel's borders, the army announced today.

2011:Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed that Jewish extremists would not be allowed to spark a religious war, after a West Bank mosque was vandalized at dawn today. “We won’t let them [Jewish extremists] attack our soldiers, start a religious war, set fire to mosques [and] attack Jews or non-Jews,” the prime minister told a Likud central committee meeting in Tel Aviv tonight. 

 

2012: “Not in Tel Aviv” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012: The Daniel Zamir Band led by Daniel Zamir  “Israeli Jazz superstar and virtuoso saxophonist” is scheduled to perform in New York City.

 

2012: In New York, the New Shul is scheduled to sponsor “Let There Be Light!” a flashmob Chanukah celebration that will gather at “8 Points of Light” to bring the menorah glow to the Village.

2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Leonard Bernstein Letters edited by Nigel Simeone, My Mistake: A Memoir by Daniel Menaker and America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East by Hugh Wilford.

2013: YIVO is scheduled to sponsor “Music Treasures of the American Yiddish Theatre” part of the Sidney Young Artist Concert Series featuring the works of big four of Second Avenue:” Abraham Ellstein, Alexander Olshanetsky, Sholom Secunda and Joseph Rumshinsky

2013:The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to show the Emmy Award winning film “Skokie: Invaded, But Not Conquered”

2013: Rabbi Alexis Berk is scheduled to officiate at the graveside services at Hebrew Rest Ceremony for Attorney Milton Cohen, a lifelong resident of New Orleans and Tulane alum. (As reported by Crescent City Jewish News)

2013: The Union for Reform Judaism Biennial is scheduled to come to an end today in San Diego, CA.

2013: Police finally fully reopened the main roads to and from Jerusalem this afternoon, after more than two-and-a-half days of closures because of heavy snow in one of Israel’s worst-ever storms.

2013(12thof Tevet, 5774): “A Lebanese army sniper killed an Israeli soldier at the border fence near Rosh Hanikra tonight.” (As reported by Yaakov Lappin)

2013: A new production of “Stars of David” which transforms interviews with Jewish figures like Gloria Steinem, Aaron Sorkin and Joan Rivers into songs” is scheduled to come to an end after opening on November 13.

 

2014: The Berman Jewish DataBank is scheduled to co-sponsor the first of two sessions on Jews and urbanism at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in collaboration with the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry.

 

2014: Funeral services Rabbi Yitzchok Meyer Abramson are scheduled to take place this at the Berger Memorial Chapel followed by burial at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in Chesterfield, MO.

 

2014(22ndof Kislev. 5775): Eighty-four year old political pitchman and consultant David Garth passed away today.

 

2014: “Itamar Zorman, winner of the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition and the 2010 Freiburg Violin Competition,” is scheduled to perform this evening at the Good Shepherd Church in New York.

 

2014: Shin Bet reported foiling a suicide bomber’s plot in Tel Aviv based on disguising the suicide bomber as a pregnant woman in need of medical help.

 

 

2014: “The Israel Antiquities Authority announced today that archaeologist have uncovered a farmhouse that is 2,800 years old consisting 23 rooms “in the area of modern day Rosh Ha’ayin. (As reported by Lazar Berman)

                             

2015(3rd of Tevet, 5775): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of HaRav Avraham Brandwein of Stretyn who had succeeded his father as the rabbi of Stretyn, after his father’s death in 1854,

 

2015: A 39-year-old Palestinian construction worker stabbed a foreman and another worker at a construction site in the Israeli city of Modi'in today, marking the first attack of its kind in the city since the start of the Palestinian wave of terror. One of the victims was seriously wounded and the other sustained moderate injuries. They were rushed to a hospital.

 

2015(3rdof Tevet, 5775): On the Jewish calendar Yahrzeit of Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz , dean of the Mir Yeshiva for more than 40 years.

2015: “More than 300 Jewish activists in Boston marched for the Black Lives Matter movement, including members of Jewish Voice for Peace.”

 

2015: The Association for Jewish Studies’ 47th Annual Conference is scheduled to come an end today in Boston, MA.

2016: On tonight’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, “Gad Elmaleh appeared as the show's stand-up act

 2016: In New Orleans, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service is scheduled to hold its “Latkes with a Twist” a “community-wide celebration” that will include a silent auction designed to raise funds for an organizations that really does the good that it promises.

2016: Today, President-elect Donald Trump is nominated “a top Jewish surrogate, David Friedman, to be ambassador to Israel, with a statement saying Friedman will serve from Jerusalem and describing the city as “Israel’s eternal capital.”

2016: The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a “presentation that will walk attendees through the history and legal basics of FOI laws, and will teach researchers how to file their own state FOI requests for any genealogical or archival records they may want to see returned to the public domain.”

2017(27thof Kislev, 5778): Third Day of Chanukah; in the evening, kindle the fourth light and erev Shabbat

2017: Seventy five year old Canadian businessman and philanthropist Bernard Charles “Barry” Sherman and his wife were “murdered today” by person or persons unknown.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2017/12/15/canadian-pharmaceuticals-billionaire-and-wife-found-dead-in-toronto-mansion/#470c717fe262

 

2017: In Omaha, Yachad is scheduled to “at Temple Israel for their services and party.”

2017: “Omaha Yachad & KC Kollel's Ahoovim are scheduled to present: A Winter Shabbaton hosted by Chabad of Omaha

2017: The Maccabeats are scheduled to perform this evening at Congregation Ahavas Achim in Highland Park, NJ.

2017: In Atlanta, The Breman Museum, the Center for Puppetry Arts and High Museum of Art are a scheduled to present a program featuring a talk with puppet builders about they create art used for performance.”

2017: “The Worlds of Arthur Szyk” is scheduled to close today at the University of California, Berkley.

http://magnes.berkeley.edu/exhibitions/worlds-arthur-szyk

 

2018(7thof Tevet, 5779): Parashat Vayigash; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2018:  Israeli “visual artist Keren Anavy” “in collaboration with Valerie Green/Dance Entropy” is scheduled to explore “the idea of Utopia through dance and visual art” this evening as part of the Dancespace Project.

2018: In Chevy Chase, MD, Ohr Kodesh is scheduled to host the “Sixth Annual Lewis Rushefsky Yiddish Film Series,” featuring films of the Yiddish theatre this evening

2018: As of today, exactly one year to the day on which the bodies of “billionaire couple and philanthropic powerhouses” Barry and Honey Sherman were found, the police have no viable suspect or motive for the crime but their four children – Jonathon, Lauren, Alexandra and Kaelen – have continued their parent’s good works and charity through the “Honey and Barry Foundation of Giving” they created to honor their memory.

2018: Kaddish is recited today for Sgt. Yoseph Cohen and Staff Sgt. Yovel Moyosef who were buried yesterday after having been murdered by Palestinian terrorists two days ago, December 13.

2019: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Man Who Solved The Market by Gregory Zuckerman, Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzugby Leandra Ruth Zarnow and Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee’s Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis by Eric Lichtblau.

2019: In Chicago, The URJ Biennial is scheduled to come to a close today.

2019: In Atlanta, the Breman is scheduled to host a walking tour of “The Temple,” the city’s oldest Jewish house of worship.

2019: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is schedule to host “Lodz Ghetto Through the Eyes of a Survivor” which is an exhibition of the work of photographer Henryk Ross.

2019: The Straus Historical Society’s Silent Auction is scheduled to come to an end today.

2019: The American Sephardi Federation with the Jewish Community of Urmia, Iran and participants from Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkey are scheduled to present: International Nash-Didan (Judeo-Aramaic) Day.

2019: It was reported today that “the price tag for the next election is NIS 3.8 billion and the cumulative cost for all three national ballots is an estimated NIS 10 billion - enough to raise old-age stipends for one million pensioners in need.” (YNET)

2020(29th of Kislev, 5781): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2020: In Little Rock, AR, Governor Hustchinson is scheduled to take part in the Chabad Public Menorah Ligthing.

2020: On Bill of Rights Day, Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host via Zoom “’legal analyst and law professor Jared Klebanow, a now-generation lawyer with experience in the classroom and courtroom, “ as he discusses “The American Constitution in the Post-Election Era.”

2020: “Celebrating 100 years since the founding of the Free Jewish Lehrhaus in Germany, HaMaqom | The Place (formerly Lehrhaus Judaica) in Berkeley is scheduled to present a talk by historian Fred Rosenbaum and Rabbi Darren Kleinberg about the school’s roots and legacy.

2020: Temple Emanuel of Newton is scheduled to present online “Hanukah in Space” during which there will be a screening of “Space Torah” followed by a question and answer session with executive producer Rachel Raz.

2020: As part of its “8 Digital Nights of Hanukah, the Jewish Museum in London is scheduled to host a presentation by Rabbi Major Reuben Livingstone, Senior Jewish Chaplain.

2020: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to present “essayist, novelist, law professor, and child of Holocaust Survivors, Thane Rosenbaum, the author of the recently published, Saving Free Speech ... from Itself, as he takes on the cultural lighting rod of free speech and confronts the confusions and contradictions around free speech, examining what is at the heart of this pressing 21st century debate.
 

 

This Day, December 16, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z":

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December 16

1316: Öljaitü, the eighth Ilkhanid dynasty ruler in Tabriz, Iran, whom the former vizer Rashid-al-Din Hamadani the Jewish convert to Islam was found of guilty of trying to poison, passed away today.

1431: King Henry VI of England named King of France following the death of his grandfather, Charles VI, King of France. Charles VI was the French king who expelled the Jews from France.

1485: Birthdate of Catherine of Aragon, future wife of Henry VIII and Queen of England.  This daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella failed to produce a male heir which changed the religious face of Christian Europe.  As for the Jewish view, Henry’s father had to promise his future Spanish in-laws that Jews would not be permitted to live in England as a condition for marriage to Catherine.

1584: Birthdate of John Seldon the English scholar and jurist who developed an interest in an Jewish laws and customs that led to the development of a “theory of international law” based on seven Noahide Laws as well as a “treatise on marriage and divorce among the Jews entitled “Uxor Ebraica.”  For more see Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden by Jason P. Rosenblatt http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2011/12/john-selden-as-an-early-modern-maccabee/and http://jcpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/john-selden.pdf

1603: A De revolutionibus manuscript of Nicolaus Copernicus passed via Rheticus to others and was marked today by Jakob Christmann, the Jewish born orientalist who had converted to Christianity, with Nicolai Copernick Canonici Varmiensis in Borussia Germaniae mathematici …

1653: Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.  Regardless of what others may have thought of him, Cromwell did work to allow the Jews to return to England.

1684: The first room for prayer meetings of was opened in Copenhagen which was the home of the newly founded Ashkenazi community

1737(23rd of Kislev, 5498): Anna Channa Isaac Brisker the  wife of Itsak ben Simon Shamash and daughter of Isaac Itsak Brisker and Sara Samuel Brisker who gave birth to her in Amsterdam in 1702 passed away today.

1741: Birthdate of Nathan Adler, a German Kabbalist from Frankfurt, who passed away in 1800 and is not to be confused with the British rabbi of the same name.

1750: Birthdate of David Friedländer “the son-in-law of banker Daniel Itzig, and a friend, pupil, and subsequently intellectual successor of Moses Mendelssohn, who occupied a prominent position in both Jewish and non-Jewish circles of Berlin.”

1760: Jacob Pinto the son of Abraham and Sarah Pinto and his first wife, Thankful Pinto, gave birth to Yale University graduate and member of the Continental Army William Pinto “who became a prominent West India merchant” who “seems to have had no Jewish affiliations

1762(30th of Kislev, 5523): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1762: As the Jews prepared to light the seventh Chanukah candle, in Barnstable, MA, Adino Hincley married Mercy Otis today.

1762: Final date for the Journal of the Upper House of Assembly in the state of Georgia.

1767(25th of Kislev, 5528): First Day of Chanukah

1767: Jews begin observing Chanukah during the second month of Lord North’s, the man who would lead England throughout most of the American Revolution, 15 years as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

1769: Dr. John Sequeyra, scion of a distinguished Sephardic family of physicians in England, treated George Washington's daughter "Patsy" who was ill. Patsy was actually his step-daughter, the child of his wife, Martha who was a widow when he married her.  Patsy’s untimely death was a great personal blow to Washington.  The “Father of our Country” had no children of his own.

1750: Birthdate of David Friedländer, (Friedlander) a German Jewish banker, writer and communal leader.

1773(2nd of Tevet, 5534): Seventh Day of Chanukah

1773: As Jews kindle the 8th light of Chanukah, a group of American patriots, the Sons of Liberty, boarded an English ship in Boston harbor and threw its cargo of tea overboard, giving us the Boston Tea Party, a milestone event on the way to the American Revolution

1776: In Great Britain, declaration of an official fast “to wish success against the rebels in America.”

1778(27th of Kislev, 5539):  Third Day of Chanukah

1778: Birthdate of Liepmann Levin, who converted and gained fame as German dramatist Ludwig Robert and was the brother of Rahel Antonie Friederike Varnhagen,

1786(25th of Kislev, 5547): Chanukah and Shabbat

1786: In Harford, CT, as the Jews began their observance of Shabbat New York and Massachusetts signed the Treaty of Hartford which settled the boundary disputes between the two states but which also showed how weak the national government was – a weakness that would lead to the creation of the U.S. Constituion.

1789: Lilie Marx and Samuel Suss Strauss gave birth to Lammle Straus, the husband of Baden native Zelma Hochstetter with whom he had six children.

1790: Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Countess Augusta Reuss-Ebersdorf gave birth to their youngest son Leopold, the First King of the Belgians who counted among his friends and advisors Senator J.R. Bischoffsheim, the father-in-law of Baron Maurice de Hirsch.

1800(29th of Kislev, 5561): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1800: As the Jews prepared to kindle the sixth Chanukah candle, Alexander Hamilton wrote to Oliver Wolcott, that either Jefferson or Burr would become the next President – a reality that existed because both men had received the same number of votes in the electoral college even though the voters had thought they were voting for Jefferson for President and Burr as Vice President. (This would be remedied by the 12th amendment to Constituion)

1805(25th of Kislev, 5566): Chanukah

1805: On the same day that Jews prepared to kindle the second Chanukah candle, the Lewis and Clark Expedition was trying to stay dry as rain fell on their encampment in Oregon.

1807(15th of Kislev, 5568): Seventy-seven year old Marianne Abraham passed away in her home town of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

1806(15th of Kislev, 5568): Marianne Abraham who had married Jochem David de Mets-Maarsen in 1750 passed away today in Amsterdam

1815: In the UK, the Western Synagogue purchased the site for the Brompton Jewish Cemetery for £400.

1816(26th of Kislev, 5577) Second Day of Chanukah

1818(26th of Kislev, 5577): Second Day of Chanukah

1818: Birthdate of Moritz German, the native of Nikolsburg who from 1844 until his death in 1892 was the “cantor of the synagogue in Wroclaw” and who was the father of “industrialist Felix German.”

1819: Birthdate of Simon von Winterstein, the native of Prague who was a successful businessman, member of the Imperial Council and a leader of the Vienna Jewish Community.

1825: Birthdate of Bavarian native Myer Strouse who in 1832 came to the United States where he settled in Pottsville, PA where he practiced law, served two terms in the U.S House of Representatives as a Democrat and represented the Molly Maguires, a secret society of coal miners feared and despised by the mine owners>

1828(10th of Tevet, 5589) Asara B’Tevet observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.

1830: Rachel Gomes and John Messena gave birth to Esther Meseena.

1832(6th of Tevet, 5586): “Gitlel bar Abraham” was buried in the “Hope Street old burial ground” after she had passed away today.

1832: Birthdate of French painter and illustrator Jules Worms who “made his debut at the Salon of 1859 with his painting “Dragoon Making Love to a Nurse on a Bench in the Palace Royale” followed by “Arrest for Debt.”

http://www.rehs.com/Jules_Worms_Bio.html

1835:L'éclair (The Lightning Flash), an opéra comique in 3 acts by Fromental Halévy was premiered today by the Paris Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse with an orchestra that included Jules Offenbach (born Jakob Offenbach) as a cellist.

1842: In Pilsen, Bohemia, Jonas and Charlotte Goldscheider Adler gave birth to Emma Adler who became Emma Mandl when she married Bernard Mandl with whom she had two children – Sydney and Etta – while working on a variety of philanthropies and “good works’ including Jewish Home Finding Society for Children, the Home for Jewish Orphans and the Baron Hirsch Woman’s Club which founded and led as its first president.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/emma-b-mandl

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Mandl-Emma-B

1847: Birthdate of Dorum, Germany native Justus Heyn, the husband of Manchester, England native Caroline Franc.

1847: In Paris, General Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy and his wife gave birth to Ferdinand Esterhazy, the French officer who was a spy for the German and “the perpetrator of the acts of treason for which Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted.

1847: A bill was introduced in the House of Commons that would have changed the oath of office so that Lionel de Rothschild could take his seat in Parliament.

1850(11th of Tevet, 5611): Nathaniel Samuel Jacobs, the son of Isaac and Catherin Jacobs and the husband of Frances Russell was buried today in the “Hope Street burial ground” on the same day he had passed away.

1851: In Hungary, Joseph Newman and his wife gave birth to Julius Newman the long time Rabbi at the Montefiore Congregation at Thomas and North Robey Street in Chicago, Illinois.

1852: Birthdate of Episcopal clergyman Professor John Punnett Peters, the well-known archaeologist and author of both the Hebrew Story, from Creation to the Exile” and Hebrew Literature

1854(25th of Kislev, 5615) Chanukah.

1857(29th of Kislev, 5618): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1857: Thirty-seven year old Liverpool native Sir Paul Samuel married his first wife Henrietta Matilda, the daughter of Benjamin Goldsmid Levien who gave birth to Louis, Edward, Henri, Lydia and Randolph.

1857: In Buetthard, Bavaria, Simon Sichel and Malie Hirsch gave birth to Portland, Oregon Police Commissioner Sigmund Sichel, the Vice President of the First Hebrew Benevolent Association, Grand President of B’nai B’rith’s District 4 and husband of Sarah Solomon.

1858: Birthdate of Yiddish singer, actor, and composer Sigmund Mogulesko.

1858: “Gen. Cass and the Mortara Affair” published today examined the American response to the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and the Pope’s refusal to return the child to his parents. “Gen. Cass” is Lewis Cass, the American military leader who carved out a successful political career that including serving as Secretary of State under James Buchanan starting in 1857.  According to the article, Cass conceded that an injustice had been done but that the United States could not be expected to officially interfere any time a matter of injustice in a foreign land was brought to its attention.  According to Cass “The President full participates in the public  feeling and he cannot refrain from expressing equal surprise and pain that, in this advanced age, such unnatural practices should be ascribed to any part of the religious world and such barbarous measures resorted to.”  Regardless of the President’s personal feelings, he still cannot bring himself to join the protests of other governments including England, France, Sardinia Holland and Austria.  The author of the article wonders if Cass would intervene if the Jews were suffering at the hands of the inquisition.  [Considering the international clamor that arose over the issue, President Buchanan’s reluctance may seem a little mystifying to some especially when you consider that one of August Belmont was reported to be one of his major supporters.  For those who know anything about the days leading up to the American Civil War, Buchanan’s behavior is not a matter of anti-Semitism but merely another reflection of a President who had no will to act no matter what the cause.]

1862(24th of Kislev, 5623): Just two weeks before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation the first candle of Chanukah is kindled.

1863: Birthdate of George Santayana the philosopher and writer best known for the quote “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  Witty though he may have been a reading of Chapter 25 of George Santayana: A Biography by John McCormick entitled “Moral Dogmatism: Santayana as Anti-Semite gives one a different view of the famous Spaniard. While it would appear that his negative view of Jews was a slowly evolving one, starting in the late 19thcentury it took full form during the 1930’s as can be seen from his reading of and comments about Lecole des Cadavres written by “the pro-Hitler, Jew-baiting fascist Louis-Ferdinand Celine.

1864: On the second and final of the Battle of Nashiville , Colonel Frederick Kneifler and his brigade of Hoosiers turned a possible defeat into victory by charging the on-coming Rebels, “forcing them to retreat” in such confusion that they left much of their equipment on the field of Battle.

1865(28th of Kislev, 5629): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1865: In Newark, NJ, Alexander and Fannie (Fleisher): Schlesinger gave birth businessman and philanthropist Louis Schlesinger, the co-founder of the Union Building Company, vice president of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, board member of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun who married the former Sophie Levy with whom he had two sons – Alexander L. and Joel L. Schlesinger.

1866: In Baltimore, MD, Selig G. Putzel and Sophie Neuberger gave birth to Lewis Putzel, the University of Maryland law school graduate and Republican politician who served in both the House of Delegates and the State Senate and was the husband of Birdie Rosenberg with whom he had two children – Edward G. Putzel and Margaret Ney/Hummel. (Some sources show 1867)

1866: Birthdate of Alexander Protopopov who as Russian Minister of the Interior said in 1916 that he believed “in equal rights for Jews” and that this would be part of the move to abolish “everything that hinders further progress” in Russia.

1868: In Romania, a shochet and his wife gave birth to writer and published Avrom Vermont who settled in Argentina in the 1890’s when the Jewish community was in its infancy.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2016/06/avrom-vermont.html

1870: Birthdate of Eugene Hugo Paul, the native of Jersey City, NJ, who became a “banker and clothier in New York City as well as an officer with the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and the Young Folks League for Aid to Hebrew Infants.

1870: Two days after he had passed away, “Ferdinand Leopold Emanuel,” the son of Harry and Rosalie Emanuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemtery.

1870:Dr. Isaac Mayer Wise, founder of American Reform Judaism, preached the dedicatory sermon at the laying of the cornerstone of the Central Synagogue, Lexington and Fifty-Fifth Street.

1873: Today, in Barbados, a petition was presented to the House of Assembly” where it was requested that the Jews “be relieved of payment of taxes of £20 to £25 annually imposed by the Vestry on a house belonging to the congregation, the small rental which was used for the upkeep of the synagogue and for the help of poor Jews.”

1874: “Property Exempt From Taxes” published today described the decision of Judge Van Brunt exempting a lot adjacent to the Hebrew Free School from taxes even though the school is only renting the property and does not own it.

1875:“The National Assembly nominated” Auguste Scheurer, a future ardent defender of Dreyfus, “as a permanent Senator.”

1875: The children from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum were taken to the Hebrew Charity Fair, which is now in its second week. So far, the fair has raised nearly $100,000. 

1875:The H.M.S. Malabar set sail from Egypt, bound for Portsmouth, England, with a precious cargo stored in seven zinc boxes: 176,602 shares of stock in the Suez Canal Company, recently sold by the Khedive of Egypt. The buyer was the British Government, bolstered by a timely advance of 4 million [pounds] from N.M. Rothschild & Sons in London. Spiced with intrigue and flush with flamboyant figures, the affair has all the flair of a thriller. There have been bigger real-estate bonanzas -- notably the $15 million deal that won the Louisiana Purchase from France and the $7 million payment that wrested Alaska from Russia. But none have had quite the elegance, speed and daring of the Suez Canal transaction. It briefly established the House of Rothschild as a sovereign state on a par with -- or perhaps even slightly ahead of -- Her Majesty's Government.  Two decades earlier, the British were strangely myopic about the value of a proposed canal that would unite the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Benjamin Disraeli, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, dismissed the notion: ''The operation of nature would in a short time defeat the ingenuity of man.'' For the greatest maritime power on earth, this would prove a grave miscalculation, ceding construction of the canal to French capital and engineers, backed by Egyptian forced labor. By the time the canal opened in 1869, it had redrawn the map of the British Empire. The sea journey that had stretched 10,800 nautical miles from London to its imperial jewel, India, was slashed to 6,300 miles. Luckily for the British, the Khedive provided the British with a chance to remedy their blunder only six years later. A profligate borrower, addicted to luxury and Pharaonic projects, Isma'il Pasha became hopelessly indebted and could stave off his creditors only by selling his controlling stake in the Suez Canal Company. Very likely it was Lionel de Rothschild, head of the British bank, who tipped off Disraeli to the historic opportunity. The Prime Minister had to act with maximum secrecy and dispatch, sending his private secretary to sound out Lord Lionel on the huge advance of 4 million [pounds]. As legend has it, the reserved and circumspect Rothschild asked, ''What is your security?''''The British Government,'' the secretary replied. The tale has been embellished with other, possibly fanciful, details -- the most common being that the financier savored muscatel grapes as they talked, spitting out pits between rejoinders -- but the moment needs no apocryphal adornment. With a nod, Lord Lionel had conferred upon the British crown mastery of one of the world's principal crossroads. In retrospect, the feat represents a high-water mark of banker power. For its services, N.M. Rothschild exacted a steep and controversial fee: a 2 1/2 percent commission on the advance, plus 5 percent annual interest. The Rothschilds defended these terms, noting that they had put a considerable portion of their capital at risk during the perilous interval before Parliament voted for payment. Hobbled by the lumbering pace of politics and fearing a leak of information, Disraeli, like other 19th-century statesmen, employed an elite private bank as a screen behind which to conduct secret statecraft. The deal held up for a remarkable 81 years, binding together the outposts of the British Empire until President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, in a blaze of rhetoric, nationalized the Suez Canal Company in July 1956. In a rear-guard defense of colonial privilege, the British, the French and the Israelis pounced on Egypt in a brief but abortive invasion that only underscored the limits of Western influence in the region. The advent of larger vessels has somewhat diminished the canal's importance. Supertankers now economically ship oil by the traditional route around the Cape of Good Hope. Even so, the hundred-mile canal remains the pivot of much Middle East commerce and diplomacy.

1876: Birthdate of Kiev native Louis Cohen, the University of Chicago and Columbia University trained engineer whose many inventions in the fields of “radio and cable telegraphy” included the U.S. Navy’s “Cohen receiver” and who raised one daughter with his wife Ethel

1876(30th of Kislev, 5637): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1876: Birthdate or Russian native Isidor Leo Marrow, who in 1888 came to the United States where he rose to the presidency “underware makers” Harwood Manufacturing Company while serving as “a director of the Israel Zion Hospital” while raising two sons and four daughters with “his wife Rebecca.”

1877: Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs of the 34thStreet Synagogue officiated at the funeral of Jacob Grau, the impresario. The Hebrew Mutual Benefit Society had attended the body before the ceremony which was attended by a large throng. Burial was at the Washington Cemetery.

1878: Sixty-seven year old German author Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow an advocate for the emancipation of the Jews in his writings including “Uriel Acost” his play that would “later become the first classic play to be translated into Yiddish and became a longtime standard of the Yiddish theatre” passed away today.

 

1878: Max Blatt and his wife gave birth to Joseph Blatt the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College who served as the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in Columbus, GA.

 

1879(1st of Tevet, 5640): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh day of Chanukah

 

1879(1st of Tevet, 5640): Hungarian born Joachim Pollak, passed away today Trebitsch Moravia where he had been serving as rabbi since 1828.

 

1879: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association hosted a Chanukah reception at the Academy of Music

1880: It was reported today that theUnion Presbyterian Church of Alexandria, VA which does not have a building in which to hold services has accepted the offer of a local synagogue to use its facility.

1880: Frank Leslie’s illustrated published a woodcut of Chanukah celebration hosted by Young Men’s Hebrew Association at the Academy of Music in New York.

1880: In “Gilnitz, Polish Lithuania,” Joseph Jacob Altman and Leah Oberschmieds gave birth to Rebecca Annetta Altman, the resident of Steubenville, OH, who wrote “essays, poems, sketches and translations from German, Hebrew and Yiddish for American Jewish newspapers and the Steubenville Herald.

1881: It was reported today that the tableaus on display at the ball sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association that “reproduced some of the most famous scenes in the Biblical story” “were selected by Rabbis H.P. Mendes and Henry S. Jacobs” and “carried out under the supervision of Messrs. I. and B. Kiralfy.

1881: It was reported today that the Commissioners of Emigration have sent 200 of the 250 Jewish immigrants from Russia who arrived aboard the SS Sueviato Ward’s Island. The rest of them will be sent there in a day or two.

1882: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanu-El testified before a committee headed by Senators Boyd and Browning that was investigating “the subjects of corners and futures and the effect which they have upon commerce and public morals.”

1883: It was reported today that “Mme. Janauschek” will be starring in an upcoming performance of “Zillah, the Hebrew Mother

1883: “Shall Jews Marry Christians” published today summarized the views of Rabbi Isaac M. Wise on the subject on intermarriage of which he spoke approvingly.  To what extent the fact that one of his daughter married an Irish Catholic influenced his attitude is unknown.

1883: In Rochester, NY, members of Berith Kodesh are scheduled to vote today on adopting the new English ritual for their services which they began using at Shabbat services this past weekend.

1883: Birthdate of French film pioneer, Mix Linder.

1883: “Revision” published today described some of the changes that can be found in the latest translation of the Old Testament  Among them is changing the garment that Jacob gave to Joseph from a “coat of many colors” to “a tunic with long sleeves.”

1883(17th of Kislev, 5644): Sixty-six year old Maximilien Charles Alphonse Cerfberr of Medelsheim, “a French journalist, writer and government official” passed away today.

1884: It was reported today that vice cases were treated differently based on religion as could be seen by the fact that, Herman Schneider, a 28 year old Jew, was indicted and held without bail on the same charge for which the light haired and fair skinned Frank Snyder was allowed to post bail.

1884: Birthdate of Metz native and German trained architect Walter Curt Behrendt who came to the United States in 1934 where he continued his career as visiting lecturer and college professor at Dartmouth and the University of Buffalo.erman

 

 

1885: It was reported today that the Ladies’ Fair being held at the Metropolitan Opera House has already raised $10,000 which will got to the Kindergarten and Industrial Schools of the Hebrew Free School Association

1885: In San Francisco, Julius C. Koosher was one of four men arrested today on charges that they planned to assassinate 20 prominent Californians including Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker and then blow up the city’s Chinatown. Koosher, who is also known by the name Kowalski is a Jew who escaped Russia after suffering unspeakable persecutions and came to the United States where he became an agent of the Jewish Relief Society. His animosity towards the railroads stemmed from being swindled by railway magnet Henry Villard who had promised to pay me $600 for every family that helped become homesteaders.

1886: In Detroit, a dispute erupted at the Commercial National Bank between insurance man William Parkinson a Jew named Weinberger over $75 that the former owed to the latter.

1887: Lieutenant Louis Ostheim, the Philadelphia native and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy was detached to take charge of Fort Myer in Virginia.

1887: In Germany, Moritz Falkenstein and Cäcilie Falkenstein gave birth to Harry Falkenstein, the husband of Esther Falkenstein and father of Edith Falkenstein who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 55.

1889: Dr. Anton Zolki, a Jewish “journeyman dentist” attacked Dr. C. H. De Lamater while the being treated for a dental problem.

1889: A large contingent from the B’nai B’rith is expected to attend the events this evening at the “Hebrew educational fair” being hold at the American Institute Building.

1889: “Foreigners In The Trades” published today reiterates the stereotypes among immigrants including “the Chinamen who seem to be able to do little else besides washing lines” and Jews who continue to involve themselves “in callings in which compound interest figures prominently.” (Another way of calling Jews moneylenders and usurers)

1891: In Munich, Joseph Schülein, the son of Joel (Julius) Schülein and Jeanette Schülein and Ida Schülein gave birth to Kurt Schülein

1891: Plans were published today for the construction of a new synagogue to be built at Plainfield, NJ to serve the Jews of that town as well as the Jews living in North Plainfield, Bound Brook and Somverville.

1892(27th of Kislev, 5653): Third Day of Chanukah

1892: Rabbis Theodore Guenzburg, David Chan and Henry S. Jacobs led services this evening which part of the jubilee exercises celebrating the 50th anniversary of Rodeph Shalom in New York City which featured a sermon by Dr. Gustav Gottheil, the Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El.

1892:"How They Regard Ham. Views of Local Rabbis on Mr. Rosenburg's Expulsion” published today described the results the Brooklyn Eagle found when it visited local rabbis after “Hyman Rosenberg was expelled as rabbi of Beth Jacob synagogue for eating ham.” “While George Taubenhaus, rabbi of Beth Elohim stated, "I do not believe my congregation would expel me if I ate ham", Baith Israel's rabbi Friedlander responded, "While there are some differences between the reform and orthodox Jews, I do not think it is the place for any Jewish minister to eat ham. The reformers do not so strictly observe the old Mosaic Law, but it does not seem to me a good example for a rabbi to set to his congregation."

1894: At Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Silverman “gave the third of the series of sermons on ‘Answers to Jewish and Christians Inquirers,’” entitled “The Essential Basis for a Religion of Humanity.”

1894: A list published today of the officers of the New York Hebrew Mutual Benefit Association included M.D. Michaels as President and Philip Benjamin as Treasurer.

1894: Funeral services were held today for Abraham Keyser, a retired grocer who had originally been buried in a grave without a marker because nobody knew who he was when he mysteriously passed away.

1894: It was reported today that Sir Julian Goldsmid, “a member of the House of Commons for the South Division of St. Pancreasa” presided at a meeting of the Russo-Committee where “communications” were shared that the Czar had taken steps to modify “actions taken under the May Laws” and the laws regarding the expulsion of Jews from Russian

1895: After being closed yesterday, the Educational Fair, a fundraiser sponsored by prominent New York Jewish families re-opened today. So far the fair has raised almost $100,000.

1895: It was reported that a near riot broke in front of the Thalia Theatre where a concert given by “The Hebrew Mechanics’ Association under the management of Max Hirsch’s dramatic agency.

1895: It was reported today that the opening night of the second season of concerts at the Arion Society’s concert hall included Louis Blumberg playing “Max Bruch’s transcription of the old Jewish prayer, Kol Nidre.”

1896: Solomon Schechter left England bound for Egypt and Palestine so he could study Hebrew manuscripts including those in the Geniza at Cairo. Although there were reports of the Geniza dating back to the 1750’s, Agnes and Margaret Smith, known as the Westminster Sisters, were the ones who saw it in 1896 and told Schechter about what would become the greatest literary treasure trove found in Jewish history. Schechter’s involvement would vault him to a leading spot among Jewish intellectuals which led to his becoming the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary; a position from which he would try to rescues Judaism from the extremes of radical reform and stultifying orthodoxy.

1897: West Point graduate Harry J. Hirsch was promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant in the 18th Infantry of the United States Army today.

1898: In London, Emma and Karl Kirchberger gave birth to their daughter author Amy Blank, the wife of Rabbi Sheldon Blank, the Nelson Glueck Professor of Bible at HUC and the editor of the Hebrew Union College Annual for six decades, as well as the author of books like Jeremiah: Man and Prophet and Prophetic Thought

1900(24th of Kislev, 5661): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1900: M.D. Gottlieb presided over a meeting of “about 500 young Jews, some whom saw service in the Spanish War at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory’ where they enrolled in an organization which it is hoped by its promoters” including Emil K. Fireinan “will be admitted to the National Guard of the State” of New York.

1900: Last day on which the Barge Office was used as the processing station for immigrants, including tens of thousands of Jews, entering the United States through the port of New York. This was the second time that the Barge Office was used for this purpose. It had been temporarily re-opened due to a fire at Ellis Island, the place most people think of as the entry point to America.

1901: In Philadelphia, Edward Sherwood Mead, a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Emily (née Fogg) Mead, a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants gave birth to anthropologist Margaret Mead who  in the late 1940s was involved in a project financed by the American Jewish Committee that studied 128 Jewish immigrant families living in New York City” one of the main findings of which was that the mother in these families was, “intensely loving but controlling to the point of smothering, and engendering guilt in her children through the suffering she professed to undertake for their sakes.”

1901: Arnold Schonberg began serving as the Music Director of Berlin’s "Überbrettl" today.

1902: “The Roumanian Question “published today discussed a note the State Department addressed to Roumania concerning her outrageous international procedures touching her Jews” but also raised objections for the United States being a dumping ground for immigrants, including Jews from Roumania, who have deliberately kept their citizens from succeeding in their native country.

1903(27th of Kislev, 5664): Third Day of Chanukah

1903: In Rochester, NY, the District Council of Zionists is scheduled to hold a Chanukah Concert today.

1903: Twenty-seven year old Louis Bernstein, the CCNY educated son of Henry Louis Bernstein who became President of the Music Publisher’s Protective Association, married Enid Wolf today.

1903: As of today, the balance in the account of The Educational League for the Higher Education of Orphans with headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio which had been organized in 1896 whose members included Rabbi Moses J. Gries of Cleveland, Rabbi Leo M. Franklin of Detroit, Michigan, Rabbi Tobia Schanfarber of Chicago, Illinois, Rabbi Abram Simon of Washington, D.C. and Rabbi Louis Wolsey of Little Rock, Arkansas stood at $5,989.69.

1904:At tonight’s meeting of the American Conference on International Arbitration meeting in Carnegie Hall, Oscar Straus delivered a speech in which he “sketched the history of arbitration up to the establishment of the permanent court at the Hague” and said “we have assembled tonight to give voice to the true grandeur of Nations believing…that permanent peace is the only true diplomacy befitting civilized States.”

1905(18th of Kislev, 5666): Parashat Vayishlach

1905: In Kiev, the Czar’s forces crush the four day old Shuliavka Republic whose founders had called for an end to pogroms aimed at Jews.

1905: It was reported today that “many wealthy Jews are leaving” Warsaw because “of the raids on their residences by bands of revolutionary coreligionists” who call themselves “Anarchist.”

1905: A review Balthasar Huebmaier – The Leader of the Anabaptists by Henry C. Vedder published today noted that while he served as “preacher in the Cathedral of Regensburg” he “took part in persecuting the Jews.”

1905: “Arnold Kohn, Vice President of the State Bank and a member of the National Committee which is raising the two-million dollar fund for the relief of the suffers by Russian massacres” today “received a number of letters” including ones from Messrs. Perelmutter and Kligman providing the “details of the atrocities” at Kishinev.

1905: In Salonika which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire Isaac Carasso and his wife gave birth to Daniel Carasso who founded what would eventually become Dannon Yoghurt.

1906(29th of Kislev, 5667): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1906: “Prior to the actual ceremonies” dedicating the new building of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association” the entire building on Lexington Avenue was “thrown open to the inspection of a large audience.

1908: Birthdate of New York native Louis “Lou” Spindell, who played for CCNY from 1928 to 1930 before moving on to the American Basketball League.

1909: Confirmation of Rabbi Chaim Bidjarano’s election as Chief Rabbi of Adrianople.

1909(4th of Tevet, 5670): Seventy nine year old Lina Morgensten, the German feminist activist who was the wife of Theodor Morgenstern and the mother of Olga Morgenstern passed away today.

1909(4th of Tevet, 5670): Mrs. Schosche Malke Kiwowitz passed away today.

1910: “The old s tone mansion on Eagle Avenue just north of 161st Street, which for years has been occupied by the Hebrew Infant Asylum, has been sold to a builder a improvement.”

1911(25th of Kislev, 5672): Chanukah

1911: Seventy-three year old Rabbi Moses A. Schreiber passed away today in New York City.

1911: Educational institutions in Jaffa raise funds for the Ottoman Navy League.

1911: Celebration of the 25th anniversary of the first Jewish colony in Argentine.  The colony was made up of 200 families from Constantinople.   By mid-1917, Ashkenazim made up 80% of the Jews in South and Latin America, the other 20% being Sephardim.

1912: It was reported today that Julius J. Franks had presided over an informal meeting of the Judeans at the Hotel Majestic where “recent books of Jewish interest were discussed including Michael Hellprin and His Sons and Life of Benjamin Disraeli and where Dr. H.G. Enelow “declared that a complete account of the Jewish race” in the United States “was still to be written.”

1913: Birthdate of Lipa Zabrowsky, the native of Vilnius who made Aliyah in 1920 and gained famed as Aryeh Ben-Elizer, the member of Irgun who became an MK.

1913: The Supreme Court of Georgia heard the appeal of Leo Frank for a new trial following his conviction for murdering Mary Phagan.

1913: Charlie Chaplin began his film career at Keystone for $150 a week.

1913(17th of Kislev, 5674): Sixty-six year old Albert Wolfson, the son of jurist Isaac Wolfson, a liberal lawyer who was courageous enough to defend Friedrich Geffcken, an opponent of the Iron Chancellor and who was denied a seat in the Hamburg Senate because he was Jewish, passed away today.

1914(28th of Kislev, 5675): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1914: “The Senate’s debate today on the Immigration was largely devoted to the question of Jews from Russia, specifically an amendment offered by Senator Thomas of Colorado, suggested by Louis Marshall., “intended to extend the exemption to those not literally persecuted because of their religion but simply discriminated against in the statutes of their countries.”

1915: Albert Einstein published his "General Theory of Relativity.”

1916(2st of Kislev, 5677): Parashat Vayeshev

1916: In response to a request made by the Joint Distribution Committee sermons are scheduled to be delivered in every synagogue and temple throughout America “exhorting the congregants to support the plans for the relief of Jewish war sufferers” that are being made for 1917.

1917(1st of Tevet, 5678): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah; in the evening kindle the eighth candle

1917: The Anshe Emes Religious School is scheduled to hold a “Chanukah entertainment” this afternoon.

1917: Tonight, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein told members of the International Synagogue meeting at the Mount Morris Theatre that “The men who fought under Judas Maccabean have left their descendants among us at Yaphank at every other” Army “camp in the United States, on the soil of France or wherever else a good Jew may find himself.  From them the Jews of the world look for a good, a glowing and a glorious report.”

1917: At Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Joseph Silverman” predicted “that the fall of Jerusalem would probably cause a change in the ancient Jewish ritual of worship” because “the holidays of the Jewish calendar are of the joyous sort.  With the possible exception of the observance held by the orthodox Jews on the anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem, there is not a melancholy note in our ritual.  Now that the ancient city has been captured by the British forces, I imagine that this melancholy ceremony will now be and abandoned and the occasion turned into one of praise and thanksgiving.” (Editor’s note – One wonders what term he would use to describe Yom Kippur.)

1917(1st of Tevet, 5678): During World War I, Naaman Belkind was hung by the Turks as a spy. Naaman Belkind was born in 1889.  The nephew of Bilu founder Israel Belkind and the son of Bilu pioneer Shimshon Belkind, Naaman Belkind was born in Eretz Yisrael. Bilu was founded in 1882 and was a pre-Herzl Zionist movement. Bilu is an acronym based on a verse from Isaiah (2:5), "Beit Ya'akov Lekhu Ve-nelkha/Let the house of Jacob go!" BILU's founders believed that the time had come for Jews not only to live in Israel, but to make their living there as well.  He grew up in the Bilu community of Gedera, and was later employed in the wine cellars of Rishon LeTzion. Along with his cousin Avshalom Feinberg and his brother Eytan, Belkind joined the Nili espionage group, which was formed in 1915 to assist the British against the Turkish authorities. The group encountered much opposition to its operations, in part from the British themselves, but largely from the members of the Yishuv, who regarded the espionage as subversive and endangering Jewish settlements. Nili's independence from mainstream Zionist politics also lent it a controversial nature, but the group maintained its activities. In September, 1917, Belkind set out for Egypt to look into the circumstances regarding Feinberg's death earlier that year. Caught by Bedouin in the Sinai, he was handed over to the Turks and brought to Damascus. Shortly after, the principal Nili figures were arrested and the group incapacitated. Belkind was convicted of spying and was hanged along with Nili leader Yosef Lishansky. He was later re-interred in Rishon LeTzion.

1917: In London, Herbert Samuel one of the highest ranking Jews in the British political firmament   wrote a letter to his son stating that “The fall-or rather the liberation-of Jerusalem has caused much emotion in this country.  I have received dithyrambs from all sorts of people, mostly strangers.”

1917: The New York Times reported Jacob Schiff’s announcement that The New York Jewish community had just successfully completed its first $5 million campaign for Jewish war relief, its share of a $10 million national campaign. In making the announcement Schiff commented, “Fifty-two years ago, when I came to this country, I don’t believe the combined wealth of American Jewry was equal to $5,000,000. See where we have arrived; see where our unity and strength have brought us.”

1917: The Un-Christian Jew a story of Jews in the United States, by Lawrence Sterner was among the books found on today’s “Latest Publications” list.

1917: It was reported today that “many inquiries have been received by the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America from Jewish refugees in the countries along the Eastern front asking for news or relatives and friends in” the United States and that many of them have been located and are now in communication with relatives and friends in Europe.”

1917: It was announced tonight “that the 150 Jews in Sing Sing Prison had contributed $200” to the five million dollar fund being raised for Jewish war relief and that they “wished to give their earnings for the rest of the year” to the fund, a move that Rabbi Samuel Buchler, the visiting chaplain at Sing Sing will seek to get approved by the State Superintended of prisons.

1917: In Baltimore, MD, two hundred leaders of Zionist organizations from the United States and Canada including the Canadian Federated Zionist Societies, presided over by Rabbi Stephen Wise began to make plans for “the re-assimilation of the promised land that will include the creation of $100,000,000 fund” a million of which was raised in pledges this evening.

1918: In Philadelphia, at a meeting of the American Jewish Congress, plans were formulated to send a delegation of Jews to the Versailles Peace Conference which will push the claims of the Jews for full civil and political right in all lands.

1918: Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow wrote today from LeMans, that he is charge, for the present, of the center for the Jewish Welfare Board that has been established in the French city which “is going to be known as embarkation camp” through which a large number of Jewish soldiers will pass through on their way back to the United States.

1918: In New York City, two Jewish immigrants from Russia, garment business owner Meyer Gendel and his wife “Anna (Alpert) Gendel, who had been a seamstress on the Lower East Side of Manhattan before and who was arrested for hitting a nonunion worker with an umbrella during a long strike at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory” gave birth to Columbia University trained “art critic” and photographer Milton Gendel.  (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

1919(24th of Kislev, 5680): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1919: It was reported today that “with the coming of sunset this evening will begin…the world world-over, the celebration of Chanukah or the Festival of the Dedication.  Although rated in the traditional calendar as a minor festival, Chanukah, which is also known as the Feast of Lights is of major significance, as it commemorates one of the most heroic and far-reaching victories for the fatherland and the faith.”

1920: President Morris Handle and Recording Secretary Herman Natal send out invitations inviting their co-religionists to “attend the celebration of the organization of Congregation Beth-El in Camden, NJ.

1920: Rabbi Hyamson delivered a lecture on his experience in Poland and Lithuania at today’s meeting of the New York Board of Ministers which was held at Temple Emanu-El

1921: It was reported today that “the late Lazarus Kohns, the brother-in-law of the late Isidor Straus and of Nathan and Oscar S. Straus, left an estate which has been appraised as worth net almost $525,000.”

1922(26th of Kislev, 5683): Sixty-four year old Eliezer Ben-Yehuda the father of the Modern Hebrew Language succumbed to TB in Jerusalem today. 

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

1922:SS Albert Ballin was an ocean liner of the Hamburg-America Line which was named after Albert Ballin was launched today.

1922: Lord “Curzon decided that he would remain at the Conference of Lausanne over the Christmas holiday in order to expedite the conference’s conclusion

1922: Gabriel Narutowicz, President of Poland was assassinated by a right-wing nationalist.  The right-wingers derided him as the “President of the Jews.”

1922: Birthdate of Isidore Cohen, the native of Brooklyn who became a world renowned violinist who was a member of both the Juilliard String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio.

1923: Birthdate of Menahem Pressler a German-born pianist who fled to Palestine before settling in the United States where among other things he has spent 60 years on the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University

1924: Birthdate of Nissim Ezekiel, the native of Bombay who was an Indian Jewish poet, playwright, editor and art-critic.

1925: Today, Grover Moscowitz was nominated by President Calvin Coolidge, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York

1927: In Germany, premiere of Family Gathering in the House of Prellstein starring S.Z. Sakall, Sig Arno, Ilka Grüning, Fritz Spira and Max Ehrlich.  The latter two would not be able to escape the Holocaust.

1928: “The Jews of America have not done their full duty to establish Palestine as the national Jewish homeland, Dr. I.M. Rubinow, executive director of the Zionist Organization declared” this “afternoon at a conference of more than 100 east side Jewish organizations” meeting “at the Hotel Pennsylvania” where plans were made for the dive of the United Palestine Appeal in the east side and Harlem, which will begin in January.”

1929: “Sir Boyd Merriman, counsel for the Jewish case before the British Commission of Inquiry” meeting in Jerusalem, “announced this morning that an Arab witness who had testified on behalf of the Jews…and whose cross-examination had not been completed had sent a letter saying he had been suddenly compelled to leave the country, and in order not to do injury to his compatriots he would not appear again.”

1930: An Arab mob attempted to prevent Jewish settlers from plowing land near Herzlia. British police came from Tel Aviv and arrested the Arabs at which point the Jews went back to their farm work.

1930: “Six Jewish laborers were sentenced today to three weeks’ imprisonment for participation in an unruly unemployment demonstration at Ness Ziona, near Jaffa.”

1931: As German spirals into political chaos the Social Democratic Party (SPD) with the Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, the Reichsbanner and workers' sport clubs formed The Iron Front an anti-Nazi, anti-monarchist paramilitary organization designed to “counter the right-wing Harzburg Front.”

1932: “Narcotics” co-starring Peter Lorre and directed by Kurt Gerron who along with his wife would gassed at Auschwitz in 1944 was released today in Germany.

1932: “The Half-Naked Truth” a comedy produced by Pandro S. Berman, with music by Max Steiner was released in the United States by RKO.

1933: In address at the fourth annual Maccabean Festival held in Madison Square Garden to celebrate Chanukah, Samuel Untermeyer charged the German Ambassador, Dr. Hans Luther, with “insincerity and hypocrisy.”  “Mr. Untermyer said the activities of the Friends of New German and other Nazi organizations constituted a ‘criminal conspiracy against the sovereignty and neutrality of our country’ and that the purpose of these organizations was to propagate German national socialism which that ‘American citizens are to propagate on American soil the disenfranchisement of Jewish American citizens.”

1933: In Washington, DC, Philip Sylvan Peyser and Helene Hattendorf gave birth to Charles Alan Peyser.

1934: In Camden, NJ, Congregation Beth-El hosted its annual dinner and installation of congregational officers’ ceremony.

1934: David Jacob Sandweiss, the University of Michigan trained physician married Freda Levin today

1935: Having lost his job as a mathematics professor in Germany because he was Jewish, sixty year old Issai Schur was invited to the Mathematical Seminars Conference in Zurich.

1936: Magistrate Jeannette G. Brill will deliver an address entitled “Everyday Problems” at the annual luncheon of the metropolitan branch of the Women’s League of the United Synagogue of America being held today at the Hotel Commodore in New York City.

1936: The Pope created Emmanuel Suhard, who would write “a public protest against the deportation of the Jews of Paris in 1942” was created Cardinal Priest of S. Onofrio.

1936: “The Catholic bishopric of Berlin” protested today against the libeling of the Church and its clergy by the official National Socialist Party newspaper, the Angriff which published an article that said that “Jews and Catholics are in league to combat racial purity” and showed “a photograph of a meeting of rabbis and Protestant pastors in Riverside Memorial Church.”

1936(2ndof Tevet, 5697): 8th Day of Chanukah

1937: Stan Francis, the Program Director the Associated Broadcasting Company Limited in Toronto wrote Louis Herman asking him to come to Francis’ office so that discuss the recording of his radio company.

1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Ormsby Gore, told the House of Commons that in Palestine leading Arab notables were murdered by Arabs, which was "terrorism of Arabs by Arabs."  This form of Arab violence has continued down to our own times. In many ways, the current Arab leadership are the survivors of their own intra-communal violence.

1937;  The Palestine Post reported that Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem were surprised when ordered to pay for the costs of the 20 supernumerary constables appointed to guard them from frequent attacks by their Arab neighbors. Talk about adding insult to injury.  This was almost as bad as when the Jews had to pay for cleaning up the broken glass after Kristallnacht. 

1937: Birthdate of Morris Dees Jr., co-founder of the Southerner Poverty Law Center. Dees is not Jewish but his father Morris Seligman Dees Sr. was named after a Jewish Merchant in Montgomery whom Grandpa Dees admired. Joe Levin (no relation) who is Jewish was the other Co-Founder of Southern Poverty Law Center.

1938: In Rome, “the Cabinet under the leadership of Premier Benito Mussolini today decided to create a special board for the purchase, management and resale of property owned by Jews in excess of the maximum allowed under the law approved on November 10.” (Editor’s Note – so much for the quaint notion that the Italian fascists were not anti-Semites.)

1938: Today, Ambassador Joseph Kennedy who had made a special trip back from London to the United States was today “particularly outspoken in his condemnation of Jewish persecution in Germany which he has called ‘the most terrible thing I have ever heard of.’”

1939: Girls in Lodz were seized to clean a latrine using their own shirts. When done, the Nazis wrapped the woman's faces with these same shirts. By this time Jewish population of Warsaw and Lotz has risen to over 1,000,000.

1939:  The Nazis excluded the Jews from all employment benefits.

1939: Jewish girls in Lódz, Poland, who have been impressed for forced labor, are forced to clean a latrine with their blouses. When the job is complete, the German overseers wrap the filthy blouses around the girls' faces.

1940: It was reported today that Willie Rubenstein had scored ten points for the New York Jewels when they went down to defeat in an American Basketball League game against Philadelphia.

1941: Isidore Newman who was training with the SOE “received a postcard from the Jewish Chaplain congratulating him on his promotion” to 2nd Lieutenant

1941: In Romania, the government dissolved the Federation of the Unions of the Jewish Communities

1941: Hans Frank, governor-general of Occupied Poland, notes in his diary that some 3,500,000 Jews live in the region under his control.

1941: The second of the three day murder of Jews in Skede, Latvia in which almost 3,000 Jews, mostly women and children were murdered.

1942: A Jewish ghetto is established in Kharkov, Ukraine.

1942: Heinrich Himmler orders that Roma candidates for extermination be deported to Auschwitz.

1942(8th of Tevet, 5703): David M. Bressler, who was widely known for his activities in Jewish, State and municipal relief and in charity organizations, died this afternoon at the office of his physician to which he had been taken from his office at 75 Maiden Lane after he had suffered a heart attack. Mr. Bressler, son of Julius and Sarah Rothenberg Bressler, was born in Germany on May 1, 1879, and came here in 1884. He rendered service to thousands of immigrants whom he helped to settle throughout the country. Outstanding was his work as director of the Industrial Removal Board during the first decade of the century. He directed immigrants from the Eastern States to communities in the South and Middle West and provided them with the opportunities for their Americanization. By his plan, as he described it himself, he avoided over-crowding of New York and other large Eastern cities, and organized the Jewish community of America to divert the stream of Jewish immigration. The Removal Office thus was a clearing house for Jewish immigrants and prevented congestion at the port of entry. Among the many charity drives which he conducted was the United Jewish campaign of New York that raised more than 56,000,000 in 1926. After a campaign that lasted but a little more than a month, the goal was exceeded by $656,000. Another drive conducted by Mr. Bressler as national chairman was the Allied Jewish campaign of 1930. The plan, commended by President Hoover, was conceived in Washington, where Mr. Bressler was one of 800 representative Jews from all parts of the United States, who mapped out the details of the campaign. Mr. Bressler's philanthropic and social service career covered more than forty years. During that time he served many agencies. He extended his chief field of Jewish activities, to State-wide efforts when Governor Lehman appointed him a member of the New York State Planning Board in 1934, and when he became a director of Sydenham Hospital. Previously, Governor Lehman had made him a member of the Appeal Board of Unemployment Insurance, and in 1931 he was named vice chairman of the National Council of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, of which Felix M. Warburg was chairman. Mr. Bressler attended City College, the Jewish Theological Seminary and the New York Law School. He was admitted to the bar in 1900, and from 1900 to 1917 was general manager of the Industrial Removal Board. While he centered his business interests on insurance, he also served in a voluntary capacity as board member of the American Hebrew Congregations, the American Jewish Committee, the Palestine Economic Corporation, the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies and the National Refugee Service. As a member of a survey commission appointed by the Joint Distribution Committee, Mr. Bressler went to Europe in 1922 and 1929 to study the situation of Jews there, and published several reports on his observations. He was chairman of the New York War SufferersCampaign in 1922 and 1926, and served in 1930 as national co-chairman of the Allied Jewish Campaign of the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. He was a Mason and a member of B'nai B'rith and the Metropolitan Club.

1943: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning at Temple Emanu-el is New York for fifty-eight year old New York born and Columbia trained gynecologist Samuel H. Geist, the husband of Juliet Beecher Geister and father of Joyce B. Jacobson

1943: Birthdate of producer Steven Boncho, creator of several hit shows including Hill Street Blues, LA Law and NYPD Blue.

1943: In an example of Himmler’s belief in the “final solution to the Jewish question, he told a group of Kriegsmarine commanders today, “I have basically given the order to also kill the wives and children of these partisans, and commissars. I would be a weakling and a criminal to our descendants if I allowed the hate-filled sons of the sub-humans we have liquidated in this struggle of humanity against subhumanity to grow up.”

1944(30th of Kislev, 5705): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; in the evening light 7 Chanukah candles

1944(30th of Kislev, 5705): Fifty-five year old Philip Guedalla the British barrister, author and unsuccessful candidate for Parliament died today while serving as a Squadron Leader with the RAF. "History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other."

1944: As part of Ben-Gurion’s plan for breaking the power of the Irgun and the Stern Gang, Eliahu Golomb who had called the clash between the Yishuv and these groups “a struggle between Zionist democracy and Jewish Nazism” held a secret meeting with Nathan Friedman-Yellin one of the leaders of the Stern Gang.  Friedman-Yellin would only agree to halt attempts to assassinate Churchill and not much more.

1944: As the Battle of the Bulge began, Captain Bert Katz, who would become a leader of the Cedar Rapids Jewish and business committees, was one of those facing the unexpected onslaught of Hitler’s Panzers. Among other Jewish soldiers who faced down Hitler’s last gasp attack was J.D. Salinger and Leste Milton Bornstein the father of author and Ambassador Michael Oren.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-battle-of-the-bulge

1944(30th of Kislev, 5705): Fifty-five year old Philip Guedalla, author, barrister and extremely unsuccessful candidate for a seat in the House of Commons passed away today. He served as a squadron leader in the RAF during WWII making him one of the oldest people, I would guess, to hold that rank.  He was also noted for his quick wit, a few examples of which can be found below.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/philip_guedalla.html

1945: It “was disclosed tonight in the publication of correspondence between” Foreign Secretary Ernest “Bevin and S.S. Silverman, Laborite Member of Parliament” that “Bevin has given his assurance that the British Government has no intention of evading its obligations in the setting up of a Jewish national home under the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine..”

1945: Theatrical producer Billy Rose who returned to the United States “today aboard a transatlantic Clipper after an eight-week business trip during which he visited Jewish refugee camps in Germany and Vienna” urged that the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration’s $400,000,000 program for Poland be held up “until they clean house.”

1946(23rd of Kislev, 5707): Award winning 83 year old American artist Albert Sterner, the London born son of Julius and Sarah Sterner passed away today.

1946: Birthdate of Manhattan native and Sarah Lawrence College graduate Dori Levine, who gained fame as Emmy award winning actress Dori Brenner.

1946: It was reported today that Lazarus Joseph said it was “the duty of every American citizen, Christian or Jew, black or white” to help in “the rehabilitation of 1,500,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.

1946: In France, Leon Blum named Premiere.

1947(3rd of Tevet, 5708): Forty-eight year old Romanian born and Harvard trained lawyer, Nathan R. Margold who worked “as an attorney for minority groups including the NAAC and various Indian tribes with claims against the Government’ before serving as the Solicitor General for the Interior Department because he shared an interest in Indian affairs with Secretary Ickes passed away today while serving as a Judge of the Municipal Court in Washington, D.C. (Some sources show his date of death as December 17)

https://legallegacy.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/july-21-1899-birthdate-of-nathan-ross-margold/

 

1947: Capitol record released a recording “You Were Meant for Me” a popular song with lyrics by Arthur Freed first published in 1929.

1948: Egypt charged that the Jews announced a new attack on the garrison at Faluja.

1949: Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced that Jerusalem will be become the capital of Israel on January 1, 1950.

1950: Birthdate of “Claudia Lynn Cohen, a high-profile gossip reporter for television and newspapers who was a frequent subject of the gossip columns herself, partly because of her marriage to, and remunerative divorce from, the billionaire businessman Ronald O. Perelman”.(As reported by Margalit Fox)

1952: Yitzhak Ben-Zvi “assumed the office of President of Israel and continued to serve in the position until his death on April 23 1963.

1952(28th of Kislev, 5713): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1952(28th of Kislev, 5713): Seventy-six year old Etta Karesh Levin, the wife of Julius Levin and the mother of Sidney L. Levin passed away after which she was buried in KKBI Cemetery in Charleston, SC.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the extraordinary meeting of the Israeli-Jordanian Mixed Armistice Commission broke down with each side accusing the other of border violations. Israel accused infiltrators of firing at the guards, and stealing arms and ammunition. Jordan complained that Israel had laid mines and attacked the Arab Legion post in the Mount Scopus area.

1952: Birthdate of Susan Estrich, graduate of Harvard Law, and “liberal” foil on FOX News.

1953: Birthdate of “Héctor Timerman, a former Argentine foreign minister who was charged with treason in 2013 for his role in negotiating an agreement with Iran relating to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires” (As reported by Daniel Politi)

1954: Birthdate of Bright Kanyontore Rwamirama Ugandan State Minister for Animal Industry who represented his government at the 2012 ceremony commemorated the raid on Entebbe that took place at the Old Entebbe Airport where Yonatan Netanyahu lost his life saving those who were threatened with death by Palestinian terrorists.

1954: “There's No Business Like Show Business” produced by Sol C. Siegel, with songs by Irving Berlin and a screenplay by Phoebe and Henry Ephron was released in the United States today by 20th Century Fox.

1955: In Queens, the former Jacqueline Boklan, “the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Russia” and Alfred G. Paulson gave birth to NYU and Harvard trained billionaire hedge fund owner John Paulson, the husband of Episcopalian Jenny Zaharia and the father of Danielle and Giselle Paulson.

https://nypost.com/2019/06/13/paulson-to-sell-almost-half-of-steinway-factory-to-robert-de-niro-group/

 

1955 After 888 performances the curtain came down at the Belasco Theatre on the original Broadway production of “Fanny” a musical with a book by S.N. Behrman and lyrics and music by Harold S. Rome.

1957: “In a letter dated today, the "Steering Committee of Temple Sinai," a small group of Temple Emanuel members who felt that the close family atmosphere of the Temple had been lost and that religious observance had become more conservative over the years, informed the secretary of the board of Temple Emanuel that they intended to create a second Reform congregation in Worcester.

1959: U.S. premiere of “The Gazebo” produced by Lawrence Weingarten featuring Carl Reiner as “Harlow Edison,” Mabel Albertson as “Miss Chandler,” Martin Landau as “The Duke” and Robert Ellenstein as “Ben.”

1959: “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” a film adaptation of the novel by the same name directed by Henry Levin, with a script co-authored by Walter Reisch and music by Bernard Hermann was released today by 20th Century Fox.

1960: “Wildcat,” a musical with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh and music Cy Coleman opened at the Alvin Theatre.

1966(3rd of Tevet, 5757): Eighty-one year old Alexander Trachtenberg  the native of Russia who earned a Master’s from Yale and was a leader in the Socialist Party of America as the CPUSA as well as the founder of International Publishers passed away today.

1967(14th of Kislev, 5728): Parashat Vayishlach

1967(14th of Kislev, 5728): Seventy year old to NYU trained lawyer George M. Eichler, the Hoboken born son of Morris and Julia Eichler, “a state deputy attorney general in New Jersey” and “general counsel for the New Jersey Motor Bus Association” who was the husband of “former Sally Jacobs,” with whom

1968(25th of Kislev, 5729): Chanukah

1968: Birthdate of Peter Orszag, an American economist, who was VP with Citigroup and Director of the Congressional Budget Office.

1968: “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” with songs by the Sherman Brothers – Richard and Robert -- was released in the United Kingdom today by United Artists.

1968: The Spanish government officially voided the order of expulsion of 1492.

1969: Release date for “Cactus Flower” a film that would not have been made if it weren’t for the Jews – director Gene Saks, writers Abe Burrows and I.A.L. Diamond, actor Walter Matthau and actress Goldie Hawn.

1969:Elimelekh Rimalt began serving as Communications Minister.

1969: Release date for the film version of “Hello Dolly” starring Walther Matthau and Barbra Streisand and written and produced by Ernest Lehman with music by Jerry Herman.

1970(17th of Kislev, 5731): Fifty-five year old Oscar Lewis, the history who changed his major to anthropology at the behest of his brother-in-law Abraham Maslow passed away today.

1970: Eighty-three year old Mrs. Bessie Levy who along with her late husband Albert Warner, “one of the four founding brothers of Warner Brothers” had given “$1.5million to build new wing at Mount Sinai Hos pital in Miami Beach, where they spent the winters” passed away today at her home in Hampshire House.

1970: U.S. premiere of “Puzzle of a Downfall Child direct by Jerry Schatzberg who also co-authored the script.

1970: The movie version of Erich Segal’s novel Love Story directed by Arthur Hiller was released in the United States today.

1971: “Never Underestimate Power of a Woman Even at Princeton” published today described the life at an Ivy League elite school experienced by future civil rights attorney Abby Rubenfeld, the daughter of Milton Rubenfeld, the WW II war hero who in 1948 was one of the founders of the IAF.

1971: The Bangladeshi Liberation War, during which Henry Kissinger shaped U.S. policy so that it favored Pakistan, came to an end today with Bangladesh winning its independence which would appear to have the so-called foreign policy expert on the wrong side of history.

1973: “Hell Up in Harlem,” a sequel to “Black Caesar” directed by Larry Cohen who co-produced the film with Samuel Z. Arkoff, a Jewish native of Iowa, was released today in the United States.

1973: “Papillion” a French prison film co-starring Dustin Hoffman and with music by Jerry Goldsmith was released in the United States today.

1975: CBS aired the first episode of “One Day at a Time” the popular sit-com starring Bonnie Franklin as Ann Romano that lasted for nine years.

1976(24th of Kislev 5737): First Chanukah Candle kindled for the last time during the Presidency of Gerald Ford.

1978: In Jerusalem, 22 people including five Americans were injured by a bombing on a bus.

1979:  More than 800 guests attend special ceremonies to mark what Mayor Edward I. Koch has proclaimed as "Congregation Orach Chaim 100th Anniversary Day.”

1979: First broadcast of the made for television “An American Christmas Carol” starring Henry Winkler.

1979(26th of Kislev, 5740): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1979(26th of Kislev, 5740): Seventy-two year old Judge Murray I. Gurfein, the New York born son of Louis and Rose Gurfein and husband of the former of Eva Hadas who was part of the prosecution team at the Nuremberg War Crime trials and who was most famous as the Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who rejected the Nixon Administration's attempt to bar The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers in 1971” passed away today.(As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

1981: Defense Minister Ariel Sharon flew to the newly annexed Golan Heights today for a meeting with military commanders amid reports of Syrian troop alerts across the border.

1981: Eighty-one year old Victor Kugler, one of those who helped to hide Anne Frank and her family passed away today.

1982: Sofia Cosma, a Jewish concert pianist who defied long odds to rebuild her career after seven years in Soviet prison camps played pieces by Chopin, Haydn and Rachmanioff at first concert at the 92ndStreet Y.

1984: At the East Park Synagogue in New York, Rabbis Arthur Schneier, Hillel Friedman and Marshall T. Meyer officiated at the wedding of Emily Ione Meyer, a daughter of Arlene Meyer Cohen of New York and Greensboro, N.C., and the late John H. Meyer, and Joshua Mark Sacks, a son of Mr. and Mrs. David G. Sacks of Larchmont, N.Y.

1984(22ndof Kislev, 5745): Sixty-six year old “Harold P. Manson, director of the office of Academic Affairs of the American Friends of the Hebrew University and the husband of “Mrs. Natanya Neumann Manson, a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company” passed away today

1984: “Diamonds” a revue with music by Cy Coleman, Betty Comden and Adolph Green opened Off Broadway at the Circle in the Square Downtown theatre today.

1984: William G. Blair described a rent strike that is continuing at 4-6 East 65th Street, properties which had formerly belonged to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations are across the street from Temple Emanu-El

 

1986: In “Altheimer Praised for Fostering Study in Agriculture Field” Bruce Kinzel described the contribution of Benjamin Joseph Altheimer Sr. the Pine Bluff born Jew to the activity which has historically been the economic backbone of the Razorback state.

1987(25th of Kislev, 5748): Chanukah

1987: U.S. premiere of “Broadcast News” directed, produced and written by James L. Brooks co-starring Albert Brooks.

1988: “Rainman,” directed by Barry Levinson, starring Dustin Hoffman and music by Hans Zimmer was released today in the United States.

1989: “Lesléa Newman publishes the groundbreaking children’s book, Heather Has Two Mommies

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/16/1989/leslea-newman

1990(29th of Kislev, 5751) Fifth Day of Chanukah

1990: The New York Times reported that last week, Dr. John Strugnell, a Harvard divinity professor, was dismissed as chief editor of the scrolls after having called Judaism "a horrible religion" in an interview published in November in a Tel Aviv newspaper. Several colleagues, who said they were horrified at the remarks, attributed them to Dr. Strugnell's "mental condition" and to a drinking problem. A spokesman for Harvard said Dr. Strugnell, a Roman Catholic, was being treated in a hospital, but he wouldn't say where or why.

1991: The U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a 111-25 vote.

1992: The body of IDF Sergeant Nissim Toledano, who had been kidnapped by Hamas, was found today.   Toledano had been stabbed to death while his hands were bound.

1992: The Bangor Daily News reported that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told a stunned and angry nation…that he would “strike pitilessly” against Muslim fundamentalists who kidnapped and killed and Israeli trooper.  But he promised Israel would not abandon the U.S. – sponsored Mideast peace talks.

1992: Israel ordered deportation of 415 leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the West Bank and/or Gaza after escalating terrorist activity.

1992 (21st of Kislev, 5753):Simon M. Jaglom, a New York businessman and financier, died today at New York University Medical Center. A Manhattan resident, he turned 96 last Saturday. A native of Ukraine, he moved to what was then the Free State of Danzig, where he became general director of the Ministry of Foreign Trade. He went to London in 1937 to establish a business and came to this country two years later. He became president and later chairman of the New York Commodities Corporation and the Overseas Barters Corporation and continued to head both concerns until last month. He was a longtime supporter of Israel and Jewish causes. He was a past president of the American-European divisions of the United Jewish Appeal and of the Organization for Rehabilitation Through Training. He and his wife donated a wing to the Tel Aviv Museum.

1993: The New York State Legislature elected G. Oliver Koppell “to fill the unexpired term of New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams.

1993: The West End revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” transferred to the Lyttleton Theatre.

1994: Tower Airlines, which has several flights from New York to Tel Aviv reported today that that someone, probably an employee, had cut electrical wires on three cargo planes and two or three passenger planes at Kennedy International Airport in October and early November, disabling monitoring systems.  Terrorist activity, which would be of special concern to those on flights to Israel, has been ruled out as a cause.

1994: “Speechless” a comedy with music by Marc Shaiman was released today in the United States today.

1995: Rabbi Ronald B. Sobel officiated at the wedding of Ruth Goldestein Israels and William Rosenwald.  The bride is an 82 year old graduate of Hunter College.  The groom is the 92 year old son Julius Rosenwald, the longtime chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Company

1997:Janet Rosenberg was elected President of Guyana, making her the first American-born woman to be elected president of any country. Although she had been involved in the country's governance for over half a century, she was only elected

1998: “The Prince of Egypt,” an animated film based on the Book of Exodus and the life of Moses, co-produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg, with a screenplay co-authored by Nicholas Meyer, music by Hans Zimmer and Stephen Schwartz and featuring Jeff Goldblum as “Aaron” and Ofrz Haza as “Yocheved” was released in the United States today.

1999: “Letter to an Expecting Parent” by Yehuda Lev published today provides advice for Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/item/letter_to_an_expecting_parent_19991217

2000: “Israelis and Palestinians appeared to edge closer today to resuming peace negotiations after an overnight meeting between Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.”

2001(8th of Tevet, 5646): Helmut Flieg the German-Jewish writer who used the pseudonym of Stefan Heym passed away.

 

 

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan; translated by John Brownjohn. Notes translated by Susanne Ehlert, Heidegger’s Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse by Richard Wolin, One Scandalous Story: Clinton, Lewinsky, and Thirteen Days That Tarnished American Journalismby Marvin Kalb and Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truceby Stanley Weintraub.  (Yes one of the best Christmas stories ever written has a Jewish author.)

2002: In what some saw as a move designed to protect his position as the leader of the Palestinians Yasir Arafat, sought to distance himself unequivocally from Al Qaeda in an interview published today, warning Osama bin Laden to stop justifying attacks in the name of Palestinians even though those same Palestinians cheered when Iraqi Scuds fell on Israel.

2003: “Israel developed a risky plan in 1992 to assassinate Saddam Hussein at a funeral but shelved it after five Israeli soldiers were killed while training for the mission, according to news reports today.”

 

2003: “Israel's deputy prime minister said today that Israel should prepare to make concessions with a ''grand, one-sided move'' if peace talks with the Palestinians should fail.”

2004(4thof Tevet, 5765): Louis J. Herman, the son Canadian Cantor Samuel Herman, who became the Cantor of Congregation Beth El at Camden, NJ, in 1957, passed away today – a death that was mourned by, among others, his son David who is “a Rabbi in Baltimore MD, and is the executive director of Maryland Friends of Boys Town Jerusalem, a school for disadvantaged youth in Israel.”

 

2005: After premiering at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in May, “Free Zone” directed by Amos Gitai and starring Natalie Portman was released today on a limited basis in the United States.

2005: “Hoodwinked” a computer animated comedy film produced by Maurice Kanbar premiered today in Los Angeles.

 

2005: The US House of Representatives passed a resolution that conditioned future financial aid to the Palestinian Authority on the exclusion of Hamas from the upcoming parliamentary elections next month.

 

2005: Representative Henry Waxman announced “he would introduce a bill to the U.S. House of Representatives that would lift the ban on federal money for subway tunneling in his congressional district.”

 

2005: Soer Trondelag became the first province in Norway to bar the purchase of Israeli goods when the provincial board voted to impose a boycott.  A board representative from the far-left Red Electoral Alliance said she hopes the boycott will spread to other Norwegian provinces.  The Norwegian national government has not imposed or called for any such boycott.

 

2006(25th of Kislev, 5767): First Day of Chanukah

 

 

2006: In Boston on the first day of Chanukah, Rob Tannenbaum and his pal David Fagin, who fronts the New York band the Rosenbergs, came to Boston with his latest Jewish-themed act, “Good for the Jews.” The duo performs songs such as the sarcastic "Good to be a Jew on Christmas" and "Jdate," an ode to the popular dating website.

 

 

2006(25th of Kislev, 5767): Rabbi Yehosuha Yagel, who headed the Midrashiyat Noam Yeshiva High School since its founding in 1945 passed away at the age of 91. Midrashiyat Noam, located in Pardes Hannah, was the first yeshiva high school in the country and has become on of the flagship yeshivas of religious Zionism in Israel.  Yagel received the President’s Prize for life achievement in education in 1998.

 

2007: The Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) opened its 39th annual conference.

 

2007: The Sunday Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Judaica including a marvelous text entitled How To Read The Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now by Professor James L. Kugel, The Year of Living Biblicallyby A.J. Jacobs, Churchill and the Jews by Martin Gilbert and Henry James: The Mature Master by Sheldon M. Novick.

 

2007: The Sunday New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Judaica including Prince of Darkness: Richard Perle by Alan Weisman, Love Falls by Esther Frued great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black by South African author Nadine Gordimer, both of whose parents were Jewish.

 

2007: The New York Timesfeatures an article on conflicts surrounding Gerard Schwarz’s tenure as conductor of the Seattle Symphony where he “is known for his fund-raising and civic involvement, but where he has made enemies and generated ill will among the players.”

 

2007: Julius Shulman attended a showing of his architectural photography at the Los Angeles Public Library.

 

2008:Mort Gerberg presents “Last Laughs: Cartoons About Aging, Retirement...and the Great Beyond” at the Washington DCJCC. Longtime New Yorker cartoonist Mort Gerberg has assembled an all-star cast of gifted and popular cartoonists including George Booth, Roz Chast, Frank Modell, JB Handelsman, Sidney Harris and Jack Ziegler to join him in this exclusive collection confronting, illuminating and celebrating the inevitabilities of life. Everything from cloning to cryogenics and more is tackled with humor and pathos. Mort Gerberg’s cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy and The Huffington Post, as well as in syndicated newspaper features and on television. He has written, illustrated or edited nearly forty books, including his textbook, Cartooning: The Art and the Business, More Spaghetti, and Joy in Mudville: The Big Book of Baseball Humor. 

 

2008 (19 Kislev, 5769):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.

 

2008: Award winning Israeli-born photographer, Michal Chelbin delivers a lecture at New York’s School of Visual Arts Amphitheater followed by a book signing

 

2008: Andy Statman joined the Flecktones in a concert at the Kimmel Center in Phildelphia. The venue was named in honor of Sidney Kimmel.

 

2008:The Israeli version of “Big Brother,” a reality show alternately beloved and reviled by Hebrew speakers, wrapped up today in exactly the manner in which it was broadcast all season: as a ratings juggernaut. Early estimates suggest that a record 39.2% of the country’s television audience tuned in on Tuesday evening to watch as Shifra Cornfeld, a 28-year-old designer from Jerusalem, was announced as the show’s debut winner over 56-year-old Ashkelon resident Yossi Boublil. Cornfeld took home 1 million shekels and a place in the country’s pop culture pantheon.

From the start of its three-month run, “Big Brother” served as a consistent source of controversy — especially after Boublil, a Jewish contractor of Moroccan descent, began to refer mockingly to the show’s Ashkenazic participants as, collectively, “the Friedmans.” An instant catchphrase, the moniker only intensified the disapproval of the show’s already numerous critics, who condemned “Big Brother” as celebrating superficiality and anti-intellectualism — and even, in many cases, as degrading the country’s culture and moral values. Protest rallies timed to coincide with the season finale were held in Akko, Beersheba and at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Based on a Dutch concept later adapted in dozens of countries, “Big Brother” isolates its contestants in a single house, recording their activities 24 hours a day and assigning them weekly challenges as competitors are eliminated.

 

2008: After having lost $3million dollars in Ascot Partner, The New York Law School filed a suit against Ascot partners and Ezra Merkin charging him with “recklessness, gross negligence and breach of fiduciary duties” contending that Merkin was running “a feeder fund” for Bernie Madoff

2009: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Hadassah Book Club meets at the home of Charlene Wolf to discuss Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner.

2009: Professor Ari Y. Kelman discusses his new book, "Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States," as part of the Nextbook series' 2009 season being held at the D.C. Jewish Community Center. 

2009: Jonathan Sheehan of UC Berkeley is the Keynote Speaker at workshop entitled "The Bible and Secularism" at The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in Philadelphia, PA.

2009:Iran test-fired its most advanced ballistic missile, capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe. The missile tested, according to Iranian reports, was an upgraded version of the Sajjil 2, a sophisticated ballistic missile that has a range of close to 2,000 kilometers, can carry a nuclear warhead and is powered by a solid-fuel propellant which gives it greater accuracy and range. With solid fuel, the missile can be stored in underground silos, making it more difficult to detect before launch. "This missile can threaten Europe," one Israeli defense official said. "If Israel were their only enemy, why would they need missiles that can reach Europe?" According to the official, the Super Green Pine Radar, which works in conjunction with Israel's Arrow missile defense system, detected the launch of the Sajjil, as did the US-manned X-Band Radar located in the Negev. "We closely follow what happens in Iran," the official said, adding that the IDF was familiar with the Sajjil, which had been tested for the third time today. The missile, officials said, was still in final development and testing stages and would soon enter mass production.

2009: US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was name Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2009 today.

2009: Today Jon Scheyer “scored 24 of a career-high 36 points in the first half to lead Duke past Gardner-Webb. He shot 11-of-13 and hit a career-best seven 3-pointers while grabbing eight rebounds and getting nine assists.”

2009: The third annual Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism opens today in Jerusalem.

2009: Britain’s Supreme Court declared today that it was illegal for a Jewish school that favors Jewish applicants to base its admission policy on a classic test of Jewishness – whether one’s mother is Jewish.

2009:  Today approximately 400 El Al passengers had to wait for almost seven hours in a grounded airplane in a U.S. airport due to a fuel leak. Throughout these hours passengers were not permitted to leave the aircraft and received no food except drinks and light snacks. The grounded Boeing 747-400 - El Al flight LY028 - was scheduled to take off at 1:30 P.M. on December 16 from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and land about 10 hours later at Ben-Gurion Airport. The airline did not report the incident to the media.

2010: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present the” Chamber Music of Barber, Britten and Brahms” featuring the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble.

2010: Janis Spindel is scheduled to present a program entitled “Men and the City: Where Are all the Men in New York?” at the 92nd St Y in, of course, New York City.

2010: A judge has ordered members of the family that owned a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa to pay more than $2 million after defaulting on financial agreements with one of their former banks. A federal judge ruled today in favor of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Value Recovery Group and against brothers Sholom and Tzvi Rubashkin and their father, Aaron. The family owned the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, which was sold after a 2008 raid in which 389 illegal immigrants were detained. The $2 million covers a $300,000 loan the Rubashkins received from Omni National Bank, interest on that loan and equipment leases with the bank. Omni sued to collect the money before it collapsed last year. FDIC was appointed its receiver.

2010(9thof Tevet, 5771): Ninety year old violinist and concert master Eric Rosenblith passed away.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2010/12/21/eric_rosenblith_90_violinist_of_acclaim_tireless_teacher/

 

2010(9thof Tevet, 5771):Irwin M. Abrams, a longtime professor of history at Antioch College, a pioneer in the field of peace research and a global authority on the Nobel Peace Prize, died today at the Friends Care Center, just a block away from the house on Xenia Avenue where he had lived for almost 60 years. He was 96. Irwin was born in San Francisco in 1914. He graduated from Lowell High School in December 1930 at the age of 16. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree and PhD from Harvard University. In 1936–37, Irwin traveled to Europe to do research for his dissertation. It was a formative experience. He met many outstanding leaders and scholars of the international peace movement and delved into previously unknown source materials.

2010: Starting today the Galilee will be hosting its first annual international ornithological festival. The result of a joint effort and a million-shekel investment by all of Israel’s nature protection organizations and Galilee promoting bodies, the new festival seeks to attract bird and nature lovers from across the country and the world in an aim to maintain the birds’ natural habitats.

2010: Judith Malina’s production of “Korach” “a new play based on the Biblical account of Korach, ‘the first recorded anarchist in history,’ opened at The Living Theatre in New York.

2011: A brunch honoring Rabbi Eric Yoffie is scheduled to take place at today’s session of the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial.

2011: Andrew Fastow, the CFO of Enron, was released from prison camp today where he had been serving time for the financial chicanery that destroyed the company and, among other things, so distorted the economy in California that brought about a recall election that paved the way for Arnold Schwarzenegger to become that state’s chief executive.

2011: Before delivering the keynote address at the Union for Reform Judaism conference in Maryland today, President Obama met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The Defense Ministry said in a statement that in the 30 minute-long meeting, the two discussed regional issues and the challenges facing the Middle East, the United States and Israel. Barak thanked Obama for strengthening the security ties between Israel and the United States during his term.

2011:President Obama told a gathering of Reform Jewry not to let anyone challenge his record of support for Israel, which he said was "unprecedented.""No U.S. administration has done more in support of Israel's security than ours -- none," he said in an address this afternoon to more than 5,000 people at the biennial conference of the Union for Reform Judaism. "Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. It is a fact." The crowd at a hotel in the Maryland suburbs outside of Washington gave him a standing ovation. Obama listed areas of close cooperation, including missile defense and Iran sanctions. Of the sanctions, he said they were the "hardest hitting" ever. He repeated his pledge that he would take "no options" off the table when it comes to forcing Iran to back down from its suspected nuclear weapons program. Obama peppered his speech with Jewish references, starting with "Shabbat Shalom" and joking about his daughter Malia's eagerness to attend bar and bat mitzvahs. His speech was based on the story of Joseph's declaration "Hineni" -- "Here I am" -- to his father, Jacob. To repeated applause, Obama ran through his domestic policy achievements on health care, and women's and gay rights, among others.

2011:The High Court of Justice ruled today to reject a petition asking to delay the second stage of the prisoner exchange deal brokered with Hamas to release kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit. The release of 550 Palestinian security prisoners is now expected to proceed as normal. In a unanimous ruling, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, Justice Asher Dan Grunis and Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, said that the government must "make good its commitment to the agreement it has signed and approved. The ruling, written by Justice Grunis, noted the the court decided in October not to intervene in the release of 1,027 security prisoners as part of the first stage of the Schalit deal, after terror victims and their families filed High Court petitions opposing the releases "The court did not intervene in the first phase [of the deal]... and there is no reason to intervene now in the implementation of that agreement's second phase," Grunis said. The Israel Law Center (Shurat HaDin) and terror victims Michael Norzich and Dr Alan Bauer filed the petition yesterday, arguing that the government should formulate clear criteria for determining which prisoners should be released. The petitioners conceded that Israel must honor the prisoner exchange deal, but said that as Schalit is now safe at home the  government could delay the deal's second phase of releases while it established such criteria. The petitioners asked for an injunction ordering the government to publish the list of prisoners scheduled for release at least 14 days prior to the release date. This, they said, would give terror victims sufficient time to check whether any prisoners scheduled for released were terrorists involved in attacks that harmed them or their relatives. The petitioners noted that the Prison Service published the prisoner list just four days ahead of the release. However, in its response to the court, the state contended that, with the exception of two women prisoners, the 550 prisoners scheduled for release on Sunday does not include Hamas or Islamic Jihad members, and that none of the prisoners on the list had been directly involved in any attacks that resulted in death or injury. Four hundred of the prisoners on the list have served two-thirds of their sentences, the state said. Justice Grunis also criticized the petitioners for failing to file the petition weeks ago, and demanding that the state release the list of prisoners then, since he said they were aware the second phase of the Schalit deal would occur two months after the first prisoner release in October.

2011: In an interview published today, “renowned Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt says that American and Israeli politicians who invoke the Holocaust for contemporary political purposes are engaging in ‘Holocaust abuse,’ which is similar to ‘soft-core denial’ of the Holocaust.”

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/top-holocaust-scholar-blasts-holocaust-abuse-by-u-s-israeli-politicians-1.401821

 

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/full-interview-with-holocaust-historian-deborah-lipstadt-1.401823

2012: In “Martin Baron’s Plan to Save The Washington Post” Paul Starobin described the plans that “a bespectacled and scruffily bearded Jewish boy from Tampa” for the “hometown” newspaper of the nation’s movers and shakers.

https://newrepublic.com/article/111173/martin-barons-plan-save-washington-post-invest-metro-coverage

 

2012: Monni Must, acclaimed photographer and author of Living Witnesses: Triumph Over Tragedy, a portrait book trilogy that captures the lives and experiences of over 400 Holocaust survivors is scheduled to appear at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

2012: The Third Israeli-Russian & International Russian Émigré Film Festival sponsored by the Russian American Cultural Center is scheduled to take place in New York City.

2012: The last performance of “Bad Jews” a comedy by Joshua Harmon is scheduled to have its final performance at the Roundabout Underground’s Black Box Theater. (As reported by Charles Isherwood)

http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/theater/reviews/bad-jews-by-joshua-harmon-at-black-box-theater.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1355555428-UQjruELeAnQVgzDPmgbmuw


2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World by Howard Pollack and The Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon

2012: Rabbi Shaul Praver of Temple Adath Israel in Newtown is scheduled to officiate at the funeral of six year old Noah Pozner, the first grader who was the youngest person killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School

2012: “Amour” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2012: The JCNVV is scheduled to present a performance of “Clever Rachel,” a Moses Goldberg’s dramatic adaptation of a book by Debby Waldman.

 

2012:Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman formally submitted his resignation from the government to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this morning, ending a turbulent term as the country’s top diplomat.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/avigdor-liberman-resigns-as-foreign-minister-to-battle-breach-of-trust-case/

2013: MoMA is scheduled to host the North American premiere of “Footsteps in Jerusalem.”

 

2013: The San Diego Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host The Holocaust & Churches in Nazi Germany: Examples of Complicity & Resistance

 

2013: Weather permitting, the “Stranger by the Lake” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: IDF Master Sgt. Shlomi Cohen a resident of Afula who was killed “in a cross-border attack” from Lebanon yesterday, was buried in Haifa today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/soldiers-killer-surrenders-to-lebanese-authorities/

 

 

2013: “

 

 

An association of American professors with almost 5,000 members has voted to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli colleges and universities, the group announced today, making it the largest academic group in the United States to back a growing movement to isolate Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/education/scholars-group-endorses-an-academic-boycott-of-israel.html?hpw&rref=us&_r=1&&pagewanted=print

 

2014(24th of Kislev, 5775): In the evening kindle the first Chanukah light.

http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 

2014: Arthur and Shirley Sotloff, the parents of Steven Sotloff, an American-Israeli journalist murdered by the Islamic State in September, are scheduled to celebrate the first night of Hanukah this week by lighting the Chabad center’s outdoor public menorah-lighting in Miami. (As reported by Justin Jalil)

 

2014: The 16th Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to start today.

 

2014: In Coralville, IA Agudas Achim is scheduled to host a Chanukah Party – the last one under the leadership of Rabbi Jeff Portman.

 

2014: US Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to assist in the lighting this year of the Hanukkah menorah on the ellipse in front of the White House. (As reported by JTA)

 

2014: Police arrested Benzi Gopstein, “the head of extreme anti-assimilation group Lehava” and nine others this morning “amid suspicion’s that they incited violence and acts of terror. (As reported by Stuart Winer)

 

2014: Israel’s channel 10 news reported tonight that tomorrow, the EU is “temporarily” removing “Hamas from its list of designated terrorist organizations.”

 

2014: “The Central Elections Committee announced today that the budget allocated for the March 17 elections would stand at NIS 242 million ($62.04 million), NIS 5 million ($1.28 million) less than for the run-up to the polls in January 2013.”

 

2014: American actress Sarah Silverman is scheduled to attend the 16th Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival

 

2015(4th of Tevet, 5776): On the Jewish calendar “Yahrzeit of Rabbi Joshua Isaac Shapira, a leader of 19th century European Jewry known by the nickname Reb Eisele Charif.”

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_4.html

 

2015(4th of Tevet, 5776): On the Jewish calendar Yahrzeit of HaRav Moshe Zev of Bialystock, zt”l, author of Marot Hatzovot and Agudat Aizov and “the founder of Gemilat Chassadim Beit Medrash, Bialystok’s most prominent Torah center.”

 

2015: It was reported today that “the billionaire casino magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson is behind the mysterious purchase of The Las Vegas Review-Journal for $140 million”

 

2015: Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host a screening of “Stateless” a moving about Soviet Jews who were stranded in Italy in 1988 “followed by a Q&A with Producer/Director Michael Drob and Kiev-born human rights and LGBTQ activist Yelena Goltsman, who stars in the film.”

2016: Today “a busload of East Midwood members and at least 500 other people filled the auditorium of the 1 Police Plaza to honor EMJC’s Rabbi Emeritus, Dr. Rabbi Alvin Kass, the legendary Chief Chaplain of the NYPD, on his 50 years of service.

http://www.emjc.org/honoring-rabbi-emeritus-dr-rabbi-alvin-kass-50-years-service-nypd/

 

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 be shown for the last time at the Cinema Village.

2016: Today, King Mohammed VI of Morocco at the rededication ceremony of the Ettedgui Synagogue in Casablanca, Morocco,

2016: The Skirball Center is scheduled to host Human Rights Shabbat with “civil rights advocate Roberta Kaplan, who represented Edie Windsor in “the landmark Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor that resulted in DOMA being declared unconstitutional.”

2017: In London, JWE3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Menashe,” the first Yiddish-language feature film that has been made in several years.

2017(28th of Kislev, 5778): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah;

2018: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a talk by Kindertrasnport “Kid” Ruth Barnett who “was four years old when she arrived in Britain with her brother.”

2018: The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines is scheduled to host a screening of “1945” the award winning movie that tells the story of “two Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who arrive in a Hungarian village in August 1945, and the paranoid reactions of the villagers, some of whom fear that these and other Jews are coming to reclaim Jewish property.”

2018: In London, “Artist-in-residence Tommy Berry” is scheduled to work in the gallery space creating works based on the survival story of Kindertransport survivor, Bea Green and her son Paul Green” at the Jewish Museum.

2018: “Jonathan Brent, Executive Director and CEO of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, is scheduled to speak about the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections Project, begun in 2015, to conserve and digitize YIVO's entire prewar library and archival collections located in NYC and Vilnius, Lithuania, reuniting them through a dedicated web portal.

2018: “With Israelis bracing for expected consumer price increases” and “proposed cuts to the Welfare Budget, it was reported by “Latet” that there are more than two million Israelis including a million children defined as poor, a number which differs with the National Insurance Institute’s findings by approximately one half million. (As reported by Telem Yahav)

2018: In a sign of the time moment, in Cedar Rapids Temple Judah is scheduled to host a member of the CRPD who will “conduct safety awareness training, including active shooter training.”

2018: Jewish Silk Road Tours Inc. in partnership with Bukharian Jewish Congress of USA and Canada, Center for Traditional Music and Dance are scheduled to host a walking tour of several neighborhoods in Queens, NY that will include a visit to the Bukharian Jewish Museum to increase understanding of the Silk Road and Burkharian Jewish culture and as lunched catered by the Bukharian Restaurant.

2019: In London, JW 3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Citizen K.”

2019: The Streicker Center is scheduled to “a conversation with Andrea Bocelli” during he will talk about “the man, the artists” and “the music.

2019: The Sonoma County Jewish Community Center is scheduled to host the “Friendship Circle Chanukah Party.”

2019: Award winning pianist Roman Rabinovich is scheduled to perform with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church.

2019: It was reported today that Israeli boutique hotel chain Brown, together with IT Company Aman Group, has won a tender to open a hotel at Ben Gurion Airport.

2020(1st of Tevet, 5781): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

2020: This evening the Jewish Federation of the Corridor is scheduled to host an Iowa-wide candle lighting on Zoom which is designed to connect communities across Iowa from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River in a lighting of the Chanukah candles!

2020: The Illinois Holocaust Memorial is scheduled to host “Coffee with a Survivor” – Eric Balustein who “will discuss why he swapped identities with another inmate at Buchenwald - and how he endured the camp.”

 

2020: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host Caludia Mendoza, the Joint CEO of the Jewish Leadership Council as part of its 8 Digital Nights of Hanukah

2020: The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present “Movie Night” with a screening of “The Hebrew Hammer.”

2020: Temple Etz Chaim is scheduled to present online, “The Hanukkah Story Today: The Ways the Hanukkah Story Speaks to Us Now” which is part of the Metrowest Boston celebration of the holiday.

2020: Several San Francisco Bay Area JCCS are scheduled to host online “Theodore Bikel’s The City of Light” in  which Aimee Ginsburg Bikel talks about her late husband’s life and singing-acting career,  and the couple’s book, which is anchored by a childhood Hanukkah story Theodore wrote shortly before his death” as well as “a rare Hanukkah recording by Bikel.”

2020: Young Jewish Columbia is scheduled to host its Chanukah Program.

2020: B’nai Jeshurun with the help of ATI is scheduled to bring back a fun-filled evening of trivia prizes for Hanukkah.

2020: “This year’s Festival des Andalousies-Atlantiques which will be virtual with the Festival’s original dynamic and world-class artists” is scheduled to end this afternoon.

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host a Lunch and Learn with Rabbi Feviel Strauss who will be discussing Theodor Herzl as part of the Great Jewish Leaders series.

2020: Israelis awaken to a mixed bag of news on the Pandemic front including the reassuring reports that vaccine distribution will begin at several hospitals this Sunday and the cautionary report that  Israel may have to tight coronavirus restrictions to “prevent another general lockdown as cases surge nationwide.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 17, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 17

520 BCE (24th of Kislev): “The foundation-stone of the Temple was laid” (As reported by Jewish Encyclopedia)

630: Modestus of Jerusalem who replaced Zacharias as Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem when the latter was killed following destruction of Jerusalem by Chosroes II passed away today.  (Editor’s note – the conquerors come and go but Jerusalem remains the City of Daivd)

1141 (Tevet, 4902): After leaving Cairo, Jehuda Halevi arrived at the port of Damietta where he was warmly received by his old friend Abu Said Chalfon.

1261: 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” was “created” as a Cardinal by Urban IV

1187: Gregory VIII, the Pope who called for the disastrous Third Crusade, passed away. Each of the crusades was a disaster for the Jewish people in way or another.  On top of everything else, the Third Crusade removed the protective hand of King Richard from England and left the Jews to suffer under the anti-Semitic Prince John.

1398: Tamerlane, also known as Timur, defeated the armies of Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud's in Delhi.This battle was part of the war between the Persians and the Mongols.  According to one source, Timur brought Persian Jews to his kingdom so that they could help develop the textile industry.  For more on this subject see Tamerlane and the Jews by Michael Shterenshis

1489: Today Italian rabbi, Obadiah ben Abraham Bartenura wrote that “he had moved to Hebron where he found the atmosphere much more conducive, and a small Jewish community numbering some twenty households who were of a better temperament than those in Jerusalem, and where they lived along one alleyway.”

1490: Yucef Franco went on trial today charged with “trying to attract conversos to Judaism as well as having participated in the ritual crucifixion of a Christian child on Good Friday.”

1531: A Bull was issued by Pope Clement VII establishing the Inquisition in Portugal. Frei Diogo da Silva was made Inquisitor General.

1538: Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII of England. Henry had reportedly sought support from Italian rabbis in making the Biblical case for his annulment.  The Italian Jews were fearful of the Pope among whom they lived than they were of a distant monarch who did not let Jews live in his kingdom.  The excommunication led to a weakening of the Church and the strengthening of the Protestant Reformation which helped to contribute to the Jews return to England in the 17th century.

1595: In Lima, Peru, ten people were accused of violating the law by practicing the Jewish religion including Francisco Rodriguez who was later burned at the stake.

1600: King Henry IV of France married Marie de' Medici. She is most famous as the mother of Louis XIII in whose name she reigned for seven years as Queen Mother and regent.  During that time she defied the ban on Jews living in France by retaining Elijah Montalto as court physician. To gain his services Marie agreed to let him practice his religion and not to have to work on Shabbat.  When Louis came of age he reverted to the practice of his predecessors and reaffirmed the ban on Jews living in his kingdom.

1651: “A forced of more than 1,000 Barbadian militia” under the command Francis Willoughby, under whose leadership a group of Sephardic Jews migrated to Suriname” were defeated in clash with pro-Parliament forces.

1651: When a seven ship fleet arrived off the coast of Barbados today and demanded it surrender, the island’s governor, Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, under whose leadership a group of Sephardic Jews migrated to Suriname in 1652 and “settled in the Jodensavanne area” refused saying “he knew of no supreme authority over Englishman except the King” and announced his plans to resist.

1728: Congregation Shearith Israel purchased a lot on Mill Street in lower Manhattan, to build New York's first synagogue.

1762(1st of Tevet, 5523): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1767(26th of Kislev, 5528): Second Day of Chanukah

1773(3rdof Tevet, 5534): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1775(24thof Kislev, 5536): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1775: Moses Dobruška a cousin of Jacob Frank, the founder of the Frankist sect, “converted from Judaism to the Catholic faith and took the name of Franz Thomas Schönfeld.”

1778(28thof Kislev, 5539): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1787: Birthdate of Amsterdam native Roseanna Linderman, the wife of Levi Abrahams and the mother of their Philadelphia born children, Hester and Maria Abrahams.

1789: Birthdate of Bavaria native Isaac Nordlinger, the husband of Eugenie Schweizer and the father of Wolf, Rosali, Fredricka, Bernhard and Marie Nordlinger, all of whom were born in Alsace.

1791(21st of Kislev, 5552):Chief Rabbi David Tevele Schiff passed away. He was the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and the rabbi of the Great Synagogue of London from 1765 until his death. He was the son of Solomon Schiff, member of a famous and learned family from Frankfurt am Main. Tevele Schiff was educated in the schools of Rabbis Jacob Poper and Jacob Joshua Falk. He served as maggid in Vienna. He also was head of the Beth Midrash in Worms, and later Dayan in Frankfurt.

1792(2ndof Tevet, 5553): Eighth day of Chanukah

1792: Lilie Marx and Samuel Strauss gave birth to their daughter Sprinz Strauss.

1792(2ndof Tevet, 5553): According to Gotthard Deutsch, this was the day on which “Teble Schiff, the rabbi of London” passed away.  (Editor’s note – any help will be greatly appreciated in resolving the discrepancy)

1794(25thof Kislev, 5555): First day of Chanukah

1794:William Moultrie who n 1794, during his final year in office, Moultrie attended the consecration of Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, SC, completed his second term in office as Governor of South Carolina.

1796: Birthdate of Charleston, SC native Judith Hyams, the wife of London native Henry Hyams with whom she had eight children and who, like her husband, was buried in New Orleans.

1797: Birthdate of Prussian native and London resident Helena Horn, the wife of Lehman Meyer Gluckstein, with whom she had nine children

1800(1stof Tevet, 5561): Sixth Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet is observed for the first time in the 19th century.

1806: Birthdate of German historian Theodor Hirsch who like a certain segment of Jewish society at this time converted to Christianity in order to further his career and/or gain greater social acceptance.

1807: In Charleston, SC, Caroline Lazarus and Aaron Phillips gave birth to Philip Phillips a lawyer who served as Representative from Alabama’s First Congressional District before the American Civil War.

1808:Today, “a central consistory for the Jews in Holland was authorized by royal decree.”

1809(10thof Tevet, 5570): Asara B’Tevet

1809: In Columbia, SC, Rebecca Phillips and Isaiah Moses gave birth to Hannah Moeses.

1819: Simón Bolívar declared the independence of the Republic of Gran Colombia in Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar in Venezuela). Jews served in Bolivar’s army and provided him with the financial backing that was necessary for his ultimate success.

1821(23rdof Kislev 5582): Thirty-six year old Grace Mendes Seixas, the daughter or Richea Hart and Abraham Seixas who were married in Charleston in 1777, passed away today.

1822(3rdof Tevet, 5583): Joseph Aguilar the husband of his first cousin Grace Aguilar and the grandfather of author Grace Aguilar passed away today.

1823: Solomon Levitt married Ann Isaacs at the Great Synagogue today.

1824(26thof Kislev, 5585): Second Day of Chanukah

1824: Birthdate of Parisian native Adolphe Hatzfeld, the son of a goldsmith who obtained a Doctorate in Letters after which he was professor of foreign literature in Grenoble and a professor of rhetoric at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris.

1830: Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Venezuela and Columbia known as the “George Washington of South America” passed away. “Simon Bolivar found refuge and material support for his army in the homes of Jews from Curaçao. Jews such as Mordejai Ricardo and the brothers Ricardo and Abraham Meza offered hospitality to Bolivar as he fought against the Spanish, thus establishing brotherly relations between Jews and the newly independent Venezuelan republic. Several Jews even fought in the ranks of Bolivar's army during the war.” “The Jews of Curacao became involved with Simon Bolivar and his fight for the independence of Venezuela and Colombia from their Spanish colonizers. Two Jewish men from Curacao distinguished themselves in Simon Bolivar’s army, while another supplied moral and material support to Bolivar, as well as refuge for him and his family.”

1833: In Philadelphia, PA, Benjamin and Harriet Marx Etting gave birth to Frank Marx Etting who became Paymaster of the United States Army during the Civil War.

1832(25thof Kislev, 5593): Chanukah

1836: In Dover, UK, the Dover Telegraph reported that "Mr. Danofsky, of King Street, St James, Westminster, has married Mrs. Hughes, widow of the late Mr. Moses Hughes formerly of Albion Hotel, Dover.”

1837: Three days after he had passed away, Jacob Abrahams, the father of Abraham, Joel, Henry and Naphtali Abrahams, was buried today at the “Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.”

1839(10th of Tevet, 5600): Asarah BeTevet                                                

1839(10thof Tevet, 5600): Joseph Flesch, the son of Abraham Flesch, whose accomplishments included translating the works of Philo into Hebrew, passed away today in his native Moravia.

1839: In Paris, Baron Anselm von Rothschild and Charlotte von Rothschild gave birth to their second son, Ferdinand James Anselm von Rothschild an English politician and art collector, and a member of the prominent Rothschild family of bankers who would pass away exactly 59 years later on his birthday.

1846: In Vienna, Moritz Pollak and Julia Benjamin gave birth to Emile Pollak, the husband of Carrie Benjamin who “came to Cincinnati in 1865” where he became President of the Block-Pollak Iron Company and a leader of the Jewish community as can be seen by his membership on the board of directors of Hebrew Union College and the United Jewish Charities.

1846: Jeaneta Mallan and Kent, England native Joseph Davis gave birth to Rosetta Davis.

1847(10thof Tevet, 5608): Asara B’Tevet

1849: In Washington, D.C. Sarah Ann Hays and Major Alfred Mordecai, the West Point graduate who had commanded the arsenal at Washington, D.C. during the Mexican-American War gave birth to Gratz Mordecai the husband of Frances Kingsland Gifford and author whose works included “Notice of Jacob Mordecai, Found and Proprietor From 1809 to 1818 of the Warrenton, NC Female Seminary” and A Report on the Terminal Facilities for Handling Freight of the Railroads Entering the Port of New York: Especially of Those Railroads Having Direct Western Connections

1851: In Baltimore, MD, Members of the Kaschurn Lodge, No. 3, a Jewish fraternal organization, met with Lajos Kossuth, the exiled Hungarian leader.  They gave him seventy-five dollars.  They also gave him three banners.  The largest one had three full length pictures of Moses, Washington and Kossuth.  Moses represented Asia; Washington represented America and Kossuth represented Europe.  The two smaller banners contained the statement, in both Hebrew and English, “Thy enemies shall come against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways.  In thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

1852: Benjamin Disraeli finished serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer.  He will be replaced by Gladstone.  This is the first of three times that Disraeli will hold this office in the English government.

1852(6thof Tevet, 5613): Jacob Prince was buried in the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery” after he has passed away today.

1857(30thof Kislev, 5618): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth day of Chanukah

1857: Iranistan, a Moorish Revival mansion in Bridgeport, Connecticut designed by the Austrian-American architect Leopold Eidlitz caught on fire tonight.

1859: British political leader Henry Fitzroy, the husband of Hannah Rothschild and the son-in-law of Nathan Mayer Rothschild passed away.

1859: During his sermon at the Greene Street Synagogue, Rabbi Raphall delivered “a fervent appeal on behalf” of the Jews who had been forced to seek refuge at Gibraltar because of the war between Spain and Morocco.  The Jews fled because of their justified fear of attacks by the enraged native population.  Several thousand had been forced to leave all of their possessions behind and were now living in tents provided by the British colonial government and eating food provided by funds from the Jews of England.  The congregation responded by immediately raising several hundred dollars to aid their suffering co-religionists.

1859: It was reported today that “From Austria, amid the echoes of Hungarian dissatisfaction, and Tyrolese boldness, come the reports of promised reform. It is stated as a certain fact that in a few days the Emperor will issue a decree, relieving the Jews from many disabilities under which they now lie. The law which forbade a Jew to have a Christian servant is already repealed; and the emancipated Israelite can now rejoice in the possession of a cook who hasn't a conscientious objection to getting up and making a fire, of a Saturday morning. The expected decree will abolish the old law, by which no one of the three witnesses required for a Christian's will could be a Jew -- a blind provision, which has been the source of more trouble to Christians than Jews. Then the rule, still on the statute-books in Austria, that a Jew's evidence in a civil case against a Christian should be considered as "doubtful," will be done away; as also the present prohibition, which prevents any but a Christian from filling the office of Notary. This last provision is no older than 1855. Before that year Jews were allowed to be Notaries, and it is said that there is a Jewish Notary in Prague, who was appointed under the old law, and holds his office still. It is proper that the Government should concede these rights to an oppressed class; but one cannot but notice how, through these reforms, it hopes to escape more pressing and important demands from its subjects. Hungary demands her constitutional rights, and the Emperor grants a couple of reforms to Venice. Tyrol desires her ancient and guaranteed privileges, and he emancipates the Jews at Prague! No matter -- the day is coming

1860(4thof Tevet, 5654): Seventy-year old Hanna Bodenheimer, the widow of Emanuel Bodenheimer passed away today after which she was at the Durbach Jewish Cemetery in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

1860(4thof Tevet, 5654): Seventy-nine year old Bella Seixas, the Newport, RI born daughter o Johabed Levy and Moses Mendes Seixas passed away today.

1860: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Henry S. Jacob officiated at the weeding of Daniel S. Hart and Priscilla Lopez, “the only daughter of David Lopez.”

1860: “Affairs in France” published today described the conflict between the French Empress and Achille Fould, the Jewish financier and political leader whom she used to value as an advisor.  The Empress has changed her view of Fould due to the influence of the Catholic clergy.  Fould is not bothered by the possible loss of the Pope’s temporal power while the clergy and the Empress are greatly distressed by such a possibility. It is rumored that the Empress has said she will not return from England until Fould has been dismissed from office.

1862(25thof Kislev, 5623): Chanukah

1862: Birthdate of Bagdad native Madelien Ellis, the wife of Ellis Ezekiel Isaac Ellis, who, like her husband would be buried in China.

1862: Birthdate of Moriz Reosenthal, the native of Lemberg who became a world renowned pianist and composer.https://www.amazon.com/Moriz-Rosenthal-Word-Music-Nineteenth/dp/0253346606

1862: General Grant, in issuing his infamous Order 11, ordered all "Jews as a class" expelled from his lines. In New York City 7000 Jews marched in protest against his decision. Lincolnrescinded his order.  Grant never explained the order.  Grant had shown something of a nativist streak in the 1850’s when he reportedly supported the Know Nothing Party.  As President, Grant maintained cordial relations with Jewish leaders.  After leaving the Presidency, Grant lent his name to petitions protesting the treatment of Russian Jews and he made a contribution to the newly formed Adas Israel Congregation in its formative years! (For more see When General Grant Expelled the Jews by Jonathan D. Sarna , a “must read” and Jews and the Civil War edited by Johnathan Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn)

1863: Eleven year old Frederic Hymen Cowen gave “his first genuine public recital at the Bijou Theatre of the old Her Majesty’s Opera House.

1864:La belle Hélène (The Beautiful Helen), an operetta by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto co-authored Ludovic Halévy “was first performed at Paris's Théâtre des Variétés” today.

1868: Three days after he has passed away, Joshua Israel Brandon, the son of Abraham Israel Brandon and Emily Ascoli and the husband of Jesse De Symons, was buried today as the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1870: This evening will mark the close of the Hebrew Fair which has been held for several days at the 22nd Regiment Armory in New York City.

1871: Birthdate of Lazarus Goldschmidt, the Lithuanian trained Rabbi who “in 1888 went to Germy and in 1890 entered the /Berlin University…where he devoted himself to the sudsy of Oriental languages” with an emphasis on “Ethiopic.”

1872: In Lebro, Sweden, “architect Emil Victor Langlet and his wife author Clara Mathilda Ulrika Clementine Söderén” gave birth to Swedish publish Valdemar Langlet, who along with his Nina Borovko-Langlet “is credit with saving many Jews” living in Budapest “from the Holocaust by providing Swedish documents saying that these people were waiting for Swedish nationality.”

1873: Birthdate of Vilnius native Hyman Elias Goldstein who gained fame as British magician Horace Goldin.

1874: At today’s meeting of the Board of Alderman in New York, the resolution submitted a t a previous meeting in favor of permitting the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Society to sublet their premises” which is property own by the city “was called up and laid over.”

1875: The three men convicted of killing a Jewish peddler named Abraham Weissburg are scheduled to be executed today in New York.

1875: It was reported today that in the Hebrew Charity Fair’s contest for most popular minister Dr. Einhorn is in first place with 43 votes followed by Dr. Isaacs with 37 votes.  This is just part of the many activities connected with this pre-Chanukah fundraising fair.

1875: P. Nathan Rubenstein was identified as the man who had bought the knife that was used in the murder of Sarah Alexander. The same witness said she had not sold this unique item to Lewis Rubenstein, Nathan’s brother.  Both of the young men are Jewish.

1876: Today’s edition of The Sunday School Helper focuses on Acts xii. 1-11 which described how King Herod killed James “and because he saw it pleased he Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also.” (Editor’s Note – these depictions of the evil Jews persecuting Christians provided the soil from which ant-Semitism has grown.)

1877: In Germany, Joseph and Rosalie Kahn gave birth to Mollie Kahn who in 1906 became Mollie Kahn Fuchs when she married University of Michigan trained civil engineer Walter Mortiz Fuchs, the mother Miriam, Elizabeth and Walter Paul Fuchs.

1878: Garnier and Schaefer will play tonight at the Hebrew Fair in Tammany Hill.[ Garnier and Schaefer were locally famous billiard players and this match must have been part of the fair’s fundraising activities.]

1880: Ernst Henrici delivered a speech propagating his anti-Semitic ideas at the Imperial Hall.

1881(25thof Kislev, 5642): Chanukah

1882: It was reported today that Herr Belchman has come to the conclusion that there are both blond and dark haired people among the Jews living in Western Russia.  Furthermore, they have “narrower chests” and “shorter heads” than their non-Jewish counterparts.

1882: It was reported today that Rabbi Gustav Gottheil had testified before Senators Boy and Browning who are investigating “corner and futures and the effect… they have on commerce and public morals.” The Rabbi said he could not speak about the business aspect of the topic.  But as to the moral implication he cited the Jewish prohibitions against allowing a man who engaged in gambling to serve as a Judge as a witness.  Furthermore, the lure of gambling misled young man and was comparable to putting a stumbling block before the blind.

1883: Madame Fanny Janauschek will appear in tonight’s production of “Zillah, the Hebrew Mother” at the Third Avenue Theatre in New York

1883: A Jewish peddler named Simon Holzman was assaulted and nearly killed near Eatontown, NJ.

1885: Julius C. Koosher, a Russian Jew who came to this country after his business was destroyed in his native land because of his religion and who worked in the United States worked as a land agent but was cheated out the money owed to him by the railroad tycoon Henry Villard, was being held by authorities after having been arrested yesterday for trying to murder 20 prominent Californians and blow up Chinatown

1887: In Chicago, Charles and Mary Haas, gave birth to Rose Alice Alschuler, the child educator and Zionist who was the wife of Alfred Samuel Alschuler, Sr.

https://jwa.org/people/alschuler-rose

1887: Simplicius, a story of the Thirty Years' War, with a libretto by Victor Léon was produced at the Theater an der Wien today.

1888: In Philadelphia, PA, Mat Goldberger went to trail today for the murder last April of Mrs. Annie Schuleberg

1888: The Republican Club of 450 5th Avenue blackballed Benjamin F. Peixotto and James W. Moses this evening

1889(24thof Kislev, 5650): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1889: Mrs. Martin M. Lewis took a leading part in the activities at today’s Hebrew Fair.

1889: A fire broke in a tenement on Eldridge Street that housed several Jewish owned businesses as well as a synagogue and school used by Jewish immigrants from Russia.

1889: Anton Solki, an itinerant Jewish dentist will be arraigned today in Yorkville for having attacked Dr. C.H. de Lamater, after the latter had treated him for a dental problem.  The accused does not remember the attack and can give no reason for having done what he is accused of doing.

1890: The Auxiliary Society of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society is scheduled to host a reception at Terrace Garden this evening.

1891: “Under Cover Of Her Child’s Right” published today described the case of Hannah Bocks a Russian Jewess who will be allowed to stay in the United States because her child was born here and “the law will not permit her to be separated from her child” who is an American by birth.

1891: Alexander Becce, a Russian Jew living in San Antonio, TX filed suit today in Federal court against the Hamburg-American Packet Company for $5,000 in damages after the company refused to honor the tickets it had sold him or to refund his money.

1891(16th of Kislev, 5652): Benedict Zuckermann, an observant German-Jewish mathematician and astronomer passed away today.  He was a colleague of Henrich Graetz and a supporter of Zacharis Frankel.

1892(28thof Kislev, 5663): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1892: Birthdate of American biochemist Edwin Cohn.  In 1940 the hard-driving Harvard biochemist Edwin Cohn broke plasma down into its different proteins — and saved millions of soldiers' lives Most fatalities in World War I occurred not from the direct physical damage of bullet wounds but from loss of blood. In the spring of 1940, as another war seemed inevitable, finding a way to replace lost blood became a medical priority. Edwin Cohn, a Harvard biochemist, took on the problem of breaking down blood plasma to isolate a protein called albumin that could be stored for long periods without spoiling, shipped efficiently and used easily on a battlefield to save lives. Patriotic blood drives yielded whole blood from which a small inventory of albumin had been accumulated by December 7, 1941. It was rushed to Pearl Harbor where it proved enormously successful in the first battlefield setting.  Cohn headed up a government effort to oversee the production of albumin. His work throughout the war to improve the process and the consequent successes of blood products on the battlefield were one of the keys to victory for the Americans in World War II. He passed away in 1953.

1892: Rabbi David Cahn conducted services this morning as Rodeph Shalom continued the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary which included a sermon, delivered in German, by Rabbi Wise entitled “Retrospective Glances” that traced the history of the congregation

1892: In an attempt to exercise better control over the Jews, “the Russian Senate has promulgated a law requiring that Jewish artisans shall only reside in places where official boards of trade exist.”

1892: Samuel Muhr a leading Philadelphia Jewish merchant and Mayer Sulzberger a prominent Jewish Philadelphia lawyer were among the dignitaries who attended a dinner at the Art Club in Philadelphia honoring the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who was also the Chairman of the National Democratic Committee.

1892: The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Rodeph Sholom continues today with services starting at 9:30 a.m.

1893: Birthdate of Erwin Piscator.The German born Piscator has been described as one of the most renowned figures of modern theater famous for his avant-garde productions at the Epic Theater in WeimarBerlin and his innovative contributions to the American stage.

1893: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon on “Shall We Give State Aid to Denominational Schools?” this morning at Temple Emanu-El

1893: In “France and Autocracy” published today Gabriel Monod of The Contemporary Reviews writes “we cannot go on feigning ignorance” of the persecution of the Jews by the “Russian autocratic government.”

1894:  Birthdate of Arthur Fiedler.  Fiedler gained fame as the conductor of the Boston Pops which he turned into an American institution.  He passed away in 1979.

1895: “The Sweat-Shop Problem” published today described the growth of the clothing industry which “has been built up…largely on the cheap labor of poor Jews who have sought refuge here from oppression in other countries.

1895: The New York Life Insurance Company made a donation of $500 to the Hebrew Educational Fair which was conveyed to Oscar Straus in the form of a check from its president, John A. McCall.

1895: Max Schindler was injured today when he tried to stop a fight between Italian and Jewish pushcart peddlers on Essex Street which was being repaved.

1895: In Cincinnati, Louis H. and Ada Landman gave birth to Solomon Landman, the husband of “the former Rita Boehm,” father of Doris, Joan, Louis and Nathan Landman and graduate of the University Cincinnati and Hebrew College who began his rabbinic career B’rith Sholom Temple in Springfield, Il, founded the Hillel Chapter at the University of Wisconsin and was leading Temple Isaiah in Kew Gardens, Queens at the time of his death.

1896: Twenty-four year old Louis A. Strauss, the Chicago born son of Abraham and Ernstina (Leopold) Strauss and holder of Ph.D. from the University of Michigan where he rose to be the Chairman of the English Department married Elsa Riegelman today in New York City.

1897: New Yorkers were contributing to American kolel “incorporated today as ‘The American Congregation, Pride of Jerusalem.’”

1898(4thof Tevet, 5659): On his 59th birthday, Liberal MP Ferdinand James Anselm, Freiherr von Rothschild who had become a British citizen, endowed the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children in Southwark, south London in memory of his wife who had died in childbirth and held leadership position in the Anglo-Jewish community including Warden of the Central Synagogue and Treasurer of the Jewish Board of Guardians passed away today.

1900(25thof Kislev, 5661): First Chanukah of the 20th century

1900: Birthdate of Henry Calechman, who would be buried at B’nai Jacob Memorial Park seventy-seven years later.

1900: British soldier and diplomat Sir Matthew Nathan began serving as the Governor of the Gold Coast.

1900: New buildings were opened on Ellis Island as it returned to operation following fire which had meant that immigrants, including tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants, had been processed at the Barge Office.

1901: Clara and Emil Worms gave birth to Bella Worms who became Bella Adler when she married Leo Adler with whom she had three children – Milton, Gunther and Greta.

1902(17thof Kislev, 5663): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of Louis de Carabajal and his mother Francisca Nuenez “who were burned at the stake in an auto-de-fe in Mexico City in 1596.

1903 (28th Kislev, 5664): On the fourth day of Chanukah The Wright Brothers made their first powered and heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. According to some, the success of the Dayton bicycle men was based on early work by Otto Lielenthal who died during a flight test seven years before.  Arthur L. Welsh, a young Jew from Dayton, was one of the early pilots who were taught to fly by the Wright brothers. When Welsh died in 1912 during a test flight, he was the only pilot employed by Wrights who were close friends as well as his mentors. Finally, Hart O. Berg played a critical role in helping the Wright Brothers promote their aircraft on their first European tour and his wife was one of their first, if not the first woman to fly with the Wrights

1904: T.C. Evans reviewed “he Life of Lord Beaconsfield” by Walter Sichel, a “biographical study of the remarkable man, wit, statesman, novelist, the celebration of whose centenary is now at hand.”

1905: “After weeks of anxious waiting the national committee which is raising the relief fund for the victims of the Russian massacres” today received from “Sir Samuel Montague and Lord Rothschild the first reports concerning the distribution of the $1,000,000 already sent” from the United States and Jews in western Europe.

1905: It was reported today the relief fund for the Jews suffering from the massacres in Russia totaled $1,172,639 including $424 from the “Orthodox Hebrews of Jacksonville, Fla.”

1905: A map published today “shows at a glance where…massacres of the Jews have occurred “in Russia.

1906(30th of Kislev, 5667): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1906: Oscar Straus became the third U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

1907: Over one hundred people who had received invitations from Mrs. Samuel Guggenheim, Mrs. Solomon Schecther, Rabbi J.L. Magnes, Jacob Feschwar, Louis Loeb and Bernard G. Richard attended a meeting tonight at Temple Beth-El where it was decided to form a Society of Jewish Art the purposed of “will be the promotion of all forms of Jewish art.

1908: it was reported today that Oscar S. Straus, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor was among those seated at “the President’s Table” at the Twenty-third Annual Banquet of the Society of New York which was also attended by Otto Kahn and Daniel Guggenheim.

1909: Muslims in Tunis protested when Jews were going to be put under French jurisdiction. Muslims stated that this was discriminatory and a violation of treaties, even though it was the Muslims the French were going to protect the Jews from.

1910(16th of Kislev, 5671): Parashat Vayislach

1910: According to a report today from St. Petersburg, “forty Jewish families will be expelled from Moscow on January 14” because “they do not come with the provisions of the new law recently passed by the Czar permitting Jewish merchants of the first guild and their families to reside in the city and province of Moscow.”

1911: “A bronze memorial tablet to the late Abraham Abraham, the Brooklyn merchant and philanthropist, was unveiled today at the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum at the close of the annual meeting.

1912: In Chicago, Sinai Temple is scheduled to host the Chicago Woman’s Aid for Opera Day this afternoon..

1912: The funeral for Ernest J.D. Rappaport, the eighteen year old son of Rabbi and Mrs. Julius Rappaport is scheduled to take place this afternoon.

1913: Birthdate of American business man Sol Linowitz who served as Chairman of the Board of Xerox Corp and negotiated the return of the Panama Canal.

1913: It was reported today that Judge Leonard S. Roan who had presided over the original Leo Frank trial and refused to grant a new trial “said that he personally was not absolutely convinced of the accused’s guilt or innocence.”

1914(29th of Kislev, 5675): Fifth day of Chanukah

1914: Tulane Medical School graduate Dr. Sidney K. Simon, the New Orleans born son of Charles and Dora (Kohn) Simon and Professor of Gastroenterology married Emma Roos Dreyfous today in New Orleans.

1914: At Clark University, the school’s president gave the after-dinner address at the first banquet of the Menorah Society.

1914: “Albert Lucas, Secretary of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America announced today that he had received a letter from the Secretary of the Jews’ Temporary Shelter in London saying ‘If you can see your way of further assisting us in our extremely heavy outlay by making a grant to our funds you can be sure that the money will be put to the best possible purpose, especially for food and lodging for the Yiddish-speaking and refugees from Belgium.’”

1914: It was reported today that Senator Ellison Smith the South Carolina bigot and racist who was Chairman of the Committee on Immigration expressed his opposition to any change to the immigration laws that might be of benefit of Jews Russia.

1914: In New York, Herbert L. Satterlee “announced that he had completed arrangements with Felix Warburg who was at the head of the committee for the relief of the Jews in Poland, whereby the Polish American Relief Committee and the Polish American Relief Committee and Mr. Warburg’s committee would work in unison in relieving the distress of the Poles.”

1914:  The Turks expelled the Jews of Tel Aviv, sending them to Egypt.  Many of the Jews were native Russians.  Since Russia and Turkey were enemies during World War I, the Turks saw these Russian Jews as potential enemy agents or worse.  

1914: This “afternoon Bedouin police raided the Ghetto at Jaffa, arrested 1,600 persons and drove them at the point of the bayonet” While being forced aboard the already overcrowded Florio, “sever of the men resenting the brutalities to their wives were thrown overboard by boatmen and drowned before the eyes of the women.” (Editor’s note – these Jews were transported to Alexandria where they found temporary refuge at the Hotel Metropole)

1915(10th of Tevet, 5676): Asara B’Tevet

1915(10th of Tevet, 5676): Seventy-one year old Imperial Councilor Adolf Schrmack passed away today in Vienna.

1915: Today “The National Workmen’s Committee on Jewish Rights, a body representing 500,000 Jewish workers organized ‘to assist in obtaining rights for Jews in countries of the present war zone where they are deprived of their rights,’ received a letter …from Samuel Gompers which included a set of resolutions adopted by the American Federation of Labor at its recent convention in San Francisco in which the federation took steps to co-operate with the committee.”

1916: “The Joint Distribution Committee which is led by Chairman Felix M. Warburg and Treasurer Herbert H. Lehman continued to receive “large contributions from all parts of the country” including $5,500 from the Baltimore Committee and $2,000 from the Omaha Committee.

1916: It was reported today that the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War of which Harry Fischel is the Treasurer received $225 from the committee in Sioux City, Iowa, $124 from Rokeach and Sons and $35 from the committee in Marshalltown, Iowa.

1916: At tonight’s annual meet of the Brooklyn Federated Jewish Charities, Edward Lazansky the former Secretary of the State for New York was President of the organization succeeding Benjamin H. Namm who had held the job for the past four years.

1916: Tonight, “a recommendation that the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis representing more than 1,000,000 Jewish in the Eastern and New England States, officially indorse the German peace proposals and a pleas that a federation of synagogues be formed at once to check the spread of Jewish religious indifference were made…by Rabbi Joseph Silverman at Temple Emanu-El in his Presidential message to eighty rabbis assembled for the Autumn conference of the council” which was chaired by Justice Irving Lehman.

1916: Today, 750 person heard a sermon delivered by Rabbi Jesse Bienfeld at the dedication of “Judah Halevi Temple, a $30,000 white brick structure at 106th Street and Morris Avenue” which was atteneded by Judge Otto Rosalsky and Charles Eno.

1916: Felix M. Warburg, the President of the Manhattan Federated Jewish Charities and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise expressed their support for the “amalgamation” of the Brooklyn and Manhattan federations.

1917(2nd of Tevet, 5678): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1917(2nd of Tevet, 5678): Sixty-four year old Julia Matilda Cohen, the daughter of Jacob and Matilda Waley and the wife of Nathaniel Cohen who was the longtime president of the Union of Jewish Women and author whose works included The Children’s Prayer Book…with a Prayer Book for Home Use in Jewish Families, Infants’ Bible Reader and Addresses to Children, passed away today.

1917(2nd of Tevet, 5678): Thirty-six year old Dov Ber Borochov, one of the founding fathers of the Labor Zionist movement, passed away.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Borokhov_Ber

http://streetsofisrael.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-dovberborochov/

1917: Birthdate of Jacob Landau, the native of Philadelphia who gained fame as an artist “known for his evocative works on the human condition and 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.

1917: A newly independent Finland moved to make Jews full-fledged today when “Parliament approved an act concerning ‘Mosaic Confessors’” that made Jews “Finnish nationals.”

1917: “According to the Messaggero, the Pope has addressed a circular to all Bishops in the belligerent countries declaring that if any Christian State aids the Turks in an attempt to retake Jerusalem it will be condemned by the Hoy See.”

1918(14th of Tevet, 5679): Vilna born “Rabbi Isaac Zev Vendrovksky, the author of many works on Jewish law and literature” who in 1895 “went to South America where he was placed in charge of a division of the Baron de Hirsch colonies” before moving to New York in 1900 where became “consulting editor for religious work on the Jewish Daily News” passed away today.

1918: Release date for “Carmen” a 1918 German silent drama film directed by Ernst Lubitsch

1919(25th of Kislev, 5680): Chanukah

1919: In Berlin, “the government is taking measures to prevent any violent outbreak of anti-Semitism” which are opposed by “the Pan German press.”

1920: It was reported today ant one-eighth of the 2,000 students attending the University of Chicago are Jewish.

1920(6th of Tevet, 5681): Seventy-five year old Louise Herschman Mannheimer, the Prague born daughter Joseph Hershman and Katherine Urbach and wife of  Professor Sigmund Mannheimer who gained  fame as the author, contralto and “founder of the Cincinnati Jewish Industrial School for Boys while raising Eugene, Leo, Jennie and Edna Mannheimer

1921(16th of Kislev, 5682): Parashat Miketz

1921: In Chicago, Morton David Cahn, the son of Joseph and Miriam Cahn, and Julia Elizabeth Cahn gave birth to Alan Hofeller Cahn

1922: In “Blindness Waning in Palestine” published today Rabbi Stephen S. Wise described how the British, with the help of the Hadassah society have successful waged war against trachoma.

1923: Early in his career, Sid Terris fought a future Lightweight Boxing Champion “to a ten round draw at Madison Square Garden” in New York City.

1924: Birthdate of Yohai Ben-Nun, the sixth commander of the Israeli Navy.

1925: “An important discovery was made near Jaffa” when “archaeologist unearthed a mausoleum containing a hall, two chambers and a small niche

1926: “Dig Up Jerusalem Walls” published today described the ongoing excavation of “the course of the third wall of the City of Jerusalem” “undertaken by the Hebrew University and the Jewish Archaeological Society under the supervision of Dr. Sukenik.”

1927(23rd of Kislev, 5658): Parashat Vayeshev

1927: It was reported today that Rabbi Edward Lissman of the Riverside Synagogue has said that “Christianity and Judaism traditionally run parallel in the latitudes of human experience and if the ethics of civilization are to be save, let the ideals of the two beliefs predominate in the interests of perpetual righteousness.”

1928: Aaron Copland was part of a group participating in a musical event at the New School for Social Work today.

1928: New York Municipal Court Justice Panken presided over a meeting of the American Ort tonight at the Pennsylvania Hotel where he said today “anti-Semitism runs rampant” in Russia and Nathan Chanin of the Jewish Socialist Federation said “Jewish children were discriminated against in Russian vocational schools” while “Jews were prohibited from buying food in the Soviet cooperatives” which meant they “were obliged to deal directly with farmers who exacted exorbitant prices.”

1929:  In New York City, Oliver C. and Ida Panish Safir gave birth to William Safire.  Unique among the Jews of his generation, Safire was a conservative Republican who was a speech writer for President Nixon.  He spent almost three decades as a political columnist for The New York Times.

1929: In Pensacola, FL, the two-story brick building on East Chase Street which was the home to Temple Beth El whose original building had burned down in 1895 was struck by a devastating fire that “almost completely destroyed the structure.”

1930: According to reports published today, Arabs have failed to stop Jewish settlers from plowing their land at Hedera after they lost a lawsuit designed to keep the land from the Jews.  After the police intervened, the Arabs agreed to await the outcome of the appeal before taking any further action.  The Arabs said that they understood the recently issued White Paper to mean that all land in Palestine belonged to them.

1931: “Tonight or Never,” a comedy directed by Mervyn LeRoy, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, with music by Alfred Newman and co-starring Melvyn Douglas was released in the United States today.

1931: In Manhattan, Blanche and Milton Frankfurt gave birth to Stephen Owen Frankfurt “an advertising executive who helped lead the transformation of television commercials from straightforward sales pitches in the 1950s to sophisticated, art-designed productions”  (As reported by Leslie Kaufman)

1931: The meeting of the World Islamic conference came to an end in Jerusalem.  The conference agreed to deny Jews access to the al-Aksa Mosque as a first step to undermining efforts of the Zionists to live peacefully side by side with their Arab neighbors.  

1933:In today’s Advent sermon Michael von Faulhaber, the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich “spoke to the "People of Israel" about the "Old Testament" and declared "This treasure did not grow in your own garden... this condemnation of usurious land-grabbing; this war against the oppression of the farmer by debt, this prohibition of usury, is certainly not the product of your spirit!". (Editor’s Note: Guenter Lewy concludes: "It, therefore, is little short of falsification of history when Faulhaber's sermons in 1933 are hailed by one recent Catholic writer [Yves Congar] as a 'condemnation of the persecution of Jews)

1934: In Chicago Samuel Petlin, who went from being a cantor to Poland to working in a cleaning plant in the United States and “Rose (Cohen) Petlin” gave birth to painter Irving Petlin who lost at least 49 members of his family in the Holocaust. (As reported by Richard Sanomir)

1935: Based on votes counted so far, Meier Dizengoff trails Laborite Joseph Aronowitz in the Tel Aviv mayoral election held on Sunday.

1936: Governor Herbert H. Lehman is scheduled to deliver the opening address at the Jewish Theological Seminary in what will be the first in a series of programs designed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the institution.

1937:Temple Shaaray Tefila began a weekend of services dedicating their reconstructed sanctuary. The Temple had been the victim of an arsonist’s fire in March necessitating this rebuilding project.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that three Arabs were killed when British troops and police fought a large Arab gang near Tulkarm.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish boy of 16 was killed when a Polish hooligan shot him and threw a bomb at a shop in the village of Czarna, near Warsaw, completely demolishing it. Polish officials were reported to be planning to deport, with French approval, some 30,000 Jewish families, 120,000 persons to Madagascar, within the next six years. France demanded that the refugees be supplied with sufficient capital to make their planned farms profitable.

1938: After almost two weeks of terrorist activities in Haifa during which three Arabs and four Jews have been killed, Haifa enjoyed a third day “of tranquility.”

1939(5thof Tevet, 5700): Fifty-seven year old Congressman William Irving Sirovich passed away today.

http://history.house.gov/People/Detail/21701

1940: Thanks to the efforts of Marge Iverson, the wife of Phillip Iverson, The St, Johnsbury Jewish Woman’s Club held its first meeting in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

1940: Drunken SS guards at the Sachsenhausen labor camp awaken Jews during a frigid night and order them to roll in the snow.

1941: Fifty-six year old Oskar Blumentahl was transported today from Prague to Terezin, the first step on a journey that would lead to his murder in the first month of the New Year.

1941: Presidential Executive Order 8982 created the Board of Economic Warfare among whose employees was Raphael Lemkin the Polish lawyer who created the term “genocide” in 1944.

1941: The slaughter of the Jews of Skede, which began on December 15, came to an end. German security police and Latvian police marched almost three thousand Jews to a ditch, forced them to strip and then shot them in groups of ten.  For those who doubt the truth, Yad Vashem has a photograph that was taken by one of the German or Latvian killers.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/06.asp

1941: German Christian church leaders of Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstei, Anhalt, Thuringia and Lubeck announced that the “severest measures” should be taken against the Jews, who should be expelled from German territories.

1941(27th of Kislev, 5702): Dr. David Dubslo and two of his colleagues died of spotted typhus while treating Gypsies who had been sent to the Lodzghetto.  The Gypsies lived in a special section of the ghetto and had no doctors of their own.

1942: Celebration of the 80th birthday of Moriz Rosenthal.

1942: “Random Harvest,” the film version of the novel with the same name directed by Mervyn LeRoy, with a screenplay co-authored by George Foreschel and filmed by Joseph Ruttenberg was released today United States.

1942: Dr. Samuel Goldenson is scheduled to officiate at the funeral services for David M. Bressler at Temple Emanu-El

1942: The Yishuv announces a 30-day period of mourning to commemorate the tragedy of the Jews in Europe.

1942: Pressure from members of Parliament, from Jewish groups in England, from the Anglican Church, from the British press, and from the Polish government-in-exile persuades the Allied governments to publish their first official recognition of atrocities in Poland. The Allied nations--Great Britain, United States, Soviet Union, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the French National Committee--officially condemn the Nazis'"bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination." They vow to punish those responsible. Several U.S. State Department officials try to block this declaration. All previous and following declarations neglect to mention Jews.

1942: Accepting the United States government’s position that the Jews being massacred by the Germans can be helped only by a total and unconditional Allied victory over Germany, the American press continues to treat the Holocaust as just another war story, and is unwilling to discuss the systematic annihilation of the Jews. Given the Allied governments' knowledge of the Holocaust at this time, waiting until the Allied Armed Forces have achieved a total victory over the Germans indicates that the Allied governments have accepted the probability that the majority of European Jews will be killed before the Germans can be stopped.

1942: Jewish inmates at the labor camp at Kruszyna, Poland, near Radom, attack guards with knives and fists. Six prisoners are killed and four escape.

1942:The Allies issued a statement saying Jews were being taken to tBirkenau, the part of Auschwitz devoted to extermination and killed.

1943 Sixty year old German actress who was forced to divorce her Jewish husband actor Fritz Spira by the Nazis and was the mother of Camilla Spira whom she saved from the Weterbork transit camp (a first stop on the trip to death in the East) and actress Steffie Spira passed away soon after hearing that Fritz had died in a concentration camp in Yugoslaia.

1943: Transport 63 departed with a cargo of French Jews being sent to Nazi-Germany

1943: Jews are executed at Kovno, Lithuania, as reprisal for an escape of several Jews from the ghetto.

1943: Birthdate of Barbara Berman who as Barbara Berman Dobkin, the wife of Eric Dobkin became “the pre-eminent Jewish feminist philanthropist of the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century.”

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/dobkin-barbara

1944(1stof Tevet, 5705): Rosh Chodesh Tevet coincides with the 2nd day of the Battle of the Bulge.

1944: On the second day of the Battle of the Bulge Sergeant Roddie Edmonds who refused to tell the Germans which of his troops were Jewish saying definitely that “We are all Jews here” ate his last meal.

1945(13thof Tevet, 5706): Eighty-year old music publisher, Edward Bennet Marks, the son of Bennet and Pauline (Spero) Marks, the husband of Miriam Chuck with whom he had three children who was a “member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Council for Coordination Industry” and the President of the highly successful Edward B Marks Music Corporation whose works included “Kaddish of My Ancestry” passed away today.

1945: U.S. Senate votes for Wagner-Taft resolution calling for free entry of Jews into Palestine and establishment of Jewish commonwealth. Wagner is Senator Robert Wagner, a New York liberal Democrat. Taft is Senator Robert Taft a conservative Republican from Ohio.  This shows the bipartisan support the measure had.

1945: Birthdate of Novisibrsk native Ariye (Arik) Paz (Feingold) who parents Zelda and Simcha immigrated to Israel in 1948 where he served on the Submarine Dakar which was lost on January 25, 1968 at the age of 22.

1946: With the assistance of Rabbi Louis Gerstein, Rabbi David de Sola Pool of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue conducted the funeral service for 84 year old “American social worker, labor activist and suffragist” Maud Nathan whose prominent relations included Emma Lazarus and Justice Benjamin Cardozo” followed by a burial at the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens.

1946: Sylvia Fine and Danny Kaye gave birth to their daughter Dena,https://parade.com/234327/scottneumyer/dena-kaye-remembers-her-father-during-danny-kayes-centennial-celebration/

1946: Land purchases and budgetary matters were discussed at a meeting of the World Zionist Congress.

1946: Birthdate of Hamilton, Canada native Eugene Levy the writer and comedic actor is best known to Americans for his role in “American Pie.”

1947: Birthdate of Russian violinist Zakhar Bron.

1947: Birthdate of Eddie Antar who was the cofounder of the electronics retail chain Crazy Eddie, Inc. He fled to Israelin February, 1990 to avoid. Later, he was extradited and convicted of securities fraud and racketeering.

1947: Birthdate of New York City native and holder of Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard, Alan Jeffrey “Jerry” Nussbaum, the professor of Indo-European linguistics, and the Greek and Latin languages at Cornell University and husband of philosopher Professor Martha Nussbaum.

1947: In the face of mounting violence and fearing that worse was to come, the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem opened a blood bank with goal of producing 1000 doses of plasma.

1947: The U.S. State Department expressed its fears that the Soviet Union is supplying arms to both sides of the Palestine conflict.

1947: The Arab League Council announced it will stop the proposed partition of Palestine by force and begins raids on the Jewish communities in Palestine.

1947: The State Department reported that the Arab League Council had begun buying weapons to implement its policy of thwarting the partition of Palestine.

1947: Moshe Shertok, Jewish Agency political head, charges that British are obstructing partition and that British administration does not protect Jews from Arab attacks, yet they prevent Jews from defending themselves. Dr. Nahum Goldmann,

1947: The Jewish Agency executive, reports Jewish plans for Swiss-like neutrality.

1947: Pinchas Ben-Porat, a pilot with Sherut Avir, the air arm of Haganah, boarded his single engine RWD-13 and flew a medical doctor to the small town of Beit Eshel.

1947: After completing his flight to Beit Eshel, “Ben-Porat was assigned a support role to Nevatim, a Jewish settlement in the Negev desert. When Nevatim came under attack by Arab irregulars, Ben-Porat flew an RWD 13 or Auster to Nevatim. Upon arriving, he removed the right door of the plane and set up a Bren gun and gunner with several hand grenades. Ben-Porat and his gunner flew a half-hour of close air support. The tactic was emulated by many Jewish pilots and crew in the Israeli War of Independence.” Once he completed that leg of the mission Ben-Porat was supposed to fly to Nevatim, but learning that 200 Arabs were assaulting it, he removed the doors of his aircraft to install a Bren Gun, and with a volunteer gunner and some hand grenades, took off for the village

1948: Four thousand, one hundred Jews set sail from Yugoslavia for Israel.

1949: Today marked the final performance of the original Broadway production of “Regina” a Mrc Blitzstein opera based Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” conducted by Maurice Abravanel, choreographed by Anna Sokolow and starring Brenda Lewis “Birdie.”

1950: Actress Ruth Roman, the daughter of Lithuanian-Jewish parents, married Mortimer Hall.

1951: In Chicago, Bernard Meltzer, “a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials” and his wife gave birth to Daniel Julius Meltzer, the Harvard Law School Professor who was an adviser to President Obama.

1952:According to a report issued today by Moshe Kol, co-treasurer of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and chairman of the Youth Aliyah management committee in Israel twenty million dollars has been expended by Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, on its Youth Aliyah (youth immigration) activities in Israel in the last eighteen and a half years.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the new Mapai-General Zionists coalition won 73 seats in the Knesset.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that in New York, more than 19,000 persons, attending the Hanukkah Festival of Lights, at the MadisonSquareGarden, purchased $2,575,000 worth of Israel Bonds.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that officers and men of the Jerusalem Area Police Force contributed IL 136 to the Post's Hanukkah Toy Fund, the largest amount given by any organized group of workers, and assisted the newspaper's volunteers in the distribution of toys and sweets in the Jerusalem Corridor's outlying ma'abarot.

1953(11thof Tevet, 5714): Seventy-four year old Carrie Davidson, “a founder of the National Women’s League of the United Synagogue of America,” “the editor for 24 years of The Women’s League Outlook” and the widow of “Dr. Israel Davidson, the Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature at JTS” with whom she raised two daughter passed away today after a week long illness.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/davidson-carrie-dreyfuss

1956: In London, Conservative politician Nigel Lawson, and his first wife socialite Vanessa Salmon gave birth to journalist Dominic Lawson

1956: Time magazine “panned" Jewish playwright’s “Night of the Auk” saying “that a good case of actors…were unhappily squandered on a pudding of a script…that sounded like cosmic advertising copy.”

1958: In Cedar Rapids, IA, George and Joyce Skinner gave birth to Kevin Skinner, a loyal member of Temple Judah.

1959: “The fourth Knesset started with David Ben-Gurion's Mapai party forming the ninth government” today.

1959:Haim-Moshe Shapira replaced Israel Bar-Yehuda as Internal Affairs Minister.

1959:Yisrael Barzilai completed his term in office as Communications Minister.

1959: Rabbi Ya'akov Moshe Toledano returned to his position as Minister of Religions.

1959: Violinist Isaac Stern and his wife gave birth to symphony conductor Michael Stern.

1960(28thof Kislev, 5721): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1960(28thof Kislev, 5721): Fifty-nine year old Bella Weretnikow Rosenbaum, the first Jewish female attorney in the state of Washington, passed away today.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jun/06/1901/bella-weretnikow

1960: After 488 performances the curtain came down on “Take Me Long” a musical whose book was co-authored by Joseph Stein and with lighting by Jean Rosenthal.

1962(20thof Kislev, 5723): Latvian born “Hebrew and Yiddish author,” Simon Gerson Bernsteinn, the holder of Ph.D. from the University of Berne who came to the United States in the early 1920’s where he was an active Zionist and a member of the National Executive Committee of the American Jewish Congress passed away today in NYC.

1963(1stof Tevet, 5724): Seventh Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet observed for the first time during the Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson

1964: At the Terrace Room of the Plaza, “Rabbi Moshay Mann” officiated at the marriage Miss Elissa Pamela Landau, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Gustave J. Laudau” and “Barry Steven Glassman, son of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Glassman.”

1964: Nobel Prize winner Victor Francis Hess passed away.  A native of Austria, the non-Jewish Hess fled his native country because his wife was Jewish.

1964:Dr. Luther L. Terry, Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, announced today the Dr. Stanley F. Yolles, the husband of Dr. Tamarath K. Yoles, has been named director of the National Institute of Mental Health and Assistant Surgeon General of the Public Health Service.

1965(23rdof Kislev, 5726): Seventy-three year old Louis Cohen, the acting Postmaster of the Bronx who made a career as functionary in the Democratic party starting with Mayoral election of 1913 and the husband of “the former Belle Lazarus and father of Robert and Joseph Lazarus, passed away today.

1965: AstronomerDavid H. Levy began his search for comets.

1966: “El Dorado” a western co-starring James Caan was released today in Japan.

1966: Birthdate of Aryeh Judah Schoen Nusbacher, the New York native who “became a Senior Lecturer at Sandhurst, a captain in the Territorial Guard and Baal Koreh at the Guilford Synagogue” and who has been Lynette Nusbacher “since her gender change in 2007.”

1967(15thof Kislev, 5728): Seventy-nine year old University of Berlin trained economist and health educator Savel Simand the Rumanian born son of Morris and Marie Kauffman who in 1913 came to the United States where he wrote for the New York Times, lectured at Yale, Harvard and Columbia while serving as the “administrative director of the Bellevue-Yorkville Health Demonstration and director of public education for the New York City Health Department passed away today,

1968(26thof Kislev, 5729): Second day of Chanukah

1968: It was reported today that the announcement of the rescinding of the order of expulsion of the Jews by Ferdinand and Isabella took on an additional significance because it also marked “the opening of the first synagogue built in Spain in 600 years.

1969: A planned attack by two British national on an El Al plane in London was “forestalled” today.

1970: “Alex in Wonderland” a comedy directed and written by Paul Mazursky and featuring future Oscar winner Michael Lerner was released today in the United States.

1970(19thof Kislev, 5731): Seventy two year old Aiken, SC native and University of South Carolina trained attorney Benet Polikoff, Sr, “a partner in the New York law firm of Polikoff and Clareman” passed away today.

1972: Release date for “Avanti!” a comedy produced and directed by Billy Wilder with a screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A. L. Diamond.

1972: “The chairman of the Jew ish Agency, Louis A. Pincus, said today that this year 56,000 new settlers arrived in Israel, 30,000 of whom came from the Soviet Union.”

1972: “The Heartbreak Kid” a comedy directed by Elaine May, written by Neil Simon and Bruce Jay Friedman and co-starring Charles Grodin and Jeannie Berlin was released in the United States today.

1973: Arab terrorist killed 32 passengers when they tried to attack a Pan American jet at the Rome airport.

1973(22ndof Kislev, 5734): Ninety-two year old Belle May Loewenstein, the Cleveland born daughter Ameilia and Nahum Hexter and the wife of Moses Lowenstein and Solomon Emanuel Ullman (not at the same time) passed away today in Richmond, VA.

1973: At the Rome airport Arab terrorist hijacked a Lufthansa jet and flew to Kuwait 12 live and one dead hostages were released and the Kuwaitis released the terrorist to the PLO after refusing to extradite them to Italy.

1974(3rdof Tevet, 5735): Seventy-three year old Estonian born award winning of University of Pennsylvania trained architect Louis Isadore Kahn, passed away today.

https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/21829

1974: Birthdate of super chef Duff Goldman.

1974: Release date for “Front Page,” the cinematic adaptation of Ben Hecht’s play made possible by the writing team of I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder who also served as the director, starring Walter Matthau and featuring Harold Gould as “The Mayor” and Allen Garfield as “Kruger.”

1975: Irene Shubik produced “Rumpole of the Bailey” broadcast today on “Play for Today.”

1976(25thof Kislev, 5737): First Day Chanukah celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Gerald Ford

1977: “Capricorn One” a Mars based mystery directed by Peter Hyams, with music by Jerry Goldsmith and starring Elliot Gould was released in Japan today.

1978: Channel 2 (WCBS) broadcasts “Lamp Unto My Feet – Chanukah in Romania” at ten o’clock this morning.

1978(17thof Kislev, 5739): Ninety-two year old University of Pittsburgh trained lawyer and the “11th national President of the American Jewish Committee” passed away today.

1978(17th of Kislev, 5739: Eighty-year old Irving Jacobson, a star of the Yiddish theatre who made the successfully transition to the world of American film and legitimate theatre passed away today.

1979: CBS broadcast the first episode of “House Calls,” a sit com that included Richard Lewis playing Dr. Leon Promethesu.

1980(10thof Tevet, 5741): Asar B’Tevet

1982: “Tootsie,” starring Dustin Hoffman, with a script by Larry Gelbart, Murray Schisgal, Barry Levinson and Elaine May was released today in the United States.

1982: In the U.K. and U.S. opening of Frank Oz’s “The Dark Crystal.”

1982: “Best Friends” with a script by Barry Levinson and co-starring Goldie Hawn and Ron Silver was released in the United States today by Warner Brothers.

1982: Israeli born cellist Ofra Harnoy, a winner of the 1982 Concert Artists Guild Award, made her debut this evening at the Carnegie Recital Hall at the age of 17.

1984: Three people were injured when terrorists hurled grenades at a Tel Aviv bus stop.

1985: Yale Laws School graduate Stanley Sporkin, the Philadelphia born son of the former Ethel Weiner and Judge Maurice Sporkin, began serving as a Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

1986: “The Name of the Rose” a medieval murder mystery featuring Ron Perlman as “Salvatore” and Elya Baskin as “Severinus” was released in France today.

1988: Abdeen Jabara, the 45-year-old president of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, an American citizen, was barred from entering Israel today.  According to a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry the decision was based on Jabara’s record which includes “activities as a lawyer defending terrorists, attempts to prevent the collection of money for Israel, trying to legally prevent the entry of Prime Minister Shamir into the U.S., and an F.B.I. investigation against him.''

1989: The New York Times reviewed “Birth Power: The Case for Surrogacy” by Israeli lawyer Carmel Shalev.

1989: The first episode of “The Simpsons” whose developers included James L. Brooks and Sam Simon was broadcast today.

1991(10th of Tevet, 5752): Asara B'Tevet

1992: As violence from Palestinian terrorist escalated 415 terrorist leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were flown to Israel’s northern border and deported to Lebanon. 

1992: At the Apollo Theater in Harlem, another screening of “Liberators,” directed by Williams Miles and Nina Rosenblum, was held before an audience of 1,200 prominent Jews and blacks, hosted by three influential politicians: Congressman Charles Rangel, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and Jesse Jackson. Elie Wiesel, who didn’t appear in the film, sent a videotaped message of support, and the event was broadcast on WNET. (As reported by Mark Schulte)

1993: Today Judith Rodin became the first graduate of the University of Pennsylvania to serve as the president of that school and she became the first woman to serve as president of an Ivy League university.

1993(3rdof Tevet, 5754): Fifty year old actress Janet Margolin lost her battle with ovarian cancer and passed away today.

1993: “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” a comedy directed, produced and written by Mel Brooks and co-starring Richard Lewis was released in France today.

1994: In Los Angeles, “jazz pianist Michael Wolff and actress Poll Draper” gave birth to actor and music Nathaniel Marvin Wolff, the older brother of singer/songwriter Alex Wolff.

1995(24thof Kislev, 5756): Kindle the First Chanukah Candle

1995:”Vatican Reaffirms Its Policy on Jerusalem” published today takes issued with Leah Rabin’s description of the Pope’s comments about the Israeli capital city.

1995: The New York Times featured a review of the recently published paperback edition of Yehoshua Kenaz’s The Way To The Cats, an “Israeli novel that presents old age with all its ravages” as seen through the life of its protagonist “Yolanda Moscowitz, 76, who is recuperating from a broken leg in a rehabilitation center in Tel Aviv, where she hopes that her dignity won't go the way of her beauty.

1996(7th of Tevet, 5757): Song writer Irving Caesar passed away.  Born in 1895, he was originally known as Isidor Caesar.  He wrote lyrics for "Swanee,""Sometimes I'm Happy,""Crazy Rhythm," and "Tea for Two," one of the most frequently recorded tunes ever written.

1966: “Unlike Agnel” a Christmas made-for-television movie featuring Eli Marienthal as “Matthew” was broadcast for the first time by CBS.

1997: “Wag the Dog,” a dark, political satire directed and co-produced by Barry Levinson, with a screenplay co-authored by David Mamet and starring Dustin Hoffman premiered today at Century City.

1998:Parade,” “a musical with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown” “premiered on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.”

1999: “Sunshine” a marvelous film that traces a Hungarian Jewish family for five generations from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution began a limited opening in three Canadian cities.

1999: “Stuart Little” a film version of the novel by the same name directed by Rob Minkoff was released today in the United States.

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boomby Bob Woodward, Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision by Louis Breger, Schmidt Deliveredby Holocaust survivor Louis Begley and Sex and Power by Susan Estrich.

2000: In “A Haunting Legacy in Provence” published today Michael Frank provides a brief informative view of the history of a French Jewry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/travel/a-haunting-legacy-in-provence.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2001(2ndof Tevet, 5762): Ninety-four year old Jeanne Mandello the Jewish photographer who fled from Germany and France to escape the Nazis and who finally found refuge in Uruguay passed away today.

http://jeannemandello.com/about-part-10-her-work/

2002: The money that South African businessman Cyril Kern had lent to the campaign of Ariel Sharon was returned to him today.

2003: It was reported today that “Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters” will honor “Mark Canton with the Sydney J. Rosenberg Lifetime Achievement Award at the 12th Annual Dinner & Auction Gala” being held at the Century Plaza Hotel next month.

2004: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon struck a deal today with the opposition Labor Party to join his Likud government, which is likely to ensure that Mr. Sharon can carry out his plan to dismantle all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and four small ones in the West Bank.”

2005: On SNL, Andy Samberg co-starred in the Digital Short "Lazy Sunday", a nerdcore hip hop song performed by two Manhattanites on a quest to see the film The Chronicles of Narnia.

2006: Sir Arnold Wesker, the Jewish dramatist was the castaway on Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4

2006: The Times of London names Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (translated by Sandra Smith) as number one on its list of “The Best Books of 2006.” This recently discovered volume written by a French Jewish author describes life in France in the early days of World War II.  The book was written as Nemirovsky fled from the Nazis.  She perished in the death camps before she had a chance to complete the work or edit it.

2006: The Jewish people should develop a long-term strategic planning mechanism to address the threats that endanger all Jews, according to recommendations submitted at today’s cabinet meeting.

2006: In Boston, WGBH-FM (89.7) airs"Chanukah: A Time for Superheroes" The radio special is about the connection between superheroes and Judaism. It has input from Stan Lee, "Spiderman" director Sam Raimi, BryanSinger of the X-Men movies, and Michael Chabon, an author who dissects comics and Judaism in his book "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."

2006: The Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) opened its 38th Annual Conference, San Diego, California.

2006(26th of Kislev, 5767): Dodger Pitcher Larry Sherry, who with his brother Norm formed the only all brother, all Jewish battery in baseball history that led a team (the 1959 Dodgers) to a World Series Championship, passed away.

2007: After only 3 months with the team, punter Josh Miller was released by the Tennessee Titans of the National Football League.

2007: In Chevy Chase, MD, historian Walter Isaacson discusses his most recent book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, at the FriendshipHeightsVillageCenter.

2007: The Jerusalem Post reported that for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a chief rabbinical chaplain is servicing the spiritual and religious needs of Jewish soldiers in Russia's armed forces and various security services.  The position is currently being filled by thirty four year old Rabbi Aharon Gurevich.

2007: The owners of the 2nd AvenueDeli “literally cut the salami and officially welcomed hungry patrons to its new address on 33rd Street near Third Avenue in Manhattan. Jeremy Lebewohl, the nephew of its founder, is the new proprietor. Once again we can savor the best tongue sandwich and meat knishes in the known world.

2008: “The Wrestler,” a sports movie directed and co-produced by Darren Aronofsky and with a screenplay by Robert Siegel “was released in a limited capacity” today in the United States.

2008: In New York, Chamber Music at the Y features acclaimed Jerusalem born pianist, Benjamin Hochman

2008:The rocket that shattered the front windshield of Pinchas Cohen's bright yellow hatchback this evening narrowly missed his wife and son.

2008: Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, announced today that it had invested $90 million with Bernard Madoff, who has been charged with securities fraud. This means that “The Madoff Scam” may cost Hadassah the entire ninety million dollars.

2009: The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation and the Potomac Chapter offer a program entitled “Harry Truman and the Founding of Israel” featuring Allis and Ronald Radosh, authors of A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel.

2009(30 Kislev, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Kislev.

2009: The third annual Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism comes to a close today in Jerusalem.

2009: Shamai Kedem Leibowitz, an American lawyer and blogger also known as Samuel Shamai Leibowitz, who is the grandson of Yeshayahu Leibowitz also known as Samuel Shamai Leibowitz, “pleaded guilty to knowingly and willfully disclosing five Secret level FBI documents in April 2009, to a blogger, who then published information derived from those documents on the blog.”

2009: Germany announced today that it was donating 87 million dollars to a new endowment for Auschwitz-Birkenau to preserve barracks, gas chambers and other evidence of Nazi crimes at the former death camp.

2010(10thof Tevet, 5771): Yarhtzeit of Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin)

2010(10thof Tevet, 5771): Fast of the Tenth of Tevet

2010:"A Day in the Warsaw Ghetto: A Birthday Trip in Hell" is scheduled to open at Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan

2010: A traditional Friday Night Shabbat services with MesorahDC complete “with soulful melodies, contemporary insights, and stories followed by a three-course dinner is scheduled to take place at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2010: The Los Angeles Timespublished David Ulin’s list of the ten top books of 2010 which included three works by Jewish authors – Almost Dead by by Assaf Gavron, Freedomby by Jonathan Franzen and The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg.

2010(10th of Tevet, 5771: Mary Jane “M.J.” Bear, a journalist and Internet pioneer who built websites around the world, died today at the age of 48. Bear, a native of Des Moines, Iowa, worked for TV and radio stations. At National Public Radio she became a vice president. She also worked for Online, Radio Free Europe in Prague and Microsoft, in Vienna, Austria. She launched websites for Microsoft in Greece, Poland, Israel and Turkey, as well as TV programming in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. During her illness from leukemia, Bear created a website on Caring Bridge, which provides free and private websites “that connect people experiencing a significant health challenge to family and friends.” The site is now filled with touching tributes from friends and family. Bear took an active role in Jewish communities in every city in which she lived, and was a founding board member of the Online News Association, which is establishing an endowment fund in her name for young journalists.

2010: In “Beneath the Dead Sea, Scientists Are Drilling for Natural History,” published today Isabel Kershner, describes how “an an international team of scientists has been drilling beneath the seabed to extract a record of climate change and earthquake history stretching back half a million years.”

2011: “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos, CA.

2011: The third weekend of Hamshoushalayim is scheduled to come to an end.

2011: Havdalah, Board Installation and Centennial are scheduled to take place this evening at the Union Of Reform Judaism Biennial.

2011: Opening night of the 13thannual Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival 

2012: The Conservative Synagogue of Fifth Avenue is scheduled to host “Living A Serious Jewish Life” which will examine what it mean to be an “observant Jew’ using The Observant Lifeas the basis for the presentation.

2012: Director Mariano Wainsztein is scheduled to discuss his film “The Mitzvah makers which premieres tonight at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.

2012: “Jud Süss” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2012: Dorit Beinisch, the first female President of the Supreme Court of Israel became an Officer at The French "National Order of the Legion of Honour

 

2012: A memorial service was held today for director, writer, actor and impresario Isaiah Sheffer

2012: Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the spiritual leader of one of the largest congregations in London and a former chief rabbi of Ireland, was named Britain's chief rabbi-designate today.

2012:The state informed the High Court of Justice today that it will evacuate the two Jewish families living in four rooms in Hebron’s Beit Ezra building.

2012: Funeral Services were held today for six-year old Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the only Jew who was killed

2013: The UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to sponsor a screening of “David” directed by Joel Fendelman and “Don’t Tell Santa You’re Jewish.”

 

2013: Weather permitting, the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to show “Jews for Sale” which tells the story of “the sale of Jews of Romania to the State Israel starting with WW II and climaxing during the rule of Nicolai Ceausescu.

 

2013: After having been indicted on charges of “obstruction of justice, child endangerment, failure to report child abuse and conspiracy” the Dauphin County Judge ruled that Graham Spanier’s attorneys “would not be allowed to call to the stand Cynthia Baldwin” the attorney for Penn State who had testified against him before the Grand Jury as part of a guarantee for immunity. (Spanier was the child of Holocuast survivors who served as the head of Penn State who was charged with not fulfilling his duties during the Jerry Sandusky child molestation investigation.)

 

2013: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is due to arrive in Israel tonight for a high-profile visit, which is expected, for the first time, to focus on political issues such as Iran and the peace process in addition to efforts to foster economic cooperation. (As reported by Raphael Ahren)

2013: Today Shia , LaBeouf released his short film Howard Cantour.com to the Internet” following which “bloggers noted its close similarity to Justin M. Damiano, a 2007 comic by Ghost World creator Dan Clowes” which led to charges of plagiarism.

2013(3rd of Tevet. 5583): Eighty year old Dr. Robert Neuwirth, “a pioneering gynecologist” passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)

2014: “Tito’s Glasses” and “Closer to the Moon” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2014(25th of Kislev, 5775): Chanukah – one hundred years ago Jews in Vienna provided provisions for Jewish refugees who fled the battlefields held by the Russians to help them celebrate the holiday.

 

2014: “Canada and Australia announced that they would not attend a Geneva Convention conference hosted by Switzerland on the situation in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem today.’ (As reported by Lazar Berman)

 

 

2014: “Olive oil was used in the Land of Israel as early as 8,000 years ago, archaeologists working at an antiquities site in the Lower Galilee said today, heralding the earliest evidence for use of the staple in the country and possibly the entire Middle East.” (

2014: “American Alan Gross has been released from a Cuban prison after five years, as part of an agreement that also includes the release of three Cubans jailed in the United States.”

2015: The Skirball Center is scheduled to host Jeffery Gorsky, author of Exiles in Sepharad: The Jewish Millennium in Spainas he talks about “the incredible arc of the dramatic 1,000-year history of Spanish Jewry.

2015: Andy Sandberg served as host at the Emmy Awards

2016(17th of Kislev, 5777): Parashat Vayishlach 

 

2016:  The Brotherhood Synagogue is scheduled to host is “Annual Eyal Vilner Big Band Concert followed by continuous vodka and latkes.”

 

2016: The 14th Street Y is scheduled to host the penultimate performances of “Hannah and the Moonlit Dress.”

https://vimeo.com/192161820

 

2016: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host “Pankcakes and Prayer.”

2017: The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, Iowa, is scheduled to host a screening of “I’m Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas” a comedy “set entirely in a Chinese restaurant.”

2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Promise at Dawn: A Memoirby Romain Gary, The Kites by Romain Gary, Girls Trip by Tiffany Haddish, a former “energy producer at Bar Mitzvahs” and the recently released paperback edition of Judas by Amos Oz.

2017: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a special Chanukah party that includes events for history buffs, artists and music lovers of all ages.

2017: Matisyahu, Neshama Carlebach and Eli Schwebel are among the artists scheduled to perform at today’s concert at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York which is “a benefit concert to support JQY or Jewish Queer Youth.”

2017: In London, JWE3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Menashe,” the first Yiddish-language feature film that has been made in several years.

2017: Kosher Cajun restaurant is scheduled to “be frying up tons of fried chicken and latkes” for this afternoon’s annual community Chanukah celebration at the Jewish Community Center on St Charles Avenue in New Orleans.

2017(28th of Kislev, 5778): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2018: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Three Identical Strangers.”

2018: In Columbus, OH, the Tifereth Israel Men’s Club is scheduled to host “Hockey with Tifereth” at Nationwide Arena as the Blue Jackets play the N.Y. Rangers.

2018: In Chevy Chase, MD, Ohr Kodesh is scheduled to host a lecture on “Russian Jewry in 2018: What’s New?” in which Harvey Leifer provides an update on the life of the “million refusniks” who made Aliyah after the Soviet Union changed its immigration policy.

2018: The International Academy for Russian Music, Arts, and Culture (IARMAC) and Agudas Achim Congregation are scheduled to present pianist Polina Shepherd performing “Songs of the Steppes.”

2018: In response to the recent wave of violence, Israelis now use hitchhiking and bus stops that are more like fortifications completed with a compliment of armed soldiers.

2019: Following earlier reports that “Israel’s famed Mossad intelligence agency recently helped bust a major terrorist cell in Denmark as part of an ongoing policy of collaboration with Western intelligence agencies, it was reported today that Austrian authorities have thwarted what appear to be ISIS inspired Christmas season attacks.

2019: In Walnut Creek, CA, the National Council of Jewish Women is scheduled to host its “Hanukah Party,” the annual fundraiser that includes “a silent auction, raffles, bake sale, lunch and entertainment.”

2019: In Palo Alto, CA, the Oshman Family JCC is scheduled to host “Yiddishe Khanike” a “trio including vocalist-accordionist Jeanette Lewicki performs Yiddish songs and klezmer music.”

2019: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Drs. Jay Berkovitz, Lisa Leff and Maurice Samuels as they discus “Jews and Judaism After the French Revolution.”

2019(19th 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

2019(19th of Kislev): On the Jewish calendar, 75th birthday of Avraham Elimelech ben Yosef Dov

2019(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(2nd of Tevet, 7801): Seventh Day of Chanukah

2020: Temple Emanuel of Newton is scheduled to present online “Doughnut-Baking With Stephanie Weitzman

2020: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to provide a chance to “spend the last night of Chanukah with The Shitisel Mishpacha!”

2020: San Francisco based JIMINA is scheduled to host online “Chag Habanot: A North African Chanukah Celebration of Women” during which attendees will celebrate and learn about the Mizrachi holiday that honors women and the heroine Judith” and hear the music by Israeli singer Lala Tamar and local musician Hind Ennaira, plus dance instruction.

2020: ADL Cleveland is scheduled to host an event featuring Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley and Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto, who have led their communities through mass tragedies and incidents of hate.

2020: Despite the surge in coronavirus case and a talk about another nationwide lockdown, Israelis can look forward to go the library following yesterday’s approval of “the immediate reopening of all public libraries” (As reported by Yuval Plotkin)

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 18

1118: Alfonso the Battler conquered Zaragoza.

1271:  Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" ( yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China. Reportedly, Marco Polo found several influential Jews at the court of Kubla Khan. These Jews would have been descendants of Persian Jews who probably came to China the 11th century as merchants. In the 13th century, Marco Polo, traveling in China spoke of meeting Jews or hearing about them during his travels in the Middle Kingdom. Polo recorded that Kublai Khan himself celebrated the festivals of the Muslims, Christians and Jews alike.  Historical sources also describe Jewish communities at various cities, including Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Ningbo, and Yangzhou. Only the community in Kaifeng (Henan Province) survived since its founding around 240 BCE

1312: Today, during the Council of Vienne which had already dealt with issue of teaching Hebrew at the principle universities in Europe, Clement V issued Lice Dudum, a bull dealing with the disposition of the property of the Templars.

1338: Pierre Roger, the future Pope Clement VI who in 1342 would have 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 was created a Cardinal today.

1495: King Alphonso II of Naples passed away.  Both Alphonso and his father employed Isaac Abravanel the biblical scholar who was also a financial wizard.

1585: Canon lawyer Ippolito Aldobrandini, who would become Clement VIII during whose Papacy Jews were forced to attend “conversionist sermons,” prohibited from “dealing in new articles of clothing” and forced to allow copies of the Talmud to be burned in 1601, was named as a Cardinal today.

1621: Today, the House of Commons affirmed the “Protestation of 1621,” a “reaffirmation of the right to freedom of speech” was drafted by 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 relationship 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.”

1626: Birthdate of Christina, Queen of Sweden who became a Catholic and moved to Rome in December 1655 where she made Clement X prohibit the custom of chasing Jews through the streets during the carnival. In 1686 she issued a declaration that Roman Jews stood under her protection, signed la Regina – the queen.

1655: Oliver Cromwell presided over the fourth, and what he hopes will be the final, debate over allowing the Jewish people to return to England.  Much to his chagrin, Cromwell cannot get a majority to support the return of the Israelites despite his argument that “The pure (Puritan) gospel must be preached to the Jews, to win them to church. ‘But can we preach to them, if we will not tolerate them among us?’”  Cromwell closed the meeting and announced that he would decide the issue on his own.

1725: Birthdate of Johann Salomo Semler the biblical commentator and historian who“was the first to take due note of and use for critical purposes the opposition between the Judaic and anti-Judaic parties of the early church.”

1757: Rose Bunn and Joseph Simon gave birth to Myer Simon who was buried in Philadelphia when he passed away in 1825

1749: The will of Moses Abbady, which named Solomon and Israel Abbady as executors, was probated today.

1744: In Prague, Empress Maria Theresa banished the Jews. A few weeks earlier, Frederick the Great took 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. At this point and then again 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.  To put this in perspective, this happened five months before the outbreak of the American Revolution.  In other words, while the Old World was continuing to find ways to persecute Jews, the New World was about to enjoy a new birth of freedom that would include the Jews.

1762(2ndof Tevet, 5523): Parashat Miketz; 8th Day of Chanukah

1764(24thof Kislev, 5525): In the evening, Kindle the first Chanukah candle.

1764: Birthdate of Solomon Levy, the husband Rebecca Eve Hendricks and the father Hayman, Julia and Augusta Levy, each of whom passed away in the United States.

1767(27thof Kislev, 5528): Third Day of Chanukah

1767: As Jews get ready to Kindle the Fourth Chanukah Candle “an agent of England’s Wedgwood potteries finished extracting several tons of fine white clay from the mountains of North Carolina.”

1773(4thof Tevet, 5534): Parashat Miketz

1775(25thKislev, 5535): As Americans spend the first winter in rebellion against King George, Jews on both sides of the Atlantic celebrate Chanukah.

1776(2ndof Tevet, 5637): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1776: Birthdate of Bavaria native Beerle Gutman, the husband of Bluemle Levi and the father of Mathilde and Hannele Gutman.

1778(29thof Kislev, 5539): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1787: New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Like many of the original thirteen colonies, New Jersey had religious restrictions for holding office that were not removed until the 19thcentury.  By the 1840’s Patterson, NJ, “launched a congregation” and in 1857, the Jews of Elizabeth began meeting for regular worship services. New Jersey’s Jewish experience would prove to be unique because of the success of the agricultural movement that began in 1882 when Michael Heilprin helped a group of European immigrants establish Carmel in southern New Jersey. 

1791: In Andover, MA, Dorcas Faulkner and John Adams gave birth to Hannah Adams.

1800(2nd of Tevet, 5561): Seventh Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams

1803: Fifty-nine Johann Gottfried Herder, the German philosopher who “argued that Jews in Germany should enjoy the full rights and obligations of Germans, and that the non-Jews of the world owed a debt to Jews for centuries of abuse, and that this debt could be discharged only by actively assisting those Jews who wished to do so to regain political sovereignty in their ancient homeland of Israel.[5] Herder refused to adhere to a rigid racial theory, writing that "notwithstanding the varieties of the human form, there is but one and the same species of man throughout the whole earth".

1804(17thof Tevet, 5565): Rabbi Yaakov Wolf Krantz, zt"l,  the Maggid (itinerant preacher) of Dubno, particularly known for the parables (meshalim) he employed in his sermons and writings passed away today.

1805(27thof Kislev, 5566): Third Day of Chanukah

1805(27thof Kislev, 5566): Seventy-two year old Machteld Mathilda Michela, the daughter of Jochem Jochanan Mozes Hannover and Anna Hindche Joseph Salomon Hannover the wife of of Liebman Liepman Elieser Arnsteiner and Meyer Samson Wolfenbuttel passed away today in Amsterdam.

1813: Birthdate of David Spangler Kaufman, the first Jew elected to the U.S. Congress from the state of Texas.

1813(25thof Kislev, 5574): Chanukah and Shabbat

1813(25thof Kislev, 5574): Fifty-one year old “Bohemian Talmudist and Hebraist” Baruch ben Jonah Benedict Jeiteles, eldest son of Jonas Jeiteles and father of Ignaz Jeiteles passed away today in his native Prague.

1815: Birthdate of David Judah Alberga, the husband of Henrietta Delgad and the father of Theresa and Eugene Alberga.

1816: Andrew Asher and Rosa Joseph were married today at the Great Synagogue.

1816(28thof Kislev, 5577): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1816: John Lyon Pyke and Dinah Joel were married today at the Great Synagogue.

1820(13thof Tevet, 5581): Moseh Sofer, the Chief Rabbi of Pressburg and Sarel Sofer gave birth to Rabbi Shimon Sofer

1824(27thof Kislev, 5585): Parashat Miketz; Third Day of Chanukah

1824: Birthdate of Austrian native Abraham Woolner, the husband of Magdelena Wollner with whom he had five children – Sophie, Hannah, Maximillian, Isabella and Gisela.

1835(27thof Kislev, 5596): Third Day of Chanukah

1835: Birthdate of Hanover, Germany native Moritz Rothenstein, the husband of Bertha Rothenstein and the father of Charles, Blanche, Emily, Louisa, William and Albert Rothenstein, all of whom were born in Yorkshire, England.

1836(10thof Tevet, 5597): Asara B’Tevet

1838: In Budapest, Caspar Schoney and Golde Ehrentreu gave birth to Lazarus Schoney, the husband of Theodosia Secor Fowler who trained as a rabbi and a doctor, served as surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War after which he served for ten years as a “professor of Pathology and Clinical Microscopy at New York Eclectic Medical College.”

1839: Birthdate of German physiologist Julius Bernstein, the son of Aron Bernstein, “a founder of the Reform Judaism Congregation in Berlin “and the “father of mathematician Felix Bernstein” (Some sources show his birthdate as December 8)

1843(25thof Kislev, 5604): Chanukah

1849: Birthdate of Nahum Meir Schaikewitz, the Minsk born novelist and playwright who began by writing short stories in Hebrew who eventually moved to New York in 1888 where he wrote “over two hundred novels” in Yiddish.

1850(13th of Tevet, 5611): Daniel Meijer’s sister, Eva, passed away.  Daniel was the first Jewish lawyer in the Netherlands and one of the youngest members of the bar in that nation’s history.

1852: The New York Times described a recent major address by Chancellor of the Exchequer Benjamin Disraeli before the House of Commons on the Budget and plans to make major revisions in the tax code.  The speech and proposals are so well received that the Times concluded by saying that “”The Chancellor evidently wins new laurels at every fresh display of his truly remarkable ability.”

1856: In Ireland, Elizabeth Jane Somerville, the daughter William Somerville, 1st Baron Athlumney and Lady Maria Harriet Conyngham married James Molyneux Caulfeild, 3rd Earl of Charlemont, who, after being styled as the Countess of Claremont in 1863 began attending synagogue services in Belfast leading to her eventual conversion to Judaism.

1856: Birthdate of Alfred Steckler, a graduate of Columbia Law School who served as a judge of the Fourth District Court of New York City and before serving on the Supreme Court of the First Judicial District  of New York County.

1857(1stof Tevet, 5618): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1857: The brother of P.T. Barnum the owner of Iranistan a Moorish Revival mansion in Bridgeport, Connecticut that was designed by Austrian born Jewish architect Leopold Eidlitz sent word that the mansion had effectively burned to the ground.”

1860: Birthdate of Salomon Linneweil, the Dutch born husband of Rebecca Van Biene

1861: During the Civil War, 2nd Lt. Leo Charles who was the regimental adjutant with the 27th Regiment began his service in the Union Army.

1861: In Chicago it is reported that a young girl who had run away from her parents’ home in Maine to live with an uncle in Wisconsin now is in critical condition in Chicago following an attempted suicide.  While making her way back to Main, the young girl allegedly met young Jew named Laselle with whom she stayed at various hotels including the Tremont, the Stewart House and Sollitt House where “he effected her ruin.”  He then allegedly turned the girl over to another Jew named Stein who brought her “to an assignation house.”  Within half an hour the police “pounced” on the house arresting Stein and several others at which time the girl tried to kill herself.  The investigation is at a standstill until she recovers so that authorities can question her.

1862(26th of Kislev, 5623): Second Day of Chanukah

1862: At St. Pancras, London, Edward Levy-Lawson, 1st Baron Burnham and his wife Harriette Georgiana Webster gave birth to Harry Lawson Webster Levy-Lawson, 1st Viscount Burnham.

1863(8th of Tevet, 5624): Jacob Miller, who had been serving with Company A of the 16th Regiment – Third Cavalry died today as a result of the wounds he had sustained while fighting at Mine Run, VA last month.

1864: Birthdate of Shropshire native Samuel Parkes Cadman, an American clergyman whose support of Jews can be measured by his appearance at a non-sectarian mass meeting in 1916 to raise funds for the relief of Jews in the war zones of Europe as well as by his calls to boycott the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.

1863(8th of Tevet, 5624): Thirty-eight year old Louis Schwarkopf, the husband of the former Dora Block, the son-in law of Daniel Block and one of the founders of Congregation B’nai B’rith in St. Louis.

1865(30th of Kislev, 5626): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Sixth Day of Chanukah

1865: Slavery ended in the United States as the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was declared in effect. Yes there were Jews who owned slaves and yes there Jews who served with Confederacy.  But the majority of the Jews supported the Union and Jews played a role in the movement to gain freedom for slaves. For example a visit to the Lloyd Street Synagogue in Baltimore includes a demonstration of its role in the Underground Railroad.  This role was quite risky in a city in slaveholding Maryland.

1866: Bithdate of Alexander Protopopov who as Chairman of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce and Minister of the Interior, while working for the adoption of a new commercial treaty between his country and the United States in 1916 told Joseph Kruk in London that he did believe in “equal rights for Jews in Russia” and said that “regarding the Jews, I can say this much, that it is a shame for one to be a Russian if he is compelled through that to fear somebody.”

1867: Birthdate of Wilmington, Illinois native “Dr. Isaac A. Abt, an international authority on children’s diseases” and a pioneer in the field of pediatrics.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/498358

http://uncap.lib.uchicago.edu/view.php?eadid=inu-ead-nua-archon-309

1867: In Frankfurt, Selig Meier Goldschmidt and Clementine Fuld gave birth to their youngest child Johanna Goldschmidt, the future wife of Adolph Stern.

 

1869: Julie and Adolph Marx Oppenheimer gave birth to Eugen Oppenheimer

 

1869(14th of Tevet, 5630): Forty year old Louis Moreau Gottschalk the son a Jewish businessman from London and a white Creole Haitian in New Orleans who was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano pieces passed away today in Rio de Janeiro.

 

1870: “The Jews in America” published today traces this people’s history with an special emphasis on religious practice starting with the earliest settlers, to the arrival the Germans as well as the role of such leaders as Rabbi Merzbacher and Rabbi Samuel Adler.

1872: George Geiger re-enlisted today and was attached to Troop H of the 7th Cavalry, the military unit that would be under the command Custer at the Little Big Horn.

1872: Two days after he had passed away, 23 year old Michael Emanuel, the son of Lawrence Emanuel and Eve Braham, was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

 

1876: The Hebrew Charity Fair which is a fund-raiser for the Ladies’ Benevolent Society opened this evening at the Masonic Hall in New York.  Despite the inclement weather, the event was well attended.

 

1877: Sergeant George Geiger who earned the Medal of Honor for his bravery at the Battle of the Little Big Horn was discharged today “for medical reasons.

 

1878: Birthdate Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin recognized the state of Israel at the moment of its birth and he did allow the Czechs to sell fighter planes to the new-born Israeli Air Force.  But these measures were a reflection of his fight against British Imperialism and not a reflection of any love for the Jewish people. Stalin did employ Jews in his regime before and during the war. But he also conducted bloody purges aimed at the Jews.  Stalin did enjoy support among some Jews – those who were loyal party members and those who regarded him as a savior because the Soviet Army was the force that liberated much of Europe from Nazis.  The reality was that Stalin was an anti-Semite who began a series of murderous purges aimed at the Jews of the Soviet Union and that he died before he could carry out his own version of the Final Solution.

1878: “The editor of a prominent Jewish newspaper said this afternoon” that Jewish institutions including Mt. Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, have no choice but to reject donations from anybody tied to Judge Hilton who has banned Jews from staying at his hotel.

1878: It was reported today that the Jews of New York are planning on rejecting the donations made by Mrs. A.T. Stewart through Judge Hilton. The gifts included $500 for Mount Sinai Hospital, $250 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and $250 for the Hebrew Home for the Aged and Infirmed. These Jewish organizations have received donations from Mrs. Stewart in the past.  However, this year the notices of the donations were worded in such a way that it would have required Jewish leaders to come to Judge Hilton’s office to get the money.  Considering the fact that Judge Hilton has banned Jews from his hotel in Saratoga Springs, such an arrangement is totally unacceptable.

1878: In St. Louis, Dr. Washington E. Fischel and “educator Martha Ellis Fishel” gave birth to Edna Fischel Gellhorn, and the wife of Dr. George Gellhorn who is remembered by many as the mother of photographer Martha Gellhorn, passed away today.

https://shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/g/gellhorne/

 

 

 

1878: Randolph Herr, a New York lawyer who was a partner of Judge Bloom, shot himself through the head today.

1879: Birthdate of Frieda Hesslein, who as Frieda Herzberg was shipped from Berlin to Terezin where she was murdered on October 19, 1942.

1881: Anti-Juif, a weekly, was published for the first time in Paris.  This would be the first of four publications with this name all of which had a common anti-Semitic theme.

1881: It was reported today that an unnamed American who was performing in a circus at St. Petersburg received orders from the Russian government to leave the capital city because he was Jewish.  (This is part of the pattern of discriminating against American citizens because they were Jews that would be protested by President Arthur in his message to Congress)

 

1882: It was reported today that Mount Sinai Hospital is one of the “most imposing structures” in New York. It has a capacity to serve 160 patients and has added to new units in the last year – an eye and ear department and an “isolation house.”  While the hospital is almost totally dependent on the Jewish community for financial support, it provides services to one and all regardless of religious affiliation.

1882: “A Hebrew Colony Broken Up” published today described the demise of a colony that had been “established a year ago on Sicily Island in Concordia Parish by several families” of Jewish immigrants from Russia. According to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Association representative in New Orleans, so many of the colonists were stricken with swamp fever that they were unable to care for themselves let alone work at building the settlement.  After returning to New Orleans, the immigrants have been sent to either Chicago or New York.

 

1882: “Value of the Bible” published today provided some of the views of Reverend Richard Heber Newton, an Episcopalian minister and theologians, on the ancient text.  Among other things, that Bible did not included “the whole of Hebrew literature” because “many of the Hebrew writings had been lost.”  But the Bible contains “the best of the Hebrew writings” because it’s a sifted and winnowed library” that represented “the literature of a race whose religion grew until it became a universal religion for all men.”

 

1883: George Reeveys is in jail at Freehold, NJ because he has been charged with an attack on a Jewish peddler named Simon Holzman whom authorities fear may die from his wounds.

 

1883: In the Westchester County Court at White Plains, NY, Judge Pratt sentenced Theodore Hoffman to be hanged after he had been convicted of kill a Jewish peddler, Zife Marks.

1884: Birthdate of Russian native Clara Stern Gilman, the wife of Nathan Gilman and mother of Pearl and Charles Gilman who settled in New London, CT and was an officer of the National Council of Jewish Women.

 

1885: In New York, Rabbi Joseph Zeisler, the Hungarian born son of Eduard and Josefine Zeisler and Irma Zeisler gave birth to Cornelius Zeisler

1886: After two weeks, the fair that was raising funds for the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids came to a close tonight.  The successful event was held in New York’s Central Park Garden.

 

1886: It was reported today that during the year, the Hebrew Free School Association had provided services to 2,698 students as compared to 2,046 students in 1885.

 

1886: The Hebrew Free School Association held its annual meeting today.  During the meeting it was announced that prominent educator Julia Richman has been chosen to serve on its board of directors.  Ms. Richman along with Ms. Froelich are the first two women to serve on the board.

 

1887: Al Hayman, the partner of Charles Frohman, who managed the Baldwin and California Theatres in San Francisco left to New York today to return to “the city by the Bay.”

 

1887: The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory held its Chanukah reception at 95 East Broadway. After the children sang in Hebrew, Mrs. Deborah Alexander distributed fruit and candy to the youngsters.

 

1887: Birthdate of Capt. Artur Carlos de Barros Basto, “a decorated Portuguese military officer, a hero of Portugal's 1910 revolution and World War I and leader of the open return to Judaism of the Crypto-Jews of Portugal. Barros Basto died in 1961, almost blind, a disappointed man. He has never been exonerated by the Portuguese Army of the decision of 1943 of the Minister of the War under the Fascist regime of Antonio Salazar who stripped him from the Portuguese Army Officer Corp for the simple fact of his being Jewish and being a defender of religious tolerance and of the Portuguese Crypto-Jews in particular. The attempts and efforts to rehabilitate him continue to this day. He was born in the Portuguese city of Amarante on December 1887, and was given a Catholic education. When he was nine years old his grandfather told him they were descendants of Jews forcibly converted in 1497. Raised by his mother in Porto, he attended the Portuguese Military Academy and participated in 1910 in the founding of the Portuguese Republic. He later commanded a battalion of the Portuguese Corps in World War I, as lieutenant on the Western front. There he met a French rabbi who likely further influenced him. Upon his return to Portugal from the war he began to study Judaism and Hebrew. Rebuffed by the Israeli community of Lisbon, he went to Tangier to formally return to normative Judaism, adopting the name of Abraham Israel Ben-Rosh. He married the daughter of a prominent Lisbon Jewish family and settled in Porto where in 1923 he created the Israeli community of Porto, still active today[4] Barros Basto became known as the "Apostle of the Marranos", the title of a short biography by noted historian Cecil Roth who met Basto in 1930 and described him as the most charismatic man that he had ever met. Basto had been recommended in 1926 by Lucien Wolf of the London Marranos Committee to be the recipient of funds to establish a Jewish school and lead the return of thousands of descendants of Jews forcibly baptized in 1497 (New Christian, Conversos, or Marranos, more politically correct known as "Anusim", Hebrew for "forced one"). Basto established "Rosh Pinah", described by him as a "theological seminary", the first Jewish school in 500 years. In 1929 the first stone of a new synagogue was laid. A magnificent art nouveau synagogue, Mekor Haim was inaugurated, in 1939, the year of Kristallnacht. Basto had led a successful international fund raising campaign from Jewish communities with historical connection to Portugal such as Amsterdam, London, New York, Hamburg and Paris. Paul Goodman, friend, and president of the Portuguese Marranos Committee attended; so did Moses Amazalak, president of the Lisbon Israeli community. Rabbi David de Sola Pool of New York was an avid supporter and a room in the synagogue is named after him. "Adonai (God) is with me and I will not fear"[5] was his motto, and he was not afraid to canvas the interior of Portugal to make surveys, the contacts, to defend the Jewish identity of the Crypto-Jews at the same time having the goal of returning them to modern Judaism. Upon his return to the city of Oporto, he established the Israelite Community in 1923, and was one of the founders of the synagogue of the city of Oporto in 1938. Given the difficulties that he found in Portugal, most of all financial, he left Portugal. In London the Committee of Portuguese Marranos was created, that raised £10,000 for the construction of a community centre with a synagogue and a reading room, and to hire a resident rabbi”

1888:  Birthdate of Robert Moses.  The son of Emanuel Moses, a department-store owner, and Bella Silverman Moses, the Moses family was part of the well-to-do circle of New York German Jews known as ''our crowd.''  Moses was public works planner who re-shaped New York and its environs.  Two of his more famous works were the Lincoln Center and Shea Stadium. He passed away in 1981.

1888: Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs read the opening prayer at the dedication ceremonies marking the official opening of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids were held today. Isaac Eppinger, Chairman of the Building Committee then presented a ceremonial golden key to Jacob H. Schiff, President of the Montefiore Home.

1888: In Philadelphia, PA, the murder trial of Jewish businessman Mat Goldberger entered its second day.  He is accused of murdering Annie Schuleberg who fell to her death while trying to escape a fire that Goldberger had set to collect the insurance for his business which was on the ground floor of the building where Mrs. Schuleberg lived with her husband and eight children.

1889(25th of Kislev, 5650): Chanukah

1889: Birthdate of Margareta Hellerová who in 1942 was deported from Prague to Ujazdow where she was murdered by the Nazis.

1889: Three Russian Jewish shoemakers – Harris Elias, Solomon Elias and Abraham – are being treated for burns and smoke inhalation following a fire at their tenement on Eldridge Street.  The three were the only ones injured when the five story building went up in smoke,  (Fires like these were all too common and were run of the reasons that some Uptown Jews formed committees to look into conditions in these buildings that dominated the Lower East Side)

1889(25th of Kislev, 5650): Mrs. Martin M. Lewis ( nee Lizzie Lazarus) passed away unexpectedly this evening.  Her husband is a prominent importer of woolen goods.  She was the daughter of Alfred Lazarus, the Secretary of the Third Avenue Railroad Company.  She is survived by her seven year old son and seven month old son and a sister-in-law, Mrs. Charles Lewis.

1890: Birthdate of Neville Jonas Laski, the younger brother of Harold Laski, who was a jurist and leader of the Anglo-Jewish community.

1890: Colonel George P. Clark will give a lecture this evening at 55th Street and Lexington sponsored by the Young Men’s Association of Congregation Ahawath Chesed.

1891: The body of a well-dressed man, thought to be a Russian Jewish immigrant was found in flour mill today at Petersburg, PA.

1892(29th of Kislev, 5653): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1892: Almost 1,500 people attended the third and final day of the celebration of Rodeph Shalom’s 50th anniversary which featured the 300 children attending the religious school under the direction of Benjamin Blumenthal.

1892:  Rabbi H. Rosenberg was expelled from Temple Beth Jacob in Brooklyn, for eating pork.

1892: The United Hebrew Charities Society has reportedly refused to give any more support to the striking cloakmakers because  the society “received a good deal of support from the cloak manufacturers and these men refused to give any more money to support the persons who were fighting against them.

1892: As gold leaves Europe for America and America moves to restrict the exportation of the precious metal, the Austrian government has reportedly “concluded a gold loan of 50,000,000 florins from a Rothschild Syndicate” in an attempt to stabilize its economy.

1892: Three hundred religious school schools under the direction of Benjamin Blumenthal were the center of attraction at today’s third and final day of celebrations marking the jubilee year of Congregation Rodeph Shalom at 63rd and Lexington in Manhattan.

1892: “The admissions by [Isidor] Loewe, the Jewish small arms manufacturer the offered to supply France with the machinery necessary for the manufacture of Lebel rilfles has caused renewed viruluence in the Judenhetze.” [German anti-Semites] They overlook the “open fact” that the Krupp, the great German arms manufacturer has continued to supply Russia with guns and ammunition, even when the two nations seemed to be on the verge of war.

1892: The Cologne Gazette attacked Loew’s offer to supply France “as strengthen the assertions of the anti-Semites that the Jews have no national feeling, that they never amalgamate with any people and that they are dominated by the idea that they are a privileged nation that may prey upon but be absorbed by other nationalities.  (These sentiments expressed by a prominent German paper pre-date Hitler by forty years providing more proof that German anti-Semitism was not a Nazi aberration but a part of the German social fabric)

1893: Twelve Jews were held at the Essex Mark Police Court “on charges of violating the law by keeping their places of business on Essex, Hester, Ludlow, Orchard, Rivington and Canal Streets open on Sunday.

1893: Must Have No State Aid published today described Rabbi Joseph Silverman’s views on public funds being used to support parochial schools.

1894: In Manchester, UK, David Rodker and his wife gave birth to John Rodker one of the “Whitechapel Boys” and a leading figure in the world of British literature.

1894: In defending a “closed court” in the trial of Captain Dreyfus Le Petit Journal wrote that the closed court is our impregnable refuge against Germany" and La Croix wrote that it must be "the most absolute closed court.”

1895: Antonio Cappel is being held by authorities today on charges that he assaulted a Jew named Max Shindler when Jewish and Italian pushcart peddlers clashed on Essex Street yesterday.

1895: Today is “Fraternity Day” at the two-week long charity fair which is raising funds for the Educational Alliance and the Hebrew Technical Institute. Music was supplied by the band from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Victor Herbert Orchestra.

1896: In Frankfurt am Main Ida and Karl Ferdinand Mortiz Flesch who held a Dr. of Jurisprudence degree gave birth to Hans Flesch

1896: Two days after he had passed away, 72 year old Michael Abrams, the son of Samuel and Catherine Abrahams and the husband of Fanny Levy with whom he had five children, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1897: Emmanuel Célestin Suhard, who would speak out against the treatment of the Jews by the Vichy government, was ordained as a priest today.

1898(5th of Tevet, 5659):Baron Ferdinand James de Rothschild, M. P., passed away on his 59thbirthday.

1899: The McKinley administration submitted an agreement to Congress that had been negotiated by Oscar Straus, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, in which Sultan Abudul Hamid II promised to tell the Moros (Moslems living in the Philippines) not resist U.S. rule of the islands.

1899: Fanny Barnard, the daughter of David Michaelson and Anne Davies and the husband of Daniel Barnard with whom she had had two daughters – Annie and Rosie – was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1899: In Philadelphia, Harry and Ethel Daroff gave birth to clothing manufacturer Joseph Alfred Daroff, the husband of Sylvia Daroff and father of Marilyn Daroff.

1900(26th of Kislev, 5661): Second Day of Chanukah

1900: Speaking from his residence, Oscar S. Straus, who had resigned as U.S. Minister to Turkey said, “The President while desiring very much that I should return to Constantinople, was willing to respect my wishes to resign.”

1901: Samuel Gompers and Oscar Straus were chosen to serve as Vice Chairmen of the newly created committed that “shall be known as the Industrial Department of the National Civic Association” which was created “to avert strikes and to settle labor troubles when called upon.” 

1902: After  Alexander Lvovich Parvus, (Israel Lazarevich Gelfand) had “struck a deal with Maxim to produce  his play “The Lower Depths” it premiered today in Moscow.

1902: Great Britain expressed support for the sending of a small commission to the Sinai Peninsula to report on conditions and prospects. This was part of plan to start a Jewish settlement in the Sinai which could eventually lead to a Jewish home in Palestine itself.

1902: In Bremen, Julius Biebow, “an insurance company director” and his wife gave birth to Hans Biebow the murderous chief administrator of the Lodz Ghetto whose attempt to escape punishment for his crime ended with his hanging in 1947.

1902: N. Taylor Phillips chaired a contentious meeting of Zionists and those opposed to Zionism at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.

1903: Arnold Schonberg began composing “Natur” (Nature) op.8, No.1 today, a work which he would finish in March, 1904.

1903: In Łanowce, Podolia, Khanina Auerbakh and his wife Mania (nee Kimelman), gave birth to Rokhl Auerbach who “was one of the three surviving members of the covert Oyneg Shabes group led by Emanuel Ringelblum that chronicled daily life in the Warsaw Ghetto, and who initiated the excavation of the group's buried manuscripts after the war” passed away.  (Editor’s Note: For more on this see Who Will Write Our History)

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/auerbakh-rokhl

1904(10th of Tevet, 5665): Asara B’Tevet

1904: The New York Timesreports that Lionel de Rothschild is building a 250 Horse Power auto boat as an entry for the Harmsworth Cup race to be held in July of 1905.

1904: Birthdate of New York City native Benjamin Hanft, a “prominent public relations executive for a number of national Jewish organizations” and the husband of Esther Haft, with whom he had three children including actress Helen Haft.

1904: “The annual Charity Ball of the United Hebrew Charities Association is scheduled to be held at Arlington Hall at 20 St. Mark’s Place” today.

1905: Sarah Bernhardt and Mark Twain were among those who entertained today at the benefit matinee for the Jewish suffers in Russia which was held at the Casino in New York City.

1905: In New York, the Federation of American Zionists received official word that “the central organization of the Zionists in Europe has decided to hold a special international congress of Jews” which will “take action on the situation in Russia.”

1905: Based on letters from written from Russia in November that are now in the hands of those raising funds for the victims of the Russian massacres, “it appears that in many localities funds were at once raised locally to meet” the initial emergency which according to Jacob Schiff is a good signed because “it shows that there is recuperative power in the people in spite of their sore affliction.”

1906(1st of Tevet, 5667): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1906: The Czar approved a bill presented to him by the Russian Council of Ministers which purported to give greater liberties to Jews living in the 15 provinces of western Russia known as the Pale of Settlement.

1907: Today, Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa who as Pope Benedict XV denounced anti-Semitism in response to a petition by American Jews and who gave Nahum Sokolov an extended audience where he presented the case for a Jewish state in Palestine to the Pontiff “received the episcopal consecration from Pope Pius X.”

1908(24th of Kislev, 5669): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.

1908: Thirty-two year old Schije Kuperstein, 19 year old Miriam Wolfe, 15 year old Blumah Wolf and 11 year old Michel Wolfe, all of whom had died aboard ship while making their way from Russia to England were buried today at “Nunsthorpe Jewish Cemetery,” near Grimsby.

1908(24th of Kislev, 5669): Fifty-seven year old Benjamin Levy, the native of New South Wales, Australia who was the husband Zara Levy passed away today in London.

1908: Rabbi Panigel was forced to surrender his seals of the office of Hahambashi of Jerusalem. Rabbi Hiskia Shabbatai filled the office temporarily.

1909: “Isaac N. Seligman, the banker, told an audience at the Young Men's Hebrew Association tonight how the late President Baldwin of the Long Island Railroad had been threatened by members of this city's Board of Aldermen several years ago, at the time that the Long Island Railroad was attempting to get permission to build the tunnels under the East River.”

1910:  Birthdate of Abe Burrows.  Born in Brooklyn, this successful composer won a Tony in 1951 for the Broadway hit, “Guys and Dolls.”

1910: Birthdate of Leon Greenman, the native of White Chapel, London, who ended up in Auschwitz and wrote about his experiences in An Englishman In Auschwitz.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/10/secondworldwar

1910: In New York City, Katie and Joseph Goodman gave birth to Thelma Goodman who gained fame as singer and actress Thelma Leeds who was the wife of comedian Harry Einstein and the mother of Albert Brooks, Bob Einstein and Clifford Einstein.

1911: Three days after he had passed away Alexander Isaac, “the son of the late Alexander Isaac” and Sophie Ley was buried today at the “Balls Pond Jewish Cemetery.”

1911: Birthdate of Cleveland, Ohio native and cartoon animator David Hilberman.

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/21/local/me-hilberman21

1911: In Middletown, CT, Berthe Vogel and Samuel Dassin gave birth to director and victim of the Hollywood blacklist, Julius “Jules” Dassin.

1912: “Miss Henrietta Weber” is schedule to a “lecture on Faust, Lohengrin and ‘The Cricket on the Hearth’ this evening at the Chicago Hebrew Institute.

1912: La sorcière, an opera composed by Camille Erlanger, premiered in Paris.

1912: Founding of Temple Beth El in Muncie, Indiana.

1913:In London, Henry Green, the organizer of the Jewish American Rumanian Committee is scheduled to attend an informal meeting of the delegates who will be attending the International Conference to be held at Berlin in January.

1914(1st of Tevet, 5675): Sixth Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1914: Jacob Furth’s conviction on charges of financial irregularities related to a bank in La Conner, Washington, was over-turned today.  Furth was an Austrian born American businessman and banker who played a prominent role in the development of Seattle, Washington.  The removal of this blemish on his record was bittersweet since it came six months after he had passed away.

1914: Those listed today as contributors to the fund for “the relief of Jews through the war included the Hebrew Ladies’ Relief Association of Kansas City, The Dallas Texas Committee, the Salem Mass. Hebrew Ladies’ Association and Katz Rosenthal Company of Columbus, Ohio.

1914: “With the consent of the military censor,” today’s “Russkoe Znamen published the observation that ‘treason runs in the blood of the Jew, and no Jew can be trusted not betray the army even though the ranks may be full of volunteers” while also declaring “that being easily susceptible to fear and panic, the Jews by their flight create holes in the ranks of which the Germans are quick to take advantage.”  (Editor’s note: This represents an official, on-going policy of anti-Semitic attack on Russian Jewish soldiers fighting for the Czar’s empire)

1914: As of today it was reported that an additional $42,147.53 has been collected to aid the Jews of Europe suffering the effects of the war.

1914: “Poles In Need of Help” published today described plans to provide aid to those caught on what has become a battleground between German and Russian armies including a joint effort by the American-Polish Relief Committee and the committee that Felix Warburg had formed to aid Jews in Poland.

1915: It was reported today that “Israel Cohen, Secretary of the International Zionist organization and a British subject, who was interred in a detention camp at Ruhleben near Berlin” at the start of the war and was finally released at the start of this month, is planning on coming to the United where he plans on giving a series of lectures on “Jewish Suffering of the War.”

1915: It was reported today that Samuel Gompers has sent a series of resolutions adopted by A F of L including one that states “that the American Federation of Labor requests the Government of the United States to urge upon the governments of the nations of other countries to cease discriminations wherever they exist and now practiced against the Jewish people” to the National Workmen’s Committee of Jewish Rights.

1916: After ten months, the Battle of Verdun which claimed a total of 800,000 casualties on both sides came to an end with neither the Germans or the French having anything to show for what has been described as “the longest, and possibly the deadliest, battle in history” which “could be judged the unnecessary battle in an unnecessary war.”  (Editor’s Note – the gruesome blood bath elevated Marshall Petain, the man who would lead Vichy, to a position of almost mythic proportion.  The monumental casualties would help to account for the failure of France to respond to the rise of Hitler in the 1930’s and the quick fall of France in 1940 which had such dire consequences for the Jewish population.)

1916: It was reported today that in the view of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, “since 1880 Jews had been steadily migrating from New York to Brooklyn and the poverty problem which once confronted the Manhattan organization had now crossed the East River.”

1916: “A motion endorsing the desire for peace and appointing a committee to draft appropriate resolutions was adopted” this morning “at the Fall of Assembly of the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis” being held at Temple Emanu-El.

1916: At a dinner given tonight at the Hotel Biltmore, the guest of honor Felix M. Warburg, the Chairman of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies call for “a non-denominational, non-racial merger of activities for war relief based on a plan to raise one hundred million dollars for Europe’s stricken people.”

1916: Leon L. Waters presided over a dinner at the Hotel Astor at which Simon Bamberger, the Governor-elect of Utah, who was “the first Jew and non-Mormon to be selected as the executive of that State.”

1916: Tonight, “at the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees of Temple Emanu-El…Louis Marshall was elected president of the board, M.H. Moses was elected vice president” and Irving Lehman, Henry Fidenberg and Henry M. Toch were elected to the Board of Trustees.

1917: Major General, Charles-Arthur Gonse who refused to admit that Dreyfus was innocent and continue to work to keep him in prison even after being shown conclusive evidence of his innocence passed away today.

1917: Hermann Frenkel a partner of the Jacquier and Securius Bank was one of the founders of Universum Film which was established today in Germany as a direct response to foreign competition in the realm of film and propaganda.

1917: As British forces prepared for an assault across the Auju River which would make it possible to use the Port of Jaffa tonight “the 161st (Essex) Brigade from the 54th (East Anglian) Division and the Auckland and Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiments, from the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, moved into the front line replacing the 52nd (Lowland) Division.”

1917: During World War I, the American Joint Distribution Committee issues $50,000 for the Jews of Salonica, $25,000 for the Jews of Turkey living outside of Palestine and $3,500 for the Jews of Alexandria. These funds are to purchase wheat for the baking of Matzah for the upcoming Passover.

1917: It was reported today that British artillery did not respond to heavy shelling from the Turks during the battle for Jerusalem because the generals were afraid that shelling would damage the city.

1918: Birthdate of Daniel Mazia, an American a cell biologist who was notable for his work in nuclear and cellular physiology. His research centered on the broad question of cell reproduction, especially the division and regulation mechanisms involved in mitosis (the process by which the chromosomes within the nucleus of a cell double and divide prior to cell division). Mazia is best known for his isolation (1951, with Japanese biologist Katsuma Dan) of the mitotic apparatus, the structure responsible for cell division. This brought understanding of the mechanisms of cell division and intracellular motility. A study in the early '60s on centrosomal reproduction, until recently an unappreciated structure, led to Mazia's interest in this cell organelle and the publication of a seminal paper. He passed away in 1996.

1918: Nine days before his 46th birthday, “German born American Jewish lawyer, the founder and first president of ADL married Hilda Valerie Freiler today.

1918: Birthdate of Savannah, GA, native Hal Kanter, an Emmy Award-winning comedy writer, and a director and producer whose career included writing for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, directing Elvis Presley and creating a landmark 1960s TV series starring Diahann Carroll. (As reported by Dennis McLellan)

1919(26th of Kislev, 5680): Second Day of Chanukah

1919(26th of Kislev, 5680): Seventy-six year old Samuel Singer, the son of Babette Mandelbuam Singer and the husband of Hannah Heller Sanger whom he married in 1867 and with whom he had five children – Charles, Asher, Alex, Eli and Carrie – passed away today after which he was buried at the Hebrew Rest Cemetery in Waco, TX.

1919: “Takes Steps to Curb German Anti-Semites published today that in response to the government “taking measures to prevent any violent outbreak of anti-Semitism,” “the Pan German Press” has declared “that these measures are a violation of the political rights of citizens, since it asserts the anti-Semitic movement is merely political.”

1920: In a letter written today Gertrude Bell said loved Sir Sassoon Eskell, the Baghdad born member of a distinguished Jewish family “also known as Sassoon Effendin because “he is by far the ablest member of the Council” and although “a little rigid, he takes the point of view of the constitutional lawyer and doesn't make quite enough allowance for the primitive conditions of the 'Iraq, but he is genuine and disinterested to the core.”

1920: Jerusalem celebrated the third anniversary of its liberation by General Allenby during which “Sir Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner for Palestine and all the leaders of the various faiths participated in a review and service held in St. George’s Cathedral.

1921: “Several hundred Jews from four States and the District of Columbia met today at the Jewish Relief Conference in the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel for the inauguration of a $14,000,000 nation-wide campaign for the relief of Jews in Eastern Europe.”

1922: In the Bronx, David Zimmer and Pauline Geller Zimmer gave birth to Esther Miriam Zimmer who gained fame as microbiologist Esther Lederberg who was ‘a pioneer in the field of bacterial genetics.”

http://www.estherlederberg.com/Anecdotes.html

1923(10th of Tevet, 5684): Asara B'Tevet

1923: Today, Federal Judge Julian W. Mack scored the police and the prohibition forces for spending so much time rounding up petty offenders of the Volstead act and failing to concentrate attention on the big offenders.”

1924(20th of Kislev, 5685) California Republican Congressman Julius Kahn, Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee dies paving the way for his widow Florence Kahn to begin her active political career in the same legislative body.

1924: Birthdate of San Francisco native Herbert Allen “Herb” Gorman the WW II Coast Guard veteran and minor league star whose only major league appearance was as a pinch-hitter for the Cards in 1952.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Herb_Gorman

1924: “A protest again the attitude of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the  League of nations with regard to Jewish immigration into Palestine was adopted today the conference of the representatives of the Jewish settlements and communities which is in session in Tel Aviv for the purpose of creating better facilities for the arriving immigrants.” The conference also adopted resolutions “demanding immediate abolition of restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine” and the assignment funds to building inexpensive housing to accommodate those making Aliyah.

1925: In Budapest, “stormy parliamentary debates in the past two days over ‘numerous clauses’ of the law restricting the number of Jewish university reached a climax this afternoon when the Minister of Education challenged opposition Deputy Sandor to a duel.”

1926: Birthdate of actor Walter Lassally, the native of Berlin who was not Jewish but whose Jewish ancestry forced his family to flee to England just before the outbreak of WW II.

1926: Eighty-four year old Civil War veteran and Congressman John B. Weber who was motivated to serve “as one of the general agents of the Hirsch Fund” and to help straighten “out the kinks and snarls” at the Woodbine Colony which is the home to 500 people” after having visited Russia and seen the conditions under which the Jews live, passed away today.

1927(24th of Kislev, 5688): In the evening, Kindle the first Chanukah candle.

1927: According to today’s New York Times, “The organization of two Jewish Fascist groups in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is reported in recent dispatches from Palestine to German newspapers.  It is averred that the self-assumed task of the new organizations consists in fighting Socialist and Communist ideas and the Yiddish jargon brought to Palestine by immigrants from Poland and Russia.  The Jewish Fascists insist that the use of Yiddish handicaps the establishment of Hebrew as the common language of Palestine Jews.”

1928: In Brooklyn, “homemaker Frances (Goldberg) Gitler” and furrier Samuel Gitler gave birth to “Ira Gitler, who was one of the most respected and prolific jazz writers of the postwar era and an early champion of bebop.” (As reported by Richard Sandomir_

1928: It was reported today “that Jews in South Africa had contributed $100,000 towards” supporting the efforts of ORT to supply training and supplies for the Jews in Russia.

1929: Following yesterday’s fired at Temple Beth-El in Pensacola on-lookers “saw that the structure was almost completely destroyed, with the scrolls so ruined that they had to be buried and the only salvageable items were the organ, “the memorial table” and “the Ten Commandment Tablet above the Ark.”

1930(28th of Kislev, 5691): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1930: It was reported today that “Arab clashes with Jewish settlers have been reported from the south and north of Palestine, necessitating the immediate dispatch of British police reinforcements from Jerusalem.”

1931: Birthdate of record producer and manager Allen Klein whose clients included Sam Cooke and the Rolling Stones. (As reported by Ben Sisario)

1931: In Manhattan, “fashion designer Jo Copeland and cigar manufacturer Edward J. Regensburg Jr. gave birth to novel Lois Gould the wife of psychiatrist Robert E. Gould and the mother of Anthony and Roger V. Gould.

1931: “My Leopold” a comedy starring Camilla Spira was released today in Germany.

1932(19th of Kislev, 5693): “Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism.”

1932: “A reception and tea in honor of Dr. Lion Feuchtwanger” is scheduled to “to be given by the editors of the Menorah Journal and Menorah Graduate Society” this afternoon London Terrace” where “it is expected that over 400 members and friend will attend.

1932(19thof Kislev, 5693): Eighty-two year old Eduard Bernstein a German social democratic political theorist and politician passed away today.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/index.htm

http://spartacus-educational.com/GERbernstein.htm

1933: In New York,Sophie A. Udin, a feminist leader and activist who sought equality between the sexes, including equal pay for equal work and equal representation for women” and “Pinhas Ginguld, a Poale Zion officer and head of the network of secular Yiddish Folk Schools and Teacher’s Seminary, in New York” gave birth to their second child and first daughter Marcia Ginguld Ford who moved to Israel to raise her family.

1934: Birthdate of Marcell David Reich, the Antwerp born commodity trader Marc Rich, the fugitive financier who purchased a Presidential Pardon from Bill Clinton.

1935: It was reported today that “plans for a campaign to raise $500,000 to aid Polish, German and other non-Russian Jews to settle in the recently created autonomous territory of Birobidjan in the Soviet Union were announced on December 17th at a luncheon in the Bankers Club of the American committee for the settlement project.”

1935: In Berlin, “the year's last Cabinet session has come and gone without producing the long-heralded general law for new economic restrictions on Jews, designed to complete their segregation from the German people.”

1936: In Warsaw, Foreign Minister Josef delivered a speech to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate talked about the need to find an “outlet for Poland’s surplus population, especially the Jews” declaring “that Jewish problem in the whole of Eastern Europe presented great difficulties now because of the fact that a very large number of Jews who have been making their livelihood as middle-men and traders are now losing their means of support and have no possibilities of assuring work for the younger generation in view of changes in the economic structure of various countries.”

1936(3rd of Tevet, 5697): Dr. Henry Moskowitz, a leader in civil, political and labors circles” passed away at the age of 57 in his New York Home.  A native of Romania, Moskowitz graduated from NYC public schools and City College before moving to Germany where he earned his Doctorate. Moskowitz was active in the settlement house movement, an ally of Governor Al Smith and served as chairman of the Civil Service Commission and Commissioner of Public Markets. Moskowitz was active in Jewish affairs He was on the board of directors of American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Social Service. His most notable achievement may have been being one of the founders of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP).

1937(14th of Tevet, 5698): Parashat Vayehci

1937(14th of Tevet, 5689): Forty-nine year Viennese native “Dr. Richard Hermann Jaffe, chief pathologist at the Cook County Hospital who has resided in Chicago since 1922 and taught at both the University of Illinois and University of Chicago Medical Schools while raising his son Ernst with his wife passed away this evening at a time when “he had played a leading role in the investigation into the death of 13 infants stricken with an unusual form of dysentery at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, passed away this evening.

1937: “Every Day’s a Holiday” a comedy produced by Emanuel Cohen was released today in the United States.

1937: Ella Fitzgerald recorded “I Want to Be Happy” the popular tune with lyrics by Irving Caesar, the son of Jewish immigrants from Romania.

1937: On Shabbat (Saturday), Temple Shaaray Tefila continued with the dedication of its new facilities in New York City.

1937: After 289 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway performance of “Babes in Arms” a “musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart.”

1938(25th of Kislev, 5699): First Day of Chanukah; kindle the second light in the evening

1938: “Sheik Said el Khatib, who was a leader at the Mosque of Omar was shot dead by Arabs in the Old City of Jerusalem this morning…  The killing eliminates another important Arab from the opponents of the exile Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini.”

1938(25th of Kislev, 5699): Chanukah

1938(25th of Kislev, 5699): “One Jew was killed and two were wounded when a Jewish-owned bus, traveling on the new coastal road between Haifa and Tel Aviv was fired on by “unidentified assailants” while an Arab woman was shot dead by another Arab in the Old City of Jerusalem.

1938: Birthdate of Bronx-born, Oscar winning song writer, Joel Hirschhorn. He and his partner Al Kasha won in 1972 for “The Morning After” from The Poseidon Adventure and We May Never Love Like This Again" from The Towering Inferno in 1974.

1938: Thousands of Father Charles Coughlin's followers take to the streets of New York City, chanting, "Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!" and "Wait until Hitler comes over here!" Many Christian policemen are sympathetic to the Coughlinites. The protests will last until April 1939. They are opposed by other Catholic organizations and by leftists and liberals.

1939: Birthdate of Hartford, CT, native David Margolis ‘a brash and revered prosecutor who in more than 50 years at the Justice Department helped it navigate through some of its most difficult chapters…” (As reported by Eric Lichtblau)

1939:  Birthdate of Harold Varmus, an American virologist and co-winner (with J. Michael Bishop) of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1989 for their work on the origins of cancer - that cancer genes (oncogenes) can arise from normal cellular genes, called proto-oncogenes. Oncogenes are normal genes that control growth in every living cell, but which under certain conditions can turn renegade and cancerous. They believed that the growth of cancerous cells is not the result of an invasion from outside the cell, but rather a misuse of a normal gene by a retrovirus, as a result of exposure to some aggravating carcinogen, such as radiation or smoke. Their research in the mid '70s has led to great strides in the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of a variety of cancers.

1940: Birthdate of Hadera native Eli Cohen the award winning Israeli actor and movie director.

1940: The South Shore Group of the Women’s League for Palestine is selling tickets for today’s matinee performance of “The Corn is Green” at the National Theatre as part of their efforts to raise funds for refugee relief.  Proceeds of the sale will “augment a $25,000 Emergency Refugee Relief Fund for young women refugees living the two homes of the Women’s League in Haifa and Tel Aviv.

1940: Hitler prepared his directive for war with Russia. He changed the name from Fritz to "Operation Barbarossa." Barbarossa was the mythic Emperor of Medieval Germany, destined to rise again and lead Germany in glory and victory. Hitler fixed May 15, 1941 as the date of invading Russia.  Because he had to rescue the Italians from their military misadventures in Greece, Hitler would not invade until June.  This month long delay cost the Nazis dearly.  Their offensive ground to a halt in the Russian winter and despite victories in 1942 never regained sufficient momentum for final victory.  Unfortunately for the Jews, Operation Barbarossa carried a companion piece that included sending liquidation squads in on the heels of the invading German Army.  Their mission was to murder Jews and Bolsheviks.  This was the first step in the plan to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Russian to create “living room” for Hitler’s Aryan Master Race.

1941:  Three months before the deportations of the Jews in France began in earnest, Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s chief ideologue and its leading plunderer, requested Hitler’s personal authorization to seize all the household effects and personal possessions belonging to Jews and to distributed parts of them among party members and the Wehrmacht staff.

1941: In Brooklyn, “high school teacher Sam Wallach” and the former Lottie Tannenbaum gave birth to historian Joan Wallach, the Brandies and University of Wisconsin trained historian whose intellectual breadth included French history and gender history who became Joan Wallach Scott when she married Donald Scott.

https://www.ias.edu/scholars/scott

1941: “H. M. Pulham, Esq” a movie version of the novel by the same name starring Hedy Lamarr was released today in the United States.

1941: An entry in Heinrich Himmler’s diary today read “What to do with the Jews of Russia” to which he later wrote was “exterminate them as partisans.”

1942(10th of Tevet, 5703): Asara B’Tevet

1942(10th of Tevet, 5703): Seventy-nine year old Henry W. Unger, the Tammany Hall political leader, assistant district attorney and B’nai B’rith activist who was the husband of Isabella Peyser Unger and father of Albert and Herbert Unger passed away today.

1942: When Jewish forced laborers at Kruszyna, Poland, refuse to board trucks, more than 100 of them are shot.

1942: British Ambassador to the Vatican Francis d'Arcy Osborne asserts that Pope Pius XII "does not see that his silence is highly damning to the Holy See." He had provided the Vatican with detailed information on the killings of Jews and pleaded for a clear denunciation of this horror in the Pope’s Christmas Eve broadcast to the world.

1943: In Neve Sha’anan, Malka and Israel Levin gave birth to Israeli dramatist Hanoch Levin

1944: “The two annual bazaar conducted by the Women’s League for Palestine opened today with the proceeds going to “the building of a third story on its Jerusalem rehabilitation center now under construction.

1945(18th of Tevet, 5706): Fifty-six year old Russian born and Columbia trained physician Dr. Jacob Lattman who specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and who raised one son Laurence and two daughters Frances and Joy with his wife Yetta passed away today.

1945: Birthdate of Cantor Marsha Fensin.

1945: The father of Aryeh ben Eliezer, a former member of the American Committee to Save the Jews of Europe who was deported from Palestine to Eritrea in October of 1944, failed in his attempt gain his son’s freedom in suit brought before the high court in Jerusalem. 

1946:Sir William Fitzgerald, chief justice of Palestine, says Jerusalem will be divided into Jewish and Arab boroughs.

1946: An Arab landowner is assassinated because he sold land to Jews.

1947: Birthdate of “Eddie Antar, the Brooklyn-born man who created the chain of Crazy Eddie electronics stores only to watch it collapse when an underlying fraud was exposed.” (As reported by Niraj Chokshi)

1947: Arab guerilla forces that have been recruited in Damascus and Beirut gathered in the Syrian capital as they prepare to invade Palestine.

1947: Birthdate of Shabtai Kalmanovich

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/6489381/Former-Israeli-double-agent-shot-dead-near-Putins-office.html

1947:  Birthdate of Steven Spielberg.  Born in Cincinnati, this famous director has given us everything from “ET”, to “Close Encounters,” to “Jaws” to fictional and documentary cinema about the Shoah.

1947: “Miracle on 34th Street” produced by William Perlberg and featuring Jack Albertson as postal service employee that begins at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and tells the tale of Santa Claus who among other things brings peace between Macy’s and Gimbel’s department stores was released today in Australia.

1948: During the “Operation Velvetta,” which was part of the clandestine movement to provide the new Jewish state with modern aircraft, a flight of Spitfires left Czechoslovakia for Israel but was forced to turn back because of “poor weather conditions.”

1948:UN mediator Ralph Bunche announces that a final solution to Palestine conflict is well on its way.

1949: The Palestine Post reported thirty-five men and women from 12 countries signed up for a three month class to become first-aid workers for the Magen David Adom, the Israeli ambulance service. Instruction was in French, Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish and Yiddish.

1950: In New York, singer Jacqueline (née Gould) and Aaron Isaac Maltin, a lawyer and immigration judge’ gave birth film critic Leonard Maltin, the creator of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide which appeared from 1969 until 2014.

1952:  The Jerusalem Post reported from Sofia that the new Israeli Chargé d'Affaires, Gershon Avner, who presented his credentials, was assured that Bulgaria would not restrict Jewish emigration to Israel.

1953: Israel's first paper mills were dedicated today at Hadera, midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The enterprise, sponsored by investors from the United States, Brazil, Australia and Israel, is expected to meet most of Israel's current paper needs.

1953: Two Unit 101 squads let by Meir Har-Zion began an attack along the road running from Bethlehem to Hebron.

1955: Release in Asia today of sci-fi thriller “Lost Continent” co-starring Sid Melton.

1956: The IDF hoisted the Israeli flag on the purported site of Mount Sinai.  Actually, there are at least three places on the Sinai Peninsula that lay claim to being the location for the giving of the Ten Commandments. 

1956: New York premiere of “This is Baby Doll” a dark comedy starring Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach filmed by cinematographer Boris Kaufman .

1957(25th of Kislev, 5718): Chanukah

1958: Birthdate of Philadelphia native and Phi Betta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan Julia Wolfe “an American composer and professor of music at NYU” who married fellow composer Michael Gordon in 1984.

https://juliawolfemusic.com/

1958: “Some Came Running” produced by Sol Siegel with music by Elmer Bernstein and a script co-authored by Arthur Sheekman was released in the United States today.

1961(11thof Tevet, 5722): Sixty-four year old Leo F. Reisman, the popular 1920’s amd 1930’s bandleader whose orchestra launched the careers of co-religionists Eddy Duchin and Mitch Miller passed away today.

1961: Santa Monica, CA, Ronald and Clare (née Spark) Loeb gave birth to Columbia grad and founder and chief executive of Third Point, a New York-based hedge fund Daniel Seth Loeb, the husband of Margaret Davidson Munzer and the great-nephew of Ruth Handler, the creator Barbie doll.

1962(21stof Kislev, 5723): Seventy-seven year Dr. Siegfried Josen Thannhauser, the Munich orn son of Josef Salomon Thannhauser and husband of the former Charlotte Langermann who lost his license under the Nazis after which he was able to come to the United States and begin working in Boston, passed away today.

1963(2ndof Tevet, 5724): 8th Day of Chanukah

1963: U.S premiere of “4 for Texas” that included an uncredited appearance by Yaphet Kotto as well as one of the final appearances of the Three Stooges including Larry Fine and Moe Howard.

1966(5thof Tevet, 5727): Seventy-five year old “Dr. Albert Salomon, Berlin native and refugee from Hitler’s Germany Albert Salomon who became a Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research passed away today.

1965(5th of Tevet, 5727) Eighty-three year old Florence Eliau Bamberg, the Baltimore born daughter of the former Hannah Eilau and Ansel Bamberger and holder of a B.S., M.A. and PhD from Columbia Teachers College, the advocate of progressive education as advocated by John Dewey and the first woman to become a full professor at Johns Hopkins University passed a way today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bamberger-florence

1967(16thof Kislev, 5728: Sixty-four year old Boston native and Boston University grad Harold Sherman Gold, a member of the American Jewish Committee and Temple Israel passed away today.

1967: Violinist Paul Zukofsky played the music of Mozart, Brahms, Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt tonight at a recital in Carnegie Hall

1968(27thof Kislev, 5729): Third Day of Chanukah

1968: Seventy-six year old Dorothy Garrod who “was the pioneer excavator of the famous Mount Carmel caves, where a long sequence of prehistoric cultures and human fossils was discovered” passed away today.

1969: Today marked the historic move of the original home of Adas Israel to its current location at Third and G Streets, NW. With help from the District, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and an Act of Congress, the Society relocated the building, now the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum. The first floor was too weak to survive a move, so the structure was severed horizontally and only the second and third floors (Sanctuary and Balcony levels) made the journey by flatbed truck.

1969: Funeral services are scheduled to take place at the Riverside on Amsterdam Avenue for the son William and Gussie (Goldenberg) Feuer of 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.

1970: Eighty-nine year old Pastor Marc Boegner, the French resistance leader who in 1942 wrote to Marsh Petain protesting against the deportation of Jews and the inhuman manner in which orders for these deportations were being carried out” passed away today.

1970: “El Topo,” a “Mexican acid Western film written, scored, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky,” the Chilean born son of “Jewish-Ukrainian parents” was released today in New York City.

1971(30th of Kislev, 5732): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1971(30th of Kislev, 5732): Sixty-five year old Samuel Katcher, the son of Louis and Rebecca Katz Katcher and the husband of Bessie Starlor Katcher passed away today after which he was buried at Beth El Memorial Park Cemetery in Livonia, Michigan

1972: Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys”produced by Emanuel Azenberg, directed by Alan Arkin, with Sam Levene as Lewis and Jack Albertson as Clark,premiered on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre.

1973: “Cinderella Liberty” the cinematic treatment of the novel by the same name directed and produced by Mark Rydell and starring James Caan, Eli Wallach and Allan Arbus was released in the United States today.

1974(4th of Tevet, 5735): Sixty=two year old Rabbi Samuel Isaac Korf, the son of Gittel Godman Korff and Jacob Israel Korff, the husband of Anna Twersky and the son-in-law of Rabbi Nachum and Malcha Twersky, who was the spiritual leader of Congregation Kehillath Jacob in Newton” and “a founder of the Associated Synagogues of New England” passed away today in Boston.

1976(26th of Kislev, 5737): Parashat Vayeshev; Second Day of Chanukah

1976: "A Star is Born," with Barbra Streisand, premieres

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Menachem Begin, upon his return from the US, prepared himself to leave for Egypt, in response to the direct invitation by President Anwar Sadat. Begin, who presented a new Middle Eastern peace proposal to Washington, was now expected to bring it with him to Cairo.

1977: In Boston, “Jacqueline (née Jordan) and Sidney Blumenthal, a writer and former aide to President Bill Clinton and aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton” gave birth to author and journalist Max Blumenthal whose works include Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israeland The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza.

1977: The Post described in great detail the emotional moments for Israelis who spent their first Shabbat in Cairo. There was riotous, joyful welcome for the Israeli negotiating team outside the Cairo synagogue. In his address in Tel Aviv, President Ephraim Katzir, revealed a $100m. oil deal with Mexico.

1977: “The World’s Greatest Lover” directed, produced and written by Gene Wilder who also starred in the comedy that featured Elya Baskin was released in the United States today.

1979: Amy Sheridan, who would go on to be “the first American Jewish woman to gain aviator status in any branch of the Armed Services” earned her bars as a Warrant Officer One at the United States Army Aviation Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

1980(11thof Tevet, 5741): Ninety-eight year old Fanny G. “Henka” Pofcher, the husband of Elias Harry Pofcher passed away today after which she was interred at the Imas-Roxbury Lodge Cemetery in West Roxbury, MA.

1980(11thof Tevet, 5741): Fifty-seven year old Mazkeret Batya native and Palmach officer Moshe Kelman whose military record including commanding the third battalion during Operation Yiftach and Operation Danny and who “worked as an investment consultant and in the design and construction of factories and industrial zones” in Israel after earning a B.A. from Columbia University.passed away today

1981(22ndof Kislev, 5742): Seventy-two year old Chicago native and Northwestern trained surgeon, Dr. Leon Judah Aries, the husband of Marie L. Aries with whom he had three daughters – Jane, Elizabeth and Nancy – passed away today.

1981: “Absence of Malice” a legal melodrama directed and produced by Sydney Pollack and starring Paul Newman and Bob Balaban was released in the United States today.

1981: “Ghost Story,” a cinema version of the novel co-starring Melvyn Douglas was released today in the United States.

1982: “The King of Comedy” co-starring Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard was released today in Iceland.

1982: At Ohev Shalom Talmud Torah Congregation in Washington, rabbi Hillel Klavan officiated at the wedding of Barbara Eileen Cohen, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jay J. Cohen of Bethesda, MD and Andrew Mark Hutter, son of Dr. and Mrs. Robert V.P. Hutter of Livingston, N.J.

1982: Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz officiated at the wedding of Linda Rachel Nass, daughter of Edna Kadin Nass of New York and the late Samuel Nass and Dr. Brian Lloyd Tell, son of Frieda Tell of Jamaica Estates, Queens, and Lake Worth, Fla., and the late Dr. Meyer Tell.

1984(24thof Kislev, 5745): Kindle the first Chanukah light in the evening.

1984: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt reviewed Albert Speer: The End of a Myth by Matthias Schmidt

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/18/books/books-of-the-times-157358.html?pagewanted=print

1985: “Out of Africa” the cinematic treatment of the novel of the same name (and a must see movie) directed and produced by Sydney Pollack was released in the United States today.

1986: “Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold,” a movie version of the novel produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan was released today in West Germany.

1987: The Jewish National Fund New Leadership of Greater New York is sponsoring ''A New York Chanukah'' at the Crystal Pavilion, 805 Third Avenue near 49th Street.

1987:  A federal judge sentenced Ivan F Boesky to 3 years in jail for insider trading. 

1987: “Ironweed” the movie version of the novel of the same named directed by Héctor Babenco and co-starring Carroll Baker was released in the United States today.

1987: Israeli troops kept a tight lid on the occupied Gaza Strip today, but scattered demonstrations broke out in Palestinian refugee districts and towns in the West Bank and the Arab sector of East Jerusalem. A Palestinian shot as he stabbed an Israeli soldier in the Gaza border town of Rafa died today, bringing the death toll to at least 14 Palestinians shot by the army in the current round of violence.

1988:Israel's political leaders continued to flounder today in their nearly seven-week effort to form a new government. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's hard-line Likud supporters said he was ready to abandon efforts to form another government with his Labor Party rivals. They said the Prime Minister was prepared to enlist several small religious parties in a narrow rightist government, a development that could add strains to Israel's relations with Washington and with American Jews. ''The Prime Minister is fed up,'' said Avi Pazner, Mr. Shamir's spokesman. ''This has been going on for more than a month and a half.'' There were reports late today on the Israeli state radio of an agreement between Likud and the religious and rightist parties, including the allocation of Cabinet posts. But a meeting to form a new government did not take place tonight, and the Prime Minister's office would say only that talks might be held tomorrow. #3 Palestinians Slain The political negotiations continued as three more Palestinians were shot to death by the Israeli Army in the occupied territories. The Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has grown more intense in the days since the United States decided to open talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization. At least eight Palestinians have been shot to death since Friday.

1988: In an article entitled “American-Jewish Writers: On Edge Once More,” Ted Solotaroff, author of A Few Good Voices In My Head examines the changes in American Jewish literature over the last quarter of a century

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/18/books/american-jewish-wrtiers-on-edge-once-more.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

1989:Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said today that his ministry authorized and paid for meetings between relatives of Israeli soldiers captured during the invasion of Lebanon and representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

1989: A Congress of Jewish Organizations and Communities in the U.S.S.R. opened today in the Moscow Cinema Center.

1990(1st of Tevet, 5751): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1990: The former New York City Mayor, Edward I. Koch, was hit in the head and slightly hurt today when a stone was thrown at him as he strolled through the Arab Quarter of the Old City

1991(11th of Tevet, 5752): Seventy year old Samuel “Sam” Deitchman who “played guard, forward, and center at CCNY from 1940 to 1942 when the team made repeat appearances at the NIT, the premier college basketball tournament of that period, passed away today.

1992(23rd of Kislev, 5753):  Seventy-seven year old television producer and game show creator Mark Goodson passed away. Born in 1915, his stable of creations included Beat the Clock, The Price Is Right, To Tell the Truth and that Sunday favorite, What’s My Line? (As reported by Bill Carter)

https://www.biography.com/people/mark-goodson-9542303

1993(4th of Tevet, 5754): Parashat Vayigash

1993(4th of Tevet, 5754): Seventy-four year old actor, director and WW II veteran Samuel “Sam” Wanamker, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who was a victim of the  infamous “blacklist” passed away today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1993/12/19/sam-wanamaker-actor-and-director-dies-at-74/04d13a69-54d7-4495-a25c-facb42485296/?utm_term=.c19c9b285d0c

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sam-wanamaker-1468601.html

1994(15th of Tevet, 5755): Seventy-year old Heinz Bernard, the German born British actor, director and theatre manager passed away today.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaries-heinz-bernard-1568974.html

1995(25th of Kislev, 5756): Chanukah

1995(25th of Kislev, 5756): Seventy-three year old Eliezer “Danny” Armon the Hungarian Jew who made Aliyah and who served with Naval Company of the Palmach where he skippered several ships that ran the British blockade passed away today. (James Bond, et al had nothing on this guy)

http://www.palyam.org/English/IS/Armon_Eliezer_Danny

1995 (25th of Kislev, 5756): Rabbi Chaim Pearl passed away.  Born in England in 1919, Rabbi Pearl’s first pulpit was in Birmingham England.  He came to the United States after World War II and officiated at a Conservative Synagogue in New York.  He retired in the 1980’s and moved to Jerusalem where he lived at the time of his death. Rabbi Pearl published numerous articles in the Anglo-Jewish press. He also authored a number of books, including a translation of Sefer Ha-Aggadah, A Guide to Jewish Knowledge, and The Medieval Jewish Mind: Studies in the Religious Philosophy of Isaac Arama,as well as two volumes on Rashi. In addition, he edited the sermons of Rabbi Abraham Cohen, who was his predecessor in Birmingham; produced a number of pamphlets; and served as associate editor of The Jewish Bible Quarterly.

1995 (25th of Kislev, 5756): Eighty-six year old physicist Nathan Rosen passed away. Born in 1909, he was a U.S.-born Israeli theoretical physicist who in 1935 collaborated with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky on a much-debated refutation of the theory of quantum mechanics; he later came to accept the theory. The famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen critique of quantum mechanics was published in the 1935 Physical Review. (A New York Times obituary described The Physical Review as "one of the most impenetrable periodicals in the English language.") Rosen founded the Institute of Physics at Technion in Haifa Rosen was also the father of Dr. Joe Rosen a noted-physicist in his own right, a Renaissance Man in the truest sense of the word and a real mensch.  

1996: “Marvin’s Room” the movie version of the play with the same name directed by Jerry Zaks, featuring Bitty Schram as “Janine” and music by Rachel Portman was released in the United States today.

1998: Release date for “You’ve Got Mail,” a comedy produced and directed by Nora Ephron with a script by Nora and Delia Ephron.

1996(8th of Tevet, 5757): Theatrical composer and Tin Pan Alley lyricist, Irving Caesar, the son of Romanian Jewish immigrants who was responsible for such classics (which nobody knows today) as “Tea for Two” and “Swanee” passed away today at the age of 101.

https://www.songhall.org/profile/Irving_Caesar

1998: “You’ve Got Mail,” a comedy produced and directed by Nora Ephron with a script by Nora and Delia Ephron was released today in the United States.

1998: The Chesed-El Synagogue which dates back to 1905 was designated as “national monument of Singapore” today.

https://www.chesedel.org/

2000: Three days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held at Temple Israel in New Rochelle NY, for Irving J. Pastarnack, the husband of Irene (Stern) Pastarnack and father of Bruce and Mark Pastarnack.

2001: In Tampa, Florida, the funeral is held for Charles Michael "Chuck" Schuldiner singer, songwriter, rhythm and lead guitarist of the band Death. 
 
2002: “Two Week’s Notice” a comedy co-starring Kevin Klein but not Mark Feuerstein because his scenes were deleted was released today in the United States.
 
2002: In “Art Institute looks at houses of David Adler” published today Blair Kamin examines the life and career of the Jewish architect who “passed himself off as Protestant and designed in a thoroughly eclectic manner that was catholic with a small ‘c’”.
 

2003: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is scheduled to speak at a conference in the seaside town of Herzliya today, and it seems that all of Israel, certainly all of the Israeli press, is speculating as to what he will say.”

2004: As Prime Minster Sharon forms his coalition government “ “in an interview with Le Figaro that will appear today, Shimon Peres said: "Even if I'm not entirely in agreement with Sharon, I prefer a mediocre plan supported by a majority of the people to a brilliant plan without the majority to implement it” and “that's a difference between me and some of my colleagues."

2005: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rushed to hospital in Jerusalem after suffering a minor stroke and briefly losing consciousness. His doctors later said that the prime minister was in a stable condition and was undergoing tests. Sharon's long-time personal physician, Dr. Boleslav Goldman, said several hours later that the "prime minister is fully conscious. He is talking freely, moving and joking. He underwent a mild stroke."

2005: Israeli Holocaust survivor Lea Fuchs Chayen sends her e-mail address to Iowan David Cmelik so that they could communicate in a more direct, personal manner.  Cmelik is the son of Frank Cmelik who was a rifleman in the 84th Division of the Ninth Army.  The 84th Divisions was recognized a a liberating unit by the United States Holocaust Museum and the United States Army.  Cmelik had been searching for Chayen because she was one of the girls his father had mentioned that he had helped to liberate when his unit entered the Salzwedel Labor Camp in the spring of 1945.  His father was finally being awarded the Bronze Star that he had earned as part of the liberation effort.  In her e-mail and subsequent correspondence, Chayen described the details of her liberation and her gratitude for what Frank Cmelik and his fellow soldiers had one.

2006: The "Local Testimony" photography exhibition opens in Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv, in commemoration of Lior Ziv, an IDF Spokesman photographer who was killed during an Israel Defense Forces operation in 2003. The exhibition, held for the fourth consecutive year, shows Israeli photographic journalism of the past year. The dozens of photographs on display have been chosen from some 4,500 entries to the Local Testimony competition. This year's winners include the following Haaretz photographers: Uriel Sinai came first in the category of series of photographs documenting the results of Katyusha rocket landings in Haifa; David Bachar came third in the category of series of portraits; Nir Keidar came second in the category of series of sports photographs and Nir Kafri came first in the culture and art category.

2007: Internet voting, sponsored by The Philatelic Service of the Israel Postal Company, designed to choose the stamp to be used to mark Israeli’s 60th Independence Day, comes to an end. 

2007: Today, Marc “Trestman was named head coach for the CFL Montreal Alouettes whom he led to the Gray Cup in 2008.

2007(9th of Tevet, 5768): Eighty-three year old mathematician Samuel Karlin passed away. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/january16/karlin-011608.html

2007: David Rubenstein purchased the last privately owned copy of the Magna Carta at Sotheby's auction house in New York for $21.3 million

2007:Naftali Tzi Weisz, the 59-year-old Grand Rabbi of Spinka, and Gabbai Moshe E. Zigelman, 60, both of Brooklyn, N.Y., were named in a federal grand jury's 37-count indictment in Los Angeles. The indictment claims that Weisz and Zigelman promised to secretly refund up to 95 percent of millions of dollars of contributions to several Spinka charities. The contributors could claim the full amount for tax deductions, even though they gave as little as five percent of the amount declared on federal income tax returns, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

2008: In its final evening, The 10th Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival features a screening of the 1920 classic, “The Golem.”

2008:In New York, as part of the “18 Nights of Inspiration lecture series “Dov Waxman, professor of political science at Baruch College, discusses the main issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the prospects for peace in a talk entitled "Is Peace Possible?"

2008:The largest and most hi-tech movie theater in the South is opening in Beersheba's ONE center today.

2008: Members of an Australian trade union that accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” joined Jewish officials at a Chanukah celebration..”

2008:Hamas officially declared this evening that it would not extend the six-month-old truce between Gaza factions and Israel. The announcement appeared to be anti-climactic since 11 Kassam rockets and five mortar shells had already pounded southern Israel by mid-afternoon.

2008(21st of Kislev, 5769): Centenarian Scottish sculptor Hannah Frank the daughter of immigrants from the Pale of Settlement passed away today in Glasgow.

http://hannahfrank.org.uk/

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12378258.Hannah_Frank/

2008: Today “the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University in New York announced it had acquired Norman Jaffe's architectural archives” which include architectural drawings, presentations and photographs from Jaffe's professional practice and covers more than 80 projects from the 1960s to the 1990s.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/23/obituaries/norman-jaffe-61-an-architect-famed-for-home-designs-is-dead.html?pagewanted=1

2009: In New York, as part of the Concert Masters Series, the Baruch Performing Arts Center presents as an evening with Roman Spitzer, Principal Violist of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

2009(1 Tevet, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2009: In the evening, light the eighth Chanukah candle, 5770

2009:A Las Vegas teacher has been told to stay home while district officials investigate a claim that she denied in class the Holocaust happened, a newspaper reported today. Clark County schools spokesman Michael Rodriguez said Northwest Career and Technical Academy teacher Lori Sublette was assigned to remain home, and appropriate action would follow an investigation. Student Katie Piranio told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Sublette said during a Nov. 25 class that history books were inaccurate and Nazis in World War II lacked the technology to kill millions of Jews. Sublette did not immediately return a message left by The Associated Press seeking comment. The Review-Journal said she did not answer when a reporter reached her Thursday and asked if she had denied the Holocaust happened. Sublette said she was not in a position to respond and would have to talk to her principal. Sublette is a full-time gym teacher. The district says she was teaching a 30-minute weekly class designed to prepare students for life after high school.

2009: Amjal Kasab, a Pakistani man standing trial for his role in the terrorist attack on Mumbai last year that included the murder of Jews at the Chabad House, recanted his earlier confession in court today saying he been framed by the Indian police.

2009: According to police reports, the infamous iron sign over the gate to the Auschwitz memorial site with the cynical phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei” – German for “Work Sets You Free” was stolen this morning between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. when museum guards noticed that it was missing and alerted police.

2009: U.S. release date for “Avatar” the epic sci-fi thrill co-produced by Jon Landau

2010: In Israel, Channel Two broadcast the first episode of “Yellow Peppers,” a show that tells the tale of a family raising an autistic child.

2010: Hazak Shabbat -The United Synagogue has designated this Shabbat as HaZaK Shabbat, to recognize the older adults' groups of Conservative congregations. 

2010: “Shabbat Chazak” – Finished reading Bereshit or Genesis. This is “one of the four Shabbats when we complete one of the books of the Torah (the fifth time is on Simchat Torah); just as we complete the weekly Torah reading Shabbat morning, the entire congregation rises and together calls out “Chazak, Chazak, V’nitchazaik” –“Be strong. Be strong. Let us strengthen ourselves!” Just as we have completed one of the books of the Torah, God will help us be strong and complete all of the loose end of our lives, physically and spiritually. The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that there is a superiority to the “chazak of Parashat Vayechi in that it is the first one. (The Rhinebeck Jewish Center)

2010: The 92nd St Y is scheduled to present “Wiesel in Concert: Memories & Melodies of My Childhood” during which the “renowned scholar, teacher and advocate, with orchestra and choir, is scheduled to sing songs from his youth for a new generation—a review of Jewish melodies from the shtetl to today.

2010:Oy Vey in a Manger is scheduled to open at Theatre J in Washington, DC.

2010: “Jerusalem Rejuvenates C.R. Native” published today,  describes the spiritual and professional  journey made by Abbie Silber, the daughter of Dr. Robert and Laurie Silber,  from growing up in Cedar Rapids to studying and performing in Jerusalem.  http://easterniowalife.com/2010/12/16/cedar-rapids-native-studies-finds-a-home-in-jerusalem/

 

2010: On Saturday, two women were stabbed in a forest near Beit Shemesh. Kay Wilson, an olah from Great Britain, and her American friend Kristine Luken were hiking in the wooded hills west of Jerusalem. 

2010(11th of Tevet, 5771): French scholar Jacqueline de Romilly, a specialist on ancient Greece, a prolific writer and one of the first women to join the prestigious Academie Francaise, died today at the age of 97. (As reported by Cecile Roux)

http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=112149344

2010(11th of Tevet, 5771):Eighty-three year old “Morris L. Cohen, a book lover who shunned the practice of law because it was too contentious and became one of the nation’s most influential legal librarians, bringing both the Harvard and Yale law libraries into the digital age, died today at his home in New Haven.” (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “In The King’s Arms,” Sonia Taitz’s first novel about a Yeshiva-schooled and Vassar-scrubbed, 21-year-old New Yorker named Lily Taub and “Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World” by Richard Rhodes. Unbeknownst to most of her fans, Hedy Lamar a Viennese born Jewess whose birth-name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler.

2011: The Union for Reform Judaism Biennial is scheduled to come to an end.

2011: London’s Jewish Community Center is scheduled to host a family-friendly Chanukah Party this afternoon.

2011:”Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is scheduled to be shown at the Jewish Cinema Mississippi Chanukah Event in Jackson, MS.

2011: The Jewish Community Center Wide Chanukah Concert with Craig Taubman is scheduled to take place at the Uptown JCC in New Orleans, LA.

2011: Viewers of ION-TV are in for a musical treat as Meaghan Reider, daughter of Sue and Ronald Reider, pillars of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community is scheduled to perform a cantorial role this morning.

2011(22nd of Kislev):  Yahrzeit of Dulcina, the wife of Eleazar Rokeach and his son Jacob and his daughters, Belat and Hannah. They were killed in 1196 by two crusaders who broke into Eleazar’s home while he was working on a commentary on “Bereshit.” Born in 1176, this native of Mainz (Germany) was also known as Eleazar ben Judah ben Kalonymus. A leading Talmudist and author his works included “Ha-Rokeah” (Perfumer) “a halachic guide to ethics and Jewish Law for the common reader. The title derives from the numerical value of the word הרקח, which corresponds to that of אלעזר. The book is divided into 497 paragraphs containing halachot and ethics; first published at Fano, 1505.” The title of the book probably was the source of his “last name.”  He played a critical role in devising legislation that helped the Jews of the Rhineland survive the devastation of the Crusades.  He passed away in 1238.

2011:Today, the Ministerial Committee on Legislation approved a bill that would allow Jewish couples to register for marriage with any rabbinate bureau in the country, irrespective of where they live.

2011:  Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger criticized the segregation of men and women on public transportation, in an interview with Army Radio.

 

2011: An Egyptian pipeline carrying gas to Israel and Jordan was bombed today, the 10th such attack this year, but no fire erupted because the line that runs through North Sinai was already disabled, a security source said.

2012:  “Fill the Void” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2012:Mitchell Davis of the James Beard Foundation is scheduled to moderate a panel discussion with Julia Moskin of The New York Times, Stephanie Pierson – author of Brisket Book, Daniel Delaney of Brisket Town, Noah Bernamoff of Mile End and butcher Jake Dickson entitled “Let’s Brisket” in which they will discuss what was once considered to be the quintessential Jewish cut of beef.

2012: Tthousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls went online today with the launch of a new website by Google and the Israel Antiquities Authority, part of a move to make the famed manuscripts easily available to scholars and casual web surfers

2013: Rev. Canon Jack E. Lindquist is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “The Holocaust and Churches in Nazi Germany: Examples of Complicity and Resistance” at the Coronado Library.

 

2013: The UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present “Don’t Tell Santa You’re Jewish” and “David” by Director Joel Fendelman.

 

2013: “Fill the Void” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, weather permitting.

 

2013: It was reported today that Israeli fashion model Esti Ginzburg's f”ather was suing her for allegedly failing to pay him money owed for a house he sold her and her husband.”

 

2013: A 22-year-old man was killed and six more were injured when the IDF exchanged fire with Palestinians during an operation in the West Bank city of Jenin tonight.

 

2013: The Justice Ministry unveiled the draft of a proposed bill today that will ultimately completely restructure the legal regime and sovereignty principles governing the country’s coastal waters. (As reported by Sharon Udasin and Yonah Jeremy Bob)

 

 

2013: In contrasting decisions handed down today Germany says it won’t return two paintings once owned by a Jewish businessman who fled the Nazis, even as the western city of Cologne agreed to hand back almost a dozen other valuable drawings to heirs in two separate cases.

 

2013: The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court today sentenced Rabbi Mordechai Elon to six months of community service, as well as a 15-month suspended jail term, rejecting the prosecution’s demand that he be sent to prison for fondling a minor. Elon, once a celebrated mentor of Israel’s religious Zionist movement, was also ordered to pay the victim NIS 10,000 ($2,850) in compensation. (As reported by Spencer Ho)

 

2014: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host its annual Festival of Lights this evening at the Center for Jewish History.

 

2014: The Washington, DC Jewish Community Center is scheduled to host “Authors Out Loud” featuring Boris Fishman whose latest work is A Replacement Life: A Novel.

 

2014(26th of Kislev, 5775): 2nd day of Chanukah

 

2014(26th of Kislev, 5775): Eighty-nine year old Harold Schulweis, the long term rabbi at the Valley Beth Shalom synagogue in Encino, CA passed away today.

 

2014(26th of Kislev, 5775): Seventy-year old Mandy Rice-Davies “the showgirl” who played a key role in the Profumo Affair that brought down the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and who later converted to Judaism and made Aliyah, passed away today.

2014: In Iowa, Chabad led by Rabbi Avrohom Blesofsky is scheduled to light the menorah this evening at Coral Ridge Mall.

2014: Israeli pianist Daniel Gortler is scheduled to perform at the Jewish Museum.

2014: “In the decision released today the Supreme Court ruled against a motion from lawyers representing Yonit Erez, whose conversion to Judaism in 2000 was revoked by Israel’s rabbinical courts. The rabbis took the radical step after concluding that Erez had misled them in promising to lead an Orthodox life.” (As reported by Amanda Borschel-Dan)

2014: “President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and generations of Mossad chiefs participated in a ceremony today held at the president's residence in Jerusalem, where citations of excellence were awarded to outstanding Mossad agents.”

 

2014: Of the four Hamas terrorists who reportedly were taking part in a military exercise near the Egyptian Border one was killed and three were injured following an explosion near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

 

2014: A memorial service for Rabbi Isaac Neuman is scheduled to be held this evening at Sinai Temple in Champagne, Illinois.

2015: Rabbi Jennie Rosenn is scheduled to speak at Temple Emanu-El as part of Human Rights Shabbat.

 

2015: “Son of Saul” an “acclaimed Hungarian drama set in Auschwitz” and the “winner of the Grand Prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival” is scheduled open at The Film Forum in Manhattan.

2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Thanks You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman and The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis that examines the research of Hebrew University professors Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.

2016: WQXR is scheduled to host “a family Chanukah celebration in The Greene Space’ featuring “Parent’s Choice Award winners “The Bossy Frog Band” playing Chanukah favorites.”

2016: The Ethiopian Jewish Community’s seventh annual Sigd celebration is scheduled to come to an end today.

2016(18th of Kislev, 5777): In Antwerp, “a diamond dealer for De Beers” and his wife gave birth to Jack Valdmonna Lunzer, the husband of Ruth Zippel and the industrial diamond merchant who was the “custodian of the Valmadonna Trust Library” a collection of more than 13,000 books and manuscripts that included a handwritten Hebrew Bible from England dating back to 1189, “a Franco-German Pentatuch from the 10thor 11th century” and a Haggadah “printed in Prague in 1526.”

2017: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present an “interfaith conversation” between Ahmed Omar the Deputy Director of MALA who is a Somalilander American of Muslim heritage and Richard Sassoon, an Iraqi-American of Jewish heritage who graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and studied at the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding on the subject of “overcoming extremism.”

2017: In Newark, NJ, the Maccabeats are scheduled to perform at the Prudential Central following the NJ Devils NBA game.

2017(30th of Kislev, 5778): Sixth Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2018(10th of Tevet, 5778): David Levin is scheduled to say Kaddish today at the Tel Aviv International Synagogue on the Yahrzeit of his sister Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin) the wife of Larry Rosenstein of blessed memory, the mother of Danny, David Asher and Joel Rosenstein and the sister of Mitchell Levin all of whom miss her and remember her with love and affection

2018(10th of Tevet, 5779): The Fast of the 10thof Tevet; Asarah b’Tevet, is a minor fast day that commemorates the date “when, according to the Tanach (II Kings 25:1-4), the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem.”

2018: For the second and last time, today in London, “Artist-in-residence Tommy Berry” is scheduled to work in the gallery space creating works based on the survival story of Kindertransport survivor, Bea Green and her son Paul Green” at the Jewish Museum.

2018: “Moshe Bonen and special guests are scheduled to celebrated the musical talent and pay tribute to Arik Einstein” this evening at the Loft City Winery.

2018: Beit Avi Chai is scheduled to host “Lunar Legends: Magical Soup, a play for the month of Tevet.”

2019: In Boca Raton, FL, B’nai Torah Congregation is scheduled to host Angela King, Brendan Murphy and Dr. Steven Luckert, the Senior Program Curator of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as they present “Hate and Its Impact: Sowing the Seeds of Global Antisemitism.”

2019: “Jewtopia” featuring Michael Alpert and Pete Rushefsky is scheduled to begin tonight at the Stanton Street Shul.

2019: In Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts is scheduled to host the “Hanukkah Festival of Lights.”

2019: “Maim” featuring Israeli dancer Zvi Gotheiner, which is an attempt to raise awareness about the diminishing of the world’s supply of potable water is scheduled to open in New York.

2020: In another session examining UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection, curators Francesco Spagnolo and Shir Kochavi are scheduled to present a 1940s menorah in a talk subtitled “A Workshop for ‘Displaced Persons’ in Germany, 1945.”

2020: OneTable and Riverway Project are scheduled to present online Ladino Hanuká with artist, writer, singer and Jewish educator Sarah Aroeste

2020: The Bexley, Ohio, Public Library is scheduled to host local Bexley author and illustrator Benny Zelkowicz, of The “Books of Ore” trilogy, as he talks about his career as an animator on projects like “The LEGO Movie” and “The Simpsons”, his love of monster movies, and his new book, The Golem's Gift, including the sand painting technique used to illustrate the book!

https://www.bzelk.com/

2020(3rd of Tevet, 5781): Eighth Day of Chanukah

 

 

 

This Day, December 19, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 19

324: Licinius abdicates his position as Emperor leaving Constatine I, “the first Christian Emperor” in control of the Roman Empire much to the detriment of the Jewish people.

1154: Coronation of Henry II, King of England.With the restoration of order under Henry II, conditions of the Jews improved markedly. Within five years of his accession Jews are found at London, Oxford, Cambridge, Norwich, Thetford, Bungay, Canterbury, Winchester, Newport, Stafford, Windsor, and Reading. Yet they were not permitted to bury their dead elsewhere than in London, a restriction which was not removed till 1177. Their spread throughout the country enabled the king to draw upon them as occasion demanded; he repaid them by demand notes on the sheriffs of the counties, who accounted for payments thus made in the half-yearly accounts on the pipe rolls (see Aaron of Lincoln). Richard "Strongbow" de Clare's conquest of Ireland in 1170 was financed by Josce, a Jew of Gloucester; and the king accordingly fined Josce for having lent money to those under his displeasure. As a rule, however, Henry II does not appear to have limited in any way the financial activity of Jews. The favourable position of the English Jews was shown, among other things, by the visit of Abraham ibn Ezra in 1158, by that of Isaac of Chernigov in 1181, and by the resort to England of the Jews who were exiled from France by Philip Augustus in 1182, among them probably being Judah Sir Leon of Paris. When he asked the rest of the country to pay a tithe for the crusade against Saladin in 1186, he demanded a quarter of the Jewish chattels. The tithe was reckoned at £70,000, the quarter at £60,000. In other words, the value of the personal property of the Jews was regarded as one-fourth that of the whole country. It is improbable, however, that the whole amount was paid at once, as for many years after the imposition of the tallage arrears were demanded from the recalcitrant Jews. The king had probably been led to make this large demand upon English Jewry by the surprising windfall which came to his treasury at the death of Aaron of Lincoln. All property obtained by usury, whether by Jew or by Christian, fell into the king's hands on the death of the usurer; Aaron of Lincoln's estate included £15,000 of debts owed to him. Besides this, a large treasure came into the king's hands, which, however, was lost on being sent over to Normandy. A special branch of the treasury, constituted in order to deal with this large account, was known as "Aaron's Exchequer". In this era, Jews lived on good terms with their non-Jewish neighbours, including the clergy; they entered churches freely, and took refuge in the abbeys in times of commotion. Some Jews lived in opulent houses, and helped to build a large number of the abbeys and monasteries of the country. However, by the end of Henry's reign they had incurred the ill will of the upper classes. The anti-Jewish sentiment fostered by the crusades, during the latter part of the reign of Henry, spread the anti-Jewish sentiment throughout the nation.

1187: Clement III who was no friend of the Jews was elected Pope today.  In the aftermath of the First Crusaders violent march through the Rhine, Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor sought to allow Jews who had been forced to convert to return to Judaism.  Pope Clement III opposed Henry on this insisting that the Jews, no matter how they had come to the Church, could not leave it.  To his credit, Henry ignored the Pope.  He went so far as to find those who had killed his Jewish subjects and bring them to justice.  From the Jewish point of view, Henry was the exception to the norm among European Princes and Prelates.  We should remember him for this and not for shivering in the winter as he did penance before an arrogant prince of the Church.

1370: Pope Urban V passed away.  Urban issued a bull entitled “Sicuti judaeis non debet” that forbade the molestation of Jews and condemned the forced baptism of Jews.

1483: The first edition of Talmud Babli Berakot was published in Soncino, Italy by Joshua Solomon Soncino.  This is the tractate of the Babylonia Talmud that discusses the laws of Kriat Shema, Prayers and Blessing.

1483: The first edition of Talmud Betzah was published in Soncino, Italy by Joshua Solomon Soncino. Betzah is the tractate that deals rules concerning Festivals.

1488: The first edition of the Sefer Mitzvoth Gadol was published in Soncino, Italy. The Sefer Mitzvoth Gadol (The Great Book of the Commandments) was written by Rabbi Moses ben Jacob of Coucy'. Rabbi ben Jacob lived in the first half of the 13th century in Coucy, France. This work--usually designated by its acronym, the Semag—classifies Jewish law according to the traditional enumeration of 613 commandments. The work is divided into two sections. The first deals with the 365 negative precepts of the Torah, and the second with the 248 positive precepts. References to the Semag are by Section. The publishing of this and other such texts helped to enhance the culture of education that has been the hallmark of Judaism since its earliest days.  Guttenberg and his printing press were definitely “friends” of the Jews.

1521: John III was crowned King of Portugal in the Church of São Domingos in Lisbon, beginning a thirty-six-year reign that included negotiations with David Reubeni over the providing a fleet to help in his competition with the Ottomans in 1525 and the introduction of the Inquisition to his realm in 1536.

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.

1757: Phillip Cuyler wrote to Jewish “insurance broker” David Franks about the “large sum of uninsured goods that he has on board the ship Charming Rachell.”

1762: Birthdate of Ephraim Zalman Margolis the Galician born rabbi who was the brother of Hayyim Mordecai Margolioth and whose works including commentaries on parts of the Shulchan Arukh.

1764(25thof Kislev, 5525): First Day of Chanukah

1764: As Jews prepare to kindle the second light of Chanukah, those in the 13 Colonies are dealing with the impact of Sugar Act enacted early in the year which was one of the pieces of legislation that led to the American Revolution

1767(28thof Kislev, 5528): Parashat Miketz; Fourth day of Chanukah

1767: Today, Benjamin Franklin wrote from London to his son William Franklin, the colonial governor of New Jersey that “We have had an ugly affair at the Royal Society lately. One Dacosta, a Jew, who, as our clerk, was entrusted with collecting our monies, has been so unfaithful as to embezzle near £1300 in four years. (The reference is to “Emanuel Mendes da Costa, who had been appointed clerk and assistant secretary of the Royal Society in 1763)

1775(26thof Kislev, 5536): Second Day of Chanukah

1775: As Jews prepared to kindle the third light of Chanukah, patriot forces overwhelmed the British forces on Sullivan Island leading to the building of fortifications designed to protect the port of Charleston

1777: Gen. George Washington led his army of about 11,000 men to Valley Forge, Pa., to camp for the winter. Hanukkah at Valley Forge is a children’s book by Stephen Krensky about an event that took place during that fateful winter.On a cold December night during the height of the Revolutionary War, General George Washington surveys his weary troops at Valley Forge. He spies a soldier lighting a candle. Curious, he asks the soldier what he is doing. The soldier explains that he is celebrating the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. He goes on to relate a miraculous story—how long ago a ragtag army of Jewish soldiers defeated a much larger force of powerful Greeks, a tale that provides just the kind of inspiration General Washington needs. Stephen Krensky's fictionalized version of a poignant historical anecdote is brought vividly to life in Greg Harlin's brilliant watercolor illustrations.” The thirty two page book is designed for children from 4 to 7. While we may not know the names of all the Jews who spent the winter freezing in the Pennsylvania cold, we do know that Abraham Levy and Phillip Russell were among those who stuck it out. When the army marched out in the spring, some of the soldiers carried rifles supplied by Joseph Simon who crafted them at this forge in Lancaster, PA.

1778(30thof Kislev, 5539): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6th Day of Chanukah

1778: Jews prepared to the light the seventh Chanukah light on the first anniversary of Washington akes his forces into winter camp at the fabled Valley Forge while on this day the Virginia legislature was enacting legislation “to encourage officers and men to remain in the Continental Army.”

1781: Joseph II abolished Leibzoll (body tax) along with the "special law taxes, the passport duty, the night duty and all similar oppressive imposts which had stamped the Jews as outcasts."

1786: Marks and Rachel Lazarus gave birth to Michael Lazarus, a leader of the Reform movement in Charleston, SC and who “opened steam navigation between Charleston and Augusta”  

1787: In Germany, Kehla and Feis Moses Fraenkel gave birth to Meyer Fraenkel

1788: In Charleston, SC, Sara and Moses Clava Levy gave birth to Jacob Clavious Levy, the husband of Fanny Yates with whom he had eight children.

1788: In Pennsylvania, Michael Marks and Jochabed Isaacks gave birth to Sarah Marks the future wife of Samuel Lyons

 

1791(23rd of Kislev, 5552):

1799: In Bonfeld, Germany, Blumel Joseph and Joseph Ruben Gummersheimer gave birth to their son Hennoch Strausburger.

1800(3rd of Tevet, 5561): Eighth Day of Chanukah is observed for the first time in the 19th century and for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1800(3rd of Tevetm 5561): Moses De La Motta, the son of Sarah and Isaac De La Motta passed away in Charleston, SC.

1803: Birthdate of  Hartvig Abraham Von Essen, the husband of Brigitte Simon and the father of Ferdinand and Ida Von Essen

1807: Abraham Franklin married Miriam Aaron today.

 

1813: Barnet Franks married Jane Jacobs at the Great Synagogue today.

1816(29th of Kislev, 5577): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1816(29th of Kislev, 5577): Sarah Sazrzedas, the daughter of Sarah and Isaac da Costa, who had one child by each of her two husbands, Col. David Maysor and David Sarzedas, passed away today.

1821(25th of Kislev, 5582): Chanukah

 

1821: Birthdate of Dutch bibliographer Meyer Roest whose best known work is the two volume Catalog der Hebraica und Judaica aus der L. Rosenthal'schen Bibliothek

1823: In Newington, Martha and Woolf Levy gave birth to David Lewis Levy, the husband of Bertha Levy.

 

1828:Clari” an opera semiseria in three acts by Fromental Halévy “was first produced at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris” today.

 

1831: The Privy Council in England granted the Jewish community official recognition and equality on the island. Jews were then permitted to vote in the elections and, by 1849, eight of the 47 members of House of Assembly were Jewish, including the Speaker of the House. Jews became so prominent in society that in 1849, the House of Assembly did not gather on Yom Kippur.

1832(27th of Kislev, 5593): Third Day of Chanukah

1840: Birthdate of German native Carolina Berg, the wife of Abraham Michael.

 

 

 

1841: Birthdate of Russian-born Austrian “rabbinical scholar” Abraham Epstein author of the Ḳadmut ha-Tanḥuma, who passed away in 1918.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/epstein-abraham

 

 

1844 (9th of Tevet, 5605): The Czar abolished all Kahals in the Russian Empire.

1849: William Wolf Collins, the son of Lewis Collins and Julia Isaacs, was buried at “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

 

1846(30th of Kislev, 5607) Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth of Chanukah

 

1846(30th of Kislev, 5607): Eighty-one year old Rebecca Judah, the daughter of Samuel Judah passed away today in New York.

1852: Birthdate of Russian native Albert A. Michelson who taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and calculated the Speed of Light for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1907.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1907/michelson/biographical/

1854(28thof Kislev, 5615): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1854: Birthdate of Joshua Moses Levy, the “elder of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue” in London and member of the Board of Deputies who served on the Licensing Committee of the Board of Shechita and the “Committee of the Bread, Meat and Coal Society.”

1855(10thof Tevet, 5616): Aasara B’Tevet

1856: In Vienna, Simon Spitzer, the son of Moses Spitzer and his wife Marie Spitzer gave birth to Malvine Nawaski.

1856: The Huntington Trial a case being heard before Judge Capron was in recess today “because one of the jurors was a Jew and had conscientious scruples about working on his Sabbath…”

1857(1stof Tevet, 5618): Parashat Miketz: Eighth Day of Chanukah

1857: In the future Czech Republic, Helen and Daniel Low gavie birth to Karl Low, the husband of Rosa Low.

1857: Under a modification of the 1855 Naval Reform designed to remove superfluous officers, Uriah Phillips Levy began the first of three days before a Board of Inquiry that had been convened to see if he should be reinstated. Fifty -three character witnesses, including former Secretary of the Navy and historian George Bancroft, governors, senators, congressmen, bank presidents, merchants, doctors, and editors had already testified on his behalf before Phillips began testify. The most shocking statement had come from Bancroft who confirmed Levy had been purged "because he was of the Jewish persuasion."  The most moving part of the testimony came with the statement of Phillips, "My parents were Israelites, and I was nurtured in the faith of my ancestors.""I am an American, a sailor, and a Jew," At the end, there was a moment's silence before the explosion of cheers, the hats flung in the air, the wild applause.

1858: In Camden, New Jersey, Maurice Traubel and Katherine Grunder gave birth to essayist, poet and follower of Henry George, Horace Traubel who was the editor of The Conservator from 1890 until his death in 1919.

1859: Nine year old Israel Dov Frumkin emigrated from Russia to Jerusalem with his father, Alexander Sender Frumkin, mother and brother

1862(27thof Kislev, 5623): Third Day of Chanukah

1862(27thof Kislev, 5623: Thirty nine year old Abraham Solomon, the son Catherine and hat manufacturer Meyer Solomon and the brother of painter Simeon Solomon passed away today on the same day that his artistic talents were recognized by election as “an Associate of the Royal Academy.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Solomon#/media/File:A_SolomonFirst_Class-_The_Meeting,_and_at_First_Meeting_Loved._Abraham_Solomon.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Solomon#/media/File:A_SolomonFirst_Class-_The_Meeting,_and_at_First_Meeting_Loved._Abraham_Solomon.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Solomon#/media/File:Solomon_Abraham_The_Acolyte.jpg

1865(1stof Tevet, 5626): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah observed for the first time in a re-united United States of America.

1867: In Prague, Joseph and Julie Wolf gave birth to Siegfried Reginald Wolf.

1868: In Vienna, the Rudolphinum founded in honor of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria and funded by A.M. Pollak was dedicated today.

1870(25thof Kislev, 5631): First Day of Chanukah

1871: In Canonbury, London, Rose Jessel and Bernard Spiers gave birth to Theresa Lizzie Spiers, the wife of Solomon Conquy and the mother of Theresa Orovida Conquy.

1876: It was reported today that William J. Ree, “one of the most daring and expert swindlers and forgers” ever to operate in New York City, is among the many convicts paroled by Governor Tilden without informing the District Attorney or the criminals’ victims. Ree is reportedly from Denmark and a member of a wealthy Jewish who has two brothers who are successful merchants in London. He married the wealthy widow of the late Commodore Uriah P. Levy and proceeded to run through her fortune of $400,000. He also was the heir to a fortune left to him by one of his wife’s aunts – a fortune that he dissipated with equal speed which led him to turn to active swindling.

1876: A fair to raise funds for Hebrew Charities is to be held this evening at the Masonic Hall in NYC.

1878: It was reported today that most of the Jews of Cincinnati, Ohio, approved decision of the Hebrew Benevolent Societies decision to refuse the contributions offered by Mrs. A.T. Stewart.  They feel that the involvement of Judge Hilton makes it impossible for Jews to accept the money.  Several Jews have offered to make up any short-fall. A minority, including Louis Kramer and Henry Mack Southern, have expressed the opinion that charities have no right to reject contributions regardless of the source.  Jews have refused to do business with Hilton and his company since he banned Jews from being guests at his fashionable New York hotel.

1879: In Laupheim, Pauline Heilbronner married Leopold Hirschfeld and became Pauline Heilbronner Hirschfeld, the mother of Laura and Bella Hirschfeld.

1880: It was reported today that Mt. Sinai Hospital, which was opened in 1852 was the third private hospital opened that provided for New York City’s destitute.  St Vincent’s which was opened by the Roman Catholics in 1859 and St. Luke’s which opened in 1850 are the only two such institutions that are older than the facility funded by the Jewish community that is opened to all regardless  race or creed.

1880: In New York, Reverends John Cotton Smith, R. Heber Newton and L.D. Devan expressed their concern from their respective pulpits about the wave of “anti-Jewish agitation” currently sweeping Germany. (Compare this to the relative silence that one “heard” during the 1930’s)

1880: In Belz, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach and Basha Ruchama Twersky gave birth to Aharon Rokeach the fourth Rebbe of the Belz Hasidic dynasty who led the movement from 1926 until his death in 1957.

1880:  Leana Catosk Pearlstone, the Mississippi born daughter of Mina and Louis Hart and her husband Barney Pearlstone gave birth to Ann H, Pearlstone

1880: “First Chandlery Factory In America” published today credited Jews who had come to Newport from Portugal between 1745 and 1750 with introducing this “lucrative…business” in which they had an advantage because they knew “the art of preparing the sperm for candles.” “Of the 16 people” originally “engaged in this business” three were Jews named Riveria, Lopez and Siexas.

1881: It was reported today that police in New York, Brooklyn Staten Island and Jersey City are all looking for thirty eight year old Louis Hammel, the Jewish foreman of J. Beck & Sons who has been reported missing by his relatives.

1881: Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, who would take an active role in determining and trying to ameliorate the conditions of the Russian Jews after the passage of the May Laws, began serving as Secretary of State under President Chester A. Arthur.

1881: In New York, Julius and Sarah (Adler) Goldman gave birth to Hetty Godman, “a member of the Goldman-Sachs banking family” who made her mark in the world of academia which was unusual for a woman in her era.

1881: In New York, Sarah and Julius Goldman gave birth to Hetty Goldman “a well know archaeologist who unearthed many new excavations that gave historians a better insight of the past in Greece” and who “was very active in sponsoring Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.” (As reported by Seymour Brody)

1882: In New York Superior Court, Judge Arnoux heard the argument of Abraham Meyer who is seeking an injunction that will restrain police from enforcing that part of the Penal Code that would force him to close on Sunday.  Meyer is Jewish and claims that under the law he can “sell goods on Sunday because he observes Saturday as his ‘holy time.’”

1882: Elizabeth Henriques, the daughter of Solomon Jacob Waley and Rachel Hort and the husband of Jacob Quixano, the native of Jamaica, was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1882: Birthdate of Bronislaw Huberman, the Polish born violinist who founded the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra in 1936.  After the creation of the state of Israel, a year after Huberman’s death, the orchestra would change its name to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

1883: D. Wiley Travis, the attorney for Theodore Hoffman who was sentenced to death for murdering Jewish peddler Zife Marks, “will take the case to the Court of Appeals.”

1883:Madame Fanny Janauschek will appear in “Zillah, The Hebrew Mother” today at the Third Avenue Theatre.

1885: Birthdate of  Vilna native and Cooper Union trained engineer Joseph Halpern, the “director of the Bureau of Port Planning and Development and the Department of Marine and  Aviation, the husband of Ida Halpern with whom he had three children --- Dr. Seymour, Adeline and Beatrice.

1885: At least a thousand people attended tonight’s session of the fair being held to raise funds for the kindergarten and industrial schools of the Hebrew Free School Association.

1886: First meeting of the “Emin Pasha Relief Committee.” Mehmed Emin Pasha was the name of a German Jew Eduard Schnitzer had taken when he had converted to Islam to further his career in the world of the Ottomans. 

1886: Five hundred prominent Jews met at Temple Israel in Brooklyn, NY, this afternoon and formed the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1886: It was reported today that the Hebrew Fee School Association is now supporting a “Ladies Hebrew Seminary” in addition to its industrial branches for manual training and kindergartens.

1886: An auction will held today, the day after the close of the charity fair held to raise funds for the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, which is expected to raise an additional $15,000. The fair raised $168,000 for the Home.

1887: It was reported today that the Ladies’ Deborah Nursery, founded by Mrs. Deborah Alexander, is currently providing care “for 150 young boys and babies.”

1888: It was reported today that Benjamin F. Peixotto and James W. Moses were blackballed from the Republican Club on 5th Avenue because they “had enough Jews in the club at present.” Peixotto is a member of a distinguished Sephardic family that has served the United States for three generations. But Moses, a prominent member of the Cotton Exchange, is a Yankee from Maine without a drop of Jewish “blood in his veins.”

1888: “The Republican Club” published today described plans for this new organization which plans on blackballing Jews, a fact that the author is able to easily rationalize, but also is willing to accept contributions of Jewish money.

1888: It was reported today that the following have made donations to the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids: Lazarus Straus, $2,500; Louis Stern, $500, W.J. Cholle, $200; Henry Newman, $100 and M.W. Mendel and Jacob H. Schiff, $1,000 each.

1888:  Birthdate of Fritz Reiner, Hungarian born American symphony conductor who passed away in 1963.

1889(26thof Kislev, 5650): Second Day of Chanukah

1889: Louis and Clara Asia Parnes gave birth to Maxwell Parnes, the husband of Sarah Blumberg Parnes

1890: It was reported today that a St. Petersburg newspaper has responded to “English remonstrances against the treatment of the Russian Jews” by charging the English with having exterminated the natives of Australia and poisoned the Chinese with opium among other crimes.

1891(18thof Kislev, 5652): Parashat Vayishlach

1891(18thof Kislev, 5652): Sixty-eight year old Bavarian native Isaac Kohn, the son of Abraham and Bella Kuhn and the husband of Henrietta Kohn passed away today in Phildadelphia.

1891: “The coroner is making a searching inquiry” into events surrounding the death of Maxwell Castine, a Russian Jew whose body was discovered yesterday with his throat cut from ear to ear in a “flouring mill at Petersburg

1891: Ninety Russian Jews who have been brought to the United States by Baron Hirsch are staying at the synagogue in Fall River, MA until they begin working in the local mills.

1892(30thof Kislev, 5653): Rosh Chodesh Kislev; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1892: The State Board of Arbitration met in Camden, NJ tonight and decided to go to Woodbine and “get the facts regarding the cloakmaker’s strike” taking place at the Jewish colony.

1892: “Fifty Years A Temple” published today the jubilee celebration that has been taking place at Rodeph Sholom which were attended by a host of dignitaries including Judges Goldfolgle, Newberger and Lachman as well as Otto J. Wise, Charles S. Cohn, A.H. Berrick and Abram Stern.

1893(10thof Tevet, 5654): Asara B’Tevet

1893: Henry Solomon, Lazarus Diamond, Max Rosenthal and Leah Blumental are among the saloonkeepers were being held on charges violating the excise law which forbids the sale of alcohol on Sundays.

1894: Judge Henry Mayer Goldfogle expressed his sympathy with the striking cloakmakers  who are faced with eviction and “asked the landlord to give their tenants an extension of time” – a request with which they complied so “no evictions were ordered.”

1894: In the United States, Baer and Fanni Adler gave birth to Leo Adler, the husband of Bella Adler and the father of Greta, Milton and Gunther Adler. (Not to be confused with the Oregon newspaper man with the same name born in 1895)

1894: The trial of Alfred Dreyfus began today at the Cheche-Midi Prison.

1894: Birthdate of Paul Dessau the native of Hamburg and grandson of Cantor Moses Berend Dessau, the composer and conductor whose works ranged from scores to Walt Disney moves to “the oratorio Hagadah shel Pessach after a libretto by Max Brod.”

1894: As of today the officers of the Jewish Historical Society are President--Oscar S. Straus; Vice Presidents – Dr. Charles Gross, Simon W. Rosendale, Paul Leicester Ford; Corresponding Secretary – Dr. Cyrus Adler; Recording Secretary – Dr. Herbert Friedenwald; Treasurer – Professor R.J.H. Gottheil.

1895: “Dr. Hermann Kahn will sell copies of Maritz Oppenheim’s paints of scenes from the life of the Israelites at tonight’s session of the charity fair which is a fundraiser for the Educational Alliance and The Hebrew Technical Institute.

1895: Four days after she had passed away, 72 year old Katherine Schiff, the daughter of Moses Mosely and Rosetta Samuel and the wife of Saling Schiff with whom she had had nine children, was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemeery on Buckingham Road.

1895: “The Anti-Semites in Vienna” described the unpopularity of the Imperial Government’s decision to reject the election of a Jew baiter, Dr. Luger, to be Burgomaster of Vienna.”

1896: “Santa Maria,” an operetta by Oscar Hammerstein I closed at the Olympia Theatre after three months of performances.

1896: The University of Wisconsin football team led by first year head coach Philip King, a Jewish native of Washington, DC lost their last game of the season to Carlisle.

1897(24thof Kislev, 5658): First Chanukah candle kindled for the first time during the Presidency of William McKinley.

1898: The American Jewish Historical Society what had been “organized at New York on June 7, 1892” was incorporated today in the District Columbia with members that included Dr. Cyrus Adler, Simon W. Rosendale, Mendes Cohen, Charles Gross and Professor Richard Gottheil.

1898: Louis Samuel Montagu, the second Baron of Swaythling and his wife gave birth to Stuart Albert Samuel Montague, third Baron Swaythling who served with the Guards during World War I and who was the person “responsible for making rear lights compulsory on motor cycles.”

1898(6thof Tevet, 5659):Rabbi Yechezkel Shraga Halberstam, “who was famous for his disagreements with his father Rabbi Chaim Halbertam of Sanz on matters of halakha” who served as a rabbi in several towns including Shinova, passed away today.

1898: After the death of Rabbi Yechezkel Shraga Halberstam, today, his second son, Rabbi Moishe Halberstram succeeded his father as Rabbi of Shinova.

1898: After having been “organized at New York in 1892,” today The American Jewish Historical Society, whose members included Dr. Cyrus Adler, Simon W. Rosendale, Mendes Cohen, Charles Gross, Simon Wolf, Professor Richard Gottheil, Dr. Herbert Friedenwald and Professor J. H. Hollander, was “incorporated in the District of Columbia.

1898: Today, “an indenture was recorded by the Register of Deeds for Camden County, New Jersey for a property consisting of three lots at the southeast corner of South 8th Street and Sycamore Street to Congregation Sons of Israel, who were acquiring the property from George W. Jessup.”

1899: Eighteen year old Adele Bauer, the daughter of “banker Moritz Bauer and Jeannette (Honig) Bauer married “industrialist Ferdinand Bloch, who was 17 years her senior” to become Adele Bloch-Bauer.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bloch-bauer-adele

 1900(27th of Kislev, 5661): Third Day of Chanukah

1900: Today Sir William Lyne, who when he came out in favor the Federation of the Australian states was accused if consorting “with the Sydney Jews and pub-keepers” was appointed “the Commonwealth’s first Prime Ministe by the Governor-General of Australia.

1901: In Pottsville, PA, Annie and Maurice Mordechai Mohr gave birth to Jennie Mohr.

1901: In Berlin, Else Preuss, the daughter of Carl and Antonie Lieberman and Dr. of Jurisprudence Hugo Preuss gave birth to Hans Helmuth Preuss

1902: ‘Lively Zionist Meeting” published today described a speech given by Jacob De Haas Secretary of the Federation of American Zionists which was supposed to be part of a debate between him and Rabbi Silverman, who was an opponent of Zionist.  The debate did not take place because Silverman failed to show up.

1902:Birthdate of British violinist and orchestra leader, Leonard Hirsch.  He was a conductor of the Royal Air Force Symphony Orchestra.

1903:Chaim Zelig Louban, a 27 year old student, attempts to assassinate Max Nordau at a Chanukah ball of the Paris Zionist society. He approaches Nordau, cries "Death to Nordau, the East African" and fires two shots. Nordau writes to Herzl: "Yesterday evening I got an installment on the debt of gratitude which the Jewish people owe me for my selfless labors on its behalf. I say this without bitterness, only in sorrow. How unhappy is our people, to be able to produce such deeds." This incident goes to show the depth of feeling surrounding the “Uganda Plan.”

 

1903: “Camden Hebrews to Have Synagogue” published today described the purchase of the church building at the southeast corner of Eighth and Sycamore streets for $2,300 by the city’s Jews which will hereafter be used as a synagogue.

1903: Herzl publishes an account of the Kharkov conference in "Die Welt", together with a declaration calling upon those who had voted for the ultimatum to surrender their mandates. In a subsequent issue a digest of the minutes of the Conference appears.

1903: The Williamsburg Bridge was opened in New York City. This was America's first major suspension bridge using steel towers instead of the customary masonry towers. It was built to alleviate traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and to provide a link between Manhattan and the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, and was the second of three steel-frame suspension bridges to span the East River. Designed by Leffert L. Buck and Henry Hornbostel, it had taken over seven years to complete. The 1,600 foot Williamsburg Bridge was the world's longest suspension bridge until the 1920s. It had cost $24,100,000 for the land and construction. For Jews it meant a connection between the Lower East Side and what would become the thriving Jewish neighborhoods of 20th century Brooklyn.

1904: It was reported today that Carl Schurz had delivered an address at the 12th annual meeting of the Educational Alliance “in which he had advised Jews to be less clannish” because this would remove one of the pretexts for anti-Semitic feelings.

1905: Frank F. Harding the principal of Public School 44 which is located in a neighborhood “almost entirely by Jews” discussed Christ during a Christmas entertainment in a manner that one student found objectionable and others saw as an attempt “to proselytize the children his charge.”

1905: In Manhattan, Mamie Friedman and Saul Kahn gave birth to Irving Kahn who would still be working as professional investor a hundred years later.

1905: It was reported today that “contributions to the fund for the relief of suffers by Russian massacres” including $329 from Congregation Shaari Zedek and its Sisterhood, $2,322 from the “Orthodox Jews of St. Paul, MN” and $157 from Athens, GA, the home of the University of Georgia.

1905: “Jewish World Congress” published today described the decision by “the central organization of the Zionists to hold a special congress” to deal with the violence being aimed at the Jews of Russia.

1906(2nd of Tevet, 5666: Eighth Day of Chanukah

1906: Birthdate of David I. Arkin the American “teacher, painter, writer and lyrcist” who was the father of actor Alin Arkin.

1907: It was reported today that Jews have been ordered to depart from Validvostok wirhin the next four days.

1908(25th of Kislev, 5669): Chanukah celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt.

1909: “The presence of about 25 policeman policemen at the dedications exercises of the new building of the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum did mee with the approval of Mayor-elect Gaynor who headed the list of the invited guests and who questioned Simon F. Rothschld , the president of asylum about the reason for their presence.

1910: Birthdate of David Raziel, one of the founders of "The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel" better known at the Irgun.

http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2009/05/68th-memorial-anniversary-for-david.html

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

1911(28th of Kislev, 5762): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1912: Birthdate of “Judah Cahn, the founding rabbi of the Metropolitan Synagogue of New York and past president of the New York Board of Rabbis…” (As reported by David Bird)

1913: In Memphis, TN, Josef and Tillie Klausner gave birth to Sylvia Klausner who became Sylvia Mandell when she married Carl Mandell.

1913: One of the last advertisements for “Shon the Piper” an historical drama starring Robert Z. Leonard which now considered a “lost movie” appeared today “announcing a showing at the Airdome in Durham, North Carolina.

1914(2nd of Tevet, 5675): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1914: In Charleston, SC, Dr. Leon Banov and Minnie Banov gave birth to Leon Banov, Jr. the Medical College of South Carolina trained proctologist, husband of Rita Landesman Banov and father of Jane and Alan Banov.

1914(2nd of Tevet, 5675): During WW I, Captain Cecil David Woodburn Bamberger, who “had attended University College School was killed while serving with the Royal Engineers.

1914: A letter received today in New York from a journalist in Jerusalem described “conditions in Palestine since the Turkish declaration of war: that “shows how serious the hardships brought upon the population are likely to be.

1915: Joseph Trumpeldor, who took command of the Zion Mule Corps after Lt. Col. Patterson became so sick he had to return to England, “was wounded in the left shoulder by a rifle bullet today but refused to ev evacuated” and chose to say with Jewish unit which by now had dwindled to five British officers, two Jewish officers and 126 enlisted men.”

1915: Today, “the Zionist Council of Greater New York “is scheduled to “celebrate it tenth anniversary at the Central Opera House” with events including a “musical concert” the issuance of “The Decennial” a souvenir period “containing articles by Louis D. Brandeis, Dr. Schmarya Levin and Dr. Stephen S. Wise.”

1915: Among those who were reported today to have made contributions to the Central Relief Committee for the Relief of Jews suffering through the war are Sioux City Religious Association, $218; Jewish National Organization of Minneapolis, $387; Jewish Committee of Knoxville, TN, $400 and the Hadassah Aid Society of Wilkes-Barre, PA Religious Committee, $180.

1916(24th of Kislev, 5677): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1916: The New York Times reported, “The celebration of the Jewish festival of Chanukah, or Feast of Dedication known also as the Feast of Lights, will begin this evening and will continue for eight days.

1917: Seventy-one year old Ernst Herter the German sculptor who” was present in New York when his Heinrich Heine memorial sculpture, known as the Lorelei Fountain, was unveiled in the Bronx, New York” after “Heine's city of birth, Düsseldorf “squelched” the project” due to anti-Semitic sentiment that pervaded the German Reich at that time passed away today.

1917: In Youngstown, OH,  Jacob and Sarah Grobstein gave birth  Sarah Grobstein who became Sarah Goldmaker when she married Harry Goldemaker.

1917: In the early morning hours, as the Imperial forces prepared for the attack on Jaffa, “the 161st (Essex) Brigade from the 54th (East Anglian) Division and the Auckland and Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiments, from the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, moved into the front line replacing the 52nd (Lowland) Division.”

1917: The Organization for the Defense of Eastern Jewry was established today in London.

 1917(4th of Tevet, 5678): Seventy-four year old “communal worker” Michael B. Jonas passed away today in St. Louis.

1917: “Among the additional contributions to the $10,000,000 fund raised by the American Jewish Relief Committee published today were $5,000 from M.M. Travis of Tulsa, OK, $1,2500 from the Jewish Relief Committee of Spokane, WA, $1,100 from Jewish Relief Committee of Grand Forks, N.D. and $1,000 from the Jewish Relief Committee of Nashville, TN.

1918: “On the initiative of Chaim Weiszburg, a leader of the Zionist movement, Uj Kelet, a Zionist Jewish newspaper in the Hungarian language whose writers included Rudolf Kastner, was launched as a weekly today.

1918: “The Private From the Bronx” published today praised the bravery of Abraham Krotoshinsky who earned the Distinguished Service Cross for the heroism displayed while helping to rescue the “Lost Battalion” during the fighting in the Argonne Forest.

1919(27th of Kislev, 5680): Third Chanukah

1919: The Rusland docked in Jaffa, with returning Zionists trapped in Europe by WW I on board.

1919: “The Little Café” a comedy from the days of silent pictures based on the “1911 play ‘The Little Café’ by Tristan Bernard, directed by Raymond Bernard and starring Armand Bernard was released today in France.

1919: Birthdate of Sally Ann Lowengart, the native of Portland, Oregon who gained fame as civil rights activist Sally Lilienthal, found of the Ploughshares Fund.

1919: Victor Berger was elected for a second time to serve in the House of Representatives for a district in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  The House had denied Berger the right to serve after having been elected in 1918 because he a convicted felon and opponent of the Great War.

1919: In New York, David Freedman an immigrant from Romania and his wife gave birth to “American novelist and mathematician” Benedict Freedman.

1919: Today, William Shemin was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross “for battle field valor druing the Aisne-Marne Offensive” during WW I.

1919: Zionist office opened in Constantinople for Jews wanting to move to Palestine.

1919: The SS Ruslam reached Jaffa with 671 people aboard. The ship was loaded with doctors, artists, and academics and had been called Israel’s Mayflower. Its arrival marked the period of what is known as the "Third Aliyah," which lasted four years. Approximately 50% of the 35,000 immigrants were from Russia and 35% from Poland. The "Third Aliyah" was idealistic and marked the time when the first Kibbutzim and Moshavim were established.

1920: Rabbi Max D. Klein of Adath Jeshuron Congregation in Philadelphia will address those attending today’s celebration of the organization of Congregation Beth-El in Camden, NJ.

1920:  In New York City, Benjamin and Frances Lear Susskind gave birth to David Susskind who was known primarily as movie, stage and television producer.  But during the late 1950’s he hosted one of the original late-night talk shows.  It was a high-brow event with no singers, no book pluggers and no comedy monologues.  The set would become wreathed in a haze of cigarette smoke as the guests discussed weighty and artsy issues of the day.  Susskind passed away in 1987.

1920: Twenty-four year old Dr. Daniel Harold Leventhal, the Chicago born son of Harry of Harry and Dorothy Leventhal  who  served as “an orthopedic surgeon with the 26thDivision of the AEF” Getrude M Coski today in Chicago.

1924:  Governor General Primo de Rivera of Spain offered all Sephardim the possibility of reacquiring Spanish nationality provided they acquired this nationality before December 31, 1930.

1925(2ndof Tevet, 5686): Parashat Miketz; 8th day of Chanukah

1925(2ndof Tevet, 5686): Fifty-four year old James Henry Oxberry, the English born son of Hannah and Thomas Oxbdrry and husband of the former Annabella Goldenberg who “managed the Hongkong Hotel and owned the Palace Hotel passed away today in China.

1925: Birthdate of Robert B. Sherman one half of the Sherman Brothers, “American songwriting duo” whose most famous contribution included “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

1926: Birthdate of Mina Arison Sapir, the native of Belz Bessarabia, Romania who is the wife Yekutiel Sapir and  the mother of Micky and Shari Arison. Her daughter is reported to be one of the richest women in the world.

1926: In the Bronx, Mary and Solomon Stempel gave birth  Herbert Milton "Herb" Stempel the disgruntled gameshow contestant turned whistleblower whose testimony touched off the “Quiz Show Scandal” that destroyed that genre.

http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/herbert-stempel

1927(25thof Kislev, 5688) Chanukah

1927: Birthdate of Norman Lamm, the modern Orthodox rabbi best known for his services the Chancellor of Yeshiva University.

1927: “Showboat” a Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II musical based on Edna Ferber’s novel of the same name finished its “pre-Broadway tour.”

1928(6thof Tevet, 5689): Rabbi Aryeh Levin Schochet passed away today in Brooklyn after which he “was buried in Old Montefiore Cemetery in Springfield Gardens, Queens.”

1928: Birthdate of Morris Isaac Charlap, the native of Philadelphia who gained fame as composer Mark “Moose” Charlap whose most famous effort was “Peter Pan.”

1929: In the Bronx, Samuel Harry Bell, a dentist who had changed his name from Bolotsky and the former Edith Yudell, a singer in the Metropolitan Opera Chorus gave birth to “Dr. Bertrand M. Bell, who was instrumental in reducing the grueling shifts worked by interns and residents being trained in American hospitals.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

1931: “Lost Original of Maimonides’ Third Part of “guide to Perplexed” Written in Arabic Recovered and Presented” published today tells how “the lost original of Maimonides’ third part of the “Guide to the Perplexed”, written in Arabic, has been recovered and presented to the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, by Mrs. Nathan Miller, together with two other valuable manuscripts of unrecorded religious poems written in Spain in the sixteenth century.”

1932: The NBC Blue Network broadcast the fourth episode of Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel is a situation comedy radio show starring two of the Marx Brothers, Groucho and Chico.

1932: Having written “his Ph.D. thesis on the epistemology and metaphysics of the German philosopher Hermann Cohen” and having “passed his oral doctor’s examination” in 1930, Joseph B. Solveitchik  “graduated with a doctorate” today from Friedrich Wilhelm University.

1933: “The Love Hotel” a comedy filmed by cinematographer Otto Heller was released today in Germany.

1934:The projected Jewish republic in Biro-Bidjan, Russia, constitutes no menace to the Zionist movement, E.Z. Goldberg, associate editor of The Day, who recently returned from the Soviet, declared today. He was interviewed at 285 Madison Avenue, the office of the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in the U.S.S.R., of which he is a member. Mr. Goldberg said that the Soviet territory of Biro-Bidjan was an improvement over Palestine as a home for the Jews because it was three times larger than Palestine, “had no Arab problem” and benefited from support from the government.  At the same time he said that Biro-Bidjan would not be a homeland for all Jews since there would no place for Orthodox Jews “who are capitalistically minded” and can go to Tel Aviv to make money.

1934: Thomas Lovejoy, Vice Chancellor of Bristol, wrote to Churchill that he would not be able to help him in his quest to find any more places for German-Jewish medical students because “there had been a heavy rush on entry to the Faculty of Medicine that year and we have had to refuse applications for entry from all foreign counties and even from some of the Dominions.”  If the German-Jewish students could gain admission to the college than they could get out of Germany and gain entrance into the safe haven of Great Britain.a

1935: Birthdate of Sidney Alvin Field, the Hollywood native who gained fame as Syd Field, author of Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting

1936: “Tribulations of the Persecuted Jews” published today provides a detailed review of Some of My Best Friends Are Jews by Robert Gessner.

http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/1930s_antisemitism_pdf

1936: In Jerusalem, Yaakov Yehoshua, a member of long standing “Jerusalem family of Sephardi origin and  a scholar and author specializing in the history of Jerusalem and  Malka Rosilio, who immigrated from Morocco in 1932 gave birth to Abvraham B. Yehoshua known to the world as the renowned author A.B. Yehoshua.

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

1936: At a tea given in the Park Avenue home of Mrs. Clarence Y. Palitz “by members of the Women’s American ORT” Lord Marley, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, who was introduced by Mrs. Emily M. Rosenstein,said “the economic plight of Jews in Poland is growing progressively worse as the immigration of German Jews seeking escape from the Hitler regime continues”

1937: The Palestine Post reported that out of the three Arab constables ambushed by an Arab terrorist gang, two were "tried" and killed on the spot, while the third was released after he promised to report on the "trial" and undertook to leave the police force within the next three days. All three constables were robbed of all their belongings. A punitive fine of £500 was imposed on the Jureina quarter of Haifa, where Sheikh Khatib was murdered. Jewish and German Protestant residents were exempted.

1938: Tonight, in an address at “a banquet of the Cleveland Zionist Society” Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes “admonished wealth Jews to exercise extreme caution in the acquisition of their wealth and great scrupulousness in their social behavior” while also saying that “he felt that any American” like Henry Ford and Charles A. Lindbergh ‘who accepted a decoration from a dictator automatically foreswears his American birthright.”

1938: In France, Darius Paul Dassault (Darius Paul Bloch) was promoted from the rank of Corps General (général de corps d’armée) to the rank of Corps General (général de corps d’armée)

1939(7th of Tevet, 5700): Fifty-one American runner Alvah Meyer who “1914 he set a world record at 60 yards, and in 1915 he set a world record at 330 yards” and was “a Jewish member of the Irish American Athletic Club” passed away today.

1939: “Remember?” a comedy produced by Milton Bren and edited by Harold F. Kress was released today in the United States.

1939: The Nazi government officially gave Heydrich the responsibility for centralizing the implementation of his deportation plans.  This was one of the basic steps in creating the organization that would lead to the slaughter of European Jewry.  German efficiency and detailed planning was one of the hallmarks of the Final Solution.

1939: Three months after the German invasion of Poland, Chaim Weizmann meets with Winston Churchill who is now a member of the British Cabinet.  Weizmann thanks Churchill for his consistent support of the Zionist cause.  Churchill reiterates his support by agreeing that after the war he will support the Zionist “wish to have a State of some three or four million Jews in Palestine.” 

1940:Zygmund William “Bill” Birnbaum married Hilde Merzbach. The two had met in Seattle while both of them were involved in assisting Jewish refugees arriving from Europe.

1940: Birthdate of Phil Ochs, singer, songwriter and social activist.

1941: Adolf Hitler becomes Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. It is realties like this that put the lie to those who apologist who tried to separate the Whermacht from the Nazi death machine.

1942: After three weeks trapped in a synagogue by hostile Ukrainian troops, 42 Jewish men are marched to the Rakow Forest and ordered to dig ditches. They resist and are then shot. A few manage to escape. Later in the day, 560 more Jews are led from the synagogue to the forest and murdered.

1942: In Norway, new tenants moved into the home of the Isak Plesansky family who had already been shipped to Auschwitz.  Within three weeks the clothing of the Plesanksy family would be in the hands of the superintendent of the Berg Concentration Camp.  Needless to say, the heirs of the Plesansky family were never compensated for the loss after the war. 

1943(22nd of Kislev, 5704): Seventy-one year old Russian born actor Sol Horowitz and husband of Jennie Grovitz whose movie roles are overshadowed by the fact that the he was the father of Moe, Curly and Shemp Howard, The Three Stooges, passed away today in Losing Angles.

1944: During the Battle of the Bulge Sgt. Roddie Edmonds whose unit had been outgunned and surrounded by the Nazis surrendered but showed how courageous he was a month later when he defied his captors by refusing to give up his Jewish comrades telling the commandant “We are all Jews.”

1944(3rd of Tevet, 5705): Eighty three year old Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp passed away today.

1944: In New York City, Bernice (née Herstein) and Seymour Durst gave birth to real estate developer Douglas Durst, the President of the Durst Organization.

1944: Birthdate of Philadelphian Mitchell Feigenbaum, a mathematical physicist whose pioneering studies in chaos theory led to the discovery of the Feigenbaum constant. (Makes you wonder how many more Jewish boys named Mitchell were born in Philadelphia in December, 1944.)

1945: The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a resolution on Palestine which had been approved by the U.S. Senate.

1945: In New York, Daniel Wildenstein and his wife, who had been forced to flee France after the Nazi occupation gave birth to “art deal and racehorse” aficionado Guy Wildenstein

1945: U.S. premiere of “Leave Her to Heaven” directed by John M. Stahl, with a screenplay by Jo Swerling and music by Alfred Newman.

1946: “The Return of Monte Cristo” the third in a series of films about the swashbuckler directed by Henry Levin was released in the United States today.

1946:Johan J. Smertenko, vice president of American League for a Free Palestine, is barred from England where he had planned to start British branch of organization. He says terrorism is justified.

1946:William B. Ziff declares that negotiation by Jewish Agency would be opposed by Palestinian underground groups. Revisionists say that Ziff had been expelled for breaches of party discipline.

1947: In an attempt to deal with the looming threat to its water supply, Jerusalem householders respond to a request by communal leaders to open and clean their cisterns “in preparation for water storage.”

1947: In New York City, premiere of “The Bishop’s Wife” a romantic comedy directed by Henry Koster, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, with a script co-authored by Bill Wilder.

1948: Birthdate of Aden native Margalit "Margol" Tzan'ani, the Israeli singer and wife of Mordi Lavi with whom she had one son, Asaf who began her musical career as a 19 year old in the Israeli production “Hair.”

1948: During “Operation Velvetta” 12 more Spitfires were flown to Israel as part of the effort to create a modern air force in the heat of battle.

1949(28th of Chanukah, 5710): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1949: The United States High Commissioner’s office announced that “five high ranking Nazi officials” including George von Schnitzer, a director of I.G. Farben, “are among the sixty German war criminals who will be freed on parole this week.”

1950: As the Allies tried to integrate Germany back into the family nations and deal with the realities of the Cold War Foreign Ministers France, the UK and US declared at the end of their lengthy meetings today “that among other measures to strengthen West Germany's position in the Cold War that the western allies would ‘end by legislation the state of war with Germany.’”

1951: Birthdate of Nikolay Mikhailovich Volkov, the Russian civil engineer who “is the former governor of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.”

1952: David Ben-Gurion’s government resigned due to a dispute with the religious parties over religious education.

1952: In the UK and USA, release date for “Hans Christian Andersen” produced by Samuel Goldwyn, directed by Charles Vidor, with a screenplay by Moss Hart and Ben Hecht and starring Danny Kaye. (So many Jews to immortalize a Dane – only in America)

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the resolution of the UN General Assembly's Political Committee urging direct Arab-Israeli peace negotiations was hindered by a sudden Philippine and Catholic Bloc countries' amendment demanding the implementation of all old UN resolutions, including the internationalization of Jerusalem. Israel complained to the US and Britain that they continue to arm the Arab states, despite their promise that there should be no arms race in the region.

1953:: Two Unit 101 Squads led by Meir Harzion completed a night time attack during which they ambushed a car carrying Mansour Awad, “a Lebanese born doctor serving in the Arab Legion” who died during the attack.

1957: Aharon Remez, the second commander of the Israeli Air Force, resigned his seat in the Knesset.  He had been elected in 1955 as a member of Mapai and was followed in office by Amos Degani.

1957: “The Pride and The Passion” a big screen epic sent during the Napoleonic wars in Spain directed and produced by Stanley Kramer, co-starring Theodore Bikel as “General Jouvet” and with an opening title sequence designed by Saul Bass was released today in Sweden.

1958: “The Geisha Boy,” starring Jerry Lewish and Suzanne Pleshette was released today in the United States

1961: U.S. premiere of “Judgment at Nuremberg” directed and produced by Stanley Kramer, with a script by Abby Mann and music by Ernest Gold, the native of Austria who moved to the U.S. after the Anschluss because his paternal grandfather was Jewish.

1961: Six days after its London premier, “The Young Ones” with music by Stanley Black and choreographed by Harold Ross was released across the United Kingdom.

1963: “Nobody Loves an Albatross” produced by Philip Rose, directed by Gene Saks and featuring Marian Winters as “Marge Weber” opened at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway.

1964: Twenty-one year old “film director, screenwriter and cinematographer” Peter Hyams, the grandson of impresario Sol Hurok and the stepson of “blacklisted conductor Arthur Lief” married George-Ann Spota whose children included director John Hyams.

1965(25th of Kislev, 5726): Chanukah

1965: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services were held at the Riverside Chapel for 73 year old “Acting Postmaster of the Bronx, Louis Cohen, the husband of Belle Lazarus with whom he had had two sons – Robert and Joseph.

1966: One day after he had passed away, funeral services were scheduled to be held Albert Salomon, the refugee from Nazi Germany who became a Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research

1967: Gertrude D.T. Schimmel was “promoted to Lieutenant” and “was assigned as Commanding Officer of the ‘Know Your Police Department’ program which was an information and community relations program for children.

1968(28th of Kislev, 5729): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1968: American Socialist Party leader and social critic Norman Thomas passed away. While he may have been a visionary liberal on many issues including the need to end racial segregation, his record regarding the Jews is more of a mixed bag.  During the 1930’s, Thomas actively opposed the United States entering World War II, a view that he changed after Pearl Harbor. Thomas campaigned…in favor of opening the United States to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in the 1930s. Thomas was also very critical of Zionism and of Israel's policies towards the Arabs in the postwar years (especially after the Suez Crisis) and often collaborated with the American Council for Judaism.

                                                    

1968: MK Avraham Hirschson and his wife gave birth to their first son, Ofer.

 

1968: In Italy, premiere of “A Place for Lovers” produced by Arthur Cohn with music by Lee Konitz.

 

1969: After having first been released in France, “A Place for Lovers” produced by Arthur Cohn with music by Lee Konitz was released in Italy today by MGM.

 

1969(10thof Tevet, 5730): Asara B’Tevet

 

1969(10thof Tevet, 5730): Fifty-seven year old actress Sara Berner whose birth name was Lillian Herdan passed away today.

http://tralfaz.blogspot.com/2012/05/fall-of-sara-berner.html

 

1969: During the War of Attrition, Israeli aircraft bombed “a group of Egyptian military bases about 30 kilometers from the Suez Canal.

1969:  Two pharmacists were killed in a bloody robbery. In 1974, Pierre Goldman, the illegitimate son of Jewish WW II Resistance Leader Alter Mojze Goldman, was given a life-sentence by the Paris cour d'assises, after being convicted of this crime. He denied having committed this robbery, although he admitted to three earlier robberies. He was finally acquitted of the murders that took place during the robbery, but condemned to twelve years in prison for the other three robberies

1971(1st of Tevet, 5732): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1971(1st of Tevet, 5732): James G. Heller an American composer and rabbi passed away in Cincinnati, Ohio. “James Gutheim Heller was born in New Orleans on January 4, 1892, to the famous Reform rabbi Maximilian H. Heller. He received an undergraduate degree from Tulane University, a graduate degree from the University Of Cincinnati College Conservatory Of Music, and was ordained a rabbi at Hebrew Union College. Heller was rabbi of Congregation Bene Yeshurun (Isaac M. Wise Temple) in Cincinnati from 1920-1952, and was involved with several organizations including the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Labor Zionist Organization of America, and the State of Israel Bonds Organization. He was an active Zionist, and introduced Youth Temple, which was designed to bring young individuals together for religious education. Heller was also a composer and musician who wrote program notes for the Cincinnati Symphony.”

1971: Stanley Kubrick's X-rated "A Clockwork Orange" premiered in New York City.

1972: “Across 110th Street” a crime film co-starring Yaphet Kotto was released in the United States today.

1973(24thof Kislev, 5734): In the evening Kindle the first Chanukah light.

1973(24thof Kislev, 5734): Seventy-one year old Russian born, Cincinnati, OH raised Philip “Cincy” Sachs, the basketball coach for Lawrence Institute of Technology, the Detroit Gems and the Detroit Falcons passed away today.

1973: “The Day of the Dolphin” a sci-fi thriller directed by Mike Nichols and produced by Joseph E. Levine was released in the United States today.

1975: Berlin born, American art dealer Frank Richard Perls who moved to the United States in 1937 underwent open-heart surgery today.

1976(27thof Kislev, 5737): Third Day of Chanukah

1977: The Jerusalem Post published details of Menachem Begin's peace plan which outlined a mutual Arab-Jewish right of settlement in Judea and Samaria and a united Jerusalem. Palestinian Arabs were to enjoy "self-rule," their own administration and freedom to vote in Jordan. Israel was to retain full responsibility for internal and external security of the West Bank and Gaza, and recognized Egyptian sovereignty over all of Sinai. Israel was willing to consider, but not to initiate, a military defense pact with the US.

1978(19thof Kislev, 5739): Eighty-nine year old movie actree Ethel “Queenie” Rosson Daly, the daughter of Arthur and Helene Rosson and wife of Joseph James Daly, who came from a family that was deeply involved in the film industry including award winning cinematographer Harold Rosson.

1979: “Being There” the film version of the novel of the same name by Holocaust survivor Jerzy Kosiński starring Peter Sellers, featuring Melvyn Douglas and Elya Baskin and with music by Johnny Mandel was released in the United States today.

1979: Newly minted Warrant Officer “Amy Sheridan earned her wings as an aviator for the US Army, making her the first American Jewish woman to gain aviator status in any branch of the Armed Services” (As reported by Jewish Woman’s Archives)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL344F821CCF7DE964

1979: Results of a comparison test of White Pekin Ducks published today it was reported that the Kosher Empire Duckling (frozen) had an “extremely mushy exterior, with skin broken in several areas.  It was poorly cleared with many pin feathers remaining.  The meat was very mush and flavorless. At $2.25 a pound it was by far the most expensive of the ducks in the test group. [Editor’s Note – as a consumer of Empire poultry, I can honestly say that this comes as a complete surprise.  In my experience, their products have always been first rate.

1980: In San Francisco, caterer Cindi (née Sussman) Sokoloff and podiatrist Howard Sokoloff gave birth to actress Marla Sokoloff.

1980: A month after premiering in New York City, “Raging Bull” produced by Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff was released throughout the United States today.

1980: “Seems Like Old Times” a Neil Simon comedy starring Goldie Hawn and Charles Grodin and with music by Marvin Hamlisch was released in the United States today/

1981:Odessa refuseniks Yakov Mesh and Valery Pevzner, whose homes were recently searched by militia and books on Israel, Jewish culture and history as well as Hebrew textbooks were confiscated, were summoned to the local offices of the KGB, and told they will be put on trial.

1981: The Goldstein brothers, both of whom were refuseniks were kept from going go Moscow and were forcibly returned to Tbilisi.

1981(23rdof Kislev, 5742): MK Shabtai Daniel, born Shabtai Don-Yichye in 1909, passed away today.

1982: At Congregation Schomre Israel in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Rabbi Morris Bekritsky officiated at the marriage of Grett Evonne Singer and David Rapport Lachterman.

1982: Edward Rothstein reviewed the Carnegie debut of Israeli cellist Ofra Harnoy and the 92nd Street Y debut of pianist Sofia Cosma.

1983: “Rueben, Reuben,” with a screenplay by Julius J. Epstein was released today in the United States.

1984(25thof Kislev, 5745): First Day of Chanukah

1984: “The River” directed by Mark Rydell was released in the United States today.

1985: After opening in Australia in May, “Goodbye, New York” a comedy produced, directed, written by and starring Amos Kollek, the son of Teddy Kollek, was released today in the United States.

1986: U.S. premiere of “Little Shop of Horrors” directed by Frank Oz, produced by David Geffen, with a script by Howard Ashman and co-starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Green.

1987: As Congress tries to finish its business before adjourning for the holidays, the House holds a rare Saturday session which has made many members re-consider their travel plans including House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas who wonders if he will be able to make his scheduled Sunday evening flight for Tel Aviv.

1989: In Moscow, the Congress of Jewish Organizations and Communities in the U.S.S.R. continued for a second day.

1990(2ndof Tevet, 5751) Eighth Day of Chanukah

1990: Israeli soldiers shot and wounded 18 Palestinians today during a strike to protest Israeli plans to expel four Arabs, residents said.

1991: Professor Avishair Margalist of the Hebrew University publishes a plan in the New York Review of Books suggesting a form of joint sovereignty whereby Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and a futue Palestinian State.

1991:”Wagner, Israel -- and Herzl” published today

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/19/opinion/editorial-notebook-wagner-israel-and-herzl.html

1991: Premier of “The Ghost of Versailles,” conducted by James Levine.

1992(24thof Kislev, 5753): Kindle the first candle of Chanukah in the evening.

1992(24thof Kislev, 5753): A Hamas terrorist kidnapped and murdered a policeman in Jerusalem.

1992(24thof Kislev, 5753): Eighty-five year old legal philosopher and Oxford professor H.L.A. Hart passed away

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/84p295.pdf

1993: At the James Doolittle Theatre, the curtain came down on a revival production of “Conversation with My Father” by Herb Gardner featuring Judd Hirsch as “Eddie” which was a play that “presents the saga of a first generation of American Jews who came of age in the Depression and were assimilated at a high price during and after World War II”

1995(26thof Kislev, 5756): Second Day of Chanukah

1995:Roval Elimelech who lives in Kfar Saba, a suburban town north of Tel Aviv, found out that a new border had sprung up overnight not far from her doorstep. About a mile away, Palestinian policemen had moved into Qalqilya, a town on the West Bank's border with Israel, taking it over from Israeli soldiers who had withdrawn on Saturday night in keeping with an agreement signed in September on expanding Palestinian self-rule.

1996(9th of Tevet, 5757:Sefton D. Temkin, an author and scholar of American Jewish history, passed away in his native Liverpool, England. He was 79 and a resident of Albany. Dr. Temkin, who was associate professor emeritus of Judaic studies at the university, was chairman of the department of Judaic studies in the 1970's and had continued his research at Albany since retiring a few years ago. Dr. Temkin was an expert on the life and work of Isaac Mayer Wise, who founded Reform Judaism in the United States in the nineteenth century and oversaw its spread across the country as the founder and longtime leader of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

1997(20th of Kislev, 5758): Physicist David Norman Schramm passed away at the age of 52. He had a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother.

1997: Release date for “Titanic” co-produced by Jon Landau

1997: Janet Rosenberg Jagan completed her term as Prime Minister of Guyana.

1997: Janet Rosenberg Jagan began serving as President of Guyana.

1998(30th of Kislev, 5759): Parshat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1998: The debate over impeachment of President Clinton, which was tied to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky dominated the news coverage.

1999(10th of Tevet, 5760): Last fast of the 20thcentury

1999(10th of Tevet, 5760): Seventy-three year old British physicist whose honors included the Faraday Medal and the Guthrie Medal passed away today.

http://www.sissa.it/ap/activity/sciama.php

1999: The New York Times book section includes a review of Mailer: A Biographyby Mary V. Dearborn which tells “How a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn grew up to be you-know-who.”

1999: “Outside Party Lines” published today provides a complete review of Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile by Stanislao G. Pugliese

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/12/19/reviews/991219.19stillet.html

2000: In “Theories on a Theory” published today, Peter Hirschman wrote from Haifa that “the overview of the development and practical outcome of the quantum proves beyond doubt that Max Planck jump-started the 20th century” and that “he deserves the status of a progenitor no less than Einstein and company since it was he who broke the mold of conventional thought that was holding everything back.”

2001: Despite the fact that the Israeli government had said last week that Yassir Arafat was “irrelevant” a week ago, today “senior Israeli and Palestinian military officers met to discuss possible new security arrangements” in the wake of “suicide bombings and other anti-Israeli attacks>

2002: A revival of “Dinner at Eight,” a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber opened at the Lincoln Center Theatre.

2003(24th of Kislev, 5764): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

2003: In the wake of Prime Minister Sharon’s threat of unilateral action on borders if the peace talks did not bear fruit, “Palestinians “said they would opposed any attempt at a unilateral move to establish borders.

2004: The New York Times features a review of the paperback edition of American Music by Annie Leibovitz

2004(7th of Tevet, 5765): Herbert Brown passed away. He discovered organoboranes and received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1979. Brown was born Herbert Brovarnik in London to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. He moved to the United States at a young age and was educated at the University of Chicago, earning a B.S. and Ph.D. in 1936 and 1938, respectively. He became professor at Purdue University in 1947, a position he had held emeritus until his death.

2005: Having pulled out of Gaza, the Israeli government announced further measures to improve relations with the Palestinians. The IDF announced thatIsrael will ease access to Bethlehem during the upcoming Christmas celebrations in a "calculated risk" intended to let Christian pilgrims worship the holiday freely in the West Bank town. IDF Lt. Col. Aviv Feigel said pilgrims will not need permission from the army to enter the town, the traditional birthplace of Jesus. The military will try to speed the process by not checking every tourist bus, but conducting spot checks of random buses instead, he said. The Israelis are doing this despite the fact that half of the Israeli terror fatalities in 2004 came from attackers who entered Jerusalem from Bethlehem.

 

2006(28th of Kislev, 5767): The joy of Chanukah was marred as three yeshiva students belonging to the Lubavitch Hasidic sect were killed in a car accident on their way to light Hanukkah candles and distribute doughnuts for the holiday at Israel Defense Forces bases in the south of the country. Five other Lubavitchers traveling in the same vehicle were injured in the accident.

 

2007: Yonatan Dagan performs in his capacity as lead DJ of the J.Viewz proejcted, a ensenbmle that defies any clear musical classification at Jerusalem’s Yellow Submarine a venue for some of the most eclectic and innovative music styles available.

 

2007(10thof Tevet, 5768): Fast of the Tenth of Tevet

2007(10thof Tevet, 5768): Yarhtzeit of Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin)

 

2008:Temple Beth Rishon, in North West Bergen County, NJ, presents the Marvin Gastman Memorial Concertfeaturing "The Chanukah Story" sung byThe Western Wind as part of its pre-Chanukah festivities.

2008: “Max Manus” a biopic about this little known Norwegian born who risked all in a clandestine war against the Nazis was released today in Norway.

2008: Allen Weinstein resigned as Archivist of the United States – a position he had held since 2005.

2008:Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the defense minister met at IDF headquarters in central Tel Aviv to approve Operation Cast Lead

 

2008:  Haaretz reported that a rare half shekel coin, first minted in 66 or 67 C.E., was discovered by 14 year-old Omri Ya'ari as volunteers sifted through mounds of dirt from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

 

 

2008: After serving since 2005, Allen Weinstein resigned today as Archivist of the United States after which he resumed his duties as a history professor at the University of Maryland in College Park.

 

2008(22ndof Kislev, 5769): Seventy-eight year old Carol Chomsky the noted linguist who was the wife of Noam Chomsky passed away today.

 

 

2009: Final performance of at Theater 3 of “Biography,” a play written by S.N. Behrman aka Samuel Nathaniel Behrman a native of  Worcester, Massachusetts, who was the third child of Joseph and Zelda Behrman, Jewish immigrants living on Worcester's East Side.

 

2009: (2 Tevet, 5770): Eighth Day of Chanukah

 

2009: Final night of the 5thAnnual Sephardic Music Festival in New York.

 

2010:Shaloah Sunsets, a fund raiser for the Jewish Congregaton of Maui is scheduled to host a fund-raising event – Shaloah Sunsets- at the Four Seasons Resorts Waliea.

 

2010: The 92nd St Y is scheduled to present “Jews and Money: The Story of a Stereotype” featuring Abe Foxman and Allan Chernoff.

 

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 editions of Digital Barabarism: A Writer’s Manifesto by Mark Helprin and Arthur Miller: 1915-1962 by Christopher Bigsby.

 

2010: The body of Kristine Luken, a US citizen living in England who was visiting Israel, was found south of Mata, approximately 400 meters from the road between was discovered around 6:30 a.m. today.  She was one of two women who were stabbed while were hiking in the wooded hills west of Jerusalem on Saturday.

 

2010: A crowd of approximately 200 people demonstrated outside the Silver Spring apartment of 34 year old Aharon Friedman demanding that he give his wife Tamar Epstein a “get.” The two have already received a civil divorce.  Friedman’s refusal to grant the “get” is reportedly tied to his dissatisfaction with the visitation rights granted by the courts.

 

2011:The third annual Latke Festival is scheduled to take place this evening, with attendees sampling the potato-pancake offerings of local restaurants like Kutsher’s Tribeca and Veselka and judges choosing the winning recipe.

 

2011: “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC of Dutchess County/Upstate Film Festival in Rhinebeck, NY.

 

2011: Israel has offered to export natural gas to India, according to a report in today’s edition of the Indian daily Economic Times. 

 

2012: The Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to present an evening with Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, author of A Kosher Christmas: ‘Tis the Season to Be Jewish

 

2012: “No Man’s Land” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012: The US prevented a UN Security Council condemnation of Israel today over a spate of settlement construction decisions, leading the other 14 countries on the 15-member council to issue separate condemnations of their own instead.

 

 

2012: Comedic actor Alan Alda is scheduled to discuss math and science with Steven Strogatz, author of  The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math from One to Infinity at the 92ndStreet Y.

 

2012:Those who “sleep with rockets and amass large stockpiles of weapons” in southern Lebanon are “in a very unsafe place,” OC Air Force Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel said today.

 

 

2012(6th of Tevet, 5773): Leading figures from across the political spectrum closed ranks today in paying tribute to Israel’s 15th chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. (res.) Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who died at age 68 at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem after a prolonged battle with leukemia.

 

2013: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is scheduled to meet with President Shimon Peres before going to the Yad Vashem where he will lay a wreath after which he will attend a luncheon hosted by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (As reported by Raphael Ahren)

 

2013:In the central region, KKL-JNF foresters are scheduled to distribute Christmas trees in the

Cypress grove adjacent to the KKL-JNF offices in Givat Yishayahu

 

2013:The Tel Aviv District Court sentenced former Bank Hapoalim chairman Dan Dankner to one year in prison, after having convicted him of fraud, breach of trust, violation of proper management of Bank Hapoalim and illegal receipt of funds and loans, as part of a plea bargain agreement

 

2013: Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man who opened fire on them during operations in the West Bank city of Qalqilya early this morning, the second such incident in several hours.(As reported by Lazar Berman)

 

 

2013:“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the world to deny Iran the ability to produce nuclear weapons today, while meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang.”

 

2013; “The Draughtsman's Contract” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Festival.

 

2013: At the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, the curtain came down revival of Harold Pinters “Betryal” co-starring Rachel Weisz whose parents had been forced to flee Austria after the Nazis came to power.

 

2013(16thof Tevet 5774): Seventy-seven year old publisher Al Goldstein passed away today. (As reported by Andy Newman)

 

2014: In New Orleans Touro Synagogue is scheduled to sponsor its annual College Students Homecoming Lunch.

2014:”It was announced that Gina Gershon would guest star in Glee's sixth and final season as Pam, the mother of Blaine Anderson.”

2014: “The Big Trip” and “Samson and Delilah” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: In Little Rock, AR, Chabad Lubavitch led by Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host a Menorah Lighting ceremony complete with Latkes, Doughnuts and that warm holiday feeling that the Ciments have been bringing to the land of the Razorbacks for more than 2 decades.

 

2014: For the third time since the end of Operation Protective Edge “Palestinians in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket at an Israeli community in the Eshkol region near the Gaza Strip this morning.”

 

2014: “The Israel Air Force tonight struck Hamas targets in the southern Gaza Strip for the first time since the summer’s war.”

 

2014: Two weeks after having signed a two-year, non-guaranteed contract with the New Orleans Pelicans Gal Mekel was waived by the Pelicans today after appearing in just four games.

 

2015(7thof Tevet, 5776): Parashat Vayiggash

 

2015(7thof Tevet, 5776): Eighty-seven year old “Lord Greville Janner of Braunstone, the British Labour Member of Parliament and peer in the House of Lords” passed away today.

 

 

2015: Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv’s Menora Mitvachim marking his first professional appearance in Israel.

 

2016: Israeli violinist Itamar Zorman and Israeli pianist Roman Rabinvoich are scheduled to perform with the Jupiter Chamber players at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church.

 

2016: Today’s issue of TIME has a cover picture of Person of the Year taken by Israeli photographer Nadav Kander.

http://time.com/magazine/us/4594940/december-19th-2016-vol-188-no-25-26-u-s/

 

2016: Today “on the Facebook invitation for a Hanukkah event at the University of Warsaw, Konrad Smuniewski inveighed against “Jew communists” and called Judaism a “criminal ideology” of “racism, xenophobia and hatred.”

2016(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

http://www.arjewishcenter.com/library/article_cdo/aid/335659/jewish/19-Kislev-The-New-Year-of-Chassidism.htm

 

2016: “The unemployment rate among Americans with college degrees was just 2.3 percent in November, a number that suggests employers are now competing for well-educated workers. Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, went to the University of Baltimore today to congratulate graduates on joining that fortunate group.”

2017(1stof Tevet, 5778): Seventh Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2017(1stof Tevet, 5778): Eighty-seven year old Clifford Irving who was best known for his creation of a pony auto-biography of Howard Hughes passed away today.

 

2017: The Maccabeats are scheduled to appear at a concert sponsored by Chabad of Larchmont and Mamaroneck at the Hampshire Country Club.

 

2017: The Washington Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Bang: The Bert Berns Story.”

2018: A Jewish marriage contract, or ketubah, from 1884 made for a couple married in Kingston, Jamaica is scheduled to be auctioned as part of a sale of “Important Judaica” conducted by Sotheby’s which expects the item to sell for $8,000 to $12,000.

2018: In one of those oddments of New York urban life, former major league all-star major league centerfield Lenny Dykstra, a Christian who has no intention of converting, is scheduled to attend the Torah study group conducted by Chabad Rabbi Shmuel Metzger “in the basement of the Ambassador Wines shop.”

2018: In Cedar Rapids, IA, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to The Marriage of Opposites, the best-selling novel by Alice Hoffman. 2019

2018: Today, “the first synagogue built in Washington, DC” is scheduled to “roll down 3rd Street to it new and permanent home at 3rd and F Streets, NW.”

2018: The American Jewish Historical Society and YIVO are scheduled to present “Queer Expectations: A Genealogy of Jewish Women’s History.”

2019: The New York Klezmer Series is schedule to present “A 10thAnniversary Celebration of Brazil’s Kleztival, a Yiddish Cultural Festival in Sao Paolo, Brazil.”

2019: In San Francisco, the Contemporary Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Experiments in Sonic Potential” with jazz musicians Lisa Mezzacappa and Kara Davis performing in conjunction with the Annabeth Rosen exhibit.

2019: In Davie, FL, the David Posnack Jewish Community Center is scheduled to host “Hate and Its Impact: Sowing the Seeds of Global Antisemitism.”

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to a live concert with “David Broza and Friends.”e

2019: It was reported today that “The heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, will visit Israel in January to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

2019: It was reported today that “Israeli officials are preparing” for an outbreak of violence if Qatar goes through with its threat “to cut funds to Qatar.” (As reported by Alex Fishman)

2020: The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present online a “Post Hannukah Concert” that will include Jewish, Yiddish and Klezmer sounds.

2020: In Palm Beach Gardens, Temple Judea is scheduled to host online “Torah Study” with Rabbi Feivel Strauss

2020(4thof Tevet, 5781): Parashat Miketz; For more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 

This Day, December 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 20

 69: General Vespasianus occupied Rome on the same day that the Emperor Vitellius was murdered.  Vespasianus is better known as Vespasian, the Roman general who was in charge of putting down the Great Revolt in Judea.  He broke off his military action to come back to Rome and seize power.  His son Titus would destroy the Temple in 70.  Before leaving for Rome, Vespasian gave permission for the establishment of what would become the community of scholars at Yavneh.

629: The reign of King Chintilla who had effectively banned Jews from living in his realm when he decreed that only Catholics could living in Spain came to an end today.

1192: Richard the Lionhearted captured in Vienna. Richard was returning home after the Third Crusade when he was taken prisoner by Leopold, duke of Austria.  Leopold then sold him to the Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor.  Henry offered to return Richard to his homeland if his brother Prince John paid the ransom.  The Jews of England paid 5,000 marks towards the ransom.  This was three times the rate paid by the Christian citizens of the realm.

1497: Isaac Abravanel completed the Yeshu'ot Meshiḥo" (The Salvation of His Anointed).

1522:  Suleiman the Magnificent accepts the surrender of the surviving Knights of Rhodes, who are allowed to evacuate the Isle of Rhodes. Based on references in the Book of the Maccabees, Jews had lived on Rhodes since the second century BCE.  However, in 1500, The Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes “expelled all the Jews who did not choose to convert to Christianity” making the Island “Jew Free” for a couple of decades. Suleiman the Magnificent conquered the island “he invited Jews from various parts of his empire to come to Rhodes and start a new community. The Jews that came were Sephardim, the ones who had found refuge in the Ottoman Empire following the expulsion from Spain in 1492. These Jews brought with them their culture, their customs and traditions, one of the cultural aspects was linguistic, the language they spoke was Espanyol, as they called it, also known as a "Ladino" and "Judeo-Spanish" The Jewish Quarter of the city was affectionately known as "La Juderia".  Suleiman is also the Sultan who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and was the patron of Dona Gracia and Joseph Nassi.

 

1629: Edward Pococke, the Hebrew scholar who wrote Porta Mosis, extracts from the Arabic commentary of Maimonides on the Mishnah, was ordained as a priest in the Church of England today.

1673: Sir Thomas Raymond and his wife gave birth to Robert Raymond, who while serving as Attorney General “was asked to decide whether a Jew born in England but of foreign parentage could purchase and enjoy an estate in fee” ruled that such a Jew “was fully capable of purchasing and enjoying the land and that the law had put no disability upon him account of his religion”

1704: Johann Andreas Eisenmenger “the most dangerous libeler of the Talmud who wrote a two-volume, two thousand page book on the “wickedness of the Talmud” entitled Endecktes Judenthum” passed away today.

 

 

1718(27th of Kislev, 5479): Rabbi Naphtali Cohen, the son of Rabbi Isaac Cohen and the great-great-great grandson of Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel died in Constantinople today as he was trying to make his to “the Holy Land.

1750: Twenty-nine-year Hayman Levy, the Hanover, Germany born son of Moses Levy who became an “outstanding merchant,” Revolutionary War patriot and President of Sherith Israel, “became a freeman” today in New York City.

1764 (26th of Kislev, 5525): Second Day of Chanukah

1767(29th of Kislev, 5528): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1772(24th of Kislev, 5533): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah candle

1780(22nd of Kislev, 5541): Naphtali Cohen the Ukrainian born rabbi who was the son of Isaac Cohen great-great-grandson of the Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, died in Constantinople today as he made his way to the Holy Land

1775(27th of Kislev, 5536): Third Day of Chanukah

1778(1st of Tevet, 5539): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1783(25th of Kislev, 5544): As Jews in America observe Chanukah, the holiday that celebrates the defeat of a tyrant takes on a special meaning since this is the time the holiday is celebrated after the close of the American Revolution.

 

1786: In Charleston, SC, Rebecca De Pass, the daughter of Doctor Raphael De Pass who was originally from Jamaica married Joseph Da Costa.

1788: In Philadelphia, Miriam Simon and Michael Gratz gave birth to Jacob Grata, the father of Robert Henry Gratz.

 

1791(24th of Kislev, 5551): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

 

1791(24th of Kislev, 5551): Rabbi David Tevele Schiff was buried today in the Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.

1794: New York native Moses Myers and Eliza Judah gave birth to Moses Myers.

 

1796:The first printing of the "Book of the Intermediates" - Tanya - was completed today in Slavita, including Part I - Sefer Shel Benonim, - Part II - Chinuch Katan - and Shaar Hayichud Veha'emunah.

1803: The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans as huge swath of land stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains became part of the United States.  Jewish settlement in the region had been hampered by the anti-Semitic codes and practices of the European powers – Spain and France – that had owned the land.  Now that it was the hands of the United States, the territory Jews could settle and thrive in a land that would come to include cities like New Orleans, St. Louis, and Denver each with their own thriving Jewish communities.

1808(1st of Tevet, 5569): Seventh Day of Chanukah; Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1808(1st of Tevet, 5569): “Elchanon ben Solomon” was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1816(1st of Tevet, 5577): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1816(1st of Tevet, 5577): Simon Bondi who wrote, together with his brother Mordecai, the "Or Ester" (Light of Esther), a Hebrew dictionary of the Latin words occurring in the Talmud, passed away today in his native Dresden.

1821(26th of Kislev, 5582): Second Day of Chanukah

1821: Birthdate of Michel Levy, the native of Phalsbourg who became a prominent French publisher.

1824(29th of Kislev, 5585): Fifth Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the Presidency of James Monroe

1826: Woolf Levy married Catherine Lazarus today at the Great Synagogue.

1826: Meir ben Gedaliah married Rachel bat Phineas today at the Western Synagogue.

1827(2nd of Tevet, 5588): Seventh Day of Chanukah

1827: In New Orleans, a group of Jews with Germanic roots led by Jacob Solis formed Shaarei Chesed, an Orthodox Synagogue.  In 1881, the congregation merged with Neufutzot Yehuda to form what would become Touro Synagogue, one of the Crescent City’s leading Reform congregations.

1828: Birthdate of Friedrich Korányi “Hungarian physician and medical writer who earned his doctor’s degree at Budapest in 1851.

1834: In Saxony during the reign of King John, “affairs of Jewish culture and instruction were placed under the Ministry of Education.”

1844(10th of Tevet, 5605): Fast of the Tenth of Tevet

1844(10th of Tevet, 5605): Sixty-four year old Nathan of Brselov, “the chief disciple and scribe of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, founder of the Breslov Hasidic dynasty who  is credited with preserving, promoting and expanding the Breslov movement after the Rebbe's death” passed away today.

1844: The Jewish Chronicle challenged Nathan Marcus Adler, the new chief rabbi, to handle the controversy between “those who wished to move ahead quickly, too quickly, and those who would rather not move at all” in a “temperate” way.

1848(25th of Kislev, 5609): As Jews observe Chanukah, the term Chanukah Gelt takes on a special meaning as this is the first time the holiday is celebrated after the start of the California Gold Rush.

1849: Birthdate of Jacob Samuel Speyer, the native of Amsterdam who earned his Ph.D. at Leyden in 1872 and became a leading philologist.

1857: In Russia, Alexander Vineberg and his wife Anna who died in childbirth gave birth to Hiram Nahum Vineberg, the husband of Lena Bernheimer and graduate of McGill University who went on to become the attending gynecologist at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital and the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids.

1858 In Cincinnati, Ohio, Julius and Duffie Freiberg gave birth to Julius Walter Freiberg, who was also known as Jacob Walter Freiberg, the husband of Stella Freibeg.

1860: Two days after he had passed away, 51-year-old Naphtali Hart, the husband of Elizabeth Solomon with whom he had had four children, was buried today in the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1860: South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States. Jews had been living in South Carolina since colonial times. It was in South Carolina that a Jew was for the first time elected to serve in the legislature. The Jews of South Carolina served with distinction in the American Revolution and Beth Elohim has been a part of Charleston since the beginning of the 19th century. When war the Civil War began Benjamin Mordecai donated $10,000 to “The Cause” and at least 182 Jews from South Carolina fought with the CSA. [During the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, Charleston will be site of a symposium on the role of Jews, Slavery and the Civil in 2011.]

1861:In the U.S. House of Representatives Congressman Williams S. Holman’s of Indiana “resolution, instructing the Committee on Military Affairs to report a bill amendatory of the present laws, so as not to exclude in the appointment of chaplains any religious societies, was adopted. Mr. Holman mentioned that at present Jewish Rabbis were excluded, notwithstanding there were large numbers of Hebrews in the army.

1861: Arnold Fischel, a Rabbi from New York City who had gone to Washington, DC to seek President Lincoln’s help in changing the law so that Rabbis could serve as chaplains in the Union Army wrote a letter to Henry Hart describing his visit to the city, the fruits of his labor and a detailed description of his visits to the camps and hospitals of the Army of the Potomac which, according to him the number of Jews is very large.

1861: During the Civil War, Philadelphian C.D. Goldenberg began serving with Company F of the 110th Regiment.

1862(28th of Kislev, 5623): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1862: In Cleveland, OH, “Aaron and Sarah (Newman) Schanfarber gave birth to University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College trained Rabbi and husband of Carrie Phillipson who served congregations in Toledo, Fort Wayne, Baltimore and Mobile before settling in as the leader of “Kehilath Anshe Maariv” in Chicago for quarter of century.

1863(10th of Tevet, 5624): Asara B’Tevet

1863: Seventy-four-year-old Anglo-Jewish aristocrat Sarah Goldsmid, the “daughter of Joseph Elias-Eliahu Montefiore and Rachel Abraham Montefiore” who was first married to Solomon Ben Masud Ben Abraham Sebag with whom she had two children, Sir Joseph Sebag-Montefiore and Jemima Sebag-Montifore and then married Moses Asher Goldsmid

1863: Hevrat Mefizei ha-Haskalah (Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia) was founded was founded in Russia

1865(2nd of Tevet, 5626): The Eighth Day of Chanukah is observed for the first time without the sound of booming canon and soldiers dying in anguish.

1866: In Baltimore, MD, Bertha Bamburger and Dr. Aaron Friedenwald, a “professor of otology and ophthalmology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons” gave birth to Julius Friedenwald, a graduate of Johns Hopkins and the College of Physician and Surgeons in Baltimore who was the husband of Esther Lee Rohr and a Professor of Stomach at the College of Physicians and Surgeons who co-authored “a text book on Dietetics.”

1867: Austrian laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luis Markbreitr, his wife, gave birth to their third child and first daughter Gisela.

1870: The Executive Committee in charge of the Hebrew Charity Fair voted to donate an assortment of items valued at $1,000 to the Soldier’s Orphan Fair taking place at the armory on Broadway.  The donation is the committee’s way of thanking the non-Jewish community for their support of the Jewish fundraising event.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F07E6D91431EF34BC4A51DFB467838B669FDE

1872: In the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna, Samuel Schonberg, a native of Bratislava who was a shopkeeper, and his wife Pauline gave birth to their daughter Adele the older sister of composer Arnold Schonberg.

1872: Birthdate of Mitau, Latvia native and Cornel Medical College trained “serologist and pathologist” David M. Kaplan who had come to the United States in 1889 and served in the “Army Medical Corps during WW I” while raising a son, Stanley and a daughter with his wife.

1877: Birthdate of Latvian native and Cornell Medical College trained serologist and pathologist David M. Kaplan, a WW I veteran who “was one of the early experimenters in the use of penicillin.”

1878(24th of Kislev, 5639): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1880(18th of Tevet, 5641): Sixty-six-year-old Rebecca Cohen Isaacks Hart, the “daughter of American Revolutionary War veteran Sampson Means and Catherine (Cohen) Isaaks and the wife of Abraham Hart who was an active member of “Synagogue Mickveh Israel” in Philadelphia where she served for thirty years as “President of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society” and helped to managed the Jewish Foster Home passed away today.

1880: It was reported today that 2,000 people attended a meeting in Berlin during which a resolution “was passed in favor of the suppression of the liberty of the Jews.” They also passed resolution to oppose the return of any Liberal to Parliament who would not vote “for such suppression and to buy nothing from Jewish shops or firms.”

1881: Edward Elias Sassoon and his wife gave birth to Sir Ellice Victor Sassoon

1882: It was reported today that former New York Assemblyman Charles W. Dayton is representing Abraham Meyer, a Jewish merchant who did business on Sunday.  In his opening remarks, Dayton said that while there should be a “day of rest” the Jews, under the Constitution, had a right to choose on which day they should rest.  Too force him to stay closed for two days would work an undue hardship on Meyer.

1882: Henry Phillips, a leading member of the Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) Congregation Mickvé Israel of Philadelphia, presided at the "bar dinner" given to Chief Justice Sharswood on the retirement of the latter. This was the last public occasion in which he participated as a member of the Philadelphia bar, of which he had become a leader.

1882(10th of Tevet, 5643): Asara B’Tevet

1882(10th of Tevet, 5643): Seventy-two-year-old Philipp Ehrenberg, the second son of Henriette and Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg who “succeeded his father as principal of the Samsonschule in Wolfenbuettel” passed away today.

1884: “The executive board of the Israelite congregation of Lübeck wrote to the Chief Rabbi of Hamburg, Anschel Stern, officially appointing him as an honorary member.”

1885: Birthdate of Albert C. Cohn who served as Justice on the New York State Supreme Court. He was the father of Roy Cohn, the infamous lawyer who worked for Joe McCarthy.

1885: Through its first five days, the Ladies Fair has brought in $21,196 which will go to support the Hebrew Free School Association.

1886: It was reported today that 185 young Jewish men have “signified their intention of joining” the newly organized Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1888: Birthdate of Yitzhak Baer a German-born Israeli historian whose expertise was medieval Spanish Jewish history and whose works include Land of Israel and Exile to the Medieval Ages and History of Jews in Christian Spain.

1888: Birthdate of Newark, NJ native and early professional bowler Mort Lindsey.

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/MortimerLindsey.htm

1888: In Tukums, Latvia, “Herman Magidsohn, a merchant born in Russia in July 1863, and Bessie Magidsohn, born in August 1864 in Russia” gave birth to Joseph “Joe” Magidoshnm, the All-American halfback at the University of Michigan where he was the first Jew to earn a letter for athletic performance before going on to a career was a civil engineer in Chicago where he lived with his wife Jennie Gold and two children.

1889(27th of Kislev, 5650): Third Day of Chanukah

1889: A revival of Halevy’s “La Juive” starring Paul Kalisch as “The Jew” will be featured tonight at the Steinway Music Hall in New York.

1890: Birthdate of Bella Fromm the German journalist who covered the rise of Hitler until she fled to the United States where she published “Blood and Banquets. A Berlin Social Diary: A Berlin Social Diary.”

1890: “Coroner Levy” is scheduled to deliver a “lecture today at the Eldridge Street Synagogue for the benefit of the Hebrew Sheltering House on Madison Street” entitled “The Condition of Jews in Russia.”

1890: “Judas Maccabaeus,” a five act dramatic presentation of the Jewish war with Antiochus by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is scheduled to “presented by the Edwin Forrest Amateur Dramatic Society this evening at Turn Hall in New York City.

1891: “Among the Philadelphians” published today described civic activities in the City of Brotherly Love including the $100,000 offer made by the Mercantile Club, a Jewish social and business organization to by the building on North Broad Street that had been the home to the now defunct Delaware Club.

1891: The summary of the annual report by the President of Johns Hopkins included among the school’s accomplishments a lecture by Dr Herbert B. Adams at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association on Confucius.

1892(1st of Tevet, 5653): Rosh Choesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1892: Members of the State Board of Arbitration are in Woodbine, NJ, the Jewish colony to “see what they can do to settle the differences between the cloakmakers and the New York ‘sweater’ contractors who have become an evil in the settlement.”

1895: A.M. Palmer, Agustin Daly, Daniel and Charles Frohman, Tony Pastor, Kirke La Schelle and W.A. Brady are among those who will participate in benefit performance at Palmer’s Theatre that will provide additional funds for the charity fair being held at Madison Square to raise money for the Hebrew Technical Institute and the Educational Alliance.

1895(3rd of Tevet, 5656): Fifty year old Leopold Jacob, the son of Cantor the German born Socialist and Poet passed away today in Zurich.

1896: Birthdate of Alfred Henry Sachs, the native of Poland who came to the U.S. in 1910 where he attended JTS, CCNY and Columbia before practicing law and becoming a leader in Jewish communal as can be seen by his service as the Executive Director of the Board of Jewish Education and as an officer with ZOA.

1896: In Hoboken, NJ, “Morris and Julia (Greenwald) Eichler gave birth to NYU trained lawyer George M. Eichler, “a state deputy attorney general in New Jersey” and “general counsel for the New Jersey Motor Bus Association” who was the husband of “former Sally Jacobs,” with whom he had one son and daughter.

1897(25th of Kislev, 5658): Chanukah celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of William McKinley.

1897: In Ukraine, “Reuben Wolf Hassman and Bertha Beila Hausman” gave birth to Louis Hausman.

1898: Jacob H. Schiff the donated a new building to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association located at Ninety-Second Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City.

1898: Following the end of the Spanish –American War, Sergeant George M. Klein and Private Sydney Frank, both form Vicksburg, were among those mustered out of the 1st Mississippi Volunteer Infantry.

1898: Following the end of the Spanish-American War, Private Hans Meyers was mustered out of the 2nd Mississippi Volunteer Infantry.

1898: 1898: Following the end of the Spanish-American War Jacob Schrob and Bernard Schwarzenberg were mustered out with the other members of Battery B of the 1st Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Artillery at Bridgeport, CT.

1898: Following the end of the Spanish-American War Corporal Nathan Bernstein and Privates Harry Bernstein and Isidore Cohen all of Richmond were mustered out with the other members of Company A of the 2nd Virginia Volunteer Infantry.

1899: "The retired British priest and die-hard Egyptophile Greville Chester" wrote a letter today describing the destruction of the Ben Ezra building in Cairo

1900(28th of Kislev, 5661): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1900: “William Weil, an inspector of hydrants in the Brooklyn Water Supply committed suicide this even after having been arraigned on a charge of petit larceny following a complaint by Franks J. Mills that he had paid Weil money after the latter “had represented himself as an advertising solicitor for a weekly paper which was to be issued under the auspices of two Jewish congregations.”

1901(10th of Tevet, 5662): Asar B’Tevet

1901:  Birthdate of Louis I Kahn, the world famous architect who had trouble getting commissions early in his career because he was Jewish and whose work can be found from the Yale Campus, to the Salk Institute, to Fort Worth to Bangladesh.  He passed away in 1974.

1902:  Birthdate of columnist Max Lerner whose famous quotes include “When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.” “Either men will learn to live like brothers, or they will die like beasts.”

1902: In Brooklyn, Austrian Jewish immigrants Jennie and Isaac Hook gave birth to philosopher and author Sidney Hook.

1903(1stof Tevet, 5664): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1903: Today, the Seventh Day of Chanukah has been designated as “Shekel Day” a Zionist fund raising event which its supporters hope will become an annual event.

1904: At a meeting of the Council of Jewish Women Mrs. Solomon Schechter presented a paper entitled "The Problem of Religious Observance" which contended that congregational singing is an important factor in the religious services of the Jews, and pleaded for a return to the use of beautiful ancient melodies, which at present are sadly neglected and almost disappearing.

1905: Forty-four year old Henry Harland who, early in his career wrote the “Jewish Tribology” – As It Was Written, Mrs. Peixada and The Yoke of the Torah– under the penname of Sidney Luska passed away today.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/16044a.htm

1906: Dr. Solomon Schechter, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary presided over a mass meeting in Cooper Union which was sponsored by the Zionist Council of Greater New York. When Dr. Schmarja Levin, a member of the recently dissolved Russian Duma, was introduced the crowd waved small Zionist flags in the pattern adopted by the Zionist Convention held in Basle, Switzerland in 1897.  Speaking in Yiddish, Levin presented the Zionist argument that Jews would always be treated as outsiders and needed to establish their own nation in their historic homeland.

1907(15thof Tevet, 5668): British educator and communal leader Abraham Levy who had been born in 1848 passed away today.

1907: Albert Abraham Michelson wins the Nobel Prize for Physics. The physicist was the first American to win a Noble Prize in a field of science.

1908: Ossip Gabrilowitsch was injured today in Danbury, Connecticut, when he rescued Clara Clemens from run-away sleigh that overturned when the horse pulling the sleigh bolted.  Clemens is the daughter of Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, the famous American author. [Gabrilowitsch was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and orchestra conduct who had settled in the United States. He would marry Clara in 1909 and would be the father of Samuel Clemens’ only grandchild.]

1909(8thof Tevet, 5670): Mendel Tostowsky passed away today.

1910: Hiram C. Gill, the Mayor of Seattle, a position which had been held by Bailey Gatzert, the first Jew to serve in that capacity, was made the subject of re-call election today.

1911(29thof Kislev, 5672): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1911(29thof Kislev, 5672): Seventy-seven year old CSA veteran Benjamin F. Jonas, the Kentucky born son of Abraham Jonas and the former Louisa Block whom Lincoln named as the successor to the role of Postmaster after her husband’s death and who was the second Jew to serve as U.S. Senator from Louisiana passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/benjamin-franklin-jonas

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/benjamin-franklin-jonas

1911: Birthdate of New York native Hortense Calisher, the daughter of a Southern Jewish perfume-maker and a German immigrant, who has written about her own family in three memoirs. The most recent, Tattoo for a Slave (2004), traces the history of her father's family from before the Civil War to her own lifetime. A 1932 graduate of Barnard College, Calisher published her first short story, "The Middle Drawer," in 1948. She did all of this while raising two young sons. Like much of her later work, this O. Henry Award-winning story drew upon themes of Calisher's own life. Most of Calisher's fiction features Jewish characters, but their ethnic identity is usually background rather than a dramatic element. Calisher has been a Guggenheim fellow twice and a National Book Award finalist three times. Though popular fame has eluded her, she has been lauded as a "writer's writer" with a wide imaginative and formal range, and has been praised for both intricate plot and rich character development. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

1911: Birthdate of Harry C. Friedman

1911(29thof Kislev, 5672): Seventy-six year old popular and financially successful actress Rose Eytinge, the Philadelphia born daughter of Rebecca and David Eytinge and the sister of actor Samuel Eytinge passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/eytinge-rose

1912(10th of Tevet, 5673): Asara B’Tevet

 

1912(10th of Tevet, 5673): Sixty-two year old Texas businessman Isaac Gordon passed away in Beaumont today.

 

1912(10th of Tevet, 5673): Seventy-five year old Rabbi Abraham Werner passed away today in London.

1913: “More than 2,500 friends and admirers” of Solomon Bloomgarden, the poet who writes under the name of “Yehoash” “attended a farewell reception at Carnegie Hall tonight” for the man known as the “Yiddish  Milton” who will be leaving for Palestine in the first month of 1914.

1914(3rd of Tevet, 5675): Eighth Day of Chanukah

 

1914: “The American Jewish Relief Committee for War Suffers of which Felix M. Warburg is Treasurer raised and additional $18,000 today bringing the fund’s total to $222,122.

 

1914: The Jewish Emancipation Committee received this statement tonight; “Advices from Jerusalem and Jaffa indicate that close 50 000 Jews are on the verge of starvation there and that relief is need immediately to save hundreds from perishing.”

1914: During WW I, opening of the Battle of Champagne in which a large number of “Oriental Sephardim,” many of whom had lived in the Ottoman Empire where they were educated by the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools fought and died because they “felt they owed a debt to France

1915: Louis Marshall, Chairman of the American Jewish Relief Committee said today that a fund of $5,000,000 must be raised immediately in order to bring effective relief to the thousands of Jews” suffering from the effects of the war in Europe.

1915: During World War I the last ANZAC troops evacuated Gallipoli.  If Gallipoli had succeeded, the Allies would have been able to open a supply route to Russia and end the stalemate on the Western Front.  This would have meant no Russian Revolution and no humiliating peace that would give the Nazis a road to power.  The Zion Mule Corps served at Gallipoli.  The Jewish unit acquitted itself with distinction and help. This helped to convince the British to create regiments of Jewish troops that would help to liberate Palestine under General Allenby.  The Zion Mule Corps is one of the progenitors of the modern IDF.

1915: Birthdate of Anaheim, CA, native Delmer Elsey Daniel Berg who at the time of his death, would “the last living veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

1915: Louis Lipsky is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Organization and Institutions of Zionism” sponsored by the University Zionist Society.

1916(25th of Kislev, 5677): Chanukah is observed for the first time  with Lloyd George as Prime Minister of Great Britain.

1916: In New York City, Charlie Scwhartz, an immigrant who left Russia to escape serving in the Czar’s army and his wife gave birth to Morris “Morrie” S. Schwartz, “a sociology professor at Brandeis University and author” who was the subject of the best-selling book Tuesdays with Morrie, which was written by Mitch Albom

1916: Today, “the passage across the Russian frontier of thousands of Rumanians who have abandoned their houses and property in the face of the invading Germans and Bulgarians cast the shadow of a new refugee problem on the Russian Empire” which “has only partially succeeded in…assimilating the millions of homeless…Jews and members of other races who fled” there during the first year and a half of the World War.

1917(1st of Tevet, 5664): Rosh Codesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1917: This afternoon, during an address during a ceremony that involved the “presentation of a service flag in honor of the boys of Public School 129 in Brooklyn” where 80 percent of the population is Jewish Samuel H. Cragg, a member of Local Draft Board 24 said that “there ae three epochs in the life of the Jewish boy’ first at birth, circumcision; second, at 13, confirmation; third at 21, exemption.” (Editor’s note – this canard implying that Jews were draft dodgers which flew in the face of statistical reality, cost Cragg his position)

1917: Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, which eventually become the feared NKVD is founded. Regardless of its various names, Jews could be counted among the members of, and victims of the Secret Police.  For example, Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda whose father was a Jewish watchmaker (his mother was a Russian) was head of the NKVD during the 1930’s where he oversaw the show trials and murders of such Old Bolsheviks as Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev both of whom were born Jewish before giving up Moses for Marx and Lenin. Yagoda himself would fall victim to Stalin’s wrath and would arrested and executed by the same NKVD.

1917: Colonel Sir Ronald Storrs, the newly appointed British Military Governor for Jerusalem, arrived in the City of David. 

1917: Despite a heavy rain tonight British forces used pontoon bridges and boats to cross the Auju River at Jaffa and taking advantage of the element surprise and using their bayonets instead of bullets forced the Ottomans to retreat five miles to the west.

1917: Birthdate David Bohm, American-born physicist, philosopher, and neuropsychologist.  Bohm worked on the Manhattan project.  Like many others who worked with Oppenheimer, Bohm fell afoul of the spirit of McCarthyism in the 1950’s

1917: “According to a cable message from Petrograd received by Zionists” in New York 36 year old David Ben Borochow (Dov Ber Borochov) “founder of the Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) of Russia” who worked in the United States from 1914 to 1917 while in exile from his native land has passed away.

1918: During Senate Committee hearings today, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was defended against charges that it had ever taken part in the German plan to use it as a conduit for financing German propaganda when the war broke out in 1914.

1919(28th of Kislev, 5680): Parashat Miketz and the Fourth Day of Chanukah

1919: Rabbi Schulman is scheduled to lead services this morning at Temple Beth-El in New York.

1919: Rabbi Enelow is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Need Jews Become Ethical Culturist” at services this morning at Temple Emanu-El.

1919: Birthdate of Everett Grennbaum, the Buffalo native who the script writer whose span of creativity went from the banal – The Love Boat—to the sophisticated – MASH.

1920: Birthdate of Aharon "Aharale" Rabinovich Yariv, the native of Moscow who made Aliyah at the age of 15 and became a key member of the Israeli intelligence service and advisor on counterterrorism.

1920: Rabbi H. G. Enlow is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Patriarchs to Saul” and Rabbi Max Reichler is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “How To Teach Hebrew” at this evenings meeting of the Association of Religious School Teachers of New York.

1920: Columbia University graduate Lewis Einstein, the New York born son of David and the former Caroline Fatman began serving U.S. Minister to Czechoslovakia

1921: It was reported today “several hundred Jewish businessmen” have pledged $380,000 to supported the work of the American Palestine Corporation.

1922(1st of Tevet, 5683): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1922: The New York Times reported that "A rumor is circulating here that Henry Ford is financing Adolf Hitler's nationalist and anti-Semitic movement in Munich.”

1922: In Bucharest, Romania, “Lajos and Eszter (Katz) Abraham” gave birth to Adolf Abraham who gained fame as 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.

1922(1st of Tevet, 5683): Eighty-five year old French banker Louis Raphaël Cahen d'Anvers  the son of  Meyer Joseph Cahen d'Anvers and Clara Bischoffsheim both of whom were members of prominent French banking families passed away today.

1923: Birthdate of New York native Dr. Irving Geschwind, “a member of the faculty in the Department of Animal Husbandry at UC Davis” passed away today.

1924: Adolf Hitler freed from jail before completing his full sentence.  This attests to his growing political power and popularity. Hitler had spent 8 months in Landsberg Prison for his role in the famed, failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.  The term was a slap on the wrist and presaged the anarchy that would envelop the Weimar Republic.  While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, his “literary masterpiece” that was a blueprint for the havoc he would unleash on the world.

1924: Spanish newspapers published a signed decree from the king of Spain saying Sephardic Jews dispersed along the Mediterranean coast and in other countries, which "in one way or another" claim descent from families, which once lived in Spain can apply for full Spanish citizenship.

1925: Fifteen year old Rudi Ball, a future Olympic medal winner “decided to become a hockey player” tonight after “a friend of his took him to a game at the Berliner Sportpalast between two of Europe’s top teams at that time, Berliner SC against Wiener EV.”

1925: One day after he had passed away, 55 year old James Henry Oxberry, the husband of Hannah Oxberry and the “leader and founder of Buffaloism (The Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes) in the Far East” was buried today at the “Happy Valley Jewish Cemetery in Hong Kong.”

1926:  Birthdate of David Levine, painter and artist who is famous for his caricatures.

1927(26th of Kislev, 5688): Second Day of Chanukah

1927: Federal Judge Grover M. Moscowitz who “has accepted the chairmanship of the Brookly Division of the 1928 United Palestine Appeal” is scheduled to speak tonight at the organizations “annual Brooklyn Conference.”

1928: Tel Aviv Mayor, David Bloch, is scheduled to arrive in New York today aboard the SS Leviathan.  Mayor Bloch is coming to the United States to seek financial support for the development of Zionist programs in Palestine.  A delegation of “Jewish and labor leaders headed by Abraham Shiplacoff the former Assemblyman of Brooklyn” is scheduled to greet the Mayor and his associated including Dr. C.H. Arlasaroff and Miss Goldie Meyerson. Miss Meyerson would gain lasting fame as Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister.

1928: Ernest Bloch’s “America: An Epic Rhapsody in Three Parts for Orchestra,” has its first performance at today’s matinee performance of the New York Philharmonic.

1929: Today Rabbi Jacob Slonim of Hebron provided explicit details of the murder of five his relatives during last summer’s Arab riots to the British commission investigating this matter.

1930(30th of Kislev, 5691): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1930: At services this morning, Rabbi Louis Newman will deliver a sermon on “Compassionate Marriage and Other Marriage Problems” at Rodeph Shalom in New York City

1930: At services this morning, Rabbi Israel Goldstein will deliver a sermon on “Compassionate Marriage: What is wrong with it?” at B’nai Jeshurun in New York City.

1930: Cleveland’s Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver will deliver a sermon on “The Role of Religion in a Changing World” at the Free Synagogue which is meeting in Carnegie Hall.

1930: Rabbi Nathan Krass is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “If I Were a Jew” at Temple Emanu-El.

1931(10th of Tevet, 5692): Asara B’Tevet

1931(10th of Tevet, 5692): Eighty-four year old Carl Edvard Cohen Brandes Danish politician, critic and author, and the younger brother of Georg Brandes and Ernst Brandes as well as the father-in-law of Norwegian chemist George Dedichen passed away today in Copenhagen.

1932: “The Blue of Heaven,” produced by Gabriel Levy and with a screenplay by Max Kolpe and Billy Wilder was released today in Germany.

1933: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this afternoon at the Riverside Memorial Chapel for John J. Bockar, the husband of Iva K Bockar and the brother of the former Anna Bockar, Isaac Bockar and Aaron Bockar

1934(14th of Tevet, 5695): Ninety year old Caroline Meyer Mehrbach, the widow of Moses Mehrbach, passed away at White Plains, NY.

1934(14th of Tevet, 5695): Eighty-year old Alice HannahTeller Fleisher, the daughter of David and Rebecca Teller and the wife of Moyer Fleisher passed away after which she was buried in the Mount Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia.

1936: “The Truth About Christopher Columbus” published today provides a review The Truth About Columbus and the Discovery of America by Charles Duff who “emphasizes the Jewish contribution in encouragement, court influence and money to Columbus’s success and the tragic irony of that contribution at the time of the persecution and expulsion of the Jews in Spain

1936: “Three Smart Girls” a musical comedy produced by Joe Pasternak and directed by Henry Koster was released in the United States today.

1936: State Supreme Court Justice Albert Cohn served as toastmaster for the dinner tonight at the Hotel Commodore attended by “more than 400 members of B’nai B’rith” were celebrating the 93rd anniversary of the founding of Jewish fraternal organization.

1936: Details of the pressure being brought to bear on the Jews of Tripoli by the Governors, Marshal Italo Balbo to vacate their shops and move back into the city’s old quarter which have resulted in the flogging of at least two Jews “were revealed today with the arrival in Rome of the Jewish newspaper Nostra Bandiera of Turin which printed extracts from a local Tripoli newspaper, Avvenire di Tripoli.”

1936: This morning, during a service led by Rabbi Jonah Wise that was part of the celebration of the 19th anniversary of the Central Synagogue, “James G. McDonald of the New York Times and the former League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees” delivered a talk in which he said “the supreme tragedy of the present threats to freedom lies in the fact that they menace the true things that give mankind hope for the future.”

1936: An appeal signed by several prominent clergyman seek to raise money for Christians suffering under the Nazi regime noted that “the response of the Jews in America to the needs of their brethren sets a heroic example for us to follow.”

1936: Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. “told a joint meeting of the brotherhoods of sixteen Baltimore synagogues tonight that only under a democratic system of government can the welfare and liberties of minority groups be preserved.”

1936: “Arturo Toscanini and his wife arrived by plane today from Alexandria, Egypt and then drove to Tel Aviv where he will conduct the Palestine Symphony Orchestra.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Simon Less, 24, a milkman, was killed near the Jerusalem quarter of Beit Hakerem. Shlomo Ben-Nun, 27, a policeman, was kidnapped and later murdered by armed Arabs near Kfar Hittin. A police squad killed one Arab terrorist and jailed another. Jewish buses were shot at and a number of passengers were wounded. In Berlin, Herr von Schwabach, a prominent half-Jewish banker, committed suicide when refused permission to marry his Aryan fiancée. The Lwow University closed owing to renewed anti-Jewish violence. 

 

1938: After waiting for two months, Madison, Wisconsin native, George Rublee, American executive director of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees today was invited to go to Berlin discuss plans for “taking almost 700,000 Jews out of Germany.”

 

1938: After having fought with the Lincoln Brigade 26 year old Edward Isaac Lending returned to the United States aboard Ausonia, after which he would put his military training to go use while serving with the U.S. Army as part of an anti-aircraft united the European Theatre of Operations.

 

1939: Miss Sophia Harris daughter of Mrs. Louis I. Harris and the late Dr. Harris, one-time Health Commissioner of New York was married tonight at the Hotel Whitehald to Rabbi Leo Geiger of Congregation Sha'arey Israel in Macon GA.  Rabbi Nachman Arnoff performed the ceremony.

 

1940: Bing Crosby (who was not Jewish) turned “A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square” a British song with lyrics by Eric Maschwitz into an instant “standard” when he recorded it today.

 

1940: Starting today, “various humanitarian aid organizations” including “Jewish French organizations tolerated by the Vichy Regime”  “intervened to lend their services to the inmates at Gurs by setting up “posts” inside the French fascist concentration camp.

1940(20thof Kislev, 5701): Seventy-year old “Mrs. Isabella Peyster Unger” the wife of Tammany Hall political power and Municipal Court Judge Henry W. Unger and the mother of Albert Unger and Herbert Unger, of blessed memory, passed away today.

 

 

1940: A group of Zionist met today in Bendzin, Poland.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/03.asp

 

 

1940: Captain America Comics #1 — cover-dated March 1941 went on sale today.  Captain America was the creation of Joe Simon (born Hymie Simon) and Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg)

1941(30thof Kislev, 5702): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1941: At Temple Emanu-El in New York, Rabbi S.H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Maccabees and Religious Freedom.”

1941: In New York, at Temple Rodeph Sholom, Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “No. 2, Red, White and blue Herring, A Maccabean Answer.”

1941: In New York, at Temple Israel, Rabbi William F. Rosenblum is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Now It Is Our Battle.”

1941: In New York, at the West End Synagogue, Rabbi Hyman J. Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Maccabees Defeated Hitler.”

1941: In New York, at the West Side Jewish Center, Rabbi Leo Ginsburg is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Our Fathers’ Triumphant Wars and Now.”

1941: In New York, at the Fort Washington Synagogue, Rabbi Alexander Segel is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “A Maccabee in This Generation.”

1942: The Nazis shot 560 Jews in the Rakow forest. “The story of the massacres that took place at the Rakow forest is typical of the Nazi atrocities during the WWII. The Nazis liquidated the ghetto of Piotrokov, the first ghetto built by the Germans in Poland. While most of the inhabitants of the ghetto were deported to be murdered at Treblinka, one group of 560 Jews was shot to death in the forest outside of town.”

1943: The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved a resolution by sponsored by Iowa’s Senator Guy Gillette and 11 of his colleagues proposing “that President Roosevelt set up a commission of diplomatic, economic and military experts to devise ways ‘to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe from extinction at the hands of Nazi Germany.’ The Nazis were charged in the resolution with having ‘exterminated close to two million’ Jewish men, women and children in Europe.” 

1944: During negotiations with the Germans to save Hungarian Jews, Dr. Rudolf Kastner arrived in Switzerland.

1944:  In response to the activities of Lechi (the Stern Gang), Churchill “dropped all discussion of the Jewish state proposal that had been scheduled for promulgation on this date.”

 

1944: Lazar Kaganovich ended his term as People’s Commissar for Transport in the Soviet Union.

 

1945: Fifty-two Palestinian Jews detained at a camp at Latrun halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv…were transferred to military custody today and deported to Eriterea.”  The British believe that the Jews are part of an “underground terrorist organization” but have not formally charged them with any crimes.  The 52 join 300 Jews already imprisoned at Eriterea under similar conditions.  When other prisoners at Latrun found out about the deportations they began a hunger strike.

 

1945: In “Baghdad Worried by Zionist Issue and the Russian’s Activity,” published today,Clifton Daniel reported that “Iraq is probably the fountainhead of the pan-Arab movement and hotly anti-Zionist.”

1945: Council Law No. 10 was signed by 23 countries establishing the war crimes commission at Nuremburg. Approximately 5000 people were tried with 600 receiving the death sentence

1945: The British deport 52 suspected Jewish terrorists who have been held at Latrun to Eritrea.

1945: The Minnesota Starvation Experiment, for which Max Kampelman served as a voluntary subject because he was a conscious objector came to an end today.

1946:  Birthdate of Romanian born author and poet Andrei Codrescu.  Codrescu is a naturalized American who teaches at LSU and is a regular contributor on National Public Radio.

1946: Today the Jewish Agency for Palestine announced establishment of an annual grant to the Children's Foundation of the Holy Land in memory of Miss Henrietta Szold founder of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, on what was the 86th anniversary of her birth.

1946:  In Tel Aiv Itzhaak Geller (Gellér Izsák), a retired army sergeant major, and Manzy Freud a distant relative of Sigmund Freud gave birth to Israeli psychic Uri Geller.

1947: “Dr. Emanuel Neumann, president of the Zionist Organization of America, and a member of the American Section of the Jewish Agency Executive, announced today that he had called a special meeting of Zionist leaders of Greater New York for next Tuesday night at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel to review the latest developments in Palestine.”

1948:  Canada recognized the state of Israel.

1948(18thof Kislev, 5709): Seventy-seven year old French born and educated Felix Weill, a French professor at City College since 1901 and the chairman of the Romance Language from 1935 to 1939 who with his wife Else raised their daughter Ellen, passed away today.

1948: Laurence Duggan (who was not Jewish) jumped to his death after having been “named” (as a Communist spy) by Isaac Don Levine.

1948: As Israel began to grow its air force, Jack Cohen led six Spitfires from Kunovice today

1948: King Abdullah of Palestine appoints Sheikh Hussan Medin Jarallah as mufti of Jerusalem. Haj Amin el Husseini is recognized as mufti of Jerusalem by other Arab states.

1949(29th of Kislev, 5710): Fifth day of Chanukah

1949(29th of Kislev, 5710): Sixty-two-year-old Russian born American sculptor and painter Alexander Portnoff whose models included Shalom Aleichem “died suddenly today in Philadelphia, PA.”

1949: The UN Trusteeship Council asks Israel to call off transfer of its government to Jerusalem.

1949: The UN Economic Survey Mission plans several projects to be covered by the aid program for Arab refugees including irrigation and hydroelectric development in Arab Palestine and Arab countries. No funds are allotted for Israel which is absorbing thousands of Jewish refugees who have been forced to flee from the Arab and/or Moslem countries in which they have been living.

1950: “Ten short-wave diathermy machines and other medical equipment were donated to Israel today by the American Committee for the National Sick of Palestine as special ceremonies held in the offices of the J. Beeber Company,” the manufacturers of medical equipment responsible for the donation.

1951: “Death of Salesman” the cinematic treatment of the play by Arthur Miller directed by László Benedek and produced by Stanley Kramer was released in the United States.

1952(2nd of Tevet, 5713): 8th day of Chanukah

1953: Thirty year old CPA and investor Bertram Frankenberger, the son of Bertram and Thelma Frankenberger married Marjorie Green with whom he had two daughters, Linda Sue Reason and Wendy Beth Goldstein.

1953(14thof Tevet, 5714): Fifty-five year old William B. Ziff, the advertising agency owner turned publisher who founded and chaired Ziff-Davis Publishing company, whose service “as an aviator in World War I with 202nd Aero Squadron led him to become an advocate for military airpower as can be seen in his best-seller The Coming Battle of Germany and whose support for Zionism was the inspiration for The Rape of Palestine, passed away today living his son William Ziff, Jr. to run his publishing enterprises.

1954(25thof Kislev, 5715): Chanukah

1954: U.S. premiere of “The Silver Chalice” which much to his later shame marked the debut of Paul Newman with music by Franz Waxman.

1956: In New York City Jack Garfein, “a Czech Jew and Holocaust survivor” and actress Carroll Baker who had converted to Judaism gave birth to Blanche Garfein who gained fame as actress Blanche Baker.

1957: “The Pride and The Passion” a big screen epic sent during the Napoleonic wars in Spain directed and produced by Stanley Kramer, co-starring Theodore Bikel as “General Jouvet” and with an opening title sequence designed by Saul Bass was released today in Finland a day after having had its Swedish premiere.

1957: The :comedy shorts unit closed today marking the end of Jack White’s (Jacob Weiss) career with Columbia where he had made so many films with the Three Stooges.

1959: ABC broadcast “The Vagrants” one of the many episodes of “The Rebel” direct by Irvin Kershner.

1960: Auschwitz-commandant Richard Bär was arrested in German Federal Republic.

1961: “Lover Come Back produced by Martin Melcher and Stanley Shapiro who also co-authored the script and co-starring Tony Randall was released in the United States today.

1961(13th of Tevet, 5722):  Fifty-nine year old Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Moss Hart, the son of the former Lillian Solomon and cigar maker and the husband of Kitty Carlisle whom he married in 1946 passed away today.

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/moss-hart/

1963: Birthdate of Tal Friedman, the native of Kiryat Ata who served in the Israeli Sea Corps and went on to become a popular comedian, actor and a musician.

1963: “Contempt” a satire produced by Joseph Levine was released today in France.

1963(4th of Tevet, 5724): Eighty-three year old Franciska (Franzi) Schwimmer, the daughter of Max and Bertha Schwimmer  who “graduated from the National Music Academy in Budapest and became a piano and music teacher” passed away today in New York City.

1963: Guy de “Rothschild was on the cover of TIME magazine in a story that said he took "over the family's French bank during the disorder of war and defeat, changed its character from stewardship of the family fortune to expansive modern banking.”

1963: “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” a song from the album “Funny Girl,” was recorded today at Barbra Streisand.

1964: Rachel Rubin became Rachel Adler today when she married Rabbi Moshe Adler.

1964: “An Evening with Fred Astaire” with music by David Rose and his Orchestra and produced by Bud Yorkin was re-broadcast this evening.

1964: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol formed his cabinet and became head of the Israeli government.  Eshkol was a compromise candidate of whom little was expected.  In one of the irony of history, Eshkol would be Prime Minister when Israel was faced with its greatest military challenge in May and June of 1967.  Under Eshkol’s leadership, the Israeli forces won the Six Days War, which among other things, resulted in the re-unification of the city of Jerusalem.

1966(7th of Tevet, 5727): Seventy-two year old Amram Aburteh the native of Morocco who became “the Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic congregation in Petah Tikva, Israel and author of Netivei Am, a collection of responsa, sermons, and Torah teachings” passed away today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amram_Aburbeh#/media/File:Rabbi_Amram_Aburbeh_photo_En.jpg

1966(7th of Tevet, 5727): Sixty-eight year old NYU trained attorney Joseph H. Wasserman, a specialist in tax law, the husband of the “former Leah Chayes” and the father of Dr. Norman Wasserman, died of a heart attack while driving his car in Brooklyn.

1966: Albert Günther Göring, the younger brother of Nazi leader Hermann Göring who worked to save Jews from Hitler and was an anti-Nazi, passed away.

http://www.auschwitz.dk/albert.htm

1966: Gene Klein and business associate Sam Schulman, plus a group of minority investors, obtained the National Basketball Association franchise for the city of Seattle, Washington

1966: A Chanukah Festival for Israel featuring Sophie Maslow and company is scheduled to be held at Madison Square Garden.

1967(18th of Kislev, 5728): Sixty-three year old Boston native Alfred Henry “Truck” Miller who played in the backfield for Harvard in the late 1920’s before spending one year as a player with professional Boston Bulldogs passed away today in Detroit, Michigan.

1968(29th of Kislev, 5759): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1968(29th of Kislev, 5759): Eighty four year old Israeli author and Editor Max Brod, the editor of the works of Franz Kafka of whose estate he was executor and whose most work was The Redemption of Tyco Brahe passed away today.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-2587503572/brod-max.html

 

1969: “New Journalism Dean” published today described the life and career of Elie Abel, whom the trustees of Columbia University have just named “as the new dean of its Graduate School of Journalism.

 

1969: Peter, Paul & Mary's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" reaches #1

1969: In Zurich, Jacqueline (née Burgauer) and Gilbert de Botton gave birth to author, philosopher and television personality Alain de Botton. De Botton’s father was part of a prominent Egyptian Jewish family that was expelled by Nasser along with most of the rest of the Jews living in Egypt.  (This part of the Middle East refugee problem that you did not hear about)

1970: The 6th Asian Games in which Esther Roth-Shachamorov won golds in 100m hurdles and pentathlon and a silver in long jump came to an end today in Bangkok.

1971(2ndof Tevet, 5732): 8th Day of Chanukah

1971(2ndof Tevet, 5732): Sixty-eight year old West Hoboken, NJ native and NYU Law School trained attorney Walter Leichter, a president of the New Jersey Bar Association and president of the North Hudson Jewish Community Center who was the husband of “the former Irma Cohen” passed away today.

 

1972: In Oakland, CA, Sharon and Lawrence Slutzker gave birth to New Jersey raised tight end Scott Slutzker who played at the University of Iowa before going on to pro career with the Colts, Saints and Jets.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/scott-slutzker

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SlutSc00.htm

 

1972:  Neil Simon’s "Sunshine Boys" premiered in New York.

1973(25th of Kislev, 5734): First Day of Chanukah

1973(25th of Kislev, 5734): Sixty-seven year old San Francisco born, U.C. Berkley grad Frederick L. Ehrman, the “former chairman of the board of Lehman Brothers” and the husband of “the former Edith Koshland with whom he had one daughter – Edith—passed away today.

1973: A terrorist attack was thwarted when authorities arrested “10 Turks, 1 Palestinian and 1 Algerian…in a villa near Paris.”

1973: “The Laughing Policeman” directed and produced by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Walter Matthau was released in the United States today.

1974: After having premiered in New York City a week ago, “The Godfather Part II” featuring Less Strasberg, James Caan and Abe Vigoda and edited by Peter Zinner opened in theatres throughout the United States tdoay

1974: Thirteen people were injured in Jerusalem when terrorists exploded a bomb “on a crowded street.”

1974: “The Jackson-Vanik Amendment was overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. Congress, making U.S. trade concessions and low-interest loans to any “non-market economy” (communist) conditional on “respect for the right to emigrate.”

1975: Seven months after having opened in France, “Seven Beauties,” co-starring Shirley Stoler was released today in Italy.

1976(28th of Kislev, 5737): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1976: Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin resigned.  Rabin was forced to resign over a financial indiscretion that took place while he had been Ambassador in Washington.  His resignation opened the way for the election of the Likud and Menachem Begin.  Up until then, Labor had controlled the Israeli governments chosen since 1948.  This opening for the Right wing changed the political equation in Israel both in foreign and domestic affairs.

1977: “The Water Engine,”  “a play by David Mamet that centers on the violent suppression of a disruptive alternative energy technology” opened today at The Public Theatre.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported from Cairo that Egypt and Israel agreed to incorporate all principles of UN Resolution 242 on their agenda. In the Knesset a number of members of Likud, Labor and the National Religious Party expressed fears about Menachem Begin's peace plans for Judea and Samaria and asked for explanations. It became evident that the prime minister faced a serious challenge from many of his own ardent supporters. The chief editor and political analyst of the Egyptian influential daily al-Ahram, Ali Hamdi el-Gammal, welcomed Begin's peace proposals as "very promising and encouraging."

1978: In a strange multi-cultural twist “Steam Heat” the show tune by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross was sung by the African-American cast of “Good Times.”

1979(30th of Kislev, 5740): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1981: Today “the Cabinet of Israel convened for a weekly meeting, in which Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and the Chief of Staff (Ramatkal) Rafael Eitan presented the "Big Plan" for an invasion of Lebanon, which included seizure of the Beirut-Damascus Highway” which was cancel due to Cabinet opposition despite Prime Minister’s Begin support of the plan,

1982(4th of Tevet, 5743): Ninety-five year old pianist Arthur Rubinstein passed away.

https://www.steinway.com/artists/arthur-rubinstein

1983: In Los Angeles, “Sharon Lyn (née Chalkin), a costume designer and fashion stylist, and Richard Feldstein, a tour accountant for Guns N' Roses” Jonah Hill, the multi-talented brother of Jordan and Beanie Feldstein, two of whose most memorable performances were as the “geek” in “Moneyball” and as one of the money crazed “brokers” in the “Wolf of Wall Street.”

1984(26thof Kislev, 5745): Fifty-one-year-old Dr. Stanley Milgram, the noted psychologist, passed away today. (As reported by Daniel Coleman)

1985: Howard Cosell retired from television sports after 20 years with ABC.

1986(18th of Kislev, 5747: Parashat Vayishlach

1986(18th of Kislev, 5747): Sixty-eight year old Connecticut born lightweight and featherweight contender Julius “Julie” Kogon who wore a Star of David on his boxing trunks passed away today after which he was buried in the Garden of Sinai Cemetery in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

1987: "Nuts" with Barbra Streisand premieres.

1987:Today, Egypt summoned the Israeli Ambassador, Moshe Sasson, to the Foreign Ministry to express concern over what it called ''the brutal, oppressive measures taken by Israel against the Palestinian people.'' It was the fifth protest statement issued by Egypt in the eight days.

1989:On the day of the American invasion, Mike Harari, a 62-year-old retired agent of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, rumored to have been an Israeli spy, a gun-runner, and a military adviser to General Manuel Antonio Noriega vanished from Panama

1990: “Godfather Part III” featuring Eli Wallach premiered today in Beverly Hills.

1991: “Father of the Bride” co-produced by Howard Rosenman and Nancy Meyers who also co-authored the script and featuring Eugene Levy was released in the United States today.

1992(25th of Kislev, 5753): First Day of Chanukah

1992(25th of Kislev, 5753): Eight-eighty year old Brooklyn born Max Hodesblatt, the graduate of Boys High whose basketball and baseball skill earned him membership in CCNY Athletic Hall of Fame as well as a successful coaching career at Jefferson High Schoo.

1992(25th of Kislev, 5753): Eighty-eight year old Nathan Milstein, the Russian-born violin virtuoso, died yesterday at his home in London. (As reported by Harold C. Schonberg)

1992(25th of Kislev, 5753): Ninety-one year old “Stella Adler, an exponent of Method acting whom many considered the leading American teacher of her craft, died today at her home in Los Angeles. (As reported by Peter B. Flint)

1995(27th of Kislev, 5756): Third Day of Chanukah

1995:The trial of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin opened today only to be postponed for a month, while Israelis received an unexpected replay of the killing in an amateur video not made public before.

1996(10th of Tevet, 5757): Astronomer and science celebrity Carl Sagan passed away at the age of 62. (As reported by William Dicke)

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/3/140316-carl-sagan-science-galaxies-space/

1996(10th of Tevet, 5757): Asara B'Tevet

1997(21st of Kislev, 5758): Parashat Vayeshev

1997: In “The Celebration of Hanukkah, Then and Now” published today Steven R. Weisman describes the rift in the Jewish community in the days of the Macabees and compares it to the challenge facing the state of Israel in the clash between its Orthodox and non-Orthodox citizens.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1997/12/20/702846.html?pageNumber=12

 

1998(1st of Tevet, 5759): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1998: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The House of Rothschild Money's Prophets, 1798-1848 by Niall Ferguson and The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy by David Klinghoffer

1999(11th of Tevet, 5760): One hundred one year old British born American director Irving Rapper whose career began in 1941 with “Shining Victory” and ended with “Born Again” in 1978 passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/dec/29/local/me-48573

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/30/arts/irving-rapper-101-film-director-dies.html

2000: As of today, “Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, the Likud Party leader, are the sole contestants for the Feb. 6 elections for prime minister.”

2001: “As Israeli military pressure on Yasir Arafat eased slightly today…Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a top political leader of Hamas, said today that Hamas's military wing intended to continue sending suicidal attackers against Israel.”
2002(15th of Tevet, 5763):
An Israeli rabbi was shot and killed on the Kissufim corridor road in the Gaza Strip while driving with his wife and six children to attend a pre-wedding Sabbath celebration in Afula. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

2003(25th of Kislev, 5764): Parashat Vayeshev; First Day of Chanukah

2003: “In a first for the Kremlin, President Vladimir V. Putin officially observed Hanukkah with invitations to Russia's chief rabbi, Berl Lazar, and Aleksandr Boroda, a local Jewish leader.”

2003: The Klezmatics perform "Holy Ground: The Jewish Songs of Woody Guthrie," at the 92nd Street Y, featuring songs inspired or written by Guthrie's mother-in-law, Aliza Greenblatt.

2004: Paula Abdul the daughter of Syrian born Jew Harry Abdul and Canadian born Jew Lorraine Rykiss was involved in an automobile accident today in Los Angeles.

2005: New York native and Columbia Law School graduate Stephen Friedman, a long-time partner of Goldman Sachs became the Chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

2005(19th of Kislev, 5766): Eighty-two year old Hyman Morris who served as Lord Mayor of Leeds from 1941 to 1942 passed away today.

2005: The Jerusalem Postreported on clean-up efforts at Beth El Synagogue in New Orleans.  The work is being done by college students who are using their winter break to help clean up damage left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.  Beth El was covered by ten feet of water and was the only synagogue in New Orleans completely destroyed by the storm.

2006: The Inspector General reported today that Sandy Berger, a high ranking foreign policy advisor to President Clinton had removed four classified documents from the National Archives reading room” in 2003.

2006: “Cantors in Concerto” featuring Eliezer Kepecs, Yehuda Rossler, Davide Montefiore, Alex Stein and Michael Trachtenberg will take place at 8 o’clock this evening at Merkin Concert Hall.

2006: Haaretz reported on a case of technology, academia and physical courage converging to protect the history of the Jewish people. Emory University is planning to translate a professor's Web site on Holocaust denial into Arabic, Farsi and other languages common to countries where anti-Semitic views are widespread. Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who runs the site Holocaust Denial on Trial (www.hdot.org), said she hopes the translations will provide resources to people who have no historical accounts of the Holocaust in their native tongue. "I'm convinced that there are people in predominantly Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East, who are being inundated with Holocaust deniers' claims and don't know that the deniers are fabricating and distorting," she said in a news release. Robert Paul, dean of Emory College, said the university is creating a $2 million endowment to help enhance the Web site. The site's stance on anti-Semitic views could create some security concerns for the university, he said. "That's always a threat, but that's the risk you take in a free society," he said in a telephone interview. Emory is located in Atlanta, Georgia, the same city from which Jimmy Carter sent forth his comparison of Israel with the Apartheid of South Africa. 

2006(29th of Kislev, 5767): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2006(29th of Kislev, 5767): Rabbi Dovid Barkin the son-in-law of Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch and former Rosh Yeshiva of the Telshe Yeshiva passed away today.

2007: In the afternoon, Palestinian terrorists fired three rockets toward southern Israel with one hitting about forty yards from a school in downtown Sderot forcing twelve students to seek treatment for shock.

2007: Basell, a company created by Leonard "Len" Blavatnik, completed its acquisition of the Lyondell Chemical Company for an enterprise value of approximately $19 billion. The resulting company, LyondellBasell Industries then became the world's eighth largest chemical company based on net sales

2007: In the evening five Palestinian terrorist were killed and Israeli soldier was badly wounded in fighting in Gaza about a mile from the border with Israel as forces of the IDF sought to put an end to the continuous missle attacks on southern Israel including the town of Sderot.

2007:According to an unnamed sources in Los Angeles, the Spinka Rebbe has hired top criminal defense Attorney Donald Etra to defend him..

2007: In “Keeping the Peace” published today Yehuda Lev described what it was like to be married to his wife Rosie, woman with strong beliefs who was not afraid to share them.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/lifecycles/article/keeping_the_peace_20071221

2008(23rd of Kislev, 5769): Twenty-three year old Emma Bee Bernstein the first born child of poet and college professor Charles Bernstein passed away today.

2008:”Imagine This!,”a five million Pound West End production depicting the tragic story of the Warshowsky Family theater group who defy the oppressors and the ghetto's meager resources to put on a musical on the siege of Masada and warn their audience of the fate awaiting them in Treblinka, closes only a month after its official opening at the Drury Lane New London Theatre.

 

2008: In New York, as part the JCC Manhattan, Beit Midrash Yonatan Gefen facilitates a presentation entitled, “Why Do I Write? (Zionism as an Anti-depressant)” Poet, playwright, author of 20 books, translator, lyricist and satiric performer, Yehonatan Geffen has been a correspondent for Maariv since 1992 and his column appears there every Friday. A third generation member of the renowned Dayan family, he served as an officer in the Israeli Paratroopers and in the Golani infantry brigade. His talk will focus on writing as a weapon, as an attempt to find out the truth, as communicating and therapy, writing as falling in love and finally, the significance of writing in a language that was dead for over 1900 years.

 

2008: The slender Saturday edition of the Cedar Rapids Gazette reads like a Jewish newspaper with articles entitled ‘Israeli election hopefuls siik the Obama touch” (complete with a picture of the President-elect at the Western Wall), “Hamas declares end of truce with Israel,” “Jewish Festival of Lights begins Sunday” and “Potential buyers showing interest in Agriprocessors.”

 

2009: 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 Hot, Flat and Crowed: Why We Need a Green Revolution — And How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman and A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 by Annie Leibovitz.

 

2009: The Washington Postfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Herblock: The Life and Work of the Great Political Cartoonist by Haynes Johnson and Harry Katz.

 

2009: Mathieu David Schneider left the Vancouver Canucks “due to a reported dispute about his playing” which led to his being waived and being shipped down the AHL in January,

 

2010: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to present a program entitled “The Chosen Peoples and Their Enemies” featuring Michael Walzer and Jackson Lears, Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz.

 

2010:Some 1,200 new species and varieties have been discovered during the just-concluded first world “census” of marine life. The director of the census, Jesse Ausubel, will participate in a conference today at the Israel Academy of Sciences and the Humanities in Jerusalem. The occasion will also be marked by the screening there of Oceans, completed last year, which is considered one of the greatest nature films ever made.

 

2010:The Los Angeles Times featured a review of The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt, of blessed memory.

 

2010:An IDF soldier reported that three individuals attempted to stab him near a gas station in Givat Ze'ev in Jerusalem. According to the soldier, the three individuals exited their vehicle with one holding a knife. After the soldier loaded and aimed his personal weapon at the three, they returned to their red Toyota and fled.

2010: Three days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning for 67 real estate executive Stuart Arthur Arnheim at Rodef Shalom Temple at Shadyside.

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/obituaries/2010/12/20/Obituary-Stuart-Arthur-Arnheim-President-of-prominent-real-estate-firm/stories/201012200169

 

 

2010: Seven mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip into the Eshkol regional council today.

 

2010:  Nearly 50 Conservative (Masorti) rabbis have signed a halachic statement allowing home rentals or sales to non- Jews in Israel, in a move to counter the statement recently signed by nearly 50 city rabbis that prohibited just that.

 

2010:Roni Daloomi released her debut album titled "Ktzat Acheret" (A Little Different)

 

2010(13th of Tevet, 5771): Seventy-four year old “Steve Landesberg, an actor and comedian with a friendly and often deadpan manner who was best known for his role on the long-running sitcom ''Barney Miller,'' died in Los Angeles today.  (As reported by Hamilton Boardman)

 

2011(24th of Kislev, 5772): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

 

2011(24th of Kislev, 5772): Ninety year old “Jacob E. Goldman, a physicist who as Xerox’s chief scientist founded the company’s vaunted Palo Alto Research Center, which invented the modern personal computer” passed away today.” (As reported by John Markoff)

 

 

2011: The Mobile Menorah Parade is scheduled to roll through uptown, downtown, and the French Quarter as Chabad celebrates Chanukah

 

2011: The Sephardic Music Festival is scheduled to open in NYC

 

2011:Girl-power aficionado Gloria Steinem is scheduled to join the activism-inclined five-piece pop rock band Betty for their late show.

 

2011:A jazz ensemble, featuring David Freeman, Oren Neiman, Doug Drewes and Ivan Barenboim, is scheduled to perform original compositions inspired by Chanukah, as well as new arrangements of music from the YU Museum’s “Jews on Vinyl” exhibition.

 

2011:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak condemned violence by right-wing extremists today, vowing to use all means to eradicate the phenomenon..

2011:A State Comptroller report released today revealed significant gaps in coordination for  a possible emergency scenario between local and state authorities..

2011: “The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis” published today described the exploits of Abdol-Hossein Sardari who risked his life to saved thousands of Iranian Jews from the Holocaust.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16190541

2012: Following a screening of “Roman Holiday” at the 92nd Street Y, Andrew Dickos is scheduled to lead a presentation on “Hollywood’s Blacklisted Filmmaker,” a disproportionate number of whom were Jewish.

2012: Today, Peter Madoff, the brother of Bernie Madoff  and the “Chief Compliance Officer” who “ran the daily operations for the past 20 years” “was sentenced to 10 years for” for his role in what may have been the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme./

2012: “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2012(7th of Tevet, 5773): Eighty-eight year old WW II veteran Bernard G. Palitz, the brother of Clarence Y. Palitz with whom he founded the Financial Federation corporation passed away today.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?pid=162032993

2012: It was announced today that stating in January, Jake Tapper would join CNN where he “would anchor a weekday program and serve as the network’s Chief Washington correspondent.”

2012: Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor today called on Europe to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

2012:Former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Amnon Lipkin-Shahak was "a true hero," Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at his funeral this afternoon.

2013: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is scheduled to tour Jerusalem’s Old City and visit the Western Wall before leaving Israel for Algeria. (As reported by Raphael Ahren)

 

2013: “A program of the best Israeli songs from all time from Argov through Naomi Shemer: is scheduled to be performed by “the soloists of the Israeli Opera’s Meitar Opera Studio.

 

2013: In Coralville, Iowa, Agudas Achim under the leadership of Rabbi Jeff Portman is scheduled to host a complimentary Shabbat Dinner followed by a musical service welcoming the Sabbath Queen.

 

2013: “Washington Square,” the cinematic version of the novel by Henry James, is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree today to pardon jailed Jewish tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky (As reported by Nataliya Vasilyeva)

 

2013: “The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah warned today that the Israelis would be "punished" for killing a leader of the Shiite party, an assassination in which Israel has denied any involvement.”

 

2013:”The U.S. Senate voted 59–34 for cloture on Janet Yellen's nomination

 

2013(17thof Tevet, 5774): Seventy year old Marjorie Katz passed it way.

http://articles.philly.com/2013-12-24/news/45512931_1_lewis-katz-oprah-winfrey-margie

 

2014: The Kol Ami Community Chanukah Party is scheduled to take place in Arlington, Va.

2014: “The War of the Buttons” and “Jadoo” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2014: In Rockville, MD, the Magen David Sephardic Congregation is scheduled host “Light it Up” it’s annual Chanukah Party.

2014: In another example of the strange logic of terrorists, Hamas today threatened to attack Israel after her jets struck several targets belong to the group which came after a rocket had been fired into the Eshkol region from Gaza.

2014(28th of Kislev, 5774): Eight-five year old Louise Goldblatt, the mother of Dr. Fred Goldblatt and Laurie Silber, wife of Dr. Bob Silber passed away today in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life by Sarah L. Kaufman and the recently released paperback editions of How About Never – Is Never Good For You?: My Life in Cartoonsby Bob Mankoff, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions by Phil Zuckerman and The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman.

2015: The Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” co-sponsored by the Challah Connection is scheduled to begin tonight in New York City the Broadway Theatre in New York City.

2015:Miss Israel, 19-year-old Avigail Alfatov, is scheduled to compete in the Miss Universe Pageant airing tonight on U.S. television.

2015: Veteran Likud politician Silvan Shalom resigned from political life today, as pressure mounted over an increasing number of allegations of sexual harassment by women who had worked with him.

2015: Jewish film director J.J. Abrams, whose Star Wars reboot had the biggest North American debut of all time today, initially turned down the request to direct the film.

2015: Israel Defense Forces artillery units shelled targets in South Lebanon this evening, shortly after at least three rockets were fired from across the border into Israeli territory.

2016(20th of Kislev, 5777): Eighty-nine Vienna born American cartoonist Paul Peter Porges passed away today.

http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2016/12/22/paul-peter-porges-mad-writer-and-artist-rip

http://michaelmaslin.com/peter-porges-new-yorker-mad-graphic-raconteur-has-died/

2016: “According to a letter that emerged” today “the Jerusalem rabbinate has called on hotels in the city not to erect Christmas trees or host New Year’s Eve parties.”

2016: “A ship carrying 450 kilograms of cannabis set sail for Tel Aviv” today which activists claimed was part of a protest against “the government’s refusal to decriminalize marijuana.”

2016: “A bronze penny minted by the Greek tyrant from the Hanukkah story was recently stumbled upon by archaeologists amid the ruins of Jerusalem’s Tower of David during routine cleaning of the site, the museum said in a statement” issued today.

2016: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “Jim J’s Jukebox,” providing a look at the music and lyrics of “Vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and Hollywood.”

2016: “The Band’s Visit” a musical based on the screenplay by Eran Kolorin is scheduled to be performed at the Linda Gross Theatre where its run has been extended by another week into January, 2017

2017: Naida Michal Brandl, PhD, an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Judaic Studies, Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb in Croatia and the recipient of the 2017 Fred and Ellen Lewis/JDC Archives Fellowship, is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Jewish Life in Croatia 1945-1952” at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

2017 The American Jewish Historical Society and the American Society for Jewish Music are scheduled to host The Annual Chanukah Concert “with Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director, National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene; Yiddish folk and theater songs, with singers and piano and klezmer clarinet plus a Chanukah sing-along and special story for the holiday.”

 

2017(2ndof Tevet, 5778): Eighth Day of Chanukah;

 

https://jeopardylabs.com/play/chanukah10

2018: In Washington, DC, Professionals in the City is scheduled to host a “Jewish Dating Event” at Finn and Porter in the Embassy Suites Hotel.

2018: Chabad of the South Hills is scheduled to sponsor “Kids in the Kitchen” where children learn the joys of “international kosher cooking.”

2018: The Squirrel Hill JCC is scheduled to host an evening of Israeli Dancing

2018: In Albany, NY, Congregation Ohav Shalom is scheduled to host “the Noodle Pudding Players performing Jeffrey Sweet’s ‘The Value of Names’” a play that “described the impact of the Hollywood blacklisting” on those working in the entertainment industry

2019: Deadline for submitting applications “for the first-ever Sephardic trip for Jewish young professionals to Germany.”

2019: In Atlanta, the Breman Museum, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is scheduled to play a medley of Chanukah music “and other selections by Jewish Composers.” 

2019: Cultural activist/musician & composer Raul Rothblatt is scheduled to host a neighborhood tour of Brownsville, “New York’s largest historic Jewish neighborhood.”

2019: It was reported today that “New York State has awarded $10 million for the protection of “religious-based institutions and non-public schools from hate crimes…”

2019: It was reported today that “newly reelected British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to fulfill an election campaign promise to introduce legislation aimed at undermining the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.”

2020: American Friends of the Hebrew University is scheduled to present online “High Tech Jerusalem,” which is “journey through Israel’s tech transformation and the ways in which Hebrew University is contributing “to advancement and evolution our world today.”

2020: Action for Post-Soviet Jewry is scheduled to present “a virtual retirement tribute celebrating Judy Patkin’s 45 years in action at Action for Soviet/Post-Soviet Jewry (APSJ

2020: In Columbus, OH, Congregation Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host via Zoom, Tom Sudow, the International President of the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs as he talks about the “Jewish Community in Post COVID World – What will be the new normal?”

2020: LSJS is scheduled to celebrate “Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt"l by launching his new book “Judaism’s Life-Changing Ideas” in partnership with Koren Publishing and the Jewish News.”

2020: In Australia, Shalom is scheduled to host a St. Almas Pickles using cucumbers from the “soils of Adamama Urban Farm.” 

2020: William Kolbrener, Professor, Dept of English, Bar Ilan University is scheduled to present “Midrash of the Northern Renaissance:Rembrandt's Readers - Reading Rembrandt”

2020: Yiddish New is scheduled to present Fieldwork in Focus: A Roundtable on Research Into East European Jewish Music with the Klezmer Institute’s Christina Crowder.

 

 

 

 

 


This Day, December 21, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 21

69: The Senate acknowledged Vespasian as emperor. This marked the end of the so-called The Year of the Four Emperors during which four individuals - Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian – held the position of imperial leadership.  This period of apparent anarchy was very unsettling for the Romans and part of Vespasian’s acceptance as emperor stemmed from the fact that he would be able to provide an imperial heir and stability for the emperor.  In Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations, Martin Goodman ties the destruction of the Temple to the unsettling events of the Year of the Four Emperors and Vespasian’s determination to prove that he could bring order to the Empire.

640: As the forces of Islam sweep across North Africa in a wave that will end with the conquest of Spain seventy years later, Muslims capture the Babylon Fortress in the Nile Delta after a seven month siege

1140: Conrad III of Germany besieged Weinsberg. Seven years later, Conrad would be one of the leaders of the Second Crusade during which the Jews of Mainz, Cologne and Worms were all attacked.

1361: As Christian forces continued their attempt to drive the Moslem from Iberia, forces from the Kingdom of Castile (Catholic) defeated forces from the Emirate of Granada ((Islam at the Battle of Linuesa, part of the Reconquista that when concluded would result in the expulsion of the Jews from Spain more than a century later

1375: Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio passed away.  No, Boccaccio was not Jewish but Jews play an important part in his literary life. Boccaccio wrote about the “corruption and decadence” that were part of the Church in the 14th and 15th centuries. “In his classic work, Decameron, a Jew by the name of Abraham is convinced by a Christian friend to visit Rome in the hope that he will be so impressed that he will convert to Christianity. Abraham returns disgusted and reports: ‘I say this for that, if I was able to observe aright, no piety, no devoutness, no good work or example of life or other what did I see there in any who was Churchman: nay lust, covetise, gluttony and the like and worse ... And as far as I judge, meseemeth your chief pastor and consequently all others endeavor with all diligence and all their wit and every art to bring to naught and to banish from the world the [values of the] Christian religion ...’” Boccaccio and others like him help lay the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century

1693(3rd of Tevet, 5454, OS): “R’Abraham Oppenheim, Zur Kanne,” the Worms bron son of Eidel  and Simon Wolf Oppenheim who was the husband of Rechlin and Blume Oppenheimer passed away today in Frankfurt.

1733: Despite the efforts of some Englishmen to overcome Oglethorpe’s decision to allow Jews to settle in his Georgia colony Jews from the Suasso, Salvador and Da Costa families were among those who received conveyance of town lots, garden and farms that were executed today.

1753(25th of Kislev, 5514): Chanukah

1761(25th of Kislev, 5522): Chanukah is observed for the first time during the reign of King George III of the United Kingdom.

1764(27th of Kislev, 5525): Third Day of Chanukah

1767(30th of Kislev, 5528): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1771: In London, Haham Moses Cohen d'Azevedo and Sara de Abraham Cohen D'Azevedo gave birth to Rachel Cohen d’Azevedo, who became Rachel Cohen Delgado when she married Manasseh de Isaac Delgado.

 

his wife Manasseh de Isaac Delgado

1772(25th of Kislev, 5533): Chanukah is celebrated for the first time following the first partition of Poland.

1777: Jacob and Abigail Pinto gave birth to Isaac Pinto, the husband of Maria Pinto.

1775(28th of Kislev, 5536): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1778(2nd of Tevet, 5539): Eighth Day of Channukah.

1781: Birthdate of West Indies native Leach Rachel De Leon, the wife of Abraham Quixano Henriques with whom she had had nine children

1782: In the United Kingdom, circumcision of Solomon Jones aka, Reuben ben Jonathon HaCohen

1791(25th of Kislev, 5552): Chanukah

1795: Birthdate of German historian Leopold von Ranke, author of Universal History: The Oldest Historical Group of Nations and the Greeks in which speaks highly of Moses’ presentation of The Decalogue which makes “no distinction …between religion, moral laws and civil institutions” which means that “under the immediate protection of God individual life enjoys those rights and immunities which are the foundation of all civil order.”

1804:  In Bloomsbury, Lodon “Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria (Miriam), née Basevi” gave birth to Benjamin Disreali the most famous Non-Jewish Jew whose baptism resulted from a dispute that the father had had with the local Jewish community.  The change in religion opened the doors to a political career for Disraeli that resulted in him serving two terms as Prime Minister.  Disraeli was the victim of anti-Semitic remarks and was also quite proud of his Jewish heritage.  He passed away in 1881.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/benjamin-disraeli

1808: “According to a report made to Napoleon I by the Minister of the Interior,” today, “Alsatian Jews employed Christian workers in their cloth factories.”

1810(24thof Kislev, 5571): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1816(2ndof Tevet, 5577): Parashat Miketz; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1813: Birthdate of Babette Mandelbaum Singer, the native of Bavaria who settled in New York where she raised seven sons and three daughters with her husband Eli Sanger, one of the Sangers who founded Sanger Brothers, the department store in Waco, TX.,

1816: Today, as Jews prepared to kindle the eighth Chanukah candle, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Andrew Jackson, Francis Scott Key, and Daniel Webster met at the Davis hotel in Washington D.C. to begin the formation of the American Colonization Society whose goal was to free the slaves in America and provide them with the wherewithal to return to Africa

1820: One day after she had passed away, 43 year old Sarah Solomon, the husband of Barnet Solomon, was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.

1820: Birthdate of Heungseon Daewongun, the Regent of Korea whom German Jewish businessman Ernst Jakob Oppert attempted to blackmail into removing “Korean trading barriers.”

1828: Birthdate of Albert Cardozo, the Philadelphia native who became a prominent New York State jurist and was the father of Benjamin Cardozo, the second Jew to serve on the U.S Supreme Court.

1827(3rdof Tevet, 5588) Eighth and final day of Canukah

1829(25thof Kislev, 5590): Chanukah

1831(17thof Tevet, 5592): Sixty-seven year old Rachel Gratz, the daughter of Richea Myers-Cohen and Barnard Gratz, the wife of Solomon Etting with whom she had eight children passed away today.

1831: One day after he had passed away, 86 year old “Eliezer bar Yitzhak” was buried today at the “Ipswich Old Jewish Cemetery” on Salthouse Street.

1832; “Louis Samuel a watchmaker of Liverpool and his wife Henrietta Israel, daughter of Israel Israel of Bury Street, St. Mary Axe, London” gave birth to Montagu Samuel who changed his name to Samuel Montague a British banker who founded the bank of Samuel Montagu & Co and eventually became the first Baron Swaythling.

1834: Birthdate of Adolf von Sonnenthal, the Budapest born actor who was well known for playing “Nathan” in Lessing’s “Nathan der Weise

1836: Isaac Maurice Bloom married Rebeca Jacobs at the Great Synagogue today.

1841: Samuel Strauss, a merchant and Rosalia Drucker gave birth to Heinrich Alphons Strauss, the brother of MP Arthur Isidor Strauss and Sigmund Ferdinand Strauss.

1846(2ndof Tevet, 5607): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1846: Birthdate of infamous German “Jew baiter” Hermann Ahlwardt, the co-founder of the Anti-Semitic People’s Party.

1848: In Poland, Israel Guranowsky and Gitel Zloto gave birth Abraham Guranowsky who in 1878 began serving as the rabbi of Congregation Emunath Israel in New York City.

1849: In London, Samuel (Isaac) Henry Glucksteinand and Hannah Coenraad Gluckstein gave birth to Bertha "Betsy" Koppenhagen, the wife of Julius Ferdinand Koppenhagen

1851: Birthdate of weightlifter Edward Lawrence Levy, the native of London, the winner of the First British Amateur Weightlifting Championship and the first World Weightlifting Championship and who was “a member of the International Weightlifting Jury at the “first modern Olympics” held at Athens in 1896.

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/EdwardLawrenceLevy.htm

1853: In Budapest, Moritz Jellinek and his wife gave birth to Heinrich Jellinek de Haraszt who “succeeded his father as president of the Budapest Tramway Company” where “he introduced electric traction, and extended the system to the environs of Budapest, establishing the branches Budapest-Szent-Endre and Budapest-Haraszti.”

1858: Three days after she had passed away Jane (Arrobus) Nordon, the wife of Mark Jacob Nordon and the mother of Joseph Nordon was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1859(25thof Kislev, 5620): First Day of Channukah

1859: Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, the future Anglican Bishop of China whose parents had expected him to be a rabbi before he converted “arrived in Shanghai aboard the SS Golden Rule.

1859:  Birthdate of Gustave Kahn. The French Symbolist poet wrote works on a variety of topics including Zionism.  This theme was the inspiration for “Terre d'Israël” published in 1933.  He passed away in 1936.

1860: Birthdate of Henrietta Szold, American Jewish leader; founded Hadassah.  Among other things she was responsible for the Youth Aliyah that brought European Jews to Palestine before the war and saved them from the final solution.  She passed away in 1945, three years before her dream of Jewish state came true.

1861: Birthdate of Behrendt Pick, the native of Posen who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1884 and was appointed a lecturer on numismatics at the University of Jena but whose distinguished career did not protect him the consequences of the Nazis rise to power which drove him to suicide in 1940/

1861:  The Congressional Medal of Honor was created at the start of the Civil War.  Six Jews were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Civil War.

1862(29thof Kislev, 5623): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1862: Today, as Jews in Vicksburg, the “Gibraltar of the West” prepare to kindle the sixth light of Chanukah, Confederate President Jeff Davis visited the city which is the key to controlling the Mississippi River.

1863: Simon P. Jacob began serving with Battery E. of the 152nd Regiment of the Third Artillery today.

1863: Mendez Nathan, the son of Seixas Nathan, was one of the signatories of the agreement to form a public stock exchange, to be known as the "Open Board of Stock-Brokers" which was made public today.

1866: In Tongham, Captain Thomas Gonne and Edith Firth Gonne gave birth to Maude Gonne who as Maud Gonne MacBride, the Irish fire-brand who “frequently aired her anti-Semitic views.”

1867: The Austrian constitution abolished discrimination based on religious differences.  This did not mean the end of anti-Semitism in Austria. 

1867: Passage in Austria of the Land Ownership law today which “brought the Jews the desired equality with the Christian residents including the removing on property ownership and freedom of movement” which led to a “large increase in the Jewish population” as can be seen by the fact that in 1880 14,449 Jews living Czernowitz and that by 1940 there were 50,000 Jews in the city which made them half of the population.

1864: The Mayor of Savannah presented the key to the city to the General commanding the leading column of the Union forces marking the successful conclusion of “Sherman’s March to the Sea” in which Company C of the 82nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, an all Jewish Unit from Chicago participated.

1870: The Hebrew Charity Fair came to a close tonight marking the end of the three week long successful fund raising event.  The fair raised almost $155,000 which will divided between Mount Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.  The hospital will get 75% of the money and the orphanage will get 25%. The funds will enable Mount Sinai to complete its new hospital and the orphanage to build a new industrial school.

1871(9thof Tevet, 5632): Fifty-five year old Count Salomon Henry d'Avigdor, Duke d'Acquaviva, the Nice born son of Count Isaac Samuel d'Avigdor and Gabrielle Pauline Henriette Avigdor, the husband of Countess Rachel d'Avigdor amd the father of Elim Henry d'Avigdor; Mariam Isabelle Olga Lucas; Sergius Henry d'Avigdor and Boleslas Henry d'Avigdor passed away today in Paris.

1872: In New York, “impresario and composer” Oscar Hammerstein I and his first wife Rosa (Rose) Blau gave birth to bricklayer turned theatre manager and composer Arthur Hammerstein, the brother of Willie Hammerstein, the husband of Dorothy Dalton and the father of actress Elaine Hammerstein.

1872: It was reported today that the human remains found on the shore of Oneida Lake in New York were not those of a farmer named Blodgett but were probably those of Jewish peddler who was known to carry large amount of money when he travelled through this area. It is thought that the peddler was attacked by a local gang and killed during the robbery

1874: The Two Orphans, with Rose Eytinge in the role of “Marianne” opened today at Union Square Theatre.

1876: Prior to this date Albert Lavergne, alias Abraham Levy, who “confessed to having absconded with $30,000 worth of diamonds from France” “was employed as a salesman by the firm of Les Fils de C Oulman, diamond doing business at No. 2 Rud Drouot, Paris” which also employed his brother-in-law George Oulman.

1876: Birthdate of Anna Wiesen, the native of Manasse who was shipped from to Berlin to Terezin and then to Treblinka in 1942 where she was murdered.

1876: Albert Lavergne, alias Abraham Levy, who had stolen $30,000 worth of diamonds from his employer Les Fils de C Oulman, diamond brokers at No. 2 Rud Durot, left Paris for London from which he planned to board the Anchor Line steamer bound for New York.

1876: The Hebrew Charity Ball took place tonight at the Academy of Music.  The ball is a fundraiser for the United Hebrew Charities, an organization devoted to taking care of the poor Jews of New York that has been so successful it is a model for similar non-Jewish organizations.  Last year the ball raised more than $13,000.

1877: In Lithuania, “Yehiel Michel and Hinda (Cohen) Goeld gave birth Charles Goell who in 1891 came to the United States where he formed a construction and staring building houses and apartments in Brooklyn and married Ida Armour.

1878(25thof Kislev, 5639): First day of Chanukah

1878: Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa who as Pope Benedict XV denounced anti-Semitism in response to a petition by American Jews and who gave Nahum Sokolov an extended audience where he presented the case for a Jewish state in Palestine to the Pontiff was ordained today.

1879:  Birthdate of Joseph Stalin.  As head of the Communist Party and Prime Minister of the Soviet Union Stalin gave vent to his anti-Semitic beliefs on more than one occasion.  At the same time he was the head of the Soviet nation that fought the Nazis and whose forces liberated several concentration camps.  His decision to recognize the state of Israel at the moment of its birth may be been one of the facts that prodded the U.S. to take the lead in the recognition race.  Also, Stalin’s support of Israel at its moment of birth, made it possible for Israel to acquire much needed arms in Communist dominated Eastern Europe, including the first combat aircraft of the IDF.  This may be one an example of the Rabbinic admonition that Yetzer Ha-Rah (the evil inclination) can produce a positive result.

1880: “The Hebrew fair for the benefit of the Forty-fourth Street Synagogues and the Ladies Lying-in Relief Society’ which is taking place at the Metropolitan Concert Hall is scheduled to come to an end today.

1880: In New York, The Thalia Theatre Company will give a benefit performance at the Terrace Garden as a fundraiser for the Hebrew Ladies’ Benevolent Society of Yorkville.

1882(10thof Tevet, 5643): Asar B’Tevet

1883(22ndof Kislev, 5644): Isidor Goldsmidt, a native of Bavaria who came to New York where he developed “a prosperous millinery business” passed away today.

1883: The first Permanent Force cavalry and infantry regiments of the Canadian Army were formed. According to the Jewish Canadian Military Museum “members of the Jewish community have participate in every significant conflict that has involved Canada” since 1759 when Jews fought in the forces of General James Wolfe. These conflicts have included the Boer War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and various “peacekeeping activities” since 1953.

1884: Count Tolstoi, the Minister of the Interior has struck “a blow against the Jews” with his announcement that effective with New Year’s 1885, the Russian Imperial Government “will monopolize the business of pawn-broking” an enterprise, at least in the popular mind, dominated by Jews who charge unreasonable rates of interest.

1885: Isaac Sekel Bamberger the son of Rav Yitzchak Dov Halevi Bamberger, The Würzburger Rav and Kela Bamberger and Julie Judith Bamberger gave birth to Selka Ochseman

1885: The Ladies’ Fair, a fund raiser for the Hebrew Free School Association will come to an end tonight with an auction followed by a ball.

1886(24thof Kislev, 5647): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1886: Three days after she had passed away, Sara Drucquer, the daughter of Jacob and Adelaide De Meza and the husband of Jonas Drucquer with whom she had had eight children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1886: “Leah: The Forsaken” a five act play by German-Jewish playwright Salomon Hermann Mosenthal opened at the Union Square Theatre in New York City. The play deals with issues of confronting 17th century Jews living in Germany and intermarriage.

1886: One day after she had passed away, 63 year old “Rosine Lion,” the daughter Joseph Bing-Jacob and Colette Brunswick and the wife of “Lion Lion” with whom she had had ten children was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery” on Buckingham Road.

1887: In Worcester, MA, Abraham I. and Mary (Edeleman) Asher gave birth Columbia University trained attorney Jacob Asher, a partner in the firm of Goldstein and Asher, the holder of a lifetime appointment as a special Justice of the Central District Court and the director “of all local campaigns for Jewish War Relief who was the husband of Dorothy Virginia Rogin.

1889(28thof Kislev, 5650): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1889: In Germany, Samuel and Maichen Weil gave birth to Holocaust victim Ferdinand Weil, the husband of Sitti Weil.

1889: After two weeks the Hebrew Educational Fair, a joint fundraising effort by several NYC Jewish organizations, came to an end

1890: In New York City, Joseph Muller who was Catholic and Frances Lyons who was Jewish gave birth to Hermann Joseph Muller whose method for recognizing spontaneous gene mutation led to his discovery of a technique for artificially inducing mutations by means of X rays that has since had broad theoretical and practical application. For this discovery he was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1946/

1891:”Aid For Jewish Refugees” published today described the first ever appeal by the Jewish residents of the United States “to the American people, irrespective of creed or religion for assistance in a work of charity” i.e. funds to help with resettlement of Russian Jews in New York City to other places in the United States, a project already funded by Baron de Hirsch.

1891: “Ten thousand copies of the appeal” for funds being raised for the purpose of taking those” Russian-Jewish refugees who come to the United States “to places where they can earn a living instead of allowing to congest the labor markets of the cities” was printed in today’s papers “have been mailed to citizens of means and influence” in the hope that it will result in an increase of contributions that will enable immigrants to work in cities and farms away from the eastern seaboard,

1891: The will of Deacon Josiah W. Cook of Cambridge filed for probate today including a bequest to the Hebrew Academy.

1891(20thof Kislev, 5652): Sixty-four year old Jacob Hecht, one of the leading Jewish citizens in Baltimore, MD, passed away leaving behind seven sons and two daughters.

1892(2ndof Tevet, 5653): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1892: Two fresh outbreaks of Cholera in Hamburg today have given rise to fears that this “will strengthen the movement in America to shut out immigrants” especially among Russian Jews are thought to be carriers of the disease.

1893(12thof Tevet, 5654): Seventy-four year old Charles Dyte, the son of David Moses Dyte and Hannah Lazarus and the husband of Evelina Nathan passed in Ligar St, Bllarat, Victoria, Australia.

1894: Birthdate of David T. Wilentz, the native of Dvinsk who as Attorney General of New Jersey “successfully prosecuted Bruno Hauptmann in the Lindbergh kidnapping trial” and father Robert Wilentz, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and Norma Hess.

1894: The Dreyfus Court Martial held its penultimate session.

1894: Three days after he had passed away, 44 year old John Chetham, the husband of Maria Benjamin with he had had three children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1895: An article tracing the use of saffron published today points out that to this day, the cooking of “the Jews of Spanish descent” derives some of its unique character, from the “use of saffron in their dishes.”

1895: The charity fair sponsored by the Jewish community for the benefit of the Educational Alliance and the Hebrew Technical Institute came to an end today with an auction of all of the previously unsold items just before midnight.

1896: A laparotomy was performed today on Morris Goodheart, President of the Hebrew Mutual Benefit Society and the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society “for the removal of an abscess in the peritoneal cavity.

1896: “Santa Maria” an operetta composed by Oscar Hammerstein I opened at the Alvin Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA.

1897(26thof Kislev, 5658): Second Day of Chanukah

1897: In Bedford, England, Benjamin Tisinbom and the former Esther Cohen gave birth to a daughter today.

1898: “Rev. Dr. Baar to Resign” published today described the decision of Dr. Herman Baar, who has been serving as the Superintendent of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York for the past 22 years to retire next Spring.

1900(29thof Kislev, 5661): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1900: “Lecture at Harvard by Oscar S. Straus” published today described a speech given by “Oscar S. Straus, ex-United States Minister to Turkey, to students of Harvard University in Sanders Theatre on "The United States Doctrine of Citizenship and Expatriation” in which he called for a change in laws pertaining to naturalization of immigrants wishing to become citizens of the United States.

1901(11thof Tevet, 5662): Parashat Vayigash

1901: It was reported today that Oscar Straus had delivered a talk at the last meeting of the Author’s Club in which said “there is no society, club or organization in the land that has made a larger contribution certainly not in proportion to its membership to the patriotic public service than the Author’s Club” and in which he paid “a fine and sympathetic tribute to the late George Waring who was a member of the Author’s Club.”

1902(21stof Kislev, 5663): Forty-six year old Russian painter Isaac Lvovich Asknazi whose award winning works included "Abraham Expelling Hagar with Her Son Ishmael" and "The Publican and the Pharisee" passed away today.

1903(2ndof Tevet, 5664): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1903: In Los Angeles, Tobias and Fannie Yuster gave birth to Samuel Terrill Yuster, the husband of Rose Yuster, the father of Louis and France Yuster and the chairman of the Petroleum Engineering Department at Penn St. before becoming the Professor of Engineering at UCLA.

1904: In “Benjamin Disraeli,” published today, it was noted that this date is the exact centenary of the birth of the English statesman and that despite the fact that he had been named Earl of Beaconsfield, he will always be known to posterity by his given name or by the nickname of “Dizzy.”

1905: Today “a dispatch from Sam Remo announced the death there of Henry Harland” the author who began his career “by writing clever stories of Jewish life” under the name of “Sidney Luska” which led readers and critics to assume that he was Jewish.

1906: It was reported today that Dr. Schmarja Levin, a former member of the Duma which has been dissolved by the Czar, had denounced a recent bill promulgated by the Russian Council of Ministers while visiting the New York home of Dr. J. Leon Manges, the Secretary of the Federation of American Zionists. Levin said that the bill did not give the Jews living in the Pale of Settlement any new rights and actually discriminated against Jews living in or trying to do business in other parts of Russia.

1907: Klara Hitler who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was treat by Dr. Eduard Bloch, the Jewish physician whose patients included her young son Adolf, passed away today.

1908: Today, world premiere of Arnold Schönberg’s Second String Quarter, op.10.

1909(9thof Tevet, 5670): Israel Abbe Schneider passed away today.

1910: Secretary of Commerce and Labor Charles Nagel “ruled that thirteen of the twenty Russian Jewish immigrants being held at Galveston, TX” because they were “likely to become public charge maybe admitted” to enter the United States.

1911(30thof Kislev, 5672): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1911: Szabadsag a paper founded in Cleveland by “Theodore Kundtz, a Catholic and Joseph Black, “a Jewish leader in Cleveland published a “lavish issue of the paper” today that “had sixteen full pages on the religious history of the Hungarian churches, but not a word on Hungarian synagogues” even though there were “forty-five Jewish congregations in existence at that time.”

1911(9thof Tevet, 5762): Parashat Vayigash

1911(30thof Kislev, 5672): Seventy-seven year old CSA veteran Benjamin F. Jonas, the Kentucky born son of Abraham Jonas and the former Louisa Block whom Lincoln named as the successor to the role of Postmaster after her husband’s death and who was the second Jew to serve as U.S. Senator from Louisiana passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/benjamin-franklin-jonas

1912: U.K. premiere of “The Miracle” a British silent film based on a play by Max Reinhardt.

1912: In Warsaw, Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky and his wife gave birth to Israeli mathematician Elisha Netanyahu who was the brother of historian Benzion Netanyahu and the uncle of Benjamin Netanyahu

1913: It was reported today that the Sisterhood of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue will holding their annual Chanukah Ball at the Astor.

1913: “Nathan Straus Plans Big Work for Holy Land” published today described future programs that the retiring head of R.H. Macey & Co. will be working on for the those living in Palestine regardless of their religion including

1914: “A conference held today” in Chicago resulted in the issuance of a call for “men of all creeds and races to join in the movement” “to save Leo Frank from death” by attending a mass meeting as part of the efforts on behalf of this talented and much wronged young man.”

1914:  The firstfeature-length silent film comedy, "Tillie's Punctured Romance" was released.  Charlie Chaplin was one of the three stars in this feature film.

1914: “Jews Starving in Jerusalem” published today warned that “there is grave danger of pestilence as well as famine” in the city “unless steps are taken at once to provide a regular supply of food and free medical services”  -- an effort for at least $100,000 a month will be need while the present crisis last.

1914: The list of contributors to the American Jewish Relief Committee for War Sufferers published today included The Hebrew Ladies’ Relief Society of Harrison, First Galician Society, Jews of Wilmington, N.C. Jews of Nacogdoches, Texas, the Wide Awake Circle, the society of Peru, Indiana and the First Konstantiner Benevolent Society.

1915: The Board of Directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York has named Dr. Cyrus Adler who is currently President of Dropsie College, as acting President of JTS following the death of Dr. Solomon Schechter.

1915: The American Jewish Relief Committee launched its campaign to raise funds in 1916 for the relief of war sufferers in Europe at a mass meeting tonight at Carnegie Hall which will be chaired by Louis Marshall which “persons in the audience spontaneously contributed more than $700,000 in money, jewelry and pledges deposited in baskets and thrown upon the stage in one of the greatest responses to an appeal every recorded.”

1915: The second round of talks between the French and the British concerning the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after the World War opened today with Sir Mark Sykes representing the British and Francois-Georges Picot representing the French.  The final product would be known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

1916(26thof Kislev, 5677): Sixty-one year old Harry Hananel Marks, the founder of the Financial News and a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community passed away today.

1916: Twenty=eight year old CCNY graduate and NY Stock Exchange member Edwin Weisl, the son of Jacob and Fredericka (Block) Weisl married Edna Kraus

1916: Jacob H. Schiff presided at a meeting this evening at Carnegie Hall which launched the campaign to raise ten million dollars “for the relief of Jewish war sufferers” and which featured speeches by Louis Marshall, the funds temporary chairman, Rabbi Judah Magnes and New York Mayor Mitchell.

1917: In what has become a daily occurrence, another fifty to seventy-five Jews were to the Jewish hospital today in Warsaw “on the verge of death” as a result of “starvation.”

1917: In Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg): “Jewish communal elections were postponed on account of the chaotic state of affairs.”

1917: As British forces sought to secure a supply from Jaffa, they completed their crossing of the Auju River and were able to hold “a line from Hadrah to Tel el Rekkeit 2 miles north of the river and construct bridges that allowed the artillery to cross the river and join the cavalry and infantry.”

1918: In a cable message made public today. “President Thomas G. Masaryk of the Czechoslovak Republic informed the Zionist Organization of America that he had directed the cancellation of the recently promulgated order regarding the deportation of Jews” and had assigned them place in “domiciles for refugees.

1918: A cablegram was received in New York today from Lithuania saying that arrangements had been made for Jews to participate in the new Lithuanian Government and that Jews held the positions of “Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Under Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and State Minister for the Department of Jewish Affairs.”

1919(29thof Kislev, 5680): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1919: In New York, “a tri-city-get-together” proposed by Louis H. Levin is scheduled to meet for a second day in Baltimore where plans will be discussed of the upcoming meeting of the National Conference of Jewish Social Service.

1919: Emma Goldman, along with 248 other radical "aliens," was deported to the Soviet Union on the S.S. Buford under the 1918 Alien Act, which allowed for the expulsion of any alien found to be an anarchist. Emma Goldman, born in Kovno, Lithuania (then Russia) in 1869, came to the United States in 1885 at age 16. By the time of her deportation, she had made a name for herself as a leading anarchist, public speaker, and crusader for free speech, birth control, and workers' rights. Goldman first became interested in radical politics in Russia, where she came into contact with populists and political organizers. In the U.S., she was disappointed to learn that instead of streets paved in gold, workers were subject to gross economic inequality and inhuman working conditions. The defining moment for Goldman came in 1886, when eight anarchist radicals were convicted, on flimsy evidence, of setting off a bomb at Chicago's Haymarket rally causing a riot in which several police officers were killed. Convinced of the defendants' innocence, Goldman resolved to learn all she could about anarchism, and soon became active in the anarchist movement. Unfortunately for Goldman, the decades of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were difficult ones in which to be an anarchist in America. Federal anti-anarchist laws restricted Goldman's ability to give public speeches and subjected her to frequent harassment and arrests. Still, she had a profound influence on American political activism. Mother Earth, the journal she founded in 1906 and ran until 1917, provided an outlet for the writings of radical thinkers. Roger Baldwin, who heard Goldman speak on free speech in 1908, went on to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Margaret Sanger, a prominent birth control activist, looked on Goldman as her mentor. Although Goldman was not a pacifist, she believed that governments had no right to wage war, and actively opposed U.S. involvement in World War I. She argued that the war was an imperialist venture that aided capitalists at the expense of workers. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, her anti-conscription activism was considered a threat to national security, and she spent 18 months in federal prison. On her release, she was immediately re-arrested and sentenced to deportation under the 1918 Alien Act, which authorized the deportation of any alien found to be an anarchist. At first excited by the chance to see the workers' republic of Soviet Russia, Goldman was soon disillusioned by the Bolshevik regime. Barred from returning to the U.S., she spent the last two decades of her life wandering through Europe and Canada, giving speeches on radical politics. When she died in Toronto in May 1940, her body was returned to Chicago, where Goldman was buried near the Haymarket anarchists who had first inspired her.

 

1919(29th of Kislev, 5680: Fifth Day of Chanukah

 

1919: Twenty-nine year old Columbia University educated engineer Max Steinberg, the son of Joseph and Martha Steinberg, who rose to the rank of First Lt. in the Coast Artillery during World War and who began serving as “an civil engineer in the War Department in 1919” married Rose Dicker today in Brooklyn.

 

 

1920: “Sally” a Jerome Kern musical opened on Broadway today at the New Amsterdam Theatre

 

1920(10th of Tevet, 5681): Asara B’ Tevet

1921: In Milwaukee “Esther (née Ottenstein) Lubotsky who was a childhood friend of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and Meyer Lubotsky, a retail tire business owner” gave birth to Miriam Lubotsky the older sister of Charlotte Rae Lubotsky who was better known as actress Charlotte Rae,

1921: “The Senate Committee on Immigration met today take up the proposed temporary exclusion act” which most Jews opposed because it was seen as another attempt to limit, if not completely end, the immigration of Jews to the United States.

1922: In New York City, Solomon Wilchinsky, a tailor and the former Clara Fuchs gave birth to Paul Wilchinsky who gained fame as Paul Winchell, an accomplished ventriloquist who, during the 1950’s starred on television with his two “wooden friends” - Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smith.

1922(2nd of Tevet, 5683): Seventh Day of Chanukah

1922(2nd of Tevet, 5683): The former Winifred Lichtenauer, the daughter of banker Joseph Lichtenauer  who had married Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler in 1906 passed away today.

1922: In the Soviet Union, the first edition of Bezbozhnik an anti-religious newspaper that “alleged that some rabbis in the tsarist government's pay had helped organize anti-Jewish pogroms,” and “criticized the Jewish holiday of Passover as encouraging excessive drinking, because of the requirement of drinking four glasses of wine, while Prophet Elijah was accused of being an alcoholic who got "drunk as a swine” was published today.

1923: In Montgomery, AL, Merton Nachman and “the former Maxine Mayer, were proprietors of Nachman & Mertief, a prominent department store” gave birth to Merton Roland Nachman, Jr. the Harvard trained attorney and WW II veteran “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…” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1923: In Baltimore, MD, Fannie Hirsch Flom and Itak Flom gave birth to Joseph Harold Flom, pioneering corporate lawyer who helped build Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom into one of the nation’s leading law firms. (As reported by Jonathan D. Glater)

1924: “More than 250 delegates, representing virtually every section of the country, including many of the leading Jews of America, attended the second blennial convention of the Jewish Welfare Board today in the new Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association Building.”

1924: It was reported today that Lord Balfour, the British leader who produced the Balfour Declaration, is experimenting with mental telepathy.

1925: In Newark, NJ, Sara Lasser and Martin Kurtz gave birth to Paul Winter Kurtz “a philosopher whose advocacy of reason ahead of faith helped define contemporary secular humanism.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1925: Premiere of Eisenstein's movie “Potemkin” in Moscow.

1925: Twenty-five year old Hebrew Union College trained Rabbi, Samuel Henry Gordon, the Vilna born son of Reuben and Sarah (Fisher) Gordon married Iren Olive Phillipe in Saginaw, Michigan in the same year that he began serving Temple B’nai Israel in Salt Lake City, Utah.

1925: “The Girl With a Patron,” a silent comedy directed by Max Mack was released today in Germany.

1926: Birthdate of Arnost Lustig, an acclaimed Jewish Czech author who drew on his own harrowing experiences as a teenager in World War II to produce novels and short stories laced with tales of young people who survive the Holocaust. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1927: Nine Hungarian students went on trial today for their role in riots where “several Jews were beaten and large property damage was to synagogues throughout Transylvania.”

1928: The New York Philharmonic Symphony performs Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” and Bloch’s “America.”

1929(19thof Kislev, 5690): Parashat Vayishlach

1929: Today, Bernard S. Deutsch, president of the American Jewish Congress announced the appointment of a commission to investigate the suppression of Judaism in Russia which will be chared by Carl Sherman.

1930(1st of Tevet, 5691): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1930: “The Princess and the Plumber” a comedy directed by Alexander Korda was released in the United States today by Fox Film Corporation.

1931: Birthdate of Ysrael Abraham Seinuk, the native of Havana, Cuba, “a structural engineer who made it possible for many of New York City’s tallest new buildings to withstand wind, gravity and even earthquakes.”

http://articles.philly.com/2010-10-04/news/24980759_1_design-of-high-rise-buildings-structural-engineers-cooper-union

1932: Birthdate of New Yorker and Harvard alum Edward Hoagland who in a 1968 essay “On Not Being a Jew” complained that he was “being told in print and occasionally in person that I and my heritage lacked vitality because I could field no ancestry who had hawked copper pots in a Polish shtetl.”

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/on-not-being-a-jew/

1933: It was reported today that “all Jews, with the possible exception of front-line war veterans, and all "Marxists" without exception will be barred from editorial or illustrative work for any German newspaper or magazine, beginning Jan. 1, according to the rules of procedure” that were announced for the recently decreed press law.

1934: Churchill wrote the High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope, expressing his support for the practice of collective punishment – in the form of fines – aimed at terrorists who burned groves of fruit trees “in a thirsty land.” The fruit trees had been planted by Jewish pioneers; those burning them were Arabs taking part in the armed revolt organized by the Grand Mufti.

1935(25thof Kislev, 5696): Chanukah

1935(25thof Kislev, 5696): Forty five year old journalist, author and WW I veteran of the German Army Kurt Tucholsky passed away today in Sweden.

http://www.dw.com/en/kurt-tucholsky-enigmatic-author-and-satirist/a-16179470

1935: The 75th birthday of the pioneering Zionist Henrietta Szold was celebrated with a radio address broadcast across the United States. It included addresses by the President of Hadassah, Rose Jacobs and by the President of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann. Hadassah chapters hosted local celebrations and numerous Shabbat sermons across the United States were reportedly devoted to Szold's life story and achievements.

 

1935:The British High Commissioner announces to Arabs and Jews the British intention of setting up a Legislative Council in Palestine.

 

1935:Sir Grenfell Wauchope, High Commissioner of Palestine, summoned Arab leaders today and presented to them a memorandum outlining the features of the proposed Legislative Council of Palestine. The preface to the memorandum states that in view of the fact that municipalities are now functioning smoothly the time is ripe for the establishment of the Council.

 

1936:Helmut Hirsch, the German Jew who actively worked to carry out a plan to murder Hitler was arrested by Gestapo agents in Stuttgart.

 

1936: “Well informed Italian circles expressed rather naïve surprise this evening at what they term the ‘unnecessary fuss made by the world’s Jewish press’ over the flogging of two Jews in Tripoli and the imprisonment of another for three months for refusing to keep their open Saturdays” which in reality was part of a plan to force the Jews of that city to leave the new city and return to the older, less commercially attractive old part of the city.

 

1936: Dr. Charles M. Sheldon, a Congressional minister from Topeka, Kansas and author of In His Steps tonight proposed “a merger of all Protestant, Catholic and Jewish churches” as a way of averting war.

 

1936:Rabbi J.Z. Dushinsky, representing Audath Israel, told the Peel Commission, "The holy Torah has promised the Holy Land to the people of Israel, but is by the very Torah that we are commanded not to occupy the country by force...but we are confident that to the extent that the returning exiles to Zion will fulfill the will of god, as revealed in the torah, and will make the national home the abode of the torah in all branches of economic and cultural endeavor...

 

Sir Horace Rumbold questioned him:

 

Q. There should be a proportion of members of Audath Israel employed in the posts and in the railways, but you also object to their working on Saturdays?

 

A. Yes

 

Q. do you not see what that leads to?...The railways certainly are an important element in the economic life of the country...do you not thinking that is going to make it rather difficult?

 

A. They will be run by Arabs on Saturday, by non-Jews.  On Saturdays the work can be done by non Jews

 

1936: “Vicious Circle” published today provided a review of Some of My Best Friends Are Jews by Robert Gessner.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,757240,00.html

 

 

1937: In a debate over the visit of Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, to Berlin, Churchill spoke out against the Nazi treatment of the Jews.  “It is a horrible thing that a race of people should be attempted to be blotted out of the society in which they have been born.” He further expressed his fear that the British were negotiating from a point of weakness and that the Halifax meeting would result in German acquiring the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

 

1937: Birthdate of New York native, Cornell University wrestler and Columbia Law School graduate Stephen Friedman, the partner in Goldman Sachs, husband of Barbara Benioff, the father-in-law of actress Amanda Peet and the father of David Friedman a/k/a David Benioff  who is a Republican and has held several appointed positions including Chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

 

1937: Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” which animator David Hilberman helped to create premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre.

 

1938: As British, Zionist and Arab leaders prepared to meet at a conference in London designed to bring the 2 year long Arab uprising end, Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, stress “that the forthcoming conference…must be co conducted to ensure that the Arab States would be friendly to us.”  In other words, the British government was poised to turn its back on the promises of the Balfour Declaration and close Palestine to the Jews.

1939: Hitler named Adolf Eichmann leader of "Referat IV B"

1939: Premiere of “Tevye” a Yiddish language film based on the Sholem Aleichem character, directed, produced and starring Maurice Schwartz, who also wrote the script.

1940: Birthdate of Frank Zappa, composer of the controversial, satirical song “Jewish American Princess.”

1940: Birthdate of Baghdad native and “Israeli yachting world champion” Zaphania Carmel who “drowned during training in 1980.”

1941(1stof Tevet, 5702): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1941(1stof Tevet, 5702): Fifty-three year former Postmaster and secretary of the Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce Harvey E Harris, the Bloomfield born son of Mr. and Mrs. Eli Harris and brother of Jerome Irving Harris and Mrs. Hazel L. Steinhart, passed away.

1941: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Jews View Christmas, Christians Vie Hanukkah” at the “Free Synagogue Congregation worshipping in Carnegie Hall.”

1941: “Dr. Shlomo Bardin of the American Zionist Youth Commission” is scheduled to deliver an address on “American Jewish Youth and the War” at Temple B’nai Jeshurun’s youth service.

1941: Henri Torres of France, the “defender of Schwartzbard and Grynzpan” is scheduled to deliver an address on “Petain, Darlan and Laval, Will France Join Germany in War Against the United State?” today at Rodeph Sholom.

1941: Rabbi Hyman J. Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “A Rabbi’s View of Jesus” this morning at the West End Synagogue.

1941: Mrs. Tehilla Lichtenstein is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “What Not to Worry About These Days” at the Jewish Science Society.

1941:Immediately after the arrival of the first group of Eretz-Israeli residents who were trapped in Nazi occupied Europe at the outbreak of WW II and who have been exchanged for Germans living in Palestine, Haaretz published a story about a woman who had left Palestine with her daughter before the war to visit her hometown and family in Poland. "Our little town did not even have a cemetery in ordinary times," the unnamed woman was quoted as saying, "but now the Germans have established one, and it contains hundreds of graves of local Jews and of others deported there from the big cities."

1942(13thTevet, 5703): Eighty-four year old Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Columbia Univesity Franz Uri Boas the Minden, Westphalia born son Sophie Meyer Boas and husband of “the former Marie A.E. Korckowizer” who held a Ph.D. from Kiel University  who is known as the “Father of American Anthropology” passed away today in New York City.

1943(24thof Kislev, 5704): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1943:Hersz Kurcweig, a Jew, and Stanislaw Dorosiewicz, a non-Jew, escape from Auschwitz after killing an SS guard.

1943: U.S. premiere of “The Song of Bernadette” a cinematic treatment of the life of St. Bernadette based on a novel by Franz Wefel, produced by William Perlberg and music by Alfred Newman.

1944(5thof Tevet, 5705): Eighty-three year old Alfred Leopold Delgado, who is buried in the Falmouth Jewish Cemetery in Jamaica passed away today.

1944: Bandleader Kay Kyser (who was not Jewish) recorded "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" a popular song with music by Harold Arlen

1945: The United States and Great Britain announced that the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine will open hearings January 7, 1946.

1945: The original Broadway production of “Billion Dollar Baby,” a Betty Comden and Adolph musical with a score by Morton Gould opened at the Alvin Theatre where it “ran for 220 performances.”

1946:Arabs in Palestine refuse to pay taxes if money is used for Jewish immigration.

1946: Birthdate of Josh Mostel.  Mostel followed in the thespian footsteps of his famous father, Zero Mostel.

1946:Morton Gould's "Minstrel Show" premieres in Indianapolis

1946: Today, The New Yorker published J.D. Salinger’s “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” featuring “Holden Caulfield” who gained fame in Cather in the Rye

1946: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise declared at the centennial celebration of Central Synagogue that "Reform Judaism looks forward to the union of all Jewish religious groups in a great synthesis with freedom for all."

1947:Arabs plan to win full control of Palestine and set up an all-Arab state

1947(8thof Tevet, 5708): Sixty-five year old Simon Lazarus, Sr., the oldest son of Rose Eichberg and Fred Lazarus and the older brother of Fred Lazarus, J. the founder of Federated Department Stores, passed away today.

1947: Estelle Scher, the actress known as Estelle Getty, married Arthur Gettlemen with whom she had two children – Carl and Barry Gettlemen.

1947(8thof Tevet, 5708): Forty-four year old journalist and producer Mark Hellinger passed away in Los Angeles.

http://web.sbu.edu/friedsam/archives/jimbishop/Hellinger/Hellinger%20Biography.htm

1948: Birthdate of Barry Gordon the American performer who served as President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1988 to 1995 making him “the longest-serving president.”

1948: “Act of Violence” a cinema noir directed by Fred Zinnemann was released today in the United States

1948: Birthdate of Zev Yaroslavsky a Los Angeles County politician who served on the Los Angeles City Council from 1975 until 1994, when he was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. He was preceded in both offices by Edmund D. Edelman.

1949: New York premiere of Samson and Delilah, “Biblical Epic” starring Hedy Lamer, with a screenplay co-authored by Jesse Lasky, Jr. based on a “film treatment” by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the late Zionist leader.

1950(12thof Tevet, 5711): Eighty-six year old Elgin, Illinois native Harriet Wile, the daughter of Leopold and Rose Adler and he wife of David Jacob Wile passed away today in Chicago.

1950: In New York, stockbroker Walter Katzenberg and his wife Anne, an artist, gave birth to Walt Disney Studios Chairman and Democratic party kingmaker Jeffrey Katzenberg, the husband of the former Marilyn Siegel with whom he had twins – Laura and David.

1951: Larry Blyden played Hector and Howard Da Silva played Dupont-Dufour Sr. in “Thieves’ Carnival” this week’s offering on “The Play of the Week.”

1951: Yitzhak Gormezano Goren, aged ten and accompanied by his parents, left his home on Rue Delta in Alexandria to rejoin his two brothers who had already moved to Israel.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/190825/aciman-alexandrian-summer

1951: “Decision Before Dawn” a WW II espionage movie directed and produced by Anatole Litvak with music by Franz Waxman released in the United States today by 20thCentury Fox.

1952:Paul Celan married graphic artist Gisèle Lestrange over the opposition of her parents.

1952(3rd of Tevet, 5713): Eliyahu Hacarmeli an early Zionist leader, who served in the first Knesset, passed away.

1952: Shlomo Hillel entered the Knesset today as a replacement for the deceased Eliyahu Hacarmeli.

1952: Near tragedy struck the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America when fire destroyed the headquarters at 1380 Jerome Avenue, Bronx, New York. Fortunately, complete tragedy was averted because of the diligence of some members of the brotherhood residing in the area and who were nearby at the time of the fire. They prevailed upon the firefighters to saturate the office area with water, thus averting any major destruction of the records.

1952: Thirty-one year old Rabbi Randall Falk, the Little Rock born son of Randall Morris Falk and the former Lucile Kronberg and holder of a DD from Vanderbilt in Nashville, where he led “Congregation Ohab ai Sholom” married the former Edna Unger with whom he raised Heidi, Randall and Jonathan Falk.

1953: Birthdate of András Schiff, the native of Budapest and the child of two Holocaust survivors who gained fame as a “British classical pianist and conductor.

1953: As claims resurfaced that Dr. Robert Oppenheimer was a Communist, Lewis Strauss told “Oppie” that “his security clearance had been suspended.”  Oppenheimer refused Strauss’ suggestion that he resign and demanded a hearing on the charges.

1954: Composer Morton Gould and his wife gave birth to this fourth and youngest child, Deborah, today.

1954: Congregation B’nai Jeshurun marked it 130th anniversary as the second oldest Jewish congregation in New York by staging a Chanukah celebration in its Community Center on West 88th Street. B’nai Jeshurun is the oldest Conservative Congregation in the United States.  Rabbi Israel Goldestein opened the festivities by lighting the “torch of freedom” which had been flown to New York from Israel last week 

1956, the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new version of La Périchole an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach with a libretto co-authored by Ludovic Halévy that included interpolations from other scores and turned the speaking role of the Old Prisoner into a singing role for a comic tenor.

1957: A terrorist attack to place in a field near Kibbutz Gadot.

1958(10th of Tevet, 5719): Asara B'Tevet

1958(10th of Tevet, 5719): Seventy-four year old German born American author Lion Feuchtwanger,  passed away while living in his Los Angeles. Born in 1884, and writing under the pseudonym, J.L. Wetcheek, Feuchtwanger’s life reads like something out of suspense thriller as he fled Nazi Germany, took refuge in the Soviet Union and France before escaping to the United States under a secret program run by Varian Fry.  Of course, he was a significant author in his own right to boot.  At the same time, there is something depressingly repetitive about his life – one more European Jew forced to take it on the lamb before finding a final refuge in the United States, England or Israel where he or she then enriches the culture, science or business communities of their place of refuge.

http://www.josephus.org/Feuchtwanger.htm

1959: Shimon Peres, a member of Mapai, began serving as Deputy Defense Minister.

1961: “Take Her, She’s Mine” a “Broadway comedy written by Henry Ephron and Phoebe Ephron opened at the Biltmore Theatre.

1961: In Patterson, NJ, Isaac Weiner and his wife gave birth to Michael Weiner, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)

1961: In New York City, Elain Terner Cooper and Robert E. Mnuchin “a partner at Goldman Sachs in charge of equity trading, a member of the management committee and the founder of the Mnuchin Art Gallery gave birth to Steven Terner Mnuchin, the Yale University graduate, former Goldman Sachs partner and hedge fund investor who has been named by President-elect Trump to serve as Secretary of the Treasury.

1962: U.S. premiere of “In Search of the Castaways” with songs by Richard and Robert Sherman – The Sherman Brothers.

1962: “The Trial,” a movie version of the novel by Franz Kafka was released today in the United States.

1964: Despite supportive testimony from a bevy of performers and authors, Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in jail for using “obscene” language in his nightclub act.

1965(27th of Kislev, 5726): Third Day of Chanukah

1965(27th of Kislev, 5726): Fifty-three year old Dr. Bernard Brass, the son of Samuel and Edith Shinan Brass and the husband of Pearl (Hochman) Brass passed away today after which he was buried in the Mt. Carmel Section of Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon, MA.

1965: After premiering in Tokyo, “Thunderball,” four film in the James Bond series featuring Leonard Sachs was released today in the United States.

1966: “Grand Prix,” a movie about international road racing directed by John Frankenheimer whose father was Jewish but who was raised as a Catholic and filmed by cinematographer Saul Bass, who used his skill to created unique racing footage, was released today in the United States by MGM.

1967(19th of Kislev, 5728): Chabad celebrates

1967: “Half a Sixpence,” a British musical directed by George Sidney was released today in the United Kingdom.

1967(19th of Kislev, 5728): Louis Washkansky, a Lithuanian born Jew and  the first man to undergo a heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, after living for 18 days after the transplant.

1967: Release date for “The Graduate,” a film classic directed by Mike Nichols, co-produced by Joseph E. Levine and co-starring Dustin Hoffman in the title role. (Oh yes, the music is courtesy of Paul Simon)

1968(30th of Kislev, 5729): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1968: “Once Upon a Time in the West” featuring Lionel Stander was released in Italy today.

1969: Former Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, who was serving was ambassador to the United States, was summoned from Washington to Jerusalem to give his views on an American response to a change in Israeli policy that would include in-depth bombings of Egyptian positions beyond the Nile in response to Nasser’s policy of bombarding Israeli positions. 

1969: Three Lebanese nationals were detained when an attempt to hijack a TWA plane was thwarted at the airport in Athens.

1970: “They Call Me Trinity,” a spaghetti western produced by Joseph E. Levine was released in the Italy today.

1970: Six days after opening in the United States “There’s a Girl in My Soup” a comedy co-starring Goldie Hawn and Peter Sellers premiered in London today.

1971: UN Security Council chose Kurt Waldheim as 4th Secretary General.  Naming a former Nazi officer did nothing to engender Israeli or Jewish confidence in the world organization. 

1971: “Such Good Friends” a comedy by on a novel by Lois Gould, directed and produced by Otto Preminger, with a screenplay by Esther Dale (pseudonym for Elain May and starring Diane Cannon (Samille Diane Friesen) was released in the United States today.

1972: “Up the Sandbox” the movie version of Anne Roiphe’s novel directed by Irvin Kershner, produced by Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler and starring Barbra Streisand was released today in the United States.

1973(27th of Kislev, 5734): Parashat Miketz and the Third Day of Chanukah

1973(27th of Kislev, 5734): Eighty year old Golda Bam “Goldie” Richmond Reid, the daughter of John Marshall Richmond and Clara France Richmond and the wife of Stalie Cecil Reid passed away today.

1973: Representatives of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, US and USSR met in Geneva.

1975: A Broadway revival of the Jerome Kern musical “Very Good Eddie” opened at the Booth Theatre where it ran for 304 performances.

 

1976: A scheduled “unofficial symposium on Jewish culture in the USSR was banned by authorities” today.

 

1976: Richard F. Shephard described “the third network raid-on-Entebbe production” which will be aired on NBC next month following the telecast of the Super Bowl.

 

1976: “Voyage of the Damned” a film based on a story “inspired by true events concerning the fate of the MS St. Louis ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939” directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with music by Lalo Schifrin and co-starring Lee Grant was released in the United States today.

 

1976(28th of Kislev, 5737): Fourth Day of Chanukah

 

1976: “Mikey and Nicky” a gangster film directed and written by Elaine May, co-starring Peter Falk and featuring Carol Grace, the wife of Walter Matheau, and Sanford Meisner was released today in the United States.

 

1976(28th of Kislev, 5737): Pinchas Kehati, an Israeli bank teller and the author of Mishnayot Mevuarot (literally "Clarified Mishnayos"), popularly known as "the Kehati Mishnayot") which is a commentary and elucidation on the entire Mishnah which was “written in Modern Hebrew” and translated into English in 1994, passed away today.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported from Cairo that the Israeli and Egyptian peace negotiating teams were near an agreement on Israel's continued presence along the Jordan River.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that 3,700 government employees in the Tel Aviv area would be transferred to Jerusalem.

1978: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” a sci-fi horror film directed by Philip Kaufman and starring Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy was released today in the United States.

1979(1st of Tevet, 5740): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1979: It was reported today that “12 case of latkes – a donation from Empire Kosher Poultry of Miflin, PA – were delivered earlier this week to Manhattan’s Town Hall, where audiences were offered the potato pancakes and kosher wine after matinees this week of ‘”Rebecca – the Rabbi’s Daughter.’  They were also invited to join in a Chanukah blessing by a leading lady, Mary Soreanu, who is starring in the production at the concert hall – which leads to another reason for the celebration at the hall.  The production marks the return to Broadway of Yiddish theatre after a 10-year absence.”

1979: “The London Connection” featuring David Kossoff and Wolfe Morris was released in the United States today.

1980(14THof Tevet, 5741): Ninety-two year old Leon Leo Solomon Hexter, the son of Max and Sara Hexter and the husband of Rachel Schwartz passed away today in his home town of Cincinnati, Ohio.

1981(25thof Kislev, 5742): Chanukah observed for the first time during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

1983: Sixty-four year old Paul de Man the “Belgian born literary critic” whose anti-Semitic views expressed during WW II did not become known until after his death, passed away today.

1984: “Protocol” a comedy directed by Herbert Ross with a script by Buck Henry based pm a story by Nancy Myers and starring Goldie Hawn was released in the United States today by Warner Bros.

1984: “Johnny Dangerously” a parody directed by Amy Heckerling was released today in the United States.

1987(30th of Kislev, 5748): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1988(13thof Tevet, 5749): Eighty-two year old British historian, author and WW II veteran Philip Montefiore Magnus-Allcroft, the son of Laurie and Dora Marian Magnus and the husband of Jewell Allcroft passed away today.

1988: Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's agreement on a new coalition government with the Labor Party barely survived a challenge early today from hard-line members of his own Likud party led by Ariel Sharon.

1988: “Beaches” co-produced by Bette Midler who co-starred in the film along with Barbara Hershey and featuring Marc Shaiman was released today in the United States.

1988: Sixteen crew members 243 passengers and 11 bystanders on the ground were murdered today when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie when a bomb planted by terrorists exploded. At the time Muammar Gaddafi of Libya was blamed for the attack although several other terrorist groups claimed credit for the attack.

1988: An Israeli court today postponed a lawsuit by the Bankers Trust Company of New York to break up troubled Koor Industries.

1989:In “Deserted Synagogue of 1919 Sets Off Boston Tug-of-War” published today, Constance L. Hays described the struggle over the fate of the Hub City’s Vilna Shul.

1989: A Congress of Jewish Organizations and Communities in the USSR that had begun on December 18 met for the last time today in the Moscow Cinema Center having established the Vaad, “an umbrella organization of Jewish Cultural bodies chaired by Mikhail Chlenov from Moscow, Yosif Zissels from Chernovtsy and Shmuel Zilberg from Riga.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/21/us/deserted-synagogue-of-1919-sets-off-boston-tug-of-war.html

1990: “Kindergarten Cop” produced and directed by Ivan Reitman, the son of Holocaust survivors was released today in the United States.

1991(14th of Tevet, 5752): Parashat Vayehi

 

1991(14th of Tevet, 5752): Ninety-five year old “painter and printmaker” Minna Citron passed away today. (As reported by Roberta Smith)

https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/417/Citron/Minna

 

 

1990 “Bonfires of the Vanities,” cinematic treatment of the novel by the same name featuring Alan King, F. Murray Abraham and Saul Rubinek was released today in the United States.

1991: El Sayid Nosair was acquitted of killing Meir Kahane.

1992(26th of Kislev, 5753): Ukrainian born violinist Nathan Milstein passed away.

1992(26th of Kislev, 5753): Ninety-two year old actress, famed acting teacher and member of one of the most distinguished families of the Yiddish theatre, Stella Adler, the New York born daughter of Sara and Jacob P. Adler, sister of Luther and Jay Adler and half-sister of Charles and Celia Adler passed away today.

1993: A family tour of Israel that include the opportunity to celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and at the Zealot's Synagogue in Masada sponsored by the American Jewish Congress is scheduled to begin today.

1994: Federated Department Stores announced the acquisition of R H. Macy & Co the mercantile establishment made famous by the owners Nathan and Isidor Straus.

1994: Limited release of “Little Woman” starring Winona Ryder as “Josephine ‘Jo’ March.”

1994: U.S. premiere of “Mixed Nuts” directed by Nora Ephron who wrote the script along with her sister Delia featuring Kahn as “Mrs. Blanche Munchnik”, Robert Klein as “Mr. Lobel”, Rob Reiner as “Dr. Kinsky”, Adam Sandler as “Louis Capshaw”, Liev Schreiber as “Chris” and Garry Shandling as “Stanley.”

1995(28thof Kislev, 5756): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1995:Israel barred entry today to seven American Jews, including a New York rabbi whom the Government considers to be a security risk in light of the assassination last month of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The Interior Ministry said Rabbi Abraham Hecht, 73, of New York, had given a religious justification for the killing of Mr. Rabin only months before it occurred -- though he later apologized in a letter to Mr. Rabin days before the assassination.

1995: The city of Bethlehem passed from Israeli to Palestinian control as part of the peace process begun at Oslo.  Unfortunately there was no peace to go with the process.

1996: Baltimore native Stephen Glick, the senior executive at “Rose Shanis, the personal loan business his mother founded in 1932” and his wife celebrated their 36th wedding anniversary.

1996(11th of Tevet, 5757):Margaret Rey passed away at Cambridge

http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-03540.html,

1997(22ndof Kislev, 5768):Sholom Schwadron, “the Haredi rabbi and orator known as the ‘Maggid Jerusalem’” passed away today.

1997: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers includingThe Bible As It Wasby James L. Kugel and Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler.

 

1998: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Conrad Bloom” a sitcom starring Mark Feuerstein, Steve Landesberg and Lina Lavin

 

1998(3rd of Tevet, 5759): Sixty-three year old Hofstra graduate Merwin F. Kaminstein the former Presiden of Filene’s and Rich’s department stores, the husband of Janet Kaminstein and father of Susan, Ann, Steve and Greg Kaminstein lost his battle with cancer today.

 

 

1999: Shortly before the end of his term as Mayor of Philadelphia, Ed Rendell resigned to take up the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (DNC

 

2000: Four Israeli soldiers were injured when a Palestinian rammed a truck into a West Bank checkpoint.

 

2001(6th of Tevet, 5762): Sport’s journalist Dick Schaap passed away.

http://www.jewishsports.net/PillarAchievementBios/DickSchaap.htm

 

2001: Following a Hollywood premiere a week ago, “A Beautiful Mind” the academy award winning film co-produced by Brian Grazer, with a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman and featuring Judd Hirsch was released in the United States

2002(16th of Tevet, 5763): Parashat Vayechi

2002: In a sttatment that “seemed aimed at inoculating the Palestinians from both the surge of Qaeda attacks around the world and the increasing allegations by Israel that the terrorist group’s operatives are active in the Gaza strip,” Yassar Arafat “demanded that Al Qaeda stop using the Palestinian cause to justify terror attacks.”

 

2003: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including There Are Jews In My House by Lara Vapnyar, Sephard by Antonio Muñoz Molina; translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters by Elie Wiesel and The Roaring Twenties: A New History

of the World's Most Prosperous Decadeby Joseph E. Stiglitz.

 

2003: In “Rabbi Finds Anti-materialism A Tough Pitch in Hollywood” published today, Amy Wallace

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/style/rabbi-finds-antimaterialism-a-tough-pitch-in-hollywood.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

 

 2004: Today, during his visit to Jerusalem, British Prime Minister Tony Blair “said that it was an opportune moment to restart Mideast peace efforts, but he warned that the Palestinians needed to act against terrorism.”

2005: It was reported today that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been released from the hospital after having suffered a “mild stroke” while saying that he will immediately return to his job despite the advice of doctors to “cut his work load.”
2006:
The annual report put out by Israel's intelligence agencies was presented to the prime minister prior to discussion of it by the security cabinet. Olmert heard the assessments of representatives of the Shin Bet security service, Military Intelligence and the Mossad concerning the Palestinian Authority, the Iranian threat and the situation along the northern border. Defense Minister Amir Peretz also attended the meeting with the intelligence officials.

 

2006: U.S. premiere of “The Good Shepherd produced by Jane Rosenthal with a script by Eric Roth.

 

2006: In Boston, JDub records and Heeb magazine cohost a "Jewltide Hanukkah Bash" at T.T. the Bear's. Headliners are the LeeVees, a duo featuring Adam Gardner (of Guster) and Dave Schneider (of the Zambonis), whose songs include "How Do You Spell Channukkahh" and "Goyim Friends," a tune about gentile pals. The show also features Golem, SoCalled, and Shtreiml 

 

2007: Release date for “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” a music comedy written b Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan.

 

2007: U.S. premiere of “Charlie Wilson’s War” directed by Mike Nichols with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.

 

2007: It was reported today that Rite Aid founded by Alex Grass had suffered record-breaking losses in despite the acquisition of the Brooks and Eckerd chains

 

 

2007:Today Shari Ellin Redstone, president of National Amusements, vice-chairman of CBS Corporation and Viacom, became chairman of Midway Games (a position she would subsequently relinquish in December 2008 when her father Sumner Redstone sold all his stock in the company).

 

2007: President Shimon Peres apologized for the Kafr Kasim massacre of 1956, in which Border Police officers killed 48 of the village's residents..

 

2007: “A feature film adaption of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Sweeney Todd’ was released today with Sacha Baron Cohen as ‘Signor Pirelli.’”

 

2008: Opening session of the AJS (Association for Jewish Studies) 40th Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

 

2008:Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies will present research at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in Washington, demonstrating that while some American Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Stephen Wise were firmly pro-British and opposed Aliya on the eve of the Holocaust, others including Louis Brandeis recognized the need for emergency measures to rescue Jews from Europe and were willing to take a more hardline position…

 

2008: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States by Jonathan Engel and The Hanukah Miceby Steven Kroll; Illustrated by Michelle Shapiro.

 

2008(24th of Kislev, 5769): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah Candle

 

2008(24thof Kislev, 5769): Ninety-four year old Tony Award winning playwright Dale Wasserman whose works included “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest” and “The Man of La Mancha” passed away toda.

 

2008:A British tourist working in an archaeological dig in Jerusalem today unearthed a treasure of 264 gold coins from 1,300 years ago. Archaeologists called the find "one of the most impressive deposits ever found in the capital." The coins were found by Nadine Ross, who came to Israel for one month to volunteer at the archaeological site at the City of David. They all carry the portrait of the Roman emperor Heraclius, who ruled the empire between 610 and 641

 

2008: “Shaul Ladany: The long walk through horrors of 20th century” published today

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/shaul-ladany-the-long-walk-through-horrors-of-20th-century-1206199.html

 

 

2009:Theatre Company Jerusalem presents "The King and the Magician," a tale of a soothsayer king, Balak ben Zippor, and a great magician, Bilam ben Beor. This is unique adaptation of the Biblical story, for children - story about curses and their disadvantages and blessings and their advantages.

 

2009:Habima Theatre presents "His Whole Life Ahead of Him," a new adaptation of Roman Gary's novel Emil Ajar.

 

2009:Today archaeologists unveiled what may have been the home of one of Jesus’ childhood neighbors. The humble dwelling is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered in Nazareth, then a hamlet of around 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood. Archaeologist Stephen Pfann, president of the University of The Holy Land, noted: “It’s the only witness that we have from that area that shows us what the walls and floors were like inside Nazareth in the first century.”

 

2009: Polish police detained five men today for stealing the metal sign that hung over Auschwitz, the former Nazi death, and said they were common thieves not neo-Nazis.

 

2009: In article published in Sports Illustrated entitled “Welcome the King of Israel,” Lee Jenkins describes the life of “Sacramento rookie Omri Casspi, the first Israeli to play in the NBA” who is “a modern extension of the league’s Jewish roots.”

 

2010:Rabbi Yosef Edelstein of MesorahDC is scheduled to lead “Food for Thought: Digesting Ethics, Mysticism, and Philosophy” at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

 

2010: Dulce Pontes, the famous Fado singer from Portugal, is scheduled to appear in Tel Aviv.

 

2010:A Qassam rocket struck the Ashkelon beach early today exploding in an open field near a kindergarten and lightly wounded a teenage girl in a nearby building.

 

2010: A high-level priest on the morning show of the largest television station in Greece blamed world Jewry for Greece's financial problems today. The Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim also blamed world Jewry for other ills in the country during his appearance on Mega TV. Mixing Freemasons with Jewish bankers such as Baron Rothschild and world Zionism, the Metropolite said that there is a conspiracy to enslave Greece and Christian Orthodoxy.

2010(14thof Tevet, 5771): Seventy-two year old “Marcia Lewis, an actress and singer known for bringing a comic brassiness to Broadway revivals of “Grease” and “Chicago,” died today in Nashville.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/arts/22lewis.html

 

 

2010: Today, the Queen created Fiona Sara Shackleton the daughter of “Jonathan Charkham, an adviser to The Bank of England and economist, and Moira Elizabeth Frances Salmon, daughter of Barnett Alfred and Molly Salmona “ “a life peer as Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia, of Belgravia in the City of Westminster.

 

2011(25thof Kislev, 5772): First Day of Chanukah

2011(25thof Kislev, 5572) :Eighty-five year old  WW II veteran and Penn St grad David N. Pincus, a co-owner of Pincus Bros., the highly successful Philadelphia clothing manufacturers and husband of Geraldine Pincus with whom he established one of the major collection of expressionist art work passed a way today.

https://www.christies.com/sales/post-war-contemporary-new-york-may-2012/morning-special-feature-01.aspx

 

https://www.inquirer.com/philly/obituaries/20111222_Art_patron_and_humanitarian_David_Pincus_dies_at_85.html

https://www.jewishexponent.com/2013/01/31/remembering-the-flame-of-david-pincus/

 

 

2011:  The band Girls in Trouble led by Alicia Jo Rabin is scheduled to perform this evening at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

 

2011: Dan & Aviva and Drory Yehoushua are scheduled to perform at The Spanish Portuguese Synagogue as part of the Sephardic Music Festival.

 

2011: Yad Vashem is scheduled to posthumously honor a Polish man who saved the lives of Jews during World War II by hiding them in his attic. The Holocaust Museum will bestow the title of righteous gentile upon Wojciech Wołoszczuk, a farmer who let Frances Schaff, nee Feiga Bader; her brother, his family and two other Jews secretly stay in his house to avoid persecution by the Nazis and their allies. Food was scant during the war and Schaff's brother was shot dead while trying to forage food for his family outside the house. His wife and children survived the war but were murdered by Polish peasants in its immediate aftermath. Schaff, the sole survivor of her family, grew up in an orphanage in Israel. She later emigrated to the US In 2009 Schaff submitted a request to honor Wołoszczuk, who died in 1963, after visiting Poland with her family. His daughter, Janina Wołoszczuk, will come from Poland to accept the medal and certificate of honor on his behalf.

 

2011: Today, the Knesset Finance Committee allocated an additional NIS 780 million to Israel's defense budget, which came at the expense of other government offices such as welfare and housing.

2011: The situation in Syria is unstable and the IDF needs to keep a watchful eye on daily developments along its northern front, Commander of the Israel Air Force Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan said today.

2011: The US Senate approved $211 million for Iron Dome in new $633 billion defense bill

 

 

2012: Three solid days of rainfall across the country has water authority officials calling the the winter of 2012-13 the wettest since 2004

 

 

2012: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear today that he has no intention of losing any more ground to his right wing challenger Naftali Bennett, giving a TV interview in which he slammed the Jewish Home party’s chairman for his apparent justification of insubordination

 

 

2012: Ensemble Dmama is scheduled to perform at the Eden-Tamir Music Center in Jerusalem.

 

2012: “The Shortest Day” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012: Talia's Steakhouse & Bar, the only full dine-in Glatt Kosher (under OU Supervision) steakhouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, offers a pre-paid Friday night dinner where diners can enjoy their challah and have wine for Kiddush.

http://taliassteakhouse.com/shabbatmenu.html

 

 

2013: The Eden Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host “The Best of Chamber Music – The Romantic Clarinet.”

 

2013: “Dancing in the Rain” (Ples v dezju) is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Today the Arab League rejected the US proposal, by which IDF soldiers would remain in the Jordan Valley for a 10 year period as part of peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). (As reported by Ari Yashar)

 

2013: “IDF forces foiled a terror attempt from Gaza on Saturday, shooting and wounding a 22 year old terrorist who was trying to place an explosive on the border.” (As reported by Ari Yashar)

 

2013(18thof Tevet, 5774): Eighty-four year old Edgar M. Bronfman passed away today. (As reported by Jonathan Kandell)

 

 

2013: On the 25th anniversary of the Lockerbie Bombing Israeli sources provided evidence the Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command was responsible for downing Pan Am Flight 103.(As reported by David Horovitz)  [Editor’s note: After you read about enough of these groups you almost feel like these guys are good at two things – murder and coming up with unbelievable names for their organizations]

 

 

2014: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish author/and or of special interest to Jewish readers including Isabel’s War by Lila Perl, The Brotherhood of Book Hunters by Raphaël Jerusalmy, The Norton Anthology of World Religions Volume II: Judaism, Christianity, Islam edited byJack Miles, David Biale, Lawrence S. Cunningham and Jane Dammen McAuliffe, The Wall by H.G. Adler and Living The Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions by Phil Zuckerman

 

2014: “The Prime Ministers: Soldiers & Peacemakers” and “Felix and Meira” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: Chabad is scheduled to host the “Chanukah Bowl” at Colonial Bowling Lanes.

 

2014: Final performance of “On the Other Side of the River” is scheduled to take place today.

 

2014: Shaare Tefila is scheduled to hold its annual Chanukah Party, Dinner and Talent Show.”

 

2014: “Four anti-assimilation activists affiliated with the Lehava organization were arrested on suspicion of incitement to violence today, and four others were brought in for questioning”

 

2014: “The Syrian army said today that it shot down an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle over Quneitra, media in Syria and Lebanon reported.

 

2014: “IDF paratroopers' hearts went out to two Palestinian children who approached their post today asking for food.”

 

2015(9thof Tevet, 5776): On the Jewish calendar Yahrzeit of Ezra.

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_9.html

 

2015: The Historic 6th and I Synagogue is scheduled to host a fun run sponsored by the Running Club this evening.

 

2015: Israeli and U.S. officials declared a new medium-range missile interceptor fully operational today, ending years of development and testing for the key component of Israel’s defense array.

 

2016: Prof. Isaiah Gafni, The Sol Rosenbloom Professor Emeritus of Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is scheduled to deliver a special Chanukah lecture’ “The Hasmonean Episode: From Rebellion to Kingdom” in which he will examine the two chapters of the holiday story – “The rebellion under Mattathias and his sons, followed by the emergence of an independent state and kingdom.”

2016: “Jewish worshipers in Ukraine were teargassed and the grave of Hasidic Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav was defiled with fake blood and a pig’s head in an attack tonight at the popular pilgrimage site visited by tens of thousands of Jews every year.”

 

2016: “Former president and convicted rapist Moshe Katsav was released from Ma’asiyahu Prison today after the State Prosecution said it would not appeal Sunday’s parole board decision to free him. He had served five years of a seven-year jail sentence.”

2016: Rabbi Berel Lazar was the keynote speaker when approximately 6,000 people arrived at a government compound in Moscow to celebrate Chanukah, “twenty-five years after the Kremlin hosted its first-ever Jewish event.”

 

2016: On the occasion of his 70th birthday, violinist and champion of Jewish music Yuval Waldman is scheduled to play a recital-lecture of works by Jewish composers which he commissioned or gave the premiere performance of including “Thoughts and Feelings, a never before heard work by Joachim Stutschewsky which Stutschewsky wrote in 1981 at the age of 90, Variations on "Hatikvah" by Yehiel Goyzman, Waltz from an Unknown Country by Paul Alan Levi (U.S. Premiere), the world premiere of a new work by Alex Weiser, and Fantasy on "Jerusalem of Gold" by Yuval Waldman himself.”

 

2017: As part of its Historic Jewish Atlanta Tours, The Breman Museum is scheduled to host a trip to the Fox Theatre.

2017: A memorial service was held today in Toronto for philanthropist Barry and Honey Sherman whose murderer still remains at large.

2017: “The SEC is suing Robert Shaprio, the former head of the Woodbridge Group of Companies for allegedly running a $1 billion Ponzi scheme.”

 

2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host Peter Weintraub presenting an “Introduction to Judaism.

2017(3rdof Tevet, 5778): Ninety-three year old USAAF veteran Jerome “Jerry” Yellin, the P-51 Mustang pilot who is credited with flying the last mission in WWII passed away today.

2017: Today, “The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution rejecting any recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the wake of the pronouncement by President Donald Trump two weeks ago.” (Anybody who knows the history of the UN and Jerusalem knows that the international body abdicated its responsibility regarding the city 70 years ago when it failed to enforce its own resolution to make the Jerusalem an international city to be governed by body established by the UN)

 

2017(3rdof Tevet, 5778): On the Jewish calendar, third of Tevet is the Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_3.html

2018: In what some say is a sign that in Jerusalem, public transport is on its way to experiencing a revolution “Kol Ha’lr reports that today, the Ministry of Transport is scheduled to issued tenders for the operation of dozens of municipal service line in the city.”

2018: In New Orleans, the JCC is scheduled to host “Bring A Friend Friday” at its Metairie and Uptown Locations.

2018: As Israeli forces begin “neutralizing” the terror tunnels Hezbollah has constructed from Syria, Israeli officials begin to prepare for a dealing with a Syria under the Assad regime, with Russians and Iranians but, according to President Trump’s latest Tweet, without American forces.

2018: Israeli born guitarist Gilad Hekselman is scheduled to perform at the Cornelia Street Cafe

2018: In response to those asking for activities that “enhance and deepen” services, in Memphis, Temple Israel is scheduled to host a “Preneg” before Friday evening services.

2018: In New Orleans, the JCC Membership Appreciation Week is scheduled to come to an end today.

2018: The Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston is scheduled to host Tot Shabbat.

2019: In Hingham, MA, Congregation Sha’aray Shalom is scheduled to host the Noah Aronson Band in a “Pre-Chanukah Concert.”

2019: “Yiddish New York,” the “largest festival of Yiddish Culture, Arts and Language” in the United States is scheduled to open at the 14thStreet Y.

2019(23rdof Kislev, 5780): Parashat Vayayshev;

2019(23rdof Kislev, 5780): Eighty-eight year old Joseph Myron Segel, the Philadelphia born son of realtor Albert Segal and Fannie Segal and graduate of Wharton, the entrepreneur who gave us the “Franklin Mint” and QVC Shopping Network passed away today. (As reported by Katharine Q. Seelye)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/25/business/joseph-segel-dead.html

 

2020: The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to host online “a presentation about Jewish medical ethics by Dr. Michael Szycher.

2020: Lost Tribe Esports, “a global, year-round engagement initiative, connecting the next generation to Jewish life and identity through esports and the community of gaming” is scheduled to present online a “Valorant Game Night.”

2020: In Pepper Pike, OH, B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to present “What’s Nu?” a “topical text studay and discussion on the relevant Jewish topics” with Rabbi Hal Rudin-Luira, followed by a discussion of the weekly Torah portion “from a liberal point of view led by Professor Doron Kalir.”

2020: The National Library of Israel is scheduled to host online Dr. Noam Sienna lecturing "On the Altar of the Press”: Jewish Print Culture in 19th Century North Africa.”

2020: On the winter solstice, Aquarian Minyan in Berkeley is scheduled to present a conference of academics, scholars and mystics discussing topics that include this year’s extremely rare Jupiter-Saturn conjunction

2020: As the United States copes with the worst cybersecurity breach in its history, based on reports published yesterday, Israel may be dealing with an Iranian “infiltration of servers belong to the state-owned IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


This Day, December 22, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z":

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December 22

69: Emperor Vitellius is captured and murdered by the Gemonian stairs in Rome. Vitellius was the third of The Four Emperors.  He would be succeeded by Vespasian, the man who put down the rebellion in Judea that began 2,000 years of exile. 

244: Birthdate of Diocletian, the Roman Emperor who ordered all of his subjects to accept his divinity and offer sacrifices to him. He exempted the Jews from this decree.  According to Meir Holder, “his regime was comparatively favorable to the Jewish people

1095: Birthdate  of Roger II whose reign over the Kingdom of Sicily was unique for its religious tolerance which allowed native Jews, Byzantine Greeks, Muslim Arabs, Normans, Longobards and "native" Sicilian peoples to live in harmony. (As reported by Luigi Mendola)

1135: Coronation of Stephen as the King of England during whose reign Jewish communities were established in Norwich, Cambridge and Oxford.

1603: Mehmed III Sultan of the Ottoman Empire passed away. Born in 1566, Mehmed III continued the Turkish practice of taking advantage of the skills of his Jewish subjects. He appointed a Jew named Gabriel Buonaventura as ambassador to Spain which may seem counter-intuitive considering that Spain had expelled her Jews a century earlier. Two Jewish doctors named Benveniste and Korina were in palace service. In 1597 a Morrano named Alvaro Mendez who had taken the Turkish appellation Solomon Abenyaes prepared a treaty of alliance with England aimed at King Philip of Spain.

1603: Ahmed I becomes Sultan of the Ottoman Empire following the death of Mehmed III. During his reign, Sultan Ahmed I caught small pox, a highly fatal disease.  When his palace physicians could not help him, Ahmed sought help from Buha Eskenazi, the widow of Solomon Eskenazi who had been one of his doctors. The widow Eskenazi was able to affect a cure and she remained in the Sultan’s service. 

1639:  Birthdate of French dramatist Jean Racine.  Racine chose two very different Jewish women as topics for two of his plays both of whose names provided the title for the respective works. In 1689, he wrote Esther.  In 1689, he wrote his last play Athaliebased on the life of the wicked Queen Athalia, daughter of Jezebel.

1653:Nethaneel ben Benjamin ben Azriel Trabot the Rabbi of Modena who was the uncle of Solomon Graciano, and the author of “the collection of response entitled ‘Kenaf Renamin’” passed away today.

1666: Founding of the French Academy of Sciences which “in 1833 the Académie des Sciences awarded Danish surgeon Ludwig “Lewin Jacobson one of the Monthyon prizes (4,000 francs), having previously awarded him a gold medal for his important researches into the venal system of the kidneys in birds and reptiles.”

1696: Birthdate of James Oglethorpe, founder of the colony of Georgia.  “In July, 1733, a month after Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe, forty Sephardic Jews arrived in Savannah.” A year later German Jews arrived in the colony.”  The trustees of the colony wanted to discourage the Jewish settlement.  Oglethorpe had the courage and good sense to ignore their wishes.

1723: Seventy year old Normandy native Jacques Basnage de Deauval, the Protestant minister and author whose works included L'Histoire des Juifs (History of the Jews) which the author said is "a survey of all that pertains to the religion and the history of the Jews since Herod the Great” passed away today. (Editor’s note- other sources show 1725.  I have not been able to resolve the disparity.)

1762: In New York City, Caty Hays and Abraham Sarzedas gave birth to Judah Sarzedas.

1764(28th of Kislev, 5525): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1765(10th of Tevet, 5526): Asara B’Tevet observed as Colonists and Parliament clash over the Stamp Act.

1767(1st of Tevet, 5528): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1769: Jacob and Abigail Pinto gave birth to Thankful Pinto who had been named after Jacob Pinto’s first wife.

1772(26th of Kislev, 5533): Second Day of Chanukah

1772: As Jews prepared to kindle the third light of Chanukah, The Belfast News Letter reported that in South Carolina there is “a great crop of rice” but a lack of ships to carry the product to market.

1775(29th of Kislev, 5536): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1775: As Jews prepared to kindle the sixth Chanukah candle and light the Shabbat candles, today the Continental Congress commissioned the first officers in the United States Navy.

1779: Rebecca Franks and English native Lucius Levy Solomons who passed away in Montreal, gave birth to Elizabeth (Betsy) Solomons.

1780(24th of Kislev, 5541): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah candle.

1791(26th of Kislev, 5552): Second Day of Chanukah

1791: As Jews prepare to kindle the third Chanukah candle, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote to President Washington telling him of the progress of the negotiations with Spain that will allow Americans to use the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans which was a significant milestone in the growth of the newly created federal government.

1793(19th of Tevet, 5554): “Mistress Heneli Sarah bat Moses from Lohzin passed away today after which she was buried at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”

1799(24th of Kislev, 5560): In the evening the first Chanukah candle is lit for the last time in the 18th centuary.

1808: Abraham Jacobs married Rachel Raphael at the Great Synagogue today.

1810(25th of Kislev, 5571): Chanukah

1811: In Falmouth, Cornwall, Sarah and Moses Hyman gave birth to Harriet Elizabeth Hyman.

1813: William Collins married Priscilla Marks at the Western Synagogue today.

1816(3rd of Tevet, 5577): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1819: Zadock Jessel married Mary Harris at the Great Synagogue today.

1822: In Berlin, Samuel Bleichröder, founder of the banking firm of S. Bleichröder in 1803 and his wife gave birth to Gerson von Bleichröder who followed in his father’s footsteps.

1823: Birthdate of Chaim David Lippe, the Hungarian born cantor he moved to Vienna where he opened a Jewish publishing house.

1827: Birthdate of Russian native Samuel Lasker, the husband of Augusta Lasker and the father of Henry, Sallie, Harry, Bettie and Esther Lasker, who settled in Little Rock, AR,

1830: In Bavaria, Abraham Feineman and Sibila Oswald gave birth to B.A. Feineman, the husband of Bettie Binswanger, the President of the congregation in St. Joseph, MO for several years and the congregation in Kansas City, MO for seventeen years who was also a vice president of banks in Kansas City and a member of the City Council in Kansas City for two years.

1830(6th of Tevet, 5591) Bordeaux native Moise Rodrigues, the husband of Esther Rodrigues passed away today in South Carolina.

1833: In Prussia, a prohibition was issued prohibiting Hews from assuming the “names of Christian saints as first names.”

1840: In London, Sarah Boam and Morris Van Praagh gave birth to Rebecca Van Praagh.

1841: Joel Jewell married Mary Solomon at the Great Synagogue today.

1841: La reine de Chypre,(The Queen of Cyprus) “a grand opera in five acts composed by Fromental Halevy was  first performed today at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra

1842: In New York, Benjamin Bloomingdale and Hannah Weil gave birth to their third child, Joseph Bernard Bloomingdale, the husband of Clara Kaufman and Vice President of the Hebrew Technical Institute who along with his brother Lyman founded Bloomingdale’s Department Store.

1842: In Bavaria, Loew Affelder and Rosalia Regine Rosenberg gave birth to Jacob Affelder who camed to the United States in 1858 and was the husband of Catherine Fleishman Affelder.

1843: In London, Rachel and Joseph Rosinbloom gave birth to Esther Jeanette Rosinbloom.

1844: In Paddington, London, Isabella Lloyd and Henry Russell gave birth to Fanny Marcella Russell.

1848: Birthdate of Hungarian born and Viennese trained doctor Arpad G. Gerster a surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital as well as a Professor of Clinical Surgery at Columbia while writing such books as Recollections of a New York Surgeon and while raising a son with his wife, the former “Anna Barnard Wynne of Cincinnati.”

1849: The execution of Fyodor Dostoevsky is called off at the last second. The Russian author had been imprisoned for his involvement with a “liberal intellectual literary group” feared by the Tsar Nicholas I.  Whatever their political and intellectual differences Dostoyevsky and the Czar had at least one thing in common, they were both anti-Semites.  Dostoyevsky believed that “Jews were behind just about every attempt to disrupt Europe’s order.”  As he wrote, “The Jews have everything to gain from every cataclysm and coup d’état…and profit from anything that serves to undermine gentile society.” 

1852(11th of Tevet, 5613): Solomon ben Akiba Eger who first served as the Rabbi of Kalish before succeeding his late father as the rabbi in Posen, a position he held when he passed away today.

1855: "Mr. Gottschalk Soiree" published today reviewed the performances of Louis Moreau Gottschalk saying that "in Mr. Gottscahlk we have an artist who doubly claims our attention and our respect.

1861: In Cincinnati, Edward and Henrietta Bloch gave birth Charles Edward Bloch, the husband of the former Bertha Eisendrath, who joined the family business, Bloch and Company which led him to publishing the Chicago Israelite and founding The Reform Advocate.

1862(30th of Kislev, 5623): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1862: In Lancashire, Rosetta and Lewin Barnet Mozely gave birth to Frank Lewis Mozely.

1867: In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the lower house of the Parliament adopted a bill favoring the emancipation of the Jews today.

1878(26th of Kislev, 5639): Second Day of Chanukah

1878: Naphtali Herz Imber, (1856-1909) a Hebrew poet, wrote the words for Hatikvah. The poem eventually became the national anthem of the State of Israel.

Hatikvaהתקווה "The Hope"

כל עוד בלבב פנימה
נפש יהודי הומיה,
ולפאתי מזרח קדימה
עין לציון צופיה -

עוד לא אבדה תקותנו,
התקוה בת שנות אלפים,
להיות עם חופשי בארצנו
ארץ ציון וירושלים.

Kol 'od balevav P'nimah -
Nefesh Yehudi homiyah
Ulfa'atey mizrach kadimah
Ayin l'tzion tzofiyah.

'Od lo avdah tikvatenu
Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim:
Li'hyot am chofshi b'artzenu -
Eretz Tzion Virushalayim.

As long as in the heart, within,
A Jewish soul still yearns,
And onward toward the East,
An eye still watches toward Zion.

Our hope has not yet been lost,
The two thousand year old hope,
To be a free nation in our own homeland,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

1871(10thof Tevet, 5632): Asara B’Tevet

1871: Birthdate of Sophie Grünbaum one of the last Jewish inhabitants of Kleinsteinach who was deported in 1942.

1871: It was reported today that B.L. Solomon & Sons (a partnership of Barnet L., Solomon B. Judah H. and Simon B. Solomon) has a “superb store” in the 600 block of Broadway which offers a “stock of furniture” that includes the most “’costly and luxurious” furniture and materials for decorating the home.

1871: French orientalist Dr. Joseph (Naftali) Derenburg,  the son of Hartwig (Ẓebi-Hirsch) Derenburg, the grandson of Jacob Derenbur and the younger brother of French attorney Jacob Derenburg  was elected a member of the  Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettrestoday.

1872: Two days after she had pass away, 67 year old Elizabeth Manuel, the widow of Moses Emanuel with whom she had had five children, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1872: In “Pirot, Serbia, Isaac and Rachel (Mevorach Varon,” gave birth to David J. Varon, the employee of the Edmond de Rothschild colonies in Palestine and husband of Henriette Behar who came to the United States in 1905 where he was a “Professor of Architectural Design at Syracuse University” and later lived in New York City where he wrote Indication in Architectural Design, lectured on architecture at Cooper Institute and became a member of the Association of Staten Island Architects.

1873: It was reported today that in England, there has been some talk of making Sir Moses Montefiore and Baron Rothschild “peers of the realm.” Before this happens, the Oath of Allegiance taken by members of the House of Lords will have to be modified as has already happened with the House of Common.  The current oath requires all knew members of Lords to swear “on the true faith of a Christian.” Dropping these words was what made it possible for Rothschild to finally take his seat in the House of Commons.

1873: In Great Britain, Ellen Cohen Montague and Samuel Montague, the founder of Samuel Montagu & Co gave birth Lilian Helen Montagu, the sister of Louis and Edwin Montague.

1873: Three days after he had passed away, 94 year old Lewis Schultz, the husband of Louisa Schultz, was buried today at the “Exeter Jewish Cemetery.”

1875(24thof Kislev, 5636): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1874: Birthdate of German socialist leader Erhard Auer who was imprisoned by the Nazis for his role in the July 20 assassination and was murdered by them in March of 1945.

1875: This evening when the Hebrew Charity Fair comes to a close in New York City, all unsold items will be sold at auction to the highest bidder.

1876: It was reported today that New York Governor Samuel Tilden, New York City Mayor William Wickham and Mayor-elect Smith Ely, Jr. had attended the Hebrew Charity Ball at the Academy of Music.  The ball, which raised funds for Jewish and non-Jewish charities, was sponsored by the Purim Association and marked the start of the fashionable ball season in New York.  The Purim Association is one of the oldest of such Jewish organizations in the city.  The society used to sponsor a annual masquerade ball but has not done so since 1871 do to the enactment of the Masquerade law which made it impossible to sponsor such events.

1878: In Wien, Austria, Gustav Przibram, the son of Salomon and Marie Przibram and Charlotte Przibram   gave birth to Professor Karl Przibram

1878: Per the request of the deceased, Reverend A. J. Lyman, pastor of the South Congregational Church officiated at the funeral of the late Randolph Herr who had taken his own life.  Reverend Lyman chose passages from the Old Testament for the service.  Mr. Herr’s brother tried to stop the funeral proclaiming that his brother was Jewish and he should be buried as Jew.  The widow and the former partner of the deceased assured the brother that Lyman was there because this was a request of the late Mr. Herr. After the ceremony, Mr. Herr was buried in Greenwood Cemetery.  No reason was given for this apparently odd request.

1878: Three days after he had passed away, 70 year old Simeon Samson was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1878: The Board of Directors of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital held a lengthy meeting today during which they agreed to reject the five hundred dollar donation offered by Mrs. Stewart through Judge Hilton.  There was no question that the board would reject the donation.  The only matter up for discussion was how strongly to word the letter of rejection. The Directors will make up the shortfall resulting from the rejection of the donation.  Rejection was a matter of pride since a large segment of the Jewish community had expressed their opposition to accepting money from the man who banned them from being guests at his fashionable hotel in Saratoga Springs.  If the board had accepted the money, several of the donors who contribute to the institutions annual budget of ten thousand dollars would no longer support the hospital.

1878: It was reported today that the Jewish Messenger has issued a called for a “united effort” to provide religious training for the city’s poor Jewish children. The Messenger said that “there should be 10,000 children attending the Jewish free schools instead of only 1,000.” The paper took the community to task for arguing about “the length of a prayer or the position of a seat” while Christian missionaries are busy converting these young Jews.

1879: An anonymous correspondent wrote to the Jewish Messenger of New York that: “Mr. S. L. Lewis . . . died on Saturday, November 29th [1879] . . . funeral . . . the following day with Jewish rites, Mr. C. J. Fishel, of the firm of Mellis and Fishel, opening the services by reading a prayer. . . . Deceased carne here about fourteen years ago and has resided here ever since.  Mrs. Rebecca Green, wife of Mr. Mark Green, of the firm of Phillips and Company, [died] on the 8th [of December, 1879]. Mr. J. Hyman opened the services. . . . The deceased was born in San Francisco, Cal., and was the daughter of Mr. I. Salomon, a wealthy merchant. Her body will be sent to San Francisco for interment.”  These are believed to be the first Jewish funerals that took place in what was then known as the Sandwich Islands, or as we know them today, the Hawaiian Islands, our 50th state.

1879: It was reported today that “The Jews, Their Customs and Ceremonies” by E. M. Myers is now available in New York.

1880:In New York Rebecca Goldsmith and actor “Joseph Frankau, a cousin of London cigar importer Arthur Frankau” gave birth to pioneering Broadway designer Aline Bernstein.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/aline-bernstein

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bernstein-aline

1880: Mary Anne Evans, better known by her pen-name George Eliot, under which she wrote her last novel Daniel Deronda which was published  in 1876 and presented a presented a positive view of Jews and was sympathetic to the cause that would later be labeled as Zionism, passed away today.

1882: It was reported today that in Russia, the legislature “has decided to accede to the request of certain Jewish chemists to rescind the order…forbidding Jews from keeping chemists’ shops outside of those part of the empire set aside for Jews to reside in.”  (This is an example of the crazy-quilt of regulations with which Jews coped with during the 19thcentury.  There never was a sense of permanence to any of the gains made by Jews since the government was autocratic and the society was dominated by ant-Semites.)

1883: Birthdate of New York City native Emil Salomon, the Executive Director of the Tulsa, Oklahoma Jewish Federation starting in 1949 who “argued with the USNA (United Service New American, which was founded to help Jewish refugees after WW II) that Tulsa Jews were too few and the employment opportunities too limited to absorb the number of refugees that USNA requested” which was a total of 24.

1883: William Goldsmidt found the body of his father Isidor in his room at the home they shared on 2nd Avenue in New York.  Based on notes that were found and the examination by the coroner, it was deduced that he had died of a self-induced overdose of laudanum.  It would appear that he had never gotten over the death of his wife which was soon followed by the death of his daughter.

1885: Birthdate of old Riga native and Cornell undergraduate Samuel Berkowitz the holder of a Masters from Columbia and public school principal  who was the husband Frances Berkowitz with whom he raised three children, Henry, Arthur and Evelyn

1885: In Great Britain, the first passenger train ran through the Mersey Railway Tunnel which had been built under the superintendence of Samuel Isaacs.

1886(25thof Kislev, 5647): Chanukah

1886: The first passenger train ran through the Mersey tunnel owned by Samuel Isaac

1886: A review of “Leah the Forsaken” panned the performance of Margaret Mather in the title role.  On the other hand, Milnes Levick performed the role “bore the role of the apostate Jew with dignity and skill of a sound experienced actor.”

1888: It was reported today that the Seligman Solomon Society will be providing an evening of entertainment at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum later this month.

1888: “Members of the highest of London’s Jewish circles” attended the reception that followed the marriage of “Brandon Thomas, one of the best known of the younger actors on the English stage and Marguerite Blanche Leverson, the beautiful daughter” diamond merchant James Leverson and his wife Henrietta” who had previously opposed the marriage on religious grounds.

1888: Among the allocations made by the Brooklyn Board of Estimates were $134.39 to the Hebrew Benevolent Association of Brooklyn and $703.49 to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society.

1889(29thof Kislev, 5650): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1889: It was reported today that the Hebrew Educational Fair, a fund raiser for several Jewish charities in New York City raised $125,000

1889: Birthdate of avant garde Russian artist Nathan Altman who decades long career spanned the Czars and the Commissars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Altman#/media/File:Natan_Altman_(selfportrait,_1911,_GRM).jpg

1889: The Montefiore and Lady Judith Hebrew Association was formed by a group of Jews who met tonight at the Florence Building in New York City.

1889: It was reported today that during the month of November, the United Hebrew Charities had provide aid to 2,77i adults and children who comprised 639 families

1889: It was reported today that Henry Rice is the President of the United Hebrew Charities and that I.S. Isaacs serves as secretary of the organization.

1889: It was reported today that the newspapers are filled with “reminiscences” of Robert Browning who passed away earlier this month.  These include articles which “tend to support the theory that he is of Jewish descent.”  His father was a clerk in the employ of the Rothschild at a time when their bank “employed scarcely any but Jews.”  The name “Bruning” (a Germanic form of Browning) was very common among Jewish families in North Germany.”  He was a friend of Emma Lazarus and “both his verse and private correspondence show that he kept an interest in the” persecution of the Russian Jews.

1890: Abraham B. Arnold, the graduate of the Washington University School of Medicine was among those granted a certificate to practice medicine and surgery in California at todays “regular meeting of the Board of Examiners.

1891: Founding of Congregation Kenesseth Israel in Minneapolis, MN.

1891: Sixty-four year old Paul Anton de Lagarde who “argued that Germany should create a "national" form of Christianity purged of Semitic elements and insisted that Jews were "pests and parasites" who should be destroyed "as speedily and thoroughly as possible".

1891: The NYPD police station on East 22nd Street appeared to a monument to ecumenism since it was filled with three carloads of loot stolen from Churches and Synagogues by a thief who styled himself as “Pastor John Weih.”

1892: In a move that will have an impact on Russian Jews trying to reach the United States, Secretary of the Treasury Charles Foster has told the Secretary of State that officials at Hamburg are prepared to let ships sail for the United State even though a few cases of Cholera have been reported and recommended that German officials be told that ships would not be admitted to the United States until cholera was no longer presence in Hamburg.

1892: In Palestine, Rivka and Moshe David “Morris” Gelman gave birth to Joseph Gelmanm, the husband of Said Sid Simons.

1892: Birthdate of NYC native and Columbia trained Pharmacist, Miss Fanchon Hart, the bacteriologist and food and drug analyst who served on the faculty of her alma mater.

1893: A representative of the United Hebrew Charities was among those who signed a letter addressed to the Mayor calling on him to help provide more relief for all the newly unemployed who have lost their jobs as a result of the Panic of 1893.

1893: In Osterholz-Scharmbeck, “merchant and cigar manufacturer Bernhard Reemtsma” and his wife gave birth to Philipp Fürchtegott Reemtsma, “the tobacco industrialist” whose son Jan described Phillip’s art collection as “stolen” and who has been part of the work to return art to its rightful Jewish owners who were forced to part with it during the Nazi era.

1894: On the last day of the Dreyfus Court Martial his defense attorney Edgar Demange “spent three hours arguing that the very contents of the bordereau showed that it could not be the work of Dreyfus” while prosecutor Brisset abandoned “the moral proofs” presenting an emotional appeal the Judges.

1894: In France, The Dreyfus affair moved to a new level when Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly convicted of treason.

1894: At Shabbat morning services in New York, erev Chanukah, “rabbis earnestly and vigorously pleaded for the better observance of the Sabbath.”

1894: Today’s announcement “that the whole village of Halberton in Cumberland Country, New Jersey has been sold by the Sheriff” provides the public with proof that another of the Russian Jewish colonies in the state has failed.

1895: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon today at Temple Emanu-El entitled “On What Basis Can Christian and Jews Unite?”

1895: Wolf Avener of Philadelphia and Isaac Falpe were arraigned today before the Magistrate at the Centre Street Court on charges of trying to blackmail Aris Lichtenstein, a Jew who converted to Christianity.

1895: Birthdate of Viennese native Trude Fleischmann, the noted American photographer. (Editor’s note – thanks to Cedar Rapids photographer par excellence Steve Eckert for helping to increase our awareness of Jewish photographers and the role of Jews in photography.)

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/fleischmann-trude

1895: Based on reports published today the charity fair sponsored by the New York Jewish community for the last couple of weeks has raised more than $150,000, two thirds of which will go to the Education Alliance and one third to the Hebrew Technical Institute.

1897(27thof Kislev, 5658): Third Day of Chanukah

1897: In Charleston, SC, Dr. Mendes of Savanah officiated at the marriage of Isabelle Nathan and Benjamin Mantoue.

1897: In London, Rabbis Marks and Joseph officiated at the wedding of George Frederick Hart, “the eldest son of the late Neville Hart” and Emily Frances, the daughter of the Late Michael Abrahams of Regent’s Park.

1898: Schenectady, NY native Frank B. Yovits who had enlisted in 1897 and served with the “13th U.S. Infantry in Cuba” was promoted to Corporal today after which he was ship to the Philippines. (Editor’s note – this is during the Spanish American War and the subsequent Moro Uprising) 

1900(30thof Kislev, 5661): Parshat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1900: Emil Jellinek, delivery of the first new Mercedes which had been sold to racecar driver Baron Henry de Rothschild at the railway station in Nice.  [The car was called Mercedes in honor of the Jewish automobile developer’s daughter. Somehow, this naming convention escaped the notice of the Nazis who were proud to ride in Mercedes-Benz vehicles.]

1901: In “Lutheran View Of Sunday” published today, William Dallmann, a Lutheran pastor wrote “as to the Sabbath: There is no “Sabbath.”  The law of Moses touching the Sabbath given to the Jews in the Old Testament is not binding on the Christians in the New Testament.”

1902: In New York, Louis Napoleon Levy, the New York born son of Jonas Phillips Levy and Frances Allen Levy and Lillian Hendricks Levy gave birth to Alma Levy, who became Alma Bookman when she married Robert Bookman.

1903: It was reported today that “two Russians named Gnetschin and Marosjeik, who have been on trial charged with murder as the authors of the massacre of Jews here last Spring, were sentenced to seven and five years' penal servitude respectively.”

1904: Approximately 100 students met in Earl Hall today and formed the Zionist Society of Columbia after listening to speeches by Dr. P.H. Mendes, Dr. L.J. Magnes and Professor Israel Friedlander.

1905(24thof Kislev, 5666): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1905: A special matinee performance of “La Tosca” starring Sarah Bernhardt, who along with Mark Twain, had appeared earlier in the week at a benefit performance for the fund for the suffering Jews of Russia, is scheduled to take place this afternoon at the Lyric Theatre.

1905: An additional $3,367.41 was added to the fund for the relief of the persecuted Jews in Russia today.

1905: The Novoe Vremya published a series of articles alleging that the Jews are at the bottom of the whole revolutionary movement” in Russia and “would alone benefit from it.”

1906(5thof Tevet, 5667): Parashat Vayigash

1906: It was reported today that the present concessions made by the Russian government “fall so far short that “they can be of no value in strengthening the government or in aiding the Jews”

1907: It was reported today that Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El  has taken issue with a speech delivered by Harvard President Eliot to members of the Menorah Society “in which he said, among other things, the Jews are inferior physical to almost any other race in the world and that through the oppression of centuries they have lost the warlike spirt which they once had had.

1908: At tonight’s meeting of the New York Milk Committee of the Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor Dr. Wilbur C Phillips paid tribute to Nathan Straus for his efforts to bring fresh mil to the poor and said that he believed that “if Mr. Nathan Straus could join with the Milk Committee in issuing an appeal for funds money would be lacking to feed every starving mother and underfed baby…”

1909(10thof Tevet, 5670): Asara B’Tevet

1909: A fare-well banquet in honor of Rabbi Martin A Meyers was held tonight at the Hotel Premier in New York City. The 31-year old Meyers has been serving as the Rabbi at Temple Israel in Brooklyn.  He is moving to San Francisco to begin serving as the Rabbi at Temple Emanuel, the Pacific Coast’s largest Jewish congregation.  Rabbi De Sola Mendes served as Toastmaster at the event which was attended by 22 rabbis including Stephen Wise, Joseph Silverman, Alexander Lyons, and Rudolph Grossman.

1910(21stof Kislev, 5671): Fifty-three year old David Günzburg the 3rd Baron de Günzburg, a noted orientalist and leader of the Jewish community in Russia passed away today in St. Petersburg

1910: It was reported today that The Jewish Immigrants’ Information Society which provides quarters for Jews at Galveston: had taken an active role in helping Secretary of Commerce and Labor Charles Nagel reach the decision to admit thirteen of the twenty Russian Jewish immigrants seeking admission to the United at Galveston.

1911(1stof Tevet, 5672): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1911: Mrs. Leopold de Rothschild was awarded the Order of Mercy.

1911: At Cape Town, the council of the university, confirmed its “resolution to include Hebrew among the optional subjects in its syllabus for matriculation.”

1911: Anglo-American Archeologist Charles Waldstein resigned the Slade of Professorship of Fine Arts at Cambridge University.

1912: Report that in response to joint representations by foreign Ambassadors, the Turkish government repeals order expelling Italian subjects, majority of whom are Levantine Jews.

1912: In Philadelphia, founding of Adath Zion.

1912: The K.A.M. Club is scheduled to meet today at the K.A.M. Temple

1912: Arthur Dunham is scheduled to be the conductor this evening at the Tenth Sinai Orchestral Concert being held at Sinai Temple on Chicago’s south side.

1912: Rabbi Schanfarber officiated at the weeding of Henry Horwitz of Cleveland, Ohio and Mrs. Carrie Baldauf of Oskaloosa, Iowa. (Editor’s note – you have to be a real Hawkeye to understand this one.)

1912: Bernard Jadwin of New York married Adeline Horwich at the Ashland Club today in Chicago.

1912: In Chicago, Rabbi Julius Rappaport officiated the wedding of Milton E. Kauffer, the son of “Mr. and Mrs. Jonas Kauffer of Milwaukee, WI” and Marie Unger, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bert Unger.

1912: Birthdate of Joseph Wulf, the native of Chemnitz who was a resistance fighter in the Krakow Ghetto and a survivor of the Auschwitz death marches and as an award winning historian in the post-war fought to make the site of the Wannsee Conference “into a Holocaust memorial and document center.

1913: It was reported today that George McAney, the President-elect of the of the Board of Alderman spoke at a dinner of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association which was attended by Marcus M. Marks, Borough-elect President  where he called for “a new city charter” to bring progess to New York.

1914: The American Jewish Relief Committee has raised a total of $222,122.06 as of today.

1914: Following the outbreak of WW I, General John Monash, who had “acted as censor for four weeks” “before being appointed to command the 4th Infantry Brigade of the Australian Imperial Force” set sail for Egypt where it would join the forces fighting the Ottomans and protecting the Suez Canal.

1914: The Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs remitted $26, 144.42 to various entities in Palestine.

1914: A group of 300 citizens from Waco, TX submitted a petition to Georgia Governor John M. Slaton listing seven reasons why they “believe that the verdict of the jury, of the death penalty based upon the evidence was not justified” and that “it would be a blot on the escutcheon of the fair State of Georgia to permit Leo M. Frank to executed.”

1915: At the headquarters of the Campaign Committee working to raised five million dollars before the end of 1916 for the millions of Jews suffering in Europe due to the work, and in the offices of Felix Warburg, the clerks were busy all day today “opening letters offering help in tie and money and answering telephone calls from persons who wanted to work on the drive and contribute to the fund.

1916: More than 1000, members of the Hebrew Retail Kosher Butchers’ Association of the East Side met today and voted to boycott the beef offered by the local slaughter houses since the price has continued to rise.  In the last month, chuck has gone from 12 and a half cents a pound to 17 and a half cents a pound.

1916: Herbert H. Lehman, Treasurer of the Joint Distribution Committee representing the American Jewish, Central and People’s Relief Committees announced today that his work of tabulating the contributions and pledges from the mass meeting in Carnegie Hall on December 21 had gone far enough to prove that predictions about having raised three million dollars were accurate.

1916: It was reported today that “the publishers of the Jewish Daily Forward” had promised to contribute the gross income of their issue of April 22, the value of which is estimated to be between ten and fifteen million dollars, to the ten million dollars fund being raised for Jewish War Relief.

1916: The 26th Annual Assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society opened in New Orleans today.

1917(7thof Tevet, 5678): Parashat Vayigash

1917: Dr. Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver the sermon at Temple Beth-El.

1917: “Word was received at the headquarters of the Jewish War Relief Committee” on New York’s fifth avenue “that the bulk of the subscriptions obtained by Adolph Zukor” one of the founders of Paramount Pictures, totaling more than $50,000” were ready to be turned over the committee’s Treasuer.

1917: Marcus Loew reported to the Jewish War Relief Committee that he and his managers had collected approximately $42,000 from “actors, directors, musicians and” others in the entertainment industry with whom they do business.

1917: Today, in discussing the impact on Zionism of the capture of Jerusalem by the British at Temple Israel in Harlem, Dr. Maurice H. Harris said “There will be less need now of a Jewish homeland because the days of Jewish persecution are over” and that “the Jew who bends his steps to Judea today will be the idealist who feels that ‘not on bread alone doth man live’ seeking to “got there not to make money but because it is the Holy City” with all that the name Jerusalem conjures up.

1917: Vice Chairman Mrs. Leopold Stern presented “an illuminated book of old Italian design…to Jacob H. Schiff at reception…this afternoon at Delmonico’s” given in honor of the women who worked on the campaign to raise five million dollars for the war relief fund.

1917: Colonel Ronald Storrs, the newly appointed British Military Governor of Jerusalem toured the city for the first time meeting with wounded Turkish soldiers being treated at the Grand New Hotel and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Kamel al-Husseine, the spiritual leader of the city’s Muslims.

1917: Formal peace negotiations begin at Brest-Litovsk between the Germans and the Russians whose chief delegate is Adolf Joffe, a Jewish born Bolshevik.

1917: Having crossed the Auju River, outside of Jaffa the British position was made even more secure when the 54th (East Anglian) Division captured Bald Hill to the right of the 52nd and in doing so the Ottoman defenders lost fifty-two killed and forty-four more were taken prisoner.

1917: Isaac Steinberg began serving as People’s Commissar for Justice of the RSFSR

1917: In the newly independent Finland, Parliament approved an Act concerning "Mosaic Confessors."  Under the Act, Jews could for the first time become Finnish nationals, and Jews not possessing Finnish nationality were henceforth in all respects to be treated as foreigners in general.

1918: “A gold medal was presented to Felix M. Warburg” tonight” at a dinner at the Hotel Biltmore by a group of the division heads and workers, who under his leadership have just completed a successful campaign for $5,000,000 for Jewish war sufferers.”

1919:  The United States deported 250 alien radicals, including anarchist Emma Goldman.

1919(30th of Kislev, 5680): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Sixth Day of Chanukah

1920(11thof Tevet, 5681): Sixty-nine year old Rabbi Abram S. Isaacs who edited The Jewish Messenger and published several books including A Modern Hebrew Poet: The Life and Writings of Chaim Luzzatto passed away today in Paterson, NJ.

http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=5525

1921: Future State Supreme Court Justice Alfred Frankenthaler married Martha Lowenstein today in New York.  The couple had three children – Marjorie, Gloria and Helen.

1921: Birthdate of Lee Wolff Wattenberg the cancer fighting doctor. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/health/lee-w-wattenberg-who-saw-cancer-fighters-in-foods-dies-at-92.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1922(3rd of Tevet, 5683): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1922: What is described by the bankers as the first Jewish bond issue in history was announced for today by Harvey Fisk & Sons, Inc.  The bond issue is valued at 75,000 pounds and is issued by the city of Tel Aviv which plans to use the funds for public works projects including the construction of sewage systems, streets and roads and installations to produce electricity.

1922: In Lynn, MA, Mary Pauline (née Gold) Roman, a dancer and Abraham Roman, a barker in a family owned carnival gave birth to Ruth Roman, the sister of Ann and Eve Roman.

1922: Birthdate of Heinz Bernard, the son of the Hazzan of the Orthodox Synagogue in Nuremberg who as Heinz Bernard Lowenstein gained fame in the UK as an actor and director.  The name change came about after his natural father died when the boy was two years old and he was adopted Max Lowenstein.

1923(14thof Tevet, 5684): Parashat Vayechi

1923: President Ben Altheimer, presided over a meeting at Temple Beth-El this afternoon where it decied to honor Rabbi Samuel Schulman with a life time appointment in honor of his twenty-five years of service to the congregation.

1924: The Institute of Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University is opened in Jerusalem, although the university has not yet officially opened.

1924: “The Wonderful Adventure” a silent film directed by Manfred Noa and written by Robert Liebmann was released today in Germany.

1924: Birthdate of attorney Jack Greenberg, the Brooklynite son of Jewish immigrants, who argued many of the land mark Civil Rights cases

http://www.forumonlawcultureandsociety.org/bio/jack-greenberg/

http://web.law.columbia.edu/faculty/jack-greenberg

http://web.law.columbia.edu/news/2016/10/legendary-civil-rights-pioneer-and-beloved-professor-jack-greenberg-48-dies-91?platform=hootsuite

 

1925: Birthdate of financier Lewis Glucksman, a trader with Lehman Brothers and CEO of Kuhn Loeb.

1925(5thof Tevet, 5686): Sixty-five year old Paul Nelke, the Berlin-born British stockbroker who was a senior partner in Nelke, Phillips and Bendix and who was the father of socialite and patron of the arts Maude Julia Augusta Nelke, passed away today.

1925(5thof Tevet, 5686): Eighty year old Benjamin W. Fleisher, the husband of Ida Maria Fleisher passed away after which he was buried at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia, PA.

1926: Part I of “Queen Louise” a biopic produced and written by Max Glass was released in Germany today.

1927(28thof Kislev, 5688): 4th day of Chanukah

1927(28thof Kislev, 5688): Eighty-nine year old Dr. Jacob Da Silva Solis-Cohen, founder of laryngology in the United States passed away today.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v141/n3565/abs/141361b0.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9213113

1928: The American Advisory Committee of the Hebrew University announced today that the archaeological department had sent to the Newark Museum  a collection of potsherds and other other material from the excavations at  tel el Jerish, a Middle Bronze Age, mound north of Tel Aviv.  Dr. Eleazar Sukenik, field archaeologist of the university recently cleared a cave in the Wady-en-Nar.  A number of ossuaries with Hebrew inscriptions were removed.  Of particular intnerest is an ossuary bearing the name Shamai be Jehosaf.  The fragments have been added to the university collection.

1928: Felix Warburg, Chairman of the American Advisory Committee announced today that Societies of Friends of the Hebrew University had been formed in Boston under the chairmanship of Dr. Milton J. Rosenau of Harvard Medical School and in New Haven under the chairmanship of Colonel Isaac M. Ullman.

1928: Bing Crosby and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra (who were not Jewish) recorded “Makin Whoopee!” the Eddie Cantor hit with lyrics by Gus Kahn

1929: Anita Pollitzer, the South Carolina feminists and patron of the arts and her husband were photographed today at Muir Woods.

http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:32862

1929: Tillie and Barney Balaban gave birth to American Jazz man, Leonard “Red” Balaban, he husband of Maxine “Micki” Israel and father of Michael, Steven, and Rachel Balaban.

1929: U.K. flyweight Moe Mizler fought his final bout of the year – a bout which resulted in a loss.

1930: “The Royal Family of Broadway” the cinema version of the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, directed by George Cukor and with a screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz was released today in the United States today.

1930: The Kosher Prime Butchers Corporation was among the business that was incorporated today in the state of New York.

1931(12thof Tevet, 5692): Forty-nine year old Lithuania native and Omaha businessman Harry Lapidus, the president of the Omaha Fixture Supply Company and leader of the Jewish community who “was a member of the American Jewish National Council of Americanization and a member of the executive committee of the United Palestine Appeal while raising two children – Earl and Estelle – with his wife, the former Minnie K. Kooler “was found mysteriously shot to death late tonight near a viaduct” in Omaha.

1932: Premiere of “The Rebel,” a German historical film directed by Curtis Bernhardt and Edwin H. Knopf and co-produced by Joe Pasternak.

1932: “The Mummy” a horror film directed by Karl Freund and produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr. was released in the United States today.

1932: Seventy-six Major General Erwin von Heimerdinger, the father of Gertrude von Heimerdinger was employed in the German Foreign Office as assistant Chief of the Diplomatic Courier Section. An anti-Nazi, she secretly arranged for special passes to enable diplomat Fritz Kolbe (the main Allied source of intelligence) to make frequent trips to Switzerland to pass on information to Allen Dulles, head of American O.S.S.

1935: In Amsterdam Leo Speyer, the “son of Isak Itzig Speier and Flora Speier and Elize Nanette Speyer gave birth Isaac Alfred Speyer who had the dubious honor of having his father murdered at Auschwitz and his mother murdered at Sobibor.

1935: Birthdate of Jamaica, NY native Rabbi Joel Mathew Chazin, the JTS graduate and “strong advocate for social justice” who served for 22 years as chaplain and director of religious services at Montefiore and who raised three children with his wife Linda while living in Shaker Heights, OH.

1936: “Balalaika” a musical play co-authored by Eric Maschwitz opened today in London at the Adelphia Theatre where it ran for 569 performances.

1936(8thof Tevet, 5679): Sixty eight year old Milton S. Florshiem, the founder and chairman of the board of Florsheim Shoe Company passed away today.

http://www.florsheim.com/shop/index.html

1936: At a dinner at the Hotel Commodore attended by 1,000 guests in honor of British Labor leader Lord Marley, “the project to settle oppressed Jews in the autonomous territory of Birobidjan in the Soviet Union” appeared to move forward with the announcement that “the U.S.S.R. had authorized admittance of 2,000 families and 500 individuals from Poland for 1937.”

1937: The Palestine Post reported no fewer than 16 terrorist attacks over the weekend. An Arab police inspector, Sa¹ad al-Arab, was killed in Haifa. A second victim of the attack on the Haifa-Nahalal bus, Aaron Sloverson, died in a hospital. Isaac Orphali, 26, was badly wounded when an Egged bus was shot at near Motza.

1938: “The United States abruptly rejected a sharp protest the German Government sought to deliver to the State Department in which the Boys from Berlin complained about a speech by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes which he “had criticized Henry Ford and Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh for having accepted decorations from Germany and then had trained his guns on Germany” for persecuting the Jews.

1939: “Everything Happens at Night” an espionage mystery featuring Maurice Moscovitch as “Dr. Hugo Norden” was released in the United States today.

1940(22nd of Kislev, 5701): Author Nathanael West dies in auto accident at the age of 37. In his short career West produced Miss Lonely Hearts, Cool Million and The Day of the Locust.

1941: Massacres of the Jews of Vilna ended leaving 32,000 dead Jews.

1941: Ten days after Romania declared war on the United States the former U.S. ambassador died at Bucharest before he could return to the U.S.

1941: Over the next eight days, more than 40,000 Jews are murdered at Bogdanovka in the Transnistria region of Romania.

1942:  The Jewish Fighting Organzation (JFO) lead by Aharon Liebeskind attacked Nazi troops gathered at Cyganeria, a coffee house in Kraków, Poland, killing several SS officers.

1942: Franz Boas, “father of modern Anthropology” passed away.  Born in 1858, Boas never converted to Christianity, but he was one of those German Jews who saw himself as a German first and foremost.  Of course the last decade of his life might have caused him to re-think that concept.

1943(25thof Kislev): 5704): First day of Chanukah, a holiday that was celebrated in the Lodz Ghetto this year with a party according to a photo provided by Yad Vashem.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/08.asp

1943: Rabbi Louis Wefel, the “flying Chaplain” spends his last Chanukah in Casablanca leading services. A few days later, Werfel would become one of only 6 Jewish chaplains to actually die in combat in World War II.

1943: After the family of Adolfo Kaminsky had been interned in Drancy, which was a prelude to deportation to the death camps, the family was freed today and moved to Paris thanks to the “support from the Consul of Argentina…”

1943: The Gestapo discovered 62 Jews hiding in a cellar of a building on Krolewska Street in Warsaw. All are murdered.

1943: Birthdate of Paul Wolfowitz, a sub-cabinet official in the Bush Administration who was named President of the World Bank, a  position from which he was forced to resign in disgrace.

1943: United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau confronted U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, telling him to his face that "the impression is all around that you, particularly, are anti-Semitic!"

1943: As Jews light the second Chanukah candle, the Women’s League for Palestine takes over tonight’s performance of Carmen Jones in New York City with the proceeds to be used to support their centers in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv which feed needy children.

1944(26thof Tevet, 5704): Parashat Vayera

1944(26thof Tevet, 5704): Fifty-five year old German born dentist Fritz Pfeffer who was in hiding in with Anne Frank died today of “enterocolitis” at the “Neuengamme concentration camp, Hamburg, Nazi Germany” today.

http://www.annefrankguide.net/en-GB/bronnenbank.asp?oid=3072

 

1944: Modi Alon, completed his RAF flight training at a base in Rhodesia. Four years later, Alon would become the first member of the fledgling IAF to score an aerial victory.

1944: “Winged Victory” the cinematic adaptation of Moss Hart’s stage play was released today in the United States.

1944: Together Again” a film based on a story co-authored by Herbert J. Biberman and directed by Charles Vidor was released today in the United States.

1945: The American Displaced Persons Act makes it easier for Nazi war criminals to immigrate to the United States. It particularly benefits Balts, Ukrainians, and ethnic Germans--many of whom had engaged in a "high level of collaboration" with the Germans. The act discriminates against Jewish refugees. When the bill is debated, many congressmen and members of the Departments of State, Justice, and Interior express their anti-Jewish feelings indirectly and in private.

1945(18th of Tevet, 5706):Otto Neurath an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist passed away. “Before he was forced to flee his native country for Great Britain in the wake of the Nazi occupation, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle.”

1945(18thof Tevet, 5706): Seventy-three year old Vilna born and educated pioneer Zionist leader David Podolsky who came to the United States in 1896 where he combined work as a realtor with support of such organization of Yeshiva College and HIAS while raising three daughters and a son with his wife Fannie passed away today.

1945: Today Colliers magazine published “I’m Crazy” a story by J.D. Salinger “that contained material later used in The Cather in the Rye.”

1946(29thof Kislev, 5707): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1946(29thof Kislev, 5707): Phillip Langh, the graduate of Columbia and JTS who served as the rabbi at Chicago’s Anshe Emet Synagogue from 1920 to 1928 passed away today.

1947: The new leader of the Jewish Community (Dr. Ghingold) appeared at the residence of the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Alexandru Safran, bearing words from the government that he must leave Romania within two hours! The expulsion of Dr. Safran from the country, and his replacement by Rabbi Moses Rosen represented a turning point in the life of the Jewish community in Romania"

1948: Mordechai Hod was among a group of IAF pilots who flew several Spitfires and Messerschmitts from Czechoslovakia to Israel.  The planes, which were war surplus clandestinely purchased in Czechoslovakia, were some of the first modern warplanes acquired by the infant Jewish state.

1948: At night, Operation Horev began with an attack by the IDF against Hill 86, an Egyptian position overlooking the Gaza-Rafa Road.

1948: Syria banned Life and Newsweek because of “their increased Zionist propaganda”

1949: “East Side, West Side” a film based on a novel by Marcia Davenport (Marcia Glick) and directed by Mervyn Leroy was released today in the United States today.

1950: Eighty-eight year old conductor and arranger Walter Damrosch whose father was Lutheran but whose grandfather was Jewish (a common German sequence) passed away today

1952: “The Member of the Wedding” directed by Fred Zinnemann and produced by Stanley Kramer was released today in the United States.

1952: Beginning of the national syndication of Ding Dong School. Created by and starring Frances Horwich, it was one of the first television shows to offer quality educational programming for young children.

 

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the UN General Assembly failed to give the needed two-thirds majority to its Political Committee¹s resolution, which required that the Arab states enter into immediate and direct peace negotiations with Israel, and without any preconditions. The vote was 24 for, 21 against and 15 abstentions.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that a Negev settler, Yosef Yairi, 24, of Sde Boker, was killed by marauders. Infiltrators stole 80 sheep and irrigation equipment from the kibbutz. Israel protested that meat purchased in Ethiopia was seized by Egyptian authorities in Port Said.

1953: Yitzhak Pundak was appointed head of the IDF’s Armored Corps.

1955: “The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell” a movie based on the life of the air power advocate who proved you cannot be a prophet in your own time directed by Otto Preminger, produced by Milton Sperling who also co-authored the script and with music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released in the United States by Warner Bros.

1955:Lola Montès,” an epic historical romance film and the last completed film of director Max Ophüls   and featuring Anton Walbrook as “Ludwig I, King of Bavaria” was released in France today.

1955: “Dementia” a horror film co-starring Shelly Berman was released today in the United States.

1956: After six months, the curtain came down on the Broadway production of “New Faces of 1956” produced by Leonard Sillman.

1956: Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man” co-starring Nehemiah Persoff and featuring Werner Klemperer with music by Bernard Hermann was released today in the United Sates

1956: Oswald Rothuag, the Nazi jurist who perverted justice for the sake of the Reich and “who presided over the trial of Leo Katzenberger” and ordered “his execution for ‘racial defilement’” was released on parole today after his life sentence was reduced to twenty years of which he served less than ten.

1959: In one of those only in America moment NBC broadcast “Christmas Startime” a “musical Christmas special that featured conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein.”

1960: “Two Women” which was released today in Italy produced the Oscar Winning Actress thanks to the “the heavy promotions by its North American distributor Joseph E. Levine.”

1961: In today’s issue of The Jewish Chronicle, editor William Frankel led with the story of Rabbi Louis Jacobs’ resignation from the staff of Jew’s College due to the Chief Rabbi’s ongoing opposition and then followed a week later with an editorial expressing “regret” at “the loss of another spiritual leader followed by the pointed comment that “a religious revival will never be brought about prohibitions and denunciations, by exclusive claims to authenticity, or by mutual recriminations between different sections of the community.”

1961: In Washington, DC, Carl and Joan Fastow gave birth to Andrew Fastow, a key figure in the Enron debacle who pleaded guilty and went to jail for his part in the Enron’s demise.

1962(25thof Kislev, 5723): Chanukah

1962: Birthdate of Buenos Aires native Andrés Cantor, the grandson of refugees from Nazi occupied Poland and “sportscaster and pundit who works in the United States providing Spanish-language commentary and analysis in sports.”

1963: In one of those cultural ironies that can only happen in America, a special rendition of “Steam Heat,” the Richard Adler and Jerry Ross hit was performed today on the Judy Garland Christmas Show.

1964: Release date for “Kiss Me Stupid” a comedic film written by I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder and produced and directed by Billy Wilder.

1964: Comedian Lenny Bruce is convicted on obscenity charges.

1964: In Israel, Levi Eshkol formed the 12th government today.

1964: As the 11th government gives way to the 12th government Golda Meir continues to serve as Foreign Minister.

1965: Birthdate of David Samuel Goyer, “an American screenwriter, film director, novelist, and comic book writer.”

1965(28thof Kislev, 5726): Fourth day of Chanukah

1965: Simon and Garfunkel recorded “Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall” today.

1965(28thof Kislev, 5726): Sixty-four year old Al Ritz, the oldest of the Ritz Brothers passed away today in New Orleans.

1967: “The Graduate,” directed by Mike Nichols, with a screenplay co-written by Buck Henry, co-starring Dustin Hoffman and with songs by Paul Simon was released today in the United States.

1968(1stof Tevet, 5729): Rosh Chodesh Tevet and the 7th day of Chanukah

1968(1stof Tevet, 5729): Fifty-nine year old Cornell University and University of Chicago (Ph.D.) trained economist and  WW II Army Air Forces officer Oscar L. Altman, one of the “first economist to see the importance of the Eurodollar” and “treasurer of the International Monetary Fund” passed away today.

1969: As part of the Cherbourg Project, retired Israeli Admiral Mordecai Limon met in Paris with Martin Siemm and Amiot. The owner of the Cherbourg shipyard signed a contract with Limon canceling the original sale of the boats to Israel. Amiot then signed a contract with Siemm selling the boats to the Norwegian for the same price. Copies of the contracts were immediately dispatched to the relevant French authorities.

1969(13thof Tevet, 5730): Seventy-five year old Austrian-born, American movie director Josef von Sternberg best known for his two versions of “The Blue Angel” and “discovering actress Marlene Dietrich, passed away today.

http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/moguls/von_sternberg.html

1970: The S.S. commander of Treblinka was sentenced to life imprisonment. 

1971: Kurt Waldheim was elected Secretary General of the UN. Waldheim became a controversial figure after being exposed by the Austrian Weekly Profile and the New York Times. Although he denied any Nazi past, the World Jewish Congress contended they had proof that he had been a member of the S.A. and Army group E that was involved with deportation of Greek Jews and Yugoslavian partisans. Despite the WJC’s proof that the United Nations War Crimes Commission had wanted Waldheim for murder, he denied any direct involvement with such actions. Although he did not succeed in his bid for a third term, he was elected President of Austria in May 1986. Waldheim was denied entry to the U.S. and many diplomats refused to call on him. A notable exception was the Pope who received him in 1987.

1973(27th of Kislev, 5734): Sixty-five year old Philip Rahv, born Ivan Greenberg, the co-founder of “The Partisan Review” passed away today.

1973: “Rabbi Daniel J. Fingerer” officiated at the wedding of Carole Drucker, the Assistant State Attorney General and chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the State Attorney General's office and daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Drucker and George D. Zuckerman the University of Michigan and Harvard Law School graduate and son of Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Drucker,

1974: An American child was injured today in Jerusalem during a terrorist grenade attack on a bus.

1974: “Jacob the Liar,” an East German-Czechoslovak Holocaust film based on the novel of the same name by “concentration camp survivor Jurek Becker was shown on GDR TV today for the first time.

1976(1stof Tevet, 5737): Sixth Day of Chanukah

1976: Yosef Burg, a member of the National Religious Party, completed his term as Internal Affairs Minister.

1976: In Israel, the government head by Yithak Rabin resigned today “after ministers of the National Religious Party were sacked because the party had abstained from voting on a motion of no confidence, which had been brought by Agudat Yisrael over a breach of the Sabbath on an Israeli Air Force base.”

1977(12thof Tevet, 5738): Eighty-three year old Leo Perper, the native of Odessa who became the President of the Roger Kent clothing-store chain passed away today.

1979(2ndof Tevet, 5740): Parashat Miketz; 8th and final day of Chanukah

1979: Darryl Zanuck passed away.  Zanuck was not Jewish. He is the movie mogul who produced “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” the 1947 film about anti-Semitism that Jewish movie makers all turned down.

1981:In his review of “Elephants” a play now appearing at the Jewish Repertory Theatre which tells the story of “an otherwise upstanding, aging janitor in a Chicago synagogue who steals cocaine from a children's hospital in order to finance a trip to Tel Aviv to visit his dying sister” Mel Gussow describes David Rush’s dramatic effort as being “about as far-fetched a play as one could imagine.”

1982(6th of Tevet, 5743):Robert Weltsch an important European Zionist passed away.

1984(28thof Kislev, 5745): Parashat Miketz, Fourth Day of Chanukah

1984(28thof Kislev, 5745): Eighty-six year old Edith Elliot Lindeman Calish, the author of Jewish children’s books, and writer of popular song lyrics who was the entertainment editor the Richmond Times-Dispatch for over three decades passed away today.

http://www.outsidethewalls.org/obit.pdf

 

1985: Richard F. Shepard described an exhibition at the Bronx Museum “Between the Wars: The Bronx Express a Portrait of the Jewish Bronx.”

1985: “Capturing the Holiday Spirit” by Moshe Brilliant published today describes the unique celebration of Christmas in Israel.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/22/travel/capturing-the-holiday-spirit-israel.html?pagewanted=print

1985: John Koenig published a review of Jesus and Judaism by E.P. Sanders.

1987(1stof Tevet, 5748): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1987:Hundreds of thousands of Arabs inside Israel joined others in the occupied territories today in a general strike protesting Israel's handling of a wave of protests.

1988: After numerous appeals by Dr. Herman D. Noether, the eldest son of Professor Fritz M. Noether who had been convicted of being a German spy in 1938, today “the Plenum of the USSR Supreme Court passed a decree No. 308-88 which determined that Professor Fritz M. Noether had been convicted on groundless charges and voided his sentence, thus fully rehabilitating him."

1988: Likud's Yitzhak Shamir formed the twenty-third government including the Alignment, the National Religious Party, Shas, Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah in his coalition, with 25 ministers

1988: The Labor Party gave final approval today to a new coalition government led by the Likud party.

1988: Ezer Weizman replaced Gideon Patt as the Science and Technology Minister of Israel

1988: Yithak Shamir, a member of Likud, completed his service as Internal Affairs Minister.

1988: Areyh Deri, a member of Shas, began serving as Internal Affairs Minister.

1988: “Burning Secret,” a filmed “based on the short story Brennendes Geheimnis by Stefan Zweig” was released today in the United Kingdom and West Germany.

1989:During the American invasion of Panama the United States Embassy in Panama reported that Mike Harari, a 62-year-old retired agent of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad was an American ''prisoner of war.''

1989: “Music Box,” produced by Irwin Winkler and with a screenplay by Joe Eszterhas was released today in the United States.

1990 (5th of Tevet, 5751): Seventy-eight year old “Gershom G. Schocken, an influential Israeli journalist who was the editor and publisher of the daily newspaper Haaretz for half a century, died on Saturday at Shiba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv, where he lived.” (As reported by Peter B. Flint

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/24/obituaries/gershom-g-schocken-78-editor-of-israeli-newspaper-for-50-years.html

1990: The New York Times reported today on a sudden surge in the number of Soviet Jewish immigrants arriving in Israel this month may well bring the total of Jews settling here this year to more than 200,000, making it perhaps the largest influx of immigrants in 40 years.

1990: AnIsraeli ferry capsized killing 21 US servicemen.

1990: While taping an interview with a crew from Tele 5, the Spanish television station, President Hussein says Tel Aviv would be Iraq's first target whether or not Israel joins the war effort against Iraq.

1991(15thof Tevet 5752): Three days after celebrating her 74th birthday, Selma Goldmaker, the Youngstown, OH born daughter of Sarah and Jacob Grobstein, the wife of Harry Grobstein passed away today.

1991: Ninety-two year old Helen P. Silvermater, the wife of Nathan Silvermaster both of whom were alleged to have been spies for the Soviet Union passed away today.

1992(27thof Kislev, 5753): Third Day of Chanukah

1992(27thof Kislev, 5753): Eighty-one year old Polish born English actor, director and writer Milo Sperber, the brother of Manes Sperber passed away today.

1992: “The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany has 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)

1992: “American Samurai,” a “martial arts action film directed by Polish born, Jerusalem raised American filmmaker Sam Firstenberg was released today in Germany

1993: Eliahu Levin and Meir Mendelovitch were killed by shots fired at their car by terrorists from a passing vehicle for which Hamas claimed responsibility.

1993: “Italian Fascism Didn’t Practice Anti-Semitism” published today described Louis Jay Herman’s view on Mussolini and the Jews.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/22/opinion/l-italian-fascism-didn-t-practice-anti-semitism-707193.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1993: Two were left dead following a shooting attack near Ramallah.

1993:Israeli and Palestinian negotiators worked in secret today on a compromise plan for control of border checkpoints between Israel and parts of the occupied territories where Palestinians are soon to have autonomy. Shortly after midnight, Uri Savir, director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, emerged from the talks to say that both delegations would leave Versailles this morning and "a statement would be issued." He seemed discouraged but declined to elaborate on how the talks were progressing.

1993: Seventy-eight year old Bangladesh native Sir Reginald Michael Hadow, the British diplomate who was Ambassador to Israel from 1965 to 1969 passed away today.

1995(29thof Kislev, 5756): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2000: “The Family Man” a romantic comedy directed by Brett Ratner, co-produced by Howard Rosenmen with a script co-authored by David Weisman and music by Danny Elfman was released today in the United States.

2001(7thof Tevet, 5762): Parashat Vayigash

2001(7thof Tevet, 5762): Eighty-six year old WW II Captain Leonard “Len” Maidman, the NYU forward and member of the 1935 National Championship team who was described by University of California head coach Nibs Price as, "the best player I've seen around”  and who “practiced medicine until his retirement in 1985” passed away today.

2002:Yael Weiss, a pianist, and Mark Kaplan, a violinist, who met at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival in the summer of 1999 were married at the Americas Society in Manhattan to strains of Bach.

2002: The New York Times book section featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Analyzing Freud: Letters of H.D., Bryher, and TheirCircle edited by Susan Stanford Friedman, Nobody’s Perfect:Billy Wilder: A Personal Biographyby Charlotte Chandler, and Kafka Goes to the Movies by Hanns Zischler; translated by Susan H. Gillespie.

2003(27thof Kislev, 5764): Third Day of Chanukah

2003: “After a day of meeting with Israel's leaders, Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, was attacked and heckled this evening by Muslim radicals inside the Aksa Mosque here, one of the holiest sites in Islam.”

2004(10th of Tevet, 5765): Asara B'Tevet

2005: An immigration judge order John Demjanjuk deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.

2005: Israeli Harry Potter fans have something to be in high spirits about this Hanukah. The Hebrew version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, JK Rowling's sixth book in her magical series hits the bookstores just two days before the first night of Chanukah.

2006(1stof Tevet, 5767): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, 2006: Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni announced that Italy’s Holocaust Museum will be located in Rome at the Villa Torlonia.

2006: Alan G. Hevesi completed his term as State Comptroller for the State of New York.

2006: STS-116 Discovery under the command of Mark Lewis “Roman” Polansky completed its twelve day mission today.

2006: Today, “the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld” John Demjanjuk’s deportation order.

2007: Chazak Shabbat observed by Conservative Synagogues across the United States.  Chazak Shabbat always falls on the Shabbat when Vayechi is the weekly portion.  Congregations honor members who are fifty-five years and older and the special programs designed to encourage their continued participation in the Jewish community.

2007:The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that "the head of the largest branch of Americana Judaism is urging members of the movement to do more to observe Shabbat.  Rabbi Eric  Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism told those attending the group's Biennial convention that stressed out families need a day when they can stop running around long to see what God is doing.  Among other things, Yoffie urged Reform Jews to make a commitment to attend Saturday morning worship

2008: Eric Alterman “announced that his blog Altercation would be moving to The Nation's website in 2009, and would appear on a less regular basis than its previous Monday through Friday schedule.[

2008: The AJS (Association for Jewish Studies) Women’s Caucus Breakfast and The Sephardi/Mizrahi Caucus Lunch are held on the second day of the AJS (Association for Jewish Studies) 40th Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

 

2008: HappyBirthday “Hatikvah” – 130th anniversary of the creation of the poem “Hatikvah” by Naphtali Herz Imber.

 

2008(25thof Kislev, 5769): First Day of Chanukah

 

2008: Jewish Book Month comes to an end.

 

2008:Gaza gunmen fired at IDF soldiers patrolling the security fence near the Sufa crossing late this afternoon, seemingly refuting reports of a 24-hour ceasefire. The troops returned fire. No one was wounded and no damage was reported. In addition, soldiers arrested two Palestinians near Kissufim who had crossed the Gaza fence. They were transferred for interrogation. Also today afternoon, three Kassam rockets fired by Gaza terrorists hit southern Israel. One struck the Eshkol region, while two hit the Sha'ar Hanegev area. No one was wounded and no damage was reported.

 

2008:The suspected murderer of Yemeni Jew Moshe Yaish Nahari told a court on today that he had warned Jews to convert to Islam or leave the country and that if they didn't, he would kill them. The court ordered the suspect, Abdel Aziz Yehia Hamoud al-Abdi, to go for a psychiatric examination to determine if he is competent to stand trial. The lawyers for the accused had appealed that he was mentally unfit and that he had no understanding of what he had done. They claimed that he had recently also killed his wife. Judge Abdel Bari Oqba adjourned the trial until a report about al-Abdi's mental health is made. Al-Abdi allegedly gunned down Nahari, a teacher at the yeshiva in Raydah, on Dec. 11. Nahari was one of the roughly 400 remaining Jews still living in Yemen, mostly in Raydah, a small town north of the capital San'a. Yemen was once home to about 50,000 Jews in the early 1950s, but most emigrated to Israel.

 

2008: The scandal at Agriprocessors makes Timemagazine’s list of Top 10 Religion Stories in 2008.  At #9, “When Kosher Wasn’t Kosher – A raid on a kosher-meat-processing plant in Iowa highlighted unethical practices.”

 

2008: Time quotes Ehud Olmert’s reaction to Jewish attacks in Hebron. “As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs.”

 

2009: In Washington, D.C. at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue students in the conversion class at Tifereth Israel Congregation share their stories and celebrate their first December holiday season as Jews in America in a program entitled “Journeys to Judaism: Jews by Choice Tell Their Stories.”

 

2010: “Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln's City,” an exhibition sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to come to an end today.

 

2010: The Coen Brothers’ version of “True Grit” is scheduled to be released today.

 

2010: Jamal Hussein Ahmad, a 49-year-old tailor, who was charged with trying to bomb a synagogue in the heart of Cairo, is scheduled to go trial today.

 

2010:The president of Austria’s tiny Jewish community wrote a letter today to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressing a feeling of “betrayal” and “outrage” at deputy minister Ayoub Kara’s current visit to Vienna at the invitation of the right-wing Freedom Party, formerly the political home of Jorge Haider.

Ariel Muzicant said that the Likud’s Kara, the deputy minister for Galilee and Negev development, “officially honored and praised” individuals of the party as well as their political program. He said the party had been founded by surviving Austrian Nazis; had representatives over the decades who had praised the Nazis, made anti- Semitic remarks and engaged in Holocaust denial; and organized meetings of anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi European parties in Austria. “For decades the small Jewish Community of Austria has successfully fought against any kind of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism, and the FPO [Freedom Party] was and is one of our worst adversaries,” Muzicant wrote, saying Kara’s visit and actions were “stabbing us in the back.” The Austrian Jewish community, he wrote, feels “betrayed and are outraged” by the visit.

 “I consider this a shame for the State of Israel and a betrayal of the murdered 65,000 Austrian Jews and the 6 million martyrs of the Shoa,” he said. The Prime Minister’s Office directed questions about the matter to the Foreign Ministry, which said that Kara’s visit had not taken place in consultation with the Prime Minister’s Office, the Foreign Ministry or the government. “This is his own private initiative,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said, acknowledging that the trip had raised eyebrows and criticism in Austria. Kara deflected the criticism, saying at a press conference in Vienna that the Freedom Party was the only one of Austria’s five political parties that had supported Israel during the Gaza flotilla crisis in late May, had condemned calls from inside the Austrian Social Democratic Party for a boycott of Israel, and had written in its platform that the party was based on Judeo-Christian traditions. “Everyone who stands against terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, supports Israel and its right to defend its citizens, and recognizes the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is my partner and a partner for Israel,” he said. Kara said he had looked into the party’s platform and the background of the head of the party, Heinz Christian Strache, and found “no connection with Nazism.” In an apparent reference to Muzicant’s letter, Kara said that those attacking his trip were doing so out of ulterior motives that had nothing to do with the interests of Israel or Jews in the Diaspora, but were “coming against the background of business dealing with the acting chancellor,” who comes from the rival Social Democratic Party. Kara’s spokesman, Mendi Safadi, said Haider had been “kicked out of the party.” In 2005, Haider and other leading figures in the party defected and set up a new party. Strache was in Israel earlier this month along with representatives of other European rightwing parties. Kara met with that delegation, which also included representatives from right-wing parties in Belgium, Germany and Sweden.

 

2010: Master classes at the Stage-Center International Theatre in Tel Aviv which are being taught by Michael Mayer, the director who has become the toast of Broadway with his megahit musicals Spring Awakening and American Idiot begin today.

 

2010:Tensions were rising today between Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian political factions, over a leaked American diplomatic cable and ongoing accusations by each side regarding the other’s arrests, plans and statements.Fatah denied the assertions of a Wikileaks cable from 2007 in which the head of the Israeli Shin Bet Security Service, Yuval Diskin, is quoted as saying that Fatah forces asked Israel to attack Hamas in Gaza and that the Palestinian Authority shared its intelligence with Israel.Fatah said that none of its members had ever acted in that way and that the leak was part of a Shin Bet plot to undermine the Palestinian Authority.

 

2010: A stage adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel, “The Life Before Us” (“La vie Devant Soi”), about an orphaned Arab boy’s devotion to a terminally ill Auschwitz survivor and ex-prostitute, featuring Myriam Boyer was broadcast across Europe today.

 

2011: In New Orleans, Gates of Prayer is scheduled to host its Sisterhood Chanukah Dinner

 

2011: In New Orleans, Touro Synagogue is scheduled to host its Sisterhood Chanukah Family Dinner

 

2011: Moshav, Soulfarm & DeScribe are scheduled to perform at the Highline Ballroom as part of the Sephardic Music Festival.

 

2011:In San Francisco, the Contemporary Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a Houdini-themed Hanukkah concert, with Leonard Cohen tunes performed by all-male musical group, Conspiracy of Beards

 

2011: The final weekend of Hamshoushalayim is scheduled to begin today in Jerusalem with activities especially geared for families.

 

2011: In Linn County, the first area wide Chanukah Candle Lighting Ceremony is scheduled to take place in Springville, Iowa under the leadership of Lena Gilbert

 

2011:Hamas has moved to join the Palestine Liberation Organization - a key step toward unifying the long-divided Palestinian leadership, the Associated Press reported today..

 

2011:Today, Defense Minister Ehud Barak criticized statements made by Israel's Foreign Ministry, which said the "bickering" of European Union members of the UN Security Council over Israeli settlement was making them "irrelevant."

 

2012: “Aya” is schedule to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012: “World’s second-oldest Bible fragment posted online” published today described the posting online of thousands of pages from fragile religious manuscripts including a 2,000 year old copy of portions of the 10 Commandments and the Shema by Cambridge University (As reported by JTA)

 

2012: “Dreaming in Yiddish,” a concert in tribute to singer, teacher, feminist and activist Adrienne Cooper featuring the leading artists in the Yiddish music world is scheduled to  take place at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College.

 

2012: The head of the nationalist Jewish Homes Party denied calling for insubordination in the army tonight, rebuffing accusations that he endorsed refusing orders when he said two days earlier that he would not evacuate settlements

http://www.timesofisrael.com/bennett-denies-expressing-support-for-insubordination-anywhere-ever/

 

2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Solomon, The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner and The Myth of America’s Decline: Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies by Josef Joffe.

 

2013: “The Escape,” a movie about eight young Israelis from different backgrounds who retrace the routes of those trying to escape the Holocaust, is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: The Jerusalem Municipality and the Jewish National Fund are scheduled to distribute free Christmas trees to Christian residents of Jerusalem today between 09:00 am and 12:00 pm at College Des Freres - De La Salle High School, 20 Bab El-Jadid Rd.

 

2013: A bomb exploded on a bus in Bat Yam this afternoon, but nobody was injured because an alert passenger had spotted the device and the bus driver had ordered the vehicle evacuated.

 

2013: Police are investigating an attempt by three Palestinian Authority Arabs to stab officers, this evening at a police roadblock at the Mishor Adumim Junction, next to the eastern Jerusalem suburb of Ma'alei Adumim. (As reported by Gil Roen)

 

2014: The Washington DC, Jewish Community Center is scheduled to present “World Music for Chanukah with Avram Penga” the “Greek-born guitarist and bouzouki virtuoso.

 

2014: “Night of Fools” and “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014 The public Chanukah lighting is scheduled to take place at Cosenza.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/italian-towns-arab-street-decked-with-menorahs-for-xmas/

 

 

2014: In London, “Rabbi Santa Comedy Night,” consisting entirely of Jewish comedians, an evening organized by Bennett Arron, is due to open today.

 

2014: “Less than a week after the National Insurance Institute published statistics saying that 1.65 million Israelis lived under the poverty line in 2013, umbrella aid group Latet released its own report today, claiming nearly a million more Israelis — totaling a third of the country — are living in poverty.

 

2014: “Two hundred and twenty-six immigrants, 76 of which are children, landed this afternoon in Israel on a special flight from Ukraine.”

 

2015: “Apples from the Desert” a tale of tradition versus modernity is scheduled to be shown for the last time at the UK Jewish Film Festival.

 

2015(10thof Tevet, 5776): Yahrzeit of Judy Levin Rosenstein, gone too soon but never forgotten.

 

2015: “Twelve selected pieces from the Valmadonna Trust Library — an unrivalled library of some 300 handwritten Hebrew documents and 13,000 rare printed Hebrew books, with some dating as far back as 1,000 years — is scheduled to go on sale in New York today.

2015: “Sotheby’s set a new world auction record for any piece of Judaica in New York, when of the finest copies of Daniel Bomberg’s Babylonia Talmud sold for $9.3 million” today.

 

 

2015(10thof Tevet, 5776): The Tenth of Tevet is a communal fast day, commemorating the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem in the era of the First Beis HaMikdash, the Holy Temple.

2016: The Temple Israel of Memphis Family Tour of Israel is scheduled to leave the United States today.

 

2016: Jonathan Brent, YIVO’s Executive Director, is scheduled to host a panel discussion on “YIVO, Liberalism and the Jewish Response to Fascism.

 

2016: Rachel Freirer, a mother of six and former lawyers who practiced commercial and residential estate law “officially became the first Chasidic women to be sworn in as a Judge in New York State” when she “was sworn in today as the Civil Court judge in Kings County’s 5th judicial district.”

 

2016: Lipa “Schmeltzer sang "God Bless America" in Yiddish (as "Gott Bensch Amerike") in Brooklyn Borough Hall at the inauguration of New York Civil Court Judge Rachel Freier.

 

2016: In Coralville, IA, The Augdas Achim is scheduled to discuss The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature edited by Ilan Stavans.

2017: FOX news announced that James Rosen was “exiting the company at the end of the year” without making any references to charges of sexual misconduct.

2017: A special exhibition “The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann” is scheduled to come a close at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

2016: Today, “in Warsaw, Polish culture minister Piotr Glinski signed a contract with Michal Laszczkowski, head of the Cultural Heritage Foundation” that formalized the Polish government’s donation of 100 million zlotys “to restore and protect” the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery which was “established in 1806 and is the resting spot of 250,000 Polish Jews.”

2017: In Jerusalem, Hansen House is scheduled to host “Context with Mindy Weisel.

2017(4thof Tevet, 5778): Eighty-eight year old Laborite and MP Eric Moonman, the Liverpool born son of Leah and Borach Moonman who left school at the age of 13 to become an apprentice priner and who was chair of both Poale Zion and president of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland passed away today.

2017(4thof Tevet, 5778): Yahrzeit of Rabbi Joshua Isaac Shapira

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_4.html

 

2017(4thof Tevet, 5778): Yahrzeit of Yiddish playwright Solomon Ettinger who passed away on the 4th of Tevet, 5617.

2018(14thof Tevet, 5779): Parashat Vayechi;

2018: Ninety-four year old Simcah Rosten,”the last surviving Warsaw Ghetto uprising fighter” passed away today.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/simcha-rotem-last-surviving-fighter-in-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-dies-at-94/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/simcha-rotem

 

2018: As a sign of the vitality of Judaism Southern Style, in Memphis, Rachel Perlman is scheduled to be called to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah at Temple Israel.

2018: In New York, Symphony Space is scheduled to host Israeli singer “David Broza and Friends Not Exactly Christmas Show.”

2018: In Atlanta, the Oakland Cemetery homed to “the second oldest Jewish burial ground in Georgia, is scheduled to host a tour featuring the “Sights, Symbols and Stories of Oakland.

2018: This year’s Yiddish New York Festival is scheduled to officially open tonight with a Yiddish Dance Party at the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

2018: Following her an operation which in which “she had two cancerous growths removed from her lung” yesterday, Jews everywhere, regardless of their political views, offer a prayer for “refuah shlema” or “perfect healing,” for Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

2019: Yiddish New York and the Yiddish Artists and Friends-Actor Club is scheduled to host a “Celebration of Molly Picon.”

2019: The Mayor of London is scheduled to attend Chanukah in the Square hosted by Rachel Creeger at Trafalgar Square.

2019(24thof Kislev, 5780): Ninety year old Ronald Hyman Melzack, the Montreal born son Joseph and Annie (Mandel) Melzack and the McGill University trained psychologist best known for his 1973 book The Puzzle of Pain who was  husband of interior designer Lucy Birch passed away tody.

https://www.cdnmedhall.org/inductees/ronaldmelzack

 

2019: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to host a “Family Concert,” featuring “Hanukkah music from around the world with Elad Kabilio and the musicians from MusicTalks.”

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century by Sara Abrevaya Stein.

2019(24thof Kislev, 5780): First time lighting the Chanukah menorah without Deb Levin Z”L.

2020: The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth Country is scheduled to begin present an online views of “the documentary film, Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema.”

2020: FIDF Engage is scheduled to present Maj. Gen. (Res.) Nadav Padan, Former Head of IDF Central Command, who will discuss Cyber Warfare: A New Dimension in Modern War which given the hack just suffered by the United States is a very timely presentation.

2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present online “Not Your Bubbe’s Book Club.

2020: The first direct flight from Israel to Morocco marking the establishment “of ties between the two Mideast countries” is scheduled to depart today.

2020: Judaism Your Way in Colorado which is offer virtual cooking classes to make Jewish comfort foods is scheduled to provide instruction for making homemade pita and hummus this evening.

2020: YIVO is scheduled to present “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese Food” in which author Andrew Cohen traces “this delicious history from the turn-of-the-century Lower East Side to today’s take-out lo mein”

2020: In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host online “Perek Yomi” with Rabbi Skoinik

 

 

 

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

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December 23

962: Byzantine troops led by Nicephorus Phocas defeated Moslem forces and seized Aleppo.  This temporary turn of events could not have been good for the Jews who had been living there since Biblical times because it was the Moslem conquest of the city in 636 that removed the disabilities placed on the Jews by the Byzantines

1312: Jacques Duèze, who as Pope John XXII would give into the wishes of his sister and ban the Jews from Rome, was named as a Cardinal today by Pope Clement V.

1420: The Pope banned conversion of Jewish children done without consent of their parents

1605: The Council of Worms issued further “ordinances regulating Jewish Affairs.

1767(2ndof Tevet, 5528): Eighth and final day of Chanukah

1736: In Peru, the last inquisition took place. Dona Ana de Castro, a former lover of the viceroy (among others) was accused of Judaizing and burned at the stake. It is probably that her execution had more to do with official embarrassment than with any religious devotion on her part

1764(29thof Kislev, 5525): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1764: Birthdate of Josiah Tattnall, Sr. the Governor of Georgia who succeeded David Emanuel, reportedly the first person of “Jewish heritage” to hold such an office in the United States.

1767(2ndof Tevet, 5528): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1769(24thof Kislev, 5530): Parsahat Vayeshev; In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.

1771: In Montreal, Mr. and Mrs. Lucius Levy Solomons gave birth to Levy Solomons, the husband of Catherine Manuel and the father of Lucius, Adolphus, Samuel and Abraham Solomons, each of whom was a native of Albany, NY.

1772(27thof Kislev, 5533): Third Day of Chanukah

1772: Birthdate of “Polish Hebraist” Shalom ben Jacob Cohen

1775(30thof Kislev, 5536): Parsahat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1775: As the Jews prepared to kindle the Seventh light of Chanukah, during the American Revolution, “King George III issued a royal proclamation closing the American colonies to all commerce and trade…”

1777: Birthdate of the anti-Semitic Tsar Alexander I who promulgated a decree drafting Jewish 12 year olds into the Russian Army

1778: “Catherine” Bush, the Philadelphia born daughter of Tabitha Mears and Mathias Bush married Myer S. Solomon the London born son of Bilah Myers-Cohen and Joseph Solomon with whom she had seven children.

1780(25thof Kislev, 5541): Parashat Vayeshev; First Day of Chanukah

1780: As Jews prepare to kindle the second light of Chanukah, John Laurens, a friend Frances Salvador, the South Carolina Sephardic Jew and fellow supporter of the American Revolution, wrote to George Washington that Congress has decided to send him and not Alexander Hamilton who had his own murky Jewish routes, on diplomatic mission to France.

1791(27thof Kislev, 5552): Third Day of Chanukah

1791: Catherine II created the Pale of Settlement. Jews were squeezed out of the major cities and ports into the area known as White Russia. Even within the Pale, Jews were excluded from certain cities and Crown Lands. The driving force behind the creation of the pale was the merchants in Moscow who demanded protection against Jewish competition. The Russian government followed the path of bigotry to the detriment of the nation.  Creating the Pale meant that the Jews would not be available to help create a vigorous middle class which was so critical to the success of other modern nation-states including the U.S., Britain and Germany. The Pale of Settlement was Russia's response to having acquired a large Jewish population as a result of the partition of Poland.  This upset what had been the Russian policy of trying to create a Russia without Jews. The Pale was on Russia's western frontier.  In event of an invasion by Prussia, Russia would have this buffer zone that would absorb the first shock and devastation while the Russian Army was being fully mobilized.  In one sense, the Jews of the Pale were the human shields of the Russian Empire. What is the “Pale” in the Pale of Settlement? “Pale” is the term for the fence boards. 

1791: Birthdate of Anton von Rosas, the Austrian ophthalmologist, who was one of the many who “were dismayed that the Jews were ‘taking over’ and ‘jewifying’ their culture” and who helped create an “anti-Semitic literature” that “had no equal…either for quantity or virulence.”

1792: In Bavaria, Asser Lion and Gitlé Loëw gave birth to Charlotte Aron, the wife of Alexandre Aron.

1799(25th of Kislev, 5560): Chanukah is observed for the last time in the 18th century.

1799: As Jews prepare to kindle the second Chanukah light, today, President Adams wrote to the members of Congress expressing his grief and sense of loss over the death of George Washington which had occurred on December 14th.

1812:Jephtas Gelübde ('The vow of Jephtha') the first opera composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer, the German Jewish composer, had its first performance at the Hoftheater in Munich

1818(25th of Kislev, 5579): Chanukah

1820:Birthdate of Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy “a Hungarian rabbi and academic who became the first Jewish Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature at the University of Cambridge.

1822(9th of Tevet, 5583): Rabbi Isaac Adler passed today depriving thirteen year-old Samuel Adler of both is father and teacher.

1823: Jacob Pinhas was instrumental in drawing up the law today, on the organization of the Jews, and in establishing the normal school of Cassel

1827: In Horsens, Denmark, Jette Hertz and Isak Salomon Dessau gave birth to Mariane Dessau, the wife of fellow Dane, Moses Abraham Cohn.

1831(19th of Tevet, 5592): Leonora Marks, the daughter of Alexander and Esther Hart Marks passed away today after which he was buried at the Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery, Columbia, SC.

1837(25th of Kislev, 5598): Chanukah

1837: Birthdate of Isaac Seldner who served with the 6th Virginia Infantry Regiment in the Civil War.

1844(13th of Tevet, 5605): Seventy-seven year old Salomon Heine, the Hamburg merchant and banker who was known as the “Rothschild of Hamburg” passed away today.  He was the uncle of Heinrich Heine.

1849: In Germany, Abraham Einstein and his wife, the former Helene Moos gave birth to August Ignaz Einstein.

1850:  In Bavaria, Lazarus Straus and his wife gave birth to Oscar Straus, the holder of degrees from Columbia, Brown, University of Pennsylvania and Washington and Lee University and the husband of Sarah Lavenberg, who was one the Straus brothers, the noted merchants, public servants, philanthropists and leaders of the Jewish community from the second half of the 19th century through the Roaring Twenties.  Straus was ambassador to Turkey and the first American Jew to hold a cabinet post.  He was appointed Secretary of Commerce and Labor by Teddy Roosevelt.  He was active in the reform wing of the Republican Party and became an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson.  Straus was the found of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and the American Jewish Committee.  Among the books he authored was his autobiography Under Four Administrations.  He passed away in 1926.

1851: The Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Association is hosting a benefit at the Broadway Theatre tonight.  The entertainment includes a violin solo by Frederick Griebel and a performance of comedy, “All That Glitters Is Not Gold.”

1852: In Louisville, KY, Agatha Schwab and Maier Ochs gave birth to Nannie Ochs, the wife of Simon Burger and the mother of Cora, Maude and Victor Burger.

1852: In Spitafields, London, Jane Silver and Henry Woolf gave birth to Hannah Woolf.

1854: Birthdate of Hanover, Germany native Albert Steinfeld who came to New York City with his family at the age of eight where he was educated and worked in “a large dry-goods firm for two years” before moving to Denver where he went to work in a store owned by his uncle after which he found fame and fortune in Arizona.

1860(10th of Tevet, 5621): Asara B’Tevet

1860: Birthdate of Chicago native Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry magazine who supported numerous then unknown American poets including the Lithuanian born Max Michelson.

1862(1st of Tevet, 5623): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; on the same that Jews celebrated the seventh day of Chanukah, President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter of consolation to Mary Frances “Fanny” McCullough whose father William McCullough, a Lt. Col in the 4thIllinois Cavalry had been killed earlier in the month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_Fanny_McCullough#/media/File:Fanny_McCullough_Letter.jpg


1864(24th of Kislev, 5625): As night falls, the Jewish troops with  General Sherman kindle the first light of Chanukah in  Savannah, GA.

1865: In New York, “Lehman Israels, the brother of Dutch painter Josef Israels” and Florence Zilla Lazarus gave birth to Irving Institute trained architect Charles Henry Israels the husband of Belle Linder whose firm worked on several buildings including the Hudson Theatre, Arlington Hotel and Warrington Hotel in New York and who as a member of the American Institute of Architects and the Municipal Art Society wrote for the New York Herald and other papers about “architectural topics.”

1866: Birthdate of Boris Schatz, the native of Lithuania who “founded the Bezalel School in Jerusalem.”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/boris-schatz


1867: Emancipation of the Jews of Hungary took place today when upper house of the legislature passed legislation supported by the Hungarian Prime Minister.  After the Prussians defeated the Austrians, the Austrians reformed certain aspects of their imperial system.  They created the dual monarchy so that the Austrian Empire became the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The Hapsburgs tried this and other cosmetic reforms in an attempt to maintain control over their polyglot empire. 

1868(9th of Tevet, 5629): Jacob Disraeli, the son of Isaac D’Israeli and Mary Basevi, passed away today.

1870: It was reported today that many of the women who had worked to make the Hebrew Fair such a success are now helping out at the fair being held to raise funds to support the orphans of soldiers and sailors.

1871: Birthdate date of Charles Fleischer, the Breslau born American Reform Rabbi who in 1894 “succeeded Rabbi Solomon Shindler at Temple Israel in Boston” before founding “an independent religious institution, known as the “Sunday Commons” of Boston.

1871(14th of Tevet, 5578): Seventy-four year old Austrian banker Jonas Freiherr von Königswarter passed away in Vienna.

1872(23rd of Kislev, 5633): Eighty-three year old Esther B. Seixas, the New York born daughter of Zipporah Levy and Benjamin Mendes Seixas, the wife of Naphtali Phillips and mother of Reuben, Rachel, Sara and Zipporah Phillips passed away today in Washington, D.C.

1873: In London Samuel and Ellen Cohen Montague gave birth to Lilian Helen Montague the social reformer and active member of Britain’s Liberal Jewish Community.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/montagu-lily


 1875: It was reported today that the Hebrew Charity Fair which was held at Gilmore’s Garden has come to a close.  On the last evening the remaining items on hand were auctioned off for $542.  The fair raised almost $135,000.
 
1875(25th of Kislev, 5636): First Day of Chanukah

1875: Birthdate of Margarethe (Oppenheim) Thoman who in 1942 was transported from Berlin to Terezin where she was murdered.

1876: In Zbąszyń, Poland, Jacobi and Thelka Bornstein gave birth to Siegfried Bornstein

1876: A fair that is designed to raise funds for Hebrew Charities is scheduled to take place tonight at the Masonic Hall in New York City.
1877: The Independent Order Sons of Benjamin whose members included Ferdinand Levy, Louis Lindeman, Richard Cohn, Julius Gumpert and Jacob Hyman was founded today in New York City.
1877(17th of Tevet, 5638): Yehuda Abraham Covo passed away.  Born in 1832, he was a Rabbinical Judge and head of the Asher Covo Yeshiva.
1878(27th of Kislev, 5639): Third Day of Chanukah
1878: It was reported today that the Board of Directors of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews did not hold its monthly meeting.  While no official announcement was made about the reason for this, it was assumed that board did not meet because of disagreement over whether or not to accept the donation from Mrs. Stewart that would necessitate the Jews accepting the money from Judge Hilton.
 
1878: A fair for the benefit of Shaare Rachmim which opened in Tammany Hall on December 9 is scheduled to come to an end this evening.
 
1879: An association of rabbis and prominent Jewish laymen was formed today with the goal of promoting a stricter observance of the Sabbath as proscribed by the Torah and other Jewish laws.
 
1880: Three days after she had passed away, Rebecca Henriques, the daughter of Rosetta and Edward Micholls, the wife of David Quixano Henriques and the mother of Arthur and Edward Henriques was buried today in the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1881: Birthdate of Berlin native and the University of Freiburg and Humboldt University trained attorney Ernst Levy, the WW I veteran of the German Army who became a professor at the University of Washington after having been forced to leave his native land by the Nazis.

1882: Nineteen year old Annie Littlestein, a Jewish immigrant from Poland was rescued by James McCready after she jumped into the East River today.
 
1882: As New Yorkers wrestled with the Sunday Closing Laws, Superior Court Justice Arnoux rendered a decision “that the Penal Code prevents all persons including Hebrews who observe Saturday as ‘holy time’ from carrying on business on Sunday excepting for the sale of meats, fish, milk, drugs and food to be eaten on the premises where sold.”

1883: The first school of the Hebrew Technical Institute opened today at 206 East Broadway.
 
1883: Reverend R. Heber Newton preached a sermon on “The Traditions of Jacob” “the Hebrew Hercules who wrestled all night with an angel…and won a victory from his supernatural opponent.”

1883: The first school of the Hebrew Technical Institute opened today at 206 East Broadway in New York.

1884: In Philadelphia, PA,Simon and Florence Liveright gave birth to Rebekah  Liveright who became Rebekah Kohn when she married Irving Kohn.

1885: Rebecca Lyons was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1885(15th of Tevet, 5646): Alois Feigelstock, a well-known New York Jewish businessman appears to have taken his own life at New-Lots, a town on Long Island.

1886(26th of Kislev, 5647): Second Day of Chanukah

1886: Birthdate of Russia native and Columbia trained dentist Dr. Sol Boris Kahan who also pursed a forty year career in sculpture during which his works were shown at the Whitney and Brooklyn Museum and who was the husband of “the former Dr. Rose Coloms” and the father of Dr. Boris Kahn
 
1888: “Very Little of a Christian” published today described the decision of a French Jew to convert so that he could obtain a government position.

1888; Laurence Oliphant, a British author diplomat and proto-Zionist passed away. Born in 1829, following a number of twists and turns, by 1879, Oliphant began working on a project to help Jews settle in Palestine. He raised money, vainly sought to obtain a lease on a portion of Palestine from authorities in the Ottoman capital and helped to settle one group of Jews in the Galilee.  He hired Naftali Herz Imber, the author of Hatikvah, as his secretary.

1888: “A Jewish Freethinker” published today provides a detailed review of Salomon Maimon: An Autobiography which provides the life story of Rabbi Salomon Maimon and a picture of 19th century life for the Jews of Poland.

1888: It was reported today that a recitation by Louis Aldrich will be part of the upcoming theatrical and musical benefit program sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1889(30th of Kislev, 5650): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Candles

1889: It was reported today that “the Imperial Academy of Arts has decided to exclude Jews from membership.”
 
1889: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band led a procession of a thousand school children who were taking part in the cornerstone laying ceremony for the new public school located at the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue and 156th Street in New York City.

1889: Birthdate of Benjamin Marcus Pritcea, the Scottish born American architect who designed the Alhadeff Sanctuary of Seattle’s Temple De Hirsch Sinai.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seattle-Alhadeff-Sanctuary-3604.jpg
 
1889: It was reported today that the officers of the newly formed Montefiore and Lady Judith Hebrew Association are: Julius Harburger – President; Moses Mehrbach – First Vice President; Isaac Marx – Second Vice President; M.G. Landsberg – Secretary; H.C. Rosenzweig – Treasurer.  The Association was formed to protect and aid the tide of arriving Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia.
 
1890: Three days after he had passed away, Salomon Henry Godefron, the husband of Emma Micholls with whom he had had four children, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1890: Birthdate of Minsk native Jacob Shieren Ben-Ami who enjoyed success in the United States in both the Yiddish and English-speaking theatrical world.

1891: In Brooklyn, Henry and Jennie (Berkman) Berson gave birth “educator Isaac B. Berkson,” the hold of a Ph.D. from Columbia Teachers Collee and the husband of LIbbie Suchoff who was the Director of the Jewish Institute, member of the National Council for Jewish Educations and “author of “Theories of Americanization with special to the Jewish group.”

1891: In following up on series of bizarre robberies, police entered the apartment of John Weih where they found “three pulpits where were furnished according to the custom of Hebrew, Catholic and Protestant churches respectively with all the trappings and silverware which to belonged to each.”  Police cannot explain this interdenominational criminal activity.

1891: Among the articles published in The New York Weekly Times that appeared today was “An Indictment of Russia – The Massing of the Jews in the towns of the Pale”

1892: One day after he had passed away “in his 104thyear,” Joseph Levy, the husband of Blumah Jacobs with whom he had had four children, was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery” on Buckingham Road.

1892: Seventy-one year old Paulus Stephanua Cassel, a Jewish convert to Christianity who major work was a history of the Jews from the destruction of the Jerusalem to 1847 passed away today.

1892: Hermann Stern, a thirty three year Jew from German employed as a foreign exchange clerk in the banking house of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co (and who would later commit suicide) wrote a note today addressed to the coroner stating that “ My last wish is that everything I leave is left to the care and disposition of my beloved friend Carl Gutmman…who is now on his way from Europe.”

1893: The local assemblies of “Hebrew tailors” that had been organized by David De Leon voted leave the Knights of Labor and under the name of the newly formed Amalgamated Association of Clothing Cutters and Trimmers join the American Federation of Labor.

1893: “To Aid The Unemployed” published today described efforts by various New York charity organizations including the United Hebrew Charities to deal with “the general increase at the present time in this city of destitute men drawn hither by the hope of finding either employment or relief…”

1894(25th of Kislev, 5655): First Day of Chanukah

1894: “Hebrew, Israelite and Jew” published today relying on information that first appeared in the Rochester Tidings says that the “Jew refers to the religion which the Jews profess.  Hebrew refers to a language which they no longer speak and has no meaning at the present time. The Jews do call themselves Hebrews” except for “a few who do not know any better.”  “Israelite refers to a nation which they at one time formed” and only has significance “when reference is made to the ancient nation.”
 
1895: In “Mutual Respect the Common Ground for Christian and Jew” published today Dr. Joseph Silverman said that “No greater insult can be offered to the modern Jew than to convert him.” He called for the creation of “a non-sectarian commission consisting of Jews, Protestants and Catholics to be known as the Commission for Peace and Brotherhood who purpose should be to destroy religious prejudice and intolerance.”

1895: Wolf Avener and Isaac Falpe are scheduled to be examined for their role in a blackmail attempt targeted at Aris Lichtenstein, a Jew who converted and became a Minister.

1895: In a speech deriding “the Puritan Sabbath” which has led to a series of Blue Laws, Reverend Henry Van Dyke said that he did not know where the Puritans came up with this concept since the Jews, the first observers of the Sabbath, keep “the Seventh Day with feasting and social cheer.”

1897(28th of Kislev, 5658): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1897: It was reported from Prague, that “at a gathering of a ‘Czech Jewish Political Union’” held at Prague, may of the speakers said that “the leaders of ‘Young Czechs’ were” responsible for “the recent anti-Jewish disturbances” and they have decided to “leave the ‘Young Czech’ political party.”

1897: Birthdate of Herbert Parzen, the native of Poland who came to the United States in 1907 where hear a bachelors and masters at Columbia while being ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. (I have used the dates supplied by the American Jewish Archives which are at odds with another source)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0015_0_15448.html

1898: Birthdate of Grodno Gubernia native Irving Projansky, the three year forward on the City College of New York basketball whose stellar career was marred when “he scored a basket on the wrong basket against Cornell, a game which saw CCNY lost by a score of 21-20.”

1900(1st of Tevet, 5661): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1900: Viscount Herbert Samuel and Beatrice Miriam Samuel gave birth to Philip Ellis Herbert Samuel

1900: Dr. Samuel Schulman, the associate rabbi of Temple Beth-El delivered a sermon this morning on the subject of “Judaism’s Message of Peace and Good-Will.”

1900: Twenty-seven year old David Hartmann, the Hungarian born grandson of revolutionary David Sugar, who in 1889 came to the United States where went from operating a small furniture store in Brooklyn before turning to auctioneering and sell ladies garments, married Jennie Berkowitz with whom he had two daughters, Stella and Beatrice.

1901: Today’s dispatch to The Times of London “from Kieff says the existence of a dangerous subversive movement among the Jews and laboring classes of Odessa has been discovered” and “that the general condition of South Russia causes alarm…”

1902: It was reported today that Herman Brandstein has purchased a five-story triple flat at 969 Columbus Avenue and a five-story triple flat on 116th Street.

1903: University of Michigan graduate and steel company executive Julius Kahn, the German born son of Joseph and Rosalie Kahn and the brother of Albert Kahn with whom “he designed the ‘Kahn bar’” married Margaret K. Kohut, daughter of rabbi Alexander Kohut today.

1904: It was reported today that Samuel Untermeyer is the counsel for the creditors of the suspended brokerage firm of Munroe and Munroe.

1904: Birthdate of Sir Charles Clore, the native of Mile End, London who “owned, through Sears Holdings, the British Shoe Corporation and Lewis's department stores (which included Selfridges)” and who “established Karen Clore (now the Clore Israel Foundation) to give grants to Israeli causes.”

1905(25th of Kislev, 5666): First Day of Chanukah

1905: It was reported today that “the fund for the relief of the persecuted Jews in Russia has reach a grand total of $1,200,311.66

1905: Today marked the final period of “strict mourning” that had been proclaimed by the Odessa Zionist Central Committee following “the four nights of slaughter” in Odessa during which “no help arrived from non-Jews.”

1906: “Christmas Boycott Urged” published today described a call by “rabbis and prominent Jews who have been trying to have” Christmas exercises in published schools abolished” for Jewish parents “to keep their children out of school” on December 24 which is ‘’when the children have been asked to come to school in their best clothes to take part in the Christmas festivities.”

1907: Birthdate of Avraham Stern, the leader of Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang a group of Zionist who lost their moral compass, to put it mildly.  Others would say, that Zionists or not, the Stern Gang was a group of murderous thugs.

http://www.etzel.org.il/english/people/stern.htm

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/1018/features/terror-out-of-zion/

1907(18th of Tevet, 5668): Thirty-six year old John Paley, a native of Minsk who came to the United States in 1888 to pursue a career as a Yiddish newspaper editor and novelist passed away today in New York City.

1908: “Die geschiedene Frau (The Divorcée), an operetta in three acts by Leo Fall with a libretto by Victor Léon” opened today at the Carltheater in Vienna.


1909: Sir Mathew Nathan completed his service as Governor of Natal

1909: Birthdate of Herman Barron, the Port Chester, NY native who became the first Jewish golfer to win a tournament on the PGA Tour when he won the Western Open at Phoenix, AZ in 1942.

1909:  Birthdate of boxer Barney Ross.  Born Barnet Rasofsky in Chicago, this son of Rabbi turned away from his Jewish studies at the age of 14.  His father was killed in the family grocery store by robbers.  Ross moved into the shadowy underworld of the street before emerging as welterweight boxer at the age of 18.  Ross would become World Welterweight Champion of the Word during the 1930’s.  After retiring he became a successful restauranteur.  Although in his thirties at the outbreak of World War II, Ross enlisted in the Marines and earned the Silver Star during the campaign to take Guadalcanal. Ross’ successful battle with drug addiction provided the storyline for the film Monkey on My Back.  He passed away in 1967.

1910(22nd of Kislev, 5671): Fifty-three year old patron of the Jewish arts and “authority on Arabic Poetry” Baron David Gunzburg, “a son of Horace Ossipovitch Gunzber, the President of the Central Committee of the Jewish Colonization Association who had died in 1909, who was a member of the same organization as well as a member of the Committee for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia, passed away today.

1911(2nd of Tevet, 5672): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah.

1911: Debut of Edmund Eyslter’s operetta Der Frauenfresser (The Woman-Eater).

1911: The London Outlook printed an “anti-Jewish editorial” today.

1911: “La mujer divorciada” the Spanish language version of “Die geschiedene Frau (The Divorcée), an operetta in three acts by Leo Fall with a libretto by Victor Léon” opened today in Madrid.

1912: Mrs. Leo Heller is scheduled to deliver a “report from the Annual Meeting of the Illinois Federation of Women’s Clubs” at the regular meeting of the K.A.M. Auxiliary.

1913(24th of Kislev, 5674): For the last time the first light of Chanukah is kindled before the start of the deluge that began with WW I and continued through WW II.

1913: The Federal Reserve, which a cadre of right-wing anti-Semites decry as part of Jewish cabal, was created today when President Wilson signed The Federal Reserve Act today.

1914: Based on information from Berlin, it was reported that “Russian court-martials in Poland have hanged numerous Jews.”

1914: The list of those contributing to the American Jewish Relief Committee published today included F.A. Rosenbloom, Austin, TX; I.C. Long, Greensboro, NC; the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Columbia, SC; J. Hecht, Charles City, IA; “Jews of Ft. Worth, TX” and “Jews of Natchez, Mississippi.”

1914: It was announced today at a meeting of the Board of Jewish Ministers at Temple Emanu-El that Governor-elect Whitman has stated that “he will appoint at least one Jew to each Board of Managers of the State hospitals.”

1915: Birthdate of Sidney Shapiro, “an American author and translator who has lived in China since 1947.”

1915: Memorial services marking the 38th anniversary of the death of Mrs. Clara Schiff, the mother of Jacob H. Schiff were held this afternoon in the Straus Auditorium of the Educational Alliance and “as it has been his annual custom ever since the alliance was established, Mr. Schiff addressed the girl members of the School of Religious Work and awarded a prize, named for his mother, for the best essay on a selected topic.”

1915: “The original Broadway production” of the Jerome Kern musical “Very Good Eddie” “opened at the Princess Theatre.

1916: The 26th Annual Assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society continued to meet for a second day in New Orleans.
 
1916: During World War I, British Imperial forces (mostly ANZACs) captured the Turkish garrison during the Battle of Magdhaba on the Sinai Peninsula.  This victory was part of the British plan to move west and eventually take Palestine from the Turks. Jewish forces would play a role in the final battles to liberate Palestine from Turkish rule. 

1916: “The Women’s Proclamation Committee, a national organization for Jewish relief announced” today “that in 1917 it would conduct a ‘Life for a Life’ campaign for the collection of funds for Jews left destitute in the war areas of Europe.”

1916: The list of contributions made to the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War published today including $153 from Mt. Zion Congregation of Jersey City, NJ, $40 from Chevra Adas Volovisk of Brooklyn, $200 from the Committee in Calgary, Canada, and $28 from Dubuque, Iowa.

1917(8th of Tevet, 5678): Sixty-nine year old New Haven, CT native Toby Edward Rosenthal the award winning artist who spent most of his career in Europe, passed away today in Munich.

http://www.jmaw.org/toby-rosenthal-jewish-artist-of-early-san-francisco/

1917: At Temple Beth-El, Rabbi Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “The Jewish Soul On Trial.”

1917: At Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Joseph Silverman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Egoism and Altruism.”

1917: At Carnegie Hall, which is home to the Free Synagogue, Henry Morgenthau is scheduled to preside over a tribute to Rabbi Wise during which speeches will be given by Abram I. Elkus and Rabbi Louis Grossman.

1917: At the Mount Morris Theatre, which is home to the Institutional Synagogue, F.C. Hicks, “who returned from Europe last week” is scheduled to speak on “The War Conditions at Europe’s Front.”

1917: In Pittsburgh, PA, Jennie and Louis Friedman gave birth to Sophie Friedman who gained fame as Sophie Masloff, the first woman and the first Jew to serve as Mayor of Pittsburgh.

1917: Having successfully crossed the Auju River outside of Jaffa, “the 52nd (Lowland) and 54th (East Anglian) Divisions moved up the coast a further 5 miles (8.0 km), while the left of the advance reached Arsuf 8 miles (13 km) north of Jaffa, capturing key Ottoman defensive positions.”

1917: Having already met with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Colonel Storrs, the newly appointed British governor of Jerusalem, attended a gathering of Orthodox Ashkenazi rabbis.  The rabbis hoped to enlist Storrs’ support in their conflict with local Zionists.

1917: In Philadelphia, “Resolutions in favor of making Palestine a Jewish State to be populated by Jews from all parts of the earth where adopted today at a conference of Jewish labor organizations held under the auspices of the workmen’s wing of the Zionist movement.”

1917: “Thousands of New York Zionists packed Carnegies Hall” tonight and thousands more who could not get in “crowded the streets around building” where they sang songs in Hebrew and heard speakers including Dr. Schmarya Levin as part of a “celebration of the British promise to restore Jerusalem and the Holy Land to the Jewish people…”

1917: At a reception in the home of Henry Morgenthau attended by “100 members of the Joint Distribution Committee, the Central Jewish Relief Committee, the Jewish People’s Relief Committee, the Provisional Zionist Executive Committee and the Jewish Women’s Proclamation Committee” a silver tea service was presented to Dr. Otis A. Glazebrook, the former American Consul in Jerusalem and Mrs. Glazebrook “in recognition of their self-sacrifice and devotion in distributing the funds sent from America for the relief of the Jews in Palestine.”

1918: It was reported today that “Louis Marshall, Chairman of the American Jewish Committee said that Jews in America were doing little for Judaism or their synagogues” and “the Jews” in the United States “must be aroused.”

1919(1st of Tevet, 5680): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1919: The New Palestine, an “organ of the Zionist Organization of America” was established today.

1920: As British support for the Balfour Declaration waned, the 17th Earl of Derby, a prominent Conservative politician wrote Winston Churchill expressing his opposition to the Palestine Mandate in general and the Zionist cause in particular. 

1922: Four members of the Salonica Jewish community were elected to the Greek Assembly: Isaac Alhanati, Jonas Jamnelides, Joshua Laias and M. Levy.

1922:  Birthdate of Leonard Stern the successful television writer and producer, two of his better known shows were comedies – The Phil Silvers Show and Get Smart.

1922: In Braddock, PA, Polish-Jewish immigrants Anna Stopnitsky and Lazear “Leonard” Landau gave birth to St. John’s Colle graduate and director Jack Landau, who as the associate director the American Shakespeare Theatre was responsible for the a performance of Shakespearian in 1961 which was the first time that had been done since William Howard Taft was Pesident.

1923: In New York City “Gertrude Himmelfarb, a scholar of Victorian era literature and “Irving Kristol, an editor and publisher who served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine, founded the magazine The Public Interest and has been described as the "godfather of neo-conservatism" gave birth to neo-conservative pundit, commentator and editor, Bill Kristol whose support of Republican candidates knew no bounds until he joined “the never Trump movement.

1923: In Madison, WI, economist Selig Perlman and Eva Perlman gave birth to economist Mark Perlman, the husband of Naomi Perlman

1923: In Brooklyn, William Okun and the former Leah Seligman gave birth to Milton Theodore Okun, “a producer and arranger who helped turn acts as diverse as Peter, Paul and Mary, John Denver and Plácido Domingo into pop sensations, and who founded Cherry Lane Music Publishing, one of the world’s largest independent music publishers.” (As reported by Daniel E Slotnik)


1923: Birthdate of Meshulam Riklis, the Turkish born Israeli-American businessman

1924: Premiere of “The Last Laugh,” a German silent picture filmed by cinematographer Karl Fruend with a script by Carl Mayer.

1925: The text of an agreement between Great Britain and Ibn Saud which included articles aimed to insure the safety of the frontiers of Transjordan and Palestine” was published today in Jerusalem.

1926: “Phone in 11 Languages” published today reported that “telephone users in Jersusalem can ask for their numbers in eleven languages and that the exchanges will put them through.”

1927: “Tell It To The Marines” a silent film that was a box-office success featuring Carmel Myers as “Zaya” was released today in the United States.


1927: A statement was issued today announcing the sale of the Daily Telegraph by Lord Burnham the grandson of J.M. Levy.

1927(29th of Kislev, 5688): On the fifth day of Chanukah, 89 year old Nathan Barnet, a native of Posen, who was a successful businessman and Mayor of Paterson, NJ, passed away today. He is scheduled to be buried at Mt. Neboh Cemetery in Paterson, NJ.

1928(10th of Tevet, 5689): Asara B'Tevet

1928: At Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi Nathan Krass delivered a sermon on “Judaism and Christianity, Contrasts and Conciliations.”

1928: At Carnegie Hall, author James Waterman Wise, the son of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, told the congregation of the Free Synagogue that “we live in a Jewish world today, and the civilization of the world is a Jewish civilization.”

1929: “The Night Belongs to Us” starring Otto Wallburg as “Vater Bang” was released in Germany today.

1930: During his speech tonight at dinner given by the American Jewish Congress, “novelist and magazine writer” said that “unless a world protest is raised,” the “extermination of the one million Jews in Rumania by the present and successive governments” is certain to happen and that the Jews were being blamed for “every political, social economic mishap” that takes place in that country.

1931: At Temple Rodeph Sholom Dr. Hans delivered a lecture to the Rudolph Grossman chapter of the American Friends of the Hebrew University during which “he said the Orient was throwing off the shackles of an intense religious mysticism, an acceptance of miracles and of things as they are and was substituting a greatly liberalized sense of religion and ‘conscious wish to alter things.’”

1932(24th of Kislev, 5693): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1932: “Rasputin and the Empress” a biopic produced by Bernard H. Hyman and Irving Thalberg was released in the United States today.

1933(5th of Tevet, 5694): Parashat Vayigash

1933(5th of Tevet, 5694): Seventy six year old San Francisco native Henry Max Seligman, the son of Jesse and Henriette Seligman and the husband of Adelaide Seligman passed away today in New York City.

1933: Governor Herbert H. Lehman spoke at the annual Maccabean Festival at Madison Square Garden where he denounced the treatment of the Jews of Germany “whose loyalty an love for their country has been betrayed.  Dr. Albert Einstein was the guest of honor at the event which he described as a “demonstration of Jewish solidarity. Governor Lehman’s neice, Mrs. Benjamin J. Buttenweiser, was chairman of the event’s hostess committee.  The evening’s entertainment included “a dramatic and musical panorama of modern Jewish life in Palestine entitled ‘Reunion in Tel Aviv.’”

1934: According to reports published today, “athletes throughout the country are training for the elimination finals which will be held here during February to choose the American Jewish team to complete in the second Maccabiah at Tel Aviv in April 1935.  The National Sports Board, whose membership includes Irving Jaffee, Nat Holman Abel Kiviat, Joseph Alexander and Pincus Sober, is headed by Benny Leonard.

1935(27th of Kislev, 5696): Rabbi Joshua Joffe who had retired in 1917 from JTS after 24 years of teaching and then returned to Germany passed away in Freiburg, Germany.  After his death, his wife and daughter returned to the United States.

1936: Birthdate of Los Angeles native and “an American former World Class Tennis player Myron Franks” the husband of Gloria Delson Cahn and “a Senior VP at RBC Wealth Management.”

1936: It was reported today that former Representative W.W. Cohen, head of the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan said that sufficient funds were available to pay for the settlement of a contingent Jews from Poland in that part of the Soviet Union based the fact that when the American contingent settled there in February of 1934 it had cost “$350 per family to cover transportation, admission and a beginning clothing allowance.”

1936: Patrolmen Isidore Astel, was seriously wounded when he shot and killed a robber in upper Manhattan down which led to his being promoted to the rank of Detective and receiving the Gold Police Combat Cross from the Mayor and the Police Commissioner while still in the hospital in June of 1937.

1936: Tonight, “more than 800 persons attended a farewell dinner at the Manhattan Opera House honoring a delegation of six union leaders that includes Joseph Schlossberg, secretary-treasurer of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union; Max Zarlitzky, president of the United Hatters’, Cap and Millinery Works’ International Union; Isadore Nagler, general manager of the joint board of the Cloak, Suit and Reefer Makers’ Union; Reuben Guskin, president of the United Hebrew Trades’ and Samuel Perlmutter and Joseph Brislaw, vice presidents of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, who are sailing to Europe where they “will confer with experts in France, England and Poland on the Jewish labor movement in Palestine.”

1937: The Palestine Postreported that the British government denied that it was deliberately postponing the establishment of a new Palestine Commission which was to submit a plan for the partitioning of the country, as authorized by the League of Nations. Another Arab leader, Isouk Ayash, was shot in cold blood by an Arab gang in the village of Beit Immar, near Hebron.

 

1937: The British army begam a three day effort to suppress Arab bands in the Galilee.

 

1937: In Mount Vernon, NY, Clara and Sol Trager gave birth to David Gershon Tagera, the federal judge in Brooklyn whose rulings were pivotal in a racially charged case in Crown Heights and in the first civil suit to challenge the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to countries that employ torture. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

 

1938: Birthdate of Robert Elliot “Bob” Kahn, an American computer scientist who co-created the packet-switching protocols that enable computers to exchange information on the Internet. In the late 1960s Kahn realized that a packet-switching network could effectively transmit large amounts of data between computers. Along with fellow computer scientists Vinton Cerf, Lawrence Roberts, Paul Baran, and Leonard Kleinrock, Kahn built the ARPANET, the first network to successfully link computers around the country. Kahn and Cerf also developed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which together enable communication between different types of computers and networks; TCP/IP is the standard still in use today.

 

1938: According an announcement by Joseph H. Biben, the editor and publisher of The American Hebrew,“the 1938 American Hebrew Medal has been awarded to President Roosevelt for outstanding serving in promoting better understanding between Christians and Jews.”

 

1939:Thirty-five German refugees, victims first of German anti-Semitism and then of the war, arrived here this afternoon on the Italian liner Conte di Savoia, ending a voyage that began at Italian ports more than two months ago

 1940: It was reported today that “the fall of France” has boosted the popularity of “The Last Time I Saw Paris” the first Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II song “whose words were written before the music.”

1940: Martha Sharp met 6 adults and 27 children including 14-year-old Eva Rosemary Feigl, all of whom were refugees from the Nazis, at the port of New York.

 1941: It was announced today at British Army headquarters in Jerusalem that Palestine, “alone among the territories of the Near East is to have a Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service.”

1942: “The Thin Man,” a radio serial adaptation of Dashiell Hammet’s 1934 novel, produced by Himan Brown was broadcast for the last time with Woodbury Soap as the sponsor. (Brown was Jewish, Hammet was not)


1943: The Jewish community at Pinsk, Poland, is liquidated.

1943: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau is informed by his staff that, "when you get through with it, the [State Department's] attitude to date is no different from Hitler's attitude."

1943:  Birthdate of actor Harry Shearer whose credits include work with “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons.”

1944: Agnes Steiner moved together with her mother and grandfather to the building where the Neolog "Hevra Kadisha" of which her grandfather had been President, had been located.

http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/photoarchives/detail.aspx?id=1170311


1944: Birthdate of General Wesley Clark, NATO chief and unsuccessful Presidential candidate.  Late in life Clark learned the truth about his lineage.  His father was a Jewish lawyer living in Chicago.  He died when Clark was four.  His mother moved to Little Rock where she married Viktor Clark.  Clark adopted young Wesley and changed his name.  Clark’s Methodist mother hid Clark’s Jewish heritage from him because she was concerned about the KKK which was active in Arkansas. 

1945: Birthdate of Bernie Fine the long-term associate head basketball coach for Syracuse University who terminated following charges of sexual abuse.

1945:  Sumner Welles, chairman of American Christian Palestine Committee, advises that UN Trusteeship Council should establish Jewish commonwealth in Palestine with armed force to give security.

1946(30th of Kislev, 5707): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Sixth Day of Chanukah

1946: In Berlin, Holocaust survivor Helen Ciesla and Harold Kempner, a US Army officer gave birth to filmmaker Aviva Kempner, the founder of the Washington Jewish Film Festival and The Ciesla Foundation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/theyll-have-to-carry-me-out-of-here-in-a-box/2015/09/22/cb74f0c6-478e-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html?utm_term=.fe3e94796cee

http://cieslafoundation.org/product-tag/aviva-kempner/

1946: It was reported today that “a group of Jewish children in the displaced-persons’ center in the French sector” celebrated Chanukah “with a couple of doughnuts, a few pieces of candy and a cup of hot chocolate.”
 
1947(10th of Tevet, 5708): Asara B'Tevet

1947:  The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. The first three patents for the field-effect transistor principle were registered in Germany in 1928 by the Jewish physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. At the time, they attracted little attention.  It would take two more decades of work in Germany and the United States before the giant step in miniaturization could take place.

1947(10th of Tevet, 5708): Frances Stern, social worker, nutritionist, educator, and pioneering dietician passed away.
 
1948:Efforts of UN Truce Committee to arrange Israel-Egypt armistice conference break down.

1948: Israel attacks Egyptian troops near Gaza, Nirim, Rafah, and Khan Yunis.

1949(3rd of Tevet, 5710): 8th day of Chanukah

1949: Birthdate of Shimon Dotan, the native of Romania who moved to Israel in 1959 and became “an award winning Israeli film director, screenwriter, and producer.”

1949(3rd of Tevet, 5710): Arthur Eichengrün, the German Jewish chemist who claimed that he invented aspirin passed away.  Fifty years after his death, Walter Sneader of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow re-examined the case and came to the conclusion that indeed Eichengrün's account was convincing and correct and that Eichengrün deserved credit for the invention of Aspirin. Bayer continued to reject his claim.  Born in 1867, Eichengrün was one of the few Jews to survive the war even though he lived in Berlin until 1944 when he was shipped to Theresienstadt.

1950(14th of Tevet, 5711):Parashat Veyhechi

1950: Joseph Schlossberg, the chairman of the Israel Histadrut campaign in the United States found out today that “Mordecai Namir, the former Israelis ambassador to Moscow has been named secretary-general of Histadrut, the Israeli Federation of Labor.”

1951: “Flood Eases at Tel Aviv” published today reported that many people had returned to their homes in Tel Aviv and schools would be re-opening in Israel’s largest city despite the fact that rain was still falling for the 8th straight day but the situation was still critical in the northern part of the country “where water in coastal waddies continued to rise as torrents poured down from the Galilean hills/

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that David Ben-Gurion introduced a new Mapai-General Zionists-Progressive government coalition to the Knesset. Hapoel Hamizrahi was still considering an option whether to join the coalition. During a heated debate, Ben-Gurion complained that the absurd fragmentation of political factions was the root of all Israeli parliamentary troubles. 

1952: In New York City, “Irving Kristol, an editor and publisher who served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine, founded the magazine The Public Interest and has been described as the "godfather of neo-conservatism" and Gertrude Himmelfarb,.a scholar of Victorian era literature gave birth to Harvard educated journalist, author and “political intellectual” William “Bill” Kristol who while serving as Chief of Staff to the Vice President was known as “Dan Quayle’s Brain” but who in the second decade of the 21st century has found himself on the fringes of his political world and reduced to being the “house-conservative” on CNN.

1952: In Brooklyn, Dvora and Abraham Schneider gave birth to “singer and actress” Helen Leslie Schneider.

1953: Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who had directed the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bombs used during WW II was notified that his security clearance had been suspended.

1954: The State of Israel Bond Drive sponsored the 3rdannual Chanukah festival which was held at Madison Square Garden tonight. 

1954: U.S. Premiere of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” the Disney version of the Jules Verne novel directed by Richard Fleisher and co-starring Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre.
 
1956: The French Jewish Community honored David Feuerwerker on the 20th anniversary of his service as a Rabbi.

1959: One day after he passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held in Manhattan for seventy-six year old Harry P. Fierst , the Kovno born clothing manufacturer and husband of Miriam Fierst with he raised a son and a daughter and whose many activities in the Jewish community including serving as a President of the Mount Vernon Young Men’s Hebrew Association and a director of Congregation Emanuel in Mt. Vernon, NY while helping to “organize the Mount Vernon District of the Zionist Organization of America in 1920” and helping to found the American Zionist Youth Commission.

1958: U.S. premiere of “The Geisha Boy” produced by the film’s star, Jerry Lewis, with music by Walter Scharf.

1960: In Queens, NY, homemaker Thelma (Farber) Lilienfeld and radiologist Ralph Lilienfeld gave birth to Cornell undergrad Scott Owen Lilienfeld, the holder of a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and professor at Emory University who “sought to deepen the understanding of so-called psychopathic behavior” while  exposing “the many faces of pseudoscience in psychology.” (As reported by Benedict Carey)

1960(4th of Tevet, 5721): Sixty-eight year old H.U.C. trained Rabbi Jacob Tarshish, the son of Ida and Perez Tarshish, and the husband of Golda Tarshish who headed congregations “in Columbus, Allentown and Miami while develop a persona as “The Lamplighter” during his radio broadcast that went from 1930 to 1943.

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/ref/collection/tc/id/54808

1961(16th of Tevet, 5722): Parashat Vayechi

1961(16th of Tevet, 5722): Seventy-two year old WWI combat veteran, Oxford graduate and early supporter of Winston Churchill,Leonard Nathaniel Goldsmid-Montefiore, the London-born son of Claude Montefiore and his first wife Therese Alice who “succeeded his father as a leader of Jewish philanthropic organizations in the UK including the Anglo-Jewish Association, the Central British Fund for German Jewry, and the Jewish Board of Guardians” while founding “the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide” and raising two sons – David and Alan – with his Muriel Jeanetta Tuck.

1962(26th of Kislev, 5723): On the second day of Chanukah Leivick Halpern, who used the pen name “H.Leivick” passed away today.  One of the best known works of the Yiddish author was “The Golem,” a “dramatic poem in eight scenes”
http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/igumen/igumen_leyvik.htm

1965(29th of Kislev, 5726): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1965: “The Slender Thread” the first film directed by Sydney Pollack, written by Shana Alexander and starring Steven Hill and Ed Asner and featuring Jason Wingreen was released in the United States today.

1966(4th of Tevet, 5721): Sixty-eight year old Jacob Tarshish, the HUC educated Rabbi known as “Lamplighter” who was the “son of Yechiel Sharaga Feivish Tarshish and Chaya Sarah Ida Tarshish” and the husband of Golda Tarshish with whom he raised one son and two daughters, passed away today.

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/ref/collection/tc/id/54808

https://www.amazon.com/Prelude-happiness-Jacob-Tarshish/dp/B00086OQVK

https://www.amazon.com/Little-journeys-Lamplighter-Jacob-Tarshish/dp/B000895MQK

 

1967: Final broadcast of “Twice a Fortnight,” a British comedy series co-starring Jonathan Lynn, a nephew of Abba Eban

1967: In Los Angeles, the curtain came down on “The Happy Time,” with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by N. Richard Nash (yes a trio of Jewish creators) which had opened on November 19.

1968: Pinchas Rosen resigned from the Knesset and retired from politics.

1968(2nd of Tevet, 5729): 8th day of Chanukah which marks the end of the final celebration of the holiday during the Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.

1969: “Master of Shadow” published today examines the career of Josef von Sternberg, the director “The Blue Angel” who passed away yesterday.

1969: As part of the Cherbourg Project retired Israeli Admiral Mordecai Limon, Martin Siemm and Amiot met again to secretly sign contracts undoing everything they had signed the day before.

1969: “Three” a film version Then We Were Three by Irwin Shaw directed by James Salter was released today in the United States.

1969: Paratroopers airlifted an entire Soviet radar station out of Egypt and transported it back to Israel

1970(25th of Kislev, 5731): Chanukah

1970: “A Memorandum of Understanding” was published at the initial meeting of the “International Catholic – Jewish Liaison Committee.”


1970: “Little Young Man” starring Dustin Hoffman, whose ancestors were Jews from the Ukraine and Romania and Marin Balsam was released in the United States today.

1971: The 22nd national convention of the Farband opened in New York City.

1971: U.S. premiere of “Dirty Harry” directed and produced by Don Siegel with music by Lalo Schifrin

1971: In Toronto, Judy Haim, a Sabra and Bernie Haim gave birth to actor Corey Haim

1973(28th of Kislev, 5734): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1973(28th of Kislev, 5734): Seventy-two year old Irna Phillips whose skill at creating and writing daytime soap operas earned her the title “Queen of the Soaps” passed away today.

http://www.oldradioshows.org/2011/02/irna-phillips-mother-of-the-soap-opera/

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/phillips-irna

1974: Howard Metzenbaum completed a one year term as a U.S. Senator from Ohio to which he had been appointed by the Governor when the elected incumbent had resigned to become U.S. Attorney-General.

1974: “Although he failed to win a seat,” Yigal Cohen “entered the Knesset as a replace for Ariel Sharon.”

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the cabinet approved the peace plan as prepared by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. This scheme, which was to be presented to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Ismailia, was prematurely leaked to the press. It reportedly contained, among other suggestions, a proposal for municipal autonomy for the Arab part of Jerusalem.

1976(2nd of Tevet, 5737): The 8thcandle of Chanukah is kindled for the last time during the short-live Presidency of Gerald Fordl

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that in Cairo Egyptian officials described the Israeli security proposals, presented by Defense Minister Ezer Weizmann, as "extremely disappointing." The Egyptian view was that only very minor changes of the pre-1967 borders could ever be considered.

1977: It was reported today that the Chanukah holidays have spurred contributions from Jewish citizens to the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Among other donations, the fund has received a gift of $100 from the Henry and Nell Feder Foundation Philanthropic Fund of the Jewish Communal Fund.  A note accompanying the donation said that the “Jewish Communal Fund is dedicated to the support of the voluntary system of philanthropy and is happy to be of help to you in achieving your goals.”
 
1979(3rd of Tevet, 5740): Art collector Peggy Guggenheim passed away.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/the-priceless-peggy-guggenheim-1806124.html


1979(3rd of Tevet, 5740): Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz passed away. Born in 1902, “he was a member of the faculty of the Mirrer Yeshiva for more than 40 years, in Poland, Shanghai and Jerusalem, serving as Rosh yeshiva during its sojourn in Shanghai from 1941 to 1947, and again in the Mirrer Yeshiva in Jerusalem from 1965 to 1979.”

1980: Seventy-six year old Berlin native Hans Wilhelm, a screenwriter who was forced to leave Germany after the Nazis came to power because of his “Jewish heritage” passed away today in Santa Monica, CA.

1982: In Sydney, the Israeli Consulate and a Jewish social club were bombed today.

1983(17th of Tevet, 5744): Ninety-four year old Emma Diamond passed away today in a Cleveland Heights nursing home
1984(29th of Kislev, 5745): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1985: It was reported today that Biederman & Company has become the first ad agency for Tower Air, which flies its 747 aircraft primarily out of Kennedy International Airport and has regular service to Brussels and Tel Aviv.

1985:Time magazine describes the recently concluded UNESCO Conference held in Paris to honor the memory of the Rambam. “Maimonides was one of the few Jewish thinkers whose teachings also influenced the non-Jewish world; much of his philosophical writings in the Guide were about God and other theological issues of general, not exclusively Jewish, interest. Thomas Aquinas refers in his writings to “Rabbi Moses,” and shows considerable familiarity with the Guide. In 1985, on the 850th anniversary of Maimonides's birth, Pakistan and Cuba — which do not recognize Israel — were among the co­sponsors of a UNESCO conference in Paris on Maimonides. Vitali Naumkin, a Soviet scholar, observed on this occasion: “;Maimonides is perhaps the only philosopher in the Middle Ages, perhaps even now, who symbolizes a confluence of four cultures: Greco-Roman, Arab, Jewish, and Western.” More remarkably, Abderrahmane Badawi, a Muslim professor from Kuwait University, declared: “I regard him first and foremost as an Arab thinker.” This sentiment was echoed by Saudi Arabian professor Huseyin Atay, who claimed that “if you didn't know he was Jewish, you might easily make the mistake of saying that a Muslim was writing.” That is, if you didn't read any of his Jewish writings. Maimonides scholar Shlomo Pines delivered perhaps the most accurate assessment at the conference: “Maimonides is the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages, and quite possibly of all time” As a popular Jewish expression of the Middle Ages declares: “From Moses [of the Torah] to Moses [Maimonides] there was none like Moses.”

1986: In what marked the beginning of perestroika which improved conditions for “refuseniks” Andrei Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner returned to Moscow from internal exile.

1987(2nd of Tevet, 5748): 8thand final day of Chanukah

1987(2nd of Tevet, 5748): Seventy-two year old broadcast executive Aaron Rubin passed away.

1987: “Good Morning Vietnam” directed by Barry Levinson began a limited released today in the United States.

1988: Shimon Peres completed his service as the Foreign Affairs Minister.

1988: Moshe Arens began serving as the Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel.

1988: “Dominick and Eugene” produced by Marvin Minoff and co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Tony Curtis was released in the United States today.

1988: “The Accidental Tourist” directed by Lawrence Kasdan who also co-authored the script was released today in the United States.

1989(25th of Kislev, 5750): First Day of Chanukah and Shabbat

1989(25th of Kislev, 5750): Eight three year old Richard Rado the British mathematician who had been forced to leave his homeland by the Nazis and who was awarded the Senior Berwick Prize after having discovered the Rado graph, passed away today in Reading, UK

1992: U.S. premiere of “Scent of a Woman” directed and produced by Martin Brest with a script by Bo Goldman.

1993(9th of Tevet, 5754):Two Israeli men were killed in the West Bank by Palestinian gunmen today in a drive-by shooting that ended a 10-day lull in attacks by opponents of the peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The two Israelis, Meir Mendelevitch and Eliyahu Levine, both rigorously Orthodox men in their 20's, were said to have been driving home to Bnei Brak, outside Tel Aviv, when they were overtaken by a car of Palestinians and riddled with bullets.


1993(9th of Tevet, 5754):Anatoly Kolisnikov, an Ashdod resident employed as a relief watchman at a construction site there, was stabbed to death by terrorists while on duty.

1994: “Legends of the Fall” a movie version of the book by the same name directed by Edward Zwick who also served as producer along with Marshall Herskovitz was released today in the United States.

1994: It was reported today that Lucy Kroll an agent for writers, playwrights and performers for more than 50 years, has given the Library of Congress a big gift: 110 boxes full of letters, manuscripts, albums, contracts and other memorabilia. Her clients have included Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht, William Schuman, Martha Graham, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, James Earl Jones, Jerry Garcia and Barney Clark, the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart. Ms. Kroll, an octogenarian who sold her New York agency in October to Barbara Hogenson, who had worked for her, said: "For Christmas, I am divesting myself. Possessions are heavy, so instead of buying gifts, I am giving things that belong to me -- jewelry, books, and clothes. I am also donating my 1940's couturier clothes to a university in Tel Aviv to train students how to design."
1994: “Death and the Maiden” the Roman Polanski adaption of the book by Ariel Dorfrman who wrote the screenplay along Rafael Yglesias was released today in several countries simultaneously.
1995(30th of Kislev, 5756): Parasha Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1995:Prime Minister Shimon Peres said today that Israel would be prepared to close its nuclear program if there was a regional peace in the Middle East, though he stopped short of confirming that Israel possesses nuclear weapons.

1996 James Steinberg completed his service as Director of Policy Planning and began serving as Deputy National Security under President Clinton.

1997(24thof Kislev, 5758): Kindle the first light of Chanukah in the evening

1997: “As Good As It Gets” an off-beat comedy directed and produced by James L. Brooks who also co-authored the script was released today in the United States.

1997: Woody Allen aged 62 married Soon-Yi Previn aged 27. The bride was the adopted daughter of Woody Allen’s long time paramour, Mia Farrow.  For all of those who point to Woody as a Jewish man of letters, they must assume that he skipped that day in Sunday School when they talked about forbidden marriages.

1997: Andrew Tobias publishes the “Jewish Parrot” Joke:

Meyer, a lonely widower, was walking home one night when he passed a pet store and heard a squawking voice shouting out in Yiddish, "Quawwwwk ... vus machst du ... yeah, du ... outside, standing like a schlemiel ... eh?"

Meyer rubbed his eyes and ears. He couldn’t believe it. The proprietor sprang out of the door and grabbed Meyer by the sleeve. "Come in here, fella, and check out this parrot."

Meyer stood in front of an African Grey that cocked his little head and said, "Vus? Ir kent reddin Yiddish?"

Meyer turned excitedly to the store owner. "He speaks Yiddish?"

In a matter of moments, Meyer had placed five hundred dollars down on the counter and carried the parrot in his cage away with him. All night he talked with the parrot in Yiddish. He told the parrot about his father’s adventures coming to America, about how beautiful his mother was when she was a young bride, about his family, about his years of working in the garment center, about Florida. The parrot listened and commented. They shared some walnuts. The parrot told him of living in the pet store, how he hated the weekends. Finally, they both went to sleep.

Next morning, Meyer began to put on his tefillin, all the while saying his prayers. The parrot demanded to know what he was doing, and when Meyer explained, the parrot wanted to do it too. Meyer went out and handmade a miniature set of tefillin for the parrot. The parrot wanted to learn to daven, so Meyer taught him how read Hebrew, and taught him every prayer in the Siddur with the appropriate nussach for the daily services. Meyer spent weeks and months sitting and teaching the parrot the Torah, Mishnah and Gemara. In time, Meyer came to love and count on the parrot as a friend and a Jew.

On the morning of Rosh Hashanah, Meyer rose, got dressed and was about to leave when the parrot demanded to go with him. Meyer explained that Shul was not a place for a bird, but the parrot made a terrific argument and was carried to Shul on Meyer’s shoulder. Needless to say, they made quite a sight when they arrived at the Shul, and Meyer was questioned by everyone, including the Rabbi and Cantor, who refused to allow a bird into the building on the High Holy Days. However, Meyer convinced them to let him in this one time, swearing that the parrot could daven.

Wagers were made with Meyer. Thousands of dollars were bet (even money) that the parrot could NOT daven, could not speak Yiddish or Hebrew, etc. All eyes were on the African Grey during services. The parrot perched on Meyer’s shoulder as one prayer and song passed - Meyer heard not a peep from the bird. He began to become annoyed, slapping at his shoulder and mumbling under his breath, "Daven!"

Nothing.

"Daven ... feigelleh, please! You can daven, so daven ... come on, everybody’s looking at you!"

Nothing.

After Rosh Hashanah services were concluded, Meyer found that he owed his Shul buddies and the Rabbi over four thousand dollars. He marched home quite upset, saying nothing. Finally several blocks from the Shul, the bird, happy as a lark, began to sing an old Yiddish song. Meyer stopped and looked at him.  "You miserable bird, you cost me over four thousand dollars. Why? After I made your tefillin, taught you the morning prayers, and taught you to read Hebrew and the Torah. And after you begged me to bring you to Shul on Rosh Hashanah, why? Why did you do this to me?""Don’t be a schlemiel," the parrot replied. "You know what odds we’ll get at Yom Kippur?!"

1998: Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson completed his service as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

1999(14th of Tevet, 5760): Eighty-three year old author and satirist Felicia Lamport, the daughter of Samuel C. Lamport and Miriam (Dworsky) Lamport and the wife of Judge Benjamin Kaplan with whom she had two children – James Kaplan and Nancy Mansbach – passed away today. (As reported by William H. Honan)

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/25/arts/felicia-lamport-83-a-satirist-devoted-to-rhyme.html

 

2000(26th of Kislev, 5761): 2ndDay of Chanukah

2000(26th of Kislev, 5761): Fifty-five year old Susan Berman, “the daughter of Davie Berman, a Las Vegas mob figure” was murdered today, reportedly by her friend Robert Durst.

http://www.startribune.com/dead-robert-durst-confidante-has-twin-cities-mobster-connection/296776801/

2000(26th of Kislev, 5761): Ninety one year old Victor Borge, the Danish born film actor and comedic pianist passed away. (As reported by Stephen Holden)

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including The Healing Wound:Experiences and Reflections on Germany, 1938-2001 by Gitta Sereny and Indelible by Rachel Hadas

2002: In case of any excuse will do, it was reported today that the elections in which Yassar Arafat is running for another terms as Palestinian president have been postponed because “Israeli troops were occupying the West Bank and restricting in the Gaza strip.

2003: New York Gov. George Pataki pardoned the late comedian Lenny Bruce for his 1964 obscenity conviction.

2004: It was reported today that British Prime Minister Tony Blair who is visiting the Middle East has released “detailed plans for an international conference on Palestinian reform that would be a first step in “reviving Middle East peace efforts” but who also “warned that nothing would be accomplished if the Palestinians failed to act against terrorism.”

2005: “The Ringer,” a “sports comedy” directed by Barry Blaustein was released in the United States today.

2005:Jewish leaders in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria have called for tougher laws against incitement and racial hatred following the riots that swept Australia about 10 days ago.


2005(22nd of Kislev, 5766): Eighty-five year old Selma Jeanne Cohen, publisher of the six volume International Encyclopedia of Dance passed away today (As reported by Jack Anderson)


2005: Release date for “Munich” the Steven Spielberg film about the Israeli program to hunt down the terrorists responsible for the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics.

2006(2nd of Tevet, 5767): Eighth Day of Chanukah.

2006: The Jerusalem Post reported on the preparation for Christmas Eve pilgrims coming to Bethlehem. Israel plans to ease security restrictions to make it easier for the expected 20,000 pilgrims to enter the city. 

2007: In Jerusalem, a screening of “Tehillim.”

 

2007(14th of Tevet, 5768): Ninety-three year old Rhoda Pritzker, the Manchester born daughter of Morris and Cissie Goldberg and the widow of wealthy lawyer, businessman and philanthropist Jack Pritzker whose family “founded the Hyatt hotel chain” passed away today.

https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20071230/philanthropist-helped-education-and-arts

 

 

2007: The Sunday New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Henry James: The Mature Master by Sheldon M. Novick.

 

2008:Closing session of the AJS (Association for Jewish Studies) 40th Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

 

2008: “Judge Judy Sheindlin shared juicy revealing secrets about her life on Shatner's Raw Nerve, in which she was presumptuously interviewed by William Shatner.”

 

2008:   Adam Goldstein, a celebrity disc jockey known as DJ AM, who survived a fiery Learjet crash in South Carolina has sued several companies and the estates of the plane’s pilots.

 

2008: President Bush pardoned Charles Winters.(As reported by Eric Lichtblau)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/washington/24pardons.html

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2008/12/bush-pardons-in.html

 

2008 (26 Kislev 5769):Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, a nationally prominent Reform rabbi known for his progressive, sometimes provocative public stances, including opposition to the Vietnam War, a speech at Yale accusing the university of a history of anti-Semitism and early political support for his neighbor Barack Obama, passed away  in Chicago at the age of 84.

 

2008: NYU “filed a lawsuit to recover $24 million lost in the Ariel Fund, Ltd and the Gabriel Corp claiming that the university was unaware that Ezra Merkin, who was the manager of the Ariel Fund “was actually turning NYU’s money to Bernie Maddoff.

2009(6thof Tevet, 5770): Eighty-six year old “Yitzhak Ahronovitch, the captain of the refugee ship Exodus, whose violent interception by the British Navy as it tried to take thousands of Jewish refugees to Palestine in 1947 helped rally support for the creation of the state of Israel the next year” passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/world/middleeast/24ahronovitch.html

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/dec/27/ike-aronowitz-obituary

 

2009: “Heroes” featuring the work of sculptor Ann Forman sponsored by The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and Casa Argentina en Israel - Tierra Santa comes to a close at the IRWF in New York.

 

2009:The Wednesday evening lecture series at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem presents a Guest Lecture: "Women and the book of Psalms," by Prof. Marc Z. Brettler of Brandeis University.

 

2009: Mishkenot Sha'ananim presents the first in a seven-part lecture series entitled "My Jerusalem." The series includes seven encounters in which key Jerusalemite personalities from various fields talk about Jerusalem from a personal angle. The first lecture, entitled “Stones Weep in Jerusalem” presented is a collection of experience and memories presented by author Dan Benaya.

 

2009:According to today’s Cedar Rapids Gazette“Tootsie Rolls are officially kosher.”

The Orthodox Union has added Chicago made Tootsie Rolls to the compendium of kosher confections that children can consume. “For years, consumers have been banging down the doors of the Orthodox Union asking when will Tootsie Rolls become certified,” says Rabbi Eliyahu Safran of the Orthodox Union, the world’s largest kosher certification agency.The certification covers Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Fruit Rolls, Frooties and DOTS. Ellen Gordon, president of Tootsie Roll Industries, said the only thing that changes is the packaging, which will carry the stamp of approval in 2010. No announcement has been made about the status of Gatorade, which is always purportedly attempting to gain the Hechsher.

 

2009: As of today, Temple Sinai in Oakland, CA, had raised almost $12 million for its new building. Officially known as the First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland, this Reform temple was found in 1875 and “is the oldest Jewish congregation in the East San Francisco Bay region.”

 

2010:David Broza a musician who “personifies Israel at its finest,” is scheduled to perform at the 92nd Street Y.

 

2010: A planned Seattle bus advertising campaign that accused Israel of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip was rejected by King County Executive Dow Constantine.

A planned Seattle bus advertising campaign that accused Israel of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip was rejected by King County Executive Dow Constantine today.
 

2010: A memorial service was held today for Kristine Luken, the American stabbed to death by a terrorist, at Christ Church in Jerusalem.

 

2011(27th of Kislev, 5772): Seventy-eight year old “Evelyn Handler, a cell biologist who, as the first woman to serve as president of Brandeis University, set off an acrimonious debate over the university’s Jewish identity when she secularized some campus traditions in hopes of attracting more non-Jewish students, died today in a pedestrian accident in Bedford, N.H (As reported by Paul Vitello)

 

2011: The Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

 

2011: Jazz For All, featuring Eyal Sela &The Orel Oshrat Trio, is scheduled to take place the Eden-Tamir Music Center.

 

2011:Today, right-wing lawmakers lashed at a statement attributed to Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat and reported by Haaretz earlier in the day, according to which Israel should relinquish Jerusalem's Palestinian neighborhoods beyond the separation barrier.

 

2011:President Obama signed a bill today to expand U.S. military assistance to Israel.

 

2012:Naftali Bennett, Head of HaBayit HaYehudi Party, is scheduled to speak at Federation Hall in Tel Aviv

 

2012: “Once I Entered a Garden” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival. 

 

2012: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Love, In Theory: Ten Stories by E.J. Levy.

 

2012(10th of Tevet):Asarah BeTevet

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/102698/jewish/10-Tevet.htm

 

2012(10th 0f Tevet): Yarhrzeit of Judith Sharon Rosenstein (nee Levin). Known to one and all as Judy, she truly was an Ashit Chayil, “A Woman of Valor.” A devoted wife, loving mother, doting grandmother, faithful friend as well as daughter and sister extraordinaire, Judy is a gift to all who are fortunate enough to be part of her life. “And her children called her ‘Blessed’.” May her name always be remembered!

 

2012:Gaza Arab terrorists fired a rocket at Israel this evening, the first one since the end of Operation Pillar of Defense in November.

 

2012:Almost half of the Israeli population supports a unilateral withdrawal from large sections of the Palestinian territories based on the pre-1967 lines, according to a poll conducted by Rafi Smith for the Blue White Future movement. The poll was released ahead of an election debate between the “Zionist parties” hosted by the movement today at Tel Aviv University.

 

2012: December 2012 continued to break precipitation records over the weekend, as heavy rainfall across central and northern Israel filled the Sea of Galilee, swelled rivers and streams and brought 60-70 centimeters of snow to the summit of Mount Hermon.

 

2012: Today, human rights activist Maikel Nabil, the pro-Israeli dissident who was the first political prisoner in post-revolution Egypt, made his first public appearance in Jerusalem where he tried to draw attention to Arab peace activists across the region and called for an Arab-Israeli reconciliation.

 

2012: Ninety-six year old author Klemens von Klemperer passed away. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/world/europe/klemens-von-klemperer-dies-at-96-wrote-of-nazi-era.html?hpw&_r=1&

 

2013: “Kidon” and “Apollonian Story” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Early this morning police sappers collected the shards of a Kassam rocket that Palestinians earlier fired from the Gaza Strip at the Hof Ashkelon area which landed near a busstop used by schoolchildren.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/missile-from-gaza-falls-near-childrens-bus-stop/

 

2013: In the spirit of “The Big Lie”President Mahmoud Abbas released a Christmas greeting calling Jesus a “Palestinian messenger” and implying that Israel persecutes Christians. Abbas ignored the fact that there was no Palestine in the time of Jesus who was a Jew and that on the day he made the charges about persecution of Christians the JNF was completing its annual distribution of Christmas trees.

 

2013: Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas, the Loyola Marymout University trained attorney and the son of Jewish refugees from Cuba began serving as he 6thUnited States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Secutiry,.

 

2013: An Arab terrorist stabbed an Israeli police officer this afternoon at the “Adam checkpoint north of Jerusalem.” (As reported by David Lev)

 

2013: Kenyon College and Indiana University officially withdrew their memberships from the American Studies Association today, joining the growing list of institutions pushing back against the academic body for its recently announced boycott of Israel.

 

2014: “Mr. Kaplan” and a Chanukah treat for the kids “Lady and the Tramp” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: A memorial service for Louise Goldblatt, the wife of the late Leroy “Larry” Goldblatt and the moter of Laurie (Dr. Robert) Silber and Dr. Fred Goldblatt is scheduled to take place at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA

 

2014(1stof Tevet, 5775): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

 

2024: In the evening, kindle the 8th Chanukah light.

 

2014: Heads of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria together with IDF representatives lit the eighth and final candle of Hanukkah tonight at the grave of Yehoshua Ben Nun (Joshua) - the disciple of Moshe (Moses) from the Torah - located in the village Kifl Hares just north of Ariel in Samaria.

 

 

2014: “The Antitrust Authority decided today to break up a deal allowing a consortium of two energy companies to develop Israel’s largest gas fields, in a dramatic move reversing an arrangement that had come under fire.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

 

2014: French police arrested a suspect who is connected with the firing a gun into one of the windows of the David Ben Ichay Synagouge in Belleville.

 

2015(11thof Tevet, 5776): Seventy-four year old Alfred Goodman Gilman who “shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells” passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

 

2015: Israeli singer and songwriter Yonatan Gefen is scheduled to perform at the JCC in Manhattan.

 

2016: The final screening of “On the Map” which “tells the against-all-odds of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s 1977 European Championship” is scheduled to take place at the Cinema Village.

 

2016: The Temple Israel Family Tour is scheduled to arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport on EL AL Flight #208 on a trip that will last until January 1, 2017.

 

2016: In the wake of the U.S. presidential elections, the 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host Dick Simpson, professor of political science at the University of Illinois in Chicago speaking on “Winning Elections in the 21stCentury.”

 

2016: “The Trump transition team announced today that Jason Greenblatt will leave his current job as executive vice president and chief legal officer of The Trump Organization to serve as the president’s special representative for international negotiations” which means “he is expected to manage the administration’s work on Israeli-Palestinian talks and on trade agreements, among other negotiations.”

 

2016: “Defying extraordinary pressure from President-elect Donald J. Trump and furious lobbying by Israel, the Obama administration today allowed the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction.” (As reported by Somini Sengupta and Rick Gladstone)

 

2016: “The U.N. Security Council today passed a resolution demanding that Israel cease Jewish settlement activity on Palestinian territory in a unanimous vote that passed when the United States abstained rather than using its veto as it has reliably done in the past.” (As reported by Carol Morello and Ruth Eglash)

 

2017: The nation’s largest workshop/festival of Yiddish culture is scheduled to open today at the 14th St Y in Manhattan

 

2017(5thof Tevet, 5778): Parashat Vayigash;

2018(15thof Tevet, 5779): Eighty-seven year old Belgian born and University of Chicago mathematician, Elias Stein who was the husband of Elly Stein passed away today.(As reported by Kenneth Chang)

 

2018: 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 Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting For Hitler, 1929-1941, “the second installment of a three-part biography explores Stalin the ideologue and the opportunist, and concludes with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.”

2018: In the NFL when the Patriots take the field against the Buffalo Bills today, fans will be looking to see if Pat’s Wide Receiver Julian Edelman again “wears cleats bearing the words “The Tree of Life” written in Hebrew, the logo of the Tree of Life Or L’Simcha Congregation — the synagogue targeted in the mass shooting in October — and an Israeli flag, with the hashtag #strongerthanhate.”

2018: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “a special concert featuring NEA National Heritage Fellow Michael Alpert and special guests” in a “A Night of Yiddish Song” as well as “an evening of singing, stories and reminiscences by the family, friends, colleagues and student of scholar and vocalist Ruth Rubin.

2018: In Amherst, MA, the Yiddish Book Center is scheduled to host a screening of “offbeat, irreverent musical documentary ‘Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas.’”

2018: Yiddish New York includes workshops and/or lectures on “Klezmer for Beginners,” “Contemporary Yiddish Culture” and “Yiddish Cartooning.”

2018: The USY International Convention is scheduled to open in Orlando, FL.

2019(25th of Kislev, 5780): First Day of Chanukah

https://jeopardylabs.com/play/chanukah10

2019: Yiddish New York is scheduled to host a performance of “Reflections of a Lost Poet (A Rendezvous Mit Gott): The Life & Works of Itzik Manger” by Miriam Hoffman and starring her son Avi Hoffman as well as as a “Mickey Katz dance party with Marty Ehrlich and Michael Winograd.”

2019: YIVO is scheduled to present Itzik Gottesman as he lectures on “A Very Jewish Christmas: Old World Jewish Christmas Traditions” followed by “Chanukah candle lighting ceremony and a kosher Chinese dinner.”

2019: In Palo Alto, Zack Tobin is scheduled to host “Ha Ha Hanukkuah” in an evening that combines Jewish Bay Area comedians, Latkes and Maccabee Mules.

2020: Base BSTN is scheduled to present online “Praise, Request and Gratitude: A Look at Jewish Prayer.”

2020:Grammy-nominated songwriter, piano sensation and Shaker Heights native Jim Brickman who is Jewish is scheduled to continue his annual Christmas tradition this holiday season with the Comfort & Joy at Home 2020 Virtual Tour” which is, in apart, a fund raiser for the Columbus’ historic Southern Theatre

2020: Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza, his Cuban band and others are scheduled t0 livestream a concert “Not Exactly Christmas Show.”

2020: the Yiddish New York Film Festival is scheduled to begin today.

2020: •  Rabbi Moshe Druin, from Sofer on Site, is in Cedar Rapids this week to repair the Temple Judah Torah scrolls and since we can’t meet him in person this year, due to our coronavirus restrictions, Temple Judah is scheduled to offering a Zoom session with him today at 7:00 pm” during which he will “discuss what goes into making and keeping a Torah kosher, tell a few stories, and take questions.”

2020: As part of the “Coffee with a Survivor” program, the Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to present Second Generation Speaker Kitty Loewy who “will share the story of how her father, Karl, immigrated to the Dominican Republic as a refugee.”

2020: Mosaic is scheduled to co-host a presentation of “My Quarrel with Hersh Raysseyner” which will feature “an introduction and Q&A with Ruth Wisse.”

2020: Following yesterday’s collapse of the “unity” government, Israelis awaken to an even more unsettled world thanks to the on-going threat of Arab terrorism, the Pandemic and an election campaign that will last until March

 

 

 

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

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December 24

1166: King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine gave birth King John of England, the brother of Richard the Lionheart whom he followed to the throne in 1199 and who was such a rapacious monarch that the English nobles banned together and forced him to sign the Magna Charta, which placed limits on the power of the King.  John’s record in dealing with the Jews was uneven, to say the least.  Since Jews fell outside of the norms of the feudal world of the Middle Ages, special provisions were needed to deal with them.  Two years after coming to power, King John issued a special charter guaranteeing the rights of the Jews while he reigned as long as they conformed to all laws and decrees i.e. provided a steady flow of funds to the royal treasury.  In essence, the Jews were “the king’s possession” to do with as he pleased.  So this same King John, when he needed more money, imprisoned several wealthy Jews in a castle at Bristolin 1210 and held them until they paid a ransom of 66,000 marks.  John’s son followed his father’s pattern of behavior in dealing with the Jews.  His grandson would expel the Jews from England after squeezing them of all their financial value.

1294: Pope Boniface VIII is elected Pope.In 1298, four years after Boniface came to power, 628 Jews are killed after a priest Nuremberg, Germany, spreads a story that Jews drove nails through communion hosts, "thereby crucifying Christ again". There are those who hold Boniface accountable for this murderous act, if for no other reason that it took place during his “undistinguished” papal rule.

1354: The Jews of Speyer, Germany were given permission to open a school and synagogue.

 1491: Birthdate Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish founder of the Jesuit order. Loyola was born one year before the Jewish expulsion from Spain.  He lived during a period dominated by the Inquisition and Church sanctioned anti-Semitism. “It is accordingly much to their credit that the Jesuits were firmly opposed (particularly under Ignatius and his first three successors as Superior General of the Jesuits) to ecclesiastical anti-Semitism and to the Inquisition's persecution of suspected Jews. When Ignatius was accused of having partly Jewish ancestry, he replied, ‘If only I did! What could be more glorious than to be of the same blood as the Apostles, the Blessed Virgin, and our Lord Himself?’”

 

1524: Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese explorer who after establishing “a sea route from Europe to India and the Spice Islands” met “Ysuf Adil” “a Jewish man of about forty who said he been born in Posen, Poland and had been taken prisoner en route to Jerusalem and sold as a slave in India” and the Portuguese explorer called Gaspar de Gama” and was employed as a pilot in Indian waters” passed away today,

 

1529: According to various sources date on which Kabbalist, poet and author Shlomo Alkabetz (שלמה אלקבץ) married the daughter of one Yitzchak Cohen, a wealthy householder living in Salonica. His most famous work was 'Lecha Dodi', the hymn that marks the start of the Shabbat.

 

1610:Spain and the Dutch Republic signed a treaty recognizing free commerce between the Netherlands and Morocco, and allowing the sultan to purchase ships, arms and munitions from the Dutch. This was one of the first official treaties between a European country and a non-Christian nation, after the 16th-Century treaties of the Franco-Ottoman alliance. Samuel Pallache, a Jewish-Moroccan merchant, was the lead negotiator during the negotiations.  He had been appointed as the Ottoman envoy to the Dutch Republic by sultan Zidan Abu Maali in 1608.

 

1698: Birthdate of William Warburton, the Bishop of Gloucester, author of the Divine Legation of Moses in which he contends, among other things, that  “the afterlife is not mentioned in the Torah” which makes  “Mosaic Judaism distinctive among ancient religions.”

 

1696: On Christmas Eve, at Evora, Portugal, a group of alleged heretics were led from the palace of the Inquisition (still existing today) to the Roman square, the most visible height of the town, where they were burned. Evora, a provincial capital of Portugal, had been an important center for Marrano Jews.

1744: In Lancaster , PA, Bilah Myers-Cohen and Joseph Solomon gave birth to Shinah Solomon, the wife of Elijah Etting with whom she had eight children.

1767(30th of Kislev, 5525): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1769(25th of Kislev, 5525): First Day of Chanukah

1770: In Newport, RI, Judith Rachel Mears and Moses Isaacks gave birth to Sarah Lopez Isaacks, the wife of Judah Myers.

1772(28th of Kislev, 5533): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1775(1st of Tevet, 5536): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1775: During the American Revolution, as Jews prepare to light the eight Chanukah candle, the Georgia Council of Safety attempted to keep lumber from being shipped to the British West Indies.

1777(24th of Kislev, 5538): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah candle.

1777: Birthdate of Baden native Simon Zimmern the husband of Lena Grombacher with whom he had seven children

1778: The South Carolina and American General Gazette reported that Samuel Mordicai had married Catherin Andrews, the daughter of Abraham Andrews.

1780(26th of Kislev, 5541): Second Day of Chanukah

1789: During the French Revolution, the National Assembly approved a law granting Protestants equal rights with Catholics.  The Assembly refused to extend the same rights to the Jews of France.

 

1798: Birthdate of Adam Bernard Mickiewicz, poet, author and Polish nationalist who sought to organize a military force to fight against the Russians during the Crimean War.  To that end, he worked with Armand Levy to organize a military unit made up of Russian and Palestinian Jews called the Hussars of Israel to fight against the forces of the Czar – the same Czar who was the impediment to Polish independence.

1799(26th of Kislev, 5560): Second Day of Chanukah

1799: As Jews prepared to kindle the third Chanukah Candle, the French adopted “The Constitution of the Year VIII,” a short document designed to make the First Consul, a position held by Napoleon, the virtual dictator of France.

1812: Birthdate of Henry Russell, the “great-nephew of the British Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschel” who was a leading composer of tunes that were popular both in England and the United States.

1814: In Sheerness, Isle of Sheppey Kent, Sarah Levin and Moses Russell gave birth to Henry Russel,

1814: The Treaty of Ghent is signed ending the War of 1812 which is also referred to as the Second War for American Independence.  As has been the case in all other conflicts, Jews played an active role in the military.  The most famous of them was Uriah P. Levy whose naval career would see him rise to the rank of Commodore despite having to deal with anti-Semitism.  Captain John Ordronaux gained famed as a privateer. Several grandsons of Mordechai Sheftal, the Georgian who gained fame during the Revolutionary War fought the British as did one of the sons of Haym Solomon.  Thirty Jews were part of the force that defended Fort McHenry.  Captain Mordecai Myers distinguished himself on the water of Lake Ontario and Major Abraham Massaias helped to “foil British attempts to invade Georgia from the sea.”  Last but not least is Judah Touro who would fight with Andrew Jackson’s forces at the Battle of New Orleans.  As we all know, this most famous battle of the War of 1812 was fought on January 8, 1815, more than two weeks after the war had officially come to an end.

 

1817: In Durbach, Johanna and Emanuel Bodenheimer gave birth to Hermann “Hirschel” Bodenheimer.

1819: Birthdate of Prussian native Philip Victor Haldinstein, the husband of Rachel Soman with whom he had seven children.

1820: Siegmund Leopold Beyfus and his wife “Babette” Rothschild, the daughter of Mayer Amschel Rothschild gave birth to Charlotte Beyfus the future wife of Abraham Oppenheim.

 

1826: In Paris, Jacob Libermann was baptized today taking the name François Marie Paul after which he entered the seminary and began studying for the priesthood.

1828: Twenty-six year old Julia Levy, the New York City born daughter of Rebecca Eva Hendricks and Solomon Levy married twenty-four year old Joseph Lyons Moss, the Philadelphia born son of Rebecca Lyons Johns today in New York City after which they lived in Philadelphia with their eight children.

 

1834: A letter of this date written from Jerusalem stated “It should be known to you that from other lands, worthy people are actually streaming to the Four Holy Cities (Hebron, Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed)” which is part of the proof offered by Arei Morgenstern in his book” Hastening Redemption: Messianism and the Resettlement of the Land of Israel” that there a significant number of Haredim had made Aliyah prior to the birth of the modern Zionist movement at the end of the 19th century.

 

1837: Birthdate of Samuel (Shmuel) Polyakov known as the “railroad king” in Russia who was also the co-founder of World ORT.

1837: Sarah Moses and Alexander Jones gave birth to Rachel Jones.

 

1841: As the conflict between traditionalist and reformers in the Anglo-Jewish community becomes increasingly strident, The Voice of Jacob published an article with a relatively conciliatory tone under the heading ““The attempt to establish a secession synagogue in London.” The article’s author clung to the notion that “that reform group was unlikely to wield any influence.”  Considering the names of the people tied to the Reform movement, this seemed like “a vain hope.”

 

1841: Birthdate of Flaminio Ephraim Servi, the native of Pitigliano, Tuscany who served as rabbi in several communities including Casael-Moneferrato where he was the Chief Rabbi.

1844: Birthdate of Lambert N. Goldsmith, the husband of Frances Goldsmith and the father Ida Goldsmith Morris

1845(25th of Kislev, 5606): Jews in Texas observe Chanukah as members of an independent republic for the last time.

 

1849: Birthdate of Charles Ephrussi, scion of prominent Jewish banking family from Odessa who gained fame as an art critic and collector

 

1851: The President of the Hebrew Benevolent Associations attended tonight’s Anniversary Dinner commemorating the first landing of the Pilgrims hosted by the Sons of New England at the Astor House.

1855(15th of Tevet, 5616): Fifty-four year 0ld Isabella Etting, the Maryland born daughter of Frances Gratz and Reuben Etting passed away today.

1855: Today’s “Parisian Gossip Column” reported a claim by French publicist and editor Taxila Delord that Mlle. Rachel, the famous Jewish actress is planning on returning to France from the United States without completing all of the performances to which she had agreed.

1857:  Birthdate of Copenhagen native Arthur Rothenborg, the husband of Jenny Kann.

1857: Uriah P. Levy was restored to active duty. Naval officials had tried to end his career prematurely, due in part, to the fact that he was Jewish.  Levy played a key role in putting an end to flogging as a punishment for common sea men.  He also was responsible for saving the library that had belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

1861: In England, Mary Levy and John Fileman gave birth to Henrietta Fileman.

1862(2nd of Tevet, 5623): 8th day of Chanukah

 

1862: Today, Henry C. Ekstein a native of Philadelphia joined the U.S. Navy where he served as surgeon rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander before he retired in 1893.

 

1863: In New York, Bernhard and Pauline (Josephthal) Sutro gave birth to CCNY graduate Richard Sutro the financer and the senior partner of Sutro, Bros and Company with an interest in railroads who was the husband of the former Helen Hunt and father of May Rothschild and Edith Ward.

 

1864(25th of Kislev, 5625): Parshat Vayehsev, First Day of Chanukah observed as President Lincoln revels in the news that Sherman has taken Savannah.

1864: Birthdate of Glewitz Germany native and University of Berlin trained physician who in 1901 came to the United States where he served on the faculties of Fordham and Columbia universities and the Medical Director of the Montefiore Home and Hospital for Chronic Diseases on Gun Hill Road.

1864: Philadelphian Abraham Frauenthal who had been in the military since 1861, completed his term of service today.

1865: Birthdate of Polish native William Graupe, the husband of Martha and Pauline Graupe who was buried in B’nai Israel Cemetery in Salt Lake City when he passed away.

1865:  A group of Confederate veterans met in Tennessee and founded the Ku Klux Klan. The first leader of this violent hate group was NathanBedfordForest, the Confederate General who commanded troops at the infamous Fort Pillow Massacre.  Klan members have attacked Blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants and just about everybody else who is not just like them.  The Klan has fallen several times only to reappear in more virulent forms at a later date. The Klan is not just a Southern phenomenon.  During the 1920's one of the largest groups of Klansmen could be found in Indiana.  During that same decade, the hooded hate-mongers staged a parade in Washington, D.C. with no objection worth noting.  Any attempt to rationalize or romanticize the Klan's behavior smacks of the worst form of revisionism.

1865: Birthdate of Polish historian Szymon Askenazy

http://www.jstor.org/discover/4203131?sid=21105504767003&uid=2&uid=4

1868(10thof Tevet, 5629): Asara B’Tevet

1868: Birthdate of Emanuel Lasker, a mathematician who gained fame as a chess player.  He was “World Champion” from 1894 through 1921.  In one of those on-going ironies of the way history is recorded, Lasker is identified as a “German chess champion” even though he was the kind of German who was forced to flee for his life in the 1930’s.  Lasker finally found refuge in the United States where he died in 1941.  

1870(30thof Kislev, 5631): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1870:Barbe-bleue, an opéra bouffe, or operetta, in three acts (four scenes) by Jacques Offenbach with a French libretto co-authored by Ludovic Halévy was performed today at the Grand Opera House in New York City.

1871(19thTevet, 5631): Abraham Samuel Benjamin (The Ktav Sofer) passed away. Born in 1815, he was a Rabbi, educator and Orthodox leader of Hungarian Jewry. He was the son of Moses Sofer and took his father’s place upon his death in 1839. His Responsa and clarification on the Torah were published under the title Ktav Sofer.

1871: In Indianapolis, Indiana, “Herman and Caroline (Daniels) Bamberger” gave birth to University of Indiana trained lawyer Ralph Bamberger, a member of the Indiana House of Representatives and husband of May Freiberg.

1872(24thKislev, 5635): Kindle the first Chanukah Candle

1872(24thKislev, 5635): Eighty year old Rebeca Philips, the daughter Hannah Isaacks and Jacob Phillps and the wife of Isaiah Moses with whom she had 12 children passed away today at Savannah, GA.

1872: Birthdate of Riga, Latvia native and American sheet metal worker Israel Getzel Gerber known by his new legal name Julius Gerber who “became secretary of the Socialist Party in 1895 and served throughout the period when the great Eugene V. Debs was its leader while being married to Lena Sacht with whom he had five sons and three daughters.

1873: Birthdate of Otto A. Rosalsky, the NYU law school graduate (class of 1894) who at the age of 33 was first appointed Judge General Sessions a position he would continue to hold for so long that he was the dean of that bench when he passed away in 1936.

1873: Birthdate of C.G. (Charles Gabriel) Seligman, a pioneer in British anthropology who conducted significant field research in Melanesia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and, most importantly, the Nilotic Sudan. After completing his medical education, in 1898 he went with the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits. Subsequently, his interests turned from medical research towards anthropology. In 1904l he revisited New Guinea to distinguish the characteristic racial, cultural, and social traits of the peoples of the region. In the 1920's, he pioneered a psychoanalytic approach: studying cross-cultural similarity of dreams. He concluded that the psychology of the unconscious could provide an approach to some basic anthropological problems.  He died in 1940.

1874: In Lithuania, Jacob Menasseh Milwitzky and Hinda Riva Mandelstamm gave birth to philologist William Milwitzky, the graduate of Columbia and the University of Paris “who travelled through Turkey, Greece and Romania to collect material for the study of Judaeo-Spanish dialects” which provided the basis for articles in Modern Language Notes and the Jewish Encyclopedia and who also co-author La Bible en Espagne.

1879: The Pauline Markham troupe which included Sadie Marcus, the Jewess who would marry Wyatt Earp performed “H.M.S Pinafore” for the first time In Tombstone the town made famous by the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

1881: It was reported today that Baron Gustav Rothschild has purchased a “woodland tract around Chantilly for which he paid the state” approximately a million dollars.

1881: It was reported today that a near riot had broken out in Odessa, Russia, as people sought to buys tickets for the upcoming performances of Sarah Bernhardt.

1882: It was reported today that Judge Arnoux has lifted the temporary injunctions that restrained the police from arresting Jewish merchants who kept their stores open on Sunday.  In his ruling, Arnoux said that the state legislature has designated the “first day of the week” as the day on which numerous commercial activities are prohibited and that it would be a violation of that stance to allow those who observe a different day of the week as a day of rest to remain open on Sunday. In other words, Jews who do business on Sunday are subject to arrest.  The ruling did not prohibit Jewish merchants from contesting the constitutionality of the law if they face trial on such a violation.

1882: It was reported today that Annie Littlestein, the 19 year old Jewish immigrant from Poland who had been saved after she jumped into the East River had fled her home after a violent altercation with her jealous husband.  The couple has one child whom the police gave back to its mother after the husband disappeared from the home.  (Life in the new world was not always an easy walk on Streets Paved With Gold)

1883(25thof Kislev, 5644): Chanukah

1884: The Paris correspondent of the Times of London ”devotes considerable space to-day to an account of the present state of Russia” in which he says, “the persecution of the Jews is as fierce as it was a few years ago when the European press boiled with indignation at the anti-Semitic outrages which disgraced Russia.

1885: Birthdate of Sagagen, Russia, native Aaron Samuel Cantor who came to Philadelphia in 1891 where he attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, became a cardiologist and eventually moved to Scranton, PA where he passed away in April of 1955.

1886(27thof Kislev, 5647): Third Day of Chanukah

1886: Birthdate Manó Kaminer the native of Hungary who gained famed film director Michael Curtiz. Who directed everybody from Errol Flynn to Elvis Presley.  Like so many other Jewish immigrants he helped develop American Middle American culture with films like Yankee Doodle Dandy and White Christmas.  But his most famous effort is the all-time classic “Casablanca.

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/42547%7C111394/Michael-Curtiz/biography.html

1887: Birthdate of Galicia native Julius Haber, who at the age of 15 came to the United States where he worked with Louis Lipsky, president of the ZOA, helped found the Kadimah Zionist Society and wrote “The Odyssey of an American Zionist while raising three children – Bernard, Henrietta and Chanah – with his wife Birdie.

1887: It was reported today that Bishop Potter, New York’s leading Presbyterian minister, publicly praised the contributions of the Jews of New York to the Sunday Hospital Fund and said that their generosity should serve as an example to Christians who have not been nearly as generous.

1887: It was reported today that among those contributing to the non-denominational Sunday Hospital Fund were Mrs. J.H. Lazarus ($10.00) and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun ($50.00)

1888: Birthdate of Mihaly Kertesz, the Budapest born son of a carpenter and an opera singer who gained fame as Michael Curtiz who won the Oscar as Best Director for the film classic “Casablanca.”

1888: Today, the first burial took place at the “New Hills of Eternity cemetery” which stood on a twenty acre site in San Mateo County that had been purchased by two San Francisco Synagogues after the California state legislature had passed a bill prohibiting further burials in the Mission District which had been the site of the old Hills of Eternity, the city’s Jewish cemetery.

1889(1stof Tevet, 5650): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1889: In Mobile, AL, Sarah Ashkowitz and Joseph Feibelman gave birth to attorney Herbert Uriah Feibelman, the father of Herbert and Emily Feibelman

1890: Rabbi Pereira Mendes and Cantor A.H. Nieto officiated at the wedding of his daughter Rebecca Nieto to Albert Lucas of London this afternoon at Shearith Israel on West 19th Street.

1890: Thirty-four year old Hyman B. Isaacson arrived in the United States “bringing with him a letter (of introduction) from Rabbi Isaac Elchanon to Rabbi Jacob Joseph” who offered him a position as supervisor of Kashruth” which he declined deciding instead to learn “the trade of shirt cutting” which led him to found what would becoming the firm of H.B. Isaacson and Son, a very successful manufacturer of “boys’ wash suits” which provide him with the funds to become a major philanthropist in the Jewish community.

1890: In New York, Grand Jury presented its finding on “illegal divorces which often cause trouble to the ignorant persons who put their faith in them” addressing specifically the practice of Jewish immigrants to the United States obtaining religious divorces from Rabbis and then re-marrying even though they have not gotten a civil divorce – a practice which was acceptable in Europe but not in the United States.

1891: The American Hebrew reminded its readers to “let your children know that it is Chanukah this week and give them a good time.  You have eight days’ time in which to celebrate the Feast, the first night being the 24” of Kislev which is December 25.

1891: Birthdate of NYC native Jess Perlman, the CCCNY alum and Fordham Law School graduate who worked with Camp Madison Grove School in Madison, CT and served on the Jewish Board of Guardians in New York

1891: Emanuel Lehman, the Treasurer of the ad hoc committee formed to provide aid to Russian Jews reported that $77,708.73 has been raised for this purpose as of today.

1891: In Vienna, Rosa Korngut and Nathan Birnbaum gave birth to “Yiddish linguist and Hebrew paleographer,” Solomon Birnbaum

1892(5thof Tevet, 5653): Thirty-three year old Herman Stern, a German Jew “who was employed as foreign exchange clerk in the Wall Street banking house of Landenburg, Thalman & Co committed suicide today by hanging himself in his bedroom at the house of Samuel M. Marks.”

1893: The American Hebrew was founded byF. de Sola Mendes and Philip Cowen, the publisher of the paper.

1893: “History of the Jews In America” published today provided details about the second annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society which will be held at Columbia College later this month.

1894: Birthdate of Lazarus Leonard Aaronson, the son of Orthodox Jew’s living in London’s East End, who converted to Christianity and is best known for his 1930’s work Christ in the Synagogue.

1894: In New York the United Hebrew Charities received $1,163.62 when the Mayor decided to distribute the remainder of the funds donated by city employees last winter to help the poor and the unemployed.

1894: In Paris, “General Mercier, Minister of War, introduced…a bill in the Chamber of Deputies providing the death penalty for such military traitors as Captain Dreyfus.”

1894: In the Chamber of Deputies, Socialist Jean Jaurès who has been “delegated by his party to demand the abolition of the death penalty in the Army…said that Captain Dreyfus escaped the death sentence because the Government feared the consequences of executing him.”

1894: “Christmas In Germany” published today provides a snapshot of events and feelings in the Kaiser’s Kingdom including the anger being felt by Germans over “the spy mania in France” including the Dreyfus Affair which try to make Germany a villain responsible for espionage

1895: Sixty-four year old Sir Edward J. Harland who hired Gustav Wihelm Wolff to be his personal assistant and with whom he later formed Harland and Wolff, the leading shipbuilding company passed away today

1897(29thof Kislev, 5658): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1897: It was reported today that in Morocco, “a deputation from the Jewish community” took part in the recent triumphant entry of newly appointed governor Kaid ben Elsh into the city of Tetuan.

1897: It was reported today the former president of the Municipal Council of Jerusalem is applying for “a concession to supply Jerusalem with drinking water” which will “utilize three ancient reservoirs, two of which dated from the time of King Solomon and the third from the time of Sultan Soliman the legislator.”

1900(2ndof Tevet, 5661): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1900: it was reported today that Nathan Straus, “driving the famous trotter Alves” posted a of 2:09 mark of while racing at the Speedway in New York

1901: In Hungary, a carpenter named Samuel Rosenfeld and his wife Sarah Gluck gave birth to Ruth Rosenfeld who came to the United States where she worked as a seamstress.

1902(24thof Kislev, 5663): Kindle the first Chanukah candle

1902: “Sabbath Alliance Offers Prize” published today described an essay contest conducted by The  Woman’s National Alliance where contestants are to write on ways to heighten observance of the Sabbath that has a $25 dollar prize with all entries to be submitted to the office of the Educational Alliance by April 1, 1903

1904: Birthdate of New York native and Harvard trained attorney Abraham Howard Feller who taught at his alma mater before providing legal services to the Office of Lend-Lease Administration and the Office of War Information before serving as general counsel to the newly formed United Nations, reportedly jumped to his death today.

1904: Birthdate of British financier and philanthropist, Sir Charles Clore the descendant of Lithuanian Jews whose holding company owned the fabled Selfridges department story and whose “Clore Foundation is a major donor to arts and Jewish community projects in Britain and abroad.”

1905(26thof Kislev, 5666): Second Day of Chanukah

1905: It was reported today that the Novoe Vremya which “continues its provocative attitude toward the Jews, sarcastically referring to the ‘second day of the revolution so solemnly and stupidly proclaimed by the Russian Jewish agitators’ is one of only two non-official newspapers that is still being published.

1905: “A meeting was held” tonight “in the Education Hall under the auspices of the Zionist Council of Greater New York to define the attitude of Zionists toward the Jewish question and the recent massacres in Russia.”

1905: In Philadelphia, PA, today “a policeman threatened to stop a meeting of Socialists who had gathered in a local theatre to ‘protests against the massacres of Jews in Russia’ if the speakers persisted in denouncing President Roosevelt and his administration.”

1906: In Georgia, USA, Gerson Rothschild, the son of Sophie of Nathan Baruch Rothschild and his wife Frances Rothschild gave birth to Sofia Rothschild

1906: In New York, Jewish leaders who have been trying to have Christmas celebrations in public schools abolished are hoping that Jewish children will stage a boycott on the day that “children have been to come to school in their best clothes to part in Christmas festivities”

1906: Birthdate of German-born American composer Franz Waxman whose film scores netted him 12 Oscar nominations and two back to back Academy Awards for “Sunset Place” and “A Place in the Sun.”

1907:  Birthdate of I.F. (Isidore Feinstein) Stone, a left-wing journalistic gadfly who published “IF Stone’s Weekly.”

1908: Birthdate of Odessa native and City College and Columbia alum Maurice Chernowitz, the profess of fine arts at Yeshiva University and the husband of the “former Rose Fineman” with whom he raised two daughters –  Tamara and Rena.

1909: I was reported today that Professor Milton J. Rosenau, Professor of Hygiene at Harvard and supporter of the Lake Preventorium wrote a letter to Nathan Straus in which he said, “I see by the papers that you have a princely gift for the establishment of a preventorium for tuberculosis at Lakewood, NJ” and then reassuring Straus that :this is real preventive medicine and that its establishment “will set an example which” will be widely followed.

1910(23rdof Kislev, 5671): Parashat Vayeshev

1910: In Braga, Poland, Esther Ben Dor, the mother of Emory University biblical archaeologist Immanuel Ben-Dor, gave birth to Benami Bendor, the husband of Ruth Bendor.

1910: Birthdate of author Fritz Leiber.  The Phi Beta Kappa graduate won three Hugo awards for his science fiction writing including Ship of Shadows.

1911(3rdof Tevet, 5672): Rabbi Hirsch Goldberg of Savannah, GA died today in New York City.

1912:Marguerite Thompson married William Zorach, the Lithuanian born American Jewish sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer who won the Logan Medal of the arts.

1913(25thof Kislev, 5674): Jews observe Chanukah for the last time in a world that is not at war.

1913: Birthdate of Bernard Manischewitz, the native of Cincinnati, Ohio who was the last member of his family to preside over the worldwide kosher food empire that began when his grandfather opened a small matzo bakery in Cincinnati. Mr. Manischewitz was president of the B. Manischewitz Company for 26 years, until he supervised its sale to a group led by Kohlberg & Company in 1990. At the time, it had $1.5 billion in annual sales and exported its products, from gefilte fish to borscht, around the world.  It then controlled 80 percent of the United States market for matzo, the unleavened bread eaten year-round but especially at Passover.  Mr. Manischewitz's father, Jacob, gave him his first job with the company when he assigned him to inspect the production line to make sure the flat, cracker-like matzos did not break. He eventually became one of the three first cousins who ran the company in its third generation, continuing alone after the others died. The cousins followed the five sons of Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz, who began the bakery in 1888.  In the company's early stages, the rabbi installed certain innovations that were challenged by rabbinical authorities as violating Jewish dietary laws. Rabbi Manischewitz, however, argued strongly that his methods were more sanitary and led to standardized quality. Rabbi Manischewitz also began insisting in advertisements that customers ask for his matzos by the name Manischewitz in order to counter imitators who copied his original name, Cincinnati matzos. In 1932, the company built a second factory, in Jersey City, which quickly became the center of operations. By 1949, Bernard Manischewitz's generation had taken over. He was president, D. Beryl Manischewitz was chairman and William Manischewitz was treasurer.  An article in The New York Times in 1951 told how Bernard Manischewitz was leading the company into preparing more than 70 different kosher foods, in addition to matzo, including frozen fish and poultry, canned borscht and chicken soup, and the Tam Tam cracker. Wines with the name Manischewitz were sold throughout the country under a licensing arrangement.  In an interview with The Times in 1956, Mr. Manischewitz suggested that those products signified the biggest change in Jewish domestic life since biblical times. He said all but the most strictly Orthodox homemakers had been released from "the compulsory obsession with the problems of cooking." He also noted that American processed kosher foods were selling well in Europe and even in Israel.  All this expansion called for snappy — or at least memorable — advertising. One tongue-in-cheek radio ad advised listeners not to eat Manischewitz matzos in bed because they were crispier and so might cause "a crummy night's sleep." Bernard Manischewitz attended Syracuse University for a year and graduated from New York University with a business degree. He later took night courses in factory management. One of the last battles of his career came in 1990, when the company faced charges of conspiring to fix the price of Passover matzos. It ended in 1991 with the company pleading no contest to a single criminal indictment and paying a $1 million fine. Mr. Manischewitz was an intensely private man who avoided using his own name to register in hotels and make restaurant reservations, Dr. Hoffman said. He also believed that not dropping his name made good business sense. When he was in Alaska bargaining over the price of whitefish for making gefilte fish, Dr. Hoffman said, he feared that if people knew he was Mr. Manischewitz, they might expect a higher price. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 89. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1913: Melech Epstein, the Russian born “Jewish American journalist and historian” arrived at Ellis Island. He was the author of Jewish Labor in U.S.A. and The Jew and Communism.

1914: “Open Fund to Aid Jews” describes plans in London to provide aide for Russian and Polish Jews who are suffering as the Russian, German and Austrian forces fight it out on the Eastern Front.

1914: Dr. Arthur Levy, a rabbi serving with the German Army in the campaign against Russia wrote a letter today from Lodz describing the pogroms and murders “committed by the Russians against the Jewish population.”

1914: In an attempt to save the life of Leo Frank, Louis Marshall “presented the appeal from the decision of the Federal District Court of Georgia before J.R. Lamar, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1914: It was reported today that Charles S. Whitman, the Republican who begin serving as Governor on January 1, 1915 plans to appoint at least one Jewish member to each of the boards managing the state’s hospitals.

1914: “Betty,” a musical comedy composed by Paul Rubens opened at the Prince’s Theatre in Manchester, UK.

1914: “To-Night’s the Night,” a musical comedy composed by Paul Rubens the son of English stockbroker Victor Rubens and Jenny Wallach, opened tonight at the Schubert Theatre in New York City.

1914; During World War I the "Christmas truce" begins on the Western Front.  For more about this amazing tale read Silent Night: The Story of The World War I Christmas Truce by the Jewish author, Stanley Weintraub's and you will see how a Christmas book can be considered a “Jewish Book.”

1914: The American Jewish relief organization in Washington, DC received a cablegram from Alexandria, Egypt asking for aid to help the 682 Russian Jews who have just reached that city after having been forcefully expelled from Jaffa by the Turks.

1914: In New York, Herman Bernstein, the editor of The Day, a Jewish newspaper, received a telegram from Secretary State of William Jennings Bryan in which he says, “Department hesitates to place full credence in press reports of ill-treatment of Jews in Jaffa, inasmuch as no official advices to that effect have been received from the Ambassador at Constantinople.”

1914: “Journalistic Comedy of Errors” published today

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9503E5D81438E633A25757C2A9649D946596D6CF

1915: Eduard Gold was appointed mayor of South Vancouver today.

1915: It was reported today that one of the signs of the great strides made by organized religion in 1915 is “that Jews have recently started a movement to raise funds for those of their race in war stricken lands.”

1915: Rabbi Louis Bernstein of St. Joseph preached “the opening sermon tonight at the national meeing of the Jewish Chautauqua Society” which is meeting in St. Louis for 6 days.

1915: “The Central Committed for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War which is in working in co-operation with the Jewish Relief Committee” announced today “collections amounting to about $20,000.”

1915: It was reported today that “more than three hundred Jews – captains of industry, merchants, university professors and rabbis” attended a just concluded conferred that had been convened to form “an organization that would bring about closer relations between the Jews of Germany and the Turks.”

1915: It was reported today that “Theodor Wolff of the Tageblatt, who is perhaps the most prominent editor in Germany declares that notwithstanding the recent revival of anti-Semitism the feeling against Jews in Germany is gradually on the wane, existing nowhere to a great extent except possibly among the minor ability.”

1915: Birthdate of Aleksandr Yakovlevich Novakovsky, the native of Petrograd who gained famed British economist Alexander Nove.

1915: It was reported today that Jacob H. Schiff has continued his annual tradition of marking the anniversary of the death of his mother, Mrs. Clara Schiff by addressing “the girl members of the School of Religious Work” and awarding a prize named in her honor for the best essay written by one of the students.

1916(29thof Kislev, 5677): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1916: In New Orleans, the Jewish Chautauqua Society led by Chancellor Berkowitz of Philadelphia met for a third day today in New Orleans.

1916: Today the Metropolitan League of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association held a Chanukah celebration at Temple Israel in Harlem where Felix M. Warburg “advised the young men to adhere closely to the teachings of their religion, never to desert it and to obey their parents” while advising “the parents to send their children to the Hebrew associations rather than to other places.”

1916: “A plea for inclusion of Jewish political and religious freed in the treaties of peace at the end of the European war was made by Max J. Kohler, author of Jewish Disabilities in the Balkan States in an address” given this “morning at Temple Israel in Brooklyn on ‘The Relation of American Jewry to World Jewry.’” (Editor’s note – Woodrow Wilson had just been re-elected using the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.”  All of this would look different when a mere four months later the United States would declare war on Germany ending the self-proclaimed role of honest peace broker.)

1916: More than 20,000 youngsters attended the Chanukah celebrations at today’s session of the Convention of the Young Judea National Leaders’ Association heard Professor Israel Friedlander discuss the significance of the holiday when he said was the only Jewish festival in which the “military spirit” was involved.

1916: “An endless chain of contributors who persuade others to contribute and to persuade still others is one of the plans for raising money put in operation by the committee seeking to collect $10,000,000 before the end of 1917 for the relief of Jews suffering from the war, it was announced” today “by Albert Lucas, Secretary of the Joint Distribution Committee which represents those organizations interested in Jewish war relief work.”

1916: The New York Times featured a review of Isaac Mayer Wise: The Founder of American Judaism, a biography of the founder of Reform Judaism, written by Max B. May.

1917: Birthdate of Zara Nelsova, the native of Winnipeg, Canada whose career as a cellist took her to London and then back to North America where among things  this one-time child prodigy taught at Julliard in New York.

1917: During a discussion of juvenile education as a factor in the success of the Zionist movement at today’s meeting of the Young Judea National Leaders Association at the Central Jewish Institute
Samuel Rodman Leaders of Baltimore said that “the present Jewish education in America is worthless.”

1917: Seventy-one year old Nevada Senator Francis G. Newlands the only Democrat to vote against the confirmation of Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

1918: An official notification reached Washington today “crediting Andrew Moraczeewski, the Premier of Poland, with having just declared that it was the purpose and intention of the Polish Government to put an end to the anti-Semitic movement.”

1918: “An appointment was today by telegraph” for a delegation of American Jews to meet in Paris with Colonel House, the advisor to President Wilson, to discuss the Zionist movement.

1918:  Birthdate of Anwar El Sadat who served as President of Egypt from 1970 until his murder in 1981.  Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem and subsequent signing of the Camp David Peace Agreement make him a “Profile in Courage.”

1919(2ndof Tevet, 5680): 8th day of Chanukah

1919: It was reported today that the buyers for J.L. Brandeis and Sons of Omaha have arrived in New York.

1920: “Judge Otto A. Rosalsky told a delegation of the Daughters of Jacob who presented him today with a judicial robe, that he was preparing a bill to bring to court those “who persist in libeling not only Jews but every other denominatin’” and then went to “assail Henry Ford for his anti-Semitic utterances characterizing him as the ‘greatest menace to American institutions.’”

1920: Reviews of Playmates in Egypt and Other Stories by Elma Erlich Levinger, A Book of Jewish Thoughts by J.H. Hertz, Stories of Child Life in a Jewish Colony In Palestine by Hannah Trager with a preface by Israel Abrahams and Omar and the Rabbi by Frederick Leroy Sargent were published today.

1920: Enrico Caruso gave his last public performance, singing in Jacques Halevy's ''La Juive'' (The Jewess) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Halevy was the son of a cantor. In writing “La Juive” he created the role of Eléazar one of the great favorites of tenors including Enrico Caruso. The opera's most famous aria is Eléazar's "Rachel, quand du Seigneur”.

1920(13thof Tevet, 5681): At erev Shabbat services, Shaari Zedek is scheduled to host Jewish Collegians’ Night during which Louis S. Posner will deliver a lecture on “The Building of a Nation” and “David Tannenbaum, formerly of the Chaplain of the Eighty-second Division, American Expeditionary Force” will describe the “achievements of the Inter-Collegiate Association.

1921(23rdof Kislev, 5682): Parashat Vayeshev

1921(23rdof Kislev, 5682): Odessa born financier and economist Arthur Raffalovich, the son of Hermann Raffalvoich and brother of Sophie and author  Marc-André Raffalovich passed away today in Paris.

1922: “Heroes of the Street” a crime drama produced by Harry Rapf was released today in the United States.

1922: “During a six-hour delay on the New York Central between Boston and New York, Harvard President Abbot L. Lowell told Victor Kramer, a Jewish graduate of Harvard that at Harvard Jews “are Menorah boys” and Christians “are Crimson boys and the two just don’t mix” which accounted, in part for his belief that the “real answer” to the Jewish problem “was for Jews to abandon their religion which had been superseded by Christianity.”

1923: Birthdate of David Frank Friedman a film producer  from Birmingham, Alabama, who cheerfully and cheesily exploited an audience’s hunger for bare-breasted women and blood-dripping corpses in lucrative low-budget films like “Blood Feast” and “Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1924: Albania becomes a republic. Jews had lived in parts of what is now Albania since Roman times.  As part of the Ottoman Empire Albania provided a refuge for Jews fleeing from the Inquisition (a role it was to play again during the Shoah).  An independent Albaniahad actually been created just before World War I in one of the on-going dismemberments of the Ottoman Empire.  After the war, there were probably 200 Jews living in the country.

1924: In Vilna, Sonia and Max Silverstein, who would later emigrated to Havana where he operated a shoe factory, gave birth to Stanley Oscar Silverstein “who designed fashionable but affordable shoes that helped Nina Footwear, the company he founded with his brother, become a force in the international women’s footwear industry…” As reported by Daniel Slotnik)

1924: In Egypt, Simcha Ambash, an engineer whose name is “an acronym for ‘I believe in complete faith’” and his wife Leah, “the daughter of Yechiel Michael Steinberg, founding family of the village of Motza” gave birth to Aura Herzog, holder of a B.A. in mathematics and physics, wounded veteran of the War of Independence and wife of Chaim Herzog with whom she raised four highly accomplished children – “attorney Yoel Herzog, Brigadier General Michael Herzog, politician and former opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Bougie), and Ronit, a clinical psychologist.” (Her sister Suzy was the vivacious wife of Abba Eban)

1924: Birthdate of Nissim Ezekiel, the native Bombay (as it was called during British rule) “an Indian Jewish poet, playwright, editor and art-critic” whose works include The Bad Day and The Deadly Man.

1925: Birthdate of Yafa Abramov, the native of Giv’at Rambam who gained fame as Yafa Yarkoni “an Israeli singer who won the Israel Prize in 1998 for Hebrew song.”

1925: In Brooklyn, Isadore and Nettie Stromer Singer gave birth to M.I.T. professor Irving Singer.

1925: Birthdate of Nuremberg native Claude Frank whose family moved to Paris when he was 12 to escape the Nazis and eventually arrived in the United States where he became a successful pianist who often performed with his wife Lillian Kallir

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/11316312/Claude-Frank-obituary.html

1925(7thof Tevet, 5686): Seventy-eight year old whiskey dealer Isaac Weil, the husband of Hannah Weil and the father of Jonas, Benjamin, Charles, Caroline, Herman and one unnamed infant girl who died at birth, passed away today after which he was buried at the Temple Israel Memorial Park in Minneapolis, MN.

http://pre-prowhiskeymen.blogspot.com/2011/10/isaac-weil-joined-old-world-with-new.html

1925: In the Bronx, NY, Hetty and Max Schmertz gave birth to Eric Joseph Schmertz “who as one of the nation’s most relied-upon labor peacemakers helped resolve thousands of labor disputes, getting both the Rockettes and New York City cab drivers to end strikes in the 1960s.” (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1926: In address given today welcoming delegates from every part of the country to the Ninth Annual Convention of the Histadruth Ivrith, the national association for the promotion of Hebrew as the medium of literary expression, Rabbi Max D. Klein called there revival of the Hebrew language a “phenomenon of modern life.”

1927: “The New Moon,” an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II” opened in Philadelphia on Christmas Eve.

1928: Erwin Rommel and his wife gave birth to Manfred Rommel who as mayor of Stuttgart “strengthened the city’s Jewish population.” (As reported by Douglas Martin) 

1928: As the internecine conflict between Jews for control of the project to settle Jews in Palestine heated up, it was reported today that “M.W. Weisgal, editor of The New Palestine, the official organ of the Zionist movement in this country said…that the Jewish Agency was a term used by the Palestine mandate for any Jewish agency which might arise to help Palestine and that the World Zionist Organization was at present at such an agency.

1928: It was reported today that “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of New York, whose opposition to the inclusion of non-Zionists in the Jewish Agency Council was overridden by the World Zionist Organization” said “he will opposed the measure when it goes before the Zionist Congress for ratification.”

1929: In Jerusalem, “the Jewish case came to dramatic close at today’s hearing of the Palestine Inquiry Commission when Sir Boyd Merriman, counsel for the Jews, who was about to finish his summation, declined to continue because of the interruptions of R. Hopkins Morris, the member of the Commission representing the British Liberal Party.”

1930: The Executive of the Jewish Agency announced “that a total of 5,883 Jews entered Palestine during the Jewish Year 5690 (Oct. 1, 1929 to Sept. 30, 1930)

1931: Birthdate of Argentinean born composer and director Maricio Kagel.

1932(25thof Kislev, 5693): Parashat Vayeshev and first day of Chanukah

1932: Birthdate of Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus.

1933: “Year of Hitler Nears End with Small Hope for Jews,” published today described how the entire structure of the Reich has been “altered” while “the persecutions of ‘Non-Aryans’ continued with only slight amelioration.”

1934: “Peter” a comedy directed by Henry Koster and produced by Joe Pasternak was released in Austria today.

1935(28thof Kislev, 5696): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1935(28thof Kislev, 5896): Fifty year Austrian composer Alban Berg passed away today in his native Vienna as the result of blood poisoning.

http://www.naxos.com/person/Alban_Berg_25989/25989.htm

1936(10th of Tevet, 5697): Asara B'Tevet

1936: In Germany, the hierarchy ordered its priests to read the pastoral letter, On the Defense against Bolshevism

1936: In Cuba, Congress impeached Miguel Mariano Gómez who as President of Cuba had negotiated with Congressman William I Sirovich about the possibility of “Cuba opening her doors to at least 100,000 persecuted German Jews”

1936: It was reported today that William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor has expressed his support for “the ideals of the Jewish labor movement in Palestine.”

1937: The Palestine Postreported that 11 Arabs were killed, scores wounded, and one captured, in a battle fought by a strong police and military force against a large Arab band northeast of Nazareth. An Arab gang attack was repulsed at Kibbutz Alonim. Telephone lines were cut in numerous places throughout the country.

1937: In a leading article the Post sadly reflected that at Christmas-time the world picture hardly presented a flattering reflection of a Christian ideal. The situation in Europewas painfully familiar and needed no elaboration, while in Palestine, in which the centuries-old history of Christianity had its roots, peace seemed intractable.

1937: Pope Pius XI delivered his annual Christmas message to the College of Cardinal during which he “condemns…the persecution of the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany.” "In Germany there is real, actual religious persecution despite efforts to present a contrary impression. For some time people have been saying and trying to make other people believe there is no persecution, but we know there is — and very grave persecution. Indeed, rarely has there been persecution so grave, so terrible, so painful, so sad in its deep effects.” (As reported by Austin Cline)

1937: “Thank You, Mr. Moto” “the second of eight Mr. Moto films” all starring Peter Lorre as Mr. Motto and produced by Sol M. Wurtzel was released today in the United States.

1938(2ndof Tevet, 5699): Parasha Mketz; 7th day of Chanukah

1938(2ndof Tevet, 5699): Sixty-six year old Nashville, TN native and University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College trained rabbi Abram Simon, the husband of Carrie Simon and father of David Simon passed away today “less than here hours after he preached at the Washington Hebrew Congregation.

https://opensiddur.org/profile/abram-simon/

1938(2ndof Tevet, 5699): Eight-one year old Arthur Ellis Franklin, a senior partner at Keyser & Co, a merchant bank, the son of banker Ellis Abraham Franklin and Adelaide Franklin and the husband of Caroline Franklin with whom he had six children passed away today in London.

1938: Several members of the American Catholic hierarchy and leading Protestants sign a Christmas resolution expressing "horror and shame" in response to the Kristallnacht pogrom.

1938: “The desperate plight of 7,000 Jews expelled from Germany, who for almost two months have been sheltered in barns near the Polish-German frontier is being investigated be Robert Briscoe, a member of the Irish Parliament.”

1939: “On Christmas Eve, approximately two months after occupying the city, Germans, along with Polish policemen, encircled the synagogue in Siedlce, removed the Torah scrolls from the building, and lit both the synagogue and the Torah scrolls.”

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/01.asp

1940(24thof Kislev, 5701): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1940: Birthdate of Shaul Amor, the native of Morocco who made Aliyah in 1956 and was elected to the Knesset for the first time in 1988.

1940: In advising the Mandate Government as to how to deal with Jewish immigration to Palestine after the Patria incident Churchill sent a memo urging the government to consider their promises to the Zionists and to be guided by general considerations of humanity towards those fleeing from the cruelest forms of persecution.  The Permanent Under-Secretary of State ignored Churchill’s request and successfully convinced his colleagues not let Churchill know of their decision to suspend Jewish legal immigration until September, 1941.

1940: Release date of the Czech film “Ecstacy” starring Hedy Lamar, who was the daughter of two assimilated Viennese Jews – Gertrude and Emil Kiesler.

1941: “Dangerously They Live” a “WW II spy film” starring John Garfield was released in the United States by Warner Bros.

1941: Viktor Alter, the Polish born Bundist who to organize the International Jewish Ant-Fascist Committee was sentenced to death by the NKVD after having fallen afoul of Stalin’s paranoia and anti-Semitism.

1942: Following a successful attack on Nazi troops at the Cyganeria, a coffee house in Cracow, Poland, the German authorities launched a massive retaliatory campaign aimed at destroying the Jewish Fighting Organization.

1942: Hundreds of Jews were captured after another German manhunt in the woods of Parczew.

1942:On Christmas Eve before Barney Ross and his Marines were to go to battle the famous Father Frederic Gehring, a war-time chaplain who wrote regular correspondences for Reader's Digest magazine asked Ross to take part in what would become one of the most poignant such events of the war. During his time in Guadalcanal, Ross had begun what would be a life-long friendship with Gehring who considered Ross a national treasure who defied logic when it came to bravery and the defense of principle.  Ross was the only one capable of playing a temperamental organ on the tropical island, so Gehring asked him to learn Silent Night and other Christmas songs for the troops. Barney played these songs and sang with the homesick young men, after which Gehring implored Ross to play a Jewish song. Ross played a melancholy song called "My Yiddishe Momma" about a child's love for his self-sacrificing mother. Many of the Marines knew the melody of the song because Ross always had it played when he entered the ring. But when the Marines heard the heart-rending lyrics, newspaper reports say they were all in tears. After Ross's single-handed victory in the battle at Guadalcanal, he was viewed as almost superhuman, particularly based on all he had to overcome in his troubled life.

1942: During his Christmas Eve address, Pope Pius mentioned “the hundreds of thousands who without any fault of their own sometimes only by reasons of their nationality or race are marked for death or gradual extinction.”  Despite having been told about the fate of the Jews of Europe, the Pope chooses not to condemn those who are engaged in the slaughter known as “The Final Solution.”

1943: As the Soviet Army began advancing toward Berlin, the Nazis worked furiously to cover up the slaughter of the Jews.  At the infamous Fort Number Nine (known as “the Slaughterhouse") in the Kovno Ghetto the Bobel Commando unit composed of 64 Jews  dug up and assisted in the burring of 12,000 bodies out of the 70,000 that had been murdered there since the winter of 1941. On this Christmas Eve they attempted their escape while the guards celebrated. Nineteen would survive and tell the horror story of Bobel Commando Unit. In Borki, a similar attempt to escape was undertaken by its Bobel Commando Unit. Of 60 who tried, only 3 escaped to live through the war. One, Josef Sterdyner, testified at the trial of the Borki guards in 1962. Another, Josef Reznik, was a witness at the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem in 1961.

1943: “The Ghost Ship,” “a psychological thriller directed by Mark Robson” was released in the United States today.

1943: At Borki, Poland, 60 Jews working on an exhumation squad attempt to escape through a tunnel, but few of them are successful.

1943: U.S. premiere of “Jack London” a film treatment of the author’s life produced by Samuel Bronston.

1943(27thof Kislev, 5704): New York’s Rabbi Louis Werfel a 27 year old chaplain serving with the Twelfth Air Force Service Command in North Africa was killed in a plane crash in Algeria as he was flying back from conducting Chanukah services in Casablanca. Rabbi Werfel was the fourth Jewish chaplain to lose his life in the line of duty as of this date.  He was known as “the flying rabbi” because of his propensity for using aircraft to travel to distant outposts to serve the unique needs of Jewish servicemen. After graduating from Yeshiva University he served as the rabbi for the Mount Kisco (NY) Hebrew Congregation and Knesseth Israel in Birmingham, Alabama, his last pulpit before joining the Army Air Force. In Birmingham he was on the board of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Army and Navy Committee The wide range of Werfel’s activities could be seen from his request to the Jewish for 10,000 French-Hebrew prayer books for the Jews fighting with the Free French forces.

1944: As proof that for many British policy-makers keeping Jews out of Palestine was more important than saving them from the Holocaust, Lord Gort, the High Commissioner for Palestine telegraphed the Foreign Office from Jerusalem asking that the Soviet Government – whose troops had entered the Balkans – be asked to close both the Rumanian and Bulgarian frontiers on the grounds that Jewish immigration from South East Europe to Palestine was getting out of hand.

1945: Twenty-one year old Arnold Weiss who was serving as an officer in the United States Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps, began working on a project that would lead to the discovery of Hitler’s last will and political testament.

1945: In New York City Bernard Constant Meyer, a Manhattan psychoanalyst and his wife concert pianist Elly Kassman gave birth to University of Iowa graduate Nicholas Meyer who enjoyed a career in films and as an author whose works included The Seven-Per-Cent Solution which was later made into a movie.

1946: Birthdate of Uri Geller, the Israeli who specializes in the para-normal.

1946(1st of Tevet, 5707): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Seventh Day of Chanukah

1946(1st of Tevet, 5707): Israel Levin is murdered in Tel Aviv, Palestine, for betraying Stern Group leader.

1946: Birthdate of Israeli movie director Uri Barbash, the brother of screenwriter Benny Barbash whose most notable work might the 1984 film “Beyond the Wall, which received an Oscar nomination in the category of Best Foreign Language Film.

1946: TheWorld Zionist Congress ended with the Zionists calling for an end of terrorism. The Congress expressed its opposition to a UN trusteeship and want independence with no partition. The delegates also adopt resolution to boycott conference in London, England.

1947(11thof Tevet, 5708): Forty-five year old Berlin native Gertrude Greissle, the daughter Mathilde (Zemlinsky) Schonberg and Arnold Schonberg and the wife of Felix Anton Greissle passed away today in New York

1947(11thof Tevet, 5708): Forty-six year old Turku native Elias Katz who won a silver medal while running the 3000 meter steeple chase as a member of Finland’s Olympic team in Paris was murdered during an attack by Arabs in Palestine.

1947: Heavy sniping amounting almost to guerrilla warfare killed four Arabs and two Jews and wounded at least twenty-six other persons in Haifa during the last twenty-four hours.

1947: Nineteen people who had been on trial since August 7 on charges of committing war crimes in their operation of Mittlebau-Dora Concentration Camp heard the their individual verdicts – 15 guilty and 4 acquitted.

1948: Abram Chayes married Antonia (Toni) Handler who “served as Undersecretary of the Air Force in the Carter Administration; a union that produced five children Eve, Gayle, Lincoln, Angelica and journalist Sarah Chayes.

1948: “The Paleface” a western comedy with a screenplay by Melville Shavelson was released in the United States today.

1948: The Canadian Minister for External Affairs, Lester Pearson, informed Israel’s Foreign Minister, Moshe Sharett that “ the state of Israel, in the opinion of the Canadian governments has given satisfactory proof  that it complies with the essential conditions of statehood” including “external independence and effective internal government within a reasonably well-defined territory.”  In plain English, the government of Canadarecognized the state of Israel.

1948: On Christmas Eve, pilgrims are allowed to enter Bethlehem.  But they have to pass through both Jewish and Arab checkpoints.

1948: Egyptian planes attack Nazareth, Haifa and Tel Aviv.

1950(15th of Tevet, 5711): Lev Simonovich Berg passed away.  Born in 1876, Berg was the geographer and zoologist who established the foundations of limnology in Russia with his systematic studies on the physical, chemical, and biological conditions of fresh waters, particularly of lakes. Important, too, was his work in ichthyology, which yielded much useful data on the paleontology, anatomy, and embryology of fishes in Russia.

1951(25th of Kislev, 5712): As the Korean War drags on for a second year, the Jews observe Chanukah

1951: Idris I is proclaimed King as Libya gains its independence from Italy.  Jews had lived in what was now Libya since the time of the Greeks and Romans.  Jewish fortunes in Libya were already in decline before independence.  The anti-Jewish policies of the fascists coupled with outbreaks against Jews following the creation of Israel had begun to take its toll on the Jewish population.  The Six Days War in 1967 led to further attacks on the Jews.  Idris realized that he could not protect his Jewish subjects and he allowed the Jewish community to leave the country.  The Jews went to Rome with some of them moving on to Israel or the United States

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the new Mapai-General Zionists-Progressive government coalition won a 63-to-24 vote of confidence. The religious parties still hesitated, but were expected to join the coalition.

1952(6thof Tevet, 5713): Ninety-eight year old Max Hexter, the son of Levi and Betty Hoechster and the husband of Sarah Hexter passed away today in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1952(6thof Tevet, 5712): Moritz Hausler, the Viennese native who “played for the Austrian National team seven times during his international career” and “was also a member of the famed Hakoah-Vienna club” before coming to the United States where he played soccer for the New York Giants and New York Hakoah passed away today

1952: “Come Back, Little Sheba” a dramatic film directed by Daniel Mann, produced by Hal B. Wallis and with music by Franz Waxman was released today in the United States.

1952:  The Jerusalem Post reported that 80 dunams of land and a house in the Zeita village in the Little Triangle were detached from Israel and handed over to Jordan by the Mixed Israeli-Jordanian Armistice Commission, according to the demarcation armistice lines, agreed upon at the Rhodesarmistice negotiations. Arab residents of this area surrendered their Israeli identity cards and became Jordanians.

1952: As the third Israeli government ends and the fourth Israeli government takes power today, Moshe Sharett retained his position as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

1952: Yosef Burg replaced Mordecahi Nurock as Minister of Postal Services, making him the second person to hold this position.  Nurock was the first person to hold the position now known as the Communications Minister

1952:Israel Rokach replaced Haim-Moshe Shapira as Interior Minister in Israel.

1955(9th of Tevet, 5716):Hugo Chaim Adler a Belgian composer, cantor, and choir conductor passed away. “Born in Antwerp to Jewish parents, Adler studied at the Hochschule für Musik Köln from 1912-1915. In 1915 he was drafted into the German Army during the First World War; serving for three years in the infantry until he was wounded at Argonne. In 1918 he was appointed cantor and teacher at St. Wendel in the Saarland. He left there in September 1921 to become second cantor at the synagogue in Mannheim, rising to head cantor there in 1933. While in Mannheim he studied music composition at the Mannheim Conservatory with Ernst Toch. In 1939 he fled Germany for the United States after having been imprisoned due to his Jewish ancestry by the Nazi regime. From September 1939 until his death of cancer in December 1955 he was cantor of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, Massachusetts. He remained active as a choir conductor and composer of sacred music during these years. Several of his works were published by Sacred Music Press and Transcontinental Music Publishers in New York City. He is the father of composer and conductor Samuel Adler.”

1955(9thof Tevet, 5716): Seventy-two year Samuel Charney, who wrote under the pen-name of Shmuel Niger passed away today.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Niger_Shmuel

1955: Release date in Japan for “The Court Jester” a musical comedy starring Danny Kaye.

1957(1stof Tevet, 5718): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1957: Norma Talmadge, the former wife of Joseph Schenck with whom she created one of Hollywood’s earliest and most successful production companies passed away today.  He was Jewish.  She was not, although she apparently had a penchant for Jewish husbands since she married George Jessel 9 days after she divorced Schenck.

1956(1stof Tevet, 5718): Seventy-seven year old Ephraim Frisch, the Lithuanian born son of “Rabbi David and Hannah (Baskowtiz) Frisch and the wife of Ruth Cohen Frisch who “was ordained at HUC in 1904, helped to found the New Synagogue of New York in 1915 after which he led Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, TX passed away today in New York.

1958(13thof Tevet, 5719): Fifty-three year old Nicholas “Slug” Brodszky the native of Odessa who came to the United States in 1934 where he composed the music for many successful films including “The Student Prince” and “”Love Me or Leave Me as well as “the score for the Yiddish language film Die Purimspieler.”

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/nicholas-brodszky-mn0000174438

1959:At the first post-war Christmas Eve celebrations in 1959, the synagogue and the Cologne memorial for the Victims of the Nazi regime were damaged by two members of the extreme rightist Deutsche Reichspartei, who were later arrested. The synagogue was daubed with black, white and red color paint, and a swastika and the slogan "Juden raus" were added

1959: The desecration of a new synagogue in Cologne, Germany sparked a wave of anti-Jewish incidents throughout Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, and Africa.

1961: Sid Gillman’s San Diego Chargers lost to the Houston Oilers in the 1961 American Football Championship game.

1961: Eighty-five year old prolific English author Charles Hamilton, best known for his man series set in British Public Schools whose works included an “anti-racism message as can be seen by his creation of “a Jewish schoolboy, Monty Newland, as an admirable and respected” character passed away today.

1962(27thof Kislev, 5723): Third Day of Chanukah

1962(27thof Kislev, 5723): Seventy-seven year old Fannia Mary Cohn, the Belarus born daughter of flour mill owner” Hyman Cohen and Anna (Rosfosky) Chen Russian revolutionary who emigrated to the United States in 1904 where she became an educational and labor leader whose work with International Ladies Garment Workers Union was undermined by what today would be male chauvinism and sex discrimination.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/cohn-fannia-m

1963: Birthdate of Paul Bloom, the Canadian born American professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University

http://pantheon.yale.edu/~pb85/Paul_Bloom.html

1964: Today the Baroness Batshea de Rothschild vision of bring modern dance to Israel was fulfilled with official founding of the Batsheva Dance Company under the guidance of Martha Graham.

1965(1stof Tevet, 5726): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1965: It was reported today that convicted terrorist Mahmud Hejazi is appealing his conviction because he was not allowed “to employ a foreign lawyer,” as he should have been under a law that had been passed “to let Adolf Eichmann employ a foreign lawyer.”

1969: On Christmas Eve, five small boats showing almost no lights slipped out of Cherbourg harbor into the teeth of a Force 9 gale which kept even large freighters from venturing out. Built for the Israel Navy, the vessels had been embargoed at the beginning of the year by French president Charles de Gaulle.

1970: Nine Jews were convicted in Leningrad for hijacking a plane.  In the post-Cold War era, some of us may have forgotten about the Refusniks and the battles Jews waged to immigrate to Israel.

1970: Three weeks after its premiere “The Aristocats” featuring music by Richard and Robert Sherman was released in the rest of the United States today.

1970: The New York Times reports that Jews and Arabs are living harmoniously on the plain near Meggido--believed to be the Biblical Armageddon--where St. John said in Revelations that the forces of good and evil would fight the last great battle at the end of time.

1971(6thof Tevet, 5732): Seventy-one year old Montgomery Country, MD native and San Francisco Law School trained attorney Jacob Wilburn Ehrlich, the author of such books as The Holy Bible and the Law and Howl of the Censors and husband of Marjorie Ehrlich with whom he raised a son and a daughter passed away today.

1971:  Birthdate of Tamir Bloom, a champion fencer, who was a member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team.

1972: “Leaders of New York’s Jewish community joined today with prominent figures of other faiths” and political leaders including Mayor Lindsay to honor Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel  at his funeral today.

1973(29thof Kislev, 5734): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1973: Ninety-one year old Smith graduate and author Mary Sachs, the husband of neurosurgeon Ernest Sachs, “the grandson of a Goldman Sach’s founder” whose first play was “The Twelfth Disciple,” a drama about Judas that as performed on Broadway passed away today.

1974(10thof Tevet, 5735): Asara B’Tevet

1974: Victor and Elena Polsky arrived in Israel.

1974: Refuseniks from Leningrad led by Israel Varnavitsky and from Moscow led by Alexander Luntz took part in a protest  in “the waiting room of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the 4thanniversary of the 1st Leningrad Trial” after which approximately “300 people signed a letter protesting the unjust sentences” at the end of trail.”

1974: “On Prisoner of Zion Day activists came to the Central Committee of the CPSU demanding release of all 40 Prisoners of Zion.”

1975(20th of Tevet, 5736):  Sixty-four year old composer Bernard Herrmann passed away.  Born in 1911, Herrmann gained fame for writing musical scores for a wide variety of films including Citizen Kane, Vertigo and Psycho.  In fact he died the day after he completed the score for the film Taxi Driver

1975: In Moscow, Anatolii Sharansky, Alexander Luntz, Mark Azbel, Yuli Kosharovsky, Victor Brailovsky, Vladimir Lazaris and others were arrested today following a demonstration of solidarity with the Prisoners of Zion that had been organized by Vladimir Prestin.

1976(3rdof Tevet. 5737): Eighth Day of Chanukah is observed for the last time during the Presidency of “accidental president,” Gerald Ford.

1977: BBC1 broadcast the final episode of “The Duchess of Duke Street” featuring June Brown as “Mrs. Violet Leyton.”

1978(24thof Kislev, 5739): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light

1978(24thof Kislev, 5739): Sixty-eight year old native Washingtonian Philip Prince Peyser, the son of Julius Peyser and Miriam Prince passed away today after which he was interred in Davidsonville, MD.

1980: “Five Jewish activists were sentenced to ten days’ imprisonment on charges of hooliganism for demonstrating at the Lenin Library in solidarity with Prisoners of Zion.”

1981(28thof Kislev, 5742): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1981(28th of Kislev, 5742): Eighty-four year old Atlanta, GA native and Emory University trained psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Kahn, the husband of Karen Khan with whom he raised two daughters, Janice and Susannah, while teaching, practicing and writing in the New York Metropolitan area passed away today.

https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Freudian-psychoanalysis-Samuel-Kahn/dp/0802221742

1982: “Six Weeks” a movie version of the novel by the same name produced by Peter Guber with a screenplay by David Selzer was released today in the United States.

1982:”Bombs in Australia Hit Jewish and Israeli Sites’ published today described attacks on the Israeli Consulate and a Jewish social club in Sydney.

1984(30th of Kislev, 5745):  Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1984: Yitzhak Peretz replaced Shimon Peres as Internal Affairs of Minister.

1984: In “A Panel Explores Gambling Among Jews” Nadine Brozan describes the ways in which the Jewish community is finally coming to grips with this social problem.

1985:A small bomb concealed in a loaf of bread was found at a bus stop near Tel Aviv University today, the police said. A passer-by discovered the suspicious-looking loaf and informed explosives experts, a police spokesman said. The device was safely dismantled. No arrests were reported.

1987(3rdof Tevet, 5748): Eighty-nine year old Dr. John Jacob Sampson, the native of Galveston, TX and husband of Rose Etta Sampson, who practiced medicine with his father, passed away today in San Francisco, CA.

1990:  In the run-up to what would be Gulf War I, Saddam said Israel will be Iraq's 1st target. A Spanish television station reported today that during a weekend interview, the Iraqi leader had said that Tel Aviv would be Iraq's first target whether or not Israel joins the war effort against Iraq

1993(10thof Tevet, 5754): Asara B’Tevet

1993(10thof Tevet, 5754): Lieut. Col. Meir Mintz, commander of the IDF special forces in the Gaza area, was shot and killed by terrorists in an ambush on his jeep at the T-junction in Gaza. The Hamas Iz a-Din al Kassam squads publicly claimed responsibility for the attack.

1993: “Tombstone” a film that tells the tale of “Wyatt Earp” including his relationship with “Josephine Marcus” and featured the line in Latin by “Doc Holliday” Credat Judaeus Apella, non ego  which literally means "Let the Jew Apella believe it; not I" and allegedly referred to a Hellenized Jew who, was orthodox, ill-informed and consequently very superstitious.”

1995(1st of Tevet, 5756): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Seventh Day of Chanukah

1995:The night was certainly not silent and it was not always calm as Bethlehem marked its first Christmas under Palestinian control with thunderous fireworks, choirs, bagpipes, dances and laser lights. While the revelry flowed over Manger Square, Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, took his place in the front pew of St. Catherine's Roman Catholic Church, part of the larger complex including the Orthodox Church of the Nativity, for the traditional Midnight Mass in his role as the new leader of Bethlehem and the Palestinians of the West Bank. Sitting impassively in his trademark checkered headdress with his wife, Suha, and Bethlehem's mayor of 23 years, Elias Freij, Mr. Arafat listened as the Latin Patriarch, Michel Sabbah, a Palestinian who is the chief Catholic prelate of the region, praised him and declared that "the beginning of Palestinian freedom is the beginning of reconciliation between Palestinian and Jewish people."

1995: On Christmas Eve, at an Israeli checkpoint on the border of the West Bank, Israeli police stopped busloads of Israeli nationalists who had wanted to hold a protest against the transfer of authority to the Palestinians at Rachel's Tomb. The protesters held up posters and chanted, "Land of Israel, Land of Israel" as the police blocked their way to the West Bank."Why can't we go in?" demanded Judy Pearlman, a Jerusalem resident originally from New York. "The Arabs are having their celebration worshiping their God. Why can't we worship ours? All we want to do is light candles at Rachel's Tomb on the last day of Hanukkah. We're second-class citizens in our own country."

1996: “The Portrait of a Lady,” the cinematic version of the novel of the same name co-produced by Steve Golin and co-starring  Barbara Hershey and Shelley Winters which had premiered at the Venice Film Festival was released in the United States today.

1997(25thof Kislev, 5768): First Day of Chanukah

1997: Edward S. Walker, Jr. presented his credentials as the U.S Ambassador to Israel.

1997:  For the first time Chanukah candles were officially lit in Vatican City.

1997: The New York Times published "A Singular Passion for Amassing Art, One Way or Another"— outlined a case involving Portrait of Wally by Egon Schiele, which was in the MoMA exhibition but was obtained by Rudolph Leopold soon after the Nazi era. The Manhattan DA stepped in to help restore the piece to descendants of its original owner, but ownership of the painting is still in contention, nearly 10 years later. Ron Lauder has been accused of a failure to act on the case, despite being MoMA chairman at the time

2000: Robert Durst's longtime friend, Susan Berman, who had facilitated Durst's public alibi after Kathie Durst’s disappearance and who had recently received $50,000 from Durst was found murdered execution-style in her Benedict Canyon house in California.

2000: The New York Times book section featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including The Wandering Jewsby Joseph Roth and translated by Michael Hofmann, More Stories From My Father’s Courtby Isaac Bashevis Singer; translated by Curt Leviant and a poem entitled Flight to Egypt by Jewish poet Joseph Brodsky.

2001: David Broza performed his Not Exactly Christmas Eve Concert.

2001: The New York Timespublished a profile 9/11 victim Mark Shulman today.

http://www.legacy.com/sept11/story.aspx?personid=147312

2002: “Debate Erupts Over Authors of the Dead Scrolls” published today described the questions that have arisen since Roland de Vaux “a French biblical scholar and archaeologist” began his work at Qumran.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/2002/12/24/530115.html?pageNumber=65

2003(29thof Kislev, 5764): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2003: “A day after Egypt’s foreign minister Ahmed Maher had met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon” in an attempt to work out a cease fire, Israelis troops fought their way into the camp at Rafah where they “uncovered a large weapons-smuggling tunnel.”

2004:  The Jerusalem Post reported a major archeological discovery. The Israel Antiquities Authority announced that an elaborately paved assembly area and water channel that carried rainwater to the pool of Shiloah (Siloam) during the Second Temple period were uncovered by archeologists digging in Jerusalem's ancient City of David.

2005: The Seventh Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival featured showings of “Dear Enemy,” “Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer” and “The Star Hidden in the Backlands.”

2006: The New York Timesbook section featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Isaac B. Singer: A Life by Florence Noiville; translated by Catherine Temerson and Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam, and the Purpose of American Psychology by George Prochnik. The book is based on Freud’s only trip to the United States, which took place in 1909.

2006: The Washington Postbook section carried a review entitled “Out of Hungary: How an extraordinary group of refugees helped create Casablanca,Darkness at Noon and the bomb” in which Geoffrey Wheatcroft explores The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World by Kati Marton. “In her very readable new book, Kati Marton tells the story of nine Hungarian Jews who left the country between the world wars and prospered.” The nine include filmmakers Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz, photographers Andre Kertesz and Robert Capa, physicists Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner and John von Neumann and the author Arthur Koestler.

2006: BBC Radio 2 broadcast the first of “two special on-hour tribute programs” that celebrate Lew Grade’s life and mark the centenary of his birth.”

2007: The International Conference on Contemporary Reform Judaism opens its two day meeting in Jerusalem. 

2007: In Paul Rudnick’s “I Hit Hamlet” published today, the playwright turned journalist tells the tale of the creation and production “I Hate Hamlet.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/24/i-hit-hamlet

 2008(27th of Kislev, 5769):Seventy-eight year old Harold Pinter, who was widely esteemed as the most important British playwright of the past half-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005, passed away today in London today.  (As reported by Mel Gussow and Ben Brantley)

http://theater.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/theater/26pinter.html?pagewanted=all

2008: The Maltz Museum,hosts a special Hanukkah candle-lighting service at 5 p.m., followed by a full-buffet Chinese dinner, catered by Pearlof the Orient. Museum

2008: The Moshav Band joins with Soul Farm in an appearance at B.B. King Blues Club in New York City.

2008:The American Technion Society (ATS), one of the Haifa institution's fund-raising arms, reports that it has lost a total of $72 million invested in funds managed by Madoff.

2008:The second season of the Hebrew-language edition of “Survivor” begins today.

2009: David Broza, one of Israel's most enduring and energizing artists performs at the Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York City.

2009: Jews in the Greater Washington Metropolitan area can choose between an evening that features the perfect blend of the latest, hottest dances from Israel intermingled with recent hits and oldies from the whole gamut of Israeli choreographers at  Tikvat Israel Synagogue in Rockville, MD or "Putting the Ha! in Hanukkah" Jewish music for people who don't like Jewish music at Jammin Java in Vienna, VA.

2009:The gang that ordered the theft of the infamous 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign from the Auschwitz death camp memorial were planning to sell it to fund attacks against the Swedish prime minister and parliament, the Times reported on today.

2009(7th of Tevet, 5770):After months of quiet, a father of seven was shot dead in a drive-by shooting attack near the northern Samaria settlement of Shavei Shomron today. The victim was identified as Meir Chai, a 45-year-old resident of the settlement and father of seven children ranging in age from two months to 18. Chai was the fourth terror victim in the West Bank in 2009

2009: The Boston Globe published “Levi Horowitz; guided many as Bostoner Rebbe; at 88,” a comprehensive obituary of the Jewish leader who passed away on December 5.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2009/12/24/levi_horowitz_guided_many_as_bostoner_rebbe_at_88/?s_campaign=8315

2010(17th of Tevet, 5771):Roy R. Neuberger, who drew on youthful passions for stock trading and art to build one of Wall Street’s most venerable partnerships and one of the country’s largest private collections of 20th-century masterpieces, died today at his home at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan” at the age of 107. (As reported by Edward Wyatt)

2010: Hullegeb Fest is scheduled to present “Kudus Kudus ‘The Sacred Songs of Ethiopian Jewry’” at the Confederation House.

 

2010: Two suspects from Jerusalem and Hadera are set to be indicted today on charges of stealing 30 Torah scrolls from synagogues across the South and the Central region

 

2010:A Kassam rocket that was shot into Israeli territory early this evening. The rocket exploded in an open field near Ashkelon. No injuries or damage was reported.

 

2010: Following a series of attacks from Gaza, IAF planes attacked targets in the northern and southern Gaza Strip late tonight.

 

2011:The Kinsey Sicks in Oy Vey in a Manger is scheduled to open in Washington, DC.

 

2011:Israelis from Baton Rouge, Gulfport and other cities nearby are scheduled to join with Israelis from New Orleans and Metairie for a fun Chanukah event of food, music and lots of fun at the Chabad Center in Metairie, LA.

 

2011:The Godfather of Israeli music, Miki Gavrielov, is scheduled to perform at the 7th Annual Sephardic Music Festival at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC.

 

2011:Hamshoushalayim is scheduled to come to an end for 2011.

 

2011(28th of Kislev, 5772): Shabbat Shel Chanukah

 

2011: Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch to instruct the police to act firmly against violent attacks targeting women in the public sphere.

 

2011:Around noon today, shots were fired at an Israeli vehicle near the Ma'ale Shomron settlement in the West Bank. No one was injured in the incident but the vehicle was damaged and there were clear signs that the vehicle had been struck by bullets. Israel Defense Forces soldiers are searching the area for the perpetrators and checkpoints have been set up.

 

2011: It was reported today “that members of Anonymous had stolen e-mail messages and credit card data from the website Stratfor, a “strategic forecasting company” founded by in Austin by George Friedman in 1996.

 

2012:Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of 15 books about the Holocaust and Jewish history, is scheduled to unveil The Evian Initiative, a new campaign to solve Israel's African refugee problem at Hebrew University.

 

2012: The Gefilte Fish Gala, a fund raiser Sharshelet’s Breast Cancer research is scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C.

 

2012: “Zimzum” a film that centers around solving a spree of robberies at a Moshav, is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012: “Stand Up Rabbis” a night of comedy featuring Rabbi Naftali Cohen and Shmuley Boteach is scheduled to take place in New York City.

 

2012(11th of Tevet, 5773): Ninety-two year old Alexander Leaf “a versatile physician and research scientist who was an early advocate of diet and exercise to prevent heart disease” passed away today. (As reported by Paul Vitello)

 

 

2012: Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel’s civilian population have no lawful justification and are a war crime, Human Rights Watch said in a scathing report published today, assigning Hamas blame for civilian deaths in Israel and Gaza during last month’s Operation Pillar of Defense.

 

 

2012(11th of Tevet, 5773): The curtain came down today on the life of ninety year old Jack Klugman.  Many people know him only as the funny slob: “Oscar Madison” or the quirky Medical Examiner “Quincy” but he was an accomplished dramatic actor as can be seen from the several episodes of “Twilight Episodes” in which he starred.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2012/12/24/jack-klugman-dies/1789879/

 

 

2013: The distribution of Christmas Trees by the JNF which began at Nazareth on December 10 is scheduled to come to an end today.

 

2013: “Gravehopping” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Minister Transportation Yisrael Katz dedicated the first train station to be armored against missile attacks in Israel in the southern city of Sderot. The ceremony was also attended by the Chairman of Israel Railways, Doron Weiss, and its CEO, Boaz Tzafrir. (As reported by Tova Dvorin)

 

2013(21stof Tevet, 5774:  Twenty-two year old Salah Shukri Abu Latyef, a civilian worker for the IDF from the Israeli Arab town of Rahat was shot fatally by sniper fire near Gaza, where he was working between Nachal Oz and Kfar Aza. The worker was evacuated to Be'er Sheva's Soroka Hospital where he was pronounced dead (As reported by Ari Yashar)

 

2013: This afternoon a police officer was stabbed by an Arab terrorist.

 

2013:  A firebomb was thrown at car belong to a resident of Nazareth.

 

2013: The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has struck multiple terrorist sites throughout Gaza, in response to the fatal shooting of a civilian IDF worker by terrorist snipers from the Islamist-controlled territory. During the afternoon the IDF hit six targets in Gaza linked to terrorist groups. “The targets we attacked belong to the Islamic Jihad and Hamas,” the commander said. (As reported by Maayana Miskin and Ari Soffer)

 

2014(2ndof Tevet, 5775): 8th day of Chanukah

 

2014(2ndof Tevet, 5775): Seventy-five year old forger Lee Israel passed away today.

 

2014: “The Spanish Prisoner “and “Ida” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: David Broza is scheduled to return for his annual concert at the 92ndStreet Y.

 

2014: A successful robbery took place “at the Israeli owned Mizrahi-Tefahot bank in Zurich today.

 

2015: David Broza is scheduled to perform his annual “Not Exactly Christmas Eve” concert at the 92nd Street Y.

 

2015: Agudas Achim is scheduled to sponsor “Mushu & a Movie.”

 

2015(12thof Tevet, 5776): On the Jewish calendar “Yahrzeit of Harav Moshe Margulies, zt"l, of Amsterdam, author of Pnei Moshe on the Yerushalmi.”

 

2015: On Christmas one hundred and ten years ago, as Jews were being massacred in Russia Professor Israel Friedlander said “The Christian world as a whole –especially to-night – is preaching the Gospel of peace and good-will to man but the Christian world knows neither peace nor good-will in dealing with the Jews.”  (Editor’s note: As the terrorist continue their three month long rounds of attacks on Jews, you can remove the words “Christian” from Friedlander and they seem mournfully true especially in world where CNN describes those who commit acts of terror against Jews as “protestors.’)

 

2016(24thof Kislev, 5777): Shabbat Va-yayshev;

 

2016: Following services this morning at the Stanton Street Synagogue, YNY is scheduled to host talk followed by Walking of Tour of the Lower East Side led by Elissa Sampson

 

2016(24thof Kislev, 5777): In continuation of a tradition that is more than two decades old, The Public Menorah Lighting Ceremony under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment, the consummate lamplighter, is scheduled to take place in Little Rock, AR.

 

2016(24thof Kislev, 5777): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

http://strangeside.com/chanuka-unusual-menorahs/

 

2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah: Fear and Love in the Modern Middle East by Adam Valen Levinson, The Exodus by Richard Elliott Friedman, The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times by James L. Kugel, The Book of Separation: A Memoir by Tova Mirvis, The Story of the Jews Volume 2 Belonging: 1492-1900 by Simon Schama and Bethlehem: Biography of a Town by Nicholas Blincoe.

 

2017:Veretski Pass, including Cookie Segelstein (violin), Joshua Horowitz (button accordion and cimbalom) and Stuart Brotman (cello, bass), is scheduled to make its New York City debut at the Town and Village Synagogue as part of “Yiddish New York.”

2017(6thof Tevet, 5778): Eighty-three year old musical prodigy turned law school graduate Marcus Raskin, anti-Vietnam Kennedyite who founded the Institute for Policy Studies passed away today. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/obituaries/marcus-raskin-progressive-think-tanks-co-founder-dies-at-83.html

2017: A concert dedicated to Claude Bolling with the Ensemble “Al Hatefer” including Yael Hacohen, Goni Eshed, Alon Stern, Yoav Lachovitsky and Eliah Zabaly is scheduled to take place this evening at the Gula Bar and Restaurant in Jerusalem.

2018: In Coralville, IA, this evening Agudas is scheduled to host a screening of “The Band’s Visit” and potluck dinner.

2018: “Yiddish New York” is scheduled to host “Not Just) Az der rebe tants: Toward an Inclusive History of Hasidic Dance” during which “Jill Gellerman sketches a multimedia survey of Hasidic dance, from the European repertoire to the existing practice in America, including men’s and women’s traditions among several Hasidic sects in Brooklyn.”

2018: In Boston, the City Winery is scheduled to host “David Broza and Friends” featuring an appearance by Trio Havana.

2018: In Tel Hazor, Israel, Joshua Larry Rosenstein, the son of David Asher and Dorrie Rosenstein and grandson of Judith Sharon and Larry Rosenstein, zichronam leshalom, is scheduled to be called to the Torah as Bar Mitzvah in a Minyan that will include his great-uncle David Levin and his wife Debbie.

2019(26thof Kislev, 5780): Second Day of Chanukah

2019: The USY International Convention is scheduled to continue for a third day in Ontario, CA.

2019: YNY is scheduled to host a screening of  “His People,” a “Yiddish film with a live score by Paul Shapiro

2019: A television adaption of The Tiger Who Came to Tea written and illustrated by Judith Kerr, “aired in the UK on Chanel 4 this evening.

2019: In London JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles.”

2019: The 1015 Folsom Night Club is scheduled to host Latke Ball 2019, “the biggest event of the year.’

2020: Jewish Review of Books is scheduled to host its “December conversation with acclaimed historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein. Stein who will discuss her award-winning book, Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century, which uses the correspondence of one Jewish family to tell the story of their journey “across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe.”

2020: The 28th Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, one of San Francisco’s longest running comedy shows is scheduled to have, online, its first performance this evening.

2020: In Cleveland, Congregation Shaarey Tikvah is scheduled to host, via Zoom, “Sisterhood Game Night.”

2020: Camp Yavneh is scheduled to present online “Christmas Eve for the Jews” with comedian Joel Chasnoff.

2020: Likud Higher Education Ze’ev Elkin who yas announced he is leaving his party to join Gideon Sa'ar's "New Hope" party for the March elections is scheduled to resign his Knesset seat today. (As reported by Moran Azulay)

 

 

 

 

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

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December 25

0337(14th of Tevet, 4098): Earliest possible date on which Christmas was reported to have been celebrated on December 25th. 

496: Baptism of Clovis I, the Frankish ruler who united all the tribes of Gaul (France) under one ruler. His adoption of Catholicism had little no impact on his Jewish subjects who mingled freely with their Christian and pagan brethren until King Dagobert tried to expel them in the 7thcentury.

800: Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.  Charlemagne supported most of the policies and edicts Pope Gregory the Great and Pope Stephen IV.  However, he ignored their edicts concerning Jews.  For the most part, Jews were allowed to participate in the economic and social life of the Empire within the limits of Medieval Society.  The Jews of Narbonne (France) supported Charlemagne’s father Pepin in his war with the Moslems and Charlemagne remembered this. Unfortunately, Charlemagne’s policies toward the Jews died with him in 814.

1000: At the start of the 11th century, Hungary was established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary.  In this case, Christian means Roman Catholic.  Religious belief aside, Stephen used Catholicism as an instrument of national unification as he established his rule over pagans and those of his subjects who sought support from the Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) Empire.  Based on archeological evidence Jews had probably been living in what was now Hungary since the third century.  The first written mention of Jews living in Hungary is found in a letter from the end of 10th century written by the famous Sephard, Hasdai ibn Shaprut. There were enough Jews living in Hungary by the end of the 11thcentury that at the council of Szabolcs, the Church prohibited marriages between Jews and Christians, work on Christian festivals, and the purchase of slaves. At the same time, the Hungarian King Kolman took measures to protect Hungarian Jews from Crusaders passing through the kingdom.

1066: Coronation of William the Conqueror as king of England.  There is no record of a Jewish community in England before Norman conquests.  A group of Jews arrived from Rouen (France) in London at the start of William’s reign.  There is no record as to why William allowed this and his immediate successors followed policies that were inimical to Jewish interests.

1100: Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned as the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity.  This is one of those events loaded with subtle irony.  This coronation was the culmination of the First Crusade, during which the Christian warriors drove the Jews from the City of David. In other words, if Jesus had been alive for Baldwin’s coronation, he wouldn’t have been able to attend the event.   Please note, Baldwin and his successors were not laying claim to the throne of King David

1137: Birthdate of Saladin, the Moslem leader who drove the Crusaders out of Jerusalem and whose family physician was reported to be Maimonides. (As reported by Austin Cline)

1193: King Richard made Hubert Walter, who had gone on the Third Crusade with him where they failed to liberate Jerusalem and who “also oversaw the establishment of a new system that supervised, recorded and regulated moneylending by England's Jews” Chief Justicar.

1194: In Palermo, coronation of Henry VI as King of Sicily, during whose reign anti-Semitic riots took place all along the Rhine but not in southern Italy.

1312: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Judenburg and Furstenfeld, Austria

1369: King Frederick III of Sicily issued a decree requiring all Jews to wear a special identification badge.

1406: In Toledo 25 year old Henry III, the King of Castile and Leon who employed a Moses Zaral, a converso as a physician passed, away today.

1406: John II, whose birth was commemorated by poem written by Moses Zaral his father’s physician, began his reign as King of Castile and Leon today.

1480: Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin, both Dominican friars arrived in Seville. Seville’s population included a significant number of New Christians, who enjoyed the comparative quite of the city.  That ended with the arrival of the friars who brought the Inquisition with them.

1564: Birthdate of Johannes Buxtorf “a celebrated Hebraist, the Professor of Hebrew for 39 years at Basel, known by the title “Master of Rabbis” and author of Synagoga Judaica which docments “the customs and society of German Jewry.”

1565: “Pius IV who issued a bull that improved the conditions of the Jews began his papacy today. The 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.

1559:Today, Giovanni Angelo Medici was elected Pius IV, the Pope “who relaxed a variety of restrictions on Jewish life that had been imposed by his predecessor, Paul IV, but were restored by Pius V.

1599: Portuguese settlers establish the village of Natal in Brazil.  At this time, the only Jews living in Brazil were New Christians or Conversos.  Dutch forces would occupy Natal from1633 to 1654, a period during which Jewish communities flourished under the religious toleration brought from Holland.  

1659: Thomas Violet, a London goldsmith appealed to the Judges asking they overturn the dispensation the late Oliver Cromwell had given the Jews to build a “Portuguese synagogue” that had “opened in 1656.”

1753(29th of Kislev, 5514): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1764(1st of Tevet, 5525): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1769(26th of Kislev, 5530): Second Day of Chanukah

1772(29th of Kislev, 5533): Erev Shabbat and the Fifth Day of Chanukah

1775(2nd of Tevet, 5536): Eighth Day of Chanukah; last observance of the holiday in the “13 Colonies” which in 1776 will become the United States of America.

1777(25th of Kislev, 5538) First Day of Chanukah

1777: Isaac and Esther Baze gave birth to Abraham Montel the husband of Naumy Vidal-Naquet.

1780(27th of Kislev, 5541): Third Day of Chanukah

1780: Rebecca Franks and Lucius Levy Solomons, who moved from England to Montreal, gave birth to Rachel Solomons, the wife of Henry Joseph

1781: Zipporah De Lyon of Savanah, GA and Lithuanian native Mordecai Moses Mordecai gave birth to David Mordecai, the husband of South Carolinian Reinah Cohen with whom he had seven children.

1790: In London, “The Times described” John “King, with heavy-handed sarcasm, as “without any matter of doubt one of the most respectable characters in this country, and until the later attack on him, the breath of infamy never blew on his reputation. In all his dealings with mankind he has been the strict, upright, honest man. He never took advantage of the distresses of a fellow creature , in order to rob him of his property – he never extracted exorbitant interest for discounting a bill – he was justly paid every debt he contracted to the uttermost farthing; and in a domestic line of life has proved himself a fond – faithful – loving husband – a tender affectionate and praiseworthy parent, and a feeling steady and sincere friend. Chaste in all his actions – virtuous in every sentiment – and unsullied in his reputation as a Man, a Money Lender, a Jew, and a Christian.”   (Editor’s Note:  John King was born Jacob Rey who was the son of Moses Rey and was called by “Jew King” even though he was never considered to be a leader of the Anglo-Jewish Community.  For more see “The Chequered Career of ‘Jew’ King: a Study in Anglo-Jewish Social History” by Todd M. Endelman.)

1791(29th of Kislev, 5552): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1791: In Stamford Hill, Jessy Salomons and Benjamin Goldsmid gave birth to James Goldsmid

1791: Birthdate of Esther Lamert, the daughter of Isaac Lamert and the wife of Joseph Nathan with whom she had nine children.

1794: In Rhode Island, Esther Mordecai and Philip Moses Russell gave birth to Rebecca Russell, the husband of David Nathans and the mother of Moses and Sarah Nathans.

1796(25th of Kislev, 5557): Chanukah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1798: In Holland, David Levy and his wife gave birth to Sarah Levy, the wife of Jacob I. Workum with whom she had six children

1799(27th of Kislev, 5560) Third Day of Chanukah

1799: Simon Waley married Elizabeth Raphael at the Great Synagogue today.

1800: Birthdate of Louis Levy, the husband of Hannah Hart whom he married in New York City;

1805(4th of Tevet, 5566): Isaac Satanow, the Polish native who settled in Berlin where he developed his intellectual and writing skills under Daniel Itzig and David Friedlander passed away today.

1806: Esther Marache and Philadelphia native Joseph Mordecai gave birth to Thomas Whitlock Mordecai the husband of Lucretia Cohen

1808: In the seemingly never ending intrigue swirling around the German prince and his Jewish financier, sixteen year old Jacob Rothschild, son of A.M. Rothschild arrived in Prague with a chest full of papers belonging to Wilhelm, the exiled Landgrave.

1811: Birthdate of Savannah native Emanuel Sheftall, the husband of Jane L. Theiss Sheftall and father of William, Hannah, Josephine, Croline, Loisa, Jane, Edward James, Mary and Sarah Sheftall.

1815: In Charleston, SC, Isaac and Rachel Mordecai Harby gave birth to Julian Harby who settled in San Francisco.

1816: Joseph Crool married Rosetta Mosley at the Great Synagogue today.

1820: Birthdate of Austrian chemist Theodor Wertheim, “the father of Dr. Ernst Wertheim.”

1822: In England, Priscilla Marks and William Collins gave birth to Abraham Collins who moved to Sydney before he died in 1884.

1822: Isaac Bennett (Isaac ben Yom Tov), the native of Middlesex was circumcised today.

1824(1st of Tevet, 5582): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1824(1st of Tevet, 5582): Eighty year old Sir Sampson Gideon, 1st Baron of Eardly whose father had been denied his rightful honors because he was a practicing Jew, passed away today.

1825: Birthdate of Jindřich Opper, the native of Blovice, Bohemia who gained fame a French journalist Henri Blowitz who predicted the French defeat during the Franco-Prussian War, turned a diplomatic post with the government of the Third Republic and scored a journalist coup when “he obtained a copy of the Treaty of Berlin” and published it ahead of his competitors.

1831: Birthdate of Salomon Lefmann the native of Westphalia who became a leading Jewish philologist.

1831: Birthdate of Warsaw native Christian David Ginsburg the convert to Christianity who settled in the United Kingdom where he became a leading Hebrew and Bible scholar.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christian-David-Ginsburg

1834(23rd of Kislev, 5595): Eighty-four year old David Friedländer, a German Jewish banker, writer and communal leader passed away.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6372-friedlander-david

1836: In Schleswig-Holstein, Salomon M. Salomon and Caroline Salomon gave birth to Edward S. Salomon, the Chicago lawyer who married Sophie Greenhut who was an officer in the 24th Illinois Infantry during the Civil War rising to the rank of Brigadier General, appointed Governor of Washington Territory by President Grant before becoming the District Attorney in San Francisco.

1835: Birthdate of Ferdinand Stern, a native of Manheim, Germany, the husband of Charlotte Stern and the father of Alfred and Helene Stern.

1839(23rd of Kislev, 5595): Fifty-four year old Meyer Israel Bresselau “a founding member and chairman of the Hamburg Temple” passed away today.

1839: Solomon Joseph married Priscilla Samuel at Strand, London today.

1839(23rd of Kislev, 5595): David Caro a devotee of Me’assefim who “under the pseudonym "Amittai ben Abida Achitzedeq" he defended the Hamburg Reform Temple in Berit Emit (Covenant of Truth)” passed away today.

1849: In London, Marks Kolsky, a tailor and his wife gave birth Morris Kolsky who gained fame as cinematographer Richard Fryer.

1849: In Minsk, Hodie Goldberg and Isaac Schaikewitz gave birth to Nahum Mayer Schaikewitz, the editor and publisher of The Jewish Puck who also wrote fifty plays in Yiddish some of which were performed in Odessa and 205 novels in The Convict, Last Jewish King and A Spark of Judaism.

1853(24th of Kislev, 5614): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1856: Evidence continued to be presented today in The Huntington Trial a case being heard before  Judge Capron which had recessed on the previous Saturday “because one of the jurors was a Jew and had conscientious scruples about working on his Sabbath…” despite the fact that the case has to be completed by December 31. The eleven Christian jurors did not request a postponement because today is Christmas.

1859: In Austria, Mortiz and Josephine (Shiff) Berg gave birth to Columbia University trained physician Dr. Henry W. Berg “an authority on infectious diseases and internal medicine,” who during World War One “treated thousands of soldiers and sailors at the Riverside Hospital.

1860: “Suicide of A Patient At The Jew’s Hospital” published today reported that “Elias Kemp, an old man, who, for nearly a year past, has been an inmate of the Jews' Hospital, No. 140 West Twenty-eighth-street, under treatment for spinal disease, died today in consequence of a razor-wound in his throat, which he had inflicted last Sunday with the object of taking his life. The fact that his disease had recently assumed unfavorable symptoms, and the physician had pronounced him incurable, led him to commit the act. Coroner O'Keefe held an inquest upon the body. Deceased was a native of Poland.

1861: In Krementshug, Poltava, Russia, Samuel David Spivakovsky and Deborah Adel Dorfman gave birth to Hayem David Spivakovsky, who as Charles D. Spivak earned an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College, married Jennie (Gittel) Charsky following which he taught at several medical schools while teaching at the Hebrews Education Society in Philadelphia and founding the Jewish Alliance of America in Philadelphia.

1863:Birthdate of Regina Margareten.  She came to the U.S. as a young bride in 1883. With her husband and her parents, she helped to open a grocery store on New York's Lower East Side. The first year in New York, the family members baked Passover matzo for themselves. The second year, they made enough to sell in the store, and the matzo business soon became the family's sole occupation. After Regina's husband died in 1923, she was formally named treasurer of Horowitz Brothers & Margareten Company and became one of the company's directors. She held these positions for the rest of her life. Margareten also acted as the company's quality control department, tasting every batch of matzo. By 1932, Horowitz Brothers & Margareten Company was using 45 thousand barrels of flour and grossing over one million dollars per year.In addition to her work at the business, Margareten was the matriarch of an extended family of over 400 members. Her obituary, which described her as the "matriarch of the kosher food industry," also reported that she was a member of over 100 charitable organizations. Throughout her life, she played an important role in the family business, working in her office daily until two weeks before her death in 1959 at age 96

1863: Philadelphian Jacob Mayer, who rose to the rank of Sergeant by the end of the Civil War, began his service today with Company F of the 82ndRegiment.

1864(26th of Kislev, 5625): Second Day of Chanukah

1864: James William Wallack, Sr., the London born son of a “Jewish father” who gained fame in the American theatre passed away today in NYC

1864: Warsaw native Rabbi Falk Vidaver and Anna Vidaver gave birth Nathaniel “Nathan” Vidaver in Boston today.

1865: Corporal Moses Jacoby, who had enlisted in 1861 completed his service with Company E of the 47th Regiment in the Union Army.

1866: Birthdate ofAvraham Mordechai Alter also known as the Imrei Emes after the works he authored. He was the third Rebbe of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger, a position he held from 1905 until his death in 1948. He was one of the founders of the Agudas Israel in Poland and was influential in establishing a network of Jewish schools there. It is claimed that at one stage he led over 200,000 Hasidim.

1867: Birthdate of Alfred Kempner, the native of Breslau who, as Alfred Kerr, became an influential theatre critic.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11056.html

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/alfred-kerr

1869: In Chicago, Moses Maness Ritterband and Esther Amanda Ritterband gave birth to Benvenida Solis Rittberand who became Benvenida Solis Firth when she married Emil Firth.

1869: In New Orleans, LA, Bertha Cohan and Hertz Bonart gave birth to businessman Sam Bonart, the President of the Y.M.H.A, a Trustee of the Jewish Federation of Charities and “Treasurer of the Orthodox Congregation Beth Israel, who, after his first wife passed away, married the former Goldie Spingarn with whom he had three daughters – Pauline, Anna and Bertha.

1870(1st of Tevet, 5631): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1872(25th of Kislev, 5633): As President Grant basks in the glow of his recent re-election, the Jews observe Chanukah.

1875(27th of Kislev, 5636): Parshat Miketz; third day of Chanukah

1876: In Krakai, Lithuania, Nechemiah and Judith Schlesinger gave birth to Benjamin Schlesinger who served as the editor of the Daily Forward and President of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.

1876: Birthdate of Odessa born “dean of the New York dance teachers” Louis H. Chalif who was “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,

https://timenote.info/en/Louis-Harvy-Chalif

1878: Birthdate of Lithuanian native and Johns Hopkins trained Egyptologist Dr. Aaron Ember who chaired the department at his alma mater and was credited “with having discovered phonetic laws which demonstrate that Tut-ankah-Amen’s people and the Israelites spoke languages of common origin.”

1878: Birthdate of Joseph Michael Schenck, the native of Russia who came to the United State in 1893 where he became a major figure in the American motion picture industry

1879: It was reported today that a group of Rabbis and prominent laymen have formed an association to promote a stricter observance of the Sabbath, which for the Jews falls on Saturday.  It is predicted that the association will not find much success among the eighty to ninety thousand Jews living in New York since strict observance of the Sabbath would cost them two day’s worth of business since they would still be bound by the general populace’s Sunday observance.  Failure because of business considerations is not unique to Jews since attempts to have Christians return to the observance of the Sabbath in the spirit of the Puritans failed for this very reason.

1880: The Young Men’s Hebrew Union will be held this evening at 607 Fulton Street.

1880: It was reported today that “many Jews residing in Berlin” are “avoiding appearing in public…and many Jewish families are preparing to emigrate to Belgium, France and England.

1881: At today’s “annual meeting of the patrons and members of Mount Sinai Hospital” “the following officers were re-elected: President – Hyman Blum; Vice President – Isaac Wallach; Treasurer- S.M. Schafer.”1881: Anti-Jewish riots began in Poland. In Warsaw twelve Jews were killed, many others were wounded and some women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

1881: Emanuel and Leah Horowitz Abrahams gave birth to Max Abrahams, the husband of Fannie Danovitch Abrahams and the father of Arthur, Elias, Jesse and Leon Abrahams.

1881: It was reported today by a recent visitor to North Africa that 25,000 Jews dominate the coastal trade in Tunisia and Algeria. 

1881:Birthdate of Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill who was knighted in 1937 following his year of service as the General Officer Commanding British Forces in Palestine.

1882: “Jewish Antiquities” published today reviews  Henrietta Lee Palmer’s Home Life In The Bible “which provides extensive information respecting the domestic life of the ancient Jews, the construction of their dwellings, their furniture, dress and ornaments” and much, much more.

1882: Today, “24 Russian Jewish families that had established the Jewish community of Beersheba in Kansas” wrote to “Moritz Loth, the president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregation” expressing their appreciation for the financial and material support provided for them.

1882: “Doing Good” published today decried the attempts of Salmi Morse, a Jewish theatrical producer, to produce The Passion Play.  According to the article only Jew bent on making money would seek to produce a playing that insults “the decent part of the community” and blasphemes “all that Christians hold sacred.

1883: Birthdate of Samuel Hugo Bergmann, the Austro-Hungarian native who was a “schoolmate of Franz Kafka” and who made Aliyah in 1920 after which he founded the Brit Shalom movement with Martin Buber.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/samuel-hugo-bergman

1883: In Chicago, “cigar merchant Rueben Berger” and his wife Jeanette Sperling Berger gave birth to Samuel “Sam” Berger, “the first Olympic heavyweight gold medalist in boxing history.

1884: Birthdate of Nathaniel Phillips, the native of Kalwaria, Poland and husband of the former Ruth Simon who came to the United States in 1885 and after graduating from CCNY worked as a lawyer and civic leader who served on the Mayor’s Commission on Americanization and the National League for American Citizenship.

1884(7th of Tevet, 5645): Eighty-three year old Salomon Herxheimer the chief rabbi of Anhalt-Bernberg and the husband of Lea Susskind passed away today.

1884: It was reported today that while the Russian government battles against Nihilism which “is more dangerous than ever, the persecution of the Jews is as fierce as it was a few years ago when the European press boiled with indignation at the anti-Semitic outrages which disgraced Russia.”  (In terms of cause and effect, this is an example of the cause whose effect could be seen in the teeming masses of the Lower East Side)

1885: Alois Feigelstock , a Jewish businessman who took his life in a fit of temporary insanity brought on by his grief over the death of his daughter will be buried in Cyprus Hills Cemetery.

1885: It was reported today that the recently completed census in Germany contained some “curious facts” in its responses as can be seen by one where the head of the family described himself as a Jew, described his wife as a Catholic and described his children as being “brought up in the evangelical faith.”  (And you thought the American Jewish community in the 21st century had strange familial arrangements)

1886: Birthdate of Franz Rosenzweig.  Born in Germany, Rosenzweig was “an existential philosopher.”  According to one description of The Star of Redemption, his seminal philosophic work Rosenzweig “sees the world as consisting of three elements – man , the universe and God, which enter a relationship through revealing themselves to one another.  The three points form a triangle, which intersect with a second triangle of creation, revelation and redemption.  Their relations become historical forces” which in one case is Judaism – hence the star.  Revelation, which is a continuing process of good, leads to redemption.  Man helps to bring the universe to redemption by converting his love for God into his love for his fellow man.  Rosenzweig pioneered the construction of a Jewish-Christian relation without polemic, which became the basis for postwar interfaith dialogue.”  In his personal life, Rosenzweig fought crippling paralysis with the assistance of his wife.  He passed away in 1929.  According to a poll conducted by Commentary Magazine in 1965, Rosenzweig was “the most influential modern Jewish thinker.”  Quotes from Rosenzwewig: “Jewish prayer means praying in Hebrew.” (This from a man who translated the entire Bible into German)  “We owe our survival to a book – the only book of antiquity that is still in living use as a scroll.”  “Asked, ‘What does Judaism think about Jesus?” he answered ‘It doesn’t.’” 

1887(10th of Tevet, 5648): Asara B’Tevet

1887: At Temple Beth-El in New York City, Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler delivered a lecture entitled “Charity – Religious not Sectarian.”

1887: President Hyman Blum presided over Mount Sinai Hospital’s annual meeting which held at the medical facility on the corner of Lexington and 65th Street.

1887: Birthdate of London native and American journalist Jack Larric who went from the staff of The New York Herald to writing such Broadway plays as “Denial” while being married to the former Ivy Sherman.

1887: It was reported today that a trial is being held behind “closed doors” in St. Petersburg where 8 Nihilists are facing charges that they tried to murder the Czar during his recent visit to the Don Cossack Country. The group’s leader has been identified as a Jew named Boris Orshis.

1887: Based on information that first appeared in the Toronto Globe, it was reported today that an Orthodox Jew living in Canada has warned his English co-religionists against worshipping Reform which he described as “Organ; pews; Christian choir; hats off; microscopic Prayer Book; abolition of the use of Hebrew; pork and oysters; Chanukah Christmas; intermarriage; the Sunday Sabbath; no God; no Judaism.”

1888: In Vienna, 44 year old Dr. Arnold Heinrich Bodek (Aaron Chaim) married Malwine Malva Bodek.

1888: In Panimunik which was in the Lithuanian part of the Russian Empire Julius and Fanny Opesken gave birth to Sara Opesken who gained famed Oscar winning American screenwriter Sonya Levien.

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-sonya-levien/

1888: Birthdate of Philadelphia native and Princeton graduate David Lawrence, the journalist and published who opposed the New Deal, co-founded what became the conservative magazine U.S. News and World Report and was the husband of Ellanor Lawrence with whom he had three children – David, Jr., Mark and Nancy.

1889(2nd of Tevet. 5650): Eighth day of Chanukah

1889: The Hebrew Free School Association held its annual meeting today at the headquarters of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association on Lexington Avenue and 58th Street.

1889: Birthdate of Naftule Schüldkrau, the New York born musical child prodigy known as Nat Shilkret whose musical family included pianist Lew Shilkret, Jack Shilkret, Harry Shilkret who financed his medical school education by playing the Trumpet and Nathaniel Finston, his violinist brother-in-law.

http://www.milkenarchive.org/people/view/all/640/Nathaniel+Shilkret

http://www.collateralworks.com/linernotes/natshilkret.html

1889(2nd of Tevet, 5650): Eighty-nine year old Valentine Koon, the native of Stuttgart who came to the United States in 1842 where he found success in manufacturing shoes during the Civil War and in New York real estate, passed away today. In October, 1843, Koon and 11 other Jews founded the Order of the B’nai B’rith.

1890: Birthdate of Kiev native and Russian trained psychiatrist Dr. Gregory Zilboorg, the participant in the Russian Revolution and Minister of Labor in the government of Alexander Kerensky who was forced to leave Russia for the United States after the Bolsheviks came to power which led to a career as a clinician, lecturer and author in his chosen field.

1891(24th of Kislev, 5652): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1891: Birthdate of Saxon native, Ewald Andre Dupont who gained famed as director and screenwriter E.A. Dupont, who became a U.S. citizen in 1935 after fleeing Nazi Germany.

1892: Samuel Marks, the friend and landlord for Hermann Stern, the German Jewish bank clerk could supply no reason for his suicide unless it was done “in a sudden fit of insanity” since he had no known financial problems or “love affair.”

1893: “Trouble Over Master Workmen” published today described the Knights of Labor losing three locals of clothing cutters and trimmers with a total membership of 2,400 to the American Federation of Labor.  Most of these workers were Jewish and Daniel de Leon, a Jewish socialist had failed to keep them from leaving the Knights for the AF of L headed by Samuel Gompers.

1893 “Caprivi Scores the Anti-Semites” published today relying upon information from the London Daily News described Chancellor Leo Von Caprivi’s  response to the remarks by Herr Zimmerman, the anti-Semitic leader in which he denounced “the agitation against the Jews” and warned that anti-Semites attack on “Jewish capital” would lead to an “attack on capital in general. The repeated attempts by the anti-Semites to interrupt his speech, “were the best proof of that he was hitting the nail squarely on the hand.

1893: German anti-Semitism was described to as the persecution of “everybody whose father or mother or any ancestor was Jewish.  This new anti-Semitism united racial anti-Semitism with religious anti-Semitism.

1894(27th of Kislev, 5655): Third Day of Chanukah

1894: As part of a Chanukah celebration, 700 Jewish children who are “recent immigrants from Russia and Romani” and “who are pupils at the Baron de Hirsch Schools saluted the flag” today “with an ardor that awakened the patriotic feelings of the men and women who had assembled to witness the ceremony at the Hebrew Institute.”

1894: The annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Association was held this morning in the schoolrooms of the Temple Emanuel at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Third Street. Julia Richman was chosen to serve as a member of the board of directors for the upcoming year. During the meeting Ms Richman presented the report of the Discipline Committee.  It showed that 3,283 children between the ages of eight and fourteen years were enrolled as of November 30.  Children are required to attend public schools as a condition to participating in the afternoon classes devoted to religious subjects and instruction in Hebrew.  The Association offers a total of sixty one classes.

 

1894: According to reports published today, the German Embassy in Paris “has issued a note denying that anybody connected with it had direct or indirect relations with Captain Dreyfus” which is seen as “the German government’s answer to the sentencing of Dreyfus for the alleged betrayal of French plans to the embassy in Paris and to the violent attacks made upon the embassy by the Paris press. (Editor’s note – What Jews sometimes lose sight of is that part of the Dreyfus affair was born of the deep animus the French had for the Germans following the humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine.)

 

1894: Birthdate of Yetta Zwerling, the sister of Bessie and Mamie Zwerling who sang together in the Yiddish theatre before she became a film start.

http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yt/lex/Z/zwerling-yetta.htm

 

1895: Birthdate of Abraham "Abe" Landau the chief henchman for New York gangster Dutch Schultz. Landau was Schultz's most trusted employee, often given tasks that required coolness and cunning rather than gunfire and brutality. According to some sources, “It is very likely that he never actually killed anyone during his gang years.” 

 

1895: The national convention of the Hebrew Anarchists began today “on the top floor of the American Star Hotel” on 165 East Broadway in New York.

 

1895: On this date, Herzl wrote in his diary “I was just lighting the Christmas tree for my children when Rabbi Moritz Güdemann arrived. He seemed upset by the "Christian" custom. Well, I will not let myself be pressured! But I don't mind if they call it the Chanukah tree - or the winter solstice.” Guidemann was the Chief Rabbi in Vienna who believed in Jewish nationalism but considered the Jewish religion as an integral part of Jewish identity. As far back as 1871, however, he had strongly protested against the proposal of the Jewish community of Vienna to strike from the prayer-book all passages referring to the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and had even gone so far as to threaten to resign from the board of trustees if his protest should remain unheeded. But in 1897, when Herzl’s Zionist movement was in its infancy, he wrote against the tendencies of Zionism to lay more stress on the national than on the religious character of Judaism, for which he was severely attacked by the friends of the Zionist movement. When you consider the complexity of his views, you can understand his consternation at seeing Herzl lighting a Christmas tree.

 

1896: In New York, Hyman and Sarah Becker gave birth to Belle Becker who gained fame as “Jewish torch singer Belle Baker, the husband of Maurice Abrahams.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/baker-belle

 

1897(30th of Kislev, 5658): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6th day of Chanukah; Parashat Miketz is chanted for the first time during the Presidency of William McKinley.

1898: Herzl publishes his article "Französische Zustände" - "French States of Affairs" about the Dreyfus Affair.

1898: Birthdate of Russian native Abraham Barshofsky who changed his name to John Barsha while in high school and went on to become an all-star football player at the University of Syracuse before pursuing a legal education which financed by money he earned playing “professional with the Syracuse All-Stars.”

1898: Birthdate of Lena Goldman, the wife of  David Wilentz, the Attorney General of New Jersey who prosecuted Bruno Hauptmann and the mother of Robert Wilentz, the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court from 1979 to 1996 and Norma Hess, the “wife of Leon Hess, founder of Hess Corporation.”

1899: Birthdate of Morris “Moe” Barney Dalitz, the Boston born Nevada casino owner who “was often referred to as ‘Mr. Las Vegas.’”

1899:  In Borisoglebsk, Tambov, Hebrew teacher and author Raphael Soyer and his wife Bella gave birth twin boys, Moses and Raphael Soyer bother of whom became American painters.

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

http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/soyer_m-bio.htm

1900: Birthdate of Martin Konigsberg, the husband of Nettie Konigsberg who was a bookkeeper at her family’s delicatessen and the father of Allan Stewart Konigsberg who gained fame as Woody Allen.

1900: In New York, Frederick Fred Margareten, the Hungarian born son “of Rabbi Yoel/Joel Margareten and Julia Yetta Margareten,” and his wife Regina Margareten gave birth to May Margaretten who became May Weiss when she married Morris Weiss, the mother of Richard and Stanley Weiss.

1901: In New York, Max and Jane Walcoff Udell gave birth to Daniel A. Udell, the thrice married clothing merchant.

1901: Birthdate Samuel H. “Sam” Pite the Yale basketball player who overcame the coach’s anti-Semitism to be a star forward from 1922 – 1924.

http://www.jewsinsports.org/profile.asp?sport=basketball&ID=123

1902(25th of Kislev, 5663): Chanukah

1902: In the U.K. Samuel B. Hamburger, the Latvian born son of Joseph and Kiva Hamburger and his wife Annie H. Hamburger gave birth to Rachel Hamburger who became Rachel Jinks when she married Curtis Jinks.

1903: In Kiev, Haim and Sophia Lasker gave birth to Morris Lasker, the HUC trained rabbi who served congregations in a wide variety of places including Dayton, OH and Havana Cuba.

https://kipah.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Rabbi-Meir-Lasker-1.pdf

1903(6th of Tevet, 5664): Sixty-year old Julius Rosenheim, the son of Joseph and Nanny Rosenheim and the husband of Ida Rosenheim passed away today in Bavaria.

1904: Governor Odell pardoned Adolph Herschkopf, the convicted Jewish leader of a band of firebugs that operated in New York in 1893, who had served eight years of life sentence at Sing Sing.

1905(27th of Kislev, 5666): Third Day of Chanukah

1905: It was reported today that in Philadelphia, the police did not interfered with a meeting being held “to protest against the massacres of Jews in Russia” despite a complaint that had been lodged that at least one of the speakers denounced President Roosevelt.

1905: It was reported today that Professor Israel Friedlander said that the Russian Massacres were another argument in favor Zionism and cited the need for a Jewish Palestine as last refuge for the Jews in a time of persecution especially now when “the Christian world is preaching the Gospel of peace and good-will to man but the Christian world knows neither peace nor good-will in dealing with Jews.”

1906: In Tokmak, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire to Isaak and Olga Winogradsky gave birth to Lev (Louis) Winogradsky gained fame as Lew Grade the performer, turned talent agent, turned television and movie mogul who created Baron Grade in 1976.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1252349/The-Last-Great-Showman-All-My-Shows-Are-Great-Lewis-Chester.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-lord-grade-1191347.html

1906: Birthdate of Clark M Clifford.  Clifford is best known as the ultimate Washington lobbyist and Mr. Fix-it and as the US Secretary of Defense who changed Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War policy.  But Clifford said that his proudest moment was the role he played in the United States recognition of Israel.  In 1948, Clifford was a White House aide to Harry Truman.  He supported Truman in this decision despite the advice from the “striped pants boys” at the State Department that this was not a wise thing to do.

1906: In Gilserberg, Isaac Plaut, Simon and Lina Plaut, and his wife Sophie, gave birth to Meta Palut.

1907: Birthdate of Sheindel Reznick, the wife of Hyman Reznick and mother of Naomi Blumberg.

1908(1st of Tevet, 5669): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1908: It was reported today that Irving Lehman, the son-in-law of Nathan Straus who was elected Justice on the Democratic Ticket and has been sworn in is scheduled to begin hearing cases on December 28th.

1909(13th of Tevet, 5670): Parashat Vayechi

1909: “The Mohegan basketball team of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association defeated
the basketball team of the Bronx Branch of the YMHA tonight by a score of 32 to 27,

1910: In Canada, Sarah and Moishe Grossman gave birth to their seventh child Allan Grossman who served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Canada for 20 years.

1910: Birthdate “Sam” Rotenberg, a member of the Portland Chapter of AZA and University of Oregon halfback.

1911: In Detroit, Michigan, J.S. Groening, an Orthodox Jew who had just heard that his wife and children were safe told the clerk at local hotel “ I have just had a great happiness today, and I want to make as people as happy as possible” on Christmas even though I am Jewish after which he went out and found twelve men who looked “as if they were temporarily out luck” and brought them back to the hotel where he fed them dinner in a private dining room.

1912: Twenty-seven-year-old Western Reserve graduate and Cleveland attorney Maurice Bernon, the son of David J. and Augusta (Jacobs) Bernon married Minnie M. Reiss in Cleveland.

1912: In Hesse, Isaac Plaut, son of Simon and Lina Plaut, and his wife Sophie, gave birth to Lina Plaut who became Lina Hecht when she married Max Hecht.

1913(26th of Kislev, 5674): Second Day of Chanukah

1913: Twenty-six-year-old “theatrical producer, the New York City born son of Marx and Henrietta (Morris) Blum who attended Columbia and CCNY married Ethel Silver.

1913: In San Francisco, CA, Hattie and Edward Morris gave birth to Alvin Morris, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who gained fame as Tony Martin who was successful as a singer and film start.

1913: In New York, D. Samuel Gottesman, “a pulp and paper magnate and financier who helped the Central National Bank in New York and the former Jean Herskovits gave birth to Celeste Ruth Gottesman who married Armand Phillip Bartos and gained fame as philanthropist and patron of the arts Celeste Bartos. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1913: Otto Philip and Matilda (Davidson) Caplin gave birth to Elliot Caplin, the creator of the comic strip “The Heart of Juliet Jones” and the younger brother of Al Capp, creator of “Li’l Abner.”

1914: Messrs. Brooks, Rotan, Jenkins, Williamson, Rowe and Nash of Waco, TX sent a letter to the New York Times containing a copy of a petition signed by approximately three hundred gentile citizens sent to the Governor of Georgia listing the reasons why he should commute Leo Frank’s death sentence and pardon him “if he is innocent.”

1914: Birthdate of New York City native Oscar Lefkowitz, a rabbi’s son, who gained fame as award winning anthropologist Oscar Lewis.

1914: “Asks Aid For Jews” published today described the desperate plight of the Jewish refugees arriving in Alexandria from Jaffa and plans to ask Ambassador Morgenthau to forward some of the funds sent to him by American Jews from Constantinople to Egypt.

1914: “Asks Report About Jaffa” published today described U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan doubts about the credibility of reports of “the ill-treatment of Jews in Jaffa.”  (Editor’s note: Were Bryan’s doubts based on the caution of a diplomat worried about war time propaganda or were they based on the anti-Semitic views and behavior he had demonstrated earlier in his career?)

1915(18th of Tevet, 5676): Due to a quirk of the calendar Jews and Christians are both celebrating today since Shabbat and Christmas coincide.

1915: “Alluding with gratification to Bishop Greer’s recent utterance at Carnegie Hall that the Church and civilization owed a debt to the Jew, Rabbi Ephraim Frisch of the New Synagogue on West 86th Street spoke to his congregation on “The Debt the World Owes to Christianity.”

1915: Birthdate of Alfred M. Lilienthal “an American Jew, who was a prominent critic of Zionism and the state of Israel.”

http://mondoweiss.net/2008/10/alfred-lilienthal-prophetic-anti-zionist-writer-is-dead/

http://www.realnews247.com/alfred_lilienthal.htm

1915: “The Women of the Hour Committee of the American Jewish Relief Committee which is raising $5,000,000 for the Jewish sufferers from the war was formally organized” today.

1915: Among those listed today as contributors to the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the war are $75 from the Ladies Aid of Devils Lake, ND; $69 from Muscatine, Iowa; $47 from B’rith Shalom of Philipsburg, PA; and $26 from Fort Smith, AR.

1915: In St. Louis, MO, the Jewish Chautauqua Society met for a second day.

1915: More than 3000 people attend the opening session tonight of “the second annual conference of Young Judeans, an organization formed to foster Zionism” in the United States which was held “in the auditorium of the Young Women’s Hebrew Session.”

1916(30th of Kislev, 5677): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Sixth Day of Chanukah

1916: In New Orleans, the Jewish Chautauqua Society led by Chancellor Berkowitz of Philadelphia met for a fourth day today in New Orleans.

1916: In New York, premier of “Joan the Woman” a silent film about the famous French saint produced by Jesse Lasky.

1916: Birthdate of Allen Adler, the son of Yiddish theatre manager Adolph J. Adler, the grandson of Yiddish theatre great Jacob Adler and Sonya Adler and the nephew of Luther and Stella Adler. A veteran of World War II, Adler co-authored the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet” and in 1957 “Mach One,” his science-fiction novel was published. Adler fell victim to the infamous Red Scare and was blacklisted.  He passed away in January of 1964.

1916: “A Life for a Life” which is interpreted to mean “that prosperous, protected lives in America shall save pauperized persecuted lives in Europe and Asia” was adopted today as the slogan for the Women’s Proclamation Committee’s campaign to assist in raising ten million dollars for the relief of Jews suffering from the war by the end of 1917.

1917(10th of Tevet, 5678) Asara B’Tevet

1917: Mass celebration took place in Washington D.C. marking the British taking Jerusalem from the Turks during World War I in which it was noted that Jewish units of the British Army took part in the fighting. 

1917: At the Belasco Rabbi Abram Simon was among the clergymen who addressed an interfaith meeting celebrating the British capture of Jerusalem and he to the throng “that the basis of civilization was to be found in the worship of one God and that upon that basis, Jew, Gentile and Moslem might stand together.”

1917:The observance of Christmas Mass by British forces in Jerusalem and Bethlehem is punctuated by “desultory Turkish artillery fired from the north and the east.”

1918: Hyman Gerson Enelow, who had been in France since July representing the Overseas Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board wrote today that it would not be necessary for him to take charge of the newly created center established by the Jewish War Board, “since more workers” are coming to Europe making it unnecessary to fill the post and freeing him for other tasks.

1919: “According to an announcement made” today “by the Joint Distribution Committee for the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers” “more than one million dollars has been appropriated for Jewish relief work in Europe and Asia.”

1920(14th of Tevet, 5681): Parashat Vayechi chanted for the last time during the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson

1921(24th of Kislev, 5682): In the evening, light the first Chanukah candle.

1921: Rose Finkelstein married Hyman Norwood in a “wedding gown… made the Boston WTUL’s dress shop. Rose Finkelstein Norwood was a leading labor organizer who among other things was President of the Boston Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL)

1921: In Szczercow, Poland, Samuel and Kreindel (Piotrkowska) Brajtbart gave birth to Moryc Brajtbart (later Morris Breitbart) the brother of Rosa and Bronia Brajtbart. He would survive the Holocuast, become a dentist and immigrate to the United States in December, 1949

1921: In an interview with the New York Times, Henry Ford said that in 1915 he abandoned “This Peace Ship” his attempt to end WW I because “he learned that the Jews were behind the war and would continue the war as long as it was profitable.”

1921: Sixty-five year old Vladimir Korolenko, “one of the few Russian writers who create apositive Jewish images in his work,”  “condemned the Kishinev pogrom” and wrote articles in defense of Menachem Mendel Bellis passed away today.

1921: As of today 25 year old Harry Moss who had joined Moss Bros. in 1909 and was the nephew of Alfred Moss, was serving as the director of the company which he would one day lead.

1921: “The Little Minister” the movie version of the novel, produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky was released today in the United States.

1921: “Rose Finkelstein married Hyman Norwood, the love of her life, in a wedding gown made in the dress shop of the Boston Women’s Trade Union League.” (Jewish Women’s Archives)

1922(5th of Tevet, 5683): Russian born Isaac Alpert, the husband of Bessie Alpert and father of Hyman, Samuel and Max Alpert passed away today after which he was buried in the Beth Israel Cemetery in West Springfield, MA.

1923: “Sir Herbert Samuel will leave for Amman, the capital of Transjordan” today to meet with King Hussein with whom he “will discuss the details of the Anglo-Arab treaty which “is about to be concluded.”

1924:  Birthdate of Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone.  Born Jewish, Serling converted for the sake of domestic tranquility

1925: “The help of Irish American in establishing the Irish Free State and the aid of American Jews in establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine were likened to each other today by Miss Sulasmith Schwartz at the opening session of the annual convention of Junior Hadassah” in Washington, DC which is being attended by approximately “1,000 delegates and guests from more than forty states.”

1925: Birthdate of Geula Cohen, the Tel Aviv native who belonged to Irgun and Lehi and who was elected to the Knesset for the first time in 1973.

1925: Birthdate of Yaffa Abramaov, the Tel Aviv native who gained famed as Yaffa Yarkonki, the Israeli singer whose first husband was killed while fighting with the Jewish Brigade in WW II and whose most beloved song may have been “Bab el Wad,” “an ode to the Israeli fighters who died in ambushes while driving convoys to Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war” passed away today.(As reported by Isabel Kershner)

1925(8th of Tevet, 5686): Karl Abraham passed away. Born in 1877, Abraham was the German psychoanalyst who studied the role of childhood sexual trauma in relation to the symptoms of mental illness. He was initiated into psychoanalysis by Carl Gustav Jung (1904). He first met Freud in 1907, and subsequently became one of his most reliable collaborators. Covering a wide range, Abraham's papers include work on depression, mania, autoerotism, repressed hate, as well as others on applied psychoanalysis that include papers on the Day of Atonement and a major one (1909) in which he connected myths with dreams and viewed both as wish-fulfillment fantasies. Abraham founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society (1910). He made pioneering efforts in the psychoanalytic treatment of manic- depressive psychosis.

1926: U.S. premiere of “Flesh and the Devil, a “romantic drama silent film” produced by Irving Thalberg with a script by Benjamin Glazer.

1927: “The difficulties experienced by Israel when it tries to reconcile itself to the teachings of Jesus were outlined” this “morning by Rabbi Nathan Krass while speaking at Congregation Emanu-El where “said the Jews cannot accept the divinity of Jesus because they refuse to confound  the personality of any man, however noble, with the everlasting God.”

1928(12th of Tevet, 5869): Seventy-six-year-old David Solis Ritterband the youngest child of Benvenida Solis and Leon Ritterband passed away today.

1928(12th of Tevet, 5689): Fifty year old Alfred W. Fleischer passed away today after which he was interred at Philadelphia’s Mount Sinai Cemetery.

1930: “An order prohibiting the White-Russian Jewish Theatre to play in Riga was issued today by the Ministry of the Interior.”

1930(5th of Tevet, 5691): Eugene Goldstein passed away. Born in 1850, Goldstein was the German physicist who discovered and named canal rays (1886) which emerge through holes in the anodes of low-pressure electrical discharge tubes (later shown to be positively charged particles). Earlier, he coined the term "cathode ray" (1876) emitted from a cathode. He was the first to see that they could cast a shadow, and were emitted at right angles to the surface. He also investigated the wavelengths of light emitted by metals and oxides when canal rays impinge on them. When the Berlin Urania, opened in 1889 it had five scientific departments and a "science theatre", it was Goldstein who had recommended the "hall of physics in which the visitor could experiment on his own". Students of his that continued his work included Wien and Stark.

1931: It was reported today that Dr. William F. Rosenblum, the rabbi of Temple Israel had issued a Christmas eve message “decrying bigotry, in which he said that “those who teach Christian youth now can present a picture of the founder Christianity which will not cause Christian children to hate their Jewish playmates.”

1932(26th of Kislev, 5693): Second Day of Chanukah

1933: “Roman Scandals” a film based on a story by George Kaufman, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, starring Eddie Cantor and with music by Alfred Newman during the filming of which Arthur Sheekman met his future wife, was released today in the United States.

1934: Twenty-five year old year old Stanley Irving Posner, the Massachusetts born “son of Benjamin and Fanny (Libby) Posner, the Harvard trained attorney holding degrees from Amherst and the University of Chicago married Lillian Kahn, the mother of James, Elizabeth and Lawrence Posner.

1934: By today, as right-wingers try to strangle Jewish businesses, “Zoltan Mesko, a leader of a pro-Nazi party had posted placard in Budapest which stated ‘Christian brothers! Only such gifts are fit for your Christmas tree which give bread to another Christian family. Brothers! By from Christian industry and business!”

1935: Birthdate Anne Roth who gained fame as author and feminine activist Anne Roiphe who is best known for writing Up the Sandbox.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/25/1935/anne-roiphe

1936: A month after premiering in the U.K. “Rembrandt” a biopic directed and produced by Alexander Korda was released in the United States today.

1937(21st of Tevet, 5698): Parashat Shemot

1937: In New York, at B’nai Jershurun, Rabbi Israel Goldstein delivered a sermon in which he said “the courage opposition of religious forces to the onslaught of totalitarianism and militarism is the one bright note in an otherwise pessimistic world.”

1938: Harold Goldblatt presided over today’s opening session Avukah’s three day conference being held at the Hotel Claridge.

1938(3rd of Tevet, 5699): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1938: On what would have been his 79th birthday, funeral services are scheduled to be held at Temple Emanu-El for Columbia University trained physician Dr. Henry W. Berg, the Austrian born son of Josephine and Moritz Berg, who was  “an authority on infectious diseases and internal medicine,” who during World War One “treated thousands of soldiers and sailors at the Riverside Hospital.

1939: “Professor Benjamin Joseph Lazan” the New York born son of “Samuel and Pauline (Brenson) Lazan” who had served for 12 years as “the chairman of the University of Minnesota departments of aeronautics and engineering mechanics” married Jeanette Wexler today.

1939: “Four Wives,” the movie version of Fannie Hurst’s “Sister Act,” directed by Michael Curtiz, produced by Hal Wallis, with a script by Julius and Philip G. Epstein and music by Max Steiner was released today in the United Sttes.

1940(25th of Kislev, 5701): Chanukah

1940: After premiering in the United States, “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 Kingdom today.

1940: Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "Pal Joey" premiered in New York at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

1940:  The British government; suspended the quota for legal immigration to Palestine for three months.  The Zionists saw this as punishment for illegal immigration activities in general and specifically, the events surrounding the Patria. There is a positive correlation between the British attitude towards Jewish immigration during and after World War II and the violent activity of the Irgun.

1941: George Beurling, the Canadian born pilot who died in 1948 while on training flight with the infant Israeli air force, flew his Spitfire on his first combat today.

1941: “Banjo Eyes,” a musical adaptation of “Three Men on a Horse” with a cast that included Eddie Cantor and Lionel Stander, opened at the Hollywood Theatre on Broadway.

1941: During World War II, the Battle of Hong Kong ends as the forces of British Empire were defeated by those from the Empire of the Rising Sun thus beginning the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong. Jews had begun settling in Hong Kong when the British took control in 1842.  However most Jewish merchants preferred mainland communities such as Shanghai.  During the 1930’s as the Japanese forces took control of more of mainland China, these same Jewish businessmen and many Jews who had found fled the Nazis, moved to Hong Kong. No matter how distasteful Japanese rule might have been, for the Jews, it was better than having fallen into the hands of the Nazis. Of course, this does not in any way provide expatiation for the treatment of the Chinese population at the hands of their harsh Japanese occupiers.

1942 (17th of Tevet, 5703): Nazi forces in Cracow capture and murder Aharon Liebeskind leader along with Heshek Bauminger, of the Jewish Fighting Organization (JFO).  Bauminger will be captured and killed in March of 1943.

1942: U.S. premiere of “Reunion in France” directed by Jules Dassin, produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz with music by Franz Waxman.

1942: Birthdate of Barry Joseph Goldberg, the Chicago native who became a songwriter and record producer.

1943: Trucks carrying naked Jewish women make regular trips to the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Any woman who leaps from a truck is immediately shot down.

1943(28th of Kislev, 5704): Shabbat Shel Chanukah

1943: The U.S. government sent a telegram informing Adina Werfel that, while returning from conducting a Hanukah service for American soldiers in Casablanca, the small plane carrying her husband, Rabbi Louis Werfel (the “flying rabbi”) had crashed into the Algerian mountains due to limited visibility caused by bad weather. Werfel was an Orthodox Rabbi serving as Chaplain with the United States Army Air Force.

1943: Birthdate of Israeli historian Moshe Zimmermann.

1944: In an Upper Silesia Labor Camp, the Nazis selected 60 Jews to be shot because they no longer were able to work.

1945 Today, Sergeant Benjamin Ferencz “was honorably discharged from the Army” in what would be only a temporary leave of absence from government service a few weeks later he was recruited to serve as prosecutor under Telford Taylor the chief of the team dealing with the “Subsequent Nuremberg Trials.

1945: Birthdate of Evelyn "Eve" Pollard (Evelyn, Lady Lloyd), OBE an English author, journalist and a former editor of several tabloids.

1945: U.S. premiere of “Road to Rio” with a script co-authored by Jack Rose

1946(2nd of Tevet, 5707): 8th& final day of Chanukah

1947: For the last time, Christmas is celebrated by the British as the ruling power in Jersualem.

1947: “A Double Life” directed by George Cukor, featuring Shelley Winters and Philip Loeb was released today in the United States.

1947:  “The Voice of the Turtle” directed by Irving Rapper was released in the United States today by Warner Bros.

1947: “Daisy Kenyon” the movie version of the novel of the same name produced and directed by Otto Preminger was released today in the United States.

1947: “Captain from Castile” a costume drama featuring Lee J. Cobb and Marc Lawrence with music by Alfred Newman was released today in the United States.

1947:Two British soldiers were killed and at least three more were wounded tonight when gunmen from the Stern Gang \fired on a group of Tommies who were celebrating Christmas in a Tel Aviv cafe.

1947: In Brooklyn, NY, Loa Schleifer and Morris W. Wasserstein gave birth to Bruce Wasserstein, the Wall Street investment banker who helped pioneer the hostile takeover in the 1980s and reshaped the mergers and acquisitions business into a high art…” (As reported by Sorkin and de la Merced

1948: After passing through Jewish and Arab checkpoints, Christian pilgrims are allowed to enter Bethlehem.

1948: Birthdate of Philadelphia born Kay S. Hymowitz, the Brandeis and Tufts University graduate who pursued a career in teaching and journalism.

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/expert/kay-s-hymowitz

 

1948: U.S. premiere of Abraham Polonsky’s “Force of Evil” starring John Garfield with music by David Raskin.

1949: “Real estate mogul Abraham Hirschfeld” and Zipora Teicher Hirschfeld gave birth real estate developer, producer and art collector Elie Hirschfeld, the husband of  “Sarah J. Schlesinger, a physician, researcher and associate professor of clinical investigation at Rockefeller University.”

1949: “My Foolish Heart” a movie based on a short story by J.D. Salinger produced by Samuel Goldwyn and with a script by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein premiered today in Los Angeles.

1949:Israel and Jordan ease armistice restrictions so pilgrims can attend Christmas services in Bethlehem. Most people in Holy Land are UN personnel and diplomats, because Jordan prohibits other pilgrims from returning directly to Israel.

1950: Birthdate of Yehuda Poliker “an Israeli singer, songwriter, musician, and painter. Poliker's father, Jacko, tells the story of his escape from Auschwitz in the 1988 film "Because of That War" (Biglal Hamilhamah Hahi), which features music by his son. The film includes interviews with Yehuda Poliker and Ya'akov Gilad, whose Polish Jewish parents also survived Auschwitz.”

1950: “Vendetta” from which Max Ophuls was fired as the director was released today in the United States.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that Hapoel Hamizrahi and Mizrahi finally resolved to join the Mapai-General Zionists-Progressives government coalition.

1952: The town of Hatzor is founded in the Galilee, developing from the Ma'abarah located there. The immigrants came from the camp in Rosh Pinah where the living conditions were described as “poor.”

1952: The French press was highly critical of Lebanon, which had turned down the Israeli offer to enter the Lebanese territorial waters in order to save the French liner S.S. Champollion, which sank in a heavy storm, having split on reefs off Sidon on the Lebanese coast. All but 26 of the 328 passengers and crew lost their lives, mostly while trying to swim the 200 meters separating them from the shore. According to the French press all passengers, crew and the ship could have been saved, had Lebanon accepted the prompt Israeli assistance offer.

1953(19th of Tevet, 5714): Eighty-two-year-old Levi “Lee” Shubert “the eldest of seven siblings of the theatrical Shubert family passed away today

http://www.shubertfoundation.org/about/brothers.asp

1955(10th of Tevet, 5716): Asara B'Tevet

1955(10th of Tevet, 5716): Psychoanalyst Barbara Low, “the sister of Sir Maurice and Sir Stanley Low and aunt of Ivy Litvinov,” a founding member in 1919 of the British Psychoanalytical Society, prolific author and lecturer who “attracted wide attention when she spoke on the “Psychoanalysis of Nazism” passed away today.

1955: “I’ll Cry Tomorrow” a biopic about actress Lillian Roth who converted to Catholicism from Judaism directed by Daniel Mann and produced by Lawrence Weingarten was released in the United States today.

1956(21st of Tevet, 5717): Fifty-six year old San Francisco native and Columbia educated University of Chicago professor and expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls Ralph Marcus passed away today.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/542757?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marcus-ralph

1957: “The Enemy Below” a WW II war movie in which Theodore Bikel, whose family escaped Austria, played the second command of the Nazi submarine was released in the United States today.

1957: U.S. premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s subtly anti-war film “Paths of Glory” starring Kirk Douglas.

1959(24th of Kislev, 5720): Erev Shabbat; kindle the first Chanukah light in the evening.

1961(18th of Tevet, 5722): Otto Loewi passed away. Born in 1873, Loewi was the German-born American physician and pharmacologist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with Sir Henry Dale) "for their discoveries relating to the chemical transmission of nerve impulses." Sadly, just two years later he was a victim of Nazi persecution, imprisoned for being Jewish. As ransom for his life, he was forced to hand over his possessions, including his Nobel Prize money, and Loewi escaped to England. From there he moved to America in 1940. His research showed that it was the release of a certain chemical (the transmitter) acetylcholine that enabled the transmission of nerve impulses. Loewi also investigated action of drugs able to blockade or assist nerve impulse transmission.

1961: After a year on Broadway at the St. James Theatre, “Do Re Mi”  a musical with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, transferee to the 54thStreet Theatre today.

1962: “Who’s Got the Action,” a comedy directed by Daniel Mann, filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg and co-starring Walter Matthau was releaed today in the United States.

1963: “Love with the Proper Stranger” a delightful off-beat comedy written by Arnold Schulman, featuring Herschel Bernardi and with music by Elmer Bernstein was released today in the United States.

1964: U.S. premiere of “The Pleasure Seekers” with music by Lionel Newman

1965(2nd of Tevet, 5726): Parshat Miketz; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1964: “Six and the Single Girl” with a script by Joseph Heller and starring Tony Curtis and Lauren Bacall was released in the United States today.

1969: The French discovered that the berths that had been holding five embargoed Israeli missile boats are empty..

1970:After ten days, “The First Leningrad Trial ends with Jewish and non-Jewish defendants --Mendel Bodnya, Israel Zalmanson, Silva Zalmanson, Anatolii Altman, Leib Khnokh, Boris Penson, Wulf Zalmanson, Iosif Mendelevich, Alexey Murzhenko, Yurii Fedorov-- accused of “hijacking” an airplane to escape the Soviet Union and reach Israel, sentenced 4 to 15 years while Mark Dymshitz and Eduard Kuznetsov received the death sentence, which was eventually commuted to 15 years.

1972: “Homage Paid to Rabbi Heschel by 500 at a Traditional Service” published today described the funeral of the man who when he marched at Selma said he was praying with his feet.

1973(30th of Kislev, 5734): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1973(30th of Kislev, 5734): Seventy-nine-year Columbia trained pediatrician and WW I Army Medical Corps veteran Dr. Harry Bakwin the husband of Dr. Ruth Morris who joined together to become major art collectors.

http://research.frick.org/directoryweb/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=11848

1973: “The Sting” the Oscar award winning film starring Paul Newman, featuring Harold Gould and with a marvelous score by Marvin Hamlisch was released in the United States today.

1974: U.S. premiere of “The Sting” starring Paul Newman with an amazingly memorable musical score created by Marvin Hamlisch.

1974(11th of Tevet, 5735): Seventy-four-year-old Irish painter Harry Aaron Kernoff passed away today.

http://www.artnet.com/artists/harry-kernoff/in-davys-parlour-snug-self-portrait-with-davy-7LouYz70lzm-CZrnRNYITQ2

1975: “The Hindenburg” an epic about the airships disaster with music by David Shire and featuring Alan Oppenheimer, a cousin of J. Robert Oppenheimer was released in the United States today.

1975: “Lucky Lady’ a comedy directed by Stanley Donen, produced by Michael Gruskoff and wrottem bu Gloria Katz was released in the United States today.

1977: Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat met in Ismailia, Egypt. During negotiations, Sadat tells Begin that there can be no separate peace between Israel and Egypt.  To gain peace with Egypt, Israel must agree to the pre-1967 boundaries and recognize the right to Palestinian self-determination.  Rather than lose momentum or stop the negotiations, Begin and Sadat established several working committees to examine different aspects of the peace process.

1977: U.S. premiere of “High Anxiety” directed and produced by Mel Brooks who co-authored the script along with Barry Levinson and co-starred in it along with Madeline Kahn.

1977(15th of Tevet, 5738): Comedian Charlie Chaplin died at age 88.

1978(25th of Kislev, 5739): Chanukah

1978: Republication of “The Menorah” by Theodor Herzl

http://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/25/archives/the-menorah.html

1980: Today, over 1,200 people “representing members of Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform, synagogues” attended the founding conference of the New Jewish Agenda

1980: U.S. premiere of “Altered State, a sci-fi thriller adapted from a novel of the same name written by playwright Paddy Chayefsky who used the pen-name “Sidney Aaron” when he wrote the script and co-starring Bob Balaban as “Arthur Rosenburg” and produced by Daniel Melnick.

1980: U.S. premiere of “First Family” written and directed by Buck Henry (Henry Zuckerman)

1981: “Modern Problems,” a comedy directed and written by Ken Shapiro was released today in the United States.

1983: On their 43rd wedding anniversary millionaire real estate mogul Sol Goldman sent his estranged wife Lillian flowers and “asked her to organize a birthday dinner for their daughter Amy” as part of an attempted reconciliation.

1982(9th of Tevet, 5743): Parashat Vayigash

1982(9th of Tevet, 5743: Eighty-eight-year-old vaudevillian and radio performer Jack Pearl, the Manhattan born son of Anna and Louis Perlman and the husband of Winifred Pearl passed away today.

https://walkoffame.com/jack-pearl/

1983: In an article entitled “Israel’s Founding Father,” James Feron reviewed Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire by Dan Kurzman.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/25/books/israel-s-founding-father.html

1984(1st of Tevet, 5745): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1985: “Murphy’s Romance” a charming comedy co-starring Corey Haim with music by Carole King was released today in the United States.

1985:A small bomb concealed in a loaf of bread was found at a bus stop near Tel Aviv University today, the police said. A passer-by discovered the suspicious-looking loaf and informed explosives experts, a police spokesman said. The device was safely dismantled. No arrests were reported.

1987:Three Palestinian guerrillas infiltrated a short distance into Israel from Jordan tonight and were captured alive by Israeli troops after a shootout.

1987: “Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night,an American animated fantasy adventure film featuring the voice of Edward Asner as “Scalawag the Raccoon” was released in the United States today.

1988: In an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper published, Egyptian President Mubarak was quoted as saying he would go to Israel if the visit would help achieve peace. Prime Minister Shamir has said he would welcome a visit by Mr. Mubarak.

1989(27th of Kislev, 5750): Third Day of Chanukah

1989: Skokie native and Penn alum Brent Howard Novoselky caught a fourth quarter touchdown pass which sealed the victory for his Minnesota Vikings over the Green Bay Packers and garnered them a place in the NFL playoffs.

1989:During the American invasion of Panama the United States Embassy in Panama recanted its previous report that Mike Harari, a 62-year-old retired agent of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad was an American ''prisoner of war.''

1990: After premiering in Beverly Hills five days ago, “Godfather III” co-starring Eli Wallach was released in theatres throughout the United States.

1990: Hadash lost one of its four seats in the Knesset when Charlie Biton broke away to establish Black Panthers as an independent faction

1991: In the United States, limited release of “Grand Canyon” directed and co-produced by Lawrence Kasdan with a script by Lawrence Kasdan and Meg Kasdan.

1993(11th of Tevet, 5754): Parashat Vayechi

1993(11th of Tevet, 5754): Eight year old Brooklyn born art collector and holder of PH.D from NYU Eric Estroick, and husband of Salome Dessau English textile designer and inventor of stretch lace who endowed the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in Canonbury, north London” passed away today in London.

1993: “Shadowlands” in which Debra Winger portrays the life of Joy Davidman, the Jewish poet who converted to Christianity was released in the United States today.

1993: Eleven people were injured when a bomb went off in an Israeli ship at Eilat.

1994: In the United States, general release of “Little Women” starring Winona Ryder as “Jo”

1994(22nd of Tevet, 5755): Near the Binyanei Hauma (Jerusalem International Convention Center) thirteen Israeli soldiers and civilians were wounded when a Hamas sponsored suicide bomber tried to board their bus at the entrance to the city but was foiled they managed to close the door.  The terrorist succeeded in blowing himself up.

1994: A Palestinian suicide bomber carrying a pack of explosives blew himself up here near a bus full of Israeli soldiers today, wounding 13 people and killing himself.

1994:Shimshon Moshe’s kiosk was torn apart by a blast from a suicide bomber standing at a bus stop, across from Jerusalem International Convention Center.

1995(2nd of Tevet, 5756): 8th Day of Chanukah

1995(2nd of Tevet, 5756): Ninety-year old Emmanuel Levinas a Talmudic scholar who was one of the major philosophic minds of the twentieth century and whose work was greatly influenced by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/27/world/emmanuel-levinas-90-french-ethical-philosopher.html

1995:The Israeli Government approved sweeping changes today requiring the country's powerful banks to sell substantial parts of their assets, a Treasury spokesman said.

1996: Premiere of “Mother” directed and written by Albert Brooks who also starred in the comedy, produced by Scott Rudin with music by Marc Shaiman.

1996(15thof Tevet, 5757): Sixty-four-year-old economist Michael Bruno, the former head of Israel’s central bank passed away today in Jerusalem. (As reported by Peter Passell)

1997: Jerry Seinfeld announced that this is the final season of his TV show.

1997(26th of Kislev, 5758): Second Day of Chanukah

1997: Eight days after premiering at Century City, “Wag the Dog” directed and produced by Barry Levinson, with a script by David Mamet, starring Dustin Hoffman and featuring Hope Garber “as the Albanian grandmother” was released today in the United States

1997: U.S. premiere of “Kundun” including a score create by Philip Glass.

1998: “The Thin Red Line” the movie version of the WW II novel with music by Hans Zimmer and edited by Israeli Saar Klein was released in the United States today.

1998: U.S. premiere of “Patch Adams” co-produced by Marvin Minoff with music by Marc Shaiman.

1999(16th of Tevet, 5760): Parashat Vayechi

1999: “Israeli troops and Lebanese guerrillas fighting in southern Lebanon observed a rare and unannounced three-day cease-fire that ended today, allowing the recovery of the bodies of five guerrillas killed in the area in recent months.”

2000: BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” the dramatic creation of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman (Yes, the Jews provided the entertainment for Englishmen on Christmas)

2001(10th of Tevet, 5762): Asara B'Tevet

2001: “Ali” a sports biography directed and co-produced by Michael Mann who also co-authored the screenplay along with Eric Roth co-starring Ron Silver and filmed by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and edited by Stephen Rivkin was released in the United States today

2001(10th of Tevet, 5762): Fity-year old “Mari Kajiwara, an American modern dancer of stunning quality who mesmerized audiences as a leading member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Ohad Naharin Dance Company and the Batsheva Dance Company of Israel, passed away in Tel Aviv (As reported by Anna Kisselgoff)

2002: Today, in an effort to help with the celebration of Christmas in Bethlehem of the Israeli soldiers who had “re-entered the city last month after a suicide bombing attack had killed 11 people in Jerusalem.”

2003(30th of Kislev, 5764): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

2003(30th of Kislev, 5764):Adva Tzippora Fisher, 19, of Kfar Saba; Cpl. Rotem Weinberger, 19, of Kfar Saba; Staff Sergeant Noam Leibowitz, 22, of Elkana and Cpl. Angelina Shcherov, 19, of Kfar Saba were murdered today and 16 others were wounded when suicide bomber from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine “detonated an explosive device near a bus stop at the Geha Interchange.”

2004: According to reports published in today’s The Cedar Rapids Gazette the Israel Museum has announced that "an ivory pomegranate long touted by scholars as the only relic from Solomon's Temple is a forgery..."  The collector alleged to have been involved in this forgery was the same person who claimed to have found a burial chest containing the bones of James the brother of Jesus.  The pomegranate is actually about 3,500 years old and comes from the Bronze Age that pre-dated the time of the Temple.  But the inscription tying it to the Temple was of more recent origins.

2004: “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” a comedy produced by Scott Rudin, with a script co-authored by Noah Baumbach and co-starring Jeff Goldblum was released in the United States a month after opening in Los Angeles.

2004:  For the first time since the latest wave of Arab violence, a Palestinian leader attended Christmas observances in Bethlehem.  As a sign of possibly improving relations, 15,000 tourists were in Bethlehem on Christmas Day.  This was the largest turnout since the latest wave of terror began in 2000.

2005: At Eilat, fourth and final day of the Red Sea Classical Festival.

2005: “The New World” a historic drama filmed by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and edited by Saar Klein was released today in the United States.

2005: Bensiyon Morisbhai Songavkar an Indian professional cricketer represented Saurashtra when it played Goa today.

2006: Haaretz reported that Journalist Uri Dan, 71, died yesterday from cancer. Dan, who wrote for Ma’ariv,the Israel Defense Forces magazine Bamahaneh and the New York Post, was a close friend of former prime minister Ariel Sharon.

2006: In “The Jews Who Wrote Christmas Songs” published today, Nate Bloom provides the following Jewish connections to the ASCAP’s list of the 25 most popular Christmas songs:

“Winter Wonderland” was co-authored by Felix Bernard, a Brooklyn born Jew

“The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)"was written in 1945 by Mel Tormé (1925-1999) and Robert "Bob" Wells (born 1922) --both of whom are Jewish. Tormé, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, is most famous as a jazz vocalist, but he did write about 250 songs, mostly with Wells. Tormé wrote the music for "The Christmas Song" and Wells penned the lyrics.

“Sleigh Ride” was the product of lyricist Mitchell Parish(1900-1993), who was a Lithuanian born Jew named Michael Hyman Pashelinsky whose family took him to Shreveport, LA when he was an infant.

"Let It Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!" was written in 1945 by the Jewish songwriting team of lyricist Sammy Cahn (1913-1993) and composer Jule Styne (1905-1994).

“White Christmas” by Irving Berlin, the non-religious Jew who was the son of a rabbi.

"Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" and “Its Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” are both products of Jewish song writer Johnny Marks

 

"It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" co-authored by George Wyle (1917-2003), born Bernard Weissman in New York City, who got his start playing piano in the Catskills

 

"Silver Bells" co-authored by Livingston and Evans.Jay Livingston, who wrote the music, and Ray Evans (1915-2007), who wrote the lyrics, were a famous Jewish songwriting team with many big hits to their credit. Livingston (1915-2001) was born Jacob Levinson in a small industrial suburb of Pittsburgh. Evans was born in 1915 in Salamanca, a small city not that far from Buffalo, N.Y. He went to the University of Pennsylvania, as did Livingston, and the two met when they joined the university dance band. They formed their songwriting partnership in 1937 and it endured until Livingston's death. (By all accounts, these two guys were like brothers and Evans was absolutely devastated by Livingston's death.) According to ASCAP the most popular version of "Silver Bells" is the one by saxophonist Kenny G, who is Jewish.

 

“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” co-authored by Walter Kent, Buck Ram (who were Jewish) and Kim Gannon (who was not Jewish) Kent (1911-1994) was born Walter Kauffman in New York. He was a practicing architect, an orchestra leader, and a composer. Most of his composing was for films. His other big hits were "The White Cliffs of Dover" and "I'm Gonna Live Till I Die." He is buried in a Los Angeles area Jewish cemetery. Ram (1907-1991) was also born in New York. His real fame came as a rock n' roll music writer and producer in the '50s, most notably with the Platters, a group he created. He is credited as the writer of such hits as "The Great Pretender,""Only You,""The Magic Touch" and "Twilight Time."

2006: Shas MK OferHugi was convicted of various charges related to forgery and fraud and was later sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay a 12,000 shekel fine.

2006: On the anniversary of his birth BBC Radio 2 transmitted the second of two special one tribute programs celebrating the life of Lew Grade.

2006: “Notes on a Scandal” the movie version of the novel by Zoe Heller whose father was Jewish with a soundtrack by Philip Glass and produced by Scott Rudin was released in the United Kingdom today.

2007: At the Friedman Center in Santa Rosa, CA, a screening of “The Impossible Spy.” This riveting film tells the incredible but true story of Elie Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jew and top Israeli intelligence recruit whose obsession with his mission as a double agent drove him to his death. Cohen, an accountant with a photographic memory, left his pregnant wife to join the Mossad’s Syrian section in 1959 and quickly infiltrated the highest ranks of the ruling Syrian Baath party. On the eve of his nomination as Syria’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Cohen was uncovered and executed in Damascus in 1965. Two years later, Israel achieved victory in the Six Day War, defeating the Syrian Army as a direct result of the information Cohen provided.

2007: A group of 40 new immigrants from Iran touched down at Ben-Gurion International Airport , the largest since the fall of the Shah and Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. A total of 200 Iranian Jews have immigrated to Israel in 2007, compared to only 65 in 2006.

2008:In Downtown Manhattan’s East Village Simon Jacobson facilitates the Chanukah Drum Circle and Menorah Lighting featuring special Holiday Melodies

2008: MK Uri Ariel of Tkuma left The Jewish Home, a right-wing party formed by the merger of Moledet, Tkuma and the National Religious Party.

2008: U.S. premiere of Marley & Me directed by David Frankel and co-starring Alan Arkin.

2008: Tkuma MK Ariel left Jewish Home and joined the Union

2008: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” a film that received thirteen Oscar nominations with a script by Eric Roth was released in the United States today.



2008: The Maltz Musuem sponsors the Third Annual Chinese Food and a Movie. From noon to 4 p.m. visitors to the Museum can experience “Maccabees: The Original Superheroes” — dress up and have photos taken, watch short movies and vintage superhero films, make Hanukkah candles and join in candle lighting and songs, as well as enjoy egg rolls, latkes, donuts and holiday songs.

 

2008: In Washington, D.C. closing session of USY International Convention. This marks the forty-seventh anniversary (December 1961) of the USY convention where Danny Siegel launched his career on a national stage and taught at least one attendee how to smoke cigars.

 

2008: Opening session of the Hazon Jewish food conference in Pacific Grove, California.

 

2009:From 11am to 3pm those in New York City can enjoy “A Special Day of Free Events”” at Yeshiva University Museum.

 

2009:The Rosenbloom Owings Mills (MD) JCC holds a day of Relaxation, Creation and ReJEWvenation where, among other things, families can make their own challah; children can make their own Shabbat kits, complete with centerpieces, tzedakah boxes, Kiddush cups and Havdalah kits and everybody can enjoy an appearance by ShinShinim, a teen Klezmer band from Ashkelon, Israel. 

 

2009(8th of Tevet, 5770):Morris E. Lasker, a federal judge in New York and Massachusetts for four decades who struck down squalid, often brutal conditions in New York City jails and upheld prisoners’ rights perhaps more than any other jurist of his era, died today in Cambridge, Mass at the age of 92. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

2010(18thof Tevet, 5771): Yahrzeit of Huna Mori bar Mor Zutra, The Exilarch ("Resh Galuta") of Babylonian Jewry who “, was executed in Pumpeditha by order of the Persian emperor.

2010(18thof Tevet, 5771): Yahrzeit of Rav Mesharshia bar Pekod

2010(18th of Tevet, 5771): Yahrzeit B'nei Yissachar, Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapiro of Dynov (1783?-1841), author of the Chassidic work B'nei Yissacha who passed away in 5602 (1841).

2010: The 3 day-long Gateways Winter Retreat with Rabbi Mordechai Becher, Mrs. Debbie Greenblatt, Dr. Chaim Presby, Rabbi Jonathan Rietti, Mrs. Chaya Reich, Rabbi Mordechai Suchard and Rabbi Yonason Shippel is scheduled to enter into its second day at the Hanover Marriot in New Jersey.

2010: On Shabbat, Jews all over the world begin reading the Book of Shemot or Exodus

2010: The Master Classes taught by American director Michael Mayer at the Stage-Center International Theatre Workshop in Tel Aviv come to an end.

2010(18th of Tevet, 5771):Bud Greenspan, award-winning filmmaker, writer, character and, arguably, the world's No. 1 fan of the Olympics, passed away today at the age of 84. (As reported by Mike Kupper)

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/26/local/la-me-bud-greenspan-20101227

 

2011: The 61st USY International Convention is scheduled to begin in Philadelphia, PA

 

2011: The Gateways Chanukah Retreat is scheduled to come to an end in Somerset, NJ.

 

2011: “Minus 16,” a work by Ohad Naharin, Israel’s most famous choreographer is scheduled to have its final performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center.

 

2011: Community Mitzvah Day sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans is scheduled to take place today.

 

2011: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘Man Seeks God: My Flirtations With the Divine’ by Eric Weiner, ‘Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790’ by Jonathan I. Israel and the recently released of paperback edition of ‘In The Valley of the Shadow:On the Foundations of Religious Belief’ by James Kugel.

 

2011:Today the Ministerial Committee for Legislation delayed a vote on bills aimed at combating discrimination against women.

 

2011: Residents of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Beit Shemesh called Israel police officers “Nazis” today, after they removed a sign ordering the separation of men and women in a street in that neighborhood.

2011(29thof Kislev, 5772): Eighty-seven year old “Andrew Geller, an architect who embodied postwar ingenuity and optimism in a series of inexpensive beach houses in whimsical shapes, many of them in the Hamptons, and who helped bring modernism to the masses with prefabricated cottages sold at Macy’s” passed away today. (As reported by Fred A. Bernstein)

 

2011(29thof Kislev, 5772): Sixty-five year old “Adrienne Cooper, an American-born singer, teacher and curator of Yiddish music who was a pioneer in the effort to keep the embers of that language smoldering for newer generations” passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/arts/music/adrienne-cooper-expert-on-yiddish-music-is-dead-at-65.html?_r=0

 

2012: The Maccabeats are scheduled to perform this evening at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill

 

2012: The JCC of Northern Virginia is schuedled to sponsor the “Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along.”

 

2012: In New York, the Aish Center is scheduled to host Discovery 2012 a Jewish educational program that boasts having a quarter of a million attendees worldwide.

 

2012: “The Smoking Room” is scheduled to shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012: Today Turkish police arrested four men in the coastal city of Adana on suspicion that they tried to sell a purportedly 1,900-year-old Torah scroll.

 

2012: Sources close to both Hatnua chairwoman Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that the two parties are investigating the possibility of working together in the next government.

2012: Israel to Review Curbs on Women’s Prayer at Western Wall

2013: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host JFest, a Family Fun Day featuring Israeli Dancing and a screening of “Hava Nagila”

2013: The American film classic “Casablanca” which has a “raft” of Jews before and behind the camera is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: Eleanor “Bron appeared on BBC One in an adaption of The Tractate Middoth.”

2013: Today, the IDF deployed an Iron Dome missile interception battery to the area near the southern town of Sderot, amid heightened tensions between Israel and the Palestinians following a string of attacks against Israeli civilians, police officers and soldiers. (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)

 

2013:Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said today that the "terror attacks in Judea and Samaria are the result of incite, instigated by the Palestinian Authority, which teaches hatred of the State of Israel. We will know how to handle it." (As reported by Yoav Zitun)

2014: On this day, reading “Real American Jews write Christmas Music” should provide a Jewish connection with events being celebrate each year on December 25th.

2014: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host J Fest including a screening of “The Frisco Kid.”

2014: “Bottle Shock” and “Winter Sleep” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival

2014: “Archaeologists conducting excavations in the town of Magdala, situated on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, exposed a public structure from the Roman period, it was reported today. The structure's grandeur led researchers to conclude that the site contained the ruins of an ancient synagogue. "We're still at an early stage of unearthing the structure," they said. "We found parts of the structure, fragments of columns, parts of benches, the threshold of a door and pottery fragments." (As reported by Itay Blumenthal)

2014: Eleven-year-old Ayala Shapira was seriously injured in a firebomb attack this evening while riding with her father Avner.

2014: “The High Court of Justice has ruled that Israel must evacuate and dismantle the of Amona, the largest illegal outpost in the West Bank's Binyamin Region Council, within two years and work to find alternative housing for the settlers currently living there.” (As reported by Aviel Magnezi)

2015: In Fairfax, VA, the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host J Fest including a free screening of Barbra Streisand in “Yentl.”

2015(13th of Tevet, 5776): Ninety-five character Jason Wingreen passed away

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jason-wingreen-dead-all-family-851697

2016(25th of Kislev, 5777): First Day of Chanukah; in the evening, kindle the second light

 

2016: The UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “The Innocents.”

 

2016: The 5th Annual Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Memorial Concert which this year “will honor Yiddish poet Irena Klepfisz” is scheduled to place at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

2016(25th of Kislev, 5777): Eighty-eight-year-old Vera Rubin the groundbreaking astronomer passed away today.  (As reported by Dennis Overbye)

http://home.dtm.ciw.edu/users/rubin/

2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently release paperback edition of Good on Paper by Rachel Cantor.

2017: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “director Maysaloun Hamoud’s groundbreaking film In Between” that tells the story of “three young Arab-Israeli women sharing a flat in Tel Aviv.”

2017: Brooklyn based “Tsibele” and “Overnight Kugel” are scheduled to perform on the fourth night of Yiddish New York.

2017: “A Magical Trip to Jewish Morocco” sponsored by Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to begin today.

2017: One hundredth anniversary of the first Christmas under which Jerusalem was ruled by the British.

2017: Seventieth anniversary of the last Christmas under which Jerusalem was ruled by the British.

2018: “Israel said tonight it had deployed its air defenses against a missile shot from Syria as Damascus attempted to repel an alleged Israeli airstrike against Hezbollah or Iranian targets near the capital.”

2018: After having premiered at the American Film Insitute Fest in November, “On the Basis of Sex,” a bi-opic based on the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg directed by Mimi Leder was released in the United States today.

2018: “Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, was released from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York today and is recuperating at home

2018: In Albany, NY, the Congregation Ohav Shalom is scheduled to host an evening of “theater with the Noodle Pudding Players performing Jeffrey Sweet’s “The Value of Names” which “describes the impact of the 1950’s-60’s Hollywood blacklisting of many actors, producers and directors whose lives were forever changed.”

2018: Today, President Trump expressed his confidence in Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin who he said was a “very talented guy, very smart person.”

2018: During its third Yiddish New York is scheduled to host a lecture by “thnomusciologist Walter Zev Feldma styled “Nign/Zemer/Lid: Religious Yiddish Vocal Folk Music Traditions”

2018: The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh is scheduled to host Mitzvah Day today.

2018: “The book launch of Rabbi Itamar Verhephtig’s Aleicha Zarach in which author and editor Rabbi Itamat Verhephtig describes the life and work of Dr. Zerach Verhephtig who headed a huge rescue project during the Holocaust, signed the Declaration of Independence, was awarded the Israel Prize and was a member of the Knesset and Deputy Minister of Religions” is scheduled to take place today in Jerusalem.

2018: While still digesting the ramifications of the United States immediate withdrawal from Syria, Israelis awoke this morning to deal with increased political turmoil resulting from yesterday’s announcement that elections will be held in April of 2018 instead of November of 2019 as originally planned.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles.”

2019(27th of Kislev, 5780): Third Day of Chanukah

2019: YNY is scheduled to host the “8th Annual Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Memorial Concert and Award.”

2019: In a uniquely San Francisco twist on celebrating Chanukah, the Make-Out Room is scheduled to host “It’s a Jewish Christmas, San Francisco” complete with “ the strip dreidel game, burlesque performance, Chinese food buffet, movies, comedy, DJs and schmoozing.”

2020: “From the Bible to Christmas with the Ankor Choir” which is the fifth and last concert of “The Vocal Series” is scheduled to be broadcast live on Kan Kol Hamusika.

2020: The Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to host a screening of “Crossing Delaney which “will be accompanied by a discussion with the star of the film, actor Peter Riegert, the screenwriter, Susan Sandler, and Sirius XM radio host Jessica Shaw, plus a pickle-making demonstration with David Teyf, Executive Chef at the Museum’s LOX at Café Bergson.”

2020(10th of Tevet, 5781): Yahrzeit of  Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin) the wife of Larry Rosenstein of blessed memory, the mother of Danny, David Asher and Joel Rosenstein and the sister of Davjd Mitchell Levin all of whom miss her and remember her with love and affection

2020(10th of Tevet, 5781): The Fast of the 10thof Tevet; Asarah b’Tevet, is a minor fast day that commemorates the date “when, according to the Tanach (II Kings 25:1-4), the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem.”

2020: The National Museum of American Jewish History, of which Mitchell Levin is an official content provider, is scheduled to host a livestream “concert from Alex Mitnick of the Emmy Award-winning (and returning favorite) Alex & the Kaleidoscope.”

2020: The UK Jewish Film Festival On Demand page is scheduled to host the first two episodes for fee of “The New Black (Shababniks) for the last time.

2020: The Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County, NJ is scheduled to host the final screening of the documentary film, “Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of the Indian Cinema.”

2020: The pandemic reportedly dampened Christmas celebration in the “Holy Land.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 26, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 26

1135: Coronation of Stephen I, king of England, who in 1141 burned down the house of Aaron f. Isaac in Oxford as a way to “induce” the Jews to providing him with funds to continue his war with Empress Matilda who had previously extorted funds from the same Jewish community.

1194: Birthdate of Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor who improved the conditions for the Jews of Palermo, Naples and Jerusalem.

1424:  The city of Barcelona, Spain was granted the right to exclude Jews for all time.

1495: Savonarola expelled the Medici and the Jews from Florence. The Jews, who had previously served as the Medici's bankers, were replaced by a Monte di Pieta, a public loan bank.

1634:  Religious freedom was granted to Jews and Catholics in Brazil. This was the period of time when Brazil was under the control of the Dutch.  Things would change in 1654 when Portugal took Recife, Brazil and the Jews were forced to flee.  One group of these refugees would arrive in New Amsterdam and the rest is history.

1693: The parents of Sampson Gideon were married today by Haham Ayilon at the Creechurch Lane Synagogue in London which had been found by “Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, one of the Sephardic merchants allied to Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads”.

1751: Birthdate of Lord George Gordon who took the name Yisrael bar Avraham Gordon when he converted to Judaism in 1787

1764(2ndof Tevet, 5525): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1769(27thof Kislev, 5530): Third Day of Chanukah

1769: Birthdate of German historian Ernst Moritz Arndt, who “played a crucial part in the development of German nationalism, with a corollary of hostility to, and fear of, the Jews” whom believed “had become ‘a depraved and degenerate people…unfit to be full citizens of a Christian state.’”

1772(30thof Kislev, 5533): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1775: On the day after Chanukah, “The Continental Congress called for another three million dollars in bills of credit to be issued to help defray the costs of building a navy and supplying the army” which is yet another example of the financial problems besetting the Americans and which Haim Solomon tried to help to ameliorate.

1776: In an act of daring-do Washington ferries his freezing, starving troops across the ice choked Delaware River and leads them to victory at the Battle of Trenton. There were certainly Jewish soldiers among those who joined in the Crossing of the Delaware two of whom may have been Abraham Levy and Phillip Russell. Since Washington’s Army was on the verge of destruction, defeat at Trenton would have meant the end of the American Revolution, a war which created a nation rightfully described as “the last best hope men” – an appellation with which the Jewish people would heartily agree.  One of the most readable treatments of this turning point in American history is The Crossing by the Jewish author Howard Fast which was the source for a film by the same name.

1777(26thof Kislev, 5538): Second Day of Chanukah

1777: As Jews prepare to light the third Chanukah candle, Washington’s troops are completing their first full week at Valley Forge having arrived there on December 19.

1780(28thof Kislev, 5541): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1780: Sixty-eight-year-old Dr. John Fothergill who sought solace in the suffering of the Friends or Quakers by compares to the Jews as can be seen when he wrote “John Pemberton during the American Revolution that he often reflects “on the history of the Jewish people with humbling admiration” and that their sufferings affords “instructive lessons.”

1783: Áron Chorin, a Hungarian rabbi who sought to reform some Jewish practices, married today following which he had a short, unsuccessful career in business before making use of his Talmudic knowledge and rabbinic skills as the leader of the Jewish community of Arad.

1783: Isaac Baruh Lousada, a member of a family of prominent planters and merchants in Jamaica and his wife gave birth Emaneul Baruh Lousa, “a collateral ancestor of Moshe Baruh Louzada , a founder of the London Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue”  who after moving to England lived at Sidmouth which he developed into a “popular resort.”

1783: In Germany, Voegele Juda and Loeb Moses Sontheimer gave birth to Moses Loeb Sontheimer, the husband of Ruchele Rosenheim with whom he had six children.

1787: Hannah de Jacob Dias and Aaron De Pass gave birth to Abraham De Pass who was living in Jamaica at the time of his death.

1791(30thof Kislev, 5552): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1796(26thof Kislev, 5557): Second Day of Chanukah

1796: In Amsterdam, Aaron de Sola and his wife gave birth to David Aaron de Sola, the great-nephew of the physician Dr. Benjamin de Sola, who in 1818 was called to London to become one of the ministers of the Bevis Marks Congregation under Haham Raphael Meldola who become his father-in-law when a year later he married Rica/Rebecca de Hezekiah Meldola with whom he had fifteen children and whose talents produced a popular tune for “Adon Olam” and several books including his Biography of Isaac Samuel Reggio.

 

1799(28thof Kislev, 5560): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1799: American Jews who have been welcomed by The Father of our Country join their fellow citizens in mourning the passing of George Washington who was buried today.  (Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport set a tone of acceptance that has been the unique hallmark of the Jewish experience in the United States)

1801: A deed bearing today’s date conveys land owned by Charles Carroll to Levi Solomon and Solomon Etting which the Baltimore Jewish community will use as a cemetery.

1809: Anne Emilie Furtado, the daughter of Abraham Furtado the President of the Assemblee des Notables married Moise Aime Solar, the son of Aaron Felix Solar.

1810: Solomon Jonas married Rosetta Joseph today at the Great Synagogue.

1815(24thof Kislev, 5576): In the evening light the first light of Chanukah which American Jews are doing in an environment of peace for the first time since 1812.

1823: As the struggle between Reform movement and traditionalists became more pronounced, a party of Orthodox Jews obtained a royal cabinet order that frustrated attempts “to adapt the old ritual to new forms” including sermons preached in German. This forced Isaac Noah Mannheimer, a rabbi who was a leader in the Reform movement to leave Berlin for a pulpit in Hamburg which led him to a position in Vienna where he was able to fully display his intellectual and oratorical gifts.

1825: In Amsterdam, Rachel Bueno and Samuel Coelho gave birth to Rebecca Coelho, the husband of Aaron Coronel, the mother of Rebecca, Moses, Rachel, Samuel, Eleazar and Jacob Coelho.

1825: Several Imperial Russia army officers lead force of approximately3000 soldiers on the Senate Square in the failed Decembrist uprising. Pavel Pestel, one of the leaders of the unsuccessful Decembrist revolt, proposed sending all Jews from Russia to some territory in Asia Minor, especially acquired for this purpose, where they would be able to establish independent state.

1829: One day after she had passed away, Francis Harris the wife of Henry Harris was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery

1830(10thof Tevet, 5591): Asara B’Tevet observed for the first time since the “Great Powers” recognized the independence of Belgium where Judaism was given the status of an officially recognized religion in the same year.

1834: Birthdate of Abraham Baer the cantor who was a native of Prussia and who moved to Gothenberg in 1857 at the age of 23 to pursue his career.

1838: Birthdate of Giueseppe Ottolenghi the native of Lombardy who rose to be a General in the Italian Army serving as the Commandant of the First Army Corps.

1843(24th of Kislev, 5595): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah

1843: In Paris, Count Salomon Henry d'Avigdor, Duke d'Acquaviva, the Nice born son “of Count Isaac Samuel d'Avigdor and Gabrielle Pauline Henriette Avigdor and his wife Countess Rachel d'Avigdor gave birth to Mariam Isabelle Olga Lucas the wife of Anglo-Jewish painter Horatio Joseph Lucas

1848: In Philadelphia. Buchau, Germany, native Max Einstein, the owner of a ribbon and silk store who would rise to the rank of Colonel during the Civil War married Helena Guggenheim.

1849: Birthdate of Hanover, N.H. native and graduate of Dartmouth and the Union Theological Seminary, “one of the most distinguished Hebrew Scholars in America” and author of A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament who served as “the Director of the American School for Oriental Study and Research in Palestine with headquarters in Jerusalem” and the President of the Union Theological Seminary while raising a son, Julius with his wife, the former Louise Reiss.

1851:Lord Palmerston completed  his term of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs during which the British blockaded  the port of Piraeus as part of the response to Greece’s abuse of David Pacifico, whom Palmerston defended as this “man of Jewish persuasion” and on whose be he “made a celebrated speech which concluded that all British subjects ought to be able to say, as did citizens of ancient Rome, "Civis Romanus sum" ("I am a citizen of Rome"), and thereby receive protection from the British government.”

1852: The Reverend Samuel Osgood delivered a talk at the Church of the Messiah in NYC entitled “The Enigma of History- A Discourse on the Jewish Race” which was based, in part, on information provided by Rabbi Morris Raphall with whom Osgood had carried on a correspondence. 

1853(25thof Kislev, 5614): 1st day of Chanukah

1854: In Bavaria, Mendel Emanuel Schloss and Adelheid Baer Schloss gave birth to Leopold Schloss, the husband of Karoline Schloss.

1854: Two days after he had passed away, Hyam Hyam, the husband of Hannah Lazarus with whom he had had eight children, was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.

1860: In “Ballston Spa, NY,” Lewis Muhlfelder and Rosa Schwarz gave birth to Union College undergrad and Albany Law School trained attorney David Muhlfelder

1861: During the Civil War, in what was known as The Trent Affair, Confederate diplomatic envoys James M. Mason and John Slidell are freed by the United States government, thus heading off a possible war between the United States and Britain. Slidell, the Louisiana politician who had been a power in the Democrat Party, before the war, was a close ally of August Belmont who had married his niece.  During the war, Slidell would serve in Paris where his daughter would marry a leading French-Jewish financier.

1862: The Union “Army of the Cumberland” including the 79th Indiana Regiment under the command of Colonel Frederick Knefler left Nashville to face the Rebel “Army of Tennessee” which was camped at Murfreesboro.

1862: In Bremen, Germany, Sophia and Israel Frank gave birth to Hanover Seminary trained rabbi who in 1892 came to the United States where he became the spiritual leader of Congregation Oheb Shalom in Reading, PA and married Florence W. Weitzenkorn, daughter of Levi and Henrietta F. Weitzenkorn in 1909.

http://www.pa-roots.org/data/read.php?117,409119

1864(27thof Kislev, 5625): Third Day of Chanukah

1864: Today as Jews prepare to light the Fourth Chanukah candle, Abraham Lincoln wrote to General William Tecumseh Sherman ““Many, many, thanks for your Christmas-gift—the capture of Savannah. When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering that ‘nothing risked, nothing gained’ I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went farther than to acquiesce.”

1866: Birthdate of Toby Cohn, the native of Breslau, who became a “German physician and medical author.”

1867: Birthdate of Julien Benda, the Paris born “philosopher and novelist” best-known for his short book, La Trahison des Clercs (The Betrayal of the Intellectuals).

1870(2nd of Tevet, 5631): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1870: Dr. Max Landsberg was chosen to serve as Rabbi at Berith Kodesh in Rochester, NY.  He began serving in that capacity in March of 1871.  Prior to his selection, the position had been vacant for 2 and a half years.  Landsberg’s three predecessors were Marcus Tuska, Isaac Mayer and Aaron Ginbserg who completed his service in 1868.

1872: The London Daily Telegraph reported on a paper presented by George Smith on recent explorations of the Tigris and Euphrates river valley which should shed further light on the origins of the ancient Hebrews including the dates for the life of Abraham.

1873: Rabbi Aron Chorin gets married and leaves the rabbinate for the world of Commerce.  The change will be short-lived and will become the Rabbi in Arad in 1789.

1874: In Posen Louis Kaplan and Minna Margolius gave birth to Jacob Kaplan who in 1885 came to the United States where he was “ordained as a rabbi at H.U.C. in 1902 after which he served a congregation New Mexico before starting in 1926 to serve as the rabbi for Miami’s Temple Israel.

1875(28th of Kislev, 5636): Fourth day of Chanukah

1875: Birthdate of London native and solicitor Emile Maurice Marx, a captain in the 1st Sussex Royal Engineers and Mayor of Brighton from 1903 to 1904.

1875: It was reported today that “an ‘English Jew’ had recently written an essay modern Judaism in which he asserted that it was utterly impossible to convert a respectable Jew to Christianity.  When it was pointed out to the author that the Prime Minister of England was a convert to Christianity from Judaism, the ‘English Jew’ claimed that the Disraeli’s father, Isaac, had a quarrel with the Synagogue about money and that he had left the Synagogue. While the Prime Minister had somehow become a churchgoer, he had “never been baptized as a Christian.” [Editor’s note – “The English Jew” was right about Isaac but wrong about Benjamin.  The father had the children baptized after his falling out with the synagogue.]

1876: Three days after she had passed away Esther (Brandon) Varicas, the wife of Abraham Varicas was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1877(20th of Tevet, 5638): Israel Jones, the younger brother of Solomon Jones, who became a leader of the Jewish  community in Mobile, Alabama as well as serving on the City Council, passed away today.

1878(30th of Kislev, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1878: “A Romance of Rascality” published today described the life and times of South Carolina’s Franklin J. Moses, “a Jew” who “held his head high among the planter aristocracy.”

1879(11th of Tevet, 5640):Sarah Reibeiro-Furtado, the daughter of Abraham Furtado, the President of the Assemblee des Notables passed away in Paris.

1880: “The annual meeting of the patrons and members of the Mount Sinai Hospital” is scheduled “to be held at the Standard Club” at eleven o’clock this morning.

1880: Tonight’s “driving snow-storm” did not keep a throng from filling the Plymouth Church this evening to hear Reverend Henry Ward Beech deliver his talked entitled “Persecution of the Jews in Germany.”

1880: It was reported today that the growth in attendance at the opera in New York City is attributable, in part, to the growth of the German-Jewish population in New York.  After all, the members “of this ancient race were drawn to New York because of its rapid development in literature, in art and…in operatic music.”

1881: It was reported today that a riot broke out in Warsaw when a pickpocket who was allegedly a Jew was caught plying his trade during the recitation of high mass in the Church of the Holy Cross.  During the violence four shops owned by Jews were destroyed and 30 people were injured.

1881: It was reported today that the Directors of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York have agreed to provide a doctor to work at the offices of the Society for the Aid of the Russian Hebrew Immigrants and Refugees. 1881: It was reported today that during the 3,182 patients were admitted to Mt. Sinai Hospital, of whom 1,566 were not charged for treatment.

1882: In New York, Louis and Jennie Roscuk Gordon gave birth to Columbia trained attorney Harry Golden, “an adviser to Mary John F. Harlan and author of American Bedlam who was the husband of “the former of Rebecca Cohen” and the father of Eric and George Gordon

https://www.amazon.com/American-bedlam-Harry-Allen-Gordon/dp/B0007EH9H6

 

1883: “Georgia In Early Times” published today provided a detailed review The History of Georgia by Charles C. Jones, Jr. which included a description of the arrival of the first Jews in 1733. Governor Oglethorpe championed their cause despite opposition from some of his English supporters because he saw that as being “peaceful,” “orderly” and industrious.

1885: It was reported today that the population of Sofia has grown from 15,000 to 25,000 since it became the capital of Bulgaria.  Approximately half of the citizens are Jewish.

1885: Fifty four year old Austrian jurist Julius Anton Glaser who converted to Christianity passed away today.

1886: Birthdate of Gyula Gömbös the right-wing Hungarian politician who recanted his anti-Jewish views in order to become his country’s Prime Minister during the 1930’s,

1886: Paul Heyse, the German-Jewish writer, is one of the “eminent authors of the 19th century according to Dr. George Brandes, whose book Eminent authors of the nineteenth century:  Literary portraits was reviewed in today’s New York Times. (Brandes is Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, a Danish born Jews who was a leading literary critic)

1886: “When To Go Long Or Short” published today traces the career and financial dealings of Solomon Mopus a Polish born Jew living in New York City.

1886: In “Mr. Tooker on Religion” published today, Joseph Tooker a leading New York merchant, writer and theatre managers provided his views on the celebration of Christmas.  Among other things he believes that the Jewish merchants “are heart glad over every return of this jubilee season of their Christian fellow-citizens” since “they make so much money.”  He also marveled at the fact that some Jewish children hang up stockings on Christmas eve which he sees as an example of “where ignorance is bliss ‘tis folly to be wise.”

1887: In South Carolina, Albert E. Hertz married Laura E. Bonnoitt today.

1887: It was reported today the society providing financial support for Mt. Sinai Hospital had grown by 101 during the year and now totaled 3,564.

1888: Moriz Rosenthal, “the eminent pianist” will give a recital today at the Academy of the Music in New York.

1888: It was reported today that children under the care of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum will be among those New York youngsters who will attend upcoming performances of “Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

1889: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association had assets of $58,682.37 which it uses to support three schools that are open daily from 3:30 in the afternoon until 6 in the evening.

1889: Birthdate of actor Vladimir Sokoloff, the Moscow native who went from the Moscow Art Theatre, to Berlin in 1923, Paris in 1932 to avoid the Nazis and finally to the United States in 1937 where he appeared on Broadway, television and films that included oddly enough his portrayal of a Filipino in John Wayne’s “Back to Bataan.”

1889: In St. Louis, George Washington Milius, the Cincinnati born son of William and Eva Milius and his wife Pauline gave birth to William Stix Milius

1890: Sixty-year-old Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court William Dunlap Simpson, who as Governor of South Carolina had pardoned Francis Cardozo, the “son of Lydia Weston, a free woman of color, and Isaac Nunez Cardozo” and a cousin of Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo” who had been convicted on trumped up charges of fraud, passed away today.

 

1891(25th of Kislev, 5652): First day of Chanukah

1891: In New York, Sarah Rachel Bluestone and Joseph Isaac Bluestone gave birth to Columbia trained physician Ephraim Michael Bluestone, a Lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps during WW I, a director of the Hadassah Hospital in Palestine and director of Montefiore Hospital and the husband of “the former Rodetsky.

1892: “Our Superstitious Lore” published today described quaint customs of different national groups including the Jews “who have a custom of breaking crystal at a wedding to scatter brightness upon the happy pair” and who like others, “throw rice…to bring” the newlyweds “good fortune.”

1892: It was reported today that of the more than one million people buried in and around Brooklyn an untold number are buried in Washington Cemetery in Gravessend which is only used by the Jews.

1892: Birthdate of Dvinsk native Isidor Kadis who in 1905 came to the United States where he attended the University of Cincinnati and HUC and became a “field director of the JNF” who worked with Chaim Weizmann and raised two children with his wife Jean Price Kadis.

1893: Twenty-one year old Louis Topkis, the Odessa born son of Jacob and Rachel Topkis and leading Delaware businessman married the former Esther M. Krigstein today.

1894: Today, in France, “many journals urged that the degradation of Captain Dreyfus should be” done “as a public ceremony.”  They say “he should be stripped of his military honors…on the Longchamps race course or the Vincennes rifle range, where thousands could witness his disgrace rather than in the privacy of the barracks.” (The term degradation refers to the formal stripping of ranking and branding of the convict military officer as a traitor before he his shipped off to Devils Island.)

1894: “A reception and ball was given by the Progressive Bowling Club at the Hebrew Young Men’s Hall on Plane Street” tonight.”

1893: Four days after he had passed away, 88 year old Joseph Isaacs was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery” on Buckingham Road.

1894: Oscar S. Straus presided at the third annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society which began this morning at the Arlington Hotel in Washington, D.C.

1894: According to reports published today the newly elected officers of the Hebrew Free School Association are President Albert F. Hochstadter, Vice President Henry Budge and Honorary Secretary Edmund E. Wise

1894: “Loyal Hebrew Children” published today described the Americanization of Jewish immigrant children from Russia and Romania that takes place at classes financed by the Baron de Hirsch Fund at the Hebrew Institute which also include basic academics with an emphasis on English.

1894: In New Orleans, LA, Rabbi Maximilian Heller and Ida Annie Heller gave birth to Max Heller

1895: The objective of those attending the Hebrew Anarchist “was to devise ways and means for” promoting Anarchist principles” and their newspaper Die Freie Gesellschaft (The Free Society)

1895: Toledo native Edward Nathan Calisch and Hebrew Union College graduate who became rabbi of Congregation Beth Ahabah in Richmond, Virginia in 1891 officiated at a service attended by members of the Travelers Protective Association which he said the “first instance in which any organization, not composed of Jewish members, had attended service in a body that house of worship.”

1895: In Richmond, VA, “members of “Post A, Travelers Protective Association attended services” today at “Beth Ahabah Synagogue” during which Rabbi Edward Nathan Calisch said in his sermon “that this was the first instance in which any organization, not composed entirely of Jewish members had attended services in a body in that house of worship.

1896: In San Francisco, La Loie Fuller “declined to either confirm or deny that the report” that she was engaged to New York State Senator Jacob A. Cantor whom she described as “a dear friend.”

1897(1st of Tevet, 5658): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1897: Birthdate of Sarah “Salle” Blumberg Parnes, the widow of Harold Solomon Gerstner and Maxwell Parnes and the daughter of David Blumberg, passed away today after which she was buried in the Mount Ararat Cemetery

1897: The American Jewish Historical Association held its seventh annual meeting in Philadelphia.  The meeting was chaired by First Vice President Simon W. Rosendale who read a letter of resignation from the association’s President, Oscar S. Straus who can no longer fulfill his duties because he is serving as United States Minister at Constantinople

1897: Founding of the Hebrew Hospital and Asylum Musical Association which gave concerts at the Hebrew Hospital and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and whose members included Dr. Joseph Blum, Mrs. J.J. Seldner and Miss Hennie Van Leer.

1898: President Albert F. Hochstadter presided over the annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Association which was held today at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. With but one dissenting vote, the association voted to decide on a plan that would lead to a merger with the Educational Alliance. The Association had ended the year with a shortfall of $5,000 and it is believed that the merger might allow the two groups to meet their goals in a more economic manner. Uriah Hermann volunteered to pay for the new prayer books needed for the People’s Synagogue

1898: Birthdate of Ernst Fraenkel, German born political scientist, lawyer and university lecturer who fled Nazi Germany but returned to Germany after the war and resumed his career.

1899: In New York City Clara and David Mannes gave birth to Leopold Mannes, the “American musician” who played a leading role in creating “the first practical color transparency film, Kodachrome.”

1900: Birthdate of Samuel Cashwan, the Russian born American sculptor whose works include “Aquarius,” “Musicians” and the “Lincoln Memorial Statue at the Lincoln Consolidated Training School in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

1901: The Fifth Zionist Congress convenes in Basel. The Jewish National Fund is established. The Jewish Colonial Trust, the monetary arm or bank of the World Zionist Organization, finally raises sufficient sums to be established. By the end of the year, 250.000 English Pounds have been collected.

1902: Birthdate of Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan, the Russian painter whose work often reflect his Jewish origins.

1902: Final publication of the American Hebrew which would merge with The Jewish Messenger and resume publication in 1903 as The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger

1903: It was reported toady that Lord Rothschild had president over “a joint meeting of the Foreign Committee and Board of Deputies of the Anglo-Jewish Association” where reports predicting a renewal of anti-Jewish outrages at Kishineff” were reviewed  and “it was decided to approach the Foreign Secretary and urge him to take joint action with the government of the United States for the purpose of averting further persecution of the Jews in Russia.”
1903: “The Paris correspondent of The Times of London says it will probably be a few weeks before the Court of Cassation takes up the Dreyfus case.”

1904: It was reported today that the family of Adolph Herschkopf, who after having served eight years of a life sentence in Sing Sing, was pardoned by Governor Odell “is glad because the jury judge and prosecuting attorney” have changed their minds as to the guilt of the Jewish tailor.

Herschkopf was not the most miserable man in New York last night. He had been employed in the prison tailor shop, and had not felt the touch of snow on his face since entering the prison gate

1905(28th of Kislev, 5666): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1905: Winston Churchill was approached by a leading Jewish constituent, Dr. Joseph Dulberg of Manchester, who was seeking British support for a Jewish national home.

1905: “Jewish Refugees in London” published today described the arrival “in the last few weeks of hundreds of Russian Jews victims of the recent onslaughts in South Russia” in the British capital most of whom have “only a few shillings in their pockets” or are completely penniless and if they are “fortunate, find work with sweating tailors” that earns them five or six shillings a week “which enables them to share a night’s lodging…where eight or ten men sleep on sacks on the floor” and to buy “black bread, a bit of pickled herring and a cup of bad tea.

1906: Charles Frohman moved “The Beauty of Bath” a musical with songs by Jerome Kern to the Hicks Theatre where “it ran for a total of 287 performances.”

1907(21st of Tevet, 5668): Sixty-four-year-old David Avner, the father of eight children and the Lithuanian born son of Tamare Ivry and Yitschak Avner passed away today in Pittsburgh, PA.

1907: Months of organizing work by sixteen-year-old Pauline Newman culminated in the start of the largest rent strike New York City had ever seen. One reason for the strike's success was Newman's enlistment of neighborhood housewives. While working-class activists like Newman had to work during the day, the impassioned housewives that they organized could go from tenement to tenement to convince others to strike. Thus, the success of the strike depended on shop floor networks of teenaged girls and on networks of neighborhood housewives and mothers. The strike, involving 10,000 families in lower Manhattan, lasted only until January 9, but about 2,000 families succeeded in having their rents reduced. More importantly, the strike attracted the attention of leading figures in the settlement house movement who suggested capping rents at 30% of a family's income. Though their suggestion was not implemented, it introduced the idea of rent control into New York politics. The idea stayed alive into the 1930s, when rent control was finally implemented in New York City. Newman's leadership of the strike began a lifetime of activism. It brought her to the attention of the Socialist party, which ran her for secretary of state of New York the following year (despite the fact that women did not yet have the vote in New York). She used the opportunity to call for woman's suffrage. Newman also began organizing female garment workers and was a key organizer in the 1909 Uprising of the 20,000.

1908: In New York City, “Alex and Sarah (Reichick) Elson gave birth to Washington University trained lawyer Sam Elson, the holder of JSD from Yale who taught at his alma mater, was a member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and was the husband of Getrude Clemens Palmer with whom he had four children.

1908: Hyman Hirsch and Miriam Phillips Hirsch gave birth to Hyman Hirsch, Jr. who would only live to the age of 23.

1909: Birthdate of Jersey City, NJ, native Robert S. Marcus, the City College and Yeshiva University trained rabbi and hold of doctorate of Jurisprudence from NYU Law School who led congregations in Lawrence and Newburgh, NY before serving overseas as a chaplain with the Ninth Tactical Air Force where he worked with concentration camp survivors and returning to the United States where among other things, he served as the Director of the Department of World Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress while raising two children with his wife Fay.

1909(14th of Tevet, 5670): Schaie Gittelsohn passed away today.

1909: Three days after he had passed away, George Joel Marks, the son of Solomon Marks and Amelia Joel and the husband of Elizabeth Samuels with whom he had had ten children was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1909: Dr. Felix Kornfeld and the former Paula Mandle gave birth to their first child, Peter Kornfeld, the older brother of Ulrich Kornfeld and brother-in-law of the former Lorie Granitsch.

1909: In London, Hans Leopold Hoff, a “German Jewish merchant” and his German Lutheran wife gave birth to Australian scholar Ursula Hoff.

1910(25th of Kislev, 5671): Chanukah

1910:Rabbi Philip Klein of Ohab Zedek, First Hungarian Orthodox Congregation” officiated at the wedding of attorney Harris Koppelman and attorney “Esther Kunstler, the daughter of real estate dealer Felix Kunstler.”

1910: Ten months after Avrohom Bornsztain, founder and first Rebbe of the Sochatchover Hasidic dynasty” who was “known as the Avnei Nezer ("Stones of the Crown") after the title of his posthumously-published set of Torah responsa, which is widely acknowledged as a halakhic classic” passed away, today his wife Sara Tzina passed away leaving their “only son, Shmuel,” to mourn their passing.

1911: Today, the “Baltimore section of the National Council of Jewish” voted to withdraw “from the National body” using a resolution that “expressed dissatisfaction with the administration of the National officers.”

1912: In Portland, OR, Isaac and Ruth Neuberger gave birth to Senator Richard Neuberger who was succeeded by his wife Maurine who was elected to the office after his death in 1960.

https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/neuberger_richard_1912_1960_/#.XCGMMfZFx9B

1913(27th of Kislev, 5674): Third Day of Chanukah

1913: In Camden, NJ, the Hebrew Ladies’ Aid Society are making plans to host their tenth annual reception at Turner Hall in January, 1914.

1913: “Atlantis” a Danish film featuring future award winning director Michael Curitz in one of his early acting appearances was released today.

1914: In New York City, Leo Simonson, “a successful wigmaker for the theatre and movies businesses” and Irene Simonson, a member of the family that owned the Illinois Watch Case Company” gave birth to gold medal winning chess champion Albert Charles Simonson

1914: “Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy, took immediate steps today to obtain verification of reports that the USS North Carolina, which was on its way to deliver aid to the Jews of Jaffa had threatened to bombard Tripoli when “a mob attempted to prevent the departure of an American merchant vessel” carrying refugees.

1915: In St. Louis, Rabbi Max Heller of New Orleans was the principal speaker at today’s session of 24th annual assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society.

 1915: In an attempt to “weaken Russia internally, the authorities in Berlin handed Russian Jewish Bolshevik, Alexander Helphand, a million rubles to spread anti-war propaganda through Russia.

1915: Having fallen too ill to be treated at Alexandria, Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson arrived in London today leaving Joseph Trumpeldor, the Jewish veteran of the Russian army, in command of the Zion Mule Corps.

1915: A list those who have contributed to “the American Jewish Relief Committee which is raising $5,000,000 for the Jewish suffers of the war” and plan on contributing more is scheduled to be prepared today.

1915: In speaking at Temple Beth­-El in New York, Rabbi Schulman “advocated the plan of the League to Enforce Peace as the only suggestion yet put forward which promised peace-loving nations a method of escape from the necessity of arming themselves to avoid conquest by aggressive nations.”

1915: The second annual conference of Young Judeans which had been opened by Rabbi David De Sola Pool opened yesterday with a speech “on the subject of Judaism in America and the patriotism of the Jews” continued for a second day.

1915: Admit reports of possible general strike in New York at the beginning of 1916, “Dr. Felix Adler, Chairman of the Arbitration Committee appointed by the May at the suggestion of Jacob Schiff to which both the garment workers and manufacturers agreed to submit their differences said” tonight “that the committee had no notification that a strike of 85,000 workers was at hand.”

1915: It was reported today that after the Russian forces retreated from Brest-Litovsk ending the destructive battle around the city, the refugees who had been hiding in the swamps, most of whom were Jews sick with “malignant diseases” “began to straggle back into the city.”

1915: “Henry Fisher, Chairman of the Brooklyn Jewish Volunteer Relief Committee…announced” tonight “at the headquarters at 16 Manhattan Avenue that the street collections of the day amounted to $5,000.”

1915: “The Bath Beach division of the Brooklyn Jewish Volunteer Relief Committee for War Sufferers obtained contributions amount to $1,034 in a house to house canvass” today.

1915: Dr. J. L. Magnes said tonight that “the most recent report from Russia was that the 3,500,000 Jews” many of whom were being driven from place to place without food and shelter “were in need of assistance.

1916(1st of Tevet, 5677): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Seventh Day of Chanukah

1916: In New Orleans, the Jewish Chautauqua Society led by Chancellor Berkowitz of Philadelphia met for a fifth day today in New Orleans

1916: It was reported today that the movement to hold a congress to demand the removal of civil and political disabilities imposed on Jews has been one of the most widely debated movements in the history of the Jews” of the United States and developed divisions of opinion with Louis Marshal, Jacob H. Schiff and Oscar S. Straus and “others in the American Jewish Committee opposed to idea of such a congress” and another group led by Justice Louis Brandeis, Judge Hugo Pam and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise” favoring the convening of such a congress in the United States.

1916: In a protest against the high cost of kosher beef, nearly 3,000 shops refused to receive or sell kosher meat today. “Many kosher butchers closed theirs shops and put up signs in their windows reading ‘Because of the high prices on kosher-killed products, this shop will be closed until further notice.’”

1916: Inspectors working for Joseph Hartigan, New York City’s Commissioner of Weights and Measures, reported to him tonight that the people had virtually all stopped buying kosher meat.

1917: Orthodox rabbis in Jerusalem establish the Ashkenazi Community Council to oppose the Zionist dominated City Council of Jerusalem Jews.

1917: The Menorah Quintennial Convention, a gathering of the leaders of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, which Israel Zangwill said he could not attend, was scheduled to open today in New York.

1917: Fresh Turkish troops attack the British hoping to take back Jerusalem.  After eight hours of fierce nighttime combat, the British beat them back.

1917(11th of Tevet, 5678): Ninety-two year old Henry Sonneborn a “manufacturer” passed away in Baltimore, MD.

1917: Twenty-two year old Cleveland born featherweight Danny Frush fought and won his fifth bout leaving him with a record of four wins and one loss.

1918: Following the British elections, Churchill wrote Prime Minister Lloyd George cautioning him against appointing three Jews to a cabinet that had only seven openings. This was not based on any anti-Semitic feelings on Churchill’s part.  He was merely expressing concerns for the reality of British politics at a time when Lloyd George needed to build a broadly supported government that could “win the peace” now that the World War had been won.  In the end, Lloyd George appointed only one Jew to the first post-war cabinet.

1919:Sir John Monash, Australia’s ranking General on the Western Front in World War I, who served with great distinction, returned home to a hero’s welcome. Monash was the son of a German-Jewish couple who had arrived in Australia two years before Monash’s birth.

1919: Birthdate of Sam Aaronovitch, the native Londoner who became a leading economist and a “senior member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

1919: Harry Frazee, owner of the Boston Red Sox, sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Boston fans never forgave Frazee for the sale of the Bambino which was the start of the Yankee dynasty.  On top of everything else Frazee was one of those gentiles who had the dubious distinction of being smeared for being Jewish. “The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper published by one of this nation’s most infamous anti-Semites, automobile pioneer Henry Ford, published an article titled “The Jewish Degradation of Baseball”, which insisted that Frazee was a Jew, that he was out to “get” Ban Johnson and that he was part of a grand Jewish conspiracy designed to place Organized Baseball under Jewish control. Frazee was in fact Presbyterian and a Mason and, though he was not Jewish, being a Freemason branded him guilty by association. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery originating in Russia that detailed a Jewish plot to dominate the world, claimed that Jews and Freemasons were acting in concert. Judaism and Freemasonry were so intertwined in Europe, even as far back as the 1860s, that the Nazis eventually adopted the slogan “All Masons Jews—All Jews Masons,” and Hitler abolished Freemasonry in Germany in 1935. But, as evidenced by Ford and his newspaper, bigotry wasn’t just endemic of Europe, and Organized Baseball certainly was no stranger to it.”

1920: The 29th annual assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society is scheduled to being today in Cleveland, Ohio.

1920: The Intercollegiate Zionist Association is scheduled to hold its annual convention today at Columbia University.

1921(25th of Kislev, 5682): First Chanukah celebrated during the Presidency of Warren Harding.

1921(25th of Kislev, 5682): Eighty-three-year-old James Martin Eder, the Russian born son of “Martin Sass Eder and Dorina Kaiser” the Harvard Law School student and wife of London born Elizabeth “Lizzie” Benjamin who was known as Santiago Martín Eder Kaiser, the founder of the Columbian sugar industry,

1921: “School Days,” a comedy produced by Harry Rapf was relased today in the United States.

1923: One day after he had passed away, 52 year old Samuel Lewis was buried today at the Crumpsall Jewish Cemetery.”

1923: In Washington, DC, “Prussian born Protestant botanist” Ernst Artschwager and the former Eugenia Brodsky, a Ukrainian born Jewish designer game birth to painter and sculptor Richard Ernst Artschwager.

1924:  Birthdate of Israeli spy Eli Cohen.  Since we cannot do justice to this heroic figure you might want to go to http://www.elicohen.org/ for more information about his contribution to the survival of the Jewish state.

1925: “Lady Windermere’s Fan” a silent film version of the stage play by the same name directed, produced and edited by Ernst Lubitsch was released today.

1926:A benefit concert of Hebrew music was given under the auspices of the League of Zionists-Revisionists at Carnegie Hall this evening” featuring performances by Eugenia Eranow, soprano; Leon Cortilli, tenor; Yascha Fishberg, violinist; Gdal Saleski, cellist; Ignace Hilsberg, Isidor Gorn, Max Barnett and William Sauber, pianists, and Naum Zemach of the Moscow Theatre Habima.

1927:  Birthdate of Alan King. King was equally adept as a comedic actor and as monologist.  One of his most famous lines was, “It is not how long you live, but how well you live” that counts. After uttering that bon mot, he would take a deep, long pull on his signature cigar and give you that knowing smile. His philanthropic commitments included founding the Alan King Diagnostic Medical Center in Jerusalem, establishing a scholarship fund for American students at Hebrew University, and establishing a Dramatic Arts Chair at Brandeis University. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He passed away in 2004.

1928: During “the first public meeting of the American Academy for Jewish Research at the Jewish Theological Seminary,” D.S. Blondheim, the secretary of the academy read a paper prepared by Professor Max L. Margolis of Dropsie College that provided a plan for the preparation of “an authoritative edition of the Hebrew text of the Scriptures” that would involve “forty scholars in Europe, Asia and America working for ten years.”

1929(24th of Kislev, 5690): In the evening, kindle the first light of Chanukah during the first year of The Great Depression

1930: The Jewish Daily Bulletin reported today that four Jews will sit as judges of the Cleveland Municipal Court during the coming year, as a result of the appointment this week by Governor Myers V. Cooper of Maurice J. Meyer and Alfred L. Steur to fill vacancies on the Municipal Court bench where they will join the other two Jewish judges -- Jacob Stacel and Mary D. Grossman.

1931: U.S. premiere of “Arrowsmith” the film version of the novel by the same name produced by Samuel Goldwyn with music by Alred Newman.

1931:George and Ira Gershwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical play "Of Thee I Sing" premieres on Broadway

1931: “Mata Haria” a movie about the WW I spy produced by Irving Thalberg with a script by Leo Birinsky and Benjamin Glazer was released in the United States today.1933: U.S. premiere of “Queen Christina” a film treatment of the life of Queen Christina of Sweden produced by Walter Wanger with a script by S.N. Behrman and Ben Hecht.

1932(27th of Kislev, 5693): Third Day of Chanukah

1932: The NBC Blue Network broadcast episode five of “Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel” starring Chico and Groucho Marx.

1934: “Pipe Paid” with a script by Viola Brothers Shore opened today on Broadway at the Ritz Theatre.

1934: In London, “Barnett Samuel, a solicitor a and Minna Nerenstein, a composer and partner in Jewish publishers Shapiro, Valentine” gave birth to 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 and who was the husband of historian Alison Light.

https://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/obituary-raphael-samuel-5588939.html

1934: Anna Birshtein married Louis Geffen. Anna’s uncle was a rabbi and Louis was the son of Tobias Geffen had been who had been an orthodox rabbi in Atlanta, GA, since 1910.  Geffen and his brother Samuel formed the Atlanta law firm of Geffen and Geffen, a firm founded out of the need for the brothers to be able to practice law while remaining observant Jews.

1935: “The mobilization of world Jewry to resist the establishment of a Legislative Council in Palestine to combat the menace of the ‘disgraceful Nuremberg laws’ of the Hitler regime was ordered today by the executive of the World Zionist Organization” headed by Dr. Chaim Weizmann.

1936(12th of Tevet, 5697): Parashat Vayechi

1936: A delegation of American Jewish labor leaders including Joseph Schlossberg, Max Zaritzky, Isador Nagler, Reuben Guskin, Samuel Perlmutter and Joseph Brislaw is scheduled to set sail for Europe today where members are going “to confer with experts in France, England, and Poland on the Jewish labor movement in Palestine.”

1936: Founding of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The Polish born violinist Bronislaw Huberman is credited with founding the orchestra.  It was originally called the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra but changed its name after the founding of the state of Israel. 

1936: In Tel Aviv, Arturo Toscanini, who had fled Mussolini’s Italy, conducted the first performance of the Palestine Philharmonic. At the end of the concert Bronislaw Huberman, declared that “Nothing could describe this concert except the word divine."

1936: Founding of the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra, now known as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the leadership of Bronislaw Huberman.  “The orchestra, first conducted by Arturo Toscanini, debuted after a struggle that also involved Albert Einstein, Chaim Weizmann and a characteristically defiant David Ben-Gurion.Huberman’s epic quest is the subject of the new documentary “Orchestra of Exiles,” a real-life tale of Jewish musicians in need of a home, and a nascent country in need of an orchestra.

1936: It was announced today that ten thousand dollars had been pledged to ORT by the American Committee Appeal for the Jews in Poland at a dinner hosted by Samuel Lamport who had pledged five hundred dollars in his own right.

1936:  Birthdate of Kitty Dukakis the Jewish wife of U.S. Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.

1937: The Palestine Postreported that over 1,000 British troops, police and troopers of the Transjordan police force, spent Christmas under pouring rain in a raging battle in the Wadi Hamud area, north-west of Tiberias, where nearly forty Arab terrorists were killed. The troops and police suffered five wounded.

1937: The Palestine Postreported that Taleb Nanini, a local notable, was killed by an Arab terrorist in his village of Akraba. Yehuda Mintz and his two sons, Isaac, 35, and Eliahu, 27, watchmen of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives were wounded on their way to work. In Haifa, Private Mott, a British soldier of the Essex Regiment, picked up a bomb with a burning fuse and threw it off the pavement, saving by his bold action lives of numerous passersby.

1938: Harold Goldblatt presided over the second session Avukah’s three day conference being held at the Hotel Claridge.

1938: In Montreal, Sarah and Jack Lev gave birth to Judy Feld Carr, the “Canadian woman” who “would rescue more than three thousand five hundred Syrian Jews between 1975 and 2000.” (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/carr-judy-feld

1939(14th of Tevet, 5700): Fifty-four year old Romanian born University of Michigan Professor of Economics, Max Handman, who had earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Oregon and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1917 after which served as a professor of sociology and economics at several universities including Texas and Minnesota passed away today from the effects of heart attack he suffered “while listening to a radio broadcast of the declaration of war by Great Britain against Germany.”

1940(26th of Kislev, 5701): On the second day of Chanukah, 89-year-old Daniel Frohman, the “Jewish American theatrical producer and manager and early film producer’ passed away today.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19401227&id=ijtPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=W00DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6934,7784907

1940: U.S. premiere of “The Philadelphia Story” a romantic comedy directed by George Cukor, produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg with music by Franz Waxman.

1940(26th of Kislev, 5701): One day after her 71stbirthday, Chicago native Benvenida Solis Firth, the daughter of Moses and Esther Ritterband and the wife of Emil Firth passed away today in Beverly Hills.

1940: The British government suspended the quota for legal immigration for three months, thus halting all immigration until March, 1941.

1940: The Broadway production lf “My Sister Eileen” written by Joseph A. Field and Jerome Chodorov and directed by George S. Kaufman opened at the Biltmore Theatre today.

1940: Birthdate of record producer Phil Spector.

1941: The USS Blue, which had not been sunk or damaged during the attack on Pearl Harbor thanks to the efforts of Ensign Nathan Asher, a graduate of the Naval Academy who took command U.S.S. Blue since the skipper was ashore” unloaded supplies at Midway which would be the scene of the pivotal battle in June of 1942.

1942: The U.S. Army Medical Corps completed establishing 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.”

1942: “Marine in the Making” an Oscar nominated documentary filmed by cinematographer Richard Freyer (born Morris Kolsky) was released today.

1943: “The American Jewish Conference, 521 Fifth Avenue, today urged intensified efforts to rescue the Jews of Europe and criticized Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long's report to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on rescue measures taken since the discussions in Bermuda.”

1944: During WW II, the Red Army and the Romanian completed their encirclement of Budapest, a city which had lost most of its Jewish population to Auschwitz.

1945: The Jewish Agency charges that Palestinian government has stopped issuing immigration certificates despite British foreign minister Ernest Bevin's declaration that monthly quota would be permitted.

1946: Diamond factories in Natanya and Tel Aviv are raided, reportedly by Jews who would have been using the proceeds of the raid to finance the fight against the British.

1946: Peter H. Bergson, Hebrew Committee of National Liberation, formed exile government for Hebrew Republic of Palestine in France. In the wake of British intransigence, he promises a revolt.

1946: Zero Mostel opened in tonight’s Broadway premier of “Beggar’s Holiday” a musical which Dale Wasserman would update and present with the Marin Theatre company in 2004.

1946: Bronislaw Huberman the Polish born violinist who was President and founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra returned as a soloist performing in Tel Aviv on the tenth anniversary of Arturo Toscanini’s first appearance as conductor of the orchestra.

1947: The second radio broadcast series of “The Thin Man” which was produced by Himan Brown came to an end today.

1947: The SS Abril left New York today bound for France sailing under a Honduran flag and operated by the American Sea and Air Volunteers for Hebrew Repatriation, an offshoot of the American League for Free Palestine and the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation

1947: “Good News” a musical with a screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green was released in the United States today.

1947: Birthdate of Israeli soccer player Manacham Bello.

1947(13th of Tevet, 5708): Hans Beyth, a central figure in welcoming newly arrived immigrant children to Eretz Israel, was one of seven Jews killed by Arab snipers as they traveled in convey coming from the coast up to Jerusalem. Beyth had just completed arrangements for the care of 20,000 young survivors of the Holocaust and other youngsters from Europe.

1947: Golda Meyerson, acting head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department escaped injury today when the convoy in which she was traveling came under attack by Arabs.

1947: One Jew was killed and two were wounded today when Arabs attacked a Jewish patrol at Imara in the Negev.

1947: A four-year-old Jewish girl, whose name has not been made public was killed today a bullet in Tel Aviv.  The assailant has not been identified.

1947: Lazar Kaganovich completed his second term as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

1947: In Jerusalem, an Arab Legion truck that had illegally entered the city, was fired on by Jews manning a Haganah outpost.  No casualties were reported by either side.

1948: Despite defending itself against a war of annihilation, immigrants keep coming as can be seen by the fact that today; Israel greeted the arrival of its 100,000th immigrant since its declaration of statehood in May.

1948: The International Ladies' Garment Workers, Union (of American Federation of Labor) donates $250,000 and lends another $500,000 to Israel.

1948: A six plane formation of Spitfires arrived in Israel from Czechoslovakia.

1948(24th of Kislev, 5709): In the evening, the Chanukah light is kindled for the first time in almost 2,000 years in an independent Jewish state.1948: The Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, which had been meeting in Tel Aviv moves to Jerusalem.

1948: As Israel clandestinely moved aircraft from Czechoslovakia to the fighting front, Jack “Cohen led” fellow pilots Sinclair, Ruch, Jacobs, Schroeder, and Finkel across the sea. Cohen flew Spitfire 2014, the plane that he, as test pilot and flight leader, considered the worst. Just after take-off, Cohen had to turn 2014 around and land again. A flap on the cowling had come open and he returned to have it secured after which he rejoined the others.

1948: King Abdullah of Jordan attendeda Palestinian conference in Ramallah that “declared its support for the Jericho Conference resolution, calling for unification of the two banks of the Jordan under the Hashemite crown.”  (And that is what happened.  The West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem were annexed by Transjordan which changes its name to Jordan.  No state of Palestine was created or contemplated by a large swath of the Arab leadership.)

1949(5th of Tevet, 5710): Sixty-five-year-old Philadelphia, PA native Leon Schlesinger, the motion picture producer “behind Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1930’s and 1940’s” who “oversaw the creation of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd” and who was the husband of Bernice Schlesinger passed away today.

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/leon-schlesingers-obituary-6088.html

http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-life-and-death-of-looney-tunes-producers-schlesinger-and-selzer/

1950: It was reported today that “German rearmament has been sharply attacked in the Knesset, most of who 127 members have mourned kinsmen murdered by the Nazis.”

1951: “Double Dynamite,” a comedy “based on a story by Leo Rosten,” with a screenplay co-authored by Mel Shavelson and starring Groucho Marx was released today in the United States.

1951: Birthdate of Roslyn, NY and Barnard College Columbia University School of Journalism trained “sportswriter” and author who has written books about Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth and the worlds that produced them.

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Mapam Council voted, by 232 to 49, to support a very carefully worded "protest" against the Czech anti-Zionist trials and activities while identifying itself completely with "the world's revolution." The Sneh-Riftin bloc justified the trials and advocated a complete acceptance of the accusations. 

1953(20th of Tevet, 5714): Eighty-two year old Lee Shubert, the Lituanian born eldest of seven brothers who build the Shubert theatrical empire passed away today.

http://www.shubertfoundation.org/about/brothers.asp

1953: Monnett B. Davis passed away while serving as the second U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

1953(20th of Tevet, 5714): Dr. Alexander Marx, the director libraries and Jacob H. Schiff Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary passed away today at the age of 75.  A native of Germany, Marx served in the Prussian Army and earned his Ph.D. in 1903 following which he came to the United States where he took up his position with JTS. When he arrived, the library contained 5,000 volumes. At the time of his death, the collection had grown to 144,000 books and 8,000 manuscripts making it one of the finest collections of Judaica in the world.

1954: ABC broadcast the final episode of “What’s Going On” a gameshow created and produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman.

1955: “Storm over the Nile” based on “The Four Feathers” directed and produced by Zoltan Korda, with music by Benjamin Frankel and co-starring Laurence Harvey was released today in the United Kingdom.

1956: Birthdate of Yehudit Ravitz, the native of Beersheba and member of “Sheshet” who is a successful singer-songwriter, composer and music producer.

1956: Los Angeles premiere of “This is Baby Doll” a dark comedy starring Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach and filmed by cinematographer Boris Kaufamn.

1959(25th of Kislev, 5720): Chanukah and Parshat Vayeshev

1960: “Do Re Mi” a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, with a cast that included Phil Silvers and Al Lewis “opened on Broadway at the St. James Theatre” today.

1961: From February 17, 1952 through today, Dolph Schayes played in 706 games setting an NBA record for not missing a single game.

1962: “David and Lisa” the movie based on Jordi, Lisa and David by Theodore Isaac Rubin starring Janet Margolin and Howard Da Silva was released in the United States.

1963(10th of Tevet, 5724): Asara B’Tevet

1963: “Act One,” the film version of the Moss Hart autobiography directed and produced by Dore Schary who also wrote the script and featuring Sam Levene,George Segal, Jack Klugman and Eli Wallach was released today in the United States.

1963(10th of Tevet, 5724): A year after the death of his son John, 83 year old, Jacob J. Shubert, the Lithuanian born son of David Schubart and Katrina Helwitz and  the last of the three Shubert Brothers who created a mini theatrical empire passed away today.

1964: The Buffalo Bills defeated Sid Gillman’s San Diego Chargers in the American Football League Championship Game.

1965(3rd of Tevet, 5726): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1965: Today “at the 38th annual meeting of the American Academy for Jewish Research, Norman Gold, an assistant professor of Medieval Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago, announced the discovery of a document that “bears the date of 1020” which “he called the oldest extant legal document of the Jews in Sicily” and which he said “showed that a community of Jews flourished in Syracuse under the Arabs before the Norman conquest of the island in 1080.”

1965: "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand closes on Broadway.  The Broadway hit had a Jewish diva portraying Fanny Brice, the Jewish comedic star of the Follies and radio-fame.

1967(24th of Kislev, 5728): In the evening kindle the first Chanukah candle

1968(5th of Tevet, 5729):Arthur Fellig, known by his pseudonym Weegee passed away.

http://backflashes.tumblr.com/post/15053833751/weegee-was-the-pseudonym-of-arthur-fellig-june

1968(5th of Tevet, 5729):Fifty-year old Leon Shirdan, a marine biologist from Haifa was murdered today when two Palestinian terrorists attacked  El Al Flight 253 when it stopped in Athens on its way to New York.

1969: Operation Rooster 53 was launched at 9 p.m. as A-4 Skyhawks and F-4 Phantoms began attacking Egyptian forces along the western bank of the Suez Canal and Red Sea which provided cover for three Aérospatiale Super Frelons, carrying Israeli paratroopers, made their way west towards the communication network which was their ultimate target.

1970(28th of Kislev, 5731): Parashat Miketz, Fourth Day of Chanukah

1970(28th of Kislev, 5731): Seventy-nine year old University of Maryland trained physician George Piness, the Odessa born son of Louis and Sara Piness and husband of the former Hortense Weil passed away today.

1971: In New York the 22nd national convention of the Farband, which “finallybrought about the merger of Farband, Poalei Zion, and the American Habonim Association” came to an end.

1972: Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States passed away in Kansas City, Mo.  Truman’s activist, anti-Communist policy and his progressive domestic program earned Truman the support of Jewish voters.  But his greatest moment, from a strictly Jewish perspective, came when he decided that the U.S. would support the creation of the state of Israel and single-handedly ensured that the U.S. was the first nation to recognize the new Jewish state

1973(1st of Tevet, 5734): Rosh Chodesh Tevet and 7thDay of Chanukah

1974(12th of Tevet, 5735): Comedian Jack Benny passed away at age 80

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jack-benny

1976(5th of Tevet, 5737): Fifty-seven year old Western Electric general manager David Kass, the husband of “the former Hortense Tackler” passed away today.

1977: The Jerusalem Postreported from Ismailia that Prime Minister Menachem Begin, after a meeting with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, saw "peace in a few months." Begin had also expressed his anger and disappointment with Knesset members who leaked details of his peace plan before he could hand it over to Sadat. The Egyptian president described the meeting as "one of the happiest days of his life" and added that he was now ready for full ties and normalization with Israel.

1977(16th of Tevet, 5738): Seventy-five year old University of Chicago trained attorney Benjamin Barnard Davis, the Lithuanian born son of Max and Dora Flaxman and husband of Janice Muller with whom he had one son – Muller Davis – who was a partner in several law firms including Davis, Jones and Baer passed away today.

1978: Birthdate of Alan Senitt, a British political activist and volunteer in the campaign of Virginia’s Mark Warner.  Senitt was stabbed to death in Washington, D.C. defending his female campaign co-worker from street thugs.

1981: “The Prince and the Aviator” directed by Jerry Adler and featuring Ellen Greene opened at the Alvin Theatre.

1982: The New York Timespublished a review of Leon Blum by Jean Lacouture.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/26/books/herbert-r-lottman-herbert-r-lottman-longtime-paris-resident-author-left-bank.html

1984: “Mrs. Soffel” a prison moved produced by Scott Rudin and featuring Maury Chaykin was released today in the United States.

1985: It was reported today that “Moscow may restore diplomatic ties with Israel and dramatically increase the number of Jews permitted to immigrate to Israel, according to reports of a conversation between a representative of an American Jewish group and a Soviet diplomat. The Jewish representative met a few days ago with an unidentified Soviet official who predicted the restoration of full Soviet-Israeli diplomatic relations and an increase in emigration to Israel.

1985: One person was injured in terrorist bombing that took placed out of a restaurant in Tel Aviv.

1987(5th of Tevet, 5748): Parashat Vayigash

1987: Sixty-five year old U of Pennsylvania Phi Beta Kappa graduate Hershel Johan Matt, the Minneapolis, MN, born son of Rabbi Calman David Matt and Lena Matt, who after earning a MHL from JTS and receiving Semicha at JTS went to lead several congregations while raising four children – Jonathan, Daniel, David and Deborah—with his wife Gustine passed away today.

1988: Benjamin Netanyahu began serving as Deputy Foreign Minister

1989(28th of Kislev, 5750): Fourth Day of Chanukah celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of George Bush.

1990:  Tele 5, a Spanish television station, is scheduled to broadcast an interview with President Hussein that had been taped on December 22nd in Baghdad during which the Iraqi leaders says Tel Aviv will be Iraq's first target if war breaks out in the Persian Gulf.

1991: Robert S. Strauss began serving as the United States Ambassador to Russia during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush

1992: New York Jet announcer Marty Glickman retires at 75

1992:The standoff between Lebanon and Israel over the fate of 415 Palestinian deportees trapped in a snow-covered valley in southern Lebanon, continued today as both sides again rejected appeals to allow relief agencies to deliver food or medicine. Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, whose Government has blocked relief assistance from reaching the group, asked Washington to intervene with Israel to allow aid to reach the Palestinians. But at the same time, his Government turned down a request by the deportees to give the ill and injured treatment in Lebanese hospitals. An envoy of Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said he supported the Lebanese Government's decision to refuse entrance to the men.(As reported by Chris Hedges)

1993: Comedian Rodney Dangerfield weds Joan Child.

1994: The French now suffer the fate of the Israelis at Entebbe when an Air France Flight is hijacked by four members of the Armed Islamic Group.

1996: Eighty year old actress Eleanor Lynn, a star in Clifford Odets’ “Rocket to the Moon” who was the wife of movie executive Morris Helprin and the mother of novelist and journalist Mark Helprin passed away today.

1997(27th of Kislev, 5758): Third Day of Chanukah

1999: The New York Timesbook section includes a review ofMy First 79 Years by Isaac Stern with Chaim Potok.

2000(29th of Kislev, 5761): Eighty-seven years old Felicia Shpritzer who was the first woman to earn “sergeant’s stirpes” in the NYPD passed away today.

2001: In Moscow, a monument honoring Shalom Aleichem was unveiled at a public ceremony attended by Nathan Meron, the Israeli Ambassador.  The Moscow newspapers reporting the event described Solomon Rabinovich as “the great Russian Jew” and “a sagacious writer.”

2001: Benyamin Ben-Eliezer won the Labor primaries that were held today.

2002: “The Hours” a film version of a novel by the same name produced by Scott Rudin was released today in the United States.

2002: In “The Cultural Spoils of War,” Ronald Lauder the chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery and co-chairman of the Research Project on Art and Archive describes attempts to reclaim and return cultural treasures stolen during the Holocaust.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/opinion/the-cultural-spoils-of-war.html

2003(1st of Tevet, 5764): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2003: “The Company” a ballet movie with a screenplay by Barbara Turner was released in the United States today.

2004: Sir Martin Gilbert “argues that Bush and Blair may one day be seen as akin to Roosevelt and Churchill. (Editor’s note – even the great ones get it wrong once in a while)

2004(14th of Tevet, 5765): Ninety-five year old Simon “Si” Gerson a leading member of the Communist Party USA whose political activism spanned 7 decades passed away today.

2005: “Builders Reveal Hidden Synagogue and Dark Era of Portugal's Past” published today describes the fate of Medieval Jewish Community of Porto.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/international/europe/26portugal.html

2006: Two boys, both 14, were injured about 9 p.m. when a Qassam rocket landed in the street near where they were walking. Both were treated by Magen David Adom paramedics and taken to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. A total of eight Qassams were fired at Israel during the day, the most in a single day since the cease-fire was declared about a month ago. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for firing the missiles from the Gaza Strip at the western Negev town. One of the Qassams fired at Israel Tuesday landed in the industrial area in south Ashkelon, close to a strategic infrastructure installation.

2006: About Alice by Calvin Trillin, “a slightly expanded version of the essay Alice, Off the Page” was published today.

https://www.amazon.com/About-Alice-Calvin-Trillin/dp/1400066158

2007 (17 Tevet): Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Aaron Zelig Ben Joel Feivush, author of Toldot Aaron and Rabbi Yaakov Wolf Krantz, Maggid of Dubna

2008:HaTzofe (The Observer) printed its last edition today.

2008: Closing session of the Hazon Jewish food conference in Pacific Grove, California.

2008: The New York Times publishes a review of Searching for Schindler by Thomas Keneally

2008: “Waltz With Bashir” opens in selected movie theatres across the United States.

2008:The final decision to launch Operation Cast Lead was made on this morning, when Barak met with Chief of Staff General Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the Shin Bet Security Service Yuval Diskin and the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Amos Yadlin

2008:In Author Defends Disputed Memoir,” Dave Itzkoff describes the controversy surrounding the soon to be published Angel at the Fence by Herman Rosenblat.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7D6103AF934A15751C1A96E9C8B63

2009: The Gilad Barkan Band, led by Israeli native Gilad Barkan, appears at the Café Vivaldi in New York City. Barkan's band includes Israeli flutist Amir Milstein, co-leader of Bustan Abraham, who bestows the music with a mesmerizing and soulful new dimension.

2009: Itamar Jobani makes his final appearance at the “Open Studios: Artist at Work program hosted by New York’s Museum of Art and Design.

2009:The Israeli military killed six Palestinians today, three in the West Bank whom it accused of killing a Jewish settler and three in Gaza who it said were crawling along the border wall planning an attack. It was the deadliest day in the conflict in nearly a year.

2010: The Gateways Winter retreat at Whippany, NJ came to an end.

2010: Klezcamp is scheduled to open today in the Catskills. Henry Sapoznik, a Ukrainian cantor’s son who founded KlezKamp in 1984, calls it a “Yiddish Brigadoon.”

2010: The Los Angeles Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Letters: Saul Bellow edited by Benjamin Taylor and When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry by Gal Beckerman

2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Hero:The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda

2010:IDF troops, with the help of a helicopter gunship, fired on insurgents who detonated an explosive device against a passing Israeli patrol near the border in the southern Gaza Strip today.

2010:Opening day of the Limmud Conference, the British Jewish community’s answer to the Edinburgh Festival, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this week at the University of Warwick in Coventry.

2010:Today, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal filed by Israeli settlers requesting it postpone again a long-awaited order to evict an apartment building they constructed illegally in a predominantly Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

2011: For the first time ever, Jews in the I-380 corridor will have a chance to light a menorah made from bowling pins at the Chabad-Lubavitch Chanukah Bowl  under the direction of Rabbi Avremel & Chaya Blesofsky

2011: The final performance of The Kinsey Sicks in Oy Vey in a Manger is scheduled to take place tonight in Washington, D.C.

2011: Singer, composer, guitarist, and living exponent of Sephardic music Gerard Edery is scheduled to perform at the 6thStreet Synagogue Center for Jewish Arts and Literacy as part of Sephardic Music Festival in NYC

2011(30th of Kislev, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2011:A police officer was wounded as clashes erupted between ultra-Orthodox Jews in two separate neighborhoods in Beit Shemesh.

2011: The Foreign Ministry warned that Israel's possible recognition of the Armenian genocide, which was discussed in a Knesset committee today, could lead to the serious deterioration of Israel's ties with Turkey.

2011: Thirty-nine-year-old Maya Amsellem is scheduled to marry 42 year old Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi. (As reported by Jada Yuan)

2012: Inebriated gondoliers vying for the throne of Barataria are scheduled to take over the Hirsch Theater at Jerusalem’s Beit Shmuel starting today, with the next Gilbert and Sullivan production from the Encore Educational Theater Company.(As reported by Jessica Steinberg

2012:Zaytoun” a film about a downed Israeli pilot who escapes from Lebanon with a disaffected Palestinian will be released today exclusively at Curzon Renoir.

2012: “High Noon” the classic American western film starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival. 

2012(13th of Tevet, 5773): Ninety year old Canadian poet Elizabeth Brewster passed away today.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/obituary-elizabeth-brewsters-journey-of-self-awareness-led-to-prolific-poetry-career/article8226920/

2012: “Senior officials confirmed today that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a secret meeting in Jordan with King Abdullah II, yesterday focusing on the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad would use chemical weapons against rebels in the ongoing sectarian conflict raging in that country.

2012:A 2,750-year-old temple and a cache of sacred vessels from biblical times were discovered in an archaeological excavation near Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced today.

2012:Hawaii Lieutenant Governor Brian Schatz was named today to fill the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of fellow Democrat Daniel Inouye.

2013:A Kassam rocket was fired from Gaza this evening, the second in as many days. The rocket fell in open ground right near a community in the south, causing no injuries or damage.

In response, the IAF struck several targets in Gaza. According to an IDF statement, the sites including a weapons production site in central Gaza, along with a weapons storehouse in northern Gaza.

2013: “Captain Phillips” starring Tom Hanks is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: “A total of 38 Indian citizens from the Bnei Menashe community made aliya today, the first cohort to arrive since the Knesset approved another wave of immigration for the group.” (As reported by Henry Rome and Sol Sokol)

2014: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host the next in its Future Generation Series of concerts.

2014: “Bullets holes were discovered at the entrance to a Paris publishing this morning” marking the third time this week that Jewish buildings have been fired upon the other two being at the Al Haeche Kosher Restaurant and the David Ben Ichay Synagogue. (As reported by Lazar Berman)

2014: As “worshippers were leaving the Temple Mount complex after morning prayers, two Border Police officers were stabled near the Lions Gates” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

2014: “The Zig Zag Story” and “The Farewell Party” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” the $140 million Hollywood film about the biblical escape of the Jews from Egypt, will not be shown there because it asserts historical falsehoods and spreads a “Zionist view,” the Egyptian culture minister was quoted as saying today meaning that it will join Morocco as the second Arab country to ban the film. (As reported by Rick Gladstone)

2015(14thof Tevet, 5776): Shabbat Vayechi

2015: “Nightlife -- A festival of light and art, intent on illuminating the multicultural abundance and complexity of Tel Aviv's Neve Sha'anan neighborhood is scheduled to take place this evening

2016(26thof Kislev, 5777): Second Day of Chanukah; in the evening, kindle the third light

2016(26thof Kislev, 5777): Ninety-four year old Tony winning veteran Broadway actor George S. Irving passed away today. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

idx=3&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article&_r=0

2016(26thof Kislev, 5777): Fifty one year old Chicago filmmaker David J. Steiner died in a bus crash while traveling in Uganda.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/chicagotribune/obituary.aspx?pid=183243867

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/chicago-filmmaker-david-steiner-killed-in-uganda-bus-crash/

2016: In Little Rock, Lubavitch of Arkansas under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host a Family Chanukah Party complete with Latkes and a Smooth bar at the Chabad House.

2016: At the Town and Village Synagogue a variety of acoustic acts led by “Book of J – an amazing new Bay Area collaboration between singer/guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood (Sway Machinery) and singer Jewlia Eisenberg (Charming Hostess) making their New York debut” are scheduled to appear as part of YNY (Yiddish New York) Unplugged.

2017: Pete and Paul, A Fargenign: Yiddish Swing Dance Party! Is scheduled to take place tonight as part of Yiddish New York.

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to kickoff “Winter Break at the Museum” by offering freed admission to “kids and students.”

2018: “A special workshop on improvisation for instrumentalists by renowned pianist/composer Anthony Coleman, longtime faculty member of New England Conservatory” is scheduled to take place today at “Yiddish New York.” 

2018: Penultimate session of the USY International Convention is scheduled to take place today in Orlando, FL.

2018: In Albany, NY, “Rabbi Deb Gordon of Congregation Berith Sholom in Troy” is scheduled to facilitate this year’s final Pirkei Avot Class sponsored by the Women’s Table.

2019(28thof Kislev, 5780): Fourth Day of Chanukah

2019: In Brisbane, CA, Cantor Barry Reich is scheduled to lead the menorah lighting at “Latkes, Lumpias and Horns.”

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the last screening of “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles.”

2019: Chabad of Downtown Boston is scheduled to host the “Chanukah Celebration at the Seaport.”

2019: In San Francisco, Sherith Israel is scheduled to host “Latkes and Vodkas” for adults only.

2020: YNY is scheduled to open this evening with Yiddish singer Sarah Gordon in a traditional Zingeray (Yiddish sing-along).

2020 The final performance of The 28th annual Kung Pao Kosher Comedy is scheduled to take place today.

2020: After yesterday’s interception of two rockets fired by terrorist from Gaza at Ashkelon, Israelis are confronted with a triple header of challenges – pandemic, electoral chaos and terrorism.

2020(10thof Tevet, 5781): Vayigash; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 27, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 27

175 BCE (Tevet 3585): This day marked the completion of the Septuaginttranslation of the Bible into the Greek language. According to a letter from Aristeas to Philocrates, 72 sages, (six from each Israelite tribe) were brought to by Ptolemy II Alexandria to translate the Bible into Greek. Based on the legend, each sage was isolated and wrote a separate translation, but when all 72 were compared, they were all identical.  The text of the Septuagint and the Tanach are not the same.  Some viewed this translation as a positive event because it showed an interest of Greek intellectuals in Jewish thought and philosophy.  Others contend that this translation was necessary because the Jews of Alexandria had such limited knowledge of Hebrew that they could no longer read the text in the original. 

1350: Birthdate of King Juan I of Aragon.  In 1392, Juan granted amnesty to those who had attacked the Jews of Majorca and the Christians who sheltered them in 1391. At least 300 Jews were murdered. Juan granted the amnestybecause they had done it for the welfare of king and state; and he further declared all debts of the Christians to the Jews to be null and void.”

1459: Birthdate of John I Albert the Polish monarch also known as King Jan I Olbracht. In 1495, he transferred the Jews Cracow to the nearby royal city of Kazimierz, which helped to create a major European center for Diaspora Jewry. “With time it turned into a virtually separate and self-governed 34-acre Jewish Town, a model of every East European shtetl, within the limits of the gentile city of Kazimierz. As it developed into a safe haven for European Jewry, its population increased reaching a total of 4,500 Jews by 1630.

1480: In Spain, a second royal decree was issued directing the Mayor and other officials of Seville to assist the inquisitors in their work since they had shown an inclination to protect the converted Jews with to whom they were drawn either because of reasons of kinships or friendship.

1503: Followers of Zechariah of Kiev were burned in Moscow, on charges of Judaizing. This term refers to helping non-Jews convert to Judaism

1504: "Proselytizing" Jews in Moscow and Kievwere expelled after a few high officials converted to Judaism.

1587: Coronation of Sigismund III Vasa as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania under whose reign the rollback of religious granted to non-Catholics, including the Jews began at the behest of the Jesuits and others involved in the “counterrerformation.”

1657: Three years after the first Jews arrived in New Amsterdam and dealt with the bigotry of Peter Stuyvesant, a group Englishman living in the Dutch colony submitted a petition to the Governor-General requesting the lifting of the ban on Quaker worship.  Known as the Flushing Remonstrance, they were greeted with even greater hostility by “Peg-leg Pete” than he had shown to the Jews.

1747: In London, Sarah Nunes Navaro and Aaron Nunez Cardozo gave birth to Judith Nunez Cardozo

1753(2ndof Tevet, 5514): Seventh Day of Chanukah

1760: Rebecca Mears and New York native Jacob Isaacks gave birth to Samson H. Isaacks.

1769(28thof Kislev, 5530): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1771: In Curacao, Leah Cohen Peixotto y Campos Perera and Samuel Levy Maduro Peixotto gave birth to Grace Peixotto.

1772(1stof Tevet, 5533): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1775: Merchant Aron Hart, one of the earliest leaders the Canadian Jewish community wrote to Colonel Livingston expressing best wishes for his safety and health while reviewing the money owed by the military to him for delivery of goods to the military including £121.14.10 for the Colonel’s regiment.

1777(27thof Kislev, 5538): Parashat Miketz; Third Day of Chanukah.

1777: Despite the promise of French aid that was supposed to come to the Continentals after the victory at Saratoga in October, prospects of the American Revolution are not bright as the Jews prepare to kindle the Fourth Chanukah candle.

1786: Esther Levy married Isaac Simons today in Easton.

1780(30thof Kislev, 5541): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1780: As Jews prepare to light the Seventh Chanukah Candle, the British strategy to shift fighting to the southern colonies the Americans raid Hammond’s Store on Williamson’s Plantation in South Carolina.

1790: In Curacao, Rachel Sasportas and Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto gave birth to Leah Peixotto, the wife of Moses Jessurun

1791(1stof Tevet, 5552): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1792(12thof Tevet, 5553): After passing away today, six and a half year old “Reizcha bat Jacob ben Zvi” was buried at the “Alderney Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1796(27thof Kislev, 5557): Third Day of Chanukah

1796: “The government deprived” Rabbi Wolf Boskovitz “of his office today and ordered the community to elect” a replacement but said the replacement could not be Rabbi Moses Munz.

1797: Joel Benjamin married Rachel Levy at the Great Synagogue today.

1797: In New York, 34-year-old Richa (Rachel) Hendricks, the daughter of Uriah Hendricks, married Abraham Gomez.

1799(29thof Kislev, 5560): Fifth Day of Chanuah

1799: As Jews prepared to light the Sixth Chanukah candle, citizens of the United States observed “a Day of Public Mourning for the Universally Lamented, General Washington, the late President of the United States.

1801: In London, Zipporah Isaacs and Hyman Cohen gave birth to Henry Hyman Cohen

1805: David Cromelien and Adeline (or Amelia) Cromelien gave birth to Moses (Monroe) Cromelien, the husband of Phoebe Cromelien and the father of Pauline Cromelien; Chapman Cromelien; Hester Cromelien and Charles Cromelien

1810: Birthdate of Levi Herzfeld the native of Ellrich who became a leading German rabbi and historian who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1836.

1812(24th of Tevet, 5573):  Shneur Zalman of Liadi founder of Chabad Hasidism passed away (date based on adjusted secular calendar).  Born in 1745, Shneur Zalman of Liadi was a descendant of the mystic and philosopher Rabbi Judah Loew (known as the "Maharal of Prague"). He was a prominent disciple of Rabbi Dovber of Mezeritch, the "Great Maggid" who was in turn a major disciple of the founder of Hasidism Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer known as the Baal Shem Tov ("Master [of the] Good Name"). After the death of Rabbi Dovber of Mezeritch, his students dispersed over Europe. Rabbi Shneur Zalman became the leader of Hasidism in Lithuania and is accepted as one of the great Hasidic leaders. The movement he founded was moved to the town of Lubavitch in present-day Belarus by his son and successor Rabbi Dovber Schneersohn. In 1940 the Chabad Lubavitch movement moved its headquarters to Brooklyn, New York in the United States with branches all over the world staffed by its own Lubavitch-trained, and ordained, rabbis with their wives and children. He involved himself in opposing Napoleon's advance on Russia and supporting the Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel, then under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Due to false charges from his Misnagdim opponents in Vilna, he was imprisoned by the Czar on charges of supporting the Ottoman Empire, since he advocated sending charity to the Ottoman territory of Palestine. The day of his acquittal and release, the 19th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, is celebrated as the "Hasidic New Year" by Lubavitch Hasidim, who have a festive meal and communal pledges to learn the whole of the Talmud known as "Chalukat Ha'Shas." Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi is well known for his systematic exposition of Hasidic Jewish philosophy, entitled Likkutei Amarim, and more popularly known as the Tanya, first published in 1797. (The fuller and more authoritative version of this work dates from 1814) Due to the popularity of this book, Hasidic Jews often refer to Shneur Zalman as the Baal HaTanya.He is also well known for his work Shulchan Aruch HaRav, his version of the classic Shulkhan Arukh, an authoritative code of Jewish law and custom. The work states the decided halakha, as well as the underlying reasoning. The Shulchan Aruch HaRav is used by Lubavitch Hasidism. However, citations to this work are sometimes found in non-Lubavitch sources such as the Mishnah Berurah and the Ben Ish Chai. Rabbi Zalman is one of three authorities on whom Shlomo Ganzfried based his Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh. Descendants of Rabbi Shneur Zalman adopted the names Schneersohn or Schneerson to accommodate Napoleonic edicts that required all subjects to take permanent surnames. (Prior to Napoleon's conquests and the winds of Enlightenment he brought in his wake, Jews only had their traditional names such as Shneur ben (son of) Boruch.) The last two Rebbes of Chabad Lubavitch, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (1880-1950) and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), adhered strictly to their family surnames.

1815(25thof Kislev, 5576): First Day of Chanukah

1815: Divinah Cohen and Isaac Cohen who were married in 1803 gave birth to Emily Minis.

 

1819: Karoline and Maier Mendel Einhorn gave birth to Sigmund Max Einhorn whose wife was also named Karoline with whom he had four children – Pauline, Fanni, Rosa and Max.

1820(22ndof Tevet, 5581): Abraham ben Gedaliah Tiktin, the native of Posen who “became chief rabbi at Breslau”: passed away today.

 

1827: Lewis Phillips married Sarah Jonas today at the Great Synagogue.

1830: In the U.K., Rachel Mocatta and Lewis Raphael gave birth to Edward Louis Raphael,

1834: Fifty-nine-year-old English author and poet Charles Lamb who used anti-Semitic tropes in his attacks on tenor John Braham while mocking him for having married a gentile.

 

1842: Birthdate of Dr. Sigmund Mayer, the native of Bechtheim in Rhenish Hesse who became a physiologist and histologist who is the Mayer in “Traube-Herring-Mayer “a phenomenon that deals with rhythmic variations in arterial blood pressure.”

 

1843: Montague Hyam married Rachel Nathaniel Levy today at the Great Synagogue.

1846: In Whitechapel, London, Phoebe Levy and Aaron Samuel gave birth to Lawrence Samuel.

1847: Birthdate of Hungarian native and humorist Carl Hauser, a resident of the United States for over forty years who was “editor of Puck when it was a German publication, author of Fun for the Millions, published and known as the “German Mark Twain.”

1848: In Charleston, SC, Jacob Ottolengui married Eliza Emma Jacobs, the daughter of Colonel Jacobs.

1851: Birthdate of Max Judd, the Polish native, who founded the St. Louis Chess Club and served as U.S. Counsul to Austria during the 2nd administration of President Grover Cleveland.

1853: One day he had passed away, Joseph Phillips, the son of Lyon and Elizabeth Phillips and the husband of Sarah Elizabeth Phillips with whom he had had one son – Lewis – was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1854: “Coming Events” published today reported on the prominent role that Benjamin Disraeli will be playing in the upcoming session of Parliament as the lead of “the loyal opposition.”  Among other things, he is expected to join with Lord Derby in support Parliamentary reform along the lines of the Chartist Movement.  This will set him on a collision course with Lord John Russell who talks more about reform than he delivers.  “Disraeli will probably propose that every householder shall have the elective franchise and that representation shall be based upon population.  If he he goes to this extent Russell will be ‘nowhere’ in the race and Disraeli will become champion of popular rights.”  [Did Disraeli’s Jewish roots explain the fact that a leader of the Conservative Party was a leading proponent for this most liberal reform?  Is there a connection between social justice and Judaism that a trip to the baptismal font cannot wash away?]

1855: “Do You Eat Pork?” published today reported that “physicians have just discovered that the tape worm only troubles those who eat pork” According to The Gazette Medicale  “ the Hebrews are never troubled with it” while pork butchers are “peculiarly liable to it and dogs that are fed Pork “are universally so afflicted.”

1857(10thof Tevet, 5618): Asara B’Tevet observed for the first time during the Presidency of James Buchanan.

1860(14th of Tevet, 5621): Eighty-seven year old Elizabeth Etting, the daughter of Elijah Etting and wife of Robert Micle passed away today in Emmitsburg, MO.

1861(24thof Tevet, 5622): Sixty-five-year-old Jacob Eiechenbaum, the native of Galicia who became “one of the pioneers of modern education among the Russian Jews” passed away in Kiev.

1861: Rabbi Abraham Fischel wrote a letter to Henry I. Hart describing the conditions of the troops encamped around Washington, DC which he has visited while waiting to hear from Congressional leaders about his efforts to get the law changed so that Jews can serve as Chaplains in the Union Army.

1862(5thof Tevet, 5623): Sixty-five year old Michel Goudchaux the French banker who served as Minister of Finance during the Second Republic who was a fierce opponent of Louis Napoleon and his imperialism passed away today.

1863: Five days after she had passed away, 62 year old Jane Jones, the wife of Alexander Jones with whom she had had five children was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1863: In Holland, Abraham de Pinto was appointed “Landsadvocaat” (Land’s Advocate) today.

1864(28thof Kislev, 5625): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1864: Birthdate of Boston native Max H. Aronson, the husband of Rebecca Kantorowicz Aronson with whom he had ten children.

1865: Birthdate of Amsterdam native Sara Teresea Ameringen, the wife of Moses Alvares Vega and the mother of Abraham Moses Alvares Vega.

1868: Rumanian Jews were excluded from the medical profession.

1868(13thof Tevet, 5629): Thirty-four-year-old Dr. Louis Man Emanuel who had earned an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1860 and served as surgeon with the Union Army from 1861 to 1864 seeing action at numerous battles including Fredericksburg and Gettysburg died today in Linwood, Pennsylvania from “an attack of diabetes mellitus brought on by exposure” while serving his country.

1868: In Plock, Anna and Ludwick Flatau gave birth to Polish neurologist and psychiatrist Edward Flatau.

1869: Carl Theodor Liebermann and Antonie (Toni) Amalia Liebermann gave birth to their daughter Else who became Else Preuß when she married Dr. Hugo Preuß (Editor’s note: ß is a letter in the German alphabet for which there is no equivalent in the alphabet of the English language, although the proper pronunciation approximate the letter “s”)

1869: In Cincinnati, OH, “Herman S. and Jennie (Wolf) Mack gave birth to Harvard trained, attorney Edwin S. Mack, the member of the Wisconsin bar and faculty member of the University of Wisconsin Law School faculty and husband of the former Della Adler with whom he had three daughters – Theresa, Elizabeth and Jean."

1870: “The Jews In Rome” published today provides “an interesting summary of the peculiar legal status of the Jews” living in the Italian capital courtesy of the Florence correspondent of the London Daily News who reported that “the 4,800 Jews huddled together in the Ghetto were until a very few years ago forcibly penned up there, the huge iron gates being closed at nightfall and neither ingress nor egress permitted by the guards until the following morning.”

1871: Rabbi J.J. Lyons officiated at the wedding of Nathan S. Hart and Ada F. Samuel, the daughter of Morris L. Samuel

1871: Birthdate of Russian native Edward Cohen who settled in Cambridge, MA where her was member of the committee working on revising the City Charter and an officer of the Zionist Organization of America.

1872: In Giessen, Germany, Dora and Mayer Livingston gave birth to Sigmund G. Livingston, the Illinois lawyer who “was the founder and first president of the Anti-Defamation League.

1874: It was reported today that Rabbi Moses Dimant who had been jailed for failing to provide the four dollars in court ordered support for his wife Liebe was released today on a writ of habeas corpus.  The writ was obtained by the wife who said she no desire to see her husband in jail.

1874(19th of Tevet, 5635): Asher Jacob Covo, Chief Rabbi of Salonica who was born in 1797, passed away.

1875(29thof Kislev, 5636): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1878(1stof Tevet, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1879: In New York City, as part of Hospital Saturday, Jewish congregations collected pledges estimated to total more than $20,000.  In years gone by, this money would have gone exclusively to Mt. Sinai Hospital.  This year the money will go to a city-wide fundraising effort for all participating hospitals.  The total raised yesterday does not count contributions by individual Jewish donors or donations made by businesses owned by Jews.

1880: Birthdate of Emil Kiesler, the father of Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler who gained fame as film star Heddy Lamar.

1880: It was reported today that Lawrence Oliphant’s new book, The Land of Gilead, includes a plan for “colonizing on of the rich and unoccupied districts in Turkey with Jews, to whom the Ottoman authorities can have no possible objection on political grounds.”

1882: It was reported today that “Grand Master Julius Harburger” has delivered $606 to the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society which was collected by the lodges of the Independent Order of the Sons of Israel. This brings the total collected for aid to the Jewish refugees from Russia to $3, 836.15

1882: Birthdate of Jacob B. “Jack” Findling, the former resident of New York City and Chicago who settled in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1908 where he became President of the Boston Store, founder and President of “the Salt Lake Jewish Community Center Association” and President of “District No. 4 of B’nai B’rith.”

1884(9thof Tevet, 5645): Parashat Vayigash

1884: Birthdate of Ukraine native Benjamin Rosenberg who gained fame as the American modern painter Ben Benn.

https://rogallery.com/Benn_ben/Benn-bio.htm

1884(9thof Tevet, 5645): Forty-one year old Mortiz Wottiz, the son of David and Karoline Wottitz and husband of Eugene Wartski Wottitz passed away today in Vienna.

1884: It was reported today that the Jews living in the western Russian province of Volhynia are refusing to serve in the army.

1885: It was reported today that Rabbi S.M. Morais and Rabbi Henry P. Mendes are among those calling for the establishment of a new seminary in the East to train rabbis.  This is a reflection of the dissatisfaction with the changes being advocated by the Reform Movement lead by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise and being taught at Hebrew Union College.

1885: It was reported today that there 2,064 students attending the schools supported by the Hebrew Free School Association in New York City.

1887: The Ladies’ Bikur Cholim Society hosted a fundraiser tonight “for the benefit of the Industrial School for Poor Girls.”

1887: In South Carolina, Rabi Levy officiated at the marriage of Henry Rashbaum and Emma (Brown) Baum.

1887: Birthdate of Paris native and Sorbonne trained investment banker Andre Istel whose role on the international financial stage including negotiating the Franco-British financial agreement in 1939 and who served as a limited partner of Kuhn, Loeb and Company while raising two sons and a daughter with his wife, ‘the former Yvonee Cremieux.

1888: In New York, the City Court Judges heard an appeal by representatives of the Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society and Orphan Asylum ask that they overturn their decision to allow only the Police Justices to hear applications for the commitment of children to charitable institutions.

1888: In Tokyo, 42-year Dr. of Jurisprudence Albert Mosse and his wife Caroline (Lina) Mosse old gave birth to Hans Mosse

1888:  Birthdate of attorney Meyer Jacobs, the clerk of the New York Surrogates Courts and President of the Beth Din of America.

1888: A piano solo and a presentation by Elliot F. Shepard were part of the entertainment at this evening’s program presented by the Young Men’s Association of Temple Beth-El.

1889(4thof Tevet, 5650): Seventy-eight-year-old German portrait artist and painter Eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann passed away today in Dusseldorf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Bendemann#mediaviewer/File:Eduard_Bendemann_1811_-_1889_Selbstbildnis_1859.jpg

1889: Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler of Temple Beth-El is scheduled to officiate at the funeral of Valentine Koon, a native of Stuttgart, Germany born in 1810, who came to the United States where he found success in the manufacture of shoes for the army and New York real estate and as an elector in the national election, voted for Abraham Lincoln while serving as one of the founders of the New York chapter of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith.

1890: Birthdate of Hungarian Communist Tibor Szamuely who would help form the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic formed by Bela Kun in 1919.

1890: In New York City, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment presented the budget for 1891 which included an allocation of $60,000 for the Hebrew Benevolent Society and $70,000 for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.

1891(26thof Kislev, 5652): Second day of Chanukah; in the evening kindle three candles

1891: The Hebrew Free School Association of Brooklyn held its fourth annual examinations at Weber’s Washington where the students were tested “and showed great proficiency in translating Hebrew into English” as well as demonstrating “an accurate knowledge of Jewish History. Following the distribution of prizes and recitations by the students, three candles were lit as part of the celebration of Chanukah.

1891: Based on information that first appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette it was reported today that “Notes of a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land” in which F.R. Oliphant describes his visit to Palestine has recently been published in Great Britain.  Oliphant recorded the final years of Laurence Oliphant which included a variety of anecdotes involving Germans, Druses and Romanian Jews whom the older Oliphant had rescued from economic distress when he found living on the streets of Haifa.

1891: In Tupelo, MS, Moses Plough and his wife gave birth Abe Plough the Chairman Schering-Plough.

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1064

1891: It was reported today that “Galician newspapers are filled with articles advocating the renewed enforcement of repressive measures against the Jews of Russia and Poland”

1891: It was reported today that the arrest of large numbers of Jews in and around Russia has been done in complete secrecy “with people suddenly disappearing.”

1892: Plans were published today for the upcoming dedication of the new Hebrew Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.

1893: The American Jewish Historical Society opens its second annual meeting at the Columbia College Library Building in New York City.

1893: Birthdate of Leopold Pick, the resident of Vienna who was shipped to Terezin and then to Auschwitz where he was murdered at the age of 50.

1894: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Emil Pollak and Carrie (Caroline) (Carolyn) Pollak (born Benjamin) gave birth to Julian Albert Pollack who served on the City Council and was an executive with the Community Chest.

1894: The third annual convention of the American Jewish Society which began yesterday came to an end today, having heard numerous papers including “The Jewish Soldier” presented by Simon Wolf and having decided to hold next year’s meeting in Philadelphia.

1894: The final budget figures for 1895 presented today at the meeting of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment included $80,000 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, $90,000 for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society and $5,000 for the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children

1894: In Minsk, “Rabbi Jona and Debosha (Hochtein) Churgin gave birth to Pinkhos Churgin the holder of a Ph.D from Yale , an Assistant Professor of Hebrew Literature and editor of “Our Voice who as the husband of Rosetta Seligson.

1894: “Irritation About Dreyfus” published today described start of a “Jew-baiting campaign” by the revolutionary and anti-Semitic newspapers.”  “La Parole predicts that the Jews by presuming to consider themselves equals with Frenchmen and competing with them are preparing the most fearful disaster that ever marked the tragic history of the race.” (The first steps on the road to Drancy?)

1895: “The Brooklyn Hebrew Aid Society has officially been incorporated.”

1895: Birthdate of Siegfried Aron, the native of Hamburg, Germany who gained fame as actor Siegfried Arno whose successful career in Germany was cut short by the rise of the Nazis which forced him to leave and eventually continuing his career in the United States starting in 1939.

1895: At least 23 people died today in Baltimore when a fire broke out at the Front Street Theatre where a 2,500 people most of whom were Jewish had gathered to see the “Jewish opera, Alexander.”

1896: Birthdate of German writer and playwright Carl Zuckmayer who did not think of himself as being Jewish until the rise of Hitler.  His mother was the daughter of a Protestant church councilor who had converted from Judaism.  This made him Jewish in the eyes of the Nazis and no doubt accounted for his fleeing to the United States where he spent World War II.

1896: The San Francisco Call reported that word has been received regarding the engagement of New York State Senator and prominent New York attorney Jacob A. Cantor to Loie Fuller “the famous and fascinating danseuse and artist in feminine draperies.”

 

1897(2nd of Tevet, 5658): Eighth Day of Chanukah

 

1897: Birthdate of Haverhill, MA, native William Cantor the Harvard alum who graduated in three and half years while serving on the University Dining Council and being a member of the “Menorah Society Zionist Club” who went to become an “insurance executive” and “officer in B’nai B’rith.”

 

1898: In Stolin, Russia, “Samuel and Eva (Goberman) Sandweiss gave birth to University of Michigan trained physician David Jacob Sandweiss, “the chief section gastroenterology and attending physician division of internal medicine at Detroit’s Sinai Hospital and a member of the Board of Directors the Hebrew Benevolent Society who raised four children – Samuel, Flora, Donald and Sandra – with his wife Sandra Gail.

 

1898: Birthdate of Russian born David Jacob Sandweiss, who came to the U.S. in 1909, earned a Medical Degree from the University of Michigan, practiced in Detroit where he raised his son Samuel with his wife Frieda.

 

1899(25th of Tevet, 5660): Moses Levi Ehrenreich, the native of Brody who became the chief rabbi of Rome whose “chief literary work consisted of the part he took the translation of the Bible into Italian under the direction of Luzzatto, for which he translated Hosea, Micah, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah” passed away today.

1900: It was reported today that “the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York has issued an appeal funds” which it hopes will the $350,000 need to feed, clothe and educate the 950 children that are living at the institution “located on the block bounded by 11th Avenue, Grand Boulevard, 150th and 151stStreets” which is led by Samuel D. Levy, the President of the Board of Management.

1901: The Zionist Congress which opened yesterday in Basel with a speech by Dr. Theodore Herzl of Vienna which was heard by the 1,000 delegates continued for a second day with a speech by Max Nordau.

1902(27th of Kislev, 5663): Parashat Miketz; Third Day of Chanukah

1902: In Bucharest, “at today’s session of the Senate during a discussion of the question of the naturalization of the Jews, the Minister of the Public Instruction referred “to the calumnies against Roumania so widely disseminated’ in connection with the Jewish question” which was an obvious reference to the note written by Secretary of State John Hay “to the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin” in which he addressed the pitiful conditions of the 400,000 Jews living in Rumania.

1903: In the United Kingdom, Samuel B. Hamburger the Latvian born son of Joseph and Kiva Hamburger, and his wife Annie H. Hambruger gave birth to Sarah Sallie Hambruger, who became Sarah Sallie Knott when she married John F. Knott and later became the other of Joseph Knott.”

1904: Charles Frohman produced “Peter Pan or the Boy Wouldn’t Grow Up” which debuted today at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London.

 

1905(29th of Kislev, 5666): Fifth Day of Chanukah

 

1905: It was reported today that the Russian government claims “that the leaders of the revolutionary at Moscow are mostly students from Kiev, Kharkoff and Odessa, among whom are many Jews.

1906(10th of Tevet, 5667): Asara B’Tevet

1906:  In Pittsburgh, PA, Max and Annie Radin Levant gave birth to composer and pianist Oscar Levant.

http://www.touchoftonga.com/DavidMulliss/oscar-levant.html

1906: In Paris, “Julia Berg, a German Jew” and “American painter Lyonel Feininger gave birth to photographer Andreas Bernhard Lyonel Feininger who was fortunate enough to get out of Europe before WW II and augmented his life as a free-lacer by working with Life, the premiere photo magazine of its day

https://www.biography.com/people/andreas-feininger-39329

1906: In Brooklyn, Edward and Martha Esther Cahn gave birth to Alma Bionion Cahn, who gained fame as Alma Binion Schapiro, the painter, the wife of investment banker and chess master Morris A. Schapiro and the mother of Daniel and Linda Schapiro.

1907: Emperor Menelik of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), granted letters of protection to Rabbi Haim Nahoum and his team who were sent by the Alliance Israelite Universelle to study the condition of the Falashim (Ethiopian Jews).

1908: Twenty-six-year-old Galicia native Samuel Schimmel the founder of Schimmel Electrical Supply in Philadelphia, PA married Anne Feigenbaum with whom he had “five children – Herbert, Ruth, Leonard, Bernard and Nathaniel.”

1908: Dr. Herbert Friedenwald, Secretary of the American Jewish Committee said today that Russian newspapers he had just received showed that Czarist state had resumed the persecution of its Jewish citizens. 

1908: Based on a letter whose contents were made public today in London, Israel Zangwill has denied reports coming from the United States that he is planning on turning his play “The Melting Pot” into a novel which would be dedicated to President Theodore Roosevelt.

1909 Birthdate of Benjamin Morris Jebaltowsky the middleweight who fought under the name Ben Jeby

1910(26thof Kislev, 5671): Second Day of Chanukah

1911: Thirty-year old Rush Medical College trained physician Walter Wile Hamburger, the son of Annette and Max Hamburger who would serve as a Major in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army during War and who was a member of Chicago Sinai Congregation married Edna Levis today in St. Louis, MO.

1912(17thof Tevet, 5673):,Fifty –five year old Russian-born Berry Dantzig, the husband of Anna Kasor Dantzig passed away today passed away in Kansas City, MO after which he was buried in the Sheffield Cemetery. (Another source shows December 12)

1912(17thof Tevet, 5673): In Berlin, Judicial Councilor Erich Lello passed away today.

1913(28thof Kislev, 5674): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1913(28thof Kislev, 5674): Seventy-one-year-old Bertha Spiegelberg, the native of Borgholz, Germany and wife of Levi Spiegelberg passed away today in New York City.

1913: The Sisterhood of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue will hold its annual Chanukah celebration at the Astor Hotel.

 

1914(10th of Tevet, 5675): Asara B’Tevet

 

1914: Eugene V. Debs, the former Socialist candidate for President of the United States wrote from Terre Haute, Indiana, that “I have followed the Leon Frank case in the press on account of its extraordinary nature, and the conviction was forced upon me so long ago that Frank’s trial was a farce and that the prejudice against him on account of this races was so intense that, however innocent he might be, he had not a ghost of a chance for his life.”

 

1914: Today, the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Relief Committee appropriated $100,000 “for the relief of Jews of Russia, Poland and Galicia” which is “in addition to $75,000 appropriated for the same purpose at a prior meeting” and the $50,000 “sent to the Jewish Colonization Association at Petrograd.”

 

1914: In Rochester, NY, “the usual Sunday morning services of Berith Kodesh Temple were incorporated into the activities of the Jewish Chautauqua Convention which was addressed by Dr. William Rosenqau of Baltimore, MD, the organization Vice Chancellor.

 

1914: “Zabara” published today provides a review of Sepher Shaashchim by Joseph ben Meir Ibn Zabara translated by Professor Israel Davidson.

 

1914: It was reported today that the USS Tennessee and her sister ship the USS North Carolina which had taken gold raised by American Jews to Jaffa where it was to be sent to aid those in Jerusalem are now believed to have sailed north to Beirut.

 

1915: It was reported today that Dr. Christian F. Reisner delivered a sermon at the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in “which he praised the Jews for the large contribution they have made to sufferers of their race in Europe” saying that their “wonderful exhibition of giving” is attributed to the fact that “the Jew has suffered so much that he sympathy for others that suffer.”

 

1915: Ex-Judge Leon Sanders, the President of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society is scheduled to address a meeting sponsored by the Society in the auditorium of the Bank of the United States at a list of “Jewish war sufferers who anxious to communicate with their relatives and friends in the United States” will be read for the first time.

 

1915: “The Foreign Relations Bureau of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society opened tonight in the building of the Bank of the United States at 77 Delancy Street” in NYC.

 

1915: It was reported today that “efforts to care for the Jews in the neighborhood of Constantinople were being made through Ambassador Morgenthau to whom $5,000 is being sent every three months for distribution.”

 

1915: the American Jewish Relief Committee for the Jews suffering from the war planned to have raised another million dollars by today.

 

1915: “Cash contributions to the $5,000,000 fund to be raised by the American Jewish Relief Committee for the Jews suffering from the war continued to pour into the offices of the Treasurer, Felix M. Warburg at 52 William Street.

 

1915: At the afternoon meeting of the National Association of Young Judea, it was decided to continue with the establishment of Young Judea Center “in which member can participate in literary work and other activities.”

 

1915: In St. Louis, MO, the national meeting of the Jewish Chautauqua Society continued for a fourth day.

1916(2ndof Tevet, 5677): 8th& final day of Chanukah

1916: The 26th Annual Assembly of the 5,000 member Jewish Chautauqua Society whose officers include Jeanette Miriam Goldberg of Jefferson, TX is scheduled to come to an end today in New Orleans.

1916: It was reported today that The Daily Jewish Wahreit will begin printing the story of Sergius Michallow Trufanoof better known as “Illiodor, the Mad Monk of Russia” which were not published in “a recent issue of the Metropolitan Magazine.

1916: In New York City, the packing companies which slaughter cattle in accord with the laws of Kashrut met with representatives of the Federation of Retail Kosher Butchers and agreed to sell them kosher meat for 15 cents a pound.  Last week, they had been charging 18 cents a pound which led to a boycott by the kosher butchers. The packing companies further promised that before they raised prices again, they would meet with the butchers and explain the reason for the increase.

1917: During WW I, the first British train arrived in Jerusalem after the Ottomans left.

1917: Colonel Ronald Storrs, the newly appointed British Military Governor of Jerusalem, viewed the distant mountains of Moab in the glow of the sunset.  For the first time since the Crusades, 600 hundred years ago, a Christian power controls Jerusalem.  From the Jewish point of view, the Christian power was Great Britain which, under the terms of the Balfour Declaration, was committed to the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine.

1917: The Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs announced today that “the Turkish army that surrendered Jerusalem to General Allenby executed thirty Jewish men and women of that city” including “the father and a sister of Aaron Aaronsohn, head of the Palestine Agricultural Experiment Station which is subsidized by the American Agricultural Department.

1917: At a meeting of naturalized American of Rumanian birth held tonight at Cooper Union several speakers including John Trowbridge, Chairman of the Rumanian Red Cross in America “said that Rumanian Jews could be assured that the United States would see to it that they would obtain freedom after the war”

1917: Three days after he had passed away, 45-year-old Solomon Vitofsky, the husband of Vella Vitofsky with whom he had had four children was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1917: More than $2,500 dollars was contributed by Rumanian Jews living in the United States for the Jewish Relief Fund.

1917: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Herbert (Lefty) Karpel, the southpaw who pitched in two games with the New York Yankees.

1917(12thof Tevet, 5678): Seventy-one-year-old antiquarian Joel Koopman passed away today in Brookline, MA.

1918: Dispatches from Warsaw today report that Ukrainian General Symon Petliura “has promised protection to the Jews from pogroms” – a promise he was either unwilling or unable to keep as can be seen from the death of approximately Jews during Pogroms in the Ukraine.

1919(5th of Tevet, 5680):Sir Charles Solomon Henry passed away. Born in 1860, he “was an Australian merchant and businessman who lived mostly in Britain and sat as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons from 1906-1918.”

1920: “The 29th annual assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society” is scheduled to meet for a second day today in Cleveland.

 

1920: In the Bavarian village of Leutershausen, Nathan Jochsberger, “a cattle dealer…and the former Sofie Enslein” gave birth to Hilda Jocbsberger the musically talented refugee from Nazi Germany who founded New York’s Hebrew Arts School for Music and Dance.(As reported by Richard Sandomir)

 

1921(26th of Kislev, 5682): Second Day of Chanukah

1921: Birthdate of Judith Hannah Saretsky who gained fame as “Judith S. Wallerstein, a psychologist who touched off a national debate about the consequences of divorce by reporting that it hurt children more than previously thought, with the pain continuing well into adulthood…” (As reported by Denise Grady)

1921: In Atlanta, GA, Alan and Edith Gavronski Lipshutz, gave birth to Robert J. Lipshutz, the White House Counsel for President Jimmy Carter “who played an important behind-the-scenes role in negotiations leading to the Camp David peace accords.”

1923: Arthur Hays and Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger gave birth to their third child, Judith Peixotto Sulzberger, who gained fame as “Dr. Judith P. Sulzberger, a physician whose philanthropy led to the creation of a center for genome studies in her name at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

1924(30thof Kislev, 5685): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1924: Myer L. Brown addressed the opening of the 15th annual convention of the Jewish Socialist Labor Party of America being held at the Town Hall in New York.

 

 

 

 

1925: Birthdate of Moshe Arens, the native Kaunas who made Aliyah in 1939 and whose career has included service as Minister of Defense, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador to the US.

1926: Latkin Square in the Bronx was named for the first US Jewish soldier to die in WWI

1927: At the behest of Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, is expelled from the Communist Party. 

1927: Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern’s “Show Boat" premiered at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City.  If you need more of a Jewish connection than Kern and Hammerstein, this Broadway hit was based on the novel of the same name written by Edna Ferber. When Edna Ferber published Show Boat in 1926, she was already an established writer, with eleven books, two stage plays, and a Pulitzer Prize (for So Big, 1925) to her credit. But when the musical adaptation of the novel opened on Broadway with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and music by Jerome Kern, it was unlike any earlier production. Combining music and dance with fully formed characters and serious themes, “Show Boat” departed from both operetta and the musical comedy revue, establishing a new style of American musical. Ferber's work in Show Boat and in later novels grew from a keen eye and a gift for observation of the world around her. Raised in often precarious economic circumstances in small towns in Iowa and Wisconsin, Ferber always identified with the lives of ordinary working people. She believed that they had "a kind of primary American freshness and assertiveness." She tried to communicate those qualities and do justice to the lives of working folks in all of her writing. Ferber's work also drew on the oppression she felt she had experienced as both a woman and a Jew. Subjected to anti-Semitism as a child, she felt she had gained strength from facing her tormentors. Similarly, she believed that women's experience of social limitations led them to develop special strengths. Many of her early works featured strong women overcoming social obstacles to professional success. Show Boat, which tackled the theme of interracial marriage, also addressed the issue of social constraints. After its successful Broadway debut, “Show Boat” ran for 572 performances, and was later made into a film twice. Revival performances continue to entertain audiences across the country.

1928: It was announced today that Harris L. Selig, the executive director of the Yeshiva College Building fund who has raised “more than three million dollars” the school “has resigned from the building campaign committee” and will be leaving “for a trip to Europe and Palestine in January

1929(25th of Kislev, 5690): Jews observe Chanukah, in what will be the first winter of the Great Depression.

1929: “Their Own Desire” a movie version of the novel starring Norma Shearer who was nominated for a best actress Oscar was released today in the United States.

1930: In Philadelphia, “Harold M. Saunders, an architect and the former Marian Weihenmayer, a jewelry designer, gave birth Harold Henry Saunders, the American diplomat who worked with Henry Kissinger to gain interim agreements after the Yom Kippur War and “was credit as one of the Camp David accords.”

1930(7th of Tevet, 5691): Alfred Moritz Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, son of German born Anglo-Jewish chemist Ludwig Mund and Frieda, née Löwenthal Mund passed away.

1930: “The Right to Love” a movie version of the novel starring Paul Lukas and featuring Irving Pichel was released today in the United States.

1931: “In Bible Lands Before the Macedonian Conquest” published today provided a complete review of History of Palestine and Syria by A.T. Olmstead.

1932(28th of Kislev, 5693): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1932(28th of Kislev, 5693): Fifty-nine-year-old Arthur S. Bandler, the Austrian born son of Bernard and Pauline Bandler, the husband of Edna Bandler and the President of Leslie-Mott, Inc. passed away today.

 

1932: Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City. This American cultural landmark was a project produced by three people – multi-millionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and two Jews, Samuel Roxy Rothafel, who previously opened the Roxy Theatre in 1927 and RCA chairman David Sarnoff.

1933: It was reported today that “the American Economic Committee for Palestine has received 1,379 inquiries from potential settlers in Palestine since its organization in July 1932…”

1934: “Broadway Bill” a comedy: written by Robert Riskin and based on the short story "Strictly Confidential" by Mark Hellinger” was released in the United States today.

1934: Starting today “Columbia concentration camp (also known as Columbia-Haus) a Nazi concentration camp situated in the Tempelhof area of Berlin…was administrated by the Concentration Camps Inspectorate.

1935: Birthdate of Rabbi Raymond Apple who served as the Senior Rabbi of the Great Synagogue of Sydney between 1972 and 2005]. In this role, he was one of Australia's highest profile rabbis and the leading spokesman for Judaism in Australia

1935: Regina Jonas received her semicha and was ordained by the liberal Rabbi Max Dienemann, who was the head of the Liberal Rabbis' Association, in Offenbach am Main

1935: Birthdate of Dr. Victor Brailovsky a native of Moscow, a computer scientist and MK who served as Minister of Science and Technology. Bailovsky was a refusnik who spent three years in a Soviet prison because he wanted to make Aliyah.  He finally was allowed to leave for Israel in 1987.

1936: In New York, “Daniel Bonn Salk and Dora Press Salk gave birth to child psychologist Lee Salk, the husband of Kerstin Salk.

1936: Today, the National Advisory Council of the Jewish National Fund voted to provide the financial support for a project that will reclaim swampland in the vicinity of Lake Huleh which “will create an area of 14,000 acres on which 2,500 homesteads may be established” and which be “developed for agricultural uses for the benefit of Jews and Arabs beginning in 1937.”

1936: Today, “at its annual meeting in the Commodore Hotel, the Greater New York Council of Jewish Organizations” which represents “about 250 Jewish communal and fraternal organizations with an aggregate membership” “urged Jews in the United States to contribute their share of the $5,000,000 fund for “rebuilding Palestine” which takes on an added urgency because of “the need for the rehabilitation of distressed Jews in Germany, Poland” and other countries in Europe.

1936: In Washington, DC, delegates to the convention of Junior Hadassah “adopted a budget of $75,000 for the Junior Hadassah Palestinian Projects and for the Jewish National Fund” following which they attended a dinner featured speaker Rabbi Edward L. Israel of Baltimore said that “the difference between communism and Zionism is the difference between dictatorship and democracy.”

1937: The Palestine Post reported two British army casualties: an officer and a private, both of whom fell while searching for arms in Arab villages in Galilee. Rafael Yavneh, 26, was shot and badly wounded at km. 16 of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road in the fourth Arab attack on Jewish transport within a week. The Arab Defense Party met at the house of Bisharra Debbas, a Christian and the former governor of Acre, and appealed to stop terror and to consider a new Arab representative body - an Arab Higher Council - as the alternative to the radical Husseini Arab Higher Committee.

1937:The Haganah decides to establish Field Companies under the command of Itzhak Sadeh.

1938: Jewish organizations provided “food and clothing” for “five hundred refugees from Germany, Austria and Hungary who left Varna for “an undisclosed destination” today.

1938: Following a year-long survey that had been conducted by J.X Cohen, using information from “classified advertising columns of newspapers and confirmed by an investigation of the leading employment agencies in New York City and of the personnel records various industries including public utilities, quasi-government agencies, banks, insurance companies, hotels and department stores,”  “the American Jewish Congress reported today that the employment of Jews in the United States had increased since Hitler’s rise to pwer and was now at a record high mark.”

1938(5th of Tevet, 5699: Poet Osip Mandelstam died in one of the labor camps of Stalin’s Gulag.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/698

1939: “Persecution of Jews, a subject that has been taboo since the signing of the signing of the Soviet-German pact, was rediscovered today by the army organ, Red Star.”

1940: In a speech given while was “accepting the Inter-Faith award conferred on him by the National Conference of Christians and Jews,” Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes denounced “rancor, bigotry, racial animosities and intolerance” saying that these “deadly enemies of true democracy are more deadly than any external force because they undermine the very foundation of the democratic effort.

1941(7thof Tevet, 5702): Parashat Vayigash

1941: At Shaare Zedek Synagogue, during his sermon on the meeting between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Church, Rabbi Elias Simon said, “Like Joseph of old, they seem to have been chosen to preserve life and liberty for all men and nations.”

1941: At the Montefiore Synagogue, Rabbi Jacob Katz delivered a sermon in which he said, “Conscious of the privilege bestowed upon us by American citizenship and courageous as Jews who will yet win their rights, as an historic people, we find ourselves consecrated to the cause symbolized by Roosevelt and Churchhill.”

1942(19thof Tevet, 5703): Sixty-three-year-old Dora Blumenthal, the Dresden born daughter of Gustav and Amalie Pinthus and the wife of Oskar Michael Blumenthal died today at Theresiendstadt.

1942: In Worcester, MA, Frances and Jacob Hiatt, a highly successful businessman and leader in he Jewish community gave birth Myra Nathalie Hiatt who became Myra Kraft when she married Robert Kraft best known as the owner of the New England Patriots who was a powerhouse in her own right as can be seen by the fact that her philanthropy led to her being chosen as “one of the 20 Most Powerful Women in Boston.”

1943: Sam “Pivnik was admitted to the prisoner infirmary in the Quarantine area KL Auschwitz II-Birkenau, B IIa, Block 9, with suspected typhus.

1943: The keel of the SS Meyer London, a “liberty ship” was laid today.  The ship was named in honor of Meyer London, a Jewish political leader and reformer who was one of only two Socialists to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.  Ironically, London had voted against the declaration of war that led to American involvement in World War I.

1944: Dr. Rudolf Kastner left Switzerland for Budapest but could get only as far as Vienna because “the Red Army had encircled “the Hungarian capital.

1944(11thof Tevet, 5705): Seventy-five year old Ludwig Behr Bernstein, the husband of Ethel Bernstein and the father “of Stanley Burnshaw; Evelyn Krohn; Pauline Oseroff and Marie Nemer” passed away today in Los Angeles, CA

1944:Arrow Cross members came to the shelter run by Sister Sara Salkahazi's.  The Hungarian nun was active in hiding Jews from the Arrow Cross and the Nazis. Salkahazi and four Jewish women who did not manage to either hide or flee were taken to the bank of the Danube, where the Arrow Cross men stripped them, shot them and threw their bodies into the river.At the site where Salkahazi and those who shared her fate were executed, not far from the tourist mecca of Budapest's main market, a modest memorial has been erected. Her name and memory also grace a tree on the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. And now, the Catholic Church has also recognized the importance of her deeds.

1945: The World Bank was created with the signing of an agreement by 28 nations. Among Jews associated with the bank were Eugene Meyer, the first president, James Wolfensohn and Paul Wolfowitz, both of whom served as Presidents between 1995 and 2007 and Stanley Fischer, Lawrence Summers and Joseph E. Stiglitz who served as Chief Economist from 1988 to 2000.

1945: The British authorities in Palestine blame the Haganah for bomb blasts and gun battles in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Tel Aviv, including an attack on a Tel Aviv arms depot.

1945: “Terrorists struck tonight in the heart of Jerusalem, blowing up the Civil Investigation Department building in the Russian compound near the main post office. At least three policemen are dead and six injured.”  Other attacks were reported on a police station in Jaffa and installation of the Royal Engineers Workshops in Tel Aviv.

1945(23rdof Tevet, 5706): Seventy-six-year-old Philadelphia native Simon Walter, “the head of the paper firm S. Walter, Inc. and former member of the City Council passed away today in his home town.

1945: “In the greatest mass arrests in the history of Palestine more than 1,500 people were taken into custody tonight” after unidentified people blew up the British police station in the center of Jerusalem.

1946: “After refitting in Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, USS Cythera (PK-31), renamed SS Abril, sailed from New York City for Southern France and Port-de-Bouc., with a 21-man crew, mostly American volunteers, seven of whom were from Brooklyn.”

1947: It was reported today that the British police in policed had revealed that the headmaster of the government school in Ramallah had received a warned that the Irgun would blow up the school.

1947(14thof Tevet, 5708): A convoy that counted Gold Meir (future Prime Minister of Israel) as one of its passengers came under attack.  Seven Jews were killed by the Arab attackers.

1947: Sherut Avir was formed today, “with the few light aircraft at the Jew’s disposal” with “responsibilities that included liaison, recon, transport, and convoy escort.”

1947(14thof Tevet, 5708): Eighty-three-year-old old Julia H. Kohlman, the wife of Sigmnund Kolhman passed away today after which she was buried in “Springhill Avenue Temple Cemetery” in Mobile, Alabama.

1947(14th of Tevet, 5708): Hans Beyth, a central figure in welcoming newly arrived immigrant children to Eretz Israel, was one of seven Jews killed by Arab snipers as they traveled in convey coming from the coast up to Jerusalem. Beyth had just completed arrangements for the care of 20,000 young survivors of the Holocaust and other youngsters from Europe.

1947: Houses belonging to Jews and Arabs were set on fire today in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv region.

 

1947: As communal strife continued to intensify, troops had to be used to end a six hour between Jews and Arabs near Tulkarm.

1947: A private source in Haifa said tonight that in the last 48 hours the verified deaths included nine Jews, eight Arab and two Britons.  Forty-three people were reported to have been wounded during the same period.

1948(25th of Kislev, 5709): Chanukah

1948: Members of the Moslem Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian Prime Minister Fahmy Norashy Pashy because of Egypt’s failure to win the war in Palestine.

1948: Israel bombs Arab forces in Gaza.

1948: Fighting between Israeli and Egyptians in Fallujah.

1948: During Operation Horev, an Israeli armored brigade attack al-Auja. The successful attack led to the surrender of Egyptian forces in the area.

1948:  Birthdate of actress Tovah Feldshuh

1949: “Rabbi Shlomo Lorincz, the president of Agudath Israel Youth” arrived today in New York…with plans for a three month-tour of the United States to recruit Jewish youths for settlement in ‘the strategic agricultural areas of Israel.’”

1950(18th of Tevet, 5711): Max Beckmann German-born painter/graphic artist passed away at the age of 66.

1951: Birthdate of Henryk Halkowski historian, journalist, essayist and translator of Jewish origin, scholar of Hasidism and the history of Krakow's Kazimierz.

1952: In New York, attorney Sidney Feldshuh and the former Lillian Kaplan gave birth to Tony Award and Emmy Award nominated actress Terri Sue “Tovah” Feldshuh, the sister of playwright David Feldshuh who may be best known for her performance in “Golda’s Balcony, “the longest-running one-woman play in Broadway history.”

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel Rokach, mayor of Tel Aviv for the past 17 years, had relinquished his post to Haim Levanon, the Deputy Mayor.

1952(9thof Tevet, 5713): Jesse Hieman, the son of Max Heiman who “developed Gus Blass Company into the largest department store” in Arkansas and the husband of Adele Blumenthal Heiman, passed away today.

1952: Today, “the American Legion announced that it disapproved of the “Moulin Rouge” the movie based on the life of artist Toulouse-Lautrec featuring Theodore Bikel.

1952: Birthdate of David KnopflerScottish-born guitarist, singer and songwriter who along with his brother Mark was part of Dire Straits.

1953(21st of Tevet, 5714)Poet Julian Tuwim passed away. Born in 1894 in Łódź, “he studied law and philosophy at Warsaw University. In 1919 Tuwim co-founded the Skamander group of experimental poets with Antoni Słonimski and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. He was a major figure in Polish literature and was also known for his contribution to children's literature.”

1953: “His Study Was Man” published today provided a complete review of Franz Boas: The Science in the Making by Melville J. Herskovtiz.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/12/27/92520886.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1953: In Detroit, Michigan, Reva (nee Kolodney) Taubman and shopping mall developer Adolph Alfred Taubman gave birth to Robert S. Taubman, the husband of Julia Reyes Taubman who followed in his father’s footsteps to become CEO of Taubman Centers.

1956(21stof Tevet, 5717): Fifty-six-year-old University of Chicago professor Dr. Ralph Marcus, “an authority on the Dead Scrolls passed away tonight after suffering a heart attack.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0363/ms0363.html

https://www.jstor.org/stable/542757?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

1957: In New York,  funeral services are scheduled to be held today at Temple Emanu-El for H.U.C. trained Rabbi Ephraim Frisch, the founder in 1915 of the New Synagogue and since 1948, the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, TX.

1958(16thof Tevet, 5719): Parashat Veyechi

1958: Today Max Raskin, Marquette University trained attorney who specialized primarily in labor law announced the formation of the “law firm of Raskin, Zubrensky and Padden” with Padden being his 29-year-old son in law Phillip Padden, the De Paul University trained attorney

1959(26thof Kislev, 5720): Second Day of Chanukah

1959: ABC broadcast “Gun City” an episode of “The Rebel” directed by Irvin Kershner with a script co-authored by Richard Levinson.

1960(6thof Tevet, 5721): The former Meta Pollak, who had married Paul Joseph Sachs with whom she had had three children passed away today.

1961(20th of Tevet, 5722): Eighty-year old Romanian born American author Konrad Bercovici, the husband of Naomi Librescu whose varied life included living in Paris during the Dreyfus Affair , being “one the regulars at the Algonquin Club and successfully winning a lawsuit in which he charged Charlie Chaplin with creating the film “The Great Dictator”  with ideas stolen from him passed away today.

1964: Elinor Bluemnthal married John Muir Gold.

1964: Art Modell’s Cleveland Browns defeated the Baltimore Colts in the NFL Championship Game at Cleveland Stadium.

1965: It was reported today that Dr. Salon Baron “professor emeritus of history at Columbia University’ has been elected President of the American Academy for Jewish Research, succeeding Professor Saul Lieberman.

1965: “Marat/Sade” by Peter Weiss opened at the Martin Beck Theatre starting a Broadway run that would last for 145 performances.

1965(4thof Tevet, 5726): Seventy-five year old Austrian-American architect and designer Frederick John Kiesler passed away today in NYC.

http://www.askart.com/artist/Frederick_John_Kiesler/81029/Frederick_John_Kiesler.aspx

1966: Birthdate of former professional football player and wrestler, Bill Goldberg.  In 1998, Goldberg did a Koufax when he refused to wrestle on Rosh Hashanah.

1967(25thof Kislev, 5768) Chanukah

1969(18thof Tevet, 5730): Parashat Vayechi

1969(18thof Tevet, 5730: One American was “killed in a shooting attack on a bus near Hebron.

1969: By 2 a.m., during Operation Rooster 53, when the paratroops had taken apart the radar station and prepared the various parts for the CH-53's, the two helicopters were called in from across the Red Sea. One CH-53 carried the communications caravan and the radar antenna, while the other took the heavier, four-ton radar itself. The two helicopters made their way back across the Red Sea to Israeli controlled territory.

1970(29thof Kislev, 5731): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1970: After 2,844 performances at the St. James Theatre, David Merrick’s “Holly Dolly” came to a close.

1970: The Golani Brigade took part in a retaliatory strike came against the village Yatar, a major guerrilla base.

1972: After two previews, a Broadway revival of “Purlie” with lyrics by Peter Udell, music by Gary Geld and directed by Philip Rose opened today, at the Billy Rose Theatre, where it ran for fourteen performances.

1973(2ndof Tevet, 5734): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1973: Bora Laskin completed her service as Pusine Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and took office as the 14th Chief Justice of Canada

1974: The Dear Abby Show ended its run on CBS radio after 11 years.  Dear Abby is the pen name for a Jewess from Iowa, who along with her sister became the twin queens of advice during the last half of the 20th century.

1974: Human rights activist Sergei Kovalev was arrested today in the Soviet Union.

1975(23rd of Tevet, 5736): Parashat Shemot

1975(23rd of Tevet, 5736: Just days before his 74thbirthday, Polish born Yiddish poet Yankev Parnas passed away today.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2018/08/yankev-parnas.html

1976: Malcom Toon left his post as U.S Ambassador to Israel.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported from Ismailia that the Begin-Sadat summit meeting made definite progress, despite the apparent Egyptian disappointment over the lack of an anticipated joint declaration of principles. While the US proposed a timely Israeli-Egyptian mediation, settlers at Ofra declared war on Begin's possible "occupied territories" concessions.

1978(27thof Kislev, 5739): Third Day of Chanukah

1978 (27thof Kislev, 5739): Seventy-seven-year-old Phil Meyers, chairman and founder of Standard Wine & Liquor Company of Woodside, Queens,” “the city's oldest licensed wholesale distributor of wines and spirits” and a leader “in the United Jewish Appeal and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies” who raised two daughters – Renee and Adrienne – with his wife Mae, passed away today.

1979: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Knots Landing” a prime time television soap opera created by Baltimore native David Jacobs.

1980(20thof Tevet, 5741): Parashat Shemot

1980(20thof Tevet, 5741): Eighty-three-year-old Herman Levin, the lawyer turned Broadway producer who gave us such hits as “My Fair Lady” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” passed away today.

1981(1stof Tevet, 5742): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh of Day of Chanukah

1981(1stof Tevet, 5742): Eighty-two-year-old movie producer Edwin Knopf passed away today.

1981: In this excerpt from his “Travel Advisory,” Robert J. Dunphy describes the “dig” at Bet Shean and provides historic perspective for what is being unearthed in modern day Israel.

The trumpets sound as the gladiator enters the arena. The crowd roars and cries for blood as the man-eating beasts are unleashed and the contest is about to begin. The scene is easy to envision in Bet Shean, Israel, where a Roman amphitheater is being unearthed. Built around 200 A.D., the arena served as the site for gladiatorial combat, circuses and sports contests for more than two centuries. The first-century historian Josephus, whose writings also detailed the dramatic story of Masada, also in present-day Israel, mentioned the existence of several amphitheaters in the area but that in Bet Shean is the only one that has been found to date. The elliptical structure is 120 yards long and 73 yards wide. The arena floor was below ground level, and a high wall protected spectators from the wild animals in the gladiatorial contests. The three front rows of seats were hewn from white limestone and above them were wooden seats. The outer wall was made of black basalt. The dig is situated several hundred yards from a Roman theater, which for years has been one of Israel's most impressive tourist attractions. With the discovery of the amphitheater, the entire area will be converted into a giant antiquities park. Bet Shean, about two hours by car from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, was the site of a Roman garrison and the principal city in the north of the country.

1982(11thof Tevet, 5743): Ninety-six-year-old Bavarian born Elsa Haas, the daughter of Joseph Schülein and Ida Schülein and the wife of Dr. Alfred Hass with whom she had two children -- Charlotte 'Lotti' Schüller and Gerhard Julius Haas – passed a way today in New York City.

1982: Frank Lautenberg was sworn in as a U.S Senator representing the state of New Jersey.

1985: Abu Nida, the Palestinian terrorist organization, kill eighteen people during attacks inside the airports in Rome and Vienna. According to some, the attack was a fallback.  The terrorists had really wanted to hijack El Al planes and destroy them over Tel Aviv (this is 16 years before 9/11).

1987:Three Palestinian guerrillas infiltrated a short distance into Israel from Jordan Friday night and were captured alive by Israeli troops after a shootout, the Israeli Army spokesman announced today. One of the guerrillas was wounded during the clash in a wheat field of an Israeli border settlement, but no Israeli soldiers or civilians were hurt, said the army spokesman, who released the account this afternoon.

1987: ''Furniture Making in East London: 1830 to 1980 '' an exhibition which is part of a celebration of London’s East End’s Jewish heritage comes to a close at Geffrey Museum

1988: Yossi Ahimeir, an aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, said today that the Prime Minister may ask the United States and the Soviet Union to sponsor Middle East peace talks. Mr. Ahimeir said in a telephone interview that Mr. Shamir would make Moscow's renewal of diplomatic relations a condition of his proposal. The Soviet Union broke ties with Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.

1989(29thof Kislev, 5750): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1990(10thof Tevet, 5751): Asara B’Tevet

1990: The Israel Philharmonic played two Wagner overtures under the direction of Daniel Barnboim.

1991(20th of Tevet, 5752): Seventy-two-year-old Eitan Livini, a member of the Irgun, member of the Knesset and father of Tzipi Livini passed away today.

1991: U.S. premiere of the “Naked Lunch” directed by David Cronenberg who also wrote the script, filmed by cinematographer Peter Suschitzky with music by Howard Shore.

1992(3rdof Tevet, 5753): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1992:The standoff between Lebanon and Israel over the fate of 415 Palestinian deportees trapped in a snow-covered valley in southern Lebanon, continued today as both sides again rejected appeals to allow relief agencies to deliver food or medicine..

1995(4th of Tevet, 5756): Eighty-four-year-old Shura Cherkassky passed away.  Born in the Ukraine in 1909, his family found refuge in the United States during the Russian Revolution.  The brilliant classical pianist performed almost until the end of his life.  

1997(28thof Kislev, 5758): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1997: Final broadcast of “Hee Haw” a long running rural based comedy and music television program whose producers included Bernie Brillstein was broadcast for the last time today.

1998: The New York Times Book Section includes a review of On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilderby Ed Sikov which tells the story of how a Jew born in a town south of Kracow became one Hollywood’s leading writers and directors.

1999(18th of Tevet, 5760):Ninety-four-year Leonard Goldstein passed away.  Born in 1905, he became President of ABC. He orchestrated the merger of his United Paramount Theatres with ABC in 1953 and he headed the merged company called American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres. The company was renamed American Broadcasting Companies in 1968. In 1974, Mr. Goldenson received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York." The Leonard H. Goldenson Theater at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences building in North Hollywood, California is named in his honor.

1999: Belizean rapper Shyne who adopted the name Moses Michael Lev when converted to Judaism and his girl were involved in a shooting at a Manhattan club which left three people injured and found him facing criminal charges that resulted in his being sentenced to prison for ten years.

2000: Release date for “Confusion of Genders” directed by Ilan Duran Cohen, the French born author who studied at the New York Film School

 

2000: “Tamir Goodman of Towson University recorded 9 points, 5 assists and 4 rebounds in 34 minutes in the Tigers’ 73-71 loss to the Wolverines.”

2001: Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer “appeared his morning to have won an election to the Labor Party” thus “extending the life of the broad coalition government.”

2002(22nd of Tevet, 5763): Terrorists broke into a dining hall at a yeshiva in Otneil, south of Hebron, and killed 4 students who were working in the yeshiva kitchen, and injured ten others. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

2003: The musical version of “A Christmas Carol with lyrics and a book by Lynn Ahrens and music by Alan Menken was performed for the last time at the Paramount Theatre in Madison Square Garden.

2004: A fire broke tonight in the “Commercial Block” of Cheyenne, Wyoming that began to consume the Idelman Building which had been built in 1884 by two brothers, Max and Abe Idelman” who used for their “wholesale liquor business.”

2005: “A Wounded Poet Who Sang the Crucible of a Generation” published today provided a review of Max Egremont’s Signified Sassoon: A Life that tells the tale of son of father from the wealthy Sephardic Sassoon clan and a mother who raised her son as a member of the Church England.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/books/a-wounded-poet-who-sang-the-crucible-of-a-generation.htm

2005: “Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein’s Strangest Theory,” published today described the impact of the paper published seventy years ago by Einstein, Boris Podlosky and Nathan Rosen that provided the cornerstone for the new field of quantum information.

2006: The exhibition of Jerusalem painter Maureen Fain at the Artura Studio in Jaffa comes to an end.

2006: Heavy snow fell on Jerusalem forcing the Egged bus company to shut down its routes “citing dangerous road conditions.  Snow began falling on the Golan Heights in the early morning hours and by evening reach as far south as Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev.  Although it was technically too late, many Israelis began humming that old standard “I’m Dreaming of Chanukah Ch-e-vair.” (The last sentence is mean to be funny.)

2006(6thof Tevet, 5767): One hundred two-year-old “Itche Goldberg, a champion of Yiddish who wrote and edited and taught his beloved language in the face of all those who said keeping Yiddish alive was a lost cause “passed away today. (As reported by Ari Goldman)

2007: In Anaheim, California, the USY International Convention comes to an end.

2008: In a ritual rarity, three Torah scrolls are used because of Shabbat, Chanukah and Rosh Chodesh Tevet.  The Prophetic readings are equally unusual due to Shabbat Chanukah, Machor Chodesh and Rosh Chodesh.

2008:Just days after the cabinet gave the military final approval to counter ongoing Palestinian rocket fire against communities in the western Negev; the IDF launched a massive operation, striking Hamas installations throughout the Gaza Strip

 

2008:The publisher of a disputed Holocaust memoir has canceled the book, adding the name Herman Rosenblat to an increasingly long line of literary fakers and bringing down with a crash his story - embraced by Oprah Winfrey, among others - of meeting his future wife at a Nazi concentration camp

2008 (30 Kislev 5769)Beber Vaknin, aged 57, was killed by missile in his hometown Netivot when he other literary and political figures, including those associated with her father’s generation, as well.

2009(10th of Tevet, 5770: Fast of the Tenth of Tevet

2009(10th of Tevet, 5770:  Yahrzeit of Judy Rosenstein (nee Levin)

2009: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Footnotes in Gazaby Joe Sacci, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth, and Power — A Dispatch From the Beach by Gerald Posner and Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic by Michael Scammell.

2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish authors including Goddess of the Market:Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller

2009:Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz is expected to deliver his recommendations to the Supreme Court about "mehadrin" bus lines - which designate separate seating for men and women - some residents of the capital plan to make their voices heard on the subject.

2009: The Yerushalmim movement, along with members of the New Israel Fund and Meretz, is scheduled to lead a demonstration against the continued existence of the “hehadrin” bus lines..

2009: The United Synagogue Youth (USY) International Convention opens in Chicago, IL.

2009: In “Sigmund Freud saved by Nazi admirer,” published today Richard Woods reviews The Escape of Sigmund Freud by David Cohen.

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was saved from Hitler’s persecution of the Jews by a long-standing Nazi who was fascinated with his work, a new book reveals.  The fate of Freud and his family in Vienna hung in the balance after Hitler’s forces took over Austria in 1938. The psychoanalyst was first protected, then helped to escape to Britain, by Anton Sauerwald, a Nazi who had been put in charge of his assets. In twists of Freudian complexity, Sauerwald was put on trial after the second world war accused of plundering the Freud family wealth — only to be saved after the intervention of one of Freud’s daughters. The full story has emerged thanks to research by David Cohen, author of The Escape of Sigmund Freud, published by JR Books. By the 1930s Freud was famous in Europe and the United States for his pioneering work on the unconscious. He had founded the International Psychoanalytical Association with Carl Jung and helped to start a publishing business. His success had brought financial rewards and the family lived comfortably in Vienna. However, the Nazis ordered all Jews to declare their wealth and asserted that “all Jewish assets are assumed to have been improperly acquired”. “Kommissars” were appointed to oversee the process. Sauerwald dealt with Freud. According to Cohen, he controlled not only the family assets, “but in effect their destiny”. Luckily, he was no ordinary Nazi. Although he had made bombs for the Nazi movement, he had also studied medicine, chemistry and law. At the University of Vienna he had been a student of Professor Josef Herzig, who often visited Freud to play cards. That friendship seems to have influenced Sauerwald but so, too, did Freud’s writings. “The books had an extraordinary impact on him,” Cohen writes, “an impact Sauerwald knew he must not let his Nazi superiors suspect.” It was a dangerous line to tread. While Sauerwald used to knock politely on Freud’s door, the SS barged in. At one point SS troops hauled off Anna Freud, one of Sigmund’s daughters, for interrogation. Cohen reveals: “Sauerwald did not disclose to his superiors that Freud had many secret bank accounts abroad. Instead, he took the evidence back to his own apartment, where he had a panzerkassette, a locked box for documents.” As tensions grew and war loomed, Freud decided to flee. To do so he needed an exit visa. For that he relied on Sauerwald. The Nazis wanted all the books of his publishing business to be destroyed. “Sauerwald did not want to see the books destroyed,” Cohen writes. “They were the root documents of psychoanalysis.” Instead, Sauerwald and an accomplice smuggled them to the Austrian national library, where they were hidden. Dismayed by an order to turn Freud’s home into an institute for the study of Aryan superiority, Sauerwald signed Freud’s exit visa. He also helped to raise money; in June 1938 Freud left Vienna on the Orient Express. Freud settled in London, telling one newspaper “all my money and property in Vienna is gone” — without mentioning his accounts elsewhere. In September 1939 he died of cancer. After the war suspicions arose that Sauerwald had made off with the family wealth. Harry Freud, a nephew of Sigmund and an officer in the US army, had Sauerwald arrested and put on trial. Sauerwald’s wife wrote to Anna Freud in London begging her to explain what Sauerwald had done. Anna replied: “There was not any doubt that your husband used his office as our appointed commissar in such a manner as to protect my father.” She also wrote to Harry Freud: “[The] truth is that we really owe our lives and our freedom to [Sauerwald]. Without him we would never have got away.” Sauerwald was released and lived until 1970. Cohen said: “There are three main reasons why Sauerwald was so keen to help Freud. He had been the devoted student of a man who had been very close friends with Freud. He understood just how important a man Freud was academically and, finally, I think a little bit of money may have changed hands down the line.” This weekend David Freud, the Tory peer and great-grandson of Sigmund, said: “I didn’t know about this until I read the book. It was a pretty ambiguous relationship. But I think it rings true that he helped Sigmund in the way suggested.”

2010: The USY International Convention is scheduled to open today in Orlando, FL.

2010: Today marks the second anniversary of the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, the IDF’s operation in Gaza which was aimed at stopping the daily rocket attacks by Gaza-based terrorists towards southern Israel.

2010: In King County (Seattle), twelve buses were scheduled to hit the streets carrying an ad reading “Israeli War Crimes: Your tax dollars at work” with an image of a group of children next to it, showing one little boy staring out at the viewer while the others gawk at a demolished building.

2010:An Israeli activist was sentenced to three months in jail today for his part in a 2008 protest by Tel Aviv cyclists opposed to the blockade of Gaza. The activist, Jonathan Pollak, is a 28-year-old leader of Anarchists Against the Wall.

2010:Israeli archaeologists said today they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans. A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.

2010: “Disaster Relief Group Still Finding A Need” published in today’s Cedar Rapids Gazette described the efforts to help the needy residents of Cedar Rapids who were displaced by the Floods of 2008.  Jeff Schneider, a member of Temple Judah, has played a leading role in the effort which has “delivered 10 semi-trailer loads of furniture” to people who literally lost everything.  Jeff started Temple Judah Disaster Relief which after two years of work is now faced with meeting the challenge as sources of funding in the community have dried up.  While Jeff and three of the volunteers who inspired him – Tom Hill, Marie Hill and Rob Hill – continue to look for in-kind donations of old furniture, etc. they have not made any appeal for funds although volunteer contributions would be greatly appreciated. 

2010: A two-day symposium on the history of the Jews in Indonesia being held at the University of Haifa came to an end to today. “The gathering included many firsthand accounts by former community members…who spoke about what it was like being part of a tiny Jewish minority in what is now the most populous Muslim country in the world.”

2010(27thof Tevet, 5771): Ninety-three year old “Alfred E. Kahn, a Cornell University economist best known as the chief architect and promoter of deregulating the nation’s airlines, despite opposition from industry executives and unions alike” passed away today. (As reported by Robert D. Hershey, Jr.)

2010(27thof Tevet, 5771): Joan Rodker, a longtime left-wing activist in Great Britain who had contact over decades with writers such as Doris Lessing, Jessica Mitford and others passed away today http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/feb/09/joan-rodker-obituary

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/8277253/Joan-Rodker.html

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00170/hrc-00170.html

2011(1stof Tevet, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2011(1stof Tevet, 5772): Eighty-three-year-old “Helen Frankenthaler the lyrically abstract painter whose technique of staining pigment into raw canvas helped shape an influential art movement in the mid-20th century and who became one of the most admired artists of her generation” passed away today. (As reported by Grace Glueck)

2011: In “Honoring All Who Saved Jews” published today Eva Weisel described her Holocaust experience and the courage of  Khaled Abdul Wahab, an Arab Muslim who was “rescuer.”

2011: In Iowa City. Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its annual Chanukah party this evening.

2011: The Sephardic Music Festival in NYC is scheduled to come to an end.

2011: “Women Unchained” is scheduled to be shown at the Limmud Conference in London, UK

2011:Today, President Shimon Peres called on Israelis to attend a demonstration against religious fanaticism, after two days of rioting by ultra-Orthodox extremists in Beit Shemesh.

2011:Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said today that the Israeli army will not excuse religious soldiers from official army events that feature female soldiers singing.

2012: “Babylon Blues” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2012: The JCC in Manhattan is scheduled to host “Israeli Dance with Tamar.”

2012:In a whirlwind of legal arguments, wrestling and threats to change the law to make it easier to disqualify Knesset candidates, the High Court of Justice heard Balad MK Haneen Zoabi’s petition to be reinstated for the current campaign.

 

 

2012: In a fierce excoriation that brought Israel’s subterranean racial tension to the surface for the first time in this election season, Aryeh Deri of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party today lashed out at the Yisrael Beytenu party’s chief, Avigdor Liberman, claiming that he and his Likud-Yisrael Beytenu list were on a crusade against Sephardi politicians.

 

2012:Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who replaces the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, was sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden at 2:36pm ET. 

 

2013: “Hunting Elephants” and “The Killing of Sister George” are scheduled to be shown today at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was released from hospital late tonight after being treated for sinus problems

 

2013: Gaza's only power plant ground to a halt again on today, only 12 days after being brought back online following a 7 week shutdown due to fuel shortages which officials blamed on the Israelis but which were really a result of Egyptians shutting down the tunnels through which fuel has been brought into the Hamas controlled territory.

 

2014(5th of Tevet, 5775): Parashat Vayigash

 

2014(5th of Tevet, 5775): Three days after his 89th birthday, American pianist Claude Frank passed away today. (As reported by Anthony Tommasini)

 

2014(5th of Tevet, 5775): Ninety-one year old Chanoch (Hans) Seligman, a native of Chomutov, a town which had been part of the Sudentenland, and the son of Emil and Irma Seligman passed away today in Kefar Sava

 

2014: The Jerusalem Opera is scheduled to perform “Figaro” by Mozart at Ashdod with the Ashdod Symphony conducted by Omeri Arieli.

 

2014: “The Smurfs” and “The Chaos Within” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: “An apartment in a Jerusalem neighborhood was firebombed this evening, causing some damage to part of the home. The attack follows a firebombing that injured an 11 year old girl who was riding in a car with her father.

 

2014: A Palestinian baby collapsed while crossing the border between the West Bank and Jordan, prompting the IDF to send a helicopter to evacuate the child to a Jerusalem hospital, effectively saving his life.” (As reported by Itay Blumentahl)

 

2015(15th of Tevet, 5776): Ninety-three year old Oscar winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler passed away today. (As reported by John Anderson)

 

2015: The New York Times features books by Jewish authors or of special interest to Jewish readers including Emblems of the Passing World: Poems After Photographs By August Sander by Adam Kirschand the recently released paperback publication of Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits — to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life by Gretchen Rubin.

 

2015: “Orchestra of Exiles” a documentary about Polish violinist Bronislaw Humberman “whose extraordinary efforts saved hundreds of Jews from the approaching Holocaust” is scheduled to be shown at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA.

 

2015: Israeli artist “one of the pioneers of middle eastern music in the Arabic and Turkish genres” is scheduled to perform at BB King Blues Club.

 

2015(14th of Tevet, 5776): Yahrzeit of Pinchas Rutenberg founder of the Israel Electric Corporation.

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_14.html

 

2016(27th of Kislev, 5777): Third Day of Chanukah

 

2016(27th of Kislev, 5777): Ninety-two-year-old “Joel Sollender a World War II POW who appeared in television ads for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign” passed away today.

 

 

2016: The funeral for Libby Bucksbaum, the wife of Arnold Bucksbaum, is scheduled to take place in Cedar Rapids, IA, followed by burial at Eben Israel Cemetery.

 

2016: “Chanukah at the Riverwalk” the biggest community event sponsored by Chabad Lubavitch of Louisiana is scheduled to take place this evening including lighting  of the region’s largest Chanukiah built by Isak Borenstein of blessed memory. (For more see the Crescent Jewish News, the leading source of Jewish news in the Crescent City and along the Bayous of the Gulf Coast)

 

2016: At a “Vodka and Latkes Party” YNY is scheduled to  “present the Ternovka Ensemble, a new collaboration between renowned Yiddish singer Zhenya Lopatnik (who recently relocated to New York from Kharkiv, Ukraine) and tsimblist (hammered dulcimer) player Pete Rushefsky.”

 

2016:  Its official – This Day in Jewish History is one of the “Top Jewish Blogs and Websites on the Web” as chosen by Feedspot Blog Reader for 2016

https://www.facebook.com/This-Day-in-Jewish-History-146451285535179/notifications/?section=activity_feed&subsection=mention&target_story=S%3A_I100136786801077%3A727082424106507

 

2017: Today, “The Jewish Music Research Centre joined with the National Sound Archive of the National Library of Israel in celebrating the life of Dr. Tzipora H. Jochsberger, the pioneering German-Israeli musicologist who passed away at the age of 96 in October.”

http://jewish-music.huji.ac.il/content/tzipora-jochsberger

 

2017: Mona’s is scheduled to host a “Late-Night Kelzmer Jam Session” as part of Yiddish New York.

2017: Yiddish New York is scheduled to host “an evening of song and music to celebrate the legacy of late, visionary singer-scholar, Adrienne Cooper.”

2017(9thof Tevet, 5778): According to Tradition, ninth of Tevet is the Yahrzeit of Ezra.

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_9.html

2017: “A year-end report” conducted by the Taub Center which was “released today found that the cost of living in Israel is among the highest of developed nations.”

2018: Award winning concert pianist Eliah Zabaly is scheduled to perform this evening in “Mal’ha, Jerusalem” this evening.

2018: Yiddish New York is scheduled to host a series of lectures and teen and youth programs culminating in “the final student concert” this afternoon.

2018: “The Squirrel Hill JCC Kaufman Dance Studio” is scheduled to an evening of Israeli dancing this evening.

2018: In an example of “tikkun olam” in Memphis, TN, members of the Sisterhood of Temple Israel are scheduled to gather this afternoon to “knit bears for children infected/affected with HIV/AIDS in emerging nations.”

2019(29thof Kislev, 5780): Fifth Day of Chanukah

2019: Israel coped with aftermath of its first snowfall of the season and the flooding in north that resulted from “torrential rains.”

2019: In Natick, MA, the Bacon Free Library is scheduled to host “PJ Library Chanukah Mitzvah Meetup and Story Time”

2019: In San Francisco, Sherith Israel is scheduled to host “Hanukkah Klezmer and Comedy,” a “community dinner with musician Peter Bonos and stand-up comedian Alicia Dattner.”

2020: YNY is scheduled to host lunchtime concert with Cookie Segelstein and Josh Horowitz and in the evening the “Ninth Annual Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Concert and Award” followed by a “Yiddish Karaoke Bar.”

2020: In partnership with the American Israel Friendship League, Israel’s Office of Cultural Affairs in North American is scheduled to present a program that “will include a conversation between Vertigo’s Artistic Director and Co-Founder, Noa Wertheim and Joan Finkelstein, Executive Director for the Harkness Foundation for Dance in New York, moderated by Wayne L. Firestone, Executive Director of America-Israel Friendship League.”

2020: NFTY Northeast is scheduled to present its three-day December Institute which begins this moring with a “Kesher Brunch.”

 

 


This Day, December 28, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 28

1235: A ritual murder massacre at Fulda resulted in the death of 32 Jews. The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire established an investigation at Hagenau (located in modern Alsac) to confirm or disprove the charges. After hearing various experts, he declared that since Jews are prohibited from eating animal blood, they would surely be banned from using human blood. He forbade anyone from accusing Jews of this charge. Who would have expected such logical conclusion from this particular source?  Of course, logic does not trump anti-Semitism and the blood libel continues to this day.

1703: Mustafa II, Ottoman Sultan passed away.  During his reign, the Turks conquered Belgrade and the Jews returned to the city.  Mustafa continue the practice of his predecessors and employed Jews a court physicians including Doctor Tobias Cohen and Doctor Israel Koenigland

1712: In Livorno, Tuscany, Judah Moses Raphael Montefiore and Sarah Montefiore gave birth to Moses Vita-Haim Montefiore who settled in England and was the husband of Esther Hannah Magood Montefiore

1753(3rd of Tevet, 5514): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1757(17th of Tevet, 5518): Moses Ben Aaron also known as Moses Lwow who was embroiled in controversy between Frederick William I and the elders of the Berlin Jewish community and who later successfully served as chief rabbi of Frankfort-on-the-Oder passed away today while serving as “Landesrabbiner" of Moravia

1769(29th of Kislev, 5530): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1772(2nd of Tevet. 5533): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1776(18th Tevet, 5537): Parashat Vayechi

1777(28th of Kislev, 5538): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1777: Dorcas Harrison and Thomas Williams gave birth to William Williams, the husband of Phebe Harrison and father of William Williams, Jr.

1779: Jacob de Beer “was employed today by the Dutch East India Company

1782: In Newport, RI, Jochabed Levy and Moses Mendes Seixas gave birth to Abigail Seixas.

1788: In Prague, Israel Landau and Serel Duschenes gave birth to printer, publisher, and lexicographer Moses Israel Landau, the husband of Rivka Landau and the grandson of Ezekiel Landau.

1791(2nd of Tevet, 5552): 8th day of Chanukah

1794: Birthdate of Charleston, SC native Rachel Salomon, the wife of David Lewis and the mother of Judith and Rachel Lewis.

1795: In Charleston, SC, Sarah and Abraham Moise gave birth to Rachel Moise, the mother Jacqueline Ellen Levy.

1796(28th of Kislev, 5557): Fourth Day of Chanukah observed for the last time during the presidency of George Washington.

1798: Eliza Judah and New York native Moses Myers gave birth to Augusta Myers, the wife of Philip I. Cohen with whom she had eight children.

1799(30th of Kislev, 5560): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1799: In Germany, Schiene and Moses Froehlich gave birth to Levy Froehlich, the husband of Getta Katz and the father of Joseph, Regina, Gerson and Moses Froehlich.

1800(12th of Tevet, 5561): Aaron Philip Hart, considered to be “the father of Canadian Jewry” passed away.

1802: In Strasbourg, Alsace, France Adelaide Cerfbeer and Auguste Ratisbonne gave birth to Théodor Ratisbonne a member of a prominent Jewish banking family who was baptize in 1826, ordained in 1830 and who founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion.

1811: Civil rights were extended to Jews in Frankfurt, one of the most venerable Jewish communities in Europe. The change was initiated by a number of distinguished Jews including Meyer Anschel Rothschild; the result was that the New Duchy of Frankfort passed a law granting Jews "Civic rights and privileges equally with other citizens." The signing only took place after Rothschild and his co-religionist agreed to pay 400,000fl to the French official making the decision.

1815(26th of Kislev, 5576): Second Day of Chanukah

1815: Mordecai ben Samuel Nathan married Zischa bat Moshe Israel at the Western Synagogue.

1825: Birthdate of Jindřich Opper, the native of Boheima who gained fame as Henri Blowitz, the naturalized Frenchman who became a journalist and diplomat who covered the Franco-Prussian War and the Congress of Berlin.

1827(10th of Tevet, 5588): Asara B’Tevet

1827: Birthdate of German native Morritz Nelki, the father of Julius Nelki.

1828: Birthdate of Joseph (Josef) Ritter von Weilin the native of Tetin who became a note Viennese dramatist and historian.

1828: Having passed away on Shabbat, Myer Hayman was buried today at the Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1828(22nd of Tevet, 5589): Forty-five-year-old Judith Jacobs, the German first wife and Samuel Ottenheimer and the mother of Jette Ottenheimer passed away today.

1828: In Kent Road, London, Amelia Jacbos and Daniel Levy gave birth to Catherine Levy.

1830: Birthdate of German native Augusta Lasker, the wife of Samuel Lasker, who settled in Little Rock where she was the mother to Esther, Bettie, Harry Sallie and Henry Lasker.

1831: In Württemberg, Germany, Bernard Frankfurter, the son of Moses Levi Frankfurter and Mirjam Landauer and his wife, Esther Frank, gave birth to Nannett Frankfurter

1832: John C. Calhoun, who as Secretary of State appointed philo-Semite Warder Cresson (and future convert to Judaism) to serve as U.S. Consul to Jerusalem completed his term as Vice President of the United States today.

1833: Joseph Moses Levy, the chief proprietor of the Sunday Times and his wife Esther (née Cohen) gave birth to Edward Levy-Lawson Burnham who was put in charge of the Daily Telegraph which was deliberately priced at one penny, making it the cheapest and the largest circulated paper in Britain, surpassing the Times. 

https://spartacus-educational.com/Jlawson.htm

1836: South Australia and Adelaide are founded.  Jews were among the earliest settlers.   Among them may have been Solomon Emanuel who would become a successful merchant was convicted of housebreaking in 1817 and sentenced to “seven years of transportation” and his brother Vaiben who had been convicted of larceny at the same time.

1839: Phoebe Simmons and Abraham Marks gave birth to Sarah Marks.

1842: Samuel Solomon married Rosetta Hart today at Canterbury, Kent.

1843: In Vienne, Moritz Moses Jacob von Goldschmidt and Anna Netti von Goldschmidt gave birth Salomon Goldschmidt.

1843(5thof 5604): Sixty-three-year-old David Cromelien, the Amsterdam native passed away today in Philadelphia, PA.

1844(18thof Tevet, 5605): Parashat Vayehci

1845: Three days after he had passed away, David Hart was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1846: Iowa enters the Union as the 29th state. “Iowa was reported to have suffered an ‘invasion’ of Jewish peddlers; about a hundred of them arrived in the first decade after statehood.  The peddlers who hailed from Eastern Europe had one center, those from German another.  The first congregation arose in 1855 in Keokuk which the ‘Eastern European’ center.” Iowa’s two most famous Jews were born in Sioux City and are known to the world as Dear Abbey and Ann Landers. Until 2008, Iowa was home to the largest kosher slaughtering operation in the United States. 

1849: Birthdate of Saul Abdoolah Joseph, the husband of Sophia Joseph, who as buried in the Happy Valley Jewish Cemetery in Hong Kong when he passed away in 1906.

1851: In New York August Belmont, who was Jewish, and Caroline Sllidell gave birth to U.S. diplomat and politician Perry Belmont. Belmont led the life a privileged, well-connected gentile.

1852: Henry FitzRoy, the son-in-law of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, became Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department.

1852:Lord Palmerston, who as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had come to the defense of David Pacifico which led him to make a celebrated speech which concluded that all British subjects ought to be able to say, as did citizens of ancient Rome, "Civis Romanus sum" ("I am a citizen of Rome"), and thereby receive protection from the British government” began serving as Home Secretary today.

1856: Birthdate of Thomas Woodrow Wilson.  To the world, Wilson is famous for the New Freedom, his leadership of America during World War I and the Fourteen Points.  For Jews, his greatest claim to fame was naming Louis Brandeis as a Supreme Court Justice. Wilson was also the first President to publicly endorse a national Jewish philanthropic campaign. In a letter to Jacob Schiff, on November 22, 1917, Wilson called for wide support of the United Jewish Relief Campaign which was raising funds for European War relief.

1859: Angelina Levy and Edward Ludwig Goetz gave birth to Lucy Esther Goetz.

1859: Fifty-nine-year-old British historian, MP and Cabinet Minister Thomas Babington Macaulay who in 1830 “spoke in favor of Robert Grant’s bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities” passed away today.

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/people/macaulay.htm

1859: In the United Kingdom Edward Ludwig Goetz and the former Angelina Levy gave birth to their first child, Lucy Esther Goetz who would not live to see her second birthday.

1859: Today, Congregation Beth El which had been “organized as an orthodox synagogue in 1854” which makes “the oldest Jewish house of worship” in the Lone Star State, “obtained a charter for the Hebrew Congregation” which had 22 members from the City of Houston.

1860: The Jewish Messenger publishes an editorial by Samuel Mayer Isaacs supporting the Union.  “The Union...has been the source of happiness for our ancestors and ourselves. Under the protection of the freedom guaranteed us by the Constitution, we have lived in the enjoyment of full and perfect equality with our fellow citizens. We are enabled to worship the Supreme Being according to the dictates of conscience; we can maintain the position to which our abilities entitle us, without our religious opinions being an impediment to advancement. This Republic was the first to recognize our claims to absolute equality, with men of whatever religious denomination. Here we can sit 'each under his vine and fig tree, with none to make him afraid.'”

 

1862: Cesar J. Kaskel received an order from Captain and Provost Marshall L.J. Waddell informing him that “in pursuance of General Order No. 11…you are hereby ordered to leave the city of Paducah, Kentucky, within twenty-four hours after receiving this order.”  (As described by Jonathan Sarna)

1862: In Bokshsa, Poland, “Ephraim Rosenfeld and Rachel Wilchinsky” gave birth to “Moshe Jacob Alter” later known as Morris Rosenfeld, the sweat shop tailor and diamond cutter turned journalist who became editor of the Jewish World and a delegate to several Zionist Congresses and raised a family with his wife Bella Guttenberg.

https://www.poemhunter.com/morris-rosenfeld/biography/

 

1863: In San Francisco, Hannah (Marks) Solomons and Gershom Seixas Solomons gave birth University of California trained attorney and author Lucius L. Solomons, a trustte of the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives and a member of Temple Emanuel who was the husband of Helen Franks.

1863: In Germany, Benjamin Jaffa and his wife gave birth to Nathan Jaffa who in 1878 came to the United States where he eventually settled in what is now the state of New Mexico where, among other things he served as a regent of the University of New Mexico and Mayor of Santa Fe while raising a son, Benjamin with his wife Esther.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jaffa-2

 

 

1864(29th of Kislev, 5625): Fifth Day of Chanukah

 

1864: In Taurogen, Russia, Isaac Epstein and his wife gave birth to Jacob Epstein the husband of Lena Weinberg who was the “founder and proprietor of the Baltimore Bargain House” as well as the Director of the Hebrew Benevolent Society and the Hebrew Friendly Inn and Aged Home.

 

1864: In San Francisco, Hannah Marks and Gershom Siexas Solomons gave birth to Lucius L. Solomons the California lawyer who married Helen Frank, served as President of the San Francisco World’s Fair Association and held several positions of Jewish communal leadership including grand president, District No. 4, Independent Order of B’nai B’rith.

 

1865(10th of Tevet, 5628): Asara B’Tevet observed for the first time during the President of Andrew Johnson.

1866: In Cologne, Germany, textile merchant Joseph Wallach and the former Marianne Levy gave birth to Dr. Moshe Wallach, brought modern techniques  to Jerusalem where he founded and directed Shaare Zedek Hospital for almost half a century.

1870: Birthdate of Abraham Ber Goldenson, the native of Lithuania who “served the Nusach Hari shul, St. Louis, Missouri as their head rabbi for over 13 years from 1918 to 1931.”

1872(28th of Kislev, 5633): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1872: In Poland, Bertha Zippora Rosen and Baruch Emanuel Cassen gave birth to Henry Meyer Cassen who in 1885 came to the United States where “he worked in sweatshops and as a telegraph messenger” before becoming “a clothing cutter” who became the Secretary of the Utopia Land Company and the husband of Bessie Freed.

 

1873: It was reported today that Anshe Chesed, one of New York’s oldest and most traditional congregations is merging with Temple Adath Jeshrurn, one of the city’s leading Reform congregation. Anshe Chesed is commonly known as the Norfolk Street Congregation.

 

1875(30th of Kislev, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1875: In New York City, Frederic and Evelyn (Nathan) Brandeis gave birth to Columbia trained physician Juliuan Walter Brandeis, “the chief of Clinic in medicine at Lebanon Hospital, the President of the New York Physician Association and husband of Pauline Florence Aron.

1875: In Teddington, Middlesex, Bessie Ellis and Isidore Levaux gave birth Montague Vivian Ellis Levaux.

1877: Frdericka and Michel Schwabacher gave birth Lt. Herman Shaw who died of his wounds in France while serving with the Royal Engineers.

1878(2nd of Tevet, 5639): 8th & final day of Chanukah

 

1879: William Waddington, who had provided Laurence Oliphant with a letter addressed to the Sultan expressing support for Oliphant’s plan for large-scale settlement of Jews in Palestine which would improve the economy of the Ottoman Empire, completed his term as the 42nd Prime Minister of France.

 

1881: In Rochester, NY, founding of the Eureka Club whose members included Joseph Michaels, Charles L. Blum, Herman C. Cohn and Charles L. Blum.

 

1881: In Moscow, Jacob and Theodosia Beloussoff gave birth cellist Evesi Beloussoff, who in 1923 came to America where “he made over 100 appearances in a transcontinental tour and married Hely Levy Silver two years later.

 

1882: Eighty-two-year-old German orientalist and student of Semitic languages and who in 1861 authored a textbook of the Hebrew language ("Lehrbuch der hebräischen Sprache") passed away today.

 

1883: Birthdate of Lithuanian Israel Isidor Mattuck who was ordained at Hebrew Union College before moving to Great Britain where served as the rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London for 35 years.

 

1883: In Sharon, PA, Ezekiel and Ida (Rabinowitz) Warshawsky gave birth to Cleveland and Paris trained artist Abel George Warshawasky, the husband of Valentine Francoise Landelle.

http://www.artnet.com/artists/abel-george-warshawsky/

 

 

 

1884: “Louis Kossuth Living” published today dispelled the recent rumors of his death while describing the accomplishments of his life.

 

1884: Three days after he had passed away, 65 year old Michael Nathan, the husband of Sarah Green and the father of Simon Nathan, was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

 

 

1885: Fifty-four year old Jules Glaser, a leading Austrian jurist and statesman passed away today. Glaser had converted from Judaism to Christianity because the attitude of his countrymen made it very difficult to advance professionally and because the government would not hire him because he was Jewish.

 

1885: It was reported today that there were 80,000 Jews living in New York City; another 20,000 living in Brooklyn; and no more than 15,000 living in Philadelphia.  At the same time, there are approximately two million Jews living in Russia.

 

1885: “The Proposed Jewish College” published today described the decision of Philadelphia’s Rabbi Sabato Morais “to visit the rabbis and influential Jews in New York and Brooklyn” to discuss the need to establish a college “to offset the liberal tendencies of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.”

 

1885: Based on information that first appeared in The Argonaut, it was reported today that Benjamin Disraeli and his wife attended a dinner where Mrs. Disraeli sat next to Bernal Osborne.  When the men were alone after dinner, Osborn said to Disraeli, “Good God!  What possessed you to marry that woman?”  After a lengthy pause Disraeli replied, “Partly, Osborne, for reason which you are incapable of understanding – gratitude!” (Like Disraeli, Osborne was a Sephardic Jew and English poltician who had converted to Christianity.)

 

1885: “The Source of Republican Ideas” published today provided a lengthy review of The Origin of Republican Form of Government in the United Statesof America by Oscar Straus, leading Jewish businessman who was active in the Republican Party.

 

1886: Birthdate of Chicago “furniture merchant” Aaron D. Bernstein

1887: The Brooklyn Board of Estimates met today and awarded funds to a variety of public charities including $111.68 to the Hebrew Benevolent Asylum and  $78.80 to the Hebrew Benevolent Association

 

1888: Pianist Moriz Rosenthal is scheduled to perform this afternoon at the Academy of Music.

1888

 

1888: “To His Hebrew Brethren” published today provided Elliott F. Shepard’s description of Palestine which he had visited in 1885.  The climax of the trip came when his party visited Jerusalem a city of 210 ten acres surrounded by walls that were 32 feet high. It seemed odd that a city that was now “the size of a New Hampshire farm” had once been allegedly home to 2,300,000 souls. (Where Shepard found that figure is not disclosed in his discourse.)

 

1888: It was reported today that the Industrial School at 177 East Broadway is an institution supported by the Jews of New York City that currently provides different kinds of manual training to anywhere from 130 to 150 girls so that they may “support themselves.”

1889(5th of Tevet, 5650): Seventy year old Jacob Lagowitz passed away today in New York City.  Born at Frankfort in 1819, he came to the United in 1849 and started a company that manufactured trunks and luggage. He was a Director of the First National Bank of Newark and leaves behind a widow and seven daughters.

1890: In New York City, “Abraham S. and Fannie (Charness) gave birth to John Marshall Law School trained attorney who practiced law in Chicago and was so active in the city’s Jewish affairs that he received the Julius Rosenwald Memorial Award in 1970.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-09-27-8603120347-story.html

1890: “Coroner Ferdinand Levy” is scheduled to “deliver a lecture this evening before the Russian-American Hebrew Association at Harris’s Assembly Rooms on East Broadway” entitled “The Jew as a Citizen.”

1891(27thof Kislev, 5652): Third Day of Chanukah

1891: Birthdate of Cracow native Samuel B. Amsterdam who lived in Philadelphia and Newark, NJ.

1891: Among the charities that received a portion of the “$75,000 in excise moneys” allocated by the Brooklyn Board of Estimates today were Hebrew Benevolent Society of Brooklyn, $97.22: Hebrew Benevolent Association, $65.20; Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society, $390.

1892: At 3 p.m. Rabbi Leopold Winter began the ceremonies dedicating the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum’s new facility with a prayer followed by a song performed by the orphans. Among the speakers will Dr. Edward McGlynn.

1892: In Plotsk, Wolf Krotoshinsky and his wife gave birth to Abraham Krotoshinsky who earned a Distinguished Service Cross for his service in World War I where he was a member of the 77th division and part of the so-called Lost Battalion.

1892: Birthdate of New York native and NYU trained CPA Louis Weinstein who was active with the YMHA.

1893(19thof Tevet, 5654): Seventy-two year old Adolf Jellinik, the husband of Rosalie Bettelheim who had died the year before and who had served as the rabbi in Leipzig before assuming a similar position at the Leopoldstädter Tempel in Vienna passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_10067.html

1893: The second annual meeting American Jewish Historical Society comes to a close.  The two day event was held at the Columbia College Library Building in New York City. Among the papers presented today was “The Family History of the Rev. David Machado” in which Taylor Phillips “traced the family back to the time of the Inquisition, when of the members of the family who was the physician at the Court of Portugal was imprisoned by the Inquisitors for professing the Jewish faith” for which he was ultimately burned at the stake.

1894: In Vienna, Rosa Volk, the daughter of Leopold and Sofie Sara Pick and her husband Alexander Volk gave birth to Margarite Volk.

1894: Three days after she had passed away, 71 year old Maria (Jacobs) Freedman, the wife of Abraham Freedman and the mother of Emanuel and Israel Freedman was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1894: Sixty-three-year-old James Graham Fair on of the Comstock Lode “silver kings” and United States Senator from Nevada passed away today in San Francisco leaving behind numerous bequests including “$25,000 to the Hebrew asylums in that city.”

1894: Two days after she had passed away, 60-year-old Hannah Abrahams, “the widow of Yitzhak Meir Abrahams,” was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1895: As of today 14 of the 23 Jews who died in Baltimore at the fire the Front Street Theatre where Schongold and Tansman production of the Jewish opera “Alexander” was being performed including 50 year old Louis Amolsky, ten year old Louis Cohen, 14 year old Ida Friedman, seven year old Theresa Goldstein and her 4 year old brother, forty year old Mr. Levenstein, 20 year old Lena Lewis, 15 year old Sarah Rosen, 25 year old Jacob Rosenthal (a tailor),  12 year old boy only identified as Salzberg, 16 year old Sarah Siegel, 14 year old Ida Silberman, a tailor simply identified as Wolf and 21 year old Jennie Hinkle who was trampled death.

1897: The Relief Committee of the Board of Guardians is schooled to meet today at 3 3:30 p.m. in London.

1898: Birthdate of Joseph Ginsburg, the native of Kharkov who was the father of French multi-talented artist Serge Gainsbourg.

1898: Birthdate of Bialystok native Mischa Spoliansky, the son of an opera singer,  whose career eventually led him to Great Britain where he pursued a career as a composer for several major motion pictures.

http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/long-bio/Mischa-Spoliansky

1899: Herzl meets with Oscar Straus, the American ambassador to Constantinople

1899: Birthdate of Jack I Poses, the native of Russia who came to the United States in 1911 where he graduated from NYU and founded the Parfums D’Orsay Company.

1900: Sixty-five-year-old Yale University trained Congregational pastor turned author and Cornell University professor of American history and “corresponding member” of the American Jewish Historical Society, Moses Coit Taylor passed away today.

1901: At the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basil, Max Nordau delivers a speech in which he called upon the Jewish people to “build a social structure of their own and to learn to know themselves sufficiently to think out their own future.”  He lamented the fact that wealthy Jews too often turned their back on their less fortunate co-religionists and called upon these “millionaires” to support the causes of the Jewish people.

1902:  In New York City, Ignatz Adler, “a jewelry salesman” and his wife Clarissa, “a former schoolteacher gave birth philosopher, author and teacher Mortimer J Adler whose accomplishments included helping in the creation of “The Great Books of the Western World” program who converted to Catholicism before his

1902: In Bucharest, Ecaterina Gaster Revici and Tulius Revici gave birth Melania Iancu

1903: The Times of London Moscow correspondence said that “information from a trustworthy source at Kishineff confirms “the reports of a plot to wipe more of the Kishineff Jews during the Russian Christmas holidays” which will be celebrated on January 7.

1903: It was reported today that a correspondent of The American Hebrew has warned “the charitable against wasting “their money be responding to the heartrending appeals for aid, usually accompanied by little olive wood boxes…sent out in great numbers to all parts of the world by some very businesslike beggars who have their headquarters in Jerusalem and are living well by the description of woes which they neither share nor remedy.”

1904: It was reported today that the newly enacted protection of “the Jews and other unorthodox sects” is a victory for the reformers in Russia.

1904: It is reported from Berlin today “that proclamations have been distributed in Ekaternioslaff calling on the Christians to destroy the Jews, who it is declared, caused the war with Japan.”

1905(30th of Kislev, 5666): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1905: Baron Michelham (verbally Lord) /mɪtʃ.ləm/, of Hellingly in the County of Sussex, a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom created today for the banker, businessman and philanthropist Sir Herbert Stern, 1st Baronet who was head of the firm Herbert Stern & Co

1905: “At a meeting of the National Committee for the Relief of Sufferers by Russian Massacre held” today” at Temple Emanu-El - the first such meeting since it was decided to collect a fund of $2,000,000 – Treasurer Jacob H. Schiff read a communication from the Foreign Relief Committee made up of delegates from London and Berlin” saying that it was impossible for them so visit “all the disturbed centers in Russia” on account of the conditions in that strife-torn country.

1905: Henry B. Greenthal, a manufacturer of clothing at 7 Lafayette Place in New York hosted a dinner tonight at Pacific Hall tonight, the anniversary of his birth, for 375 employees and friends including his colleague Isaac Rubenstein who has worked with him for 25 years.

1906: Birthdate of Ann Rosenblatt, the native of Omaha, Nebraska who gained fame composer and lyricist Ann Ronell “best known for the jazz standard ‘Willow Weep for Me.’”

1906: Seventy-nine-year-old Solomon Buber who combined life of mercantile pursuits with a devotion to Jewish scholarship that included “fifty years of bringing to life the hidden treasures of Israel’s literature” with a special emphasis on “the careful editing of Midrashic literature” passed away today in his native Lemberg.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Buber_Salomon

1906: The Independent Workmen’s Circle of America, Inc. with offices in Boston, MA, was organized today.

1906: The first interment took place today at Mount Carmel Cemetery which has been serving the Jewish community now for more than a century.

1906: Seventy-three-year-old Amsterdam native “Isaac Mozes Pereira Mendoza”, the husband of Sara Isaac Monis with whom he had had eight children was buried today,

1907: Birthdate of Ze’ev Woolf Goldman the native of Galicia who gained fame as Israeli linguist and president of The Academy of the Hebrew Language Ze’ev Ben’Haim

1907(23rd of Tevet, 5668): Parashat Shemot

1907(23rd of Tevet, 5668): Twenty-seven-year-old Cora Kaufman Khan, the daughter of David Kaufman and wife of Bernard Kahn passed away today after which she was buried at the Hebrew Friendship Cemetery in Baltimore, MD.

1908: It was reported today that the Grand Duchy of Finland is taking part in of it “periodic expulsions of Hebrews.” Under Finnish law, Jews are denied the rights of citizenship including the right buy and own land and are only “permitted to reside in Finland under close restrictions.” The Finnish legislature has refused to consider a measure that would abolish “Jewish disabilities.”

1908: It was reported today that a bill has been introduced in the Finnish Legislature that contains a clause forbidding the method used by Jews for slaughtering kosher meat.

1909(16th of Tevet, 5670): Jankel Kaplan passed away today.

1910(27th of Kislev, 5671): Third Day of Chanukah

1911:  Birthdate of Sam Levenson who parlayed his experiences as a teacher in New York into a career as a humorist and television star during the 1950’s.

1911: Birthdate of Felicja Blumental. Born in Warsaw, this Polish-born Brazilian pianist would be known for her performances of 19th-century rarities and music by contemporary composers

1912: The National Council of Young Israel convened for the first time.  The Council was originally created to combat the wave of assimilation by providing a palatable synagogue experience that was user friendly to newly arrived immigrants and their subsequent generations. 

1912: Birthdate of William “Willie” Rubenstein “a guard from the Bronx, who was a three-year star for New York University (NYU) in the mid-1930s when the Violets were one of the best teams in the country.”

1913(29th of Kislev, 5674): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1913: In Toronto, Joseph and Fay Jacobivitch gave birth to Louis Harold Jacobovitch the Canadian actor who gained fame as Lou Jacobi.

1914: Dr. Simon Baruch, the father of Bernard Baruch spoke at tonight’s meeting of the Association of American Women of German Descent at the Hotel McAlpin “where he predicted ultimate friendly relations among those engaged in the present war.”

1914: “Lesson From Frank Case” published today provides a summary of Dr. William Rosenau’s speech “America” The Land of Milk and Honey” where he said that “America has meant the emancipation of the Jew” but that “occasionally there is an outbreak showing there is still feeling against the Hebrew” of which “the Leo M. Frank trial in Atlanta is an example.”

1914: “A Study in Scarlet” a silent movie version of the novel of the same name produced by G.B. Samuelson was released in the United Kingdom today.

1914: “Justice Lamar of the Supreme Court of the United States granted Leo M. Frank, under the sentence of death in Atlanta, an appeal for a writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court the immediate effect of” which “will be to stay Frank’s execution which had been set for January 22.”

1914: “The Young Men’s Hebrew Association’s campaign to raise $85,000 for a building in the Bronx is scheduled to end today with a luncheon at noon today at the Union Square Hotel.”

1915(21st of Tevet, 5676): Rabbi Mordecai Feinberg passed away today in Philadelphia.

1915: According to announcement made today at a campaign luncheon at the Union Square Hotel, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association raised $35,000 in the last two weeks during its campaign to raise funds for a “new clubhouse in the Bronx.”

1915: The list of newly elected officers of the National Association of Young Judea published today included: President, Isaac Rosengarten; Vice President, Rabbi Louis J. Hass of Woodbine, NJ; Treasurer, Isadore Blum and Secretary, Leon Spitz.

1915 Isaac Levy, the lawyer for Theresa Samuels who has been writing “poison pen” letter to young married women was informed by the psychiatrist who said she “was suffering from a form of insanity” that her “complaint will probably yield to treatment.

1915: As of today, it was reported that the American Jewish Relief Committee for Jews suffering from the war has received more than $600,000 since the rally at Carnegie Hall including $50 from the Right Rev. David H. Greer, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of New York.

1915: “The Women of the Hour Committee” whose members “have volunteered to give at least an hour a week” of raising funds to aid the suffering Jews of war-torn Europe “launched its ‘heavy work’” today “with each woman being furnished a list of ten possible contributors from whom she was to solicit money.”

1915: A New York butcher Ignatz Weiss was charged with violating a law that went into effect last September that required that meat sold as kosher must bear the imprint of the supervising rabbi officiating at the slaughterhouse that provided the meat. Bail was set at $100.00

1916: A meeting is scheduled to take place as part of the attempt to settle the dispute between Kosher Packing Houses and the Retail Kosher Butchers Federation during which an additional attempt will be made to reassure that charging them 15 cents a pound for kosher beef is justified. The 15 cents is 3 cents less than the price charged when the federation announced their refusal to make any purchases at that price, but some may feel that even that is too much.

1916(3rd of Tevet, 5677): Sixty-nine-year-old University of Virginia graduate Moses R. Walter, a “prominent Maryland lawyer, former President of the Baltimore Bar Association and “an active member of the American Jewish Relief Committee for Baltimore which raised funds for the relief of the Jews of Europe who suffered as a result of the war” passed away today.

1916: The order disbanding the Zion Mule Corps was issued today.

1916(3rd of Tevet, 5677): Sixty-one-year-old Russian born Isaac Shwayder, the husband of “Rachel Leah Kobey Shwayder” with whom he had nine children including Jesse Shwayder, the founder of Samosonite, passed away today after which he was buried at Mount Nebo Memorial Park in Aurora, CO.

1916: At a luncheon held at New York’s Union Square Hotel, it was announced that the Young Men’s Hebrew Association had raised $35,000 in the last two weeks. The funds are part of the $85,000 that are needed to build a new clubhouse in the Bronx. The money came from 2,500 contributors, most of whom gave $10 or less. Only twelve contributions were larger than $100.

1917: Rabbi Samuel Colombo sent a cablegram to Dr. Hertz, the chief rabbi of the British Empire expressing “on behalf of the Federation of Italian Rabbis, joy and felicitations on the capture of Jerusalem and thanking the British Government for” the Balfour Declaration.

1917:“Having beaten back the Turkish attempt to recapture Jerusalem, Allenby ordered his men to advance to make the perimeters of the city secure.”

1917: According to a cablegram which had been sent to the Jewish Daily Forward by its correspondent in Petrograd which was published today, the Bolshevik “Government has appropriated 2,000,000 rubles for the purpose of propagating a world-wide revolution” and “250 military detachments have been formed to combat the anti-Jewish outbreak throughout the country.”

1917: “In an interview with a representative of the Jewish press” the Polish Prime Minister “states that he is not an anti-Semite” and “that by mutual understanding Jews in Poland will receive equal rights’ as can be seen by the fact that the Home Secretary “would accord the same rights and privileges to the Jewish press as are accorded to the Polish Press.

1917: At today’s “meeting of the quinquennial convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association which” is being held at Columbia University, “Chancellor Henry Hurwitz read a letter from Israel Zangwill in which the writer criticized the failures of those who believed that Judaism is a world mission to be presented through their religion as to their failure to universalize their religious teachings and observed that the Jewish religion in England ‘is kept alive only by Christian prejudice and a Jewish superstition.’”

1918: Based on dispatches from Paris today American delegates to the Peace Conference have given a great deal of consideration to the question of intervening in Russia where Jews are the victims of both sides of the fighting, but they have not reached any decision.

1918: Bavarian born Texas merchant Alexander Sanger assumed the Presidency of Sanger Brothers in Dallas where he had already helped to form the first Jewish congregation in Dallas.

1919:” A meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Conference of Jewish Social Service” is scheduled to meet at 10 A.M. at the Hotel Astor in New York Astor.

1919: Today, Abraham Nathan, the son of Sarah Costa and Henry Nathan and the husband of Katherine Lyons was buried at the “East Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1920: Birthdate of Fatima Kuinova a Bukharan Jewish Shashmakom singer who was named "Merited Artist of the Soviet Union" who settled in Rego Park in 1980 “where she founded and was the lead vocalist for the Shashmaqom Music of the Bukharan Jews Ensemble.”

1921(27thof Kislev, 5682): Third Day of Chanukah

1921:Orphans of the Storm,” a silent film sent in the French Revolution, starring Joseph Schildkraut as “Chevalier de Vaudrey” was released in the United States today.

1922: In a New York City apartment, Celia (née Solomon) and Jack Lieber gave birth to Stanley Martin Leiber who gained fame as Stan Lee creator of The Hulk and Spiderman.

http://www.stanleefoundation.org/

1922: In New York City, Romanian-born Jewish immigrant parents, Celia (née Solomon) and Jack Lieber, gave birth to Stanley Martin Lieber, known as Stan Lee, the creator of the cartoon figures “The Hulk” and “Spiderman.”

1923: Broadway premiere of Shaw’s “St. Joan” in which Michael Stuhlberg would play the “the Dauphin, Charles VII” in the 1993 revival at the Lyceum Theatre.

1923: In Suwalki, Poland, Owseij Chasyd and his wife gave birth to Józef Chasyd) who gained fame as violinist Josef Hassid.

http://www.avakesh.com/2009/08/josef-hassid---achron---hebrew-melody-op33.html

1924(1st of Tevet, 5685): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1924: U.S. premiere of “So Big” the “silent film based on Edna Ferber’s novel of the same name.”

1924(1st of Tevet, 5685):Léon Bakst, Russian costume designer an painter, passed away. To see examples of his work go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Bakst  https://web.archive.org/web/20090411070131/http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/theatre_performance/features/Costume/1739_Designers_Speak/1739_Leon_Bakst/index.html

1925 George and Ira Gershwin's musical "Tip-Toes" premieres in New York, NY

1926(23rd of Tevet, 5687): Seventy-four year old attorney Samuel B. Hamburger, the President of the Central Synagogue for the last seventeen years passed away unexpectedly today.

1927: The New York Timesdescribes the importance and significance of the gift of $2,000,000 recently made by John D. Rockefeller Jr. for the building of a museum in Jerusalem.

1927: In New York, at the Selwyn Theatre premiere of George Kaufman’s “Royal Family”

1927: In Boston, world premiere of Alexander Tansman’s Second Concerto for piano and orchestra

1928: Birthdate of Canadian jazz musician and composer Moe Koffman.

1928: Featherweight Harry Blitman fought is 69th bout today which he won by a TKO.

1929: Birthdate of Albert Edmund Wolf.

1929: According to Joseph M. Levy a reporter for the New York Times, Americans have replaced Englishmen as the greatest travelers visiting Palestine, particularly Jerusalem.  In a change from pre-World War One days, “it is estimated that seven out of every ten visitors to Palestine are from the United States.”

1930: The delegates at the first national convention of the Zionist Revisionists Convention of American which opened last nights are scheduled to attend a dinner tonight in honor of Vladimir Jabotinsky

1931: The ninth annual convention of Junior Hadassah which opened last night continued today “with more than 750 delegates and guests in attendance.

1932: In Hamburg, Helene and Hildebrand Gurlitt gave birth to art collection Cornelius Gurlitt.

1932: “The Animal Kingdom” a film version of the stage play of the same name, produced by David Selznick, starring Leslie Howard and with music by Max Steiner was released in the United States by RKO.

1932: Hildebrand Gurlitt and his wife gave birth to German art collector Conrelius Gurlitt whose family was labeled “a quarter-Jew under the Nazi race law” because his great-grandmother was Jewish.

1933(10th of Tevet, 5694): Asara B’Tevet

1933: In a case of Jew replaces Jew today “Lazarus Joseph was elected, to the New York State Senate (21st D.) to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Henry G. Schackno

1934: “The Little Minister” a movie version of the novel and play of the same name, produced by Pandro S. Berman and with music by Max Steiner was released in the United States today.

1934: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Herbert George “Herb” Garnder, the creator of the comic “The Nebbishes” and scriptwriter whose most famous work may have been “A Thousand Clowns.”

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/resources/longbox/150/

1934: “Kid Millions” a comedy produced by Samuel Goldwyn and starring Eddie Cantor was released today in the United States today.

1935: U.S. premiere of “Captain Blood” a swashbuckler directed by Michael Curtiz with music by Erich Wolfgange Korngold.

1936: “At a time when highway robberies, brigandage and murder have again become the chief topic of news in the Palestine press and anarchy one more threatens the peace of the Holy Land,” the Vaad Leumi (the governing body for the Jewish community in Palestine) submitted evidence at today’s meeting of the Royal or Peel Commission that “the recent disturbances proved how unstable the state of public security is even in normal times and particularly how unprepared the country in in emergencies.”

1936: In Washington, DC, the delegates to final session of the annual convention Junior Hadassah adopted resolutions “urging the British Royal Commission to make recommendation that will facilitate constructive building for all sections of the population” and creating a $1,000 scholarship in honor of Miss Alice Seligsberg, of New York, one of the first members of Hadassah who for several years served as an advisor to Junior Hadassah.

1937: It was reported today that following fighting between “British forces and Arab gangs in the hills of Galilee” it has now been “verified that more than 90 per cent of the Arab terroirst gangs at present operating in Palestinians are Syrians all of whom are equipped with rifles and ammunition and received monthly salaries from a mysterious source.:

1938: Birthdate of Yehoram Gaon “an Israeli singer and actor” a Sephardic Jew from Jerusalem

1938: As Leon Trotsky prepared to depart for Norway, one of the countries that had offered him refuge from the murderous wrath of Stalin, Trotsky writes in his diary, “Stalin wishes to strike not at the ideas of his opponent, but at his skull, at his very life force” Ironically, when Stalin’s assassin killed Trotsky he accomplished the deed by driving an ax into Trotsky’s brain.

1939: In the Beit Hakerem section of Jerusalem, Moshe-David Gaon a well-known historian born at Sarajevo in 139 and Sara Hakim gave birth to Yehoram “Yoram” Gaon, an Israeli singer, actor, director, producer, television and radio personality who has also written and edited books on Israeli culture.

1940: In Chile, Erick Kreutzberger and Anna Blumenfeld Neufeld, gave birth to Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld, the Chilean television personality known as Don Francisco.

1941:Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, the two men designated to carry out Operation Anthropoid (the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich) were airlifted by a Royal Air Force Halifax of No. 138 Squadron into Czechoslovakia at 22:00

1941: The Nazis sanctioned performances known as Kameradschaftsabende (evenings of fellowship) in Terezín, reasoning that the prisoners would cause less trouble.

1942: In Augusta, GA, Leonard Scheinman a doctor from Brooklyn serving in the U.S. Army and the former Sera Mani, a Hebrew School teacher gave birth to Victor David Scheinman “who overcame his boyhood nightmares about a science-fiction movie humanoid to build the first successful electrically powered, computer-controlled industrial robot.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

1942: In the Warsaw Ghetto, as part of the work of the Oyneg Shabes group, Rokhl Auerbach began interviewing “Abraham Krzepicki, an escapee from the Treblinka extermination camp.” (Editor’s Note: For more on this see Who Will Write Our History)

1942(20thof Tevet, 5703): Two Jews are shot for mutiny at the Stalowa Wola, (Poland) slave-labor camp.

1942(20thof Tevet, 5703): Danzig native Alfred Flatow, the gymnast who helped Germany win Gold Medals at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens died today at Theresienstadt.

1942: Dr. Carl Clauberg begins his sterilization experiments on women prisoners at Auschwitz.

1943: “What A Woman” a romantic comedy that marked the film debut of Shelly winters was released in the United States today.

1943: Reports out of Ankara, Turkey say the Germans are rushing material and reinforcement troops onto the Island of Rhodes by air, due to sea difficulties. At the time there were 10,000 Germans on the island.

1944: Members of Hungary's Arrow Cross abduct 28 Jews in a Budapest hospital. They will murder them two days later.

1944: On the Town opened on Broadway. It was lyricist Betty Comden's first hit. It was also the first big success for her three collaborators: Composer Adolph Green, Leonard Bernstein, and Jerome Robbins. Comden and Green also acted in the show, which featured the hit song "New York, New York." The musical, which followed a day in the lives of three sailors on leave in New York, ran for 462 performances on Broadway before going on tour. This success marked the beginning of Comden and Green's long career working together on Broadway and in Hollywood. When MGM turned On the Town into a movie with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in 1949, it was the first feature-length musical to be filmed on location. In 1953, Comden and Green worked again with Bernstein, creating the show Wonderful Town, which won a Tony Award for Outstanding Musical. Collaborating with Green in a decades-long partnership, Comden wrote lyrics and librettos for numerous additional Broadway musicals and movies, including Singin' in the Rain (1952), Peter Pan (1953), Auntie Mame (1958), Say Darling (1958), and The Will Rogers Follies(1991). Their work garnered five more Tony Awards and two Academy Award nominations. In 1991, Comden and Green were awarded Kennedy Center Honors.

1945: Arnold Hans Weiss, who left Nazi German at the age of 13 and returned as an officer in the United States Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps completed a mission for which he received a Commendation Ribbon for assuming “the responsibility of apprehending a personality high in the annals of the Nazi system.” The Nazi was “Wilhelm Zander, chief aide to Martin Bormann, the Nazi Party official who had controlled access to Hitler.”

1945: “Spellbound,” a murder mystery with a strange twist produced by David O. Selznick, written by Ben Hecht and with music by Miklós Rózsa which had premiered in New York City on Halloween was released to the rest of the United States today.

1945: Moshe Shertock, head of the Jewish Agency political department was released today at 9 am after having been arrested last night along with 1,500 other Jews following the bombing of British installations in Palestine.  Shertock could have been released as early as 4 in the morning but he “refused to leave until most the prisoners were freed; something that did not happen until 9 o’clock.

1946(5th of Tevet, 5707): Elie Nadelman, the Polish-born American sculptor and founder with his wife of the Museum of Folks Arts passed away today in NC at the age of 64.

1946(5thof Tevet, 5707): Odessa born American jurist and Zionist Alexander Haim Pekelis passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pekelis-alexander-haim

1946(5thof Tevet, 5707): Fifty-five year old Pierre Leon Dreyfus the Paris born son of Alfred Dreyfus and Lucie Eugénie Hadamar and the husband of Marie Apollonie Dreyfus passed away today in Ireland.

1946: Joseph Clark Baldwin a Congressman from New York and a member of the Political Action Committee for Palestine appealed to Menachem Begin to end “terrorist’s activities.”

1947: As the Arabs continue their violent reaction to the UN partition vote, a convoy of Jewish trucks was ambushed near Dier Balah. The Jews fought their way through the ambush in which two Arabs were killed and another nine were wounded.

1947: Five Arabs were killed in Jerusalem by members of the Stern Gang who forced their way into an Arab house and shot those inside.

1947(15th of Tevet, 5708): Five Jews are killed in random terror attacks in Jerusalem. One was stabbed to death while on his way to a funeral.  Another, Miriam Meir, the mother of six, was hanging her washing on a line when she was shot by an Arab sniper.  Dr. Hugo Lehrs, a British government medical officer was walking with an Arab doctor and an Arab nurse when they were confronted by three armed Arabs. “Which is the Jew?”  They asked.  The two Arabs stood aside and Dr. Lehrs was gunned down.

1947: Moshe Sneh resigned as Jewish Agency executive. He criticized the Agency for emphasis on a friendship with the West and says they should pay more attention to Soviet Union

1948(26thof Kislev, 5709): Erving Max “Goldy” Goldstein, “a three-time All-Southern selection” who played Guard for the University of Florida Gators followed by one season with the professional Newark Bears passed away today.

1948: As the fortunes of war turned against the invading Arab armies, the IDF crosses the Egyptian border moving into the Sinai Peninsula.1948: During Operation Horev, the Negev brigade followed the tanks of the 8th brigade across the Egyptian border tonight and moved towards El-Arish

1948: Kitty Carlisle performed as Lucretia when the two act opera The Rape of Lucretia opened on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre.

1948: The Alexandroni brigade is sent to break through an Egyptian stronghold in Iraq-El-Manshia, as part of the big campaign aimed to capture Kis Fallujah which is held by the Egyptian Army. The brigade did not succeed in this mission either.

1948: Syd Cohen dined on breakfast of boiled eggs and black coffee before he took off in his Spitfire Merlin on his first mission for the Israeli Air Force.

1948: “Dressed casually, without any badge of rank Gordon Levett  the WW II, RAF veteran who flew covert missions bringing dis-mantled planes to Israel and who was the first English Gentile to fly with Israel’s first squadron took off today on his first mission with the IAF.

1949: Birthdate of Rachel Elior an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism at Hebrew University.

1951(29thof Kislev, 5712): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1951(29thof Kislev, 5712): Forty-six-year-old Harry Strauss, who had married Cecile G. Pofcher in 1931, passed away today in West Roxbury, MA.

1951(29thof Kislev, 5712): Eighty-year-old Vicksburg, Mississippi, native Edward E. Scharff passed away today

1952(10th of Tevet, 5713): Asara B’Tevet

1952: Columbia trained attorney Judah Gribetz, the son of “Abraham and Ida (Heller) Gribetz and author of a series of books on “The Timetables of Jewish History” married Jessica Shapiro with whom he had three children – Sidney, Marion and Sarah.

1954: “The Flower Peach” by Clifford Odets which tells “the story of Noah and his struggle to carry out his mission” and which New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson “praised” for “its human warmth and wisdom’ opened at the Belasco Theatre for the first of 135 performances.

1955: The funeral for 72-year-old “Samuel Niger (Charney), the famous Yiddish author, literary critic and editor” is scheduled to be held today in New York.

http://www.jta.org/1955/12/27/archive/samuel-niger-charney-noted-jewish-critic-dead-funeral-wednesday

1956: CBS broadcast the final episode of “The Crusader” a detective series whose leading character was the son of a mother who died in a Nazi Concentration Camp and included appearances by such stars as Jack Albertson, Leon Askin, Michael Landon and Werner Klemperer.

 

1956: J. Sinclair Armstrong, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission today announced the appointment of Joseph B. Levin as an Assistant General Counsel of the Commission.

1958: Bob Wolf was the radio voice of today “sudden-death overtime NFL championship game between the Giants and the Baltimore Colts where he excitedly proclaimed “The Colts are the world champions — Ameche scores!” as “Colts fullback Alan Ameche won the game on a 1-yard touchdown plunge.”

1959(27thof Kislev, 5720): Third Day of Chanukah

1959: First graduation ceremony at Bar-Ilan University

1959: “The Cherry Orchard” produced by David Susskind co-starring Susan Strasberg as Anya was broadcast today as the “Play of the Week,

1959: Shlomo Yisrael Ben-Meir began serving as Deputy Internal Affairs Minister.

1963:  German-born composer Paul Hindemith passed away.  The very successful Hindemith was not Jewish but his wife and many of his friends were.  Hindemith fled Germany when the Nazis came to power.  He started a new career in the United States.

1963: “Love With a Proper Stranger,” an off-beat comedy featuring Herschel Bernardi and Tom Bosley and with music by Elmer Bernstein was released today in the United States.

1963: After 82 performances and four previews” at the Majestic Theatre, the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Jennie,” “a musical with a book by Arnold Schulman, music by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Howard Dietz.

1963: President Lyndon B. Johnson attended the dedication of the new home for Agudas Achim on Bull Shoals Boulevard in Austin, TX.  The dedication was originally scheduled for November 23 at which then Vice President Lyndon Johnson was going to be the honored guest.  The assassination on November 23 changed all of that and it came as a great surprise to the congregants when President Johnson contacted the synagogue after the official mourning period was ended to make arrangements to come to Austin. (Editor’s Note- This is but one of the many little known stories about Lyndon Johnson and the Jewish community.  I taught at Agudas Achim five years after this event and people spoke of it with an understated pride that one usually did not find in Texans)

1966(15th of Tevet, 5727): Seventy-nine year old Frank Chodorov (born Fishel Chodorowsky) whose economic and philosophic views can be seen in his Founding of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualist with patrician conservative William F. Buckley as President.

https://mises.org/library/frank-chodorov-nonvoter

1967:Muriel 'Mickie' Siebert became the first woman member of the New York Stock Exchange, one of many firsts that have earned the feisty Siebert the moniker "The First Woman of Finance."

1968: Israeli forces conducted a commando raid aimed at Beirut Airport as part of its war against Palestinian terrorists.

1969: Neil Simon's "Last of the Red Hot Lovers" premieres in New York City.

1970(30thof Kislev, 5731) Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1971(10th of Tevet, 5732): Asara B'Tevet

1971(10th of Tevet, 5732): Eighty-three year old Viennese native Maximilian Raoul Walter “Max” Steiner the composer nominated for 26 Oscars and winner of six for scores for “Gone With the Wind” and “Casablanca.” 

http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_steiner.htm

1972: Four Black September members took over the Israeli embassy in Bangkok, holding 12 hostages. They raised the PLO flag over the building and threatened to kill the hostages unless 36 PLO prisoners were released. The building was surrounded by Thai troops and police. The option of a rescue operation was considered in Israel but ruled out. A rescue operation was considered a logistical impossibility, and it was also thought that as the embassy was in busy central Bangkok, the Thai government would never allow the possibility of a shootout to occur. Though their demands were not met, negotiations secured the release of all the hostages and the Black September militants were given safe passage to Cairo

1972: Martin Bormann's skeleton was found in Berlin.  Bormann was one of Hitler’s closest associates in the waning days of World War II.  He was last seen alive leaving Hitler’s Berlin Bunker as the Soviet forces were closing in for the kill.  For almost a quarter of century, Nazi hunters looked for Bormann because they assumed that he might be hiding in South America or some place in the Middle East.

1973: Birthdate of actor Seth Meyers, a SNL regular.

1974: Final broadcast of the National Lampoon Radio Hour whose writers and performers included Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis and Richard Belzer.

1975: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” which was an all-African-American production came to a close in New York City.

1976 "Fiddler on the Roof" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 167 performances.

1976(7thof Tevet, 5737): Eighty-four year old Solomon Zeitlin, the native of Byelorussia who became professor of rabbinical studies at Dropsie College in Philadelphia where he taught in the same classroom for over five decades and who is known both as the author of the three volume The Rise and Fall of the Judean as well as challenger of the authenticity of the Dead Sea Scroll passed away today.

http://www.jta.org/1976/12/30/archive/solomon-zeitlin-dead-at-84

1976: Edward Zorinsky began serving as U.S. Senator from Nebraska.

1977(18thof Tevet, 5738): In Tel Aviv, a terrorist bombing killed two and injured two.

1980(21stof Tevet, 5641): Sixty-five year old Charles Tannen, who followed in the thespian footsteps of his father Julius passed away today.

1980:Yona Kolchinsky was forewarned that he will be called up for military service beginning from December 29th of this year.”

1980(21stof Tevet, 5641): Seventy-five-year-old Sam Levene whose fifty year stage and film acting career began with five lines in a 1927 play passed away today.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19801230&id=c54cAAAAIBAJ&sjid=42cEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4805,7505194

1981(28th of Tevet, 5742): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1981(28th of Tevet, 5742): David Abraham Cheulkar, a Jewish-Indian film star passed away. Born in 1909, his career began in 1941 when he made the first of over 110 films.

1982: The New York Times featured a review of The Belarus Secret by John Loftus which explains “how some Nazi war criminals and collaborators were able to make their way to the United States after World War II, attain citizenship and live undetected or unmolested” by the authorities.

1984(4th of Tevet, 5745): Seventy-six year old Soviet physicist Isaak Kikoin passed away.

1985:Sulayman Khatir who had machine-gunned to death seven Israelis at Ras Burqa, “a beach resort area in the Sinai Peninsula” was tried by a closed Egyptian military tribunal today after which he was “sentenced to life in prison at hard labor.”

1986: It is reported that a gift of eight colorful and high-spirited children's books for each day of Hanukkah is available from the Ktav Publishing House. The books are ''Chanukah Fun and Story Book: Stories, Poems, Games & Things to Do for Chanukah,'' edited by Bernard Scharfstein ($6.50), and the following books written by his brother, Sol, a resident of Livingston: ''Chanukah Game and Story Book'' ($7.95), ''What Do You Do on a Jewish Holiday,'' a flip-flap book ($8.95), ''Let's Do a Mitzvah'' ($10.95), ''See, Smell and Touch Hanukah'' ($8.95), ''The Dreidel'' ($6.95) and ''Hanukah Popup'' ($6.95).

1986: It was reported today that the following are now available just in time for Chanukah:

''The Hallah Book: Recipes, History and Traditions,'' by Freda Reider which tells about the ''ceremonial loaves that grace the Jewish Sabbath and the holiday tables.'

''Jewish Holiday Treasure Box: How to Be Jewish,” an attractively boxed package of 16 items for year-long fun and learning that includes 8 picture books, 6 play-and-learn magazines, a cassette tape of songs and stories and a parent handbook to be used with children from 4 through

''A History of America's Jews: This Land of Liberty,'' by Helene Schwartz which is packed with illustrations that include many historic photographs.

''The Guide to Everything Jewish in New York,'' by Nancy Davis and Joy Levitt, a thoroughly resourceful guide and fun to read reference book that helps even the most assimilated yuppie to find ''Jewish-style food'' and almost anything else you could think of that might be needed or wanted by the Jewish community.

1987: Israeli officials said today that Israeli soldiers had resorted to using live ammunition against Palestinian demonstrators when their own lives were endangered. The comments by Shimon Peres, Israel's Foreign Minister, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Defense Minister, were made after two weeks of rioting in the occupied territories Mr. Rabin, interviewed from Tel Aviv on the NBC News program ''Meet the Press,'' said the Israeli Army had sought to use minimum force against the rioters, but he defended the use of live ammunition in situations when the lives of soldiers were in jeopardy. ''I believe we have tried and will continue to try in coping with violent public disorder with minimum measures -rubber bullets, tear gas,'' Mr. Rabin said. ''But whenever our soldiers are in danger, their life is in danger, they are allowed to open fire with live ammunition.''

1987(7thof Tevet, 5748): Forty-eight year old lyricist Edward “Ed” Kleban best known his Tony Award winning work on “A Chorus Line” passed away today.

http://www.masterworksbroadway.com/artist/edward-kleban/

1989(30thof Cheshvan, 5750): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1989(30thof Cheshvan, 5750): Ninety eight year old Solomon Birnbaum, the oldest son of Rosa Korngut and Nathan Birnbaum, who was a noted “Yiddish linguist and Hebrew paleographer” passed away today.

1989: An Israeli widely regarded as Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega's closest associate has been seized by United States troops in Panama, a senior American Embassy official said today. The prisoner, Mike Harari, 62 years old, who formerly was an Israeli intelligence official, played an important advisory role in developing Panama's armed forces. (As reported by David E. Pitt)

1989: An Israeli Government official said today that Mike Harari was ''absolutely not connected in any way to the Government, and his activities in Panama have no connection to any official Israeli organization or body.''

1992: Shmuel Zailer, a director of Raz-Lee Ltd., an Israeli software company tells the New York Times, "It's easier exporting to the moon than to America."

1992: The Southwestern Bell Corporation and Clal Industries of Israel will jointly bid for control of Israel's national telephone company, Clal said today.

 

1993: William L Shirer passed away at the age of 89.  Shirer was born in Chicago and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa where he graduated from Coe College.  Shirer is not Jewish.  However, as radio correspondent for CBS in the 1930’s, Shirer was one of the first to warn of the threat posed by Hitler and Nazi Germany.  His massive tome, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich continues to be one of the best books ever written on that period.  His incisive writing on the collapse of the French Third Republic is an underappreciated classic.

1997(29th of Kislev, 5758): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1999(19th of Tevet, 5760): Seventy-seven-year-old Milton Abrams passed away today after which he was buried at the Beth Shalom Cemetery.

2000(2nd of Tevet, 5761): Seventh Day of Chanukah

2000: At 3:30 a.m., the government of Israel, led by Prime Minister Barak, “issued a statement confirming that Israel would accept Mr. Clinton's proposals ''as a basis for discussion'' so long as the Palestinians did too.’

2001: “Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army to cordon off the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip tonight after bombings that killed two Israelis, even as the Palestinian and Israeli leaders plotted out their continued responses to a peace initiative.”

2001(13th of Tevet, 5762): Seventy-three Samuel A. Goldblith, an American food scientist who had been captured at Corregidor and survived being a Japanese POW passed away.

http://news.mit.edu/2002/goldblith-0109

2002(23rd of Tevet, 5763): Parashat Shemot

2002(23rd of Tevet, 5673): Ninety-eight-year-old Harold Baumbach the painter and friend of fellow Mark Rothko, who was the husband of Ida Baumbach and the father of Jonathan, James and Daniel Baumbach passed away today.

2003(3rd of Tevet, 5764): Seventy-three-year-oldManny Dworman, a nightclub owner, musician and long a colorful fixture on the Greenwich Village scene” passed away today at New York Hospital in Manhattan. (As reported by Stephen Holden)

2003: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil Haygood and Gonna Do Great Things: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Gary Fishgall.

2004(16th of Tevet, 5765) Jerry Orbach, the American actor who may be best remember for his role as a detective on the long-running series, “Law & Order,” passed away.

2004(16th of Tevet, 5765):  Susan Sontag, feminist, author and social critic passed away (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/world/americas/29iht-sontag.html

2004: The New York String Orchestra, “founded in 1969 by violinist Alexander Schneider and his manager Frank Salomon is scheduled to perform “all-Mozart program with pianist Leon Fleisher” at Carnegie” this evening.

2004(16th of Tevet, 5765): Tzvi Tzur, the 6th Chief of Staff of the IDF passed away.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141509

2005: Today an immigration judge ordered John Demjanjuk, who had not disclosed his role as guard at Sobibor, be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukrainea\.

2006: The annual Limmud Conference held at Nottingham, England, featuring presentations by 52 Israeli speakers, comes to a close. Based in the UK, Limmud is a global leader in innovative, inclusive Jewish education.

2007(19th of Tevet, 5768): Two Israelis were killed and a third was wounded in a drive-by shooting in the south Hebron Hills. The victims, David Rubin and Ahikam Amihai, were in elite units of the IDF, with Rubin serving as a sergeant in the Israeli Naval commandos and Amihai as a corporal in the Israel Air Force commandos unit. The two soldiers were on leave. Before being fatally wounded, the two managed to return fire and wounded one or more of the four Palestinian gunmen. The Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade took responsibility for that attack.

2008: In Clayton, MO, The New Jewish Theatre presents “The Last Seder.”

2008: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Michael Lewis’ Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity.

2008:The Israeli Air Force today blew up 40 tunnels that have been used to smuggle arms and terrorists into Gaza.  

2008:Gaza terrorists continued firing rockets at the western Negev this afternoon, although the pace of the attacks had slowed by 4:00 p.m.

2009: Famed dancer and choreographerKobi Rozenfeld, a native of Rehovot, Israel, conducts a hip hop workshop at the Peridance Center in New York.  Kobi Rozenfeld is coming from LA to teach three guest Street-Jazz classes:

2009:Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Weisz, the Brooklyn-based Grand Rebbe of the Spinka sect, was sentenced to two years in federal prison today for a decade-long fraud and money-laundering scheme.

2009:Significant progress was made today in the case concerning the rights to the literary estates of Franz Kafka and Max Brod.

2009: It was announced today that for the first time in 10 years the number of immigrants to Israel has risen this year, according to Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky and Immigration and Absorption Minister Sofa Landver.

2009: Israel announced today it would build nearly 700 housing units in Jewish areas of Jerusalem on territory conquered in the 1967 war that the Palestinians claim for their future state.

2010:Just Say "Know" to Judaism! “a weekly series explores the relevant texts in Judaism that provide guidance for becoming a better person in an entertaining, informative and meaningful manner is scheduled to meet today at The Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

2010: “Reform Reading and Liberal Leyning – The Torah Service in Progressive Jewish Services” with Paul Freedman and “Ben Shahn: Political Artist, Personal Imagery” with Irene Wise are two of the programs scheduled to take place at today’s session of the Limmud Conference.

2010:Today Iran hanged an Iranian convicted of spying for the country's archenemy Israel, the official IRNA news agency reported.  The report identified the man as Ali Akbar Siadati and said he was hanged in Tehran's Evin prison.

2010: A natural gas field discovered in Israel's territorial waters contains an estimated 16 trillion cubic feet of the natural resource.

2010(21st of Tevet, 5771): Avraham “Avi” Cohen an Israeli footballer who served as chairman of the Israel Professional Footballers Association was declared brain dead after being seriously injured in a motorcycle accident on December 20.

2011: Adrienne Khana Cooper, “a Yiddish singer…who played an integral role in the revival of klezmer music” was buried at Oakmont Cemetery in Lafayette, CA following a memorial service at Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek.

2011(2nd of Tevet, 5772): 8th & final day of Chanukah

2011(2ndof Tevet, 5772): Ninety-four-year-old Irving Raphael Isaacs, the University of Michigan trained photographer, advertising executive and WW II Army Air Corps bombardier who was the son of Bernard Isaacs, the Superintendent of Hebrew Schools in Detroit and the husband of the former Martha Lillian Horelick passed away today.

https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/irving-raphael-isaacs/

2011: Matisyahu is scheduled to perform at the “9:30 Club” in northwest Washington, DC.

2012: “The Gatekeepers” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival

2012: The Eden-Tamir Music is scheduled to be the site of a noon-time concert featuring Piano Chamber Music and a Young Artist Competition.

2012(15thof Tevet, 5773): Ninety-two-year-old Benjamin Franklin expert Claude-Anne Lopez passed away today. (As reported William Yardley)

2012:A senior Muslim Brotherhood official called on Jews who immigrated to Israel from Egypt to return to Egypt and leave Israel to the Palestinians, Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported today. Senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood offcial Essam el-Erian said in an interview to television station Dream TV that every Egyptian has the right to live in Egypt, and Egyptian Jews living in Israel were contributing to the occupation of Arab lands, according to  Al-Masry Al-Youm.

2012: Some 200 settlers clashed with security forces attempting to evacuate the illegal West Bank outpost of Oz Zion near the Beit El settlement today.

2013: Roman Rabinovich, winner of the Arthur Rubenstein Competition for Young Artist of the Year 2012 is scheduled to be featured at a piano recital in at the Eden-Tamar Musical Center.

2013: After Shabbat world renowned artists Miriam Fried-violin, Paul Biss-viola Zvi Plesser-cello and Ron Regev-piano are scheduled to perform in several pieces including Brahms Trio No. 3 in Jerusalem

2013: “Frozen” and “The Escape” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013:An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale shook Cyprus tonight, with the effects felt as far east as Northern Israel. The two areas primarily affected were Haifa and the Krayot. (As reported by Tova Dvorin)

2013: Dozens gathered today in front of the Jerusalem residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protest against the release of Palestinian prisoners. Protesters included family members of the prisoners' victims, and carried signs reading "only Israel releases murderers." (As reported by Noam Dabul Dvir)

2014: “The Rover” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas by Patrick Modian

2014: “Hamas prevented 37 Palestinian war orphans living in the Gaza from entering Israel” to participate in an “educational and recreational visit organized by Yoel Marshak of the Kibbutz Movement in collaboration with the Arab Israeli towns of Kfar Kassem and Rahat which was meant to bring the teenage children of Hamas operatives killed during Operation Protective Edge to the Ramat Gan Safari and to Israeli towns along the Gaza border.”  (As reported by Elhanan Miller)

2014:Today, Judge Salim Joubran, speaking at a High Court hearing for a petition against the Knesset law that raises the threshold to 3.25 percent of total votes struck out against the new rules raising the minimum vote threshold for entrance into the Knesset, saying it could result in a total lack of Arab representation in the Knesset.

2015: In Tel Aviv Poetry “Slam Israel’s Slamstival” is scheduled to come to an end.

2015: In New Orleans, which most people connect with jazz another 2 hour round of Israeli folk dancing is scheduled to begin this evening. 

2016(28thof Kislev, 5777): Fourth Day of Chanukah

2016: “In his address” today, Secretary of State John Kerry “defended America’s decision not to veto UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which condemned settlements as illegal and called for a halt in all settlement activity.”

2016: In Little Rock, AR, Lubavitch of Arkansas is scheduled to host the Chabad Young Professional Chanukah Party at Dave and Busters.

2016: At La Mama, Yiddish New York & New Yiddish Rep are scheduled to present: “God of Vengeance” (Got fun nekome) by Sholem Ash followed by “Ahava Oylem – An Evening of Sacred Music” at the Town and Village Synagouge and a “Late Night Klezmer Jam Session” at Mona’s.

2017(10th of Tevet, 5778): Fast of Tevet

 

2017(10th of Tevet, 5778): Yahrzeit of Judith Sharon Rosenstein – nee Levin.  “Judy” to one and all: a true woman of valor – loving wife, devoted mother, a grand grandmother and a great sister.  Unfortunate proof of the statement that “the good die young!”

 

2017: Tonight, Haylyards Bar is scheduled to host the post-Chanukah Chanukah Party that includes a screening of “The Hebrew Hammer!”

 

2017: YNY is scheduled to host its annual Student Concert

2018: In Winchester, MA, Temple Shir Tikvah is scheduled to host “Hot Chocolate Shabbat.”

2018: In Memphis, TN, the Sisterhood is scheduled to host a “Preneg” prior to Friday evening services.

2018: In Rochester, NY, Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host its last “Challah Baking” of 2018.

2018: “The DC Improv” is scheduled to host an evening with Dov Davidoff, who is currently appearing on “HBO’s Crashing.”

2018: As Israelis prepare for Shabbat, they consider the impact of this week’s surprise announcement of election in April of 2019, the discovery of new terror tunnels on the border with Lebanon and the issuance of the official order paving the way for the immediate of U.S. troops from Syria despite previous pleas from Prime Minister Netanyahu not to do this.

2019: Following a week in which there have been at least eight additional anti-Semitic attacks, Jews in New York will be contemplating if the additional police presence will protect them as they make their way to Shabbat services.

2019: In a year in which anti-Semitic episodes are up by 105%, Jews across the United States will be contemplating how dangerous it is to do something as going to Shabbat morning services.

2019: In Walnut Creek, CA, Chabad of Contra Costa is scheduled to host “Spin Till You Win Dreidel Tournament.”

2019(30th of Kislev, 5780): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah.

2020: The Asiyah Jewish Community is scheduled to present online a “Contemplative Remix: Weekday Maariv

2020: YNY is scheduled to continue with the premiere screening of “Song Searcher” and “The Ukraine in NYC concert featuring Zhenya Lopatnik, a celebrated vocalist/composer of Yiddish and Ukrainian songs, Nariman Asanov (violin), Rustem Faizov (trumpet) and Dinara Faizova (dancer) of the spectacular NY Crimean Tatar Ensemble, Carpathian woodwind virtuoso Andriy Milavsky (clarinet/flutes), GRAMMY-winning trumpeter Frank London, and a sure-handed rhythm section of Ilya Shneyveys (accordion), Brano Brinarsky (bass) and Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl).”

2020: The Jewish Family and Children’s Service is scheduled to host online an “Inclusive Coffee Corner with Jewish life coordinator Alex Maslow.

2020: NFTY Northeast is scheduled to present the second day of the December Institute that will include a program on “Who is a Jews?

2020: Israelis are dealing with the second day of its third lockdown which began yesterday, “as coronavirus cases across the country continue to surge and health officials worked to race to vaccinate as many as people as possible as quickly as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 29, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 29

584 BCE (10 Tevet 3175):The Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, began his siege of Jerusalem leading to the destruction of the first Temple. This day is commemorated as one of the "minor" fasts, lasting from sunrise to sunset.  Of course, the tenth of Tevet floats when it appears on the secular calendar.

1170: Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II.  While the movie about Becket gives the Archbishop “all of the good lines” the reality was a bit different, especially for the Jews.  The reign of Henry II was a good period for the Jews of England.  His view that the King and not the Church was the ultimate authority for the realm would have appeared to be the better case for the Jews given the inimical view that the Church held of the Jewish people.  Death is always a tragedy, but we should understand the reality of those over whom we weep as opposed to an image created by later day dramatists and film makers.

1485: Joshua Solomon Soncino published Sefer ha-Ikkarim (Book of Principles) at Soncino, Italy. Sefer ha-Ikkarim ("Book of Principles") is a fifteenth century work by Rabbi Joseph Albo, a student of Crescas. It is an eclectic, popular work, whose central task is the exposition of the principles of Judaism. Rabbi Joseph Albo was probably born in Aragon in 1380 and reportedly took part in the religious debate held at Tortosa in 1413 and 1414.  His date of death is given variously as 1430 or 1444.

1690:In Italy, “severe earthquakes” struck the town of Ancona. They are memorialized by the town’s Jews with the celebration of a “Purim of Ancona.”  A description of the event and the special prayers recited on that day were printed in “Or Boker” was which was published in 1709.

1709: Birthdate of Empress Elizabeth of Russia. The daughter of Peter the Great was an enemy of the Jews.  She reiterated and reinforced the decrees already in existence banning Jews from the Russian Empire.  Despite requests from some of her advisors that Jewish merchants be allowed to visit the kingdom since it would enrich Russia, Elizabeth held firm. This is yet another example of Religious zeal over-ruling all other considerations.  According to one account, at least 35,000 Jews were forced to leave Russia because of her.  Her legacy was a Jew Free Russia – something that would not last because of Russian greed for the land of others.

1758: Jacob and Thankful Pinto gave birth to Solomon Pinto, a patriot who fought in the Revolutionary War, the husband of Clarissa Pinto and the brother of Abraham and William Pinto.

1764(5thof Tevet, 5525) Parashat Vayigash

1769(1stof Tevet, 5530): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1777(29thof Kislev, 5538): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1778(10th of Tevet, 5539) Asara B’Tevet

1778: During the American Revolutionary War, 3,500 British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell capture Savannah, Georgia without firing a shot. Among those taken prisoner by the British as they secured Savannah was the Jewish patriot from Georgia, Morcechai Sheftall.  In 1778, having proven his skill and selflessness as Commissary General of Georgia, Mordechai Sheftall had been appointed  to the post of Deputy Commissary General to the federal troops stationed in Georgia and South Carolina by General Robert Howe. Before the Continental Congress could confirm his role, however, he was captured in December 1778, along with his fifteen-year-old son, Sheftall Sheftall, in the battle to prevent Savannah from falling to British troops. Some of the outnumbered patriots escaped by swimming across the Savannah River, but the younger Sheftall could not swim. His father would not abandon him. With 185 other Americans, they were captured and imprisoned. The British interrogated the Sheftalls under great duress, depriving them of food for two days. At one point, they were almost bayoneted by a drunken British soldier. Still refusing to provide information about the American's sources of supplies and refusing to renounce the patriot cause, father and son were transferred to the dank prison ship Nancy where the British deliberately offered Mordecai no meat other than pork, which he refused. After several months, the elder Sheftall was paroled to the town of Sunbury, Georgia, where he was kept under close British surveillance; his son remained on the Nancy. At Mordecai's urging, Mrs. Sheftall took her other children to the relative safety of Charleston. Separation from family weighed heavily on Mordecai. Through the intervention of friends, he was finally able to arrange for his son's parole to Sunbury under the same restrictive conditions on his own freedom of movement. Things looked promising when American military pressure on Savannah forced the British garrison to withdraw from Sunbury, but freedom for the Sheftalls did not follow. Local Tories began to beat and even kill patriots in Sunbury, especially parolees like the Sheftalls. Father and son managed to flee on an American brig headed for Charleston and a hoped for reunion with their family, but were captured by a British frigate and transported to Antigua, where they remained prisoners until the Spring of 1780. In June, both Sheftalls were paroled once more. They headed for Philadelphia, to which Mrs. Sheftall and the children had fled, yet again, for safety. There, despite his own financial hardships, Mordecai helped fund a new synagogue for Congregation Mikve Israel. Mordecai spent the remainder of the war in Philadelphia, seeking to help both the American cause and his own financial condition by financing a privateer to capture and loot British vessels. His investment does not seem to have paid off; on its very first voyage, the ship ran aground. In1783, when the war ended, Mordecai returned with his wife and children to Savannah, where the family resumed its life for several generations. The state of Georgia granted him several hundred acres of land in recognition of his sacrifices on behalf of independence. When he died in 1797 at the age of 62, his beloved home city of Savannah buried him with full honors in the Jewish cemetery he created.”

1780: Birthdate of Rachel De Leon, the daughter of Spanishtown, Jamaica native Abraham Rodrigues De Leon.

1786(8thof Tevet, 5547): Seventy year old “British businessman” and descendant of “Portuguese Sephardic Jews” Joseph Salvador, a supporter of the “1753 Jew bill,’’ the sole Jewish “director of the British East India Company” and active supporter of the colonization of Georgia and South Carolina where a large number of Sephardim settled including his nephew Francis was reputed to have been “the first Jew to be elected public office” what became the United States and the first Jew to die during the American Revolution passed away today.

1790: Birthdate of German native Lea Gutkin, the wife of Abraham Kaufmann and the mother of Adelhiet, Zibora, Amalia and Esther Kaufman.

1796(29thof Kislev, 5556): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1799(1stof Tevet, 5560): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1801: Based on a deed of conveyance of this date, Levi Solomon and Solomon Etting paid William McMechen and John Leggett for land to be used as a Jewish cemetery in Baltimore, MD

1802: Aron Isaacson married Mary Israel today at the Great Synagogue.

1802: In Charleston, SC, nineteen-year-old Rinah Cohen, the daughter of Moses Cohen and Judith de Lyon married David Mordecai

1809: Birthdate of William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Gladstone is known primarily as the political rival of Benjamin Disraeli and this tends to color the view of him held by some Jews.  Gladstone was a complicated man.  He began his political career who opposed Jews sitting in the House of Commons.  At considerable political risk, he modified that position and voted in favor of removing the Christian religious qualification as long as the number of Jews in Parliament would never be so great as to lead Christians from their faith. Although Disraeli was raised as an Anglican, Gladstone was suspicious of what he described as his radical Jewish policies.  Considering the level of English anti-Semitism, Gladstone should go into the plus column.  

1814: Birthdate of French political leader and statesman Jules Simon, whose name indicates that he was of “Jewish origin.” Simon always thought he was born on December 30, until he took a “second look” at his birth certificate when he was being sworn in as a deputy and saw that it was dated December 30 but said he was born “yesterday”

1815(27thof Kislev, 5576): Third Day of Chanukah

1816(10thof Tevet, 5577): Asara B’Tevet observed for a second time, on the civil calendar in 1816.

1817: In Karlskrona, Sweden, Aaron Abrahamson and his wife gave birth to Swedish businessman and patron of the arts August Abrahamson who was the grandson of Aaron Abraham who had been a member of the Berlin Academy of Art.

1824: John Meseena married Rachel Gomes today at the Hambro Synagogue.

1823: In New York City, Dr. Daniel Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto, the Dutch born of Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto, Cantor and Judith van Samuel Peixotto, and his wife Rachel Lopes Mendes Peixotto gave birth to Judith Salzedo Hays, the wife of David Solis Hays who was the first Jewish woman to serve as a principle in the New York City public schools.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/peixotto-judith

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/peixotto-judith-salzedo

1829(3rdof Tevet, 5590): Forty-nine year old Jacob da silva Solis, the long born son of Bevendia de isaac henriques Valentine and Solomon da silva Solis and the husband of Charity Hays with whom he had seven children past away today.

1829: Birthdate of the first Jewish mayor of Seattle, Washington, Bailey Gatzert, the native of Darmstadt, Germany who lived in Natchez, Mississippi before moving to Seattle where became a successful businessman and banker.

1829: The Director of the Paris Opera signed a contract today “specifying” Giacomo Meyerbeer’s “Robert le diableas a "grand opera in five acts and seven scenes"

1831: Birthdate of Hanover native and University of Halle graduate Marcus (Meir) Lehmann, the prolific author who served as the rabbi of a “private religious society” in Mainz which was really a congregation until his death in 1890.

1832: John C. Calhoun, who as Secretary of State appointed philo-Semite Warder Cresson (and future convert to Judaism) to serve as U.S. Consul to Jerusalem, began serving as his first term as a U.S. Senator from South Carolina.

1833: In Finsbury, Esther and Joseph Moses Levy gave birth to Edward Levy who became Edward Lawson.

1837: Caroline Davis and Levy Jacobs gave birth to Edward Jacobs.

1838: George D. and Elizabeth Bennett Rosengarten gave birth to Adolph G. Rosengarten who rose to the rank of Major in the 106th Regiment, a cavalry unit in the Union Army who died at the Battle of Stone River during the Civil War.

1838: In Denmarkd, Brigitte Simon and Hartvig Abraham Von Essen gave birth to Ida Frederikke Von Essen.

1845: Texas is admitted as the 28th U.S. state. Considering their numbers, Jews played an active role in the affairs of Texas at this time.  Moses Albert Levy served as surgeon-general for Sam Houston’s forces at the Battle of San Jacinto – the victory that gave Texas her independence.  Isaac Lyons served as the surgeon –general for another Texas leader, Tom Green.  At least one Jew, Abraham Wolf, died at the Alamo.  David Kaufman fought at the Battle of Neches, served in Republic of Texas legislature and was one of the state’s first Congressmen when she joined the Union.  Kaufman County is named for him.  With the support of Sam Houston, Henry Castro helped settle 5,000 Germans in Texas between 1843 and 1848.  Castro County and Castroville both bear witness to the successful effort of this Sephardic Jew. During the 1850’s Jewish congregations were established in Houston, Galveston and San Antonio. In each case, the building of the cemetery preceded the building of the house of worship.

1847: Seventy-two year old English composer William Crotch passed away. Among his students was the Jewish composer Charles Kensington Salman who created the musical setting for “Adonai Malakh” (Psalm 93). Crotch drew on Biblical related themes for some of his works including “The Captivity of Judah” and an oratorio entitled “Palestine.”

1848: One day after he had passed away, 72 year old Joseph Emanuel was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.

1848: Birthdate of Calude Reigner, the an officer with the Corps of Royal Engineers who served two tours of duty with the Palestine Exploration Fund where he took part in some of the first modern surveys of Jerusalem and other parts of this part of the Ottoman Empire.

1848: In Hungary, Lena Kulka and Emanuel Shlesinger gave birth to Sigmund Shlesinger the husband of Fannie Fleshiem who served with “Colonel George A. Forsyth’s Company of Scouts” and fought at the Battle of Beecher’s Island (Colorado) in 1868.

1848: In Hungary, Emanuel Shlesinger and Lena Kulka gave birth to Sigmund Shlesinger, the husband of Fannie Fleisher, a member of Colonel Forsyth’s Scouts during the Indian Wars in Colorado in 1868 and active member of the Cleveland, Ohio, Jewish community who served on the Board of Directors of Tifereth Israel and was one of the incorporators of the Cleveland Federation of Jewish Charities.

1849: Birthdate of British economist William Cunningham the author of The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in which he described the role of Jewish moneylenders in Medieval England and the manner in which King John, among others, exploited them for his own gain.”

1853: Birthdate of mathematician Ferdinand Caspary, the son of a German Jewish businessman and the grandson of a rabbi who was raised in Glogau.

1851: Philadelphia native Julia Levy and Joseph Moss who had been married in New York City gave birth to Helen Moss.

1854: In Manchester, England, Marcus and Martha Leipziger gave birth to Dr. Henry M. Leipzieger, the Supervisor of the Lectures of the Board of Education who founded the Hebrew Technical Institute in 1884.

1857: “A Legal Decision” published today told the story of the son of a wealthy London Jewish banker who had fallen in love with a Christian girl whom he was going to marry despite the father’s threat to disinherit him.  Taking advantage of a little-known law that required Jewish fathers to support their Christian children, the boy told his father he would become a Christian which meant he would be “entitled to one-half of the father’s fortune.”  The father sought help from lawyer who said that for a fee of ten guineas he would tell him how to thwart the son’s plan.  Once the fee was paid, the lawyer told the father that he could become a Christian would leave him free to disinherit the son. The father left the lawyer without any further comment.

1860(16th of Tevet, 5621): Parashat Vayechi

1860(16th of Tevet, 5621): “Tamar (Terese) Ree, the Danish born daughter of Isac Hartvig Rée and Sara Wulff von Essen and wife of Hartvig Philip Ree, passed away today at Frederica, Denmark.

1860: The New York Times reported that one of the manifestations of excitement shown by the Poles following the Warsaw Conference was “a hatred of Jews and Germans that knew no bounds.”

1861: Birthdate of German mathematician Kurt Hensel whose paternal grandmother was Fanny Mendelsohn and whose paternal great-great grandfather was Moses Mendelsohn making him an example of the “disappearing Jews” – an all too common phenomenon of the 19th and 20th centuries.

1862(7th of Tevet, 5623): Seventy-year-old Samuel Israel Mulder who is best known for his translation of Pentateuch, Psalms and Proverbs from Hebrew into Dutch – the first such work of its kind.

1864(30th of Kislev, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6th day of Chanukah

1864: In San Francisco, founding of “Congregation Ohabai Shalome” at “1831 Bush near Laguna” whose members included Joseph Schmidt, Philip Stern, Bernard Reiss and M.L. Stern.

1870: New York City authorities warned Jews about incompetent and unscrupulous mohalim who were causing the deaths of many Jewish infants.

1871: In Kalvarija, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), Efraim London and his wife gave birth to Meyer London, the Brooklyn Congressman who was one only two members of the Socialist Party elected to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

1871: In Memphis, TN, Max Friedman and Tillie Marks gave birth to Lee M. Friedman, the Harvard educated lawyer, President of the Boston Branch of the Alliance, Israelite Universelle and treasurer of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association who also served as secretary of the Purim Association.

1872(29thof Kislev, 5633): Fifth day of Chanukah

1874: In Edinburgh, Scotland, Dora and Samule Glasstone gave birth to Agnes Glasstone who died before she reached the age of ten.

1874: Two days after she had passed away, Miriam (Lazarus) Israel, the wife of Morris Israel was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1874: A review of “The Travels of the Shah of Persia” by J.W. Redhouse which uses the Shah’s diary to recount the monarch’s 1873 tour of Europe by the Shah included a description of his meeting with Lord Rothschild.  After praising Rothschild for his wealth, the Shah told Rothschild that “the best thing to do would be that you should” use your money “and buy a territory in which you could collect all the Jews of the whole world, you becoming their chief and leading them on their way in peace, so that you should no longer thus scattered and dispersed.” (Compare this sentiment with the Iranian -modern day Persia- view on the Jewish state.)

1875(1stof Tevet, 5636) Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Seventh Day of Chanukah

1875: Birthdate of Camden, SC native Love Rosa Hirschmann who gained fame as Love Rosa Gann, the graduate of the Medical College of South Carolina, who went on to practice medicine in the fields of ophthalmology and otolaryngology.

1875: Birthdate of Mainz, Germany and New York Law School trained attorney Otto Godfrey Foelker, the member of the Republican party who served in the New York State Assembly, the New York State Senate and the U.S. House Representatives before moving to California where he practiced law before his death.

https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=F000231

1877: Birthdate of Hyman Somers, the son of Rubin Myers.

1878: In New York City, the Young Men’s Hebrew Union hosted a well-attended reception and ball in Irving Hall which was a celebration of Chanukah.

1879: Four days after she had passed away, 65 year old “Jessie Salmon” the daughter of John Salmon and Catherine Polack was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1880: Based on information provided by London Times’ correspondent in Berlin, “the persecution of the Jews in Prussia has led to “a Jewish traveling in a public canning a Professor, a Jewish student killing a Christian fellow-student in duel and a Jewish merchant boxing a Christian trader’s ears” --- “unfortunate incidents” that “were ‘preceded by some violent act on the part of the Christian antagonist.’”

1881: In Paris, antiques dealer Alexandre Rosenberg and his wife gave birth to Paul Rosenberg, a leading French art dealer who was able to regain parts of his collection that had been stolen by the Nazis.

1882: Isaac Samuel, the French born son of Lyon Israel Samuel and Fleurette Baruch Weil and the husband of Fanny Heilbronner with whom he had had five children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1882: It was reported today that in Russia, “the senate has decided that no court can authorize the transfer of land to a Jew.”

1882: It was reported today that in Russia “the railway companies have ordered the discharge of their Jewish employees.”

1885: Amy and Daniel Cohen gave birth to Pauline Cohen who died at the age of seven months after which she was buried in the Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.

1886(2ndof Tevet, 5647): Sixty-two year old Levi Goldsmith, the German born Son of Seligmann Falcke Goldschmidt and Schönchen Hinka Alexander and husband of Henrietta Goldsmith passed away today in Philadelphia, PA

1886: Alice Suares was married today in Alexandria, Egypt.

1888: In Chicago, Joseph Zeisler, the Austrian born son of Isaac and Anna Zeisler and his wife Theresa gave birth to Erwin (Billy) Paul Ziesler

1888: In New York, the Excise Commissioners heard the protest of the Pastor of St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church to the granting of a liquor license to Charles Goldstein, the owner of Webster Hall, an edifice designed to for Jewish weddings and other such social events.

1888: Santa Clause will distribute toys to the 600 children at the Christmas Party being held today at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City.

1888: The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City will the site of tonight’s theatrical and musical productions the proceeds of which will go to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1889: Six hundred youngsters attended an evening of entertainment in the chapel of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum sponsored by the Seligman Solomon Society.

1889(6thof Tevet, 5650): One day after his 78th birthday, Rabbi Ludwig Philippson whose works included “an annotated German translation of the TaNaCh” and who was the son of  Moses Philippson and the father of geologist Alfred Philippson passed away at Bonn

1889: The officers and managers of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society hosted a reception in honor of state Senator Jacob A. Cantor and Assemblyman Joseph Blumenthal.

1889: The Jaffa to Jerusalem Railway Company (Société du Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa à Jérusalem et Prolongements) was founded in Paris with Bernard Camille Collas, a French lighthouse inspector, as the first director.

1889: It was reported today the one of the highlights of this year’s New York theatrical season was Edwin Booth’s portrayal of Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.”

1890: In San Rafael, CA, “a grocer” and his wife gave birth to Alfred C. Blumenthal who gained fame as “wealthy real estate operator A.C. Blumenthal who was known to his theatrical friends in Hollywood and New York as “Blumey.”

1890(18THof Tevet, 5651): Sixty-five year old Henry S. Henry, a native of Ramsgate, England, who was the founder of H.S. Henry & Son, commission merchants who was active in several charitable Jewish organizations passed away today at his New York home.

1890: Sgt. Jack Trautman, who could have retired but chose to stay with his men, fought at Wounded Knee, SD today with such courage that he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

1891: According to Emmanuel Lehman, the Treasurer for the Transportation Fund for Russians, as of today the fund has raised $82, 842.73 to aid Jews trying to flee the Czar’s realm.

1891(28thof Kislev, 5652): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1891: Sixty-eight-year-old German mathematician Leopold Kronecker, who converted to Christianity in the last year of his life, passed away today.

1892: A fire broke out at the four-story brick building at 3 Mechanic Alley the ground floor of which is occupied by tailor shop owned by three Jews, Samuel, Isaac and Harris Goldstein.

1893(20th of Tevet, 5654): Adolf Jellinek passed away. Born in 1821, he was an Austrian rabbi and scholar who became a preacher at the Leopoldstädter Tempel in Vienna in 1856.

1893: In Newark, NJ, Max Boxer made bail on charges of misusing the United States mail when he sent a postcard to Abraham Kursek, a Jewish poultry and fish merchant threatening to shoot him and his son-in-law if he did not vacate his stall on Prince Street.  The two men were business compeititors.

1893: In New York, Judge McAdam granted an injunction prevent Joseph Jaffa  from publishing  the picture of Rudolph Marks, a Jewish actor who is studying law at the University of the City of New York, as part of a contest that he is promoting without the plaintiff’s permission.

1894: In Vienna, Alfred Sachs, the son of Eduard Elkan Sachs and Babette Sachs, and his wife Therese Sachs gave birth to Marie Schmeichler, the wife of Dr. Robert Schmeichler.

1894: In Leicester, UK, Jacob Alfred Jacobs and Eleanor Sophia Jacobs gave birth to Montague Jacobs, the husband of Iris Annie Jacobs with whom he had two sons.

1894:A two week revival of “Quite an Adventure,” a one-act comic opera by Edward Solomon, came to an at the Savoy Theatre in London.

1895: Based on statements of Samuel Schafer published today the Hebrew Fair which closed last week has raised $165,000 and that when all contributions are tallied the amount raised will reach approximately $175,000.  Approximately $100,000 will go to the Educational Alliance with the balance going the Hebrew Technical Institute.

1895: “Judaism And Its Spirit” published today provides a detailed review of The Spirit of Judaism by Josephine Lazarus one of the sisters of Emma Lazarus.

1895: Arthur Scholem and Betty Hirsch Scholem gave birth to Werner Scholem, German political leader, member of the Reichstag during the Weimer Republic and the brother of Gershom Scholem.  Werner would die in Buchenwald.

1895: An armed column “crossed into the Transvaal and headed for Johannesburg” which marked the start of the Jameson Raid whose participants included Solomon Barnato “Solly” Joel one of three sons of Joel Joel and Kate Isaacs who made “a fortune in diamond and gold mining in South Africa,

1896(24th of Tevet, 5657): Seventy-two-year-old Jacob ben Moses Bachrach, the son of R' Moses Bacharach and Sheina Bacharach and the husband of Reva Bachrach, the editor of Hebrew works including “the Turim of Jacob ben Asher” passed away today in Bialystok.

http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/brisman/item/8237

1897: The House Committee of the Home and Hospital for Jewish Incurables is scheduled to meet this afternoon in London.

1897: The “Russo-Jewish Conjoint Committee” of the Board of Guardians is scheduled to meet this afternoon.

1897: The Chovei Zion Association is scheduled to meet this evening at Bevis Marks.

1898: Richard J. H. Gottheil, a professor of languages at Columbia University and a leader in the early American Zionist movement gathered together a group of Jewish students from several New York City universities to form a Zionist youth society. The society was called Z.B.T. which most people know as Zeta Beta Tau fraternity.

1900(7th of Tevet, 5661): Parashat Vayigash

1900:  In his review of Arabia: The Cradle of Islam by Samuel W. Zwemer , George Warner described Arabia as “a vast territory, little known and yet the cradle not Islam alone but of the Hebrew race” as well.

1900: “To-day is "Hospital Saturday," when the citizens of Jewish faith make contribution to the cause in the synagogues; while to-morrow is "Hospital Sunday," when it is the privilege of the Christian to do a similar service for the afflicted through the church offerings.”

1901: The Jewish National Fund (JNF) was founded. “The Jewish National Fund is the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners - Jewish People everywhere.”  After several false starts, the delegates to the Fifth Zionist Congress passed a motion that a fund to be called Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael) should be established, and that "the fund shall be the property of the Jewish people as a whole".  The purpose of the fund would be to be purchase land in the land of Palestine that would belong to the Jewish people.  The JNF's first undertaking was the collection of £200,000.  One of the delegates immediately pledged £10 in memory of Zvi Hermann Schapira who had been one of the prime mover’s behind the creation of the JNF. Theodore Herzl made the second donation and his aide, the third. And with this, the dream of a national fund--and a Jewish Homeland--became a reality.

1902: Birthdate of New York City and St. Lawrence College trained labor lawyer Robert Abelow,
a partner in the firm of Weil, Gosthael and Magnes and the editor of “The Employee Relations Law Journal” who was the husband of “the former Miriam Steinbrink” and a son-in-law of New York State Supreme Court Justice Meyer Steinbrink”

1903(10thof Tevet, 5664): Asara B’Tevet

1903: Plans were agreed on tonight by the “Grand Masters of six leading Jewish fraternities” to make the call of intervention to prevent the massacre of the Jews of Kishineff on Russian Christmas into a national, America, movement.

1903: “The London correspondent of The Jewish Daily News” today “cabled an interview with a Kishineef refugee” who passed through London on his way to America  and described the situation in that city “as very serious” and “that a massacre is looked upon as inevitable, that the Jews of Kishineff are awaiting their faith with the stoic despair of convicts doomed to be executed…”

1904: Birthdate of Wooldridge, NY native and Union College graduate Samuel G. Engel the pharmacist and drug store owner turned “screenwriter and producer” who gave us such films as “My Darling Clementine,” the romanticized biopic about Wyatt Earp.

1905: The Jewish Chronicle reported that “the brothers Gomez de Costa in Hackney, West Indies, would not receive their sister in their house for a year because she had married an Ashkenazi Jew.

1905: The Jewish Chronical reported that a “Proselyte Board” has been formed in Johannesburg “consisting of congregational delegates and Rabbis and that no proselytes would be admitted to the community unless they received a vote of two-thirds of those present at the meeting.

1905: As of today it was reported that the fund to help the Jews suffering from the Massacres in Russia had reach $1,217,000.

1906(12thof Tevet, 5667): Parashat Vayechi

1906: “Praises Schiff’s Scheme” published today described Lord Rothchild’s “scheme for a Jewish settlement near Galveston, TX because, among other things “if Jews are to be sent out of Russia” especially at a time like this, “it is much better to send them where work is available than to where their hands would remain idle.”

1907: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Wharton graduate Herbert K Baskin, the vice president in charge of the Bankers Trust Company “on Broadway near 24thStreet and recipient of awards “from the American Jewish Community and the UJA who was the husband of “the former Betty Maxine Schwartz.”

1908: Louis A. Hensheimer, a member of the baking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company spent his last day “at his desk” prior to undergoing surgery for appendicitis.

1908: Birthdate of Magnus Alfred Pyke, the native of Paddington who was educated in Canada who returned to England, where among other things he served as the Chief Chemist at Vitamins Ltd in Hammersmith and Manager of Distiller Ltd’s yeast research laboratory in Scotland from 1949 to 1973.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-magnus-pyke-1558840.html

1909: Birthdate of Johtje (pronounced YO-tya) Vos, a Dutch woman who along with her husband hid three dozen Jews from the Nazis during World War II.  In addition to which they provided assistance to an unknown number of Jews escaping through part of the Netherlands from 1940 through 1945.  Mrs. Vos moved to Woodstock, NY in 1951 and passed away at the age of 97 in 2007.  She never saw herself as a Righteous Gentile or a particularly brave person.

1910(28thof Kislev, 5761): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1910: “The subject of “Immigration” is scheduled to be discussed today in what is the first of twelve lectures arranged by The Committee on Education of the Jewish Community to be delivered on alternating Thursday evenings, four of which will with deal with “Communal Jewish Problems” and eight of which will deal with “Jews in Many Lands.”

1910: Constantin C. Arion, who as the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs would say that his “Government would grant rights to the Jews in accordance with the peace treat” and that the Government “would completely abolish Article 7 of the Rumanian Constitution” which states that “Jews in Rumania are aliens and that naturalization is only possible for them individually” began serving his first term as Minister of Religion and Public Instruction today.. (Editor’s Note – Going back to the Congress of Berlin, Rumanian government were always promising to emancipate the Jews living in the country and always failing to do so.)

1911: Camille Erlanger’s L’aube rouge premiered at Rouen, France.

1911(8th of Tevet, 5672): Seventy-one-year-old Arnold Tanzer, the associate editor of the Nation passed away today in New York City.

1911: The Chamber of Commerce of Salonica rendered a decision that Jewish porters do not need to work on Shabbat.

1911: At its meeting today, “the Board of Trustees of B’nai Jeshurun” “decided to recommend” to the congregation that the hire Rabbi Joel Blau who is now leading Congregation Shaari Zedek in Brooklyn.

1911 Mrs. Leopold de Rothschild was among those receiving the “Award of the Order of Mercy” today.

1912(19thof Tevet, 5673): Sixty-six year old grain merchant Emanuel Steinhardt passed away today in New Orleans.

1912: In Newark, NJ, Esther Taubenhaus and her husband gave birth to Tulane Medical School graduate Dr. Leon Taubenhuas, “the director of community of health services at Beekman Downtown Hospital and a specialist in emergency medicine” who with his wife Barbara raised two daughters.

1912: A Hebrew School was founded today in Schenectady New York.

1912: U.K. premiere of “The Miracle” a British silent film based on a play by Max Reinhardt.

1913(30thof Kislev, 5674): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1913: In Australia first showing of “The Miracle” a British silent film based on a play by Max Reinhardt who helped write the script for the film.

1914: In Rochester, NY, Oliver Bachrach of Baltimore delivered a lecture on the prophet Jeremiah at The Jewish Chautauqua Society Convention.

1914: “Looking to the War’s End” published today described the views of Bernard Baruch’s father, Dr Simon Baruch on what a post-war world would look like including that “perhaps in a decade or fifty years” the United States and Germany, joined by other countries now at war” will join “together to subdue the Tartar and the yellow man and then we shall have a real peace.”

1915: “The People’s Relief Committee, which is also co-operating with the American Jewish Relief Committee, expects to raise $100,000 today.”

1915: Today in New York, “at the monthly meeting of the Hebrew Congregation of the Deaf and Dumb mutes” Sephardic Rabbi Albert J. Amateau used sign language to make an appeal to the 140 members for contributions to the $5,000,000 fund which the American Jewish Relief Committee is attempting to raise for Jews suffering through the war” which met with an immediate contribution of $250 dollars and a small box filled with jewels.

1915: Today, Dr. J.L. Magnes addressed a crowd of jewelry industry employees and persuaded them to subscribe to a contribution of $10,000 and to create a committee under the Chairmanship of Leopold Stern which will raise $100,000 from among Jewish jewelry workers.

1915: “Today is tag day for the benefit of Jewish sufferers through the war and by night the committee” in charge “expects to have distributed one million tags and to have collected $50,000.”

1915: “A special feature” of today, which is Tag Day, “will be sight-seeing cars filled with actors and actresses from the Yiddish theatres which will tour the city stopping a various tagging pints to entertain the crowds.”

1915: It was reported that M. Maldwin Fertig, the president of The Young Men’s Hebrew Association, has said the campaign to raise funds for a new facility in the would continue until it has reached its goal of $85,000.

1916: The piano duo of Rose and Ottilie Sutro played their version of Max Bruch’s Concerto for Two Pianos in A-flat minor for the first time with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

1916: It was reported today that the survivors of Baltimore lawyer Moses R. Walter are his wife, the former Bertha Ulman, and his children Clementine Walter, Valerie Walter, Raphael Walter, Albert Walter and Mrs. Robert Walkingshaw of Seattle, WA.

1917(14thof Tevet, 5678): Parashat Vayehci

1917: Rabbi Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver the sermon this morning at Temple Beth-El on 5th Avenue.

1917: It was reported at The Hague today “that leading Jewish financiers of Germany refused to support the German war loan unless the German Government” refrained “from all opposition to the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine independent of any Turkish control.”

1917: When Representative Julius Kahn of California spoke tonight at the dinner session of the Fifth Annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association meeting at Columbia he “was applauded when he urged that universal compulsory military service be enacted in law” because “there was no prospect that wars would cease at the end of this war, and every reason to fear that wars would continue in the future as they had in the past.’ (Editor’s Note- the Jewish Congressman did not see WW I as the “war to end all wars” and was calling for peace time conscription – something that would not come to fruition until the year prior to the attack at Pearl Harbor.)

1917: Tonight, “speaking at a benefit at Cooper Union for the needy Jewish journalists and writers fo the warring countries, Dr. J. L. Magnes predicted that the Jewish people would survive their present sufferings stronger than ever and assert a stronger influence on the religious and political life of the nations.”

1917: Tonight at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory more than $6,000 was raised at the Zionist Ball which was held to raise funds “to be used in re-establishing the Jews in Palestine.”

1917: Today “Famous Players, Feature Play, Oliver Morosco Photoplay, Bosworth, Cardinal, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Artcraft, and The George M. Cohan Film Corporation”  “were incorporated into one entity called the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation” with Adolph Zukor as President and Jesse L. Lasky as Vice President.”

1918: Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow, who was in France serving as representative of the Overseas Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board wrote today that for three weeks he has been visiting various military camps using an automobile lent him by a Colonel in the Army and while he has found the experience to be “a great privilege” if also feels that “if he Jewish work here does not improve much in point of organization, I may go in as an army chaplain.”

1918:During the Freedom Wars, Lithuania's government called for volunteers to defend the Lithuanian state. Of the 10,000 volunteers who responded more than 500 of them were Jews. Altogether more than 3000 Jews served in the Lithuanian army between 1918 and 1923.

1918: The Zionist Organization of America held a reception tonight at the Hotel McAlpin for Judge Julian W. Mack, Jacob de Haas and Colonel Harry Cutler “on the eve of their departure for Paris as representatives of the Zionist Congress recently held in Philadelphia” where 300 attendees hear a the message that the delegates hope to come back “with the message that Zion (a Jewish homeland in Palestine) had become a fact.”

1918: Solomon Sufrin is scheduled to speak at “a special convention of the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America” being held at the University Settlement on Eldridge Street.

1919: According to a cable received in Washington, D.C. today, “Dr. Carfinas, the Jewish Zionist Deputy of the Greek Parliament protested to the Greek Senate in the name of Universal Brotherhood against the crimes committed on Jews in certain countries of Eastern Europe and requested the Minister of Foreign Affairs to voice the protest to the civilized world.”

1920: One of two dates in FSB archives for the death of Alexander Dubrovin, the founder of the anti-Semitic journal Russkoye Znamya who helped organized “the pogroms of the Black Hundreds.”

1921(28thof Kislev, 5682): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1921: In Tulsa, OK, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Friedman gave birth to Staley Friedman the author of Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue which “marked the first effort to explain and popularize the humanistic and religious concepts Martin Buber.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)

1922(10th of Tevet, 5683): Asara B'Tevet

1922(10th of Tevet, 5683): The Chief Rabbi of Alexandria, Rodolfo Compagnano, passed away

1923(21stof Tevet, 5684): Parashat Shemot

1923: Birthdate of Shlomo Venezia, the native of Thessaloniki, Greece who survived Auschwitz and wrote Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz

1923: According to an announcement made today by Dr. Nathan Ratnoff, the President of the American Jewish Physicians’ Committee, “a modern medical college and hospital will soon look down on Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives” on eight acres of land purchased for $50,000.

1924(2ndof Tevet, 5685): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1924: It was reported today that that Rabbi Nathan Krass has taken issued with a speech given y Dr. Charles W. Eliot saying that the catch phrase “the melting post,” “like all catch phrases has been superficially conceived or erroneously interpreted.”

1924: In Boston, real estate agent “Frederick Yankelovich and the former Sadie Mostow” gave birth to pollster Daniel Yankelovich. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

1925: “A $10,000 trust fund to provide scholarships for young men and women of the United States to study at the Hebrew University” was “established by Louis Gollin, the manager of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in St. Louis.”

1926: It was reported today that the percentage of school children suffering from trachoma has been reduced from 70% to 12%.

1927: Following its premiere performance last night Alexander Tansman’s “Second Concerto for piano and orchestra was performed again tonight in Boston.

1928: Der Oytser (The Treasure), a play in Yiddish by Sholom Aleichem directed by Aleksei Dikiy premiered today.

1928(16th of Tevet, 5689): Eight year old German born Leopold Stern, a philanthropist and Republican Party activist “known as the dean of diamond importers in America” passed away today.

1928: “The fourth national labor convention for Palestine held under the auspices of the national labor committee for the Organized Jewish Workers in Palestine opened tonight in New York.  Abraham Shiplacoff, chairman of the national committee gave the welcoming address to the five hundred delegates.  Among the visitors was David Bloch, Mayor of Tel Aviv and Israel Merminsky general secretary of the Palestine Federation both of whom have been visiting the United States for the last ten days.

1929(27thof Kislev, 5690): Third Day of Chanukah

1929: Birthdate of Feigele Peltel who as Vladka Meed used her flawless Polish and Aryan good looks to smuggle pistols, gasoline for firebombs and even dynamite to the Jewish fighters inside the Warsaw Ghetto, and who after the war became an impassioned leader in the national effort to educate children about the Holocaust (As reported by Joseph Berger)

1929: In Warsaw, Rabbi Brachya Lieberman, a notable Gerrer Hasid and wife gave birth of Rabbi Simcha Binem Lieberman who survived the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as well as Treblinka, Dachau and Theresienstadt.

1929: Roger W. Straus addressed the Chicago Conference of Temple Brotherhoods at their Chanukah Dinner which was being held at the Palmer House Hotel.  Mr. Straus, a New Yorker, is the son of the late Oscar S. Straus and President of the National Federal of Temple Brotherhoods which, has 22,000 members.  In his speech, Mr. Straus connected the meritorious service of many members in the World War with the valor of the Maccabees in issuing a call to show the same kind of dedication in combating “the corrosive, brutal theory of materialism and thereby to serve again our religion, our country and humanity.”

1929: Lt. Governor Herbert H. Lehman of New York, Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson of Pittsburgh, Joshua Kantrowitz, Ben Altenheimer and Jean Wise will address the Third Annual Chanukah Dinner sponsored by the Metropolitan Conference of Temple Brotherhoods which is being held at the Astor Hotel in New York City.

1930: In Cleveland, Ohio, Bernard Gottesman, an insurgent agent born in Hungary and his wife the former Virginia Weitzner gave birth to Irving Isadore Gottesman “a pioneer in the field of behavioral genetics whose work on the role of heredity in schizophrenia helped transform the way people thought about the origins of serious mental illness.” (As reported by Erica Goode)

1931:The first Hebrew-language feature-film "Oded Hanoded" - "Oded the Wanderer", directed by Chaim Halahmi, premiered in Tel Aviv.

1933: “Flying Down to Rio,” featuring a score by Max Steiner and songs by Gus Kahn was released in the United States.

1934: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Phi Beta Kappa graduate Roberta Karpel who after marrying Robert Silman gained fame as award winning author Roberta Silman.

http://www.robertasilman.com/

1935(3rdof Tevet, 5696): The widow of Barond Edmond James de Rothschild, Adelheid (known as Adélaïde) passed away today, 12 months after the Baron had died.

1936: At a dinner at the Hotel Astor, the national service award of the Phi Epsilon Fraternity “consisting of a scroll and a check for $100” was given to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise for being the man “who has made during the year the most distinctive contribution to the creative life of the Jewish people.”

1936: While testifying today before the Peel Commission Moshe Shetrok cited a well-known letter from Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to Dr. Chaim Weizmann promising Jews “a proportionate share of employment on public work in Palestine” in connection “with his allegation that the Palestine government does discriminate against Jews in public works including the railways, ports and civil services where a virtual Arab monopoly has been created.

1937: William Dodd completed his term as U.S. Ambassador to Germany.  Dodd was the first U.S. Ambassador appointed to serve as after Hitler came to power. (For more see, In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson)

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the General Council for Palestine Jews (Va'ad Leumi) decreed that in view of certain developments, the council was the sole body authorized to reach an agreement with the Arabs.

1937: The British press reported that the Foreign Office had become increasingly alarmed at the extent of Arab and Moslem opposition to Palestine's partition. It had not yet decided whether to appoint a new Palestine Commission, expected to implement the plan, as agreed upon with the Mandatory Commission of the League of Nations.

1937: Heavy fines and prison sentences were imposed on German Jews, accused of illegal ritual slaughtering practices.

1938: “In Hell’s Kitchen,” Irving Sperling, “a jewelry salesman” and “Cecile (Shavitz) Sperling gave birth to “convicted drug dealer” Herbert Sperling.  (As reported by Sam Roberts)

1938: In Berlin, “officials at the Ministry of Finance would neither confirm nor deny the report” “that the 20 per cent capital levy” imposed on the Jews “as a fine for the assassination of Ernest von Rath…is to be increased to 30 per cent.”

1939: “Destry Rides Again” produced by Joe Pasternak and featuring Mischa Auer “as Boris Callahan, the henpecked Russian” was released in the United States today.

1939: U.S. premiere of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame produced by Pandro S. Berman with a script by Sonya Levien and Bruno Frank and music by Alfred Newman.

1939: “Balalaika” a movie version of the English musical directed by Reinhold Schunzel and produced by Lawrence Weingarten was released in the United States today.

1940(29thof Kislev, 5701): Fifth day of Chanukah

1940(29thof Kislev, 5701): Forty six year old Dov Hoz the native of Orsha who was one of the founders of the Haganah and the “founder and CEO of Aviron was killed in an automobile accident today.

https://streetsofisrael.wordpress.com/2014/06/

1941(9th of Tevet, 5702): Tullio Levi-Civita passed away.  Born in 1873, Levin-Civita was an Italian mathematician who was one of the founders of absolute differential calculus (tensor analysis) which had applications to the theory of relativity. In 1887, he published a famous paper in which he developed the calculus of tensors. In 1900 he published, jointly with Ricci, the theory of tensors Méthodes de calcul differential absolu et leures applications in a form which was used by Einstein 15 years later. Weyl also used Levi-Civita's ideas to produce a unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism. In addition to the important contributions his work made in the theory of relativity, Levi-Civita produced a series of papers treating elegantly the problem of a static gravitational field.  On September 5, 1938 the Racial Laws were passed in Italy which excluded all those of Jewish background from universities, schools, academies and other institutions. Levi-Civita was dismissed from his professorship, forced to leave the editorial board of Zentralblatt für Mathematik, and prevented from attending the Fifth International Congress of Applied Mechanics in the United States. He wrote to a former student in May 1939 “I live as a retired person and I do not move; except in summer, however, if my personal conditions allow me to move. As you maybe know, Jews have been completely expelled from Italian cultural life; in particular, I will not participate in the "Volta Congress" and will not be in Rome in September”.In the last years of his life, in spite of his moral and physical depression, Levi-Civita remained faithful to the ideal of scientific internationalism and helped colleagues and students who were victims of anti-Semitism; thanks to him, many of them found positions in South America or in the United States.

1941(9th of Tevet, 5702): A Jewish physician from Prague, Czechoslovakia, Dr. Karol Boetim dies of spotted typhus while treating patients at a Gypsy camp near the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto.

1942: “The Russian People” co-starring Luther Adler is scheduled to open at the Guild today.

1942: “Sweet Charity,” co-authored by Irving Brecher and co-starring Philip Loeb is scheduled to open at the Mansfield Theatre.

1942: Today Jan Komski and three comrades, Mieczyslaw Januszewski, Boleslaw Kuczbara, and Otto Küsel, participated in one of the most famous escapes in the history of that infamous camp. This escape was significant because it was among the first to be organized by the illegal camp resistance movement, and with the help of the local population. “In the morning of Dec 29, 1942, a two wheel cart drawn by two horses passed the gate at Auschwitz in the afternoon. It carried Kuczbara, dressed in a stolen SS uniform. Alongside walked three inmates, seemingly being escorted by the SS-man. They aroused no suspicion as Otto Küsel was known to all the Blockführers (SS Block Commanders). When they reached the check point at the border of the big sentry chain, Kuczbara showed the guards a cleverly forged pass. His uniform and the pass convinced them to allow the cart and the prisoners through. The men simply walked out of the camp. They made it to the village of Broszkowice where they met a resistance woman who gave them civilian clothes. They spent the night at the home of Andrzej Harat, who actually rented the apartment above them to an SS officer.  Mr. Komski eventually reached the city of Krakow, where he was arrested in a routine roundup as he was sitting on a train awaiting departure for Warsaw. Any escaped prisoner would have been hanged very soon after his return to Auschwitz. But, Komski was not recognized and his identity papers now bore a different name.”

http://www.remember.org/komski/jan-komski.html

1943(2ndof Tevet, 5704): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1943: “A series of statements and affidavits detailing numerous acts of Anti-Semitism and desecration of Protestant churches and Jewish Synagogues in Washington Heights, was issued today by the Eastern regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith.”

1944: As he attempted to negotiate a life-saving deal with the Nazis, Rudolf Kastner found himself trapped in Vienna and unable to return to Budapest – a situation that would not change until March of 1945.

1944(13th of Tevet, 5705): Seventy-six year old Bird Stein, the Allegheny, PA, born daughter Pauline (Bernhard) Stein and Solomon Stein, who “received her education at Columbia, the New School for Social Research and NYU and became Bird Stein Gans when she married her second husband Howard Gans with whom she had two children Marian and Robert and who worked to advance the cause of women as can be seen by her leadership role in the National Council of Jewish Women passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bird-stein-gans

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gans-bird-stein

1945(25thof Tevet, 5706): Parashat Shemot

1945 (25thof Tevet, 5706): Seventy-three-year-old University of Pennsylvania trained lawyer Samuel W. Salus, the member of both houses of the state legislature and Republican Party leader who was the husband of Ada R. Salus, the father of Arthurs S. Salus and the grandfather of Samuel W. Salus II passed away today.

http://www.house.state.pa.us/BMC/Bios/PDF/2242.PDF

1945:Just before dawn today British Sixth Airborne Division troops threw a cordon around Ramat Gan a town of 10,000 and searched every part of it, looking for terrorists who blew up police and military installations in near-by Tel Aviv and Jaffa Thursday night.  Authorities arrested more than 800 men between the ages of 16 and 40 making this the largest action of its kind in Palestine.

1946: In Palestine, Major Paddy Brett and three non-commissioned officers serving in the British Army were flogged by attackers alleged to have been members of the Irgun.

1947: Five Jewish doctors driving back to Jerusalem from Hadassah Hospital came under attack from Arab gunman. The doctors found sanctuary with a nearby Jewish family while their attackers burned their car. 

1947: "The 29th of November", a ship filled with "illegal" Jewish immigrants, was driven off the coast of Eretz Israel by the British.  The ship was named in honor of the date when the U.N. approved the partition resolution that effectively created the Jewish state of Israel.

1947: Two ships with 7,000 immigrants are boarded by British forces before they can reach the coast of Palestine. The Jewish Agency wants to avoid confrontation with the British, knowing that immigration will open on 1 February 1948. Ben Gurion gives orders that there has to be no resistance.

1947(16th of Tevet, 5708): Moshe Rembach, a Jew who had been working for Barclays Bank since it opened in 1918, was shot and killed by Arab gunman at the entrance to bank.

1948(27thof Kislev, 5709) Third day of Chanukah

1948(27thof Kislev, 5709): Seventy year old British composer Harry Farjeon whose father was Jewish but whose mother was not passed away today.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/garlands/farjeon.htm

1948: It was reported today that Dr. Edwin J. Cohn of the Harvard Medical School has been chosen to deliver the 1949 Julius Stieglitz Memorial Lecture at the University of Chicago.

1948: Israeli troops pushed deep into the Sinai and established a base at Abu Ageila, 20 miles west of the border between Egypt and Israel.

1948: As Israeli forces finally were driving out the Egyptian invaders, the United Nations called for a cease fire between the Jewish state and the Arab aggressor in the Negev.

1948: Israel responded to the UN call for a ceasefire in the Negev by saying it will continue fighting until Egypt agrees to peace talks while the British government, in a move that shows its pro-Arab and anti-Jewish bias, insists that Israel accept the UN call for an immediate ceasefire.

1948: Ralph Bunche urges the Palestine Conciliation Committee to begin its work.

1949: After premiering in October, “The Reckless Moment” directed by Max Ophüls, produced by Walter Wanger and music by Hans J. Salter was released throughout the United States today.

1950: In New York Melanie (Shroder) and Polish-born violinist Roman Totenberg gave birth to Judge Amy Totenberg.

1952(11th of Tevet, 5713):  Beryl Rubinstein composer and piano virtuoso passed away at the age of 54.  A native of Athens, Georgia, Rubinstein was the son of a rabbi.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel protested to the West on its intensified supply of arms to the Arab states. Britain offered to sell jet planes to Israel, and in an equal number to each separate Arab state, and this would obviously give the combined Arab forces great superiority.

1952(11thof Tevet, 5713): “Yiddishist” Smuel Leshtsinski passed away today after being in an automobile accident in New York.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2017/06/shmuel-leshtsinski.html

1953: Yosef Serflin replaced Yosef Sapir as Minister of Health

1953: Yosef Sapir replaced Yosef Serline as Minister of Transportation

1954: In New York, premiere of “Animal Farm” with music by Mátyás Seiber.

1955: Barbra Streisand makes her first recording, "You'll Never Know" at age 13

1955: In a speech to the Supreme Soviet, Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev condemns Israel as a tool of imperialist states used to threaten its Arab neighbors.

1956: Birthdate of Yehudit Ravitz, the native of Beersheba who “is one of the most successful and famous Israeli rock musicians, with a career spanning over thirty years.”

1957: Singer Steve Lawrence, born Sydney Liebowitz in Brooklyn, married fellow entertainer Eydie Gormé. He was Jewish.  She was not.

1957: In Piscataway, NJ, physicist Norman Rudnick and his wife Selma gave birth to multi-talented writer Paul M. Rucnick whose first play was “Poor Little Lambs.”

1959(28thof Kislev, 5720): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1959: “Bari-Ilan University Holds First Commencement Services” published today describes the baccalaureate activities at one of Israel’s newest institutions of higher education.

1960: The Israeli cabinet appointed a full committee “to examine the possibility of settlement in the northeastern Negev desert and the Arad area.”

1961: Having divorce her in 1959, today Billy Rose remarried Joyce Mathews.

1961: Jerry Herman’s off-Broadway musical “Madame Aphrodite” opened at the Orpheum Theatre.

1962(2ndof Tevet, 5723): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah

1962(2nd of Tevet, 5723): Eighty-one year old Eva Leo Fox, the New York born daughter of Max and Caroline Seelig Leo and wife William Fox who “founded the Fox Film corporation in 1915” whose name lives on as the “Fox” in Fox Network News.

 

1964(24thof Tevet, 5725): Seventy-two year old Samuel P. Halpern, the Romanian born son of Jacob and Clara Sarah Halpern and the husband of Etta Halpern passed away today in Minneapolis, MN.

1965: After premiering in Tokyo, “Thunderball,” four film in the James Bond series featuring Leonard Sachs was released today in the United Kingdom.

1965(6thof Tevet, 5726): Ninety five year old Avraham Shapira, the husband of Liba Rochel Shapira passed away today in Petah Tikva,

1965(6thof Tevet, 5726): Seventy-two-year-old German born biographer and novelist Dr. Manford George who arrived in New York as penniless refugee and resuscitated his career as the editor of Aufbau, a German weekly, passed away today.

1966: Elliot Gould and Barbra Streisand gave birth to actor Jason Gould.

1966(16thof Tevet, 5727): Centenarian and more, Bessie Abelson, the wife of Abraham Abelson passed away today after which she was buried in the Talmud Torah Plot of the Home of Peace Memorial Park in East Los Angeles.

1967: Birthdate of Evan Seinfeld actor, director and heavy metal bassist in the bands Biohazard and Damnocracy

1968: Israeli commandos destroyed 13 Lebanese airplanes.

1969: NBC broadcast the 16th episode of Melville Shavelson’s “My World…and Welcome to it.”

1971: After premiering in the UK in November, “Straw Dogs” starring Dustin Hoffman, produced by Daniel Melncik, with a screenplay by David Zelag Goodman and music by Jerry Fielding was released in the United States today.

1971:  Birthdate of Jay Fiedler, quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.

1972(24thof Tevet, 5733): Fifty-two-year-old “Milton L. Kaplan, president and general manager of King Features Syndicate since 1968,” the husband of “the former Doris Willens” and the father of Jeffrey, Daniel and Andrew Kaplan” passed away today.

1973: Birthdate of baseball executive Theo Epstein.

1973: An apparent terrorist plot was foiled when authorities detained two Arabs at the airport in London.

1973: While Prime Minister Golda Meir was not averse to some form of territorial compromise to gain peace with the Arabs, she said today that Israel would not descend from the Golan, will not partition Jerusalem and will not allow the distance from Natanya to the border be a mere 18 kilometers.

1974: “Soviet Jewish physicist and activist Alexander Voronel arrived in Israel.”

1976: Howard Metzenbaum began serving his second, non-consecutive term of office a U.S. Senator from Ohio.

 1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset endorsed the peace plan, as drafted by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and presented to the US and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, by 64 to eight votes with 40 abstentions. More than 1,000 settlers from the administered territories protested against the plan outside the Knesset's gates.

1977: Poland was reported to be seeking to renew relations with Israel that had been severed during the 1967 war.

1980: Refusnik Yona Kolchinsky was scheduled to be called up for service in the Soviet army.

1980(22ndof Tevet, 5741): Eighty-one-year-old Nadezhda Mandelstam the Russian writer and widow of Osip Mandelstam passed away today.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1981/mar/05/nadezhda-mandelstam-18991980/

1981(3rdof Tevet, 5742): Seventy-one-year-old Milton H. Mostel, the brother of Zero Mostel passed away today.

1982(13th of Tevet, 5743):  Movie producer Sol. C. Siegel passed away.  His cinematic productions included “High Society,” “No Way to Treat A Lady” and “Alvarez Kelly.”

1983(23rd of Tevet, 5744): Seventy-three year old Morris N. Kertzer who had served as a rabbi at congregations in the Bronx and Larchmont passed away today. (As reported by Ari L. Goldman)

1985: “The Jew Who Spied for the Nazis” published today provided a review of Arrows of the Almighty:The Most Extraordinary True Spy Story of World War II by Michael Bar-Zohar which tells “the tragic true story of Paul Ernst Fackenheim

1985: HBO’S “Head Office,” a comedy directed and written by Ken Finkelman and co-starring Rick Moranis was released today in the United States.

1986: Eighty-one-year-old actress Grete Moseheim who went to England after the rise of Hitler because her father, Markus Mosheim was Jewish passed away today in New York.

1987: Tonight police arrested financial consultant and retired Marine Corps Colonel, Jonathan de Sola Mendes the husband of “the former Mary Ellen Rosenbulth and the grandnephew of Rabbi H. Pereira Mendes and Rabbi Frederic de Sola Mendes,and “charged him with first-degree manslaughter” for  having bludgeoned his father-in-law to death this evening in the victim’s Park Avenue apartment after they allegedly had quarreled over a collection one hundred rare books.

1988:William Andreas Brown, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, presented his credentials today.

1989(1stof Tevet, 5750): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1992:The Southwestern Bell Corporation and Clal Industries of Israel will jointly bid for control of Israel's national telephone company, Clal said today. Clal and Southwestern Bell International Development will bid for a controlling interest in Bezeq, the Israeli telecommunications concern. The Israeli Finance Minister, Abraham Shohat, recommended this month that the Government sell its 75 percent stake in Bezeq but no deadline was set. The five-month-old Labor Government has vowed to speed privatization but has yet to sell any of the big Government-owned enterprises. The former Likud Government sold 25 percent of Bezeq shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 1990.

1993:Yuval Goldan was stabbed today by a terrorist near Adarim in the Hebron area.

 

1993: “Ghost in the Machine” a sci-fi horror film produced by Wesleyan University grad Paul Schiff, the Bethesda born son of Charlotte and Edward Schiff was released today in the United States.

 

1993: The last edition of Hadashot was published today.

1995(6th of Tevet, 5756): Composer Shlomo Yoffe died in Beit-Alpha.

1995: The family of Yigal Amir, the man who murdered Prime Minister Rabin celebrated the wedding of Vardit Amir and Yithak Cohen in Tel Aviv.

1996(19th of Tevet, 5757): Seventy-five-year-old Leonard “Lenny” Rader, who played basketball at LIU with his “twin brother Howard before going on to play professionally passed away today.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/nbl/players/r/raderle01n.html

1997(30th of Kislev, 5758) Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1998(10th of Tevet, 5759): Asara B'Tevet

1999: “The Hurricane” boxing biopic co-starring Live Schreiber was released today in the United States.

1999: In an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal,Ira Stoll criticized a speech Rabbi Yitz Greenberg gave last November at the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly in Chicago.

2000(3rd of Tevet, 5761): Eighth Day of Chanukah

2000: “Israelis and Palestinians wrangled today over an 11th-hour compromise peace proposal by the Clinton administration as new violence broke out.”

2001(14th of Tevet, 5762): Parashat Vayechi

2001(14th of Tevet, 5762): Eighty-five-year-old San Francisco born physician and president of the Jewish Home, Julian Davis, the husband of Audrey Davis and the father of James and Keith Davis passed away today.

https://www.jweekly.com/2002/01/04/dr-julian-davis-dies-jewish-home-president/

2002: The New York Times featured books reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including the paperback edition of Middle Age: A Romance, by Joyce Carol Oates

2003: Russian Interior Ministry and FSB units seized 4,376 copies of Blowing up Russia: Terror from within printed in Latvia and purchased by Alexander Podrabinek's Prima information agency, which had passed customs control and were being trucked from Latvia to Moscow for retail delivery

2004(17th of Tevet, 5765): Chemist Julius Axelrod passed away.  Axelrod was a co-winner of the Noble Prize for Chemistry in 1970.

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

2004: In “Putting a Still-Vexed Play in a Historical Context” published today A.O. Scott examines “The Merchant of Venice” and its most famous character, Shylock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/movies/29veni.html?_r=0

2004: “The Merchant of Venice” directed by Michael Radford who “believed that Shylock was Shakespeare's first great tragic hero” and which “begins with text and a montage of how the Jewish community is abused by the Christian population” was released today in the United States 3 weeks after opening in the United Kingdom.

2005: A suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at an IDF checkpoint on the West Bank. An IDF soldier and two Palestinians were killed in addition to the bomber.

2005: Alice Loeb, daughter of Ernst Loeb and wife of John Strugnell passed away today in Grasse, France, two days after celebrating her 85th birthday.

2005(28th of Kislev, 5766): Day 4 of Chanukah

2005(28th of Kislev, 5766): Ninety-five-year-old architect Armand P Bartos passed away today.

2006: The Jewish Daily Forward, featured a review of Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce: A Socioeconomic Historyby Cormac Ó. Gráda.  “Gráda’s new economic chronicle, “traces the history of the Jews in Ireland from 1079, when they first arrived, up until the present day. The book’s main focus is the Jewish community from the 1870s through the 1940s, roughly during the Ulysses author’s lifetime. While much has been written about the Jewishness of James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, one of the most famous characters in all of literature, few know anything about the remarkable community in Ireland that inspired Joyce to create him.”

2007: The Chicago Tribunefeatures a review of People of the Book, Geraldine Brook’s new novel that follows the tortuous path of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

2007: The Chicago Tribunereported that the 47,000 square foot property housing Streit’s, the last matzo factory on the New York’s Lower East Side, is going on the marked for $25 million in part of the city that is becoming increasingly gentrified.  The factory will keep producing matzo until the owners build a new one in about a year, probably in New Jersey.

2008: In “Anatomy of a Scam,” Time magazine offers a pictograph description of a Ponzi scheme as it reports that “…Bernard Madoff was arrested for allegedly bilking investors out of up to $50 billion in a Ponzi scheme described as one of history’s largest swindles.”

2008: “The U.S. Treasury gave GMAC of which Jacob Ezra Merkin served as the Non-executive Chairman of GMAC $5 billion from its $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).”

2008:The stars of the hit Broadway musical “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” – Stephen Bogardus, Kerry O’Malley, Jeffry Denman & Meredith Patterson ring The Closing Bell at the NYSE in celebration of the holiday season.  “Irving Berlin’s ‘White Christmas,’” a new musical stage reinvention of the classic film, is now playing a limited engagement on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre.

2008(2nd of Tevet, 5769): Eighth Day of Chanukah

2008:A bottle of flammable liquid was hurled at Temple Sholom one of Chicago's oldest synagogues. The building caught fire but did not suffer “major damage.”

2008 (2 Tevet 5769): Irit Shitrit, a 36-year-old mother of four who had sought shelter in a bus station was killed by a rocket in downtown Ashdod.  Her sister was one of eight other civilians injured in the attack.

2008 (2 Tevet 5769): First Staff Sgt. Lutfi Nasraldin, 38, from the Israeli Druze village of Daliyat al-Karmel was killed when two mortar shells landed in the brigade headquarters near Nachal Oz.

2008 (2 Tevet 5769):Hani al Mahdi a 27-year-old construction worker, from the Bedouin village of Aroer was killed when a Palestinian Grad missile exploded near a construction site in the coastal town of Ashkelon.

2009: In Jerusalem, Yellow Submarine (Tzolelet Tzehubah)hosts Elan Bar Lavi, the Mexican/Jerusalemite guitarist, back in Israel after an American and Mexican tour.

2009: Opening session of International Conference on Conservative Judaism: Halakhah, Culture and Sociology at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

2009: Israel’s Supreme Court ruled today that a major access highway to Jerusalem running through the occupied West Bank could no longer be closed to most Palestinian traffic. In a 2-1 decision, the court said that the military had overstepped its authority when in 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, it closed the road to non-Israeli cars. The justices gave the military five months to come up with another means of ensuring the security of Israelis that permitted broad Palestinian use of the road.

 

2009: “The New Israeli Foundation for Cinema & TV announced today special funding to devlop scripts based on the stories of Shalom Aleichem.”

 

2009(12th of Tevet. 5770): Eighty-three-year-old journalist Janina (née Lewinson) Bauman, the wife of “socialist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman” passed away today.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/jan/26/janina-bauman-obituary

 

 

2009: Mathieu “Schneider was waived by the Vancouver Canucks” today.

 

 

2009(12th of Tevet, 5770): Eighty-three-year-old “David Levine, whose macro-headed, somberly expressive, astringently probing and hardly ever flattering caricatures of intellectuals and athletes, politicians and potentates were the visual trademark of The New York Review of Books for nearly half a century, died today in Manhattan.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

2010(22 Tevet): In the yearbook of the Meisel Synagogue in Prague, the 22nd of Tevet is designated as the date on which to commemorate the escape of Yosef Thein from the gallows in the Hebrew year 5383 (1622).

2010: “Judaism and Social Justice: What Can We Contribute to the Discourse in the Age of Globalization?” and “Brotherly Love: Joseph Revisited,” a session that will use close reading techniques to explore the opening of Vayeshev (Genesis 37) and gain a deeper appreciation of the complexity of the text and its surprising insights into the story of Joseph and his brothers, are two of the programs scheduled to be presented at today’s meeting of the Limmud Conference.

2010: Perez Hilton broke the news earlier today that not only is Natalie Portman who starred in “Black Swan” along with three other Jewish actresses all playing ballerinas (Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey), now engaged to marry her choreographer from “Black Swan,” but that she is also pregnant. For those wondering about Millepied's ethnic origins, he is French, but not Jewish.

2010(22nd of Tevet, 5771):Rabbi Menachem Zeev “Wolf” Greenglass, a Chabad kabbalist and educator who exchanged hundreds of letters over the years with the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, died in Montreal today at the age of 94. Greenglass was a founder of the Rabbinical College of Canada in Montreal after escaping Europe during the Holocaust and taught there for decades. He gave his final lecture on the Chabad philosophical treatise Tanya in 2007. Greenglass was born in Lodz, Poland, to parents who followed the Alexander Chasidic dynasty. In Poland, Greenglass became close to Rabbi Zalman Schneersohn, a descendant of the first Lubavitcher rebbe, and then enrolled in the Otwock Lubavitch yeshiva, where he met Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the son-in-law of the then current Lubavitcher rebbe. When World War II broke out, Greenglass headed for Vilna and was among those who received later transit visas from the Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara, who saved thousands of Jews. Greenglass crossed Russia by rail, went by boat to Japan from Vladivostok and then to Shanghai before reaching Canada. Once there, Chabad tasked him to open schools, including Montreal's Beth Rivkah Girls School, and work with Jewish children in the Montreal public schools. During that time, Greenglass continued a correspondence with Schneersohn, who had become Chabad's rebbe, and who wrote to him in 1954 that "without an intellectual appreciation for the truth … one cannot expect a student to always be in total acceptance." Greenglass also maintained a lengthy correspondence with the Jerusalem mystic Rabbi Yeshaya Asher Zelig Margaliot.

2010: Liverpool marked the death of Avi Cohen with a period of applause before their Premier League match against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Cohen had been declared legally dead the day before after being involved in fatal motorcycle accident

2010: Leah Berkenwald published her “Top 10 Moments for Jewish Women in 2010”

http://jwa.org/blog/top-10-moments-for-jewish-women-in-2010

2011: Those viewing tonight’s scheduled screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi creation, 2001: A Space Odyssey at the San Francisco MOMA will find their viewing experience enhanced if they wear the Dreidel Vission Goggles available at the Jewish Museum for a mere $3.00

2011: Rav Gav is scheduled to appear at Greek Themed International night sponsored by  HipJLM (Heneni International Programs: Jerusalem).

2011: Mrs. Raize Guttman is scheduled to present “Challah for a Kallah,” an interactive Challah class which will cover everything from the hashkafa to the halacha of baking challah as well as learning how to make new and interesting challah shapes.

 

2011:An 8-year-old girl who became the symbol of a recent public struggle against gender segregation and religious extremism returned to school today, for the first time since a violent incident that sparked a nation-wide protest movement. Na'ama Margolese turned into a household name last week after Channel 2 broadcasted a segment in which the young girl's described being spat on and accosted by ultra-Orthodox men over what they deemed to be her indecent apparel.

 

 

2011:Israel's population stands at 7.836 million, the Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) indicated today as part of its year-end survey.

 

2012: The Rishonim String Quartet is scheduled to perform at the Eden-Tamir Music Center.

 

2012: “I Wish” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012: The Millinery Center Synagogue is scheduled to host a Kumzitz Melaveh Malka featuring Singer Songwriter Dov Shurin along with Kabalistic Insights in Judaism with Reb Yitzchak Ring

 

2012(16th of Tevet, 5773): On the final Shabbat of 2012, Jews read Vayehi, the final parsha of Bereshit.

 

2012: After reports were made public today by the PA that there had been nine deaths due to the swine flu,  “a spokesman for the Israeli health ministry said officials were monitoring the situation in the West Bank, but so far are not taking any action.”

 

2012: It was reported today that “Ron Dermer, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is set to replace Michael Oren as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, an Israeli newspaper reported.”

 

2013(26thof Tevet, 5774): Ninety-two-year-old “Rabbi Mordecai Chertoff, a former foreign news editor of The Palestine Post and survivor of the February 1948 bombing of the paper’s Jerusalem office” passed away today.

 

 

2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil by Paul Bloom and Correspondences: A Poem and Portraits by Anne Michaels and Bernice Eisenstein.

 

2013: In the Bronx, the Sholem-Aleichem Cultural Center is schedule to host a “Yiddish Event.”

 

2013: “Like Father, Like Son” and “Brokeback Mountain” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: At least five Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel. (As reported by JTA and Forwards)

2013: “In Week 17 of the 2013 NFL season, Julian Edelman became the third Patriots player in team history to catch over 100 passes in a season today in the Patriots' 34–20 win over the Buffalo Bills

2013: Immigration from France and other Western European countries was up dramatically in 2013, but immigration from the US was down, according to figures released today by the Jewish Agency for Israel. (As reported by Gavriel Fiske)

2014: The Palestinians are scheduled to submit their UN Security Council statehood resolution to a vote today.

 

2014: “The Farewell Party” and “Boyhood” are scheduled to shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: Marc Trestman, the only Jewish head coach in the NFL was fired today after two seaons.

 

2014: “Aryeh Deri of the Shas party offered his resignation to the ultra-Orthodox party’s steering council of rabbis today, a day after the publication of footage of the party’s late former spiritual leader criticizing Deri and praising his arch-rival Eli Yishai, the former leader of the party.” (As reported by Stuart Winer and Tamar Pileggi

2014: An Egyptian court today ban an annual festival in honor of Yaakov Abu Hatzira a Morrocan rabbi whose tomb is in the Nile Delta province of Beheira, south of Alexandria.”

 

2014: Yuri Kissin, “who immigrated to Israel from Russia in 1990 and is a graduate of Tel Aviv University” is scheduled to sing the title role when the Jerusalem Opera performs “Figaro” today.

 

2015(17thof Tevet, 5776): Forty-two year old Neil Gandler, “a Jewish tech entrepreneur who lived out of rental cars’ was shot and killed today by two burglars “while sleeping in a rented car in a gym parking lot during a failed robbery attept.

 

2015: The Israel Air Force Flight Academy Air Show/Graduation and Airshow/Misdar Knafaim (Wings Ceremony) is scheduled to take place today at the Chatzeirim Air Force Base near Beer Sheva. 

 

2015: In Jerusalem, Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld is scheduled to speak on “Wherefore Art Thou Modern Orthodoxy?”

 

2016(29thof Kislev, 5777): Fifth Day of Chanukah

 

2016: YNY is scheduled to come to an end with an “amazing Student Concert.”

 

2016: In Little Rock, AR, Governor Hutchinson is scheduled to “deliver Chanukah greetings a the Public Menorah Lighting sponsored by Chabad Lubavitch.

 

2016: “Operation Wedding” is scheduled to be screened with “The Chop,” the winner of the Pears Short Film Fund at UKJF at JW3, the Jewish Community Centre London.

 

2016: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host its New Year’s Klezmer Concert this evening.

 

2016: Citing “high prices as one reason for the lack of success in Israel,” “Gottex Brands, also known as Zara Group Israel, which holds the GAP franchise in Israel” announced today that it “will shut down its seven stores in Israel in 2017.”

 

2016: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host Shabbat Chanukah services followed by a special congregational dinner.

 

2017: The Exhibition “1917: How One Year Changed The World” which has opened in New York at the American Jewish Historical Society on September 1 is scheduled to come to a close today. (As reported by Julia Klein

 

2017:  Today, in a game against the Arizona Coyotes, Zach Hyman scored the fifth shorthanded goal of his career, which is the third most by a Leafs player in their first three NHL seasons.”

 

2017: In Jerusalem, Jodi and Gavin Samuels are scheduled to host a Shabbat Dinner that will include a presentation by “guest speaker, Michael Bassin.”

 

2018: In Rochester, NY, the JCC CenterStage Theatre is scheduled to present a performance of “Big Wigs.

 

2018: After having arrived yesterday on his first ever official to the country, Prime Minister is scheduled to spend Shabbat in Brazil today.

 

2018: In Washington, DC, Theatre J is scheduled to present “Talley’s Folly,” a “Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy” about Matt Friedman, a “middle-aged Jewish accountant.

 

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to a “Survivor Talk” by George Levy Mueller.

2018(21stof Tevet, 5779): Parashat Shemot - As the secular world prepares to celebrate a New Year, Jews begin reading “a new” book of the Torah as they start with Shemot.

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 by Norman Lebrecht and the recently released paperback edition of The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005 by Zachary Leader.

2019: JCC and Chabad of Contra Costa are scheduled to host the public menorah lighting at Alamo Plaza.

2019: Final performance of “The Sorceress” Avrom Goldfaden’s 1870’s operetta which is produced by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene is scheduled to take place at he Museum of Jewish Heritage.

2019: In the evening, in Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled host their annual Chanukah Party complete with latkes, sour cream, apple sauce and whole lot more fun.

2019: In Brookline, MA, New England Yachad is scheduled to host the “Teen and Adult Chanukah Party.

2019: In London, JW 3 is scheduled to host the first screening of “Spider in the Web.”

2019(1stof Tevet, 5780): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

2020: Hadar is scheduled to present “Rising Song Intensive,” a one-day virtual seminar for people    of all musical backgrounds…”

2020: The 3-day long December Institute presented by NFTY Northeast is scheduled to come to an end today.

2020: Judaism Your Way in Colorado is schedule to continue its virtual cooking classes with instructions in how to make Mandelbrot

2020: YNY is scheduled to host a Lunchtime concert with London’s Fran & Flora (Francesca Ter-Berg and Flora Curzon) \ one of the British capital’s most sought-after bands followed by an evening concert with “The Nigunim Trio (Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg & Rob Schwimmer).”

2020: The FIDF is scheduled to host the Head of the Lebanon Department in the IDF Intelligence Corps lecturing on “The Northern Border: Exposed.”

2020: Today “Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai is scheduled to announce his entry into national politics and the formation of a new party ahead of Israel's upcoming elections for parliament, Hebrew media outlets reported yesterday.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, December 30, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 30

39: A black day on the Jewish calendar; birthdate of Roman Emperor Titus the man who destroyed the Second Temple. The Arch of Titus commemorates the exile of the Israelites.

987: Coronation of Robert II, who “conspired with his vassals to destroy all the Jews who would not accept baptism” and inspired mob violence against the Jews including “the learned Rabbi Senior”

1066((9 Tevet 4827): Joseph ibn Nagrela, son of Samuel ibn Nagrela, was murdered in Granada during the Granada Massacre. He had served as vizier to Badis, ruler of the Berbers. There had been constant tension between the Berbers and the Arab population. Joseph attempted to ease the conflict between the two camps and prevent excesses against the local Arabs. His enemies included Abu Ishak, Berber advisor to the prince, who accused him of trying to cede the city to a neighboring prince. Badis ordered Joseph killed and crucified. In the ensuing massacre of the Jewish population, 1,500 families were killed, including Joseph's wife and son. A few years later, Jews were readmitted to Granada and reassumed high offices.

1066(9thof Tevet, 4827): In what is called the 1066 Granada Massacre an untold number of Jews in this part of Muslim-ruled al-Andalus were murdered by a Islamist mob.

1066(9th of Tevet, 4827): Joseph ibn Naghrela, the eldest son of Rabbi Sh'muel ha-Nagid and vizier to the King of Granada, was crucified by an Arab mob

 

1299: The City of Damascus, except for its Citadel began it surrender to the forces of Mahmud Ghazan who had converted to Islam in 1295 marking the start of a downgrading of the conditions of the Jews in Persia because they were forced back into the role of “dhimmis” – official second class citizens.

1334: French born Jacques Fornier was elected Pope Benedict XII who came to the defense of Jews as can be seen by his letter to Duke Albert of Austria, “recommending that he take measures for the protection of Jews” and a letter to the Bishop of Passau urging him to investigate charges of host desecration aimed at the Jews “and to punish severely those who had invented such false accusations.”

1576: After spending four and one half years in prison, Fray Luis De Leon, a converso descendant was released. As a scholar of Hebrew at the University of Salamanca, he was punished by the Inquisition for translating the Song of Songs (Solomon) from Latin into Spanish.

1596(9thof Tevet, 5357):  Menachem Rapoport (Menachem Abraham ben Jacob Ha-Kohen) passed away. Known as Rappa, this Italian rabbi witnessed “the burning of the Talmud pursuant to the papal bull of 1553” and was the author of several works including “Zofnat Pa’neach.”

1665: Sabbetai Zvi, the famous or infamous "False Messiah" departed for Constantinople

1669: Based on a case involving “the kahal of Brest and some Russian priests of Brest, “it appears that the latter caused much damage to the Jews of Brest, and that during the religious processions riots took place in which Jewish property was stolen and Jews were murdered or wounded by priests as well as by others.” Jews had been living in Brest-Litvosk since the 14th century and although their fortunes had fallen to a new low during the Cossack Uprising, in 1669, life was improving since King Michael Wisniowieck re-confirmed the privileges previously enjoyed by the Jews which allowed them to own property and engage freely in commercial activity.

1673: Birthdate of Ahmed III the sultan who appointed Judah ben Samuel Rosanes as chief rabbi of hakam bashi of the Ottoman Empire.

1695:Based on the diploma on display at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, today is the day on which Dr. Coppilia Pictor graduated from Medical School in Padua. He was the first doctor in Bochum, Germany

1673: Birthdate of Ahmed III, the Ottoman Sultan who signed the peace treaty of Passarowitz between Austria and Turkey in 1718. According to the treaty, “Jews who were Turkish subjects were permitted to live and trade freely in Austria. Their position was thus more favorable than that of Jews who were Austrian subjects. In 1736, Diego d'*Aguilar founded the "Turkish community" in Vienna.

1749: Birthdate of Rachel De Leon, the daughter of Abraham De Leon.

1769(2nd of Tevet, 5530): Parashat Mketz; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1775(7th of Tevet, 5536): Parashat Vayigash

1775: On the same day Jews observed Shabbat, General Washington’s officers discuss the possibility of recruiting free African-Americans to fight in the Continental Army.

1777(30th of Kislev, 5538): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah observed as Washington’s Army suffers in Winter Quarters in Valley Forge.

1783: In Charleston, SC, Sarah De La Motta and Levi Sheftall gave birth to Mordecai Sheftall, the husband of Virginia Russell and the father of Judith, Sara, Luara, Mordecai, Letheria, Henry, Benjamin and Thomas Sheftall.

1787: In Germany, Sara Anschuler and Salomon Schwarzenberg gave birth to Lazarus Schwarzenberg the husband of Eva Bach and the father of Sarah, Fannie, Nathan, Moses, Rosetta and Amelia Schwarzenberg.

1792(15th of Tevet, 5553): Abraham Samuel Covo, the Chief Rabbi of Salonica passed away.

1792: The day after she had passed away, 64 year old Eve Josephs was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1799(2ndof Tevet, 5560): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1812: Joshua Lyon Phillips married Elizabeth Harris at the Great Synagogue today.

1815(28thof Kislev, 5576): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1815: In Lincolnshire, Elizabeth Cullen and George Toynbee gave birth to Joseph Toynbee, the grandfather of historian Arnold Toynbee who took exception to the continued existence of the Jewish people because according to his paradigm they should have disappeared like other ancient peoples.

1814: Birthdate of Barbara Elizabeth Gluck the native of Vienna who wrote her poetry under the name of “Betty Paoli.”

1829: Berton Gottheimer married Julia Zachariah today.

1832: At Donaldsonville, LA, Joseph Marks married Eliza Hyams, the daughter of Samuel Hyams of Charleston, SC.

1836: Birthdate of David Castelli, the native of Leghorn who became “an Italian scholar and educator in the field of secular Jewish studies” before passing away at Florence in 1901.

1845: In Wellington, NZ, Solomon and Jane Levy gave birth to Alfred Lipman Levy, the husband of Annie Elizabeth Levy and Mary Ann Levy.

1847: In Bonn, Loeb Leopold Ungar and Adelheid Edel Ungar gave birth to Adolph Ungar, the Chicago printer and author who was the husband of Henrietta Ungar

1850: Horatio Simon Samuel married Henrietta Montefiore at the Great Synagogue today.

1851:Horace Greely delivered a lecture tonight at the Philomathean Society of Brooklyn on "The World's Fair and Its Lessons” based on his visit to the Crystal Palace where the display of "Jerusalem, in her lonely humiliation, best typifies the Hebrew state and race."

1851: In Middlesex, England, Caroline Benjamin and Isaiah Joshua Simmons gave birth to Joseph Simmons

1854: In Siroka, Hungary, Leon Faber and his wife gave birth to Maurice Faber, who was the rabbi at B’nai Zion in Titusville, PA for ten years where he also taught German language and literature at the local high school before serving as rabbi at B’nai Israel in Keokuk, IA and finally filling the pulpit at Congregation Beth-El in Tyler, TX.

1855: In Sikora, Hungary, Leon Faber and his wife gave birth to Maurice Faber who served as Rabbi of Congregation B'nai Zion, Titusville, Pa., for ten years, and of Congregation B'nai Israel, Keokuk, Iowa, for two years and finally of Congregation Beth-El in Tyler, TX, Congregation B'nai Israel, Keokuk, Iowa, and Congregation Beth-El, Tyler, TX.

1855(21stof Tevet, 5616): Seventy-six year old German Jewish banker Samuel Bleichröder the father of Gerson von Bleichröder and Julius Bleichröder passed away today.

1856: Phillip Soman married Harriet Salkin today.

1857(13th of Tevet, 5618): Fourth Yahrtzeit of Judah Touro.

1861: Two days after he had passed away, 62-year-old Joseph Moseley “of King Street Commercial Road” was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1862: Based on information supplied by the Associated Press several newspapers carried stories about General Order11 including on that used the headline “Expulsion of Jews from General Grant’s Department – The Circumstances Stated and the Documents Quoted”

1863: Leopold Kompert was fined as a result of a suit “brought against him by the clerical anti-Semite Sebastian Brunner for libeling the Jewish religion.”

1864(1stof Tevet, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh day of Chanukah; for the first time in three years, the eighth candle of Chanukah are kindled in a Savanah, GA that is back in Union hands.

1864: In Kensington, Annie and Israel Edward Woolf gave birth to Isabelle Rebecca Woolf who did not live to see her twelfth birthday.

1865: Birthdate of English writer, Rudyard Kipling. In an article entitled “How not to be a stranger in a strange land” David Mamet wrote “My favorite poet was a Jewish man from Krakow, Rudolph Klepsteen. He wrote under the name of Rudyard Kipling, and his most famous poem is called “If.”It begins: “If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you.”He was writing, as he always did, about the Jewish experience.”  This runs contrary to the standard biography that says Kipling was born in India.  The death of his son in World War I had a profound effect on Kipling who became a very active member the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.  The man who wrote of “the white man’s burden” was particularly concerned that dead Jewish soldiers, as well as other non-Christians including Hindus and Muslims troops “were remembered in ways suitable and compatible with their religion and culture.” He also wrote a poem entitled “The Burden of Jerusalem” that begins:

 

“In ancient days

     and deserts wild

There rose a feud –

     still unsubdued –

'Twixt Sarah's son

     and Hagar's child

That centred round Jerusalem.”

1867: In Philadelphia, PA, Meyer Guggenheim and Barbara Guggenheim gave birth to John Simon Guggenheim, “the director and member of the Executive Committee of the American Smelting and Refining Company, the husband of Olga Hirsh and  the father of John and George Guggenheim who served as a U.S. Senator from Colorado.

1868: Birthdate of Philip Passon, the native of Russia who moved to Brooklyn where he was active in the Federation of Jewish Charities and served as director of the Machzike Talmud Torah.

1869:  Birthdate of Belgian political leader, Adolphe Max.

1870(6th of Tevet, 5631): Thirty-five year old Rabbi Simon Tuska, the Hungarian born son of Rabbi Mordecai Tuska and the husband of  Jeanette Nussbaum Tuska whose last pulpit was Temple Israel in Memphis, TN passed away today after which he was buried at the Temple Israel Cemetery .

1871: The annual report on deaths in New York published today reported that only one person had passed away at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1871: George Cruikshank, the illustrator who created the Copper plate engraving “Fagin in his cell” “published a letter in The Times which claimed credit for much of the plot of Oliver Twist” a work that helped create the image of Charles Dickens as an anti-Semite.

1872(30th of Kislev, 5633): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1873: Birthdate of Al Smith, 4-term Governor of New York and the first Catholic to run for President of the United States.  Smith enjoyed a great of deal support among New York’s immigrant Jewish population. He served on the commission that investigated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and championed laws to improve working conditions; a position that would have made very popular with the thousands of Jewish workers employed in the garment industry. Belle Moskowtiz was long-time political advisor to Smith and managed his 1928 Presidential campaign.  Smith gave Robert Moses his big chance in New York State government allowing him to reorganize the state’s government on a basis fitting the 20thcentury.  Smith’s 1928 campaign actually created the coalition that would lead to major Democratic victories over the next couple of years.  Jews were a major component of that coalition and it ultimately gave them political influence that they had been sorely lacking.

1875(2nd of Tevet, 5636): 8th and final day of Chanukah

1878: The New York Times reported that last “Saturday was the anniversary of the feast of dedication as commemorated by the Jewish race; that is to say, the anniversary of the resuscitation of Jewish worship in the temple at Jerusalem, after the long interruption of the Assyrian conquest and the renewed (but brief) autonomy of the Jewish nationality, after one of the severest military struggles, waged by the Maccabees, recounted in ancient history.” (The NYT would not be the first, nor will it be the last, to confuse the Syrians with the Assyrians.)

1879: An article published today that traced the history of the hospitals of New York City, reported that when Mt. Sinai Hospital opened in 1852 with the support of the Jewish community, it was the third hospital founded by a religious group.  During the 1840’s the Episcopalians had founded St. Luke’s and the Catholics had founded St, Vincent’s.

1879: In Galveston, TX, Louis and Rebecca (Schlenker) Schatzkey gave birth to Dora Schatzkey Zielonka, the wife of Martin Zielonka and the mother of

1880:  Birthdate of Munich native Alfred Einstein, the German American musicologist, critic, and second cousin of Albert Einstein who was “an outstanding authority on music of Mozart and the Italian madrigal”

1880: In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “Samuel Hirsch…brought suit” today “against Rabbi Isaac Moses, the editor of a Jewish newspaper…for slander claiming $5,000 damages” because Rabbi Moses had described Mr. Hirsch as liar and a thief in his publication.

1880: Ernst Henrici, the “co-initiator of the so-called Anti-Semite Petition” delivered a speech at “Bock Assembly” espousing his “anti-capitalist, anti-liberal and anti-conservative agenda.”

1882: “Help for the Hospitals” published today provided a description of various New York City health institutions including Mt. Sinai Hospital which was originally created for the use of the Jews of New York City, but now serves patients regardless of “race, creed or nationality” and also maintains a system of “charity beds” to serve the city’s needy.

1882: Rachel and Morris L. Kramer gave birth to Hyman S. Kramer the younger brother of Beckie Kramer.

1884: In Philadelphia, PA, “Moses and Miriam (Levy) Sloman gave birth to Drexel Institute trained artist Joseph Sloman who designed the stained-glass memorials for Temple Israel in Union City, NJ, who was a member of Adas Emuno in Hobken and was the husband of the former Martha E. Stien.

1886: “A Bar But No Barroom” published today included Charles Goldstein response to complaints by members of St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church to his receiving a license to sell liquor at Webster Hall which is a block away from the church.  Goldstein said that no objections were raised before or after the foundation was laid for the building last August. Webster Hall is a building designed to host various Jewish social events including weddings.  Liquor would not be sold until 8:30 or nine in the evening.  (Considering the popular image connecting certain groups of Catholics with the consumption of alcohol, one must wonder what the real motive for the late-blooming objections was)

1886: It was reported today that a ukase issued during the reign of Czar Nicholas compelling “resident German Jews to hold certificates as merchants of the first guild” has been revived in Poland.  The certificates cost seven rubles.  Since few of the Jewish merchants can afford the certificates, they will be forced to leave.

1888: Among the charitable institutions receiving money from city is the Hebrew Benevolent Society of the City of New York was got a payment of $60,000.

1888: The Seligman Solomon Society sponsored evening of entertainment at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1889: It was reported today the Jesse Seligman, Henry Rice and Julian Nathan were among the dignitaries who attended the recent evening of entertainment held in the chapel of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum

1889(7thof Tevet, 5650): Thirty-three year old Myer Silberman, a jeweler from Poland, apparently took his own life today while “alone in his room at 5 Orchard Street.”

1889: It was reported today that Philip J. Joachimsen, the Chairman of Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society Advisory is “confined to his home by illness” which made it impossible for him to take part in the events honoring state Senator Jacob A. Cantor and Assemblyman Joseph Blumenthal.

1891(29thof Kislev, 5652): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1891: “The Siege of Yemen” published today described 10 week siege of Yemenite town by an Arab army whose leader declared he would convert the Jews of Yemen to Islam “or extirpate them.” (That is a fancy way for saying “wipe them out.”)

1892: Benjamin Kossman transferred to the Company D of the Sixth Cavalry in the U.S. Army.

1892: Cornelius Herz, the English born American and French trained physician who worked to develop uses for electricity is in London, where he may stay for some time as France deals with the Panama Scandal.

1892: Birthdate of Yonkers NY, native and Dickinson College trained attorney, Joseph Altman a powerful figure in New Jersey politics which led to his serving six terms as the Mayor of Atlantic City while raising his son Michael with his wife Lillian.

1892: “No Mercy for the Jews” published today described reports “from St. Petersburg and other parts of Russia which show that the persecution of the Jews and the inhumanity of the Czar’s officals toward that unhappy race are greater than ever before” as can be seen by the issuance of “six edicts…aiming to disperse the Jewish subjects…weaken their position in the trading centers and crush out their religion.

1892: As of today, it is reported that many of the 20,000 Jews who have been converted to Orthodox Christianity since 1891 have been deported to Tcherkesovo, five miles from Moscow where they can be watch priests of the Russian Orthodox Church.

1892: It is reported that “many of the Jewish tradesmen and artisans who have been driven from Moscow” have gone to Lodz, a city in Poland which, thanks to their efforts “is fast become and an important manufacturing center.”

1893: As the economic crisis worsens, “the plan” for supplying bread, coal, tea and other necessities to the poor advocated by and financed by Nathan Straus “will be put in operation today.”  Mr. Koppel, a nephew of Mr. Strauss will oversee the daily operation.

1893(21stof Tevet, 5654): Seventy-one-year-old Italian poetess and translator “of medieval Hebrew poems and original Italian verses in Jewish” Eugenia Pavia-Gentilomo-Fortis passed away today in Asolo.

1893: Russia signed a military accord with France.  This treaty ended France's political isolation that dated from the Franco Prussian War.  This meant that the next time France faced Germany, she would have any ally.  The treaty also undid the alliance of the three emperors (Germany, Russia and Austro-Hungry). This treaty was part of the web of treaties that would create an aura of inevitability at the outbreak of World War I.  World War I marked the beginning of the most catastrophic period in the history of European Jewry. Yes, it helps to understand the history of the world when studying Jewish History.

1894: Herzl published a long and detailed article in the Neue Freie Presse summing up the major events of the preceding year in France. The Dreyfus trial is not mentioned in the summary.

1894: Three days after he had passed away, “Edward Phineas Sanguinetti” the son of Isaac Sanguinetti and Harriet Nathan was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1894: “The Dreyfus Scandal and the Growth of French Anti-Semitism” published today described the growing power of General Mercier “who scored a distinct personal triumph…in the conviction of Captain Dreyfus” as well as the quadrupling of the circulation of Drumont’s Libre Parole which makes a specialty of anti-Semitic violence and which along with “Rocherfort’sIntransigeant are preaching…nothing less than the wholesale massacre of the Jews.”

1897(5thof Tevet, 5658): Seventy-one year old Hungarian born, Chicago resident Eduard Zeisler the husband of Josephine Ungar passed away today in Chicago.

1897: The Relief Committee of the Board of Guardians is scheduled to meet this afternoon in London.

1897: Oscar S. Straus, President of the American Jewish Historical Society presided over the last session of its annual meeting which was held today in the Assembly Room of New York’s Temple Emanu-El.  The secretary of the society, Dr. Cyrus Adler, reported a proposed amendment to the constitution on behalf of the Executive Council that would increase the number of Vice Presidents from 3 to 4 and suggesting that Herbert B. Adams fill the newly created position.  The amendment and recommendation were adopted.

1899: Birthdate of David Glick, the husband of Rose Shanis Glick and the father of Stephen Jack Glick, who was buried in Baltimore when he passed away in 1984.

1900: Adalbert Epstein and Emma Epstein gave birth to Friedrich “Fritz” Epstein

1900: Fifty-one-year-old Gratz Mortdecai, the Washington, DC born son of Sarah Ann Hays and Major Alfred Mordecai, the West Point graduate who had commanded the arsenal at Washington, D.C. during the Mexican-American War, married Frances Kingsland Gifford today.

1902(30thof Kislev, 5663): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1902(30thof Kislev, 5663): Fifty-five-year-old Rosa Gottschalk, the German born daughter of Saran and Joseph Ullman, the wife of Albert Gottschalk with whom she had four children – Levi, Lillie, Bertha and Joseph – passed away today in Baltimore, MD.

1902:Herzl considers the possibility of using the waters of the Nile as a means of irrigating the wilderness lands of the Sinai Peninsula.

1903(11thof Tevet, 5664): London born lawyer Abraham Lewis, a resident of Cincinnati and an active member in B’nai B’rith and the Union Of American Hebrew Congregations passed away today In Washington, D.C.

1904: It was reported today that Albert L. and Stanley Wolfson have bought “new seven-story loft building at 39 West 21st Street.

1904: It was reported today the Meyer Goldberg and Abraham Greenberg have a plot on the south side of 139th Street, east of St. Ann’s Avenue in New York.

1905(2ndof Tevet, 5666): Parshat Miketz; 8th day of Chanukah

1905: “The Great Work Ended” published today described the impact of the publication of the twelfth and final Volume of the Jewish Encyclopedia, “easily the largest work yet recorded of American constructive authorship.”

1905: Governor General Doubassoff sent a telegram to the government today that he had “prevented several thousand ‘loyalists’ from marching into Moscow for the purposed of attacking the strikers, revolutionists and Jews.”

1905: The lecture “How We Think” was delivered “before the St. Louis Jewish Educational Alliance.”

1905: Birthdate of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.

1906: “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who gave up one of the largest and richest of the Western Jewish synagogues, Beth Israel, at Portland, Oregon, to establish in this city what he calls the "Free Synagogue," announced today that he had obtained moral and financial support among New Yorkers sufficient to guarantee the establishment of his congregation and eventually the building of a synagogue.”

1907: Two days after she had passed away, Rabbi William Rosenau officiated at the funeral 27-year-old typhoid victim Cora Kaufman Kahn, the daughter of David Kaufman and wife of Bernard Kahn after which she was buried at the Hebrew Friendship Cemetery in Baltimore, MD.

1908: This afternoon, in Albany, NY, Governor Hughes issued a proclamation recommending that contributions being made for those who have suffered in the disaster in Southern Italy and Sicily be made to the New York State Branch of the American National Red Cross Society through its Treasurer Jacob H. Schiff or at the offices Kuhn, Loeb and Company.

1908: It was reported today that the newly elected officers of the Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity which has 300 members are President, Arthur S. Levy, Jr.; Secretary, Abraham Rosenberg; Treasurer, Max Leibson; and Historian, A. Maurice Levine.

1909: Jacob Rogovin and the former Dora Shainhouse, who operated a dry goods business, in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, gave birth to Milton Rogovin, an optometrist and persecuted leftist who took up photography as a way to champion the underprivileged and went on to become one of America’s most dedicated social documentarians. (As reported by Benjamin Genocchio)

1910(29th of Kislev, 5671): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1910(29th of Kislev, 5671): Sixty-six year old Lambert Goldsmith, the father of Ida Goldsmith Morris, passed away today after which he was buried in The Temple Cemetery in Louisville, KY.

1911(9th of Tevet): Parsahat Vayigash

1911: In Brooklyn, NY, Jacob Brenner was “appointed Sheriff’s Counsel” today.

1912: “The Firefly,” an operetta sponsored by Arthur Hammerstein that had premiered on Broadway at the Lyric Theatre moved to the Casino Theatre today where it ran for a total of 120 performances.

1912: In a two-column letter to The Times, Dr. Max Nordau, President of the Tenth Zionist Congress “points out the opportunity presented by the impending partition of the Turkish Empire for the earnest consideration by European diplomacy of the Zionist scheme for the resettlement of the Jews in Palestine.”

1913(1st of Tevet, 5674): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1913:Jewish students representing most of the universities and large colleges of the United States at the second convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association for the study and advancement of Jewish culture and ideals, now in session at Columbia University, were advised tonight by Jacob H. Schiff that they could not expect to accomplish much without the Jewish religion.”

1914: Dr. William S. Friedman, the rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Denver, “likens the persecution of Leo Frank to the persecution of Mendel Bellis in Russia” and “predicted that when the nations now engaged in the European war have finished the struggle, they will turn their attention to the Jews to make him the scapegoat.”

1914: “Shows Jews’ Sufferings” published today described how Oliver Bachrach wore a yoke built of ash, tore his air and “broke an earthen post…as did the patriarch in the time of old in token of great stress of mind” all of which he used to demonstrate the sense of suffering that he was trying to convey in his address about Jewish suffering.

1914: The Sixth Annual Convention of Pi Tau Pi Fraternity, led by President Herbert Frank of St. Louis MO, came to an end today in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1914: Austrian born, American architect Rudolph Michael Schinlder met Frank Lloyd Wright for the first time today.

http://makcenter.org/rm-schindler-bio/

1914: Today’s list contributors to the American Jewish Relief Committee for Suffers from the War included the Cohn Raincoat, Co, the West St. Paul Congregation, Chattanooga Relief Committee and Davidson Bros & Co of Sioux City, Iowa.

1914: At Rochester, NY, “in an address tonight before about 1,000 delegates to the Jewish Chautauqua Convention Dr. Leon Harrison of St. Louis said that regardless of Leo Frank’s guilt or innocence, he is “certain that Leo Frank has not received the fundamental right to which every American citizen under arrest is entitled – a fair trial.”

1915: The Treasurer’s Report of the American Jewish Relief Committee released tonight showed that the total contributions had reached $965.886.25; $755,000 of which was in cash and $210,886.25 in pledges.  Today’s largest contribution in the amount of $5,000 came from Henry P. Goldschmidt.  Felix Warburg is the committee’s treasurer.

1915: “In a letter addressed to Benedict XV,” the American Jewish Committee asked the Pope to “help he Jewish cause by using “his influence with the Roman Catholic Poles” – a request that “was not a success” and which Italian Jews said “created in Italy an impression bordering on the ridiculous.

1915: Oscar S. Straus, Chairman of the Clothing Appeal Committee of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, issued a New Year’s appeal today for clothing and shoes for the destitute” people living in war-torn Belgium and Northern France.  [Straus, a leading member of the Jewish community, also played a prominent role in the civic and charitable endeavors of the general community.]

1916: Today, “the Women’s Proclamation Committee” which is “the national women’s organization” collecting funds for Jewish relief led by its President, Mrs. Samuel Elkes “received a draft for $1,000” from its St Louis branch which had held a fund-raising bazar on December 11.

1917: At Temple Beth-El, Dr. Samuel Schulman is scheduled to speak on “Losses and Gains of 1917.”

1917: At Carnegie Hall, Rabbi Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon at the Free Synagogue on “Has Israel’s Hour Come At Last?”

1917: Dr. Alexander Lyons of Brooklyn is scheduled to speak on “Can We Still Believe?” at Temple Emanu-El.

1917: Felix M. Warburg, the Chairman of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthorpic Socieites announced today that on Sunday, January 6, 1918, a campaign would being with the gola of raising more than four a half million dollars “for the support of Jewish charities in New York City, many of which face large deficits for 1918.”

1917: Dr. Pierre A. Siegelstein presided over the second annual convention of the American Union of Rumanian Jews at the Park Avenue Hotel where T. Tileston Wells Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Rumanian Relief Committee said that “as an ally of the United States in the World War” Rumania “assuredly pay deference to the feelings of Americans with regards to the emancipation of the Jews.”

1917: Among the contributions reported today to have been received by the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering the War including $320 from Rabbi Moses S. Margolis, $100 from the Sons of Israel of Frostburg, MD, $500 from the Columbus, Ohio Committee and $100 from Centreville, Iowa.

1918: It was reported today that James Haines, the Chairman of the Zionist Society of Engineers, has announced “that in the near future the Society will send several engineers to Palestine to make a survey of the natural resources of the country.”

1919: Three days after he had passed away, the funeral is scheduled to be held today in Manhattan for Hartford, CT born, Columbia trained attorney Ira Leo Bamberg, the husband of Reba C. Bamberger with whom he had two children.

1919: A deed bearing today’s date described a “all the lands rights, estate, property” which “Morris Bank, et al” conveyed “to the Trustees of the Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation” in Baltimore, MD.

1921(29th of Kislev, 5682): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1921: Two days after he had passed away, Myer David Levine, the husband of Shulla Freeman with whom he had had three children – Flora, Leah and Jacob Solomon – was buried today at the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery” in Northern Ireland.

1923: In New Haven, CT, Samuel and Lena Goodman gave birth NYU trained attorney and long-time County Clerk of Manhattan Norman Goodman. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1923: Philip Guedalla, the well-known English author and Liberal leader, was elected President of the Federation of English Zionists today. (As reported by JTA)

1925: U.S. premiere of “Ben Hur” the silent screen version of the novel by the same name produced by Louis B. Mayer and featuring Carmel Myers as Iras, “the Egyptian vamp.”

1926: Two days after he passed away, funeral service are scheduled to take place for Albany, NY born and Columbia trained attorney Samuel B. Hamburger, an active member of the Jewish community who “was a trustee of the Educational Alliance, a founder of the Jewish Board Guardians and long-time President of the Central Synagogue.”

1927: Birthdate of P.R. specialist Charles J. “Charlie” Brtoman whose “career” as the public address announcer for the Presidential Inaugural Parade began with Eisenhower and was end by Donald Trump.

1928: Birthdate of Yehuda Haffner, the native of Manchester England who gained as Yehuda Avner “personal secretary and speechwriter to Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Golda Meir and Levi Eshkol, and as Israeli Ambassador to Australia and the United Kingdom.”

1928: The National Labor Committee hosted a reception in honor of Mayor David Block of Tel Aviv and the other members of the Palestine Labor Delegation including Miss Goldie Meyerson (who as Golda Meir would become Prime Minister of Israel) this evening at the Manhattan Opera House. Violinist Max Rosen and Metropolitan Opera soprano Nanette Guilford make their first joint appearance as part of the evening’s entertainment.

1928: A debate is held at Yeshiva College where teams from the Hebrew Theological College of Chicago and the Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary take opposing sides on “Resolved: The Cultural Restoration of Judaism depends upon the Restoration of Palestine.”

1928: Birthdate of Lawrence Haffner, the native of Manchester England who gained fame as Yehuda Avner the Israel diplomat, confidant of Prime Minister and author.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23739770.2015.1066940

1929(28th of Kislev, 5690): Fourth Day of Chanukah is observed for the first time during the presidency of Herbert Hoover.

1930: “Five Star” a play about journalism written by Louis Weitzenkorn opened on Broadway at the Cort Theatre.

1930(10th of Tevet, 5691): Asara B'Tevet

1932: “Frisco Jenny” featuring Harold Huber as “George Weaver” was released today in the United States.

1932: U.S. premiere of “Back Street” the film treatment of the novel by Fannie Hurst directed by John M. Stahl, produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr with a script co-authored by Ben Hecht and filmed by cinematographer Karl Fruend

1935(4th of Tevet, 5696): Seventy-five-year-old Rufus Isaacs, the son of a fruit merchant who rose from being a ship’s boy, to a barrister to a leadership role in the Liberal Party that included serving as Viceroy of Indian and Foreign Secretary passed away today.

http://theinfounderground.com/smf/index.php?topic=15884.0

1935: In Brooklyn, NY,Evelyn (née Lichtenstein) and Jack Braun, gave birth to Sanford Braun, the stepson of Irving Koufax who gained fame the great southpaw pitcher Sandy Koufax.

1935: “Magnificent Obsession” a movie version of the novel by the same name produced and directed by John M. Stahl and music by Franz Waxman was released today in the United States.

1935: Birthdate of Isaiah Sheffer, the native New Yorker who created “Symphony Space, a vibrant, eclectic institution known for its broadcasts of actors reading short stories…” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1936: In Manhattan, publicist Benjamin Sonnenberg and his wife gave birth to Benjamin “Ben” Sonnenberg, Jr. whose whims and myriad enthusiasms made Grand Street, the quarterly he founded in 1981, one of the most revered literary magazines of the postwar era. (As reported by William Grimes)

1936: The newly organized Palestine Symphony Orchestra is heard on the air for the first time today when a concert under the direction of Arturo Toscanini is broadcast over WJZ’s network from 2:50 to 3:40 pm.  The seventy-piece orchestra is broadcasting from Exhibition Hall in Tel Aviv.

1936: At today’s session of the Peel Commission Jewish leaders including Beryl Katznenellenson, editor of the Jewish labor daily Davar and Miss Goldie Myerson, “denounced the government as ‘unfriendly, begrudging Jewish efforts, unmindful of the mandate and its purpose and negligent eve in fulfilling plain civic functions.”

1936: The Peel Commission interviewed Dov Hos a Russian born senior member of the General Federation of Jewish Labour who had been sentenced to death by the Turks for defending the Jews of Galilee and who had fought with the British during World War I.  During his testimony Hos told the commissioners that where the Jews established hospitals and schools, the British government is being relieved of the responsibility and expense of creating and operating them.  Commissioner Rumbold responded to these comments by angrily defending the Mandate government and referring to the Jews as “an alien race.” Hos responded that Jews were not an “alien race but a children returning to their country, to the country where they lived or to a country where they are going to have their home.”

1936: Members of the Peel Commission “attended a concert which attested to the new Jewish life in Jerusalem.” In what was described as the most important musical experience in its history, “ancient Jerusalem came alive musically.”

1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that the British government decided to publish a White Paper containing instructions for the new Palestine Commission which was to be empowered to plan on how to implement and if necessary to modify the Peel plan for the country's partition.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the Jewish settlement of Atarot and police patrols at Tulkarm and on the Nablus-Jenin road came under heavy Arab fire, but there were no reports of casualties.

1937:  Birthdate of Paul Stookey.  Stookey is “Paul” in the folk trio, Peter, Paul & Mary. He is the non-Jewish member of the famous trio.

1937: “Tovarich,” produced and directed by Anatole Litvakm featuring Fritz Feld and with music by Max Steiner was released today in the United States.

1937: The first edition of Botwin a Yiddish newspaper started by the 2nd Palafox Battalion, a Jewish company serving with the Polish Dombrowski Brigade during the Spanish Civil War was published today.

1938(8thof Tevet, 5699): Seventy-six year old Max Rabinovich, the Vice President of the Grand Forks Building and Loan Association and in 1930 the “honorary chairman of the North Dakota Allied Jewish Campaign” who was the “husband of Pearl Harstein” and father of Anna and Joseph Rabinovich passed away today.

1938: In an article in his newspaper, the Courrier Royal,“the Count of Paris, the heir to the pretender of the French throne, “condemned anti-Semitism” saying “that is certainly exaggerated to speak of a Jewish peril in France as it concerns the French Jews who become part of the French community” but said “foreign Jews are another matter.”

1939(18thof Tevet, 5700): Parashat Shemot; Starting the second book of the Torah on the last Shabbat of the year and of the decade.

1939(18thof Tevet, 5700): Fifty-year-old Charles Bear Mintz, the producer of cartoon and short subjects, two of which, “Holiday Land” and “The Little Match Girl” were nominated for Oscars passed a way today.

http://www.scrappyland.com/blog/2012/09/23/in-memoriam-charles-mintz/

1939: U.S. premiere of “Of Mice and Men” directed and produced by Lewis Milestone with music by Aaron Copland.

1939: The riverboat Uranus reached the Iron Gates gorge in Romania, on the Yugoslavian border, with 1210 fugitive Jews from Vienna, Austria, and Prague, Czechoslovakia. The boat's journey was halted after Great Britain, holder of the Mandate on Palestine, protested to the Yugoslavian government.

1940: Birthdate of James Burrows, son of Abe Burrows and director of television hits including’ Taxi,''''Cheers,'' and ''Will and Grace.''“He also presided over one of the most Jewish moments in television. In a medium in which Jewish characters rarely do anything Jewish, let alone marry within the faith (Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern in Rhoda and Paul Reiser as Paul Buchman in “Mad About You” are just two examples — and don’t even mention Seinfeld), Grace Adler (Debra Messing) of “Will & Grace,” not only was married by a rabbi under a chupah, but got hitched to a Jewish doctor. That was Leo Markus played by Harry Connick Jr. Certainly, Jewishness has increasingly factored into Burrows’ life. Both his parents were Jewish but not observant. But his first wife was a Conservative Jew and “made him get back on the bus.” He had a bar mitzvah at 47, prompting one of his producing partners, Les Charles, to say: “You’re the first Jew I know who was a bar mitzvah at 47 and bald at 13.”He is what he calls a once-a-year Jew, attending shul for Yom Kippur. But he still gathers with his daughters every Friday evening “to light the candles, have a challah and say a bracha.”

1940: Birthdate of Barbara Johnson, the native of Marshfield, Wisconsin, the wife of William Peyser “Bill Jacobson and the mother of Michael Peyster Jacobson and Stacy Ann Jacobson.

1940: Adopted birthdate for Karkow native Zoshia Zavatski who gained fame as fashion model and actress Gila Golan, the wife of Matthew “Matty” Rosenhaus with whom she three children – Sarita, Hedy and Loretta.

1941(10th of Tevet, 5702): Asara B'Tevet

1941(10th of Tevet, 5702):: Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, the Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer, and architect, better known as El Lissitzky, passed away. For examples of his art see:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=El+Lissitzky&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

1942: Pope Pius XII told an American representative that he regarded the atrocity stories about Jews as exaggerations "for the purposes of propaganda."

1943: The keel for the SS. Sigman, a U.S. Navy liberty ship, was laid today. A Russian immigrant, Morris Sigman was active in the labor movement and was president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

1943: Birthdate of Sir John Andrew Likierman, the Dean of the London School of Business.

http://faculty.london.edu/ALikierman/index.html

1944(14th of Tevet, 5705): Parashat Vayechi

1944: “Jews In Palestine Debate The Future” published today described the differing views held Dr. Chaim Weizmann and supporters of the Biltmore Plan for the future of a Jewish state in Palestine and those held by others such as Dr. Judah Magnes whose more “moderate plan” has found no support among the Arabs which would be the key to its success.

1945: Mrs. William Prince President of the Women’s League for Palestine announced today that work has been started on an addition to the League’s home for immigrant girls in Tel Aviv

1945: Birthdate of director and actor Lloyd Kaufman.

1945: The New York Times reported that in their hunt for the Jews thought to be responsible for Thursday night’s violence in Palestine airborne troops surrounded the town of Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv and took more than 800 men into custody for questioning.

1947: Birthdate of historian Michael Burns the author of Dreyfus: A Family Affair, 1789-1945, France and the Dreyfus Affair: A Documentary History and Rural Societyand French Politics: Boulangism and the Dreyfus Affair” 1888-1900.  

1947(17thof Tevet, 5708):  Forty Jewish workers were killed by Arabs at the Haifa refineries

1947: A bus carrying hospital workers to Mount Scopus came under attack at the same place where Jewish doctors had been attacked the day before.  Fourteen of the Hadassah Hospital workers were wounded. 

1947: Arab gun men attacked a group of Jews as they began to bury ten of their murdered co-religionists at the Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives. British policemen accompanying the burial party carried on a gun fight with the attackers.  One policeman and one Jew from the Burial Society were killed.  The ten people who were to have been buried and the two new fatalities were put back on a bus and returned to Jerusalem.

1947: The Dora Trial came to an end today when the following verdicts were handed down: Death by hanging, Hans Moser; Life imprisonment – Erhard Brauny, Otto Brinkmann, Emil Buhring, Ruldof Jacobi, Josef Kilian, George Konig, Wilhelm Simon; 20 years imprisonment – Willi Zwiener; 20 years imprisonemtn Arthur Adra, Oskar Helbig, Richard Walenta; 7 years – Heinrich Detmers; 5 years – Walter Ulbricht, Paul Maischein

1948(28thof Kislev, 5709): Fourth Day of Chanukah

1948: Israeli armor and infantry captured the airfield south of El Arish and moved to capture the town itself.

1948: The original Broadway production of “Kiss Me Kate” with a book written by Samuel and Bella Spewack which earned them two Tony Awards.

1948: During Operation Horev, the Harel brigade moved further west into the Sinai Peninsula.

1948: The British government took an active role on the side of the Arabs in the Israel War for Independence.  The British issued an ultimatum to Israel that unless it withdrew from the Sinai it would employ force to force the Israeli’s to leave. 

1948: John McElroy and wingman Jack Doyle (in White 24) each shot down a MC.205V that had been strafing Israeli troops near the REAF Bir Hama air base, killing the two Egyptian pilots

1949(10th of Tevet, 5710): Asara B’Tevet

1949(10thof Tevet, 5710): Seventy year old Lomza native, Abraham Joseph Coen the graduate of Jefferson Medical College who specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was a member of the faculty of Temple University passed away today after which he was buried at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia.

1949: “The Inspector General” a musical comedy directed by Henry Koster, produced by Jerry Wald and Sylvia fine, written by Harry Kurnitz and Ben Hecht and starring Danny Kaye was released today in the United States.

1949: In New York, “real estate mogul Abraham Hirschfeld” and Zipora Teicher Hirschfeld gave birth to Brown University grad and long-distance runner Elie Hirschfeld who followed in his father’s footsteps and then branched out into theatrical production, art collecdtion and philanthropy.

1950: “At War with the Army” a musical comedy starring Jerry Lewis and Polly Bergen and featuring Mike Kellin was released in the United States today.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the US offered "no comment" on Israel's serious warning on Western arms sales to the Arab states. Britain denied that its arms sales to the Arab states contravened the joint March 25, 1950, US-Franco-British declaration of principles on the maintenance of peace in the Middle East. The Women's Labor Bill, which banned women from dangerous employment and offered special maternity privileges, passed the first reading in the Knesset.

1952: “The Bad and the Beautiful” a Hollywood film about Hollywood starring Kirk Douglas premiered today in Los Angeles.

1953(24th of Tevet, 5714): Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler the Russian born Orthodox rabbi and Talmudist and son of Mussar movement leader Reuven Dov Dessler, whose words of wisdom included “When you have a true ambition for something, you will not give up hope. Giving up hope is a sign that you are lacking ambition to achieve that goal!” passed away today.

http://matzav.com/rav-eliyahu-eliezer-dessler-ztl-on-his-yahrtzeit-today-24-teves/

http://www.hevratpinto.org/tzadikim_eng/146_rabbi_eliyahu_eliezer_dessler.html

1954: “House of Flowers is a musical by Harold Arlen opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre and played for 165 performances.’

1955(15th of Tevet, 5716): Forty-nine-year-old New Haven, CT born, and Yale trained psychiatrists Dr. Louis Harold Cohen, the husband of Sylvia Cohen and father of Jonathan, James and Elizabeth Cohen whose writings on the subject of mental health included Murder, Madness and the Law, passed away today.

 

1957(2ndof Tevet, 5718): 8th Day of Chanukah

1957(2ndof Tevet, 5718): Eighty-six-year-old Kovno native Morris Turitz, the founder of “the New York Linen Supply Company and co-founder of both The Jewish Daily Forward and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/12/26/90876792.pdf

1957: The Israeli government of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion resigned.

1959(29th of Kislev, 5720): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1960(11th of Tevet, 5721): Seventy-five year old Ángelo Donati, “the Jewish Schindler” passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0005_0_05326.html

http://www.jspacenews.com/jewish-diplomat-angelo-donati-became-pope-jews-holocaust/

1960: Danielle Kahn and modernist architect Isi Metzstein gave fir to Scottish film director Saul Metzstein.

1960: A group of Israeli university professors signed and published a public letter denouncing Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.

1963(14thof Tevet, 5724): Eighty-three year old Bucharest native and Swiss trained ophthalmologist Dr. David H. Alperin, the hold of Ph.D in biochemistry from Columbia and the husband of Esther Wexler Alperin with whom he had a daughter and a son, ophthalmologist Benjamin J. Alperin passed away today.

1963: President Johnson and Ladybird Johnson were photographed standing with Jim Novy, one of the mainstays of Agudas Achim in Austin, TX.

http://transition.lbjlibrary.org/files/original/cce0ca8939266da849a8499ee06eec24.jpg

1965(7th of Tevet, 5726): Seventy-two year old Manfred George the German born Jewish journalist who came to the United States in 1939 where he “became the editor of Aufbau, a periodical published in German, and transformed it from a small monthly newsletter into an important weekly newspaper, especially during World War II and the postwar era, when it became an important source of information for Jews trying to establish new lives and for Nazi concentration camp survivors to find each other” passed away today.

1965: Birthdate of Heidi Fleiss convicted prostitute and Madame.  Her doctor father is an opponent of circumcision, a rather strange position for a Jew to take.

1966: Seventy-seven-year-old Warsaw born and University of London alum Aaron Glanz-Leyeless the Yiddish journalist, poet, playwright and author whose works included the play “Shlomo Molcho and the award-wining A Jew at Sea and who had married “the former Sophia Kupfer” after his first wife “the former Fannie Wolynsky” had passed away died today “at the Hillcrest General Hospital.”

http://www.alba-valb.org/volunteers/abraham-lewis

1966: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for Dr. Bela Fabian the exiled Hungarian leader who opposed the fascist regime of Admiral Nicholas Horthy whose marriage to Ilona Schwarz Fabian in 1924 at “the Dohany Temple in Budapest, the world's largest synagogue, with a ca­pacity of 20,000, in was described as not only a wedding ceremony but a demonstration against antidemocratic and antiSemitic rightists.”

1966(17thof Tevet, 5727): Sixty-one-year-old Piero Scacerdoti, the general manager of Riunione Adriatica di Sicurtà passed away today in Saint Moritz.

1967(28thof Kislev, 5728): Parashat Miketz; Fourth Day of Chanukah

1967(28thof Kislev, 5728): Thirty-eight year old “songwriter and record producer” Bert Berns who gave us such hits as “Twist and Shout,” “Hang on Sloopy’ and “Under the Boardwalk” (favorites of mine that I had no idea were written by a Jew) passed away today

http://bertberns.com/

https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/bert-berns

1968(28thof Kislev, 5728): 4th day of Chanukah

1968(28thof Kislev, 5728): Thirty-eight year old song writer and record producer Bertrand “Bert” Russell Berns passed away today.

http://bertberns.com/

1968: Trygve Lie passed away.  Born in Norway in 1896, Trygve Lie was the first United Nations Secretary General.  In that position he headed the U.N. at the time of creation of state of Israel.  His support was critical in the birth of the Jewish state and the successful conclusion of the War for Independence.

1969:While living in Stretford, Greater Manchester, Karen Kay gave birth to twin boys, Jason and David, a few weeks after birth David died. Jason (Jason Kay) was born Jason Cheetham.

1969: Birthdate of Jason Kay, best known by his stage name Jay Kay. He “is Grammy Award winning English musician from the band Jamiroquai.”

1970(2nd of Tevet, 5731): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1970(2nd of Tevet, 5731): Eighty-year-old Lithuanian native and MIT graduate Joseph H. Cohen who was the “founder of the Atlantic Gelatin division of General Foods Corporation and the husband of the former Rose Stone with whom he had two sons and a daughter passed away today in Boston.

1970: Today during a television appearance on The Dick Cavett Show,” producer and screenwriter Robert “Kaufman revealed that when his family moved to the town in 1941 they were the first Jewish family to reside in Westport.”

1973: The New York Times featured a review of Selected Poems a collection of the poems of Jewish poet Joseph Brodsky.

1974(16thof Tevet, 5735): Seventy-year-old, Sid Terris, one of the leading “lightweight” boxers of the 1920’s passed away today.

 

1977: A frustrated Moshe Dayan told Israeli television that if Sadat insisted on an Israeli agreement to “return” all Arab lands and recognize Palestinian sovereignty as pre-conditions to peace negotiations than the peace process is finished.  For the next six months there is virtually no progress in talks between Egypt and Israel.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that President Anwar Sadat of Egypt said that he was "disappointed" that US President Jimmy Carter lauded Prime Minister Menachem Begin as flexible. This, Sadat said, "will delay peace."

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that two persons were killed and another two injured by a bomb explosion in Rehov Shoham in Netanya.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported Ephraim Katzir, Israel¹s fourth president, declined a second term of office.

1978: Roger and Hammerstein’s “King & I" closed after 719 performances at the Uris Theater in New York City.

1979(10th of Tevet, 5740): Asara B'Tevet

1979(10th of Tevet, 5740): Composer Richard Rodgers passed away at the age of 77.

https://www.biography.com/people/richard-rodgers-37431

http://archives.nypl.org/the/21252

1980(23rdof Tevet, 5741): Thirty nine year old Rabbi Morton Waldman who has been leading the Jackson Heights Jewish Center suffered a fatal heart attack tonight.

1983: Birthdate of Santa Monic native Ashley Zuckerman, the Australian raised actor “best known for playing Dr. Charlie Isaacs on WGN America's Manhattan”

1983: In “Three Decades of Chaim Soutine Paintings” Grace Glueck provides a brief history of the late French expressionist painter and a description of his works now appearing at the Galleri Bellman.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/30/arts/art-three-decades-of-chaim-soutine-paintings.html?pagewanted=all

1984(6thof Tevet, 5745): Eighty-four-year-old exotic food importer Max H. Ries who operated a textile factory in Munich until 1939, passed away today

1987: Two people were injured by a letter bomb in Or Yehuda.

1987: Terrorists were thwarted today in Israel when 10 letter bombs were discovered and disarmed without injury.

1988(22nd of Tevet, 5749): Yuli Markovich Daniel Soviet dissident writer, poet, translator, political prisoner and gulag survivor passed away.

1989: In “Pursue Peace, Not Just Elections,” Abba Eban, the former Foreign Minister of Israel, described what he sees as the next steps to be taken on the road to a Middle East settlement: 

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/30/opinion/pursue-peace-not-just-elections.html

 

In January, the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli and Egyptian foreign ministers will meet in Washington to discuss how to form a Palestinian delegation to meet with Israel. If all goes well, these ministers, along with the Palestinians agreed upon in Washington, will all meet in Cairo to discuss procedures for holding West Bank and Gaza elections to choose representatives to negotiate with Israel for interim self-government.Since Israel refuses to deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization, the U.S. will probably tell Israel that the Palestinian delegation in Cairo is dissociated from the P.L.O. But this tactic would not convince others, who would regard them as well-defined P.L.O. partisans. It is still not certain that West Bank and Gaza elections will be held. The reason is that the U.S. and Egypt disagree with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's view that the P.L.O. cannot have any role, direct or indirect, in the peace process. But Mr. Shamir, after all, initiated the idea of the elections, so it is urgent to hold them and to break out of procedural debates. Free, democratic elections would enable the Palestinians to say what they like, display their emblems, celebrate their leaders and assemble peacefully. This would be a positive change in the present situation in the territories. Elections, however important, are not the basic peace issues. Those issues are the status of the West Bank and Gaza, the distribution of sovereignty or control in those territories, the location of Israel's secure boundaries and the structural relationship among Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians in a permanent settlement. None of these issues is even remotely addressed in ''the only game in town,'' as the U.S. has described the elections. In preoccupying itself exclusively with elections, the U.S. is sidetracking the considerable Israeli and Arab opinion that is ready to think about central peace problems. U.S. officials tell us there has been no ''ripening'' of conditions for discussing peace, security, boundaries and constitutional structure. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our region has never been as ripe as it is today for large visions and hard facts. Israel's political parties, media and think-tanks are reflecting deeply on new possibilities, including confederative and community structures that could accommodate Palestinian freedom without risk to Israeli security. The leading Israeli institute of strategic studies (at Tel Aviv University), headed by mainsteam defense experts, has formulated the far-reaching principle that ''Israeli security can be maintained through continued military deployment but without physical control over all the territories and all of the Palestinian inhabitants.'' Israeli polls report majorities for territorial compromise and the principle of dialogue with whomever the Palestinians appoint. This is a promising prospect, because there is now a pragmatic school in Palestinian mainstream thinking. Eastern Europe's uprising strengthens the principle that every people is entitled to representatives of its own choice. Acceptance of this doctrine could bring the Middle East out of anachronism into the spirit of the age. Besides, the Soviet Union has never been more ready than now to oppose extremism and to cooperate in stabilizing the Middle East. The case for discussing the major problems now is strengthened by international experience, which instructs us that it is just as difficult to get agreements on small steps as it would be on central issues. Nothing is gained by procrastination. In the meantime, the U.S. should publicly clarify its own conclusions on the crucial issue of Palestinian representation in the peace process. Does the U.S. truly believe it is feasible to produce an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in total dissociation from the P.L.O.? If so, it should give its evidence for that belief.Or does it conclude, together with all the rest of the world, that this is not feasible? In that case, it should state its finding openly. This would galvanize Israel and the other parties to seek pragmatic decisions on their home grounds. The death of illusion is a necessary prelude to the birth of realism.

1991(23rdof Tevet, 5752): Ninety-one year old New York dermatologist Samuel M. Peck. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/04/nyregion/samuel-m-peck-91-dermatologist-and-professor.html

1991(23rdof Tevet, 5752): Eighty-six-year-old New York State Supreme Court Justice Mitchell D. Schweitzer passed away today. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

 

1992: “Ice Cream King Takes Another Dip” published today described the creation of Haagen-Dazs by Reuben Mattus.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1992/12/30/ice-cream-king-takes-another-dip/8f439c4e-223b-4e3e-a3b4-44d7b64f8858/?utm_term=.e56a83b691e7

1992: “Delta Heat” a cop movie set in New Orleans produced by Uri Harkham and filmed by cinematographer Avraham Karpick was released in the United States.

1993: Israel and the Vatican agreed to recognize one another.

1993(16th of Tevet, 5754): “Superagent” [Irving Paul] "Swifty" Lazar passed away at the age of 86.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/1994/04/michael-shnayerson-199404

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5D71126E733BC4953DFB26F958A

1991(23rd of Tevet, 5752: Eighty-six-year-old Judge Mitchell D. Schweitzer passed away today.

1993:Israel's Foreign Minister said today that Israel and the P.L.O. had concluded their latest round of talks with a "meeting of the minds," but there was no breakthrough and significant differences remained. The two sides, still trying to work out the details of the accord that they signed in Washington in September and that was supposed to have gone into effect two weeks ago, reached what an Israeli official described as "a set of understandings" on how to carry out the first phase -- an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.

1993: Roni Milo resigned from the Knesset so he can concentrate on his role as mayor of Tel Aviv.

1995: In reviewing the events that flickered across our television screen, Walter Goodman described 1995 as being a year of “Emotional Overload and Emotional Lift.”  As an example of this he wrote that “The shock at the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Prime Minister was to some extent alleviated by the immediate surge of revulsion, expressed on television both in the United States and in Israel, over violent political language as well as acts of violence. At the widely covered funeral, the tributes of so many heads of state were heartening, with the pictures of an obviously moved King Hussein of Jordan carrying special force. Even amid the anxiety over the future, it was a historic and consoling moment: an Arab leader showing personal sorrow for the death of an Israeli leader.”

1996: Proposed budget cuts by Benjamin Netanyahu spark protests from 250,000 workers who shut down services across Israel.

1997(2ndof Tevet, 5758): 8th& final day of Chanukah

1997: “Legends of Yiddish Stage Brought To Life” describes Fyvush Finkel’s homage to the world of theatrical Yiddish -- ''Fyvush Finkel -- From Second Avenue to Broadway.''

http://www.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9F0DE5DF1531F933A05751C1A961958260&_r=2&

 

1999: Two days after he had passed away, Milton Abrams was buried today at the Beth Shalom Cemetery in Shaler Township, PA.

 

2000(4th of Tevet, 5761): Ninety-one-year-old screenwriter Julius J. Epstein passed away today. (As reported by Richard Natale)

http://articles.latimes.com/print/2000/dec/31/local/me-6888

 

2000: In Humble Bagel, Highly Priced But Worth It,” published today Clyde Haberman lamented the increasing cost of what was once the quintessential New York Jewish Food.

 

“The holidays required a stop at H & H, the bagel emporium on the Upper West Side. This produced a discovery that, since the last visit a few weeks earlier, the price of a bagel had gone up a dime. It now cost 95 cents. Nearly a buck for a bagel! A bagel! You could understand it, maybe, if you were able to read your fortune in the poppy seeds. But what is humbler than an unadorned, untoasted, unshmeared bagel? Ninety-five cents? At Zabar's, across the street, bagels sell for only 39 cents each. They're 60 cents at Barney Greengrass, nearby, and at Columbia Bagels, half a mile farther north on Broadway, and 50 cents at Kossar's, the bialy mavens on the Lower East Side. One bagel purveyor in Manhattan -- please, he said, no names -- was not aware of the new H & H price until a phone caller mentioned it. He had to share the news with a colleague. ''Hey,'' he called out, ''H & H gets 95 cents.'' Then he returned to the phone. ''You should see his grimace,'' he reported. ''That,'' he agreed, ''is a lot of money for a bagel.'' Indeed. At the H & H store, a counterman could muster little more than an embarrassed smile when asked why. ''Ask the boss,'' he replied. But the boss, Helmer Toro, was not to be found at the H & H headquarters in Midtown. A woman who picked up the phone did allow, however, that ''our bagels are great.'' No argument, even if there are those who insist that Columbia's or Kossar's are tastier. And the long lines at H & H this week suggested that 95 cents (with a discount price of $11 for a dozen, and an extra thrown in free) is hardly enough to deter committed New York shoppers.”

 2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a 10-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers by David Edmonds and John Eidinow and Making The List:A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, 1900-1999by Michael Korda.

2001(16th of Tevet, 5762): Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth passed away shortly before midnight, aged 82, after suffering from an illness. Born at Wojnicz, Poland in 1918, the son of Rabbi Avrohom Yosef Schermann and Perla Kreiswirth, he was an Orthodox rabbi who served as the longtime Chief Rabbi of Congregation Machzikei Hadass Antwerp, Belgium. He was the founder and rosh yeshiva of the Mercaz HaTorah yeshiva in Jerusalem and was a highly regarded Torah scholar.

2002: “The Israeli Supreme Court ruled today that reserve soldiers do not have a right to refuse to serve in the occupied territories. It held that Israeli society is too polarized and embattled to permit selective assertions of conscience by its fighters.”

2003:  U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recued himself and his office from investigating The Plame Affair. Palme is Valerie Plame the Jewish CIA operative whose identity was exposed in column by Robert Novak. 

2004: Airel Sharon “sealed a deal with the Labor Party to form a coalition with Shimon Peres becoming Vice Premier, restoring the government’s majority in the Knesset”

2004(18th of Tevet, 5765):  Artie Shaw passed away. Born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, Shaw gained fame for as a clarinet player and Big Band Leader.  He received a Grammy Life Time Achievement Award and is member of the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.

2005(29th of Kislev, 5766: Seventy four year old Rona Jaffe, the Brooklyn born daughter of Samuel and Diana Jaffe, the author of The Best of Everything passed away at the age of 74.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/31/arts/31jaffe.html

2005: Pepe Eliaschev, the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants, a fixture of Argentine media, and host of the daily radio show, “Esto Que Pasa” or “This is what’s happening” was fired in what he saw as a form of media self-censorship.

2005: The first kosher restaurant, Kineret Aruba Glatt Kosher Deli opened at the Playa Linda Beach Resort in Aruba.

2006:The second edition of Encyclopedia Judaica, a 22-volume work, was published which is to be released in January, was published today.

2006: “Deposed Iraqi leader, Sadam Hussein, was executed by hanging”today

2006: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports about the growth of religiously orientated games in an article entitled “How about a game of Kosherland?” The story begins “The crazy Jewish fun of Kosherland looks la lot like the board game Candy Land, except gefilte fishing substitutes for he visits to the Ice Cream Sea…” The founder of Jewish Educational Toys said people are much more willing to buy religious toys since he helped create Kosherland in 1985.

2007: The Sunday New York Times features reviews of the books by Jewish authors and/or about matters of special interest to Jewish readers including Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg and The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/books/review/Oshinsky-t.html?_r=0

2007: In what would seem to be a reminder of the common origins of mankind, the Chicago Tribune reported that the a genetic mutation known to increase the odds of breast cancer in some Jewish women has been found in significant numbers of Hispanic and African-American breast cancer patients underscoring the need for genetic testing across ethnic lines to determine who is at risk.

2008: At 1:33 A.M., Israeli time, Haaretz reported that two Israelis had been killed Monday evening as Gaza militants pelted southern Israel with rockets and mortar shells, as Israel concluded its third day of aerial assaults on the Gaza Strip. One Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed in a mortar strike in a western Negev base, and another was seriously wounded. Four others were lightly hurt in the attack. The other fatality occurred when a woman got out of her vehicle when she heard the early warning siren in the city of Ashdod and sought shelter in a bus stop on the side of the road. She sustained critical shrapnel wounds, and later died. Another passerby who also ducked into the bus stop for shelter suffered serious injuries in the attack.

2008 (3 Tevet, 5769):Seventy-eight-year-old “Harvey Ginsberg, a New York book editor who served long tenures at G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Harper & Row and William Morrow & Company, and whose most loyal writers included John Irving and Saul Bellow, passed away today in Manhattan.” (As reported Bruce Weber) 

2009:New York’s classical music radio station, WQXR, 105.9 fm presented a broadcast of selections from the Keshet Eilon 2009 Violin Mastercourse, performed at its gala final concert at Kibbutz Eilon by participants in the course.

2009:The Gerard Bechar Center presented The Jerusalem Cantors Choir, in a concert entitled "Mizmor Le-toda:" a festive show combining Israeli and Cantorial classics. The evening is a tribute to Cantor Binyamin Glickman on the occasion of his 75th birthday and celebrating 55 years of his career as a conductor.

2009:The Psik Theater presented "The Jerusalem Comedy:" a comedy about Ultra Orthodox, Secular, and those stuck somewhere in the middle. The play tells the story of the struggle between the secular theatre "Le'Mehadrin" and the adjacent orthodox yeshiva in the same neighborhood. The juxtaposition of the two creates extreme comical situations.

2009: Closing session of the International Conference on Conservative Judaism: Halakhah, Culture and Sociology at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

2009: Final session of The USY International Convention was held in Chicago, IL.

2009:Israel's population stands at 7.5 million, according to figures released today by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

2009:One or more mortars were fired from Gaza into southern Israel.

2009: “The Russian-born pianist Evgeny Kissin, who became a British citizen in 2002, has accused the BBC of “slander and bias” against Israel, broadcasting material he describes as “painfully reminiscent of the old Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda”.

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/pianist-kissin-protests-against-bbc-anti-israel-bias-1.13266

2009: Today, the Shin Bet, Israel's security service, released a report which showed that 566 rockets were fired on Israel from Gaza in 2009; most were fired in January, during Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza. By comparison, 2,048 rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza in 2008.

2010: In Orlando, FL, the USY International Convention is scheduled to come to an end.

2010: The 30th Limmud Conference is scheduled to come to an end today.

2010:The Rt. Hon. Sir Martin Gilbert, CBE is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled "Britain and Palestine, 1917-1947: Researching the Relationship" at Beit Avi Chai. Attendees will enjoy an evening with Sir Martin, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, who is one of the most knowledgeable, literate and prolific historians in the 20th and 21st century.  His eighty-two books include Israel, Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century, Churchill and the Jews, Holocaust Journey and his latest offering, In Ishmael’s House

 

2010: The Shin Ben (Israel Security Agency) reported today that there was a decrease in the number of terrorist attacks targeting Israelis in 2010. There were 798 recorded terrorist attacks in 2010 at the time the report was written, compared to 1,354 in 2009.

 

2010:This evening, a group of Arab men attacked a soldier at the entrance to Kiryat Arba. The soldier suffered head injuries in the attack. His assailants were arrested.

 

2010:An exhibition on the Jews of Iran showcasing the community’s 2,700-year-old history and rich heritage opens today at Beit Hatefutsoth in Tel Aviv.

 

2010: Former president Moshe Katsav was found guilty of raping former Tourism Ministry worker "Aleph," in the Tel Aviv District Court this morning.

 

2010: The Limmud Conference, British Jewry’s answer to the Edinburgh Festival which has been celebrating its 30th anniversary came to an end today.

 

2011(4th of Tevet, 5772): Ninety-four-year-old Bernard Bellush,Professor Emeritus of History at the City College of New York (CCNY), who was part of “Alcove Number One” – “a group of student radicals at CCNY during the 1930’s – passed away today.

 

2011(4th of Tevet, 5772): Sixty-five-year-old of Adrienne Cooper, the singer who played a major role in reviving Yiddish culture and music with a special emphasis on Klezmer passed away today.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/sep/01/1946/birth-of-adrienne-cooper-performer-and-interpreter-of-yiddish-song

https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0000095/adrienne-cooper-2010

 

2011:The Jaffa Rd Walking Tour, an exploration of Jerusalem’s main artery to the coast for centuries which was also an Ottoman road with British influences, is scheduled to begin this morning. at Tzahal Square, Kikar Safra #10, across from Jaffa Gate Plaza, at 9:00am.

 

2011: The Israel Air Force struck a group of terrorists attempting to fire rockets into Israel this morning.

 

2011: Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, the rabbi of the Har Bracha settlement and the dean of the Har Bracha yeshiva, strongly criticized gender segregation on buses in a column to be published in the B’Sheva weekly today

 

2012: Choreographer Ssmulik Gov-Are and Hadassah Badoch-Kruger Yemenite dance expert & former soloist with the Inbal and Batsheva dance companies are scheduled to attend the Israeli Folk Dance End-of-Year Party

 

2012: After a year, Uncovered & Rediscovered, an evolving eight-part exhibit that explores the Chicago Jewish experience at the Spertus Institute is scheduled to come to an end today.

 

2012: Celebration of the birthday of University of Iowa Hillel Director Jerry Sorkin

 

2012: “DADB – A Story of an Israeli Icon” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival

 

2012: Dorit Beinisch “was awarded as a knight of The Movement for Quality Government in Israel.”

 

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg and Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks

 

2012: Israel’s population stands at 7,981,000 citizens, an increase of nearly 2 percent, according to an annual end of the year tally from the Central Bureau of Statistics, released on today (As reported by Gabe Fisher)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/on-eve-of-2013-israels-population-stands-at-cusp-of-8-million/

 

 

2012(17th of Tevet, 5773): Nobel Prize winner Rita-Montaclini passed away at the age of 103 (As reported by Benedict Carey)

 

2012(17th of Tevet, 5773): Eighty-nine-year-old Beate Sirota Gordon, “the unsung heroine of Japanese women’s rights” passed away. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://forward.com/articles/168592/beate-sirota-gordon-dies-at-/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20(Monday-Friday)&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%202013-01-02

 

 

2012: Security forces arrived early this morning at the West Bank outpost of Oz Zion, demolished makeshift structures and evacuated a small group of right-wing activists who had remained at the site..

 

2012: In “Several Eras End at One Lower East Side Building” published today David W. Dunlap described the world that surrounded the First Romanian-American Synagogue known as ‘the cantors’ Carnegie Hall.”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/several-eras-end-at-one-lower-east-side-building/

 

2013: “Ender’s Game” and “The Godfather II” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Twenty-six more murdering Palestinian terrorists are scheduled to be released today as part of the Israeli compliance with the pre-conditions for the latest rounds of “peace talks” which are taking place against a background of stabbings, shootings and bombings. 

 

2013: Hours before Israel was set to free another 26 Palestinians convicted of terrorism, the High Court of Justice refused the bereaved families' appeal against the release scheduled for midnight.

(As reported by Omri Efraim)

 

 2013: An art historian has found two art works stolen by the Nazis inside Germany's parliament, a newspaper reported today, in a new embarrassment for authorities after a huge stash of looted art came to light last month.

 

2014: “October 7, 1944” an “installation, commissioned by the American Jewish Historical Society that offers a response by the internationally acclaimed choreographer Jonah Bokaer to an uprising organized by Jewish inmates at Auschwitz in 1944 which pays tribute to the role of four unheralded women who took part in the uprising” is scheduled to come to a close today.

 

2014: “Winter Sleep “and “David Perlov” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2014: A “federal civil suit was filed in Florida by Jane Doe 1 (Courtney Wild) and Jane Doe 2 against the United States for violations of the Crime Victims' Rights Act by the U.S. Department of Justice's NPA with Jeffrey Epstein and his limited 2008 state plea.

 

2014(8thof Tevet, 5775): One-hundred-four-year-old two-time Oscar winning actress Luise Rainer passed away today. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

 

 

2015: “The annual reading by recent graduates of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing is scheduled to take place today in Tel Aviv.”

 

2015: The Fifth Annual Jerusalem Business Conference which “is for Jerusalemites, Olim and returning residents who have a business, or are considering setting one up” is scheduled to start this morning at the Begin Center.

 

2016(30thof Kislev, 5777): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

 

2016(30thof Kislev): Yahrzeit of Rav Zeligman Gantz, who “served as a Dayan in Prague” and “was a brother of Tzemach Dovid.”

 

2016: In addition to kindling the Chanukah and Shabbat lights, friends and family of Jerry Sorokin are scheduled to kindle the candles for his birthday.

 

2016: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host Shabbat Chanukah services followed by a special congregational dinner.

 

2017(12thof Tevet, 5778): Parashat Veyechi; on the final Shabbat of 2017, reading of the final chapters of Bereshit. 

2017: Offensive lineman Adam Bisnowaty was “promoted to the active roster” of the New York Giants today.

 

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a “survivor talk” by Magda Brown who as a 17 year old was “deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

 

2017: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is to host a “Architecture Tour” lead by Stanley Tigerman, “the former director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

2018: “The Bender JCC of Greater Washington is scheduled to host “Mount Vernon Virtuosi: Dancing into 2018. In Albany, NY, B’nai Sholom is scheduled to host the “Ne’imah Jewish Community Chorus” this evening.

2018: Prime Minister Netanyahu continues the third day of a trip to Brazil which is scheduled to include talks with US Secretary of Mike Pompeo who is also in the country.

2018: In Washington, DC, the Arena Stage is scheduled to present the final performance of “Indecent,” which “tells the story of the artists who risked their lives to perform the controversial play ‘God of Vengeance’ in 1923.”

2018: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Late-Life Love: A Memoir by Susan Gubar and Jonathan Lethem’s essay “Fictions’ New Fake Drugs: A Preliminary Pharmacopoeia.”

2019(2ndof Tevet, 5780): Eighth Day of Chanukah

2019: The celebration of Chanukah, which has been marked by daily outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence culminating in a machette attack on Jews lighting their candles in suburban New York is scheduled to come to an end this evening.

2019: In London JW3 is scheduled to host a screening “Spider in the Web,” whose protagonist is “Adereth an aging, jaded Mossad Agent.”

2019: In Jerusalem, The Tower of David is scheduled to host its final “Chanukah Tour.”

2019: The Chanukah Festival at Ein Yael, the outdoor museum, is scheduled to come to an end today.

2020: YNY is scheduled to host a lunchtime concert with A special performance by the Berlin-based duo of Sveta Kundish (vocals) and Patrick Farrell (accordion/piano) followed by a climactic “Great Yiddish Culture Crawl.”

2020: B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host via Zoom “Kosher Fitness” with Rabbi, and certified person trainer Michael Unger.

2020: As part of its “Coffee with a Survivor” program, the Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host a presentation by “Second Generation Speakers Ron and Steve Coppel” talking “about how their father survived the infamous “Death March” from Auschwitz in 1945.

2020: Based on statements made yesterday by a joint command set which includes Hamas that runs Gaza, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees and smaller armed groups, which were accompanied flying rockets, Israelis are going to be facing “a series of join exercise” which may be “a show of force organized by Iran.

 

 

This Day, December 31, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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December 31

335: End of the Papacy of Sylvester I “who convinced Constantine to prohibit Jews from living in Jerusalem.”

535: Byzantine General Belisarius took the city of Syracuse which marks the completion of the conquest of Sicily. In 536 he would march into Rome itself. This military action was part of Emperor Justinian’s plan to take back what had been the Western Roman Empire and recreate the Roman Empire of the Caesar’s with the capital at Constantinople. Belisarius’ victory probably did not over-joy the Jews living in the "Giudecche" or Jewish Quarters of Sicily since it brought with it Justinian’s Code. Amongst other things the code “prohibited Jews from building synagogues, reading the Bible in Hebrew, assemble in public, celebrate Passover before Easter, and testify against Christians in court.”

1229: James I of Aragon the Conqueror enters Medina Mayurqa (now known as Palma, Spain) thus consummating the Christian conquest of the island of Majorca.Following his victory, James “gave the Jews a quarter in the neighborhood of his palace for their dwellings, granted protection to all Hebrews who wished to settle on the island, guaranteed them the rights of citizens, permitted them to adjudicate their own civil disputes, to kill cattle according to their ritual, and to draw up their wills and marriage contracts in Hebrew. Christians and Moors were forbidden, under severe penalties, to insult the Jews or to take earth and stones from their cemeteries; and the Jews were ordered to complain directly to the king of any act of injustice toward them on the part of the royal officials. They were allowed to charge 20 per cent interest on loans, but the amount of interest was not to exceed the capital. In case a Jew practiced usury, the community was not held responsible. The penalty for lending money on the wages of slaves hired out by their masters was loss of the capital. Jews could buy and hold houses, vineyards, and other property in Majorca as well as in any other part of the kingdom. They could not be compelled to lodge Christians in their homes: in fact, Christians were forbidden to dwell with Jews; and Jewish convicts were given separate cells in the prisons. If the slave of a Jew or Moor adopted Judaism or Mohammedanism, he had to be set free and was required to leave the island.”

1349: By the end of this month, the Black Death had reach Cologne just four months after the pogrom that took place on the night of Saint Bartholemy had devastated the Jewish community.

1378: Birthdate of Callixtus III the Pope who issued “Si ad reprimendos” the Bull that confirmed “Dudum ad nostram audientiam” which forbade Jews to live with Christians or to hold public office.

1492: One hundred thousand Jews were expelled from Sicily.

1539: In Poland, King Sigismund I “ordered the Jews of Cracow, Posan and Lemberg (Lvov) to buy 3,350 Jewish books from the Printing house of the apostate Helitz brothers. The Jews bought the books as ordered - and then destroyed them all.” (As reported by “The History of the Jewish People)

1599: The British East India Company is chartered. Joseph Salvador was the first Jewish director of the British East India Company. The Salvador family would become involved with the settlement of Georgia.  Francis Salvador, Joseph’s great-grandson would become one of the heroes in the American War for Independence, a rebellion against King George III.  Ironically, when King George III ascended the British throne, Joseph had arranged an audience for the seven-man delegation that officially congratulated the king on behalf of the Jewish community. (Ed. Note – some sources give the date as 1600, not 1599)

1678: By the end of this month, Jews were living “in the communities of the Surb valley” in accordance with a resolution that had been adopted earlier in the year by the Tagsatzung, “the legislative and executive council of the Swiss Confederacy.”

1705: Sixty-one-year-old the Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese born wife King Charles II of England who brought Portuguese native Fernando Mendes to serve as her personal physician which made it possible for him to begin living openly as a Jew, passed away today.

1720: Birthdate of Charles Edward Stuart the leader of Jacobite forces whose invasion had caused panic among many of London’s financiers, except most notably Sampson Gideon” who provided the government with money and support, that led to the crown’s victory at the Battle of Culloden which ended a major threat to the Hanovarian English monarchy.

1746: Birthdate of Joseph Wolf Fraenkel, the husband of Edel Teomim-Fraenkel

1769(3rdof Tevet, 5530): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1776: As of today, Jews “were further to restricted to living in only Endigen and Lengnau two communities in Switzerland.

1776: George Washington convinced most of his small army to re-enlist which meant they would be available for his audacious plan to cross the Delaware, which saved the Revolutionary cause which was supported by most Jews living in America.

1780: The French Consulate in Salonica signed a document stating that Abraham Samuel Covo, Chief Rabbi of Salonica is under his protection.

1786(10th of Tevet, 5547): Asara B’Tevet

1786: In Newport, RI, Jochabed Levy and Moses Mendes Seixas gave birth to Grace Seixas, the wife of Benjamin Cohen whom she married in 1858.

1791: Empress Catherine of Russia issued a ukase restricting the right of Jewish residence in Russia which marked the start of the Pale of Settlement.

1794: Birthdate of Jacques-Simon Herz, the native of Frankfort-on-Main who studied piano in Paris, “played and taught in England” until he returned to Paris in 1857 where he composed “two violin sonatas, a horn sonata and a waltz.”

1795: As of today in the population of Amsterdam totaled 217,024 of which 20,052 were Jewish.

1807: In Chatham, Sarah Moses and Lazarus Philip Magnus gave birth to Pamelia Magnus, the wife of Michael Hart.

1811: In Charleston, SC, Isaac and Rachel Mordecai Harby gave birth to Lieutenant Solomon Harby, the brother of Octavia, Armida, Samuel Horace ad Julian Harby.

1815(29thof Kislev, 5576): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1817: The marriage of Benjamin Moise and Recca Levy took place in their hometown of Charleston, SC.

1821: In Middlesex, Phoebe and Ephraim Benjamin gave birth to Benjamin Benjamin.

1823: In London, Phoebe and Ephraim Benjamin gave birth to Lewis Benjamin, he husband of Mary Benjamin and the father of Abraham, Moss, Solomon, Benjamin, Ashe, Ephraim and John Benjamin.

1824(10thof Tevet, 5585): Asara B’Tevet

1826: In Charleston, SC, John Drummond and his wife gave birth Elizabeth Drummond to whom the Hebrew BenevolentSociety of Charleston would present “a handsome testimonial for unobtrusive but signally useful charity bestowed upon a poor Jewish family heavily visited with the fever last summer.

1827: In Philadelphia, French born American Jew Elias Mayer and his wife Abby gave birth to Adolph Henry Mayer.

1826(1stof Tevet, 5587) Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

1826(1stof Tevet, 5587): Bilhah Polock, the daughter of Isaac Polock and the wife of Joseph Jacobs passed away today in New York.

1829: Birthdate of “Italian patriot, diplomat, financier and author” Isaac Artom “the first Jew to sit in the Italian legislative body.”

1830: Birthdate of Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt whose career was closely linked to the building of the Suez Canal.  After the canal was opened in 1869, Ismail’s efforts “to encourage outsiders to settle in the country as a way of developing its economy” included setting aside “the age-old restrictions and humiliations of the dhimmi status…Those Jews who responded to the Khedive’s call were granted special privileges in return for their skills and expertise.”

1831(27thof Tevet, 5592): Parashat Vaera

1831(27thof Tevet, 5592): Mrs. Elizabeth Barnett, who married Naphtali Hart after being married to Nathan Barnett passed away today in Philadelphai.

1831: Birthdate of Aristide Felix Cohen, the native of Marseilles and brother of composer Jules Cohen who became a leading French author.

1831: Birthdate of “Austrian mathematician Josef Schlesinger” who overcame poverty to graduate from the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna” where he served as an assistant before becoming a Professor of Geometry at several institutions.

1832: In Jamaica, Daniel Jacobs “was appointed” an Ensign today.

1834: In Trieste, Graziadio Treves, the rabbi for the community and his wife, the former Lia Montalcini gave birth to journalist Emilio Treves

1841(18th of Tevet, 5602): Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapiro of Dynov passed away. Born in 1783, he was the author of the Chassidic work B'nei Yissachar.

1844: The right to collect a tax ("basket tax") on all traditional Jewish clothing, including head coverings as well as a tax on kosher meat and other Jewish necessities was auctioned to the highest bidder in Poland-Lithuania. It was still in force until the 20th century.

1845(2ndof Tevet, 5606): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1845(2ndof Tevet, 5606: Seventy-seven-year-old Joshua Lopez, the son of Sarah Rodriguez Rivera and Aaron Edward Lopez whose first wife was Rebecca Hays Touro and whose third wife was Mary Ann Gomez passed away today.

1845: District Rabbi Jonas Wiesner married Estra (Therese) Wiesner

1848: In New York City, the constitution of Ahawath Chesed, a congregation primarily made up of Ashkenazi Jews, was adopted and signed by 31 members.

1848: Dov Beresh Meisels was elected to the Austrian Parliament. He was also elected to the Municipality of Cracow in the same year. An outspoken supporter of Jewish rights, he aligned himself with radicals because "Juden haben keine rechte" (Jews have no rights)

1852(20th of Tevet, 5613): Dr. Zacharias Wertheimer, the native of Vienna who “was involved in fighting the typhoid epidemic that had broken out on the Hungarian border before becoming a physician at the Zachar Hospital in Vienna, passed away today

1853:The partnership of Gustav Christian Schwabe, his father-in-law, Benjamin Rutter, and Adam Sykes which was known as the merchant company Sykes, Schwabe and Co, was dissolved today. Schwabe was born Jewish in 1813.  However, his family was forced to convert to Lutheranism and Gustav was baptized in 1819.

1854(10thof Tevet, 5615): Asara B’Tevet

1854(10thof Tevet, 5615):  Eighty-six year old Rebecca Moses Harby, the daughter of Myer Moses and the wife of Solomon Harby with whom she had had six children passed away today and was buried at the “Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Cemetery” in Charleston, SC.

1854: As of the year ending today, there were forty one Jewish families living in Pilsen made up of 118 males and 131 females.

1858: Jacob and Amalia Freud gave birth to Anna Freud.

1860: Birthdate of German chess master Berthold Lasker.

1861: In Cincinnati, OH., Leopold Pappenheimer and Marie Pappenheimer gave birth to Alexander T. Pappenheimer, the husband of Pauline Pappenheimer

1862: During the Civil War, Jacob C. Cohen of the 27th Ohio Infantry, wrote a letter describing conditions at Parker’s Crossroad, TN which was part of the Confederacy.

 1862: The 79th Indiana under the command of Colonel (later General) Frederick Knefler are part of the Union Army that meets the Confederates as the Battle of Stone River begins.

1862: General in Chief Henry Halleck read the telegram from several prominent Cesar Kaskel, Julius Kaskel, Daniel Wolff, Marcus Wolff and Alexander Wolff protesting General Order No. 11.  Not knowing who the men were or the circumstances under which it was written, Halleck, ever the cautious political general took no action saying he needed more information.

1862: President Abraham Lincoln signed an act admitting West Virginia to the Union. “The first official Jewish settlement in West Virginia was at Wheeling where a Jewish cemetery and informal congregation was established in 1849. At the time it was still the state of Virginia as West Virginia did not become a state until 1863. Jews lived and traded in West Virginia prior to 1849, and as early as the late 18th century, but the official community did not get its start until Congregation L'Shem Shomayim was established in Wheeling in 1849. An earlier Jewish cemetery was established in Charleston in 1836, but the B'nai Israel Congregation in Charleston was only informally organized in 1856 and legally chartered as the "Hebrew Educational Society" in 1873.”  This quote is from the website of West Virginia Jewish History and Genealogy Jews- they are everywhere and darn proud of it.   

1863: As of this date, Louis H. Mayer, the native of Cincinnati who had first enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 at the age of 16 when Lincoln made his initial call for volunteers had been honorably discharged so that he could “accept a position as Assistant Paymaster in the United States Army at Memphis, TN.

1864(2ndof Tevet, 5625): Parsha Miketz; 8th day of Chanukah – last day of the year and the last day of Chanukah coincide

1864: Kalmus Calmann Levy and Pauline Levy gave birth to Gaston Michel Calmann-Lévy

1866: Birthdate of Adolph Schwartz, a native of Germany who found fame and fortune as a merchant and civic leader in El Paso, TX.

1867: Eliza Spyer, the daughter of Nathaniel Nathan and Rachel Levy, the wife of Stephen Joseph Spyer and the mother of Angelina, Olivia and Eliza Spyer, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1867: In Knoxville, TN, Louis Alexander Gratz, the Mayor of North Knoxville, TN and a Major in the Union Army and Elisabeth “Lizzie” Trigg Gratz gave birth to their daughter Laura who became Laura Bearden Leigh when she married John Marion Leigh

1869: In Lida, Russia, Bernard and Aida Pollack gave birth to David Pollock, who became the Superintendent of Zion Hebrew Sabbaths Schools in Chicago as well as the editor of the Zion Messenger.

1870(7thof Tevet, 5631): Parashat Vayigash

1870: In Philadelphia, David Hays Solis and Elvira S. Solis the daughter of Isaac and Sarah Nathan gave birth to Albert Benjamin Solis

1871(19thof Tevet, 5632): Fifty-six-year-old Samuel Benjamin Sofer, the son of the Chasam Sofer and a leading Hungarian rabbi passed away.

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

 1872(1stof Tevet, 5633): On the last day of 1872, Jews kindle the Chanukah candles for the last time

1872(1stof Tevet, 5663): Rosh Chodesh Tevet – the last day of the year is the first day of the month!

1872: In Kalamazoo, MI, “Bernhard L and Bertha (Schuster) Desenberg gave birth to Alma Desenberg who became Alma Desenberg Cowen when she married Texas born attorney Israel Cowen on March 15, 1897 after which she had two children, Bayard and Elizabeth, while becoming active in numerous social causes in Chicago including the K.A.M auxiliary and the Jewish Women’s Council.

1873: Birthdate of Louis Falk, the Russian born husband of Ida Falk.

1873: Horace Porter, the Civil War General and personal secretary of President Grant who was also U.S. Ambassador to France during the attempts to exonerate Captain Dreyfus, resigned from the U.S. Army today.

1874: In Portland, OR., Aaron Meier “a merchant and founder of Oregon's largest department store, Meier & Frank, and Jeannette (Hirsch) Meier” gave birth to University of Oregon trained attorney Julius Meir, the husband of Grace Mayer, the President of Beth Elohim Congregation and the 20thGovernor of the State of Oregon.

1876: Birthdate of Pizer W. Jacobs, the son of Wolfe Jacobs, the Hebrew Union College trained rabbi who served a congregation in Albuquerque, NM before assuming the pulpit of Congregation B’nai Sholom in Huntsville, AL in 1902

1876: It was reported today that “the American churches have been showing their patriotism during the year by joining in the celebration of the nation’s Centennial anniversary including the Jews who have contributed a statue commemorating religious liberty.

1878(6thof Tevet, 5639): Thirty-seven year old German born American poet Minna Cohen, the wife of Rabbi Kleeberg whose collection of poems Gedichte was published in 1877 passed away today.

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

1880: Anti-Jewish riots broke out on New Year ’s Eve in Berlin which were, in part, “attribution to Ernst Henrici’s” anti-Semitic speeches.

1880: It was reported today that Samuel Hirsch seeking $5,000 in damages from Isaac Moses a rabbi and newspaper publisher in Milwaukee for describing him as a liar and a thief.

1880: Birthdate of George C. Marshall one of America’s unsung heroes.   As U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Marshall deserves much of the credit for the Allied victory in World War II. United States.  As Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State under President Truman, he was a leading architect of the American policy that checked Stalin’s imperial designs.  He did oppose the partition plan in 1947 and 1948.  His fear was that American troops would end up having to intervene to save any newly created Jewish state and he knew that America did not have the men to match the mission.  Although he disagreed with Truman on this issue, much to his credit, he did not resign his post.

1881: Birthdate of Jacob Israel de Haan, Dutch poet and writer. Israel de Haan was an “ultra-Orthodox leader who was working to establish the Orthodox community as a separate entity distinct from the Zionists.”  He was willing to enlist the support of non-Jews hostile to Zionism in to advance the cause of ultra-Orthodoxy.  In one of the most regrettable episodes in modern Jewish history, de Haan was assassinated in 1924 before he could continue his meetings with British authorities. 

1881: It was reported today that “the disorganization of society in Russia” can be seen “by the violent and murderous attacks on the Jews.”  The riots in Kiev resulted in property damage valued at twenty-four million dollars while the property damaged at Ellisabetgrad was valued at $1, 600,000.

1882: New York Governor Alonzo B. Cornell who had appointed Myer Samuel Isaacs Justice of the Marine Court, possibly making him the first Jew to hold that position, completed his term in office today.

1882: Following the death of Dr. Henry Vidaver on Rosh Hashanah, 5642, today his brother, Dr. Flak Vidaver became the rabbi at Sherith Israel in San Francisco.

1882: Birthdate of David Cohen, Dutch historian and Chairman of the Jewish Council.

1882: “Delegates from the lodges of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith, the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Israel and the Order of Kesher Shel Barzel met” this afternoon in New York to considering the benefits of “uniting the three orders.”

1884: In the report that F.N. Owen made to the Tenement House Commission today on conditions 968 houses sheltering 8,811 families he noted that “in houses occupied by Polish Jews…ashes are rarely found in the cellars but are in their rooms.”  (This strange notation may indicate that each dwelling had its own coal burning stove as opposed to the central heat we connect with apartment dwellings)

1885: Jacob Platzky reportedly stole $500 worth of goods from store at 27 Allen Street that specialized in hosiery and fancy goods.

1886: Israel Rokach, the future mayor of Tel Aviv was born in Neve Tzedek, which, at the time, was part of Jaffa.

1886: Birthdate of Henry Pearlman, the native Kovno, who earned an LL.B. from NYU and served as the Director of the Jewish Community House.

1887: It was reported today that “higher government authority has rejected the proposal of the Imperial Commission to permit Jews to reside in any village in Russia.”

1888: In Paris, Adolphe and Noémie Bloch gave birth to René Georges Bloch

1888: It was reported today that Jewish bankers in Europe are pleased with the successful offering of the loan needed by the Russian government.

1888: In Brooklyn founding of the Lawrence Club which meets on the first and third Sundays of each month.

1888: It was reported today that a children’s choir under the director of Sigmund Sabel provided part of the entertainment at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum’s annual holiday party.

1888(27th of Tevet, 5649): Samson Raphael Hirsch passed away. Born in 1808, he was a “German rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the Torah Im Derech Eretz School of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally termed neo-Orthodoxy, his philosophy, together with that of Azriel Hildesheimer, has had a considerable influence on the development of Orthodox Judaism. Hirsch was rabbi in Oldenburg, Emden, was subsequently appointed chief rabbi of Moravia, and from 1851 until his death led the secessionist Orthodox community in Frankfurt am Main. He wrote a number of influential books, and for a number of years published the monthly journal Jeschurun, in which he outlined his philosophy of Judaism. He was a vocal opponent of Reform Judaism and similarly opposed early forms of Conservative Judaism.”

1889: It was reported today that Myer Silberman, an immigrant Jewish jeweler, had left a suicide note blaming his death on Max Kantrowitz whom he claim had stolen his money and diamonds. He also asked that the death benefit due him as a member of Raphael Lodge be sent to young daughter who is still living in Europe with family members.

1889: According to census figures, as of today the total population of Amsterdam was 408,061 of whom 54,479 were Jewish including 49,946 Ashkenazim and 4,533 Portuguese Jews” also called Sephardim.

1890: 20thof Tevet, 5651): Seventy-three-year-old Simon Mendes Nathan, the New York City born son of Sarah Seixas and Isaac Mendes Seixas Nathan and the husband of Canadian native Rebecca Solomons with whom he had twelve children, passed away toay.

1890: The funeral for 65-year-old Henry S. Henry the native of Ramsgate who came to the United States in 1848 where he became a successful commission merchant is scheduled to take place at his West 25th Street home.

1891(30th of Kislev, 5652): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1891: The Barge Office ended its role as the entry point for immigrants, including tens of thousands European Jews, coming through the port of New York.

1892: A dispatch from Paris published today said that the secret way that Corneilus Herz was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor is proof that it was done “in the interest of the friends of the Panama” Canal Scandal, supposedly the worst financial scandal to hit 19th century France.

1892: A new structure built from Georgia Pine opened today on Ellis Island to serve as an immigration depot. Hundreds of thousands of Jews would pass through Ellis Island including approximately 140,000 in 1914 which was the year that saw the largest influx of Eastern European Jews arriving in the United States.

1892: Benjamin Kossman began serving with the “Regulars” (US Army) today as a private with Company D of the 6th Cavalry

1892: “It almost took Europe’s breath away this morning to read in the dispatches from New York” that 1892 “has been one of unexampled prosperity in America” since just the opposite is true in Europe as can be seen from six hundred million dollars lost by the English “investing and small income classes” which comes after losses for four hundred million dollars in 1891.  The disparity in economic conditions helped to explain the wave migration to American including the hundreds of thousands of Jews who made the trek (Editor’s Note – by this time in 1893, the United States would be suffering its worst economic downturn until 1929 which would heavily on the newly arrived Jewish immigrants)

1893: Based on reports published today of the additional 2,172 families that have applied to the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor from December 1 thru December 23, 110 are Jewish.

1893 Simon Rosendale completed his term as Attorney General of New York.

1894: A French court rejected Dreyfus’ appeal of his conviction.

1894: Three days after he had passed way, 40 year old  Lewis Levy, the son of Abraham and Jane Levy, was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1894(4th of Tevet, 5655): David Rosin a German Jewish theologian born at Rosenberg, Silesia, in 1823, passed away. Having received his early instruction from his father, who was a teacher in his native town, he attended the yeshibah of Kempen, of Myslowitz (under David Deutsch), and of Prague (under Rapoport); but, wishing to receive a regular school education, he went to Breslau, where he entered the gymnasium, and graduated in 1846. He continued his studies at the universities of Berlin and Halle (Ph.D. 1851) and passed his examination as teacher for the gymnasium. Returning to Berlin, he taught in various private schools, until Michael Sachs, with whom he was always on terms of intimate friendship, appointed him principal of the religious school which had been opened in that city in 1854. At the same time Rosin gave religious instruction to the students of the Jewish normal school. In 1866 he was appointed Manuel Joël's successor as professor of homiletics, exegetical literature, and Midrash at the rabbinical seminary in Breslau, which position he held till his death.

1895: “Disraeli in 1867” published today relies on information from The Table-Talk of Shirley in which Sir John Skelton described the future Earl of Beaconsfield as being “unlike any living creature one ever met with his olive complexion and coal black eyes and the might dome of his forehead (no Christian temple to be sure” Shirley prophetically wrote, “England is the Israel of his imagination and he will be the imperial Minster before he dies.”

1896: Two days after she had passed away, 78 year old Marianne (Hart) Levy, the wife of Aaron Levy and the mother of John and Alexander Levy, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1896: Birthdate of New York City native and CCNY graduate Julius Isaacs, the NYU trained attorney.

1896: Morris Goodhart, the son-in-law of Judge Phillip J. Joachimsen, was operated on today for an abscess. (Complications from this operation would eventually prove fatal.)

1897(6th of Tevet, 5658): Sixty-three-year-old Bavarian native David Oppenheimer who lived in New Orleans and in California during the Gold Rush before settling in Vancouver where he became a successful businessman and served as its second mayor passed away today.

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=6346

1897: With Shabbat starting 3:30 this evening, Friday night services were held at Bevis Marks.

1897: Birthdate of Chicago native and University of Chicago trained attorney Edwin Louis Weisl, a company commander United States Navy, World War I and husband of “the former Alice Todriff” who “was one President Johnson’s closest friends and a Democratic National committeeman” from California.

 

1897: It was reported today that among the papers presented at the final session of this year’s meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society were “New York Jews During the Struggle for American Independence” and “Some Early American Zionist Projects” Max J. Kohler.

1898: Dr. Herman Baar delivered his last address as superintendent during Saturday morning services as the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1898(6th of Tevet): Rabbi Yechezkel Shraga Halberstam, known as the Shinever Rov (Rabbi of Sieniawa), the eldest son of the Divrei Chaim, Rabbi Chaim Halberstam of Sanz passed away today after which he son Rabbi Moishe Halberstram succeeded him as Rabbi of Shinova.

1898: Frank Black, who appointed Jewish political leader and philanthropist to the state board of charities in 1897, completed his term as the 32nd Governor of New York.

1898: Twenty-five-year-old Israel Cass, the native of Russia who came to Boston in 1890 and was a partner in Cass and Rosental, a manufacturer of children’s clothes “became a naturalized citizen today in New York City.

1899: By the end of this month, Children of the Ghetto written by Israel Zangwill had been performed for the last time at Herald Square Theatre.

1899: Fifty-eight-year-old Alsace native Elie Scheid who served for sixteen as the inspector for the Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians) during which he made annual trips to examine the progress being made by the settlers in Palestine retired today with a pension provided by Baron Edmond de Rothschild.

1900: The New York Times reported that city authorities have decided to locate the Baron and Baroness de Hirsch memorial at the eastern edge of Central Park at the Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street Gate.

1901: Birthdate of Warsaw native and Berlin trained actor, director and author Yankev Parnas whose travels took him to France, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Israel and the United States.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2018/08/yankev-parnas.html

1901: The Fifth Zionist Congress ends its meeting at Basil, Switzerland.

1902: Birthdate of Louis Farer who starred at CCNY and Columbia University from 1921 through 1924 after which he played professionally for four years.

1903(OS):  Birthdate of Russian-born American violinist Nathan Milstein.

1903 Dutch jurist Aaron Adolf de Pinot who had been appointed justice of the Supreme Court in 1876 was name vice president of that court today.

1903: As of today, the Independent Order for the Free Sons of Judah had a total membership of 7,608 which was divided into 115 lodges, “of which 6 were ladies’ lodges” located in six states and the District of columiba.

1904: Following the recent death of his father Clarence Charles Minzesheimer head of the banking and brokerage house of Charles Minzesheimer & Co which had been founded in 1860, reformed the business with two new partners

1905:  In London, “Anna Kertman and Isadore Stein, emigrants from Ukraine,’ gave birth Julius Kerwin Stein who gained fame as Chicago Musical College alum and award winning composer of songs and Broadway musicals Jules Styne

1906: Thirty-year old Otto A Rosalsky completed his service on the General Sessions having been appointed by the Governor to “fill the unexpired term of” of the incumbent who had moved on to the State Supreme Court.

1906(14thof Tevet, 5667): Thirty-six-year-old Frank Henry Nathan, the son of Charleston native Eudora H. Hart and Gratz Nathan and husband of Sarah Moss passed away today.

1906: The Central Conference of American Rabbis paid $10.20 for “clerical work” and Toby Rubovits $1,027.55 for “printing and mailing Year Books and Officers’ Reports.”

1906(14th of Tevet, 5667):Julia Goodman née Salaman a British portrait painter, passed away.

1907: Dr. Edward C. Hirsch told the those attending the final session of the convention of the American Ethical Societies that “that to be a Jew in the United States, with all its boasted democracy and civilization is not such a comfortable thing.”

1908:  Birthdate of Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/simon-wiesenthal

1908: Birthdate of Vancouver native and U. of Washington trained attorney Alex Caplan who practice law in Seattle and was active in the B’nai B’rith as can be seen from entries in the Jewish Transcript.

1908: Birthdate of Lillian Klein Pollack, the Brooklynite who was active in the Jewish Child Care Association, Federations of Jewish Philanthropies and Hadassah and who was the wife of Milton Pollack.

1908: Louis A. Hensheimer, a member of the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company was operated on today for appendicitis.

1909(19thof Tevet, 5670): Eighty-three year old German born Julius Weis who had arrived in New Orleans at the age of 19, made and lost a “fortune” in Natchez at the time of the Civil War after which he returned to New Orleans where he helped to found the Cotton Exchange, contributed to Jewish charities including Touro Infirmary, raised six children with is wife Caroline Mayer Weis and in 1901 was “fined $25 for violating the Wilson separate car law because he sat in the section reserved for negroes and declined the conductor's request to get up because there were no empty seats in the white section.”

1910(30th of Kislev, 5671): Parashat Miketz, Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1911(10thof Tevet, 5672): As large parts of the World fill themselves with food and drink as they get ready to usher out the older year, Jews are observing the fast – Asara B’Tevet

1911: Russian troops, occupying the Persian city of Tabriz where Jews had been massacred in 1830 by Shi’a Muslims, carried out the execution of Shiite Muslim cleric Seqat-ol-Eslam Tabrizi, along with 12 other Iranian nationalists, in retaliation for their opposition to the Russian invasion.

1912: Birthdate of Newark, NJ, native Beatrice (Ribak) Mandelman the muralist and printmaker who”attended Rutgers University, the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art and the Art Students League in New York City” and who worked for the WPA from 1935 to 1942 where she was “one of the original members of the Silk Screen Unit.”

https://www.askart.com/Auction_Records/Beatrice_Ribak_Mandelman/10015/Beatrice_Ribak_Mandelman.aspx?lot=6013140

1912: A Russo-U.S. trade treaty, originally ratified in 1832, was abrogated by President Taft because of Russian discrimination against Jews who were American citizens.

1913(2ndof Tevet, 5674): Eight Day of Chanukah (Editor’s note – the last time the holiday would be observed before WW I which found English, French and Russian Jews fighting against Jews from Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire)

1913: By the time the copyright of the opera “Parsifal” expired today, it had been performed 43 times since first performed under the direction of Heinrich Conried who began managing the Met in 1903.

1913: In New York, Julius Harburger completed his term as Sherriff.

1914: Mitchell May completed his term as New York’s Secretary of States.

1914: “In a letter to Louis Marshall, President of the American Jewish Committee, the State Department informs him that there was much exaggeration in the cabled report published a few days ago to the effect that a large number of Jews in Jaffa had been summarily expelled from that city and summarily expelled from that city and transported to Alexandria, and that they had suffered from violence and insult at the hands of Turkish officials.” (Editor’s note - one wonders why the State Department decided to whitewash what was an effect a pogrom)

1914: As conditions continue to deteriorate for non-Moslems in the Holy Land, “three hundred French and forty Russian monks and nuns arrived at Pireus today from Palestine.”

1914: It was reported today that when the ship sponsored by the American Jewish Relief Committee sails from New York “it will carry relief, not only to the Jewish sufferers of Palestine but to the constituencies of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, the American Missionary Board and The Christian Herald.

1914: “The Provisional Executive Committee for general Zionist affairs…announced “today” that the Turkish Post Office has prohibited the use of all languages except Turkish, Arabic, French and German” which will present a problem for Jews writing to Palestine because most of them write in Yiddish, Hebrew and/or Russian.

1914 It was reported today that among those contributing to the fund for the relief of the Jews of Russia, Poland and Galicia were Camp Zion of Des Moines, Iowa and Temple Emanuel of Helena, Montana

1914: “Denver Jews To Aid Frank” published reported that “the Jews of Denver ask only for a fair trial for Leo Frank – a trail free from prejudice and the menace of hissing, howling mob outside the courtroom.”

1914: It was reported today that Dr. Leon Harrison of St. Louis believes that the Leo Frank case “shows that the prejudice again the Jews has been entirely removed” and it shows “that the Jew is born to suffer.”

1914: Martin H. Glynn, the 40th governor of the state of New York completed his term in office. Five years later he would come to the defense of the Jews of post-World War Europe in an article entitled “The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!” Since he was a Roman Catholic who never ran for office after leaving the statehouse, we can only assume that his article was written out of personal conviction.

1914: It was reported today that the American Jewish Relief Committee has sent fifty thousand dollars to the Jewish Colonization Association at Petrograd for distribution to the needy

1914: It was reported today that the American Jewish Relief Committee has collected $262,067.97.

1915(24th of Tevet, 5676): Seventy-year-old Joseph Goodhart, a former member of the Board of Education passed away today in Cleveland, Ohio.

1915: The commander-in-chief of the BEF gave orders that Solomon Joseph Solomon should be given the temporary rank of Lieutenant Colonel so that he can begin the work of setting up “a team to start the production of camouflage materials in France.

1915: “Jacob R. Fain, representing the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Society of America arrived” in Seattle “from New York today to assist in caring for Jewish refugees from the Russian war zone.”

1915: Three days after the order had come for the disbandment, “at the last parade” today Joseph Trumpeldor addressed the men in Hebrew saying “‘We are leaving tonight; our work is done. We have a right to say; well done … we and the Jewish people need never be ashamed of the Zion Mule Corps!’”

1915: It was reported today that the American Jewish Relief Committee had received a telegram from Isidor Herschfield, who was traveling in war torn Eastern Europe on behalf of the committee and HIAS that described the need for shoes, food, clothing, fuel and “enormous sums” in Bialystock, Peski, Ross and Vilna.

1915: “The American Jewish Relief Committee which is attempting to raise $5,000,000 before the end of 1916 for the benefit of Jews suffering the war announced” today at the office of the Treasurer, Felix Warburg the receipt of $1,200 from non-Jews” including ex-Senator W. A. Clark, $1,000; R. Fulton Cutting, $100 and Paul D. Cravath, $100.”

1915: “Dr. Felix Adler warned the member of the Society for Ethical Culture at the meeting held” this “morning in Carnegie Hall that there are crises pending in the world and that it behooved the educated class to organize for the purpose of meeting them” and “he especially urged upon the society the advisability of taking a united stand in all matters pertaining to the social and moral status of the people.”

1915: Louis D. Brandeis and Dr. Schmarya Levin are scheduled to be the guests of honor at the 19th annual convention of the Knights of Zion opening today in Chicago.

1915: In writing today about why the United States should join the Entente powers, Isaac Don Levine said that, among other benefits would be a shortening of the war and providing support for “oppressed nationalities including Jews, Poles and Armenians.”

1916: Birthdate of Leo Kahn, whose success in pioneering big-box, warehouse-style supermarkets led him to join with another entrepreneur in 1986 to start Staples, the retail chain that calls itself the “office superstore…” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1916: “Mr. and Mrs. Henry L. Gideon of Boston” are scheduled to “give a recite of Jewish music this evening…for the Sunday Evening Forum of the Free Synagogue. (Gideon was the author of Jewish Hymnal for Religious Schools.)

1916: Among the contributions listed today by the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering through the War were $100 from the Jewish Alliance of Hamilton, Canada, $500 from the Ontario, Canada, Committee and $20 from the Chevra Kaddisha in Rockland, Maine.

1916: Extracts from a speech delivered in the Russian Duma by Deputy Friedman were made public today the American Jewish Committee in which he said “The Jewish people are deprived of the right to have their own press and recently of the right to have prayer books, textbooks and reference books in their own language” and “as before hundreds of Jewish youths are not admitted to the educational institutions.”

1916:  In Constantinople, Arthur Ruppin, a German born Zionist wrote in his diary, “Apparently the war is gradually coming to a close.  Probably, it will still take some time, but 1917 will bring us peace.”

1917: Nathan D. Perlman completed his two year term as a member of the New York State Assembly from 6thdistrict in New York County.

1917: Today, the New York State Supreme Court ruled that Mitchell Mark “had the sold right to use the ‘The Strand’ for a movie theater.”  Starting in the 1890’s Mark became one of the first entrepreneurs to dominate the field of movie distribution. In 1914, Mitchell and Moe Mark opened the million dollar Mark Strand Theatre in New York City, which “may have been first real movie palace, specifically built only to show motion pictures…The New York Times favorably reviewed the opening of this theater, helping to establish its importance.” Having spent that kind of money (a million dollar was big money in the second decade of the 20th century), it is understandable that Mark would take steps to keep others from encroaching on the fame of his new theatre.

1917: It was reported today that eighteen year old Max Rosen, the son of Rumanian immigrant and Bowery barber shop owner Benjamin Rosen, has returned to New York from Europe where he has been studying and performing to adoring audiences for the last five years is scheduled to make his debut in January with Philharmonic Orchestra in Carnegie Hall next month.

1917: Tonight, Albert Lucas announced that today “more than $750,000 was paid into the treasure of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds For Jewish War Suffers” which meant that Julius Rosenwald would pay an additional $75,000 into the fund based on his promise to give ten percent based on the total of all money received by December 31, 1917.

1917: Resolutions were passed today at the fifth annual convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association meeting at Columbia University “expressing the gratitude of the association to the British Government for its declaration favoring the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine and pledging the whole-hearted support of the association to the United States Government in the war.”

1917: It was reported today that the 85 organizations affiliated with the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies have spent $3,980,962 so far this year and are requesting $4,685,362 for 1918.

1917: The 21stAnnual Convention of the Federated Zionist Societies of the Middle West which was organized in 1898 opened today in Chicago.

1917: Colonel Storrs, the newly appointed British Military Governor of Jerusalem “received New Year’s greeting from all the city’s communities – Muslim, Christian and Jewish.”  The Jewish community sent two greetings, one from the Ashkenazi Community Council and one from the City Council of Jerusalem Jews.

1918: Birthdate of Antonio Yosef Ben-Jochannan the Puerto Rican born historian and prolific author whose best-known work may be Abu Simbel to Ghizeh: A Guide Book and Manual

1918: Charles S. Whitman, who as Governor-elected “had stated” that he would “appoint at least one Jew to each Board of Managers of the State hospitals” completed his service as the 41st Governor of New York.

1918: Thirty-five-year-old Zion de Frece Bernsten “the first vice president of the National Cloak and Suit Company and the New York City born son of Louis and Eva Bernstein married Helen M Stroock today.

1919: Twenty-three-year-old Columbia trained psychologist Dr. Elsie Oschrin Bregman, the Newark, NJ, born son of Aaron and Theresa (Goldstein) Oschrin married Adolph Bregman today.

1919: Fiorello La Guardia whose father was a Catholic from Italy and whose mother was Jew from Trieste, completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 14th District’

1920: Abram I. Elkus completed his service on the New York Court of Appeals.

1921(30thof Kislev, 5682): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1921: 1919: Fiorello La Guardia whose father was a Catholic from Italy and whose mother was Jew from Trieste, completed his service as a member of the tenth President of the New York City Board of Aldermen

1922: A delicatessen dinner and reception are scheduled to be held at the Brooklyn Jewish Center on Eastern Parkway.

 1922: The Alumni Association of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society hosted a bazzar at the Central Jewish Institute in NYC from noon until midnight.

1922: Birthdate of Marek Edelman, Jewish-Polish political and social activist, cardiologist, and one of the last living leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1923: Birthdate of New York City native and CCNY graduate Seymour David Simpson, the “food chain executive, WW II and active member of the UJA.

1923: Birthdate of Arthur Siegel, the classically trained musician who gained fame as an American songwriter.

1923: “Kid Boots” starring Eddie Cantor opened on Broadway at the Earl Carroll Theatre.

1924: Birthdate of Dutch born American economist Hendrik Samuel “Hank” Houthakker.

1924: Deadline set by Governor General Primo de Rivera of Spain offering all Sephardim the possibility of reacquiring Spanish nationality. Very few Jews took him up on this offer.

1925: Arthur Kober, the Brody-born American author and playwright Lillian Hellman married today.

1926: “The General” a film that included “gags and bits of business” by Al Boasberg was released today in Tokyo.

1927: Henry Ford ended publication of the Dearborn Independent after having written “a public letter to ADL president Sigmund Livingston recanting his anti-Semitic views.

1928: Funeral services were held at Temple Emanu-El for diamond importer Leopold Stern where his “close friend, Dr. Samuel Schulman paid tribute to ‘his well –rounded life characterized by the virtues of work, service, character and faith” after which he was buried “in the family mausoleum in old Beth-El Cemetery.”

1928: Republican Albert Ottinger completed his service as New York State’s Attorney Generaly

1929: In Mineola, NY, James J. Silvers a salesman, sometime farmer and small business owner, and Rose Roden Silvers a music critic for The New York Globe and one of the first female radio hosts for RCA gave birth to Robert B. Silvers, a founder of The New York Review of Books.

http://www.nybooks.com/robert-silvers/

1929(29th of Kislev, 5690): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1929(29th of Kislev, 5690): Sixty-seven-year-old Warsaw born pianist and music teacher Alexander Lambert who “was either student, teacher or close personal friend of almost every important pianist in the last fifty years” died today after having been accidently struck by a cab owned by Julius Isaacson.

1931: Birthdate of “Irish journalist, novelist and feminist” June Levine

http://www.irishwriters-online.com/levine-june/

 1931: Jewish author Emil Ludwig interviews Joseph Stalin.  The interviews will provide material for his biography on the Soviet dictator.

1932: “The Match King” a biopic produced by Hal B. Wallis and featuring Harold Huber was released today in the United States.

1933: According to reports published today, Erika Morini, the Jewish violinist from Vienna, will be coming to the United States during the Fall of 1934 for her fifth tour in this country. Morini is considered a real child prodigy.  Born in 1904, she made her concert debut in 1917.

1933(13th of Tevet, 5694):Hungarian born American rabbi, scholar and author George Alexander Kohut passed away today

http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=17635

1934: By the end of the month, movies goers in the United Kingdom had a chance to “The Man Who Knew Too Much” a mystery produced by Michael Balcon and starring Peter Lorre.

1934: As of today, Otto A. Rosalsky was scheduled to complete his fourteen year service on the General Service bench, having been elected to a fourteen year term with Republican and Tammany Hall support.

1935: Under the leadership of Seymour Weiss, in New Orleans, the Roosevelt Hotel made a major upgrade with the opening of the Blue Room, which for decades, was one of the leading, if not the leading and classiest place to spend an evening in “the city that care forgot.

1935: The last Jews remaining in Germany's civil service are dismissed by the government.

1936: Leonard Stein, the local adviser to the Jewish agency in London testified for almost three hours today before the Royal Commission in a last-ditch effort by the Zionists to prevent Great Britain from changing the terms of the mandate which had been “granted for the express purpose of establishing a Jewish national home” to a new interpretation that would favor the Arabs.

1937: Birthdate of Avram Hershko Israeli biologist who won 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.

1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that a number of influential British Cabinet members recommended an entirely new policy in Palestine. They demanded the abandoning of the Lord Peel Partition plan, and the overthrow of the idea of the Jewish National Home as conceived in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and offered an alternative of a permanent Jewish minority in an all-Arab Palestine state; so much for the concept of British honor.

1937: Birthdate of German journalist and businessman Paul Spiegel

1937(27th of Tevet, 5698): Yehiel Ephroni, 33, was fatally wounded by shots fired by an Arab terrorist gang at an Egged bus at Km. 16 of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road.

1937: The Bucharest Stock Exchange crashed when Romanian Jews started to liquidate their assets, fearing the new government’s anti-Semitic policy.

1937: “Stage Door” the movie of the Edna Feber and George Kaufman stage play with the same name produced by Pandro S. Berman was released in the United Kingdom.

1938: Five hundred Jews attended a New Year’s Eve dance at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.  According to John Martin, the Secretary of the Peel Commission, a female reveler broke into the room of Sir Horace Humboldt, the official who called the Jews of Palestine an “alien race’, blew a small trumpet to awaken him and then proceeded to tell him the ‘he was the ugliest member of the commission and various other home truths while he cowered helpless beneath the counterpane.”

1939: Kibbutz Usha, Rachel (Rushka) and Shmuel Pazi gave birth to war hero and Paralympic Medalist, Igal Pazi.

1939(19thof Tevet, 5700): Eighty-two year old Georg Wertheim who “joined the department stored founded by his father Abraham” which employed 10,000 in its pre-World War I heyday but was lost to the family when the Nazis came to power passed away today in Berlin.

1939: As World War II began 1,210 Jews boarded the river boat Uranus, looking to be transported to Palestine.

1940: On New Year’s Eve, at Dachau, Fritz Grunbaum who was gravely ill with tuberculosis put on his last show as he entertained the prisoners in the camp infirmary.

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/music-early-camps/dachau/grnbaumfritz/

 1941: A New Year’s Eve costume party was held in Riga, Latvia.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/december/04.asp

 1941: Hitler approved Alfred Rosenbeg’s request to plunder the French Jews and distribute their property to Nazi party members and members of the Werhmacht staff.  The fact that the Werhmacht profited from this should be an indicator that the German General Staff was aware of what the fate of the Jews from the early days of the war. 

1941:  In Washington, DC, on “New Year’s Eve in the dead of night, the National Gallery loaded seventy-five of its best works and secretly slipped them out of town” as they began their trip to “safety” in North Carolina in what was part of the effort to protect America’s value historical documents and art which was part of an activity that was the first move in what would eventually become the work of “the Monuments Men.”

1941: In the dark days of the European Night, this was an attempt to strike a match and bring a flicker of hope to the desperate. On this night, Abba Kovner uttered some of the most meaningful lines of the 20th century.  On New Year’s Eve, Abba Kovner spoke out at a meeting of Zionist Youth hiding in a convent outside of Vilna.  He asserted that Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews and called for armed resistance with his famous words. "Let us not go as sheep to the slaughter."  As a result of the meeting and his stirring call to action, the Jews formed the United Partisan Organization.  Kovner’s revolt failed and he became part of a partisan unit.  Later, he was active in smuggling Jews into Palestine.  After fighting in the War for Independence, he settled down on a kibbutz with his wife and pursued a career as a poet.  He was one of the witnesses against Eichmann when the Nazi butcher was brought to trial in Jerusalem

1942: Captain Isidore Newman, a member of the SOE reported to Training School S2 today where he began learning “the latest radio techniques.

1942: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was delivered to her publisher. Although it was not her first novel, it was the first to win a wide following for the philosophy she called Objectivism. She explained that: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” The Fountainhead illustrated this philosophy for the public through the tale of an architect who sticks to his artistic convictions against massive social opposition. Though critics failed to praise the book, it eventually became a best-seller, and was made into a movie starring Gary Cooper in 1949. Together with Atlas Shrugged (1957), The Fountainhead has become one of the central texts of an Objectivist movement that emphasizes capitalism, individualism, and the pursuit of individual ambition. Although her idea that altruism is bad and selfishness good contradicts traditional Jewish values, Rand's promotion of individual ambition was typical of Russian Jewish emigrants of her generation. Rand herself came from Russia to the United States at age 21, drawn by the conditions depicted in American movies, and eager to leave Stalinist Russia. Jobs as a screenwriter and script reader in Hollywood supported her writing, and also introduced her to husband Frank O'Connor. Literary critics and philosophers have never taken Rand seriously, but her works have garnered popular acclaim. Despite mostly negative reviews, her four novels have together sold over twenty-five million copies, and Objectivist discussion groups and internet sites abound.

1942: By this date, the German Reich has deported more than two million Jews to death camps. Hundreds of thousands more Jews have been murdered by Einsatzgruppen and police battalions.

1942: In Petah-Tikva, Simcha and David Mizrahi gave birth to Yehezckel Mizrahi who perished aboard the Submarine Dakar.

1942: At a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Churchill asked if would be possible for the RAF to undertake two or three heavy raids on Berlin in January.  In addition to dropping bombs on the German capital, the planes would drop leaflets warning them of the fate that awaited them at the end of the war and that the attacks were reprisals for Nazi persecution of Poles and Jews.  Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff “warned that any such raids avowedly conducted on account of the Jews would be an asset to enemy propaganda.”  The RAF and the USAAF had at least one thing in common. Neither military unit was going to exert any effort to slow down the impact of the Final Solution.

1943(4thof Tevet, 5704): Sixty-nine-year-old Halifax, NC native and graduate of UNC and U. Md. School of Medicine, Dr, Lee Cohen the Captain in the Medical Corps during WW I who “was among the first in American to undertake plastic surgery on the nose and who designed many of the instruments used in plastic surgery” passed away today at Johns Hopkins Hospital leaving behind “a widow and three daughters.

1943: U.S. premiere of “Destination Tokyo” produced by Jerry Wald and Jack L. Warner, co-starring John Garfield with music by Franz Waxman and a script co-authored by Albert Maltz.

1943: Had it not been for his death in 1941, today would have marked the end of Israel J.P. Alderman’s ten-year tenure as City Court Judge in New York City.

1943: “Thanks to the ceaseless importunity of Rabbi Kalmanowitz, the firsthand reports of Laura Margolies, the vigorous efforts of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and John Pehle, the director of the Division of Foreign Funds Control,” by the end of this month, “the interpretation of the Trading with the Enemy Act was finally relaxed” which enable the JDC to be able to provide aid to the suffering Jews trapped in the Shanghai Ghetto.

1944: Hungarian Arrow Cross members storm a Swiss-sponsored "safe house" in Budapest and attack residents with machine guns and hand grenades. Three Jews are killed but the rest are saved by a Hungarian military

1944(15thof Tevet, 5705): Jewish educator Abraham Handelman, who in 1913 came to the U.S. where he earned degrees from Drake and Dropsie in Philadelphia passed today.

1944(15th of Tevet, 5705): Josephine Sarah Marcus passed away.  Born to German immigrant parents in Brooklyn, NY, in 1861, Marcus grew up in San Francisco. Enchanted by a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, she ran away from home at age 18 to join the theatre. On tour in Tombstone, Arizona, she met and married Wyatt Earp, then a deputy U.S. Marshall for the Arizona Territory. In 1881, Wyatt Earp won lasting fame when he and his brothers fought a gun battle with their political rivals the Clanton gang at the O.K. Corral. Fleeing indictment for murder in the aftermath of the shootings, Wyatt and Josephine moved to Colorado. Wyatt's and Josephine's marriage lasted another forty-eight years, until his death in 1929. During these years, they moved frequently around the American west, following gold, silver, and copper mining, until they settled in Southern California. There, they invested in real estate and racehorses, wrote Wyatt's autobiography, and drafted a screenplay based on his exploits. After Wyatt's death, Josephine contributed to published and film portrayals of his life, helping to establish an enduring American legend. Josephine Marcus-Earp was buried beside her husband in a Jewish cemetery in Northern California, where their graves are today the primary local tourist attraction.

1945: Birthdate of Leonard Max Adleman a theoretical computer scientist and professor of computer science and molecular biology at the University of Southern California. He is known for being a co-inventor of the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) cryptosystem in 1977, and of DNA computing. RSA is in widespread use in security applications, including digital signatures. He won the ACM Turing Award in 2002.

1945: “Doll Face,” a movie adaptation of “The Naked Genius,” a play co-authored by Mike Today was released today in the United States.

1945: Fiorello La Guardia whose father was a Catholic from Italy and whose mother was Jew from Trieste, completed his service as the 99th Mayor of New York City.

1945: In Pittsburgh, a gang of seven Italian American robbers killed a Jewish restaurant owner.  The Pittsburgh Jewish Community Relations Council “made a point of downplaying the role of group antagonism as a motivation for this tragic event in order not to harm Jewish-Italian relations.”

1946:Another combined military and police search for the terrorists responsible for Thursday night's explosions in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Jaffa was carried out in the slum area of Jerusalem this morning. More than 400 persons were detained for interrogation.

1946: In Brussels, Leon (Lipa) Halfin and Holocuast survivor Lilane Nahmias, gave birth to Diane Simone Michelle Halfin who gained fame as fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg

http://www.dvf.com/

http://www.makers.com/diane-von-furstenberg

1947: Following an Arab attack on the refinery at Haifa where they killed 47 Jews, members of the Palmach launched an attack on Balad al-Shaykh, Haifa.

1947(18thof Tevet, 5708): Fannie Kaplan, the mother of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan passed away today which resulted in his sisters Sandra and Barbara being “sent to a foster home” and turning the 13 year old into a non-observant, rebellious “street kid.”

1947: Because of constant attacks from Arabs and the siege of Jerusalem, Hebrew University was forced to end all courses and close its doors.

1947: Benjamin J. Rabin completed his term as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 24th District today.

1947: Darius Paul Dassault, the French military leader who had changed his name from Darius Paul Bloch was serving with the Resistance was promoted to the rank of Army General (général d'armée)

1948(29thof Kislev, 5709): Fifth Day of Chanukah

1948: “Words and Music” a biopic “based on the creative partnership of the composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart who provided the score for the show which was directed by Norman Taurog and produced by Arthur Freed was released today in the United States.

1948: In response to a British ultimatum, Ben-Gurion dispatched the order for Israeli forces to evacuate the Sinai and return to the Negev. A Jewish brigade was on the brink of capturing the Egyptian city of El Arish.  Despite pleas from Yigal Allon, who was in command of the forces, Ben-Gurion refused to change his mind. Ever the realist, Ben Gurion knew he needed a successful conclusion to fighting with the Arabs; not a widening war with the British.

1948: U.S. President Harry Truman cabled Ben-Gurion demanding that Israeli forces evacuate the Sinai or face the possible loss of U.S. support.  Truman did not know that Ben-Gurion had already issued orders for such an evacuation.  There are those who think Truman was moving to shore up the British whose support he needed in dealing with the threat of Soviet Imperialism. 

1948: “While flying a Spitfire (White 15) on a patrol over the Sinai” Danny Wilson “spotted an Egyptian aircraft - an Italian Fiat (Macchi) - coming back to its airfield at Bir Hama” which he shot down and from which the enemy pilot escaped when the pilot bailed out.

1949: The curtain came down “Born Yesterday” starring Judy Holliday today after 1,642 performances.

1949: Birthdate of American author Susan Schwartz.

1950(22nd of Tevet, 5711):Sixty-eight-year-old Vilna native Jacob Billikopf, Ph.B., L.L.D who was a nationally known figure in social work, Jewish philanthropy and labor arbitration passed away today. Billikopf had a long and distinguished career in public service work. He served as superintendent of the United Jewish Charities in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Kansas City, Missouri, before becoming the executive director of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, chairman of the National Labor Board for the Philadelphia region during the first years of the New Deal. He served as impartial chairman of both the Ladies' Garment industry and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers in [Philadelphia]. He later represented the department stores of Philadelphia in their labor relations. He was also a member of the board of trustees of the New School for Social Research, and president of the board of trustees of Howard University. In 1937 and 1938 he dedicated himself fulltime to bringing European Jewish refugees into the United States. Following World War II he served on the Clemency Board in Washington which was established to review court martial sentences.

1951: Seventy-five-year-old Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet leader whose greatest accomplishment may have been his ability to survive Stalin’s paranoia and anti-Semitism passed away today.

http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSlitvinov.htm

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset passed the first reading of the War Invalids Bill, submitted by the Minister of Labor, Mrs. Golda Meyerson (Meir). (This is the same Golda Meir who would become Foreign Minister and Prime Minister in the 1970's in time for the Yom Kippur War.)  

1952: In the wake of the “Red Scare” Rutgers University fired Moses Finley even though the Special Faculty Committee had issued a report “stating there should be no charges against…Finley and the University should take no further action in the matter.”

1952: “The Stooge” a comedy directed Norman Taurog and co-starring Jerry Lewis, Polly Bergen and Eddie Mayehoff, the son of Russian immigrant Jew was released today in the United States.

1953: In Boston, MA, Elizabeth Mary and S. Roy Remar, an attorney gave birth to American actor William James Remar whose “paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants” who name was originally “Ramarman.”

1953: In Brooklyn, Frank Rabinowitz, “a high school P.E. teacher” and “Shirley (Felman) Rabinowitz” gave birth to Alan Robert Rabinowitz, the University of Tennessee Ph.D. conservationist best known for his work with saving the Jaguars from extinction. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

1954: Republican Nathaniel Goldstein completed his third and final term as Attorney General of the State of New York.

1954: In New York City, “Abigail Heyward and Irwin Schneiderman” gave birth to Harvard Law School trained attorney Eric Tradd Schneiderman who resigned his position as Attorney General of New York after being accused of sexually abusing at least four women while serving as A.G.

1954: Jacob K. Javits completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 21st District.

1955(16thof Tevet, 5716): Parashet Vayechi

1955(16thof Tevet, 5716): Forty-two-year-old Sid Grossman, the WW II veteran and photographer who taught the art to several budding youngsters passed away today.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/redeeming-a-life-in-photography/?_r=0

1955(16thof Tevet, 5716): Seventy-three-year-old novelist and translator Ludwig Lewisohn, one of the original members of the faculty at Brandeis university passed away today.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shofar/summary/v020/20.2kessner.html

1956:  Birthdate of Dr. Martin Joseph Fettman.  An astronaut, Fettman was a Payload Specialist

1957: David Ben-Gurion resigned as Prime Minister “over the leaking of information from ministerial meetings.

1958: In Princeton, NJ, Sydney Anne and Lee Paul Neuwrith gave birth to actress Beatrice “Bebe” Neuwirth

1958: The Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, commonly known by its Hebrew acronym PICA, which had been established in 1924 “agreed to vest its right to land holdings in Syria and Lebanon to the state of Israel. 

1958: On New Year’s Eve, while dictator Flugencio Batista was preparing to flee Cuba one step ahead of Castro’s revolutionary forces mobster Meyer “Lansky was celebrating the $3 million he made in the first year of operations at his 440-room, $18 million palace, the Habana Riviera.”

1959(30th of Kislev, 5720): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

1959:Isidore Dollinger resigns as a member of the House of Representatives from New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

1961: Having led the New York Giants to the Eastern Conference Champion, Coach Allie Sherman suffered a lost to Green Bay in today’s NFL Championship Game.

1962: “40 Pounds of Trouble” a comedy starring Tony Curtis and Larry Storch was released in the United States by Universal Pictures.

1962: Max Goberman who conducted “the original productions of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘On the Town’ and West Side Story’” passed away today.

http://www.naxos.com/person/Max_Goberman/100862.htm

1962: Lesser Enterprises the real estate development firm led by Louis Lesser announced its first cash distribution – 21 cents a share – today.

1963(15th of Tevet, 5724): Seventy-seven year “Jacob Halper, old a former vice president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union” the husband of Mary Halpern and the father of Mrs. Bella Klosk and Alexander Halpern, “a commissioner of the Port of New York Authority” passed away today.

1963: Israel's first desalination plant opened at the port of Eilat. 

1963:  Birthdate of Scott Rosenfeld who gained fame as Scott Ian a guitarist for Anthrax.

1966: Kitty “Carlisle made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera, as Prince Orlofsky in Strauss's Die Fledermaus.”

1967(29th of Kislev, 5738): Fifth Day of Chanukah

196729thof Kislev, 5738): Seventy-eight-year-old Rumania born, University of Vienna trained lawyer Joseph Kissman, the Yiddish writer and official of the Jewish Labor Committee who was the husband of “political journalist” Leah Rosenbaum Kissman passed away today.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2019/03/yoysef-kisman-joseph-kissman.html

1968(10th of Tevet, 5729): Asara B’Tevet

1968: In an essay entitled “On Not Being a Jew” Edward Hoagland “complained that he was ‘being told in print and occasionally in person that I and my heritage lacked vitality because I could field no ancestry who had hawked copper pots in a Polish shtetl.’”

1969:  Five unarmed Israeli gunboats arrived in Haifa tonight ending a 3,000-mile journey from Cherbourg, France. Their arrival did little to unravel the mystery of their departure, which when the story became public, sounded like something out of an Ian Fleming novel.

1970: Seventy-four-year-old Hungarian born, English psychoanalyst Michael Balint, a convert from Judaism to Christianity passed away today.

https://balint.co.uk/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1464079/

1970(3rd of Tevet, 5731): Arnold Reuben, a German immigrant who founded Rebuen’s Restaurant and Delicatessen, one of the delis that claimed to be the home of The Reuben (sandwich), passed away in Palm Beach at the age of 87.

1971: “A group of people who wanted to create a warmer, more intimate, and more democratic Reform temple” founded Temple B’Nai Sholom in Albany, NY which held its first service on this date.  Within a month the congregation was incorporated. The congregation met in a church until its present building on 5 ½ acres of Whitehall Road was dedicated in 1979. In 1998, an educational wing was added, and existing space was reconfigured to beautify the sanctuary and add a library, lounge and meeting room.

1971: ‘’Diamonds Are Forever” the seventh of the “James Bond” films produced by Harry Saltzman, with a screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz and featuring Marc Lawrence as “Rodney” premiered in the United Kingdom today.

1972: The Socialist Party of America which had been founded in 1901 and attracted a large following among Jews including Congressman Meyer London of New York, Congressman Victor Berger of Wisconsin and Morris Hillquit was dissolved today.

1973: Elections which had been scheduled to be held in October and were delayed by the Yom Kippur War took place. Likud a new political party won 39 seats in the Knesset.

1974: Congregation Adath Israel Brith Sholom, a Reform synagogue located in Louisville, Kentucky, was added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

1974: Abe Ribicoff, the Democrat from Connecticut began serving as Chair of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee today.

1974: Mikhail Stern, a victim of the Soviet Union’s anti-Zionism went on trial at Vinnitsa.

1975: Isidore Dollinger completes his career as a Justice on the New York Supreme Court.

1975: Cornell student Sue Fishkoff landed in Leningrad today. Within hours of her arrival, she found herself “in a Jewish apartment within hours” of her arrival, plucked out of the crowd by a young Jewish member of the Komsomol group sent to greet” those arriving at the airport.

1976(10th of Tevet, 5737): Asara B’Tevet

1976: Iris Origo who had risked her life by providing assistance to Jews, downed Allied pilots and anti-fascists partisans in Italy during World War II, was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Overseas and Diplomatic List. The Anglo-Irish writer also helped tEo save Jewish children through the kindertransport including the painter Frank Helmut Auerbach.

1977: Ed Koch completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 18thDistrict.

1978: Stanley Steingut completed his service as “115th Speaker of the New York State Assembly.”

1978: After having served in the position for twenty-four years, Arthur Leavitt, Jr. completed his sixth and final term as New York State Comptroller.

1978: After 1,920 performances the curtain came down on “The Magic Show” “a one-act musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz.

1979(11th of Tevet, 5740): Fifty-three-year-old Brooklyn, Tulane trained M.D. Saul Frederick Rabiner passed away today.

1980: A Jewish owned hotel in Nairobi Kenya was bombed killing 18.

1980: Chuck Schumer completed his service as a “member of the New York State Assembly from the 45thDistrict.”

1980: A department store that had been built on the site of the Praška Street synagogue burned to the ground.  The synagogue had been demolished without the consent of the Jews in 1941.  After the war, the communist regime confiscated all religious property including the land of the synagogue.

1981: Iraq said today that two Israeli fighter planes had penetrated 30 miles into southwestern Iraqi airspace near the Saudi Arabian border but had been intercepted by Iraqi planes and forced to withdraw. The Israeli military command in Tel Aviv refused comment on the statement.

1982(15th of Tevet, 5743): Seventy-nine-year-old New York jeweler Henry Lewis Lambert, the brother of Victor Lambert – the creator of the Lambert Trophy – passed away today.

1982: NBC broadcast the last episode of “The Doctors,” the long-running soap opera in Doris Belack, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants played “psychiatrist Dr. Claudia Howard.”

1984(7th of Tevet, 5745): Seventy-one-year-old Yitshaq Ben-Ami, the Tel Aviv born son of Sara Brayna Rosen and Menachem Mendel Rosin and Hebrew University educated member of the Irgun and co-founder of the American Friends for a Jewish Palestine whose literary output including Years of Wrath, Days of Glory: Memoirs of the Irgun passed away today in Manhattan

1986: In Washington, DC, Len and Marjorie Freiman gave birth to major league baseball player Nathan Samuel "Nate" Freiman

 1987(10thof Tevet, 5748): Asara B’Tevet

1987: In “Early Neil Simon, ‘Come Blow Your Horn’” Mel Gussow reviewed the playwrights semi-autobiographical drama.

http://www.theater.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9B0DEFD61F3CF932A05751C1A961948260

1987(10th of Tevet, 5748: Forty-eight-year-old Leo Steiner, the restaurateur best known as the co-owner of the Carnegie Deli passed away today – which is sort of strange; a man who sells “Jewish” food for a living dies on a Jewish fast day.

1987: The police said today that 10 identical letter bombs had been mailed from Turkey to several locations in Israel. Two residents of Or Yehuda, near Tel Aviv, were slightly wounded by one of the bombs, but the others were defused, the police said.

1987: ''A People in Print: Jewish Journalism in America.'' a major exhibit celebrating the freedoms of speech and religion at the National Museum of Jewish History comes to an end. In the following article entitled History of “Jewish Journalism On Display in Philadelphia” the author provides interesting highlights into this little studied topic.

1988: An Off-Broadway revival production of “Godspell” a Stephen Schwartz musical which had opened at the Lamb’s Theatre in June came to an end today.

1989: Today, Prime Minister Shamir said he had dismissed Ezer Weizman from the cabinet for violating Israeli law by maintaining contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Shamir accused Mr. Weizman of giving advice to the P.L.O. on how to respond to Mr. Shamir's plan for elections in the occupied territories

1989: After 1,420 performances the curtain came down on a Broadway revival of “Me and My Girl” featuring George S. Irving in “his Tony nominated performance as Sir John” at the Marquis Theatre

1989: Ed Koch completed his service as New York’s 105th Mayor

1990:  Garry Kasparov retains holds his title by winning the World Chess Championship.

1990: According to reports published in today’s New York Times, “Israeli military experts are virtually unanimous that in the event of war, Iraq would launch at least 20 missiles against Israel armed with conventional or chemical warheads, and that some of those missiles would be certain to penetrate Israeli defenses.

1991(24th of Tevet, 5752):Eighty year old  Felicja Blumental, a Polish-born Brazilian pianist who was known for her performances of 19th-century rarities and music by contemporary composers, died today in Tel Aviv, where she was attending a recital by her daughter, Annette Celine Blumental, a soprano..

1991(24th of Tevet, 5752): Benjamin Joseph Buttenwieser passed away. Born in 1900 he was an American banker, philanthropist and civic leader in New York. Buttenwieser entered Columbia College at age 15 and graduated in 1919. He eventually became a partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and director of many companies, including Revlon; Benrus Watch; Tischman Realty and others. Buttenwieser married Helen Lehman Buttenwieser in 1929. She was the niece of Governor Herbert Lehman and an attorney for Alger Hiss. Their activism landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents. The Buttenwieser Professorship at Columbia University was established in 1958 with a gift to the University from Buttenweiser, a longtime University Trustee and clerk of the Trustees, in honor of his father, Joseph. He was also a trustee of Lenox Hill Hospital and the New York Philharmonic. He was also a president of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.

1991: An Arab woman from Bethlehem was preparing an explosive charge in a toilet in the Mahane Yehuda market, the main Jewish market of West Jerusalem, when the charge exploded killing her and no one else.

1991: All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.  There is so much that is positive about this for the world in general and Jews in particular.  The demise of the Soviet Union opened the flood gates and made it possible for the long-suffering Jews living in the various Soviet republics to make Aliyah

1992: Amnon Rubinstein, a member of Meretz, completed his service as Science and Technology Minister.

1992: Czechoslovakia is dissolved, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Jews will always have a warm spot in their hearts for Czechoslovakia.  In 1948, when faced with an arms embargo and the invasion by well-armed Arab armies, the Czechs sold the Israelis their first combat aircraft.  Ironically, these were surplus ME-109’s – the fighter plane that had been the pride of the Nazi Air Force.  These fighter planes, one of which was flown by Ezer Weizmann played a key role in halting the Egyptian drive to seize Tel Aviv.

1992: Amnon Rubenstein completed his term as Minister of Science and Development.

1992: “Jeffrey,” Paul Rudnick’s comedy about AIDS opened today “at the tiny WPA Theatre.”

1993: Elizabeth Holtzman completed her term as the 40th Comptroller of New York City.

1993: G. Oliver Koppel completed his service as a member of the New York State Assembly where he had begun serving in March, 1970.

1993: Robert Abrams completed his service as New York State Attorney General, a position he had held since 1979.

1993: Entertainer Barbra Streisand performed her first paid concert in 22 years, singing to a sellout crowd at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas.

1993: Formally recognizing each other after decades of diplomatic aloofness and centuries of frequent Jewish-Catholic rancor, Israel and the Vatican signed an agreement today to establish diplomatic relations.

1993: G. Oliver Koppel completed his service as a member of the New York State Asssemly.

1993: Chaim Weizman and David Bizi were found after being murdered by terrorists in a Ramle apartment. ID cards of two Gaza residents were found in the apartment, together with a leaflet of the Popular Front 'Red Eagle' group, claiming responsibility for the murder.

1994(28th of Tevet, 5755): Leo Fuchs Polish born U.S. Yiddish actor passed away at the age of 83.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaries-leo-fuchs-1568528.html

1994: Gabriel Oliver Koppell completed his terms as the 61st New York State Attorney General.

1995: In writing about the “Emotional Overload and Emotional Lift” captured by television in 1995, Walter Goodman cites the tragic events that occurred in Israel. “The shock at the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Prime Minister was to some extent alleviated by the immediate surge of revulsion, expressed on television both in the United States and in Israel, over violent political language as well as acts of violence. At the widely covered funeral, the tributes of so many heads of state were heartening, with the pictures of an obviously moved King Hussein of Jordan carrying special force. Even amid the anxiety over the future, it was a historic and consoling moment: an Arab leader showing personal sorrow for the death of an Israeli leader.”

1997:  Marv Levy retired as coach of Buffalo Bills.

1997: Despite American calls for a ''timeout'' in settlement building, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai of Israel shoveled cement into a hole today for a new extension of this Jewish settlement in the hills north of the Palestinian-ruled town of Ramallah.

1998: The United States Ambassador to Israel ordered the American Embassy in Tel Aviv closed today after what embassy officials called a ''direct and credible'' threat of a terrorist attack against the building. 

1999: Barbra Streisand opened her “Timeless” tour when she took the stage at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas tonight.

1999:The last commercial flight out of Kennedy International Airport for 1999 took off at 10:17 p.m. for the 10-hour nonstop flight to Tel Aviv with a mere 12 paying passengers on board.

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Open Society:Reforming Global Capitalismby George Soros, The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Language and Culture by Ruth R. Wisse and Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture by Robert Alter.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/reviews/001231.31schort.html

2001: Alan Hevesi completed his term as New York City’s 41st Comptroller.

2001: After seven years, Michael Applebaum completed his service as Montreal City Councilor for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

2002: “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” a comical biopic loosely based on the life of Chuck Barris premiered today.

2002: Eric Schneiderman completed his service as a Member of the New York Senate from the 30th District.

2002: Pianist Alberto Portugheis performed in recital at today’s “Concert of Latin American Blend”

2002: Maxine Frank Singer, a leading biochemistry researcher and advocate of science education, stepped down after 15 years at the helm of the Carnegie Institution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/31/dining/was-life-better-when-bagels-were-smaller.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

2003(6th of Tevet, 5764): Gerald Yael Goldberg the native of Cork born in 1912 who became the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Cork in 1977 passed away.

2003: German-born American physicist Arthur R. von Hippel passed away.  Von Hippel was not Jewish, but his wife was.  Von Hippel was an opposed to the Nazis.  For these two reasons, Von Hippel left Germany and eventually made his as to the United States where he spent the rest of his life.

2004(19th of Tevet, 5765): Israeli Poet and playwright Elisheva Greenbaum passed away. In June of 2003, at the Metulla Festival of Poetry, Elli was awarded the prestigious "Tevah" prize in poetry. Earlier, in 2002, Elisheva was awarded The Prime Minister's prize for poetry.

 2005: Premier of “Six Actors in Search of a Plot" a new bilingual Arabic-Hebrew written by the Palestinian playwright Mohammad el-Thaher.

 2005(30th of Kislev, 5766): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

2005: In the evening, Havdalah and New Year’s coincide. How ironic that "2005" separates itself from our lives on the evening when the Jew separates the day of rest from the week of work

2005: Jimmy Young the long-term “caretaker and chief custodian” at Adas Israel in Washington, DC retired today having become an “institution” at city’s venerable Conservative synagogue.

2005:  Neil Diamond appeared on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2006.

2005: Norman Pearlstine completed his ten-year tenure as editor in chief of Time, Inc.

2005: A Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s “Sweet Charity came to a close today after 279 performances.

2005: In “Hiram Bingham: Heroism Beyond Diplomacy” published today Rafael Medoff, the Director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies described the life-saving activities American diplomat.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/30/AR2005123001270.html

2006(10th of Tevet, 5767):Asara B'Tevet

2006(10th of Tevet, 5767): Yahrzeit of Judith “Judy” Sharon Rosenstein (nee Levin).

2006: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World by Kati Marton.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World by Kati Marton, Emma Lazarus by Esther Schor and Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins by Amanda Vaill.

2006(10th of Tevet, 5767): Seymour Martin “Marty” Lipset “the most revered analyst of American society and democracy since Alexis de Tocqueville” passed away at the age of 84.

2006: At the Jewish Museum in New York an exhibition styled “Ours to Fight For: American Jews During the Second World War” comes to an end.

2007: The New Republic magazine featured a review of The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan.  

2007:Rabbi, Naftali Tzi Weisz, 59, and his assistant, or gabbai, Moshe E. Zigelman, 60 spent some of the time studying Hebrew books and reciting psalmswhile waiting to appear in court having been charged in an indictment that alleges a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud U.S. government agencies, to operate a underground money transfer system and to launder money through an Israeli bank.

2007(22 Tevet 5768): Rabbi Arnold G. Kaiman, 74, rabbi at Congregation Kol Ami on the Near North Side for 21 years, died of lung problems, in a West Bloomfield, Mich., hospital.

2008: In “Striking Deep Into Israel, Hamas Employs an Upgraded Arsenal” Mark Mazzetti described the increased power of the group governing Gaza.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/world/middleeast/01rockets.html?_r=0

 2008: An exhibition entitled "From Distant Places to Dubuque's Shores: 175 Years of Jewish Life"   at the National Mississippi River Museum& amp; Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa comes to a close.

2008: The Village Voice, which had regularly published Nat Hentoff's commentary and criticism for fifty years, announced today that he had been laid off

2008: The Maltz Museum offers museum guests an opportunity to toast in the New Year at a 7 p.m. function before moving on to other holiday parties

2008: Haaretzreported that Katyusha rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip exploded in Be'er Sheva region, 37 kilometers from the coastal territory, which was the furthest point eastward which a Palestinian projectile has managed to reach.

2008: Two Israelis were lightly wounded when they were shot by a group of men in a mall in Odense, Denmark this afternoon.

2008: Judith Smith Kaye the first woman to hold the position of Chief Judge of New York completed her service in that position today.

2008: The New Republic magazine featured a review of “Adam Resurrected,” a film based on the novel by Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk starring Jeff Goldblum as the protagonist, Holocaust survivor Adam Stein.

2009: Final session of Limmud in the United Kingdom.

2009:President Barack Obama named Amanda Simpson to the position of Senior Technical Adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security at the U.S. Department of Commerce making her the first transgender woman appointed by any administration and the first transgender individual to hold an executive branch position.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/31/2009/amanda-simpson

 2009:At the Center for Jewish History an exhibition entitled “Stars, Strikes, and the Yiddish Stage: The Story of the Hebrew Actors' Union, 1899-2005” comes to an end.

2009: “Publishing in Exile: German-Language Literature in the U.S. in the 1940s” a joint exhibition of The Goethe-Institute New York and Leo Baeck Institute, sponsored in part by the New York Council for the Humanities comes to an end.

2009:On New Year’s Eve, Off The Wall Comedy Empire presents David Kilimnick, Israel's ‘Father of Anglo Comedy,' whose monologue “brings on new complaints” as he “addresses the issues of what really makes the right resolution”  for the New Year. Israelis know him as the “creator of the 'The Aliyah Monologues,''Find Me A Wife,''HaOleh HaChadash' and 'Frum From Birth'”.

2009:Two rockets launched from the Gaza Strip exploded in a southern Israeli town.The two Grad type rockets, which have a range of about 13 miles, hit the Israeli town of Netivot late today. No one was hurt.

2009:The last H&H bagel of the year which was sold at the company's 80th Street store was a poppy seed bagel purchased moments before midnight by Ezra Millstein, of West 73rd Street.

2009: Hamas activist, Ibrahim Za’arah, 44, was arrested with two bombs on his person weighing 6-7 kilograms, as well as detonation devices as he tried to enter Israel.

2010: In New York, The Peridance Capezio Center is scheduled to host the first in a series of GAGA Master Classes with Ohad Naharin. “

2010: Jehuda Reinharz is scheduled to end his 16 years as President of Brandeis University today.  He will be succeeded by Frederick Lawrence who will become President on January 1st.

2010: Eric Schniederman completed his service as a Member of the New York State Senate from the 31st District.

2010: Bezalel Fair, the largest arts & crafts fair of its kind in Israel where all work displayed in handmade Israeli art, is scheduled to open in Jerusalem at 9 a.m.

2010: The 92ndSt Y is scheduled to host “A Champagne New Year's Eve with Sharon Isbin the world-famous guitarist who is a native of St. Louis Park, MN.

2010(24th of Tevet): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi. The founder of Chabad Chassidism, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of died on the eve of the 24th of Tebet, at approximately 10:30 pm, shortly after reciting the Havdalah prayer, which marks the end of Shabbat.

2010(24th of Tevet): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrzeit for the four thousand Jews of Safed and the one thousand Jews of Tiberias who were killed in the 1837 Galilee Earthquake.

2010: Kathe Goldstein is scheduled to lead Friday night services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA. 

2010: The winner of “Jerusalem in 2111” competition, featuring science fiction clips depicting the city in 100 years, was announced today. The winning video, Secular Quarter #3, directed by David Gidali along with cameraman Itay Gross, two Israeli students studying at the prestigious AFI Film school in Lost Angeles, was chosen among dozens of videos entries from all over the world. The video was sent two weeks ago, along with nine other finalists to a panel of senior judges from around the world.  The panel consisted of top film industry executives in science fiction and animation from Germany, France, Venezuela, England, US and others.   The winning movie was preferred by producer of Avatar and Titanic, Jon Landau and renowned director Wim Wenders. Gidali and Gross were jointly awarded a $10,000 grand prize, however the real prize is the world wide exposure of their film to leading film executives.  In addition,the Jerusalem Development Authority is looking into the possibility of turning the video into a full length feature movie. The ceremony held at the Cinematheque in Jerusalem was attended by Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Naomi Tsur, Mrs. Lia van Leer, the founder of the Cinematheque, Mr. Yigal Molad Hayo, Cinematheque director, Mr. Yoram Honig, manager of the Jerusalem Film and Television Fund,, initiator and producer of the competition, architect Daniel Varnik, and many senior film industry executives. The film, Secular Quarter #3, presents a bleak vision of Jerusalem in 2111, as a city where different populations are separated by futuristic steel walls, and over head by steel domes protecting the citizens from missile attacks.  By night, spacecrafts hover over the city and breakdown the walls; as a result secular and ultra-Orthodox youths meet, perhaps for the first time. The film tries to send the message that the more we continue to build walls, the less we will understand about the other side.

2010: Palestinian Authority terrorists attempted to murder a Jewish shepherd this morning, according to a report from the Samaria Regional Council. The terrorists opened fire on the shepherd as he tended his flock near Maaleh Shomron. The intended victim managed to take shelter and call for help. The attackers fled before IDF forces reached the scene.

2010: KlezKlamp, proof of the revitalization of Klezmer, the Yiddish language, comes to an end.

2011: The riotous Sandra Bernhard is scheduled to perform on New Year’s Eve at Joe’s Pub

2011: Party diva Lori Brizzi and DJ Nelson “Paradise” Roman are scheduled to host the New Year's Eve Millennium Dance Party at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

2011: Jackie Hoffman starred as Grandmama in the Broadway musical The Addams Family, which closed today after an 18 month run at the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre.

2011: Over a thousand ultra-Orthodox men assembled tonight in Jerusalem’s Kikar Hashabbat (Sabbath Square), in protest of what they termed the exclusion of Haredim, a response to the recent outrage over the exclusion of women in Beit Shemesh and elsewhere.

2011: The curtain came down on the original Broadway production of The Addams Family starring Bebe Neuwirth as “Morticia Addams.

2012: “The Garden of Eden,” a documentary about the Sakhne National Park and resort, is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2012: The Muslim authority managing the Temple Mount yesterday dumped tons of unexamined earth and stones excavated from the holy site into a municipal dump, in violation of a High Court injunction, Maariv reported today.

2012: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized late today to a top government official who received a firing notice via email. 

2012: As of today, Wisdom Tree Investments led by Chairman Michael Steinhardt “had $18.3 billion under management and was growing by 10% a month.”

2012: After having served as editor of the Boston Globe for the last 11 years where the paper earned a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the priest driving sexual scandal, Martin “Marty” began serving as the editor of the Washington Post, a position he would hold until January of 2013 when he was promoted to Executive Editor.

2013: Today Mathieu “Schneider appeared as a member of the Red Wings alumni team at Comerica Park against members of the Toronto Maple Leafs alumni

2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to usher in the New Year with a special Klezmer concert with acclaimed band, Machaya.

2013: “Like Father, Like Son” and “When Harry Met Sally” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

2013: Gabriel Oliver Koppell completed his service as a member of the New York City Council from the 11th District.

2014: “The Rover” and “Sofie” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival

 2014: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a friendly family afternoon Klezmer Concert where families can usher in the New Year. 

2014: “After years of financial trouble, Israel’s Channel 10 is scheduled to stop broadcasting today.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

2014: The Israel Antiquities Authority announced that “hundreds of ancient coins and ancient artifacts were found at the home of a suspected antiquities thief in Beit Shemesh last week after the man was caught in the act at a nearby archaeological site.” (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)

2014: According to the French, “nearly 7,000 French Jews immigrated to Israel in 2014” which is more than double the number for 2013 when 3,400 French Jews made Aliyah. (As reported by Stephanie Butnick)

2015: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to welcome the 2016 with the Third Annual First Night Klezmer Concert featuring the “acclaimed band, Machaya.”

2015: Dr. T Alan Hurwitz “the first born deaf and Jewish person to serve as President of Gaullaudet University retired today.

2016(2nd of Tevet, 5777): Parshat Miketz; Seventh Day of Chanukah

2016: Today, the “Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue closed after almost eighty years of service.”

2016: “IDF soldiers were attacked by West Bank settlers today after arriving at the scene of clashes between settlers and Palestinians near the village of Sussiya, south of Hebron, police said.”

2016: Shabbat and New Year’s Eve coincide just as they did seventy-five years ago when Abba Kovner uttered the words of resistance "Let us not go as sheep to the slaughter”

 

2016: In Little Rock, Chabad Lubavitch under the leadership of Rabbi PInchas Ciment is scheduled to host “the Arkansas Chanukah Menorah Car Parade.”

 

2016: “Art School, HaMidrasha Faculty of Arts at Seventy” is scheduled to come to an end in Tel Aviv.

 

2017: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg and the recently released paperback edition of The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature by Adam Kirsch as well as “When ‘All Thumbs’ Becomes a Compliment” by Calvin Trilling.

 

2017: Based on an announcement made on December 22, today is James Samuel Rosen’s last day working as a correspondent for the FOX News Channel.

2017: On the last day of the year in one more example of the changing economic and social conditions in the United States, “Congregants from Temple Hadar Israel in New Castle, Pennsylvania gathered at the local Tifereth Israel cemetery to bury ritual objects from their defunct synagogue.” (As reported by Alanna E. Cooper)

https://www.jta.org/2018/01/04/united-states/a-rust-belt-synagogue-runs-out-of-people-and-gathers-to-bury-its-past

2018: Today marks the deadline for submitting applications for the newly created “Krauthammer Fellowship,” “a two-year opportunity for aspiring writers and editors” created by a partnership of Mosaic magazine, the Tikvah Fund and the Paul E. Singer Foundation created to honor Charles Krauthammer, the recently deceased “intellectual journalist.”

2018: As much of the world prepares to ring in the New Year, ironically Israel joins countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran in avoiding the celebration and treating it with “disdain”.

https://news.yahoo.com/israel-likes-party-torn-39-180447421.html

2018: According to “figures released by the Jewish Agency” the year ending today saw an increase in Jewish immigration to Israel of approximately 5 percent compared to figures for 2017 which can be attributed to a spike in immigration from Russia and Ukraine which offset declines from such places as France and the United Kingdom. (As reported by YNET)

2018: In Rochester, NY, the CenterStage Theatre At the Louis S. Wolk Jewish Community Center is scheduled to present the final performance of “Big Wigs.”

2018: According to manager Herzl Levi, The Crowne Plaza in Haifa “will not allow New Year’s parties to avoid upsetting the supervisors that certify the hotel’s kitchen as kosher.” (As reported by Daniel Estrin and Dan Perry)

2018: For the 8th year in a row, “the old Jaffa at Beit Kandioff” is scheduled to host what it considers to be on of Tel Aviv’s premiere New Year’s Eve parties.

2018: This evening the Gala Hispanic Theatre is scheduled to host the final performance of “Talley’s Folly,” “the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy about Matt Freidman, a middle-aged Jewish accountant.”

2018: “The Special Investigative Committee on Oversight that was investigating Missouri Governo Eric Greitens released its final report” today which according to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch “which showed that Greitens ran an off-the-books gubernatorial campaign in 2014 and 2015, and lied about his campaign's acceptance of a charity donor list from the Mission Continues, a veterans charity Greitens founded in 2007.”

 

2018(23rdof Tevet, 5779): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrtzeit of Nathan Straus.

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_23.html

2019: Israelis are scheduled to welcome in the New Year at numerous venues including the “Beer Bazaar, in Jerusalem which is welcoming 2020 with craft beer and music from Solomon Brothers and DJ Zohar. Beer Bazaar” or “The Shablul Jazz Club in Tel Aviv which will be celebrating the New Year with Chicago Blues legend Mark Rashkow.”

2019: Three days after he passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held today at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids for ninety-one year old Berlin born and Cornell University trained University of Iowa Political Science Professor Jerry Lowenberg, the husband of Ina Lowenberg with whom he had two children – Deborah and Michael.

2019: JW3 is scheduled to host the final London screening of “Spider in the Web.”

2019: It was reported today that Mitchell Silber “a counter-terror expert who formerly held a high-level intelligence post with the New York Police Department will lead a new initiative to secure Jewish institutions in New York City.”

2019: As Jews grapple with the latest outbreak of anti-Semitic violence, they may be pondering the fact that the spokesman for the accused machete wielder appears to be a Jewish attorney.

2019: At YIVO in New York City, the “Rise of the Yiddish Machines” is scheduled to come to a close.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/05/22/now-museum-pieces-yiddish-typewriters-tell-the-story-of-a-once-vibrant-culture/

2020: Jewish Family and Children’s Service is scheduled to present via Zoom “Music Therapy for Kids.

2020: Rabbi Baruch HaLevi (Rabbi B) and Ariela HaLevi (formerly of Congregation Shirat Hayam) are scheduled to present “The Soul Experience,” a virtual, spiritual and healing service incorporating Jewish-inspired prayer, meditation, mindfulness practice, chanting, singing, yoga, mystical text study, guided visualization and more.

2020: New Year’s Eve, or as the Israelis call it “Sylvester” is scheduled to be celebrate in Eretz Israel.

2020: As Israelis wait to welcome the New Year, they are digesting yesterday’s report by Professor Nachman Ash that the “nationwide lockdown in its current form is not effective enough in bringing down the infection and needs to be much stricter.”

This Day, January 1, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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January 1

630:  Prophet Muhammad sets out toward Mecca with the army that will capture it bloodlessly.  At first Mohammed “had hoped to find is main supporters among the Jewish tribes” of Arabia.  This can be seen in his early adoption of certain laws regarding fasting and facing Jerusalem during prayer.  When the Jews refused to accept him as the final line of prophets that had included Abraham and Moses, he turned against the Jews “in a cruel war of extermination.”  Mohammed would die two years after the conquest of Mecca, but his legacy lives on to this very day.

1430:  The Jews of Sicily were no longer required to attend “conversionist services.”

1431: Birthdate of Valencia native Rodrigo de Broja who as Pope Alexander VI employed Bonet de Lattes, a Jewish born rabbi from Provence and “the inventor of an astronomical ring-dial by means of which solar and stellar altitudes can be measured and the time determined with great precision by night as well as by day” as his physician.

1438:  Albert II of Habsburg is crowned King of Hungary. Albert confirmed the privilegium of Béla IV. In 1251 Béla had granted a privilgium to his Jewish subjects which was essentially the same as that granted by Duke Frederick II the Quarrelsome to the Austrian Jews in 1244, but which Béla modified to suit the conditions of Hungary.

1484: “In Wildhaus, in the Toggenburg Valley of Switzerland,” Ulrich Zwingli and his wife gave birth to Huldrych Zwingli, the leader of the Reformation in Switzerland who at a minimum “studied and admired the Hebrew language, used it to some advantage” in his work and “took over some Hebraic teachings while evincing little concern for contemporary Jews.”

 

1515: Louis XII who ordered the final expulsion of the Jews from Provence in 1501 and who introduced a tax in 1512 on the remaining Jews there, who had accepted baptism known as the "tax of the neophytes," passed away today.

 

1515: King Francis I succeedt0 to the French throne. Francis did not have any Jewish subjects since they had been expelled by Charles V at the end of the 14th century and they would not return until 1675 when Louis XIV would grant permission to the Jews living in Alsace and Lorraine, his two newly acquired provinces, to remain in their ancestral homes. For some strange reason Francis showed an interest in the Hebrew language. He invited August Justiniani, the Bishop of Corsica who was reputed to be a serious student of Hebrew literature to move to France.  He also invited Elias Levita, the renowned Hebrew grammarian and poet, to move to France and accept a professorship in the Hebrew language. Levita declined the offer for obvious reasons.

 

1515:  Jews were expelled from Laibach, Austria.

 

1527: Croatian nobles elect Ferdinand I of Austria as king of Croatia in the Parliament on Cetin. There were no Croatian Jews in attendance since the Jews had been expelled and there was no record of any Jews living in Croatia after 1526. 

 

1549(Shevat, 5309): Elia Levita also known as Elijah Levita, Elias Levita, Eliahu Bakhur ("Eliahu the Bachelor") a Renaissance-period Hebrew grammarian, poet and one of the first writers in the Yiddish language passed away. Born in 1469, he “was the author of the Bovo-Bukhthe most popular chivalric romance written in Yiddish, which, according to Sol Liptzin, is ‘generally regarded as the most outstanding poetic work in Old Yiddish.’”

 

1559: Frederick II, who moved to keep Jews out his realm by ordering ‘that all foreigners in Denmark had to affirm their commitment to 25 articles of faith central to Lutheranism on pain of deportation, began his reign as King of Denmark and Norway today.

1565: A papal decree issued today order that “the fines levied on Jews for possessing scrip certificates of indebtedness, lending money on interest, or engaging in certain occupations were to go to the support” of Houses of Catechumens, “a Roman institution for converting Jews to Catholocism.”

1577: Today, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to the compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services.

1578: Today, Pope Gregory XIII signed into law a tax forcing Jews to pay for the support of a “House of Conversion” to convert Jews to Christianity.

1581: Today, Pope Gregory XIII ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community.  Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign.

 

1594: Rodrigo Lopez, a Marrano who was serving as physician to Queen Elizabeth, was arrested on charges of trying to poison the English Monarch

 

1627 (13th of Tevet, 5387): A press belonging to Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel published a prayer book, which was the first work produced by this Hebrew particular printing press.

 

1651: Coronation of King Charles II of Scotland who as King Charles of II of England would issue several proclamations guaranteeing the rights of the fledgling Jewish community in the British Isles.

 

1714: Leffmann Behrends, the son of Issachar Barmann and the grandson of Isaac Cohen of Borkum, who was a leading German financier who used his influence to protect his co-religionists passed away today.

1715: Birthdate of Leah Tobias, the wife of Joseph Tobias and the mother of Joseph, Jr., Masdad, Rinah, Jacob and Judith Tobias.

1763(16th of Tevet, 5523): Parashat Vayehci

1766: Charles Edward Stuart the leader of Jacobite forces whose invasion had caused panic among many of London’s financiers, except most notably Sampson Gideon” who provided the government with money and support, that led to the crown’s victory at the Battle of Culloden which ended a major threat to the Hanovarian English monarchy began his “pretendence today.

1773: In Pennsylvania, Miriam Simon and Michael Gratz gave birth to Simon Gratz, the husband of Mary Smith and the father of Louisa, Caroline, Edward, Simon, Jr., Mary, Theordore, David and Elizabeth Gratza.

1774: In London, Joseph Moss and his wife gave birth to John Moss, who settled in Philadelphia where he married Rebecca Lyons with whom he had nine children.

1778(2nd of Tevet, 5538): As the world ushers in the New Year, Jews observe the Eighth and final day of Chanukah.

1781: In New York City, Reyna Malcha Hays and Isaac Touro gave birth to Nathan Touro.

1784: Sara Rodrigues Alvares and Abraham Furtado, President of the Assemblee des Notables gave birth to their daughter Anne Emilie

1790: Birthdate of Alsace-Lorraine, France native Michelette Lazard, the husband of Paul Godchot with whom she had seven children, five of whom died in the United States as adults.

1793 Birthdate of Bertha Morgenstern, the native of Russia who came to New York City in 1842 with her children and husband.

1798:  The first Jewish censor was appointed by the Russian government to censor all Hebrew books printed in Russia or imported from other countries.  As you can see from the next comment about life under Communism, the Czars and the Commissars agreed on the need to censor Jewish books.  However, sometimes, the outcome could be a bit on comical side.  “Yosef Mendelovitch tells that when he was being transferred from one Russian prison to another, he was in temporary possession of his Chumash that had been confiscated when he was first imprisoned.  He would have to give it up again upon arrival at the new prison. Also in his possession was a collection of selected speeches by Brezhnev translated into Yiddish.  This book was officially passed by the censor (which is why I'm relating this story). He separated content from covers in both books, which happened to be of the same size, got rid of the speeches, and pasted (with well-chewed bread) the Chumash into the censor-approved cover.  His Chumash passed cursory inspection at his new prison and was his unfailing companion during his incarceration.”

1799: Birthdate of Samuel Hays Myers, the son of Samuel Myers, the husband of Eliza Kennon Mordecai and the father of Caroline and Edmund Myers.

1802: In a letter written to the Danbury, CT Baptist Association, ThomasJefferson coined the metaphor, "a wall of separation between Church and State."  (Editor’s note: Many think this term originated in 1947, when the "wall of separation" concept gained acceptance as a constitutional guideline. It obviously dates back to the Founding Fathers.  Contrary to the nonsense being passed around by various demagogues today, separation of Church and State was a basic concept in the founding of the United States.  The assault on Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” could be styled as an attempt by modern day radicals to undo the work of the American Revolution.)

1803: In Jamaica, Solomon Isaacs and his wife gave birth to their fifth son Soloman Isaac, the  husband of Charlotte Jame Thornthwaite and the father of Arthur, Ernest, Gertrude, Charles, Agnes and Percy Isaacs all of whom lived in London.

1804:  As a result of the slave revolt of Toussaint L’Ouverture French rule ends in Haiti making Haiti the first black republic and first independent country in the West Indies.  “Unfortunately, “during the slave revolt, much of the Jewish community was murdered or expelled from Haiti.  A few years later, many Polish Jews arrived in Haiti due to civil strife in Poland.”

1807: Birthdate of German rabbi Asher Sammter

1807: Birthdate of Abraham Kohn, the Chief Reform Rabbi of Lemberg.

1808: Several restrictions on Jewish ownership of land went into effect in Russia.

1809: In Frankfurt am Main, Jacob Hirsch Kahn, the son of Miriam and Isaac Jacob Kahn and his wife Jetta Kahn gave birth to Babette Kann.

 

1811: Today Lübeck was annexed to France. This meant an end to all anti-Jewish discrimination including an abolition of the special taxes of the "Schutzjuden.” This change brought an influx of Jews who entered the town from surrounding areas including Moisling. All this would come to an end when the French left and the Germans again took control. :

1812: In Brighton, Sussex, Hannah Benjamin and Levi Emanuel Cohen gave birth to Australian newspaper man Abraham Cohen.

1815: Birthdate of German author Boas Eduard who passed away in June of 1853.

1816(20th of Kislev, 5576): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah combined with celebration of New Year’s Day.

1826: In Frankfurt am Main Zerlinr and Meyer Levin Beyfus gave birth to Marie Beyfus.

1827(2nd of Tevet, 5587): Last of Day of Chanukah coincides with the First Day of the New Year.

1829: One day after he had passed away, Levy Abrahams was buried at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1831: In Lancashire, Henrietta Israel and Louis Samuel gave birth to Adelaide Samuel

1834: Gustav Schwabe, a Jewish native of Hamburg whose family was forced to convert when he was 6 years old, became a partner at Boustead and Company was renamed Boustead, Schwabe and Company.

 

1834: In Blieskastel, Salomon Oppenheimer and Johanetta Kahn gave birth to their fourth son David Oppenheimer who eventually settled in Vancouver, BC where he became a successful businessman and served as the city’s second mayor.

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=6346

 

1834: Birthdate of Salomon Stricker, the native of Waag-Neustdadt which was part of the Autro-Hungarian Empire at that time who became a note pathologist and histologist.

1834: Birthdate of Ludovic Halévy, a member of the famed Halevy clan whose artistic and social activities spanned at least three centuries starting in 1760.  Halevy was prominent in the musical theatre of 19th century France.  One of his most famous works was the libretto for the opera “Carmen.” Halevy is an example of the fate of European Jews.  His father had converted in order to marry the daughter of the architect Louis-Hippolyte Lebas and this enabled him in 1831 to become assistant professor of French literature at the Ecole Polytechnique, where there was some discrimination against Jews.

 

1837: Earthquake in the Tzfat-Tiberias area of Eretz Israel killed between two thousand and four thousand people, mostly Jews.  Many monuments and archaeological sites were damaged. The quake is also called The Galilee Earthquake of 1937 and the Safed Earthquake.

1837(24th of Tevet, 5597): Nissim Zerahiah Azulai “editor and annotator of Shabbethai Cohen's "Shulḥan ha-Ṭahor" (The Pure Table), a treatise on the 613 commandments, perished in the earthquake at Safed”

 

1844: In Austrian Galicia, Wolf Neumann, a Hebrew and Talmudic scholar and his wife gave birth to Moses Newman who came to the United States in 1897 and was active in the Jewish Galician Federation.

1845: In Odenbach, Germany, Freda Hart and Jacob A. Felsenthal  gave birth to Henrietta (Yetta) Felsenthal  who settled in Chicago where she gave birth to three children – Samuel, David and Jane – with her husband Simon

1845: In Charleston, SC, A.J. Brady of Athens, GA, married Adeline Moses, the “youngest daughter of Isaiah Moses.

1847: In “Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia,” Solomon and Caroline Phillips gave birth  to jeweler turned political leader Simeon Phillips who served in the legislature and as Mayor of Dubbo and was the husband of Rosetta Phillips.

1849: Birthdate of Alois Epstein, the native of Bohemia who graduated from the University of Prague with an M.D. in 1873 and became a leading Austrian podiatrist.

1854: Solomon Nunes Carvalho, a South Carolina native of Portuguese and Sephardic Jewish descent, who had the good or bad fortune to join John C. Fremont's 1853-54 mapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains, served a dessert of blanc mange “to the ‘satisfaction and astonishment of the whole party,’ a fitting climax to a meal of horse soup and horse steaks fried in buffalo tallow.”

1854(1st of Tevet, 5614): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1858(15th of Tevet, 5618): Eighty-year-old Isaac Pinto, the son of Jacob and Abigail Pinto and the husband of Maria Pinto passed away today in Chillicothe, Ohio.

 

1858: French author Mario Uchard exchanged New Year's greetings with the famed Franco-Jewish actress Rachel Félix in which the latter seemed to be bidding Uchard "an eternal adiu.  However, her doctor assured Uchard that "she would live some days longer.

[Editor’s Note: The following is not an error.  There were two different letters.]

1859: The New York Times published a copy of the letter “The Executive Committee of the Representatives of the United Congregations of Israelites of the City of New York” had sent to President James Buchanan in November of 1858 concerning the Mortara Case. Their letter included a reference to the letter sent by The London Committee of Deputies of British Jews “to their brethren in the United States” seeking their support in having the boy who was kidnapped in Bologna returned to his family.  The letter informed the President of the support being offered by several European nations and of plans to hold a public meeting to enlist public support in the United States. The committee reminded President Buchanan of the prompt action taken by President Van Buren in 1840 when he was asked to intervene to aid the persecuted Jews of Damascus and expressed the hope that he would do the same.

 

1859: The New York Times published a copy of the letter The Executive Committee of the Representatives of the United Congregations of Israelites of the City of New York had sent to President James Buchanan in December of 1858 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. 

 

1861: In St. Joseph, MO, Max and Bertha Eppstein gave birth to Seraphine Eppstein who gained fame as Seraphine Pisklo after marrying Denver businessman Edward Pisko in 1878 at the age of seventeen and who played an active leadership role at the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives in Denver from 1911 until her retirement in 1938.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/pisko-seraphine-eppstein

1861: Birthdate of London native Samuel Isaac Cohen who served as a “communal secretary”

 

1861: In Riddleville, GA Charles Wessolowsky and Johanna Wessolowsky gave birth to Morris Weslosky the husband of Julia Weslosky.

 

1862: Jacques Van Praag married Rebecca Levy today in Holland.

1863(10thof Tevet, 5623): Asara B’Tevet

1863: Birthdate of David Davidson who had lived in Sioux Falls, SD, came to Sioux City, IA in 1883 where he was a “merchant.”

1863: In Poland, Abraham Jacob Bauer and his wife gave birth to Sol H. Bauer who served as the rabbi at several Chicago Congregations including Moses Montefiore Congregation, The First Hungarian Congregation and Congregation Anshe Emeth.

 

1863: Edward Rosewater, a member of the United States Telegraph Corps serving at the White House telegraph office, was responsible sending out President Abraham Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” today. Rosewater was born to a Jewish family in Bohemia and moved to the United States in 1854

1863: During the Civil War, Confederate forces recaptured Galveston, Texas with assistance from Rosanna Dyer Osterman.  As recounted in Jewish Women in America: An Historical

 Encyclopedia, Rosanna Dyer Osterman, a native of Germany, was living in Galveston, Texas, in 1862 when Union forces captured the city.  She had come to Texas in 1838 to help her husband run his mercantile business.  Eventually, she became a leading member of the Jewish community, helping to bring the first rabbi to Texas in 1852.  When the Civil War broke out, Osterman, by then a widow, remained in Galveston.  While many others left for the mainland, she stayed to nurse the sick and wounded, turning her home into a hospital. After the city was captured by Northern troops, she provided military information to Confederate officers in Houston. This information helped them to successfully recapture Galveston on January 1, 1863.  Just three years later, Osterman was killed in a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi River.  In her will, she left her considerable fortune, over $200,000, to a host of Jewish and benevolent institutions. Gifts went to Jewish hospitals in New York, New Orleans, and Cincinnati, and enabled the establishment of a Hebrew Benevolent Society in Galveston, which cared for poor and sick people of all faiths.  Osterman's bequests also funded synagogues in Houston and Galveston, a Home for Widows and Orphans and a Sailors’ Home in Galveston, and a Jewish Foster Home in Philadelphia.  In an obituary, the Galveston Newslauded Osterman for her "unselfish devotion to the suffering and the sick" and said that "the history of Rosanna Osterman is more eloquently written in the untold charities that have been dispensed by her liberal hands than any eulogy man can bestow."

 

1864: In Hoboken, NJ, Edward Stieglitz, a lieutenant in the Union Army and the former Hedwig Ann Werner gave to Alfred Stieglitz considered by some to be “the father of modern photography.”

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-stieglitz-alfred.htm

1864: Corporal Philip A. Barnet began serving with Company B of the 51st Regiment.

 

1864: In Bonn, Ludwig Philippson and his wife gave birth “German geologist and geographer” Alfred Philippson.

 

1864: Corporal Moses Bahney began his service with Company B of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment.

 

1864: Philadelphian August Solomon began his service with Company B of the Ninety-Third Regiment.

 

1867: Birthdate of Lew Fields.  This New York native was part of the Weber and Fields one of the most successful vaudeville acts of their time.  When the act split up, Fields became one of the most influential producers in New York.  He was the father of songwriter Dorothy Fields who enjoyed a successful Broadway career in her own right.

 

1867: Rabbi Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, presided over the first Jewish wedding in Atlanta, which joined Emilie Baer to Abraham Rosenfeld in the holy bonds of matrimony. He used the occasion to encourage the creation of a congregation to replace the short-lived one begun in 1862.  The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation received a charter four months later and began constructing a synagogue in 1875.

 

1867: Following the retirement of Joseph Herzfeld, Hallgarten & Herzfeld, changed its name to Hallgarten & Co, the investment bank co-founded by Lazarus Hallgarten.

1868: In Reading, PA, Congregation “Aheb Sholem” is seeking to hire a teacher and shochet by today.

1869:  In Philadelphia, Nathan Rosenau and Mathilda Blitz gave birth to University of Pennsylvania Medical School graduate Milton J. Rosenau, who married Myra B. Frank in 1900 and who played a crucial role in the long, contentious campaign to make milk supplies pure and safe in the United States.

1873: Birthdate of St. Petersburgh native Louis Antoville, the art dealer, co-founder of The Jewish Daily Forward and the father of Solomon and Dr. A.A. Antoville.

1873: Julie Judith Bamberger and Isaac Bamberger gave birth to Shimon Simcha Bamberger.

1874: Frederick de Sola Mendes assumed his duties as of Rabbi at Shaaray Tefillah congregation (later known as the West End Synagogue) in New York City.

1874: As part of the New Year’s Day celebration, 200 children at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum partook of an excellent dinner.  Afterwards, they marched to the homes of Meyer Stern and Mrs. Max Herzog, President of the Ladies’ Sewing Society, where they paid their respects.

 

1874: Three days after she had passed away Sarah (Lazarus) Emden, the wife of Lewis Israel Emden was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1875: In New York, Hirsch & Mayer, a firm dealing in woolen goods, was reported “to have a stock of goods wholly paid for” and to be owed $30,000.

 

1875: Jacob Schiff , Solomon Loeb's son-in-law, joined the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

1876: As of today, the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith has a total of $550,000 in its treasury.

1876: As of today, the Independent Order Free Sons of Israel has a total of $58,350 in its treasury

1876: As of today, the Improved Order Free Sons of Israel has a total of $25,500 in its treasury.

1876: In London, Hannah and Solomon Goldstein gave birth to Australian businessman Hyman Goldstein.

1876: In New York, Hirsch & Mayer was found to be insolvent.  The insolvency touched off 20 civil suits and criminal charges aimed at Benjamin Mayer, a young, well-connected man, from a prominent Jewish New York family.

1878:  In Louisville, KY, David Henry and Selma Franko Goldman a professional pianist gave birth to Edwin Franko Goldman.  At the age of nine, Goldman studied cornet with George Weigand at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York.  In 1892, after winning a scholarship, he attended the National Conservatory of Music, where he studied music theory and played trumpet in the Conservatory orchestra. In 1893 he became a professional trumpet player, performing in such organizations as the Metropolitan Opera House orchestra and with his uncle Nahan Franko, a famous trumpet player.Goldman soon founded the New York Military Band, which is known today as the famous Goldman Band. The band played in many summer band concerts throughout New York, especially The Green at the Columbia University and then The Mall in Central Park.  They were also heard on many radio broadcasts.Goldman was known for his very congenial personality and dedication to music. He was very close to city officials and earned three honorary doctorates.  Eventually in 1929, he founded the American Bandmasters Association and served as Second Honorary Life President after John Philip Sousa.  In his lifetime, Goldman composed over 150 works.  He was also the composer of many cornet solos and other short works for piano and orchestra.  Goldman's works are known for their pleasant and catchy tunes, as well as their fine trios and solos.  He also encouraged audiences to whistle/hum along to his marches.  This has become a tradition with his most famous march "On the Mall".

1878: After completing his legal studies today, Louis Marshall “joined the law firm of William C. Ruger in Syracuse, NY.”

1878: Leopold Ullstein converted the Berliner Tageblatt into the Berliner Zeitgung (B.Z.)

1878: In New York City, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Hamburger gave birth Benjamin Hamburger, the successful manufacturer of robes and dresses whose involvement in the Jewish community include support the Federation of Jewish Charities and belonging to Sinai Temple of the Bronx and who is married to the former Ray Marks with whom he had one son, Sidney.

1879: Birthdate of Alfred Ernest Jones, the official biographer of Sigmund Freud.

1879: In Tolcsva, Hungary, Michael Fuchs and Hannah Fried gave birth to Wilhelm Fuchs who gained fame as “American motion picture executive” William Fox who “founded the Fox Film corporation in 1915” and raised two daughters - Mona and Isabella – with his wife Eva Leo Fox.

http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-Ei-Gi/Fox-William.html

 

1879: Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum opened its facility today with four children.

1880: David Joël, brother of Manuel Joël, assumed his duties as professor of the Talmudic branches, with the title of "Seminarrabbiner", at The Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau

1880: Alonozo B. Cornell began serving as the 27th Governor of New York during which term he appointed Myer S. Isaacs, the son of the late Rabbi Samuel M. Isaacs, as Justice of the Marine Court.

1881: Hallgarten & Company became a member of the New York Stock Exchange.

1882(10th of Tevet, 5642): Asara B’Tevet

1882: A magic act presented by Professor Leon is part of the scheduled entertainment to be presented tonight at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1882: The New York Times published a detailed review of The Mendelssohn Family, 1729-1847 by Sebastien Hensel

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Mendelssohn_family_1729_1847.html?id=4E20AAAAIAAJ

 

1882: In Corning, NY, Jennie Bach Ansorge and Mark Perry Ansorge gave birth to Columbia Law School trained attorney and Republican politician Martin C. Ansorge who served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives during which he “nominated the first African-American to the U.S. Naval Academy.”

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/martin-charles-ansorge

1882: Leon Pinsker anonymously published “Auto-Emancipation,” a pamphlet whose subtitle was Mahnruf an seine Stammgenossen, von einem russischen Jude (Warning to His Fellow People, from a Russian Jew) in which he urged the Jewish people to strive for independence and national consciousness.

1883: It was reported today that Marcus Marx has been elected Chairman of a committee to consider the merger of B’nai B’rith, the Free Sons of Israel, and Kesher Shel Barzel since half of the members of the latter two organizations are members of B’nai B’rith.

 

1884: As of today the two story frame building used by the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids housed 30 patients

1884: Birthdate of Moses “Mosey” King, the New England lightweight boxer and longtime Yale boxing coach who “was Connecticut’s’ first boxing commissioner.”

1885: As of today, the Russian Imperial Government will begin its monopoly pawnbroking in an attempt to add to the misery of its Jewish subjects which it believes are the only people engaging in this form of moneylending. 

 

1885: “An English Society for the Conversion of the Jews” announced that during 1884 it had converted “four Jews at an average cost of about $21,000 each.”

 

1885: As of today, the Hebrew Technical Institute enrollment has risen from 27 to 45.

 

1885: This month marking the founding of The Chicago Israelite, “an American weekly newspaper devoted to Jewish interests” under the “editorship of Leo Wise who wrote the “Notes and Comments” column along with Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, Levi A. Eliel and Dr. Julius Wise “who wrote under the pen-name of ‘Nickerdown.’”

 

1886: Birthdate of Homona, Hungary native Louis Lefkowitz, the founder “of Louis Lefkowitz and Brother, manufacturers of leather belts” who came to the United States in 1902 where he married Sadie Leah Weiss in 1915 and a leading member of Congregation Ohab Zedek.

 

1886: Birthdate of Clara Lemlich Shavelson who was a leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York's garment industry in 1909

 

1887: In Helena, Montana, founding of Temple Emanuel which held services on Friday evening and Saturday, with a Religious School that met on Sunday and enjoyed the support of a Ladies’ Auxiliary Society founded three years later.

 

1887: Birthdate of William Canaris, the Admiral in charge of the Abewhr, a German intelligence organization during WW II who was executed in 1945 for his opposition to Hitler. (Editor’s note: It was the Abewhr under Admiral Canaris that continued to use an unchanged Enigma code for so much of the war which gave the Allies an edge that among other things, helped them to win the Battle of Britain.  Was the failure of Canaris to change codes arrogance or his way of helping to bring down Hitler?)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/canaris.html

 

 

1887: Henry M. Stanley was back in London preparing the expedition that is designed to rescue Emin Pasha, the governor of Equatoria who is besieged by forces of Muslim fanatics. Emin Pasha was a Silesian born Jew named Isaak Eduard Schnitzer who successively converted to Christianity and Islam.

 

1887: The Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York is scheduled to move into its new home “in the building formerly occupied by the Home and School for the Children of Soldiers and Sailors on 11th Avenue near 151stStreet in New York where it will continue to care for over 400 children.

 

1888: Barnett nad Dora Kriss Feinberg gave birth to Dr. Moses Feinberg

1888: “The People of Israel” published today provides a detailed review of Histoire Du Peuple D’Israel (Volume I) by Ernest Renan.

 

1890: In Louisiana, any Jews remaining in Alsatia, East Carroll Parish faces the threat of being driven out by “lead.”  (That’s mean guns for the uninitiated)

 

1890: A fair being held under the auspices the People’s Free School Association, is scheduled to come to an end today. This is a fundraiser sponsored by the Executive Council of the Hebrew Fair Association.

 

1890: “A mass meeting of down-town” Jews held this evening at the Pythagoras Hall on Canal Street to discuss the construction of a new hospital to be built on the Lower East Side.  The up-town hospitals cannot accommodate the influx of sick Jewish immigrants.

 

1890: According to H.I. Goldsmith, the Grand Secretary of Grand Lodge, No. 1 of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Israel, there is $295,027.33 in “the degree benefit, an increase over the last year of $7,608.94.

 

1890: In Jacksonville, FL, Aaron and Theresa Budwig Zacharias Gave birth to Rear Admiral Ellis Mark Zacharias, the  husband of “the former Clara Miller” with whom he raised two sons –Gerald and Ellis M Jr. – who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1912, skippered the cruiser Salt Lake City at the start of WW II when “participated in the first United States counter-strikes against Wake and the Marshall Island and came to public attention “as a practitioner of psychological warfare” in the fight against Japan” passed away today. (Editor’s note – There is no way that this blog can do justice to his long, distinguished and exciting career.)

 

1890: As today, the Hebrew Technical Institute had a balance on hand of a little more than six thousand dollars.

 

1890: In Elizabeth City, Russia, Hill and Ruth Chernoff gave birth to chemist Lewis H. Chernoff the holder of a Ph.D from Yale, and husband of Sophie Lovins who was a professor of Chemistry and Physics at the College of Charleston, a chemist with the Department of Agriculture and a contributing investigator at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver.

 

1890: The terms of Messrs. Tuska, Thalmessinger and Bloomingdale as trustees for the Hebrew Technical Institute were scheduled to come to an end today.

 

1891: In Newark, NJ, founding of “Bet Hamidrosch Hagodol Ansche Warschaw” which owns a cemetery on Grove Street and whose members included Louis Marx, Sam Cohn, Morris Berkowitz and Abraham Cohn.

 

1892(1stof Tevet, 5652): Rosh Chodesh Tevet and 7th day of Chanukah

 

1892: Roswell P. Flower, who would appoint Edward Jacobs as Loan Commissioner, began serving as Governor of New York.

 

1892: Simon W. Rosendale began serving as New York State Attorney General.

 

1892: The SS Masilia whose passengers include a large number of Russia Jews whose passage had been paid by the Baron Hirsch Fund left Marseilles today for a four week voyage to New York

 

1892: Birthdate of Bertha Solomon, one of the first women’s rights activists in South Africa.

 

1892: The Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York opened.  Millions of mostly eastern European Jews would pass through Ellis Island on their way to New York’s Lower East Side or other such urban locations.

1892: Birthdate of Kiev native Boris Mirkin-Getzevich, the Russian jurist fluent in several languages including Yiddish who wrote under the pen name Boris Mirsky who daughter Vitia married Stéphane Hessel the member of the French Resistance who survived the concentration camps to become a diplomat and author.

1892: The Society of the Hebrew Sheltering Home has received $2,005 in the last twelve months.

1892: Colonel John Weber, the first Commissioner of Immigration at the port of New York, gave a $10 gold Liberty coin to the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island.

1893: Twenty-nine-year-old Schepsel Scaffer became the “rabbi of Shearith Israel in Baltimore, MD.

1893: The new sliding scale dues structures based on age adopted by the Grand Lodge District No 1 of the Order of B’nai B’rith to encourage younger Jews to join went into effect today.

1893: Joseph K. Toole who laid the cornerstone when construction began on Temple Emanu-El in Helena Montana completed his first terms as Governor of Montana.

1893: It was reported today that Darkest Russia, “the organ of the English Jewish community” had suspended publication on the assurance if it did so Russia “would modify her persecution” of the Jews would resume publishing since things have actually gotten worse.

1894: Thirty-six-year-old Heinrich Hertz, the German physicist for whom the hertz, the SI unit of frequency, is named and was born to a Jewish family that had converted to Christianity passed away today in Bonn.

1894: Simon W. Rosendale completed his service as New York State Attorney General.

 

1894: As of today, the United Hebrew Charities has spent an additional $64,900 in the last three months (October 1) to provide a variety of services including medical, educational and vocational to aid those suffering during the worst economic depression to hit the United States until 1929 and 2008.

 

1895: In Cincinnati, Ohio formation of Council No. 13 of the National Council of Jewish Women was formed with Miss Clara Bloch as President and Miss Mathilda Bettman as Secretary.

1895: “Louis Marshall was a framer of Article 14, the "Forever Wild" clause, in the New York State constitutional Amendment to the New York State Constitution, which went into effect” today.

1895: Birthdate of Nathaniel Shilkret, American composer and conductor.  For many years he was "director of light music" for the Victor Talking Machine Company.  His best-known popular composition was "The Lonesome Road", which has been recorded by more than one-hundred artists, including Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. He passed away in 1992.

1895: In Kansas City, MO, Robert and Bessie White Ginsberg gave birth to University of Missouri graduate and University of Pennsylvania trained cardiologist A. Morris Ginsberg, the husband of Zora Tasman Ginsberg and the father of P. Mortimer Ginsberg who passed away without reaching his third birthday.

1896: “Destroying the Old Relic” published today described the destruction of the Rolls House which had originally been “built by Henry III as a House of Maintenance for converted Jews” but was converted to other uses by Edward III when the supply of Jewish converts ran out.

 

1896: As of this date, there were 43, 658 Jews living in Minsk.  There were forty synagogues along with numerous less formal “houses of prayer.” The city boasted a large number of Yeshivot including Blumke’s Yeshivah, the Little Yeshivah and the Yeshivah at the Synagogue of the Water Carriers.  At this time Minsk was also home to a Jewish Trade School that offered training for locksmiths and carpenters as well as providing instruction in Hebrew and Religion.  The Jewish hospital had accommodations for 70 patients and the Jewish poorhouse had beds for 80 indigent patrons.

 

1897: Frank Black, who appointed Jewish political leader and philanthropist to the state board of charities began serving his term as the 32nd Governor of New York.

 

1897: A fundraiser for the Hebrew Technical School for Girls was held at the Carnegie Lyceum.

 

1897: Birthdate of Austrian poet Theodore Kramer who fled to England after the Anschluss and whom Thomas Mann called “one of the greatest poets of the young generation.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Kramer#/media/File:GuentherZ_2007-11-03_1320_Gedenktafel_Theodor_Kramer_Wien02.jpg

1898(7th of Tevet, 5658): Parashat Vayigash

1898: In Silesia, Maximillian Ullman and his wife, two Jews who had converted to Catholicism, gave birth to “composer, conductor and pianist” Viktor Ullman. Their conversion and did not save this musical genius who was imprisoned at Theresienstadt and murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/viktor_ullmann/

 

1898: “Do People Read the Bible Nowadays?” by Amos Kidder Fiske, author of “The Jewish Scriptures” and “The Myths of Israel” was published today.

1898:” Miracles and Dilettantism” published today disputes the version of the conversion of Abbe Ratisbonne to Catholicism as described in The Life of Cardinal Wiseman by Wilfred Ward.

 

1898: Dr. Joseph Silverman delivered an address entitled “The Religious and Ethical Possibilities of Greater New York” at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.

1899: A building that had been built because of the “munificence of the late Baroness de Hirsch-Gereuth” was opened today at the Baron de Hirsch Trade School in Nw York

1899(19th of Tevet, 5669): Fifty-three-year-old Agnes Henricks, the New York City born daughter of Rachel Seixas Nathan and Montague M. Hendricks, the wife of Aaron Wolff and mother of Lillian Hendricks Wolff passed away today in NYC.

1899: “Dr. Baar’s New Year Address” published today described Dr. Hermann Baar’s what is his last address to the children at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum since he has announced his retirement as Superintendent of the organization.

 

1899: Birthdate of Elazar Menachem Man Shach, (Eliezer Schach) the Lithuanian born Haredi rabbi who became a leader in Bnei Brak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elazar_Shac

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/elazar-shach

 

1899: Leopold Cohn sent a letter to President McKinley concerning the anti-Semitic prejudice that exists in Brooklyn and Manhattan which is manifested by “acts of violence” aimed the poor Jews of these cities.  Cohn, a former Rabbi, converted to Christianity and now is a missionary for the Baptist Church.

 

1899: “A Benevolent Society’s Jubilee” published today described plans for the upcoming celebration of the Noah Benevolent Widows and Orphans’ Association 50th anniversary celebration.  The association was originally formed by German Jews in the 1840’s.

 

1899: Mrs. Bertha Morgenstern observed New Year’s Day and her 106th birthday at the Hebrew Sheltering House in NYC.

 

1899: It was reported today that Aaron Baerlein is President of the Noah Benevolent Widows and Orphans’ Association, a fraternal and benevolent order formed by German Jews in New York before the Civil War.

 

1899: As of today, not counting officers, there eighty-two Jews serving in the British Army and forty-six serving in the militia.

 

1899: In Rochester, NY, founding of “Temple Kitchen Garden” “under the auspices of the Sisterhood of Berith Kodesh and the Council of Jewish Council” and funded by “the Sisterhood and the Hebrew Ladies’ Aid Society.

 

1900(1st of Shevat, 5660): Rosh Chodesh Shevat

 

1900(1st of Shevat, 5660): Vilna native Joshua Ḥayyim b. Mordecai ha-Levi Epstein, “familiarly known as "Reb Joshua Ḥayyim the Sarsur" (money-broker)” passed away today.

 

1900: Birthdate of David William Pearlman, the native of Mezeritch who came to the United States 1904 after which he eventually earned a master’s degree from Columbia and became a Reform Rabbi after being ordained at the Jewish Institute of Religion.

 

1900: In Natchez, Mississippi, founding of the Jewish Relief Association which would be managed by Rabbi S.G. Bottigheimer.

 

1900: Starting today The Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) “restructured the way in which the colonies received financial and managerial support, with the effect of making them more profitable and independent.”

 

1900: In Rzhaventsy, Zastavna Raion, “Yoel and Ita” gave birth to Ester Rosenzweig, the Russian revolutionary known as Elizabeth Zarubina who spied for the Soviet Union in the United States under the name of Elizabeth Zubilin

 

1900: Birthdate of Samuel “Sam” Berger, the native of Ottawa, who was a successful attorney before he became the owner of two CFL teams – the Ottawa Rough Riders and the Montreal Alouettes.

 

1900: Birthdate of Chiune Sugihara “ a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania who risked  his career and life by issuing travel documents to thousands of Jews so that they could escape the Nazis by appearing to be traveling to Japan.

 

1901: As of today, the city of Warsaw “had a population of 711,988 inhabitants” of whom 400,395 were Poles, 36,659 were Russians and 254,712 were Jews meaning that the Jews were 36 per cent of the city’s population and that it has the largest Jewish population.

1901(10th of Tevet, 5661): Asara B’Tevet

 

1901: Birthdate of Russian born American sculptor and watercolorist Eugenie Gershoy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenie_Gershoy#mediaviewer/File:Archives_of_American_Art_-_Eugenie_Gershoy_-_2120.jpg

 

1902: Birthdate of Hans von Dohnányi, the German jurist, anti-Nazi who rescued Jews including “two Jewish lawyers from Berlin, Friedrich Arnold and Julius Fliess.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/oct/25/tragedy-dietrich-bonhoeffer-and-hans-von-dohnanyi/

1902: Twenty-six-year-old Russian born American journalist Herman Bernstein, whose varied career included visiting Europe in 1915 to study and to report on the “conditions of the Jews in war-stricken countries, covering the AEF invasion of Siberia as war correspondent for the New York Herald and exposing the “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion” as a “literary forgery,” marred Sophie Friedman today in New York City.

1902(22nd of Tevet, 5662): Solomon Lyons, the 6th son of Rose and Henry Lyons of Birmingham, UK “accidently drowned in Jersey” today.

1903(2nd of Tevet, 5663): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1903: Herzl begins a trip to Elach, Austria, his hometown.

 

1903: In Gorbals, a section of Glasgow, Morris Galpern, a cabinetmaker, and Anna Talisman gave birth to Labour MP and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons Myer Galpern who was knighted in 1960.

1904: Birthdate Louis Kerzner, who gained fame Louis Cohen a New York mobster who murdered labor racketeer "Kid Dropper" Nathan Kaplan and was an associate of labor racketeer Louis "Lepke" Buchalter.

1905: It was reported today “victory will crown the efforts of the United States to secure recognition of American passports without distinction to religion” because the Passport Committee meeting in St. Petersburg is going to recommend “that the Jews have complete freedom of travel and residence in their zone without passports which will only be required when traveling in other parts of Russia.”

1906: In Mabgate, Leeds Abram Rozenkopf and Chaja Nagacz who “came from adjacent villages in Poland and were married in Leeds in 1905 where they anglicized their name gave birth to Louis Rosenhead the British mathematician who served as a “Head of Department at Liverpool University from 1933 to 1973.”

1906: The Educational Alliance which has depleted its treasury because of the demands made to aid the Jews suffering massive anti-Semitic violence in Russia hopes to be able to stop borrowing from the members of its Board of Directors as of today.

1906: During the dispute about establishing a temporary Jewish homeland in a place other than Palestine, Winston Churchill wrote to his constituent Dr. Joseph Dulberg, leader of the Manchester Jewish community, describing the difficulties in establishing “a self-governing Jewish colony in British East Africa” not the least of which was the division between the Territorialists and the “Palestine or bust” faction.

1907: Herman “Kid” Landfield was knocked in the 8th round today while fighting the world lightweight champ – a defeat that led to his retirement later in the year.

1908: In New York City, Meyer Barnett, the “son of Harris and Gittel Baran” and his wife Sarah Barnett gave birth to Lillian Nell Barnett, who became Lillian Nell Berg after she had married Ralph Emanuel Berg.

1908: “An administrative decree issued” in Paris on September 30 that “provides for the separation of Church and State in Algeria” thus placing Jews on an equal footing with Catholics, Protestants and Muslims” is scheduled to go into effect today.

1909(8th of Tevet, 5669): Louis A. Heinsheimer passed away. Born in 1859, he was a partner in the investment banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. from 1894 to 1909. Heinsheimer was the nephew of one of the Firm's founders, Solomon Loeb. Heinsheimer's estate in Far Rockaway, New York, was called Breezy Point (not to be confused with the Breezy Point neighborhood on the western tip of the Rockaway Peninsula) and stood until 1987. Heinsheimer's mansion was owned and used for several years by the Maimonides Institute for Exceptional Children until it burned down. The mansion site is now a part of Bayswater Point State Park.

1909: Birthdate of Barry Goldwater, Republican Senator from Arizona and godfather to what has become the dominate right wing of the Republican Party.  Goldwater was not Jewish.  His father was Jewish but he raised his son as an Episcopalian for the obvious advantages it brought to him.  However, some of Goldwater’s critics did not let him forget his Jewish origins.  When he ran for President, his running-mate was William Miller, a Catholic member of the House of Representatives.  Bigots referred to the ticket as the Arizona Israelite and his fellow-traveler from the Vatican.

1909: As of today, agents of the Baron Hirsch Fund have purchased several hundred acres of farm land four miles west of Millville, New Jersey for the purpose of establishing a colony.  Forty families are ready to move into the houses once they are built.  Each family will receive 25 acres of cleared ground to work.

1910(20th of Tevet, 5670) Parashat Shemot

1910: The first issue of Das Yiddishe Levben, an “English and Yiddish monthly” which was an “organ of the United Hebrew Charities was published today.

1910: Isabel Hyams, an 1888 MIT graduate and a trustee of the Boston Consumptive Hospital, began an experimental “Penny Lunch” program in a Boston elementary school.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/01/1910/isabel-hyams

 

1911: On New Year’s Day, in New York City, an Austrian immigrant who “worked designing women’s clothing in the garment industry on the Lower East Side” and his wife gave birth to Joe “Shikey” Gotthoffer the James Monroe High School basketball player who went on to a successfully career with the Philadelphia SPHAS, followed by WW II stint working as “a supervisor at Wright Aeronautics in New York where her built engines for B-21s.”  (As reported by Douglas Stark)

 

1911(1st of Tevet, 5671): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Seventh Day of Chanukah

 

1911: In Łódź, Poland, Slanislava (Vinaver) and Adam Totenberg gave birth to Roman Totenberg, the child prodigy violinist who is the father of NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg, Judge Amy Totenberg and businesswoman Jill Totenberg.

 

1911: The Sunday Magazine Section of the New York Times described the debate between Dr. Solomon Schechter of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Dr. G. Margoliouth of the British Museum over the interpretation of a document entitled “A Document on the Sectaries” which had been found in the Cairo Genizah.

 

1911: Birthdate of Hammering Hank GreenbergHall-of-Fame first baseman for the Detroit Tigers.

http://www.jewsinsports.org/profile.asp?sport=baseball&ID=4

1912: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and Harvard and Columbia trained economist Moses Abramovitz the husband of painter and sculptor Carrie Glasser.

https://news.stanford.edu/pr/00/abramovitz1213.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20070609121742/http://www-econ.stanford.edu/abramovitz/abramovitzm.html

1912: As of today, “according to official statistics” there 11,817,783 Jews in the world of which 1,894,400 live in America while only 53,000 Jews live in Jerusalem.

 

1912: As of today, there were 94 people residing at the Orthodox Jewish Home for the Aged.

1913: A commercial treaty between the United States and Russian which had been “denounced by Congress…became inoperative” today “because it was interpreted by Russia as permitting the exclusion of American Jews from her dominions.”

1913: Birthdate of ABA Bantamweight and ABA Lightweight Champion Harry Mizler who represented Great Britain in the 1932 Olympics and was the younger brother of boxer Moe Mizler.

 

1913: A treaty of commerce and navigation and commerce between the United States and Russia “became inoperative” today “because it was interpreted by Russia as permitting the exclusion of American Jews from her dominions.

 

1913: American journalist James Creelman, who “had toured Russia investigating the persecution of the Jews” resigned today from the New York Civil Service Commission.

1914: In New York, Morris Cahan, the Russian born son of Simon and Yetta Cahan, and his wife Anna Cahan gave birth to Dr. Amos William Cahan.

 

1914: In an attempt to obliterate loan sharking and enable American wage earners to borrow money easily, cheaply, and under self-respecting conditions, Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, announced plans to create “industrial loan banks that could make small loans at a low rate of interest - loans so trifling in character that the ordinary bank would not consider them - to workingmen whose means are too insignificant to give them any standing with banks. 

 

1914: The sons of Leopold Ullstein purchased the Vossische Zeitug, “a liberal newspaper with a tradition dating back to the 1617.”

 

1915: “Before the Law”, “a parable contained in The Trial by Franz Kafa was published for the first time in the New Year’s Edition of the independent Jewish weekly Selbstwehr./

 

1915: Leo M. Frank wrote to the editor of the New York Times from his prison cell, “In assuring you of my deep appreciation of the stand you have taken in my case, for the cause of justice, may I not extend to yo my heartiest good wishes for a Happy New Year/”

 

1915: “Texans Make Plea For Leo M. Frank” published today described a petition signed by over three hundred “Gentile citizens:” from Waco, TX sent to the Governor of Georgia listing the reasons why he should stay the execution of Leo Frank and free him if the evidence warrants such a conclusion.

 

1915: Charles Whitman, who after being elected promised to appoint at least one Jew to each of New York’s hospital boards began serving as the state’s 41st governor.

 

1915: Jews of Laibach Austria were expelled.

 

1915: Nathan D. Perlman began serving as a member of the New York State Assembly form the 6th district from New York County.

 

1915: Today, in St. Louis, MO, Dr. Kaplan Kaplansky of The Hague, the General Secretary of the Jewish National Fund said today that “one third of Palestine could now be bought for restoration as the home of the Jewish people if the funds were available.”

 

1916: It was reported today that “every steamer from Japan brings a considerable number” Russian Jews to Seattle “who have fled across Siberia” and whom the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Society of America will urge “to remain on the Pacific Coast.

 

1916: It was reported today that the Jews of Rochester, NY expect to raise $25,000 for the American Jewish Relief Committee that is collecting funds to aid the Jews suffering in war torn Europe and Palestine.

 

1916: As of today the Hebrew Free Burial Association had a balance of $457 in the treasury and “had liabilities on cemetery lots amounting to $9,500.”

 

1916: The Knights of Zion are meeting for the second day of their 19th annual convention in Chicago.

 

1916: Dr. Max Goldfarb, the Secretary of the National Workmen’s Committee for Jewish Rights announced today that three Socialists including Morris Hillquilt “will request that President Wilson take steps to insure the political freedom of the Jews in Europe after the war.”

 

1917: Simon Bamberger became Utah’s fourth elected Governor making him the first non-Mormon to hold the office.

1917: The Temple, a monthly publication which was the “organ of Congregation B’nai B’rith” was established today in Denver, CO.

1917: As of today, the Independent Western Star Order which was founded in 1894 and has its offices in Chicago, Illinois had 17,924 members.

1918: In Columbus, OH, Dr. Morris B. Lhevine and Sarah Piatagorski Lhevine, gave birth to Marie Lhevine, the Columbia University trained attorney who became Marie Lhevine Aries after she married Dr. Leon J. Airies, the Chicago surgeon with whom she raised “three daughters – Jane, Elizabeth and Nancy.”

1918: Birthdate of New York City native and Columbia University recipient of a BSc and MA who gained fame as award winning sculptor Mitzi Solomon Cunliff, the designer of the golden trophy in the shape of a theatrical mask that would go on to represent the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and wife of Marcus Cunliff.

1918: During an afternoon session of a Zionist convention that drew delegates from Ten Mid-West States at the Hotel LaSalle, “more than $60,000 was pledged” to “be used for the reclamation of Palestine.”

 

1919: Prince Faisal “submitted a formal memorandum to the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference outlining his vision for Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East. It was not monolithic or pan-Arab. It sought only one territory: Syria.”

1919: Today marks the “official birthdate of Homl, Belarus native Marek Edelman the cardiologist and husband of “Alina Marogolis-Edelman” with whom he raised two children, “Aleksander and Anna” who is best known as the “last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/6259900/Marek-Edelman.html

l

 

 

1919: (29th of Tevet, 5679): Sixty-nine-year-old David Lubin, the Polish born American “merchant and agriculturalist” who played a pivotal role “in founding the International Institute of Agriculture” passed away today.

 

 

1919: Birthdate of J.D. Salinger who is as famous for being a recluse as he is for being the author of Catcher in the Rye.  “Salinger was born in 1919 in New York City.  His mother was Irish Catholic, and his father was Jewish. And because many people in the early half of the 20th century were often openly racist toward Jews, being half-Jewish was hard on Salinger’s psyche.

What also hurt Salinger’s relationship with his father was the fact that he wanted him to take over the family meat business.  Salinger was initially unopposed to the proposition.  However, after taking a trip to his father’s native land of Poland and seeing the slaughterhouses, Salinger lost respect for his father and his profession.  Salinger then became a devout vegetarian. What probably had the strongest effect on the mental makeup of Salinger was his experience in World War II.  Salinger was in one of the most dangerous regiments of the entire war, as he saw as many as 200 of his fellow soldiers die in a day.  Plus, he is also believed to be one of the first soldiers to see the Nazi concentration camps.  This probably greatly affected him because of his Jewish ancestry.” Salinger, who passed away in 2010, became a Buddhist who only would eat organic foods.

 

1920(10th of Tevet, 5680): Asara B’Tevet

 

1920: Arnold "Arnie" Horween kicked the PAT that provided the margin of victory as Harvard won the Rose Bowl.

 

1920: Fiorello La Guardia whose father was a Catholic from Italy and whose mother was Jew from Trieste, and was fluent in Yiddish, began his service as the 10thPresident of the New York City Board of Alderman

 

1921: Featherweight Danny Frush scored a victory when he fought his 40th bout today.

 

1921: Jacob A. Dolgenas began serving as the Rabbi at Congregation Gates of Prayer in Brooklyn.

 

1922(1st of Tevet, 5682): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

 

1923: Birthdate of Daniel Gorenstein, American mathematician.

 

1925: Greece mandates a national day of rest, in disregard to any religion. Thus the Jews are forced to work on the Sabbath, and those who did not, lost profits.  The Jews saw this as a move on the government's part to get rid of them.

1925: Former New York state legislator Louis D. Gibbs, a member of Temple Emanu-El began serving “as a member of the New York Supreme Court” today,

1925: Albert Ottinger began serving as New York State Attorney General.

 

1926: Lazar Kaganovich completed his first term as a member of the Orgburo (The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)

 

1927: Birthdate of Canadian political leader Shelia Finestone.

 

1927: Middleweight Seymour ‘Cy” Schindel won his bought today leaving him with a record of 10 wins and 2 losses.

 

1928: Sixty-five-year-old theatrical dancer Loie Fuller whose rumored engagement to Jacob Cantor helped lead to his defeat when he ran for a seat in Congress representing New York’s 15thdistrict, passed away today.

1929(19th of Tevet, 5689): Forty-three-year-old Pittsburgh born Harvard trained attorney Allan Davis, the president of the Menorah Society passed away today in his home town.

1929: “Queen Kelly” a silent film directed and produced by Erich von Stroheim was released in the United States today

1929: During the Rose Bowl, University of California half Benny Lom, a future Jewish Hall of famer attempted to stop one of his teammates from running the wrong way which led to the touchdown that gave Georgia Tech one of the strangest victories in college football history.

1929: Herbert Lehman began serving as Lieutenant Governor of New York

1929: Republican Albert Ottinger completed his service as New York State Attorney General.

1929: The Labor Party has been defeated in the elections for the Municipal Council of Tel Aviv.  Labor had controlled the council for the past three years but had only won five of the fifteen seats on the council in this year’s election.  It would appear that the United Centre Party has captured a majority of the seats which means that Meir Dizengoff will return as Mayor of the Jewish metropolis since the council elects the mayor.  Dizengoof had resigned three years ago in a dispute with the Laborites.

1930(1st of Tevet, 5690): Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Sixth Day of Chanukah

1930(1st of Tevet, 5690): Victor (Avigdor) Schonfeld, the native of Sutto, Hungary who arrived in Britain in 1909 “as Rabbi and Librarian of the North London Beth Hamedrash” and who founded the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in 1926 by which time he become active in the Mizrachi movement passed away today.

1930: In Boston, Jacob Leo Wiseman and Leah Kotze nave birth to Williams undergrad and Yale Law School trained law schoolteacher Frederick Wiseman whose decision to become a director and producer of documentaries was so successful that earned both the Dan David Prize and the George Polk Career Award while raising two children with his wife Zipporah Batshaw.

1931: In an interview published in today’s edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican, newly inaugurated Governor Arthur Governor expressed the regret that his parents Don and Dona Seligman, whom “the older generations of Spanish-Americans” spoke of “with a friendliness and sincerity that that borders on reverence” “could not have lived to have witnessed” his inauguration “and to have shared with me the happiness that I enjoy.”

 

1931: The undefeated Alabama Crimson Tide led by All-American Tackle Fred Sington, a member of ZBT, won the 17thRose Bowl today

 

1932: The Green Wave of Tulane led by Louis “Lou” Boasberg who played both tackle and end and later founded the New Orleans Novelty Company, played USC in the Rose Bowl today.

1933: Herbert Lehman began serving as the 45thGovernor of the state of New York.

1933: A pastoral letter of Austrian Bishop Gfollner of Linz states that it is the duty of all Catholics to adopt a "moral form of anti-Semitism."

 

1934: In New York City, Henry G. Schanko “took office as a Justice of the City Court” today.

 

1934: The Nazis remove Jewish holidays from the official German calendar.

 

1934: Birthdate of Chicago native Alan Harrison Berg, the Denver radio talk show host who was gunned by members of “The Order,” a white supremacist group.

1934: German laws allowing sterilization of the "unfit," which were passed in July 1933, are promulgated.

 

1934: In a move that will upset the balance of power in Europe and therefore threaten the well-being of the Jewish people, Hitler orders the German government to undertake a building program that will produce 4000 aircraft by October 1935. (As reported by the Jewish Virtual Library)

 

1934: Fiorello La Guardia whose father was a Catholic from Italy and whose mother was Jew from Trieste, and was fluent in Yiddish, began his service as the 99thMayor of New York City.

 

1934: In Miami, lineman Henry Weinberg helped lead Duquesne to 33 – 7 victory over the University of Miami in the Palm Classic which a year later became known as the Orange Bowl.

 

1935: “Israel Amicam, former official of the Posts and Telegraph Department of the Palestine government, who waged a determined war with the government to force transmission of telegrams in Hebrew characters, today sent the first message in Hebrew characters over Palestine’s telegraph wires.”  (JTA)

 

1936: Section 3 of the Nuremberg Laws – “Jews will not be permitted to employ female citizens under the age of 45, of German or kindred blood, as domestic workers” – went into effect.

 

1936: Sioux City, Iowa, native Herb Baumstein quarterbacked the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) today in the second annual Orange Bowl.

 

1936: Birthdate of Actress Zelda Rubinstein.

 

1936: In a New Year’s message made today by the United Palestine Appeal, “Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine declared that there was room in Palestine for Jews and Arabs and both peoples could live in harmony.”

 

1937: One day after its premiere in New York City, “One in a Million” with an all-star cast including the Ritz Brothers and Borrah Minevitch was released in the rest of the United States today.

 

1937: The New York Times describes the very successful performance in Tel Aviv of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.  The site of an Italian maestro conducting a Jewish orchestra in front of a predominately Jewish orchestra is proof to the Times of “how completely forgiven and forgotten is the serious misunderstanding between the two peoples that arose under Titus and Hadrian a couple of thousand years ago.”

 

1937: Marcel “Bloch's aircraft factories were nationalized by the Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques de Sud-Ouest (S.N.C.A.S.O.), one of six state-controlled aeronautic factories,” after which he “was retained as a civil servant and invested the compensation he received for his company in a variety of North American securities which led to the founding of a new aircraft company which later produced the highly successful Bloch 152 fighter.

 

1937: Georg Wertheim head of Wertheim’s one the four largest department store chains in Germany writes in his diary, “The store is declared to be ‘German.’”  This marked the end to his involvement in the family business begun by his parents in 1875.  Wertheim died in 1939.

 

1938(28th of Tevet, 5698): Parashat Vaera

 

1938(28th of Tevet, 5698): Sixty-year-old Berlin born Rabbi Martin Zielonka, the husband of Dora Schatzkey Zielonka and father of Arthur Zielonka passed after which he was buried in the Temple Mount Sinai Cemetery in El Paso, TX.

http://www.jmaw.org/rabbi-zielonka-el-paso-texas/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43058494?seq=1/analyze

1938: Today, Bert Adler left his position as deputy sanitation commissioner in New York to the join the newly created Depart of Public Works

 

1938: During January, the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany, is enlarged.

 

1938: The Namensänderungsverordnung went into effect today forcing 87 year old German mathematician Alfred Pringsheim to legally change his name to Alfred Israel Pringsheim

 

1938: During January, a collaborationist organization, National-Socialistische Vrouwen

Organisatie (National Socialist Women's Organization), is established in Holland.

 

1939: The Palestine Post expressed world-wide Jewish disgust for Sir Horace Rumbold after he had publicly referred to the Jews of Palestine as an “alien race.”

 

1939: “By today, in Cologne, all the Jews were excluded from the economic life and constrained to forced labor.”

1939: It was reported today that “Doubleday, Doran and Company have signed a contract with Peter Mendelsohn” “a descendant of the composer” Felix Mendelsohn “for a novel dealing with the plight of exiled Austrian Jews which would be fitting follow up to “his latest novel, All That Matters” which was based on “his experiences in a German Concentration Camp.”

 

1939: “Simon and Schuster have signed a contract with Dr. Abraham Flexner” the “director of the Institute for Advanced Learning at Princeton University” “for the publication of his memoirs.

 

1939: As of today, the licenses of the Jewish cattle traders in Laupheim, Germany were revoked.

 

1939: In an infamous prophecy delivered in a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler threatened that if “international Jewry” started “another” world war, such a war would not end in the extermination of the Aryan race but rather in the extermination of the “Jewish race.”

 

1939: In Germany, The Decree for the Elimination of Jews from German Economic Life took effect.  This was part of what was known as the compulsory Aryanization process in which all Jewish retail businesses were to be eliminated.  All stock was forbidden to be traded on the free market, but it had to be "sold" to a German competitor or association.  This edict was signed just a month earlier by the Economic and the Justice ministries.

1939: By the end of January "Illegal immigration" from Germany to Palestine has begun.  27,000 Jews will illegally immigrate by the end of 1940.

1939: As decreed on August 17, 1938, Jewish men in Germany must adopt the middle name of "Israel"; Jewish women must take the middle name "Sara."

1939: Jews are eliminated from the German economy; their capital is seized, though some Jews continue to work under Germans.

1939: At the Buchenwald, Germany, concentration camp, Deputy Commandant Arthur Rödl orders several thousand inmates to assemble for inspection shortly before midnight. He selects five men and has them whipped to the melody played by the inmate orchestra.  The whipping continues all night.

1940(20th of Tevet, 5700): Hugo Herrmann a Zionist author and publisher, one of the founders of the Jewish student organization Bar Kochba in Prague who worked for the Keren Hayesod and settled in Jerusalem in 1934 where he published descriptions of his extensive travels in Palestine passed away today.

1940: The Nazis shot Dr. Cooperman in Warsaw for being out after eight o'clock.

1940: Nazis prohibited Jews from gathering in shuls or private homes for prayer.

1940: Gustav Schröder, the captain of the MS St. Louis on its ill-fated journey in 1939 and whom Yad VAshem “honored with with the title of ‘Righteous Among the nations “slipped past allied patrols and reached Hamburg today” marking his final voyage during the Third Reich.

 

1941(2nd of Tevet, 5701): 8thand final day of Chanukah

 

1941: In the Bronx, “Lester Bluestein, an embroiderer” and “the former Beatrice Wargon” gave birth to Maurice Bluestein the mechanical engineer who perfected the weather measure known as “the wind chill factor.”

 

+

1941: In La Plata, Argentina, Catalina and Simon Portugheis gave birth to pianist Alberto Portugheis.

 

1942: U.S premiere of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” the film version of the play of the same name by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman with a script by Julius and Philip G. Epstein produced by Jerry Wald.

 

1942: In the U.S., the Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) is established to investigate and arrest suspected Nazi war criminals.

1942: Fifty-nine year old Max Kohn who had been transported from Prague to Terezin was transported to Riga today where he was murdered.

 

1942: Birthdate of Democratic politician Martin Frost who represented the 24th Congressional District in Texas from 1979 until 2004.

 

1943: Republican Nathanial L. Goldstein began serving the first of three terms as New York State Attorney General.

 

1943: In Greensboro, NC, Ruth (née Caplan) and Raymond G. Perelman “who controlled the American Paper Products Corporation gave birth to American investor and businessman Ronald Perelman.

 

1943 (24th of Tevet, 5703): Arthur Ruppin passed away today in Jerusalem at the age of 67.  “Born in Germany, Mr. Ruppin came to Palestine in 1908 to direct the first Palestine office of World Zionist Organization in Jaffa.  He was one of the founders of Tel Aviv.”  Dr. Ruppin was considered an authority on all facets of the economic situation in Palestine and was a strong fighter against those who claimed that limits must be placed on Jewish immigration because the country could not sustain anything more than a marginal growth in population.

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

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

 

1944: Operation Halyard, one of the largest Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines of World War II in which Yugoslav Partisans (a multi-ethnic resistance force that included Bosnian Muslims and Jews) played a key role, began today.

1945: On the same day that Hitler broadcast his last New Year’s Day address, the Red Army launched the Oder-Neisse offensive, the start of the last push that would in Berlin.

1946: In Tel Aviv, police found a large arms cache today that contained a both heavy and light automatic weapons, various chemicals of the type used for detonating explosives and a number of military uniforms.

1947: The State Stove Company of Hamilton, OH which Lucian L. Kahn served as vice president and treasurer was sold today to the Noma Electric Corporation.

1947: A British Military Court sentenced Dov Bela Gruner to be hanged for his part in the attack on the police station at Ramt Gan.  Gruner, a 33-year-old veteran of the British Army, is a member of the Irgun and claimed that he should have been treated as a prisoner of war and not a criminal.

 

1948: After the “Pan York” and the “Pan Crescent”, two ships each carrying “7,500 people from Romania, Bulgaria and Transylvania” arrived in Cyprus having been forced to go there by British ships trying to keep Jews from Palestine, crew member Gedda Schochat, Dave Lowenthal, Teddy Vardi and Avi Livney were taken thrown into “a jail cell of the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry” where, based on their appearance the following day, they were beaten. (As reported by Avi Livney)

 

1948: Thousands of “illegal” Jewish refugees who had been trying to reach Palestine disembarked in Cyprus where the British interned them in DP camps.

1949(30th of Kislev, 5709): Parashat Miketz; Rosh Chodesh Tevet; Sixth Day of Chanukah

 

1949: As promised by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Israeli troops began withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula.

 

1949: Today, Joseph Klein began serving as the Rabbi at Temple Emanuel Sinai in Worcester, Mass – a position he would fill for so long that he became the congregation’s longest serving Rabbi.

 

1950: In Guyana, Janet Rosenberg Jagan and her husband formed the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) which she served as General Secretary until 1970.

 

1951: Birthdate of Portsmouth, VA native and MIT grad Radia Joy Perlman who “s most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges…”

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/lan-switching/spanning-tree-protocol/5234-5.html

https://www.computerhope.com/people/radia_perlman.htm

 

 

1952(3rd of Tevet, 5712): Either late last night or early this morning Leah Feistinger was raped and murdered. “The Mixed Armistice Commission (MAC) investigating officer, Major Loreaux, reported that the body of the girl, Leah Feistinger, had been found hidden in a cave about a mile from the Jordan border, the girl had been raped and murdered her face had been mutilated. While it was believed by Israeli police that this atrocity had been committed by Jordanians, they did not find evidence of an infiltration. The case had not been discussed by the Commission. Major Loreaux expressed the opinion that the Israeli police would have a better chance of finding the killer than the Arabs would.”

 

1952: In Jerusalem, “shooting attack by terrorists during a home invasion.”

 

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel continued to protest against the increased British, French and US arms sales to the belligerent Arab states, at least until they agreed to negotiate peace.  While Britain, threatened by the Egyptian guerrilla war against its forces stationed at Suez, had temporarily suspended her arms shipments there, France and the US had no such problem and continued to arm Israel¹s neighbors without any restrictions.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the government presented the oil-importing companies with IL 3,800,000 financial guarantees, covered by funds earmarked under the German Reparations Agreement for this purpose.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the number of unemployed in 1952 was 16,500.  This number, however, did not include Israeli Arabs, residents of immigrant transit camps, and others who had not registered with the Labor Exchange for employment.

1955(7thof Tevet, 5715): Parashat Vayigash

1955: After having served in the Army during the Korean war and spending “two frustrating semesters at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art” and less than successful stint in Chicago, today, Dave Heath moved to Chicago where he gained fame as an award-winning photographer.

1955: Republican Nathaniel L. Goldstein completed his third and final term as New York State Attorney General.

1955: Arthur Leavitt, Sr begins serving as New York State Comptroller, a position he will hold for a record 24 years.

1955: Jacob K. Javits begins serving as the 58th New York State Attorney General.

1956: In an open-the-flap book titled See the Circus published today H. A. Rey illustrated a man who looks very much like the Man with the Yellow Hat wearing a blue and white polka-dotted kerchief. The caption for the page reads, "Ted has a tricycle, so very small, He cannot ride it, because he's so tall. If you want to find out WHO the rider will be, just open the flap, and then you will see." Opening the flap reveals two monkeys riding a tricycle.”

1957: Today, British Reform Rabbi Hugo Gabriel Gryn married Jacqueline Selby with whom he had four children – Gaby, Naomi, Rachelle and David.

1957: Arthur E. Manheimer, the Harvard educated attorney and WW I veteran who was the husband of Ruth Manheimer and father of William and Kent Manheimer retired today from the presidency of the Hampden Watch Company which he had founded in 1940.

1957: Louis Lefkowitz began serving as Attorney General of the State of New York.

1958(9thof Tevet, 5718): Joseph Porton, the native of Neshvis, Lithuania, who established a printing business in Leeds, England and wrote Bible Stories and Jewish Ideals and Thoughts and Ideas passed away today.

1959: Publication of the Bibliography of Sephardic Proverbs by Henry V. Besso.

1959: As the Castro forces took over Cuba, casinos owned by Meyer Lansky were looted.

1959: Caroline Klein Simon was sworn in as New York's Secretary of State as part of the administration of newly elected Governor Nelson Rockefeller.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/01/1959/caroline-klein-simon

1960(1st of Tevet, 5720): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; the first day of the year coincides with the first day of the month and, in the evening, the kindling of the candles for the 8th day of Chanukah

1960(1st of Tevet, 5720): Seventy-seven-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate Sydney Davis, the chemist turned real estate broker and “president of the Brotherhood of Temple B’nai Jershurun of Newark who was the husband of Saide Davis with whom he had one daughter passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/01/02/99282223.pdf

1961: Sid Gillman’s Los Angeles Chargers came out on the short of the score of the first American Football League Championship Game.

1962: Abe Beam began serving as the 36thNew York City Comptroller.

1963(5th of Tevet, 5723) A fire broke out at the Telshe Yeshiva claiming the lives of two students.

1963: Al Davis met with the owners of the Oakland Raiders and negotiated a deal that made him coach and general manager.

1964: Publication of the third edition of A History of the Jews of England by Cecil Roth.

1965: Palestinian al-Fatah terrorist organization forms.

1966: Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence" reaches #1.

1967: A month-long exhibition of the paintings of Isser Arnovici, opened at the Elizabeth Street Gallery.

1967: “Code Name: Heraclitus” with a musical score by Johnny Mandel was released today in the United States.

1968(30thof Kislev, 5728): Rosh Chodesh Tevet; 6th day of Chanukah

1968(30thof Kislev, 5728): Seventy-nine-year-old Philadelphia restaurateur Samuel Feld, the husband of “the former Edna Rosenfeld” with whom he raised three children including the actor Norman Fell passed away today afer which he was buried at the Montefiore Cemetery. 

1968: During a reception today, “President de Gaulle…assured the Grand Rabbi of France that it was from his intention to insult the Jews when he calls them an ‘elite people, sure of itself and domineering.’”

1968: Louis Begley named partner in the law firm now known as Debevoise & Plimpton. Begley would eventually leave the law and become a successful, award winning author.

1968(30thof Kislev, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Tevet and 6th day of Chanukah

1968(30thof Kislev, 5768): Ruth L. Sherman, the daughter of Elias and Fanny Pofcher and the wife of Charles Sherman passed away today after which she was buried in West Roxbury, Mass.

1969: Isidore Dollinger begins serving as a justice of New York Supreme Court, from the first judicial district.

1969: M.S. Agwani’s review of Bernard Lewis’ The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam which “traces the history of the secret Islamic sect” was published today.

1969:  According to The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History birthdate of Sophie Okonedo, the London born actress was nominated for an Oscar as the best supporting actress for her role in Hotel Rwanda.

1970: Abe Beame began serving as the 38th New York City Comptroller.

1970: In Jerusalem, five people were injured by a terrorist grenade

1970: BBC began broadcasting “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” featuring Wolfe Morris of “Thomas Cromwell” one of the villains in the series.

1970: In Hebron, two Arabs were “killed by a grenade thrown at an Israeli army vehicle.

1971: U.S. premiere of “Something Big” with music by Marvin Hamlisch and a title song by Burt Bacharach.

1972: After 1,281 performances at the Shubert Theatre, the curtain comes down on the original Broadway production of “Promises, Promises” a musical with a score by Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David and a book by Neil Simon.

1973(27thof Tevet, 5733): Lou Halper, the New Jersey Welterweight Champion of 1932 and member of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame who was President of Halper Brothers Paper Company passed away today

1973: Birthdate of Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times executive David Leonhardt.

1974: “The Way We Were,” “the fifteenth studio album recorded by American vocalist Barbra Streisand. was released today by Columbia Records

1974: Abraham “Abe” Beame began serving as the 104th Mayor of New York City.

1975: Chuck Schumer began serving as a “member of the New York State Assembly from the 45th District” today.

1975(18thof Tevet, 5735): Seventy-one-year-old Victor Alphonse Sachse, Jr., the LSU trained attorney and husband of Janice Rubenstein Sachse who was the father attorney and Korean War Veteran Victor Alphonse Sachse III, passed away today and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Baton Rouge, LA.

1977: Following the death of his first wife “Sara Zwilling” in 1975, movie maker Boris Sagal married his second wife, “Marge Champion” today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/24/obituaries/boris-sagal-58-movie-director-dies-after-a-helicopter-accident.html

 

1977: Jerry Nadler began serving as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 69th district.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Egyptian negotiators in Cairo demanded that Israel liquidate her settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza as a pre-condition for the Palestine Arabs¹ self-determination.  Israel suggested that under the proposed peace plan, the prospective Sinai settlers would pay taxes to Egypt.

1978: Ed Koch begins serving as the 105th mayor of New York City.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that US President Jimmy Carter, who concluded his talks with the Shah of Iran and King Hussein of Jordan, was expected to arrive in Cairo for talks with President Anwar Sadat and a possible active participation in Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli population toward the end of 1977 stood at 3,650,000 ­ 3,076,000 Jews and 574,000 non-Jews.

1979(2ndof Tevet, 5739): Eighth Day of Chanukah

1979: Robert Abrams began serving as Attorney General of New York State.

1979: “A car bomb was found opposite Cafe Atara on the pedestrian mall and was neutralized about half an hour before it was to have blown up.”

1980(12thof Tevet, 5740): Eighty-two year old London born American Oscar winning composer Adolph Deutsch passed away today.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/adolph-deutsch-mn0000497873/biography

1980: After 32 years, German born American aviation engineer who played a major role in the aerospace manufacturing industry retired from General Electric where he had helped to develop among other things, the fanjets that power a significant number of all civilian and military aircraft.

1983: Moshe Levy was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and appointed IDF Chief of General Staff.

1984: The funeral for Rabbi Morris N. Kertzer, author of What Is a Jew? is scheduled to be held in Toronto today.

1985: Carolyn Leigh was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame today.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/01/1959/caroline-klein-simon

1985: Louis Silverstein, the longtime Art Director of The New York Times, retired today.

1986(20thof Tevet, 5746): Ninety-six year old basketball player and coach Max “Marty” Friedman passed away today.

http://interalliedgames.org/athletes/max-marty-friedman/

1986: Jerry Abramson began serving as the 47th mayor of Louisville, KY.

1987(30th of Kislev, 5747): Rosh Chodesh Tevet

1988(11th of Tevet, 5748): Seventy-nine year old German born American “character actor” whose “Jewish descent” made him a target for the Nazis during the Holocaust passed away today

1989: As new measures, imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration in response to the bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Scotland on December 21 take effect, Senator John D. Rockefeller 4th, a West Virginia Democrat who was en route from Israel to the United States and was transferring to a Pan Am flight in Paris, said the security was tighter than usual, but not as heavy as that which he had experienced at Ben-Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv. ''They opened everything, and that's excellent,'' he said of his early-morning departure. Security officers gave every passenger ''a very diplomatic, but careful grilling,'' asking questions like: Do you have anything new? Are you carrying anything for anyone? One security officer, he said, told him bluntly: ''Get nothing between here and the airplane. Go straight to the plane.''

1989: Stephen Engelberg and Michael Gordon of The New York Times are the first to report in detail about West German participation in the design and construction of the vast chemical plant designed to produce poison gas at Rabta in Libya along with facts about French aid in refueling bombers that would make possible the quick delivery of poison-gas bombs to Tel Aviv residents who are descendants of those forced to breathe Cyclon-B at Auschwitz.

1990: Elizabeth Holtzman became the 40th Comptroller of New York City.

1990: Stephen Breyer began servicing as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

1991: WW II veteran and Queens College graduate Warren H. Phillips, the New York born son of Abraham Phllips and the former Juliette Rosenberg and husband of Barbara Anne Thomas, stepped down as CEO of Dow Jones & Company, a position he had held since March of 1975.

1991: Bruce Sundlun began serving as the 21st governor of Rhode and the second Jew to hold this position.

1992: In “Frank Binswanger - Philadelphia's Golem - Remembered Fondly He Was Constantly Exhorting Philadelphians To Join His Pursuit Of Impossible Dreams” published today Dan Rottenberg provides a personal picture of this descendant of Rabbi Judah, the 16th century creator of the Golem.

http://articles.philly.com/1992-01-01/news/26037351_1_impossible-dreams-golem-pennsylvania-horticultural-society

1992: A suspicious fire broke out in the basement of a synagogue in Brooklyn, severely damaging the building and forcing the removal of several torahs. . Flames rushed through the basement of Congregation Hisachbis Yirieim at 902 Avenue L, near East Ninth Street, at 4:02 P.M.  It was under control at 4:47 P.M., Fire Marshal Glynn said. Fire department officials said that the fire “is being considered as suspicious” in origin.

1994: Abraham M. Lackman is scheduled to begin serving as budget director under new mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani

1994: Alan Hevesi began serving as the 41st Comptroller of New York City

1994: Gabriel Oliver Koppell began serving as the 61st New York State Attorney General.

1995(29th of Tevet, 5755): Eugene Wigner, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963 passed away.

1995: The full text of report compiled by the Agranat Commission, except for 48 pages, was made public today.

1995: “The final phase of the Free Trade Agreement was fully implemented today when Israel and the United States completely eliminated all duties and tariffs on manufactured goods.”

1995: Norman Pearlstein began serving as editor in chief of Time Inc.

1997: “No Names on the Doors,” the third in Nadav “Levitan’s trilogy about Kibbutzim” was released in Israel today.

1997: Eighty-eight-year-old James Bennett Pritchard, the University of Pennsylvania archaeologist whose work included six expeditions that unearthed and examined the remains of the Biblical city of Gibeon passed away today.

1998: Share prices on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange closed higher today, on optimism that the Government would pass its 1998 budget and that there would be a cut in interest rates as early as February.

1998: Jack Weinstein, the future Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, was promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel today.

1999: After 13 years, Jerry Abramson completed his final term as mayor of Louisville, KY.

1999: The Times of London features a review of Athens In Jerusalem: Classical antiquity and Hellenism in the making of the modern secular Jew by Yaacov Shavi; translated from the Hebrew by Chaya Naor and Niki Werner.

1999: Eliot Spitzer became the 63rd New York Attorney General.

1999: Eric Schneiderman began serving a member of the New York Senate from the 30thdistrict.

2000: David Hurlbut moved into the Harmony Club in Selma, Alabama. It had originally been built as a social club by a group of prominent Jewish businessmen in 1909.

2000: Barbra Streisand completed a two night concert series at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas which generate more than $18 million in revenue.

2000(23rd of Tevet, 5760): Jeshajahu Weinberg, the first director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here and one of the principal forces behind its creation, died today in Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. He was 81. Mr. Weinberg served as the museum's director from its beginning in 1989 until 1995, as it became one of Washington's leading tourist attractions. He also helped create museums in Israel and Europe. (As reported by Irvin Molotsky)

2001: A car bomb rocked the commercial heart of the Israeli coastal city of Netanya today wounding more than 30 people, at least one seriously.

2001: Yasir Arafat left Gaza shortly after midnight today for a hastily arranged meeting with President Clinton to discuss the Palestinian leader's reservations about an American blueprint for a final peace deal. came

2001: Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu belatedly endorsed Ariel Sharon in his bid to become Prime Minister. 

2002: Michael Bloomberg became the 108th Mayor of New York City.

2002: Gabriel Oliver Koppell began serving as a member of the New York City Council from the 11th District.

2002: Michael Applebaum began serving as Borough mayor for Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and Montreal City Councilor

2002(17thof Tevet, 5762): Fifty-seven film producer Julia Phillips passed away. (As reported by Bernard Weinraub)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1740091.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/03/arts/julia-phillips-57-producer-who-assailed-hollywood-dies.html

2002: Gabriel Oliver Koppell began serving as member of the New York City Council from the 11th District.

2003: Het Parool “an Amsterdam based daily newspaper” that got its start “as a resistance paper during the German occupation” took a financial bailout today to save it from the consequences of failing circulation and revenue.

2003: Alan Hevesi began serving as the 53rd Comptroller of New York

2003: Eric Schneiderman began serving as a member of the New York Senate from the 31stdistrict.

2004: Louis Begley retired from Debevoise & Plimpton

2005: Jessalyn Sarah Gilsig and Bobby Salomon were married today in “a traditional Jewish wedding.

2005: Isaac Perlmutter became the CEO of Marvel Comics today.

2006: Jack Lebewohl, the new owner of the 2nd Avenue Deli which was located at its original location in the East Village, closed the famed eatery after a rent increase and a dispute over back rent that the landlord had said was due.

2006: Daniel C. Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, assumes the position of S. Daniel Abraham Visiting Professor in Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University.

2006: Eric Garcetti began serving as President of the Los Angeles City Council

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Kafka: The Decisive Yearsby Reiner Stach, Savage Shorthand The Life and Death of Isaac Babel by Jerome Charyn, Siegfried Sassoon: A Life by Max Egremont and Why She Married Him  Myriam Chapman’s first novel based on her grandmother's recently discovered manuscript describing a childhood in turn-of-the-century czarist Russia, close escapes from its brutal pogroms and life as a Jewish émigré in Paris.

2006(1st of Tevet, 5766): Henry Samuel Magdoffpassed away. He was a prominent American social commentator who held several administrative positions in government during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and later became co-editor of the Monthly Review.

2007: As a result of “the incident in which the Hanit Navy ship was struck by an Iranian missile launched by Hizbullah during the second Lebanon war” “IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Dan Halutz announced today that the two Navy officers at the rank of colonel would be reprimanded following the incident, and that the ship's commander, a lieutenant colonel, would also be punished by the Navy commander, and his next position would be at the headquarters and not a commanding position.” (As reported by Hanan Greenberg)

2007: Eliot Spitzer became the 54th governor of New York

2007: Under Commissioner David Stern, the NBA switched back to the leather ball.

2007: Jane Doe Buys a Challah and Other Short Stories, the first publication of Ang-Lit Press, a newly established English publishing house based in Tel-Aviv goes on sale in Israel.  The book is the first ever anthology of short stories by Israeli Anglo writers.

2008: Lieutenant General Moshe Levy, who had served at the 12th Chief of Staff of the IDF, suffered a massive stroke.

2008: At the Museum of Jewish Heritage closing day of an exhibition entitled The Other Promised Land: Vacationing, Identity, and the Jewish-American Dream.”

2009: In a move that bodes well for Israel, The Czech Republic takes over the presidency of the European Union from France.  While France has condemned Israel’s attacks on Hamas, the Czech Foreign Minister Karel Shwarzenberg has “insisted Israel had the right to defend itself…Schwarzenberg said Hamas has excluded itself from serious political debate due to its rocket attacks on Israel” and that Hamas “has put its bases in gun warehouses in densely populated areas” which “was the reason for the Palestinians’ growing death toll.

2009: Today, Norman “Podhoretz became editor of Commentarymagazine.

2009: Haaretz reported that according to a story published by the Belgian daily La Derniere Heure published earlier this week Jewish-French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy was listed by a Belgium-based Islamist group as a target for assassination alongside other leading Jewish personalities in Europe. 

2009 (5 Tevet 5769):  Helen Suzman, the internationally renowned anti-apartheid campaigner who befriended the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and offered an often lonely voice for change among South Africa’s white minority, died in Johannesburg at the age of  91. (As reported by John F. Burns and Alan Cowell)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/world/africa/02suzman.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

2009: “Teapacks, an Israeli band that formed in 1988 in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, officially disbanded today.

2009: After almost five years as Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Bernard A. Friedman became the Senior Judge of the same court.

2009(5th of Tevet, 5769): Polish writer Henryk Halkowski, one of Poland's most notable contemporary Jewish personalities, died suddenly today just days after celebrating his 57th birthday.  (As reported by JTA)

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2009/01/04/1001969/halkowski-noted-polish-writer-dies

2010: Starting at noon, Congregation Tikvat Israel in Rockville, Md., is hosting a sale of used books about Judaism.

2010: In a case of Jew vs Jew Lionel Perez replaced Saulie Zajdel as Montreal City Councillor for Darlington.

2010:In Israel the Water Authority is supposed to be implementing a price hike. If the price increase does not go through, several water corporations - including those servicing the Galilee - will not have the funds to buy water from Mekorot, the national water company.

2010:In Jerusalem Hama'abada and The Visual Theatre present a unique collaboration: "Snow Will Fall Tonight" including the following three shows: "Pollyamoria" by Ma'ayan Moses, Pets" by Anat Arbel--tragi-comic dance theatre and "To Raise You Wild"--by Shai Persil.

2010:The Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility today for firing two Grad-type rockets at the Netivot area from Gaza on last night.

2010:Two mortar shells hit open areas in southern Israel this evening. There were no reports of casualties or damage in both attacks. One of the projectiles landed near the Kerem Shalom border crossing at the southeastern end of the Gaza Strip and the other hit an open area in the Sdot Negev region and has not yet been located.

2010: Michael Bloomberg is sworn in for this third term as Mayor of New York.

2010: Birthdate of Nathan Zachary Silber son of David and Rebecca Silber and grandson of Dr. Robert “Bob” and Laurie Silber, pillars of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community and all-around great guys.

2011: András Schiff “published a letter in the Washington Post questioning whether "Hungary is ready and worthy to take on" the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, as it did that day, because of "racism, discrimination against the Roma, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, chauvinism and reactionary nationalism," and "the latest media laws"

2011: Eric Schneiderman began serving as the 65thAttorney General of New York.

2011:Frederick Lawrence, 54, is scheduled to become Brandeis University’s eighth president today succeeding President Jehuda Reinharz

2011: With snow falling and temperatures well below freezing, the Traditional Minyan at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ushered in the New Year.  In keeping with the bowl games that dominate the day, Deb Levin and Amy Barnum provided a football themed Kiddush complete with pizza, munchies and a whole lot more.

2011: Arab terrorists launched a mortar attack near Sderot this evening. One woman was treated for shock. The IDF noted that 6,500 residents live in the immediate area, which includes several kibbutzim. The IDF retaliated by bombing a terrorist base and a weapons factory in northern and central Gaza later that night.

2011:Two female soldiers managed to escape a would-be attacker tonight. The two were attacked by a Palestinian Authority man with a knife as they left their base in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. The two reported the incident immediately, and Border Police began searching the area. They found the PA man nearby, and he admitted to having attempted to stab soldiers at the base. He was arrested and taken in for questioning.

2011:An earthquake hit northern Israel on this evening, being felt most strongly in the region of Beit Shean and Afula; residents of Tzfat reported feeling motion as well. The quake was measured at 3.6 on the Richter scale. No injuries were reported following the quake.

2011(25th of Tevet, 5771): Abdallah Simon, called one of America's "most powerful" wine executives for decades and a philanthropist, died today at the age of 88.

2011: As a result of the 2010 Congressional Elections, the following is a list of the 39 Jewish members — 12 senators and 27 representatives — who are expected to serve in the 112th U.S. Congress, which is set to convene in January:

U.S. SENATE

Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)*

Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)**

Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.)

Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

Al Franken (D-Minn.)

Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.)

Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)

Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.)

Carl Levin (D-Mich.)

Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.)

Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)**

Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)**

(Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who is projected to win his re-election bid, does not identify a religion, but notes that his mother is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor.)

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.)

Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.)

Howard Berman (D-Calif.)

Eric Cantor (R-Va.)

David Cicilline (D-R.I.)*

Stephen Cohen (D-Tenn.)

Susan Davis (D-Calif.)

Ted Deutch (D-Fla.)

Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.)

Bob Filner (D-Calif.)

Barney Frank (D-Mass.)

Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.)

Jane Harman (D-Calif.)

Steve Israel (D-N.Y.)

Sander Levin (D-Mich.)

Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.)

Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)

Jared Polis (D-Colo.)

Steve Rothman (D-N.J.)

Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)

Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.)

Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)

Brad Sherman (D-Calif.)

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)

Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)

Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.)

John Yarmuth (D-Ky.)

*Elected to House or Senate for the first time in 2010 midterms

**Senators who were re-elected in 2010 midterms (As reported by JTA)

2012:Simon Greer will become the president and CEO at the Nathan Cummings Foundation after serving in the same roles at Jewish Funds for Justice. He succeeds Lance Lindblom.

2012:  A memorial service was held to honor the late Yiddish singer Adrienne Cooper at Congregation Ansche Chesed while shiva was held at her daughter’s apartment in New York City.

http://jfrej.org/2011-12-28/remembering-adrienne-cooper-zl

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit” by Joseph Epstein and “Some of My Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir” by Rosamond Bernier whose mother was English and whose father was an American Jew.

2012(6thof Tevet, 5772):Venerated Israeli singer Yafa Yarkoni died at the age of 86 at Reut Medical Center in Tel Aviv today, after years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease. (As reported by Isabel Kershner)

2012: Today, University of California and Harvard Business School graduate Laurence M. Baer, the play-by-player announcer turned baseball executive, who along with his wife Pamela is a member of Congregation Emanu-El, became the CEO of the San Francisco Giants.

2012: Israeli politicians responded to last night‘s ultra-Orthodox demonstration in Jerusalem’s Kikar Hashabbat (Sabbath Square), with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Opposition Leader Tzipi Livni expressing outrage over protesters use of Holocaust symbolism to protest what they termed the exclusion of Haredim.

 

2012:Gaza terrorists resumed 11 years of aerial attacks on Israel late this morning, firing two mortars shells on the western Negev.

2013: After having announced his intentions in September, today Thomas Edgar Rothman’s resignation as Chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment became effective today.

2013: The works Janusz Korczak the pediatrician who wrote under the pen name Henryk Goldszmit  and who famously went to the death camps with his orphans, would be available in the public domain as of 1 January 2013.[

 

2013: Paul Shapiro's Ribs and Brisket Revue is scheduled to host a special Klezmer Brunch for the New Year.

2013: Thomas Edgar Rothman’s resignation as “chairman and chief executive of the Fox Filmed Entertainment” which had been tendered in September, became effective today.

2013: “The Looper” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2013: Starting today, female and male models who have a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18.5 may not be shown in the media or on Israeli websites or go down the catwalk at fashion shows

 

2013: After coming under fire from right-wing Israeli politicians for a series of statements he made over the past few days regarding the peace process and the prospect of talks with Hamas, President Shimon Peres was subjected to an unexpected tongue lashing — from a top Palestinian Authority official today.

 

2013:The ascendant head of the Jewish Home party, Naftali Bennett, continued to make political waves \, after supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Yisrael Beytenu list released an Internet ad featuring Holocaust-era imagery that implied that the national religious party aspires to take the country’s Orthodox citizens back to “the ghetto.”

 

2014: Professor Gal Kaminka, of Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Computer Science and Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, one of Israel’s, and the world’s, leading contributors to intelligent robotics – the science of using artificial intelligence to make robots “smarter” – is scheduled to receive Landau Prize for Arts and Sciences in the robotics category for his outstanding contributions to the advancement of science today (As reported by David Shamah)

 

2014: Rabbi David Ellenson completed his term as President of HUC-JOR

 

2014: “The Escape” and “Omar” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's condition continues to worsen, Sheba Hospital in Tel HaShomer reported today to Channel 10. (As reported by Tova Dvorin)

 

2014: Andrew Cohen began serving as a Member of the New York City Council from the 11th District.

 

2014: A memorial service for the 69 sailors of the INS Dakar was held at Mount Herzl today, marking 46 years since it sank into the Mediterranean. (As reported by Tova Dvorin)

 

2014: In Switzerland, “the former municipality of Unterendingen merged into the municipality of Endingen” which “the 18th and 19th century, was one of few villages in which Swiss Jews were permitted to settle” as can be seen by the fact that “old buildings in Endingen have two doors – one for Jews and one for Christians” and that. Endigen's synagogue and Jewish cemetery are listed as a heritage site of national significance.”

 

2015: “The IDF is scheduled to withdraw its security forces from Israeli communities near Gaza that are not adjacent to the border effective today.”

 

2015: Jody Geron is scheduled to join Universal Music Publish Group today Chariman/CEO, replacing Zach Horowitz who has led the company for the past two years.”

 

2015: “Heartburn” and Foxcatcher” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.

 

2015(10th of Tevet, 5775): Fast of the 10th Tevet

 

2015(10th of Tevet, 5775): Yahrzeit of Judith Sharon Levin Rosenstein, known to one and all simply as Judy.

 

2015: Jerusalem Mayro Nir Barkat announced today that the “The Jerusalem Unity Prize has been established in memory of three Israeli teens -- Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach, and Naftali Fraenkel, a dual American and Israeli citizen who were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists last June.”

 

2015: “Ayala Shapira, the 11-year-old Israeli girl who was critically wounded in a firebomb attack in the West Bank last week, awoke from a medically induced coma today.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

 

2015: “Palestinians threw three Molotov cocktails at building in a Jewish neighborhood on the Mount of Olives on the first night of 2015. (As reported by Lazar Berman)

 

2015: Todd Kaminsky began serving as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 20th District.

 

2016(20th of Tevet, 5776) On the Jewish calendar, yahrzeit of Maimonides.

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_20.html

2016: Today, Cantor Sherwood Goffin officially retired as the Chazan of the Lincoln Square Synagogue where he was giving the title of “Founding Chazan.”

http://sherwoodgoffin.com/about-me/cantorial-biography

https://yucommentator.org/2019/04/sherwood-goffin-renowned-cantor-and-educator-dies-at-77/

2016: The copyright that a Swiss foundation holds to The Diary of Anne Frank was scheduled to end today until litigation was brought which may extend the copyright to 2050 or beyond.

 

2016: During the day, we say Happy New Year and in the evening we say Shabbat Shalom.

 

2017(3rd of Tevet, 5777): Eighth Day of Chanukah and New Year’s Day

2017(3rd of Tevet, 5777) Seventy-seven year old Tel Aviv born veteran of the Golani Brigade and University of Jerusalem and NYU trained lawyer, Yaakov Neeman, the former Minister of Justice and Minster of Finance passed away today in Jerusalem.

2017: Russ and Daughters Kosher location at the Jewish Museum is scheduled to be open for New Year’s.

 

2017: “Through the Wall” is scheduled to be shown at JW3 in London.

 

2017: “The new state broadcasting corporation established by a 2014 Knesset law to replace the cash strapped Israel Broadcasting is scheduled to be launched today. (As reported by Sue Surkes)

 

2017: “Islamic authorities managing the Temple Mount attempted to have a veteran Israeli archaeologist ejected from the Jerusalem flashpoint holy site today for using the term “Temple Mount” in a lecture to American students.”

 

2017: The New York Times features books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobe, the recently released paperback editions of On The Road by Gloria Steinem and The Improbability of Life by Hannah Rothschild as well as a “conversation with Bernard-Henri Lévy, the author of The Genius of Judaism and the report that one of the books that will appear in March is Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Apply, “a memoir that builds on her powerful 2013 essay in The New Yorker about a miscarriage she suffered during a reporting trip to Mongolia.”

2018: Deadline for accepting application for the 2018 Graduate Research Fellowship competition sponsored by the US Holocaust Memorial “Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.”

2018(14thof Tevet, 5778): Ninety-seven-year-old Robert Mann, “the founding first violinist of the Julliard String Quarter passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/obituaries/robert-mann-dead-juilliard-string-quartet-violinist.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

 

2018: For those planning on celebrating the New Year with a combination of Culture and Kosher Cuisine Russ & Daughters is scheduled to open this morning at its café in the Jewish Museum.

2018: “As of today, the Simon Dubnow Institute, then Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow (DI), will be accepted as member of the Leibniz Association”

2018: “In a generational changing of the guard”, 37 year old Arthur Gregg Sulzberger is scheduled to replace his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger as the publisher of the New York Times today.

2019: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to attend the inauguration of Brazil’s President-elect Jair Bolsonaro today in Brasilia.  (As reported by C.H. Gardiner)

2019: Thanks to the wonder of modern communication, the University of Iowa is scheduled to play in the Outback Bowl under the watchful eyes of Hebrew Hawkeyes Joel Barnum, Fred Goldstein and Bob Silber who are in three different cities.

2019: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Budapest Noir” this evening in London

2019(24thof Tevet, 5779): On the Jewish calendar, “Yahrzeit of Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler.”

http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tevet_24.html

2019:  In an example of a “Diminutive David” living in a world of “Great Goliaths” This Day…In Jewish History is listed among the “Top 50 Jewish Blogs, Websites and Newsletters to Follow in 2019.” (Editor’s note – We have no idea how this is ranking is created.  Obviously we do not do this for placement on a list.  But it is a hoot to be listed with these Heavy Hebrew Hitters.

https://blog.feedspot.com/jewish_blogs/?fbclid=IwAR3kS9CouAE-65H-Rl8lZ8NYRVVvkDr8dcGd1EpuaJI2OGfqRGevfXDKUn4

2020: Mount Carmel Cemetery which interred its first deceased Jew on December 28, 1906 is scheduled to be open for visitation today.

2020: The Jerusalem Theatre is scheduled to host “It’s All Mozart” with Nofar Yacobu abd the Jerusalem Symphony.

2020: This Day…In Jewish History is rated #16 on the list of the “Top 50 Jewish Blogs and Websites to Follow in 2020. (Editor’s Note – Unfortunately, Deb Levin Z”L is not with us to see the fruits of her labor)

2021: In Cleveland, Temple Emanu El is scheduled to host a virtual Wine and Cheese Reception prior to Shabbat Services via zoom.2

2021: In Columbus, OH, starting today, “Tifereth Israel members in good standing are eligible for 15% of the cost of cemetery plots.”

2021: Kerem Shalom is scheduled to present online Erev Shabbat Services with Wendy Humphreys.

2021: The Office of Cultural Affairs of the Consulate General of Israel in New York and the JCC Manhattan are scheduled to host “a viewing and discussion of Dani Menkin’s documentary telling the story of Aulcie Perry, the American who became a basketball legend in Israel.”

2021: As of today, This Day…In Jewish History is rated #14 on the list of the Top 70 Jewish Blogs and Websites to follow. (Editor’s note – Without fear of contradiction we know that this site has the smallest staff of the 13 sites above it.)

 

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