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

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March 23

1369: King Pedro of Castile who employed Abraham ibn Zaral as his physician was beheaded by his rival and brother, Henry of Trastamara marking the end of their civil war for control of the kingdom. Henry “was as hostile to the Jews as Pedro had been friendly. His long-cherished hatred of his brother burst forth when a Jew named Jacob, an intimate of the king, praised the latter excessively to Henry. In his fury he stabbed the Jew with a dagger. Pedro would have revenged himself on Henry forthwith, but his courtiers restrained him by force. Henry saved himself by a hasty flight. This was the immediate cause of the civil war which brought untold suffering upon the Jews of the country. . He was as hostile to the Jews as Pedro had been friendly. His long-cherished hatred of his brother burst forth when a Jew named Jacob, an intimate of the king, praised the latter excessively to Henry. In his fury he stabbed the Jew with a dagger. Pedro would have revenged himself on Henry forthwith, but his courtiers restrained him by force. Henry saved himself by a hasty flight. This was the immediate cause of the civil war which brought untold suffering upon the Jews of the country. During their struggle for control, Henry continuously depicted Peter as "King of the Jews," and had some success in taking advantage of popular Castilian resentment towards the Jews. During his reign, “Henry of Trastamara instigated pogroms beginning a period of anti-Jewish riots and forced conversion] in Castile that lasted approximately from 1370 to 1390.”

1475: Trent (Italy) was the scene of one of the more notorious ritual murder libels. A Franciscan monk, Bernardinus of Feltre, had recently arrived and began preaching Lent sermons against the Jews. A week before Easter a boy by the name of Simon drowned in the river Adige. The monk charged the Jews with using the body for its blood. The body washed up a few days later near the house of a Jew who brought it to the Bishop Honderbach. Seventeen Jews were tortured for over two weeks. Some confessed while being tortured and 6 Jews were burnt. Two more were strangled. A temporary hiatus was called by Pope Sixtus IV, but after five years the trial was reopened and 5 more Jews were executed. The papal inquest agreed with the trial, Simon was beatified, and all Jews were expelled for 300 years. The trial served as the basis for anti-Semitic writings for hundreds of years. Only in 1965 was Simon de –beatified

1490: The first dated edition of Maimonides'“Mishneh Torah” was published. Maimonides was born in Cordova, Spain in 1135. His family fled as one group of Moslem rulers replaced another. Eventually he settled in Egypt where he was a distinguished physician for the ruling Moslems as well as head of the Egyptian community. According to one source he provided medical advice for both Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted. He died in 1204 and is buried in Tiberias in Israel. Simply put, the Mishneh Torah was "an orderly restructuring of the entire legal literature of the Talmud." The Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Law) is "one of the most distinguished codes of Jewish law...”

1555: Pope Julius III passed away. Despite opposition, Julius allowed Jewish refugees from Spain settle in Ancona in northeast Italy. He spoke out against the blood libel and opposed baptism of Jewish children without the approval of their parents. At the same time, he was unable to stand up to the power of the Inquisitor General from the Holy Office and he acquiesced in the burning of numerous copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books.

1556: Paul IV issued the Papal Bull “Dudum postquam”

1712(15th of Adar II): Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Koidonover author of Kav ha-Yashar passed away

1714: Duke Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Courland

1732: In Niederwiesen, Germany, Hindle and Moses Levi gave birth to Philip Moses Faist Rosenheim the husband of Dreile Schwiezer and the father of Samuel, Moses, Simon, Hindle and Abraham Rosenheim.

1766: In Lower Saxony, Germany, wealthy tobacco merchant and philanthropist Isaac Jacob Gans, the “son of Jacob Salomon Gans and Freude Katz Gans and his wife Pesse Pauline Leah Gans gave birth to Abraham Isaak Gans

1769(14thof Adar II, 5529) Purim

1784: Reverend Gershom Mendes Seixas returned to New York City from Connecticut and took up his position as “Minister.” He returned while New York City was evacuated by the British, and most of the members of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue were in the safety of Connecticut and Philadelphia. Seixas was very patriotic and was thanked by President George Washington at one time. Seixas instituted a recital of a prayer for the government in English, it having been always read in Spanish prior to this time.

1780: Birthdate of German native Loeb Feigenbaum, the husband of Ida Bach with whom he had nine children.

1796(13thof Adar II, 5556): Fast of Esther; erev Purim

1796: In Jebenhausen, Germany, Marget Isaac and Aron Abraham Arnold gave birth to Joseph Aron Arnold, the husand of Therese Kaufman with whom he had seven children.

1799(16thof Adar II, Parashat Tzav

1801: Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael's Castle. Paul’s reign was a comparatively short one, starting in 1796 with the death of his mother Catherine the Great. The shortness of his time on the throne was a good thing for the Jews of Russia. In 1799, Paul sent one of his closest advisors, Gabriel Derhavin to Belorssia. Derhavin decided that the problems in that part of the realm, as well as the rest of Russia were caused by the Jews “who were irredeemably corrupt.” He was planning on urging the Czar to move most of the Jews to the “frontier territories or drive them from the empire altogether.” These and other harsh measures would have become the law of the land if Paul had not been killed and replaced by his comparatively more enlightened son, Alexander I.

1806: Rachel and Moses David Friedman gave birth to Zanwel Friedman.

1807(13th of Adar II, 5567): Ta’anit Esther

1811: Birthdate of German medical doctor Carl Friedrich Stahl.

1816(23rdof Adar, 5576): Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei; Shabbat Parah observed as the 14thCongress of the United States was meeting during its first session.

1820: Abraham Wiesel Gompertz, the father of Harriet Gompertz was buried today.

1826: In Philadelphia, PA, Abraham Arnold, the German born son of Marget Isaac and Aron Abraham Arnold married Maria Abrahams, the daughter of Roseanna Linderman and Levi Abrahams,

1827: Marcus De Vries married Kaat Van Rook

1830: One day after he had passed away, Trespole Myers was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1831: Eighty-eight-year-old Christian-Hebraist Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi passed away.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12896-rossi-giovanni-bernardo-de

1833(3rdof Nisan, 5593): Vayikra

1836: Birthdate of German native Gertrude Hyman Felsenthal, the wife of Herman Felsenthal with whom she had six children – Eli, Judith, Flora, Hannah and Emily.

1837: Birthdate of Joseph Wieniawski, Russian pianist and composer.

1846: In New York, Moses and Esther Lazarus gave birth to Josephine Lazarus.

1847: Samuel Joans married Esther Cashmore, the daughter of Moshe Kashman at the Great Synagogue.

1848: In Manchester, UK, Charles Sydney Grundy and his wife gave birth to English dramatist Sydney Grundy who combined with Edward Solomon to produce two comic operas – “The Vicar of Bray” and “Pochoantas” - and produced “An Old Jew” at the Garrick in 1894, five years before Zangwill’s “Children of the Ghetto.

1849(29thof Adar, 5609): Fifty-four year old Hananeel de Castro, the husband of Deborah de Jacob Mendes da Costa who was the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews at the time of the Damascus Blood Libel in 1840 passed away today.

1853: In Pribram, Bohemia, Markus Saphir, the Bohemian born son of Joseph Saphir and his wife Anna Saphir gave birth to Theresia Saphir

1853: While delivering a speech welcoming Father Gavazzi, the celebrated Roman patriot and orator to the United States, Reverend Dowling pointed out a peculiarity of the American experience. “This government, alone of all others, never persecuted or endeavored to persecute Jews.”

1854: In Louisville, KY, Adolph and Frederick Brandeis gave birth to Alfred Brandeis, the husband of Jennie Brandeis and brother to Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1855: Birthdate of Sherman, CT native and Columbia University Professor Sociology Franklin Henry Giddings who 1907 told a group attending a lecture at the People’s Institute in Cooper Union that he favors “the recent movement by the Jews to keep Christian ceremonies out of the public schools” and that while “he favored the Zionist movement, he feared that could it not be made attractive to the Jews to be successful.

1856(12thof Nisan, 5621): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1856: In Philadelphia, Isaac and Henriette Kohn gave birth to Sophie Kohn who became Sophie Pfaelzer when she married Philadelphia jewler Morris Moses Pfaelzer

1861: “The Hebrew Son” is scheduled to be performed at the Winter Garden Theatre in NYC.

1862: In Hungary, “Pauline and Dr. Jacob Jacques Heinrich Hirschfeld” gave birth to Adele Amalie Hirschfeld who became Adele Amalie Schmidt when she married August Schmidt.

1862: During the American Civil War, Judah P. Benjamin completed his short stint as “acting” Secretary War. Benjamin continued to serve as Secretary of State.1862: Eighty-one-year-old Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, the Russian foreign minister who successfully thwarted the plan of Jacques Isaac Altaras to settle 40,000 Russian-Jewish families in Algeria passed away today.

1863: According to “The Books of the Week” column published today, Scribner’s has published "Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, -- Part 1, Abraham to Samuel" by Arthur Penryn Stanley, D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church. According to this Stanley “the roots of the Jewish Church must be sought deep in the Patriarchal Age, its prelude commencing with the Call of Abraham, then from the time it takes determinate shape and recognized status with the Exodus, the first great period extends to the absorption of the ancient and primitive constitution in the new institutions of the Monarchy. This “period is generally called by the name of the Theocracy; its great characters are Abraham, Moses and Samuel. It embraces the first revelation of the Mosaic Religion, and the first foundation of the Jewish Church and polity." Two future volumes will continue to describe the history of the Jews up to Roman times. The second volume will describe the period of the Monarchy. The third will describe the period “from the Captivity to the destruction of the Jewish Capital and State by the Emperor Titus.”

1864(15th of Adar II, 5624): Shushan Purim

1864: “Purim: Our Jewish Citizens in Their Glory” published today reported that Purim Association has given their “third Grand Fancy Dress Ball, at the Academy of Music. The Association was formed in 1862 by nine young men of the Jewish faith, its first ball was given at Irving Hall in 1862, its second at the Academy of Music in 1863, and its third at the same hall last evening. The festival of Purim is one of the oldest and most important festivals recognized by the Jews, commemorating, as it does, one of the most important events in their history as a nation. It was instituted by Queen Esther and by Mordecai about the year 510 B.C., and commemorates the remarkable deliverance of the children of Israel from the tyranny and machinations of Haman, who was Prime Minister to King Ahasuerus, who reigned from India unto Ethiopia, over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces. Mordecai had been carried captive from Jerusalem, and with him the fair and beautiful maiden Hadassah or Esther, whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter. Esther being exceedingly beautiful and pleasing found favor in the eyes of King Ahasuerus, who married her and made her his Queen. About this time Haman was appointed to the high position of Prime Minister to the King, and he demanded and received homage from all except the Jew Mordecai, who not only refused to pay homage, but also refused to give any reason why he would not. Haman, highly incensed at the conduct of Mordecai, ordered made a gallows of extraordinary height, on which to hang him for the insult be had offered to one in high office and favored by the King. Queen Esther, hearing of this, informed the King of the relation which existed between her and Mordecai, and also of the great benefit Mordecai had done the King some time previous in informing of two men in his confidence, Bigthana and Teresh, who sought to lay violent hands upon the King and kill him. The King remembering all these things and the iniquity, or Haman, ordered him hanged upon the gallows erected for Mordecai, placed Mordecai in the position held by Haman, made him chief over the house of Haman, and released the children of Israel from bondage. This was celebrated by great rejoicing all over the land and, in every way the joy and happinees of the people was exhibited. From that to the present the festival of this deliverance of the Jews has been celebrated by the most extravagant expressions of happiness, calling upon each other at their houses, in every dress and guise which could possibly add merriment or joy to the occasion, and using every means they could devise for the utmost enjoyment and celebration of this great and happy event. Of late years their number has so increased that time would not allow them to visit all the friends they wished, nor would their houses hold all the friends they wished to entertain. To obviate this difficulty, nine young gentlemen on the Jewish faith, in the year 1862, organized the "Purim Association," the object of which was to collect all the parties together for the general enjoyment of the festival, and that all friends might meet. Thus far they have been particularly fortunate nothing has occurred to mar their pleasure, and they have also by this means been enabled to do a great deal of good. Last year they presented to the Orphan Asylum and other charitable institutions a handsome sum, and this year they intend, first, to present to the Sanitary Fair a good round sum, and then take care of the charitable institutions, as is their custom. The officers of the association, who have been and are working hard and steadily for the promotion of this society and its good influence, and to whom, in a great measure, the success of the ball is due, are as follows: M.H. Moses, President; Jos. A. Levy, Vice-President; A.H. Schutz, Treasurer. The hall was crowded with a most brilliant assemblage, who entered into the enjoyments of the occasion with a zest seldom equaled; the costumes were very rich and beautiful; the diamonds worn by the ladies magnificent and in brilliancy almost rivaled the bright eyes of their fail owners. Among the best of the characters represented were those of Mrs. Partington, Lucretia Borgia, Penobscot Squaw, Chippewa Chief, and Joan of Arc, several beauties of the Court of Charles H., the Duke of Buckingham, Faust, a Priest, and several Jewish maidens. Merriment reigned supreme within the hall. Wives, well-disguised, teased their liege lords almost to distraction; sweethearts by sly winks and actions, drove their devoted lovers almost frantic; husbands thinking they were not known or noticed, paid sweet compliments to fair maidens only to be rapped over the knuckles for not reserving them for their wives, and staid old bachelors and maidens entered into the spirit of the fun in a manner which fairly astonished themselves. Two Bands gave constant music, to which the feet of the merry dancers kept time. At twelve o'clock they unmasked and then what surprise was created. Husbands found they had been flirting all the evening with their own wives; lovers had been confidentially extolling the beauties of their sweethearts to their-sweethearts themselves; old maids had been telling old bachelors how disagreeable they thought that class of men to be, and old bachelors had been sympathizing, perhaps, with the old maids themselves, upon the unhappy condition of these unfortunate ladies. The mistakes, however, were speedily and amicably settled, and after the excellent supper prepared by the caterer, M.S. Cohen, had been fully enjoyed, were entirely forgotten.” New York Mayor Charles Gunther was among the dignitaries who attended the event.

1865: In Philadelphia, Joseph and Louisa Berg gave birth to Hart O.Berg, “a pioneer in the manufacture of machine guns, submarines, automobiles and airplanes” who married the former Lena Willets and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by France in 1901.

1866: James Disraeli who resided in Cromwell Place wrote his will today.

1867: Birthdate of Arthur Bornstein, the native of Breslau, Germany who was a dentist by training but whose real passion was writing as can be seen by the volumes of short stories he published starting in 1894.

1867: In Vienna, Dr. Michael Reiner and Agnes Reiner gave birth to Dr. Maximilian Max Reiner, the husband of Paula Reiner and the father of Herbert and Heinrich Reiner.

1867: In Zabno Galicia, Solomon and Rosa Malter gave birth to Henry Malter, the husband of Bertha Freund and the holder of Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg who was the  professor of medieval philosophy and Arabic at the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, rabbi of the Sheerith Israel Congregation of Cincinnati and Professor of Rabbinical Literature at Dropsie College

https://www.nytimes.com/1925/04/06/archives/dr-malter-dies-a-lqotf-scholar-professor-of-rabbinical-literature-a.html?searchResultPosition=1

1868(15th of Adar II, 5624): Shushan Purim

1868: In Cardiff, Esther Lyons, “18 year old Jewess” who was running away from her family “knocked on the door of Croome Villa, Roath, the home of the Reverend Nathanial Thomas, minister of the Baptist Tabernacle” in what would be the first act of a cause celeb that would sour relations between Jews and Baptists in South Wales “for years to come.

1868: The University of California is founded in Oakland, California when the Organic Act is signed into law. Today the University of California at Berkley has approximately 3000 Jewish students out of a student population totaling approximately 24,000. The school offers ten Jewish studies courses and a Major in the field.

1869: In New York City, Henry and Clara (Mayer) Hahn gave birth to German and Bohemian trained violinist and composer Frederick E. Hahn the first violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1892 to 1896, the founder and leader of the Hahn String Quartet and the founder and director of the Hahn Conservatory of Music who was a member of Mikveh Israel Congregation in Philadelphia.

1869: In Pila, Sieradz, Poland, Szaja Pilichowski and his wife gave birth to painter Leopold Pilichowski.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15770.html

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

1870: Jay Gould appeared before the New York State Senate Railroad Committee and that his opponents were being financed by “Jewish bankers” from London. (“Robber Baron” Jay Gould was attempting to use anti-British and anti-Jewish prejudice to deflect attacks on his unscrupulous business tactics when dealing with the Erie Railroad.)

1870: Herman W. Hellman, who in 1866 sold out his interest in a book and stationary business and then went into business for himself “sold his entire stock and fixtures to Harris and Jacoby” and left for a trip to Europe.

1871(1st of Nisan, 5631): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1872: “Persecution of Jews In Romania” published today the reporter compared the attacks on the Jews with the suffering “in England in the days of Isaac of York” and calls upon the European Powers to intervene on behalf of the Jews if the government of Romania will not stop the attacks on its Jewish citizens.

1872: This evening, as Jews celebrated Purim, synagogues in New York “were all crowded” as they listened to the unique musical narrative of the story of Esther. “In the…strictly Orthodox synagogues such as those on Chrystie and Allen Streets, the audience stamped their feet or struck the ground with the heavy sticks whenever the detested name of Haman was pronounced.”

1876: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will host its final “entertainment of the season” this evening at the Standard Hall in New York City.

1877: Isaac Artom “was elected senator of the kingdom” today making him “the first Jew to sit in the Italian legislative body.”

1878: In Monaco Jewish court photographer Ignaz Schrecker and his wife Eleonore von Clossmann gave birth to Austrian composer and conductor Franz Schreker.

1879: It was reported today 800,000 Philadelphians are served by 564 houses of worship including 9 synagogues.

1879: Dr. Henry S. Jacobs will deliver a lecture this evening at the Norfolk Street Synagogue sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Union.

1880: In Russia an editorial entitled “The Yid is Coming” is published in the anti-Semitic journal Novoe Vermie.

1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Lubny, Russia. This would not be the first or the last time that death would strike the Jews of Lubny which is actually located in the Ukraine, In 1648 during the horror known as the Chmielnicki Massacres, thousands of Jews died at Lubny and other nearby towns. In October of 1941, the Nazis massacred the Jewish population as the German armies swept across the Ukraine. The rioting in 1881 probably was a mini-pogrom sparked by the killing of Czar Alexander II "at the hand of revolutionary bomb throwers." They presaged a series of such riots that would sweep much of Russia during the Spring and Summer of 1881.

1882: In Erlangen, Bavaria, mathematician, Max Noether and his wife gave birth to mathematician Amalie Emmy Noether.

https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/noether.htm

1882: In Papa Hungary, the former Sophie Hirsch, the youngest daughter of Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch and “Rabbi Shlomo (Solomon) Zalman a talmid of the Ksav Sofer” gave birth to Joseph Bruer, the husband of Rika Eisenmann of Antwerp, granddaughter of Eliezer Liepman Philip Prins, the Rosh Yeshiva of Torah Lenranstalt, the rabbi of the Klaus Synagogue in Frankfurt, and after fleeing the Nazis, the founder and leader of Khal Adath Yeshurun, the Washington Heights congregation established to meet the needs of the large German-Jewish community that had been created due to the rise of Hitler.

1883(14th of Adar II, 5643): Purim

1886(16thof Adar II, 5646): Eighty-two-year-old Bina Oppenheimer, the daughter of David and Schiele Kahn and the wife of Lob Oppenheimer passed away today in New York City.

1886: Birthdate of Austrian native Benjamin Waxelbaum and the husband of Dorothy Waxelbaum who in 1893 came to the United States where he became a “publishers’ representative with offices at 180 East Broadway in New York, worked for 14 years as the advertising manager of New York Jewish Morning Journal and became a founding partner in Keilson and Waxelbaum

https://books.google.com/books?id=BCzwbV-L7D4C&pg=RA2-PA98&lpg=RA2-PA98&dq=Benjamin+Waxelbaum&source=bl&ots=CdFNA2WdM8&sig=ACfU3U3NZrxVxW0pp-thRD86VrKfr9UKHA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDy9Ws9ZbhAhVM0YMKHTbECjEQ6AEwC3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=Benjamin%20Waxelbaum&f=false

1886: Secretary Taylor of the American Yacht Club called the members together in a special meeting this evening to listen to a lecture by the popular Sephardic raconteur Mr. R.J. de Cordova on "The New York Stock Exchange." Instead of of lecture, Mr. de Cordova amused the "twoscore members" of the club humorous rhyming story about a stock broker in search of a rich wife, the daughter of a Pennsylvania farmer made rich by the discovery of petroleum on his farm and "a rejected bucolic lover" who happily marries the maiden after she loses her fortune while pursuing an extravagant urban lifestyle.

1887: Birthdate of Sidney Hillman. Sidney Hillman was a major figure in the American labor movement and became a leading advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, one of the two major unions in the garment industry from 1915 until his death in 1946. An untiring champion of the working class and the underprivileged, Hillman was a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organization, the CIO. Unfortunately, with the passage of time, we have lost a sense of appreciation for the improvement in the American way of life wrought by Hillman and similar giants of the American labor movement, many of whom were Jewish.

1887(27th of Adar): Seventy-year-old Posen born Rabbi Eliezer Landshuth, author of Amudei ha-Avodah passed away today at Berlin.

http://newspaperslibrary.org/articles/eng/Leser_Landshuth

https://www.virtualjudaica.com/Listing/Details/639179/Siddur-R-Hirsch-Edelmann-Eliezer-Leser-Landshuth-Koenigsberg-1845

1889: Birthdate of Lithuanian native Florence R. Dolowitz, the Hunter College graduate and mathematics teacher who founded the Women’s American ORT while raising two children – Grace and David – with her husband Alexander Dolowitz, passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/25/obituaries/florence-dolowitz-who-founded-ort-in-america-is-dead.html

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/dolowitz-florence

1890: “Art Notes” published today described the ten illustrations of “The Merchant of Venice” by Edwin Abbey that will appear in the April edition of Harper magazine.  They include “the figure of Portia exhorting the Jew” to show mercy and a “frontpiece” showing the Ducal Palace “with the Jew demonstrating why he does not love Christians.”

1890: The late Solomon Adler bequeathed $500 to both the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Mount Sinai Hospital and $250 to each of the following: Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York.

1891: Alice Goldmark, the niece of composer Karl Goldmark, married Louis Brandeis at her parent’s home in New York City and the moved “Boston’s Beacon Hill district” where their two daughters – Susan and Elizabeth – were born.

1891: “The Baron de Hirsch Club” published today described the accomplishments of the newly formed social club.  Among the seventy-five charter members are Dr. Leon Sherurg, Elias Gluskin, Morton Britton, John W. Jacobus, William Bellamy, Louis Henderson and M.J. Rosinski

1892: Twenty-four-year-old Abraham Gussow, the Russian born of son of Herman Gossow, was the founder of A. Gussow and Company, on of “the largest manufacturers of women’s underwear in New York and a president of the Cotton Garment Association today married Emma Iserlson with whom he had five children – Pansy, Minnie, Anna, Isidore and Alfred.

1892: It was reported today that after the claim of Adolf Grube for 1,600,000 rubles has been satisfied J.E. Guenxburg will only have 14 million rubles in his accounts with which to satisfy the rest of his creditors.

1893(6thof Nisan, 5653): Seventy-six-year-old Adolf Fischoff, the doctor turned Austrian political leader and author passed away today.

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6153-fischhof-adolf

1893: Max Judd of Missouri has been nominated to serve as Consul General at Vienna. Judd, a native of Austria, came to the United States as a child and has lived in St. Louis for the last twenty-five years.  A man of “well and fine education” “his appointment is the result of the almost universal request of the people of” St. Louis which speaks well of Judd and the regard in which the Jews of Missouri are held by the general population.

1893: W.H. Helm of Dumfries and his wife gave birth Sir Alexander Knox Helm, the United Kingdom’s first ambassador to Israel.

1893: A case involving the seizure by police of liquor which members of Boston’s Adath Israel’s congregation claimed was intended for use on Passover began making its way through the court system. The Jews claim that the vice president of the congregation was holding the liquor for his co-religionists which he will be distributing during Passover. The police claim that this is a ruse and is merely a way for the Jews to get around local liquor ordinances.

 

1893: Kosher slaughtering was prohibited in Saxony, which is in a part of Germany that Martin Luther had dominated during his rise to power. Some claim that the ban was part of the anti-cruelty to animal movement, but this claim has a very hollow sound to it considering what else was going on in the society.

1895: Edwin Einstein, a New York Republican, was appointed to serve as Dock Commissioner today by a Mayor who was a Democrat.

1895: In Budapest, the House of Magnates rejected the clause of the Religious Freedom Bill that gave Jews equal rights with the Christians by a vote of 117 to 111.

1896: Birthdate of Jacob “Jake” Friedman, the native of Bridgeport, CT who in 1926 played “end” in three games for the Hartford Blues, an NFL team that existed for only year.

1896: Congregation B’nai Shalom which held services on “Sabbath and holidays,” included a Ladies Hebrew Association as an “auxiliary society” and was served by Rabbi Max Lewinthal was founded in Brookhaven, Mississippi today.

1896: “What Is A Christian Nation?” published today described the views of Dr. Gustav Gottheil who “claims that the so-called Christian nations are not so in fact and that the Jews are, from the ethical standpoint, the true Christian nation.”  A Christian nation would make the Sermon on the Mount the basis for its Constitution entailing “the returning of good for evil, the breathing of a blessing upon those who curse us, the rendering of good for evil.” (Editor’s note –This view should provide food for thought for those who claim the U.S. is a “Christian nation.”)

1897: Mrs. Rebecca Kohut gave a talk today on “The Training of Children in Reverence in Jewish Homes” at the Manhattan Congregational Church.

1897: Birthdate of Jackson, MS native and Millsap College graduate Julian B. Feibelman, the Hebrew Union College trained rabbi who was the long-time leader of Temple Sinai in New Orleans where he could be seen striding up St. Charles Avenue in spats sometimes accompanied by his wife, the former May Anna Fellman.

1897: Oscar S. Straus, the former U.S. Minister to Turkey who has just returned to the United States said that he had met with Baroness de Hirsch while in Europe but did not care to discuss the details of continued financial assistance for immigrants from Europe who will be settling in the Western Hemisphere.

1897: One day after he had passed away, 36-year-old Julius Pearl, the son of Haskel and Miriam Pearl was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

1899: Birthdate of Russian native and Washington, DC automobile dealer Joseph Cherner the husband of Ruth Cherner who was a major financial contributor to Israel during the early days of the Jewish State,

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/04/18/84884426.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1899: Dr. Joseph Silverman delivered a lecture on the “Longevity of the Hebrews.”

1899: It was reported today that during the month of February the United Hebrew Charities had received 2,815 applications for assistance which covered 9,377 individuals.  Jobs were found for 477 applicants while over 1,800 people were seen by either a doctor or a nurse.  The charity raised over $17,000 during February and spent almost $13,000 in providing aid to the needy.

1900: Birthdate of Erich Seligman Fromm, the German born American psychoanalyst

http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell9.htm

http://www.erichfromm.net/

1901(23rdof Nisan, 5661): Parashat Vayikra

1901: It was reported today that General Louis Botha, the leader of the Boers, was “generally in favor of the terms of the settlement” he was “greatly concerned about the position Jewish capitalist would occupy in the country and” he “was told that Jews and Christians would enjoy equal rights,” with “no distinction being made in the matter of concessions.

1901: The former Annie Pauline Alberts and Phillip Sihisky who were married by Rabbi David Shane at the Sons of Israel Synagogue in Camden are “on a bridal tour” after which they will return to Camden, the home of the bride’s father Isaac Alberts.

1902(14th of Adar II, 5662): Purim1903: According to a report filed today by the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London Times, “the four points on which reforms are required in Russia – education, local government, peasant’s rights and finances – the Czar’s manifesto is worthless” and “and the manifesto obviously did not apply to the Jews…”1904: “Hamilton Odell, the referee appointed to determine what institution should be paid the reside of the estate of the late Simon Goldenberg upon the death of his widow Mary Goldenberg reported to the Supreme Court” in New York today “in favor of the Hebrew Technical Institute.”

1903: It was reported today that Dr. Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El had said that “it is certainly high time that a more liberal form of government should be inaugurated in Russia, the land of ignorance and poverty, of political corruption and bribery, of social religious oppression and persecution, of intolerance and bigotry, the land where it has been said that more deaths have occurred in recent years than in all Napoleonic wars.”

1904: “Hamilton Odell, the referee appointed to determine to what institution should be paid the residue of the estate of the late Simon Goldenberg upon the death of the widow, Mary Goldenberg, reported to the Supreme today in favor of the Hebrew Technical Institute.

1905: Penultimate session of the convention of the Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith meeting in New Orleans.

1906: In New York, Carrie Wasserman gave birth to Edith Lee Wasserman who became Edith Lee Kamsler when she married Charles Albert Kamsler.

1907: In New York this evening, enough poor Jews presented their tickets which could be exchanged for 10 pounds of Matzoth and 5 pounds of floor to the store on Attorney Street, that 20,000 pounds of matzoth and 10,000 pounds of Matzah floor were needed to meet the demand.

1907(8thof Nisan, 5667): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1907: Birthdate of Solomon “Sol” Furth, the Brooklyn born track star nicknamed “Happy” who competed in the 1932 Olympics.

1907: Today, in Paris, Dr. Max Nordau told a meeting of French Zionists “that it was necessary to immediately prepare for the next Zionist Congress” and that they need “to organize the plans for the future of the Zionist movement.”

1907: Birthdate of Latvia native Moses Cyrus Weiler, the HUC trained rabbi referred to as “an unsung hero of the struggle for black emancipation in South Africa.

http://www.unitedsisterhood.org.za/index.php/about-us/rabbi-moses-cyrus-weiler

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0215/ms0215.html

1907: When “a small boy with red brick hair” presented his ticket entitling him to 10 pounds of Matzah and 5 pounds of Matzah flour, he was told that “these matzoth are only provided for person of true Hebraic faith.” The lad replied, “Me name is Mickey O’Brien, but sure me mother needs the matzoth. We’re most staring and if it’ll do any good I’ll be an Irish Hebrew.” The lad got his matzoth and flour. [It was not unusual for non-Jews to show up for when free food was passed out at Passover time. The Jews did not seem to mind apparently remembering the words of the Haggadah inviting the poor to come and join us in eating at the Seder.]

1908(20th of Adar II, 5668): Seventy-two-year-old Nathan Stix, the German born son of Deborah Cohen and Solomon Stix who in 1861 at Cincinnati, OH married Ricka Iglauer with whom who had six children, passed away today after which he was buried at the Walnut Hills Jewish Cemetery in Evanston, OH.

1908: It was reported today that “for the ninth time in two months” an attempt has been made by unfriendly Chinese tongs to burn the tenement at 42 Division Street which is occupied by Jews as well as Chinese.

1909: “The unions of Jewish choristers, musicians, ushers and bill posters in the east side theatres order a strike” today “of their members in the Thalia Theatre, involving about eighty persons against a notice of a reduction in wages.”

1910(12thof Adar II, 5670): Hume, Germany native Joseph Brandestein, the San Francisco tobacco and cigar merchant and leader in the Jewish community as can be seen by his service to the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Mt. Zion Hospital Association and Congregation Emanu-El who married Jane Rosenbaum with whom he had eleven children including Max, Manfred and Edward passed away today.

http://www.jmaw.org/brandenstein-jewish-san-francisco/

1911(23rd of Adar, 5671): Daniel Abramovich Chwolson passed away.

http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2009/05/08/the-israeli-health-ministry-and-the-rehabilitation-of-daniel-chwolson/

1912(5thof Nisan, 5672): Ninety-year-old communal worker Hezekiah Kohn passed away today in New York.

1913(14thof Adar II, 5673): Purim

1913: Eighty-year-old Civil War veteran Adam Mayer passed away today in New Orleans.

1914: Birthdate of Spencer Bernard Witty, the native of Waccabuc, NY who with his four brothers Frederic, Ephraim and Arthur, and a cousin, Irving expanded the business created by their grandfather David Witty into a “chain” of six store that sold classy, high end clothing for men.

1914: It was reportedfrom St. Petersburg “that as …Passover approaches more blood ritual allegations are being circulated.” In Uman, in the Ukraine, reports are circulating “that a Christian boy, Anton Zummer, who was working in a bakery at a machine for making matzoth…had his hand thrust in the machinery by the Jewish boys and lost a large quantity of blood which went to the making of the bread…Another report speaks of the finding of an 8-year old boy’s body under a railway bridged at Kovel…with the head, neck and chest pierced with wounds.” [This is the same Uman that is the burial site of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov which Jews visit each year at Rosh Hashanah.]

1915: The United Hebrew Community has sent out an appeal for more funds to so it can distribute matzoth and other food to the poor Jews of the Lower East Side before the beginning of Passover. Moses H. Phillips, President of the Hebrew Community said that the demand is greater this year than in years past and at least 90,000 pounds of food will be needed to feed the needy. The United Hebrew Community is only one of several Jewish organizations that will be distributing food at Passover time to their less fortunate co-religionists.

1915: The fund of the American Jewish Relief Committee has collected $579,996. 53 as of today.

1915: The Zion Mule Corps, consisting of Jewish volunteers from Palestine, was formed to serve with the British Army. This was the first Palestinian Jewish military unit attached to a regular army in the modern times. The unit was organized under the command of Joseph Trumpeldor, an early military hero of the future state of Israel and Vladimir Jabotinsky who would become leader of what was known as the Revisionist Movement, forerunner of today's Likud part. The united fought against the Turks who were allies of the British. The success of the Zion Mule Corps paved the way for the Jewish Legion which was formed in 1918.

1915: Sixty-six-year-old “Judge Leonard S. Roan of the Court of Appeals of Georgia before whom Leo M. Franks was convicted and by whom he was sentenced to death on August 16, 1913 for the murder of…Mary Phagan” passed away today.

1915: According to family legend, today, in Brooklyn “Louis and Sarah Rabinowitz, Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia” gave birth to Jacob Rabinowitz who gained fame as producer and talent-maven Jack Rollins. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/obituaries/jack-rollins-dies-at-100-sharpened-talent-like-woody-allens.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1916: In St. Louis, at Rabbi Masliansky and Rabbi Abranowitz told those attending “a relief meeting” at “B’nai Emuno Synagogue” about “the sufferings of the Jews in the war zones” “more than $1,000 was raised through the sale of certificates bearing the recent proclamation of President Wilson naming a Jewish Relief Day.”

1916(18thof Adar II, 5676): Seventy-two-year-old Colonel Felix Rosenberg, the Civil War veteran who “came to Cleveland after the Civil War, was a brevet colonel in the Spanish-American War” and the “editor of Town Topics, a weekly publication devoted to local high society news” passed away today in Cleveland.

1917(29th of Adar, 5677): Fred Lazarus, the Wurtenburg, Germany born son of Amelia and Simon Lazarus, and husband of Rose Eichberg who with was the “F” in F. and R. Lazarus Company passed away today in Columbus, OH.

https://www.columbusmonthly.com/news/20190603/from-archives-end-of-lazarus-dynasty

 1917: As of today, it was reported that the People’s and Central Relief Committees are raising funds for the relief of Jews in war-torn Europe along with the American Jewish Relief Committee led by Henry Morgenthau, Louis Marshall and Herbert Lehman.

1917: The United States Ambassador to Russia today sent a cablegram to the State Department stating “that the new Russian Government had taken its first important step toward the emancipation of the Jews by removing the education restrictions previously imposed under the old regime.”

1917: In a letter to the British and French Ambassadors to the United States, Oscar Straus, Chairman of the Public Service Commission expressed the opinion that “the great majority of the Jewish citizens of the United States are pro-Ally and not pro-German.”

1917: Birthdate of Yevgeny Khaldei the Soviet born Jewish World War II combat photographer whose work included one of the most famous of that genre showing a Soviet soldier raising a flag over the Reichstag as the Red Army triumphed in  the Battle of Berlin.  According to some reports Khaldei patterned the picture after the one of the flag raising over Iowa Jima, another iconic WW II photo taken by a Jewish photographer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reichstag_flag_original.jpg

1918(10thof Nisan, 5678): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1918: Rabbi Samuel Schulman is scheduled to deliver the sermon this morning at Temple Beth-El on 5th Avenue.

1918: Rabbi Krass is scheduled to deliver a sermon “A Lesson from The Copperhead” at Central Synagogue.

1918: Rabbi Enelow is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Basic Doctrines of Reform Judaism” at Temple Emanu-El.

1918: Rabbi M.H. Harris is scheduled to deliver a sermon “The Great Sabbath” this morning at Temple Israel of Harlem

1918: Today’s issue of The Publisher’s Weeklyincluded Jewish Fairy Stories by Gerald Friedlander and illustrated by Beatrice Hirschfeld among its listings.

https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Fairy-Tales-Gerald-Friedlander/dp/0486419827

1919: Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy. The ashes of the First World War were not even cool yet when the seeds for World War II and the Holocaust were being planted.

1919: Birthdate of Marvin “Mickey” Rottner the Chicago native who played guard for the Loyola University basketball team from 1939 to 1942 after which he played professional basketball from 1945 to 1948.

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=105722874

1919: Birthdate of Henry Foner, the native of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood who was a decorated veteran of the United States Army whose labor organizing activity included serving as president of the Joint Board of Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union.

http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_254/

http://ilgwu.ilr.cornell.edu/archives/oralhistories/henryfoner.html

1920: “Poster displayed at Damascus, where the Syrian Congress proclaimed the independence of that country declared: ‘In spite of himself the Moslem is brother to the Christian and the Jew.”

1920: It was reported today that Henry Morgenthau, the former Ambassador to Turkey and ally of President Wilson, is the leading candidate to become the Ambassador to Mexico.

1921(13thof Adar II, 5681): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim

1921: Today is the second day of “The Palestine Bazar” organized by the Manchester Branch of the Jewish National Fund Commission for England

1921: The Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary held commencement ceremonies today.

1921: KH-UIA was registered as a British limited company, whose members, together with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, were chosen by the WZO's Executive Board. KH-UIA's founders included such luminaries as Chaim Weizmann, Aharon, and Isaac Naidich. The first Directors were Barth Berthold Feiwel, Georg Halpern, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Shlomo Kaplansky, Shemaryahu Levin, Issac Naidich, Israel M. Sieff (later Lord Sieff) and Hillel Zlatopolsky.

1921: Accompanied by Sir Herbert Samuel and T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) Winston Churchill left Egypt for Palestine to begin his projected four week long fact finding tour.

1922(23rdof Adar, 5682): Eighty-one year old Harav Moshe Nachum Wallenstein who was born in Pupa, Hungary, in 1841 and moved to Israel in 1864 where he served the community as a rabbi passed away today.

1922: In Pittsburgh, PA, Louis and Elsie Alpern gave birth to Morton Alpern who gained fame as comedian Marty Allen.(As reported by Peter Keepnews)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/obituaries/marty-allen-wild-eyed-comedy-star-is-dead-at-95.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1923: Yorkshire native Gertrude Berger and Albert Halson gave birth to Dennis Charles Halson who passed away before he reached the age of two months.

1923: “Louis Marshall was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities at which campaign plans of the Charities were discussed.” (As reported by JTA)

1924(17th of Adar II, 5684): Moses Cattaui Pashe, President of the Jewish Kehillah of Cairo, Egypt passed away.

1925: It was reported today that the newly elected officers of the New York branch of the United Synagogue of America are President Sol Mutterperl; Vice Presidents, Leo J. Goldberger, Alfred Goldfarb, Jacob Monsky, Hyman J. Reit, Albert Rosenblatt, Morris Stern and Harris Sussman; Secretary, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohn; and Treasurer, Joseph Durst.

1926: Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff, the Honorary Chairman of the Women’s Division of the United Jewish Campaign of New York hosted a tea at her Fifth Avenue home for “the women who are organizing teams of workers for the campaign to raise six million dollars that will start in April.

1926: Birthdate of Norman Clifford ‘Norm” Mager whose accomplishments with the CCNY and the Baltimore Bullets of the NBA were over-shadowed by his involvement in the point shaving scandal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/sports/ncaabasketball/norman-mager-78-player-tarnished-by-gambling-scandal-dies.html?_r=0

1927: In Detroit, anti-Semite and automobile manufacturer Henry Ford and his Dearborn Independent was an important point today in the trial of Aaron Sapiro’s libel suit…when Judge Raymond banned a series of letters” that proved Mr. Ford and his weekly newspaper had been warned of the “falsity of the articles which are the basis for this trial.

1928: Birthdate of Mortimier H. Rydell, the multi-talented New York known as Mark Rydell whose accomplishments including directing one of the greatest westerns ever made – The Cowboys in which John Wayne actually acts instead of just portraying John Wayne.

1929(11thof Adar, 5689): Parashat Vayikra; Shabbat Zachor

1929: Birthdate of author James Maxwell whose works include “The Night Everything Was Simple” in which “Zionist plans for Palestine are viewed with approval”  and “Village Incident” and “Strictly From the Mississippi” in which “the Jewish characters are presented sympathetically.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/03/25/94941819.pdf

1930: ““The Administrative Committee of the enlarged Jewish Agency is meeting in London today.

1930:  The front page of the New York Times sports section featured a picture of Penn State Boxer David Stoop knocking out his opponent as Penn State University successfully defended its intercollegiate title.

http://images.rarenewspapers.com/ebayimgs/3.90.2015/image078.jpg

1931: In Warsaw, Mordechai Bernstein, a journalist and “the former Zelda Goldin, a seamstress and Spanish teacher” gave birth to Masha Bernstein who survived the Holocaust and Siberia to gain fame as Masha Leon, “the society columnist for The Forward.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/nyregion/masha-leon-dead-society-columnist-for-the-forward.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1932(15thof Adar II, 5692): Shushan Purim

1932(15thof Adar II, 5692): Sixty-five-year-old Boris Schatz, the Lithuanian born sculptor who became known as the "father of Israeli art," founded the Bezalel School in Jerusalem passed away today.

http://www.schatz.co.il/en/boris

1933: Hitler “told the Reichstag today that Positive Christianity was the "unshakeable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people", and promised not to threaten the churches or the institutions of the Republic if granted plenary powers.”

1933: The Jewish War Veterans (JWS) launched a boycott of German goods in the United States today making it the first organization in the U.S. to launch such an economic action

1933: Birthdate of Shlomo Ofek the native of Poland who perished aboard the Submarine Dakar in 1968.

1933: Birthdate of Abraham “Abe” Cohen who after playing football and wrestling at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga went to play professional football for the CFL Hamilton Tiger Cats and one season for the newly minted AFL Boston Patriots in 1960.

1934: In what has to be one of the biggest lie of this period, “Hans Frank, the Nazi Commissioner said at a police meeting today” that “overzealous anti-Semites will be relentlessly curbed

1934: It was reported today “that a number ‘non-Christian’ doctors have been informed” that their contracts will not be renewed which is consistent with the anti-Semitic government in Vienna to reduce the number of Jewish doctors and to impoverish the Jewish community.

1936: Darius Paul Dassault was promoted to the rank of Division General (général de division) in the French Army.

1936: In Hackensack, NJ, “the Board of Education voted unanimously at its meeting tonight not ban the ‘Merchant of Venice’ from the second year high school English course because of complaints” voiced “by Rabbi Irving Silman of the Hackensack Hebrew Institute.”

1936: “David J. Schweitzer, vice chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee outlined the problems facing the committee which is engaged in a $3,500,000 drive in this county, $1,500,000 of which” is supposed to come from New York,

1937: Two days after he had passed away funeral services were held today for sixty-four-year-old British born historian and Zionist leader Jacob De Haas in his home where per his request Rabbi David De Sola Pool of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue officiated at a simple, private ceremony followed by burial at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens, NY.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Of-Palestine-Thousand-Years/dp/1406709301

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/03/22/94345411.pdf

1937: It was reported today that sixty-four-year-old Jacob de Haas one of the last surviving founding fathers of the Zionist movement had passed away

http://archive.jta.org/article/1937/03/23/2838214/jacob-de-haas-herzl-collaborator-dead-here-at-64

1937: The French Fascist, led by “La Cagoule” were thwarted in their attempt to overthrow the Third Republic when Leon Blum’s Popular Front government avoided a vote of “no confidence.”

1938: In New York, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland delivered his first address as national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal. After being introduced by Louis Nizer, associate chairman of the division and chairman of the Film Board of Trade, Rabbi Silver asked a luncheon meeting of more than 100 theatrical and motion picture executives to support the drive to raise $4,500,000 to support Zionist activities. He gave a glowing account of the progress that had been in creating a Jewish Homeland. He spoke specifically about the challenges created by the worsening situation in Europe and the efforts that have been to settle refugees, especially those from Germany, in Eretz Israel. Silver equated the Zionist work in Palestine with the fight against the rise of totalitarianism.

1938. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver spoke to a meeting of the Long Island Conference for Palestine at the Jamaica Jewish Center this evening. The more than 1,000 attendees representing thirty-four communities in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties adopted a resolution agreeing to raise $75,000 for the United Palestine Appeal.

1938: “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” a romantic comedy directed and produced by Ernst Lubitsch and a screenplay co-authored by William Wilder was released today in the United States.

1938: In Paris, Adam and Pauline Kaufman gave birth to Michael Kaufman a “foreign correspondent, reporter and columnist for The New York Times who chronicled despotic regimes in Europe and Africa, the fall of Communism and the changing American scene for four decades”

1939: Erich Maria Remarque, the author of All Quiet on the Western Front whose books were burned by the Nazis arrived in New York today and “said he had come here to study America, learn the language and write a book dealing with the persecution of the Jews

1939: “Eleven members of the old and prosperous Italian Fornari family,” including forty year old Raffaele , his wife Celesete and their two children Vitoria and Alberto, “that traces its history in Rome back for 300 years arrived yesterday on the Italian liner Rex as refugees from the recent anti-Semitic edicts of the Fascist party.”

1940: The All-India-Muslim League called for a Muslim homeland in the Indian sub-continent. The British response would be to partition India into a Hindu state of India and a Moslem state, Pakistan. The demands of the by the Muslims living in India were part of a wave of Muslim nationalism that had been sweeping the lands of North Africa and the Middle East since the start of the 20th century. The conflict in Palestine should be viewed within that context. The similarity of the British response in Palestine and India (Partition) is also worth noting.

1940: David Samuel Margoliouth, the Oxford University Professor whose father Ezekiel had converted from Judaism to Anglicanism passed away today.

1941: “An elaborate German "show trial," to be held after the war in an effort to reveal a world-wide Jewish-Masonic plot to kill many high Nazi leaders, is being organized by Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo [secret police], it was reported in Vichy tonight.”

1941: It was announced today that “representatives of Jewish organizations in forty-eight cities and twenty-six states have associated themselves with the Jewish section of the Interfaith Committee for Aid to Democracies.

1942: Of the approximately 4,000 remaining Jews in Lublin, Poland 2,500 were massacred and the rest of them were deported to Majdanek for extermination. At the start of the war, 40,000 of the 125,000 inhabitants of Lublin had been Jewish.

1942: Birthdate of Yevhen Lapinsky who played on the Soviet Union Volleyball Team that won the Gold Medal at the Olympics in 1968.

1943 (16th of Adar II, 5703): Twenty-nine Jewish orphans at La Rose Orphanage in Les Accates, France, as well as Alice Salomon, the guardian who refused to leave them two months before, were gassed at the Sobibor death camp. The Alice Salomon mentioned here is not to be confused with the famed German intellectual who fled Nazi Germany before World War II and passed away in New York in 1948. At the same time, one must wonder who says Kaddish for this otherwise unknown brave soul and the 29 youngsters who were in her care.

1943: The Gestapo arrested Henri Krasucki, his mother and other members of the French resistance.

1943: In France, 4000 Jews were deported from Marseilles, interned briefly at Drancy, France, and then deported to Sobibór

1943: The Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple stood up in front of the House of Lords in London and pleaded with the British government to help the Jews of Europe. "We at this moment have upon us a tremendous responsibility," he said. "We stand at the bar of history, of humanity, and of God." Ever since news of Hitler's plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe reached the public in late 1942, British church leaders and members of Parliament had been agitating for something to be done. Temple's plea marked the culmination of the clamoring.

1944: British Major-General Orde Wingate died in airplane crash while fighting the Japanese in Burma during World War II. ”Wingate was an unconventional person in many respects. Among his other unique qualities was that he was an officer in the British Army, who, while serving in Palestine during the 1930's supported the Jewish cause. Then Captain Wingate served in Israel from 1936 until 1939. Born in 1903 to a religious Christian family and a firm believer in the Bible, Orde Wingate passionately embraced the prophetic vision of Jewish redemption and the Jews' ultimate return to Eretz Yisrael. During his service in Eretz Yisrael, he worked to help realize that ideal. The son of a British officer, Wingate was born in India, received a military education, and was commissioned in 1923. He served in India and then in the Sudan, where he studied Arabic and Semitics, and acquired a familiarity with the Middle East. Wingate was recognized as a talented officer, and by 1936 he had earned the rank of captain. That same year he was transferred to Eretz Yisrael and served there for the next three years. Wingate arrived in Eretz Yisrael as an intelligence officer at a time when small bands of Arab rioters were regularly attacking both the British and the Jews. To counter this offensive, Wingate organized and trained “Special Night Squads,” comprised primarily of Haganah fighters, which were successfully employed throughout the Yishuv. Their tactics were based on the strategic principles of surprise, mobility, and night attacks and they served effectively both as defensive and offensive units, successfully pre-empting and resisting Arab attacks. Wingate maintained good contacts with the heads of the Yishuv and the Haganah. He learned Hebrew, and he demonstrated his ardent belief that the Jews were entitled to their homeland in Eretz Yisrael. He also recognized the need for a working military force, and he dreamed of heading the army of the future Jewish state. Because of his efforts and support, he was called in the Yishuv “ha-yedid,” the friend. Wingate's intense support for the Zionist viewpoint, however, was controversial, and in 1939 the British succumbed to Arab pressure and transferred Wingate from Eretz Yisrael. His passport was stamped with the restriction that he not be allowed to re-enter the country. His personal involvement with the Zionist cause was thus curtailed, but many of those he trained became heads of the Palmach and, later, the Israel Defense Forces Wingate returned briefly to Great Britain, but, recognized for his military talent, he was transferred to further active duty. In 1941 he led the force in Ethiopia against the Italians and was a major figure in liberating the country. He then worked in Burma, organizing and training the Chindits, a special jungle unit that operated behind Japanese lines. Wingate was killed in an airplane crash in Burma in 1944 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Wingate's friendship for the Yishuv and his contributions to its defense has been recognized through the several places in Israel named for him, including the College of Physical Education near Netanya."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/wingate.html

http://www.zionism-israel.com/bio/Charles_Orde_Wingate.htm

1944: At Ioannina in Greece, 1,860 Jews were seized by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz.

1944: Birthdate of Michael Laurence Nyman the native Stratford, London the multi-talented musician who has done it all from concert pianist, to composing movie scores and to the creation of operas.

1945: Forty-three-year-old Elisabeth de Rothschild, the Catholic wife of Baron Philippe de Rothschild was murdered today at Ravensbruck concentration camp.

1946(20thof Adar II, 5706): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Parah

1946: The American Joint Distribution Committee announced today in Paris that it “has arranged to prove 1,866,000 pounds of unleavened bread to Jewish communities in nearly every country” in Euopre.

1947: The executive committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine ended its deliberations today. The committee has been meeting in Jerusalem to plan tactics for the upcoming special session of the United Nations being held to deal with the issue of Palestine.

1947: Birthdate of classical pianist Kaplinsky, the native of Tel Aviv who became a professor of music at Julliard.

1948: “The Search” a “film directed by Fred Zinnemann which tells the story of a young Auschwitz survivor and his mother who search for each other across post-World War II Europe” was released today.

1948: David Ben-Gurion “cabled the United States State Department a warning that he and his colleagues would with all of their strength oppose any postponement of Jewish independence.” The U.S. State Department, the body that had done so much to keep Jews from getting to the United States during the Hitler period, was busy trying to sabotage President Truman’s support of partition and the creation of a Jewish state.

1949: “Detective Story” a three act play by Sidney Kingsley opened on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre.

1949: Israel and Lebanon signed an armistice agreement. Israeli troops withdrew from border towns they had occupied during the fighting. Lebanon would not become a major area of operations until decades later when the PLO was thrown out of Jordan and took refuge in Lebanon.

1949: In an attempt to break the deadlock between Israel and Transjordan over the shape of the border between the two states, Yigael Yadin, Walter Eytan, Moshe Dayan and Yehoshafat Harkabi (future director of Israeli Military Intelligence) went to meet King Abdullah at his villa in Shuneh Yigal. Yadin’s flawless recitation of a poem in Arabic served as an icebreaker. Despite initial setbacks, the two sides would reach an understanding that night.

1950: “The new Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Msgr. Alberto Gori, paid his first official visit to Israel today. He met the diplomatic corps and senior officers of the Foreign Affairs, Interior and Religious Affairs Ministries at a reception in Jaffa.”

1951(15thof Adar II, 5711): Shushan Purim

1951(15th of Adar II, 5711): Michael H. Cardozo Jr. of 163 East Eighty-first Street, veteran attorney, passed away today in his office at 115 Broadway at the age 70. He was a cousin of the late Associate Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo of the United States Supreme Court.

1951: After premiering in New York City and Los Angeles, “Royal Wedding, the Alan Jay Lerner musical comedy directed by Stanley Donen was released throughout the rest of the United States today.

1954: Mathematician Jacob Bronowski, the father of Lisa Jardine, “delivered his own Conway Memorial Lecture today.”

1956: New York State Supreme Court Justice Henry Epstein officiated at the wedding of actress Rita Gam, to Yale Graduate and WW II Marine Corps veteran “Thomas H. Guinzburg, the son of Harold K. Guinzburg, publisher of the Viking Press” today.

1957: The University of North Carolina led by Lennie Rosenbluth won the NCCA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament in Kansas City, MO.

1959(13thof Adar II, 5719): Sixty-seven-year-old Sam Born, the Russian born American “candyman” who founded Just Born Company, maker of such sweet treats as Peeps passed away today.

http://www.justborn.com/

1960: Seventy-eight-year-old Franklin Pierce Adams, the Chicago born son of Moses and Clara Schlossberg Adams and writer known simply as F.P.A. who was a member of the famous Algonquin Round Table passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/03/25/105423068.pdf

1962: Abraham Ellstein’s only opera, “The Golem” which he created with his wife Sylvia Regan premiered today at the New York City Opera a year and a day before he passed away under the baton of Julius Rudel who had fled his native Austria when the Nazis took over.

1962: Arthur Fiedler and his wife visited the Marshal Space Flight Center today.

1962: In its review of the Broadway musical “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” The New York Timesproclaimed "The evening's find is Barbara Streisand, a girl with an oafish expression, a loud irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh. Miss Streisand is a natural comedienne" By the time Streisand made her Broadway debut in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” she had already developed a loyal following as a singer. In performances at the Lion Club, one of New York City's premier gay clubs, and in other clubs around the country, the young Streisand developed her trademark outsider persona, impromptu one-liners, and theatrical delivery that brought audiences to their feet. Streisand's performance as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale was so successful that the role was expanded for her, with new songs added. Despite national acclaim for her performance, she was considered too Jewish, too eccentric, too unattractive, and too marked by her Brooklyn upbringing for a record contract. When Columbia Records finally released The Barbra Streisand Album in 1964, however, it remained on the charts for eighteen months. Streisand's movie debut in Funny Girl four years later, in the Oscar-winning role of comedian Fanny Brice, cemented her place among the stars of American theatre and film.

1963: Duke’s Art Heyman was named the outstanding player at the 1963 NCC Men’s Division I Basketball tournament which came to a close today

1963: Rolf Hochhuth's "Der Stellvertreter" (The Deputy), premiered in Berlin. The Catholic Church was outraged at the portrayal of Pius XII as being complicit in the murder of the Jews of Europe.

1964(10th of Nisan, 5724): Actor Peter Lorre passed away passed away at the age of 59. Born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein in what was then the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Lorre gained fame as a character actor with parts in such films as Casablanca and Arsenic and Old Lace. In the 1930’s he played the title character the Mr. Motto detective films.

http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/The_Times_(25/Mar/1964)_-_Obituary:_Peter_Lorre

1969: Birthdate of Donte Phillip Spector, one of three children adopted by Phil Spector and his second wife.

1970(15thof Adar II, 5730): Shushan Purim

1970: Birthdate of Justin Craig Duberman, the native of New Haven who after growing up in Highland Park Illinois went on to play ice hockey for the University of North Dakota and made it to the NFL as a right wing for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

1971: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Julia,” the ground-breaking sitcom created by Savannah native Hal Kanter, co-starring Ezra Stone and with music by Elmer Bernstein.

1972 (8th of Nisan, 5732): Rabbi Chaim Meir Hager, who had been revered as Vizhnitzer Rebbe for 35 years, passed away in Israel tonight.

1972: In Paris, “a psychoanalyst whose parents were Holocaust survivors from Poland and Russia” and his wife, a child therapist gave birth to author and actress Judith Godreche, the wife of French actor Danny Boon.

1973: CBS broadcast the last episode of daytime soap opera “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” created by Chicago native Irna Phillips.

1974: Senator Ted Kennedy arrived in Moscow today where he spoke with Brezhnev about the Middle East and immigration, two topics of importance to Jews in the United States and Israel.

1974: “Leonid Zabelishensky was released from prison today.”

1975: In “Major Book on Holocaust” published today, Gerald F. Lieberman described the negotiations that are “under way between Israel and an American company for the publication of The Diary of Adam Czerniakow,” a document that a leading Jewish scholar in Brooklyn College termed of major importance in understanding the near destruction of European Jewry under the Nazis.

1978: The first UNIFIL troops arrived in Lebanon for peacekeeping mission along the Blue Line. The Blue Line was a demarcation between Israeli and PLO forces.

1979(24th of Adar, 5739): One person was murdered and 13 more injured in a terrorist bombing at Zion Square in Jerusalem.

1979: Abraham David Sofaer began serving as Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York,

1980: In “The Two Faces of Israel’s Masada: Glory and Tragedy,” Carmia Borek describes the varying view of this famous Jewish landmark.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FB061EFA395C11728DDDAA0A94DB405B8084F1D3

1980: Birthdate of Asaf Avidan an Israeli folk/rock musician known for his breakthrough debut album, "The Reckoning", which was created with a group of backup musicians under the name "Asaf Avidan and the Mojos". The album received positive critical reviews and earned Avidan a nomination for Best Israeli Artist at the upcoming MTV Europe Awards.

1980: Release date in the United States for “Christ Stopped at Eboli” (Italian: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli), a 1979 film adaptation of the book of the same name by Carlo Levi.

1981(17thof Adar II, 5741): Ninety-five-year-old German born American Chess champion Edward Lasker who had been trained as an engineer and was a close friend of fellow chess champion and distant relative Emanuel Lasker passed away today in New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/26/obituaries/dr-edward-lasker-is-dead-at-95-5-time-us-open-chess-winner.html

https://worldchesshof.org/hof-inductee/edward-lasker

1981: Shimon Peres said in Tel Aviv today his party would make an effort to negotiate the future status of Jerusalem with Saudi Arabia and would look seriously at the possibility of peace with the Saudis.

1983(9thof Nisan, 5743): Eighty-four-year-old Rabbi Saul Lieberman passed away.

http://www.joshyuter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Saul-Lieberman-and-the-Orthodox-31.pdf

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/slieberman.html

1985: Jewish singer Billy Joel wed supermodel Christie Brinkley

1986(12th of Adar II, 5746): Rabbi Moshe Feinstein passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/25/obituaries/thousands-mourn-talmudic-scholar.html

1987(22ndof Adar, 5747): Eighty-five-year-old Morton Minsky, the last of the Minsky brothers, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/24/obituaries/morton-minky-is-dead-at-85-last-of-a-burlesque-dynasty.html

1987: CBS broadcast the first episode of the long running soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” which would feature Tracey E. Bregman in the role of “Lauren Fenmore.”

1988: In Wellington, NZ, Israel national football team defeated Chinese Taipei, nine to nothing.

1988(5th of Nisan, 5748): Fifty-eight year old “Jim Jacobs, a boxing historian and a co-manager of Mike Tyson, the heavyweight champion” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/24/obituaries/jim-jacobs-tyson-s-co-manager-and-handball-titlist-dies-at-58.html

1989: In Philadelphia, Dr. Richard Cohen, who played tennis for the University of Pennsylvania and played professional tennis for two years and his wife gave birth to professional tennis player Julia Cohen, the sister of All-American tennis player Josh Cohen.

1989: Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann (who was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Europe) announced that they had unlocked the mystery of cold fusion at the University of Utah.

1991(8thof Nisan, 5751): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1991: It was reported today that “Israel's foreign debt rose by $260 million in 1990, to $24.1 billion, reversing a decline since 1987…”

1991: “Congress today approved but modified the revocation of $55 million in aid to Jordan and a ban on military sales to allies who failed to fulfill their pledges of financial assistance for the Persian Gulf war.”

1990: Release date of “Pretty Woman” the comedy filmed under executive produce Laura Ziskin and co-starring Jason Alexander (born Jay Scott Greenspan).

1992: “Broadway Bound” a made for television movie based on Neil Simon’s play co-starring Jonathan Silverman, featuring Jerry Orbach and Michele Lee and with music by David Shire was broadcast for the first time tonight.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1992-03-23/features/9201300090_1_kate-jerome-brighton-beach-memoirs-four-time-emmy-winner

1993: Judith Kaye began serving as Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals

1993: A third revival of “3 Men On A Horse” a play co-authored by George Abbott with a cast that included Tony Randall, Jack Klugman and Jerry Stiller began previews at the Lyceum Theatre.

1994(11th of Nisan, 5754): Victor Lashchiver, employed as a guard at the Income Tax offices in East Jerusalem, was shot and killed by terrorists near Damascus Gate on his way to work. The Popular Front claimed responsibility for the attack.

1994: “Above the Rim,” “a sports film co-written, stored and directed by Jeff Pollack” was released in the United States today.

1995(21st of Adar II, 5755): Author and screenwriter Irving Shulman passed away at the age of 81.

http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-28/news/mn-47894_1_irving-shulman

1997(14th of Adar II, 5757): Purim

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including "The Vulnerable Observer Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart" by Ruth Behar and "The Journey Home Jewish Women and the American Century" by Joyce Antler. Among the more than 50 Jewish women chronicled in this tome are: Sonya Abuza, an overweight immigrant in Hartford who had been deserted by her husband, later became famous as a ''Gypsy of the footlights'' named Sophie Tucker. Henrietta Szold, the eldest of five daughters of a distinguished Baltimore rabbi, established Hadassah, the largest women's Zionist group in the world, in 1912. Ruth Gruber, who at 20 was declared the youngest person in the world to hold a doctorate, flew a secret mission for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II to help 1,000 refugees find asylum in Oswego, N.Y. Goldie Mabovich Meyerson was born in Kiev, was raised and married in Milwaukee, then moved to Palestine in 1921, where, known as Golda Meir, she became Prime Minister of Israel. In this unique volume, Joyce Antler, who teaches American studies at Brandeis University, blends history, anecdote and biography to emphasize the achievement of these women, who attempted to satisfy family, God and their own dreams at the same time. The book illuminates their struggles for identity as well as the sexism and anti-Semitism they encountered.

1998(25thof Adar, 5758): Eighty-one-year-old American poet Hilda Morely and cousin of Isaiah Berlin passed away today.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/hilda-morley

1999: Emanuel Zisman left The Third Way and continued serving as independent MK.

2000: During his meeting with President Ezer Weizman, Pope John Paul II “blessed the state of Israel” after which he visited Yad Vashem.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/speech.asp

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/portrait.asp

2001(28thof Adar, 5761): Eighty-seven-year-old Janice Levin, the art collector and philanthropist whose husband attorney Philip J. Levin passed away in 1971, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/janice-levin-87-philanthropist-of-the-arts.html

2002(10thof Nisan, 5762): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

2002(10thof Nisan, 5762): Seventy-three year old Oscar Winning set designer Richard Sylbert passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/movies/richard-sylbert-73-designer-of-oscar-winning-film-sets.html?scp=1&sq=richard%20sylbert&st=cse/

2003(19th of Adar II, 5763): Fritz Spiegl the Austrian-born musician, journalist, broadcaster, humorist and collector who fled to England in 1939 to escape the Nazis passed away today.

2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including Regarding "The Pain of Others" by Susan Sontag and "Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication From the Vietnam War" by Henry Kissinger.

2004: Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the New York Department had increased uniformed and plainclothes patrols at synagogues and in predominately Jewish neighborhoods following an attack on Sheik Ahmed Yasssin, a founder of Hamas, in Gaza City.

2005: March Madness, the popular name for the national American collegiate basketball champion competition took on a Jewish twist. A sixteen-year-old feud was reignited by comments made by Deon Thomas a professional basketball player for Maccabi Tel Aviv about University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Coach Bruce Pearl, whose skill at bringing his unheralded hoopsters to the Sweet Sixteen may mark him as the next Red Auerbach.

2005: The Ensemble for the Romantic Century presented Fanny Mendelssohn: Out of Her Brother’s Shadow, a theatrical concert featuring the music of Fanny Mendelssohn at the Jewish Museum in New York.

2005(12thof Adar II, 5765): Seventy-three-year-old Naftali Halberstam “the grand rabbi of the Bobov Chasidic Sect” passed away today.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/obituaries/naftali-halberstam-dies-at-74-bobov-hasidims-grand-rabbi.html

2005(12thof Adar II, 5765): Eighty-five-year-old award winning British actor David Kossoff passed away today in Hatfield, Hertforshire, England.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1486283/David-Kossoff.html

2006: Judith Martin, known professionally as “Miss Manners” today “was a special guest correspondent on The Colbert Report, giving her analysis of the manners with which the White House Press Corps spoke to the President.”

2007(4th of Nisan, 5767: Paul J. Cohen, American mathematician, and winner of the Fields Medal, passed away.

http://paulcohen.org/

2007: Tal Friedman sang with “The Krayot” band in Tel Aiv today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tal_Friedman_23032007.jpg

2007: An international conference for Jewish theater professionals, artists, and aficionados hosted by The Association for Jewish Theatre in conjunction with the Jewish Theatre of Austria comes to an end.

2008: An exhibition organized by guest curator Murray Zimiles entitled “Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel has its last showing at the American Folk Art Museum.

2008: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of "Liberty Of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality" by Martha C. Nussbaum.

2008: The Washington Post book section featured a review of Mark Evanier’s "Kirby: King of Comics" that describes the life and times of Jack Kirby, the son of Austrian Jewish immigrants who had such an impact on the comic book genre including the creation of The Fantastic Four, The Hulk and Captain America.

2008(7thof Nissan, 5778): In Paris, 85-year-old Holocaust survivor was murdered allegedly by Yacine Mihoub and Alex Carrimbacus who shouted “Allah Akbar” as they stabbed her.

2008: As pilots began undergoing tests for cancer, a team of technical personnel from the Israel Air Force flew to Fort Worth, Texas, for consultations with their American counterparts and Lockheed Martin concerning the recent discovery of carcinogenic material in an Israeli F-16I.

2008(16th of Adar II, 5768): Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum, an ultra-Orthodox educator and innovator who created a series of dial-in phone lines with lectures on sacred texts, died today at the age of 68 http://forward.com/articles/13039/rabbi-eli-teitelbaum-dial-a-daf-creator--/

2009: At Rutgers University, Professor Martin Bunzl, director of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, University of Illinois at Urbana delivers a lecture on Israel, Islamophobia, and the Right Wing in Europe entitled “The New Philo-Semitism.”

2009: Sports Illustrated magazine reported on the recent death of 86 year old Bill Davidson who amassed a fortune in the glass business owner the Detroit Pistons for 35 years and free spending philanthropists. The magazine also noted that Davidson had run track at Michigan and “was a charter member of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

2009: The Aviv String Quartet, founded in Israel in 1997, performs at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.

2009: In the on-going sage of what was once the country’s leading kosher slaughtering operation four companies bid for the assets of Agriprocessors in an auction that began today. The bidding ended this evening night with offers reaching as high as $5.5 million.

2010: The AIPAC Policy Conference comes to a close.

2010: The New York Times Knowledge Network and the Israeli Consulate are scheduled to team up together to present the opening night of a weeklong event entitled The New Israeli Cuisine in which participants will take a tour through the fascinating evolution of Israel's culinary scene. A melting pot of more than 60 different ethnicities - from India to Morocco to Argentina - Israeli cuisine is one of the world's fastest emerging kitchens.

2010: The Temple Mount Human Rights Group has scheduled a gathering for today in front of the Mashbir department store in Jerusalem.

2010: The President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel met this evening in Washington, D.C.

2010: The UK expelled an Israeli diplomat owing to claims that an embassy official from that country forged passports, and David Miliband gave a public warning against travel to Israel because of identity theft concerns

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7506064/David-Miliband-Israeli-cloning-of-British-passports-was-intolerable.html

2010: As German authorities pursue suspected Nazi war criminals to the last, a court in Aachen convicted an 88-year-old former SS soldier today on charges of killing three Dutch civilians in reprisal for attacks by Dutch resistance fighters in 1944. The case against the former soldier, Heinrich Boere, who is now a stateless person, was depicted by German analysts as one of the last major war crimes trials. Court proceedings began last November in another case, against John Demjanjuk, 89, who was accused of helping to force 27,900 Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust. The verdict in Aachen on Tuesday against Mr. Boere came more than six decades after he was found guilty by a Dutch court in 1949 and sentenced to death. That sentence, passed in his absence, was later commuted to a life imprisonment, but he fled to Germany after the war and did not serve it. The German court sentenced him to the maximum permissible sentence of life imprisonment on Tuesday, as the prosecution had demanded, rejecting a defense plea for the case to be dropped under European Union regulations covering due process. Defense lawyers said they would appeal the court findings, a process that could take years. Court-appointed doctors will also examine Mr. Boere to ascertain whether he is medically fit to serve a prison term. Before his trial he lived in a nursing home. Mr. Boere was not taken into custody after the sentencing, pending his lawyers’ appeal and the medical tests. The court ruled that he was unlikely to be a flight risk. Gerd Nohl, the presiding judge, described the killings as “murders that could hardly be outdone in terms of baseness and cowardice — beyond the respectability of any soldier,” The Associated Press reported. Mr. Boere attended the proceedings in a wheelchair and seemed to show no obvious reaction to the sentencing. The trial began in October. Mr. Boere admitted killing the owner of a bicycle shop, a pharmacist and another civilian when he was part of a Nazi execution team. The prosecution said he had willingly joined the so-called Feldmeijer squad in 1940 when German forces overran the Netherlands. The squad was composed mainly of Dutch volunteers, who carried out reprisal killings against compatriots considered to be anti-German. During the trial, he said he had no choice but to follow orders to carry out the killings. “I always regarded these assignments as military orders which I had to carry out,” the German DPA news agency quoted Mr. Boere as saying in a statement though his lawyer. “Today, 65 years after what we did, I obviously see it from a different point of view,” he said. But he did not apologize, DPA reported. On two occasions German courts refused to extradite him or force him to carry out the Dutch life sentence in Germany. Mr. Nohl, the presiding judge, said Mr. Boere had lived “undisturbed” in Germany since 1955.

2010: The ex-convict who killed a Canadian Jewish leader in Barbados last year was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Curtis Joel Foster, 25, was sentenced today in a Barbados court for killing Terry Schwarzfeld, who had just started her term as president of Canadian Hadassah WIZO and was executive director of Ottawa's largest synagogue, Agudath Israel. Originally charged with murder, Foster, who had eight prior criminal convictions, pleaded guilty in January to manslaughter. Prosecutors said they accepted the plea because they were convinced a jury would not find that he intended to kill Schwarzfeld. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 16 to 20 years. Schwarzfeld and her daughter-in-law, vacationing in Barbados, were walking on a secluded beach on Feb. 28, 2009 when Foster waved a gun at them and demanded money. When the women said they had none, Foster retrieved a piece of wood and chased them. He hit Schwarzfeld, 60, on the back of her head, then attacked her daughter-in-law, Luana Cotsman. Cotsman survived, but Schwarzfeld never regained consciousness. She died of brain injuries on March 18, 2009, two weeks after being airlifted to a hospital in Ottawa.

2011: The 75-minute dramatic oratorio, “From the Fire,” is scheduled to be presented in New York City to mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and bring attention to contemporary examples of unsafe working conditions.

2011: Kathryn Gleason, a professor of Archaeology and Landscape Architecture at Cornell, who has excavated at Herod's tomb and other sites in Israel is scheduled to deliver a lecture at the 92nd St Y entitled “Archaeology In Israel: Herod's World .”

2011: Today a committee of the Knesset is scheduled to debate whether J Street is sufficiently "committed" to Israel to be called a pro-Israel organization.

2011: “Two rockets exploded in Beersheba this morning, and ten mortar shells fell in the Sha'ar Hanegev and Eshkol Regional Councils.

2011: Seventy-nine-year-old actress Elizabeth Taylor who converted to Judaism in 1959, had two Jewish husbands (producer Mike Todd and crooner Eddie Fisher) and was such an ardent supporter of Israel and Jewish causes such as the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate, that her films were “were banned by Muslim countries throughout the Middle East and Africa” passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/23/local/la-me-elizabeth-taylorlong-20110324

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/23/elizabeth-taylor-obituary

2011(17, Adar II, 5771): “One woman died and 50 were injured after an explosion took place at a bus station in central Jerusalem this afternoon.

2011: It was reported today that “The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is trying to identify more than 1,000 children in photos that date from when they were scattered across Europe at the end of World War II and taken in by relief agencies. The museum’s “Remember Me” project seeks the public’s help in identifying 1,100 children among tens of thousands who were uprooted by the war. (Associated Press)

2011(17thof Adar II, 5771): Famed defense attorney Leonard I. Weinglass passed away today at the age of 77. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/us/25weinglass.html

 

2012: “Gripsholm,” a movie about Berlin cabaret life in the inter-war years featuring the life of a German-Jewish publisher as the leading character, is scheduled to be shown in Atlanta, GA.

2012: “Remembrance and “Ahead of Time” are schedule to be shown at the NoVA International Jewish Film Festival in Fairfax, VA.

2012: As a part of the movement started by National Day of Unplugging Jews will begin a weekend complying with the Sabbath Manifesto.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Shabbat_The_Sabbath/Themes_and_Theology/sabbath-manifesto.shtml

2013: Barak Obama is scheduled to return to the United States after completing his first trip to Israel since being elected President.

2013: Violinist Vadim Gluzman and pianist Agnela Yoffe are scheduled to perform at the High School of Fashion Industries.

2013(12thof Nisan, 5773): Shabbat HaGadol

2013: “After the Houston Astros put him on waivers,” today “the Oakland A’s picked up Nate Freiman, “the 26-year-old first baseman, who dominated opposing pitchers during Team Israel’s World Baseball Classic bid last year and who hit .278 for Houston during Spring Training, with 1 HR, two doubles, no walks and 7 whiffs in 36 at-bats.

2013(12thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-three-year-old Canadian born American bodybuilder Joe Weider who along with his brother carved a special niche in the world competitive bodybuilding passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/sports/joe-weider-founder-of-a-bodybuilding-empire-dies-at-93.html

2013: The worsening crisis in Syria necessitated restoring relations with Turkey, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page this evening, explaining the reasoning to his apology to Ankara over the death of nine Turkish activists on board a Gaza-bound flotilla.

 2013: US Secretary of State John Kerry began nitty-gritty efforts at re-starting talks between Israel and the Palestinians with a late night meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

2013: An IDF jeep on patrol near the Syrian border was hit by gunfire this evening. The IDF said the shots were fired from Syria, and that it was "checking the circumstances surrounding the incident."

2014: Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra are scheduled to return to Miami, for a concert featuring Bruckner’s Symphony No.8 in C minor which is being dedicated in memory of Dr. Shulamit Katzman, who was a devoted supporter of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

2014: A youth center in Jönköping in southern Sweden is vandalized with anti-Semitic slurs, including “Jewish pigs,” “you’ll burn in hell,” and swastikas.

2014: “Billionaire diamond magnate Lev Leviev” one of the “most successful Bukharian Jews” and “Israeli philanthropist” was photographed today “writing in a Torah scroll wit Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov and defense minister Moshe Yaalon.”

2014: Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman is scheduled to perform his only New York recital at 8 p.m.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Jewish Poetry Now: Celebrating the Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry”

2014: In New Orleans, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service (one of America’s premiere provider of social services for the Jewish community) is scheduled to hold its Annual Meeting this morning at the Uptown Jewish Community Center.

2014: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to host Robert H. Gillette, author of The Virginia Plan that described the plan of department store own William B. Thalhiemer’s  plan to rescue the students of Gross Breesen Institute and create “a safe haven on Burkeville, VA  farm.

2014: “The Jewish Cardinal” with “Moses on the Mesa” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “The Zigzag Kid” is scheduled to be the last picture shown at this year’s Houston Jewish Film Festival.

2014: The Tulane University Jewish Studies Department under the Chair of Professor Brian Horowitz is scheduled to host a lecture “Tortosa” presented by David Goldstein

2014: “The mystery of where Islamist hackers got phone numbers and email addresses to send threatening text and email messages grew today, when it emerged that a database belonging to the Israel Defense magazine and web site had been hacked over the weekend.” (As reported by David Shamah)

 

2014: “The Foreign Ministry’s Workers Union today declared a full-blown general strike, shutting down the ministry’s headquarters in Jerusalem and all Israeli embassies and consulates across the world.´(As reported by Raphael Ahren)

2014: “Art Spiegelman’s Co-Mix: A Retrospective,” is scheduled to come to a close at The Jewish Museum in New York City

2015: “Touchdown Israel – Tackle Football in the Holyland” is scheduled to be sown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival

2015: Dr. Tom Barton is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the Battle Over Jews in Medieval Spain” in Carlsbad, CA.

2016: The Jews in the American South is scheduled to stop in Beaufort, South Carolina, for a visit to Beth Israel Congregation – formerly Orthodox, now “all-inclusive” – to talk with community members about maintaining religious traditions and Jewish identity in a small town.

2016: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “France, Jewish Identity and the Holocaust: Yellow Stars of Tolerance and Cojot.”

2016: YIVO is scheduled to present “Mixed-Sex Dancing in Yiddish Culture.”

2016: Hadassah Humanitarian Mission to Cuba is scheduled to begin today.

2016: “Next Stop” a “play that follows two Israelis humorously navigating the confusion of dating life in New York City” is scheduled to open at the Broadway Comedy Club.

2016(13thof Adar II, 5776): Fast of Esther; in the evening read the Megillah – for more see

2017: The ten-day Israel Culinary Trip to Israel sponsored by the Streicker Center is scheduled to begin today.

2017: “A months long wave of bomb threats against Jewish institutions in the United States that prompted evacuations, heightened security and fears of rising anti-Semitism gave way to an unexpected twist” today when a Jewish 18-year-old who holds dual Israeli and American citizenship who reported has a brain tumor was arrested and “His father was ordered held for eight days on suspicion that he might have been aware of the threats…”

2017: Today “The Republican-led Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's pick to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, ignoring objections from Democrats that David Friedman lacked the temperament for such an important diplomatic post.”

2017: The American Society for Jewish Music is scheduled to present “Your New House: Wedding Songs, Gender and Memory in an Indian Jewish Community.”

2017: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to host George Prochnik speaking on “Stranger in a Strange Land – Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem.

2018(7thof Nisan, 5778): Eighty-six-year-old Lawrence K. Grossman, the former President of PB and head of NBC news passed away today. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/obituaries/lawrence-k-grossman-head-of-pbs-and-then-nbc-news-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018: Daylight saving time begins at 2:00 A.M in Israel

2018: A Hebrew language performance of the Israeli play “Scoop” is scheduled to take place this evening at the Roy Arias Theatre in New York City.

2018: Liquidation sales of “Toys R Us; the chain founded by Charles Lazarus began today.

2018: This morning, the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.”

 2018: BowTie theatres in Hartford and New Haven, CT. are scheduled to host screenings of “Itzhak,” a film about the life of violinist Itzhak Perlman.

2019(16thof Adar II, 5779):  Parashat Tzav;

2019(16thof Adar II, 5779): Eighty-two-year-old Larry Cohen, the Manhattan born son realtor Irving Cohen and Carolyn Cohen, the prolific movie and television director, producer and screenwriter (as reported by Neil Genzlinger) passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/obituaries/larry-cohen-dead.html

2019: The Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host the “East Coast US premiere” of “The Bird Catcher” which tells the tale of Jews fleeing the Nazis in Norway.

2019: In Jerusalem, the Bible Lands Museum is scheduled to host the last day of its special gallery displays designed to celebrate Purim.

2019: The Bloomfield Science Museum is scheduled to host the final day of “Mirror Image – A Purim of Mirrors and Reflections.

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is schedule to host “Running Breathless: An Untold Story of WWII and the Holocaust.

https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/MAMTAKOGUL0319

2020: Tikvah is scheduled to host Webcast with Caroline Glick on “The New Arab Bloc and the Future of Israeli Sovereignty.”

https://tikvahfund.org/glick/?utm_source=jrb_list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jrb_glick_announcement

2020: The London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to host an on-line version of “Explaining Exodus: Building a House of God – with Rabbi Joseph Dweck.”

2020): 27th of Adar, 5780): Eighty-eighty-year-old Yale trained attorney and “legal crusader” Stanley Sporkin, the Philadelphia born of the former Ethel Weiner and Court of Common Pleas Judges Maurice Sporkin and the husband of Judy Imber with whom he had three children “who, as the chief enforcement officer at the Securities and Exchange Commission, held American corporations accountable for making illicit campaign contributions in the United States and for bribing public officials abroad,” passed away today in Rockville, MD (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/business/stanley-sporkin-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

2020: The 2nd Jewish Africa Conference and Morocco Trip which was scheduled to begin today has been canceled due to the Pandemic.

2020: “#inthistogether: Jewish Unity in History With Natan Sharansky” is scheduled to be presented on-line today at noon, eastern time.

https://www.jewishboston.com/events/inthistogether-jewish-unity-in-history-with-natan-sharansky/

2021: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present online “Leaving Egypt: Passover Prep.”

2021: The Boston-Area Jewish Education Program is scheduled to present online, the “Great BJEP Matazah Bake” during which attendees will “learn the history of this 18-minute bake as they return to their roots like the Israelites in Egypt, now with running water and electricity, to say the very least.”

2021: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “One Night At A Time” during which

Arianna Huffington and Marina Khidekel will discuss the insights gained while writing Your Time to Thrive.

2021: The Jewish Community Center of the North Shore is scheduled to present online “Nafshi Yeshovev: What Lifts My Spirit – An Exploration of Text, Poetry, Music and More” with Rabbi Michael Ragozin.

2021: As Israelis go to the polls for the fourth time in two years, Prime Minister Netanyahu will see if he can “remain in power while on trial on corruption charges.”

  


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

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March 24

 809: Harun al-Rashid (Aaron the Upright, Aaron the Just), fifth caliph of the Abbasid Empire who had issued a decree that Jews wear a yellow belt in 807, passed away.

1244(18th of Nisan): Rabbi Meir Abulafya Ha-Levi (Ramah) an opponent of Maimonides and author of Yad Ramah passed away today.

1267: The government of Barcelona gave the Jews permission to repair their synagogue.

1267: Louis IX, IX who at the request of the Pope Gregory burned “24 cartload of Jewish books in 1242, made plans to expel the Jews after confiscating their property and ordered them to wear a “Jew’s badge” and “to listen to missionary sermons”  and his three sons “took up the Cross” for what was to be the 8th Crusade.

1284: Hugues de Lusignan the son of Henry of Antioch and Isabelle de Lusignan, the daughter of king Hugh I of Cyprus, who, in one of those minor ironies of history, was the King of Jerusalem even though the Christian Crusaders had lost control of the city at the end of the 12th century, passed away today.

1488(13th of Nisan): Rabbi Obadiah Bertinoro, author of a popular Mishnah commentary arrived in Jerusalem

1564: The Pope authorized the printing of the Talmud in Mantua on condition that the word Talmud would be omitted from the text. From the opening years of the sixteenth century, Mantua was a leading center of Jewish printing. A husband-and-wife duo, Abraham and Estellina Conat shared equally in printing and promoting Jewish texts. By the seventeenth century, the situation of the Jews of Mantua had worsened as they, like Italian Jews in many other cities, were forced to live behind Ghetto Walls.

1564: The index of Pius IV. of Trent, which appeared today permitted the Jews to use Hebrew and even Talmudic books, provided they were printed without the word "Talmud," and were purged from vituperations against the Christian religion. The expurgation of Hebrew books, thus expressly declared admissible, was henceforth regularly undertaken before printing, either by the Jews themselves or by Christian correctors; and this accounts for the more or less mutilated state of reprints since the middle of the sixteenth century.

1575(3rdof Nisan, 5335): Joseph Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch, passed away today at Safed.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Caro.html

1603: Queen Elizabeth I passed away at the age of 69, having ruled since 1558. Although Elizabethan England was supposedly Jew-free, there were several small Marrano communities in the British Isles. In 1588, Dr. Hector Nunes, one of these secret Jews provided the English leaders with the invaluable intelligence that the Spanish Armada had reached Lisbon which was its first stop as it headed north to attack England. On the other hand, Dr. Roerigo Lopez was Elizabeth’s physician in 1586 and he ended being accused of being part of a plot to kill the Queen. While the evidence was flimsy, it was thought better to execute him given the many threats against her life. The fate of Lopez gave rise to Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. This in turn inspired Marlowe’s competitor, William Shakespeare to write The Merchant of Venice.

1630(11th of Nisan, 5390): Isaiah Horowitz, Shelah ha-Kadosh (the holy Shelah) passed away in Tiberias.

http://shl2gur.tripod.com/shla.htm

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112346/jewish/Rabbi-Isaiah-Halevi-Horowitz-The-Sheloh.htm

1648(27thof Adar, 5408): Seventy-six-year-old Leon of Modena a Jewish scholar, born in Venice in 1571, of a notable French family which had migrated to Italy after the expulsion of the Jews from France passed away today. He was a precocious child, but, as Graetz points out, his lack of stable character prevented his gifts from maturing. "He pursued all sorts of occupations to support himself, viz. those of preacher, teacher of Jews and Christians, reader of prayers, interpreter, writer, proof-reader, bookseller, broker, merchant, rabbi, musician, matchmaker and manufacturer of amulets." Though he failed to rise to real distinction he earned a place by his criticism of the Talmud among those who prepared the way for the new learning in Judaism. One of Leon's most effective works was his attack on the Kabbala, Ari Nohem, first published in 1840, for in it he demonstrated that the "Bible of the Kabbalists", the Zohar, was a modern composition by Moses de Leon. He became best known, however, as the interpreter of Judaism to the Christian world. At the insistence of an English nobleman he prepared an account of the religious customs of the Synagogue, Riti Ebraici (1637). This book was widely read by Christians; it was rendered into various languages, and in 1650 was translated into English by Edward Chilmead. At the time the Jewish question was coming to the fore in London, and Leon of Modena's book did much to stimulate popular interest. He died at Venice.

1656: After the outbreak of war between England and Spain, Jews living in England petitioned Cromwell to stay insisting that they were not Spaniards but rather Marranos. Although Cromwell chose not to officially reply to today’s request, he permitted the community to establish a Jewish Cemetery, and for protection during prayers. His unwritten agreement was conditioned on there being no public Jewish worship. This is considered by many to mark the official end of the expulsion of the Jews from England.

1664: Roger Williams was granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island. Unlike Massachusetts, Rhode Island was not governed as a theocracy. Rhode Island helped create the atmosphere of toleration that would become the American model thus making the United States a unique place for Jews to live.

1733: Birthdate of British theologian Joseph Priestly who 1786 published “Letter to the Jews” in which he urged them to convert that elicited a length answer from David Levin which led to the publication of his three volume Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Old Testament.

1743(28th of Adar): Rabbi Raphael Immanuel Ricchi author of Mishnat Hasidim passed away

1755: In Binswagen, Germany, Lazarus Liebermann Baldauf and Leopold Loeb Baldauf gave birth to Nathan Baldauf.

1756: Bordeaux, France native Daniel Nones and Ester Alvares gave birth to Sara Nones.

1764(20thof Adar II, 5524): Parashat Shimini; Shabbat Parah

1769(15thof Adar II, 5529) Shushan Purim

1769: On the same day that Jews are reveling in holiday celebrating their deliverance from Haman, the Spanish Inquisition gained new ground as the first two parties set out to build Spanish settlements in Alta California, an area which includes what is now California, Nevada, Utah and portions of four other western states.

1788: In New York, Hannah Isaacks and Jacob Phillips who were married at Newport, RI in 1785 gave birth to Abraham Phillips.

1794: Start of the Kościuszko Uprising. Tadeusz Kościuszko, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, announced the general uprising against the Russian occupiers and assumed the powers of the Commander in Chief of all of the Polish forces. Jews, in a Jewish regiment led by Berek Joselewicz, took part in the failed uprising which led to the third and final partition of Poland in 1795.

1795: Birthdate of Zvi (Zwi) Hirsch Kalischer “an Orthodox rabbi and one of Zionism's early pioneers in Germany.”

1796(14thof Adar II, 5556): Purim observed for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1801: Alexander I became Czar of the Russian Empire. He ruled until his death in 1825. His treated his Jewish subjects poorly at the beginning and at the end of his reign. In the middle years which were marked by the wars with Napoleon, Alexander was impressed by the loyalty of his Jewish subjects in the fight against the French. He received unexpected help from the head of the Chabad Chassidim. Like other Christian leaders, Alexander sought to convert the Jews which was the source of any beneficence he might have shown them. When “killing them with kindness” failed, he went back to killing them with starvation, misery and impoverishment.

1807(14th of Adar II, 5567): Purim

1813: In Argentina, the inquisition was officially abolished. Two months later the Assembly passes regulations allowing freedom of practicing religion if it is observed in one’s home.

1816: Sampson ben Abraham married Pescha bat Shermari Solomon at the Western Synagogue.

1817: Leah and Solomons and Aaron Jacobs gave birth to Edward Jacobs.

1818: American statesman Henry Clay wrote: 'All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government are compatible with liberty.' No, Henry Clay was not Jewish. But his statement on the relationship between government and organized religion provides a clue as to why Jews have flourished in America and how wrong some modern politicians are in their statements about separation of church and state.

1820: Birthdate of Elizabeth Rachel Felix, who gained fame as Mademoiselle Rachel, the great French Tragedienne

1820: First public performance of Marche Funebre et De Profundis en Hebreu, a funeral march composed by Jacques Fromenthal Halevy that had been commissioned by the Consistoire Israélite du Départment de la Seine, for a public service in memory of the Duke de Berry, in the Jewish community's temple. This liturgical composition which helped launch Halevy’s career was meant to be performed by a vocal trio and orchestra. On its engraved title page, Halevy was described as a member of the Royal Institute of Music and a recipient of the patronage of the King of France at the Academy of Rome. One of France's greatest composers, Jacques Fromenthal Halevy (1799-1862), was also the son of a cantor. His father, Elie Halfon Halevy was the secretary of the Jewish community of Paris and a Hebrew teacher and writer as well. Musically gifted, Jacques was accepted as a student by the Paris Conservatory at age ten and subsequently became a member of its faculty, rising to the rank of professor in 1833. His lasting fame was assured by his grand opera La Juive which premiered in 1835.

1822: Birthdate of Solomon Cohn, the native of Zülz, Prussian Silesia who followed in the footsteps of his grandfather Meshuallam Solomon Cohn of Furth and served as a rabbi of several congregations in Germany.

1824: George Aarons married Elizabeth Davis at the Western Synagogue.

1825(5thof Nisan, 5585): Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apt, the son of Chaya Sara and R Shmuel of Neustadt and the founder of the Mezhbizh/Zinkover rabbinic dynasty passed away today.

1829: In Hoorn, Holland, Ribca Eliezer Abendana and Mozes Aron Senior Coronel gave birth to cigar maker Aaron Senior Coronel, the husband of Rebecca “Kitty” Coelho and the father of Rebecca, Moses, Rachael, Samuel, Eleazer and Jacob Coronel.

1830: Joseph ben Moses HaLevi married Esther bat Eliyakum Goetshlik HaCohen at the New Synagogue.

1830: Thirty-nine-year Bavarian native Jesajas Simon Schulein married twenty-nine year old Ann Seuchtwanger.

1841: “Another important step for emancipation was the law adopted today, for Galicia, which promised certain improvements for the Jews of that province who should dress in European costume and acquire a knowledge of either German or Polish”

1843: Birthdate of Sigmund Salfeld, the 1870 graduate of the University of Berlin who in 1880 began serving as a rabbi in Mainz where he passed away in 1926 at the age of 83.

1845: Rebecca Cohen Hart, the New York born daughter of Catherine and Sampson Mears Isaacks, and her husband Abraham Hart gave birth to Catherine (Kate) Hart

1847: In London, Rabbi D.A. De Sola delivered a sermon at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Bevis Marks, on the subject of the Irish Potato Famine which began with the following statement, “"For devastation has gone forth through the land, Death stalks around, with disease in its train...."

1850(11thof Nisan, 5610): Frances Marks, the English born wife of Humphrey Mordecai Marks and the mother of Alexander, Elia, Frederick and Isaac Marks passed away today after which was buried in the Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery in Columbia, SC.

1852: Selig Salomon Philipp married Eveline Albu today in Berlin.

1853: In Jerusalem, English missionaries ended up fighting instead of praying on Good Friday. First, they “were turned out of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because they behaved in an unseemly manner when the Procession of the Host” passed by. Then “a missionary named Crawford preached a sermon outside the Synagogue while the service was going on…and indulged in invectives against the Talmud. One of the Children of Israel incensed this, hurled a dead cat” in his face. A fight then broke out between the Protestant missionaries and the Jews during which “it rained mud and rocks.”

1857: Boston physician John Warren Gorham who had been nominated by President Franklin Pierce as “the first American consul to serve in Jerusalem” arrived in that city today after which “he set up the consulate in a rented building on Mount Zion near the Jaffa Gate.”

1859: In Savannah, GA, Johanna Peyser became Johanna Wessolowsky when she married Charles Wessolowsky

1859: In Laupheim, Germany, Samuel Heilbronner and Emilie Einstein gave birth to Pauline Heilbronner who became Pauline Heilbronner Hirschfeld when she married Leopold Hirschfeld with she had two children—Laura and Bella.

1860(1stof Nisan, 5620): Parashat Vayikra; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChoedsh.

1860: In New York, the Supreme Court granted an “order of the payment of surplus in the case of Hebrew Mutual Benefit Society vs. Fitzpatrick.

1860: An editorial published today that reviewed the current debate over the death penalty stated that the legislature should refrain from discussing “What the law of Moses says on the subject, or how far that law is binding on modern communities; questions which they are not competent to decide” and should stick to the question at hand – should life imprisonment replace hanging as a punishment for murder.

 

1862: Judah P. Benjamin completed his service as Secretary of War for the CSA.

1862: The Purim Association of the City of New York was organized for the purpose of arranging annual Purim balls. Meyer S. Isaacs, prominent New York Lawyer, civic leader and Jewish activist, was one of the founders of the Purim Association which lasted until 1906.

1872(14th of Adar II, 5632): Purim

1872: In New York City, Jacob and Rosalie (Lebrecht) Wiener gave birth Joseph Wiener Columbia University trained surgeon and author Joseph Wiener who was affiliated with several hospital including German Hospital and Mt. Sinai Hospital and who was the husband of Gertrude Strauss.

1872: Hyman Israel, one of the wealthiest members of Beth Israel Bikur Cholim in New York City hosted a Purim Open house at his home on 25th Street. The party included a large number of masked young men and women including the host’s daughter, Miss Annie Israel.

1873: Following a speech by Benjamin Disraeli, the government of Prime Minister Gladstone was defeated on the issue of the Irish University Bill. Disraeli, who was seen as a “Jew” and Gladstone alternated as leaders of British governments during the middle decades of the 19th century.

1874: Birthdate of New York native and builder Joseph Gilbert, “who erected more than 18 skyscrapers in Manhattan before 1925 and who raised two children – Victor and Helen – with his wife https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1958/04/19/81989007.pdf

1874: In Budapest Cecilia Stein and Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz gave birth to Eric Weisz who gained fame as contortionist, acrobat and escape artist Harry Houdini.

https://www.thegreatharryhoudini.com/

https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3711.html

1878: Proving that Jews can be found all over the world, it was reported today that Parva, a Brazilian city deep in the heart of the Amazon on the Equator has a population of 35,000 that “includes a few Jews.

1878: The Young Men’s Hebrew Union hosted an evening of culture at the Norfolk Street Synagogue this evening that included a lecture by A. Oakly Hall on “The Great Pertersham Will Case” followed by a musical program that included a violin solo David Bimberg.

1878: Birthdate of Moissaye Joseph Olgin “a Russian-born writer, journalist, and translator” who was active in the first three decades 20th century

1878: Birthdate of Moissaye Joseph Olgin, a Russian-born writer, journalist, and translator in the early 20th century who founded the Morgen Freiheit, a New York City Yiddish Newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party, among whose stated aims was the promotion of the Jewish labor movement and the defeat of racism in the United States.

1883: In “Kiviska, Russia, Hersh and Brucha Schriber gave birth to Mordechai “Max” Yohlin, the husband of Esther Pressie with whom he had six children – Betty, Mary Rose, Harry and Sylvia – with whom, in 1925 he “immigrated to Philadelphia where he began serving as a congregational rabbi and cantor.

https://library.temple.edu/scrc/mordechai-yohlin-family-papers

1886(8thof Nisan, 5626): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1887: President Grover Cleveland appointed Oscar Solomon Strauss ambassador to Turkey. Strauss was the first American Jew to serve as an ambassador. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt would appoint Strauss Secretary of Commerce and Labor, making him the first American Jew to hold a cabinet post in the government of the United States. The year 1887 was a busy one for the Strauss family. That was the year that Oscar's brothers, Nathan and Isidor bought Macy’s Department Store.

1887: Birthdate of Prague native Karl Arnstein the aeronautical engineer best known for being the chief designer for the lighter than air air-craft  USS Akron and USS Macon

1889: Meier Selig Goldschmidt Selma Cramer the daughter of Salomon Cramer and Therese (Röschen) Oppenheimer today.

1889: Twenty-three-year-old Frankfurt, Germany native Meir Selig Goldschmidt married Selma Cramer, the daughter of Salomon Cramer and Therese (Röschen) Oppenheimer.”

1891(14th of Adar II, 5651): Purim

1891: In South Carolina, Joseph F. Brannon married Rebecca Cecilia Wolfe today.

1892(25thof Adar, 5652): Fifty-four-year-old Moses Mehrbach, a native of Bavaria and the husband of Carolyn Meyer passed away today in New York.

1894: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Dr. Frederic D. Zeman the Columbia trained physician and WWI veteran who was a geriatric specialist and husband of “the former Madeleine Arnold”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/27/archives/frederic-zeman-geriatrist-dies-headed-medical-services-at-jewish.html

1894: The Don Quixote Club will give a benefit performance tonight at the Manhattan Athletic Club Theatre to raise funds for the United Hebrew Charities.

1894: “Rights of Foreign Jews in Russia” published today described an order issued by the Russian Minister of the Interior to the police that they are not to interfere with activities of foreign Jews who have “proper passports” in their possession. The order was issued in response to pressure from various governments whose Jewish citizens have complaint about ill-treatment and expulsion by the Czarist government.

1894: The New York Times stated erroneously that on Friday, March 23, “with the setting of the sun the Hebrew Feast of the Passover began.” (The first Seder would not come until the evening of April 20, with the first day of the holiday falling on April 21.)

1895(28th of Adar, 5655): Babet Karl, the aunt of wealthy real estate lawyer Abraham Stern passed away today in New York.

1895: Professor Felix Adler delivered a lecture this morning at the Carnegie Music Hall entitled “The New View of Childhood and Its Effects on Education.”

1896: Birthdate of Lower East Side native Moses Polakoff, the WW I Navy veteran and NYU trained attorney who worked in the United States Attorney’s office before going into private practice where some of his most notorious clients were Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/14/obituaries/moses-polakoff-is-dead-at-age-97-was-lawyer-for-lucky-luciano.html

1897: It was reported today that during the month of February the United Hebrew Charities had received 3,306 applications for assistance on behalf of 11,020 people.  Jobs were found for 611 people and 466 people were seen by either doctors or nurses. The charity raised $19,253.40 during February and spent $11,736.53.

1897: Birthdate of Wilhelm Reich. He was a Jewish-Austrian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and author, who was trained in Vienna by Sigmund Freud. He passed away in 1957.

1897: “Theatrical Notes” published today described Oscar Hammerstein’s decision revamp his production of “Greater New York.”

1898: Hertig and Seamon have donated the use of the Harlem Music Hall to the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society for tonight’s charity event that will benefit the Society and the Montefiore Home.

1899: It was reported today that Rabbi Joseph Silverman attributes “the long life and freedom from epidemics enjoyed” by the Jews “to their Mosaic laws.  “To the Jew his religion is a philosophy of life” and the Jew “is the only real cosmopolitan” who “can live in any country and enjoy health in every climate.”

1899: The Jewish Messenger reported that Congregation Orach Chaim opened its new sanctuary. "An ornament to Manhattan in general and to the inhabitants of E. 51st in particular, is the handsome new edifice of this synagogue. The only thing that mars the beauty of the structure is the $15,000 mortgage. It would be, indeed, permissible even for the most ultra-orthodox to learn from Roman Catholic neighbors not to dedicate a place of worship in the presence of a mortgage."

1900(23rdof Adar II, 5660): Sixty-eight-year-old “Austrian scholar and author Solomon Joachim Chayim Halberstam, the son of Isaac Halbestram, passed away today.

1901: After a half of a dozen speakers including attorney Clarence Darrow and social worker Jane Adams addressed a meeting that heard about the outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks in Chicago, “the Chicago Protective League was organized” today “to demand that the police protect the Jews.”

1902(15thof Adar II, 5662): Shushan Purim

1902(15thof Adar II, 5662): Poet and author Salomon Mandelkern who was born at Mlynov, Volhynian Governorate in 1846 passed away today in Vienna. Mandelkern, whose son Israel lived in New York, had translated the works of several American writers including Henry W. Longfellow into English.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13144.html

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Mandelkern%2C%20Solomon%2C%201846-1902

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10351-mandelkern-solomon-b-simhah-dob

1903: Sarah Alexander, the daughter of Henry Woolf and Sarah Jane Asher and the wife of Oscar Alexander with whom she had had nine children was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

1903: Birthdate of “Polish novelist and educator Igor Newerly” who was imprisoned by the Nazis for his efforts to rescue Jews – efforts which earned him commendation from Yad Vashem.

http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=4044056

1904: It was reported today that referee Hamilton Odell has selected the Hebrew Technical Institute will receive the residue of the $600,000 the estate of lace importer Simon Goldenberg following the death of his widow Mary Golden, in part because Goldenberg had consider making a revision of his will so he could leave the institute a large amount of money.

1905: The Constitution Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith ended its weeklong meeting in New Orleans.

1906(27thof Adar, 5666): Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudi

1906: It was reported today that a private funeral is scheduled to be held for 8-year-old Julius C. Morgenthau, Jr. the son of Julius C. Morgenthau and Regina L. Rose.

1906: It was reported today that seventy-seven-year-old Edward Bloch who had passed away on March 22 is scheduled to buried tomorrow at the United Jewish Cemetery in Cincinnati, OH.

1907: A meeting of the Executive Board of the Romanian Central Relief Committee was followed today by two mass meetings in synagogues of the east side at which it was decided to request President Roosevelt to take action to relieve the situation in Moldavia.

1908: Albert Lowy, the husband of Gertrude Lindenthal with whom he had had eight children was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1909(2ndof Nisan 5669): Sixty-two-year-old Bavarian born, Virginia raised political leader Herman Myers, the Mayor of Savannah, GA passed away today.

1909(2ndof Nisan, 5669): Fifty-five-year-old German architect Alfred Messel whose most famous work was the Wertheim Department store on Leipziger Platz and who became a Protestant in 1899 passed away today.

1910: Birthdate of Gyula Ortutay, the anti-fascist political leader who while serving as the country’s Minister of Religion and Education in 1947 “visited Jewish grammar schools and in a brief address to the students, expressed sympathy and understanding for the sufferings of the Jews under previous pro-Nazi regimes, but pleaded for “forgiveness and cooperation in the reconstruction of Hungary.”

1911: Birthdate of Tyler Kent, the anti-Semitic son of an American diplomat who used his position as cypher clerk to steal and share secret documents the anti-Semitic Right Club, that if exposed would have helped destroy efforts by FDR and Churchill to fight the Nazis before America entered WW II.

1911: Reports reached the West of the massacre and looting of Moroccan Jews.

1911: Harry Lapidus, the president of the Omaha (Neb) Fixture Supply Company and Minnie K. Kooler Lapidus Earl A. Lapidus, the U.S. Naval Graduate who rose to the rank of Lieutenant before dying in the South Pacific during WW II.

Seventy-six-year-old Minnie K. Kooler Lapidus, the wife of 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 and the mother of Estelle and Earl Lapidus passed away today after which she was buried at the Fisher Farm Cemetery in Bellevue, Nebraska.

1912: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America held its “Thirteenth Biennial Meeting” today.

1912: Birthdate of Isaac Edward Lending, the son of Bronx owner of a textile trimmings business who reversed the order of his name to Edward Issac Lending – the name he used as a journalist and a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

1913(15thof Adar II, 5673): Shushan Purim

1913(15thof Adar II, 5673): Forty-six-year-old Viennese native Dr. Maximilian Max Reiner the son of Agnes and Dr. Michael Reiner and husband of Paula Reiner passed away today in Italy.

1914: Today, Morris Gintzler, the Hungarian born son of Emil and Saly Gintzler, and his wife Rose Gintzler gave birth to Dorothy Helen Gintzler who became Dorothy Helen Perlberg when she married Charles Perlberg with whom she had two daughters – Rose and Jane.

1915: In Lynn, MA, Ann and Israel Sack gave birth to Albert Milton Sack the “prominent New York antiques dealer and the author of a guidebook to early American furniture that became the bible for a generation of weekend antiquers and a standard for professional collectors.”

1915: Among those listed today as contributors to the fund of the American Jewish Relief Committee were the Calgary, Alberta, Jewish Relief Committee, Congregation House of Israel, Hot Springs, AR; the Sunday School of the Hebrew Bible Class Association, Newport News, VA and the Ladies Temple Sisterhood of B’nai Jeshurun, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1915: An eyewitness account of the Austrian surrender of Przemsyl to the Russians sent from Petrograd to London today described the destruction of fortification but reported that except for the outskirts, “town itself” most of whose occupants were Jews who had stayed during the fight was “intact.”  (Editor’s note – The Jews stayed because they had not place to go and they were subject to anti-Semitic outburst by those on both sides of the fight.)

1915: The Jews are among the many groups fleeing Constantinople today based on a fear of Russian invasion of the Ottoman capital.

1916: Final arrangements were completed today “for the bazaar for the benefit of the Jewish war sufferers of Europe” which opens tomorrow in the Grand Central Palace” and “is one of the largest undertakings yet attempted by the Jews of New York to raise funds for the relief of their suffering co-religionists in Europe.

1916: In New York, “The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War” received word today that a successful meeting had been held last night at B’nai Emuno Synagogue in St. Louis where “many wept when Rabbi Masliansky and Rabbi Abranowitz described “the sufferings of the Jews in the war zones.”

1917: Based on reports that the political and religious emancipation of the Jews are about to be removed along with “the passport restrictions which have rendered it impossible for American Jews to travel in Russia” the U.S. “State Department has already received a number of applications from American Jews” wishing to go to Russia.

1917: In an interview given today, Dr. Israel Friedlaender, the Professor of Biblical Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary predicted that as a result of the Russian Revolution there would be a “great diminution in the volume of Jewish emigration from Russia to the United States and the return of many thousands of recent emigrants” to Russia “which now offers them the liberty in search of which they had fled” to the United States and “Russian-American Jews” would “play a great part in the industrial upbuilding of their native land.”

1917: According to a letter from Oscar S. Straus published today, “Now that the magnificent uprising of democracy in Russia appears to have opened a new and glorious future for that country with equal rights for the oppressed nationalities, Jewish sentiment in America in favor of the Allied cause may be safely counted upon to become unanimous.”

1917: Birthdate of Brooklynite Alex Steinweiss, the son of women’s shoe designer and a seamstress, who as “an art director and graphic designer…brought custom artwork to record album covers and invented the first packaging for long-playing records.” (As reported by Steven Heller)

1918: At the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall, Dr. Wise is scheduled to speak on “Vies and uses, Right and Wrong, of Friendship and Love.”

1918: Samuel Bayer was elected President today “at a special meeting of the Board of Directors of the Uptown Talmud Torah.

1918: Congressman Julius Kahn is scheduled to address the Institutional Synagogue meeting at Mt. Morris Theatre on “American In and After the War.”

1918: “Resolutions were adopted” today at the annual meeting of the Trustees of Mt. Sinai Hospital “complimenting Geroge Blumenthal, the President, on the successful execution of the duties of the various offices he has held with that institution during the last twenty-five years.”

1918: In Chicago, Ida and Abe "Melech" Levin give birth to Joseph B. Levin.

1918: At Temple Beth-El is scheduled to speak on War and Democracy at 11 o’clock this moring.

1919: On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, North Carolina native Louis Heilbroner, the founder of a successful “chain of men’s clothing stores” and Helen Heilbroner gave birth to American economist Robert Heilbroner, the author of some twenty books, best known for The Worldly Philosophers published in 1953, which is a survey of the lives and contributions of famous economists, notably Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/obituaries/robert-heilbroner-writer-and-economist-dies-at-85.html

https://s-usih.org/2014/05/marginalized-economists-revisiting-robert-heilbroner-guest-post-by-rachel-m-cohen/

1919: Alvey A. Adee, the Second Assistant Secretary wrote to Dr. Pierre Siegelstein, the President of the Rumanian Hebrew Aid Society that the State Department had “received a message…from the Union of Native Jews of Rumania” in Bucharest asking that Rumanian Jews in America do everything in their power to “send money, food, underwear, clothing and shoes” because “misery is very great with all.

1920: Birthdate of Cracow native Mieczyslaw Pemper, the concentration camp inmate who actually compiled what came to be known as “Schindler’s List.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/world/europe/19pemper.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8578020/Mietek-Pemper.html

1920: The annual convention of Sigma Epsilon Delta Fraternity whose member incuded Samuel Hess, Ben Horn, and Milton Bermas to place today in New York City.

1921(14thof Adar II, 5681): Purim

1921: The Chief Rabbinate of Palestine was established under the British Mandate. The first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Palestine was the scholar and sage, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook was one of the leading intellectual and religious leaders during the Yishuv period.

1921: “The Palestine Bazar” organized by the Manchester Branch of the Jewish National Fund Commission for England for which Winston Churchill, MP acted as patron was scheduled to come to an end today.

1921: Winston Churchill’s train arrived in Gaza, the first large town he would visit on his trip to Palestine.

1922: “Ludwig II” a silent biopic directed by Otto Kreisler was released today in Austria.

1922: In Bradford, Yorkshire, Eava Samuel and Abraham Ludman gave birth to Jeffrey Ludman who passed away before he reached the age of three months.

1922: In an attempt to calm Arab fears over Jewish immigration to Palestine, Churchill “approved a proposal from Sir Herbert Samuel that Jewish immigration would be limited by the ‘economic capacity’ of Palestine to absorb newcomers.” Of course, Churchill saw that Palestine would have a growing economic capacity given the improvements brought about the Jewish settlers.

1923: In Baltimore, MD, Robert Debuskey, “a wine salesman” and “Freda (Blaustein) Debuskey gave birth to Basil Merle Debuskey the press agent who was a major influence on the productions of Joseph Papp.  (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/obituaries/merle-debuskey-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1924: In Philadelphia, Samuel Feld and Edna Rosenfeld gave birth to Norman Noah Feld, the native of Philadelphia and WW II veteran who gained fame as actor Norman Fell whose most lasting role came as Mr. Roper in the television hit “3’s Company.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/16/nyregion/norman-fell-74-actor-known-for-tv-role.html

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

1924: Birthdate of Michael Hamburger the native of Berlin whose family settled in the United Kingdom in 1933 where he attended Oxford, served in the British Army during WW II after he which he pursued an academic career which was noted for his translation of the works of several authors from German into English.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jun/11/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries

1925: Today “the Central Education Committee (Tsentrale Bildungs Komitet or TSBK), the Vilna branch of the Central Yiddish School Organization (Tsentrale Yidishe Shul Organizatsye or TSYSHO) and the Vilna Education Society (Vilner Bildungs Gezelshaft or VILBIG) met to discuss Nochum Shtif’s memorandum,” “in which he outlined and   a plan for an academic Yiddish institute and library” which they approved in a brochure entitled, Di organizatsye fun der yidisher visnshaft (The Organization of Yiddish Scholarship, Vilna, April 1925).

1926: “The New York Board of Jewish Ministers” under the leadership of Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach met at Temple Emanu-El today and “endorsed the appeal to raise $50,000 for the New York Public Library” where “a collection of rare material depicting the history of Jews in Oriental countries” is about to go on display.

1926: Mrs. Joffe of the Women’s Branch of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America wrote a letter today to arrange for out-of-town students studying in New York to be placed in homes at no charge where they will “be furnished all meals during the coming Passover holidays.”

1927: “Out of the Mist” a silent film produced by Karl Freund and featuring Vladimir Sokoloff as “Poleto” was released today in Germany.

1927: The “campaign workers for the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities” met at the Unity Club on Bedford Avenue where “Supreme Court Justice Mitchell May, President of the Federation” said “that a recent influx of Jews into Brooklyn had increased the demands on the Federation” and it as announced that so far $125,000 had been raised in the drive to raise $2,500,000.

1928: Birthdate of Bronx native and Iowa Hawkeye alum Melvin “Mel” Rosen who went from being a successful collegiate middle-distance runner to being the highly successful track coach at Auburn University.

http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=140

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/sports/mel-rosen-coach-of-powerful-92-olympics-track-team-dies-at-90.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1932: Birthdate of New York native and Yale graduate Lawrence Jerome Schniderman, the Harvard trained physician and husband of pianist Barbara Goldman with whom he had four children –Rob, Claudia Heidi and Tanya.

1933: “The Enabling Act (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) an amendment to the Weimar Constitution that gave the German Cabinet – in effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichsta passed in both the Reichstag and Reichsrat today and was signed by President Paul von Hindenburg later that day.

1933: Three weeks after premiering in New York City, “King Kong” with music by Max Steiner premiered on the West Coast today in Los Angeles.

1934: “Once to Every Woman” a movie version of short story by the same name with a script co-authored by Jo Swerling was released in the United States today.

1935: Edward M.M. Warburg, the son of Felix M. Warburg and William Rosenwald of Philadelphia, one of the co-chairman of the UJA addressed “a dinner tonight at which the Jews of Boston began to raise one hundred thousand dollars toward the $3, 250,000 sought by the United Jewish Appeal for the relief of European Jews.”

1936(1st of Nisan, 5696): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1936: Polish Charge d’Affaires Wladyslaw wrote a letter to Dr. Cyrus Adler explaining that his country’s newly adopted Slaughter Reform Bill, which put an end to kosher slaughtering was really just a way to “adjust the abnormal conditions existing in the Polish cattle meat industry” which are caused by the differences in the way Christians and Jews consumer meat.

1936: Mrs. Leo Sulzberger is scheduled to president over today’s open meeting of the New York section of the National Council of Jewish Women is being held in the synagogue at Welfare Island.

1936(1stof Nissan, 5696): Sixty-five-year-old Maryville, MD native Hattie Kahn, the wife of Adolph Kahn and a national director of the National Council of Jewish Women passed away today in Miami Beach.

1936: The House of Commons discussed a proposal for setting up a Legislative Council in Palestine that would give the Arabs control over the future of Jewish immigration into Palestine i.e. the end of such immigration and the Zionist dream. Churchill delivered a stirring speech against the proposal.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that in London the Secretary for the Colonies, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, was asked in the House of Commons what steps had been taken to prevent any future Arab disturbances and why Palestinian Jews were not allowed the same right of self-defense as enjoyed by the British people.

1937: “The work of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem may help to bring about a better understanding between the two racial groups of the Palestine Population, Professor Hugo Bergman,” the chair of the modern philosophy department and rector of the university “declared” tonight “at a dinner given in his honor by the American friends of the Hebrew University at the Waldorf-Astoria” in NYC.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that The High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope, visited the Jezreel Valley and discussed matters of security at Merhavia and Balfouria. An announcement was later made that over 700 supernumerary constables would be re-enlisted for service in the north of the country.

1938: “More than 450 persons attended a luncheon today at the Hotel Astor marking the opening of the Greater New York campaign of the United Palestine Appeal, the $4,500,000 national campaign for the settlement in Palestine of Jews of Germany, Austria, Poland, Rumania and other lands.”

1938: “Joseph Buerckel, Nazi leader from the Saar, who is in charge of the Anschluss plebiscite in Austria, April 10, opened the plebiscite campaign tonight with a speech delivered, at the Vienna Konzerthaus” which consisted mainly of an “incitement against the terrorized Austrian Jews.”

1939: “Wuthering Heights” the movie version of the novel by the same name directed by William Wyler, produced by William Wyler, with a script co-authored by Ben Hecht and music by Alfred Newman premiered in Hollywood tonight.

1939: New York Governor Lehman praised Young Judaea “on its thirty-first anniversary celebration” taking place this month.

1939: In response to “Britain’s threat stop land purchases by Jews in Palestine,” “Hadassah…contributed $25,000 today to the Jewish National Fund ‘to assure the immediate purchase of land areas now held under option in the Jewish National Home.’”

1940: An hour-long production of “June Moon” co-authored by George S. Kaufman co-starring Jack Benny and Benny Rubin was presented today.

1941: After receiving a transit visa from the United States, poet Anna Seghers, her husband, László Radványi and their children left France where they could no longer stay because of the Nazi occupation for America today.

1941: In Chicago, Ester Huff and William Masser gave birth to Michael William Masser, the Chicago born stockbroker turned popular music composer.

1942: “To the Shores of Tripoli” a paean to Patriotism featuring Max “Slapsie Maxie” Rosenbloom with music by Alfred Newman was released in the United States today.

1942(6th of Nisan, 5702): Agronomist and journalist Joel Shubin, who was “an alleged Communist International representative to the American Communist Party” and the Soviet Deputy Minister of Agriculture” passed away today either from “lung disease” or as the victim of a political liquidation.

1944(28th of Adar, 5704): In Markowa, a patrol of German police came to the house of Wiktoria and Józef Ulm, where they found 8 Jews, members of the Szall and Goldman families. First the Germans executed all the Jews. Then they shot down pregnant Wiktoria and her husband. When the 6 children began to scream at the scene of dead bodies of their parents, Jozef Kokott, a German policeman (killed them. Markowa was a Polish village near Lancut. During World War II many families hid their Jewish neighbors to help them survive the Holocaust. It is estimated that at least 17 Jews survived the war in Markowa. Seven members of Weltz family were hidden in a barn of Dorota and Antoni Szylar. Jakub Einhorn was hidden by Jan and Weronika Przybylak and the Jakub Lorbenfeld family was hidden by Michal Bar. Two girls from Reisenbach family were initially hidden by Stanislaw Kielar, before joining the rest of 5 members’ of the family in the house of Julia and Józef Bar. Righteous Gentiles came in all shapes and sizes. Some were industrialists called Oksar and others were simple peasants who showed real courage.

1943: In Berne, “a well-informed said today” that “the Vichy regime has resumed the shipment of Jews to Eastern Europe” as can be seen by “a contingent of 2,500 foreign Jews” having been placed in cattle cars without food for the five or six day trip from “a camp near Lourdes” to Poland

1944: An unidentified Turkish Jew who was an eyewitness to the event, reported to the United States government that on this date the Germans had deported all the registered Jews of Athens.

1944: Following the refusal of Elias Barzilai, the Chief Rabbi of Athens, to provide the Germans with a list of Jews, “the Germans lured Jews into Beth Shalom Synagogue” today with an offer of “free matzoth for Pesach.”

1944: Shlomo Venezia and his family were deported from Thessaloniki to Athens before being shipped to Auschwitz.

1944: In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in the Ardeantine Caves Massacre.

1944: As the Nazis assert control over Hungary, President Roosevelt warns the Hungarians “to refrain from anti-Jewish measures.” (As reported by the Jewish Virtual Library)

1944: Two British constables were killed in Tel Aviv and three others were killed in Haifa when a bomb exploded at the Criminal Investigation Department headquarters in Haifa. These and other attacks conducted tonight were believed to be the work of the Stern Gang and were condemned by The Tel Aviv Municipal Council and the Federation of Jewish Labor.

1945: A train carrying 200 Jewish women, exhausted from a death march from Neusalz, Poland, arrived at Bergen-Belsen, Germany.

1945: The Arabs held protest demonstrations at the same time that their leaders rejected a compromise that would have rotated the position of Mayor of Jerusalem among members of the Jewish, Arab and British communities. The Jews had agreed to the compromise even though 61 per cent of the city’s population was Jewish.

1946: New York’s “Governor Dewey gave his full support” today “to the current $35,000,000 camptaing of the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York in a special message telephone from Albany to a meeting of the UJA’s Council of Organizations at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.”

1947: Birthdate of Minneapolis native and Northwestern University trained journalist Alan Wiseman, the husband of sculptor Beckie Kravetz.

1947: Dr. Nahum Goldman is scheduled to leave Palestine today for London and New York so that he can begin planning for the upcoming meeting of the special sessions of the United Nations that has been called to deal with the problem of Palestine.

1948(13thof Adar, 5708): Ta’anit Esther and Erev Purim

1948: Seventy-four year old Russian philosopher and author Nikolai Berdyaev whose The Meaning of History “credits the Jews with being the first people to contribute the concept of ‘historical’ to world history thereby discharging ‘the essence of their specific mission’” and further contended that Jews did not merely grasp “the significance of the past and present” but “were also the first people to link these up with the future” as can be seen in The Book of Daniel which “is one of the first well-defined expressions of the true philosophy of history.

1948: It was announced today the Israel “Rogosin, president of the Beaunit Mills, Inc., has been appointed chairman of the $600,000 fund raising campaign of the American Memorial to Six Million Jews of Europe, Inc.” which plans to erect “a memorial as a symbol of brotherhood and peace on Riverside Drive, in New York City.”

1949: Today, “the Israeli Foreign Ministry is making a determined bid to convince the Soviet bloc countries that recent restrictions on the departure of Jews to Israel are incompatible with their strong support for the new state in the United Nations.”

1950(6th of Nisan, 5710): Harold Joseph Laski an “English political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946” passed away.

1950(6thof Nisan, 5710):Thirty-four year old Brooklyn born NYU basketball star Simon Boardman who was appointed “director of physical education at the Atlantic City Technical High School after his service in WW II passed away today, leaving his wife Harriet and his mother Rose to mourn his passing.

1950: An Israeli government official “said today that Jordan suddenly broke off negotiations on a five-year non-aggression pact” between the two countries which was close to completion. “Earlier today, a high diplomatic source in Beirut reported the break in negotiations had been forced by the resignation last week of Jordan’s Premier Tewfik Abul Huda.”

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the atmosphere at the opening of the Hague reparations talks between world Jewry and West Germany was "official, cool and tense." The German delegation claimed that their willingness to make reparations was restricted by Allied legislation.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that in Jerusalem a man who escaped from a mental home was shot and killed by an Arab Legion sentry near the Jaffa Gate. Infiltrators murdered Mordecai Harkabi, a watchman from Hadera.

1953(8thof Nisan, 5713): Archie L. Cohn, the husband of Edith Cohn passed away today in New York City.

1954: Birthdate of actress Donna Pescow, the Brooklyn native who played “Annette” in the disco classic “Saturday Night Fever.”

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Eighty-year-old Polisn native Martha Esther Cahn, the daughter of Rachel and Moses Isaac Binon and the wife of Edward Cahn passed away today.

1955: “Man Without A Star” a movie version of a novel by the same name produced by Aaron Rosenberg and starring Kirk Douglas was released today in the United States.

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Terrorists threw hand grenades and opened fire on a crowd at a wedding in the farming community of Patish, in the Negev, killing a young woman and wounding 18 others.

1955: United States Customs officials seize copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" because it was obscene.

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Three days after celebrating her 80th birthday, Martha Esther Cahn, the daughter of Rachel and Moses Isaac Binion and wife of Edward Cahn with whom she had three children – Alma, Ruth and Joshua – passed away today.

1956: In Brattleboro, VT, Kitty Prins Shmulin and “George J. Shumlin, a third generation American who was Jewish, and descended from Russian immigrants” gave birth to Peter Elliott Shumlin, the 81st Governor of Vermont.

1956: Actress Rita Gam, to Yale Graduate and WW II Marine Corps veteran “Thomas H. Guinzburg, the son of Harold K. Guinzburg, publisher of the Viking Press” began their “European wedding trip.”

1956: In Detroit, Frederic Henry Ballmer, the Swiss born “manager at the Ford Motor Company” and Beatrice Dworkin, whose Jewish family had come from Belarus gave birth to Steve Ballmer, Vice President of Microsoft.

1958: Seventy-eight-year-old Seumas O’Sullivan the husband of Irish artist Estella Francis Solomons the daughter of Maurice Solomons “an optician whose practice in 19 Nassau St., Dublin, is mentioned in Ulysses” and the brother-in-law of Bethel Solomons, a physicians who was a supporter of the 1916 Easter Rising.

1959(14thof Adar II, 5719) Purim

1960: An English production of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song” opened today in London’s Palace Theatre where it “ran for 464 performances.

1961(7thof Nisan, 5721): Ninety-year-old Brooklyn born Columbia law school grad Mitchell May whose political career included serving as a member of the House of Representatives and serving 18 years as a Justice of the New York Supreme Court.

https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=M000276

1961: Birthdate of Jamaica, Queens NY native and Yale University Ph.D. Jeffrey I. Herbst, the former President of Colgate University and President of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles who is the husband of Sharon Polansky, the father of Matthew, Spence and Alna Herbst and the brother of Susan Herbst, the 15th President of the University of Connecticut and the first women to hold that position.

1961: “Town Without Pity” starring Kirk Douglas and with music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released in West Germany today.

1961(7thof Nisan, 5721): Fifty-six-year-old New York born Harvard graduate Manfred I. Behrens, Jr., the husband of the former Marjorie Wortman, with whom he had two children – Jill and Manfred, 3rd– who was one of the country’s leading authorities on retailing” and a trustee of the Jewish Board of Guardians passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/03/25/118030498.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1964: “The Fall of the Roman Empire” produced by Samuel Bronston and with a score by Dimitri Tiomkin was released today in the United Kingdom.

1965: In Chicago, “Lynn Straus and news anchor Walter Jacobson gave birth to Brown University trained actor Peter Jacobs best known for his portrayal of “Dr. Chris Taub.”

1965: “The Sucker” a comedy directed by Gérard Oury was released in France today.

1965: Shlomo-Yisrael Ben-Meir began serving as Deputy Minister of Health.

1965: Rabbi Saul Leeman of Cranston and Rabbi William G. Braude were among those marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

http://jwa.org/media/what-i-learned-in-alabama-about-yarmulkes

1968: This afternoon Suzie Burger, a 7 1/2-year-old artist, helped dedicate the new Henry Kaufmann Building at the 92d Street Young Men's-Young Women's Hebrew Association.

1969(5thof Nisan, 5729): Seventy-eight-year-old Neville Laski, the British jurist who was the brother of Harold Laski passed away today.

1969: Birthdate of Munir Amar, the Druze general and Head of the IDF Civil Adminsitration whose life was cut short at the age of 47 in a tragic plane crash.

1970: “King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery To Memphis” a documentary produced by Ely Landau and Richard J. Kaplan, directed by Sidney Lumet and Joseph L. Mankiewicz  and co-starring Paul Newman was released today in the United States today.

1970: “It Takes A Thief” which had co-starred Malachi Thorne in its first two seasons completed its run in prime time television.

1971: ABC broadcast the final episode of “The Young Lawyers” a legal drama starring Lee J. Cobb and with music by Lalo Schifrin.

1972: An estimated 50,000 mourners accompanied Rabbi Chaim Meir Hager’s aron to its final resting place. He had been revered as Vizhnitzer Rebbe for 35 years.

1972: Nine days after premiering in New York City, “The Godfather” produced by Albert S. Ruddy and co-starring James Caan and featuring Abe Vigoda was released across the United States today.

1973(20th of Adar II, 5733): Seventy-four-year-old award-winning Israeli novelist Haim Hazaz passed away. A native of the Ukraine, he made Aliyah in 1931. His only son, Nahum died during the War of Independence. Hazaz spent the last decade of his life in Talbiya.

1974: Henry Kissinger arrived in Moscow for a four-day visit.

 

1975: Eliyahu Moyal replaced Jabr Muadi as Deputy Minister of Communications.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that a Haifa Labor Court ordered the striking Haifa and Ashdod port workers to return to work, but they were still debating whether to respond to the court's orders.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that five hundred and eleven out of 566 members of the Herat's Central Committee voted for Menachem Begin to head the party's list for the forthcoming Knesset elections.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that leading Israeli scientists gathered at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot to protest against the latest wave of Soviet persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union.

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): Shabbat HaChodesh

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): Eighty-year-old Sir Jacob Edward Cohen, founder of the Tesco supermarket chain passed away.

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): Sixty-three-year-old British actress Yvonne Mitchell passed away today in London

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): One person was killed, and 13 people were injured, most of them lightly, when an explosive charge blew up in a trash can in Zion Square in Jerusalem.

1981(18thof Adar II, 5741): Eighty-four-year-old Nathaniel Lawrence Goldstein who served as New York State Attorney General from 1943 to 1954 passed away.  A Republican, he teamed with Thomas E. Dewey to break the Democratic hold on Albany.

1981: Today Saudi Arabia rejected a suggestion by the Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres that he would try to explore the possibility of peace with the Saudis if his Labor Party wins the Israeli general elections on June 30.

 

1981: In “About Education; Nature vs. Nature: Psychologist Urges Active Intervention,” published today Dr. Reuven Feuerstein the clinical psychologist serving as director of the Youth Aliyah Research Institute, professor of psychology at Tel Aviv University and adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University, explains his unique views on mental health including the concept of intelligence. “Heredity, shemeredity! You have to do something” is his answer to the endless argument over whether disadvantaged children do poorly in school because of inherited traits or because of their environment. The human organism is an open system, very plastic. It can be changed and modified. The question is whether educators have the will, the confidence to do something.”

1983: “The City Council committee on consumer affairs held today the second hearing in City Council history on kosher food prices and recommended that the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs and State Attorney General Robert Abrams investigate widespread charges of price fixing in Kosher-for-Passover products. (JTA)

1984(20th of Adar II, 5744): Ninety-three-year-old Sam Jaffe who performed with Cary Grant in Gunga Din, with Marilyn Monroe in Asphalt Jungle and Charlton Heston in Ben Hur (amongst other accomplishments) passed way.

http://www.mtv.com/artists/sam-jaffe/biography/

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2506&dat=19840325&id=SXhJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SgsNAAAAIBAJ&pg=885,7539643

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19840326&id=mr4yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=S-8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=4470,3041652

1984(20thof Adar II, 5744): Seventy-one-year-old Judah Cahn, “the founding rabbi of the Metropolitan Synagogue of New York and past president of the New York Board of Rabbis” passed away today. (As reported by David Bird)

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/26/obituaries/judah-cahn-founding-rabbiof-metropolitan-synagogue.html

1986(13th of Adar II, 5746): Reb Moshe Feinstein, a leading expert on Halachah, passed away 21 days after celebrating his 91st birthday.

1987: In New Haven, CT, Dr. Ira and Karen Zeid gave birth to major league pitcher Joshua Alexander ("Josh") Zeid who played college ball at Tulane University where majored in English.

1988(6thof Nisan, 5748): Fifty-six-year-old artist Mary Ellen Mendes, the daughter of Milton and Muriel Rosenbluth and the wife of Jonathan de Sola Mende with whom she had two children passed away today in Bethesda, MD after which she was buried in Kings County, NY.

https://www.maryellenart.com/

 

1989: A videotape version of the 1960 production of “Peter Pan” a musical by Mark "Moose" Charlap, with additional music by Jule Styne, and most of the lyrics written by Carolyn Leigh, with additional lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green was broadcast today.

1991: Rabi Laurence Kotok officiated at the wedding of Nancy Anne Stein and David Mark Woolf at the North Country Reform Temple.

1991: Mr. and Mrs. Sam Witchel of Scarsdale N.Y. have announced the engagement of their daughter Alexandra Rachelle Witchel to Frank Hart Rich Jr.., a son of Mr. Rich and Mrs. Joel Fisher, both of Washington. A June wedding is planned. Ms. Witchel, 33 years old and known as Alex, is a reporter in the news department of The New York Times. She writes the "On Stage, and Off" column. Mr. Rich, 41, has been the chief drama critic of The Times since 1980.

1992: “Jakes Women” written by Neil Simon and directed by Gene Saks opened at the Neil Simon Theatre.

1993: Award winning author John Hersey passed away. While most of the world remembers the non-Jewish Hersey for his writings about Hiroshima, many Jews remember him for his epic novel, The Wall. It was one of the first and finest books to be written about events during the Holocaust. In this case, The Wall, portrayed the events leading up to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1993: Ezer Weizman was elected President of Israel. The nephew of Chaim Weizman enjoyed a distinguished military career before entering politics. He flew for the RAF during World War II and was one of the founders of what would become the Israeli Air Force. He played an instrumental role in developing it into one of the finest military units of its kind in the world.

1994(12th of Nisan, 5754): Fast of the First Born observed since the 14th Nisan is on Shabbat

1996: In “The Jew Who Fought to Stay German” published today famed Israeli author Amos Elon uses the recent publication of Victor Klemperer’s "Diaries 1933-1945" to review this unique literary work and to examine the world in which this “disenfranchised German Jew” struggled to survive as he came to grips with the reality the “real” Germany despites his best efforts to deny that reality.

1998: Today Howard Epstein “was elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for the New Democratic Party representing the provincial riding of Halifax Chebucto.”

2000: Pope John Paul’s visit to “the Holy Land which included a trip to Yad Vashem “where he bowed his…in a long silence that filled the cold dark Hall of Remembrance” continued today

2001: “Inherit The Wind” the controversial play co-authored by Jerome Lawrence is scheduled to have its final performance at the Sheffel Theatre of the Topeka (Kansas) Civic Theatre & Academy.

2002(11thof Nisan, 5762): Seventy-four-year-old Noble prize winner Cesar Milstein and husband of Celia Prilleltensky passed away today in Cambridge, England.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1984/milstein-bio.html

2002: The New York Times included a review of The Good, The Bad &The Difference: How to Tell Right from Wrong in Everyday Situations by Randy Cohn, a Jewish author born in Charleston, South Carolina.

2003(20thof Adar II, 5763): Eighty-eight year old Academy award winning screenwriter Philip Yordan passed away today in La Jolla, CA.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/apr/09/guardianobituaries.film

2004(2ndof Nisan, 5764): Eighty –three-year-old former Congressman Joshua Eilberg passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/mar/27/local/me-eilberg27

2005: Paula Abdul “was fined $900 and given 24 months of informal probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor hit-and-run driving in Los Angeles.”

2005: Broadcast of a re-union episode of Krovim Krovim an Israeli television sitcom.

2006: The Japanese Foreign Ministry “issued a position paper” today “that there was no evidence the Ministry imposed disciplinary action on Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who defied his government while serving in Lithuania by issuing thousands of transit visas to Jews enabling them to escape the Nazis.

2006: Lily Elstein held the first concert at the former Mivtahim Inn in Zichron Yaakov which she purchased January of 2006.

2006: Hazel Josephine Cosgrove, Lady Cosgrove, completed her service as a Senator of the College of Justice.

2008: Time features an article entitled “Israel’s Secret War” which describes the “invisible battle being waged in the West Bank as Israel uses a mailed fist and a network of Palestinian informers to stop suicide bombers before they can reach their targets.” As one IDF officer said, “Our people sleep comfortably because the IDF is putting in a huge effort in the West Bank to prevent terror.”

2008: The New Yorker published “The Region of Unlikeness” by Rivka Galchen.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/03/24/the-region-of-unlikeness

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “A Festival of Hebrew Literature,” with David Grossman, Etgar Keret, Meir Shalev and Zeruya Shalev.

2008: Edmund “Levy was elected by the Supreme Court justices to serve on the Judicial Selection Committee in place of the court's Vice-President Eliezer Rivlin.”

2009: The Princeton Program on Judaic Studies presents “A Celebration of Tel Aviv at 100” featuring talks by Todd Hasak-Lowy (University of Florida) on “Tel Aviv's Accelerated History,” and Alona Nitzan-Shiftan (Technion) on “Architecture from the Sand” and a ‘screening of the first two installments of the new Israeli documentary "Tel Aviv," with creators Modi Bar-On and Anat Zeltser.

2009: In an event co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel, Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret, author of the short story collections “The Nimrod Flipout” and “The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God and Other Stories,” as well as creator of the award-winning film "Malka Red-Heart," discusses the relationship between the short story and film as part of the Nextbook series at the D.C. Jewish Community Center.

 

2009: An effort to auction off bankrupt Agriprocessors has been continued to next week after two days of bidding failed to yield an offer acceptable to the largest creditor.

2009: Senior Labor minister Isaac Herzog announced his support for party leader Ehud Barak's bid to bring the center-left Labor into a coalition headed by Prime Minister-Designate Benjamin Netanyahu.

2010: The Knesset's State Control Committee is scheduled to hold a special hearing today to discuss the cabinet's decision to delay proceeding on a rocket-resistant emergency room for Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon while a new location is sought to avoid tampering with old graves.

2010: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “From Black Market to Dinner Table: International Clandestine Aid and Its Hungarian Jewish Recipients in the 1950s” as part of its graduate seminar program.

2010: Israel will continue building in all of its Jerusalem municipality and a construction plan that raised questions during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current trip to Washington is nothing new, Netanyahu's spokesman said in a statement today.

2010: The Washington Post featured a review of a memoir entitled "Devotion" by Dani Shapiro, a successful writer who’grew up with difficult parents: a father whose devotion to Judaism was the only sustaining force in a disappointing life, and a bitter, angry mother.’

2010(9th of Nisan, 5770): Ninety-three-year-old pharmaceutical executive and patron of the arts Mortimer D. Sackler passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/business/01sackler.html

2011: Prof Mandy Merck, Royal Holloway, University of London is scheduled to deliver a talk entitled “Charlotte loves Harry – Ethnic stereotypes and Jewish jokes in Sex and the City” at the Wiener Library,in the UK.

2011: “The Book of Mormon” the musical that earned Josh Gad a Tony Award nomination as best leading actor in a musical opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre.

2011: Ely Levine is scheduled to give a lecture at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa entitled "Building in the Bible: From Babel to Bathsheba." Levine, a visiting professor at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, "will discuss how the study of ancient architecture has shed light on biblical mysteries."

2011: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not leave for Russia today as planned due to the terrorist attack in Jerusalem yesterday.

2011: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and American Society for Jewish Music presented “The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire.”

2011: The British Foreign Office confirmed today that a UK national, Mary Jane Gardner, died in yesterday's terrorist attack at a Jerusalem bus stop, the Associated Press reported. The 59-year-old woman was critically injured in the blast and succumbed to her wounds the same day at Haddasah-Ein Kerem Medical Center. Thirty-nine others were injured in the attack; two are still in serious condition.

2011: The Israeli Air Force struck targets in the Gaza Strip in the early hours today, a day after Palestinian militants fired about a dozen rockets and mortars across the border

 

2012: Ricky Ullman’s final performance “as the character Alex in the New Group's production of "Russian Transport" Off-Broadway in New York.”

2012: Shabbat of the “Sabbath Manifesto” is scheduled to end this evening.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Shabbat_The_Sabbath/Themes_and_Theology/sabbath-manifesto.shtml

2012: “The Syrian Bride” is scheduled to be shown this evening at Tifereth Israel’s Israeli Movie Night in Washington, DC.

2012: “The Flood” is scheduled to be shown at the 16TH Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival

2013: Join Beyhan Cagri Trock, author of The Ottoman Turk and the Pretty Jewish Girl: Real Turkish Cooking is scheduled to teach a class featuring “authentic, delicious Sephardic and Turkish family recipes” at the Lorinda "Annie" Hooks Demo Kitchen

2013: The Trio Sefardi is scheduled to provide an afternoon of music that focuses on the traditions of Pesach at the Abraham Lincoln Hall.

2013: The Jewish Cardinal, a French television film directed by Ilan Duran Cohen was broadcast for the first time today on RTS Deux 

2013: Visitors to the Weiner Library in London will have the opportunity to view the exhibition Wit's End: The Satirical Cartoons of Stephen Roth', a compilation of the works of the “Czech Jewish artist whose cartoons lampooned fascist dictators and put a wry spin on political events during the Second World War.”

2013: IDF soldiers fired a Tammuz missile at a Syrian army position in Tel Fares, from which shots were fired both that day and the previous day across the border into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The missile destroyed the Syrian post and reportedly wounded two gunmen there.

2013: Ben Zygier, the alleged Mossad agent also known as Prisoner X who committed suicide in Ayalon Prison in 2010, was arrested for passing sensitive information to Hezbollah that led to the arrests of two informants within the ranks of the Shi’ite organization, Der Spiegel reported on today.

2014: Reform Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, the Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, is scheduled to be to speak on “Christianity and and Judaism: God’s Double Helix Through Time” at Loyola University in New Orleans.

2014: “Dancing in Jaffa” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra are scheduled to present a benefit performance at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in Palm Beach.

2014: Majn Alef Bejs, “a book on Yiddish published by a Polish Jewish group has won first prize in the non-fiction category of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair which is scheduled to open today.

2014: “For the second time in as many weeks, Economy and Religious Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett came under fire today over an accusation that he has been using his position to funnel money to associates.”

2014: The results of a new survey of anti-Semitic attidues presented at a news conference today organized by the Action and Protection Foundation headquarters “showed up to 40 percent of respondents accepted some anti-Semitic attitudes. (As reported by JTA)

2014: Today “a woman complained that Silvan Shalom had sexually harassed her at work more than 15 years before” which led to an investigation that was closed because the statute of limitations had been reached even though other women came forward with similar charges

2015: In La Jolla, CA, the Lawrence Family JCC is scheduled to host “Turning Inward: Jews and American Life, 1965-Presentish.”

2015: “London-based attorney Christopher Marinello, who works for the Rosenberg family,” “a Jewish family trying to retrieve a long-lost Matisse painting (Seated Woman) looted by the Nazis said” today that “a deal had been signed with the German government for its restitution.”

2015: The 5thJ Street National Conference is scheduled to come to an end.

2015: William Brumfield is scheduled to deliver at lecture on the “The Jewish Moment in Russia” at Tulane University.

2015: The 16th Street Book Club is scheduled to discuss A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev, translated by Evan Fallenberg

2015: Today, at a Simon Wiesenthal Center Dinner, Harvey Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax “urged Jews in the fight against anti-Semitism to “stand up and kick these guys in the ass.” (JTA)

 

2015(4thof Nisan, 5775): Eighty-six-year-old Israeli diplomat and ministerial adviser Yehuda Avner passed away today in Jerusalem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/middleeast/yehuda-avner-diplomat-and-aide-to-israeli-leaders-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2016: Ninety-eighth anniversary of the birth of Joseph B. Levin aka Yosef Dov ben Avraham Elimelech without whom, literally, this blog would not exist.

2016: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “The Music and Life of Irving Berlin.”

2016: The Jews in the American South is scheduled to be in Beaufort, South Carolina visiting with Mayor Billy Keyserling, “the grandson of Lithuanian immigrants” who escaped from Czarist Russia and graudate of Brandies University who has been active in state politics for several decades.

2016(14thof Adar II, 5776): Purim

2016(14thof Adar II, 5776): Sixty-six-year-old television comedy writer Garry Shandling who was best known for “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show” passed away today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/garry-shandling-who-parodied-tvs-conventions-in-two-hit-comedy-shows-dies-at-66/2016/03/24/cc268cde-f1ff-11e5-85a6-2132cf446d0a_story.html?utm_term=.c6d8ca6d4a8f

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/arts/television/28stei.html

2016: Ninety-four-year-old former MK Esther Herlitz, the native of Berlin who was Israel’s first female ambassador passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-first-female-ambassador-passes-away-at-94/

2017(26thof Adar, 5777): Seventy three year old Columbia University grad Paul Novograd, “the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe” and who had reluctantly closed the Claremont Riding Academy ten years ago passed away today.  (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/nyregion/paul-novograd-dead-ran-claremont-riding-academy-in-manhattan.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2017: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to turn Shabbat into a family affair with a Ruach Preneg followed a by a “L’dor Vador Shabbat Service.”

2017: Former Penn State President Graham Spanier was convicted today for his role in “hushing up the suspected child sex abuse” by a Penn St assistant football coach.

2017: Approximately 5,000 “Israelis and foreigners got filthy and battled through miles of obstacles” today took part in Israel’s first “Mud Day” race in Tel Aviv.

2017: Kibbutz Beit Oren is scheduled to host “Believe Fairy Festival,” Israel’s first “fairy festival.”

2018: Iowa City author and photographer Ina Loewenberg is scheduled to sign copies today of her new memoir A Life à la Carte at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City.

2018: “The Chop” and “The Cousin” are scheduled to be shown at the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.

2018: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host a performance this evening of “Irving Berlin: American.”

2018: Members of USY are scheduled to follow in the footsteps of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel by “praying with their feet” as participants in the #MarchForOurLives rally in Washington, DC.

2018: One hundredth anniversary of the birth of Joseph B. Levin, who in one of those calendar coincidences was Bar Mitzvahed on Shabbat HaGadol which is observed today in 2018.

2018(8thof Nisan, 5778):  Parashat Tzav and Shabbat HaGadol;

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel by Matti Friedman and Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents and a Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes) by Boris Fishman.

2019: The AIPAC Policy Conference, where the self-important gather, is scheduled to open today in Washington, DC.

2019: For the first time since the arrest of Robert Kraft, Pats owner, the NFL owners are scheduled to begin their annual meeting.

2020: In the midst of the darkness of the pandemic, friends and family of Ilan Caplan prepare celebrate that consummate physician and sweet singer of song, Dr. Ilan Caplan who has brought light to so many.

2020: Bidud Beyachad: The London School of Jewish Studies Torah Show with Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum is scheduled to begin on line today at noon

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present on line this evening Martin Kaufman’s discussion of Nachman of Breslov.

2020: Warren Klein (Currator of the Bernard Museum of Judaica at Temple Emanu-El) takes is scheduled to host a virtual tour of the Barbra Streisand Exhibition and answers questions along the way... via Zoom Video Conferencing

2020: Boston Jewish Film is scheduled to present an on-line screening of “Code of the Freaks” this evening.

2020: “The San Francisco Freedom Seder,” the “24th annual multicultural seder hosted by JCRC, JCCSF and Congregation Emanu-El” scheduled for this evening has been canceled due to the Pandemic.

2020:  Today Israelis should get some idea of how Yuli Edelstein will respond to the ruling by the Supreme Court that he “must hold by tomorrow to elect a speaker of the Knesset.”

2021: JCCSF is scheduled to present chef and cookbook author Jake Cohen demonstrating his recipe for matzo tiramisu and offering Passover tips, followed by optional 30-minute conversation for 20- and 30-somethings, with loneliness/connection expert Kyla Sokoll-Ward.

2021: Jason Harris of the podcast “Jew Oughta Know” and director of Osher Marin JCC’s Taube Center for Jewish Peoplehood is scheduled to talk, virtually, about whether the Exodus from Egypt is myth or grounded in historical fact.

2021: As part of the Jewish Gateway’s”Torah for Everyone” series, Rabbi Bridget Wynne is scheduled to explain virtually “how and why the traditional Haggadah story differs from the Exodus story.”

2021: In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to present Rabbi Josh Warshawsky leading “Music as Midrash; Exploring Passover Through Song.”

2021: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston is scheduled to present online “Israeli Society and the Holocaust: A Work in Progress” which is “led by Rachel Korazim, will explore the development of the Holocaust narrative in Israel from the early days, still under British Mandate all the way to recent years.”

2021: If the exit polls taken by Israel’s three main television channels are harbinger’s of realty, as of today “Benjamin Netanyahu is on course to form the next government - if he can persuade his former ally Naftali Bennett to join his coalition.

2021: Oshman Family JCC and Bina are scheduled to present Tova Birnbaum and Zoe Fertik leading a learning seder to familiarize people with the texts and rituals.

2021: Boston Jewish Film is scheduled to present, online, a screening of “Rain in Her Eyes.”

 

 

This Day, March 25, In Jewish History

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March 25

 1271: King Jaime (Kings James I of Aragon) freed all the Jews in Murviedro, a city in Valencia of debts from Christians. It should be noted this came after the Christians burned down a synagogue, and then were forced to rebuild it themselves.

1303(7th of Nisan): Massacre of the Jews of Weissensse, Germany

1488: Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro “a 15th-century Italian rabbi best known for his popular commentary on the Mishnah, commonly known as "The Bartenura" arrived in Jerusalem where he rejuvenated the moribund Jewish community.

1510: Birthdate of Normandy native Guillaume Postel the linguist, diplomat and Cabbalist who “became the first scholar to recognize the inscriptions on Judean coins from the period of the Great Jewish Revolt as Hebrew written in the ancient "Samaritan" character” and who collected Latin translations of the Zohar, the Sefer Yetzirah, and the Sefer ha-Bahir, the fundamental works of Jewish Kabbalah” as well as other Cabbalistic texts, such as his own commentary on the Cabbalistic significance of the Menorah, which he published in 1548 in Latin and subsequently in Hebrew.”

1525: Three years after the fall of Rhodes, the janissaries revolted against Suleymann, ransacking the palace of Ibrahim Pasha and looting the Jewish Quarter of Constantinople.

1541: Birthdate of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany whose son would turn Tuscany into a haven for Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition.

1584: “Queen Elizabeth I granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter for the colonization of an area in North America” that would lead him to recruit Joachim Gans to join the expedition which make Gans “the first recorded Jew in Colonial America.”

1597(6th of Nisan, 5357): Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, known as “Samuel Judah of Padua, the son of Rabbi Meir ben Isaac Katzenellenbogen and the father of Saul Wahl passed away today.

1601(21st of Adar II, 5361): Doña Mariana was tried and put to death at an auto-da-fé held in Mexico City today. She was one of the two surviving daughters of Doña Francisca, who had been put to death earlier. The entire family had been found guilty of the same crime – relapsing from Catholicism to Judaism. Only the youngest daughter would escape death.

1601: More than 100 people appeared in the sanbenito at the auto de fe in Mexico today.

1735: For the year beginning today, Jews accounted for 13 of the entries in the journal recording maritime trade for the port of New York.

1737: In New York City, Hanna Mears and Abraham Isaacks gave birth to Moses Isaacks, the husband of Rachel Mears with whom he had fourteen children.

1748: “For the quarter beginning today there were seven Jewish entries”. “Jacob Rivera had three entries and Mordecai Gomez, Jacob Franks, Samuel Naphtali and Abraham Hart had one each.”

1762: In Philadelphia, PA, Prague native Mathias Bush and Tabitha Bush gave birth to David F. Bush

1769(16th of Adar II, 5529): Parashat Tzav

1769: Birthdate of Wurttemberg native Levi Abrahams, the husband of Roseanna Linderman and father of Hester and Maria Abrahams, both of whom were born in Philadelphia.

1790: In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Madel-Mathilda Cohen, the “daughter of Isaac Jacob Gans and Pesse Pauline Leah Gans” and her husband Abraham Herz Cohen gave birth to Philip Abraham Feibusch-Cohen

1795: Birthdate of Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, a German born Orthodox Rabbi who supported the Zionist ideal before it officially became a movement.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zevi-hirsch-kalischer

1796(15th of Adar II, 5556): Shushan Purim

1798: In Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia native Frances Gratz and Reuben Etting gave birth to Benjamin Etting, the husband of Harriet Marx whom he married in 1830 at Richmond, VA and with whom he had six children.

1801: In Padua, Baruch Hayyim Almanzi, a wealthy merchant and his wife gave birth to Joseph Almanzi “an Italian Jewish bibliophile and poet.”

1807(15th of Adar II, 5567): Shushan Purim

1809: In Groningen, Holland, Elizabeth Speyer and Benjamin Moses Van Praagh gave birth to Morris, Van Praagh, the husband Sarah Boam the father of Rebecca and Lawrence Van Praagh and the President of The Hambro Synagogue.

1810(19th of Adar II, 5570): Jochem (Jochanan) David de Mets-Maarsen who had been born in Amsterdam in 1728 and married Marianne Abraham passed away today in the Netherlands.

1817: Tsar Alexander I recommended formation of Society of Israeli Christians, whose primary function was to convert Jews to Christianity. It failed.

1822: In Stockholm, Beata Levin and Salomon Josephson gave birth August Abraham Josephson, the husband of Augusta Hortensia Jacobbson with whom he had three children and who may be have been a relative of the painter Ernst Josephson.

1828: Shaare Chesed, which was re-named Touro Synagogue, the first congregation formed in New Orleans was incorporated today.

1829: In York Place Queens Elm, Sophia and Nathaniel Levy gave birth to Maria Levy.

1830(1st of Nisan, 5590): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1830(1st of Nisan, 5590): On the Jewish Calendar, Yahrzeit of Rabbi Saul Shiskes of Vilna

1831: “The Colonial Act of William IV which passed the Legislature “today” removed any restraint or disabilities under which persons professing the Hebrew religion” in Barbados “then labored and subjected them like other persons to fines and penalties for the non-performance of duties.

1835: In London, Esther and John Nathan gave birth to Samuel Nathan

1835: Birthdate of Amsterdam native Phoebe Neuburger, the wife of Levy Duis.

1838: In Albany founding of Congregation Beth-El which in 1885 joined with Anshe Emeth to form Congregation Beth Emth whose members included Julius Laventall, Henry W. Lipman and Isaac Brilleman.

1838: In Jamaica, Hannah and Isaac Kursheedt gave birth to Edwin Israel Kursheedt

1839: Birthdate of Solomon Hirsch, “one of the early leaders of Portland, Oregon’s Jewish Community who “with Jacob Mayer and Louis Fleischner, Hirsch was one of the founders of Fleischner, Mayer and Co., the largest wholesale dry goods company on the West Coast” and the “Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Ottoman Empire from 1889–1892”

1840: During the Damascus Affair, Adophe Cremieux, vice president of the Central Consistorie of French Israelites, hears the appeals Jews from the Syrian community seeking relief for the Jews who have wrongly been imprisoned. A future member of the Chamber of Deputies, this Sephardic lawyer, takes up the cause of his co-religionists enlisting the support of no less than Adolphe Thiers, the French Prime Minister.

1841: Louis Lowe who had been praised by the Board of Jewish Deputies “for his efficient assistance to Sir Moses Montefiore “was presented to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria” today.

1843(23rd of Adar II, 5603): Parashat Shimini; Shabbat Parah observed as the Great Comet begins to move away from the earth.

1845(16th of Adar II, 5606): Fifty-seven-year-old Isaac Russell, the son of Philip and Esther Russell and the husband of Perla Sheftall Russell passed away today after which he was interred in the Mordecai Sheftall Museum in Savannah, GA.

1846: Sir Walter Charles James, 1st Baron Northbourne and “Sarah Caroline, the daughter of Cuthbert Ellison” gave birth to Walter James, 2nd Baron Northbourne the Liberal political leader who in 1906 called on the British government to make public “any consular or other reports concerning the anti-Jewish outrages in Russia” because “he thought the publication of any such reports might indirectly have some effect in inducing the Russian Government to do its best to remedy conditions that outraged the civilization of the twentieth century.” (Editor’s note - I have not been able to find a reason why this member of the British aristocracy spoke out on behalf of the Jews during the Pogroms in Russia.)

1848: In Germany Marx Mordechai Pfaelzer and Karoline/Gitel Pfaelzer gave birth to Morris Moses Pfaelzer, the Philadelphia jeweler who married Sophie Pfaelzer with whom he had two children – Frank Pfaelzer and Henrietta Stern

1860: Austrian banker Jonas Freiherr von Königswarter was knighted today.

1861(14th of Nisan, 5621): As the storm clouds of secession roll across America, Jews on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line sit down to the Seder tonight on the first night of Pesach.

1861: Thirty-one-year-old Henry Straus, a native of Alsace living in Jackson, MS enlisted in the Confederate Army today.

1863: Barcuh Castello married Sophia Woolf today.

1863: In Louisville, KY, “Moritz (Morris) Flexner, an immigrant from Neumark, Bohemia, via several years in Strasbourg, France; and his wife Esther from Roden, Germany” gave birth to Simon Flexner a fighter against all diseases. He probed and pushed to find the causes and cures for human ailments. As a result of his work, he became the director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. His brother Bernard became a famous lawyer and an ardent Zionist. Another brother, Abraham, was the first director at the Institute for the Advanced Study at Princeton. Simon went to the University of Louisville to study medicine and received his M.D. in 1889. Finding that the laboratories at the school had very few supplies, he acquired a microscope and taught himself how to use it. He then went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to study pathology. He soon began to publish papers on pathology and in 1892. He became an associate in pathology in the newly opened Johns Hopkins Medical School. He became involved with many epidemics, including one of cerebrospinal meningitis in western Maryland in 1893. In 1899, he was in Manila where he found the strain of dysentery bacillus that became known as the Flexner type. In 1901, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was created and he was chosen to be one of seven members on the board of scientific directors. He was asked to organize and direct the laboratories on medical research. This concept of research was new to America and it was financially secure through the Rockefellers' endorsements. In 1905, New York City was hit with a severe epidemic of cerebrospinal meningitis, which Flexner had encountered 12 years before. He experimented with monkeys until he found a serum to conquer the disease. In 1907, he found himself trying to fight an epidemic of poliomyelitis which had spread through the eastern states. He was able to isolate the infectious agent but he couldn't find a cure, since the disease was caused by a filterable virus rather than a bacterial organism. His discovery laid the basis for others to find polio vaccines some 40 Years later. Simon was the only editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine for 19 years. During this time he wrote many articles on public health, research and education. In World War I, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Army Medical Corps and went to Europe to inspect and establish the medical facilities of the expeditionary forces. After the war, his role in the Rockefeller Institute became greater, and now included involvement in the animal pathology department at Princeton. Flexner was active in many organizations and became an officer of quite a few. He retired from the Rockefeller Institute in 1935 and a year after was appointed an Eastman Professor at Oxford University. He died in 1946, leaving behind a legacy in the field of pathology.

1864: The Jewish Chronicle published the following description of the death of famed musician Isaac Nathan who had died in January of that year. Mr. Nathan was a passenger by No. 2 tramway car […] [he] alighted from the car at the southern end, but before he got clear of the rails the car moved onwards […] he was thus whirled round by the sudden motion of the carriage and his body was brought under the front wheel. “The horse-drawn tram was the first in Sydney: Nathan was Australia's (indeed the southern hemisphere's) first tram fatality.”

1865: Captain Leopold Meyer of Philadelphia, completed his three year enlistment as a member of Company C of the 113thRegiment – Twelfth Cavalry.

1866: Two days after she had passed away, the former Rebecca Arrobas, the wife of David Hyams and the mother of Rachel and Abrahm Hyams was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery.

1867: In Saxe-Weimar, Germany, Nathan Riesman and Sophie Eisman gave birth University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania educated doctor David Riesman, the professor of Clinical Medicine at the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine and visiting physician at the Philadelphia General Hospital and Jewish Hospital who edited the American Text-Book of Pathology and was the father of sociologist David Riesman, the author of the best-selling The Lonely Crowd.

1869(13th of Nisan, 5629): Ta’anit Bechorot

1869: “The Jewish Passover” published today reported that “tomorrow evening at sundown the feast of the Passover will be commenced by Israelites everywhere, in commemoration of their ancestors having remained intact on the night when all of their oppressors, the Egyptians, were smitten by the angel of death.

1869: The New York Times reports that “To-morrow evening at sundown, the feast of the Passover will be commenced by Israelites everywhere, in commemoration of their ancestors having remained intact, on the night when all the first-born in the families of their oppressors, the Egyptians, were smitten by the angel of death. The feat will continue eight days, during which but unleavened bread will be eaten…On the first and second evenings various commemorative rites will be indulged in in every household including the recital of Scriptural and legendary narratives, and familiar conversations on the subject of the deliverance. Appropriate psalms will also be chanted.”

 

1870: It was reported today that the ladies of the B’nai Jeshrun Benevolent Society in New York have established an Industrial Home for impoverished Jewish Women.

1870: In Bohemia, Joachim and Barbara (Eisenschimmel) Sabath, gave birth to Judge Joseph Sabath, who in 1885 came to the United States where he studied law in Chicago with his brother Congressman Adolph J. Sabath and lived with his wife Regina Mayer.Sabath.

1871: In the Suwałki Governorate of Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire Duvvid Schubart and Katrina Helwitzin gave birth to Levi Schubart who gained fame as Lee Shubert, the “American theatre owner/operator and producer and the eldest of seven siblings of the theatrical Shubert family.”

http://www.shubertfoundation.org/about/brothers.asp

1872(15th of Adar II, 5632): Shushan Purim

1873: Birthdate of agronomist Selig Suskin, a native of the Crimea who was one of the founder of Be’er Tuvia, and a delegate to the Sixth Zionist Congress.

1874(7th of Nisan, 5634): Leading Hungarian tobacco merchant Simon Wolf Schossberger De Torna, “who in 1862 became the first Hungarian Jews elevated to the nobility by Emperor Francis Joseph I” and whose son “Sigmund von Schossberger was the first Jew to be created a Baron in Hungary” passed away today.

1874: Birthdate of Russian born American chazzan Zevulun "Zavel" Kwartin

1875:  La Périchole,“an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach” was part of a triple bill that opened today at the Royalty Theatre in London.

1875: In Aldershot, Portsmouth native Julia Phillips and Russian born Mayer Woolfson gave birth toe Lionel Woolfson.

1877: In Alpena, Michigan, the Hebrew Benevolent Society met today and decided that their meeting room would “be used for holding ‘prayer meeting on the following Holy Days despite the fact that a dispute had broken out over a “divergence” between Orthodox and Reform beliefs.

1877: Birthdate of Milton Moses Portis, the native of Riceville, Canada who came to the U.S. in 1880 where he earned a B.S. from the University of Chicago and an M.D. from Rush Medical College.

https://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/luna/servlet/detail/NLMNLM~1~1~101439778~192222:-Milton-M--Portis-

1878: Birthdate of Samuel Goldstein, the native of Odessa who gained fame as Sidney M. Goldin “an American Jewish silent film director as well as a prominent writer, actor and producer for Yiddish theater during the early 20th century” who worked with such luminaries as “Molly Picon, Maurice Schwartz and Ludwig Satz.”

1878: Rabbi Abram Isaacs is scheduled to deliver a lecture tonight on “A Hero of the Synagogue” at the 34th Street Synagogue in New York City.

1879(1st of Nisan, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1880: In an article explaining the origins of Easter Eggs, the New York Times reports that “the old Jews introduced eggs at the feast of Passover…”

1880(13th of Nisan, 5640): Fifty-nine-year-old Ludmilla Assing German-born Italian author, the daughter of Dr. David Assing and Rose Marria Assing passed away today in Florence.

1880: Miss Emita Wolf and Mr. Lewis May were married this evening at the home of Mr. Charles Wolf, the prominent New York banker who is the brother of the bride. The groom is President of Temple Emanu-El and “the head of a large banking house at No. 33 Broad Street in New York City.

1881: Among the winners of the Grave Prize Essays at Williams College was Austin B. Bassett of Albany, NY who wrote on “Ancient and Modern Jew.”

1881: Rabbi Nahum Levison of Safed and his wife gave birth to Sir Leon Levison, a convert who became the “first president of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance,” founded “the Russian Jews Relief Fund” and the “Palestine Jews Relief Fund” and married Kate Barnes, the daughter of John Barnes, with whom he had four children and made his home in Edinburgh.

http://www.lcje.net/High%20Leigh/Sunday,%20August%207/2%20Sir%20Leon%20Levison%20at%20High%20Leigh%201931%20by%20kai-kjaer%20hansen.pdf

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1936/11/26/85439276.pdf

1882: A fire broke out at nine o’clock tonight at a tenement house located at 159 Attorney Street in New York destroying a supply of Matzah which a baker named Louis Schoenthal had stored on the building’s first floor. Schoenthal claims that the Matzah which he had prepared for the upcoming holiday of Passover was worth $6,000. Fortunately, he has insurance which should cover the loss.

 

1883(16th of Adar II, 5643): Shushan Purim observed since the 15th of Adar fell on Shabbat.

1883(16th of Adar II): Rabbi Simeon Sofer of Galicia, founder of Mahazikei  ha-Dat passed away

1884: In New York City, Moses and Amelia Ottinger gave birth to Lawrence Ottinger, the founder of the United States Plywood Corporation, the brother of realtor Leon Ottinger, State Supreme Court Justice Nathan Ottinger and New York State Attorney General Albert Ottinger, and husband of “former Louise Lowenstein” with whom he had two children, Richard and Patricia Ottinger.

1887: In Lithuania, Rosa Feinberg gave birth University of Pennsylvania graduate and Yeshiva Mishkan Yistrole trained Rabbi Louis Finberg, the spiritual leader of the “Adath Israel Congregation” and husband of Rosa Rauneker Feinberg with whom he raised two daughters and one son, Mordecai Feinberg.

1888: In New York, Mrs. Mary Isaacs, the mother of six, was the first of over eight hundred poor Jews who received meat orders courtesy of funds raised by Mrs. M. Rosendorff. This was part of an annual project to provide food for the city’s poor Jews so that they can celebrate Passover.

1888: Birthdate of New York City native and WW I Jacob Julian Aper, the Columbia trained dentist.

1889: Birthdate of Idwa Weinstein Posner, the wife of Isidor Posner and the mother of Rhoda and Irving Posner.

1890: Zadoc Kahn was inducted as Chief Rabbi of France, a position to which he had been elected in 1899 following the death of Chief Rabbi Isidor. Kahn “then entered upon a period of many-sided philanthropic activity. He organized the relief movement in behalf of the Jews expelled from Russia, and gave much of his time to the work of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which elected him honorary president in recognition of his services. He aided in establishing many private charitable institutions, including the Refuge du Plessis-Piquet, near Paris, an agricultural school for abandoned children, and the Maison de Retraite at Neuilly-sur-Seine, for young girls. He was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1879 and Officer in 1901. He was also Officer of Public Instruction. He was one of the founders, the first vice-president, and, soon after, president, of the Société des Études Juives (1879). He was considered a brilliant orator, and one of his most noteworthy addresses was delivered on the centenary of the French Revolution — "La Révolution Française et le Judaïsme".

1891: T. H. French and Frank Daniels have purchased tickets so that all of the children attending the Industrial School supported by the United Hebrew Charities can attend this afternoon’s performance of “Little Puck” at the Grand Opera House. (Frank Daniels was a stage actor who would pursue a film career in the early days of cinema.  He was not Jewish – just generous)

1891: In the Court of Common Pleas, Joseph Abrahamson, a wealthy young Jew, changed his his name to Joseph Abraham Edison.

1892: Two days after she had passed away, the former Cecilia Samuels, the wife of Phillip Joseph Salomons with whom she had had five children before marrying Sir David Salomons, MP was buried today at the Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1893: “Russian Hatred of Jews” published today described yet another manifestation of anti-Semitism in the Czar’s Empire where “grain speculators and merchants” are forming “a new produce exchange from which Jews will be excluded.”

1894: As the United States copes with an economic depression, the Finance Committee of the 6-15-99 Club, a businessmen’s funded relief organization allocated $1,600 to various charities including $100 to the United Hebrew Charities.

1894: In San Francisco, Isadore and Jennie Baruh Zellerbach gave birth Harold Lionel Zellerbach, the graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, who was a senior executive with the Crown Zellerbach Corporation, patron of the arts and husband of “the former Doris Joseph a daughter, Mrs. Stephen N. Loew Jr.” with whom he had two sons, Stephen and William.

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/31/archives/harold-lionel-zellerbach-83-dies-an-industrialist-and-patron-of.html

1896(14th of Adar, II, 5746): Purim

1896: The Monte Relief Society which was started by former opera star Sofia Nueberger who is now known as Sofia Monte Loebinger and 16 women in 1893 now has 350 members. Mrs. Monte-Loebinger continues to serve as President.  Other officers including Louise Simon – Vice President; Mollie Teschner Recording Secretary; Emma Marx – Financial Secretary; Carrie Heyman – Treasurer.

1898: “Vaudeville for Poor Children” published today described a vaudeville show performed by members of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society for the benefit youngsters under the care of the society and the Montefiore Home.

 

1899 (14th of Nisan, 5659): This evening, as Jews begin the observance of Pesach, services are held at New York’s Temple Emanu-El conducted by Rabbi Joseph Silverman and Dr. Gustav Gottheil with Mr. Sparger serving as Cantor.

1899: “The Hebrew Passover At Hand” published today described the observance of the holiday that “s the anniversary of the going of the Children of Israel out of Egypt and their freedom from bondage under Pharaoh.” “During the feast no leaven is eaten” but “with the more radical Jews the feast is not now closely observed, and the unleavened bread is not eaten, but a quantity is kept at the table…”

1900: Today Rabbi Henry S. Morais of Newport offered the opening prayer at the “seventh biennial convention of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association” which “was held at the Baron de Hirsch School under the leadership of its President, former Assemblyman Joseph Blumentha.

1901: Birthdate of British anthropologist Camillia Wedgwood, the daughter of Josiah Wegwood, the British leader who spoke out against appeasement and supported the settlement of Jews in Palestine in opposition to the White Paper.  “From 1937 she was secretary of the German Emergency Fellowship Committee, which included Max Lemberg and Sydney Morris. She pleaded the cause of Jewish and non-Aryan Christian victims of Nazi persecution before (Sir) John McEwen, minister for the interior. In close contact with her father, she raised money for refugee passages to Australia, but confided to her sister Helen that she felt like 'a mouse nibbling at a mountain'. She publicly protested against the treatment of the internees in the Dunera and the refugees in the Strouma which sank in the Black Sea.” (As reported by David Wetherell)

1902: Herzl is informed that the Sultan studied his plan. Herzl is asked what plans he has for the regulation of the Turkish debts under more favorable conditions than those submitted by the French.

1903: Herzl met Lord Cromer and Boutros Ghali in Cairo.

1903: In London, “Rosa Enoyce and George Barnes” gave birth to Gertrude Maud Barnes, the actress known as “Binnie Barnes.)

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/30/arts/binnie-barnes-95-actress-known-for-her-feisty-roles.html

1903: The Zionist Commission led by Leopold Kessler and including Selig Soskin, Dr. Hillel Yaffe, and Colonel Albert Goldsmid returned to Suez.

1903: The Jewish quarter of Port Said, Egypt was invaded and looted by Arabs in consequence of an earlier ritual murder charge that took place on September 17, 1902.

1904: Anatole Leroy Beaulieu visited Hebrew Union College.

1905: The New York Times reviews “Volume 9,” the newest volume of The Jewish Encyclopedia to be published. Eventually there will be a total of 12 volumes. “Volume Nine” opens “with a record of the Marawezyk family of Polish scholars that flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and closes with the Philippson family, a family of German authors and scientists, who rose to fame in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

1906: “Dr. Paul Nathan’s View of Russian Massacre” published today

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A00E7DE113EE733A25756C2A9659C946797D6CF

1906: In Pleschen, Ruschka and Alfred Pinczower gave birth Dr. Kurt Pine, the refugee from Hitler’s German who earned an M.A. and Ph. D from Yale while developing into a noted social worker and raising a family with his wife Bessie Miriam Pine.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/21/94102891.pdf

1907: The East Side Business Men’s Protective Business Association continued their annual distribution Matzoth and Matzah flour to the poor Jews

1908: It was reported today that Ethel Levy will begin to appear at Keith Proctor’s vaudeville next month.

1909: “The Majesty of Birth, “a comedy…under the direction of Cohan and Harris” which “deals with the intermarriage of Jews and Gentiles” opened today in Trenton, NJ. (Harris was Jewish, Cohan was not)

1910(14th of Adar II, 5670): Purim

1910: Birthdate of Benzion Mileikowsky, the native of Warsaw who gained fame as Benzion Netanyahu, a leading Jewish historian whose Benjamin became Prime Minister of Israel. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1911: Birthdate of Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

1911: The discovery of the mutilated body of Andrei Yishinsky, near Kiev, Russia, led to the infamous trial of Mendel Beilis on ritual-murder charges

 

1911(25th of Adar, 5671): In New York City, 146 garment workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire in a time when there were no effective pesky regulations regarding the health, welfare and safety of workers.   Many of the victims were young immigrant Jewish girls working in the sweatshop environment of the garment industry. The first helped spur the formation of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Approximately 500 workers were sewing shirtwaists in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company's sweatshop near Washington Square in Manhattan when a fire broke out. The building lacked adequate fire escapes, firefighting equipment was unable to reach the top floors, and — most tragically — exit doors had been locked to prevent unauthorized breaks. Some women, unable to reach an exit, jumped from ninth- and tenth-floor windows in a vain effort to save themselves. The fire did its work within twenty minutes. In the end, 146 died and many more were injured. Most of the dead were recent immigrant Jewish and Italian women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three. Just two years before, the Jewish owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company had been among the targets of the strike known as the uprising of the 20,000, which had sought union recognition through the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Though the strike had forced some firms to settle with their workers, Triangle had fired union members there and remained an anti-union shop. In the wake of the fire, the Jewish community and leading women in the labor movement sprang into action. The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), a cross-class coalition that worked as an ally of the ILGWU, organized a public meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2. There, Rose Schneiderman, the leader of the 1909 strike, called upon all working people to take action. Three days later, 500,000 people turned out for the funerals of seven unidentified victims of the fire. Under pressure from the ILGWU, the WTUL, and others, New York State established a Committee on Safety in the wake of the fire. In addition, the state legislature set up a Factory Investigating Committee, which drafted new legislation designed to protect workers. Their recommendations included automatic sprinkler systems and occupancy limits tied to the dimensions of exit staircases. Thirty-six labor and safety laws were passed in the three years after the fire, thanks to the agitation of working people.

Even as these regulations went into effect, the site of the Triangle fire remained a rallying point for labor organizing. Some survivors, galvanized by their experience, went on to lifetimes of labor activism. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the fire, later became Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt. She said that the Triangle Fire was what motivated her to devote her career to helping workers. The last survivor of the fire, Rose Rosenfeld Freedman, died in 2001 at age 107.

1911: Louis Waldman was a shocked member of the crowd on the street that witnessed the catastrophic Triangle Waist Company fire of 1911, an event which clearly always remained with him and served as one of the landmarks of his life. Waldman described the grim scene in his 1944 memoirs:

"One Saturday afternoon in March of that year — March 25, to be precise — I was sitting at one of the reading tables in the old Astor Library... It was a raw, unpleasant day and the comfortable reading room seemed a delightful place to spend the remaining few hours until the library closed. I was deeply engrossed in my book when I became aware of fire engines racing past the building. By this time I was sufficiently Americanized to be fascinated by the sound of fire engines. Along with several others in the library, I ran out to see what was happening, and followed crowds of people to the scene of the fire.

"A few blocks away, the Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street was ablaze. When we arrived at the scene, the police had thrown up a cordon around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. The eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames."Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.

"The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines."

1911(25th of Adar, 5671): Seventeen-year-old Tillie Kuperschmidt died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Along with many others, her tombstone is still standing at the Hebrew Free Burial Association's Mount Richmond Cemetery.

1912: Birthdate of Louis Pollock, the husband of Marian Pollock, who passed away at the age of 90, just a month after his wife had passed away.

1912: Thirty-one-year-old Benjamin Berenson, the Russian born son of Charles and Dorothy Berenson Shapiro who in 1899 arrived in New York City where he went from being a carpenter, to being a general contractor to being a bank vice president while joining serving as board member for the Shield of Abraham, the Beth Abraham Home for Incurables and the Montefiore Hospital married Frances Shapiro today. Shapiro who in 1899 arrived in New York City where he went from being a carpenter, to being a general contractor to being a bank vice president while joining serving as board member for the Shield of Abraham, the Beth Abraham Home for Incurables and the Montefiore Hospital

1913: It was reported today, that starting on March 27, Young Israel will begin hosting “a series of lectures illustrated by stereopticon views, showing the condition of Jews in various countries in the world.”

1914: Sixty-seven-year-old Theodore Samson Samuel, the London born son of Isaac Samuel and Fanny Heilbronner was buried today at the “Pere Lachaise Cemetery” in Paris.

1915: Professor H.L. Sabsovich, the General Agent of the Baron De Hirsch Fund and the First Mayor of the Jewish Colony at Woodbine, is scheduled to be buried today at Woodbine, NJ.

1915: In Camden, NJ, Rabbis Brenner and Friedman of Philadelphia, PA officiated at the dedication of a new synagogue at 419 Arch Street.  The officers of this reform congregation included Barnard Levin, President; Jacob Tarter, Vice President; Louis Levin, Secretary and Max Greenberg, Treasurer.

1915: As The Great War rages across Europe, Albert Einstein wrote from Berlin to the French writer and pacifist, Romain Rolland “When posterity recounts the achievements of Europe, shall we let men say that three centuries of painstaking cultural effort carried us no farther than from religious fanaticism to the insanity of nationalism? In both camps today even scholars behave as though eight months ago they suddenly lost their heads.”

1915: As the Gallipoli Campaign gave rise to all kinds of flights of political fancy, “The British Colonial Secretary, Lewis Harcourt, sent the members of the War Council a memorandum headed ‘The Spoils’ in which he suggested that, on the defeat of Turkey, Britain…should offer the Holy Places (in Palestine) as mandate to the United States” (How different History might have been had the United States been an active participant in the settling of the Jewish homeland immediately after WW I.)

1915: The largest segment of the civilian population of Prezemysl which has just been occupied by the Russians was composed of a few thousand Jews who had remained after the general evacuation of the town last October.

1915: It was reported today that Europeans, Ottomans and the Jews are fleeing the Turkish capital because of fear of the Russians

1915: After two and half years, “Mortche” Goldberg is scheduled to be arraigned today in General Sessions where he will face an indictment charging that he, along with his wife Rosie Goldberg, Louis Barusch and Gussie Cohen were the officials of the Vice Trust which maintained forty “resorts” in New York City which divided nearly $1,250,000 a year in profits and $400,000 yearly for protection to the police.

1915: “Judge Leonard S. Roan of the Court of Appeals of Georgia who sentenced Leo Frank to death in 1913 is scheduled to be buried at the Fairburn Cemetery in Fairburn, GA.

1916: A bazaar organized by the People’s Relief Committee to raised fund for Jews suffering in the war zones is scheduled to begin today at the Grand Central Palace where attendees will have a chance to purchase items valued at more than $100,000.

1916: A preliminary conference where plans for the proposed Jewish Congress will be discussed is scheduled to begin today in Philadelphia.

1917: “Editors and publishers of Jewish daily newspapers” published in New York City “met at the Summer home of Samuel Untermyer at Greystone, on the Hudson, this afternoon “and organized the Jewish League of American Patriots.

1917: In Philadelphia at the 29thannual meeting of the Jewish Publication Society, President Simon Miller, officially announced the “publication of a new Jewish Bible” which will appear in two editions – “a popular edition designed for congregations and Sabbath schools and an India paper edition, interleaved with blank pages for the use of scholars and students.”

1917: Today, the formal pledge of loyalty adopted by the Mayor’s Committee was sent to the membership of The Independent Order of Israel so it can be recited at “a patriotic mass meeting which will be held at the Floral Garden so “that the Jews of Greater New York may give joint public expression of their loyalty and devotion to the flag.”

1917: The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War of which Harry Fischel is the Treasurer received contributions from committees in Cincinnati ($400), Meridian, Mississippi (391), Salt Lake City ($101) and San Francisco ($1,500).

1917: A review of The Chosen People by Sidney L. Nyburg was published today.

1917: Today “a cpmferemce was held in the rooms of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association” “for the purpose of securing for Richmond proper representation in the congress to be held in Washing which will consider how the religions and political rights of the Jews in the warring nations of Europe can be best procured” which marked the first that delegates “from all three congregations” in Richmond, VA, participated in the same meeting.

1918: Lucien Millevoye the French right-wing anti-Semitic politician who delivered numerous public attacks on Dreyfus during the 1890’s passed away today in Paris.

1918: It was reported today “that the unleavened bread obtained for the Jewish soldiers here during the Passover season cannot be used because” it was “handled by those of another faith” so “it will be made into pudding” while the Quartermaster Department will be the expense of obtaining a new supply.

1918: In Winston-Salem, NC, Isidore Cohen and Nellie Rosenthal Cohen gave birth to Howard Cosell, a Brooklyn trained lawyer who gained fame as a sportscaster and was part of the trio of on-air talent that made Monday Night Football a national event. As to being Jewish, Cosell once said he remembered "going to school in the morning, a Jewish boy. I remember having to climb a back fence and run because the kids from St. Theresa's parish were after me. My drive, in a sense, relates to being Jewish and living in an age of Hitler. I think these things create insecurities in you that live forever, and your desire to offset them is a drive to accumulate economic security.

1919: The Committee of Jewish Delegations is formed during the Peace Conference at Versailles

1919: Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov completed his second term as a full member of the Politburo

1920(6th of Nisan, 5680): Seventy-year-old Mathilda Ochs, the Mount Washington, KY born daughter of Agatha Schwab and Maier Ochs and the wife of Louis Tachu whom she married I Louisville, KY in 1871 passed away today.

1920: It was reported today that the State Department has authorized the Joint Distribution Committee for Jewish Relief in New York City to serve as a recipient for private funds for transmission to Jews in Poland which can be transmitted at no cost to the sender.

1921(15th of Adar II, 5681): Shushan Purim

1921: Arab demonstrations begin in Haifa protesting Jewish immigration. Following police action designed to break up the gatherings, anti-Jewish riots broke out “during which ten Jews and five policemen were injured” by the rioters.

1921: It was reported today that “Eugene Meyer, Jr. of New York” has been “elected Managing Director of the War Finance Corporation” which “will be an important factor in promoting foreign trade” during the administration of President Warren Harding.

1923: Sir Herbert Samuel, High Commissioner of Palestine denied the demands of the Arab Excuitve

Sir Herbert Samuel, High Commissioner of Palestine,that those arrested in the demonstration of March 14th to celebrate the success of the Arab boycott of the Legislative Council elections be released and that the Jerusalem chief of police be placed on trial for causing their arrest.” (As reported by JTA)

1923: Birthdate of Murray Klein, the driving force behind making Zabar’s Delicatessen into a New York institution.

1925: Bantamweight Herman “Kid” Silvers” (Herman Silverberg) fought his 8th bout which resulted in his second professional loss.

1925: On a visit to Palestine, Lord Balfour of Balfour Declaration Fame, who is still a supporter of the Zionist cause, drives from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem stopping to visit with Jewish settlers and Arab Sheiks, “who told him they lived quite happily in proximity with their Jewish neighbors.”

1925: Dr. David de Sola Pool, rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue addressed a dinner of the Jewish Education Association at the Hotel Astor in New York City. He strongly supported the need “for Jewish religious education entirely free from the public schools. He voiced his support for the public schools remaining non-sectarian while calling for an improvement in the quality of Jewish education which will ensure the teaching of Jewish values, culture and character.

1925: In a speech delivered at the City College of New York, Rabbi Stephen Wise called on Jews all over the world to contribute to the support of the newly created Hebrew University which will officially be inaugurated on April 1.

1926: It was reported today that “a committee of presidents of the Jewish women’s organizations” in New York City are scheduled to “meet at Temple Emanu-El to discuss plans to raise the $500,000 quota of the women’s division the United Jewish Campaign

1927: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, the son of the late Rabbi Isaac M Wise and Dr. Nathan Krass, the rabbi at Temple Emanu-El delivered ‘the principle addresses” at services tonight marking the observance of the 80thanniversary of the found of The Central Synagogue at Lexington and 55thStreet.1929: Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases decided today to seek a fund of $1,200,000 to provide more modern facilities for wheelchair custodial cases. S.R. Guggenheim donates $50,000 and intends to given a similar sum when an additional $1,150,000 has been raised from other sources.

1929: Der rote Kreis (The Crimson Circle) a British-German crime film directed by Frederic Zelnik and starring Otto Walberg was released in Berlin today.

1929(13th of Adar II, 5689): Fast of Esther

1930: George J. Feldman, of Boston, for a number of years the secretary to Senator David I. Walsh, of Massachusetts, has resigned to accept appointment as special attorney of the Federal Trade Commission, with the New York office of the Commission. (As reported by JTA)

1933: “Along with Julius Brodnitz, Heinrich Stahl, Kurt Blumenfeld and Martin Rosenblüth, Max Naumann was one of the Jewish activists who were summoned to a meeting with Hermann Göring” today where the Number 2 Nazi tried to enlist their help in preventing a rally against Nazi antisemitism which was planned in New York City for 27 March.”

1933: “Daring Daughters,” based on a story by Sam Mintz was released today in the United States.

1934(9th of Nisan, 5694): Sixty-six-year-old George Joseph Stern, the son of Pinkus and Ida Stern and the wife Husband of Bertha Elisabeth Stern passed away today.

1934: Birthdate of feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem creator of Ms Magazine. Born into a dysfunctional family in Toledo, Ohio, she loved to watch Shirley Temple movies, hoping to be rescued miraculously from poverty, just like the little girl on the screen. Her first book, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) wasn't published until she was almost fifty. Steinem said, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."

http://www.gloriasteinem.com/

1934: Birthdate of Rabbi Berel Wein There is no way to do justice to this eminent, literate, Jewish scholar. For those interested in finding out more about him, you might begin at

http://www.rabbiwein.com/

1935: Reynaldo Hahn's three act French opera “Le marchand de Venise” based on “The Merchant of Venice” was first performed at the Paris Opéra,

1935(20th of Adar II, 5695):  Poet and translator Alice Julia Lucas - the sister of C.G. Montefiore, the wife of barrister Henry Lucas and the sister-in-law of Sir Arthur Lewis – who was the founder and President of the Jewish Study Society whose works included Translations from the German Poets of the 18th and 19th Centuries, published in 1876 and Talmudic Legends, Hymns and Paraphrases published in 1908, passed away today.

1936: Funeral services for Mrs. Alice Davis Menken, “whose efforts did much to establish a more humane trend in the field of penology” and the widow of New York attorney Mortimer M. Menken are scheduled to be held at the Riverside Memorial chapel followed by “burial in the Spanish and Portuguese Cemetery at Ridgewood, Queens.”

1936: “Jews from almost forty countries found homes in Palestine during 1935, according to a report made public” today “by the United Palestine Appeals which seeks $3,500,000 for settlement work this year.”

1936: “An explanation of the Slaughter Reform Bill and a defense of the attitude of the Polish Government…were included in a letter to Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of the American Jewish Committee made public today by the Polish Embassy” in Washington, D.C. (Editor’s note – Jews in Poland saw this bill as an attack on Kosher slaughtering and another manifestation of the anti-Semitism gripping parts of that country.)

1936: In the U.S. premiere of “Ever of “Everybody’s Woman,” the only Italian film directed by Max Ophuls.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Petah Tikva had become Palestine’s second purely Jewish town and had been granted municipal status. The newly formed municipal council was to consist of 15 councilors, of whom one was to be mayor and another deputy mayor.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Mr. Ormsby-Gore, the Colonial Secretary, told the House of Commons that many arrests had been made in Northern Palestine, but the security situation in the South was better. Meanwhile Rehovot police fought a short battle with Negev Bedouin, searched their encampments and made some arrests.

1937: “The Seventh Heaven” starring Simone Simon, whose father would die in a concentration camp and featuring Gregory Ratoff and J. Edward Romberg was released today in the United States.

1938: Birthdate of Decatur, AL, native and Auburn University graduate Alan Goodman Koch, the right-handed pitcher with the Washington Senators and Detroit Tigers who perused a legal career after the Major Leagues.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/kochal01.shtml

1938: In Poland, after several attempts, the Seym outlawed the ritual slaughter of meat. The bill was never enforced because the Seym dissolved in September during the Czech crisis.

1939(5th of Nisan, 5699): Parsahat Vayikra

1939: Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Self-Preservation and the Moral” at Temple Emanu-El.

1939: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Life of Isaac M. Wise” at the Central Synagogue.

1939: Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Judaism and Democracy” at the West End Synagogue.

1939: “Blackwell’s Island” a crime thriller starring John Garfield was released by Warner Brothers today

1939: Birthdate of Carolyn Goldmark Goodman the Bryn Mawr College graduate who married Oscar Goodman whom she followed as Mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada.

1940: Birthdate of Susan Fromberg who became famous as Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, a novelist with a gift for evoking complex characters in the grip of extreme psychological stress and physical suffering, notably in “The Madness of a Seduced Woman” and the Vietnam War novel “Buffalo Afternoon.” (As reported by William Grimes)

1940: Birthdate of “Larry Rosen, the music producer and digital-audio entrepreneur who was best known as a founder of the pop-jazz record label GRP…”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/arts/music/larry-rosen-digital-audio-pioneer-dies-at-75.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1941: Today’s agreement by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia to join forces with Germany led to a coup thwarting the alliance which triggered an invasion of Yugoslavia. (from “The History of the Jewish People”)

1941(27th of Adar, 5701): Dr. Froim Ephym Syrkin, the brother of the Zionist leader Nachum Syrkin (of blessed memory) passed away today at the age of 52. For the last five years, Dr. Syrkin has been serving as the superintendent of Beth Moses Hospital in Brooklyn. Born in Russia in 1889, Dr. Syrkin served with the Russian Army Medical Corps during World War I before starting a medical practice in post-war Warsaw where he also served as regional director for the American Joint Distribution Committee. Syrkin came to the United States in 1920 and worked at the Beth Abraham Home and Hospital for Incurables in the Bronx and the Bronxwood Sanitarium before going to work for Beth Moses in 1936. Syrkin was a bachelor who was survived by his mother and three sisters, two of whom are doctors.

1942: The government of the Slovak Republic began to deport its Jewish citizens today. The Slovak Republic was one of the countries to agree to deport its Jews as part of the Nazi Final Solution. Originally, the Slovak government tried to make a deal with Germany in October 1941 to deport its Jews as a substitute for providing Slovak workers to help the war effort. After the Wannsee Conference, the Germans agreed to the Slovak proposal, and a deal was reached where the Slovak Republic would pay for each Jew deported, and, in return, Germany promised that the Jews would never return to the republic. The initial terms were for "20,000 young, strong Jews", but the Slovak government quickly agreed to a German proposal to deport the entire population for "evacuation to territories in the east". The willing deportation was only the latest in a series of anti-Semitic actions taken by the government. Soon after gaining its “independence,” the Slovak Republic began a series of measures aimed against the Jews in the country. The Hlinka's Guard began to attack Jews, and the "Jewish Code" was passed in September 1941. Resembling the Nuremberg Laws, the Code required that Jews wear a yellow armband, banned intermarriage and denied Jews the opportunity to hold a variety of jobs.

1942: Seven hundred Jews from Polish Lvov-district reached Belzec Concentration camp

1942: The second wave of deportations of the Jews of Laupheim took placed today when “a large number of them were transported to Poland.”

1942: Lazar Kaganovich completed his second term as People’s Commissar for Transport.

1943: Birthdate of William H. Ginsburg, the Philadelphia born California lawyer best known for representing Monica Lewinsky.

1943: A second group of Macedonian Jews who had been imprisoned in tobacco warehouses in Skopje was shipped to the Treblinka Death Camp.

1943: In a surprise move, 97% of all Dutch physicians went on strike against Nazi registration

1943: One thousand Jews are deported from Marseilles, France, to the Sobibór death camp.

1943(18th of Adar II, 5703): The Jewish community from Zólkiew, Poland, was marched to the Borek Forest and executed. [Ed. Note – Who says Kaddish for these people?]

1943: An anonymous letter written by a non-Jewish German citizen, critical of Nazi ghetto-liquidation techniques, was forwarded to Hitler's Chancellery. There is no record of the author’s name or his/or her fate.

1944: In the Ukraine, the Ghetto at Bar was liberated.

1944: The Germans plan to start deporting the Jews of Volvos today were thwarted thanks to a warning received by the town’s Archbishop, Joachim Alexopoulos who work with the chief rabbi, Moshe Pessah “to find sanctuary for the city’s Jews in the mountainous villages of Pelion.” (As reported by Amanda Borschel-Dan)

1944: After weeks of political wrangling and German invasion, official word came that Hungary was ready to deal with its Jewish "problem".

1944: In response to last night’s attacks by members of the Stern Gang, the government imposed a curfew on the Jewish sections of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Hadar Hacarmel in Haifa.

1945: After 87 performances, the two-act musical composed by Arthur Gershwin “A Lad y Says Yes” closed at the Broadhurst Theatre.

1946: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry heard testimony from twelve witnesses today in Jerusalem. Among those testifying were Golda Meyerson representing the General Federation of Jewish Labor in Palestine, Sami Taha representing the Arab Worker’s Society who “called Zionism a trick of British Imperialism” and E.A. Ghory who “said that Palestine Arabs were supported against Zionism by the entire Moslem world.”

1946: “A shipload of illegal immigrant arrived” off the coast of Tel Aviv tonight. Several of the immigrants evaded capture by the British and reportedly “found shelter” in the homes of Jews living in Tel Aviv.

1946: In the first outbreak of its kind since the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry arrived in Palestine, unidentified attackers stuck the Saronoa police camp.

1947: Meir Feinstein, a British army veteran, Daniel Azulai, Massoud Bouton and Moshe Horowitz appeared before a three man military tribunal to answer charges that they were responsible for the bombing of a Jerusalem railway station last October resulting in the death of a British constable. The quartet will face the death penalty if they are found guilty

1947: A bank in Tel Aviv was robbed today in broad daylight by a gang believed to belong to the Irgun.

1947: In what appears to be another example of an on-going conflict among Arabs over the sale of land to Jews, gunmen attacked the home of Fakhri Eddine, a prominent Arab living in Beisan, seriously wounding five men and a girl.

1948: Birthdate of Eliezer Kalina who lost his leg during the Yom Kippur War and went on to be a Gold Medal Winning Paralympic Champion.

http://www.paralympic.org/ipc_results/search.php?sport=all&games=all&medal=all&npc=all&gender=all&name=kalina&fname=

1948(14th of Adar II, 5708): Purim

1948(14th of Adar II, 5708): Sixty-four-year-old German native Richard B. Feibelmann the holder of a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Munich who went from teaching to research chemist to chemical company manager before, in 1935, coming to the United States where “he developed starch solubilization processes for use in the textile and paper finishing industries” while raising his daughter with his wife Carla passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/03/26/93792659.pdf

1948: “Two mines exploded under an unescorted Jewish convoy north of Gaza,” killing one unidentified Jew.

1948: As fighting continued today “along the Jaffa-Tel Aviv border” ten Jews were wounded when “four mortar shells fired by Arabs fell in southern Tel Aviv and “squads of the Haganah resumed shellfire at dawn” aimed “at Arab positions.”

1949: The Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace arranged by a CPUSA front organization and sponsored by Herbert Aptheker opened today in New York City.

1950(7th of Nisan, 5710): Parashat Vayikra

1950: Young Judeans from East Chicago attended an Oneg Shabbat at the B’nai B’rith Club Rooms in Gary, Indiana where the community has just announced to settle ten “displaced families.”

1950: The United States, Great Britain and France issue a joint declaration promising to “take action against any aggression “designed to alter the frontiers in the Middle East.

1951: “Rawhide” a western featuring George Tobias and with a music by Sol Kaplan and Lionel Newman was released today in the United States.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from The Hague that the Israeli delegation to the reparations talks feared that there was little hope of attaining early substantial grants and had asked for a detailed clarification of the opening statements made by the West German delegation. The atmosphere at the talks continued to be formal. In Israel the police and Histadrut pickets stood by while Herut was making final preparations for a huge mass demonstration against German reparations.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that three Arab infiltrators were killed in the Sharon; a fourth escaped

1953: Four days after she had passed away in Miami Beach, funeral services are scheduled to be held in Brooklyn for Lena Shapiro, the wife of Karl Shapiro, Director of the Infants Home of Brooklyn and mother of Solomon A. Shapiro and Yetta Sultan, a member of the Sea Group of Hadassah.

1953: Dedication of a new road leading to Sodom, Israel.

1953: Pearl Edelman LaPorte, the wife of Jacob LaPorte whom she had married in 1904 in Chicago passed away today after which she was buried at Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.

1955: “Interrupted Melody,” a musical biopic directed by Curtis Bernhardt, with a screenplay by Sonya Levien and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg was released in the United States toda.

1955: “Strategic Air Command” a Cold War paean to SAC produced by Samuel J. Briskin was released today in the United States.

1955: “The Big Combo” a film noire directed by Joseph H. Lewis, with a screenplay by Philip Yordan and featuring Michael Mark had a special screening in New York City today.

1956(13th of Nisan, 5716): Seventy-four-year-old of Vilna native Arthur Lyon Malkenson, who in 1896 came to the United States in 1896 where he graduated from CCNY and earned a laws degree from NYU after which he pursued a care in journalism which led to him serving as “president and publisher of “The Jewish Morning Journal” while raising a family of five children with his wife “Freda Friedkin Malenson” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/03/26/84880944.pdf

1957(22nd of Adar II, 5717): Max Ophuls passed away. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0649097/bio

1958: In Los Angeles, CA, Barbara and Anthony H. Pascall gave birth to American movie executive Amy Pascal.

1960: The head of the Jewish Labor Committee called on the State Department and other Federal agencies today to cease what he termed discrimination against potential employees of the Jewish faith.

1963: At a surprise meeting with David Ben Gurion, Meir Amit was ordered to take over Mossad following the resignation of Isser Harel ("Little Isser"). Amit was forced to double as the director of military intelligence and head of Mossad. (As reported by the Telegraph of London)

1965: Birthdate of actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

1965: The opera “Lizzie Borden,” with mezzo-soprano Brenda Lewis singing the lead premiered today in New York City.

1965: The Bundestag voted to extend the statutory deadline on war crimes prosecutions.

1974(2nd of Nisan, 5734): Seventy-five-year-old Dr. Arthur Frederick Abt passed away.

https://prabook.com/web/arthur_frederick.abt/1112936

1974: Barbra Streisand recorded the album "Butterfly"

1975: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot at point-blank range and killed by his half-brother's son, Faisal bin Musa'id, who had just come back from the United States. It is a commonly-held, but so far unsubstantiated popular belief in Saudi Arabia and the Arab and Muslim world that Faisal's oil boycott was the real cause of his assassination, via a Western conspiracy. [For once Israel and the Jews were not blamed for something gone wrong in the Middle East. The event is a yet another reminder that Israeli is not the cause of murder and mayhem in that part of the world as the anti-Semites would have us believe.]

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that port workers returned slowly to work under Labor Court orders. But the workers of the Land Registry went on a wildcat strike unauthorized by the Histadrut.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that a terrorist cell of 16 members, preparing a car bomb, was caught at Jenin. A number of dentists were put on trial for income tax evasion.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported Israeli scientists concluded that some of the trees of the Gethsemane area in Jerusalem were at least 1,600 years old.

1978: During Operation Litani, the PLO ordered a ceasefire in its fight with the IDF.

1979: Six-year-old Etan Patz, a Jewish child living in Manhattan, disappeared as he walked to the bus stop for the first time by himself.

http://forward.com/articles/156788/clerk-lured-etan-patz-with-cold-soda/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Weekly%20%2B%20Daily&utm_campaign=Weekly_Newsletter_Friday%202012-05-25

1981(19th of Adar II, 5741): Seventy-two-year-old Uriel Shelach, the Israeli poet who wrote under the pen name of Yonatan Ratosh passed away today.

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/modern_judaism/v019/19.2rabin.html

1981(19th of Adar II, 5741): Ninety-year-old chess champion Edward Lasker passed away today. (As reported by Thomas W. Ennis)

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/26/obituaries/dr-edward-lasker-is-dead-at-95-5-time-us-open-chess-winner.html?pagewanted=print

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lasker

1982: Eighty-three-year-old Goodman Ace (born Goodman Aiskowitz) known as “Goody” the husband of Jane Ace an the creator of “Easy Aces” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/27/obituaries/goodman-ace-humorist-dead-co-star-of-easy-aces-on-radio.html

1982: Rabbi Ronald Sobel officiated at the wedding of Joan Treble Sutton, a columnist for the Toronto Sun and Oscar S. Straus, a former career Foreign Service officer and the grandson of Oscar Straus who served under President Teddy Roosevelt, in his study at Temple Emanu-El.

1982: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Cagney and Lacey” a ground-breaking cop-buddy television series produced by Barney Rosenzweig and co-starring Al Waxman “as Cagney and Lacey's good-natured and sometimes blustery supervisor, Lt. Bert Samuels.”

1983: “Bad Boys,” a coming of age movie directed by Rick Rosenthal was released in the United States today.

1984: “Glengarry Glenn Ross,” a Pulitzer Prize winning play written by David Mamet, opened today on Broadway.

1984(21st of Adar II, 5744): Fifty-year old American psychiatrist Edward Joel Sachar, the son of historian Abram L. Sachar and Thelma Sachar, and the brother of historian Howard Sachar and gastroenterologist David B. Sachar passed away today.(As reported by Walter H. Waggoner)

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/28/obituaries/dr-ej-sachar-psychiatrist-and-hormone-expert-dead.html

1986: 'The Arthur Frank Collection of Scientific Instruments' which had been created by his father Charles Frank, a Lithuanian born resident of Glasgow  who was an optical and scientific instrument maker, was sold today at Sotheby's Auction House

1986: The ILGU will host a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

1986: The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Goldman v. Weinberg a “case in which a Jewish Air Force officer was denied the right to wear a yarmulke when in uniform on the grounds that the Free Exercise Clause applies less strictly to the military than to ordinary citizens.”

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/475/503

http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Military_Law_Review/pdf-files/275075~1.pdf

1988: “A New Life” a comedy produced by Martin Bregman and co-starring Hal Linden was released in the United States today.

1988: “The Fox and the Hound” an animated film version of the novel by the same name featuring the voice of Jack Albertson, Paul Winchell and Corey Feldman was re-released in the United States today.

1991: At a meeting with prominent Jews President Lech Walesa of Poland repeatedly made explicit statements denouncing anti-Semitism and vowed to fight bigotry in his country. Facing the questions of members of the World Jewish Congress, an umbrella group of major Jewish organizations in 70 countries, Mr. Walesa pledged to rescind Polish support for a 1975 United Nations resolution that equated Zionism with racism. He also said he would try to find a way to address the property claims of Jews who fled Poland during World War II, and to pass a law protecting Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in Poland as sacred places. His remarks contrasted sharply with statements he made while visiting the United States two years ago. At that time, he denied the existence of anti-Semitism in Poland, which before World War II was home to three million Jews. Mr. Walesa conceded that there had been a resurgence of ethnic prejudice in Poland, a country virtually without Jews today but with a long history of anti-Semitism. "Though this is just a marginal part of life, I am ashamed of it," he said. "As long as I have anything to say in Poland, I will oppose anti-Semitism." Jewish participants at the meeting said they were impressed with Mr. Walesa's candor and his promises to fight for the repeal of the United Nations resolution, and for property rights of expatriated Polish Jews. "I thought he was very sincere," said Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress. "When he got angry, there was a real force behind his words." The congress plans to set up a commission in May to delve into the causes of anti-Semitism. Mr. Bronfman said Mr. Walesa had offered to sit on the commission himself if he could not find an appropriate Polish representative. Benjamin Meed, president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943, said he was satisfied with Mr. Walesa's stance against anti-Semitism but wanted to see his promises translated into action. "I was very impressed," he said, "but I'm waiting for the deeds." The 45-minute exchange between Mr. Walesa and congress members, held in a conference room at the Seagram Building in midtown Manhattan, was respectful but charged with passion. The Jewish participants deferentially but firmly demanded that he provide them with concrete evidence of his desire to eradicate anti-Semitism. Mr. Walesa responded by alternately pleading for patience and heatedly defending himself against implications that he had provoked bigotry during the Polish election. In a testy response to the representatives' repeated insistence that he back his words with actions, Mr. Walesa, a Roman Catholic, declared at one point: "If I could, then frankly, I would be a Jew. Is it my fault that I'm not?" Kalman Sultanik, president of the Federation of Polish Jews, asked Mr. Walesa for assurances that a Carmelite convent on the grounds of the Auschwitz death camp would be relocated. Last year, Jews and Catholics settled the dispute by agreeing to move the convent to an interfaith center to be built outside the former concentration camp. But the Polish Roman Catholic Primate, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, spoke out against the agreement, and Mr. Sultanik apparently wanted Mr. Walesa's guarantee that it would go forward. The bitter dispute underscores the belief held by many Jews that some members of the Polish Catholic hierarchy harbor anti-Semitic sentiments. Although Mr. Walesa unequivocally addressed most other issues raised by Jewish leaders at the meeting, he responded to Mr. Sultanik's request only by saying that his Government would "do everything possible to do away with this problem so it does not raise tensions between us." Past anti-Semitism in Poland and his new Government's goal of combating any resurgence of it emerged as major issues during President Walesa's visit to the United States. During a ceremony at the Holocaust museum in Washington, where Mr. Walesa began his United States tour last week, he announced the formation of a presidential commission to fight anti-Semitism and xenophobia. He also donated several relics from the Holocaust to the museum, which is scheduled to open in 1993. After the World Jewish Congress meeting, Mr. Walesa headed to the United Nations for a meeting with Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, and he assured the Jewish leaders he would discuss the Zionism resolution with him. Mr. Walesa also promoted investment in Poland, which has been a major part of his mission to the United States. Saying he would work to educate the younger generation of Poles about the shared Jewish and Polish heritage, he said, "We shall, however, know each other best not through textbooks but through business."

1992(20th of Adar II, 5752): Seventy-nine year old Max I. Dimont, the native of Helsinki  who enjoyed a 35 year career in public relations with Edison Brothers and is best remembered for writing several books on the history of the Jews the best known of which was Jews, God and History, passed away today.

http://thehobophilosopher.blogspot.com/2010/08/jews-god-and-history-by-max-i.html

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jews-god-and-history-by-max-i-dimont/

1994: In Albuquerque, NM, Sam and Jackie Bregman, both of whom are lawyers gave to Houston Astros infielder Alex Bregman who was part of long line of Baseball Buffs including his grandfather Stan Bregman, the general manager of the Washington Senators and his uncle Ben Bregamn.

1994: “D2: The Mighty Ducks” the second in this hockey comedic trilogy directed by Brandeis graduate Sam Weisman was released in the United States today

1995(23rd of Adar II, 5755): Parashat Shimini; Parashat Parah

1995(23rd of Adar II, 5755): Eighty-six-year-old Swarthmore College grad and Oxford attendee Elizabeth Flexner, the Georgetown, KY born daughter of playwright of Anne Crawford Flexner and reformer Abraham Flexner, known for her championing the field of women’s rights and studies passed away today.

https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal/?v=1&maj=on&min=on&nx=on&mf=on&ss=on&mod=on&o=on&s=on&i=off&year=1913&month=x&yt=G&lg=s&d=on&c=off&geo=geoname&zip=&city=&geonameid=&b=18&m=50&.s=Create+Calendar#cal-1913-03

1997: It was reported today that “a furor is erupting over the use of pigskin in the treatment of Orthodox Jewish children with serious burns in New York’s pre- eminent pediatric burn center,” the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center’s burn center.

1998(27th of Adar, 5758): Fifty-one-year-old Congressman Steve Schiff passed away.

http://www.anomalies.net/archive/cni-news/CNI.0999.html

1998: U.S. premiere of “A Price Above Rubies,” directed and written by Boaz Yakin

1999: Raik Haj Yahia, Amir Peretz and Adisu Massala broke away from the Labor Party to form One Nation.

2000(18th of Adar II, 5760): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Parah

2000: As he prepared to meet with Pope John Paul II in Jerusalem tomorrow, Sheik Ikrima Sabri, the Chief Islamic cleric in Jerusalem “said today that he believed that the number of 6 million Holocaust victims is exaggerated” and that Israel “considers its pain more important than anyone else’s.”

2001(1st of Nisan, 5761): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

2001(1st of Nisan, 5761): Ninety-one-year-old “Canadian businessman and philanthropist” Jack Diamond passed away today.

http://www.orderofbc.gov.bc.ca/members/1991-jack-diamond/

2001: “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport” won the Oscar tonight for the “Best Documentary Feature.”

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century by Laura Shapiro and Faithless: Tales of Transgression by Joyce Carol Oates.

2001: Dick Schapp is honored by The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.

2003(21st of Adar II, 5763): Eighty-nine-year-old Eddie Jaffe, a legendary New York press agent, passed away today. (As reported by Ralph Blumenthal)

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/theater/eddie-jaffe-the-press-agent-of-broadway-is-dead-at-89.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

2004: The Times of London reports that the chairman of Signature Restaurants, which owns celebrity eateries in London such as The Ivy and Belgo, is backing plans by the Giraffe’s owners, Jewish business people Russel and Juliette Joffe, to double the size of the business to 16 sites over the next two to three years.

2004: NBC broadcast the last episode of “Good Morning, Miami” a sitcom created by David Kohan and Max Mutchnick and starring Mark Feuerstein.

2005(14th of Adar II, 5765): Purim

2006(25th of Adar, 5766): Parashat Vaykhel-Pekudi; Shabbat Hachodesh.

2006: Rabbi Harold S. White officiated at the marriage of Sarah Elizabeth Ackerstin, “an assistant attorney general in the attorney general’s office for the District of Columiba” and Israel Shai Klein, the communications director, based in Washington, for Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.”

2006: According to his report published today, Steve Erlanger believes that “nearly three months after Mr. Sharon's major stroke on Jan. 4, his spirit hangs over this Israeli election, as the country prepares to give its verdict on March 28 on Kadima, the centrist party he created.”

2007: “International Jewish Artists of the Year Awards” begins at Christies Auctions House, in London, England (UK).

2007: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning in Chevy Chase, MD for eighty-one-year-old “L. Leonard Ruben, one of Montgomery County's best-known judges and the husband of former Maryland state senator Ida G. Ruben,” who had passed away after he collapsed outside the district courthouse in downtown Silver Spring.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032102169.html

 

2007: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is holding an academic symposium in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the death of Uriel Weinreich, an exploration of the legacy of this premier scholar of Yiddish linguistics in America.

2007: The curtain came down today on a production of “The Farnsworth Invention” a play by Aaron Sorkin that examines how David Sarnoff’s relationship to the “invention of television signal at the La Jolla Playhouse.

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “The Secret U.S.-German Collaboration to End World War II” a lecture by Maria (Maki) Haberfeld and Sigrid MacRae who offer startling facts about the war with Hitler’s Germany and the way we might want to think about the resurgent anti-Semitism in Germany today. What were Roosevelt’s real responses to Hitler? How did the United States end up inadvertently strengthening the resistance of the Germans and the Swiss to a Holocaust?

2008: Israeli artist Sigalit Landau opens a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The MOMA exhibition, which was conceived in the wake of a recent show she did at the KW Gallery in Berlin, includes works from the "Dead Sea" series, and a selection of old and new video works.

2008: Israel's UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman, slammed the "trend" of equating the "lawful actions" of a state defending its citizens with the "violence of terrorists," in a bitter exchange at the Security Council's monthly session on the Middle East.

2008(18th of Adar II, 5768): Eighty-three-year-old Abby Mann, the American film writer and producer who wrote the screenplay for “Judgment at Nuremberg”, passed away, one day after Richard Widmark who starred in this epic died. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/movies/28mann2.html

2009: At New Jersey’s Atlantic Cape Community College Janna Gur Israeli culinary delivers the second of four lectures on the cuisine of Israel and Tel Aviv in particular entitled “Celebrating the Food of Tel Aviv.”

2009: The government of Israel hosts a public celebration marking the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty 30 years ago.

2010: The Annual Downtown Seder is scheduled to be celebrated tonight at the City Winery in New York. The City Winery is “the brainchild” of Michael Dorf, a well-known Jewish entrepreneur. “The Seder brings together an eclectic mix of artists, political figures, thinkers, and comedians to offer a one-of-a-kind interpretation of the ancient Passover Story.” It is celebrated 4 days before Passover starts, so that attendees can bring many of these important messages to their own Seder. The Seder meal is described as “vegetarian” with the “exception for chicken Matzah ball soup.

2010: Moshe Peretz won the prize פרס אקו"ם For "Best achievement in music".

2010: The Jerusalem Municipality finance committee approved a plan for the construction of a new cinema complex in the Haleom parking lot opposite the Supreme Court, on condition that it closes during Shabbat, Israel Radio reported today

2010: “Monkey Business in a World of Evil” published today described the Curious George exhibition at the Jewish Museum.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Military_Law_Review/pdf-files/275075~1.pdf

2011(19th of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-six-year-old “Irving J. Shulman, who founded the Daffy’s clothing store chain and brought discount fashion to Fifth Avenue through quirky marketing and a promise of “clothing bargains for millionaires,” passed away today. (As reported by Christine Hauser)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/business/30shulman.html?_r=0

2011(19th of Adar II, 5771): Eighty-one-year-old Thomas Eisner the “groundbreaking authority on insects whose research revealed the complex chemistry that they use to repel predators, attract mates and protect their young” passed away today. (As reported by Kenneth Chang)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/science/earth/31eisner.html

2011: “Last Folio” which has only been exhibited in Cambridge, England i Scheduled for display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York in 2011, starting today” a date which “marks the 68th anniversary of the first ever transport to Auschwitz — of young Jewish Slovak girls. As the first inmates there, they were responsible for establishing the routines that would keep them alive, and many became the dreaded and despised kapos, or prisoner-guards.”

2011: In Albany, NY, The Reform Congregations of the Capital District are scheduled to begin the celebration of Founder Day’s.

2011: A Netanya Conservative and Reform house of worship became the target of stone-throwing attacks during Shabbat evening prayers.

2011(19th of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-one-year-old Dr. Thomas Eisner, “who cracked the chemistry of bugs” passed away today. (As reported by Kenneth Change)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/science/earth/31eisner.html

2011: The Jerusalem Marathon ended in some confusion as the three leading runners apparently took a wrong turn and arrived at the wrong finish line.

2011: U.S. release date for “Peep World,” a comedy narrated by Lewis Black and co-starring Ron Rifkin, Ben Schwarts and Sarah Silverman among others.

2011: New York City Marks the 100thAnniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42273592/ns/business-us_business/#.VvSgeo-cF9B

2012: “White Balance is scheduled to be shown tonight at the 16th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2012: As part of a month-long national conversation about Spinoza's impact and legacy, Theatre J in Washington, DC is scheduled to sponsor “Spinoza: A University Debate.”

2012: “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951” which has been on display at The Jewish Museum New York is scheduled to close today.

http://www.forward.com/articles/144903/#ixzz1cnoqvT00

2013: The Wiener Library is scheduled to host Compliant or Confrontational?: The Protestant Church and the Holocaust,”  a program that “will examine the role of the Protestant Church during the Second World War and the impact and legacy of the Holocaust upon the Protestant Church in post-war Germany.

2013(14th of Nisan, 5773): Fast of the First Born; Erev Pesach

2013(14th of Nisan): On the Jewish calendar today marks the seventieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.   Erev of Pesach 5703 (April 19, 1943), the German forces began their final drive to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto. When the SS entered the ghetto they were met with armed resistance.  Much to everybody’s surprises a handful of fighters armed with a few pistols, rifles and Molotov Cocktails inflicted casualties on the tank led German troops. At the end of the day, the Jewish “fighters felt that the day was theirs. They had taken on heavily armed and trained units and inflicted losses.  They could not win or even hold out, but they would die avenging the silenced dead.”  It would take the Germans more than a month to subdue the Jewish fighters.  When you consider that the French surrendered to the Germans after only six weeks of fighting, the valor of the Jewish men and women is even more impressive.  There are several sites that are calling attention to this anniversary including http://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/april-19-1943-anniversary-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising/ and http://www.juf.org/news/thinking_torah.aspx?id=419902

For those of you who would like to add a reading to your Seder to mark the moment you might want to consider the one below.  It is an eyewitness description of what the fighters saw as they set up a new position in a rabbi’s apartment at 4 Kuzia Street on the night of the first Seder.

The apartment was in a state of chaos [a youth observed]. Bed linens were spread all around, chairs were turned upside down, various household items were strewn on the floor, and all the window panes were smashed into little bits. During the daytime, while the members of the family had sought shelter in the bunker, the house had become a mess; only the table in the middle of the room stood: festive, as if a thing apart from the other furniture. The redness of the wine in the glasses which were on the table was a reminder of the blood of the Jews who had perished on the eve of the holiday. The Hagada was recited while in the background incessant bursts of bombing and shooting, one after the other, pounded throughout the night. The scarlet reflection from the burning houses nearby illuminated the faces of those around the table in the darkened room. When the rabbi reached the passage, "Shofoch Chamatcha" ["Pour out Your wrath on the nations who have not wished to know You"], he and his family broke down and cried bitterly. I had the feeling that it was the weeping of people condemned to death, people who, outwardly, had re- signed themselves to the idea of their deaths, yet were terrified when the moment neared. The rabbi lamented those who had not lived to celebrate this Seder.  From The Holocaust by Nora Levin

 

2013: This evening, President Barak Obama is scheduled to host his annual White House Seder.

2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced today that he would resume the routine transfer of tax revenues collected for the Palestinian Authority, ending a freeze that began in December 2012 following the Palestinian bid for upgraded status at the UN in late November.

2013:Two leaders that have been in the limelight this month sent their thoughts to world Jewry today, as both Pope Francis and US President Barack Obama wished their respective communities a happy Passover.

2013(14th of Nisan, 5773): Eighty-five-year-old two-time Pulitzer prize winning New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis of whom “Nicholas B. Lemann, the dean of Columbia University School of Journalism, said: "At a liberal moment in American history, he was one of the defining liberal voices” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/us/anthony-lewis-pulitzer-prize-winning-columnist-dies-at-85.html?hp

2014: “Two Sided Story” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “The Rolling Stones confirmed today that they will perform in Tel Aviv on June 4 as part of their “14 On Fire” world tour.”

2014(23rd of Adar II, 5774): Eighty-eight-year-old sculptor Mon Levinson passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/arts/design/mon-levinson-88-op-art-sculptor-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

2014(23rd of Adar II, 5774): Seventy-year-old journalist Robert Slater passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/business/media/robert-slater-journalist-and-author-dies-at-70.html?hpw&rref=obituaries

2014:A strike by Israeli diplomats over salaries has foiled preparations in Nepal for what coordinators say is the world’s biggest celebration of the Jewish Passover holiday, organizers announced today.”

2014: “The Beginning” and “Among Believers” the opening episodes of “The Story of the Jews” with Simon Schama are scheduled to be shown this evening.

http://www.iptv.org/series.cfm/23708/story_jews_with_simon/ep:101

http://www.jta.org/2014/03/18/arts-entertainment/with-the-story-of-the-jews-simon-schama-returns-to-his-roots

http://www.iptv.org/series.cfm/23708/story_jews_with_simon/ep:101

2015: Sol Levinson & Bros. Funeral Home and Jewish Community Services are scheduled to present “The Empty Place at the Table: Coping with Loss During the Holidays.”

2015: Publication of “From A Woman’s Thoughts to Welcoming the Ladies”

http://jewishmuseummd.org/2015/03/from-a-womans-thoughts-to-welcoming-the-ladies-a-few-thoughts-for-the-end-of-womens-history-month/

2015: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a “Workshop: Help Make a Museum” as part of the planning process to create “a new regional Jewish museum.”

2015: Auschwitz museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told the AP today “that historians have no doubt that” a list “of 15 Polish and Jewish inmates of the Nazi death camp” that had been “found last inside a 1923 Polish book on the history of warfare” was authentic. (As reported by Monika Scislowska)

2015: National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host the “3rd Annual Freedom Seder Revisited.”

2015: The Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to meet in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

2015: Thomas Barton is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Battle Over Jews in Medieval Spain” in Coronado, CA.

2016(15th of Adar II, 5776): Shushan Purim

2016(15th of Adar II, 5776): On the day after his 47th birthday Brigadier General Muni Amar “died in a plane crash” this afternoon.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4783182,00.html

2016: As the Jews in the America South reaches Savannah, GA, “local expert Harriet Meyerhoff is scheduled to lead a tour that will include to Mickve Israel, one of the nation’s oldest congregations and its museum.

2016: One-hundred fifth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/triangle-intro/

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/triangle-shirtwaist-fire   

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to begin today.

2017: “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross,” which was organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, is scheduled opened today.

http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/memory-unearthed

2017(27thof Adar, 5777): TRIPLE HEADER SABBATH

 Shabbat HaChodesh; Complete reading the Book of Exodus; Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

 2018: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present “Pomegranates and Palm Trees For Passover.”

2018: The American Society for Jewish Music, The American Jewish Historical Society and the American Sephardi Federation are scheduled to host “Songs of Devotion and Desire” which examines “the music heritage of Jewish Spain.”

2018: JNOLA and Jewish Community Day School are scheduled to host their 3rd annual Chocolate Seder

2018(9th of Nisan, 5778): One day after his 90th birthday,Bronx native and Iowa Hawkeye alum Melvin “Mel” Rosen who went from being a successful collegiate middle distance runner to being the highly successful track coach at Auburn University while raising two daughters – Laurie and Karen – with his wife, “the former Joan Kinstler, passed away today.

http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=140

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/sports/mel-rosen-coach-of-powerful-92-olympics-track-team-dies-at-90.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018: The funeral for Belle Lipsky is scheduled take place today followed by internment at Eben Israel Cemetery in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2018: The World Premiere of “Hero Among Us, that tells the story concentration camp liberator John Gaultier is scheduled to take place in his hometown of Vinton, IA this afternoon.

2018: The 18thAnnual New Jersey Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2018: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including That’s What She Said:What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together by Joanne Lipman and American Innovations by Rivka Galchen.

2019: The Center for Jewish History, the American Jewish Historical Society and MALA are scheduled to host a screening of “RBG,” the documentary about Justice Ginsburg followed by a discussion with RBG director Julie Cohen and associate producer Nadine Natour.

2019: In “Museums Cut Ties With Sacklers as Outrage Over Opiod Crisis Grows” published today, Alex Marshall described how the world of art and culture are being impacted by the behavior of this pharmaceutical family.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/arts/design/sackler-museums-donations-oxycontin.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

2019(18thof Adar II, 5779): Eighty-five-year-old University of Chicago and Columbia trained anthropologist Dr. Sydel Silverman, the Chicago born daughter of Elizabeth Bassman and Rabbi Joseph Finer whose works included The Beast on the Table passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/obituaries/sydel-silverman-dead.html

2019:  In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Driver,” a tale of an ultra-Orthodox father raising his daughter as single parent after his wife leaves him.

2019: The annual AIPAC Conference is scheduled to continue meeting for a second day in Washington, D.C.

2020: Today is the deadline the Supreme Court in Israel has set for Yuli Edelstein to convene the Knesset so that a new speaker can be elected.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host an online session with Leah Koenig as she talks about “The History of Jewish Cookbooks in America.”

2020: Boston Jewish Film is scheduled to present an online screening of “To Be of Service.”

2020: “Israel’s Chief Rabbi David Lau, in a public letter, called on Jews to refrain from eating or speaking unnecessarily today in light of the coronavirus pandemic” since “abstinence from food and speech is a Jewish spiritual practice designed to encourage self-reflection on the personal and communal level.”

2020: Observance of National Medal of Honor Day as designed by the United States Congress in 1990 which provides us with a chance to remember all America’s heroes including Abraham Cohn, Leopold Karpeles, Benjamin Levy and David Urbansky, veterans of the Civil War who were among the first Jews to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of honor.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-medal-of-honor-recipients

https://nmajmh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/hall-of-heroes/

https://www.aish.com/j/f/We_Jews_Medal_of_Honor_Winners.html

https://www.geni.com/projects/Medal-of-Honor-Recipients-Jewish/4987

2021: The Contemporary Jewish Museum is scheduled to present online Kristin Eriko Posner, founder of Nourish, a lifestyle company, and social worker Faye Chao Sofaer sharing recipes for Jewish Asian Passover recipes, stories and traditions.

2021: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present online “Passover Cooking Across the Diaspora with culinary historian Sara Gardner.

2021: As part of the Marshall Weinberg Sprig 2021 Classical Music Season, the 92ndStreet Y is scheduled to host on cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan.

2021: The Jewish Studio Project is to present “Have You Made Art About It Yet? Passover Edition”

a virtual class for making art that explores moving from narrow places to expansive joy.

2021: The Boston Synagogue is scheduled to present online a “Passover Party with Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band.”

2021: Based on reports published yesterday that the Chinese government plans to invite Israelis and Palestinians to hold talks in China, as of today there is a new player in the long-running, inconclusive game of Middle East Peace Talk

2021: Based on reports published yesterday, Prime Minister Netanyahu will not be able to form a government with Gideon Saar because the leader of New Hope has rejected proposals that he hold coalition talks with Bibi.

2021: One hundred tenth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire which should serve as a reminder that issues surrounding the working conditions for women and violence against women in the workplace is not a new issue.

 

This Day, March 26, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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March 26

1027: Coronation of Conrad II as Holy Roman Emperor, whose court was the site of religious disputation between Bishop Wazon “the overlord of” Liege and an unnamed Jewish physician. (As reported by the Jewish Virtual Library) 

1147: Jews of Cologne, Germany, fasted to commemorate anti-Jewish violence.

1369: King Pedro of Castile who employed Abraham ibn Zaral as his physician was beheaded by his rival and brother, Henry of Trastamara marking the end of their civil war for control of the kingdom. . Henry “was as hostile to the Jews as Pedro had been friendly. His long-cherished hatred of his brother burst forth when a Jew named Jacob, an intimate of the king, praised the latter excessively to Henry. In his fury he stabbed the Jew with a dagger. Pedro would have revenged himself on Henry forthwith, but his courtiers restrained him by force. Henry saved himself by a hasty flight. This was the immediate cause of the civil war which brought untold suffering upon the Jews of the country. . He was as hostile to the Jews as Pedro had been friendly. His long-cherished hatred of his brother burst forth when a Jew named Jacob, an intimate of the king, praised the latter excessively to Henry. In his fury he stabbed the Jew with a dagger. Pedro would have revenged himself on Henry forthwith, but his courtiers restrained him by force. Henry saved himself by a hasty flight. This was the immediate cause of the civil war which brought untold suffering upon the Jews of the country. During their struggle for control, Henry continuously depicted Peter as "King of the Jews," and had some success in taking advantage of popular Castilian resentment towards the Jews. During his reign, “Henry of Trastamara instigated pogroms beginning a period of anti-Jewish riots and forced conversion] in Castile that lasted approximately from 1370 to 1390.”

1481: “Seventeen Marranos perished at the stake on the Quemadero (place of burning) in Seville, Spain followed by enough other similar killings that by the end of November, “300 had perished at the stake” while another 79 were spared but sentenced to life imprisonment. (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

1655: Sir Christopher Packe, who had disappointed Cromwell by joining the militant exclusionist faction opposing the admission of Jews to England who had been Lord Mayor of London began serving as “Protector” today.

1671(15th of Nisan 5431): In Amsterdam, the Great Synagogue was consecrated on the first day of Pesach (Passover).

1692(9th of Nissan, 5452): The Jewish community of Carpentras, France escaped from a rioting mob causing this date to be celebrated as a Private Purim

1774: In Germany, Getta Sender and Moses Mack gave birth to Alexander Mack, the husband of Sara Aub whom he married in 1802 and the father of Wolfgang Mack.

1775(24th of Adar II, 5535): David Lopez passed away in Newport, RI.

1780: Birthdate of Isaac Elias Itzig, who as Julius Eduard Hitzig served Prussia as a civil servant before gaining fame as a German author.

1796: Carel Asser was among those who signed a petition to the States General seeking the emancipation of the Dutch Jews.

1801(12th of Nissan, 5561): Fast of the First Born observed since the 14th falls on Shabbat.

1806: Today, in Savannah, GA, Sarah de Leon, the daughter Abraham de Lyon married Samuel Russel

1807: West Indies native Leach Rachel De Leon and Abraham Quixano Henriques gave birth to Leah Henriques.

1808: Sephardic Jewish leader and MP Ralph Bernal and his wife Ann Elizabeth gave birth to Ralph Bernal Osborne

1816: Philadelphia native Benjamin Jonas Phillips and Abigail Seixas gave birth to Israel Benjamin Phillips, the husband of Harriet Jackson whom he married in New York in 1837 and the father of New York City native Benjamin Phillips.

1817: In London, Dinah Judah Botibl and Moses Acris gave birth to Joseph Moses Acris.

1825(17thof Nisan, 5585): Parashat Vayikra read for the first time during the Presidency of John Quincy Adams who had taken the oath of office 22 days ago,

1831: Rabbi David de Aaron de Sola preached the first sermon in English at Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. Born in Amsterdam in 1796, de Sola was the son of Aaron de Sola. He began serving at Bevis Marks in 1818. A prolific author he published his first work, The Blessings, in 1829 followed by his six-volume translation The Forms of Prayer According to the Custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in 1836. De Sola was also a musician whose accomplishments included musical rendition of Adon Olam which is still used in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi synagogues in the United Kingdom. He passed away in 1860.

1832: Birthdate of Michel Jules Alfred Bréal, the native of Bavria who became a leading French philologist and “is identified as the father of modern semantics.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03483.html

1839: In Bavaria, Babette Treu and Isaac Jacob Bamberger gave birth to Clara Bamberger, the wife of Leo Friedlander whom she married at Baltimore in 1863 and with whom she had four children – Sylvan, Julian, Irvin and Ray Friedlander.

1840: Birthdate of George Smith, the Englishman who provided some of the first and most meaningful investigation into the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia, with an emphasis on Assyria. His work provided historic context for, and proof of, the ancient Israelites including his discovery in 1866 of the date when Jehu, king of Israel, made a tribute payment to Assyrian King Shalmaneser III.

1845: Birthdate of Anna Madeline Graff Kahn the native of Germany and wife Solomon Kahn with whom she had four children.

1851: Louis Kyezor married Julia Joseph today.

1851: Birthdate of “German art historian” Julius Langbehn who attacked “Jews as corrupters of German culture” saying that they “no place in Germany” – a position that would later be part of the Nazi movement.

1852: In Eiger, Hungary, Eduard and Josefine Zeisler gave birth to Rabbi Joseph Zeisler whose congregation included B’nai Zion in Danville, PA where he served from September of 1905 to August of 1906.

1852: It was reported today that an Imperial Ukase has been issued in Russia that classifies Jews into two categories, “those who have a fixed residence and a trade and those who have neither. The latter are to be employed in the public mines and fortresses.”

1852: In a sign of the crumbling power of the Sultan and the commensurate growth of European power, in Palestine, it was reported today that the Ottomans had agreed to grant France the right to build a church in a suburb of Bethlehem and to allow Catholic priests the right to repair their church in Jerusalem.

1852: The congregation of Ohabei Shalom dedicated its own synagogue building on Warren Street, the first synagogue in Boston and the second in New England.

1853: Birthdate of Hugo Rheinhold the Prussian born businessman turned sculptor whose most famous work maybe “Ape with Skull.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affe_mit_Sch%C3%A4del#/media/File:Affe_mit_Sch%C3%A4del.jpg

1855: Birthdate of Salomon Kahn, who was buried in the Freudenberg Cemetery when he passed away in 1924.

1855: Nahum Steiner, a Jew who converted to Christianity, delivered a speech at the Knickerbocker Hall in New York entitled “Our Present Christianity Compared With Primitive Discipleship or Judaism Again.” During his presentation he attempted to answer questions regarding the destiny of the United States when compared to Jewish History.

1859: In Hildesheim, Hanover, Elise Wertheimer and Salomon Hurwritz gave birth to mathematician Adolf Hurwitz.

http://www.numbertheory.org/obituaries/LMS/hurwitz/page1.html

1860: The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a resolution offered by Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham “calling for the correspondence relative to the Swiss Treaty” including the limitations that this treaty placed “upon Hebrew citizens of the United States.” This is the same Congressman Vallandgiham who would be labeled as a Copperhead during the Civil War. The issue of the discriminatory nature of the Swiss treaty as it affected the Jews was one of the first times that the civil society moved to protect its Jewish citizens.

1861(15thof Nisan, 5621): Pesach

1861(15th of Nisan, 5621): The New York Times reported that “The Jewish Passover, a festival commemorative of the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, commenced last evening, and will continue for eight days. The origin of the festival is given in the 12th Chapter of Exodus, and the Bible prediction that it should be forever observed by the Israelites throughout the world, has this far been strikingly fulfilled. The duties imposed upon the Jews during the Passover are, total abstinence from all kinds of leaven and leavened bread attendance of the males at the Tabernacle, and cessation of business on the first two and last two days of the festival. On the evenings of the first two days, the reading of the Seder takes place in every Jewish family, the members, meanwhile, sitting round a table, on which are placed the bone of a lamb, representing the sacrifice of the "paschal lamb," and some bitter herbs, symbolical of the bitterness of the Egyptian bondage. After the reading of the Seder, the family chants a service reciting their bondage and deliverance. Previous to the Passover, every Jewish household undergoes a thorough renovation, corresponding to the house-cleaning process customary among Christians.”

1861: Birthdate of Uchimura Kanzō, the philo-Semitic Japanese minister.

https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/4136

1862: In New York, Henriette and Isaac David Walter gave birth to cotton-goods manufacturer and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia graduate William Israel Walter, the husband of the former Florence Bernheimer with whom he raised two children – Marjorie and Florence – who supported such worthy causes as the “children’s clinic at Mt. Sinai Hospital and the History Department at Bryn Mawr College

1862(20th of Adar II, 5622): Uriah Phillips Levy, Commodore of the United States Navy, passed away in Philadelphia. Levy was a descendant of the original 23 Jews who settled in New Amsterdam in 1654. He was buried in the Cypress Hill Cemetery in the Congregation Shearith Israel portion. On his stone was written, "He was the father of the law for the abolition of the barbarous practice of corporal punishment in the United States Navy."

http://www.fau.edu/library/brody8.htm

1864(18thof Adar II, 5624): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Parah

1864: As Jews observed Shabbat Parah, Union General James McPherson took command of the Army of the Tennessee as part of the plans for the year-long offensive that would bring victory to the Union and  former Senator Archibald Dixon, Governor Thomas E. Bramlette, and Albert G. Hodges, editor of the Frankfort, Kentucky, Commonwealth, met with Lincoln to discuss the recruitment of slaves as soldiers in Kentucky during which Lincoln explained to them the benefit of allowing those who had been classified as “runaway slaves” to gain their freedom by severing in the Union Army.

1863: According to a report published today, during the month of February, there 7 Jewish children staying at the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers in New York City.

1866: “On the initiative” of fifty-three-year-old “Dutch physician and economist” Samuel Sarphati “the Amstel Hostel was built today in the street later named after him.”

1867: In Opava, Czech Republic, Charlotte and Samuel David Kaluber gave birth to Dr. Arnold Klauber

1868: The Orphans' Guardians or Familien Waisen Erziehungs Verein was organized in Philadelphia “chiefly through the efforts of R. Samuel Hirsch of the Congregation Keneseth Israel. Instead of keeping the children together in one institution, this society endeavored to find homes for them among respectable Jewish families.

1869(14th of Nisan, 5629): Erev Pesach observed for the first time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant.

1870: Birthdate of Isaac Elias Itzig as Julius Eduard Hitzig worked as a civil servant and author in Germany.

1871: Leó Frankel “was elected as a member of the Paris Commune.”

1872: In Chicago, Abraham and Ernestina (Leopold) Strauss gave birth to University of Michigan trained English Professor Dr. Louis A Strauss, the Phi Beta Kappa scholar and husband of Elsa Riegelman who rose to be chairman of the English Department at his alma mater.

1872: In New York, Hirsh Bernstein came to the D.A.’s office where he posted bail after having been indicted on charges of libeling Rabbi Ahrenson. The dispute revolves around a dispute about the sale of wine which may or not be considered “kosher.”

1873: William F. Nast and he former Esther A. Benoist gave birth to Conde Nast, who while serving as publisher of Vogue in 1938 forced British photographer Cecil Beaton to resign because of comments made by him “that were critical of the Jewish race.”

1875: In Danzig, Moritz Abraham and Selma Moritzsohn gave birth to German physicist, Max Abraham

1875: E.G. Holland delivered his lecture on “The Hebrew Race” this evening at a meeting of the Liberal Club in Plimpton Hall.

1876(1st of Nisan, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1876: In Cuyahoga County, OH, William and Marie Lederer Pollak gave birth to Herman H. Pollack.

1877: In Grodno, Russia, Judah Judson and Hannah Rosenberg gave birth to New York resident Solomon Judson the editor of Me’et Le’et and author of Agadot ve-Dimyonot who married Minnie Shapiro,

1880(14th of Nissan, 5640): Ta’anit Bechorot, Erev Pesach

1880: Birthdate of Freeport, Illinois native “newspaper reporter, editor, publicity man, screen writer, author, Collector of Customs in Los Angles and President of the Los Angeles Commission, Alfred A. Cohen “who wrote the “The Jazz Singer,” the first full length talking motion picture.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/02/05/86968833.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1882: In Denver, CO, John and Winona Edson gave birth to press agent Elie Edson.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/22/archives/elie-edson-89-dies-stage-press-agent.html

1882: In Black Hawk, CO, Isaac Shwayder and his wife Rahel gave birth Jesse Shwayder, the founder of Samsonite

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/25/archives/jesse-shwayder-of-samsonite-dies-founder-of-luggage-firm-in-denver.html

http://www.jmaw.org/shwayder-jewish-samsonite-denver/

1882(6thof Nisan, 5642): Seventy-nine-year-old German born dramatist Leopold Feldman passed away today in Vienna.

1884: Two days after she had passed away, 73-year-old Caroline Woolf, the widow of Lewis Woolf and the mother of Emily Francis Woolf was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1884: Mr. and Mrs. Joseph C. Bloch were married today.

1886: Cleveland “clothing manufacturer, real estate executive and civic leader John Anisfield married

Daniela Guttenberg, his first wife who was the mother of Edith Karolyn,

1888(14th of Nisan, 5648): The New York Times reported that “the Jewish feast of Pesach, or the Passover, will begin at sunset this evening, and continue for eight days. This feast was ordained to commemorate the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt, under the leadership of Moses after they had been held in bondage for upward of 400 years…There is a peculiar observance connected with the first evening of the festival on which occasion the head of the household gathers about him at the table all the members of the family, including servants if they be Hebrews, and with ancient rites and ceremonies he recounts the story of the deliverance of his forefathers from the bondage under which they had been held by the Egyptian Pharaohs for so many years.”

1891: It was reported today that Joseph Abrahamson had changed his name to Joseph Abraham Edson because he was getting ready to marry a young Christian girl “and that both…were desirous that his surname should have every semblance of a Jewish named removed.”

1892: The Brooklyn Chess Club will host Willliam Steinitz, the Prague born Jewish chess champion.

1892: The Oratorio Society presented the Biblical opera “Samson and Delilah” under the direction of Walter Damrosch the German born conductor whose paternal grandfather was Jewish.

1893: Arthur Reichow of New York notified Louis Hahn that a check for $800 would be sent to him to meet the needs of the Jews living in Chesterfield, Connecticut.

1893: The Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith was organized today

1893: “Suffers in Russia” published today described the worsening conditions of the Jews living in the Pale.  They cannot find work in the Pale and the government will not allow them to leave the Pale to find jobs.  Only the charity of English Jews has prevented a larger number of deaths.  The Minister of the Interior is waiting for a report from the Governor of the Pale on the possibility of further Jewish immigration.  (This is further evident of the infamous 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 Policy of the Czarist governments)

1893: Members of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York heard a presentation by Reverand Hermann Warazawiak on the origins, customs and practices of Passover. Warazawiak spoke with an air of authority since he had been raised as an Orthodox Jew in Poland before converting in 1889.

1894: “Of The Jews and Their State” published today provided a detailed review of The Jewish question and the Mission of the Jews, an anonymous work published by Harper & Brothers.

1895: “Russia’s New Business Rules” published today described the additional restrictions placed on “Foreign commercial travelers of the Jewish persuasion” which do not apply to non-Jewish businessmen.

1895: Four days after she had passed away, 55-year-old Sarah Barnett, the daughter of Morris and Fanny Barnett was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1896(12th of Nisan, 5656): Fast of the First Born observed since the 14th of Nisan falls on Shabbat

1896: The "Sion" society in Sofia adopts an enthusiastic resolution proclaiming Herzl as their leader.

1896(12thof Nisan, 5656): Fifty-two-year-old Hungarian communist Leó Frankel passed away today in Paris.

1896: Among the books on art sold by Bangs & Co in New York was The Gentile and the Jew, a two volume work by J.J. Dollinger published in London in 1862 that included 113 engravings by Bartolozzie which cost $10.

1896: In “Persecution Under Nero” published today L.D. Burdick questions the reliability of the Roman historian Seutonius who incorrectly identified Chrestus, who had been crucified in Judea by Tiberius as the leader of rebellion by the Jews of Rome that took place later of who was a leader of the New Christians.

1897: Birthdate of Polish-born, French movie director Jean Epstein

1898: Birthdate of Henri Palacci who was deported from Istanbul to France in 1942.

1898: Isaac Blond went to the Barge Office to greet his wife Liebe and their four children who arrived today aboard the SS St. Paul but was told by authorities that he could not see them and that they would probably be sent back to Europe because “two of the children had a contagious disease and could not land.”

1898: In Albany, New York, the Assembly passed a bill introduced by Senator Cantor that exempted the real estate of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association from assessments and water rates.

1898: New York State Senator Jacob A. Cantor addressed a meeting organized by the Merchant’s Association of New York where he spoke against transferring the control of the canal system of the State to the Federal Government and in favor of a passage of the seven million dollar appropriation bill, known as the Cantor-Hill bill, which would preserve the states control over its canal properties which are estimated to exceed a hundred million dollars in value,

1899(15th of Nisan, 5659): Last Pesach of the 19th century.

1899: It was reported today that Ferdinand Blumenthal “recently described to the Academie des Sciences of Paris a process of making sugar from albumen which throw light on the obscure disease known as diabetes.”

1899: The New York Times reported that “the Jewish Feast of the Passover began with sundown last evening. Services were held in all synagogues and also many private residences the festival will last one week, during which time services will be held daily.”

1900(25th of Adar II, 5660): Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise passed away at the age of 80. The German born Wise is remembered as the father of Reform Judaism in the United States. He was instrumental in founding the three-basic organization of the movement: Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873, Hebrew Union College in 1875 and the Central Conference of American Rabbis in1889.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/IWise.html

1900: Today’s passing of Rabbi Wise marked “the beginning” of a drive “to raise an Isaac M. Wise Memorial Fund” in the amount $500,000 “to endow the Hebrew Union college and the other activities of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.”

1901: Christian, Jew, and the believer in the teachings of Confucius met on equal terms last night at Calvary Baptist Church, West Fifty-Seventh Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, to discuss the Golden Rule at a meeting held under the auspices of the Baron and Baroness de Hirsch Monument Association.

1902: Zalman Shapira and Rosa Krupnik gave birth to Israeli political leader Haim-Moshe Shapira

1902: The Rumanian government prohibited Jews from engaging in handicrafts or trade.

1902: “Mayor Low, Borough President Cantor and Jacob H. Schiff spoke” tonight” at the dedication exercises of the Luas A. Steinam School of Metal Working, at 225 East Ninth Street which has been erected for the Hebrew Technical Institute by Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Steinam in memory of their son Lucas.

1903: “The Rev. Dr. Kaufman Kohler of Temple Beth-El, the newly elected President of the Hebrew Union College at Cincinnati, was the guest of honor tonight at a banquet given by the Judaeans at the Tuxedo. Assembled at the dinner were nearly all the leading teachers and expounders of Judaism in New York.’

1904: Funk and Wagnalls published the sixth volume of the Jewish Encyclopedia, a compendium of knowledge that will eventually consist of twelve volumes. The volume includes articles ranging from “God” to “Istria.”

1904: The New York Times featured a review of "The Seder Service" a new Haggadah by Lillie Goldsmith Cowen which was published by her husband Philip Cowen. This edition of the Haggadah contains the Hebrew text, a revised English translation and notes by Dr. Solomon Schechter, the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The Haggadah is decorated with reproduction of pages from older Haggadot some which were printed four hundred years ago.

1905: Eveline Bethsabée Lattès ép. Mayrargue the daughter of Israël-Vita Lattès and Marie ép. Lattès and her husband Henri Danie Marague gave birth to Jeanne Mayrargue ép. Kunian

1905: Birthdate of Viktor E. Frankl, famed psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor and author of one of the greatest books ever written, Man’s Search For Meaning. What makes Frankl’s work and philosophy so powerful is that he took them with him into the camps and came out with his philosophy intact. There would be no better way to celebrate this centennial than read or re-read this slender tome. Viktor Frankl in his own words: “The best of us did not return.” “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Quoting Nietzsche he wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” “Man, however is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!” “Man needs something for the sake of which to live. The first goal of most people “was finding a purpose and meaning to their lives.” “Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success; you have to let it happen by not caring about it…Success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/frankl.html

1906: As unrest gripped Russia, it was reported that “Count Witte’s steadfast friendship for the Jews has subjected him to constant attacks” including accusations that he was a Jew and/or “bought by the Jews”

1906: It was reported today that in Russia, “the Government cannot assume responsibility for promulgating a law of equality” and that it must be left to Parliament to “decide the question of the status of the Jews.’

1906: It was reported today that Count Witte, who is serving as Premier, is taking every precaution from not allowing “anti-Semitic manifestations this Easter” turned to violent attacks on the Jews.

1907: Today marked the last day of this year’s distribution of free Matzoth and Matzah flour by the East Side Business Men’s Protective Business Association the poor Jews of the lower east side.

1907: Colonel Ernest Albert Rose married Julia Eda Lewis the daughter of Annette and Samuel Eleazer Lewis were married today at the Princess Road Synagogue in Liverpool, England.

1908: Birthdate of Samuel Bronshtein, the Bessarabian born nephew of Leon Trotsky who gained fame movie producer Samuel Bronston.

1909: Harry Fischel, one of the best-known Jewish philanthropists with connections to over twenty Jewish intuitions and a knowledge of a feeling of those living on the Lower East Side expressed his opposition to “the proposal to erect a gallery on the Arsenal site in Central Park” saying that it is only at Central Park can the Jews living on the Lower East “get free, open air and plenty of space to breathe” and Dr. A.A. Haimovich, the Treasurer of the Educational League expressed his opposition saying that “it is absurd to say that the people care for Central Park…”

1910(15thof Adar II, 5670): Parashat Tzav

1910: It was reported today that a fued between “two prominent Jewish charitable organizations” – the United Hebrew Charities and the Widowed Mothers’ Fund Association – has come to an end.

1911: Birthdate of Sir Bernard Katz who shared in the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

1911: In London, two actions are to be heard before Justice Darling in a libel suit "in which Baron de Forest, adopted son of the late Baron Hirsch and Lady Gerard are principals."

1912: Osip Brik married Lila Kagan

1913(17thof Adar II, 5673): Forty-seven-year-old Rabbi Joseph Chuckrow passed away in Troy, NY.

1913: In Budapest, Jewish mathematics teachers Anna and Lajos Erdős (formerly Engländer) gave birth to mathematician Paul Erdos who was one of the century's greatest mathematicians, who posed and solved thorny problems in number theory and other areas and who founded the field of discrete mathematics, which is the foundation of computer science. He was also one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, with more than 1,500 papers to his name. And, his friends say, he was also one of the most unusual.”. “Never, mathematicians say, has there been an individual like Paul Erdös.” (I make no claim to understand anything about any of his work.)

1913: On the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City Nathan and Sophie Riesel gave birth to crusading journalist Victor Riesel.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/05/obituaries/victor-riesel-81-columnist-blinded-by-acid-attack-dies.html

1914: The siege of Adrianople which had begun in October, 1913, came to an end. Both poor and middle-class Jews were affected with three thousand seeking shelter in schools and 9,200 being left “completely helpless.”

1915:  According to reports published today the Russian forces that have taken the town of Przemysl from the Austrians are calling up the “panic-stricken Jews” who have fled the town to return and are reassuring the civilian population that remained, most of whom were Jews, that they have nothing to fear.

1915: “Ex-President Taft delivered a lecture before members of the National Geographic Society in Washington on the subject of his mission to the Vatican in 1902” where he conducted delicate negotiaons with Leo XIII, the Pope whose papers in France and the Vatican assured readers that Dreyfus was guilty because he was Jewish.

1915: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the officers of Congregation Ahev Zedak in Camden, NJ were Bernard Levin, President; Jacob Tarter, Vice President; Louis Levin, Secretary and Max Greenberg, Treasurer.

1915: Dr. Nathan Blaustein who delivered the infant of Mrs. Sadie Mager, a widow who died of a heart attack last December is now seeking a family to adopt the girl saying tonight “that the only thing he demanded was those who would adopt her would prove to him they were in a position to give her a good home and that they should be Jews.”

1916: Birthdate of Christian Anfinsen winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

1916: In New York, 20,000 people attended the great bazar that opened tonight “in the Grand Central Palace” which was a fund raiser sponsored by the People’s Relief Committee for Jewish War Sufferers.

1916: In Johannesburg, Eva, née Kirkel and Israel Rabinowitz gave birth to composer and conductor Harry Rabinowitz whose most famous score may be the one he wrote for “Chariots of Fire.”

1916: Birthdate of bandleader Vic Schoen. There is no evidence that Schoen was Jewish but he played a key role in the creation of the era of Yiddish Swing. Schoen was the bandleader whose featured singers were the Andrews Sisters. Lyricist Sammy Cahn gave the Yiddish song “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” English lyrics and turned it over to the singing sisters. Schoen had a notion of how to swing it. The Andrews Sisters' debut 78 rpm for the Decca label hit almost immediately. The era of Yiddish swing had begun.

1916: Birthdate of Mort Abrahams who gained famed as the producer of Dr. Doolittle and Planet of the Apes.

1916 In St. Louis Fred Zadek Salomon, the son of Adolph and Matilda Salomon, and his wife Helen gave birth to Fred Zadek Salomon, Jr. the longtime manager of the Famous Barr Department store and the husband of Darlane Salomon with whom he raised two daughter – Edith and Candace.

1916: Louis D. Brandeis is scheduled to speak on “Jewish Rights and Congress at the opening session today of the American Jewish Congress in Philadelphia, PA whose delegates included Rabbi Wolf Gold, Samuel Lippman and Henry Eiser.

1916: According to “advices received at the Russian Embassy” in Washington, DC, “absolute equality of Jews in Russia with all others to own property, to reside in any place, to serve in the army and navy, to participate in educational advantages and at the polls has been officially proclaimed” by the new government.

1917: Abraham Isaac "Abe" Shiplacoff, a Socialist New York assemblyman won a temporary victory when he objected, on procedural grounds, to a resolution that had been introduced “urging the United States Congress to a pass a measure known as the Chamberlain bill, requiring the United States to prepare for entry into” the World War.

1917: Plans for the upcoming patriotic mass meeting of the Independent Order of Free Sons, which “has plans for raising a regiment in case of war” were published today.’ (Editor’s note – this outburst of patriotism came at a time when the United States was strongly considering entering WW I on the side of the Allies; something that would become a reality in less than a month.)

1917: One of the advantages of the Russian Revolution was seen today when it was reported that the publication of the second volume of Simon Dubnow’s History of the Jews in Russia and Poland would soon be a reality that to the disappearance of the censors who had been part of the Czar’s government. (The brilliant mind of Dubnow would perish in 1941 when he was murdered by the Nazi in Riga. Yidn, shraybt un farshraybt  "Jews‎, write and record’)

1917: In World War I, British troops are halted after 17,000 Turks blocked their advance at the First Battle of Gaza. The setback would prove to be temporary and the British would later resume their drive to take Palestine from the Ottomans.

1918: “A message from the representatives of the Jewish colonies in Palestine was received at the Zionist headquarters” in New York today which “said that the Jewish Administrative Commission organized by the International Zionist Organization” were expected to arrive in Palestine this week.

1919: In Cedar Rapids, Rose and David Padzensky gave birth to Ruth Lillian Feder, the wife of Iz Feder and mother of Ron, Neil and Steven Feder who was a strong-willed businesswoman and pillar of the Jewish Community.

https://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2019/Jun/Ruth-L-Feder/

1920: Eugen Schiffer who had become a Protestant in 1896 but who was forced to move to a Jewish Ghetto in Berlin after the Nazis came to power completed his term as Minister of Justice in Germany.

1920: In Vienna, the Jewish community made a “public appeal for help” in re-building “the communal synagogue in Leopold Strasse” which had been destroyed by fire two years ago.

1920: In Göttingen, Germany, mathematician Richard Courant and Nerina Runge Courant gave birth to American physicist Ernest Courant

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/bulletin/2007/bb051807.pdf

1920: Shabelsky-Bork, a “supporter” of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" tried to assassinate Pavel Milyukov (former leader of the Cadets, who fled Russia in 1918) at a meeting of Russian refugees. Instead, he killed Vladimir Nabokov and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. After only staying in prison for a short time, he was released and befriended by Alfred Rosenberg, the "Nazi philosopher".

1921(16thof Adar II, 5681): Parashat Tzav

1921: In the Bronx, the Montefiore hosted a “Purim entertainment” that included a Purim play and a Hebrew sketch.

1923(9th of Nisan, 5683): Actress Sarah Bernhardt passed away. She was born in Paris as Henriette Rosine Bernard, the eldest surviving illegitimate daughter of Judith van Hard, a Dutch Jewish courtesan known as "Youle."

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Museum/Posters/Entertainers/Bernhardt/

1925(1st of Nisan, 5685): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1925: Lord Balfour visited Rishon L”Zion where he said “he rejoiced at this opportunity to visit the oldest Jewish settlement in Palestine.

1926: Today when Harvard announced plans for the incoming freshman class it issued a denial that religion or race would be a considered which “was in answer to a report that members of recent entering classes at Harvard were 25 per cent Jewish” and 150 Jews “would not be admitted to Harvard in the three years who otherwise would have been enrolled…”

1926(11thof Nisan, 5686): Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin passed away today after which he was buried at the Clover Hill Park Cemetery in Birmingham, MI.

https://kevarim.com/rabbi-judah-leib-levin/

1926: Premiere of “The Fiddler of Florence,” a German silent film directed and written by Paul Czinner.

1927: Colonel Herbert H. Lehman, the acting chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee announced today that “the Jewish community of Salonica, Greece has issued an appeal for relief” that was sent to Dr. Bernard Khan, the European Director of the Committee.

1928: On New York’s Lower East Side, Philip and Pola Young “Jewish immigrants from Poland” gave birth to Israel Goodman Young who gained famed as Greenwich Village folklorist Izzy Young, the man responsible for Bob Dylan’s first New York concert.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/obituaries/izzy-young-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1928: Cellist Gdal Saleski, the author of Famous Musicians of Jewish Origins performed a concert at Steinway Hall that included Joseph “Achron’s ‘Fragment Mystique’ which “is based on a Hebrew theme.”

1929(14thof Adar II, 5689): Last Purim before the Great Depression

1929: The dirigible Graf Zeppelin appeared over three cities in Palestine. At five in the afternoon it circled Jaffa where the large colony of German settlers waved flags of welcome. At six, the airship appeared over Tel Aviv where it became a welcome partner in the city’s Purim celebrations. As night descended the German craft circled Jerusalem for an hour before heading north towards Syria.

1930 In London, Lord Melchett, Chaim Weizmann, Oscar Wasserman, Felix Warburg and Max Warburg will meet this afternoon in an “attempt to reach a settlement regarding the functions of the Administrative Committee and the Jewish Agency's Executive, the immediate raising of an internal loan of $5,000,000, and Lord Melchett's demand that before any larger colonization scheme be undertaken in Palestine, the 1,500 Chalutzim in Palestine for many years be settled on the land.” (As reported by JTA)

1931: In Boston, MA, Dora (née Spinner) and Max Nimoy gave birth to Leonard Simon Nimony, Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame. Do you remember the hand gesture that went with the Vulcan credo - Live long and prosper? In case you missed it, it is the same gesture as that made by the High Priest when giving his benediction. And now you know why.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/television/leonard-nimoy-spock-of-star-trek-dies-at-83.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=1

1931: Arab leaders in Palestine urged Moslems not to participate in the celebration Maier Dizengoff’s seventieth birthday. Dizengooff is the Mayor of Tel Aviv.

1934: Twenty-eight-year-old Nathan N. Rosen was officially installed as the Rabbi at Temple Petach Tikva in Brooklyn. (As reported by JTA)

1934: Hitler agreed to a nationwide boycott of Jewish businessmen and professionals to be known as “Boycott Day” which would take place on April 1. The boycott is designed to last indefinitely or until the Jews have been completely eliminated from the German economy.

1934: In Brooklyn Beatrice (Wortis) and David I. Arkin gave birth to actor Alan Arkin who has played a myriad of roles during his long career including the lead in the famed anti-establishment film “Catch-22.”

1935: Pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra “was in the Henry Ford Hospital tonigh undergoing treatment for what was described as ‘acute intestinal complications.’”

1936: According to reports published today of the 61,541 Jews who entered Palestine in 1935, 27,291 came from Poland; 3,596 came from Rumania; 2,122 came from Greece, 1,967 from Lithuania; 1,638 from the United States; 1,425 from Southwestern Arabia; 1,397 from Czechoslovakia; 1,042 from Latvia; 1, 021 from France; 961 from Austria, 764 from Turkey and 7,747 from Germany.

1936: In Warsaw, “the Senate enacted today a law prohibiting Jews from selling vegetables and dairy products” which had been passed by the Sejm (lower house) last week.”

1936: In New York, at a luncheon of the New York chapter of Hadassah, Eddie Cantor “announced that if the members of Hadassah would raise sufficient funds to provide for five hundred children” who were refugees from journey and part of the Youth Aliyah movement “he would provide for an equal number.”

1936: In Poland, “the Jewish community’s offices in the town of Nowysacz were bombed today.”

1936: In Poland, a synagogue was damaged at Wilno as anti-Semitic disorders gripped the country.

1937(14thof Nisan, 5697): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish Ghaffir (supernumerary policeman) was wounded, an Arab brigand killed and a number of Arabs taken prisoner during a battle with a terrorist gang which attacked Jewish settlers plowing their fields at the foot of Mount Tabor. Jewish settlers were assisted by police reinforcements which arrived from Afula and Nazareth.

1938: “Archaeological discoveries expected to shed light on the life, customs and general history of the Holy Land of 2,000 years ago were listed today by Edward M. M. Warburg of the executive committee of the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem” “in a report prepared in connection with the thirteenth anniversary of the founding of Hebrew University” which “cites the finding of the long missing Third Wall of Jerusalem and…certain important Jewish cemeteries.”

1938: “Speaking at the opening session of the second annual convention of the United Galician Jews of America at Mecca Temple,” “May La Guardia told 3,000 Jews of Eastern European origin tonight that recent events in Europe had brought more misery than civilization had ever previously experienced.”

1939: At Atlantic City, NJ, “Reginald T. Kennedy, the executive director of the New York roundtable of the National Christians and Jews today declared that all religions must cooperate in teaching faith in democracy and present a united front to propagandists who are attempting to align one against the other” and who are trying to convince the public that “a Catholic is probably a Fascist, a Jew is a Communist” and “that the Protestant majority is indifferent to the minority rights” of Jews and Catholics.

1939: Dr. Samuel Goldenson is scheduled to lecture on “Racialism and Humanity” at Temple Emanu-El.

1939: Louis Lipsky, Robert Szold, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Dr. Solomon Goldman, the president of the ZOA are scheduled to lecture on “The Jewish National Home: Is the London Palestine Conference Ended?” at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall.

1940: In the Bronx the former Sophie Falkenstein and Arthur Caan, refugees from Nazi Germany gave birth to James Langston Michael Caan known to American audiences as the movie and television actor James Caan

https://www.biography.com/people/james-caan-9542410

1941: “The German Army High Command gives approval to RSHA and Heydrich on the tasks of SS murder squads (Einsatzgruppen) in occupied Poland.”

1942(8thof Nisan, 5702): At Jungfernhof concentration camp, Rudolf Seck, the commander sent 1,840 to be “resettled” today which meant they were shot to death at the Bikernieki forest.

 

1942(8thof Nisan, 5702): Fifty-nine year old Rabbi Joseph Hirsch Carlbach was murdered near Riga today.

http://www.jci.co.il/?cmd=aboutus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Carlebach#/media/File:Carlebach_in_Altona.jpeg

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

1942: Birthdate of Erica Jong, author of Fear of Flying

1942: The first "Eichmann transport" began moving to the camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau

1942: The first of 700 Jews from Polish Lvov-district reached the concentration camp at Belzec

1942 The first Jewish transportation arrived at Auschwitz under the command of Rudolf Hoss, containing 1000 Jews from Slovakia and 1000 women from Ravensbruk. According to a conservative estimate from March 1942 until the liberation on January 27 1945 over 750,000 Jews were gassed within its gates. Hoss himself estimated it at 1,135,000

1943: Wilfrid B. Israel, a German born Jew and ardent Zionist departed London for Lisbon. Once in Portugal he stayed in the Iberian Peninsula for two months, where he found over 1,500 stateless Jews in Spain. He issued 200 of them certificates to go live in Palestine, and did what he could to intervene on the other's behalf.

1944: The twenty-third Beth El Ball was held this evening at the Walt Whitman Hotel in Camden, NJ. It was dedicated "to our fighting allies".

1944: The New York Times includes a review of "Dangling Man" by Saul Bellow

1945: General Patton sent 307 officers and men in tanks, half-tracks and support vehicles under the command of Captain Abraham J. Baum on a mission to liberate approximately 1,300 POWS being held at a camp near Hammelburg, Germany. The group of POWs included Patton’s son-in-law who had been captured during fighting in North Africa. In the words of historian Stanley Weintraub, “Nine GIs in Baum’s small column were killed and 31 others were wounded and captured – a hairy business for Baum as his dog tag identified him as Jewish.”

1946: Today twenty-year old Berlin born American screenwriter Don Mankiewicz married his first wife Ilene Korsen with whom he had two children – Jane and screenwriter John Mankiewicz.

1946: “Millionaire businessman and philanthropist Sir Charles Clore and the former Francine Halphen gave birth to philanthropist Dame Vivien Louise Duffield, the sister of Alan Evelyn Clore and the wife of ‘British financier John Duffield” with whom she had “two children, Arabella and George.

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/meet-dame-vivien-duffield-londons-super-philanthropist-and-step-granny-to-that-wild-beauty-cara-8699777.html

1946: In Cleveland, Judge and Mrs. Joseph C. Bloch celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary.

1946(23rdof Adar II, 5706): “Phineas Horowitz, veteran Zionist leader, and vice-president of the British Zionist Federation, passed away today in London.” (As reported by JTA)

1947: “Forty Jewish tenant farmers, half of whom are WW II veterans” and each of whom “received a lease of four acres from the Jewish National began farming on land “near Raanana in the Plain of Sharon” where they will engage in truck and flower gardening”

1947: It was announced today that author and attorney “Louis Nizer has been named chariman of the national speakers bureau of the $170,000,000 campaign of the United Jewish Appeal for the relief, rehabilitation and resettlement of Europe’s Jewish survivors.”

1948(15thof Adar II, 5708): Shushan Purim

1948: “Alleging that the Arabs intended to try to seize Jerusalem after the British withdrawal, spokesman for the Jewish Agency for Palestine confirmed today that the Agency had proposed that 10,000 Norwegian and Danish troops be brought from Germany to maintain order in the city.” (Considering the fact that the city was already under siege with Arabs blocking convoys from the coast and attacking the Old City, this was not Paranoia but a response to a real threat.)

1948: Before leaving the United States today with his wife Lou, Austrian born composer Hanns Eisler who had fallen afoul of HUAC read a statement that included: “I leave this country not without bitterness and infuriation. I could well understand it when in 1933 the Hitler bandits put a price on my head and drove me out. They were the evil of the period; I was proud at being driven out. But I feel heart-broken over being driven out of this beautiful country in this ridiculous way.”

1949: Birthdate of Helene Middleweek who as Valerie Hayman, Baroness Hayman, became the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

1950: Lafayette College in Easton, PA announced that its round the world student tour this summer which is designed to increase their “intellectual, cultural and spiritual horizons” will include a stop in Tel Aviv.

1950: It was reported today that the government of Israel is using the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research under the direction of Dr. Uriel G. Foa to deal with a variety of problems facing the infant Jewish state including assisting immigrants in adjusting to life in “their new homeland.”

1951: Final broadcast of the ABC panel show “Can You Top This?” co-starring Harry Hershfield.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the anti-reparations demonstration in Tel Aviv, organized by the Herut political party, lasted two hours and passed off quietly after a week of general tension. At The Hague the Conference on Reparations started discussing the respective Jewish claims on Germany. The German delegation contested the Jewish claim for $500 million as "exaggerated," while the Jewish delegation claimed that the sum was "only a fraction" of the heirless property actually remaining in German hands.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Knesset debated the final reading of the Nationality Bill and the principle of dual nationality, held by a number of Israeli citizens.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Israeli-Jordanian Mixed Armistice Commission reaffirmed the Israel-Jordan demarcation line in the Kalkilya area. The line was marked by a deep ditch, dug by a tractor to prevent further infiltration and other incidents.

1953: “The Story of Three Loves,” a romantic anthology film with a script co-authored by George Froeschel and co-starring Kirk Douglas was released in the United States today.

1954(21stof Adar II, 5714): Ninety-one-year-old Flora “Flo” Isaacs Strauss, the St. Louis born daughter of Jonas and Bertha Heller Isaacs, the wife of Julius Caesar Strauss and the mother of Benjamin, Charles and Irving Strauss passed away after which she was buried New Mount Sinai Cemetery and Mausoleum in Affton, MO.

1955(3rdof Nisan, 5715): Parashat Vayikra

1955(3rd of Nisan 5715): Fifty-year-old Ralph Kahn Uhry, the Plaquemine, LA born son of Hippolyte and Dora Kahn Uhry and the husband of Alene Fox Uhry with whom head two children, Pulitzer prize winning playwright Alfred Uhry and author Ann Uhry Abrams passed away today after which he was buried in Atlanta, GA.

1956: In Sweden, premiere of “The Rose Tatoo” with a script adapted by Hal Kanter and directed by Daniel Mann.

1957(23rdof Adar II, 5717): Fifty-four-year-old Max Ophüls, the German Jewish movie director who spent the war in France and the United States passed away today in Hamburg.

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/max-ophuls

1957(23rdof Adar II, 5717): Sixty-six-year-old London born American munitions maker and convicted war profiteer Murray Garsson died today “penniless and homeless in a Bellevue Hospital ward today” after suffering a brain hemorrhage following a fall.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/03/28/84909966.pdf

1960: In Manhattan, Academy Award winning actor and stage star Joel Grey and his wife Jo Wilder gave birth to actress Jennifer Gray, the star of “Dirty Dancing” who isthe granddaughter of comedian and musician Mickey Katz.

1960(27thof Adar, 5720): Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei and Shabbat HaChodesh

1960(27thof Adar, 5720): Eighty-two-year-old Russian born Rabbi Leon Album, the University of Chicago and Stanford University alum who was the husband of Amelia Album with whom he raised two children – Selma and Manuel – passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/03/27/119099940.pdf

1960: Birthdate of Steve Feinberg the Princeton graduate who is the co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management.

1961: “The Hoodlum Priest” directed by Irvin Kershner and filmed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler was released today in the United States.

1961: Birthdate of Mitchell Simpson, who gained fame as Amanda Simpson.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/amanda-simpson-test-pilot-mitchell-simpson-senior-post-commerce-department-article-1.460198

1961: “Dondi” a movie based on the comic strip co-created by Irwin Hansen was released in the United States today.

1964: Birthdate of comedian Todd Barry

https://www.toddbarry.com/

1964: Two days after opening in the UK, “Fall of the Roman Empire” produced by Samuel Bronston, with a script co-authored by Philip Yordan and music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released in the United States today.

1964: "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand opens at Winter Garden Theater in New York City for the first of 1,348 performances

1967(14thof Adar II, 5727): Purim

1967: Production of “Ciao! Manhattan” co-directed, produced and written by David Weisman began today.

1967(14th of Adar II, 5727): Joseph Jacobs, president and founder of Joseph Jacobs Organization, a merchandizing and advertising organization that specializes in the Jewish mark and “has been credited with being responsible for the wide currency of kosher symbols on food labels” passed away today at the age of 75. A 1911 graduate of City College, Mr. Jacobs taught school while doing graduate work at Columbia before going to work as an advertising salesman for the Daily Forward in 1919, the same year that he founded his own company. Mr. Jacobs’ most lasting contribution to American Jewry is the famous Maxwell House Hagaddah.

1969(7thof Nisan, 5729): Fifty-nine-year-old New York City born lawyer “Seymour Barkin, the assistant director of the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York” passed away today “after emergency surger at Roosevelt Hospital”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/03/28/90078888.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1970: "Minnie's Boys" opened at the Imperial Theater. Minnie’s boys were better known as the Marx Brothers.

1970(18thof Adar II, 5730): Seventy-seven year old artist Fritz Ascher passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/if-not-for-the-nazis-he-may-have-been-the-next-leonardo/

1970(18thof Adar II, 5730): Seventy-six year old Brooklyn born Columbia trained physician WWI veteran Dr. Frederic D. Zeman the geriatric specialist and husband of “the former Madeleine Arnold” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/27/archives/frederic-zeman-geriatrist-dies-headed-medical-services-at-jewish.html

1971: NBC aired “Gideon,” a play by Paddy Chayefsky based on the Biblical Judge with Peter Ustinov in the title role.

1971: Outbreak of the nine-month long Bangladesh Liberation War. A Jewish military leader, Lieutenant General JFR (Jacob-Farj-Rafael) Jacob gained fame in his homeland when he headed the Indian armed forces that vanquished the Pakistani army in the war that broke out between the two countries over East Pakistan which after the war became the independent state of Bangladesh).

1973: It was reported today that Arthur Hertzberg, “head of the American Jewish Congress” had called “for providing American Jews with a basic Jewish education and a deep sense of identification with the Jewish People.”

1973: In East Lansing, Michigan Dr. Carl Page and Computer Professor Gloria Page, who was Jewish, gave birth to Lawrence “Larry” Page who along with Sergey Brin co-founded Google.

1974: Birthdate of Rockford, Illinois actress and comedian Natasha Leggro, the graduate of the Stella Adler Conservatory who “converted to Judaism as an adult.”

1975(14thof Nisan, 5735): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach

1976: In Chicago, the Dearborn Station, which has been designed by Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) today.

1979: Nineteen people were injured today during a terrorist bombing in a market at Lod.

1979: Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty at the White House. This historic event ended three decades of fighting including three major wars. It took Sadat to break the “Gordian Knot” and come to Jerusalem. It took Begin to gamble that the Egyptians would keep their word and not turn the Sinai into a springboard for another war. And it took Carter's tenacity to keep the talks on track. All Arabs are not the same. Likud, right wingers, are willing to make peace. And American Presidents can provide the leverage for agreement. Critics say it has been a cold peace. But the border between the two has comparatively remained tranquil and the armed forces of the two nations have not clashed in a quarter of century. Hatikvah - hope.

 

1982: “I Ought To Be In Pictures” a film based on the Neil Simon play of the same name directed and produced by Herbert Ross, starring Walter Matthau and with music by Marvin Hamlisch was released in the United States today.1984(22ndof Adar II, 5744): Seventy-one-year-old Bora Laskin passed away while serving as the 14th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Canada.

http://www.ottawajewishbulletin.com/2017/04/canada-150-bora-laskin/

http://www.cjnews.com/culture/canada-150/remembering-bora-laskin-giant-supreme-court

1985: “Anna Karenina,” a made-for-television adaption of the famous novel with a script by James Goldman was released today in the United States.

1987: U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited Jerusalem. Former Prime Minister Begin who has been living in virtual seclusion for years declined Carter’s request for a meeting. Begin did visit with the President by phone.

1991: David Wolfson who as knighted in 1984 was “created a life peer with the title Baron Wolfson of Sunningdale, of Trevose in the County of Cornwall” today.

1993(4thof Nisan, 5753): Seventy-nine year old psychologist and chess champion Reuben Fine passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/27/obituaries/reuben-fine-american-chess-giant-dead-at-79.html

1995: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950 by Jenna Weissman Joselit and Jews and the New America Scene by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab.

1997: In Stockholm, Budapest native Eva Löwenthal was interviewed by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute.

1997: A week after premiering in New York, “The Devil’s Own,” a film that pits two Irish institutions – the IRA and the Boston Police Department -- against themselves directed by Alan J. Pakula  was released today in the rest of the United States.

2000: U.S. President Bill Clinton meets with Syrian President Hafez Assad.

2000: Pope John Paul II ended his trip to Israel by visiting the Western Wall and, in keeping with a centuries-old tradition left a message in one of its cracks.

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood by Tom King and The Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice That Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Lawby Alan M. Dershowitz

2001: Dalia Rabin-Pelossof became the only member of New Way to remain in the Knesset when two other New Members resigned from the Israeli Parliament.

2001: Three days after she had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held for eighty-seven-year-old Janice Levin, the art collector and philanthropist whose husband attorney Philip J. Levin passed away in 1971.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/nyregion/janice-levin-87-philanthropist-of-the-arts.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/25/classified/paid-notice-deaths-levin-janice-h.html

2001(2ndof Nisan, 5761): Ten-month-old Shalevet Pass was murder this afternoon by a Palestinian sniper belong to the Tanzim terrorist group while sitting in his stroller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shalhevet_Pass#/media/File:Shalhevet_Pass.jpg

2002(12th of Nisan, 5762): Chaike Belchatowska Spiegel, one of the last surviving combatants of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis, died in Montreal at the age of 81.

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/05/arts/leo-ornstein-108-pianist-and-avant-garde-composer.html?searchResultPosition=1

2003: Rabbi Janet Marder was named president of the Reform Movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis. This meant that she had become the first woman to lead a major rabbinical organization.

2004: “Israeli officials expressed growing confidence today that Hamas” terrorists “would not manage to fulfill their threats of extraordinary retaliation for Israel's killing of their…leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

2005: Robert Iger reassigned Peter Murphy, the Disney’s chief strategic officer, and pledged to disband the company's strategic planning division. Iger also vowed to restore much of the decision-making authority that the division had assumed to the company's individual business units.

2006: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) strongly condemned the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, for remarks urging two leading Jewish property developers to "go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs, if they don't like the planning regime or my approach." The two property developers, brothers Simon and David Reuben, are of Iraqi Jewish origin and were born in India. Both are British citizens. Mr. Livingstone has refused calls for an apology. Instead, he stated: "I would offer a complete apology to the people of Iran to the suggestion that they may be linked in any way to the Reuben brothers. I wasn't meaning to be offensive to the people of Iran."

2006: The New York Times featured a review of "My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud" by Janna Malamud Smith.

2007(7thof Nisan, 5767): Ninety-two year old Leon Banov, Jr. the Charleston born son of Minnie and Dr. Leon Banov and the Medical College of South Carolina trained proctologist who was the husband of Rita Landesman Banov and father of Jane and Alan Banov passed away today.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/charleston/obituary.aspx?n=leon-banov&pid=86978509&fhid=6051

2008: In Jerusalem, The Bible Lands Museum English lecture series presents: "The Classical Islamic Attitude to Jerusalem," by Professor Moshe Sharon of Hebrew University

2008: Haaretz reported that in a rare departure from government practice, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is planning to convene an interfaith conference for Muslims, Christians and Jews, according to the Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper. The call for religious dialog to include Jews is the first by the monarch, whose country's regulations prohibit the importation of non-Muslim religious objects including crucifixes and stars of David.

2008: Two people were lightly wounded and nine were in shock after Palestinians fired a volley of Kassam rockets at Sderot. Six rockets were lobbed at Sderot, two of them landing inside the town. Security forces were trying to locate the other four rockets.

2008: Richard Anderson Falk began serving as “a United Nations Special Rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967."

2008: The Israel Defense Forces captured a senior Hamas terrorist who helped mastermind the 2002 suicide bombing at a Passover Seder at Park Hotel in Netanya, in which 29 people were killed and nearly 150 others wounded. Omar Jabar, who headed Hamas' military wing in the West Bank city of Tul Karm, was among seven wanted Palestinians already detained by the IDF.

2008: Students at Haifa University expressed their anger today after the university decided to schedule tests on the Holocaust Memorial Day, some during the siren that marks a moment of silence.

2008: Double Sextet" a composition by Steve Reich was performed for the time in Richmond.

2009 (1st of Nisan 5769): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

2009: Israeli culinary writer Janna Gur gave a lecture on the Cuisine of Israel at the College of Technology in New York City accompanied by a cooking demonstration by students

2010: Keren Ann Zeidel is scheduled to perform at The City Winery in New York City.

2010: In Washington, D.C., Robyn Helzner, one of the leading interpreters of world Jewish music, and Cantor Larry Paul are scheduled to lead a Carlebach-inspired service at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue.

2010(11th of Nisan,5770): Major Eliraz Peretz 31, from Kiryat Arba, who was the deputy commander of the Golani battalion and Staff Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky, 21, from Rishon Letzion were killed during fighting on the Gaza border today. Peretz’s brother had been killed while fighting in Lebanon.

2011: In Rockville, MD, Tikvat Israel Congregation is scheduled to sponsor an old-fashioned Sock Hop.

2011: “The Infidel” and “Vidal Sasoon: The Movie” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “Berlin '36” is scheduled to be shown on opening night of the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2011(20th of Adar II): Eighty-six-year-old “Stanley Bleifeld, a figurative sculptor whose bronzes adorn the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Navy Memorial in Washington and museums including the Museum of the City of New York” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/arts/design/stanley-bleifeld-sculptor-for-navy-and-baseball-hall-of-fame-dies-at-86.html

2011(20th of Adar II): Ninety-four-year-old internet pioneer Paul Baran passed away. (As reported by Katie Hafner)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/technology/28baran.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Paul%20Baran&st=cse

2012: The 16th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a “Book and Film” event commemorating the Kindertransport.

2012: Publication of “Three Roses for Women’s History Month.”

http://jewishmuseummd.org/2012/03/three-roses-for-women’s-history-month/

2013(15thof Nisan, 5773): First Day of Pesach

2013: “At dawn this morning, a large group gathered on a mountain in the Negev desert to reenact the moments leading up to the Israelites exodus from Egypt.” (As reported by Andrew Esentein)

2013: In the evening numerous congregations are scheduled to host community Seders including Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Agudas Achim in Iowa City and Kol Ami in Arlington, VA

2013: Bahrain’s lawmakers voted today to label the Lebanese militia Hezbollah a terrorist organization, the Lebanon-based news outlet Now Lebanon reported.

2013: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s telephone conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the start of the process of improving Israeli-Turkish ties, not the end of it, a government official said today. The official’s comments came as Erdogan continued boasting of Israel’s apology, and as the Ankara Municipality erected billboards thanking Erdogan for upholding Turkish pride.

2014: In Fairfax, VA, Gesher Jewish Day School is scheduled to open its 6th annual Used Book Sale.

2014: “Igor and the Cranes' Journey” is scheduled to be shown a the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: In Portland, the Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Night of the Maggidim” when real life becomes a Chassidic Tale.

2014: Bowing to pressure from Arab states UN Human Rights Council President Remigiusz Henczel rejecteded the candaidcay of Georgetown Law lecturer Christina Cerna as the of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories choosing instead Indonesian Makarim Wibisono, “an outspoken critic of Israel.” (As reported by Times of Israel)

2014: The Israeli Navy fired on two Palestinian boats this morning and a third one tonight that were thought to be involved in smuggling operations between Egypt and Gaza.

2015: In Turkey, the Grand Synagogue of Edrine which had first been used Erev Pesach, 1909 and which was abandoned in 1983 “after most of the Jewish community left the city, emigrating to Israel, Europe, or North America” was re-opened under the leadership of Rabbi David Azuz who oversaw the “celebration and a Shacharit, morning prayer service, attended by a large number of Jews including Ishak Ibrahimzadeh, leader of the Jewish Community in Turkey, Rav Naftali Haleva, deputy to Hakham Bashi (Chief Rabbi) Ishak Haleva, Bülent Arınç, Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey, and some other Turkish high officials.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Synagogue_of_Edirne#/media/File:GrandSynagogueEdirne_(2).JPG

2015: Holocaust survivor Halina Peabody is scheduled to speak at the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum today as part of its “First Person Series.”

2015: “The human rights group Amnesty International said in a report issued today that armed Palestinian organizations committed war crimes during the 2014 Gaza-Israel conflict, by killing both Israeli and Palestinian civilians using indiscriminate projectiles.”

2015(6thof Nisan, 5775): Naomi Weisstein whose "Kuche, Kirche, Kinder: Psychology Constructions the Female" is part of the Women's Liberation canon as was her path- breaking research on visual perception” passed away today and is mourned by “loving husband Jesse Lemisch” and the members of “History in Action, an intergenerational network of feminist writers and activists.”

http://jwa.org/people/weisstein-naomi

2015: The Jewish Film Festival of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host a screening of “24 Days” which “offers a gripping and carefully-plotted thriller that tells the true story of the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi in a Paris suburb by The Gang of Barbarians, who expect a huge ransom as they assume that all Jews have money.”

2015: In New York, Eléonore Biezunski is scheduled to deliver a lecture on Creating Songs in Boiberik: Singing Peace at "Felker Yontev" in which she “examines the structure of these pageants and how they continue to impact the music scene in Yiddish today.”

2016: “Tikkun” a prizewinning film at the Jerusalem and Locarno Film Festivals directed by Avishai Sivan is scheduled to be shown at the Museum of Modern Art this evening.

2016: The Jews in the American South is scheduled to come to an end in Savannah, Georgia where the Jewish community dates at back to 1733.

2016: During his weekly Saturday night lecture, “Israel Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef “said non-Jews could live in Israel only if they observe the seven Noahide Laws, which include prohibitions against idolatry, blaspheming God, murder, forbidden sexual relations, stealing and eating the limb off a live animal, and which proscribe the establishment of a legal system” and that “Non-Jews, Yosef are in Israel only to serve Jews.”

2016: “Baba Joon” is scheduled to be shown at the 20th annual Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a brunch featuring Matzoh Momma's delicious spread of Jewish soul food, klezmer music by The Klez Katz!, and coffee by Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters of Olympia before a screening of the “Last Laugh.”

2017: The AIPAC Policy Conference is scheduled to begin today in Washington, D.C.

2017: “Hundreds of teen singers from the U.S. and Israel” are scheduled to perform on the stage of the “Metropolitan Opera House when HaZamir holds its gala concert.

2017: Friends and family send best birthday wishes to Joan Thaler, one of the grand ladies of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community is contributions are too numerous to recount.

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a performance of Chilean-American writer and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman's “Speak Truth to Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark.”

2018: The Center for Jewish History, Jewish Studies Program of Cornell University and American Jewish Historical Society are scheduled to host the “Triangle Fire: See You in the Streets” featuring Cornell University Professor Nick Salvatore and author/artist Ruth Sergel in a lively discussion of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “An Wit Chef Alon Shaya” the Tel Aviv-born, Philly-raised chef moved to New Orleans and won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in America.

2018: “Red Trees” and “In the Land of Pomegranates” are scheduled to be shown at the Jacob Burns Film Center during the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Bal Ej: the hidden Jews of Ethiopia” is scheduled to be shown at the Eli Cohen Center in Nahariya, Israel.

2018(10thof Nisan, 5778): On the Hebrew Calendar, observance of “Aliyah Day,” “an official day of national celebration in which Jewish immigration to Israel is honored and noteworthy immigrants are recognized for their contributions to the nation.” (As reported by Debra Kamin)

2019: Prime Minister Netanyahu will not be making his scheduled speech at the meeting of AIPAC because he was flying back to Israel to deal with the rocket attacks “from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip” which have struck to areas north of Tel Aviv.

2019: In the wake rocket attacks from Gaza, schools under the control of the Regional Council of Chof Ashkelon are scheduled to be closed today.

2019: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “At the Crossroads of Sephardic, Mizrahi, and Russian-Speaking Worlds: A Three-Part Learning and Cultural Series on the Greater Sephardic Communities of the Former Soviet Union.”

2019: Public shelters in Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva are scheduled to be open today

2019: Friends and family of Joan Thaler, the most gracious and modest of Eishes Chayils prepare to wish her the happiest of birthdays.

2020(1stof Nisan, 5780): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

2020: “From Day To Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps” scheduled for today at the Illinois Holocaust Museum has been canceled due to the Pandemic.

2020: At 9:00 pm, Addison-Penzak JCC’s Rabbi Laurie Matzkin is scheduled to lead a “circle of song” on Zoom featuring Hebrew words and music to inspire and quiet the mind.

2020: This evening, Streicker Center is scheduled to host Rabbi David Wolpe on-line as he offers “Lessons of Resilience from the Torah.”

2020: Hillel@Home is scheduled to host the virtual “Why Is This Passover Different Than All Others?” during which “Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks offers a message of hope…”

2021: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present “Leaving Egypt: Passover Prep” with Rabbi Jen Gubitz.

2021: Temple Emanu El is scheduled to host a wine and cheese reception prior to the special Refugee Shabbat Friday night service.

2021: Congregation B’nai Torah of Sudbury’s Rabbi Dr. Lisa Eiduson and cantorial soloist Jodi Blankstein are scheduled to present a special “Taste of Pesach: Short and Sweet Shabbat Service”

2021: B’nai Jeshurun Congregation in Pepper Pike, OH is scheduled to a host a virtual Kinder Shabbat service.

2021: Following yesterday’s report by Israel’s election commission that with 100% of votes counted, Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and his natural allies have won 52 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament” and “an ideologically diverse array of parties committed to ousting him won 57 seats” “party leaders have already begun negotiations that are expected to drag on for weeks” in an attempt to assemble a majority of at least 61 seats thus avoiding a fifth election in two years.

2021: Jewish Arts Collaborative is scheduled to present JLive Art with Julie Weitz who, Passover 2021 “has created ‘Golem v. Golem,’ a hybrid digital-public art-physical installation for Passover…”

 

  

This Day, March 27, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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March 27

347: Traditional birthdate for Jerome, the priest and theologian best known for the creation of the Vulgate Bible, the Latin translation of the text and the author of correspondence with Augustine of Hippo that frequently mentioned the Jews living in Africa.

538 BCE: Cyrus was crowned “King of Babylonia and King of All Lands.”  Cyrus was the King who made it possible for the Jews to return to Judea marking the end of the Babylonian exile.

196 BCE: Ptolemy V ascends to the throne of Egypt. Ptolemy was one of the Greco-Egyptian rulers who fought with Antiochus for the control of Judea.

972: In Orleans, “Hugh Capet and Adelaide of Aquitaine” gave birth to Robert II who “conspired with his vassals to destroy all of the Jews who would not accept baptism” and who “inspired mob violence against the Jews including the learned Rabbi Senor.

 1188: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, who was comparatively protective of his Jewish subject “took up the Cross” and joined what would become the Third Crusade.

1191: Pope Clement III who was one of the Popes locked in a power struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV in which the Jews were mere pawns, passed away today. Henry considered the Jews to be his subjects and beyond the control of the Church. During the First Crusade, the hordes going through Germany killed and robbed the Jews. At the same time, many Jews were forced to convert. Henry was in Italy and much to the dismay of the Pope, when he heard what was going on in Germany, the Emperor set about punishing those of the perpetrators who were still around including at least one archbishop. He also ordered that any Jew who had converted under duress should be allowed to return to the faith of their fathers. Clement over-ruled the Emperor on this one. He did not how people were brought to Jesus, but once they were there, there was no going back.

1309: Pope Clement V, who in 1305 became the first pope to threaten Jews with an economic boycott in an attempt to force them to stop charging Christians interest on loans, excommunicated Venice and all its population.

1378: Gregory XI, the last of the Avignon Popes, passed away. In 1375 Gregory had issued an order “to compel” Jews to hear sermons.  The order would later be vacated and replaced by the older formula allowing one to “exhort” the Jews to listen. (For more see Popes, Church and Jews in the Middle Ages by Kenneth Stow)

1625(OS): The reign of King James I of England, Ireland and Kings James VI of Scotland who had Henry Finch arrested because a work he had published “predicted in the near future, the restoration of the temporal dominion to the Jews” and who was responsible for the King James Bible came to an end today.

1639: In Rome, a child is forcibly baptized after his father jokingly remarked that he would not mind it, on the condition that the Pope acted as godfather. The Jews rioted and were violently crushed. As a result, two of his children were taken, one a baby, and were carried in a ceremony by the Pope.

1753: In London, “Elizabeth Crowcher, daughter of a wealthy merchant from Wapping” and Ralph Schomberg, the physician and Anglican convert who was the son of German Jewish physician Meyer Low Schomberg, gave birth to controversial British naval officer and historian Isaac Schomberg.

1775(25th of Adar): Rabbi Chaim Ben David Abulafia, author of Nishmat Chaim passed away.

1775: Elizabeth Ezekiel married Samuel Judah today in London.

1786(27th of Adar, 5546): Based on tombstone found in the original Jewish cemetery in Ghent, date on which an unnamed Jew passed away. This unknown Jew or Jewess was the first Israelite to be legally buried in the city under the reign of Joseph II.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6652-ghent

1791: In Savannah, GA, Shankey Hartand Abraham Jacobs gave birth to Georgianna (Judith) Jacobs.

1793: In Grove Germany, Rivka Mosheim and Itzig Behr gave birth to Bernhard Benrend, the husband of Eliese Heine with whom had fourteen children.

1797: In Essingen, Germany, Bunle Babette Isaac and Emanuel Natahn Scharff gave birth to Aaron Emanuel Scharff, who married Magdelanna Roos with whom he had seven children after having first been married to Apollonia Nathan.

1798: Today, “Moses Myers, the consignee of four and half hogsheads of brandy lost his case in” United States District Court after which “permission was granted to him to petition the Secretary of Treasury for a reversal of the decision” as long as Myers paid the costs.

1800(1stof Nisan, 5560): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1800: On the same day that the Jews were uttering additional prayers for the celebration of the New Moon, the United States Senate was citing editor William Duane Contempt in their fight to muzzle a journalist who was critical of the Federalist Party.

1802: Raphael Nathan Bischoffsheim and his wife Helene, the daughter of Herz Moses Cassel, gave birth to their daughter Amalie who married was married in August 1818 at Mayence.

1812(14thof Nisan, 5572): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach observed for the last time before the outbreak of war between the United States and Great Britain, known as the War of 1812.

1816: Gabriel Gabriel married Rebecca Marks today at the Great Synagogue.

1820: In Baghdad, David Sassoon and Hannah Joseph gave birth to businessman Elias David Sassoon.

1820: Woolf Davis married Rachel Meyer at the Seel Street Synagogue in Liverpool, England.

1827(28th of Adar): Rabbi Samuel ben Nathan Ha-Levi author of Mahat-zit ha Shekel passed away

1827: Birthdate of Wolf Frankenburger, the native of Obbach who became a successful lawyer and represented the Constituency of Middle Franconia in the Reichstag.

1830(3rdof Nisan, 5590): Parashat Vayikra.

1835: Birthdate of Alton, Germany native Bernhard Cohen who settled in England where he was bured at the Scholemoor Jewish Cemetery.

1836: In Kecskemét, Hungary, Maria (nee Hacker) and Samuel Goldstein gave birth to cantor and composer Josef Goldstein who “was chief cantor at the Leopoldstädter Tempel in Vienna, Austria from

1857 until his death” in 1899.

1847: Birthdate of Nanette Adeline Kilian, the wife of German born Max Tutuer and mother of Walter and Josephine Tuteur both of whom were born in London.

1836: During the Texas Revolution, an untold number of Jews died when Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texas POW's who had fought under James Fannin at Goliad, Texas.

1839 (12th of Nisan, 5569): 32 Jews living in Meshed, Persia were massacred, and the remaining 100 families were forced to convert to Islam.

1839(12thof Nisan): The Jews were forced to convert in Meshed, Iran. Influenced by other anti-Jewish riots under the Kajar Dynasty in Iran, the local community attacked the Jewish quarter. The Synagogue was destroyed, over 30 Jews killed, and the rest of the community threatened with annihilation. Moslem leaders offered to prevent further riots on condition that the Jews convert, which they did. The Jews became known as Jadid al-Islam or New Moslems thus ending the presence of the Jewish community. They continued to practice their Judaism in secret and fled the city with their families whenever an opportunity for escape presented itself.

1847: Birthdate of German born chemist Otto Wallach. In 1910, he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

1848: In Meseritz, Prussia, Neuman and Johanna Arnfeld Tuholske gave birth to Herman Tuholske, the   Missouri Medical College trained physician, surgeon and medical school professor who co-founded he St. Louis Post-Graduate School of Medicine in 1882 and established the St. Louis Surgical and Gynecological Hospital in 1890 and had three children with his wife Sophie Epstein Tuholske.

https://beckerarchives.wustl.edu/FC059

1850(14thof Nisan, 5610): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1850: In Rotterdam, Dunkirk, France native Sara Wolf and Hampshire born Benjamin Pinheas Moses gave birth to Henry Moses Spier who died before he had reached the second month of his life.

1850(14thof Nisan, 5610): Fifty three year old banker and astronomer Wilhelm Wolff Beer for whom the crater Beers on Mars is named and who is the brother of Giacomo Meybeer  passed away.

1860: Birthdate of Eugene C. Kahn, one of the first, if not the first, Jewish child to be born in Morgan City, a port city on the Atchafalaya.

1861(16thof Nisan, 5621): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1861: The New York Times reports a drop in the sale of livestock this week due to Lent and the observance of Passover.

1861: Charles August Lauff, the German native and California businessman, and his wife, Maris J. Sebran, the daughter of Gregorio and Ramono Briones, gave birth to Charles A. Lauff.

1862: Captain Nathan Davis Menken, a merchant from Cincinnati who was serving with Company A, 1st Ohio Cavalry in the Union Army served with distinction today at the Battle of Kernstown in Virginia.

1863: In response to the “recommendation by the President of the Confederacy” that this be a Day of Prayer, Rabbi M. J. Michelbacher, of the German synagogue Bayth Ahabah in Richmond, Virginia, preached a sermon, "to which he added a prayer for the Confederate States of America "to crown our independence with lasting honor and prosperity," and for its president, Jefferson Davis, "grant speedy success to his endeavors to free our country from the presence of its foes." [On a personal note, it never ceases to amaze me that Jews could support slavery. How does one go to a Seder after reciting such a prayer?]

1868: Lazar Schorstein, the Vienna born son of Yithak Schorstein, and his wife Clara Schorstein gave brith to Bertha Victoria Shostein (who may have changed her last name to Shorstone who lived in the United Kingdom with her siblings, Gustave Isidore Schrstein and Therese Alice Schorstein, the wife of Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore.

1869: The New York Times reported that “At sundown last evening the Jewish Feast of Passover commenced. It was instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of God's chosen people from Egypt, in bondage, and the passing over by the destroying angel of those families the doors of whose dwellings were marked with the blood of the Paschal Lamb.”

1869(15th of Nisan, 5629): First Day of Pesach; in the evening count the Omer for the first time.

1869(15th of Nisan, 5629): In New York Temple Emanuel and the Nineteenth-street synagogue were among the Jewish houses of worship holding services on the first day of Passover.

1876: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association moved from its temporary quarters to the Harvard Rooms at Forty-Second Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City.

1877: In New York City, “Sigmund and Pauline Ullman gave birth award winning impressionist painter Eugene Paul Ullman whose son Paul was shot and killed by the Gestapo while secretly working for the Allies in WW II and for which Eugene “accepted France’s Corix de Guerre on Paul’s behalf.

https://library.newschool.edu/archives/findingaids/KA0042.html

1877: In New York City, Justice Murray dismissed charges filed against Henry Sollinger for having obtained money under false pretense from Mrs. Jane Ferguson. Sollinger was born Jewish but claimed to have converted to Christianity at which time he began using the alias Frederick E. Hall.

1878: In Cleveland Ohio, Falk Vidaver, the son of Nathan Vidaver and his wife Anna gave birth to Ruth Vidaver who became Ruth Dodge when she married Dr. Henry Washington Dodge, Sr.

1879: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association has received $10, 840.60. The money was raised by the Purim Association at its dress ball that had been held on March 6th.

1880(15th of Nisan, 5640): First Day of Pesach

1880: It was reported today that Baron James de Rothschild is President of the newly formed society established in Paris to promote Jewish studies.

1881: In Albany, NY, Joseph and Matilda Anker gave birth to Edward R. Anker, the long-time newspaper editor and husband of Frances Freund Anker

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/12/08/113173280.pd

1882: In New York, Benjamin Arnheim, the son of Walter and Sophia Arnheim and his wife Henrietta Arnheim gave birth to Walter B. Arnheim

1883: In Teplitz, Rabbi Adolf Aharon Rosenzweig and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Arthur Rosenzweig who passed in Prague in 1935.

1884(1st of Nisan, 5644): Rosh Chodesh Nisan observed for the last time during the Presidency of Chester Alan Arthur.

1887: “The first organized effort on the part of” Jews in Brooklyn “to tender a public tribute to the late Henry Ward Beecher too place” today” at the Kane Street Temple where…a large number of prominent Israelites met ‘in order to co-operate with other creeds and societies in raising a fund for a statue and free library to perpetuate the memory of the great friend of humanity and champion of religious liberty --- Henry Ward Beecher.’”

1888(15thof Nisan, 5648): Pesach observed for what was thought to be at the time, the last time the Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

1889: In Rheinhessen, Germany, Abraham Beckhardt and his wife gave birth WW I ace Fritz Beckhardt who scored 17 kills while flying for the “Fatherland” which later attempted to erase his record when the Nazis came to power.

1890(6thof Nisan, 5650): Emanuel Berhnheimer a native of Germany who came to the United States in 1844 and formed a partnership with August Schmid that led to formation of Lion Brewery, passed away today. 

1891: Birthdate of Russian native and Columbia trained “neurologist and psychiatrist” Dr. Irving J. Sands, the author and leading medical educator who was the husband New York City Board of Education member Cecile Ruth Humbert Sands and the father of Drs. William L and Richard H Sands.

1891: The Citation for First Sergeant Jacob Trautman Medal of Honor was issued today.

1892: The Biennial Convention of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association was held at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1893: The Bowery Amphitheater “reopened as a Hebrew theatre under the management of Sigmund Magulesko, Isidore Lindeman and Joseph Levy.

1893: Birthdate of sociologist Karl Mannheim, author of "Ideology and Utopia." Born in Hungary, he passed away in London in 1947.

1893(10th of Nisan, 5653): Solomon Beyfus, the son of Hamburg born language professor Gotz Philip Beyfus and Plymouth born Cippy Beyfus and the husband of Charlotte Abrahams, “the daughter of Esther and Henry Abrahams, a jeweler of Bevis Marks in the City of London” with whom he had ten children passed away today “leaving £81,326” and tribe of children who became successful in the law and theatre.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Beyfus_(1820-1893)#/media/File:Solomon_Beyfus_A_Ready_Lender.JPG

1893: “Jews and Intermarriage” published today contains a refutation by Rabbi Mendes of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of previously published sermons that Jewish law does not prohibit intermarriage between a Jew and his earnest request that further discussion of this topic be limited to the Jewish press.

1894: Birthday of Israel B. Padway, the native of Leeds, England who came to the United States in 1906 where he graduated from Marquette Law School and began practicing law as well as serving as President of the Board of Jewish Education.

1895: Professor Felix Adler delivered a lecture tonight at the Hebrew Institute on “The Influences of Organized Labor.”

1898: The Excelsior Club which meets every Sunday and whose members include William Weinbeck, Ben Harvey, Frank Eggelton, Harry Hartman, Edgar Rosenthal and Jack Lipschutz was founded today in Philadlelpia.

1898: “In Algeria the sixth paper devoted to anti-Semitism, L'Anti-Juif Algérien, appeared, with an illustrated supplement”

1898: “Austro-Hungarian Polity” published today described the some of the cause of that have led to unrest in certain agrarian districts including “a marked contempt and dislike for commerce and trade” among Hungarians, “so that the industry of this country is to a large extent, in the hands of the Jews.”

1899: New York Mayor Van Wyck met with six boys from the Hebrew Institute at Jefferson and East Broadway.

1899: Birthdate of Polish born physician Hyman Edward Canter, who moved to Pittsburg in 1913 where he practiced obstetrics.

1900: Herzl had a meeting with Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber about sanctioning the Viennese electoral reform. He requests that the “Neue Freie Presse” should not oppose the reform too massively.

1901: Anti-Jewish riots began in Smyrna, Turkey. The riots were triggered by the reports of the disappearance of a child who was said to have been slaughtered by the Jews for 'ritual murder.' Though the riots continued for four days, the child was eventually found and paraded through the streets to show he was indeed alive.

1901(7thof Nisan, 5661): Seventy-seven-year-old “German manufacturer and philanthropist” Heinrich Blumenthal was “for a quarter of a century Blumenthal was a member of the city council, and for more than two decades the president of the Jewish community of Darmstadt” passed away today.

1902: Birthdate of screenwriter Sidney Robert Buchman, the native of Duluth, Minnesota and Columbia University graduate who served as President of the Screen Writers Guild of America who ended up on the infamous Hollywood Blacklist.

http://zenithcity.com/thisday/august-23-1975-death-of-duluth-screenwriter-sidney-buchman/

1902: It was reported today that President Theodore Roosevelt had sent a letter of regret expressing his disappointment at not being able to attend the dedication of the Lucas A. Steinam School of Metal Working which is new addition to the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York.

1903: The Zionist Commission met Herzl in Cairo.

1904(11thof Nisan, 5664): Colonel Albert Edward Goldsmid the distinguished British officer who founded the Jewish Lads’ Brigade and the Maccabaeans passed away.

1905: The Pall Mall Gazette published “The Truth About the East End” by Meyer Jack (MJ) Landa the native of Leeds who worked as journalist in London where he also wrote plays including “The Shylock Myth.”

1905: Birthdate of Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff a German military officer who played a role in two unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Hitler, and who, thanks to the bravery of his tortured comrades remained undiscovered and thus survived the war.

1906: At the insistence of the Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria, the Minister of the Interior of Bulgaria issues a circular to his governors to take every form of precaution against anti-Semitism over Easter.

1906: Oscar S. Straus and former state Supreme Court Justice William N. Cohen, who spoke on “The Function of the Synagogue in America” were among those who addressed the first meeting of the Temple Beth-El Club which was held at the sanctuary on 5thAvenue and 76th Street.

1906(1st of Nisan): First publication of Der Yiddisher Kemfer, a publication American Labor Zionism

1907: It was reported today that the Rumanian Central Relief Committee in New York is sending $5,000 to Rumania for the relief of the Jews, including the four hundred destitute families who had escaped from the attacks in Bucowina as well Jews living at Gabatz and Jassy.

1908: According to a letter today by Joel Benton what was described as “The Easter Lily” “was really a large and glorified anemone, which grows in great profusion in Palestine” and which has “very rich velvet-colored petals.”

1909: In Munich, author Thomas Mann and his Jewish wife Katia gave birth to their third child, Angelus Gottfried Thomas Mann who gained fame as historian Golo Mann.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/09/obituaries/golo-mann-85-historian-dies-was-2d-son-of-thomas-mann.html

1910(16thof Adar II, 5670): Shushan Purim

1910: “The Executive Committee of the Jewish community, which represents 690 organizations” in New York City “has appointed a Conciliation Committee to act as a sort of arbitration body to adjust amicably differences arsing in Jews congregations, societies lodges of New York.

1911: Hundreds of organizations, as well as “wealthy men and well-to-do businessmen sent checks” and “liberal contributions” as well as “notes of sympathy” to offices of the Mayor and Jacob H. Schiff, the Treasurer of the National Red Cross Relief Committee to help the victims and the families of those who died or were injured in what we now call the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire”

1912: In Lisbon, the Colonial Committee is considering a scheme to encourage Jews “of all nationalities” to settle in Angola.

1912: A Jew, for the first time, receives an appointment as an officer in the Ottoman Turkish Army upon graduation from the Imperial Military Academy.

1913: This evening Dr. Dave de Sola Pola Pool of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagoge is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the “The Jews Of England” at Clinton Hall sponsored by Young Israel

1913: Birthdate of SS Captain Theodore Dannecker, one of Eichman’s underlings who was a “ruthless” participate in the Final Solution.

1914: In New York City B.P. Schulberg and Adeline (née Jaffe) Schulberg, who founded a talent agency taken over by her brother, agent/film producer Sam Jaffe gave birth to Seymour Wilson Schulberg who gained fame as Budd Schulberg, the novelist and screenwriter whose credits include “What Makes Sammy Run” and “On the Waterfront.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/movies/06schulberg.html

1915: Starting today, Dr. Nathan Blaustein will accept applications at his office from 3 to 6 pm for those who wish to adopt the three-month-old daughter of Sadie Mager who died while giving birth to the child.

1915: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon at Temple Emanu-El this morning “choosing as his text ‘And Abraham bowed down to the people of the land’” in preparation of the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Dr. Isaac Meyer Wise, the found of Hebrew Union College and the driving force behind the Reform Movement in America.

1915: As the celebration of Passover approaches, the American Jewish Relief Committee for the Suffers from the European War sent out a special appeal to American Jews.

1916: In Philadelphia, at the Hotel Walton, the conference that is making plans for the convening of the first American Jewish Congress, which is being attended by more than 400 delegates from the United States entered its second day

1916: Approximately 15,000 people attended the third day of the bazaar sponsored by the People’s Relief Committee for the Relief of the Jewish War Suffers at the Grand Central Palace which was capped off by Russian Night and resulted in an additional $20,000 being added to the fund which now totaled $75,000.

1916: Three hundred people including New York Governor Whitman attended a dinner tonight at the Savoy Hotel “where nearly $75,000 was collected for a home for aged, blind and crippled Jews” which is to be erected by the Daughters of Jacob in the Bronx.

1917(4th of Nisan, 5677): Seventy-two-year-old Civil War veteran and sculpture Moses Jacob Ezekiel passed away in Rome, Italy

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ezekiel.htm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/mezekiel.html

1917: Now that all “absolute equality” has been granted to the Jews in Russia, it was reported that “there will be no further restrictions upon the issue of passports to Russian or American Jews who desire to visit Russia than those common to other persons.”

1917: According to telegrams received in Copenhagen today Maxim Vinaver and Oscar Gruzenberg have been appointed to the Russian Senate and Supreme Court making them the first Jews “who ever obtained a seat in a Russian tribunal.”

1917: The Army and Navy Bulletin of the Young Men’s Hebrew and Kindred Associations stated that during the upcoming Passover festival “Jewish soldiers will be able to participate in Seder and synagogue services” and that plans are being made for all those serving on “every one of the big vessels” in the Navy including the battleships Missouri and New York to have the same opportunity.

1917: “Leo Motzkin of Kiev, one of the leading Zionist publicists and the head of the international press bureau which had much to do with the acquittal of Mendel Bellis of the charge of ritual murder” said in New York today “that he was confident that the Russian revolution would mean the ultimate liberation of the Jews and unprecedented progress for the Zionist movement.”

1917: The editors and publishers reported today to have attended the recent meeting at the home of Samuel Untermeyer where it was decided to form the Jewish League of American Patriots which would “enlist the moral and physical support of every loyal American Jew in the event of war” included Israel Friedlkin publisher and Peter Wiernick, editor the Jewish Morning Journal; Morris Weinberg publisher and William Edlin, editor of The Day; Herman Paley, publisher and Isidore Conikman, editor of the Warheit; Leon Kamaliki publisher and Odalia Bublick, editor of the Jewish Daily News and Judge Aaron J. Levy also of the Warheit

1918: Henry Adams passed away. To many he was part of the last generation of the distinguished Adams family. For Jews he was that and a little more or should I say a little less. In 1894, Henry Adams organized the Immigration Restriction League to limit the admission to America of "unhealthy elements" -- Jews being first among these. In his famous book, The Education of Henry Adams, he wrote about those he was trying to keep out of America: "Not a Polish Jew fresh from Warsaw or Cracow - not a furtive Jacob or Isaac still reeking of the Ghetto, snarling a weird Yiddish to the officers of the customs..." He found many supporters for his cause, but he did not win

1918(14th of Nisan, 5678): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1918: Based on information supplied by the Jewish Welfare Board, “Jewish families in the vicinity of army and navy cantonments” are scheduled to act as hosts for Jewish soldiers and sailors” who will have leaves so they may observe Passover.

1918: “Jewish Soldiers in the British army held a Seder at” Beit Yehudayoff, known as the ‘palace’

1918: Rabbi Barnet Siegel and John L. Bernstein presided over the Seder sponsored by the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Society which was attended by 1,000 people.

1918: For what may have been the first time in history a Seder was conducted at Yokohama, Japan for Jewish immigrants most of whom were women and children.

1918: Having secured the territory around Jerusalem, the British moved across the Jordan and began what was the opening of the First Battle of Aman.

1919: It was announced today the Continental Headquarters in Paris that “the approximately 60,000 Jewish soldiers in the American Expeditionary Force will receive an average of five to six pounds of Matzos from the Jewish Welfare Board so they can observe Passover.

1920(8thof Nisan, 5680): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1921: During his fact finding visit to Palestine, Winston Churchill went to the British Military Cemetery on the Mount of Olives to attend a service of dedication honoring the sacrifice of Allied soldiers who had fought against the Turks.

1922: In San Francisco, Joseph and Lillian Kurzman gave birth to military historian Daniel Halperin Kurzman whose works included include Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire. (As reported by Daniel Slontnik)

1923: Birthdate of British impresario Victor Hochhauser who, along with his wife, promoted numerous events including those for the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.

1923: Lord Grey, who “had been the foreign secretary during the McMahon-Hussein negotiations”, addressed the House of Lords today.  During his speech, “he made it clear that he entertained serious doubts as to the validity of the British government's interpretation of the pledges which he, as foreign secretary, had caused to be given to Hussein in 1915.

1923(10thof Nisan, 5683): Sixty-seven-year-old Felix Daus, “the inventor of the Daus duplicator and hectograph” died suddenly this afternoon while visiting his lawyer Herman Brasch and was buried later at the Mt. Zion Cemetery in Queens.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1923/03/28/105105033.pdf

1923: Sidney and Helen Livingston Weinberg gave birth to Sidney J. Weinberg, Jr. who would become a senior director at Goldman-Sachs.

1923: Birthdate of Prof. Nahum M. Sarna, z"l the father of Jonathan Sarna and a noted scholar in his own right

https://www2.bc.edu/~langerr/NMSarna/

1924(27thof Adar II, 5684): Ninety-one-year-old Abraham Berliner, the son of Franziska and Baruch Benjamin Berliner, the husband of Henriette Berliner and father of Flora, Selma, Max and Paul Berliner, who should not be confused with the German-Jewish historian of the same name, passed away today in Berlin.

1926: “For Jewish Students in the City” published today described plans by the Women’s Branch of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations to provide home hospitality for during Passover for Jewish students attending colleges in New York which “is not charity or philanthropy” but is an expression of a “deeper love” that come when opens their doors.

1927: Banker and philanthropist Nathan Jonas was the guest of honor at a banquet tonight at the Hotel Biltmore where 1,000 guests gathered to “mark the completion of his three decades of service in behalf of Brooklyn Jewish Charities.

1927: In New York City, Kassel Lewis and Sylvia Surut gave birth to New York Times correspondent Anthony Lewis, the author of Gideon’s Triumph

1927: “Out of the Mist” a silent film produced by Karl Fruend was released in Germany Deutsche Fox, the German subsidiary of the William Fox’s film company

1927: “Mr. Antin Write a Stark Book on State Politics published today provides a review of The Gentlemen From The Twenty-Second: An Autobiography by Benjamin Antin which is described as “an autobiography you could waltz to.”

1928: It was reported today that Cellist Gdal Saleski, the author of Famous Musicians of Jewish Origins has performed a concert at Steinway Hall that included Joseph “Achron’s ‘Fragment Mystique’ which “is based on a Hebrew theme.”

1928(6th of Nisan): Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzki, son of Rabbi Chaim Yitzchak Ber Plotzker of Kutno, the President of Kollel Polen and a prolific author whose works included Chemdas Yisrael on Sefer ha-Mitzvot passed away today. When Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzki visited America, he “pronounced Manischewtiz matzah to be thoroughly reliable – ‘there is none more faithful to be found’ – citing “constant supervision of one of the sages of Jerusalem,” Rabbi Mendel M. Hochstein.

1930: Birthdate of actor David Janssen. Born David Meyer, Jansen gained fame playing the lead in the long running TV drama, “The Fugitive.”

1930: Flyweight Moe Mizler fought his 39th bout at Whitechapel, London, UK

1930: “The meeting of the Administrative Committee of the Jewish Agency ended this morning after a short session with Felix M. Warburg, chairman, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Agency, expressing their satisfaction with the work that had been accomplished. There was a general feeling among the participants that the meeting had been fruitful of practical results for Palestine, and there was particular gratification that the complete budget of three and a half million dollars was confirmed.” (As reported by JTA)

1931:  English novelist Arnold Bennett, the confidant and advisor of Anglo-Jewish pianist and advocate for refugees from Nazi Germany Harriet Cohen whom she described as my “dear friend and mentor of my youth” passed away today.

1931: Charlie Chaplin received France's distinguished Legion of Honor

1932: It was reported today that Chief Judge Cuthbert W. Pound of the New York Court of Appeals will preside at the regional finals of the National Oratorical Contest, replacing Benjamin Cardozo, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court who was his predecessor as the Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

1933: A gigantic anti-Nazi protest rally, organized by the American Jewish Congress, was held in New York City. 55,000 people attended and threatened to boycott German goods if the Germans carried out their planned permanent boycott of Jewish-owned stores and businesses.

1933: Rabbi M.S. Margolis, the President of the of the Orthodox Jewish Congregations delivered a speech “at a mass demonstration in Madison Square to protest again the Nazi persecution of German Jews.

1933: In “Germany: Scared To Death,” Time reported that “To say that most German statesmen and politicians outside the Government's charmed circle were scared to death last week, would be understatement. Panic made cowards of the bravest of brave German Socialists and Communists. Even Catholics trembled—except Dr. Hans Luther. It was accurately said that in less than two weeks Chancellor Hitler has reduced his opponents to a lower level of groveling fear than did Premier Mussolini in the two years after the March on Rome, Oct. 30, 1922.”

1934: In Brooklyn, NY, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Adler gave birth to Dr. Joel B. Adler, the graduate of Yale and the University of Downstate Medical State Center and husband of Flora Adler with whom he had two children, Douglas and Allison.

1935(22ndof Adar II, 5695): Sixty-one-year-old Croatian architect Rudolf Lubiniski who designed the Croatian State Archives, passed away today in Zagreb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Lubinski#/media/File:Sove_HDA_2_1009.jpg

1936: From Windsor, Ontario, novelist and critic Dr. Ludwig Lewisohn named “the ten greatest living Jews” who are Professor Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, French philosopher Henri Bergson, Martin Buber, Chaim Wiesmann, gynecologist Dr. Bernard Zondek, author Scholom Asch, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Justice Louis D. Brandeis and composer Arnold Schoenberg.

1936: It was reported today that Eddie Cantor warned, that based on “information he had received recently, ‘a pogrom will follow the Olympic Games in Germany’” and that “he and members of his family had been threatened” which led to his belief that it is “necessary for Jews to have some form of unity.

1937(15th of Nisan, 5697): First Day of Pesach.

1937: In New York, at Shaarey Tefilah “two fires occurred simultaneously in the basement of the synagogue and caused minor damage. Later that same morning, at 10 o'clock, 700 persons assembled to celebrate the second Seder of the Passover. A few hours after the congregation had gone, a third fire was reported at 3:15 o'clock. This fire damaged the Ark of the Covenant and destroyed 18 hand-illuminated Torah kept in the Tabernacle. The $25,000 pipe organ was badly damaged and the entire south end of the synagogue was wrecked by flames, smoke and the axes of the firemen. After investigations by the Fire Marshall, it was discovered that the incendiary fires had been set by the synagogue's caretaker. The synagogue was reconstructed and remodeled to designs of S. Brian Baylinson, and a four-story synagogue house was added.

1937: The Joint Distribution Committee announced today that France, Belgium, England Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland had ratified the Geneva agreement granting German citizens (including Jewish refugees from the Nazis) who were in foreign countries prior to July 4, 1936 refugee certificates “good for one year” which meant they had “the right of residence.”

1938 After meeting him while performing with the Phil Harris orchestra, Leah Ray married MCA executive and future Jets owner Sonny Werblin with whom she had three sons during their fifty year marriage.

1938(24thof Adar II, 5698): Sixty-six-year-old William Louis Stern, the Berlin born son of Joseph Stern and “husband of Clara Joseephy” who fled the Nazis and continued his work in the field of psychology at Duke University passed away today.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060319004052/http://www.bh.org.il/Names/POW/Stern.asp

1938: Miss Henrietta Szold, 77-year-old founder of Hadassah, the Woman's Zionist Organization of America sent a cable from Jerusalem to Hadassah headquarters in New York describing her efforts to arrange for the transfer of Jewish children from Austria to Palestine. “The change is described as vital and as being the only hope for the youngsters to ever lead normal lives.”

1939: Dr. Max Danzis, the chief of medical staff, appealed to Newark Beth Israel’s board a their meeting today “to exerts all possible influence on behalf of “refugee physicians fleeing Nazi Germany.

1940: Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz concentration Camp in southern Poland

1941(28thof Adar, 5701): Forty-five-year-old Russian born David Alper who married Minnie “Manya” Isiomin after he had been married to Frieda Alper passed away today after which he was buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, NY.

1941: A Yugoslav government that was sympathetic to the Nazis “was toppled by an anti-German military coup” which lead to a Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April.  This would prove to be disastrous for the Jews of the Balkans since it would bring them into the grasp of the Final Solution.  Ironically, the long term effect of this would lead to the ultimate defeat of the Germans in WW II.  The invasion of the Balkans delayed the German invasion of Russia.  That delay meant the German army would be mired in the Russian Winter, which was a major factor in handing the Nazi war machine its first defeats on the eastern front.

1942: On day after the start of the deportation of Slovokian Jews, Slovakia’s Chief Rabbi Micahel Weissmand and the Slovokian Zionist leader Gisi Fleischann sent a message of SS Captain Dieter Wisliceny offering him a bribe stop the shipment of the Jews to the death camps.

1942: Goebbels described in his diary, Belzec and the cremation of the Jews, "The procedure is pretty barbaric, one not to be described here most definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. . . fully deserved by them."

1943: “Blue Ribbon Town” featuring Jewish comedian Groucho Marx was heard for the first time on CBS Radio

1943: The CKC resistance movement including Jewish cellist Frieda Belinfante “organized and executed the bombing of the population registry in Amsterdam today, which destroyed thousands of files and hindered Nazi attempts to compare forged documents with documents in the registry.”

1944: Several of the leaders of the Yishuv including executives of the Jewish Agency and General Council of Palestine Jews, Tel Aviv Mayor Israel Rokach and the municipal councilors of Tel Aviv and Mayor Joseph Saphir of Petak Tikvah met in Jerusalem this morning to deal with the latest outbreak violence by “the small terrorist group whose sabotage activities have led to a new and grave situation.” Among those calling for action to end the violence were chief Rabbis Isaac Herzog and Bension Uziel.

1944: In A Children’s Aktion, the Nazis collected all of the Jewish children of Lovno.

1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Forty Jewish policemen were shot by the Gestapo in the Riga Ghetto.

1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Two thousand Jews were murdered in Kaunas Lithuania

1944: One thousand Jews left the Drancy Concentration Camp in France for Auschwitz Concentration Camp

1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Resistance fighter Abraham Geleman, born in Lodz was killed in Belgium.

1944: As the Red Army approached Riga, Kovno and Vilna, Germany picked up the pace with actions against the surviving inhabitants of the ghettos. Children everywhere were being seized and driven off to their death. "The Children's Action" in Kovno resulted in the death of thousands of children under the age of 17. Most of them were shot. In order to spare their children from such horrors, some parents poisoned them. In Lodz, a mother killed her severely handicapped boy with a lead pipe across the head instead of allowing him to meet his fate with the Germans.

1945: Task Force Baum, the unit under the command of Captain Abraham Baum that had been sent behind enemy lines to liberate camp OFLAG XIII-B, near Hammelburg whose POW’s included the son-in-law of General Patton broke through the bridgehead at Aschaffenburg and “arrived in sight of the camp” by the afternoon.

1945(13th of Nisan, 5705): Jacob S. Kahn, the president of the Refrigeration Maintenance Company passed away today at the age of 62. Kahn had been a builder during the 1920’s, who erected the Hyde Park Hotel.

1945(13thof Nisan, 5705): Seventeen-year-old Lily Freedman, the daughter of Ray and Simon Freeman, was “killed by enemy action” today.

1945(13th of Nisan, 5705): Sixty-five-year-old Moshe Avigdor Amiel, the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv passed away today.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~szwetch/Stamps.of.Israel/6.html

1946: USCGC Northland (WPG-49), a cruising class of gunboat especially designed for Arctic operations that served in World War II was decommissioned today by the U.S. Coast Guard which would lead to its eventual acquisition by a Jewish group who would renamed it Jewish State and use it to transport refugees to Palestine.

1946: Today “the steamer Tel Hai, carrying 736 passengers, was intercepted by the destroyer HMS Chequers 140 miles out at sea as it approached Palestine.”

1946: In Cleveland, Dr. and Mrs. Gittelson celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary today.

1947: A.H. Weaghorn, a British police sergeant who is an expert on Jewish political affairs was attacked by three men outside of Tel Aviv’s central police station. Two of the men opened fire and one threw a bomb. The sergeant, who was wounded, returned fire along with several of his comrades.

1948: Twenty-two-year-old Algerian Avraham Abarzel, the son of Albert and Diamantine Abarzel, who had survived the Nazi occupation of France arrived in Israel today and “immediately joined the IDF” which later transferred him “to the French Commando Company of the Palmach Hanegev’s 9th battalion.”

1949(26th of Adar): Russian born Hebrew poetess Elisheva Bikhowsky passed away

1949: The Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, co-sponsored by Herbert Aptheker came to a close today.

1950(9th of Nisan, 5710): Sixty-four-year-old Harvard graduate and founder of Wertheim and Co., Maurice Wertheim, the son of Jacob and Hanna Wertheim and the husband of Cecile J. Seiberling passed away today.

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2016/HUM11c/exhibits/show/cultural-space/maurice-wertheim--investment-b

1950: After having been "rebuffed" by Levi Eshkol, the Treasurer of the Jewish Agency, Shlomo Hillel, "one of the Israeli organizers of the Iraqi Jewish emigration""went to see Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion who was totally supportive of the mass emigration from Iraq.’Tell them to come quickly,' Ben-Gurion said to Hillel...'What if the Iraqis change their minds and rescind the law? go and bring them quickly.'" Hillel would return to Iraq and try to expedite matters but the Jewish Agency "held the purse strings" and insisted on slowing down the immigration movement to what it considered were more manageable numbers.

1950: Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, the 75 year old conduct emeritus conductor of the Boston Symphony is scheduled to leave for Europe today after having conducted 16 concerts in Israel.

1950: Anglo-Israeli financial negotiations on problems dating from the days of the mandate are scheduled to come to a successful conclusion today with the planned signing of an agreement in London.

1950: The New York Times publishes a picture of Charlotte Johnson, The American Red Cross representative in Israel, watching as Jewish children who have arrived in Tel Aviv from Europe receive clothes made from textiles donated by the Brooklyn Chapter of the American Red Cross.

1950: An adaptation of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” a comedy written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart was broadcast on the Lux Radio Theatre.

1951: “Odette,” a biopic about British agent who was not executed at Ravesnbruck filmed by cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum was released today in the United States.

1952(1st of Nisan, 5712: Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Jewish Agency decided to send 100 disgruntled immigrants from India, who had been squatting outside the agency's offices in Tel Aviv, back to where they came from, announcing that this should not serve as a future precedent insofar as other immigrants were concerned.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Ministry of Health had announced that every Israeli between the ages of four and 60 would be inoculated against typhoid.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that at The Hague the German delegation to the Reparations Conference expressed surprise at the extent of the Jewish request of the sum of $500 million, to be paid within five years. They expected a smaller sum but agreed to recognize all claims as "urgent" and had "shown willingness" to meet them. Jewish delegates pointed out that they didn’t want to wait until all the Nazi victims were dead but intended to help the living.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli delegation in London held extensive talks on possible oil deliveries and economic cooperation.

1952: New York premiere of “Singin’ in the Rain,” a musical comedy directed by Stanley Doenen written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

1955: Birthdate of Susan Neiman, the Atlanta, GA, high school dropout and Ph.D. recipient from Harvard whose memoir Slow Fire described “her life as a Jewish woman in Berlin” during the 1980’s.

http://www.susan-neiman.de/

1956: “Patterns” a film noire co-produced by Jed Harris (Jacob Hirsch Horowitz) was released in the United States today.

1957: Funeral services were held this afternoon for eighty-year-old English born Cleveland realtor David J. Cohen, the husband of Katie Fisher Cohen with whom he had three daughters --Eleanor, Dean and Miriam – after which he was interred at the Mayfield Cemetery. 

1958: A less than laudatory review Edna Ferber’s Ice Palace published today described “her story as too repetitious and disorderly to win a prize in the world of literature” but then mockingly said it might provide immeasurable help in the campaign “to win statehood for Alaska.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=990DE0DB163DE53BBC4F51DFB5668383649EDE

1958: “Carl Foreman said today that he wrote the screenplay for “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” the day after Pierre Boulle was given an Oscar for writing the script.

1958: “Run Silent, Run Deep,” a WW II submarine thriller with music by Franz Waxman and featuring Don Rickles in a non-comedic role was released today in the United States.

1959: Twenty-seven-year-old "Elizabeth Taylor took the Hebrew name Elisheba Rachel and converted to Judaism."

1960: ABC broadcast “Fair Game,” an episode of “The Rebel” directed by Irvin Kershner.

1961(10th of Nisan, 5721): Eighty-seven-year-old Moshe Novomeysky the Siberian native and engineer who developed the Palestine Potash Company passed away today.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/this-day-in-jewish-history/.premium-1.711008

1965(23rdof Adar II, 5725): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Parah

1965(23rdof Adar II, 5725): Sixty-year-old New Jersey born, Columbia Ph.D. “Israel E. Drabkin, chairman of the department of classical languages and Hebrew City College who married Miriam Frideman after his first wife Norma Lowenstein died passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/03/28/97189720.pdf

1967(15thof Adar II, 5727): Shushan Purim

1970(19thof Adar II, 5730): Seventy-nine-year-old thrice married medium and author Viola Brothers Shore the eldest child of Abram and Minnie Epstein and one of the many called as witness by HUAC passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Shore-Viola-Brothers

1974: “Mame” a cinematic version of Jerome Lawrence Broadway musical directed by Gene Sakes with music by Jerry Herman and co-starring Bea Arthur was released today in the United States.

1974: “Concrack,” a marvelous adaption of The Water is Wide directed by Martin Ritt and with a screenplay co-authored by Irving Ravetch was released today in the United States.

1975(15thof Nisan, 5735): Pesach1

977: In Allentown, PA, Donald and Melina Kohn gave birth to Sally Rebecca Kohn founder and chief education officer of the Movement Vision Lab, a contributor to Fox News and “a distinguished Vaid Fellow at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute.”

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the week-long port workers’ go-slow strike continued and ships were loaded at half the normal rate. Angry citrus farmers called on the government to allow them to load their fruit by themselves. The Bank Leumi strike ended and its 300 branches opened for business. The hospital doctors’ strike was called off at the last moment. But radio and TV broadcasts were halted for seven hours as the result of a strike by the Broadcasting Authority administrative staff.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that in New York US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance promised Jewish leaders that during his forthcoming visit to Moscow he would discuss the problems of Soviet Jewry at the Kremlin.

1979(28th of Adar, 5739): One person was killed and 14 were injured during a terrorist bombing in downtown Tel Aviv.

1980: The Louisville Free Public Library which had been co-designed by William G. Tachau who designed buildings for Congregation Mike Israel, Graz College and Dropsie College was placed on the National Register of Historic Places today.

1981: “Thief,” a crime film directed by Michael Mann who also produced and wrote the script, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring James Caan was released in the United States today.

1982: ABC broadcast the last episode of “Bosom Buddies” costarring Wendie Jo Sperber and featuring Billy Joel’s “My Life” as its opening theme.

1983: “The neo-Nazi National Democratic Party will not be able to use “a city-owned public hall” for its party congress which is scheduled to open today in Frankfurt thanks to a change announced by the mayor of the German city that came about because of protests that came from several groups include the Social Democratic Party.

1984: “Terrible Joe Moran” a made-for-television film co-starring Ellen Barkin and featuring New York political leader Edward I. Koch as “Moe” was released today.

1986: Birthdate of Vania Heymann, the native of Jerusalem who creates novel video including commercials for PepsiMax.

1990(1stof Nisan, 5750) Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1990(1stof Nisan, 5750): Ninety-two-year-old Morris Holman the captain of the 1918 CCNY basketball team and the brother of Nat Holman who coached CCNY in 1920 passed away today.

1990: “Rent Collection” a “genre piece” by David Monies was sold by Sotheby’s London today.

1991: Isaiah Berlin met with author Lewis M. Dabney, a professor of English at the University of Wyoming in London at the Athenaeum Club. Dabney was editing Edmund Wilson's last journal, ''The Sixties,'' and had begun a biography. Dabney wanted Berlin to fill out the account of Wilson he had begun in a short memoir published a few years earlier. In the course of their conversation, Berlin told Dabney two “funny stories” about Wilson’s visit to Israel. Wilson “went to Jordan and when he came back he had to pass through the Mandelbaum Gate. The Israeli passport officer looked at his passport, noticed it was Edmund Wilson, then said: ''I think your dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls is not quite right. I think it should have been 50 years before.'' And Edmund answered, and the chief officer said: ''Stamp Mr. Wilson's passport. You can't discuss the scrolls here, not on the Government's time.'' He talked to me about that afterward, saying, 'Only in Israel would I find a passport officer who wished to question the date of the scrolls.'’ That amused him. It pleased him. Then he went to see the man he most admired in Israel, who was a scholar called Flusser (David Flusser) in Jerusalem, who talked to him about the Bible and the scrolls. Edmund asked him what he thought of Israel. Flusser said: 'Israel est un tres petit pays. Et je ne suis pas patriote.’ He was delighted with that. Anybody who said he wasn't a patriot went straight to his heart.”

1994(15th of Nisan, 5754): First Day of Pesach

1996: The New York Times featured a review of Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

1996: Final broadcast of “Dream On,” the HBO sitcom created by Marta Kaufmann and David Crane.

1998: After meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai in the U.S. today U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen indicated that Washington has agreed to expand the joint Arrow anti-missile project and provide $45 million in funding for a third battery of missiles for Israel.

1998: The Times of London included a review of John Murray’s biography of Edmund de Rothschild entitled "A Gilt-Edged Life."

1999(10thof Nisan, 5759): Parashat Tav; Shabbat HaGadol observed for the last time in the 20th century

2000: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urges Israel to return the annexed Golan Heights to Syria.

2000: U.S. premiere of “The Audrey Hepburn Story?” in which “Emmy Rossum appears during early scenes of the film playing Hepburn in her early teens.”

2000: Jack Lang began serving as Education Minister of France for a second time today.

2001: Islamic Jihad took credit for a bombing in the Talipot industrial zone in which 7 people were injured.

2001: Hamas took credit for the bombing an Egged bus at French Hill in which 28 were injured in Jerusalem.

2002 (14th of Nisan, 5762): A suicide bomber killed 29 Israelis during a Passover Seder in Netanya, Israel. The stark statement speaks for itself.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1389228/Hotel-blast-survivors-relive-the-Passover-massacre.html

2002 (14th of Nisan, 5762): Milton Berle passed away. Born Mendel Berlinger on July 12, 1908, Berle's career began at the age of five when he modeled as Buster Brown. He starred in a variety of entertainment mediums. But he gained his greatest fame as Uncle Miltie, star of the Texaco Milton Berle Show. The show began airing in 1948. It was the first national television hit and became a must see every Tuesday night. Berle was also one of the first to learn that television was a devouring medium that used you up and spit you out. Although his career would last for another half century, he would never know the success he gained with his Tuesday night television triumph. Berle died at the age of 93, smoking cigars and stealing other people's material almost to his last day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/28/arts/milton-berle-tv-s-first-star-as-uncle-miltie-dies-at-93.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2002(14th of Nisan, 5762): Director Billy Wilder passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/29/us/billy-wilder-master-of-caustic-films-dies-at-95.html

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/mar/30/guardianobituaries

2003: In Memoirs of a Queen, Middle East Perspective” published today Jane Maslin provides a review of Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor, who considers “1948, the year the State of Israel was founded, as the ''year of the catastrophe,'' and who “assails Zionism, the building of Israeli settlements and the perceived power of American Jews in influencing these matters” while having come to “the realization that many studio executives were Jewish, ''deeply loyal to Israel and Israeli politics, right or wrong.''

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/books/books-of-the-times-memoirs-of-a-queen-middle-east-perspective.html?searchResultPosition=3

2004: Eighty-one-year-old Dr. Sabina Zimering sat in the audience at the Great American History Theatre in Saint Paul, MN and watched the remarkable story of her own survival in Nazi Europe unfold on stage.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/27/2004/sabina-zimering

2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of topics of special interest to Jewish readers including "Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages" by Jaroslav Pelikan and the recently released paperback edition of "Someone to Run With" by Israeli novelist David Grossman; translated by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz.

2006(27th of Adar, 5766): Eighty-one year old Rudolf Vrba, who as a young man escaped from Auschwitz and provided the first eyewitness evidence not only of the magnitude of the tragedy unfolding at the death camp but also of the exact mechanics of Nazi mass extermination passed away at a hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/world/europe/07vrba.html

2006: Ehud “Banai sang a duet with David D'Or on D'Or's CD, Kmo HaRuach ("Like the Wind"), which was released” today.

2006: The New Yorker published “Allice Off the Page” an essay in which Calvin Trillin “discusses his late wife.”

2007(8th of Nisan, 5767): Ninety-nine year old Berlin native Axel Gerhardt Rosin, the long-time president of the Book-of the-Month club, note philanthropist and husband Katherine Scherman passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/obituaries/28rosin.html

2008: “The Lemon Tree,” an Israeli film directed, produced and written by Eran Riklis was released today in Israel.

2008: Sammy Ofer donated £20 million to London's National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, as part of a £35 million program of expansion.

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents a lecture by Professor Robert Seltzer a professor of history at Hunter College and Director of the Hunter Interdisciplinary Program in Jewish Studies who answers the questions “Why was the State of Israel needed? What were the reasons behind its establishment by the Jewish Diaspora?”

2008: Haaretz reported that two of its writers Shmuel Rosner and Or Kashti were recently named winners of the B'nai B'rith World Center Award for Journalism for 2007 on the basis of their work for the paper.

2008: As President Georgi Parvanov of Bulgaria’s visit to Israel came to an end, Bulgaria accepted responsibility for the genocide of more than 11,000 Jews in its jurisdiction during World War II.

2009: In Baltimore, Maryland B’nai Israel Synagogue presented a Friday night event featuring Philip J. Tulkoff, President, Tulkoff Food Products who delivered a talk entitled “Memories of Horseradish Lane and the Growth of Tulkoff Foods” in which he reminisced about “the good old days.” Thanks to the efforts of Lena and Harry Tulkoff that began in the 1920’s Tulkoff Horseradish Products Company became one of the nation's largest manufacturers of prepared horseradish products.

2009(2 Nisan, 5769): Eighty-six-year-old Irving R. Levine whose ever-present bow tie was his unique visual signature while he covered business and the economy for NBC News passed away. Unlike the blowhards and blow-dried talking heads who read this news beat today, Levine understood the subject matter and conveyed it a low keyed professional manner. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/business/28levine.html

2010: Shabbat HaGadol

2010: Sidney Ferris Rosenberg, the radio personality who is the cousin of former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman “returned to WFAN hosting a show in Port St. Lucie before the New York Mets faced the Washington Nationals.”

2010: the Jewish Ensemble Theatre is scheduled to present Wendy Kesselman’s newly adapted version of The Diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, MI

2010: Opening of the “Legacy of the Shoah Film Festival” at John Jay College in New York City. The opening night features Forgotten Transports: Women’s Stories – Estonia, Children of the Night by Marion Wiesel and a discussion with the award-winning director Lukas Pribyl.

2011 Dr. Jane Katz “was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Commack, New York for her pioneering athletic contributions to the field of aquatics”

2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest including “Great Soul Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India” by Joseph Lelyveld and the recently released paperback edition of” Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” by Lori Gottlieb

2011: YU Center for Israel Studies, Yeshiva University Museum, YU Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies presented Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine.

2011: “Norman Gorbaty: To Honor My People,” exhibition at the Walsh Art Gallery is scheduled to come to a close at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Conn.

2011: “The Chosen” is scheduled to be performed at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC under the sponsorship of Theatre J.

2011: The Harry Houdini Exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York is scheduled to come to an end.

2011: The second annual Limmud Conference is scheduled to take place in Chicago, Illinois.

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor A Walking Tour of Old Jewish Alexandria.

2011: Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story and God & Co.are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “The Infidel” and “The Human Resources Manager” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “The Whipping Man,” featuring a Seder on the first night of Pesach as its dramatic hook, is scheduled to have its last performance at the City Center State in New York.2011: Six gunmen in Sinai targeted the pipeline that carries natural gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan today, overpowering a guard and planting an explosive device before fleeing, The Associated Press reported.

2011: Bank Leumi and Hashava – The Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets ended months of arbitration by signing an agreement in which the bank will pay the company NIS 130.8 million, the two sides announced today. The money will go to heirs of Holocaust victims and toward projects that help Israeli Holocaust survivors – more than a quarter of whom live under the poverty line, according to government estimates.

2011(21st of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-five-year-old Bernard B. Roth; founder of South Gate-based World Oil Corporation passed away today. (As reported by Shan Li)

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/31/local/la-me-bernard-roth-20110331

2012: The 16th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end with a reception and a tango party.

2012: The Andy Statman Trio is scheduled to perform klezmer music at the Charles Street Synagogue.

2012(4thof Nisan, 5772): Eighty-two-year-old Baltimore born poet Adrienne Rich, whose father was a Jewish doctor passed away today (As reported by Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-and-author-dies-at-82.html?_r=2&hp

2012: PeterGuber became a minority owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers through his affiliation with Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC

2013(16thof Nisan): Second Day of Pesach

2013(16thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-five-year-old screenwriter Fay Kanin, the partner and wife of Michael Kanin, both of whom were blacklisted, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/arts/fay-kanin-95-writer-for-movies-and-tv.html?_r=0

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/31/fay-kanin

2013: “Jews of Egypt” a “controversial documentary on Egypt’s expulsion of its long-resident Jewish population opened” to at three movie theatres in Cairo and Alexandria “despite an initial effort by the Egyptian government to block its release.”

2013: The 23rdannual Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival is scheduled to open at the Haifa Municipal Festival Theatre Complex.

2013: Bulgaria will provide more evidence that Hezbollah planned the airport bus bombing that killed five Israelis in Burgas last year, and to use that proof to pressure the European Union to formally label the Iran-backed Islamist group a terrorist organization, Reuters reported today

2013: Some of Israel’s most sensitive computer information is stored on servers in a building above ground in the south of the country, acutely vulnerable to attack or natural disaster, a TV investigative report said today.

2014: “Aftermath” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: In Boston, attendees of the Keshet Cabaret are scheduled to have the opportunity to bid on a personal voicemail from Sarah Silverman.

2014: “For the first time since 1993, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is scheduled to perform at Jones Hall in Houston.”

2014: “Malmö police arrest two teenagers, out of a gang of five, who attempted to break into the local Jewish community center. When they were stopped by security at the gate, they voiced anti-Semitic slurs, according to the police. They were also seen filming and taking pictures of the building before their arrest.” (As reported by Yair Rosenberg)

2014: Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College and the music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra for whom he is scheduled to conduct Max Bruch’s ‘Moses’ at Carnegie Hall

2014: Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism in partnership with the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London and The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is scheduled to host “No Stab in the Back!” Race, Labour and the National Socialist Regime under the Bombs, 1940-45”

2014: “The Israel Anti-Fraud Unit said today that it is investigating former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is suspected of obstructing justice and witness tampering.”

2014: The IDF Northern Command announced today that it was changing its orders regarding opening fire in areas along the Golan border fence. Anyone from the Syrian side who comes near the fence should expect to be shot, the IDF said.

2014: Pears Institute for the study of Anti-Semitism in partnership with the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London and The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is scheduled to host the opening session of “Labour and Race in Modern German History”

2014: In commemoration of “the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the nationwide mass deportations in Hungary, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a screen of “Free Fall” a documentary that “explores the unique circumstances of the Holocaust in southern Hungary.”

2015: “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2015: “Cupcakes” a film “set in contemporary Tel Aviv” is scheduled to open at the Quad Cinema in NYC.

2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear in Westhampton Beach, NY.

2015: “The European Union kept Hamas on its terrorism blacklist today despite a controversial court decision ordering Brussels to remove the Palestinian Islamist group from the register.”

2015(7thof Nisan, 5775): Ninety-two-year-old George Spitz who made the New York Marathon what it is today passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/nyregion/george-spitz-civic-gadfly-helped-transform-marathon-dies-at-92.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2016: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host “New World Haggadah: A Passover Story for a Diverse America” featuring Ilan Stavans “one of today’s foremost interpreters of Jewish and Ladino cultures.”

2016: “A Tale of Love and Darkness” a cinematic adaptation of Amos Oz’s autobiographical novel is scheduled to be shown at the 20th annual Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.

2016: Tal Nitzán, “an Israeli award-winning poet, writer, editor and a major translator of Hispanic literature” and “author of six poetry books, one novel and four children's book, and editor of three poetry anthologies, among them the ground-breaking anthology With an Iron pen": Hebrew Protest Poetry” is scheduled to appear at a bilingual poetry reading at the Cornelia Street Café.

2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Best Place on Earth: Stories by Ayelet Tsabari, Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America by Douglas Brinkley and Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein.

2017: JTS is scheduled to host “Wondering Jews: Abigail Pogrebin and Joseph Telushkin in Conversation.”

2017: “Almost a decade after losing billions of his clients’ money in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, hedge fund financier Charles Murphy leaped to his death today from the twentieth floor of Midtown Manhattan’s luxury Sofitel Hotel, in what is being described as a suicide” proving that the evil of this ultimate con man never seems to end. (As reported by Daniel J. Solomon)

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Shalom Italia” a film about “Italians brothers who reunite in the Tuscan mountains searching for the cave that save their lives.”

2017: In New York, “Re’ut Ben-Ze’ev, mezzo soprano, and the Beatrice Diener Ensemble-in-Residence at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University are scheduled to perform the work of Jewish composers with music by Martin Boykan, Edward Jacobs and the world premiere of Concertino No. 1 for Guitar and Chamber Ensemble by YU faculty composer David Glaser.”

2017: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present for talk by “Efrat Yerday on the contemporary parallel struggles of Ethiopian Jews in Israel/Palestine and Black Lives Matter in the US and on the struggles of black people against racism from a transnational perspective” entitled “Between Yosef Slamsa and Martin Luther King” The Ethiopian Jewish Struggle in Comparative Perspective.”

2018: Columbia Professor Todd Gitlin is scheduled to present “A 50-Year Perspective on the American Left” as part of the History Matters lecture series at the Center for Jewish History.

2018:  “Bye Bye Germany” and “1945” are scheduled to be shown at the Jacob Burns Film Center as part of the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2018: A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the leader was taken to hospital on Tuesday for tests following an illness.

2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled host a presentation by Rabbi Jerome K. Davidson and Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson on “All In The Family” which examines the relationship between Abraham and Isaac.

2018: From Israel to Iowa friends and family of Giora Neta celebrate the birthday of this staunch Zionist and a person of uncompromising beliefs.

http://crgazette.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=1550467&CategoryID=52778

2019: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present curator Jacob  Wisse as he leads “a tour of ‘Lost and Found,’” which explores “the remarkable story of a pre-war family photo album that was owned by a woman who was deported from the Kovno Ghetto in 1943.”

2019: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to “a book launch of Avrom Goldfaden and the Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theatre” featuring a talk by author Alyssa Quint.

https://yivo.org/Avrom-Goldfaden

2019: Robert Kraft and his attorney are scheduled to make a court appearance today in connections with charges with two charges of solicitation that allegedly took place in a Florida massage parlor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/sports/robert-kraft.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

2019: Following yesterday’s assault of incendiary balloons, Israelis are preparing to face another day of what is now a two-pronged threat of violence from Gaza.

2020: In Boston, Havurah on the Hill is scheduled to host a Virtual Shabbat Dinner starting with “a community Shabbat candle-lighting.”

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to offer a virtual presentation by Rabbi Amy Ehrlich on “Forging Ahead – Bruria as a Model of Resilience.”

2020: Rabbi Heath Watenmaker of Beth Am in Los Altos are scheduled to offer stories, a bedtime Shema and Shabbat blessings for kids on Zoom or by phone

2020: This afternoon, the Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host a “Virtual Challah Bake.”

2020: Ninety-three-year-old U.C.L.A. graduate Harriet Glickman the Sioux City, IA born daughter of Russian Jewish grocery store owners Harry and Tone (Merlin) Ratner and wife of Richard Glickman who in 1968 persuaded Charles M. Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” to add an African-American character to his roster of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang, passed away today. (As reported by Daniel Slotnik)

https://schulzmuseum.org/remembering-harriet-glickman/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/arts/harriet-glickman-dead-peanuts.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

2020: Rabbi Zac Kamenetz of the JCCSF is scheduled to lead a virtual Shabbat service on Facebook that includes his guitar and reflections on these times.

2021(14thof Nisan, 4781): Shabbat Hagadol; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2021: Oshman Family JCC is scheduled to presents a socially distanced outdoor seder for adults and older children at the Freidenrich Community Park Palo Alto, CA.

2021(14thof Nisan, 5781): This evening, the Maccabeats will finish your seder.

https://www.kveller.com/the-maccabeats-new-passover-medley-will-help-you-finish-your-seder/

2021: JewBelong’s Virtual Passover seder “Burning Man-ischewitz” is scheduled to take place this evening.

2021: Congregation Shir Hadash is scheduled to present a virtual, intergenerational seder led by Rabbi Ted Riter, Cantor Devorah Felder-Levy and Rabbi PJ Schwartz.

2021: For the first time in history, the Jews of Bahrain are scheduled to celebrate Passover with the Jewish communities of the Gulf i.e., Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.R.

 

 

 

 

This Day, March 28, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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March 28

364: Roman Emperor Valentinian I appoints his brother Flavius Valens co-emperor dividing the Roman Empire between two rulers. Valens, The Emperor of the East “was an Arian and had suffered too severely from the powerful Catholic party to be interplant himself. He protected the Jews and bestowed honors and distinction upon them. Valentinian, who was Emperor of the West, also “chose the policy of tolerance in the struggle between Catholics and Arians, and permitted the profession of either religion without political disadvantage…” He extended this level of toleration to his Jewish subjects as well.

1038(20th of Nisan): Ravi Hai Gaon passed away

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112498/jewish/Rav-Hai-Gaon.htm

1193: On his way back from the Crusades, King Richard I of England becomes the prisoner of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. When it came time to pay his ransom, the Jewish community was forced to contribute 5,000 marks to the total.  This was more than three times the amount contributed by the entire City of London.

1285: Pope Martin IV passed away. “In 1281, Pope Martin IV” reminded “inquisitors that Jews should not be accused of encouraging converts to return to Judaism if all that was known that the Jews and converts had been engaged in conversations.” (For more see Between Christian and Jew by Paola Tartakoff)

1482: Lucrezia Tornabuoni the wife of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici passed away.  She was doubly unusual for a woman of her time.  First because she wrote poetry that was published and second because one of the subjects of her sonnets was Jewish – the Biblical figure of Esther.

1487: In Naples, Joseph Günzenhäuser printed “Psalms” with a commentary by Kimhi

1515: In Spain, in an example of how the Jews were treated,  Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda whose father “Juanito de Hernandez, was a marrano (Jewish convert to Christianity) and was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith” and his wife gave birth to Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada the future St. Teresa of Ávila

1537(16th of Nisan): King Sigismund I of Poland issued a decree granting a monopoly of importation and publication of Hebrew books to the Helitz brothers who had established the first Hebrew printing press in Poland. The Jews resisted the edit since the Helitz brothers had converted to Christianity.

1592: Birthdate of Czech educational reformer John Comenius. Three hundred years later, the imperial government would thwart plans by Czech nationalists to celebrate his birth which would lead to mob violence that would eventually be directed against the Jewish quarter of Prague.

1610(4th of Nisan): Rabbi Ben-Zion Zarfati of Venice passed away.

1744: In New York City, Isaac Mendes Seixas and Rachel Franks Levy gave birth to Moses Mendes Seixas, the husband of Jochabed Levy with whom he had nine children.

1737: Joseph Suess Openheimer (Jud Suess), former confidential adviser to Karl Alexander, duke of Wuerttemgerg, was interrogated for the first time by a judicial examiner preparing an indictment on charges of high treason, violation of the constitution, and oppression of religion.” Although the charges were totally bogus, he would be convicted and hung. He died a proud Jew reciting the Shema as he climbed the scaffold to his death. (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)

1763: In Philadelphia, Tabitha and Mathias Bush gave birth to Isaiah Bush.

1767(27thof Adar II, 5527): Parashat Tazria; Shabbat HaChodesh.

1772(23rdof Adar II, 5532): Parashat Shimini; Shabbat Parah

1781: Sara Sarzedas and Colonel David Maysor gave birth to Rebecca Maysor who became Rebecca Hyams the wife of David Hyams with whom she had five children

1783: Philadelphia native Leah Nathan and Bavarian born Jacob Naphtali Hart gave birth to Moses Hart who passed away in Paris.

1788: In Germany, Frommet Ottenheimer and Herz Marx Rothschild gave birth to Hindle Rothschild, the husband of Michael Seligman Dettlebacher with whom she had six children.

1795: As part of the Third Partition of Poland, the Polish Duchy of Courland ceased to exist when it became part of Imperial Russia. From 1772 until 1795 there were three successive partitions of the land that included Poland and Lithuania. The partitioning powers were Prussia, Austria and Hungary. Russia had gone to great lengths to limit its Jewish population. However, when it acquired its portion of Poland, it acquired a large Jewish population that it greeted with increasingly vicious anti-Semitism.

1797(1stof Nisan, 5557): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1797(1st of Nisan): Rabbi Saul Shiskes of Vilna, author of Shevil ha-Yashar passed away

1797: In German, Rehle (Sarah) Jonathan and Moses Faist Rosenheim gave birth to Johnathan Rosenehim.

1797: Rachel Gratz and Solomon Etting, the Baltimore attorney who led the fight to get Maryland to change the law barring non-Christians from holding public office and Rebecca Gratz who were married in 1791 gave birth to Rebecca Etting.

(some sources show her birthdate as 1798)

1807: In London, Soloman and Sarah Polack gave birth to Joel Samuel Polack, the first Jew to settle in New Zealand (1830).

https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1p18/polack-joel-samuel

1812(15thof Nisan, 5572): Pesach celebrated for the last time before the start of the War of 1812.

1817: Birthdate of Vilhemine Meyer, the wife of Schaltiel Isaac Cohn, who was buried in Denmark when she passed away.

1818: Birthdate of Wade Hampton III the Confederate General and governor of South Carolina with whom Edwin Warren Moise served during the war.  In 1876, Moise supported Hampton in his run for governor and ran successful for the position of adjutant general on Hampton’s ticket.

1820: Birthdate of Italian author Moses Soave, the native of Venice who wrote biographies on 16th century Jewish poet Sara Copia Sullam, 16thcentury Portuguese physician Amatus Lusitanus, 16th century Italian physician Abraham de Balmes, 10th century Italian physician Shabbethai Donnolo and 16th century French born Italian scholar Leon de Modena.

1824: In Nachod, Bohemia, Joseph and Sulamith Mautner gave birth to Isaac Mautner.

1824(28thof Adar II, 5584): Ninety-five-year-old Solomon Pinto, the Yale graduate, soldier in the American Revolution and member of the Society of Cincinnati who was the son of Jacob and Thankful Pinto and the husband of Clarissa Pinto passed away today.

1825(9th of Nisan): Rabbi Jacob Zevi Yales, author of Melo ha-Roim, passed away

1826(19th of Adar II): Rabbi Jacob Kahana of Vilna, author of Ge’on Ya’akov passed away.

1827: In Mayence, Germany, Rabbi Samuel and Sophie Bondi gave birth to Hugo Bondi

1832(26th of Adar II, 5592): Sixty-nine-year-old mathematician Lazarus Bendavid passed away today in Berlin.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Bendavid,_Lazarus

1832: In Mlečice (modern day Czech Republic) Marcus and Maria Lobl gave birth to Jacob Lobl.

1840: Birthdate of Eduard Carl Oscar Theodor Schnitzer the German born Jewish doctor who converted to Islam and gain fame as Mehmed Emin Pasha, a prominent leader of the Ottoman Empire who served as governor of Egypt.  During his service, he would be captured by rebels and the international Emin Pasha Relief Expedition led by the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley would come to his rescue.

1843: In Heidingsfeld, Germany, Joseph and Nanny Rosenheim gave birth to Julius Rosenheim, the husband of Ida Rosenheim.

1844(8thof Nisan, 5604): Fifty-five-year-old Eleazar S. Lazarus a “city official in New York” who according to one source was the “editor of the first Hebrew prayer book published in North America, an accomplishment usually credited to Isaac Pinto, passed away today.

https://ufspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2019/10/09/isaac-pinto-first-jewish-prayer-book-published-america-ufsasc/

1846: In London, Lydia and Mark Collins gave birth to Amelia Collins.

1849: Birthdate of French orientalist James Darmester

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4906-darmesteter-james

1850(15thof Nisan, 5610): Pesach

1851: In Neuilly-sur-Seine, Nathaniel de Rothschild and Charlotte de Rothschild (née de Rothschild) gave birth to Baron Arthur de Rothschild who bequeathed his artworks to the Louvre and “provided the prize money for the America’s Cup.”  (This date is provided by the Jewish Encyclopedia which conflicts with other sources.

1853: Frances Phillips and Jacob Hyman gave birth to Henry Morris (Imano), known “for his magnificent bass voice” and appearance in the Dyoyley Carte Opera Company’s production of ‘The Mikado’” who was he husband of Miriam Isabel Davis.

1854: Great Britain and France declared war on Russia marking the start of the Crimean War. The Paris Treaty of 1858, concluding the war, granted Jews and Christians the right to settle in Palestine, forced upon the Ottoman Turks by the British for their assistance in the war effort. This decision opened the doors for Jewish immigration to Palestine.

1854: Two days after she had passed away, Hannah (Woolf) Falcke, the wife of Jacob Falcke with whom she had had ten children was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1857: According to reports published today, the Jews Hospital in New York has enough beds to care for 170 patients. Currently, approximately 50 of those beds are in use.

1858: Birthdate of Imar Boas, he native of Exin, Prussia, a specialist in abdominal medicine who also authored several works on the topic.

1859: In Philadelphia, Abraham Kahn and Rebecca Ezekiel gave birth to Eva Coons, the wife of Isidor Coons and “Member of the Board of Directors of the Hebrew Education Society, Jewish Chautauqua Society, jewish Foster Home and Orphan Asylum, and the Philadelphia Branch of JTS.

1861(17thof Nisan, 5621) Third Day of Pesach

1861: "The Hebrew Son" is scheduled to be performed at the Winter Garden in NYC, “for the special delectation of our Judaic brethren.”

1863: During the U.S. Civil War, two Jews were arrested today on the Thomas A. Morgan while she was sailing from Fortress Monroe to Yorktown, on charges that they had a load of contraband goods in their possession

1864: In New York, the Assembly adopted a bill “authorizing the conveyance of property to the Hebrew Benevolent Society.”

1864: Medal of Honor Abraham Cohn who had enlisted as a “private in company E, of the 6thNH Volunteers in Campton, NH on January 5, 1864 was promoted to the rank of Sergeant-Major today.”

1865(1stof Nisan, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1865: Thirty-four-year-old Philadelphia native Myer Asch who had been serving with the Union Army since September of 1861 “was honorably discharged and mustered out with the rank of brevet Colonel of United States Volunteers” after spending most of the war with cavalry units of the Army of the Potomac except for the six months he spent as a prisoner in several Confederate prisons.

1865(1stof Nisan, 5625): Sixty-eight-year-old Leopold "Löbl Jünger" Strakosch the husband of Julia Strakosch passed away in Brno, Moravia.

1866: In Detroit, MI, Bertha (Tobias) and William Bendix gave birth to violinist and concert master Max Bendix, the conductor of Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera and Metropolitan Opera who was the uncle of actor William Bendix, best known for his starring role in the sit-com “Life of Riley.”

1866: Birthdate of Leon Kahn who was interred in the Jewish cemetery at Morgan City, LA when he passed away.

1867: A meeting was held today in Richmond, VA where the participants expressed their indignation at the decision by the insurance companies “to take no more ‘Jew Risks.’” Those in attendance, many of whom were Jews, adopted resolutions stating that they would not do business with any company that took such action. The Mayor of Richmond, Joseph C. Mayo, told the meeting that he had been in the insurance business for several years and had most of his dealings with Jews whom he described as upright and “honest in their conduct.” While serving as prosecuting attorney, he could only think of three Jews who had been brought before and while sitting with them while serving in the City Council “he had found them trustworthy.”

1868: In Chicago, Charles and “Fanny Louise (Powers) Hapgood” gave birth to Norman Hapgood, the author of The Inside Story of Henry Ford’s Jew-Mania

https://www.amazon.com/inside-story-Henry-Fords-Jew-mania/dp/B00085Q0DI

1868: Birthdate of Simon Oscar Pollock, the native of Minsk who was forced to flee the United States in 1890 because of his political activities along with his wife Julia Moschowitz where he pursued a career as a lawyer, author and counsel to the Political Refugees Defense League.

1869(16th of Nisan, 5629): Second Day of Pesach

1869: Birthdate of Turin native and Socialist Claudio Treves who was forced into exile when Mussolini and the fascists came to power.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/World-War-I-and-fascism#ref929657

1873: After accusations of ritual murder surfaced in Turkey, letters were sent to the Christians leader in Marmara, Gallipoli, Bursa , Salonica, Smyrna, Manisa, Chios, Adrianople, Janina, Silistria and other cities to warn of this behavior. The letters were formulated by the Turkish Jewish leadership in conjunction with the Greek Patriarch.

1873: Three days after he had “died at Matlock Bath Derbyshire,” Abraham Mocatta, the son of Daniel Mocatta and wife of Evelina Mocatta was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1875: It was reported today that Rabbi Brettenheim of Baltimore’s Howard Street Congregation recently officiated at the wedding of Rosa Stern, daughter of the later Bernhard Stern and Mr. Solomon Hochschild.

1876(3rd of Nisan, 5636): Eighty-year-old Hungarian born violinist Joseph Böhm “who was a member of the string quartet, which premiered Beethoven's 12th String Quartet” and “a director of the Vienna Conservatory” passed away today.

1877(14th of Nisan, 5637): Fast of the First Born

1878: In New York City, “Babetta (née Newgass) and German-born immigrant Mayer Lehman, one of the three brothers who cofounded the Lehman Brothers investment banking firm” gave birth to Herbert Henry Lehman who served as Lt. Gov., Gov. and U.S. Senator from New York.

http://library.columbia.edu/locations/rbml/units/lehman/biography.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/nyregion/herbert-lehman-biography.html?_r=0

1878: Birthdate of Abraham Walkowitz, the Siberian born “American painter grouped in with early American Modernists.

http://rogallery.com/Walkowitz_Abraham/Walkowitz-bio.htm

http://www.askart.com/artist/Abraham_Walkowitz/30115/Abraham_Walkowitz.aspx#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Walkowitz#/media/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Isadora_Duncan_29_-_Abraham_Walkowitz.jpg

1880(16th of Nisan, 5640): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1880: Birthdate of Louis Wolheim the multi-lingual Cornell football player who was fluent in Yiddish who gained fame as an actor in silent films, Broadway and finally in talkies including “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

1880: It was reported today that in Tula, Orel, and Kharkoff , the Russian government has “ruthlessly expelled” the Jews who have established businesses over the last several years.

1880: It was reported today that instead of improving the conditions of his Jewish subjects, the Czar has begun treating them with “increased severity.” The Jews have been forced to claim that they are Protestants to avoid be expelled from St. Petersburg by the police.

1880: It was reported today that an international conference is going to be held at Madrid aimed at adopting measures to protect the Jews of Morocco.

1880: It was reported today that the Jewish Messenger has expressed its gratitude for the influence the United States has exerted on behalf of the Jews of Morocco. The paper views the United States diplomat serving in Morocco as “the best and most powerful friend the Jews of that country have.”

1881: Rabbi Nachum Levison of Safed, Palestine, and his wife gave birth to Sir Leon Levison, “the first chairman of the board of directors of the publishing house of Marshall, Morgan and Scott, the founder of relief funds for Russian Jews and Palestine Jews and the first President of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance who in 1908 married Kate Barnes, the daughter of John Barnes.

1881: Birthdate of Safed native Judah Leib Levison, the son of Rabbi Nahum Levison of Galicia who gained fame as Edinburgh resident Leon Levison, the convert to the United Free Church of Scotland, the first President of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance and “fierce opponent of the Nazis” who was knighted in 1919 for raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for the suffering Jews of Russia and who had two brothers, one of whom was “a Christian minister in Edinburgh” and the other, Alexander Levison, the loyal Jew and leader of the Independent Congregation in Edinburgh.

http://www.lcje.net/High%20Leigh/Sunday,%20August%207/2%20Sir%20Leon%20Levison%20at%20High%20Leigh%201931%20by%20kai-kjaer%20hansen.pdf

1882: A pogrom begins in the largely Jewish town of Balta, in Podolia, Russia.

1883(19thof Adar II, 5643): Sixty-three year old “Guy’s Hospital trained physician and Justice of the Peace Nathaniel Mayer Montefiore, the English born son of Sir Abraham Montefiore, of Stamford Hill and Henriette Montefiore, the husband of Emma Montefiore and father of Leonard Abraham Montefiore; Charlotte Rosalind McIver and Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore

1883: Jennie E. Lyman, a young gentile girl from Cleveland, Ohio, married Max Rosenberg while studying in New York City unbeknownst to her parents.

1884: Samuel Shrimski completed his term as a member of the New Zealand Parliament of Oamaru.

1886: Birthdate of Ukraine native and blacklisted American garment worker Clara Lemlich, “a leader of the Uprising of 20,000” a member of the CPUSA and labor organizer.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/shavelson-clara-lemlich

1888(16thof Nisan, 5648): Second Day of Pesach

1888: In Suwalki, Poland Celia Rubinson and Chaim Hochstein gave birth to Joseph Irving Pascal who married Charlotte Pascal after having been married to Rose Pascal.

1889: Birthdate of Russian native Harry Cassman the prominent Atlantic City lawyer and “longtime leader of Beth Israel “who, in late 1923, founded what is now Jewish Federation of Atlantic & Cape May Counties with a group of local Jewish leaders and who was the husband of Celia Cassman and the father of Elaine Cassman McGee.

http://www.jewishvoicesnj.org/news/2015-09-16/Voice_at_the_Shore/I_will_always_have_sand_in_my_shoes.html

1890: Birthdate of Joseph Irving Pascal the native of Kovno who came to New York City in 1901 where he earned two degrees at Columbia before graduating from the Rochester School of Optometry. (Some sources show his birthday as 1888)

https://www.ajo.com/article/0002-9394(55)92142-5/pdf

1890: Rabbi Gottheil will officiate at the funeral of Emanuel Bernheimer one of the oldest members of Temple Emanu-El and Rabbi Silverman will officiate at the graveside services when the deceased is interred in the Salem Field Cemetery.

1891: Edward Lawrence Levy of England won the first World Weightlifting Championship which had been organized by the International Weightlifting Federation. 

1892: The newly elected officers of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association are Joseph Blumenthal, President; M.I. Asch of Philadelphia, Vice President; Simon Heizig, Vice President; Daniel P. Hays and Jacob Singer of Philadelphia, Secretaries. 

1892: L'Osservatore cattolico, reported that a leading German anti-Semite has thanked them and their extensive reporting on the crimes of the Jews "for having furnished him with such good scientific material" to him and his conservative political party.

http://skepticism.org/timeline/march-history/3406-milan-catholic-newspaper-praised-for-reporting-jewish-crimes.html

1893: Joseph H. Senner was appointed Commissioner of Immigration at New York which means he will be charge in Ellis Island, the entry point for tens of thousands of eastern European Jews – a position formerly filled by Colonel Weber.

1893: Birthdate of Arnold Rice Rich, the native of Birmingham, Alabama, graduate of U. Va. And Johns Hopkins Medical School who served as Chairman of the Department of Pathology and pathologist-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1944 to 1958 during which time he was married to “pianist and composer Helen Jones with whom he had two children – Adrienne and Cynthia.

1895: The Monte Relief Society hosted a grand cakewalk at the Terrace Garden tonight.

1896(14thof Nissan, 5656): Shabbat HaGadol; In the evening, the first Seder

1896: Over 150 poor Jewish immigrants from a variety of European countries took part in a Seder at the Hebrew Sheltering House on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. There was no charge for the Seder. The Hebrew Sheltering House also provided meals throughout the holiday at no charge.

1896: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil conducted Passover services this evening at Temple Emanu-El.

1896: Herzl took part in the Seder of the Zionist student association "Unitas".

1896: “Mll. Marsy’s Testimony” published today described the appearance of one of the key witnesses in the case brought by the state against ten conspirators including Armand Rosenthal to blackmail Max Lebaudy, the son of a wealthy sugar refiner.  Before his arrest, Rosenthal used the pen name Jacques Saint Cere in his role as correspondent for Le Figaro and The New York Herald.

1897: M.S. Isaacs, the President of the Board of the Baron de Hirsch Fund presided over a meeting held at Temple Emanu El in New York which was also attended by Emanuel Lehman (Tea surer), Julius Goldman (Secretary), Henry Rich, James Hoffman, William B. Hackenberg and Judge Myer Sulzberger of Philadelphia.

1897: “Mucha’s famous Sarah Bernhardt cartoon” is among the works that will be shown at the poster exhibit sponsored by the Albany Club that is opening today.

1897: Birthdate of Lewis Coleman Cohen a “Labour councilor on the Brighton Borough Council”

1897: “The United Brothers,” a Jewish fraternal organization, celebrated its 50thanniversary “at the Grand Central Palace…with a reception this afternoon and a banquet followed by a ball this evening.”  Among the speakers were Marks Fishel, George Hahn, Judge Joseph E. Newburger and Jacob Marks.

1899: Three days after she had passed away, Dinah Solomons, the widow of Morris Solomons was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1899: “Boys Call On The Mayor” published today described an unscheduled visit six Jewish boys paid on the Mayor of New York. The boys were members of the City History Club of the Educational Alliance and they hold “his honor” that they were studying the history of the city and they thought they “would like to meet its ruler.” The mayor gave them each an autograph and then had a policeman give them an escorted tour of city hall.

1900(29th of Adar II, 5660: Mendel Hirsch, the eldest son of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch passed away. Born in 1833, he Bible teacher and commentator as well as a poet. After receiving his PhD in 1854, he taught at a school founded by his father. Several of his articles were published in the monthly magazine Jeshrun. His daughter Rachel Hirsch was the first woman to be appointed as a professor of Medicine in Prussia.

1900: Joseph Solomon, the “Deal, Kent” born son of Moses and Sarah Solomon was buried today at the “Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.”

1901(8th of Nisan, 5661): Eighty-three-year-old German physician turned poet and dramatist Max Ring who “in 1856 married Elvira Heymann, the daughter of publisher Karl Heymann passed away today in Berlin.

1901: Birthdate of Charles E. Smith, a Russian immigrant who became a successful real estate developer in Rockville, MD where he is philanthropies included the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School

1902: Birthdate of violinist Paul Godwin. Born Pinchas Goldfein in Poland, Godwin first gained fame playing under that name in his native country. He moved to the Netherlands where his career flourished under the name of Godwin. Godwin miraculously survived the Holocaust. A virtuoso in his day, his works are largely unknown to modern audiences.

1903: As part of another meeting with the Commission, Herzl, Goldsmid and Stephens visit Lord Cromer. He states that the Zionists should now demand the concession from the Egyptian government. He recommends that they engage lawyer named Carton de Wiart, to assist in this endeavor.

1903: In Bohemia, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mordko Serkin and his wife gave birth to pianist Rudolf Serkin who first performed in the United States in 1933 before making it his permanent home in 1939

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/10/obituaries/rudolf-serkin-88-concert-pianist-dies.html

1904(12th of Nisan, 5664): Dr. Abraham B. Arnold, a graduate of Washington University School of Medicine who was “granted a certificate to practice in California in 1890” passed away today in San Francisco

1905: Birthdate of Baltimore native Eli Baer, the University of Maryland trained attorney who was active in the Democrat Party, B’nai B’rith and the National Conference of Jews who lived to the age of 99.

1905: In Pittsburgh, PA, Henry Berman who served as a general manager at Universal Pictures and his wife Julie gave birth to producer Pandro Samuel Berman.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-pandro-s-berman-1329133.html

https://www.geni.com/people/Pandro-Berman/6000000009487972908

1906: “Judge Cohen Tells Jews of Their Weaknesses” published today included a warning from the New York jurist that “rich Jews…can get to be a pretty arrogant sort of person” who need to avoid being “purse proud” while Oscar Straus countered that Jews are sometimes mistaken as being materialistic because they “have been so hard-pressed and have had to struggle so hard” to make a living when in fact “the Jew was remarkable for his high ideals.”

1906: Birthdate of Stanley “Tex” Rosen, the captain of the Rutgers University football team and tailback for Buffalo Bisons in the embryonic days of the NFL who went on to coach at Perth Amboy, NJ.

1907: Jews on the Lower East Side sponsored a benefit performance in a Bowery theatre this evening with the funds to go to starving people in China. Local Chinese had raised thousands of dollars to relieve the suffering of Russian Jews and the Jews were responding in kind. The turnout was less than expected because many of the Jews were preparing for Passover which begins tomorrow night and since the performance was in Yiddish, Chinese patrons would not have been able to understand the performance.

1907: As violence bordering on revolution continues in Romania, the peasants in Northern Moldavia are reportedly prepared to renew their plundering and pillaging at the start of Passover, if the government does not fulfill all of its promises. This does not give the government much time to act since Passover begins tomorrow evening, March 29, 1907.

1908: Ein Walzertraum (A Waltz Dream) an operetta by Oscar Straus opened at the Hicks Theatre in London today.

1908(25thof Adar II, 5668): Parashat Shimini; Shabbat HaChodesh

1908: Birthdate of Isaak Kikoin the physicist who won both the Stalin and Lenin prizes and who played a key role in the development of the Soviet atomic program. He was born at Žagarė the same town that was the birthplace of Rabbi Israel Salanter and American labor leader Sidney Hillman.

1909: Birthdate of Hynek Abraham who was deported from Prague to Terezin in 1942 and in 1944 from there to Auschwitz where he was murdered.

1909(6thof Nisan, 5669): Eighty-four-year-old David Bamberg, the German born son of Isaac Jacob Bamberger and his third wife Gela Weil and the husband of Johannah Adler with whom he had seven children passed away today in Baltimore, the hometown of all his children.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/37014882/obituary-for-david-bamberger/(According to this account he died in 1895.

1909: In Detroit, Michigan, Goldie (née Kalisher) and Gerson Abraham gave birth to Nelson Ahlgren Abraham who was raised in Chicago where he gained fame as author Nelson Algren.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/books/review/nelson-algren-biography-mary-wisniewski.html?ref=headline&nl=bookreview&emc=edit_bk_20161111&_r=0

1910: It was reported today that the officers of the newly formed Conciliation Committee formed by the Executive Committee of the Jewish Community in New York are, “Rabbi M.Z. Margolies of Kahal Israel, William Fischman, a merchant and attorney Abraham S. Schomer.”

1911: Jacob Z. Lauterbach was “elected” as a Professor of Talmud at Hebrew Union College.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0186/ms0186.html

1911: Max Florin’s black and white photo was printed in thumbnail size, along with a one-paragraph story” published today under the headline, “His Friends Think He Was Rescued.”

1912: Birthdate of Josy Zinnen who died at Mauthausen in 1945

1912: Constantin C. Arion, who as the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs would say that his “Government would grant rights to the Jews in accordance with the peace treat” and that the Government “would completely abolish Article 7 of the Rumanian Constitution” which states that “Jews in Rumania are aliens and that naturalization is only possible for them individually” began serving as Minister of Administration and Interior of Romania today.

1913(19thof Adar II, 5673): Thirty-eight year Viennese born pianist and composer Erich Wolf passed away in New York City today.

1913(19thof Adar II, 5673): Forty-four year old Rudolphn Beck, a Professor of Surgical Anatomy at the Chicago College of Dental Surgery passed away today.

1914: Birthdate of Oscar winning screen writer Edward Anhalt

1914: Birthdate of Philadelphia native and NYU undergrad Samuel J. Gelman, “the executive vice president of the Jewish Hospital and Medical Center of Brooklyn who had “received his medical degree from Anderson College in Glasgow,” served and in the British military during WWII and raised three children – Leonard, Sheila and Joyce – with his wife, “the former Judith Fabian Brieger.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/08/03/archives/samuel-gelman-hospital-official-vice-president-of-jewish-medical.html

1915: Birthdate of Jacob Harold Levison, the native of McDonald, PA, who gained fame as Oscar winning song writer Jay Livingston.

1915: During World War I, The Holland-America liner Maastendyk arrived in Amsterdam today from New York carrying ten pounds of Matzoth which were to be shipped to Rabbi Bernard Pressen in Berlin. As part of the laws adopted to conserve resources for the war effort, the German government had issued an order banning the use of wheat for making Matzah, so the Rabbi was depending on this shipment from the United States for his Seder. At this point in the war, both the Netherlands and the United States were neutral, so no laws were being violated by sending goods to Germany.

1915: Judge Nathaniel E. Harris, who will become Governor of Georgia on May 1stcommented on the Leo Frank case saying, “the Supreme Court will not be through with the case until some days after I take office and it is quite possible that I may never be asked to pardon Frank.”

1915: The American Jewish Relief Committee issued a special appeal for funds needed to alleviate the suffering of Jews caught in war-torn Europe. With Passover starting tomorrow evening, the committee invoked holiday motifs in its appeal. Responding to the appeal would be a fitting response to the words of the Haggadah, “let all who are hungry come and eat; let all al that are needy come and celebrate the Passover.”

1915: In “Russia of Today and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” published today French author Jean Finot presents a portrait of a “civilized Russia” that has been erroneously portrayed as Cossack barbarians by Germans – a portrait that includes the statement that “Jews, Moslems and Christians live together in harmony” and that “Jews” among others “should feel convinced that their martyrdom will cease when normal life is resumed and Germany decisively defeated” – statements that stand at odds with those who know a different reality of the Russian Jewish experience.

1916: In South Africa, Nathan Adelstein and Rosie Cohen gave birth to Dr. Abraham Manie “Abe” Adelstein “who became the Chief Medical Statistician of the United Kingdom.”

http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/31

1916: “Only one young man took the competitive exam today for the appointment to United States Naval Academy from Representative Isaac Siegel’s Congressional District” which is a bit unusual because in the past there have been six or seven candidates to take the exam.

1916: “Relics from Palestine” and several European art works were on sale at tonight’s sessions of the Jewish relief bazar which has raise $100,000 as of tonight.

1917: As the British forces advanced in Palestine, the Jews of Tel Aviv and Jaffa were expelled by the Turks. The Turks were sure that the Jews were secret (and not so secret) allies of the British Army. Tel Aviv had been founded by Jews eight years earlier and was truly the only all Jewish city in existence at the time.

1917: Leo Motzkin of Kiev, “one of the leading Zionists publicists and the head of the international press bureau” which played a key role in gaining an acquittal of Mendel Bellis said today in New York “that he was confident that the Russian Revolution would mean the ultimate liberation of the Jews and unprecedented progress for the Zionist movement.”

1917: Dr. B.E. Shatzky told a group of American businessmen “at a luncheon give under the auspices of the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce at the Hotel Biltmore” “aroused great enthusiasm when he declared that ‘through a glorious bloodless reconstruction all class and racial barriers, including discriminations again the Jews in Russia had disappeared forever at one blow. The Jewish question is now settled by Russian democracy, once and forever.’”

1917: The second concert of the Schola Cantorum given tonight at the Carnegie Hall included “two traditional Yiddish songs” – “Auram” and “Eili,” an “incantation sung by Russian, Polish and New York Jews based on” synagogue melodies.

1917: “The Times Riga correspondent wrote today, “I am grieved to state that the Jews are not behaving well.  They have become citizens of free Russia but they do not display a sense of responsibility befitting their new positions.  Similar complaints had reached me at Petrograd.  Hotheaded, hysterical Jewish youths are playing into the hands of worse than demagogues and Russia’s external enemies….If anarchy comes to Russia, there bound to be reaction in which the Jews will be the first sufferers.”

1918(15thof Nisan, 5678): The last Pesach of World War I

1918: While serving with the 1st Australian Infantry Brigade, thirty-two-year-old Leonard Maurice Keysor who had already earned a Victoria Cross was wounded was wounded today during fighting on the defensive Méricourt-Sailly-Le-Sec line and temporarily evacuated

1918: During World War I, as Jews begin to observe Passover they will have to deal with food shortages brought about the food conservation rules of the United States Administration which means that there is a thirty percent reduction in the amount of matzoth and increase in the cost of mutton which has risen from six to seven cents a pound in 1917 to 11 to 12 cents per pound this year.

1918: Based on information supplied by the Jewish Welfare Board, “Jewish families in the vicinity of army and navy cantonments” are scheduled to act as hosts for Jewish soldiers and sailors” for a second day so they may observe Passover.

1918: At Temple Israel of Harlem, Rabbi M.H. Harris delivered a sermon “Passover and the Present Crisis.

1918: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and CCNY grad Harry Minkoff, the veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, founder of Gift-Pax and husband of Ruth Minkoff with whom he raised three children – Jane, Larry and George – and who was an active member of Temple Beth El in Great Neck and the UJA Federation of New York.

1918: During Passover services today at Ohab Zedek Synagogue, Rabbi Bernard Drachman “appealed to the Jews of America to give their adopted land their assistance and full cooperation.”

1919: Birthdate of composer Jacob Avshalomov. Born in Tsingtao China, Avshalomov, was the son of the famous Russian composer Aaron Avshalomov. Avshalomov moved to the United States in 1937 where he pursued his musical career. He also provided a haven in the United States for his more famous father after World War II.

1919: Today Captain J. M. Loughborough, a member of the committee preparing for the return of the 77th Division, “praised the record made by Jewish boys from the east side whose deeds…had been rewarded by official recognition in many cases from their divisional commander and General Pershing” and “declared that New York should be proud of the 14,006 Jewish boys in the Metropolitan Divison.”

1921(18th of Adar II, 5681): Fifty-two-year-old Julia Wormser Seligman the former of wife of Jefferson Seligman from whom she had been divorced for several years, passed away today in New York City.

1921: In Chelsea, Massachusetts, “Abraham Fradkin, who came from Russia, and the former Eva Steinberg, from Poland” gave birth to their seventh and young child Irving Fradkin the optometrist who founded the Dollars for Scholars Program. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/us/irving-fradkin-died-scholarship-america.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1921: In Hanover, Germany, Sendel and Riva Grynszpan gave birth to Herschel Grynszpan the alleged assassin of Ernst vom Rath whose death was the pretext for Kristallnacht.

1921: Birthdate of Jerzy Bielecki the Polish member of the resistance who was named a righteous gentile by Yad Vashem. (As reported Dennis Hevesi)

1921: In Jerusalem, Churchill met with Abdullah ruler of Transjordan who sought to have an Arab Emir (himself) appointed to rule Palestine saying that this was the best way to avoid violence between Arabs and Jews. Churchill sought to reassure the Abdullah, that his fears were groundless. He told him that if Abdullah would not oppose Jewish settlement west of the Jordan, he would not have to worry about Jewish settlements east of the Jordan in Transjordan.

1923(11thof Nisan, 5683): Sixty-three-year-old New York native Leon Tanenbaum, “the head of the real estate firm of Tanenbaum, L. Strauss and Company and, for twenty-six years, a Director and Trustee of the Hebrew Technical School for Girls passed away today.

1926: “Jews of Poland Again Face Periods of Want” published today described the “adverse economic condition that have undone much the past relief work which has left one million people in need of aid that can only met by charitable giving from the Unite States.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9800E3DB1039EF32A2575BC2A9659C946795D6CF

1927: Six years before the Nazis came to power Fraud Ludendorff, the wife Erick Ludendorff, the Quartermaster General of the Kaiser’s army in WW I took the lecture platform in Berlin where she declared that “Freemasonry and Jesuitism are aiding the Jewish race to subdue and enslave the Germans and all the Nordic races.”

1928: The Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for Komzet of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews." The decree meant "a possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the territory of the called region.

1928(6th of Nisan): Rabbi Dan Plotzki, author Kelei Hemdah, passed away

1928: In the Bronx, Irving and Bea Kunkin gave birth Bronx High School of science graduate Arthur Glick Kunkin, the Socialist journalist and founder of the underground Los Angeles Free Press. (As reported by Neil Ganzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/obituaries/art-kunkin-dead.html

1928: In Berlin, Johanna "Hanka" Grothendieck, Johanna "Hanka" Grothendieck, the Chassi turned anarchist gave birth to French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/math-great-grothendieck-son-of-jewish-nazi-victim-dies-at-86/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/world/europe/alexander-grothendieck-math-enigma-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1929: “More than 800 people, representing cultural organizations in various parts of the United States and Canada” attended the opening session of “the first American convention of the promoters and adherents of the Yiddish language, literature and culture” which opened tonight at the Irving Plaza Hall.

1930: In Paris, “English political activist Marion Cave and Carlo Rosselli, the scion of “a wealthy Tuscan Jewish family” and “anti-fascist activist” gave birth to poet Amelia Rosselli, the granddaughter of Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, a Venetian Jewish feminist, playwright, and translator from a family prominent in the Italian Risorgimento, the movement for independence.

1930:  In Chicago, Russian Jewish immigrants Lillian Warsaw and Selig Friedman, “a sewing machine salesman gave birth to Jerome Isaac Friedman, the physicist who co- discovered the quark and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990.

1930: Birthdate of Albert S. Ruddy, the native of Montreal who was raised in New York and began work in film and television only after finding out that a career in architecture and construction was not for him.

1932: The first Maccabiah athletic games took place in Tel Aviv with representatives from 14 countries.

1933: The German Bishops' Conference bestowed a new level of acceptance of Hitler and the Nazis when the church leaders “conditionally revised prohibition of Nazi Party membership.”]

1934(12thof Nisan, 5694): Sixty-nine-year-old Russian born Louis Zuro, the younger brother of textile Aron Surasky, the father of the late Josiah Zuro, the music direct at Pathe motion picture studio and the husband of Leah Zuro, who began working on productions of Hammerstein’s grand operas in 1910 and organizing free Sunday concerts in 1924 passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/03/29/95038244.pdf

1934(12thof Nisan, 5694): Eighty-four-year-old Pine Bluff, AR businessman Isaac Dreyfus, the New Orleans born son of Rosina Meyer Dreyfus, the husband of Bertha Simon Dreyfus and father of Ruth, Hugo, H. Artie, Jerome and David Dreyfus passed away after which he was buried at the Congregation Anshe Emeth Cemetery in Pine Bluff, AR.

1934: Word of “Boycott Day” leaks out causing prices on the Berlin Stock Exchange to drop. Responding to economic reality Hitler decides that Boycott Day will go forward, but will last only for one day instead of serving as the kickoff day for an on-going boycott of Jewish businesses and professionals designed to destroy the economic well-being of Germany’s Jewish population.

1934: Rogers and Effie D. Pinner sold their house at 39 Riggs Place in South Orange, NJ.

1935: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia attended the formal opening of Reuben’s Restaurant and Delicatessen on East 58th Street in New York City.

1936: “The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee estimated” today that “the number of refugees from Germany to various European countries since the beginning of the Hitler regime totaled 58,837” of which 25,000 went to France and 5,837 went to Holland.

1936: “Poland Passes Meat Act” published today described the passage by the Polish Senate of a government bill designed “to break a Jewish monopoly in meat butchering” by permitting “the ritual slaughtering of animals to the extent of the amount necessary for Jews.”  (Editor’s note – considering the blatant anti-Semitism of the Polish government including their attempts to ‘deport’ their Jewish population the motives of this bill expressed by the government are disingenuous to say the least.)

1936: “The high-geared Nazi party machine has undertaken” measures “to compel every eligible voter…to go the polls” tomorrow where only “yes” votes will be counted.

1937(16th of Nisan, 5697): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1937: Twenty-six Polish Jews who was been arrested “for communistic activities” were sent to concentration camps today.

1937: “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of New York, the President of the American Jewish Congress and Canon Anson Phelps Stokes of Washington Cathedral…agreed tonight in a panel discussion at the Town Hall of Washington that knowledge and faith were the great requisites for combating religious persecution.”

1937: In “Birobidjan Called Place of Promise” Jacob M. Budish “one of the founders of Ambijan, an organization supporting the settlement of Jews in Biro-Bidjan, in eastern Siberia” described progress being made in this region where American Jewish organizations have received permission to settle one thousand families.  (Editor’s note – This Jewish region was an attempt by the Soviets to compete with the establishment of the Jewish home in Palestine and came before Stalin returned to the anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia.)

1938: Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen had a formal opening at 6 East 58th Street which was attended by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in attendance. It stayed at this location for three more decades until it was sold in the mid-1960s, afterwards moving to a location at 38th Street and Madison Avenue.

Arnold Reuben, a German immigrant, had first opened the restaurant in 1908 on Park Avenue Eight years later, the restaurant moved Broadway and in 1918 it moved again, this time Madison Avenue.

1938: Birthdate of businessman Leonard Stern former owner of the Village Voice and head of Hartz Pet Supply.

1938(25thof Adar II, 5698): Six Jewish passengers were killed by Arabs while traveling from Haifa to Safed.

 

1938: Bronislaw Huberman leaves The Hague as he prepares to move to Tel Aviv where he will conduct the newly formed Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra.

1939: It was reported today that “two Jews were killed and two wounded in various incidents in Haifa, Tiberius and Jerusalem.

1939: It was reported today that British forces have killed Abdul Rahim, the Commander-in-Chief of the Arab Revolutionary Forces in Palestine as he attempted “to break through a military cordon around a Samarian village in the North.”

1939: It was reported today that Councilmen George Backer addressed the luncheon at the Roosevelt Hotel which marked the start of the New York Campaign of the American Ort Federation which provides “vocational education in Poland, Rumania, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, France and Germany.

1940: It was reported today that “an order issued by the ‘Gouvernement-General’ of Poland” (the name of the German occupation of conquered Poland) “forbid the emigration of Jews from its emigration of Jews from its territory for an indefinite” because “there are enough occupations in Poland for any Jews desiring work.”

1940(18thof Adar, 5700): Vintner and violinist Shmuel Cohen, an early settler of Rish Lezion and the husband of Minya Papirmeister who created Israel’s national anthem Hatikvah by providing a musical voice for the words of Naftali Herz passed away today.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-second-death-of-shmuel-cohen-the-hatikvahs-composer/

https://www.naxos.com/person/Shmuel_Cohen/19081.htm

1941: Birthdate of Jacques Masson, a French Mizrahi Sephardic Jew of Bukharian ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger the product of an Ashkenazi family gave birth to Jeffrey Masson, the author of The Assault on Truth, a controversial book about Freud and psychoanalysis.

1942: The first transport of French Jews to Auschwitz began. This represented one of the first transports of Western Jews to the Death Camps. The Jews were from Paris and were rounded up with the help of the French Police. One of the popular myths of World War II was that the French people were united in the Resistance to the Nazi occupation. In truth, there plenty of collaborators both in Vichy and the German occupied zones. This had tragic consequences for the Jews of France as well as Jews from other parts of Europe who had sought refuge there before the outbreak of the war.

1943: In San Francisco, Huntington Sanders Gruening, the son of Ernest Gruening, and his wife gave birth to Alaska politician Clark S. Gruening.

1942: Major Paul Alfred Cullen, who had changed his name from Cohen to Cullen while serving in the Middle East in 1941, arrived in Ceylon today.

1942: Anne Frank wrote a poem today that began

If you did not finish your work properly,

And lost precious time,

Then once again take up your task

And try harder than before.

If others have reproached you

For what you have done wrong,

Then be sure to amend your mistake.

That is the best memory one can make.

1943: “The Yeshiva Synagogue Council representing 600 synagogues in the United States and Canada adopted a resolution” today “at its seventh annual conference, held at Yeshiva College, urging all synagogues to place themselves at the disposal of the armed forces as a ‘spiritual abode’ and to continue cooperation with the United Service Organizations, Red Cross and worthy welfare groups in raising funds and sale of war bonds.”

1943: “The victory for which the United Nations are fighting has for its purpose not only the preservation, but the extension of freedom, Alben W. Barkley, majority leader of the Senate, declared tonight in an address to 1,000 persons at the thirty-fifth anniversary dinner of the Order Sons of Zion, in the Hotel Astor.”

1943: Two days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held at Rodeph Shalom for Columbia trained attorney Irving J. Joseph, the husband of the late Blanche Lewy Joseph with whom he had two children, Marjorie and Stephen, who was counsel for the Home of the Daughters of Jacob and director of the Jewish probation Society.

1944(4th of Nisan, 5704): Rabbi Chayyim Most, Maggid of Kovono, was killed by the Nazis. Apparently Rabbi Most was a leader of outstanding character although there is little about him in the official records that I have found so far. He appears to have not been killed with most of the other Jews of Kovno; but met death at the same time that the remaining youngsters of the ghetto were slaughtered.

1944: Anne Frank and her family hear Gerrit Bolkestein, Education Minister of the Dutch Government in exile; deliver a radio message from London urging his war-weary countrymen to collect "vast quantities of simple, everyday material" as part of the historical record of the Nazi occupation. "History cannot be written on the basis of official decisions and documents alone," he said. "If our descendants are to understand fully what we as a nation have had to endure and overcome during these years, then what we really need are ordinary documents -- a diary, letters."

1944: The Irgun issued a statement today claiming credit for the attacks on police stations in Haifa, Jerusalem and Haifa. It also claimed that it had called ahead and left warnings about the impending attacks. The Irgun denied responsibility for shootings in Tel Aviv and blamed those on the Stern Gang.

1944: Colonel Paul Alfred Cullen, who would eventually reach the rank of Major General, today returned to Cairns where he was attached to the Headquarters of the New Guinea Force.

1945(14th of Nisan): Fast of the first born

1945(14thof Nisan): While serving with the Middlesex Regiment, Lt. Basil Seymour Cornell, the brother of Sgt. Michael Cornell of blessed memory, was “killed in action” while fighting in Germany.

1945: After having sustained a nighttime attack by a superior German force, Captain Baum and the remnants of his ill-fated  task force suffered further losses as they tried and failed to make their towards American lines.

1945: Birthdate of Israeli law professor Ruth Gaviszon.

1945: Members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8th Army celebrated a Seder in Faenza, Italy.

1945: Members of the Jewish Brigade's First Camouflage (PAL) Royal Engineers celebrated Pesach in Libya using” a specially designed haggadah of their very own. The cover page of the soldiers' haggada bears their unit's emblem - a long-tailed wolf, outstretched in the center of a Magen David, the tail protruding between a couple of the star's corners. On either side of the insignia is written the unit's name, in English on one side and in Hebrew on the other, the letters sitting in what looks like fluttering ribbons.” (As reported by Lydia Aisenberg)

1946: “The State Department released the so-called Acheson-Lilienthal Report which was co-authored by David Lilenthal, the Illinois born son of Jewish immigrants who was head of the TVA that “outlined a plan for international control of atomic energy.”

1947: As Jerusalem prepared for its 17th night under a twelve-hour curfew, Haim Salomon and Dr. Jacob Thon, representing the Jewish Community Council, met with Brigadier General J.F. Bedford-Roberts in attempt to get him to lift the ban on Jewish movement and commerce.

1947: An explosion and fire rocked the Iraq Oil Pipeline near its terminal in Haifa Bay today. Five youths dressed as Arabs whom authorities believe were really Jews are assumed to be responsible for the attack.

1947: Lt. Gen Sir Alan G. Cunningham, High Commissioner for Palestine and LT. Gen. G.H. Macmillan, commander of the British troops in Palestine, left London for Palestine this morning after having conferred with Prime Minister Atlee on a new “get tough” policy for Palestine.

1947: In Minsk, Genia and Hayim Wohlberg gave birth to Yosef Nezer Wholberg who made Aliyah in 1957 and perished aboard the INS Dakar at the age of 21.

1947: An announcement was made today that the United States has given its approval for a special session of the United Nations General Assembly to deal with the issue of Palestine. U.N. officials think that the session could take place sometime during the month of May.

1948(17thof Adar II, 5708): “Twenty-five Jews were killed and twenty-four were wounded in a thirty-hour fight” when 3,000 Arabs ambushed their convoy “south of Bethlehem in the Solomon’s Pools area”

1948(17thof Adar II, 5708): This afternoon “250 Arabs” armed “with two-inch mortars and light machine guns…ambushed a convoy of five truck and an armored car killing 45 Jews “at Kabriri, a village each of Nahariya.

1948: In a refugee camp at Prague, Samuel Freilich, a lawyer and rabbi from Munkács, in the Carpathian Ruthenia and Ella (Wieder) Freilich, who along with her husband had survived both Auschwitz and Dachau gave birth to Hadassah Freilich who gained fame as Hadassah Lieberman, the wife of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman who ran for Vice President on the ticket with Al Gore.

1948: On his radio show, Jack Benny hits the laughter jackpot with the immortal “Your money or your life” bit.

 

1949: James Grover McDonald, the first United States Ambassador to Israel presented his credentials today

1950(10thof Nisan, 5710): Sixty-year-old Mathematician Ernst David Hellinger, the Silesian born son of Emil and Julie Hellinger who was rescued from Dachau and fortunate enough to join the faculty of Northwestern University in suburban Chicago passed away today.

http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095929484

1950(10th of Nisan, 5710): Fifty-seven-year-old WW I Veteran and American Diplomat Laurence Adolph Steinhardt died in a plane crash today while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Canada.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/lasteinh.htm

1951(7thof Nisan, 5718): Sixty-five-year-old Bloomington native and 1908 graduate of the University of Indiana Howard Kahn, the “crusading editor in St. Paul who “received the Cosmopolitan International’s Distinguish Service Medal” for his work in ending the corruption in that city” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/03/30/89785885.pdf

1956(16thof Nisan, 5716): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1953(12thof Nisan, 5713): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol observed for the first time during the Presidency of Ike Eisenhower.

1956(16thof Nisan, 5716): Sixty-seven year old Tilly Newman, the wife of Joseph Newman passed away today and was buried in the Ella Street Cemetery.

1958: “Satan’s Satellites” a film version of the 1952 serial “Zombies of the Stratosphere” which featured Leonard Nimoy in one of his first cinematic roles was released today.

1959: “Davy Jones’ Locker” a musical with lyrics by Mary Rogers opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre.

1960: Birthdate of Uri Orbach, the native of Petah Tikva who became an author and politician who served as Pensioner Affairs Minister.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-jewish-home-minister-uri-orbach-dies-at-54/

1960: The Philadelphia Inquirer described the presentation of a Kiddush Cup to Rabbi Harry B Kellman by congregation president Morris E. Albert marking the 40thanniversary of Congregation Beth El in Camden, NJ.

1961: “Funeral services were held today for Brooklyn born Jewish communal leader Mitchell who “served in Congress in 1899 to 1901” and who was also a justice of the New York State Supreme Court.

1962: “In a speech at the Golden Anniversary Banquet of the Institute of Radio Engineers at the Waldorf Astoria,” “David Sarnoff, chairman of the board of the Radio Corporation of America urged…that the West organize what he called a free world community of science to meet and defeat the challenge of Communist bloc technology.”

1963: “The first Broadway production of ‘Mother Courage,’” a play written “in response to the invasion of Poland in 1939” directed by Jerome Robbins and featuring Gene Wilder opened today at the Martin Beck Theatre.

1963(3rdof Nisan, 5723): Eighty-four-year-old Odessa native and Menshevik leader Lydia Dan, the sister Julius Martov and the wife of Fyodor Dan who fell afoul of Lenin’s Bolsheviks and went into exile in 1923, which given the purges of the 1930’s probably saved her life passed away today.

1964(15thof Nisan, 5724): Pesach

1964(15thof Nisan): Eighty-four-year-old Jake Cohen, the Lithuanian born son of Azlman Gan and husband of Dora Bursk passed away today in Memphis, TN.

1965: One day after he had passed away, “a funeral service is scheduled to be held this afternoon at the Jewish Memorial Chapel in Hackensack” New Jersey for sixty year old New Jersey born, Columbia Ph.D. “Israel E. Drabkin, chairman of the department of classical languages and Hebrew City College who married Miriam Frideman after his first wife Norma Lowenstein had died.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/03/28/97189720.pdf

1966: Birthdate of James Douglas Bennet, an American journalist whose mother was Jewish and who became editor-in-chief of the Atlantic in 2006.

1966(7thof Nisan, 5726): Sixty-four-year-old actress Helen Menken, the first wife of Humphrey Bogart, passed away today.

1969(9th of Nisan, 5729): Rabbi Aryeh Levin passed away. Born in 1895, Reb Aryeh, was an Orthodox rabbi dubbed the "Father of Prisoners" for his visits to members of the Jewish underground imprisoned in the Central Prison of Jerusalem in the Russian Compound during the British Mandate. He was also known as the "Tzadik ("saint") of Jerusalem" for his work on behalf of the poor and the sick.”

 

1969: President Dwight D Eisenhower died in Washington DC at the age of 78. Eisenhower was President during the Suez Crisis of October 1956. In a rare of Cold War harmony, Ike sided with the Soviets. He allowed the Russians to threaten the British and the French with atomic attack if they did not withdraw from Suez in effect supporting the Nasser, the Egyptian dictator. After the fighting ended, he threatened the Israelis with economic destruction if they did not withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza. Gaza was a base from which Egyptian supported terrorists attacked Israel. The Israelis wanted to trade withdrawal from the Sinai for and to the Egyptians illegally barring Israeli vessels or vessels that stopped at Israeli ports from using the Canal. None of this seemed to matter to Eisenhower. Instead he chose to take actions that bolstered Nasser who repaid Ike’s kindness with an even more virulent anti-Western, pro-Soviet policy. At the same time, it should be noted that Eisenhower was horrified by what American troops found when they liberated the concentration camps during World War II and insisted that all of it be filmed immediately so that nobody could ever denied what had happened.

1969: In Miami Beach Marsha Pratts and Ronald Ratner gave birth to director Bret Ratner who was raised by restaurateur Alvin Malnik

1970(20thof Adar II, 5730): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Parah

1970(20thof Adar II, 5730): Eighty-eight-year-old Nissen Telnshkin, the long rabbi at Congregation B’nai Yitzchok and leader of the Orthodox rabbinate passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/03/archives/rabbi-telushkin-88-orthodox-scholar.html

1970(20th of Adar II, 5730): Natan Alterman “an Israeli poet, playwright, journalist, and translator who - though never holding any elected office - was highly influential in Socialist Zionist politics, both before and after the formation of the state of Israel” passed away.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/natan-alterman

1974: Isaac Poltinikov, the “retired military ophthalmologist who was deprived of pension and rank following an application for exit visa for Israel two years ago and threatened by KGB with a trial on charge of parasitism” appealed to the American Congress of  Ophthalmologist’s.

1974(5th of Nisan, 5734): Sixty-eight year old Dorothy Fields “one of the great Broadway lyricists, who wrote popular songs for revues, films and shows for nearly 50 years” passed away  today.

http://www.dorothyfields.org/home.htm

1974: For English MP’s of the All-Party Parliamentary Committee for the Relief of Soviet Jewry today refused visas to Russia.

1975(16th of Nisan, 5735): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.

1975: Two bus bombing in Jerusalem resulted in 13 casualties in one case and none in the other as terrorists struck on that was holy to Christians and Jews – Good Friday and Pesach.

1975(16th of Nisan, 5735): German born political scientist Ernst Frankel passed away.

1977: Birthdate of Lauren Weisberger, the native of Scranton, PA author of The Devil Wears Prada which was later made into a successful movie.  (A book about a Jewess in the clothing industry – how novel a novel)

1977: The annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee opened today in Venice.

1978: The PLO leadership finally ordered a ceasefire today, after a meeting between UNIFIL commander General Emmanual Erskine and Yasser Arafat in Beirut

1980: The Eldridge Street Synagogue was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places

1980: U.S. premiere of “When Time Ran Out,” a disaster epic produced by Irwin Allen, with a script co-authored by Carl Foreman, with music by Lalo Schifrin and co-starring Paul Newman.

1981(22ndof Adar II, 5741): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Parah

1981(22ndof Adar II, 5741): Seventy-five year old Isaiah Trunk, the Polish born award winning author and “chief archivist of YIVO” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/01/obituaries/isaiah-trunk-author-of-a-history-of-jews-during-the-nazi-era.html

1981(22ndof Adar II, 5741): Fifty-nine-year-old Polish born and Boston University trained psychiatrist Dr. Jacob Swartz, the U.S. Army veteran and husband of Elinor Swartz with whom he raised four children – Marvin, Howard, Carol and Leslie – passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/01/obituaries/jacob-swartz-psychiatrist-dies-professor-wrote-widely-in-field.html

 

1984: Judith Baum, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Baum of Antwerp, Belgium, was married today to Dr. Neil A. Halpern, a son of Rabbi and Mrs. David Halpern of Brooklyn in ceremony performed by the bridegroom's father, rabbi of the Flatbush Park Jewish Center in Brooklyn at Congregation Beth Sholom in Lawrence, L.I.

1984: “The Last American Virgin” directed by Boaz Davidson and produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan was released in Norway today.

1985: Neil Simon's "Biloxi Blues" premiered in New York. The Jewish author wrote a hit play (and later successful movie) based on the clichéd collision between New York Jews and the U.S. Army during World War II.

1985(6th of Nisan, 5745): Marc Chagall passed away. Born on July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus), Chagall studied in St. Petersburg and then moved to Paris before World War I. He returned to Russia where he served for a time during the 1920's as art director for the Moscow Jewish Theatre. He left the Soviet Union in 1923 and moved back to France. Distinguished for his surrealistic inventiveness, he is recognized as one of the most significant painters and graphic artists of the 20th century. Many of his paintings draw upon his life as a Jew and use Jewish themes of which the Praying Jew is one of the most famous. His twelve stained glass windows at the Hadassah Hospital-Hebrew University Medical Center are another example of Chagall's open identification with his Jewish heritage. There are numerous cites where you can find out more about him and view his works. I cannot do justice to him in this limited space.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/chagall.html

http://www.artnet.com/artists/marc-chagall/

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Marc-Chagall-1887-1985-6891

1986: 20thCentury Fox releases Lucas an “American teen tragicomedy film directed by David Seltzer and starring Corey Haim.”

1988: In Northridge, Los Angeles, Steven and Eileen Plata Kalish gave birth to major league outfielder Ryan Michael Kalish.

http://www.jewishbaseballnews.com/players/ryan-kalish/

1994(16th of Nisan, 5754): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.

1994(16th of Nisan, 5754): Russian born Playwright Eugene Ionesco passed away in Paris. Two of his more noted works were the Bald Soprano and The Rhinoceros.

1995(26th of Adar II, 5755): Eighty-six year old Sidney “Sid” Goldin the star basketball and tennis player at Georgia Tech and WW II Bronze Star winning Naval Officer “was a member of both the Georgia Tech Athletic and Georgia Tech Engineering Halls of Fame” passed away today.

1996: The Shamgar commission, the official Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, submitted its findings today.

1998: Arab Israeli politician, Haj Yahia entered the Knesset today as a replacement for Moshe Shahal. Upon taking his seat, he resigned his position as mayor of Tayibe.

1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback editions of "Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years Later" by Yehudi Menuhin and "Barney Polan's Game: A Novel of the 1951 College Basketball Scandals" by Charley Rosen.

1999: “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” a cinematic treatment of Jane Yolen’s novel of the same name that was turned into a screenplay by Robert J. Arech produced by Murray Schisgal and Fred Weintrub with an introduction by Dustin Hoffman was shown on Showtime for the first time this evening.

2000: Two days after she had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to held at Mt. Lebanon Cemetery for Selma Friedman, the wife of Theodore Friedman, mother of  Patricia Koepple and Andrew Friedman and a member of Tempe Israel in Lawrence, NY.

2000: The police recommend filing corruption charges against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara

2001: Canadian born Jazz musician and composer Moe Koffman passed away. He was accomplished on at least three woodwind instruments including flute, saxophone and clarinet.

2001(4th of Nisan, 5761): Itzhak Mr. Yaakov, known as the father of the Israeli technology industry, was quietly taken into custody by a special security division of the Defense Ministry

2001(4thof Nisan, 5761): Fifteen-year-old Eliran Rosenberg-Zayat and 13 year old Naftali Lanskorn were murdered by Hamas during a bombing at Mifgash HaShalom.

2002(15thof Nisan, 5762): Pesach

2002(15thof Nisan, 5762): “Rachel and David Gavish, 50, their son Avraham Gavish, 20, and Rachel's father Yitzhak Kanner, 83, were killed when a terrorist infiltrated the community of Elon Moreh in Samaria, entered their home and opened fire on its inhabitants. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.”

2003: As Ehud Olmert, the minister of industry and trade, ordered an indefinite suspension of the government inspections that enforce laws banning work on the Sabbath, “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new coalition was facing its first mini-crisis today over the sensitive question of working on the Jewish Sabbath, an issue that splits many secular and religious Israelis.”

.2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including "Bobby Fischer Goes To War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time" by David Edmonds and "John Eidinow and Hirschfeld’s Harlem with Illustrations" by Al Hirschfeld.

2005: “The Knesset again rejected a bill to delay the implementation of the disengagement plan by a vote of 72 to 39. The bill was introduced by a group of Likud MKs who wanted to force a referendum on the issue.”

2006: Delta Airlines launched a route from Ben-Gurion International Airport to Atlanta and is also competing on the Tel Aviv-Newark route with El Al and Continental Airlines.

2006: Publication of the paperback edition of Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany by Marthe Cohn whose sister was sent to Auschwitz and who was a decorated member of the “Intelligence Service of the French 1st Army.”

https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Enemy-Lines-French-Germany/dp/0307335909

2007: Shai Agassi resigned his position as President of the Products and Technology Group (PTG) at SAP AG. to pursue interests in alternative energy and climate change. In October 2007 would found a company named Project Better Place, focusing on a green transportation infrastructure based on electric cars as an alternative to the current fossil fuel technology

2008: In Jerusalem, The Bible Lands Museum in conjunction with the Rubin Academy of Music present Hot Slavic Winter – The Passion of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and more, as part of the Opera in the Morning series.

2008: With a theme of “Shake it up on Shabbat with your Shabbat Egg Shakers!” Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa sponsors its second Musical Shabbat. This is a testimony to the vitality of this small but vibrant outpost of the “whole house of Israel.”

2008: “21” a crime film based on Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich with a screenplay by Allan Loeb was released in the United States today.

2008: Three Kassam rockets were fired at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip, one of them hitting the outer wall of a preschool in one of the kibbutzim in the Sha'ar Hanegev region moments after the children were taken inside by their teacher. The teacher and a parent of one of the children suffered shock and the building was damaged. Two other Kassam rockets that were fired at the western Negev landed in open areas and caused no wounded or damage

2009(3rdof Nisan, 5769): Eighty-eight-year-old Janet Rosenberg Jagan, the wife and political partner of Cheddi Jagan who held numerous political offices in Gyuana including the presidency passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world/americas/30jagan.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/30/janet-jagan-guyana-america-marxist

2009: Jews all over the world begin reading the Book of Vayikra (Leviticus)

2009: In Iowa City, the U of I Hillel sponsors “Blintzes, Bubbly & Bingo” an enjoyable evening of food, drink, good company...and fabulous prizes!

2009: The Chicago Tribune reviews “Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb” by David Kushner

2010: An episode of the “Simpsons” titled "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed," is scheduled to be shown this evening. The episode includes scenes of Homer and Bart at the Western Wall with their Israeli tour guide, who will be voiced by British comedian Sascha Baron Cohen, of Borat and Bruno fame.

2010: Kathe Goldstein, “the musical voice” of Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is scheduled to hold a piano recital for the enjoyment of the senior citizens living at Meth-Wick House who would otherwise be bereft of such cultural pleasure.

 

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including "The Sabbath World" by Judith Shulevitz and "The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2010" by Edward Hirsch.

2010: The second and final day of The Legacy of the Shoah Film Festival is scheduled to take place at John Jay College in New York City featuring “Forgotten Transports: Family Stories – Latvia,” “Forgotten Transports: Men’s Stories – Belarus,” “Forgotten Transports: Fighting to Survive - Poland” and “Distant Journeys” by Alfred Radok

2010: Two Israeli soldiers killed in a firefight with Palestinian terrorists in the southern Gaza Strip were buried in separate ceremonies today. Thousands attended the funeral for Maj. Eliraz Peretz, who was on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. He is the father of four young children. His brother was killed in action in 1998. Staff Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky of the Golani Brigade, Staff Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky of the Golani Brigade, was buried later in the day.

2011(22ndof Adar II, 5771): Eighty-nine-year-old born author Abraham Rothberg, the holder of a masters in literature from the University of Iowa whose works included The Sword of Golem and the autobiographical novel The Song of David Freed and the husband of Esther Conwell passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/books/abraham-rothberg-who-wrote-of-golem-and-stalin-dies-at-89.html

2011: “The Simon Wiesenthal Center posthumously awarded Hiram Bingham IV their Medal of Valor in New York City with a film tribute” that showed how US Vice-Consul Bingham saved lives as the Nazis marched across western Europe.  

2011: A ruckus broke out in the lobby of the Supreme Court on today when right-wing activists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel hurled insults at Balad MK Haneen Zoabi as she came out of the courtroom. The judges had been debating the legality of a Knesset decision to strip her of some of her parliamentary rights.

2011: Evergreen is scheduled to perform a concert “Enchanted Celtic Music from Israel” sponsored by The Embassy of Israel, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and Sixth & I Historic Synagogue.

2011: “An Article of Hope” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts” and “Eichmann’s End: Love, Betrayal, Death” are scheduled to be shown at The Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: Under legislation approved unanimously today by the Maryland House of Delegates, SNCF must catalog and put online records relating to its transportation of 76,000 Jews and other prisoners from the suburbs of Paris to the German border from 1942 to 1944. (As reported by JTA)

2011: The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to host a lecture by Michael O’Hanlon entitled “The Limits of Foreign Policy: Reconsidering the Future Role of the U.S. In World Affairs

2012: Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and President of The Israel Project, is scheduled to discuss "The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership" with its author, Ambassador Yehuda Avner.

2012: In New York City, The Center for Traditional Music and Dance's An-sky Institute for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present the year's first installment of the Tantshoyz Yiddish Dance Party series, as part of the Sixth Street Community Synagogue's klezmer series.

2012(5thof Nisan, 5772): Eighty-two-year-old “Irving Louis Horowitz, an eminent sociologist and prolific author who started a leading journal in his field but who came to fear that his discipline risked being captured by left-wing ideologues” passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/nyregion/irving-louis-horowitz-sociologist-dies-at-82.html?_r=1&hpw

2013: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present Boris Sandler's Film "Yosef Kerler"

2013: The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Distinguished Speakers Series is scheduled to present “Those Angry Days’ Roosevelt, Lindberg, and America’s Fight Over World War II” featuring Lynn Olson and Tom Brokaw.

2013: Artists Ben Schacter and Yona Verwer are scheduled to lead a discussion of “It's a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond´ at the Yeshiva University Museum.

2013: “Jewish dead lie forgotten in East L.A. graves” published today” described a snapshot of a forgotten world as seen through Mt. Zion Cemetery

http://www.latimes.com/news/columnone/la-me-jewish-cemetery-html-20130328-dto,0,4355412.htmlstory#axzz2x0xYWSrK

2013: The traditional Birkat Kohanim mass priestly blessing took place this morning at the Kotel.2013: The escalation of Palestinian violence in the West Bank is reminiscent of the second intifada, but has not yet turned into a third one, Judea Brigade Commander Col. Avi Baluth told The Jerusalem Post today.

2014: “Finding Vivian Maier” a documentary about the photographer “executive produced by Jeff

Garlin” and co-starring Joel Meyerowitz which had premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival was released today in the United States today.

2014: In Chile, “an art school that promotes Nazi ideology scheduled to open today in the southern island of Chiloé.”

2014: Paramount is scheduled release the biblically based epic film “Noah” to the general movie-going public.

2014: Israel told the Palestinians it will not free the final batch of prisoners they had been expecting alongside US-brokered peace talks, a senior Palestinian official said today.

2014: This afternoon, “Under the Same Sun” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2015(8thof Nisan, 5775): Shabbat Hagadol

2015: In a speech given today the Grand Synagogue in Jerusalem, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin used language that led to accusations that he had compared President Obama to “Haman” – a comparison that did not negatively affect his career since three months later his “term as Chief Rabbi of Erfat was extended by five years.”

2015: In keeping with its annual tradition Congregation Agudas Achim is scheduled to hold Shabbat morning services at the home of Joseph and Kineret Zabner, to honor the Torah scroll which is a long-time family possession.

2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Garden of Laughs Benefit in NYC.

2015: “The Green Prince” and “Magic Men” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Film Festival.

2015: Sonia Kaplan, author of My Endless War, is scheduled her experiences during the Shoah at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015(8thof Nisan, 5775): Shabbat Hagadol

2015(8thof Nisan, 5775): Ninety-three-year-old Tony Award winning director Gene Saks passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/theater/gene-saks-actor-and-director-of-stage-and-film-dies-at-93.html

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/gene-saks-dead-neil-simon-director-1201462211/

2016: Today, “American Jewish comedian Roseanne Barr is scheduled to participate in a conference in Jerusalem about fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement.”

2016: Center for Jewish History, American Sephardi Federation, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to host a screening of “Watching the Moon at Night” a “documentary inspired by the historian Walter Laqueur explores the causes and consequences of terrorism and anti-Semitism around the globe.”

2017(1stof Nisan, 5777): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

2017: Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, “the leader of the so-called Jewish Faction, spoke during a rally in Jerusalem against the draft of the ultra-Orthodox community today.”

2017: The Jewish Women’s Archive sponsored “Good Girls and Nasty Women: Gender in American Jewish History” featuring Bonnie S. Anderson Lynn Povich, Rebecca Traister and moderator Bari Weis.

2017: The YIVO Institute sponsored a lecture by Jack Jacobs on the “Political Thinkers Of East European Jewry” where he “will focus on the ideas of Dubnow, Zhitlowsky, Pinsker, Ahad Ha’am, Syrkin, Borochov, Scherer, and Jabotinsky.”

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of the Women’s Balcony, a film about “a close-knit congregation that fractures along gender lines” in a “battle of the sexes.”

2018: Holocaust survivor Fritz Gluckstein is scheduled to tell “his story” at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

2018: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Semitism: Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.”

2018(12thof Nisan, 5778): Ninety-nine-year-old Budapest born Peter Munk, “the Canadian who built the world’s largest gold-mining company, passed away today. (As reported by Ian Austen)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/obituaries/peter-munk-90-dies-built-worlds-biggest-gold-mining-company.html

2018: David Shulkin completed his service as the 9th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

2018: “Broadway Chicken – A Performance from the World’s Greatest Musical” is scheduled to open at the Bascula arts center in Tel Aviv this evening.

2018: “Beneath the Cortex – The Human Theatre” is scheduled to premier this evening at Yung Yidish TLV.

2018: William “Kristol, founder and editor at large of The Weekly Standard, is scheduled to discuss “American Politics In the Age of Trump” this evening in the Kimmel Theatre at Cornell College which marks what he described as his first springtime visit to Iowa since he usually comes for the January Presidential Caucuses

2019(21stof Adar II, 5779): Eighty-five year old novelist Jonathan Baumbach, the Brooklyn born son of  Harold Baumbach a noted painter, and  Ida Baumbach, a school teacher, whose works included Separate Hours and Reruns passed away today.  (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/obituaries/jonathan-baumbach-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host Susan Warsing and Martin Weiss as part of their “First Person” series.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final two screenings of “Driver,” that tells the tale of an ultra-Orthodox acting as a single parent to his daughter after his wife leaves him.

2019: The Yehsiva University Museum is scheduled to present a performance by “the Ensemble-in-Residence of Stern College for Women” “of the 20thcentury and contemporary Jewish composers”

2019: As Major League Baseball opens its 2019 season today, Jews might be taking an interest in teams with Jewish owners, executives and or managers including the Chicago Cubs, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Yankees.

2020(3rdof Nisan, 5780):  Parashat Vayikra;

2020: The appearance of Sharon Pitluk Silver as part of the Illinois Holocaust Museum’s Survivor Speaker program scheduled for today has been canceled due to the Pandemic.

2020: In the midst of the darkness of the Pandemic, the glow of Shabbat burns a little brighter for the friends and family of Feivel Strauss as they celebrate his natal day.

2020: Havurah on the Hill and the Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host a Virtual Havdalah service this evening.

2020: The Riverway Project is scheduled to present the “Virtual Bagel Brunch: Passover Edition” this morning.

2020: Anne Germanacos of S.F. indie Jewish community The Kitchen is scheduled to host a casual discussion on Zoom on the events of the day.

2021(15thof Nisan, 5781): Pesach (Calendar Coincidence – Palm Sunday is also celebrated today which means Holy Week and Pesach track together)

2021: Compared to where things were a year ago for the first Pandemic Pesach things are much improved since “Israel has fully vaccinated over half its population of 9.3 million, and as coronavirus infections have plummeted, authorities have allowed restaurants, hotels, museums and theaters to re-open while allowing to 20 people can now gather indoors.”

2021: Rabbi Bridget and the Jewish Gateways community are scheduled to host online “the second night Passover Seder of Connection and Community.

2021: For the second year in a row, Congregation Beth El of the Sudbury River Valley is scheduled to present the Second Night Seder via Zoom.

2021: The New York Times reviews books by Jewish authors or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed by Wendy Lowe and The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens — and Ourselves by Arik Kershenbaum

2021: Rabbis Mordecai Miller and Joshua Weisberg are scheduled to lead a seder featuring the Israeli-Ethiopian story, with music by Cantor Lisa Iskin.

 

 

 


This Day, March 29, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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March 29

 835 BCE (1st of Nisan, 2926): According to some Joash assumed the throne as King of Judah

1188: Emperor Frederick was convinced (both diplomatically and financially) by Moses bar Joseph Hakohen of Mayence to issue a decree declaring “that anyone who wounds a Jew shall have his arm cut off, he who slays a Jew shall die. This decree succeeded in preventing most of the excesses of the pervious crusades in the third crusade soon to follow.

1244(11th of Nisan, 5004): Rabbi Meir Abulafia Halevi (Ramah), noted Talmudist, masorete, and poet passed away today at Toledo, Spain at the age of 74. (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

1349: Emperor Charles IV “declared that the city of Speyer had no blame for” the riots in January, 1349 during which “the Jewish community was totally wiped out.”

1366: Coronation of Henry II as King of Castile and Leon. Henry denigrated his rival Peter by portraying him as a friend of the Jews; a portrayal that including calling him “King of the Jews.” Henry exploited Castilian animosity towards Jews by instigating pogroms and forcing them to convert to Christianity.

1516: Today, the government created the Venetian Ghetto which according to some was the oldest ghetto in the world and would survive until the arrival of Napoleon at the end of the 18th century.

1559: Polish King Sigismund II granted the Jews a charter despite opposition of the local authorities at Przemysl.

1602: In Stoke-on-Trent, Vicar Thomas Lightfoot and his wife gave birth to clergyman John Lightfoot who authored several books on the Old Testament and its positive relationship to Jesus as well as such works as A Handful of Gleanings out of the Book of Exodus

1614(29th of Nisan, 5374): Rabbi Joshua Falk ben Alexander Katz of Lemberg author of Sefer Me’irat Einayim, passed away today.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5994-falk-foreignchars-v05p332001-jpg-foreignchars-joshua-ben-alexander-ha-kohen

1629: Birthdate of Alexis Mikhailovich, the second of the Romanov Czars. He reigned during the period marked by the Chmelnicki Uprising that decimated eastern European Jewry and the appearance of Sabbati Zvi. Considering the fact that we have records of the Czar ordering sharpshooters to protect Jews on their travels, sending Jewish merchants abroad to purchase wine and allowing Jews living in territory he acquired under the Treaty of Andrussev to continue living there as Russian citizens, he is considered to have been “kindly disposed toward the Jews.

1632: The Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629. Return of the city to French control would keep Jews from settling in Quebec for another 130 years. The French gave up Canada to the British in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War, known in America as The French and Indian War. Once the British were in control, Jews began to openly settle in the former French colony.

1664: Consecration of Giulio Rospigliosi to whom apostate Jew Giovanni Battista Jona, dedicated a Hebrew translation of the New Testament when he became Pope Clement IX

1714(13th of Nisan): Rabbi David ben Solomon Altaras, author of Kelalei ha-Dikduk passed away.

1719(9th of Nisan): In Venice, Rabbi Jacob Pardo of Ragusa and his wife gave birth to David Pardo who accepted the position of Chief Rabbi at Sarajevo in 1764 and passed away in Jerusalem in 1792.

1744(16th of Nisan): Rabbi Hayyim ben Jacob Abulafia of Smyrna, author of Ez ha-Hayyim passed away.

1772: Birthdate of German native Rivka Mosheim, the wife of Itzig Behr and the father of Kussel, Bernhard and Abraham Behnrend.

1773: Pope Clement XIV confirmed the bull issued by Clement VII concerning “Jus Gazaka” which the Jews viewed positively since it dealt with their right to rent houses in the ghetto of Rome. “Another token of Pope Clement XIV’s benevolence toward the Jews was the confirmation today of the bull of Clement VIII concerning the Jus Gazaka, which was of very great importance to the Roman Jews.

1781: In Philadelphia, Leah Nathan and Jacob Naphtali Hart gave birth to Jacob Hart who passed a way in New Orleans.

1789: In Franklin Tree, Alice Alexander and Jacob Aaron gave birth to Miriam (Ann) Aaron, the wife of Abraham Franklin with whom she had twelve children.

1790(14thof Nisan, 5550): Ta'anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

 

1790(14thof Nisan, 5550): Sixty-seven-year-old Mathias Bush, the native of Prague whose sons served with the American Army during the Revolution passed away today in Philadelphia.

1792: Gustav III of Sweden, during whose reign “the Jews of Stockholm invited Levi Hirsch” to serve as their rabbi was assassinated today.

1797(2ndof Nisan, 5557): Mrs. Rachel Marks, the wife of Levy Marks passed away today in New York City.

1793: In a decree issued today, the restriction on Austrian Jews “farming rural property” was modified to allow for it on “the estates of noblemen” “and even then hereditary tenancy or acquisition was prohibited.”

1800(3rdof Nisan, 5660): Parashat Viykra is read for the first time in the 19thcentury and for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1801(15th of Nisan, 5561): Pesach is observed for the first time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson.

1812(16thof Nisan, 5572): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer.

1812(16thof Nisan, 5572): Seventy-six-year-old Esther Hannah Magood Montefiore, the Livorno, Italy born daughter of Massahod (Modjesta) Raccah-Racha, a “Moorish merchant,’ and wife of Moses Vita-Haim Montefiore

1814: The King of Denmark officially allowed Jews to find employment in all professions and makes racial and religious discrimination punishable by law.

1819: In Moravia, Rabbi Leo Wise, a schoolteacher and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, one of America's most influential Jewish leaders during the 19th Century. His major achievements were the establishment of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873, the Hebrew Union College in

1855: In the area that became the Czech Republic, today Josef Pick, the son of Markus Pick and Elisabeth Sara Pick, and his wife Eleanor Pick gave birth to Siegfried Pick.

1875, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1889. This brief summary can in no way do justice to the life a man who had such an impact on the American Jewish community.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/isaac-mayer-wise

1819: In Larraine, France Simon and Pauline Levy gave birth to Kalmus Calmann Levy.

1821: Birthdate of engraver and publisher Frank Leslie whose Illustrated Newspaper carried pictures of Jewish events including a Hebrew Purim Ball and Chanukah Celebration.

http://www.israeldailypicture.com/2014/03/a-purim-treat-from-archives-of-library.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IsraelsHistory-APictureADaybeta+%28Israel%27s+History+-+a+Picture+a+Day+%28Beta%29%29

1824: Birthdate of Amsterdam native David Zacharias Baruch, the son of Zacharias Baruch, the husband of Lea Nabarro and the father of Gratia, Rebecca, Clara, Izaak and Abraham Baruch.

1829: Six days after he had passed away, 43 year old Joel Abrahams was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1832: Birthdate of Austrian philosopher Theodore Gomperz, the native of Brno, who “was elected a member of the Academy of Science, received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa from the university of Königsberg, and Doctor of Literature from the universities of Dublin and Cambridge.”

1832: Birthdate of Offenbach native Leopold Oppenheim, the husband of Josephine Barrow Montefiore.

1833: As a result of the damage sustained to its building in 1831 during a hurricane, a new synagogue was consecrated by Kaal Koadosh Nidhl Israel on Barbados.

1840: In Essingen, Germany, Sarah Adler and Rabbi Joseph Gabriel Adler gave birth to Rabbi Immanuel Manchem Adler, the husband of Judith Adler and father of Pinchas Adler.

1848: In Great Britain, Samuel Joseph Rubinstein married a daughter of David Moses Dyte, a London quill merchant.

1848: A decree issued today granted civil rights to the Jews of Alessandria, Italy which allowed to serve in the army and hold government jobs.

1849: Adolphus Alexander married Violet Abrahams today at the Pilgrim Street Synagogue in Liverpool, England.

1849: Lewis Nathan married Regina Kisch today at the Great Synagogue.

1853: Birthdate of Moravia native Moritz Gunwald who passed away in London after which he was buried at the Edmonton Federation Cemetery.

1855: In what became the Czech Republic, Josef Pick, he son of “Markus and Elisabeth Pick” and Eleanor Pick gave birth to Siegfried Pick

1858(14th of Nisan): Jews who had served in the Russian army received the right of residence in the province of Abo-Bjorneborg, Finland upon its annexation today.

1859: In New Orleans Jacob Osoro DeCastro and Hannah Haim DeSola DeCastro gave birth to Zippporah Alice DeCastro Lazaron, the husband of Atlanta, GA native Samuel Louis Lazaron and the mother of Savannah, GA native Samuel Lazaron, the Reform Rabbi who led Baltimore Hebrew Congregation for three decades who eventually gave up his post because of anti-Zionist views.

1859: A new lodge of the Sons of Israel which was the first one outside of New York City was “instituted” today.

1860: Todays "Personal" column reported that “The Cincinnati papers notice the arrival in that city of Mr. Israel J. Benjamin, author of Eight Years in Asia and Africa -- a Jew, who is making the tour of North America to examine the condition of his race. His design is to cross the Plains, spend a short time in the Rocky Mountains, and thence proceed through California to Asia.

1860: In Donaldsonville, LA, Michael Blum and Louise Meyer gave birth to Sam Blum, a product of the New Orleans public school and businessman who was President of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association for six years and “trustee of the Touro Synagogue for several years.”

1861(18thof Nisan, 5621): Fourth Day of Pesach

1861: Opening night at the Winter Garden for “The Hebrew Son” a play designed to appeal to the Jews in the audience.

1862: “After the repeal of the majority legal restrictions on Jewish citizens, today the Israelitische Kultusverein (literal: Israelite Cultus Society) was founded by 12 members.”

1862: Birthdate of Swiss born American portrait painter whose work includes a painting of Isaac Newton Seligman that has disappeared and one of his five-year-old son Joseph L. Seligman which was done in 1891 and first exhibited in January of 1892.

1863: “New From Fortress Monroe”published reported that two Jews were arrested while on board the SS Thomas A. Morgan which was making her trip from this Fortress Monroe, VA to Yorktown, VA. The Jews had “a lot of contraband goods” in their possession. [The implication of the article is that the Jews were trading with the Rebel forces further upriver.

1863: The New York Times reported that Colonel Crane and a group of Union soldiers captured a schooner towing a lighter filled with cotton in Florida. Of the 12 men aboard the schooner, 10 were rebels while the others were a man named Titus from Rhode Island and “a Jew from New York named J. Cohen.” [The correspondent does not say how he ascertained that Cohen was a Jew or why his was the only one whose religion was mentioned.]

1866(22nd of Adar II, 5646): Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch passed away. Born in 1789, Rabbi Menachem Mendel was the grandson of the first Chabad Rebbe and was the third Chabad Lubavitch Rebbe. "He was also known as the Tzemach Tzedek (Righteous Sprout), the name for a voluminous compendium of Jewish halachah that he authored. He also authored Derech Mitzvotecha (Way of Your Commandments), a mystical exposition of Jewish law." According to some sources, the seventh Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson was named in honor his illustrious predecessor. This brief summary can in no way do justice to the life and writing of this illustrious sage.

1867: “Affairs In Illinois” published today reported on the victimization of the insurance companies by a series of fraudulent claims. The article concludes by stating “And the fire insurance companies have been so frequently victimized by Jews practicing arson, that many of them are declining Israelitish risks.’ The article does not contain any details about these Jewish arsons.

1867: “The Purim Ball” published today reported that this event is different from the other balls that make up the New York Social Season. Unlike the other festivities, the Purim Ball is rooted in the national traditions of the Jews and calls for form of costume and masquerade that makes it a unique event.

1868: Birthdate of Nova Scotia native and twenty Congressman from New Jersey’s 5thDistrict Charles Aubrey who during his career as minister and evangelist had delivered a sermon on “The New American” said “The Jews have got your theatres and most of your banks.  They will soon hold you in the hollow of their hand.  Most have no religion at all.  What can we do with them? I say, let them come to the Madison Avenue Baptist Church.  There was one Jew would have received here – Jesus Christ.  There was another – Paul.”

1869(17thof Nisan, 5629): Third Day of Pesach

1870: Philip Magnus married Kate Emanuel today.

1873(1st of Nisan, 5633): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1875: Two days after she had passed away, the former Caroline Simon, a native of Jamaica and the wife of Phineas Abraham with whom she had had eight children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1875: It was reported today that there is a dispute among the members of New York’s Beth-El congregation over how to deal with the remains of those buried at the two cemeteries owned by the congregation. Beth-El was formed by a merger of Anshei Chesed (Norfolk Street Synagogue) and Adas Jeshurun which is why Beth-El has two cemeteries.

1877(15th of Nissan, 5637): First Day of Pesach

1878: Birthdate of Albert Gumm, the Indiana native who gained fame as a songwriter under the name of Albert Von Tilzer, the author of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.”

1880: Myer Stern represented the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society at today’s meeting of the New York State Board of Charities meeting.

1880(17thof Nisan, 5640): Third Day of Pesach

1880(17thof Nisan, 5640): Sixty-year-old Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim, the scion of a Jewish banking family who served as editor of the liberal Die Reform (The Reform) who served in the German Reichstag.

1880: Birthdate of pianist Rosina Lhévinne whom Juilliard president Peter Mennin called "quite simply one of the greatest teachers of this century." Born in Kiev, she began her piano studies at age six and entered the Moscow Conservatory at age nine. Over the next nine years, she perfected her piano technique, graduating in 1898 with the school's gold medal. Among her classmates at the Conservatory were Sergei Rachmaninoff and Josef Lhévinne, whom Rosina married after her graduation. After getting married, Lhévinne abandoned her fledging solo performance career in order to keep her husband, also an accomplished pianist, in the spotlight. However, she did not abandon the performance circuit, often playing two-piano concerts with her husband. The Lhévinnes toured the U.S. for the first time in 1907, and moved permanently to New York immediately after World War I. In 1924, they joined the faculty of the newly established Juilliard Graduate School, where they shared a studio. After Josef Lhévinne's death in 1944, Rosina continued to teach at Juilliard, where her students included such promising musicians as Van Cliburn, David Bar-Ilan, James Levine, and Arthur Gold. As her students made their mark in national and international piano competitions, Lhévinne's fame grew. However, it was only in 1956, at the age of seventy-six, that Lhévinne resumed her own solo piano career. Her first concert was with the Aspen Festival Orchestra; she went on to perform with orchestras around the country. In 1963, she appeared in four performances with the New York Philharmonic, under Leonard Bernstein's direction. Despite a busy performance schedule, Lhévinne continued to teach at Juilliard until she passed her ninety-sixth birthday.

1880: In Kempen, Rabbi Adolph Moses Radin and his wife gave birth to American legal scholar Max Radin.

http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb9g5008vb&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00006&toc.id=

1881: In Leadville, CO a fire broke out in the Pioneer Salon which spread to the next door liquor business owned by the Schloss family.

1882: Birthdate of Riga native and NYU trained attorney Dr. Joseph Kahn, the high school teacher, lecturer on philosophy and partner in the firm of Kahn and Zorn, who was New York State Supreme Court referee, author of books on accounting and flying and mountain climbing enthusiast.

1882: A two-day Pogrom in the largely Jewish town of Balta (Russia) comes to an end leaving nearly half of the homes and shops in ruins.

1882: “Near Bolanda, Mississippi,” the former Venola Rutledge and Thomas Braxton Rankin gave birth to sixteen term Mississippi Congressman John Elliott Rankin the noted bigot who accused Einstein of being a Communist and while speaking on the floor of the House called Walter Winchell “the little kike.”  (Editor’s note - his record against Blacks was far worse)

1888(17thof Nisan, 5648): Third Day of Pesach and on the Jewish calendar yahrtzeit of Rabbi Reuben Hoseshke Kat of Prague

1884: Mrs. Max Rosenberg claimed that on this day her husband forced her to pack her trunk, leave their New York apartment and stopped providing her with financial support. (Rosenberg would subsequently deny these claims, citing proof that she left of her own volition, that he continued to support her, that she still loved him and that the cause of their problems was that he was Jewish – a fact resented by her gentile father.)

1887: In Leadville, CO, Simon Schloss “was a member the committee of arrangements for the eighth annual Purim Masque Ball held at the Tabor Opera House today

 

1888(16thof Nisan, 5648): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1888: Five days after he had passed away, Abraham Hammond Solomon was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1888(16thof Nisan, 5648): Seventy-four year old composer and pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan whose “Op. 31 set of Préludes includes a number of pieces based on Jewish subjects, including some titled Prière (Prayer), one preceded by a quote from the Song of Songs, and another titled Ancienne mélodie de la synagogue (Old synagogue melody)

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Alkan-Charles.htm

1890(8th of Nisan, 5650): Shabbat HaGadol

1890: Birthdate of daughter Pauline Herzl, daughter of Theodor Herzl who passed away in 1930.

1890: “Emanuel Bernheimer” published today listed the philanthropies and charities supported by the founder Lion Brewery including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home for the Chronic Invalids.

1890: It was reported today that in St. Petersburg, university students have presented Professor Menelieff with demands that entrance fees be reduced and the restrictions against Jewish admission be removed.

1890(8th of Nisan, 5650): Forty-five-year-old Morris Eising, a Jewish immigrant from German was found dead in his boarding house at West 24th Street.

1891: Following the appointment of the Grand Duke Sergei as Governor of Moscow, the Jews found out today about the plan to expel 20,000 of them from the city.

1892: The Russian government published the edict that expelled 14,000 Jews from Moscow. Two thirds of Moscow’s Jewry were disposed and violently removed to the Pale of Settlement.

1892(1st of Nisan 5652): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1892: Three days after she had passed away, the former Emily Bethiah Meikleham, the widow of Joseph Cohen was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1892(1st of Nisan 5652): Rabbi Elimelech Szapira of Grodzhisk passed away. Born in 1832, he “was the leading Hasidic rebbe of his time in Poland. He was a chosid (follower) of the Rizhiner Rebbe. After the death of his father, the Sorof of Mogelnica, he assumed leadership of the chasidim, who eventually numbered ten thousand. His sons-in-law were the Kozhnitser Rebbe and Rebbe Osher the Second of Stolin-Karlin.”

1893: In Boston, Judge Ely dismissed charges against Tavia Angus, the defendant charged by the police with illegally possessing wine and liquor which his co-religionists from Adat Israel claimed he was holding for them and which would be distributed prior to Passover which begins at sundown on March 31. The Jews will now be able to get their wine and brandy back from the police in time for the first Seder.

1893: “New Immigration Commissioner” published today described Secretary of Treasury John G. Carlisle’s appointment of Joseph H. Senner as the Commissioner of Immigration at New York. (Carlisle was not Jewish; Senner was)

1894: Birthdate of Bohemia born painter turned photographer Franz F. Planer the Oscar award nominated cinematographer whose works spanned from the big out door western “The Big Country” to the Manhattan stylishness of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

http://www.cinematographers.nl/GreatDoPh/planer.htm

http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-Ni-Po/Planer-Franz.html

1895: “Grand Cake Walk For Charity” published today described the fund raiser sponsored by the Monte Relief Society which began with an address by the founder and President Sofia Monte-Loebinger. The society which is named for its founder was founded by a handful of Jewesses and provides financial aid to the city’s destitute.1895(4th of Nisan, 5655): Bernhard Bernhard, a benefactor to many Jewish charities including the Hebrew Benevolent Association, passed away today at his home on East 62nd Street in New York leaving behind two children

1896(15th of Nisan, 5656): First Day of Pesach

1896(15th of Nisan, 5656): The New York Times reported that “Pesach, or the Feast of the Passover, with which the Israelites celebrate the deliverance of the Jews from bondage in Egypt, was inaugurated at sundown yesterday. The feast continues eight consecutive days and will close with the setting of the sun next Saturday.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30917F63C5415738DDDA00A94DB405B8685F0D3

1896(15thof Nisan, 5656): Fifty-two-year-old Hungarian born revolutionary Leó Frankel who took part in the Paris Commune of 1871 passed away today.

1896: In Amsterdam, “Abraham Jessurun Cardozo and Marie Serlui, gave birth David Abraham Jessurun Cardoza, the assistant rabbi at New York’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and senior rabbi at Philadelphia’s Congregation Mikveh Israel who in 1953 became the first rabbi to publicly hold High Holiday services in Spain since the expulsion in 1492,

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/05/archives/rabbi-cardozo-dies-a-sephardic-leader.html

1896: It was reported today that Lucien L. Bonheur is chairman of the committee planning the 19th annual Strawberry Festival sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. He is being assisted by Isaac Newton Lewis, Falk Younker, Levi Hershfield, Edwin M. Schwartz and Dr. Louis S. Rosenthal. Percival S. Menken is President of the Association.

1897: “Millions For Charity” published today described a “stupendous project” to be underwritten by the Baron de Hirsch Fund that will “relieve the congested district of” New York’s “east side by building homes and establishing industries in the suburbs.”

1897(25thof Adar II, 5657): Sixty-six-year-old David Weinberg, a retired furrier, passed away at his home leaving behind a widow and four children in New York.

1897(25thof Adar II, 5657): Forty-nine-year-old Louis Israel, “proprietor of the one of the largest livery stables in Brooklyn” passed away today.  A native of Brooklyn, he was President of the Hebrew Benevolent Society and a member of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Israel, the King Solomon Lodge and the B’nai Sholom Benefit Society.

1898(6th of Nisan, 5658): Rabbi Emanuel Schwab who was 101 years old passed away today in New York City.  A native of Frankfort on Main he came to the United States 53 years ago where he served as rabbi of congregations at Schenectady, NY and Bridgeport, Conn.  He was preceded in death by his wife the former Miss Sophie Hirsch whom he had married in 1862.

1899: Baroness Hirsch the widow of the late Jewish philanthropist is reportedly to be critically ill.

1899: The Jewish Colonial Bank in London begins to accept subscriptions.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/jct.html

1900: The American Israelite announced the death of Isaac Mayer Wise.

1900: In Belfast, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Elliot “gave birth” to a “stillborn” child today.

1901: The United Mine Workers, whose predecessors had included The National Federation of Miners led by its President Samuel Gompers, “obtained recognition by the anthracite mines in Pennsylvania and called off a strike that had been planned for April 1.”

1902(20thof Adar II, 5662): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Parah

1902: “Call for Information” published today described a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives directing the Secretary of State “to inform this House whether American citizens of the Jewish religious faith, holding passports issued by” the United States “government are barred or excluded from entering the territory of the Empire Russia and whether the Russian Government has made or is making any discrimination between citizens of the United States, of different religious faith or persuasion visiting or attempting to visit Russia…”

1903: Herzl meets with the Belgian born barrister Leon Constant Ghislain Carton de Wiart now living in Egypt. Herzl tells him that “We will give up the word 'Charter' but not the thing itself."

1903: Birthdate of Russian born American and Radcliffe trained political scientist who worked for such luminaries as Governor Herbert H. Lehman and General Lucius D. Clay.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/12/archives/vera-mictieles-dean-69dies-international-a-flairs-specialist.html

https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news/schlesinger-newsletter/vera-micheles-dean-expert-in-international-relations

1904: Eleven-year-old Harry Serkin was given five cents by an unknown man to delivered a parcel to the office of the Jewish Morning Journal at 228 Madison Street which turned out to be a box filled with kerosene soaked sawdust and a piece of zinc piping filled with powdered carbon and with a smoldering fuse all of which was taken to the Madison Street Police Station.

1905: At 07:00 today Dorothy Levitt “departed from the De-Dion showroom in Great Marlborough Street London and arrived at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool at 18:10, having completed the 205 miles in 11 hours” thus establishing “a new record for the longest drive achieved by a lady driver.”

1906: As of today, Attorney General Julius M. Mayer is President of the Jewish Protectory and Aid Society, Jesse Straus is the Secretary and Henry Solomon and Mortimer L. Schiff are Vice Presidents.

1907(14th of Nisan, 5667): On Ellis Island, Rabbi Adolph Radin joined 180 Jewish immigrants in a Seder this evening which marked their first Passover in the United States.

1907: “A meeting convened by Zionists was held” today “at the Hotel Continental in Vienna to protest” the “atrocities” being committed against the Jews in Romania.

1907: As of today, 140,000 soldiers had been recruited to help quell the Romanian Peasant Revolt. The peasants were revolting against the Christian nobles who were the landowners responsible for their exploitation. An untold number of Jews fell victim to the peasants because they were the one who collected the rents. Once again, a dispute between groups of Christians results in dead Jews.

1908: Late tonight, the New York City Police expressed the opinion that “Selig Silverstein (also known as Selig Cohen), a Russian-born cloak maker and anarchist living on Van Brunt Street in Brooklyn, who was attending the Socialist Conference of the Unemployed and who had thrown “a bomb into a group in in Union Square” was acting alone in the manner of “a sickly fanatic” and not as a participate in “a deliberate plot.”

1909: It was reported today that the turnout for the election of the Executive Committee which “will look after all Jewish community interests” was so heavy that it took two days to count the ballots and that the “Orthodox and liberal elements are both represented on the committee of twenty-five.”

1910: Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé a 19th century French archaeologist and author “who is known for his architectural studies of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the surrounding areas. (For more see Digging Through The Bibleby Richard A. Freund)

1911: Birthdate of Paris native and Sorbonne attendee Dr. Nathan Edlemean, the CCNY undergrad and hold of a Ph.D. from Columbia, who taught French at two colleges and wrote Attitudes of 17th Century France Toward the Middle Ages.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/16/archives/nathanedelman-iexpertohfrehgh-teacher-at-oolumba-dead-wrte-major.html

1912: By decree of the King of Italy, Jews in Tripoli can now organize as a community.

1912: Painter and Professor Max Liebermann received an honorary Doctor Philosophy degree for the University of Berlin.

1912(11thof Nisan, 5672): Sixty-eight-year-old “communal worker,” Tobias Weinschenker passed away today in Chicago.

1912(11thof Nisan, 5672): Fifty-seven-year-old merchant Jacques Loeb passed away in Montgomery, Alabama.

1913: Birthdate of Fivel Feldman, the Brooklyn native gained fames as comedian Phil Foster who gained lasting fame as Frank De Fazio on the 1970’s sitcom “Laverne and Shirley.”

1913: It was reported today that “there was a debate concerning Shechitah” “in the Landtag of Darmstadt, the capital city of the Duchy of Hesse” where, as expected the anti-Semites attacked the Jewish form of slaughter as being inhumane but unexpectedly defenders of the practice “were found in the Catholic party.”

1913(20thof Adar II, 5673): Shabbat Parah

1913(20thof Adar II, 5673): New York “communal worker” David H. Lieberman passed away today.

1913: Birthdate of Hyman Bloom. Born into an orthodox Jewish family in southern he emigrated to the United States with his family in 1920, at the age of seven. He lived for most of his life in Boston, Massachusetts and at a young age planned to become a rabbi, but his family could not find a suitable teacher. Bloom and Jack Levine, another Jewish painter from Boston, received scholarships in the fine arts given by the famous Harvard art professor Denman Ross. Bloom, along with Levine and another painter, Karl Zerbe, eventually became associated with a style named Boston Expressionism. He passed away in 2009.

1914(2ndof Nisan, 5674): Fifty-seven-year-old Rosa Stix, the Cincinnati born daughter of Yetta Hackes and Louis Stix nd the wife of Carl Iglauer with whom he had two children – Zilah and Florence—passed away today.

1914: In Mulhouse, Baruch Kahn and Constance Kenendel Lang gave birth to Louis Joseph Kahn

1915: Emanuel Beckerman, an interpreter in the Bronx Municipal Court was pleased to learn today that the ten pounds of matzoth that he had shipped to Rabbi Bernard Pressen for his Seder in Berlin had arrived in Amsterdam and should have made it to Berlin in time for the Seder. Beckerman had met Pressen in 1907 did not want his co-religionist to go with unleavened bread because the Kaiser’s government had banned using wheat to make matzoth.

 

1915: “More than 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors along with Admiral Charles Sigsbee who had commanded the Battleship Maine, were the guests tonight at a Seder hosted by the Army and Navy Y.M.H.A.

1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): Ninety men and one hundred and five women ranging in age from 67 to 110 held a Seder at the Home of the Daughters of Jacob in New York City. Nissen Rosen, 105 years old, will sit at one end of the table where he will face 110 year old Ethel Rosenstein. It will be a double celebration for Hannah Perlaeur who was born on the night of the Seder 95 years ago.

1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): One hundred Jews who had recently arrived from Jerusalem were among those who participated at a Seder at the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society’s home on Broadway.

1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): Dr. M.J. Leff conducted a Seder for the staff at the Beth Israel Hospital in New York City.

1915: As Jews ran their last errands in preparation for the Seder at Ostrolenka, Russia, German planes began bombing the city with what appeared to be a decision by “the enemy to raze the city to its foundations.”

1915: It was reported today that Judge Nathaniel E. Harris, the governor-elect of Georgia believes “the bitterness against Leo Frank has largely passed away and there are now many who take the view that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice” while “on the other hand, there are plenty of them who do not.”

1916: Alexsei Brusilov, who as the Chief of Staff approved the appointment of Jewish Chaplains to serve in the Russian Army “was given command of the Southwest Front.”

1916: Bronx Borough President Douglas Mathewson and Bronx County Register were among the thousands of people who attended “Bronx Night” at the Jewish Bazar being held at the Grand Central Palace.

1916: Three days after he had passed away, 25-year-old Corporal George Jessel Issacs, the “son of Harry and Mria Isaacs” was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1917: Jacob Schiff, Adolph Lewisohn and Oscar S. Straus are expected to attend the meeting of the Jewish League of American Patriots at the Broadway offices of Samuel Untermyer where plans will be made “to spread the movement” throughout the United States.

1917: “Hadassah…announced” today “that $30,000 has been raised for a medical until which it” will “establish in Palestine at the earliest possible moment to combat typhus and other plagues now reported to be prevalent in that country.”

1917: “The Independent Order of Free Sons of Israel” which has eighty-one lodges throughout the United States is scheduled to “hold a patriotic mass meeting” tonight at the Floral Garden so “that the Jews of Greater New York may give joint public expression of their loyalty and devotion to the flag.”

1917: “President Wilson sent a telegram to Julius Rosenwald today endorsing the raising of a $10,000,000 fund for the relief of Jewish war sufferers.”

1918(16thof Nisan, 5678): Second Day of Pesach

1918: Captain Albala of the Serbian Commission to the United States, Professor Mordecai M. Kaplan, Sol M. Sroock and Colonel Maurice Simmons are scheduled to be speakers tonight at “a public celebration of Passover” at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls to which young Jewish service men have been invited

1918: In The Hague, “the Central Jewish Aid Committee sent 540,000 marks to Poland for the relief of Jewish communities and institutions.”

1918(16thof Nisan, 5678): Second day of Pesach

1918(16thof Nisan, 5678):  Eighty-year-old Assur Henry Moses the Secretary of the Assoication for the Oral Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb from 1870 to 1915 and the father of singer Alice Moses who used the stage name Alice Mandeville passed away today.

1919: “The centenary of the birth of the late Dr. Isaac M. Wise” is scheduled to “be celebrated by the Jews of America” today according to Rabbi Joseph Silverman.

1919: The celebration of the ceremony of Conferring Rabbinical Degrees on five students at The Yeshiva began today with services being held in orthodox synagogues throughout Greater New York under the direction of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis.

1920: In the House of Commons, “Lieut.-Colonel Malone asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to an anonymous booklet recently issued called "The Jewish Peril"; whether he is aware that this pamphlet is a mutilation of an original Russian anti-Semitic document produced with a view to injuring the entente with Great Britain; that as now published it is intended to arouse anti-Semitic feeling in this country; and whether he will take steps to procure the suppression of this publication?” to which the Home Secretary, Edward Shortt,replied “I understand that the booklet "The Jewish Peril" is an English translation of a book published in Russian in 1905 by Serge Nilus. This book went through three or four editions. I am not aware that the pamphlet is a mutilation of the book nor do I know what the object of Serge Nilus was in publishing his work. I fear that the law confers no powers upon me to procure the suppression of the publication.”

1921: Birthdate of Bronx native Abraham H. Baum, who would lead the raid commanded by Blood and Guts Patton to rescue his son-in-law from a German POW camp.

1921: Winston Churchill, British Colonial Secretary, is greeted by 10,000 Jews on Mt. Scopus in Palestine. Both the Chief Sephardic and Ashkenazic Rabbis were in attendance. They gave him a Sefer Torah. Churchill planted a tree on the future site of Hebrew University and spoke in support of the Zionist endeavors in Palestine.

1921: Birthdate of Howard “Howie” Leonard and Lenny Rader, twin brothers who played basketball for LIU and then went to careers with the pros.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/nbl/players/r/raderho01n.html

https://www.basketball-reference.com/nbl/players/r/raderle01n.html

1921: It was reported today that the late Julia Wormser Seligman was a native of San Francisco who was the only daughter of the late Isidore Wormser from whom she inherited two million dollars.

1923(12th of Nisan, 5683): Fast of the First Born observed because the 14th of Nisan falls on Shabbat.

1923: Birthdate of Jack David Dunitz the Glasgow born British chemist and widely known chemical crystallographer who was a Professor of Chemical Crystallography at the ETH Zurich from 1957 until his official retirement in 1990 and is the husband of Barbara Steuer as well as the father of Marguerite and Julia Gabrielle Steuer

1925: While visiting Palestine, Lord Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, “reads the lessons in the Anglican Cathedral of St. George.”

1926(14thof Nisan, 5686): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1926: An exhibit of “valuable literary material” including a letter signed by Moses Maimonides, a little booklet that is the “only known fragment of the great Book Precepts of Yaliach” and “a wealth of material relating to the synagogue at Kai Fung-fu” that illustrates “Jewish life in Oriental countries” opened today at the New York Public Library where Dr. Joshua Block is chief of the Jewish Division.

1926: In Kecskemét, Hungary, Solomon and Margaret Sandberg who were murdered in 1944 gave birth to Gusztáv Sandberg who gained fame as Dachau survivor and Israeli economist Moshe Sanbar.

1926: Rabbis from more than fifty congregations throughout New York City that included representatives of liberal, reform, conservative and orthodox synagogues “have joined in signing a proclamation calling upon the Jews of New York to do their share toward answering the call of suffering millions of their destitute co-religions in Eastern Europe.

1927: Birthdate of Martin Fleischmann. A chemist at the University of Utah, Fleischmann (and his partner Stanley Pons) claimed to have discovered Cold Fusion in 1989.

1927(25th of Adar II, 5687): Eight-six-year-old Luigi Luzzatti, the second Jew to serve as Prime Minister of Italy passed away today.

1929(17thof Adar II, 5689): Thirty-six-year-old Abraham Mandel, the Russian born son of Rebecca and Joseph David Mandel, the husband of both Edith Mandel and Goldie Mandel passed away today in Denver.

1930: The first American convention of the promoters and adherents of the Yiddish language, literature and culture opened this evening at the Irving Plaza Hall in New York City. Eight hundred people from the United States and Canada attended the opening session of a convention working to foster Yiddish Culture.

1931: Birthdate of Evelyn de Rothschild. Rothschild headed the English branch of the family and its banking business for twenty-one years. In 2003, the English and French branches merged and Baron David de Rothschild, head of the French branch assumed the new leadership position. The Rothschilds continue to be "one of the world's largest private banking dynasties."

1932(21stof Adar II, 5692): Sixty-one year old poetess Ida Goldsmith Morris, the daughter of Lambert and Frances Goldsmith and the wife of Herman Morris passed way today after which she was buried at Temple Cemetery in Louisville, KY.

1932: At the first Jewish Olympic Games, officially known as the Maccabiah, American Sybil Koff of New York, finished first in the semi-final of the 100 meter race while the American team finished second in the semi-final of the relay race. The opening contests in which American Jews played a prominent part took place “in the newly built stadium situated at the junction of the Yarkon River and the Mediterranean Sea” before a crowd estimated to exceed the venue’s 25,000 seat capacity.

1932: Jack Benny debuted on radio. This legendary Jewish entertainer moved from vaudeville to the electronic medium - radio, the movies and finally television.

1933: The front page of the Nazi newspaper, Volkisher Beobachter, stated "Let Jewry Know Against Who it Has Declared War".

1933: “In an act of anticipatory obedience to the Nazi regime, the management of UFA, a leading German motion picture production company, decided to fire several Jewish employees.”

1934): Sixty-nine-year-old Russian born Louis Zuro, the younger brother of textile Aron Surasky, the father of the late Josiah Zuro, the music direct at Pathe motion picture studio and the husband of Leah Zuro, who began working on productions of Hammerstein’s grand operas in 1910 and organizing free Sunday concerts in 1924 was buried today at Mount Lebanon Cemetery one day after his death.

1934(13th of Nisan, 5694): Sixty-seven-year-old Otto Hermann Kahn passed away. Born in Germany in 1867, this noted banker, collector, philanthropist and patron of the arts moved to the United States in 1893. He joined the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company and continued to add to his fortune. He was a founder and President of the Metropolitan Opera Company. He bankrolled numerous artists including Hart Crane, George Gershwin and Arturo Toscanini. Kahn uttered the following warning, “The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. Liberty is not foolproof.” To work “it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable, and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change.”

1934: Birthdate of Ehud Netzer, the native of Haifa who became a leading Israeli archeologist.

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-me-ehud-netzer-20101106-story.html

1935: In Brooklyn, Abraham M. and Belle Lindenbaum gave birth to Samuel H. Lindenbaum, who was widely considered New York City’s top zoning lawyer and who was credited with doing as much as any of the powerful developers among his clients to shape the modern skyline of Manhattan…” (As reported by David W. Dunalp)

1936: The SS guard formations were renamed SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-Death's Head Units). They provided guards for concentration camps.

1936: In St. Louis, MO, “Prince Hubertus zu Loewenstein said “While there are so many visitors in Germany because of the games, Hitler is on his good behavior so far as internal policies are concerned but almost certainly there will be a new reign of terror for the Jews and other oppressed groups after the Olympics are concluded.”

1936: In Poland, the Jews opposed the new law that gives the minister of agriculture control over the Polish Dairy industry “on the ground that it menaces the Jewish milk trade.”

1937: Birthdate of Moacyr Jaime Scliar a Brazilian writer and physician who passed away in 2011.

1937: It was announced today that the Zionist General Council that was to be held in London on April 13 will be held on April 17 in Jerusalem.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the body of Jacob Zwanger, an engineer who had disappeared some 18 days earlier, was found near Rehovot. He was apparently strangled. A Jew and his Arab partner were arrested, both suspected of Zwanger's murder.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Arab brigands held up and robbed drivers near Jenin.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a plea was made in the House of Commons to reduce the British tariff on Palestine oranges which was devised to protect the South African citrus industry.

1938: A total of $20,000 was contributed tonight to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.

1938: The New York Times reported that Dr. Sigmund Freud has been denied a passport so that he cannot leave Vienna for the Netherlands. A delegation that included Princess Marie Bonaparte had gone to Vienna to make Freud aware of the warm welcome that would await him in what would be his new Dutch home.

1938: A total of $20,000 was contributed tonight to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.

1939: Birthdate of Roland Arnall, the French native who became a successful American businessman, diplomat and financial contributor to the well-being of Chabad-Lubavitch.

1939: The Soviet NKVD secret police arrested Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, the father of the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson for his outspoken efforts against the Communist Party’s efforts to eradicate Jewish learning and practice in the Soviet Union. After more than a year of torture and interrogations in Stalin's prisons, he was sentenced to exile to the interior of Russia. He died there in 1944. Rabbi Schneerson was a distinguished Kabbalist. Some of his writings have been published under the name Likkutei Levi Yitzchak. Most of it, however, was burned or confiscated by the Soviet authorities and has yet to be returned to the Chabad movement.

1940: NBC Radio, broadcast the final episode of “I Love a Mystery” which was sponsored by Fleischmann’s Yeast founded by Charles Louis Fleischman in 1868.

1941: In France, establishment of the Commissariat of Jewish Affairs.

1942: SS Captain Dieter Wislicey wants $50,000 in cash as the price for stopping the deportations of Slovakian Jews to the death camps. He will get the money, but the deportations will continue

.1942: Founder's Day in honor of Isaac Mayer Wise, founder of Reform Judaism, was observed this afternoon in the Central Synagogue, with a special service under the auspices of the Greater New York City Alumni of the Hebrew Union College

1943: In Philadelphia, Mark and Lillian Shapiro gave birth to Harvard Law School Ronald M. Shaprio, a leading sports agent, author and co-founder of the Shapiro Negotiations Institute.

http://www.shapironegotiations.com/ron-shapiro/

1943: Third and final shipment of Macedonian Jews from Skopje to Treblinka.  Of the 7,144 Jews shipped there over three days only about 200 survived the war,

1943: “Hans Neumann, Leo Drabant, his wife along with eight other anti- Nazi resistance members were arrested by the Gestapo” today.

1944: Anne Frank mentions in her diary that Gerrit Bolkestein, Education Minister of the Dutch Government in exile, delivered a radio message from London urging his war-weary countrymen to collect "vast quantities of simple, everyday material" as part of the historical record of the Nazi occupation and writes "Ten years after the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding."

1944: Tel Aviv was declared off limits to all military personnel today, including those who have family living in the city. The ban was in response to attacks on police stations in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem for which the Irgun has taken public credit.

1945(15th of Nisan, 5705: First Day of Pesach

1945(15th of Nisan, 5705): On the first day of Pesach at least 58 Jews were murdered in a forest near the Austrian village of Deutsch Shuetzen, in what would come to be called the Deutsch Shuetzen Massacre. SS sergeant Adolf Storms SS sergeant Adolf Storms was among the perpetrators of the killing.

1945: In the evening, members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8thArmy serving in Italy took part in a Seder at Faenza.

1945: Birthdate of Yehuda Ezekiel Berkowit, the Netanya native who gained fame as Yehuda Barkan, the “Israeli actor, film producer, film director and screenwriter.”

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/289730

1945: The ill-fated and ill-conceived mission ordered by General Patton to rescue his son-in-law John K. Waters under the command of Captain Abraham Baum came to an ignominious end with Baum who had been shot in the groin joining the wounded Walters in a German hospital for POWS.

1946: Birthdate of Miami native Bruce Weber, the noted fashion photographer.

http://www.bruceweber.com/

1946: U.S. premiere of “Night Editor” directed by Henry Levin

1947: Clifton Daniel interviewed Jewish refugees at Caraolos, a British run displaced persons camp outside of Famagusta, Cyprus. “An appeal for the outside world to consider their plight was the first and only formal proposal addressed” to him by these immigrants. Currently, there are 11,000 Jews living in camps like this all across Cyprus. If the British stick to their policy of releasing 750 Jews a month to go to Palestine, it will take at least fourteen months to empty these camps.

1947: “A ship carrying 1,600 Jewish unauthorized refugees was intercepted tonight off the northern coast of Palestine by the Royal Navy.” The ship which was known as the Patria or Moledeth was taken to the harbor at Haifa.

1947: Slaih Jabir, who in 1950 would introduce the “Supplement to Decree 62 of 1933 which effectively forced Jews to leave all their property behind and go to Israel” began serving as Prime Minister.

1947: At a mass meeting in Tel Aviv, Golda Meyerson, the head of the Jewish Agency’s political department “assailed the underground extremists’ warfare today in these words: ‘Terrorism is assisting Palestine’s British administration it has put Palestine Jewry on the defensive, whereas but for terrorism the Zionists could have pursued a more vigorous line in their political efforts…we don ot want to embark on internal warfare, but if it be thrust upon us we shall finish with the terrorists, although without cooperating with the Government in doing so.’”

1948: Today “Dr. Hussein el-Khalidi, secretary of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine, rejected proposals for a truce in Jerusalem, for an international force to pro tect the city and for a trusteeship for the Holy Land.”

1949: In a meeting with Zionist leaders in New York, former Prime Minister Winston Churchill offers assurance that his commitment to the Jewish state is as solid as it has ever been.

1949: “The Set-up” a boxing film written by Art Cohn, co-starring George Tobias and featuring a cameo appearance by photographer Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig was released in the United States today

1950: The United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine issues a memorandum designed to “meet the Israeli demands for direct negotiations and the Arab desire that the commission act as mediator.”

1950: The “first contingent of ‘hard core’ cases from the refugee camps in German and Austria arrive in Israel” three days before Pesach. “These unfortunates, the halt, the lame and the blind were brought in by the combined efforts of the international relief organizations, the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Israeli Government.” Their arrival is an example of David Ben Gurion’s belief that Israel is the home for all Jews regardless of their condition.

1951: Judy Holliday, born Judy Tuvim, won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Billie Dawn in the film “Born Yesterday.”

1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage. The prosecutor in the case and the judge who would pronounce the death sentence were also Jewish. However, right-wing politicians would overlook this and use the Rosenberg case as further proof that the Jews were part of the Communist Conspiracy.

1953: Birthdate of Samuel Elliott Chwat founder of the Sam Chwat Speech Center.

1953: While serving with the First Marine Division during the Korean War, Jewish chaplain Samuel Sobel who had been “commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1945” “was hit by shrapnel today in the battle of Vegas” which would lead to him being sent back to Paris Island, SC and being awarded a Purple Heart.

1954: In “Massacre at Scorpion’s Pass” published today the Time correspondent described the terror attack that took place south of Beersheba.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,819663,00.html

1956: Syria returned 4 Israeli soldiers who had been held captive for fifteen months in return for an the prisoners the Israelis had taken during Operation Olive Leaves.

1956: Be'er Sheva or Beersheba was linked to Israel's railway system. Yes, this is the ancient city mentioned connection with Abraham and Isaac. This is just one example of how the young state of Israel was developing its economy and infrastructure while confronting on-going threats of Arab attacks as well as the reality of cross-border raids by fedayin (the name given to the terrorists of those days.)

1958(8thof Nisan, 5718): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1959: Birthdate of Nouriel Roubini, the Turkish born son of Iranian Jews who became a leading American advisor on economics and the chairman of Roubini Global Economics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roubini_Global_Economics

1959(19thof Adar II, 5719): Yiddish author and playwright David Pinski’s wife Adele (Hodel) passed away five months before he passed away in August.

1959: Birthdate of Perry Farrell, lead singer of Jane’s Addiction

1959: Release date for “Some Like It Hot” a great comedy film directed, produced and co-authored by Billy Wilder.

1959: Birthdate of Nouiel Roubini, the Turkish born son of Iranian Jews who spent part of his youth living in Israel, who would gain fame as the economist who predicted the financial crisis that would engulf the world’s economy starting in the fourth quarter of 2008.

1959: Today “on Easter Sunday in 1959, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rose in the pulpit of his Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, to deliver a sermon that focused on his just-completed visit, with his wife, Coretta, to Jerusalem and its holy sites.”

1960: Birthdate of Bronx native and Spring Valley raised Princeton graduate Stephen Andrew “Steve” Feinberg, the billionaire co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Cerberus Capital Management and supporter of Donald Trump.

1963: “Miracle of the White Stallions” directed by Arthur Hiller was released today in the United States.

 

1965: In the United Kingdom, premiere of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” with a script by Ernest Lehman.

1965(25thof Adar II, 5725): Fifty-five-year-old Stanley Irving Posner, the Massachusetts born “son of Benjamin and Fanny (Libby) Posner, the Harvard trained attorney holding degrees from Amherst and the University of Chicago who was the husband of Lillian Kahn and the father of James, Elizabeth and Lawrence Posner passed away today.

1965: Birthdate of Elisheva Greenbaum. In June of 2003, at the Metulla Festival of Poetry, Ellisheva was awarded the prestigious "Tevah" prize in poetry. Earlier, in 2002, Elisheva was awarded The Prime Minister's prize for poetry.

1966: “It's A Bird... It's A Plane... It's Superman is a musical with music by Charles Strouse” which “is based on the comic book character Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and published by DC Comics” “opened on Broadway” today “at the Alvin Theatre.”

1967(17th of Adar II, 5727): Israeli author, Isaac Dov Berkowitz passed away. Born in Belarus in 1885 he made aliyah in 1928. The son-in-law of Sholom Aleichim, he was a two-time winner of the Bialik Prize and a winner of the Israel Prize for literature in 1958.

1968(15thof Nisan, 5724): First Day of Pesach and Shabbat.

1968: “Madigan” a police movie directed by Don Siegel, with a script co-authored by Abraham Polonsky was released in the United States today.

1969: The original production of “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?” produced by Philip Rose came to a close today at the Belasco Theatre.

1970: One day after he had passed away funeral services were held at the Talmud Torah of Flatbush under the leadership of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein for Rabbi Nissen Telushkin.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/03/archives/rabbi-telushkin-88-orthodox-scholar.html

1970: Eighty-four-year-old Anna Louise Strong, the American born journalist best known for her support of Communism in the USSR and China who was the wife and political sole mate of Joel Shubin, the Jewish agronomist and journalist who served for a time the Deputy Minister of Agriculture in the USSR.

1970: Eighty-four-year-old Heinrich Brüning, the Chancellor of Germany who tried to save the Weimar Republic in the wake of the anarchy created by the Communists and the Nazis and sought to thwart Hitler’s rise to power passed a way today.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/82225/Heinrich-Bruning

1972(14thof Nisan, 5732): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1972(14thof Nisan, 5732): Ivan Salomon who with his wife Sophie was a“Yeshiva University Guardian who helped to established YU’s Sephardic Studies Program” and was the father of Professor Herman Salomon, “the former editor of The American Sephardic Journal” passed away today.

1973(25th of Adar II, 5733): Ida Cohen Rosenthal, the woman who created the modern brassiere industry passed away.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197610

1974: Four months after premiering in France, “The Three Msketeers” directed by Richard Lester and co-produced by Alexander Salkind and Ilya Salkind was released today in the U.S. and the U.K.

1975(17thof Nisan, 5735): Shabbat Chol Hamoed; Third Day of Pesach

1975(17thof Nisan, 5735): Seventy-three-year-old former University of Chicago Professor of Archaeology   Pinhas Pierre Dlougaz, the Ukrainian born son of Simon and Zipporah Silverman who conducted excavations several sites in Turkey and Persia and Beth Yerah in Israel passed away today in Iran

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/delougaz-pierre-pinchas

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/delougaz

1977: Robert Strauss began serving as United States Trade Representative.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, said that he would allow the early reconvening of the Geneva Peace Conference without PLO participation. The conference might later decide on the PLO's eventual participation.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Egged management threatened to withdraw public transport service to and from Lod due to hooliganism, personal attacks, theft and other difficult conditions at the Lod Central Bus Station.

1979: Real Life” the first feature film directed by Albert Brooks who co-authored the script and co-starred in the picture along with Charles Grodin was released today in the United States.

1980(12thof Nisan, 5740): Parashat Tzav and Shabbat Gadol

1980(12thof Nisan, 5740): Ten days after his 68th birthday, New York born, Columbia trained attorney Joseph Walker an executive with S. Klein Department Stores, passed away today.

https://forgotten-ny.com/2016/03/s-klein-stores/

1981: The New York Times reviews "The Geneva Crisis" by Matti Golan, an Israeli diplomat writing about a fictional attempt by idealistic Jews who are duped when they attempt to work for peace with Palestinian rebels.

1981: The Broadway production of “Woman of the Year” a musical with a book by Peter Stone and starring Lauren Bacall opened today at the Palace Theatre.

1981(23rd of Adar II, 5741): Forty-nine-year-old Jerusalem born Joseph A. Eliash passed away today in Oberlin, OH after which he was buried at the Salem Jewish Cemetery in Sheffield, OH.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1983(15thof Nisan, 5743): Pesach

1984: In Amsterdam, the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee met for the last time.

1986(18thof Adar II, 5746): Seventy-eight year old Harry Ritz, one of the famous three Ritz Brothers passed away today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zishe_Breitbart

1987: Yitzhak Shamir was re-elected chairman of right wing Herut Party. Born in Poland in 1915, Shamir moved to Palestine in 1935. While attending Hebrew University he joined the Irgun. He later left the Irgun and joined what was the Stern Gang. Shamir would later rise above what some people might think of a rather dubious past to become Prime Minister in 1988. To his credit, in May 1991, Shamir ordered the airlift rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jewry, codenamed "Operation Solomon." In September, Shamir provided living proof that people can change, when he represented Israel at the Madrid Peace Conference which brought about direct negotiations with Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians.

1987: Tonight, Colonel Aviem Sella, the Israeli Air Force who was indicted earlier this month in the United States for his role in recruiting Jonathan Pollard as a spy, said that he was giving up his recent promotion to the rank of general because of “the problems it had caused between the United States and Israel.”

1987: An American Rabbi, Arthur Schneier, said that “that the Soviet Union has agreed that future Jewish émigrés will be sent to Israel by way of Rumania.” In the past, those Jews who were allowed to leave the Soviet Union traveled through Vienna where many of them obtained visas for the United States even though they had said they were leaving to go to Israel. Schneier hopes the change will lead to an increase in the number of Jews who are allowed to leave the Soviet Union. The Rumanians have asked that the transit cite in their country not be identified so that it will not become a target for terrorists.

1989: ABC broadcast the 61st Academy Awards this evening produced by Allan Carr and directed by Jeff Margolis during which “Rain Man” directed by Barry Levinson and co-starring by Dustin Hoffman won the Oscar for Best Picture.

1991(14thof Nisan, 5751): Fast of Esther; erev Pesah

1991(14th of Nisan, 5751): The Kesim celebrated the last Pesach for their community at the Israeli embassy in Addas Abba, Ethiopia.

1991: “The Unborn” a horror film directed by Rodman Flender and co-starring Lisa Kudrow was released today in the United States.

1993: Billy Crystal served as host at the 65th Academy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles. Elizabeth Taylor was co-winner of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award

1993: Simone Veil began serving as Minister of Health in France

1993: Jack Lang completed his first term in office as Education Minister of France.

1994(17th of Nisan, 5754): During Chol Hamoed Pesach, Yitzhak Rothenberg, age 70, of Petah Tikva, was attacked on a construction site by two residents of Khan Yunis by axe blows to the head. He died several days later of his wounds.

1995: Police Insp. Nitzan Cohen, 22, of Jerusalem and Sgt.-Maj. Jamal Suwitat from Makr village in Western Galilee were killed when a Palestinian driver rammed his truck into their jeep in a convoy east of the Netzarim junction in Gaza.

1996(9thof Nisan, 5756): Ninety-four-year-old Louis B. Flexner, the Kentucky born the “founding director of the Institute of Neurological Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania” passed away today. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/03/us/louis-b-flexner-94-researcher-into-the-biochemistry-of-memory.html

1996: Actress Rebecca “Schaeffer's life and death became the topic of the first E! True Hollywood Story episode, which originally aired” today.

1997(20thof Adar II, 5757): Parashat Vayikra; Shabbat Zachor; Erev Purim

1997(20thof Adar II, 5757): Seventy-nine-year-old geneticist Ruth Sager passed away today.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/11/ruth-sager/

https://jwa.org/thisweek/feb/07/1918/ruth-sager

 http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2004/11/ruth-sager/

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/04/us/dr-ruth-sager-79-researcher-on-location-of-genetic-material.html

1998: The 27th Nabisco Dinah Shore Golf Championship was played today. The namesake of this major LPGA event was born Frances Rose Shore in Winchester, Tenn. in 1917. She adopted the name Dinah from a hit 1930's tune of the same name that was her signature song in the early days of her career.

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “Diplomacy for the Next Century” by Abba Eban, “Clement Greenberg: A Life” by Florence Rubenfeld,” The Castle: A New Translation, Based on the Restored Text” by Franz Kafka; translated by Mark Harman and “Getting Away With Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System” by Susan Estrich.

1998: Famed basketball player Henry "Hank" Rosenstein Rosenstein was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame

1999: In the ever-changing revolving door of Israeli party politics, Eliezer Sandberg”s HaTzeirim faction joined Shinui.

1999: Emanuel Zisman left the Third Way political party and served the rest of his term as an independent MK.

2000: Israel's high court orders that about 700 Palestinians be allowed to return to their traditional homes in caves in the southern West Bank.

2000(22nd of Adar II, 5760): Ninety-year-old choreographer Anna Sokolow passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/30/arts/anna-sokolow-a-modern-choreographer-known-for-studies-in-alienation-dies-at-90.html

2001: “A group of men from a reclusive Hasidic community in the Hudson Valley were indicted today on federal charges that they ran a criminal organization that defrauded people, banks, insurance companies and the government of millions of dollars over several years.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/nyregion/14-hasidim-are-indicted-on-charges-they-ran-a-fraud-scheme.html

2001: Lawyers representing some Holocaust victims said today that they planned to drop a lawsuit that contends that American executives who ran International Business Machines during the 1930's and 1940's played a role in equipping the Nazi regime in Germany to pursue its goals of persecuting Jews and other minorities that they had filed in federal court in Brooklyn against I.B.M. last month because “the lawyers said the State Department had advised them that the litigation could delay compensation payments to more than a million slave laborers and other victims of Nazi policies.”

2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Second Day of Pesach and 1st day of the Omer.

2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): “Tuvia Wisner, 79, of Petah Tikva and Michael Orlinsky, 70, of Tel-Aviv were killed Friday morning, when a Palestinian terrorist infiltrated the Neztarim settlement in the Gaza Strip.” (Jewish Virtual Library)

2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Rachel Levy, 17, and Haim Smadar, 55, the security guard, both of Jerusalem, were killed and 28 people were injured, two seriously, when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the Kiryat Yovel supermarket in Jerusalem. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. (Jewish Virtual Library)

2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Lt. Boaz Pomerantz, 22, of Kiryat Shmona and St.-Sgt. Roman Shliapstein, 22, of Ma'ale Efraim were killed in the course of the IDF anti-terrorist action in Ramallah (Operation Defensive Shield. (Jewish Virtual Library)

2002: In response to the suicide bombing at a Seder in the Park Hotel that claimed the lives of 30, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield.

2002: U.S. premiere of “Clockstoppers” a “science fiction comedy film” with a script co-authored by David N. Weiss.

2002: U.S. premiere of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” a comedy directed by Harry Shearer who also wrote the script.

2002: “Death to Smoochy” a comedy written by Adam Resnick and co-starring Jon Stewart and Harvey Fierstein was released in the United States today.

2002: In the U.K. premiere of “Invincible” a drama based loosely on the life of Jewish vaudeville strongman and circus performer Siegmund “Zishe” Breitbart.

2003: In her presidential installation sermon on Rabbi Janet Marder spoke about the need to develop and sustain progressive Judaism in Israel, and about "developing an inner life — about personal prayer, about seeking the Holy One, and quiet hours inside a book, and the solitude that is essential for a life of clarity and integrity."

2004: “The New York Police Department will step up security around the city for Passover, which begins at sundown on April 5, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said today.”

2004: Today, New York Police Commissioner said “the Department of Consumer Affairs is turning its attention to retailers who price-gouge on kosher items” and advised New Yorkers who suspect such overcharging to call 311. (As reported by Jennifer Steinhauer)

2005: The New York Times reported that “as Columbia University awaits a report on charges of intimidation of Jewish students in classes in Middle East studies, a group of graduate students began circulating a petition calling for the resignation of Columbia’s president, Lee Co. Bollinger, because he ‘failed to defend our faculty, thereby nurturing an environment of fear and intimidation throughout the university.’” Columbia’s faculty has been divided about Mr. Bollinger’s performance ever since the showing of a videotape last fall that demonstrated some professors of Middle East studies intimidating Jewish students in classes and on campus.

2006: Shlomo Benizri “was charged by the State Prosecutor's Office with accepting bribes and breaching the public trust.”

2006: With 95 percent of the ballots counted, the election results for the 17th Knesset appeared as follows:

Kadima: 28 Knesset seats

Labor: 20

Shas: 13

Likud: 11

Israel Beitenu: 12

NRP / NU: 9

Pensioners: 7

United Torah Judaism: 6

Meretz: 4

Balad: 3

Hadash: 3

United Arab List: 4

While it appears that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party gained the largest number of seats, it was fewer than had been estimated in earlier polls. Once the results are final, Olmert will probably be asked to form a government. If the total holds at or around thirty seats, Kadima will have to gather another 31 seats to gain the 61 seats necessary to control the Knesset and govern the country.

2007: The Tel Aviv Museum of Art presents, for the first time in Israel, a retrospective selection of works by Mark Rothko, one of the pillars of the New York School artists, identified in the late 1940s and early ‘50s as the painters of Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition follows the development of Rothko’s work, and includes representations from his early, socially conscious paintings done in the Depression years; Surrealist, biomorphic-abstract works in which, largely through the influence of Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy,” he sought to rebuild mythology; paintings of deconstructed forms from his “Multiform” series; and works from the classic period in his oeuvre, in which he focused on a reduced number of hovering monochromatic rectangles that seem to barely touch each other. His later paintings are considered the height of the great yearning for the sublime which seized artists of the mid-twentieth century. “The people who weep before my paintings,” said Rothko in 1965, “are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.” The exhibition is held through the generosity of Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko; Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder; Lauren and Steven Schwartz; Lauren and Ezra Merkin; Sheldon Bergh Award for Curatorial Research Abroad; American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in New York.

2007: Montreal native and Harvard Ph.D Bernard Jack Shapiro completed a three year term as “the first Ethics Commissioner of Canada” today.

2007: Three days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held at K.K. Beth Elohim in Charleston, SC for Leon Banov, Jr. the Charleston born son of Minnie and Dr. Leon Banov and the Medical College of South Carolina trained proctologist who was the husband of Rita Landesman Banov and father of Jane and Alan Banov.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/charleston/obituary.aspx?n=leon-banov&pid=86978509&fhid=6051

2008: Shabbat Parah, 5768

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “Gershwin Brothers’ Dream of a Great American Opera: Porgy and Bess and beyond” the third lecture in a series entitled “Music as Melting Pot Mosaic: The Gershwins.”

2009: In the 2nd of a four-part lecture series marking this special year of Hakhel Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of England a noted author and lecturer delivers a talk on Unity and Redemption - Celebrating Freedom Together.

2009: MAD Magazine posted “Happy 80th Birthday, Mort Drucker” today.

https://www.tomrichmond.com/2009/03/29/happy-80th-birthday-mort-drucker/

 

2009: Model Matzah Baker takes place at Lubavitch Chabad of Northbrook with participants learning about Passover and enjoying the thrill of baking their own Matzah.

2009: The Chicago Tribune reviews “The Kindly Ones” a Holocaust novel by Jonathan Littell which the reviewer calls a “helpless narrative” and “missed opportunity.”

2009: The Times of London reported today that the Israel Air Force used unmanned drones to attack secret Iranian convoys in Sudan that were trying to smuggle weapons to Palestinian militant organizations in the Gaza Strip. Defense officials were quoted as saying that the trucks were carrying missiles capable of striking as far as Tel Aviv and the nuclear reactor in Dimona.

2009(4thof Nisan, 5769): Ninety-five-year-old American photographer Helen Levitt passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/arts/design/30levitt.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1427511695-KVhjlQzyQlYzOLiARUxbMg

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-helen-levitt1-2009apr01-story.html#page=1

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/apr/03/helen-levitt-obituary

2010: Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted a performance in London by the acclaimed Jerusalem Quartet. Today’s lunchtime concert, which was being broadcast live on BBC Radio, was taken off the air in the middle due to the disruption, the Jewish Chronicle reported. The quartet completed its program. About five protesters took turns disrupting the concert with anti-Israel epithets at 10-minute intervals throughout the performance at Wigmore Hall, according to reports. They were removed from the audience. Protesters in other countries also have disrupted the quartet's performances. In a statement, the quartet noted that all four musicians served in the Israeli army as musicians and not in combat, and also perform as regular members of Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which brings Israeli and Arab musicians together. "We no more represent the Government of Israel than the audience at the Wigmore Hall represented the Government of the United Kingdom," read the statement. Only one of the four musicians is a native Israeli; one lives in Portugal and another in Berlin

2010: In New York, a week long program entitled The New Israeli Cuisine is scheduled to come to an end.

2010(14th of Nisan, 5770): Fast of the First Born

2010(14th of Nisan, 5770): In the evening, Jews around the world sit down to the Seder. Have a zissen Pesach

2010(14thof Nisan, 5770): Seventy-five-year-old author Alan Isler whose works included The Prince of West End Avenue, a novel “set in a Jewish old person’s home” which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize passed away.

2011: “Nora’s Will” and “Precious Life” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: President Obama nominated Daniel B. Shapiro to serve as the Ambassador of the United States of America to the state of Israel.

2011: Center for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute presented “Romantic Piano Trios: Schumann and Rachmaninoff.”

2012: The Andy Statman Trio (Andy on mandolin and clarinet, Jim Whitney on bass, Larry Eagle on drums & percussion) is scheduled to wrap up the season at the Charles Street Synagogue.

2012: Al Munzer is scheduled to moderate “Spinoza, Superstar of the millennium?” as part of Theatre J’s backstage program.

2012: Senator Gary Peters delivered a speech in honor of Joel E. Jacob, Chairman of the Board of MAZON.

http://capitolwords.org/date/2012/03/29/E508-2_to-honor-the-leadership-of-joel-jacob-as-chairman-/

2012: Jon Lebowitz was confirmed for a second term as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

2012: “Footnote” is among the films scheduled to be shown today at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2012(6thof Nisan, 5772): Seventy-four-year-old “Kenneth Libo, a historian of Jewish immigration who, as a graduate student working for Irving Howe in the 1960s and ’70s, unearthed historical documentation that informed and shaped World of Our Fathers, Mr. Howe’s landmark 1976 history of the East European Jewish migration to America” passed away today. (As reported by Paul Vitello)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/books/kenneth-libo-historian-of-jewish-immigration-dies-at-74.html

2013: The Ruach Minyan at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. is scheduled to host a Pesach Shabbat dinner.

 

2013: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a concert “Passion and Fire in the 20th Century.”

2013(18thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-one-year-old linguist John H. Gumperz passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/education/john-j-gumperz-linguist-of-cultural-interchange-dies-at-91.html?hpw&_r=0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._Gumperz

2013: The 23rdannual Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2013: The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Classic Film Series is scheduled to present “That Hamilton Woman” the classic directed by Michael Korda.

2013: “The Jewish Cardinal,” a “French television film directed by Ilan Duran Cohen was broadcast today on Arte.

2013: Forty-year-old Michael Steinberg, a SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager who had worked for discredited billionaire Steven Cohen, was arrested by federal agents today.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/sac-capital-manager-arrested-on-insider-trading-charges/?hp

2013: A man claiming to represent the hackers behind one of the biggest attacks in Internet history made anti-Jewish statements.

2014: “Fountains of the Deep: Visions of Noah and the Flood” is scheduled to be shown for the last time in a pop art space ot 462 West Broadway.

2014: “Labor and Race in Modern Germany,” co-sponsored by the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism is scheduled to come to a close today

2014: “The Zigzag Kid” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “A Jewish woman and her partner were among the first same-sex couple ever to be officially married in Britain today, after a law authorizing same-sex marriages went into effect throughout the country. Twenty-nine-year-old Nikki Pettit, who is Jewish, married Tania Ward, 28, in a Jewish ceremony in Brighton, on Britain’s south coast.”

2014: “Trebilinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine is scheduled to air tonight on the Smithsonian Channel.

http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/194995/uncovering-the-remains-of-treblinka/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Arts&utm_campaign=Arts%20Newsletter%202014-03-27

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/179065#.Uzil8JtOWpo

2014: Israel did not conduct the fourth stage of the prisoner release tonight,

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16499

2014: “New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson today for using the controversial term "occupied territories," saying he "misspoke" during his speech to a Republican Jewish Coalition event, Politico and CNN reported.”

2014: “Rabbi Yousef Hamadani Cohen, chief rabbi of Iran since 1994, who passed away over the weekend was laid to rest” today.

2015: Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a screening of “Defiance.”

2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Country of Ice Cream Starby Sandra Newman

2015: Suite Française a film “based on the best-selling book by Irène Némirovsky, written by her during the Nazi occupation and before she was sent to Auschwitz is scheduled to be shown today as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival

2015: “A Happy End” by Iddo Netanyahu is scheduled to be performed for the last time at the June Havoc Theatre in Manhattan.

2015: The 64th Annual Israel Folk Dance Festival and Festival of the Arts is scheduled to take place in NYC.

http://israelidanceinstitute.org/general/festival-64/

2015: Professor Derek J. Penslar is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “1948 as a Jewish World War” in Miami Beach.

http://jewishstudies.fiu.edu/events/2015/1948-as-jewish-world-war/

2016: Today, “Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef walked back his statement that non-Jews should not live in Israel, calling the comment “theoretical.”

2016: “Stolen Heart: The Theft of Jewish Property in Berlin’s Historic Center, 1933 – 1945” an exhibition that explores the critical issue of the state-sponsored “Aryanization” and plundering of Berlin’s Mitte (city center) and the murder of many of its former property owners is scheduled to open today.

2016: “Hitler’s Commando Lt. Col. Otto Skorzeny ‘Worked as an Assassin for Israeli Intelligence” published today described Mossad’s employment with a notorious Nazi.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/29/hitlers-commando-lt-col-otto-skorzeny-worked-as-an-assassin-for/

2016: “Following a public backlash,” “Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef walked back his statement that non-Jews should not live in Israel, calling the comment “theoretical.”

2016: The Skirball Center is scheduled to host Lord George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury (Ret.), as he presents a Christian perspective on anti-Semitism, its root causes and the current situation in Europe and the UK as well as the BDS movement and its attempts to delegitimize Israel.

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host “Ave Maria” a film in which “a Jewish family asks Palestinian nuns to break their vow of silence to help them on Shabbat.”

2017: As part of the observance of Women’s History Month, Lauren B. Strauss, Scholar in Residence at American University and Executive Director of the Foundation for Jewish Studies is scheduled to “discuss her role in the Civil Rights movement and how her early experiences shaped her later life” with Holocaust survivor  Marione Ingram, the author of The Hands of Peace.

2017: The Vice President of the United States administered the office to “bankruptcy attorney David Friedman, the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

2017: “A telegram from senior Nazi Heinrich Himmler to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, probably dating to 1943,” which “contains a promise to support the Mufti in his fight to control Palestine, was published today on website of Israel’s National Library,

2017: Dr. Michael Bornstein, “one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust” is scheduled to return to the University of Iowa where he earned his Ph.D. and “worked in pharmaceutical research and development for more than 40 years” to share his life story and discuss his new memoir, Survivors Club.

2018: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to “a concert of piano music presented by the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble celebrating the music of Oxana Yablonskaya.”

2018: Rona Kenan is scheduled to return to Zappa Tel Aviv with the band for a performance this evening.

2018: The Westchester Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

2018: Two days after his 87th birthday, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the Yale trained attorney and husband of Ramona Ripston with whom he had had three children – Mark Justin and Dana – passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/obituaries/stephen-reinhardt-liberal-lion-of-federal-court-dies-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018: Today, the online store of “Toys R US, the chain founded by Charles Lazarus” “shut down today.”

2018: Holocaust survivor Louise Lawrence Israels is scheduled to tell her first person story of survival at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

2019: After having premiered in Los Angeles earlier this month, “Dumbo,” the timeless tale of elephant co-starring Alan Arkin and with music by Danny Elfman is scheduled to be released today in the United States.

2019: “Great British Jews: A Celebration” an exhibition that examines the contributions Jews have made to the United Kingdom, including “fish and chips” and “Marks and Spence” is scheduled to open today at the Jewish Museum in London.

2019: As part of its Shabbat observance, in New York, Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host eight students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the Valentine’s Day massacre who will “perform ‘Shine,’  their tibute to the friends they lost and to speak about their experience and how activism, music and the arts are helping them to heal.”

2019: “Believe,” the latest album by Neshama Carlebach is scheduled to be released today.

https://www.jta.org/2019/03/07/culture/neshama-carlebach-is-figuring-out-how-to-both-love-and-not-love-her-father?utm_source=JTA%20Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-9441-39206

2020:  The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman by Ben Hubbard, which provides insight into a major player in Israel’s backyard, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future by James Shapiro and the recently published paperback edition of Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents and a Dinner Table (A Memoir With Recipes) by Boris Fishman.

2020: “The first-ever Limmud eFestival featuring “dozens of presenters teaching on the most interesting and important Jewish ideas” is scheduled to begin today.

https://www.crescentcityjewishnews.com/limmud-north-america-announced-efestival-for-march-29/

2020: In San Rafael, CA, trivia maven Howard Rachelson is scheduled to the virtual version of “Rodef Shalom Trivia.”

2020: “The 2nd Jewish Africa Conference & Morocco Trip” scheduled to end today was canceled due to the Pandemic.

2020: Adrienne Usher, Director at the Shapell Roster, first-ever comprehensive data archive documenting the Jewish soldiers who served in the American Civil War’ is scheduled to present the project’s history and future, as well as research methodology related specifically to the Confederacy in a Webinar hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia.

2020: The screening of “My Polish Honeymoon” scheduled for today has been canceled due to the pandemic.

2021(16thof Nisan, 57801): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

2021: Three Jewish Federation initiatives - the Goldring Center for Jewish-Multicultural Affairs, JP NOLA, and the Leventhal Center for Interfaith Families - are scheduled to partner with Temple Sinai to host a virtual seder on Monday, March 29 for the LGBTQ community and the allies who love and support them.

2021: New England Yachad is scheduled to present online the YAYA Movie Club.

2021: Israelis should be able to find greater enjoyment in celebrating the rest of Pesach since “the coronavirus pandemic in Israel continued its decline over the weekend” according to the Health Ministry

2021: Romanian police were scheduled to continue investigating death threats made against award-winning film and theatre star Maia Morgenstern and her children at the start of Passover celebrations.

 

 

This Day, March 30, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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March 30

1135: On the secular calendar, birthdate of Maimonides (Moses Ben Maimon) in Cordova, Spain. According to Jewish tradition he was born Erev Pesach. "From Moses to Moses there was none like Moses.' This folk saying sums up the greatness of the man. There is not space enough to do justice to his amazing life. Such were his intellectual capabilities that one person said, if you did not know that Maimonides was the name of the man you would think that it was the name of a university. He is most noted for his codification of Jewish Law called the Mishneh Torah (Review of the Torah) and his philosophic work Moreh Nevuchim (Guide To The Perplexed). But for some the true measure of the man is the lesser known Letter of Consolation and Letter on the Sanctification of God. He wrote both of these to reassure the Jews of Fez that to encourage them in their steadfastness to Judaism and to emphasize the fact that God hears our prayers and that our sins do not detract from our good deeds. He wrote a great deal more including medical books. Maimonides refused to "make a profit from the crown of the Torah" so while he served as the leader of the Jewish community in Egypt; he earned a living as a leading physician. Maimonides died in Egypt in December, 1204 or Tevet, 4965. He is buried in Tiberias and many make a point of visiting the grave of this sage. If you do the math this is the 870th anniversary of the birth of Maimonides. This would make this an especially auspicious year for Jews to devote study time to this sage who has influenced non-Jews as well as Jews eight centuries.

http://www.amazon.com/Maimonides-Biography-Abraham-Joshua-Heschel/dp/0374517592

http://huc.edu/faculty/faculty/marmur/Heschel's%20Two%20Maimonides.pdf

1191: King Philip II of France set sail from Sicily to begin his campaign against Saladin in what is called the Third Crusade. Throughout his reign, Philip persecuted his Jewish subjects by variously holding them hostage for ransom, releasing Christians from paying their debts to the Jews and expelling them so he could seize all of their property and assets.

1218: Henry III of England enforced the Yellow Badge Edict. The badge was a piece of yellow cloth in the shape of the Tablets of the Law and was worn above the heart by every Jew over the age of seven.

1296: Edward I sacks Berwick-upon-Tweed, during armed conflict between Scotland and England. This is the same King who expelled the Jews from England in 1290. He expelled them so that he could finance his various wars against the French, the Welch and the Scots

.1432: Birthdate of Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed’s reign was a positive period for the Jews. After he conquered Constantinople in 1453, he allowed Jews from today's Greek Islands and Crete to settle in Istanbul. His declaration of invitation said, in part, "Listen sons of the Hebrew who live in my country...May all of you who desire come to Constantinople and may the rest of your people find here a shelter". After fighting off a crusade led by Jean de Capistrano, Mehmed invited the Ashkenazi Jews of Transylvania and Slovakia to the Ottoman Empire. The invitation may have been as a sign of appreciation for fighting prowess of a Jewish regiment called “the Sons of Moses.” Mehmed ordered that various synagogues that had been damaged by fire should be repaired and several Jews held positions at Court.

1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella signed a decree expelling the Jews from Spain.

1526: In Antwerp, Belgium, Emperor Charles V issued a general safe-conduct to the Portuguese "New Christians" and Marranos allowing them to live and work there. Although they still had to live under cover they were safe from the Inquisition.

1581: Pope Gregory XIII issued a Bull banning the use of Jewish doctors. This did not prevent many popes from using Jews as their personal physicians.

1690: Alexander VIII issued “Animarum Saluti,” a papal relating to the neophytes in the Indies.

1739(20th of Adar II): Rabbi Moses Meir Perles of Prague, author of Megillat Sofer passed away.

1771: In New York City, Abraham Isaac Abraham and his wife gave birth to “Feglah” Abrahams who died in infancy.

1773: In Newport, Ezra Stiles, the future President of Yale invited Hebron born Rabbi Chaim Isaac Caregal and Aaron Lopez to his home for a meeting that would be the beginning of strong friendship that lasted for the next 6 months when the Rabbi left town to continue his travels.

1774(18thof Nisan, 5534): Fourth Day of Pesach

1774: In Eppingen, Germany, Kursche Karoline Maier and Laemmle (Asher) Heinsheimer gave birth toe Maier Heinsheimer, the husbad of Bela Furth with whom he had ten children.

1794: In London, Julie Asher and Joseph Raphael HaCohen gave birth to Lewis Raphael, the husband of Rachel Mocatta and the father of Jeanette, Edward, Henry, Emily and George Raphael.

1799(23rdof Adar II, 5559): Parashat Shimini; Shabbat Parah observed for the last time in the 18th century.

1801(16th of Nisan, 5561): Second day of Pesach; The Omer is counted for the first time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson.

1804: Birthdate of Salomon Sulzer the Austrian Chazan and composer whose "Shir Tziyyon" a work in two volumes that “established models for the various sections of the musical service—the recitative of the cantor, the choral of the choir, and the responses of the congregation—and contained music for Sabbaths, festivals, weddings, and funerals which has been introduced into nearly all the synagogues of the world.”

1809: In London, Rachel and Moses Zechariah Foligno gave birth to their youngest daughter, Rose Foligno.

1812(17thof Nisan, 5572): Third Day of Pesach; Second Day of the Omer

1812: On Gibraltar, Rabbi Samuel Conquy and Rica Conquy gave birth to Solomon Conquy.

1815: In Basel, Isaac Dreyfus, the Alsace born son of Jacob Drefyus and his wife Gertrude “Julie” Dreyfus gave bith to Nanette Dreyfus.

1816(1stof Nisan, 5576): Parashat Vayikra; Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1816: In Moravia, Jacob Steinschneider and his wife gave birth to Moritz Steinschneider “a Bohemian bibliographer and Orientalist who passed away in 1907.

1819: In German Beier Grunebuam and David Jacob Felsenthal gave birth to Hermann Felsenthal. (not to be confused with the German born American banker of the same name who settled in Chicago)

1820(15thof Nisan, 5580):  As Americans enjoy political season of “good feelings” Jews observe Pesach

1827: Rachel Gomez and John Meseena gave birth to Rebecca Meseen the wife of Prussian native William Flatau and the other of Ruben Flatau.

1829: Birthdate of German native Sigmund Leibman Leopold, the husband of London born Emma Leopold and the father of Isaac, Theresa, Bertha, Lewis and Florence Leopold each of whom was born on the Jersey Channel Islands.

1831(16thof Nisan, 5591): In Mayence, Rabbi Samuel Bondi and Sophie Sueschen Bondi gave birth to Marcus Meir Bondi.

1833(10thof Nisan, 5563): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Hagadol

1833: On the same day the Jews observed the last Shabbat before Pesach, today’s issue of The Lancet published the “Lectures on Medical Pathology” which had been delivered at the University of Paris.

1839(15thof Nisan, 5599): Pesach and Shabbat

1840: Jonas Ellis married Sarah Jacobs at the New Synagogue today.

1844(10thof Nisan, 5604): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1844: As the Jews observed the last Shabbat before Pesach, today, during the Dominican War of Independence, at the Battle of Santiago, “Dominican troops, that were part of the Army of The North and led by General José María Imbert, defeated Haitian Army troops led by General Jean-Louis Pierrot”

1849: In New York, Isidor Bush published the first edition of Israel’s Herald, “the first Jewish weekly in the United States” that folded after only 3 months.

1849: Today’s Issue of Israel’s Herald provided a contemporaneous account of the settling of St. Louis when it reported that “ten or twelve Jews have established themselves in a distant place in the West” where worrying “about providing for their daily bread” and “unavoidable difficulties…prevent them from adhering strictly to religious practices.”

1851: Thirty year old Prussian born cigar dealer Samuel Gluckstein the son of Lehman Meyer Gluckstein and Helena Horn who had come to Britain ten years ago was now living at  9, Freeman Street, Tower Hamlets, London

1853: Simon ben Moses married Elkla bat Joseph at the Great Synagogue today.

1853: Birthdate of Cincinnati, OH native Gustavus Henry Wald the Dean of the University of Cincinnati Law School.

1853: Samuel Cohen married Rosetta Menser at the New Synagogue today.

1856: In Hoboken, NJ, Henry and Sophie Waldstein gave birth to Charles Waldstein, the native of New York who became a leading Anglo-American archaeologist who was knighted in 1912 and changed his name to Walston in 1918 so he became known as Sir Charles Walston, husband of Florence Seligman.

https://www.jta.org/1927/03/25/archive/sir-charles-walston-noted-anglo-jewish-scholar-dies-at-71

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appletons%27_Cyclopædia_of_American_Biography/Waldstein,_Charles

 

 

1856: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War. One of the stranger aspects of the conflict that most remember for “The Charge of the Light Brigade” was the creation of Mickiewicz’s Jewish Legion. A Polish nobleman and nationalist who was living in exile in Paris at the start of the war, Mickiewicz went to Constantinople where he and Armand Levy organized a military unit made up of Jews from Poland and Palestine. The group was also called the Hussars of Israel. Mickiewicz died before he could lead them into action.

1856: The attempts of the Turkish sultan, Abed Almagid, to ally his kingdom with the west came to fruition today when the Ottoman Empire “was officially included among the European family nations’ today during the Congress of Paris.  Abed Almagid had showed his support for the cause of the Jews when he issued a decree in 1840 absolving the Jews of Rhodes from the charges of having killed a Christian child so his blood could be used in making matzah.

1858: Printer Hyman Lipman, a Philadelphia Jew who played a key role in the early development of the postal card patented the lead pencil.

1861(19thof Nisan, 5621): Fifth Day of Pesach and Shabbat observed as the Confederate besiege Fort Sumter

1862: In Brooklyn, Congregation Beth Elohim dedicated its new facility on Pearl Street which gave rise to its nickname “the Pearl Street Synagogue.”

1863: During the Civil War, President Lincoln issued a proclamation proclaiming Thursday, April 30, 1863 as a National Day of Fasting.

1864(22ndof Adar II, 5624): Seventy-six-year-old Moses Asher Goldsmid, the husband of Eliza Salomons, the second daughter of Levy Salomons with whom he had two children, Annie and Julie and after she died married Sarah Montefiore, the sister of Sir Moses Montefiore and daughter of Joseph Montefiore, passed away today.

1864: Birthdate of German- born sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, the father of Hillel Oppenheimer, a professor of botany at Hebrew University. After a distinguished career in Germany, Oppenheimer passed away as a refugee in Los Angeles in 1943.

1865: In Antrim, Northern Island, Caroline Spiers and Hermann Boas gave birth to Dora Rosetta Boas.

1866(14thof Nisan, 5626): Ta’ant Berachot; Erev Pesach

1867: In what was then Lötzen, East Prussia and is now Giżycko, Poland, Mortiz Davidson and his wife gave birth to movie producer Paul Davidson.

1869(18thof Nisan,5629): Fourth Day of Pesach at time when 12 when twelve states had voted to ratify the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constittion

1873(2ndof Nisan. 5633): Eighty-eight-year-old Count Abraham Camondo passed away. Born in Istanbul, he “was a Jewish Ottoman-Italian financier and philanthropist and the patriarch of the Camondo family.”

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3949-camondo

1875: In Frankfurt, Germany, Stella Rothschild, the German born daughter of Leopold Schott and Sara Randegger and her husband Wilhelm Benjamin Rothschild gave birth to David Rothschild.

1877(16th of Nisan, 5637): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1877: In Towanda, PA, “Simon and Rachaell (Hyman Gomez, Frumberg gave birth to birth NYU trained lawyer Abram Morgan Furmberg, the husband of Lillian Nebenzahl, and member of the Missouri Bar Association who was a member of B’nai B’rith, Y.M.H.A and Temple of Israel

1879: “Egyptian Influence on Hebrew Names” published today described the work of Dr. Brugsh that there is no Hebrew derivation for the names Moses, Aaron or Miriam but they do contain Egyptian roots. Also, the name Pinchas (the famed slayer in the Book of Numbers) comes from an Egyptian term for “the Negro” which was applied to dark-skinned men in Egypt

1880(18thof Nisan, 5640): Fourth Day of Pesach

1880: It was reported today that a new opera, “The Queen of Sheba” by Goldmark has been successfully performed in several German cities.

1881: In Leadville, CO, the liquor business owned by the Schloss family was determined to have sustained $250 in damages in a fire that began last night.

1882: Birthdate of Austrian-born English psychoanalyst and child psychologist Melanie Klein. Klein developed methods of play technique and play therapy in analyzing and treating child patients. She passed away in 1960.

1883: Birthdate of Jo Davidson, the Lower East Side son of Russian Jewish immigrants who went on to become one of the most famous sculptors of his time passed away today in Tours, France.

 

https://www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org/jo-davidson

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jo-davidson

1883: Two days after he had passed away, 63-year-old Nathan Mayer Montefiore, the son of Abraham Joseph Montefiore and Henrietta Rothschild, the husband of the former Emma Goldsmid and the father of Alice, Leonard, Charlotte and Claude Montifiore was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery in what must have been a gathering of some of England’s most prominent Jews since it involved the Montefiores, Rothschilds and Goldsmids.

1883: Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Westmount, a Reform synagogue in Westmount, Quebec, the oldest “Liberal” or “Reform” synagogue in Canada, was incorporated today.

1884: In Kozlov, Czech Republic, Adolf Neubauer, the son of Karl and Theresia Neubauer, and his wife Karla gave birth to Ida Neubauer who became Ida Simon when she married Carl Simon.

1888(18thof Nisan, 5684): Fourth Day ofPesach

1888: In Trock, Poland, “Hyman Ely and Sarah (Rodberg) Cohen gave birth to the husband of Mildred Ruth Park and MIT trained engineer Samson Kalmon Cohen who was commended by Col. George Goethals for his work in building the Panama Canal, served with the Engineers in WW I and was an active member of Temple Israeli in Boston.

1888(18thof Nisan, 5648): Forty-one-year-old “German Jewish physician and Arctic explorer” Dr. Emil Bessels suffered a stroke today and passed away in Stuttgart, Germany.

1890: Ida Levy of New York is scheduled to marry Henry Naftal of Asbury Park today.

1890: Authorities concluded that Morris Eising, German-Jewish immigrant who had been found dead in his rooming house had died by his own hand.  Apparently, he was despondent over the loss of his job which meant he could not send money back to his wife in Bavaria.

1890: This morning Rabbi Gustav Gottheil is scheduled to officiate at the funeral Emanuel Bernheimer, “one of the owners of the Lion Brewery” and one of the oldest brewers living in New York.  Born in 1817, he learned his craft in his native Germany before coming to the United States in 1844.  In 1850 he and August Schmid formed the Constanz Brewery and in 1860 they took over and enlarged the Lion Brewery.  Bernheimer was one of the oldest member of Temple Emanu El and a patron of several charities including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids. After the funeral, Dr. Silverman will officiate at the burial in the Salem Field Cemetery.

1890: “The Theatrical Week” published today provides highlights of current and upcoming productions including “The Shatchen,” a new play by Charles Dickson and Harry Dobbin whose protagonist is Myer Petooksy  a peddler who also works as “an unlicensed marriage broker.”

1891: “New Books” published today contains a complete review of The Persecution of the Jews in Russia that includes an “appendix containing a summary of special restrice laws, a map showing the pale of Jewish settlements.”

1892: It was reported today that Prague after police quelled a riot by a mob upset by the Imperial authority’s refusal to allow a celebration of the anniversary birth of a medieval educational reformer, John Comenius.  When the rioters were thwarted by authorities, they cried “Let’s make for the Jews!” followed by calls to head for the Jewish quarter where they could “vent their fury on the inoffensive Hebrews.” The mounted policemen wanted an end to the rioters and drove them from the streets including those in the Jewish quarter. (Yes, this mindless anti-Semitic attack took place in the supposedly civilized confines Prague.  The anti-Semitic outburst that consumed Paris during the Dreyfus affair was really not such an aberration after all.)

1892: A cable was received today in Toronto from London describing the death of sixty nine year old Canadian Jew Mark Samuel

1892: In Hanover Arnord and Caecilie (Solling) Panofsky gave brirth to Erwin Panofsky, the husband of Dorothea (Dora) Mosse, the German art historian who was forced to pursue his career in the United States after the rise of the Nazis

https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/panofsky-erwin-1

.https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/panofskye.htm

1894: Birthdate of Samson Raphaelson the New York born graduate of the University of Illinois whose extensive writing career included creating a short story based on an episode in the life of Al Jolson which he then he expanded into the Jazz Singer, a successful Broadway play and the first “talkie.”

 

1895: Birthdate of Pierre Péteul, who as the Capuchin Franciscan friar Père Marie-Benoît saved approximately 4,000 Jews from the Shoah.  He was was honored with the Medal of the Righteous among the Nations and was known as Père des juifs  (Father of the Jews.

1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1896: Benjamin Kossman completed more than five years of service with the U.S. 6thCavalry.

1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Citizens are required to return their census papers in London. While most citizens are required to return their census papers today in London, the Jews have been given an extension and do not have to return them until tomorrow since today is the second day of Passover and the English respect the need to observe the holiday.

1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Fifty-one-year-old Rabbi Aaron Wise who had gone to Rodelph Sholom to officiate at Passover Services this morning, complained of being ill and went home after consulting with Benjamin Blumenthal without preaching lay down on a longue in the basement dining room as passed away before medical help could arrive.

Born in Hungary in 1844, Wise was educated in the Talmudic schools of Hungary, including the seminary at Eisenstadt, where he studied under Dr. Hildesheimer. Later he attended the universities of Leipzig and Halle, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution. He assisted Bernard Fischer in revising the Buxtorf lexicon and was for several years a director of schools in his native town. He was for a time identified with the Haredi party in Hungary, acting as secretary to the organization Shomere ha-Datt, and editing a Judaeo-German weekly in its support. In 1874 Wise emigrated to the United States, and became rabbi of Congregation Baith Israel in Brooklyn; two years later he was appointed rabbi of Temple Rodeph Shalom in New York, which office he held until his death. Wise was the author of Beth Aharon, a religious school handbook; and he compiled a prayer-book for the use of his congregation. He was for some time editor of the Jewish Herald of New York, and of the Boston Hebrew Observer; and he contributed to the yearbooks of the Jewish Ministers' Association of America, as well as to other periodical publications. He was one of the founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the first vice-president of its advisory board of ministers. Wise founded the Rodeph Shalom Sisterhood of Personal Service, which established the Aaron Wise Industrial School in his memory. He was the son of Chief Rabbi Joseph Hirsch Weiss, and father of Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise.

1897: Colonel Goldsmid asks Herzl to stay away from the Zionist Congress in order to prevent a split in the ranks of the Hovevei Zion.

1897: Dr. Adler, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, and Moritz Güdemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna, led anti-Zionist attacks. They were known as the "Protestrabbiner" - "Protest Rabbis".

1897: “In Memory of General Grant” published today described the units that will be marching in the parade to honor the late President and Civil War hero including a contingent from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Cadets under the command of Major Martin Cohen and Adjutant Max Saltzman.

1897: In New York City’s Lower East Side, Bessie and Jakob Riskin gave birth to “screenwriter and playwright Robert Riskin who won an Oscar for the timeless comedy “It Happened on Night” as well as “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” – an example of the American cultural myth actually created by Jewish immigrants and their children in Tinsel Town.

1898: Liebe Blond and her four children who had arrived in the United States were put on a ship bound for Europe after authorities refused to let her husband who has been working here see her or listen to his entreaties to let them stay in the United States.

1899(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Hayyim Leib Tiktinski, head of the Mir Yeshivah for 49 years passed away1899: It was reported today that when Baron Hirsch passed away he left a fortune estimated at 125 million dollars, most of which was tied to railroad companies.  Both before and after his death, Hirsch had given large sums to the poor including 10 million dollars for the Jewish Colonization Association of the United States.

1899: It was reported today that since the death of her husband, Baroness Hirsch has been very generous in providing aid to the poor including $1,500,000 to the need of Paris and an even large amount to the Educational Alliance which assists the Russian Jews.

1899: Birthdate of movie producer Irving Thalberg. Thalberg was an early pioneer in the film industry. His brief career (he died of pneumonia at the age of 37) left such a mark on the world of cinema that a year after his death the Academy of Motion Picture Artists created a special award in his name that is given annually at the Oscar Presentations. Thalberg was the inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Last Tycoon. In explaining why his name did not appear in the film credits, Thalberg said, “if you’re in a position to give yourself credit, you don’t need it.”

 

1900: In Princeton, NY, “Classics professor Charles A. Robinson” and his wife gave birth to

Charles A. Robinson, Jr. the Professor of Classic at Brown University who married Celia Sachs, the daughter of art historian Paul J. Sachs who played a key role in planning to save and retrieve works of art in World War II.

1901(10thof Nisan, 5661): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1901: Birthdate of Sydney David Piece the member of the Canadian track and field team at the 1924 Paris Olympics and McGill University graduate who served as “Canada’s ambassador to Brazil, Belgium and Luxembourg.”

1902: In expressing his opposition to attempts make the public system school denominational Alexander Harvey, whose letter was published today, wrote that “When in their earliest and most impressionable years Protestants, Catholics and Jews go to the same schools, learn the same lessons, play the same games and are forced in the rough and ready democracy of boy life to take each at his true worth, it is impossible later to make the disciples of one creed persecute those of another” which means that “America is free”  “from the evils of religious persecution. (Editor’s note – his words are as true today as they were then)

1903: Birthdate of Sol C Siegel, journalist turned movie producer who helped to create such hits as “High Society,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “No Way to Treat a Lady,” “Alvarez Kelly” “Three Coins In A Fountain” and “A Letter to Three Wives” the last two which were nominated for Oscar’s as Best Picture.

1903: As part of negotiations to secure land for a Jewish homeland, Carton de Wiart talked to a lawyer with the Egyptian government who recommends that the concession should be in the form of a lease, not a freehold. Herzl demands a 99-year lease.

1904(14thof Nisan, 5664): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1904: It was reported today that the children of the late Mayer Lehman, who was a Director of Mount Sinai Hospital for 19 years, have given $93,000 to cover the cost of constructing the Dispensary Building which is to be dedicated in memory of their father.

1904(14th of Nisan, 5664): At Ellis Island, three hundred Jewish immigrants who “have been detained while awaiting inspection” held a Seder on the first night of Passover. The meal was served on dishes that were brand new having been brought straight from the storeroom. All of the utensils used in the kitchen were also brand new and the meal was prepared under the supervision of the Jewish immigrants. The meal included chicken soup, roast goose, apple sauce, mashed potatoes, black tea, oranges and, of course, Matzah and ground horseradish.

1904: Alice Weinberg, the twelve-year-old daughter of Max Weinberg was reported missing by her father. The girl had gone to play with her friends this morning while her family prepared for tonight’s Seder. The family called off its Passover celebration so it could search for Alice.

1905: Birthdate of St. Louis’ native and Princeton graduate Phillip W. Habertnan, the Columbia trained lawyer and member of the legislative investigation team led by Judge Samuel Seabury that ended the career of Mayor Walker who was a Republican, a partner in the firm of Proskauer, Rose, Goetz & Mendelsohn and the husband of Helen Habertnan with whom he had two children – Charles and Norma.

1906: Birthdate of Belarus native Morris Adler, the husband of Goldie Adler, and the leading Detroit Rabbi who was mortally wounded by a congregant during Shabbat services

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2016/02/12/rabbi-morris-adler-shaarey-zedek/80186614/

1907(15thof Nisan, 5667): Pesach and Shabbat

1907: As of today, in Washington, Secretary of State Root had received a number of appeals from Jewish organizations” in the United States” for the exercise of the good offices of this Government for the protection of the Jews in Romania who are suffering from the excesses of the rebellious peasantry in that country.”

1908: Lightweight Leach Cross (Louis Charles Wallach) fought is third bout in the month of March and his 29th career bout today.

1909(8th of Nisan, 5669): Mrs. Michla Shilotzdky passed away this morning at the age of 106. The cause of death was pneumonia. Mrs. Esther Davis, 115 years old; Mrs. Rosei Aaronwald, 108 years old; and Mendel Diamond, 107 years old were at her bedside at the Daughters of Jacob Home in New York.

1909: Official opening of the Queensboro Bridge which two Jewish boys from Queens named Simon and Garfunkel would immortalize in the 1960’s hit "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"

1909: A special report to The London Times from Teheran says that anti-Jewish riot occurred at Kermanshah” and “that the rioters sacked 170 houses.”

1910: The Mississippi Legislature founds The University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg, Mississippi. At the time of the founding of USM, there was a small Jewish population in Hattiesburg including Maurice Dreyfus who operated a saw mill and Frank Rubenstein who opened a department store called “The Hub.”

1911: After a year, Luigi Luzzatti completed his service as the 20th Prime Minister of Italy.

1912: Clark University educated mathematician Herman Lester Slobin, the Russian born son of

 “Joseph and Anna (Leuchtiger) Slobin” married Alice Levy in Minneapolis, MN.

1913: B’nai Israel Congregation was founded in Greensburg, PA.

1913(21st of Adar II, 5673): Seventy-two-year-old merchant Bernard Wolf passed away today in Chicago.

1913: Ahavas Achim Congregation was founded in Buffalo, NY.

1914: Today, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Asbury Park, NJ made public a letter to the Reverend Dr. Aaron E. Ballard, the President of the Ocean Grove Association, protesting again reflections on Jews in a public letter by Dr. Ballard and condemning his remarks as tending to create racial differences and prejudice.”

1915(15thof Nisan, 5675): Pesach

1915: Rabbi Aaron Elseman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “America the Hope of Humanity” this morning at Temple Beth Israel in Manhattan.

1915: The 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors who attended last night’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Nay Y.M.H.A. which also provided a night’s lodging at the Hotel Roland are scheduled to worship at Temple Beth Israel at Lexington and 72ndStreet.

1915: The Secretary of War, the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City have been invited to attend tonight’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Young Men’s Hebrew Association for the benefit of 300 of the 8,000 Jews serving in the military which is being held at Vienna Hall on Lexington and 58thStreet.

1916: Mr. Boris Hambourg, violoncellist, gave a recital this afternoon in Aelian Hall in which he brought forward several unusually interesting pieces of old music by such composers as Galliard, Galeotti, and Lanzetti.

1916: Dr. Henry Moskowitz introduced former President Teddy Roosevelt to the crowd attending the Jewish Bazaar at the Grand Central Plaza where the former Rough Rider “delivered an address in which he urged boh rich and poor to contribute to help the victims of the European War.”

1917: It was explained today by those who had formed the Jewish League of American Patriots “that in mobilizing ‘the forces and resources of the Jewish race in America’ no attempt would be made to separate the Jews a unit of patriotism but arouse Jews to full co-operation with other Americans.”

1917: President Wilson’s telegram to Julius Rosenwald published today read, in part “Your contribution of $1,000,000 to the $10,000,000 fund for the relief of Jewish war suffers serves the democracy as well as humanity…Your gift lays an obligation even while it furnishes inspiration.”

1917:  Those listed as being the largest contributors (and the amount of their contributions) to the Hadassah medical that will soon be on its way to Palestine included Mrs. Julius Rosenwald ($1,000), Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim ($500), Mrs. Nathan Straus ($500), Rosie Bernheimer ($500) Mrs. Max Richeter ($250) and Mrs. Robert Hirsch ($250).

1917(7thof Nisan, 5677): Eighty-one year old Gertrude Hyman Felsentahl, the German born wife of Herman Felsenthal and mother of Eli, Judith, Flora, Hannah and Emily Felstenthal passed away today after which she was buried at the Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum in Chicago.

1918(17thof Nisan, 5678): Shabbat Pesach

1918: As part of the appeal to raise funds for the Third Liberty Loan a special appeal was sent to the Jewish community signed by several leaders including Dr. Solomon T.H. Hurwtiz of the Rabbinical College of American and editor of the Jewish Forum, Rabbi Henry Guiterman of Scranton, PA, and Dr. Samuel Buhler, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Ministers’ Assoication.

1919: Birthdate of Oscar Benjamin “Ossie” Schectman the Queens born son of Jewish immigrants who won the NIT while playing basketball for Long Island University and “is credited with having scored the first basket in what became the National Basketball Association.

1919: Simon Wolf, Dr. Joseph Silverman, Daniel P. Hays and Dr. Nathan Krass were among those who spoke at Temple Emanu-El this evening at ceremonies marking the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Isaac Mayor Wise, leader in America of Reform Judaism and the founder of the Hebrew Union College and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

1919: “The Ceremony of Conferring Rabbinical Degree to five students of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanah Theological Seminary today at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.

1920: A British soldier digging a trench in Syria uncovered ruins of Dura Europus which would include the discovery a synagogue that dated back to 244 “making it one of the oldest synagogues in the world.

1920: In Baranovichi, Poland, Brakha née Sokolovsky and Shraga (Feivel) Tunkel gave birth to Yaakov Tunkel who would gain fame as Yaakov Banai, a leader of Lehi also known as the Stern Gang.

1921: The body of Richmond native Sir Moses Jacob Ezekiel, the graduate of VMI and Confederate veteran who became “a world famous sculptor and died in Rome in 1917” is scheduled to be brought to the National Cemetery at Arlington, VA today for final interment.

1921: “In Lindau, Bavaria, physiotherapist “Ella (Norden) Kalischer” and psychoanalyst  Hans Kalischer gave birth to Clemens Kalischer, the American photographer whose skill raises the question “What is there about Jews and cameras?”https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/obituaries/clemens-kalischer-97-refugee-photographer-of-humanity-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1921: Churchill visited Tel Aviv where he delivers a speech praising what the Jews have accomplished in the last twelve years since the city was first founded.

1921: Winston Churchill visited the “39-year-old agricultural colony of Rishon le-Zion where he spoke approvingly of the accomplishments of the Zionists and the positive affect their activities have had on the surrounding Arab population.

1921: British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill completer his fact-finding trip to Palestine and leaves Jerusalem for Egypt.

1925: Birthdate of Edward Sidney Finkelstein, the native of New Rochelle, NY, “a master merchandiser who turned Macy’s into one of the nation’s smartest, fastest-growing department store chains.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/business/edward-s-finkelstein-89-is-dead-took-macys-to-its-highs-and-lows.html?hpw&rref=obituaries

1925: Time magazine published the following account Rabbi Solomon Goldman’s attempt to make changes at his synagogue in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

In spite of generations of prophets and reformers, Jewish ritual with all its shrilly "orthodox" punctilio has lived with few radical changes. In Cleveland, Ohio, some months ago, Rabbi Solomon Goldman, spiritual head of the local "Jewish Center," proposed to rid his congregation of some bits of orthodoxy. In particular, he decided that men and women might sit in the same pews. Here was reform indeed! Not since Solomon built his great temple had the thoroughly orthodox Jewess sat with the thoroughly orthodox Jew at worship. She had been relegated to one side of the temple, or to the gallery, or to a seat in the rear behind a curtain. It was custom not merely Jewish, but Pan-Asiatic. Muhammadan women do not squat with men folk in the pit of the Mosque. And even in the new Christian Churches in China, Japan and elsewhere, women have always, until very recently, sat in a special section railed or curtained off for them. Now Rabbi Goldman of Cleveland has changed all this in his congregation. At once A. A. Katz, one of Rabbi Goldman's flock, cited him to appear before the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of America to answer for his ecclesiastical liberality. Rabbi Goldman refused to appear. In this, he was supported by his congregation. When the week ended, it was still the turn of the Jewish Fundamentalists to move. It should be noted that departure from Jewish orthodoxy is not equivalent to becoming a Reformed Jew. The latter class, whose most prominent leader is Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, disregards many customs from which Rabbi Goldman is not likely to depart, among which are:

Blessing - At each service, men are called up before the congregation to say a blessing before and after portions of the Torah, which is read— on all Sabbaths and holidays. In congregations where Jewish customs are meticulously observed, this privilege is auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Music - No instrumentation is permitted. Weird half-shouted chants, led by a slippered cantor, are the only melodies.

Costume - Both men and women must wear hats. The enthusiastically orthodox wear skullcaps, shawls. Men also wear the talis, a fringed scarf, draped over the shoulders.

1926(15thof Nisan, 5686): Pesach

1926: Birthdate of Warsaw native Eugenia Rotsztejn, the Holocaust survivor who became Eugenia Unger when she married David Unger and emigrated to Argentina in 1949 where she was bat matizvahed in 2017.

1926: “Our Daily Bread” a silent drama directed by Constantin J. David and written by Hans Behrendt and Mutz Greenbaum who also served as cinematographer  was released in Germany today.

1926: In Manhattan, “Harold K. Guinzburg, the publisher and co-founder of Viking Press” and his wife gave birth Thomas Guinzburg, an editor and publisher who helped create The Paris Review, and who later became president of Viking Press, the publishing house founded by his father.

1926: In New York, “many rabbis devoted their sermons to appeals in behalf of their suffering co-religionists in Eastern Europe” and asked their congregants “to support the United Jewish campaign of Greater New York, of which William Fox is Chairman and Louis Marshall and Felix M. Warburg are Honorary Chairmen.”

1927: At luncheon at the Astor Hotel, Utah Senator William H. King told the members of the Brooklyn Women’s Division of the United Palestine Appeal “that he favored the United States severing diplomiatic relations with any country which failed because of anti-Semitism to protect its Jewish nationals.”

1928: While serving in the final year of her term as President of Hadassah Irma Levy Lindheim the American women's Zionist organization, declared that the administration of the ZOA was "not an effective instrument for the achievement of world Zionist aims for the up-building of Palestine." In so doing, she asserted her opposition to the leadership of ZOA President Louis Lipsky. Although Lindheim was careful to note that she spoke as an individual and that Hadassah had no quarrel with the World Zionist Organization led by Chaim Weizmann, she came under attack for her comments from both ZOA leadership and other Hadassah members. During her presidency, Hadassah was in frequent conflict with the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which wanted to control and dispense the funds raised from the Hadassah membership. The Hadassah-ZOA conflict had roots dating back to 1918, when Hadassah (founded in 1912) first joined the umbrella organization, giving up some of its organizational authority. Seven members of the Hadassah board had been expelled in 1920 when the organization's Central Committee refused to raise money for the ZOA fund Keren Hayesod. Despite Hadassah's loss of autonomy, the organization's membership steadily increased even as general ZOA membership declined.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/30/1928/irma-levy-lindheim

1928: Birthdate of American Jewish author Carl Solomon.

1929: U.S. premiere of “Chinatown Nights” based on the story “Tong War” by Samuel Ornitz and produced by David O. Selznick.

1929: In New York City “Clair and Dr. Abraham George Sheftel gave birth to Judy Sheftel who became Judy Feiffer when she married Jules Feiffer.

https://www.mvtimes.com/2016/07/06/judy-feiffer/

1929(18thof Adar II, 5689): Shabbat Parah

1929(18thof Adar II, 5689): Sixty-nine-year-old Maximillian “Max” Heller who served as Rabbi at Temple Sinai in New Orleans from 1887 until 1829 passed away today.

http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Rabbi-Max-Heller,870.aspx

1929: Birthdate of actress Shirley Stoler, the Brooklyn born daughter of “Russian Jewism immigrant owners of a used furniture store who appeared on Broadway, in films and on day-time soaps passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/28/nyregion/shirley-stoler-69-actress-hailed-for-her-role-in-seven-beauties.html

1929: It was reported today that Hadassah has acquired a portrait of Nathan Straus painted by Eward Salzan which will be hung in the Straus Health Center currently under construction in Tel Aviv.

1930: Birthdate of Gene Selznick, the native of Los Angeles who helped to make volleyball the popular sport in southern California.

http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-gene-selznick-20120612,0,4439222.story#axzz2x2Jxl7y2

1930: It was reported today that if the government’s case against New York’s Century Club ever reaches the Supreme Court on appeal, Justice Benjamin Cardozo would be one of the one the judges who would have to recuse himself because he had been a member of the exclusive New York social organization.

1930: A citrus tree was planted on the 140 acre plot purchased in 1926 under the direction of Mrs. Ada Maimon marking the official founding Ayanot, a women’s farm that took its name from the two springs located on the acreage. For the next two years, the women workers lived in Ness Ziona and came to Ayanot every day to cultivate the soil. In 1932, Ada Maiomon and ten girls would begin living on a cowshed on the property.

1932: Birthdate of A. J. (Arie) Zuckerman, Dean of the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine. Zuckerman’s area of expertise is the study of hepatitis.

1934(14thof Nisan, 5694): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach

1934: “Blue Moon” a classic popular song written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart was “registered for copyright as an unpublished work” today.

1936: Among the teams competing for a slots to represent the United States at the Olympics are Temple which has three Jews in its starting line-up and the Hollywood Universals which has two Jews – a fact that seems at odd with the determination of some Jews to boycott the “Hitler” Olympics.

1936: Twenty-eight-year-old Walter Sievers “was sentenced to death today for having killed a Jewish tradesman name Zirpkowski in his shop last July” as the court dismissed his claim that he had shot the victim “in a moment of political excitement” finding instead “that the crime had been committed in cold blood with the purpose of robbery.”

1936(7thof Nisan, 5696): Seventy-year-old David Eder, a British psychoanalyst who treated soldiers for mental problems during World War I and served as President of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain passed away today.

1936: “The first words heard from the Palestine broadcasting station which was opened” today “by the High Commissioner “This is Jerusalem calling.”

1937: In Chicago, “the former Dorothy Gurevitz” and her husband, electrician Max Hirsch gave birth to Charles Sidney Hirsch, the graduate of the University Of Illinois College Of Medicine in Chicago and “the New York City chief medical examiner who raced to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and returned to the morgue with every rib broken to face the monumental forensic challenge of identifying the 2,753 victims of the attacks…”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/nyregion/charles-s-hirsch-new-yorks-chief-medical-examiner-on-9-11-dies-at-79.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1937: Based on information that first appeared in Juedische Rundschau,“a journal of the Zionist Federation in Germany” relying on a study prepared by Ernst Karn, “996 teachers and professors have left Germany” since the Nazis came to power with “239 of them settling in the United States”  where 21 are working at Harvard and 12 are at Yale.

1937: According to a press announcement “principals of the Jewish School of Music in Pinsk face court proceedings because students sang “the first act of Puccini’s opera ‘Tosca’ which takes place in a Catholic Covent” in Yiddish “outraged Christian feelings and profaned religion.”

1938: Mrs. Joseph Stroock, a member of the national Youth Aliyah committee of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America announced that a total of $20,000 was contributed last night to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.

1940: At today’s meeting of its stockholders, The Workers Bank, Ltd. Of Tel Aviv, the central bank of the cooperatives in Palestine, declared the tenth annual dividend of 4 per cent on its common stock.

1940: President Roosevelt met with Victor Perlmutter today at the White House from 1:23 to 1:27 after which he dined alone.

1941: Two thousand people who “attended dedication exercises” today “for the New Msifta Building of the Heshivah Torah Voadath, a Jewish parochial school heard speeches by Rabbi Isaac Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, State Supreme Court Justice Philip M. Kleinfled and Rabbis Morris Horowitz, Judah Sltzes, Moses Yoshor, Philip Mendelowitz, Solomon Heinan and M.A. Kaplan.

1941: At the Hotel Chelsea, in Atlantic City, the five hundred delegates attending the closing session of the seventeenth annual convention of the Young People’s League of the United Synagogue of America adopted a resolution calling “upon Great Britain to open Palestine to refugee Jews and give freedom and citizenship to those Jews now held in concentration camps” controlled by the British.

1942: After being open for only two weeks, the Belzac Concentration Camp has processed 15,000 Jews most of whom were from the Liviv Ghetto.

1943: Senate Majority Leader Barkley and House of Representatives Minority Leader Joseph Martin, Jr. were among the speakers at tonight’s “Voice of Washington” meeting where attendees called for the establishment of sanctuaries in the United States, Palestine and neutral countries” for the Jews who have escaped the “atrocities which have already taken a toll or more than two million Jewish men, women and children and which threaten  death to the rest of Jews in Europe.”

1943: “The German-controlled Vichy radio asserted today that Hungarian Jews who thus far have been subject to labor service would be called up,” starting in April “for military duty for the first time.”

1944: Moshe Sertok, the head of the international department of the Jewish Agency, asked Oliver Stanley, the Colonial Secretary to allow any Jew reaching Istanbul from Nazi-occupied Europe to be admitted to Palestine.

1945(16th of Nisan, 5705): SS Sergeant Adolf Storms reportedly shot “a Jew who could no longer walk during a forced March in from Deutsch Shuetzenn to the village of Hartberg.”

1945(16th of Nisan, 5705): Nine women tried to escape from Ravenbruck. They were caught and executed.

1946: “St. Louis Woman,” a Harold Arlen musical opened its Broadway run at the Martin Beck Theatre

1946: Birthdate of Lesley Sue Goldstein who gained fame as recording star Lesley Gore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/arts/music/lesley-gore-teenage-voice-of-heartbreak-dies-at-68.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1947: Benjamin Teller, who is managing the Hapoel’s American Tour announced today that the soccer team is scheduled to fly out of Tel Aviv on April 6 and arrive in New York on April 10.

1947: The Rabbinical Council of Palestine called on the terrorists to halt their actions and “issued a strong denunciation of terrorism as ‘completely contrary to Jewish religious feeling.’”

1947: The 18 Americans who made up most of the crew of the SS Ben Hecht, formerly the Abril, boarded the Marine Carp, an American ship headed for New York. The British had declined to press charges against the crew.

1948: Because no supply convoys have reached Jerusalem from the Tel Aviv area with commodities since March 24 because of attacks by Arab troops, there has been a “growing shortage of fresh food for the Jewish inhabitants of the city resulting in the “introduction” today “of bread rationing and the restricting of the amount of butter given to children.

1948: In pre-state Israel, in response to Arab aggression, the Yishuv extended the call to active duty to “men and single women” between the ages of 26 and 25.

1949: Husni al-Za'im who had become Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Army in May 1948, seized power today in a bloodless coup that would de-stabilize Syria with ramifications that have lasted into the 21st century for both Israel, the region and the world as a whole.

1949: Yigal Yadin and Walter Eytan returned to King Abdullah’s villa at Shuneh to try and reach final armistice terms with the Jordanians.

1950: In Ottawa, Canadian attorney and CFL owner Sam Berger and his wife gave birth to Canadian MP David Berger.

1950(12th of Nisan, 5710): Seventy-seven-year-old Léon Blum French, the former French premier, passed away. Leon Blum was born in Paris, France, on April 9, 1872. The son of Jewish parents, he studied law at the Sorbonne. He became active in politics as result of the Dreyfus Affair. Blum became a leader of the Socialist Part. He was part of a group of left-wing parties in France known as the Popular Front that opposed Hitler in the 1930's. As leader of the Popular Front and head of the Socialist Party, Blum became Prime Minister of France, the first Jew to hold that position in the history of France. Blum lost his post before the outbreak of the war over the issue of the Spanish Civil War. After the Germans invaded France, Blum was arrested by the Petain Government which tried him along with other officials of the Third Republic on charges of betraying France. He was found guilty in 1942 and held by the Germans until 1945. Blum briefly returned to public life after the warhttp://jbuff.com/c031110.htm

For more see Leon Blum: From Poet to Premier by Richard Stokes

http://books.google.com/books?id=T8fSuMogggoC&pg=PA270&lpg=PA270&dq=Prime+minister+leon+blum+obituary&source=bl&ots=rockzz3E_L&sig=LWk1kL-fs3g1EBjDto1KANL1Sps&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ExBWUaOkBpDY9ATpkoDwBA&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=Prime%20minister%20leon%20blum%20obituary&f=false

1951: Louis “Lou” Lipman, the Army veteran and star Long Island University basketball player

1951: Neve Shalom, a new synagogue, was dedicated in Istanbul,.The building holds more than 1,000 people, and the 400,000 Lira it cost to be built was raised by the Jewish community of Galata, Pera, and Chichli.

1953(14th of Nisan, 5713): Ta'anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1953: “Jeopardy” a film noir with music by Dimitri Tiomkin, based on “A Question of Time,” “a radio play by Hebrew Hawkeye Maurice Zimm” was released in the United States today.

 

1953(14th of Nisan, 5713): Yiddish novelist and poet Abraham Reisen passed away “was arrested in connection with a point-shaving scandal that had gripped college basketball” and eventually received a suspended sentence “for violating New York penal code #302 in connection with tossing a game against Duquesne in January, 1949”

1953: Albert Einstein announced his revised unified field theory.

1954(25thof Adar II, 5714): Sixty-seven-year-old Austrian born Dr. Solomon Gandz, the former librarian and Professor of Arabic and Medieval Hebrew at Yeshiva, passed away today while serving as “Research professor in the History of Semitic Civilization at Dropsie College” in Philadelphia.

1957: "The Libyan government began to enforce a law forbidding any individual or corporation in Libya 'to make personally or indirectly an agreement of any nature whatsoever with institutions or persons residing in Israel.' The penalty was eight years in prison and a heavy fine."

1957(27thof Adar, II, 5717): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Parah

1957(27thof Adar II, 5717): Fifty-eight-year-old Smith College cum laud graduate and “immediate past president of the National Council of Jewish Women” Katherine A. Engle the wife of attorney Irving M. Engle, the President of the American Jewish committee and mother of Mrs. Richard W. Levy of New Orleans, who had been chairman of the board of HIAS and a member of the board of governors of the Hebrew University passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/03/31/90785342.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1957: In New York City, Helen and Sam Reiser gave birth to Paul Resier whose credits include “My 2 Dads,” “” Diner, “Aliens” and “Mad About You.”

1958: Syrian forces attack Israelis at Lake Hula.

1958: “Strong Men Face to Face” published today provided a highly negative review of Edna Ferber’s latest novel Ice Palace which is described as a plot that is “absent minded to the point of being ramshackle” and which readers who have an “affection for fiction” will regret to find this work “billed as a novel.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9D0CEEDD1139EF3BBC4850DFB5668383649EDE

1962(24thof Adar II, 5722): Seventy-one-year-old Boston born, NYU trained career educator Harold Fields, the WW I veteran and executive director of the National League For American Citizenship who raised a son, Arthur, with his wife Edith passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/03/31/83493361.pdf

1962: “It’s Trad, Dad!” a musical comedy directed by Richard Lester, produced by Max Rosen and Milton Subotsky, who also wrote the screenplay and starring Helen Shapiro was released today in the United Kingdom.

1962: “Delousing of Harry Bogen” published today reviewed “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” starring Elliot Gould as Harry Bogen and introducing Barbra Streisand as Miss Marmel-stein.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,895977,00.html

1964(17thof Nisan, 5724): Third Day of Pesach

1965: In Los Angeles “Mission Impossible” stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain gave birth to actress Juliet Rose Landau

1966: Sixty-six-year-old Joseph Mortimer Lichtenauer, the husband of Irma Lena Kaufrman Lichetenauer who “received the President’s prize for design for mural decorations and whose “portraits and decorative pictures were exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition” passed aay today.

1966: In Hartford, CT, Rabbi and Mrs. Abraham N. AvRutick announced the engagement of their daughter Naiomi to Harold L. Rosenbaum, the graduate of Yeshiva University who is enrolled at the New Jersey College of Medicine.

1967(18thof Adar II, 5727): Linguist Uriel Weinreich of whom Dovid Katz said, "Though he lived less than forty-one years, Uriel Weinreich ... managed to facilitate the teaching of Yiddish language at American universities, build a new Yiddish language atlas, and demonstrate the importance of Yiddish for the science of linguistics” passed away today.

1970: “Applause,” the Tony Award musical “with a book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Charles Strouse and starring Lauren Bacall (Betty Joan Perske) in her Tony Award winning portrayal of “Margo Channing” and featuring Bonnie Franklin opened on Broadway today.

1971(4thof Nisan, 5731): Seventy-two-year-old Rabbi Albert N. Mandelbaum, the Jerusalem born son of Rabbi Simcha and Esther Mandelbaum and former chairman of the executive board of the Rabbinical Council of America who was educated at the University of Nebraska, the University of Louisville, and Yeshiva University who was the husband of "the former Lea Gordon” with whom he had two sons and one daughter passed away today.

1972(15thof Nisan 5732): Pesach

1972: Larry Blyden began playing the role “Hysterium” in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” for which he earned the “Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

1973(26thof Adar II, 5733): Sixty-nine-year-old Harvard trained and Lasker Award winning physician, Dr. Sidney Farber, the “director of research at the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation” who was the husband of “the former Norma C. Holzman” with whom he had three children – Ellen, Stephen and Thomas – passed away today.

1973: Birthdate of Adam Michael Goldstein, the native of Philadelphia known as DJ AM who found fame and fortune in Los Angeles.

1975(18thof Nisan, 5735): Fourth Day of Pesach

1975(18thof Nisan, 5735): Eighty-three-year-old Nancy Cullen the wife of Selfton Louis Cullen, the sister of Marjorie Cohen and the daufhter of Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs and Lady Deborah Isaacs passed away in Sydney, Australia.

1975: Agudas Achim, the Orthodox congregation in Little Rock, AR, breaks ground for its new building which is located in western Little Rock.

1976: Israeli Arabs hold their first Land Day which was public held a protest strike against the expropriation of lands in the Galilee "for purposes of security and settlement."

1976: Five Israeli Arabs were killed by security forces during mass protests in Nazareth, Israel. As a result of this deadly incident congregants of Mishkan Israel, a synagogue in New Haven, raised $10,000 so that their rabbi, Bruce M. Cohen, could go to Israel to promote peace. Three weeks later, while giving a speech in Jerusalem, Rabbi Cohen was approached by a young Israeli Arab, Farhat Agbaria, who shared his dream. Together they founded Interns for Peace.

1976: The first season of “One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin ended tonight.

1977: In Vienna, the annual International meeting of Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee whose theme had been “Mission and Witness of the Church” came to an end.

1979: “The Silent Partner” a crime film starring Elliot Gould was released in the United States today.

1979: Birthdate of Berkley, CA, native and currnt Oakland, CA resident Michael David Lukas, the holder of an MFA from the University of Maryland and author of The Oracle of Stamboul whose other works include The Watchman of old Cairo, “The Hypocrisy of Hanukkah” and “From Cairo to Kolkata.” (Editor’s note – he might be worth the read since he appears to be an author who sees Judaism as culture thousands of years old which is more than just a three-legged stool of Anti-Semitism, Israel and the Holocaust, as important as those things might be)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/opinion/sunday/the-hypocrisy-of-hanukkah.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/travel/jewish-history-cairo-tunis-kolkata.html

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-18116-0

1980: Yakov Kreizberg made one of his first public appearances as conductor today, when he led an orchestra at the Marble Collegiate Church in a performance of Haydn's Symphony no. 88.

1981: In the United Kingdom, premiere of “Chariots of Fire” based, in part on the life of Harold Abrahams with a score conducted by Harry Rabinowitz.

1981: In his review of ‘Woman of the Year” published today Frank Rich praised the work of Lauren Bacall whom she said, “is a natural mutual musical-comedy star.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/30/theater/stage-lauren-bacall-in-woman-of-year.html?pagewanted=all

1981: “The Geha Interchange which is the confluence of Highway 4 and Road 481 in Israel,” which “is named after the Geha Mental Health Center” and which “frms the border between Petah Tikva to Bnei Brak” was opened to traffic today.

1982(6thof Nisan, 5742): Seventy-four-year-old Austrian born, California grocery store chain owner Theodore Cummings, the political ally of Ronald Reagan passed away today while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Austria.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/01/obituaries/te-cummings74-envoy-to-austria.html

https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/cummings-theodore-e

1983(16th of Nisan, 5743): Second Day of Pesach

1983(16thof Nisan, 5743): Seventy-six year of Austrian born American high-profile photographer passed Lisette Model, away today. (As reported by Walter H. Waggoner)

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/31/obituaries/lisette-model-a-photographer-is-dead-at-76.html

 

1984: “Misunderstood” a movie version of the novel by the same name directed by Jerry Schatzberg was released today in the United States.

1984: In Albuquerque, NM, Sam and Jackie Bregman, both of whom are lawyers gave birth to Alex Bergman, who played baseball for LSU before signing with the Houston Astros.

1985: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Double Trouble” a sitcom starring Jean and Liz Sagal.

1988: U.S. premiere of the Geffen Film Company’s “Bettlejuice,” costarring Winona Ryder with music by Danny Elfman.

1991(15thof Nisan, 5751): First Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1993: The International Monetary Art Forum featuring the works of Fritz Ascher opened today in Washington D.C.

1993: Simone Veil completed almost fourteen years of service a Member of the European Parliament for France today.

1994: The two terrorists who attacked Yitzhak Rothenberg, age 70, of Petah Tikva with axes yesterday were arrested today.

1995(28th of Adar II, 5755): Fifty-nine year old  record producer Paul A. Rothchild passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/03/obituaries/paul-rothchild-record-producer-59.html

http://www.examiner.com/article/remembering-paul-rothchild

1996(10thof Nisan, 5756): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1997: The New York Times includes a review of "The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century" by Alan M. Dershowitz

2000: At least 23 Israeli and Palestinian Arabs were injured in clashes with Israeli security forces during an annual day of protests.

2000: In Great Britain, Channel Four broadcast the first episode of “Da Ali G Show, a British satirical television series created by and starring English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.”

2001: “Someone Like You,” a comedy based on a novel by Laura Zigman, directed by Tony Goldwyn and featuring Ellen Barkin and Peter Friedman was released in the United States today.

2002(17thof Nisan, 5762): Border Policeman Sgt.-Maj. Constantine Danilov, 23, of Or Akiva was shot and killed in Baka al-Garbiyeh, during an exchange of fire with two Palestinians trying to cross into Israel to carry out a suicide attack. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility.

2002: Al Aqsa terrorists took credit for today’s bombing of an Allenby Street coffee shop in Tel Aviv.

2002: Joelle Fiasham, a member of the CPUSA, was among those who endorsed the call today for a national holiday honoring Cesar Chavez.

2003: Het Parool, which began “as a resistance paper during the German occupation of the Netherlands” “became the first newspaper in the Netherlands to switch from broadsheet to tabloid format.”

2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including "The New Face of War: How War Will Be Fought in the 21st Century" by Bruce Berkowitz and the newly released paperback edition of SOROS: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire by Michael T. Kaufman.

2003: Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference

2003: A suicide bombing in the pedestrian mall entrance of a cafe in Netanya wounded more than 40 people. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it a “gift to the Iraqi people.”

2004: “Response to Benny Morris’ ‘Politics by other means’ in the New Republic” published today provided Ilan Pappe’s response to the views of this long time Israeli historian.

https://electronicintifada.net/content/response-benny-morris-politics-other-means-new-republic/5040

2005: Release date of “Live and Become” a French film about an Ethiopian Christian boy who disguises himself as a Jew to escape to Israel was directed by Romanian born Jewish director Radu Mihăileanu

2005(19th of Adar II, 5765): Ninety-one-year-old high hurdler record holder Milton Green who protested against Hitler by not participating in the 1936 Olympics passed away today.

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/MiltonGreen.htm

2005: Eli Aflalo began serving as Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor.

2005: Ruhama Avraham, a member of Kadima began serving as Deputy Internal Affairs Minister.

2006(1st of Nisan, 5766): Three Israelis were killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car after nightfall at the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, located west of Nablus. The vehicle blew up around 9:45 P.M. next to the Kedumim gas station. Security forces sealed roads in the area immediately in the wake of the attack. A new group linked to Fatah, the party headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group, from the Balata refugee camp in nearby Nablus, called itself Kateb al-Shahid Chamuda and identified the bomber as Mahmoud Masharka, 24, from the West Bank city of Hebron. Al-Manar TV in Lebanon broadcast a claim of responsibility from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Fatah. The three Israeli casualties had apparently picked up the suicide bomber, who was likely dressed as an observant Jew, as he was hitchhiking on the road. He then exploded in their car. It is not clear if the terrorist got in the car at the entrance to Kedumim or rode with the Israeli victims to Kedumim from another location. A rescue service official said medics could not approach the car, because it was still on fire nearly an hour after the blast. The blast scattered pieces of the car across a wide area. Rafaela Segal, who lives in Kedumim, said she heard the blast from her house, from where she can see the gas station. "I saw thick smoke rising from the gas station and at first I thought the gas station was on fire," she said. "Now all the roads are closed except for the emergency vehicles. The smoke has reached my windows," she told Israel Radio more than an hour after the blast. "Security forces are searching the area. "The Prime Ministers' Office blamed the Palestinian Authority for the attack, PMO official David Baker told Haaretz. "The Palestinian Authority continues to do nothing to prevent terror against Israelis. There are currently scores of terrorist alerts concerning attacks against Israelis in the works," said Baker. "The Palestinian Authority continues to be fertile ground for terrorist attacks, most notably because of the PA's aversion to taking any necessary steps to prevent terror," he added. The last suicide bombing in the West Bank was December 29, 2005, at an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint. An IDF soldier and two Palestinians were killed in addition to the bomber. This was the first suicide bombing claimed by a group other than Islamic Jihad since a cease-fire was declared in February 2005

2006: Lisa Kron's sparkling autobiographical play "Well” opened on Broadway when it premiered tonight at the Longacre Theater.

2006: Haaretz reported on how a piece of a Torah scroll passed from a former Nazi offer to a “holy man.” Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman was sitting yesterday in his home in Migdal Ha'emek and touching, for the umpteenth time, the parchment cut over 60 years ago from a Torah scroll in an Eastern European synagogue. Although the piece of parchment has been in his possession for several days, apparently it is still a source of great excitement for him. This parchment was cut by an officer in the German air force, the Luftwaffe, during World War II, from a Torah scroll; he used it as a cover for his officer's ID document. Now it has come into the hands of the rabbi of Migdal Ha'emek, head of the Migdal Ohr youth village and an Israel Prize laureate. Rabbi Grossman says Moti Dotan, the head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council, recently came to his house with a notebook in hand. Dotan had returned from a ceremony in honor of the 25th anniversary of the twin cities pact between the regional council and the Hanover district in Germany. Dotan said that at the conclusion of a festive evening, a member of the Hanover district council approached him and asked to speak to him. "My father, Werner Herzig, died a few weeks ago," said the man. "Before his death he said he wanted to speak to me, and he told me he had participated in the war and been involved in crimes. 'It's important for me to tell you this, because today there are Holocaust deniers,' [said the Herzig senior]." Dotan says Herzig added that his father told him he had participated in the burning of a synagogue on the Russian front. According to Dotan, Herzig junior gave him the ID document and asked him to find a holy man in the Lower Galilee and give it to him. "I thought that Rabbi Grossman did holy work, and he was the most suitable person to receive the notebook," says Dotan. "When I came to him and gave him the document, I told him the story, he held the parchment and began to cry," recalls Dotan. He says that Rabbi Grossman symbolizes all that is good in Judaism, and will make proper use of the item. Rabbi Grossman turns over the piece of parchment and reads from the text. The parchment is from the book of Deuteronomy, from the weekly portion "Ki Tavo." The rabbi reads: "...and distress wherewith thy enemy shall distress thee in thy gates ... then the Lord will make thy plagues remarkable, and the plagues of thy offspring, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and severe sicknesses, and of long continuance ... also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this Torah, them will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou art destroyed. And you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of the heaven for multitude" (Deuteronomy 28, 57-62). The rabbi is convinced that this is a "supreme message, with personal supervision. After 60 years, this notebook arrives in Israel, wrapped in these words of reproof, and is calling on us 'to awaken.' After all, the German could have cut the parchment from other books, from any of the Five Books of Moses, and he specifically cut out the section that speaks of redemption," said the rabbi. In recent days, Rabbi Grossman has shown the notebook to young people whom he met in the city, and according to him, it is causing a great deal of excitement. "It's a tangible thing, which you can see with your own eyes. You can see here the embodiment of evil, how after the destruction of a synagogue, this man had the daring to enter and to cut from the Torah scroll, only because he thought that the parchment was a suitable way to preserve his document." The rabbi promises to visit schools and young people with the notebook and to show it to them.

2007: “After the Wedding” a Danish movie nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film directed by Susanne Bier who co-authored the script was released in the United States today.

2008: In Jerusalem, as part of the Contemporary Music Concert at the Jerusalem Music Centre The Israeli Contemporary Players perform music by Josef Bardanashvili, Tristan Murail and Arnold Schoenberg.

2008: The Sunday New York Times featured a review of "The End of the Jews" by Adam Mansbach.

2008: In Washington, D.C., Aaron David Miller, a 20-year veteran of the State Department (most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations), discusses his new book, The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace at Politics and Prose Bookstore.

2008: Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House, a Jewish delicatessen located at the intersection of 172nd Street and Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, which opened in 1954 and closed today. (Personal note: One of the great joys of my childhood was eating at Wolfie's and Pumperniks - especially the latter. It was billed as the home of the pumpernickel bagel which for lovers of dark bread was indeed a delight)

2009: Reuven Rivlin was chosen to serve as the Speaker of the Knesset when he got 90 out of the 120 possible votes.

2009: Yeshiva University hosts the first day of the Israel and India International Conference styled"A Relationship Comes of Age" which includes the following presenters: Nathan Katz (Florida International University), Amit Kapoor (Management Development Institute, India), Efraim Inbar (Bar-Ilan University), Shlomo Mor-Yosef (Hadassah Medical Organization), Maina Chawla Sing (University of Delhi), P R Kumaraswamy (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Gadi Ariav (Tel Aviv University).

2009(5th of Nisan, 5769): Fifty-two-year-old Frank Stein, 'the face of Australian Jewry in Israel passed away today. (As reported by Raphael Ahren)

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/news/frank-stein-the-face-of-australian-jewry-in-israel-dies-aged-52-1.273264

2010: 80th anniversary of the founding of Ayanot

2010(15th of Nisan, 5770): First Day of Pesach

2010: A Chabad house in Budapest was stoned during a Passover Seder.

2011: “The Matchmaker” and “Seven Minutes in Heaven” are two of the movies scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2011: James Steinberg completed his term as the 16th United States Deputy Secretary of State.

2011:” Norman Mailer: The American” and “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: A memorial service for George Einstein is scheduled to be held at the Sandestin Beach Club in Sandestin Resort, Fl.

2011: Today the World Jewish Congress lauded Colombia’s decision not to recognize a Palestinian state, saying it showed courage in the face of pressure from neighboring countries.

2011: “The United States District Court in Lower Manhattan dismissed a case brought by Steven’s ex-wife Patricia Cohen based on charges of racketeering and insider trading.

2011: “Israel Air Force jets struck a group of Palestinian militants in southern Gaza, killing one gunman and wounding another as they rode a motorcycle. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed carrying out the dawn strike, saying it targeted Palestinians who had launched a short-range rocket across the border yesterday. No one was hurt in that attack, which followed a surge in fighting around Gaza this month.”

2012: One World One People, an exhibit of the works of renowned photographer Arnold Newman, is scheduled to come to an end at the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee.

http://www.jewishmuseummilwaukee.org/index.php

2012: “The Kid With a Bike,” “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” and “Footnote” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Film Festival.

2012: Shabbos Zingt - A Bay Area Yiddish ensemble that has created a new kind of Shabbos service, with Yiddish melodies and a Klezmer feel – is scheduled to appear at Shir Hadash in San Francisco.

2013: In Coralville, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host Shabbat Yeladim

 

2013:  An ensemble consisting of violinists Anna Ioffe and Alina Keitlin and harpsichordist Natilie Rosenberg is scheduled to perform at the Edin-Tamir Music Center.

2013: "The ( * ) Inn”, an early touchstone for experimental theater in Yiddish, is scheduled to be performed at the Abrons Arts Center in New York.

2013: Natural gas flow from the Tamar natural gas field began flowing this afternoon

2013: In Memphis, TN “Paul Goldenberg, the burly former cop who runs the Secure Community Network, the security arm of the national Jewish community” has played a key role with the Jewish community including Cantor Rick Kampf in preparing for today’s scheduled rally by the KKK. (As reported by JTA)

2014: “Thousands of French Jews attended an information fair today in Paris about moving to Israel amid an unprecedented spike in immigration to the Jewish state and a wave of anti-Semitic attacks.”

2014: The musical “If/Then” starring Idina Menzel as “Elizabeth” is scheduled to official open on Broadway at the Richard Rogers Theatre.

2014(28thof Adar II, 5774): Seventy-one-year-old Rivka Haut, a founder of the Women at the Wall and fighter for the rights of women within traditional Judaism passed away today.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york/rivka-haut-71-champion-agunot

http://forward.com/articles/195683/rivka-haut-quiet-warrior-who-battled-for-orthodox/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%202014-04-02&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29

2014: “Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story” is scheduled to be shown on the last night of the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Pittsburg Jewish Film Festival and the New Jersey Film Festival.

2014: “If/Then,” a musical starring Idina Menzel as “Elizabeth Vaughn” opened on Broadway at the Richard Rogers Theatre.

2014: “The Jews of Ioannnia gathered…to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the destruction of the community by the Nazis.”

2014: The 6thannual Gesher Jewish Day School Used Book Sale is scheduled to come to an end in Fairfax, VA.

2015: “The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer” is scheduled to be shown at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, PA.

2015: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to host a faculty colloquium featuring historian Elisha Russ-Fishbane on “Maimonidean Controversies in Egypt.”

2015: Dr. Derek Penslar is scheduled to speak on “Dreyfus Was Not Alone: Jewish Military Officers in the Modern World” at FIU.

2015: At the Center for Jewish History, Jeffrey S. Gurock, author of The Holocaust Averted is scheduled to deliver a lecture that asks the question “What might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred?What might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred?

2015:Carolyn Starman Hessel is scheduled to retire as Director of the Jewish Book Council.

2015: The festive opening of The Gazelle Valley Urban Wildlife Park took place this afternoon with birdwatching workshops, music and theater, and art projects.

2015(10thof Nisan): “According to the Book Of Joshua” that date on the Jewish calendar “of the first-ever mass Aliyah with the Biblical narrative relating that the Israelites crossed the Jordan River” today “ending their 40 years of wandering in the desert.” (As reported by Deborah Kamin)

2016: Yosef Garfinkel, Shalom Holtz and Lawrence Schiffman are scheduled to lead a discussion about the excavations and discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa (Elah Fortress) near Jerusalem and what they suggest about the era and figure of King David and our understanding of the Bible presented by the American Jewish Historical Society.

2016: Na’ama Gold is scheduled to facilitate Café Ivrit at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia.

 2016: The Hadassah Humanitarian Mission to Cuba is scheduled to come to an end today.

2016: The Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to host the final performance of “Dudu Fisher in Jerusalem.”

2016(20th of Adar II, 5776): Eighty-eight-year-old USC law school alum and entertainment ‘super lawyer” Seymour Lazar passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/business/seymour-lazar-flamboyant-entertainment-lawyer-dies-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2016: Rabbi Rachel Cowan is scheduled to moderate “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” at the Skirball Center.

2016: Geoff “Schwartz signed a one-year contract with the Detroit Lions.

2017(3rdof Nisan, 5777): Eighty-six-year-old Emerson College grad, successful businessman and philanthropist Ted Cutler passed away today.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/31/ted-cutler-premier-arts-patron-boston-dies/9YWb9gm7H5IpyPojsNtqYN/story.html

https://www.jta.org/2017/04/02/united-states/ted-cutler-boston-philanthropist-businessman-and-arts-patron-dies

2017: The biannual conference of Jewish Voice for Peace which will feature a speech by convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmeach Odeh is scheduled to open in Chicago.

2017: The Counsellor to King Mohammed VI of Morocco, Mr. André Azoulay, is scheduled to receive the American Sephardi Federation’s Pomegranate Award for Lifetime Achievement on the opening night of

The 20thAnnual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

 2017: “False Flag” and “The Origin of Violence” are scheduled to be shown at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

2017: Louis Black is scheduled to bring his unique brand of humor to the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2018: In Tel Aviv, Pele is scheduled to host what some consider an oxymoron --- A Vegan Seder.

2018: France J. Pruitt is scheduled to talk about her book Faith and Courage in a Time of Trouble “a memoir of a Belgian-Jewish girl and her family who were saved during the Nazi occupation of France through the compassion and heroism of French peasants from the southern part of the country” this afternoon at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

2018: Due to delays announced by Israel Railways “multitudes of Jews” will not be traveling to Jerusalem “this Passover” as promised by Transportation Minister Israel Katz.

2018: In New Orleans, LA, Temple Sinai is scheduled to host the Young Professionals Seder.

2018(14thof Nisan, 5778): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach

2018(14thof Nisan, 5778): Ninety-four-year-old Herbert Kaiser, the Brooklyn born son of Nettie Slavititski and house painter Max Kaiser, the WW II Navy Veteran, Swarthmore College graduate and Foreign Service Officer who in retirement raised millions of dollars for training medical personnel in South Africa passed away today. (As reported by Bart Barnes and Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/herbert-kaiser-diplomat-and-philanthropist-who-helped-train-black-medical-professionals-in-s-africa-dies-at-94/2018/04/03/6807bc68-368c-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html?utm_term=.8787602ef49d

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/obituaries/herbert-kaiser-94-health-care-champion-in-south-africa-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well2018(14thof Nisan, 5778): Eighty-four-year-old Michael Applebaum, the Newark born student of violinist of Efrem Zimbalist who reportedly had him change his name to Michael Tree, the name under which he founded the Guarneri String Quartet passed away today. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/obituaries/michael-tree-a-founder-of-the-guarneri-quartet-dies-at-84.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

https://www.violinist.com/blog/scottslapin/20184/25758/

2018(14thof Nisan, 5778): Eighty-four-year-old “corporate raider and philanthropist” Samuel Belzberg, the Calgary born son of Polish monger and the husband of Frances Belzberg with whom he had four children – Marc, Lisa, Wend and Sherry – passed away today. (As reported by Brooks Barnes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/obituaries/samuel-belzberg-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/remembering-sam-belzberg/

2019: In a week marked by the final end of the ISIS hold on territory in Syria and President Trump’s declaration that the Golan Heights is part of Israel, the question arises as to what impact this will have on President Assad, the Russian puppet ruler of the state that provides a home to Hezbollah.

2019(23rd of Adar II, 5779): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Parah

2019(23rd of Adar II, 5779): Ninety-eight year old Leonid Bernstein, “a highly decorated anti-Nazi fighter; who  sabotaged Nazi train transports and located the German V2 rocket production facility enabling its precise bombing by the Soviets” passed away today “in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Alat.”

2019: In New Orleans, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service is scheduled to host the Jewish Roots of Fashion Gala.

https://jcrs.org/events/jewish-roots-annual-gala/

 

2020: Rabbi Lawrence Kushner of Emanu-El in San Francisco is scheduled to lead “Getting a Head Start on Passover” via Zoom this afternoon.

2020: On-line this afternoon, Hebrew College is scheduled to present “Facing Your Fears: A Passover Teaching on Transforming Anxiety Into Understanding.”

https://www.jewishboston.com/events/facing-your-fears-a-passover-teaching-on-transforming-anxiety-into-understanding/#utm_source=JewishBoston+This+Week&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020-03-26

2020: In keeping with the tradition of “esn, esn meyn kinder esn,” through the wonders of modern technology, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Immune-Boosting Meals” with Anna Gershenson.

2020: As part of a 3 month trial, scheduled to start today “The Bellamy’s restaurant in the House of Commons will offer kosher and halal food

2020(5th of Nisan, 5780): On the Jewish calendar Yahrzeit for fifty-four-year-old Amy Barnum, the wife of Joel Barnum with whom she raised three daughters – Emma, Sasah and Gail – and daughter Jack and Bette Kozlen of Omaha who was a pillar, in the truest sense of that term, of the Jewish community in Cedar Rapids and a driving force behind the Traditional Services at Temple Judah whose untimely passing canonly be described as a tragic loss for all of us.

https://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2017/Apr/Amy-M-Barnum/

2021(17thof Nisan, 5781): Third Day of Pesach; Second Day of the Omer

2021: Temple Beth Advodah is scheduled to present “The Great Afikoman Hunt, a challenging scavenger hunt around the temple grounds” which is a self-run activity that will challenge your mind and body as you follow clues to find the afikoman.

2021: JCCSF is scheduled to present a virtual “Klezmer Accordion Concert” with “accordionist Jim Rebhan and soprano Barbara Hollinger, a husband-and-wife duo, play a variety of new and old Passover songs and lively klezmer.”

2021: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston is scheduled to present online “a discussion with Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu and Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, director of the Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation at the Arava Institute, about the current challenges of climate change and equity in climate policy.”

2021: Anna Orbaczewska, a painter and multimedia artist based in Poland represented by lokal_30 gallery in Warsaw, and Rotem Reshef, an action painter based in Tel Aviv and New York, and currently artist in residence at RU” are scheduled to “discuss their engagement with feminist activism as women and artists, and how it impacts their participation, position, and presentation of their work in Poland, Israel, the U.S. (respectively) and across borders.

2021: In New Orleans, the National Council Of Jewish Women is scheduled to hold it Executive Committee Meeting.

2021: Based on reports published yesterday, President Reuven Rivlin will not begin consultations this week with Israel's political rivals that are designed to break the country's post-election deadlock.

2021: Based on reports published yesterday, Israelis planning to travel this Spring and Summer because of the improved Pandemic outlook will have to reconsider their plans do threats by Iranian backed terrorists groups.

2021: For the first time, Clevelanders driving down Triskett Road this morning will on Triskett Road will be able to see the historical marker “A Modern-Day Exodus” honoring Beth Israel-The West Temple.

https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/local_news/west-temple-third-jewish-entity-to-earn-historical-distinction/article_52c7c376-90c9-11eb-b9c7-5b52add9a1b2.html

 

 

 


This Day, March 31, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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March 31

1084: Henry IV, who had been embroiled in a conflict with the Papacy, was crowned Emperor by Clement III, called by some an anti-Pope. Within six years after this second coronation, Henry granted the Jewish community of Worms, the privileges of free commerce and exemption from taxation” and “designating the Jews as ‘subjects of his treasury,’” placing  “them under his immediate protection, so that neither royal nor episcopal functionaries could exercise any jurisdiction over them” including the power of taxation.

1146: Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII was present and joined the Crusade. Unlike the First Crusade, the Second Crusade was led by two monarchs - Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. The “German connection” led to more suffering for the Jews of the Rhineland. Thanks to the incitement by one monk, the town of Wurburg was demolished during the massacres of Jews living along the Rhine River. As had happened during the First Crusade, the Christian warriors decided to slaughter the Infidels in their midst as they moved to free the Holy Land from the Infidels. The growing class of Christian merchants benefited from the violence since the destruction of the Jewish community destroyed their Jewish competitors. All Christians did not engage in this anti-Semitic behavior. Bernard himself tried to protect the Jewish population. His message of Crusade was heard. His message concerning the Jews was not.

1283: Massacre of the Jews of Mayence in Germany.

1310: At the auto da fé held at Paris today, a converted Jew who had returned to Judaism also died at the stake.

1324: In his 53rd year, Henry II, “the last ruling and first titular King of Jerusalem” (part of the Christian fiction of control dating from the Crusades) passed away today.

1381: During a popular uprising in France known as The Revolt of the Maillotins, Jews in France were murdered, and their property plundered for next three or four days. The regent exercising royal power for the youthful Charles VI was unable to save the Jews or gain them indemnification for their loss.

1387: Sigismund of Luxemburg, who “drained the Jews of their wealth whenever he could, he protected them from some of the worst excesses,” was crowned King of Hungary and Croatia today.

1492: Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon issued the Alhambra Decree or Edict of Expulsion, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. Jews, unlike conversos and Marranos, were not subject to the Inquisition. So, the Church leveled a ritual murder accusation against them in Granada and was thus able to call for the expulsion of both Jews as well as Marranos from Spain. The Marranos themselves were accused of complicity in the case so both groups were ordered to leave within four months. Torquemada, the director of the Inquisition (and incidentally of Jewish descent), defended this against Don Isaac Abarbanel. The edict was passed, and over fifteen thousand Jews had to flee - some to the Province of Aragon and others, like Abarbanel, to Naples. Still others found temporary sanctuary in Portugal.

1499: In Milan, Bernardino de' Medici and Clelia Serbelloni gave birth to Giovanni Angelo Medici, who as Pope Pius IV issued a bull that improved the conditions of the Jews passed because it allowed them to stop wearing their yellow cap, buy land up to the value of 1,500 ducats and to trade in things other than old clothes. While they could speak with Christians, they could not have Christian servants. He also allowed the Jews to publish the Talmud as long as they did not use that word in the publication.

1547: Francis I, for whom Agostino Giustiniani, the first person to occupy a chair of Hebrew and Arabic at the University of Paris, became a pensioner passed away today.

1547: Henry II succeeded his father as King of France on his 28th birthday. Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno, the Italian Rabbi dedicated his commentaries on “The Song of Songs” and “Ecclesiastes” to the French monarch.

1596: Birthdate of Rene Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher who was one of the two main sources from which Spinoza derived his view of the world.

1621: Forty-two-year-old Phillip III, who supported the policy of making his realm Jew free and gave a free hand to the murderous Inquisition began passed away today.

1647: Ralph Cudworth who had been Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge since 1645 and who “maintained an extensive correspondence” with Isaac Abenda the hakam of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in London preached a sermon in the House of Commons that advocated “principles of religious toleration and charity.”

1648: In an attempt to explain the drop off in the production of vanilla, Commander Beekman of Essequibo and Pomeroon wrote the following letter to his superiors in Amsterdam today

“The Jew Salomon de la Roche having died some 8 to 9 months ago, the trade in vanilla has come to an end, since no one here knows how to prepare it, so as to develop proper aroma and keep it from spoiling. I have not heard of any this whole year. Little is found here. Most of it is found in Pomeroon, whither this Jew frequently traveled, and he sometimes used to make me a present of a little. In navigating along the river, I have sometimes seen some on the trees and picked with my own hands, and it was prepared by the Jew....I shall do my best to obtain for the company as much as shall be feasible, but I am afraid it will spoil, since I do not know how to prepare it.” [The letter is illustrative of the vital role Jews played in the production of vanilla.]

1661: Spanish-born and Hamburg educated publisher Joseph b Abraham Athias who settled in Amsterdam where he became a printer producing such volumes as “Tikkun Sefer Torah” (Order of the Book of the Law” “was taken into the Printers’ Guild today.

1688: The German Jews received permission to participate in the tobacco industry “but only on condition that they would build houses in Christianshavn, a suburb of Copenhagen on the island of Amager.

1722: Fifty –two-year-old Campegius Vitringa, the Elder, “a Dutch Christian Hebraist” whose works included a dissertation on the Synagogue and a “Commentary on Isaiah” passed away today at Franeker.

1745: Leah and Joseph Tobias gave birth to Joseph Tobias, Jr., the husband of Judith Tobias and father of Joseph, Leah and Isaac Tobias.

1745: The Jews of Prague were exiled today.

1764(27thof Adar II, 5524): Parashat Tazria; Shabbat HaChodesh

1764: On the same day that the Jews observed one of their special of their special Sabbaths, The Providence Gazette and Country Journal reported today that upwards of a thousand people have recored from Small-Pox due to the “practice of inoculation” which has led “many who opposed the practice to now embrace it.”  (Editor’s note -  Sounds eerily similar to the response to the Pandemic of 2020)

1768: New York City native Sara Rodriguez Rivera and Portugal native Aaron Edward Lopez, gave birth to Joshua Lopez whose first wife was Newport, R.I. native Rebecca Hays Touro and whose third wife was Mary Ann Gomez, the mother of Aaron Edwin Lopez.

1774(19thof Nisan, 5534): Fifth Day of Pesach

1774: As the Jews on both sides of the Atlantic ate the Matzot, the Boston Port Act which closed the port of Boston and which was one of the steps on the road to the American Revolution became law today.

1779(14thof Nisan, 5539) As the American Revolution dragged on for its fourth year, Jews observed the Fast of the First Born and prepared to sit down to a Seder this evening.

1781: Today “the Hungarian government issued a decree known as the Systematica gentis Judaicae regulatio, which wiped out at one stroke the decrees that had oppressed the Jews for centuries. The royal free towns, except the mining-towns, were opened to the Jews, who were allowed to settle at leisure throughout the country. The regulatio decreed that the legal documents of the Jews should no longer be composed in Hebrew, or in Yiddish, but in Latin, German, and Hungarian, the languages used in the country at the time, and which the young Jews were required to learn within two years.”

1783: Emperor Joseph II issued a proclamation allowing the Jews to live in so-called "Royal Cities" including Pest, which would later be the “Pest” in Budapest. By 1787 81,000 Jews would be living in Hungary. The Hungarian Jewish community would grow large and prosper but would all but perish in the Holocaust. Tragically, it was the Holocaust that produced Hungary’s most famous post-War Jew, Elie Weisel.

1789: In New York, Zipporah Levy and Benjamin Mendes Seixas gave birth to Esther B. Seixas, the wife of Naphtali Phillips whom she married in 1823 and the mother of Reuben, Rachel, Sarah and Zipporah Phillips.

1792: In London, Hannah Montefiore and Moses Ancona gave birth to their daughter Esther Ancona.

1796: Birthdate of Hermann Hupfeld, the German Biblical commentator who specialized on ‘the Old Testament” and whose writings “included a treatise on the early history of Hebrew grammar among the Jews” published in 1846.

1797: Solomon da Silva Solis and  Benvenida de Isaac Henrqiues Valtine , the daughter of Isaac Henriques Henriques Valentine and Simha Mandil and Solomon da Solis gave birth to Samuel Solis.

1799(24th of Adar II, 5559): Lorenzo Bertran was subjected to an auto-da-fe ("act of faith," in reality the public ceremony when the sentence of the Inquisition was read and carried out) in Seville. Supposedly he was the last person to be punished for attempting to lead others to Judaism in Spain. It was not the end of the auto-da-fe; a ceremony that was reported to have taken place in Mexico in isolated instance in the early 19th century.

1805: Founding of the Syrian Society which morphed in the Palestine Association whose members sought “to promote the study of the geography, natural history, antiquities and anthropology of Palestine and the surrounding areas, "with a view to the illustration of the Holy Writings”

1808: In Westphalia, which was ruled by Jerome Bonaparte a Jewish consistory “was introduced by decree.”

1808: Jacob Lazarus and Elizabeth Lazarus were married at the Great Synagogue.

1808: The French created Kingdom of Westphalia ordered Jews to adopt family names

1810: Birthdate of Hayyim Selig Slonimski a native of Byelostok, who was “a Hebrew publisher, astronomer, inventor” and a pioneer in providing Jews of eastern Europe with a scientific education.

1811: In Columbia, SC, Rebecca Phillips and Isaiah Moses who had been married since 1807 gave birth to Jacob I. Moses, who married Sarah Ottolengui after the death of his first wife, rinah J. Ottolenguie.

1812(5572): Fourth Day of Pesach

1814: Birthdate of Amsterdam native Meyer Hartog Silver, the husband of Rachel Silver and father of Phoebe Silver who was the father of Clara Silver, the issue of his second marriage to Rachel David Blok.

1817(14th of Nisan, 5577): Ta'anit Bechorot

1821: Abolition of the Portuguese Inquisition. The Inquisition was established in 1531 meaning it lasted for 290 years.

1825(12th of Nisan, 5585): Ta'anit Bechorot observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Quincy Adams.

1838: Two days after she had passed away, 16-year-old Betsy Jacob, the daughter of Jacob and Sarah Kate (Sinons) Jacob was buried today at the “Falmouth Jewish Cemetery.”

1839: Louis-Mathieu Molé, “Napoleon's advisor on Jewish affairs and was heavily involved with Napoleon's gathering of a Jewish Grand Sanhedrin in 1807,” completed his service as the 16th Prime Minister of France.

1843: Birthdate of anti-Semitic political leader Bernhard Forster, the brother-in-law of Friedrich Nietzsche.

1851: Birthdate of Sir Francis Henry Dillon Bell, the first native of New Zealand and the first Jew to serve as Prime Minister of the land of the Kiwis.

1853: In Hungary Michael Heilprin and his wife gave birth to Angelo Heilprin “an American geologist, paleontologist, naturalist, and explorer.”

1854: Birthdate of Joseph Schulen, the Munich banker who went into the brewery business in 1895, when he took over Munich’s bankrupt Unionsbrauerei and in 1904 “acquired Münchner Kindl, another failing brewery in Munich.” (As described by Yardena Schwartz)

1854: Birthdate of Hungarian born British inventor David Gestetner, the father of Sigmund and sidonie Gestetner whose inventions included the Gestetner Cyclograph.

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/david-gestetner/

1855: Birthdate of Alsace native Jacques Love, the son of Gabriel Loeb and wife of Selena Wiel who settled in Montgomery, AL where he was a member of the of the B’nai B’rith and the “wholesale grocery firm of Winter, Leb and Company

1856: 40 Harmonia, a large main-belt asteroid was discovered today by German-French astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt

1856: The Jews of Belarus or White Russia were denied the right to wear any distinctive garments that would mark them as different from the rest of the citizenry. At the time White Russia was part of the Czar's Russia with Poland and Lithuania to the west, Ukraine to the South, and Russia to the east. Minsk, home to a large Jewish population is today the capital of an independent Belarus.

1857: In San Francisco, Jesse (Isaias) Seligman and Henriette Seligman gave birth to Henry Max Seligman the husband of Adeliade (Addie) Seligman.

1858: One day after she had passed away, Louisa Collins, aged 2 years and 9 months and the daughter of John and Adelaide Collins was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1860(8thof Nisan, 5620): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Hagdol is observed for the last time during the Presidency of James Buchanan.

1861(20thof Nisan, 5621) Sixth Day of Pesach observed for the first time during the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

1863(11thof Nisan, 5623): Abraham Abraham, a native of Bath and an “optician and scientific instrument maker” who was the son of optician Jacob Abraham, and who served as President of the Liverpool Jewry’s Philanthropic Institute and Warden of “the Old Hebrew Congregation” passed away today.

1863: “The Will of Commodore Levy--The Bequest of the Monticello Estate to the People of the United States Void” published today described the litigation surrounding attempts to “break” the late Jewish naval hero’s will. “This was an action to obtain a construction of the will of Commodore Levy, in respect to the bequest of the People of the United States of a farm owned by him, and 200 acres adjoining it, at Monticello, Virginia, and also in respect to a bequest of $1,000 to the Jews' Hospital in this City. The Court now rendered the following judgment, declaring the devise and bequest of the Monticello estate, and the 200 acres adjoining, to the people of the United States void, and that said portions of the estate descended to and vested in the heirs at law and next of kin of the testator; also that the Jews' Hospital of New-York are entitled to have their bequest." Such was the endorsement upon the papers.”

1865: During the American Civil War, Philadelphian Morris Schlesinger, the First Sergeant of the Twelfth Regiment, USA was mortally wounded at the Gravelly Run, Virginia today.

1865(4th of Nisan): Rabbi Jacob Zevi ben Gamaliel Konigsberg author of Ha-Ketav ve-ha-Kabbalah passed away

1865: The new Synagogue of the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, (Gate of Heaven), in Rivington-street, between Ludlow and Orchard, was formally consecrated this afternoon. The building, which was erected in 1835, was occupied by a Presbyterian congregation until last November, when it was sold to its present occupants.

1866(15thof Nisan, 5626): Second Day of Pesach and Shabbath

1867: “The Insurance Companies and ‘Jew Risks’”published today reported on a meeting where members of the community including the mayor or Richmond expressed their anger over the decision of insurance companies to no longer accept ‘Jew Risks.’ The mayor, who had been in the insurance business for years, told the crowd that he had numerous dealings with Jews over the years and found them to be honest. No reason was given for the decision of the insurance companies.

1868: Today Barrister Sir Julian Goldsmid, the Vice Chancellor of London University and MP married Virginia Philipson with whom he had five children – Violet, Edith, Margherita, Beatrice and Maud.

1869(19thof Nisan, 5629): Fifth Day of Pesach

1869: “Blue pass to the floor of the Senate for the impeachment of the President printed by Adolph Simeon Solomons, one of the founders of the American Red Cross” bearing today’s date.

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3fq89

1871: A poem in Hebrew about the Western Wall by Henry Vidaver, who served as a rabbi at Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, United Hebrew Congregation in St. Louis, B’nai Jeshrun in New York and Sherith Israel in San Francisco, appeared in the newspaper Havatzelet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Vidaver_poem_1871.jpg

1872In the Netherlands, Bonn and Albertje Osterman gave birth to future Illinois resident Albert Osterman.

1875: Henry Moss married Matilda Leopold today.

1876: In Safed, Palestine, Hershel and Leach Benderly gave birth to American University of Beirut graduate Samson who came to the United States where he trained as a doctor before abandoning medicine for Jewish education with the founding of the Bureau of Education in New York where he lived with his wife, the former Hemdah C. Miller.

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/the-benderly-boys-and-american-jewish-education

1876: Birthdate of William Henry Dieterich, the anti-Semitic and “somewhat pro-German” Senator from Illinois who lost his bid for re-election in 1938 thanks in part to the efforts of Henry Horner, the states Jewish governor.

1878: It was reported today that “foreign Jews trading in Russia” are now have the same legal standing as native Russian merchants.

1878: “The Order of B’Nai Brit” published today traces the history of the history of the Jewish fraternal organization which was founded 35 years ago in New York City.

1878: It was reported today that “foreign Jews trading in Russia” are now have the same legal standing as native Russian merchants.

1878: Birthdate of University of Chicago undergraduate and Harvard trained attorney Benjamin Samuels, who rose to the Presidency of the Yellow Cab Company in his native Chicago while serving as the President of B’nai B’rith and founding “Leo N. Levi Memorial Hospital in Hot Springs, AR where the treatment of arthritis was of primary concern and raising his son Robert with his wife Martha.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/05/31/101465856.pdf

1880(19thof Nisan, 5640): Fifth Day of Pesach

1880(19thof Nisan, 5640): Forty-four-year-old Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski the son of Tadeusz Wieniawski, who converted to Catholicism before he earned his medical degree and Regina Wolf, “the daughter of a noted Jewish physician from Warsaw” passed away today.

1880: Alexander II of Russia was assassinated, and with him his half-hearted liberalism. He was succeeded by Alexander III who, devoted to medievalism, urged the return to Russian civilization. The most influential person during his reign was Pobestonostov, his financier and procurator of the Holy Synod, who earned the title "the Second Torquemada."

1881(1stof Nisan, 5641): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1881: In London, Morris and Anna (Mishkowsky) Goldforb gave birth to C.C.N.Y (B.S.) and Columbia University (Ph.D.) trained biologist Dr. Abraham Goldforb, the CCNY Professor specializing in physiology and experimental embryologist who was the husband of Dr. Frances Shostac and father of Mrs. Miriam Dinerman.

1882: One of two birthdates (the other being March 21) of Friederike Massaryk, the native of Austria, who converted to Protestantism in 1903 and gained game as actress and soprano Fritzi Massary.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/massary-fritzi

1883: In Russia, “Joseph and Etta (Belitsky) Elvove gave birth U of Kentucky undergrad and George Washington University trained pharmacist Elias Elvove, the husband of Elka Milatiner and member of Adas Israel in Washington who pursued a career with the “U.S. Hygienic Laboratory.” (Another source show his birthdate as March 22. )

1885(15THof Nisan, 5645): Pesach

1885: The New York Times reported that “the Jewish festival of Pesach, or Passover, instituted to commemorate the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, commenced last evening and its celebration will be continued among the orthodox Hebrews throughout the world for the next eight days. This festival is also known as Hag Ha’Matzos, or the fest of the unleavened bread.”

1889: The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated. One of Chagall’s most famous paintings was “Eiffel Tower, Serenade.”

1888(19thof Nisan, 5648): Pesach Shel Shabbat

1889: Birthdate of St. Louis native and WW I veteran Irwin Sale the Washington University trained lawyer who on to serve as an Assistant United States Atorney.

1890: The New York Times reported that “the diary of Sir Moses Montefiore and Lady Montefiore which the Belforde Clark Company published in two octave volumes covers the period from 1812 to 1883. The papers of Sir Moses were left to his Secretary, Dr. Lowe, for arrangement and publication, but Dr. Lowe died upon completing the work and son of Sir Moses, now a resident of this country, then carried it forward.”

1891: In Bilgoraj, Pinchas Mendl Zinger, a rabbi and author of rabbinic commentaries, and Basheva Zylberman gave birth to Hinde Ester Singer Kreytman, the sister of Joshua and Isaac Bashevis Singer who gained fame as Yiddish author Esther Kreitman.

1892(1stof Nisan, 5652); Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1892: NYU grad and Columbia Law School trained attorney Fredric Ullman, the German born sone of David and Charlotte (Loeb) Ullman and the president of Temple Beth Zion and the Jewish Hospital, both of Buffalo, NY married the former Beatrice Hirsh today.

1892: It was reported today that 69 nine-year-old Mark Samuel, a former resident of Toronto, has passed away in London. He had found M & L Samuel in 1855 and helped found the Toronto branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association.  He was a supporter of efforts to settle Russian Jews in the Northwest Terriotories.

1892: The SS Massilia, the steamship which had previously brought several Jews from Russia who were infected with typhus is scheduled to arrive in New York today.  Health authorities will be paying close attention to the passengers since they are similar to the ones brought here before.

1893(14th of Nisan, 5653): Ta'anit Bechorot

1893(14th of Nisan, 5653): Alexander Levi one of the earliest settlers and earliest Jewish settlers of Dubuque, Iowa, passed away today.

1893: A group of Boston Jews belonging to Adath Israel petitioned Judge Ely for the return of wine and brandy which the Judge had previously ruled had been wrongfully seized by the police. Passover begins tonight and the Jews need the wine for the Seder. While the Judge said he would do all that he could to help with the return, “he could find no authority to order the wines returned before May.”

1893: The New York Times reported that “the celebration of the feast of Pesach, or the Passover, will be begun by Jewish people throughout the world at sunset this evening and will be continued for eight days by the Orthodox Jews. Those who have accepted the reform ritual, among them a large number of the Jews in America, continue the celebration only seven days, the first and last days of that period being alone regarded as of special significance and celebrated as holy days.”

1894: Birthdate of Anatol Josephewitz, was a Jewish Siberian immigrant to the United States from Omsk, Russia, who gained fame as Anatol Marco Josephs, the man who invented and patented the first automated photo booth in 1925, which was named the "Photomaton".

1894: It was reported today that Russia is changing its rules about naturalizations and that “foreign Jews will be excluded” from applying for citizenship in the Czarist Empire.

1894: “For the Jews in Palestine” published today described the appeal made by Abraham Neurmak, the rabbi at New York’s Orach Chaim to provide aid for those living in Eretz Israel.  “The North American Relief Society” under the presidency of Myer Isaacs has already responded with a donation of one hundred dollars.

1894: As of today, there are about 4,000 Polish Jews living in Zarephath, Hebron, Tiberias and Jerusalem. They came to Palestine to seek refuge from Russian persecution.

1895: “A Charity For Children” published today described “the good work of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.”

1895: “Cider in Etymology” published today traces the origins of the English word “cider” which according to Sir George Birdwood has its origins in the Hebrew word “Shekar.”

1895: Four days after he had passed a way, Roman native Giuseppe di Rubino Moro, the husband of the former Rachel Montefiore and father of Arthur and Sarah Moro was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1896: In New York, the Herald Square Theatre will host a special performance of “The Heart of Maryland” that is a fundraiser for the Hebrew Infants’ Asylum.

1896: “More than 1,000 pushcart vendors” attending a meeting tonight at the Hebrew Institute which was held under the auspices of the City Vigilance League and presided over by New York May Strong.

1896: In New York, Palmer’s Theatre was the site of fundraiser for the benefit of the A.C. Sisterhood, a Jewish organization headed by Rebecca Kohut, the wife of the late Dr. Alexander Kohut that “supports a kindergarten, day nursery, relief bureau and employment bureau.”

1897: The improbably named “Jack the Jew” that went off at odds of 9 to 10 won the first race on a sloppy track in New Orleans.

1897: Funeral services for the late Louis Israel, the owner of one of the largest livery stables in Brooklyn, will take place at Temple Beth Elohim today.

1897: Massachusetts Congressman introduced the following resolution in the House of Representatives:

“Resolved, That the Secretary of State be requested to demand from the Russian Government that the same rights be given to Hebrew –American citizens in the matter of passports as now are accorded to all other classes of American citizens and also to inform the House of Representatives whether any American citizens have been ordered to be expelled from Russian or forbidden the exercise of ordinary privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants because of their religion.”  (Editor’s Note – This champion of Jewish rights is John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald who provided the name for his famous grandson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy)

1898: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at Temple Beth-El will officiate at the funeral of the late Rabbi Emanuel Schwab. Cantor Hass of Adas Israel will preside over the internment in the Machpel Plot at Cypress Hills Cemetery

1899: Rumania barred Jews from professional and agricultural schools/

1899: Birthdate of Alexander Solomon, the native of Toronto and member of the Jewish Legion who served in Palestine before returning to Canada where he practiced law for 27 years.

1900(1stof Nisan, 5660: Parashat Tazria; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh

1900: Today, at Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon which was a eulogy for the late Dr. M. Wise “using as a text Second Samuel, Chapter III, Verse 38: ‘Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen in Israel?’”

1901(11th of Nisan, 5661): On Jewish calendar Yahrzeit of Rabbi Isaiah Horowtiz

1902: Today at a meeting of the Board of Health, “members of the board brought the fact that the produce dealers on the east side” home to large immigrant Jewish population “are violating many laws of health and the chief offenders are those who sell polluted milk.”

1903: The Times of London correspondent in St. Petersburg reported that there are factories in South Russia, “especially in Kertch and Odessa” that are “chiefly in the hands of Greeks and Jews” which “employ men of great archaeological learning” to produced fake antiques that are so well-made that they “deceive experts.”  (Editor’s note: Is the report correct or is it one more anti-Semitic canard from the land of pogroms and blood libels?)

1903: Birthdate of Warsaw native Aaron B. Tart, the attorney and director and  executive vice president of the Organization for Rehabilitation Through Training (ORT)

1904(15thof Nisan, 5664): First Day of Passover

1904(15thof Nisan, 5664): Sophia Karp, born Sara Segal in Romania, who became a leading performer in the New York Yiddish Theatre working with such giants as Abraham Goldfaden, Israel Grodner and Sokher Goldstein passed away today at the age of 42 or 43

1904: The New York Times reported that “at sunset last evening the Jewish people throughout the world began the celebration of the festival of "Pesach," or the Passover. This festival was instituted to celebrate the deliverance of the children of Israel from their long bondage in the land of Egypt, and, lasting for eight days, is a season of peculiar observances.”

1905: Dorothy Levitt, the first English woman ever to compete in a motor race drove from the Adelpi Hotel in Liverpool to Coventry and then on to the De-Dion showroom in Great Marlborough Street in London, retracing the 205-mile trip she had made the day before.

1906(5thof Nisan 5666): Parashat Vayika

1907(16thof Nisan, 5669): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1907: It was reported today that Secretary of State Root does not see how he could intervene on behalf of the Jews of Romania since “the uprising of the peasantry” which has brought so much to the Jews “appears to be political” instead of religious.

1908: It was reported today that “Jacob Saperstein, the editor of The Jewish Morning Journal, who a has vigorously denounced Saturday’s Anarchist outbreak in Union Square” has received at least three letters all in Yiddish one of which demanded money and the other two threatening his life but none of which he said worried him or would influence his actions.

1908: Today’s Extraordinary Sale at Abraham and Straus included $5.00 suitcase being sold for $3.97 and $16 Princess Bureaus being sold for $10.00.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1908/03/31/issue.html

1909: “The Man of Few Books” published today which questioned the views of Harvard President, Dr. Charles W. Eliot “who opposed efforts to limit the admission of Jews and Catholics to Harvard,” on what books should be read to provide “a liberal education” noted that “Assuredly Moses and the authors of the Bible were “fraught with a universal insight into things.”

1910: Sidney Sonnino, whose father Issacco Saul Sonniono was an Italian Jew who converted Anglicanism, completed his service as Prime Minster of Italy.

1910: Luigi Luzzatti began serving as Italy’s 31st Prime Minister making him the second Jewish person to hold the position; the first being Alessandro Fortis.

1911: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise delivered an address tonight in Boston on “The Moral and Economic Effects of Race Discrimination” in which he said that “America’s countenancing Russia’s refusal to recognize passports issued by” the United States “to former Russian Jews is to accept such discrimination as valid.”

1911(2ndof Nisan, 5671): Eighty-year-old Augusta Lasker, the German born wife of Samuel Lasker with whom she had five children – Henry, Sallie, Harry, Bettie and Esther – passed away today in Little Rock, AR after which she was buried in the Oakland and Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park.

1912: It was reported that “Interesting archaeological discoveries, showing the observance as far back as 430 B.C. of the Jewish Passover, the festival commemorative of the exodus from Egypt, which Jews throughout the world will celebrate for a week beginning the evening of April 1, are described in the current issue of The American Hebrew.”

1912: The Patriotic League of America, an organization dedicated to helping Jewish young men pursue careers in the army and navy has invited 200 service men stationed in and near New York City to be its guests at Seders for the first two nights of Passover at the Tuxedo Hall in New York. Adjutant General A.F. Ladd of the War Department has responded positively to the League’s lobbying efforts on behalf of the Jewish servicemen and has directed commanding officers to allow the Jewish soldiers to have furloughs so that they can observe the holiday which begins on the evening of April 1.

1912: It was reported that Leopold Plaut, President of the United Hebrew Charities has issued a circular asking that the families of deceased Jews donate the money normally spent for flowers at a funeral to his organization. The organization will send acknowledgements to the donor and the family of the deceased, acknowledging the gift without mentioning the amount.

1913: “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, a play with music by Louis F. Gottschalk “opened at the Majestic Theatre in Los Angeles” today.

1914: Reverend Aaron E. Bullard, President of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, in Ocean Grove said that he meant no disrespect to Jews when he took issue with the fact that under a Borough Government in Ocean Grove that a Jews could be elected to the management of a “Christian resort” saying that complaints on this point by the Young Men;s Hebrew Association of Asbury Park were unfounded since he has “eaten at their table” and has the “highest respect” for a number of Jews.

1915(16thof Nisan, 5675): Second Day of Pesach

1915: Lord Oxford and Asquith wrote in his diary “I think I have already referred to Herbert Samuel’s dithyrambic memorandum, urging that in the carving up of the Turk’s Asiatic dominion we should take Palestine, into which the scattered Jews would in time swarm back from all the quarters of the globe and in due course obtain Home Rule.” “Curiously the only other partisan of this proposal is Lloyd George, who, I need not say does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it will be an outrage to let the Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of agnostic, atheistic France” (As reported by JTA)

1915(16thof Nisan, 5675): Seventy-four-year-old Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, the eldest son of Baron Lionel de Rothschild and the grandson of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the founder of the English branch of the famous banking family passed away today.

1915: In Egypt, Colonel John Henry Patterson swore in the new volunteers for the Zion Mule Corps and invited them to ‘Pray with me that I should not only, as Moses, behold Canaan from afar, but be divinely permitted to lead you into the Promised Land’

1916(26thof Adar II, 5676): Fifty-year-old Maurice Rothschild, a member of the New York Exchange passed away today.

1916: The Jewish War Sufferer’s Bazar which is being held in the Grand Central Palace closed at six o’clock this evening because of Shabbat and will reopen tomorrow evening at six o’clock when a record breaking crowd is expected to attend the fair.

1917: “The latest official cablegram” received tonight at the United States State department “regard the torpedoing of the British steam Crispin stated that out of the sixty-nine Americans on board two appear to have been killed by an explosion and eighteen…more are still missing. (This is the latest report of the what those who wanted the United States to enter the war on the side of the Allies called “unrestricted submarine warfare” which would in fact lead to the U.S. going to war in April with all that that would mean for Americans in general and American Jews in particular.)

1918(18thof Nisan, 5678): Fourth Day of Pesach

1918: “Jews in Newark, NJ,” are scheduled to hold a parade “this afternoon to celebrate the arrival in Palestine of the Jewish Administrative Commission”

1918: The members of Young Judea, “who have organized to help in the collecting the fund of one million dollars for the restoration of the Jewish homeland in Palestine” are scheduled to meet in cities across the United States “where plan for the restoration of a Jewish republic in Palestine will be discussed.”

1918: Members of the British Expeditionary Force were forced to cross back to the west bank of the Jordan River after having been defeated by Ottomans during the first Battle of Amman, the first leg of a British offensive following the capture of Jerusalem which was designed to eventually end with the capture of Damascus thus ensuring Britain’s post-war control of the region.

1918: Today, Dr. H.G. Enelow reviewed Jewish Theology Systematically and Historically Considered by Dr. Kaufman Kohler, the distinguished New York Rabbi and President of the Hebrew Union College.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C03E7DA1E3FE433A25752C3A9659C946996D6CF

1919: The Alumni Association the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary is scheduled to meet in New York today and “discuss the future of Judaism in America and special religious work in Palestine.”

1919: It was reported today that “Dr. David Levine has been chosen” to serve as the rabbi for “newly-formed Progressive Synagogue of Brooklyn”

1919: It was reported today that “Edmond A Guggenheim…has been appointed a special deputy police commissioner” who “will have charge of police affairs in the Bronx.

1920: According to the Treaty of Versailles as of today the Reichswehr (German Army) was to have army no more than 100,000 men in a maximum of seven infantry and three cavalry divisions which the Allies thoughts would make it impossible for the Germans ever to threaten the peace of Europe with an offensive action.

1920: In the aftermath of the Arab riots, some contended that today, Colonel Bertie Harry Waters-Taylor, Allenby’s Chief of staff had told Haj Amin al-Husseini that if he rioted during Holy Week, it would serve as proof that Arabs would never allow a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1921: Albert Einstein lectured in New York on his new theory of relativity.

1922: In Detroit, Michigan, “Sarah (née Applebaum) and David T. "D.T." Nederlander” gave birth to James M. Nederlander, the brother of Harry, Robert, Fred, Joseph; and Frances Nederlander who founded Nederlander Organization “one of the largest operators of legitimate theatres and music venues in the United States.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/theater/james-nederlander-theater-magnate-dies-at-94.html?_r=1

1922: In Berlin, American-born German movie producer Seymour Nebenzal and his wife Lisbeth Mary Else Nebenzal gave birth to producer and novelist Harold Nebenzal who “was in charge of foreign film production for many years for MGM, and also worked on many of the films of Billy Wilder.

1922: Birthdate of Lionel Davidson, the Hull, Yorkshire born son of the Davidovitz family who gained fame as the “noted British thriller writer whose novels brought to life far-flung setting like Prague, Tibet, Israel and Siberia.” (As reported Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/arts/01davidson.html?searchResultPosition=4

1922: “Herman and Mollie (Schesten) Shay, poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe” gave birth to “Art Shay, a photographer who chronicled the famous and powerful, including nine presidents, as well as the everyday life of mid-20th-century Americans…” (As reported by James Estrin)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/obituaries/art-shay-whose-camera-captured-the-famous-and-the-everyday-dies-at-96.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

http://www.artshay.com/

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/4/30/18388126/art-shay-legendary-photographer-dies-at-96

1922: In the Bronx, Columbia trained lawyer Herman Shulman and his wife Rebecca gave birth to Paul Nachman Shulman, the United States Naval Academy graduate who played an active role in Isreal’s nascent naval force in 1948.

1923(14th of Nisan, 5683): Shabbat HaGadol and Erev Pesach

1923: “Paganini” a silent bio-pic directed by Heinz Goldberg and featuring child actor Martin Herzberg was released today in Germany.

1923: Birthdate of Shoshana Damari
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/damari-shoshana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaL7mllWVG4

1924: It was reported today that in an address on “My Thirty Years’ Battle in The Ministry” Dr. Stephen S. Wise “derided the counsel of those who urge silence when ‘Jews are assailed and libeled.’”

1924: It was reported today that Adolph S. Ochs, the son-in-law of the late Dr. Isaac M. Wise and Mrs. Albert M. May, the reform rabbi’s daughter were among the speakers at ceremony at Temple Rodeph Sholom where “a memorial portrait of the founder of Hebrew Union College and the Central Conference of Rabbis “ was unveiled.

1925: In Washington, Myer Solomon Cohn, the Russian born son of Leo and Sarah Cohn, and his wife Bertha “Birdie” Cohn gave birth to Leonard Earl Cohn

1925: The town of Afula was founded in the Jezreel Valley. Afula means The Town of Jezreel and it was started with the support of the American Zion Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the town never lived up to the original expectations with the settlers in the Jezreel Valley preferring to go to Haifa for rest and relaxation. The hospital at Afula did prove to be of lasting importance. Afula is a friendly crossroads town with numerous small stores selling what the locals claim to be the "best pistachio nuts in the world."

1926(16thof Nisan, 5686): Second Day of Pesach

1926: Jacob Adler, who had suffered a stroke in 1920 and had been in declining health ever since, suddenly collapsed today.

1926: Despite Arab threats of a general strike, the French High Commissioner visited Jerusalem today where all of the stories owned by “Arabs and Christians” were closed “in sympathy with the Syrian rebels” and the Jewish shops were closed because of Passover.

1927: While deliver an address today on “The Jew in Industry and Finance” President Frederick B. Robinson of City College said that “the alleged Jewish conspiracy in international industry and finanace is a figment of ill-informed persons.”

1928: Real birthdate of Jacob Lateiner, Cuban born American pianist. His father would not get around to registering his birth until May of 1928 which has led to confusion about when he was really born.

1928: Today Jewish and Gentile businessmen in Jerusalem and Haifa told a reporter today “that while the Government remained in the hands of the British they did not fear trouble with the Arabs or Bedouins who were more afraid of Lord Plumber than they had been of Hebert Samuel,” his civilian and Jewish predecessor as British High Commissioner.

1929: Birthdate of Ilya Piastetski-Shapiro, famed math theorist who clashed with Soviet authorities. He passed away at the age of 79 on February 21, 2009 in Tel Aviv.

1932: At Tel Aviv, on the final day of the first Jewish Olympics, Americans captured the lion’s share of the victories Sybil Koff of New York “won the women’s triathlon and the high jumps. Gus Hemann … won the men’s 100 meter dash…Leslie Flaksman won the 500 meter race…and Harry Schneider won the javelin, shooting, discus-throwing and men’s triathlon contests.” Victories by European teams included an Austrian first place finish in the 400 – meter race and first place finish by the a team from the Middlesex Regiment in the relay race that earned it the High Commissioner’s Cup.

1933: Adolf Bertraim, archbishop of Breslau rejected the request of Oskar Wasserman for aid in protesting against the boycott of Jewish business organized by the Nazis but this was refused as he regarded it as purely an economic matter”
1934(15th of Nisan, 5694): Pesach

1935: German mathematician Felix Hausdorff who would later commit suicide when ordered to report to a concentration camp, was granted emeritus status today.
1935: Hebrew novelist Samuel I. Agnon was awarded the Bialik Prize in Hebrew Literature. The Bialik Prize was established in memory of the dean of Hebrew literature, Chaim Nachman Bialik and is considered the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. S.I. Agnon is considered by sum to be a worthy candidate for the Nobel Prize.

1935: The Italian liner Roma arrived in Haifa carrying 1,650 passengers, which is believed to the largest number of people ever brought to Palestine on one ship. Most of the passengers are believed to be headed for Tel Aviv, site of the upcoming Maccabiad.

1935: In the Bronx, “Joseph Perelman, a textile official and Dorothy Shapiro Perelman, a public schoolteacher” gave birth to Judith Louise Perelman who gained fame as novelist Judith Rossner, the author of Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/aug/13/guardianobituaries.books

1935: The Palestine police (an instrument of the British mandatory government) “issued an order today prohibiting a parade of athletes participating in the Maccabiah, the world Jewish athletic games.” The parade was scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv on April 1. The police reportedly were responding to threats of violent outbursts by the Arab populace.

1936: Birthdate of poet, playwright and novelist Marge Piercy who grew up in the racially divided city of Detroit, where her Jewishness made her the target of bullies. One grandparent was Yiddish-speaking and Orthodox; another was a union organizer murdered for his activism. These influences, together with grief over relatives murdered in the Holocaust, aroused Piercy's political activism. They also strengthened her commitment to remaining involved with issues and matters of Jewish importance.

1936: In New York, The Friends of the New Germany, whose members are “supporters in the United States of Nazi philosophy, announced the organization would now be known as the German-American League or “Amerikadeutscher Bund” which is dedicated to combating “the Moscow-direct madness of the Red world mean and its Jewish bacillus carriers.” 

1936: Mrs. Judah Dresner presided over the closing session of the 14thconvention of the New York State Conference of the National Council of Jewish Women at the Jamaica Jewish Center in Queens where Mrs. Maxwell Ehrlich of Staten Island was elected president.

1937: “The anti-Jewish demonstrations begun before Easter continued” in the Free City of Danzig where “Jewish shops were picketed today.

1937: The Palestine Post reported from Glasgow that the International Labor Party conference deplored the bloodshed in Palestine by terrorists and called upon Jews to resist all attempts by Arab reactionary elements, sometimes supported by the British authorities. The first regulation made by the High Commissioner under the New Palestine Orders allowed the authorities to seize and retain accommodation and food, as they thought fit for the execution of their duty.

1938: As of today, “an eight-month limit of 8,000 Jewish immigrants being allowed to enter Palestine will have expired.

1938: According to reports published in the New York Times, Dr. Sigmund Freud cannot leave Vienna and move to The Hague because “the authorities have refused to give him a passport.” In other words, the Nazi Austrian government has made the prominent Jewish psychiatrist a prisoner.

1938: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Arthur B. Rubenstein, the composer of countless scores to television and movies including “Whose Life Is It Anyway” and “Lost in America.”

1939: The Campbell Playhouse broadcast a non-musical version “Showboat” based on the novel by Edna Ferber on CBS Radio.

1939: In Wakefield, Mass., truck driver turned attorney Julius Horovtiz and Hazel Rose (Solberg) Horovitz who did double duty as a trained nurse and homemaker gave birth to Israel Arthur Horovitz, the husband of Gillian Horovitz and “an influential and oft-produced playwright” passed away today. (As reported by Neil Genlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/theater/israel-horovitz-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1939: The cinema version of “The Hounds of the Baskerville” with music by David Raskin was released today in the United States.

1940: Nuri Said was replaced as Prime Minister of Iraq by Rsahid Ali who a year later would lead an anti-British pro-Nazi coup that would lead to the Farhud, a pogrom that was the beginning of the end for the ancient Jewish community of Iraq.

1940: Birthdate of Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank.

1940: Benjamin V. Cohen met with Franklin Roosevelt in the White house from 5:10 pm to 6:45 pm.

1941: After 7,500 Jews arrived from Vienna, a decree was issued to establish a ghetto at Kielce

1941: The United Yeshivos Foundation, the cording ation agency of forty Jewish educational institutions is scheduled to honor Julius Dukas, a director of the foundation and the president of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School with a dinner tonight at the Hotel Astor in celebration of his 80th birthday.

1941: With encouragement from the Axis powers (Italy and Germany) Rashid Ali al-Gaylani led an anti-British revolt in Iraq much to the detriment of the Jewish population.

1941: After 7,500 Jews arrived from Vienna, a decree was issued to establish a ghetto at Kielce

1942(12th of Nisan, 5702): Eighty-three-year-old Washingtonian, Aline Esther Solomons, the daughter of Rachel Phillips and Adolphus Solomons passed away today.

1942: The Gestapo “disbanded” the Neu-Isenburg orphanage and deported the girls living there to Theresienstadt.

1942: 1939 Naval Academy graduate Nathan “Fred” Asher married Selma Straus with whom he had three children – “Dennis, Karen and Jeffrey.”

1942: In the western Ukraine, the Gestapo organized the first deportation of 5,000 Jews from Stanislawow ghetto to Belzac death camp.It was one of the biggest transports to Belzec in the first phase of the camp.

1942: Birthdate of radio personality Michael Savage

1942: Six thousand Jews from Eastern Galicia were deported to Belzec and gassed to death.

1943: This was the deadline the Germans gave Spain to repatriate any Spanish nationals of the Jewish "race."

1943: Broadway premier of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical “Oklahoma.” Yes, it took a team of Jews to create this most famous of all American musical comedies. This is yet another example of how it was Jews who helped to create what some call "the American myth." It was this ability and not some Jewish plot that explains, in part, the success of Jews in various parts of the American entertainment industry.

1943: Crematorium II at Auschwitz begins operation.

 

1944(7thof Nisan, 5704): Sixty-seven year old Lothar Stark the German born movie producer who took refuge in Copenhagen in 1933 when his Jewish heritage was discovered  died in Sweden today after having been rescued along with most of the Danish Jewish population in 1943.

1944: It was announced that every Jew in Hungary would be required to wear a yellow badge as of April 5th

1945: Mother Maria of Paris, a Russian nun who had saved many French Jews by hiding them, was killed by the Nazis.

1945: The deportation of Jews from Slovakia comes to an end. In all, German and Slovak authorities deported about 70,000 Jews from Slovakia; about 65,000 of them were murdered or died in concentration camps. The overall figures are inexact, partly because many Jews did not identify themselves, but one 2006 estimate is that approximately 105,000 Slovak Jews, or 77% of their prewar population, died during the war.

1946: Birthdate of Gabe Kaplan in Brooklyn, New York. The comedian and actor gained famed as the teacher in “Welcome Back Kotter,” a television show that launched the career of John Travolta.

1946: Hungarian born American layer and Nazi war crime prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz married his wife Gertrude today in New Yor.

1946(28th of Adar): Yiddish author and translator Leon Kobrin passed away
http://books.google.com/books/about/Fun_Deitmerish_Tzu_Yiddish_In_Amerike.html?id=Z8bNPgAACAAJ

1947: Birthdate Israeli archaeologist Ronny Reich who shifted his focus from the Iron Age to the Early Roman period in the late 1970’s/

http://archlgy.haifa.ac.il/staff/reich.htm

1947(10thof Nisan, 5707): Sixty year old Hot Springs, AR native and NYU trained attorney who had been appointed the United States District Court by President Coolidge in 1925 passed away today New York.

https://www.fjc.gov/node/1385426

1948: In Brooklyn, New York Philip Perlman “a Polish immigrant who was a manager at a doll parts factory and Adele Perlman, “a bookkeeper” gave birth to Comedic Actress Rhea Jo Perlam who gained fame for her roles in the television comedies “Taxi” and “Cheers” where she worked with her sister, producer and scriptwriter Heide Perlman.

1948: as part of Operation Balak, “the airlift to Israel of fighter planes and military supplies” a Skymaster “flew directly from Prague to an airstrip near Be’er Tuivah, landing there today” with equipment immediately used in Operation Nahshon.

1948(20thof Adar II, 5708): Sixty-two year old journalist, rebel and communist Egon Erwin Kisch died today two years after returning to his native Czechoslovakia.

http://spartacus-educational.com/Egon_Erwin_Kisch.htm

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kisch-egon-erwin-10755

1948: Today, the New York Times received memoranda,” including a letter from Shmuel M. Katzneslon that “set for the bitter position of the Jewish political detainees” being held at a the special British camp in Gilgal, Kenya

1949: The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada. There were somewhere between 215 and 360 Jews living in Newfoundland at this time. “The real history of the Newfoundland Jewish community began with the arrival in St. John's of Israel Perlin from the United States. He was instrumental in founding the first synagogue in Newfoundland, the Hebrew Congregation of Newfoundland, in 1909. The census of 1935 reported 215 Jews living in Newfoundland. The census of 1971 showed that that number had grown to 360.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel had become the ninth nation to ratify the agreement to eliminate trade barriers on the import of educational, scientific or cultural materials, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Forty tons of Jerusalem stone, hewn from the Castel quarry, went into the building of the UN headquarters in New York as Israel's contribution to the project. The stone was sufficient for 300 sq.m. of flooring. Israel purchased 40,000 tons of wheat from South Africa.

1953: The number of Israeli unemployed as of this date was 16,350.

1953: New York premiere of “Fear and Desire” “directed, produced and edited by Stanley Kubrick” with a script by Howard Sackler.

1953(15th of Nisan, 5713): First Day of Pesach

1953: Birthdate of New York native and author Harold Augenbraum, “the former Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, and former member of the Board of Trustees of the Asian American Writers Workshop, and former vice chair of the New York Council for the Humanities.”

1953: Birthdate of Ehud Banai, an Israeli singer and songwriter.

1954: As tensions grew between Jordan and Israel due to the attacks by terrorists based in Jordan, the British cabinet discussed military options for responding to a possible strike by Israel into Jordan.

1955(8thof Nisan, 5715): Seventy-four-year-old Columbia trained ophthalmologist Dr. Kaufman Schlivek, the husband of Elsie Schlivek, with whom he had two children – Isabelle and Louis – passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1955/04/01/85690056.html?pageNumber=27

1956: In Boston, Albert Sinofsky and his wife gave birth to Bruce Jeffrey Sinofsky who grew up in Newton, Mass and pursued a career as documentary film maker.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/movies/bruce-sinofsky-documentary-filmmaker-dies-at-58.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1957: In Trenton, NJ, at Har Sinai Temple Rabb Joshua Haberman officiated at the wedding Elanor Mae Cohen, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Herman Cohen and Byron E. Fox, the University of Virginia trained attorney practicing in Arlington, VA.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/04/01/90787884.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1958: The US Navy formed an atomic submarine division. Admiral Hyman Rickover is considered the “father of the atomic Navy.” Thanks to his efforts, America developed a fleet of nuclear submarines that provided the United States with its strongest strategic edge during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

1959: In one of those uniquely American cross-cultural experience Don Devlin (Bronx born Jew Donald R. Siegel) “appeared as an Indian, Dixon White Eagle” in an episode of “Sugarfoot.”

1960: “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” a movie version of a book by the same name produced by Joe Pasternak was released today in the United States.

1961(14thof Nisan, 5721): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach and erev Shabbat

1961: “Just two months after Arthur Goldberg’s appoint as Secretary of Labor” Arthur and Dorothy Goldberg hosted a Seder to which the President, Speaker of the House, Chief Justice, the President of the AFL-CIO and both senators from the state of Illinois were invited.

1963(4thof Nisan, 5723): Eighty-seven-year-old Samuel Paley, the native of Kiev who came to the United States in 1888, founded the United Cigar Company in 1896 and financed the purchase of what today is CBS by his son William, passed away today in Miami Beach.

1963(4thof Nisan, 5723): Sixty-eight year old New York song writer Harry Askt who began his career playing piano for such vaudeville performers as Al Jolson and who began his partnership with Irving Berlin while they were serving at Camp Upton during WW I passed away today in California.

https://www.songhall.org/profile/Harry_Akst

1963: Today, in accordance with company policy, Paul M. Hahn retired as the President and CEO of the American Tobacco, a post he had held since 1950.

1964(18thof Nisan, 5724): Fourth Day of Pesach

1966: It was reported that Harold L. Rosnebaum, the grandson of Rabbi Moses A. Poleyeff, a professor of Talmud at Yehisva’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary will be married this summer to Naomi AvRutick, the daughter of Rabbi Abraham N. AvRutick, a past president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

1968(2ndof Nisan, 5728): Forty-five-year-old Mt. Vernon, NY native and Harvard trained city planner Stanley Tankel who crossed swords with Robert Moses passed away.

http://www.nypap.org/preservation-history/stanley-tankel/

1969(12thof Nisan, 5729): Eighty-eight-year-old Dr. William Seigman Ehrich, the Georgetown, SC son of Louis and Cornelia Ehrich, “who for most of his career was a surgeon at Evansville State Hospital” passed away today after which he was buried at the Beth Elhoim Cemetery in his native Georgetown.

1970(23rd of Adar II, 5730): Sixty-nine-year-old Russian born author and journalist Herman Ehrenreich who in 1910 came to the United States where he attended NYU and became the drama critic of The Forward while writing such Yiddish books as Lands and People and A World Without Jews passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/02/archives/herman-ehrenreich-critic-of-the-jewish-daily-forward.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

1971: In Perth Scotland, the former Carol Diane Lawson and James Charles Stewart "Jim" McGregor to Ewan Gordon McGregor who has chosen to his directorial debut be creating a cinematic version Phillip Roth’s Pulitzer-winning novel American Pastoral

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ewan-mcgregors-biggest-challenge-philip-roth/

1972(16thof Nisa, 5732): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1975(19thof Nisan, 5735): Fifth Day of Pesach

1975: Boris Tsitlionok and Mark Nashpits were the defendants in the Soviet anti-Zionist trials that began today.

1976: U.S. premiere of “W.C. Fields and Me” directed by Arthur Hiller, produced by Jay Weston, written by Bob Merrill, featuring Allan Arbus and Milton Kamen.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that West Germany protested to Israel that it had not been told for more than a year of the arrest of two young West Germans, Brigitte Schultz and Thomas Reuter, who planned, on January 18, 1976, to shoot down an El Al plane in Nairobi. Five terrorists were arrested by Kenya: two Germans and three Arabs. Israel announced that they would soon be tried in camera, by a military court.

1978: In New York City, Joseph Cross and his wife gave birth to actor turned businessman Harley who went from making such cult films “The Believers” to co-founding Hint Mint, a breath mint candy company.

1979: In Jerusalem, Israel, Gali Atari &; Milk and Honey win the twenty-fourth Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing "Hallelujah.

1981: The annual International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee began today in London.

1981: “The Yellow Star - The Persecution of the Jews in Europe 1933-45” lost out for an Oscar tonight as Best Documentary Feature.

1983: NBC broadcast the final episode of the first season the hit sitcom “Cheers” co-starring Rhea Perlman as an Italian waitress supporting a multiplicity of offspring as a single mom.

1984(27thof Adar II, 5744): Parashat Tazria; Shabbat HaChodesh

1985: After 122 performances the curtain came down the Off-Broadway production of “Diamonds” a musical revue directed by Harold Prince with lyrics and/or music by Howard Ashman, Cy Coleman and Comden and Green

1989: Six months after premiering in ItalyHeathers” a comedy starring Winona Ryder (Winona Laura Horowwitz) who also served as narrator was released in the United States today.

1991(16thof Nisan, 6751): Second Day of Pesach and First Day of the Omer

1991: The 1960 television version of “Peter Pan,” with music by Mark Charlap and Jule Styne and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, Betty Comden and Adolph Green which had become a classic was re-broadcast today.

1993: “Family Prayers” a dramatic film starring Paul Reiser and featuring Tzvi Ratner-Stauber and Allen Garfield was released in the United States today.

1993: The “first season” of “Homicide: Life on the Streets” a television adaptation of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon whose creators included Barry Levinson came to an end.

1993: With Israel reeling from its worst wave of Arab violence in years, including the shooting deaths of two policemen this morning, the Government indefinitely closed the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip today.

1994: Yosef Zandani, age 28, of Bnei Ayish, was found killed in his apartment near Gedera. Near the body was a leaflet of the DFLP "Red Star", explaining that the murder was carried out in revenge for the shooting of one of its members by an Israeli citizen. The Israeli acted in self-defense

1995: Al HaMishmar, a “paper owned by and affiliated with Hashomer Hatzair as well as the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party of Palestine and Mapam” which was first published in 1943 ceased publication today.

1996: “Who Owns The Dreyfus Affair?” published today provides an advance look at the opera based on the life of the famous French Captain.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/31/arts/classical-music-who-owns-the-dreyfus-affair.html?pagewanted=print

1997: The Union of Orthodox Rabbis issued “A Historic Declaration which stated Reform and Conservative are not Judaism at all. Their adherents are Jews, according to the Jewish Law, but their religion is not Judaism...we appeal to our fellow Jew, members of the Reform and Conservative movements: Having been falsely led by heretical leaders that Reform and Conservative are legitimate branches and denominations of Judaism, we urge you to be guided by this declaration, and withdraw from your affiliation with Reform and Conservative temples and their clergy. Do not hesitate to attend an Orthodox synagogue due to your inadequate observance of Judaism. On the contrary, it is because of that inadequacy that you need to attend an Orthodox synagogue where you will be warmly welcomed

.1998(4th of Nisan, 5758): Former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug passed away at the age 77 (As reported by Laura Mansnerus)

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0724.html

1999(14thof Nisan, 5759): Ta-anit Bchorot; Erev Pesach; Deb Levin hosts her first Seder in what will become a tradition that will eventually be highlighted in the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

1999: Did you ever wonder how Jews celebrate Pesach, the holiday of “Spring,” in the Southern Hemisphere where it is really Autumn? In “An Argentine Passover, Then and Now,” Joan Nathan gives us some sense of the celebration.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/31/dining/an-argentine-passover-then-and-now.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2000: “Whatever It Takes,” a comedy co-starring Marla Sokoloff and James Franco and produced by Paul Schiff was released today.

2000: “High Fidelity” a movie version of the novel directed Stephen Fears and co-starring Jack Black, Lisa Bonet and Sara Gilbert was released today in the United States.

2000: “Rules of Engagement” a combination war and legal movie directed by William Friedkin, produced by Scott Rudin and featuring Mark Feuerstein was released in the United States today.
2001: Uzi Landau replaced Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as Energy and Water Resources Minister of Israel

2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of "Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History" by James Carroll and "Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses" by Bruce Feller.

2002(18thof Nisan, 5762): 4th day of Pesach and 3rd day of the Omer.
2002(18th of Nisan, 5762): Fourteen “people were killed and over 40 injured in a suicide bombing in Haifa, in the Matza restaurant of the gas station near the Grand Canyon shopping mall. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The victims: Suheil Adawi, 32, of Turan; Dov Chernevroda, 67, of Haifa; Shimon Koren, 55; his sons Ran, 18, and Gal, 15, of Haifa; Moshe Levin, 52, of Haifa; Danielle Manchell, 22, of Haifa; Orly Ofir, 16, of Haifa; Aviel Ron, 54; his son Ofer, 18, and daughter Anat, 21, of Haifa; Ya'akov Shani, 53, of Haifa; Adi Shiran, 17, of Haifa; Daniel Carlos Wegman, 50, of Haifa. Carlos Yerushalmi, 52, of Karkur, died the next day of wounds sustained in the attack.” (Jewish Virtual Library)

2002(18thof Nisan, 5767): Hamas took credit for today’s attack at the Erfat Medical center where four people were injured.
2003: Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman gave birth to their youngest child, Abraham “Abie” Wolf Waldman

2003(27th of Adar II 5763): Eighty-five year old Sidney Greenberg, one of the Conservative movement’s leading rabbis, passed away.

http://forward.com/articles/8526/rabbi-sidney-greenberg--wrote-on-prayers-holi/

2003: National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice addressed the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference.

2004: An updated version of “Baby” the David Shire musical opened at “the Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, New Jersey today.

2005: While Lewis Wolff may be the head of the group buying the Oakland Athletics, reports published today claim that John J. Fisher son of GAP founder Donald Fisher, is he one putting up most of the money for the purchase.

2005: As of today, Hans “Berliner still had by far the highest International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) rating of any player in the United States, at 2726, 84 points above the second-highest rated player.”

2005: ABC News reported that Ted Koppel will leave that organization when his contract expires in December of 2005. Mr. Koppel has been with the network for 42 years and has hosted the popular late night news program “Nightline” for the past twenty-five years. Nightline provided a hard-news late night alternative to the talk shows hosted by the two other networks. Nightline’s audience would always grow during periods of crisis such as the seizure of the American embassy in Teheran and the prolonged hostage seizure that followed.

 

2005: At the Jewish Museum in New York, a distinguished panel of speakers, including exhibition co-curators Emily Bilski and Emily Braun, as well as Whitney Museum curator Elizabeth Sussman and Union College professor Brenda Wineapple, consider the contributions of women such as Gertrude Stein, Margherita Sarfatti, and Florine Stettheimer to literature and the visual arts from the late 18th century through the 1930s.

2007: Shabbat Ha Gadol.

2007: In Cedar Rapids, the show “Remnants of Memories” Interpretations of the collage by artists Tom Lee and Elizabeth Levi sponsored by Ginsberg’s Jewelry comes to a close.

2008: Hillel receives a $10.7 million grant, from the Jim Joseph Foundation which the college oriented organization says is the largest in its history. The grant will be disbursed over five years and enable Hillel to engage an additional 30,000 students, according to a news release. Hillel intends to use the funds to place Jewish educators on 10 new campuses as part of its Experiential Educator Exemplar program. The grant also will go to support the Campus Entrepreneurs Initiative, which employs college students to engage their peers in Jewish life.

2008: In New York, The Center for Jewish History presents a lecture by Dr. Atina Grossman entitled “Close Encounters: Jews and Germans in Occupied Germany during which she will discuss the story of the "close encounters" in Allied occupied Germany between Jewish survivors of the Nazi Final Solution who found themselves on "cursed German soil" after the German surrender, and the defeated Germans with whom they continually interacted.

2008: End of Women’s History Month.

2008: In Vancouver, B.C., the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “Samuel Bak: Painter of Questions.”

2008: “New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656” was among the nominees for the 23rd annual Lucille Lortel Awards, celebrating excellence in Off-Broadway theatre,

2008(24thof Adar II, 5678): Ninety-six year old movie director Jules Dassin the son of Russian immigrants who began his career as a Yiddish actor and was a victim of the infamous Hollywood Blacklist, passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/movies/01dassin.html?_r=0
http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.aspx?n=jules-dassin&pid=106710732

2008(24th of Adar II, 5768): Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, a dominant figure in American Jewish philanthropy during Israel’s formative years, passed away at his New York home at the age of 89. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/nyregion/04friedman.html?_r=0

2009(6th of Nisan, 5769): Ruth Fredman Cernea, 74, a cultural anthropologist who wrote on topics that included the Jews of Myanmar and the annual mock debate at the University of Chicago on the respective merits of Jewish holiday foods such as latkes and hamantaschen, died today of pancreatic cancer.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-04-07/news/36922526_1_jewish-humor-sephardic-jews-jewish-community

2009: Danny Ayalon began serving as Deputy Foreign Minister.

2009: Moshe Kahlon replaced Ariel Atias as Communications Minister.

2009: Gideon Sa'ar was appointed Minister of Education

2009: Yeshiva University hosts the second day the Israel and India International Conference which features the theme "A Relationship Comes of Age." Presenters include Nathan Katz (Florida International University), Amit Kapoor (Management Development Institute, India), Efraim Inbar (Bar-Ilan University), Shlomo Mor-Yosef (Hadassah Medical Organization), Maina Chawla Sing (University of Delhi), P R Kumaraswamy (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Gadi Ariav (Tel Aviv University).

2009: Gottschalks, a chain of department stores that was founded by German Jewish immigrant Emil Gottschalk in 1904, “announced it would liquidate its remaining stores.”

2009: Silvan Shalom replaced Yaakov Edri as Minister for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee

2009: Ayoob Karab began serving as Deputy Minister for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee.

2009: Ariel Atias replaced Ze'ev Boim as Minister of Housing and Construction

2009: Ya'akov Margi replaced Yitzhak Cohen as Minister of Religious Services

2009: Eli Yishai replaced Meeir Sheetrit as Minister of Internal Affairs

2009: Uzi Landau replaced Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as Minister of Energy and Water Resources.

2009: Daniel Hershkowitz replaced Raleb Majadele as Minister of Science and Technology.

2010(16th of Nisan, 5770): First Day of the Omer; Second Day of Pesach

2010: “Rethinking the Holocaust and Genocide with Michael Thaler”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPMJyjbz_nE

2010: An exhibition presented by the American Jewish Historical Society entitled “Pages from a Performing Life: The Scrapbooks of Molly Picon” featuring the 22 scrapbooks keep by Molly Picon and her husband Jacob Kalish chronicling their extraordinary 50-year career, is scheduled to come to an end.

2010(16thof Nisan, 5770): “Internationally known Columbia archaeologist Samuel Paley, the “head of the Judaic Studies at the University of Buffalo” who has “excavated sites in Cyrus, Israel and Turkey” lost his battle with brain cancer and passed away today.

2010(16th of Nisan, 5770): Steven Zilberman died while serving his country. “Miroslav Zilberman, a Navy pilot known to his friends as Steven, moved with his parents from Ukraine to Columbus, Ohio, in the early 1990s. His parents, Anna and Boris, did not want their son to be forced into military service in their native land. AP reports describe Zilberman as grandson of Gregory Sokolov, a major in the Soviet Army in World War II. Zilberman decided to follow his grandfather’s footsteps and joined the Navy after graduating from Bexley High School in 1997. He went on to graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he majored in computer science. Zilberman’s plane, an E-2C Hawkeye, was returning to the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower following a mission supporting operations in Afghanistan when the plane experienced a malfunction. Zilberman ordered his crew mates to eject before going down with the plane into the North Arabian Sea.”

2011(25th of Adar II, 5771): Eighty-three-year-old Henry Taub, found of ADP, passed away. (As reported by Duff Wilson)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/business/05taub.html

2011: Yosef Begun a former Soviet Prisoner of Conscience is scheduled to speak at noon today in Washington, DC.

2011: Performance of “Steve Reich’s masterpiece Tehillim” today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjnVN6-Wx08

2011: The 14th annual Main Jewish Festival opens in Portland, Maine.

2011: “The Army of Crime” and “Hidden Children” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: “The Human Resources Manager” is one of the films scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival

2011: In Jerusalem, the Old City Flavors Festival comes do an end.

2011:  David “Deutsch’s second book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World, was published” today further enhancing the reputation of the Haifa born British physicist who atteneded both Cambridge and Oxford.

2011: “How Israel Won the Six-Day War” published today described Operation Yated and the role an Egyptian agent “turned” played in the miracle of June, 1967.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/how-israel-won-the-six-day-war-1.353213?localLinksEnabled=false
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/how-israel-won-the-six-day-war-1.353213?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.225%2C2.239%2C

2012(8thof Nisan, 5772: Parashat Tzav and Shabbat Hagadol - 81st anniversary of the Bar Mitzvah of Joseph B. Levin, of blessed memory who was Bar Mitzvahed on Shabbat Hagadol

2012: This evening Emily Bount married Michael Signer, the son of Robert and Marjorie Singer, who as Mayor of Charlottesville worked on plans to remove Confederate statues from his cities which led to violent protests from white supremacists and Nazi.

2012: “Footnote” and “Salmon Fishing in Yemen” are scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2013: Jeremy Piven stars in “Mr. Selfridge” a Masterpiece Classics min-series that is scheduled to aire for the first time tonight on PBS.

2013: The Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, also known as the Jobar Synagogue was erroneously reported to have been destroyed by Syrian forces operating in Damascus today when in fact it was only seriously damaged by mortar fire from either government or rebel forces.

2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Retrospective by A.B. Yehosuha and Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Lifeby Jonathan Sperber 

2013: President Shimon Peres today congratulated Yitzhak Tshuva, the controlling shareholder of the Tamar natural gas field which was first put into use Saturday, for pumping the gas into Israel four years after the deposit was first discovered — adding, however, that the pumping should not have begun on the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest.

2013: Pope Francis and Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni exchanged greetings to mark Passover and Easter.

2014: In Little Rock, Lubavitch of Arkansas under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host an evening with “author, comedian, journalist and musician David Nesenoff.”

2014: Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was convicted today of receiving bribes to facilitate the construction of the Holyland housing project in Jerusalem a decade ago.

2014: In their never-ending quest to get something for nothing “The Palestinians today gave US Secretary of State John Kerry 24 hours to resolve a dispute with Israel over prisoners after which they will resume moves to seek international recognition.

2015: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to lead Passover shopping expedition to Moti’s Market in Rockville, MD.

2015: In Philadelphia, The National Museum of Jewish History is scheduled to host the VIP Opening Reception for “Richard Avedon: Family Affairs” which “features more than 70 portraits by the famed photographer.

2015: The first part of “The Dovekeepers” a dramatization of events at Masada is scheduled to be shown on CBS.

2016: Steven Gimbel, the professor of philosophy at Gettysburg College and author of Einstein: The Man is scheduled to lecture at Johns Hopkins University’s Baltimore campus.

2016(21st of Adar II, 5776): Eighty-six-year-old Hungarian Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Laureate Imre Kertesz passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/world/europe/imre-kertesz-dies.html?_r=0

2016: Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Raise the Roof"– a documentary about the building of a replica of the “mural covered wooden synagogues of the 18th century” that were destroyed by the Nazis.

2017: Bidding for the mineral rights on five blocks in the Mediterranean ‘including areas that lie in waters disputed by Israel” is scheduled to come to an end today in Beirut.

2017: ABC broadcast the final episode of “Last Man Standing” a sit-come co-starring Molly Ephriam as the ditzy daughter Amanda “Mandy” Baxter.

2017: “Norman Lear,” a film about “the life, trailblazing shows, and political activism of famous TV writer/producer Norman Lear: is scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

2017: Release of “The Zookeeper’s Wife.”

http://www.focusfeatures.com/thezookeeperswife

2018: France J. Pruitt is scheduled to talk about her book Faith and Courage in a Time of Trouble “a memoir of a Belgian-Jewish girl and her family who were saved during the Nazi occupation of France through the compassion and heroism of French peasants from the southern part of the country” this afternoon at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

2018(15thof Nisan, 5778): Pesach

15th of Nisan, 5650 (1890): An untold number of poor New Yorkers enjoyed eating meat at their Seder tonight thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Paulina Rosendorff who had provided the funding that enabled butchers to distribute their product free of charge.

15thof Nisan, 5675(1915):The 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors who attended last night’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Y.M.H.A. which also provided a night’s lodging at the Hotel Roland are scheduled to worship at Temple Beth Israel at Lexington and 72ndStreet today while the Secretary of War, the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City have been invited to attend tonight’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Young Men’s Hebrew Association for the benefit of 300 of the 8,000 Jews serving in the military which is being held at Vienna Hall on Lexington and 58th Street.

15thof Nisan, 5677 (1917): One day after U.S. declared War on Germany, Jews gather in the synagogue to observe Pesach and Shabbat

15th of Nisan, 5705(1945):At least 58 Jews were murdered in a forest near the Austrian village of Deutsch Shuetzen, in what would come to be called the Deutsch Shuetzen Massacre while in the evening, members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8thArmy serving in Italy took part in a Seder at Faenza.

15th of Nisan, 5725(1965):  While Jews in the Soviet struggled to deal with a shortage of Matzah created by the government refusal to let state bakeries prepare adequate supplies of unleavened bread Rabbis in America were encouraged to deliver sermons that related the themes of Pesach with fight for Civil Rights complete with references to the recent voting rights march in Selma.

15th of Nisan, 5728(1968):For the first time, Pesach is observed in a unified Jerusalem

2019: The New York Times features books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest Jewish readers including A Weekend in New York by Benjamin Markovits, America’s Jewish Women: A History From Colonial Times to Today by Pamela S. Nadell, The Age of Disenchantments: The Epic Story of Spain’s Most Notorious Literary Family and the Long Shadow of the Spanish Civil War by Aaron Shulman, Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keefe, Paul Strand and Rebecca Salsbury by Carolyn Burke and the recently released paperback edition of Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America’s Fifty-Year Fall and Those Fighting to Reverse It by Steven Brill.

2019: In Ames, IA, the Iowa Jewish Historical Society, the Ames Jewish Congregation, Hillel at ISU, Chabad at Ames and the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines are schedule to present “Second Chance” during which Celina Karp Biniaz, “one of the last survivors from Schindler’s List,” and the “only Schindler Juden to graduate from high school and college Iowa” “tells her personal story.”

2019: In Atlanta, at the Breman Museum, Daniel Horowitz Garcia is scheduled to lecture at today’s meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society.

2019: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present a panel discussion on “Immigration Matters: Jews, Other Immigrants and America.”

2019: Today is the deadline for submitting SEFER Center awards grants for Research on Russian Jewry. 2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host an on-line presentation by Rabbi Sara Sapadin on “Passover in the Age of Coronavirus - How the Haggadah Speaks to Us Now.”

2020: The London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to “The Pesach Exodus: Ultimate War of Good versus Evil,” an on-line presentation by Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum.

2020” Hillel@Home is scheduled to a “”Jewish Ethics in Entertainment,” a seminar on breaking into Hollywood and how Jewish ethics inform the entertainment profession, with screenwriter and producer Dara Resnik.”

2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host “How to Find Your Ancestor Without Leaving Your Computer.”

2020: Adas Israel and the Capital Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a live-stream with Esther Safran Foer “as she discusses her debut memoir,  I Want You to Know We’re Still Here, the story of Esther’s journey to piece together a mystery from her family’s past and of four generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust.”

2020(6thof Nisan, 5780): On the Hebrew calendar Yahrzeit of Talmudist Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen.

2021(17thof Nisan, 5781): Third Day of Pesach; Second Day of the Omer

2021: Jewish Family and Children’s Services is scheduled to present a seder with JFCS Jewish Chaplaincy Services director Bruce Feldstein and JFCS Spiritual Care Services director Rabbi Daniel Isaacson.

2021: URJ Jacobs Camp Director Anna Herman and New Orleans JCC Director of Youth and Family Engagement Gary Brandt are scheduled speak at  the Leventhal Center for Interfaith Families so that attendees can learn more about the magic of Jewish summer camp for all families and hear from interfaith camp families,

2021: Keshet is scheduled to present online, “Let My People Grow: An LGBTQ+ & Ally Teen Passover G

2021: This evening “AGJC leadership has been invited to Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi where Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie and members of the board, along with military chaplains and the Jewish Welfare Board, are scheduled to host a Passover celebration with holiday food and conversation for U.S. troops stationed at the base which can be seen by webcast at other U.S. bases in the region

2021: USF’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice is scheduled to present an interfaith solidarity seder focusing on the need for climate justice.

2021: Based on reports published yesterday, today and for the foreseeable future, Israelis must be on alert to prevent the entry of the pathogen's far more dangerous Brazilian strain, despite the country's continued drop in coronavirus infection rates.

2021: Rabbi David Zaslow, author of Jesus: First-Century Rabbi, is scheduled to talk “about the sociology, history and psychology of hating Jews, including Good Friday narratives that are read and acted out in many churches.”

https://rabbidavidzaslow.com/bio/

https://rabbidavidzaslow.com/

 

 

  

This Day, April 1, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 1

 515 BCE:  The Second Temple was inaugurated in Jerusalem (As reported by Jona Lendering)

527: Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne. This was a “lose-lose” proposition for the Jewish people. When Justin I assumed the throne he adopted a policy of rigorously enforcing the anti-Jewish laws promulgated by Theodosius including excluding Jews from “all posts of honor” and banning the construction of new synagogues. “Justinian began persecuting the Jews immediately after his accession” as can be seen from the adoption of anti-Jewish legislation in the very first year of his reign.

1205: Amalrik II King of Cyprus/Jerusalem, died. This was the period of the Crusades when followers of Islam and Christians from Europe jockeyed for control of Eretz Israel and Jerusalem.

1315: Louis V “suspended the collection of the debts owed to” the Jews “which were still outstanding from their expulsion in 1306 as part of his plan to eventually allow the Jews to France.

1548: Sigismund II Augustus, the Polish King who allowed “Jews to settle in Vilna without restriction” and who issued “the ‘Magna Cara of Jewish Self-Government’’ “which permitted Jews to elect their own chief rabbi and judges” began his reign as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.

1557(1st of Iyar):  Iggeret Ba’alei Hayyim, a book on zoology translated by Kalonymus was printed for the first time in Mantua, Italy.

1662(12thof Nisan, 5422):Isaac ben Abraham Uziel a Spanish physician, poet and grammarian, born at Fez” who became rabbi of Neveh Shalom in Amsterdam in 1610 when Judah Vega passed away died to in Amsterdam who left behind several literary works including “a Hebrew grammar, Ma’aneh Leshon.”

1769(23rd of Adar II, 5529): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Parah

1779(15thof Nisan, 5539): First Day of Pesach

1740: Leah and Joseph Tobias gave birth to Masdad Tobias, the brother of Rina, Jacob, Judith and Joseph (II) Tobias.

1743: In Eppingen, Germany, Schoenle Heinsheimre and Moses Heinsheimer-Regensburger gave birth to Laemmle Heinsheimer, the husband of Kusche Karoline Maier with whom he had five children.

1756: Birthdate of German native Honas (Moses) Steinfurter the husband of Hina Einstein.

1761: Birthdate of German born Blumel Joseph, the wife of Joseph Ruben Gummersheimer with whom she had seven children.

1774(20thof Nisan, 5534): Sixth Day of Pesach,

1774: As Jews on both sides of the Atlantic celebrated Shabbat Shel Pesach, it was reported today that the British government had responded to the Boston Tea Party by sending four regiments and a new Governor, General Thomas Gage, to close the port of Boston in accordance with the recently passed act of Parliament.

 

1782: The certificate authorizing Solomon Etting of Lancaster, PA to serve as a shochet was issued today making him the first native born American to receive this distinction

1789(5thof Nisan, 5549): Rachel Ritzel Heilbron, the New York born daughter of Sarah and Moses Benjamin Franks and  and her second husband David Heilbron gave birth to Jonathan Heilbron the nephew of Colonel Isaac Frannks.

1793: Birthdate of German native Isaak Loeb Ettlnger, the husband of Sara Heinsheimer with whom he had twelve children before marrying Karolina Heinsheimer, the mother of Isaak and Hinna Ettlinger.

1795: In Lissa, Posen, Salomon (Shlomo) (Schlaume) Kalischer and Rahel Gutel Kalischer gave birth Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalishcer, the husband of Henrietta Kalishcer

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zevi-hirsch-kalischer

1797(5thof Nisan, 5557): Parashat Vayikra read for the first time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1798(15thof Nisan, 5558): Pesach.

1804: In Charleston, SC, Rachel Moses and Moses Cohen gave birth to Zipporah Cohen who marred Joseph Soria in 1833 in Charleston, SC.

1812(19thof Nisan, 5572): Fifth Day of Pesach observed as President Madison wrote to Congress in the days leading up to war with Great Britain “Considering it as expedient, under existing circumstances and prospects, that a General Embargo be laid on all vessels now in port or hereafter arriving, for the period of sixty days, I recommend the immediate passage of a law to that effect.”

1815: Birthdate of Otto Von Bismarck. A Prussian, he served as Chancellor from 1866 to 1890 making Germany into a united modern nation. His record concerning the Jews was mixed, He was Chancellor in 1869 when emancipation legislation was enacted removing limitations on civil rights based on religion. His personal physician was Jewish and there were Jewish department heads in the government. In his earlier years, Bismarck had been opposed to Jews as government ministers. Once again, as his career drew to a close and it fit his political needs Bismarck distanced himself from the Jews but did not adopt the rabid anti-Semitism that appeared in Germany during the 1880's.

1817(15th of Nisan, 5577): First Day of Pesach

1823: In Alsace, Charlotte Aron (Loew) and Alexandre Aron gave birth to Achille Aron

1828: In Cassel, Germany, Moses Mordecai Büdinger gave birth to Austrian historian Max Büdinger who served as chair of the history department at the University of Vienna from 1872 until 1902.

1829: Jacob ben Naphtali HaCohen married Beila bat Solomon HaCohen at the Western Synagogue.

1835: Samuel Samuels married Esther Benjamin today at the Great Synagogue.

1840: Lazarus Walter married Hannah Aaron at the Great Synagogue today.

1843(1stof Nisan, 5603): Parashat Tazria; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh is celebrated on the first Saturday on which Jews and Gentiles could walk under the Thames River thanks to the completion earlier in the week of Mar Brunel’s Thames Tunnel.

1844: Birthdate of Nikolai Skyrdoff, the Russian Admiral who was, strangely enough married to “a Jewess.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1904/04/20/100468393.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

 

1845: In Trieste, Elisa Morpurgo and Giuseppe / Joseph Baron von Morpurgo gave birth to Louise Cahen d'Anvers (de Morpurgo)

1848(27th of Adar II, 5608): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat HaChodesh is observed during the period between the cessation of hostilities between the United States and Mexico and the ratification of the final peace treaty

1852: Fire broke out in San Francisco destroying a boarding house owned by Abraham Abrahamsohn that boasted a “French cook, three waiters and a dishwashers.” Abrahamsohn would have tried his hand unsuccessfully in the gold fields and as tailor in Sacramento had made the money for the boarding house by working as a mohel. One can only assume that there was a good sized and prolific Jewish population in San Francisco for him to have earned enough capital from performing ritual circumcisions. This latest setback forced Abrahamsohn to head to Australia where he again failed as gold miner, but met with modest economic success when he returned to his original profession – baker – and began providing food for the hungry miners.

1853: When an apprentice named Herman who was working for a boot and shoe shop was arrested on charges of theft that covered the last 9 months, he claimed that he was regular selling eighty dollars’ worth of merchandize of an un-named Jew for twenty-five dollars.

1857: Joseph Abrahams married Betsie Mesner today at the Great Synagogue.

1858(17thof Nisan, 5618): Third Day of Pesach.

1858: The New York Times reported that one of the reasons for a drop in business at the local cattle markets this week was the absence of Jewish butchers who were observing Passover.

1861(21stof Nisan, 5621): Seventh Day of Pesach

1861: An English play entitled “Babes in the Wood” opened at the Winter Garden Theatre.  According to the reviewer, the play is based on the all too common practice of the impecunious English gentleman who borrows money from “a friendly Hebrew” for which he pays “a liberal interest” so that he may pursue a life style that includes “a generous supply of wine,” cigars and a marriage which all too often does not turn out to be solution to his problems. [It would appear that 3 centuries after the creation of Shylock, the English still are writing about the poor gentile victimized by the Jewish moneylender.]

1861: In Cincinnati, OH, “Lewis and Emma (Goodhart) Heinshiemer gave birth to businessman Edward Lewis Heinsheimer, one of the first students to enroll at Hebrew Union College which he supported for the rest of his life as can be seen by his service as a member of the board of governors and President and who was the husband of the former Sally Workum Freiberg and the father of Emma, Duffie and Stella Heinsheimer.

1862(1st of Nisan, 5622): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1862: In Dublin, Rae (Hyman) Cohen and Elias Cohen, the founder of the importing business Cohen in Trbeca and “active member of the Reformed Temple” in New York gave birth Jacksonville merchant and philanthropist Jacob Elias Cohn who followed his brothers to post-Civil War Jacksonville, FL where they created Cohen Brothers department store and who was the husband of Hattie Cohen with whom he had two children – Halle and Minna.

https://books.google.com/books?id=_JN2CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT11&lpg=PT11&dq=Jacob+Elias+Cohen&source=bl&ots=Tx3HHWd3cH&sig=ACfU3U2wmo6yEPcK_e2ZJhOWFUlWHYbMPA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjBt9np4sXoAhWKWM0KHUbsBpQQ6AEwAnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Jacob%20Elias%20Cohen&f=false

 

1863: Two days after he had passed away Alexander Isaacs, the husband of the former Sophie Levy with whom he had had twelve children was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1864: In Cincinnati, the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society which was the ladies’ auxiliary of the Congregation Adath Israel was founded today.

1865(5thof Nisan, 5625): In the waning days of the American Civil War, Sergeant Morris Schlesinger of Philadelphia who had been wounded yesterday at Gravelly Run, VA, died today.

1865: Union forces defeat the Confederates at the Battle of Five Forks which effectively sealed the fate of Robert E. Lee’s Army and therefore the Confederacy.  The rebels were forced to abandon Richmond which would lead to the involvement of Raphael Moses, the native of Columbus, GA who had been with Lee at Gettysburg in the bizarre episode concerning the disposal of the Southern government’s bullion supply.

1865: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, later known as Leslie’s Weekly published a picture of the annual Purim Ball held in New York in March.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FS_pCpoljIA/Ux0AyfllXVI/AAAAAAAAPt0/Ahlt2dZ-ozk/s1600/purim+library+of+congress.tiff

 

1866(16thof Nisan, 5626): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1866: In a column entitled "Southern Jottings" published today described conditions in Charleston, South Carolina, including the observation that "the Hebrew element is largely represented here and speculators are as abundant as tea stores on Vesey Street."

 

1866: Under the simple heading of “Nathan Meyer Rothschild of London” the New York Times published a lengthy article tracing the history of the family from its earliest beginning to its present prominent role in the world of finance as well as the role of other Jews in the financial growth that has occurred in Great Britain since “the days of the South Sea bubble.”

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9500EEDD133DE53BBC4953DFB266838D679FDE&scp=1&sq=jew&st=p

 

1869(20th of Nisan, 5629): Sixth Day of Pesach observed during the Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson.

1870: “April Fool” published today traces the origins of April Fool’s Day in which the author claims that the prophet Haggai “makes allusion to it in the third chapter of his book.” He also contends that Solomon recognized “the fool” in his writings and even references a specific day for fools in the 29th verse of the 17th chapter of Proverbs, “The fool has his day and the simple man his season…”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E07E2DA163BE63BBC4953DFB266838B669FDE

 

1870(10th of Nisan, 5631): Shabbat HaGadol

 

1870: Sixty-two year old physician and author Moses Philippson passed away today in Breitenfeld.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15700.html

 

 

1871: "Green Street Synagogue” was founded today by a small group of Jews in Baltimore, Maryland.

1872: Sixty-two year old Rose Jacobs, the wife of John Jacobs and the mother of Julia Jacobs was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1872: Birthdate of Conrad Gröber, the Catholic cleric whose eventual opposition to the Nazi regime did not include opposition to the Holocaust.

1872: Today, the United States Postal Department authored the establishment of a post office in the community which would eventually be known as Seligman, MO.

1873:In Islington, London, Abraham Aloof, the son of Judah and Grace Aloof, and Mesoda Aloof  gave birth to Judah Aloof who passed away at the age of three months.

1874: Birthdate of Kuppenheim, Germany native Max Dreyfus who at the age of 14 came to the United States where he became a successful musical publisher.

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/16/archives/max-dreyfus-music-publisher-who-headed-chappell-90-dies.html

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/max-dreyfus-mn0001008543

 

1874(14th of Nisan, 5634): The New York Times reported that “this evening the Jewish festival of ‘Pesach’ or the Passover will be inaugurated with the observances and ceremonies incident to its celebration. This festival is one of the most important in the Hewish calendar, and was instituted to commemorate the miraculous deliverance of the children of Israel from the vile system of slaver imposed upon them during their sojourn in the land of Egypt. The festival begins at sundown this evening and continues for eight days…and is distinguished from all festivals by the banishment of all leavened bread from the houses of the pious Israelites…”  

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F0DE1D81039EF34BC4953DFB266838F669FDE

1875:  Actress “Polly” Richards gave birth to, Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace whose works were banned  in Germany “because of rumors that the writer was of Jewish extraction” – a charge vehemently denied by his daughter Mrs. Frere Reeves.

1875: In Hackney, London, Buena David Belasco and Eliezer Isaac Ventura gave birth o Samuel Eliezer Ventura.

1876: It was reported today that I.S. Nathans, a Jew who has become an Episcopalian has been authorized by his church to led a mission to convert the Jews of New York which the church number at 110,000.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A02E4D8143AE63BBC4953DFB266838D669FDE

 

1876: Sigmund Dringer, an Austrian born Jew, had acquired 4,000 tons of scrap iron and 1,700 tons of car wheels said to be worth one hundred thousand dollars.  This made Dringer the largest scrap medal dealer in the United States supplying foundries and rolling mills from Boston to Cincinnati.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9405E4D7153EE63BBC4A53DFB4678383669FDE

1880(20th of Nisan, 5640): Sixth Day of Pesach

 

1880: This morning, Shearith Israel, located at West19th Street near 5thAvenue in New York City, celebrated the 150th anniversary of its consecration with special services led by Rabbis Nieto, Lyon and Pereia-Mendes.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B04E2DC1F31EE3ABC4C53DFB266838B699FDE

 

1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jerusalem.

1881: Today marked the beginning of a three month exodus of Jews from Russia that would include “not less than 225,000 Jewish families” or “over a million souls.”

 

1881: “Le tribut de Zamora, an opera in four acts” with a libretto by Adolphe d’Ennery premiered today “at the Opéra's Palais Garnier.”

 

1882: A blood libel in Tisza Eszlar, Hungary began. On April 1,“A week and a half before Easter, a fourteen year old Catholic housemaid, Esther Solymossy, left her employer’s home to buy paint. She did not return.” When a weeklong search failed to turn up any evidence of the missing girl, two prominent Hungarian anti-Semites named Onody and Istoczy began making claims about “ritual murder” forcing the local sheriff to pursue this blatantly false line of accusation. Fifteen Jews were ultimately charged and tried for "murder" for which there was no real evidence. After a year of futile effort, the fifteen were acquitted.

 

1883: In New York, David Holtz and Pauline Moses, whom he had known for a brief time, were engaged to be married.

1883: Birthdate of Rumanian native Emil Armin, the grandson of a sofer who in 1905 came to the United States where he joined his brother, enrolled in night art classes after which he became a leading American painter.

http://www.chicagomodern.org/artists/emil_armin/

https://richardnortongallery.com/artists/emil-armin

1884: In Galveston Morris and Nettie Lasker gave birth to their second child and first daughter Florina Lasker “the chairman of the National Council of Jewish Women’s immigrant aid section,” the co-author of Care and Treatment of the Jewish Blind in the City of New York” and a board member of the ACLU.

1884: In Cincinnati, OH, Isabella and Edward Johaan Schaar gave birth to University of Cincinnati trained chemical engineer and President of Chicago’s Maxwell House was an active member of the ZOA.

1886: Birthdate of Vitebsk native and University of Maryland trained physician Benjamin Pushkin, who practiced in Baltimore while serving on the faculty of his alma mater.

1887: Birthdate of Leonard Bloomfield an American linguist whose influence dominated the development of structural linguistics in America between the 1930s and the 1950s. He is especially known for his book Language published in 1933 that described the state of the art of linguistics at its time. Bloomfield was the main founder of the Linguistic Society of America.

1888(20thof Nisan, 5648): Sixth Day of Pesach

1888: Three days after his death composer and pianist Charles-Valntin Alkan was buried today in the “Jewish section of Montmartre Cemetery, Paris,” in a tomb which would later be the burial site for his sister Celeste and which was “not far from the tomb of his contemporary Fromental Halévy.”

 

1888: At Temple Beth-El in New York, Rabbi Kaufman Kohler delivered a lecture entitled “The Wandering Jews.”

 

1889: Caroline and Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman gave birth to Eustace Seligman.

1889: Birthdate of Bryn Mawr grad and pioneering psychiatrist Sadi Muriel Baron, the wife of Dr. David Raskind and the mother of Dr. Richard Raskind who gained fame as Dr. Renee Richards.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Baron-Sadi-Muriel

 

1890: Three Russian Jewish immigrants – Ed Myers, Isadore Lowenstein and Ike Edeliman – have been charged with arson and are locked up the Central Police Station in Louisville, KY.

 

1890: Nathan Birnbaum, a leader of Kadima and the publisher of the journal Selbst-Emanzipation created the term Zionism. Birnbaum was actually a Zionist before Herzl popularized the concept. Unfortunately, Birnbaum was not able to find a "home" in the movement as it grew. In a total role reversal he advocated the development of the Jewish community in the Diaspora, Yiddish instead of Hebrew and orthodoxy over secularism.

 

1890: Fifty women formed The Beth El Society of Personal Services was formed with the intent of lessening the burden being placed on the United Hebrew Charities.

 

1892: Grover Cleveland addressed a large crowd of Russian Jews in New York City.

 

1892: In Great Britain, Mr. Balfour told the House of Commons that the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg had based his expectation that a large number of Jews would be coming to the UK because he believed that the United States was about to put an end to the immigration of Jews from Russa.

 

1892: In Brooklyn, the Republican faction opposed to Ernst Nathan sent out a call for meeting.

 

1893(15th of Nisan, 5653): First Day of Pesach

 

1893: According to “the books of the Jewish shelter on Leman, Street, White Chapel,” London, today marked the start of the expulsion of Polish Jews that would totally 38 by the end of the month.

 

1893: Meyer Lyask received an order warning “him to quit his lodgings in the village of Gmina (Poland) within seven days.

1893: Nathan Straus, Isidor Straus and Simon F. Rothschild bought out Joseph Wechsler’s interest in Wechsler and Abraham and renamed the store Abraham and Straus which at that time had 2,000 employees.

 

1893: German’s celebrate the 78th anniversary of the birth of Otto Von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor who changed the face of Europe in ways too numerous to mention here.

http://forward.com/articles/138986/bismarck-s-bayonets/

 

1894: Professor Felix Adler delivered a lecture on “The Influence of Woman” at the Music Hall in New York City.

 

1894: “Over In Camden” published today described the purchase by the Sons of Israel of “a portion of the New Camden Cemetery for use as a cemetery for Jews in the New Jersey city.

 

1894: It was reported today that there may have been a period of time when the Queen Insurance Company of New York did not insure Jews

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30E10F93C5A1A738DDDA80894DC405B8485F0D3

 

 

1894: “All Fool’s Day” published today attributed to the origins of April Fool’s Day as being tied to the fact that Noah made the mistake of “sending the dove out of the ark before the water had abated on the first day of the month” on the Jewish calendar which correlates “our 1st of April.”  Since then people would be sent on “fool’s errands” on this date in the foolish manner of Noah sending out the dove.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50B12FA345D15738DDDA10994DA405B8485F0D3

 

 

1894: “Godfathers and Godmothers” published today described the origins of this popular custom among Christians but for which “doubtless” began with the Jews.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60D10F93C5A1A738DDDA80894DC405B8485F0D3

 

 

1895: Interview with Alphonse Daudet, French anti-Semitic writer, for whom Herzl translated an article. Herzl unfolds his views on the Jewish question, which produce a deep impression on Daudet. Daudet feels that Herzl should write a novel about his ideas.

 

1895: First appearance of The "American Jewess," the first English-language publication published by and for American Jewish women.

1895: In Columbia, “George Henry Issacs, an English Jew originally from Jamaica” and his wife gave birth to Jorge Isaacs Ferrer whom Isaac Goldberg described as “a half-Jew” who is “Spanish America’s most famous novelist.”

 

1896: It was reported today that the recent benefit production of “The Heart of Maryland” raised about two thousand dollars for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum who had just celebrated 21 years of service to the Congregation.

 

1896: The funeral for Rabbi Aaron Wise is scheduled to be held this morning at Rodeph Sholom, at Lexington and 63rd Street in Manhattan

 

1896: “Promises For Peddlers” published today described a meeting between 1,000 pushcart vendors led by Abraham Benowitz, President of the Fish Peddlers’ Association and New York leaders including Mayor Strong and President Teddy Roosevelt of the Police Board to discuss plans for how their business would be conducted on Hester Street on the Lower East Side.

 

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FA0A15F83F5F1B738DDDA80894DC405B8685F0D3

 

1897: Birthdate of Harry Joseph Passon, the brother of Herman and Nathan Pass and who “along with friends Eddie Gottlieb and Hughie Black organized a basketball team sponsored by the South Philadelphia Young Men’s Hebrew Association which became known by the acronym SPHAS.”

https://sabr.org/research/harry-passon-philadelphia-baseball-entrepreneur

 

1897: “Rights of Hebrew Americans” published today described the efforts of Congressman Fitzgerald of Massachusetts to have the Secretary State ensure that American Jews are not discriminated by the Czar’s government when they are doing business in Russia. (Congressman Fitzgerald is the grandfather of JFK)

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60D12F73E5811738DDDA80894DC405B8785F0D3

 

 

1898: In New York, Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D. and Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M.D. gave birth to child-prodigy and math wizard, William James Sidis

 

1898: Birthdate of Joseph A. “Joe” Alexander the Syracuse native and three-time All-American guard on the Syracuse University football team who “was the first player signed by the original New York Giants” and who went on to a successful medical career when his playing days were over.

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/14/archives/drjoseph-alexander-dead-at-77-lung-expert-allamerica-guard.html

 

1898: Louis and Clara Asia Parnes gave birth to Paul Parnes the husband of Fay Parnes and the father of William and Arlene Parnes.

 

1898: Moses Samuel Zuckermandl who was the rabbi at Pleschen, Prussia “was appointed lecturer at the Mora-Leipziger Foundation at Breslau” today.

 

1898(9thof Nisan, 5658): Sixty-eight year old German lawyer Hermann Makower who also served as President of the Board of the Jewish Community of Berlin passed away today.

 

1899(21stof Nisan, 5659): 4th day of Pesach and Shabbat

 

1899(21stof Nisan, 5659): Three weeks short of the third anniversary of the death of her husband, Baron Maurice de Hirsch; sixty-five year old Clara Hirsch, the Baroness de Hirsch passed away today in Paris. The daughter of Belgian banking family, she knew the personal tragedy of loss when her daughter died in infancy and her son died at the age of 31.  She threw herself into a variety of charitable efforts and after her husband’s used the family fortune to provide for a myriad of causes including settle Russian Jews in agricultural communities and establishing training schools for young girls so that they could learn a trade and be self-supporting.

 

1899: Philip Michael Ritter von Newlinski, a Polish nobleman whom Herzl wanted to use his contacts with the Ottomans to promote the Zionist cause, dies in Constantinople.

 

1899: In “Closing of the Schools” published today, “Vox Populi” defends the decision of the school board closing the schools at this time of the year since it coincides with Easter and Passover which means that Christian and Jewish students would not be in school.  Such a decision is not an unwarranted intrusion of religion in public education but an acknowledgement that in the United States we enjoy religious freedom that enables to honor the customs of Christians and Jews.

 

1899: Despite a total lack of evidence, Leopold Hilsner was sentenced death today in Polna, Bohemia in another case of a Blood Libel. His sentence was later commuted and in 1916, Hilsner received a full pardon. It should be noted that his life was saved thanks to the activities of T.J. Masark, Czech patriot and the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia.

 

1899: Austrian author Karl Kraus an advocate of Jewish assimilation and a critic of Theodor Herzl renounced the “faith of his fathers” today.

1900: At memorial service was held this morning at Temple Beth-El to mark the passing Rabbi Isaac M. Wise where Rabbi Samuel Shulman led the congregation in the recitation of Kaddish and delivered a special in which he noted “that memorial service was being held on the anniversary of the death of the Baroness Clara de Hirsch saying: ‘Let us combine in though the memory of the mental and spiritual emancipator and the benefactress whose work was worldwise.’”

1900: The executors of the estate of Abraham Wolf, a partner in the banking firm of Kun, Loeb & Co turned the estate over to the trustees Mrs. Addie Kahn and her son Gilbert W. Kahn

1901: It was reported today that Louis Kahn “driving the famous black pacer George Wallace”  and Nathan Straus driving the bay gelding Alvis were among those competing at the Speedway over the weekend.

1902(23rdof Adar II, 5662): Sixty-five year old David Oppenheimer, the German born son of Lob and Bina Oppenheimer and the husband of Johanna Oppenheimer passed away today in New York City.

1902:“Leo Fresh, the well-known auctioneer, called at the police barracks tonight and stated that a fine hen, which he had been fattening for the Jewish Passover, had been stolen by a woman who lives at 83 Jenkins Street.”

1902: Birthdate of Russian native and Cincinnati, OH raised Philip “Cincy” Sachs, the basketball coach for Lawrence Institute of Technology, the Detroit Gems and the Detroit Falcons.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/coaches/sachsph99c.html

 

1903: Birthdate of Chess Champion Salo (Salomon) Landau, the Galician native who died in Auschwitz.

1903: All entries must submitted to the office of the Educational Alliance by  today for those who want to enter 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.

1903: Herzl meets McIlwraithe, the legal adviser of the Khedive. Herzl presents the Zionist proposal. McIlwraithe promises that the government will make a counter-proposal.

1904(16thof Nisan, 5664): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1904(16thof Nisan, 5664): Eighty year old Gustav Freund, the husband of Rosa Fruend passed away today in Vienna.

1904: Benjamin Franklin Lindas, he St. Louis born son of Severt and Catherine (Leonard) Lindas, and Washington University trained attorney went into the real estate business “a partner of in the firm of F.H. Wood and Co.”

1905: Tonight, over a thousand Jews watched as two Torah scrolls were carried to the First Zolyner Congregation Anshe Sefard from the home of Sigmund Yokel, the President of the Congregation. After a brief ceremony during which the scrolls were placed in the Holy Ark, “the marchers celebrated at a big banquet.”

1905: The New York Times reported that the third edition of “The Seder Service,” a Haggadah prepared by Mrs. Phillip Cowen and published by her husband is now in available.

1906: Birthdate of Nusyn Glass the Polish born actor who gained fame as Ned Glass known for his portrayal of Uncle Moe in “Bridgette Loves Bernie.”

1906: Professor Ivan Michaelovitch Zanchevsky , the Rector of the university in Odessa, who has been “charged with organizing the student militia which defended the Jews during the massacres last November” is scheduled to “be place on trial before the Senate.

1907(17thof Nisan, 5667): Third Day of Pesach

1908: Birthdate of Abraham H Maslow, renowned psychologist and Brooklyn native who was the oldest of seven children of Russian Jewish immigrants. In a manner typical of this immigrant generation, Maslow's parents pushed him to succeed academically. Maslow studied law at CCNY and Cornell. He then married his cousin Bertha and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin where he began his study of psychology earning his doctorate in 1931. Maslow is most famous for developing his Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow was a professor at Brandeis from 1951 until 1969. He died in 1970. In examining Maslow's life and work, one commentator found a connection between Maslow's Jewish background and his scientific work. Just as Judaism tries to bring order of a chaotic world, so Maslow sought to develop a unifying structure that would enable people to bring order to their chaotic lives.

"Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be." Abraham Maslow.

1909: Birthdate of Abner Biberman. Born in Milwaukee, Biberman gained fame as an actor and movie director. His films included “Gunga Din,” “Bridge At Saint Luis Rey,” “Winchester 73” and “Viva Zapata.” His oriental appearance made him a natural for the role of the Japanese officer in several war movies made during WW II, the most famous of which was “Back to Bataan.” He passed away in June, 1977.

1910: It was reported today that “the will of Amelia Alexander Kaufman, who died on February 19 at the Hotel Premier” showed she had “left $1,000 each to Mt. Sinai Hospiital, the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum the Montefiore Home, the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews, the Unite Hebrew Charities and the Beth Israel Hospital and $500 each to the Machzikel Talmud toran and the North American Relief Society for the Indigent Jews of Palestine.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/04/01/105076690.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1911: At least a thousand Jews were threatened with expulsion from Moscow.

1912(14thof Nisan, 5672): Ta’anit Bechorot observed for the last time during the Presidency of William Howard Taft.

1912(14th of Nisan, 5672): For the first time, the Patriotic League of America sponsored a Seder tonight at Tuxedo Hall for Jewish soldiers and sailors stationed in the New York metropolitan area.

1912(14thof Nisan, 5672): Sixty-one year old Felix Pinner, the Berlin born son of “Sara and Isidor Lewin Pinner passed away today in his hometown.

1912(14th of Nisan, 5672): In what appeared to be a classic SNAFU, 17 Jewish soldiers on Governor’s Island were assigned to guard duty tonight meaning that they could not attend the Seder at the Tuxedo. This was in direct violation of The Secretary of War’s had order that all soldiers in the New York area would receive a furlough to celebrate the holiday. When authorities found out about the mistake they corrected it so the soldiers could attend the Seder.

1913: Mrs. Moses L. Purvin was elected President and Mrs. Benjamin Auerbach was elected Vice Presidents at the annual business meeting of The Chicago Woman’s Aid which will “continue its policy of having paintings of Chicago artists on view in the Library of the Sinai Centers

1913: “The regular meeting Ladies Society of B’nai Sholom Temple Israel” took place this evening where the attendees he a program on “Our Holidays” that included a presentation on Passover by Mrs. Carrie H. Geil.

1913: “New York fruit merchant” Joseph Kozinsky and his wife gave birth to Frank Kozinksky who would change his name to Frank King and along with his brothers Maury and Herman King Productions, the film company that had the courage to hire blacklisted writers during the McCarthy Era.

1914: Birthdate of Philip Yordan, the native of Chicago and law school graduate who an Academy Award for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story for Broken Lance and who worked to thwart the effects of the infamous Hollywood Blacklist system.

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft0z09n7m0&chunk.id=d0e17295&toc.id=&brand=ucpress

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/apr/09/guardianobituaries.film

 

1915: Sam Lazarus and Annie Stein Lazarus gave birth to Jacob Mendel Lazarus who would be buried, for a Jew, in the unlikely location of Valdosta when passed away more than nine decades later.

1915: Based on a resolution adopted today in Chicago, Orthodox Jews will be able to exercise their franchise in the upcoming elections scheduled for April 6, the last day of Passover. Since the Orthodox cannot write on the holiday, the resolution empowered judges and clerks of the election to mark the ballots for the observant Jews.

 

1915: In Berlin an anti-war protest was held led by Rosa Luxemburg, an act for which she was imprisoned.

 

1915: As “The Mule Corps swears allegiance to the British army” Jabotinsky refuses to serve “because its duties only involve transportation” and does not fulfill his demand for the establishment of a fighting legion.

 

1916: The Federation of Rumanian Jews dedicates the new Jewish Home for Convalescents, which formally opens today at Grandview, Rockland County as a permanent memorial to the work of Dr. Solomon Schechter. Schechter was the noted Hebrew scholar and head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, who died on November 20, 1915.

 

1917: Professor Richard Gottheil of Columbia University introduced Major General Leonard Wood to the members of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity tonight “on preparedness and the obligations of alien-born citizens to their adopted country with regard to service in the army in war or peace.”

1917: In Bavaria, Elsa Haas, the daughter of Joseph and Ida Schulein and her husband Dr. Alfred Haas gave birth to

1917: “A declaration signed by sixty-eight Jewish citizens issued in support of the letter which Oscar S. Straus recently wrote to the British and French Ambassadors at Washington in which Mr. Straus contended that a majority of the Jews of the United States sympathize with the cause of Allies was issued” today “under the caption,” ‘A Declaration by American Jews.’”

 

1917: Birthdate of Melville “Mel” Shavelson who gained fame a writer, director and producer of dozens of films featuring such stars as Lucille Ball, Jimmy Cagney and Frank Sinatra. He was nominated for two Oscars and created two Emmy Award-winning television series, "Make Room for Daddy" and "My World and Welcome to It."

https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/384/writer-director-producer-mel-shavelson-dies-at-90/

 

1917: Baron Alexander Gunzberg sent a cable from Petrograd to Louis Marshall in New York in which he wrote that the new Government be publishing  “a decree canceling all laws and paragraphs adversely affecting Jews” and that the “Russian Jewry, liberated from the yoke, in grateful appreciation of never-failing helpfulness stretch out their hand to their free-born American bretheren.”

1917: As leaders work on the plans for the calling of “The American Jewish Congress” a special meeting of the Executive Committee was held today in New York where the a resolution was adopted setting the rules for calling a meeting the Congress on September 2, 1917.

1918(19thof Nisan, 5678): Fifth Day of Pesach

1918: In New York, one hundred thousand people are expected to participate in the celebration of the establishment of the Provisional Jewish government in Palestine which will include parades and a mass meeting in Carnegie Hall that will include a speech by Dr. Stephen S. Wise.

1918: Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist Commission, arrived in Palestine. The Commission had been established by the British to help carry out the promises of the Balfour Declaration. The Commission actually arrived before the war had ended and the Mandate had been established. The British had intended that the Commission be its official contact with the Jewish community (Yishuv) and help in setting policies concerning post-war settlement and development including immigration. Unfortunately, this positive start did not pre-sage a continuation of British support during the inter-war period.

1918: Following the capture of Jerusalem in December of 1917, the 7th Indian Division relieved the 52nd Division which had been transferred to the Western Front.

1918: Three days after he had passed away, 18 year old Sidney Benjamin Flaum, a “rifleman with the 17th Battalion” and the son of Maurice and Phoebe Flaum was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1918: One day after she had passed away, the former Esther Van Praag, the wife of David Abrahams and the mother of Sarah Abrahams was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1918(19th of Nisan, 5678): Isaac Rosenberg, a leading Anglo-Jewish poet, is killed on April Fool’s Day while fighting on the Western Front.

 

1919: In Grodno, Yitahak and Dvora Livni gave birth to ham "Eitan" Livni who made Aliyah in 1925, served with the Irgun and became a Likud MK.

 

1919: Birthdate of Jabr Muadi, the Israeli Druze politician who served in the Knesset for three decades from 1951 to 1981

 

1920: The emergence of the Nazi Party. (This happened on the anniversary of the day that Haman published his decree of extermination of the Jews.)

1920: Jewish merchant Henry Dix wrote to Mrs. Israel Unterberf, the President of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association about a gift he proposed giving to the association of a property he owned at Mt. Kisco as well as the establishment of trust fund for maintain the property.

1921: In the United Kingdom, Alfred Moritz Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, completed his service as First Commissioner of Works and began serving as Minister of Health in a cabinet headed by David Lloyd George.

1921: Beth El Hebrew School, “the second of a series of Hebrew schools to be established in the Bronx under the auspices of the New York committee of School Extension of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations” which has a capacity for five hundred students and is led by principal Louis E. Goldstein opened today.

1921:  Marius Ranson who has been serving as assistant to Dr. Schulman at Temple Beth-El is scheduled to become the Rabbi at Temple Beth Emes in Albany, NY today  filling a pulpit at the congregation that has been vacant since the death of Rabbi Eli Mayer.

1921: The United Relief Organization of Brownsville and East New York’s campaign to raise fifty thousand dollars “for war relief work” is scheduled to come to an end today.

1921: In “Upholds Palestine Plan; Churchill Tells Arabs that Balfour Declaration Must Stand,” published today described“further details of Winston Churchill’s visit to Jerusalem.” Churchill met with a delegation of Arab Congress which had been held much earlier in Haifa and which “asked for the withdrawal of the Balfour declaration. Churchill declared…that the government was determined to keep to the Balfour declaration in both of its parts, namely, the establishment of the Jewish national home and the protection of the non-Jewish population.” Later, when he met with a Jewish delegation, Churchill concluded his remarks “by saying that the British taxpayers could not bear the expense of the establishment of the Jewish national home and that Jews must therefore make greater efforts to obtain the necessary funds.”

1921: Lightweight Leach Cross (Louis Charles Wallach) fought his 140thbout in Los Angeles.

1922: Sir Edgar Speyer “and his remaining partner in the London bank dissolved Speyer Brothers.

 

1923(15th of Nisan, 5683): Pesach I

1923(15thof Nisan, 5683): Eighty-one-year-old Miriam Maduro Davis, the New York born daughter of Dr. Daniel Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto and Rachel Lopes Mendes Peixotto and wife of Michael Marks Davis with whom she had seven children passed away today.

1924: Otto Preminger’s theatrical career began today when he “appeared as a furniture mover in Reinhardt's comedia staging of Carlo Goldoni's ‘The Servant of Two Masters.’1925: Amid much pomp and circumstance, Hebrew University was opened in Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. Chaim Weizman beamed with pride as he saw his 25 year old dream come to life. Lord Arthur Balfour, of Balfour Declaration Fame, represented the British government. Much of the funding came from the American philanthropist Felix Warburg. The first chancellor of what this first class educational institution was Dr. Judah Magnes, a native of San Francisco. The cornerstones had originally been laid in 1918 when fighting was still going on between the British and Turkish forces in Palestine. Talk about Jewish optimism and dedication to learning.

1925: Chanina Karchevsky, “The Tel Aviv Nightingale,” conducted the Gymnasisa Herzliya Choir in what has been termed an “unforgettable performance” on Mt. Scopus at the ceremony marking the dedication of Hebrew University.

1925: Birthdate of Bialystok born and University of San Francisco grad Sala Galanta who gained fame as Sala Burton, the wife of Congressman Phillip Burton whom she followed in office when he passed away.

http://dictionary.sensagent.com/Sala%20Burton/en-en/

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B001158

 

1926(17th of Nisan, 5686):Acting giant Jacob Pavlovich Adler passed away in New York City.  Born in Russia in 1855, he was a dominate figure in the Yiddish Theatre in Odessa, London and New York City. A name unknown to most, he is remembered as the father of the actor Luther Adler and Stella Adler who coached Marlon Brando.

 

1926: Hebrew Book Day is mounted in Tel Aviv.

 

1927: The HaShomer HaZair kibbutzim and training groups establish a national organization in Haifa called "HaKibbutz Artzi" - "National Kibbutz". The Kibbutz Artzi is a federation comprising 85 kibbutzim founded by the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. In 1998 it numbered around 20,000 members and its entire population (including children, candidates, parents of members etc.) totaled approximately 35,000.

 

1928: Birthdate of Herbert G. Klein newscaster and President Richard Nixon’s press secretary.

 

1928: Konrad von Preysing, a Catholic prelate who would play a key role as an anti-Nazi activist during World War II was made a canon today.

1929: In Chicago, Morton David Chan and Julia Elizabeth Cahn gave birth to Mary Elizabeth Cahn who became Mary Elizabeth Wolf when she married Stephen Louis Wolf.

1929: In New York City, Abraham Gribetz,, an executive vice president of the Hebrew Loan Society and Ida (Heller) Gribetz gave birth to Columbia and NYU trained attorney and U.S. Navy veteran Judah Gribetz, the one-time Deputy Mayor of New York for Governmental Relations, the author of The Timetable of Jewish History and husband of Jessica Shapiro with whom he had three children – Sidney, Marion and Sarah.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011ME5E3A/?tag=prabook0b-20

 

1930: “Blue Angel” a movie that was
filmed simultaneously in English and German versions” directed by Josef von Sternberg, with a script co-authored by Robert Liebman

1930: In Melbourne, Australia, a group of Jews interested in forming a “Liberal Community” met for the first time.

 

1931: Birthdate of Rolf Hochhuth. This non-Jewish German playwright wrote The Deputy which portrayed the role of the Pope during the Holocaust.

1932: “The Miracle Man” with a script co-authored by Samuel Hoffenstein was released in the United States today.

1932: Adolph Eichman joined the Nazi Party

 

1932: The New York Times described the closing day activities at the Maccabiad. “An emotional crowd of 25,000 watched the conclusion of the first Jewish Olympics…The Palestine High Commissioner participated in the ceremonies as did other officials and representatives of foreign governments. There were tears in the eyes of many as the exhibits reached their close. Among the Maccabee displays were those of scouting, gymnastics, motorcycling, bicycle riding and horseback riding led by Abraham Shapiro, the hero of Petch Tikva…A procession of 5,000 Maccabeans led the way to the graves of Achad Ha’Am , Maz Nodeau and the victims of Arab riots, where wreaths were placed. …The procession marched through the main streets of Tel-Aviv” before dispersing at the “Herzlia Gymnasium where the march of the Maccabeans had begun.”

1933: In Brooklyn, Philip Weinstein, a garment industry work, and “the former Shirley Bisnoff, a homemaker and jazz pianist” gave birth to Stanley Alan Weinstein who gained fame as Sam Weston, “the father of G.I. Joe” action figure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/business/stan-weston-dead-gi-joe-creator.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

1933: German violinist (and non-Jew) Adolf Busch repudiated Germany altogether and in 1938 he boycotted Italy. 

 

1933: Nazi Germany began its persecution of Jews by boycotting Jewish businesses. Less than a month after coming to power, the War Against the Jews began in earnest. This puts the lie to those who portray Hitler's policies against the Jews as only being an incidental part of his plans and programs.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/april/03.asp

http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206078.pdf

 

1933: At Lauphehim, members of the SA enforced the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses “positioned themselves in front of Jewish shops in order to intimidate potential customers and prevent them from entering” while the windows were broken in at least one shop.

 

1933: As part of the Nazi boycott against Jewish businesses, uniformed men “placed themselves in front of Jewish shops in Cologne” to prevent customers from entering.

 

1933: In response to the Nazi boycott, in Cologne Jewish merchant Richard Stern, who had fought in the First World War, distributed a leaflet against the boycott and placed himself wearing his Iron Cross near the SA-poster in front of his shop.

1933: In Berlin “SA paramilitaries” carrying signs that read “Germans! Defends yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!” “blocked the entrance to a Jewish owned shop.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Nazi_boycott_of_1933#/media/File:SA_Jews.jpg

 

1933: In Constantine, Algeria, Abraham Cohen-Tannoudji and Sarah Sebbah gave birth to French physicist, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize.

1934(16thof Nisan, 5694): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.

1934: In the last twelve months, ending today, the Joint Distribution Committee spent $1,011,330 “in connection with program of aid to the German Jews.”

1934: Chevrolet ended its sponsorship of the Jack Benny Program. Benny continued the show with General Tire as the sponsor.

1934: In Mishnietz, Poland Nechama Laska and Hiam Yehuda Giladi gave birth to Israel Giladi

1935: The New York Times reported that “the American team is favored to retain the track and field title in the Jewish world games which open tomorrow…The strongest challenge for the Americans is expected to come from the German, French, Czech and Austrian teams.

 

1935: “Storm Over the Andes” an adventure film co-authored by Dore Schary was released in the United States today.

 

 

1935: Democratic leader General Hugh S. Johnson denounced “Father Charles Coughlin, comparing the Catholic priest to Adolf Hitler” because of the anti-Semitic pronouncements on his radio show

 

1935: Anti-Jewish legislation in the Saar region was passed.

 

1935:Israelitisches Familienblatt (Israelite Family Paper) began appearing in Berlin and became the organ of the Reichsvertretung

 

1936: French conservatives condemned French Socialist leader Léon Blum because of his Jewish ancestry and his strongly anti-Nazi orientation. A popular slogan at the time condemned the future French premier: "Better Hitler than Blum."

 

1936: “An injunction suit against Cantor David Katzman was filed in the Supreme Court” today “ by the First American Rumanian Congregation” that seeks to restrain the can from breaking a contract to officiate during the Passover holidays in the plaintiff’s synagogue…and going the Laurel-in-the-Pines Hotel at Lakewood, NJ.”

 

 

1936: One hundred ninety Jewish exiles from German who had boarded the Cunard White Star line Berengaria at Cherbourg and Southampton arrived in New York today.

 

 

1937: Birthdate of Sylvia Rafael, the Pretoria native who made Aliyah in 1963 and became an agent for Mossad.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-bio-reveals-triumphs-trials-of-mossads-most-famous-female-agent/

 

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported on the festive opening of a new road connecting Hadar Hacarmel and Mount Carmel in Haifa. The new road was 3,100 meters long and 10 to 15 meters wide - the asphalt width was six meters. It was expected that this new road would help to develop Mount Carmel.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that according to the Palestine Review Jews contributed financially at least four times as much to the Arab economy as Arabs returned to the Jews.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a provision was made in the Pension Ordinance for officials in the Civil Service to retire, under special circumstances, on attaining the age of 50.

 

1938: Fritz Löhner-Beda, the Bohemian born librettist, lyricist and writer was arrested and deported to Dachau Concentration Camp.

 

1938: “Number 111” a thriller directed by Steve Sekely was released in Hungary today.

 

 

1939: The Spanish Civil War came to an end marking another victory for fascism. Oddly enough, despite the support Franco got from Hitler and Mussolini he remained neutral during WW II, which proved quite advantageous to the Allies. As far as Franco’s treatment of the Jews, the record appears too mixed but consider the following as one piece of the puzzle.

http://wais.stanford.edu/Spain/spain_sephardicjewsunderfranco112302.html

 

 

1939: At the age of 13, Raul Hilberg who would gain fame as Dr. Raul Hilber a world renowned Holocaust scholar fled Austria with his family a year after the Anschluss, for France, where they embarked on a ship to Cuba. From Cuba the family would make their way to the United States, where Hilberg, after serving with the U.S. Army in Europe would come home and build his academic career.

 

1939: U.S. premiere of “Dodge City,” a western directed by Michael Curtiz, produced by Hal Wallis with music by Max Steiner.

 

1940: The Institut für deutsche Ostarbeit (Institute for German Work in the East) was founded to study Polish Jewry.

 

1940: Shanghai, China, accepted thousands of Jewish refugees.

 

1941: A ghetto was established at Kielce, Poland. German overseers of the ghetto renamed some of the streets. New names were Zion Street, Palestine Street, Jerusalem Street, Moses Street, Non-Kosher Street, and Grynszpan Street.

1941: In Iraq, Rashid Al led a successful anti-British, pro-Nazi coup that would lead to the pogrom known as the Farhud in June that was the beginning of the end for the ancient Jewish community in that Arab country.

 

1941(4th of Nisan, 5701): German troops executed 250 members of a Jewish youth group in Subotica, Yugoslavia, who have been carrying out acts of sabotage.

 

1941: A men's annex was established at the Ravensbrück concentration camp located in Germany,

 

1941: Seven Warsaw Jews smuggled themselves into Bratislava, Slovakia, and from there to safety in Palestine.

 

1941: A pro-Axis officer clique headed by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani seized power in Iraq, and prepared airfields for German use.

1941: The Farhud, a pogrom aim at the Jews of Baghdad “inspired by both the Nazis and the Grand Mufti of Jersualem, Haj-Amin Al Husseini, began today.

1941: The first Croatian concentration camp began operation, at Danica. Four more Croat camps were opened, at Loborgrad, Jadovno, Gradiska, and Djakovo.

 

1941: Lillian Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine", premiered in New York City. A native of New Orleans, Hellman's father was "of German Jewish ancestry." Hellman was a staunch supporter of the Communists. Many right-wingers mistakenly took her ancestry and her political beliefs, tied them together and used Hellman as an example of the Jewish/Communist Conspiracy to overthrow America.

 

1941 Bess and Rubin “Honest Joe” Goldestein gave birth to Eddie Goldstein whom Dallas knew as swap shop owner “little Honest Joe King Edward.”

 

1941: Birthdate of Bonnie Sherr Klein, the Philadelphia native and Stanford graduate who went to Canada with her husband Michael Klein as part of an anti-war protest where she developed into a filmmaker and social activists.

 

1942: Sobibór death camp was nearly operational; gassings would begin in May.

 

1942: At the beginning of the first week in April, more than 4400 Jews died of starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto

 

1942: At the beginning of April, the first transports of Jews arrive at the camp at Majdanek, Poland, which will begin gassing Jews later in the year.

 

1942: During the first week of April, Sunday Times of London published, but did not highlight news items about the Nazi executions of 120,000 Romanian Jews.

.

1942: During the first week of April, Jews were mocked and hanged at Mlawa, Poland.

 

1942: The Nazis deported 965 Slovakian Jews to Auschwitz.

 

1942: In occupied Poland the Nazis created the Łachwa Ghetto when the town's Jews were forcibly moved into a new ghetto consisting of two streets and 45 houses, and surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The ghetto housed roughly 2,350 people, which amounted to approximately 1 square meter for every resident

 

1943: By the beginning of April, Nazi killing squads had murdered almost two million Jews in Eastern Europe.

 

1943: Starting in the first week of April, the Germans forced Jewish prisoners to burn the bodies of 600,000 Jews exterminated at Belzec.

 

1943: During the first week of April, the Germans launched an offensive against Jewish partisans active in the Parczew Forest, Poland.

 

1943: During the first week of April, Resistance members derailed a death train in Belgium.

 

1943: Pope Pius XII complained that Jews are demanding and ungrateful.

 

1943: Dr. Julian Chorazycki, a former captain in the Polish Army and a leader of inmate resistance at the Treblinka death camp, took poison when the camp's deputy commandant discovered the stash of currency Chorazycki had planned to use to buy small arms.

1944: Having lost 95 bombers, in last night’s attack on Nuremberg, which was the worst single night of loss since the bombing campaign, leaders of the RAF consider how to continue their attacks.  (This should serve as a reminder that it is only in hindsight, that victory over the Nazis seemed inevitable.)

 

1945: On Easter, Jan M. Komski, who was not Jewish, was among the 20,000 prisoners marched from Hersbruck to Dachau

 

1945(18thof Nisan, 5705): Fourth Day of Pesach

 

1945(18thof Nisan, 5705): Twenty-seven year old Karel Švenk, the Czech entertainer who :was one of the first artists to be deported to Terezin in 1941 died today en route to Mauthausan.

http://www.thelastcyclist.com/about-terezin/remembering-karel-svenk/

1945(18thof Nisan, 5706: Ninety-six year German immigrant Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, the founder of I.W. Harper, the premium bourbon whiskey passed away today.

http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Schmieheim/IWBernheim.html

 

1945: Father Giuseppe Girotti, a Catholic theology professor at the Saint Maria della Rose Dominican Seminary of Turin, who acted to save many Jews by arranging safe hideouts and escape routes from the country died at Dachau. He had been arrested and sent to the camp after having been betrayed by an informer and caught in the midst of helping a wounded Jewish person. It is reported that while in Dachau, he continued to write his unfinished commentary on the biblical book of Jeremiah.

1946: It was reported today that Ian Morris Heilbron was to be “the first non-American to honored with the Priestly Medal.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/priestley/recipients/1945heilbron.html

1946: Sholom J. Kahn reviewed Star of the Unborn by Franz Werfel.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/star-of-the-unborn-by-franz-werfel/

 

1947: The first Jewish immigrants disembark at the port of Eilat. Eilat is a port the southern end of Israel on the Gulf of Aqaba. Ben-Gurion was determined to make this part of the new state of Israel. The tale of the race for Eliat in 1948 is a tale of daring-do that would worthy of Rambo or James Bond. Ben Gurion realized how important this southern port would be to the development of trade, among other things. The reality has exceeded his vision.

 

1948: As the military situation for the Yishuv reaches a crisis status, Ben Gurion holds an urgent meeting with his senior Jewish Agency colleagues and forces them to adopt “a single blow offensive.”

 

1948: Arabs attacked Beit Alpha, a kibbutz near the Gilboa Ridge, with mortars.

 

1948: The first major report of Ralph Asher Alpher’s work describing the Big Bang Theory appeared in the periodical Nature.

 

1948: During Operation Nachshon, three large convoys broke through the blockade of Jerusalem bringing food and arms to the beleaguered Jewish population.

 

1949: Mordechai Maklef wаѕ appointed Head οf one of tһе General Command Departments in the IDF.

 

1950(14th of Nisan, 5710): Shabbat Hagadol

 

1950: At sundown, Israelis sit down to celebrate the second Pesach since the creation of the state of Israel. A Seder is being held on Mt. Scopus for the 118 Israelis taking care of the Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University campus that have been cut off from the rest of Jewish Jerusalem. The climaxing word of the Seder “Next Year in Jerusalem” take on special meaning for the 80,000 newly arrived immigrants who will be eating their Matzah and Maror in transit camps.

 

1951: Following the issuance of an order by David Ben Gurion, the “Central Institute for Coordination” or Mossad became operation under directorship of Reuven Shiloah.

http://www.mossad.gov.il/Eng/About/ReuvenShiloach.aspx

 

 

1952: The Jerusalem Post   reported that an acceptable formula had been reached at the London External Debts Conference on the eventual Israel-German reparations agreements. At The Hague, however, the German reparations delegation announced that it had no authority to assume any commitments towards Israel or World Jewry's representation. A woman who refused to accept a $10,000 inheritance from her sister, who died abroad, was charged with infringing Israel's financial regulations.

 

1952: “Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick” produced by William Perlberg and co-starring Dinah Shore was released in the United States today.

 

1952:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the deepest well in Israel, 565 m., was dug at Karkur and had produced 360 cu.m. of excellent water per hour.

 

1952(6th of Nisan, 5712): Hungarian born dramatist and novelist Ferenc Molnár passed away today in New York.

http://archives.nypl.org/the/21724

 

1953(16th of Nisan, 5713): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1953: One day after premiering in New York City, “Fear and Desire” “directed, produced and edited by Stanley Kubrick” with a script by Howard Sackler was released in the rest of the United States today.

 

1953: In New York City Irene “Kelly” Kellerman, “an art teacher” and “Sonny Sonnenfeld, a lighting salesman, educator, and architectural lighting designer” gave birth to Barry Sonnenfeld director of the comedies “Men In Black” and “When Harry Met Sally.”

1955(9thof Nisan, 5715): Sixty-six year old David Kass, the New York born son of Ida and Abraham Kass who was the founder and “President of the Overland Trading Company, Director of the Trade Bank of New York, President of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun and husband of Sadie Kass with whom he had two daughters – “Helen Joy and Babette” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1955/04/02/93736812.pdf

 

1957: Birthdate of Representative Peter Deutsch, from Florida’s 20th Congressional District.

 

1957: First Jewish immigrants to arrive by ship disembarked at Eilat.

 

1958: U.S. premiere of “Teacher’s Pet” a romantic comedy produced by William Perlberg with a script by Fay and Michael Kanin.

 

1959: An IDF drill for calling up the reserves turned into a fiasco that became known as The Night of the Ducks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/books/edmund-epstein-dies-at-80-gave-lord-of-the-flies-wings.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0

 

1961(16thof Nisan, 5721) Second Day of Pesach

 

1961(16thof Nisan, 5721): In Cincinnati, Ohio, seventy-six year old Julian A. Pollak, the president of the Pollak Steel Company from 1944 to 1957 and Chairman of the Board from 1957 until today who had been a member of the Cornell University football team from 1905 to 1957 and major philanthropist in his hometown passed away today.

1962: Two days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held today at Temple Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan for seventy-two year old Boston native and New York University educated teacher Harold Fields the WW I Army veteran whose activities in the field of immigration including helping “to frame the National Origins Act of 1924,” participating in two conferences of Governor Roosevelt on immigration and working as a “consultant” on the topic for the famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/03/31/83493361.pdf

1964(19thof Nisan, 5724): Fifth Day of Pesach observed during the Filibuster designed to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

1965: The London Borough of Tower Hamlets which is the home of Field Street Great Synagogue founded in 1899, was created today.

1965(28th of Adar II, 5725): Helena Rubinstein US cosmetic manufacturer passed away. Her age was not accurately determined, but she was reported to be 89 at the time of her death.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rubinstein-helena

1967(20thof Adar II, 5727): Parashat Shimin; Shabbat Parah

1968(3rd of Nisan, 5728): Russian physicist Lev D Landau passed away at the age of 59. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1962 for his pioneering theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium He is also admired for a prolific series of textbooks on theoretical physics, co-authored with E. M. Lifshitz.

 

1969: Holocaust survivor Fred Kort opened Imperial Toy Corp. on Seventh Street in downtown Los Angeles. His inaugural product: the hi-bounce ball. Kort's sons from his first marriage, Jordan, Steve and David, all joined their father's business.

1972(17thof Nisan, 5732): Third Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1973: In Castro Valley, CA, Elaine Maddow (née Gosse) and Robert B. “Bob” Maddow gave birth to MSNBC anchor and news personality Rachel Maddow whose paternal grandfather was from an Eastern European Jewish family named Medwedof but who is herself not Jewish.

 

1973: In Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Talmud shiur at Yeshiva University we completed learning the first chapter of Talmud Bavli Tractate Hullin. The Rav gave a dvar Torah at the Siyyum. He explained the meaning of the recitation of the hadran alakh, the prayer that promised upon the completion of learning a Talmud chapter or Tractate that we would return to study you – speaking to the text – again

 

1974: The Interim Report of the Agranat Commission published today “called for the dismissal of a number of senior officers in the IDF and caused such controversy that Prime Minister Golda Meir was forced to resign.”

1975(20thof Nisan, 5735): Sixth Day of Pesach

1976(1stof Nisan, 5766): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1976(1stof Nisan, 5766): Eighty-two year old NYU trained lawyer Charles Marks, the supporter of the YMHWHA and the controversial State Supreme Court Justice who presided over the Malcom X murder trial and who was the husband of “the former Beatrice Engelhart Rubin” and the father of three children – Howard, Lester and Lucille – from his first marriage to the former Paula Unger passed away today

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/03/archives/charles-marks-exjustice-dies-presided-in-state-trial-of-malcolm-x.html

 

1976(1st of Nisan, 5736): Eighty-four year old Max Ernst “the self-taught German-painter who formed a Dada group in Cologne, Germany, with other avant-garde artists and pioneered a method called frottage, in which a sheet of paper is placed on the surface of an object and then penciled over until the texture of the surface is transferred” passed away today.

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-ernst-max.htm

http://www.max-ernst.com/

 

1976: “Looking at the Law” featuring attorney Neil Lewis Chayet debuted today on WBZ.

1977:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the visit to Israel of the French foreign minister, Louis de Guiringaud, ended with "normalization," if not an improvement of strained relations.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that while visiting Washington King Hussein of Jordan declared that he was ready for a "full peace" with Israel, but would never give up East Jerusalem.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the ambitious Netivei Ayalon highway system in Tel Aviv had been revised owing to enormous expenses.

 

1977:Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure” an animated feature film with the voices of Didi Conn as “Raggedy Ann,” Arnold Stang as “Queasy and Sheldon Harnick as “Barney Beanbag” was released today in the United States.

 

1977: U.S. premiere of “Hot Tomorrows” directed and produced by Martin Brest and starring Ken Lerner

 

1978: Rafael Eitan was promoted to the rank of General and was appointed by Ezer Weizman to be the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

1978: CBS broadcast the final episode of “The Bob Newhart Show,” a sitcom co-starring Suzanne Pleshette, the daughter of Jewish immigrants.

1980(15thof Nisan, 5740): Jews observe Pesach as Ronald Reagan sought to unseat Jimmy Carter.

1981: In London, the annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee continued to meet for a second day.

1981: An Israeli communique said today that one Israeli soldier had been wounded in the fighting in southern Lebanon.

1982: “Efim Goldberg, of Riga, was warned to stop teaching Hebrew.”

1982(8thof Nisan, 5742): Eighty-two year old Jack I. Poses the “president and founder of Parfums D'Orsay Company, a founder of Brandeis University and a sponsor of the Poses School of Fine Arts at Brandeis” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/04/obituaries/jack-i-poses-founded-parfums-d-orsay-co.html

 

1982: It was reported today that “289 Jews had left the Soviet Union in March.”

1982: In trucks and vans loaded with furniture and farm equipment, most Jewish settlers completed their departure from northern Sinai yesterday, leaving behind a hard core of several hundred militants who vowed to defy the deadline imposed by the army for leaving the area.

 

1984: The long-term efforts of Arnold Resincoff, a Conservative Rabbi and former military chaplain, to convince the United States Department of Defense to participate in the national annual program for the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust took a significant step forward today when “Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger signed a memorandum to the military services, urging the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military commanders to participate in the annual program for the first time”

 

1987: Opening of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair whose offereings have included The ''Twenty Four Books of the Holy Scriptures,'' the first edition in English of what was for generations the standard Jewish-American Bible, translated and annotated by Rabbi Isaac Leeser and published in Philadelphia in 1853 ($1,750) and the first complete, corrected, printed film script of ''The Wizard of Oz,'' dated May 4, 1938, in its original blue wrappers from the files of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ($7,500).

 

1988: “Beetlejuice” with music by Denny Elfaman and co-starring Winona Ryder, which opened theatrically in the United States today earned $8,030,897 in its opening weekend.

1989(25thof Adar II, 5749): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat HaChodesh

1991(17thof Nisan, 5751): Third Day of Pesach

1991: Ehud Barak began serving as Chief of the General Staff of the IDF during a time when the first Oslo Accords were being implemented and the negotiations were going forward that would lead to a peace treaty with Jordan.

1991:  Birthdate of California native, University of Chicago graduate and Steve Bannon acolyte Julia Aviva Hahn “an editor for Breitbart News and Special Assistant to President Donald Trump who is the granddaughter of Harold Honickman whose net worth in 2002 was estimated to be “$850 million” and who had multi-million dollar stock portfolio of her own when she joined the White House State.

1992: Daniel Goldin begins serving as the Administrator of NASA making him the first Jew to serve as head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

1993: Five months after premiering in the United States, “Toys” a “fantasy comedy directed by Barry Levinson” who co-produced and co-wrote the script, filmed by cinematographer Adam Greenberg and with music by Hans Zimmer was released today in Australia.

1994: “Clifford,” a comedy co-starring Charles Grodin and co-produced by Larry Brezner was released today in the United States.

1994: WW II veteran and Harvard graduate Donald Mayer Blinken, the New York born son of Ethel Horowitz and Maurice Blinken and the father of Secretary of State Antony Blinken began serving as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary.

1996: In “Challenging a View of the Holocaust,” published today Danita Smith discusses the new information provided by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust."

1997: “--Lancit Media Entertainment, Ltd. (Nasdaq: LNCT), a leading creator and producer of high quality children's and family programming, today announced that Susan L. Solomon has been named Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, effective immediately.”

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Susan+L.+Solomon+named+chairman+and+chief+executive+officer+of...-a019260508

1998: “Israel today formally accepted a 20-year-old United Nations Security Council resolution calling on it to withdraw from Lebanese territory. But the Israelis said any pullback would be made only on the condition that Lebanon assume control over the region and prevent its use for attacks on Israel.”

1999(15thof Nisan, 5759): Final Pesach of the 20th century.

1999: Publication of “A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey” by Merle Feld.

 

1999: In Denmark, premiere of “The One and Only,” a Danish romantic comedy directed by Susanne Bier.

 

2000: Marvin Miller is inducted into The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.

 

2001: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Stet: A Memoir” by Diana Athill.

 

2001: Six days after she was killed by Palestinian gunfire, 10 month old Shalhevet Pass was buried today.

 

2001(8thof Nisan, 5761): Forty-two year old Dina Guetta was stabbed to death by a terrorist today on Ha’atzmaut Street.

 

2002: In response to the increasing violence or Arab terrorists that climaxed with the suicide bomber murdering 30 people at a Seder in the Park Hotel, the IDF made preparation for Operation Defensive Shield.

 

2002 (19th of Nisan, 5762) Fifth day of Pesach

 

2002(19thof Nisan, 5762) Tomer Mordechai, 19, of Tel-Aviv, a policeman, was killed in Jerusalem, when a Palestinian suicide bomber driving toward the city center blew himself after being stopped at a roadblock. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

2002: “Using doctored pictures purportedly from the Hubble telescope, NASA ‘proved’ that the Moon was made of green cheese an expression that came from a fable that Reb Meir,Rashi, the Iraqi Rabbi Hai Gaoan and the Petrose Alponsi an apostate Spanish Jew helped to popularize.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_is_made_of_green_cheese

 

 

2003: “A rumor that” Chilean television personality Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld known to his public as “Don Francisco had died surfaced around the New York and New Jersey area. The rumor proved false, but sent many of his fans into a panic until it was revealed as an April Fool's joke.”

 

2003(28th of Adar II, 5763): Late in the evening, sixty-two year old  Robert M. Levine, Gabelli Senior Scholar in the Arts and Sciences, Director of Latin American Studies, and professor of history at the University of Miami, died after a determined and ever-optimistic fight against cancer.

 

2003(28thof Adar II, 5673): Eighty-eight year old Edward L. “Ed” Kweller who played college basketball for Duquesne before playing two years as professional in the pre-war National Basketball League passed away today.

2004(10thof Nisan, 5764): One-hundred-one year old Colonel Aaron Bank, a veteran of the OSS and founder of the “Green Berets” passed a way today(As reported by Richard Goldstein)

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/06/business/col-aaron-bank-101-dies-was-father-of-special-forces.html

 

2004: A revival of “Sly Fox” a comedy by Larry Gelbart featuring Richard Dreyfus opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre today.

2005(21stof Adar, 5765): Sixty-eight year old composer and song writer Jack Keller, the Brooklyn born son of Mal and Reva Keller who worked with fellow Jewish artists Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield and whose musical skills ranged from writing the theme music for television hits like “Bewitched” to writing country and western music for Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn passed away today in Nashville, TN.

2005: Lewis Wolff was among those purchasing the Oakland Athletics baseball team today

 

2005:A sign was dedicated today in Deadwood, South Dakota by the Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission in conjunction with the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation which records information about the purchase of Hebrew Hill and some of those buried there.

2006(3rdof Nisan, 5766): In an interesting calendar coincidence, April Fool’s Day coincides with the reading of the first portion from the Book Vayikra (There’s a sermon topic in there some place)

2007: The Sunday Washington Post reviewed two books designed to “untangle Biblical tales” that have just appeared in paperback: “David and Solomon In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings And the Roots of the Western Tradition” by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman and “Jesus and “Yahweh: The Names Divine” by Harold Bloom.

 

2007:The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of “Jesus and Yahweh: The Divine Name” by Harold Bloom.

 

2007: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of the US Representatives addresses the Knesset in what is her first address to a foreign government legislature. She is the highest ranking American woman to speak before the Knesset.

 

2007: Based on stories in the secular press, the world of Kashrut is alive and well. The Washington Post featured an article entitled “A Doughnut Shop's Change Leaves a Hole” that tells about the consequences of four Dunkin Donut stores in the Washington area to give up their kosher certification. The Chicago Tribune featured an article entitled “China Firms Clamor To Go Kosher: Businesses covet certification that lets them tap $150 billion market.”

 

2007: “Gefilte Fish Chronicles” airs at 7 p.m. on New York’s Channel 13. The DVD has its own website

 

2007(13th of Nisan, 5767): Eighty-two year old Abraham Louis Limmer who gained fame as Lou “Boomie” Limmer the major league first baseman who overcame the effects of having broken his neck and suffered temporary blindness “while sliding into third base in the Western League” to play for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1951 and 1954 passed away today.

2007(13thof Nisan, 5767): Ninety-four year old Rabbi Josef Hirsch Dunner passed away today.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jul/03/guardianobituaries.religion

 

 

 

2007: German Chancellor Angela Merkel received an honorary doctor of philosophy degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "in recognition of her lifelong dedication to the principles of democracy and in appreciation of her warm and constant friendship for the people and State of Israel."

 

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “The Year of Living Biblically,” featuring author A.J. Jacobs who discusses his most recent book, The Year of Living Biblically, in which he recounts his fascinating, enlightening and delightfully strange year trying to follow all 613 commandments in the Bible.

 

2008: In Washington, D.C., Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor in the Clinton White House, discusses and signs “The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party” at a Barnes & Noble book store.

 

2008: Idina Menzel “kicked off her 2008-2009 "I Stand Tour" in support of her new album performing 4 sold out legs.”

2008: Shlomo “Benizri was convicted of accepting bribes, breach of faith, obstructing justice, and conspiracy to commit a crime for accepting favors worth millions of shekels from his friend, contractor Moshe Sela, in exchange for inside information regarding foreign workers scheduled to arrive in Israel.”

2008(25th of Adar II, 5768): Radio broadcaster and actress and Shosh Atari passed away at the age of 58 after suffering a serious illness. Atari was born in Rehovot, and grew up in the central town. She spent her military service in Army Radio, and after her discharge from the Israel Defense Forces worked at Channel 1 television. In the 1970s Atari joined Israel Radio as a presenter. In the 1980s, she became one of the stars of Reshet Gimmel radio, where she hosted popular music chart shows, and other programs with Tony Fine as her editor. Atari was also famous as the moderator on the "Pitzuhim" game show on the Israel's educational TV channel. At the end of the 1990s the broadcaster joined Lev Hamedina Radio. A few years ago Atari underwent a kidney transplant operation after suffering from a kidney illness. Following the operation she moved again to Reshet Gimmel, but then returned to broadcast a daily program on Lev Hamedina radio. The broadcaster also performed on the stage at the Be'er Sheva theatre. In 2004, Atari's book "Secrets and Lies" was published. In 2007 she returned to television, starring in the "It's all honey" drama series on Channel 2.

 

2008(25th of Adar II, 5768): Actor Mosko Alkalai, 77, died of respiratory failure. Alkalai was hospitalized and underwent surgery in Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center several weeks ago, but was unable to recover. Winner of the Israeli Film Academy's 2003 Lifetime Achievement Awards, Alkalai graced the stage and silver screen in a career spanning 21 years, appearing in dozens of theater plays and motion pictures. He also took part in various public activities and was the chairman of the Israeli Union of Performing Arts a member of the Israeli Arts Council and a member of the Israeli Film Academy.

 

2009:Avigdor Lieberman replaced Tzipi Livni as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

 

2009: Yitzhak Aharonovich replaced Avi Dichter as Minister of Internal Affiars.

 

2009: The Center for Jewish History, PEN, Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York and Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival co-sponsor a PEN World Voices entitled “Evolution/Revolution: Meir Shalev in Conversation with Daniel Menaker” featuring Israeli writer Meir Shalev the author of more than 16 highly praised works, spanning fiction, non-fiction and children's books and Daniel Menaker, the former Random House Editor-in-Chief.

 

2009: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah hosts a congregational meeting as it begins a search for its next Rabbi.

 

2009: The Centennial Conference for Urban Sustainability opens at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center.

 

2009: A new exhibition by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw that has brought together photos and documents depicting the rich history of 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland goes on display today at the European Parliament in Brussels and will run nearly a week. With old paintings and photographs, the show recalls how Jews found refuge in Poland during the Middle Ages after being expelled from many parts of Europe. It also stresses the mark the community made on the larger, mainly Roman Catholic Polish community. “That knowledge is little known outside Poland," said European Parliament lawmaker Ryszard Czarnecki, who came up with the idea for the exhibition. "People in the West know - and very rightly so - about the Holocaust, but they don't know what was before the Holocaust, the hundreds of years of a very rich history," Czarnecki said. "The Jews had their significant share in creating the Polish state, its economy, architecture, culture and art." The institute drew from its archives to present religious Jews, synagogues and Yiddish-language newspapers and posters. A portrait gallery recalls prominent Polish Jews, including filmmaker Roman Polanski, the late chess champion Akiba Rubinstein and the pianist Artur Rubinstein. The exhibit is one of several efforts by Polish leaders to fight stereotypes that the nation remains anti-Semitic, more than six decades after most of the nation's roughly 3.5 million Jews were either murdered in the Nazi Holocaust or emigrated.

 

2009(7thof Nisan, 5769):Marcos Moshinsky “a Mexican physicist of Ukrainian and Jewish origin whose work in the field of elementary particles won him the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Investigation in 1988 and the UNESCO Science Prize in 1997” passed away today.

 

2009: “Picturing the Shoah,” a film festival sponsored by YIVO that explores how movies have represented the Holocaust from radical, provocative, and unexpected angles opens with a showing of “Schindler’s List.”

 

2010: An exhibition entitled “From Dream to Reality: Zionism and the Birth of Israel” presented by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to come to an end today.

 

2010: An exhibition entitled “Folk Art Judaica by Herman Braginsky” presented by Yeshiva University Museum featuring carved ritual objects made of fine and aged woods, including tzedakah boxes, Torah pointers, mezuzot, dreidels, Torah arks, spice containers, and other works created by self-taught craftsman Herman Braginsky who was born in 1912 and passed away in 1999 is scheduled to come to an end today

2010:A ceremony officially classifying the Machpelah Cave in Hevron as a National Heritage Site is scheduled to be held today, as tens of thousands visit the city for a Hol Hamo'ed celebration

2010: The New York Times features a review of “Jenniemae & James: A Memoir in Black & White” in which Brooke Newman writes about her father, the famous mathematician James Newman,”the son of Jewish immigrants “who “had an I.Q. of 175.”

2010:During a visit to Damascus, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reiterated US misgivings about the flow of weapons through Syria to Hizbullah and told reporters the US view is that this is "something that must stop" for there to be peace.

2011: Eatliz, one of Israel’s leading alternative rock bands, is scheduled to perform at the City Winery in New York City.

2011: The Arizona Diamondback hired former basketball front office maven Jerry Krause as a scout today.

2011: “Nora’s Will” and “Anita” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011:A loud explosion was heard outside the house of opposition leader Tzipi Livni today. The blast was apparently a result of a firecracker thrown at the security stand outside Livni's Tel Aviv home. Livni was not at her house when the explosion occurred.

2011:Residents from all over Israel reported that they felt an earthquake this afternoon.Israel's Geophysical Institute said the earthquake, which occurred over 800km from Israel, was mostly felt in the north of Israel, including the towns of Safed and Nahariya. At the same time as residents in Israel reported buildings shaking, a deep 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck in the sea 76 miles (120 km) east-northeast of Iraklio, a town on the Greek island of Crete, on Friday, the US Geological Survey said.

2011:Britain's first Jewish ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould and his wife Celia had their first sabra baby girl today. Baby Rachel Elizabeth was born early this morning at the Lis Maternity Hospital in the Tel Aviv Medical Center.We are both incredibly happy and proud new parents," Gould said. "We are very grateful for the fabulous care we've received and all the mazel tovs we've been sent."

2011:“Lillian Bassman: Lingerie,” is scheduled to be published by Abrams today.

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘Enemies: A History of the FBI’  by Tim Weiner and ‘Mudwoman’ by Joyce Carol Oates.

2012: Aluf Ram Rothberg, commander of the Israeli Navy reportedly “ordered senior commanders to prepare for a complex, 10-day exercise in Italy with the US and Italian navies” as part of an April Fool’s Day prank that got out of hand.

2012: Anthony Russell, “an exciting new talent in the world of Yiddish music” is scheduled to perform at Temple Beth Emeth in Brooklyn.

 

2012: “Footnote” and “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

 

2012(9th of Nisan, 5772): Eighty-year old “Edmund L. Epstein the literary scholar who saved Lord of the Flies” passed away today. (As reported by Bruch Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/books/edmund-epstein-dies-at-80-gave-lord-of-the-flies-wings.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0

 

2012: “Spinozium” is scheduled to take place today at Theatre J in Washington, DC.

http://washingtondcjcc.org/center-for-arts/theater-j/on-stage/11-12-season/new-jerusalem/Spinozium.html

 

2013(21stof Nisan, 5773): Seventh Day of Pesach; Reform Jews recite Yizkor

 

2013(21stof Nisan, 5773): Seventy-year old William H. Ginsburg, the California civil lawyer who was thrust into the national spotlight when he represented Monica Lewinsky, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/us/politics/william-h-ginsburg-70-represented-monica-lewinsky.html?hpw&_r=0

 

 

2013: Those visiting the symphony bar are scheduled to have a chance to “experience Leopold Bloom's passage through Dublin in a dramatic episode from James Joyce’s masterwork Ulysses.”

 

2013: In New York, Larry Schwartz and Beth Sandweiss are scheduled to offer a course in Jewish mindfulness which is designed to integrate the knowledge and practice of Judaism with mindfulness practice and key ideas that support that practice.

 

2013: Beginning this morning, Israel “was hit by strong winds and dust” which led to “high levels of air pollution causing breathing complications.” (As reported by Yoel Goldman

 

2013: In Ancient Fear Rises Anew Lisa Abend describes the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Hungary.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30D15FD385911738DDDA00894DC405B8585F0D3

 

2014: The Hebrew Language Table at the Library of Congress is scheduled to co-sponsor a presentation by Professor Gabriel Weimann entitled “Terrorism in Cyberspace: The Next Generation.”

 

2014: Episodes 3, 4 and 5 of “The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama,”are scheduled to be shown this evening.

http://www.thirteen.org/13pressroom/tca-tour/the-story-of-the-jews-with-simon-schama/

http://www.iptv.org/series.cfm/23708/story_jews_with_simon/ep:101

 

 

2015: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “Its Yiddish Time” with Alex Lieberman.

2015: “Woman in Gold” is scheduled to open today in U.S. theatres.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/as-woman-in-gold-premieres-meet-the-man-who-battled-for-the-klimt/

 

 

2015: “Joy of Life: Paintings by Dolorosa Rubens Margulis” is scheduled to open at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.

2015: “Jewish Oklahomans” by Phil Goldfarb, Ed Harris and Katherine Frame was filed today.

http://www.avotaynuonline.com/2015/04/jewish-oklahomans-by-phil-goldfarb-and-ed-harris-phd-edited-by-katherine-frame/

 

2015:Anna Sapir Abulafia, the wife of historian David Afulafia, was appointed the Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions in the faculty of theology and religion at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford tday

 

2015: In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of New York City’s Landmarks Law, architectural historian and preservationist Samuel D. Gruber is scheduled to lecture on “Synagogues of New York: History, Architecture, and Community” at the Center for Jewish History.

 

2015: Ninety-three year old “James Venture, one of the last survivors of the infamous Train de Loos, which carried French resistance fighters, Communists and Jews from a prison in the northern French village of Loos to concentration camps in Germany in September 1944passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/world/europe/james-venture-french-resistance-fighter-who-survived-nazi-death-train-dies-at-93.html?rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article

 

2015: The second and final episode of “The Dovekeepers” a fictional account of the final days at Masada is scheduled to be shown on CBS.

http://thejewniverse.com/2015/catch-the-steamy-romance-atop-masada-on-a-tv-near-you/?utm_source=Jewniverse+Newsletter&utm_campaign=798bfe26de-Jewniverse+RSS+Eletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b48fb1c44e-798bfe26de-27129561

 

2016: Kate Hinz, daughter of Stephanie and Daniel Hinz and Ben Binder, son of Janice Binder, begin their B’Nei Mitzvah weekend by helping to lead Friday night services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA.

 

2016: “Beyond the Balcony: the Works of Michal Nachmany is scheduled to open today in New York City.

 

2016: In Fairfax, VA, the “First Friday Boaok Group” is scheduled to discuss Honeydew by Edith Pearlman.

2017(5thof Nisan, 5777): Parashat Vayikra

2017(5th of Nisan, 5777): Fifty-four year old Amy Barnum, the wife of Joel Barnum with whom she raised three daughters – Emma, Sasah and Gail – and daughter Jack and Bette Kozlen of Omaha who was a pillar, in the truest sense of that term, of the Jewish community in Cedar Rapids and a driving force behind the Traditional Services at Temple Judah passed away today in what can only be described as a tragic loss for all of us.

https://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2017/Apr/Amy-M-Barnum/

 

2017: For the second time this week Arab terrorists struck in Jerusalem today when two teenaged boys were stabbed in the Old City.

2017: In Buenos Aires, 91 year old Holocaust survivor Eugenia Unger, who usually displays the number tattooed on her arm by the Nazis, covered it with her Shabbat clothes and her talit when she celebrated her bat mitzvah today. (JTA/TOI)

2017: Bob Dylan finally received “his Nobel Literature diploma medal…during a small gathering this afternoon in a hotel” in Stockholm, Sweden. (As reported by David Keyton)

2017: In New Orleans the Jewish Children Regional Services is scheduled to host its annual gala “Jews Roots of Past, Present and Future, honoring the former and current leadership of JCRS.

2017: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a showing of “Past Life,” “a suspenseful, twisty, true tale from Israeli master Avi Nesher.”

2017: Sixty-eight year old Rabbi David Saperstein, who “for the law two years served as the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom” is scheduled to “return to the Union of Reform Judaism’s senior staff” today.

2018: The New York Times published books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century by Robert D. Kaplan and (((SEMITISM))):Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump

by Jonathan Weisman

2018(16th of Nisan, 5778): Second day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

2018: In Jerusalem, the Tower of David is scheduled to host a performance of “Jerusalem in My Heart” which tells “the story of Nissim, a Jew who is coming to Israel from Spain on his way to the Western Wall

2018: “The Kushners Saw Redemption in the White House. It Was a Mirage” published today described the relationship of the family of Donald Trump’s Jewish in-laws.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/us/charles-jared-kushner-white-house-real-estate.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

2019: In Tel Aviv, 18 Bar Kochva is scheduled to be the site for the monthly “Women Wine and Wisdom”

where the women of Israel’s largest city “join together to explore inner freedom based on lessons from Passover and to celebrate Rosh Chodesh Nisan.”

2019: The Tel Aviv LGBTQ Center is scheduled to host “Everything you wanted to know about Israeli elections but were afraid to ask” a non-partisan event with appearances by Anat Nir, Idan Roll and Merav Ben Ari.

2019: The Center for Jewish History and the American Jewish Historical Society are scheduled to present a conversation with journalist Peter Beinart and Yale Professor Jason Stanley, the author of How Fascism Works, The Politics of Us and Them

2019: At Tifereth Israel in Des Moines, IA, the Iowa Jewish Historical Soceity is scheduled to host “Memories and Melodies of Auschwitz,” “featuring Schindler’s list survivor Celina Karp and pianists Alex Biniaz-Harris and Ambrose Soehn, “composers of ‘Melodies of Auschwitz.’”

2019: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to host curator Ilona Moradof’s tour of “Kindertransport – Rescuing Children on the Brink of War” which illuminates “the organized rescue efforts that brought thousands of children from Nazi Europe to Great Britain in the late 1930s.”

2020: Hillel@Home is scheduled to host Amar’e Stoudermire, “he former NBA star and owner of a kosher organic farm as he talks about diversity in Jewish life.”

2020: In a “Zoom class HaMaqom,” Rabbi Stuart Kelman is scheduled to conduct “an inclusive discussion about death and dying, focusing on Jewish laws and traditions.”

2020: The London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to host an on-line class with Rabbi Barry Kleinberg lecturing on “From the Sages, Thought and Law: Rav Kook.”

2020: On-line, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host Hadar Orshalimy speaking on “Jazz by Jewish Composers.

2020: “Tightrope: American Reaching for Hope” scheduled for today at the Illinois Holocaust Museum has been cancelled due to the Pandemic.

2020: “Sephardic Communities: Preserving Holocaust History through Artifacts, Archives, and Research” sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum scheduled to take place tonight at Florida Atlantic University has been canceled due to the Pandemic.

2020(7thof Nisan, 5780): On the Hebrew calendar Yahrzeits for the Jews of York who rejected “an invitation to baptism” and committed mass suicide and Rabbi PInchas Zelig of Lusk.

2021(19thof Nisan, 5781): Fourth Day of Pesach

2021: NFTY Northeast whose “area encompasses five NFTY regions, including Northeast, New York, Garden Empire, Pennsylvania and Mid-Atlantic” is scheduled to present online, an “Open Space for Youth Professionals.”

2021: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present online “Passover Cooking Across the Diaspora” with culinary historian Sara Gardner.

2021: TheContemporary Jewish Museum and Yiddish Book Center are scheduled to present SFSU professor Rachel Gross and U. of Chicago professor Jessica Kirzane talking about the evolution and importance of matzah balls and their connection to Jewish identity.

2021: Under an agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades which is set to go into effect today, travelers who have received a full dose of one of the European-approved COVID-19 vaccines will not have to take two PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests before traveling from one of the countries to the other, and will not need to enter quarantine upon arrival.

This Day, April 2, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 2

742: Birthdate of Charlemagne. Charlemagne was both King of the Franks and the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite pressure from the Catholic Church and the mighty Pope Gregory, Charlemagne treated his Jewish subjects and they played a prominent part in his realm. Unfortunately, after his death in 814, his successors were unable to continue to his policies towards the Jews of Christian Europe.

1118: Baldwin I, who arrogantly styled himself King of Jerusalem.  For Jews nothing more be said then that he was a brother of Godfrey of Bouillon and a leader of the bloody First Crusade.

1279(Nisan, 5039): A number of London Jews were martyred following ritual charges. You will note that during the Easter Season there is a significant increase in these reports for several centuries in different parts of Europe.

1453: Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople. The siege would lead to the downfall of the Byzantine capitol which would improve the lot of the Jews living in the city as well as opening it up to settlement by Jews living Crete, Transylvania and Slovakia.

1473: Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, under whose reign the condition of the Jews improved, and his mistress, Barbara Edelpöck gave birth to John Corvinus

1550: The Jews were expelled from of Genoa.

1608(26thof Nisan, 5368): Joseph Ben Samuel Ibn Rey, the Italian rabbi who was the author of a work entitled "Sefer Massoret," a treatise on the Masorah, in which he endeavored to prove that there are no reasonless or unjustified repetitions in the Bible passed away today. (As reported by Gotthard Deutsch, M. Seligsohn)

1678(10th of Nisan): Rabbi Judah Ashael ben David del Bene author of Kisot le-Bet David passed away

1738(12thof Nisan, 5498):  Joseph Oppenheimer was hanged. Oppenheimer, the finance minister, was arrested after the sudden death of Prince Karl of Wurttemberg. He was offered a pardon on condition of agreeing to be baptized. Although not a practicing Jew, he refused and was placed in a cage in the center of Stuttgart declaring "I will die as a Jew; I am suffering violence and injustice." He died while shouting Shema Yisrael.

1756: Benjamin D’Israeli, the Anglo-Jewish merchant who was grandfather of the British Prime Minister married his first wife, Rebecca Mendez Furtado.

1755(21st of Nisan, 5515):Aryeh Leib ben Saul Lowenstam passed away in Amsterdam. Born in Cracow this Polish rabbi was a member of long line of Jewish sages including his grandfather Rabbi Hoeschl of Cracow and his father Saul who served as rabbi of Cracow from 1700 to 1704,

1770(7th of Nisan): Rabbi PInchas Zelig of Lask, author of Ateret Paz passed away

1774(21st of Nisan, 5534): Seventh Day of Pesach; Shabbat shel Pesach

1782: In Essingen, Germany, Bunle Babetter Isaac and Emanuel Nathan Scharff gave birth to Lazarus Scharff.

1788: Demmelsdorf, Germany, Relia and Choshman Stix gave birth to Solomon Stix, the husband of Deborah Cohen whom he married in 1815 and with whom he had ten children, several of whom settled in Cincinnati, OH, 

1779(16th of Nisan, 5539): During the American Revolution France, the ally of the United States, was ten days away from signing “a secret treaty with Spain to wage war against Great Britain” Jews observed the Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1787: Ephraim Hart “he was registered as an elector of the Shearith Israel congregation” in New York City.

1791: Forty-two year old Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (known simply as Count Mirabeau) a leader of the French Revolution who was an admirer of Moses Mendelssohn and whose support of Jewish emancipation can be seen in his statement “Confer upon” the Jews “the enjoyment of civil rights and they will enter the ranks of peaceful citizens, passed away today.

1801: Birthdate of Falk Jacobsen who passed away exactly one month before his 80thbirthday after which he was buried in Denmark’s Horsens Jewish Cemetery.

1806: Birthdate of Gabriel Riesser, youngest son of Lazarus Jacob Riesser and an advocate for the emancipation of the Jews of Germany.

1812(20thof Nisan, 5572): Sixth Day of Nisan

1812: Catherine Williams and Hugh Morse gave birth to Alfred William Morse.

1816: In Charleston, SC, Grace Labatt and Isaac da Vega gave birth to Moses da Vega.

1817(16th of Nisan, 5577): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1817: Birthdate of Sara Cohn, the wife of Meyer Abraham Heckscher.

1825(14th of Nisan, 5585): Shabbat HaGadol; Erev Pesach

1825: “The special privileges granted to the Portuguese Jewish citizens of Suriname were terminated by order of the Dutch crown. Thenceforth, Jews in the Dutch colonies were accorded the same rights as the other inhabitants, and all privileges, concessions and exceptions of whatever nature were abolished.” (As reported by the Suriname-Jewish Community)

1826: In Ancona, Italy, “Anna Costantini, a young girl, was torn from her family and forced into baptism.”

1827(5th of Nisan, 5587): Forty-five year old Rachel Mordecai Harby, the Charleston born wife of Isaac Harby whom she married in December, 1810 and mother of Solomon, Julian, Horace, Samuel, Armida and Octavia Harby passed away today after which she was buried in the Coming Street Cemetery at Charleston, S.C.

1827: Birthdate of English painter William Holman Hunt who moved to Palestine in the 1850’s to find inspirations for his painting and whose house at No. 64 Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem would be the future home of Hebrew language poet Rachel Bluwstein.

1833: Birthdate of Wolf Horn who passed away ten days before his 67th birthday after which he was buried in the Penang Jewish Cemetery which “ is located on Jalan Zainal Abidin (previously called Jalan Yahudi or Jewish Street) in the heart of old Georgetown, on an island off the west coast of Malaysia. 1840: Birthdate of Émile Zola. This non-Jewish French author would become a leading player in the Dreyfus Affair. His J”Accuse would be an indictment of the French military establishment and the anti-Semitic forces that swirled around this entire act of injustice.

1844:"The building” housing the Great Synagogue in Sidney “was consecrated today with the music for the ceremony in the hands of Isaac Nathan, father of Australian music, who was also associated with the music at St Mary's Cathedral. For the occasion Nathan composed settings for Baruch Habba ("Blessed be he that cometh") and Halleluyah.

1844: In New Orleans, Henry and Mary Levy Florance gave birth to Henry Clay Florance, the husband of Katie B. Beecher Florance whom he married in 1882 and the grandson of Netherland native Zachariah Florance whose birth name Zahariah Florance.

1846: The last letter in the correspondence between Grace Aguilar and “the philanthropist Miriam Moses Cohen who acted as an agent for her publications in America” was sent today.

1848: Two days after he has passed away, Barnet Barnett was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1857(8thof Nisan, 5617): Sixty-year old University of Heidelberg trained jurist Mortiz Wilhelm August Briedenbach, the Offenbah-on-Main born son of Wolf Breidebenbach who held a number of positions in the government of Hesse and served “as the principal author of its penal code” passed away today.

1861(22ndof 5621): Eighth Day of Pesach

1862: Abraham Crawcour married Catherine Rebecca Hart today.

1863: During the Civil War, food shortages cause hundreds of angry women to riot in Richmond, Virginia and demand that the Confederate government release emergency supplies, in what became known as the Richmond Bread Riots. In her honor’s thesis entitled The Richmond Bread Riot of 1863: Class, Race, and Gender in the Urban Confederacy, MIDN 1/C Katherine R. Titus wrote that while the rioters targeted speculators and government offices “Richmond citizens also targeted foreigners and Jews. The city had a tradition of blatant anti-Semitism. Once the War erupted, many Richmond citizens openly blamed the Jews and foreigners in the city for speculation and charged them with disloyalty. Sallie A. Putnam, for instance, believed that the Jews in Richmond profited from the war. She exhorted, “They were not found, as the more interested of the people, without the means to purchase food when the Confederate money became useless to us from the failure of our cause.” Major John W. Daniel contended that local stereotypes allowed the rioters to target Richmond Jews. After the War, he reminisced, “certain people down there were credited with great wealth. It was said that they had made barrels of money out of the Confederacy, and the female Communists went at them without a qualm of conscience.”

1863: Two days after he had passed away, Abraham Abraham the husband of Sarah Abraham was buried today in the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1864(25thAdar II, 5624): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Chodesh is observed as General Grant prepares the Union Army for a campaign of national scope that will bring an end to the Civil War in the following Spring.

1865:Twenty Jewish men signed a constitution that became the framework that would guide the future of Reform Jews in Akron, Ohio.

1865: Founding of the Akron Hebrew Congregation which holds services on holidays and Friday evenings.

1865: In Montgomery, Alabama, “Abraham J. Schiff, the best Hebrew scholar in Wolosin” who served as rabbi in Montgomery until moving to New York where he became rabbi at Beth Hamedresh Hagodl  and Sheve Kapaln gave birth to I.O. Schiff who “opened his first dry goods store at 105 Essex Street” and married Stella Newmark with whom he had three children.

1866(17thof Nisan, 5626) Third Day of Pesach; second day of the Omer

1867: Birthdate of Mrs. Henry Gottdiener

1869(21stof Nisan, 5629): Seventh Day of Pesach

1869: Michael Henry became editor of The Jewish Chronicle– a position he would hold until his death in 1875.

1870(1st of Nisan, 5630): Rosh Chodesh Nisan/Shabbat HaChodesh

1871 In Baltimore, MD founding of Congregation Chizuk Amunah whose members included by M.S. Levy, Joseph Levi, and Milton Fleischer and has been served by Rabbi Henry W. Schneeberger and Canto Herman Glass.

https://www.chizukamuno.org/

1874(15thof Nisan, 5634): Pesach

1874: In Elmira, NY, Simon and Jennie Levy gave birth to Cornell University trained attorney Benjamin Levy, the husband of Martha Bimberg and leader in the Jewish Community who was a director of the Y.M.H.A and President of the Children of Israel Congregation.

1877(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Chaim Bezalel of Bielitz, Poland, author of “Derekh Yivhar” passed away.

1878: In New York City, Austrian Jewish immigrants Fanny Ritterman and Bernard Kasner gave birth to their sixth child mathematician Edward Kasner.

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Kasner.html

http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/kasner-edward.pdf

1878: In Oswego, NY, Bernard and Pauline Bandler gave birth to Maurice Edward Bandler, a graduate of Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

1878: In Germany, Sophie and Seligman Lazarus Cohn gave birth to Gustav Cohn, the husband of Henriette Cohn and the father of Karlo Alfons Cohn; Max Cohn; Fritz Cohn and Margarethe de Tokayer.

1880(20thof Nisan, 5640): Sixth Day of Pesach

1881: It was reported today that the population of Thessaly, which is moving from Turk to Greek rule includes 50,000 Jews and Muslims as well as 300,000 who are classified as Greeks.

1882:The New York Times reported that “the feast of Passover will commence tomorrow evening at sundown in accordance with the rabbinical ordinance which lays it down that it shall be celebrated from the evening of the 14thof Nisan and continues for eight days. It is regarded strictly as a feast of rejoicing and it’s a pleasant illustration of the liberalizing tendency of the age that many Jews make it a custom to send small presents of unleavened bread to the Christian friends”

1882: In Louisville, KY, founding of Congregation B’nai Jacob which was led by Rabbi S.J. Scheinfield and held daily services at 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. and Saturday services at 8 a.m. while also providing a religious school for the young and a cemetery on Lucas Lane for the deceased.

1882: The New York Times publishes an excerpt from “Domestic and Artistic Life of Copely” by Martha Babcock Amory in which the author describes a dinner with Baroness Lionel Rothschild in 1857.

1883: In Łódź, Poland, Rabbi Adolph Moses Radin and his wife gave birth to anthropologist Paul Radin, the holder of a Ph.D. Columbia who studied the people called “Indians” and served as the chair of the Anthropology Department at Brandeis while married to his wife Doris.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/02/22/89118689.pdf

https://www.academia.edu/262124/PAUL_RADIN_an_attempt_at_an_intellectual_biography

 

 

1883: After telling him that it was customary for newly engaged couple to announce their intention to become man and wife before an official at City Hall, the relatives of Pauline Moses to David Holtz to City Hall where an alderman performed a marriage ceremony; a fact not understood by Holtz because of his limited knowledge of the English language.

1885: Birthdate of Tarnow, Austria native and University of Pennsylvania Ear Nose and Throat specialist Henry Dintefass, an associate professor otolaryngology at the Graduate School of Medicine, who was the husband of Lillian Ditenfass and the father of Miriam Ditenfass.

1886(26th of Adar): Rabbi Aryeh Leib Yellin, author of Yefeh Einayim passed away today

1887(8th of Nisan, 5647): Shabbat HaGadol

1887(8th of Nisan, 5647): Sixty-one year old Austrian mathematician Simon Spitzer who became a professor of analytic mechanics at the Vienna “Handelsschule” in 1870

1887(8th of Nisan, 5647: Lithuanian born Schachne Issacs, the husband of Reitza Tobias and the father of Genesha, Rachel and Abraham Isaacs passed away today in Cincinnati, OH after which he was buried in Beth Tefyla Schachnus Cemetery.

1888(21stof Nisan, 5648): Seventh Day of Pesach

1888(21stof Nisan, 5648): Twenty-eight year old Aizik Aronchik, the son of “Jewish trades from Gomel” and dropout from the St. Petersburg Institute of Railway of Engineers who was involved in an attempt to kill the Czar in 1881 and was sentenced to life imprison following the “Trial of Twenty” died in prison today passed away today four years after having been transferred to the Shlisselburg Fortress.

1890: The Passover Association distributed free matzoth to over four thousand poor Jews this evening at the Goodfellow’s Hall on Essex Street in New York.

1890: The New York Times reported that the American Hebrew will be publishing a special Passover

edition this Friday.

1890: It was suggested at today’s meeting of the New York Board of Estimate and Apportionment that the old Hebrew Orphan and Asylum on 77th Street could be used for the proposed new offices of the city’s Board of Education.

1891: Birthdate of Max Ernst founder of surrealism who with his Jewish wife Luise Straus gave birth to painter Jimmy Straus and who was briefly married to Peggy Guggenheim at the end of 1941.

1892: “Russian Jews Not Wanted” published today

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10E1EFC3F5C17738DDDAB0894DC405B8285F0D3

1892: Simon Schafer, M.H. Moses, Judge M.S. Isaacs and A.L. spoke at tonight’s meeting of the Purim Association which was held at the Hoffman House tonight.

1892: “Want To Hear Cleveland” published today described the ex-President’s popularity in New York as can be seen by warm reception his supporters receive when they address rallies of Russian Jews.  The Russians barely understand English, but the sound of Cleveland’s name is enough to bring out shouts of approval..

1893(16th of Nisan, 5653): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1893: At Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Silverman is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Crucifixition.”

1893: It was reported today that in German “the Conservatives have definitely thrown over Rector Hermann Ahlwardt the Jew baiter and libeler.”  However, their rejection has not stopped him from making public speeches and holding anti-Semitic rallies.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F00911F93C5515738DDDAB0894DC405B8385F0D3

more 2014

1893: “Fine British Weather” published today described the social and political events taking place in the UK including plans by “an organization of progressive young Jews…to propose at all annual meetings of the synagogue throughout England, most of which are held next week, a resolution that it is not desirable to elect a man engaged in money lending as President of the congregation.”

1893: Dr. Silverman is scheduled to give an address at Temple Emanu-El on “The Crucifixion.”

1893: The New York Times reported that “an organization of progressive young Jews has arranged to propose at all annual meetings of the synagogues throughout England, most of which are held next week, a resolution that it is not desirable to elect a man engaged in money lending as President of the congregation.”

1894: It was reported today that approximately 50 Jews, many of them women attended the evangelistic service at the Thalia Theatre Auditorium although there was no report of any of them coming forward to convert.  (These services were part of a concerted effort by some Christians to convert Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century)

1896: The will of the late Charles S. Friedlander was filed with the Surrogate today for probate.

1896: The funeral for Dr. Aaron Wise was held this morning at Temple Rodolph Shalom, the New York congregation he had served as Rabbi for several years.

1896(19thof Nisan, 5656): Leonard Friedman, who is approximately 52 years old, passed away today at Lakewood, NU.  A native of Germany, he came to the United States and after fighting his way out of poverty established Leonard Friedman & Co which over the last twenty years has become one of the leading tobacco houses in the United States.

1896: Funeral services were held for Dr. Aaron Wise, who had been rabbi at New York’s Temple Rudolph Shalom at the time of his death. The services at the Lexington Avenue Temple were attended by so many mourners that “not one half could gain entrance to the synagogue.” Several of New York’s leading clergy took part in the ceremony including Dr. Rudolph Grossman of Temple Beth-El, Dr. Kaufmann Kohler also of Temple Beth-El who delivered an address in German and Dr. Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanuel who delivered a eulogy in English in which he said of Wise, “The spirit of his words cannot die. The influence of the teacher has not limits as to time or space.” Burial followed the service in Union Field, Cypress Hills Cemetery.

1897: Reverend John Hall delivered a lecture on “Judaism and Christianity” in which he said “There is a distinction between Judaism as described in the Bible and the Judaism of the present generation.”

1897: A school designed to teach students how to cook food according to the laws of Kashrut opened today in Brooklyn in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population.

1897: In New York, Governor Frank Black appointed Jewish philanthropist and Republican Party activist Edward Lauterbach to serve as a member of the State Board of Charities.

1897: In Austria, Count Casimir Badeni resigned during a government crisis that was precipitated, in part, by his clash with the anti-Semitic parties.

1897: Julius Goldschmidt who had been Consul General in Vienna under President Harrison began serving as Consul General to Berlin

1897(29thof Adar II, 5657): Fifty-three year old Paris native Isidore Danziger, a resident of New Orleans for the last forty-eight years, the husband of Amelia Amanda Dreyfous Danziger and father of Isabelle, Jennie, Alice, Alfred and George Danziger passed away today after which he buried in Hebrew Rest Cemetery.

1898(10thof Nisan, 5658): Shabbat Hagadol

1898(10thof Nisan, 5658):Austrian pathologist and histologist Salomon Stricker passed away.

1899: In Richmond, VA, founding of the Hebrew Sheltering Aid Society which “furnishes shelter and means of transportation to strangers and whose members included E.C. Meyer, Philip Hirshberg, S.I. Hirshberg and D.S. Sharove.

1899: At the Hebrews Sheltering Guardian Society Orphan Asylum, Chaplain Joseph Kauffman officiated at service were a “bronze tablet in memory of Samuel Lewisohn” was unveiled.

1899: “Disraeli and the Suez Canal” published today provided a summary an article by Arnold White that appeared in Harper’s Weekly describing the British leader’s role in facilitating the purchase of this vital waterway from which he gained no financial advantage.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40F16F63E5913738DDDAB0894DC405B8985F0D3

1899:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40C1EF93E5913738DDDAB0894DC405B8985F0D3

 

1899: “Passports For Americans” published today

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB071FF93E5913738DDDAB0894DC405B8985F0D3

1900; It was reported today that while delivering his eulogy for Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, Rabbi Samuel Schulman had “called upon the young men of Congregation Beth-El…to show that Americanism and Judaism can go hand in hand and that enlightenment and faith are not inharmonious.”

1901 It was reported today that Isaac M. Bernstein sold five lots on the south side of 107th Street in Manhattan.

1902: “Bugle Call,” starring Rose Eytinge opened today on Broadway.

1902: “Controversy Over Hen Fattened For Passover” published in today’s Atlanta Constitution described a complaint filed by Leo Fresh with police to retrieve the chicken that he was preparing to take to a “shocket” which had mysteriously ended up in the yard of a neighbor lady who planned to have it killed in a manner not consistent with the laws of Kashrut.

1903: The High Court of Australia sits for the first time. In 1930, Isaacs Isaacs would become the third person to fill this position and the first Jew to serve as Chief Justice of Australia.

1903: Irvin Bettman, the Cincinnati born son of Louis and Rebecca (Bloom) Bettman, and President of Bettman, Kleinhauser Clothing Company in St. Louis and the Chairman of Jewish War Relief drives in St. Louis married Meta Pollak today.

1903: Herzl meets McIlwraithe, the legal adviser of the Khedive where he finds out that an immediate counter-proposal is out of question. The size of the land and the duration of the contract are discussed.

1904(17thof Nisan, 5664): Shabbat shel Pesach

1904: It was reported today that the funeral for Albany, NY native and Alfred University educated shirt manufacturer Solomon Friend will take place on Sunday at Temple Emanu-El.

1905: The Executive Committee presented “the policy with regard to the granting of the degree of Doctor of Divinity and the degree of Doctor of Hebrew Literature as well as the formal requirement for the granting of these degrees was presented today to the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

1905: President N. Taylor Phillips presided over “the second annual meeting of the New York Branch of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where the nominating committee composed of Dr. Cyrus Adler, Julius Dukas and Simon was formed and the following were chosen to service as officers – Edgar J. Nathan, President; Isaac J. Danziger, Vice President; Daniel Guggenheim, Treasurer; and Joseph B. Abrahams, Secretary.     

1906: During the conference at Algeciras, Morocco, “Mr. White, the chief of the American delegation and the Duke of Almodovar raised the question of “the unfavorable situation of the Jews in Morocco.”        

1906: Tonight, in Clinton Hall, “at the installation of the newly elected officers of the Zionist Council of Greater New York, Dr. J. L. Magnes, the Secretary of the American Federation of Zionists read…a copy of a proclamation issued against the Jews in Russia” which he said practically meant that there would be another Pogrom in Ekaterinoslov.

1907: In Brooklyn, movie producer Louis B. Meyer “and his first wife Margaret Shenberg gave birth Irene Mayer Selznick famed as the producer of Street Car Named Desire and the younger sister of Edith Selznick who was born in 1905

1908(1stof Nisan, 5668): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1908: J. Levine, B. Mendelsohn and Victor Epstein and two boys from the Educational Alliance were among the 80 contestants who took part in the preliminary round of the Metropolitan Association wrestling championships at the Boys’ Club at 10thStreet and Avenue A.

1908: As Jews observe Rosh Chodesh Nisan they could buy today’s issue of Vogue for ten cents.

1909: Ahmed Riza Bey, President of Turkish Parliament, offered Russian and Romanian Jews who were suffering tremendous persecution and attacks a chance to come settle in Turkey.

1910(22ndof Adar II, 5670): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat Parah

1910: “Attacks Prof. Hilprecht” published today described “an address on ‘The Latest Additions to the Babylonia Literature of the Deluge Story’ presented by George A. Barton in which he denounced the tablet discovered on an expedition by Professor Herman V. Hilprecht as being a fabrication and a fraud that did not uphold the Biblical story of the deluge as claimed by Hilprecht.”

1911: The newly formed Grand Council of the Jewish Community of Constantinople expresses loyalty of all Jews of all parties to the Ottoman Empire.

1911:Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, gave a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House today to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League in which she used the Triangle Fire as an argument for factory workers to organize:

1912(15thof Nisan, 5672): As TR and Taft battled for control of the Republican Party, observance of Pesach observed the first day of Pesach.

1912: Today “two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying 4 "Ahuza" members, 3 laborers and 2 armed watchmen. After a 5 hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Ra'anana which has grown to become a city of almost 70,000 people living in Israel’s Central District.

1912(15th of Nisan, 5672): Fifty women attended a Seder tonight at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association building on Lexington Avenue. The attendance was limited by the size of the building underscoring the need to build a new facility.

1913: Isador H. Weinstock, the Cantor of the Plum Street Synagogue in Cincinnati, presented a program on “The Music of the Synagogue” at “the seventh regular meeting” of the Isaiah Woman’s Club.

1913: Funeral services were held today for Bernard Wolf, the husband of Amalia Wolf and “father of Mrs. Numa Lachman and Mrs. Isador Brown” at K.A.M. Temple in Chicago followed by burial at Mount Maariv.

1913:Today, Jews living in New York City brought copies of letters from family members living in Anatolia describing persecution by Greeks living in that part of the Ottoman Empire to the attention of the American Jewish Committee. They called upon the committee to intervene on the behalf of their co-religionists and to organize a protest against these outrages.

1914: The officers of the Jewish Soldiers and Sailors Passover Committee met at the Broadway Central Hotel in New York. After the meeting, Henry Berlin, Chairman of the Arrangements Committee, reported that Secretary of War Garrison and Secretary of the Navy Daniels had sent letters announcing that Jewish soldiers and sailors would receive furloughs to celebrate Passover this year.

1914(6th of Nisan, 5674): Paul Heyes, the first Jew to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away today at the age of 84. A native of Bonn, “he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1910 ‘as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories.’ One of the Nobel judges, said that ‘Germany has not had a greater literary genius since Goethe.’" [Considering what would happen to the Jews of German two decades after his death, this praise has a strange ring to it. Also, Heyes is living proof that winning a Nobel Prize is no guarantee to lasting fame, even among his co-religionists.]

1914: In New York, Mr. and Mrs. Percy Salomon gave birth to William Roger Salomon who would become a long time managing partner of the bond trading house Salomon Bros.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-william-salomon-20141210-story.html

1915: Today “Henry Fischel, the Treasurer of the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering through the War” “received a donation of five dollars from Leo Frank” who faces the death penalty in Georgia” and who compared “his own suffering with that now being borne by Jews in the war zones.”

1916: At ninth anniversary services of the Free Synagogue led by Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau talked about plans to move the congregation from its home in Carnegie Hall to a temple building to be built in the center of Manhattan that will be better suited to the religious mission.

1916: Grand Master Samuel Goldstein presided over the convention of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Judah in the Bronx today which was attended by approximately “450 delegates representing 18,237 members of the Jewish fraternal organization” who heard Rabbi Joseph Rosenblatt lead a memorial service for Jews who have been killed during the war in Europe.

1916: “Joseph H. Cohen, President of the Beth Israel, today announced a plan to build a West Side Jewish Community Center” on 88th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues which “contain a synagogue, a library, a gymnasium, kindergarten, public hall, roof garden and classrooms for educational work.”

1916: Thirty-two-year-old Newark, NJ attorney Aaron Levinstone, the Grodno born son of Yeruchim and Esther Levinstone the Jewish community leader who was Chairman of the United Palestine Appeal, a member of the National Executive of the Z.O.A and a member of Temple B’nai Abraham married Etta G. Goldstein today.

1917(NS): Today “the Provisional Government—in power until a Constituent Assembly could be called to determine the character of the successor Russian state—abolished all the legal restrictions on ethnic and religious communities, including Jews” which meant that “for the first time since they had been admitted to the Russian Empire, Jews gained full equality with all other citizens” which stood in mark contrast to the era of the “tsarist regime which had confined Jews to the Pale of Settlement and had severely restricted their opportunities in agriculture, the professions, military service, education” and governmental or civil unless Jews agreed to convert to Christianity.

1917: According to a cable message received today by Louis Marshall, Chairman of the American Jewish Relief Committee from Baron Alexander Gunzburg in Petrograd, “all laws of Russia which are adverse to the Jews there are to be repealed by a decree of the provisional Government.”

1917: President Wilson asked the United States Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. This was the first official step towards America’s entry into World War I as a combatant on the side of the Allies. While American Jews supported the war effort and served in all branches of the armed forces, there was an unintended downside for the Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe. It was easier for American Jews to get aid to their suffering co-religionists when the United States was a “neutral.” Once it joined the Allied side, the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) it would be much more difficult to get help to those living in the war torn areas under the control of these nations.

1918: In Bohemia, the Emperor pardoned Leopold Hilsner a shoemaker who was serving a life term after having been convicted “on the charge of ritual murder” in 1900.

1918: At Vienna “in an address to a deputation of the City Council…the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that in the peace negotiations between the Central Powers and Romania, the Jewish question will be solved with equal rights being guaranteed to the Jews of Roumania.

1918: One day after his death on the Western Front, a letter written by poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg which had been written three days earlier arrives in London. In the letter he describes life in the trenches.

1919: Dr. Rudolph I Coffee delivered a speech on “Peace Treaty” at the Teachers Institute of Boone County “under the auspices of the Illinois Branch of the League to Enforce Peace.”

1919: In Chicago, Lillian Mitnick and Abe Diaman of Kansas City, MO were married at the Ashland Clubhouse.

1919: In Chicago, Blanche Mosbach, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Mosbach married Maxwell Glassner at the family’s home on Michigan Avenue.

1920(14rh of Nisan, 5680): Ta’nit Bechorot observed for the last time during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson

1921: Professor Albert Einstein held a press conference aboard the steamship Rotterdam today in New York Harbor. During the conference Einstein talked about his Theory of Relativity and his support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1921:Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, began serving as Viceroy and Governor-General of India.

1923(16th of Nisan, 5653): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1922: “Two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying 4 "Ahuza" members, 3 laborers and 2 armed watchmen. After a 5 hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Ra'anana, a city in the heart of the southern Sharon Plain of the Central District of Israel with a population of 68,300, as of 2009.”

1923(16thof Nisan, 5683): Second day of Pesach

1925: According to a cable message that was made public today by Judge Jacob S. Stahl, President of the American Palestine Line steamship company, the SS President Arthur has arrived in Haifa. The liner with 500 prominent American Jews from all parts of the United States sailed on March 12 on her maiden voyage to inaugurate a regular service between New York and the Holy Land.

1925: At “the groundbreaking ceremony of the Hebrew University on April 2, 1925 Edmund Landau lectured in Hebrew on the topic Solved and unsolved problems in elementary number theory.

1925: The Vatucan’s Holy Office published a decree saying that the Catholic Church, whatever its other views on Jew maybe, “condemns hatred against the people elected by God, a hatred that today is vulgarly called anti-Semitism.” (For more see Under His Very Windows by Susan Zucotti)

1926: “Gdal Saleski, the Russian violoncellist” “who is a graduate of the Petrograd Conservatory of Music” “gave a recital” this “evening at Steinway Hall” accompanied by violinist Yasha Fishberg and pianist Lazare Weiner.

1926: In Leipzig, “David Hilsenrath, a furrier, and Anna (Honigsberg) Hilsenrath” gave birth to Holocaust survivor and author Edgar Hilsenrath whose works included “a celebrated farce, The Nazi and the Barber which tells the story of an SS officer and mass murderer who kills his Jewish best friend from childhood, assumes his identity, flees to Palestine and is transformed into an ardent Zionist.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/obituaries/edgar-hilsenrath-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

 

1926: It was reported today that according to the census taken by The Christian Herald “numbers the members of Jewish congregations at 357,135” but notes “that these are chiefly heads of families.

1926: “The twentieth anniversary of the Palestine Maccabee Sport was celebrated in Tel Aviv” today where Lord Plumer distributed the prizes.

1927: Samuel Untermyer arrived in Jerusalem after a “rough” flight from Cairo that included “a detour of thirty miles over the Mediterranean to avoid a sand storm.”

1927: It was reported today that Aaron Sapiro who has been testifying in the libel suit he brought against Henry Ford will spend the weekend in Chicago on personal business before returning to the stand on Monday to continue answering questions from James A. Reed, the Senator from Missouri who is representing Henry Ford, the anti-Semitic car maker.

1927: “Service for Jewish Patients” published today described the services available “to Jewish patients in all of the city hospitals on Welfare Island” including the presence of Jewish social workers who can help the Jewish patients “in a non-Jewish institution.”

1928: Birthdate of actress Rita Gam who was the wife of director Sidney Lumet and publisher Thomas Guinzberg (not at the same time) and the mother of producer Kate Guinzburg

1928: In Paris Olga (nee Bessman) and Joseph Ginsburg gave birth to Lucien Ginsburg who gained fame as Serge Gainsbourg, a poet, singer, songwriter, actor, director and finally controversial guest on French television talks shows.

1929: The rabbinical commencement exercises of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva College, the first in three years and the first in the new building of the institution, were held today. Dr. Bernard Revel delivered an address in which he warned of the dangers of “religious illiteracy and urged that synagogues become centers of faith. Among those receiving diplomas were forty-one newly minted rabbis and 45 teachers.”

1930: Birthdate of Highland Park, Illinois (Suburban Chicago) native and Goucher College graduate Rosaline Fox Solomon, the award winning photographer.

https://www.rosalindfoxsolomon.com/

https://www.icp.org/infinity-awards/rosalind-fox-solomon

 

1930: Isaac Isaacs completes his service as Puisine Justice of the High Court of Australia and begins serving as the as Chief Justice of Australia.

1930: Haile Selassie is proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia. Part of his title included the honorific “Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah” which is tied to the contention that the Ethiopian rulers traced their origin to a relationship between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. During World War II, Orde Wingate would aid the king in his fight against the Italians. This is the same Orde Wingate who was stationed in Palestine before World War II. He was one of the few British officers who was supportive of the efforts of the Jews to defend themselves against the Arab who were attacking them. Wingate reportedly provided training for the Zionists in basic military tactics and weapons usage.

1931(15thof Nisan, 5691): Pesach

1931: “The Street Song,” “a musical crime film” directed and produced by Lupu Pick was released in Germany today.

1931: “The Cleveland Indians picked” Moe Berg up today when “Chicago put him on waivers.”

1931: U.S. premiere of “Skippy” directed by Norman Taurog who won an Academy Award, with a script co-authored by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sam Mintz.

1931: As Jews gathered to observe the second Passover of the Great Depression Rabbis focused their holiday talks on the worsening economic conditions of the day and the need for reform. Sermons mixed holiday motifs and symbolism with the rise in unemployment and deteriorating social conditions. Using the Ten Plagues as his point of departure Rabbi Rosenblum of Temple Israel “declared that the unsettled economic condition of the world was the greatest plague of our era and that the leaders of government and business were responsible for the chaos and misery. Capitalism seems to be a Pharaoh…If Pharaoh listens he will not suffer ten plagues. If he does not, the very first plague will yet come to pass. It will be a revolution and blood.” At Temple Rodeph Shalom, Rabbi Newman “said that Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, commemorated the release of the Israelites not only from political bondage but economic enslavement as well.” Rabbi Samuel Schulman broadened the scope a bit by pointing out the “power of religion to free or enslave man and emphasizing that real freedom required economic freedom which would allow for just and equal opportunity for every individual to use his powers in accordance with his ability and to receive just rewards.” (Sounds a bit like Marx and Moses meeting on New York’s fashionable east side.) But it was left to Rabbi Jonah Wise preaching at New York’s Central Synagogue to pull all elements of religion including Christianity together with the great crisis facing the nation. “Men are trained by loyalties to country, church and self to refuse to share life with foreigners, non-conformists and competitors. We shall never have security and morality until we learn to live at peace. We are making occasional breaches in the Chinese wall of creeds, tariffs and prejudices. Passover and Easter are supposed to be feasts of freedom and salvation. They are farces in the face of humanity starved in the presence of plenty and condemned to hatreds in fact while applauding love in theory.”

1932(25thof Adar II, 5692): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat HaChodesh

1932(25thof Adar II, 5692): to Max Leopold Margolis the Lithuanian-born American philologist whose accomplishments included serving as “editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society's translation of the Bible into English, the finished product being published in 1917” passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13280.html

 

 

1933: “The Nazis Begin To Dodge Anti-Semitic Boomerang” published today examine the effects of the government’s boycott of Jewish stores in Germany.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/04/02/119443565.pdf

 

1934:Birthdate of Paul Joseph Cohen famed mathematician who developed a technique he called “forcing.” He won the Fields Medal in 1966.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/april4/cohen-040407.html

 

1935: In Tel Aviv, the second Maccabiah Games opened “before 40,000 spectators at the Maccabiah Stadium. The German contingent marched flagless amid the fluttering colors of the other teams entering the venue. The American team including Janice Lifson, Doris Kelm and Lillian Copeland, placed “fourth in the “Tel Aviv Prepares Its Greatest Fair” published today Joseph M. Levy describes plan for the upcoming Levant Fair slated to open at the end of this month.

1936(10thof Nisan, 5696): Eighty year old Mrs. Ethel “Etta” Yaroshev Cutler, the native of Ukraine and wife of Isaac Cutler who was the mother of Colonel Harry Cutler, the Chairman of the Jewish Welfare Board who had passed away in 1920, passed away today after which she was buried in the Sons of David and Israel Cemetery in Providence, R.I.

1936: Birthdate of Shaul Paul Ladany, the Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ben Gurion University and two-time Olympian who survived Bergen-Belson and the 1972 Munich Massacre.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/shaul-ladany-the-long-walk-through-horrors-of-20th-century-1206199.html

1936: The “formal presentation of the 1935 American Hebrew Medal for the Promotion of Better Understanding between Christian and Jews in America” is scheduled to “be made to Roger Williams Straus” the co-chairman of the National Conference of Jews and Christians at ceremonies being held “in the auditorium of the College of the City of New York.”

1936: The list of ten true or false questions that was created by a professor at the Rhode Island State College for a test that will demonstrate “the amount of scientific thinking done by the person taking the test included: “The Christian faith is the only true one” and “Any nation that persecutes the Jews, as Germany has done recently be totally uncivilized.”

1936: “Edwin Goodman, president of Bergdorf-Goodman was named” tonight “as chairman of the dress division of the Greater New York Campaign of the Joint Distribution committee for the Aid of Jews in German, Central and Eastern” at a dinner at the Harmonie Club.

1936: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise spoke to a dinner at the Metropolis Club, where “a group of members reported that they had raised $30,000” which will go toward meeting the $75,000 quota set by the Joint Distribution Committee.

1937(21st of Nisan, 5697): Seventh day of Pesach

1937(21st of Nisan, 5697): Nathan Birnbaum passed away. Born in Vienna in 1864, Birnbaum coined the terms Zionists and Zionism in 1890. He was active with Herzl in the First Zionist Congress. However, he later drifted away from the movement becoming more concerned with a renaissance in Jewish culture and traditional Judaism. He left Germany after Hitler came to power and moved to the Netherlands where he continued his writings.

1937: In Warsaw, “the Minister of Education issued a decree today dissolving the militant ant-Semitic Nationalist students’ organizations in” universities in Warsaw and Vilna.

1937: On the outskirts of Warsaw at Sokolow and Lukow, “all the Jewish market stands were smashed and many Jews were injured and driven from the marketplaces today by a stone-hurling mob.”

1973: Twenty-five year old New York City native Edward Isaac Lending arrived in Spain where he would fight with the Lincoln Brigade against the fascist forces of Franco.

1937: In Albania, the Jewish community was granted official recognition by the government. The largest Jewish populations were located in Kavaje and Vlora. Approximately, 600 Jews were living in Albania prior to World War II, 400 of who were refugees. At the beginning of World War II, hundreds of Jews arrived in Albania seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in other regions of Europe.

1938(1stof Nisan, 5698): Rosh Chodesh Nisan and Shabbat HaChodesh

1938(1stof Nisan, 5698): Moise Micha Sapir the fourth commander of the Botwin Company (named for Naftali Botwin, the Polish Jewish radical executed in 1924) was killed at Lerida today during the Spanish Civil War.

1939: The last in a series of concerts sponsored by the New Friends of Music featuring the first of five symphonies, each of which has been verified “as the work of the Austrian master by Dr. Alfred Einstein who has restored them to their original form” is scheduled to place today in Carnegie Hall

1939(13thof Nissan, 5699): Fifty-five year old Fordham University trained physician Dr. Hirsch Sadowsky, the Russian born son of Shlomo and Peshe Sadowsky, the husband of Golia Sadowsky and the father of Dr. Bernard Sadowsky passed away today at his retirement home in Florida.

1940: “Faced with the greatest crisis in their history, Jews must look to their religious principles "to build inner and outer defenses" against anti-Semitism, leaders of American Jews emphasized at a dinner meeting tonight of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.”

1941: In what would prove to be a prelude to the Farhud in June, today “Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani, an anti-British nationalist politician from one of the leading families in Baghdad, carried out a military coup against the pro-British government in Iraq” which “was supported by four high-ranking army officers nicknamed the “Golden Square,” and by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni.

1941(5thof Nisan, 5701): Sixty-five-year-old Minnie b. Affelder, the New York born daughter of Leopold and Rebecca Kahn Affelder, and the sister of William, Harry and Jeanette Affelder passed away today after which she was buried at Mount Neboh Cemetery.

1941: Hungarian Premier Count Pál Telecki committed suicide rather than collaborate with Germany. This is only one small chapter in the complex story of Hungary’s involvement in World War II. For much of the war, Hungary’s Jewish population would remain comparatively untouched by the raging Holocaust. Only in the final year of the war would the final solution come to this eastern European state.

1942(15thof Nisan, 5702): First Day of Pesach

1942(15thof Nisan, 5702): Seventy-two year old Chicago Medical College trained obstetrician Joseph Bolivar DeLee, the Cold Spring, NY born son of Morris and Dora Tobias Lee who revolutionized his field of specialty while founding the Chicago Lying-in Hospital and teaching at Northwestern and the University of Chicago passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/04/03/85308288.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

https://www.nytimes.com/1942/04/03/archives/dr-joseph-delee-obstetrician-dies-famed-chicago-specialist-72.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

1942: Birthdate of Larry Selman whose life would be captured in a documentary “The Collector of Bedford Street.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtCz9PfYNQM

1942: “My Favorite Blonde” a comedy based on a story by Melvin Frank was released today in the United States.

1943:At the Thirty-eighth Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which opened its three-day meeting in the Hotel New Yorker today,speakers declared that only through the creation of an international structure of mutual responsibility will the world obtain a lasting post-war peace period.

1943: “Flight for Freedom” based loosely on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, directed by Lothar Mendes, one of the many refugees from Nazi Germany, was released today in the United States.

1944: Today, 90 Jews who were captured by the Nazis at Chalcis, a port on the Greek island of Euboea are shipped to Auschwitz.

1944: In Haifa, British police discovered a cache of arms belonging to the Stern Gang following a bombing which caused the death of a Jewish constable and wounded a British policeman.

1944: At night, British authorities arrested more than sixty individuals many of whom were reported to be “members of the Jewish revisionist party known as the New Zionist Organization.”

1945: In a letter to Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Peter Bergson provides a description of the efforts of the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation (H.C.N.L.) to save the Jews of Europe and create a Jewish state.

1945: After more than three years of service, Laurence A. Steinhardt left his post as Ambassador to Turkey.

1946: In Cleveland, Ohio, Mrs. Henry Gottdiener celebrated her 79thbirthday today.

1947: Tonight, in “in a pre-Passover broadcast, presented in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee, over the Mutual network, “Former Governor Herbert H. Lehman urged “the assignment of unused immigration quotas to admit a "fair share of the victims of nazism"

1948: U.S. premiere of “B.F.’s Daughter” produced by Edwin H. Knopf and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.

1948: British Forces arrive at the air field south of Beit Darass looking for arms that had been delivered to the Jews. They found nothing since the Jews had hidden the weapons in the surrounding collective settlements.

1948: In response to Soviet order to restrict shipments of goods to Berlin by the Allies General Lucius Clay ordered that all supplies be sent by air marking the actual start of the Berlin Airlift. (Editor’s note – this entry serves as a reminder that the events surrounding the creation of Israel took place at the same time that Russia was pursuing a ruthless policy of imperialism across Europe.)

1949(3rd of Nisan, 5709): Parashat Vayikra

1949: “Magistrate Morris Rothenberg, the acing national chairman of the United Palestine Appeals reported” today “that a minimum of $100,000,000 most of which will be raised by Jews” in the United States will be used “to cover the construction costs of housing units for immigrants” in Israel.

1950(15th of Nisan, 5710): First Day of Pesach

1951(25thof Adar II, 5711): Fifty-four Odessa born American pianist Simon Barere who survived the Bolsheviks and the Nazis so he could make his Carnegie Hall debut in 1936 and who was the husband of Helena Vlashek, “suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while performing the first bars of Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 in Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy, had suddenly collapsed and died backstage shortly this evening.”

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Barere-Simon.htm

 

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset passed the Nationality Act which was expected to confer automatic Israeli citizenship on all Jewish residents, and some of the non-Jews, on July 14, 1952. The vote was 43 to 17. The Knesset defeated, by a vote of 25 to 16, a proposal made by Herut which would require all persons holding dual citizenship to give up one nationality within two years after becoming Israeli citizens.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that a report from The Hague stated that the German delegation to the reparations talks left for Germany for further consultations. The Israeli delegation denied that there was any "crisis" in the talks and explained that the preliminary, informative stage of deliberations drew to a close, and a formula for further talks had been agreed upon. The delegation hoped that this would allow for good progress in the further discussions and actual negotiations. A small letter bomb, containing 40 grams of modern explosives, was sent to the leader of the German reparations delegation at The Hague. It failed to explode when opened in the mail room of the German Embassy.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF had completed "Operation Ma’barot," the winter-long assistance extended by various army units to new immigrants in their camps.

1954: In Hong Kong, a Centenary Dinner was held celebrating the 100 anniversary of the founding of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps which from 1932 through 1942 included Company H or “The Jewish Company.”

http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/svc.htm

1955: Today, “six weeks after being sacked from a managerial position at AC Mila,” Hungarian born Jewish “soccer legend” Bela Guttman “lost control of a car he was driving, killing one teenager and seriously injuring another.”

1956: CBS broadcast the first episode of “The Edge of Night,” a soap opera featuring Shirley Stoler, the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants as “Frankie.”

1958: Release date for “The Young Lions,” the cinematic treatment of Irwin Shaw’s novel of the same named produced by Al Lichtman one of the main protagonists of which is “Noah Ackerman”

1961(16thof Nisan, 5721): Second Day of Pesach

1961: ABC broadcast the first episode of “The Asphalt Jungle” created and produced by Mel Epstein.

1961: It was reported today that Cincinnati industrialist Julian A. Pollack is survived by his second wife, Gertrude, “a daughter, Mrs. Morton A. Rauh of Yellow Springs, Ohio and two sons, David Pollack of Cincinnati and Julian Jr. Pollack of Arlington, VA.

1962:Frieda Caplan opened her specialty produce company, Frieda's Inc., which has introduced a wide array of exotic produce to the American market.

1964(20thof Nisan, 5724): Sixth Day of Pesach

1965(29thof Adar II, 5725): Eighty-three year old Hebrew Union College graduate Dr. Abraham Cronbach, the son of Marcus and Hanna Itzig and husband of Rose Hentil who began his rabbinical career at the Reform congregation of Temple Beth Elin South Bend, Indiana” passed away today.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0009/ms0009.html

 

1965: Birthdate of Rachel Freier, the daughter of Chasidic Jews from Borough Park and the wife of David Frier who when she “was elected as a Civil Court judge for the Kings County 5th judicial district in New York State” became the first Hasidic Jewish woman to be elected as a civil court judge in New York State and the “first Hasidic woman to hold public officein United States history.”

1965: Hochhuth’s play "Stellvertreter" was banned in Italy. In English, the play is called "The Deputy." It was a sensation at the time for its dramatic portrayal of the negative role Pope Pious XII played during the Holocaust in terms of saving the Jews from the Holocaust and resisting the Nazis.

1967(21stof Adar II, 5727): Sixty-four year old Hungarian born  Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Columbia University John W. Gassner, the theatre critic, playwright and author whose twenty books included Theatre at the Crossroads and Masters of the Drama who was the husband of “the former of Mollie Kern” and whose academic career led him to becoming the Sterling Professor of Playwriting and Dramatic Literature at Yale University passed away today.

https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w68d0q21

 

1970: An Israeli Phantom jet piloted by Pini Nahmani was shot down over a Damascus suburb. Nahmani was imprisoned in the al-Mazza Prison in Damascus.

1972(18thof Nisan, 5732): Fourth Day of Pesach

1972: Actor Charlie Chaplin returned to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist in the early 1950s during the Red Scare.

1973(29thof Adar II, 5733): Seventy-four year old Jascha Horenstein, a native of Kiev who became a leading American conductor passed away today.

http://www.classical.net/music/performer/horenstein/index.php

1974: Tonight, at the 46th annual Academy Awards, Marvin Hamlisch won three Oscars “including Best Song and Best Dramatic Score for The Way We Were along with the award for Best Song Score and/or Adaptation for The Sting.”

1975(21st of Nisan, 5735): Seventh Day of Pesach

1977: “The Ascent” a Russian film set in WW II with music by Alfred Schnittke, the son of Frankfurt born journalist Harry Viktorovich Schnittke and grandson of “philologist and translator” Tea Abramovna Katz was released in the Soviet Union today.

1978: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Dallas” a five-part mini-series created by David Jacobs that proved so popular it became a regular weekly show that lasted until May of 1991.

1978: Birthdate of Nicholas Evan “Nick” Berg “the American freelance repairman” who was beheaded by Islamist terrorists in Iraq who were so proud of the act that they put the video on the internet.

http://articles.philly.com/2004-05-15/news/25381697_1_kesher-israel-nicholas-e-berg-memorial-service

1979: Menachem Begin visited Cairo, Egypt. The historic visit followed the historic peace treaty that Begin and Sadat had signed. Begin was the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit Egypt.

1980(16thof Nisan, 5740): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1981: In London, the annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee came to an end today.

 

1981: “Seventy-five British academics signed a letter to Soviet Minister of Culture Petr Demichev protesting the repeated harassment of Hebrew teachers and students in the Soviet Union.”

1981: “Anatoly Shcharansky, the Jewish Prisoner of Zion, who is serving a sentence in a Urals labor camp, informed his mother that in January 1981 he was sentenced to six months’ solitary confinement, and deprived of family visits in 1981.”

1982: “Ivan Kovalev, 28, one of the last active members of the Helsinki Group of dissidents monitoring Soviet abuses of human rights, was sentenced by the Moscow City Court to five years in a labor camp followed by five years’ internal exile.”

1982:Jewish militants opposing Israel's withdrawal from Sinai tried to reach the area by boat today after the army closed it to unauthorized civilians and set up roadblocks

 

1987(3rd of Nisan, 5747): Famed drummer and orchestra leader Buddy Rich passed away at the age of 69. According to some sources, only Rich’s father was Jewish. However, on the official Buddy Rich Website, Rich’s religion is listed as Jewish

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/03/obituaries/buddy-rich-jazz-drummer-with-distinctive-sound-dies.html

 

1987:Theater of the Riverside Church offered a rare look at Israeli Experimentalist Theater and dance when it presented Tmu-Na today. The Tel-Aviv group, founded in 1982 by Nava Zukerman, takes its name from the Hebrew word for moving pictures. And that, essentially, is what this good-looking company presents on stage. But the work Tmu-Na chose for this New York debut engagement is a disappointing one. ''Five Screams,'' loosely based on ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being'' by Milan Kundera, sets a group of men and women on a journey through five ''screams'' that program notes identify as ''signals of disagreement with the absurdity of existence.'' The 90-minute work, which is set to snatches of music composed by everyone from Laurie Anderson to Johann Strauss, opens with ''The Journey'' and moves on to ''Anticipation.''''Obedience and Rebellion'' is next, then ''The Kitsch: The Total Acceptance of Existence.''''Five Screams'' ends with ''Resignation.'' There is nothing so mystifying, often, as elucidating program copy.What we actually see are somber encounters and separations that form a kind of cool if anguished ritual of surviving. There are moments when the performers' individual qualities shine through and give it all a fleeting poignancy or element of surprise. But there is something very familiar in the scattered chairs, the women's flowing hair and drab dresses, the men's casual and inexplicable brutality and the air of unspecified angst that hangs over ''Five Screams.'' Tmu-Na has clearly been influenced by Pina Bausch, who has had great success in Israel.This is diluted Bausch, however, and it says little about the lives and gifts of the performers who helped to create ''Five Screams,'' which was adapted and directed by Ms. Zukerman and Koby Meydan. The performers are Amnon Doyeb, Netta Moran, Phina Bradt, Rama Ben-Zvi, Yael Bechor, Mr. Meydan, Yael Sagi and Yossi Pershitz. ''Five Screams'' will be performed again tonight and tomorrow night at Riverside, 120th Street and Riverside Drive.

1988(15 of Nisan, 5748): Pesach

1989(26th of Adar II, 5749): Jack Ruby Lindo whose tombstone in the Anglican cemetery in Ocho Rio has a “large six-pointed Star of David” passed away today.

http://www.kulanu.org/jamaica/jews-of-jamaica.php

 

1991(18thof Nisan, 5751): Fourth Day of Pesach

1992: Bernard Kouchner began serving as Minister of Health of France.

1992: Jack Lang completed his second term as Culture Minister of France.

1993: “The Crush” directed and written by Alan Shapiro and starring Alicia Silverstone was released in the United States today.

1993: “Jack The Bear” a film based on the novel of the same name directed by Marshall Herskovitz was released today in the United States.

1993: “Cop and a Half” a comedy directed by Henry Winkler was released in the United States today.

1993: CBS broadcast the first episode of “Good Advice” a sitcom with scripts co-authored by Max Mutchnick.

1995: Two members of Hamas blew themselves up in Gaza City while preparing for an attack on Israel.

1995: In an article entitled “Central Synagogue; A $500,000 Restoration of an 1872 Masterwork,” Christopher Gray traces the history of Central Synagogue, one of the most spectacular houses of worship in New York City, is a rare surviving example of early Victorian religious architecture. Construction sheds are now going up for a $500,000 restoration of the building's 1872 stone exterior. Central Synagogue, which was originally called Ahawath Chesed, was founded in 1846 by immigrants from Prague and the nearby regions of what was then Bohemia.

1996: “The Dreyfus Affair” is scheduled to have its American premiere at the New York City Opera this evening.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/31/arts/classical-music-who-owns-the-dreyfus-affair.html

1997(24thof Adar II, 5757): Forty-nine year old Hedi Kravis, the Brooklyn born daughter of psychiatrist Bernard Shulman, the first wife Henry Kravis, passed away today. (As reported by Lawrence Van Gelder)

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/05/nyregion/hedi-kravis-chic-society-s-interior-designer-49.html

 

1998:”Israel Offers Pullout if Lebanon Bars Raids” published today described the conditions under which Israel will leave its neighbor to the north.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/02/world/israel-offers-pullout-if-lebanon-bars-raids.html

2000: James Rubin completed his service as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs

2000:The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “I Will Bear Witness:A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945by Victor Klemperer; translated by Martin Chalmers and the recently released paperback edition of “Playing for Keeps:Michael Jordan and the World He Made”by David Halberstam

2000:Columbia University and the Jewish Campus Life Fund celebrates the dedication and cornerstone-laying, of the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life, a new $11.5 million building that fulfills the long-held goal of creating a permanent home for Columbia's vibrant and diverse Jewish student community. The building is named for the family of Robert K. Kraft, a 1963 graduate of Columbia College and University Trustee since 1991. His lead gift in 1993 launched the building campaign for the Center.

2001: Scott Schoeneweis was awarded the honor of being the Angels' opening day starter today (his first such assignment) and he pitched effectively, yielding 3 runs and 8 hits in 7 innings; but Anaheim lost to Texas, 3-2.

2001: Pitcher Tony Cogan played in his first major league game as a player with the Kansas City Royals.

2002(20thof Nisan, 5762) Sixth Day of Pesach; 5th day of the Omer

2002: Funeral services are scheduled to be held at Guttermans in Woodbury, L.I, for Abraham Goldberg, the husband of Marjorie Goldberg and father of Barry Goldberg and Lori Kamper.

2002(20thof Nisan, 5762)

2002: As part of Operation Defensive Shield, the IDF entered the booby-trapped camp at Jenin and ”surrounded the headquarters of the Preventive Security Force in nearby Beitunia.”

2002: Israeli forces surrounded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem after 200 Palestinian terrorists took refuge inside. Instead of storming the church, the IDF surrounded the building a laid siege to the armed killers.

2002: Frieda Caplan's specialty produce company, Frieda's Inc., which has introduced a wide array of exotic produce to the American market, celebrated forty years in business.

2003: Milwaukee Brewers Pitcher Matt Ford appears in his first major league baseball game.

2004: “Home on the Range” an animated musical western featuring the voice or Roseanne Barr was released in the United States today.

2005: Pope John Paul II, “the Polish Pope” whose efforts to improve relations with the Jewish people included the first Papal visits to Auschwitz, a synagogue and Yad Vashem as well as his decision to recognize  the state of Israel and serving as host of “The Papal Concert to Commemorate the Holocasut” passed away today.

2005: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that “the search for a new rabbi for Temple Judah has ended with the hiring of Rabbi Aaron Sherman.” Rabbi Sherman and his wife Stephanie Alexander recently purchased a home in Cedar Rapids. A graduate of Brown University, Rabbi Sherman has a Masters in Hebrew Letters and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2000.

2006: At about 1 am today “a man at a party in Hollywood, a man argued with Paula Abdul grabbed by the arm and threw her against the wall” resulting “in a concussion and spinal injuries.”

2006: Haaretz reported that Poland is going to probe 1940s murder after Israeli meets alleged killer.In 1943, at the height of World War II and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry, Gitl Lerner, a 45-year-old Jewish woman, hid with five of her children in the home of a Polish farmer. The six managed to escape a transport to the Majdanek death camp and found shelter along with two Jewish youths. On the night of October 30, Polish farmers in the area stabbed Lerner and the five children to death. Sixty years later Roni Lerner, an Israeli businessman and Gitl's grandson, set out to track down his family's murderers. In the course of his investigation, Lerner, pretending to be a historian, met the sole surviving murderer and uncovered the horrific case, which the prosecution in Poland has now reopened as a result. Under Polish law, there is no statute of limitations on murders committed during World War II or the country's Communist era. However, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who assisted Lerner in his contacts with the Polish prosecution, says that despite admirable Polish willingness to bring criminals to trial, the proceedings drag on and convictions have been exceedingly few, in view of the number of suspects still alive. With the help of an Israeli film crew and local researchers, Lerner managed to locate the last remaining suspect in the murder. The suspect,Joseph Radchuk, a 92-year-old farmer, led Lerner and his people to the place where the victims were buried 60 years ago. Lerner is going to Poland today at the head of a delegation to exhume the skeletons and bring them for burial in Israel, alongside his father's grave. "I won't leave my family members in that cursed land of Poland," he said before departing Israel. Researchers from Poland's Institute for National Commemoration (IPN) are slated to meet with Lerner tomorrow and to be present for the exhumation of the victims' remains, if found, at the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. The eight victims are Gitl and her five children (Miriam, 22; Hannah, 20; David, 17; Zvi, 15; and Haim, 13) and two young Jewish men known only by their surnames: Zefrin and Pomerantz. They were stabbed to death at their hideout in the small village of Pashgalini, near the family's hometown of Komarovka in eastern Poland, not far from the city Lublin. The family arrived at the hideout in April 1943, after a Polish farmer named Jan Sadovski found it for them. While the family was in hiding, Lerner's father, Yitzhak, was living in Warsaw under an assumed identity. He heard of his family's murder from a Polish friend who lived in the village. In November 1944, after the Red Army had conquered the area from the Germans, Lerner went to the village to investigate. His testimony, preserved in the Jewish archives in Warsaw, states that the murder was perpetrated by Sadovski and four other farmers - one of them being Joseph Radchuk. The testimony stated that the murder had been committed to steal the Lerner family's possessions and those of their two friends, who were wealthy people. Lerner Sr. met with Radchuk, who said he had witnessed the murder and admitted taking many of the family's possessions. Lerner Sr. filed several complaints with the Soviet authorities, but later learned that aside from Sadovski, who was tried and executed, nothing was done to his accomplices. After the war Lerner Sr. fled to Sweden and from there immigrated to Israel. He remarried, to a Holocaust survivor from a neighboring town in Poland and lived with her in Moshav Hibbat Zion. Lerner began investigating his family's tragedy in July 2003, when he accompanied his daughter's school trip to Poland and tracked down his father's testimony at the archives in Warsaw. On returning to Israel, Lerner decided to commemorate his father's life with a book and a documentary film, and headed back to Poland. He kept Israel's ambassador, David Peleg, and his deputy, Yosef Levy, apprised of all his movements there. He also made contact with the local Jewish community and Monica Kravchuk, chair of the Jewish heritage foundation in Poland. Research led to the home of the Ozdovski family, on whose land the Lerners' hideout had been located. The family, whose father apparently participated in the murder, said that the bodies were initially buried near the hideout, but were moved a year later to an unknown location because neighbors complained the place had become haunted. Lerner says that during an unannounced visit to the family's home, he spotted a Singer sewing machine that had belonged to his family and was mentioned in his father's testimony. Last October the researchers located Radchuk, who showed them where the bodies were reburied at the edge of the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. If the skeletons are found there, they will be flown to Israel on Tuesday and the funeral will take place in Hibbat Zion at the end of the week.

2006: Jaclyn Leibson Mintz, daughter of Dale Mintz, the national director of women’s health and advocacy for Hadassah and editor of “The Hadassah Jewish Family Book of Health and Wellness” and Stephen A. Mintz were married in a ceremony officiated at by Rabbi A. Rothman.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development” by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton and the recently released paperback edition of “Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel by Rebecca Goldstein.”

2007: “Nightrise” the third book in The Power of Five series, by Anthony Horowitz was released in the United Kingdom today.

2007(14thof Nisan): Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the Jewish calendar

2007 (14th of Nisan): In the evening, Pesach begins with the first Seder.

2007: The New Republic Magazine featured a review of George Konrad’s autobiography, “A Guest In My Own Country: A Hungarian Life.” Konrad, like the more famous Elie Weisel, survived the Holocaust in Hungary, but spent his adult life in the land where he had faced almost certain death.

2007: Erev Pesach, Newsweek Magazine featured an article entitled “American Jews: The List—Choosing the Chosen” in which three American Jewish multi-millionaires list the top fifty rabbis in the United States. Following the criteria used by this trio, the Rabbis we read about Bnei Berak in the Haggadah would not have made the list.

2007: Chicago real estate billionaire Sam Zell “has won the auction for the Tribune Co.” The 65 year old native of Highland Park, Illinois has bought the company whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune.

2008: In Vancouver, B.C., the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “Jewish Luck.” which was among the first Soviet Yiddish films to be released in the US during the 1920s. “Based on Sholem Aleichem's series of stories featuring the character Menakhem Mendl, “Jewish Luck” revolves around the daydreaming entrepreneur Menakhem Mendl who specializes in doomed strike-it-rich schemes. Despite Jewish oppression by Tsarist Russia, Menakhem Mendl continues to pursue his dreams and his continued persistence transforms him from schlemiel to hero as the film uncovers the tragic underpinnings of Sholem Aleichem's comic tales. Notes Village Voice critic Georgia Brown, "The movie's best inter-title translated from Isaac Babel's Russian: `What can you do when there is nothing to do?'" A dramatized version of the Menkhem Mendl stories was first staged by the Moscow Yiddish State Theater, under the direction of Alexander Granovsky, who later made this silent film. “Jewish Luck” features some of the finest artistic talents of Soviet Jewry during this period. It has been speculated that the cinematography done by Eduard Tissé inspired the filming of particular scenes in one of his later projects, Sergei Eisenstein's “The Battleship Potemkin.” The original Russian inter-titles were written by Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, who later became a victim of the Stalinist purges in the late 1930s.”

2008: The Hallmark Channel “Son of the Dragon” with a teleplay written by David Seidler “which helped to launch the cable channel.”

2008: The Rosenbach Museum and Library received an official State Historical Marker by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in recognition of the lasting contributions of museum co-founder, Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach.

2009: Television financial personality and Harvard Law School graduate Jim Cramer has license to practice law suspended today “for failure to pay the registration fee” for the New York Bar.

2009: Professor Amy-Jill Levine, of Vanderbilt University, delivers an address at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, entitled “Misunderstanding Judaism/Misunderstanding Jesus.”

2009: “The Teddy Bear was born in Bedford Stuyvesant” published today described the role of “Rose and Morris Michtom, two Russian Jewish immigrants who lived in Brooklyn” in creating this iconic American stuffed animal.

http://savebedfordstuyvesant.blogspot.com/2009/04/teddy-bear-was-born-in-bedford.html

2009: Centenarian Andrew Steiner, the Czech born architect who saved Jews as a leader in the Bratislava Working Group and settled in Atlanta, GA after the war passed away today.

https://www.thebreman.org/Research/Cuba-Family-Archives/Oral-Histories/ID/1901/Steiner-Andre

 

2009(8th of Nisan, 5769): A terrorist infiltrated Bat Ayin in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank and killed Shlomo Nativ, a 13-year-old Israeli boy, by striking him in the head with an axe. The terrorist also attacked a 7-year-old boy with the axe, hitting and wounding him in the head. He was taken to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and is in moderate condition. Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and an organization calling itself the Imad Mughniyeh Group claimed responsibility for the attack, although this has not been confirmed.

2009: Today in an interview to the Radio Liberty Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg denounced the FSB as an institution harmful to Russia and the ongoing expansion of its authority as a return to Stalinism

2010: Krista Tippe, host of American Public Media's Speaking of Faith and author of , Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit, is scheduled to appear with Michel Martin, host of NPR's Tell Me More are scheduled , to get together for a dialogue about the role of faith in their lives at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall in Washington.

2010: “Musical Shabbat” is scheduled to return to Friday Night Services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2010: After premiering at the Locarno Film Festival “Breath Made Visible,” a “documentary film about modern dance legend Anna Halprin” was released in the United States

2011:Professor Yosef Shiloh, of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Medical School, the first Israeli to receive the prestigious Clowes Award presented by the American Association for Cancer Research is scheduled to be honored at the AACR Annual Meeting that opens today in Orlando, Florida. The prize includes a $10,000 grant, a commemorative plaque, and funding to attend this prestigious event.

2011:Former Israel Olympian, Shaul Landry, a surviving member of the 1972 Munich delegation, is scheduled to celebrate his 75th birthday today by walking his age in kilometers.http://www.jpost.com/Sports/Article.aspx?id=212351

2011(27th of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-two year old Morris Parloff, a member of the "Ritchie Boys," a German-speaking unit of the U.S. Army that did intelligence work and psychological warfare in World War II, and who later became a psychotherapist, researcher and an administrator at the National Institute of Mental Health, passed away today. Parloff was among the surviving members of the Ritchie Boys featured in a 2004 documentary.

http://ritchieboys.com/EN/boys_parloff.html

2011(27thof Adar II, 5771): In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Traditional Saturday Morning Minyan celebrated Shabbat Ha-Chodesh.

2011(27thof Adar): Yahrzeit of Zedekiah “the last king of the royal house of David to reign in the Holy Land. He ascended the throne in 434 BCE, after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia (to whom the kingdom of Judah was then subject) exiled King Jeconiah (Zedekiah's nephew) to Babylonia. In 425 BCE Zedekiah rebelled against Babylonian rule, and Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem (in Tevet 10 of that year); in the summer of 423 BCE the walls of Jerusalem were penetrated, the city conquered, the (first) Holy Temple destroyed, and the people of Judah exiled to Babylonia. Zedekiah tried escaping through a tunnel leading out of the city, but was captured; his sons were killed before his eyes, and then he was blinded. Zedekiah languished in the royal dungeon in Babylonia until Nebuchadnezzar's death in 397 BCE; Evil Meroduch -- Nebuchadnezzar's son and successor -- freed him (and his nephew Jeconiah)” today. Ironically, Zedikiah died on the same day on which he was freed.

2011: “The Matchmaker” is scheduled to be shown at the West Chester Jewish Film Festival.

2011:Early this morning, in the southern town of Khan Yunis, IAF aircraft bombed a car carrying four senior Hamas operatives who, according to Israel, were on their way to Sinai with plans to kidnap or attack Israelis vacationing on the peninsula.

2011: The Israeli Counter-Terror Bureau urged Israelis today to leave the Sinai Peninsula immediately, after revealing that Israeli intelligence agencies had obtained concrete information of plans by terrorists to kidnap or attack Israeli nationals vacationing there over the upcoming Pesach holiday. The bureau said that some terrorists were already in the Sinai.Israel is also concerned about reports of the Egyptian police abandoning Sinai in the face of growing Beduin violence and the territory turning into a breeding ground for Global Jihad. The Counter-Terror Bureau noted today that the terror cell planning the attacks against Israelis in Sinai was using local Beduin to help carry out the attacks.

2011:Naama Shafir, a Sabbath-observing Israeli, scored a career-high 40 points to power the University of Toledo women's basketball team to the school's first national postseason championship in any sport. Shafir hit 13 of 27 shots as the host Rockets defeated the University of Southern California, 76-68 today for the Women's NIT title. The victory also marked the first women's national championship for a Mid-American Conference team in any sport. Shafir, a 5-7 junior guard from the small northern Israeli town of Hoshaya, also sank 13 of 18 free throws in the game. Following the victory on Saturday afternoon, Shafir walked home and held off interviews until long after the conclusion of Shabbat. Shafir is believed to be the first female Orthodox Jew to be awarded a Division I athletic scholarship. She led the Rockets this season with averages of 15.3 points and 5 assists per game. She had been courted by Boston University and Seton Hall before enrolling at Toledo. Getting the OK to play in the United States was no easy layup: Shafir obtained permission from an Orthodox rabbi in Israel to play games that coincided with the Jewish Sabbath, but not to practice, according to The Associated Press. Other special measures have been enacted to accommodate Shafir’s Sabbath observance: For road games, she checks into a hotel within walking distance of the host arena with a coaching staff assistant, bringing with her frozen kosher meals from Detroit. (As reported by JTA)

2012(11th of Nisan, 5772): Ninety-seven year old “Mauricio Lasansky, an Argentine-born master printmaker who was equally well known for a series of drawings depicting the horrors of Nazism” passed away today at his home in Iowa City, Iowa. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/arts/design/mauricio-lasansky-master-printmaker-dies-at-97.html

2012(11th of Nisan, 5772): Ninety-year old Borscht Belt tumbler Lou Goldstein passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/nyregion/lou-goldstein-borscht-belt-comedian-dies-at-90.html?_r=2&hpw&

2012:Hillel C. Neuer and Bari Weiss are scheduled to discuss “From Eleanor Roosevelt to Qaddafi: An Insider's Account of Human Rights at the UN” at the 92nd Street Y.

2012: “Kosher deli in England a Titanic survivor’s legacy” published today tells the story of restaurant started almost a century ago by a Jewish survivor of the aquatic disaster.

http://azjewishpost.com/2012/kosher-deli-in-england-a-titanic-survivors-legacy/

2013(22nd of Nisan, 5773): Final Day of Pesach

2013: Elem, a non-profit organization for runaway homeless and neglected Israeli and Arab youth in distress is scheduled to host an evening of dinner and drinks to support Israeli Jewish and Arab Youth at Risk prepared by some of New York’s finest chefs.

2013: Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon toured the Golan Heights this afternoon, and vowed that Israel would prevent the proliferation of weapons "that could threaten us in the future" to radical elements in Syria

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Yaalon-Well-prevent-arms-from-reaching-terrorists-308420

2013:Israel launched its first airstrike on the Gaza Strip today since the Egyptian-mediated truce ended November’s eight-day bout of fighting. The airstrike came in response to the firing of a projectile from Gaza, which had exploded in an open area of southern Israel’s Eshkol region.  Israel had not responded to a previous attack that came while President Obama was visiting the region in March.

 2013: Following the shots fired from Syrian territory into the Golan Heights today, IDF tanks returned fire at a Syrian military target across the border, successful destroying whatever had been doing the shooting.

2013: As of today Supercentenarian Evelyn Kozak became “the seventh oldest person living in the world” an honor she held until her death in June of 2013.

https://www.vosizneias.com/133083/2013/06/12/brooklyn-ny-worlds-oldest-jew-dies-at-113/

 

2014: The Jewish Theological Seminary is scheduled to present “Mah Nishtanah: Posing New Questions, Telling New Stories – An evening of inspiring Passover learning.”

2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Chai Fantasy” – a panel discussion about fantasy literature and Judaism.

2014(2ndof Nisan, 5774) Ninety-four year old David Werdyger, the Chasidic Chazan and Holocaust survivor passed away today.

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/boruch-dayan-emmes/224712/petira-of-famed-chazan-david-werdyger-zl-father-of-mordechai-ben-david.html

2014(2ndof Nisan, 5774): Seventy eight year old pianist and critic Harris Goldsmith passed away today. (As reported by Vivien Schweitzer)

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

 

2014(2ndof Nisan, 5774): Seventy-eight year old Sandy “Grossman, who won eight Emmys, directed broadcasts of 10 Super Bowls, 18 N.B.A. finals, 5 Stanley Cup finals and Olympic hockey” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/sports/sandy-grossman-maestro-of-nfl-on-tv-dies-at-78.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

2014: Pierre Moscovici completed his service as Minister of Finance for France.

2015: In “Off the shelf | New books about the Bible worth reading more than once” published today provided a review of Robert Alter’s Song As Death is Love: The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah and Daniel, Michael Fishbane’s newly released The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs and Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s new book, Bewilderments: Reflect-ions on the Book of Numbers.

https://www.jweekly.com/2015/04/02/off-the-shelf-new-books-about-the-bible-worth-reading-more-than-once/

 

2015: Alex Schiffman Shilo is scheduled to speak today the “First Person 2015 Series” sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015: WQXR is scheduled to broadcast “A Musical Fest for Passover with Itzhak Perlman.

http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/277596-musical-feast-passover-itzhak-perlman/

2015: “At a White House news conference today, President Barack Obama said that the United States and the five other world powers negotiating in Switzerland had reached a “historic understanding with Iran” on a deal that, if fully implemented, would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” (As reported by JTA)

2016(23rdof Adar II, 5776): Shabbat Parah; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2016: At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, celebration of the B'nei Mitzvah of Kate Hinz and Ben Binder is scheduled to take place this morning.

2016: “Firebirds” is scheduled to be shown at the Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.

2016: The new Nadav Remez Quintet is scheduled to perform for the first time at Rockwood Music Hall

2017: “On the Map” a film about “the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team's historic win” is scheduled to be shown on the final day of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

2017: “A new Israeli system designed to intercept medium-range missiles became operational today after it was unveiled at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US defense officials.” (As reported by Tama Pileggi and Stuart Winer)

2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character by Marty Appel and Blitzed:Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler

2017: As part of Spring Break, the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to let “kids and students” enter without an admission charge.

2018(17th of Nisan, 5778): Third Day of Pesach, first day of Chol Hamoed; second day of the Omer

2018: In Jerusalem, the Tower of David is scheduled to host a performance of “The Riddle of the Queen of Sheba.”

2018: “The Unorthodox Matchmaker” published today described the role of Yocheved Lerner-Miller in the love life of the Observant.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/style/the-unorthodox-matchmaker-yocheved-lerner-miller.html?mabReward=CBMG1&recid=12gDjEE8pt1Q5w7pXDxDzLyBLL4&recp=8&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine

2018: Gary David Cohn completed his service as Donald Trump’s Direction of the National Economic Council.

2018: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in an interview published today, recognized Israel’s right to exist and extolled the prospect of future diplomatic relations between his kingdom and the Jewish state.

2018: In Jerusalem, the Begin Center is scheduled to host “Map and Matza”

2018(17th Nisan, 5778): Seventy-three year old reporter Connie Lawn passed away today. (As reported by Daniel E. Slotnik)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/obituaries/connie-lawn-independent-white-house-reporter-dies-at-73.html

2019: The voters of Chicago are scheduled to go to the polls where they will decide which of two African American women will replace Rham Emanuel as the city’s chief executive.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Humor Me.”

2019: Today, Massachusetts gaming regulators released an investigative report concluding that executives of Wynn Resorts Ltd concealed sexual misconduct allegations against the casino operator's billionaire founder, Steve Wynn” whose father had changed the family name “from Weinberg to Wynn to avoid anti-Jewish bias.”

2019: With The Kinneret having risen have risen 15.5 since Friday including an 11 centimeter in a single day, today’s forecast calls for local rainfall in northern Israel.

2019: A week before its national elections, Israelis consider the impact of yesterday’s reported by researchers Noam Rotem and Yuval Adam that there is “a network of hundreds of fake Twitter accounts that promoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and attacked his political rivals…”

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host, on-line, “The History of Jewish Music from Barchu to Broadway” with Cantor Mo Glazman.

2020: Fiddler Cookie Segelstein and button accordion player Josh Horowitz of Veretski Pass are scheduled to play klezmer on Zoom in a Fiddle Online “Covid Concert.”

2020: This evening,In a Zoom class from HaMqom Educator Tamar Zaken is scheduled to talk “about the Sephardic end-of-Passover tradition of Mimouna, and how Jews and Muslims lived side-by-side in Morocco.”

2020: Boston Jewish Films is scheduled to present an online screening of “The Witch Hunters.”

2021(20th of Nisan,5781): Sixth Day of Pesach

2021: The Village for Families With Young Children at Temple of Boston is scheduled to present online the Home Edition of “Tot Rock Shabbat.”

2021 In a virtual session examining UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection, curators Francesco Spagnolo and Shir Kochavi are scheduled to talk about an exhibit that had 100 never-before-displayed artifacts from the Jewish community in Kerala, South India.

2021: The Jewish Arts Collaborative is scheduled to present online a conversation with Argentinian born artist Silvina Mizrahi as she talks “about how her upbringing has influenced her artwork.”

2021: As Israelis prepare for Shabbat and the final days of Pesach observance, they can add a fifth question to the proverbial four questions – based on this week’s comments from the Prime Minister, will Bibi with Ra’am to form a new government.

This Day, April 3, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 3

309 B.C.E.: Traditional date for the start of the Seleucid Dynasty. The Seleucid dynasty was one of the dynasties founded after the death of Alexander the Great. Its territory included Syria and Babylonia. In 198 B.C.E. the Seleucids took control of Palestine from the Egyptian based Ptolemy dynasty. This change in dynastic role would lead to the uprising thirty years later that we celebrate as part of the Chanukah Story.

33: According to some scholars, the actual date when a Jewish carpenter was crucified by the Romans for inciting rebellion. 

1287: Honorius IV, the Pope who played a key role in the expulsion of the Jews from England passed away. “In November 1286 Pope Honorius wrote to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, reaffirming the decision of the Lateran Councils. He enlarged on the evils of relations between Christians and Jews and warned of the pernicious consequences of the study of the Jews' Talmud. The King joined in the dialogue and condemnation by reviving the crimes of ritual murder. Jewish writers use the word "allegation" with regard to ritual murder with boring regularity.”

http://www.heretical.com/British/jews1290.html

1367: During the Castilian Civil War Peter I defeated his half-brother at Nájera, the home town of a clan of rabbis and writers who fanned out across North Africa and Palestine.

1473: Sixty-three year Italian noble man Alessandro Sforza, the patron of “Jewish Italian dancer and dancing master Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro” who converted to Roman Catholicism under his influence passed away today.

1544: Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire confirmed the privileges of Austrian Jews. The Emperor was anti-Jewish and a persecutor of the Marranos. But he was convinced by Josel of Rosheim to condemn the accusations of ritual murder. The fate of Jews under Charles appeared to have been a matter of geography. In 1541 he expelled the Jews from Naples and Flanders he instituted the Inquisition in Portugal in 1543. But in his Germanic holdings, Charles found the Jews to be useful and confirmed their rights in Augsburg, Speyer and Regensburg as well as Austria. As we will see when we study the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, Charles treatment of the Jews must be viewed in terms of the clash between the Catholics and the Protestants and not just in terms of Jews versus Christians.

1546(21st of Nisan, 5306): “Rabbi Jacob Berab, leader of a movement to restore the ancient rite of semichah died today at the age of seventy-two.” (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

http://www.safed.co.il/rabbi-jacob-barab-beirav.html

1637(9th of Nisan): Rabbi Joseph ben Phinnehas Haan of Cracow author of Yosef Ometz passed away today.

1637(9th of Nisan): Rabbi Yosef Hahn, author of “Yosef Ometz”, passed away.

1673(17th of Nisan): Rabbi Reuben Hoeshke Katz of Prague passed away

 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0017_0_16671.html

1681(15th of Nisan): Rabbi Abraham Kalmansk of Lemberg, author of “Eshel Avraham” passed away

1714: Italian rabbi David ben Solomon Altaras the author of a Hebrew grammar and editor of daily prayer book passed away today in Venice.

1722: In New York City, Abraham Pinto and his wife gave birth to Rachel Pinto “one of the chief benefactors of Polonies Talmud Torah at Congregation Shearith Israel.”

1751: Twenty-seven year old Hannah Levy, the daughter of Moses Raphael Levy and Grace Mears passed away today.

1764(1st of Nisan, 5524): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1764: Meyer Hart, one of the founders of Easton, PA took the oath of allegiance to the colonial government today.

1774(22nd of Nisan, 5534) Eighth Day of Pesach is celebrated for the last time in peace in the thirteen colonies because a year from now the British and the Americans would have clashed at Lexington and Concord on the Fifth Day of Pesach, marking the start of the Revolutionary War.

1777: Ester Alvares and Bordeaux, France native Daniel Nones gave birth to Sipora Nones.

1778: In Easton, PA, Reyna Levy and Isaac Moses gave birth to Rebecca Moses.

1779(17th of Nisan, 5539): Shabbat Shel Pesach; 2ndday of Omer.

1780: Birthdate of Holland native David Cromelien, who had six children with his first wife, Henriette Nathan and six children with his second wife with Adeline Cromelien.

1787: In Portsmouth, UK, Bohemia native Solomon Lyon and Rachel Hart gave birth to Isaac Leo Lyon today.

1787: Birthdate of Baden, Germany, native Sara Baer, the wife of Moses Lemle Heinsheimer and mother of Karoline, Regina and Julius Heinsheimer.

1790(19th of Nisan, 5550): Ephraim Moses Kuh, the nephew of Veitel Ephraim, Frederick the Great’s jeweler, whose poetry “vividly expresses his patriotism and his reverence for Frederick the Great; but also expresses his resentment at the bad treatment of Jews in Germany and scorn at his own and others' failures and weaknesses” passed away today in his hometown of Breslau.

1804: In Philadelphia, PA, Miriam Marks and Bordeaux, France native Benjamin Abraham Nones gave birth to Henry Benjamin Nones, the husband of Anna M. Nones, with whom he had nine children.

1806: Jochabed Isaacks and Michael Marks who wee married at Newport gave birth to Leah Marks.

1812(21st of Nisan, 5572): Seventh Day of Pesach

1818: In Silesia, Schiee Jaffé and his wife gave birth to Samuel Jaffé

1822: In Surrey, Deborah and Solomon Bennett gave birth to Gabriel Bennett.

1823: Birthdate of Galicia native Solomon Rubin, the rabbi whose attraction for the Haskalah movement led him to become a school principle and tutor as well as “a prolific author ‘ who produced more than twenty-five works including “a Hebrew translation of Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’” which is considered to be his “most important contribution to Neo-Hebrew literature.” 

1825(15th of Nisan, 5585): Pesach is observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Q. Adams.

1830(10th of Nisan, 5590): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol is celebrated for the last time before Mexico acting out of fear of annexation forces in the United States, banned “any additional American colonist from settling in Mexican territory which included parts of the whole of the states of California, Texas, Arizona Colorado, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico.

1833(14th of Nisan, 5593): Ta’anit Bechorot is observed for the first time while Martin Van Buren was Vice President.

1834: Nathan Baeck, a Rabbi in Kromau, Moravia and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Samuel Baeck the father of Leo Baeck.

1841: Birthdate of German native Wolf Landau, who served as the Rabbi at several U.S. congregations before finally settling in Bay City, MI, where he led Anshe Chesed, a Reform congregation founded in September of 1879 that met on Adams Street and offered Sunday School classes as well as regular Saturday morning services.

1844(14th of Nisan, 5604): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1844: A newspaper report states that a census was conducted at Constantinople and there were 900,000 people living in the city including 100,000 Jews.

1847(17th of Nisan, 5607): Shabbat Shel Pesach; Third Day of Pesach

1847(17th of Nisan, 5607): Sixty-four year old Tobias Asser died in his native Amsterdam today.

1850: In Durbach, Germany, “Herman (Hirschel) Bodenheimer,” a baker and Elka Hirschfelder gave birth to Pauline Bodenheimer who would pass away before her second birthday.

1857: Löw Schwab, the rabbi at Budapest passed away today and would ultimately be replaced by Dr. W. Alois Meisel.

1862: Fifty-eight year old Annie Schlesinger, the wife of Michael Samuel Schlesinger with she had had seven children, including one set of twins was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1863(14th of Nisan, 5623): Fast of the First Born and Erev Pesach

1865: In Philadelphia, PA, “Laemmlein Buttenweiser and Leah Buttenweiser” gave birth to CCNY grad and NYU trained attorney Joseph L. Buttenweiser, the President of the Federation for Support of Jewish Philanthropic Society, the President of the Hebrew Technical Institute and a member of both Temple Israel and the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue who with his wife Caroline raised five children.

1865: Eighty-two year old Lydia Lyons, the wife of Sampson Samuel and the mother of Fanny, Lewis and Saul Samuel was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1866(18th of Nisan, 5626): Fourth Day of Pesach

1869(22nd of Nisan, 5629): Eighth Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1870:Fifty-one year old Philipp Jaffé, “one of the most important German medievalists of the 19th century” who “was appointed assistant professor of history at Humboldt University of Berlin” in 1862 and who converted to Christianity in 1868 passed away today.

1870: “Reformed Judaism: Advanced ideas in the Ancient Religion--Doctrines and Tenets of the Reformers--The New Temples in Brooklyn” published today reports on the growth of the Reform movement. It describes the activities of New York’s well-established Temple Emanuel including its purchase of the cemetery at Cypress Hill as well as the birth of Temple Israel, Brooklyn’s first Reform congregation. The Temple is led by Raphael Lewin who had served as Rabbi for the Reform Temple in Savannah, Georgia. The article also discusses the doctrines of Reform Judaism based on Lewin’s book, “What is Judaism; Or a Few Words to the Jews.

1871: The New York Times reported that “the Jewish people of Newark are preparing for the celebration of the Feast of Passover, which begins on the 6th of April and last eight days It is calculated that during the feast more than 15,000 pounds of unleavened bread will be consumed.”

1873(6th of Nisan, 5633): Lewin Aron (`Libesch') Pinner passed away today.

1873: In London, Blema Blumenthal and Prussian native Salomon Albu gave birth to Henry Martin Albu.

1875: Two days after she had passed away, 53 year old Elia Esther Hart, the wife of Frederic Baruch Barnett and the mother of Joel Barnett who had passed away in infancy, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1878: Irish-American playwright James A. Herne whose first successful play, “Hearts of Oaks” was written with and produced by David Belasco married Katherine Corcoran today.

1880(22nd of Nisan, 5640: 8th day of Pesach

1880: Birthdate of Austrian philosopher and author Otto Weininger

1882(14th of Nisan, 5642): The New York Times reported that “the Jewish festival of ‘Pesach,’ or the Passover, commences at sundown this evening and will continue for eight days…The festival was instituted to commemorate the miraculous deliverance of the Children of Israel from the bondage to which they had been subjected in Egypt.”

1884(8th of Nisan, 5644): Less than a month before his 72nd birthday Ignaz Karunda, the son and grandson of Czech second-hand book dealers who became a successful writer and Austrian parliamentarian passed away today in Vienna.

1884: Birthdate of Donaldsonville, LA native and Tulane undergrad Monte Lemann, the Harvard trained lawyer, the Tulane University Law School professor who in 1931 was the only member of President Hoover’s Wickersham Commission to refuse to sign the report recommending “further and stricter efforts to enforce prohibition” and who with his wife Mildred raised two sons Thomas and Stephen Lemann.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/09/23/88824954.pdf

1884: German painter Gustave Karl Ludwig Richter whose works included a portrait of his wife Cornelie Meyerbeer, daughter of composer Giacomo Meyerbeer and their son passed away.

1886: Today, in Philadelphia, one week before his 30thbirthday Lee Levy, the New York City born son of Meyer and Caroline Levy, who was a wholesale liquor distributor, married Zetta Sproesser with whom he had three children – Irene, Beebe and Milton.

1888(22nd of Nisan, 5648): Eighth Day of Pesach is observed on the day when Emma Elizabeth Smith was murdered in what would be the first killing by the legendary “Jack the Ripper

1890: It was reported today that “Count Dleianoff, Minister of Public Instruction, has refused to receive the petition recently prepared by” university students “asking for…the unrestricted admission of Jews.”

1890(13th of Nisan): Aron Arnaud, chief rabbi of Strasbourg, Alsace, author of “Prieres d’un Coeur Israelite passed away”

1890: In Bavaria Karoline and Leopold (Lehmann) Schloss gave birth to Isidor Schloss

1890(13th of Nisan, 5650): Eighty-three year Arnaud Aron, the Grand Rabbi of Strasbourg, passed away today. (According to some sources he was born in March and not May which means he would have been 82.  I have not been able to resolve the dispute)

http://opensiddur.org/by/arnaud-aron/

1890: Almost two years after its founding the Leopold Morse Home for Infirm Hebrews and Orphanage was dedicated today in Mattapan, Massachusettes.

1890(13th of Nisan, 5650): On the day before Jews are scheduled sit down to their Seders on the first night of Passover, hundreds of people received free meat today thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Paulina Rosendorff. While most of the recipients were poor Polish Jews, several poor gentiles also lined up to get the free meat. Mrs. Rosendorff said she did not care because poverty knows no religious boundaries.

1892: Birthdate of Frantisek Klein who was transported from Prague in 1942 to Ujazdow where he was murdered.

1892: It was reported today that while Jewish refugees have been prevented from crossing the border between Russia and German, 5,000 Russian Christians have been allowed to cross into Germany in the last two weeks.

1892: It was reported today that there “there is a growing belief that” Russian Jewish exiles are not “desirable as immigrants” to United States because “many of the immigrants have been shown to accept a permanent state of dependence and pauperism as a consequence of the immediate relief and help that were…extended to them.” (Editor’s Note – For those following the immigration debate in the United States, these comments have an eerily familiar ring; the only change is in the name of the immigrant group)

1892: It was reported today that “the opinion of Baron Hirsch that the proportion of the Hebrew population of the United States was already as great as was desirable will be shared by most thoughtful Americans, Hebrews or otherwise.  In truth the only solution of the problem raised by the persecution of the Russian Jews is that of Baron Hirsch of a Hebrew colony which might ultimately become a Hebrew state.

1893(17th of Nisan, 5653): Third Day of Pesach

1893: In Forest Hill, London, Lilian Blumberg and Ferdinand Steiner gave birth to Leslie Howard Steiner, who gained fame as actor Leslie Howard. Yes, the blue-eyed blond who played the quintessential Southern gentlemen Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind was Jewish. Lelies Steinner was born in England, the son of a Hungarian Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, and Lilian Blumberg daughter of a barrister named Charles Blumberg. The middle class Blumbergs did not approve of the marriage. However, they mellowed after the birth of young Leslie who was an officer in the cavalry during World War I. After the war, Steiner, now Howard built a career on the stage and later in films. He changed his name to avoid ant-Semitism, a not uncommon need among theatrical people of the time. Howard's death in June of 1943 is still shrouded in mystery. German fighters shot down the civilian plane, which was carrying him from neutral Portugal back to England. According to some, Howard was a British spy and the target of the attack. The mystery may be solved until 2025 when papers concerning the matter will finally be declassified

1895: Percy Benedict Lewis, the son Regine and Frederick Hy Lewis was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1895: In Albany, state Senator Wolf introduced a bill “empowering the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York to convey certain property transferred to the society by the city.”

1896: Among the institutions named to receive bequests from the late Charles S. Friedlander are Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews, $1,600; Society of Shevet Juda, $600; Hospital of Beth Israel, $600; Mount Sinai Hospital, $600; Hebrew Technical Institute, $600; Ladies Deborah Nursery Sanitarium for Hebrew Children, $600; Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, $600 and the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum, $600.

1896: In describing the virtues of Rabbi Aaron Wise who was buried yesterday, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil said “The spirit of his words cannot die.  The influence of the teacher has no limits as to time or space.”

1897(1st of Nisan, 5657): Parashat Tazria; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh

1897: It was said today that Jewish philanthropist and Republican politician Edward Lauterbach “would have been pleased if Colonel George Bliss had been selected by the Governor” to serve as a member of the State Board of Charities.

1897: Rabbi Rudolph Grossman of Temple Beth-El delivered an address on ‘The Talmud’ “at a meeting of the Alumni Association of the Hebrew Technical Institute.”

1898: Birthdate of George Jessel, the self- proclaimed toastmaster general. Jessel gained early fame as the star in the Broadway production of the Jazz Singer. The movie version was the first talking motion picture but it starred Al Jolson. As he aged and survived his contemporaries, Jessel became famous for his eulogies. During the Viet Nam War, he "wrapped himself in the flag" going so far as to equate the New York Times with Pravda and provoking the normally mild-mannered Ed Neuman to literally pull the plug on an interview on a live broadcast. Jessel died in 1981.

1898: Birthdate of Harry Ferman, the native of Ukraine who came to Canada in 1912 where he worked as a farmer and retail trader before joining the Jewish Legion in 1918.

1898: The New York Times published a lengthy, laudatory article about Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise on the 90th anniversary of his birth.

1899: It was reported today that Jesse Lewisohn had presented a check for one thousand dollars to the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society Asylum in memory of his late brother Samuel.

1899: “Judaism and Christianity” published today contain the views of Dr. John Hall on the relationship of these two faiths including that “it would be almost impossible for us to understand” the Epistle to the Hebrews” unless we had the books of Leviticus to refer to.”

1899: “The third of the series of model lessons conducted by Isaac C. Noot, Principal of the Hebrew Schools of New York will be held this afternoon in the vestry of Temple Beth-El.”

1900: Birthdate of Shelomo Dov Goitein, “a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages and author of the five volume A Mediterranean Society.

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/10/nyregion/shelomo-d-goitein-a-hebraic-scholar-dies.html?pagewanted=print

1901(14th of Nisan, 5661): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1902: It was reported today that “Moses Blau has old sold a three story dwelling at 103 East 81st Street.

1903(6th of Nisan, 5663): Seventy-five year old Moses Ha-Kohen Reicherson, the Polish born Hebrew grammarian and teacher who moved to New York in 1890 passed away today leaving behind a number of unpublished works including commentaries on the Pentateuch, on the books of Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve Prophets, Psalms, Job, and Proverbs; and a prayer-book, "Tefillah le-Mosheh."

1904(18th of Nisan, 5664): Fourth Day of Pesach

1904: “Warn Anti-Jew Agitators” published today said that “although the authorities do not believe there is a danger of a recurrence of the anti-Jewish riots of last year, reports of impending trouble circulated at Odessa, Kieff, Kishineff, and other centers where there is a large Jewish population, have somewhat alarmed the Jews and Minister of the Interior Plehve has adopted most rigorous precautionary measures.”

1904: “Buying Slow Last Week on Account of the Jewish Holidays” published today said that :all the auction houses reported dull business in the last week because of the Jewish religious observances.”

1904: A thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her mother arrived at the White House with a supply of Matzoth. While her mother waited in anteroom, the young girl went into the President’s office and presented the unleavened bread to a thankful Theodore Roosevelt. The President thanked the girl for the gift and complimented her on her tact and courtesy.

1905(27th of Adar II, 5665): Seventy-four year old Levi Spiegelberg, the native of Prussia and husband of Bertha Spiegelberg passed away today in New York City.

1906: Today, in the House of Lords, “Lord Northbourne asked the Government if would lay on the table any consular or other reports concerning the anti-Jewish outrages in Russia” because “he said that the publication of such reports might indirectly have some effect inducing the Russian Government to do its best to remedy conditions that outraged the civilization of the 20thcentury.

1906: Today, in the House of Lords, Lord Fitzmaurice, speaking on behalf of the Foreign Office said the Government could not grant Lord Northbourne’s request to make reports of anti-Semitic activities in Russia public “without committing a grave impropriety” and besides which “Great Britain could not interfere in the internal affairs of Russia.

1906: At Algeciras, at the Conference on Moroccan Reforms, unanimous support was obtained for the resolution that U.S. Ambassador White had introduced “on behalf of the Jews in Morocco.”

1907: Today, Alois Grossman, the chairman of the Committee on Synagogue Music of the Central Conference of American Rabbis addressed a letter to the individual members of the committee – Rudoph Grossman, I.L. Leucht, I.S. Moses, J.L. Magnes, William Loewenberg, A.M. Radin and Nathan Stern – on the issue of the role of traditional music in Reform services which elicited responses all of which were favorable to “the employment of more traditional music in the reform service” with one respondent going so far as to say “I hate church music in the synagogue” while another said that “I am heartily in favor of traditional music…”

1907: Birthdate of Isaac Deutscher, the native of Galicia who left Poland in 1939 to work as newspaper in London and who wrote biographies of Trotsky and Stalin.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/index.htm

http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSdeutscher.htm

1909: District Superintendent Julia Richman was among the group who inspect the new Stuyvesant High School which is in the “very hear of the lower east side.”

1909(12th of Nisan, 5669): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1909: “History of the Jews” published today described a circular letter that has been by Rabbi Frederick de Sola to Rabbis and Jewish scholars that explains the reason for creating “The History of the in Monographs,” a multi-volume work that will serve “as a literary supplement to the Jewish Encyclopedia” and which will be overseen by an editorial committee consisting of himself, as chairman, and Dr. David Phillipson and Dr. Isidore Singer.

1910: The Ninth Quinquennial Convention of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith took place at Washington, D.C.

1911: After have been introduced by Isidore Blum, as the “honorary president of the Harvard Menorah Society,’ Jacob H. Schiff delivered a speech to about “200 Jewish students from Columbia University” at tonight’s meeting of the Columbia Menorah Society in which he “declared that the first duty of Jews is to work for the weal of the community in which they live, and that, despite insistence in some quarters that the Jews are more than a people and still a nation, he could not emphasize too strongly the fact that those who have come here belong to the American Nation, and never will politely seek or hope for a future in another.”

1912: Birthdate of Willie Rubenstein, who in 1934 led the undefeated NYU Violets to victory over the undefeated CCNY Lavenders.

http://peachbasketsociety.blogspot.com/2018/02/willie-rubenstein.html

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1935-Press-Photo-Willie-Rubenstein-New-York-University-Basketball-Captain-/273080316249

1913: Two days after he had passed away, Marcus Israel Landau who had had five children with his first wife Hannah and thirteen children including Annie Edith Landau, the principal of the Evelina D. Rothschild School in Jerusalem with his second wife of 40 years, Chaja Kohn and the inventor of the Landau Miner’s Safety Lamp was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Landau%27s_safety_lamp.jpeg

1914(7th of Nisan, 5674): William Gallich passed away today in Butte, Montana.

1914: Henry Berlin, Chairman of the Arrangements Committee for the Passover celebrations to be held in this city under the auspices of the Jewish Soldiers and Sailors Passover Committee, reported today that with Capt. Lewis Landes of the committee he had called on Commander Moses of the United States battleship Texas and Commander Jackson of the United States battleship North Dakota. They extended invitations to attend the Passover dinner at Tuexedo Hall on April following the regular Passover services. The commanders of the two battleships promised to lend their aid in making the celebrations a success.

1915(19th of Nisan, 5675): Shabbat Shel Pesach; Fifth Day of Passover

1915(19th of Nisan, 5675): Sixty-two year old I.L. Peretz the failed whiskey distiller who became a leading poet, playwright and author passed away today in Warsaw.

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

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/i-l-peretz/

1915: Birthdate of Paul Claude Marie Touvier the French collaborator whose crimes included murdering seven Jewish hostages near Lyon.

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-04-20/news/mn-48236_1_war-crimes

1916: The bazaar and fair sponsored by the People’s Relief Committee for the Jews suffering in the war zone which is being held at the Grand Central Palace is scheduled to come to an end today.

1916: Birthdate of Ralph Glasser the Scottish psychologist, economist, advisor to developing countries and author of an autobiographical trilogy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1389641/Ralph-Glasser.html

1917: Louis Marshall was reported to have said that the cable message from Baron Gunzburg confirmed that all of the restrictions that have been placed on the Jews “are to be repealed with the result that full, equal rights will be guaranteed to the Jews of Russia.”

1918(21st of Nisan, 5678): Seventh Day of Pesach; Final Day of the holiday for Reform Jews

1918: “In view of the Government’s suspension of wheatless regulations in is relation to the consumption of matzoths during the Passover season, Rabbi Isaac Landman of Temple Israel of Far Rockaway suggested that the Jews” of the United States “make up for the amount of wheat which they consumed in their matzoth during the festival season by imposing a ‘wheatless week’ upon themselves.”

1919: In Cincinnati, at the Hebrew Union College Rabbi Julian Morgenstern delivered an address on “Were Isaac M. Wise Alive Today” at the afternoon session of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in which he made “a plea for the maintenance of American Judaism, devoid of all foreign elements” and that “for the Jews, the goal should the inculcation of the American element thoroughly into the Jew’s religion,” making “American ethics and Jewish ideals inseparable” while understanding that “no Palestinian Judaism will answer this purpose.”

1920(15th of Nisan, 5680): First Pesach of “the roaring twenties” and the last Pesach of the presidency of Woodrow Wilson

1920: At Temple Israel of Harlem, Rabbi Maurice delivered a sermon on “Liberty” in which he “said that each Passover Jews should be reminded not only their ancestors escaped bondage, but that those of today should be inspired to reach yet higher stages of liberty.”

1920: At Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Rabbi Israel Goldstein delivered a sermon on “Freedom Then What?”

1920: At the Institutional Synagogue, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein delivered a sermon on “The Need of a Religious Revival” in which that “our only hope for the future to bring back our young people to the faith of our fathers rests in the creation of institutional synagogues.

 

1921: Birthdate of David Arguete, the native of Aydin, Turkey who gained fame as Turkish “composer, lyricist and guitarist” Dario Moreno who was buried in Holon, Israel when he died suddenly in December, 1968.

1922: Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s anti-Semitism would prove to be stronger than his sense of brotherhood for his fellow Socialist brethren. From his attacks on Trotsky to the Doctors’ Plot that came at the end of his life, Stalin displayed an attitude towards the Jewish people that would have made the Czars proud.

1923: In Cincinnati, OH, William Jacob Mack, Sr. the son of Lydia and Millard Mack and Henriette Segal gave birth to William Jacob Mack, Jr.

1924: Birthdate of Marlon Brando. See below for Louis Kemp’s account of attending a Seder with the great American method actor.

http://www.jewishmag.com/89mag/brandoseder/brandoseder.htm

1925: In Nuremberg, a member of a minor German political group, Julius Streicher, gave a speech calling for the annihilation of the Jews. Eight years leader he would join his mentor Adolf Hitler in making this seeming empty threat a reality.

1926:Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, completed his service as the Viceroy and Governor-General of India.

1927: At the Free Synagogue meeting today in Carnegie Hall, Dr. Stephen S. Wise delivered a sermon on “The Jew In American Colleges in which he declared that “few institutions in existence today are more hostile toward the spirit of true American democracy than Greek letter fraternities and sororities” and that “no one thing has been so damaging to the morale of the young Jews as the mere raising of the quota system question at Harvard.”

1927: “Plans for a conference of a representatives of the two million Orthodox Jews in the United States for form an organization to prevent reform Jewry from deciding Jewish religious matters…were discussed” today “by representatives of more than 200 0rthodox Congregations of Greater New York at the Central Jewish Institute.”

1927: The new home for Temple of Israel of Washington Heights, a neo-Georgian synagogue at 560-66 West 185th Street, designed by Sommerfeld & Steckler that cost $400,000 was dedicated today.

1927: “The Carousel of Death” a silent drama produced by Lothar Stark was released today in Germany.

1928: “Halt Deportation Of Jews” published today described the promise that the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigration Aid Society “had obtained from the immigration officials that the 150 Jews now on Ellis Island will be permitted to remain until the” Passover “holiday season ends.

1929: In New York City, “Daniel Lefkowitz and Estelle (Cohn) Lefkowitz, a beautician” gave birth to Maxwell Lefkowitz who gained fame as Lee Leonard, one of those responsible for the debut of ESPN

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/obituaries/lee-leonard-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

 

1930: According to Census records, on this date Joseph Gelman was an architect living and working in Hartford, CT.

1932: Birthdate of Chicago native and noted American Architect Norman Jaffe.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/23/obituaries/norman-jaffe-61-an-architect-famed-for-home-designs-is-dead.html?pagewanted=1

1930: Birthdate of Max Frankel the native of Gera, Germany who came to the United States in 1940 and became “one of America’s preeminent journalists. He worked for The New York Times for fifty years, rising from college correspondent to reporter, Washington bureau chief, editorial page editor, and ultimately executive editor 1986—1994. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 and is the author of a nationally bestselling memoir, “The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times.” He lives in New York City.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-times-of-my-life-by-max-frankel/

1933: In the wake of the Reichstag Fire, Time published “Germany: Hitler Enabled.”

Before Berlin's Kroll Opera House swarmed a crowd of young Nazis last week. "Give us the Enabling Act!" they chanted, "give us the Enabling Act or there will be another fire!" The Reichstag was meeting in the Opera House because the central hall of the Reichstag building had been gutted by incendiary fire, a fire that despite popular murmurings the Nazis have persistently blamed on Communists. Because of the fire every Communist deputy was in jail. So the young Nazis' cry was easily answered : The Reichstag passed the Enabling Act 441-94. Adolf Hitler became Dictator of Germany for four years to come. Socialists did not let the bill go through without one word of protest. Cried Deputy Otto Wels: "Take our liberty, take our lives, but leave us our honor! If you really want social reconstruction you would need no such law as this." In full Nazi uniform Chancellor Hitler popped from his seat, his little mustache twitching with excitement. "You're too late!" he roared. "We don't need you any longer in molding the fate of the nation!" Not a few U. S. editors, rapidly scanning the Enabling Act for early editions, headlined their stories END OF THE REPUBLIC. Well they might, for the Enabling Act contained the following provisions

1) Emergency decrees no longer need be signed by President von Hindenburg. Chancellor Hitler will proclaim them on the authority of his own Cabinet.

2) Emergency laws need the approval of neither the Reichstag nor the Reichsrat (Federal Council of States). The right of popular referendum on them, expressed in the Weimar Constitution, is specifically set aside.

3) Treaties with foreign powers no longer need Reichstag or Reichsrat approval.

4) The Cabinet can decree the annual budget and borrow money on its own authority.

5) Any law proclaimed by the Chancellor may deviate from the Constitution, becomes effective 24 hours after its publication in the Federal Gazette.

Since the rights of free speech, public assembly and inviolability of the home have long been suppressed, here was more power in the Chancellery than even Bismarck dreamed of, but careful investigation showed that canny old Paul von Hindenburg still held two aces up his detachable cuffs: The President still has power to dismiss any or all members of the Cabinet including Handsome Adolf himself. He still remains Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr, with sole power to proclaim martial law. The Reichswehr is not yet a Nazi organization. If told to turn Adolf Hitler out of office it could theoretically do so. Observers agreed that these two cards had been shoved up the President's sleeve by Vice Chancellor von Papen. At the week's end lean-jawed Lieut.-Colonel von Papen was fighting hard for yet another check on the Nazis: the vital post of Prussian Premier. He was holding his own at the week's end. Chancellor Hitler let it be known that the Premiership would not be definitely awarded for some time yet; possibly until after May 1. Before the vote on the Enabling Act, Chancellor Hitler read a declaration of policy to the Reichstag that was mild as buttermilk compared with his former utterances. There was the old insistence on "rooting out Communism to the last vestige" but on the other hand "the Government regards the question of monarchistic restoration as indiscussible at present." Germany was pledged to refrain from arming if other nations disarmed radically. Hitler welcomed the Mussolini-MacDonald peace projects. To the general surprise he announced that Germany "looks forward to friendly relations with Soviet Russia." Despite world protests over anti-Semitic outrages in Germany and boycott murmurings that offer grave threats to German commerce and industry (see below), German business seemed to approve the Nazi dictatorship last week. In Berlin tycoons of the Reichs Federation of Industry signed a manifesto promising the Government their fullest support. Led by chemical and brewing stocks, the Berlin Bourse continued a boom that had been three weeks under way. carrying some stocks 300% to 400%, above their crisis lows.

1933: Time magazine published “Prayers & Atrocities” which includes a description of the British reaction to the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,753626,00.html

1934: In the Bronx, Benjamin and Esther Hanft gave birth to actress Helen Hanft, "the Ethel Merman of off-off Broadway"

1935: At the Maccabiah in Tel Aviv, American Syd Koff finished first in the 60 meter dash and second in the broad jump. New York prize fighter Solly Hornstein won his first round test while A. Horowitz of South Africa won the 10,000 meter race.

1936: “Support to the Greater New York campaign of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was pledged by representatives of 200 Jewish women’s organizations have a membership of 100,000 in the five boroughs” of New York City “and Westchester at a breakfast meeting” today “at the home of Mrs. Roger W. Straus” where attendees heard from several speakers including Mrs. Milton Wyle, Mrs. David Goldfarb and Carl J. Austrian.

1936: After almost a year of being on the air, the Blue Network and NBC broadcast the last of Al Pearce’s radio shows sponsored by Pepsodent Toothpaste.

1936: Dr. Hjalmar Schact, the German Minister of Economics advanced the argument that “whether Germany devalues” its currency “or not, she would still have to maintain rigid control of capital movements because of the ’12,000,000,000 to 20,000,000,000 marks of Jewish capital that would otherwise strive to leave the country.”

1937: According to a report received in New York today by Dr. Stephen S. Wise from the Jewish Agency for Palestine, “a total of 34,500 German Jews settled in Palestine during the four year period since” Hitler came to power.

1937(22nd of Nisan): Author and folklorist Judah Loeb Cahan passed away.

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

1938: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Joel Adelberg who as Jeff Barry wrote such “immortal” hits as "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Da Doo Ron Ron", "Then He Kissed Me", "Be My Baby", "Chapel of Love",  "River Deep - Mountain High", "Leader of the Pack" and "Sugar, Sugar"

http://lpintop.tripod.com/jeffbarry/

1939(14th of Nisan 5699): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesach

1939: Dr. Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion were greeted by cheering crowds when they returned to Tel Aviv from the Palestine Conference that had been held in London. Of the negotiations, Weizmann told the crowd, “We did not return victors, but neither were we vanquished.”

1939: In Brooklyn, Abraham and Mildred Gralnick gave birth to Jeffrey Charles Gralnick “a blunt, gravel-voiced television news executive who got his start in the days of the 15-minute, black-and-white evening newscast and went on to play leading roles in the news divisions of three major broadcast networks.” (As reported by Dennis Heveisi)

1939:Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck author of Prelude To The Past became a naturalized U.S. Citizen today.

1940: Birthdate of Tel Aviv native and Ophir Award winning cinematographer “Amnon Salomon” a “disciple of cinematographer David Gurfinkel”

https://www.haaretz.com/1.5202870

1940: Ernst Heilmann, German jurist and political leader was murdered at Buchenwald.

1941: “Nazis Put New Curbs on Jewish Workers” published today described “a rule that Jewish laborers must not be paid for time spent in air-raid shelters” and another rule stating that “Jews are not entitled to compensation for damage suffered in air raids.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/04/03/110051425.html?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0&pageNumber=

1942: This day's deportations from Augsburg, Germany, emptied the town of Jews, ending a Jewish presence that was established in 1212. They were deported to the Belzec death camp.

1942(16th of Nisan, 5702): The Final Solution came to Tlumacz also called Tlumach on the second day of Pesach. Tlumach was a town of about seven or eight thousand people, about a third of whom were Jewish. It was one of those places that changed hands several times including being part of the Soviet Union and Hungary. The Germans took control in 1941 and immediately killed off the leading Jews of the area. On April 3, twelve hundred Jews are taken to Belzac Extermination Camp and the remaining three thousand were placed in a ghetto. Later in the war another two thousand Jews were sent to Belzac. The Jewish community was not reconfigured after the war and is now only a page in the book of Jewish memory. Sad as this event is, it would be sadder still if we did not note their fate and remember (Yizkor) them.

1943: Maria Różanski, Wiktoria Paduch and several others were sentenced to death today by the German Sondergericht special court for helping two Jewish women Elsa Szwarcman and Sala Rubinowicz escape from the Radom Ghetto

1943(27th of Adar II, 5703): Actor Conrad Veidt who played Major Strasser in Casablanca passed away at the age of 50.

http://conradveidt.wordpress.com/

1943: Birthdate of British director Jonathan Lynn, a nephew of Abba Eban.

1944: As an indication that “the backbone of Jewish extremist gangs” may have been broken, British authorities suddenly lifted the rigid curfew in Palestine today.

1944: Moshe Shertok reported to Jerusalem that his negotiations with Oliver Stanley, the British Colonial Secretary had succeeded in creating a breakthrough in the search for a safe haven for Romanian Jews fleeing the Nazis. Henceforth, for an all too brief period of time, “any Jews who reached Istanbul could continue on to Palestine irrespective of Palestine Certificates and quotas in effect because of the 1939 White Paper.

1944: An internal memo of this week from the United States Government War Refugee Board states that it did understand the "attitude" of the Turkish government. On one hand it was "professing a desire to cooperate with the refugee program," while on the other it would not let the United States nor other countries use its ships to transport refugees from Romania to Turkey without formal contracts in place.

1945(20th of Nisan 5705): On the 6th day of Pesach the Fourth Armored Division and the 355th Infantry Regiment of the 89th Infantry Division, part of General George Patton's famed Third U.S. Army, liberated the first death camp, Ohrdruf or North Stalag III, a sub camp of Buchenwald, located near Weimar.

1945: Würzburg, which had had a population that included 2,000 Jews in 1930 most of which was shipped to the death camps between November 1941 and June 1943, was occupied by the U.S. 12th Armored Division and U.S. 42nd Infantry Division in a series of frontal assaults masked by smokescreens

1946: In the United States, premiere of “Deadline At Dawn” directed Harold Cluman, with a script by Clifford Odets and music by Hanns Eislter.

1947: The HMT Ocean Vigour was damaged by a bomb planted by the Haganah’s Palyam forces while docked at the port of Famagusta. She was a British freighter which had been converted into a caged prison ship used to deport illegal Jewish immigrants who had attempted to enter the Mandate Palestine back to Europe and to prison camps in Cyprus. “The Ocean Vigour was one of 3 ships used by the British authorities in “Operation Oasis” to deport the refugees from the Exodus 1947, most of whom were Holocaust survivors, to Germany. The Haganah commander on the Ocean Vigour was Meier Schwarz. The ship carried 1,464 deportees to Port-de-Bouc near Marseilles and, when they refused to disembark there, on to Hamburg, Germany, where they were forced off by club-wielding British troops.”

1948: In another act of daring, a ship from Yugoslavia docked at Tel Aviv. Hidden in the ship’s cargo of potatoes and onions, were 500 rifles, 200 machine guns and a large quantity of ammunition. Jewish dock workers unloaded the vital supply of munitions and shipped them to the Haganah without being caught by the British.

1948: During the fighting that resulted from Arab attempts to abort the Partition Plan of the United Nations, a unit of Palmach fighters captured Al –Qastal, after Mordechai Gazit led a Haganah unit that killed the commander of the Army of the Holy War in their attempt to hold this strategic point.

1949: In “Beginnings of Italian Music” published today Howard Taubman provided a complete review of The Italian Madrigal, a three volume history of the beginnings of Italian national music by Alfred Einstein.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/04/03/85358291.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1949: Israel and Jordan signed an armistice agreement. This agreement was part of the negotiations held on the island of Rhodes under the auspices of the U.N. and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dr. Ralph Bunche. The agreement left the Jordanians in control of the eastern part of Jerusalem and the West Bank. When people speak today of Arab East Jerusalem, they are speaking of a result caused by the Arab Armies forcibly removing the ancient Jewish community from that section of the city; a condition that was in violation of the U.N. resolutions, but which were made a reality by this armistice agreement. The Jordanians never honored the agreements for free, unfettered access to the Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University Campus on Mt. Scopus.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/arm03.asp

1950: In Brooklyn, the former Toby Fassman and Max Cohen gave birth to Columbia trained sociologist Steven M. Cohen, the husband of Marion Lev-Cohen with whom he had two children

1950(16th of Nisan, 5710): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1950(16th of Nisan, 5710): Kurt Julian Weill, German born composer and socialist passed away in New York City.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FA0D1EFD385F177A93C6A9178FD85F448585F9

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported on satisfactory economic talks held in Great Britain where Israel sought, in addition to the Haifa Oil Refineries¹ deliveries agreement, more trade and credits, and genuinely modern military equipment.

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that 5 members of the family of Yehoshua Arya, a Tel Aviv municipal employee, slept on the pavement outside the Jewish Agency building after they had been evicted from their one-room apartment in the Hatikvah quarter.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that owing to last-minute red tape, only 324 immigrants arrived aboard the S.S. Transylvania from Romania, instead of the expected 1,000. In Hamburg police arrested a neo-Nazi who mailed a letter-bomb to the head of the German reparations team at The Hague.

1953: “Desert Legion,” another Hollywood version of the French Foreign Legion with a screenplay by Irving Wallace and Lewis Metzler and featuring Leon Askin was released in Los Angeles today.

1954: Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese diplomat who risked his life and career to help Jews escape from Hitler’s Europe, passed away

http://sousamendesfoundation.org/aristides-de-sousa-mendes-his-life-and-legacy/

1955: The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Jewish author Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.

1958(13th of Nisan, 5718): Sixty one year old Theodor Kramer whom Thomas Mann called “one of the greatest poets of the young generation” but whose career in Austria was short-circuited by the Anschluss and an escape to the United Kingdom passed away today.

1958: U.S. premiere of “The Long Hot Summer” produced by Jerry Wald and starring Paul Newman.

1960: George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the newly formed American Nazi Party held his first public rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

1960: Rabbi Harry Halpern officiated at the wedding of Judith Helen Jacobi, the daughter of Brooklyn residents Dr. and Mrs. Mendel Jacobi and Sydney Phillip Levine, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Max Levine.

1961(17th of Nisan, 5721): Third Day of Pesach

1961(17th of Nisan, 5721): Forty six year old Maurice Howard “Babe” Patt, the Carnegie Tech line who played five seasons in the NFL and served in the U.S. Navy during WW II passed away today.

http://blaircountysportshof.com/wp-content/uploads/1989-Maurice-Patt.pdf

http://www.jewsinsports.org/profile.asp?sport=football&ID=225

1961: “The Happiest Girl in the World” a musical with E.Y. Harburg opened today at the Martin Beck Theatre.

1964(21st of Nisan, 5724): Seventh Day of Pesach

1967: The original version of “I’ve Got a Secret” a popular panel game show co-produced by Mark Goods and created by Allan Sherman was broadcast for the last time today.

1967: Robert Brustein, head of the Yale Drama School and playwright Robert Anderson are scheduled to deliver the eulogies at today’s funeral for Sziget, Hungary native and Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Columbia University John W. Gassner, the theatre critic, playwright and author whose twenty books included Theatre at the Crossroads and Masters of the Drama who was the husband of “the former of Mollie Kern” and whose academic career led him to becoming the Sterling Professor of Playwriting and Dramatic Literature at Yale University.

https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w68d0q21

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/04/03/90308089.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1972(20th of Nisan, 5732): Fifth Day of Pesach

1973(1st of Nisan, 5733): Aaron Rabinowitz, a pioneer in public and private house as well as real estate development passed away at the age of 93. The son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Rabinowitz’s work in the field of public housing began in 1926 when he began serving on the New York State Board of Housing created by Governor Al Smith. He then worked closely with Lieutenant Governor (and later Governor) Herbert Lehman.

1974(11th of Nisan, 5734): Fifty-nine-year-old New York City native and and realtor Sidney Joseph Ungar who supported several Jewish organizations including “Boys Town Jerusalem” and served as the “state chairman of the Israel Bond Organization” passed away today.

1975(22nd of Nisan, 5735): Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor

1975(22nd of Nisan, 5735): Fifty-six-year-old Tulane trained attorney Label Katz, the New Orleans born son of Matilda and Ralph Katz and “former president of the 500,0O0member B'nai B'rith organization and lifelong activist in Jewish affairs” passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/katz-label-a

https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/resources/18289

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/05/archives/label-katz-dies-led-bnai-brith-early-campaigner-for-soviet-jews-met.html?searchResultPosition=2

 

1975: Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.

1977(15th of Nisan, 5737): Pesach

1977: The Jerusalem Postreported that HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) urged Soviet immigrants to bring their relatives from the Soviet Union directly to the US in order to "reduce the growing phenomenon of dropouts in Vienna." Max Fisher, chairman of the Jewish Agency¹s Board of Governors, did not think that this would be at the expense of Jews who wished to come on Aliyah. He believed that if more Jews could be got out from Russia, more will come to Israel

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that US experts hailed the new Israeli tank, the Chariot.

1978: CBS broadcast the final show for the third season of “One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin.

1979(6th of Nisan, 5739): Seventy-eight year leader of the Arkansas Jewish community Adele Bluthenthal Heiman passed away today.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/apr/03/1979/this-week-in-history-death-of-adele-bluthenthal-heiman-communal-leader-in

1980: In one of those moments when you would think that “the theatre” could not exist without Jews Neil Simon’s “I Ought To Be In Pictures” starring Ron Liebman as “Herb” and Dinah Manoff as “Libby” which had first been produced by Emanuel Azenberg in Los Angeles with Tony Curtis as “Herb” opened tonight at the Eugene O’Neil Theatre. (Eugene O’Neil is the only non-Jew in this list)

1981(28th of Adar II, 5741): Seventy-seven year old Polish born American Yiddish theatre actor and union leader Herman Yablokoff passed away today at Mt. Sinai Hospital.

http://www.yivoarchives.org/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=33552

https://www.milkenarchive.org/artists/view/herman-yablokoff/

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/04/obituaries/herman-yablokoff-yiddish-actor.html

1981(28th of Adar II, 5741): Seventy-nine year old film critic Cecilia Ager, the wife the composer of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” Milton Ager passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/04/obituaries/cecelia-ager-79-critic-of-films-who-wrote-for-variety-and-pm.html

1982(10th of Nisan, 5742): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1982(10th of Nisan, 5742): Eighty-six year old Tillie Klausner, the Polish born daughter of Miriam and Aaron Wolf Bienenstock and wife of Josef Klausner passed away today in Denver, CO.

1982: Following the end of her romantic relationship with Marvin Hamlisch, today Carol Sager married Burt Bacharach “after over a year’s co-habitation.”

1984(1st of Nisan, 5744): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1984: Milton Coleman, a reporter with the Washington Post who happens to Black, said that did not “have any comment to make on” Minister Lois Farrakhan vow to “make an example of him” because he disclosed the fact that Reverend Jesse Jackson “had referred to Jews as ‘Hymies’ and to New York as ‘Hymmietown.’”

1986: Birthdate of actress Amada Bynes.

1986(23rd of Adar II, 5746): Israeli mathematician Elisha Netanyahu passed away.

http://blms.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/6/613.extract

http://www.math.technion.ac.il/newmath/netanyahu.html

1987: Bob McAdoo, former National Basketball Association scoring champion, scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half today as Tracer Milan won the European Champions Cup by edging Maccabi Tel Aviv of Israel, 71-69, in the final.

1987: The New York Antiquarian Book Fair comes to a close. Among the items offered at the fair was The ''Twenty Four Books of the Holy Scriptures,'' the first edition in English of what was for generations the standard Jewish-American Bible, translated and annotated by Rabbi Isaac Leeser and published in Philadelphia in 1853 which was valued at $1,750.

1988(16th of Nisan, 5748) Second Day of Pesach; First day of the Omer

1988(16th of Nisan, 5748): Eighty-one year old OSU grad and cartoonist Milton Caniff, the Hillsboro, OH born son of John and Elizabeth Caniff and the husband of Esther Parsons Caniff who created “Terry and the Pirates” and “Steve Canyon” passed away today.

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Milton_Caniff

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/04/obituaries/milton-caniff-81-creator-of-steve-canyon-dies.html

https://www.amazon.com/Meanwhile-Biography-Milton-Creator-Pirates/dp/1560977825

1990:Gilbert and Sullivan Yield To Gershwin and Ryskind

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/03/theater/reviews-music-gilbert-and-sullivan-yield-to-gershwin-and-ryskind.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fSubjects%2fT%2fTheater

1991(19th of Nisan, 5751): Fifth Day of Pesach

1991(19th of Nisan, 5751): Ninety-year-old Charles Henry Goren, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who became “a world champion American bridge player and bestselling author who contributed significantly to the development and popularization of the game” passed away.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/12/obituaries/charles-goren-90-bridge-expert-dies.html

https://www.biography.com/people/charles-goren-9316113

1992: Richard Schifter completed his term as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.

1992(29th of Adar II, 5752): Eighty-four year old painter Aaron Bohrod passed away today.

http://www.wisconsinart.org/archives/artist/aaron-bohrod/profile-23.aspx

1992: “The Player” a satirical film featuring appearances by Sydney Pollack, Peter Falk, Jeff Goldblum and Gina Gershon premiered in Cleveland, Ohio today.

1992: Jack Lang began serving as Education Minister of France for the first time.

1992: “Beethoven,” the first in a series of dog comedy films co-produced by Ivan Reitman, starring Charles Grodin and with music by Randy Edelman was released today in the United States.

1993(12th of Nisan, 5753): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1993(12th of Nisan, 5753): Eighty-two year old philanthropist Ludwig Jesselson passed away today in Jerusalem. (As reported by Eric Pace)

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/05/obituaries/ludwig-jesselson-82-commodity-trade-executive.html

1993(12th of Nisan, 5753): Pinky Lee kiddy host (Pinky Lee Show), died of a heart attack at 85. Born Pincus Leff, in 1916, Lee was a big star in the early days of television. His signature line was "Ha Ha Hee Hee." He was well known as a host of children's shows including the Pinky Lee Show. Lee ran into trouble with the Blacklist. One of his last programs was the Gumby Show in 1957. (Yes, there was Gumby before SNL.)

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/07/obituaries/pinky-lee-85-host-of-children-s-tv-shows-dies.html

1994(22nd of Nisan, 5754): Seventy-five year old Maj. Gen. Aharon Remez, the first commander of the Israeli Air Force, passed away today at the age of 75. General Remez had also served as a Labor Party Member of Parliament, Transport Minister and Israeli Ambassador to Britain. He was buried with full military honors on Monday in Jerusalem's military cemetery. Born in Tel Aviv in British-ruled Palestine, General Remez joined the Haganah underground in 1936. The Jewish Agency, then the governing body of Jewish settlement in what later became Israel, sent him to New Jersey in 1939 to learn how to fly. He flew a Spitfire for Britain in combat against the Germans. In 1947 he helped establish Haganah’s flying service, the predecessor to the Israeli Air Force, and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion appointed him commander shortly after Israel's statehood was declared in 1948. General Remez stepped down three years later in a dispute over attempts to incorporate the Israeli Air Force into the general command. The air force is under separate command today. He served as Ambassador to Britain in the late 1960's.

1996(14th of Nisan, 5756): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1996:Today, with the Jewish celebration of Passover set to begin at sundown, one New York synagogue will push the religious use of a new technology a little further, placing on the Internet what it calls a "cyber seder," the liturgical text and images for a Passover meal. Beginning at 4 A.M. (to reach Jews at sundown in Australia) and repeating every hour for the next 36 hours, Temple Emanu-El will transmit a reading of the Haggadah. The text is recited and discussed at seders, the home rituals held on the first one or two nights of Passover, commemorating the exodus of the biblical Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The transmission will be available to people with personal computers with Internet links and, to hear the reading, audio capability.

1997: A revival of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” which uses a verse from Chapter 2, Verse 15 of the Song of Solomon which reads, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes" as the inspiration for its title opens today at the Vivian Beaumont.

1997: “Dogtown” a drama co-starring Jon Favreau and filmed by cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau was released today at the Los Angeles International Film Festival.

1997(25th of Adar II, 5757): Seventy-five year old Los Angeles Judge Jerry Pacht “died of a cerebral hemorrhage today.”

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-04-04/news/mn-45393_1_jerry-pacht

1999(17th of Nisan, 5759): Shabbat Shel Peach; 2ndday of the Omer

1999(17th of Nisan, 5759): Sixty-eight year old Lionel Bart, the London born son of Galician Jewish refugees Yetta (née Darumstundler) and Morris Begleiter, a master tailor and creator of the hit musical “Oliver” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/05/theater/lionel-bart-68-songwriter-created-the-musical-oliver.html

2000: The New York Times featured a book of special interest to Jewish readers, Circumcision: A History of the World’s Most Controversial Surgery by David Gollaher.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/03/books/books-of-the-times-a-ritual-with-deep-cultural-roots.html?searchResultPosition=11

2001: “President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt urged President Bush today to increase the United States' involvement in the Middle East, but Mr. Bush used their White House meeting to defend his policy of allowing the Israelis and Palestinians to take the lead in seeking peace.

2001: “The Pestilence That Left Not Just Death Behind It” published today provides a review of In the Wake of the Plague: The Black and Death and the World It Made by Canadian-American Jewish historian Norman F. Cantor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/books/books-of-the-times-the-pestilence-that-left-not-just-death-behind-it.html?searchResultPosition=5

2002(21st of Nisan, 5762): Seventh day of Pesach and 6thday of the Omer

2002: During Operation Defensive Shield, IDF troops secured Jenin but the fight for the terrorists’ stronghold still loomed ahead.

2002(21st of Nisan, 5762) IDF reservist Maj. Moshe Gerstner, 29, of Rishon Lezion was killed in Jenin during anti-terrorist action (Operation Defensive Shield).

2003: Release date for the Hebrew Language Israeli film “Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi.”

2004: At the Rainbow Room in NYC, Rabbi Mark S. Golub officiated at the wedding of Anna Chloe Hoffman, a daughter of Dale and Stephen Hoffman and David Russ Steinhardt, a son of Judy and Michael Steinhardt, founder of “Makor, a cultural center which is part of the 92nd Street Y.

2005: Official induction Pretoian born Warren Goldstein, as Chief Rabbi of South Africa making him the first native of South Africa and the youngest person to hold the post.

2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop” by Joseph Lelyveld, “Inside the List by Rachel Donadio” and “Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover It” by Alan Wolfe as well as the following monograph about ''Runny Babbit,'' Shel Silverstein's silly tale of a rabbit with a penchant for inverting his consonants that just made its debut at No. 1 on the children's picture book best-seller list. Silverstein, the much loved poet and author of idiosyncratic and often bittersweet books like ''The Giving Tree,''''Where the Sidewalk Ends'' and other children's classics of the past four decades, worked on ''Runny Babbit'' on and off for 20 years, before his death in 1999. Silverstein was a constant reviser. ''He had mountains of poems and stories, in bits and pieces, and in different versions, written on stray pieces of paper,'' his friend and former editor, Joan Robins, told Publishers Weekly. Robins and Toni Markiet, the executive editor of HarperCollins Children's Books, both helped shepherd ''Runny Babbit'' into print. Written in jolly inverse verse, the book recounts the adventures of a kindhearted, rather hapless rabbit, from restaurant to bath to library (''A bience scook? A boetry pook? / Oh, no -- a bomic cook!''). HarperCollins has done a first printing of 500,000 copies, betting that deprived Silverstein fans will be eager to snap it up. A good bet: The Times Magazine reported after his death that Silverstein -- who in the course of his career was a playwright, a regular cartoonist for Playboy and a country-western songwriter -- left an estate worth $20 million, so he clearly knew a thing or two about what people want.

2006: Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz announced that he was closing the Yona Metzger investigation and would not seek an indictment against him, citing a lack of sufficient evidence. He added, however, that in light of various "disturbing" information that came to light during the investigation, including contradictory statements given to the police that the Chief Rabbi should resign

2007(15th of Nissan, 5767): First Day of Pesach

2007: In “Shtetl by the Sea, Only a Few Fading Signs Remain” published today Abby Goodnough provides a portrait of the changing face of “Jewish Miami Beach.”

The synagogue at 1415 Euclid Avenue had only a few members left when Daniel Davidson, a New Yorker seeking a standout South Beach retreat, bought it in 2003. “I thought the space magical,” he said of the spare, white 16,000-square-foot building — now back on the market for $9,950,000 — “irrespective of religion. And so the Orthodox synagogue, Kneseth Israel, became Temple House, where Mr. Davidson has not only lived but also allowed Budweiser to film a commercial, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Al Gore to hold a Democratic fund-raising event and Jennifer Lopez to stage a listening party for her latest album, belting out love songs near where the Torah ark used to be. Like so many buildings that served a thriving Jewish population here for decades — synagogues, delicatessens, kosher markets and hotels, even Yiddish theaters — Temple House’s history is all but imperceptible now. The community that earned Miami Beach nicknames like Little Jerusalem and Shtetl by the Sea is largely gone, and many of today’s residents know nothing of it. Miami Beach had roughly 60,000 people in Jewish households, 62 percent of the total population, in 1982, but only 16,500, or 19 percent of the population, in 2004, said Ira Sheskin, a demographer at the University of Miami who conducts surveys once a decade. The decline — due mostly to elderly Jews dying or getting priced out after the city’s Art Deco revival, but also to the migration of others to Broward and Palm Beach Counties as greater Miami became more Hispanic — has forced old-timers to scour for hints of their past. A few remain, like the Hebrew-inscribed doors of a deserted Orthodox shul being converted to condominiums and the old entryway to Wolfie’s, a beloved coffee shop demolished for a condo building that will keep the faded front as a relic. But Miami Beach’s last kosher resort hotel, the Saxony, closed in 2005 to make way for condominiums. Its oldest synagogue, Beth Jacob, also closed that year after membership dropped to 22, from 1,200 in the 1950s. Its domed building is now the Jewish Museum of Florida, housing memorabilia like mah-jongg boards and anti-Semitic real estate ads promising “always a view, never a Jew.” (Residents with “Hebrew or Syrian blood” generally could not rent or buy north of Fifth Street until the 1950s.) On Lincoln Road, the pedestrian thoroughfare at the heart of South Beach, Temple King Solomon has given way to Touch, a restaurant and lounge with occasional belly dancers and flame throwers. On Washington Avenue, the Cinema Theater, home to one of the longest-running Yiddish vaudeville shows in the world, is now Mansion, a club favored by Paris Hilton types. Farther north, in Sunny Isles Beach, Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House — Miami’s version of Katz’s Deli in New York, famous for “mile-high” corned beef sandwiches — will soon be demolished and replaced with yet another condo tower. This is not to say all Yiddishkeit is lost here: Talmudic University, which opened in Miami Beach in 1974, remains on Alton Road, along with a Lubavitch center that runs a day school and a rabbinical college. A few miles north of blingy South Beach, beachfront resorts like the Fontainebleau and the Eden Roc still fill up at Passover, and an Orthodox Jewish community is flourishing around 41st Street. But in South Beach alone, the number of people in Jewish households dropped by 53 percent between 1994 and 2004, to 4,171 from 8,775. Charlotte Cooper, who came to Miami Beach from New York to perform Yiddish theater in the 1960s and stayed until she was priced out in 1999, said she could hardly stand to return these days.“It’s an entirely different story now,” said Mrs. Cooper, a Holocaust survivor who moved to a condominium in Pembroke Pines but still performs here now and then. “People from Hollywood, movie stars, come to stay in those hotels now. It has nothing to do with the Jewish people anymore.” At Temple Emanu-El in South Beach, Rabbi Kliel Rose is striving to attract young Jews while keeping older, second- and third-generation members. The cavernous stone synagogue drew 1,200 families in the 1980s; it claims about 260 now. Rabbi Rose’s tactics include regular outings to South Beach bars and clubs, lectures on Kabbalah and a recent Havdalah ceremony, marking the end of Sabbath at sundown Saturday, with cocktails at Temple House. Rabbi Rose has added drums, guitar and an element of mysticism to Shabbat services. Still, to ensure the requisite 10 people for morning minyans, or prayer sessions, Temple Emanu-El teams up with the Cuban Hebrew Congregation, one of the neighborhood’s only other surviving synagogues. “We are truly experimenting,” said Rabbi Rose, 36, who wears an earring and was recruited from Congregation B’Nai Jeshurun, a booming conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “We are trying to think outside the box.” When his congregants started shifting in their seats toward the end of Shabbat services one recent Friday night, Rabbi Rose asked them not to leave just yet, admonishing, “Lincoln Road can wait.” David Weintraub, who directed “Where Neon Goes to Die,” a film about the Jewish retirees who flocked to Miami Beach from the 1920s through the 1980s, said his research was frustrated by an astonishing lack of documentation. “This legacy went on for over 60 years, and yet there is almost no memory that it even happened,” Mr. Weintraub said. “At the Miami Beach archives, I went through their file drawers for two weeks. There were drawers and drawers of cheesecake on the beach but not one photograph of Yiddish culture.” Now, Mr. Weintraub is thinking of organizing “ghost tours” of Jewish Miami Beach. But he does not want a tourist clientele. “We would target the folks who already live in Miami in the hopes that if people get a better sense of who and what came before,” he said, “they might be more pro-active when city planners destroy another piece of Miami’s past.” Marcia Zerivitz, founding executive director of the Jewish Museum of Florida, said that while the decline of the Jewish population is an old story here, the rest of the country is surprisingly unaware. Filmmakers and writers still call her to say they want to document Jewish culture in Miami Beach, Ms. Zerivitz said. “I get calls like that all the time, especially from California and up east,” she said. “I say: ‘Sorry, you’re many, many years too late. There’s nothing left.’ ”

2008: Don Hewitt was honored with Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcast Journalism.

2008: As part of the Israel at 60 Celebration the 92nd Street Y hosts Israeli “Culture: Past and Present: Examining Pre-1948 Israeli Culture: Art and Literature.” Professor Uri Cohen examines the formation of Israeli culture from its inception to the creation of the state.

2008: Israeli-European economic ties are growing as the parties seek to speedily integrate the strong and expanding Israeli economy into the huge European market, according to statement made by EU officials today.

2009: Richard Stoltzman presents “A Salute to Benny Goodman” at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City. Originally scheduled for Hancher Auditorium, the program was shifted to the smaller venue because of the Floods of 2008.

2009: At Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Vanderbilt University Professor Amy-Jill Levine delivers a lecture entitled “Hearing the Parables in their Jewish Contexts.”

2009: “Fast and Furious” featuring Gal Gadot as “Gisele Yashar” was released in North America today.

2010: Violinist Joseph Lin is scheduled to perform at the Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2010(19th of Nisan, 5770): Fifth Day of Pesach; Shabbat Chol HaMoed

2010(19th of Nisan, 5770): Ninety-one year Stamford born and New Canaan, CT raised journalist Bernie Yudain, the long-time editor and columnist for the Greenwich (CT) Times passed away today.

https://www.greenwichtime.com/local/article/Bernie-Yudain-beloved-newspaperman-and-Mr-434316.php

2010: On Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach, Temple Judah holds its monthly traditional Saturday morning service complete with a Kosher for Passover Kiddush, a one of a kind event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa thanks to the culinary skills and creativity of Deb Levin.

2010: Nili Shamrat “was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and given a five-year suspended sentence for possession of stolen property” for his role in the 1983 burglary of the L.A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art.

2011(27th of Adar II, 5771): Moshe V. Goldblum, rabbi of Pittsburgh’s Beth Shalom Congregation for 24 years, passed away today in Israel. “Goldblum was a 1949 graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary and came to Pittsburgh from Jacksonville, Fla. He also served congregations in Columbus and Mansfield, Ohio, New York and Baltimore. He was a U.S. Army chaplain from 1945 to 1947.”

2011(27th of Adar II, 5771): Twenty three year old Yale hockey player Mandi Schwartz passed away today. (As reported by Thomas Kaplan)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/sports/hockey/05schwartz.html

2011: The Annual Used Book Sale is scheduled to begin at Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax, VA.

2011: The Center for Jewish History in conjunction with the Jewish Book Council, the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and the Columbia University Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies are scheduled to present a program entitled “The Jewish Book: Past, Present, Future” which deals with the questions of What makes a Jewish book?, Who are the People of the Book? How have Jewish books changed with changes in technology?

2011: “Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story” is scheduled to be shown at The Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011: Agudas Achim Synagogue is scheduled to host the Iowa City Jewish Community’s 3rd Annual Mitzvah Day - A Day of Community Service.

2011: The New York Timesfeatures books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘All the Time in the World’ by E.L. Doctorow and ‘The Free World’, David Bezmozgis’s first novel, set in Rome in 1978, which “follows three generations of Soviet Jews as they wait for visas to North America.”

2011: President Shimon Peres is scheduled to leave for Washington, DC where he will meet with several US leaders including President Obama.

2011: The Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs announced the names of people chosen to light beacons at this year's Independence Day ceremony. The ministry pointed out that each of the chosen beacon lighters represent the central theme of this year's ceremony, "Looking after one another – the year of mutual care," which was chosen by the cabinet. The 2011 Independence Day ceremony will take place on May 9, at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Among the torch lighters are Orit Dror, a member of Kibbutz Lavi who, together with her husband, donated her son's organs after he died of a terminal illness, and saved the life of a 13-year-old girl; Zehava Dankner (mother of businessman Nochi Dankner), a philanthropist who supported, among others, residents surrounding Gaza, and who is involved in matters of education, security and health; Barbra Goldstein, a representative of Hadassah, the women's Zionist organization of America, which is marking its 100th anniversary this year; Yovi Tsuma, a social activist who participates in a group of young Ethipian volunteers who help members of the immigrant community who have encountered difficulties in absorption; and Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg, a member of the Chabad movement, who lost his daughter and son in law in the November 2008 terrorist attack at the Chabad house in Mumbai.

2012: “The Kid With a Bike” and “The Mill and the Cross” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival

2012: A Concert of Russian and Jewish Music featuring Metropolitan Klezmer is scheduled to take place in New York City.

2013: “The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said a lower court had erred in dismissing fraud-based claims by” Steven A. Cohen’s “former spouse” Patricia Cohen and revived the lawsuit” while also reviving “claims of racketeering and breach of fiduciary duty, while upholding the dismissal of an unjust enrichment claim.”

2012: The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, with the endorsement of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, is scheduled to present a performance by the Yuval Ron Ensemble.

2013: “Numbered,” a film that explores the relationship some Auschwitz survivors have with their tattoos, is scheduled to be shown at the Museum of Jewish Heritage at Battery Place in New York City.

2013: Today “it was announced that Lorne Michaels will be taking over as the executive producer for The Tonight Show.”

2013(23rd of Nisan, 5773): Ninety-five year old, Dorothy Taubman, the developer of the Taubman Technique for rehabilitating musicians passed away today. (As reported by Vivian Schweitzer)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/arts/music/dorothy-taubman-95-dies-helped-pianists-avoid-injuries.html?hpw&_r=0

http://www.wellbalancedpianist.com/bptaubman.htm

2013(23rd of Nisan, 5773): Eighty-six year old cartoonist Ed Fisher passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/arts/design/ed-fisher-new-yorker-cartoonist-dies-at-86.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1365516068-S6p6hQ2Ss4WKd3NIVq7aWg

http://edfischer.com/cartoons.html

2013: Palestinian terrorists fired two rockets at the southern Israeli city of Sderot this morning. The intermittent rocket attacks began while President Obama was touring the region before Pesach.

2013: Today,A three-judge panel of the Tel Aviv District Court ordered Bank Hapoalim and three pension funds to pay around NIS 2.1 million to the estate of an elderly Holocaust survivor for liability in allowing the illegal withdrawal of her money by her home caregiver.

2013: First baseman Nate Freiman made his major league debut with the Oakland A’s

2014: In Israel, Channel 2 broadcast the last episode of “Yellow Peppers,” a series about a family raising an autistic child.

2014: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host Jews and Baseball: D.C. and Beyond with Phil Hochberg, Jean Leavy and Aviva Kempler

2014: A French court fines a 28-year-old Moroccan man $4,130 for posting photos online of himself giving the quenelle salute in front of Grand Synagogue in Bordeaux

2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Austin Jewish Film Festival.

2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host the opening reception for an exhibit styled “The Seder: Meanings, Ritual & Spirituality” featuring the work of Samuel Eisen-Meyers.

2014: Friends and family gather to celebrate the birthday of Elizabeth Levin, “daughter extraordinaire” of David Levin.

2015: “President Obama issued Passover greetings” today “to those celebrating Passover in the United States, in the state of Israel and throughout the world.

2015: President Obama and his hosted their seventh White House Seder where the menu included, “Moroccan charoset balls, savory holiday brisket and carrot soufflé.”

2015: Francis J. Pruitt, the author of Faith and Courage in a Time of Trouble, “a memoir of a Belgian-Jewish girl and her family who were saved during the Nazi occupation of France through the compassion and heroism of French peasants from the southern part of the country” is scheduled to appear at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015: A year after having been shown at the Tribeca Film Festival “5 to 7” directed and written by Victor Levin was released in the United States today.

2015: The friends and family of Elizabeth Levin will have to get her that birthday cake today before the last crumbs of Chametz are swept away.

2015(14thof Nisan, 5775): Ninety-two year old English actor Robert Rietti, born Lucio Herbert Rietti, passed away today.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/celebrity-obituaries/11555558/Robert-Rietti-voiceover-actor.html

2015(14th of Nisan, 5775): Fast of the First Born

2015(14th of Nisan, 5575: In the evening first Seder.

2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo by Boris Fishman and Spain in our Hearts: American in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 by Adam Hochschild

2016: In Fairfax, VA, Temple Beth El is scheduled to host a “sneak preview of Sabena Hijacking” one of the films to be shown later at the JCCNV’s Annual Film Festival.

2016: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a panel discussion on “The Forgotten Genocide: The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Armenia, Bosnia and Syria.”

2016: HaZamir: The International Jewish High School Choir is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall.

2016: “Wedding Doll” is scheduled to be shown on the final night of the Israeli Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA.

2016: Radio Kol Hamusica is scheduled to broadcast the works of Israeli composer Emanuel Vahl.

2016: The Breman Museum, the Center for Civil and Human Rights and the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, are scheduled to offer a free screening of the award winning film, “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr.& Mrs. Kraus”

2016:Leo Baeck Institute and Center for Jewish History are scheduled to host “Burning Words: A History Play by Peter Wortsman”

2016: Unlike last year, Elizabeth Levin gets a break and she and her friends a family can enjoy plenty of cake as they celebrate her natal day.

2017: The JTA Centennial Gala featuring Bernard-Henri Levy as the keynote speak and honoring Brian Sterling, Mark Wilf and Jane Weitzman is scheduled to take place this evening at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

2017: “State of Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel said today he will purchase an unmatched $61 million in Israel bonds to hit back at the boycott movement against the Jewish state, and because the bonds are a good investment.” (As reported by Stuart Winer)

2017: Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, “was appointed a National Deputy Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee” today.

2017: In Cedar Rapids, a sad moment as the  community gathers for the funeral of Amy Barnum, wife of Joel Barnum, mother of Emma (Sam), Sasha (Lance), Gail and grandmother of Dean and Henry. A friend to so many – positive, upbeat woman of valor whose optimism was so contagious.

https://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2017/Apr/Amy-M-Barnum/

2018(18thof Nisan, 5778): Fourth Day of Pesach

2018: A real simcha for friends and family of Dr. Elizabeth Levin as they celebrate her natal day and acceptance into a prestigious fellowship program.

2018: In New Orleans, Temple Sinai and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans are scheduled to cost a LGBTQ Interfaith Seder this evening.

2018: In Jerusalem, The Tower of David is scheduled to host a performance “A Lion of the Streets of Jerusalem”—a “story about Rabbi Aryeh.”

2018: The Swann Auction Galleries is scheduled to a screening of selections from the feature documentary Rosenwald, followed by a conversation with director Aviva Kempner, hosted by Nigel Freeman.

2019: Second anniversary of the funeral of Amy Barnum.  Gone – but never forgotten

https://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2017/Apr/Amy-M-Barnum/

2019: In Des Moines, IA, Ambassador Ron Dermer is scheduled to “deliver an address to the Jewish Community.” (Editor’s note – Will he tell the non-Orthodox attendees while Israel does not recognize the validity of the Judaism or explain why those who have a non-Orthodox convert in their family tree are not Jews.)

2019: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a curator’s tour of its newest exhibition “Jews, Money, Myth.”

2019(27thof Adar II, 5779): Seventy-seven year old New Heaven, CT native and Belz School of Jewish Music graduate Sherwood Goffin, the long-time cantor at the Lincoln Square Synagogue and faculty member at Yeshiva University’s Belz School of Music who raised three children with his wife Batya, passed away today.(As reported by Benjamin Koslowe)

http://sherwoodgoffin.com/about-me/cantorial-biography

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host Holocaust survivor David Bayer as part of its “First Person Series.”

2019: As The Kinneret experienced record rises in the last few days, the forecast for today calls for local rains in the afternoon which will “mostly” in the southern part of the country

2019: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present “Israel and Eurovision 1973-2019: “featuring Israeli singers Ariella Edv and Omer Shaish” in a concert that “celebrates Israel’s participation in Europe’s iconic song competition.”

2019: The Jewish Study Center and Adas Israel are scheduled to a lecture by “Karin Olofsdotter, Sweden’s Ambassador to the United Sates” on “The Work Must Be Done: Raoul Wallenberg’s Mission to Rescue Hungary’s Jews.”

2019: David R. Levin, is button-busting proud to be celebrating the birthday of his accomplished daughter Elizabeth.

2020(9thof Nisan, 5780): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrtzeit of the fifty-seven Jews killed in Bury St. Edmunds, England during the reign of King Richard I. (Abraham P. Bloch)

2020: Rabbi Heath Watenmaker of Beth Am in Los Altos offers stories, a bedtime Shema and Shabbat blessings for kids on Zoom or by phone. Zoom requires registration.

2020: In a virtual presentation on “Was Christopher Columbus Jewish” Jason Harris is scheduled to look at the circumstantial evidence surrounding this including the fact so many Jews were involved in his voyage.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Abigail Pogrebin’s virtual lecture on “How to Guarantee and Un-Boring Passover.”

2020: As they prepare for Shabbat, residents of Kiryat Joel deal with competing claims by their village officials and Dr. Zev Zelenko, who claims to have found a treatment for coronavirus, on just how many sick people there are and the validity of his claims

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/technology/doctor-zelenko-coronavirus-drugs.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

2021(21stof Nisan): Seventh Day of Pesach and Shabbat

2021: The JCC of Greater Boston is scheduled to present online, the first in a series of session on “Wudang 13 Tai Chi Movement Form.”

2021: Yamina Chairman Naftali Bennett is scheduled to meet with both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid today or tomorrow as Israeli political leaders try to avoid a fifth election in two years.

2021: In Tel Aviv-Yafo, Chabad on the Coast is scheduled to host The Freedom Feast this evening.

2021: Triple Simcha – Seventh Day of Pesach; Shabbat: and most important of all the celebration of the natal day of Dr. Elizabeth Levin!

 

This Day, April 4, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 4

188: Birthdate of Cracalla, the Roman Emperor who allowed all free Jews within the empire to become full Roman citizens.

397:Aurelius Ambrosius, (Saint Ambrose) a bishop of Milan who became one of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the fourth century passed away. He lived during a period when the Christian Church was still trying to establish its identity. He was no stranger to Jews as we can see from the following three examples. In “De Abrahamo” Ambrose warned Christians against intermarrying with Jews.  His strong opposition can be seen in the following conflict he had with the Roman Emperor, Theodosius over the rebuilding of synagogue. “It appears that in 388 a mob, led by the local bishop and many monks, destroyed the synagogue at Callinicum. The emperor Theodosius the Great ordered the rebuilding of the synagogue at the expense of the rioters, including the bishop. Ambrose immediately issued a fiery protest to the emperor. He wrote to Theodosius that "the glory of God" is concerned in this matter, and that therefore he cannot be silent. "Shall the bishop be compelled to re-erect a synagogue? Can he religiously do this thing? If he obey the emperor, he will become a traitor to his faith; if he disobey him, a martyr. What real wrong is there, after all, in destroying a synagogue, a 'home of perfidy, a home of impiety,' in which Christ is daily blasphemed? Indeed, he must consider himself no less guilty than this poor bishop; at least to the extent that he made no concealment of his wish that all synagogues should be destroyed, that no such places of blasphemy be further allowed to exist." At the end, he succeeded in obtaining from Theodosius a promise that the sentence should be completely revoked, with the very natural consequence that thereafter the prospect of immunity thus afforded occasioned spoliations of synagogues all over the empire. That Ambrose could nevertheless occasionally say a good word for the Jews is shown by a passage in his "Enarratio in Psalmos" in which he remarks, "Some Jews exhibit purity of life and much diligence and love of study."

1081: Alexios I Komnenos is crowned Byzantine emperor at Constantinople, beginning the Komnenian dynasty. Most Byzantine Emperors of this period “expressed little interest in combating…religious pluralism.  Alexios was the exception to the rule.  He took “an unusual interest in presenting himself as a defender” of the dominant Christian Orthodox faith. During his reign, St. Nikon agreed to go to Sparta if the Jews were expelled from the community. The town was enduring a wave of unusual illness and Nikon said that cause was the contaminating effect of “abominable” Jewish customs and the polluting effect of their worship.

1284: The reign of Alfonso X as King of Castile and Leon who “employed Jewish, Christian and Muslim Scholars…primarily for the purposed of translating books from Arabic and Hebrew into Latin and Castilian” and who relied on Yehuda ben Moshe to translate selected works of magic, came to an end today.

1284: Sancho IV of Castile, who treated the story of the affair between Rahel la Fermosa, a Jewish woman from Toledo, and King Alfonso VIII as fact and not fable, began his reign today.

1285: Philip the Fair, King of France, began his policy of using Jews solely for his financial benefit.  He was called the Fair because of his complexion, not his behavior.  The Jews were caught up in the conflict called the Albigensians Heresy, a conflict within the Catholic Church.  Philip was always looking for ways to enrich himself.  Ultimately he expelled the Jews from his kingdom, abrogating the debts he owed them and confiscating all personal and communal property.

1292: Pope Nicholas IV who had issued “Orat Mater Ecclesla,” a bull designed “to protect the Roman Jews from oppression, passed away today.

1588: Christian IV, “the first Danish king to establish connections with Jews” which became a reality when he appointed Albert Dionis, a Sephardi Jew “to run the mint in the newly planned town of Gluckstadt on the Elbe.”

1609: English navigator Henry Hudson set sail from Amsterdam harbor under direction from his “employer,” the Duct East India Company to sail east in the quest for a shorter water passage to the Indies.  Fortunately for the Jewish people, Hudson ignored these instructions and sailed west seeking the fabled Northwest Passage to the Orient.  As part of this quest, Hudson sailed past what is now New York on his way up what we know as the Hudson River claiming all of the surrounding for the Dutch.  This meant that the 23 Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam landed in a territory controlled by the religiously tolerant Dutch as opposed to a colony controlled Catholic Spain or Catholic France neither of whom would have allowed the Jews to settle.

1660: King Charles II of England publishes the terms under which he will return to the throne in a document known as the Declaration of Breda. The restoration under Charles II bodes well for the Jews of England since it was Charles II who was the first to declare that the Jewish community could remain in England without suffering harassment.   

1687: King James II issued The Declaration of Indulgence, one of the major steps towards the granting of full religious liberty in Great Britain.  Jews had returned to in 1655 and the next major step in the fight for full religious rights would come with the passage of the short-lived Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753.

1693(27th of Adar II, 5453):Eighty-eight year oldRabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, a kabbalist, scholar and leader of the Dutch Jewish community passed away.

http://www.dutchjewry.org/drieluik/isack_aboab_da_fonseca/isack_aboab_da_fonseca.htm

1718: Birthdate of Benjamin Kennicott, English churchman and Hebrew scholar who spent most of his life exploring and collating various Hebrew texts.  Unfortunately, the final printing of his work rendered much of it nearly useless.  One of the most positive outcomes was the recognition of the antiquity and common origins of the text of the Hebrew Bible.

1733: Today in Saxony, “August II revived the decrees of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ordering in addition that the body-tax be paid thenceforth by all Jews, regardless of sex or age, though Elijah Behrend succeeded in securing the exemption of children under ten years of age. Behrend furthermore obtained permission for all Bohemian, Moravian, and Hungarian Jews to travel on any road through Saxony and secured the repeal of the edict forbidding them to remain in any place longer than one day.”

1739: “Israel in Egypt,” “an oratorio by George Frideric Handel that “it is composed entirely of selected passages from the Hebrew Bible, mainly from Exodus and the Psalms premiered at London's King's Theatre in the Haymarket”

1754(12th of Nisan, 5514): Fast of the First Born held on Thursday because Pesach begins on Saturday night.

1762(11th of Nisan, 5522): David Frankel, the chief rabbi of Berlin whose students included Moses Mendelssohn, passed away today.

1772(1st of Nisan, 5532): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1772(1st of Nisan, 5532): In Medzhybizh,Simcha, the son of Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka and his wife Feiga gave birth to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, a great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov who was “the founder of the Breslov Hasidic Movement.

1775: Birthdate of Samuel Elias, the native of Whitechapel, London who gained fame as the boxer Dutch Sam, a name that might be attributed to the fact that his parents had come to England from Holland.

1776: Celebration of the first Pesach after the firing of the Shot Heard Round the World.

1778: In New York, Jessie Jonas and Samuel Judah gave birth to Walter Jonas Judah, “the grandson of Baruch Judah” who was “the first American-born Jew to enroll in medical school” and who died while “attending Columbia College.

http://www.sephardicstudies.org/judah.html

1785: In New York City, Judith Myers and Mordecai who were married in 1784 gave birth to Moses Mordecai who died at Sweet Springs, VA.

1793: In London, Esther Abraham Bernal and Samson Isaac Genese gave birth to Isaac Hiam Samson Genese.

1795(15th of Nisan, 5555): Pesach

1795: Birthdate of violinist Joseph Böhm, the native of Pest who became a director of the Vienna Conservatory.

1799: Birthdate of grocer Marcus Samuel, the husband of Kennington Surrey native Abigail Moss and the father of Samuel, Maria, Joseph and Marcus Samuel.

1801: Twenty-year old Carel Asser married eighteen year old Rosa Levin Amsterdam.

1812(22nd of Nisan, 5572): Eighth Day of Pesach

1818: Birthdate of Moritz Kohner, the native of Neuern, Bohemia, the merchants who was “elected president of the Leipzig Jewish community in 1868 and founded the Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeindebund in 1869.

1822: In Sierentz, Isaac Dreyfus and Gertrude "Julie" Dreyfus gave birth to Sophie Dreyfus who became Sophie Picard when she married Abraham Picard.

1825(16th of Nisan, 5585): Second Day of Pesach

1825: In Westminster, London, Rebecca Levy and Victor Abraham gave birth to Lewis Abraham the husband of Hetty Mayer.

1828: In London, Sarah and Jacob Nunes Castello gave birth to Esther Jacob Nunes Castello.

1829(1st of Nisan, 5589): Parshat Tazria; Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1829: Moses Nathan Levy, the Hamburg born son Jette and Nathan Levy and his wife Hannchen Levy gave birth Hirsch Levy.

1830: Samuel Bettelheim, the Slovakia born son of Dr. Leopold Bettelheim and Éva Bettelheim and his wife Chava Eva Bettelheim gave birth to Rabbi and Hebraist  Albert (Aaron) Siegfried Bettelheim,.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/bettelheim-albert-aaron-siegfried

 

1834(15th of Nisan, 5593): Pesach

1838: Birthdate of Lawrence Barrett the Shakespearian actor who “portrays the character” of Shylock “with force, sincerity and at times with splendid effect”

1838: Albert Moses Levy married Claudinia Olivia Gervais.  Levy was a Virginia born doctor who moved to Texas where he played a prominent role in the revolt against Mexico.  Levy’s father, a Dutch born Jew married an Episcopalian after coming to the United States.  Levy was raised in the faith of his mother and his wife, with whom he had five children, was also an Episcopalian. While stories like this were not uncommon among 18th and 19thAmerican Jewry, it is amazing that there were not more such cases given the fluidity of the American frontier.

1841: In Augusta, GA, Gustavus V. Anker of Richmond, VA married Abigail Rebecca Sampson, the daughter of the late Joseph Sampson, who had lived in Charleston, SC.

1841: In London, Elizabeth Alexander and Israel Russell gave birth to Sarah Russell, the wife of Morris Davidson.

1841: Birthdate of Ancona (Italy) native Frederico Consolo, the violinist who “composed the arrangement for the national anthem of San Marino, based on a 10th-century chorale” which “was adopted in 1894.”

1844(15th of Nisan, 5604): Pesach

1847: In Sydney, Australia, Henrietta Levien and Edward Salamon gave birth to Montague Levien Salamon.

1850:  Los Angeles is incorporated as a city. Jews were active in Los Angeles from its earliest days as an American city. Jacob Frankfort is reported to the first Jew to live in Los Angeles.  He arrived in the city in December 1841, when it was still part of Mexico.  In the early 1850’s seven prominent, unmarried Jewish merchants occupied space at the Corner of Aliso and Los Angeles streets on what was called Bell’s row.  Two were from Poland and five were from Germany.  They ranged in age from 19 to 28.  For the trivia buffs, their names were Abraham Jacobi, Morris Michaels, Morris Goodman, Phillip Sichel, Augustine Waserman, Felix Bachan and Joseph Plumer.

1856: In Cincinnati, OH, Yetta Hackes and Louis Stix gave birth to Rosa Stix, the wife of Carl Iglauer and the mother of Zillan an Florence Iglauer.

1859:Dinorah, originally Le pardon de Ploërmel ("The Pilgrimage of Ploërmel"), a French opéra comique in three acts with music by Giacomo Meyerbeer was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart), in Paris.

1859: The New York Times reported that “the number of Jews in Oregon, most of whom are engaged in commercial pursuits, is quite large. In Portland, they have a synagogue recently incorporated by the legislature under the name of ‘Congregation Beth Israel’ where religious worship is conducted after the manner of German Israelites.  A large portion of them are, however, free-thinkers.”

1861: Two days after she had passed away, Sara Elizabeth Phillips, the wife of Joseph Phillips and the mother of Lewis Phillips was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1861: The New York Times reported that M. Guranda, the Viennese Jewish editor of the Ost Deutsche Post was elected to serve in the Provincial Diet.

1862: Birthdate of Leonid Pasternak, the native of Odessa who became a noted post-impressionist painter and was the father of Boris Pasternak.

http://pasternak-trust.org/leonid/biography/

1863(15thof Nisan, 5623): Pesach

1865: Private Henry Strauss was discharged from the 10th Mississippi Infantry today.

1866(19thof Nisan, 5626): Sixth Day of Pesach

1866(19thof Nisan, 5626): Twenty-two year old Heinrich Oppenheimer, the son of Marx and Sarah Oppenheimer, passed away today.

1866: Birthdate of Adolph Joachim Sabath, the native of Zabori who came to the United States at the age of 15 and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1907 to 1952.

http://specialcollections.tulane.edu/archon/?p=collections/findingaid&id=499

1867: London natives Selina Spyer and Arthur Lindo gave birth to Ernest Nathaniel Lindo who died at the age of two years and eight months.

1870: Joseph Jacobs, the son of Abraham Jacobs and Rachel Raphael and the husband of Catherine Jacobs was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1871: “Matzoth Again: The Feast of Passover Unleavened Bread How They Make Passover Cakes,” published today describes the process of making Matzah. [Ed. Note: Given the comparatively small Jewish population, this article is remarkable for several reasons.]

1872: Johann Jacoby joined the Social Democrat Party in Prussia today.

1872: The Grand Lodge of the Sons of Israel received a report today that 2,176 names were on the rolls of the Endowment Fund which had been established to provide for widows and orphans and that the fund was now capitalized at $69,604.40.

1877(21stof Nisan, 5637): Seventh Day of Pesach

1877: The third of the annual special services for the Jews “held in Christ Church Spitafields” which were part of the on-going attempts to convert Jews and which in the past had provoked demonstrations by Jews of the area was led by Reverend A.I. McCaul an included a sermon by Reverend Samuel Bardsley

1877: Birthdate of Yiddish poet and songwriter Mordechai Gebirtig.

1878: In Chicago, Adolph Loeb, the son of Jakob and Ester Loeb, and his wife Johanna Loeb gave birth to Ludwig Mannheimer Loeb

1878: In Singapore, the new Maghain Aboth Synagogue on Waterloo Street which had been financed in part by Menasseh Meyer, “supposedly the richest Jew in Asia,” was consecrated today.

1879: Birthdate of Ignacz Trebitsh the son of Paks, Hungary merchant, who left his native land in 1896, converted to Christianity and led a life as Lincoln Trebitsch whose remarkable life included serving three years in a British jail for being a German spy and as an MP from Darlington.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Lives-Trebitsch-Lincoln/dp/0300040768

1879: A correspondent for the Neue Zilricher Zeitgung describeda massacre of Jews in Satschcheri in the Caucuses. At the beginning of April, the body of a child was found in the woods. Seven Jews were accused by the Christian villagers of having killed the child and then having hid the body as part of their Easter Sacrifice.  The accused were taken before a local Judge who dismissed the charges after “a medical witness” testified that the child had died of natural causes and that the wounds on the body “were the work of wild animals.  The Jews celebrated their deliverance with a party which was interrupted by a an axe wielding Christian mob.  The mob, which had been incited by an Orthodox Priest broke into the house killing six of the Jews and injuring many more.

1879: A correspondent for the Neue Zilricher Zeitgung described a massacre of Jews that had taken place in Satschcheri, a town in the Caucasus region.  The massacre was the result of a blood libel based on claims by Christian villagers that seven Jews had killed a child whose body was found in the woods.

1880: In Marienpol, Poland, Nathan and Sarah Lamport gave birth to Samuel Charles Lamport, a graduate of high school in Burlington, VT, City College and Brown University, who is the owner of Lamport Manufacturing and Supply Company and a leader of the Jewish community as can be seen by his service as a trustee of the Jewish Publication Society and a director of the JTS and the Home of the Daughters of Jacob.

1882(15th of Nisan, 5642): First Day of Pesach

1882: As the Jews of Tisza-Eszlar, Hungary, observe Pesach rumors are circulating that Esther Solymosi, a 14 year old Christian peasant girl who disappeared on the first of the month has been killed by the Jews so her blood could be used in baking matzah.

1883(26thof Adar II):Menahem Cattawi Bey, known as the "Egyptian Rothschild” passed away today.

1883: Birthdate of Chicago native and graduate of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy Sidney Teller, the chemical turned social worker who began his new career as the superintendent of the Deborah Boys’ Club and who, in 1906 married Julia Pines with whom he created the Sidney and Julia Lecture Fund at the University of Chicago.

https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/5534

1884: In Pest, The Supreme Tribunal has confirmed the acquittal of all the Jews who were charged with murdering Esther Salomossy. It was alleged that they had killed her to obtain blood to mix with “Passover Bread”

1885: In Mantua, Lodovico Mortara and his wife gave birth to “economist, demographer and statistician” Giorgio Mortara, the grandson of Rabbi Marco Mortara.

1886(

1886(28thof Adar II, 5646): Moritz Warburg, who was born in 1810 who represented his native Altona in the Reichstag passed away today.  He was survived by his first son Albert who was born in 1843 but was pre-deceased by his second son Jacob who was born in 1848 and was killed during the Franco-Prussian War.

1886: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and NYU grad Joseph Pulvermacher the banker who decided not to found in the footsteps of his doctor father and the husband of the former Lucille Meyer with whom he had two children Mureil and Louis and who was a director of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and President of Congregation Rodeph Sholom.

1887(10thof Nisan, 5647): Isaiah Morgenstern passed away.

1888: In Mattapan, Massachusetts, founding today of the Leopold Morse Home For Infirm Hebrews whose supporters included Godfrey Morse, Ferdinand Strauss, Joseph Herman and Jacob Spitz.

1889: Clarence Charles Minzesheimer, “who had entered the banking and brokerage business of his father Charles Minzesheimer became a member of the New York Stock Exchange today.

1889: Banker and President of Sinai Congregation Moses E. Greenbaum, the Chicago born sone of Rosine Straus and Elias Greenbaum, and his wife Julia Greenbaum gave birth to their first son, Moses Ernest Greenbaum, Jr.

1890(14thof Nisan, 5650): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach and Erev Shabbat

1890: “The Jewish Feast of Pesach” published today continues a tradition of the New York Times of writing about the holiday stretching back to the earliest days of the paper’s founding before the Civil War.

1890: “Meat Given To The Poor” published today descried the distribution Passover provisions the needy.  While most of those in line were Polish Jews, “there was also a number of poor Gentiles.”  They were given coupons to take to local butchers since those distributing the food felt that there should be no distinction to helping the poor regardless of religion.

1890(14th of Nisan, 5650): As Jews begin the celebration of Passover this evening, the less fortunate Jews living in New York will enjoy a happier holiday thanks to the efforts of the Passover Relief Association which distributed 9,830 pounds of Matzah, 1,000 pounds of sugar, 480 pounds of coffee and 50 pounds of tea at Goodfellow Hall prior to the start of the holiday.

1890(14th of Nisan, 5650):Felix Albert Bettelheim passed away in Baltimore, Maryland. Born in Hungary in 1861 he was the son of the rabbi Aaron Siegfried Bettelheim. He immigrated to the United States in the sixties. In his seventeenth year he was graduated from the University of California with high honors, and three years later from the Medical College in San Francisco. From 1880 to 1881 he was resident physician of the San Quentin state prison; from 1881 to 1883, ship's surgeon of the Pacific Mail steamship "Colima"; 1883-89, surgeon-general of the Panama Railroad and CanalCompany. Through his efforts the first hospital in Panama was built; and he became one of its staff of physicians. He held several high offices and received a number of medals and testimonials from the government in recognition of his services. Bettelheim was the discoverer of a new germ peculiar to tropical countries, an account of which is given in medical records. In 1889 he studied clinical methods in the great European cities. On his return to America he died from a tropical liver complaint which was held by American authorities to be unique and was described by Professor Osler, of Johns Hopkins University, in a London medical journal. He was a frequent contributor to the "Lancet" and other periodicals, and left a posthumous work, "On the Contagious Diseases of Tropical Countries," still unpublished. A text-book by Dr. Thorington of Philadelphia, on the diseases of the eye, is dedicated to Bettelheim's memory.

1890 (14th of Nisan, 5650): The Jewish Messenger reports that “despite the undeniable tendency to change in every direction, the festival of Passover, which begins this evening survives with all its old time strength and picturesqueness.  Our Passover “is over three thousand years old and likely to survive three thousand more.”

1890: In the Ukraine, “Sura and Chaim Aaron Rabinowitz” gave birth to Isidore Rabinowitz and the husband of Miriam Rabinowitz.

1890: Erev Pesach, the American Hebrewpublishes a special Passover edition including an article entitled “Prejudice Against the Jews; its Causes and Remedies.”

1892: It was reported today that newly elected officers of the Purim Association are M.H. Moses, President; Simon Schafer, Vice President; and Sol E. Solomon, Treasurer.   The $16,000 that the association raised at its last charity ball has been donated to the United Hebrew Charities.

1892: It was reported today that “fever and diphtheria” are ravaging Jewish communities on “both sides of the Russian-German border.”

1892: Two todays after she had passed away, Russian born Betsy Cohen, the wife of Myer Cohen and the mother of Hymen, Evelyne and Reuben Cohen was buried today at the “Stockton Jewish Cemetery.”

1893: “Austria and the Jews”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10615F63C5515738DDDAD0894DC405B8385F0D3

1894(27thof Adar II, 5654): Sixty-eight year old Rabbi Abraham Pereira Mendes passed away in New York.  A native of Kingston, he was educated in England where he served congregations in Birmingham and London and served as the Dayan for the Sephardic community.  He came to the United States in 1883 to serve as Rabbi at the historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI.  He and his wife Eliza who was the daughter of Rabbi D.A. de Sola had two sons Frederick de Sola Mendes and Henry Pereira Mendes each of whom became rabbis.

1894: Birthdate of Riga native and University of Petrograd lawyer Anatole Chujoy who in 1924 came to the United States where he founded Dance Magazine in 1936 and Dance News in 1942 where he was editor and publisher until he passed away in 1969.

1894: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that in Camden, NJ, “the Hebrew Independent Political Club has endorsed Isaac H. Weaver for Council and Harry Wolfe for Freeholder in the Fifth Ward.”

1895: In Galicia, Sarah and Abraham Teichman gave birth to Moses Teichman who came to the United States with his mother in 1897 aboard the S.S. Friesland and who gained fames as Arthur Murray the man who danced his way into a financial empire of the Arthur Murray Dance Studios.  He began teaching dance while attending Georgia Tech as a way to pay for his college expenses. 

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/04/obituaries/arthur-murray-dance-teacher-dies-at-95.html

1895: The will of Bernhard Bernhard who had passed away last week we filed for probate today.

1896:  Birthdate of poet Tristan Tzara [Samuel or Sami Rosenfeld].  Born in Romania, he began publishing in 1912.  In 1916 he moved to Switzerland where he a founder of Dadaism.  Tzara named this nihilistic movement by opening the dictionary and choosing the first meaningless word.  Tzara moved to Paris and was a member of the Communist wing of the Resistance.  He died in 1963.

1896: Birthdate of Wolfgang Fürstner, the Wehrmacht officer who was in charge of the Olympic Village in 1936 and who committed suicide after he was reclassified as non-Aryan when it was discovered that his grandfather was a Jew who had converted to Christianity.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9903E3D81E3FEE3BBC4951DFBE66838D629EDE

1897: One day after he had passed away, Dutch born Jacob De Meza, the husband of Adelaide De Meza with whom she had had seven children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1897: “Dr. Grossman on the Talmud” published today included the view Dr. Rudolph Grossman of Temple Beth-El “that while there were many who knew what the Talmud was they failed to thoroughly comprehend the many and interesting truths contained in the book.”

1897: “A new Sefer Torah will be dedicated this afternoon Congregation Adath Israel of West Harlem.”

1897: “Kosher Cooking School” published today described the opening of “school for instruction in the art of kosher cooking;” kosher meaning prepared “in accordance with the Jewish dietary laws.”

1897: It was reported today that Ancient History of the Peoples of the East by the French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero has been translated into Hebrew by a publisher in Warsaw.

1897: “In The Public Eye” published today described the phenomena of Hebrew “spring up again as living literary language in Eastern Europe” as can be seen by, among other things, the publication of monthly Hebrew language review now being published in Berlin.

1897: It was reported today that Israel Zangwill, author of Children of the Ghettowill be speaking in Jerusalem later this month.

1897: Birthdate of Sir Francis Edward Evans, the Belfast native who served as the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to Israel from 1951 to 1954.

1898: Three days after he had passed away, 63 year old Samuel Cowen was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1899: Rabbi B. A. Elzas officiated at the wedding of Israel D. Hart of Beaufort, SC and Rosalie Cecile Levy at the Charleston home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Levy

1899: In Berlin, sociologist and economist Franz Oppenheimer and his wife gave birth to Hillel Oppenheimer, the Israeli botany professor who helped to found the “Faculties of Natural Science and Agriculture” at Hebrew University and passed away in 1971.

1899: In Albany, NY, the state Assembly passed a bill “exempting the real estate of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of New York City from taxation.”

1899: In New York City, the trustees of the United Hebrew Charities offered Dr. Lee K. Frankel of Philadelphia the position of manager of the organization.

1899: Birthdate of Carmel Myers, the San Francisco native whose Australian rabbi father used his connections with D.W. Griffith, to help her launch a movie career that began with “Intolerance” in 1916.

1900: Birthdate of St. Louis native Ernest E. Ellman.

1901(15th of Nisan, 5661): At Temple Israel in New York City, more than $100 was raised after Rabbi Harris delivered a Passover sermon in which he called for funds to be raised to alleviate those suffering through the horrific famine in Bessarabia.

1901(15thof Nisan, 5661): Pesach

1901: Today, “The Morning Leader published the following dispatch from Vienna: ‘At Smyrna, on the strength of rumors that the Jews had murdered a Greek lad for ritual purposes 10,000 infuriated Greeks stormed the Ghetto” after which “the Turkish troops charged the mob with bayonets, one person being killed and fourteen others wounded.”

1901(15th of Nisan, 5661): R. J. de Cordova passed away in London today at the age of 79.   De Cordova, whose parents were English, was born in the West Indies. He came to the United States in 1849 where he enjoyed a successful business career until the Panic of 1857.  At that time he began a career as humorist, author and journalist who wrote for the New York Express and the New York Times.  Mr. de Cordova was a regular speaker at Temple Emanu-El where he had a contract at one time to give a lecture on every third Saturday of the month.  He moved to London in 1885.

1902: Twenty-three year, Sam Zuckerman, the Ostrow born son of Sam and Jennie Zuckerman who in 1896 came to the United States where he went from owning one cigar store to owning “Zuckerman’s, one of the finest ladies’ ready-to-wear garments stores in Jamestown, NY” married Ettie Schneider with whom he had one son and one daughter.

1903(7thof Nisan, 5663): Parashat Vayikra

1903: “Genetic Philosophy of Judaism” published today speaks approvingly of the works of S.M. Dubnow who “tries to answer the question, “What is Jewish History?”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1903/04/04/101987229.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

https://www.nytimes.com/1903/04/04/archives/genetic-philosophy-of-judaism.html?searchResultPosition=1

1904(19thof Nisan, 5664): Fifth Day of Pesach

1904: Baroness Rosalie de Almeda, the wife of Harry Emanuel and the mother of Ferdinand and Eugenie Emanuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1905: In a speech delivered at a Zionist banquet in London, “Israel Zangwill declared that in the whole history of the world the Jews never had a better friend than President Theodore Roosevelt.”  In the same speech, Zangwill rejected Britain’s offer of territory in East Africa (often referred to as the Uganda Plan) saying that the land might be useful “for rearing goats” but that it “was doubtful if a settlement 500 miles from the sea offered sufficient bais for a prosperous Jewish colony.”

1906: It was reported today that the police authorities in Berlin are “conferring with the local Jewish Auxiliary Society” as to how to deal with the 7,000 impoverished Russian refugees most of whom are alleged to be their co-religionists.

1907: “The Jewish Situation in Rumania” published today took issue with calling Jews “rackrenterrs” and comparing them to Irish landlords” and said that Romanian laws prohibiting Jews to hold title to land has forced them into the role they are playing as “middlemen.”

1908(3rdof Nisan, 5668): Parashat Tazria

1908: In Great Britain, the conflict between those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible and those who believe in a more liberal interpretation heated up today when Sir Samuel Montagu, head of the banking firm of Samuel Montague & Co threatened to withdraw his financial support from the Jewish Religious Education Board unless it severed any further relationship with two of its more “liberal members” – Calude Joseph Goldsmid-Montefiore and Israel Abrahams. Montefiore and Abrahams are noted scholars.  The former is the author of The Origin and Development of the Religon of the Ancient Hebrews and the latter is a reader at Cambridge who is also editor of The Jewish Quarterly Review. Montague, who is officially known as Lord Swaythling, is an active leader and famed philanthropist in the Jewish community.  He is referred to as King of the East End because of his generous support of the less fortunate and is second only Lord Rothschild as its benefactor.  The Jewish Religious Education Board is a major communal organization that “looks after the material welfare and religious education of more than 10,000 Jewish children in the great East End of London.  According to some accounts, the whole matter reached a boiling point over whether or not one really believes that Balaam’s ass actually spoke to its master as described in the book of Numbers.  Montefiore accepts the text literally.  The two biblical scholars apparently think there is room for interpretation.  

1909: Hashomer, the first Jewish self-defense organization was founded to protect Jewish settlements in what was Palestine, a part of the Ottoman Empire.  Until then, local Arab militias had been paid to protect farmers and others from marauding bands.  The early Zionists had already begun providing their own farm labor.  Now they decided to provide their own protection as well.  Needless to say, this did not sit well with the local population.  This is one more example of how the Zionists were resented not for being Jewish, but for failing to conform to the behavior acceptable to the local power structure.  From the Jewish perspective, Hashomer represented yet another break with the European experience.  Jews would no longer be at the mercy of others.  They would provide their own protection.  Having just experienced of wave of Pogroms in Russia, this had an extra special meaning for the early members of Hashomer, many of whose members were recent arrivals from Russia who had organized self-defense organizations in Russia during the pogroms five years earlier. Its founders included Itzhak ben Zvi, Israel Giladi, Israel Shohat and Alexander Zeid. It was eventually absorbed into the Hagannah the Jewish defense force formed in the 1920's that became the foundation for the modern IDF.

1909(13thof Nisan, 5669): Seventy-four year old Budapest native Adolf von Sonnenthal the tailor turned actor who was known for his portrayal of Nathan in “Lessing’s Nathan der Weise” passed away today.

1910: Three days after he had passed away, 46 year old Claude Laurie Marks, “D.S.O., Major 4th Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry” the London born son of Cecilia and David Woolf Marks and the husband of Canadian born Caroline Hoffnung with whom he had had two children – Cecil and Astor – was buried today Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1910: Birthdate of Columbia Law School trained attorney and WWII veteran Arthur Krim, the husband Mathilde Krim who combined a legal career with motion picture production and Democratic Party politics.

1911: In Brooklyn, twenty-four year old Hot Springs, AR native Grover Moscowtiz, the future federal judge married Miriam H. Moscowitz today.

1911: Marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Schwartz, members of the Euclid Avenue Temple in Cleveland, Ohio.

1912: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for Hannah Jacobs who passed away on April 2.

1912: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today at 10 o’clock  this morning for Rachel Tannenbaum a member of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun and the wife of Lipman Tannenbaum.

1913: Hannah Roth, “widow of the late Samuel Roth” was lead to rest today at the Waldheim Cemetery.

1913: Sixty-nine year old Edward Dowden, the Irish author who claimed that “in the original Persian” version of the Shylock story, “the Jew is not impelled to cruelty because the money is not returned to him but for the reason that he in love with his debtor’s wife” and whose daughter Hester “claimed to communicate via various spirit guides including ‘Johannes,’ an ancient Jewish Neo-Platonist who lived 200 years before Jesus, passed away today.

1913:  Birthdate of Jerome Weidman“revered New York novelist and playwright who first made a splash with his novel I Can Get It for You Wholesale and later won a Pulitzer Prize with George Abbott for their Broadway collaboration Fiorello!“ He died in 1998 at the age of 85.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/07/theater/jerome-weidman-dies-at-85-author-of-novels-and-plays.html

1913(26th of Adar II, 5673): Sixty-five year old Frankfort banker “B. Oppenheimer” passed away today.

1914(8thof Nisan, 5674): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1914: It was reported today that Henry Berlin, Chairman of the Arrangements Committee for the Passover celebrations to be held in” New York City “under the auspices of the Jewish Soldiers and Sailors Passover Committee” has met with Commander Moses of the United States Battleship Texas and Commander Jackson of the United States battleship North Dakota who promised to lend their aid to make the Passover celebration a success.

1915: Four days after she had passed away, 67 year old Agnes Barnett, the London born daughter of Israel and Elizabeth Mendoza and the wife of Bearmon Barnett with whom she had had six children was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1915(20thof Nisan, 5675): Sixth Day of Pesach

1915: “Twenty thousand Jewish children held simultaneous Passover celebrations” this “morning in nine theatres in New York under the auspices of Young Judea.”

1916: Blanche Wolfe and Alfred A. Knopf who she had first met in 1911 were married to at the St. Regis Hotel after which they gave birth to the son Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. in 1918

1916: A bazar and fair designed to raise funds for “the Jewish war sufferers” which had begun on March came to an end at the Grand Central Palace in New York.

1917: The Russian revolutionary government headed by Kerensky granted equality to all Russian Jews for the first time in Russian history. Since about 18 percent of the world's Jews were living in areas controlled by the Russian government, this decree would appear to have had a major impact on the fate of the world's Jews.  Unfortunately, such was not the case.  Within the year, the democratic Kerensky government was replaced by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.  That regime spelled the end of real freedom for everybody although Stalin would later have some special twists of evil for the Jewish population.

1917: Dr. Avram Coralnik, who has been in the United States since last October representing “an influential publication at Petrograd said today it “is well known all over the world, the Jews were the most persecuted people in Russia.”

1918(22ndof Nisan, 5678): 8th Day of Pesach

1918(22 Nisan, 5678): Seventy-five year old German Jewish-philosopher Hermann Cohen, whose works included Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism passed away in Berlin.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/HermannCohen.html

1919: Rabbi David Lefkowitz of Dayton, OH, delivered an address on “Religious Education and the Future of American Judaism at the convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis at the Hebrew Union College today” in which he “pointed out” the “need for more religious education in synagogues and Jewish Sabbath schools” in the United States.

1920(16th of Nisan, 5680): Second Day of Pesach

1920: Arab orators in Palestine roused crowds into a fiery mob which attacked and killed Jews in three days of violent rioting that began today. At least five Jews were killed and hundreds more were injured during the Arab riots in Jerusalem.  The riots were fomented to protest Jewish immigration.  In a portent of the future, the British arrested the Jewish leaders, including Vladimir Jabotinsky and others for organizing a self-defense league.  The origins of the Arab rioting stemmed from intra-Arab conflicts – those who favored and opposed Feisal’s rule in Palestine.  Chaim Weizmann, who witnessed the riots, wrote to British Prime Minister Lloyd George that British authorities had done little to protect the Jews, a view that was supported by a later commission of investigation.

1921: A Jewish battalion and an Arab battalion are founded by the British.

1922:  Birthdate of composer Elmer Bernstein.  He wrote the theme songs or other music for more than 200 films and TV shows, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Ten Commandments, The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the fanfare used in the National Geographic television specials. He received 14 Academy Award nominations, but his only win was for Thoroughly Modern Millie. Along with many in Hollywood, Bernstein faced censure during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. He was "gray-listed"—not banned but kept off major projects—due to sympathy with left-wing causes and had to work on a series of low budget films.

1922: The Jewish industrial chemist and Liberal politician, Sir Alfred Mond, who was then Minister of Health, wrote to Sir Herbert Samuel warning him that the Arab delegation currently visiting London to express its opposition to the principles of the Balfour Declaration had become ‘a focus and a tool of the general anti-Semitic movement.’

1923(18th of Nisan, 5683): Forty-nine year old Yuily Osipovch Martov, the Russian Revolutionary who led the Mensheviks – one of the many parties to be outlawed by Lenin and his Bolsheviks – passed away as an exile living in Germany.

1923: Today “1923, following the success of the studio's film “The Gold Diggers,” Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. was officially established, with. Harry Warner as president, Albert Warner as treasurer and Jack Warner and Sam Warner as co-heads of production.

1924: The British and French end their dispute over the northern border of Palestine. Metula and its environs are included in the territory of the British Mandate.

1924: The first issue of the periodical "Kiryat Sefer" appears. It is published by the National Library in Jerusalem.

1924: In Hajdunanas, Hungary, Abraham Ornstein, an accountant, and the former Frieda Sziment gave birth to Holocaust survivor and psychoanalyst Paul Hermann Ornstein. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/us/paul-ornstein-dead-self-psychologist.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1925: Henry Malter, the Galicia born son of Solomon and Rosa Malter and the husband of Bertha Freund and the holder of Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg who was the  professor of medieval philosophy and Arabic at the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, rabbi of the Sheerith Israel Congregation of Cincinnati and Professor of Rabbinical Literature at Dropsie College passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1925/04/06/archives/dr-malter-dies-a-lqotf-scholar-professor-of-rabbinical-literature-a.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

1926: Louis Lipsky, the Chairman of the Zionist Organization of America announced today “the beginning of a nation-wide movement for the promotion of Jewish education” that will be designed in cooperation with the “more than 2,000 Jewish schools in the United States.

1926: In Berlin, real estate investor Oskar Rohr and Perla Gelbard Rohr gave birth to Sami Rohr who would survive the Holocaust to become a real estate mogul and philanthropist.

1927: William H. Gallagher, the attorney representing Aaron Shapiro in his suit against Henry Ford “served notice that he will call Mr. as the next witness” to which Ford’s attorney responded that the anti-Semitic automaker would not be available because of medical reasons.

1927: Samuel Untermyer is scheduled to return to Cairo from Jerusalem this morning.

1927: Birthdate of Sam Adams, the native of Chicago who became a leading literary and Hollywood agent.

http://forward.com/culture/356239/meet-sam-adams-humphrey-bogarts-assistant-and-ib-singers-dealmaker/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_MainList_Title_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Daily%202016-12-13&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20Monday-Friday

1928(14thof Nisan, 5688): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1928: In London’s East End, Annie Berlin and Abraham Noserovitch gave birth to Monty Noserovitch, who gained fame as composer Monty Norman, the creator of “The James Bond Theme.”

1928: “Eve’s Daughters” a drama starring Wolfgang Zilzer and filmed by cinematographer Otto Keller was released today in Germany and Czechoslovakia

1929: According to a dispatch issued today by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “three Old Prussian lodges declared that they were ‘100 per cent free of Jews.’”

1930: Birthdate of “American classicist and philosopher and long-time  member of the faculties of New York University and The New School” Seth Benardete, the New York born son of Mair Jose Benardette, an expert on Sephardic and culture and the husband of Jane Benardete, an English profess at Hunter with whom he had two children, Ethan and Alexandra.

1931: U.S. premiere the action film “Dirigible” produced by Harry Cohn with a script co-authored by Jo Swerling.

1931: U.S. premiere of “Front Page” for which director Lewis Milestone received an Oscar nomination.

1931: In New York City, premiere of “Cracked Nuts” with music by Max Steiner.

1932: In Brooklyn Herman and Florence Davies gave birth to Clive Davis.

http://www.clivedavis.com/

1932: “Zion, Ten Years Later” published today described the fundraising efforts of the Jewish Agency to raise $2,500,000 “of which hone million is to be raised in New York City” to go toward rebuilding the Jewish National Home in Palestine.

1933: In Germany, a Civil Service Law prohibiting Jews from holding public service jobs was adopted.

1933: Maximilian “Max” Cohen, who had fallen out of favor with the Communist Party in the United States chaired the Rose Pastor Stokes Testimonial Committee “which held a dinner” today on her behalf “in an effort to raise funds to pay” for the cancer treatment of this Russian born American Jewess.

1933: A front-page article in the German-Jewish newspaper Jüdische Rundschau exhorted Jews to wear the identifying Yellow Star with the headline, Tragt ihn mit Stolz, den Gelben Fleck!(Wear it with Pride, the Yellow Badge!). The article was one of a series written a German Jew, Robert Weltsch, all of which were based on the same theme:"Say 'yes' to our Jewishness." The original article was written in response to the to the April 1, 1933 Nazi-led boycott of Jewish shops, which was the first meaningful anti-Jewish action of the newly-empowered Nazis.

1933(8th of Nisan, 5693): Forty-five year old Romanian born “vegetable huckster” Isaac Alpert, the husband of Fanny Alpert and the father of Joseph, Jacob and Harry Alpert passed late this evening in Syracuse, NY.

1934(19th of Nisan, 5694) Fifth day of Pesach

1934(19th of Nisan 5694): Sophie Newman Casper, the daughter of Kallman and Ernestine Newman, the husband of Kaskil Casper and the mother of Melville and Ervin Casper passed away today after which he was buried at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, in Colma, CA.

1935: Sixty-eight year old Bettino Levi, “an intimate friend of Theodor Herzl” who has working to provide relief for Jewish refugees from Germany passed away today.  (As reported by JTA)

1935: American competitors at the 2nd Maccabiah in Tel Aviv came in first in their respective events.  Sybil Koff continued her winning ways in the 400 yard hurdles while “Abe Rosenkrantz captured the 1,500-meter run.”  Julius Finkelstein took the top spot in the shot put and James Sandler tied the Maccabiah record as he claimed first place in the high jump.  Lilian Copeland, who had done so well at the 1932 Olympics, won “both the javelin and discuss throws in the women’s division.”

1936(12thof Nisan, 5695): Shabbat HaGadol

1936(12thof Nisan, 5695): Forty-three year old Budapest born American “violinist, conductor and composer, Sandor Harmati best known for his song "Bluebird of Happiness" written in 1934 for Jan Peerce” passed away in Flemington, NJ toda.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/527c5c18-ce55-4a5f-aa80-cefe9b2e8934

1936: “The United Palestine Appeal issued a statistical analysis showing that 36,372 Jews from Germany entered Palestine from January, 1933 to December, 1935.”

1936: “The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee announced” today “that $10,000 had been sent to Jews in Poland and Germany for Passover relief and the purchase of kosher meat.”

1936: “At a dinner given his honor by a committee head by Stephen S. Wise and attended by 900 persons” “Eddie Cantor announced tonight at the Hotel Astor that he intended to go ‘from one end of the country to the other’ in an effort to raise funds to take as many German Jewish children out of Germany as possible.”

1936: One of the letters meant to reply to a political whispering campaign aimed at Secretary of Labor Perkins released tonight said that “there were no Jews in her ancestry” and that “If I were a Jew I would not secret of it” and “would be proud to acknowledge it.”

1936: It was reported today that “even under present restrictions the flight of Jewish capital is so serious a factor that any Jewish capitalist wishing to emigrate from Germany now is being visited by the Gestapo.” (Talk about gross rationalization for anti-Semitism)

1937(23rdof Nisan, 5697): Seventy-nine year old Henry Goldman the only member of Goldman-Sachs to support Germany during World War I and who moved to Germany in the early 1930’s only to barely escape back to the U.S. in 1936, passed away today.

1937: Twelve organizations participated in a meeting organized by the American Ort Federation to honor the memory New York civic leader Henry Moskowitz during which Mayor La Guardia testified to “his public service and intellectual honesty” and Governor Lehman said that “his sympathies knew no limits of race, color, creed or nationality.”

1937: The Palestine Post commented on the text of the 300-page memorandum submitted by the Jewish Agency to the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine. The agency pointed out that the duty of the Mandatory government was to establish the Jewish National Home in Palestine, to encourage Jews to immigrate, to help them to settle down and to develop self-governing institutions. The Crown Colonist, published in London, advocated Jewish settlement in Transjordan, as a means of getting that country out of its economic plight.

1938: Todayduring a heated House of Commons debate in which he had been criticizing the government's foreign policy, Manny Shinwell slapped the face of the Conservative MP Commander Robert Tatton Bower after Bower told him to "go back to Poland" because “Shinwell said he had taken this to be an anti-Semitic remark.”

1938: Arthur Sweetser, a director of the secretariat of the League of Nations met with President Roosevelt to discuss the fate of the Jews of Europe and proposal for a “rescue plan.  According to Mr. Sweetser, during the meeting, Roosevelt took credit for this latest proposal to deal with the problem. “Then Roosevelt turned more expansive and said ‘Suddenly it struck me: why not get all the democracies to unite to share the burden? After all, they own most of the free land of the world, and there only…what would you say, 14, 16, million Jews in the whole world of whom about half are already in the United States.  If we could divide up the remainder in groups of 8 or 10, there wouldn’t be any Jewish problem in three or four generations.’”

1939(15th of Nisan, 5699): Pesach

1939: Four year old Faisal II becomes King of Iraq. Faisal is the King of Iraq during the Israel War for Independence.  Iraq was the largest Arab state without a border with Israel that sent a major contingent “to drive the Jews into the sea.”  More importantly, Faisal was the last king of Iraq.  He was overthrown and murdered in a brutal revolt in 1958 when the Ba’ath Party (the party that would give us Saddam Hussein) came to power. 

1939: The Institut zur Erforschung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben(Institute for the Study of Jewish Influence on German Church Life) was founded.

1940: FDR met in the White House today Michigan Senator Prentis M. Brown, the future senior partner of Brown, Lund and Levin.

1940: “I Love a Mystery” sponsored by Fleischmann’s Yeast and featuring Tony Randall (Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg) expanded to a 30 minute broadcast format today on NBC.

1941: In Vichy, today’s Journal Officiel listed the names “of more than eighty government employees who were removed from office under the Jewish statute of unoccupied Zones” while today’s new list of Jewish-owned shops in the occupied zone of France for which “Aryan manager have been appointed included “the sporting goods store formerly operated by Jeff Dickson, the American sports promoter who also operated the Palais des Sports in Paris” and “two music stores of Encoch and Company on the Boulevard des Italiens and the Senart Societe in the Rue Dragon.

1942: Birthdate of New York native Elizabeth Levy, the author of over “eighty children’s books.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20110718151906/http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/birthbios/brthpage/04apr/4-4levy.html

http://elizabethlevy.com/booksall/

1943: In the Bronx, Jack Espstein, a Toronto born salesman and his wife Evelyn gave birth to Michael Peter Epstein, the product of Fairfax High in Los Angeles and U.C., Berkeley who gained game as Major Leaguer first baseman Mike “SuperJew” Epstein.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/epstemi01.shtml

1944: An Allied spy plane flying over Poland happened to photograph Auschwitz while documenting construction of a synthetic-fuels plant providing photographic proof of the existence of the death camp.

1944: German Holocaust victim Anne Frank, 14, wrote in her diary: 'I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift...of expressing all that is in me.'

1944(11th of Nisan, 5704): “Miss Irene Lewisohn, founder and co-director of the Neighborhood Playhouse School” passed away tonight.

1944(11th of Nisan, 5704): After having been shipped from Prague, 60 year old  Gustav Althoff was murdered today at Terezin.

1945: After being imprisoned at Dachau, Emil Carlbach, an inmate at Buchenwald issued a “call to mutiny” today.

1945:The 4th Armored Division and the 89th Infantry Division liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp.  It was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by the U.S. Army. General George S. Patton, Old Blood and Guts, described it as "one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen."

1945: Birthdate of Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit who gained famed as student protester in France known as "Danny the Red". Like many other radicals, this son of refugees from Hitler’s Germany later sought political respectability.  In his case, he became a lead of the European Greens and a member of the European Parliament.

1946: As international postal service is begun after a six year hiatus, large numbers of letters and postcards are sent to numerous locations including Tel Aviv.

1946: Eitan Livini was arrested today on charges that he had participated in the “Night of the Trains,” an Irgun led sabotage operation aimed bringing the British transportation infrastructure to a halt.

1947: After premiering in Miami, “The Sin of Harold Diddlebock,” a comedy featuring Lionel Stander and Julius Tannen was released in the United States today.

1948: Birthdate of Michael Kleiner, the native of Munich who made Aliyah in 1951 and whose career in politics led him to be elected President of the Supreme Court of Likud, “the party's highest judicial body in all matters pertaining to its constitution, and party members and divisions are subject to its decisions.”

1948: Following an attack in the Northern Negev,a Palmach Unit destroyed "nine Bedouin lay-bys and one mud hut."

1948: The Arab Liberation Army opened an attack on kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek with a barrage from 7 artillery pieces supplied by the Syrian Army which elicited a successful counter-attack by the Haganah.

1948: “As National Commander of the Jewish War Veterans, Julius Klein organized an enormous show of strength for the establishment of the State of Israel in the form of a JWV parade down New York's Fifth Avenue.”

1949: “Gabriel Haritos, as the Mayor of Rhodes, was the local partner for the proceedings for the initial talks between Israel, Egypt and Jordan, under the auspices of United Nations, at the Grande Albergo delle Rose (Hotel of Roses) in Rhodes” which had begun in January and came to an end today.

1949:French Labor Leader Leon Jouhaux, who is visiting Israel as a guest of the General Federation of Jewish Labor, was pelted with tomatoes and oranges by Communist hecklers tonight when he made a public address in Tel Aviv Museum.

1949: Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion addressed the Knesset on the impact of the armistice signed yesterday with Trans-Jordan.

1950: Birthdate of “American poet, essayist, editor and literary scholar Charles Bernstein who is the husband of artist Susan Bee and father of Felix and Emma Bee Bernstein.

http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Bernstein-Charles-and-Loss-Pequeno-Glazier_Autobiographical-Interview_1996.pdf\

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bee/

1951: U.S. premiere “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” a film adaptation of Jerome Weidman’s 1937 novel directed by Michael Gordon, produced by Sol C. Siegel, with a script by Abraham Polonsky and Vera Caspary and music by Sol Kaplan.

1951: In what was the first outbreak of anti-Semitism in postwar Austria, 26 Jews were wounded in Salzburg.  The first outbreaks of anti-Semitism in postwar Europe actually began in Poland.  This episode reinforces the notion that the Nazis were so successful because they had willing help from the local populations.

1951: Seven soldering were killed today in what is known as the “el-Hamma incident.”

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from The Hague that a critical stage had been reached in the reparations talks held there, after the German delegation, upon its return from Bonn, claimed that it had been denied any authority by the West German Federal Government.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that four Israeli passengers aboard a Cyprus Airways ended up in the Beirut airport. They were flying from Nicosia when heavy fog forced the emergency landing. The four Jewish passengers were allowed to proceed to Lod unharmed.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that on the eve of rather frugal Pesach holidays, Dr. Dov Joseph, minister of commerce and industry, promised a richer menu, better organization and more supplies for the forthcoming summer.

1953: Birthdate of Simcha Jacobovici the Israeli born “Canadian film director, producer, free-lance journalist, and writer.”

1953: Birthdate of Laurie Hope Beecham the Philadelphia native whose short career on Broadway included appearances in “Annie” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/10/arts/laurie-beechman-dies-at-44-played-grizabella-in-cats.html

1953: Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of FDR, met with Lazarus Joseph “to advocate for the preservation of social welfare projects.”

1954: Paddy Chayefsky’s teleplay “Mother” was broadcast by The Philco Televison Playhouse.

1958(14th of Nisan, 5718): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1958: More than 600 residents at the two locations of the Brooklyn Hebrew Home” are scheduled to “partake in traditional Seders” while the 400 bedridden residents will be served the Passover meals in their rooms.”

1958 Tonight, “at the seventy-fourth annual Seder at the United HIAS Service on Lafayette Street, Carlos L. Israels, president of the agency, told the celebrants that the ‘story of the Jewish exodus is as much alive today as it was in Biblical times.’”

1958: New York Rabbi David Eichhorn, the director of field operations for the Jewsih Welfare Board’s Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy is in Korea to celebrate Passover with United States service men and women stationed there.

1960: Seventy-six year old German historian Wilhelm Herzog the author of Die Affäre Dreyfus (The Dreyfus Affair) which “was adapted as the British film “Dreyfus” in 1931 and as the 1937 play “I Accuse!” passed away today.

1960: “A Palm Tree in a Rose Guardian produced by David Susskind was broadcast as “The Play of the Week”

1960: Actress Shelley Winters (Shirley Schrift) won her first Academy Award for her performance as Mrs. Van Daan in the film version of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

1962: “A Thousand Clowns” featuring Gene Sakes as “Leo Harman” had a “preview” Broadway performance today.

1964(22ndof Nisan, 5724): Eighth Day of Pesach; Shabbat

1964: “Anyone Can Whistle,” a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim” opened on Broadway today at the Majestic Theatre.

1966 (14th of Nisan, 5726): Rabbi Alan Greenspan, a Chaplain in the United States Army, leads a Seder for 135 Americans in Saigon.  This simple statement does not do justice to the efforts of Rabbi Greenspan who overcame a wide-range of obstacles to pull off this fete.

1966 (14th of Nisan, 5726): General William Westmorland issued a Passover greeting to Jewish soldiers in which he compared the Freedom theme of the holiday with the American effort to provide freedom and security for the people of Viet Nam.

1966: “Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment,” directed by Karel Reisz and co-starring Bernard Bresslaw was released today in the United Kingdom.

1967(23rd of Adar II, 5727): Lyricist Al Lewis whose most famous work was “Blueberry Hill” passed away. Written in 1940, it gained everlasting fame when it was recorded by Fats Domino in 1956.

1967(23rdof Adar II, 5727): Eighty-three year old Columbia University trained chemist Herbert Abraham, the New York born son of Samuel and Rosalie Abraham who became chairman of the board of Ruberoid Company and author of authoritative Asphalt and Allied Substances who was the husband of the former Dorothy Jacoby passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/04/05/90311878.pdf

1967: Dr. Martin Luther King opened his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in New York City by welcoming Rabbi Abraham Heschel.

http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/174210/remembering-dr-king/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The%2520Forward%2520Today%2520%2528Monday-Friday%2529&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%25202013-04-04

1968: Larry Rosen, the owner of Smith’s Pharmacy at 14th and Clifton Streets, N.W. in Washington spent his last day at his business which would be burned down in the rioting that began tonight after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1968: The riots that erupted in several cities today led to the writing of Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 in which historian Arnold R. Hirsch analyzed the impact of “institutional forces during World War II and the decades that followed, when millions of African Americans migrated to cities outside of the South, high-rise towers sprouted up in predominantly black neighborhoods and policymakers announced a cheery-sounding doctrine known as “urban renewal” — what writer James Baldwin would later dub “Negro removal.”

1970: CBS broadcast the last episode of the long-running sit com “Petticoat Junction,” starring Bea Benaderet, “the daughter of Samuel David Benaderet, a Turkish Sephardic emigrant who settled his family in San Francisco.

1971(9thof Nisan, 5731): Seventy year old Shlomo Yisrael Ben-Meir the native of Warsaw who arrived in Israel in 1950 after having worked as a lawyer in the United States and then served as an MK from 1952 until his death, passed away today.

1971: “Follies” “a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim,a book by James Goldman” and scenic designs by Boris Aronson opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater.

1972(20thof Nisan, 5732): Sixth Day of Pesach

1972(20th of Nisan, 5732): Sixty-nine year old German born, American composer Stefan Wolpe, passed away.

http://www.wolpe.org/

1972: Le Mondedescribed Charles Bettelheim as "the most visible Marxists… in France as well as in Spain, Italy, Latin America, and India.”

1973: Attacks by four Arabs “on the Israeli Ambassador’s residence in Nicosia” and an Arkia plane at the Nicosia airport was thwarted today.

1973:  Birthdate of Magician David Blaine “the son of Patrice White, who may or may not have been a gypsy, but was certainly a Russian Jew living in Brooklyn” and is sometimes called a modern day Harry Houdini. 

1974(12thof Nisan, 5734)): Fast of the First Born observed on Thursday because erev Pesach falls on Shabbat.

1974: “A prominent Jewish leader, Rabbi Alexander Schindler, speaking for more than 200,000 Reform Jews, asked President Nixon today to obtain a public apology from Attorney General William B. Saxbe or to force Mr. Saxbe to resign for remarks the Attorney General made yesterday about Jewish intellectuals whom he equated with Communists during the McCarthy era.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/04/05/archives/apology-by-saxbe-sought-by-leader-of-return-jews.html?searchResultPosition=1

1975(23rdof Nisan, 5735): Ninety five year old Edith Rosenbuam Russell, the Cincinnati born of the former Sophia Holstein and merchant Harry Rosenbaum, the American fashion buyer, stylist and correspondent for Women's Wear Daily, best remembered for surviving the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic with a music box in the shape of a pig passed away today in London.

1976(4th of Nisan, 5736): Sixty-seven year old Chicago native Louis James “Lou” Gordon who played tackle for Illinois from 1927 through 1929 so well that “football historian Dr. L.H. Baker to the All-Time Illini Team” and whose nine year NFL career including playing for the Green Bay Packers when they defeated the Boston Redskins for the Championship, passed away today.

1977: CBS broadcast the final episode of season five of “Maude” starring Bea Arthur in the title role

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat ended talks with French and German leaders by saying that he saw encouraging signs for the reconvening of the Geneva Peace Conference and the establishment of a permanent peace in the Middle East.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that El Al planes took off for overseas flights without cabin crews who had absented themselves to protest against El Al's refusal to compensate them for duty on holidays.

1978:Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Synagogue was added to the National Register of Historic Places

1979: Birthdate of actress Natasha Lyonne who appeared in Slums of Beverly Hills and FreewayII

1979: Joseph Stephen Stanford began serving as Canada’s Ambassador to Israel.

1980(18thof Nisan, 5740): Fourth Day of Pesach

1980(18thof Nisan, 5740): Seventy-one year old movie director Aleksander Ford who was born Mosze Lifszyc in Kiev, passed away today.

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

1980: “Sitting Ducks,” a comedy directed and written by Henry Jaglom was released today in the United States.

1981(29th of Adar II, 5741):Icko Wakmann, retired president of the Relide Clock Company in Manhattan and founder of the Wakmann Watch Company and father of Tel Aviv resident Margalit Zwiebel passed away at the age of 86.

1982: The New York Times publishes a review of “Kibbutz Makom Report From an Israeli Kibbutz” by Amia Lieblich.

1982: In recognition of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's 80th birthday, the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled have issued House Joint Resolution 447 to set aside today as a "National Day of Reflection."

1983:Responding to Iraqi charges that Israel was guilty of ''mass poisoning'' of Palestinian schoolgirls in the West Bank, the Security Council tonight called on Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to investigate ''the causes and effects of the serious problem of the reported cases of poisoning.'' The ambiguous language, necessary to win the approval of all 15 Council members, left open the question of whether the schoolgirls had actually been poisoned and left up to the Secretary General to decide whether the outside medical teams summoned by Israel meet the demand for ''independent inquiries.'' 1984: NBC broadcast the first episode of “Double Trouble” a sitcom starring Jean and Liz Sagal whose executive producers including Saul Turteltaub.

1984: Today, “Rev. Jesse Jackson disavowed ‘violence’ and ‘intimidation’ after a supporter threatened to ‘make an example’ of” Milton Coleman the Washington Post reporter, who is black” and who was the first report of Mr. Jackson's reference to Jews as ''Hymies'' and to New York City as ''Hymietown.''

1985:Birthdate of Israeli tennis player Dudi Sela

1987(5th of Nisan, 5747): Michael Redstone, the media mogul whose companies included CBS and Viacom, passed away.

1987: Annette Greenfield Strauss won a plurality of the vote for Mayor of Dallas. Winning a run-off election on April 18, she became the city's first elected woman mayor.

1988: Publication of “Chasing a Chameleon - Trebitsch Lincoln” in the 38thVolume of History Today.

http://www.historytoday.com/bernard-wasserstein/chasing-chameleon-trebitsch-lincoln

1991(20thof Nisan, 5751): Fourth Day of Pesach

1991: It was reported today that the “immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union last month reached a total of almost 15,000 and will climb to 25,000 this month…” (As reported by Henry Kamm)

1992(1st of Nisan, 5752): Rosh Chodesh Nisan/Shabbat Ha-Chodesh

1992(1st of Nisan, 5752):Samuel "Sammy" Herman Reshevsky, a chess prodigy and grand chess master who was an Orthodox Jew who did not play on Shabbat, passed away today.

1993: Israeli tennis star Amos Mansdorf was the runner-up at today’s tournament in Osaka, Japan.

1995: In Washington, DC, the Garfinkel’s Department Store building at 14thand F Street was put on the National Register of Historic Places. (For those of us growing up in D.C. in the 1950’s Garfinkels was the height of posh, to say the least.)

http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2012/11/garfinckels-washingtons-fashion-arbiter.html

1996(15thof Nisan, 5756): Pesach

1996: It was reported today, that, according to Mrs. Alla Nazarova, on the day before Passover, “the food supply store in Moscow’s largest synagogue” “sold three and a half tons of Matzoh.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/04/world/why-this-matzoh-is-different-from-all-others-it-s-moscow-s.html?searchResultPosition=1

1997: Today’s edition of The Jewish Press “quoted from ‘A Historic Declaration’, issued by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis on March 31” which began “Reform and Conservative are not Judaism at all.”

1998(8thof Nisan, 5758): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Hagadol

1998(8thof Nisan, 5758): Eighty year old Minneapolis born and Johns Hopkins trained cardiologist and internist Dr. Abraham Genecis, the World War II Army Medical Corps veteran and professor at his alma mater who was the husband of the father of “the former Rita Gisent” and father of Victor and Dr. Paul Genecin, passed away today.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-04-07-1998097108-story.html

1999: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “Uncovering Clinton:A Reporter's Story” by Michael Isikoff and “The Rise and Fall of the House of Barneys: A Family Tale of Chutzpah, Glory and Greed” by Joshua Levine.

1999: In an article by Bill Kent,John Mulloy, president of Ginsburg's bread bakery laments the fate of his company’s sales during Pesach.

'What happens to our bread business during Passover?'' sighed John Mulloy, president of Ginsburg's bread bakery here. ''It dies!'' During the eight days of Passover, Jews refrain from eating all foods made from grains except matzah, a flat, cracker-like wheat bread that Mr. Mulloy does not make. ''In the old days the Ginsburgs would just close up and take a vacation when Passover came around,'' Mr. Mulloy went on. ''We never close.'' What started as a family-run business on Atlantic Avenue in 1903 that made bread and cakes for Boardwalk hotels now employs 120 and occupies an entire city block at Mediterranean and New York Avenues. All of the casino hotels use Ginsburg's baked goods. The bread is also sold in six supermarket chains in the area. And eight regional distributors put the bread on grocery shelves as far away as Flordia and California. In the 20 years Mr. Mulloy has owned the bakery, Ginsburg's three Israeli-made, natural gas-fired Thermatron ovens have never grown cold. ''There were some bad years when the business went up and down,'' said Mr. Mulloy, who owned a delicatessen in Philadelphia and ''raised four sons on corned beef specials.'' He bought the bakery from the Ginsburgs with a partner in 1979 partly because of its Jewish rye bread. ''Even in Philadelphia, where you could get all the good Jewish rye you wanted, my customers would rave about the Ginsburg rye. For some of them, before the casinos opened up, it was the only reason to go to Atlantic City.'' Two years later, after moving to the area, Mr. Mulloy bought out his partner and turned over the management of the bakery to his sons -- John, 33; Michael, 32; Dan, 30; and Chris, 29 -- who learned the peculiar difficulties of doing business with a casino industry whose buyers can be notoriously fickle and take four months to pay their bills. An attempt to sell the bread through a retail storefront failed, he said, when ''tourists just couldn't find us.''''There were other times when we didn't think we'd make it,'' Mr. Mulloy said. ''But, as locations go, this one has been very good to us.'' The plant uses no milk ingredients in its dough and is inspected yearly by a panel of local rabbis who assure that its preparation techniques and products are in accordance with Jewish dietary laws. Beyond saying that his plant uses about 75 tons of flour each week, Mr. Mulloy would not disclose how much bread his bakery produces, or how much sales decrease during Passover. ''But there is enough of a downturn for us to use the holiday to make improvements to the plant,'' he said. Ginsburg's has just begun a $1.5 million renovation ''that will just make us a little bit more efficient'' -- in time for September, when the demand for chalah peaks at Rosh Hashanah.

2000: Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary delivered the first public lecture sponsored by the John Cardinal O'Connor Distinguished Chair in Hebrew and Sacred Scripture at St. Joseph's Seminary.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/features/pilgrims_progress_new_yorks_jews

2001: In “Transformed on the Trail of the Patriarchs” published today Richard Bernstein reviewed Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feller.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/04/books/books-of-the-times-transformed-on-the-trail-of-the-patriarchs.html?searchResultPosition=4

2001: Today “mortar fire wounded an Israeli baby in the Gaza Strip and the Israelis retaliated by shelling…”

2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): 8th day of Pesach and 7th day of the Omer

2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): During Operation Defensive Shield a member of the Israel Border Police was killed by terrorists when they went to arrest a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade at Hebron.

2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): “Rachel Charhi, 36, of Bat-Yam, critically injured in a suicide bombing in a cafe on the corner of Allenby and Bialik streets in Tel-Aviv on March 30, died of her wounds. Some 30 others were injured in the attack. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility.”

2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): During Operation Defensive Shield Border Police Supt. Patrick Pereg, 30, of Rosh Ha'ayin, head of operations in an undercover unit, was killed Thursday while attempting to arrest a wanted member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): During Operation Defensive Shield Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Einan Sharabi, 32, of Rehovot; Lt. Nissim Ben-David, 22, of Ashdod; and St.-Sgt. Gad Ezra, 23, of Bat-Yam were killed today.

2003: After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival six months ago “Phone Booth” an urban horror film directed by Joel Schumacher, produced by David Zucker and written by Larry Cohen was released in the United States today.

2004: “Itche Goldberg, who turns 100 today, is the editor of Yiddishe Kultur, one of the last Yiddish literary journals” which has been a voice of Yiddish creativity since it was established in 1938” and for which Mr. Goldberg, who lives on the Upper West Side, has been the editor for 40 year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/nyregion/neighborhood-report-lower-east-side-voice-after-100-years-still-dreaming-corned.html?searchResultPosition=7

2005(24th of Adar II, 5765):  Edward Bronfman, Canadian financier and philanthropist passed away at the age of 77.  Part of “the other Bronfmans” to distinguish him and his brother from the more famous Edgar Bronfman family, Edward Bronfman amassed business holdings valued at $80 million.  His generosity and in recognition of his other contributions to the civic good earned Bronfman  the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

2006: Eightieth birthday of Sami Rohr.

2006: “While turning the pages of The Miami Herald” Sami Rohr “was surprised by a large advertisement announcing a new literary award” – The Sami Rohr Prize – that his three children had created without his knowledge to honor him. “It’s the largest prize of its kind in North America, in terms of the amount,” and gives “authors an opportunity to take time off to pursue their craft’” which furthered Rohr’s desire “to make sure that Jewish literature would thrive for generations.”

 

2006: Paula Abdul filed a report at a Hollywood police station claiming she had been a victim of battery at a private party…"According to Abdul, the man at the party argued with her, grabbed her by the arm and threw her against a wall," L.A.P.D. Lt. Paul Vernon said. "She said she had sustained a concussion and spinal injuries

2006:The Justice Ministry confirmed that Yona Metzger would not be able to continue as chief rabbi if the dayanim Appointment Committee disqualifies him from serving as a judge in the High Rabbinic Court

2006: In, “With Yoga, Comedy and Parties, Synagogues Entice Newcomers,” published today Michel Luo reports on the development of Jewish outreach programs

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/nyregion/04synagogue.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

2007: New Mexico’s Bosque Redondo State Monument, a site commemorating “The Long Walk” hosts the traveling exhibition “Anne Frank: A History for Today.”

2007: “A little over three weeks after Robert “Bob” Levinson was arrested, an article today by Iranian state-run PressTV stated that he "has been in the hands of Iranian security forces since the early hours of March 9" and "authorities are well on the way to finishing the procedural arrangements that could see him freed in a matter of days". The same article explained that it was established that Levinson's trip to Kish "was purely that of a private businessman looking to make contact with persons who could help him make representations to official Iranian bodies responsible for suppressing trade in pirated products which is a major concern of his company.”

2007: An exhibition styled “Landmarks” presented by students of the Jewelry and Fashion department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design comes to a close.

2007916thof Nisan, 5767): Second Day of Pesach.

2007: Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehinten, the ranking Republican on the House (of Representatives) Foreign Affairs Committee “stated at a Congressional Hearing” that “‘Jews who were born in Arab countries have lost their resources, their homes, their heritage, and their heritage sites.’” During these same hearings, Irwin Cotler, a member of the Canadian Parliament and a former Justice minister argued that “’the rights for Jewish refugees from Arab countries have to a party of any peace process if tht peace process is to have any integrity.’”

2007: Today “a little over three weeks after Robert Levinson was arrested, an article by Iranian state-run PressTV stated that he "has been in the hands of Iranian security forces since the early hours of March 9" and "authorities are well on the way to finishing the procedural arrangements that could see him freed in a matter of days

2008: The Youth Department of Congregation Beth Judea holds a special Friday Evening Shabbat Service led by the Kadinkers, the Kadima and the members of USY.  The service is preceded by a traditional kosher dinner.  Founded in 1969, the synagogue is in Long Grove, Il and serves families located in nearby Wheeling and Buffalo Grove.  Its website provides an on-line entry into the world of synagogue music.http://www.bethjudea.org/

2008: Army radio reported that Palestinian militants had opened fire on farmers working in the fields of Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, near Gaza. Thirty of the fieldworkers being shot at were volunteers from kibbutzim from different parts of Israel who had come to aid their counterparts at Ein Hashlosha, which has been the target of repeated sniper attacks

2008: Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida announced today that sniper fire from Hamas' military wing, which wounded Public Security Minister Avi Dichter's bureau chief near Gaza, was in fact aimed at the minister himself.

2008: The city of Montreal stated it planned to allow demolition of the building that housed Bens De Luxe Delicatessen and Restaurant originally opened by Ben and Fanny Kravitz in 1908.

2009(10thof Nisan, 5769): In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at Temple Judah, the Traditional Saturday morning minyan celebrates Shabbat Hagadol

2009: Eighty-four year old actress Maxine Cooper Gomberg, the wife of screenwriter and producer Sy Gomberg passed away today.

https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-maxine-cooper15-2009apr15-story.html

2009:Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv hosts the city's Centennial Opening Gala. A showcase for top Israeli and International artists, the event includes an impressive 360-degree audiovisual display and performances by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Israeli Opera.

2009: Retired American soccer play Daniel Jacob "Dan" Calichman “was honored by the Galaxy in a pre-game match ceremony.”

2009:Several hours after IDF soldiers killed two Palestinian terrorists who were trying to plant a bomb along the Gaza border fence, Border Police forces killed a terrorist who tried to carry out a shooting attack at their base in the Negev this afternoon

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently published paperback edition of One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict by Benny Morris, “the father of Israel’s ‘new historians’” who “was convinced by the failed 2000 Camp David summit that Israel could do nothing to make Arab Muslims agree to its existence as a Jewish state” and “ now sees the two-state solution as a fantasy” while rejecting  “the so-called one-state solution as a call for Israel’s elimination.”

2010: “Tulane University President Scott Cowen receives the Times-Picayune Loving.”

http://www.nola.com/living/index.ssf/2010/04/tulane_university_president_sc.html

2011: Larry Page “officially became chief executive of Google.”

2011: A revival production of “The House of Blue Leaves” starring Ben Stiller began its preview performances at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

2011: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Leo Baeck Institute are scheduled to present a rare interview with Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek as part of a program entitled “Rechnitz: Austria's Dirty Little Secret.”

2011:SheshBesh - The Arab-Jewish Ensemble of the IPO – is scheduled to perform in New York City.

2011:La Rafle,” a film described as “a European Schindler’s List” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2011(29thof Adar II, 5711): Actor Juliano Mer-Kham was gunned down in Jenin.

http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=215116

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-actor-juliano-mer-khamis-shot-dead-in-jenin-1.354044

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/apr/11/juliano-mer-khamis-obituary

2011(29thof Adar II, 5711): Fifty-one year old John Adler who “was a U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 3rd congressional district, serving from 2009 until 2011” passed away today.

2011(29thof Adar II, 5711): Ninety year old William Prussoff  “a pharmacologist at the Yale School of Medicine who, with a colleague, developed an effective component in the first generation of drug cocktails used to treat AIDS” passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/health/research/07prusoff.html

2011(29thof Adar II): Anniversary of the giving of the first commandment to the Jewish people. “Shortly before sundown on the 29th of Adar, G-d commanded Moses regarding the mitzvah of sanctifying the crescent new moon and establishing a lunar calendar. This is the first mitzvah the Jews were given as a nation.”

2011:Dirar Abu Sisi was Hamas's leading missile developer according to an indictment filed today at the Beersheba District Court.

2011:The Lehi considered killing Winston Churchill, The Telegraph reported today, citing declassified MI5 files. Eliyahu Bet-Zuri, a member of the underground group during the time of the British mandate, reportedly suggested in November 1944 that Lehi, or Stern Gang, members fly to London to kill the prime minister and force the British out of Mandatory Palestine, sparking concern in MI5 that Jewish extremists might try to assassinate foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, as well. "As soon as [Bet-Zuri] returned to Stern Group headquarters, he proposed to suggest a plan for the assassination of highly placed British political personalities, including Mr. Churchil, for which purpose eimssaries should be sent to London," a sources within the Lehi told Major James Robertson from MI5's Middle East section. Four months later, Bet-Zuri was executed in Cairo for assassinating Lord Moyne, the British Minister in the Middle East.

2011:Requests from charities around the country for food aid packages to help feed the country’s growing needy population have nearly doubled this year compared to last year, Israel’s largest food bank, Leket, reported today. (As reported by Ruth Eglash)

2012: “The Kid With a Bike” is one of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2012: The Yuval Ron Ensemble is scheduled to present a program thatexplores music of the ancient biblical Hebrew, Yemenite and Babylonian musical traditions, in Manhattan, Kansas.

2012(12th of Nisan, 5772):On the 12th of Nissan, 3412, Ezra departed from the river of Ahava, for Eretz Israel. This was part of the return from the Babylonian Exile that would lead to the building of the Second Temple and the regular, public reading of the Torah.

2012: Ruth Goodman and Gabi Gabay are scheduled to lead a program of Israeli Dancing at the 92nd Street Y.

2013: A renewal contract for the “Judge Judy” television show with Judith Sheindlin in the title role extended the show through the 2016-2017 season.

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “At the Edge of the Jewish World: Central Asia’s Bukharan Jews.

2013: As part of the lecture series 'FilmTalk: The Jewish Villian', the Wiener Library is scheduled to present “Reviewing Fagin, 1948-2005”

 2013: The Jewish Theological Seminary is scheduled to host “a concert starring the Juilliard Jazz Ensemble” that “will feature the music of prominent Jewish and African American jazz composers” and “will explore the singular connections between the compositions and the cultures.”

2013: The White House will not hold a Jewish History Month event this year because of the sequester.

2013: More than 100 U.S. Jewish leaders urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make clear "Israel’s readiness to make painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of peace."

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/04/04/3123456/jewish-leaders-urge-netanyahu-to-work-with-obama-on-peace

2013: Women who recite the Mourner's Kaddish at the Western Wall will not be arrested, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said he has been assured, despite a police vow to enforce a ban.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/04/04/3123491/police-women-prohibited-from-saying-kaddish-at-western-wall

2014: Congregants at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa are scheduled to take a trip down memory lane with “Retro-Reform” Shabbat Evening Services featuring Gates of Prayer, the prayerbook which was considered ground-breaking when introduced just a few decades ago.

2014: The 12thannual Austin Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2014: “The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers” and “Aya with Wherever You Go” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2014: The Cedar Rapids Gazette is scheduled to publish a feature story about Cesare Frustaci the survivor of the Nazi ghetto in Budapest who will be the featured speaker at the upcoming Yom Hashoah Service sponsored by The Thaler Holocaust Remembrance Fund.

2014: In Spain, a Family Reunion, Centuries Later

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/travel/in-spain-a-family-reunion-centuries-later.html?hpw&rref=travel&_r=0

2014: “A Legendary Mossad Commander Steps from the Shadows” published today explores the life and times of Mike Harari.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-legendary-mossad-commander-steps-from-the-shadows/

2015: Francis J. Pruitt, the author of Faith and Courage in a Time of Trouble, “a memoir of a Belgian-Jewish girl and her family who were saved during the Nazi occupation of France through the compassion and heroism of French peasants from the southern part of the country” is scheduled to appear at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015(15thof Nisan, 5775): Eighty-two year old actor and playwright Ira Lewis passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/theater/ira-lewis-actor-and-playwright-dies-at-82.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2015(15th of Nisan, 5775):First day of Pesach coincides with observance of Shabbat.

2015(15th of Nisan, 5775):In the evening, second Seder and first counting of the Omer.

15th of Nisan, 5650 (1890):An untold number of poor New Yorkers enjoyed eating meat at their Seder tonight thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Paulina Rosendorff who had provided the funding that enabled butchers to distribute their product free of charge.

15th of Nisan, 5675(1915): The 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors who attended last night’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Y.M.H.A. which also provided a night’s lodging at the Hotel Roland are scheduled to worship at Temple Beth Israel at Lexington and 72nd Street today while the Secretary of War, the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City have been invited to attend tonight’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Young Men’s Hebrew Association for the benefit of 300 of the 8,000 Jews serving in the military which is being held at Vienna Hall on Lexington and 58thStreet.

15th of Nisan, 5677 (1917): One day after U.S. declared War on Germany, Jews gather in the synagogue to observe Pesach and Shabbat

15th of Nisan, 5705(1945): At least 58 Jews were murdered in a forest near the Austrian village of Deutsch Shuetzen, in what would come to be called the Deutsch Shuetzen Massacre while in the evening, members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8th Army serving in Italy took part in a Seder at Faenza.

15th of Nisan, 5725(1965):  While Jews in the Soviet struggled to deal with a shortage of Matzah created by the government refusal to let state bakeries prepare adequate supplies of unleavened bread Rabbis in America were encouraged to deliver sermons that related the themes of Pesach with fight for Civil Rights complete with references to the recent voting rights march in Selma.

15th of Nisan, 5728(1968): For the first time, Pesach is observed in a unified Jerusalem

2016: “In Search of Israeli Cuisine” and “Are You Joking?/ The Plagues” are scheduled to be shown at the Hartford, CT, Jewish Film Fest.

2016: Today, Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the Chicago Bulls “was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor.

2016: “Aliyah Dada” and “The Prime Ministers II: Soldiers and Peacemakers” are scheduled to be shown today at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2017: Publication of Survivor: A Portrait of the Survivors of the Holocaust by Harry Borden

2017: In Des Moines, The Iowa Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host a luncheon featuring three Israelis – Sandee Illouz, the founder and director of EREZ College Shlomi; Noa Kali of the Kadar Center for Innovative Learning Approches and Yoram Poslinsky, the director of the community Center Network in Akko and the found of the Rosh Pinnna Music School and Orchestra.

2018(19thof Nisan, 5778): Fifth Day of Pesach

2018: In Memphis, TN, Rabbi Feivel Strauss is scheduled to focus on Jesus as part of the Great Jewish Renegades series.

2018: In Jerusalem, The Tower of David is scheduled to host a public reading of “Young David and the Pitcher.

2018: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host the NYC premiere screen of “GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II,” a documentary ‘Directed by Lisa Ades, Produced by Amanda Bonavita, and Written by Maia Harris” that tells the story of the more than half a million Jewish Americans “who served in WW II.”

2018: “Remember Baghdad,” “an exploration of the rich Jewish life and culture that had flourished in Iraq before the events of the 20th and early 21st centuries dramatically changed the course of the country – and the fate of its Jews” and “The Outer Circle,” “a portrait of four generations of the Fattals as they gather for their annual feast in Mama’s house on Rosh Hashanah” are scheduled to be shown at the CCA Glasgow, in Glasgow, Scotland.

2019: Funeral services were held today at the Lincoln Square Synagogue for seventy-seven year Cantor Sherwood Goffin followed by burial at the Cedar Park Cemetery in Paramus, NJ.

http://sherwoodgoffin.com/

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to present a lecture by Holocaust survivor Susan Warsinger as part of its “First Person Series.”

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final screenings of “Humor Me” co-starring Elliot Gould.

2019: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a screening of “The City Without Jews,” a film based on the Hugo Bettauer novel.

2019: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “British Jews Go Pop” during which Nathan Abrams, a Professor in Film at Bangor University in Wales “shed light on how Jews transformed the British entertainment industries, creating some of the most iconic characters and images of the 20th century including James Bond, Doctor Who, Carry On and so many others.”

2019: As The Kinneret continued its rise following an extended period of draught, for the first time today’s forecast only calls for season temperatures under partly cloudy skies with no rain.

2019: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to co-host a book launch of A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in Americawith the author Kirsten Fermaglich.

2020(10thof Nisan, 5780): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol;

2010(10thof Nisan, 5780): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrzeit of Rabbi Aaron of Neustadt “who was martyred in Vienna.” (Abraham Bloch)

2020: “Anne Germanacos of S.F. indie Jewish community The Kitchen” is scheduled to lead “a casual discussion on Zoom on the events of the day.”

2020: Because of emergency regulations approved two days ago by the cabinet naming Bnei Brak a “restricted zone” due to its high rate of infections residents of the city observe Shabbat in a state of lockdown which means that “police will prevent in or out of the city.”

2021(22ndof Nisan, 5781): Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor

https://www.crescentcityjewishnews.com/yizkor/

2021: The New York Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive by Carl Zimmer

2021: The Mimouna Project is scheduled to present “The International Mimouna: Jews & Muslims:which is The Story of Neighbors in Morocco.”

2021: Kol Hadash, a community for Humanistic Judaism, is scheduled to host a Holocaust survivor from the JFCS William J. Lowenberg Speakers Bureau talking about her experiences in the Netherlands and beyond.

2021: Temple Beth Avodah is scheduled to host “The Great Afikoman Hunt.”

2021: Israelis awoke to a slightly more unstable world this morning following yesterday’s thwarting of an attempted coup in neighboring Jordan.

2021: New England Yachad is scheduled to present online “Rayim Lounge Night.”

 

 

This Day, April 5, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 5

855: Today, in what is now part of the state of Israel,“at the banks of the Auja River, Abu'l-Abbas ibn al-Muwaffaq fought against Khumarawayh ibn Ahmad ibn Tulun in the Battle of Tawahin ("The Mills").”

1291: Muslim forces began the siege of Acre, the last Crusader stronghold.  Today, this site, Akko, is back in the control of the true titleholders, the people of People of Israel who were more often than not victims during the centuries dominated by the Crusades.

1419: Sixty-nine year old Vincent Ferrer, the Dominican Friar who used dubious means to force Jews to convert to Catholicism and helped to sow the seeds of anti-Semitism in Spain passed away today. Among the leaders who sought to provide the Jews with the intellectual support to fight this period of darkness was Isaac ben Jacob Canapton, the Spanish rabbi who lived from 1360 to 1463 and wrote A Methodology of the Talmud. (The Catholic Church saw fit to canonize the priest)

1464: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Seville, Spain.

1508: Birthdate of Ecrole II d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara to whom the Ferrara Bible, a 1553 publication of the Ladino version of the Tanach used by Sephardi Jews was dedicated,

1533: In an effort to stop the Inquisition, Pope Clement VII issued the Bulla de Perdao which was essentially a pardon for all past offenses. This was supposed to help the News Christians living in Portugal. Unfortunately, the pope died a few years later and the Inquisition was officially established.

 

1558: Birthdate of Philosopher Thomas Hobbes who discussed the nature and source of the canonized Biblical texts in Chapter 33 of his seminal work, The Leviathan.

 

1566:  Two hundred Netherlands noblemen, led by Hendrik van Brederode, force their way into the presence of Margaret of Parma and present the Petition of Compromise which denounces the Inquisition in the Netherlands. The Inquisition was suspended and a delegation was sent to Spain to petition Philip II.(Ed note:  This should provide further explanation of the reasons for the rise of the Jewish community in the Netherlands and ultimately in the United States)

 

1568: Batpism of Maffeo Barberini who has Pope Urban VIII “ended the custom according to which a Jew, upon enter the pontiff’s presence was expected to kiss the Holy Father’s foot.”  All that he required was that the Jew kiss the spot on the floor where the Pope’s foot had stood. (As reported in The Sword of Constantine, page 384)

 

1649: Birthdate of Elihu Yale who took a Jewish wife while serving in India and fathered a child with her.  [And you thought the only Jewish connection was the group of Hebrew letters on the crest of Yale University.]

 

1697: King Charles XI of Sweden, in whose presence Israel Mandel, Moses Jacobs and the 28 members of their families were baptized in Stockholm as a pre-condition for being able to do business in Sweden, passed away today.

1697:): King Charles XII who “incurred substantial debts with Jewish and Muslim merchants” while supply his army that was fighting in Bessarabia which led to several Muslim and Jewish creditors arriving in Sweden which led to Swedish law being altered to allow them to hold religious services and circumcise their sons began his rule as King of Sweden today.

 

1721(8th of Nisan): Rabbi Benjamin Zev, author Ir Binyamin, passed away today

1757: Sir Alexander Schomberg, the son of Meyer Löw Schomberg a German-Jewish doctor who settled in England, and who was able to pursue a naval career only after converting so he could comply with The Test Act was promoted to the rank of captain today after which he eventually took command of the HMS Diana, and “played a distinguished part in the taking of the fortress at Louisburg during the Seven Years War.

1760(19thof Nisan, 5520): Centenarian Isaac Ḥayyim de Brito Abendana:Ḥakam of the Portuguese community in Amsterdam, who “published "Sermão Exhortatoria," in 1753 passed away today.

 

1775: Pope Pious VI issued the “Editto sopra gli ebrei,” a proclamation that reinstituted all former anti-Jewish legislation. The proclamation included forty-four clauses prohibiting the possession of Talmudic writings, erection of gravestones, forbidding Jews from passing the night outside the ghetto, under pain of death, and more. The regulations were in effect until the arrival of Napoleon army 25 years later.

1791: English native Esther Cohen and German native Michael Hart who were married in Philadelphia in 1787 gave birth to Henry S. Hart.

 

1795(16thof Nisan, 5555): 2nd day of Pesach

 

1795(16thof Nisan, 5555): After having been arrested as an Austrian spy, accused of corruption and bribery” Moses Dobruschka was sent to the guillotine.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Dobruschka-Schonfeld_Family

 

1800(10thof Nisan, 5560: Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol observed for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.

 

1804: Birthdate of German botanist Matthias Jakob Schleiden

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40385773?sid=21106334574703&uid=4&uid=2

 

1812: In Stuttgart, Germany, Sheinle Ephraim and Isaac Samuel Wormser gave birth to Lewis Wormser Harris the successful Irish financier who served as Lord Mayor of Dublin and President of the Dublin Hebrew Congregation.

 

1822(14th of Nisan, 5582):Ta'anit Bechorot

1822: In York Place Queens Elm, Sophia and Nathaniel Levy gave birth to Ellen Levy.

1822(14th of Nisan, 5582): Rabbi Benjamin Zev of Zabrocz , Poland, passed away in Tiberias. (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)

1824: In London, Ellen Rice Jacobs and Gabriel Simmons gave birth to Mark George Simmons, the husband of Caroline Lazarus with whom he had nine children.

1824: The brit of Lewis Levy, the son of Joseph Levy and the former Hanna Isaacs took place on Holywell Street which may have been the same street described as “19th-century London’s epicentre of erotica and smut.”

https://publicdomainreview.org/2016/06/29/the-secret-history-of-holywell-street-home-to-victorian-londons-dirty-book-trade/

1825(17th of Nisan, 5585): Third Day of Pesach observed exactly one month and one day after John Quincy Adams’ inauguration as the 6th President of the United States.

1830, “In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, Thomas Macaulay spoke eloquently in favor of Robert Grant's bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities. Alluding to but not actually naming, Nathan Rothschild (who had financed the Allied armies ranged against Napoleon), Macaulay noted that "as things now stand, a Jew may be the richest man in England.... The influence of a Jew may be of the first consequences in a war which shakes Europe to the centre," and yet the Jews have no legal right to vote or to sit in Parliament. "Three hundred years ago they had no legal right to the teeth in their heads." If some members of the House thought it indecent of Macaulay to dredge up this nasty old business about King John extracting gold teeth from Jewish heads, certain opponents of Jewish Emancipation found it still much the best policy. According to J. A. Froude, his biographer, Thomas Carlyle, standing in front of Rothschild's great house at Hyde Park Corner, exclaimed: "I do not mean that I want King John back again, but if you ask me which mode of treating these people to have been nearest to the will of the Almighty about them--to build them palaces like that, or to take the pincers for them, I declare for the pincers." Carlyle even fancied himself in the role of a Victorian King John, with Baron Rothschild at his mercy: "Now, Sir, the State requires some of these millions you have heaped together with your financing work. 'You won't? Very well'--and the speaker gave a twist with his wrist--'Now will you?'--and then another twist till the millions were yielded." Although Macaulay was a liberal, he did not speak for all liberals, some of whom stood much closer to Carlyle on the Jewish question. One of these was Thomas Arnold, the famous headmaster of Rugby and intellectual leader of the liberal or Broad Church branch of the Church of England. Arnold set himself against conservatism as the most dangerously revolutionary of principles: "there is nothing so unnatural and so convulsive to society as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress." (4) When John Henry Newman, leader of the Anglo-Catholic (or "High") branch of the Church of England, declared that liberalism was "the enemy," and that by liberalism he meant "the Anti-dogmatic Principle," Arnold was among the principal culprits he had in mind, particularly "some free views of Arnold about the Old Testament."

But Arnold's preference of improvement to preservation and of free views to dogma drew up short where the Jews were concerned. He might excoriate the High Church party for having, throughout English history, opposed improving measures of any kind; but he shared with his Anglo-Catholic adversaries the conviction that Christianity must be the law of the land. In 1834 (a year after the Jewish Emancipation Bill had been passed by the Commons but rejected by the Lords) Arnold insisted that he "must petition against the Jew Bill" because it is based on "that low Jacobinical notion of citizenship, that a man acquires a right to it by the accident of his being littered inter quatuor maria [on the nation's soil] or because he pays taxes." That indelicate word "littered" suggests that Arnold's opposition to Jewish emancipation was not purely doctrinal, but had a strong admixture of compulsive nastiness (or worse).

1831: Peter Simeon, the husband of the former Sarah Rees and father of James, Michael and David Simeon was buried today.

1832: Ellis Abrahams married Rachel Hyams today at the New Synagogue.

1833(16thof Nisan, 5593): Second Day of Pesach

1833: As the Jews observed the first day of the Omer, President Andrew Jackson wrote to Andrew Jackson, Jr. who was raised by Jackson as his own son although he was really the nephew of his wife Rachel

1844(16thof Nisan, 5604): Second Day of Pesach

1844: As the Jews observed the first day of the Omer, President John Tyler, the first Vice President to have become President due to the death of the incumbent, issued a proclamation giving U.S. Secretary of State John C. Calhoun to meet with emissaries from the Republic of Texas to discuss the possible annexation of Texas which today is the home to approximately 175,000 Jews.

1847(19thof Nisan, 5607): Fifth Day of Pesach

1847(19thof Nisan, 5607): Seventy-three-year-old John Moss, the London born son of Joseph Moss and the husband Pennsylvania native Rebecca Lyons whom he married in 1797 and with whom he had nine children passed away today in Philadlphia.

1849: The Sons of Israel held its fifth meeting today where it is decided to buy a seal which will not cost more than five dollars.

1850: The Danish King implemented a law that allowed foreign Jews to settle in Denmark

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Iceland.html

1859: In England, John and Alice Watchorn gave birth to Robert Watchorn, the Immigration Commissioner who in 1907attended a Seder at Ellis Island in 1907 where he gave “a speech dealing with the right of every man in this country to worship God according to his own conviction and pointing out that a man who served God was sure to make a good citizen.

1860: According to reports published today Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, “editor of the Cincinnati Israelite, has written to several Senators to caution them against the repetition of any clause in the Chinese treaty similar to that in the treaty with Switzerland, which debars the Jews from enjoying the privileges of other American citizens.”

1860: In New York, the Assembly passed a bill “to amend the charter of the Hebrew Benevolent Society”.

1860: In New York, the Assembly passed a bill “to amend the charter of the Cemetery Association of” B’nai Jeshurun.

 

1861: An article published today entitled “What Made Him Sick” described the desperate financial condition of the Ottomans whose creditors include Jews who left the government undisclosed amounts of money.  [During its last century of existence, Westerners referred to the Ottoman Empire as “the sick man of Europe.’]

1862: In Beerfelden, Germany, Simon Buttenwieser and Bella Saalheimer gave birth to Moses Buttenweiser, the holder of a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University and husband of Ellen Clune who after teaching and writing in his native land became “Professor of Exegesis at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1863(16thof Nisan, 5623): Second Day of Pesach

1865: In Boston, MA, Clara Ballin and William Filene, the founder Filene’s department store gave birth to Abraham Lincoln Filene who took over the family business with his brother Edward and was a supporter of the New Deal and who along with his wife and their daughters Helen and Catherine was known for his philanthropic work

1865: In Zatos, Austria, “Jacob and Rosie (Getreider) Farber gave birth to Prague trained Rabbi Rudolph Farber who in 1895 came to the United States where he wed Etta Crocker, the mother of his 3 children – Bertram, Arnold and Nettye Heyman – and served congregations in Texarkana, Los Angeles and Chicago while serving as an editor of the Jewish Occident and the American Hebrew News.

1866(20thof Nisan, 5626): Sixth Day of Pesach

1866: In Franklin, PA, Morris Ullman, the German born son of Judith and Leopold Ullman and Lenche Ullman gave birth to Monroe A. Ullman, the Cleveland educated businessman who was a partner of Leopold Einstein and the husband of Florence Fuld of Albany, NY.

1868(13th of Nisan, 5628): Aaron Stix, the German born son of Deborah Cohen and Solomon Stix and the husband of Hannah Rice with whom he had four children – Carrie, Charles, Harry and Rachel – passed away to today in Cincinnati, OH.

1870(14th of Nisan, 5631):Ta'anit Bechorot

1870: Today the Sultan Abdul Aziz issued a firman that allocated the "Alliance Israelite Universelle" 2600 dunams of land east of Jaffa for the establishment of a school of agriculture and also granted permission for importing all kinds of tools and machinery free of taxes and customs. As Ben Gurion, said: "I doubt that the Israeli dream would have been realized if the farm school of Mikveh Israel had not existed."1871(14th of Nisan, 5631): As the Jews of Newark, New Jersey, begin the celebration of Passover this evening, it is estimated that they will consume 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of matzoth during the eight days of the holiday.1872: In Mogilev, Mordechai Yithak, “a commissioner of military clothing” and his wife gave birth to David Pinski, the Yiddish playwright who pursued his career in Warsaw, Berlin and New York before making Aliyah in 1949 after the creation of the State of Israel.

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

https://digifindingaids.cjh.org/?pID=1522286

1874: Charles Isaacs, the husband of Deborah Isaacs with whom he had had seven children was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1875: In Louisville, KY, “Isaac and Rose (Sale) Lieber gave birth to St. Louis educated businessman, Leslie Lieber, the husband of Rosalie Dillenberg with whom he had two children – David and Dorothy – who left F. Smith and Son in 1898 to become vice president of Haas-Lieber Grocery County.

1878: Today, a week before his 22nd birthday Rabbi Benjamin Baruch Guth, the Hungarian born son of Frank and Juliane Guth who was the “founder of the Jewish Center of the East Side” and a member of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of U.S. and Canada married Jennette Roth.

1881: Two days after she had passed away, 44 year old Hannah Moses, the Middlesex born daughter of Isaac Moses and Ann Aarons and wife of Louis Goldschmidt with whom she had two children – Therese and Annette – was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1882(16th of Nisan, 5642): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1882(16th of Nisan, 5642): German born rabbi and educator Max Lilienthal passed away in Cincinnati, Ohio. After a successful career in Europe, “Lilienthal left Russia suddenly in 1844 and went to the United States. Settling in New York, he became rabbi of the Congregation Anshe Chesed, Norfolk street and, later, rabbi of Shaar ha-Shomayim,. His somewhat advanced views led to considerable friction. He resigned his position in 1850 and established an educational institute with which he attained considerable success. In 1854 he became correspondent of the "American Israelite," and in the following year removed to Cincinnati and became associate editor of that journal and rabbi of the Congregation Bene Israel. His activity in Cincinnati extended over a period of twenty-seven years. He organized the Rabbinical Literary Association, serving as its president, and was at first instructor and later professor of Jewish history and literature at Hebrew Union College. He was prominent, also, in the Jewish press as the founder and editor of the "Hebrew Review," a quarterly, and the "Sabbath-School Visitor," a weekly, and as a frequent contributor to the "Israelite," the "Occident,""Deborah" (founded by him), the "Asmonean,""Volksblatt," and "Volksfreund." He published a volume of poems entitled "Freiheit, Frühling und Liebe" (1857), several volumes of addresses and sermons, and left three dramas in manuscript—"Die Strelitzen Mutter,""Rudolf von Habsburg," and "Der Einwanderer."Lilienthal took an active interest in the affairs of the municipality. As member of the Cincinnati board of education, and as director of the Relief Union and of the university board, he contributed much to the welfare of his adopted city. He was a reformer by nature; he was instrumental in introducing reforms in his own congregation in Cincinnati, constantly preached tolerance, and urged a more liberal interpretation of Jewish law.”

1885: In Kletkx, successful flour millowner Hyman Cohen and Anna Rosofsky  gave birth Fannia Cohen 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

1890(15th of Nisan, 5650): First Day of Pesach

1890: Three days after he had passed away, 27 year old Percy Michols, the son of Rebecca Montefiore and Horatio Lucas Michols was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1891: In Paris, Alfred Dreyfus, the most famous Jew to serve in the French Army and Lucie Eugénie Hadamard gave birth to Pierre Léon Dreyfus, the husband of Marie Apllonie Dreyfus.

1892: In Pennsylvania, Minna and Rabbi Louis Levinthal gave birth to University of Pennsylvania trained attorney Judge Louis E. Levinthal, the huband of Lenore Levinthal and father of Sylvia and Cyrus Levinthal,“who was special adviser for Jewish affairs to Gen. Lucius D. Clay and the postwar European Command in 194748.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/19/archives/louis-levinthal-84-led-zionists-in-40s.html

1895: “Bequests by Bernhard Bernhard” published today included a partial list of those benefiting from his generosity including the Hebrew Benevolent Association, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Home for the Aged and Infirm Hebrews and the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids each of which received $150 and the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews which received $100. 

1896(22ndof Nisan, 5656): Eighth and final day of Pesach with ceremonies that include Yizkor.

1896(22ndof Nisan 5656): Seventy-three year old Leopold Pick, the husband of Sofie Sara Pick passed away today in Vienna.

1896: Rabbis Gottheil, Silverman and Sparger will officiate at the funeral of Leonard Friedman who died last week in New Jersey. Edward Lauterbach will deliver the graveside address.

1896: Dr. Joseph Silverman spoke today at Temple Emanu El on “Passover and Easter; a Comparative Study.”

1896: “Solomon’ Song” published today contains a detailed review of Elbert Hubbard’s study of the biblical book entitled The Song of Songs, Which Is Solomon’s

1896: Using information that first appeared in The American Hebrew, “Error in the Jewish Calendar” published today described a lecture “delivered under the auspices of the Graetz College in Philadelphia on ‘The Jewish Calendar’ in which Dr. Cyrus Adler called attention to an error in the calendar” which was first “promulgated by Hillel II” in or around 350 C.E.

1897: Reverend Lyman Abbott of Plymouth Church addressed an event hosted by the Jewish Alliance in the Assembly Hall of Temple Emanu El

1898: Three days after she had passed away, 28 year old Katie Myers, the wife of Albert Myers was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1898: Birthdate of Russian native and WW I Irving Norman Chayken who in 1908 came to the United States where he became a jeweler and B’nai B’rith in Hammond, IN.

https://outlet.historicimages.com/products/rsk61503

1899: Dr. Lee K. Frankel of Philadelphia accepted the offer to serve as the manager of United Hebrew Charities of New York City succeeding N.S. Rosenau who had resigned from the position last February due to poor health.

1899: “Real Estate Exemption” published today described Assemblyman Green’s efforts to gain a property tax exemption for the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of New York City.

1900(6th of Nisan, 5660); Yahartzeit of Rabbi and Talmudist Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen who passe away 1597(5357).

1900: Birthdate of Spencer Tracy, the non-Jewish actor who starred as the American judge who would not bow to popular will and release Nazis in “Judgement at Nuremberg,” the 1961 film with a script by Abby Mann and produced and directed by Stanley Kramer.

1901:  In Macon, GA, Lena Priscilla (née Shackelford), a Protestant Mayflower descendant and Edouard Gregory Hesselberg, a Jewish concert pianist and composer gave birth to Melvyn Hesselberg who gained fame as actor Melvyn Douglas who wrote in his autobiography See You at the Moviesthat he was unaware of his Jewish background until later in his youth: "I did not learn about the non-Christian part of my heritage until my early teens," as his parents preferred to hide his Jewish heritage.”

Douglas gained a different kind of fame when his wife Helen Gagahan Douglas ran against Richard Nixon for U.S. Senator in 1950.  Nixon and his allies combined her liberal politics with his Judaism to create the specter of the Jewish/Communist Conspiracy.  The fact that Douglas had changed his name was considered evidence of the conspiracy. "Californians can do one thing very soon to further the ideals of Christian nationalism, and this is not to send to the Senate the wife of a Jew."  Douglas died at the age of 80 in 1981 just before the appearance of his final film, Ghost Story.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/05/obituaries/melvyn-douglas-dead-actor-80-won-2-oscars.html

1901: Birthdate of old NYU trained lawyer Joseph Gershman who “was a past president of the Educational Alliance, treasurer of the Jewish Education Committee” and “a founder with Herman Wouk of the Fire Island Synagogue” passed away today in Beth Israel Hospital.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/12/09/78547297.html?pageNumber=55

1901: In Detroit, a site was chosen at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Eliot Street was purchased on which would be built a new Temple for Congregation Beth El.

1901: Birthdate of Boston native and Harvard trained Dentist Lewis Julius Danovitch.

1902(27th of Adar II, 5662): Parashat Shmini; Shabbat HaChodesh

1902: It was reported today that “the House Committee on Foreign Affairs” has “directed favorable report on the resolution of Representative Goldfogle of New York asking the State Department for information as to the alleged exclusion of American Jews from Russia.”

1902: Charles Frohman, the Jewish producer from Ohio, “has made another hit in Detrichstein’s farce ‘All on Account of Eliza,’ which has been received with acclaim at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

1902: “The Jew as a Patriot” published today provided a review of Peter’s The Jew in Politics which includes chapters that “trace the part taken by the Jew in the early American wars,” in the Civil War and “in the Spanish war in which 4,000 Jews participated.”

1903: In Maciejowice, Poland, Rabbi Mendel of the Warka Hasidic dynasty and his wife gave birth to Ita Kalish.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kalish-ita

1904(20th of Nisan, 5664): Sixth Day of Pesach

1904: Birthdate of Bronx native Pincus “Pinky” Silverberg who gained fame Flyweight Champion “Young Silverberg.”

1905: Two days after he had passed away, Alfred Benjamin Baumann, the husband of the former Priscilla Isaacs and father of Rebecca, Benjamin, John James and Adela Baumann was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1905: The announcement of the engagement of journalist and former cigar worker Rose Pastor to prominent Protestant philanthropist James Graham Phelps Stokes caused a media sensation.

1905: Birthdate of Elias Pichney, the native of Fostov, Ukraine the husband of former Dora Werthman and father of Joel, who was the field secretary of the National Jewish Welfare Board and “the co-founder of Social Workers for a Sane Nuclear Policy.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1981/08/29/251193.html?pageNumber=11

https://www.jta.org/1981/09/01/archive/elias-picheny-dead-at-76

1906: In Cologne, a congregation introduced the use of an organ which led to the departure of its Orthodox members who formed a new congregation.

1907(21stof Nisan, 5667): Seventh Day of Pesach

1907: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and University of Illinois trained physician Morris Aaron Kaplan who specialized in the treatment of allergies while serving on the faculty of his alma mater and the University of Chicago.

1908: Henry Asquith became Prime Minister of Great Britain today and appointed two rising stars to his cabinet and future Prime Ministers to his cabinet – David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.  Lloyd George would be the Prime Minister whose government issued the Balfour Declaration; a document he would continue to champion during the 1920’s when such support ceased to be “fashionable.”  Churchill enjoyed the support of friendship of members of the Jewish community, supported the Balfour Declaration and was a personal friend of Chaim Weizmann.  This personal friendship did not keep Churchill from turning his back on the Zionists in the waning days of WW II.

1909: Birthdate of Art Cohn, the New York native who became a successful sports writer of the Oakland Tribune (CA) and screenwriter who died in a plane crash with his friend movie producer Mike Todd whose biography he was in the process of writing

1909: Edward Lewis, the son of the former Ann Levy, was buried today at the “Karangahape Road Cemetery” in Auckland, NZ/

1909(14thof Nisan, 5669): As Jews in Atlanta, GA sat down to their Seders, for the first time they had a choice of which matzoth to use – they could either continue with the Manischewitz or use that offered for the first time in this southern city produced by A. Goodman & Son, of New York which also offered “Berliner Tea Matzoths, Matzoth Meal, and Imported Potato Flour”  

1909(14th of Nisan, 5669): The New York Times reported that “The celebration of the Jewish festival of Pesach, or the Passover, will commence at sunset this evening and will continue among the orthodox members of the Hebrew community for eight days. The first two days and the last two days of this period are held as strict holidays on which no business should be transacted, or servile work entered upon, except such as may be considered works of necessity or charity.”

1910:  Birthdate of Chaim Grade, poet, novelist and short story writer.  Born in Vilna, Lithuania (which at that time was part of Russia), Grade gained prominence in the 1930's as a Yiddish author.  He survived the Holocaust and came to the United States after the war where he continued to write.  Two of his more famous novels are The Agunah and The Yeshiva.  In My Mother's Sabbath, Grade created a memoir praising his mother, "a pious woman, who raised her son alone and worked herself to the bone...but never forgot the holiness of the Sabbath."  Elie Wiesel described Grade as "one of the greatest, if not the greatest of contemporary Yiddish novelists."  Grade passed away on June 26, 1982.

1911:Eight hearses carried the caskets of seven unknown victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire to the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.

1912(18thof Nisan, 5672): Fourth Day of Pesach.

1912: Today B. Altman advertised “their newly equipped fireproof storage on premises at their Fifth Avenue location which are designed for “the safekiiping and care of furs, fur garments, rugs, portieres and curtains.”

1912: It was reported today that “one hundred young women, many of them this season's debutantes, will participate in the work of raising $200,000 for the Young Women's Hebrew Association building fund in the two weeks' whirlwind campaign which opens on April 10th, the day after Passover ends.

1912: Today, Dr. Heinrich Harburger, the Professor at the University of Munich and the Councilor at the Court of Appeals was appointed President of the Senate of the Supreme Court.

1913: Maimonides Kosher Hospital founded in Chicago

1913: It was reported today that there were at least five Jews, including three from Warsaw “in the deputation which presented the Czar with a million rubles in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanoff dynasty.”

1913: The celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding the Jewish Publication Society is scheduled to begin this evening after Shabbat with an “Authors Evening” “to which all the living authors who have written books for the society will be invited.”

1914:Preparations were made today for the free distribution of thousands of pounds of unleavened bread or Matzoth to needy Jewish families, for use duruing the week of the Passover, which begins on Friday night.

1914: The 24th annual convention of the Independent Order of Free Sons of Judah opened today at the Murray Hill Lyceum

1914: The New York Times Magazine features on articledescribing “the almost unrivaled collection of Jewish manuscripts found at the Jewish Theological Seminary, which, thanks to Dr. Solomon Schechter and others is surpassed only by those found at the British and Bodleian Museums.”

1915(21stof Nisan, 5675): Seventh Day of Pesach

1916: It was reported today that at least one member of the Dumas has been critical of the Russian government’s negotiations with their British ally and has demanded, among other things, that after the war Britain agree to a Joint Anglo-Russian of Palestine which unbeknownst to him would run contrary to Sykes-Picot agreement that gave Britain sole control of Palestine.

1917: Harry Hirschfeld of Ossining received permission today from the warden at Sing Sing to provide food for a seder to be attended by Alexander Shuster who is in the deathhouse and other Jewish prisoners which will be paid for by Jacob Schiff and others.

1917: The Evening Telegram published what Samuel Untermyer later said was a “fabricated” interview in which it was claimed he said he “was opposed to the United States sending young men to fight for England which has injured” the United States ‘as much as Germany has.”

1917: “The tenth annual report of the American Jewish Committee made public” today contained “a census of the Jews in the army and navy of the United States showing that there 2,953 enlisted or commissioned Jews in the regular army and navy and more than 1,000 in the National Guard at a time when the peace-time army had approximately 100,000 members.

1917: Sixteen year old Solomon Richenberg “the son of Mark and Annie Richenberg” was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1917: Birthdate of Robert Albert Blochwhowrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction. He was a contributor to pulp magazines like Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America. Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He passed away in 1994.

1917: “Professor Israel Friedlaender of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, an authority on Russian Jewry gave a statement to the press in which he expressed his disagreement with the belief of “Rabbi David Philipson of Cincinnati that the Russian Revolution will put an end to Zionism by removing the necessity for Jews to seek refuge in a State of their own to escape persecution.”

1918: In an interview given in Berlin to a representative of the Judische Rundschau, the Bulgarian Minister stated “that his government intended to press for the grant of full rights to Jews in Romania at the peace congress and promised that steps will be taken to end the mistreatment of the Bessarabian Jews.”

1918: Premier Radoslavoff of Bulgaria praises the patriotism of Jews, and pledges his

 Government will be an ally of the Jewish cause in the negotiations with Romania.

1918: The Duetschvolkische Blutter wrote “that the time has arrived to declare war on Jews openly because of their opposition to German war aims” while deputies in the Reichstag were “demanding the adoption of measures against the Jewish race which agitates for strikes and raises the price of food.”

1918: It was reported today Kiev continues to the scene of “anti-Semitic agitation” as can be by the fact that “when the city was captured by the Ukrainians most of the inhabitnts they shot were Jewish.”

1918: It was reported today “that anti-Jewish riots have occurred in Turkestan” including the city of Kokand where 300 Jews have been killed and great deal of property has been destroyed.

1919: Rabbi Joseph H. Margolies conducted services at the South Side Hebrew Congregation on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
1919(5th of Nisan, 5679): The Polish army executed 35 young Jews who had helped in the distribution of packages sent by the Joint to the Jewish community of Pinsk. They were taken from a legitimate business meeting of the Jewish Cooperative and accused of being Jewish Bolshevists. Others also arrested were told to dig their own graves and but were released.  Ironically, the relief activities of the Joint Distribution Committee were used by Russians, in the declining years of Stalin, as a pretext for their anti-Semitic charges of disloyalty against Soviet Jews.

1919: Yiddish author and Mayor of Pinsk, Moyshe Gloyberman passed away today.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2015/08/moyshe-gloyberman.html

1920(17thof Nisan, 5680): Third Day of Pesach

1920: As Arab violence in Jerusalem grew worse, “the Old City was sealed off and martial law was declared which did not put an end to the “looting, burglar, rape and murder” which makes the decision to withdraw the soldiers that night all the more inexplicable or as the Palin Report would call it “an error in judgment.

1922: “The House Without Laughter,” a silent drama produced by Lupu Pick was released in Germany today.

1923: In Frankfurt, Henri and Rosa Mandel gave birth to philosopher and economist Ernest Mandel who was a member of the Resistance in Belgium during WW II.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/22/world/ernest-mandel-72-is-dead-marxist-economist-and-writer.html

1924(1st of Nisan, 5684): Parashat Tazria; Rosh Choesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh

1924(1st of Nisan, 5684): Fifty-two year old Lithuanian born American coin designer and engraver Victor David Brenner whose “initials are pressed into the underline of Lincoln’s bicep” on the Lincoln penny, passed away today.

https://www.usacoinbook.com/encyclopedia/coin-designers/victor-d-brenner/

1925: Celebration of the 40th anniversary of the founding ofMontefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases a leading medical intuition named to honor the memory of Sir Moses Montefiore. During the observance, President Rosenbaum reviewed the history of the hospital and Dr George E. Vincent, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, delivered an address on "The Hospital and the Community."

1926: At Footgaurd Hall in Hartford, CT, flyweight Pincus “Pinky” lost his only fight by a knockout when he was “ko’d” in the third round.

1926: Birthdate of Philadelphia native Adolph Stanley Levey who gained fame as drummer Stan Levy.

https://jazztimes.com/news/drummer-stan-levey-dies/

1926:Newspaper correspondent T. Walter Williams reported that the American Zionist Commonwealth and the Palestine Securities Corporation are paying $20 a dunam (quarter of an acre) to the Arabs for land in Palestine and selling it to Jewish settlers for $100 per dunam.

1927: It was reported today that Joseph A. Koffend, a product of the Presbyterian Church’s aggressive conversation activities “wishes to go to Africa as a missionary.

1927: Municipal elections are held in Jerusalem. The election ordinance allocates four seats for Jews and eight for Arabs. Ragheb al Nashashibi is elected mayor. Deputy Mayors are Chaim Salomon and Ya'akuv Faraj (a Christian).

1930: U.S. premiere of “Ladies of Leisure” written by Jo Swerling and produced by Harry Cohn.

1931(18th of Nisan, 5691): 4thday of Pesach

1931(18th of Nisan, 5691): Twenty year old Lewis Warner, the son of Harry Warner, who had been appointed “as head of Warner Bros.” passed away today “when an infected, impacted wisdom tooth was extracted, which led to septicemia and then double pneumonia.”

1931(18th of Nisan, 5691): Seventy-nine year old Nathan Frank, passed away today.

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=F000340

1931: “Skippy,” a comedy directed by Norman Taurog, produced by Adolph Zukor, Jesse Lasky and B.P. Schulberg with a script by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sam Mintz was released today in the United States.

1933: In Washington, “William Venezky and the former Millie Ruth Bronstein, Jewish immigrants from Russia” gave birth to Melva Jane Venezky who gained fame as Melva Bucksbaum, the wife of Des Moines shopping center developer Martin Bucksbaum, who went from being president of the Des Moines Art Center board to being a nationally known art collector and curator.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/arts/design/melva-bucksbaum-art-collector-and-curator-dies-at-82.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1933: One day after he had passed away, 45 year old Romanian native Isaac Alpert, the husband of Fannie Alpert and the father of Joseph, Jacob and Harry Isaac Alpert was buried today at the “Workmen’s Circle Cemetery” in Syracuse, NY.

1934: Birthdate of “Dr. Fritz H. Bach, a physician and medical researcher who helped develop techniques to improve people’s chances of surviving organ and bone marrow transplants.” As reported by Douglas Martin)

1934: Birthdate of Moise Yacoub Safra, the scion of affluent Syrian and Lebanese bankers who moved to Brazil where he “co-founded Banco Safra” with his brothers.

http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/brazilian-jewish-philanthropist-moise-safra-passes-away

1935: In Jerusalem, at the final session of the Actions Committee, the Supreme Council of the World Zionist Organization voted to approve the largest budget ever in its history which will include funds for settling an “agricultural colony named in honor of the late Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris.”

1935: In New York, Samuel Pincus, “an immigrant from Poland” and “the former Charlotte Wittenberg” gave birth to Robert Alfred Pincus who gained fame as “art critic Robert Pincus-Witten.”  (As reported by Neil Genglinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/obituaries/robert-pincus-witten-art-critic-and-historian-is-dead-at-82.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1936: Based on an analysis of figures “sent from Jerusalem by Dr. Werner Senator, director of the immigrant department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine” published today “134,500 people from all countries arrived in Palestine” from January of 1933 to December of 1935, of whom 36,372 came from German including “24,499classified as permanent settler and 11,873 classified as tourists most of whom are rapidly indicating their intention of staying permanently.”

1936: Plans were published today describing the upcoming viewing of “important works of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century” that will take place at the Manhattan home of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Buttenweiser which will serve as fundraiser for the women’s division of the United Palestine Appeal.

1936: “Dr. Ludwig Lewisohn’s list of ‘the ten greatest living Jews’ was criticized for including the names of ‘Jews who are great men but not great in an address delivered this morning at the Free Synagogue by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who “was one of the listed by Dr. Lewisohn.”

1936: In Pittsburgh, Pa, “the executive board of District 5 of the United Mine Workers of America asked its 40,000 members today to enforce a boycott on all German-made goods.”

1936: “Slogan calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses were plastered in the shape of swastikas over the windows of Jewish stores” tonight which “was the newest phase of a Jew-baiting campaign among the 35,000 Jewish citizens of Leeds, UK.

1936: The Fraenkische Tageszeitug reported today that a Nuremberg court sentenced a Jewish cattle dealer to six weeks’ imprisonment for wearing brown trousers.”

1936: “The conference of Jewish youth organizations meeting” in New York “at the Hotel Pennsylvania adopted a resolution today favoring the inclusion of Jewish history and Hebrew in school curriculums.”

1936: “A plan for settling 12,000 German Jews a year in countries other than Palestine at an annual cost $1,000,000 was completed by the Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland, the Jewish relief organization and forwarded to the Council for German Jewry in London.”

1937: “Elephant Boy” a Kiplingesque film directed by Zoltan Korda and produced by Alexander Korda was released in the United States today.

1937: The Palestine Post reported in a leading article that the Mandatory government’s delay in granting certificates to workers, apparently for political reasons, had caused a severe shortage of Jewish labor.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Jews living Safed were forced to remain in their own quarter since those who dared to go into the Arab parts of the city were stoned.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a royal palace was been unearthed at Megiddo by the archaeological expedition, organized by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

1937: The Palestine Post reported in Poland Menachem Begin and members of his Betar Revisionist youth group were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for having demanded free immigration to Palestine, during a demonstration held outside the British Embassy in Warsaw. The Polish government expressed its regrets to the British Embassy.

1937:  In New York City, “while fifty men and women who said they represented more than 100 Jewish organizations picked the Polish Consulate…at noon today, a delegation of seven presented a petition to a consulate attaché demanding that the Polish Government take immediate action to stop attacks” on Jews in Poland.

1937: Birthdate of Aryeh “Arie” Selinger who “served as the head coach of the USA Women's Team in the years 1975-1984.”

1937: Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld and the former Toby Bookholtz gave birth to Pulitzer Prize winning author and New York Timesexecutive editor Joseph Lelyveld.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/11547/index3.html

1938: Anti-Jewish riots break out in Dabrowa and spread across Poland.

1938: Lazar Kaganovich began serving his second term as People’s Commissar for Transport.

1939(16th of Nisan, 5699): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1939(16th of Nisan, 5699): Dr. Moses Gaster passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F60E15FA3858127A93C4A91788D85F4D8385F91940: Birthdate of Aliza Kashi, Israeli, actress and singer.  She gained some of her popularity as a regular on the Merv Griffin Show.

1940: The Norwegian government in exile began to function in London which meant that Norway’s small Jewish community was now at the mercy of their Nazi conquerors and the Quisling government.

1941: Unbeknownst to them the Jews of Greece and Yugoslavia are enjoying their last day before the forces of the Final Solution come to their respective homelands.

1942: The Lutheran Church of Norway issued "Kirken grunn"("Foundations of the Church"), a letter condemning Nazism and racism and protesting efforts of Vidkun Quisling, Norway's German puppet, to "Nazify" Norway's churches.

1943: In Aleppo, Syria, Jacob Safra and his wife gave birth to Brazilian businessman and co-founder of the Bano Safra Moise Safra.

1943(29th of Adar II, 5703): Three hundred Jews from Soly and Smorgon, Byelorussia, were transported by rail westward to Vilna, Lithuania. En route, the captives shattered the railcars' wire-reinforced glass and attempted to flee but were shot to death by guards. The survivors were later shot at Ponary, southwest of Vilna, by German and Lithuanian SS troops. About 4000 Jews from in and around Vilna were trucked to Ponary, slaughtered, and dumped into mass graves. Jews arriving at the Ponary station by rail from Oszmiana and Swieciany, Lithuania, resisted with revolvers, knives, and their bare hands; a few dozen escaped to Vilna and the rest were shot. During the massacre, a Lithuanian policeman was wounded by Jews and an SS sergeant was hospitalized after being stabbed in the back and in the head.

1943(29th of Adar II, 5703): The final trainload of Jews from Macedonia arrived at Treblinka. All aboard were gassed immediately.

1943: Three Tunisian Jews, Joseph, Gilbert and Freddy Scemla, were flown from North Africa to Germany where they would be imprisoned in Dachau and eventually be beheaded.  The three men had been betrayed by an Arab when they were attempting to hide from the Nazis in the days before Tunisia was liberated by the Allies. 

1943: Hans vonDohnányi a German jurist who was part of the Resistance and really did rescue Jews, was arrested at his office by the Gestapo] on charges of alleged breach of foreign currency violations: he had transferred funds to a Swiss bank on behalf of the Jews he had saved

1944: Deadline arrives for all Jews of Hungary to wear a Gold Star on their clothing.

1944: At today’s meeting of the Cairo Forces Parliament which when it met for the first time in February included Welsh attorney and future MP Leo Abse, “an officer gave notification that the assembly was contrary to King’s Regulations” the more than 500 attendees voted for a bill call for then nationalizing banking system” and then dissolved.

1944: Violette Szabo, who would eventually be murdered at Ravensbruck  began her first mission as a covert agent today when she was flown from RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire in a US B-24 Liberator bomber and parachuted into German-occupied France, near Cherbourg

1944: A prisoner escaped from Auschwitz to warn Czech Jews about the death camp.

1945: Forty-seven year old Karl Otto Koch, the Nazi commander of Buchenwald, Majdanek and Sachsenhausen was executed today after having been found guilty by “the Supreme Court of the SS and Police”

1945: After two days of fighting the Wehrmacht surrendered to the U.S. Army at  Wurzburg, which had had a population that included 2,000 Jews in 1930 most of which was shipped to the death camps between November 1941 and June 1943

1945: Today “units from the American Fourth Armored Division of the Third Army were the first Americans to discover a concentration camp with prisoners and corpses.”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/usarmy_holo.html

1946: It was reported today that “the New York State Legislature is considering a bill introduced by Bernard Austin to establish in Brooklyn a $2,000,000 college to train Hebrew teachers and grand degrees in Hebrew literature.”

1946: It was reported today that 27 “Protestant churches in Massachusetts have organized a campaign to build a synagogue for Jewish families in Athol area” who “have been worshipping in a loft above a store.”

1947(15th of Nisan, 5707): In China, a Seder was held at The Shanghai Jewish Young Community Center

1948: With Arab irregulars already attacking the Yishuv, and Arab armies poised to attack in May, the final step in mobilization was completed with a call-up for all males forty or younger.

1948: While Jerusalem was under siege and the United States was wrestling with question of the creation of the Jewish state, the Soviets were using all tactics to strangle the West in Berlin including the harassment of Allied civilian aircraft by Russian fighters as can be seen by today’s collision of a Yak-3 with British airliner.

1949: Birthdate of Dr. Judith Arlene Resnik.  Born in Akron, Ohio, Resnik was a design engineer, electrical engineer and biochemical engineer for Xerox, RCA and NIH.  She was a mission specialist on the Challenger where she died in 1986.

1951: In a rare move for this time, Israel responded to the murder of seven soldiers yesterday with an airstrike, which, unfortunately was ineffective.

1951: “A Place in the Sun,” co-starring Shelly Winters and with music by Franz Waxman was released at the Cannes Film Festiva.

1951: “Teresa” directed by Fred Zinnemann, produced by Arthur Loew, Jr., with a script by Stewart Stern and music by Louis Appelbaum was released today in the United States.

1951: The Rosenbergs and David Greenglass were convicted of spying.  Prosecuted by Jewish lawyers, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death by a Jewish judge.

1953(20thof Nisan, 5713): Sixth Day of Pesach

1953(20thof Nisan, 5713): Twenty-seven year old Herb Gorman, who had been taken out of game while playing left field for the PCL San Diego Padres today after complaining of pain passed away at a local hospital.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Herb_Gorman

1953: Birthdate of Ghaleb Majadele, an Israeli-Arab member of the Labor Party who has served as an MK and cabinet minister.

1954: In New York, Leon Hess, the founder of what is now the Amerada Hess Corporation and his wife Norma gave birth to Harvard trained businessman John B Hess, the husband of Susan Elizabeth Kessler who succeeded his father as CEO of the family business in 1995

1955: Birthdate of London native, novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz, the husband of Jill Green who holds the unique distinction of being the “literary voice of the dead” having been commissioned by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle “to be the writer of new Sherlock Holmes novel” and having been commissioned by the estate of Ian Fleming to write a new James Bond novel.

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/author-anthony-horowitz-warned-off-including-black-character-in-new-book/

1955: Having been named Prime Minister for a second time in 1953, Winston Churchill retried from the position today. For more about Churchill and the Jewish people see Churchill and the Jews by Sir Martin Gilbert.

https://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Jews-Friendship-Martin-Gilbert/dp/0805088644

1956: Birthdate of “English author and screenwriter” Anthony Horowitz.

1956: In a case of Jew versus “Abraham Telvi, a mobster and hit man, attacked journalist Victor Riesel with acid, blinding him as he left” Lindy’s Restaurant in New York.  Riesel was a crusading journalist who exposed the connection between mobsters and certain elements of the American labor movement.

1956: Egyptian artillery in the Gaza Strip bombarded settlements in the Negev.  Four civilians and two Israeli soldiers were wounded.  At mid-day Egyptian terrorists were spotted trying to infiltrate from Gaza.  The failed attempt was accompanied by a renewed barrage from the Egyptians which killed three Israeli soldiers.  The Israelis returned fire, killing 63 civilians in the process.  The Foreign Ministry expressed regret at the loss of civilian life but reminded the Egyptians that it was “their folly” which had brought on the exchange in the first place.  Attacks like these from Gaza were one of the causes of the war between Egypt and Israel that took place later in 1956. [Yes, this is the same Gaza from which the Kassam Rockets are being launched during the 21st century.

1958(15th of Nisan, 5718): First Day of Pesach

1958(15thNisan, 5718): Terrorists lying in an ambush shot and killed two people near Tel Lakhish

1961: Barbra Streisand made her first performance on national television tonight when she appeared on the Jack Paar Show singing Harold Arlen’s “A Sleepin’ Bee.” (Of the three mentioned Paar is the one who was not Jewish.)

1962: “A Thousand Clowns” featuring Gene Sakes as “Leo Harman” officially opened on Broadway today

1965:Jack Benny, whose weekly television show will not continue after this season, said today he would star on two special hour-long shows next season on the National Broadcasting Company network. The 71-year-old comedian will thus continue the uninterrupted association with broadcasting that began in 1932.

1966(15thof Nisan, 5726): Pesach1967: “Double Trouble” an Elvis Presley musical directed by Norman Taurog and produced by Irwin Winkler and Judd Bernard was released in the United States today.

1967(24thof Adar II, 5727): Seventy-six year old Nobel laureate Herman Joseph Muller passed away today.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1946/muller-bio.html

1967(24th of Adar II, 5727): Sixty-year old Russian born volinist Mischa Elman passed away.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/04/06/90313730.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

http://www.jta.org/1967/04/07/archive/mischa-elman-world-famous-jewish-violinist-dead-funeral-today

http://www.theviolinsite.com/violinists/mischa_elman.html

1970(28thof Adar II, 5730): Eighty-seven year old Russian born, American “anatomical Illustrator” Alfred Feinberg, who had been trained at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/07/archives/alfred-feinberg-87-anatomical-artist.html

1971: The Supreme Court rendered a decision in INVESTMENT COMPANY INSTITUTE et al., Petitioners, v. William B. CAMP, Comptroller of the Currency, et al. in which Joseph B. Levin represented the petitioner, National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc.

1972(21st of Nisan, 5732): Pesach VII

1972(21st of Nisan, 5732): Sixty-five year old MK Reuven Barkat passed away today.

1973(3rd of Nisan, 5733): Five days before his 70th birthday, “Austrian-American opera producer” Herbert Graf, the Little Hans discussed in Freud's 1909 study Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy” passed away today.

http://www.freudarchives.org/grafintro.htm

1973: Funeral services are held at Temple Emanu-El in New York for Aaron Rabinowitz, a pioneer in the field of affordable housing and other forms of real estate innovation.

1974: “132 Soviet Jews from 13 towns appealed to the U.S. Senators in behalf of Alexander Feldman, who was confined to a punishment cell and whose detention was repeatedly extended despite serious illness.”

1974: “Passover Messages Back Israel And Note Plight of Soviet Jews” published today the messages of Jewish leaders “that pleaded for the safeguarding of Israel's position as a democratic country in the Middle East and pointed to the plight of Soviet Jews stressing that life without freedom is worthless” including a message to the followers “Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, world leader of the Hassidic Lubavitcher movement who stressed that Passover meant that each Jew “must free himself of those influences” that impeded his adherence to mitzvoth [biblical commandments] and his daily study of the Torah.”

1975(24thof Nisan, 5735): Parashat Shmini

1975: “Premier Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, in an interview for American television, says that his country has asked the International Red Cross to try to bring about an agreement under which Israel, Egypt and Syria would refrain from striking at lone another's population centers if a new war erupts.”

1976(5thof Nisan, 5736): Seventy-eight year old NYU trained attorney, WW I veteran and Republican Party leader Lester Bachner the husband of “the former Margaret Goodman” and the father of Robert Bachner passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/07/archives/lester-bachner-lawyer-78-dead-a-leading-bridge-player-active-in.html

1977:The Jerusalem Postreported that US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned that his country and Israel must not paralyze ourselves by suspiciousness that deprives our relationship of dignity and our cooperation of significance. He reassured, “We’ll never abandon Israel.”

1977:The Jerusalem Postreported that President Sadat of Egypt, who was in Paris on an arms-purchasing mission, assured his hosts that he had withdrawn the Soviet Union’s right to use Egyptian port naval facilities.

1977: Birthdate of Israeli tennis player Jonathan Erlich.

1978: The annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee began today in Madrid

Spain.

1981(1st of Nisan, 5741): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1981(1st of Nisan, 5741): Ninety year old Lithuanian born French artist Pinchus Kremegne passed away

today.

https://www.invaluable.com/artist/kremegne-pinchus-0gvh99avj4/sold-at-auction-prices/

1982(12th of Nisan, 5742): Abe Fortas Supreme former Supreme Court Justice and advisor to Lyndon Johnson died at the age of 71. (As reported by Linda Greenhouse)

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/07/obituaries/ex-justice-abe-fortas-dies-at-71-shaped-historic-rulings-on-rights.html

1982(12thof Nisan, 5742): Eighty-eight year old Dr. Harry David Salinger, the Berlin born son of Sidonie and Salomon (Sally) Salinger, the husband of Irene Salinger passed away today in Los Angeles.

1985(14thof Nisan, 5745): Ta’anit Bechorot and Erev Pesach

1987: Broadcast of the first episode of “The Tracey Ullman Show” which was created and produced by James L. Brooks

1990: Eighty-one year old Rabbi S. Gershon Levi, a former president of the Rabbinical Assembly and a former editor of the quarterly publication Conservative Judaism, died of heart failure at his home in Jerusalem.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/06/obituaries/s-gershon-levi-81-a-former-president-of-a-rabbis-group.html?scp=1&sq=Haim+Hazaz&st=nyt

1991(21st of Nisan, 5751): Seventh Day of Pesach

1991: U.S. premiere “The Marrying Man” with a script by Neil Simon and featuring Paul Reiser as “Phil.”

1992(2nd of Nisan, 5752): Actress Molly Picon, the star of the Yiddish theatre who played Yente the Matchmaker in the film version of “Fiddler on the Roof” passed away today

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/07/theater/molly-picon-an-effervescent-star-of-the-yiddish-theater-dies-at-94.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

1993(14th of Nisan, 5733): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1994: "Jackie Mason Politically Incorrect" opened in New York City for the first of 347 performances.

1995: Alisa Flatow, a Brandeis University Junior from New Jersey, was riding a bus in the Gaza Strip when a van loaded with explosives was driven into the bus. Shrapnel from the bomb went through her skull and she never regained consciousness. Stephen Flatow, her father, flew to Israel to confirm that the brain-dead young woman was his daughter. Staff at Sororkin Hospital in Beersheva asked him if he would be willing to donate his daughter’s viable organs. After consulting with his wife and making a conference call to his rabbis, Alvin Marcus and Rabbi Moshe D. Tendler of Yeshiva University, Alisa’s parents decided to follow the positive mitzvah of Pikuach Nefesh, the "Saving a Life." Alisa’s organs changed the lives of six people on the transplant waiting list. "People have called it a brave decision, a righteous decision, a courageous decision. To us it was simply the right thing to do at the time," said Flatow. The Flatow family decision had an emotional impact on a grieving Israel. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told American Jews in May 1995 that "Alisa Flatow’s heart beats in Jerusalem." Even more, the Flatow’s decision made public a painful issue — Jewish views about organ donation.

Alisa Flatow, 20, was riding a bus in the Gaza Strip when an Islamic Jihad militant drove a van loaded with explosives into the bus. Shrapnel from the bomb went through her skull, and she never regained consciousness. Her heart was successfully transplanted to a 56-year-old man who had been waiting more than a year for one; her liver was donated to a 23-year-old man, and her lungs, pancreas and kidneys to four different patients. Her corneas were donated to an eye bank. Miss Flatow, a Brandeis University junior from West Orange, N.J., had taken a semester off to study at a Jerusalem seminary. She loved Israel and had considered settling there; it was fitting that she could help others in Israel. Alisa was a young Jewish woman of sterling character who came to Israel to study her Jewish heritage; an unusually thoughtful person -- bright, modest, and delightful. Her loss is felt by her family, her community, her classmates and her many friends in the United States, Israel, and throughout the world.

1993: The keel of INS Hanit, the corvette built Northrop Grumman, was laid down today.

1996: Marlon Brando made anti-Semitic remarks about Hollywood on The Larry King Show.

1997(27th of Adar II, 5757): Beat poet Allen Ginsberg passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/08/specials/ginsberg-obit.html

1998: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Confederates in the Attic” by Tony Horwitz,“Good Spirits: The Making of a Businessman” by Edgar M. Bronfman and “Jewish Roots in Poland: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories” by Miriam Weiner.

1998(9thof Nisan, 5758): Ninety-four year old University of Maryland trained attorney and reformer Rose Sylvan Zeter, the Baltimore born daughter of Jacob and Fannie B. Zeter  who was the first woman to be admitted to the Maryland State Bar Association and the founder of “the first all-female law firm” in the state of Maryland passed away today.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-04-09-1998099166-story.html

2000: Joseph Gutnick was among three men who resigned as directors of Great Central Mining following the exposure of financial irregularities.

2000: “Keeping the Faith” a romantic comedy about boyhood friends who become respectfully a rabbi and a priest and as adults deal with loving the same woman – a gentile doctor who converts to Judaism – written by Stuart Blumberg with a cast filled with Jews including Lisa Edestein, Ben Stiller and Eli Wallach was released in the United States today.

2001(12thof Nisan, 5761): Ta’anit Bechorot

2001(12thof Nisan, 5761): Eighty-seven year old John B. Oakes, the Elkins Park, PA born son of Bertie Gas Ochs, and George Ochs and the husband of the former Margery Hartman, with whom he had four children – Andra, Alison, Cynthia and John – who was the long time editor of the New York Times editorial page passed away today. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/obituaries/john-b-oakes-liberal-voice-of-the-times-is-dead-at-87.html

2001(12th of Nisan, 5761): German born entertainer, Theodore Gottlieb, known as Brother Theodore, passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/obituaries/06THEO.html

2002: Operation Defensive Shield continued today with Israeli forces fighting terrorists in a number of towns including Jenin, Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem where their mission was made that much more difficult because the terrorists hid among the Arab civilians.

2002(23rdof Nisan, 5762):Sgt. Merom Fisher, 19, of Moshav Avigdor; Sgt. Ro'i Tal, 21, of Ma'alot; and Sgt. Oded Kornfein, 20, of Kibbutz Ha'on - were killed in exchanges of fire between IDF troops and Palestinian gunmen in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield.

2002: “Big Trouble” the movie version of the book by the same name directed and produced by Barry Sonnenfeld was released today in the United States.

2002: Qeis Adwan, head of the suicide bombing network responsible for the Passover Massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya was killed by IDF forces today during Operation Defensive Shield, after the IDF and the Yamam caught him in Tubas, some 70 kilometers north of Jerusalem.

2003(3rdof Nisan, 5763): Parashat Tazria

2003: “After years of debate and delay, construction began on Germany's national Holocaust memorial, as “bulldozers started leveling the five-acre site in Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate, about 18 months after a groundbreaking ceremony.

2004(14th of Nisan, 5764): On the Jewish calendar, 61st anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

2004(14thof Nisan, 5764): Abraham Altus, the husband Lillian Altus and “father of Stephen and Karen, Craig and Leslie, Jonathan and Leslie” who a member of the Hewlett East Rockaway Jewish Center passed away today.

 2005(25th of Adar II, 5765):  Pulitzer Prize winning author Saul Bellow passed away at the age of 89.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/books/06bellow.html?_r=0

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/apr/07/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries

2006:  In a story that resonates with special meaning as Jews prepare to remember another Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Jerusalem Post reported on the reuniting of two cousins, Holocaust survivors, who had been separated for 66 years. For 66 years, Ella Friedvald, 82, and her 79-year-old sister Lila were sure that their cousin Krystyna had been killed in the Holocaust, just as she was convinced, they were long dead. After all, the three women were barely teenagers when the Germans invaded Poland and their families were separated, their paths seemingly forever split as their world shattered before them. After the war, Ella and Lila settled in Israel, while Krystyna, 79, made her home in the US, all having failed to find traces of their respective parents. But, as fate willed it, a faded postcard sent from a German labor camp 60 years ago and the determination of a very persistent octogenarian to claim her family's pre-war life insurance benefits led to their reunification here this week. The Friedvald girls grew up in Warsaw in the 1930s. After the Nazis invaded Poland, their families fled to Lvov, at the time still part of Poland, but under Soviet control. Although they escaped the Germans, Ella, Lila and their parents were forcibly taken by the Soviets to a closed labor camp, while Krystyna and her parents eventually made their way back to Warsaw once the Germans entered Lvov. Krystyna's last childhood memory of her two cousins was that of her father racing to the train station in Lvov in the hopes of bribing the Russian soldiers to free the two girls, only to come back home empty-handed having failed to find the family at the station. Her last piece of information about her cousins for the next six and half decades was a letter that Lila wrote her from the Soviet camp in which she said that her parents and older sister were dying of hunger. The two sisters were indeed soon orphaned, but they managed to survive the war, and eventually made their way to Israel where they married and had families. Their cousin's parents fared no better than their own, as both were killed by the Nazis in Warsaw. But young Krystyna, who was living on the Aryan side of the city and who took part in the Warsaw uprising, managed to survive the war against all odds, largely since the Germans had no clue that the Polish-speaking teen was Jewish. After the Nazis crushed the Polish rebellion, she was taken, together with a group of Poles, to a labor camp in Germany, where she remained until the war ended with the Red Army liberating the camp. While she was still at the camp, Krystyna sent out postcards to various places in Poland in search of family members and friends, but they were returned to the camp with no such persons found. "I was positive they were dead," Krystyna told The Jerusalem Post, "and they were sure I was killed with the rest of the Jews of Poland." After the war, Krystyna's uncle brought her to England, where she would meet her future husband. After the young couple married, they decided to move to the US since they did not want to start a family in war-ravaged Europe. For the next 50 years, Krystyna, of Eastchester, NY, was unaware that her two cousins were alive and well in Israel. Then, five years ago, her cousin Ella began to make inquires about possible remuneration from the Generali Company for life insurance taken out by her family members before the war. The Polish offices of the company did not find any policies for her parents or grandparents but they did find one for her cousin's father. Ella Friedvald then contacted a Polish organization of authors and composers, where he had worked, to see if they had any record of him. The organization wrote back that their cousin had informed them in a letter in 1947 that her father had been killed in 1942. That letter opened up a whole new world for them. "At that moment we knew that she had survived the war," Ella said. The next thing to do was to see if she were still alive. Coincidentally, around the same time that Ella began to make inquiries, her cousin had answered an advertisement put out by the Polish Consulate in New York in search of survivors of the Warsaw uprising. A representative of the consulate then visited Krystyna in her home, and when he asked her if she had any memento for a museum to mark the uprising, she gave him a postcard she had written from the German labor camp 60 years earlier that had been stamped "return to sender." The Polish official was very happy with the postcard, and the museum subsequently put it on its Internet site, which would prove critical in her cousins' search for her, which they carried out with the help of two Polish friends. Last month, Krystyna Friedvald got a call from the Polish museum. "Someone is looking for you," the voice on the other line said in Polish. "Who?" she asked. The museum staffer asked her if she had any cousins, using their married names. Krystyna said she did not know of any such people. "How about Ella and Lila?" the voice - like a dream out of the past - asked. "Where are they?" Krystyna cried, thinking her cousins were in Poland. "They are in Israel," came the reply. The next morning at 5 a.m. Krystyna's phone rang. It was her long-lost cousin calling from Israel. "We talked and we talked and we talked," she said. The following week Krystyna was on a plane to Israel to reunite with her cousins. After 66 years, the three, who look remarkably alike and who communicate with each other in Polish, were clearly trying to squeeze a lifetime into Krystyna's one-week visit, her first ever to Israel. "It's these two stubborn ladies, they decided to find me," she concluded with a smile.

2007: An exhibition opens at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles entitled “The Art of Vintage Israeli Travel Posters” which is designed as part of a commemoration of Israeli Independence Day. 2008: The 92nd Street Y presents a piano recital by Peter Serkin, son of the famous Rudolf Serkin2008(29thof Adar II, 5768): Shabbat Ha-Chodesh2008(29th of Adar II, 5768): Eugene Ehrlich, a self-educated lexicographer who wrote 40 dictionaries, thesauruses and phrase books for the "extraordinarily literate," not to mention people just hoping to sound that way, died at his home in Mamaroneck, New York at the age of 85

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/books/15ehrlich.html

2008: The New York Times reported that Sederot, a long neglected immigrant town a mile from Gaza, pounded by Palestinian rockets for the past seven years, is taking on a new identity, edging into the center of Zionist consciousness as a symbol of the nation’s unofficial motto: “Never Again.” Like the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Sderot is now a must-see stop for those who support Israel or are being urged to do so. 2009: “Picturing the Shoah,” a film festival sponsored by YIVO that explores how movies have represented the Holocaust from radical, provocative, and unexpected angles continues with a presentation of the works of director Jean-Luc Godard including–In Praise of Love and Our Music.2009: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Mainly On Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals”by Arthur Laurents2009: The Washington Post featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss.

2009:Israeli archaeologists continued their inspection today of the Western Wall stone by stone in a new conservation effort at the Jewish holy site. The oldest stones were laid 2,000 years ago as part of the retaining wall of the Jewish Temple, and the newest by the Ottomans - who ruled the area until 1917. Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Jon Seligman says the work aims to make sure stones don't collapse on those praying below. Today workers on a platform cleaned stones near the top of the 20-meter high wall, which is a religious flash point. The authority says work will likely continue for two months.2010(21st of Nisan, 5770): In Jerusalem, Isralight is scheduled to host the Seudat Mashiach this evening.

2010:Edom; featuring Israeli guitaristEyal Maoz is scheduled to appear at The Local 269 in New York City.

2011(1stof Nisan, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

20122(1stof Nisan, 5771): Eighty-seven year old Charles Laufer, the creator of magazines aimed at teenage girls passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/business/media/13laufer.html

2011(1stof Nisan, 5771): Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Baruch Blumberg passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/health/07blumberg.html?pagewanted=all

2011: In New York City, the Guggenheim Museum is scheduled to present “Omer Fast: Art Talk.”Omer Fast is a native of Jerusalem who “works with film, video, and television footage to examine the complex interplay between personal and public histories.”

2011: Irwin and Ginny Edlavitch are scheduled to be honored at the Washington DCJCC Annual Spring Gala.

2011: Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to kick off the 150th anniversary month of the Civil War with t a Lunch and Learn entitled “The Jewish Civil War.”

2011: President Peres joined President Obama for a working lunch at the White House where they will discuss Israeli peace proposals.

2011:A leading US Congressman blasted demonization of Israel and anti-Semitism in the Arab world today and stressed that action against incitement must be part of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. “If this is a new era of openness in the Middle East, then the work of defending Israel from ideological attacks becomes even more pressing,” House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer told the Anti-Defamation League’s leadership conference. “That’s because, if this is a new era of openness, it matters more than ever that the Arab people have a view of Israel unclouded by bigotry.

2011:Doctors around the country began a two-day warning strike in the public health and hospital system today after a meeting between representatives from the Finance Ministry and the Israel Medical Association (IMA) ended with no agreement yesterday.

2012: The Timofeyev Ensemble is scheduled to present the NYC premiere of "Shloyme: a Musical Biography of an Imaginary Hero."

2012: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present “All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunal.”

2012(13thof Nisan, 5772): Eighty-seven year old University of Oxford Professor Siegbert Salomon Prawer whose family had fled Nazi Germany in 1939 passed away today.

http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/files/prawer_obit.pdf

2012(13thof Nisan, 5772): Ninety-four year old Bernard Rapoport, the Texas insurance tycoon who became the financial angel for numerous liberal candidates and causes passed away in Waco, TX. (As http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/us/politics/bernard-rapoport-liberal-donor-in-texas-dies-at-94.html

2012: “Fake ‘eviction notices’ scare Jewish Students” published today described efforts by Students for Justice in Palestine to terrorize Jewish students attending Florida Atlantic University.

2013: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a celebration of Verdi’s 200thBirthday in the form of a performance by The Israeli Opera’s Meitar Studio.

2013:  In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its annual Sisterhood Shabbat Service.

2013: “No Place on Earth” a documentary about the Sterner and Wexler families surviving in Ukrainian caves for 17 months is scheduled to premiere in New York City.

2013:Hundreds of demonstrators marched in Tel Aviv this afternoon for the second consecutive year in protest of violence against women in the now world-famous Mitzad Sharmuta (SlutWalk).

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Hundreds-take-to-streets-for-2nd-Tel-Aviv-SlutWalk-308837

2013: Royal Dutch Shell declined to comment on reports that it will divest its stake in an Australian energy firm because of that firm’s investment in Israel’s gas fields. (As reported by Times of Israel)

2014: Yaala Ballin and her Quintent are scheduled to “celebrate the outstanding female vocalists of Jazz history” at their performance at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.

2014: Yoni Rechter is scheduled to perform at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.

2014: “Friends From France” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Cupcakes” is scheduled to be shown at 11th JCC Rockland International Jewish Film Festival

2014: The European Weightlifting Championships are scheduled to begin today in Tel Aviv.

2014: “An original chamber opera, also titled ‘Regina’" based on the life of Regina Jones, the Berlin born rabbi “written by composer Elisha Denburg and librettist Maya Rabinovitch, premiere in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.”

2014: In Waterloo, Iowa, Sons of Jacob Synagogue is scheduled to host Harry Brod, author of Superman is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice and the Jewish-American Way

2014: The Shachar Club, a kosher nightclub, is scheduled to open in Moscow.

2015(16thof Nisan, 5775): Second Day of Pesach

2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ISIS: State of Terror by Jessica Stern and J.M.Berger, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, Act of God by Jill Ciment and Eleanor Marx: A Life by Rachel Holmes.

2015: “Nearly 100,000 people came to B’nei Brak early this morning for the funeral procession for Rabbi Shmuel Halevi Wosner.”

2015(16thof Nisan, 5775): Ninety-three year old New York labor leader Victor Gotbaum passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/nyregion/victor-gotbaum-labor-leader-who-helped-save-new-york-from-bankruptcy-dies-at-93.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

2015(16thof Nisan, 5775): Eighty-seven year old emeritus Professor Barbara Bergman, a trail-blazing academic, passed away today in Bethesda, MD.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/business/barbara-bergmann-trailblazer-for-study-of-gender-in-economics-is-dead-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2016(26thof Adar II, 5776): Eighty-eight year old author Erwin Nathanson whose The Dirty Dozen was the inspiration for one of the most popular WW II movies ever made.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/em-nathanson-dead-dirty-dozen-881401

2016(26thof Adar II, 5776): Seventy-nine year old “Emmy-nominated screenwriter” Barbara Turner who was also the mother of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh passed away today.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/actress-screenwriter-barbara-turner-dies-79-article-1.2589777

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/barbara-turner-dead-dies-mother-of-actress-jennifer-jason-leigh-1201746635/

2016: Center for Jewish History and The Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU are scheduled to present Rabbi Jonathan Sacks lecturing on “The People and the Book – The World We Make with Words.”

2016: The Rosh Hashanah tractate, the first completed volume of the first Italian translation of the Babylonian Talmud is scheduled to “be ceremonially presented to Italy’s president today five years from the start of the state-funded project.”

2016: “Imber’s Left Hand” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2016: “The Heartbreak Kid” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2016: The UJA Federation of New York is scheduled to host the opening reception for Beyond The Balcony: The Works of Michal Nachmany

2017: “Fanny’s Journey” and “Atomic Falafel” are scheduled to be shown on the last day of the 14th annual International Jewish Film festival at the JCC in Rockland, NY

2017: Trezos” The Lost Jews of Kastoria” and “The Queen of Rebetiko” are scheduled to be shown at the 20th annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2018(20thof Nisan, 5778): Sixth Day of Pesach

2018: The White House today called on Palestinians to engage in solely peaceful protests and stay at least 500 meters from Gaza’s border with Israel, on the eve of fresh demonstrations supported by Gaza’s Hamas terrorist rulers along the border.

2018: At the Begin Center, “Map and Matza”—“a festival happening for the whole family that includes tours of the museum creative workshops” is scheduled to come to an end today.

2018: In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host Erev Pesach services this evening.

2018: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to present “Perfect is Boring: 10 Things My Crazy, Fierce Mama Taught Me About Beauty, Booty and Being a Boss.”

2019: In New York, the Film Forum is scheduled to host a screening of “The Wall,” an animated version of the play by David Hare.

2019(29thof Adar II, 5779): Ninety-two year old biologist Sydney Brenner, the Germiston, South Africa born son of Morris Brenner, a cobbler from Lithuania and Leach (Blecher) Breener  and husband of May Covitz, who shared in the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and John Sulston passed away today. (As reported by Nicholas Wade)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/obituaries/sydney-brenner-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2002/brenner/biographical/

2019: Dr. Scott Gotlieb completed his service as the 23rh Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host an evening with Felicia Farber, the author of Abe vs. Adolf: The True Story of Holocaust Survivor Abe Peck

2019: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Temple Judah is scheduled to host Musical Shabbat.

2019: The issue of People appearing newsstands today, contains excerpts from the new book Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II in which “biographer Robert Matzen” tells the hither-to unknown story of how the future movie star lived for five years during the brutal Nazi occupation of Holland, including her work with the Resistance and the murder of her uncle Otto van Limburg Stirum.

2020: The New York Times features books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche, and the recently released paperback edition of Funny Man: Mel Brooks by Patrick McGilligan.

2020: Jewish LearningWorks is scheduled to present a virtual presentation on “In Search of Jewish Hoemalnd during which “writer-teacher Dan Schifrin expands on his recent J. cover story about his heritage visit to Spain with his family, and the country’s Jewish history and communities.”

2020: “Transformative prayer leader and musician Deborah Sacks-Mintz is scheduled to lead an online Seder, from a feminist perspective on Zoom. With time to share personal stories.

2020: Shai Wosner at 92Y a livestream a concert by the Israeli pianist, internationally recognized for his exceptional artistry, musical integrity and creative insight is scheduled to start at 3 this afternoon.

2020: Thanks to Breman Museum At Home, Movement-for-all – (From Israel) - Online Zoom dance class with Dafi Altabeb for nonprofessional dance-lovers is scheduled to begin this morning at 9.

https://www.dafidancecompany.com/h?mc_cid=b29be21dc3&mc_eid=5b2911d6dd

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “The Ghetto Girls,” a Holoaust themed lecture by Judy Batalion, the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors and author of The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos, now optioned for a major motion picture by Steven Spielberg.

2021: Congregation B’nai Torah is scheduled to present online a discussion of “Shtisel” Season 3 with Rabbi Eiduson.

2021: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host television star and neuroscientist Maim Bialik as part of its Women Inspiring Women series.

2021: The Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s Young Leadership Division is scheduled to digitize its annual Yom Hashoah event, Zikaron BaSolon or “remembering in the living room, that brings Holocaust survivors and small groups of participants together from 8 to 9 p.m. this evening.

2021: Based on data obtained by YNET, the Israeli “economy appears to recovering replying” as can be seen by the fact “that March marked the third consecutive month of high tax revenue that matched pre-pandemic numbers.”

2021: For the first time the Consulate General of Israel to New England and the Honorary Consulate of Morocco in New England are scheduled to join forces in a multicultural Mimouna celebration online dedicated to the memory of Zohra El Fassia, an Israeli-Moroccan singer and poet who was the first woman recording artist in Morocco.

 

 

This Day, April 6, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 6

1199: King Richard I of England dies from an infection following the removal of an arrow from his shoulder. Richard spent most of his reign fighting to protect his lands in France or on the Third Crusade. While he was in England, he did protect his Jewish subjects.  Jews did suffer during his Kingship.  Among other things, they were forced to contribute a disproportionate amount towards the ransom collected to free Richard from the clutches of an Austrian duke.  Richard’s death put King John on the throne.  John openly exploited Jewish subjects.  His tyranny brought on the Magna Charta which included a special section on treatment of the Jews.

1233: Pope Gregory IX, who was criticized by some for being too protective of the Jews wrote "Mandate, if facts are established, to the archbishops and bishops of France to induce the Christians in their dioceses to stop persecuting the Jews, who had complained to the pope that they were being maltreated and tortured by certain lords, imprisoned and left to die. The Jews are willing to forsake usury. They are to be set free and are not to be injured in person or in property."  A year later, in Decretals, he invested the doctrine of perpetua servitus iudaeorum – perpetual servitude of the Jews – with the force of canonical law. According to this, Jews would have to remain in a condition of political servitude and abject humiliation until Judgment Day. The doctrine then found its way into the doctrine of servitus camerae imperialis, or servitude immediately subject to the Emperor's authority, promulgated by Frederick II.

 The second-class status of Jews thereby established would last until well into the 19th century.

1397: Boniface IX issued a papal bull confirming the “grant of Roman citizenship on Manuele” a Jewish physician “and his son Angelo.

1443:  In a document from King John of Castile on economic conditions, he mentions Jews are prohibited from exercising certain high offices among Christians, and from being employed as judges, farmers, collectors, directors, or stewards of revenue (taxes).

1453: Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople (Istanbul).  His ultimate conquest of the city would be a positive thing for the Jews since, among other things, he opened the city to their settlement

1490: Matthias Corvinus also known as Matthias I King of Hungary and Croatia who “created the office of Jewish prefect in Hungary” passed away today marking the start of an immediate downturn in the fortunes of the Jewish people which included the confiscation of their property, refusal by gentiles to pay their debts and the start of a “generalized period of persecution.”

1568:”Elvira del Campo, a young Marranon woman, was subjected to her first torture session by the Inquisition of Toledo, Spain.” (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

1667: The “Old Synagogue” is among the buildings damaged when an earthquake struck Dubrovnik today. The synagogue dates back to the 14th century and is reportedly the oldest Sephardic synagogue in use today.

1737: In Amsterdam, Ketubah of Ephraim Conquy, the Dutch born son of Aron Conquy, and Judica Conquy who were the parents of Rabbi Joseph Conquy.

1754(14thof Nisan, 5514: Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol; erev Pesach. 

1766: Birthdate of Israel B. Kursheedt, the native of Sing-hafen Germany and husband of Stratford, CT, Sarah Abigal Seixas with whom he had nine children and who when he arrived in Boston in 1796 became the first rabbi to come to the city.

1767(7th of Nisan, 5527): Newport, RI merchants and manufacturer of potash and candles Moses Lopex, the husband of Rebecca Riveria and the son of Diego Jose Lopez passed away today.

1720: Manuel San Vicente, a Spanish mercenary turned himself in to the Inquisitional Tribunal after living among the Spanish Jews in Constantinople and Salonica as a Jew for a month. He sought pardon for his sin, and/or to avoid being turned in by another party. While he was in the Ottoman Empire he was circumcised and learned Jewish prayers.

1771: In Savanah, GA, Levi Sheftall and St. Croix native Sarah De La Motta, who were wed in 1768 on the bride’s home island gave birth Benjamin Sheftall, the father of Barnwell, SC native Mordecai Sheftall.

1772: Birthdate of German native Sara Kan, the wife of Buchau native David Einstein, and mother of five children, two of whom Abraham and Eva passed away in Pennsylvania.

1780(1stof Nisan, 5540): As the Jews of Charleston observed Rosh Chodesh, the besieging British Army tightened its noose around the beleaguered Continental Army.

1780: In Germany, Juttle Kahn and Aron Loe Regensburger gave birth to Jonathan Aaron Regensurger, the husband of Voegele Loebstein with whom he had five children.

1783: Birthdate of Rohrbach native Moses Wolfe, the husband of Nanette Regensburger.

1785: Joseph Hart Myers married Jane Diamantschleifer today

1790(22ndof Nisan, 5550): 8th day of Pesach

1790: According to some sources, birthdate of Rachel Luzzatto, the native of Trieste, who was “called ‘the Queen of the Hebrew Versifiers.”

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/morpurgo-rachel

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0014_0_14214.html

1792(14thof Nisan, 5552): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1793: Jacob de Beer was employed today by the Dutch East India Company

1795(In Savannah, GA, Sarah Sheftall and Abraham De Lyon who had been married in 1785 in nuptials uniting two prominent Sephardic families, gave birth to Jacob De Lyon.

1799(1stof Nisan, 5559): Parashat Tazria; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh

1799: William Huskisson, the MP who supported full emancipation for the Jews married Emily Milkanke,

1802: Sarah Mocatta and David Abarbanel Lindo gave birth to Esther David Lindo.

1806(18thof Nisan, 5566): Fourth Day of Pesach

1806(18thof Nisan, 5566): Sixty-eight year old Zipporah Lyon, the daughter of Abraham de Lyon and the wife of Mordecai M. Mordecai passed away today in Savannah, GA.

1808: John Jacob Astor incorporated the American Fur Company.

1809: Jews fled Pressburg (Bratislava) when Napoleon attacked the city

1810: German Jewish author Saul Ascher was arrested on Berlin.

1810: Birthdate of Philip Henry Gosse, the native of Worcester, UK who wrote The History of the Jews from the Christian Era to the Dawn of the Reformation

1812: Birthdate of Aaron David Bernsterin whose works included a “translation of the ‘Song of Songs’ published in 1834, History of Revolution and Reaction in Prussia and Germany from the Revolution of 1848 up to the present and the multivolume book From the field of natural science

1814: Louis XVIII, during whose reign the emancipation the came about under the Revolution and Napoleon, was left unchanged much to many Bourbons, began his service as King of France.

1816: In Spitafields, London, Rose and Barent Salomons gave birth to Aaron Salomons who enjoyed a “happy marriage” of more than fifty-seven years with Adelaide Cohen with whom he had four children.

1819: Birthdate of Elizabeth Magnus the daughter of Sarah Moses and Lazarus Magnus, who was born at Chatham, Kent, England.

1819: In Chatham, Sarah Moses and Lazarus Philip Magnus gave birth to Elizabeth Magnus.

1822(15th of Nisan, 5582): Pesach and Shabbat1825(18thof Nisan, 5585): Fourth Day of Pesach

1825: On the same day when Jews were munching matzoth for the fourth day in a row, Henry Brougham  was being installed as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow whose first known Jewish graduate was Levi Myers who earned his degree in 1787

1829: Emily Goodman, the daughter of David M. Goodman, was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1830: On the day before the first Seder, Mexico adopted the “Law of April 6, 1830” which, in attempt to keep the United States from ultimately annexing part of its territory, banned immigration from the United States in the area that now includes, part or all of California, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, which if successful, the vibrant Jewish communities in these places would never have been established.

1832: In London, Rachel Mocatta and Lewis Raphael gave birth to Henry Lewis Raphael, the husband of Amsterdam native Henriette Raphael whom he married in 1855 and with whom he had nine children.

1833(17th of Nissan, 5593): Third Day of Pesach and Shabbat Shel Pesach

1836: Birthdate of  Nordstetten, Baden-Württemberg, Germany native Victor Henry Rothschild  who in 1852 came to the United States, settled in Ft. Wayne where he worked as a traveling salesman before opening businesses in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, Macon, GA and Hawkinsville, GA before finding in success in New York manufacturing clothing with a company ultimately called V. Henry Rothscihild and Company that employed seven thousand families while raising five children – Irene (the wife of Solomon R. Guggenheim), Victory, Gertrude, Constance and Clarence – with his wife, the former Josephine Wolfe, the daughter of Jacob Wolfe.

 

1839: In Bordeaux, France, Esther Iffla and Jonas Espir gave birth to wine merchant Elie Camille, the resident of London and husband of Sophie Neymarck with whom he had two children – Ferdinand and Daniel Lucien Espir.

1841(15th of Nisan, 5601): Pesach

1844(17th of Nisan, 5604) Third Day of Pesach and Shabbat Shel Pesach

1844: As Jews celebrated Passover and observed the Sabbath,  Joseph Smith, the leader of the Mormons who saw themselves as the new “chosen people delivered on of his final address to the general conference.

1845: After a year and a half of meeting for worship services a group of Jews whose number grown to 33 voted to establish a congregation called Emanu-El which “then engaged Dr. Ludwig Merzbacher as rabbi and lecture and G.M. Cohn as reader” each of whom was paid $200 per year while Mr. Renau was hired “as secretary and sexton with an annual salary of $150” and a room was rented in house at the corner of Grand and Clinton Streets to be used as a synagogue. (The room was fitted so that the front seats for men and the front seats for women – a configuration that would change as Emanu-El became Temple Emanu-El, the leading Reform congregation in NYC.)

1847(20th of Nisan, 5607) Sixth Day of Pesach

1848: "In every part of Germany excluding Bavaria, Jews were granted civil rights. As a result, Gabriel Riesser (a Jew, and an advocate for Jewish emancipation) was elected vice-president of the Frankfurt Parliament, and became a member of the National Assembly.” It must be noted that for the most part these freedoms existed only on paper and were not enforced."  This paper emancipation was part of the revolutionary ferment sweeping Europe at this time. The revolts failed in Germany.  The result was a migration of German liberals, including many Jews, to the United States.

1852(17th of Nisan, 5612): Third Day of Pesach; 2nd day of the Omer

1852(17th of Nisan, 5612): Sixty-three year old Rabbi Judah Bilbas,  known in his Gibraltar place of birth as Yehuda Aryeh Leon Bibas who become a friend of Sir Moses Montefiore while living in London and then led the Corfu Jewish community passed away today in Hebron.

1853: In Leipzig Rosalie Bettelheim and Dr. Adolf Jellinek, a leading Rabbi in the Austrian Empire gave birth to Emil Jellink who sat on the board of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft ('DMG') and was responsible for the naming of Mercedes in Mercedes-Benz.

1856:“After a background check” the Board of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes (the Kane Street Synagogue)“decided by a 10–9 vote” that M. Gershon, its newly hired Cantor, “had never held the position of cantor in any other congregation, and was therefore not ‘sufficiently acquainted with the actual requirements to fill said office’, and was furthermore not ‘a competent reader enough to read the Sefer Torah’. As a result, services were led by laymen,[ except during the Jewish holidays, when a professional cantor would be brought in from Manhattan.”

1857(12thof Nisan, 5617): Seventy-two year old James Abraham Cohen-Stuart the London born son of Elisabeth Gomperz and Abraham Benjamin Cohen and the husband of Petronella and Theodra Stuart passed away today

1858(22ndof Nisan, 5618): Eighth and final day of Pesach

1860(14th of Nisan, 5620): Ta’nit Bechrot is observed for the last time in a peaceful United States which, unbeknownst to anybody was about to endure five successive Aprils of blood Civil War

1861(26thof Nisan, 5621): Parashat Shmini

1861: According to the “Our Charleston Correspondence” column published today, Benjamin Mordecai was among those who lent the government of South Carolina funds it needed immediately after its declaration of secession.  Mordecai’s “free will offering” was in the amount of $10,000.  Another un-named “Hebrew gentlemen” from Charleston was pressured by his co-religionists into donating five hundred dollars to the cause.  He had just returned from New York where he had made $50,000 speculating as a “Bear” in the stock market.

1862: During the American Civil War, The Battle of Shiloh begins in Tennessee when Confederate forces under Albert Sidney Johnston attack forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant.  The Confederate attack surprised the Union troops who literally ended the day with their backs to the river.  On the following day, the Union forces would go over to the attack and drive the Confederates back into Mississippi. The 16th Regiment from Iowa was one of the units engaged in the fight.  Among the “Hebrew Hawkeyes” engaged in the fight were Jacob Jacobs and Charles Weissman of Company B and Abraham Meyers and Jacob Lehman of Company D.  Both Jacobs and Meyers were wounded in the battle.

1862: First Lieutenant Charles A. Appel was promoted to the rank of Captain in Company F of the 99nd Regiment/Ninth Cavalry

1863(17thof Nisan, 5623): Third Day of Pesach

1864(29thof Adar II): Hebrew author Zebi Hirsch Mecklenberg, passed away at Konigsberg

1864: Leopold Schloss married Anna Horatia Montefiore today.

1864: In Oss, Simon van den Bergh, the merchant who came to be known as the Margarine King and his wife gave birth to Samuel van den Bergh who followed in his father’s footsteps.

1866(21stof Nisan, 5626): Seventh Day of Pesach

1866: The Grand Army of the Republic, an American patriotic organization composed of Union veterans of the American Civil War, was founded today.  Among other things, the GAR worked to establish appropriate burial sites for Union veterans. When the five Grand Army of the Republic posts in Seattle established a cemetery in 1895, Huldah and David Kaufman donated the land.  The Kaufmans were two of the first Jews to settle in Seattle having settled there in 1869.

1866: In New York Israel Ullman and Julia Bluemthal gave birth to Selina Greenbaum the wife of Samuel Greenbaum who was President of of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association and a member of the Board of Directors of the Council of Jewish Women.

1868(14thof Nisan, 5628): Fast of the First Born; erev Pesah

1868: Rebecca Mocata was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1869(25thof Nisan, 5629): Seventy-nine year old Richmond, VA born Baltimore business man Jacob I. Cohen, Jr. who supported the “Jew Bill” that removed the religious requirement for holding public office in Maryland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_I._Cohen_Jr.

http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/013400/013489/html/13489bio.html

1870: The articles of incorporation for Temple Israel were “recorded in the Kings County clerk’s office” today1871(15th of Nisan, 5631): Pesach

1871(15th of Nisan, 5631): In New York, on the first day of Passover, The Forty-fourth Street Synagogue, the Thirty-fourth Street Synagogue and the Clinton Street Synagogue are the only Jewish houses of worship where rabbis will preach sermons in English. All of the others, with the exception of the Sephardic congregations, will hear sermons preached in German including Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue.

1872: In Turin, Giacomo Serge and his wife gave birth to “General Roberto Segre who commanded artillery formations at the start of” World War I and was cited for bravery at the Battle of Gorizia” being promoted to chief of staff of the Fifth Army Corps before becoming  head of the Italian-Austrian Armistice Commission.

1873: In Amsterdam, Abraham Querido and Schoontje / Ribca Gosler gave birth Jacob Querido, the

husband of Anna Heilbron1873: Two days after he had passed away, 40 year old Silesia native Zacharias Goldstucker, the husband of Amsterdam native Marie B. Goldstucker, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1874: Four days after she had passed, 75 year old Susanna Durlacher, the daughter of Hannah Solomons and David Levy and the wife of Lewis Durlacher with whom she had had five children was buried today in the “Balls Pond Jewish Cemetery.”

1875(1st of Nisan, 5635): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1875(1st of Nisan, 5635): Sixty-two year old Moses Hess the Bonn born son of David Hess and Hindel Flereshim who was an author, socialist and forerunner of the Zionist movement and whose book Rome and Jerusalempublished in 1862, expressed the belief that German anti-Semitism was based on race and nationhood and advised Jews to accept the fact and revive their own state in Eretz Israel passed away today.

http://www.zionism-israel.com/bio/biography_moses_hess.htm

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7649-hess-moses-moritz

1876(12th of Nisan, 5636):Ta'anit Bechorot

1878: Birthdate of Erich Mühsam. Mühsam was a German-Jewish anarchist, writer, poet, dramatist and cabaret performer.  The Nazis imprisoned him in a series of concentration camps following the Reichstag Fire.  After months of beatings and torture guards at the Orianberg Concentration camp murdered him in July of 1934.

1879: An article entitled “A Festival of Thankfulness” published today states rthat “To-morrow evening the Jewish feast of Peach, or the Passover, will commence, and will continue for seven days. This festival, which was instituted to celebrate the deliverance of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage, is also called Hag Hamatzoth.”

1879: Future Dreyfusard Ludovic Trarieux was elected to the Chamber of Deputies

1881: “The administrators of the Tunis Railway have seized a case of cartridges sent to the Khoumis by Tunisian Jews.” (The Khoumis were a tribe living on the frontier who had rebelled against Mohammed Bey. So far, I have not been able to find a reason for the Jews to be sending them aid since Mohammed Bey had made amends for executing a Jew named Batto Sfoz on charges of blasphemy.)

1882: Birthdate of Rose Schneiderman, the labor organizer who taught Eleanor Roosevelt everything she "knew about trade unionism." Born in Russian Poland, her Orthodox Jewish family was close but exceedingly poor, despite both her parents' employment as tailors. Her mother insisted that Rachel (who would later change her name to Rose) attend school and enrolled her in a traditional Hebrew school and, when she turned six, in a Russian public school. The family immigrated to the United States in 1890 and made the Lower East Side of New York City their home. Two years later, Samuel Schneiderman died of meningitis, leaving his family in a dire economic condition. Deborah, his widow, took in borders and sewed for neighbors; despite her efforts, however, the family descended into poverty and was forced to rely on charity to help pay the rent and grocery bill. A thirteen-year-old Rose dropped out of school after the ninth grade to help support the family by working as a department store sales clerk. Three years later, despite her mother's objections, Rose left sales for a better paying (but more dangerous) job in the garment industry. By 1903, she organized her first union shop, the Jewish Socialist United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers' Union, where she quickly developed a reputation as an effective leader after she organized a successful strike opposing an open-shop policy. By 1907, Schneiderman devoted most of her time to the Women's Trade Union League, which she later called "the most important influence on my life." Within a year, she was elected vice-president of the New York chapter, and thanks to a stipend provided by a member, she was able to work full-time organizing for the WTUL. After the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, she helped established the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and led its 1913 strike. Determined to outlaw sweatshop labor, she told New Yorkers, "I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. . . . Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred." Although she was a committed trade unionist, Schneiderman grew increasingly frustrated trying to get male union members to address women's labor issues. By the late nineteen teens, the WTUL was her major focus. As president of both the New York and national WTUL, she concentrated her efforts to lobby for minimum wage and eight-hour-day legislation. In 1921, she helped organize the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. In 1922, Eleanor Roosevelt joined the WTUL and the two women began a lifelong friendship. Schneiderman tutored ER on the issues confronting women workers, the challenges facing the trade union movement, and the problems inherent in labor-management relations. ER responded to Schneiderman's tutorial by chairing the WTUL finance committee, donating the proceeds from her 1932-1933 radio broadcasts to the WTUL, and promoting WTUL in her columns and speeches. As Schneiderman recalled in her autobiography, ER overcame the trappings of privilege to become "a born trade unionist."President and Mrs. Roosevelt enjoyed Schneiderman's company and often invited her to their homes in New York City, Hyde Park, and, after FDR became governor, Albany. In 1933, FDR named Schneiderman to the advisory board of the National Recovery Administration, a position she held until the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional in 1935. For those two years, she represented labor's voice on the board, working to see that wage and hour provisions of the NRA codes treated workers fairly. In 1935, she returned to both the New York and the national WTULs, whose presidencies she held until the New York WTUL ceased operations in 1950 and the national WTUL disbanded in 1955. From 1937 to 1943, Schneiderman, balancing her WTUL work with state politics, served as secretary to the New York State Department of Labor. Ninety-year old Schneiderman died in New York in 1972 at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged.

1882(17th of Nisan, 5642): Third Day of Pesach

1882(17th of Nisan, 5642): Sixty-nine year old Austrian Rabbi Ephraim Israel Blucher passed away today in Budapest after having served “at Osviecin, Galicia, and Kosten, Moravia.”

1883: In Bloomington, Illinois, “at a meeting held today, Maik Livingston offered a donation of $100 toward the building of the temple, providing the congregation was named after Sir Moses Montefiore, the great English philanthropist.”

1885: In Archachon, France, Isaac Gaston Salzedo and Thérèse Judith Anna Salzedo-Silva gave birth to Charles Moïse Léon Salzedo who was born prematurely and gained fame as Carlos Salzedo, “French harpist, pianist, composer and conductor.”

1886: David Oppenheimer, “the fourth son of Salomon Oppenheimer” one of the two brothers who “opened the first wholesale grocery house in Vancouver in July, 1887, was among those who successfully petitioned for the incorporation of Vancouver which became a reality today.

1886:  Vancouver was incorporated as a Canadian City. Jewish people have been on the Vancouver scene since the city's earliest days. The first to take up residence was Polish born Louis Gold who arrived in 1872. His wife Emma was a businesswoman, and by 1882 she had established the West End Grocery and Royal City Boot and Shoe stores. David Oppenheimer, a German native, was undoubtedly the outstanding citizen in Vancouver's formative period. He promoted incorporation of the city. In June of 1886, Oppenheimer Bros.--today Vancouver's oldest business--built the first wholesale grocery in the city's first brick building, still extant in present-day Gastown. The Great Fire passed over its foundation, then under construction. Upon completion, the building was used as Vancouver's first "city hall." Both David and his brother Isaac were members of the 1887 city council, David being chairman of the finance committee. From 1888 to 1891 David served four terms as mayor, among the most constructive in Vancouver's history.

1886(1st of Nisan, 5646): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

 

1886(1st of Nisan, 5646): Rabbi Mordechai Aby Serour of Morocco, who was best known for his work as a geographer and explorer passed away.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardoch%25C3%25A9e_Aby_Serour&ei=nTK7TvXwCuXksQKS88nOCA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQ7gEwAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3DMardoch%25C3%25A9e%2Babi%2BSerour%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D808%26bih%3D694%26prmd%3Dimvnsob

1889: Baltimore Hebrew Congregation which had been variously known as "Stadt-Schul" or "Fell's Point Hebrew Friendship Congregation" erected its new synagogue at Madison Avenue and Robert Street.

1890(16th of Nisan, 5650): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1890: “Aid For Immigrants” published today described the finalization of “the plans for the fund which Baron de Hirsch…has established to the amelioration of the conditions” of Jews living in Russian, Romania “and those other countries in Europe where the Jew is persecuted to martyrdom” to find refuge in more civilized places.

1892: “Rabbi Browne on the ‘Talmud’” published today described the speech delivered on this topic at the Central Musical Hall.  The lecture entitled "Talmud - Its Ethics and Its Literary Beauties" including his assertion that "What the Congressional Record is to the loyal American citizen, the 'Talmud' is to the Jew - an embodiment of the laws and history of his race. And yet the books of the 'Talmud' so dear to every Hebrew heart have gone through a most trying ordeal. At times they have been banished and burned, plundered and torn, and yet their glory lives.”

1892: Birthdate of Orangevale, CA native and U. of California trained attorney Matt Wahrhaftig a law partner of Samuel Bell McKee and Arthur Tasheira who had officeds in The Oakland Bank of Savings Building.

1894: One day after he had pass away, Joseph Kaufman was buried today in the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1895: Three revenue collectors raided a basement at 119 Division Street where they found 200 gallons of wine that was supposed to be “Kosher.”  The illegal still is operated by a Russian Jew known as “Gordon” who was not on the premises when the raid was being made. 

1895: The Tidings, a weekly Jewish newspaper published in Rochester, NY has been merged with The American Hebrew published in New York City.

1896: The German anti-Semitic agitator Herman Ahlwardt was accompanied by A.M. Woeller, President of the Anti-Semitic Society and Jacob Hoefnagel, the society’s secretary as he made his way to deliver a speech at Germania Hall in Hoboken, NJ.

1897(4th of Nisan, 5657):

1897: Birthdate of Otto Marz who was transported from Uhersky Brod from Terezin in 1943 before being transported from Terezin in 1944 to Auschwitz where he was murdered.

1897: Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu El and Cantor William Sparger officiated at today’s funeral for the late Julius Ehrmann.

1897: President Lewis Parmer of the Hebrew School on Stone Avenue said that the Long Island Water Supply Company is refusing to continue to service because “the supply lines are worn out”

1897: Frances Danzig, the widow of Louis Danzig, a resident of New York City, passed away today while visiting Atlantic City, NJ.

1898(14th of Nisan, 5658): Ta’anit Bechorot; erev Pesach

1898(14th of Nisan, 5658): “The Feast of Passover” published today states that “The Jewish Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread, will be ushered in at sundown to-day. It will be universally observed by orthodox Jews for eight days and by their reformed and Palestinian brethren for seven days. With the former, however, only the first and last two days are actual holidays, and with the latter only the first and last, the intervening days being only semi-festivals, on which all manner of work may be performed.”

1899: Mrs. Samuel Hirsch will sing at today’s musicale and tea sponsored by the Women’s Committee of the Hebrew Technical Institute being held at Sherry’s.

1899: Adolf von Sonnenthal received a standing ovation when he returned to the Irving Place Theatre as Nathan in Lessing’s “Nathan Der Weise.”

1899: In Newark, NJ, “Baer and Sarah (Gutkin) Hailperin gave birth NYU alum and JTS trained rabbi, Herman Hailperin who led Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh for over forty years, while teaching history at the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne and marrying Cecilia Moss after the death of his first wife Harriet Silverman.

1899: In Paris, L’Figaro published “the evidence given by Examining Magistrate Bertulus before the Court of Cassation hearing the Dreyfus Case.

1900: “With the end in view of supporting all their charitable organizations in” Chicago “by direct cash subscriptions, instead of by raising funds through the means of a charity ball and numerous other entertainments every year, the Jewish people of Chicago already” as of this date “have pledged annual subscriptions amounting to more than $100,000, and it is expected to increase the total in a short time to $100,000, the sum required each year.

1901(17th of Nisan, 5661): Third Day of Pesach and Shabbat shel Pesach is observed on the day after Good Friday and the day before Easter

1902: “Plans for Jewish Asylum” published today described Rabbi M.H.Harris’s support “for a charter for the establishment of Jewish Asylum and Reformatory” in New York which is necessary when one considers that there are 232 Jewish children in the House of Refuge and 233 Jewish children in the juvenile assylum

1903(9th of Nisan, 5663):  The Kishinev pogrom began. “The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev, which was back then part of the Bessarabia province of Imperial Russia (currently Chişinău is the capital of independent Moldova).  It started on April 6 and lasted until April 7, 1903.The riot started after a Christian Russian boy, Michael Ribalenko, had been found murdered in the town of Dubossary, about 25 miles north of Kishinev. Although it was clear that the boy had been killed by a relative (who was later found), the government chose to call it a ritual murder plot by the Jews.The mobs were incited by Pavolachi Krushevan, the editor of the Anti-Semitic Newspaper "Bessarabetz", and the vice-governor Ustrugov. They used the ages-old blood libel against the Jews (that the boy had been killed to use his blood in preparation of matzo). Viacheslav Plehve, the Minister of Interior, supposedly gave orders not to stop the rioters. During three days of rioting, the Kishinev Pogrom against the Jews took place. Forty-seven (some put the figure as high as 49) Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded, 500 slightly wounded and over 700 houses looted and destroyed.This pogrom is considered the first state-inspired action against Jews of the 20th century. Despite a world outcry, only two men were sentenced to seven and five years and twenty-two were sentenced for one or two years. This pogrom was instrumental in convincing tens of thousands of Russian Jews to leave to the West and to Israel.”

1904(21st of Nisan, 5665): Seventh Day of Pesach

1904(21st of Nisan, 5664): Fifty three year old literary critic Elazar Atlas, the son of David Atlas passed away today in Bialystok.

1905: After a 15 year absence, “Abraham Roeser, a son of the east side returned to visit his child haunts” while wearing five medals, one of which had been pinned on him by “Queen Alexandra of England in recognition of the young Jew’s bravery in the Boer War” and the other five “were for life saving.

1906: The Jewish Chronicle reported that Pope Pius X “cordially” received “Cav. Grassini, the Vice President of the Jewish Congregation of Venice.

1907: In Brooklyn, “Russian Jewish immigrants Ernestine (nee Miriamson) and Leopold Lewis who was an optometrist gave birth to movie producer Joseph H. Lewis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/13/arts/joseph-h-lewis-93-director-who-turned-b-movies-into-art.html

1907(22nd of Nisan, 5667): Eighth Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1907(22nd of Nisan, 5667): Eighty-eighty-year-old Geffen born Simon van den Bergh, known as the “King of Margarine whose philanthropies included held poor Jews leaving from Rotterdam for American and the father of Samuel van den Bergh who followed in his father’s footsteps, passed away today in Rotterdam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_van_den_Bergh

1907(22nd of Nisan, 5667): Seventy-six year old Hungarian native Adolf Neubauer who served “at the Austrian Consulate in Jerusalem and studied in Paris before moving to the United Kingdom where he “was sublibrarian at the Bodleian Library and reader in Rabbinic Hebrew at Oxford University” passed away today.

1908: In “Kirschseiffen, Germany, “Bernhard and Henriette (Jetta) Rothschild “gave birth to Albert Rothschild, the “husband of Ruth Rothschild” and father of Pierre Rothschild who died at Buchenwald in his 37thyear.

1909(15th of Nisan, 5669): Pesach

1909(15th of Nisan, 5669): Abraham Bengrihan, Chief Rabbi of Marrakech, Morocco, passed away.

1909: Birthdate of Estella Agsterribe, later Estella Blits- Agsterribe, the Dutch Olympic Gold Medal winner who would die at Auschwitz with her children and her husband.

1910: Commanding officers in Constantinople granted Jewish soldiers nine days off for Passover, even though official leave is stipulated only for the first two and last two days. 

1910: In Constantinople in response to a request from the Hambashi, the Minister of Justice, ordered all Jews in prison for trivial offenses be liberated in preparation for the celebration of Pesach.

1911: “Resolutions were introduced today in both houses of Congress directing” President Taft “to mee the discrimination shown by the Russian government against American Jews who wish to travel in that country “by the abrogation of the treaty of 1832 in which the citizens of each country are granted the right to travel and sojourn” without regard to any other qualification.

1911: “The question of the treatment of Jews in Russia came before the Supreme Court today on the appeal of Leibl Glicksman” who had been a leather merchant in Lodz and “who was arrested upon a warrant issued by the Russian Government…”

1912: In Chicago, more than 15,000 thousand Jews found out today that the Orthodox among them will not be able to participate in the primary election being held on Tuesday, April 9, the last day of Passover.  A plan to allow somebody to accompany Orthodox Jewish voters into the booth and mark the ballot for them was rejected “because of the chances of fraud.”

1912(19th of Nisan, 5672): Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach

1912(19th of Nisan, 5672): Sixty-three year old California educator William Lissner passed away today in San Francisco.

1913: Sons of Israel Synagogue founded in Lawrence, MA.

1913: The Independent Order of Free Sons of Judah whose members including Sam Goldstein, Louis Cohn and Jacob Weisman, held its 23rd annual convention today in New York City

1913: The Alliance of Jewish Women was founded in Washington, D.C. today.

1913: In Philadelphia, as part of the second day of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Jewish Publication Judge Simon W. Rosendale of Albany who “presided over the Convention at which the Publication Society was organized” is scheduled to preside over the afternoon session.

1914:A committee met at the hotel Astor tonight to make final arrangements for the Passover celebration for the Jewish soldiers and sailors whose release on furlough was obtained a few days ago.

1915: In discussing the United States reaction to losses at the hands of German submarines the Frankfurter Zeitung, denigrated the possibility of a U.S. military response saying that “if now a war should break out the hosts of Russian Jews and their children…would increase the obstacle which would be met by a people that goes to war only half-heartedly.” (Editor’s note – two years later, the Germans would find out how badly they had misunderstood the patriotism of the vast number of American Jews.)

1915: Birthdate of Joseph “Joe” Goldberg who played guard for Iowa State University in 1936, 1937 and 1938 when they surprised everybody by defeating the University of Nebraska and making it to the conference title game against the University of Oklahoma.

1916: Albert Lucas, Chairman of the Central Jewish Relief Committee of New York City address a meeting at Memorial Hall in Dayton, Ohio where “$6,700 was raised for the relief of Jews in the war-stricken countries of Europe.”

1917(14th of Nisan, 5677): Erev Pesach - As Jews sat down to their Seders tonight, they had no idea how much their world was about to change!

1917: “The celebration of Passover which began” this evening “was made especially notable by the rejoicing of the new freedom of the Jews in Russia.

1917: “At Temple Emanu-El a public announcement was made to the effect that a Russian decree had emancipated the Jews of that country” based on a message that Jacob H. Schiff had sent to Louis Marshall who was at the Temple.

1917: “Special services” marking the celebration of Passover were held at the Hebrew National Orphan Home followed by a dinner for 200 orphan boys and girls who were accompanied by “forty well-known men and women who took the part of foster parents.”

1917: "The United States declared war on Germany. Approximately 250,000 Jewish soldiers (20% of whom were volunteers) served in the U.S. army - roughly 5.7% of the servicemen, while 7of Eastern and Central Europe.  The aftermath, Communism and Fascism, would prove to be even worse.  For American Jews, the aftermath of the war included immigration restrictions and the Red Scare.

 

1917: German soldiers and a military band marched through the streets of Jerusalem, which was controlled by their Turkish ally, apparently unaware of the fact that the United States was preparing to declare war on the Kaiser’s kingdom.

1917: “A movement was started” today “by a group of Austro-Hungarian Jews to enlist citizens of foreign birth who are loyal to the American flag in the in the army and navy.”

1917: One of the British Undersecretaries for Middle Eastern Affairs, Mark Sykes informed his French counterpart Georges-Picot that Britain’s military efforts in Palestine would have to be “taken into account” at the peace conference.  This was a polite way of saying that new realities had changed the British view of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and that the British would be pushing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1918: A “a choir of boys from various synagogues sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ Governor Charles addressed the annual convention of the Rumanian Jews of America tonight at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls.

1918: The Jewish Administration Commission for Palestine arrives at Tel Aviv.  “Dr. Chaim Weizmann, head of the commission, evokes great enthusiasm when he replied in Hebrew to the address of welcome.  The British Military Governor of Jaffa, who participated in the reception, expresses his sympathy with the Zionist aims.”

1919: In Moscow, Miron Kovarsky, a piano student at the St. Petersburg conservatory and the former Zinaida Eisenstadt gave birth to New Yorker cartoonist and artist Anatoly Mironovich Kovarsky.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/arts/design/anatol-kovarsky-new-yorker-cartoonist-for-decades-dies-at-97.html?hpw=undefined&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1919: In Cincinnati, Ohio, former president William Howard Taft delivered an address on “A League of Nations” at the 30th convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis

1919: Ernst Toller began servings as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic.

1920(18thof Nisan, 5680): Fourth Day of Pesach

1919: Sol Witkewitz, the Instructor at the Art School of Chicago Hebrew Institute is scheduled to take his classes to the Chicago Artists Exhibition at the Art Institute this afternoon.

1920: Despite the declaration of martial law, Arab attacks continue on the Jews of Jerusalem for a third day.

1920:  Birthdate of Dr. Edmond H. Fischer. The son of a Jewish father, Fischer shared in the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

1923: Birthdate of Shoshana Shenburg who moved to Eretz Israel a year later where she would marry Professor Elisha Netanyahu and gain fame as attorney and jurist Shoshana Netanyahu who served as a justice on the Supreme Court of Israel.

1925: Birthdate of Helga Deen, a young Jewish girl who kept a diary that “described her stay in the Dutch prison camp “Kamp Vught” which was only recently discovered.

http://www.joodsmonument.nl/person/546602/nl?lang=en

1925: During his triumphal tour of Palestine, Lord Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, spent tonight at the hotel on top of the historic Mount Carmel, from which he had a superb view of Haifa, on the northeastern slope, and of the bay below.

1926(22ndof Nisan, 5686) Eighth Day of Pesach

1926: At Temple B’nai Jershurun, Rabbi Israel Goldstein paid tribute during the Pesach Services to the late Jacob P. Adler, the Jewish actor who “he characterized…as the Nestor of the Yiddish drama who never cheapened his origin or discarded his people during his long stage career.”

1926: “Should We Silent?” directed, written and co-produced by Richard Oswald and featuring Fritz Kortner was released today in Germany.

1927: Birthdate of Jules Hirsch, the physician who was a pioneer in the scientific study of obesity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/science/jules-hirsch-pioneer-in-obesity-studies-is-dead-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1927: In Hudson County, New Jersey, District Court Judge Myron C. Ernst said today that if the date proposed for voting on constitutional amendments is not changed from September 27, the date on which Rosh Hashanah is observed “every Jewish voter in this State will be disenfranchised.”

1929: In Berlin, Charlotte (née Epstein) and Jack Previn, who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher gave birth to pianist and conductor Andre Previn

http://www.andre-previn.com/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/obituaries/andre-previn-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1930: Today, “during an exhibition baseball game against the Little Rock Travelers,” Moe Berg’s “spikes caught in the soil as he tried to change directions and he a knee ligament.

1930: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that according to a report submitted by the Zionist Education Council to the Action Committee, “there are 21,031 pupils in the schools maintained in Palestine by the Zionist Organization. The annual budget for the schools is $637,250 which includes…a $37,975 subsidy from the Palestine Colonization Association and $60,000 from the municipality of Tel Aviv.

1930: René Dreyfus won the 1930 Monaco Grand Prix today in a privateer Bugatti..

1930: In an interview on this date “Ittamar Benavi, one of Palestine’s leading journalists” reiterates his support for the creation of a series of Cantons along the Swiss model as a way to govern Palestine.

1931: The first episode of “Little Orphan Annie” Radio Show aired today with a ten-year-old Jewish girl named Shirley Bell playing the lead role.

1931: Birthdate of Deborah Meier “an American educator often considered the founder of the modern small schools movement.”

1932: The New York United Hotels, Inc., operator of the Hotel Roosevelt, is "abundantly solvent," although, like other hotels, it has difficulty during the economic depression in making its current income meet its overhead charges, the president of the company, declared today day in an affidavit filed in Supreme Court, asking dismissal of the suit for a receivership brought by Samuel M. Bomzon, a bondholder.

1933: Today, “the Nazi German Student Association's Main Office for Press and Propaganda proclaimed a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit,” to climax in a literary purge or “cleansing” (Säuberung) by fire or book burning.

1934: In Brooklyn, Henry and Shirley Guttenplan gave birth to Howard Herman Guttenplan, “who took what began as an antipoverty program on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and transformed it into a leading workshop and showcase for experimental filmmakers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/movies/howard-h-guttenplan-longtime-director-of-millennium-film-workshop-dies-at-80.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1935: It was reported today that Actions Committee of the Supreme Council of the World Zionist Organization has adopted a budget of £329,000 for the coming year at its meeting in Jeruslaem.

1936(14th of Nisan, 5696):Ta'anit Bechorot, Erev Pesach

1936(14thof Nisan, 5869): Ninety-year old historian Alfred Stern, a professor at the Zurich Technical Institute since 1887, a contributor to the Journal of the History of Jews in Germany  and the author of A History of the English Revolution, A History of Switzerland and History of Europe, 1815-1871 passed away today. (As reported by JTA)

1936: In Germany, “Gestapo agents…stood guard within synagogues to listen to the sermons…”

1936: The Passover “service at the Hebrew Association for the Deaf…was conducted entirely in sign language under the leadership of Mrs. Tanya Nash, director of the association.”

1936: Today, “the United Palestine Appeal…released messages from public leaders” including Frank D. Fitzgerald of Michigan, Hill McAlister of Tennessee and Harry Nice of Maryland “hailing a Zionist ideal.”

1936: In a note to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, released today “Secretary of State Cordell Hull said: ‘The existence of a Jewish national home in Palestine has been a source of encouragement and comfort to many Jews who in these difficult times have found it necessary to seek refuge and new homes.  All will agree that the support and extension of the benevolent work of providing shelter in the Holy Land for homeless Jews is a highly unselfish and commendable task.  I sincerely hope that your efforts in this laudable undertaking will meet with success.’”

1936: In case that “involves a State law to prevent ‘frauds on religious institutions’ through sales for profit of tickets to purported religious services” “the Supreme Court continued in effect an interlocutory injuncted obtained by Sara Wachs” “in the New York ‘mushroom synagogue’ controversy.”

1936: In Lodz, Poland, “twenty-four young nationalist were sentenced today to terms of imprisonment ranging from one to four years after they had been convicted of having formed a secret society with the object of committing acts of terrorism against Jews and destroying Jewish property.”

1936: Today, “the scholarship department of the Yeshiva Endowment Foundation announced…a $10,000 bequest from the family of the late Mr. and Mrs. Albert Herskovits in memory of the parents.”

 

1936: Rabbis Samuel H. Goldenson and B. Benedict Glazer conducted Passover eve services at Temple Emanu-El on 65th Street.

1936: “The American Jewish Congress called upon American Jews to ‘united for the collective security of the Jewish people to combat progressive deterioration of their equal rights in their native lands’ and to organize for the ‘self-defense of the Jewish people through a world Jewish congress.’”

1936: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, Carl J. Austrian and Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein participated in a radio broadcast sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee “which is conducting a $3,500,000 drive” to “aid their oppressed brethren in Germany, Poland and other Eastern European Countries.”

1937: At is annual conference today, the “Jewish Marachi…adopted a resolution strongly opposing any attempt at partition of Palestine and declaring that the whole country must be open to Jews to the extent of its historic boundaries.”

1937: In Jerusalem Moshe Baram and his wife Grazia who was born in Aleppo, gave birth to MK and cabinet minister Uzi Baram.

1938: Today, “Julius Streicher, Germany’s No. anti-Semited issued his ‘First Reader’ which he said was intended to instruct Germans on the Jewish questions by pictures and stories” so that “the German people” can be protected in the future from the dangers in which the Jew has tumbled.”

1939: In Chicago, delicatessen owners Paul and Gertrude Krause gave birth to Jerome “Jerry” Krause the general manager who turned the Chicago Bulls into an NBA dynasty.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/sports/basketball/jerry-krause-dead-bulls-general-manager.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1940(27thof Adar II, 5700): As Jews observe in Shabbat HaChodesh they can contemplate the call this week by Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick for “closer cooperation among Catholics, Jews and Protestants.”

1941: German forces, in alliance with Hungarians and Bulgarians, invaded Yugoslavia (75,000 Jews) and Greece (77,000 Jews).  The invasion was caused by the Italian Army's failure against the Greeks.  For the Jews, this meant that the Balkans would come under Nazi domination which later resulted in the destruction of some of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world.  According to some, this "diversion" delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union which resulted in the Nazi forces becoming trapped in the Russian Winter.  This in turn was a contributing factor to the final defeat of the Nazis.

1941: In New York City, 23 year old Sylvia Lubow Rindskopf married Ensign Maurice H. Rhindskopf – a marriage that would last nearly 69 years during which she played the perfect Naval wife to Rear Admiral Mike Rindskopf.

1941: The Nazis established two ghettos in Radom, Poland.  Radom's Jewish community dated back to the Middle Ages.  Nine tenths of the Jewish population of 25,000 perished in the Holocaust.  According to some reports, the remaining Jews did not return because of the anti-Semitic riots that took place in Poland after the war.

1941: “Flame of New Orleans” a comedy produced by Joe Pasternak, co-starring Mischa Auer and featuring Shemp Howard was released in the United States today.

1942: Staff Sgt. Frank Glassman, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Peter and Sadie Glassman enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps today which was the first step in a “career” that would lead him to serve as a belly gunner aboard the “Green Hornet” which would crash in the Pacific Ocean

https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/198491

1942: In Baltimore, MD Violet "Vi" (née Krichinsky) and Irvin Levinson, who worked in the furniture and appliance business gave birth to Academy Award winning director Barry Levinson whose works included one the greatest movies ever – “Avalon.”

1943: “Tahiti Honey,” a musical comedy starring Simone Simon “the daughter of Henri Louis Firmin Champmoynat, a French Jewish engineer, airplane pilot in World War II, who died in a concentration camp” was released in the United States today.

1944: The Jewish nursery at Izieu-Ain France was overrun by Nazi's

1945: The 14th Armored Division liberated the Serbian hospital at Camp Hammelburg whose patients included Captain Abraham Baum who had been shot in the groin while trying to rescue General Patton’s son-in-law John K. Waters who was also in the hospital recovering from his wounds.

1945: After the USS Bush, an American destroyer was struck by a Japanese suicide bomber today, Raphael J. “Ray” Moses was among those who were rescued from the East China Sea.

1946: The British consulate General in Madagascar reported in confidence to the foreign Office in London that while Madagascar might be suitable for 200 colonists of the peasant class, stress should be laid by Britain on providing the right type of colonist in the first instance and not city-bred Jews who were worn and emaciated through long confinement in concentration camps.

1947: As it begins its American tour, The Hapoel soccer team is scheduled to board a plane a Tel Aviv today as it makes its way to New York City.

1947: The first Tony Awards are presented for theatrical achievement.

1948: The Irgun raided the British Army camp at Pardes Hanna killing seven British soldiers and stealing a large quantity of weapons

1948: Operation Nachshon was launched this evening in an attempt to open the road to Jerusalem.  At the same time, a convoy left the coast and after a ten hour trip arrived in the beleaguered city.  It was the first the first convoy to reach the city in two weeks.  They found a city that was under constant bombardment from Arab Legion (Jordanian Army) artillery situated on the high round north of the Damascus Gate.  For the next three weeks, the Arabs would use their military might to try and re-gain control of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Road. 

1949: The SS Caserta, carrying 400 Jews from Tripoli and 350 Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia is on the second day of its trip to Israel.

1949: “A Federal grand jury returned two indictments today against nine persons and a corporation, charging them with attempting to ship airplanes, airplane parts and other equipment to Jewish forces in Palestine in violation of the arms embargo.”

1951: “The Scarf,” a thriller based on a story by Isadore Goldsmith, the film’s producer and directed by Ewald Andre Dupont who wrote the screenplay,  was released in the United States today.

1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel Air Force planes bombed Syrian entrenchments in the demilitarized zone near El Hamma where seven Israeli policemen were killed and one wounded. The government lodged a complaint with the UN Security Council listing all recent Syrian border violations.

1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that for the first time since the establishment of the state, Britain announced that it was ready to sell small arms to Israel, on the same terms as had been enjoyed by Egypt.

1952: A Broadway revival of Clifford Odets’ “Golden Boy” starring John Garfield as “Joe” as after 55 performances at the ANTA Playhouse.

1953(21stof Nisan, 5713): Seventh day of Pesach

1954: The body of Baron Edmond de Rothschild was re-interred in Zichron Yaakov, the wine-producing village which had been established with his help.

1954: Today, during the Rudolf Kastner trial Dr. Rueben Hecht, who worked as an Irgun representative in Zurich was interrogated as the seventeenth witness by advocate Tamir who questioned him about his relationship with Dr. Jean-Marie Musy, the former president of the Swiss Confederation and “long term friend” of Heinrich Himmler.

1954(3rd of Nisan): Yiddish poet Aaron Leib Baron passed away

 

1955: David Saul Marshal, a descendant of Indian Baghdadi Jews, began serving as Chief Minister of Singapore.

1956: “The Rose Tatoo,” the film version of the successful Broadway play produced by Hal B. Wallis with a screenplay by Hal Kanter was released today in Belgium and France.

1956: “Jubal,” an “oater” with music by David Raskin was released in the United States today.

1957: First oil tanker in Eilat arrived filled with Persian Gulf oil.

1957: In Brooklyn, “Thomas Sapolsky, an architect who renovated the restaurants Lüchow's and Lundy's and his wife gave birth to Harvard graduate Robert Morris Sapolsky, the neuroendocrinologist and the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, holding joint appointments in several departments, including Biological Sciences, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/books/review/behave-robert-m-sapolsky-.html?ref=headline&nl_art=&te=1&nl=book-review&emc=edit_bk_20170707

1958(16th of Nisan, 5718): Second Day of Pesach; First day of the Omer

1959: “The Sound and the Fury” the movie version of the novel by the same name directed by Martin Ritt, with a script co-authored by Irving Ravetch was released in the United States today.

1959(27thof Adar II, 5719): Sixty-four year old Leo Aryeh Mayer, who worked jointly with Eleazar Sukenik, in connection with the excavations of the "Third Wall" of Jerusalem, built by in 41-44 CE, Agrippa, king of Judea, in 41-44 CE and served as rector of Hebrew University, passed away.

1959: Joseph B. Levin represented the Securities and Exchange Commission before the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals in Columbia General Investment Corporation v. the SEC.

http://openjurist.org/265/f2d/559/columbia-general-investment-corporation-v-securities-and-exchange-commission

1962: Leonard Bernstein causes controversy with his remarks from the podium during a New York Philharmonic concert featuring Glenn Gould performing Brahms' First Piano Concerto.

1967: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Glenn Thrush who became the White House correspondent for the NY Times in 2017.

1967: Avraham Lanir “scored his first aerial kill in a major skirmish along the Syrian border which ended with the downing of six Syrian jets. Lanir, flying Mirage 60, downed a SAF MiG-21 with cannon fire after closing to a distance of 200 meters. The MiG exploded and Lanir flew right through the fireball, covering his aircraft with soot. Initially blinded, enough soot was eventually blown off his canopy to afford Lanir a safe landing at Ramat David. The scorched aircraft earned the nickname ‘Black Mirage’".

1968: Romanian Jewish playwright Israil Bercovici adapted a collection of Itzik Manger's poems into a two-act stage piece, Mangheriada, which premiered today at the Romanian State Jewish Theater in Bucharest

1969: In Passaic, NJ, two Anglo-Jewish immigrants, Michael Rudd, “an historical guide and former vice president of TWA” and his wife Gloria, a sales manager at a television station gave birth to actor Paul Rudd

1969: Birthdate of actress Ari Meyers best known for her role as "Emma Jane McArdle" in the television series, “Kate & Allie.”

1969:  Gold Meir spoke to 3,000 teenagers in Jerusalem, expressing her absolutefaith that peace would come.

1971: Jews must have felt mixed emotions today when Igor Stravnisky passed away today.  On the one hand he was a giant in the world of music and yet he was also an anti-Semite.

http://thejewniverse.com/2013/stravinsky-the-anti-semite/

1972(22ndof Nisan, 5732): 8th Day of Pesach

1972(22nd of Nisan, 5732): Sixty-two year old Chemistry Professor and patent holder Dr. David Perlman passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/06/archives/dr-david-perlman-62-dies-chemistry-professor-here.html

1973: In the aftermath of the Munich Olympic Massacre, Basil al-Kubaissi, a law professor who provided arms and logistic support for Black September was shot to death while returning home from dinner in Paris.

1974(14th of Nisan, 5734): Shabbat Hagadol; Erev Pesach

1974(14th of Nisan, 5734): Canadian born poet Rochelle Mass and her family celebrate their first Pesach in Israel at a kibbutz where she had picked oranges during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

1975: Birthdate of actor Zach Braff

1975: Sandy Helberg the American actor who is the son of 2 Holocaust survivors married Harriet Birnbaum.

1975(25th of Nisan, 5735): Seventy-one year old Ernst David Bergman, “the father of Israel’s nuclear program” passed a way today.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1yz8B3IPltmNWxuR0U1bUEyanM/edit?pli=1

1976(6th of Nisan, 5736):Sidney Franklin passed away.  A Brooklyn born Jew whose name was originally Sidney Frumkin, Franklin was the U.S.’s first successful bullfighter.

http://findingaids.cjh.org/?pID=635255

http://brooklynology.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/post/2011/11/14/The-bullfighter-from-the-South-Slope.aspx

1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that France sold to Egypt Mirage F-1 interceptors, the most advanced French combat aircraft. It is pointless for Israelis, or for Israel friends abroad, to shadow box with PLO, Defense Minister Shimon Peres told the International Conference on Palestinians and the Middle East, since the PLO aspires to liquidate the Jewish State. He added that the PLO had maintained its rigid extremism and had lined up the entire Arab world behind this position.1977: CBS broadcast, “Something for Joey” a sports film featuring Steve Guttenburg and with music by David Shire for this time today.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat called upon US President Jimmy Carter to establish "a political entity where the Palestinians can, at long last, be a community of citizens, not a group of refugees." The Israel Press Council decided to form a team to check local papers’ observance of their ban on publication of criminal suspects’ names before they are remanded. Israeli artillery shelled terrorist concentrations in Lebanon. Israeli meat producers obtained a US permit to export kosher meat to America.

1978: The annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee continued for a second

day in Madrid, Spain.

1979: “Israeli agents sabotaged the Osirak reactor awaiting shipment to Iraq at La Seyne-sur-Mer in France.”

1979: Thirteen people were injured by a bomb set off at a bus stop in Jerusalem.

1980: After six weeks, the curtain came down today on an Off-Broadway production of “Biography” written by S.N. Behrman.

1981: “Fools, a comic fable by Neil Simon” “premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre” today.

1982: “Police searched the home of Nehemiah Rozengauz, 37, a Tashkent computer scientist” and “confiscated all materials connected to Hebrew studies.”

 1982:Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, speaking at the funeral of an Israeli diplomat slain two days ago in Paris, said today that Israeli forces would strike ''without reservation, without end'' at bases and headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon and elsewhere.

1982: “Katya Umanskaya of Moscow, was warned to stop her Jewish cultural activities.”

1982: “Sverdlovsk refuseniks Lev Shefer and Vladimir Yelchin were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda.”

1984: “Hard to Hold,” a musical directed by Larry Peerce, the son tenor and form cantor Jan Peerce, was released in the United States today.

1985(15th of Pesach, 5747): Pesach

1986(26th of Adar II, 5746):Eighty nine year oldPesach Burstein, a Yiddish actor whose singing, dancing and whistling delighted audiences here and abroad for more than 70 years, died today at Lenox Hill Hospital after suffering a heart attack last Monday. http://articles.latimes.com/1986-04-13/local/me-4493_1_abraham-goldfaden

1990:In recognition of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s “vital efforts, the Congress, by House Joint Resolution 173, has designated today, as "Education Day, U.S.A.

1990: U.S. premiere of “Tall Story” with a script co-authored by Julius Epstein and Howard Nemerov who wrote the novel on which the film was based.

1991(22ndof Pesach, 5751): 8th Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1992: The keel was laid down today for “MY Sam Simon, fourth vessel of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society fleet, named after American television producer and writer Sam Simon, who donated the money to purchase the vessel.”

1992(3rd of Nisan, 5752): Molly Picon passed away at the age of 94..Born in 1898, the petite Molly Picon was a star of both the Yiddish theatre and a variety of American entertainment mediums.  Her career included 19 years of radio broadcasts and roles on Broadway and film.  She performed for American troops during World War II.  She was one of the first entertainers to go to Europe after the war to perform for Jewish refugees.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/picon.html

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Film/American_and_European/Yiddish_Film/Molly_Picon.shtmlhttp://www.ajhs.org/scholarship/Molly/index.cfm

1992(3rd of Nisan, 5752): Isaac Assimov died at the age of 72. Born in Russia in 1920, Asimov was raised in Brooklyn which he always considered his home.  He was known as a science fiction writer but also wrote about the Bible as well.  A confirmed atheist, Assimov attributed this interest to his devoutly Jewish father.

http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_home_page.html

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-obit.html

1992: Ninety-six year old Herman F. Mark an Austrian-American chemist who fled Europe for America because he was the son of Dr. Herman Carl Mark, a Jew who converted to Lutheranism passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/10/us/dr-herman-f-mark-dies-at-96-a-pioneer-in-polymer-chemistry.html

1993(15th of Nisan, 5753): Pesach observed for the first time in the Presidency of Bill Clinton1994(25th of Nisan, 5754): A Palestinian suicide bomber killed 7 Israelis and himself.1994(25thof Nisan, 5754): Eighty-one year old Goodwin George “Goody” Rosen, the son of “Samuel and Rebecca, two Russian Jewish immigrant who played centerfield for two National League teams that no longer exist – the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants – passed away today in his native Toronto.

http://jewishbaseballmuseum.com/player/goody-rosen/

1994(25th of Nisan, 5754): Eight people were killed in a Hamas terrorist car-bomb attack on a bus in the center of Afula. This was the first documented car bombing in Israel. The dead included: “Asher Attia, 48, of Afula, bus driver; Vered Mordechai, 13, of Afula; Maya Elharar, 17, of Afula; Ilana Schreiber, 45, a teacher from Kibbutz Nir David; Meirav Ben-Moshe, 16, of Afula; Ayala Vahaba, 40, a teacher from Afula; and Fadiya Shalabi, 25, of Iksal were killed in a car-bomb attack on a bus in the center of Afula. Ahuva Cohen Onalla, 37, wounded in the attack, died of her wounds on April 25.”

1995(6th of Nisan, 5755): Six Israelis were killed in two suicide bombings at Kfar Darom.

1996: “Hava Naquila, “a happy hardcore version of the classic folk song "Hava Nagila" set in a gabber beat” was released today.

1996: Memorial services are scheduled to take place today for “Morton F. Rome, whose distinguished legal career of nearly six decades was highlighted by serving as assistant prosecutor during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial…”

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1996-03-23-1996083047-story.html

1997: Andrea Mitchell “married her second husband, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan” today

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art
and Writing About It a Game
by Roger Kahn.

1998: In “Lasar Segall’s Happy Life Didn’t Make for Great Art” Hilton Kramer examined the life and work of the Lithuanian born, Brazilian artist.

http://observer.com/1998/04/lasar-segalls-happy-life-didnt-make-for-great-art/

1999(20th Nisan, 5759): 6thday of Pesach

1999(20th of Nisan, 5759): Eighty-three year old British cellist William Pleeth, the son of Jewish immigrants from Warsaw, Poland passed away today.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-william-pleeth-1085615.html

2000:The United States Postal Service issued five stamps depicting the work of Jewish sculptor Louise Nevelson.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/apr/06/2000/louise-nevelson

2000: Habib Bourguiba, President of Tunisia, passed away.  Bourguiba came to power when Tunisia gained its independence from France in 1956.  By then the Jewish population had shrunk from its 1948 high of approximately 100,000.  The Tunisian government enacted a series of anti-Jewish decrees. In 1958, Tunisia's Jewish Community Council was abolished by the government and ancient synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish quarters were destroyed for "urban renewal." The increasingly unstable situation caused more than 40,000 Tunisian Jews to immigrate to Israel. By 1967, the country's Jewish population had shrunk to 20,000. During the Six-Day War, Jews were attacked by rioting Arab mobs, and synagogues and shops were burned. The government denounced the violence, and President Habib Bourguiba apologized to the Chief Rabbi. This apology certainly marked Bourgiba as unique among Arab leaders. His government appealed to the Jewish population to stay, but did not bar them from leaving. Subsequently, 7,000 Jews immigrated to France. Today about 1,000 Jews live in Tunisia.

2001: In entitledOut of the Jewish Ghetto and Into the Mainstream,” published today Grace Gluek traces the life and times of one of the earliest of Jewish artists, Moritz Daniel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/06/arts/art-review-out-of-the-jewish-ghetto-and-into-the-mainstream.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2002: During Operation Defensive Shield the terrorist leader responsible for trying to turn Jenin into a massive booby-trip (including the homes of the civilians) and two of his comrades were killed by Israeli troops as they cautiously made their way through the camp in an attempt to minimize civilian casulaities.

2002(24thof Nisan, 5762): Twenty-six year old Staff Sergeant Nisan Avraham from Lod was killed today and five of his comrades were wounded when Islamic Jihad terrorists attacked them at the entrance of Rafiah Yam.

2003: The New York Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ''The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror'' by Bernard Lewis.

2003(4th of Nisan, 5763): Leon Levy, the co-founder of Oppenheimer & Co who was praised as an “investment genius and prolific philanthropist” passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/nyregion/leon-levy-philanthropist-is-dead-at-77.html

2004(15thof Nisan, 5764): Pesach

2004(15thof Nisan, 5764): Ninety year old Alexander Lerner the Russian trained mathematician and leading refusenik passed away today in Israel where he had lived since 1988.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/06/world/alexander-lerner-cybernetics-expert-is-dead-at-90.html

2005:  The New York Times featured a review of “In Satmar Custody.” This documentary written in English, Hebrew, Yemenite and Yiddish describes the fate of Yeminite Jews living in Israel who were brought to the United States to live in the Satmar community in Monsey, N.Y.  The Times describes the fate of such Jews as a “nightmare for a Jewish family from Yemen.

 

2005(26th of Adar II, 5765): Specialist Daniel J. Freeman aged 20, who “had been in Afghanistan for about two months was killed today in a helicopter crash “along with 15 other soldiers. He had not been scheduled to be on board the supply flight to Kandahar, but had volunteered for a friend. “Daniel Freeman was always the boy with the Israeli accent, a remnant of his life on a kibbutz, where he lived until he was 9 years old. Growing up in Cincinnati, he loved playing soccer and rock climbing, and was part of the local fire department’s explorer club, excited to dress up and train like a firefighter. As an older teenager, “Daniel developed a keen sense of right and wrong and would get very upset if he thought something was unfair,” said Shmuel Birkan, Freeman’s stepfather. In high school, Freeman took an enthusiastic interest in military history, a subject he studied in addition to Hebrew. He decided he wanted to enlist in the Army, “because he truly believed it was the right thing to do,” Birkan said. A participant in the Army’s early induction program, Freeman went on to complete his basic and advanced training in Fort Benning, Ga. “Daniel was never particularly in favor of [America’s] reason for being in Iraq and Afghanistan. He just knew that his mission was to keep himself and his friends safe,” Birkan said. (As reported by Maia Efrem)

2006:  The Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF) of Metropolitan New York/New Jersey recognizes their Vatikim: Those Who Inspire Us with a Lifetime of Contribution with a festive evening of celebration featuring the unique Sephardic spirit and sounds of Gerard Edery and the Bnai Keshet a Cappella Singers

2006: “The industry group MarHedge awarded Matador Fund Ltd. and Manchester Trading, two funds managed by Victor Niederhoffer, the prize for best performance by a commodity trading advisor (CTA) in the two years 2004 and 2005.

2006: David Bromberg is featured in a Washington Post article entitled “In Fine Fiddle” by Paul Schwartzman.

2006: In “A Homecoming, in Los Angeles, for Five Klimts Looted by Nazis,” Sharon Waxman describes Maria Altmann’s fight to regain her family’s art.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/arts/design/06klim.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=Maria%20Altmann&st=cse

2007: As reported in Haaretz, during the Intermediate Days of Passover, Israelis visit tourist sites throughout the country, with a wide variety of festivals and activities on hand. More than 13,000 visitors came to the southern sites of Masada, Ein Gedi and Mamshit, with the total number of visitors in the Negev up from last year, according to Gilad Gabai, deputy director of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority (INPPA) southern district.

2007: “Spots of Light: To Be a Woman in the Holocaust” opens at Yad Sachem’s Exhibitions Pavilion:

2007: “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn” Jake Ehrenrich’s one-man show is playing Off-Broadway at 37 Arts.

2007: U.S. premiere of “The T.V.Set” directed, produced and written by Jake Kasdan.

2007(18th of Nisan, 5767): Fourth day of Pesach

2007(18th of Nisan, 5767): Seventy-two year old award winning screen writer Stan Daniels passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/obituaries/14daniels.html

2008: David Blatt, the head coach of the the Istanbul-based Turkish Basketball League team Efes Pilsen, “parted ways with the team.”

2008: In Washington, D.C., Jewish authorJonathan Rieder discusses and signs The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr. at Politics and Prose Bookstore.

2008(1st of Nisan, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

2008: The Boston Globe published “House of Cards” which investigated claims that Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich is largely fictional and questioning its designation as “non-fiction.”

2008: The Sunday New York Times book section featured reviews of two books by Jewish authors - Fidelity by Grace Paley and Please Don’t Remain Calm by Michael Kinsley.

2008(1st of Nisan, 5768: Thirty-six year old Major Stuart Wolfer was killed today when his unit was attacked by insurgents in Baghdad. (As reported by Maia Efrem)
Read more:
http://www.forward.com/articles/135331/profiles-of-our-fallen/#ixzz1r7KLHWdl

2009: Lubavitch Chabad of Northbrook and CJE Senior Life present the “Yiddish Club.”

2009:Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University delivers an address entitled "Iran, Israel and the US: Dissecting the Triangular Relationship’ at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

2009: Mary Altaffer of AP photographed Ruth Madoff being “escorted by private security as she left the Metropolitan Correctional Center after visiting her husband” Bernard Madooff

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/msn/ruth-madoff-living-quietly-inside-the-glare/ar-BBBzBxV?ocid=spartandhp&fullscreen=true#image=2

2009:J. Ezra Merkin, a prominent New York financier whose private clients lost more than $2 billion in the collapse of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, has been accused of fraud and deception in a civil lawsuit filed today by the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo.

The lawsuit, filed under state charity and securities laws, claims that Mr. Merkin improperly collected more

2009:A list of 801 Jews saved during the Holocaust by German businessman Oskar Schindler has been recovered from a Sydney library, News Agencies reported today.

2010(22nd Nisan, 5770): Yizkor is recited on the Eighth Day of Pesach.

2010: The Home Minister of Maharashtra State, which includes Mumbai, informed the Assembly that the bodies of the nine Pakistani gunmen from the 2008 attack on Mumbai who had murdered 8 people at Nariman House were buried in a secret location in January 2010.

2010: “Date Night,” a comedy directed and co-produced by Shawn Levy premiered in New York City.

2010:  Model and actress Lisa S. (Lisa Slesner) married David Wu today.

2010:Israeli Author Savyon Liebrecht is scheduled to speak at Yale’s Slifka Center for Jewish life.

2010: David Remnick's biography of President Barack Obama, The Bridge, was released today.

2011: Michael Applebaum began serving as Chair of the Montreal Executive committee.

2011: Season three of Top Chef Masters premiered with Chef Ruth Reichl as a judge.

2011: AlexanderMashkevitch announced his intention to found a Jewish version of Al-Jazeera that will "represent Israel on an international level, with real information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Mashkevitch

more

2011:Former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner as keynote speaker is scheduled to speak today at an event marking the formal launch of The Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israeli Law, Economy and Society at the University of California Law School.

2011:Ruth Messinger, President of the American World Jewish Service is scheduled to speak today during the New CAJE Lehrhaus webinar series. For registration and further information see http://newcajelehrhausonline.org/page.aspx?id=239947

2011(2ndof Nisan): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of The fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn ("Rashab") who passed away in 1920.

2011(2ndof Nisan): Eighty two year old Igor Yakovlevich Birman, the Russian born American economist who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union passed away today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/igor-birman-economist-who-predicted-collapse-of-soviet-economy-dies-at-82/2011/04/19/AFh062EE_story.html

2011:Tel Aviv has been ranked No. 34 out of 40 cities in the annual Knight Frank global cities index, which was released today, one place lower than last year and three below Cairo

2012(14th of Nisan, 5772): Fast of the First Born

2012(14th of Nisan, 5772): Fifty-nine year old Elan Steinberg who was head of the World Jewish Congress passed away today.  As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/07/nyregion/elan-steinberg-dies-at-59-led-world-jewish-congress.html?hpw&_r=0

2012: Rabbi Greg Wall is scheduled to lead the Seder at The Sixth Street Community Synagogue; an event that will “swing between tradition and utter hipness.”

Chag Kasher v'Sameach!

2012: At Kherson, in one of a series of acts of vandalism where “graves have been repeatedly covered with trash and tombstones destroyed and desecrated” a fire was set at the Jewish cemetery which “spread over an area of about 700 square meters and caused severe damage to the graves and tombstones.”

2013: Tom Arnold who converted to Judaism when he married Roseanne Barr and continues to be a practicing Jew and his fourth wife Ashley Groussman gave birth to their first child Jax Copeland Arnold.

2013: “A Bottle In The Gaza Sea” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2013: “Joe Papp In Five Acts” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2013: US Secretary of State John Kerry is headed to the Middle East today on his third trip there in just two weeks in a fresh bid to unlock long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

2014: The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including three written especially for children and young readers about the Holocaust: Hidden: A Child’s Story of the Holocaust by Loic Dauvillier; Hidden Like Anne Frank: Fourteen True Stories of Survival by Marcel Prins and Peter Henk Steenhuis and  The Whispering Town by Jennifer Elvgren

2014: The Jerusalem Post is scheduled to hold its annual conference in New York City.

2014: “Prior to MIPTV’s official launch tomorrow, “a session titled ‘Business Opportunities in Israel’ is scheduled to be held today.

2014: A special performance of “The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” for the benefit of Yiddishkayt and in memory of NPR radio producer Johanna Cooper is scheduled to take place in Burbank, CA.

2014: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Ada Reyim is scheduled to host a Sisterhood Community Women’s Seder using a special Haggadah honoring “the role of women in Passover tradition.”

2014:An Arab-Israeli microbiologist Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, a 33-year-old mother of three, was crowned the winner of Israel’s most-watched television show, Master Chef tonight.

2014: Elections are scheduled to be held in Hungary amid charges by the “leadership of Hungarian Jewry that Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government is pandering to nationalist voters who do not wish to be reminded of the role Hungary played in the murder of its Jewish citizens

http://forward.com/articles/195640/hungary-yellow-star-houses-project-spotlights-comp/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%202014-04-02&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29

2015: The Israeli Folk Dance group is scheduled to meet in Metairie, LA.

2015: “More than 75,000 people gathered at the Western Wall for the Priestly Blessing ceremony called Birkat Kohanim in Hebrew, during the second intermediate day of Passover.” (As reported by JTA)

2015: “Clearly unsatisfied with assurances from President Obama about the provisions of the Iran nuclear deal, Israel” today “listed specific requirements that it declared were necessary in any final agreement.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/world/middleeast/israel-iran-nuclear-deal.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

2015(17th of Nisan, 5775): Third Day of Pesach; in the evening count Omer 3

2015(17th of Nisan): According to tradition, date on which “Noah’s Ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat.”

2015(17th of Nisan, 5775): “Bernice S. Tannenbaum, the 101 year old “former president of Hadassah” who fought against the U.N. resolutions “equating Zionism with racism” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/10/us/bernice-tannenbaum-who-fought-un-resolution-on-zionism-dies-at-101.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2016(27th of Adar II, 5776): Sixty-eight year old economist Joel Kurtzman passed away today.(As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/business/economy/joel-kurtzman-economist-of-gloom-who-shifted-to-optimism-dies-at-68.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2016: “Last Musik is scheduled to present a benefit concert to protect and preserve the music composed in concentration camps, featuring Ute Lemper, renowned vocalist.”

2016: “The Kind Words” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2016: “The Experimenter” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Film Festival.

2016: In New York, the Consul General of Israel is scheduled to speak at the Amal Israel Entrepreneurship Event.

2016: As a sign of the vitality of Yiddishkeit in places where you might not expect to find it, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to discuss the book Paradise Park: A Novel by Allegra Goodman this evening. 2017(10th of Nisan, 5777): The 10th of Nisan is the date on which the Israelites under Joshua crossed the Jordan into Eretz Israel

2017(10th of Nisan, 5777): The 10thof Nisan is the official day of national celebration in which Jewish immigration to Israel is honored and noteworthy immigrants are recognized for their contributions to the nation. (As reported by Debra Kamin)

2017(10th of Nisan, 5777): Seventy-one year old accountant and business manager to the starts Joseph Rascoff passed away today. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/business/media/joseph-rascoff-dead-business-manager-for-rolling-stones.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2017(10th of Nisan, 5777): Ninety year old comedian Donald Jay “Don” Rickles passed away today.

http://www.filmreference.com/film/97/Don-Rickles.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/arts/television/don-rickles-dead-comedian.html

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/apr/07/don-rickles-obituary

2017: In “The Great Genius of Jewish Literature” published today, Robert Alter reviews the works of S.Y. Agnon.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/04/06/sy-agnon-great-genius-jewish-literature/

2017: “J.B. Pritzker announced that he was running for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Illinois.

2017: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “When Do We Eat, “a Pesach themed film

2017: The Maimonides Friendship Award Ceremony is scheduled to be the highlight of the final night of the 20th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

2017: In NYC, The Streicker Center is scheduled to host a presentation by Alessio Assonitis, Franesco Benelli and Lorenzo Vigotti on “Reconstructing the Ghetto in Florence.”

2018(21st of Nisan, 5778: Seventh Day of Pesach; for Reform and in Israel, last day of the holiday.

2018: An exhibition of “the Urban Impressionism of Lawrence Kushner,” is scheduled to open today in the Isaacs Gallery at the Osher Marin JCC in San Rafael.

2018: During today’s “violent protest in the Gaza Strip” which the Defense Minister described as “a terrorist march, a man, who it was later claimed was a Palestinian photo-journalist was killed today while flying a drone above Israeli soldiers.

2018: Today “an additional four women who formerly worked at Richard Meier’s architecture firm came forward with allegations” of improper sexual behavior on his part which would eventually lead to his permanent resignation from the firm.

2018: “Itzkak,” a feature film that “captures the life, work and heritage to violinists Itzhak Perlman” is scheduled to open at several U.S. theatres today including The Opera Plaza in San Francisco, the Midtown Art in Atlanta, GA and the Lagoon in Minneapolis, MN.

2018: The Reuter Center at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Asheville, NC is scheduled to host a screening of “Rosenwald” this evening.

2018: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host a special “Tot Shabbat Passover Experience,” this evening.

2018: The New Israel Fund said today that it has seen a major boost in donations after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s accusations that the left-wing NGO pressured Rwanda to refuse to resettle African migrants whom the Israeli government wants to deport.

2019: In London, Phoenix Cinema is scheduled to host a screening of “The Keeper.”

http://ukjewishfilm.org/film/the-keeper/

2019: In Washington, D.C., the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a lecture by Felicia Farbert, author of Abe vs. Adolf: The True Story of Holocaust Survivor Abe Peck

2019(1st of Nisan, 5779): Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh;

2020: Rabbi Lawrence Kushner of Emanu-El in S.F. is scheduled to a session via Zoom on “Getting a Head Start on Passover” that “includes strategies, text exploration and more.”

2020: Today is the scheduled deadline for submitting proposals for the central exhibition of the 8th International Photography Festival in Tel Aviv, November 2020.”

https://www.photoisrael.org/opencall/

2020: As part of its Modern Jewish Thought Series, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson as he delivers the on-line lecture “The Wisdom of Martin Buber.

2020: Four members of LSJS’s faculty --Dr Aviva Dautch, Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, Dr Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz and Rabbi Barry Kleinber - are scheduled to discuss, on-line, The Four Sons, in a debate format in which the participants will assume the persona of these famous siblings.

https://www.lsjs.ac.uk/four-sons-seder-night-debate-1111.php

2020(12th of Nisan, 5780):  On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrzeit of the 32 Jews of Meshed, Persia who were massacred after which “the one hundred remaining families were forcibly converted to Islam.”

2021: The New England Yachad is scheduled to present “Torah Talk” online.

2021:S.F.-based Israeli diplomat Matan Zamir and Israeli Covid-19 advisory team member epidemiologist Nadav Davidovitch are scheduled to talk about Israel’s response to Covid, its leadership and its successes, and the importance of global collaboration.

2021: As part of the virtual Holocaust and Genocide Lecture Series, Keene State professor James Walker is scheduled to discuss “Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing.”

2021: The Stanford Taube Center for Jewish Studies is scheduled to host a lecture by Professor Moshe Halbertal on the “Jewish Notions of the Holy.”

2021: JCCSF, Emanu-El, JFCS Holocaust Center and Taube Center are scheduled to present a free streaming of No Place On Earth, “ the 83-minute 2012 docudrama about 38 Polish Jews who survived WWII by living in cave followed by panel discussion that  includes the film’s director, a caving expert, a Bay Area relative of some cave survivors and moderator Shana Penn of Taube Philanthropies.

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host a lecture by Gilad Sharon on his father Ariel Sharon.

2021: The National Council of Jewish Women is scheduled to host a board meeting in New Orleans.

2021: The Jewish Federation of Cleveland is scheduled to host “Inside the Play: Whistle: My Mother was Mengele’s Secretary.”

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/inside-the-play-whistle-my-mother-was-mengeles-secretary-registration-146387415701?aff=consulate

2021: The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Salem State University is scheduled to present a Virtual Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony.

2021: The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to host online “a presentation by Ambassador Ido Aharoni about the recent Israeli election during which he “will unpack the election results and explore the ramifications and opportunities for Israeli society and for the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

2021: Based on reports published yesterday, Prime Minister, who has just lashed out the legal system because of his prosecution, is the leading candidate to form a new government which may or may not include members of The Islamic Movement which Dr. Mordechai Kedar has described as “a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

 


This Day, April 7, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 7

180: Saint Hegesippus, the second century historian who was an opponent of various “heresies” and whom Eusebius contended was a “convert from Judaism” because “he quoted from the Hebrew, was acquainted with the Gospel according to the Hebrews…and also cited unwritten traditions of the Jews” passed away today.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Hegesippus

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07194a.htm

451: Attila the Hun sacked Metz in what is now Germany as he pillaged his across Europe.  Based on the Thirteenth Tribe, there are those who contend that a large proportion of Europe’s Jews were descended from the Khazars a warrior people connected to Attila.

529: The Roman Emperor Justinian issued the first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis. Justinian codified the ant-Jewish imperial view of the world that began under Constantine.The code made “anyone who was not connected to the Christian church a non-citizen.” More specifically, the principle of "Servitude of the Jews" (Servitus Judaeorum) was established by the new laws, and determined the status of Jews throughout the Empire for hundreds of years. The Jews were disadvantaged in a number of ways. Jews could not testify against Christians and were disqualified from holding a public office. Jewish civil and religious rights were restricted: ‘they shall enjoy no honors’. The use of the Hebrew language in worship was forbidden. Shema Yisrael sometimes considered the most important prayer in Judaism ("Hear, O Israel, YHWH our God, YHWH is one") was banned, as a denial of the Trinity. A Jew who converted to Christianity was entitled to inherit his or her father's estate, to the exclusion of the still-Jewish brothers and sisters. The Emperor became an arbiter in internal Jewish affairs. Similar laws applied to the Samaritans.”

1285: After a journey of almost two years “German Talmudist Judah ben Asher” arrived in Toledo, Spain today.

1348:  In the first year of the reign of Charles IV, Charles University is founded in Prague. Charles was an enlightened ruler whose years on the throne were good ones for the Jews of Prague. “The long reign of Emperor Charles IV brought the Prague Jews new privileges and relative calm even. The king ensured protection and, among others, offered a chance for them to settle inside the walls of the arising New Town. A sign of the status of the Jewish community is a banner that has survived, given to the Jews of Prague by Charles IV in 1375. From that year on the Jews would, over the centuries, come to the gates of the ghetto to welcome the kings of Bohemia in Prague. The banner was a shield and legacy of the favors of the ruler’s predecessor, a symbol of ambition and sign of hope.” Today Charles University is the home base for a Jewish Studies program offered to American college students that examines the history of Central European Jewry

1486:  The first prayer book (Siddur) was printed in Italy by Soncino. This was the only time that the Siddur was published during the 15th century. For the most part hand copied manuscripts (of which there were plenty) continued to be used.

1498: Louis XII who ordered the expulsion of the Jews from Provence began his reign today.

1506: In Portugal, a group of New Christians was arrested when they were caught conducting a Seder.  Although they were released two Dominican firiars “who paraded through the streets with an uplifted crucifix crying Heresia so inflamed the citizenry that 500 hundred New Christians were murdered on the first day of a multi-day massacre

1615: In Worms, members of the Guilds riot as part of an attempt to force the Jews to leave.

1645: Michael Cardozo became the 1st Jewish lawyer in Brazil. The Dutch West India Company granted Michael Cardoso the right to practice law in Brazil a privilege no other Jew enjoyed at that time anywhere else.  The Dutch would shortly lose control of Brazil to the Portuguese.  And in 1654, it would be a group of Jewish refugees from Recife (part of formerly Dutch Brazil) who would land in New Amsterdam to begin the modern American Jewish Community.

1720: At one of the last large auto-de-fe's in Madrid, was burned five suspected Jews who were found to have committed the crime of praying in a "secret synagogue" which had been found after the Spanish war of Succession.

1740: Birthdate of Leszno, Poland native Haym Solomon, the husband of Rachel Heilbron and father of Ezekiel Salomon; Sarah Andrews; Deborah Myers-Cohen and Haym Moses Salomon who was the American patriot best known for providing financing for the American Revolution for which he was never compensated and led to his death in a state of poverty.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Haym-Salomon

https://www.nps.gov/revwar/about_the_revolution/haym_salomom.HTML

1750: Birthdate of Dettensee, Germany native Bearle Weil, the husband of Rosele Katz and the father of Esther and Elcha Weil.

1750: In Germany, Juttle and Jakob Weil gave birth to Kehle Weil, the wife of Seligman Loeb Lindauer and the mother of Bessie, Manasse, and Salomon Lindauer. 

1754(15thof Nisan, 5514): Pesach

1754: As Jews munched on their matzah, a, party of French soldiers was on the third day of its march to stop the English from building a fort at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (modern day Pittsburgh) which would lead to the battle in May in which George Washington led the British forces and which is considered by historians to being the start of the French and Indian War.

1764(5thof Nisan, 5524):Parashat Metzora is chanted as Boston deals with a smallpox epidemic that had broken out in January

1767: Christian Old Testament scholar, Johann Gottlob Carpzov, a member of the Carpzov family who specialized in the study of Hebrew and the Old Testament passed away. Carpzov authored Apparatus Historico-Criticus Antiquitatum et Codicis Sacri et Gentis Hebrææ in 1748. “According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Carpzov represents both an advance and a retrogression in Biblical science — an advance in fullness of material and clearness of arrangement (his Introductio is the first work that deserves the name), and a retrogression in critical analysis, for he held fast to the literal inspiration of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and bitterly opposed the freer positions of Simon, Spinoza, and Clericus. His antiquarian writings are still interesting and useful.”

1781: Birthdate of Berlin philanthropist Abraham Muhr

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0014_0_14351.html

1783: In Amsterdam, Branca Levie Duijts and Simon Isaac Frankfort gave birth to Gompers Simon Frankfort.

1788: American settlers establish Marietta, Ohio, the first new American settlement in the Northwest Territory.   Apparently a thriving Jewish community existed in Marietta during the last part of the 19thcentury and the first part of the 20th century as can be seen by the existence of two Jewish cemeteries, a Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish War Suffers’ Society and a synagogue called B’nai Israel.

1792(15thof Nisan, 5552): First Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1806(18thof Nisan, 5556): Fifth Day of Pesach

1806: As Jews munched on matzot. hunters with Lewis and Clark set out in search of Elk.

1807: Birthdate of Ridley Haim Herschell, the Polish born Jew who converted and founded the British Society Propagating the Gospel Among the Jews in 1842.

1810: Twenty-one year old George Hartog, “a surgeon in the King’s German Legion” who was “one of the un-sung heroes of the Battle of Waterloo” got “his medical doctorate” today.

1814(17thof Nisan, 5574): Third Day of Pesach

1814(17thof Nisan, 5574):Bernard Mordechi Kornfeld passed away today in Czechoslovakia

1817: In Liverpool, Hannah Wolf and Myer Tobias gave birth to Frederick Meyer Tobias.

1818:In Ḳin'at ha-Emet(Zeal for Truth), a paper written today, and published in the collection “Nogah ha-Ẓedeḳ” (Light of Righteousness), Aron Chorin a Hungarian rabbi and advocated for religious reform, declared himself in favor of reforms, such as German prayers, the use of the organ, and other liturgical modifications. The principal prayers, the Shema', and the eighteen benedictions, however, should be said in Hebrew, he declared, as this language keeps alive the belief in the restoration of Israel. He also pleaded for opening the temple for daily service.

1822(16th of Nisan, 5582): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

1822: As Jews munched on their Matzot, former President Thomas Jefferson wrote to his successor, former President James Madison.

1826: Birthdate of Frederick C. Salomon, the Prussian native came to the United States where he worked as a surveyor and Register of Deeds in Wisconsin before joining the Union Army where he served with distinction and was mustered out as Major General of Volunteers.

1830(14thof Nisan, 5590): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1834: A version of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s “The Fiend-Father” was presented today in New York.

1847(21stof Nisan, 5607): Seventh of Pesach

1848:Baron Jozsef Eotvos, Hungarian statesman and who supported the emancipation of the Jews became Minister of Education.

1849(15thof Nisan, 5609): Pesach

1849:The Pennsylvania legislature granted a charter today to the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia that “authorized the establishment of schools for general education, combined with instruction in the Hebrew language and literature; the charter also authorized the establishment of a "superior seminary of learning," with power to grant the usual degrees given by other colleges.”

1851: The first school created under the jurisdiction of the Hebrew Education Society held its first class today in Philadelphia, PA.

1851: Birthdate of “German composer and conductor” Martin Roder.

1852: This morning at the Herkimer-street Synagogue in Albany a new Sefer Torah was read for the first time and then placed in the Holy Ark.  Following the reading Rabbi Raphall gave what was called “an appropriate address.”

1855: At 8 Upper East Smithfield in London Abigail Moss and Marcus Samuel gave birth to Samuel Samuel founder of Samuel Samuel & Co who served as an MP for almost twenty years and who was the brother of Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount of Bearsted.

1855: At the behest of Samuel K. Labatt, The Los Angeles Star published “the lengthy and effective denunciation” William Stow written by his brilliant lawyer brother, Henry J. Labatt of San Francisco.”  Stow is William Stow who had launched an anti-Semitic attack on the Jewish people from the sanctuary of the California State Assembly. Samuel K. Labatt was the first President of the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles. He saw part of his role as being the defender of Jews against anti-Semites.

1857: Birthdate of Yanceyville, NC native Maurice Fels, the son of Bavarian born Lazarus Fels.

1858: In Frankfort-on-Main Hermann and Helene (Stiebel) Blumenthal gave birth to foreign exchange banker and “head the U.S. branch of Lazard Freres” George Blumenthal, the husband of Florence Meyer and Mary Payne Clews, the father of George Blumenthal, Jr., the son-in-law of fellow banker Marc E. Meyer and the brother-in-law of Eugene Meyer, the publisher and owner of the Washington Post whose good works included serving as President of the Mt. Sinai Hospital.

1859: In Munkacs, Hungary, David Samuel Gottesman and Chaya (Helen) Rivka Gottesman gave birth to Mendel Gottesman the husband of Sarah Gottesman with whom he had six children including David Samuel Gottesman “Hungarian-born, American pulp-paper merchant, financier and philanthropist.”

1859: In Mayen, German, importer Benedict Loeb and Barbara Isay Loeb gave birth to Isaak Loeb who gained fame as German physiologist Jacques Loeb.

https://biography.yourdictionary.com/jacques-loeb

1860(15thof Nisan, 5620): Pesach

1860:  A review of The History of Herodotusby George Rawlinson published today compared the writings of the ancient Greek Historian with information found in the Bible. The reviewer gives credence to the progression of history as presented in the Scripture. “The Hezekiahs, the Isaiahs, the Jacobs, the Zerubbabels, the Maccabees, the Gamaliels,…could never have appeared as the later records describe them, had there been no Samuel, no Joshua, no Moses, no Exodus from Egypt, no law-giving on Sinai, as represented to us in the marvelous yet truthful pictures of the more ancient books.”

1861: Sinai Congregation which was led by Rabbi Felsenthal and President Schoeneman was established in Chicago

1861: Forty year old Prussian born tobacconist Samuel Gluckstein the son of Lehman Meyer Gluckstein and Helena Horn who had come to Britain ten years ago was now living at  37, High Street, Whitechapel, London

1862: The Battle of Shiloh ends with a Union Victory. Among the many Jews serving at the battle was Corporal David Orbansky of the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry who won the Medal of Honor for his “gallantry in action against the enemy.”

1863(18thof Nisan, 5623): Fourth Day of Pesach

1863: In England, David Cohen and his wife gave birth to Henry Cohen, the graduate of Jews’ College, who served as rabbi at several congregations included, the Amalgamated Congregation of Israelites in Kingston, Jamaica, Congregation Beth Israel in Woodville, Mississippi and Congregation B’nai Israel in Galveston, Texas as well as being the Librarian of the Texas Historical Society, an executive board member of the Jewish Publication Society of America and the American Jewish Historical Society and following the historic hurricane, the Central Relief Committee of the Galveston Storm Sufferers.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fco13

1864(1stof Nisan, 5624): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1864: In Watertown, Wisconsin, Nancy (Levensen) Blumenfeld and David Blumenthal, a 1848 German émigré to the United States gave birth to R.D. (Ralph David) Blumenthal, the husband of Daisie Blumenfeld, who enjoyed a successful journalistic career in the United States with such papers as James Gordon Bennett’s New York Journal before moving to the United Kingdom where he led prestigious such papers as The Observer, The Sunday Times and the Daily Express.

http://www.watertownhistory.org/Articles/Blumenfeld,%20Ralph.htm

https://archives.parliament.uk/collections/getrecord/GB61_BLU

1865: Birthdate of Gustav Freund who was deported from Prague in June of 1942 to Terezin where he was murdered on in August.

1866(22ndof Nisan, 5626): Eight day of Pesach and Shabbat

1867: Two days after he had passed away, 43 year old Michael Simeon, the son of Sarah Rees and Peter Simeon, the husband of the former Augusta Phillips and the father of Frank Simeon, was bured today at the Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1867: Sir George Faudel-Phillips, the “second son of Sir Benjamin Samuel Phillips” and the future Lord Mayor of London married Helen Levy, the “daughter of Joseph Moses Levy, the owner of the London Daily Telegraph.

1868(15thof Nisan, 5628): Pesach

1868(15thof Nisan, 5628): Rabbi Carl Heinemann passed away.  He was hired as the first rabbi in Goteborg, Sweden in 1837 but was forced to resign in 1851 after he opposed the introduction of “radical reform measures.”

1870(16th of Nisan, 5631): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1870: In Karlsruhe, “Rosa (Neuberger) and Herman Landauer gave birth to their “second child,”German anarchist Gustav Landauer.

1870: According to the review of the Art Academy, on this date, Russian –Jewish sculptor Mark Arntokolski “was granted personal name of honorary citizen ‘for wonderful knowledge of art’”.

1872: Seventy year old, W.L. Mitchell, a Professor at the Georgia State University Law School, has begun to study Hebrew. [Ed. Note – I have not been able to find out anything about Professor Mitchell i.e. whether he was Jewish or a Christian who was following what had become a popular pastime among 18th& 19thcentury Protestants.]

1875: In Ukraine, Michael Pofcher and Rose Nizel Pofcher gave birth to Louis Pofcher, the brother of David, Abram, Elias and Simon Pofcher.

1875: Birthdate of Hungarian born American attorney Bernard Alexander.

1877: Birthdate of Buffalo native Samuel Jacob Harris, the University of Buffalo trained attorney and New York State Supreme Court Judge.

1878: Three days after she had passed away, the former Lydia Abraham, the wife of Alexander Levy with whom she had had five children was buried today in the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1879: Three days after he had passed away, 15 year old John Henry Hart Simmons, the son of Henry Simmons and Fanny Hart was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1880: Birthdate of multi-talented performer Fritz Grünbaum who gave his last performance to fellow inmates at Dachau just days before his death.

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/music-early-camps/dachau/grnbaumfritz/

1880: In Leadville, CO, Jewish businessman Jacob Schloss was elected treasurer of the Turnverin Society.

1880: In Kremai Russia, “Hirsch and Hannah (Levine) Garbovitsky gave birth to Vera Garbovitsky who gained fame as Rebecca Schweitzer, the wife of Peter J. Schwietzer, “the largest importer and exporter of cigarette paper in the United States who used their fortune for philanthropy and support of the embryonic Zionist movement.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schweitzer-rebecca

https://www.vera.org/blog/vera-schweitzer-the-vera-institutes-worthy-namesake

1880: Two days after he had passed away Isaac Goldsmith was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1880: Rabbi H.P. Mendez officiated at the wedding of Frederick Nathan, the son of the late Benjamin Nathan and Maud Nathan, daughter of Robert W. Nathan, which was held at Shearith Israel in New York City.

1882: In New York, Joseph Deutsch, the “son of Moses Deutsch and Sarah Levy” and his wife Theresa Deutsch gave birth to Morris Deutsch

1883: In “A Movement to Unite Three Congregations” published today, the Brooklyn Eagle described attempts by Brooklyn's three leading synagogues, Baith Israel, Beth Elohim, and Temple Israel to merge.

 

1883: Birthdate of Maksymilian Apolinary Hartglas, the Hungarian born Zionist activist who was one of the main political leaders of Polish Jews during the interwar period, a lawyer, a publicist, and a Sejm deputy from 1919 to 1930.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolinary_Hartglas

1885: Birthdate of Ukrainian native Edward Dato who came to the United States in 1914 where he attended Northwestern and became an engineer and realtor in Chicago.

1888(25th of Nisan, 5648): Fifty-year old Russian businessman and philanthropist Samuel Polyakov the brother of Lazar Polyakov and Yakov Polyakov, known as the “railroad king” and founder of “World ORT” passed away today in St. Petersburg.

1891: In Leadville, CO, Lotta Schloss married Moses L Stern who became secretary and treasurer of Schloss Bros.

1891: Birthdate of British born, New Zealand cartoonist, Sir David Low.  Low was not Jewish but he was an early and constant critic of Hitler and Mussolini.  Throughout the 1930’s his cartoons skewered the fascist dictators with such skill that no a less a personage than Sigmund Freud wrote, “"A Jewish refugee from Vienna, a very old man personally unknown to you, cannot resist the impulse to tell you how much he admires your glorious art and your inexorable, unfailing criticism."

1891: The cornerstone of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society’s new building was laid this afternoon at 3 o’clock.

1891: Twenty-eight year old German Jewish immigrant Siegfried Lewisohn shot himself twice in the left breast today at 29 Sutton Place in New York.

1892: John L. Stoddard delivered an illustrated lecture designed as “an excursion to Jerusalem and the Holy Land.”

1893(21stof Nisan, 5653): Seventh day of Pesach

1893(21stof Nisan, 5653): Joel Joe, the son of Isaac Joel and Rebecca Solomon, husband of Catherine Isaacs and he son-in-law of Isaac Isaacs and Leah Harris passed away today.

1895: It is expected that several liquor dealers who bought “bootleg” Kosher wine from a Russian Jew known as “Gordon” will be arraigned today for failure to pay the appropriate revenue taxes.

1895: “Free Sons of Israel” published today traces the history of  Independent Order of Free Sons of Israel” which was founded in 1849 by German Jews and has grown to be one of the leading Jewish organizations of its kind throughout the United States.

1895: It was reported today that during his service as Chairman of the Committee on Endowment for the Free Sons of Israel, William A. Gans has written checks totaling $2,300,000 to provide aid for widows and orphans.

1896: Congressman Amos J. Cummings will deliver an address about Horace Greely, as the last lecture “of the regular season’s course under the auspices of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1896: The Union Veteran Hebrew Association met today in New York City.

1896: Three days after he had passed away, 76 year old John Goodman Levy, the son of Goodman and Rebecca Levy and the husband of Maria Goodman was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery”

1896: Birthdate Benjamin Leiner, the son of Orthodox Jews, who as Benny Leonard learned his boxing trade on the streets of New York.  Leonard was Light Heavyweight Champion for seven and half years.  He was one of several Jewish boxing champs during the early decades of the twentieth century. Leonard was proud of being Jewish and was quoted that Jews were suited by nature to boxing because it was the highest form of self-defense. 

1896: Hermann Ahlwardt, the German anti-Semitic agitator and his two American sponsors are expected to be arraigned for their part in provoking a riot in Hoboken, NJ during which Ahlwardt reportedly drew a pistol and threatened the mob protesting his appearance.

1897: It was reported today that Oscar S. Straus, Isaac Wallack, Emanuel Lehman, Isaac Eppinger and Samuel M. Schafer were among the dignitaries who had attended the funeral services of the late Julius Ehrmann.

1897: Orthodox Jews through the world celebrated the “festival of the new sun” which “comes once every 28 years on the fourth day of the first week of Nisan.”

1897: While most services for The Blessing of the New Sun, Birkat Hachama, were held without any problems in New York City, including one held on the banks of the East River, an observance at Tompkins Park was marred by the arrest of the officiating Rabbis.  Rabbi Wechsler and Rabbi Klein had told their congregants to gather at the square.  Since the service had to be completed by nine o’clock, a large group had already gathered by eight when local police appeared on the scene.  They were concerned about the threat posed to the public safety by such a large gathering.  Nobody had thought to get a permit and the two Rabbis were taken away since their English was not effective enough to convey the purpose of the gathering.  A magistrate later released them with a warning.  In the mean time, the Jews in the square conducted the service without the benefit of clergy.

1897: Birthdate of Walter Winchell.  The son of Jewish immigrants, Winchell left school at the age of 13 to go into vaudeville.  He appeared with other such Jewish beginners as Eddie Cantor.  Winchell's career took a different turn.  He entered the world of journalism where he invented the gossip column.  Winchell's column appeared in 2,000 papers every day and his 1930's radio show was heard by 50 million listeners.  Winchell had his friends and his foes.  Both agreed that Winchell outlived himself and he died a much diminished figure in 1972.  However, he is another example of a Jew inventing something that was considered to be uniquely American.

1898(15thof Nisan, 5658): Pesach

1899: “Dramatic and Musical” published today described Herr Adolf Sonnenthal’s recent portrayal of the lead character in “Nathan the Wise” which was described as “his greatest success.”  The audience burst into spontaneous, uncontrolled applause when uttered the monologue during the third act in which “Nathan commenting on Saladin’s desire for money asks, ‘Who is here the Jew?’”

1899: “In Aid of the Hebrew Infant Asylum” published today described the plans for the upcoming fundraiser sponsored by the Young Folks’ League of Hebrew Infant Asylum that has 500 members and has raised over $6,000 in the last two years to support the institution.

1899:” Musicale in Aid of Hebrew Institute” published today described the successful fund raiser held at Sherry’s which raised $4,000 for the Hebrew Technical Institute.

1900(8thof Nissan, 5660): Shabbat HaGadol

1900(8thof Nissan, 5660): Zionist poet Isaac Rabinowitz passed away.

1901(18thof Nisan, 5661) Fourth Day of Pesach

1901(18thof Nisan, 566): Hillel Kahane, teacher and worker for the "Enlightenment," passed away at Bottuschan.

1901: “Jew and Chess” published today expressed surprise that “a large percentage of the most famous Chess players are Jewish” including one of the Rothschilds who is “known to be a first-class amateur” because “no player has yet made a fortune out chess and many of the great masters find it difficult to make even a mere living from the game.” (Editor’s note: Genteel anti-Semitism mixed in with the Shylock myth)

1902: Birthdate of Leo “Red” Klauber. “the captain of the 1923 CCNY team, which had a 12-1 record. Considered one of the best teams in the country that year, their only loss was to Syracuse 31-30

1903: Second day of the First Kishinev Pogrom

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-kishinev-pogrom-1903

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/04/the-pogrom-that-transformed-20th-century-jewry/

1904(22ndof Nisan, 5664): Jews observe the 8th day of Pesach in a year when T.R. seeks to be elected to the Presidency having been serving in office because of the death of President McKinley.

1905: It was reported today that the “Cohn-Baer-Myers-Aronson Company and the Broadway Reliance Reality Company have sold to Henry and Morris Goldstein the block front on east side of Robbins Avenue, between 139th and 140thStreets…”

1906(12thof Nisan, 5666): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1906: The Algeciras Conference, which had been convened to settle the dispute between France and Germany over Morocco, came to an end. During the conference, the United States raised the issue of the mistreatment of the Jews in the North African kingdom.  U.S. Ambassador White said, “the American government has always considered it duty…to assure due respect to all religious beliefs…My government has charged me to invoke the cooperation of the Conference…regarding the wishes for the welfare of the Israelites of Morocco.” According to Abraham Bloch, the European powers attending the conference supported the American position.  This included Russia whose anti-Semitic policies had forced untold numbers Jews to live in misery or leave the country, France which had been dealing with Dreyfus wave of anti-Semitism and Spain which had expelled it Jews en masse in 1492.

1907: “Roumanian Jews Barbarously Used” published today described hos “anti-Semitic agitation is used as a political weapon” and reported that “the recent outbreak of Anti-Semitic riots…has added enormously to the misery of the Roumanian Jews,” fifty thousand of whom are homeless and/or facing starvation.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1907/04/07/106112109.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1908: H. H. Asquith of the Liberal Party takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Herbert Henry Asquith served as Prime Minister until 1916 when he was replaced by Lloyd George.  In a private letter written before he became Prime Minister, Asquith described the Jews as “a scattered and unattractive tribe.”  He did enjoy the friendship of Jews including Edwin Montagu who would become the new P.M.’s private secretary. Montagu and Asquith would have a falling out over the affections of Venetia Stanley a friend of Asquith's daughter.  Montagu gained fame as one of the British Jews who opposed the Balfour Declaration. During the 1930’s, Asquith’s daughter befriended Vladimir Jabotinsky. She is the one who introduced him to Winston Churchill.  One of Asquith’s sons served with the British Army in Palestine during WW II.

1909(16thof Nisan, 5669): Second Day of Pesach.

1910: It was reported today that in his lecture at the Holland Society, Dr. T. De Vries of The Hague said that Palestine was one of the “three little countries which had been of great importance to the world” because of its religious significance.

1910: “Taft Praises The Jews” published today quotes Republican President Taft telling delegates to the B’nai B’rith convention that “There is no people so much entitled as” the Jews “to become the aristocrats of the world and yet who make the best Republicans” and that he has “profound admiration for the Jewish people because they make excellent citizens” whom he is glad have “come to this country.”

1911(9thof Nisan, 5671): Fifty-nine year old French banker and art collector Comte Isaac de Camondo who was a member of the House of Camondo passed away today.

1912(20thof Nisan, 5672): Sixth Day of Pesach

1912(20thof Nisan, 5672): Fifty-eight year old physician and journalist Mark J. Lehman passed away today in New Orleans.

1912: In Brooklyn, Barney (Beryl) Schwartz and Fanny (Fruma) Goldman Schwartz first cousins who had run away from their home in Belaya Tserkov (Bila Tserkva, Ukraine) to come to America in 1904 gave birth to Jacob Louis Schwartz who gained fame as songwriter and composer Jack Lawrence

1913: It was reported today, that since Dr. Stephen S. Wise will be absent for the next two months from the pulpit of the Free Synagogue his place will be taken by Nahum, Sokolow, “who will deliver the Passover sermon,” Professor Nathanial Schmidt of Cornell University, Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes and “several other Jewish ministers.”

1913(29th of Adar II, 5673): Sixty-five-year-old Emma Roos, the Natchez, MS born daughter of Aaron and Jeannette W. Helena Roos passed away today in New Orleans.

1914(11thof Nisan, 5674): Sixty-nine year old Julius Peyser, the Prenslau born son of Schaye Seelig Peyser and Therese Jaffe, husband of Doris Loewenthal and father of Paula Pyeser passed away today at Königsberg in der Neumark.

1914: Dr. Jacob Goldstein, the rabbi of Temple Beth Sholom of Bensonshurst and the Jewish chaplain of the Tombs and of Sing Sing said he was “shocked by the news” that Governor Glynn had denied the application for a reprieve from four gunmen in the death house at Sing Sing including “Lefty Louie,” the son bod Jacob Rosnberg and “Gyp the Blood” the son of Joseph Horwitz.’

 

1915: Birthdate of Eleanora Fagan, better known as “legendary songstress Billie Holiday,” who “recorded a gorgeous, impromptu cover of the Jewish classic “My Yiddishe Mamme,” which was composed by Jack Yellen and Lew Pollack

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/190122/billie-holidays-cover-of-my-yiddishe-mamme

1915: Birthdate of economist Albert Hirschman, “who in his youth helped rescue thousands of artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France and went on to become an influential economist known for his optimism” and was the author of Exit, Voice and Loyalty. (As reported by William Yardley)

1915: New York's Governor Charles S. Whitman signed the Widowed Mothers Pension Act into law. The new statute, which provided state-funded pensions to qualifying women so that they could care for their children at home, was largely the result of the efforts of communal activist and reformer Hannah Bachman Einstein.

1916(4thof Nisan, 5676): Eighty-two year old Joseph Shields, “a collector of internal revenue,” passed away today.

1916: Reverend Charles A. Campbell, the “pastor of the Third Street Presbyterian Church” was reported today to have been among those attending a meeting in Dayton, Ohio where he contributed $50 towards a fund being raised “for the relief of the Jews” in war torn Europe.

1916: In Manhattan, David and Anne Valentine Tishman gave birth to Robert V. Tishman, “a real estate developer whose companies — bearing the family name since the 19th century — etched their mark on the skylines of cities around the nation, including construction of the World Trade Center.”

1917(15thof Nisan, 5677): First Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1917: Services for the first day of Pesach were held at the South Side Hebrew Congregation on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

1917: “Austrian Jews Would Aid” published today described the efforts of Rabbi Samuel Buchler of Brooklyn and a group of Austro-Hungarian Jews to encourage “citizens of foreign birth who are loyal to the American flag” to enlist “in the army and navy.”

1917: In response to yesterday’s declaration of war on Germany “loyalty and patriotic support of American arms and democracy were urged in Passover sermons in many synagogues” today.

1917: At Temple Beth-El, Rabbi Samuel Schulman spoke on “Man’s Freedom, the Work of God in History” saying that “whatever differences of opinion may have existed before the decision” to go to war “was made they exist no longer.  We are today one people.”

1917: While delivering “a sermon on ‘Emancipation, Old and New’ Rabbi Maurice H. Harris of Temple Israel in Harlem predicted the coming of the democracy of the nations.”

1917: As part of their on-going correspondence President Wilson wrote to Simon Wolfe that he had “been particularly interest in the work” “of the Order of B’nai B’rith and the Hebrew Congregations of the United States” in the effort to destroy so as they can the provincialism of prejudice as between races.”

1918: “A proposal” “made by Samuel Goldstein, the President of the Jewish Federation of America” “that all Jewish organizations in the United States should be united into a national body with Nathan Starus at the head was received with enthusiasm at a convention of Romanian Jews” meeting today at the Hebrew Girls’ Technical School

1919: Clarence Darrow is scheduled to speak tonight on “The Fallacy of the League of Nations” at the Open Forum hosted by the Sinai Social Center in Chicago.

1919: It was reported today that “The Institutional Synagogue has acquired a large factory building…near its present home” which will be converted into “an edifice suitable for its own uses.

1919: Mrs. Felix A. Levy, the President of the Council of Jewish Women is scheduled to speak at today’s luncheon at the B.M.Z. Woman’s Club where new members will also be welcome.

1919: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Rabbi Mendel Silber of New Orleans delivered the opening prayer on the final day of the 30th convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis which included a presentation on “Religious Education and the Future of American Judaism” by Rabbi David Lefkowitz of Dayton, Ohio

1920(19thof Nisan, 5680): Fifth Day of Pesach.

1920: The Arab Riots in Jerusalem which had begun on the second day of Pesach came to an end today.

1923(21stof Nisan, 5683): Seventh Day of Pesach

1923:  The 1st brain tumor operation under local anesthetic was performed at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City by Dr. K Winfield Ney.

1926: “Miss Irma May, a former New York relief work” who returned to New York today aboard the French liner Paris after having spent three months in Europe said  that “more than one million Jews in Poland and millions in other countries are starving as a result of the economic breakdown of the countries in which they live” and that “their only hope of being saved from extinction is in the early arrival of relief from America.”

1927: “The libel suit for $100,000 brought by Dr. A. Coralnick, editorial writer of “The Day” against the “Freiheit”, Communist Yiddish daily, was settled out of court today. Under the terms of the settlement, the “Freiheit” is to pay the amount of $250 to Dr. Coralnick and to publish a statement withdrawing its charges against him. Jonah J. Goldstein and Leon Savage acted as attorneys for Dr. Coralnick. The $250 will be given to the Ort, Mr. Goldstein announced. (As reported by JTA)

1928: After 494 performances the curtain came down on “Rio Rita” a musical orchestrated and conducted by Max Steiner which had played at the Ziegfeld, Lyric and Majestic theatres.

1928: Birthdate of producer Alan J. Paluka, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the cinema classic “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/20/movies/alan-j-pakula-film-director-dies-at-70.html

1929: The New York Times reports that Warner Brother’s recently released Biblical epic, “Noah’s Ark” was panned by critics in London while proving to be a box-office smash success with English audiences.  The criticism seemed to be more an expression of anti-Americanism than related to the quality of the film itself.

1930: Birthdate of Berlin native Andreas Siegfried Sachs the son of a Roman Catholic mother and Jewish father who gained fame as British actor Andrew Sachs. 

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

1930: It was reported today that Palestine Mandatory Authority is preparing a plan for dividing Palestine into cantons, like Switzerland which it will then submit to the government in London. “The first experiment with such cantons will be the establishment of special Jewish district comprising Tel Aviv…with 47,000 inhabitants” and 40 nearby settlements including Petach Tikvah, Rishon Lexion and Rehoboth that would form a contiguous entity with 70,000 Jewish inhabitants.  The aim is to ultimate create 15 or 16 such cantons, seven of which be Moslem, three would be Christian and five or six which would be Jewish.

 

1931: In Chicago, Harry and Adele (Charsky) Ellsberg, Ashkenazi Jews who had converted to Christian Science gave birth to Daniel Ellsberg who became American history’s most famous whistleblower with the release of The Pentagon Papers.

1932: Attorneys for the respondent told Supreme Court Justice Alfred Frankenthaler that Samuel Bomzon “had no legal right to sue” since he was not the trustee to the bondholders. (Editor’s note – both judge and plaintiff were Jewish which apparently unimportant to all of the parties involved.)

1932: The first radio station in Palestine was opened today in Tel Aviv under a license from the British Mandatory Government. Mendel Abranovitch operated Radio Tel Aviv.

1933: After premiering in NYC and Los Angeles, “King Kong” with music by Max Steiner was released throughout the United States.

1933(11th of Nisan, 5693): Fifty-three year old Ukrainian born Jewish intellectual Nochum Shtif who wrote under the pen-name “Baal Dimion” passed away in Kiev.

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

1933: French premiere of “Zero for Conduct” a featurette filmed by cinematographer Boris Kaufman.

1933:  Hitler approved decrees banning Jews and other non-Aryans from the practice of law and from jobs in the civil service (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service). Jewish government workers in Germany are ordered to retire. The term Nichtarier ("non-Aryan") became a legal classification in Germany. This made it "legal" to discharge Jews from their position in the universities, hospitals, and legal professions.  The law was called the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.  The non-Aryan clause would be extended over the next year to include everything i.e. all professional occupations, athletic competition and military service.

1934(22nd of Nisan, 5694): Shabbat and Eighth Day of Pesach

1934(22nd of Nisan, 5694): Sixty-nine year old Charlotte Béatrice de Rothschild, the daughter of banker Alphonse James de Rothschild and the wife of Russian-born banker Maurice Ephrussi, best known for her art collecting passed away today in Davos, Switzerland.

http://www.villa-ephrussi.com/en/home

https://www.rothschildarchive.org/materials/review_2008_2009_beatrice_ephrussi_1.pdf

1934: Several thousandAmericans attended a pro-Nazi rally in Queens, New York

1934: “The House of Rothschild” a biopic about the famous banking family produced by William Goetz with music with Alfred Newman was released today in the United States.

1935: As the 2nd Maccabiah games came to a close before 50,000 spectators the team from the United States had scored 254 giving it a wide lead over second place German (183).  The team representing the Jews of Palestine scored 139.5 points edging out Austria, Czechoslovakia and South Africa.

1935: “The importance of the work done by private philanthropic agencies was stressed” today “at an all-day conference of representatives of more than 500 Jewish fraternal and benevolent societies at the Hotel McAlpin” which had been organized under the auspices of Paul Felix Warburg.

1936(15thof Nisan, 5696): First Day of Pesach

1936: “Special prayers were for offered for German Jewry and an appeal for the fund to aid Jewish emigration from Germany was made in every synagogue in Britain today.”

1936: “In a special address from the pulpit of the new West End Synagogue in Bayswater, Sir Herbert Samuel declared, ‘there is no alternative for the Jews of Germany but to leave the country’” and “he called on the Jewish communities of the world to cope with the emergency and rescue the ‘victims of cruel and relentless persecution.’”

1936: “At Congregation B’nai Jershurun Rabbi Israel Goldstein, president of the Jewish National Fund, “declared the exodus had been ‘a recurrent episode in the life of Israel.’”

1936: At Congregation Rodeph Shalom, in his sermon Rabbi Louis I Newman discussed “the need for great moral as well as political and economic personalities in a time of a time of stress” saying “the world today needs the ministration of men like Moses…”

1936: Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, the honorary president of the Union of Orthodox Congregations said today “that the treatment of the Jew ‘was the barometer of civilization.’”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9401E0DC1F3BE33BBC4053DFB266838D629EDE

1936: Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L Buttenweiser opened their home to the public where they viewed a collection of the “important works of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century” as part of the fundraising activities of the women’s division of the United Palestine Appeal.” Although the admission fee was only one dollar, an anonymous female visitor insisted on leaving a check for one thousand dollars.

1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that according to British political circles, the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine might propose the setting up of two separate Jewish and Arab states, leaving Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other holy places under British Mandate. Haifa was to be a common seaport for all.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Jewish students were attacked and beaten at the Warsaw Polytechnic Institute, which closed for a number of days.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the Polish airline, Lot, initiated a regular three-flights-a-week schedule from Warsaw to Lod Airport.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Jewish laborers complained that they were excluded from various development projects carried out by the government at Lod Airport.

1937: It was reported today that “the name of Heinrich Heine, the German poet, has been banished from Viennese municipal buildings by order of the Burgomaster Richard Schmitz” in response to “agitation against Heine in anti-Semitic circles.”

1938: “Mr. Moto's Gamble, the third film in the Mr. Moto series starring Peter Lorre as the title character” was released in the United States today.

1938: A value of $1,500,884 was set on the estate of Louis Blaustein, a leader in the oil industry, in inventories filed today in the Orphans Court

1938: In Budapest, “under pressure of the steadily growing fascist movement, the Cabinet has decided to introduce a bill regulating the employment of Jews” which “will establish a ratio – believed to be eighty to twenty – between non-Jews and Jews in all occupations.

1939: “Broadway Serenade” a musical featuring Al Shean was released today in the United States.

1939: Italy invaded and annexed Albania. Jews were exiled from the coastal port cities and moved to Albania’s interior. Several Austrian and German families took refuge in Tirana and Durazzo in 1939 in hope of making it eventually to the United States or South America. Many Jewish refugees also passed through Albania on their way to Palestine. These refugees were well treated by the Italian forces and by the local population. Jewish refugee families began to scatter throughout Albania and assimilate into society. Jewish children continued to attend school, but under false names and religions. Italians rejected the Final Solution and therefore did not implement anti-Jewish laws. Nevertheless, many Albanians joined the SS Division “Skanderbeg.” Some Jewish refugees were eventually placed in a transit camp in Kavaje, and from there sent to Italy. At one point, nearly 200 Jews were placed in the Kavaje camp. Some Albanian officials tried to rescue these Jews of Kavaje, by issuing identity papers to hide them in the capital Tirana.

                                                                          or

1939: In a prelude to World War II, Mousilliniinvades Albania as he tries to create a modern day Roman Empire. “Approximately, 600 Jews were living in Albania prior to World War II, 400 of whom were refugees. At the beginning of World War II, hundreds of Jews arrived in Albania seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in other regions of Europe.There was little history of anti-Semitism in Albania between the local Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Most of the Albanian population was not hostile toward the Jews and helped to hide them during the war, especially when Italy and Germany occupied the country. When Italy invaded and annexed Albania. Jews were exiled from the coastal port cities and moved to Albania’s interior. Several Austrian and German families took refuge in Tirana and Durazzo in 1939 in hope of making it eventually to the United States or South America. Many Jewish refugees also passed through Albania on their way to Palestine. These refugees were well treated by the Italian forces and by the local population. Jewish refugee families began to scatter throughout Albania and assimilate into society. Jewish children continued to attend school, but under false names and religions. Italians rejected the Final Solution and therefore did not implement anti-Jewish laws.Nevertheless, many Albanians joined the SS Division “Skanderbeg” and committed atrocities against the Serbian and Jewish populations of Kosovar. Some refugees were eventually placed in a transit camp in Kavaje, and from there sent to Italy. At one point, nearly 200 Jews were placed in the Kavaje camp. Some Albanian officials tried to rescue these Jews of Kavaje, by issuing identity papers to hide them in the capital Tirana.”  For more see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/albania.html \

1940: Today, officials at the Finnish Consulate in Manhattan announced that “in response to an appeal from Finland’s 2,000 Jews for Matzos for the upcoming Passover holidays arrangements have been completed to ship 5,000 pounds of the unleavened bread to the stricken Jewish population”

1940(28th of Adar II, 5700): Cyrus Adler, the national Jewish leader from, of all places, Van Buren, Arkansas, passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0001_0_00426.html

http://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/sarna/jewishleadership/Archive/CyrusAdlerandtheDevelopmentofAmericanJewishCultureScholar-Doer.pdf

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=5803

1940(28th of Adar II, 5700): Fifty-one year old “A Sigmund Kanengieser, the former national grand master of the Independent Order of B’rith Shalom” and the secretary of the Grant and Richmond Building and Loan Associations of Newark, NJ, passed away today in a hospital in Baltimore, MD after having suffered a “cerebral hemorrhage.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/04/08/92936032.pdf

1941: Two separate ghettos were established in Radom, Poland. At Kielce, Poland, 16,000 local Jews and about a thousand Jewish deportees from Vienna are herded into a ghetto area.

1942(20thof Nisan, 5702): Sixth Day of Pesach

1942: According to dispatches received today in Berne from Berlin, “Jewish tenants must display the Star of David on the doors of their dwellings beginning April 15.”

1943: The Spanish Ambassador has lunch with Winston Churchill at which time the Prime Minister protested in the strongest possible language to the closure of the border between France and Spain to Jewish refugees trying to escape across the Pyrenees. Churchill’s threatening tone had its effect when a “few days later the Spanish authorities had re-opened the border to Jewish refugees.”

1943: Jewish resistance led by Michael Glanz took place at Skalat, Ukraine.

1943(2nd of Nisan, 5703): During the Holocaust in the western Ukraine, the Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress to their underwear and march through the city of Terebovlia to the nearby village of Plebanivka. They were then shot dead and buried in ditches.

1944: Birthdate of Julia Miller who gained fame as Julia Philips co-producer of “The Sting,” “Taxi Driver” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

1944:  Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz with the expressed the intention of telling the world what was going on. With the help of the resistance movement inside the camp, these two made it out and after two weeks found their way to Slovakia. They met with Adre Steiner and Oscar Krasnansky and described in detail what was happening including plans to murder 800,000 Hungarian Jews. Krasnansky turned their report into the thirty-page long "Auschwitz Protocols" which were then sent to contacts in the West. To say the Holocaust happened because nobody knew was not quite the case; more like people did not want to know or knew but did not care.

1944(14th of Nisan, 5704): In the evening, with the world at war, Jews sit down for the first Seder of the year including American service men and woman.  The different branches of the United States armed forces have made great effort to make it possible for Jews serving in the military to observe the holiday.  “With the cooperation of the Army and Navy, 400,000 boxes Matzah, 7,000 gallons of wine and 190,000 Haggadot have been shipped by the Jewish Welfare Board for distribution” to those serving “in every war sector as well as England, North Africa and Australia.” Holiday supplies have already been parachuted to troops serving in the upper reaches of the Rockies and dogsleds were used to get Passover goodies to those serving in outposts in Alaska.  The South African Army provided a special train so Jewish soldiers in Egypt could enjoy home hospitality in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

1945: In Italy, the Jewish Brigade received an order to cross the Senio River “and establish a bridgehead on the other side – a move that would force the Germans to retreat in the wake of the advancing British Army.http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/april/11.asp

1945: Birthdate of Robert S. Wistrich, the son of Polish Jews who had fled from Lviv to the Soviet Union to escape the Nazis, “who devoted his four-decade scholarly career to dissecting anti-Semitism, from the biblical Haman, who warned King Ahasuerus of Persia against strangers whose “laws are diverse from all people,” to modern Islamist extremists who deny Israel’s right to exist.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/europe/robert-s-wistrich-scholar-of-anti-semitism-dies-at-70.html?login=email&_r=1

1945: “Brewster’s Millions” the movie version of the novel produced by Edward Small released today in the United States.

1946: “An authoritative Jewish source in Geneva charged tonight that British authorities had used diplomatic pressure to seal the borders of eastern European countries against escaping Jews to halt illegal immigration to Palestine.”

1946: Syria's independence from France is officially recognized. The Syrian Jewish community which traced its origins back to the reign of King David and had once been thriving and prosperous had, by now, fallen on hard times. As anti-Jewish sentiment increased in the 20th century, many Syrian Jews moved to New York.  In the years just prior to Syrian independence, thousands of Syrian Jews found refuge in Palestine. A year after Syria gained independence, the ancient Jewish community of Aleppo was the victim of a Pogrom. [Reading the works of Haim Sabato, a Syrian Jew whose family moved to Egypt before settling in Israel, will give you some sense of this ancient Jewish Community.]

1947: In Jerusalem, following the High Court’s rejection today of an appeal filed by Israel Rokach on behalf of Dov Bela Gruner, it was “understood” that the Mayor of Tel Aviv would file an appeal with the Privy Council in London.

1948: In Paris, Herbert Katzki, the acting director of the emigration service of the American Joint Distribution Committee reported “that 45,000 Jewish had been helped since 1946” and that 80,000 Jews, not counting those in the DP camps, “were waiting to go to Palestine.

1949: Rogers & Hammerstein's "South Pacific" opened at Majestic Theater for the first of 1,928 performances.

1949(9thof Nisan, 5709): Sixty-eight year old “Polish-born German composer and conductor Ignatz Waghalter the brother of cellist Henryk Waghalter and the husband of Mrs. Toni Waghalter with whom he had two daughters who was so popular that he could WW I performing in Germany but was forced to flee to the United States when the Nazis came to power passed away in the United States where he had tried “to establish a classical orchestra made up of African-American musicians.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1949/04/08/archives/i-waghalter-68-loh6-a-conductor-polish-born-composer-dead-led.html?searchResultPosition=2

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/04/08/issue.html?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

http://www.waghalter.com/

https://www.naxos.com/person/Ignatz_Waghalter/177380.htm

1950: In one of the ironies of history, a commercial vessel now called the Tsfonit which flew the Swastki when first launched in 1937 will fly Israel’s Blue and White flag complete with the Star of David.  The ship has been purchased by the American-Israeli Shipping Company for Zim, Israel’s shipping line, according to reports published in the New York Times.  As part of Israel’s growing commitment to maritime commerce, a freighter now named the Akko will leave for Haifa next week to join three other war surplus shipping vessels that are already plying the waters between Israeli and U.S. ports.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from The Hague that at the reparations talks held there, Israel was waiting for a definite commitment and a specific sum to be offered as compensation, by the authoritative German delegation.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the UN Technical Assistance Department proposed to set up in Israel a center for modern adobe (sun-dried earth) housing development scheme.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Jerusalem Municipal Council voted for a new entertainment tax and fixed salaries of town councilors and deputy mayors.

1952: When Mrs. Liili Darvas Molnar applied for letters of administration today in Surrogate Court, it was learned that Hungarian playwright and author had died without a will.

1955(15thof Nisan, 5715): Pesach

1955(15thof Nisan, 5715): Sixty-nine year old silent film star Theda Bara passed away today.

http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/thedabara.html

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1955/04/08/93801192.html?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0&pageNumber=21

1956(26th of Nisan, 5716): A resident of Ashkelon was killed in her home, when attackers threw three hand grenades into her house. Two members of kibbutz Givat Haim were killed, when terrorists opened fire on their car, on the road from Plugot Junction to Mishmar HaNegev

1956(26thof Nisan, 5716): One person was killed and three others were wounded when terrorists attacked areas around Nitzanim and Ketziot tossing hand grenades and firing guns into homes and cars.

1956(26thof Nisan, 5716): Two members of kibbutz Givat Haim were killed, when terrorists opened fire on their car, on the road from Plugot Junction to Mishmar HaNegev.

1958: Writer Arch Oboler's six-year-old son, Peter, drowned in rainwater collected in excavations at Oboler's Malibu home. The house was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright; the Wright-designed Oboler residential complex is named Eaglefeather. The house is featured in Oboler's film “Five.”

1960:"Everybody's Somebody's Fool" is a song written by Jack Keller and Howard Greenfield” was released today.

1961(21stof Nisan, 5721): Seventh Day of Pesach

1961: In Mexico City, soap opera star Abraham Stavchansky and his wife gave birth to Ilan Stavchansky who gained famed as Ilan Stavans, “Mexican-American, essayist, lexicographer, cultural commentator, translator, short-story author, publisher, TV personality, and teacher known for his insights into American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures.”

1962(3rdof Nisan, 5722): Parashat Tazria

1962(3rdof Nisan, 5722): Eighty-five year old builder G. Richard Davis, the New York born “son of Michael M. and Miriam Peixotto Davis, the descendant of a family that has lived in New York since the 18th century whose edifices included the Montana (site of John Lennon’s murder) and the General Motors Building and the husband of the former Irma L. Bernstein whom he married after “first wife, the former Benveneda Bricker” died passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/04/08/113422396.pdf

1963: The New York Times published a review of The Femine Mystique by Betty Friedan

1965: Robert Louis Rogers began serving as Canada’s Ambassador to Israel.

1965: “Bus Riley's Back in Town” produced by Elliot Kastner and co-starring Janet Margolin and Larry Storch was released in the United States today.

1966: Birthdate of Beersheba native Zvika Hadar who gained fame as a television game show host.

1967: Israeli fighters shot down seven Syrian MIG-21s.  This episode turned out to be one of the many flashpoints on the road to the war that would be fought in June of 1967.  The Syrians were embarrassed and infuriated by the ease with which the Israelis swept their advanced MIG’s from the sky.  So they took action to encourage Nasser to follow an aggressive policy towards Israel that would ultimately lead to a clash of arms from which the region still has not recovered at the start of the 21st century.

1970: Birthdate of Rabbi Aaron Sherman

1972: Today Sammy Shore co-founded the Comedy Store in Hollywood which became his ex-wife’s Mizi when they were divorced.

1974(15th of Nisan, 5734): First Day of Pesach

1974: Today, drummer Max Weinberg met Bruce Springsteen at a time when Springsteen was looking for a drummer to replace the soon to leave Ernest “Boom” Carter. (Weinberg is the only Jew in this item)

1974: “The Conversation” with music by David Shire and featuring Allen Garfield as William P. "Bernie" Moran was released in the United States today.

1974: “Cinderella Liberty” produced and direct by Mark Rydell and co-starring James Caan and Eli Wallach and featuring Allan Arbus was released in Sweden today.

1975: Forty-five year old Beverly Sills debuted at the Metropolitan Opera

https://jwa.org/thisweek/apr/07/1975/beverly-sills

1975(26thof Nisan, 5735): Seventy-five year old Columbia trained surgeon Maxwell “Max” Maltz, the Manhattan born son of Jewish immigrants “Josef Matlz and Taube Elzweig,” the author of Pyscho-Cybernetics and the husband of Anne Maltz passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/08/archives/dr-maxwell-maltz-dead-plastic-surgeon-and-author.html

1975: Birthdate of Ilias Miroslva, “the Slovakian professor who walked bare into Gaza to ‘save’ 3 kids he never met.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/courageous-foolhardy-naked-the-slovakian-professor-who-stripped-off-and-walked-into-gaza-to-save-3-kids-hed-never-met/

1976: U.S. Premiere of “Sparkle” produced by Howard Rosenman who co-authored the script with Joel Schumacher.

1976: U.S. premiere of “The Bad News Bears” co-starring Walter Matthau and Vic Morrow with music by Jerry Fielding.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that in Washington Egyptian President Anwar Sadat announced that a "normalization" of relations with Israel would be possible only after the signing of a peace agreement at the reconvened Geneva Peace Conference and the establishment of a Palestinian state. A Soviet diplomat called unexpectedly at the Israeli Embassy in Washington to deliver a note from his leader, Leonid Brezhnev.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Taiwan was reported to have purchased Israeli missiles.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Senior Israeli pilots expressed criticism of the current safety measures at Ben-Gurion Airport and warned that unless these were taken care of, an eventual disaster was inevitable.

1978: The annual meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee where the attendees have been discussing “How the Traditions Educate About Each Other” came to a close today in Madrid.

1979(10thof Nisan, 5739): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1979(10thof Nisan, 5739): Eighty nine year old Isidore Rabinowitz, the Ukrainian born son of “Chairm Aaron Rabinowitz and Sura Mena Rabinowitz,” the husband of Miriam Rabinowitz and the father of Harry, Esther, Pauline and Hyman Rabin passed away today in Chicago after which he was buried at Forest Park.

1981: Eighty-two year old Oscar Award winning director Norman Taurog whose forty-year carrier went from the Roaring Twenties to the Elvis Presley version of the 1960’s passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/10/obituaries/norman-taurog-director-dies-winner-of-an-oscar-for-skippy.html

1984(5thof Nisan, 5774): Parashat Metzora

1984(5thof Nisan, 5744): Seventy-year old WW II Veteran, screenwriter and producer Samuel G. Engel, the President of the Screen Producers Guild and President of the Brandeis Institute of California passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/12/obituaries/samuel-g-engel-dead-at-70-led-screen-producers-guild.html

1986: Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti wrote a profile of Israeli poet Avraham Ben-Yitzhak born Avraham Sonne for today’s edition of The New Yorker.

1985(16thof Nisan, 5745): Second Day of Pesach

1990: Michael Milken pleaded innocent to security law violations.

1992(4thof Nisan, 5752): Eighty year old Chess Grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/07/nyregion/samuel-reshevsky-is-dead-chess-grandmaster-was-80.html

1993(16thof Nisan, 5753): Second Day of Pesach

1993: In Planation, FL, Nadia Berger and former tennis pro Jay Beger, “the head of men’s Tennis Association gave birth to Daniel Berger, the former FSU collegiate golfer who made the jump to the PGA.

1994(26th of Nisan, 5754):Yishai Gadassi, age 32, of Kvutzat Yavne, was shot and killed at a hitchhiking post at the Ashdod junction by a member of HAMAS. The terrorist was killed by bystanders at the scene. 1994(26th of Nisan, 5754):Based on information it attributed to Israel Radio, The Associated Press in Jerusalem, reported that Palestinian shot and wounded at least two Israelis at a bus stop in the southern Israel port of Ashod early today before he was shot dead by a bystander.

1994(26th of Nisan, 5754):Author Golo Mann, son of Thomas Mann and Katia Mann who was Jewish passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/09/obituaries/golo-mann-85-historian-dies-was-2d-son-of-thomas-mann.html

1994: ElioToaff who had been served as Chief Rabbi of Rome since 1951 co-officiated at the Papal Concert to Commemorate the Shoah at the Sala Nervi in Vatican City, along with Pope John Paul II, and the President of Italy Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.

1994:  For the first time theVatican acknowledged Holocaust i.e. the Nazi's killing of Jews.

1998: Under the leadership of Sandy Weill, Citicorp and Travelers Group announce plans to merge creating the largest financial-services conglomerate in the world, Citigroup.

2000: Today, “the police closed a three month investigation of “ seventy-five year old President Ezer Weizman  “with the recommendation that he not be prosecuted for accepting substantial payments from a French investors.”

2001(14th of Nisan, 5761): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat Hagadol; in the evening first Seder during the Presidency of George Bush.

2002: During Operation Defensive Shield, the Vatican “warned Israel to respect religious sites in line with its international obligations ignoring the fact that the Church of Nativity was at risk only because Palestinian terrorist had seized control of the venerable shrine.

2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ''Gershom Scholem: A Life in Letters.''

2002: In a column entitled “A Jewish Avenger, A Timely Legend,” Alisa Solomon reviews the upcoming revival English language production of H. Leivick's Yiddish classic, ''The Golem,''

2002: MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute) Special Dispatch  363 quotes Al-Azhar Mosque’s Sheikh Muhammad Sayed Tantawi as announcing “every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers are legitimate acts according to religious law, and Islamic commandment until the people of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel Israeli aggression to retreat.”

2003: “Les Moonves” CBS executive and “a great-nephew of Paula Ben-Gurion” “portrayed himself in an episode of ‘The Practice.’”

2004(16th of Nisan, 5764): Second Day of Pesach

2004: Rabbi Michel Chill is overseeing the observance of Pesach at Green Haven, the prison with the kosher kitchen whose congregation of inmates included 53 year old Yakov Enshimon who is serving “25 years to life for murder.”

2005:The Prince of Wales attended a memorial service for the Hon Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild held today at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London. Rabbi Alexandra Wright, officiated, assisted by Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger. Rabbi Mark Solomon sang and Ms Andrea Hess, cello, played during the service. Attendees included Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, the Hon Emma Rothschild, Professor Sir John Gurdon and Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC.

2006: David Bromberg appears at the Library of Congress to speak on the historic significance of that ever-under-appreciated musical instrument, the American-made violin. The sixty year-old musical legend owns nearly 250, some dating back more than 100 years. It is the largest such collection, and they are displayed in cabinets from one end of his living room to the other.

2006(9thof Nisan, 5766): Ninety-two year old Helen Cohen, known as “Bobbie Nudie” after she married Nudie Cohn with whom she created the most famous business for Rodeo and western wear passed away today

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/12/style/bobbie-nudie-purveyor-of-glitter-to-rhinestone-cowboys-dies-at-92.html

http://www.nudiesrodeotailor.com/

2007: The UJA-Federation of New York’s Music for Youth initiative holds a fund raising concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

2007: “Be” an “Israeli show that blends music, dance and sex appeal” was performed “Off Broadway” at the Union Square Theatre.

2007: The three day festival known as Boombamela comes to an end.The festival is described by its organizersas "a place for meeting, experiencing, crossing borders and transcending social limitations through music, creation, and connection with nature." It is held on the sandy beach of Hof Nitzanim, between Ashdod and Ashkelon.

2008(2nd of Nisan, 5768): Eighty-three year old “atomic spy” Ruth Greenglass, the wife of David Greenglass, died today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/us/09greenglass.html

2008: RSA Conference opens in San Francisco.  RSA was developed by Ronald Rivest (R), Adi Shamir (S) and Leonard Adelman (A) in 1977.

2008:Following the latest attack targeting Yemen’s few remaining Jews during which rebel Houthi militiamen destroyed several homes that had belonged to the now-absent Jewish community in the northwestern Saada province TheJerusalemPost reported on the conditions of Jews living in Yemen.

"The Houthis destroyed part of my house and looted it," Rabbi Yehia Youssuf told Reuters in the capital, San'a. All 67 members of Saada's Jewish community fled following threats from the Houthis, the rabbi says. Some locals say the Jews were threatened because they had been selling wine to Muslims - an accusation the Jews deny, according to Reuters. A local said the Shi'ite rebels attacked the houses of other Jews after looting the rabbi's. Around 400 Jews remain in the majority Sunni state, the remnant of an ancient, close-knit community that, while remaining connected to Jewish intellectual and legal developments outside Yemen, managed to insulate itself culturally until the 20th century. According to Dr. Dov Levitan, a scholar of Yemenite Jewry at Bar-Ilan University and the Academic College of Ashkelon, the Houthi clan targets Jews to embarrass the government internationally. Apparently unrelated intertribal fighting in the province killed at least 15 people in recent days as the Houthi tribe continued its intermittent violence, begun in June 2004, against the central government and its allies. Since the early 1990s, the Yemeni government "has been very conscious of its international image," explains Levitan. "So important is the country's image to its government that the Jews have excellent government protection." When their situation in Saada became precarious about a year ago, "they were flown out in a government plane to San'a. They receive a small stipend and live in a compound protected by state security forces. This kind of concern would have been unimaginable just 15 years ago," he says. The government's concern for its image, together with pressure from American Jewish groups and US legislators, led Yemen in the early 1990s to permit most of the remaining 2,000 Jews to emigrate to Israel and elsewhere, continuing a centuries-long trickle of aliya from the country. At the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, around 35,000 Yemenite Jews lived in Israel. Another 50,000 came in the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence. Most of the 1,600 Jews who left Yemen during the 1990s now live in Rehovot. The question of why Jews remain in Yemen remains. "We have contact with these Jews. They're not the Jews who came 60 years ago," the large wave of poor refugees who fled pogroms in Operation Magic Carpet, Levitan says. "They're more educated, they're better dressed, they wear watches and drive cars. Some of them have traveled overseas. They have property there, and they are connected historically. They don't want to leave a place that has been their natural environment for generations." The Yemenite Jewish community claims to have existed since the time of the First Temple, 2,600 years ago. While this claim has not been verified, "we know with certainty that they were there for at least 1,500 years," says Levitan. Despite its unique customs and liturgy, Yemenite Jewry was never disconnected from the broader Jewish world. "For example, we know that the letters of the [medieval Jewish philosopher and legalist] Maimonides arrived in Yemen. We know from the 14th to the 16th centuries they were connected enough to receive the Shulchan Aruch [halachic codex]. And in the 18th and 19th centuries they received printed Jewish prayer books and Talmuds from abroad when there was no Jewish press in Yemen," he said. Other pressures also affect the decision of Jews to remain. The anti-Zionist Satmar hassidim work to persuade the community not to move to Israel. "They give the remaining Jews money and holy books, take them to New York and London - anything to keep them from going to Israel," says Levitan. Also, the government's concern and protection are seen as complete and genuine by the community, he says.

2008:David Grossman's latest novel, Isha Borahat Mibesora (English title: "Until the end of the land") was released by Hasifria Hahadasha, Kibbutz Hameuchad and Siman Kriah books.

2008: The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedlander won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.“In his second volume of a history of the Holocaust, Mr. Friedländer, 75, interwove segments from contemporary journals and letters into the more general description of the atrocities. “Usually, the history of the Holocaust is written from the viewpoint of German documents and archives,” said Mr. Friedländer, who was born in Prague, escaped to France in 1939 and emigrated to Israel in 1948. He teaches history at the University of California, Los Angeles.”

2009:The Zionist Organization of America renewed its call today for a boycott of Coca-Cola products during Pesach on behalf of an Egyptian Jewish family that is suing the company over a property dispute. “Members of the Bigio family, now living in the US, are demanding compensation from the soft-drink giant, based in Atlanta, for bottling plants they say were expropriated by the Egyptian government in 1965 and illegitimately bought by the Coca-Cola Company in 1994.  

2009:Today, two days before Passover, a University of Haifa archaeologist has unearthed foot-shaped structures he believes were constructed by the Israelites at the time of the Exodus from Egypt and move into the Promised Land.  The large structures were found in the Jordan Valley by Prof. Adam Zertal, who describes them as "the first structures the Israelites built on entering Canaan, and [which] testify to the biblical idea of ownership of the land." 

2009: “Picturing the Shoah,” a film festival sponsored by YIVO that explores how movies have represented the Holocaust from radical, provocative, and unexpected angles continues with exhibitions of “Black Book” and “Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943.

2009:Israel carried out a test launch of its Arrow II interceptor missile today, the Defense Ministry said, a system designed to defend against possible ballistic missile attacks by Iran and Syria

2010: Savyon Liebrecht, who was born in Munich to Holocaust survivors and is the author of The Women My Father Knewis scheduled to discuss growing up in a home of survivors, the psychological and social phenomena of the "second generation," and how these subjects manifest themselves in her stories and play at Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

 2010:The Tel Aviv municipality unveiled the city's new large-scale public bomb shelter today, built under the new Habima Theater. The advanced shelter, at 3,740 square meters, can hold as many as 1,600 people over four floors. There are five doors leading in, leading to five stairwells spanning through the four floors of the shelter. Next to the official bomb shelter an underground garage will provide a further 35,000 square meters. Although the garage will not be fortified, it will still prove a better option than the outdoors in case of an attack. Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, who inspected the site, said the model was an impressive one and it should be copied in other cities.

2011: The Miracle Worker is scheduled to have its final performance today in Talpiot, Jerusalem, in the Way Off Theater.

2011:Yeshiva University Museum, American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History and Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum  are scheduled to present a panel discussion entitled: "Give us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses....or Not: A New Model for Civic Dialogue Within and Beyond the Gallery Walls.

2011:In Rockville, MD, Magen David Sephardic Congregation is scheduled to present a lecture by David W. Jourdan, President & Founder of Nauticos entitled “Never Forgotten: The Search for Israel’s Lost Submarine Dakar.

2011:Philo Bregstein is scheduled deliver a lecture at London’s Wiener Library in which he re-evaluates Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry” by Jacob Presser. When it was first published in 1965, the book triggered a fierce debate on the Holocaust in the Netherlands.”

2011:A number of terrorist cells are operating in the Sinai Peninsula with the goal of kidnapping Israeli nationals, security officials warned today ahead of the upcoming Pesach holiday. According to the official, the threat to Israelis was based on concrete and firm intelligence information obtained by Israel indicating that Hamas and other terrorist groups were trying to abduct Israelis, transfer them to the Gaza Strip and use them as bargaining chips in potential prisoner swaps with the country.

2011: Two people were wounded today after an anti-tank missile exploded into a bus traveling in one of the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.  

2011:Today, the Iron Dome missile defense system successfully intercepted for the first time a Grad rocket that was fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon from the Gaza Strip.

2011: “In Washington, D.C., the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the United States’ Smithsonian Institution presented the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service to Jacques Attali, founder and president of PlaNet Finance.”

2011:  Today, Les editions CNRS will publish the philosopher and translator Nicolas Cavaillès’s “Cioran in Spite of HImself: Writing Against Oneself.” It appears one day before the 100thanniversary of the birth of Emil Cioran

2011:The local government of the Balearic Islands in Spain will, for the first time, officially acknowledge the suffering of a local community, whose ancestors were Jewish, at a ceremony in Palma de Majorca today. Balearic Island President, Francesc Antich Oliver, will attend the commemorative event held on the 320th anniversary of the killing of 33 locals who belonged to the Cheuta minority, and were executed by the Spanish Inquisition for secretly practicing Judaism in 1691. The Cheuta (also spelled Xeuta), is a community of about 20,000 people living on the Mediterranean islands whose ancestors were forcibly converted from Judaism to Christianity in the 15th century.

2012(15thof Nisan, 5772): First Day of Pesach

2012(15thof Nisan, 5772): Ninety-three year old television broadcast journalist Mike Wallace passed away today. (Tim Weiner)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/business/media/mike-wallace-cbs-pioneer-of-60-minutes-dead-at-93.html?_r=2&hp&

2012(15thof Nisan): According to Chabad Lubavitch, “on the 15th of Nissan of the year 2447 from creation (1314 BCE) -- exactly one year before the Exodus -- Moses was shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, at the foot of Mount Sinai, when G-d appeared to him in a "thornbush that burned with fire, but was not consumed" and instructed him to return to Egypt, come before Pharaoh, and demand in the name of G-d: "Let My people go, so that they may serve Me." For seven days and seven nights Moses argued with G-d, pleading that he is the wrong person for the job, before accepting the mission to redeem the people of Israel and bring them to Sinai.

2013(27thof Nisan, 5773): Seventy-three year old “American comedy writer and screenwriter” and “lifelong friend of Woody Allen” Mickey Rose passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/arts/television/mickey-rose-tv-writer-and-woody-allen-collaborator-dies-at-77.html?hpw&_r=0

2013(27thof Nisan, 5773): Seventy-four year old “Peter Workman, the founder of Workman Publishing, whose knack for landing best-selling trade books like “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” and “The Silver Palate Cookbook” built his company into one of the few remaining independent book publishers in the country” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/business/media/peter-workman-book-publisher-with-an-eye-for-hits-dies-at-74.html?hpw&_r=0

2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Fear Itself by Ira Katzneson and FDR and the Jews by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman

2013: The Arab-Israeli ensemble of the IPO is scheduled to perform in Los Angeles.

2013: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a screening of “Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising According to Marek Edelman.”

2013: Start of “National Days of Remembrance” sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

http://act.ushmm.org/page/s/DoR-Resources

2013: Hamas terrorists, who declare openly their wish to commit genocide against the Jewish people, marked Holocaust Remembrance Day their way today – with a salvo of rockets fired at Jewish civilians. Three rockets were fired, the action timed to coincide with the official Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony taking place in Jerusalem at the same time. One rocket exploded in an open space within the Shaar Hanegev Regional Authority's jurisdiction, causing no injuries or damage. The embedded video shows a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony being interrupted by a "Color Red" warning, giving residents a few seconds to reach shelter from an incoming rocket (As reported by Gil Ronen)

2013: Anti-Israel hackers failed in their declared plan to wipe the Jewish state from the internet on Yom HaShoah.

2013: Second season of “House of Lies” co-starring Ben Schwartz came to an end.

2014: The Tulane University Jewish Studies Department under the chairmanship of Dr. Brian J. Horowitz is scheduled to host “Nazi Film- Melodrama” a lecture by Visiting Professor Laura Heins author of Nazi Film Melodrama.

2014: In Cannes, the MIPTV event that will include a “Focus On Israel” series “that will include lectures and screenings featuring the hottest content out of the Holy Land” is scheduled to open today.

2014: The anti-Semitic “hacker group known as Anonymous” is scheduled to launch OpIsrael, its second annual attack on the cyber infrastructure of Israel.

2014: Two days after he had passed away, gravesides were held at the Lindwood Memorial Park for Boston University trained attorney, WW II veteran and “lifelong member of Kehillath Israel and Young Israel in Brookline Sumner A Marcus, the son of William and Celia (Crockett) Marcus of blessed memory.

2014: Jael Silliman author of The Man With Many Hats and a former Professor at the University of Iowa is scheduled to deliver a talk that “will present a rich visual tour of the Calcutta Jewish community

2014: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund chaired by Dr. Bob Silber is scheduled to co-host “A Service of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocuast” featuring Holocaust Survivor Cesare Frustaci.

2015: “Shall We Dance,” “the award winning Israeli theatre show” is scheduled to be performed at the Kraine Theatre tonight.

2015: Mayor Rahm Emanuel was re-elected mayor of Chicago today.

2015: In a new book, Silence No More, published today the nephew of Nelly Voskuijl posited she was a Nazi collaborator who revealed the Amsterdam hideout of the family of Anne Frank.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/sister-of-otto-franks-typist-may-have-betrayed-anne-frank/

2016: “Dough” is scheduled to be shown at the opening night of the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2016: “The American Sephardi Federation, The Aristides Sousa Mendes Virtual Museum, the American Jewish Historical Society, Centro de Portugal Office of Tourism, the Leo Baeck Institute, Luso-Americain Foundation, International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, Sousa Mendes Foundation, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish History are scheduled to host the reception marking the opening of “Portugal, The Last Hope: Sousa Mendes’ Visas for Freedom.”

2016: The Skirball Center is scheduled to host an evening with architect Daniel Libeskind whose designs include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Danish Jewish Museum and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

2016: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host a musical evening presented by Cantorial Soloist Abbie Strauss and Friends.

2016: “The American Jewish Historical Society, Museum at Eldridge Street, Anne Frank Center USA, Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees” are scheduled to host a roundtable discussion on “Yearning to Breathe Free: The Jewish Response to the Global Refugee Crisis.”

2016: “Presenting Princess Shaw” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/arts/design/vladimir-kagan-designer-of-modern-furniture-with-curves-and-sex-appeal-dies-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2016(28th of Adar II, 5776): Eighty-eight year old furniture designer Vladimir Kagan passed away today.

2016: David Feldman, Director of the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, is scheduled to deliver a lecture the Cecil Roth Lecture - Living with Others: Jews and Other Minorities in England since the Seventeenth Century.

2017:  In the early hours of this day Prime Minister Netanyahu praised the United States missile attacks on a Syrian base after the Assad regime had launched a gas attack against its own citizens,

2017: As Jews “eat down their chametz in preparation for Pesach” in Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host a family-themed Preneg followed by a Musical Shabbat led by Abbie Strauss.

2018: The Lysander Piano Trio and clarinetist Charles Neidich are scheduled to present a program that showcases works by composers Paul Ben-Haim, Béla Bartók, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Paul Hindemith, who were forced from their homelands during the rise of Nazism and fascism” at Drake University in Des Moines, IA.

2018: Today, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Lieberman “praised the actions of security forces” during yesterday’s violent attacks yesterday in Gaza.

2018: Chabad in Iowa City under the leadership of Rabbi Avrohom Belsofsky is scheduled to host Seudat Moshiach (Moshiach’s Meal) this evening.

2018(22nd of Nisan, 5778): Eighth Day of Pesach; last day of the holiday.

2019:  The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Kaddish.Com by Nathan Englander and the recently released paperback editions of Homey Don’t Play That!: The Story of “In Living Color” and the Black Comedy Revolution by David Peisner and Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and American by Steven J. Ross.

2019: A broadcast of NPR’s From the Top featuring a “one-of-a-kind concert that revolves around the theme of Jewish Music” is scheduled to take place at the Breman Museum as part of the “Molly Blank Concert Series Celebrating Jewish Contributions to Music.”

2019: In Iowa City, “Iowa Hillel’s is scheduled to host its annual benefit concert” featuring “Citrus Sunday.”

2019: JW3 is scheduled to host two screenings of “Holy Lands,” a movie about an American doctor who decides to become a pig farmer in Israel.

2019: “The Kinloss Pre-Pesach trip to the British Museum lead by Rabbi Raphael Zarum,” the Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to take place this afternoon.

2019: The Center for Jewish History, the American Jewish Historical Society and the Yeshiva University Museum are among those scheduled to host “Family Genealogy Day: Exploring Family Photos.”

2019: In Greenville, SC, The Temple of Israel is scheduled to host ShalomFest’19.

https://www.visitgreenvillesc.com/event/shalomfest-19/30625/

2020: Through the wonders of modern technology, The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “The Community and COVID-19” during which Dr. Hos Loftus and Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie will provide timely and important information on the novel Coronavirus.

https://mailchi.mp/asf/ije_travels_in_jewish_history-egyptl-784237?e=9870a7a862

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host a virtual presentation by Bari Weiss and Alana Newhouse on “Passover During a Plague.”

2020: Todays virtual “Bidud Beyachdad, The LSJS Torah Show with Rabbi Raphael Zarum” is scheduled to feature Bar Ilan University Professor Joshua Berman as its special guest.

2020: The English language version of “Yair Asulin’s prize-winning novel The Drive”is scheduled to take place today.

http://newvesselpress.com/authors/yair-assulin/

2020: “The discussion between Magda Teter (Fordham University) and Sara Lipton (SUNY Stony Brook) about Dr. Teters new book, Blood Libel: On the Trail of Antisemitic Myth, is scheduled to take place online via Zoom this afternoon.

2020: In Israel, a nationwide lockdown is scheduled “take effect today at 4 p.m.” a day before the first Seder and is scheduled to end early on the morning of April 10. (As reported by Raoul Wootliff)

2020(13thof Nisan, 5780): Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Joseph Caro, author the Shulchan Arukh, which seems oddly fitting this year as Jews struggle with how to set the table for Pandemic Pesach.

2021: As part of the commemoration of Yom HaShoah, the Israel Office of Cultural Affairs is scheduled to co-host a screening of “Who Will Write Our History,” the film that tells the story of historian Emanuel Ringelbum who led the Warsaw Ghetto resistance” using the proverbial pen followed by a discussion with producer Nancy Spielberg and director Roberta Grossman

2021: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to present “Rising from the Rubble: The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews” with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.

2021: In a milestone in the fight against the Pandemic, today marks the deadline for signing up to attend this week’s Shabbat service at Tifereth Israel in Columbus, OH.

2021: The Hill Havurah is scheduled to host a screening of “Rosenwald: A Remarkable Story of a Jewish Partnership with African American Communities which is a 2015 documentary film written and directed by Aviva Kempner about the career of American businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald” followed by a panel discussion.

2021: The UK Jewish Community National Holocaust Commeration “Remember Together We Are One” is scheduled to take place this evening online.

https://mailchi.mp/jewishnews/this-wednesday-remember-together-on-yom-hashoah?e=025a365fe8

2021: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to present Defining an Unimaginable Crime: The Story of Raphael Lemkin” the Polish Jewish attorney who  escaped the Nazis but lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust and who coined the word genocide which he then devoted his life to seeing  recognized as an international crime.

2021:The Jewish Federation of Cleveland and Kol Israel Foundation are scheduled to spotlight Barbara Winton, the daughter of Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved hundreds of children from the Nazis through his organization of the Czech and Slovak Kindertransport, during their annual Yom Hashoah V’Hagvurah event this evening.

https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/local_news/yom-hashoah-to-feature-kindertransport-founder-s-daughter/article_3e29ba46-90bf-11eb-a1b1-df4ff5462e05.html

2021: In commemoration of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), The Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities is scheduled to host a live, online walking tour in the space where the Warsaw Ghetto once existed with stops at three (3) special locations as narrated by attorney and Holocaust educator, Michael H. Traison

2021: Yesterday’s reporte by Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis that the coronavirus pandemic in Israel is beginning to do die out, gives credence to reports today that Israel may be relaxing travel restrictions and will be allowing those with family members and who have been vaccinated to enter the country.

2021: COJECO, SAMi, and Genesis Philanthropy Group are scheduled to host “The Untold Story of Bukharian Jews During WWII” during which Manashe Khaimov will present a unique intergenerational video project that documented the little-told story of the role of the Bukharian Jews in World War II; in addition to the stories of Ashkenazi Jews who were evacuated from their homes and fled to Central Asia.

 

 

 

This Day, April 8, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 8

73(15th of Nisan, 3833): The Great Revolt came to an end today when the defenders of Masada completed their murder/suicide pact

217: Assassination of Roman Emperor Caracalla.  Some Romans may Caracalla who was officially known as Antonius, as a disgrace to his office.  Caracalla extended the right of citizenship to all of those living in the empire as a way of raising additional taxes.  Under the “law of unintended consequences” this improved the status of the Jews.  While Caracalla showed no special affection for his Jewish subjects, he did not single them out for any special disabilities or punishments except for one matter of taxation. This was an improvement over life under some of his predecessors and many of his successors. When it came to taxes, Caracalla took as much as he could.  Since the time of Julius Caesar, the Jews of Palestine had been exempt from paying certain taxes during the Sabbatical Year.  The taxes were paid in produce which was used to feed the army.  Caracalla put an end to the exemption. Caracalla was fighting the Parthians in 216 which was a Sabbatical Year.  Rabbi Janni, a contemporary of Judah haNasi, ruled that it was permissible for the Jews of Palestine to grow crops during the Sabbatical Year so that they could pay these taxes.  He made it clear that this was a special exemption and in no way was intended as an abrogation of the Sabbatical Year.

426: Emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III decree that Jewish parents and grandparents cannot disinherit any children and grandchildren who convert to Christianity.  This was designed to enhance the spread of Christianity since under the decree those who converted to other religions could be disinherited.

1094(19th of Nisan): Mathematician and astronomer Rabbi Isaac ben Baruch Albalia, author of “Kuppat ha-Rochlin, passed away.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112370/jewish/Rabbi-Yitzchak-Ben-Baruch-Albalia.htm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Albalia.html

1139:  Roger II of Sicily is excommunicated. Roger may have had his problems with Innocent II, but for a monarch of his time, the Jews benefited from his rule.  Roger allowed the Jews to be tried under their own legal system; the same privilege that he had extended to his Greek and Saracen subjects.  One of his close advisors was known to be sympathetic to the Jews going so far as to visit their synagogues and to donate money for the support of the community.  Finally, Roger brought a significant contingent of Greek Jews to Palermo, the capital of Sicily, who were supposed to tend silk-worms in an attempt to develop the silk trade.

1484: Local farmers of Arles, France, led by the town's monks attacked the Jewish section of the town. A number of people were killed and 50 men were forced to accept Christianity.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Arles.html

1559: “Dominican monks distributed inflammatory pamphlets in Cremona, Italy, urging the populace to kill the Jews.” (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)

1582: Today, Giles Fletcher, the Eton and Cambridge educated “poet, diplomat and MP” who while serving as the English “minister of Musovy claimed to have discovered the Ten Lost Tribes among the Tartars” and his wife Joan had their son Phineas baptized today.

1661: Today, Henrque de Caceres who had been living in England for approximately the last fifteen years and Benjamin de Caceres “petition the king to permit them to live and trade in Barbados and Suriname.

1730: In New York, the (first) Mill Street Synagogue which is known as Shearith Israel was consecrated. It was the first structure designed and built to be a synagogue in continental North America. During the time the congregation was at Mill Street, the Sephardic leadership worried it might become Ashkenazic. The compromise within the Jewish community was they agreed the president of the congregation would be Ashkenazi, while the services would remain under the traditional Spanish and Portuguese rite, under the guise of a Sephardic chazzan. It is now known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.  One of its most famous leaders was Gershom Menes Seixas, a patriot during the Revolution, who had to leave when the British took the city.  A 1744 visitor noted that congregation's women "of whom some were very pretty, stood up in the gallery like a hen coop."

1754(16thof Nisan, 5514): Second Day of Pesach

1754: As Jews munched on their matzah, a, party of French soldiers continued its march to stop the English from building a fort at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (modern day Pittsburgh) which would lead to the battle in May in which George Washington led the British forces and which is considered by historians to being the start of the French and Indian War.

1768:Haham Moses Cohen d'Azevedo, the Amsterdam born son of Daniel David Cohen d'Azevedo and Sara Cohen d'Azevedo and his wife and Sara de Haham Moses Cohen D'Azevedo gave birth to Abigail Dias and wife of and the wife of Isaac Haim de Abraham de Jacob Dias with whom she had six Children

1769(1st of Nisan, 5529): Parashat Tazria; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh

1769: As the Jews greet the month in which they celebrate their freedom from bondage, the Inquisition continues to find fresh ground to grow as two parties of Spaniards continue their march across “Alta Califrona” where they are to build forts and missions.

1772: Ester Alvares and Bordeaux native Daniel Nones gave birth to Leah Nones

1773(15thof Nisan, 5633): Pesach

1773: Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal, the native of Palestine who was reported to be the first ordained Rabbi to visit the colonies that would become the United States was described by Ezra Stiles as wearing "a high Fur Cap, exactly like a Woman’s Muff, and about 9 or 10 Inches high, the Aperture atop was closed with green cloth" at Passover services today.

1774: Jitte Glückstadt, an unmarried Jewish woman in Altona, had her last will and testament recorded today.

1775(8thof Nisan, 5535): Parashat Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol

1775: In Savannah, GA, Judith Polock and Philip Minis who were married in 1774 at Newport, RI, gave birth to Abigail Minis.

1779(22ndof Nisan, 5539) Eighth Day of Pesach is observed while the French and Americans are conducting negotiations with Spain that will, in four days, lead to the signing of a secret treaty that will make all three of them allies in the war with Great Britain.

1780(3rdof Nisan, 5540) Parashat Tazria

1780:Today, during the American Revolution, General Schuyler wrote to Alexander Hamilton, who was thought to be Jewish because his mother was Rachel Levine and because he went to a Jewish school since he had never been baptized, about a variety of subjects including the general’s prediction that the war would be over with the year.

1790: According to some sources, birthdate of Ruth Luzzatto, who gained fame as “Rachel Morpurgo: Queen of the Hebrew Sonnet.”

http://www.mishpacha.com/Browse/Article/1435/Rachel-Morpurgo-Queen-of-the-Hebrew-Sonnet

https://ohalah.org/resources/remembering-rachel-luzatto-morpurgo/?doing_wp_cron=1407725046.2120769023895263671875

1792(16thof Nisan, 5552): Second Day of Pesach

1797(12thof Nissan, 5557) Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol

1797: Birthdate of Hesekias Stern, the son of Levy Stern and husband of Guthel Adler with whom he had two children – Jette and Rebecca Stern.

1798: Miriam Levy and London native Samuel Hyams who settled in Louisana gave birth to Moses Kosciusko Hyams who passed away in Pointe Coupee, a Parish near Baton Rouge, LA.

1801:  Soldiers rioted and killed 128 Jews in Bucharest.

1805: Birthdate of London native Mathilda Simmonds, the wife of Jacob Daniel Levy with whom she had the eleven children, the first three of whom were born in London and the last eight of which were born in New York City.

1817(22nd of Nisan, 5577): 8th day of Pesach

1819: A traveler who stopped in Joannina (Yanina), Greece acknowledged the following:
"In going out of the village this morning, soon after the sun rose, we passed a Turk, richly dressed, sitting upon a carpet, under a fig tree just budding…I know of no European habit of life so picturesque, as the Eastern one. Greek, Turk, and Hebrew enjoy nearly an equal protection."

1830(15thof Nisan, 5590): Pesach

1841: In London, Rachel and Joseph Rosinbloom, both of whom were natives of Poland, gave birth to Harriet Rosinbloom.

1843(8thof Nisan, 5603): Parashat Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol

1843: The Great Comet continues, which is now only visible in the Southern Hemisphere, continues to move away from the eart.

1845(1stof Nisan, 5605): Rosh Chodesh

1845(1stof Nisan, 5605): Solomon Rosenthal, the younger son of Naftali Rosenthal -one of the most important leader of Hungarian Jewry- who was “active in Haskalah and Jewish culture life” passed away today in Pest. 

1847(22ndof Nisan, 5607): Eighth Day of Pesach

1847: Birthdate of Karl Wittegenstein, the Austrian steel tycoon who was often compared to his friend Andrew Carnegie.  Like so many 18thEuropean Jews, Wittegenstein converted.  For him Vienna was apparently well worth a Mass.

1848(5thof Nisan, 5608) Parashat Tazria

1851: Abraham Abrahamsohn arrived in San Francisco.  A baker by trade, Abrahamsohn had left his wife and children in Pomerania (Germany) to seek his fortune in America.  On his first day in San Francisco, he “set up a canvas-roofed store” on the Long Wharf” where he made $85 in one day.  After several exciting years, Abrahamson returned to Germany where he published Interesting Accounts of the Travels of Abraham Abrahamsohn to America and Especially to the Gold Mines of California and Australia in 1856.

1853: One day after he had passed away, 9 month old John Hart, the “infant son of Aaron Hart” and Rebecca Crawcour was buried today in the Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.

1855: Birthdate of Amsterdam native William Philip de Jongh who settled in London some time before his death three months before his twentieth birthday.

1856: Birthdate of New York native and composer Rudolph Arons.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1919/02/06/106359373.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1857: In New York City, Rabbi Simon Brenner and Caroline Alexander gave birth to Jacob Brenner, the product of the Brooklyn public schools and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Kings County Republican Committee who served as a city magistrate in New York City, Commissioner of Jurors of Kings County, NY and President of Temple Beth-Elhoim and was the husband of Louise Blumeanu, “the daughter of real estate developer of Levi Blumenau.

1860(16thof Nisan, 5620): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer

1860: Count István Széchenyi who organized the National Casino, which when it reached minority nationalities including Jews which “contributed to national divisions in Hungary’s ethnically diverse population” passed away today.

1863(19thof Nisan, 5623): 5th Day of Pesach

1863: Birthdate of Jules Huret who authored Sarah Bernhardt, a biography of the famous Jewish performer

http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/12th-august-1899/23/sarah-bernhardt-by-jules-huret-with-a-preface-by-e

https://archive.org/details/sarahbernhardt00rapegoog

1867: Rabbi Joseph Perles, the Munich born on of Ethelka and Rabbi Baruch Asher Perles and his wife Rosalie Perles gave birth to Dr. Max Perles.

1868(16thof Nisan, 5628): Second Day of Pesach3

1868: Birthdate of Paul Bornstein, the native of Berlin where he earned his Ph.D. and published and edited numerous works, the most important of which “was an encyclopedic review of achievements in every sphere of activity and thought in Germany during the nineteenth century.”

1869: Jacob Bibo, an orphan who was the brother of Isaac R. Bibo and who had been working for a pawnbroker in the Bowery after leaving the Hebrew Orphan Asylum “went out on the Bowery to meet some other boys of his own aged” tonight “and has never been seen or heard of by any of his friends or relatives since”

1871: In Buffalo, NY, Samuel and Marie Weil Desbecker gave birth to

1873:Sir Julius Vogel begins serving his first term as Prime Minister of New Zealand.  Vogel was the first practicing Jew to hold this position.

1875: In Syracuse, NY, Solomon Silverstein and Esther Shevelson gave birth to Albert Silverstein the Yale graduate, “the assistant professor Orthopedic Surgery at the Denver and Gross College of Medicine” who served in the medical department of the United States Army…during the Spanish-American War and the Filipino Insurrection.”

1876(14thof Nissan, 5636):“Passover: The Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread” published today stated that “this evening will be marked by the peculiar ceremonies incident to the Jewish festival of "Pesach" or Passover. This festival, which is also known as the "feast of unleavened bread," continues for eight days, and, with the exception of the New-Year feast and the Day of Atonement, is more generally observed than any of the very numerous festal days in the Hebraic calendar.”

1876: In Amsterdam, Karel Abraham Wertheim and Henriette van Heikelom gave birth to Gustav Abraham Wertheim van Heukelom

1877: Two days after she had passed away, 84 year old Katherine Van Noorden, the wife of Moses Ezekiel Van Noorden with whom she had had ten children was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1879(15thof Nisan, 5639): Pesach

1879(15th of Nisan, 5639): In New York, Rabbi Frederick De Sola Mendes delivered the sermon at Shaarai Tefilla, Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs delivered the sermon at B’nai Jeshurun and Rabbi H.P. Mendes delivered the sermon at Shearith Israel.

1880: Birthdate of Minsk native Leopold Dubov, “the founder and first executive director of the Jewish Braille Institute of America who was blind since the age of six and raised on son, Mark, with his wife Regina.

1884: The Turkish government is a proclamation today “forbidding the immigration of Jews of any nationality, except for pilgrims who were restricted to a stay of thirty days.”

1884: In New York, German native Marks Arnheim and Fannie Arnheim gave birth to Minnie Z. Arnheim

1887(14th of Nisan, 5647): Rabbi Gustav Gottheill led the well-attended Passover eve services at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.

1887: Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria was “among the mourners at Lucien Hirsch’s funeral” which was held today.

1887: Birthdate of Walter Supper, the native of Hamm who refused to divorce his Jewish his wife which ended his successful career as a screenwriter,

1887(14th of Nisan, 5647): “The Feast of the Passover” published today stated that “the celebration of Pesach, or the Passover, will begin at sunset this evening.  The feature of the celebration is the substitution of the matzoth or unleavened cakes for bread…”

1888: The tenth annual meeting of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society of Brooklyn was held today

1888: As of today there were 57 boys and 20 girls living at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.

1890: Among the victims of a riot by 8,000 unemployed workers in Vienna were the several shops owned by Jews which were plundered by the mob.

1891: In Australia, Sir John Monash, who would lead the Aussies during World War I, married Hannah Victoria Moss. Their only child, Bertha, would be born 2 years later in 1893.  

1891: John Duncan is the architect for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society’s building now being built by Lynd Brothers. The new building will be 66 feet wide and 125 feet and will enable the society to double its capacity from 400 t0 800 orphans.  The $90,000 cost will be covered by raised by board members and prominent supports including Philip J. Joachimsen, the founder of the society and Moses Lauterbach, Chairman of the Advisory Board.

1891: U.S.N. Lt. Jonathan M. Emanuel, the native of England and current resident of Philadelphia retired today having served at sea for 15 years and 3 months.

1891: It was reported today that the self-inflicted gunshot wounds have proven to be fatal in the case of Siegfried Lewisohn, 28 year old German Jewish cheese importer who fired two bullets into his left breast after having grown despondent over the death of his wife.

1892: In the “Persecuted Jew” published today, a writer using the nom de plume “American Girl” expresses her belief that we can do more for the Jews whom she describes as persecuted outcast than answer “their call for bread” and calls upon the press to help right the wrongs done against these people.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0810F9355515738DDDA10894DC405B8285F0D3

1892: In Leopoldstadt, Vienna, Samuel Neutra, the “proprietor of a metal foundry” and Elizabeth “Betty” Glaser Neutra gave birth to “Austrian-American architect Richard Joseph Neutra.

http://www.transatlanticperspectives.org/entry.php?rec=28

1892: During today’s lecture on Jerusalem and the Holy land, John L. Stoddard displayed a large, rare photographic collection that included views of Jaffa and Jerusalem not seen by most Americans.

1892: Birthdate of Austrian native Michael Blaustein who moved to London sometime before his death in 1918.

1893(22nd of Nisan, 5653): 8th day of Pesach

1893: Birthdate of Ft. Wayne, Indiana native Samuel James Pearlman the graduate of the University of Chicago and Rush Medical College, the ear, nose and throat specialists who practiced in Chicago after serving in the Army during WW I both a Camp Grant and the U.S.A. base hospital at Sarenay, France.

 

1893: Karl Luger, a deputy in the Austrian parliament addressed an anti-Semitic rally in Vienna tonight “at which the Jews were violently denounced.”

1893: Cardinal Herbert Alfred Vaughn was appointed Archbishop of Westminster. According to Lawrence Jeffrey Epstein, once when Vaughn was having lunch with Dr, Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, he asked "Now, Dr. Adler, when may I have the pleasure of helping you to some ham?" The rabbi responded: "At Your Eminence's wedding".

1894: In Breslau, Germany, Ida Korach and Markus Lowenberg gave birth to Erich Karl Löwenberg who gained fame as Erik Charell,a German theatre and film director, dancer and actor best known “as the creator of musical revues and operettas, such as The White Horse Inn (Im weißen Rössl) and The Congress Dances (Der Kongress tanzt).”

http://operetta-research-center.org/rsc-brings-erik-charells-shakespeare-adaptation-swingin-dream-back-concert/

1895: Birthdate of Barney Gorodetsky who gained fame as comedian Bert Gordon known as “the Mad Russian.”

1895: “A package of clothing addressed to the United Hebrew Charities” was sold for $23 at today unclaimed parcels auction held by the American Express.  It was the highest price paid for any of the unclaimed items.

1895 (14th of Nisan, 5655): “The Feast of the Passover” published today describes the current status of the observance of Pesach.  “The celebration of Pesach…will be begun by the Jewish people throughout the world this evening…Those of the Jewish community who still cling to the orthodox observances of the Hebraic ritual continue the celebration of the festival for eight day, the first two and last two days of that period being observed as strict holy days.  Those who have accepted the modern or reform ritual celebrate only the first and the last day of the festival.”

1896: Lewis May, President of Temple Emanu El has sent “a communication” the Union Veteran Hebrew Association offering the use of the city’s synagogues for memorial services.  Among those planning for the Memorial Day celebration are Isaac Eckstein, Isaac J. Siskin and Otto Lassner.

1896: A committee of the New York State Board of Charities that has been investigating the Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child Protectory submitted its report this afternoon.

1896: “Jews In Our Wars” published today provided a detailed review of The American Jew As A Patriot, Soldier and Citizen, a book written to counter the claims of anti-Semites had shirked their role as soldiers in the United States.

1896: “Scenes in the Orient” published a review of A Cruise Under the Crescent a travel book that includes descriptions of visits to Jerusalem, by Charles Warren Stoddard in which the author “tells of that vexation all travelers feel as the authenticity of the shrines in Palestine”

1897(6th of Nisan, 5657): Eighty-two year old Hungarian rabbi and Talmudic scholar Samuel Low Brill passed away.

1897: Birthday of Zhovka native Sir Hersh Lauterpacht, “a member of the United Nations' International Law Commission from 1952 to 1954 and a Judge of the International Court of Justice from 1955 to 1960.”

1897: Karl Lueger, the anti-Semitic politician, began his services as Mayor of Vienna. Historians do not agree as to the depth of Lueger’s anti-Semitism.  Some, including Amos Elon contend it was more of a political ruse designed to garner votes and power. 

1897: Birthdate of Jo Swerling, the native of Berdichev who grew up on the Lower East Side and became a leading lyricist and writer.

1897: In an article describing the Jewish observance of the Blessing of the New Sun, the New York Times reports that synagogue records “show that the new sun service has been conducted by orthodox Hebrews in this country at intervals of twenty-eight years for 180 years.”

1898(16thof Nisan, 5658): Second Day of Pesach

1898:  Birthdate of E Y "Yip" Harburg.  Born Isidore Hochberg, to Orthodox Jewish parents on New York's lower east side, Harburg appears to have enjoyed a reasonably happy childhood with his parents exposing to him art, literature and the Yiddish theatre.  After trying his hand at everything from journalism to selling appliances, Hochberg began a successful career as a lyricist during the depths of the Great Depression.  His first financial and artistic angel was Ira Gershwin.  Harburg wrote the words to the Depression hit "Brother Can You Spare A Dime."  While you may not know his name, anybody who has seen the Wizard of Oz, has heard several Harburg hits.  Harburg's career disintegrated during the Red Scare of the 1950's.  He died in an automobile accident in 1961.

 

1899: “The Young Folks’ League of the Hebrew Infant Asylum” is scheduled to “give its fourth annual amateur performance” this “evening at the Lexington Opera House.”

1899: The approximately 10,000 members of various trade unions who were taking part in the Socialist and Organized Labor Day Parade paused at Greene Street and Washington Place, and stood in front of the ruins of the Asch Building where 145 people many of them young Jews lost their lives in the recent Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

1899: A review published today of The Bible and Its Transmission by Dr. W.A. Coplinger which is an historical and bibliographical view of the Hebrew and Greek texts, notes that it contains illustrations from the first printed portion of the Hebrew Bible which was completed in 1447 in Bologna

1899: Benjamin Weinstein and official of the Hebrew Trades Union was among the speakers who addressed those participating in the Socialist Labor Day Parade.

1900: Birthdate of Gavriel Mullokandov, the native of Samarkand who was regarded by some “as the greatest Bukharian Jewish singer and musician.”

1901(19thof Nisan. 5661): Fifth Day of Pesacch

1901(19thof Nisan, 5661): Forty-nine year old I.H. Goldblatt who resided at 154 Attorney Street passed away today

1902: Birthdate of Josef Alois Krips the Austrian conductor and violinist who left his homeland during the Nazi period because his father’s Jewish would have precluded him from pursuing his career (and might have led to an eventual trip to a concentration camp.)

1903: “A Servian Coup D’Etat published today described King Alexander’s moves to undermine the Serbian Constitution which would lead to his assassination in June of 1903 which would lead to the assassination in 1914 that started the flow of blood, including Jewish blood that did not stop until the end of the Holocuast.

1904(23rdof Nisan, 5664): In Frankfort-on-Main, author Chaim M. Horowitz passed away.

1905(3rdof Nisan, 5665): Parashat Tazria

1905(3rdof Nisan, 5665): Seventy-seven year old Philadelphian Barnett Phillips, the son of London native Isaac Phillips and husband of Sarah Moss who was a banker, member of the Philadelphia City Council and founder of the American Jewish Historical Society passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1905/04/09/101324100.pdf

1906(11thof Nisan, 5666): Solomon Marks, the London born son of “Elizabeth and George Joel Marks” and the husband of Benvenida “Welcome” Marks passed away today in the United Kingdom.

1907: A meeting of the Executive Committee of the Federation of American Zionist was held this evening in New York where the attendees discussed “the finances of the Federation and the upcoming convention at Tannersville.

1908: Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School. Among its Jewish graduates are Donna Dubinksy, Gabi Ashkenazi, Len Blavatnik, Michael Bloomberg, Stephen Allen Schwarzman and Rober

1908: The Passover Relief Association of Harlem distributed 2,000 pounds of Matzah, 300 pounds of coffee and other items necessary to celebrate the upcoming holiday of Passover to the needy east side Jews today.

1909: “A special dispatch received” in St. Petersburg “from Pyatigorsk, a town in Ciscaucasia said the that he Governor…has issued orders that Jews are to be denied admission to the heal restorts in the Caucasus during the coming season” and that “Jewish musicians are barred from playing in Government Orchestras.

1910: In New York City Saul Henry Ganz, a native of Junction City, KS and Ruth Ganz gave birth to Paul Henry Ganz.

1910: Large Jewish owned mercantile houses in Salonika announce 1% of all cash takings will go toward the cost of new Turkish warships.

1911: In St. Paul, MN, Russian immigrants Elias Calvin and Rose Herwitz gave birth to Nobel Prize Winner Melvin Ellis Calvin.

http://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/Melvin-Calvin-obit.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/10/us/melvin-calvin-dies-at-85-biochemist-won-nobel-prize.html

1911: In the Bronx, Morris Kaplan a candy store owner who worked as a textile cutter and his wife gave birth to Judge Benjamin Kaplan, “who as an Army officer helped craft the indictment of the Nazi war criminals who were tried at Nuremberg, and who later became a Harvard law professor and served nine years on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1912(21stof Nisan, 5672) Seventh Day of Pesach

1912: A Congressman from Missouri introduced a bill today supported by Jewish and other charitable organizations that would create “a special board of inquiry to examine those aliens who have failed to pass the tests imposed by immigration officials.

1913: Twenty-nine-old Rabbi Samuel Buchler, the Budapest born son of Morris and Fanny (Reiner) Buchler and chaplain at Sing Sing Priso who served as deputy attorney general for the State of New York who was disbarred after having been charged with grand larceny for taking money from clients and then not performing the promised services married Ida Frost today.

1913: Today, Dr. David Monash married Edith Mayer, the daughter of Ida Mayer at her home at 3814 Grand Blvd.

1914: In the Bronx, William Popper, the Vienna born son of Johanna and Herman Joseph Popper and his wife “Annie Popper” gave birth to Herman Popper.

1915(24thof Nisan, 5675): Sixty-five year old New York William Gans who had been a partner with fellow attorney Samuel B. Hamburger for 35 years and who was active in numerous Jewish charities and fraternal organizations including the Maimonides Library of which he was President, passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10814F83F5C15738DDDA00894DC405B858DF1D3

1916: As of today, The Special Million Dollar Fund of the American Jewish Relief Committee “is nearing the $4,000,000 mark.”

1917(16thof Nisan, 5677): Second Day of Pesach as the United States gears up to fight in World War I.1917: Dr. Felix Adler delivered a talk on “The National Crisis” today in which he expressed his “disagreement with the pacifists and upheld the country’s right to enter the war” as long as American did not lose “their horror of war and fought with a sense of shame that the state of the world was such they had to fight.”

1917: “The Jewish League of American Patriots announced that Samuel Untermyer, head of the league” will be going to Washington, D.C. “to confer with the Secretary of War.”

1917: The Jewish League of American Patriots “sent a request to the Park Department” in New York City, “for the use of Seward Park and Jackson Park for drilling grounds.”

1917: “Ambassador Gerard spoke for a few minutes” today “at a fair and concert at the Star Casino” which was being held  to “raise $5,000 for Jewish war sufferers at Warsaw” and “said he had made arrangements before leaving Switzerland for continuation of the transmission of funds to Jewish victims of the war in Poland.”

1917: Today, Herbert S. Goldstein announced “his resignation as Associate Rabbi Congregation Kehilath Jesharun at 117 East Eighty-Fifth Street.

1917: Sir Mark Sykes wrote to the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, “That the French were hostile to the notion of bringing the United States into Palestine as a patron of Zionism.”

1917: Chaim Weizmann cabled Louis Brandeis, advising that "an expression of opinion coming from yourself and perhaps other gentlemen connected with the Government in favor of a Jewish Palestine under a British protectorate would greatly strengthen our hands."

1918: The Immigration Restriction League was instrumental in getting Congress to consider a legistlation that was designed to reduce the number of immigrants coming from Southern Eastern Europe including the large number of Russian and Romanian Jews whose co-religionists had been finding refuge in the United States since the 1880’s

1918: During World War I, Charlie Chaplin led a group of Hollywood stars in selling war bonds on the streets of New York City’s financial district.

1919: According to a message received in Copenhagen today from the Press Bureau, “the German national government will not recognize the new Soviet Republic of Bavaria” whose leaders included Ernst Toller.

1920(20th of Nisan, 5680): The Sixth Day of Pesach

1920: After days of Arab rioting, Jews in Jerusalem are able to observe a day of the holiday in peace.

1923(22nd of Nisan, 5683): 8th day of Pesach

1926: “Mrs. Abram I. Elkus, Chairman of the Women’s Division in the United Jewish Campaign in New York to raise $500,000 of the city’s $6,000,000 quota fro relief and rehabliation of Jews in Eastern Europe announced” today “that Mrs. Alfred E. Smith, the wife of the Governor and Mrs. James. J. Walker, wife of the Mayor, would in association with Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff as honorary chairman of the Women’s Division in” New York City.

1926: Birthdate of Sheldon Greenfield, the Chicago native who gained fame as comedian Shecky Greene

1927: “Bishop Dunn Praises Work In Palestine” published today described the views of “The Right Reverend John J. Dunn, Bishop Auxiliary of the Diocese of New York who had just returned to the United States who “spoke with enthusiasm of the improvements brought about” in Palestine “by the Zionists” and said “it is impossible to say enough for the work done there” under the leadership of Nathan Straus which will “within ten years” make “Palestine…one of the most thriving sections of the world.

1928: In Manhattan Anna Evelyn (née Gritz) and Harry Ebb the lyricist best known for his work with composer John Kander which gave the world the long-running Broadway musical “Cabaret.”

1929: In Tel Aviv, Sir John Chancellor, the High Commissioner to Palestine, presided over the opening of the fourth Palestine and Near East exhibition.

1930: Mickey Cohen fought his first professional bout in Cleveland, Ohio

1930: During a visit to Palestine where he is gathering material for a novel based on Jacob and Joseph, Nobel Prize winning author Thomas Mann compared Zionism “in its ideals and purposes to the Romantic movement among the Germans in the 19thcentury.”  Mann was especially impressed by the Jews of Tel Aviv who seemed “freer and happier” than Jews living elsewhere.  “He believes that Tel Aviv has a bright future because of the wide-awakeness and intellectuality of its people.”

1931: Publication of “When Judge Cardozo Writes” by Felix Frankfurter, a case of one future Jewish Supreme Court Justice writing about another future Jewish Supreme Court Justice.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/when-judge-cardozo-writes

1932: It was reported today that Supreme Court Justice Alfred Frankenthaler has “reserved decision on the application to have a receiver appointed for the New York State asses of the New York United Hotels, Inc.

1933: Ludwig Kaas met Vice Chancellor Von Papen who was on his to offer a Reichskonkordat to the Vatican met on the train to Rome

1933: The Nazi German Student Association “drafted it twelve ‘theses’ which attacked ‘Jewish intellectualism’” and which claimed they were “a response to a worldwide Jewish smear campaign against Germany.”

1935: Birthdate of Broadway lyricist Fred Ebb.  Along with John Kinder he created numerous musicals including Chicago and Cabaret.

1935: “Sanders of the River” produced by Alexander Korda and directed by Zoltán Korda, who received “the first of his four nominations for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival” for this effort was released today in the United Kingdom.

1935: Congressional legislation created the Works Progress Administration, which developed millions of jobs for the unemployed. WPA agencies placed 8.5 million Americans on the federal payroll, including hundreds of Yiddish actors, writers, scene designers and theater directors hired for the administration’s Federal Theatre Project. Among those directly employed by the WPA was economist Solomon Adler.

1936(16th of Nisan, 5696): 2nd day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1936(16th of Nisan, 5696):Robert Bárány, who won the Noble Prize for Medicine in 1914, passed away.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/barany.html

1936: “A total world Jewish population of 16, 240,000 of whom 5,000,000 or 30 percent live in the Americas was reported to by the Jewish Scientific Institute.”

1936: “A feature of Reich Bishop Ludwig Mueller’s Germanization of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount is the elimination of all references to Jerusalem, King Solomon, Pharisees and scribes, laws and prophets and the Ten Commandments as made in the Gospel according to Mathew” because “these references were held to be Jewish and therefore to be rejected.”

1936: It was reported today that effective April 12, Easter Sunday, “all Jewish school children from 6 to 14 years of age must leave public schools.”

1936: For the second day in a row Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Buttenweiser opened their home to the public where visitors paid a dollar to view their art collection with the proceeds going to the fund being raised in the United States to settle Jewish refugees from Europe in Palestine.

1937:  Birthdate of Seymour Hersh.  A graduate of the University of Chicago, Hersh is a Pulitzer Award winning reporter for the New York Times.  

1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that there was some concern among members of the House of Commons over rumors of the possibility that the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine might propose partition. Col. J.C. Wedgwood, MP, declared that the proposed partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state meant "the scuttling of British responsibilities under the Mandate."

1938: In Laupheim, Germany as the Nazis tightened the economic noose around the neck of the Jews, “the Jewish cattle traders were allocated a separate part on the weekly cattle market

1938: It was reported today that Louis Blaustein, a leader in the oil industry whose estate was valued at $1,500,884 left a half million dollars for “charitable foundation to be known as the Louis and Henrietta Blaustein Foundation” and left the rest of the estate to his wife Henrietta, a son Jacob and two daughters, Ruth and Fanny.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/04/08/96812661.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1939: In Philadelphia, PA, Margaret Doris Bruck and Albert H. Schart gave birth to Trina Schart Hyman, artist and book illustrator who won the Caldecott Medal in 1985.

1939: In Hungary, “the First Jewish Bill was tabled today about a month after the annexation of Austria.”

1940:  Soviet troops began the massacre of what would finally total 26,000 Polish officers in Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia. Many Jews were among the victims.

1940: Just weeks after the end of the Winter War in which the Soviet Union successfully attacked and defeated Finland in New York, the Consul General of Finland and the President of Manischewitz attended a ceremony where it was announced that the company was donating 5,000 pounds of unleavened bread that is being shipped to the little country’s Jewish population just in time for the observance of Passover.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1940/04/08/92935816.pdf

1940: At 1:00 pm today FDR had lunch with New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman at Hyde Park.

1941: According to some sources the Nazis established Kielce (Poland) ghetto today. Others report that the ghetto was actually established on March 31, 1941.  Regardless, there is no conflict that the ghetto was liquidated in August, 1942 when 21,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka.  A remnant was shipped to Auschwitz in August of 1944.   Kielce's real claim to fame is that on July 4, 1946, the returning Jews were subjected to "an old-fashioned Nazi Pogrom" complete with tales of the blood libel.

1942: Two year old Eldad Davidovics was deported from Brno to Terezin today.

1942: The Crimean Peninsula was declared Juednfrei or Jew Free.  When the Nazis and their allies took the Crimea (part of the Soviet Union) in October of 1941, the Jewish population numbered between fifty and sixty thousand.  The Einsatzgruppen Units (special squads assigned to murder Jews) with the help of the local population took part in what was to date, the worst "ethnic cleansing" of the war.

1942:Nora Kaye's performance as Hagar in the world premiere of "Pillar of Fire" at the Ballet Theatre established her as one of the world's prima ballerinas.

1943(3rd of Nisan, 5703):Itamar Ben-Avi the son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who revived Hebrew as a modern language, passed away while working as journalist in New York City. (For more see Itamar Ben-Avi by Frederick P. Miller)

1943(3rd of Nisan, 5703): The Nazis began executing Jews near Ternopol in the Ukraine.  By the time they finish on the following day, one thousand Jews will have been murdered. One thousand Jews are executed near Ternopol, Ukraine.

1943: In Buffalo, NY, Helen Ternoff who was Jewish and her husband Salvatore DiFiglia who was not gave birth to Michael Bennett DiFiglia who gained fame as seven-time Tony Award winning choreographer Michael Bennett.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/30/arts/from-friends-and-associates-a-tribute-to-michael-bennett.html

1944(15th of Nisan, 5704): Pesach

1944: The Jewish Agency telegraphed from Istanbul to Jerusalem that the steamship Maritza carrying 244 Jewish refugees from Romania had arrived that day in the Turkish port and that the passenger would be leaving in two days’ time by train for Palestine.

1945: At Buchenwald at noon Polish engineer Gwidon Damazyn, an inmate since March 1941, and Russian prisoner Konstantin Ivanovich Leonov sent the Morse code message prepared by leaders of the prisoners' underground resistance.

1945: Hans von Dohnányi, who would be recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, was executed today at Sachsenhausen concentration camp for his role in resistance to Hitler.

This included smuggling Jews out of Germany, seeing to it that their funds were transferred to where they could access them and for his role in the plot to kill Hitler.

1945: Betty Warner and Milton Sperling gave birth to their second child Karen who was one of the granddaughters of Harry Warner.

1945: On the night before he was hung by the Nazis, along with General Hans Oster and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris “tapped out a coded message on the wall of his cell on the night before his execution, in which he denied he was a traitor and said he acted out of duty to his country

1946: Golda Meir, a leader of the Jewish Agency received the following telegram.  “We are 1100 Jewish refugees.  We sailed from Spezia for Palestine-our last hope.  Police arrested us on board.   We won’t leave the ship!  We demand permission to continue to Eretz-Israel Be warned:  we will sink with the ship if we are not allowed to continue to Palestine, because we cannot be more desperate.”

1946: Margaret and Hans Rey (the creator of Curious George) became United States Citizens. [Louise Borden has written a cute, fascinating tale about the Rey’s entitled “The Journey That Saved Curious George”.

1947:  Henry Ford, the creator of the Model-T passed away.  Ford may have had his moments as an industrialist, but he proved to be a notorious anti-Semite.  Among other things, he published and disseminated untold numbers of copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Ford actually believed this notorious fabrication.  His later apology was treated with various degrees of belief and disbelief.  For several decades, there were many Jews who would not by a Ford product.

1948: In New York, about 1,500 large concern in the garment and needle trades industries closed shop at 4 P.M. to per employees to part in” “the special services of prayer and intercession for Palestine” being held in temples and synagogues throughout the city.

1948: “Rabbi Irving Miller, chairman of the Administrative council of the Zionist Organization of America “denounced the arms embargo that forbids the shipment of weapons to the Jewish people in Palestine” while “speaking at the Congregation Sons of Israel at Woodmere, Long Island. 

1949: “Again” a popular song with music by Lionel Newman which had been recorded by Mel Tormé reached the Billboard magazine Best Seller chart today and lasted 15 weeks on the chart, peaking at #11

1949: Mel Tormé recording of “Blue Moon” by Rogers and Hart reached the Best Seller chart today where it lasted for five weeks.

1950: In Tel Aviv, Australian Jack Harper won the singles title of Israel’s International Open Tennis Tournament.

1950: After 380 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Miss Liberty” directed my Moss Hart and choreographed by Jerome Robbins

1950: As the condition of the Jews in Iraq worsened, today, "the Zionist organization in Iraq call on all Iraqi Jews who wished to do so to register for emigration"  to Israel. The plight of the Jews of this ancient community had become so desperate that within three weeks "47,000 Jews" would present "themselves at registration centers in the main synagogues.  They did so despite the fact that they had to sign a declaration renouncing their Iraqi citizenship forever and effectively surrendering most of their property and goods.

1951(2nd of Nisan, 5711): Sixty-eight year old Chicago native Harry Salinger, the Jenner Medical College trained physician who pursued a career a banking which led him to be Vice President of the First National Bank of Chicago who married Ciel Gruneweald after the death of his first wife Rae Davis passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1951/04/09/archives/harry-salinger-exbanker-dead-retired-vice-president-of-first.html?searchResultPosition=1

1952: It was reported today that Hungarian born author and playwright Ferenc Molnar had died intestate and  that his third wife Lili Darvas Monar and his daughter Martha were seeking to be recognized as the heirs to his estate.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from The Hague that reparations talks were suspended after Germany found only a $750m.justification for the joint Jewish-Israeli claim for $1,000m. Later Germany expressed surprise at the Israeli claim that the talks were suspended. The Israeli delegation reported that it had found the German statement completely unsatisfactory and that it would report fully to the Israeli government for consideration, review and decision.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The IDF graduated 600 cadets of all services, the largest number ever trained to become officers

1953: Sixteen year old J. David Bleich walked outside of his father’s synagogue in Lewiston, PA where he joined congregants in Birkat Hachmah, Blessing the Sun

1956(27thof Nisan, 5716): Sixty-seven year old Lithuanian native Zee (Wolf) Gold who served as a rabbi for congregations in Chicago, San Francisco and New York passed away today.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2015/05/zeev-wolf-gold.html

1957: Four years after opening on Broadway with the help of Anna Sakolow, “Camino Rea”l opened in London today.

1957(7th of Nisan, 5717): Eighty-eight-year-old NYU and Oskaloosa College (IA) alum Rabbi Adolph Spiegel the Galicia born son of Mathias and Sarah Leah (Fassberg) Spiegel and the husband of Anna Krebs whose quarter of a century of as rabbi included serving as a chaplain during the Spanish American War during which he “started the first Jewish Congregation in Puerto Rico” passed away today.

1959: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward gave birth to Elinor Teresa “Nell” Newman who run’s “Newman’s Own Organics.”

1960: “Wake Me When It’s Over” directed and produced by Mervyn LeRoy and co-starring Dick Shawn was released in the United States today.

1961(22ndof Nisan, 5721): Eighth Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1961: In Sheffield, UK, South African-born psychiatrist Professor Issy Pilowsky and his wife Marl gave birth to Lyn Sara Pilowsky who followed in her father’s footsteps and became a doctor of psychiatry.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/sep/20/guardianobituaries.health

http://www.smh.com.au/news/obituaries/her-work-eased-burden-for-the-mentally-ill/2007/09/30/1191090936668.html

1962: Governor Ralph M Paiewonsky of the Virgin Islands expressed gratification today over the message President Kenney sent to Congress recommending that the islands get the right to elect their own Governor.”

1963(14thof Nisan, 5723): Ta’anit Bechorot and Erev Pesach

1964: “The Strangler” produced by Samuel Bischoff was released in the United States today.

1965(6thof Nisan, 5725):Sixty-seven year old Manitoba native and U. CA. trained attorney Henry Joseph Sapper, the social worker with the YMHA and the Jewish Commission for Personal Service passed away today in Oakland, CA.

https://oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;titlesAZ=h;idT=UCb239063090

1966: Al Davis became Commissioner of the American Football League today.

1966: At a time when theologians such as Richard Rubenstein were questioning the role of God in a post-Holocaust world, Time magazine published its famous “Death of God” issue today.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/Is_God_Dead.jpg/220px-Is_God_Dead.jpg&imgrefurl=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_God_Dead%253F&h=290&w=220&tbnid=daqJWJAImi331M:&tbnh=160&tbnw=120&usg=___9kcyCevHOUxOcKNwVaDmitUVx0%3D&vet=10ahUKEwix-czPq6naAhXHzIMKHcUhCIEQ9QEIKzAA..i&docid=0sUFLI8IenUjlM&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix-czPq6naAhXHzIMKHcUhCIEQ9QEIKzAA

1967(27th of Adar II 5727): Parashat Tazria; Shabbat HaCodesh

1968(10th of Nisan, 5728): Sixty-nine year old  Bialystok native Jacob Perlman who came to the United States in 1912, earned all three of his college degrees at the University of Wisconsin and went on to become a world class economist while raising two children with “his wife, the former Helen Aronson” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/04/10/89131020.pdf

1968: In the aftermath of the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Larry Rosen, the owner of Smith’s Pharmacy in Washington, D.C. returned to find his family owned business gutted by looters.

1969: The Montreal Expos Baseball team, which were owned by Charles Bronfman from the team's formation in 1968 until 1990, beat the Mets at Shea Stadium in the team’s first game.

1970: During “The War Of Attrition” while carrying out a bombing mission that struck an “Egyptian military target west of the Suez Canal, the IAF mistakenly hit a school at Bahr el-Baqar killing 46 school children and injuring another fifty.

1970: “Entertaining Mr. Sloane,” a comedy filmed by cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky was released in the United Kingdom today

1970: “Cry for Us All” directed by Albert Marre with music by Mitch Leigh opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre.

1971(12thof Nisan, 5731): Eighty-eight year old Norman Bentwich “a British barrister,” committed Zionist, who “was the British-appointed attorney-general of Mandatory Palestine” passed away today.

1971: San Francisco Giants pitcher Steve Stone appeared in his first major league baseball game.

1974(16thof Nisan, 5734): Second Day of Pesach

1974(16thof Nisan, 5734): Sixty-four year old Chicago born Illinois graduate and Dr. of Ophthalmology passed away today in Palm Springs, CA.

1975(27thof Nisan, 5735): Yom HaShoah

 1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had resigned from his post and said that he would not lead the Labor Party into the May elections. Rabin took this decision in the wake of new revelations concerning the illegal bank account he and his wife Leah held in a US bank. Defense Minister Shimon Peres was expected to be nominated as the Labor Party's candidate for premiership. (.Author’s note:  During the promising days of the Oslo Accords, many forgot that Rabin had been Prime Minister once before.  He was forced out of office over a financial scandal stemming from his days as Ambassador to the United States.  This seemingly minor matter not only sidetracked his career, it opened the way for the first victory of the Likud Party.)

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Tel Aviv Maccabi won the European basketball championship in a thrilling victory, 78-77, over Mobilgirgi of Varese, Italy.

1980(22ndof Nisan, 5740): 8th day of Pesach

1980(22ndof Nisan, 5740): Fifty year old Vanderbilt University Phi Beta Kappa graduate Peter Farb, the linguist and author of such books as Man’s Rise to Civilization and Word Play: What Happens People Talk, the New York City born son of Solomon and Cecilia Farb and the husband of the former Oriole Horch with whom he had two sons – Mark and Thomas – passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1980/04/09/111149566.pdf

1981: Rabbi J. David Bleich, a professor at Yeshiva University, climbs to the roof a converted brownstone that doubled as a small synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to lead the service Birkat Hachamah.

1982(15thof Nisan, 5742): Pesach

1982: According to his notebook, Daniel Shechtman, made his breakthrough discovery while studying a metal mix of aluminum and manganese. Shechtman, a professor of materials science at Technion went on to win the Noble Prize for Chemistry.

1984: At the Kane Street Synagogue in Brooklyn, Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg officiated at the wedding of Legal Aid Yale trained attorney Laura Ellen Potter and Morton David Cahn 2d, the New England Conservatory of Music grad turned “computer consultant.”

1984: CBS broadcast the first episode of the miniseries “George Washington” co-starring Stephen Macht as “General Benedict Arnold.”

1985(17th of Nisan, 5745): Third Day of Pesach

1985: “Leader of the Pack,” a musical with lyrics and music by Ellie Greenwich and co-starring Dinah Manoff which New York Times reviewer called “an embarrassment” opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre.

1986: The funeral for Yiddish actor Pesach Burstein is scheduled to be held today at Riverside Memorial Chapel.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/08/obituaries/pesach-burnstein-yiddish-star-dies.html

1988: “18 Again!” a comedy co-starring George Burns and Red Buttons and featuring Pauly Shore was released today in the United States.

1989: After having been diagnosed with liver cancer,  Dahn Ben-Amotzheld a farewell party at the "Hamam" club in Jaffa, to which he invited 150 acquaintances” including “Amos Keinan (a former rival), Amos Oz, Meir Shalev, Gila Almagor, Yaakov Agmon, Shlomo Artzi, Yosef Lapid, Yehudit Ravitz and Nurit Galron” after which “he made a trip to the US, to say goodbye to his children from his first marriage.

1991: Michael Landon announced he has inoperable cancer of the pancreas

1991: “I Hate Hamlet” written by Paul Rudnick premiered at the Walter Kerr Theatre today.

1993: Eli Ben-Menachem became Deputy Minister of Housing and Construction.

1994:Pope John Paul II welcomed the Chief Rabbi of Rome to the Vatican today as guest of honor at a concert to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

1994: “Leprechaun 2” a slasher film directed by Rodman Flender was released in the United States today.

1995: A staged concert of “Anyone Can Whistle, a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim” “was held at Carnegie Hall in New York City as a benefit for the Gay Men's Health Crisis that “was recorded by Columbia Records, preserving for the first time musical passages and numbers not included on the original Broadway cast recording.”

1996(19th of Nisan, 5756):Argentine film director León Klimovsky passed away. “A trained dentist, born in Buenos Aires on October 16, 1906, his real passion was always the cinema. He pioneered Argentine cultural movement known as cineclub and financed the first movie theater to show art movies. He also founded Argentina's first film club in 1929. After participating as scriptwriter and assistant director of 1944's Se abre el abismo he filmed his first movie, an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Player. From this first phase, it can be also highlighted the adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and Ernesto Sabato's The Tunnel. On the 1950s Klimovsky settled in Spain, where he becomes a "professional" director. He went into spaghetti westerns and so-called exploitation films, filming in Mexico, Italy and Egypt. Perhaps he is best remembered for his contribution to Spain's horror film genre, beginning with La noche de Walpurgis. León Klimovsky confessed to have always dreamt of doing great vanguard movies but ended on filming commercial ones, but without remorse, as doing cinema was a vocational mandate for him. On 1995 he won the "Honor Award" of the Spanish Film Director Association. He died in Madrid of a heart attack. He was brother to the Argentine mathematician and philosopher Gregorio Klimovsky.”

2000: “Israel Plans a Test for Wagner” published today described plans for an upcoming concert by the Israel Orchestra of Rishon Lezion which will include Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/08/world/israel-plans-a-test-for-wagner.html?searchResultPosition=3

2001(15thof Nisan, 5761): American Jews observe the first Pesach under President George Bush.

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958-1996” by Allen Ginsberg; edited by David Carter, “Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland” by Jan T. Gross and “After Progress: American Social Reform and European Socialism in the Twentieth Century” by Norman Birnbaum.

2002: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon conveyed the goals to the Knesset as being "to catch and arrest terrorists and, primarily, their dispatchers and those who finance and support them; to confiscate weapons intended to be used against Israeli citizens; to expose and destroy facilities and explosives, laboratories, weapons production factories and secret installations. The orders are clear: target and paralyze anyone who takes up weapons and tries to oppose our troops, resists them or endangers them - and to avoid harming the civilian population."

2002(26thof Nisan, 5762): During Operation Defensive  Shield “St.-Sgt. Matanya Robinson, 21, of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, and Sgt. Shmuel Weiss, 19, of Kiryat Arba were killed by terrorist in Jenin

2002:Efraim "Effi” Eitamwas appointed Minister without Portfolio

2002:“Just after the conclusion of Passover, United Jewish Communities, a national group of 160 Jewish federations, announced a special Israel emergency fund. The organization has already collected $100 million.

2003:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/books/still-intrigued-history-s-shadows-gunter-grass-worries-about-effects-war-then.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2003(6th of Nisan, 5763): Eighty-eight year old Franz Rosenthal, the Sterling professor emeritus of Arabic at Yale, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/nyregion/franz-rosenthal-88-interpreter-and-scholar.html

2004: Three days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held for Abraham Altus, the husband of Lillian AltusZ”L and “esteemed member” of The Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Center at the Boulevard Riverside Chapels.

2005: “Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Israel should consider not demolishing the evacuated buildings in the Gaza Strip, with the exception of synagogues (due to fears of their potential desecration, which eventually did occur), since it would be more costly and time consuming. This contrasted with the original plan by the Prime Minister to demolish all vacated buildings.”

2005:The alphabetic ordering of leaders during the funeral of Pope John Paul II resulted in Moshe Katsav sitting near Iranian President Mohammad Khatami who, like Katsav, was born in the Iranian city of Yazd

2006: Observance of Shabbat Hagadol.

2006: Harvard grad and Marine Corps veteran Joel David Kaplan began serving was White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy today.

2006: Haaretz reported that Algeria, Israel and Morocco have agreed to join NATO counter-terrorism naval patrols in the Mediterranean, the organization. The announcement was made in Rabat after the NATO group’s first meeting in an Arab country.

2007: At The Jewish Museum of Maryland an exhibition styled “The Other Promised Land: Vacationing, Identity, and the Jewish - American Dream” closes.  This exhibition, the first of its kind in the U.S., evokes the experiences and meanings in Jewish vacationing from the 1880s to the present. The Other Promised Land highlights legendary "Jewish" vacation destinations including Miami Beach, Atlantic City, and the Catskills -- showing how vacations represented the excitement and promise of America while shaping notions of Jewish and American identities. A full-color, book-length catalog accompanies the exhibition.

 2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of The Grand Surprise:
The Journals of Leo Lerman
written by Leo Lerman and edited by Stephen Pascal and My Holocaust by  Tova Reich, “a shocking novel rips those who trivialize the Holocaust.”

2007: The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Polish Woman” by Eva Meker “a meticulous, raw study of the uneasy relationship between Catholic and Jewish Poles. In New York in 1967, Karolina Staszek, a Polish immigrant, becomes consumed with the suspicion that she is a Jew who had been placed with a Catholic family during World War II. The Jewish family in question, the Landaus, find the story seductive but improbable — until Karolina reveals a battery of memories unlikely to be the invention of even the canniest con artist. Told without artifice or irony, Mekler’s story of multigenerational immigration owes more to coolly composed novels like Lore Segal’s “Her First American” than to impressive acts of literary contortion like Nicole Krauss’s “History of Love.” Despite its literary trappings, “The Polish Woman” is also a straightforward mystery, littered with clues, red herrings and narrators who always know less than the reader. When Karolina first confides in Philip Landau, he suddenly recalls the warning of his parents, who escaped Poland: “The Poles were the worst, they’d declared over and over, with the pain and bitterness of personal betrayal, the worst.” When the two eventually travel to Poland to prove Karolina’s claim, they are also chasing these brief flashes of recognition, which tell the story of their shared past better than a tattered birth certificate — and explain why they have both become phantoms in their own lives. By the time the ending veers into John Grisham territory, Mekler has already transcended plot in favor of uncompromising examination.”

2008(3rdof Nisan, 5768): Eighty-five year old Bible scholar David Noel Freedman passed away. (As reported by Barry Jagoda)

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/general/04-08FreedmanObit.asp

2008(3rdof Nisan, 5768): Thirty­-two year old Major Mark Rosenberg was today, in Baghdad when his vehicle was struck by a makeshift bomb. (As reported by Maia Efrem)

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/135331/profiles-of-our-fallen/#ixzz1rOSSPxsW

2008: The Foreign Affairs Symposium at Johns Hopkins University hosts a lecture by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz co-author of “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict”, at the university's Homewood Campus in Baltimore, Md.

2008: Standing up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times by Amy and David Goodman was published today.

2008: Today, schools from kindergarten through 12th grade participate in a nationwide Home Front drill simulating a surprise missile attack during which a warning siren will sound for a minute and a half.

2008: Publication of the paperback edition of A Tragic Legacy by Glenn Greenwald.

2008: “Rothko Kin Sue to Transfer His Remains” published today describes the dispute over attempts to move the body of Mark Rothko, the Jewish abstract expressionist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/arts/design/08roth.html?pagewanted=all

2009: In “A Bread Line (Unleavened, Please) for Passover” published today, Alison Cowan described the baking of matzo in 19thcentury New York as well as the distribution of this Pesach necessity to the city’s Poor.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/a-bread-line-unleavened-please-for-passover/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

2009: Birkat Hachamah – Blessing The Sun (once every 28 years)

2009: At 6:22 a.m. this morning the sun will peak over the imposing 800-million-year-old mountains of Edom, bathing the Arava Valley below in light, and triggering one of the rarest and least-known Jewish rituals: Birkat Hahama, the Blessing of the Sun, is celebrated every 28 years in Jewish communities around the world, across the spectrum of Jewish observance.

2009 (14thof Nissan 5769):  Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

2009(14thof Nissan, 5769: Fast of the First Born; In the evening, first Seder

2010: David Remnick appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart where he promoted “The Bridge,” his biography of Barak Obama.

2010: An exhibition entitled “Painting to Remember: The Destroyed Synagogues of Germany by Alexander Dettmar” sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to open tonight.

2010:A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian militants today hit an open area along the coast of Ashkelon. No injuries or damage were reported. The rocket struck Israel just hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal this week to stop militants in the Gaza Strip from firing rockets against Israel.

2010: Paul Goldberger delivered the keynote address “Preservation: Where Do We Go From Here?” at the Indiana State Preservation Conference.

2010: A month after previews had begun at the Lunt-Fontaine Theater, “The Addams Family” with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and a book by Marshall Brickman with Bebe Neuwirth as “Morticia” and Jackie Hoffman as “Grandma Addams” officially opened tonight on Broadway.

2011: “The biggest sports event in Israel” is scheduled to take place today with the running of the Tel Aviv Marathon.

2011:Esterika Gourmet Cuisine and Larry & Mindy are scheduled to celebrate the end of winter and coming of spring with a culinary and musical Kabbalat Shabbat in Jerusalem.

2011(14th of Nisan, 2011): Fast of the First Born

2011(14th of Nisan, 2011): Hedda Sterne, “an artist whose association with the Abstract Expressionists became fixed forever when she appeared prominently in a now-famous 1951 Life magazine photograph of the movement’s leading lights” passed away today at the age of 100.  (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/arts/design/hedda-sterne-artist-of-many-styles-dies-at-100.html?_r=0

2011(14th of Nisan, 2011): Sixty-six year oldEddie Phillips, a successful liquor industry entrepreneur and the son of classic advice columnist Dear Abby, (aka Pauline Phillips), died at home in Minneapolis today. Phillips was active as a philanthropist, expanding the Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota started by his grandfather and pouring money into community needs, African-American heritage and medical research, including engineering a $10 million donation for research into Alzheimer’s at the Mayo Clinic after his mother contracted the ailment.

http://tcbmag.com/news/articles/2011/mn-businessman-edward-phillips-dies-at-66

2011(4thof Nisan):  On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of the 77 civilian doctors, nurses and other medical workers who were murdered by Arab attackers as they drove to Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem.

2011:Four additional rockets were fired at Ashkelon today and three were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system, the IDF announced, adding that it had bombed the terror cell that had fired the rockets, identifying a direct hit.

2011: In an air strike that was executed this afternoon, IAF jets bombed smuggling tunnels in Rafah. Palestinian sources reported that a fire broke out in the area, and postulate that the bomb hit a pipeline through which fuel was being smuggled.  

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘No Time Like the Present’ by Nadine Gordimer.

2012(16thof Nisan): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

2013(28thof Nisan, 5773): Yom Hashoah

2013(28thof Nisan, 5773): Fifty-one year old Greg Kramer passed away.

http://www.cjnews.com/arts/show-goes-after-creator%E2%80%99s-death?utm_source=The+Canadian+Jewish+News+Newsletter&utm_campaign=6442b00a34-The_Scoop_Apr_254_24_2013&utm_medium=email

2013: The Yiddishspiel Theater is scheduled to hold a ceremony to mark 70 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the morning of Yom Hashoah, with actors reading and telling about the days prior to the rebellion

2013: The Mediatheque Theater in Holon is scheduled toperform Gila Almagor’s autobiographical play, “Summer of Aviya,” about a summer in the life of child of survivors, during the early days of statehood.

2013: “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus,” is scheduled to be aired this evening. on HBO.

http://forward.com/articles/173372/hbo-documentary-tells-story-of-kindertransport-tha/?p=all#ixzz2PjXlE9Wo2013:

2013: Much of Israel stood still for two minutes this morning in memory of the six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-stops-to-remember-6-million-killed-in-shoah/

2013: IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz led today’s March of the Living ceremonies at Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with Tel Aviv’s Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, himself a child survivor of the camp.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/march-of-the-living-sets-out/

2014: “Israeli superstar” is scheduled to deliver “an intimate piano performance at the Edmond J. Safra Hall at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

2014: “An 18-year-old Jewish student in Gothenburg spoke out about anti-Semitic abuse in her high school, reading aloud the slurs she’s received on social media, including “Go gas yourselves, you Jew bastards,” and death threats from classmates. “I have been in hell,” she tells a local TV station. “I feel bad, can’t sleep, and have nightmares.” (As reported by Yair Rosenberg)

2014: “Zaytoun” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC Rockland International Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Ida” and “Eagles” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2014:Holocaust Survivor, Cesare Frustaci whose appearance is sponsored by the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund is scheduled to speak at Kirkwood Community College and Mt. Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2015: Holocaust survivor Henry Greenbaum is scheduled to speak about his experiences at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015(19thof Nisan, 5775): Fifth Day of Pesach

2015(19thof Nisan, 5775): Ninety-eight year old Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac the director of Free French propaganda broadcast from Britain during WW II, passed away today.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jean-louis-cremieux-brilhac-resistance-activist-and-historian-who-directed-free-france-radio-10176709.html

2015: The Westchester Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to open at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

2015: A small plane erupted into flames before takeoff at the Ben Gurion International Airport today. The plane was scheduled to take off for Russia at noon. The six passengers aboard the aircraft escaped without injuries.

2015: “An IDF soldier was stabbed in the neck and seriously injured near the West Bank settlement of Shiloh today, and a second was stabbed and lightly injured.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-soldier-stabbed-in-west-bank-attacker-shot/

2016(10thof Nisan): “According to the Book of Joshua the Israelites crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land today ending their 40 years of wandering in the desert.”

2016(10thof Nisan, 5776): Israelis are scheduled to observe the first ever Aliyah Day, “an official day of national celebration in which Jewish immigration to Israel is honored and noteworthy immigrants are recognized for their contributions to the nation

2016: “Raise the Roof” and “Bulgarian Rhapsody” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

2016: “Tamar Ettun and The Moving Company” are scheduled to perform in Bryant Park.

2016(29th of Adar II, 5776): Seventy-nine year old Charles S. Hirsch the “September 11 Coroner” passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/nyregion/charles-s-hirsch-new-yorks-chief-medical-examiner-on-9-11-dies-at-79.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2016: “Youth” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2017: The first Charlotte Jewish Playwriting Contest is scheduled to take place at the JCC in Charlotte, NC.

2017(12th of Nisan, 5777): Shabbat Hagadol;

2018: The reception marking the official opening of “City of Numinous Light” featuring “the urban impressionism of Lawrence Kushner is scheduled to take place this afternoon in the Isaacs Gallery at the Osher Marin JCC in San Rafael.

2018: In Des Moines, IA, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host the “Community-wide Holocaust Remembrance Program” this afternoon

2018: The New York Timespublished reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Common Good by Robert B. Reich, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Never Remember: Searching for Stalin’s Gulags in Putin’s Russia by Masha Gessen with photographs by Misha Friedman and The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer.

2019: The Yeshiva University Museum and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to present “literature scholar Ruth Wisse on a Yiddish-language tour of Lost & Found, exploring the remarkable story of a pre-war family photo album that was owned by a woman (Wisse’s aunt) who was deported from the Kovno Ghetto in 1943.”

2019” The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center hosted screening of “Three Identical Strangers.”

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host “The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between.”

https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/maunwantedppgdc0419

2019: The Skirball Center is scheduled to host the first session of Dr. Diane Sharon’s “Other Gods Before Me: Ancient Near Eastern Myths and the Evolution of the God of Israel.”

2019: The Jerusalem Arts Festival is scheduled to come to a close this evening.

2019: The London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to host “The Four Daughters of Seder Night” with Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum.

2019: In “How Gold’s Horseradish Came to Be a Passover Staple” published today Joan Nathan provides background on the “chrain that on your best table cloth leaves a stain.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/dining/golds-horseradish-recipe.html?fallback=0&recId=1JbO62Yr9PzAYU4OgBlFsintb7t&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=NY&recAlloc=top_conversion&geoCountry=US&blockId=most-popular&imp_id=373132676&action=click&module=Most%20Popular&pgtype=Homepage

2019: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present an evening of conversation with Robert Alter, author of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary and The Art of Bible Translation.https://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294996777 and https://press.princeton.edu/titles/13444.html

2019: As most Israelis wait to go to the Polls and vote tomorrow, ballots have already been cast by Israeli military personnel thanks to the 643 ballot boxes that were set up for this purposed by the Central Elections Committee.

2020(14thof Nisan, 5780): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach; For more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2020(14thof Nisan, 5780): Yahrzeit of Rabbi Chaim Heller

https://www.yu.edu/riets/about/mission-history/historic-roshei/chaim-heller

2020: The Chabad Jewish Center of Petaluma, CA is scheduled to host “A Seder Warmup” on Zoom where participants can “set up our Seders together, talk about the Passover story, the four questions, and more.”

2020: Among the many venues offering virtual Seders, Congregation Shir Hadash in Los Gatos, CA is scheduled to host a “Don’t Be Alone Seder Night” during which Rabbi Melanie Aron and Cantor Devorah Felder-Levy will lead a Zoom Seder using the Haggadah “A Different Night.”

2020: Due to the Pandemic, “Israelis will not be permitted to leave their houses this evening, the night of the Passover Seder, from 6 p.m. until 7 a.m. the following day, April 9/ (As reported by Mary Oster.)

2020(26thof Nisan, 5781): Yom Hashoah

2021: In one of those “calendar coincides,” at the same time that Yom Hashoah is being observed, “Two of Germany’s top athletics officials are advocating a joint Berlin-Tel Aviv bid to host the summer Olympics in 2036, so as to send “a strong signal of peace and reconciliation” a full century after the infamous Nazi-hosted Olympic Games in the German capital.”

https://unitedwithisrael.org/tel-aviv-nominated-for-2036-olympics-by-germany-to-be-held-one-century-after-nazi-games/?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=pushnotification&utm_campaign=pushengage

2021: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Temple Judah is scheduled to host a virtual Yom Hashoah Serving during which attendees will a number of readings in remembrance of the Six Million and will be encouraged to light a Yahrzeit Candle.

2021: JWA is scheduled to host via Zoom a Book Club talking with “Judy Batalion, author of The Light of Days, on women resistance fighters, in commemoration of Yom Hashoah

2021: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host a “morning Minyan lead by Abbie Straus honoring Yom HaShoah, followed at noon by Keerryn Lehman, who will share her grandmother’s stories “from life in the Kovno Ghetto and the five concentration camps” to which the Germans shipped her.

2021: The Jewish Heritage Museum is scheduled to co-sponsor Chhange's annual Yom HaShoah Program “Rescuers during the Holocaust featuring Dr. Deborah Dwork, the founding Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity and author of Saint and Liars.

2021: Holocaustmemorial events in Israel will begin today with a two-minute siren that will sound throughout Israel at 10 am.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, April 9, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 9

193: Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum.  Severus is the first emperor to ban proselytizing by Jews.

423: Emperor Theodosius II reaffirms the Roman law according to which "No Jew may purchase Christian slaves because it is abominable that religious slaves would be defiled by the ownership of impious Jews. If anyone does this, they will be subject to the statutory punishment without any delay."

423: Theodosius II and Honorious reaffirm the Roman law which ban the seizure or burning of Synagogues, but which also allows the Jews to “be punished by confiscation and exile for life if it is discovered that they have circumcised a” Christian.

614: According to “the Armenian bishop and historian Sebos” one of two possible dates the residents of Jerusalem rebelled during the war between he Byzantines and the Sasanians – a rebellion which claimed an untold number of Jews living in the city.

1141(30th of Nisan): Rabbi Joseph ben Meir Ha-Levi Ibn Migas “disciple and successor to Rabbi Isaac Alfasi” passed away today

1336: Birthdate of Tamerlane or Timur, the Mongol leader “under whose rule the Jewish people prospered” passed away today. (For more see Tamerlane and the Jewsby Michael Shterenshis)

https://books.google.com/books?id=vJZm9amnoAoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

1362: The Crown of Aragon (the name of the realm ruled by the King of Aragon) examined a court case involving the murder of a Jew by two Muslims. The widow of the man took the matter to the court after unsuccessfully seeking justice in the town where the murder occurred.

1500: A huge fleet under the command of Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, accompanied by Gaspar da Gama, a Polish born Jew whose slave name had been Yusuf ‘Adil before being forcibly converted to Christianity, “crossed the Equator” today and sailed westward away from the African coast.

1582(7th of Nisan): Lemberg Rabbi Naphtali Herz ben Meir passed away today.

1609: “The Twelve Year’s Truce” which “was a watershed in the Eighty Years' War, marking the point from which the independence of the United Provinces received formal recognition by outside powers” and helped to provide a Dutch haven for Marranos and Sephardi Jews seeking physical safety and place from which to conduct their trade with the Levant and North Africa, took effect today.

1609: The Expulsion of the Moriscos (Spanish: Expulsión de los moriscos) was decreed by King Philip III of Spain

1723(4thof Nisan): Judah Loeb ben David Neumark, author of Shoresh Yehuda which had been published at Frankfort on the Main in 1692 and who had been the manager of  the printing house owned by Daniel Ernest Jablonski  passed away today.

1723(4thof Nisan, 5483): Judah Loeb ben David Neumark, author of Shoresh Yehuda which had been published at Frankfort on the Main in 1692 and who had been the manager of the printing house owned by Dr. Daniel Ernest Jablonski,  passed away today. Jablonski “a member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin and a court preacher” was critical to the success of Judah Loeb’s printing projects since Jews were forbidden to have licenses showing ownership of a printing press.  Together, they probably produced a copy of Psalms and the Bible. Neumark was a trail-blazer in the field of Jewish printing in Germany, as can be seen by the many people who followed in his footsteps including his son Nathan Neumark.

https://books.google.com/books?id=G_uEW6sVCjMC&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=Judah+Loeb+ben+David+Neumark&source=bl&ots=0xf7NjOGvn&sig=ACfU3U1k4UZjrljd7aNm9JEjIq6zEUaFnA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwil4pzx87zgAhWLd98KHcn3CY0Q6AEwAHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=Judah%20Loeb%20ben%20David%20Neumark&f=false

1754(17thof Nisan, 5514): 3rd day of Pesach.

1774(28thof Nisan, 5534): Parashat Shmini read on both sides of the Atlantic as British troops began to make their way to Boston where they will enforce the act of Parliament closing the port in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party.

1782: Rabbi Isaac Hess Kugelmann and his wife gave birth to German educator and author Michael Hess whose students included “the young baron James von Rothschild.”

1792(17thof Nissan, 5552): Third Day of Pesach

1792: On the same day that Jews were celebrating their release from Egyptian bondage, President George Washington was writing to the U.S. consider the advisability of paying ransom for American captives held by those whom in Algiers who were later described as pirates.

1796: Birthdate of Curacao native and New York City resident Mordecai Frois, the husband of Cynthia Gomez and father of Rachel, Morris and Abigail Frois.

1797: In Germany, Frommet Weil and Davis Hirsch Lindauer gave birth to Jakob Hirsch Linaduer, the husband of Therese Einstein and father of Babette, Manasse, Rebekka, David and Joseph Lindauer.

1799(4thof Nisan, 5559): Forty-nine year old Abraham Mendes Seixas, the son of Isaac Mendes Seixas of Lisbon and Rachel Franks Levy of London passed away today in Charleston, SC.

1800(14thof Nisan, 5560): Ta’anit Bechorot observed for the first time in the 19thcentury and for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1806(21st of Nisan): Rabbi Daniel of Horodno, author of “Hamudei Daniel” passed away today.

1807: Joseph and Sophia Spyer were wed today at the Great Synagogue today.

1807: Forty-five year old “Cornish historical and portrait painter” John Opie who created “An Old Jew” passed away today.

1809: In Savannah, GA, Charleston native Perla Sheftall and Norfolk native Isaac Russell gave birth to Levi Sheftall, the husband of Anna Serena Martin with whom he had six children.

1811: “The New York State Legislature granted financial aid to the parochial school of Congregation Shearith Israel.” (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)

1816(11th of Nisan): Rabbi Simchah Bunim Rapaport of Wuerzburg, author of Hiddushei Rashbaz passed away.

1824: One day after he had passed away, a son Yitzhak Cohen was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1825(21stof Nisan, 5585): Shabbat Shel Pesach

1827: In Lenrburg, Germany, Abraham Greensfelder and his wife gave birth to Isaac Greensfelder, the husband of Amalia Blum who founded the Hebrew Relief Society in 1859, was charter member of Sinai Congregation in Chicago where he served as the President of the United Hebrew Charities for thirty two years and director of Michael Reese Hospital for 38 years.

1828: German natives Jan and Samuel Stiebel gave birth to Rosetta Stiebel.

1830(16thof Nisan 5590): Second Day of Pesach and the first day of Omer.

1831: In London, Frances Cohen and Joel Benjamin gave birth to Isaac Benjamin.

1838(14th of Nisan, 5598):Ta'anit Bechorot / Erev Pesach

1838(14th of Nisan, 5598): Sixty-year-old Hungarian physician Leopold Bettelheim Hungarian physician “a Hebraist of some importance: who “in 1830 Bettelheim was the recipient of a gold medal of honor from the emperor Franz I. for distinguished services to the royal family and to the nobility passed away today.

1842(29thof Nisan, 5602): Parashat Shimini; Pirkei Avot Chapter 1

1842(29thof Nisan, 5602): Sixty-seven-year-old Rachel Cornelia Bernard, the Amsterdam born daughter of Bernard Pak and the wife of Abraham Levy whom she married in 1799 and with whom she had eight children – Jacob, Julia, Rebeecca, Esther, Mary Louisa, Isaac, Lewis and Moses – passed  away today in Richmond, VA.

1846: In Oberdorf, Germany, Jacob Weil and Jette Pflaumlocher gave birth to Henry Wiel, the husband of Mina Rosenthal who moved to North Carolina where he served as President of both the Carolina Rice Mills and the Goldsboro Ice Company, trustee of the University of North Carolina, Goldsboro City Alderman and a leader of the B’nai B’rith.

1849: Jeanetta Mallan and Kent native Joseph Davis gave birth to Esther Davis.

1855: In London Cecilia and David Woolf Marks gave birth to Harry Hananel Marks, who founded the Financial News in 1884.

1857(15thof Nisan, 5617): Pesach

1860(17thof Nisan, 5620): Third Day of Pesach

1860: In Philadelphia, “Elias and Amelia (Mayer) Wolf” gave birth to businessman and civic leader Clarence Wolf, a member of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate from 1908 to 1912 and a director of Congregation of Rodeph Shalom.

1863(20thof Nisan, 5623): 6th day of Pesach

1863: As the Jews munch on Matzah, Samuel Dupont whose fleet of nine ironclads has failed to take Forts Moultrie and Sumter debates whether or not it is worth renewing the attack in Charleston Harbor.

1864(3rdof Nisan, 5624): Parashat Tazria

1864: Today, Jews in Keokuk, IA, chose “a Mr. J. Falk of New York…to be their schochet at an annual salary of $300, payable quarterly.”

1865: Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant met at Appomattox Court House and concluded the agreement the marked the end of Civil War. While Jews fought on both sides of the conflict, the majority of Jews supported the Union and fought for the North.  At the same time, a description of the Siege of Petersburg includes a notation that the Confederate lines were so thin that the Jewish soldiers could not be allowed to be absent to observe their Day of Atonement as they had been in past years.  Simon Wolf, a Jewish activist of the 19th Century, collected the names of over 7000 Jewish-Americans who fought on both sides during the Civil War. In 1895, he published the list in a directory entitled The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier, and Citizen.

1865: The Eighty-Second Regiment, whose members included English born Louis Manly Emanuel, the graduate of the University of Pennsylvania doctor who had been serving as surgeon with the Army of the Potomac in every battle since Malvern Hill, “was at the extreme front of the Union Army” when Lee surrendered today at Appomattox.

1865: Andrew Jackson “Jack” Moses was among the Confederate soldiers who fought against the Union Army at Sumter, SC. 

1865(13thof Nisan, 5625): Lt. Joshua Lazarus Moses was killed today as Confederate forces fought at Mobile, Alabama. Moses had been with the army since the start of the war having fought at the First Battle of Bull Run.

1865:  Birthdate of Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the native of Breslau Germany, who came to the United States in 1889.  Viewed by some as brilliant theorist and mathematical genius, Steinmetz held more than 200 patents when he passed away in 1923.  He experimented with AC electricity. His work was primarily in the field of improving practical electrical devices and the transmission of energy.  The following comments provide some sense of his importance as a Jew and as an America. "Where does our future lie! It lies in developing and making use of men like the great Jews, Abram Jacobi, Charles Proteus Steinmetz and Louis Brandeis, who are true to their own nature, and who respond to the American environment. These men are not amateur Gentiles. They are Jews and they are Americans."

1867: In Rochester, NY, Abram and Caroline Stern gave birth to Cornell University trained architect, whose works included the “Bausch and Lomb Optical Buildings in Rocheser” and “Berith Kodesh Temple.”

1867: The United States Senate ratified a treaty with Russia that enabled the United States to purchase Alaska. “Jews have been a prominent part of Alaska's history even before its acquisition by the U.S. in 1867. San Francisco Jewish pioneering merchants Louis Sloss and Lewis Gerstle (for whom Northeast Alaska's Gerstle River is named) are credited with opening the Alaska Territory to settlers and commercial enterprises when establishing the Alaska Commercial Company in 1868. Originally a fur-transporting firm, ACC expanded to become a salmon cannery and fishing fleet, operated a chain of trading posts providing general merchandise to natives, trappers, miners, and explorers, and supplied Alaska's first fleet of ships during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1901”.

1868(17th of Nisan, 5628): Third Day of Pesach

1868: Miriam Isaacs, the daughter of Joseph Simon Magnus and Bele Eliaser Cohen, the wife of Emanuel Isaacs and the mother of Rosetta and Esther Isaacs was buried today in the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1870(8th of Nisan, 5630): Parashat Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol

1870(8th of Nisan, 5630): Forty-nine year old Esther G. Poznanski, the “daughter of Rachel and Isaac Barret” and “the wife of Gustavus Poznanski” with whom she had had four children passed away today after which she was buried in Charleston, SC.

1871: The annual meeting of the "Hebrew Benevolent Fuel Association" was held at Masonic Hall this morning. This organization now has over 1,000 members, and is now entirely supported by an annual subscription of $3 per capita. The association will no long have to resort to fairs, concerts, and other soliciting entertainments” for funding. “Last year” the Association “distributed 1,000 half tons of coal” valued at $3,375 to needy New York Jews.

1872: In New York, Nathan Goldberg’s home on Division Street suffered $300 dollars’ worth of damage in a fire tonight.

1872: Two days after he had passed away, 77 year old Nathan Harris, the husband of Rebecca Harris with whom he had had six children was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.

1872: Birthdate of Léon Blum the first Jew to serve as French Premier. Imprisoned by the French and the Germans during World War II, he returned to politics briefly after the war before passing away in 1950.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWblum.htm

1872(1st of Nisan, 5632): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1876(15th of Nisan, 5636): First Day of Pesach

1876: According to a report published in the Salt Lake Tribune, the forty Jewish families of Utah’s largest city celebrated Pesach

1877(26th of Nisan, 5637): Henry Grass, a New York clothier passed away today.  He is survived by his wife Rebecca, six children, his brothers Abraham and Jacob and their daughters.

1877(26th of Nisan): Rabbi Jacob Simchah of Kempna, author of “Sha’arei Simchah” passed away

1878: In Pinsk, “Moses and Lifsha (Rosenkranz) Chermerinsky gave birth to Jewish Teachers Institute of Vilna graduate and Zionist Isaiah M. Chemerinsky, the “founder and principal of the Jewish High School in Kiev” and Hebraist who in 1922 settled in the United States where he became the Executive Director of the Jewish National Fund Educational Council and joined several Zionist organizations including “Histadruth Ivrith.”

1879(16thof Nisan, 5639): Second Day of Pesach

1879(16thof Nisan, 5639): Sixty-one year old Viennese poet Karl Isidor Beck passed away.

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

1881: In Hessen, Germany, Jakob and Ida Edelchen Baruch gave birth to Siegfried Baruch.

1882: Three days after she had passed away, the former Emily Esther, the wife of painter Phoebus Levin and the mother of Victoria Levin was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1882: Two days after she had passed away, 56 year old Miriam (Nathan) Benjamin, the daughter of Nathan and Sarah Nathan and wife of Solomon Benjamin with whom she had had fifteen children was buried today in the Willesden Jewish Cemetery in London.

1883: Businessman Nathan Barnet who helped to found the Miriam Barnert Hebrew Free School and the Barnert Memorial Hospital and the Barnert Memorial Temple was elected Mayor of Paterson New Jersey.

1884(14th of Nisan, 5644): Fast of the First Born

1884(14th of Nisan, 5644): “The Festival Of Pesach” published in the New York Times today states reported to that “the Jewish festival of Pesach, or the Passover will begin at sunset this evening and continue for seven days…It is also known as the Feast of Matzoth on account of the eating of the matzoth or cakes of unleavened bread during its continuance.”

1887(15thof Nisan, 5647): Pesach

1887(15th of Nisan, 5647): Dr. Gustav Gottheil preached a sermon at New York’s Temple Emanu-el.

1888: Birthdate of Hungarian native Alexander Lichtman, the pioneer American film producer.

http://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/al-lichtman/

1888: Birthdate of Ukrainian native Solomon Gurkov who gained fame as Sol Hurok, the impresario who learned the meaning of anti-Semitism at an early age.  When he was 18, Hurok's father gave him one thousand rubles to go to Kiev.  Hurok took the money but went to Philadelphia instead.  Once in the States, Hurok began a career as an impresario promoting everything from violinists, to opera, to Anna Pavlova, to an Israel-Yemenite Singing and Dancing Troup that preserved the Jewish-Yemenite Heritage.  He passed away in 1974. Ironically, one of the first performers whom Hurok promoted was the violinist Efrem Zimablist who was also born on April 9 in another part of the Russian Empire.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/03/06/archives/sol-hurok-the-impresario-dies-at-85-sol-hurok-impresario-for-many.html

1889:  Birthdate of Efrem Zimbalist in Rostov-on-Don Russia.  Zimbalist studied with his father who was conductor of note before coming to the United States in 1914.  He made his major musical debut in 1922.  He was one of a long list Jewish violinist to populate the musical cosmos in the last two centuries.  He passed away in 1985.

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/23/arts/efrem-zimbalist-violinist-dies-at-94.html?pagewanted=print

1890: The will of the late Louis Lippman was filed for probate today.

1890: An inquest was convened to determine the culpability of Abraham Marks in the death of Henry Heppner.  Marks claimed he shot Heppner when he was trying to break into his tailor’s shop through a rear window.

1890 Dr. Gustav Gottheil, “the rabbi of Temple Emanuel” delivered a lecture today on “The Christian Mission to the Jews; or Who Needs Conversion” in which he declared himself forcibly against the missionary work among the Jews which is being carried on by the Christian Churches.”

1890: In Elmwood, OH, “Alexander Tedesche and Jeanette (Jennie) Greenfield gave birth Hebrew Union College graduate and St. John’s University trained attorney, Sidney Saul Tedesche, the holder of Ph.D. from Yale who served as a rabbi at Brith Sholom in Springfield, Beth El in Providence, Bethel El in San Antonio, Mishkan Israel in New Haven and Union Temple in Brooklyn while raising two daughters – Carol and Jeanne – with his wife “the former Irma Goldman.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/19/140578272.pdf

1891: Adolph Saphir, who had been born into a Hungarian Jewish family in 1831 and converted in 1843 after which he “served as “Missionary to the Jews” passed away today.

1892: “Three City Hospitals” published today described the efforts of New York City to provide treatment for those suffering from contagious diseases including the construction of a new pavilion at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island for the benefit of Jewish immigrants from Russia who are suffering from typhus.

1893: On the day after Passover, Rabbi. Gustav G. Gottheil delivered a lecture entitled "The Christian Mission to the Jews; or, Who Needs Conversion!" at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0F16F6345B1A738DDDA90994DC405B8385F0D3

1893: It was reported today that the anti-Semites in Vienna claim that the man who attacked Karl Lueger with a knife was an agent of the Israelite Alliance.

1893: Birthdate of New York City native and MIT and Harvard trained civil engineer who served in the U.S. Navy during WW I after which he became a successful novelist.

https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/f/fineman_i.htm

1893: Four days after she had passed away, 61 year old Marianne (Goldshede) Abrahams, the daughter of Barnado and Annette Goldshede and the wife of Samuel Benjamin Abrahams with whom she had had seven children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery” today.

1893: Birthdate of Victor Gollancz, the son of a London wholesale jeweler, “nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz and grandson of Rabbi Samuel Marcus Gollancz” the British author and publisher who was one of the first to issue warnings about the impending mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.

http://web.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/ead/318.htm

1895: “Russian Anti-Jew Edict Enforced” published today described the lasts step in the Czar’s anti-Semitic policy in which the government has “instructed local military officials…to enforce most strictly the ant-Jew edict of 1893” that “excluded Jews from the health resorts in the Caucasus.”

1895(15thof Nisan, 5655): Pesach

1895: Birthdate of Meyer Loshie Casman, the native of Russia who “attended University of PA, University of Michigan, and the US Military Academy at West Point” and which he served as “a lawyer, army engineer and prosecutor during the Nuremberg Trials.”

1895: Dr. Solomon H. Sonnenschein who is the rabbi at Congregation Temple Israel in St. Louis will deliver a Passover Sermon entitled “The Root and Fruit of Freedom” in German at the Fifteen Street Temple in New York City. (Sermons in German were still the norm in many Reform congregations and the switch to English caused a schism in many congregations.  So much for equating Reform with being accepting of change)

1895: In Hungary, Joseph Lichtman and Pepe (aka Josephine) Zuckermandel gave birth to Alexander "Al" Lichtman a pioneering cinema businessman and movie producer whose most famous work may have been “The Young Lions.”

1898(17thof Nisan, 5658): Third Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1899: In Gainesville, TX, Nathan and Eva Baum Lapowski gave birth to WW I Marine Corps veteran Errold Baum Lapowski, the husband of Enid, OK native Eleanor Klein Lapowski, the President of the National Council of Jewish Women and father of Emily and Jean Lapowski.

1900: Tonight, during a memorial service for Dr. Isaac M. Wise, “Dr. Emil G. Hirsch made an appeal to the Jewish people to raise $500,000 which is the amount yet required to lift the debt on Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati which was an institution founded by the first leader of Reform Judaism in the United States.

1901: Today, Mayor Low said that he was sympathetic to the bill before the NY State Senate that authorizes the city to aid the Jewish Protectory and Aid Society but he also said that it was unnecessary because “section 230 of the charter gives the Board of Estimate full power in the premises.

1902: Herzl wrote to Lord Rothschild in London asking for a meeting in the British capital.

1903(12thof Nisan, 5663): Ta’anit Bechorot

1903: Birthdate of Dr. Gregory Pincus.  Born in New Jersey, Dr. Pincus' parents where Jewish immigrants from Russia.  Dr. Pincus' father was an agronomist who hoped to train Russian Jews to become farmers in the United States. A graduate of Cornell with a Ph.D. from Harvard, Dr. Pincus is known as the "Father of the Pill."  Dr. Pincus and Dr. Chiang developed the first birth control pill; a discovery that altered American and the world's sexual behavior forever.  Pincus continued his work until his untimely death in 1967.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0409.html

1904(24thof Nisan, 5664): Parashat Shmini

1904: In “Paschal Lamb Forbidden” published today the author takes issue with a statement by the New York Times saying that the family feasted on the Paschal Lamb during the seder since the lamb has not been sacrificed for 1,834 years” and that Jews “were forbidden to eat the lamb” while “wine, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs are the really important ceremonial features” of the Seder.

1905:  Birthdate of J. William Fulbright, former Senator from Arkansas.  Fulbright gained fame as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Fulbright denied being pro-Arab or anti-Israel.  However, after he left the Senate, he became a highly paid lobbyist for the Arab oil states.

1906(14thof Nisan, 5666): Fast of the First Born – Erev Pesach

1906(14thof Nisan, 5666): Morris Goldstein passed away.

1906: Austrian native Nettie Kinsbruner, the daughter of Shmuel Meyer Stettner and Rachel Stettner and her husband David (Aubie) Kinsbruner gave birth to Minna Katz, the older sister of American college basketball star Mac Kinsbrunner.

1906: Louis J. Goldman was elected President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

1906: “When Gold Boils” published reported today that Professor “Henri Moissan has been trying some interesting experiments in vaporizing gold in the electric furnace.”  A French born Jew, Moissan won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1906.

1906(14th of Nisan, 5666): Mrs. Sarah Orenstein and two of her children were almost asphyxiated this evening.  While cleaning her house in preparation for Pesach, Mrs. Orsenstein apparently failed to replace a piece tubing that she had taken from the stove causing a gas leak.  Fortunately her husband figured out what had happened and called an ambulance before the family was overcome by the fumes.

1906(14th of Nisan, 5666): Today in a Harlem Police Court the needs of two religions clashed and the Jews lost twice.  The magistrate fined eight Orthodox Jews who had worked on done construction work on new building yesterday.  They were fined because they worked on the Christian Sabbath even though they explained to the Judge that they had only been working on Sunday so they could finish the job before the Passover.  The same magistrate fined Michael Garlick for killing chickens yesterday, Sunday, which was the Christian Sabbath.  In his defense Garlick said that his boss had told him that the Deputy Police Commissioner said it would be alright to slaughter the chickens on a Sunday because of the approaching Passover holiday.  The magistrate did not dispute the fact that the Commissioner had made the statement.  He said Garlick was guilty because the Commissioner did nave “the right to interpret the law.”

1907: In St. Petersburg, “the attention of the government has been called to the fact that thousands of Jewish families in the southern provinces of Russia are selling their homes and departing in fear of wholesale anti-Jewish attacks.”

1908: Birthdate of Jersey City, NJ native and NYU alum Joseph Krumgold , the successful scriptwriter and winner of two Newberry Medals who was the husband of “the former Helen Litwin” and husband of Adam Krumgold.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1980/07/16/112163208.pdf

1908: Hundreds of poor Jews received free tickets at the offices of the United Hebrew Communities Charity which can be exchanged for Matzoth, meat and other groceries. Most of the recipients are women, many of whom who have brought their young children with them.  The distribution is an annual event intended to make it possible for even the poorest Jew to be able to celebrate Passover.  Tickets will be distributed as long as there funds are available to fund the purchase of the necessary food items.

1909: Birthdate of Galicia native Jack Diamond, the founder of “British Columbia’s largest meat packing firm – Pacific Meats,” the Chancellor of Simon Fraser University and husband of Sadie Mandelbuam with whom he had two son – Charles and Gordon.

1910: Birthdate of Yosef Shalom “a Haredi rabbi and posek who lives in Jerusalem, Israel.”

1910: Birthdate of Abraham A. Ribbicoff.  Born in New Britain, Connecticut, to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland, Ribbicoff attended New York University and was awarded a law degree cum laude from the University of Chicago in 1933. Starting in 1938, Ribbicoff worked his way up the Connecticut political ladder.  During the late 1950's was a popular two term governor who became an early supporter of John F. Kennedy.  Ribbicoff served two years as Secretary of H.E.W. before resigning to begin a two decade long career in the U.S. Senate.  Ribbicoff was a champion of civil rights, Medicare and the American workers.  He passed away in 1998.  Today we take the involvement of Jews at all levels of the political process for granted.  Such was not the case when Ribbicoff began his career.  An observant Jew, Ribbicoff was a trail-blazer for the dozens of Jewish Representatives and Senators who are in Washington today.

1911: Reverand Madison C. Peters, the Pastor Bloomingdale Church, gave a lecture today at Temple Beth El on Haym Salomon, “the financier of the American Revolution.”  During his talk, Rev Peters stated that “Haym Solomon…did for the Nation’s credit what Washington did on the field for freedom.”

1912(22ndof Nisan, 5672): Eighth Day of Pesach

1912: In New York City, Francis Nathan Wolff and Joseph F. Cullman, Jr. gave birth to Joseph Frederick Cullman III, the businessman who turned Philip Morris into a “tobacco powerhouse.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/business/joseph-f-cullman-3rd-who-made-philip-morris-a-tobacco-power-dies-at-92.html

1912(22ndof Nisan, 5672): Sixty-four year old Andrew Saks, the Baltimore born son of Helena and William Saks the President and co-founder of Saks and Company best known for Saks 5th Avenue and the husband of the former Jennie Rohr with whom he raised three children – Horace ,William and Leila – passed away today.

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/andrew-saks-dead-at-65.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20140212133833/http:/cyrus.piedmont.edu/users/mgardner/Saks_Paper_6-22-05.html

1912: Birthdate of Lew Kopelew, Russian author and political dissident.  Like many of his generation, Kopelew career was a checkered one with his acceptance or rejection depending upon the prevailing political winds.  Unlike many of his contemporaries, Kopelew survived the Soviet Union, dying peacefully in 1997.

1913(2ndof Nisan, 5673): Sixty-five year old New York banker Leo Speyer, the husband of Sara Speyer, who bought he house on 17 E. 82nd Street in 1898 passed away today.

1913: In Chicago, Adah Stern married Walter J. Greenebaum at the Blackstone Hotel.

1913: Sixty-seven year old German “philanthropist and art collector Henriette Hertz who converted to Christianity in 1871 and “is now known mainly through her establishment of the Bibliotheca Hertziana” passed away today in Rome.

1914: In “America Sung in Synagogues” published today, Rabbi Edward M. Chapman, Ph.D. took issue with the statement that “America” will be sung for the first time at Pesach eve services on April 10 since “America” has always been sung in his congregations “on national holidays when services are held as well as on some of our own holidays.

1915: Rabbi Felix A. Levy led services this evening at Temple Emanuel at Broadway and Buckingham Place.

1915: Rabbi A.R. Levy led services this evening at Congregation B’nai Jehoshua in Chicago.

1916(6thof Nisan, 5676): Second Lt Benjamin James Polack of the 9 Worcestershire was killed today during WW I while serving for King and Country.

1916: Birthdate of Elliot Handler, who co-founded the Mattel toy company.

1916: A mass meeting was held this afternoon at the London Casino in the Bronx to protest against the Burnett Immigration Bill which Justice Peter Sheil described as “class legislation” that “was aimed primarily against the Jews” since “a large percentage of the immigration for the past several years” has been made of Jews.

1916: Among the donations listed today by the Special Million Dollar Fund of the American Jewish Relief Committee $25 from the Mobile, Alabama council of Jewish Women, $50 from Goldstein and Kirshner Co. of which Israel Kirshner was President and $1,000 from the Harriman National Bank in New York City.

1916: Among the donations listed today the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War were $12 from the Ladies Aid Society of Spring Valley, $100 from the Provisional Zionist Committee and $218 from the Rock Island, Illinois Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War.

1917: Three days after the United States entered WW I, Samuel Untermyer, the head of The Jewish League of American Patriots is scheduled to go Washington to “confer with Secretary of War Baker on plans to enroll and drill the young Jews of New York

1917: At a meeting of the leaders of most the major Jewish organizations which had been called for by Samuel A. Goldsmith, the Executive Secretary of the Army and Navy Department of the Council of the Y.M.H.A. held today at the Astor Hotel it was decided that “all religious welfare work growing out of the participation of Jews in the war will be under the direction of a central board” with nine members

1917: During World War I, “Mark Sykes wrote to Lord Balfour that ‘The situation now is therefore that Zionist aspirations are recognized as legitimate by the French.’” Sykes was one of the leading British diplomats in the Middle East.  This correspondence with Lord Balfour was part of the jockeying for Jewish support during World War I and possession of parts of the Ottoman Empire after the war ended.

1917: It was reported today that Herbert S. Goldstein who resigned as Associate Rabbi of the Congregation Kehailath-Jeshurun so he could “dedicate his to a popular Jewish revival movement in New York City” will be leasing a house where he will be holding daily services and “a theatre for Sunday morning lectures.”

1918: Based on previously published reports Samuel R. Travis is leading a drive supported by “200 prominent orthodox Jews” to gain “additional members for the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.

1919: According to a cablegram made public tonight by “the Palestine Anti-Zionism Society” “the latest census in Palestine places Jews at less than 7 per cent of the population and shows that only one” out of every thousand “possesses land.”

1920(21stof Nisan, 5680): Seventh day of Pesach

1920(21stof Nisan, 5680): Seventy year old Isaias Wolf Hellman the native of Bavaria who came to the United States in 1859 where he became such a success as a banker and philanthropist that he became one of the founders of the University of Southern California passed away today.

http://www.jmaw.org/isaias-w-hellman-pioneer-investment-banker-part-2-san-francisco/

http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/towers-of-gold-how-one-jewish-immigrant-named-isaias-hellman-created-california

1920: In Vienna, university students delivered a resolution “to the rector demanding that in the future Jews not be appointed teachers, clerks or even servants; that academic distinctions not be conferred on Jewish professors;” and that the number of Jewish students must be limited so that it corresponds to their percentage in the general population.  (Yes, 18 years before the Anschluss ant-Semitism was alive and well in Austria.)

1920: Anti-Jewish mass meetings were held in Vienna to commemorate “the 10thanniversary of the death of Karl Lueger, the former Jew-baiting burgomaster.”

1921: Birthdate of George David Weiss the New York native who “was an American songwriter and former President of the Songwriters Guild of America.”

1921: In Jerusalem, Yosef and Myriam Navon, descendants of distinguished Sephardi families who had been living in the city since the 17th century gave birth to Yitzhak Rachamim Navon the fifth President of Israel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/world/middleeast/yitzhak-navon-former-israeli-president-dies-at-94.html?_r=0

1921: Birthdate of Eugen Merzbacher, the Berlin born American physicist.

http://www.aip.org/history/acap/biographies/bio.jsp?merzbachere

1922: In Brooklyn, Samuel and Shirley Mandel, gave birth to Doctor Irwin D. Mandel, an expert on Dental Chemistry.

1922: In Prague, Marie Grabenstein Epstein and Dr. Moritz Epstein gave birth to Jindrich Epstein.

1922: Birthdate of Eleanor Chana Gordon — known as Chana – who as Chana Mlotek the “music archivist at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and a columnist for theForward

http://yivo.org/about/index.php?tid=154&aid=1225

1923: A committee which had been formed in response to the growing number of Jews, especially those from eastern Europe, to “examine the principles and methods for more effectively sifting candidates for admission” delivered its reported today which on the surface looked like a victory for admission by merit but contained to “two key recommendations” – raise the proportion of students from the interior of the United States and limit the number of tram students – which would lead to a decline of Jewish students to ten percent which was much more to the liking of President Lowell.

1923: Birthdate of Toronto native Leonard Williams Levy who won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1969 for Origins of the Fifth Amendment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/obituaries/01levy.html

1925(15thof Nisan, 5685): Pesach

1925: Birthdate of Winnipeg native Esther Ghan Cohen who gained fame as Esther Ghan Firestone, the soprano and choral conductor who served as Canada’s first female cantor.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/esther-ghan-emc/

 

1925: “In Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg), in the Ural Mountains” pediatric surgeon Iosif Neizvestny and “the former Bella Dizhur, a biochemist, poet and children’s book author” gave birth to sculptor Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestny

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/arts/international/ernst-neizvestny-a-russian-sculptor-who-clashed-with-khrushchev-dies-at-91.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article

1926, The Rosenblums, a professional basketball team “organized and owned by Cleveland department store owner Max Rosenblum, “won the ABL's first championship by defeating the Brooklyn Arcadians by a score of 23–22 in the final game of the league's first championship series played at Brooklyn's 71st Infantry Regiment Armory

1926: In Vilna, Max and Sonia Silverstein gave birth to “Mike Silverstein, a founder of Nina Footwear, a women’s shoe company that grew from a SoHo loft to an international concern selling around 10 million pairs of shoes a year.”

1926: It was reported today that “budgetary allotments totaling $4,436,171.59 have been approved for 1926 by the Federation for the Support of Jewish Charities under the chairmanship of Felix M. Warburg.

1927: Alfred Williams Anthony, Sidney L. Gulick and John W. Herring who have been working with the Federal council of Churches of Christ in America “sent a cablegram to John R. Mott, the General Secretary of the International Young Men’s Christian Association” which is meeting in Budapest expressing the “hope that you will recommend that the congress issue a call to the Christians everywhere to purge the world of the curse of anti-Semitism and to accord to the Jews that highly respected place in the brotherhood of peoples which they rich deserve on the base of their sacred literature and history and which is their inalienable right.”

1927: “Sacco and Vanzetti's final appeal was rejected, and the two were sentenced to death. Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, was considered to be the most prominent and respectable critic of the trial. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939.” (The Atlantic)

1928(19th of Nisan, 5688): Fifth Day of Pesach

1928(19thof Nisan, 5688): Ninety-three year old, Isaac Seligman the German born American banker who became head of “Seligman Brothers, the London branch of the Seligman merchant-banking empire” which led to his being a leading member of the Anglo-Jewish community passed away today in London.

1928: Birthdate of Tom Lehrer, folk singer and famed creator of political and social musical parodies

1929: In Brooklyn, “Samuel Lichtenstein, an immigrant from Poland, and Jennie Waldarsky, an immigrant from Ukraine” gave birth to Harvey Lichtenstein, long-time President of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/11/arts/music/harvey-lichtenstein-dead-led-bam.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

 

1929: Betty and Walter Bridgland were married at a synagogue in Adelaid, Australia

1930: Birthdate of Nathan Blumenthal, the native of Ontario who gained fame as psychotherapist Nathan Branden, “the romantic partner of Ayn Rand.”

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nathaniel-Branden-Official-Page/123371217740717?sk=info&tab=page_info

1931: “Results of experiments showing that softening of the brain is due to a deficiency in the diet of some hitherto undiscovered was presented” in Montreal today, by Professor A.M. Pappenheimer of Columbia” and one on his associates from the Storrs Experimental Station at “the annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

1932: Birthdate of Jerzy Feliks Urman, the native of the “East Galician town of Stanislow” under Polish rule who ended his own life by taking cyanide at the age of 11 during the Holocaust.

http://thediaryjunction.blogspot.com/2016/05/jerzyks-tragic-story.html

1932: Birthdate of the multi-talented Paul Krassner

http://www.paulkrassner.com/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/obituaries/paul-krassner-dies-at-87.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1933: As negotiations for a Concordat between Hitler and the Vatican began Ludwig Kass met with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future pope.

1934: Israel B. Brodie announced that “more than a score of industrial nations will be represented at the third biennial Levant Fair to be held in Palestine.”  Participating countries include Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Czechoslovakia.

1935: Birthdate of comedian Avery Schreiber

1935: In an interview at the Hotel Commodore, “Norman Bentwich, a close associate of James McDonald in the work of the League of Nations for Refugees, a former Attorney General of Palestine and a Professor of International Law at Hebrew University agreed that Palestine was the ‘pivotal center’ for Jewish refugee settlement” but that the “greatest urgency” is the need to establish a fund to the 4,000 non-Jewish refugees in France, Czechoslovakia and other countries.”

1935: Americans took two first place finishes in the swimming events at the 2ndMaccabiah.  George Sheinberg won the 100-meter back-stroke and Janice Lifson won the 100-meter free style competition.

1936: Based on a survey conducted by economist Jacob Lestschinsky the total world Jewish population is 16,240,000 “of whom 5,000,000 or 30 per cent live in the Americas” of which 4,450,000 live in the United States.

1936: “The official Nazi organ, the Angriffannounced today” that Germany is to have ‘pure Easter eggs’” because the 7,000 Jews who “composed 24 per cent of the industry” have been eliminated “from the egg trade.”

1937: “Striptease Held Indecent by Court” published today described the legal outcome of a raid on Minsky’s Burlesque, precipitated in part, by the performance of Roxana Sand.  Sand was born Golda Glickman and for five weeks in 1934 she had been the wife of the Jewish boxer King Levinsky.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that over 10 million boxes of citrus were shipped out from Palestine from the beginning of the citrus season ­ 8,951,597 boxes of oranges and 1,218,896 of grapefruit.

1937: “The Girl From Scotland Yard,” with a screenplay by co-authored by Dore Schary and produced by Emanuel Cohen was released today in the United States.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that after Poland inaugurated a thrice-weekly air service to Palestine, the Italian airline Ala Littoria started a regular weekly hydroplane service to Haifa.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the largest-ever single pilgrimage from England since 1888 including 1,050 English and Welsh tourists arrived in Haifa aboard the S.S. Duchess of Richmond. The pilgrims proceeded to Jerusalem by two special trains, 70 cars and 15 buses, accompanied by 70 guides. They took over, for three days, all available Jerusalem hostels and hotels.

1937: “Elephant Boy” a Kiplingesque film directed by Zoltan Korda and produced by Alexander Korda was released in the United Kingdom today.

1938: “Arturo Toscanini, who came to Palestine to conduct a series of concerts with the Palestine Orchestra, arrived in Haifa by plane this afternoon accompanied by his wife.”  Among those greeting Toscanini was H.W. Steinberg, the conductor who has been rehearsing the orchestra and who will leave Palestine to become conductor of the N.B.C. Symphony Orchestra which Toscanini had been conducting.

1939: Illinois Democrat J. Hamilton “Ham” Lewis who as a Congressman had supported a “proviso in the Balfour Declaration that Jews going to Palestine to live could retain their original citizenship instead of automatically becoming British subjects” and who as U.S. Senator led “a protest against the possible transfer of American Jews from their present homes in Palestine to other parts of the country” passed away today.

1940(1stof Nisan, 5700): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1940: “Denmark and Norway were invaded by Nazi Germany. Realizing that successful armed resistance was impossible and wishing to avoid civilian casualties, the Danish government surrendered after a few token skirmishes on the morning of the invasion.”

1940: As the Germans invade Norway, Sigrid Helliesen Lund burnt the entire list of Czech Jews who had taken refuge in the country.

1940: The Danish cabinet decided “to accept cooperation with German authorities” today leading to the Danish police cooperating with the German occupation forces.

1940: As a result of Operation Weserübung, Germans take control of Denmark.  Three years later, the Danes will save their Jewish population from extermination by the Nazis in one of the most famous and daring rescue operations of the war.

1941: “The Ghetto in Częstochowa was set up” today.

1942(22ndof Nisan, 5702): 8th Day of Pesach

1942(22ndof Nisan, 5702): Seventy-two year old Harvard trained, attorney Edwin S. Mack, the Cincinnati born son of Herman and Jennie (Wolf) Mack, the 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." passed away today after which he was buried at the Greenwood Cemetery in Milwaukee, WI.

1942: When the outnumbered U.S. and Filipino forces surrendered at Bataan today, Sergeant Louis Sachwald was among those who escaped capture as he was moved to Corregidor. Eventually he would be taken prisoner and would survive the infamous Bataan Death March and years of Japanese imprisonment.

1943(4thof Nisan, 5703): Sixty-four-year-old Philadelphia born pediatrician Harry Lowenburg, Sr. the medical director of the Northeastern Hebrew Orphans Home passed away today.

1943: “Cabin in the Sky” the movie version of the 1940 Broadway musical, produced by Arthur Freed and Albert Lewis was released today in the United States.

1943: Forty-nine year old Anna Skobisova was transported from Prague to Terezin today on what would be next to the last stop before being murdered at Auschwitz.

1944: “The military authorities, with headquarters at Munkacs, began the rounding up of 320,000 Jews into Ghettoes within the operational area. In order to prevent any armed resistance by the Jews, they were concentrated in brick factories (as at Kassa, Ungvar, Kolozsvar) or under the open skies (as at Nagybanyam, Marosvasarchely, and Des).”

1945: Forty-eight year old “German jurist” Karl Sack who took part in the July 20 plot to kill Hitler was executed in Flossenbürg concentration

1945: Formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.  Two of the first three Chairman of the Commission are Jewish.  President Truman appointed David Lilienthal and President Eisenhower appointed Lewis Strauss. Neither of them were atomic scientists.

1945: Fifty-eight year old Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris, the head of the Abwehr “was executed in Flossenbürg concentration camp for high treason

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/wilhelm-canaris

1946: Eleven hundred Jewish refugees who had been sailing from Spezia to Palestine and who were now being detained in Italy went on a hunger.  The leaders of the Jewish agency them not continue the fast for their own safety.  They promised the refugees that the Jews of Eretz-Israel would fast in their place until they were allowed to continue to the Jewish homeland.

1946: “The Dark Corne black-and-white film noir” based on a story by Leo Rosten with music by Emil Newman was released today in the United States.

1947: In a criminal libel suit brought against L.M. Birkehad, “national director of the Friends of Democracy” sixty-six year old Lambert Fairchild a former NYC Alderman defended himself against claims that he was an anti-Semite, testifying under oath “that he had been elected alderman in 1934 in a predominately Jewish district and that he was associated with Jews in the American Legion.”

1948: The presiding of judge at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal announced the sentence on Eduard Strauch who was a commander of a unit of the Einsatzgruppen liquidated 55,000 Jews in a ten week period during 1943, as death by hanging – a sentenced he avoided due to other trials which enable to die in a hospital in Belgium in 1955.

1948(29th of Adar II, 5708): During the fighting that preceded the actual creation of the state of Israel, the Jewish defenders of Kastel had exhausted their supplies and were forced to withdraw.  Kastel was a village that dominated the eastern end of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem highway.  The Haganah had taken at the start of Operation Nachshon and the Arabs were determined to retake the village.  The last order given to the Jewish soldiers “by their platoon commander Shimon Alfasi, ‘All privates will retreat – all commanders will cover their withdrawal.’ Alfasi was killed in the battle, covering the retreat.  His order became a watchword during many future actions.  Abdel Kader, the commander of the Arab forces was killed in the closing moments of the battle.  Without his leadership the Arabs gave up the village a couple of days later. The Jewish forces who were preparing to re-take the village were surprised to find that the village was there without any further loss of life.  

1948: During the battle for Mishmar HaEmek, Israeli forces captured and destroyed Ghubayya al-Tahta

1949(10thof Nisan, 5709): Parashat Tzav, Shabbat HaGadol

1949: U.S. premiere of “Champion,” directed by Mark Robson, produced by Stanley Kramer, starring Kirk Douglas with a screenplay by Carl Foreman and music by Dimitri Tomkin.

1951(3rd of Nisan, 5711): Seventy four year old Henry Englander the native of Hungary and 1901 graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College who served as the rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Providence, RI and lectured at Brown University, passed away today.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0151/ms0151.html

1952(14th of Nisan, 5712): Fast of the First Born

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported the Israeli official announcement that the reparation talks at The Hague had only been suspended.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel observed the Pesach festival with all traditional holiday foods severely rationed and in a very short supply. Wine shops were well-stocked, but only the more expensive brands were available. Pesach chocolates, sweets and biscuits were completely absent. The sole bright spot was an ample supply of vegetables. Citrus fruit was either very hard to get or completely unavailable.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the rubber industry, which employs over 1,000 workers, faced a complete shut-down owing to the shortage of raw materials.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported The Palestine Conciliation Commission decided to consider an Israeli request that the Jewish property confiscated in Iraq would be charged against the abandoned Arab property in Israel.

1953: Warner Brothers premieres the first 3-D film, entitled House of Wax.

1954: President Eisenhower appointed Edward B. Lawson to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

1956(28thof Nisan, 5716): Yom HaShoah

1957:  The Suez Canal was cleared for all shipping.  This marked one of the final acts of the Suez Crisis that began in October of 1956 and resulted in a swift victory of the Israelis over the Egyptians.  The Egyptians blocked the Suez Canal in attempt to get support from the world.  In the end the Israelis left the Canal and the Sinai.  The Egyptians would fail to honor their promises of peace and when they tried to destroy Israel again in 1967, the result was an even more devastating defeat for the Arabs.

1957: Release date for “The Bachelor Party” Paddy Chayefsky’s screen adaptation of his 1953 teleplay of the same name.

1958(19thof Nisan, 5718): Sixty-seven year movie producer Solomon Max "Sol" Wurtzel passed away today.  Such was his importance that none other than renowned director John Ford delivered his eulogy.

1958(19thof Nisan, 5718): Sixty-nine year old Clarence Yale Palitz, the native of Lavia who came to the United States in 1900 where he became a lawyer, alderman and active member of the Jewish community holding leadership positions with the Jewish Ladies Day Nursery and the Jewish Social Service Association while raising three children – Lillian, Bernard and Clarence, Jr. – with his wife Ruth Krumnas Palitz passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1958/04/10/89074647.pdf

1963(15thof Nisan, 5723): Pesach

1963: Birthdate of New York native and Parsons School of Design trainded American fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Jacobs#/media/File:Marc_by_Marc_Jacobs_(Armazens_da_Capela)_R._das_Carmelitas.JPG

1964: U.S. premiere of “The Carpetbaggers” the move version of Harold Robbins novel produced by Joseph E. Levine with music by Elmer Bernstein.

1965: In Homestead, FL, Mathew Zucker, “a cardiologist” and Arline Zucker, “a schoolteacher gave birth to Harvard graduate and television executive Jeff Zucker

 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/magazine/cnn-had-a-problem-donald-trump-solved-it.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

1965: “The Greatest Story” a Biblical epic movie featuring Martin Landau, Ed Wynn and Joseph Schildkraut in his last movie with music by Alfred Newman was released in the United Kingdom today.

1966: Today, the Security Council adopted resolution 221 which put an end to British diplomat Henry Walston’s attempts “to negotiate an end to sanction-breaking pumping of oil Southern Rhodesia.

1968: The Jewish Orthodox Home for the Aged moved from Cleveland to a 37 acre site in Beachwood Village “and adopted the name Menorah Park Jewish Home for the Aged.”

1969: The "Chicago Eight" plead not guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Three of the “Eight” - Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Lee Weiner – were Jewish.  The two lead defense attorneys were Jewish and the Judge hearing the case was also Jewish.

1971(14thof Nisan, 5731): Ta’anit Behorot; erev Pesach and erev Shabbat

1972: “Sugar” a musical produced by David Merrick with tunes by Jule Styne opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre.

1973: Israel Defense Forces Special Forces units attacked several Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) targets in Beirut and Sidon, Lebanon in an action thought “to be part of the retaliation for the Munich massacre at the Summer Olympics in 1972.”

1974(17thof Nisan, 5734): Third day of Pesach

1974: Sixty-eight year old Marvin Lewis Kline, the 34th mayor of Minneapolis who was “criticized by journalist Arthur Kasherman” for his close connection to the “Minneapolis Mob” some of whose members were Jewish passed away.

1976: In Israel, a car bomb was dismantled on Ben Yehudah Street shortly before it was to have exploded.

1976: “All The President’s Men” co-starring Dustin Hoffman with a screenplay by William Goldman and music by David Shire was released today in the United States.

1976: “Family Plot” a thriller with a script by Ernest Lehman was released in the United States today.

1976: NBC broadcast “The First Easter Rabbit” an animated tale co-starring Stan Freberg as “Flops.”

1978: “Rabbit Test,” directed and written by Joan Rivers, produced by Edgar Rosenberg, starring Billy Crystal in his film debut and featuring Norman Fell was released today in the United States.

1982: Birthdate of Canadian Jay Burchel who numbers a Sephardic Jewish grandfather among his ancestors.

1983(26thof Nisan, 5743): Parashat Shmini

1983(26thof Nisan, 5743): Seventy-four year old Gertrude Adelman Shapiro, the wife of former Illinois governor Samuel Harvey Shapiro passed away today in Kankakee, Il after which she was buried at the Waldheim Cemetery.

1984(7th of Nisan, 5744): Joseph G. Weisberg, editor and publisher of The Jewish Advocate, passed away Massachusetts General Hospital after becoming ill at his desk in Boston, where The Advocate is published. He was 73 years old. Mr. Weisberg, a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Law School, was head of The Advocate, an English- language weekly, for more than four decades. He was a founder and past president of the American Jewish Press Association and a director of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a worldwide news service.

1984(7th of Nisan, 5744): In Portland, OR, 76 year old Sheindel Reznick, the wife of Hyman Reznik and the mother of Naomi Blumberg passed away.

1984: Refusnik, “Ida Nudel was summoned to the police station for interrogation.
1985(18th of Nisan, 5745): Fourth Day of Pesach

1985: In an example of Jew slamming a Jew, Frank Rich panned “Leader of the Pack” the musical with music and lyrics by Ellie Greenwich.

http://www.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9E03E6DD1338F93AA35757C0A963948260&_r=3&

1986: Fred Friendly began serving as Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College today.

1987(10thof Nisan, 5747): Eighty-three year old Louis Nathan Cohen, the Irish born son of Leba Rubin Cohen and Joseph Morris Cohen, the husband Edith Greenlee Saunders Cohen and the Joyce, David and Phillip Nathan Cohen passed away today in Albany, NY after which he was buried in the Riverside Cemetery.

1988: Pitcher Jose Bautista, a native of the Dominican Republic, played his first major league game with the Baltimore Orioles.

1988(22ndof Nisan, 5748): Eighth Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1988(22ndof Nisan, 5748): Eighty-one year old Sydney Harry “Syd” Cohen who spent parts of three seasons during the 1930’s pitching for the Washington Senators where his only act of distinction was striking out Babe Ruth in 1934, making him the last American League pitcher to whiff the great Bambino passed away today.

1989(4th of Nisan, 5749): Eighty-six year old Moshe Ziffer, a native of Przemyśl, who came to Palestine in 1919 where he became an artist and sculptor whose works included busts of Einstein, Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weismann passed away today.

1989: In the following article published today entitled “Unearthing a Roman City in Israel,” Matthew J. Reisz described the history of Beit Shean including the latest archeological discoveries at this ancient city whose ties to the Jewish people date back to the days of Saul and David.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/09/travel/unearthing-a-roman-city-in-israel.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1990: “Telling the Seder's Story In the Voice of a Woman” published today provides Nadine Brozan’s description of the celebration of Pesach with a unique, feminist twist.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/09/nyregion/telling-the-seder-s-story-in-the-voice-of-a-woman.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

1990(14th of Nisan, 5750):Louis Rappaport, called Calev Ben-David and asked him to join him in interviewing Barbara Walters just hours before the start of the first Seder.

1990: Twenty year old pitcher Scott Radinsky made his major league debut with the Chicago White Sox.

1991: Statements made in an interview with James Randi published in the International Herald Tribune resulted in a suit being filed by illusionists Uri Geller.

1992: Nigel Lawson retired as Member of Parliament for Blaby.

1992: Peter Benjamin Mandelson began serving as an MP for Hartlepool.

1993: “This Boy’s Life” a film version of the memoir by Tobias Wolff who did not find that his was Jewish until he was an adult co-starring Ellen Barkin was released today in the United States.

1993(18thof Nisan, 5763): Fourth Day of Pesach

1993(18thof Nisan, 5763): Ninety year old Rabbinic heavyweight Joseph Ber Soloveitchik passed away today in Boston.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/10/nyregion/no-headline-684393.html

http://www.manfredlehmann.com/news/news_detail.cgi/110/0

1993(18thof Nisan, 5763): Eight-six year old middle-weight Abie Bain who lost a title bout to Maxie Rosenbloom passed away today.

http://www.njboxinghof.org/abie-bain/

1995(9th of Nisan, 5755): Alisa Flatow, 20, was riding a public (Jewish) bus near the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom when an Arab suicide bomber plowed his car into that bus.  Alisa and seven Israeli soldiers, all under the age of 21, were killed.  Alisa was one of 20 American victims of the so-called "Peace" process! 

1995(9th of Nisan, 5755)Staff-Sgt. Yuval Regev, 20, of Holon; Staff-Sgt. Meir Scheinwald, 20, of Safed; Sgt. Itai Diener, 19, of Rishon Lezion; Sgt. Zvi Narbat, 19, of Rishon Lezion; Sgt. Netta Sufrin, 20, of Rishon Lezion; Cpl. Tal Nir, 19, of Kibbutz Miflasim; Sgt. Avraham Arditi, 19, of Jerusalem; and Alisa Flatow, 20, of the United States were killed when a bus was hit by an explosives-laden van near Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

1997(2ndof Nisan, 5757): Eighty-year-old screenwriter and author Helene Hanff best known for 84, Charing Cross Road passed away in New York City.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-helene-hanff-1267169.html

1998(13th of Nisan, 5758): Fast of the First Born takes place today because the 14thof Nisan falls on a Friday.

1999: “Never Been Kissed” a comedy co-starring Michael Vartan, Leelee Sobieski and James Franco was released in the United States today.

2000: 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 “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges” by Nathan Englander in which the author “combines a compassionate grasp of the Orthodox Jewish world with the skeptical irreverence of one estranged from yet still oddly defined by it,''“The Last of the Just” by Andre Schwarz-Bart a French novel that chronicles the agonies of a Jewish family from 12th-century England to Nazi Germany,” and “Picture This” by Joseph Heller.

2001(16thof Nisan, 5761): Second Day of Pesach

2001(16thof Nisan, 5761): Eighty-six year old Communist Party member and Buchenwald survivor Emil Carlebach passed away today in Frankfurt am Main.

https://www.buchenwald.de/en/1202/

2002(27th of Nisan, 5762):  Yom Ha Shoah

2002: During Operation Defensive Shield a battalion commanded by Major Oded Golomb was ambushed by terrorists in Jenin

2002(27thof Nisan, 5762):  Maj.(res.) Oded Golomb, 22, of Kibbutz Nir David; Capt.(res.) Ya'akov Azoulai, 30, of Migdal Ha'emek; Lt.(res.) Dror Bar, 28, of Kibbutz Einat; Lt.(res.) Eyal Yoel, 28, of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel; 1st Sgt.(res.) Tiran Arazi, 33, of Hadera; 1st Sgt.(res.) Yoram Levy, 33, of Elad; 1st Sgt.(res.) Avner Yaskov, 34, of Be'er Sheva; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Ronen Alshochat, 27, of Ramle; gt. 1st Class (res.) Eyal Eliyahu Azouri, 27, of Ramat Gan; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Amit Busidan, 22, of Bat Yam; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Menashe Hava, 23, of Kfar Sava; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Shmuel Danny Meizlish, 27, of Moshav Hemed; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Eyal Zimmerman, 22, of Ra'anana were killed today while fighting at Jenin. (Jewish Virtual Library)

2002(27thof Nisan, 5762): Thirty year old Major Assaf Assoulin of Tel Aviv was killed during fighting at Nablus.

2002(27thof Nisan, 5762): Twenty-one year old Staff Sergeant Malik was killed today.

2002: A pro-Israel drew 4,000 supporters today in Miami Beach, FL.

2003: “A Little Plantain At the Passover Table”https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/dining/a-little-plantain-at-the-passover-table.html?searchResultPosition=2“How to Boil an Egg: So Simple, but Not Easy”https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/dining/how-to-boil-an-egg-so-simple-but-not-easy.html?searchResultPosition=3 and “Nostalgia, the Secret Ingredient of Matzo Brei” https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/dining/nostalgia-the-secret-ingredient-of-matzo-brei.html?searchResultPosition=4 published today provide food history and cooking tips for the upcoming Passover holiday.

2003: Said Aldin al-Arabid, the Hamas leader whom has been accused “of directing dozens of attacks that killed many Israelis when the Subaru he was riding in was reported hit by a salvo of two missiles fired from an Israeli aircraft.

2004: “The Alamo” an epic about the Texas war for independence co-produced by Brian Grazer and with a script co-authored by Leslie Bohem was released in the United States today.

2004: U.S. premiere of “The Girl Next Door” with a screenplay co-authored by Stuart Blumberg.

2005(29th of Adar II, 5765): Fifty-eight year old author Andrea Dworkin who was variously an anarchist, anti-war activist, radical feminists and an outspoken critic of pornography which viewed as being a cause of the violent attacks suffered by women passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/arts/andrea-dworkin-writer-and-crusading-feminist-dies-at-58.html

https://jwa.org/thisweek/apr/09/2005/this-week-in-history-death-of-anti-violence-activist-andrea-dworkin

2006:  The Washington Post featured a review of Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City and the Conflict that Divided America by Eyal Press.  The book is an account of the battle over abortion in the United States.  The book is written by the son of Dr. Shalom Press, one of two doctors who performed abortions in Buffalo, New York.  The other was Dr. Barnett Slepian who was murdered in his kitchen when he came home from Friday night Shabbat services. Interestingly enough, the local leaders of the anti-abortion movement are twin brother who had grown up in a Jewish home and had converted to Christianity before becoming “pro-life.”

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky; translated by Sandra Smith

2006: Concentration camp survivor Emil Alperin of the Ukraine is pictured in an AP photo laying down flowers at Buchenwald near Weimar in eastern Germany as part of the commemoration ceremonies for the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi concentration camp.

2007: Haaretz reported that archeologists digging in northern Israel have discovered evidence of a 3,000-year-old beekeeping industry, including remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what they believe are the oldest intact beehives ever found.

2007(21st of Nisan, 5767: Seventh Day of Pesach: Reform Jews recite Yizkor on what is for them, is the last day of the holiday.

2007: In “Girls: Israel’s Racy New PR Strategy Israel” published today Kevin Peraino describes Israel’s flirtation with a new public-relations strategy”

http://israel21c.org/blog/newsweek-babes-in-the-holy-land-israel-flirts-with-a-racy-new-public-relations-strategy/

2008: Madeleine M. Kunin, the former governor of Vermont, the first Jewish  woman governor and an ambassador under the Clinton administration, discusses and signs her new book, “Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead,” at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.

2008(4th of Nisan, 5768):21-year-old Staff Sgt. Bisan Sayef from the village of Jatt was killed during clashes with Palestinian gunmen.

2008: April will be known as Jewish Heritage Month in New Jersey, thanks to legislation Gov. Jon Corzine signed at Passaic’s Ahavas Israel in front of a multi-ethnic group.

2009: “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” with a screenplay co-authored y David Benioff and co-starring Liev Schreiber was released today in Sydney.

2009: In “So You Think Know Matzo?” published today in Time magazine, Claire Suddath provides a brief history of this famous unleavened bread.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1890268,00.html

2009(15 Nisan 5769): First Day of Pesach

2009(15th of Nisan, 5769): US President Barack Obama will celebrate Passover tonight with staff and friends in what is believed to be the first White House Seder attended by an American president. President Obama is not the first US President to attend a Seder.  That honor belongs to William Howard Taft who was the first president to attend a Seder while in office. In 1912, when he visited Providence, RI, he participated in the family Seder of Colonel Harry Cutler, first president of the National Jewish Welfare Board. Why did Taft go?  Was it an act of brotherhood and good will or was it an act of political fence mending brought on by Taft’s support of measures that were harmful to Jewish immigration.  Since 1912 was an election year and Taft was faced with a stiff challenge from Theodore Roosevelt, he needed all of the support he get from Jewish voters who had supported the Republican Party.  

2010(25thof Nisan, 5770): Ninety-year old British soldier and diplomat Sir Peter Ramsbotham whose “mother was the daughter of Jewish banker Sgismund de Stein of London” passed away today.

2010: The Westchester Film Festival is scheduled to show “Hello Goodbye” a romantic comedy about a Jewish couple from Paris who go through a midlife crisis and move to Tel Aviv staring Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant.

2010:  Three days after premiering in New York “Date Night,” a comedy directed and co-produced by Shawn Levy was released to theatres throughout the United States.

 

2010: Rich Recht is scheduled to lead a musical and interactive Shabbat evening at the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2011: Vadim Gluzman is scheduled to perform with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

2011: Machaya Klezmer, “the premier klezmer band,” is scheduled to perform at The Jewish Study Center Spring Fund Raiser at Tifereth Israel Congregation in Washington, DC.

2011: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Jewish community gathered for shiva minyan at the home of Kate and Gary Goldstein in memory of Gary’s father, Harold Goldstein of blessed memory.

2011: Hamas said today that it “did not intend to target Israeli schoolchildren when they fired a rocket at a bus two days ago, critically wounding a teenager and moderately wounding the bus driver, in an attack that sparked the latest round of border fighting."

 2011: Today the Israel Defense Forces spokesman's office confirmed that IAF jets attacked three top Hamas officials in the Gaza strip, as well as a smuggling tunnel and a truck carrying ammunition, after southern Israel suffered a barrage of rockets overnight.

2011: This morning two additional Grad rockets were fired at Ofakim and 25 mortar shells were fired into the Eshkol Regional Council. Fifteen Grad-model rockets had been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory during the night.  The Iron Dome rocket-defense system intercepted five of them in the Beersheba and Ashkelon areas, Israel Radio reported.

2011(5thof Nisan, 5771): Eight-six year old move director Sidney Lumet passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/movies/sidney-lumet-director-of-american-classics-dies-at-86.html?_r=1

2012: In the third and final event in Adam Gopnik’s “Table Comes First” series, Padma Lakshmi and Amanda Hesser are scheduled to discuss the unique strengths and differences of our culinary masters and mavens at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

2012: At least 70,000 people from Israel and abroad gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City today for the traditional priestly blessing.

 2013: “The Last Flight of Petr Ginz” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival

2013: An exhibit of letters, manuscripts, images, and objects about the life and literary career of Hyam Plutzik opened at Connecticut’s Trinity College of which he was one of the first Jewish alums.

2013: “Melting Away” an Israeli film with English subtitles is scheduled to be shown at the 17thMandell JCC Hartford Jewish Film Fest.

2013: In Mandeville, LA, the Northshore Jewish Congregation is scheduled to host its Yom HaShaoah Holocaust Remembrance Program. 

2013: Jack Tytell, an American-born Israeli Jew who was convicted in January of murdering two Palestinians and wounding two Israelis, was sentenced today by the Jerusalem District Court to two consecutive life sentences plus 30 years jail time, and was ordered to pay NIS 680,000 ($190,000) compensation to the victims’ families.

2013: Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky was in the United States today to present to American Jewish leaders part of his proposal to resolve the issue of nontraditional prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, which will reportedly include a greatly enlarged section for egalitarian services.

2014: “Holy Ground: Woody Guthrie's Yiddish Connection” is scheduled to best shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Women Unchained” is scheduled to be shown at The JCC Rockland International Jewish Film Festival.

2014(9th of Nisan, 5774): Eighty-seven year old Jacob Birnbaum passed away today.

http://forward.com/articles/196373/soviet-jewry-activist-jacob-birnbaum-dies-at-/

2014: The Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund chaired by Dr. Bob Silber is scheduled to co-host a speech by Holocaust survivor Cesare Frustaci at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2015: In Orono, ME, Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Collins Center for Arts at the Univeristy of Main.

2015: “When a Plane Seat Next to a Woman Is Against Orthodox Faith” published today described the conditions aboard planes flying to Israel when men insist on preferential treatment because they do not want to sit next to women for religious reasons.

2015: Shoah survivor Margit Meissner is scheduled to speak today at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015: “Blumenthal,” “A Place in Heaven” and “Famous Nathan” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2015: The Argentine government announced today that it “will declassify all intelligence documents about the March 17, 1992, attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people and wounded hundreds. (As reported by JTA)

2015: Vandals smashed a window and scrawled anti-Semitic messages at Copenhagen’s only kosher deli, police said today, less than two months after a man was killed in an attack outside a synagogue on the Danish city.”

2015: Funeral series are scheduled to take place for Bernice Tannenbaum, the past National President of Hadassah who passed away at the age of 101 at Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York City.

2016(1stof Nisan, 5776):  Rosh Chodesh Nisan and Shabbat HaChodesh. 

2016: “Rock in the Red Zone” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.

2016: “JeruZalem” and “Baba Joon” are scheduled to be shown for the first time at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2016: “Laugh Lines” and “Suicide” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival

2017: “In an statement timed just ahead of Passover, the Temple Mount Sifting Project said today it had found a stone finger that may have belonged to a Bronze Age Egyptian statue, but conceded it wasn’t sure.”

2017: The New York Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy and Our Short History by Lauren Grodstein,

2017: The Autohaus on Edens is scheduled to be the venue “for an exclusive event benefiting the Women's Leadership Committee of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.”

2017: In “Keep Your Politics Out of Passover,” published today Shmuel Rosner, the political editor at The Jewish Journal and a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute examines the problems with using what are supposed to be unifying Jewish customs and ceremonies to promote partisan political views.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/09/opinion/keep-your-politics-out-of-passover.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

2018: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Bye, Bye, Germany” in London today.

2018: The Center for Jewish History and the American Jewish Historical Society are scheduled to host Psoy Korolenko and Anna Shternshis performing “satirical Yiddish anti-fascist songs from the lost Archive of the Bureau for Jewish Culture at the Ukrainian Academy of Science, written during World War II in the Soviet Union”

2018: The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players which was founded by Jens Nygaard who directed the Washington Heights YW-YMHA concerts for 25 years is scheduled to perform “The Great vs. The Five” featuring the music of Tchaikovsky versus the music of Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky, and Alexander Borodin.  

2018: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “1945” in London today.

2018: “From Poland to Israel: The March of the Living” sponsored by the Temple Emanu-El Streicker center is scheduled to begin today.

http://assets.emanuelstreickernyc.org/publications/Poland_2018/#page=1

2019: The Skirball Center is scheduled to host the first session of “Modern Jewish Philosophy” during which Dr. Daniel Rynhold examines “what got Spinoza in trouble, and how thinkers like Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig responded.”

2019: In New York, the City Winery is scheduled to host an evening, with Keren Ann (Zeidel) the Caeserea born singer and composer.

2019: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host an “Educators Open House” where, among other things attendees will receive “Ready-to-Use lesson plans and free access to online lessons and lectures.”

2019: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host the “debut of ‘And All The Days Were Purple,’ new album by composer Alex Weiser featuring Yiddish and English poems set to music.”

https://yivo.org/and-all-the-days-were-purple

 2019: As Israelis prepare to go to the polls, scientists make corrections in the orbit of the Beresheet lunar lander in preparation for the events of April 11.

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5491242,00.html

2020(15th of Nisan, 5780): First Day of Pesach;

2020: Based on the number of funerals carried out by burial societies, where covid-19 appeared on the deceased’s death certificate as of the last figures released before Pesach, at least 152 Jews in the UK have died because of the virus.

2020: “Rabbi Danny Gottlieb and Ricki Weintraub of S.F. Congregation Beth Israel Judea are scheduled to host a Seder on Facebook Live.

2020: As of seven o’clock this morning Israelis are scheduled to be able to leave their houses after having been confined to their homes since six o’clock yesterday evening.

2020: In the evening, the ASF Young Leaders are scheduled to host a “Virtual Sephardic Passover Seder.”

https://www.facebook.com/events/270815277260614/

2020: 155th anniversary of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox where Grant showed the kind of magnanimity that he hoped would quickly bind up the nations’ wounds -- a hope that others defeated.

2021: In Palm Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host two ways to welcome Shabbat -- Shabbat B’Yachad (Shabbat Together) and Shabbat Worship services with Rabbi Yaron and Cantorial Soloists Abbie.

2021: As we mark Yom Ha’Shoah, Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to welcome Abe Foxman, now VP of the Board at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, as he  talks about his life, his life’s work and about keeping Jews and Judaism alive.

2021: In Beachwood, OH, Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple is scheduled to begin the ceremonies marking the installation of Cantor Vladimir Lapi.

2021: “Many of the curbs on the education system in Israel are set to expire tomorrow. (As reported by Tamar Trabelsi Hadad and Adir Yanko)

 

This Day, April 10, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 10

401: Birthdate of Theodosius II. As Emperor he adopted many of the anti-Semitic views of his sister which led to the destruction of innumerable synagogues and the murder of the Nasi, Gamliel IV who had authorized the building of new synagogues.  Theodosius abolished of the position of Nasi in 425.  The term Nasi means Prince and starting with the last decade of the second century was the title given to the head of the Sanhedrin. The Romans had recognized the importance of the position and Jews were allowed to pay a tax for the upkeep of the Nasi.  When Theodosius killed Gamliel and abolished the position Nasi, he did not end the tax.  He diverted the money to the Roman government. 

847: Papacy of Leo IV begins.

879: Louis III becomes King of the Western Franks (also known as France).  Louis was part of the Carolingian Dynasty which was comparatively sympathetic and supportive of the Jews living in the realm as can be seen by the decrees of some of Louis III’s predecessors including Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.

1096: During the Crusades Bishop Egelbert offered to save all the Jews of Trier, Germany who are willing to be baptized.  The Jews were seeking refuge from a mob that was threatening them with death.  Most of the Jews chose to drown themselves rather than accept Christianity.

1191: In the enfolding saga of King Richard’s crusade to the Holy Land that was so costly to the Jews from the time of his departure until the payment of his ransom, the English monarch set sail from Sicily for Palestine.

1201:  King John of England confirms Charter of the Jews. King John charged the Jews four thousand marks to re-confirm the rights that had first been guaranteed by his great grandfather, King Henry

1439(25th of Nisan): Poet and kabbalist Avigdor ben Isaac Kara of Prague passed away today.

1516:  The first ghetto was established in Venice. There are various explanations of the origin of the term ghetto.  "The mostly likely explanation for the word ghetto, as applied to a special place assigned to the Jews is that one such district, set up in the city of Venice, was located near an iron-foundry which was called ‘get’ in the dialect of Venice."  While Jews had often sought to live in their own communities, the ghetto was different because it was compulsory.  Under the ghetto system, Jews were restricted by law as to where they could live while Christians were free to live everywhere.1560(14th of Nisan): The Pentateuch with a Yiddish translation was published in Cremona, Italy

1583: Birthdate of Delft native Hugo Grotious the diplomate and theologian who was a friend of Manasseh Ben Israel whose works he admired and an advocate for the admission of Jews to settle as full citizens in the Netherlands.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43059491?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

1570:  The Chumash with Yiddish translation was published in Cremona, Italy.  There were less than a thousand Jews living in Cremona at this time.  In 1559, under pressure from the Dominicans, copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books had been publicly burned in Cremona.  A quarter of a century after the printing of the above mentioned Chumash, the Jews were expelled from Cremona.

1607: As the Inquisition prepared to take action against “Jorge de Almedia, a Portuguese residing in Mexico, the husband of Dona Lenor de Andrada who was convicted by the Holy Office having kept observed the dead Law of Moses, document were posted on the door of the Cathedral in the next step to bringing him to “justice.”

1637: Venetian Rabbi, Judah di Modena “received word that his Italian manuscript entitled ‘History of Hebrew’ customs had been published in Paris.” A gentile Parisian publisher thought that “a book extolling Judaism, written by a Jew in Italian” would be of interest toChristian readers which was the authors “target audience.”  (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

1625(3rdof Nisan, 5385): Joshua Cohen Peixotto passed away.

1699: Rabbi Samuel Orgels, a friend of Baer Cohen for whom he had arranged both of his marriages, passed away.  According to the diary of Glückel of Hameln he “fell into a faint and died on the spot” on a Friday evening while in the Synagogue.

1719: Fire destroyed the Ghetto of Nikolsburg, Moravia

1728(1stof Iyar, 5488): Rosh Chodesh

1728(1stof Iyar, 5488): Solomon Ayllon, the “Hacham” of Sephardic congregations in London and Amsterdam and who was alleged to a supporter of Sabbatai Zevi, passed away today.

1738: John Da Costa swears in writing that he has translated the will of Abraham Mendes Seixas, also known as Migule Pnacheo Da Silva from Portuguese into English to the best of his ability.

1739(2ndof Nisan, 5499): Netanel son of Yaakov passed away after which he was buried in the Yablonov Cemetery.

http://jgaliciabukovina.net/160536/tombstone/tombstone-netanel-son-yaakov

1754(18thof Nisan, 5514) Sixth Day of Pesach

1770: In Germany, Jettle and Salomon Ottehnheimer gave birth to Isaac Ottenheimer, the husband of Sarah Weil with whom he had nine children.

1772: Empress Maria Theresa issued an order allowing Jews to “sell new garments they had made themselves" despite protests from the local tailor’s guild.

1790: Birthdate of Maria S. Bomseisler, the wife of Siegfried Bomesiler.

1792(18thof Nisan, 5552): Fourth Day of Pesach

1792: As Jews munch on Matzah, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote to Congress concerning on the proposed treat with Algiers that would provide for the release for captives held in their custodya.

1794: Birthdate of Edward Robinson an American biblical scholar, known as the “Father of Biblical Geography.” Robinson led a mission of exploration to Palestine in 1838.  Among his many finds was “the tunnel dug by Hezekiah shortly before the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701/02 BCE.”  He is the Robinson of “Robinson’s Arch,” a structure found on the south-western side of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

1797(14thof Nisan, 5557): Ta’ant Bechorot; erev Pesach

1800(15thof Nisan, 5560): First Pesach of the 19th Century1800: In Germany, Ester Isaac and Abraham Amson who had been married in 1797 gave birth to Sirle Abraham, the wife of Moses Rosenfelder with whom she had two children – Sophie and Abraham – the younger of which ended up living in Baton Rouge, LA.

1806(22ndof Nisan, 5566): Eight Day of Pesach

1806: As Jews munch on their matzah for the last time, Lewis and Clark are making their down the Columbia River in the vicinity of modern day Bonneville1810: Birthdate of London native Sarah Samuel, the wife of Isaac Cohen whom she married at the Great Synagogue in 1827 and the mother of Juliana, Ann and Lucy Cohen.

1816(12th of Nisan, 5576): M.H. Bock, the native of Magedburg founded a well-regarded private school “in 1807 at Berlin, and to which Christian as well as Jewish pupils were admitted” passed away today.

1825(22ndof Nisan, 5585): 8th day of Pesach

1825: As Jew munched their matzah for the last time the first hotel in Hawaii opened today.

1828: Birthdate of Isaac Honig, brother of Henry Honig, the native of Mayence who came to the United States in 1850 where his mercantile prospered to the extent that he could retire in 1865.

1835: Birthdate of Johann Schnitzler “a Hungarian-Austrian Jewish laryngologist.”

1847:  Birthdate of Joseph Pulitzer.  Born in Hungary, Pulitzer came to the United States during the Civil War where he served in the Union Army.  After the war he learned English, became rich as publisher of the St Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World.  He died in 1911.  The Pulitzer Prizes were created by his will and were first awarded in 1917.  Pulitzer's father was Jewish, but his mother was a Roman Catholic.  Although he was not Jewish, Pulitzer's enemies attacked him as one even condemning him for hiding the "fact" that he was one.

1849(17thof Nisan, 5609): Third day of Pesach

1849: Lion Metz married Julia Hart at the Great Synagogue today.

1849(17thof Nisan, 5609): In Amsterdam, David Proops, the last member of a family of printers that date back to the 18th century passed away today.

1852(2st of Nisan, 5612): Seventh Day of Pesach and Shabbat

1852: In London, Catherine Barnett and David Jonas gave birth to Jacob Jonas.

1853: In Dublin, on the day after Shabbat HaGadol, London native Isabella Davis dentist Hyman Davis gave birth to James Davis, the author known as Owen Davis, husband of Esther Josephine Da Costa Andrade, father of Isabelle, Hyman and Dorothy Davis, and the brother of Julia Davis, known as the novelist “Frank Danby.”

1854: Birthdate of Rachel H. Hays, the Utica, NY born wife of attorney Daniel Peixotto Hays, a member of one of New York’s oldest Jewish families who among other things was a trustee and secretary of the Jewish Publication Society,

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/hays-daniel-peixotto

 

1855(22ndof Nisan, 5615): Eighth Day of Pesach

1855(22ndof Nisan, 5616): Shmuel Zanvil Friedland, the son Elia and Ze’ev Wolf Friedland, the husband of Itke Friedland with whom he had four children, passed away in Minsk today.

1855: Birthdate of Kansas City, MO native Berry Dantzig, the husband of Anna Kasor Dantzig

1855: In Philadelphia, PA, Sigmund Juris and Theresa Trautmann gave birth to Louis Jurist, the husband of Louise Stieglitz and graduate of Jefferson Medical College where he served as a lecturer while also practicing laryngology at Jewish Hospital.

1856: In New York City, Meyer and Caroline Levy gave birth to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum educated Texas and St. Louis liquor store businessman Levy, the husband of Zetta Sproesser with whom he had three children – Irene, Beebe and Meilton.

1857: Birthdate of David Edrehi who would be buried at the Temple Beth-El Cemetery in Pensacola, FL when he passed away.

1858: Jewish veterans of the Russian Army were given permission to settle in Finland which was a province in the Russian Empire.  The Jewish soldiers would have had to complete 25 years of service to gain this right.

1859: In Ohio, Schachne Issacs, the husband of Reitz Tobias Isaacs, gave birth to Abraham Isaacs, the husband of Rachel Friedman Isaacs and the father of Aaron and Nathan Isaacs.

1861(30thof Nisan, 5621): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1861(30th of Nisan, 5621): As Confederate forces prepare to begin for the attack on Fort Sumter, the Jews of Charleston joined their co-religionist throughout the world in observing the first day of   Rosh Chodesh Iyar.

1863(21stof Nisan, 5623): Seventh Day of Pesach

1863: Jacob C. Cohen of the 27th Ohio Infantry writes from Corinth, Mississippi about life in the Union Army which is resting in preparation for what will be the climatic campaign to take Vicksburg, the “Confederate Gibraltar” on the Mississippi River.

1863: Today Ferdinand Leopold Samer was the first rabbi to be commissioned as a chaplain in the Union Army. Born in Germany, Samar was elected by the 54th New York Volunteer Regiment made up of mostly German speaking soldiers.  Samer was the first Jewish chaplain to be wounded in combat during the Civil War.

1864: In London, Miriam Solomons and Arvrahom ben Yehoshua gave birth to Abraham Bittan.

1865(14thof Nisan, 5625): On the day after the meeting at Appomattox ending the Civil War in the morning Jews, both North and South, observed the Fast of the First Born and in the evening sat down to their fist “peaceful” Seder.

1866(25th of Nisan, 5626): Fifty-nine year old Adolph Meyer, the scion of multi-generational Hanover, Germany, banking family who with his wife Fanny had eight children, passed away today.

1868(18thof Nisan, 5628) Fourth Day of Pesach

1868: Birthdate of London native Augustus George Andrews who gained fame as George Arliss, the first British actor to win an Oscar which was awarded to him for playing the title role in “Disraeli.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Arliss#/media/File:George_Arliss_as_Benjamin_Disraeli_Earl_of_Beaconsfield,_May_1911_Theatre_magazine.jpg

1868: Birthdate of Cracow native Asriel (Israel) Gunqzig, the rabbi of Lostice, Moravia from 1899 to 1920 after which he became the head of the Hebrew Tachkemoni School in Belgium while preparing scholarly works on the history of the Haskalah in Galicia and raising four children – Regina, Max who was murdered at Auschwitz, Jacques who was murdered at Mauthausen and Hilda – with his wife Amalia.

1870: In Russia Feiga and J. Moses Bayurk gave birth to Philadelphia resident Samuel Bayuk, the founder along with his brothers Meyer and Max what became “Bayuk Cigars, Inc., the manufacturer of ‘Phillies’” and the husband of Sadye Bayuk with whom he had five children,.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1954/11/13/84436567.html?pageNumber=15

1871: Anti-Semitic riots break out in Odessa Russia

1871: Adolph and Johanna Loeb gave birth to Esther Loeb who became Esther Greenebaum when she married Henry Napthali Greenebaum with she had four children.

1872: Thirty-one year old Philadelphia born attorney Leon da Silva Solis-Cohen, the son of Myer David Cohen and Judith Simha Solis, grandson of Jacob da Silva Solis and veteran of the Union Army married his cousin, Lucia Manness Ritterband, with whom he had two daughters (Jessie Myra and Gertrude) and one son (Leon Manness).”

1873: In “Passover: The Jewish Festival and Feast of the Year,” published today The New York Times reports that “to-morrow evening, the 11th of April the Jewish part of the inhabitants of this City will begin the celebration of the Feast of the Passover, an ancient Hebrew festival which Moses instituted to commemorate perpetually the passing over the houses of the Israelites, and the slaying of the first-born of the Egyptians, just previous to the exodus of the children of Israel.” The article is remarkable for its detailed description of the holiday including the insightful statement that “Passover is one of the three important of the festival calendar and although observed by the Jews everywhere yet the laws laid down in relation to its celebration are not followed by all classes of Jews with equal strictness”

1874: Birthdate Mehmed Talaat, a major leader of the Ottoman Empire during WW I who played a prominent role in the “Armenian Genocide” which was described in detail by Henry Morgenthau in his 1918 memoir Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story

1876(16th of Nisan, 5636): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.

1876: Birthdate of Rumania native Joseph Harry Schanfeld, who in 1886 came to Minneapolis, MN where he founded Joseph H. Schanfeld Company and leader of the Jewish community where he served as the Chairman of the United Jewish Campaign and director of the Jewish Family Welfare Association.

1876: In New York City, Bertha and Levi Spiegelberg gave birth to Eugene E. Spiegelberg

1879(16th of Nisan, 5639): Second day of Pesach

1882:  A pogrom in Podalia, Russia left 40 dead, 170 wounded and 1,250 dwellings destroyed. Fifteen thousand Jews were reduced to total poverty.  It was events like these that spurred the First Aliyah in the Zionist movement. 

1884(15th of Nisan, 5644): 1st day of Pesach

1884: Many of the settlers of Beersheba, a Jewish agricultural community observed Pesach for the last time before moving away due to a dispute with administrator Joseph Baum.

1884: In Poland, Morris Goldberg and Sarah Bianko gave birth Abraham “Abe” Goldberg, a tailor who married Minnie Weiss after the death of his wife Mimi Goldberg who settled in Cleveland, OH.

1885: Two days after he had passed away in New Zealand, 68 year old Samuel Jacobs, the son of Moses Jacobs and Sarah Levy was buried today.

1885: In Vincennes, IN, Rachel Feustmann and Isaac Gimbel, the son of Adam Gimbel, the founder of the Gimbel Department Stores, gave birth to University of Pennsylvania trained businessman Bernard Fuestmann Gimbel, the husband of Alva Bernheimer, who changed the face of the American mercantile world when he convinced his family to open a story in New York City.

https://collegiatewaterpolo.org/bernard-gimbel-department-store-innovator-thanksgiving-parade-creator-university-of-pennsylvania-water-polo-alum/

1887: In New York City, “Meyer and Lena (Michael) Wyner gave birth to Brooklyn Polytechnic engineer Emanuel Meyer and husband of Theresa Gluckselig whose career including working for the Fort Pitt Bridge Company and the Wilputte Coke Oven Corporation.

1887: Pope Leo XIII authorizes the establishment of The Catholic University of America. Among its most distinguished alums is David R. Levin a graduate of university’s Columbus College of Law.

1888: Twenty-six year old Savannah, GA businessman and philanthropist Leopold Adler, the Prague born son of Moses and Rosie Adler, the founder of Leopold Adler Department Store (at one time the largest in Georgia), the chairman of the board  of Savannah Bank and Trust Company, the President of Mikve Israel Congregation and the Chairman of Jewish Relief Drives since World War married Hannah Gukenheimer today in Savannah, GA.

1890: Sixty-one year old Hungarian born Austrian poet Karl Isidor Beck who edited the Lloyd, passed away today in Vienna.

1890: The late Louis Lippman has left a bequest of $500 to each of the following: Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum, the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids and the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews.

1892: In an article entitled “One of the Important Hebrew Festivals Begins To-Morrow Night,” the New York Times reports that “at sunset to-morrow evening, which corresponds with the evening of the fourteenth day of the month of Nissan in the Hebraic calendar the Jewish community through the world will commence the celebration of the feast of Pesach or Passover.”

1893: “Rabbi Gottheil’s Protest” published today described a lecture delivered by the leader of Temple Emanu-El in which he “declared himself forcibly against the missionary work among Jews which is carried on by the Christian churches.”

1894: Polish born, Manchester, England educated Samuel Hyman Borofsky who had been serving as a Justice of the Peace since 1891 became a Notary Public today in Boston.

1895: In Albany, NY, the State Board of Charities approved the certificate of incorporation of the Hebrew Infant Asylum of the City of New York.

1896: A Jew named Benjamin Dreyer who had been masquerading as Turk named Ben Ouni was arraigned in Brooklyn on charges of having stolen a tray of rings.

1896: “David Finkelstein of Bridgeport, CT, got a writ of habeas corpus” today “in Special Term, Part II of the Supreme Court commanding Pesach Isenbroch…to bring into court the court, the realtor’s wife, Ida Finkelstein” whom he alleges he married under false pretenses.

1896: The Young Folks’ League of the Hebrew Infant Asylum performed a two act play at the Lexington Opera house as a fundraiser.

1897(8thof Nisan, 5657): Parashat Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol

1897: “Books and Periodicals” published today described plans to simultaneously release Ancient Hebrew Tradition by Dr. Firtz Hommel in May. In this work, the noted Semitic language expert “controverts the method employed by the higher critics of the Old Testament and attacks the Graf Wellhausen hypothesis, also known as the documentary hypothesis.

1898(18thof Nisan, 5658): Fourth Day of Pesach

1898: Simon Jacoby, a native of England who had joined the U.S. Navy in December of 1897 was serving as a Gunner today aboard the U.S.S. Oregon.

1898: Birthdate of Evan P. Helfaer, the prominent Milwaukee businessman “who made a major contribution to the Helfaer Community Service Building, completed in 1973” before he died in February, 1974.

1898: In Los Angeles, Mamie and Henry Klein gave birth to their only son, Arthur Louis Klein who earned a Ph.D. in physics at Cal Tech where he eventually became a full Professor of Aeronautical Engineering – a position he held when in 1946 he went to Bikini to help evaluate the effect of the atomic tests.

1900: Herzl met Arminius Vámbéry in Budapest in an attempt to enlist Turkish support for the creation of the Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1901: “Aid for Palestine Laborers” published today described plans for a “Passover celebration and concert for the suffering Jewish farm laborers of Palestine” to be held tomorrow at night at Cooper Union to raise funds for the Zionist settlers.

1902: In Budapest, Berta (née Freiberger) and Alexander Darvas gave birth to Lili Darvis who performed on the stage and in films in Europe and the United States who may be best remembered for co-starring as the grandmother in the “Long Distance Call,” an episode of “The Twilight Zone” and who was thethe wife playwright and author Franz Molnar at the time of his death.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lili-darvas

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/july-23-in-twilight-zone-history-remembering-actress-lili-darvas-long-distance-call

1903: In Vienna, Max Graf, “a member of Sigmund Freud’s circle of friends” and his wife gave birth to opera producer Herbert Graf, who was also “the Little Hans discussed in Freud's 1909 study ‘Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy.’”

1904: In Poland Ely and Bernice R. Shanis gave birth to Rose Shanis who became Rose Shanis Glick when she married David Glick with whom she had a son, Stephen Jack Glick and gained game as the founder of Rose Shanis and Company, a unique lending institution in Baltimore, MD.

http://jewishmuseummd.org/tag/rose-shanis-glick/

1904: The Eighth Biennial Convention of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Judah whose members included Isidor Byk, Isaac Grossman, Levy Abrahams and Victor Steiner was held today in New York City.

1905: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Simenhoff officiated at the wedding of Jacob Lichmon and Rosa Dautschman.

1906: Birthdate of Wilhelm Kauders who gained fame as Czech electrical engineer Vilém Klíma who survived Terezin and the death march to Auschwitz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/18/books/ivan-klimas-my-crazy-century-spans-decades-of-czech-life.html?ref=books&_r=0

1907: It was reported today that Russian Jews living in the southern part of the Empire are “in a panic” over the possibility of “wholesale anti-Jewish attacks” and are selling their homes so they can get away from the impending pogroms.

1908: “Hebrew Charity Aids Thousands” published today described how fifty-thousand pounds of matzoth were given away yesterday in a 12 hour period to the “Hundreds of poor Hebrews” on the East Side where a greater demand for aid exists this year to the unusually large number of “Jewish laboring people” who are out of work.

1909(19thof Nisan, 5669: Fifth Day of Pesach and Shabbat Shel Pesach.

1909: “A benefit concert was given this evening at Carnegie Hall by the Council of Jewish Women. New York Section, that effected the first American appearance of an organization calling itself the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra and enlisted the services of five soloists -- Mmes. Nordica and Frieda Langendorf, Miss Germaine Schnitzer, and Messrs. Albert Spalding and David Bispham.”

1909:“By an overwhelming majority the Republican Club passed a resolution tonight condemning the Grady-Francis bills authorizing the erection by the National Academy of Design of a gallery in Central Park” which is in accord with the views of The Jewish Daily News which supports defeating the project because “under no circumstances should we allow any dimunition of the one natural resource that the city possess” and that “this principle should be established – let the Park remain exactly as it is.”

1910: Two days after his death, sixty-three year old Dr. of Jurisprudence Alois Klemperer, the son Julie Klemperer and Rabbi Gutmann Klemperer and husband of Eugenie Klemperer was buried in Vienna.

1910: Rabbi Avraham Elyashiv (Erener) of Gomel, Belarus, and Chaya Musha, daughter of the kabbalist Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv gave birth to Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv

1910: More than seven hundred members of the Hebrew Retail Kosher Butchers' Protective Association met today at 763 First Avenue and resolved not to buy a pound of meat for twenty-four hours.

1910: Birthdate of Hyman Lazarus who was buried in Columbus, OH after she passed away.

1910: Birthdate of New York businessman Samuel “Sam” Schulman who was best known as the owner of the NBA SuperSonics and a minority owner of NFL San Diego Chargers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/16/sports/sam-schulman-93-team-owner-who-defied-nba-draft-rules.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/14/local/me-schulman14

1910: “Oppressed Jews in Morocco Seek From Powers” published today described the desperate condition of these North African Jews and their attempts to get the Alliance Israelite of Paris and the Anglo-Jewish Association in London to enlist the aid of their respective governments ‘in forcing the Sultan to keep the promise of his grandfather, made to Sir Moses Montefiore in 1864, that his Jewish subjects should be dealt with justly, not cruelly”

1911: Today, The Edward Rosenstein Association distributed free matzoth to needy Jews living on the Lower East Side

1912: Sixty-eight year old French historian Gabriel Monod who “became convinced” that Dreyfus did not write the infamous “bordereau”, testified on his behalf at the Court of Cessation in 1899 and after his pardon assured Dreyfus “that come what may, he would always…defend him.”

1912: Due to an unexpected request from her editor to cover the “Paris-Roubaix races” which had forced her to delay her sailing for New York, todayEdith Rosenbaum, the Paris correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily boarded the RMS Titanic today along with her “19 pieces of baggage.”

1912: Archibald Grace IV, the man who would provide the account of Isidor Strauss’s last moments boarded the Titanic at Southampton today.

1912: Mr. Abraham Joseph Hyman who was born in the Russian Empire in 1878 and the husband of Manchester naïve Esther Levy boarded the Titanic today at Southampton as a third class passenger (ticket number 3470 which cost £7, 17s, 9d) which was the first step on journey to visit his brother Harry in Springfield, MA.

1912: Today, twenty-four year old Philadelphian Jacob Morris Langsdorf who attended Haverford College for one year married Dorothy May Kirschbaum with whom he had three children – Jack Bernard, Robert Morris and Elizabeth May Langsdorf.

1912: One hundred young women under the leadership of Mrs. Israel Unterberg, many of them this season's debutantes, are scheduled participate in the work of raising $200,000 for the Young Women's Hebrew Association building fund in the two weeks' whirlwind campaign which opens today.

1912: Tonight, marks the start of the Young Women's Hebrew Association’s campaign to raise $250,000 for a new building. Abram I. Elkus, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the campaign; Supreme Court Justice Samuel Greenbaum, Rabbi Schulman, and other speakers will address the workers at the kick-off function.

1913(3rdof Nisan, 5673): Fifty-five year old Isaac “Ike” Tuck the “publisher of the Produce Bulletin and one of the best known men in fruit trade circles all over the United States” passed away this evening at his home in Brooklyn

1913: In Romania, Morris and Mary Schachter gave birth Rabbi Marcus Schachter, the husband of Claire Schachter “who, for 46 years, was the central pillar of the Halachah L'Maaseh program at RIETS where he held the Rabbi Dr. and Mrs. Leon Katz Professorship in Rabbinics”

https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9C03E3D7173AF934A15751C0A9619C8B63.html

1913: Birthdate of Hellmuth Flieg, a German - Jewish writer, known by his pseudonym Stefan Heym. He lived in the United States (or served in its army abroad) between 1935 and 1952, before moving back to the part of his now-partitioned native Germany which was the German Democratic Republic (GDR, "East Germany"). He published works in English and German at home and abroad, and despite longstanding criticism of the GDR remained a committed socialist.

1914: Birthdate of Raphael Silverman, the native of Ithaca, NY who gained fame as “Raphael Hillyer, the founding violist of the Juilliard String Quartet and a soloist and teacher known for the warmth and expressivity of his tone.”

1914(14th of Nisan, 5674): Four hundred and fifty Jewish servicemen including sailors from the battleships Texas, North Dakota, Washington, Ohio, Wyoming and Louisiana are scheduled to take part in a seder tonight specifically for military personnel at Tuxedo Hall in Manhattan.

1914(14th of Nisan, 5674): In a pre-Passover tragedy, George Rothstein discovered the bodies of his sister Bessie Diamond and three of her young children who were victims of an apparent murder-suicide.  According to Mrs. Diamond’s husband, Mrs. Diamond had been suffering from severe depression for which her doctor had recommended she be sent to a sanitarium.

1915: As of today, at Temple Emanu-El the sisterhood which was founded in 1889 and the brotherhood which was founded in 1900 are active in providing social service and settlement work on the Lower East Side.

1915(26thof Nisan, 5675): Parashat Shimini

1915: Services were held today at Congregation B’nai Jehoshua in Chicago were Rabbi A.R. Levy delivered the sermon in German.

1915: Rabbi Joseph Hewesh delivered the sermon at Anshe Emeth in Chicago.

1916: Birthdate of Abraham Basalinsky, the native of Bethnal Green, London who gained fame as actor Alfie Bass.

1916: One day after he had passed away, Aaron Herbert, the husband of the former Rebecca Jenny and the father of Leo, Sophia and Eley Herbert, was buried today in the Belfast Jewish Cemetery in Northern Ireland.

1916: In Berlin at a meeting of the Relief Committee for Indigent Jews, “the President that 700,000 Jews in the occupied districts of Poland required assistance.

1916: Chairman Nathan of the Hebrew Benevolent Association today “paid a tribute to the work of American Jews in supporting the sufferers in Poland.

1916: The Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) is created in New York City. In 1942, Herman “Barron became the first Jewish golfer to win an official PGA Tour event by winning the Western Open by two strokes over Henry Picard at Phoenix Golf Club in Phoenix, Arizona.”

1917: “Henry Morgenthau, Chairman of the campaign to raise $10,000,000 for the immediate aid of the Jewish sufferers in the eastern war zone said” today “that Governor Simon Bamberger of Utah had pledged to give one-tenth of the total amount that his state might raise for the fund.” (Editor’s note – Simon Bamberger was the first non-Mormon and the first Jew to serve as governor of Utah.)

1917: In New York, “the Provisional Executive Committee for general Zionist affairs announced” tonight that it had received a cablegram from Moscow saying that today, “the first Zionist convention ever held in Russia has just closed its sessions which were marked with tremendous enthusiasm, due to the fact that this is the first time they have been able to assemble from all part of the country and to publicly discuss questions of interest to the Jewish people without fear or arrest.”

1918: Birthdate of Alfred P. Slaner, the developer of Supp-Hose hosiery who also made Nixon’s Enemies’ List.

1918: “Zionist Unit Prepares” published today described the upcoming departure for Palestine of “the American Zionist Medical Unit with forty members” that “will co-operate with the Jewish Administrative Commission which is laying the foundation for the future Jewish State.”

1918: Birthdate of Cornell Capa, a globe-trotting photojournalist who founded the International Center of Photography in New York and dedicated himself to preserving the legacy of his older brother, war photographer Robert Capa.  He died on May 23, 2008 at the age of 90 of Parkinson’s disease.

1919: Based on reports the American Jewish Committee has received from its agents in Czechoslovakia which are similar to others received from Jews in Poland, Rumania and the Ukraine, the committee led by Judge Julian W. Mack, its Chairman and Louis Marshall, its Vice Chairman “are building their case to convince the Peace Conference that the Jews in Eastern European countries must have their rights provided for by treaty.”

1920(22nd of Nisan, 5680): Moritz Benedikt Cantor, a German historian of mathematics, passed away.

1920(22nd of Nisan, 5680): 8TH Day of Pesach

1920: First Lieutenant Meyer L. Casman was completed the treatment for his eyes today at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

1920: Birthdate of Alexander Livshiz, the son of Russian born parents living in Yokohama who gained fame as Dr. Alexander Leaf.

http://nutrition.med.harvard.edu/personnel/biosketch/Leaf_bio.pdf

1923: In the Netherlands, Sophie Josephine Frank, the daughter of Louis and Emma Sachs and Siegfried Frank gave birth to Julius Frank.

1923: Premiere performance of Kurt Weil’s “Divertimento for Orchestra” by the Berlin Philharmonic.

1924: Today, Michael “Balcon married Aileen Freda Leatherman, the daughter of Max Jacobs and Beatrice Leatherman, with whom he had two children Jonathan and Jill who married Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis whose children were Tamasin Day-Lewis and Oscar winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

1925: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published in New York City, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Among the characters who populate this classic study of life in the Roaring Twenties is Meyer Wolfsheim a gambler with underworld connections who claims to have fixed the 1919 World Series.  The character is a thinly veiled fictional version of the Jewish gambler Arnold Rothstein, whom according to some, fixed the 1919 World Series.  Rothstein has been portrayed as the evil Jew who corrupts America’s pristine pastime and its innocent Christian athletes.  Is Fitzgerald trying to imply that whatever shady deals Gatsby may have engaged in are the product of the corrupting influence of this Jewish gambler?

1926: “Simche and Reizel Ehrenreich” gave birth to Bernard Ehrenreich, the father of Laurence and Simon Ehrenreich.

1926: In Nuremberg, Germany, “Juda and Fanny Metzger immigrants from Poland” gave birth to  “artist and political activist” Gustav Metzger who came to Great Britain from Germany as part of the Kindertransport  and created the concept of Auto-Destructive Art while being an active member of  the anti-nuclear peace movement.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/arts/design/gustav-metzger-dead-auto-destructive-artist.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1926: “Chairman David A. Brown of the United Jewish Campaign which is seeking to raise $15,000,000 for relief and reconstruction work among the Jews of Eastern Europe” reported today “to the 1,200 members of the national committee” that original goal would be surpassed and the contributions would actually come close to $25,000,000.

1927: Birthdate of Marshall Warren Nirenberg “an American biochemist and geneticist who shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968.”

1927: “Anti-Semitism in Russia” published today provides the views of Alexander Kerensky, who led the Russian government after the fall of the Czars and before the takeover by Lenin, “that hatred toward Jews is intense at present in his country” and that “only the advent of a politically free and economically sound system of government in Russia will put an end to anti-Semitism there.”

1928(19thof Nisan, 5688): Fifth day of Pesach

1928: In Mount Vernon, NY “Chauncey Freedman and the former Dorothea Kornblum” gave birth to “Monroe H. Freedman, a dominant figure in legal ethics whose work helped chart the course of lawyers’ behavior in the late 20th century.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/nyregion/monroe-freedman-expert-on-legal-ethics-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1928(19thof Nisan, 5688): Seventy-one year old Amalia “Molly” Finkelstein Mogulesko who performed in Goldfaden's "Grandmother with Grandson" and was the widow of Yiddish actor Sigmund Mogulesko passed away today.

1928: Birthdate of Claude Newman Rosenberg, the Jewish philanthropist who authored, “Wealthy and Wise: How You and America Can Get the Most Out of Your Giving” 

1929: Today, in Albany, NY, Governor Franklin Roosevelt approved a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Irwin Steingut that provides “for the incorporation of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America” which should “according to the bill” “promote traditional Judaism, advance the cause of Jewish learning and foster the spirit of fellowship among rabbis and other Jewish scholars in America.

1930(12thof Nisan, 5690): Fast of the First Born

1930: In Austin, TX, “the land for Agudas Achim’s new building was purchased for $12,500” today

1931: “My Cousin from Warsaw” produced by Arnold Pressburger was released today in Germany and France.

1931: It was reported today that Montreal gave a banquet yesterday in honor of the 500 scientists” including Professor A.M. Oppenheimer of Columbia University attending “the annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

1932: Birthdate of actor Omar Sharif.  The Egyptian born Sharif, who starred in such films as “Dr. Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” found his films banned in the Arab world because he played opposite Jewish singing star Barbra Streisand.

1933: German Vice-Chancellor Frtiz von Papen met with Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII and presented Hitler’s offer for a Concordant between the new Nazi government and the Vatican.

1934: In Englewood, NJ. Jacob and Florence Landau gave birth Jacob Charles “Jack” Landau the attorney who served as one of the founders of the Reported Committee for Freedom of the Press.

1934: “The American foundations which promote research and spiritual progress were extolled here this afternoon by Professor Albert Einstein at a formal reception to him by the New Jersey Legislature.”

1934: U.S. premiere of “Viva Villa!” produced by David O. Selznick with a script by Ben Hecht and featuring Joseph Schildkraut as “Gen. Pascal.”

1934:  In New York City, an Army surgeon, Dr. Charles A. Halberstam, and a schoolteacher, Blanche Levy Halberstam gave birth to David Halbestram the winner of a Pulitzer in 1964 for his coverage in the New York Times of the Viet Nam War who gained further fame as the author of the best-selling Best and the Brightest and who has been a prolific author on a variety of topics but ironically has never wrote a book on a “Jewish” topic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/arts/24halberstam.html?nytmobile=0

1935: In Przemysl, Poland, Adollph Sternhell, a veteran of the Polish Army and Ida Sternhell who was murdered by the Nazis along with her daughter gave birth to author and historian Zeev Sternhell the Holocaust survivor and ardent Zionist who settled in Israel where he became a leading authority on the rise of fascism and ironically was injured in attack by a right-wing “pro-settlement” zealot.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/07/zeev-sternhell-obituary

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/world/middleeast/zeev-sternhell-mideast-scholar-dies.html

https://www.amazon.com/Zeev-Sternhell/e/B001HNMZ3Y%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

1935 At Temple Emanu-El, Mrs. Israel Goldstein presided over a conference of the “leaders of Jewish women’s organizations with a combined membership of several hundred thousand” where the attendees “pledged cooperation with the Jewish National Fund” in the work of redeeming the land of Palestine.

1936: It was announced today that “Dr. Stephen S. Wise, national chairman of the $3,500,000 campaign of the United Palestine Appeal for the settlement in Palestine of a maximum number of the Jews of Germany, Poland and other lands has received messages endorsing the drive from Governor Paul V. McNutt of Indiana, Representative Schuyler Merritt of Connecticut, Governor Tom Berry of South Dakota and Governor Harold Hoffman of New Jersey.”

1936: Tonight, in a broadcast over WEAF in New York, banker and philanthropist Felix M. Warburg described “the rehabilitation work of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in fifty countries during the last twenty-two years including the current training programs “to train and rehabilitate for vocational work Jewish youths and adults in Germany who have been barred” by law taking part in commercial and professional activities.

1936: “Citing a clause of the Treaty of Versailles, Supreme Court Justice Philip J. McCook refused to recognize the ‘sovereign immunity’ claim in the courts by the German State Railroads which was the basis for its defense brought by Marcel M. Holzer, a former employee who claimed he had been discharged as a ‘non-Aryan’ and his internment in a German concentration camp.

1936: The mandatory government “prohibition on the use of the term ‘Eretz Israel’ (Land of Israel) over the radio became a national issue today when a suit was filed” in Jerusalem” to force lifting the ban.”

1937: In a pre-birthday interview given today, Dr. Pereira-Mendes, the rabbi emeritus of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue said that any celebration of his upcoming 85th birthday would be a “surprise” to him.

1937: “She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter,” an animated short directed by Isadore Freleng, produced by Leon Schlesinger and featuring the voice of Mel Blanc was released in the United States today.

1937: Final performance on Broadway of White Horse Inn which was produced and directed by Erik Charell took place today.

1938:  The Palestine Post reported that Itzhak Petrenko, 32, had been shot and killed and that two Arab terrorists were killed in their attack on the Nesher quarry, near Haifa. Two other Arab terrorists were killed after they attempted to attack a convoy escorting the mayor of Nablus, Suleiman Bey Toukan, on his official duties. A number of unexploded bombs were found in Jerusalem's Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that Maestro Toscanini, who had turned down an offer to participate in the Salzburg Festival, arrived in Haifa for a series of concerts.

1938:  The Palestine Post reported that The Jerusalem Church of the Holy Sepulcher was closed to the public due to urgent repairs and restorations.

1938: Birthdate of Denny Zeitlin the son of Highland Park, Il physician who gained fame as a jazz pianist and composer.

1938: In Tel Aviv, Arturo Toscanini directed his first rehearsal with the Palestine Orchestra.

1938: In the revolving door of French politics during the Third Republic, the government led by Premiere Leon Blum fell and meaning the first Jewish Premier of France, who had been physically attacked by anti-Semites lost his position for the second and final time.

1939: Laurence Steinhardt completed his service as U.S. Ambassador to Peru.

1939: Birthdate of Alan Rothenberg, President of the U.S. Soccer Association.

1939:  The Dutch government opened camp Westerbork for German Jews. The impulse to start the construction of the camp came from the Dutch authorities themselves, who in the years preceding the Second World War, sought to provide housing and shelter for Jewish refugees fleeing the horrors of Nazi-Germany. A camp was necessary because the authorities wanted to keep these refugees out of the cities, towns and villages. When the Nazi-armies invaded The Netherlands during the month of May 1940 the camp-infrastructure including inhabitants was an easy prey.”

1940(2ndof Nisan, 5700): Marie Knapp, the wife of concert pianist Harold Bauer whom he had married in 1906, passed away today.

1940: Justice Felix Frankfurter and two others met with President Roosevelt today at the White House at 4:30 and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and two others met with him at 5:30 pm.

1941: Rav Aaron Kotler who had been rescued by the Vaad Hatzalah arrived in San Francisco and two years later “in 1943 fond Beth Medrash Vovoha in Lakewood, NJ.

1942: Two hundred of the four hundred Jews who arrived yesterday in Havana on the last day of Pesach are reported to continue traveling to New York on the Portuguese ship which they had boarded last month in Lisbon.

1942: In a move that does not bode well for the large Jewish population of Lithuania, “German controlled newspapers in the Baltic reported today that a “rectification” of Lithuanian borders has been made around Vilna making room for the resettlement in the area of thousands of Germans.”

1943: Twelve Jewish patients of Herren Loo-Lozenoord, a facility for the mentally disabled escaped from the Nazi's.

1943: Katherine Scherman, the New York born daughter of Harry and Bernadine Scherman married Book-of-the-Month Club chairman Axel G. Rosin and became Katherine Scherman Rosin under which name she worked as an editor and author of ten books.

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=katharine-rosin&pid=137434177

1944: “Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz and carried detailed information about the death camp to outside world.” (Virtual Jewish Library

1944: In Tel Aviv, the deputy superintendent of police “beat death” by surviving the attack of an unknown gunman who fired three shots at him in front of the police headquarters in the central part of the city.

1944: “Tampico” starring Edward G. Robinson, with music by David Raksin was released in the United States today

1945:  U.S. Armed forces liberated the prison camp at Buchenwald, Germany. It was estimated that nearly 57,000 prisoners (mostly Jews) perished in the gas chambers of Buchenwald during its eight-year existence as a Nazi concentration camp.

1946: In Cleveland, Ohio, the Men’s Club of the Euclid Avenue Temple hosted Variety Nite, an evening of entertainment “for men’s club members and their ladies.”

1946: U.S. premiere of “Dragonwyck,” directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz who also wrote the script, co-produced by Ernst Lubitsch with music by Alfred Newman.

1946: At its annual spring luncheon at the Hotel Astor, the Women’s League for Palestine launched a building drive designed to raise $150,000 to upgrade the league’s Home for Immigrant Girls in Tel Aviv.  According to Mrs. David Isaacs, the League’s vice president, “Palestine will soon have an influx of thousands of young women from displaced camps abroad seeking shelter and rehabilitation.”  The luncheon was attended by 1,340 supporters.

1947: Birthdate of New York native David Abraham Adler the author “of nearly 200 books for children and young adults” including “several acclaimed works about the Holocaust for young readers.”

http://www.davidaadler.com/

1947: The Hapoel soccer team is scheduled to arrive in New York today, on the first stop on its good will tour of the United States. The team is scheduled to play all-star teams in several cities including Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

1948: “A group of Jewish immigrants from Egypt set up a camp in an area near Sderot which would be the future location of Bror Hayil.

1948(1st of Nisan, 5708): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

1948: The Haganah repelled an Arab attack on Mishmar HaEmek.  Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-Emek (Guard of the Valley) was located on the western rim of the Jezreel Valley and had been founded by Polish chalutzim in 1926.  The fight for this strategic point lasted for eight days during which the Arab Liberation Army had the military advantage thanks to having the use of field artillery supplied by the Syrian Army.  Please note that this fight took place before the creation of the state of Israel in May, 1948.  It came during the unsuccessful attempt by the Arabs to cutoff Jerusalem from the rest of the Yishuv.  

1949: What Makes Sammy Run?, Budd Schulberg’s novel based on his father B.P. Schulberg that gave the world “Sammy Glick” was dramatized for the first time on Philco Television  Playhouse.

1950: Birthdate of Haim Ramon, a native of Jaffa who served in the IAF before pursuing a political career.

1952(15th of Nisan, 5712): 1st day of Pesach

1952: In Lviv, Ukrainian SSR, Alexei Yavlinsky and “Vera Naumovna, a Russian Jewish chemistry teacher gave birth to free market economist Grigory Yavlinsky, the twice defeated candidate for the Presidency of Russia.

1953: Ernest Gruening completed his term as 7th Territorial Governor of Alaska.

1953: Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, better known as movie star Hedy Lamar, became a citizen of the United States.

1953: “Small Town Girl” a musical produced by Joe Pasternak, with a score by Nicholas Brodszky and André Previn and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg was released today in the United States.

1953:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, had held "a brief interview" at the White House, with US president, Dwight Eisenhower.

1953:  The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel received as a gift, or purchased at lowered prices, America's food surplus: wheat, beans, potatoes, cheese, powdered milk, dried eggs and butter. Another important purchase was 100,000 tons of the strictly rationed American steel for local pipe factories.

1954(7th of Nisan, 5714): Parashat Metzora

1954(7th of Nisan, 5714): Seventy-three-year-old Harold Lewis the New York born son of “Edith Roaslie Lewis and Hyman Philip Lewis and the husband of Frances Wolff Lewis with whom he had three children –Evelyn, Philip and Harley – passed away today.

1955: Dr Jonas Salk successfully tested his Polio vaccine.

1958: Birthdate of Yefim "Fima" Naumovich Bronfman a Russian born Israeli pianist.

http://www.yefimbronfman.com/

1960: ABC broadcast “The Captive of Temblor,” an episode of “The Rebel” directed by Irving Kershner and written by Milton S. Gelman

1962(9th of Nisan, 5722): Seventy five year old Michael Curitz passed away. Born Manó Kertész Kaminer on Christmas Eve in 1886, to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary), he ran away from home at age 17 to join a circus, then trained for an acting career at the Royal Academy for Theater and Art. His best known films include, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca and White Christmas.

http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/person/2377/michael-curtiz

1962: Birthdate of New York native Danielle Joyce “Dani” Shapiro the author of Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage who is married to Michael Maren.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/books/review/hourglass-time-memory-marriage-dani-shapiro.html?ref=headline&nl_art=&te=1&nl=book-review&emc=edit_bk_20170519

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/books/review/dani-shapiro-inheritance.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

1962 South Korea and Israel whose relationship dated back to 1950 when Ben Gurion supported sending UN Troops to stop the invasion from North Korea established official diplomatic relations today.1963(16th of Nisan, 5723): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.

1966(20thof Nisan, 5726): Sixth day of Pesach

1966(20thof Nisan, 5726): Eighty-six year old Joseph Newman, the husband of Tilly Cohen, of blessed memory and the father of Captain Isidore Newman who had served as “Beadle and Collector” for Hull Central Synagogue passed away today.

1968: “Belle de Jour” a French film “based on the 1928 novel Belle de jour by Joseph Kessel was released in the United States today.

1968: “George M!” a musical with a book by Michael Stewart and Francine Pascal, produced by Emanuel Azenberg and starring Joel Grey opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre.

1970: During the War of Attrition, “two 201 Squadron Phantoms attacked a radar facility at Wadi Zur.”

1971(15thof Nisan, 5731): Pesach

1971:Passover—A Rite of Spring an “exhibition, commemorating the exodus from Egypt, is a showcase for the ritual objects of various times and from various places used in Passover, such as Seder plates and Elijah cups as well as pertinent photographs and books is on display at the Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue.

1973: Operation Spring of Youth came to an end.  This was an amphibious assault by the IDF on Beirut and Sidon aimed at those who had massacred Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

1974(18th of Nisan, 5734): Fourth Day of Pesach1974: Yitzhak Rabin replaced Golda Meir as Prime Minister.  Mrs. Meir had resigned, a casualty of the Yom Kippur War.

1974: “Our Time” a coming of age film directed and written by Peter Hyams was released in the United States today.

1974: In St. Louis, MO, Becky and Robert Greitens gave birth to Eric Greitens the decorated war hero and Rhodes Scholar whose accomplishments are so varied that he can truly be called “Renaissance Man.” (How the mighty will fall)

http://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-former-navy-seal-sets-his-sights-on-governorship/http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-great-jewish-hope/

1975: The government of Israel recognized Falashas as Jews under the law.

1978(3rd of Nisan, 5738): Ninety-one year old Irma Levy Lindheim, the second president of Hadassah passed away today.http://www.jta.org/1978/04/12/archive/irma-levy-lindheim-dead-at-91

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/lindheim.html

1978: Harold H. Saunders who played a key role in the creation of the Camp David Accords, completed his service as the 6th Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research.

1978: The Jerusalem Postreported that the UNIFIL's acute lag in recruiting to beef up the projected 4,000-man force had decreased the prospects of an early, complete Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon.

1978: The Jerusalem Postreported that top US officials were reported to have been studying the possibility of an American treaty guarantee for a Middle Eastern settlement, "backed by a US air base in the Sinai and a naval base at Jaffa." The use of glass bottles was prohibited on Israeli beaches.

1979(13thof Nisan, 5739): One person was killed and 36 were injured when a terrorist bomb went off in a market at Tel Aviv.

1980: Birthdate of Israeli tennis player, Andy Ram

1980: A funeral service is scheduled to be held this afternoon in Amherst, MA,  for fifty year old Vanderbilt University Phi Beta Kappa graduate Peter Farb, the linguist and author of such books as Man’s Rise to Civilization and Word Play: What Happens People Talk, the New York City born son of Solomon and Cecilia Farb and the husband of the former Oriole Horch with whom he had two sons – Mark and Thomas.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1980/04/09/111149566.pdf

1983:Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Abrams of Roslyn, L.I., have announced the engagement of their daughter, Lori Sue Abrams, to Alan Barry Greenfield, son of Mr. and Mrs. Milton Greenfield, also of Roslyn. The groom is attending the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv, Israel

1984(8th of Nisan, 5744): Eighty-seven American movie producer and director Jack White, born Jacob Weiss in Budapest, who used “the pseudonym ‘Preston Black’” after his divorce passed away today.

1985(19thof Nisan, 5745): Fifth Day of Pesach

1987(11th of Nisan, 5747): Two Israeli soldiers were killed and two wounded in southern Lebanon, The attack occurred near Qantara, inside the ''security zone.'' Military sources said the attackers were Shiite Moslem guerrillas from the Party of God and Amal movements.

1989: Rite Aid, the drug store chain founded by Scranton businessman Alex Grass, acquired Peoples Drug’s 114 unit Lane Drug of Ohio.

1990(15thof Nisan, 5750): Pesach

1990: NBC broadcast the first episode of the sitcom “Wings” co-starring Rebecca Schull.

1990: Following his major league debut yesterday, White Sox pitcher Scott Radinsky “picked up his first major league win with one and a third innings” of relief pitching today.

1990; Ninety year old actress Natalie Schafer whose career which began in the 1920’s is remembered primarily for her role on the sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/13/obituaries/natalie-schafer-90-actress-who-played-in-gilligan-s-island.html

1992: In the UK, Malcolm Rifkind completed his service as Secretary of State for Transport and began serving as Secretary of State for Defense.

1992: After premiering in Cleveland, Ohio, “The Player” a satirical film featuring appearances by Sydney Pollack, Peter Falk, Jeff Goldblum and Gina Gershon was released today in the rest of the United States.

1992: U.S. premiere of “Newsies” with music by Alan Menken, filmed by cinematographer Andrew Laszlo.

1993(19thof Nisan, 5753): Fifth Day of Pesach; Shabbat Shel Pesach

1993(19thof Nisan, 5753): Ninety-five year old Maxim Lieber, the son of Adolph and Natalie Leiberman and the husband of Minna E. Lieber, the literary agent and alleged Communist spy passed away today.

https://myturntosoundoff.wordpress.com/essays/the-case-of-a-most-reluctant-witness/

1997(3rdof Nisan, 5757): Seventy-six year old London born “journalist, author and songwriter, Jack Fishman the winner of first Ivor Novello Award in 1955 for the song "Everywhere” passed away today after which he was buried at the Golders Green Jewish Cemetery.

1998(14th of Nisan, 5758): In the evening, First Seder.

1998: In “At the Movies” published today Bernard Weinraub described the making of a film about Lindberg based on the work of biographer A. Scott Berg.

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/10/movies/at-the-movies.html

1998: “My Giant” a comedy starring Billy Crystal who also produced and wrote script for the film was released in the United States today.

1998 “The Odd Couple II” written and produced by Neil Simon, directed by Howard Deutch and co-starring Walter Matthau in his second to last film was released in the United States today.

1999(24th of Nisan, 5759): Heinz Ludwig Fraenkel-Conrat passed away.  Born in Germany in 1910, he fled Nazi Germany ultimately settling in the United States where he served on the faculty of the University of California for over 40 years.  He was a noted biochemist famous for his viral research.

2000: “It was a busy day of fighting in southern Lebanon as “the Iran-backed Hezbollah guerrilla fighters wounded two soldiers from the Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army,” teroirst fired a mortar shell across the border into Israel” and following which Israeli warplanes struck suspected guerrilla targets while Prime Minister Barak defended his “plan for unilateral withdrawal of troops from Lebanaon.”

2001(17thof Nisan, 5761): Third Day of Pesach

2001:  Belgium born American billionaire Michel P. Fribourg, the “chairman and CEO of Continental Grain” who was the fifth generation to lead the family business that stretched back to the early decades of the 19th century and who raised five children – Robert, Paul, Charles, Nadine and Caroline – with his wife Mary Ann passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/12/classified/paid-notice-deaths-fribourg-michel-p.html

2002(28thof Nisan, 5762): Ninety-two year old Israel political leader and jurist Haim Cohen passed away. The native of Lubeck is also the author of The Trial and Death of Jesus “in which he argued that it was the Romans, not the Sanhedrin, who tried and executed Jesus.

2002(28thof Nisan, 5762): “Eight were killed and 22 injured in a suicide bombing on Egged bus #960, en route from Haifa to Jerusalem, which exploded near Kibbutz Yagur, east of Haifa. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.  The victims: Avinoam Alfia, 26, of Kiryat Ata; Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Shlomi Ben Haim, 27, of Kiryat Yam; Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Nir Danieli, 24, of Kiryat Ata; Border Police Lance Cpl. Keren Franco, 18, of Kiryat Yam; Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Ze’ev Hanik, 24, of Karmiel; Border Police Lance Cpl. Noa Shlomo, 18, of Nahariya; Prison Warrant Officer Shimshon Stelkol, 33, of Kiryat Yam; and Sgt. Michael Weissman, 21, of Kiryat Yam.”

2003(8thof Nisan, 5763):St.-Sgt. Yigal Lifshitz, 20, of Rishon Lezion, and St.-Sgt. Ofer Sharabi, 21, of Givat Shmuel were killed and nine others wounded when Palestinian terrorists opened fire before dawn on their base near Bekaot in the northern Jordan Valley. (As reported by Jewish Virtual Library.

2004(19thof Nisan, 5764): Fifth Day of Pesach and Shabbat shel Pesach.

2004: In describing the 13th century painting “Christ Crucified by the Virtues” Peter Steinfels pointed out that “the role of Jewish authorities in the death of Jesus, like the Roman role, may be missing from this picture, but Christianity's claim to have superseded Judaism is not.”

2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio by Jeffrey Kluger, Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky and the recently released paperback edition of Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner by Simon Sebag Montefiore

2005: In Stockholm, The Zionist Federation of Sweden presents "Herzl: Up Close and Personal," the traveling exhibit, which was produced by the Department for Zionist Activities, World Zionist Organization, to celebrate the visionary of the Jewish state on the 100th anniversary of his passing.

2006: The Cedar Rapids Gazette featured a photo display entitled “preparing a Jewish Tradition,” featuring pictures of bakers at the Shmurah Matzoh Bakery in Brooklyn preparing “the unleavened bread traditionally eaten by Jews at Passover.”

2007(22nd of Nisan, 5767): Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor, for Orthodox and Conservative Jews

2007:Moshiach's Seudah marks the end of Pesach

2007: At the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the “Fourth Annual Stanley F. Chyet Literary Event” features Etgar Keret. “Israel's popular young writer Etgar Keret is at once court jester, literary crown prince, and national conscience. His painfully funny and honest books, including “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God”and “Jetlag,” have earned him international recognition. Also a respected filmmaker, Keret took home the Israeli Film Academy Award for Best Picture for his film Skin Deep.”

2008: In Washington, D.C., Madeleine M. Kunin, the former governor of Vermont, the first Jewish  woman governor and an ambassador under the Clinton administration, discusses and signs her new book, “Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead.”

2008(16th of Nisan, 5769): Barry H. Gottehrer, a journalist whose award-winning newspaper series “City in Crisis” helped elect John V. Lindsay mayor of New York in 1965 and who then joined the administration to help defuse the subsequent crises the city faced, died tonight near his home in Wilmington, N.C. at the age of 73.

2008: “Fram” featuring Clare Lawrence Moody in the role of “Ruth Fry” premiered in London today.

2008: In New York, at the Jewish Museum presents a lecture “When Great Art Meets Great Evil” during whichchief New York Times music critic James Oestreich speaks with authors Henry Grinberg and Eugene Drucker about their respective novels “Variations on the Beast” and “The Savior.” Both books deal with the contradictions between the greatness of German musical cultureand the depths of depravity to which Germany sank while the Nazis were in power.

2008: The Jerusalem Post reported that while Jewish parents are well-known for wanting their children to work in certain professions with law and medicine have usually topping the list, a new challenger is climbing the ranks - hi-tech.

2009(16 Nisan 5769): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer

2009: The French government appointed Rabbi Gilles Uriel Bernheim Knight [Chevalier] in the Légion d'honneur

2009: In “Artwork from Hearst Castle returned to heirs of Jewish couple,” published today Michael Rothfeld described how the grandchildren of a two German Jews who perished in the Holocaust received some their artistic legacy.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/04/the-grandchildren-of-a-jewish-couple-whose-artwork-was-taken-by-the-nazis-in-1935-received-three-of-the-paintings-back-from-t.html

2009: In “Next Year In Jerusalem,” published today Cecilia Hanley, the food editor for the Cedar Rapids Gazette described attending a home Seder noting that “the food Deborah [Levin] served was so delicious, I ate way more than was comfortable.” She noted that Deb made brisket with her adaptation of the Classic Brisket Recipe from “New York Times Passover Cookbook” which Hanley shared with her readers.

2010: The Westchester Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to show “Ahead of Time,” a documentary narrated by Ruth Gerber, the  Brooklyn born foreign correspondent, photojournalist, author, and humanitarian who  describes her remarkable 70-year career during which she escorted Holocaust refugees to America in 1944, covered the Nuremberg trials in 1946, and documented the voyage of the ship Exodus in 1947, emerging as the eyes and conscience of the world with her lifelong devotion to assisting Jewish refugees  

 2010: “A Tiny Piece of Land” is scheduled to have its first performance at the Pico Playhouse in Los Angeles, CA.

2011: The American Jewish Historical Society, Centro Primo Levi, Center for Jewish History, The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Yeshiva University Museum are scheduled to present: “Conversations on Conversion” moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer

2011: “Jewish veterans of the 1960s women’s liberation movement gathered at New York University for a conference on "Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity."

http://jwa.org/thisweek/radical-feminism-conference

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor “Walking Tour: Downtown Jewish Washington” including the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum and the former sites of Ohev Sholom, Adas Israel, and Washington Hebrew Congregation.

2011: Tulane Professor Brian Horowitz is scheduled to attend a seminar on Hebrew literature at the University of Florida.

2011: The Los Angeles Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Panorama,” a novel in which “Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler depicts the world of German and Austrian Jews before the Nazis came to power.”

2011: The New York Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Say Her Name” by Francisco Goldman and  “The Eichmann Trial” by Deborah E. Lipstadt.

2011: Israel's government approved the famous personalities who will appear on a new series of shekel banknotes. The approval of the list today, which includes some of Israel's most beloved national poets, comes after the list was finalized last month by the Bank of Israel following more than a year of heated debate. The personalities who will grace the new notes are Rachel the Poetess on the 20 shekel note, Shaul Tchernichovsky on the 50 shekel note, Leah Goldberg on the 100 shekel note and Natan Alterman on the 200 shekel note.  Rachel, who died in 1931, is a leading poet in modern Hebrew whose works have been set to music. Tchernichovsky was a two-time winner of the Bialik Prize for Literature. Goldberg, who died in 1970, was a poet, author, playwright, literary translator and researcher of Hebrew literature who translated "War and Peace" into Hebrew. Alterman, an author, playwright, poet and newspaper columnist who died in 1970, won the 1968 Israel Prize for Literature. "In order to maintain the public's trust in the State's currency, the governor decided to replace the currency series with a new series which will include some of the world's most advanced security and identification markings in a bid to make counterfeiting more difficult," the Bank of Israel said in a statement.   The current faces on Israeli currency are former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett on the 20 shekel note; S.Y. Agnon on the 50 shekel note; and former presidents Yitzhak Ben- Zvi and Zalman Shazar on the 100 shekel and 200 shekel notes.

2012: Grand Central published A Natural Woman: A Memoir the autobiography of Carole King.

http://www.caroleking.com/book

2012: Heather Klein is scheduled to provide a program of Yiddish Passover Songs in Palo Alto, CA.

2012: Ayn Sof Arkestra & Bigger Band are scheduled to perform at The Sixth Street Community Synagogue in New York City.  

2012(18thof Nisan, 5772): Eighty five year old  Zvi Dinstein, the native of Tel Aviv who served as an MK for a decade passed away today.

2012(18thof Nisan, 5772): Ninety-seven year old French Resistance leader Raymond Aurbrac, born Raymond Samuel, passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/world/europe/raymond-aubrac-a-leader-of-the-french-resistance-dies-at-97.html

2013: On the secular calendar, 65th anniversary of the Haganah’s victory over the Arabs at Mishmar ha-Emek (On the Jewish calendar this event took place on the 1st of Nisan, 5708)

2013: As part its “Days of Remembrance” program, the University of Utah is scheduled to host “Holocaust Workshop” for which students can receive course credit.

2013: “Aliyah” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival

2013:  In Skokie, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, is scheduled to “a special advance screening and reception for ‘No Place On Earth.’”

2013(30thof Nisan, 5773): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2013: At a performance today, “using slides, musical interludes and short videos,” Israeli concert pianist and music scholar Astrith Baltsan delved into the surprisingly storied history of Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem…”

https://azm.org/astrith-baltsan-performs-hatikvah

2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be considering a proposal by Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky to establish an egalitarian prayer plaza along part of the Western Wall.

2014: Ed Millieband, the leader of the British Labor Party who has a good chance of becoming the next Prime Minister, is scheduled to arrive in Israel today for a three day visit that will have special meaning for this son of Jewish immigrants. (As reported by Raphael Ahren and Miriam Shaviv 

2014: Today, French author and college professor Alain Finkielkraut whose father was Polish leather goods manufacturer and Auschwitz survivor “was elected member of the Académie française.”

2014(10thof Nisan, 5774): If the legislation is by the Knesset today, the 10thof Nisan will be the “official day of national celebration in which Jewish immigration to Israel is honored and noteworthy immigrants are recognized for their contributions to the nation. (As reported by Debra Kamin)

2014: “The Sturgeon Queens’ is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Golda’s Balcony” staring Tova Feldshuh is scheduled to be performed at DCJCC’s Theatre J.

2014: In Bethesda, MD, Congregation Beth El is scheduled to host Ambassador Gideon Meir who will speak on “International Media Coverage of Israel During Conflict.”

2014(10thof Nisan): According to the Book of Joshua today is the day “that the Israelites crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land on that date, ending their 40 years of wandering in the desert.” (As reported by Debra Kamin)

2015(21stof Nisan, 5775): Seventh Day of Pesach

2015(21stof Nsna, 5575): Eighty-eight year old Judith Malina, the Kiel, Germany born daughter of Rosel and Rabbi Max Maline “an American theater and film actress, writer, and director, who was one of the founders of The Living Theatre” passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/theater/judith-malina-founder-of-the-living-theater-dies-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2015:  Fifty eight year old Cornell College (IA) graduate Rocel R. Kingman, the Minneapolis born daughter of Samuel and Betty Rattner and wife of David Kingman with whom she raised three sons – Sam, Benner and Teddy—passed away today.

2015: “The Decent One,” “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Ansalem” and “Anywhere Else” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2015: “Woman in Gold” is scheduled to premiere in the United Kingdom.

2015: “Dutch researchers said today they believe they have uncovered a new mass grave at the former Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, almost exactly 70 years after it was liberated’”

2015: Jewish graves were destroyed today when a tropical storm “devastated the Jewish cemetery of the State of Bahia” in eastern Brazil according to Luciano Fingergut, the community’s president.

2015: Temple Judah is scheduled to host another of its ever-popular “Musical Shabbats.”

2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers included the recently published paperback editions of When the Facts Change: Essays by Tony Judt, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitaniaby Erik Larson and Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson.

2016: “Rabin In His Own Words” is scheduled to be shown on the final day of the Hartford Jewish Film Festival today.

2016: “Karski & The Lords of Humanity” a documentary about the mission of Jan Karski, is scheduled to be shown at The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

2016: “Raise the Roof” and “Fauda, Part III” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2017(14thof Nisan, 5777):  One-hundred-three year old journalist Jesse Lurie who began writing for the Palestine Post (now Jerusalem Post) in the 1930’s and continued having his columns published until January of this year passed away today.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=185095725

http://www.timesofisrael.com/jesse-lurie-longtime-hadassah-magazine-editor-dies-at-103/

2017: “Eric Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general paused to wish his fellow Jews” a happy Pesach saying “We are commanded not only to remember our story, but to imagine that we ourselves were enslaved in Egypt, and then freed — so that we may empathize with the plight of those who are fleeing oppression and danger today” in what some saw as a thinly veiled jab at President Donald Trump” whose ban on entry into the US by refugees as well as travelers from seven Muslim majority countries Schneiderman had successfully challenged.

2017(14th of Nisan, 5777):Fast of the First Born; Erev Pesach

2017:  Jews living in the lands of “the former Soviet Union” will be able to enjoy a ritually appropriate seder thanks to the efforts of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee which has provided their co-religionists “with at least ten tons of matzah.”

2017(14th of Nisan, 5777): On the Jewish calendar, anniversary of the second most important Pesach of the twentieth century.  On the 14thof Nisan, 5677(April 6, 1917) the United States entered WW I on the side of the Allies. Ironically, most Jews were fixated on the recent revolution in Russia and the message of freedom that it sent to the Jews in the country and their kinsman around the world.  Indeed the year 1917 which included two Russian Revolutions, the U.S. entry into the war and the Balfour Declaration could be said to be one of the seminal years in the four thousand years of Jewish history.

14th of Nisan, 5622(1862):In the evening, during the Civil War, Pesach begins with 21 Union soldiers of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment celebrating with a Seder in Fayette, West Virginia.

14th of Nisan, 5660( 1900):  Poor Jews living on the Lower East Side were relieved to find that free matzoth were being distributed at Charles “Silver Dollar” Smith’s “old place on Essex Street.”  There was concern that the distribution would end since Smith had passed away last year.  Before he had changed his name, Smith was known as variously as Charles Goldschmidt or Charles Solomon.  A New York alderman who was part of the Tammany Hall machine, he was called “Silver Dollar” because of the “2,400 silver dollars used as a studded inlay in his saloon…”

 14th of Nisan, 5671(1911): This evening, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association host a public Seder in New York and “special services” for the Jewish immigrants currently detained at Ellis Island.

 14th of Nisan, 5631(1871): As the Jews of Newark, New Jersey, begin the celebration of Passover this evening, it is estimated that they will consume 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of matzoth during the eight days of the holiday

14th of Nisan, 5671(1911): This evening, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association host a public Seder in New York and “special services” for the Jewish immigrants currently detained at Ellis Island.

 

14th of Nisan, 5674(1914): Four hundred and fifty Jewish servicemen including sailors from the battleships Texas, North Dakota, Washington, Ohio, Wyoming and Louisiana are scheduled to take part in a seder specifically for military personnel at Tuxedo Hall in Manhattan.

 

14th of Nisan, 5700(1940):The Sommer family sit down to their first Seder in Liechtenstiein.  How this family of German Jewish refugees from Munich came to be there was chronicled by Susi Pugatsch-Sommer in an article entitled “A Pesach Miracle in Nazi Germany.”

 

14th of Nisan, 5703(1943): Members of Belgium Jewish underground aided by Christian railroad men derailed a train filled with Jewish deportees bound for the extermination camps. Several hundred Jews were saved.

14th of Nisan, 5703(1943): PASSOVER, WARSAW Ghetto UPRISING; The Jews were determined not to be moved without giving up a fight. 2,100 Germans, fully armed, enter the Ghetto. The Jews fighting force consisted of about 700 men and women.  They were armed with 17 rifles, 50 pistols and several thousand grenades and Molotov cocktails.  A small group of Jewish fighters open fire on the entering German troops. After an hour of skirmishing, the Germans retreated. The final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began on the Eve of Passover, April 19, 1943. The deportation did not come as a surprise. The Germans had amassed a military force to carry it out, but did not expect to engage in a confrontation that included street battles. Armed German forces ringed the ghetto at 3:00 a.m. The unit that entered the ghetto encountered armed resistance and retreated. The main ghetto, with its population of 30,000 Jews, was deserted. The Jews could not be rounded up for the transport; the railroad cars at the deportation point remained empty. After Germans and rebels fought in the streets for three days, the Germans began to torch the ghetto, street by street, building by building. The entire ghetto became a sizzling, smoke-swathed conflagration. Most of the Jews who emerged from their hideouts, including entire families, were murdered by the Germans on the spot. The ghetto Jews gradually lost the strength to resist. On April 23, Mordecai Anielewicz the ZOB commander wrote the following to Yitzhak Zuckerman, a member of the ZOB command who was stationed on the "Aryan" side: "I cannot describe the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a special few will hold out; all the others will perish sooner or later. Their fate is sealed. None of the bunkers where our comrades are hiding has enough air to light a candle at night.... Be well, my dear, perhaps we shall yet meet. The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self - defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men of battle". The rebels pursued their cause, even though they knew from the outset that they could not win. The Jewish underground would continue to fight the Nazis until the middle of May. The Polish underground only gave minimal help because of anti-Semitism prevalent among many. Although the Allies will neither publicize events nor try to help, even before the war ended, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising became a symbol of Jewish resistance

 

14th of Nisan, 5708(1948):Erev Pesach the rations given out in Jerusalem for the observance of Passover included 2 lbs. of potatoes, ½ lb of fish, 4 lb. of matzo, 1 ½ oz. dried fruit, ½ lb. meat, and ½ lb. of matzo flour. As one who was there later wrote, “For the trapped citizens of Jerusalem, who had become accustomed to privation, the Passover provisions seemed like a banquet. However, for the citizens of Jerusalem, it was not a particularly merry affair. On the verge of their national freedom, the inhabitants of Jerusalemsat somberly around their tables. This was the first time since the nightly shellings that the city's citizens had come together in assembly in the various homes throughout the city that had been the dream of two thousand years' Seders. Tonight is a holiday, but tomorrow the struggle will go on. As they sat to begin the Seder, they heard the beginning of the snipers bullets looking for a straggler in the streets. But tonight was different. As they opened the door, as they had done for scores of generations, to welcome in Elijah, there was no fear. Tonight is a night of divine protection. As the Holy One protected the Jews in Egypt, so shall he protect us here in the war torn city of Jerusalem. "Once we were slaves, but today we are free men" recited in the Haggadah, took on new meaning. The British are leaving, the Arabs are attacking, and we are beginning our new national lives as free men in our own country. "Next year in Jerusalem" had a meaning that we never before understood. We meant it; we would not relinquish our dream to return to our homeland, to the city that has been in our hearts throughout the two thousand year exile. Now we are free men, tomorrow we must continue the fight to remain free.

2018: It was reported today that “Yasser Murtaja” who had been described as a “Palestinian journalist” after he “was shot dead by Israeli protests along the Gaza border” was, “for years,” “an officer in the Hamas security apparatus in Gaza.”

2018: Director Aviva Kempner and Pam Horowitz, a former attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the widow of Julian Bond are scheduled to attend tonight’s screening of “Rosenwald” at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

2018: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “Four Strangers, Three Faiths, One Escape to Freedom”

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/four-strangers-three-faiths-one-escape-to-freedom-tickets-43752148855

2018: Author Gil Troy is scheduled to “discuss the impact of Young Judaea on the Zionist Ideas” at an alumni gathering in Manhattan.

2018: The Temple Emanu-El Steicker is scheduled to host and “Evening with David Grossman,” “one of Israel’s most celebrated writers, winner of countless awards, the only Israeli ever to win the prestigious International Man Booker Prize, for his novel, A Horse Walks into a Bar

2019: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a discussion led by Mark Slobin that will those attending Carnegie Hall’s upcoming “musical program ‘From Shtetl Stage’” that highlights “the musical legacy of Eastern European Jews.”

2019: In Philadelphia, at the University of Pennsylvania, the Kata Center for Advanced Judaic Studies is scheduled to host Yigal S. Nizri, an assistant professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, as he presents “The Hebrew Tongue That Prevails in Our Times”: Jewish Moroccan Language and Writing at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.

2019: Shiva is scheduled to come an end this morning for Cantor Sherwood Goffin.

https://yucommentator.org/2019/04/sherwood-goffin-renowned-cantor-and-educator-dies-at-77/

2019(5thof Nisan, 5779): Seventy-seven year old University Minnesota educated businessman Irwin L. Jacobs known as “Irv the Liquadtor” whose holdings included a minority interest in the NFL Minnesota Vikings was found dead this morning, the apparent victim of a murder-suicide with his wife.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/11/former-vikings-part-owner-irwin-jacobs-wife-found-dead-in-apparent-murder-suicide/

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a presentation by Holocause survivor by Louise Lawrence Israel’s as part of its “First Person” series

2019(5th of Nisan, 5777): On the Jewish calendar Yahrzeit for fifty-four year old Amy Barnum, the wife of Joel Barnum with whom she raised three daughters – Emma, Sasah and Gail – and daughter Jack and Bette Kozlen of Omaha who was a pillar, in the truest sense of that term, of the Jewish community in Cedar Rapids and a driving force behind the Traditional Services at Temple Judah whose untimely passing can only be described as a tragic loss for all of us.

https://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2017/Apr/Amy-M-Barnum/

2020: The Shiva for Cantor Sherwood Gofffin is scheduled to come to an end today

https://yucommentator.org/2019/04/sherwood-goffin-renowned-cantor-and-educator-dies-at-77/

http://sherwoodgoffin.com/about-me/cantorial-biography

2020: Shomrei Torah, the Santa Rosa synagogue is scheduled to take its freedom-, justice- and equality-centered Seder online on StreamSpot

2020: This evening, Kehilla Community Synagogue of Piedmont is scheduled to take to Zoom for a gathering that will explore themes of collective liberation, engaging in disability and racial justice and new ways of honoring indigenous land

2020(16thof Nisan, 5780): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer.

2021(28thof Nisan, 57810: Parahat Shemini; Pirket Avot, Chapter One

for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2021: In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to begin its phased re-opening plan with in-person services where all Pandemic Protocols will be practiced.

2021: The annual East Bay International Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to r return for its 26th year today with a virtual offering of 20 films over two weeks.

2021:

In the framework of the exhibition “This is not My Tree” at NARS Foundation, curator Nina Mdivani is scheduled to moderate a virtual panel on the theme Notions of Belonging, with artists Yael Azoulay, Omer Ben-Zvi, and Michal Geva. Photo: Eli Barak,

2021: Neil Friedman, co-founder of Menemsha Films and one of the developers of ChaiFlicks, a streaming service bringing Jewish and Israeli films to U.S. viewers is scheduled to discuss the perennial question: What makes a film Jewish?

2021: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, at Temple Judea, Rabbi Feivel Strauss is scheduled to lead another informative Torah Study and Meadow Miller and Abby Francisco are each scheduled to be called to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah.

2021: In Beachwood, OH, ceremonies marking the installation of Vladimir Lapin as the Cantor at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple are scheduled to come to an end.

2021: In Jerusalem, the Eden Tamir Center is scheduled to host “Flute Sounds in Ein-Kerem,” a piano and Fantasia for Flue Oboe where seating will be limited “due to the restrictions of the Green Badge.

2021: In Israel, many curbs on the education system that have remained in place are set to expire today.

2021: Based on reports published yesterday, Israel’s much vaunted vaccination program could come off the tracks because “Pfizer is threatening to delay further shipments of vaccines to Israel over a delay in payments, reportedly warning that the Jewish state could go the back of the line if it does not pay up.”

 

This Day, April 11, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

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April 11

145: Birthdate of Septimius Severus, the “Roman emperor, who according to the Virtual Jewish Library Lucious Septimus Severus treated “Jews relatively well, allowing them to participate in public offices and be exempt from formalities contrary to Judaism. However, he did not allow the Jews to convert anyone.”  [According to one source, this had to do with the fact that Severus was not really a Roman, but of Syrian-Phoenician stock, but I could find no further corroboration of this.]

399:  In the Roman Empire, a law is promulgated prohibiting sending emissaries to collect donations on behalf of the nasi.  "That the Jews should know that we have delivered them from this iniquitous tribute."

491: Anastasius I begins his reign as the Byzantine Emperor. The reign of Anastasius marked the renewal of warfare with the Sassanid Empire.  The Sassanid Empire was the name given to the Persian Empire of the day.  This renewal of warfare would have a negative impact on the Jews who ruled the island of Yotabe also known as Tiran, which is in the straits of Tiran.  The Jews of Yotabe played an instrumental role in the trade along the Red Sea and when the Byzantines sought to move East to take control of this trade and defeat the Sassanids, they would replace the Jewish leaders with their own people.

1241: The Mongol army under the command Batu Khan defeated King Béla IV of Hungary at the Battle of Muhi.  The defeat was a disaster for Christian forces in general and the Hungarians in particular.  Bela looked favorably on his Jewish subjects, seeing them as a force that could raise his kingdom from the impoverishment resulting from the defeat. Bela adopted measures that protected his Jewish subjects from mob violence and church control and allowed them to use their own legal system for settling communal disputes. In exchange for this protection, the Jews were to pay their taxes directly to the royal treasury.  Needless to say, Bela’s behavior did not meet with the approval of the clergy and they would move to overturn his rulings under his successor.  

1302: A decree was issued ordering the Jews of Barcelona to kneel when meeting a priest with the sacraments.

1571: Today Richard Curteys, who had Joachim Gans, the Hebrew speaking first Jew to settle in that part of North America controlled by the English brought before the officials of Bristol to face charges of blasphemy was presented by Queen Elizabeth to the vicarage of Ryhall, as the Bishop of Chichester.

1632: “French Protestant theologian Nicolas Antoine” who had been arrested on charges of heresy after proclaiming that he was a Jew went on trial today where he “repeated constantly, ‘I am a Jew, and all I ask of God’s grace is to die for Judaism.

1649: The largest Auto De Fe in the New World was held with 109 victims in Mexico. All but one of them was accused of Judaizing. Thirteen were burned alive and 57 in effigy. This for the most part ended the prominence of crypto-Jews in Mexico.

1657: “The Council of New Amsterdam denied a petition by Jacob Cohen (Henriques) for a license to bake and sell bread.” (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch).

1713:Following today’s signing of the Peace Utrecth which marked the end of Spanish domination over Belgium Jews began to reappear in Brussels after an absence that dated back to 1370.

1715: Birthdate of Jacob Rodrigues Pereira, the Portuguese native, who gained fame as Jacob Rodrigue Péreire, who devoted his life to teaching and working with “deaf-mutes.”  Péreire who came from a family crypto-Jews, officially rejoined the faith of his fathers and was a leader in the French Jewish Community. His grandsons were two famous 19thcentury French financiers -, Emile and Isaac Péreire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jacob_Rodrigue_P%C3%A9reire.JPG

1717(30thof Nisan, 5477): Talmudist Abraham ben Saul Broda, the son of Saul Broda and a student of Rabbi Isaac ben Ze’eb Harif, passed away today in Frankfort on Main.

1755(30th of Nisan, 5515): Rosh Chodesh Iyar observed as British and French fleets raced across the Atlantic during the French and Indian War.

1765: Founding of the Patriotic Society in Hamburg which would appoint Salomon Heine as an honorary member in 1843

1766: Virginia native Elizabeth Whitlock and Phildelphian Moses Mordecai gave birth to Isaac Mordecai, the husband of Zipplorah Russell and the father of John, Samuel and Isaac Mordecai.

1767(12tn of Nisan, 5527): Parsahat Achrei Mot; Shabbat HaGadol observed as Benjamin Franklin, who advocated including an image of the Israelites crossing the Sea of Reeds as an image for the Great Seal of America, wrote to the British warning them of the negative impact the Townshend Acts would have on relations with the 13 colonies in America.

1772(8thof Nisan, 5532): Parasha Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol

1773: In Savannah, GA, Sarah De La Motta and Levi Sheftall gave birth to Hannah Seftall, the wife of Abraham De Lyon whom she married in her hometown in 1827.

1789(15thof Nisan, 5549): Pesach is observed as the letter from Congress telling George Washington that he has been elected President of the United States makes its way to his home at Mt. Vernon, VA.

1792(19thof Nisan, 5552): Fifth Day of Pesach

1792: In Germany, Jentle Loeb and Moses Faist Rosenheim gave birth to Abraham Moses Faist Rosenheim, the husband of Voegele Ottenheimer with whom he had six children

1795: Birthdate of Friedrich Wilhelm Carl Umbreit, the German Protestant minister who authored works on the books of the Hebrew Bible while serving as a Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Heidelberg.

1792(19thof Nisan, 5552): Fifth Day of Pesach

1792: As Jews munched on their Matzoth, In Meriden, Ct. Joel and Esther Clark Yale gave birth to Levi Yale, a member of the State House of Representatives. (They are not Jewish, but the names remind us of the strong Biblical connection that New England settlers had with the “Old Testament.”

1797(15thof Nisan, 5557): Pesach celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1800(16thof Nisan, 5560): Second Day of Pesach; Counting of the Omer begun for the last time during the Presidency of John Adanms.

1801(28thof Nisan, 5561): Parashat Shmini

1801: Birthdate of Harburg native and future Brooklynite Sara Selz, the daughter of Elkan Selz, the daughter of Samuel Baer Liebmann1 with whom she had ten children.

1807: “Ezekiel Hart was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada over three other candidates, obtaining 59 out of the 116 votes cast.”  Since the election took place on Shabbat, Hart refused to take the office on that date.  He would cause a further uproar when he did take the oath because he insisted on using a Hebrew Bible instead of the Christian Bible normally used for such events.

1808(14thof Nisan, 5568): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1808(14thof Nisan, 5568): Fifty-three year old Benjamin Goldsmid, the husband of Jesse and father of Israel-Levier. Solomons passed away today.

1808: In Arnhem, a larger tract, adjacent to a lot forty feet by one hundred that had been assigned to Samuel Levie and Solomon Cohen Jacobs in 1755 was added to what had become the Jewish city’s burial ground.

1809: In New York, of Amsterdam native David Cromelien and Adeline (or Amelia) Cromelien gave birth to Hannah Cromelien who became Hannah Spiro when she married Philip Jacob Spiro with whom she had ten children.

1822: In Posen Prussia, “Sabbathi Fischel Huth and Handel Chajah Schreier” gave birth to Myer S. Hood, the student of “Rabbis Isaac Leahs and Lippman Goldstaub” and graduate of the Teacher’s Seminary in Breslaum who after coming to the United States was the “head teacher and reader” two congregations in New Jersey and the “Superintendent of the Plaut Memorial Hebrew Free School” while being married to Ernestine Baruch.

1825: Birthdate of Ferdinand Lassalle, the native of Breslau who became a prominent German jurist and political leader.

http://spartacus-educational.com/GERlasselle.htm

1827(14thof Nisan, 5587): One day after the birth of Lew Wallace, the Civil War General who wrote Ben Hur, the title character who is one of the most famous fictional Jews, the real Jews observed the Fast of the First Born and sat down for their first Seder in the evening.

1831: In Brno, Löbl Strakosch and Julia Schwarz gave birth to their 8thchild Sophia.

1831: “The Society for the Education of Poor Children and Relief of Indigent of the Jewish Persuasion in the City of New York was incorporated today.

1833(22ndof Nisan, 5593): Eight Day of Pesach

1833: In Bunde Germany, Bendix Rosenwald and Vogel Rosenwald gave birth to Hermann (Isaac) Rosenwald, the husband of Jeanette David and the father of Bendix Rosenwald; Gustav Rosenwald and Ida Bach.

1833: As Jews munched Matzoth for the last time Connecticut voters chose all six of their Congressman who elected at-large instead of district by district.

1842: John Davis married Amelia Friedberg at the Great Synagogue today.

1844(22ndof Nisan, 5604): Eighth Day of Pesach

1844: On the same day that Jews munched their Matzoth for the ls time, Mormon Joseph “was "chosen as our Prophet, Priest, and King by Hosannas," two months before he was murdered.

1845: Isaac and Rachel Pereira Baiz gave birth to Jacob Baiz the “husband of Rebecca Baiz” and “father of Angela Baiz.

1846(15thof Nisan, 5606): The Jews of Texas observe their first Pesach as citizens of the United States.

1848: Jeanetta Malan and Kent, UK native Joseph Davis gave birth to Miriam Davis.

1850: In Henderson, KY, Sarah Ochs and Samuel Bissinger who had been married in Louisville in 1848 gave birth to Benjamin Bissinger, the husband of Helena Bach whom he married in 1872 and the father of Nora, Bernard, Jacob, Louis and Lawrence Bissinger.

1850: Birthdate of Isidor Rayner, the native of Baltimore who represented the Fourth Congressional District in the House of Representatives and represented Maryland in the United States Senate.

1852: Birthdate of John Stephany, the native of London who was one of the founders of Congregation Emanu-El, the first Jewish congregation in Statesville, NC.

1860: The State Assembly passed a bill to amend the charter of the Hebrew Benevolent Society of New York

1860: In Bielitz, Austria, Anna Kanner and Ignatz Zeisler gave birth to Chicago attorney Sigmund Zeisler who represented the defendants in Illinois vs. August Spies, et al – the criminal litigation that grew out of the Haymarket Square labor demonstration or riot, depending on your point of view and who was the husband of the famed pianist Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler.

1860: The State Assembly passed a bill to amend the charter of the Hebrew Cemetery Association of New York.

1861(1st of Iyar, 5621): Rosh Chodesh Iyar – Confederate General Beauregard sent two officers to Fort Sumter with an ultimatum for Major Anderson, the commander of the U.S. forces.  Either he can evacuate or face bombardment and attack from the surrounding Rebel forces.  Today is the last day of peace for four years in the United States.

1862: Corporal Henry Wertheim, a native of Germany who was living in Mecklenburg County (NC) enlisted in the Confederate Army.

1863(22ndof Nisan, 5623): Eighth Day of Pesach; Shabbat Shel Pesach

1863: Israel Cohen, “the son of Kitty and Benjamin I. Cohen” and Cecilia Eliza Cohen gave birth to Anna Maria Cohen who became Anna Maria Minis when she married Abram Minis.

1864(5th of Nisan, 5624): Merchant and Hebrew scholar, Elijah Bardach, who was born at Lemberg in 1794 and whose works included Akedat Yizhak written in 1833, passed away today in Vienna.

1865(15thof Nisan, 5625): Pesach observed for the first time without the firing of guns from the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia.

1868(18thof Nisan, 5628): Fourth Day of Pesach

1870: In “Aid for the Hebrews of West Russia” published today, the Executive Committee of the Hebrew Board of Delegates reported receipt of the following donations:

Simeon Lodge of Titusville, PA, $13.50; Israelites of Leavenworth, Kansas, $127.10; Purim Association of Leavenworth Kansa, $202.10; Maimonides Lodge of Nashville, TN, $10.00; Congregation B’nai Brith, Wilkes-Barre, PA, $30.00.  [For those who think of American Jewish History only in terms of a few major metropolitan areas, this list might give you pause to consider another view of Jewish settlement of the United States.]

1873(14thof Nissan): This afternoon, Congregation Shaare Rachmim, officially began using the Norfolk Street Synagogue with services led by the rabbi of Ahamath Chesed, the congregation that formerly used the Norfolk Street Synagogue.  Ahamath Chesed has moved to a new location on Lexington Avenue. 

1875: Four days, after he had passed away, Louis Samson Diespecker, the husband of the former Christian Warmington with whom he had had six children was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1875: In Presov, Hungary, Lena Lefkowitz and her husband gave birth to CCNY graduate and HUC ordained rabbi, David Lefkowiz, the leader of Dayton’s Temple B’nai Jeshurun and Dallas’ Temple Emanu-El where he opposed the rising Ku Klux Klan and husband of Sadie Braham with whom he had four children including David, Jr. who followed his father into the rabbinate.

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0195/ms0195.html

1876(16thof Nisan, 5636): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1876(16thof Nisan, 5636): Fifty-eight year old “German physician and co-founder of experimental pathology in Germany” Ludwig Traube passed away today in Berlin.

1880(30th of Nisan, 5640): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1880(30thof Nisan, 5640): Twenty-year old Fanny Adler, the wife of Moses Adler and the sister of Selig Selbiger, a Jewish peddler from Prussia, passed away today.

1880: In New York City, Joseph and Mathilde (Riegelman) Haberman gave birth to Columbia trained psychiatrist and neurologist J. Victor Haberman, the WW I veteran who enhanced his knowledge base by earning a doctorate from the University of Berlin.

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fh0070291

1880: “York Minister,” published today recounting the history of this English city includes an account of the attacks made on the Jews during the reign of Richard the Lionhearted. The recounting includes a graphic description of the suffering and death of 500 Jewish citizens at the hands of mob more concerned with not paying their debts and stealing from the Children of Israel than anything else

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=940DE0DB1F31EE3ABC4952DFB266838B699FDE

1881: Isabella Benjamin and David Moses Dyte gave birth to Henry Charles Dyte.

1881: It was reported today that in Paris, the old customs for observing Shrove Tuesday are dying out.  For example, “the traditional promenade of the Boeuf Gras” did not stop in front of the hotel of Baron de Rothschild so that the revelers might “drink to the health of the great banker” as they used to.”

1882(22nd of Nisan, 5642): Eighth Day of Pesach; 7th day of the Omer

1882(22ndof Nisan, 5642): Sixty-eight year old “German banker and philanthropist” Jacob Nachod, the son of Naftali and Bertha Nachod who served as President of the German Federation of Jewish Communities which he founded passed away today.

1884(16th of Nisan, 5644) Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer counted for the last time during the Presidency of Chester Alan Arthur who had gained office because of the assassination of James Garfield.

1886: In London, Maria Carter and Joseph Ascher gave birth to Floretta Maria Ascher who died before reaching the age of two.

1888(30thof Nisan, 5648): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1888: In Jacksonville, FL, Rabbi David Levy of Charleston, SC officiated at the marriage of “Mose J. Ullman of Evansville, Indiana and Susie Jacoby of Charleston.”

1889(10th of Nisan, 5649): A young Jewish boy, Tobias Hipper, died today in New York, the apparent victim of an assault by to other boys living in his neighborhood. The police have launched an investigation into the matter.

1890:  Ellis Island was designated as an immigration station.  Ellis Island would be the first stop for millions of European Jews coming to America.

1890:  In Trenton, NJ, Herman Gross, an unemployed German Jewish grocery clerk tried to kill himself for a second time while in jail where he had been taken after his failed attempt to drown himself in the creek near the Pennsylvania Train Station.

1891: An eight year old Jewish tailor's daughter disappeared on the island of Corfu, Greece.   Rumor spread that she was a Christian girl ritually killed and these charges resulted in a pogrom.   Unfortunately, at this time of the year, no Jewish community would be exempt from the possibility of charges like this and the subsequent public uprising.

1891: Lieutenant Charles A. L. Totten, the military instructor at Yale University” and the author of publications about the “Hebrew race” has reportedly discovered the exact date of the “long day” described in the Book of Joshua.

1892(14thof Nisan, 5652): Fast of the First Born observed for the last time during the Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

1893: The New York Times reported that “The stock market was not active today, a large speculative element being absent, owing to the Passover holiday.” [Editor’s Note: The italics are mine.  The description of the Jews is pure New York Times.]

1893(25thof Nisan, 5653): Eighty-one year old Adolphe Franck who “became a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1844”and who was an “active defender of Judaism” who continued to the "Archives Israêlites" for fifty years passed away today.

1895: Ecaterina Gaster Revici, the daughter of Phina Judith Gaster and Abraham Emauel Gaster and her husband Tulius gave birth to Teofil “Teo” Revici

1895: The will of the late Michael Stachelberg, the well-known New York cigar manufacturer was filed for probate today.

1895: The Board of Estimate and Appropriation met today in New York and disturbed the proceeds from the theatrical and concert fund to several charitable organizations including the United Hebrew Charities ($750), the Montefiore Home ($500) and Beth Israel Hospital ($100)

1896: “The Young Folks’ League of the Hebrew Infant Asylum gave its first entertainment at the Lexington Avenue Opera House” tonight.

1896: Birthdate of Rose Luria Halprin one of the foremost American Zionist leaders of the twentieth century who served twice as the national president of Hadassah and held key posts within the Jewish Agency at critical periods in the history of the Yishuv and the subsequent State of Israel. She passed away in 1978.

1896: It was reported today that David Finkelstein of Bridgeport, CT, has not lived with his Ida since they were married in March when his wife discovered that he had an artificial nose, a fact that he had not shared with her before their wedding.

1896: Convicted jewel thief Ben Ouni who had been as a Turk but claimed he really was a Jew named Benjamin Dreyer is on his way to serving a four year and six month term in the New York state penitentiary.

1897: “Jews, Anthropologically Considered” published today takes issue with the contention that the “Israelitish race” …is “the most homogenous races” describing the differences between the Sephardim, Ashkenazim as well as the “nomadic Jews” of North Africa, the Falashas, the Jews of Cochin and Bombay as well as the Jews of China.

1898(19thof Nisan, 5658): Fifth Day of Pesach

1898: Two days after she had passed away, 45 year old Bloomah Jacobs, the daughter of Isaac Henry Jacobs and Matilda Levy was buried today in London’s “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”

1899: The First Jewish congregation was formed in Caracas, Venezuela.

1899: Birthdate of Philadelphia native and Temple University trained attorney A. Alfred Wasserman, a member pf the State House of Representatives from 1933 to 1937 and husband of Esther B. Wasserman with whom he had two children – Ethel and Joseph.

1899: “Citizen Pierre,” with Rose Eytinge playing the role of Madam Tison opened on Broadway.

1900: “Le Juif Polonais” (The Polish Jew), “an opera in three acts by Camille Erlanger composed to a libretto by Henri Cain” was first performed today in Paris at the Opéra Comique.  The opera was adapted from a play by Erckmann-Chatrian  of the same name.  In 1871, Leopold Lewis had translated the play into English under the title of “The Bells” which provide Henry Irving with one of his most successful acting vehicles.

1901(22nd of Nisan, 5561): Eighth Day of Peach

1901: The Ohavei Zion (Friends of Zion) are scheduled to hold a Passover celebration and concert at Cooper Union this evening to raise money for the “suffering Jewish farm laborers of Palestine.” 

1902: Birthdate of Michael Rothstein who gained fame as media magnate Michael Redstone.

1903(14thof Nisan, 5663): Parashat Tzav; Shabbat HaGadol; erev Peasach

1903: Thirty four year old German-Jewish poetess Else Lasker-Schuler and Berthold Lasker were divorced today.

1904: Conference of the Greater Actions Committee meets in Vienna. In the spirit of the Sixth Congress it is decided to send an expedition to East Africa. The reconciliation conference was Herzl's last great achievement.

1905:Einstein reveals his Theory of Relativity

1905: Colonel Nicolas Pike, author, naturalist and a relative of the famous explorer Zebulon Pike, passed away.  Among his possession was camp chest presented to the explorer Dr. David Livingston by Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore

1906: Congressman Allen L. McDermott delivered a speech in the House of Representatives in which he defended the Jewish people.  McDermott, “who represents a district in New Jersey, a state in which is published the only avowed anti-Semitic publication” produced in the United States, spoke out “against the ‘Christ Killing’ charge and the ritual murder charge.”

1907: A newspaper story entitled “More Rumors of Pogroms” describes the revival in Russia of “the old stories about the disappearance of Christian children for use in sacrifices at the time of the Jewish Passover.”  There are rumors that outbreaks of violence will take place during Russian Easter on April 2.

1908(10thof Nisan, 5668): Parashat Metzora; Shabbat HaGadol

1908: Tonight, the East Side Businessmen’s Protective Association gave away matzoth, flour, potatoes tea and eggs to over 2,000 poor Jews living on the Lower East Side.

1908: Birthdate of Leo Rosten.  Educated at the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics, Leo Rosten spent sixty years acquainting his readers with different aspects of Jewish culture and the Yiddish language.  Some of his better known works included Captain Newman, M.D., The Joys of Yiddish and Hooray For Yiddish.  He passed away in 1997.

1909(20th of Nisan, 5669): Sixth Day of Pesach

1909(20th of Nisan, 5669): In one of the great moments of modern Jewish History, Tel Aviv (Hill of Spring), the first modern Jewish city, was founded on the sand dunes north of Jaffa with the building of 60 houses. The actual name Tel Aviv was given only the next year (Hill of Spring) and was taken from a Babylonian city (Ezekiel 3:15) and used by Nahum Sokolow as the title for his translation of Herzl's book Altneuland.  Today Tel Aviv is a thriving modern metropolis popular and favorite Mediterranean vacation spot for Europeans seeking warmth in the wintertime.

1910:Members of the Hebrew Retail Kosher Butchers' Protective Association are scheduled to meet this morning, at which time they will decide whether or not to make the boycott of the slaughter houses permanent until prices are reduced at least to nine cents, as it was four months ago.

1911: Today marked the third and final day for distribution of free Matzoth by the United Hebrew Community.

1911: Birthdate of DeWitt Clinton High School child prodigy Benjamin Kaplan the Columbia Law School graduate who helped prosecute war criminals after WW II and whose Harvard Law School students included two future Supreme Court Justices – Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

1912: The RMS Titanic left Cork for the United States carrying a wide variety of famous from Cherbourg passengers including Edith Russell who had written her Secretary that “this is the most wonderful boat you can think of” and that “it is a monster,” more like a “big hotel than a cozy ship.”

1912: Birthdate of Elinor Sophia Coleman who became famous as Elinor Guggenheimer an advocate for children, women and the elderly. Mrs. Guggenheimer became the first woman to serve on the New York City Planning Commission and she was the city’s commissioner of consumer affairs in the 1970, where in one of her more lighthearted moments she went after a store in Queens for selling fake lox.  She passed away in 2008. Regardless of how she may have felt about Kashrut she left us with this little rhyme, “Oysters that could once delight us, now just give us hepatitis.”

1912: A campaign began today to raise $200,000 for a new facility to be used by the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in New York City.

1912: The Technikum, later to be known as the Techinion (Israel's M.I.T.) was founded in Haifa, Israel. Later that year the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, which established the Haifa Technion, faced a strike by both teachers and students when they tried to institute German as the school's language instead of Hebrew. The American co-trustees agreed with the strikers and the Society left Eretz-Israel after the First World War.  There was a lively debate as to whether Yiddish, Hebrew or German would be the language of the embryonic Jewish state.  There was a strong sentiment for Hebrew since the other two were languages of the Diaspora and Hebrew was "the language of the land." 

1913: In Chicago, at Temple Sholom, Rabbi Abram Hirschberg is scheduled to “deliver his 15th anniversary sermon” this evening on the subject of “Fifteen Years in the Jewish Ministry.

1913: The President of Panama attended the dedication of the first synagogue in Colon

1914(15thof Nisan, 5674): Last Pesach before the start of World War I which begin a long series of cataclysms for the Jews of Europe.

1914(15th of Nisan, 5674): A special Passover luncheon is scheduled to be served to military personnel at Tuxedo Hall in New York City.

1914(15th of Nisan, 5674): On the second night of Pesach, The Jewish Sailors and Soldiers’ Passover Committee hosted a seder for U.S. soldiers, sailors and marines at Tuxedo Hall.

1914(15th of Nisan, 5674): Tonight, Rabbi Maurice H. Harris is scheduled to lead a Seder at Temple Israel of Harlem.

1914: Two days before Harry Horowitz was scheduled to be executed for his role in the shooting of gambler Herman Rosenthal, New York State Justice Goff said the new witnesses that came forward claiming that he was innocent were not credible and that he would not grant the motion for a new trial.

1915: Charlie Chaplin releases The Tramp.

1915: ‘In his sermon” this “morning in commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of Temple Eamnu-El, Dr. Joseph Silverman” the congregation’s rabbi “called for greater extension of social service and wider consideration of problems of public welfare and personal conduct as the proper course for the congregation whose founding was one of the greatest impulses in the development of reformed Judaism” in the United States.

1915(27th of Nisan, 5675): Four days before his 62nd birthday Manhattan born Dr. Louis Waldstein Walston, the son of Henry and Sophie Schriesheimer Waldstein passed away to day in England.

1916: Based on today’s reports from the Relief Committee for Indigent Jews in Berlin “nearly $2,000,000 has been spent in relief work” to aid the Jews in occupied Poland much of which has come from Jews in America.

1916: “Bundle Day timed to the seasonal change of raiment” today “brought 2,000 packages to the Industrial Department of the United Hebrew Charities at 37 Greene Street to be utilized for the poor.”

1917: The first of the “Breaking Down the Barrier Meetings” sponsored by the Gramercy Neighborhood Association which the Jews of the area have been asked to attend is scheduled to take place tonight at the Washington Irving High School.

1917: In Manhattan, Russian immigrant Louis Sobell, “a pharmacist who opened a drugstore in the Bronx” and his wife Rose gave birth to Morton Sobell who was found guilty along with the Rosenbergs but who, unlike them only served an 18 year prison sentence instead of being electrocuted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/obituaries/morton-sobell-dead.html

1917: It was reported today that Utah Governor Simon Bamberger, the first Jew to hold that position, has said that “by feeding and saving three million starving Jews” in Russia “we help the new Government as well as our own people, and in making Russian democracy strong to withstand German autocracy we serve America.”  (Editor’s note: At this time, it was seen as critical to keep Russia in the war fighting the Germans and to do everything possible to keep them from making a separate peace with the Kaiser whom the Americans had just declared war on a week ago.)

1917: It was reported today, that before adjourning those attending the first ever Zionist convention ever held in Russia, “sent greetings to the American Provisional Zionist Committee, to the Inner Actions Committee, to Dr. Max Nordau and to all the Zionist federations throughout the world.”

1918: “The Liberty Loan drive among the Jews of the east side was launched” tonight” at two meetings held in the Bank of United States Building at 77 Delancey Street.

1918: Fritz Beckhardt, the WW I German Ace who had transferred from the infantry “scored his first victory, over a Royal Aircraft Factory RE.8.”

1919: As Bavaria is engulfed in violence during an attempt to create a Socialist Republic, “Max Cohen, Chairman of the Central Committee and one of the Socialist leaders spoke against the terms of the Armistice and “advocated the formation of a continental bloc as an offset to the ‘Anglo-American alliance.’”

1920: Tonight, at a dinner at the Astor Hotel where “more than $1,600,000 was subscribed at the launch of the campaign knowns the New York Appeal for Jewish War Sufferers” the approximately one thousand attendees hear Herbert Hoover warned that substantial amounts of equipment is need “if typhus is not to spread eastward and westward across the whole of Europe” while Judge Arbam Elkus “described the ravages of typhus as he witnessed it when Ambassador at Constantinople.”

1920: “More than 40,000 destitute Jews fleeing from persecution and economic destruction Eastern Europe are now stranded in German cities according to a cablegram received by Felix M. Warburg at the headquarters of the Joint Distribution Committee for Jewish War Suffers.”

1921: The British created The Emirate of Transjordan.  The British partitioned the land of the Palestine Mandate to create this Arab kingdom.  There are those who claim that Palestine has already been partitioned.  Since the Arabs got the land east of the Jordan, the Jews should get the remaining sliver west of the Jordan River. During the 1930’s Winston Churchill opposed the partition of the land west of the Jordan River for this very reason.  Churchill knew whereof he spoke since he was the one who really created the Emirate in the first place.

1922: Thirty year old Philadelphia College of Osteopathy and Columbia University physician Karl Benjamin Bretzfelder, the New Haven, CT. born son of Benjamin and Bessie (Mendoza) Bretzfielder” who was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army’s Medical Corps, a surgeon for the New Have Police Department and physician for both the Jewish Home for the Aged and the Jewish Orphans while serving as an active member of the Horeb Lodge of B’nai Brith and Congregation Mishkan Israel gave birth to Ameilia Kafka today.

 

 

1923: Birthdate of Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin the husband of Eleanor Katz and past President of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis whose story “Lisa and David” provided the inspiration for the 1962 film of the same name.

1925(17thof Nisan, 5685): Third Day of Pesach; Shabbat Chol Hamoed

1925: It was reported today that “the rebuilding of Palestine as a Jewish national home and the spreading of ethical ideas based on the teachings of the Bible, will be furthered to a great extent by a new foundation, which has the support of the fortune left by Joseph Fels, single tax reformer, through an institution established by his widow. Mrs. Mary Fels of New York…”

1926: Tonight, “speaking from the pulpit of the West End Presbyterian Church, Dr. H.G. Enelow, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El…called up on Jews and Christians to join together” in “the religion of fellowship with God and fellowship with man.”

1926: The Union of Orthodox Rabbis of America is scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. at the Broadway Central Hotel to develop plans for participating in the United Jewish Campaign’s to raise $500,000 “for the relief and rehabilitation of Jews in Eastern Europe.

1927: Today, New York philanthropist Nathan Straus arrived back in the United States after visiting Palestine and “said that he found steady progress there in spite of the crisis of Tel Aviv which he said was temporary.”

1928: Rookie Second Baseman Andy Cohen who had been the captain of the baseball team at the University of Alabama where he belonged to a Jewish fraternity, led the Giants to a stunning opening day victory over the Boston Braves at the Polo Grounds at the end of which he was carried off the field on the shoulder of adoring fans.

1929: Tonight “Joseph V. McKee, the president of the Board of Alderman formally opened the exhibition of ORT, the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural and Technical Trades among the Jews of Eastern Europe” which was attended by five hundred people included “Howard S. Cullman the commission of the Port Authority” and the National Chairman of ORT.

1931: Birthdate of Buenos Aires native and University of Buenos Aires alum Nelly Kelly, “the family rebel “whose witty, satire-tinged French films about female empowerment and revenge made her a distinctive voice in a male-dominated era.” (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/movies/nelly-kaplan-whose-films-explored-female-strength-dies-at-89.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1931: While speaking at a dinner given in his honor at London’s Savoy Hotel, David Lloyd George “assured the leaders of world Zionism that his faith in the Jewish national home was stronger than it was eleven years ago when his Government took over the British mandate in Palestine….The Mandate must not be administered nervously and apologetically, but firmly and fearlessly’ since Christians and Arabs under the mandate can only benefit from the success of the Zionist experiment.

1932: Time magazine published the following description of the Macabbiah.

 Three thousand Jewish athletes from 27 countries last week paraded through Tel Aviv (''Hill of Spring") in Palestine, for the opening of the first Maccabiad. Wrongly described as the "Jewish Olympics," the Maccabean Games were organized by the World Maccabee Union, named for the Israelite hero, Judas Maccabaeus. The games began when 120 pigeons in flocks of ten—messengers to the Twelve Tribes of Israel—were allowed to fly to their homes in various parts of Palestine. Led by Tel Aviv's Mayor Dizengoff riding on a white horse, the 3,000 athletes, aged 5 to 60, marched to a huge new stadium that was crowded beyond capacity (25.000). The Maccabiad lasted four days. No supremely able Jewish athletes were entered; no world's records were broken. No official team score was compiled.

1932: Birthdate of actor Joel Grey.  Born Joel Katz, he is best known as one of the stars in “Cabaret.”

1933: Mickey Cohen lost a fight with Chalky Wright in Los Angeles.

1933: “Nazis issued a Decree defining a non-Aryan as "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith."

1933: The German government began employment and economic sanctions against Jews that are widely perceived as being racially based which were opposed by The Lutheran Church.

1934: “The national executive of the Pioneer Women’s Organization to with the New York branch” is scheduled to hold a reception this evening at the Central Plaza for Goldie Meyerson, the organization’s  national secretary who has “returned after a six month’s country-wide tour during which she visited many clubs” and delivered numerous speeches. (Editor’s note – this is the future Golda Meir)pa

1935: Following “recent anti-Semitic riots” in Romania, “two German Nazis are reported to be among those arrested” and will be expelled from the country for “acting as agitators.”

1936: Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical "On Your Toes", premiered in New York City.

1936: “In a message read to 2,000 persons attending the annual dinner of the National Labor Committee for Jewish Workers in Palestine at the Hotel Commodore” tonight, Professor Albert Einstein expressed the opinion that a public protest would prevent the British Government from approving additional restrictions in Palestine which are now being considered.”

1936: Joseph C. Hyman, Secretary of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee announced today that if the committee succeeds in reaching its goal of raising $3,500,000, “it would allocate $1,115,000 to Jews in Eastern Europe of which 60 to 70 percent would go to aid Jewish communities and organizations in Poland.”

1936: Birthdate of Carla Furstenberg, who as Carla Cohen, became co-owner of a unique Washington, DC institution, Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore that proved too successful in spite of chain bookstores and internet shopping.

1937: It was reported today that “six American museums have acquired works by Elias Newman a Palestinian artist of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.  Mr. Newman has been in the United States collecting works of modern American artists for Tel Aviv’s new Museum of Art. Newman was a Polish born artist best known for his watercolors. 

1938: Forty-six days after The British High Commissioner had declared Tel Aviv Harbor open Eliezer Steinlauf, a resident of Tel Aviv who had been born in Austria, disembarked from his ship at Tel Aviv making him the first passenger to disembark at the world’s first “Jewish port.” 

1938: The Palestine Post reported that since the advent of the Nazi regime in Austria, the British Consulate in Vienna had handed out more than 12,000 applications for immigration to Australia. Immigration to New Zealand had been stopped "temporarily." South Africa demanded £250 for every immigrant.

1938: The Palestine Post published a special, copyrighted story, written by Ernest Hemingway, on the activities of the American and British volunteer battalions, fighting General Franco's insurgents in Catalonia.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that Aryans said "Ja" or "Nein" (Yes or No) in Austrian Anschluss (incorporation into Germany) plebiscite. Special trains brought more than 12,000 Nazi volunteers from Czechoslovakia for this purpose.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that the new "Eden" hotel opened in Jerusalem - a valuable addition to Jerusalem's hotel amenities.

1939(22nd of Nisan, 5699): 8th day of Pesach; unbeknownst to them, for millions of European Jews this would be their last celebration of the liberation from Egypt.

1939: Birthdate of Louise Lasser, the actress who gained fame on “Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman!”

1940:  Soviet forces complete the slaughter of 26,000 Polish army officers in the Katyn Forest.  When the slaughter is discovered, the Soviets will try and blame it on the Nazis.

1940: The Nazi occupiers of Lodz,renamed the city Litzmannstadt (after the German general Karl Litzmann, who had conquered it in World War I); most of the German documents concerning the Lodz Ghetto refer to it as the "Litzmannstadt Ghetto."

1941(14th of Nisan, 5701): In Washington, D.C, Deb and Joe Levin celebrate their first Seder – a tradition begins!

1941: Erev Pesach the ghetto at Kielce, Poland “was sealed off from the outside world” following “a  Judenrat was appointed, chaired by Moshe Pelc, who was eventually arrested and deported to Auschwitz for resisting German orders.”

1941: Nazi occupiers in Netherlands confiscated Jewish assets.

1941: On Good Friday, Reverend Conrad Gröber “gave a sermon whose vocabulary came very close to the anti-Semitic vocabulary of the Nazi rulers: "As a driving force behind the Jewish legal power stood the aggressive toadyism and malevolent perfidy of the Pharisees. They unmasked themselves more than ever as Christ's arch-enemies, deadly enemies.... Their eyes were blindfolded by their prejudice and blinded by their Jewish lust for worldly dominion." As for the "people" or, in his words, the "wavering crowd of Jews", the archbishop said, "The Pharisees' secret service had awakened the animal in it through lies and slander, and it was eager for grisly excitement and blood."

1941:Jewish Weekly newspaper taken control by Nazi's.

1941: Work was begun today to open the Jadovno contraction camp in Croatia. 

1941: Birthdate of Ellen Goodman, the popular syndicated columnist for the Boston Globe.  She is yet another in a long line of Jewish journalists who have won the Pulitzer Prize.  In her case it was for Commentary.  In addition to her journalism, she is a popular author and speaker.

1942: Three thousand Jews from Zamosc, Poland, were deported to the Belzec death camp

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/april/08.asp

1942: A German proclamation issued in Lvov, Ukraine, excoriated Polish civilians who assisted Jews.

1942: 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” was at the Mare Island Navy Yard today.

http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/pix1/0538711.jpg

1943: “The Jewish Forum, a publication devoted to "uniting Jew and non-Jew in safeguarding democracy," celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with a dinner at the Hotel Commodore today.”

1943: “Jews in 6 Weeks of Mourning” published today described “a six week period of mourning and intercession” proclaimed by the Synagogue Council of America “during which Jews of America are to mourn the loss of two million European Jews exterminated by Hitler and are to plead for governmental action to rescue as many as possible of those remaining in Nazi-held Europe” which will start on “start on the closing day of Passover.

1944; Anne Frank diary insert - ‘Who has made us Jews different to all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now? It is God that has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again.

1944: The trains filled with Jews from Ioannina, Arta, Volvos, Preveza, Chalkis, Patras, Trikala, Larissa, Kastoria and other Greek cities arrived at Auschwitz

1944: Shlomo Venezia saw his mother and his two little sisters – Marcia and Marta – for the last time today as he climbed out of a freight car at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/books/shlomo-venezia-auschwitz-sonderkommando-and-survivor-dies-at-88.html?ref=books&_r=0

1945: American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany. Thousands of Jewish prisoners had been marched from other camps to Buchenwald in early 1945.  As the Americans approached, the Nazis tried to another Death March costing the lives of 25,000 mostly Jewish prisoners.  However, 21,000 prisoners were liberated including 4,000 Jews, 1000 of whom were teenagers and children.  Thirty-one members of the camp staff were later found guilty with two of them condemned to death and four getting life sentences James Hoyt, of Oxford, Iowa, was the radio operator and driver for a four-man reconnaissance team when two Buchenwald escapees flagged them down. The team went to the camp, which was hidden in a forested area. According to his eyewitness account, “When the people saw our vehicle with the American markings on it, they really went wild. They tore a part of the fence down. They threw us up in the air,” Hoyt told The Gazette 10 years ago.  “It was a very sorry sight all the way. They were skin and bones, the living ones. Of course, there were all kinds of dead ones there.” In all, about 238,500 prisoners were held at the camp.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/april/14.asp

1945:Meir Binem (Beniek) Wrzonski the son of Noah Wrzonski and was Rajzel Maroko was among those who were found alive when Buchenwald was liberated today.

https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/liberation-of-dora-mittelbau

1945: The 3rd Armored Division discovered the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp.”

1945: The Palestine Post reported medical relief units were going to be heading to Greece. Almost one-third of the team which was first heading to Cairo and then would be off to Greece was made up of Palestinians (Jews). The team was made up of doctors, nurses, sanitary officers, laboratory technicians and drivers. Some of the Palestinians were fluent in Judeo-Spanish and Greek.

1945: Based on accounts from members of the 102nd Division, United States Army, members of the SS burned to death over one thousand prisoners at Gardelgen.  The prisoners were slave laborers from several concentration camps that were being moved east to keep them away from advancing Allied soldiers.  When the SS could no longer move them by train, they herded them into a barn, soaked them with gasoline and burned them to death.  The SS soldiers killed in this manner to conserve ammunition.  Most of the dead were Jews, a large number of whom appeared to be between the ages of fourteen and sixteen

1945: Henry Oster, a native of Cologne who “was taken to the Lodz ghetto in 1941 and later to Auschwitz” was among those left alive when Buchenwald was liberated today.

1946: “More than 400 women members of Protestants churches were guests” today “at Temple Emanu-El, at an institute on Judaism held under the auspices of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods with the cooperation of the New York Council of Church Women” where “they heard addresses by three rabbis” who “explained the beliefs of Judaism, synagogue ritual and traditions and ceremonies of the Jewish religion.

1947: In the Bronx, “Milton Riegert a food wholesaler” and his wife Lucille, “a piano teacher gave birth to Academy Award nominate producer Peter Riegert who also was an actor and screenwriter.

1947: Birthdate of Israeli political leader Charlie-Shalom Biton.  A native of Morocco, he made Aliyah in

1948: “The first westbound convoy in almost three weeks fought its way through” to Jerusalem today from Tel Aviv having fought its way “along the 40 mile hazardous route” where it faced at least 2,000 Arab fighters.

1949.  Among other things he was one of the founders of the Israeli Black Panthers movement

1952(16th of Nisan, 5712): 2nd day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer

1952: After having premiered at Radio City Music Hall in March, “Singing in the Rain,” directed by Stanley Donen, produced by Arthur Freed, with a script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, was released to theatres across the United States today.

1953: This morning, NBC radio broadcast the final episode of “The Buster Brown Program” featuring June Foray as “the voices of Midnight the Cat and Old Grandie the Piano.”

1955: “Marty”, the Oscar winning film with a script by Paddy Chayefsky was released today in the United States.

1955: Birthdate of Ethiopian native Ayele Seteng, the internationally acclaimed Israeli cross-country runner and record holiding “marathon man.”

https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/sa/haile-satayin-1.html

1955(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Jekuthiel Judah Greenwald, author of “Ach laZarah” passed away

1956(30thof Nisan, 5716): Terrorists opened fire on a synagogue full of children and teenagers, in the farming community of Shafir killing three children and a youth worker while wounding five more, three seriously including Albert Edery, 14, of Lod, Kamus Amos Uzan, 15, of Shafrir, Yaakov Harari, 13, of Shafrir, Simcha Silberstrom, 25, a teacher from Shafrir, Shlomo Mizrahi, 16, of Shafrir abd Nisim Assis, 13, of Jerusalem

1956: In the Chancery Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey, a decision was rendered “In Re Katz Estate” today.

1959: After 558 performances at the Imperial Theatre, the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Jamaica,” a musical with a book and lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Harold Arlen and lighting design by Jean Rosenthal

1959: “Davey Jones’ Locker” with music by Mary Rogers was performed for the last time at the Morosco Theatre.

1960(14thof Nisan, 5720): Fast of the First Born

1960(14th of Nisan): Rabbi Chaim Heller, author LeHikre ha-Halakhot passed away

1961:Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, makes his singing début in New York City.

1961: The trial of Adolph Eichman on charges of genocide opened in Jerusalem.  The capture of Eichman in Argentina is the stuff of James Bond.  His trial marked a turning point as Jews and non-Jews alike began to talk openly about what happened in Europe.  Eichman would be the only person ever executed by the state of Israel. “Justice Moshe Landau read the 15-count indictment aloud in Hebrew, pausing as each charge was translated into German. The charges included “causing the killing of millions of Jews,” “torture” and placing “many millions of Jews in living conditions that were calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”

1963(17thof Nisan, 5723): Third Day of Pesach

1963(17thof Nisan, 5723): Eighty-year old Latvian born leader of the Mensheviks and life-long opponent of Stalin Raphael R. Abramovich, a co-founder of the Union for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, “the editor of the Yiddish encyclopedia Jewish People, Past and Present” and a feature writer for The Jewish Daily Forward who was the husband of “the former Rosa Segal” and the father of Dr. Lia Andler and Mark Abramovich, “an electrical engineer” who “disappeared without a trace” while fighting with the International Brigade against Franco after he had reportedly been kidnapped by Bolshevists who were the political enemies of his father, passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/04/12/90562035.pdf

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

 

1963: Pitcher Conrad Cardinal appeared in his first major league game, taking the mound for the Houston Colt 45’s, now known as the Houston Astros.

1965(9thof Nisan, 5725): Eighty-seven year old Louise Kahn Hirschman passed away today after which she was buried at Temple Beth-El Cemetery in Pensacola, FL.

1965(9th of Nisan, 5725): Seventy-four year old Princeton graduate (1911) and New York Stock Exchange member James Bernhimer Seligamn, the son of De Witt J. (David) Seligman and Addie Seligman, passed away today.

1968: The Ernest Gold “I’m Solomon” had its first Broadway preview today.

1968:  Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.  It took the political skill and acumen of LBJ to insure that being Jewish was no longer a disability when it came to renting or buying a home. (This is not to be confused with more famous Civil Rights of 1964, the first piece of groundbreaking legislations signed into law by President Johnson who proved to be as strong voice for the underdog and disposed including the Jewish people and the state of Israel.)

1970:Civil rights attorney Martin Garbus and writer, therapist, and social worker Ruth Meitin Garbus gave birth to Elizabeth Fraya Garbus the Brown University graduate who gained fame as Liz Garbus, documentary film maker.

1971(16thof Nisan, 5731): Second Day of Pesach

1971: A revival of Kurt Weill’s “Johnny Johnson,” a musical version of The Good Soldier Švejk opened today at the Edison Theatre

1972(27thof Nisan, 5732): Yom HaShoah

1972(27thof Nisan, 5732): Eleven days before his 54th birthday, Solomon Aaron Berson the physician who was the research partner of Rosalyn Yalow passed away.

http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/87/5/1925.full

1973: In the wake of the Munich Olympic Massacre, Zaiad Muchasi, the replacement for Hussein Al Bashir in Cyprus, was killed by a bomb in his Athens hotel room today.

1973: New York premiere of “Scarecrow” directed by Jerry Schatzberg.

1974(19thof Nisan, 5734): Fifth day of Pesach

1974(19thof Nisan, 5734): Eighty-seven year old Jerusalem native Israel Porath, the husband of Miriam Titktin with whom he “had 7 children - Shoshana, Samuel, Tzve, Benjamin, Ben Zion, Joseph, and David – and “for almost five decades,” “the ‘dean’ of Cleveland, Ohio’s Orthodox rabbis” passed away today.

https://case.edu/ech/articles/p/porath-israel

1974: In a case of “Jew versus Jew” it was reported today that Lorence A. Silverberg, chairman and president of the Kenton Corporation, is expected to become president and chief executive officer of Interstate Stores, Inc., when its pending purchases of more than 1,100 McCrory stores is completed” instead of Samuel Neaman.

1974: It was reported today that Samuel Neaman who had resigned as McCrory's chairman and chief executive Feb. 15 to negotiate for a post as Interstate's top man” and his wife Celia had left for a trip to England and Israel, countries where Mr. Neaman has relaties.

1974(19thof Nisan, 5734): Eighteen Israelis, including 8 children were murdered today and 15 more Israelis were injured today when three terrorists belong to of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command crossed the Israeli border from Lebanon and attacked the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.

1974(19thof Nisan, 5734): Fifty-five year old German born, American mathematician Abraham Robinson passed away today in New Haven, CT.

http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/robinson-abraham.pdf

1974(19thof Nisan, 5734): Polish born American actress Lilian Satz, “a member of the Adler Yiddish Theatrical dynasty” and the wife of Yiddish actor Ludwig Satz passed away today at Mamaroneck, NY.

1974: Golda Meir resigned as Prime Minister “after the Agranat Commission had published its interim reported on the Yom Kippur War.

1974: “Music! Music!” a “cavalcade of American Musice with footnotes by Alan Jay Lerner” opened today at the Theatre Center 55th Street Theatre.

1977: Seventy-seven year old French poet and screenwriter Jacques Prevert who teamed with hid Josef Kozma, the Budapest born Jewish composer he had worked with during the 1930’s from Vichy and the Nazis at great person risk to his own life passed away today.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel had started to dismantle its outposts in South Lebanon in preparation for the expected pullback. But Lebanese Christian leaders and many Israelis expressed concern that the pullback was premature. The world's greatest battleship, the US atom-powered "Nimitz," completed its Israeli visit and sailed away from Haifa.

1978: 1978: Harold H. Saunders who played a key role in the creation of the Camp David Accords, began serving as the 12thAssistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs.

1979(14thof Nisan, 5739): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach

1979(14thof Nisan, 5739): Eighty-six year old Wharton graduate and WW I Army veteran Sam Gukenheimer Adler, the former CEO of Leopold Adler Company and husband of Elinor Gunsfeld Adler with whom he had two sons, Leopold and Sam, passed away today in Savannah.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1979/04/12/111091623.pdf

1979(14thof Nisan, 5739): Eighty-two year old Detroit businessman Shmuel-Ber Leykin passed away today.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2017/04/shmuel-ber-leykin.html

1983(28th of Nisan, 5743): General Avraham Yoffe passed away.  A sabra born at Yavne;el in 1913 Yoffe served with Orde Wingate, fought with British Army during World War II before beginning a distinguished career with the IDF that included command of the 9thBrigade during the Suez Campaign and the capture of several significant positions in the Sinai during the Six Day War.

1983: In “How Punchy Was Slapsie Maxie?” published today, Jeff Wheelwright examined the life and demise of the Jewish boxer.

http://www.si.com/vault/1983/04/11/619345/how-punchy-was-slapsie-maxie

1983: Twenty-second and final episode of the first season of “Family Ties” sit-com created by Gary David Goldberg was broadcast today.

1983: In “This Week’s Citation Classic” published today Theodore Lowi discussed his latest work, The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy and the Crisis of Public Authority.

http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1983/A1983QH93700001.pdf

1983(28thof Nisan, 5743): Yom HaShoah

1983:Poland's Roman Catholic Primate, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, officiated today at a mass honoring the Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The mass was one of a series of events over the next week and a half commemorating the 40th anniversary of the resistance to the Nazis.

1984: CBS broadcast the final episode of the miniseries “George Washington” co-starring Stephen Macht as “General Benedict Arnold.”

1985(20thof Nisan, 5745): Sixth Day of Pesach

1986: “Band of the Hand” a crime movie directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Stephen Lang and James Remard was released today in the United States.

1986(2ndof Nisan, 5746): Eighty-nine year old Israel Goldstein the long-serving Rabbi at congregation B’nai Jerhurun and an ardent Zionist who was also the founder of both the National Conference of Christians and Jews and Brandeis University passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/13/obituaries/rabbi-israel-goldstein-a-founder-of-brandeis.html

1987(12th of Nisan, 5747):An Israeli woman was killed by a firebomb thrown into her car in the occupied West Bank today, and in response hundreds of Jewish settlers rampaged in the West Bank town of Kalkilya overnight, breaking windows and setting cars ablaze. The Israeli woman was killed near Alfe Menashe, a Jewish settlement on the West Bank about 25 miles north of here. Her husband and two of her children, who were also in the car, were reported in serious condition. Her third child and a young family friend were treated for light burns. The army imposed a curfew on Kalkilya, located 17 miles from Tel Aviv, but security sources said they were unable to stop an estimated 600 angry Jewish settlers from entering the town.

1987: Following secret talks held in London, Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan reached an agreement outlining the method whereby a peace treaty could be negotiated between Israel and Jordan.  In a tragic turn events, Yitzchak Shamir, the Prime Minister of Israel, scuttled the talks and for once it was the Israelis who may have “never missed a chance to miss a chance.”

1987(12th of Nisan, 5747): Primo Levi passed away. Primo Levi survived the Holocaust and bore witness to it through an amazing collection of literature.  Born in Turin, Italy in 1919, Levi was trained as a chemist.  He was deported to Auschwitz as a Jew and a member of the anti-Fascist Resistance.  His experiences in the camps and his grueling efforts to return to Italy after the war are the subject of two of his books, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening.  He is also the author of Moments of Reprove, The Periodic Table and If Not Now When?  Levi did not make a career of being a Holocaust Survivor.  He worked as a chemist after the war and did not retire to devote full time to his writing until 1977.  He died under tragic circumstances at the age of 67.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0731.html

1988(24thof Nisan, 5748): Seventy-year old screenwriter and author Jesse Lasky, Jr who wrote the scripts for two Biblical “pot-boilers” – “Ten Commandments” and “Samson and Delilah” – passed away today.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0489679/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

1995(10thof Nisan, 5755): Jacob Weingreen the professor of Hebrew in Trinity College, Dublin who excavated Samaria and who is the namesake for The Weingreen Museum of Biblical Antiquities passed away today.

1997: “Grosse Pointe Blank” the funniest high school reunion movie ever made featuring Alan Arkin and Jeremy Piven was released in the United States today.

1997(4thof Nisan, 5757): Terrorist killed a member of the IDF after having kidnaped him near Moshav Zanoah.

1998(15th of Nisan, 5758): First Day of Pesach

1998: In the evening, Mitchell Levin and Harvey Luber, of blessed memory, celebrate their last seder together.

1999:Matt Bloom debuted on the WWF episode of Sunday Night Heat.

1999: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “Reading the Holocaust” by Inga Clendinnen and recently published paperback editions of “The Unexpected Salami” by Laurie Gwen Shapiro and “The Children” by David Halberstam

2000: A British court resolved David Irving's libel case against Deborah Lipstadt by affirming Lipstadt's portrayal of Irving as an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/apr/11/2000/deborah-lipstadt

2000: “An Israeli judge ruled that” Daniel Weiz “a 19 year old soldier can be extradited to Canada to face murder charges, “charges which Wiez has denied.

2000: “Germany has started an Internet Web site’ www.lostart.de listing thousands of works of art plundered by the Nazis from museums and individuals in World War II

2001(18thof Nisan, 5761): Fourth Day of Pesach

2001: “Plotting a Pardon; Rich Cashed In a World of Chits to Win Pardon” published today described how Avner Azulay and Rich’s former wife worked with the Clintons to obtain a midnight pardon for the billionaire fugitive from justice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/us/plotting-a-pardon-rich-cashed-in-a-world-of-chits-to-win-pardon.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2002: Palestinian terrorists begin to surrender at Jenin.

2002(29th of Nisan, 5762): In Tunisia, the El Ghriba synagogue was bombed by Al Qaeda killing 21. El Ghriba is an ancient synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba. It is located close to Hara Seghira, several kilometers southwest of Houmt Souk, the capital of Djerba.The history of the synagogue is reported to go back about 2000 years, making it the oldest synagogue in Africa and one of the oldest ones in the world. According to an oral tradition, it was built by Jews who had immigrated after the destruction of the first Temple in Jerusalem. The synagogue is the destination of an annual pilgrimage of many Tunisian Jews after the celebration of Passover.

2002:Manhattan Ensemble Theater presented the world premiere of a new English version of the Yiddish classic, The Golem. “Drenched in magic and mystery, the play reworks an ancient Talmudic legend about a 17th century Rabbi in Prague who molds and animates a huge clay figure to fight for the Jewish community, which has been threatened by accusations of spilling the blood of Christian children.”

2003: In New York, a federal judged began hearing arguments in a case where it is contended that Fritz and Guenther Werthiem had been swindled and that their heirs should be allowed to sue one of Europe's largest retailers, KarstadtQuelle AG” which “later absorbed the Jewish-owned Wertheim department store chain and the land it once held in the heart of Berlin.”

2004(20thof Nisan, 5764): Sixth Day of Pesach

2004(20thof Nisan, 5674): Eighty-three year old Austrian-born British “Paul Philip Hamburger, pianist, accompanist, vocal coach and teacher” passed away today.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1460602/Paul-Hamburger.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/paul-hamburger-549794.html

 

2004: “Focus on the Soul: The Photographs of Lotte Jacobi” came to a close.

http://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/focus-on-the-soul-the-photographs-of-lotte-jacobi

2004: An exhibition entitled “Elijah Chair: Art, Ritual, and Social Action” comes to a close at the Jewish Museum in New York.  Elijah Chair,” a video sculpture was created for the Times Square Seder, a public art and social action project which took place in New York in 2002.

2005: The New York Times publishes an article entitled “Acts of Quiet Courage” by Bob Herbert. It describes the role that Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas, the wartime Brazilian ambassador to Franceplayed in providing the visas that saved young Felix Rohatyn and his relatives during World War II.

2005: At joint press conference with Ariel Sharon, President George W. Bush endorsed the Prime Minister’s plan to withdraw from Gaza and plans for a final peace treaty with the Palestinians that will acknowledge the new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, which make it unrealistic that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.

2007(23rd of Nisan, 5767): Sixty-three year old Tina Susan Rieger, the wife of United Jewish Communities’ president and CEO Howard Rieger, lost her battle with pancreatic cancer and passed away today.

http://www.jta.org/2007/04/12/archive/tina-susan-rieger-the-wife-of-united-jewish

2007: As part of the L.A. Theatre Works program, The Skirball Cultural Center features a performance of Jewish playwright Arthur Miller’s, “The Man Who Had All The Luck.”

2007: In an article entitled “A Youthful Chronicle of Wartime in Prague,” the New York Timesreviewed The Diary of Petr Ginz: 1941-1942.

2008(6th of Nisan, 5768):Songwriter and musician Donald Kahn, the son of German born American lyricist Gus Kahn, passed away today.

2008: Jason Hutt’s documentary film “Orthodox Stance” about the pugilistic career of Dmitriy Salita which combines boxing with Orthodox Judaism opens in Los Angeles.

2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah hosts the Dan Nichols Musical Shabbat Service!

2009(17th of Nisan, 5769): Shabbat Chol Hamoed

2010: “Sin,” a play by Mark Altman based on “The Unseen” by Isaac Beshevis Singer is scheduled to have its final performance at the Baruch Performing Arts Center.

2010: Aaron Posner’s “My Name is Asher Lev” a dramatic adaption from the Chaim Potok novel is scheduled to completed its premiere run at the Round House Theatre in Bethsda, MD.

2010:Laura Cohen Applebaum The executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to discuss the new book "Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln's City at Barnes & Noble in Rockville MD.

2010: Public Broadcasting System is scheduled began a four day series of new programs about the Holocaust. In its first effort, PBS and Masterpiece Classic premiered a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank.

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems by Charles Bernstein and A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir by Norris Church Mailer who was the wife of Norman Mailer.

2010(27th of Nisan, 5770): Yom HaShoah

2011: Yeshiva University Museum and Stern College are scheduled to present a performance by The Momenta String Quartet

2011:Rabbi Jill Jacobs is scheduled to begin serving, as the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America on this date.

2011: Dr. Brian Horowitz of Tulane University, author of “Empire Jews,” is scheduled to speak at a conference on Jewish Emigration to be held at Temple University.

2011(7thof Nisan, 5771): Eighty-seven year old poet Stanley Siegleman passed away.

http://forward.com/articles/137150/a-poet-passes-stanley-siegelman-/

2011:Itzhak Perlman and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra are scheduled to perform at Lincoln Center in NYC.

2011: The New York Times included a review of The Free World,“David Bezmozgis’s intimate portrait of the Krasnanskys, a Jewish family from Latvia immigrating to the West in 1978.

2011:A 42-year-old man who participated in Friday's Tel Aviv marathon died today after being hospitalized for severe dehydration. The man collapsed of dehydration during the marathon on Friday and was brought to the emergency room in Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. His condition continued to deteriorate and this morning he died due to liver damage as a result of dehydration.

2011: Center for Jewish History presents “The Library that Never Was: The Attempt to Build a Center for Jewish Books and Learning in Post-Holocaust Europe.”

2011:Assembled in Haifa and Nazareth for the third event held in Israel under the EUREKA Chairmanship year, EUREKA's national delegates today approved a series of promising cooperative R&D projects in a variety of areas, including renewable energy, agrofood technology, biotechnology, physical and exact sciences, IT and electronics, industrial manufacturing, and more.

2011:A joint Chinese-Israeli conference opens today at Tel Aviv University, entitled "Replanning Tilanqiao, Formerly the Jewish Ghetto in Shanghai." The three-day event, organized by the Azrieli School of Architecture, will focus on the history and preservation of the ghetto. Participating in the conference are six senior officials from the Shanghai municipal planning department and three professors from the Architecture and Urban Planning School of Tongji University. The Jewish ghetto in Shanghai was created in the 1930s, in the city's Hongkou district. Thanks to international agreements, it was possible to immigrate to the city then without a passport or visa, which allowed some 20,000 European Jews to escape there during World War II. The area is now threatened by real estate development. Last year, TAU's Prof. Moshe Margalit traveled to Shanghai and made contact with local urban planning officials and academics.

2011: In “How Do You Say ‘Good to the Last Drop’ in Hebrew?” Stuart Elliot traces the relationship between Maxwell House, American Jewry and Jacobs Advertising.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/business/media/11adnewsletter1.html?_r=0

2011(7thof Nisan, 5771): Forty-nine year old Cambridge educated Sir Simon Milton, whose father came to England on the Kindertansport and later founded Sharaton and whose government service led to serving as Deputy Mayor of London passed away today.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/8446352/Sir-Simon-Milton.html

2012: As part of the East Village Klezmer Series, Michael Winograd is scheduled to Klezmer Music with Strings in NYC.

2012(19thof Nisan): Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Menachem Zemba who was shot dead by the Nazis during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

http://www.chabad.org/calendar/view/day.asp?tDate=4/11/2012

2013: The Alexandria Kleztet is scheduled to perform at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, MD

2013: As part of Holocaust memorial program, the University of Utah is scheduled to host a Candlelight Vigil followed by Peter Black’s speech entitled “70thAnniversary of the Warsaw Uprising.”

2013: “The Law In These Parts” which was selected as Best Documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2013: “Hitler’s Children” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Fest.

2013: Dr. Astrith Baltsan is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Hatikvah: Hope Reborn”

2013: Gilles Uriel Bernheim resigned as chief rabbi of France.

2013:“The flag representing the 30th Infantry Division assumed a place of honor during the National Days of Remembrance ceremony, an annual event commemorating the Holocaust at the U.S. Capitol’s Rotunda. It was added to the 35 others after the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the U.S. Army Center for Military History determined in late 2012 that members of the division had liberated Holocaust survivors.” (As reported by Hillel Kuttler)

2013: Two days after rejecting calls to do so, French Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim announced that he was stepping down from his post amid two scandals, a French newspaper reported today.

2013: Police arrested five women this morning for wearing tallitot (prayer shawls) traditionally worn by men, while participating in a Rosh Hodesh prayer service at the Western Wall attended by some 200 women.

2014: “Under the Skin” is scheduled to be shown at the Jacob Burns Film Festival.

2014: “General Jack Weinstein was responsible for the firing of nine Air Force commanders in Malmstrom AFB, Montana.”

2014: Israeli artist Tirtzah Bassel’s solo exhibition is scheduled to open at the Slag Gallery.

2014: In “Laemmle’s List: A Mogul’s Heroism” published today Neal Gabler described the life and times of “Carl Laemmle, a founder of Universal Pictures” who “unlike his peers…saved Jews from the Nazis.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/movies/unlike-his-peers-a-studio-chief-saved-jews-from-the-nazis.html

2014: Education and Sharing Day as established by the United States Congress in honor of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

2014: Cesare Frustaci, a 77 year old Holocaust survivor who has been speaking in Cedar Rapids this week under the sponsorship of the Thaler Holocaust Committee is scheduled to speak during Shabbat Evening Services at Temple Judah.

2014(11thof Nisan, 5774: Eighty-five year old Darrell Zwerling the character  who was the son of Austrian and Romanian Jewish immigrants and was one of those faces you recognize but a name you do not know passed away today.

2014(11thof Nisan, 5774): Centenarian Myer S. Kripke, the Omaha rabbi who was both a scholar and a philanthropist who relied on investment advice from his friend Warren Buffett passed away today.

http://www.omaha.com/news/longtime-leader-of-omaha-synagogue-championed-interfaith-dialogue/article_7cd35fca-3184-51ae-a030-85ba083a3042.html

2015: “David Orlowski, the son of Miriam Winter” is scheduled to be signing copies of his mother memoir Trains at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015: “The Farewell Party,” “Rue Madar,” “Victor ‘Young’ Perez” and “Belle and Sebastian” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2015: In New York City Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center is scheduled to host a Havdalah ceremony marking the end of Shabbat and Pesach featuring Idan Raichel.

2015: The family of Bernice Tannenbaum, of blessed memory, the former President of Hadassah will sit shiva this evening at her apartment.

2015(22ndof Nisan, 5775): Eight Day of Pesach, a holiday made great again in Cedar Rapids, Iowa thanks to all of the work of Deb Levin whose skills include everything from making a great Seder to provide all of the tech help to make it possible to publish two blogs.

2015: “An unseasonal recurrence of wintry weather across Israel today forced the cancellation and rescheduling of many traditional Moroccan Mimouna celebrations signifying the end of the Passover holiday.

2015: “The Zabinskis’ remarkable wartime actions — which included hiding Jews in indoor animal enclosures — and are the subject of ‘Zookeeper’s Wife’ seem certain to gain even more renown with the inauguration today of a permanent exhibition in the villa, an attractive two-story Bauhaus home from the 1930s still on the grounds of the Warsaw Zoo.” (As reported by Vanessa Gera)

2015: “During an interview in Warsaw” today, seventy-eight year old Moshe Tirosh recalled “hiding in a villa on the grounds of the Warsaw zoo for three weeks during World War II.”

2016: “A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National of Academy Sciences” that combined archaeology, Jewish history and applied mathematics, and involved computerized image processing” provided new information on “when the Bible was written.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/middleeast/new-evidence-onwhen-bible-was-written-ancient-shopping-lists.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-2&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

2016: “Rosenwald” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.

2016: In Jerusalem Migdalei haYm haTichon is scheduled to present Journey through Jazz and French Chanson" with the Blues star Deborah Benasouli

2016: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present Jews on First (aka The Right Pitch): an adaptation from Larry Ruttman’s award winning book American Jews & America’s Game - an exploration of Jewish assimilation, identity, and guts viewed through the lens of America’s favorite pastime.

2016: Following a screening of “Rosenwald” the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host “LaNitra M. Berger, PhD, a historian of African and African-American art talking about Julius Rosenwald’s impact on the African-American art during the Harlem Renaissance.”

2017(15thof Nisan, 5777): Seventy-one year old Dr. Mark Wainberg, the microbiologist specializing in HIV research passed away today. (As Richard Sanomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/world/americas/dr-mark-wainberg-microbiologist-aids-awareness-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2017(15thof Nisan, 5777): First Day of Pesach; in the evening count the Omer. 

15th of Nisan, 5650 (1890):An untold number of poor New Yorkers enjoyed eating meat at their Seder tonight thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Paulina Rosendorff who had provided the funding that enabled butchers to distribute their product free of charge.

15th of Nisan, 5675(1915): The 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors who attended last night’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Y.M.H.A. which also provided a night’s lodging at the Hotel Roland are scheduled to worship at Temple Beth Israel at Lexington and 72ndStreet today while the Secretary of War, the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City have been invited to attend tonight’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Young Men’s Hebrew Association for the benefit of 300 of the 8,000 Jews serving in the military which is being held at Vienna Hall on Lexington and 58th Street.

15th of Nisan, 5677 (1917): One day after U.S. declared War on Germany, Jews gather in the synagogue to observe Pesach and Shabbat

15th of Nisan, 5705(1945): At least 58 Jews were murdered in a forest near the Austrian village of Deutsch Shuetzen, in what would come to be called the Deutsch Shuetzen Massacre while in the evening, members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8th Army serving in Italy took part in a Seder at Faenza.

15th of Nisan, 5725(1965):  While Jews in the Soviet struggled to deal with a shortage of Matzah created by the government refusal to let state bakeries prepare adequate supplies of unleavened bread Rabbis in America were encouraged to deliver sermons that related the themes of Pesach with fight for Civil Rights complete with references to the recent voting rights march in Selma.

15th of Nisan, 5728(1968): For the first time, Pesach is observed in a unified Jerusalem

2018: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host “Unsilencing Sephardic Women Writer” Jewish Voices from North Africa” during while “French literary scholar Nina B. Lichtenstein will “illuminate the shrouded histories and complicated… identities” of a multiply marginalized minority: Magrebi (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian) Sephardic women writers.”

2018: “CXX Proof, the Bernice Diener Ensemble-in-Residence at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University, is scheduled to perform the work of Jewish composers and featuring the world premiere of Proof Positive for violin, clarinet and piano by YU faculty composer David Glaser. Musicians: Christopher Grymes, clarinet; Xiao-dong Wang, violin; Xak Bjerken, piano” at the Center for Jewish History.

2018: “The American Jewish Historical Society” is scheduled to host “We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust” which demonstrates that “long before the Holocaust was taught in schools, the youth of America was learning about the Nazi genocide from Batman, the X-Men, Captain America, and Sgt. Rock.”

2018: One day after she had passed away, Rabbis Steven Silberman and Dana Evan Kaplan are scheduled to officiate at the funeral of Harriet Scheuer Kahn at the Springhill Avenue Temple Cemetery.

http://obits.al.com/obituaries/mobile/obituary.aspx?n=harriet-scheuer-kahn&pid=188704597&fhid=5490

2018(26thof Nisan, 5778): Eighty-seven year old Green Bay, WI, native Mitzi Shore, the owner of The Comedy Store and the mother of comedian Paul Shore passed away today. (As reported by Daniel E. Slotnik)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/obituaries/mitzi-shore-whose-comedy-store-fostered-rising-stars-dies-at-87.html

 

2018: Violinist David Lisker and Northwestern Theatre Professor Rives Collins are scheduled to appear the Yom HaShoah Commemoration sponsored by the Illinois Museum and Education Center that will include “a candle lighting by Holocaust Survivors and their descendants, accompanied by prayer and song by Hazzan Benjamin A. Tisser of North Suburban Synagogue Beth El.

2018: Following this morning’s detonation of a Palestinian device “near an Israeli construction vehicle” this evening IAF struck “a military site belonging to Hamas. (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)

2019: The Cabaret at Café Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie is scheduled to host Yael Rasooly’s debut performance that tells “the stories of the backstreets and alleys, as well as the glamour and exuberance, in the final years of the Weimar Republic.”

2019: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a presentation by Holocaust survivor Sam Ponczak as part of its “First Person” series.

2019: “At around 3 pm EST” today, Beresheet is expected to land on the Moon, making Israel “only the fourth country to ever accomplish this feat.”

2020(17thof Nisan, 5780): Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach

2020: As Jews recite the special prayers that combine Pesach and Shabbat, we offer special prayers for the health and well-being of Alan Smason and all the other people at the Crescent City Jewish Newsand the friends and family of Dr. Brian Horowitz, Chair of the Tulane University Jewish Studies Department who are living in New Orleans, the latest “hot spot” during the coronavirus epidemic.

2020: The Tri-Valley Cultural Jews in the East Bay are schedule to lead a “Secular Seder” on Zoom staring this evening at 5 p.m.

2020: Today Eric Greitens, the former Republican governor of Missouri and Sheena Greitens would soon accept a job as an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs announced they were ending their marriage

2020; The Seder Squad is scheduled to present, via Zoom “Crafting our Liberation” during which attendees can “reflect on Passover through art and the religious ceremony of Havdalah” while “marking the separation between Shabbat and the rest of the week.”

2020: In what has to be one of the most imaginative responses to the Pandemic Quarantine, the Riverway Project is scheduled to present the Seder Squad’s on-line version of “The Great Passover Bake Off.”

2020: Idina Menzel, Ilana Glazer, Ben Platt and many more celebs are scheduled to lead a ‘Saturday Night Seder’ to raise money for “a Center for Disease Control fund for first responders working during the coronavirus outbreak.” (As reported by the Crescent City Jewish News, the voice for everything Jewish in the land of the Bayou)

2021: In Coralville, IA. Congregation Agudas Achim is scheduled to present via Zoom, Kathy Jacobs who will hold an Adult Ed Mussar Talk about a New Mussar Course “Gates of Everyday Holiness.”

2021: Eternal Life-Hemshech, the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta are scheduled to co-sponsor, online, Atlanta’s 56th Annual Community-wide Yom HaShoah (Day of Holocaust Remembrance) Commemoration.”

2021: Yiddishkayt is scheduled to host live-streamed Culinary + Culture Salon: The Rye Edition, in which attendees learn about the history and significance of rye bread, from the one-of-a-kind Stanley Ginsberg, The Rye Baker.

2021: Hadar and Sheldon are scheduled to host the Yom Ha’Atzmaut Across America virtual concert with Sheldon Low.

2021: Based on the proclamation issued by President Biden on April 2, today marks the end “of a week of observance of the Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust…”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/04/04/a-proclamation-on-days-of-remembrance-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-2021/

2021: As part of the Women of Sefarad Series, the Jewish Heritage Alliance is scheduled to host lecture by Professor Abraham Gross on the life and times of Doña Gracia Nasi

2021: Friends of Bezalel and AICF are scheduled to present an event featuring Bezalel graduates and AICF grant recipients Zohar Dvir (London) and Dan Azoulay (Tel Aviv).

https://events.aicf.org/events/discover-animation/

2021: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Cynthia Ozick’s review of the biography of Philip Roth by Blake Baily and Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure by Menachem Kaiser.

2021: The JCRS, an organization that really does provide meaningful support for the Jewish community is scheduled to present “Jews Roots,’ a remote celebration online of the modern era of the Jewish Children’s Regional Services which is marking its 75th anniversary.

2021: At a time when most Israelis are hoping to avoid a fifth election, Ra’am party leader Mansour Abbas is reportedly considering making a political speech in which he will stress his commitment to Israel, in order to ease the path toward his acceptance by right-wing parties, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett have been wrangling over a potential agreement to rotate the prime ministership between them

2021Fiddler at 50: A Reunion Celebration of Fiddler on the Roof” is scheduled to take place in London.

https://www.jw3.org.uk/whats-on/fiddler-50-reunion-celebration-fiddler-roof

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-hit-film-fiddler-on-the-roof-turns-50-celebrate-with-the-original-cast/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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