Quantcast
Channel: This Day ... In Jewish History
Viewing all 3229 articles
Browse latest View live

This Day, May 2, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 2

373: “Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria…aggressive opponent of Arianism and polemicist against Judaism died today.” 

693: The Sixteenth Council of Toledo, which had opened on April 25, met for the last time. Among its other accomplishments, the council took further steps in the on-going, ever more vicious, suppression of the Jews by the Christian Visigoth. The law code, which granted “tax freedom to Jewish conversos” now transferred the tax obligation to Jews who had not converted. Also, the council ruled that “converts were allowed to trade with Christians, but not until” they had proven themselves “by recitation of creeds and eating of non-kosher food. The council also enacted penalties against Christians who entered into business transactions “with unconverted or unproven Jews.”

907: King Boris I of Bulgaria died. At the time of his death, Boris was actually a monk having abdicated his throne in 889.  During his reign, Bulgaria continued to provide a refuge for Jews fleeing from Byzantine persecution.  According to some reports, there was an attempt to convert the pagan Bulgars to Judaism. True or not, Christianity would become the state religion. 

1108 (20th of Iyar, 4868): Solomon Ibn-Farussal was murdered shortly before the forces of Islam defeated the Christians at the battle of Ucles.  Yehuda Halevi composed an elegy upon hearing of Ibn-Farrusal’s murder. Ibn-Farussal reportedly was “in the service of a Christian prince” who had sent him as an emissary to the Spanish city of Murcia. The “Christian prince” may well have been Alfonso VII, the monarch who led the Spaniards to defeat at Ucles.

1160: In the Montpellier region of southern France, an agreement was concluded according to which every priest who stirred up the people against the Jews should be excommunicated.  The Jews in return pledged to pay four pounds of silver every year on Palm Sunday

1194: In one his first acts after returning from his imprisonment in Austria, King Richard I of England gives Portsmouth its first Royal Charter.  The Jews had paid a disproportionate share of that ransom. The 5,000 marks the Jews were compelled to pay was triple that paid by the citizens of London. There is no record of any Jews having lived in Portsmouth during the Middle Ages, though there were a scattered few in nearby Bosham, Chichester and Southampton, and an important community in Winchester. The first Portsmouth Jews, attracted by the opportunity of trading with the fast-growing Royal Navy in its home port and possibly by a sense of kinship with the new German-speaking monarchs of these isles, settled in Oyster Street in the 1730s - Jacob Thulman signed in Hebrew in the Borough Sessions in 1736 - but soon moved out of Old Portsmouth to Portsea, in the heart of the city’s commercial district. The first recorded mention of a Jewish community in Portsmouth is the purchase of the thousand-year lease of a plot of land by Lazy Lane (now Fawcett Road) for use as a Jews’ burial ground in December 1749. The lessees were Benjamin Levi (engraver), Mordechai Samuel (jeweler), Lazarus Moses (chapman) and Mordechai Moses (chapman). Fawcett Road cemetery was still in use until it became full in the early 1990s. [Editor’s Note-The word “chapman” probably meant that these men were merchants or peddlers.]

1293(17th of Iyar, 5053):  Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg passed away. The last of the Tosophists, he was the leading Rabbi in Germany. Convinced that there was no future in Germany, he agreed to lead a large contingent of families to Eretz-Israel. While waiting for the other families, he was seized by the Bishop of Basel. The Emperor ordered him held in prison as a lesson to any of "his Jews" who would try to leave Germany and thus cause him a financial loss. He refused to be ransomed, saying that it would serve as an impetus for further extortions. He died in a prison near Colmar, and his body was held there until it was ransomed some years later.

1352: In Nuremburg, “Vischlein the son of Masten, Semelin the son of Nathan of Grefenberg, and Jacob the son-in-law of Liebetraut appeared before the council requesting to be received again as citizens, declaring that, in return, they would remit all debts the citizens owed them and would sell all houses held in pawn; they agreed to settle only where the citizens permitted, and asked merely to be protected against the nobility.

1481: The Pope called upon all Christian princes to send back to Spain the Jews who had fled from the Inquisition.

1562: “By a decree promulgated today, King Sigismund August appoint Stanislav Dovorino as superior judge of Pinks and Korbin and placed all the Jews of Pinsk and the neighboring villages under his jurisdiction and their associates were ordered to turn over the magazines and stores to the magistrate and burghers of Pinks

1605: Massacre of the Jewish community of Bisenz, Austria.

1611: King James Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker.  For many Jews (as well as non-Jews) the language of the King James Bible is the only version of the TaNaCh they know.

1634(Iyar 4): Jacob Bassevi of Treuenberg, the “court Jew” who provided financial assistance to Rudolph II, Matthias and Ferdinand II who used his influence to protect the Jews of the Holy Roman Empire and Italy passed away

1649: Solomon Franco, reportedly the first Jew to live in the “North American colonies” today “was given funds for passage to sail from Boston to Holland because the Puritans of the General Court in Massachusetts did not want him in their colony but apparently the English had no problem with him living after he “converted to Anglicanism” in 1688, the same year in which he published Truth Springing Out of the Earth “a royalist panegyric dedicated to King Charles II.”

1670: King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America. “The first known Jew to settle in what is now Canada was Ferdinande Jacobs, a fur trader with Hudson's Bay Company who came to Manitoba in 1732.” (Jewish Virtual Library)

1713(6 of Iyar, 5473): Joseph Josel Wertheimer, father of Rabbi Samson Wertheimer, passed away today at the age of 87.

1718(1stof Iyar, 5478): Tzvi Hirsch ben Yaakov Ashkenazi, known as the Chacham Tzvi, passed away in Lviv.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112072/jewish/Rabbi-Tzvi-Ashkenazi-Chacham-Tzvi.htm

1729: Birthdate of Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great, Czarina of Russia.  Regardless of how history views this German princess who replaced her husband on the throne of Russia, she was responsible for Russia acquiring most of its Jewish population.  Under her reign, Russia acquired much of Poland and its large Jewish population.  Her record of treatment of the Jews, is mixed to negative.  As a follower of Voltaire, she could not help but be swayed by his low opinions of the Jews.  Her policies led to the creation of what would be called the Pale of Settlement.

1740: In Philadelphia, “merchant and silversmith” Elias Boudinot III and Mary Catherine Williams gave birth to Elias Boudinot, the 10th President of the Continental Congress who was persuaded by James Adair’s History of the American Indians that the native Americans were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes and that the Hebrew was the origin of their language,

1776: In Nederland, Jacob Hirsch Pinto and Levia Leonora Liebe Pinto gave birth to Branca Brendel Bernisse Hartog Kann (Pinto)

1782: One day after she had passed away, 20 year old “Yetta bat Asher” was buried today in the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”

1782: Twenty-five year old Benjamin Abraham Nones, the Bordeaux born son of Rachel and Abraham Benjamin Nones married Philadelphia native Miriam Marks with whom he had 13 children 12 of whom were born in Philadelphia and one of whom was born in the suburb of Germantown.

1782: Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, “who supported the study of general education including history, grammar and natural sciences, opened the first Jewish School in Prague

1784: Birthdate of Alexander Haindorf “a physician, a Jewish reformer, psychologist, university lecturer, journalist, art collector and co-founder of the Westphalian Kunstverein.”

1791: In Prussia “Daniel Itzig and his family received the first Naturalisationspatent, which granted them full citizenship. A year later the solidarische Haftung (collective responsibility and liability of the Jewish community for non-payment of taxes and crimes of theft) was abolished.”

1801: Jacob Hirsch Kann, the son of Miriam and Isaac Jacob Kann and his wife Jetta Kann gave birth to Eduard Jakob Hirsch Kann.

1801: James Madison, who learned Hebrew while studying at Princeton, and who has President would deal with his ally turned opponent Mordecai Noah, began serving as Secretary of State.

1806(14thof Iyar, 5566): Pesach Sheni

1810: In London, American born physician, Dr. Joel Hart married Louisa Levien.  The Philadelphia native and only son of Ephriam had gone to England to study at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons.

1813: Two days after she had passed away, 57 year old Catherine Isaacs, the wife of Isaac Isaacs, was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery,”

1813: While fighting with forces opposing Napoleon, “German historian and poet Daniel Lessman was wounded at the Battle of Lutzen.

1814: Joel Benjamin married Dina Levy at the Hambro Synagogue.

1815: In Leiden, Emanuel Levie Goldsmith and Alijda Joseph Joel Goldsmith gave birth to “Henry/Hartog Emanuel Goldsmith, the husband of Anna Goldsmith and Alija Joseph Joel Goldsmith, the “teacher, cigarmaker and attorney who settled in New York City.

1825(14thof Iyar, 5585): Pesach Sheni

1833: In Philadelphia, PA, Julia Levy and Joseph Lyons Moss who had been married in 1828 gave birth to William Moss, the husband of Mary Nooronha whom he married in 1863 and the father of Mary, Joseph and William Moss, Jr.

1833: Birthdate of Abraham (Adolf) Berliner German Jewish theologian and historian who re-established The Mekitze Nirdamim literally "awakening the slumbering", a society for the publication of old Hebrew books and manuscripts that were either never published or long out of print in 1885.

1836: Three days after he has passed away, John Nathan, the two year old son of Joseph and Esther Nathan, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1836(15thof Iyar, 5596): Eighty one year old Aaron Worms the son of Abraham Aberle, the chief rabbi of Metz and author of "Meore Or" (Flashes of Light) passed away today.

1837: Birthdate of Selah Merrill, the first United States Consul in Jerusalem who served three terms over the years 1882 through 1907 and who opposed Jewish settlement in Palestine, writing, "Palestine is not ready for the Jews. The Jews are not ready for Palestine."

1839: Joseph Joseph married Phoebe Barnett today at the Great Synagogue.

1844: Birthdate of Aaron Wise, the Hungarian born American rabbi was the son of Rabbi Joseph Hirsch Weiss, and father of Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise.

1844: Birthdate of Portsmouth, England native Kate Emanuel who gained games Katie Magnus (Lady Magnus) the wife of Sir Phillip Magnus, “the treasurer of the Jewish Girls’ Club, and author whose works included Little Miriam’s Bible Stories and About the Jews Since Bible Times.

https://www.jta.org/1924/03/03/archive/lady-katie-magnus-dies-at-age-of-eighty-years

1844: Birthdate of Emil Schürer,  “the German Protestant theologian who, for his time had the unusual distinction of studying the history of the Jews at the time of Jesus which led him to write A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ

1847: Two days after she had passed away, 77 year old Phoebe Abrahams, the “widow of Abraham Abrahams” was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1853: The Argentine Constitution promised freedom of religion and immigration. Argentina had already shown itself to be a hospitable place for Jewish settlement when it abolished the Inquisition in 1813 which contributed to an influx of Jewish immigrants from Western Europe and North Africa.  The country’s first “Jewish wedding” would take place in 1860 and the Jewish community of Buenos Aires dates its start from 1862.

1855(14th of Iyar, 5615): Pesach Sheni

1856:  The New York Times reported that Lord Derby’s government could not long survive because it was led by “a dilettante Jew whose only stary is self, and who has no care either for the national honor or glory…”  The “dilettante Jew” had to be a reference to Disraeli, who not for the first time would be wrongly identified as a Jew.  And the references were invariably used as a slur.

1858(18thod Iyar, 5618) Lag B’Omer

1859: Five days after he had passed away, financier and social reformer Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, the son of Asher Aron and Rachel Goldsmid and the wife of Isabel Goldsmid with whom he had had eleven children and who was the first Jew to be honored as a baronet was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sir-Isaac-Lyon-Goldsmid-1st-Baronet

1860: Birthdate of Theodor Herzl.  Born in Hungary, Herzl's family moved to Vienna.  He was raised in an "enlightened Jewish home" and trained as a lawyer.  Herzl pursued a career as a journalist and writer.  Although he had encountered anti-Semitism, his views on the role of the Jews changed radically when he covered the Dreyfus Trial in 1894.  If anti-Semitism could thrive in enlightened France, then the Jews were not safe any place except in a nation of their own.  He electrified many with his book the Jewish State and he organized the World Zionist Organization.  The six congresses that he chaired set much of the tone and program for the modern Zionist movement.  Herzl died in 1904 at the age of 44.  In 1949, his body was taken to Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem for its final resting place.  Herzl is the embodiment of Hillel's most famous wisdom statements and proof that one person can make a difference. “Herzl coined the phrase ‘If you will, it is no fairytale,’ which became the motto of the Zionist movement.  Although at the time no one could have imagined it, Zionism led, only fifty years later, to the establishment of the independent State of Israel.”

1861: Lieutenant Horace Porter returned to the arsenal at Watervliet, NY, with a letter from Colonel James Ripley rejecting Major Alfred Mordecai’s request for transfer and ordering him to prepare and ship much needed “artillery equipment” to Washington.” This brought to an end Mordecai’s attempt to stay in the U.S. Army without having to fight against family and friends living in the South. 

1861: In Papa, Hungary, Carl Ellinger and Marie Deutsch gave birth Emil Ellinger, who, after coming to the United States served as a Rabbi in Mount Vernon, Sioux City, Iowa and Alexandria, Louisiana home of Congregation Gemilas Hasodim.

1862: Joseph Wolff passed away today at Isle Brewers. Born at Weilersbach, Germany in 1795, to David Wolff, the town’s Rabbi, he “was baptized in 1812 by the Benedictine abbot of Emaus, near Prague.” Wolff trained as an Orientalist, traveled throughout the Middle East where he sought to convert Jewish populations and later searched for the Ten Lost Tribes in an areas stretching from modern day Turkey to Afghanistan.

1863: Birthdate of Russian native Fanny Pruzansky Bellin, the husband of Jacob Bellin and the mother of Katie, Samuel, Anna and Sadie Bellin.

1863: During the Battle of Chancellorsville, Sergeant Henry Heller was one of four soldiers who risked their lives to bring a wounded Confederate officer into the lines of the Union Army. The officer then “provided valuable information concerning the position of the enemy."

1863: During the American Civil War, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was motally wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering during the Battle of Chancellorsville. Among the units fighting at Chancellorsville  that tried to stop the advance of Jackson’s troops was a regiment from Illinois under the command of Frederick Hecker that included a company made up of (supplied by) Jews from Chicago.

1864(26th of Nisan, 5624): Giacomo Meyerbeer passed away.

http://www.meyerbeer.com/whois.htm

1867: The Weekly Clarion of Jackson reported today: “We are gratified that measures are in progress for the erection of a place of worship in this city by our fellow citizens of the Hebrew descent.” The newspaper item referred to the purchase of property at the corner of South State and South streets on which the Beth Israel Congregation would soon erect a small, wood-frame building which they would use as a school and a house of worship. This was the first building erected in Jackson designed to serve as a house of worship for the Jews living in around the city that was the capital of the state of Mississippi. 

1869:     Stella Rothschild, the Randegg. Germany born daughter of Sara and Leopold Schott and her husband Wilhelm Benjamin Rothschild gave birth to Leopoldine  Rothschild.

1870: Antoine Maurer, who was charged with killing a Jew named Joachim Feurter, went on trial again in Rockland County, NY.  Maurer had been found guilty and sentenced to death but the conviction was overturned because the accused had not been present when the Judge responded to a request from the jury for clarity on a point of law.

1870: Lothair, the first novel written by Benjamin Disraeli after his first term as Prime Minister was first published today by Longmans, Green and Company in 3 volumes

1871: The second trial of, Antoine Maurer indicted for the murder of Joachim Feurter, “a German of the Hebrew faith” commenced here today, before the Court of Oyer and Terminer for Rockland County. Maurer had been found guilty in the first trial, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. 

1872: In Minsk, Yehuda Leib Walt and Relie Hamburg gave birth to Abraham Walt who wrote under the nom de plume “A. Liesin” after he came to the United States.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_12518.html

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/11/06/99569872.pdf

1873: The Jewish Messenger issued an appeal for financial support to send poor Jewish children on summer excursions.  Among those who would benefit from some sea-side recreation are youngsters under the care of the Hebrew Benevolent Society and Free School Association.  If these two groups cannot raise sufficient funds, then the paper will organize a Messenger Excursion Fund.

1874: “The first ladies’ Hebrew benevolent society was founded” today in Oregon.

1877: A delegation of the Board of Delegates of the American Israelites, led by Benjamin F. Peixotto met with President Rutherford B. Hayes to discuss the persecution of the Jews of Romania.  The delegation presented a written account of “the recent barbarities” inflicted on the Jews of Glurgevo, Romania.  The President expressed his sympathy and concern over the treatment of the Jews.  He referred the group to Secretary of State William Evarts whom he requested to take such as this dire situation may require.

1877: On the advice of President Hayes, a delegation of the Board of Delegates of the American Israelites, led by Benjamin F. Peixotto met with U.S. Secretary of State William Evarts to discuss steps that could be taken to relieve the suffering of the Jews of Romania. The delegation “urged the Secretary of State to cable” the U.S. ministers “at Vienna, Constantinople and St. Petersburg asking them to act in conjunction with the representatives of those powers in endeavoring to repress further atrocities.  Mr. Evarts took the subject under consideration” [This was part of an on-going series of attempts to relieve the suffering of the Jews of Romania. The Great Powers thought they had resolved the matter at the Congress of Berlin, but Romanian anti-Semitism would trump their efforts.  The best hope for Romanian Jews would be found in leaving for the United States where they became part of the mass of immigrants who flooded this country in the years leading up to World War I.  This would not be the first or last time that a U.S. President’s sympathy for the plight of the Jews would not be translated into a policy bring about their salvation. Most of us do not recognize the name of Benjamin Peixotto.  In his day, he was one of the most influential Jews in the United States.  He was a successful lawyer and journalist who was active in the affairs of the Republican Party and the Jewish community. Sic Transit Gloria.]

1878(29th of Nisan, 5638): Anglo-Jewish barrister and politician Sir Henry Francis Goldsmid passed away. Born in 1808, the eldest son of Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, was educated privately, and was called to the bar in 1833, becoming Queen’s Counsel in 1858. In 1859 he succeeded to his father's honors, which included a barony of Portugal. He entered Parliament in 1860 as member for Reading, through a by-election, and represented that constituency in the Liberal interest until his death. While still a young man he actively cooperated with his father to secure to the Jews full emancipation from civil and political disabilities. In 1839 he wrote "Remarks on the Civil Disabilities of the Jews," and in 1848 "A Reply to the Arguments Against the Removal of the Remaining Disabilities of the Jews." He was one of the chief supporters of University College and gave material aid to University College Hospital. He was associated with various Jewish religious and charitable organizations. He was connected with the Reform movement from its commencement and was elected president of the Council of Founders of the West London Synagogue. He was vice-president of the Anglo-Jewish Association from its establishment in 1871 and was president of the Rumanian Committee which originated in the association. His greatest services to his race were, however, in the direction of improving the social condition of the Jews in those countries in which they were oppressed. The condition of the Poles in 1863 moved him to organize meetings for the purpose of securing some alleviation of their sufferings, and he also forcibly protested on several occasions in Parliament against the oppression of the Jews, notably that in Servia and Rumania.Goldsmid was deputy lieutenant for Berks and a justice of the peace for Berks and Gloucester. Having no children, the baronetcy devolved upon his nephew, Julian Goldsmid. His writings include, besides those already mentioned: "Two Letters in Answer to the Objections Urged Against Mr. Grant's Bill for the Relief of the Jews" (1830); "A Few Words Respecting the Enfranchisement of British Jews Addressed to the New Parliament" (1833); "A Scheme of Peerage Reform, with Reasons for the Scheme" (1835).

(As reported by the Jewish Encyclopedia)

1884: Today’s issued\ of Hamelitz, a Russian newspaper printed in Hebrew, recorded the events that led to members of the two existing synagogues in Quebec to leave and established what would become Temple Emanuel, a Reform congregation.

1884: In Oakland, CA, Aaaron and Jennie (Cahn) Jacobs gave birth to University of California trained surgeon S. Nicholas Jacobs, the husband of Rita Newman who in addition to maintain a private practice served as an “assistant lecturer in Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

1889(1st of Iyar, 5649): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1890: Mr. Cantor’s bill exempting the New York Sanitarium from local taxation was passed by the New York State Assembly today.

1891: It was reported today that there has been a serious outbreak of anti-Semitic violence at Corfu growing out of reports that the Jews “had murdered a Christian girl for the feast of Passover.”

1891: In Boston, Inspector Cogan arrested Samuel Steinhardt, a Polish Jewish immigrant who is wanted by the authorities in Newark, NJ.

1891: “The Union Square Mass Meeting” published today described Jewish participating in the mass meeting held at Union Square calling for an 8 hour day.  The marchers wore red and blue caps that had been made by striking capmakers. The Jewish protestors were demonstrating for a more just society as could be seen by one of their banners emblazoned with “We Want the Children in Schools and Not In Shops.”  (The Union Movement opposed child labor and supported universal public school eduation)

1891: “To Build A New Opera House” published today described the plans of Oscar Hammerstein, the owner of the Harlem Opera House and Columbia Theatre to build a new venue on 34th Street, just west of Broadway.  Hammerstein plans to use the new building which is estimated to cost $250,000 will for German grand operas for four months of the year and then use it as a venue for grand theatrical performances during the balance of the year.  This would keep the building in use for all 12 months which is a departure of normal business model.

1891: Religious Riot in Zante” published today described a religious riot in the capital city of this Greek Island of the same name.  During a procession on Good Friday (according to the Greek Orthodox Calendar) the Christians attacked the Jewish quarter of the town.  Soldiers fired on the mob which refused to disperse and threatened to burn down all of the homes and businesses of the Jews. (This stands in stark contrast to what happened during WW II. Mayor Loukas Career and Bishop Chrysostomos refused to give the Nazis the names of the Jews living there and instead hid them. All of the Jews survived the Holocaust.

1892: Today’s “New Publications” column contained a review of The Early Religion of Israel, as set forth by Biblical Writers and Modern Critical Historiansby James Robertson which is based on the Baird Lectures for 1889.

1893(16th of Iyar, 5653): Johann Schnitzler a Hungarian-Austrian Jewish laryngologist who was a native of Nagy Kanizsa (today part of Hungary) passed away. He was the father of famed playwright Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) and Julius Schnitzler. In 1860 he earned his medical doctorate at the University of Vienna, where from 1863 to 1867 he worked as an assistant to Johann von Oppolzer (1808-1871). In 1880 he was appointed associate professor of laryngology at the University of Vienna, and later became director of its policlinic. Schnitzler was a pioneer of modern laryngology, and author of numerous works on diseases of the throat and larynx. His best known written work was Klinischer Atlas der Laryngologie (Clinical Atlas of Laryngology), which was published posthumously in 1895. In 1860 with Philipp Markbreiter (1810-1882), he founded the Wiener Medizinische Presse, a publication of which he remained as editor until 1886Schnitzler is credited with coining the term "spastic dysphonia" for a vocal disorder known today as spasmodic dysphonia

1893: “Jews Attacked by Anti-Semites” published today described an outbreak of violence at Trappau, the capital of Austrian Silesia.  Forty anti-Semites attacked five Jewish officers who fired their revolvers in self-defense, wounding 12 of their attackers.

1894(26thof Nisan, 5654): Seventy-eight year old Rudolph Carl Hertzog, who founded his nationally known department store at 1839 in Berlin, passed away today.

1894(26thof Nisan 5654): Sixty-nine year old Sarah Miriam Carvalho the daughter of Jacob da Silva Solis and Charity Solis and the wife of Solomon Nunes Carvalho passed away today in New York.

1894: The funeral of Jesse Seligman, who passed away on April 23 in California, took place today at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50D11F73C5A1A738DDDAA0894DD405B8485F0D3

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A07E0D6173EEF33A25750C0A9639C94659ED7CF

1895: Birthdate of Lorenz Hart, the son Jewish-German immigrants who was a highly productive lyricist for Broadway musicals and films.  He is the Hart in the team of Rogers and Hart.  Some of the tunes you might recognize are “Blue Moon,” “The Lady is a Tramp” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the world.”  He passed away in 1943.

1895: In New York, Isidor Bader took a seven year old “deaf and dumb boy” who had been abandoned by an un-known man and woman to the police station of on Madison Street.

1895: Female members of Temple Emanu-El will meet at four o’clock this afternoon to discuss plans for the fair to be held in December at Madison Square Garden for the benefit of the Hebrew Technical Institute and Education Alliance.

1895: Dr. Henry M. Sanders and Professor Albert S. Bickmore delivered an illustrated lecture describing Jaffa, Hebron and Bethlehem in which they described Jaffa as “a place of 8,000 inhabitants composed mostly of fugitive from all parts of the world;” Hebron as now being “believed to be almost as ancient as Damascus;’ and “Bethlehem as being “noted for its fertility and the beauty of its women.”

1896: Henry Rice, Isaiah Joseph, J.H. Schiff, Simon Borge, Isidor Straus, Louis Stern and Louis Stern are among those who bought boxes for tonight’s concert at the Metropolitan Opera House the proceeds of which will go to the United Hebrew Charities.

1896: Harold Frederic reports from London on the financial consequences of the recent demise of Baron Hirsch. Members of the British government are expecting a windfall to the Exchequer from the death duties that will have to be paid.  They are projected to exceed the amount collected from the estate of another prominent Jew, Sir Julian Goldsmid.  On the other hand, the Prince of Wales is quite concerned over how he shall back the considerable sums that he had borrowed from the Baron.  Rumor has it that the future King need not worry since there is a clause in the Baron’s will that absolves the Prince of Wales of his debts.  

1897: Birthdate of Dr. Moses Paulson, the Baltimore born WW I Army veteran who specialized in research of concerning “digestive diseases.”

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

1898: Harry Bernstein said today “that he had no doubt that $10,000 could be raised by the Jewish residents of the Fifth Ward” in Cleveland, Ohio to purchase a warship for the fight against Spain.

1898: “A mass meeting” is scheduled to “be held in the auditorium of the Educational Alliance at 8 o’clock under the auspices of the Hebrew Volunteer Bureau for the purpose of encouraging” Jewish citizens to volunteer for service in the fight against Spain.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C0DE0DF103CE433A25756C0A9639C94699ED7CF

1898: “To Encourage Hebrew Volunteering” published today described the intention of “a committee of thirty prominent citizens” to “muster and equip at least two regiments of “Jewish “volunteers from the down-town section” of New York where several hundred Jews “have already signed the enrollment roster.”

1898: “Predictions About The War” published today described the ease with which most American leaders thought the war with Spain would be won including “‘It will be a war of one encounter,’ cried Mr. Pulitzer of the New York World, that most patriotic of Polish Jews.”

1899: Martin Sigismund Eduard von Simson whose family converted to Protestantism in 1823 who served as the first President of the Reichstag passed away today.

1900: It was reported today that Hungarian painter Mihali Munkascy, born Leo Lieb, the son of a German Jew who had come to Hungary as a land agent ad participated in the uprisings of 1848, was to be buried in Budapest after taking his own life yesterday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihály_Munkácsy#/media/File:Munkácsy_Self-portrait_1870s.jpg

1901: Today, The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association made public its program for the summer which included a lecture on Palestine by Reverend Davenport and a performance of the Oratorio “Elijah.”

1903(5thof Iyar, 5663): Parashat Tazria-Metzora; 20th day of the Omer.

1902: As part of today’s celebration of the 14th Arbor Day, at the Educational Alliance, “several hundred little immigrant boys and girls” who “had been instructed to bring with them little blocks of earth, of which, though it is a scarce article in the East side, each had one had managed to obtain a small supply” placed the earth in little boxes and planted seeds it them.

1903: As Jews prepared to count the 21st day of the Omer this evening, the world was being made richer by the births of Bing Crosby and Dr. Benjamin Spock

1904: In an act of leniency, the Justice at the Municipal court told Julius Goldman that he could stay in his apartment through May 5, the day his sister is scheduled to be married but would have to move on May 6 unless he paid his rent which was just one of the surprise rulings granted to the poor people living on the Lower East Side, a disproportionate number of whom were Jewish.

1905(27thof Nisan, 5665): Fifty-one year old Charity Lyon, the Philadelphia born daughter of Elvira and David Hays Solis, the wife of Edmund Robert Lyon and the mother of Eliva, Augusta and Walter Lyon passed away today in her home town

1906: In Riga, Morduch (Mark) Halsman, a dentist, and Ita Grintuch, a grammar school principal gave birth to “American portrait photographer” Philippe Halsman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Halsman#/media/File:Philippe_Halsman_self.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Halsman#/media/File:Philippe_Halsman_self.jpg

https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/philippe-halsman/

https://npg.si.edu/exh/halsman/intro.htm

1907: Birthdate of McKees Rock, PA native and expert on the Soviet Union Merle Fainsod, the holder of Ph.D. from Harvard, Director of the Harvard University Library and one of seven Harvard professors to sign a letter published in the Times in 1970 criticizing Sec. of State Rogers’ new Middle East Policy who raised two daughters with his wife Elizabeth.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/12/archives/dr-merle-fainsod-of-harvard-leading-soviet-scholar-64-dies-head-of.html?searchResultPosition=1

1907: Birthdate of St. Paul, MN native Pincus Leff who gained fame as Pinky Lee host of the 1950’s children’s television program, Pinky Lee Show

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/07/obituaries/pinky-lee-85-host-of-children-s-tv-shows-dies.html

1908(1stof Iyar, 5668): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1908: “Take Me out to the Ballgame”, one of the most popular song’s connected with baseball was copyrighted today.  The music for this American classic were written by a Jew named Albert Von Tilzer.

1909(11th of Iyar, 5669): Ninety-seven year old David Woolf Marks passed away today.

1910: “Jerusalem Jews in Danger” published today described the attack made on Mrs. Herbert Turell in March by “a fanatic Mohammedan” while she was in Jerusalem” and the fear expressed by Ambassador Straus to her that any demand for justice made on behalf of her and her companion “would have brought about a demonstration again the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem.”

1911: Dr. Solomon Schechter, the President of the Jewish Theological Institute arrived on the Berlin tonight marking his return from an 11 month long vacations.

1912: Birthdate of Axel Springer German newspaper magnate.  Springer was honored by numerous organizations included the Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University, and The New York Leo Baeck Institute for his work to preserve German Jewish Culture and History and his support of Israel.  It was not just a personal commitment.  His editorial policies stated that the organization was to promote "the reconciliation of Jews and Germans and support for the vital rights of the State of Israel." 

1912: The British inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic whose survivors included journalist Edith Rosenbaum and Elizabeth and Martin Rothschild, the aunt and uncle of Dorothy Parker but claimed the lives of several other prominent Jews began today in London.

1912: In the Ottoman Empire Faisal, the future King Faisal I of Iraq, and Huzaima bin Nasser gave birth to Ghazi bin Faisal who served as King of Iraq from 1933 to 1939 during which time he was “won over by pro-Nazi elements in the government and military as the tide of public feeling began turning against Iraq’s Jews. C

1913(25th of Nisan, 5673): Cleveland, Ohio political leaders Ben Windecker passed away today.

1913: Cantor Millard conducted services this evening at the Chicago Hebrew Institute which hosted a “social dance” the following evening.

1913(25thof Nisan, 5673): Seventy-eight year old “railroad construction pioneer” passed away today in Los Angeles.

1914: The trial of those accused of murdering Herman Rosnethal resumed in New York City.

1915(18thof Iyar, 5675): Lag B’Omer

1915: At Columbia University, Louis D. Brandeis delivered “an appeal to the Jews living in America to support all of the small nations of the world” which he said was “the best means of obtaining fair treatment for the Jews.”

1915: The Independent Order of B’nai B’rith which had “40,083 members” held its “tenth quinquennial convention” today in San Francisco.

1915: In New York, songwriter Fred Fisher and his wife gave birth to singer/songwriter Doris Fisher who performed with Eddie Duchin.

1916: In Chicago, dedication of Kehillath Jacob Synagogue.

1916: During a luncheon meeting of the Clergy Club of New York, the guest of honor Sir Herbert Tree challenged the recent attempt of the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis to ban the performance of “Merchant of Venice” because of the creation of Shylock which they view as an archetypically anti-Semitic character.

1916: While continuing in his efforts to try “to get possession of the offices in the new Rialto Theatre build which he asserts were set aside for him” which the remodeling plans were being made told the magistrate in the West Side Court, that when he went to the theatre on April 29th“he found the room padlocked” and when he returned on May 1 “he found a guard who had been employed to keep him out” which led him to take further legal action today in the West Side Court of Magistrate Barlow.

1917(10thof Iyar, 5677): During WW I, 28 year old Captain Maixme Berr, an artillery officer in the French Army, the son of Lehmann Berr and Henrietta Alice Berr (nee Levy was killed today.

1917: “A dinner was held” tonight “at the home of Henry Morgenthau, the former Ambassador to Turkey” where Judge Otto A Rosalsky, Jacob Billikopf and Jacob H. Schiff discussed that national campaign of the American Jewish Relief Committee for Jewish War Sufferers and “it was announced that $900,000” had already been raised in New York to meet the national goal.

1917: “News of the demolition in Petrograd of the famous monument erected to Catherine II of Russia and its recasting into shells at the request of the Committee of Soldiers was cabled The Jewish Daily Forward” today “by its correspondent in Petrograd” who also reported that funds were being raised to erect a monument to Nicholas Tshernyshevsky “the Russian patriot and author who spent nineteen years in exile and hard labor in Siberia.”

1918(20th of Iyar): Joshua Barzilia Eisenstadt passed away today.

1918: In London, the War Office issued its official statement describing the successful assault during Allenby’s campaign by British infantry on the foothills south and southeast of Es-Salt which made it possible for Australian mounted troops to enter Es-Salt where they capture 33 Germans and 317 Turkish troops.

1919(2nd of Iyar, 5679): Gustav Landauer, German anarchist and pacifist, who was the grandfather of Mike Nichols the famous American writer, director and producer, passed away today.

1919: Birthdate of “Jacob Bigeleisen, a chemist who worked on the development of the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project and helped discover new ways of analyzing chemical reactions…”

1919: Mrs. Nathaniel E. Harris, the President of the Council of Jewish Women attended the opening meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in Philadelphia.

 1920(14thof Iyar, 5680): Pesach Sheni

1920(14thof Iyar, 5680): Seventy-year old Odessa born American physician Adolph Zederbaum who was a friend of Dr. Charles David Spivak both of whom chose to practice medicine in the United States instead of Palestine passed away today.

1921: Riots in Jaffa, Palestine causes the deaths of 40 Jews and 200 wounded. Martial law was put in effect after Jewish stores were looted.

1922: David Lindo Alexander, the barrister and leader of the Anglo-Jewish community who opposed Zionism was buried today next to his wife at Wilesden Jewish Cemetery.

1922: In Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Harry Shipiatsky, who changed his name to Rosenthal after emigrating to Canada in the 1890’s and Sarah Dickstein gave birth to their youngest child , Abraham Rosenthal who as A.M. Rosenthal, rose to become  the executive editor of the New York Times.  He later became a columnist for the New York Daily News

1922: In New York City, Samuel Untermyer made a vigorous attack on critics of the Zionist cause at a meeting tonight sponsored by the Washington Heights Congregation. Other speakers were Nahum Sokolow, Colonel J.H. Patterson and Vladimir Jabotinsky, who appealed for contributions to the Palestine Foundation Fund that needs three million dollars to meet its budgetary goals.  Untermyer said the funds were going to aid those seeking to “escape from the hate, persecutions, pogroms and massacres of the crazed, bigoted and Jew-baiting peoples of Eastern and Southeastern Europe.”  Furthermore, the funds would only be used to develop the land including programs to buy land, build houses and finance public works projects.

1924: Miriam (née Riegler) and Josef Bikel from Bukovina gave birth to multi-talented performer, Theodore Bikel. (who is one of my all-time favorites) Born in born in Vienna, Bikel's family took him to Palestine during the 1930's.  Bikel supported himself as a musician and appeared in several stage productions of Habimah, the Israeli theatre.  He honed his stage acting skills in London.  Ironically, one of his first American film roles was as a German naval officer in The African Queen.  It was one of many times he would play German and Russian characters.  In a linguistic tour de force, he played a southern sheriff in the Defiant Ones, a part for which he received an Oscar nomination.  Bikel's most famous role on the American stage was the male lead in the Sounds of Music, playing opposite Mary Martin.  Bikel is multi-lingual and a skilled guitarist.  This has made a favorite among folk music followers.  Bikel has been outspoken labor activist in the film and theatre industries.  And, he is an ardent Zionist.

http://www.bikel.com/

1927: Louis Zabar, who created Zabar’s the icon of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, married Lillian Teitlebaum.  The future Mrs. Zabar had been living in Philadelphia before she moved to New York where she met Zabar whom she had originally known from the Ukrainian village in which they had both lived. They had three children – Saul, Stanley and Eli.  She passed away in 1995.

1927: “The Heart Thief” a silent melodrama starring Joseph Schildkraut was released in the United States today.

1927: In Birthdate of Amos Levine, the Tel Aviv native who as Amos Kenan became an Israeli columnist, painter, sculptor, playwright and novelist. He was known as a critic of Israeli policy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/world/middleeast/06kenan.html

1928: In San Francisco, Sydney Myer, the creation of the Australian department store that bears his name and Merlyn Myer gave birth to their youngest child Marigold Merlyn Baillieu Myer.

1929: Tel Aviv celebrated its 20th anniversary today at an afternoon tea party.  One of the highlights of the event was the congratulatory speech by Major J.F. Campbell, District Commissioner of Southern Palestine which was delivered entirely in Hebrew.  “This was the first time in the history of the country since the British occupation that a high British official has delivered a public address entirely in Hebrew.”  The first child born in Tel Aviv, who is now twenty years old, “welcomed the guests in the name of the city’s young people.”

1930: In Tel Aviv, Moshe and Sarah Kaniuk gave birth to Israeli author and journalist and Yoram Kaniuk.

1930: In Tel Aviv, Moshe Kaniuk, the first curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and his wife gave birth to Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk

1931: It was reported today that “General Ludendorff, who attributed his defeat in the war to the intervention of Jewry” and who wants “to have a Germany racially purely Germanic, free from Jewish-Marxist-Catholic domination” has now declared war on his old colleague” Adolph Hitler with whom he stood trial for the 1923 Munich Putsch at which time he declared “himself a violent anti-Semite.”

1932:  Jack Benny's first radio show premiered on the NBC Blue Network, The color coding was to differentiate the two NBC networks from one another, not a reference to off-color material.  This was one of the milestones in Benny's career which included vaudeville, films and television

1932: Birthdate of composer Malcolm Lipkin, the native of Liverpool who was a protégé composer Mátyás György Seiber, the Hungarian composer who fled Germany after the rise of the Nazis.

1933: The United Committee for the Settlement of German Jews is organized to aid immigrants.

1933: The polarization between the labor Movement (Histadrut and Mapai) and the Revisionists intensify and reach their peak after the assassination of Chaim Arlozoroff.

1934:  Congressman Louis T. McFadden delivers an anti-Semitic speech on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

1934: Funeral services were held this morning for Israel Unterberg in the Unterberg Memorial Building of JTS followed by interment at the Shearith Israel Cemetery in Brooklyn

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/05/02/94520698.pdf

1934: The defense in the trial of three revisionist Zionists for the murder of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff obtained admissions today from men employed by the police to make plaster casts of the footprints of the accused that some of the casts did not fit.  While cross-examining Inspector Riggs of the Palestine Police, defense counsel Horace Samuel attempted to establish the fact that the police had “hushed up the confession of Abdul Megid and his accomplice, Isa that they had murdered” the Zionist leader.

1935: Joseph Budko becomes director of the new Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem. Born in1888, he left Germany in 1933 and settled in Palestine.  He passed away in 1940.

1935: As Palestine endures a heat wave, temperatures reach 104 degrees “in the shade.” The average temperature for May is 65 degrees.

1935: With Canada Dry Ginger Ale as a sponsor, Jack Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program on the NBC Blue Network

1935: Arguments began before the Supreme Justices including Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo in the case of “A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States,”

 1936: Sixty-second running of the Kentucky Derby. “The Kentucky Derby was, in effect, a Jewish "sweep." Bold Venture was the winner, owned by Morton Schwartz, trained by Max Hirsch and ridden by Ira Hanford. All the human beings involved in this horse racing victory were Jews. Sometimes we suspect that Bold Venture was Jewish that day, too”

1936: “The Appellate Court at Hamm in the Ruhr which has been sentencing alleged traitors to the regime (Jews, trade unionists and Socialists) “to penal servitude in batches of 90 to 100 sentenced another back to terms ranging from 8 months one and three quarter years” today on the same day that Chancellor Hitler was “offering assurances” on the way that the “German people were leading, ordering and guiding themselves.

1936: Mrs. Estelle M. Sternberger, executive director of World Peaceways “praised the work of ORT (a non-profit global Jewish organization that promotes education and training in communities worldwide) in providing constructive relief for the Jews of Eastern and Central Europe” saying “saying that “while malicious propagandists throw dust into the eyes of their fellow-citizens by weird stories of Jewish plots to dominate this earth, the ORT builds school after school to rain Jewish workers and artisans to be humble but respected men and women and youth in the ranks of world industry.

1936: “The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee announced” today “that on the basis of reports from offices abroad, all remaining Jewish actors, singers and concert artists were deprived of employment in German in 1935 and 1,000 of the 6,000 remaining physicians had emigrated” while at the same time medical licenses were no being issued to Jews.”

1936: “A report from Jerusalem made public” today “by the United Palestine Appeal announced the $10,337,000 had been spent in Palestine from October 1, 1932 to March 31, 1936 by the Palestine /foundation Fund, the Jewish National Fund and the German Settlement Bureau of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.”

1936: “Julliard-trained pianist Jeanne Rabin” and violinist George Rabin gave birth to violinist Michael Rabin who is part of long list of distinguished Jewish violinists that runs from A to Z; from Joseph Achron and to Paul Zukofsky.

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

1937: “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise celebrated his thirtieth anniversary service as head of the Free Synagogue today by paying tribute to colleagues, leaders of the Christian church and to world figures whose achievements were sources of inspiration to him.

1937: “Mayor La Guardia received the medal of The American Hebrew for promotion of understanding between Jew and Christian tonight in a ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel- in which he was praised for his political and economic beliefs as well as his tolerance.

1938(1stof Iyar, 5698): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1938(1stof Iyar, 5698): Sixty-eight year old Philadelphia native Joseph W. Salus, the “President of the Broad Street Trust company and head of A. Salus and Son who had previously “represented Atlantic City in the New Jersey Assembly” passed away tonight.

1938: “The British partition commission began its tour of inquiry this morning, driving from Jerusalem to Jaffa and Tel Aviv.” Tel Aviv Mayor Israel Rokach took the commissioners on a tour of Tel Aviv harbor.  The commissioners expressed a great deal of interest in the harbor facilties in Tel Aviv and nearby Jaffa.  They were surprised to learn that the Jews of Tel Aviv supplied most of that city’s funding for the harbor and that Jewish taxpayers of Tel Aviv paid to support the educational and health services in Jaffa.  Residents of Jaffa made no such contribution to Tel Aviv.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that six Arab constables were killed when a gang of Arab terrorists attacked a police post near Kalkilya. Several casualties were suffered by the attackers who retreated with horses and rifles of their victims. Arab terrorists fired at the Jewish quarter of Safad and at Rosh Pina. They tampered with railway tracks, cut telephone wires and carried other acts of sabotage.

1939: Helen Fixler, a native of Sighet and  and Polish born Elias (Elihyahu) Irom gave birth to Barbara Irom

1939:Kibbutz Dalia and Kibbutz BaMifne which had been unified by a decision in the secretariat of Hashomer Hatzair settled in Ramat Menashe today.

1940: In the morning President Roosevelt met with Secretary Henry J. Morgenthau, Jr.

1940: This evening actor Melvyn Douglas arrived at the White House as a “houseguest.”

1941: Release date for “My Favorite Wife,” a comedy directed by Garson Kanin.

1941: Today after much tension between the Rashid Ali government and the British, the besieged forces at RAF Habbaniya under Air Vice-Marshal H. G. Smart launched pre-emptive air strikes against Iraqi forces throughout Iraq which marked the real beginning of the Anglo-Iraqi War began for real which lead to the Farhud, an Iraqi Pogrom aimed at that country’s ancient Jewish community in June.

1941: In Nazi occupied Netherlands Jewish journalists are laid off.

1942(15thof Iyar, 5702): Parashat Emor

1942(15thof Iyar, 5702): Fifty year old Abraham Epstein the Russian born son of Leon and Bessie Levoitz Epstein a pioneer in the field of providing financial support for the “elderly” which led to what we now know as Social Security who raised one son, Pierre Leon Epstein, with his wife Henritte, passed away today.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/historians-miscellaneous-biographies/abraham-epstein

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/05/03/170362012.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/29/opinion/l-remembering-a-father-of-social-security-302692.html

https://www.amazon.com/Abraham-Epstein-Forgotten-Father-Security/dp/0826216811

1943(27th of Nisan, 5703): Four thousand Jews from Miedzyrzec Podlaski, Poland are murdered at the Treblinka death camp.

1943(27th of Nisan, 5703): At Luków, Poland, 4000 Jews are killed

1943: Memorial rallies were held today as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the plight of European Jewry and gain support for providing aid. “The memorial rallies …were in many instances jointly led by Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbis--an uncommon display of unity. Equally significant, the Federal Council of Churches (whose Foreign Secretary had addressed the students' inter-seminary conference earlier that year) agreed to organize memorial assemblies at churches in numerous cities on the same day. Many of the assemblies featured speeches by rabbis and Christian clergymen, as well as prominent political figures. The gatherings received significant coverage in the newspapers and on radio. This important Jewish-Christian alliance helped raise American public consciousness about the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry.” (As reported by the David S. Wyman Institute)

http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2003-02-golinkin.php

1944: Robert Abshagen, was sentenced to death for his work in the anti-Hitler resistance.

1945: In Germany, the SS guards at the Neustadt-Glowen, labor camp near Lübeck fail to report for morning roll call, giving freedom to Jewish women who have been brought from Ravensbrück and Breslau, Germany, to dig defensive trenches and anti-tank ditches.

1945: Members of the U.S. Army’s 522nd Field Artillery Battalion “a Nisei unit” “discovered the survivors of a death march headed southwards from the Dachau main camp towards the Austrian border nearest the town of Waakirchen” today.

1945: Berlin surrendered to the Soviet Army. Out of a pre-war Jewish population of 33,000, only 162 survived

1945: “James Venture, one of those aboard the infamous Train de Loos, which carried French resistance fighters, Communists and Jews from a prison in the northern French village of Loos to concentration camps in Germany in September 1944” was liberated from the camp at Wöbbelin today.

1945: The Central Board of the Charity Institution for Aged Needy People (at Athens) attempted to make the elderly Jews comfortable in their last years. In a letter to the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece, they wrote:  "Honorable Sirs, The Central Board of the Charity Institution for Aged Needy People deeply sympathize with the martyrdom of the so terribly persecuted Jewish race by the wild and barbaric conqueror."

1945: “Raising a flag over the Reichstag,” a historic World War II photograph taken during the Battle of Berlin which depicts several Soviet troops raising the flag of the Soviet Union atop the German Reichstag building was taken today by Yevgeny Khaldei in another example of Jewish photographer taking an iconic WW II photograph such as the Iwo Jima Flag Raising

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

1945: President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9547 which made possible the Nuremberg Trials.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/order9547.html

1946: In Brooklyn, Leo Goldstein, “the owner of Peter Pan, a children’s swimwear and underwear manufacturer and Ronny Gore gave birth to Lesley Sue Goldstein who gained fame and singer, songwriter and actress Lesley Gore, the sister of composer Michael Gore.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/its-my-party-singer-lesley-gore-dies-aged-68/

1946(1stof Iyar, 5706): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1946(1stof Iyar, 5706): Eighty-three year old Dr. Simon Flexner, the Louisville, KY born son of “Morris Flexner and Esther Abraham, the pharmacist who went on to earn his M.D. and became on the nation’s leading pathologists passed away today.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbm.1949.0006

https://rockfound.rockarch.org/biographical/-/asset_publisher/6ygcKECNI1nb/content/simon-flexner?

1946(1stof Iyar, 5706): Forty-six year old Adolphus Leo Weil, Jr, the son of “Cassie Ritter Weil” and Adolphus Leo Weil passed away today after which he was buried in the Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, PA.

1946: A funeral service is held in Kraków, Poland, for seven Jews who were murdered on April 30 by anti-Semitic thugs at Nowy Targ, Poland.

1947(12th of Iyar, 5707): Henry Monsky, international president of B'nai B'rith and chairman of the interim committee of the American Jewish Congress passed away today in the Hotel Biltmore at the age of 57, while attending a meeting of the future organization committee of the conference.

1947: U.S. premiere of the Christmas classic “Miracle on 34th Street” produced by William Perlberg.

1948: Rusztem Vambery, the son of orientalist Armin Vambery, completed his service as Hungary’s ambassador to the United States.

1948: In response to the illegal attacks by Arab forces that had begun the day after the Partition vote, the Palmach 3rd Battalion, commanded by Moshe Kelman, attacked Ein al-Zeitun with a Davidka, two 3-inch mortars and eight 2-inch mortars

1949: Arthur Miller won the Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman."  “Death of a Salesman” went on to be a successful film as well.  Born in 1915, Miller's long career has included plays on a variety of topics including “The Crucible,” which used the Salem Witch Trials to challenge the Right Wing reactionaries including the followers of Senator Joe McCarthy during the 1950's.

1950: “A United Nations plane flying southward over Israeli territory was forced down at Lydda Airport today after Israeli Army fighters had fired across its nose. The plane was permitted to continue on to an Arab field at Kallandia, in Jordan after an official check.”

1950: Sketches of the Pulitzer Prize Winner in Jouranlism, Letters and Music for 1950” published today contained bios of

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/05/02/94256974.pdf

1951: Prime Minister David Ben Gurion left Israel for a private visit in the United States, accompanied by Chaim Herzog. During the trip he will meet with President Truman, as well as with young leaders from both political parties. One of them is Congressman John F. Kennedy. Ben Gurion will also vit Israeli air force students in California and a company manufacturing aircraft parts. The plant belongs to Al Schwimmer, a former American volunteer in the War of Independence.

1951: Syrian forces took positions in Tel Mutilla, in the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria, and Meir Amit was ordered to dislodge them. Leading his Golani infantry brigade - he had become its commander in 1950 - Amit pressed the attack for four consecutive days, compelling the Syrians to withdraw. But with 40 of his soldiers killed in action and many others wounded, he faced serious criticism from senior officers and was called to defend his actions. The Battle of Tel Motila took place near Almagor, a Moshav north of the Sea of Galilee founded in 1961.

1951: For the only time in major league history, a Jewish batter faced a Jewish pitcher whose battery mate was also Jewish.  Detroit Tiger Pitcher Saul Rogovin was on the mound. Catcher Joe Ginsberg was behind the plate.  Lou Limmer, the Philadelphia Athletics’ first baseman was at bat.  Limmer hit the first pitch into the stands.

1952: “Belles on Their Toes” the Henry and Phoebe Ephron sequel to “Cheaper by the Dozen” directed by Henry Levin was released today in the United States

1952: “Young Man with Ideas” a romantic comedy co-starring Sheldon Leonard with a script co-authored by Arthur Sheekman, music by David Rose and filmed cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg was released today.

1953: Faisal II of Iraq’s regency came to an end as he assume rule of his country – a rule that would come to violent end with his murder that would strengthen the hand of Pan Arabist Gamal Nasser, the Egyptian leader who failed in his efforts to destroy Israel.

1954: Birthdate of Elliot Goldenthal, the native of Brooklyn and “the youngest son of a Jewish housepainter father and a Catholic seamstress mother” who won “the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for his score to the motion picture Frida.”

1956: “The Many Loves of Hilda Crane” a screen adaptation of a Samson Raphaelson play with music by David Raskin was released today in the United States.

1957(1stof Iyar, 5717): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1957(1stof Iyar, 5717): Sixty-five year old Yale trained ophthalmologist Arthur M. Yudkin, the husband of Adel Yudkin and father of Marvin and Dr. Gerald Yudkin passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/05/04/84722781.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312661/pdf/taos00044-0025.pdf

1958: Opening of the Cannes Film Festival where one of the entrants was “The Brothers Karamazov” directed by Richard Brooks, produced by Pandro S. Berman, with a script by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Richard Brooks and featuring William Shatner in his film debut.

1960(5thof Iyar, 5720): Israel marks its 12th year of independence on Yom HaAtzma’ut.

1962: In Philadelphia, PA, Lillian Jenkins and Manuel Jenkins, a Jewish “car salesman and nightclub owner” gave birth to actress Tamara Jenkins.

1963: In London, Lucian Freud and Bernadine Coverley gave birth to British novel Esther Freud who is the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and a niece of Clement Freud.

1962(28th of Nisan, 5722): Seventy-two year old composer and songwriter Irving Bobo who may have been a descendant of Nathan Bobo, a German Jewish immigrant who helped to settle New Mexico, passed away today.

1966(12thof Iyar, 5726): Eighty-eight year old Hyman Pearlstone, the native of Buffalo, TX who was a businessman in Waco, Palestine and Dallas, TX where he was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and who was born exactly ten years before his brother Julius Hart Pearlstone passed away today. (Some sources show May 1 as the day he passed away.)

1967(22ndof Nisan, 5727): Eighth Day of Pesach

1968(4th of Iyar, 5728): Yom HaAtzma'ut

1968: Israeli television began broadcasting.

1968: Birthdate of Edward Frenkel, the Russian-born, Harvard educated mathematician and filmmaker who won the Hermann Weyl Prize in 2002.

1968: Release date of the cinematic version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple co-starring Walter Matthau and directed by Gene Saks.

1972(18thof Iyar, 5732): Lag B’Omer

1973: “Messiah of Evil’ a horror film co-directed, co-produced and with a script co-authored by Gloria Katz was released in the United States

1974(10thof Iyar, 5734): Fifty-six year old, Philadelphia native Abraham Allen Weintraub, a long-time administrator of St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock, a very dedicated civic worker and an inspiration to all who worked with him” and who is the namesake of “The A. Allen Weintraub Memorial Award, the highest honor bestowed upon an individual by the Arkansas Hospital Association” passed away today.

1975: Larry Blyden (born Ivan Lawrence Blieden) “reprised his role as “Ensign Pulver” in a tribute for director Joshua Logan at the Imperial Theatre.

1975: The American Jewish Committee announced publication of a guidebook by Gladys Rosen suggesting ways to recognize Jewish contributions to the United States during the Bicentennial celebrations.

1976(2ndof Iyar, 5736): Fifty-nine year old Polish born shipping executive Samuel H. Wang, who had four children – Nathan, Daniel, Hanita and Devorah – with his wife Gloria passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/05/archives/samuel-h-wang-ship-operator-59-he-headed-bulk-carriers-pioneered.html

1976:  Agudath Achim, the Orthodox congregation in Little Rock, AR, dedicates its newest building.  This is the third home for the congregation; the first one that is not in the downtown section of the city. 

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the U.S. President, Jimmy Carter, told the visiting Premier, Menachem Begin, that the U.S. will "never waiver" in its "absolute commitment to the Israeli security," even though "we may, from time to time, have a transient difference with the people of Israel". Some 150 American rabbis participating in the White House reception given to honor the Prime Minister Menachem Begin, presented the U.S. National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, with a petition protesting the proposed Middle Eastern arms embargo, which would directly affect Israel.

1978(25th of Nisan, 5738): Seventy-five year old New York attorney and executive director of the National War Labor Board Robert Abelow who was the Editor-In Chief of the Employee Relations Law Journal passed away today.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that despite the U.S. State Department's official objections, the Palestine Liberation Organization opened an information office in Washington, under the management of Hatem Husseini, a Palestinian citizen of Jordan.

1979(5thof Iyar, 5739): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1979(5thof Iyar, 5739): Just a week before his seventieth-eighth birthday Russian born French Professor of Genetics Boris Ephrussi passed away.

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ge.14.120180.002311?journalCode=genet

1979: Seventy-eight year old “Betty Blanc Glassbury, a poet and collector of Asian art,” the widow of John Adam Glassbury, whom his grandson Dr. Richard Dombroff described as “Dr. Welby in real life” and the mother of Eunice Glassbury Dombroff, passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/04/archives/betty-blanc-glassbury-78-poet-longtime-collector-of-asian-art.html

1980(16th of Iyyar, 5740): Arab terrorists kill 6 Jews and injure 17 at Hebron. Israeli military authorities order the deportation of the mayors of Hebron and the nearby village of Halhoul for incitement to violence. The mayors appeal to Israeli courts, which affirm the order. In December, they will be deported to southern Lebanon.

1981: Rabbi Joseph P. Weinberg officiated at the wedding of Harolyn Sue Landow and Michael H. Cardozo at Washington Hebrew Congregation. Mr. Cardozo is a cousin the late Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo.

1981(28thof Nisan, 5741): Eighty-five year old Dr. David Wechsler, a psychologist who was the author of widely used intelligence tests, passed away today in New York City. (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/03/obituaries/dr-david-wechsler-85-author-of-intelligence-tests.html

1981(28thof Nisan, 5741): Eighty-one year old Rabbi Joseph Hager, founder and senior rabbi of the Wall Street Synagogue, passed away today. A native of Rumania, Rabbi Hager founded two schools, the Hebrew Institute of Long Island, in Far Rockaway, and the Yeshiva of Spring Valley, in Rockland County. He was the founding editor and publisher of Synagogue Light, a monthly publication. The Wall Street Synagogue was first situated at Broadway and Duane Street and later move to 47 Beekman Street.

1981: A police sapper was moderately injured by an explosive charge that had been placed in a trash can near Cafe Alno in Jerusalem.

1982: “Talk With George Steiner” published today provides a look at the views of this Jewish philosopher, author and academic.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/02/books/talk-with-george-steiner.html

1982: Mayor Ed Koch is expected to be among the 450 guests attending the dinner tonight celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights which has been led by Rabbi Robert L. Lehman for the past twenty-five years.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/02/nyregion/hebrew-tabernacle-marking-75th-anniversary.html?pagewanted=print

1982: “Alive And 90 In The Jungles of Brazil” published today provides a detailed review of The Portage To San Cristobal of A.H., George Steiner’s novel about Adolph Hitler.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/02/books/alive-and-90-in-the-jungles-of-brazil.html?pagewanted=all

1983(19thof Iyar, 5743): Seventy year old Brooklyn born Benjamin R Epstein, the Pennsylvania educated former director of the ADL and author who raised two children – Ellen and David – with his wife Ethel passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/04/obituaries/benjamin-epstein-director-of-league-fighting-prejudice.html

1983: Barrick Resources Corporation which had been founded by Peter Munk “became a publicly traded company today” when it was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

1984: The three day suspension of publication of Hadashot mandated by the military censor for publication of an article about the Kav 300 affair came to an end

1984: “Sunday in the Park with George,” a music with lyrics and a score by Stephen Sondheim opened at the Booth Theatre today.

1985: In Great Neck NY, John Hughes and Amy Pastarnack, a Jewish breast cancer survivor gave birth to Olympic medal winning figure skater Sarah Elizabeth Hughts.

1987: “P.L.O., Reunited But Isolated” published today described the disarray among those committed to the destruction of Israel.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/02/world/plo-reunited-but-isolated-will-move-to-algeria-and-iraq.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1989(27thof Nisan, 5749): Yom HaShoah

1990: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher addressed the Women’s International Zionist Organization at its Centenary Lunch

1990(7th of Iyar, 5750): Thirty-eight year old David Rapport the London native who was born with achondroplasia and began his acting career in 1979 passed away today.

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

1991(18th of Iyar, 5751): Lag B’Omer

1991: Final broadcast of season six of The Cosby Show, a co-creation of Ed Weinberger.

1991(18th of Iyar, 5751): Eighty-two year old Leib Lensky, an actor who appeared in plays, films and television programs and performed in English, Yiddish and Hebrew, passed away today

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/05/obituaries/leib-lensky-82-dies-acted-in-films-and-tv.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1992(29th of Nisan, 5752): Dr. Lee Salk passed away.  Born in 1926, Salk gained famed as a “baby doctor" and author on family matters.  He died of cardiac arrest at the age of 65.

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/04/nyregion/dr-lee-salk-child-psychologist-and-popular-author-dies-at-65.html

1993(11thof Iyar, 5753): Eighty-six year old Polish born Arthur B. Belfer, “the founder of Belco Corporation who married his wife Diane after the death of his first wife “the former Rochelle Anisfeld” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/04/obituaries/arthur-belfer-86-philanthropist-and-head-of-petroleum-concern.html?mcubz=3

1995(2ndof Iyar, 5755): Eighty-nine year old screen writer passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/06/obituaries/edwin-blum-89-writer-for-stage-and-the-screen.html

1997: In the U.K. Peter Benjamin Mandelson, began serving as Minister without Portfolio.

1997: Malcolm Rifkind completed his service as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

1999: Daniel Goldfein’s F-16 was shot down today over western Serbia while serving as commander of the 555th Fighter Squadron and successfully ejected so that he could be rescued “by NATO helicopters.
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including“Israel and Europe:An Appraisal in History” by Howard M. Sachar and “The Majors: In Pursuit of Golf's Holy Grail” by John Feinstein.

 2000(27th of Nisan, 5760): Yom HaShoah

2000(27thof Nisan, 5760): Ninety-year old All-American quarterback for the University of Michigan Harry Lawrence Newman  whose skills were honed by fellow Wolverine Benny Friedman and went on to lead the New York Giants to an NFL title passed away today.

2000: Israeli jet fighters turn back an Egyptian civilian aircraft from the Gaza airport

2001: “Israel Arrests an ex-general as a spy for spilling old secrets” published today described action taken against seventy-five year old  Itzhak Yaakov, a retired IDF general.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/02/world/israel-arrests-ex-general-as-spy-for-spilling-old-secrets.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

2001: A meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to discuss the Egyptian-Jordanian peace initiative ends with little advancement.

2001: In “Anti-Semitism: An All-American Attribute” published today Jonathan Zimmerman reminded us that Jew-hating is common currency of culture regardless of century, gender or race.

http://articles.latimes.com/print/2001/may/02/local/me-58214

2002: Today, during Operation Defensive of Shield the siege of the Mukataa, the official headquarters of Arafat and the PA was lifted “after 6 men wanted by Israel – 4 of them convicted of involvement in the October 2001 assassination of the Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi – were moved to a prison in Jericho to be guarded by U.S. and British wardens

2003(30thof Nisan, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2003: Today, in Israel the government identified the suicide bombers who killed three people in an attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub on April 30 as “British citizens Asif Hanif, 21, who died in the suicide attack, and Omar Khan Sharif, 27, an accomplice who reportedly escaped after failing to detonate his bomb making them “the first Britons known to be prepared to kill themselves in the militant Islamic cause.”

2004: On the PGA tour, Bruce Fleisher won Bruno’s Memorial Classic.

2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning study that maintains that the Soviet concentration-camp system was equal to the Nazi killing machine and supports Solzhenitsyn's assertion that the gulag was not a Stalinist aberration but an integral part of Lenin's Socialist dream.

2004(11th of Iyar, 5764) A pregnant mother and her four daughters are shot dead by terrorists as they drive on the Kissufim road in the Gaza Strip.

2004(11thof Iyar, 5764): Eighty-year old Hyam Maccoby, the grandson and “namesake of Rabbi Hyam Maccoby known as the ‘Kamenitzer Maggid’” and British scholar whose academic work successfully challenged the image of Jesus and the Pharisees painted in the Gospels passed away today.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jul/31/guardianobituaries.religion

  2004: Vowing to fight for coexistence and mutual respect among mankind around the world, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lays the cornerstone of Jerusalem's Museum of Tolerance and pays tribute to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The Governor concludes his speech with the Hebrew saying, "Am Yisrael hai"– (the nation of Israel lives) – gives the crowd a thumbs-up sign, and adds his signature movie line, "I'll be back."

2004: Sixty-five per cent of those participating in an internal Likud referendum voted against Ariel Sharon’s plan to disengage from Gaza.

2004: Natan Sharansky, the Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, and the World Zionist Organization, launch the new "Combating Anti-Semitism" Kit.

2005(23rdof Nisan, 5765): Seventy-eight year old NYU trained physician William Kohlmann Rashbaum, “the chief of family planning services at Manhattan’s Beth Israel Medical Center” passed away today.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2005-05-06-0505060176-story.html

2005: Neiman Marcus Group was the subject of a leveraged buyout (LBO), selling itself to two private equity firms, Texas Pacific Group and Warburg Pincus

2005: Publication today of Nicole Krauss’ award winning novel The History of Love.

2006(4th of Iyar, 5766):  Yom Hazikaron – Israel Remembrance Day. On the day before celebrating its independence, Israel remembers the human cost.  In the past year, 138 members of the security forces have been killed in the line of duty, bringing the total of men and women killed defending the state since 1860 to 22,123.  This does not count the thousands of innocent bystanders who died in everything from terrorist attacks on Jerusalem pizza parlors to the sinking of ships filled with immigrants bound for Palestine in defiance of the infamous British White Paper.

2006: The Peter Jay Sharp Building of the Brooklyn Academy of Music which Harvey Lichtenstein led for 32 years starting in 1967 was added to the NRHP today

2006: Random House published Absurdistan, a 2006 novel by Gary Shteyngart” that “chronicles the adventures of Misha Vainberg, the 325-pound son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, as he struggles to return to his true love in the South Bronx.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdistan_(novel)#/media/File:Absurdistan.jpg

2007: The Jewish Center for History and the Leo Baeck Institute in New York presented “Hannah Arendt Rediscovered” a program “featuring the distinguished philosopher Richard Bernstein and author Jerome Kohn.”

2007( 14th of Iyar): Pesach Sheini

2008: As part of the PEN World Voices, Israeli author Yael Hedaya participates in a panel discussion entitled Writing Sex and Sexuality. Yael Hedaya was born in Jerusalem in 1964.
She has worked as a screenwriter for the acclaimed Israeli TV drama series Betipul (In Treatment), which was adapted for the United States and currently airs on HBO. She is the author of Dramatis Persona, Housebroken, and Accidents, which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in 2006. Her latest novel, Eden, will be published in 2008.
Yael Hedaya teaches creative writing at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa Friday evening services Temple Judah are dedicated to bidding Muriel and Fred Rogers a fond farewell.  Fred and Muriel have been mainstays of the Jewish community and while we are all glad that they are enjoying a long, healthy life, we will miss them as they return to their Chicago roots.

2008: “One of a Kind,” a play that Yossi Vassa co-wrote with Shai Ben Attar about his family’s flight from Ethiopia in the mid-1980s opens at The New Victory Theater in New York City

2008(27thof Nisan, 5768): Seventy-two year old Uzbekistani musician and poet Ilyas Malayev who fell victim to anti-Semitism in his homeland lost his battle with pancreatic cancer and passed away today in Queens, NY.

2008: “Imaginary Coordinates” featuring the Spertus Institute’s collection of Holy Land maps, which date back to the 16th century as well as contemporary Israeli and Palestinian women artists’ works that take up the question of regional borders opens at the Spertus in Chicago, Il.

2009: The Lincoln Center presents Orient- Occident: A Dialogue of Cultures as part of the Jordi Savall Jerusalem Series.

2009(8thof Iyar, 5769): Alfred Appel Jr., a scholarly expert on Vladimir Nabokov, whose lecture course he attended at Cornell, and the author of wide-ranging interpretive books on modern art and jazz, died today in Wilmette, Illinois at the age of 75. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E3DA163DF934A35756C0A96F9C8B63&scp=1&sq=Alfred+Appel%2C+Jr.&st=nyt

2009:Wayne L. Horvitz, a longtime labor relations mediator and the son of David Lyon Hurwitz, discusses and signs What's the Beef?: Sixty Years of Hard-won Lessons for Today's Leaders in Labor, Management, and Government at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

2010(18th of Iyar, 5770): Lag B'Omer

2010(18th of Iyar, 5770): Inna Hecker Grade, the widow and a translator of the great Yiddish novelist and poet Chaim Grade, who earned her own literary niche for her zealous guardianship of her husband’s legacy, died today at the age of 85 in the Bronx, New York City. (As reported by Joseph Berger)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/nyregion/13grade.html?pagewanted=print

2010: Silvia Planas and Manuel Forcano are scheduled to discuss A History of Jewish Catalonia their book that traces the rich and fertile history of the Jews in Catalonia from the earliest references, that is, from the time of the late Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages, until the drastic decree of expulsion by the Catholic Monarchs in a program sponsored by The American Sephardi Federation

2010: As part of the third annual program in memory of Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter, Prof. Eugene Orenstein of McGill University is scheduled to speak on the topic, "Ber Borokhov: A Revolutionary of Yiddish Philology" followed by Prof. Joshua (Shikl) Fishman who is scheduled to speak about Dr. Schaechter.

2010(18thIyar, 5770): Eighty-six year old Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, a leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect that opposes the existence of the Israeli state and a longtime adviser to the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, died today at his home in Jerusalem. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/world/middleeast/05hirsch.html?pagewanted=print

2011: Today, “the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY), at their monthly public meeting, voted to remove (by tabling to avoid debate) Tony Kushner's name from the list of people invited to receive honorary degrees, based on a statement by trustee Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld about Kushner's purported statements and beliefs about Zionism and Israel” after which “the CUNY Graduate Center Advocate began a live blog on the "Kushner Crisis" situation, including news coverage and statements of support from faculty and academics.”

2011: As reported by Tom Tugend in “Auschwitz bar mitzvah for 78-year-old Oscar-winner Branko Lustig”: Branko Lustig, 78, two-time Oscar winner for “Schindler’s List” and “Gladiator,” is scheduled to celebrate his bar mitzvah today at Auschwitz, in front of barrack No. 24.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/04/22/3086935/auschwitz-bar-mitzvah-for-78-year-old-oscar-winner-branko-lustig

2011: The ITV network broadcast the first episode of “Case Sensitive” which based on The Point of Rescue by British poet and novelist Sophie Hannah.

2011: The Consultation on Conscience, Reform Judaism's flagship social justice conference is scheduled to continue with a reception featuring guest host Richard Dreyfus at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

2011: The 17th Annual Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society Heritage Award Dinner is scheduled to take place in Denver. The 2011 Heritage Award Dinner will salute early Colorado Jews in the Arts and will feature the premiere of a film called "Civilizing the West: Early Colorado Jews in the Arts."

2011: This morning at 10 a.m., sirens will wail throughout the country as people observe a moment of silence in memory of the victims of the Nazi persecution. The closing ceremony of Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day will take place at Yad Mordechai, the kibbutz adjacent to Gaza named after Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising who was killed in the fighting.

2011: In the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Chicago police are taking additional measures to guard against possible retaliatory terrorist attacks.  Police were paying closer attention to many buildings including synagogues, particularly in the Rogers Park and West Rogers Park neighborhoods, areas that have large Jewish communities. Some Chicago synagogues said they're not enhancing security because they're always on high alert. "The reality is that because of Osama bin Laden and other terrorists . . . we have been instituting additional security for a very long time," said Rabbi Leonard Matanky, of Congregation KINS in West Rogers Park. In the wake of 9/11, many synagogues installed cameras and began locking their doors, among other security measures that officials declined to specify.

2011: The Supreme Court delayed the start of former President Moshe Katsav's jail sentence until a ruling is reached on an appeal filed by his lawyers. Katsav, who was convicted on two counts of rape for indecent assault and sexual harassment of female employees, appealed the ruling against him this week.

2011(28thof Nisan, 5771): Yom HaShoah

2011: Today, “More than a year after his death, Michael T. Kaufman was included in the byline for the New York Times obituary of Osama bin Laden

2011: The trustees of the City University of New York voted to shelve plans to award an honorary degree to Tony Kushner because he “had disparaged the State of Israel in past comments.

2011: The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas condemned the killing by U.S. forces of Osama bin Laden and mourned him as an "Arab holy warrior." (As reported by Jack Khoury)

2012: A limited run of 'Welcome to America' by H. Leivick (the penname of Leivick Haplern) is scheduled to begin in New York.

2012: Dr. Jonathan Sarna is scheduled to discuss his marvelous new book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA.

2012: Dr. Edna Nahshon, Professor of Hebrew and Theater at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and editor of Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context, is scheduled to discuss this new book of essays, including her own research on passion plays in America at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

2012: The Westchester Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2012: The International Workshop on Holocaust Testimonies: Truth and Witness being held at the Wiener Library in the UK is scheduled to come to an end.

2012: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Jews in Early Modern Europe: A Day-to-Day Perspective.”

2012(10thof Iyar, 5773): Ninety year old violinist Zvi Zeitlin passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/arts/music/zvi-zeitlin-violinist-who-championed-modernist-composers-dies-at-90.html?_r=2&hpw&

2013: In Chicago, the Spertus Institute is scheduled to present “Ballot, Babies and Banners of Peace,:” a lecture in which Dr. Melissa  R. Klpaaher  “will discuss how the activism of American Jewish women was grounded in their gender, religious, cultural, and ethnic identities…”

2013: “The key witness in the breach of trust trial against former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman, his former deputy Danny Ayalon took the stand today and gave incriminating testimony, confirming that while serving in the Foreign Ministry, Liberman had acted to promote a man who had done him a favor.” (As reported by Stuart Winer)

2013: The Maccabeats and Sarah Aroeste and Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird are scheduled to perform at the Washington Jewish Music Festival.

2013: A terrorist opened fire at two people this evening in Wadi Kelt, near Mitzpeh Yericho. The two were attacked as they sat in a car

2013: Terrorists in Gaza fired two rockets at southern Israel tonight. The rockets hit the Eshkol region.

2014: Coralville, Iowa, The House of David Softball Team, sponsored by Agudas Achim is scheduled to take the field.

2014(2ndof Iyar, 5774): Eighty-two year old director and playwright Charles Marowitz passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/arts/charles-marowitz-director-and-playwright-dies-at-82.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

2014: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host its final Musical Shabbat of the season.

2014: Annalisa Capristo the librarian at the Centro Studi Americani, Rome, Italy whose work focuses on anti-Jewish persecution in Italy under Fascist rule, particularly against Jewish scholars is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “An Overview of the Italian Jewish Immigration in South America” at the Third Regional New Conference sponsored by the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA)

2014: Day Two of Jewish American Heritage Month

2014: “Palestinian gunmen fired at an IDF force on the Gaza border tonight, near the Kissufim border crossing in the central Gaza Strip.”

2014: “The patriarch of the Maronite church will travel to Jerusalem next month to greet Pope Francis, the first head of his Lebanon-based denomination to visit since Israel’s creation in 1948, he said today.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/lebanese-bishop-to-make-historic-jerusalem-trip

2015: “Firing Line,” the three year old colt owned by Arnold Zechter, the former CEO of Talbots, is scheduled to run in today’s Kentucky Derby.

2015: Fred Spiegel, the Shoah Survivor who wrote Once the Acacias Bloomed: Memories of a Childhood Lost is scheduled to speak at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host “Folk Songs in Artistic Arrangement/”

 

2015: The Samaritan community is scheduled to hold its annual sacrifice of the lamb marking the Exodus from Egypt on Mount Gerizim today. (As reported by Amanda Borschel-Dan)

2015(13thof Iyar, 5775): Parashat Achrei Mot - Kedoshim

2015:  In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Mother’s Day Shabbat – “All Women Are Mothers In the House of Israel” -- includes flowers for everybody and a Kiddush prepared by the male members of the minyan.

2015(13thof Iyar, 5775): Eight-nine year old ballerina and choreographer Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya passed away today in Munich

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/arts/dance/maya-plisetskaya-ballerina-who-embodied-bolshoi-dies-at-89.html

http://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-mourns-jewish-ballet-rebel-maya-plisetskaya/

2016: Professor Richard Schwartz is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Advancing Veganism in Israel” at Ginger, 8 Balfour Street, Jerusalem.

2016(24thof Nisan, 5776): Eighty-eight year old stamp collector Irwin Weinberg passed away today. (As reported by James Barron)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/us/irwin-weinberg-collector-of-rare-precious-stamps-dies-at-88.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article

http://www.linns.com/news/us-stamps-postal-history/2016/may/irwin-weinberg-british-guiana-magenta-obituary.html

2016: The Historic Sixth and I Synagogue is scheduled to host Café Nite where attendees can “explore several learning options with MesorahDC.

2017: Yom Ha’Atzmaut - Israel Independence Day; 

2017:Sagiv Lugasi, a student at the Ort school in Ma’alot-Tarshiha, took first prize in the annual competition in Jerusalem Independence Day making him “the first secular student to win the International Bible Quiz in over 30 years.” (As reported by TOI)

2017: The Iowa Jewish History Symposium is scheduled to begin in Iowa City.

2017: GiveNOLA Day scheduled for today provides an opportunity to make donations to JCRS, a Jewish charity that has delivered a multiplicity of services to Jews throughout the region.

2017: “Beneath the Helmet,” a film about five Israeli high school graduates is scheduled to be shown at East Bay Jewish Film Festival.

2017:The LA Jewish Film Festival and Yiddishkayt are scheduled to co-host the West Coast of “Menashe.”

2018:  In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host a discussion on Great Jewish Renegades led by Rabbi Feivel Strauss that will focus on the life of Leonard Cohen.

2018: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble and Telsa String Quartet “Serenading Mozart.”

2018: The Washington Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to open with “Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me.”

2018: As part of Jewish American Heritage Month, the William G. McGowan Theatre will host historian talking about his latest work The Eddie Cantor Story: A Jewish Life in Performance and Politics.

2019: In New York, the Fort Gansevoort Gallery is scheduled to host the hoping of the exhibit “Soviet Childhood’ featuring the works of Zoya Cerkassky

2019: “Claude Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah: Four Sisters’” is scheduled to be shown at Temple Emanu-El’s Streicker Center.

https://www.emanuelnyc.org/event/claude-lanzmanns-shoah-four-sisters-part-2/

2019: In San Francisco, Congregation Emanu-El is scheduled to host “Iran Talks: Next Steps After the Collapse of the Deal and Iran’s Role in the Region” featuring Abraham D. Sofaer and Dr. Michael Ledeen.

2019(27thof Nisan, 5779: In the wake of the latest synagogue shooting and the revelation that Labour Party leader has endorsed and written a forward for “a book containing overtly anti-Semitic tropes” observance of Yom HaShoah

2020: As the number of Coronavirus deaths continues to rise, Israelis await to see which schools will and will not open tomorrow following yesterday’s vote by the cabinet “to return some of Israel’s students to school” tomorrow. (As reported by Jacob Magid

2020: The UK Jewish Film is scheduled to provide on-line a screening of “An Act of Defiance.”

2020(8thof Iyar, 5780):  On the Jewish calendar Yarhzeit of the Jews of Speyer who massacred today during the First Crusade (1096) and the Jews of Lemberg who massacred (1667)

2020(8thof Iyar, 5780): Parashat Acharay Mot and Kedoshim; Pirke Avot Chapter 3.

2021: The Jewish Heritage Museum of Month County is scheduled to present “Kreplach and Dim Sum: Yes, There are Jews in China” led by Robyn Helzner “who shares stores, photos, videos, and music to explore the extraordinary history of the Jewish communities in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Kaifeng; ad traces their emergence as the fastest growing Jewish region in the world today.”

2021: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro whose father’s family are Jews from Eastern Europe and the recently released paperback edition of Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (as Told to Me) Story by Bess Kalb

2021: Jookender Community Initiatives, Inc is scheduled to present “Lag Ba’Omer for Russian-Speaking Jewish Community.”

2021: Temple Isaiah is scheduled to present online “Jews & Blacks in the Civil Rights Era & Now: Midrash & Fact.

2021: “The Jewish Psychedelic Summit” is scheduled to begin today online.

2021: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present “The Jewish Effendiya: Between Jewishness and Middle-Classness in Modern Egypt” with Dr. Alon Tam.

2021: While many of those injured in the Mt. Meron still remain in the hospital, Israel continues to cope with the aftermath of what some have described as the worst civilian catastrophe in the state’s history.

 


This Day, May 3, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 3

1282 BCE: (28 Nissan 2488): Traditional date marking the fall of the walls of Jericho.

443 BCE (7th of Iyar, 3317): Nehemiah dedicated the newly built walls that had been built around Jerusalem

996: Papacy of Gregory V began today making him a contemporary of Hananel Ben Hushiel, Samuel Ibn Nagrela and Jacob ben Yakar each of whom was born in 990.

1096 (8th Iyar): On his way to join the Crusade led by Peter the Hermit, Emico, the Count of Leiningen, attacked the synagogue at Speyers. The Jews defended themselves but were systematically slain. Until this time atrocities in Europe were sporadic. From this point on, they became organized and frequent. Jewish martyrdom began in earnest. It should be remembered that the atrocities committed by the rampaging crusaders were not always supported by the local burghers and bishops. Furthermore, in many countries, especially the Slavic states, the local Christian community suffered from pillages as well. John Bishop of Spires even called out his army after 11 Jews were killed in a riot, but he was an exception rather than the rule. Approximately 5,000 Jews were murdered in Germany in 1096.[Editor’s Note: Maggie Anton, the author of the acclaimed series about Rashsi’s Daughters, offers the following view of events. “Actually, the Crusader attacks on Speyer in 1096 left only 11 Jews dead - those who were still on the streets. Warned of the danger, the Jews prayed early and left the synagogue before the marauders arrived, barricading themselves at home. Bishop John's army routed the mob and cut off the hands of the worst instigators. It was later in the month that the worst massacres occurred in Worms, Mainz & Cologne.”]

1235: Pope Gregory issued a Bull that repeated and confirmed the constitution of Pope Innocent III.  The Bull was issued in response to pleas from German Jews that the Church act to stop the marauding mobs that were attacking them.

1270: King Béla IV of Hungary passed away. Bela had welcomed Jewish immigrants to his kingdom and in 1251 gave them “legal rights.”

1407: Emperor Rupert issued a decree appointing Israel of Krems “chief rabbi of all the German communities ("Hochmeister über alle Rabbinen"), giving him a certificate declaring him to be a great Talmudic scholar and a good man.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_of_Krems

1455: As Christian forces advance, groups of Jews fled Spain, some of whom ended up in Kosovo others of whom settled in West African Jewish communities known as Bilad al-Sudan.

1469: Birthdate of Niccolò Machiavelli

http://voices.yahoo.com/literary-analysis-prince-niccolo-machiavelli-6074870.html

1481: Mehmed II, Ottoman Sultan passed away. Known as “The Conqueror” (Faith), he reigned from 1444 to 1446 until his father took over on account of war. He came again to throne in 1451. He conquered Constantinople in 1453. The oppressed Jews were relieved to see him occupy the city. He allowed Jews from today's Greek Islands and Crete to settle in Istanbul. Fatih's declaration is as follows: "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". The Bavarian King Ludwig the III, under the influence of the Italian Monk Jean de Capistrano expelled the Jews out and forced them to settle on the banks of the Danube River, Capistrano helped John Hunyadi in 1456 when the Ottomans besieged Belgrade. In 1410 Jean Huss was excommunicated and burned on order of the pope Alexander the V. The pope Nicholas the V, summoned Jean de Capistrano to go to Slovakia and fight the followers of Jean Huss. Of course Capistrano did not forget the Jews and as a result, by order of the Sultan, a regiment called "The sons of Moses" was formed. Since Capistrano also prepared a crusade against the Ottomans, the same regiment participated in the war which ensued. The doctors Isak Pasa Galeon and Ribbi Sonsino were also appointed to that regiment. Before being killed, Ribbi Sonsino chopped away the head of Jean de Capistrano and the church declared the latter a saint. After the war Mehmed II invited the Ashkenazi Jews of Transylvania and Slovakia to the Ottoman Empire. The synagogues Ahrida, Karaferya, Yanbol and Cuhadji which were damaged due to a fire have been repaired on the Sultan’s order. According to a votive foundation document dated 1451-1481, the doctors Moses Hamon, Isak Pas a Galeon, Hekim Yakup, Ephraim Sandji and Hekim Abraham were appointed as palace doctors.

1488: In Naples, Joseph Günzenhäuser published the first printed edition of the Pentateuch with a commentary by Abraham ibn Ezra.

1579: An auto-de-fe at Seville sentenced 38 people, some accused of Judaizing. In all, only one person was burned.

1583(11thof Iyar): Rabbi Isaac Mehling passed away in Prague.

1588: Council of Hanover in Germany ordered the severance of all business connections between Jews and Christians.

1616(16th of Iyar, 5376): Meir Lublin, the son of Gedaliah, the son-in-law of Isaac ha-Kohen Shapiro and  the author of the Talmudic commentary Meir Einai Chachamim  passed away today in Lublin.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_12821.html

1655(26th of Nisan, 5415): Abraham Nunez Bernal was burned at the stake by the Inquisition of Cordova making him yet another Sephardic martyr.

1655:Jacob Abendana delivered a famous memorial sermon on the Cordovan martyrs Marranos Nunez and Almeyda Bernal who had been burned at the stake. Abendana was the older of Isaac Abendana who taught at Magdalen College and served as hakam of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in London..

1667(9th of Iyar, 5427): Many Jews were killed in anti-Jewish riots in Lemberg.  Lemberg is in the Ukraine.  These killings took place during the wars between the Poles and the Cossacks.  The fate of the Jews of Lemberg would grow even worse in 1668 when most of them would perish in a massacre.

1670: Birthdate of Nicholas Mavrocordatos, the Grand Dragoman whom Daniel de Fonseca served as a personal physician while actually working as a secret agent for the French and Turks to provide support for the Ottomans in their conflict with Austria.

1703(17th of Iyar, 5463): Seventy two year old Samuel Oppenheimer the Jewish banker who bankrolled Emperor Leopold I during the Great Turkish War, passed away today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Oppenheimer

1733(22nd of Iyar,):  Rabbi Zevi of Vilna, author of “Bet Lehem Yehudah” passed away

1758: The Papacy of Benedict XIV, who was so committed to converting Jews that he issued a bull allowing children as young as seven to be baptized without their parent’s permissions and added to the list of Jewish books that should be “seized and confiscated but who also publicly opposed the Blood Libel, ended today.

1764: The Maryland Gazettereported "certain" Jews were willing to settle in the American colonies to conduct agriculture and commerce. This was nothing new, as for almost 30 years prior the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in London had wanted to form a large settlement for Jews in Carolina.

1775: David Salisbury Franks, who would become an officer in the American Revolutionary Army, was arrested for speaking in a disrespectful manner about King George III.

1778(6th of Iyar, 5538): Eighty-eight year old Hirsch Auberach who had been serving as rabbi at Worms in 1763, the husband Dobresch Auberach and the father of Rabbi Abiezri Selig Auerbach, passed away today.

1791: The Constitution of 3 May 1791 under which Poland’s Jews were granted full emancipation

was adopted by the Great Sejm today

1802:  Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city. Isaac Polock was reported to be D.C.’s first Jewish resident having moved to the area in 1795.  Major Alfred Mordecai came to Washington in 1828 to serve as superintendent of the District of Columbia Arsenal. He is the second known Jewish resident of the nation’s capital.  For more about the history of Jewry in the Washington metropolitan area see the website of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington http://www.jhsgw.org/

1833(14th of Iyar, 5593): Pesach Sheni, is observed for the first time since Martin Van Buren replaced John C. Calhoun as Vice President which was part of American political imbroglio that included everything from “sex to secession.”

1837: Phillip Joseph Salomons married Cecilia Samuels at the Hambro Synagogue today.

1840: In Polska, R' Israel Baruch Moses and Eve Moses (Graditz) gave birth to Rabbi Adolph Eliezer Moses who became an M.D. after graduating from medical school in his 50’s.

1841: One days after he had passed away, Myer Ephraim Myers was buried today in the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1843: Birthdate of 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

1844(14th of Iyar, 5604): Pesach Sheni

1844: Birthdate of Édouard Adolphe Drumont “a French journalist and writer” who “founded the Anti-Semitic League of France in 1889 and was the founder and editor of the newspaper La Libre Parole.”

“He was at first in government service, but later became a contributor to the press and was the author of a number of miscellaneous works, of which Mon vieux Paris (1879) was crowned by the Academy.

Drumont's 1886 book ‘La France Juive’ (Jewish France) attacked the role of Jews in France and argued for their exclusion from society. In 1892 Drumont founded the newspaper the La Libre Parole which became a platform for virulent anti-Semitism…He was sued for accusing a parliamentary deputy of having taken a bribe from the prominent Jewish banker Édouard Alphonse de Rothschild to pass a piece of legislation the banker wanted. Drumont attracted many supporters and was one of the primary sources of anti-Semitic ideas that would later be embraced by Nazism. He exploited the Panama Company Scandal and reached the peak of his notoriety during the Dreyfus Affair, in which he was the most strident of Alfred Dreyfus' accusers.” He died in 1917.

1847:  Premiere of “Don John of Austria,” the first Australian opera at the Royal Victoria Theatre in Sydney.  Isaac Nathan wrote the opera to a libretto by Jacob Levi Montefiore.

1848: Today, in Philadelphia, thirty-three year old Canadian businessman Jacob Henry Joseph m arred Sarah Gratz Moses with whom he “two sons and three daughters.

1849: The May Uprising in Dresden begins - the last of the German revolutions of 1848. These revolutions, in which many Jews played an active role, failed.  This resulted in a major migration of liberal Germans, including a large number of German Jews, to the United States.  This migration would have a major impact on the United States and the American Jewish community.

1849: At the tenth meeting of the Independent Order of Free Sons of Israel, a petition “asking for a charter for a second lodge of the order to be named Abraham Lodge No. 2” was granted.

1851: The 101 foot schooner America which was the first U.S. boat to win the America’s Cup for which Baron Arthur de Rothschild would later supply the prize money, was launched today.

1853: The New York Times reported that an un-named Jew had been arrested on a charge of receiving stolen goods.  The goods were reportedly $25 dollars’ worth of women’s shoes that had been stolen by German lad named Herman who was working as an apprentice in a boot & shoe store.

1857: Birthdate of August Lederer the Austrian industrialist, art collector and patron of Gustav Klimt.

1859:Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky the Lithuanian Jew who went through a series of conversions in various Christian churches starting as a Baptist in 1855 was appointed to serve as a missionary to China by the Episcopal Church.

1860: In Ancona, Abramo Volterra, a cloth merchant, and Angelica Almagià gave birth to Samuel Giuseppe Vito Volterra

1860: Thanks to the efforts of the pro-Secessionist forces, the Democratic Convention which Henry Myer Phillips attended as a delegate, decided to adjourn today and reconvene at Baltimore in six weeks.

1861: The Secretary of War issued a muster call for three year volunteers that would be responded to by the 26th Pennsylvania volunteers whose members included Dr. Jacob Da Silva Solis Cohen the graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College.

1863(14th of Iyar, 5623): Pesach Sheni

1863: Two days after he had passed away, Gabriel Simmons, the son of John and Sarah Simmons was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1863(14th of Iyar, 5623): Twenty-five year old Isaac Seldner of the 6th Virginia Infantry Regiment was killed today at the Battle of Chancellorsville during the Civil War.

1864(27th of Nisan, 5624): J. J. Benjamin passed away.  Born in 1818 at Fălticeni, Romania he “was a Romanian-Jewish historian and traveler. His pen name was "Benjamin II", in allusion to Benjamin of Tudela. Married young, he engaged in the lumber business, but losing his modest fortune, he gave up commerce. Being of an adventurous disposition, he adopted the name of Benjamin of Tudela, the famous Jewish traveler of the twelfth century, and toward the end of 1844 set out to search for the Lost Ten Tribes. Using the name of Benjamin of Tudela, the famous twelfth century Jewish traveler, he set out in 1844 on a search for the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. This search took him from Vienna to Constantinople in 1845, with stops at several cities on the Mediterranean. He arrived in Alexandria in June, 1847, and proceeded via Cairo to the Levant. He then traveled through Syria, Babylonia, Kurdistan, Persia, the Indies, Kabul, and Afghanistan, returning June, 1851, to Constantinople, and then back to Vienna where he stayed briefly before heading to Italy. There he embarked for Algeria and Morocco. He made copious notes of his observations of the societies he visited. On arriving in France, after having traveled for eight years, he prepared in Hebrew his impressions of travel, and had the book translated into French. After suffering many tribulations in obtaining subscriptions for his book, he issued it in 1856, under the title ‘Cinq Années en Orient (1846-51).’ The same work, revised and enlarged, was subsequently published in German under the title ‘Acht Jahre in Asien und Afrika’ (Hanover, 1858), with a preface by Meyer Kayserling. An English version has also been published. As the veracity of his accounts and the genuineness of his travels were attacked by some critics, he amply defended himself by producing letters and other tokens proving his journey to the various Oriental countries named. Benjamin relates only what he has seen; and, although some of his remarks show insufficient scholarship and lack of scientific method, his truthful and simple narrative gained the approval of eminent scholars like Humboldt, Petermann, and Richter. In 1859 Benjamin undertook another journey, this time to America, where he stayed three years. The result of his observations there he published on his return, under the title Drei Jahre in Amerika (Hanover, 1863). The kings of Sweden and of Hanover now conferred distinctions upon him. Encouraged by the sympathy of several scientists, who drew up a plan and a series of suggestions for his guidance, he determined to go again to Asia and Africa, and went to London in order to raise funds for this journey — a journey which was not to be undertaken. Worn out by fatigues and privations, which had caused him to grow old before his time and gave him the appearance of age, he died poor in London; and his friends and admirers had to arrange a public subscription in order to save his wife and daughter from misery. In addition to the works mentioned above, Benjamin published Jawan Mezula, Schilderung des Polnisch-Kosakischen Krieges und der Leiden der Juden in Poland Während der Jahre 1648-53, Bericht eines Zeitgenossen nach einer von. L. Lelewel Durchgesehenen Französischen Uebersetzung, Herausgegeben von J. J. Benjamin II., Hanover, 1863, a German edition of Rabbi Nathan Nata Hanover's work on the insurrection of the Cossacks in the seventeenth century, with a preface by Kayserling. Upon his return to London in 1862, he drew another plan to return to Asia and Africa but fell ill and died early in 1863 before being able to undertake his next journey.

 

During his travels in Persia J. J. Benjamin wrote down some observations on the life of the Jews in Persia:

 

1. Throughout Persia the Jews are obliged to live in a part of the town separated from the other inhabitants; for they are considered as unclean creatures, who bring contamination with their intercourse and presence.

2. They have no right to carry on trade in stuff goods.

3. Even in the streets of their own quarter of the town they are not allowed to keep any open shop. They may only sell there spices and drugs, or carry on the trade of a jeweller, in which they have attained great perfection.

4. Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity, and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt.

5. For the same reason they are forbidden to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans.

6. If a Jew is recognised as such in the streets, he is subjected to the greatest insults. The passers-by spit in his face, and sometimes beat him so unmercifully, that he falls to the ground, and is obliged to be carried home.

7. If a Persian kills a Jew, and the family of the deceased can bring forward two Mussulmans as witnesses to the fact, the murderer is punished by a fine of 12 tumauns (600 piastres); but if two such witnesses cannot be produced, the crime remains unpunished, even though it has been publicly committed, and is well known.

8. The flesh of the animals slaughtered according to Hebrew custom, but declared as Trefe, must not be sold to any Mussulmans. The slaughterers are compelled to bury the meat, for even the Christians do not venture to buy it, fearing the mockery and insult of the Persians.

9. If a Jew enters a shop to buy anything, he is forbidden to inspect the goods, but must stand at a respectful distance and ask the price. Should his hand incautiously touch the goods, he must take them at any price the seller chooses to ask for them.

10. Sometimes the Persians intrude into the dwellings of the Jews and take possession of whatever pleases them. Should the owner make the least opposition in defence of his property, he incurs the danger of atoning for it with his life.

11. Upon the least dispute between a Jew and a Persian, the former is immediately dragged before the Achund [religious authority], and, if the complainant can bring forward two witnesses, the Jew is condemned to pay a heavy fine. If he is too poor to pay this penalty in money, he must pay it in his person. He is stripped to the waist, bound to a stake, and receives forty blows with a stick. Should the sufferer utter the least cry of pain during this proceeding, the blows already given are not counted, and the punishment is begun afresh.

12. In the same manner the Jewish children, when they get into a quarrel with those of the Mussulmans, are immediately led before the Achund, and punished with blows. (13. A Jew who travels in Persia is taxed in every inn and every caravanserai he enters. If he hesitates to satisfy any demands that may happen to be made on him, they fall upon him, and maltreat him until he yields to their terms.

14.If, as already mentioned, a Jew shows himself in the street during the three days of the Katel (feast of mourning for the death of the Persian founder of the religion of Ali) he is sure to be murdered.

15. Daily and hourly new suspicions are raised against the Jews, in order to obtain excuses for fresh extortions; the desire of gain is always the chief incitement to fanaticism.

 From “The Jews of Islam” by Bernard Lewis)

 

1864: Jacob and Amalia Freud gave birth to Pauline “Pauli” Regine, the sister of Sigmund Freud.

1866(18th of Iyar, 5626): Lag B’Omer

1868: The New York Times reports that “many English papers have taken pleasure in describing Mr. Disraeli as an apostate Jew.  In simple truth he is neither one nor the other, in a religious point of view.  His father (Isaac Disraeli) and his mother were Hebrews both of Portuguese parentage.  Benhamin was never instructed in Judaism, because of some quarrel his father had with his synagogue.  When he was about six years old, Rogers, the banker and poset, came to visit Disraeli, the author and finding a bright boy, without religious instruction, too him by permission of his father to own church.  He was therefore brought up in the English Church, and has a least as good a right to the name ‘Christian’ as most of his fellow M. P’s.”

1871: “Murder Will Out” published today described the events surrounding the retrial of Antoine Maurer who is accused of killing a German Jew named Joachim Feurter.  Maurer’s first conviction had been over-turned on appeal.  The motive for the murder may have been tied to money that the killer owed the deceased.

1871(12th of Iyar, 5631): Sixty-eight year old philologist Eduard Munk, the cousin of Salomon Munk, who was a disciple of August Böckh passed away today Gross Glogau.

1872: Today, Levy Rheinberg was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1872: “”A War of Sects” an article published today described a riot that had taken place in Smyrna between Greeks and Jews.  The fighting began after it had been reported that the Jews “had sacrificed an infant” as part of “their religious ceremonies.”  According to these reports several people had been killed and wounded.  While the riot had stopped for the time being, troops had been ordered to the city to prevent a renewal of the violence.

1873:  Theodor Herzl’s Bar Mitzvah (No, I do not know who catered the Kiddush)

1873: “An Appeal for Hebrew Children” published today sought contributions from New Yorkers to provide Jewish orphans and students at the Hebrew free schools with an opportunity “to have a few holidays and enjoy recreation by the sea-side” during the upcoming summer months.

1874: Isaac S. Isaacs, Adolph L. Singer and Oscar S. Straus were among those elected to the Board of Directors of the newly formed Young Men’s Hebrew Association.  Lewis May was chosen as the first president.

1874: YMHA constitution was approved today.

1877: This evening, the Right Rev. Charles Perry, D.D. is scheduled to preach the annual sermon at the meeting of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews.”

1877: In Bremen, Germany, Ida and Nathan Abraham gave birth to Karl Abraham, the German psychoanalyst who worked with Sigmund Freud.

1877: “The Hebrews in Romania” described attempts by the Board of Delegates of American Israelites to have the President intercede on behalf of Jews of Bucharest and parts of the realm of Prince Charles who have been subjected to a series of unthinkable “barbarities.”

1878(30th of Nisan, 5638) Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1878(30th of Nisan, 5638): Seventy-four-year-old Shinah Etting the Maryland born daughter of Rachel Gratz and Solomon Etting who were married in 1791 passed away today.

1878: In the Ukraine, “Paltiel Nochim and Miriam (Borodinsky) Edlin gave birth to Stanford University educated journalist William Edlin, the husband of Pauline Zlotzovsky who worked for such publications as the Jewish Daily Forward, The Jewish Morning Journal and The Day before becoming the national executive secretary of Keren Hayesod in 1925.

http://findingaids.cjh.org/?pID=1529162

1882: The Czar gave his approval to series of anti-Semitic regulations proposed by Count Ignatiev known collectively as the “May Laws.

1884(8th of Iyar, 5644): Parashat Achrei Mot – Kedoshim

1884: In St. Louis, MO Adolph and Henrietta Ungar gave birth to Arthur Arnold Unger a trustee of the University of Miami (FL) and officer on the Orange Bowl Committee that oversaw this annual New Year’s football game who was the husband of Marcella Ungar

1885: Forty-five year Sally Sanford Mordecai passed away. Sally was the daughter of Brigadier General William Murray and Sally "Eveleth" Maynadier. She married General Alfred Mordecai, II. They were the parents of five children. Her father-in-law was a ranking solider in the U.S. Army prior to the Civil War who resigned rather than take up arms against his Southern family members or the country that he had sworn to protect.  Her husband had no such qualms and served with distinction during the Civil War. 

1886: The National Rabbinical Convention, an organization of Reform clergyman, is scheduled to meet today in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1891: “Russian Jews” published today opened with the statement that “Every American will be glad to see the announcement of a scheme to colonize the Jews who are expelled from the Czar’s dominions on an immense tract” of land in Argentina.  The project is being underwritten by Baron Hirsch.  According to the article, the United States already has too many Jewish immigrants from Russia.  The Russian Jews are described as impoverished, ignorant, a burden on society and a mass who will never assimilate into American life. The article ends by stating that “it is noteworthy that all other civilized countries share our dislike to entertaining the victims of the Czar’s cruelty…”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50E12F7395D15738DDDAA0894DD405B8185F0D3

1891: It was reported today that Russian Jewish immigrants are arriving in the United Kingdom at the rate of nearly 18.000 per year.

1892: Birthdate of Montreal native Dr. Jacob Viner the graduate of McGill University and Harvard who was a long-time Professor Economics at the University of Chicago.

http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/viner.htm

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Viner.html

1892: The cornerstone for a new facility to house the youngsters in the care of Hebrew Brooklyn Orphan asylum was laid today

1893: In Minsk, Chaim Joseph and Zive Lebe (Mandel) Levovitz gave birth to Rabbi Rueben Levovitz, the husband of Zlate Kustonowitz who “during World War acted as the representative of the Wilnar Barnch of the American Relief Association and who was a member of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada and the Rabbinical Board of New York City.

1894: Council No.5 of the National Council Jewish Women was formed in Newark, NJ, with a membership of 91 led by President Gratta and Secretary Maybaum.

1894: “Mourners’ Prayers will be delivered” tonight at the home of the family of Jesse Seligman, the banker, philanthropist and lead of the Jewish community who died unexpectedly and whose funeral was which was attended by over 2,000 people was held yesterday at Temple Emanuel where  Cantor Sparger and Rabbis Silberman and Gottheil officiated  at the service.

1895: In New York, Governor Morton gave executive approval to a proposal by Assembly Steinberg “authorizing the sale of certain lands to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York City which the city of New York has heretofore conditionally transferred to that institution.”

1895: In Vienna, Lili Mueller and Dr. Herman Carl Mark who converted to Lutheranism when he got married gave birth to Herman Francis Mark “the American chemist known for his contributions to the development of polymer science.

1895: In Posen, Joseph and Clara Kantorowicz gave birth to Professor Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz whose service in the German Army during World War I led him to give up running the family’s distillery business and pursue and a career in academia.

https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2656/a-dashing-medievalist/

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/kantorowicz-ernst-hartwig

1897: Two days after she had passed away, 64 year old August Glensnick, the wife of Jacob Glensnick and the mother of Philip and Mordecai Glesnick was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1897: In Germany, Samuel Weil and Maichen Weil gave birth to Ida Sara Krebs

1898(11th of Iyar, 5658): In Kiev, Blume Neiditch and Moshe Mabovitch gave birth to Golda Mabovitch, the sister of Sheyna and Tzipke Mabovitch, who gained fame Golda Mier whose life reads like one of those grand literary sagas of which television mini-series are made.  Born in Kiev, Ukraine, she experienced Pogroms before coming to America with her family.  As an act of teenage rebellion, she fled from her home in Milwaukee to join her sister in Denver.  She moved back to Milwaukee to become a schoolteacher.  After hearing the recruiting pitch for the Jewish Legion, Ms. Meirson (she Hebraized her name to Meir after the creation of the state of Israel in response to pressure from David Ben Gurion) decided to join the settlers in Palestine.  She was an ardent Zionist as well as socialist which, from an ideological point of view, made her an ideal candidate for life on a kibbutz.  Mrs. Meir, whose name was Meyerson at the time, became increasingly active in the leadership of the Yishuv.  She had a leading role in raising funds from American Jews to buy arms for the underground Jewish military units before 1948.  Disguised as Bedouin, she met with the King of Jordan in an attempt to avert hostilities in 1948.  Her story of Simchat Torah in Moscow after the creation of the state of Israel is an inspirational classic.  She was Foreign Minister and finally became the  “fourth Prime Minister of Israel.  She served from 1969 through 1974, a period that included the Yom Kippur War. She passed away in 1978, having lived to see Sadat's historic trip to Jerusalem.  They met, not as former adversaries, but as grandparents.  Golda, as she was known to all, had a gift for Sadat's grandchild. 

1898: Following the start of the Spanish-American War, The Cleveland (Ohio) Leader reported that “the Jews of the United States through the active efforts of those in Ohio may contribute a sum sufficient to purchase a warship for the United States Government.

1898: “Russian Jews to the Front” published today described efforts to have at least 5,000 mostly recent immigrants enlist in the U.S. Army led by Nathan Straus who “said that heroism and devotion to duty marked the course of Jewish history.”

1899: Governor Theodore Roosevelt signed into law a bill “providing for the consolidation of the Educational Alliance and the Hebrew Free School Association of New York City.

1900: Herzl has a meeting with Austrian Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber. At the request of the Prime Minister, Herzl drafts Koerber's "Language Bill" speech. Herzl agreed to draft the speech as part of his campaign to get the Austrian Prime Minister to help arrange an audience with the Sultan of Turkey.

1900: The week-long convention of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith which had been meeting at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago came to a close tonight.  The convention voted to create a new position of Chancellor which “will have supervision of lodges” in Europe and Asia.  The President and the Board of Directors will continue to control the lodges in Canada and the United States.  Leon Levy of New York was elected President and Julius Bien of New York was elected Chancellor. The next convention will take place in New Orleans in 1905.

1901(14th of Iyar, 5661): Pesach Sheni

1901: “Health Conditions Among Children” published today

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1901/05/03/117963166.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

https://www.nytimes.com/1901/05/03/archives/health-conditions-among-children.html?searchResultPosition=1

1901: “One thousand bakers belonging to the Hebrew Bakers’ Union were ordered” to go on strike today “at a mass meeting” six months after their last strike as they demand an agreement for “a ten-hour workday and a six-day working week.”

1902(26th of Nisan, 5662): Parashat Achrei Mot

1902: It was reported today that J.F. Taylor and Company will be publishing In the Gates of Israel by Herman Bernstein.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1902/05/03/118469331.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

 

1902: It was reported today that “a second revised edition of Nahida Remy’s “The Jewish Woman,” translated by Mrs. Louise Mannheimer, with a preface by Professor Dr. Lazarus is announced by Jennings and Pye of Cincinnati, OH.

1902: Herzl wrote to the Sultan of Turkey appealing for the establishment of a Jewish university in Palestine.  “The idea of a Jewish university, and all that such a university implied, quickly became an integral part of Zionist thinking.

1902: It was reported that Russian Jews make up “quarter of a million” of the population of New York City.

1903; Birthdate of Irish Louis Nathan Cohen, the husband of “Edith Greenlee Saunders Cohen” and he father of Joyce and Philip Nathan Cohen”

1903: “First Mission to Colony of Chinese Orthodox Jews” published today described “preparations for the first ever mission to the Chinese Jews.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1903/05/03/118493101.html?pageNumber=28

https://www.nytimes.com/1903/05/03/archives/first-mission-to-colony-of-chinese-orthodox-jews-undertaken-by.html?searchResultPosition=1

1903: Birthdate of “French philosopher and Marxist theoretician” Georges Politzer.

1904(18th of Iyar, 5664): Lag B’Omer

1904: A cable dispatch to the Times of London from Vienna dated today says, “According to Jewish journal published in Lemberg, Galicia, anti-Jewish excesses took place” on Saturday, April 30 “at Bender, in Bessarabia while the most of the Jews were attending Shabbat Services.  Five people were killed and many were wounded as the mobs attacked shops and homes because they believed the war with Japan was somehow part of an Anglo-American and Jewish act to avenge the pogrom at Kishinev.

1904: One day after he had passed away, Samuel Bernstein, the son of Elias and Sarah Bernstein was buried today in the UK.

1905: As violence rocked the Czar’s empire, “there were practically no disturbance yesterday in the Jewish cities of Soutwestern Russia, dispatches today that the people are in a state of panic.

1906: Approximately, “$35,000 was received today for the joint fund of the Mayor’s committee and the Red Cross organization at the office of Jacob H. Schiff who is Treasurer of both.”

1907: In San Francisco, Mortimer and Florence Isabelle Fleishhacker gave birth to banker and WW II veteran Mortimer Fleishhacker, Jr, the husband of Janet Fleishhacker

https://nobhillgazette.com/how-green-are-your-gables/

1908: “Joseph Cowen of London, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement…told a large audience at Clinton Hall” tonight “of the progress that the movement is making” word of which was greeted with “enthusiastic applause.”

1909: Fire destroys part of the Haskoy, the Constantinople Jewish quarter. Five hundred Jews are left homeless.

1909(12th of Iyar, 5669): Ninety-seven year old David Woolf Marks, the first Rabbi of London’s Reform Synagogue passed away.

https://www.oztorah.com/2008/10/professor-marks-the-oral-law-controversy/#.WupazkxFx9A

1910: In Boston, MA, Sam Corwin and his wife gave birth to Norman Lewis Corwin

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/arts/norman-corwin-pioneer-of-radio-dies-at-101.html?pagewanted=all

1911:Dr. Solomon Schechter, the President of the Jewish Theological Institute, who has just returned from an eleven months' vacation, said tonight that he had been spending most of the time resting. His mind has been active, however, if his pen has not, and he has already thought of a subject for another book which is to deal with the Jew in Northern Africa.

1912: Vittoli Effendi Fradji of Constantinople, Ezekiel Effendi Sassoon of Baghdad, Nissim Effendi Mazliach of Smyrna and Emanuel Effendi Karasa of Salonica are all re-elected to the Turkish parliament.

1913(26th of Nisan, 5673): Parashat Kedoshim1913: Today twenty-four year old Columbia University alum Samuel Blitz, the Lemberg born son of Hirsch and Yetta Blitz and the Secretary of the Zionist Council of Greater New York and who, as an organizer for the ZOA “traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada, visiting nearly every Jewish community in both countries” married Amelia Hirsch.

1913: Rabbi Felix Levy conducted services at Temple Emanuel in Chicago.

1913: Rabbi Julius Rapport conducted services at Temple Beth El in Chicago.

1913: In Vienna, Felix and Else Kohut gave birth to Heinz Kohut an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of Self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches. (For more see, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst by Charles Strozier)

1913: It was reported today that “A.L. Tribourg a Sioux City, Iowa attorney has been elected President of the Board of Public Libraries.

1913: It was reported today that Rabbi Emanuel Sternheim of Greenville, Mississippi, has been elected a member of the International Society of the Apocrypha in England.

1913: In what might be viewed as an early celebration of his 70thbirthday, Dr. Kaufmann Kohler who served as Rabbi of Temple Beth-El for 24 years and is now Rabbi Emeritus was honored by more than 500 friends and congregants at this morning’s Shabbat services.

1913: This evening, the Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis hosted a banquet honoring Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the President of the Hebrew Union College.

1913: In New York, the Jewish Forum at Columbia University is scheduled to host a reception in honor of Professor Richard Gottheil.

1914: “Oscar S. Strauss, the former Secretary of Commerce and Labor and former Ambassador to Turkey, delivered a speech tonight at the Brooklyn Young Men’s Hebrew Association where he “declared that the origin of republican institutions in American must sought in the Puritan ideals of the Old Testament commonwealth” and continued they took their spirit “from the history of the children of Israel from Joshua to Saul.”

1915: It was reported today that Louis D. Brandeis has publicly declared that “Disabilities are imposed upon the Jews in Russia where they are denied the freedom to move about, the right to own land the rights fundamental to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness” and that “to win these rights is the only solution for the Jewish problem for any other solution involves suicide and death to Jewish aspirations.”

1915: It was reported today that under the auspices of Baron de Hirsch Fund, “Jews have been sent to 1,700 different communities in the United States and Canada where working conditions were more suited to them than was the case in the congregated districts like New York City” and that “in 15 years 70,000 Jews have been sent West.”

1915:  Solomon Rabinowitz, who writes under the name of Sholom Aleichem, was the guest of honor at tonight’s annual meeting of the Educational Alliance where the keynote addressed was given by Jacob H. Schiff.

1915: In Chicago, following the formation of a Leo M. Frank Committee it was announced that a mass meeting will be held at the Powers Theatre to protest against the execution of Leo M. Frank.

1915: Acting on behalf of the state of Georgia, “Solicitor General Dorsey applied today to Judge Hill for a writ of habeas corpus directing the immediate presence of Leo M. Frank in court for resentence to death as the slayer of Mary Phagan” and Judge Hill announced, in response, “that he would take no action on the petition before the mandate of the United States Supreme Court is handed down.”

1915: President Ralph A. Newman was the toastmaster at the seventh annual dinner of the Harvard Menorah Society which was attended by approximately 200 men at the Hotel Lenox in Boston, MA.

1916(30thof Nisan, 5676): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1916(30thof Nisan, 5676): Sixty-eight year old Chamber of Commerce member Isaac Barron passed away today in Shreveport, LA.

1916: In Hot Springs, AR, dedication of the Leo N. Levi Memorial Hospital

1916: In a marriage of two labor activists in the garment industry, Bessie Abramowitz married Sidney Hillman. She became Bessie Abramowitz Hillman.

1916: In the conflict between the owners of the renovated Rialto Theatre which included Felix Kahn of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., and Oscar Hammerstein, “the theatre said that the rooms desired by Mr. Hammerstein were to be used by the press department and that the agreement that Hammerstein was to occupy the rooms was drawn by himself and was unsigned.”

1916: In responding to a proposal made by the Reform Rabbis to remove “The Merchant of Venice” from the New York City Sir Hebert Tree was reported to have said today that “The Jews today are perhaps the most potent race on the earth.  Surely they can afford not to be too sensitive of criticism.”  “To banish Shylock from the stage would be to banish one of the most important characters of Shakespeare’s Genius” especially since “he gave Shylock the domestic virtues and vices of his race, those vices which had been called forth by the oppression of the Middle Ages.” 

1917(11th of Iyar, 5677): Twenty-eight year old Captain of Artillery Maxime Charles Gustave Berr, the son of Louis Lehmann Berr and Henriette Alice Berr and the husband of Claire Andrée Clarisse Sara Berr died while serving in the French Army during WW I.

1917: In Russia, “the Jews of Constanigrad have signed $5,000,000 rubles for the liberty loan.

1917: Abraham Isaac "Abe" Shiplacoff’s resolution requesting “Woodrow Wilson to reconsider his appointment of Elihu Root as head of the United States Commission to Russia” was “hooted down by the members of the” the New York State Assembly.

1917: “Samuel Untermyer, speaking tonight at Cooper Union to 3,000 member of the Jewish League of American Patriots deplored he selection of Elihu Root as the head of the proposed American commission to Russia on the ground that Mr. Root was not in sympathy with and no understanding of Jewish aspirations and problems” and that while “he did not advocate his removal…he suggested that the President might was to appoint some representative Jew to its membership.

1917: Birthdate of Patricia M. Brodkin, the wife of producer and director Herbert Brodkin.

1918: In Vienna, “The Christian Socialist deputies in the Reichsrath introduced an interpellation demand the establishment of a percentage limitation for Jewish students in all higher educational institutions” while other deputies are calling for limiting the number of Jewish students to three per cent.

1918: In Camden, NJ, the ten teams working to add additional members to the Young Women’s Hebrew Association and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association showed renewed vigor tonight when they found out that work will soon be starting on the construction of a new home for the two organizations.

1918: In Greece, a newly enacted law which had a negative impact on the owners of property that had been destroyed led to many Jews leaving for the United States, France, Italy and Egypt.  Many of these Jews had lost their property in the great fire of August 17, 1917

1919(3rdof Iyar, 5679): Parashat Kedoshim

1919: In Chicago, Rabbi Abram Hirschberg conducted services at Temple Sholom.

1919: In Chicago Rabbi Joseph Hevesh conducted services at Temple Anshe Emes.

1919: In Chicago, Rabbi Julius Rapport conducted services at Temple Beth El.

1919: As the German government sought to bring down the Bavarian Soviet Republic, the army “assisted by the Freikorps” retook Munich where they killed and arrested many of the revolutionaries including Eugen Leviné

1919: Birthdate of Irish gynecologist and family planning pioneer Dr. Michael Solomons.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/pioneer-of-family-planning-1.987726

1919: After attending the final meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Scientists in today in Philadelphia, Mrs. Nathaniel E. Harris, the President of the Council of Jewish Women went to Cincinnati to attend the 25thanniversary celebration of the Cincinnati Section of the Council of Jewish Women.

1919: In Manhattan, musicologist Charles Seeger and concert violinist Constance de Clyver Edson Seeger gave birth to folk singer and social activist Peter “Pete” Seeger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html?hpw&rref=obituaries

1920: In Vienna, the university remained closed “owing to anti-Semitic demonstrations by German Nationalist students” who drove “the Jewish students from the lecture halls and classrooms.”

1922(5thof Iyar, 5682): Seventy-four year old Alice Charlotte von Rothschild, the “eighth and youngest child of Anselm von Rothschild passed away today.

https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/people-and-functions/collectors/rothschild-alice-charlotte-von-1847-1922

1923: In Palestine, filming of “Palestine Awakening” written by American Zionist William Topkis (As reported by David Geffen)

01924: Aleph Zadik Aleph, popularly known as AZA is formed in Omaha, Nebraska by Sam Beber.

1924: In Detroit, Simon and Freda Singer, immigrants from Russia who spoke only Yiddish” gave birth to Isadore Manuel Singer “who unified large areas of mathematics and physics in becoming one of the most important mathematicians of his era,” and the winner of “the National Medal of Science in 1983 and the Abel Prize in 2004, often considered the Nobel of mathematics.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/science/isadore-singer-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

 1924: Birthdate of Ludewig Pfeuffer, the native of Wurzberg whose family moved to Petah Tivkva when he was eleven and who gained fame as prize winning poet Yehuda Amichai.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/yehuda-amichai

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/like-a-prayer#

1925: President Calvin Coolidge helped dedicate the cornerstone of the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community center.

1926:  Birthdate of dramatist Herbert Blau

1926: In the same year it was released in the United States, “She” a fantasy film directed and produced by G.B. Samuelson with music by Louis Levy was released in Finland today.

1926(13thof Iyar, 5686): Seventy five year old Oscar Solomon Straus who became the first Jewish Cabinet Secretary when he served as Secretary of Commerce and Labor under Teddy Roosevelt, passed away today.

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

1927: “A Night in Spain” a review with music by Side Silvers opened at the 44thStreet Theatre today.

1927: In Brooklyn, Sidney Lazarus and the former Frances “Frankie” Mushkin gave birth to cartoonist Melvin Lazarus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/arts/design/mell-lazarus-cartoonist-of-miss-peach-and-momma-dies-at-89.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1927: In Germany, Michael and Toni Lehmann gave birth to Horst Lazard Lehman who came to the United States with his family in 1938 where he graduated from high school, served in the Army and pursued a career as Rabbi in the Reform movement.

http://findingaids.cjh.org/?pID=2487976

1928: “Show Boat,” the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical based on the novel by Edna Ferber premiered for the first time in London at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

1928: According to reports published today, the employment picture is improving after an 18 month slowdown.  Among the causes for the improvement are the growth of the orange industry, improving conditions in businesses located in Tel Aviv including textiles, chocolate and box making and the construction work on the Rutenberg hydroelectric concession on the Jordan River near the Sea of Galilee.

1928(13thof Iyar, 5688): Isabel Caroline Steinfeld, the daughter of Martha Levy and Maurice Steinfeld passed away today in Madison, Wisconsin.

1929: “Inherited Passions” “a silent drama film” starring Maria Matray was released in Germany today.

1929:Jews praying at the Western Wall are attacked by Arabs.

1930: “The Big Pond,” featuring music by Irving Kahal, Al Sherman and Sammy Fain was released today in the United States.

1931: Birthdate of Joseph LIchtman, the native of Brooklyn who gained fame as dancer, choreographer and director Joe Layton.

http://archives.nypl.org/the/18398

1932(27thof Nisan, 5692): Sixty-five year old Lee Kamioner, the native of Germany, Colorado silver miner and Denver clothing merchant and Democratic Alderman who at the age of thirty came to New York where he founded the Hub Clothing Company, became a real estate owner and a philanthropist supporting the Convalescent Homer for Hebrew Children.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1932/05/05/100731196.pdf

1933:  Birthdate of Steven Weinberg, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979, supporter of Israel who expressed his views in “an essay title ‘Zionism and Cultural Adversaries’” and husband of U.T. law professor Louise Weinberg.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1979/weinberg-bio.html

1934: In Alexandria, Egypt Sarah and Nessim Mustacchi gave birth to singer/songwriter Georges Moustaki

1934(18thof Iyar, 5694): Lag B’Omer

1934(18thof Iyar, 5694): Fifty-nine year old Samuel Elfenbein, “the son of Rosa and Moses Elfenbein” passed away today in Brunswick, GA.

1934: “A three-day celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of Tel-Aviv…culminated today with a tribute to the veteran 72 year old founder and present Mayor, Meyer Dizengoff.  More than 10,000 school children marched through the streets to the municipal building carrying baskets of flowers, where were presented to the Mayor.  Two new streets were named for him and his late wife, despite his protests that he was unworthy of such an honor.”

1934: The trial of Abba Ahimeir, Abraham Stavsky and Ze'evi Rosenblatt the three men accused of murdering Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, Jewish Labor party leader, at Tel-Aviv last June, reopened today with the court ruling against the request of Horace Samuel, counsel for the defense, to strike out evidence resulting from police line-ups in which the three accused were identified. Samuel contended that the police had “guided Mrs. Arlosoroff” in identifying the accused.

1935: Birthdate of businessman Ron Popeil who gained fame and fortune with Ginsu knives and “Mr. Microphone.”

1935: Arguments before the Supreme Justices including Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo in the case of “A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States,” continued for a second and final day.

1935: For the second day in a row, temperatures in Palestine reach 104 degrees “in the shade.”  The coastal settlements and cities, including Tel Aviv were most affected by the unusual heat wave.  Temperatures in Palestine average 65 in May and 74 during July and August.  In modern times, the temperature record belongs to a day in August 1881 when the thermometer reached 112.

1936: This morning “junior member of the religious school of Congregation Emanu-El” in New York, presented a pageant “The Ten Commandments” in commemoration of the upcoming celebration of the festival of Shavuot which “marks the giving of the commandments to Moses.”

1936: Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. made his first appearance at public dinner in New York in three years when he joined 750 other people in paying tribute to Judge Lehman at dinner tonight at the Hotel Astor where his sixtieth birthday celebration was combing with honoring his 15 years of service as President of the Jewish Welfare Board.

1936: Today, as the Arab strike enters into its 12th day, the stoppage is holding firm everywhere except in Haifa “and the Jews who are most pessimistic over the outcome of this unrest” “are keeping out of the Arab quarters” while “going about their normal business.”

1936: While speaking at a meeting of the B’nai B’rith at Atlantic City, NJ, “Representative Samuel Dickstein of New York, the chairman of the House Immigration, Naturalization and Deportation Committee declared that while the Hitler government refused to meet its obligations to American bondholder, it spent almost $32,000,000 to spread propaganda against the Jews in the United States.”

1936: The New York Times described the work that has gone into building the soon-to-be opened modern water system that will finally give Jerusalem a reliable supply of water.  This is the culmination of a ten year effort, the last two of which have resulted in the construction of four pumping stations at Ra-el Ain, Latrun, Bab El Wad and Romna.  Each of the pumping stations is at a successively higher elevation.  The work was made all the more difficult by the topography of the Judean Hills and the layers of hard work through which the workers had to dig.

1936: Joseph C. Hyman Secretary of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was reported to have issued a reassurance that although the Joint will continue providing financial assistance and travel funds for those seeking to leave Europe for Palestine, it will not be able to allocate additional funds because of other demands with which it is dealing.

1937: Rabbi Joseph Konvitz of Newark, president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in the United States and Canada, said tonight, at opening the annual convention of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in the United States and Canada that “the present Federal administration has set an example for believers in democracy everywhere,

1938: The Flossenburg Concentration Camp became operational.  The camp was located in Germany and would be liberated by the Americans in April, 1945.  Several of the conspirators who sought to kill Hitler in June, 1944, were executed at Flossenburg.  These included the famous Admiral Canaris whose diary has provided a treasure trove about German activities during this period.

1939(14thof Iyar, 5699): Pesach Sheni

1939: Hoping to establish rapprochement with Nazi Germany, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin replaces his Jewish commissar for foreign affairs, Maksim Litvinov, with the less British-oriented Viacheslav Molotov.  The result of all this would be a non-aggression pact between the two dictators in August of 1939 that would shock the world.  At the same time it would give Hitler the green light to invade Poland from the east.  The Soviets later invaded from the west and the two totalitarian butchers shared in the spoils of Poland.

1939: Just months before Hitler and Stalin signed the non-aggression pact that made possible the start of WW II in Europe Stalin removed his Jewish Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, which facilitated the negotiations with the Nazis.

1939: Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women, was established.

 1939: The Budapest "Jewish Law" prohibits any Hungarian Jew from becoming a judge, a lawyer a schoolteacher or a member of the Hungarian parliament.

1940: At noon today, Illinois Congressman Adolph J. Sabath met with President Roosevelt in the White House.

1940: Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter had lunch with President Roosevelt in the White House this afternoon.

1941: Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring came to the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris1941: Time magazine published an article titled “Germany: Problem in Subtraction” reported that The arithmetic that Hitler has taught to Jews in the Third Reich has been the misery of subtraction. From all of them he has taken something: privileges, property, homes, life. Simplest subtraction has been the decrease of the Reich's Jewish population by emigration, deportation and death.

Currently:

In Germany—500,000 Jews minus 310,000 equals 190,000.

In Austria—180,000 Jews minus 135,000 equals 45,000.

In Czecho-Slovakia—185,000 Jews minus 25,000 equals 160,000.

Within the last fortnight two sardine-packed trains left Vienna, as the Nazis applied themselves again to this problem. Aboard each were more than 1,000 Jews bound for limbo—the new barbed-wire ghetto near Lublin in Poland. Elsewhere sealed trains crossed the border with more Jews (mostly very old and very young) for the starved concentration camps of unoccupied France. From Vienna alone the Nazis promised to dump five to twelve more trainloads a month. Hitler's final solution to his problem in subtraction is zero—to be reached, according to the most sanguine reports from Germany, in just six more weeks.http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,851072,00.html#ixzz1L8yfn3rT

1942: Nazis required Dutch Jews to wear a Jewish star

1942(16th of Iyar, 5702): Sixty-two year old Posen native Felix Pinner, the “economist and editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt who came to the United States in 1939 died in Queens, New York City.

1943(28th of Nisan, 5703): German troops in the "Aryan" section of Warsaw arrest and kill 21 women who are Jewish or suspected of being Jewish.

 1943(28th of Nisan, 5703): A Jewish man named Rakowski, an underground leader at the Treblinka death camp, is shot when currency intended to bribe Ukrainians to help him and a few others escape is discovered in his barrack.

1944: The first of a number of new factories at Auschwitz opened up in preparation to receive laborers from the deportation of Hungarian Jews. New labor camps opened in Myslowice, Bobrek, and Sosnoweic in preparation for the same action. 

1944: At Gleiwitz, Poland, near Auschwitz, Germans open a slave-labor plant for production of "black smoke" for use in smoke screens.

1944(10thof Iyar, 5704): Eighty-two year old Sadie American, the Chicago born daughter of Amelia (Smith) American and German born businessman Oscar American, a leading woman’s activist who was best known for co-founding and leading the National Council of Jewish Women passed away today.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/american-sadie

https://jwa.org/people/american-sadie

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/sadie-american

1944(10th of Iyar): Poet Isaac Katzenelson murdered at Auschwitz

1945: Birthdate of Jeffrey Connor Hall, the Professor Emeritus of Biology at Brandeis who “was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.”

1945: Fifty-eight year old Herbert Farjeon, a major figure in the world of British theatre who was the son of Benjamin Leopold Farjeon passed away today.

1945(20thof Iyar, 5705): Eighty year old Bernard Flexner, “the founder and first president of the Palestine Economic Corporation” passed away today in New York

https://rbsc.princeton.edu/collections/bernard-flexner-papers

 

1945: In the U.S. premiere of “The Valley of Decision” based on a novel by Marcia Davenport who co-authored the script with Sonya Levien and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.

1945: At Mauthausan Concentration Camp, the task of guarding the camp was handed to a police unit from Vienna.

1945(20thof Iyar, 5705): Sixty-seven year old Chicago native Elias Mayer the Northwestern University trained lawyer who served as “secretary of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in the United States and a director of the Jewish Charities of Chicago passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/05/06/313702492.pdf

1945(20th of Iyar, 5705): Approximately 9400 Jewish prisoners who had been evacuated from Neuengamme and marched to Lübeck, Germany, are loaded by their overseers onto two ships, the Thielbeck and the Cap Arcona, apparently for no other purpose but a Nazi hope that the Jews would die while on board. British planes, unaware that the ships are not hostile, attack. Both ships sink in the Lübeck harbor within 15 minutes. Survivors who attempt to swim to shore are fired upon by waiting members of the Hitler Youth, Volkstrum, and the SS. Of the 9400 prisoners, only about 2400 survive

http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/Death-on-the-Baltic

 

 

                                                                      OR

 

1945(20th of Iyar, 5705): In the worst friendly-fire incident in history - Britain's Royal Air Force killed more than 7,000 survivors of Nazi concentration camps who were crowded onto ships in Lubeck harbor, Germany. The ragged masses that had survived the Holocaust stood no chance against the guns of their liberators. This tragic mistake occurred one day before the British accepted the surrender of all German forces in the region. Reports of the incident were quickly hushed up - as a jubilant world prepared to celebrate the Allied victory in Europe. Despite the bitter irony of dying in hellish fires on sinking ships just hours before liberation, the tragedy was quickly forgotten or resolutely ignored. The anniversary of this dark day will soon pass by again - largely unnoticed or unmentioned. By early May 1945, the rumors of Hitler's suicide had rekindled hope for beleaguered prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. The Red Army had just conquered Berlin; the British held Hamburg and Americans were in Munich and Vienna. After surviving unspeakable horrors and deprivations for years, the battered prisoners could finally dare to hope that their day of deliverance was at hand. In the closing weeks of World War II, thousands of prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, the Mittelbau-Dora camp at Nordhausen and the Stutthof camp near Danzig were marched to the German Baltic coast. Most of the inmates were Jews and Russian POWs, but they also included communist sympathizers, pacifists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, prostitutes, Gypsies and other perceived enemies of the Third Reich. At the port of L beck almost 10,000 camp survivors were crowded onto three ships: Cap Arcona, Thielbeckand Athen. No one knew what the Nazis were planning to do, or what plans the Allies had already set into motion. Although the final surrender was imminent, British Operational Order No. 73 for May 3 was to "destroy the concentration of enemy shipping in L beck Bay." While thousands of camp prisoners were being ferried out to the once-elegant Hamburg-Sud Amerika liner Cap Arcona, the RAF's 263rd, 197th, 198th and 184th squadrons were arming their Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers with ammunition, bombs and rockets. At 2:30 p.m. on May 3, at least 4,500 prisoners were aboard the Cap Arcona as the first attack began. Sixty-four rockets and 15 bombs hit the liner in two separate attacks. As the British strafed the stricken ship from the air, Nazi guards on shore fired on those who made it into the water. Only 350 prisoners survived. The Thielbeck- which had been flying a white flag - and the poorly marked hospital ship Deutschland were attacked next. Although Thielbeck was just a freighter in need of repairs, it was packed with 2,800 prisoners. The overcrowded freighter sank in just 20 minutes, killing all but 50 of the prisoners. In less than two hours, more than 7,000 concentration camp refugees were dead from the friendly fire. Two thousand more would have died if the captain of the Athen had not refused to take on additional prisoners in the morning before the attack. Most who were familiar with the Cap Arcona disaster believed that the Nazis intended to sink the ships at sea to kill everyone on board. Hundreds of prisoners had already been killed on the forced marches from the camps. In this case, however, RAF Fighter Command did their killing for them. In the Cap Arcona/Thielbeck/Athendisaster, the tragic deaths of so many who had suffered so much for so long were quickly forgotten. After years of unprecedented bloodletting and destruction, the nations involved were in shambles, their populations numbed by suffering and death. The unfortunate victims who perished at the close of history's worst conflagration were quickly lost in the fleeting euphoria of peace. In 1945, at the close of the war in Europe, the victorious British and their American allies did not want a media disaster overshadowing their V-E Day celebrations. When the extent of the friendly-fire incident became known at Westminster, the British government and Allied Command effectively prevented most news of the disaster from spreading from Germany. Beyond war-weariness and postwar jubilation, other factors conspired to ensure that the valiant prisoners who died at the threshold of freedom would not be given much attention in the world press. In a war in which the British had paid so high a price to defeat the Nazis, to even criticize their forces was tantamount to siding with the devil. Then postwar Germany quickly became one of the "good guys" as an important frontline ally in the Cold War against communism. As such, most Germans preferred not to draw attention to their own war atrocities. Millions of Jews, Russians, Serbs, Poles and others had already been killed by the Nazis. Tens of millions more were homeless refugees, with many near starvation. The memory of 7,000 or 8,000 concentration camp survivors killed by mistake would soon wash away in the tide of history in a violent age. Britain has never officially apologized for its tragic mistake at L beck Bay, nor has it honored the innocent victims with a proper memorial. The RAF records of the disaster are sealed until 2045, one century after the attack. No British government document has referred to the estimated 7,500 victims of its mistake. In May 1990, Germany opened a two-room museum dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Cap Arcona tragedy in the small port city of Neustadt-in-Holstein. A memorial monument was erected on the beach nearby at Pelzerhaken, where many of the bodies washed ashore and were buried. Other monuments were erected along L beck Bay and at the Neuengamme Camp Memorial southeast of Hamburg. Much has been written in German about the tragedy, but surprisingly little about the Cap Arcona has made it to the English press. On a recent visit to the memorial, a helpful resident of Neustadt said to me: "So your family is German?" I said, "No.""Oh, then you are Jewish?" Again I said, "No." My new acquaintance looked puzzled. Eventually he asked: "Well how could you possibly know about this?" I asked myself: "Why did it take me a half century to find out?" A Jewish dental student, Benjamin Jacobs, gives a firsthand account of the friendly fire attack in The Dentist of Auschwitz (University of Kentucky Press, 1995). Along with Eugene Pool, the Boston dentist also wrote The 100 Year Secret: Britain's Hidden World War II Massacre (Lyons Press, 2004). Documentaries on the subject, such as Lawrence Bond's Typhoons' Last Storm, have had only limited publicity. According to legend, Pheidippides was an Athenian herald who ran from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens 2,500 years ago. After announcing the Greek victory over the Persians, he allegedly died on the spot. The tale has been widely propagated by organizers of modern athletic events. Surviving the horrors of concentration camps - one day at a time - is in many respects like a marathon run. Mere survival under such brutal conditions surely tested the endurance of both body and spirit. And like the mythical runner, thousands of inmates made it all the way to the end of their agonizing journeys only to perish at the finish line. A half-century after the ill-fated air raid, we still know very little about the Jews, the Russians and other prisoners who survived so much before dying on the finish line in May 1945. By the time British records are unsealed in 2045, all children and most grandchildren of the victims will be gone. Historians will pore over the tragic details of the Cap Arcona disaster with the same level of detachment that we now feel for events such as the Franco-Prussian War or the siege of Sevastopol. There is no question that the friendly-fire fiasco was a tragic error made during a routine military operation. Despite the terrible consequences, few reasonable people would condemn the British for their ill-fated raid. Some Hitler apologists have even attempted to use such mistakes to blame the Allies for monstrous crimes committed by the Nazis. Yet the continued avoidance of criticizing friends does not justify shunning all mention of the innocent victims of the attack. Whether embarrassing or not, the 7,500 Cap Arconavictims deserve to be remembered.

1945: The Inspector General began an investigation in charges of “alleged mistreatment” of German Guards at Dachau by U.S. soldiers.

1946: Today, Dr. Umberto Nahon a leader of the Italian Zionist Organization said that the 1, 014 Jewish refugees who have been stranded at La Spezia for the past month have agreed that none of them will leave for Palestine until all of them have received visas so they can immigrate together.

1947(13th of Iyar, 5707): Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshm

1947: Since today has been designated as “United Jewish Appeal Sabbath by the Synagogue Council of America” rabbis delivered sermons that “stressed the needs of Europe’s 1,500,000 Jewish survivors and offered prayers for the success of the $170,000,000 United Jewish Appeal campaign” designed to alleviate their suffering.

                                                           

1948: The U.S. Supreme Court decided that deed covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate based on race or religion are legally unenforceable. This opened the doorway for Jews to move into many of what

had been “restricted” neighborhoods.  In some places, effectively whole towns had been off-limits to Jews.  Realtors and bigots would not go gently into the night and they found other creative ways to try and excluded Jews.  One of the most elegant areas in Washington, D.C. was called Spring Valley, a restricted subdivision that was home to Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

1948: The Supreme Court issued a decision in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc

1948(24th of Nisan, 5708): Sixty-three year old Hebron native and JTS ordained rabbi, Raphael Melamed, the holder of a doctorate from Dropsie College who had led Temple B’nai Israel in Elizabeth, NJ where he worked “to foster better understanding between religious groups” passed away today after suffering fatal heart attack.

1949: In New York, film executive David Raphel, the grandson of Baron David de Gunzburg and his wife gave birth to American author Monique Raphel High.

1949: Herbert Lehman, the former Governor of New York “who is on an inspection tour for the American Joint Distribution Committee” will entrain for Marseille today “where he will visit refugee camps and watch the embarkation” of the first of the ten thousand displaced person going to Israel during the month of May.

1950: The Indian League organized a meeting in memory of the late Harold Laski during which Indian Prime Minister Nehru said: “It is difficult to realize that Professor Harold Laski is no more. Lovers of freedom all over the world pay tribute to the magnificent work that he did. We in India are particularly grateful for his staunch advocacy of India's freedom, and the great part he played in bringing it about. At no time did he falter or compromise on the principles he held dear, and a large number of persons drew splendid inspiration from him. Those who knew him personally counted that association as a rare privilege, and his passing away has come as a great sorrow and a shock.”

1951: Birthdate of Pierre Lellouche, the Tunisian born Jew who has been active in French and European politics including serving as President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

1953(18th of Iyar, 5713): Lag B’Omer

1953: In Westbury, NY, Seymour and Joan Blecker gave birth to Irene Blecker the holder of multiple degrees from Cornell gained fame as Dr. Irene Blecker Rosenfeld, the CEO of Kraft Food and number 6 on “The Wall Street Journal’s 50 Women to Watch list.”

1954: In Oakland, CA, Walter S. and Jean Scheib gave birth to Walter Scheib III who grew up in Bethesda, MD to become the White House Chef for Presidents Clinton and Bush.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/us/walter-scheib-innovative-former-white-house-chef-is-dead-at-61.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/05/04/86569004.html?pageNumber=25

1956(22nd of Iyar, 5716): Eighty-six year old Bohemian born and Chicago College of Law trained attorney Joseph Sabath the long time serving Superior Court Justice and husband of Regina Sabath with whom he raised two children and who was the brother Congressman Adoph J. Sabath, “the dean of the House of Representative when he died in 1952” passed away today.

1957:  Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, California. Because of Brooklyn’s large Jewish population, the team had “tons” of Jewish fans. O’Malley was vilified for moving the team.  Decades later, we found out that the O’Malley wanted to keep the team in Brooklyn.  He was thwarted by Robert Moses who had his priorities for New York that included a baseball park outside of Brooklyn that would become known as Shea Stadium. 

1958: “Stakeout on Dope Street’ which marked the directorial debut of Irvin Kershner was released in the United States today.

1958: Sofia Cosma, the Jewish pianist who ended being imprisoned in Siberia when she was trying to escape the Nazis at the start of WW II, performed for the first time in Lasi.

1958: In Copenhagen, Claus Toksvig and his wife gave birth to Sandi Toksvig author of Hitler’s Canary, a novel set in Denmark during the German occupation which tells the story of a family involved in the resistance movement that helped to save the Danish Jews during WW II.

1959: Birthdate of Ben Elton, a London born comedian, author, playwright and television director whose father was “of German-Jewish descent” and whose mother was not.

1960: The Anne Frank House, a museum dedicated to Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank, opened in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

1960(6th of Iyar, 5720): Seventy-nine year old Alfred Whital Stern retired clothing executive and avid collector of Lincoln memorabilia passed away in Chicago.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FA0D11FF3D5C1A728DDDAC0894DD405B808AF1D3

1962(28th of Nisan, 5722): Eighty year old Russian born, long time director of “the United Hias Service Morris Asofsky, known as  “The Voice of HIAS” due to his long running program on WEVD and the husband of Flora Asofsky with whom he had raised one daughter, passed away today in Tel Aviv.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/05/80389314.pdf

1969(15th of Iyar. 5729): Seventy-nine year old cinematographer Karl W. Freund whose work included the 1927 classic Metropolis to the I Love Lucy television series.

1973: “Touch Me in the Morning” one of the top singles of 1973 conceived of by songwriter and producer by Michael Masser was released today.

1973: Birthdate of Portland, OR native movie producer and sportswriter Max Handled the University of Pennsylvania grad and AEPi brother who wrote Why Fantasy Football Matters (And Our Lives Do Not) while raising a family with his wife, actress Elizabeth Banks.

1975(22nd of Iyar, 5735): Parashat Behar-Bechukotai

1975(22nd of Iyar, 5735): Seventy Six year old Columbia grad and JTS ordained Rabbi Elliot Burstein, the  New Haven, CT,  born son of “Dr. S.P. and Pauline (Berman) Burstein and  the husband of Charlotte Greenfield, who served Congregation Beth Israel for 42 years passed away today.

https://magnes.berkeley.edu/collections/archives/western-jewish-americana/burstein-elliot-papers-1920-1969

1976: Thirty-three passers-by were injured when a booby-trapped motor scooter exploded at the corner of Ben Yehuda and Ben Hillel Streets. Among those injured were the Greek consul in Jerusalem and his wife. The following day, on the eve of Independence Day, the municipality organized an event at the site of the attack, under the slogan: "Nevertheless."

1976: Paul “Simon put together a benefit show at Madison Square Garden to raise money for the New York Public Library.”

1976: Pulitzer Prize awarded to Saul Bellow for Humboldt's Gift. Born in Canada in 1915, Bellow moved to Chicago as a child in the 1920's.  A graduate of Northwestern University, where he was told to forget about writing since no Jew could appreciate the English language.  Before becoming a successful writer, Bellow taught college, worked for the board of the Encyclopedia Britannica and served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II.  His first novel was the Dangling ManHumboldt's Gift, which appeared in 1975, "was narrated in the first person. The protagonist, Charlie Citrine, is a writer, rich and successful. But in his heart he knows that he is a failure - he is under the thumb of a small-time Chicago gangster, ruined by a divorce and finally abandoned by his mistress. He admires his dead friend, Von Humboldt Fleischer, modeled on the poet Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966). Humboldt, a talent wasted, represents for him all that is important in culture. Citrine continues the series of Bellow's losers, from Herzog to Sammler, but like his other novels, it is not gloomy, and finds a comic side even in its protagonist's tragedy."

1978: Birthdate of Herzliya native and award winning actress and singer Miri Mesika.

1978(26th of Nisan, 5738): Ninety-one year old Pinchas Rosen, Israel’s first Minister of Justice passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F70812FC395413728DDDAD0894DD405B888BF1D3

1979: Premiere of “Bent” a play by Martin Sherman that “revolves around the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany.”

1981: The New York Timesreported that The Israel Festival has been canceled for this summer. The decision was made in order ''to spread festival events out over a greater period of time, rather than concentrating them within a span of six weeks,'' according to a government spokesman. Instead there will be two smaller festivals, the Spring in Jerusalem Festival and the Proms '81, both of which will take place in Jerusalem.

1981: In New York, light from hundreds of candles flickered on polished mosaic tile as the sounds of the ghetto songs of decades ago echoed in Temple Emanu-El. As they have for 10 years, thousands of Jews and non-Jews gathered to recall the spirit of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943

1981: Beginning of Jewish Heritage Week in the United States as proclaimed by President Ronald Reagan.

1981(29th of Nisan, 5741): Seventy-nine year old tennis champion and winner of the bronze medal in the shot-put passed away today in New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/05/sports/maud-blumenthal-tennis-player-who-won-many-titles-in-1930-s.html

1985: “Private Resort,” a comedy that marked the film debut of Rob Morrow was released today in the United States.

1987: Saul P. Steinberg and Barbara Steinberg, both of New York, have announced the engagement of their daughter, Laura S. Steinberg, to Jonathan M. Tisch, president of Loews Hotels who is a son of Postmaster General Preston Robert Tisch and Mrs. Tisch of Washington and New York.

1987: Cardinal John O’Conner, Archbishop of New York “watched thousands march down Fifth Avenue protesting the oppression of Soviet Jews” later joining the protesters at a rally near the United Nations where told them, “As I stood on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral this morning and watched you stream by, I could only be proud of those who streamed out of Egypt several thousand years ago, winning freedom for themselves and for all of us. They are your ancestors, and they are mine… I am proud to be this day, with you, a Jew.” (What nobody knew that day, including O’Connor was that his mother Dorothy Gumple O’Connor, was born Jewish” and converted to Catholicism before she met and married his father.)

1987:Her Majesty Queen Beatrix officiated at the opening ceremony of the restored synagogues which house the Jewish Historical Museum

1990: NBC broadcast the final episode of season six of “The Cosby Show,” co-created by Ed Weinberger.

1991(19th of Iyar, 5751): Fifty-seven Jerzy Kosinksi author of Being There passed away today

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/04/arts/jerzy-kosinski-the-writer-57-is-found-dead.html

1992: In The Los Angeles Times, Charles Solomon reviewed Blood and Banquets: A Berlin Diary 1930-1938 by Bella Fromm, the”daughter of a prominent Jewish family, who was forced to begin working when her fortune disappeared in the runaway inflation that wracked Germany after World War I. As ‘Frau Bella,’ the society columnist for the highbrow Berlin newspaper Vossische Zeitung, she frequented the most exclusive circles” and it was this work that provided the information for her book which has appeared in a paperback edition.

1995(3rd of Iyar, 5755): Yom HaZikaron

1996: “The Pallbearer” a comedy produced by J.J. Abrams and co-starring David Schwimmer, Michael Rapaport and Barbara Hershey was released in the United States today.

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Gertrude Stein: Writings 1903-1932 and Gertrude Stein: Writings 1932-1946.

1998: In “Garment District: Sheets, Towels and Prayers In One Stop”, published today Edward Levine describes life in and around the Millinery Center Synagogue

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/03/nyregion/neighborhood-report-garment-district-sheets-towels-and-prayers-in-one-stop.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

2000: When Lillie Steinhorn retired from the Social Security Administration today she was the longest-serving federal employee on record.

2001: President Bush meets with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in the Oval Office.

2001: In address to the American Jewish Committee, President Bush said “We will speak up for our principles and we will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of our most important friends is the State of Israel… [Israel] is a small country that has lived under threat throughout its existence. At the first meeting of my National Security Council, I told them a top foreign policy priority is the safety and security of Israel. My Administration will be steadfast in supporting Israel against terrorism and violence, and in seeking the peace for which all Israelis pray.”

2002(21st of Iyar, 5762): Sixty-five year old American lighting designer Martin Aronstein whose works included such Broadway hits as “Cactus Flower and ‘How Now, Dow Jones” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/15/arts/martin-aronstein-65-designer-who-lighted-broadway-shows.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jun/08/local/me-aronstein8

2002: “Rebuilding a Community” published today described relations between the Jews of Atlanta and those living in Cuba.

http://www.jewishcuba.org/atlantajt.html

2003(1stof Iyar, 5763): Parashat Kedoshim; Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2003: Jewish Jazz flautist Herbie Mann performed for the last the time at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

 

2003: “Letters from the Dead” premiered at the Brooklyn International Film Festival where the movie’s creator, Jewish-American filmmaker Ari Taub, was named Best New Director.

2004: Twenty year old Marine Corporal Dustin Schrage disappeared today with his team May 3 while swimming across the Euphrates River in the Al Anbar province with his team in Iraq. 

2005: Two days after she had passed away funeral service are scheduled to be held today for Renee Wallach who served as the cantor at North Shore Synagogue in Syoseet, NY for fourteen years.

2006(5th of Iyar, 5766):  Yom Ha’Atzmaut – Israel Independence Day.  In Israel, the celebration of the 58th birthday began in the evening of May 2 with a state torch-lighting ceremony on Jerusalem's Mount Herzl. The ceremony also marked the end of Memorial Day.

2006(5thof Iyar, 5766): Eighty-two year old economist Mark Perlman passed away today.

https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/archives/?p=3169

2006: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli Independence Day has become a worldwide celebration. “From Los Angeles to Budapest, Jews all over the world will be celebrating Israel's 58th anniversary.”

2006: Final episode of “The Perfect Home” starring Alain de Botton, a descendant of Abraham de Boton, was shown today

2007:  The Center for Jewish History presents “TheMystery of the Kaddish” in which Presidential advisor and television personality Leon Charney discusses how the Kaddish became the most famous and familiar prayer in Jewish liturgy. He discusses his new book which charts the origins and development of the Mourner's Prayer against the full backdrop of Jewish history.

 2007: The Central Committee of the National Religious Party votes on a proposal to open up the modern Orthodox party to Israeli’s who do not necessarily adhere to religious strictures. This represents an attempt to increase the party’s political power by tapping “into the large traditional, but not religious sector, which is described as primarily Sephardim…” 

2008(28thof Nisan, 5768): Fifty-seven year old Hanon Reznikov, the co-founder of the Living Theatre passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/theater/09reznikov.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

2008: A screening of “Sonderkommando” \ זונדרקומנדו takes place at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.

2008: London's new mayor, Boris Johnson, a pro-Israel Conservative lawmaker, was sworn in after ousting the left-wing incumbent in a vote that capped the worst local election results for Prime Minister Gordon Brown's party in four decades.

2009: Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts presents “Jerusalem City of Heavenly and Earthly Peace” as part of the Jordi Savill Jerusalem series. 

2009: Annual AIPAC Policy Conference opens in Washington, D.C.

2009: The Washington Post featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression” by Richard A. Posner.

2009: The Excavations in the Roman Theater in Tiberias are being carried out In Memory of Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amir Drori ז"ל, Founder of the Israel Antiquities Authority

http://www.antiquities.org.il/article_eng.aspx?sec_id=25&subj_id=240&id=1507&module_id=#as

2009: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editor of The German Bride by Joanna Hershon’s novel which “is set among the German-born Jewish merchants and traders who settled in the American West in the 19th century” featuring as the protagonist, the daughter of a Berlin banker who travels to Santa Fe to marry a man who owns a dry goods business.

2009:Daniel Mark Epstein discusses and signsLincoln's Men: The President and His Private Secretaries at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, in Baltimore, Maryland. 

2010: Gloria Mound, Director of the Casa Shalom-Institute for Anusim Studies in Israel is scheduled to present a lecture entitled “A Certain Identity: Crypto-Jews around the World” sponsored by the American Sephardi Federation.

2010: In Washington, D.C Liaison Specialist Jason Steinhauer of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project is scheduled to present a lecture and discussion on the contributions, impact and legacy of the more than 550, 000 American Jewish military personnel who served during World War II during which they received 52,000 decorations for gallantry

2010: President Obama renewed the Syrian sanctions.

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to present “Search for Survivors” during which Scott Miller, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will describe “how two researchers meticulously traced what happened to the passengers of the St. Louis, a refugee-filled ship denied entry to the United States on the eve of the Holocaust.”

2011: Sixty-seven year old Fred Goldsmith who won Coach of the Year honors for his work at Rice and Duke retired from the profession today.

2011: Douglas Feith is scheduled to a lecture entitled “Jabotinsky: Enduring Insights at B’nai Israel Congregation in Rockville, MD.

2011: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “In Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia.”

2011:   Second and final episode of “Case Sensitive” based on Sophie Hannah’s novel The Point of Rescue was broadcast on ITV.

2011: The Consultation on Conscience, Reform Judaism's flagship social justice conference is scheduled to hold its closing session today.

2011: In Philadelphia, The Young Friends of the National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to present “U.S.-Israel Relations: Truman to Obama,” a program in recognition of Israel's Independence Day and Jewish American Heritage Month.

2012: In “Violin legend Zvi Zeitlin has died” published today Norman Lebrecht described what him “the great violinist and teacher.

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/05/a-violin-legend-has-died.html

2012: In London, the Wiener Library is scheduled to host “Death in Prague: Philip on Prague Fatale” part of a series of events tied to the 70thanniversary of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

2012: Dr. Jonathan Sarna is scheduled to discuss his marvelous new book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews, at the William G. McGowan Theater in Washington, DC

2012: Miriam Ungar organized a protest on behalf of her husband Jacob Ostreicher opposite Bolivia’s United Nations mission. (As reported by Ben Sales)

2013: “No Place on Earth” is scheduled to open in several cities including Austin, Texas, Columbus, Ohio and Seattle, Washington.

2013: Rabbi Sunny Schnitzer on guitar, noted Kabbalist Jay McCrensky on accordion, and Karen Cole on bass are scheduled to lead a “gemach Carlebach” service at Bethesda Jewish Congregation  as part of the Washington Jewish Music Festival.

2013: “In an interview with Entertainment Tonight ‘Judge Judy’ Sheindlin stated, "I have my walls full of Daytime Emmy Award nominations."

2013: Noam Schey, Sam Stalkfleet, Elise Goodvin, Molly Lipman and Cameron Braverman are scheduled to lead Confirmation Services which will be held for the first time in the new sanctuary of Agudas Achim located in Coralville, Iowa

2013(23rdof Iyar, 5773): Eighty-seven year old Herbert Blau the engineer turned dramatist passed away today on his birthday. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/theater/herbert-blau-iconoclastic-theater-director-dies-at-87.html

2013: IDF Gaza Division commander Brig.-Gen. Micky Edelstein said today that there was "some degree of dialogue" between Israel and parties in Gaza to prevent rocket fire from the coastal territory into southern Israel.

2013: The Chinese government says it is willing to set up a meeting between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president when the two leaders visit Beijing next week, if the sides expressed interest in doing so.

2014: “Cupcakes” is scheduled to be shown at the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story” is scheduled to be shown at the Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival.

2014(3rdof Iyar, 5774): Ninety-one year old radio executive Ben Hoberman passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/business/media/ben-hoberman-91-pioneer-of-all-talk-radio-is-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=1

2014(3rdof Iyar, 5774): Eighty-three year old Nobel winning economist Gary Becker passed away today.

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

2014: Phoebe Chapnick-Sorkin is scheduled to Bat Mitzvahed at Agudas Achim in Coralville, Iowa.

2014: “Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the National Center for Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “The IDF deployed a Patriot missile battery in Eilat today and stationed it alongside the Iron Dome anti-missile battery in the southern city, ahead of the Memorial Day and Independence Day holidays.

2014: “Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit criticized the Israeli government’s handling of “price tag” attacks by Jewish extremists on Saturday, saying “Israel is a lawful country that does not enforce its laws.”

2015: YIVO Institute for Jewish History Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to celebrate its 90th anniversary with a daylong celebration.

2015: Final performance of “Do This One Thing For Me” is scheduled to take place today in NYC.

http://www.dothisonethingforme.com/

2015: Two Palestinians “overpowered and detained for questioning” after they attempted to stab IDF soldiers “near the settlement of Yakir.”

2015: “At least 41 people were injured during a rally in support of the Ethiopian community “that turned violent in Tel Aviv.”

2015: Dr. Neil Gillman, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at JTS is scheduled to talk based on his most book Believe and Its Tensions: A Personal Conversation about God, Torah, Suffering and Death in Jewish Thought.

2015: The New York Times reviews books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964 by Zachary Leader and Einstein’s Dice and Schrodinger’s Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics by Paul Halpern

2016: Dr. Stephen J. Gaies is scheduled to employ a multi-media approach to discussing the Jewish Holocaust on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Des Moines, Iowa, public Library.

2016: Todd Kaminsky completed his service as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 20th District and began serving as a member of the New York State Senate from the 9th District.

2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “Breaking the Silence – Stories of Courage from our Edlers.”

2016: The Jewish Children’s Regional Service, an organization that truly helps those in need” is scheduled to host its “GiveNOLA Day.”

https://givenola.org/

2016: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to a presentation by Gili Getz entitled “A Forbidden Conversation: Speaking, the Unspoken, and the Conversations on Israel in America.”

2017(7thof Iyar, 5777): Seventy-four year old Haifa born actress Daliah Lavi passed away today. (As reported by Daniel E. Slotnik)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/obituaries/daliah-lavi-actress-in-both-dramas-and-spoofs-dies-at-74.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2017: The Jewish Book Council is scheduled to celebrate the 11th year of the Sami Rohr Prize where the 2017 Fellows - Paul Goldberg, author of The Yid: A Novel; Adam Ehrlich Sachs, author of Inherited Disorders: Stories, Parables & Problems; Rebecca Schiff, author of The Bed Moved: Stories; Daniel Torday, author of The Last Flight of Poxl West: A Novel – will be introduced and the three top prizes worth respectively $100,000, $18,000 and $5,000 will be awarded.

2017: A presentation on “Jewish Women in Iowa” is scheduled to take place today of the Iowa Jewish History Symposium in Iowa City.

2017: The Center for Jewish History and YIVO are scheduled to host a talk by Dr. Laura Almagor on “Crackpot or Visionary: Israel Zangwill, Isaac Steinberg and the Jewish Territorialist Movement.”

2018(18thof Iyar, 5778): Lag B’Omer

2018( 18th of Iyar, 5578): Ninety-three year old, one of the most influential physicist not to win a Nobel and the husband of Suzy Pines with whom he raised two children – Catherine and Jonathan – passed away today. (As reported by Kenneth Chang)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/obituaries/david-pines-93-insightful-and-influential-physicist-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018: Rabbi Yossi Jacobson is scheduled to host a “glatt kosher bbq” this evening as part of the Lag B’Omer observance in Des Moines, IA.

2018: In Memphis, TN, Rabbi Feivel Strauss is scheduled to “lead a conversation on From Skepticism to Mysticism” as part of the Lag B’Omer observance.

2018: The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a lecture by Holocaust survivor by Julie Keefer as part of the First Person 2018 Series.

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to cost an interfaith activity “Exploring the Bridges between Islam and Judaism.”

2018: The Cleveland Jewish News is schedule to host “An Evening with Regina Brett” at Temple Tifereth Israel.

2018: Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow, author of a recent biography on U.S. Grant is scheduled to participate in a colloquy following a dinner commemorating the 196th anniversary of Grant’s birth.

2018: Today as President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu continue to express suspicions that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, “an Israeli satellite imaging company released images showing what it described as “unusual” movement around the Iranian Fordo nuclear facility, a one-time uranium enrichment plant buried deep underground that was converted to a research center as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.” (As reported by Judah Ari Gross

2019: In New York, the Addis Fine Art Gallery is scheduled to host the opening of an exhibition featuring the work of Ethiopian born artist Niriti Takele who came to Israel in 1991 as part of “Operation Solomon.”

2019: As part of the Gideon Sorokin Memorial Lecture in Judaic Studies, Rabbi Henry Shreibman is scheduled to lecture on “The Face of Religion in America: The Next 50 Years” at the Dominican University of California.

2019: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Kabbalat Shabbat services followed by Friday night dinner.

2019: Scottish born Torah scholar and author Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, author of Moses: A Human Life is scheduled to begin her latest American lecture tour.

https://www.amazon.com/Moses-Human-Life-Jewish-Lives/dp/0300209622/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1473295345&sr=8-4&keywords=zornberg+avivah

2020: The Breman Museum and the Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia are scheduled to “present via a Live ZOOM webinar Garri Regev, past president of the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA), as she discusses the IGRA database and demonstrates how to use this genealogical research tool.”

2020: “Saving Lives Sunday,” “a streaming even honoring first responder and welcoming home Eli Beer is scheduled to begin at 6 pm UK Time”

2020: For the last time a streaming presentation of “Orchestra of Exiles” which tells “the story of Bronislaw Huberman, the founder of the Israel Philharmonic.”

2020: On 88.9 WERS, Chagigah Radio host Hal Slifer is scheduled to welcome the music of internationally acclaimed Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band as this week’s mini concert performers.

2020: “Clarinetist Ben Goldberg is scheduled to lead a virtual KlezCalifornia workshop on melodic construction and development for intermediate-advanced players of any instrument.

2020: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host a Virtual visit with Emma Lazarus where “children have the opportunity to engage with the famous poetess about her life and the issues of her time.”

2020: As the spread of COVID-19 appears to be halted, “The Israeli cabinet is scheduled to meet today to discuss further easing coronavirus restrictions, including opening malls and markets, amid figures suggesting the country has largely managed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

2021: The first ever Jewish Psychedelic Summit is scheduled to come to an end.

https://www.jweekly.com/2021/04/12/what-a-trip-the-first-ever-jewish-psychedelic-summit-is-about-to-take-off/?utm_source=J.+The+Jewish+News+of+Northern+California&utm_campaign=3750e62e25-Newsletter+04-13-21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_93a945700b-3750e62e25-216420497

2021: Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present “A Field Guide to Jewish Comedy Writers: An Evening With Dave Barry, Adam Mansbach & Alan Zweibel.”

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled host Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents as she “dives deep into the pillars that underlie such systems, from divine will to heredity, putting human faces on the power of human rankings.”

2021: Based on previously published reports, in the wake of the Meron disaster, there are those in Israel including Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau who think “the state is obligated to take responsibility for” the holy site.

  

This Day, May 4, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 4

1008: Birthdate of King Henry I of France who reigned from 1031 until his death in 1060 which means that he was on the throne when a future wine maker, Shlomo Yitzhaki, was born at Troyes in 1040.  [But today, who remembers the French monarch and who remembers Rashi?]

1287: Jews were arrested and accused of "clipping" the coinage in England. Although there was no evidence, the community as a whole was convicted and ordered to be expelled. A ransom of 4,000 (some say 12,000) pounds of silver were paid in ransom.  This was the penultimate act in the story of the medieval English Community.  For a century or more they had been drained of their wealth by Richard the Lionhearted, his brother King John and his son Henry III.  In 1290, having reduced the Jews to a state of semi-poverty, and replaced them with Italian Bankers, King Edward I expelled the Jews from England.  Part of his rational was that if some Jews were guilty of counterfeiting, then the whole community must be guilty.

1415: Jan Hus, who saw himself as a religious reformer was declared a heretic by the Roman Catholics at the Council of Constance.  The followers of Hus were called Hussites. The fight between the Hussites and the Catholic Church turned violent and the Jews of Central Europe would get caught in the crossfire.  After all, if you were busy killing Hussites, why not kill another group of “non-believers” living in your midst?

1493: Pope Alexander VI divided the New World including parts of east Asia between Portugal and Spain along the so-called Demarcation Line.  In other words the Western Hemisphere was divided between two Catholic Kingdoms both of which had or would soon expel their Jewish subjects. Alexander VI was one of the so-called Renaissance Popes, a group of papal leaders who left much to be desired in matters related to religion.  Alexander VI was the Borgia pope. And he was the father of the notorious Cesare and Lucretzia Borgia.  Alexander VI presented a mix bag when it came to his dealings with the Jews.  Alexander allowed so many Marranos fleeing Spain’s Inquisition in to Rome that the city’s refugee population doubled his ten year reign.  While he decreased the size of the badge worn by professing Jews, he added an additional five per cent tax to their already heavy tax burden.  In an act of additional depravity, Alexander “extended the distance of the annual race in which humiliated Jews ran naked through the city so that he could view it from his Castel Sant’Angelo residence” 

1515: An edict was issued ordering the expulsion of the Jews from Ragussa.  The expulsion was another instance of economics hiding behind religious doctrine.  There were exceptions to the order including physicians and merchants operating in the country on a temporary basis.

1680: Birthdate of Johann Gerhard Meuschen, the anti- Jesuit Lutheran theologian. In 1736 he “Novum Testamentum ex Talmude et antiquitatibus Hebraeorum illustratum,” which was a collection of studies that examined the relationship between the New Testament and the Talmud and other Jewish writings.

1689: Christian Knorr von Rosenroth passed away.  Born in Silesia in 1636, this Christian scholar became an accomplished Hebraist who became an avid student of the Kabbalah and the Zohar who authored several books on the topic.

1758: Solomon Lipschitz who was born at Furth in 1675 and served as a cantor in Prague and

Frankfurt passed away today leaving behind Te'udat Shelomo as a guide for future generations of Jewish musicians.

1789: Birthdate of author Angelo Paggi, the native of Sienna who served as the principal of the Jewish school at Florence from 1836 to 1846 before being forced to retire due to poor health.

1789: As France hurtles towards Revolution, Come de Mirabeau whose advocacy for the rights of the Jews included the call to “”confer upon them the enjoyment of civil rights and they will enter the ranks of useful citizens’ began serving as a deputy for the National Constituent Assembly.

1809: Abraham Lazarus married Mary Wilks today at the Great Synagogue.

1798: In Switzerland, the town council of Schwyz which in 2011 hosted “a special exhibition ‘Did you see my Alps? A Jewish Love story’” surrendered to French Troops.

1810: Birthdate of Alexandre Colonna-WalewskiAlexandre Colonna-Walewski the European noble and diplomat who was reported to be the illegitimate son of Napoleon and who was the paramour of the French-Jewish actress Rachel Felix with whom he had a son -  Alexandre-Antoine Colonna-Walewski – whom he adopted in 1860.

 

1814: Ferdinand VII of Spain ordered all previous proceedings of the Cortes of Cadiz null and void. This voided the 1813 statement saying the Inquisition was not in line with Spain's new liberal views. Only 2 months later Ferdinand announced Inquisitional tribunals were to once again resume, and they did.

1816: Birthdate of violinist Joseph Franco

1818: In Charleston, SC, Rebecca Lopez and Mordecai Hendricks De Leon, a doctor from Philadelphia and mayor of the southern city gave birth to Edwin de Leon, the brother of Thomas Cooper, David Camden, Agnes, Maria Louisa and Adeline Mary de Leon.

1827: Birthdate of Jacob Judah, the son of Hillel Judah and the brother of Richmond, VA Isaac Judah

who “was probably the first reader at Congregation Beth Shalom in Richmond.

1838: In Budapest Jozsef Lob Lipot Oppenheim and Katalin Oppenheimer gave birth to Abraham Oppenheim.

1840: In “Ketchevo, Prussian, Poland, Israel Baruch Moses and his wife gave birth to rabbi, author and physician Adolph Moses, a veteran of Garibaldi’s revolutionary served as leader of the Jewish communities in Montgomery, AL and Mobile, AL before settling in Louisville, KY in 1881 where he served as rabbi for the rest of his life while also earning a medical degree from the University of Louisville.

1843: Louis Loewe delivered “a discourse” today on the day of the funeral of H.R.H. Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex.

http://www.ochjs.ac.uk/mullerlibrary/images/Loewe%20exhibition/LL/LL4/discourse1.jpg

1844: Birthdate of Russia native Elchanan Harkavy, who in 1891 came to the United States where he was a businessman in Brooklyn.

1847(18thof Iyar 5607): Lag B’Omer

1847: David Solomon married Sarah Hart at 63, Quadrant Regent St, St James Westminster, London today.

1848: A bill which would have altered the oath office making it possible for Lionel de Rothschild to take the seat in Parliament to which he had been elected was “passed on its third reading in the Commons” today “by a majority of 62 votes” but was later rejected by the Lords thus thwarting the will of the electorate.

1849: Birthdate of Gustave Pollak the native of Vienna who came to the United States in 1866 where he pursed a career as a journalist with the Saturday Evening Post and author of several works including Fifty Years of American Idealism

1850: Birthdate of St. Petersburg native Emanuel Schiffers, the son of German parents who became a leading mathematician and chess master.

1851: A major fire broke out in San Francisco, destroying among other things, the “canvassed roof store” that had been opened up by newly arrived Pomeranian immigrant Abraham Abrahamsohn.  The loss of his “store” after only a month of being in the United States, forced him to head for the gold fields and try his luck as a miner.  Unfortunately, this effort did not pan out. (Sorry for the horrible pun.)

1852: In Cincinnati, Yetta Hackes and Louis Stix gave birth to Joseph Louis Stikx

1852(16thof Iyar 5612): Seventy-three year old “Austrian printer, publisher, and lexicographer” Moses Landau who created “a new edition of the "'Aruk" of R. Nathan of Rome, to which he added Benjamin Mussafia's "Mussaf he-'Aruk" passed away today.

1853: In England, Nathaniel Montefiore and his wife gave birth to British author and philanthropist Leonard Montefiore, the brother of Claude Montefiore, the grand-nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore, and the nephew of Sir Anthony Rothschild even before leaving college had contributed articles to periodicals at The Nineteenth Century and The Fortnightly Review.

1854: Fromental Halevy’s five-act grand opera “Charles VI” was performed in Buenos Aires for the first time.

1856: Two days after she had passed away, 22 year old Elizabeth (Joel) Jacobs, “the wife of Edward Jacobs” was buried today at “Bury Street, Bevis Marks” in London.

1859: Judah Norden married Sarah Lazarus today.

1861: In Liverpool, England, Harried and Walter Samuel gave birth to Samuel Edgar the husband of Ehtel Julia Edgar

1862: The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry by Isaac Taylor in which the author described the “historic personality of God, the reality of Revelation and the…certainty of Man’s Salvation as deduced from the Hebrew Psalmists and Prophets…”

 

1862: Birthdate of Schepsel Schaffer, the native of Courland who became rabbi of Shearith Israel in Baltimore Maryland, where he also served as president the city’s Zionist association starting in 1895.

1864(28thof Nisan, 5624): Thirty-four year old Major Marcus M. Speigel, the German born son of Rabbi Moses Spiegel and the former Regina Greenebaum and older brother of Joseph Spiegel, “the founder of Spiegel Catalog” who had commanded the 120thOhio Volunteer Infantry during the Vicksburg campaing was fatally wounded today “near Snaggy Point” during the Red River Campaign which was part of Grant’s multi-pronged offensive that successfully defeated the Confederates and saved the Union.

1864: Grant crosses into Virginia as the commander of a coordinated effort including Union armies all the way to Texas that will lead to the destruction of the Confederacy, a fact that will please the majority of American Jews since most of them favor the cause of the United States over the Confederate States.

1866: In Dixon, Illinois, Samson Rosenthal and Mina Cahn gave birth to Mortiz Rosenthal the University of Michigan graduate and husband of Virginia Moses who served as the Assistant State’s Attorney in Cook County, Illinois and United States Attorney for Northern Illinois.

1866: Birthdate of Galicia native Judah Leo Landau, the grandson of the Rabbi of Grabowitz who as a rabbi in Vienna and North Manchester before becoming a professor of Hebrew at Witwatersrand University and Chief Rabbi in Johannesburg where he passed away in 1942.

1871: In London, Hyam Solomon Levy-Yuly, the London born son of Mr. and Mrs. Judah Levy-Yuly and his wife Hannah Levy-Yuly, gave birth to Clara Levy-Yuly

1872: A Times correspondent writing from Smyrna today described a blood libel that had taken place in that Greek city.  Despite the efforts of local medical authorities and clergy to convince the populace that a Christrian child had died in accidental drowning and not as part of Jewish plot tied to the Passover ritual, mobs attacked the Jewish quarter converting into a place of “pandemonium, pillage, rape and murder.”

1875(29thof Nisan, 5635): Publisher Michael Levi passed away in Paris.

1875(29thof Nisan, 5635): Seventy-one year old Heinrich Ewald the author The Poetical Books of the Old Testament, History of the People of Israel, Antiquities of the People of Israel and Complete Course on the Hebrew Language– the book which led him to be described as “the second founder of the science of the Hebrew Language – passed away today

1875: In Latvia, Behr Moses and Rasya Bernstein gave birth to Columbia Ph.D Ludwig Behr Bernstein and the husband of Sophia Kivman who was the Superintendent of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum of New York before organizing the Cottage Home plan of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Asylum of Pleasantville, NY and starting in 1921 serving as the Executive Director of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in Pittsburgh.

1876: Emile Berliner starts the work that lead to the invention of the gramophone.

http://www.soundrecordinghistory.net/inventors-of-sound-recording-devices/emile-berliner/

1878(1st of Iyar, 5638): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1878: According to today's Literary Notes column, "Prof. Goldwin Smith who is said to be a cordial Jew-hater is preparing a reply to an article in the April Nineteenth Century in which it is maintained that Jews are good patriots."

1878: “Philip Leon, a well-dressed Hebrew was arraigned in the Court of Special Session on a charge of having stolen a pawn ticket and a dollar from Julia McCloughlin.”  Although he denied the larceny, which was took the form of a swindle, he was found guilty and sentenced to a month in New York’s city jail and ordered to pay a fine of $50.

1878: “Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society”, a column published today provides information about the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society based on its recently released 55th annual report. Currently the asylum provides service to 301 boys and girls.  The children attend local primary and grammar schools where, according to letters from school officials, they are doing quite well.  The asylum teaches Hebrew and other Jewish studies. The asylum houses an industrial school where boys “are taught to be printers and shoemakers.” 

1879: The New York Times featured a review of "Moses the Lawgiver" by Rev. William M. Taylor in which the author writes favorably about the Jewish leader and the customs and ceremonies of his time.  This is the first in a series of that is to include "Daniel, the Beloved", "David, King of Israel" and “Elijah the Prophet.”

1879: “Matacong” an article published today reported on the activities of Nathaniel Isaac, a Jew, who was the only English resident of this island off the coast of Sierra Leone. In 1856, Isaac accompanied a French merchant named Milon on a visit to the King of Forécariah where he served as an intermediary to assure that the Frenchman could contact his commercial operations on the island. 

 

1879: Dr. Szold, the Rabbi of the Hanover Street Synagogue in Baltimore delivered a lecture on Abraham Lincoln. The talk was sponsored by the Hebrew Young Men’s Association and included “a number of short anecdotes concerning the great man.  Dr. Szold said that Mr. Lincoln had the most remarkable faculty for solving difficult problems by tell little stories or parables.”  Alexander the Great used a sword to cut the Gordian knot.  Lincoln used his “sharp, keen incisive wit “to unravel the most” difficult and intricate questions.

1880: Birthdate of Cincinnati, OH native Dr. Elmore Tauber, the “internationally known dermatologist”.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/article-abstract/519923

1881: Birthdate of Olga Aldorova who was deported from Prague, the first step on the way to the death camps.

1882: During the blood libel known as the Tiszaeszlár Affair, the mother of 14 year old Eszter Solymosi appeared before a judge where she accused the Jews of having murdered her daughter.

1884: Samuel and Blume (Teitzlin) Skoss birth to American “Arabist” and author, Professor Soleomon Leon Skoss, the husband of Irene C. Panek.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/skoss-solomon-leon

1884(9th of Iyar, 5644): Baer Ben Alexander Goldberg passed away in Paris. Born at Soludna near Warsaw in 1799 he eventually moved to Berlin where he began a career as an author and translator; a career he continued after moving to London in 1847 and Paris in 1852. One of his first works was "Ḳonṭres mi-Sod Ḥakamim," a commentary on the Jewish calendar, with chronological tables published 1845 was one the first works by this prolific author.  "Ma'aseh Nissim," a translation from the Arabic into Hebrew of Daniel the Babylonian's critical work on Maimonides is an example of the many translations he produced while living in Paris.

1885: Birthdate of Russian born pianist Leo Sirota who taught in Japan for 15 years where his daughter Beate Sirota Gordon was born before settling in the United States.

1886: Birthdate of Vilna native and Brooklyn resident Leon Goldapple a member of the Executive Committee of the Zionist Organization of America whose publications including The New Palestine an English language weekly and the Young Judean, an English language monthly for “Jewish Youth.”

1886: At Haymarket Square a peaceful rally by workers seeking the 8 hour day turned violent that led to Illinois vs. August Spies et al in which Sigmund Zeisler represented the defendants.

1887: The funeral of Isaac Henricks, the prominent businessman and member of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society, is scheduled to take place at his brother-in-law’s home this morning.

1889: In Prestwich Lancashire, Ephraim Sieff, a Lithuanian born Jewish businessman and his wife gave birth to Israel Moses Sieff, Baron Sieff the chairman of Marks & Spencer from 1964 to 1967 who was the father of Marcus Joseph Sieff, Lord Sieff of Brimpton.

1890(14thof Iyar, 5650): Pesach Sheini

1890: Four new trustees are scheduled to be appointed a meeting of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum.

1890: It was reported today that Russia is preparing to adopt more stringent passport regulations, requiring that the documents of all those entering the country must show their religion.  Anyone who does not show a religion will be registered as a Jew and will only be able to visit “localities where Jews are permitted to reside.”

1891: In San Francisco, “wholesale wine merchant, Frederick Jacobi Sr. and Flora Brandenstein (daughter of tobacco wholesaler Joseph Brandenstein), whom Frederick Sr. had married in 1876” gave birth to  WW I Army veteran and noted composer Frederick Jacobi the husband of Irene Schwarcz who was “also known and best remembered as a composer of works with Judaic themes” whose “interest in this genre began with a 1930 commission from Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York for a Sabbath evening service.”

https://www.milkenarchive.org/artists/view/frederick-jacobi/

1892: The funeral of Abraham L. Grabfeelder, the General Southern Agent of Manhattan Life Insurance Company a director of the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children will be held this morning at 9:30

1892: Six Jews and Jewesses were convicted at Vilna of murdering babies that had been left in their care.

1892: It was reported today that David Boody, the Mayor of Brooklyn, Joseph C. Hendrix, President of the Board of Education and Oscar S. Straus, the former minister to Turkey, addressed those attending the cornerstone laying ceremonies of the new building belong to the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

 

1893: Simon Goodheart, one of the leaders of the aggressive movement to convert Jews living on the lower east side denied accusations contained in affidavits signed by those whom his group had converted and who have now renounced their conversion that financial inducements are used to gain converts and that most of those who are supposed to be converts have taken the step for financial gain.

1894: Birthdate of Archibald Maul Ramsay, a British army officer, out spoken anti-Semite and the only MP to ever be interred on suspicions that he was a spy for the Axis

1895: A nameless seven year old deaf mute Jewish boy whose mother had passed away and whose father “was unable to provide for him” has been taken to Randall’s

1895: Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Zuckerman of 71 East 109th Street appeared before the justice at the Harlem Police Court and charged their 20 year old son of burglary – specifically of stealing tree silver candlesticks worth $100 and a gold watch worth $75.

1896: Today, The New York Times published “Peculiarities of Baron Hirsch” which had first appeared in the London Chronicle whichdescribed a man of great personal wealth who was, at heart, a populist who sided with the working classes in their conflicts with “cosmopolitan financiers” and other power brokers including those inhabiting the British House of Lords.

1898: One day after she had passed away, Leah Davis, the wife of Morris Davis, with whom she had had six children was buried today in the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1900: “B’nai B’rith Convention” an article published today reported on the recently adjourned convention of the Jewish fraternal organization which has been held in Chicago, Illinois.

1901(15th of Iyar, 5661): Parashat Emor

1901: The Books and Authors column included Israel Zangwill’s comments about “Robert Annys, Poor Priest” by Annie Nathan Myer. “Zangwill writes, ‘You are to be heartily congratulated. The book is full of color, spirituality and drama. There is a fine sense of the early commerce of early English history…You score in so many ways. Your pure use of words shows you have the true artist’s joy in them for their own sake.”

1902: Herzl began a three day trip in Berlin. Herzl talked to the director of the Deutsche Bank through which the Zionist movement would like to buy the Deutsche Palästinabank. For the first time Herzl met Franz Oppenheimer.

1902(27thof Nisan, 5662): Fifty-six year old French physician Theodore Klein who served for 18 years as president of the Société de l'Etude Talmudique passed away today.

1903: Birthdate of actor Luther Adler.  Born in New York, Adler was the brother of two other famous thespians, Jay and Stella Adler.  Adler began his career at the age of 13 appearing in his father's Yiddish theater.  Luther Adlerwas born in 1903. His theatre debut began as a 13-year in his father's Yiddish Theatre. In the 1930's he was part of the Group Theatre where he worked with such well-known names as John Garfield, Elia Kazan, Less Strasberg and Howard Da Saliva.  He appeared in over thirty movies and as many television programs.  Some of his film credits include The Last Angry Man; Cast a Giant Shadow and Voyage of the Damned.  He passed away in 1984

1904:  The United States began the construction of the Panama Canal.  The first Panamanian Jewish community, Kol Shearith Israel, was founded in 1876 when Panama was still part of Columbia.  By 1911, when the Canal was all but completed the Jewish community numbered approximately 500.

1904: Dispatches sent to the Times of London today from Vienna contained additional descriptions of the anti-Jewish rioting in the town of Bender, near Kishinev where the “outcries of a drunken fanatic started the mob on its rush to the Jewish quarter” where “all the scenes of the Kishinev massacre were repeated on a small scale” with among other things the wife of a pregnant furniture dealer being “thrown from an upper window of her house into the street.”

1905: Birthdate of Mátyás György Seiber, the Hungarian composer who worked in Germany until the rise of the Nazis forced him to leave for Great Britain where he spent the rest of his career.

http://www.schott-music.com/shop/persons/featured/matyas-seiber/

1906: It as reported today that Jacob H. Schiff, acting as the treasurer for the Red Cross and the committee raising funds for the victims of the San Francisco earthquake has received an additional $35,000 in contributions.

1907: Birthdate of Milton Galatzer the native of Chicago and all-Star outfielder at Crane Tech who played the outfield and first base for the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds during the 1930’s

1907: In Rochester, Rose Stein and Louis E. Kirstein gave birth to Monument Man and co-founder of the New York City Ballet Lincoln Edward Kirstein.

http://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/the-heroes/the-monuments-men/kirstein-pfc.-lincoln-e.

1908: “The Fifth Biennial Session of the National Conference of Jewish Charities began” today in Richmond at Beth Ahabah Temple.

1909: One day after he had passed away, Louis Bernstein, the 34 year old son of Elias and Sarah Bernstein was buried today at the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery” in Northern Ireland.

1909: In Cleveland, “Yiddish speaking Russian immigrants” “Bertha (née Sen) and Benjamin Silverblatt,” gave birth to Howard Silverblatt who gained fame as actor Howard Da Silva,  a large man with a distinctive voice who worked in steel mill to pays his way through Carnegie Institute. His early stage work includes stints with Orson Wells as well as playing the original Judd in Oklahoma.  In the late 1930's and 1940's he had a successful career in movies playing in such varied films as Sergeant York and The Lost Weekend.  Da Salvia's left wing politics got him in trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Da Silva was blacklisted for many years.  His fortunes began to rise in the late 1960's and 1970's when he played Ben Franklin 1776 as well as a film about (of all people), J. Edgar Hoover.  He passed away in 1986.

https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/43087%7C71228/Howard-Da-Silva/

https://spartacus-educational.com/USAsilva.htm

1910(25thof Nisan 5670): Miriam Patchunski, the wife of Abraham Patuchunski passed away today after which she was buried at the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery” in Northern Ireland

1910: According to some sources this was the date on which Tel Aviv was founded. The confusion stems from the fact that the land company to purchase the acreage for Tel Aviv was formed in 1909.  In 1909 a number of Jewish residents decided to move to a healthier environment, outside the crowded and noisy city of Jaffa. They established a company called Ahuzat-Bayit and with the financial assistance of the Jewish National Fund purchased some twelve acres of sand dunes, north of Jaffa. In 1910, the suburb was named Tel Aviv after Nahum Sokolow's translation of Altneuland, Herzl's fictional depiction of the Jewish State.

1911: It was reported today that while Dr. Solomon Schechter, the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary was on “an eleven months’ vacation” that included time in Africa and Baghdad, Cambridge University “issued his translation of the remarkable manuscript containing a contemporary record of persons and events described in the New Testament entitled ‘Fragments of a Zadokite Work’”

1912(17thof Iyar, 5672): Parashat Emor; as the Jews observe Shabbat, an Italian Army lands on the Isle of Rhodes during a war between the Ottomans and the Italians – one of the many small wars that set the stage for WW I.1912: Birthdate of Aron B. Landauer, the husband of Elizabeth Laura Landauer

1913: The Temple Sholom Alliance is scheduled to host a performance of “A Woman’s Intrusion,” a one act play by Tillie Becker this evening at Assembly Hall in Chicago.

1913: In Sacramento, CA, rededication of B’Nai Israel Synagogue.

1913: Birthdate of Irving Broome who gained fame as John Broome the writer for DC Comics whose creations included “The Flash.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-john-broome-1096133.html

1913: “A Woman’s Intrusion” a one act playlet was scheduled to be a featured attraction at this evenings “entertainment” sponsored by The Temple Sholom Alliance at the Assembly Hall in Chicago.

1914: “Credits America’s Freedom to Jews” published today described a speech delivered by Oscar S. Straus, the former cabinet member and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey in which he described the relationship of Christopher Columbus with “Gabriel Sanctus” who had raised money for one of the explorer’s ships and Luis Santangel to whom Columbus “wrote his first letter describing the wonders of the New World.”

1915: “Chicago Plea for Frank” published today included the announcement of the those who were willing to speak out on behalf of Leo Frank who has been wrongly convicted of married Mary Phagan included the famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow, Bishop Samuel Fallows and Frank and Mrs. Grace Wilbur Trout, President of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Society.

1915: “The Illinois Legislature was asked today to pass resolutions asking for the suspension of the death sentence on Leo M. Frank” who has been “sentenced to death at Atlanta for the murder of Mary Phagan.”

1915: It was reported today that “the resentencing of Leo Frank at this time would mean the hastening of the hearing before the Prison Commission of his petition for a commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment” which “would mean that the case would reach Governor Slaton before the expiration of his term in the latter part of June.”

1915: As of today, Judge Samuel Greenbaum is the President of the Educational Alliance which as of June 30, 1914 had 2,692 members.

1916: Birthdate of sociologist Rose Laub Coser who “made contributions to medical sociology, refined major concepts of role theory, and analyzed contemporary gender issues in the family and in the occupational world.”

1916: Bronx County Registrar Edward I. Pollak presided over a meeting tonight at the Spooner Theatre organized by the Jewish Relief Committee, the Central Relief Committee and the People’s Relief Committee for Jewish War Sufferers which marked the start of “a campaign to raise $100,000 in the Bronx for the aid of Jewish war suffers.”

1916: “The American Jewish Chronicle, a weekly publication devoted, according to its management” which included Isidor Straus as President and S.M. Melamed as Secretary, “to the advocacy of the rights of Jews after the close of the European war” is scheduled to make its first appearance today.

1916: As Jewish leaders becoming increasingly concerned about the fate of Jews in Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote to Simon Wolf that the State “Department has cabled the Embassy in Petrograd making inquiry” “as to the authenticity of a report that there is to be an outbreak against the Jews of Russia at the coming Russian Easter.”

1917: At the request of the government of Salonika, the rabbis approve burial of bodies in shrouds made of paper, because linen was scarce and expensive.

1917: It was reported today that “Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein has resigned as director of the Central Jewish Institute to lead a Jewish revival movement” in New York – an effort to which he will devote the next year of his life.

1917: Tel Aviv was sacked by Arabs. Djemal Pasha announced that it was the intention of the Turkish government to purge Eretz Yisrael of its Jewish population. Tel Aviv was sacked by the Arabs on the anniversary of the official adoption of the name "Tel Aviv". That same year the British attacked the Turks in Palestine and the Jews reclaimed Tel Aviv which is often called the "New York of Israel."

1917: Djemal Pasha of the Ottoman Army declared that the intention of authorities was to "wipe out Jewish population of Palestine."

1918(22ndof Iyar, 5678): Parashat Behar-Bechukotai

1918(22ndof Iyar, 5678: Dr. Isaac Adler, the German born Professor Clinical Pathology at the New York Polyclinic Medal School who had “who had studied medicine at the universities of Heidelberg, Vienna, Prague and Berlin” after graduating from Columbia and who was the “brother of Dr. Felix Adler, head of the Ethical Culture Society of New York” passed away today.

1918: “Plan New Hebrew Club” published in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer described plans to build a $20,000 facility that will included an 500 seat auditorium which will a home for the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in Camden, NJ.

1918: “John L. Bernstein, President of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America” received a cable from Samuel Mason who had gone to Japan “straighten out affairs among the thousands of Jews who been stranded there after fleeing Russia” “announcing that the 200 Jewish refugees who had been stranded in Harbin” are now on their way to the United States.

1918: Today, the Jewish Welfare Board sent an order to Chief Rabbi Hertz, “who is working among the Jewish soldiers in England” “an order of 10,000 psalms book” which will then “be forwarded to Rabbi Levi in Paris and to Chaplain Elkin C. Voorsanger” who will distribute them to American soldiers in France.

1919: In Chicago, Illinois, the dedication of the Mt. Sinai Hospital on South California Avenue is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.

1919: In Pittsburgh, five days a group of Jews met at the home of Ben Cohen where they “organized what was charted as the Beechview Hebrew Congregation Beth El” which is now Beth El Congregation of the South Hills “the men of the congregation” met today “and elected their first officers : President, Jacob Rosenson; Vice President, Harry Ruderman; Secretary, Isidore Marmorstein; Treasurer, Abraham Zober.”

1919(4thof Iyar, 5679): Seventy-three year old Julius Reach, “the husband of the late Rosa Reach” with whom he had four children passed away today.

1920: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Harold “Hal” Judenfriend the star CCNY basketball player.

http://probasketballencyclopedia.com/player/hal-judenfriend/

1921(26th of Nisan, 5681): Jonas Kuppenheimer, president of the clothing manufacturing company that bears his family name passed away today in Lake Forest, Illinois.  Born at Terre Haute, Indiana in 1854, Kuppenheimer came to Chicago fifty years ago with his father Bernard, and his brothers Louis and Albert where they opened a clothing store that grew into a major producer of menswear.

1923(18thof Iyar, 5683): Lag B’Omer

1923: The 146th session of the New York State Legislature in which Philip M. Kleinfeld had served his first time as the State Senator from 4thDistrict came to a close.

1925: Birthdate of Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, former CEOof AIG, one of the world’s largest insurance and financial services companies.

1925: In Constantine, Algeria, Albert and Diamantine Abarzel gave birth to Avraham Abarzel, the oldest of the their ten children who died while serving in the IDF in 1948 during “battle for the capture of Beersheba.”

1925: In Johannesburg, South Africa Julius First and Matilda Levetan gave birth to anti-Apartheid activist Ruth First.

1925: U.S. premiere of “Any Woman,” a silent film produced by Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor.

1926: In Palestine, “all work in Jewish office, factories and institutions…stopped at 1:30 today as thousands of mourners paid tribute to the late Dr. Max Nordau…whose body was brought to Palestine from France.   As the body was being carried to Tel Aviv’s town hall, the procession stopped at the Great Synagogue where special religious services were held.

1927: In New York, Harry and Ida Sotsky gave birth to Abraham S. Adler the husband of Mimi Adler

1928: In Brno, Czechoslovakia, Aron and Ruth Dershowitz gave birth Rabbi Zvi Dershowtiz who came to the United States at the age of ten and served several Reform Congregations including Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, CA.

1930: In the Bronx, “the former Ruth Hirsch, a milliner” and Solomon Peterman, “a shoe salesman” gave birth to their only child Roberta Peterman who as Robert Peters “achieved the longest tenure of any soprano in the history of the Metropolitan Opera.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/arts/music/roberta-peters-soprano-with-a-dramatic-entrance-dies-at-86.html?_r=0

1934: “Manhattan Melodrama” produced by David O. Selznick with a script co-authored by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and, in what some might say was type-casting, featuring George Sidney in the role of Poppa Rosen, a Russian Jew was released today in the United States.

1935: In San Francisco, the former Alma Loew a Jewish immigrant from Germany and Edward Friedman, a Jewish refugee from Lithuania gave birth to jazz pianist Donald Ernest Friedman.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/arts/music/don-friedman-versatile-jazz-pianist-dies-at-81.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1935: A court in Berne, Switzerland is scheduled to deliver a verdict in the civil suit brought by The Union of Jewish Communities of Switzerland and the Jewish community of Bene “against Swiss Nazis and others demanding the confiscation of a pamphlet in the Protocols of Zion were published because “the publication violated the Swiss law prohibiting the printing of literature ‘calculate to excite vile instincts or to cause brutal offense.’”

1936 “Nine charitable organizations received bequests totaling $56,000 in the will of the late stock broker Albert Stieglitz which was filed in Surrogate’s Court today” and which “named his widow, Hannah Stieglitz as the principal beneficiary.

1936: Voters are expected to accept or reject the recommendation of the nominating committee chaired by Mrs. Edward Josephy naming the new slate of officers for the National Council of Jewish Women.

1936: It was reported today that “one of the steamship companies subsidized by the Federal Government through mail contracts employs seamen who place allegiance to the Nazi flag above that of the United States.”

1937: The convention of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in the United States and Canada, an “organization that includes in its membership about 98 per cent of all the orthodox rabbis in the United States” is scheduled to continue for a second day in Atlantic City, NJ.

1937: It was announced today that Arturo Toscanini will again conduct the Palestine Symphony Orchestra in a series of concerts that will include a November 10 in Tel Aviv as well as performances in Jerusalem and Haifa.

1938: In an address to 500 newly married couples at Castel Gandolfo, Pope Pius XI criticizes Adolf Hitler, currently visiting Mussolini in Rome, and the Nazi Party. Pope Pius XI says that these couples deserve a papal benediction because "such sad things are happening, sad things, very sad, both near to us and far away. Certainly, among these sad things is that on the feast day of the Holy Cross of Christ, the banners of another cross which certainly is not that of Christ should have been hoisted in Rome. This was out of place and time. We tell you this so that you may understand how necessary it is to pray, pray, and pray for the mercy of the Almighty in all its largeness." (Editor’s Note – this was not the only time that Pius XI would publicly criticize Hitler or speak up in defense of the Jews.  Any discussion of the role of the Catholic Church in events leading up to the Shoah must include an examination of this brave cleric)

1938: A picture was taken of the teachers and students at a Jewish school in Sirvintos, Lithuania.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/03.asp

1938: In Los Angeles, Oscar winning screen writer Phillip G. Epstein  and his wife gave birth to American author Leslie Donald Epstein whose novels includes King of the Jews.  Epstein was the nephew of screenwriter Julius Epstein and the father of baseball mogul Theo Epstein.

1938: Carl von Ossietzky, an anti-Nazi German journalist and winner of the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize, dies at age 50 after five years' captivity in concentration camps.

1938: The Palestine Postreported that Arab gangs murdered Hassan Darfil, a prominent Arab notable representing the Wadi Salib quarter of Haifa. Arab gangs continued to abduct and rob villagers and spread terror across the country.

1939: According to the diary of Jay Pierrepont Moffat, a State Department official, President Roosevelt met at the White House with Jewish leaders where the President seemed to be convinced that the warnings given by the U.S. Embassy in Berlin “were sound and not exaggerated.” 

1939: Birthdate of Israeli author Amos Oz.  To understand the works of Oz, you must realize that he is Jewish, but a sabra, a person who never has known the Diaspora.  Born in Jerusalem, Oz was a city boy until he went to live on a kibbutz at the age of 15. "He studied philosophy and literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and was visiting fellow at Oxford University, author-in- residence at the Hebrew University and writer-in-residence at Colorado College. He has been named Officer of Arts and Letters of France. An author of prose for children and adults, as well as an essayist, he has been widely translated and is internationally acclaimed. He has been honored with the French Prix Femina and the 1992 Frankfurt Peace Prize. He lives in the southern town Arad and teaches literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev." In describing his literary efforts, a reviewer in Newsweek wrote, “Eloquent, humane, even religious in the deepest sense, [Oz] emerges as a kind of Zionist Orwell: a complex man obsessed with simple decency and determined above all to tell the truth, regardless of whom it offends.” Oz is extremely prolific and only some of his works have been translated into English.  These include such recent efforts as My Michael, A Perfect Peaceand Don't Call It Night.

1939: In Hungary, Miklos Horthy signs “The Second Jewish Bill” which had been introduced into the Hungarian Parliament in December of 1938 and was laughingly called “the Christmas present for the Jews.”  The bill was the Hungarian version of Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws and proved to almost immediately ruinous for much of Hungary’s Jewish population.

1940(26thof Nisan, 5700): Seventy-eight year old “German numismatist” and former Professor of the University of Jena Behrendt Pick took his life today in Berlin after having been forced into retirement because he was Jewish.

1940: Today, future Reform Rabbi Robert Lehman, whose family had arrived in the United States from Nazi Germany in 1938 “celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at the Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights, a Reform congregation made up largely of fellow German-Jewish immigrants that leaned toward traditional or conservative practices.”

1941: “The Zagreb radio announced today that severe laws against Jews would be carried out throughout Croatia,” including one that would allow Jewish property to “be confiscated by the State without compensation and Jewish employees of the government to be expelled by June 1.”

1941: “Five hundred Jewish leaders, attending a conference of the United Palestine Appeal, sent a telegram to President Roosevelt today urging him to intercede with Great Britain to permit the formation at once of a Jewish Army in Palestine and to equip it with adequate material.”

1942: Japanese ships supporting the invasion of Tulagi were attacked by planes from the American aircraft carrier Yorktown marking the start of what would become the Battle of the Coral Sea, which marked the first time that the Japanese were stopped during the war in the Pacific and the first time that American planes sank a Japanese aircraft carrier

1942: Birthdate of Michael Dray.  His family had moved from Casablanca to Paris.  He was the youngest of the Moroccan-born Jews who would be deported from Paris to Auschwitz - an event that took place when he was twenty months old.

1942: The first day of an eleven day deportation of 10,000 Jews from Lodz ghetto to the Chelmno Death Camp.  They were part of 145,000 people who were gassed between December, 1941 and September 1942.

1942: Starting on this date and lasting until May 8, six Jews in Lódz, Poland, fearing deportation, commit suicide.

1942: Starting on this date and lasting until May 15, more than 10,000 Jews are deported from the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto to Chelmno.

1943(29th of Nisan, 5703): Eighty-five year old Russian born, Canadian trained American gynecologist Hiram Nahum Vineberg, the husband of Lena Bernheim and the namesake for the Hiram N. Vineberg Research Fund passed away today in New York.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Diary_of_Dr_Hiram_N_Vineberg_M_D_McGill.html?id=_s6PGwAACAAJ

1943: Against all odds, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which began on April 19 continues.

1943: An advertisement condemning the recently completed Bermuda Conference appeared on page 17 of the New York Times under the headline of To 5,000,000 Jews in the Nazi Death-Trap Bermuda was a Cruel Mockery,”

1943: The Committee for an Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews published an advertisement today in the New York Times which included the “unauthorized use of the names of several members of Congress – including Harry S. Truman, Robert A. Taft and Edwin C. Johnson.”

1943: U.S. premiere of “Five Graves to Cairo” a war movie set in North Africa directed by Billy Wilder who co-authored the script

1944(11th of Iyar): Author Yehoshua Hana Rawnitzki passed away today.

1944: “Gaslight” the film adaptation of the mystery Broadway play directed by George Cukor and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg was released today in the United States.1945(21st of Iyar, 5705): Eighty-seven year old, Hiram Nahum Vineberg, the Russian born son of Alexander and Anna Vineberg, the husband of Lena Bernheimer and graduate of McGill University who went on to become the attending gynecologist at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital and the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids passed away today.

1945: Red Army troops liberate the camp at Oranienburg, Germany, where 5000 inmates remain alive.

1945: The U.S. 82nd Airborne Division liberates the concentration camp at Wöbbelin, Germany.

1945: At Mauthausan the prisoners were not taken out to work and SS men were observed leaving the camp.

1945: The International Red Cross took over the administration of the camp/ghetto at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. The last of the camp's SS men flee.

1946(3rdof Iyar, 5706): Parashat Kedoshim

1946(3rdof Iyar, 5706): Seventy-eight-year-old Samuel Bettelheim, the Hungarian born son of Philipp Bettelheim and Johanna Buchsbaum and the husband of Julia Deutsch, who should not be confused with the Zionist leader with the same name, passed away today.

1946: “Lindsley B. Kimball, president of United Service Organizations, paid tribute today to "the role of American Jewry" in the country's war effort through the National Jewish Welfare Board, a member of the USO…”

1947: Today marked the start of the fifth annual nation-wide observance of Religious Book Week, sponsored by The National Conference of Christians and Jews and designed to stimulate the reading of books of spiritual value, is being held this week. The Conference was established in 1928 "to demonstrate that those who differ deeply in religious beliefs may work together in the American way toward mutual goals."

1947: The Irgun Zeva'l Le'umi, known in Hebrew by the abbreviation as Etzel or the Irgun, staged the famous prison break at Acre Prison.  In April 1947, the British had hung members of the Irgun so Menachem Begin felt it was imperative to try and rescue at least some of those held in the aging fortress.  In a act of daring-do worthy of any adventure novel, the Irgun entered the prison and freed 41 Etzel and Lehi (Stern Gang) prisoners.  They could not free more because of the lack of hiding places.  These escape is one of the climactic scenes in Leon Uris's novel (and movie by the same name) Exodus.

1947: More than 2,000 people filled Temple Emanu-El this afternoon at a special memorial service for Henry Monsky, international president of B'nai B'rith and chairman of the interim committee of the American Jewish Congress. Mr. Monsky died on Friday in the Hotel Biltmore at the age of 57, while attending a meeting of the future organization committee of the conference.

1948: In direct violation of international law the Arab Legion which was the Jordanian army that included a compliment of British officers attacked Kfar Etzion and was driven back by the poorly armed Jewish fighters.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-israel-war-of-independence

1948: With only five days left until the end of the British Mandate, the Jewish forces were working feverishly to develop a military posture that would enable them to avoid annihilation by Arab military forces operating illegally in Palestine.  At the same time they were trying to prepare a defensive posture that would enable them to face the invading armies they would face within the next week.  To that end, the Palmach launched Operation Broom.  Operation Broom was intended to “sweep away” Arab bases so that Jewish settlements in the lower and upper Galilee could be joined together with a wide, safe strip of Jewish territory. Large numbers of Arabs departed the Galilee for safe haven across the Jordan River.  Their departure was a result of rumors of that a large Jewish force was on its way and the belief that once the Arab armies had had their way with the Jews, they could return and reap the spoils of victory.  

1948: Norman Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published.

1949: Led by Mayor O’Dwyer and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the President of Israel, the Jews of New York city are scheduled to gather at public rallies and concerts to observe the “first anniversary of Israel’s independence.

1949:  U.S. premiere of “The Barkley’s of Broadway” produced by Arthur Freed, written by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Sidney Sheldon with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and featuring Oscar Levant as “Ezra Miller” and Hans Conried as “Ladislaus Ladi”

1950(17thof Iyar, 5710): Seventy-eight year old Viennese born American psychoanalysis Paul Fedem who was one of the early supporters of Sigmund Freud passed away today

1952: In an interview given on the eve of his departure for the United States, Abba Khoushy, Mayor of Haifa declared “that this is going to be THE city of the country.”  In outlining the many virtues of this major seaport, the mayor noted that the population has grown from 63,000 in 1949 to 200,000 in 1952.  He has four major projects on the drawing board, which, if funded, will “bring greatness to Haifa.”

1952: Birthdate of Harry Ehrenberg, Jr., a pillar of the Little Rock, Arkansas Jewish Community and a mensch in the truest sense of that term.

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Treasury doubled the exchange rate for leather and textiles to IL2 per dollar. The Histadrut banned all overtime and double jobs in order to ease the current heavy unemployment.

1953(19th of Iyar, 5713): Seventy-one-year-old solo clarinetist Simeon Bellison, the Russian born son of Andrus Bellison, “a bandmaster in the Russian Army” who had 1920 came to the United States where he pursued a varied musical career while raising “a daughter, Lillian, a member of the staff of the New York Times with his wife Etta passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/05/05/96618782.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1955(12th of Iyar, 5715): Sixty-four year old Odessa born and NYU-Bellevue College of Medicine trained “roentgenologist and diagnostician Dr. Isaac Glassman, “a member of the staff of Beth David Hospital” and husband of “the former Celia Margolin” who was the brother of Anna, Manya, Juliette, Nathan, Jacob, Simon and Leo Glassman passed away today after suffering a fatal heart attack.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1955/05/05/83356817.pdf

1955(12th of Iyar, 5715): Eighty-nine year old Rose Sheuerman Shloss, the daughter of Abraham and Bronette Sheuerman, and the wife of Max Shloss passed away today after which she was buried at the Emanuel Cemetery in Des Moines, IA.

1956:  Birthdate of author David Guterson, the author of the novel Snow Falling on Cedars which won many awards, including the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award.  The son of Jewish parents, Guterson is a self-described agnostic.

1957: The Anne Frank Foundation was formed in Amsterdam.   This is one of the organizations dedicated to preserving the memory of this tragic Jewish figure whose diary has captured and continues to capture the hearts and imagination of millions around the world.

1959(26thof 5719): Seventy-five year old Kovno born leading antique dealer Israel Sack, the founder and head of Israel Sack, Inc which is now being run by his sons “Albert, Harry and Robert” that he raised with his wife “Mrs. Ann Goodman Sacks” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/05/05/89192543.pdf

 

1961(18thof Iyar, 5721): Lag B’Omer was celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of JFK.

1964: NBC broadcast the first episode of “Another World” a daily soap opera in which Doris Belack played three different roles “during the shows 35-year run.”

1965: Israel Bar-Yehuda completes his term as Minister of Transport and Road Safety

 1970: In deciding the legal case "Walz v. Tax Commission of New York," the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a New York statute exempting church-owned property from taxation. This decision included all religious buildings i.e.Synagogues and Temples

1970(28th of Nisan, 5730): Yom HaShoah

1970(28th of Nisan, 5730): Allison Krause, a student at Kent State University, was one of four students killed by the Ohio National Guard. The Guard fired on a nonviolent demonstration against the Vietnam War. Krause was a committed Jew, the daughter of a Reform Jewish family, who opposed the US war against Vietnam out of a sense of the meaning of Judaism

1971(9th of Iyar, 5731): Sixty-seven year old Cleveland born and stock and commodity broker Robert Pollak the holder of a Ph.B from the University of Chicago who “wrote columns about theatre and music for several Chicago newspapers” passed away today.

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.POLLAK

1972(20th of Iyar, 5732): Ninety year old Hetty Goldman, “one of the first female archaeologists who was a member of the Goldman-Sachs banking family” passed away today.

http://www.ias.edu/people/goldman

http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/exhibits/BreakingGround/goldman.html

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

1973: Initial release of Steambath, the film treatment of the play by Bruce Jay Friedman who wrote the script featuring Herb Edelman.

1974: Power hitting first baseman Mike Epstein was released by the California Angels today.

1975(23rd of Iyar, 5735): Comedian Moe Howard passed away.  Born Moses Horowitz in 1897, Howard was "Moe" of the famous comedy group called the Three Stooges.  All of the Stooges were Jewish.  Another example of how Jews were successful in the entertainment field by being "All American" as opposed to ethnic.

1975: Terrorists set off a bomb in a Jerusalem apartment building.

1975: “Seven Beauties,” a WW II prison camp movie co-starring Shirley Stoler was released In France today.

1975: The New York Times featured a review of Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang by Mordecai Richler.

1976(4thof Iyar, 5736): Yom HaZikaron

1976: The musical “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” with lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Leonard Bernstein opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.

1977: “Andy Warhol's Bad” a comedy with music composed by Mike Bloomfield and starring Carroll Baker premiered in New York City today.

1977: The first of David Frost’s interviews with Richard Nixon which were produced by Marvin Mintoff, the husband of Bonnie Franklin, was broadcast today.

1978: The Jerusalem Postreported from Lebanon that Arab terrorists murdered four French UNIFIL paratroopers, wounded seven and abducted five. France avoided condemning the P.L.O. responsible for this attack and claimed that the troops were attacked by "irresponsible elements." The Security Council deplored the incident, boosted UNIFIL to the strength of 6,000 men and called on Israel "to complete the withdrawal."

1978(27th of Nisan, 5738): Yom HaShoah

1978(27th of Nisan, 5738): In New Jersey, Maurice L. Sobol, the husband of the late Shrley Sobol and father of Richard Sobol, Linda Thaler and Judith Sobol passed away today.

1979: Nigel Lawson, the scion of prominent Anglo-Jewish financial family began serving as Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

1979: Robert Strauss began serving as the first “Special Envoy for the Middle East” a newly created position created during the administration of Jimmy Carter.

1981(30th of Nisan, 5741): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1981: “At $25,000-Plus for a Portrait, Painter Aaron Shikler Can Give Critics the Brush” published today described the success of “the Gilbert Stuart of the jet set.”

http://people.com/archive/at-25000-plus-for-a-portrait-painter-aaron-shikler-can-give-critics-the-brush-vol-15-no-17/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/arts/aaron-shikler-portrait-artist-known-for-images-of-americas-elite-dies-at-93.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1982(11th of Iyar, 5742): Just 6 weeks before his 90thbirthday, Barnett Janner, who had been made a life peer which meant he was recognized as Baron Janner, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/06/obituaries/baron-janner.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_09983.html

1983: Phillip Dougherty reported that “Geers, Gross Advertising has been named agency for Hebrew National Kosher Foods, which has also named Levy, Flaxman & Associates to handle its recently acquired fresh chicken and turkey operation. The main account should be billing $3 million, and fresh fowl, $1 million. The former agency is Scali, McCabe, Sloves, whose account list includes Frank Perdue and all his little chicks. Since Perdue is already in fresh fowl and is eyeing franks made with chicken, it is easy to see why S.M.S. is no longer the Hebrew National agency.”

1984: U.S. premiere of “The Bounty” featuring Daniel Day Lewis as “Sailing Master John Freyer.”

1985: Michael A. Ledeen, an informal envoy of Robert C. McFarlane, the U.S. national security adviser, met with Shimon Peres in Jerusalem and inquired whether Israel had ideas about how to open contacts with Teheran. This is meeting that the Israelis have always cited as the American request for help that brought Israel into what became known as the Iran-Contra affair.

1991: CBS broadcast the final episode of the sixth season of the “Golden Girls” a sitcom created by Susan Harris and starring Beatrice Arthur and Estelle Getty with music by Andrew Gold.

1991(20th of Iyar, 5751): Eighty-seven year old master wood sculptor Chaim Gross passed away today. (As reported by John T. McQuiston)

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/07/obituaries/chaim-gross-87-wood-sculptor-of-exuberant-human-forms-dies.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1993: The Final Episode of “TriBeCa” entitled “Stepping Back” starring Adam Arkin, Richard Lewis, Melanie Mayron and Eli Wallach was broadcast today.

1994: In a letter published today entitled Jews Have Reason to Fear Italian Fascism, Susan Zucotti traces the history of Mussolini et al to explain “why Jews and other Italians are wary of Gianfranco Fini’s resurgent neo-Fascist party.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/04/opinion/l-jews-have-reason-to-fear-italian-fascism-986445.html

1994: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed an according that granted the Palestinians the right of self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

1994: In Los Angeles, Tom And Valarie Gould gave birth to Alexander Jerome Gould a USY president turned actor who made his “feature film debut in ‘They’.”

1995(4thof Iyar, 5755): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1997(27th of Nisan, 5757): Yom Hashoah; Rabbi Erwin Herman told the story of the "Yanov Torah" to 500 people at San Diego's community Yom HaShoah services today causing many of them to cry.

http://www.jewishsightseeing.com/usa/california/san_diego/lawrence_family_jcc/sd5-9yanov_torah.htm

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Gospel According to the Son by Norman Mailer.

1997: Barb Feller, executive director of the Granger House in Marion, Iowa, traveled to England to interview John Granger, last surviving grandson of the home’s original owner.  Mrs. Feller is an active member of the Temple Judah community serving as a Hebrew teacher and co-President of the congregation.

1999(18thof Iyar, 5759): Lag B’Omer

1999(18thof Iyar, 5759): Seventy-nine career civil servant Sir Leo Plitatzky passed away today.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-sir-leo-pliatzky-1095958.html

1999: NBC broadcast the final episode of “NewsRadio,” a sitcom featuring Jon Lovitz , Phil Harman and Steve Susskin.

2000: Shiite Muslim terrorists “fired five barrages of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel, killing one Israeli soldier and sowing panic in the northern border town of Qiryat Shemona” in what was the fiercest cross border attack since last June.

2001: The Mitchell Report (named for Maine Senator George Mitchell)  “that examined the cause of violence that began in 2000 and gave rise to the so-called Al-Aqsa Intifada was submitted today. 

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/Mitchellrep.html

2002: Eighty-six year old Wehrmacht veteran Rolf Friedemann Pauls, “the first ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel” passed away today.

2002: The exhibit “Tea House Suite” consisting of “eight new collages by Elaine Lustig Cohen” came to a close at the Julie Saul Gallery in New York

2003: The New York Times featured books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro.

2004: Publication of Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions by Ben Mezrich

2005: Natan Sharansky completed his term as Minister Without Portfolio.

2005: “Henry IV” directed by Nicholas Hytner opened at the National Theatre.

2005: The premiere of the ballet “An American in Paris” using the “eponymous music by George Gershwin from 1928.”

2006: The American Jewish Committee's centennial events culminates with a gala event attended by US President George W. Bush, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel

2006(6th of Iyar, 5766):Luba Kadison, the last surviving member of the Vilna Troupe, an influential Yiddish theater company founded in Europe during World War I, passed away at the age of 99. Caraid O'Brien, a scholar of Yiddish theater and a friend of Kadison announced that she had died at her home in Manhattan. Kadison, whose married name was Luba Kaison Buloff, toured extensively in Europe before becoming a leading actress in Yiddish theater during its heyday on New York's Lower East Side. She was part of a golden age of Yiddish theater that saw serious and satirical plays challenge the dominance of popular musicals. "They did experimental things. They were doing stuff in the style of German expressionists before most English-speaking theaters," said O'Brien, who called Kadison an "incredible inspirational artistic figure." Born in Lithuania in 1906, Kadison began performing in Europe as a child. Her father, Leib Kadison, was a founder of the Vilna Troupe, which performed modernist works by Yiddish writers S. Ansky and Sholom Aleichem, and translations of plays by others, including Maxim Gorky and Henrik Ibsen. In 1923 she married another member of the troupe, Joseph Buloff. The couple came to America in the late 1920s and performed in Lower East Side theaters packed with Jewish immigrants. Kadison had roles in Sholem Asch's "God of Vengeance," I.J. Singer's "Brothers Ashkenazi" and Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." The Holocaust devastated Yiddish culture, and declining use of the language worldwide was eventually mirrored in New York's theater scene. Kadison performed around the globe, and later in life became an interpreter, a teacher and a painter. She wrote a memoir with her husband, "On Stage, Off Stage: Memories of a Lifetime in the Yiddish Theater," which was published in 1992. Buloff, who moved on to a successful career on Broadway, died in 1985.

2006: Ehud Olmert went from Interim Prime Minister to Prime Minister after he established his own government in the wake of Ariel Sharon’s second stroke.

2006: Avraham Hirschson began serving Minister of Finance today “as part of the Kadima –led 31st governemtn.”

2006: Yael "Yuli" Tamir began serving as Minister of Education.

2006: Yaakov Edri began serving as Jerusalem Affairs Minister of Israel.

2006: Meir Sheetrit replaced Ze’ev Boim as Minister of Housing and Construction

2006: Binyamin Ben-Eliezer replaced Roni Bar-On as the Energy and Water Resources Minister of Israel.

2006: Shaul Mofaz was named Minister of Transport

2006: Ariel Atias replaced Avraham Hirschson as Minister of Communications.

2006: Roni Bar-On replaced Ariel Sharon Internal Affairs Minister.

2006: Amir Peretz replaced Shaul Mofaz as Minister of Defense.

2006: Avi Dichter replaced Gideon Ezra as Minister of Public Security.

2006: Ruhama Avraham Balila completed her term as Deputy Internal Affairs Minister.

2007: This year's Jacob's Ladder Festival opened for the first of two days at Nof Ginasar along the Kinneret.  A Cajun dance workshop, fiddle classes and bluegrass gospel music from the Abrams Brothers, a teenage duo from Canada were just a few of the 35 acts featured at this year’s event.

2008: In Chicago, The Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies presented a Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Program entitled “Poetry of the Holocaust: New Texts and Enduring Debates.”In this special Yom HaShoah conversation, poet Joy Ladin and DePaul University professor Eric Selinger explored Holocaust poetry, including Ladin’s own remarkable work, The Book of Anna, a collection of narrative poems and diary entries written in the voice of a fictional Czech-German Jewish concentration camp survivor.

2008: Secret government documents from post-World War II stored in Britain’s National Archives opened today “show that British diplomatic and military officials were concerned that sending Jews to German military camps so soon after the Holocaust would spark anger and protests around the world.”

2008: A 2008 U.S. touring production of Marvin Hamlisch’s “A Chorus Line” opened at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

2008 The Sunday New York Times book section featured reviews of A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horowitz, The Mayor’s Tongue by Nathaniel Rich son of Frank Rich and 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris.

2009: As part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature the 92nd Street Y presented the second Critics Voice program, “David Grossman on Bruno Schulz” during which Israeli novelist David Grossman, who wrote See Under: Love which stands as a lasting tribute to Schulz discusses the work of this Ukrainian born author who perished in the Holocaust.Born in Drohobycz, Galicia (now Ukraine) in 1892, Bruno Schulz, a drawing teacher by trade, wrote two story collections—Cinnamon Shops (1934) and Sanatorium Under the Sign of Hourglass (1937)—before he was killed by the Gestapo in 1942. His novel-in-progress, The Messiah, has never been found.”

2009:“Spots of Light: To Be a Woman in the Holocaust,”, an exhibition recently opened by Yad Vashem had its last showing at the Royal Palace in Dresden, Germany.

2009: The miniseries based on Sidney Sheldon’s Master of the Game and staring Dyan Cannon “was released on DVD” otoday.

2010: In New York, Manuel Forcano, Professor of Semitic Studies and Vice President of the Catalan Council for the Arts is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Traces of Esther: The Jewish Presence in Contemporary Catalan Literature.”

2010: A screening of “I had a Dream- The Story of Yona Bogale, Leader of Ethiopian Jewry” is scheduled for the opening of the Sheba Film Festival at the JCC in Manhattan. The Sheba Film festival highlights the legacy of Ethiopian Jewry.

2010:Jewish community leaders, Democratic Party officials and others gathered at a dinner in honor of DNC Chairman Governor Tim Kaine, hosted by Ambassador Michael Oren at his Washington home.

2010:The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies dedicated the first building of its new campus next to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The Schechter Institute is a non-profit organization of the Conservative Movement dedicated to the advancement of pluralistic Jewish education in Israel.

2011: Alexandria, VA is scheduled to host its 24thannual Holocaust Yom Ha’Shoah observance which will be attended by the Polish ambassador to the United States and Holocaust Survivor Charlene Schiff who will read an excerpt from her biography, “Don’t Ask For Soap.”

2011: The Tolerance Education Center in Rancho Mirage, CA, is scheduled to present “Fiddlers on MY Roof” featuring Stanley Walden.

2011:The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present the 2011 Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty Award Dinner honoring Machal and Aliyah Bet, all North American women and men who volunteered in Israel's War of Independence between 1947 and 1949, and Ralph Lowenstein, Ph.D., founder of the Machal/Aliyah Bet Archives; Machalnik; Dean Emeritus, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida.

2011: The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to present “Flight to Freedom – A Tribute Jewish Artists” during which “Joan Chesterton, Art historian and Professor Emerita at Purdue University, offers a fascinating illustrated presentation that pays tribute to the incredible contributions of four European artists who fled the Holocaust and immensely enriched American art—architect Mies van der Rohe, painter Hans Hoffmann, composer Kurt Weill and filmmaker, Billy Wilder.”

2011: Jewish song leader Mark Levy is scheduled to lead a workshop on “Jews 'n' Jazz!” at the Reutlinger Community for Jewish Living.  “The workshop will trace the development of America's notable Jewish jazz artists and composers beginning with their immigration to the U.S.”

2011: The Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center is scheduled to present “Jewish Identity in Pioneer Arizona: Anna and Lillian Solomon and Suitable Love” As part of the Arizona Jewish Centennial Series, Emily Jacobson, M.A., will speak about the Solomon family of Solomonville in Graham County. Anna Solomon, the family matriarch was a remarkable woman who raised all six of her children to marry Jews in a region where there were barely enough to form a minyan.

2011(30th of Iyar, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2011:UK Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks slammed the notion of making peace with Hamas in a speech he gave to the House of Lords today.

2012: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is scheduled to participate in the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, Illinois.

2012: As Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, kicks-off a week-end of events marking its 90th anniversary, David Neuman, the son of former Rabbi Isaac Neuman is scheduled to address the congregation during Shabbat Eve Services.

2012: For the first time a production Marvin Hamlisch’s “A Chorus Line” opened at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.

2012(12th of Iyar, 5772): Eighty-eight year old Dr. Sidney Katz, the graduate of Western Reserve University Medical school “who developed the Index of Independence of Activities for Daily Living” passed away today.

http://obits.cleveland.com/obituaries/cleveland/obituary.aspx?pid=157486571

2012(12th of Iyar, 5772): Forty-seven year old Adam Yauch, a founding member of the “Beastie Boys” passed away today.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beastie-boys-co-founder-adam-yauch-dead-at-48-20120504

http://entertainment.time.com/2012/05/04/adam-yauch-mca-of-the-beastie-boys-dies-after-cancer-battle/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true

2013: Friends and family of Harry L. Ehrenberg, Jr. gather to celebrate the natal day of this mensch who is a pillar of the Arkansas Jewish community

2013: A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff by Alicia Jo Rabins is scheduled to be performed at the Washington Jewish Music Festival.

2013: The winner of the 2nd Annual Jewish Playwriting Contest is scheduled to be chosen today at New Haven, CT.

2013: The Courier-Journal published “A Memorable Derby.”

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130504/OPINION02/305040053/Letters-Derby-Sons-Moses-Derby-Festival-Mansion-

2013: “Three to Max” a creation of Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company is scheduled to be performed at The Joyce Theatre.

2013: The 15th annual Felicja Blumental Chamber Music Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2013: Planes from the IDF fly missions in Syria

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-launches-second-airstrike-in-syria-targeting-weapons-shipment/2013/05/04/cdccddc0-b4c4-11e2-9fb1-62de9581c946_print.html

2013: Israeli tightens defenses long her northern border as the situation in Syria deteriorates.

2013:

 

 The airstrike that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria overnight on Thursday was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization, American officials said today

2014: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewsh readers including Love and Treasure by Ayelet Waldman and John Qunicy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

2014: The Jewish Historical Sociey of Greater Washington is scheduled to conduct a tour of “Jewish Sites in Arlington National Cemetery including the Confederate Memorial by Sir Moses Ezekiel and the Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle Memorials.

2014: Jewish education is scheduled to come to an end in the corriodor for the year as Agudas Achim and Temple Judah close their religious schools until the fall.

2014: “The Seder: Meanings, Rituals & Sprituality” is scheduled to close at the Oregon Jewish Museum.

2014: In the Netherlands, Nationale Herdenkingsdag (National Memorial Day

2014: The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and the JCC of Greater Washington are scheduled to host author, David Laskin, who will talk about the research that went into the writing of his book, "The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century."

2014: As part of Jewish American Heritage Month, Dr. Ted Merwin is scheduled to lecutre on “The Delectable History of the Jewish Deli at the Jewish Museum in Miami Beach.

2014: Authorities opened an investiagtion today in “anti-Arab graffiti…found spray painted…at a construction site in Kiryant Ye’arim also known as Telz Sonte” which was “another incident in a spate of race-hate ‘price-tag’ attacks by suspected Jewish extremists.” (As reported by Times of Israel Staff)

 

2014: In Washington, DC, final performance of “Camp David” a play based on the 1978 peace negotations at Camp David.

2014(4th of Iyar, 5774): Seventy-one year old Alan J. Friedman passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/nyregion/alan-friedman-71-dies-revived-hall-of-science.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

2014: “Right wing actvists…threw rocks at ploice and damaged a Border Police vehicle” when they “came to Yitzhar to search the home of a copule that had been arrested on suspicion of participating in a ‘price tag’ attack” in the norther norhtern city of Umm al-Fahm.

2014: “A group of 19 Ukranian Jews were immigrating to Israel today ami an escalating crisis that has seen a rising tide of anti-Semitic attacks.”

 

 

2015: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host Dana Kalshov’s presentation “The Israel Defense Forces: A Window on Modern Israeli Society.”

2015: “In the Community: Raise the Roof” is scheduled to be shown at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival.

2015: Security personnel shot a 35 year old Palestinian who “attacked one of the guards today at a light rail train stop in Jerusalem.”

2015: Israeli pianist Roman Rabinovich is one of three “young accomplished pianists” chosen by Sir Andras Schiff to perform with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players.

2015: “The mortar round that killed four-year-old Daniel Tragerman on the second to last day of the war in and around Gaza last summer was fired from a United Nations installation, Lt. Gen. (res) Benny Gantz, the commander of the army during the 50-day war, said” today.

2016: In Philadelphia, PA, Rabbi Lance Sussman is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “South Philly: An American Shtetl” are part of American Jewish Heritage Month.

2016: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a screening of “Persona Non Grata,” “a Japanese film depicting the life of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara who saved the lives of 6,000 Jewish refugees during World War II by issuing transit visas for them to Japan.”

2016: In Portland, Oregon, Congregation Neveh Shalom is scheduled to host the annual community-wide memorial service erev Yom Hashoah which has been planned by Rabbi Ariel Stone and Rabbi David Kosak.

2016: In Des Moines, Iowa, Tifereth Israel Synagogue is scheduled to host the community “Holocaust Memorial Commemoration.”

2016: Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) 2016 begins this evening.

2017: At the National Archives in Washington, DC, David Dalin is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: From Brandeis to Kagan.”

2017(8thof Iyar, 5777): Ninety-five year old economist William J. Baumol and the author of The Cost of Disease: Why Computers Get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn’tpassed away today. (As reported by Patricia Cohen)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/business/economy/william-baumol-dead-economist-coined-cost-disease.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/5/4/15547364/baumol-cost-disease-explained

2017: The YIVO Institute is scheduled to host a concert that “will explore music of composer Annie Gosfield that takes its inspiration from Jewish culture, history, and the New York immigrant experience.”

2017: “Beneath the Helmet” is scheduled to be shown at the Annual East Bay International Jewish Film Festival.

2017(8thof Iyar, 5777): Eighty-seven year old Edwin Sherin the “producer and executive producer of” the one of the most popular crime series ever, “Law and Order” passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/theater/edwin-sherin-theater-and-law-order-director-dies-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2018: “Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman today rejected an apology from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas over a speech blaming Jews’ behavior for the Holocaust, and not anti-Semitism, calling the Palestinian leader “a pathetic Holocaust denier.”

2018: “The Last Goldfish” and “Kishon” are scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the 26th Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Dozens of Palestinians broke into the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and the Hamas-run Strip this evening, setting fire to the gas pipeline that supplies fuel to the Strip…” (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)

2018: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to honor the Temple Israel confirmands this evening.

2018: In Cedar Rapids, IA, as the first part of her Bat Mitzvah weekend, Eleanor Dillon and her family are scheduled to participate in Erev Shabbat services at Temple Judah.

2019(29thof Nisan, 5779): Parashat Achrei Mot;

2019(29thof Nisan, 5779): Begin weekly study of Pirke Avot – Chapter One

2019: Shabbat takes on a double portion of joy with the celebration of the birthday Harry Ehrenberg, a mensch in the truest sense of that term.

2019: One week after the murderous shooting at Chabad of Poway as rabbis deal with how to continue to make their congregations as welcoming institutions while dealing with the reality of the need to increase security Rabbi Yosef Levin Bay is scheduled to host a Solidarity Shabbat and dinner at Chabad of Great South Bay” where he hopes to raise “$50,000 to finance armed security at Chabad centers” which are normally raising funds for educational and spiritual programs including those Shabbat meals which are warm hallmark of Chabad Houses across the world.

2020: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present, Live on Zoom, “War Orphans Find Home: Child Holocaust Survivors,” a program sponsored by the “Hear Their Cry: Understanding the Jewish Orphan Experience” Scholars Working Group, which has been meeting at the Center for Jewish History since September 2019.

2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host a virtual “discussion with writer/producer Karen Goldfarb about her 2016 film ‘Fascination: Helena’s Story,’”

2020: Dr. Aviva Dautch is scheduled to discuss My Russian Grandmother and her American Vacuum Cleaner by Meir Shalev the first in her virtual series on Modern Jewish Literature.

2020 In the darkest moments of the Pandemic, the friends and family get to share in a moment of light as they celebrate the natal day of Harry Ehrenberg, a mensch par excellent.

2020: In Coralville, IA, via Zoom Agudas Achim is scheduled to host “Introduction to Judaism”

2020: Israel’s Supreme Court is scheduled to continue for a second day a two-day hearing that began yesterday to determine whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted for corruption, will be allowed to form a new government. (As reported by Reuters)

2020: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to host “Modern Couples, Big Jewish Questions. an informative and social opportunity for engaged, partnered, and married couples in their 20s and 30s.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Dr. Eric Goldman who is scheduled to host a virtue presentation of “French Cinema Tackles the Shoah.”

2021: Urban Adamah is scheduled to present the first in a two-part series on connecting with the physical and spiritual dimensions of “rest and release” during the shmita year. Includes movement, breath work and connecting to the natural world.

2021: GiveNOLA Day/Federation-Clean Up Phonathon, the Jewish community’s major fund raising event is scheduled to take place today in New Orleans.

2021: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host a virtual Lunch and Learn during which Anne Harris, the wife of the late Rabbi Cyril Harris, is scheduled to share memorable anecdotes about her husband and his “dear friend Nelson Mandela “that will illuminate the personal and special relationship between these two extraordinary leaders.”

2021: The Jerusalem Writers’ Festival is scheduled to continue for a second day.

2021: Fuel For Truth is scheduled to present online “Israel Education Class for Young Professionals.”

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host a conversation with Letty Cottin Pogrebin and her daughter Abigail Pogrebein on the “State of American Feminism.”

2021: The S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation is scheduled to present the first of three straight days of talks and small-group discussions designed to forge community connections among the diverse population (473,000) of people who live in Bay Area Jewish households.

2021: While Israel continues to cope with the aftermath of the Meron tragedy, the political infighting continues which has led to an impasse over “plans to reform the Defense Ministry’s Rehabilitation Department so that it can provide better care for wounded veterans. (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)

2021: Despite the Pandemic and its attendant social dislocation, friends and family celebrate of mensch par-excellence Harry Ehrenberg, Jr.

 

 

 

 


This Day, May 5, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 5

1028:  King Alfonso V of Castile passed away. In 1020, Alfonso had presided over the Council of Leon which adopted laws that created a certain amount of equality between Christians and Jews. The legislation was in response to the threat of Moslem forces that were in control of much of the Iberian Peninsula. Alfonso was the King of Castile when Solomon ibn Gabriol was born in 1021.

1109: The Moors recaptured Valencia from the Christians. “During the period of Muslim rule… the Jewish quarter was situated on the eastern side of the Rahbat el-qadi and in its vicinity, on the site where the Santa Catalina church stands at present” (Jewish Virtual Library)

1210: Birthdate of King Alfonso III of Portugal whose reign was a period of comparative benevolence for his Jewish subjects. Jews were “exempt from the canonical decrees which compelled the wearing of a distinctive sign and the payment of tithes to the Church.”  Also, Jews were appointed to positions of governmental responsibility.  These policies were continued by his successor, King Diniz who appointed Judah, the Chief Rabbi of Portugal to serve as finance minister.

1260: Kublai Khan becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire. “Arab and European travelers, including Marco Polo in the 13th century, spoke of meeting Jews or hearing about them during their travels in China (then called the Middle Kingdom). Polo recorded that Kublai Khan himself celebrated the festivals of the Muslims, Christians and Jews alike, indicating a large enough number of Jews in the country to warrant attention by its rulers. Historical sources also describe Jewish communities at various trade ports, including Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Ningbo, and Yangzhou. Only the community in Kaifeng survived.”

1400: The privilege of the city of Worms to extend protection to the Jews in return for the payment of 20,000 gulden was renewed today by King Wenceslaus

1435: Jewish residents of Speyer, Germany, were expelled.

1588: The Council of Hanover ordered the severance of all business connections between Jews and Christians.

1624(16thof Iyar): Elias Lipiner was sentenced to death at an auto-de-fe by the Portuguese Inquisition. He was accused of committing the crime of using Jewish names and writing in Hebrew. On this same day Dr. Antonio Honem was sentenced to death for observing Jewish ceremonies.

1646:  King Charles I surrendered to the Presbyterian forces paving the way for the rise to power of Oliver Cromwell.  Cromwell would play a critical role in the return of the Jewish community to the British Isles.

1664(10th of Iyar): Rabbi Zebi Hirsch ben Abraham Katz murdered in Lemberg

1719: Fifty-three year old Samuel Zanvil Levy, the third child of Beila and Isaac Levy passed away today in New York City.

1705: After succeeding his father as Holy Roman Emperor today, Joseph I confirmed Samuel Wertheimer’s title and privileges.

1731(29thof Nisan, 5491): The grandmother of Moses Sofer, Reizchen, a daughter of the Gaon of Frankfurt Rabbi Shmuel Schotten, known as the Marsheishoch passed away.

1735: Birthdate of Jonas Mischel Jeittles, the native of Prague who studied medicine in Leipzig and Halle, became the public health officer of the Jewish community, was nominated chief supervisor of the guild of Jewish healers in Prague and in 1784 obtained from the emperor Joseph in Vienna permission that not only he himself but also other Jewish doctors could pursue unrestricted medical practice.(U.S. National Library of Medicine)

1759: Twenty-eight year old Vienna native Liebman Liepman Elieser Arnsteiner, the son of Aron Isak Arnstein and Ella Elsa Eleonora Arnsteiner and husband of Machteld Mathilda Michela Jochem Mozes Hannover passed away today in Frankfurt am Main

1764: The "Jews' decree" issued today permitted any Jew to live in Vienna “who could prove that he possessed a certain sum of ready money and "acceptable" papers, or that he had established a factory. According to this decree no Jew could buy a house; a married Jew had to let his beard grow, that he might be readily distinguished; and no synagogue or other place for common worship was permitted.

1766: Eighty-two year old Professor of Medicine Jean Austric the Protestant convert to Catholicism who family was reported to have been Jewish during the Middle Ages and who “was the first to try to demonstrate, by using the techniques of textual analysis that were commonplace in studying the secular classics, the theory that Genesis was composed based on several sources or manuscript traditions, an approach now called the documentary hypothesis” passed away today.

 

1767(Iyar 6): Rabbi Isaac Ha-Levi Horowitz of Brody passed away

1772: In Westchester County David Hay and Esther Hetting gave birth Jacob Hays, “known throughout his career as Old Hays,” whom many consider “the first real detective in New York” because “in 1802 Mayor Edward Livingston appointed him chief of the day police force” and “gave him the title of High Constable of the City of New York.

https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-2001601

https://forward.com/culture/425415/meet-high-constable-jacob-hays-new-yorks-forgotten-jewish-super-cop/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1932/04/23/old-hays

1777(28thof Nisan, 5537): Forty-three year old Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal passed away today at Barbados. Born in Hebron and ordained at 17, Carregal travels eventually took him to the American Colonies just before the start of the American Revolution.  He struck up a friendship with Edgar Stiles, the future President of Yale University.  Stiles benefited from this chance to improve his Hebrew and study scripture with a Rabbi.

1789:  In France, the Estates General convenes for the first time in 150 years.  This is the first act in what would become the French Revolution; a revolution that would result in Jews being granted full citizenship in any European continental political entity.

1795: One day after she had passed away, Rachel Harris, the three-year old daughter of Abraham Harris, was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”

1809: Right of citizenship was denied to Jews of the canton of Aargau, Switzerland. Emancipation was delayed until 1879.

1809(19thof Iyar, 5669): “Berek Yoselovich, founder and commander of a Jewish light cavalry regiment, was killed in action in the war between the Duchy of Warsaw and Austria

1813: Birthdate of Søren Kierkegaard

http://www.thedodo.info/The%20Dodo/The_Dodo1_Antisemitism_in_Denmark_Soeren_Kierkegaaard.htm#jews

http://pietyonkierkegaard.com/category/kierkegaard-and-the-jews

1818: Birthdate of Karl Marx, author of the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.  Only the ignorant and the anti-Semitic insist that Marx was a Jew.

1821: Napoleon Bonaparte passed away.  There is not enough space in this brief guide to discuss the impact of Napoleon, both pro and con, on the Jewish people.

1822(14thof Iyar, 5582): Pesach Sheni

1822: As Jews celebrated a “second Pesach” rebel forces prepared to meet Royalist in the battle that would lead to the independence of Ecuador from Spain.

1837: A dedication of new synagogue in Surinam took place.

1839: Forty-two year old jurist Eduard Ganz who like so many of his contemporaries found his way to the Baptismal font as he climbed the ladder of German society passed away today.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Eduard-Gans

1839: In the small town of Unsleben, Bavaria, “a group of 19 emigrants led by Moses Alsbacher departed for America, seeking escape from political unrest and economic and personal discrimination. They chose Cleveland as their final destination because a fellow townsman, Simson Thorman, had two years earlier made this thriving village on Lake Erie the base for his fur trading business. Arriving in late 1839, they found their first homes in the Terminal Tower-Central Market area. A Torah scroll was among the belongings of this group of settlers, and soon after they arrived, they formed the Israelitic Society for worship.”

1839: Birthdate of Breslau, Meyer Elkin, the German trained rabbi who served severed congregations in Liverpool, UK and Philadelphia before taking the pulpit at Congregation Beth Israel in Hartford, CT.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1915/12/13/106788842.pdf

https://books.google.com/books?id=1yRCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=Rabbi+Meyer+Elkin&source=bl&ots=FO3Cxms6X9&sig=N3LLUJn3bQQZMxQtXVWNvOpIngc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKh-_7lZTfAhUrpoMKHSAXDgEQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Rabbi%20Meyer%20Elkin&f=false

 1843:Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, the sixth son of George III (the one who lost the 13 colonies) who “became a Patron of the Jews' Hospital and Orphan Asylum, later to become the charity known as Norwood” and who supported legislation to remove “the civil liabilities of Jews” was buried today at Kensal Green Cemetery without the pomp of state funeral per his request.

 

1848: In Vienna, Moritz Moses Jacob von Goldschmidt and Nanette von Goldschmidt gave birth to Jacob Adalbert von Goldschmidt.

1858: Fifteen year old Jacob Affelder, the Bavarian born son of Loew Affelder and Rosalia Regine Rosenberg arrived in the United States where he eventually settled in Pittsburgh, PA and married Kate Fleishman.

1859: Birthdate of lyric poet Mordecai Zebi Mane who was part of the Haskalah movement in Russia.

1859: “Another Mrtara Case with a More Honorable Termination” published today tells the story of Alice Levy, a Jewish orphan living in New Orleans.  Before her death, the mother had left instructions that Alice should be “educated in the Jewish faith.” Somehow the child ended up in the custody “of a charitable lady in New Orleans” who was going to raise her as a Catholic.  Alice’s grandmother appealed to the French Consul in New Orleans for help.  After determining that attempts to have the child returned had been thwarted, he interceded on her behalf and the child was tunred over to a Jewish orphanage.  

1860: In his lecture on the "Lost Arts," Wendell Phillips states that the earliest mention of precious stones is in the Bible, and that "the Hebrews borrowed the names of their gems from the Egyptians."

1861: In Washington, DC, Colonel Ripley, the Chief of Ordinance received Major Alfred Mordecai’s letter of resignation and a personal letter from Mordecai in which he thanked Colonel Ripley and assured him that he had no need to doubt the Major’s continued loyalty to the nation.

1861: Hermann Mayer Salomon Goldschmidt discovered his fortieth and final Asteroid, 70 Panopaea.

1861: The members of the 27th Regiment, originally a part of the ‘Washington Brigade,’” which was commanded by Max Einstein “were enrolled” for service in the United States military during the Civil War.

1862: Mexican forces loyal to Juarez defeat the French Army loyal to the Emperor Maximilian. Because of the heavy hand of the Catholic Church only a handful of Jews were living in Mexico at the start of the 19th century.  The Jewish population actually grew during the rule by the Austrian usurper as he “imported many Jews from Belgium, France, Austria and Alsatia.”  In one of those quirks of history the Jewish population actually benefited when Benito Juarez overthrew Maximilian in 1867. Under Juarez, the Church lost much of its authority and Jews found a secularized Mexico a hospitable place to settle.

1863: Birthdate of Alexander Harkavy the native of Minsk and husband of Bella Segalowski, who came to the United States in 1882 after pogroms in Russia who later went to Canada where published that country’s first Yiddish newspaper before return to the United States where he published the Jewish Progress in Baltimore before working on translations of several books of the Bible including “The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text.”

1864: During the U.S. Civil War, start of the Battle of the Wilderness during which Sergeant Leopold Karpleles and Private Abraham Cohen served with such distinction that they each earned the Congressional Medal of Honor.

1864: Aaron Miller and Levi Myers completed their three year enlistment with Company I of the Thrity-Sixth Regiment.

1864: During the Battle of the Wilderness, Private Louis Leon (CSA) was taken prisoner and shipped to Point Lookout.

1864: Baroness Fannie de Worms and Baron Henry de Worms were married in Vienna. The marriage would end in 1886 in notorious divorce case with the Baron proving she had committed adultery with Moritz von Leon.

1865: Major Raphael Moses, “the chief supply officer for General James Longstreet, attended the last meeting of the Confederate government, at the Bank of the State of Georgia (later the Heard House), in Washington in Wilkes County where he was ordered by Confederate president Jefferson Davis to take possession of $40,000 in gold and silver bullion from the Confederate treasury and deliver it to help feed and supply the defeated soldiers straggling home after the war—weary, hungry, often sick, shoeless, and in tattered uniforms. With a small group of determined armed guards, Moses successfully carried out his duty, despite repeated attempts by mobs to take the bullion forcibly.”

1865(9th of Iyar, 5625): French Rabbi Salomon Ulmann passed away. Born at Saverne, Bas-Rhin in 1806 he began his rabbinical studies at Strasburg under Moïse Bloch (better known as Rabbi Mosche Utenheim), and was the first pupil enrolled at the initial competitive examination of candidates for the Ecole Centrale Rabbinique, inaugurated in July, 1830. He was also the first in his class at this institution to receive the diploma of chief rabbi. In 1834 he was appointed rabbi of Lauterbourg, Alsace; in 1844 he became chief rabbi of Nancy, in Lorraine; and in 1853 he succeeded Marchand Ennery as chief rabbi of the Central Consistory of the Israelites of France. Ulmann published a limited number of sermons and pastoral letters, and was the author also of "Catéchisme, ou Eléments d'Instruction Religieuse et Morale à l'Usage des Jeunes Israélites" which is considered a classic.” The most important act in Ulmann's rabbinical career was the organization of the Central Conference of the Chief Rabbis of France, over whose deliberations he presided at Paris in May, 1856. In that year Ulmann addressed a "Pastoral Letter to the Faithful of the Jewish Religion," in which he set forth the result of the deliberations of the conference, which were as follows: (1) revision and abbreviation of the piyyutim; (2) the introduction of a regular system of preaching; (3) the introduction of the organ into synagogues; (4) the organization of religious instruction; (5) the institution of the rite of confirmation for the Jewish youth of both sexes; (6) a resolution for the transfer of the Ecole Centrale Rabbinique from Metz to Paris.

1866: In Lida, Russia, Isaiah Blaustein and Sarah Natzkowsky gavie to David Blaustein, who was educated in Germany and came to the United States where his varied activities and career included three years at Harvard, serving as a rabbi in Providence, RI for three years before eventually becoming Superintendent of the Educational Alliance of New York.

1866: In Berdychiv, Ukraine, Wolf and Sura Beile Kaminka gave birth to Dr. Armand Ahron Noach Kaminka “the renowned rabbi, Hebrew scholar and secretary of Alliance Israelite Universelle in Vienna” who was arrested by the Nazis in 1938 and eventually settled in Israel and the husband of Klara Kaminka.

1867: In California, Baruch and Louisa Montag Rothschild gave birth to Leonore Rothschild who beame Leonore Rothschild Tauszky after she married Edmond Tausky.

1869(24th of Iyar): Joseph Jonas, who arrived in Cincinnati in 1817 possibly making him the first Jew to settle in that part of Ohio passed away today

1871: In Cleveland, OH, Morris Morris Ullman, the German born son of Judith and Leopold Ullman and Lenche Ullman gave birth to Jeanette Ullman the younger sister of Cleveland educated businessman Monroe Ullman who became Jeanette Friedenburg when she married Solomon Friedenburg.

1872: Two days after she had passed away, 78 year old Julia Solomon, “the widow of Samuel Solomon” was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1876: Two days after he had passed away, 50 year old Emanuel Sampson, the Sony of Mary and Isaac Sampson was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1878: “Murder of an American Lady” published today described how the sister of the American Vice Consul in Bucharest, Dr. Stern, was stabbed by a suitor her family had rejected three years earlier. The young woman was 20 years old and had only been married for four months.

1878: “A Mean Thief Punished” published today described how “Philip Leon, a well-dressed Hebrew” was tried and found guilty of having stolen a pawn ticket and a dollar from Julia McLoughlin.  Leon was sentenced to pay a fine of $50 and to serve a sentence of one month in the New York’s city jail.

1879:  According to the Rochester Express, J.B. Hoyt and J.B. Trevor are donating the funds to endow Chair of Hebrew Language and Literature at the Rochester Theological Seminary.

1879: In Russia, Aryeh Leib Yaakov Sadowsky and Fayga Rivka Sadowsky gave birth to RabbiSolomon Sadowsky who in 1902 came to the United States where served “a congregation in Albany for eight years before coming to Rochesterwhere he led Congregation Beth Israel and Congregation Agudas Achim Nusach Ari, “organized the “Orthodox Orphans Home Rochester, became an active Zionist a and authored several books including Necromancy in Hebrew Literature while raising five sons with his wife Celia.

1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Kiev, Russia. The Russian pogroms of 1881 led to the spread of Zionist ideas in Eastern Europe and the formation, in 1882, of Hovevei Zion, the first organized modern Zionist movement in the world.

1881: Following the assassination a month earlier of Tzar Alexander II of Russia, and the subsequent rumors that the Jews were behind the assassination, anti-Jewish riots broke out today. The riots and pogroms lasted for four years, during which time thousands of Jewish homes and synagogues were destroyed, and countless Jews were injured and impoverished. The unrest started out in Southern Russia, and quickly spread throughout the entire country. Tzar Alexander III actually blamed the riots on the Jews(!) and punished them by enacting new laws which further restricted their freedoms. Among these devastating laws were legislation which restricted Jews from residing in towns with fewer than 10,000 citizens, and limiting their professional employment and education opportunities. These oppressive laws, known as the "May Laws," compelled many Jews to emigrate. They are said to have caused more than two million Jews to leave Russia, many of them opting

1881: In St. Louis, founding of the Home for Aged and Infirm Israelites on 1132 Washington Avenue whose leadership including S.A. Rider and Mrs. Lissette Baum.

 

1883: In Colchester, Essex, General Archibald Graham Wavell and Lillie(nee Percival) Wavell gave birth to Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, who “in August, 1937, was transferred to Palestine, during the Arab Revolt to be General Officer Commanding (GOC) British Forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan”

1886: Birthdate of Russian native Edward S. Siskin, “the first known Jew to participate in athletics at Fordham, a Jesuit university” where he played end from 1905 to 1908 before serving as the head coach in 1918.

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Edward_Siskind.html1887(11thof Iyar, 5647): Sixty-four year old Simon Biensenstok, the husband of Helena Biensenstok and the father of Charles, Rachel, Sigfried and Herman Bienenstok passed away after which he was buried at the United Hebrew Cemetery in University City, a suburb of St. Louis.

1887: In the United Kingdom, several Brethren who were also Secret Monitors met at the home of Dr. Issachar Zacaharie where it was resolved to from the Alfred Meadows Conclave with Dr. Zacharie as its first Supreme Ruler. Secret Monitors refers to The Order of the Secret Monitor and Brethren refers to Freemasons. Zacharie was born in Kent (England) in 1827.  As a small boy he moved to the United States where he became a foot doctor describes variously as an orthopedist or a chiropodist. During the Civil War he became President Lincoln’s foot doctor.  Their relationship transcended that which normally existed between doctor and patient.  Lincoln used him as an unofficial advisor and source of information. At one point he went to New Orleans to assess the situation there for the President.  ‘Due in part to Zacharie's influence, Lincoln became an early proponent of establishing a Jewish state in the Holy Land. ‘I myself have regard for the Jews,’ the president is reported to have once said. ‘My chiropodist is a Jew, and he has so many times 'put me on my feet' that I would have no objection to giving his countrymen 'a leg up.'"  Zacharie returned to England “from America in 1875 and built up a thriving orthopedic practice in Brook Street, London. He became a member of a Bon Accord Mark Lodge in 1882 where he met other Brethren who were also Secret Monitors, having received their degree in various places. These Brethren were also members of Alfred Meadows Lodge named after a distinguished surgeon.”

1891: “Jewish Prisoners” published today described the work of Rabbi Adolph M. Radin with Jewish prisoners in New York jails and prisons.  New York City’s association of rabbis had designated him as “the visiting Chaplain” to fill this need.

1892: William Ambrose Shedd, a Persian received the George S. Green Fellowship in Hebrew at Princeton University. The theology student’s efforts gained him $600. Ivy League schools had an interest in the language of the Jews but no desire to have them on their campuses.

1892: Emanuel Lehman, the Treasurer of Transportation Fund for the Relief of Russian (Jewish) Refugees acknowledged the following contributions: Sigmund Robertson - $2,000; Lazarus Levy - $100; Seligman Solomon Society - $25; Mrs. G.M. Raphael - $10. This brings the total contributions to $97, 545.49.

1892: In Oxford, UK, Sir Archibald Garrod and Laura Elizabeth Smith gave birth to British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod who in 1929 led an all-female team to a dig in Israeli’s Carmel mountain range where they discovered the skeleton of a Neanderthal woman – “the first-ever to be discovered outside of Europe.”

1892: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band will supply the music this afternoon at the Actors’ Fund Fair in Madison Square Garden.

1893: “More Affidavits By Jews” published today described the aggressive attempts by some Christian denominations to convert Jews.

1894: In Crimea, Ilia and Clara (Sabsay) Stassevitch gave birth to violinist and pianist Paul Stassevitch who in 1919 came to the United States where debuted “with the State Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1924, taught violin at the Mannes Music School and married J. Marzrethe Somme.

1895: Police will begin an investigation into a tale told by Bernard Zuckerman, a self-confessed thief, that he had been led into his life of crime by an unnamed Polish Jewish woman.  She came to the United States about four years ago, and behaving like a female Fagan, teaches young Jewish Polish boys how to steal and then disposes of their goods.

1895: “Art Notes” published today described the paintings with a Jewish Biblical theme that John S. Sargent has done to decorate the New Public Library in Boston. The wall space over the door depicts the delivery of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. Below this “are a series of panels” that depict the “growth of the Hebrew religion” “In the center, immediately over the door, is a colored bas-relief of Moses.”

1895: Robert College in Constantinople which was created with an endowment by Christopher R. Robert of New York currently provides a western style education to a multi-ethnic student body of 200, five of whom are Jews.

1896: In New York, Matilda (Metzger) and Dr. Herman J. Schiff gave birth to Esther Schiff who gained fame as anthropologist Esther Schiff Goldfrank the wife of Walter S. Goldfrank and the author the 1927 tome The Social and Ceremonial Organization of Cochiti

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldfrank-esther-schiff

1896: Dreyfus wrote in his diary, "I have no longer anything to say; everything is alike in its horrible cruelty."

1898: “A Jewish Warship” published today described plans by Jews in Ohio to raise the money to pay for a warship to be used in the war against giving as their reasons “The Jews all over the world have a grudge against Spain” (remember the expulsion of 1492) and the fact that Jews “have had trials and tribulations in every country in the world except in America.”

1889: Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs is scheduled to deliver an address to the adult members of B’nai Jeshurun on the significant role of George Washington as part of the events celebrating the centennial of his first inauguration which took place in New York City on April 30, 1789.

1899:  Birthdate of Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, a partner of Louis “Lepke” Buchalter who helped establish Murder Incorporated.

1899: “Some interesting facts concerning the lot of the average physician working on the east side,” a predominately “Hebrew District” “were brought out at a meeting of the New York County Medico-Pharmaceutical League” tonight as part of an attempt to improve “the condition of the physicians and druggists.”

1899: Today, Rabbi De Sola Mendes said, “The condition of the Jewish populations west of Eighth Avenue and east of the Bowery in this city is not understood even by old New Yorker” and the Union of Jewish Congregations was formed to improve the welfare of the Jews living in this area.

1900: David Wolffsohn offers to resign his position with the Colonial Bank, also known as the Jewish Colonial Trust.  The Bank was established to buy land for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel.

1900: Birthdate of Nacha Rivkin, the founder of Shulamith School for Girls, the first girl's yeshiva in the U.S.

1901: President Percival S. Menken presided over the annual meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.  Attendees listened to the group’s 27th annual report, elected a board of directors and listened to a brief speech by the organization’s major benefactor, Jacob Schiff.

1901: President Simon Borg presided over the annual meeting of the Home for Aged and Infirmed Hebrews.  Based on the report of the Finance Committee, the Home’s financial condition was quite solid.  Jacob Schiff, President of the Montefiore Home for Chronicle Invalids addressed the group, congratulating the group for the quality of management at the Home.

1902: In “Presburg, Hungary,” “Rabbi Josef and Taube (Kaufman) Rosenblatt gave birth CCNY graduate and JTS ordained rabbi, Samuel Rosenblatt the hold of a Ph.D. from Columbai who several congregations including Adath Israel in Trenton, NJ, with the support of his wife, “the former Clara Woloch.”

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rosenblatt-samuel

https://jewishmuseummd.pastperfectonline.com/byperson?keyword=Rosenblatt%2C+Samuel+%28Rabbi%29

1903: “Jews Flee From Kieff” published today described conditions in the city of Kiev where “richer Jews have left their houses and have sought refuge in hotels” while “thousands of poor Jews have fled the city’ because of well-founded reports “that anti-Semitic crusade is imminent.” (Editor’s note: The fears were fanned by the Easter Pogrom at Kishinev.  Kiev would actually be spared until the wave of violence in 1905)

1904: “Jacob Goell and Mary Samowitz gave birth St. John’s University trained attorney Milton J. Goell, the holder of a BA from Harvard and Ph.D. from Yeshiva University who raised two children – James and Martha – with his wife Amy.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/08/23/archives/milton-j-goell.html

1905: Maurice Arnold de Forest, who had been adopted by the millionaire Baroness Clara de Hirsch, née Bischoffsheim, wife of Jewish banker and philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch de Gereuth, and given the surname de Forest-Bischoffsheim, resigned this commission on 5 May 1906, by which time he was also an Honorary Second Lieutenant in the Army

1906: Count Sergei Yulyevich Witte, whose career had suffered because his second wife, Matilda Ivanovna (Isaakovna) Lisanevich, was a converted Jew, completed his service as 1st Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire

1907: As violence gripped Russia it was reported today that Premier Stolypn feels that the
demands of the Jewish League presented are just, he is postponing taking action because if he did so the peasants would rise up and lynch the Jews.

1908: Akron, Ohio, department store owner Bert A. Polsky and his wife the former Hazel Steiner gave birth to the oldest child and only son Thomas E. Polsky.

1909(14thof Iyar, 5669): Pesach Sheni

1909: Birthdate of Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti, whose life was shaped by the fact that his mother and his twin brother died during his birth,

1909: Three days after she had passed away, Mary Ada Mocatta, the daughter of Frederick David Gloldsmid and the former Caroline Samuel and the wife of Frederick David Mocatta, the scion of a prominent Jewish family who wrote The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the Inquisition was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1909: Henri Daniel Mayrargue and Eveline Bethsabée Lattès, the daughter of Israël-Vita Lattès and Marie Lattès gave birth to Jean Mayrargue.

1910: Birthdate of Josef Karlenboim who made Aliyah in 1930 and gained fame as Yosef Almogi, Israeli military, labor and political leaders.

1910: Birthdate of Leo Lionni who along with David Wiesner was one of the two most “influential children’s book illustrators of the twentieth century.” The Amsterdam native’s father was a Sephardic Jewish who worked in the diamond business.  His mother was a Christian.

1911: Birthdate of “Andor Lilienthal, the last of the original 27 chess grandmasters, who played 10 world champions and beat 6 of them…”

1912(18thof Iyar, 5672): Lag B’Omer

1912: A week before his 27th birthday, Brooklyn Law School trained attorney Nathan Sweedler the son of Samuel and Ada Sweddler, the director of the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities and founder of the Brooklyn Jewish Chronicle married Ada L. Meyer

1912:  The Summer Olympics in which Abel Kiviat “won a silver medal in the 1500 meter race” opened today in Stockholm.

1913: Miss Ella Hartman was elected President of the Junior Auxilliary of the Mother’s Aid of the Chicago Lying-in Hospital and Dispensary which met at Temple Isaiah.

1913: The Chicago Association of Jewish Women is scheduled to meet in the Sinai Social Center where Mrs. Israel Cowen will be elected President.

1913: Miss Biefeld’s Young Ladies Band is scheduled to provide the music at today’s meeting of the Chicago Association of Jewish Women in the Sinai Social Center where attendees can vote for new officers between one and three in the afternoon.

1914: “There were strong indications today that Detective Will J. Burns will be detained under heavy bond as a material witness before the Grand Jury in its investigation of bribery charged made by the prosecution in the Leo Frank case against the defense whose method of obtaining affidavits to exonerate Frank of the murder of Mary Phagan and to convict Jim Conley of the crime have been called into question.”

1915: Today, Isidore Hershfield, the Director of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America declared that “every Jew, man, woman and child in the Province of Kovno was expelled on twenty-four hours’ notice” with all of them fleeing west toward the battle front controlled by the Germans

1915: Birthdate of Emanuel Litvinoff, an English-born Jewish poet known for his scathing verse indictment of T. S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism — and for reading it before an audience that happened to include Eliot. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1915:  H.A. Alexander, Leo Frank’s local attorney said Louis Marshall’s decision to ask “the United States Supreme court to hand down without further delay the mandate in the Leo M. Frank case” was “a surprise” to him.

1915: During the Gallipoli campaign, during the fighting at Kritihia, Private Groushkowksy of the Zion Mule Corps “prevented his mules from stampeding under heavy bombardment and despite being wounded in both arms, delivered his load of ammunition for which he was awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

 

1915: It was reported today from Constantinople, that “the most curious feature is the attitude of the Jews” in Turkey “who are in many ways the intellectuals.  Jewish influence has been enormous in Turkey and it has been said their Zionist aims had seriously undermined the loyalty of the Arabs.  Apparently however, Enver Pasha has decided Arab support is worth a great deal more than that of the Jews and various steps have been taken to force the Jews into a Turkish mold.  Jewish disaffection is no slight matter and it is more significant as Jewish influence had hitherto worked powerfully for Germany.”

1916: It was announced today “that $900 had been contributed by Bronx businessman towards that borough’s campaign to raise funds for the aid of “Jewish war sufferers”

1917(13thof Iyar, 5677): Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim

1917(13thof Iyar, 5677):  Seventy-two-year-old Isidor Frankenberg, an alderman serving Liverpool, England, passed away today

1916: President Wilson appointed Jacob Jerome Steinfelder the inspiration for the book Family Doctor by Richard and Dorothy Williams to serve as a lieutenant in the United States Army Medical Reserve Corps.

1917: At a mass meeting of Zionists held this evening, “Nathan Straus offered to defray the traveling expenses of all wishing to move to Palestine” but lack “means to do so.”

1917: In Cleveland, OH, Harry Fleishman Affelder, the Pittsburgh, PA born son of Jacob Isadore Affelder and Catherine “Kate Affelder, and his wife Rhoda Affelder gave birth to  Ruther Jane Affelder, the future wife of Lois H. Hexter and Jerome “Jerry” Bennet Goodfriend.

1917: At Cooper Union, during the first of a series of meetings “planned for the principal cities” in the United States “to crystalize Jewish sentiment on the subject of Zionism” Rabbi Stephen S. Wise declared that “the Jewish problem could be solved only Jews in a Jewish way, by the Jewish soul on Jewish soil.”

1917: “Jews in Palestine are threatened with a massacre, according to a cablegram received” in Chicago today “by Adolph Kraus, International President of the Order of B’nai B’rith from President Gilbert of the London” B’nai B’rith Lodge who appealed to Kraus to intervene with the American government.

1918: “The Bride’s Awakening” a silent drama directed by Robert Z. Leonard and produced by Carl Laemmle was released in the United States today.

1918: Jacob Schiff and Julius Rosenwald were among the speakers at the Belvedere in Baltimore where that city’s Jews were “launching a drive to raise its quote of $350,000 which was part of the $15,000,000 general war relief fund.”

1919: Birthdate of Samuel Abraham Goldblith, “an American food scientist” who studied malnutrition during World War II “and later was involved in food research important for space exploration.”  He died in 2001.

1919: Mrs. Joseph Hevesh is scheduled to read the prize winning story “My Father and I” at the annual meeting of the Council of Jewish Women at the Sinai Center in Chicago.

1920: Birthdate of Charles Hirsch Schneer, a native of Norfolk, Virginia who gained fame as a film producer most widely known for working with special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1921: Birthdate of Poet and liturgist Ruth Brin

1921:  Birthdate of Arthur Leonard Schawlow winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics.

1921 (27th of Nisan, 5681): Fifty-six year old Austrian born  AlfredHermann Fried  a leading pacifist, author, co-founder of the German peace movement one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1911 passed away today

1921: Demobilized Jewish soldiers under the command of a Jewish officer were assigned to patrol duty in Tel Aviv as part of today’s efforts by General Deeds and Judge Norman Bentwich to restore order in Palestine.  Arabs, including Arab policemen, began rioting on May 1.  So far 27 Jews have been killed during the violence and another 150 have been wounded.

1922: Birthdate of Polish nurse Irene Gut who was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for risking her life to save twelve Jews from certain death.

http://polish-jewish-heritage.org/eng/june_03_Irene_Opdyke_Washington_Post.htm

1922: “Morris J. Clurman” and “Lena Shimshak” gave birth to Herman Clurman, the husband of “Gloria A. Glick Clurman.

1922: Fifty-two year old Judge Joseph Sabath, the Bohemian born son of Joachim and Barbara (Eisenschimmel) Sabath applied and husband of Regina Mayer applied for a U.S. passport today and his brother Congress Adolph J. Sabath attested as to his identiy.

1924: In Berlin, dermatologist Dr. Joseph Cassel and Edith (Basch) Cassel gave birth to Lili Cassel who gained gamed as illustrator and calligrapher Lili Wronker. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/obituaries/lili-wronker-dead.html

1925: Birthdate of Polish native and Holocaust survivor Simon Kohn, founder of Simon Kohn’s Kosher Restaurant and Deli where they make great kishka and meat knishes. (Editor’s note – I am not neutral in this.  For years Kohn’s filled all of my late wife’s meat orders shipping to Cedar Rapids on time and fresh.

1926: Funeral rites are held at Temple Beth-El for businessman, philanthropist and diplomat Oscar Straus.

1926: In Manhattan, attorney Max Hirson and Hazel (Adlowich) Hirson gave birth to WW II Army veteran and Yale University graduate Roger Overholt Hirson a prominent writer for live television in the 1950s and ’60s who collaborated with the composer Stephen Schwartz on the hit Broadway musical “Pippin” (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/obituaries/roger-hirson-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1927: In Manhattan, Anita Gerber and Irwin Rosen gave birth to Charles Welles Rosen “the pianist, polymath and author whose National Book Award-winning volume “The Classical Style” illuminated the enduring language of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1930: Birthdate of Barry M. Farber, the native of Baltimore who grew up in Greensboro, NC, attended the University of North Carolina before beginning a career as a conservative radio talk show “who Talkers magazine ranked as the 9th greatest radio talk show host of all time.”

1930: In St. Paul, MN, Belle and Albert Shaw gave birth to Stanford J. Shaw whose works include The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republicand Turkey and the Holocaust: Turkey's role in rescuing Turkish and European Jewry from Nazi persecution, 1933-1945

1931: In Brooklyn, accountant Max Greenberg and Bertha (Rosenberg) Greenberg gave birth to Columbia graduate and Navy veteran Daniel Sheldon Greenberg, the younger brother civil rights attorney Jack Greenberg and husband of Wanda Reif whose coverage of science could only be described as “ground breaking.” (As reported by Cornelia Green)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/science/daniel-s-greenberg-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1933: In Budapest, Donald and Ilona Sass gave birth to Evelyn Erika Sass who as Evelyn Handler gained gamed as a cell biologist and the first women to serve as President of Brandeis University. (As reported by Paul Vitello)

1933: In New York, Abraham Schneider, the President of Columbia Pictures, and his wife gave birth to Berton “Bert” Schneider the movie executive who “in 1975, received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for producing Hearts and Minds, a documentary film about the Vietnam War.”

1933: Ludwig Kaas, who was in Rome at the behest of Cardinal Pacelli to negotiate a Concordat between Hitler and the Vatican, resigned his post as Chairman of the Centre Party one of the last political institution standing in the way of the Nazi’s complete control of Germany.

1934: In Cologne, Germany, Friedrich Carol von Oppenheim, a Righteous Among the Nations and his wife gave birth to Alfred Paul Ernst Freiherr von Oppenheim the “German billionaire and banker” “known in Americas Alfred Oppenheim, the husband of Jeanne von Oppenheim “with whom he had three children Victoria, Alexander and Christopher.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/08/local/me-passings8.1

1935: “Leading Christians, headed by former Governor Alfred E. Smith, called upon all Americans today to aid the United Jewish Appeal in its effort to raise $3,250,000 in the United States for the relief and rehabilitation of Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe and the settlement of Jews in Palestine

1936: “A big fire” which was presumably started by arsonists “broke out today in Balfour Forest in northern Palestine destroying more than a thousand trees planted by the Jews.

1936: “The British High Commissioner, Sir Arthur G. Wauchope today met the Arab High Council and told them he was ‘confident none of you gentlemen associate yourself with…any illegal act” and advised them “that they immediately make it known that there not connected with” the violence surrounding the strike.1936: Birthdate of Sanford Irving Beresofsky the native of Brooklyn who gained fame as comedian Sandy Baron.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/29/arts/sandy-baron-64-veteran-comic-who-antagonized-morty-seinfeld.html

1937: The convention of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in the United States and Canada, an “organization that includes in its membership about 98 per cent of all the orthodox rabbis in the United States” is scheduled to continue for a third day in Atlantic City, NJ.

1938: The Palestine Postreported that a Jewish farmer, Haim Sober, 40, was attacked by Arabs while on his way home to Karkur and beaten with sticks to death.

1938: As Sigmund Freud's family members continued their departure from Vienna, his “sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, left for London” today a week before Martin Freud left for the British capital.

1938: The Palestine Postreported that an Arab watchmen employed by the Iraqi Petroleum Company was shot and killed in a Tiberias cafe, apparently because he was to serve as a witness in the court case against the Izza ed Din el Kassam Arab terrorist gang which murdered a Jew at Nahalal.

1939: U.S. premiere of “Lucky Night” a comedy directed by Norman Taurog.

1939: Birthdate of photographer Ryszard Horowitz, the native of Krakow who was shipped to a Nazi concentration at the age of four months, and at the age of five was one of the survivors of Auschwitz liberated by the Soviets.

http://www.ryszardhorowitz.com/analog.html

1939: “Lucky Night,” a comedy directed by Norman Taurog was released in the United States today.

1939: “Rose of Washington” a musical “inspired by” the lives and marriage of Fanny Brice and Nicky Arnstein” directed by Gregory Ratoff featuring Al Jolson was released in the United States today.

1939: Sara Kucikowicz, the author of “The Cruel Winter” gave her tutor Shlomo Achituv “a photograph of herself, and on the back inscribed the following: “Shlomka, so you’ll remember me. Sara.” The portrait was made at the M. Glouberman photo studio at 12 Pilsudskiego St.” (As reported by JTA)

1939: The Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws went into effect in Hungary 

1939: Under newly enacted legislation first presented by ex-Prime Minister Bella Imredy two thirds of Hungary's Jews were denaturalized because they became citizens after 1914. Jews had to leave all government-related positions before the end of the year.

1940: “Dead Man’s Shoes” a British drama featuring Ludwig Stössel as “Doctor Breithaut” was released in the United Kingdom today.

1941: Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia after a five year exile brought about the Italian conquest of his kingdom.  This marked one of the early victories of the Allies over the fascists and thus was a turning point in World War II. The Emperor had spent part of his exile in Palestine where he was greeted warmly by the Jewish population

1942 (18th of Iyar, 5702): Lag B’Omer

1942 (18th of Iyar, 5702): Jewish teachers and educators in the Warsaw Ghetto created a special day for children, during which they were treated to games, plays, and special rations of sweets.

1942 (18th of Iyar, 5702): Prof. Jakob Edmund Speyer, a Jew from Frankfurt, Germany, who invented an important painkiller called Eukodal, died of exhaustion in the ghetto at Lodz, Poland

1943: The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto continued to hold out against the Nazis.

.1943: Himmler visited the Zagreb, Yugoslavia. Soon thereafter 1,400 Jews were deported

1944: Birthdate of journalist and author Richard Bernstein

http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/25/reviews/010325.25fratert.html

http://richardbernstein.net/About-Me.html

1944: Bruce Sundlun whose B-17 had been shot down on its 13th mission entered Switzerland after having made his way across France where he worked with the Maquis and where he would be recruited by spymaster Allen Dulles to work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) the forerunner of the CIA.

1944: Jacob Shapiro was sentenced to serve a sentence of 15 years to life after having been convicted of conspiracy and extortion.  He only served three years of the sentence since he died of a heart attack while in prison in 1947.

1944: The Jewish Exponent “was purchased by the Allied Jewish Appeal, a precursor of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

http://www.jewishexponent.com/

1945: Seventy-nine year old oriental language professor and amateur archeologist who climbed Mount Ararat “in search of Noah’s Ark” and who sold the clay tablet that became known as Plimpton 322 which provided a window into the world of Babylonian mathematics and linguistics passed away today.

1945: The presiding bishop of the German-Catholic bishops' conference instructs his priests to say a mass in Hitler's memory

1945:  After the commander of the bunker at Ebensee (prison) murdered all prisoners who had worked at the crematorium and the bunker, prisoners transported from Mauthausen, Austria, and Warsaw revolted at the labor camp at Ebensee, Austria. When they were ordered into a tunnel packed with explosives, they refused to budge, confusing the SS and Volksdeutscheguards, all of whom were mindful of the advancing Allies and the likelihood of war-crimes trials. The prisoners' defiance was successful and they were left unharmed. In the face of this defiance and out of fear for what might happen when the Allies arrive the Germans fled. As U.S. troops entered the camp, a brutal German Kapo (foreman) pleaded with inmates not to turn him over to the Americans as a war criminal. He was attacked by three Jewish boys and killed. Other Germans at Ebensee met similar fates.

1945: Victor Kugler, “one of the people who helped to hide Anne Frank and her family” came out hiding today after the Netherlands were liberated today.

1945: At 11:30 a.m. two American armored vehicles approached the camp gate Mauthansan and were admitted by the prisoners. The troops were from the U.S. 11th Armored Division the force that had liberated the concentration camp at Mauthausen, Austria. 110,000 survivors were found, including 28,000 Jews. Bodies of 10,000 inmates were discovered in a mass grave. In the days following liberation, more than 3000 inmates will die. The Americans did not have enough supplies to offer a fraction of these numbers. Foods such as candy, chocolate, milk and jams were too rich for the starving who still died as a result of malnutrition. One survivor, Sidney Fahn, weighed 80 pounds.

1945: Hollywood producer George Stevens who was working for the United States Army, filmed the first Jewish service at Dachau which was conducted Rabbi David Max Eichhorn, who was a chaplain with the United States Army.

1945: Louise Lawrence-Israëls was three years old when “Canadian forces liberated Amsterdam” today.

http://www.ushmm.org/remember/office-of-survivor-affairs/survivor-volunteer/louise-lawrence-israels

1945: Private Hershel Wright of the US Army gave oranges to starving survivors of the Wöbbelin concentration camp which had been liberated by the GI’s on May 2nd.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/13.asp

1945: The camp at Gusen, Austria, near Mauthausen, is liberated by the U.S. Army; 2000 inmates remain alive.

1945: The U.S. 71st Infantry Division liberates the camp at Gunskirchen, Austria, where 18,000 inmates remain alive. Hungarian author and journalist Geza Havas, force-marched to the camp from Mauthausen, died a few hours before the Americans arrive.

1945: “After a total of 12 months of imprisonment, including two months in the Melk an der Donau camp, Miklós Nyiszli and his fellow prisoners were liberated” today

1946: Birthdate of Chicago radio personality Eddie Schwartz.

1947: Members of Kibbutz Yakum (He Shall Rise) met to consider a name change.  They decided to keep the name

1948: A group of Jewish immigrant from Egypt founded Bror Hayil (selection of soldiers) a kibbuz in southern Israel near Sderot.

1949(6thof Iyar, 5709): Fifty year old Samuel Pesin, “an assistant corporation counsel” in Jersey City for the past 11 years, “a member of the John Marshall Law College,” a former President of Congregation Mount Sinai in Jersey City Heights and husband of Libby Pesin with whom he had two children – Edward and Ada – passed away today in Christ Hospital.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/05/06/84562507.pdf

1950(18thof Iyar, 5710): Lag B’Omer

1950: “The Reformer and the Redhead” a comedy co-directed and co-produced by Melvin Frank who also co-authored the screenplay, featuring Marvin Kaplan and with music by David Raskin was released in the United States today.

1952: The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Herman Wouk for the Caine Mutiny.

1952: Aba Houshy, Mayor of Haifa, leaves Israel to fly to New York City to makes speeches as part of the annual Israel Bond Drive.

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Treasury expressed satisfaction at the public response to the compulsory property loan which could be converted into a tax. Out of 10,500 property owners, 7,700 choose to pay the tax.

1953: “The Juggler” a movie based on Michael Blankfort’s novel about a Holocaust who comes to Israel where it was filmed, produced by Stanley Kramer and starring Kirk Douglas was released in the United States today.

1954: Birthdate of David Azulai, the native of Morocco who made Aliyah in 1963 and developed a career in Israeli politics that climax with service as an MK. Azulai is an “alumnus” Zion Blumenthal Orphanage which founded near the Bukharim Quarter in 1900 by Rabbi Yochanan Blumenthal

1954: Birthdate of Dave Spector, the Chicago native who is one of the more visible foreign personalities(gaijin tarento) in Japan.

1955: In a move which frightened many of those who remembered the atrocities of Nazi German, “the full authority of a sovereign state was granted to the Federal Republic of Germany” which lead to the rebuilding of the Germany Army as a part of NATO.

1955: U.S. premiere of “Daddy Long-Legs” with a script by Henry and Phoebe Ephron.

1956(24th of Iyar, 5716): Parashat Behar-Bechukotai

1956(24th of Iyar, 5716): Sixty-eight year old Russian born Fannie Abramowitz Shapiro, the “honorary president of the women’s auxiliary of the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale,” “the wife of Philip Shapiro, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler and the mother Emil Chiron and Jeannette Steinman passed away today in the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital.

1956(24th of Iyar, 5716): Fifty-four year old Miklós Nyiszli, the Jewish physician forced to work at Auschwitz passed away today in Romania.

http://www.auschwitz.dk/Nyiszli.htm

1957: “He’s the Dean of Southern Rabbi’s “by William Hammack published in today’s Atlanta Constitution recounts the life of Rabbi Tobia Geffen, “the Coca Cola Rabbi.”

1958: Birthdate of “Lieutenant Colonel Ron Arad…an IAF fighter pilot and an Israeli Air Force weapon systems officer (WSO) who is officially classified as missing in action since October 1986, but widely presumed dead. Hezbollah claimed that Arad died during an escape attempt in May 1988. An Israeli secret military commission report claimed that Arad died of illness in 1995, and was buried in the Beqaa Valley.”

1959(27th of Nisan, 5719): Yom HaShoah

1959: Today, Arab leader Dr. Charles Malik “visited the opening of the Israeli Pavilion at World Trade Fair and drank champagne at the exhibit with the Israeli Consul General, Simcha Pratt…”

1960(8th of Iyar, 5720): Sixty-six year old NYU trained attorney and WW I Samuel H. Kaufman, the federal judge best known for his role in the trial of Alger Hiss who was the husband of “Mrs. Ann E. Delaney Kaufman,” and the brother of Goldie, Julius and David Kaufman passed away today.

https://www.fjc.gov/node/1383091

1964: In Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine Professor Roland Copé, a surgeon of Romanian Jewish origin, and Monique Ghanassia, of Algerian Jewish origin gave birth to French political leader Jean-François Copé

1964: “An Air Force neurosurgeon” and a woman who had “survived as a hidden child in France during WW II” while her grandparents had been murdered at Auschwitz gave birth to Harvard educated historian and author Tom Reiss who wrote The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life,a biography about Lev Nussimbaum and the Pulitzer prize winning The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo.

1965: In Washington, DC, “Jennifer Cafritz (née Stats) and real estate developer, Conrad Cafritz gave birth to punk rocker Julia Cafrtiz.

1967: In Sweden, Karin Tegmark and mathematician Harold Shaprio gave birth to cosmologist Max Erk Tegmark.

1969: Pulitzer Prize awarded to Norman Mailer for Armies of the Night, a recollection of his own experiences at the Washington peace rallies of 1968, during which he was jailed.

1970: Due to the ill health of the accused, the trial of Helmut Bischoff, the chief of security for the Nazi V-Weapons Program was suspended today and would not resume until 1974.

1972(21stof Iyar, 5732): Ninety-year old archaeologist Hetty Goldman passed away today.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldman-hetty

1973: “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon,” “the third studio album by Paul Simon was released today.

1973: "Something So Right" a song by the American singer-songwriter Paul Simon was released today.

1975: In “Responsa: The Law as Seen by Rabbis for 1,000 years” Israel Shenker describes the role of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein whom he describes as “a court of last resort” for Orthodox Jews.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F20F13F93E5D137B93C7A9178ED85F418785F9

1976(5th of Iyar, 5736): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1976: “Baby Blue Marine” a WW II movie produced by Leonard Goldberg and Aaron Spelling was released in the United States.

1978: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today in Brooklyn for Solomon Berman, a C.P.A. who was the husband of Florence Berman with whom he had two children – Glenda and Robert.

1978: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for Bertha Hamada, the widow of the late Sam Hamada and the mother of Miriam Skolnik and Irving Hamada.1978: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Foreign Minister, Moshe Dayan said that Israeli Defense Forces must remain permanently in Judea and Samaria; Israelis should reserve the right to buy land and to settle in these territories, and should reserve the right of an unrestricted movement in the whole area.

1981(1st of Iyar, 5741): Rosh Chodesh Iyar is celebrated for the first during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

1983: Chaim Herzog began serving as President of Israel, a position he would hold until the election of Ezer Weizman in 1993.

1984: Billy Cyrstal hosted Saturday Night Live’s ninth season finale tonight prior to joining “the regular cast for the 1984-85 season.”

1985: Following a visit to the former Nazi concentration camp at Belsen, President Ronald Regan visits the Bitburg cemetery which contains the graves of 49 SS soldiers.  The visit had touch off a storm of controversy and protest.

1985: An additional 2,000-foot section of the ramparts of the Old City of Jerusalem gained modern lighting. The segment may now be walked at night, in a leisurely half-hour, starting at the Zion Gate and ending at the Citadel of David. There, a small amphitheater has been constructed for a sound-and-light display.

1987: Henry Heinz Schwarz, the longtime opponent of apartheid and member of the opposition completed his service Shadow Minister of Finance.

1990: Eighty-nine year old screenwriter and producer Endre Bohem passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-08/news/mn-96_1_endre-bohem

1990: NBC broadcast the final episode of season 5 of Golden Girls a sitcom created by Susan Harris, starring Beatrice Arthur and Estelle Getty, with music by Andrew Gold

1991(21st of Iyar, 5751): Yuval Glick and Moshe Leshem were killed when their F-4 Phantom Jet crashed into Lake Tiberius.

1991(21st of Iyar, 5751): Eighty-seven year old Chaim Gross an Austrian born American sculptor passed away. (As reported by John T. McQuiston)

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/07/obituaries/chaim-gross-87-wood-sculptor-of-exuberant-human-forms-dies.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1993(14th of Iyar, 5753): Pesach Sheni

1994(24th of Iyar, 5754): Dutch architect Hein Salomonson architect passes away at the age of 83.

1994(24th of Iyar, 5754): Sixty-four year old Joe Layton, the dancer turned Choreographer and Director passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/09/obituaries/joe-layton-choreographer-and-director-is-dead-at-64.html

1995(5th of Iyar, 5755): Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik passed away.  Born in 1911, this Russian Jew was an International Chess Grandmaster and a long time World Champion.

1995: NBC broadcast the final episode for season number three of “Homicide: Life on the Street” co-starring Richard Belzer and Yaphet Kotto directed by Barry Levinson.

1996(16th of Iyar 5756): Ninety-four year old David Lasser, a socialist activist and driving force behind the drive to create rockets passed away today in California.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/07/us/david-lasser-94-a-space-and-a-social-visionary.html

http://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0322.html

1997(28th of Nisan, 5757): Yom HaShoah

1997(28th of Nisan, 5757): Eighty-one year old photojournalist David Scherman passed away today.  (As reported by Holcomb b. Noble)

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/07/arts/david-scherman-81-editor-whose-photos-sank-a-ship.html

1998: This 1960 production of Peter Pan, a musical created by Mark "Moose" Charlap, Jule Styne, Carolyn Leigh, Betty Comden and Adolph Green was released on VHS home video

1999: The National Science Board (NSB) has named Maxine Frank Singer, Ph.D., president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C. to receive the 1999 Vannevar Bush Award for lifetime contributions to science and engineering. Singer will receive the Bush Award on May 5 in Washington, D.C. at a National Science Board awards ceremony.

2000: The Times of London features a review of Righteous Victims: A history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1999by Benny Morris and The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab world since 1948by Avi Shlaim.

2000: ABC broadcast the final episode of “Boy meets World” a sitcom starring Ben Savage.

2000: “Gladiator” a Roman Empire epic co-starring Joaquin Phoenix with music by Hans Zimmer was released in the United States today.

2001(12thof Iyar, 5661): Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim

2001: This evening Shiva for 84 year old Professor Eliezer A. Mishkin, the husband of Esther Mishkin, the father of Susan Jonathan and Arnon Mishkin, a “dedicated supporter of Israel and pioneer in electrical engineering and physics, who “after earning his bachelor's degree from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, persuaded the university to start a doctoral program” which led to him earning the Technion's first such degree in electrical engineering in 1952;

2002(23rd of Iyar, 5762): Eighty-five year old child actor turned movie director George Sidney passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/07/arts/george-sidney-85-director-of-many-movie-musicals.html

2002: Lewis Eisenberg, a financier who had been appointed by President Trump to served U.S. Ambassador to Italy today was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree from the Rabbinical College of America.

2002: The New York Times featured books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth: Funerals for the Old World and the recently released paperback edition of Paradise Park by Allegra Goodman.

2002: Jack Lang completed his service as Education Minister of France.

2003: “Lashing out at rivals within his own faction, Amram Mitzna quit today as the leader of Israel's left-of-center Labor Party -- a sign of the disarray hobbling Israel's left as the Bush administration presses a new Middle East peace plan.” (As reported by James Bennet)

2004(14th of Iyar, 5764): Pesach Sheni

2004: In “That Old Feeling: Hail, Harvey!” Richard Corliss remembers Harvey Kurtzman of Mad magazine fame who died in 1993.

http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,633658,00.html

2005: British Laborite Barbara Maureen Roche lost her seat as a Member of Parliament for Hornsey and Wood Green

2005: David Wright Miliband, the son of Jewish immigrants, is named Minister of State for Communities and Local Government by Prime Minister Tony Blair.

2006: “Hoot” a comedy based on a book of the same name starring Logan Lerman as “Roy A. Eberhardt” was released today in the United States.

2006: The Hebrew Cemetery in Richmond, VA “aka Hebrew Burying Ground” founded in 1816 was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

https://www.bethahabah.org/heritage/hebrew-cemetery/

2006: David Wright Miliband, the son of Jewish immigrants, named Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by Prime Minister Tony Blair.

2006:The New-York Historical Society named Doris Kearns Goodwin its American history laureate and  presented her with its inaugural $50,000 Book Prize for American history for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln a biography of the 16th president and his cabinet.

2006:  In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah celebrates the Confirmation of Vanessa Levi, daughter of Elizabeth and Shlomo Levi and Daniel DeClue, son of Carolyn and Rick DeClue.  These two bright, intelligent youngsters are living proof of the resiliency of the Jewish spirit in communities both large and small.  But more important than their intellectual accomplishments is the fact that these two are decent, caring human beings. It is fitting that their ceremony falls on the Shabbat when the Torah portion is Kedoshim since it reminds us that in the world of Jewish values “nice guys finish first.” 

2007: “The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend” opened at the Jewish Museum in New York City.

2007: As part of Jewish Heritage Month, The National Archives in Washington, D.C. presented a screening of An American Tail. The film is the story of the Mousekewitz family’s journey to America and of their young son, Fievel, who gets lost along the way. Landing in a bottle, Fievel washes ashore in New York Harbor where, determined to find his family, he comes face to face with the perils and opportunities of the New World. The film features the voices of Dom DeLuise, Christopher Plummer, and Madeline Kahn and is directed by Don Bluth.

2007: Running of the Kentucky Derby.  While it's not a well-known part of our Western mythology, the Jewish Hart brothers of Kentucky formed the Transylvania Company, bartering ten thousand pounds of merchandise with the Cherokee nation, in exchange for 20 million acres of land in Kentucky, according to Howard M. Sachar's "A History of the Jews in America." Yes, the Jews did give America most of Kentucky, with the help of their hired explorers Daniel Boone and his adopted Jewish son, Samuel Sanders. Another oddity is that in 1936 the Kentucky Derby was, in effect, a Jewish "sweep." Bold Venture was the winner, owned by Morton Schwartz, trained by Max Hirsch and ridden by Ira Hanford. All the human beings involved in this horse racing victory were Jews. Sometimes we suspect that Bold Venture was Jewish that day, too

2007(17thof Iyar, 5767): Seventy-nine year old Theodore Maimen, who demonstrated the first laser in 1960, passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/obituaries/11maiman.html?_r=1&

2008(30th of Nisan, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2008: “At approximately 2 a.m. Arizona time, the Hersh family’s original documents” which included documentation of the role that Hungarian immigrant and grocery store owner Joseph Abraham Hersh had in the creation of the Kosher Wine Industry, were destroyed and lost forever

2008(30th of Nisan, 5768): Irv Robbins, the co-founder of Baskin-Robbins, passed away. Robbins reportedly cashed in a $6,000 insurance policy given him for his bar Mitzvah in 1945 to start his first ice cream store.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-robbins7-2008may07,0,3080340.story

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “Growing Up Jewish in Baghdad” in which acclaimed novelist, essayist and critic Naim Kattan shares his personal history of growing up Jewish in Baghdad in the 1940s

2008: Time magazinepublished excerpts from the diary of Rutka Laskier in an article entitled “Poland’s Anne Frank.” Rutka Laskier lived in Bedzin, Poland, with her parents, grandmother and brother. Her journal, covering four months in 1943, provides a rare glimpse of the daily life of Jews under Nazi rule. The diary was found after World War II by a friend--who kept it to herself for 60 years before allowing it to be published, initially in Polish, in 2006.  The English language version of the diary is being published under the title Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust.

2008: Israel's Reform Jews dedicated the first non-Orthodox synagogue to receive state funding, after a long court battle that accented the rift among streams of Judaism in Israel..

2008: The Jerusalem Center for Ethics hosts a conference on The Limits of the Autonomy of a Patient at Mishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem.

2009: Leora Tanenbaum, author of “Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality,” takes part in an interfaith dialogue at the D.C. Jewish Community Center.

2009: As part of his first U.S. tour in 15 years, famed Canadian Jewish singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen performs in Chicago.

2009: Just in time for today’s Cinco de Mayo celebrations,  Martin Silver, a New York businessman, is launching Agave 99 the new kosher tequila. Silver, president of Long Island-based Star Industries, says he wants to satisfy the craze for high-end tequila with one that observant Jews can drink. Silver says a half million cases of the 99-proof kosher tequila are being produced at a Mexican plant using methods certified by a rabbi. It will retail for $41.95 a bottle.

2009: The Annual AIPAC Policy Conference comes to an end in Washington, D.C.

2009: Today, the Transportation Ministry sent a letter to British airline BMI’s chief executive officer in Britain demanding an explanation as to why the only reference to Israel on the map is the Arabic word for Haifa.

2009: During his visit to the United States, President Peres is scheduled to meet with President Obama at the White House.

2010: Nathan J. Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled The Impact of the Breakup of the Ottoman Empire and Future Middle East Politics at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue co-sponsored by the United Nations Association of the Capitol Area and Am Kolel Jewish Renewal Center.

2010: A documentary entitled “9 Years Later” is scheduled to be shown at the Sheba Festival at the JCC in Manhattan.

2010: The Limmud FSU Nobel 2010 festival this week honored 26 Jewish scientists and political leaders who originated in Israel, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and who were awarded the Nobel Prize.

2010: The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies dedicated its Legacy Heritage Building in south Tel Aviv’s picturesque Neveh Zedek neighborhood. The Schechter Institute is a non-profit organization of the Conservative Movement dedicated to the advancement of pluralistic Jewish education in Israel.

 2011: The Leo Baeck Institute and the recently founded Jewish Studies Center at Baruch College are scheduled to present a panel on German-Jewish immigration to New York City.

2011: “Barbara Dobkin, Jewish feminist philanthropist and the Founding Chair of the Jewish Women’s Archive, received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s Graduation at Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York”.

2011: American actor Liev Schreiber will be honored with the Achievement in Film Award, at the 25th Israel Film Festival (IFF) which begins tonight in New York City

2011: B’nai B’rith will award its first accolade honoring Jews who risked their lives to save their brethren during World War II today.

 

2011: Today is the deadline for the world’s first green-certified synagogue, Congregation Beth David in San Luis Obispo, Calif., to raise $1.3 million if it is to avoid foreclosure by the bank to which it owes the money.

 

2011: Seth Front is scheduled to present “A Culinary History of the Jews in America” a “45-minute interactive presentation that tells the history of the Jewish deli in America, from its origins on the Lower East Side to the turn of the 20th century, its adaptation to American tastes, its assimilation into mainstream American culture and finally to the challenges facing delis for survival in the 21st century’” at the Mayerson JCC in Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

2011; Editor and author Benjamin Taylor is scheduled to offer a first-hand perspective on "Saul Bellows: Letters" (Viking, 2010), a never-before published collection of letters by the Nobel Prize in Literature winner, that spans eight decades and has been called "magnificent" by the New York Times at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA.

2011: As part of the Jewish Perspectives on Social Justice Seminar Dr. Claire Katz is scheduled to facilitate a program entitled "...for they know precisely what they do...": Memory, Forgiveness and the Stranger” at the University of Denver in Denver, CO.

2011(1st of Iyar, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

2011: The Nazi war crimes trial of a 97-year-old man began in Hungary today. Sandor Kepiro, listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as the world's most wanted Nazi, was charged with taking part in raids on the Serbian town of Novi Sad in 1942, in which 1,200 Jews, Serbs and Roma were killed. Kepiro is also suspected of involvement in the deaths of 36 others who were rounded up and shot on the Danube River's banks.

2011:All flights leaving Ben Gurion Airport were stopped today, due to a problem with the airport's gas supply.

2011(1st of Iyar 5771): Arthur Laurents, the director, playwright and screenwriter who wrote such enduring stage musicals as “West Side Story” and “Gypsy,” as well as the movie classics “Rope” and “The Way We Were,” died today from complications of pneumonia at the age of 93. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/arts/arthur-laurents-playwright-and-director-dies-at-93.html?pagewanted=print

2012: Israeli author Etgar Keret is scheduled to appear at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature

2012: Temple Judah continues a weekend long celebration of its 90th Anniversary with a congregation-wide gala dinner-dance.

2012: “In Movies, specifically Hollywood movies, are the greatest machinery of propaganda the world has ever known” published today Emmy award winning Yeshiva graduate Robert J. Avrech provided his view of the role of cinema in American society.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2012/05/05/ingrid-bergman-breaks-image/

2013: The curtain came down on “Big Fish,” Andrew Lippa’s “newest musical” which had premiered in April at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago the month before.

2013:YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present the Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series: Spring Concert 2013

2013: Hadassah sponsors “Walks To Defeat Neuromuscular Diseases” in Wheaton, Maryland.

2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a Walking Tour of Arlington National Cemetery that will include a visit to the new Jewish Chaplains Memorial.

2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Vera Gran: The Accused by Agata Tusznska and Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle Eastby David Rohde.

2013: Israel decided this afternoon to close its airspace in the North to civilian air traffic following alleged Israeli air strikes on Syria in the past 48 hours.

2013: Syria has stationed missile batteries aimed at Israel in the aftermath of alleged Israeli air strikes in the country, the website of Lebanon's Al Mayadeen TV, considered close to the regime of President Bashar Assad, quoted a top Syrian official as saying today

2013: Israel is working on joining an anti-Iran defense alliance with a number of moderate Arab states that would involve sharing Jerusalem’s newly developed anti-missile technologies, a British newspaper reported today.

2014(5th of Iyar) Yom HaZikaron (Israeli Memorial Day)

2014: Forty-eight year old Jeremy Nemerov, the son of “former poet laureate Howard Nemerov” and brother of David and Alexander Nemerov, died today at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, MO.

2014 “The Ceremony” and “No Place on Earth” are scheduled to be shown at the 16th annual Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival

2014: “The Garden of Eden / Gan Eden” is scheduled to be shown at the 22nd Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

2014: The Jewish Woman’s Archives is scheduled to celebrate its 18th anniversary by honoring Gail Twersky Reimer and other Jewish Troublemakers.

2014: In Rotterdam, “an exhibit called ‘The Second World War in 100 Objects’ which marbles that Anne Frank had given to her friend Toosje Kupers in 1942, is scheduled to come to a close at the Kunsthal Art Gallery.

2014: The 2014 Open Jewish Houses initiative in the Netherlands is scheduled to come to an end today.

2014: Outfielder and future major leaguer Kevin Pillar “was named International Player of the Week” today.

2014: “Millions of Israelis stood still in solemn silence this morning as sirens wailed throughout the country for two full minutes to mark Memorial Day and to commemorate the 23,169 fallen soldiers and 2,495 terror victims who have fallen throughout the history of the State of Israel and the Zionist movement. (As reported by Adiv Sterman)

2014; “Hadas Ragolsky, an executive producer at Channel 2 news, spends Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron) where many of her fellow Israelis do: at the cemetery.

2014: A U.S. Congressional delegation that includes US Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, Sam Farr and Barbara Lee of California and Gregory Meeks of New York met with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez after having met with Alan Gross a Jewish- American government subcontractor who is serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba.

2014: “Israel crossed over from mourning to celebration tonight, as Memorial Day came to a close at sundown and Israel’s 66th Independence Day began.

2015: Dr. Lee R. Mandel is scheduled to present “The Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli Wrath of God Campaign” at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia.

2015: A memorial service for David Goldberg, the founder of Survey Monkey and husband of Sheryl Sandberg, “was held at Stanford Memorial Auditorium on the campus of Stanford University.

2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a panel of historians including the daughter of James G. McDonald are scheduled to discuss the materials found in To the Gates of Jerusalem: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, “a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, charged with finding solutions to both the problems of Jewish refugees at the end of World War II and to the resolution of British Mandate Palestine.”

2015: The exhibition “Three Years, Eight Months, and Twenty Days: The Cambodian Atrocities and the Search for Justice” co-sponsored by The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to open today.

2015: “The body of Or Asraf, the Israeli backpacker killed in the earthquake in Nepal last month, landed in Israel today after being discovered in the Langtang district of the Himalayas.

2015: Today “the James Beard Foundation awarded Israeli-born chef Alon Shaya with America’s top food prize, naming him Best Chef in the southern region for 2015, following three consecutive years he had been nominated as a finalist in the category but ultimately failed to win the prestigious award.”

2015: The Jewish Children’s Regional Service is scheduled to take part in today’s Greater New Orleans Foundation’s 2015 GiveNOLA Day

2015: Professor Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon is scheduled to present “It’s a Family Affari – Yours, Mine, Ours!” at the National Museum of American Jewish History.

2015: “Baghdad Twist,” a documentary about the disappearance of the Iraq Jewish Community, is scheduled to be shown at the Library of Congress as part of Jewish American Heritage Month.

2016(27thof Nisan, 5776): Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah; "Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day"), known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day.

 

2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education and the Intergroup Outreach Committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland are scheduled to sponsor s special program at Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland where leaders from throughout the region will read from a list of names provided by Yad Vashem of Israel’s Holocaust Research Center

2016: After having debuted at the Berlin Film Festival in February, today “Junction 48 an Israeli drama film directed by Udi Aloni, co-written by Oren Moverman and the film's star Tamer Nafar” was released today in Israel.

2016: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a Yom HaShoah commemoration program that “will include a candle lighting by Survivors and their descendants, Kaddish, and El Malei Rachamim chanted by cantorial soloist Adam Davis of Congregation Sukkat Shalom.”

2016: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to host a conversation between Marion Kaplan and Peter Schrag about the latter’s last work, When Europe Was a Prison Camp – Father and Son Memoirs, 1940-1941.

2017: In a cross cultural experience, the 92nd Street is scheduled to host a Cico de Mayo celebration.

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Shabbat dinner follow Kabbalat Shabbat.

2018: The publication of The East End in Color 1960 by David Granick is scheduled to coincide with the end of “an exhibition of previously unseen photographs by David Granick which depict Stepney, Mile End, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Limehouse and the Thames riverside in the warm hues of Kodachrome film.”

2018(20thof Iyar, 5778): Parashat Emor

2018(20thof Iyar, 5778): Fifty-three year old “Rabbi Aaron Panken, the President of Hebrew Union College was killed while piloting a small aircraft in the Hudson area of New York state.”

https://www.jta.org/2018/05/05/united-states/aaron-panken-huc-president-killed-plane-crash?utm_source=JTA%20Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-4177-39206

2018: Shlomo Bar and HaBreira HaTivit are scheduled to perform at the Noctorno Café in Jerusalem this evening.

2018: “Promise at Dawn” and “Simon and Theodore” are scheduled to be shown at the 26th Toronto Jewish Film Festival this evening.

2018: “Itzhak” a biopic about the world famous violinist is scheduled to open at the Avon Cinema in Stamford, CT.

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled Shacrit followed by Lunch and Seudah.

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Flight Portfolio, a “novel based “the real-life journalist Varian Fry, who helped thousands of Jews escaped from the Nazis” by Julie Orringer, Firefighting: The Financial Crisis and Its Lessons co-authored by Ben S. Bernanke, Everything In Its Place: First Loves and Last Talesby Oliver Sacks, The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz and a Village Caught in Between by Michael Dobbs, The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book’s Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey by Margaret Leslie Davis and the recently released paperback edition of In the Enemy’s House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies by Howard Blum

2019: In Atlanta, the 54th Annual Community-Wide Holocaust Commemoration event is scheduled to take place at the Green Wood Cemetery

2019: In New Orleans, the Jewish Community Center is scheduled to host its Yom Ha’Shoah Event

2019: In a wave of violence that actually began with a rocket launched from Gaza on Yom Ha’Shoah, Israelis are awakening to the aftermath of 200 rockets fired yesterday and threats from Hamas that more violence is on the way if the IAF strikes back at those launching these airborne terror attacks.

2019(30thof Nisan, 5779): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2020: In “Multiple Women, Three Centuries, One Far-Reaching New Novel,” published today provides a complete review of The Book of V, Anna Solomon’s novel that “interweaves the story of Esther and Vashti with those of two other women: Lily, a 40-something wife and mother in contemporary Brooklyn, and Vee, a young senator’s wife in Watergate-era Washington.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/books/review/the-book-of-v-anna-solomon.html

 

2020: “Led by celebrated teaching poets and contributors to the 92nd Street Y's #ANewColossus poetry festival” this virtual poetry workshop” scheduled to be presented by the American Jewish Historical Society “will delve into the construction and techniques used in writing “The New Colossus,” and place Emma Lazarus' poem side by side with work by contemporary poets that is “descended” from, or inspired by, the original poem.

2020: In Cedar Rapids, the Coe College from your Couch programs is scheduled to host a webinar led by B.D. Silliman Professor of Physics Steve Feller, where attendees hear stories and see photos showcasing student trips that Feller was a part of over the past few decades” and along the way hear him describe some of their discoveries in glass science and talk about the labs that they've been privileged to work at.

2020: An untold number of organizations including those supporting Jewish American Heritage Month are scheduled to make their pitches for donations today, #GivingTuesdayNow, a Global Day of Giving

2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host a virtual presentation on “Life Stories From the Pen of a 17th Century Jewish Working Mother” which examines the life of 17th century businesswoman and widow Glikl bas Judah Leib.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host on line author Laura Zigman as she discusses her new novel, Separation Anxiety.

2020: It was reported today that “Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said yesterday he was presented with a significant breakthrough in finding a cure for coronavirus during a visit to the Israeli Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona.” (As reported by Yoav Zitun)

2021: S.F. Congregation Sherith Israel’s “Conversation from the Front Line” series is scheduled to present Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, talking about various issues in Israel: Covid, equality, elections and the impact of the Biden presidency

2021: The Israeli Consulate and Jewish Silicon Valley are scheduled to present Yehonatan Indursky, the creator of “Shtisel”, who also writes for the show, talking “about the hit Israel series and his own experiences within Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community.

2021: The Combined Jewish Philanthropies are scheduled to present, online, “A Conversation with Ambassador Meron Reuben.”

2021: Following the failure of Prime Minister Netanyahu to form a new government, President Reuven Rivlin, who now has three days to decide how best to proceed” is scheduled to contact other party representatives “regarding the process of forming a government” this morning.

2021: As part of New Works Wednesday, the American Sephardi Foundation is scheduled to present Editor José Alberto R. Silva Tavim as he shares his insights into “The Diasporas of Jews and New Christians of Iberian Origin between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.”

2021: The Ninth International Festival in Jerusalem is scheduled to continue for a third day.

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, May 6, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 6 

1313 BCE (1 Iyar 2448): According to tradition, this was the date of the first population survey of the Israelite people taken by Moses.

124 CE: A Roman centurion named Valens stationed in the military camp which bordered the date palm groves in En Gedi by the Dead Sea made an emergency short-term loan to a Jew named Judah at an interest rate of twelve per cent per annum.

973: “Henry II, Duke of Bavaria and his wife Gisela of Burgundy gave birth to Henry II, the Holy Roman Emperor whose expulsion of the Jews from Mayence was lamented in dirges composed by the poet Simon ben Isaac and of which Gershom ben Yehuda said, “Thou hast made those who despise They Law to have dominion over Thy people…”

1255: The Vatican orders all copies of the Talmud to be destroyed by fire. Despite this edict, King Jaime (King James of Aragon) ordered that the Spanish Jews should remain unmolested. Unfortunately, the political pressure over successive years would prove to be too great, and on August 29, 1263 he announced Jews had three weeks to remove all blasphemy from their books.

1501: Birthdate of Pope Marcellus II who expelled the Jews from Rome.

1527: The Spanish-German army of Charles IV entered Rome marking the start of a three week long period of pillage and butchery.  Among the victims was the library of Elijah ben Asher Levita the volumes of which were used as fuels by the invaders.

1556: Seventy-eight year old “German Protestant theologian” and Hebraist Konrad Pellikan who translated a “vast amount” of rabbinical and Talmudic texts including “Ben Asher’s commentary on the Torah” passed away today,

1574: Birthdate Pope Innocent X, whom Graetz described as the first of the reactionary popes.  Among other things he opposed the Peace of Westphalia which recognized the independence of the Netherlands, the nation which provided a haven for Jews fleeing the Inquisition.

1649: The Massachusetts General Court ruled today that Solomon Franco was to be expelled from the colony and granted him "six shillings per week out of the Treasury for ten weeks, for sustenance, till he can get his passage to Holland.  Franco, a Sephard, is “the second Jew known to have lived in North America. He settle in Boston where he was an “agent for Immanuel Perada, a Dutch merchant.” After Franco had delivered supplies from Perada “to Edward Gibbons, a major general in the Massachusetts militia” a dispute arose over who should pay the Jew for the merchandize – Gibbons or Parada. The solution of the court was to expel Franco.

1691: In Palma, Majorca, after one hundred and fifty years of freedom from the Inquisition, an investigation led to the conviction of two hundred and nineteen people. All agreed to be reconciled with the church. Thirty-seven were burned to death when they tried to flee the island since it was considered a relapse to heresy.

1747(5507): Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (RAMCHA"L), Kabbalist, poet, and author of Mesilat Yesharim passed away. Born in Padua, Italy, in 1707, R. Moshe Chaim had a thorough education in both religious and secular studies.  His interest in the Kabbalah and his influence on the youth of the community led to accusations that he was a Sabbatean.  In its day, this was as harsh an accusation as you could make against a person.  Luzzato left Italy and settled in Amsterdam. At the age of 33 he published Mesillat Yesharim (The Path of the Upright), a book about ethics that describes how Jews can climb the ladder of purification to reach a level of holiness.  In 1743, he moved to Eretz Israel where he died during a plague in 1746.  He is buried at Tiberias.  Throughout his life, Luzzato struggled between his desire to study the Talmud and his need to the Kabbalah.  He is considered one of the fathers of Modern Hebrew literature, with his greatest impact being in Hebrew poetry.  His teachings earned the admiration leaders from a variety of Jewish groups ranging the Vilna Gaon of Vilna to the Maggid of Mezeritch. 

1754(14thof Iyar, 5514): Pesach Sheni as a British forces under George Washington are on their way to fight a group of Canadiens in what will become the opening battle of the French and Indian War.

 1758: In Nice, which at that time was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia “shopkeeper Jules Masséna (Giulio Massena) and Marguerite Fabre” gave birth to André Masséna who according to Andrew J. Schoenfeld, MD was “a scion of the Italian Jewish community,” “an early volunteer in the French Revolutionary Army,” “the general of the 32nddivision personally responsible liberating the Jewish communities of Northern Italy” and after the Battle of Mantua, “the commander of the Roman territories and Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Army.”

1758:  Birthdate of future French Revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre.  During the Reign of Terror in 1793 and 1794, Robespierre did close synagogues and allow Jewish religious property to be vandalized.  However, this was not because he was an anti-Semite.  Robespierre sought to stamp out all religions and the churches were subjected to the same treatment as the shuls.  In the early days of the revolution Robespierre spoke eloquently on behalf of equal rights for the Jews.  If Jews behaved “badly” it was the fault of Christianity and the Christians who had treated them in a based manner for centuries.  The salvation of the Jews (as opposed to Judaism) lay in granting them the full rights of citizenship.

1771: Birthdate of Fanny Judah, the daughter of Samuel Judah.

1786: At Frankfurt am Main, Jakob Baruch and his wife gave birth to German author and “rebel” Karl Ludwig Börne who would be immortalized by a group of German revolutionaries who named their new home in the Texas Hill Country “Borne” in his honor

1787: At Prostějov, Moravia, Rabbi Moses Sofer married Sarah, the daughter of the deceased rabbi of Prostějov, Rabbi Moses Jerwitz who had passed away in 1785. Sofer joined the Chevra Kadisha and served as head of the town’s yeshiva. 

1789: Levi Sheftall, leader of the Hebrew Congregation of Savannah, Georgia wrote to the newly elected President of the United States, George Washington expressing the fact that the members of the congregation were grateful for his “unexampled liberality and extensive philanthropy which have expelled that cloud of bigotry and superstition what has long, as a veil shaded religion.”  Furthermore the nation’s new constitution “enfranchised American Jewry with all the privileges and immunities of free citizens and initiated us into the grand mass of legislative mechanism.”  While many know of the famous letter to the Jews of Newport, the Savannah congregation was actually the first to write to Washington following his election to the Presidency.

1792(14thof Iyar, 5552): Pesach Sheni is observed on the same day that President George Washington wrote to Thomas Paine thanking the author for sending him fifty copies of the “Rights of Man.”

1803: In Darmstadt, Schiele and David Kahn Germany gave birth to Bina Kahn who became Bina Oppenheimer after marrying Lob Oppenheimer.

1804: In The Hague, Branca Brendel Bernisse married Hirschel Kann.

1806(18thof Iyar, 5566): Lag B’Omer

1806: Angel Jones married Nancy Michel today at the Great Synagogue

1811: In Poland, Pinkus Landau, the Silesian born son of Wolf and Estera Landau, and his wife Rozla Landau gave birth to Icek Landau.

1818: In Posen, Talmudic scholar Aaron Jacob Kaempf and his was wife gave birth to Saul Isaac Kaempf the philologist who served as the rabbi at the Temple Congregation in Prague from 1846 to 1890.

1818: Mordecai Manuel Noah sent a copy of the Consecration Address he had delivered at Shearith Israel and a letter in which he described the impact of his having been removed from a diplomatic post because of his religion. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/loc/noah.html

1824: One day after he had passed away, 62 year old Moses Polack was today buried at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1825(18th of Iyar, 5585): Lag B'Omer

1830: Birthdate of Abraham Jacobi “a pioneer of pediatrics” who opened “the first children's clinic in the United States and was the first foreign born president of the American Medical Association.

1831: Birthdate of Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky the Lithuanian born Jew who would eventually become the Anglican Bishop of Shanghai.

1835(7thof Iyar, 5595): Italian born Rabbi, Moses Shabbethai Beer, a native of Pesaro passed away in Rome.

1835: James Gordon Bennett, Sr. published the first edition of the New York Herald which became the New York Herald Tribune in 1924. Ruth Gruber who dedicated herself to saving Jews from the Holocaust began her journalism career as a reporter with the Herald-Tribune in 1932. Two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Herald Tribune warned of the dangers of the Nazis, stating “the Jews are merely the first to suffer under Hitlerism.”

1838(11thof Iyar, 5598): Rabbi Samuel Judah Leib ben David Kauder, author of Olat Shmuel passed away today in Prague.

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

1841: Birthdate of Enoch Heinrich Kisch, the native of Prague who became and M.D. in 1862 and an assistant professor at the Prague University in 1884.

1842(26thof Iyar, 5602): Isaac Spitz who was the son-in-law of Eleazar Fleckeles and grandfather of the poet Moritz Hartmann and had been the rabbi at Jung-Bunzlau since 1824 passed away today.

1848: Birthdate of German Protestant theologian Herman L. Strack who “was the foremost Christian authority in Germany on Talmudic and rabbinic literature who was a leading champion of the Jews when the modern anti-Semitism began in Germany during the second half of the 19th century.

1852: After a personal plea from Pope Pius IX, Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II abolishes his own statute of 1848 eliminating all discrimination against the Jews. At the beginning of his papacy, Pius had shown a positive disposition towards the Jews.  He abolished laws that forbade Jews to practice certain professions and that required Jews to listen to sermons of conversion four times a year. All of that changed following the Revolutions of 1848 when he became frightened by the rising tide of democracy, nationalism and secularism.

1853: In an article published today, The New York Times correspondent in London, wonders if the members of the House of Lords will be affected by the recent passage of the bill removing Jewish disabilities that was passed by the House of Commons. The correspondent thinks that when the bill comes before the Lords for “the dozenth time,” they will not be “converted” to “popular view as to the propriety of admitting Jews to the Legislature.”

1855(18thof Iyar, 5615): Lag B’Omer

1856(1stof Iyar, 5616): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1856: Birthdate of Dr. Sigmund Freud, father of psycho-analysis. Born Sigismund Schlomo Freud in Freiberg, in what is now part of the Czech Republic. He abbreviated his name from Sigismund Schlomo Freud to Sigmund Freud in1877.  Little is known about Freud's early life since he reportedly twice destroyed his personal papers.  This brief summary is no place to discuss his treatment of the mentally or the development of psychoanalysis.  In 1938 following the Anschluss of Austria, Freud escaped with his family to England where he died a year later. Freud was a smoker of Churchill-style cigars for most of his life; even after having his cancerous jaw removed, he continued to smoke until his death. It is said that he would smoke an entire box of cigars daily.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/sigmund-freud

1858: According to published reports, the property of the late Rachel Felix, the Jewish actress and mistress of Alexandre Joseph Count Colonna-Walewski, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, has been put up for public sale.  The Count and Mademoiselle had a son whom the count publicly legitimatized which means that there is “Jewish blood” in the House of Bonaparte. 

1860(14thof Iyar, 5620): Pesach Sheni

1860: Society for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews, an organization dedicated to converting Jews held its annual meeting at a Dutch Reform Church in New York City during which the group reported that it had visited 1,382 (presumably Jewish) families.

1860: The New York Times reported today that a “a brisk argument has sprung up over the questions of whether Pious IX is or is not the descendant of a Jew.” The pope is a member of the Mastia family which got its title of nobility from a lady of “high rank” named Ferretti who had married a “baptized Jew named Mastai.  Supposedly “the Marquis Consolina published a genealogical pamphlet proving this” twenty four years ago.  The pamphlet was burned but the claims have never been refuted.

1861: Colonel Ripley, the U.S. Army Chief of Ordinance, forwarded Major Mordecai's letter of resignation to Adjutant General.

 1861: Dr.David Camden De Leon known as the "Fighting Doctor," was appointed as first surgeon general of the Confederate Army.  Born in South Carolina in 1822, De Leon received his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania.  Following graduation, he joined the United States Army where he served with distinction during the Mexican War.  In 1861, he resigned his commission and joined the Confederates.  After the war, he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he practiced medicine until his death in 1872. His Union counterpart was Dr. Jonathan Horowitz. 

1863: The Battle of Chancellorsville comes to an end.  During the battle, Lt. Col. Edward Solomon led the forces of the 82nd Illinois which contained an all Jewish company from Chicago.  Solomon would become one of the highest ranking Jewish officers to serve with Union Army, ultimately rising to the rank of General. Sergeant Henry Hiller fought with such distinction during the battle that earned the Congressional Medal of Honr.  Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman and Captain Joseph B. Greenhut, who almost lost his arm as a result of wounds sustained at Fort Donelson, were among the Jewish soldiers who fought with distinction on that Virginia battlefield where the bravery of the Union troops was not matched by the brains of the Union generals.

1863: At the Battle of Chancellorsville, the 59thNew York Volunteer Regiment which had recruited by Philip J. Joachimsen who served as a Lt. Colonel, supported General Sedgwick’s line at Mayre’s Hieghts.

1863: Bernhard Henry Gotthelf, the rabbi of Adath Israel Congregation of Louisville, received his appointment as a chaplain.

1864: During the Battle of the Wilderness, Sergeant-Major Abraham Cohn rallied and formed, under heavy fire, disorganized and fleeing troops of different regiments” thus enabling the Union Army to continue its advance.  This was one of the two heroic deeds which would win him the Congressional Medal of Honor.

1864: Leopold Karpeles Karpeles, a flag-bearer serving in the U.S. Army rallied retreating Union troops, inducing them to check the enemy's advance while under heavy during the Battle of the Wilderness. Born in Prague in 1838, Karpeles moved to Texas. When war broke out and Texas seceded, the young Jewish immigrant did not identify with the slave-holding Southerners and he joined the Union Army.  He received a Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery during the Battle of the Wilderness, which was the first battle in an eleven month campaign which would result in the demise of the Confederacy.

1866: Birthdate of Wilna native David Blaustein, the Prussian trained rabbi who in 1866 came to the United States where he first opened a private school in Boston and then went on to aiding immigrant Jews as a leader of the Educational Alliance in New York City.

http://www.milsteinjewisharchives.yivo.org/site/upload/The%20Educational%20Alliance-Libo%20essay.pdf

1868(14thof Iyar, 5628): Pesach Sheni observed for the last time during the Presidency of Andrew Johnson.

1870: It was reported today that the rumors about the possibility of Pope Pius IX being of Jewish descent have resurfaced. According to the report “many early Christians were themselves Jews and we should hardly supposed that His Holiness would be particularly annoyed if it were proved that he was of the same race as the Founder of Christianity.” A pamphlet published 24 years ago by the Marquis Consolini claims that Matasi family of which the Pope is a member gained its rank through marriage to a baptized Jew of that name.  The pamphlet was burned but it was never refuted.

1871: German born conductor Leopold Damrosch began his career in the United States with an appearance at Steinway Hall where he was both a featured violinist and orchestra conductor.

1874: Birthdate of Chaim Fishel Epstein, the native of Lithuania who served as Chief Rabbi, St. Louis, Missouri for the Vaad Hoeir of the United Orthodox Community for 12 years, from 1930 to 1942.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0006_0_06019.html

1874: Philadelphia native Myer Asch, a Colonel of United States Volunteers during the Civil War, became a member of the Loyal Legion of the United States today.

1875: In a ceremony that some would say was as much a merger as it was a marriage, Jacob Schiff married There Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb.  Ten years later, in 1885, Schiff became head of Kuhn, Loeb & Company.

1878: In Hohokus Township, NJ. Anglo-Jewish author Benjamin Farejon and his wife Margaret gave birth to British composer Harry Farjeon

1878: Birthdate of Henry G. Schackno, the native of the Bronx who became a successful lawyer and served as a New York state senator and judge.

1878: “The Jews of Roumania” published today described the plight of the Jews of that country based on information provided by the correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette. Juries in Roumania “have acquitted the rioters who wrecked Jewish houses, who beats Jews and insulted their wives and daughters.  They have found a Rabbi and other innocent men guilty of stealing a pyx.” (Note – A pyx is a vessel that contains the Eucharist.  In other words, this has to do with charges related to Host Desecration.)  ‘ “The pyx was really stolen by” a man named “Silver, a converted Jew” who was a deserter from the Russian Army.  Silber provided three different versions of the theft.  First he claimed the Jewish tailor he worked for was his accomplice.  Then he claimed the “President of the Jewish Congregation” was his accomplice.  Finally, he exonerated the Jews and claimed that he had done it on his own.  The acquittal of the rioters is sure to provide encouragement to those who would repeat this behavior at the upcoming Passover and Easter seasons, which “have always been dangerous for the Jews in the uncivilized parts of Christendom.”

1884: Seventy year old Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne, a Jew who became a Jesuit missionary and worked to convert to Jews passed away in Jerusalem.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12659a.htm

1884(11thof Iyar, 5644): Seventy-two year old Judah P. Benjamin passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Benjamin.html

1886: Sir Marcus Samuel, the Deputy Lord Mayor of the City of London and Justice of the Peace for Kent and his wife Fanny Elizabeth Samuel, the oldest daughter of Benjamin gave birth to their the third child and second son “Gerald George Samuel” who attended Eton.

1888: In Brooklyn, Josephine (née Müller) and Henry H. Celler gave birth to Representative Emmanuel "Manny" Celler.  In an era when Jews are elected to both houses of Congress from both parties from all over the country, it is hard to remember that there was a time when Jewish Congressmen were a rare breed and a U.S. Senator could refer to one as "a Kike" on the floor of the Senate.  Born in Brooklyn, Celler was an orphan by the time he finished high school and began attending Columbia.  He worked his way through school and graduated from Columbia Law with honors in 1912. A large part of his early legal career was spent dealing with immigration issues, a topic which would become a life-long passion.  He was elected to the House of Representatives where he served for 49 years and ten months, the second longest record of service in history.  Cellar became Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee where he championed equitable immigration laws and the cause of Civil Rights.  He passed away in 1981.

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=c000264

1887: Birthday of New York City native and NYU trained attorney David L. Cohn who should not be confused with the Mississippi author of the same name before in 1894.

https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/david-l-cohn/

1889(5thof Iyar, 5649): Seventy-four year Chaim Zebi Lerner, the native of Dubno whose “reputation among Hebrew grammarians was founded on his More ha-Lashon” first published in 1859 passed away today.

1890: Birthdate of Fritz Anselm Arnheim who was transported from Terezin to Auschwitz where he was murdered.

1890: It was reported today that the Marquis de Mores, the rabid anti-Semite who blamed his business failures on a Jewish Plot, was one of the few colorful figures to surface in the current round of French elections.

1890(16th of Iyar, 5650): Sixty-nine year old Isidor Binswanger passed away.  A native of Bavaria, he moved to the United States where he enjoyed commercial success in the dry goods business.  He lived in several towns and cities in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, including Richmond.  But he is most frequently identified with Philadelphia, where he played a leading role in developing Jewish educational, charitable and cultural institutions.

1892: In Goldsboro, NC, Rabbi Julius Lewis Mayerberg and Rachel Mayerberg gave birth to Rabbi Samuel S. Mayerberg who battled corruption in Kansas City, MO, and led Temple B’nai Jehudah “for 32 years.

1894: For the fiscal year ending today, the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews had “a clear balance on hand of $22, 675.79 which it is using to care for 163 residents who have an average age of 72.

1894: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will hold its annual election between 2 and 4 pm at 721 Lexington Avenue.

1894: “Jews and Christians” published today provides a review of A Fair Jewessby B. L. Farjeon

1894: “The Obituary Record” published today described the life of the late Leopold Sacher-Masoch who, among other things was the author of several works including Jews and Russians. “He faithfully described the manners of the Polish Jews, but he feared that his affection for them might the impression that he was an Israelite…”

1895: It was reported today that “Russia’s tender regard for those principles on which rests the concert of civilized nations and her agonized fear lest Japan by violating them should imperil the progress of civilization in the East, almost make one forget …her more recent treatment of the Jews.”

1895: Birthdate of Philadelphia native and Wharton graduate Charles Kamsler who served with the military in World War I.

1898(14thof Iyar, 5658): Pesach Sheni

1898(14thof Iyar, 5658): Eighty-year old Swedish businessman and patron of the arts August Abrahamson passed away today.

1898: In Kiev Marie Ettinger and Abraham Horenstein gave birth to conductor Jascha Horenstein who conducted symphony orchestras in Vienna and Berlin before being forced to flee to the United States where he was able to continue his career.

 

1899: A children’s service is scheduled to be held this afternoon at the Hebrew Institute in memory of the late Baroness Hirsch.

1899: “Oliver Cromwell” is “the subject of” this morning’s sermon by Dr. M.H. Harris this morning at Temple Israel in Harlem.

1899: It was reported today that Dr. Felix Adler will be delivering a talk entitled “More Light” at the Music Hall tomorrow.

1899: It was reported that Rabbi Samuel Schulman will be delivering a sermon on “Youth” at the next and final Sunday morning service be held at Temple Beth-El.

1899: “Notes and News” published today described plans by F. Tennyson Neely to publish Justice to the Jews: The Story of What He Has Done for the Worldby Reverend Madison C. Peters which “is said to be the first instance in modern times that a Christian author has treated the subject in such an elaborate and comprehensive way.”

1899: “Church Notes” published today described plans for the Bloomingdale Church on Broadway to host a series of “three lectures on ‘What Christendom Owes to the Jew.’”

1899: “Plans to Better Jewish Conditions in Tenement Districts” published today described the work of the New York Jewish Union which was formed a year ago by “some influential Jewish people…for the permanent improvement of the Jewish population west of Eighth Avenue and between Thirtieth and Fiftieth Stress, and east of the Bower, below Ninth Street.

1900: Birthdate of Russian native and NYU trained cardiologist Harry Halprin, who in 1910 came to the U.S. where he graduated from CCNY and Columbia.

1901: “Young Men’s Hebrew Society” published today describe the meeting of The Young Men’s Hebrew Association where the following new Directors were elected: Meyer Auberbach, Lawrence W. Mack, Levi Hirschfield, Percival S. Menken, Isidor Kahn, Dr. Louis Rosenthal and Falk Younker.

1902: Lionel Walter Rothschild, Member of Parliament, and eldest son of Lord Rothschild is reported to suffering from a serious bout of pneumonia.

1902: “In the shtetl Mikulintsy, Ukraine, then part of Austria-Hungary,” Leib Goldhirsch and his wife gave birth to Herschel Goldhirsch, the ex-con who gained fame as journalist and humor writer Harry Golden, the publisher of The Carolina Israelite and the author of two best sellers, 2¢ Plain and Only in America.1902: Birthdate of writer and director Max Ophüls.  Born Max Oppenheimer, he changed his last name when he went from being a journalist to a life as an actor and director.  He did not want to embarrass his father with his choice of professions.  Letters From an Unknown Woman” is one of his better known efforts.

1903: According to today’s report from the St. Petersburg correspondent of The Times, the chief responsibility for the anit-Semitic outbreak at Kishineff rests with the local newspaper, the Bessarabyetz, although it partly falls on the Novoe Vremya and other newspapers which have so much to promote anti-Semitism among a people which naturally the most tolerant in the world.”

1903: “Anti-Semitism In Russia” published today described how “the Russian law imposing all kinds of restrictions on the Jews…makes people regard them as pariahs, almost outlaws, and therefore have some influence in causing such outbreaks.

1904: In Boston, MA,Sarah (née Klayman), who was born in Russia, and Charles Einstein, a pawnbroker from Austria gave birth to comedian Harry Einstein who was the father to two other comedians – Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein.

1904: In Wandsworth, London, Marguerite (née Duvivier) and Frederick Mallowan gave birth to archeologist Max Mallowan who worked several sites in Mesopotamia including Ur, reputed to be the Biblical home of Abraham.

1904: Birthdate of the multi-talented Moshe Feldenkrais, founder of the Feldenkrais method. He was an Israeli physicist and judo practitioner of Eastern European descent. Among his many published books was “Awareness Through Movement where he presented a view that good health is a matter of positive functioning. Although many don't consider this a radical idea, it is in opposition to the standard medical definition of health that states good health is an absence of illness. Feldenkrais asserted his method of bodywork exploration resulted in better functioning bodies and minds and created healthier people. He was more interested in the goal of holistic functioning rather than merely physical treatmentThe Feldenkrais Method is an educational system intended to give individuals a greater functional awareness of the self. The method uses body movement as the primary vehicle for learning in the human organism. It is perhaps due to this focus on body movements that the Feldenkrais Method is often classified as a complementary and alternative medicine. People interested in the Feldenkrais Method are predominantly individuals who either want to improve their movement repertoire (as dancers, musicians, artists), individuals who want to reduce their pain or limitations in movement, or individuals who want to use the method as a way to improve their well-being and personal development. Advocates claim the Feldenkrais Method is a very successful approach in cases of movement related pain (e.g. pain in backs, knees, hips, shoulders), and learning better functioning in cases of stroke or cerebral palsy. A central tenet of the method is that improving ability to move can improve one's overall well-being; and practitioners of the Method generally refrain from referring to conceptions of illness, diagnosis or therapy.”

1904: Herzl writes to David Wolffsohn. His letter ends with the words: "Don't do anything foolish while I am dead" - "Machet keine Dummheiten, während ich tot bin.""Die Welt" informs the public that Herzl has to take a longer holiday for health reasons.

1905(1st of Iyar, 5665): Parashat Kedoshim; Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1905: Birthdate of New York restaurateur and saloon-keeper to the stars, Bernard “Toots” Shor.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/dimaggio-bernard-toots-shor/

1905: “The May New Era” published today reported that in The New Era Magazine for  May, Max writes on “Schiller and the Jews,” H.P Mendes writes on “The Sesquicentennial of the Jews of New York,” Max J. Kohler write about “Lorenzo da Pointe,” Dr. A.S. Isaacs writes about “The Rip van Winkle of the Talmud” and George A. Kohut writes on “Jefferson and the Jews.”

1905: Birthdate of French auto racer Rene Dreyfus.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/19/obituaries/rene-dreyfus-auto-racer-88.html

1906: Birthdate of Romanian-born French film producer Émile Natan, “the brother of Bernard Natan, the head of Pathé-Natan.”

1906: In Paris, Salomea “Selma” Reinherz and Dr. Bernard Bernhard Weil gave birth to mathematician André Abraham Weil.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Weil.html

1907: In Pisa, Italy, Umberto and Linda Cassuto Abenaim gave birth to Wanda Abenaim, the wife of Rabbi Riccardo Reuven Pacifici who would be murdered at Auschwitz in December of 1943.

1908: Madeline Phillips Rubenstein gave birth to Janice Rubenstein Sachese, the wife of L.S.U. trained attorney Victor Alphones Saches, the mother attorney and Korean War Veteran Victor Alphonse Sachse III and the sister of Doris Rubenstein Kantrow.

1909: Three days after he had passed away, 97 year old David Woolf Marks, the son of merchant Woolf Marks and Polly Isaacs, the husband of Cecilia Sarah Wolf with whom he had had 12 children and longtime rabbi of the West London Synagogue which was considered to be the first “liberal” or “reform” congregation in the UK was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1910: Birthdate of Jeremy Noah Morris “a British epidemiologist whose comparison of heart-attack rates among double-decker bus drivers and conductors in London in the late 1940s and early ’50s laid the scientific groundwork for the modern aerobics movement.” He was born in Liverpool into a family of Jewish immigrants who had fled pogroms in eastern Poland. His father, Nathan, was a Hebrew scholar. After arriving in England, the family took the last name of the captain of the ship that had brought them to Liverpool. Jeremy was born within weeks of the arrival. The family then moved to Glasgow.Jeremy began to exercise early in childhood. His father would take him on four-mile walks, then reward him with ice cream.”

1910: George V becomes King of the United Kingdom upon the death of his father, Edward VII. English Jews were probably very sad to hear of the death of Edward since he had made numerous Jewish friends when he was Prince of Wales, including Nathaniel Rothschild.  He maintained these friendships once he came to the throne. King George was the reigning monarch when Lord Balfour sent his famous letter known as the Balfour Declaration. King George Street רחוב המלך ג'ורג) is a street in central Jerusalem, Israel was named for King George V.  The naming was done to mark the anniversary of the issuing of the Balfour Declaration.

1911(8th of Iyar, 5761): Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim

1911: Nineteen Esther Friedman, a braidworker whose father was killed three months by a trolley car and whose “mother has been dead for eight months” said she was “tired of trying live” as can be seen from today’s two failed at attempts at suicide – first by trying to be run over by a streetcar and second by swallowing “three tablets of bio chloride of mercury.

1912: The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Lord Roberts, Lord Cromer and Arthur James Balfour, the Speaker of the House of Commons were among the “prominent statesmen, clergymen and scientists” who signed a protest against an attempt being made in Kiev to turn the death of Andrei Yushchinsky into a case of ritual murder.

1913: Samuel Gompers and Henry Moskowitz were among the delegates attending today’s Convention of International Association of Factory Inspectors in Chicago, Illinois.

1913: Abram Elkus was appointed to serve as a delegate to the convention of the International Association of Factory Inspectors to be held in Chicago, Illinois.

1913: Following his appoint by the governor, New Yorker Alexander Rosenthal attended the convention of the International Association of Factory Inspectors meeting today in Chicago, Illinois.

1914: In Cleveland, OH, “Harry Fleishman Affelder and Rhoda Affelder” gave birth to Lewis Jacob Affelder, the husband of “Ruth Steinbach Affelder.”

1914: Birthdate of Irving J. Shulman, the Russian Jewish immigrant “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..” (As reported by Christine Hauser)

1915: In Dorchester, MA, attorney David White and his wife gave birth to Theodore White who attended Harvard where he discovered the language and culture of China.  This led to an exciting stint as the Time-Life correspondent in China during World War II.  White lost his job because Henry Luce, the publisher supported the Nationalist forces and White insisted on reporting the facts i.e. the strength of the Communists and the corruption of the Nationalists.  He also risked his life to photograph the famine that racked China – a horror that nobody wanted to come to grips with. White became a best-selling author with the publication of the Pulitzer Prize winning political science tome, Making of the President.   The book provided a unique, behind the scenes look at the Presidential campaign of 1960.  It was the first in a series of these books that White wrote every four years.  It also established a whole new genre of political writing.  "Teddy" White, as he was known, passed away in May 1986

1915: At a dinner honoring Robert F. Wagner, the New York state senate minority leader, Abraham Elkus said “that it was a high compliment that such a demonstration should be made so long after Wagner had begun his services in the Senate’ since “usually dinners had to be given soon after the honored one’s election.

1915: H.A. Alexander, Leo Frank’s attorney came to the courthouse in Atlanta today to “obtain the record of the extraordinary motion for a new trial for Frank” indicating “that some of the evidence introduced at the hearing might be used before the prison commission.”

1915: During the Gallipoli Campaign, French, British, Australian and New Zealander troops began their assault at Helles where the Zion Mule Corps had landed the week before.

1916: John Wallace Riddle, who reportedly had been named Ambassador to Russia by President Roosevelt because “of his skillful handling of the presentation of the petition of the Jews of the United States to the Russian Foreign Office in regard to the” pogrom at Kishinev was married today.

1916: In Sheffield, UK, Harry and Gertrude Blake gave birth to Leonard Blake, the husband of Gabrielle Blake.

1916: At the request of local authorities a meeting to mark the one year anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania whose victims included Edgar Gorer and Charles Frohman was called off today.

1917: Pope Benedict XV met with Nahum Soklov “who had come to Rome to gain support for the plan of a Jewish state in Palestine” for 45 minutes which was an unusually lengthy Papal audience.

1917: “A quarter of a million dollars was raised for Jewish war sufferers” tonight “at the Hippodrome where Josef Rosenblatt, the Russian cantor gave his first concert in New York under the auspices of the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering the War.”

1917: In St. Louis, a mass meeting attended by 20,000 people honoring the visiting members of France’s War Mission, come to a “dramatic climax when Rabbi Bernstein of St. Joseph declared in his speech: ‘I am thankful that the time has come when I and my brothers as Jews may enter this war, even as an ally of Russia.’”

1917: In New York City, the Jewish Morning Journal received a cable from Viscount James Bryce, the former British Ambassador to the United States” announcing “himself as being strongly in favor of the establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine.”

1918: It was announced today that Felix Warburg had resigned as a member of the Advisory Board of the United States Junior Naval Reserve, an organization which advertises itself as an organization dedicated to the training of American boys for sea service.

1919: In Roswell, NM, “Solomon Tarlow” and “Audra Gertrude Canatsey Brown” gave birth to Mildred Elizabeth Tarlow who became Mildred Wooldridge when she married Walter Olan Woolridge.

1919: In Chicago, the Temple Judea Woman’s Club is scheduled to meet this afternoon at the Community Center.

1919: The 10th annual exhibition of the Athletic Department of the Chicago Hebrew Institute which showcased the skills of “over 100 boys” who have returned from military service, continued for second day

1920(18thof Iyar, 5680): Lag B’Omer observed for the last time during the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson.

1921: In Palestine, riots that began on May 1 come to an end according to official reports. Outbreaks of Arab riots had taken place in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and various Jewish settlements. Writer Yosef Chaim Brenner was among the victims in Jaffa. A total of 47 Jews (45 alone in a hostel for new immigrants in Jaffa) and 48 Arabs were killed in the disturbances. The wounded numbered 146 Jews and 73 Arabs. The government appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Chief Justice of Palestine Sir W. Haycraft to investigate the causes of the riots.

1922(8thof Iyar, 5682): Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim

1922: Rabbi Joseph Stoltz conducted Shabbat morning services to at Isaiah Temple in Chicago.

1923: In New Canaan, CT, clothing store owner Morris Yudain and the former Berta Jaffa gave birth to Sidney Lawrence Yudain, “who created what he called a community newspaper — Roll Call— for what he called “the most important community in the world, probably” — Congress.” (As reported Bruce Weber)

1926: Birthdate of Heinrich Theodor Hirsch, the native of Berlin who escaped to England in 1938 with the Kindertansport where he developed the talent that made him the actor David Hurst.

1926: Birthdate of Martin Terry Fuss, the native of Cleveland, Ohio, who gained fame as “matinee idol” and movie producer Ross Hunter whose film credits included “Pillow Talk,” “Magnificent Obsession” and “Back Street.”

1927: In Los Angeles, first screening of “7th Heaven” a silent film with a screenplay by Irish born Jew Benjamin Glazer and produced by William Fox.

1928: Birthdate of Montreal native Moses “Moe” Laufer “a pioneer of adolescent psychoanalysis and the founder of one of the long-standing institutions for young people in England, the Brent Centre for Young People, in north-west London.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/nov/15/obituaries.guardianobituaries

1928: The 92nd Street Y.M.H.A. soccer team defeated the Hebrew Americans 4 to 1 in the final game of the third division of the Empire State League at Starlight Park.

1930: Birthdate of Mordechai "Motta" Gur the Jerusalem native who rose to the rank of Lt. General in the IDF and became the 10th Chief of Staff of the IDF

1932: This morning, Dr. Jonah B. Wise, the rabbi at Central Synagogue in Manhattan is scheduled to officiate at the funeral service for sixty-five year old Lee Kamioner, the native of Germany, Colorado silver miner and Denver clothing merchant and Democratic Alderman who at the age of thirty came to New York where he founded the Hub Clothing Company, became a real estate owner and a philanthropist supporting the Convalescent Homer for Hebrew Children.

1934: Under the leadership of executive secretary Dave White “the Maccabi organization in New York city” is scheduled to host a track and field meet today.

1935: Twelve year old Yehudit Ya’avetz, who had left Germany for Palestine 18 months ago wrote a letter to the British Monarch, King George V.

1936(14thof Iyar, 5696): Pesach Sheni

1936: In Frankfort, Germany, “a young Jewish salesman was sentenced to one year of imprisonment for having accosted an ‘Aryan’ woman” even though “the court held that although no intimate relations had occurred, the Jew had ‘insulted’ the German nation by his aggressive attitude in attempting to make the woman’s acquaintance.”

1936: In France, the second of two rounds of elections produced a solid triumph for the Populist Front which meant that Leon Blum would become France’s first “authentically Socialist prime minister” and the first Jewish Prime Minister as well.  This would lead to the fusing of “anti-Semitism with paramilitary fascism” which would see its final fruits in the quick fall of France to the Germans and the rise of Vichy.

1936: Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, the High Commissioner, left for a three day visit to the Sinai which he cut short so that he could return to Jerusalem to deal with the on-going Arab rebellion.

1937(25th of Iyyar, 5697): Mrs. Effie Wise Ochs, widow of Adolph S. Ochs, late publisher of The New York Times, died shortly after 9 o'clock this morning at her home, "Hillandale," on North Street, White Plains. Her death followed a heart attack.

1938: The Palestine Postreported that the British Army started a widespread search for Arab terrorists, their arms and ammunition in the so-called "Triangle of the Arab Terror," including Kalkilya, Taibe, Tulkarm, Azzun, Umm el Fahm and Jenin.

1938: Birthdate of Abraham David Sofaer, the native of Bombay, India, the New York University graduate whose distinguished career included serving for six years “a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

1938: The Palestine Postreported that in Jerusalem a bomb was thrown at a Jewish bus near Lifta and there was an exchange of fire at Beit Hakerem.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that A wide prominence was given to the proposed alterations in the original Palestine Partition plan, as suggested and accompanied by extensive explanations by James A. Macdonald, British member of the Parliament.

1938: The Palestine Postreported that Charles Weiss, an anti-Nazi journalist, was badly beaten and injured by Nazis in his New York office.

1939: “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” a movie whose title describes the plot line, directed by Anatole Litvak, produced by Hal Wallis and Jack L. Warner, starring Edward G. Robinson and Francis Ledere with music by Max Steiner, was released in the United States today.

1940: Birthdate of Murray Sidlin, the Baltimore, Maryland native who was the conductor the National Symphony Orchestra from 1973 to 1977.

1940: Birthdate of Harvey Jerome Goldschmid, the Bronx native and Columbia Law School Graduate who was named to the Security and Exchange Commission by George Bush.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/business/harvey-goldschmid-74-ally-of-ordinary-shareholders.html?rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article&_r=0

 1940: Today, Private Charles Abelson of Montreal enlisted in the Canadian Army where he served in the “Dental Corps.

1941: "Armed Iraqi rioters attacked one of the main Jewish hospitals in Baghdad, the Meir Elias Hospital.  The building was looted; the pharmacist shot dead, the hospital accountant gravely wounded and the doctors and administrative staff taken to prison.  After the President of the Jewish community, Chief Rabbi Sasson Khedouri, intervened, the Inspector-General of Police ordered the Jews released and the rioters arrested." (In Ishmael's House by Martin Gilbert)

1942: Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright surrendered forces under his command at Corregidor in the Philippines. Among those who surrendered was Second Lieutenant Samuel Abraham Goldblith, the MIT graduate who survived the cruelty of Japanese imprisonment and went on to became a famous food scientist.

1942: In Buenos Aires, “Adolf Dorfman, who was born in Odessa (then Russian Empire) to a well-to-do Jewish family, and became a prominent Argentine professor of economics and the author of Historia de la Industria Argentina, and Fanny Zelicovich Dorfman, who was born in Kishinev of Bessarabian to author and human rights activist Ariel Dorman

http://arieldorfman.com/

1942: Six hundred delegates from 18 countries met today at the New York Biltmore Hotel for the opening session of the Biltmore Conference, one of the pivotal meetings in the history Zionism which would produce the Biltmore Program.

1943(1st of Iyar, 5703): Seventy-eight year old Chaim Zhitlowsk, author, socialist, Jewish nationalist and advocate for Yiddish & Yiddish culture, passed away.

http://www.yiddishkayt.org/zhitlosky/

1943:  Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead was published.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/may/06/1943/ayn-rand

1943: Hajj Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem, suggested to the Bulgarian foreign minister that Bulgarian-Jewish children should be sent to Poland rather than to Palestine. The Grand Mufti spent much of World War II in Berlin as a guest of the Nazis.

1944: “The Adventures of Mark Twain” a biopic directed by Irving Rapper, produced by Jesse L. Lasky and with music by Max Steiner was released today in the United States.

1945: A death march from Schwarzheide, Germany, to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, that began on April 18 halts at Leitmeritz, Czechoslovakia.

 

1945: Nazi leader and Hitler's second-in-command, Hermann Göring, surrendered to Carl Andrew Spaatz who was the commander of the operational United States Air Forces in Europe, along with his wife and daughter at the Germany-Austria border

1945: General Hermann Niehoff, the commandant of Breslau, a 'fortress' city surrounded and besieged for months, surrendered to the Soviets

1945: At the newly liberated Dachau Concentration Camp “several hundred Greek, Serbian and Russian prisoners” celebrated Pascha, Orthodox Easter, as free people.

1946: In his speech tonight at a dinner of the Committee on Unity for Palestine of the Zionist Organization of America, Nathan Straus III “expressed confidence that Arab obstacles could be overcome through the continued improvement of education and living standards that Jewish immigration will bring.”

1947: David Ben-Gurion completes a five week round of meeting with dozens of Jewish military commanders which will later be described as a “systematic investigation” of the Yishuv’s ability to withstand the military onslaught it could expect from the surrounding Arab nations if the British decided to leave.

1947: David Ben Gurion meets with Professor Yochana Ratner of the Technion in an attempt to further evaluate the readiness of the Haganah and the Palmach to fight a conventional war against invading Arab armies.

1947: In New York City Betty Warren and George Craven gave birth to philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics. She received her B.A. (1969) from NYU and her M.A. (1971) and Ph.D. (1975) from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities.

1947: Sixteen year old Alexander Rubowitz, a member of Lehi was arrested by members of the British counter-terrorism unit while he was in the process of distributing Lehi flyers in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood. Roy Farran, a member of the British unit, reportedly beat the Jewish youth to death with a rock as he was being driven towards Jericho. Farran was court-martialed but acquitted and always denied killing the boy.

1948: An emergency meeting was convened to deal with reports of a typhoid epidemic in Acre

1948: The 12th Battalion of the Golani Brigade captured the village of Shajara.

1948: Modi Alon left Sde Dov, the airport that was home to the fledgling IAF, for Czechoslovakia where he learned to fly the Avia, a Czech version of the ME-109, the pride of the Luftwaffe. 

1948: The main Palmach assault to secure the town of Safed began. The Arab Liberation Army responded by bringing up artillery pieces (the Jews had none) with which they shelled the ancient Jewish quarter of the town.  The British offered to negotiate a truce that would have allowed the Jewish women and children to leave and effectively paved the way for Arab victory.  The Jews rejected the offer and the fighting would begin again in four days.

1949: “The Rothschild Hospital and the Arzberg school, the only available Jewish center in Vienna were filled to overflowing” today, because of the arrival of two thousand Jews who had “fled from Hungary and Czechoslovakia…”

1952: Abba Khoushy, Mayor of Haifa was greeted at New York’s Idlewild Airport by New York City official Grover Whalen.  Khoushy is beginning a five-week long speaking tour designed to raise $500,000,000 in Bonds for Israel. 

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Treasury introduced a new system of granting eighty per cent export premiums for some industries.

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that the U.S. President Eisenhower's Administration announced that while $194m. were earmarked for the economic help to the Middle East, the aid depended on the peace in the area. Israel was promised "off the record" to receive a fair share of this allocation.

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that the North African Immigrants' Association accused the Jewish Agency of preventing over one million and a half of North African Jews from reaching Israel.

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that Israel and Argentina had raised their missions to the rank of Embassies and exchanged Ambassadors.

1953: At today’s meeting HUAC, Lionel Stander "pretended that he was going to cooperate, but mocked the witch hunters instead."

1954: Birthdate of Russian volleyball player and Olympic medalist Natalia Kushnir

1954: “Executive Suite” a must see movie for anybody who wants to understand some of the driving forces behind Corporate America in the middle of the 20th century or who wants a deeper understanding of how to lead, and not lead, people” with a brilliant script by Ernest Lehman and featuring Shelly Winters as “Eva Bardeman” was released today in the United States by MGM.

1955: President Eisenhower attends the dedication of the Washington Hebrew Congregation.  (Ike was late for the ceremony.)

1956(25th of Iyar, 5716): Fifty-nine year old New York native and NYU Law School Nathan S. Sachs, the president of the retail furniture chain Sachs Quality Stores and Jewish philanthropist who was active in the Jewish Conciliation Board of America and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/05/07/86573968.pdf

1955: “The Prodigal” written by Maurice Zimm, featuring Joseph Wiseman as “Carmish and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg was released today in the United States.

1956(25th of Iyar, 5716): Fifty-nine year old New York born and NYU trained attorney, Nathan S. Sachs who followed in his father’s footsteps to become “president of Sachs Quality Stores, Inc.” while being an active member of the Jewish community as could be seen by his work with “the Jewish Conciliation Board” and “distribution committee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies” while raising four children – Charles, Martin, Sylvia and Rosalie” with his wife Lillian, passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/05/07/86573968.pdf

1962(2nd of Iyar, 5722): Twenty-three year old Lieutenant Yakir Naveh went missing when the plane he was flying “broke up over the sea of Galilee.”  Although progress has been made, his body has never been recovered. (As reported by Tova Dvorin)

1962(2nd of Iyar, 5722): Two days before Yom HaZikaron IAF cadet Oded Koton died when the plane in which he was flying “broke up over the Sea of Galilee.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/down-in-hell-israeli-divers-search-for-a-long-lost-airman/

1962(2nd of Iyar, 5722): Margalit Sharon, the wife of Ariel Sharon is killed in a highway accident when driving from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

1963: The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Barbara Tuchman for The Guns of August, a history of the event surrounding the summer of 1914 and the start of World War I.  Briskly written and well-researched, Ms. Tuchman provided an insight into how Europe stumbled into catastrophe.  At the height of the Cold War, President Kennedy insisted that his advisors read this volume.  He saw it as a cautionary tale whose lessons could help America from stumbling into World War III.  Tuchman was born in New York in 1912.  She was the granddaughter of Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Woodrow Wilson's Ambassador to Turkey.  Educated at Radcliffe College, Tuchman began writing as a magazine correspondent for the Nation, a publication owned by her father.  Tuchman's skills as a historian led her to a second Pulitzer Prize when she wrote about General Stillwell and the American Experience in China. 

1964: Birthdate of David Nirenberg Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Distinguished Service Professor of Medieval History and Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and author of Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition

http://www.davidnirenberg.com/about-1-1/

https://history.uchicago.edu/directory/david-nirenberg

https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Judaism-Western-Tradition-David-Nirenberg/dp/0393347915

1965: The Homestead Independent reported that Jewish “financier Arthur Courshon had joined hands with Juanita Castro, Fidel Castro's sister, in the formation of the Marta Abreu Foundation, designed to aid Cuban refugees and particularly Cuban refugee children. Courshon, chairman of the Board of the Washington Federal Savings and Loan Association, will be a director of the Foundation.” Courson is better known as the Jewish developer who conceived the concept of condominium apartments in Florida.

1968(8th of Iyar, 5728): Seventy-nine-year-old Austrian born Charles Katz who in 1907 came to the United States where he joined A. Hollander and Son, the fur process firm for which he became the manager of the Persian lamb division while raising three children – Stanley, Leonard and Dorothy – with is wife the “former Therese Reif” passed away today “in a nursing home in Livingston, N.J.

1968: In Paris, the march of the national student union marked the start of a series of protests during which Bernard Kouchner “ran the medical faculty strike committee at the Sorbonne.”

1969(18thof Iyar, 5729): Lag B’Omer was observed for the first time of the Presidency of Richard Nixon.

1972(22ndof Iyar, 5732): Thirty-nine year old Donald Pritzker, a scion of the Pritker family, the husband of ‘Sue Sandal and the father of Penny, Anthony and Jay Robert Pritzker died of a heart attack “while playing tennis at a Hyatt Hotel (a Pritzker property) in Honolulu.

1975(25thof Iyar, 5735): Ninety-one old Sefton Louis Cullen the son Rebecca and George Judah Cohen and the husband of Nancy Cullen, passed away today in his native New South Wales, Australia.

1975: “Larry Blyden the production of ‘Absurd Person Singular’ after he was hired to host a new game show” just three weeks before he was in an automobile accident that would eventually result in his death.

1976(6th of Iyar, 5736): Seventy-seven-seven- year-old Ukrainian born Rabbi Bernard Heller who was educated at Columbia, Hebrew Union College, the University of Michigan and the Jewish Theological Seminary and who combined leading congregations in places as varied as Scranton, PA and Bombay, India while also serving as a Hillel leader passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/07/archives/rabbi-bernard-heller-77-dies-a-scholar-author-and-teacher.html

1977(18thof Iyar, 5737): Lag B’Omer

1977(18thof Iyar, 5737): Sixty-three New York native Walter Zand, the son of Morris and Bessie Zand and the husband of Estelle Zand who served on the faculty of the University of Miami and was active in the B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish committee passed away today in Miami.

1979(8thof Iyar, 5739): Eighty-five year old composer Milton Anger passed away today in California.

http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C205?exhibitId=205

1980(20thof Iyar, 5740: Seventy nine year old Arthur Levitt, passed away. He was the New York State comptroller from 1955 to 1978, whose nonpartisan dedication, thrift with public funds and relentless criticism of fiscal chicanery endeared him to voters, who returned him to office five times with huge majorities; in New York City. A Brooklyn lawyer and nominal Democrat, Levitt served under four Governors, tightening the state's auditing procedures, including "performance audits" of state agencies, and eventually giving his office prestige and power virtually beyond politics. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924120,00.html#ixzz2SNp5SgKm

1981(2ndof Iyar, 5741): Yom HaZikaron

1982: ABC broadcast the final episode of the fourth season of “Taxi” starring Judd Hirsch.

1983: Pitcher Bob Tufts, who had originally been drafted by the San Francisco Giants, played his last major league baseball game as a member of the Kansas Royals. He converted to Judaism while playing baseball.

1983: The Hitler diaries are revealed as a hoax after examination by experts.

1983: “The Sandglass,” based on the story ''The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass,'' opened at the Thalia in New York City.

1984(4thof Iyar, 5744): Yom HaZikaron

1984: In describing Chablis, France, “the land beyond the label,” Frank Lewis and Paul Prial remind us the Jewish connection with this part of France and the making of fine wines. “The well-preserved medieval wine merchants' houses on the Rue des Juifs, just before the towers of the Porte No"el, show how widely spread the Jewish community was in those days. And the 11th-century Talmudic scholar Rashi lived only 20 miles away at Troyes.”

1986(27th of Nisan, 5746): Yom HaShoah

1987: In “Jerusalem Journal: A Reverent Monument or a Monumental Error,” Thomas Friedman described the controversy surrounding a Holocaust memorial that has been built on top of a yeshiva next to the Wailing Wall under the direction of former Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren.

1988: “Shakedown” an action film directed and written by James Glickenhaus, the son of financier Seth Glickenhaus who founded Glickenhaus & Co was released today in the United States.

1988: Sophie Masloff completed her service as the President of the Pittsburgh City Council.

1988: Sophie Masloff began serving as the 56th Mayor of Pittsburgh, PA.

1988(19thof Iyar, 5748): Eighty-four year old Viennese born American pathologist and hepatologist Hans Popper passed away today.

http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/popper-hans.pdf

1990(11thof Iyar, 5750): Ninety-three year old photographer Johanna Alexandra “Lotte” Jacobi passed away in Deering, New Hampshire.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jacobi-lotte

http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/LotteJacobi

1990: “Once on This Island a one-act musical with a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens opened today at Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizon.

1992: NBC broadcast the final episode of season three of “Seinfeld.”1993(15thof Iyar, 5753): Eighty-four year old socialist, Zionist and long time member of the House of Commons passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/11/obituaries/ian-mikardo-84-dies-led-british-labor-party.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-ian-mikardo-2321404.html

http://spartacus-educational.com/TUmikardo.htm

1994(25thof Iyar, 5754): Sixty-seven year old Brooklyn born actor Frederick Edward “Fred” Sadoff passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/07/obituaries/fred-sadoff-actor-and-director-68.html

1994(25thof Iyar, 5754): Eighty-six year old English painter and “director of the Beaux Arts Gallery in London” passed away today.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-helen-lessore-1434653.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lessore#/media/File:Helen_Lessore,_Symposium_I,_1974-1977,_oil_on_canvas,_Tate.jp

1994(25th of Iyar, 5754): Eighty-one year Rabbi Moshe David Rosen Romania's chief rabbi who became a rabbi in 1939 and was named Chief Rabbi in 1948 passed away today. He served in the Romanian Parliament and was the undisputed leader of the Jewish community.  He worked diligently to enable the Jews of Romania to immigrate to Israel while also making considerable effort to improve their lot under the Communist government.  It should be remember, that Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country that did not break relations with Israel after the Six Day War

1999: NBC broadcast the final episode for season two of “Veronica’s Closes” a sitcom created by Marta Kauffman, featuring Ron Silver “as Alec Bilson, Veronica’s business partner and rival.”

2000(1stof Iyar, 5760): Parashat Kedoshm; Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2000: It was reported today that “Representatives of Swiss commercial banks and Holocaust survivors are expected to present the final details of a $1.25 billion restitution settlement to a federal judge next week after two of the largest banks agreed to give the survivors' lawyers access to databases containing information on 2.1 million Nazi-era accounts, the lead lawyer for the survivors said”.

2001: Bruce Fleisher won the Home Depot Invitational for the second time in two years.

2001: The Santorini set sail from northern Beirut carrying weapons for terrorists in Gaza.

2001: Dr. Robert Levy calls D.C. police from his home in Modesto, California, to report that his daughter Chandra has not been heard from in five days.

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism by Daniel Schorr and Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust by Joseph Berger.

2002: “Yiddish, once on the verge of oblivion, is passing a 21st-century milestone today” when “as a result of a four-year digitization project and print-on-demand technology, a literature that thrived from 1864 to 1939 will suddenly become proportionally the most in-print literature on the planet” mean that “readers will be able to go to a Web site (www.yiddishbooks.org) and order any of 12,000 titles in Yiddish.

2003(4thof Iyar, 5763): Yom HaZikaron

2003: US soldiers from the Army’s Mobile Exploration Team Alpha, along with members of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), descended into the flooded basement of the bombed-out Department of General Intelligence in Baghdad. Although the team’s job was to search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, that day the soldiers were acting on a tip provided to the INC by a former Iraqi intelligence official that an old Jewish Talmud lay deep within the building. The Americans decided that finding such a valuable cultural artifact merited diverting the army team from its normal task. Although they did not find the Talmud, they did discover something else: a Torah scroll along with thousands of manuscripts, documents and books dealing with Iraq’s Jewish community. What they had found were the archives of two offices within the General Intelligence Department: the Israel-Palestine and Jewish Sections.The waterlogged documents consisted largely of items that were confiscated from synagogues and libraries after the mass exodus of the Iraqi Jewish community in the 1950s. With the permission of the interim Iraqi Ministry of Culture, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had the damaged documents frozen and shipped to Texas, whereupon they were freeze-dried and sent to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland for restoration and preservation. Archivists originally estimated that it would cost between $1,525,000 and $3,000,000 to restore the materials.[16] As they were not official government documents, the National Archives solicited private funds to aid in the process. Donors were hesitant to commit, however, because of the uncertain future of the manuscripts. The future of these religious artifacts thus remains in limbo. Doris Hamburg, the National Archives official who was overseeing their restoration, stated in late 2007 that the American government had taken the documents with “the expectation of the return of the materials to Iraq,” but final arrangements for their repatriation have yet to be made. However legitimate WOJI’s campaign may be, making a public claim to Jewish communal assets is certain to stir up considerable opposition in Iraq. The fact that Israelis play a major role in WOJI will only add fuel to that fire. In fact, the prospect of Jewish property compensation and Jews buying up land in Iraq already has engendered a hostile reaction. Rumors of “foreign Jews” (presumably former Iraqi citizens) seeking to buy land were rife in Iraq in mid-2003. Sunni Muslim clerics in Mosul issued a fatwa in July 2003 forbidding the sale of real estate to non-Iraqis for fear it might end up in Jewish hands.[18] Exiled Shi‘i cleric Ayatollah Kazim al-Husayni al-Ha’iri issued a fatwa in June 2003 from Qom, Iran demanding death for any Jew seeking to buy land in Iraq.[19] And in late 2003 and early 2004, the Iraqi Turkmen Front claimed that Kurdish Jews in Israel were repurchasing their former properties with the help of the Kurdish Credit Bank.[20] The veracity of these reports aside, they indicate the depth of hostility to Jews seeking the restitution of properties abandoned long ago. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer248/fischbach.html

2004: The body of twenty-year old Marine Corporal Dustin Schrage was found today after the soldier disappeared with his team May 3 while swimming across the Euphrates River in the Al Anbar province. (As reported by Jane Eisner)

2004(15th of Iyar, 5764): Barney Kessel, be-bop guitarist passed away at the age of 60.

2004: “Malpopita” a Walter Goehr opera that was supposed to have been broadcast in the 1930’s was performed today for the first time in Berlin.

2004: After ten seasons, NBC broadcast the final episode of “Friends” the sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman and starring Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer.

2004: Lea Fastow a former Enron assistant treasurer and the wife of Andy Fastow, “pled guilty to a misdemeanor tax charge and was sentenced to one year in a federal prison in Houston, and an additional year of supervised release.”

2004: In entitled “Meanwhile: The Jewish Ghosts of Salonika” published today Ari L. Goldman examines modern Greek attitudes towards Jews and Israel against a backdrop of this once thriving Jewish community that disappeared in the Holocaust.

 

A century ago this beautiful port city on the Aegean Sea was bristling with Jewish life. There were synagogues, Jewish social clubs, a vibrant Hebrew language press and institutions of Jewish learning. The city was a world center of Sephardic Jewry. Half the city was Jewish and for many years the port was even closed to commerce on Saturdays in observance of the Jewish Sabbath. But that rich Jewish life came to an abrupt end when Nazi Germany rolled into Salonika in 1943 and carried 50,000 Jews away to death camps. Ninety-seven percent were killed. Barely a word of protest was heard from fellow Greek citizens.I thought of the ghosts of that decimated community while visiting Greece on a lecture tour. I came to talk about the subjects I know best — religion and journalism — but the subject of Jews kept coming up. As an American Jewish academic traveling in Europe, I expected that I would get angry questions about U.S. foreign policy, especially the war in Iraq and President George W. Bush's support for the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon. But I didn't expect the anger would be directed toward Jews. "Don't you think that American Jews have too much power?" one well-dressed man challenged me at a university-sponsored dinner in Athens. "They control everything. They control Bush. They control America. It's got to be stopped." The next night I spoke at the University of Athens. One professor grilled me on what he called the "strange" alliance between Jews and Evangelical Christians in support of Israel. The following day here in Salonika, another professor called the Christian Zionists hypocrites for their support of Israeli policies. "How can they profess a religion of love and at the same time support 'targeted killings' of Palestinians?" he asked. "There is also Jewish love," I told the professor. "But this isn't about love or hate, it's about survival." The Jewish Museum of Salonika tells the story of a community that did not survive. It is a small but impressive place. On the first floor there are the remnants of the Jewish cemetery, complete with headstones with Hebrew writing and photographs of Jewish women visiting the graves. On the second level a timeline shows that the community's roots goes back to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Jews found refuge in this city by the sea. Over the next 400 years they thrived here. Most of the museum is dedicated to the glory that was Jewish Salonika. There are photographs and religious artifacts. The humiliation and destruction of the Jews is limited to one room, which includes documents of expulsion, the uniform of the death camp inmates and objects of everyday life taken from the dead: shoes, combs and glasses. At the museum entrance there is an armed guard, a steel gate and a buzzer system. The museum director said the museum gets few visitors these days, especially after the bomb attacks on two synagogues in Istanbul in 2003 in which 20 people were killed. "People are afraid," she said.What a pity. After all the hatred I've heard from European academics, I would love to bring a few here to Salonika to show them what Jews without political power look like.

 

2005(27th of Nisan, 5765): Yom Hashoah

2005: Ruth Laredo gave “her last ‘Concert with Commentary’” today.

2005: Malcolm Rifkind began serving as the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensins.

2006:The body of 20 year old Cpl. Dustin H. Schrage’s was found today.  He had disappeared three days earlier while swimming across the Euphrates River in Iraq’s Al Anbar Province. “Dustin Schrage was so funny, he could have been a standup comic, his mother told The Associated Press. Schrage, a native of Indian Harbour Beach, Fla., loved to play video games and listen to punk rock music, and was always making everyone laugh. “He was the comedian of the family. He was a ham. He was very well respected and well liked,” Nina Schrage said, describing her son. “Dustin always seems to be able to squeeze laugh out of his teachers and his parents,” Rabbi Zvi Konikov told AP reporters. “His laughter and confidence made him a leader.” Schrage joined the Marines after graduating from Satellite High School, a step toward his ultimate career goal of becoming a police SWAT member. (As reported in Forward)

2006: Israeli pilots and planes participate in The Volcanex 2006 exercise which is held in cooperation with the European Air Group as part of the Italian Air Force exercise Spring Flag begins in Decimomannu, Italy. The EAG was established to further develop the collaboration between British and French air forces in the first Gulf War. It now has seven member nations.  Sweden had withdrawn from the event to protest the participation of the Israelis.

2007 (18th of Iyar, 5767): Lag B’Omer2007: At the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland an exhibition styled The Mikvah Project opens. The Mikvah Project documents the resurgence and expanded practice of the ancient and private Jewish ritual bath. This haunting exhibition creates a multi-faceted picture of contemporary mikvah practice as told by the women themselves. The Mikvah Project is a traveling exhibition created by photographer Janice Rubin and writer Leah Lax. According to the Houston Chronicle,” The clarity of the water, the delicate toning of the photographs, and the crisp (but unrevealing) definition of the feminine bodies conspire to soothe the eye. This show is not to be missed."

2007: “Howard Katz” Patrick Marber’s “tense new drama” about a failed secular Jewish showbiz agent closes its run at the Laura Pels Theatre in New York.

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of The Americanist, a memoir by Harvard professor Daniel Aaron.

2007: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry From Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 translated, edited and introduced by Peter Cole and the recently released paperback edition of Everyman by Philip Roth.

2007:  Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, sponsors the annual Big Dinner, a major fund raising and gastronomic event for the entire community.

2007: Liilian “Wald, the so-called “Jewish Florence Nightingale,” will be inducted into the Jewish-American Hall of Fame today on the kickoff of National Nurses Week.

2007 (18th of Iyyar, 5767): Theodore Maiman, the physicist who built the first working laser in the United States passed away at the age of 79.

2008(1st of Iyar, 5768: Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2008: In Washington, D.C., Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tony Horwitz discusses and signs his new book, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World.

2008: The Lauder School of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya hosts a special roundtable entitled "The Energy Challenges of the 21st Century." The panel, which will convene on the IDCHerzliya campus, consists of top energy experts from Israel and the United States. The roundtable is followed by a signing ceremony establishing a joint cooperation agreement between the Lauder School of Government and the US Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

2008: Prior to Israel's 60th Independence Day, the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, in cooperation with the Remembering Organization, will conduct a symposium on the subject of "Bereavement, Terrorism and Decision Making in Israel."

2008: Israel pauses tonight to mourn its fallen soldiers, as the nation marks Remembrance Day and honors the memory of those who have lost their lives in defense of the state. 

2008:The Saul Steinberg: Illuminations travelling exhibition, which displays original Steinberg works at various museum and galleries around the world opens today at the Foundation Cartier-Bresson in Paris. Steinberg was a Romanian born cartoonists best known for his work in the New Yorker magazine.

2009:Heshey Friedman, the president of Montreal-based Polystar Plastics, Daniel Hirsch and Mitch Kirschner incorporated SHF, apparently for the sole purpose of buying Agrprocessors.

2009: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Hadassah Book Club meets to discuss “People of the Book” by Geraldine Brooks.

2009:The second annual Richard and Elizabeth Dubin Lecture, presented by the Joseph B. and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies features David Ignatius, journalist and Washington Postcolumnist in a discussion with Philip Merrill of the University of Maryland’s School Of Journalism entitled "The Middle East: Is Peace Imaginable?"

2009:Ayalet Waldman, author of the novel Daughter's Keeper as well as the “Mommy-Track mystery series,” discusses and signs her new memoir, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.

2009:Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov said today thatThe Tourism Ministry will begin marketing the grave site of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai as a tourist attraction to the haredi community.

2009(12 of Iyar, 5769): Seventy-nine year old talent broker Sam Cohn passed away today (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/arts/07cohn.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

2010: Frank Zacharias “Zach” Robin Goldsmith began serving as a Member of Parliament for Richmond Park following the General Election held today.

2010: Rabbi Ben Mintz is scheduled to teach a course entitled “Women in the Apocrypha” featuring an Esther much different than the Esther we know from the Book of Esther; Hannah, mother of the seven martyred sons; Judith, seducer and slayer of Holofernes, enemy of the Jewish people; and Susanna, object of the gaze of the Elders at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2010:Israeli singers, Pini Hadad & Nati Levi, are scheduled to perform at Club Passion in Brooklyn.

2010:Israel Police Inspector-General David Cohen and FBI Director Robert Mueller met today in Jerusalem

2011:Hazon's 2nd Annual California Bike Ride which raises money for cutting-edge Jewish environmental projects in the U.S. and Israel is scheduled to begin at 2 pm today at Westminster Woods in California.

2011: The Jewish Historical Society is schedule to present “Historic Eastern Market of Detroit with a Jewish Twist” where attendees will learn about the Market’s Jewish past, listen to stories about the Purple Gang and sample some of the foods unique to this Detroit institution.

2011: It was announced today that Filmmaker Ethan Coen, who with his brother Joel is responsible for the films "No Country for Old Men,""Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski," among others, will publish a book of poetry next year with Crown.

2011: In keeping with Broadway tradition, the lights of the theatres on Broadway were dimmed for one minute tonight in memory of Arthur Laurents who passed away yesterday. The Tony Award winner’s body of work includes “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” La Cage aux Folles” and “Hallelujah, Baby!”

2011: It was not clear when a fuel crisis that has disrupted flights at Ben-Gurion International Airport would end, the airport's chief official said today, adding, however, that takeoffs and landings are resuming thanks to an emergency supply of fuel.

2012: The Omri Mor Trio featuring Jerusalem-based jazz pianist Omri Mor is scheduled to perform at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC.

2012: Guitarist, singer and songwriter Bob Rank is scheduled to perform a solo concert exploringcontributions of Jewish performers and songwriters who have influenced the great American musical traditions of blues, folk and rock at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, Ohio.

2012: Tulane Graduate and Brandies University Professor, Dr. Stephen Whitfield is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Coming to America: The Jewish Impact & The Jewish Response” at the Jewish Museum of Florida.

2012: Dr. Sidney Katz, known for his work with the Index of Independence of Activities for Daily was buried today in his native Cleveland.

http://obits.cleveland.com/obituaries/cleveland/obituary.aspx?pid=157486571

2012: In Olney, Maryland, Shaare Tefilla Congregation is scheduled to sponsor “Plant the Seeds of Song: A Community-Wide Erev Shira in Celebration of Yom Ha’Atzmout.”

2012: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a Walking Tour of the Jewish Sites in Arlington National Cemetery that will include visits to memorial by or for Jews and headstones on prominent Jewish leaders buried at the oldest cemetery of its kind in the United States.

2012; Ron Arons is scheduled to address The Genealogy of Society of Greater Washington at Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, MD

2012: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnsonby Robert Caro and Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancerby Susan Gubar who is part of the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University.

2013: The American Jewish Historical Society and Yeshiva University Museum are scheduled to present “Jewish Women and the Civil War”

2013: “Defiant Requiem” is scheduled to be shown at the Washington DCJCC.

http://thejdc.convio.net/site/Calendar/973846288?view=Detail&id=138722

2013: The Canadian Friends of Hebrew University are scheduled to present the Key of Knowledge to actor Morgan Freemen “for his dedication to combating racism and ‘promoting knowledge and education worldwide.’”

2013: The Israel Defense Forces scaled back a drill in the north and the Northern Command head calmed fears today that the weekend airstrikes against Syria have brought the country to the brink of war.

2013: “Jew Bashing: The New Anti-Semitism,” a new, investigative documentary premieres tonight on Canadian television.

2013:Two rockets fired from Syrian territory exploded on the Golan Heights today, without causing casualties or damage, an IDF spokesperson said

2014: (6th of Iyar) Yom HaAtzma’ut (Israeli Independence Day)

2014:Rav Aharon Lichtenstein “was awarded the Israel Prize for Jewish Literature on Israeli Independence Day”

2014: “Next Year in Jerusalem” is scheduled to be shown at the 16thannual Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival

 2014: Publication of All the Light We Cannot See the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “set in occupied France during WW II that centers on a blind French girl and a German boy.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/wwii-novel-on-nazi-soldier-scoops-pulitzer-prize/

2014: “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” is scheduled to premiere at the 22nd Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “The Wonders” is scheduled to be shown at The National Center for Jewish Film’s 17th annual film festival

2014: “The Life of the Jews in Palestine: 1913/Operation Sunflower” is scheduled to be shown at The Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival

2014: “Cupcakes” directed by Israeli Eytan Fox is scheduled to be shown at the UK Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Chasing Death Camp Guards With New Tools,” published today described renewed efforts by German prosecutors to bring Nazi concentration camp workers to justice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/arts/design/cornelius-gurlitt-son-of-nazi-era-art-dealer-has-died.html?hp&_r=0

2014: “Millions of Israelis crowded parks, nature sites, museums and army bases to celebrate the country’s 66th Independence Day today, forcing authorities to turn visitors away as some sites exceeded capacity.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/sites-shut-down-as-independence-day-visitors-cram-parks-army-bases/

2014: “Israel’s political and military leaders gathered in Jerusalem today morning to toast outstanding soldiers for Israel’s 66th Independence Day, with President Shimon Peres telling troops they will face challenges further afield than generations before them.

2014: Cornelius Gurlitt, “the German recluse who captured the art world’s attention last fall after it was revealed that he had kept hidden for decades a collection of 19th- and 20th-century European masterworks amassed by his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, under the Nazis in his Munich apartment, died today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/arts/design/cornelius-gurlitt-son-of-nazi-era-art-dealer-has-died.html?hp&_r=0

2014: “Etian Amos, a Jewish teenager from Canada was this year’s winner of the International Bible Quiz which was held today as in every year at the Jerusalem Theatre on Israel’s Independence Day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/arts/design/cornelius-gurlitt-son-of-nazi-era-art-dealer-has-died.html?hp&_r=0

2015: Joshua Muravchik is scheduled to discuss his most recent book Making David Into Goliath at the Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center.

2015: Or Asraf, the Israeli backpacker who was killed in an earthquake in Nepal last month, is scheduled to be buried today “at the cemetery in his hometown of Lehavim.”

2015: “Forbidden Films” is scheduled to be shown at the 18th annual film festival sponsored by the National Center for Jewish Films.

2015: Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to converge on the village of Meron on the slopes of a Galilee mountain this evening where the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is located and light bonfires “to mark the death of the second century rabbi” as part of the celebration of Lag B’Omer which begins tonight.

2015: Rabbi Lance J. Sussman is scheduled to present “Second Thoughts: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State Since 1976” at the National Museum of American Jewish History.

2015: In Washington, DC Theatre J is scheduled to host the opening night production of “The Call.”

2015: Funeral services for Susan “Suki” Cell, the widow of Dr. Donald Cell of Cornell College, are scheduled to be held this morning at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2016: A production of Wendy Kesselman’s adaptation of The Diary of Anne Franks directed by Mary Sullivan is scheduled to open tonight at The Giving Tree Theatre in Marion, Iowa

2016: “Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Beatriz Milhazes” is scheduled to open at the Jewish Museum.

http://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/using-walls-floors-and-ceilings-beatriz-milhazes

2016: An exhibition featuring the works of Roberto Burle Marx is scheduled to open at the Jewish Museum.

http://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/roberto-burle-marx-brazilian-modernist

2017(10thof Iyar, 5777): Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim; Chapter 3 of Pirke Avot for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2017: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “Sabba Saturday” which is “filled traditional and non-traditional music, creative prayer, art, movement and more” as a way of providing a meaningful Shbbat experience for the whole family.

2017: As America prepares for today’s Kentucky Derby they are reminded of the 1936 Kentucky Derby which was a Jewish affair since the winner Bold Venture was owned by Morton Schwartz, trained by Max Hirsch and ridden by Ira Hanford.

2018: “The Legend of King Solomon” and “Assumed Identity” are scheduled to be shown at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema” is scheduled to be shown at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival

2018: In Iowa, the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines is scheduled to host a screening of “Remember Baghdad” in which “Iraq’s last Jews tell the story of their country.”

2018: The New York Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolutionby Todd S. Purdum and The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Voteby Elaine Weiss

2018: In New Orleans, Temple Sinai is scheduled to host its annual Blood Drive.

2018: In Washington, DC, 20 minutes of MOE BERG: ALL-STAR ESPIONAGE? a work-in-progress film is scheduled to be shown, followed by a discussion with director Aviva Kempner, intelligence analyst Richard Willing, and Henry "Hank" Thomas, biographer of Walter Johnson (and his grandson).

2019: The Chabad Jewish Center in Metairie, LA is scheduled to host the Rosh Chodesh Society, “a monthly night out where “women of all walks of life” can “enjoy an evening of camaraderie.””

2019: The “UJA-Federation of New York and The Jewish Week with Natan, and Park Avenue Synagogue” are scheduled to host an evening with Matti Friedman, “author of the award winning book Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, Journalist, and contributor to The New York Times op-ed section and Dr. Mijal Bitton, a Fellow in Residence at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Rosh Kehilla of the Downtown Minyan.”

2019” The Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center is scheduled to host Rabbi David Wolpe as he speaks on “Punishment and Death Penalty” offering insights into the issue “from Jewish sages, Jewish text and Jewish history.”

2019: In Walnut Creek, CA, Congregation B’nai Tikvah is scheduled to present “Prosecuting Evil,” “a documentary about the youngest prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials” followed by a discussion led by “law professor Amos Guiora.

2019: Today, former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen began serving his three year prison term today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/us/michael-cohen-prison.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US

2019: In New York, Ali Kourani, a “sleeper agent” for Hezbollah, the organization responsible for “the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beiruit,” the “torture and murder of Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley, the deaths of “19 U.S. Air Force personnel during the Kohbar Towers bombing” and the killing of several hundred Israelis” among other things, is scheduled to go on trial today.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-hezbollah-sleeper-agent-who-allegedly-ran-black-ops-in-america/ar-AAAUFGm?ocid=spartandhp

2019(1stof Iyar, 5779): Rosh Chodesh Iyar; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2019: As Jews mark Rosh Chodesh Iyar, we, and all decent people, mourn those killed this weekend by terrorist rockets fired from Gaza – Pinchas Menachem Prezuazman, 21 from Ashdod; Moshe Feder, 68, from Kfar Saba; Moshe Agadi, 58, from Ashkelon and Ziad Alhamamda.

2020: Via Zoom, from Pepper Pike, OH, B’nai Jeshurun is scheduled to present “Mishnah: The New Scripture” during which Rabbi Alan Lettofsky offers new insights into this “core text of our Jewish foundations.

2020: As Israelis arise this morning they will be confronted with the reality that at least 238 patients have died from coronavirus even as the country continues to “open up.”

2020: Live on Zoom, The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Historians of the Jews and the Making of Plague Memory.”

2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to a host a virtual presentation of Jewish Meditation and Movement

2020: The Hadassah Brandeis Institute is scheduled to host a virtual conversation with Rachel Barenbaum author of A Bend in the Stars.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present on-line Rabbi Joseph Skloot as he lectures on “Alienation and Connection-Turning to Martin Buber at a Time of Crisis,” a novel that follows an ambitious young doctor and her scientist brother in a race against Einstein to solve one of the greatest mysteries of the universe while the forces of antisemitism close in around them.”

2020: “At 7 PM eastern, Jewish Currents is scheduled to host a livestreamed discussion of the recent efforts at unionization in Amazon warehouses and the implications for the wider labor movement in the Covid-19 era, moderated by contributing writer Rachel Cohen.”

https://jewishcurrents.org/conversation/

2021: A host of Jewish organizations, including the New Israel Fund and The Kitchen S.F., are scheduled to present a program on the power of art in social change, with photojournalist Oren Ziv, musician and DJ Ellyott Ben Ezer and Jerusalem-based DJ Ramzi.

2021: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston is scheduled to present, online,

“COVID’s Impact on Under-Resourced Communities in Israel” with Times of Israelcorrespondent Nathan Jeffay/

2021Shalom Bayit, a Jewish domestic violence prevention/awareness organization, is scheduled to present a virtual gala with Rep. Jackie Speier and Ms. founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin,

2021: In a sign of the slow process to return to more normal times, in Columbus, OH, today is the last day to sign up for Shabbat morning services to be held in-person on May 8 at Tifereth Israel.

2021: In Iowa, the Jewish Federation of the Corridor is scheduled to host “a panel discussion about Israel and peace with the Palestinians and Arab nations in a changing world.”

2021: The Ninth International Writers Festival in Jerusalem is scheduled to come to an end today.

2021: As “part of Rewind, a series on Jewish women filmmakers from the Stanford Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Adam Nayman, the author of It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls is scheduled to reappraise “flops” by acclaimed filmmakers Elaine May (“Ishtar”) and Nora Ephron (“This Is My Life”). Part of Rewind, a series on Jewish women filmmakers from Stanford Taube Center for Jewish Studies.

 

 

This Day, May 7, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

 May 7

 833 BCE (2 Iyar 2928): Traditional date on which King Solomon began building the Temple in Jerusalem.

351: Gallus, who had been appointed “Caesar” of the East by his cousin, the Emperor Constantius II arrived in Antioch. Antioch was the capital of his domain which included Palestine. At the time of his arrival a revolt broke out among the Jews of Sepphoris, a town in Palestine and spread to the Galilee and Lydda.  According to different sources, the revolt was led by Isaac who came from Sepphoris and a little known figure named Patricus.  The revolt was not anti-Christian even though Constantius II had given the Church free reign in a campaign of persecution aimed at the Jews and other non-Christians. The revolt may have been aimed at the corrupt rule by Gallus.  Or it may have been a last gasp effort by the Jews in Palestine to gain freedom from Rome.  This was a period of great instability in the Empire and the Jewish leaders may have been encouraged by reports of Imperial defeats in the western part of the Empire.  They also may have thought that the Persians, who were enemies of the Roman Empire, would come to their aid.  The revolt lasted only a year and was put down by Uriscinnus, one of Gallus’ more seasoned commanders who probably defeated the Jewish forces at a battle near Acco.  The Romans moved south laying waste to Tiberia, Sepphoris and Lydda, each of which was rebuilt after the fighting stopped.  [Editor’s Note: Considering the fact that this revolt took place 280 years after the Great Revolt and 215 years after the Bar Kochba Revolt, it would seem to indicate that there was a sizeable Jewish population still living in Palestine, that the population was made up of a handful of scholars, that the Nasi did not control all aspects of Jewish life, that Jews make lousy subjects and that Jews do not seem to learn from their “mistakes.”]

962: Pope John XII crowns Otto I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Among his subjects is Gershom ben Judah, who will gain fame as Rabbeinu Gershom Me'Or Hagolah ("Our teacher Gershom the light of the exile") had been born two years earlier in Metz.  Mainz, the city he would move to as an adult, was already the center of Talmudic learning in this part of the Holy Roman Empire with Yehuda ben Meir serving as its leading scholar at this time.

973: Emperor Otto I passed away. Under Otto Jews “were regarded as possessions of the Emperor.”  In 965, Otto “gave the Bishop of Magdeburg jurisdiction over all merchants and Jews for taxation purposes. In general, the Jews were not expelled or forcibly converted and were considered the personal property of the King. In the individual towns the Jews were offered privileges, usually through a contract whereby they would be protected by the crown in return for financial fealty.” (As reported by The History of the Jewish People)

1205: Coronation of King Andrew II of Hungary. At first during his reign of King Andrew II appointed Jews to serve as Chamberlains and mint-, salt-, and tax-officials. The nobles of the country, however, induced the king, in his Golden Bull (1222), to deprive the Jews of these high offices. When Andrew needed money in 1226, he farmed the royal revenues to Jews. This led to an outcry from his Christian subjects.  Pope Honorius III excommunicated him. In 1233, he took an oath promising the papal ambassadors that he would enforce the decrees of the Golden Bull directed against the Jews and the Saracens. In addition to which he would enforce the new pope’s decrees that forced Jews to wear badges of identification and forbid them from buying or keeping Christian slaves.

1312: As he entered Rome today, Emperor Henry VII was hailed as a ‘deliverer” by the citizens including the Jews who can be seen in illustrations in the Codex Balduini Trevirensis welcoming the ruler.

1342: Clement VI, whose reign took place during the Black Death began his papacy today. When pogroms erupted in Europe in response to the belief that the Jews were responsible for the plague, Clement issued two bulls condemning the belief and the violence and urged the Catholic clergy to take steps to protect the Jews.  (Editor’s note – I can find no reason for this unusual Papal behavior but it does stand out against the anti-Semitism that was so dominant in much of the Continent.)

1348: Charles University in Prague (Universitas Carolina/Univerzita Karlova) is established as the first university in Central Europe. Starting sometime during the last two decades of the 18th century Jews, as well as Protestants, were allowed to attend the University.  In 1911, Einstein was appointed to a full professorship at the school; a position he held until 1914.  Today the CIEE Center at Charles University offers courses in Jewish Though and Jewish History including  one styled  “The History of the Jews in Bohemia and Central Europe” and another styled “Torah, Modern Jewish Religious Thought, and Czech Literature.”

1355: Twelve hundred Jews of Toledo Spain were killed by Count Henry of Trastamara.  The Jews were caught between the opposing forces in a fight between King Peter and Count Henry, his half-brother who sought the throne for himself.  The events surrounding this dynastic quarrel marked the beginning of the decline of the Jewish community in Spain.

1634: William Prynne, an opponent Jews settling in England was pilloried for the first time as part of his punishment for opposing the production of plays.

1680: An attempt to keep the Jews of Corfu from practicing law made in 1679 ended today when the Jews were granted that right today.

1718: The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. In 1724, the French adopted The Code Noir which dealt primarily with the issue of slaves but also mandate the expulsion of the Jews from the city. The arrival of Isaac Rodrigues Monsanto in 1757 provides the first recorded evidence of Jewish settlement in the Crescent City.  The real birth of the Jewish community dates from the time of the Louisiana Purchase when the Americans took over and did away with the Black Code.

1727: Two years after the death of Peter Great, Jews were expelled from Ukraine by his widow, Empress Catherine I of Russia.  Catherine was merely following the wishes of her late husband who had stated that he did not want any Jews living in Russia.  Daniil Pavlovich Apostol, the Hetman of the Cossacks, “was the first one to apply to the senate to modify the harsh law.” Eighty years ago, the Cossacks had driven the Jews from their lands.  Since then, they had found out “that they could not get along very well without Jewish merchants” because they were indispensable when it came to facilitating commerce between the Ukraine and the Polish and Lithuanian provinces..

1762: In New York City, Sarah and Moses Benjamin Franks gave birth to Rachel Ritzel Franks who married David Heilron after the death of her first husband, Haym Moses Salomon, the Jewish merchant who bankrupted himself with his support of the American Revoltion.

1769(30thof Nisan, 5529): Nathaniel Weil passed away at Rastatt. Born in 1687, this son of Naphtali Zvi Hirsch Weil was a noted Talmudist who served as a rabbi in Karlsruhe and was the author Korban Netan’el

1786: “The Russian Senate published a decree defining the economic and civil rights of the Jews of White Russia.” For much of its history, Russia had been almost free of Jews due to the exclusionary and anti-Semitic policies of a succession of Czars. As an example of the law of unintended consequences, Russia acquired a large Jewish population following the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century.  This move by the senate was the first in a series of official attempts to deal with this “Jewish problem.”  Throughout the 19thcentury, Russian policy would vacillate regarding its Jews; but in the end anti-Semitism and bigotry would win the day. (As reported by Abraham Bloch) 

1789: The Judenordnung provided for the abolition of discriminatory laws enacted against the Jews of Galicia

1804: Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, “the Acre based Ottoman governor of Sidon” who forced Napoleon to retreat from Palestine thus making null and void his promises to the Jews and included among his advisors Haim Farhi passed away today.

1807: Lieutenant-General George FitzRoy, 2nd Baron Southampton and Frances Isabella gave birth to Henry Fitzroy the British politician.  In 1839, he married Hannah, the daughter of Nathan Mayer Rothschild by whom he had two children Arthur Frederic FitzRoy and Blanche FitzRoy.

1811: Seventy-nine year old Richard Cumberland, the British dramatist who wrote “The Jew” passed away today.  “The Jew” which was premiered in May of 1794 is the first play written for the English theatre that portrayed a Jewish moneylender as a heroic figure. 

1812: In London, Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning gave birth to Robert Browning the author of “Rabbi ben Ezra” that begins with the immortal lines, “Grow old along with me!  The best is yet to be…” He was a friend of Emma Lazarus and “both his verse and private correspondence show that he kept an interest in the” persecution of the Russian Jews. There are those who contend that Browning was of Jewish descent. His father was a clerk in the employ of the Rothschilds at a time when their bank “employed scarcely any but Jews.”  The name “Bruning” (a Germanic form of Browning) was very common among Jewish families in North Germany.”

1815: Birthdate of Marco Mortara, the Italian rabbi from Viadana who was a “disciple” of Samuel David Luzzatto.

1815: Isaac Solomon married Ann Barnett at the Hambro Synagogue today.

1817: In The Hague, Leonardus Levy Abraham Verveer and Caroline Elkan to Mauritz Leonardus Verveer, “the Dutch 19th Century artist whose work has been featured in exhibitions at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam

https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Maurits-Verveer/E67CA0DF45D797B8

1824: German rabbi Lazarus Jacob Riesser and his son Gabriel began a correspondence today that would include 20 letters before it ended.

1826: Moses Henry Myers married Sarah Abrahams to at the Hambro Synagogue.

1830(14thof Iyar, 5590): Pesach Sheni

1830: Today, in one of its first formal forays into the Middle East, the United States signed a treaty of commerce and navigation with the Ottoman Empire whose American diplomatic representatives have included Oscar S. Straus, Solomon Hirsch, Henry S. Morgenthau, Sr. and Abram I. Elkus whose territory included Palestine.

1833(18thof Iyar 5593): Lag B’Omer

1833: Samuel Michael Emanuel married Sarah Jacobs today which, according to some Jews is the first time since the start counting the Omer on which weddings could take place.

1834: In Savanah, GA, in what must have seemed liked a joining of dynasties, thirty seven year old Philadelphia born ophthalmologist Isaac Hays, a member of the distinguished Gratz family married Sarah Ann “Sally” Minis, the daughter of Isaac and Divinah (Cohen) Minis, descendants of the Minis family who “were among forty-one Jewish settlers who departed England in 1733” to settle in Georga.

1842(27thof Iyar, 5602): Today’s earthquake in Haiti “killed the only daughter of French diplomat Frédéric Cerfberr who would die from injuries sustained today as he sailed back to France.

1844(18thof Iyar, 5604): Lag B’Omer which according to some Jews is the first day since the start of the counting of the Omer on which Jews can wed as can be seen by the two entries that follow.

1844: Benjamin Woolf married Rachel Hart at the Great Synagogue today.

1844: Elias Mocatta married Rachel Goldsmid today at Bloomsbury, London, UK.

1844: Today, in Presburg, Archduchess Maria Dorothea attended the inaugural ceremonies for a primary school for which Austrian financier and philanthropist Herman Todesco had paid 25,000 gulden

1844: Founding of New York State Normal School, now known as the Sate University of New York at Albany which according to a poll taken in 2015 ranks 17thon a list of the “top 60 Public Universities by Jewish Population.”

1844: Joshua Barnett married Nancy Benjamin today at the Great Synagogue.

1847: Birthdate of Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, 1st Earl of Midlothian who in 1878 married Hannah, the only child of Baron Mayer de Rothschild.  She was one of the wealthiest women of her time since she was the primary heir of her father who had passed away in 1874.

1848: Birthdate of William J. Stone, the U.S. Senator from Missouri who as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee had held hearings on the resolution to create Jewish Relief Day in 1916 – a proposal which he supported – and who was one of only six senators to vote against the U.S. declaration of war on Germany.

1849(15thof Iyar, 5609): Eighty-nine year old banker Olry-Hayem Worms, one of those who attended the Grand Sanhedrin of Napoleon in 1807 passed away today in Paris.

1854: In Cincinnati, OH, “Eva and William Solomon Milius” gave birth George Washington Milius, the husband of Pauline Milius with whom he had four children – Evelyn, William, Dorothy and Helen.

1855: Birthdate of Max Schloss, the husband of Rose Sheuerman Shloss and father of Irma Shloss Mannheimer.

1857: In New York “Nathan and Ernestine (Erdmann) Cohen gave birth to Dartmouth graduate William Nathan Cohen, the Columbia trained attorney who served as a “Justice of the New York State Supreme Court.”

1863(18thof Iyar, 5623): Lag B’Omer is observed one day after the Union Army’s disastrous defeat at Chancellorsville during which Sergeant Henry Hiller had fought with such distinction that he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor and Lt. Col. (later General) Edward Solomon led the forces of the 82nd Illinois which contained an all Jewish company from Chicago.

1864: Birthdate of Henriette Levy, the wife of Lehman Berr and the mother of Captain Maixme Beer who was killed at the of age of 28 during WW I.

1865: The Vicar-General of Velletri issued an order permitting Jews to remain in the town for ten days if they are conducting “lawful and honest business.” While in town they must return to their lodgings by one o’clock in the morning.  They are forbidden to approach all monasteries, academies and other “pious places under Episcopal jurisdiction. When having any contact or conversation with Christians, the Jews “are to refrain from familiarity. The violation of any of these regulations will be punished by imprisonment and a fine of five crowns.

1870: In Lithuania, Nachum and Freida Leah Hurwitz gave birth to future New Yorker Ezra Hurwitz, the husband of Bertha Hurwitz.

1870: Birthdate of theatre owner and film company executive, Marcus Loew, the son of Lower East Side of immigrant parents, who became involved with films at the turn of the century when he opened his first "penny arcades."  Later he converted a penny arcade in Cincinnati into a movie theatre that drew an unheard of 5,000 customers on its first day.  Loew began converting other penny arcades into movie theaters which became a national chain bearing the owner's name.  In the 1920's, he and Louis B. Mayer joined forces to create the MGM Movie Studio.  Loew needed the studio to fill the public's demand for movies at his theatres.  Loew died of a heart attack at the age of 57, one of the many Jews who revolutionized the American (and the world's) entertainment industry.

1872: Julian Henriques, the son of Jacob Quixano Henriques and Elizabeth Waley, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1872: Two days after he had passed away, 82 year old Isaac Salaman, the son of Aaron Solomon and the husband of the former Jane Raphael with whom he had had five children, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1874: Rabbi Sounescheim was one of the speakers at tonight's session of the Unitarian Conference which is being held in St. Louis, MO.

1876: Frank Keenan, the future father-in-law of Ed Wynn “made his debut” today “as a spear carrier at the Tremont Street Opera House.

1876: The French government has ordered part of its Navy to sail to Salonica, a Mediterranean seaport which is part of the Ottoman Empire and which has been the site of recent outbreaks of violence between Christians and Moslems.  This is in keeping with the French government’s view of itself as the protector of Christians throughout the Middle East i.e. those living under Ottoman rule. Salonica is home to 20,000 Jews and their well-being is threatened any time there is an outbreak of violence among different groups of non-Jews.  In this case, the Christians are primarily Greeks and the Greeks have attacked the Jewish community in Salonica in the past.  The presence of the French will serve to pacify the situation, thus helping to protect the Jewish population.

1878(4thof Iyar, 5638): Samuel Jefferson,”  “a farmer in the Mud Creek community of Lamar Co., AL who was  “the second of three sons born to Isaac and Zipporah Mordecai, the husband of the former Martha Louisa Tarrant with whom he had ten children and the great-grandson of Rabbi Mordecai Moses Mordecai, passed away today.

1879(14thof Iyar, 5639): Pesach Sheni observed today as Californians went to the polls and adopted the new constitution “by a vote of 77,959 to 67,134.

1881: The Symphony Society which had been co-founded by Leopold Damrosch in 1877 “reached its climax” today “in the great musical festival held in the armory of the 7th regiment in New York City

1882(18th of Iyar, 5642): Lag B'Omer

1884(12th of Iyar, 5644): Judah P Benjamin passed away.  "Born in the West Indies in 1811 to observant Jewish parents, Benjamin was raised in Charleston, South Carolina. A brilliant child, at age 14 he attended Yale Law School and, on graduation, practiced law in New Orleans. A founder of the Illinois Central Railroad, a state legislator, a planter, Benjamin was elected to the U.S. Senate from Louisiana during the 1850's.  When the South seceded, Benjamin joined the Confederate government serving as Attorney-General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State.  He was called "old brains" by his admirers and an "Israelite in Egyptian clothing" by his detractors.  After the war, Benjamin sought refuge in England where he began life again as a barrister and writer.  His only offspring was a daughter who had him buried in a Parisian cemetery.

1884(12thof Iyar, 5642):Dov Ber Goldberg, the native of Poland who gained fame as the French scholar who “devoted himself to the publication of editions of Jewish manuscripts in European libraries´passed away today in Paris.

1886: In “Baranovka, Russia,” “Jacob and Brucha (Cantor) Gusman gave birth who in 1901 came to the United States where he worked in a factory “making pocketbooks,” before rising to the Presidency of Import Drug Specialties and then becoming a banker in Cleveland where he lived with his wife Hanna C. Epstein served as Treasurer of the Cleveland United Palestine Appeal and President of B’nai B’rith.
1887: Birthdate Benjamin Glazer, the Belfast born born director and Oscar winning writer who “was one of the founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences passed away today.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-10680141.html

https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4z09n74z/

1888: Sixty-six year old Leone Levi passed away.  Born in Italy, as soon as he arrived in Liverpool, he applied for British citizenship and gave up Judaism for membership in the Presbyterian Church.  He may have seen this as the only path to a successful legal career.

1889: In Charleston, SC, William Cecil Cohen married Agnes McKee.

1891: “Jewish Persecution Suspended” published today described the sudden decision of the Russian government to suspend the expulsion of the Jews from Moscow.

1893 In Ashville, North Carolina founding of Congregation Beth Ha Tephilla (House of Prayer) that owned a cemetery on Riverside Drive.

1893: “Tales The Rabbis Told” published today provides detailed review of Stories From The Rabbis by Abram S. Isaacs, the Professor of Hebrew at the University of the City of New York

1893: Based on cablegram from Harold Frederic, its London correspondent, the New York Times reported that in February the Russian government had issued an edict of expulsion that will affect each of the 1,500,000 Jews living in Poland.  For two months, the Russians kept the edict of expulsion a secret.  Word only leaked out as the Jews began to approach the borders of various European countries.  Today’s story in The Times was the first report of the expulsion to be published in an American newspaper.  The report has fallen like a “thunderclap among the Jews of New York.” 

1893: “Polish Jews Thrust Out” published today verified that that “a wholesale expulsion of Jews has begun in the Kingdom of Poland.” There are approximately a million and half Jews in Poland, “about four times the number affected by the Passover edicts of 1891 in Russia.”

1894(1stof Iyar, 5654): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1894(1stof Iyar, 5654): “A Jew-baiting” mob attacked the Jewish section of Grajewo, Poland “looting the shops and houses, beating the men and insulting the women” before setting fire to several stores.

1895: Seth Low and Isidor Straus opened the East Side Free Art Exhibition at the Hebrew Institute on East Broadway and Jefferson.

1895: William Jack of Scotland received $600 as part of the Hebrew Fellowship awarded during the Commencement exercises of the Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ

1896: Dr. Walter T. Scheele “who is a fierce and aggressive Jew hater” attacked the Jews at Kruger’s Saloon” and was then “forced to leave the place” and “run for his life.”

1896: Birthdate of Joe Jacobs, the manager of Max Schmeling.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jacobs-joe

1897:  Eighty year old Ion Ghica “who was Prime Minister of Romania five times” and who “was a valuable ally for Yiddish theatre in Bucharest” having obtained, in 1881, for the National Theater the costumes that had been used for a Yiddish pageant on the coronation of King Solomon, which had been timed in tribute to the actual coronation of Carol I of Romania” passed away today.

1898: As the opening lecture in his series on “What Christendom Owes to the Jew” Dr. Madison C. Peters has chosen to talk about “The Jew as a Patriot.”

1898: Birthdate of Maclyn F. “Mac” Baker the NYU basketball star whose career was interrupted by two years of military service in World War who decided not play professional baseball to pursue a career a medical career as a surgeon and a team doctor for Seton Hall University.

1898: Birthdate of Minsk native Samuel Leaf who “started various candy companies beginning in the 1920’s” and who founded Leaf Brands in Chicago in 1947 when he merged his various candy making operations.

1898: Captain Albert Steinhauser of New Ulm and Privates Joseph Abel and Henry Heller of Winona were among those who were mustered into the service today as members of the 12th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry.

1898: Private Samuel O. Abrams of Minneapolis and Privates Herman E. Heller and Frank H. Wesenberg both of St. Paul were among those who were mustered into the service today as members of the 13th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry.

1899: Thanks to the efforts of the Mt. Zion Hospital Association the new Jewish hospital in San Francisco began accepting patients today including “poor person who are admitted regardless of creed or color.

1899: Punch and Judy visited the Hebrew Infant Asylum this afternoon and “entertained the youngsters with their antics.”1899: Sargent George M. Appel completed his service with the First United States Volunteer Engineers.

1899: Dr. Felix Adler is scheduled to “deliver an address on ‘More Light’” this morning in the Music Hall.

1899: “The last Sunday service for this season” is scheduled to be held this morning at Temple Beth-El “when Rabbi Samuel Schulman will preach on the subject of ‘Youth.’”

1899: “The East Side Physician” published today described the desperate conditions of druggists and physicians (some of whom get paid only five cents for patient visit)  who are working on the lower East Side where the population is predominately Jewish.

1899: According to a summary of their April report published today, the United Hebrew Charities received 2,510 applications for aid that impacted 8,637 individuals.

1899: Tonight, the Rev. Dr. Madison C. Peters of the Bloomingdale Reformed Church began a series of Sunday evening lectures on "What Christendom Owes to the Jew." Dr. Peters took for his subject "The Jew as a Patriot." He said: "One of the gravest charges ever brought against the Jew is that he is not and cannot be a patriot.

1900: In Cincinnati, OH “at a joint meeting of the Executive Board of American Hebrew Congregations, the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College and of the Alumni Association of the Hebrew College an appeal was issued “to the Jews of the United States” asking for their support “of the efforts now being made to create an endowment fund for the permanent support and maintenance of the Hebrew Union College to be known as the Isaac M. Wise Memorial Fund.”

1901(18thof Iyar, 5661): Lag B’Omer

1901:  Herzl finally receives an audience with the Sultan.

1902: It was reported today that plans have been filed “for the new building to be erected for the Jewish Theological Seminary” and that name of Jacob H. Schiff, who has helped to endow the institution, “appeared as owner in connection of the plans” that were filed for the three story building designed by A.W. Brunnner which is projected to cost $75,000.

1903: Today, at the 135th annual meeting of the New York Chamber of Commerce, August Blemont was named to serve on the Finance and Currency Committee.

1904(22ndof Iyar, 5664): Parashat Behar-Bechukotai

1904: Paintings by J. Campbell Phillips, including “many from Palestine” are on display at the new Hogarth Head art gallery.

1904: “A Biblical Story” published today provides a review of In Old Egypt by H. Pereira Menes which “is as the subtitle indicates a story about the Bible but not in the Bible.”

ttps://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1904/05/07/101391331.html?pageNumber=31

1905: Anti-Jewish violence broke out today in Zhitomir, the capital of Volhynia, Russia.

1906(12thof Iyar, 5666): Fifty four year old Max Judd passed away.  Born in Galicia, he came to the United States in 1862 where he became a successful cloak manufacturer who found the St. Louis Chess Club.  President Cleveland refused to bow to Austrian anti-Semitism and insisted on appointing Judd as U.S. Counsel to that kingdom.

1906: Birthdate of Sydney Harry “Syd” Cohen, the brother of New York Giants second baseman Andy Cohen who pitched for three years during the 1930’s with the Washington Senators where his teammates included Buddy Myer, Fred Sington and the most mysterious baseball player of all times – Moe Berg!

1907: Today, the representatives of Jewish aid associations of Berlin, Frankfort, Paris and Bucharest who are meeting in Vienna, decided that they did not have the funds available to aid the thousands of Romanian Jews who are fleeing the anti-Semitic violence in that country and sent letters to “Jewish associations” in New York and London apprising them of the situation.

1908: French author and playwright Ludovic Halévy passed away.  His pedigree is not that unusual a tale for European Jewry in the period between Waterloo and Sarajevo.  His father was Jewish.  He converted so that he could marry a Christian woman.

1908(6thof Iyar, 5668): Fifty-three year old Bohemian born “Arabist and archeologist” Eduard Glaser who made three separate expeditions to Yemen passed away today in Munich where his grave “contained the words ‘The greatest and the best man of all has left us.’”

1909: Birthdate of Leo Henryk Sternbach, the Polish chemist who escaped Hitler’s Europe in 1941 and continued his career in the United States where he discovered benzodiazepines.

1909: Birthdate of Edwin H Land.  Born in Bridgeport, Conn., this Harvard dropout contributed to scientific advances in the fields of photography and human optics.  His most famous invention was in the field of instant photography.  In 1947, he unveiled an instant imaging camera.  Within two years, the Polaroid was producing the camera and it became a commercial success.  Land passed away in March of 1991.

1910: Birthdate of Philadelphia native, Saul Nathan Lev, and the University of Pennsylvania trained electrical engineer.

1911: Porfirio Diaz, under whose Presidency (or dictatorship) the Jewish community began to grow because of their connection with is call for foreign investors to come to the country issued a manifesto giving the terms under which he would leave office.

1912: Columbia University approved plans for awarding the Pulitzer Prize in several categories. The award was established by Joseph Pulitzer. When he died in 1911, Pulitzer left $2 million for the establishment of a school of journalism at Columbia University and a fund that established annual prizes for literature, drama, music and journalism. Since 1922 Pulitzer Prizes have also been awarded to cartoonists.  Yes, the highest award in "American Letters" was started by a German-Jewish immigrant.

1913: In Salt Lake City, Utah, Clara (Trestman) and Benjamin Ramo gave birth to Simon Ramo who played a leading role in developing the ICBM and the founding of what became TRW.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/business/simon-ramo-dies-at-103-helped-develop-icbms-in-the-cold-war.html?_r=0

1913: Mrs. Charlotte E. Rubel sang for those attending the 17th annual meeting of the Isaiah Women’s Club which Mrs. Victor Frankenstein was elected President and Mrs. Abraham Weil was elected Vice President

1914: Today, at the resumption of the hearing into charges that bribery was used to obtain affidavits exonerating Leo Franks of the murder of Mary Phagan the defense “will introduce some new evidence bearing on the Epps, Isom and Allen affidavits” before closing its case.

1915: It was reported today that Jewish Publication Society has announced “the forthcoming publication of a new English translation of the Bible, the annual American Jewish Year Book and Max Radin history of the Jews among the Greeks and Romans.”

1915: The RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by “The German U-boat U-20” off the coast of Ireland “causing the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew” and helping to pave the way for the entrance of the United States into the war on the Allied side two years later. (For more read Dead Wake:  The Last Crossing of the RMS Lusitania by Erik Larson which is available in both hardback and paperback)

1915(23rd of Iyar, 5675): A month and a week before his 59th birthday, American theatrical producer Charles Frohman died when the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by  “The German U-boat U-20” off the coast of Ireland.

http://www.rmslusitania.info/people/saloon/charles-frohman/

 1915: It was reported today that “among the many petitions” “received daily” by the Governor of Georgia asking “for a commutation Leo Frank’s sentence” was one “signed by the members of the Cornell Alumni Association of Western Pennsylvania attesting to the character of Frank who was an alum of the university.

1915: In Chicago, “plans for a ‘Leo M. Frank Day’ on which hundreds of women of all nationalities equipped with petitions will ask citizens to sign protests against Leo Frank’s execution are being completed by the Leo M. Frank Committee.”

1916: “Jews, Greeks, Romans” published today provides a review of The Jews Among the Greek and Romans by Max Radin which starts “at the time of Alexander when the Jews as one of the Mediterranean nations began to come into closes contact with Greek civilization” and ends at with the beginning of the dominance of Christianity.

1916: In Philadelphia, PA, Jacob H. Schiff is scheduled to deliver the address this evening at the annual meeting of the Jewish Publication Society of America with Henry Miller Serving as President and Henry Fernberger as Treasurer.

1916: Supreme Court Justice Hugo Pan of Illinois spoke on “Preparedness and the Jews” at tonight’s dinner sponsored by the Federation of Jewish Charities of Brooklyn which was attended by more than 1,000 people including Rabbi Nehemiah Boynton and Justice Luke B. Stapleton of Brooklyn.

1916: As of today, The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War of which Harry Fischel is Treasurer has collected “more than $1,080,000

1916: In Peekskill, NY Louis and Gussie Rubenfield gave birth to the eldest of their six children, Leonard Rubenfeld, a graduate of the University of Alabam and Fordham Law School and WW II Army combat veteran who held a variety of legal and judicial positions in and around Peekskill and Westchester Country.

1917: The mandate of Music Publisher’s Protective Association (NMPA) whose founders included Harry Von Tilzer to put an “end to the practice of publishers having to pay vaudeville theatres for performing their music” went into effect today.

1917: Three days after she had passed away, 78 year old Rosa (Esther) Salomons the daughter of Rueben Salomons and Sarah Hurwitz was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1917: “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise came to Simsbury and delivered an address on “The World War for the Liberation of Humanity” to a standing room only crowd. So many people turned out to hear him that his lecture was delayed as chairs were sent for to accommodate the standing crowd at the rear of the hall. ‘It was the most successful mass meeting held in Simsbury’, wrote Julia E. Pattison, League Secretary. There is a story attributed to Rabbi Wise that upon meeting a rather aloof New England gentleman with ancestors that he wore on his sleeve the man announced that his antecedent had signed the Declaration of Independence. Rabbi Wise paused and replied that his ancestors had signed the Ten Commandments.

1917: It was reported today that Russian Cantor Josef Rosnblatt is making a tour of thirty American cities where his concerts are intended to raise part of the ten million dollars that the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War needs to reach its goal for this year.

1917: In London, the Jewish Chronicleprovides further details based on eyewitness accounts of the plight of Jews living in Palestine, which is under the control of the Ottoman Empire.  According to these accounts, the evacuation of the civil population of Jaffa that had been ordered by the Turks as a military measure was aimed against the Jews since all Jews including those of Turkey’s allies – Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire – were forced to leave while Mohammedans and Christians, regardless of nationality, were allowed to stay.  In all, 8,000 Jews were forced from their homes in Jaffa. The homes of the Jews of Jaffa and neighboring Tel Aviv were looted by mobs as the authorities looked on without taking any action.  Two Jews were hanged at the entrance to Tel Aviv as a warning to those who might resist and an ad hoc unit of Jewish guards was arrested and imprisoned. The deportations stretched to the ancient Jewish community in Jerusalem where three hundred Jews were deported “amid circumstances of the utmost cruelty.”

1917(15thof Iyar, 5677): Retired stockbroker Agil Cantor, the “brother of former Borough President Jacob A. Cantor of Manhattan” passed away today in his 63rdyear.

1917: It was reported today that “preparations for the election of delegates of the American Jewish Congress are no proceeding and al through this week meetings will held here to stimulate enthusiasm and interest in this week.

1917: “The Annual meeting of the local section of the Council of Jewish Women took place today at Temple Emanu-El.

1918: During their convention in Philadelphia, The Mizrachi Zionist Organization adopted the single tax plan of land control “as the best system under which the Jews can return to take possession of Palestine under the protection of the Allies.”  The plan is based on the concept that “the land be assessed and valued at the figures at which it stood before the war in 1914, making allowances for improvements.”

1919: Birthdate of Boris Slutsky, a Russian poet, whose work incorporated Jewish themes, including Jewish tradition, anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic phenomena in the Soviet society and the Holocaust. He translated the works of Kvitko, Verghelis, Galkin, Shvartzman, Y.Sternberg and others from Yiddish into Russian.

1919: President George Kurtzon declined re-election at Temple Judea’s annual meeting this evening in Chicago.

1919: During the peace negotiations at Versailles, “when faced with conditions dictated by the victors, including the “War Guilt Clause” Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau the head of the German delegation   told the Allied Leaders – Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson  - "We know the full brunt of hate that confronts us here. You demand from us to confess we were the only guilty party of war; such a confession in my mouth would be a lie.”  This treatment of the Germans at Versailles, contributed to the lack of support for the treaty and would serve to strengthen the hand of the Hitlerites in their quest to destroy the Weimar Republic

1921(29thof Nisan, 5681): Parashat Achrei Mot

1921(29thof Nisan, 5681): After a week of riots came to an end in Jaffa with 48 Arabs and 47 Jews killed and 73 Arabs and 140 Jews wounded.

1922: In Michigan, Samuel and Celia Kaufman gave birth to Donald Bruce Kaufman, the husband of “Gloria Kaufman.”

1923(21st of Iyar, 5683): Eighty-three year old Adolf Neubauer, the son of Karl and Theresia Neubauer and husband of Klara Neubauer passed away today in what is now the Czech Republic.

1923: Just days before her death, Mrs. Gussis Goldberg was taken to the Rockaway Beach Hospital with an injured hip.  The 106 year old widow and mother of Joseph Goldberg, was “believed to the oldest resident of Far Rockaway.” (As reported by JTA)

1924: In Upper Sielsia, David Lustiger and his wife gave birth to Arno Lustiger Holocaust survivor, businessman and amateur historian who document “the history of Jewish resistance under Nazi rule.”

1926: Birthdate of Joseph Ehrenkranz, the native of Newark, NJ. who served as rabbi of Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, CT and “who played a leading role in Jewish Catholic dialogue.”

1927: In Cologne, Germany Marcus and Eleanora gave birth to Ruth Prawer who gained fame as Ruth Prawer Jhabvala award winning novelist and Academy Award winning screenwriter.  She won Oscars for “Room with a View” and “Howards End.”

1929: The Flonzaley Quartet which had played the String Quartet No. 1 by Erin Schulhoff “broadcast their farewell concert over radio station WEAF” today.

1930: Birthdate of Totie Fields.  Born Sophie Feldman, in Hartford Connecticut, Ms. Fields switched from mildly unsuccessful singer to highly successful comedienne.  Her pudgy physique was her comedic “shtick” as made fun of her weight, appearance and the diet industry.  She died from health problems.  “I went on a diet for two weeks and all I lost was fourteen days.”

1933: In Savannah, GA, a large crowd of Jews and Christians attend a ceremony at Congregation Mickve Israel to mark the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in what was then the colony of Georgia.

1934: The district of Birobidzhan in Russia was established as a Jewish Autonomous Region which was to cover an area of 36,000 sq. km. Its official language would be Yiddish. Within two years Stalin had a change of heart and its Jewish socialist leaders were liquidated. Although a library and theater were established, it never reached a population of more than 18,000, less than one-fourth of the total population of the region, partly due to its primitiveness and remoteness.

1936: Despite the High Commissioner's warning Arab leaders at a general conference held in Jerusalem representing all Arab towns unanimously called for a campaign of civil disobedience by all Arabs in Palestine including the refusal to pay taxes and “a boycott of everything Jewish.” Jerusalem Mayor Khalidi has become so active in the Arab cause that he did not attend the meeting of the Jerusalem City Council; an absence which was condemned by the six Jewish councilors.

1936: In Romania, “approximately 2,000 students belong to the Iron Guard” “assaulted Jews in the streets today and attempted to prevent professors and other students from entering buildings” at the “Bucharest University.”

1936: “A cheap diamond ring, said to have been pledged in a transaction involving $200 led” today “to the arrest of Miss Mary Berd, 36 year old secretary of Rabbi Zeida Schmellner” whose arrived in the United States from Rumania in 1925 was an important enough event to rate a reception hosted by the Mayor

1936: Anti-Semitic students who had been arrested for assaulting Jews issued “a manifesto” from their jails today saying that “Rumanian students are prepared to die for their fatherland to free the country from corruption and degeneration and wipe out these tools of Jews and Free Masons.”  (Editor’s note – another clue as to why the Germans had so much success in murdering six million Jews.)

1936: After 169 performances the curtain came down on “Jubilee” a musical comedy with a book by Moss Hart at the Imperial Theatre.

1937: “Café Metrople” a drama written by Gregory Ratoff who also appeared in the role of “Paul” was released in the United States today.

1937: During the Spanish Civil War, The German Condor Legion, arrived in Spain to provide air cover for the fascist forces of Francisco Franco.  The Germans used the Spanish Civil War as a training ground for its forces which accounted for some of their early successes starting in 1939. The failure of the western liberal regimes to counter the German efforts was one more step on the road to the war that would lead to the Holocaust.  Hitler thought that the Spanish should have become active members of the Axis alliance as payment for his help.  1938: Today Ohio St. alum Sidney Bernard Finn, the award winning Harvard trained dentist who was the married Irma Harriet Rubens with whom he had two children – Catherine and Andrew.

1938(6th of Iyar, 5698): “Moses Phillip Ginzburg, founder and publisher of the Daily Jewish Courier and a leader of Chicago’s Jewish community for more than half a century passed away today at the age of 75.”  Born in Poland, Ginzburg came to Chicago in 1883.  Five years later he founded the Jewish daily which would play a major role in his and his wife, Feige Rachel Levin’s, lives.  A month before his death, the couple was honored at a dinner attended by 1,500 guests who celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.

1938: Birthdate of Gordon Davidson, the Brooklyn born electrical engineer who became a Tony Award winning director.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/gordon-davidson-moses-of-las-theater-scene-dies-at-83/

1939(18thof Iyar, 5699): Lag B’Omer

1939: In Montreal, “Ray (Arlin), a textile worker, and Victor Altman, a grocer” gave birth to Sidney Altman, the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University who shared in the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1989.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1989/altman/biographical/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/sidney-altman

1940: President Roosevelt me with Nathan Straus, the Administrator of the U.S. Housing Authority this morning at the White House.

1940(29thof Nisan, 5700): Seventy-one year old Homanna, Hungary native Morris Newfield who in 1894 came to the United States where graduated from Hebrew Union College, became the rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, married Leah Ullman, the daughter of Samuel Ullman, with whom he raised four children, Emma, Mayer, Lena and John Newfield passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/newfield-morris

http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/2007_59_01_02_doc_langston.pdf

1941: As Arab continued their violent attacks on the Jews of Iraq, "a number of Arabs youths burst into a circumcision ceremony, knives in hand, murdering a young boy and wounding his brother."  (In Ishmael's House by Martin Gilbert)

1942: Nazi decree orders all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed

1943: During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Pawel Burskin led a group of Jewish fighters through the sewers to the "Aryan ‘sector. They were ambushed by German troops, captured and shot.

1943: Sephardic-Jewish homes in Tunisia are ransacked and looted by departing German troops.

1944(21stof Iyar, 5704): Pesach Sheni

1944(21stof Iyar, 5704): Twenty-three year old Philadelphia born Flying Officer Elmer Oscar Aaron (RCAF) who had enlisted in 1942, received his commission in 1943 and flown 14 mission was killed while “participating in a raid on Tours, France.

1944: During WW II, one month before the Normandy invasion, 1,500 bombers from the U.S, 8th Air Force attacked Berlin today.

1945: Hitler makes the cover of Time Magazine again but this time with a giant X across the cover.

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19450507,00.html

1945: Under the headline “Foreign News: Dachau” published today, Time magazine gave its readers the following description of the German concentration camp.

 

When all other German prison camps are forgotten the name of Dachau will still be infamous. It was the first concentration camp set up for Hitler, and its mere name was a whispered word of terror through all Germany from the earliest days of Nazi control. It was one of the largest of the camps to which opponents of Naziism were sent. And here, too, was concentrated the flower of Nazi sadists whose business was torture and death. Last week the U.S. Seventh Army entered Dachau and liberated 32,000 of its still living inmates. With them went TIME Correspondent Sidney Olson. His report: Beside the highway into Dachau there runs a spur line off the Munich railroad. Here a soldier stopped us and said: "I think you better take a look at these box-cars." The cars were filled with dead men. Most of them were naked. On their bony, emaciated backs and rumps were whip marks. Most of the cars were open-top cars like American coal cars. I walked along these cars and counted 39 of them which were filled with these dead. The smell was very heavy. I cannot estimate with any reasonable accuracy the number of dead we saw here, but I counted bodies in two cars and there were 53 in one and 64 in another. The main entry road runs past several largish buildings. These had been cleared; and now we began to meet the liberated. Several hundred Russians, French, Yugoslavs, Italians and Poles were here, frantically, hysterically happy. They began to kiss us, and there is nothing you can do when a lot of hysterical, unshaven, lice-bitten, half-drunk, typhus-infected men want to kiss you. Nothing at all. You cannot hit them, and besides, they all kiss you at the same time. It is no good trying to explain that you are only a correspondent. A half-dozen of them were especially happy and it turned out they were very proud: they had killed two German soldiers themselves. Skeleton Stacks. We went on, and the great size of the establishment of Dachau began to open before us. Buildings and barracks spread on and on. Outside one building, half covered by a brown tarpaulin, was a stack about five feet high and about 20 feet wide of naked dead bodies, all of them emaciated. We went on around this building and came to the central crematory. The rooms here, in order, were: 1) the office where the living and the dead were passed through and where all their clothing was stripped from them; 2) the Brausebad (shower) room, where the victims were gassed; and 3) the crematory. In the crematory were two large furnaces. Before the two furnaces were hooks and pulleys on rafters above them. Here, according to a number of Frenchmen, the SS men often hanged prisoners by the necks or by the thumbs or whatever their fancy dictated. From here the victims could watch while being whipped and tortured as their comrades were slid into the furnace. Each of these pitiful, happy, starved, hysterical men wanted to tell us his home country, his home city, and ask us news and beg for cigarets. The eyes of these men defy my powers of description. They are the eyes of men who have lived in a super-hell of horrors for many years, and are now driven half-crazy by the liberation they have prayed so hopelessly for. Again & again, in all languages, they called on God to witness their joy. Heart of Darkness. But though we were tired from the long journey, we were lured on and on and on, from building to building. What lured us was a sound which at first we had thought was the wind in the pines of Dachau. Then after a while we knew it was cheering — the sound of thousands of men cheering and cheering again. At last we came to a high wooden wall and went through the gates'. Before us stretched the great prison compound of Dachau. This must be at least one square mile in extent. In & out of this vast stretch of open compound studded with low barracks were swarming the liberated men of Dachau. I cannot pre tend to estimate the number with any exactness. But there were many thousand. These men, cheering as hard as their feeble strength would permit, tore them selves getting through the barbed wire to touch us, to talk to us. Some of them were nearly mad with joy. Here were the men of all nations whom Hitler's agents had picked out as prime opponents of Naziism; here were the very earliest Hitler haters. Here were German social democrats, Spanish survivors of the Spanish Civil War, a correspondent for the Paris Soir, who cried so hard I could not get his name. Joy in the Inferno. We went into one barracks after another. So many men were sick and possibly dying of starvation and beatings that they merely lay or leaned or sat shoulder to shoulder, too weak to do more than grin glassily. It was here that we even found some Hindus. All this time the cheering went on, and we were being forcibly mobbed by hundreds of men strong as only the half-insane can be, kissed and kissed again by men who stank like the inferno, obviously sick toward death of all kinds of illnesses. One giant Russian held me for at least 30 seconds while he kissed all over the U.S. insignia on my coat. They shouted in all languages but sometimes in American phrases; one little Pole ran beside us until he dropped flat, shouting desperately: "Hello, boys!"

 

1945: At 02:41 in the morning at SHAEF headquarters in Reims, France, the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies. The surrender would go into effect on the following day, May 8, 1945 which would mean the end of the Holocaust. 

1945(24th of Iyar, 5705):  Hungarian novelist Andor Endre Gelleri, age 38, dies at the Mauthausen, Austria, slave-labor camp two days after liberation.

1945: One day before her 21st birthday Gerda Weissman Klein, “a Polish-born American writer and human rights activist whose autobiographical account of the Holocaust, All but My Life was adapted for the 1995 short film, One Survivor Remembers, which received an Academy Award” met her future husband Lieutenant Kurt Klein, whose parents had been murdered at Auschwitz and whose part of the force liberating in Volary, Czechoslovakia..

1946: Birthdate of English author Michael Rosen.

1946: “A rise in discrimination against Jews, including veterans of the war, was reported today in the regular monthly bulletin of the National Community Relations Advisory Council following a survey of employment conditions in fifteen major industrial centers.”

1947: “Observance of the second anniversary of V-E Day must be tempered by the realization that most of Europe's Jews "still know no peace," leaders of the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York said” today in statement signed by Mrs. David M. Levy, Barney Balaban, Samuel Hausman, Herbert H. Lehman and Edward M.M. Warburg, “the five co-chairman of the local drive for $65 million which is part of a national campaign for $170 million.

1948: “American opposition to the partition of Palestine is blocking the hopes of Arabs and Jews alike for freedom from ‘colonial oppression’ the Moscow radio charged in an English-language broadcast tonight.”

1948: “The Arabs agreed today to a cease-fire in all Jerusalem beginning at noon tomorrow, and the Jews said they would comply if the Arabs actually halted their firing.”

1949(8thof Iyar, 5709) Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim

1949: Two thousand Jews who have escaped from Communist Hungary are getting to spend their first celebrated their first Shabbat in the free city of Vienna.

1949: Officials of the American Jewish Committee, reported today at the opening session of the spring meeting of its executive body,  that only permanent peace between the Arab nations and Israel could assure the solution of Israel's pressing economic and rehabilitation problems.

1950: “The Damned Don’t Cry,” an “American film noir crime-drama directed by Vincent Sherman” who also co-authored the script, produced by Jerry Wald and edited by Rudi Fehr

1950: The government is scheduled to send its formal reply to the United Nations concerning “the Palestine Conciliations Commission’s proposal for peace negotiations.”  Israel is willing to send delegates to a meeting that is held without pre-conditions while the Arab states have announced that they will only come if the “return of Palestine refugees is the first item on the agenda.”

1952: A cheering crowd of 5,000 greeted Haifa’s Mayor Abba Khoushy and New York’s Mayor Impellitteri at official ceremonies at City Hall. Speakers at City Hall and a luncheon that followed at the Waldorf-Astoria “emphasized Israel’s devotion to democratic concepts and the need to consolidate the nation’s economic position as a bulwark of democracy in the Middle East.”

1953: Birthdate of Boston native James Braidy “Jim Steinberg, the Harvard and Yale Law School graduate who has served Democratic presidents in a variety of foreign policy positions including United States Deputy Secretary of State.

1954: Birthdate of movie director Amy Heckerling, the Bronx native whose first commercial success was “Fast Times at Ridgemont Hight.”

1956: In the suburbs of South Manchester, UK, “barrister Benet Hytner and his wife Joyce gave birth to director Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner.

1958: TodayIsraeli Prime Minister DavidBenGurionrejected a request by B’nai Brith that Ze’ev Jabotinsky be reinterred in Israel explainingin a letter written B’nai Brith Vice President, Joseph Lamm, that"Israel does not need dead Jews, but living Jews, and I see no blessing in multiplying graves in Israel." Could Ben Gurion’s refusal to grant what was a wish contained in Jabotinsky’s last will and testament been nothing more than a measure of revenge exacted against the Revisionist leader whose followers would become the Irgun.  With the approval of Levi Eshkol, Jabotinsky and his wife were finally laid to rest in Jerusalem at Herzl Cemetery in 1964.

1958: U.S. premiere of “The Left Handed Gun” starring Paul Newman as “Billy the Kid.”

1959: Paul Newman and Joan Woodward gave birth to Eilinor Teresa Newman who “runs Newman’s Own Organics.”

1960: After only 21 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “From A to Z” a musical revue with a book by Woody Allen.

1960: Los Angeles Dodger Catcher Norm Sherry hits an 11th inning homerun to give his brother, Pitcher Larry Sherry, a 3 to 2 victory over the Phillies.  At the time, the Sherry brothers were the first and only Jewish battery (pitcher and catcher) in major league baseball.  From 1959 to 1962 the Dodgers had three Jewish players on their roster (the other was Sandy Koufax) which some felt made them the "Jewish" baseball team.

1960: Birthdate of Adam Bernstein, the native of Brooklyn who “won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series” and who “married actress Jessica Hecht in 1995.”

1960: Larry Blyden appeared for the last time in the role of “Sammy Fong” in Flower Drum Song; a portrayal for which he received a Tony Nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

1960(10th of Iyar, 5720): Seventy-six year old Charles Edward Sebag-Montefiore passed away.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F00B16FC3E5916738DDDA00894DD405B808AF1D3

1962: “Rabbi Moshe Yaffe, the executive director of the Chief Rabbinate at Jerusalem” opened “a week-long ‘Festival of Israel’ in celebration of that country’s anniversary was opened today at Sterling Forest Park, a botanical garden in suburban Tuxedo” featuring daily programs “of costumed folk dancing and folk singing by Zionist youth groups lectures on and about modern Israel, photographic displays and exhibits of Israeli books, postage stamps and Israeli exports

1963(13th of Iyar, 5723): Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-American engineer and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics passed away.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jplhistory/learnmore/lm-vonkarman.php

 

 

1964:Birthdate of Elliot Perlman,an Australian author and barrister.

1965(5thof Iyar, 5725): Seventy-five year old Samuel Lewin-Epstein the Jerusalem born son of Eliyahu Ze'ev (Wolf) Lewin-Epstein and Judith Lewin-Epstein, the husband of Madeline Lewin-Epstein and “the father of Professor Jacob Lewis-Epstein and Noah Lewin-Epstein” passed away today in “Rechovot, Israel.”

1968: Sixty-seven year old English actress Olga Lindo, the daughter of Jewish actor Frank Lindo and his non-Jewish wife passed away today.

1968: Premiere of “Where It’s At,” a comedy directed by Garson Kanin co-starring Don Rickles.

1970: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Daniel Boone” a television series based on the American frontiersman produced by Aaron Rosenberg and Barney Rosenzweig with a theme song co-authored by Lionel Newman.

1973(5thof Iyar, 5733): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1973(5thof Iyar, 5733): Sixty-four year old Egon Hostovský a Czech author and distant relative of Stefan Zweig who was memorialized by the creation of the Egon Hostovsky (Literary) Prize passed away today.

1973: Liora Reich became the first woman to win the International Bible Quiz

1973:  Carl Bernstein shares in the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Watergate Scandal.

1973: Maxine Kumin won the Pulitzer Prize for her volume of poetry entitledUp Country: Poems of New England.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/may/07/1973/maxine-kumin

1975: “The Day of the Locust” a film version of Nathaniel West’s novel by the same name, directed by John Schlesinger, produced by Jerome Hellman and featuring Natalie Schafer as “Audrey Jennings” was released today in the United States.

1978(30th of Nisan, 5738): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1978(30th of Nisan, 5738): Sixty-three year old Mortimer “Mort” Weisinger ” an American magazine and comic book editor best known for editing DC Comics' Superman during the mid-1950s to 1960s” passed away today.

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Mort_Weisinger

1978: “Stamps” by Samuel Tower published today described Israel’s philatelic offers in honor of her 30thanniversary including the issuance of five stamps honoring “five heroes of the Israeli Underground Movement including Abraham Stern, Yitzhak Sadeh, David Raziel, Dr. Moshe Sneh and Eliyahu Golomb

1981(3rd of Iyar, 5741): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1981: Jewish Heritage Week came to an end.

1981: A revival of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” opened at the Martin Beck Theatre with Elizabeth Taylor as “Regina.”

1981(3rd of Iyar, 5741): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1982: “Paradise” a romantic adventure film starring Phoebe Cates and featuring Yosef Shiloach as “Ahmed” which was filmed by cinematographer Adam Greenberg was released today.

1982: “Death Valley” a horror film written by Richard Rothstein was released today in the United States.

1983: At Cannes, premiere of  “War Games” one of the first movies to center around computer hacking produced by Leonard Goldberg, featuring Maury Chaykin and with music by Arthur B. Rubinstein

1983: Today a recording of “It Might Be You” which was performed in “Tootsie” starring Dustin Hoffman “with music written by Dave Grusin, and lyrics written by Alan & Marilyn Bergman” which “was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1983” hit the number 25 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

1984(5th of Iyar, 5744): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1984(5th of Iyar, 5744): Painter and art director Marvin Israel passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/08/obituaries/marvin-israel-is-dead-at-61-an-art-director-and-painter.html

1985:” Memory of the Camps,” a documentary dealing with “Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps” was broadcast during season three of “Frontline.”

1986: John Corry reviewed “The Precious Legacy of Czech Jews” a film directed by Dan Wiessman and co-produced by Weissman and Nelson E. Breen.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/07/arts/the-precious-legacy-of-czech-jews.html

 

 

1987: NBC broadcast the final episode of Season 3 of “The Cosby Show” co-created by Ed Weinberger.

1986: Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s “La Cage aux Folles” had its West End premiere at the London Palladium today with the same creative team as the Broadway production.

1988(20th of Iyar, 5748): Parashat Emor

1988(20th of Iyar, 5748): Centenarian Columbia trained attorney Saul B. Ackerman, “a founding partner of Ackerman, Salwen and Glass” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/10/obituaries/saul-b-ackerman-lawyer-100.html

1989(2nd of Iyar, 5749): Just 23 three days before his 76th birthday CCNY basketball star Moe Goldman who went on to play professionally for the Philadelphia Spa and pursue a career as a New York City school teacher passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/09/obituaries/moe-goldman-ex-basketball-player-75.html

1992: The Chicago Sun Times reports that Eddie Schwartz is leaving WGN for WLUP.

1994(27th of Iyar, 5754): Seventy-three year old Aharon "Aharale" Rabinovich Yariv passed away. The Moscow native made Aliyah at the age of 15 and then pursued a career in the military and politics that included service in the Knesset.

1994(27th of Iyar, 5754): Clement Greenberg, the most famous American art critic since Bernard Berenson who was born in 1909 to a Yiddish-speaking socialist family and was brought up in Brooklyn and the Bronx passed away today. (As reported by Raymond Hernandez)

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/08/obituaries/clement-greenberg-dies-at-85-art-critic-championed-pollock.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

1994(27th of Iyar, 5754): Haim Bar Lev, the IDF's Chief of General Staff from 1968 to 1971, passed away. Bar Lev played a key role in the Yom Kippur., He came out of retirement and served as the Chief of the Southern Command at the request of Prime Minister Meir.  He provided the steadying influence and keen perception that was necessary to halt the Egyptian advance and snatch victory from the apparent jaws of defeat. (As reported by Joseph Finkleston)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-ltgen-haim-barlev-1434903.html?printService=print

1998: The 6th Annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival began today.

1999: “Rabbi Jacob Lustig and five others from his Kneseth Israel Congregation stood side by side as they entered the pleas in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court” in what prosecutors describe as a “massive fraud” involving instant bingo games throughout Greater Cincinnati. (As reported by Dan Horn)

1999: “The Mummy” a classic horror film co-starring Rachel Weisz and music by Jerry Goldsmith was released in the United States today.

2000(2nd of Iyar, 5760): Eighty three year old Holocaust survivor and champion “Race Walker” Henry Laskau passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/09/sports/henry-laskau-race-walker-is-dead-at-83.html

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including“The Human Stain” by Philip Roth and the recently published paperback edition of “A Journey to the End of the Millennium: A Novel of the Middle Ages”
A. B. Yehoshua’s novel about a North African Jewish merchant “who travels to Europe with his two wives and his Muslim partner in the year 999 explores the gaps between Jews and Christians, Jews and Muslims and men and women.”

2000: The curtain came down on a revival of Arthur Laurents “The Time of the Cuickoo” at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre.

2000: ABC broadcast “Geppetto” “a made for television musical” version of Pinocchio starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus today for the first time.

2000: Bruce Fleisher won The Home Depot Invitational.

2000: “War and Love,” a Malayalam language film filmed by cinematographer Adam Greenberg was released today in India.

2001: Dalia Rabin-Pelossof joined “One Israel” which later became Labor Meimad.”

2001: IDF naval commandos captured the Santorini, a fishing boat used for smuggling weapons into Gaza that included Katyusha rocket launchers, surface-to-air (SAM-7) anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

2002: Israeli Prime Minister met with President George Bush at the White House.

2002: Psychologist Carol Gilligan published "The Birth of Pleasure"2002: Perhaps the moment that signaled open season for Jews on campuses occurred today at San Francisco State University when “Muslim students and their leftist supporters launched a mini-pogrom against pro-Israel Jewish students.” (As reported by Caroline B. Glick)

2002(25thof Iyar, 5762): Hamas claimed responsibility for today’s bombing at Rishon LeZion where 15 people were killed and another 55 were wounded.

Pnina Hikri (60), Sharuk Rassan (42), Shoshana Magmari (51), Anat Temporush (36), Haim Rafael (64), Daliah Massah (64), Nir Lobatin (31), Avi Biaz (26), Rahamim Kimche (58), Edna Cohen (61), Yisrael Shikar (45), Yitzhak Bablar (58), Esther Bablar (54), Regina Malka Boslan (62), Nawa Hinawi (51)

2003(5thof Iyar, 5763): Yom HaAtzma’ut

2003: In Tel Aviv, Mike’s Place re-opened after suffering a suicide bombing attack on April 30.

2004(16thof Iyar, 5764): Twenty-six year old Nicholas Evan “Nick” Berg was decapitated by Islamist terrorists in Iraq today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25401-2004May13.html

2005(28thof Nisan, 5765): Parashat Kedoshim

2005(28thof Nisan, 5765): Eighty-seven year old 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 passed away today.

2006: Jacobo Kaufman delivered a major address at the "Colloquium in Memory of Antonio José da Silva (the Jew)", on the occasion of this great Portuguese playwright´s 300th anniversary celebration at Bar Ilan University. The event was supported by both Portugal and Brazil whose ambassadors attended the event.

http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleid=1819

2006:  Israel disappeared…from the news and opinion sections of the New York Times.  In one of those rare Sundays, the Jewish state was not a subject of any news stories in the Times.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Everyman” by Phillip Roth and “The Accidental Empire:Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977” byGershom Gorenberg.

2006: The World Zionist Organization announce the 2006 winners of the third annual Herzl Award, initiated by the Department for Zionist Activities to commemorate the Centenary of Herzl's passing.  The winners are Owen Kevin Futeran, South Africa, Andrea Uzan, Denmark, Ted Ekeroth, Sweden, Adrian Gluck, Argentina, Moises Mitrani, Mexico, Stanislav Skibinski, Germany, Nathan Feldman, Mexico, Phil Koningham, New Zealand and Stephen Rosenthal, United Kingdom

2006: In Los Angeles, a community-wide celebration of Israel’s 58th Independence ‘day  is kicked off by the LA County Sheriff Department Golden Stars Skydiving team floating into Woodley Park while the Tampa Jewish Community Center brings Israel to downtown Tampa for the first time with  independence day activities featuring Israeli vendors, an Israeli rock band and Israeli cuisine.

2007: Time Magazine featured an article entitled “The End of a Zionist Idyll.” The article reported on the Israeli reaction Degania’s announcement that it was giving up its socialist ideals and going private.  In the future, members could own homes and earn salaries based on how hard they worked. Degania was the first Kibbutz to be founded during the Second Aliyah.  It was the paradigm for the new Jew and the new Jewish way of life.  This announcement represents the closing of a chapter in Jewish and Israeli history.

2007: Newsweek Magazine featured a review of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.

2007(19th of Iyyar, 5767): Donald Ginsberg a physicist who became a leading expert on the production and functioning of superconductors passed away at the age of 73 in Urbana, Illinois.

2008(2nd of Iyar, 5768): Yom Hazikaron – Israel Remembrance Day. A two-minute memorial siren sounds at 11 a.m. Wednesday, followed by official ceremonies at 43 military cemeteries. The Defense Ministry said that since 1860, when the first Jewish settlers began establishing Jewish neighborhoods outside the Jerusalem city walls, 22,437 men and women have been killed in defense of the Land of Israel. Sixteen Israeli civilians were killed in terrorist attacks in the first four months of the year, bringing the total of civilian terror-related deaths to 1,634 since the creation of the state 60 years ago. Remembrance Day draws to a close Wednesday night at 8 p.m. with the traditional torch-lighting ceremony at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl marking the sudden transition from sadness to joy with the start of Israel's 60th Independence Day.

2008: As Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary, the population nears 7.3 million with 76% of the population being Jewish On the eve of its independence day, Israel's population numbers 7,282,000, 75.5 percent of which is Jewish, and 20.1 percent Arab, Central Bureau of Statistics show. The remaining 4.4 percent is made up largely of immigrants and their children who are not registered as Jews in the Interior Ministry's population rolls. By 2030, the projected population will be some 10,000,000.Over the past year, 156,400 babies were born in Israel. At present, some 69 percent of the Jewish population is made up of native-born Israelis, as opposed to only 35 percent in 1948. About 18,000 people immigrated to Israel over the past year. The figure for total population does not include foreign nationals in Israel, whose number, in 1996, was found to be 186,000.

2008: Elie Wiesel is the guest speaker at a fund raising dinner designed to benefit the new Padres Katz Special Education campus of Aleh, an organization dedicated to helping disabled children in Israel.

2008: Release date for “Waves of Freedom,” a film that “is a reminder of the American Jewish sailors who braved British soldiers and the high seas to transport Holocaust survivors and refugees from Europe to the shores of prestate Palestine.”

2009: Ruth Reichl, a former restaurant critic and now the editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, discusses and signs “Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way” at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

2009: The Jacob’s ladder Spring Festival opens.

2009: After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive by Lisa Cohen was published by Grand Central Publishing.  A native of Manitoba, Cohen is a graduate of the University Pennsylvania who has made a career in electronic journalism with stints at ABC and CBS news.

2009, Madoff Bankruptcy Trustee, Irving Picard filed a lawsuit against J. Ezra Merkin seeking to recover almost $500 million withdrawn from Madoff accounts in the last six years

2010: In Tel Aviv, the three-day Good Life Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2010(23rdof Iyar, 5770): Bernard Schoenbaum, who in hundreds of cartoons in The New Yorker needled the relatively affluent, the media-conscious, the irony-besotted and the socially competitive — in other words, the readers of The New Yorker passed away today at the age of 89.     (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/books/18schoenbaum.html?pagewanted=print

2010: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is schedule to host a Potluck Dinner before Friday Night Services where Samuel Horowitz of the Jewish Federation is scheduled to be the guest speaker.

2011: In Potomac, MD, Congregation B’Nai Tzedek is scheduled to hosts theSpring Gala which will feature The “Second City” from Chicago.

2011: Bruce Raynor is scheduled to resign as president of Workers United and as executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union.

2011: “The Matchmaker” is scheduled to be shown at the Israel Film Festival.

2011: The Traditional Minyan at Temple Judah is scheduled to host its annual “Mother’s Day Shabbat.”

2012: Israeli pianist Roman Rabinovich, Israeli violinist Itamar Zorman and the Jupiter musicians will perform are scheduled to perform at the Good Shepherd Church in New York City.

2012: James Carroll, author of Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews is scheduled to deliver an address entitled “The Church and the Jews: A Personal Journey and Assessment” as part of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation Spring Speaker Series.

2012: Jews and the Left, a two day conference sponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research with the American Jewish Historical Society, is scheduled to come to an end.

2012: Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is scheduled to be among the community leaders attending this evening’s Jewish American Heritage Month Celebration at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.

2013: Pamela Weisberger (President and Research Coordinator, Gesher Galicia) is scheduled to speak on “Unique & Unusual Resources in Galician Genealogy” at the Weiner Library in London.

2013: “Street Labs” an outdoor exhibition featuring Israel’s top Sci-Tech students presenting their award winning inventions is scheduled to play at Union Square Park.

2013: San Jose City Hall is scheduled to celebrate the history of Jewish contributions to American culture and the Jewish American heritage that has helped shape the San Jose community with the raising of the Israeli flag at City Hall followed by a kosher lunch.

2013: A “Garden of Ellie" that contains a statue of Ellie Greenwich was placed next to Hofstra University's music school. The sculpture was commissioned by Greenwich's family and created by Peter Homestead

2013: According to Image Books, On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family and the Church in the 21st Century, will be available today in the United States and Canada. “The book is the transcript of wide-ranging conversations between then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina and Rabbi Abraham Skorka, the rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary. Topics include God, atheism, abortion, the Holocaust, same-sex marriage, fundamentalism and globalization. Francis previously has published 11 books, all in Spanish. Francis, who was elected pope last week, has referred to Skorka as his “brother and friend.” As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he attended services at Skorka’s synagogue and also arranged for Skorka to receive an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Argentina. The two also shared billing on an Argentinian TV talk show on religious issues.” (As reported by JTA)

2013: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ordered a freeze in tenders for West Bank settlement construction amid a US push to renew the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Army Radio reported today.

2013: Seventy years ago the Jewish people could not protect itself and had to plead for others to “save them.” Today that is no longer the case, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said today, just days after allegations that Israeli war planes attacked weapons depots near Damascus.

2013: Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky presented his proposal on the Women of the Wall to the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women today

2014: The Center for Jewish History and American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “Native Genius,” “a night of entertainment celebrating the history of the Jewish contributions to American Theatre from 1800-1860.

2014: President Obama “will be honored by Stephen Spielberg as Ambassador for Humanity at the USC Shoah Foundation’s 20th anniversary gala event” which is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles today.

2014: “Over the Ocean,” a film about a Canadian family contemplating Aliyah is scheduled to shown at the Israel Film Festival sponsored by Agudas Achim in Coralville, Iowa.

2014: In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month “A Call to Serve: Florida Jews and the U.S. Military is scheduled to be shown in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

2014: “Rock the Casbah” is scheduled to be shown at The National Center for Jewish Film’s 17th Annual Film Festival.

2014: The 16th annual Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

2014: “Amid a spate of violent altercations between IDF soldiers and settlers from Yitzhar in the northern West Bank, an Israeli report said today that residents of the radical settlement were mulling the legality — according to Jewish law — of attacking, and even killing, IDF soldiers “under certain circumstances.” (As reported by Yifa Yaakov)

 2014: Mark Lewis is scheduled to discuss his prizewinning book, The Birth of the New Justice, a history of international criminal courts and new international criminal laws from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Cold War at The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London.

2015: As voters in the U.K. are scheduled to go to the polls today, Laborite Ed Miliband seeks to become the nation’s first Jewish Prime Minister.

2015: Joan Adler, Executive Director of the Straus Historical Society is scheduled to discuss her latest work For the Sake of the Children, The Letters Between Otto Frank and Nathan Straus Jr., at The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

2015: In Atlanta, GA, Israeli-Ethiopian singer Ester Rada is scheduled to present “The Birth of Ethio-Soul.”

2015: Dr. Jonathan Sarna is scheduled to lead a discussion about his newest book Lincoln and the Jews: A History at the National Archives.

2015: “À la Vie (To Life)” is scheduled to be shown at 18th Annual Film Festival of the National Center for Jewish Film’s

2015: The Washington Jewish Music Festival kicks is scheduled to start its 16th year to with Neshama Carlebach the Glory to God Baptist Choir

2015: As part of Jewish American Heritage Month, the Spertus Institute in Chicago is scheduled to host cartoonist Liana Fink who will talk about the creative process behind "A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York,"

2015: At the National Museum of American Jewish History Simon Malkes, author of The Righteous of the Wehrmacht is scheduled to tell the amazing true story of how a Nazi officer helped save the lives of a hundred Jews, including Simon and his family during the Holocaust

2015: In keeping with a tradition that began with his arrival in Little Rock more than two decades ago, Chabad, under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host its “BBQ Festival” complete “with all of the trimmings.”

2015(18thof Iyar, 5775): Lag B’Omer

 

2016: As we get ready for the “Run for the Roses’ this afternoon, we remember the Kentucky Derby of 80 years ago (1936) which was won by the “Sons of Moses.” The winning horse was Bold Venture, owned by Morton Schwartz, trained by Max Hirsch and ridden by Ira Hanford. All of the human beings involved in this equestrian event were Jewish. And even though it was Shabbat, some say that for the day Bold Venture was Jewish too.

2016: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host an “Interactive Survivor Experience” featuring Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter.

2016(29thof Nisan, 5776):  Machor HaKodesh;

2016(29thof Nisan, 5576): Ninety-two year old Holocaust survivor and fundraiser Ernest Michel passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/nyregion/ernest-michel-who-survived-auschwitz-and-led-jewish-charities-dies-at-92.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2016(29thof Nisan, 5576): Eighty-six year old Howard Garfinkel the high school basketball scout who had an impact on the careers of such stars as Michael Jordan, LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/sports/basketball/howard-garfinkel-who-discovered-and-groomed-top-basketball-talent-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2017: The New York Times featured books written by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Stranger in a Stranger Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem by George Prochnik, The Ideas of Industry by Daniel W. Drezner,  All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan and recently published paperback editions of Black Hole Blues: And Other Songs From Outer Space by Janna Levin and In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies by David Rieff.

2017: At the Breman Museum, Eugen Schoenfeld is scheduled to tell how he survived Auschwitz and Dachau, refused to kill one of the brutes guarding him and rose to become the Chair of the Department of Sociology at Georgia State University.

2017: Natan Sharansky is scheduled to speak at the Hirsch Theatre this evening on Eliyahu Shama Street in Jerusalem.

2017: “German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier paid a solemn visit to Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial” today.

2017: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to host a lecture by Eric Goldman entitled “Lens on Israel: A Society Through Its Cinema.”

2018: The Center for Jewish History and YIVO are scheduled to “five-time space shuttle astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman” who will discuss “his experiences as a Jew in orbit who brought a Torah, a tallis, a dreidel, and other Judaica on his trips into space.”

2018: The Yerushalmi Theatre Group is scheduled to present “Good Morning Mr. Heimer,” “a theatrical adaption of the work by Amnon Shmoosh “at Beit Mazia.”

2018:  As part of the 25th anniversary observance, the U.S. Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host “a discussion about the complexities of Holocaust history with leading scholars.”

https://www.ushmm.org/watch/big-questions?utm_source=mkto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1805MKTEM03879-event-text-button

2018: “In cooperation with the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington, New York University professor Hasia Diner is scheduled to present a lecture titled “Roads Taken: Jewish Peddlers and their American Journeys.”

2018: “GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II” is scheduled to be shown this evening at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Libya: The Last Exodus” is scheduled to be shown at the 26thToronto Jewish Film Festival.

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to co-host an “interfaith discussion of scripture from the perspectives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.”

2019: In Walnut Creek, CA, Congregation B’nai Shalom is scheduled to host an Israel Memorial Day program featuring a talk by “Lt. Col. (IDF Retired) Amos Guiora on ‘The Role of the IDF in Israel.’”

2019: The Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans and the Jewish Children’s Regional Service are scheduled to participate in “GiveNOLA Day!”

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Above and Beyond” produced by Nancy Spielberg (Elusive Justice) and directed by Roberta Grossman (Blessed Is the Match), that tells the story of the pilots who risked their lives to create Israel’s air force at the time of the creation of the state in 1948.

2019: The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America by Daniel Okren is scheduled to go on sale today.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Guarded-Gate/Daniel-Okrent/9781476798035

2020: Virtually using Zoom, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host Amy-Jill Levine as she lectures on “Jesus and the Jews.”

2020: Temple Emanuel of Newton is scheduled to present a virtual “Paper Mosaic ‘Tree of Life’ Workshop.”

2020: The Vilna Shul is scheduled to host a virtual lecture by Layah Kranz Lipsker as she discusses “Unorthodox,” the newly released four-part series on Netflix” and “the Chassidic world of her childhood and answer questions about the authenticity of this series and others like it.”

2020: The National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host via Facebook Live the first lecture in its Scholar Series as part of JAHM.

2020: Via Zoom, Rabbi Roger Klein of Temple Terfieth Israel is scheduled to host an hour of poetry readings and interactive discussion of this art form.

2020: Israelis are scheduled to make alternative plans for celebrating Lag B’Omer following yesterday’s approval by the government to ban “all traditional bonfires.”

2020: Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be able to forward today following the High Court of Justice found that Netanyahu's unity government deal with his election rival Benny Gantz does not violate the law, dismissing arguments that it unlawfully shields him in a corruption trial.”

2020: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “a live streamed program from the home of pianist Roman Rabinovich in Canada; featuring works that include Haydn’s B Minor and E-flat Major sonatas, a new piece by Israeli composer Matan Porat, and a Sonatina by Rabinovich himself.

2020: The San Francisco Fringe festival is scheduled to host a virtual performance of “Marla,” “Ali Littman’s play about the 2002 Hebrew University bombing that killed nine people, including 24-year-old UC Berkeley graduate Marla Bennett.”

2020: In Cedar Rapids, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to a social hour over Zoom.

2020: Today marks the deadline for Hillel at the University to raise $25,000 during the Global Giving Week.

2021: As Israelis prepare for Shabbat Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid is busy using the 28 days he has he has to form a new government following Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure “to form a coalition that would have allowed him to hang onto power.

2021: “The Human Factor,” a “documentary that tells the saga of a US-led Middle East flops” is scheduled to open at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco today.

https://www.jweekly.com/2021/04/30/new-documentary-tells-the-saga-of-us-led-middle-east-peace-flops/?utm_source=J.+The+Jewish+News+of+Northern+California&utm_campaign=11413edebf-Newsletter+05-04-2021&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_93a945700b-11413edebf-216420497

 

 

 

This Day, May 8, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

 

May 8

336: Emperor Constantine prohibits Jews from negatively interacting with their co-religionists who have converted to Christianity. "Jews are not allowed to disturb any man one has converted from Judaism

to Christianity, nor may they assail him with any outrage. Such behaviour will be punished according to the nature of the act [CT 16.8.5]"

336: In a further move to secure the primacy of Christianity over Judaism Constantine decreed "If a Jew should purchase and circumcise a Christian slave or a slave of any other sect, he shall not keep that circumcised person in slavery. The slave who endured such treatment will receive the privilege of freedom." [CT 16.9.1]

589: Reccared summoned the Third Council of Toledo. Reccared or Recared I was Visigoth King of Hispania (think modern day Spain). His reign marked a climactic shift in history, with the king's renunciation of traditional Aryanism in favor of Catholic Christianity in 587. He was a favorite of Pope Gregory for submitting to the papal see and for promulgating an edict of intolerance that included limiting the freedom and daily activities of the Jewish community.  He zealously followed the promulgations of the Council of Toledo which included “restrictions on Jews, and the conversion of the country to orthodox Christianity led to repeated persecutions of Jews.Of the 23 cannons adopted by the Council of Toledo, the fourteenth canon “forbade Jews to have Christian wives, concubines, or slaves, ordered the children of such unions to be baptized, and disqualified Jews from any office in which they might have to punish Christians. Christian slaves whom they had circumcised, or made to share in their rites, were ipso facto freed.”

1147: Encouraged by Peter the Hermit, a mob attacked the Jews on the second day of Shavuot in Ramerupt, France. Rabbenu Tam was one of its victims. After being stabbed five times (to match the five wounds of Jesus) he was saved by a passing knight. His house was ransacked, and a Torah scroll was destroyed.

1435: The Jews were expelled “forever” from Speyer by decree that said, “The council is compelled to banish the Jews; but it has no designs upon their lives or their property: it only revokes their rights of citizenship and of settlement. Until November 11 they are at liberty to go whither they please with all their property, and in the meantime they may make final disposition of their business affairs.

 1492: The first printed edition of Mishnayot with commentary by Maimonides was published in Naples. The term Mishnayot is plural form of the word Mishna, which part of the Oral Law. By appearing in printed form, the commentaries of one of Judaism greatest teachers on one of its core text was available to what today we would be called, "the mass market."  This is an event worth nothing since it goes to prove that even in the worst of years, something good can happen.

1612 “Dr. Eliua da Luna Montalto, a Marrano who had” returned “to Judaism wrote…to his wife’s sister, Isabella de Fonseca, and her husband, Dr. Pedro Rodrigues, imploring them to return to” the faith of their fathers. He wrote, in part, “There are so many arguments which prove the truth of biblical prophecy…nobody has an excuse for not understanding it…I protest against your following a road which leads to the brink and the undoing of your soul.” Montalto was a distinguished physician whose patients included Queen Marie de Medicis of France.  (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

1705: Birthdate of António José da Silva, a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew" (O Judeu). His parents were descended from Portuguese Jews and they became targets of the Inquisition when it turned its attention to Marranos living in Brazil. Eventually he would be found guilty of “judaizing” and would be strangled deather following which his body was burnt as part of “auto de fe.”

1737: Birthdate of English historian, Edward Gibbon, author of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Gibbon wrote authoritatively about the Jewish origins of Christianity. “The history of the church of Jerusalem affords a lively proof …of the deep impression which the Jewish religion had made on the minds of its sectaries. The first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews; and the congregation over which they presided united the Law of Moses with the doctrine of Christ.”

1773(14thof Iyar, 5533): Pesach Sheni

1773: In Egypt, Ottoman rebels revolt, killing Ali Bey, Mamluk Sultan of Egypt.

1794: English playwright Richard Cumberland's The Jew; or the Benevolent Hebrew, the first English language play to feature a Jewish moneylender as the benevolent hero of a stage comedy premiered today at the Drury Lane Theatre in London.

 

1794: “Sheva, the Benevolent” an adaptation of English playwright Richard Cumberland's “The Jew; or the Benevolent Hebrew,” the first English language play to feature a Jewish moneylender as the benevolent hero of a stage comedy premiered at the Drury Lane Theatre in London.

1796: Joseph Cohen married Mariane Joachim today at the Great Synagogue.

1800(Iyar 13)): Rabbi Joseph of Piltz, author of “Maaseh Choshev” passed away today.

1800: In Hamburg, banker Salomon Heine and his wife gave birth to their third daughter Amalie Friedlander, who was the cousin of poet Heinrich Heine.

1806(20thof Iyar): Rabbi Feibus Cohen passed away.

1808: Financier Carl Friedrich Buderus, a friend of Wilhelm and Rothschild, was arrested as French officials attempted to establish a connection between plots against French rule and the exiled Landgrave and his Jewish financier. 

1827: In Cardiff, Wales, Ann Michael and Mark Lyon Marks, “a watchmaker, auctioneer and leader of the Cardiff Jewish community gave birth to London portrait painter Barnett Samuel (B.S.) Marks

1827(11thof Iyar, 5587): Fourteen days before his 67th birthday Rabbi Naftali Zvi Horowitz of Ropshitz who “was born on the day that the Baal Shem Tov died, “who was reputed to have had tens of thousands of followers” and was “a crucial figure in the development of Galician Hassidism” passed away today after which he was buried in Łańcut, Poland.

1829: In New Orleans, London born Ashkenazi business Edward Gottschalk and Aimée Marie Bruslé, a French Creole gave birth to Louis Moreau Gottschalk an American composer and pianist

1831: One day after he had passed away, 79 year old Henry Naftali Isaacs, the husband of Ellen Isaacs and the father of Isaac Isaacs was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1837: Having been prevented from moving to Prague by immigration authorities, historian Heinrich Graetz arrived at Oldenburg where he spent three years with his patron Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, “as a pupil, companion, and amanuensis.”

1838: Birthdate of Alsace native Solomon Haff, the Texas husband of Fannie Levi Halff with whom he had two children.

1841: In New York Rabbi and Mrs. Myer Samuel Isaacs gave birth to Judge Myer S. Isaacs who co-founded the Jewish Messenger and who served as President of the Baron de Hirsch Fund.

1843: In Grätz, Grand Duchy of Posen, Dr. Markus Moses, a noted physician and his wife gave birth to German publisher and philanthropist” Rudolf Mosse

1846: In Stetin, which at that time was in Prussia, Abraham and Berthe Hammerstein gave birth to New York “theatrical and operatic manager Oscar Hammerstein who after having a falling out with his family, arrived in the United States in 1864 and parlayed his success in the cigar and tobacco business into a career that included producing grand opera at the Met but his best known by most as the grandfather of Broadway composer Oscar Hammerstein II.

1847: “In Obernbreit am Main in present-day Germany,” “Elias and Babette (Mandelbaum Heller) Sanger” gave birth to Alexander Sanger, who in 1865, came to the United Sates” where he became a leading Texas merchant who was part of Sanger Brothers and the founder of what became Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, TX.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsa54

1851: In Georgia, Emanuel and Jane L. Theiss Sheftall gave birth to Sarah Florence Sheftall, the wife of James Evan Creameer.

1852: The New York Times reported that following the fining of MP David Salomons for his attempt to take his seat in the House of Commons all the work of “emancipation” that has been done on behalf of the Jews will have to be done over again because given the hereditary nature of the House of Lords and the life expectancy of the members nothing will change for at least 20 years.

1855: The Prussian Bankruptcy Code adopted today” provided Hermann Makower with him with topic for his legal study which was published in 1861.

1857(14thof Iyar, 5617): Pesach Sheni

1857: In Manchester, England the Art Treasurers of Great Britain, one of the largest art exhibition held in the U.K. opened for a third day.

1858: Henry Lewis Raphael and Henrietta Raphael gave birth to Arthur Lewis Raphael, the husband of Marianna Floretta Raphael.

1859: Birthdate of Ukrainian native Isaac Piroshnikof, “the founder of the Warsaw Conservatory” and “military bandleader at Vilna” who in 1912 came to the United States where “he organized the Workmen’s Circle chorus…and several children’s choruses”

https://www.jta.org/1933/06/16/archive/isaac-piroshnikoff-dies-popular-concertina-artist

1864: Major Adolph Proskauer of the 12th Alabama was wounded so severely at Spotsylvania Courthouse that he could no longer serve.  A native of Germany, Proskauer "was among the few Jewish immigrants who became a high-ranking Confederate Officer. ("Jews of the Civil War")

1866: In Lockport, NY< Abraham Higham and Hanna (Barnett) Aaron gave birth to University of Buffalo trained physician who married Winifred Comstock at Detroit and who was the professor of gastro-interology and dietetics at the Detroit college of Medicine and Surgery

1870: The Hebrew Leader, a weekly newspaper; published in New York city by Jonas Bondy, cautioned its readers about the possible success to be enjoyed as a result of the upcoming meeting of the Conference of Evangelical Alliance.

1870: Richea Hart and Abraham Mendes Seixas who were married at Charleston, SC in 1777 gave birth to Rebecca M. Seixas.

1870: According to today's Religious Items column " The Hebrew Leader referring to the coming Conference of the Evangelical Alliance says: 'No fear; what these gentlemen achieved in London, Paris, Berlin, Geneva and Amsterdam they will achieve in New York: Nihil.'"

1871: In Temple Emanu-El “abolished the ceremony of Bar Mitzvah” and “the custom of publicly blessing a mother on her first appearance in a synagogue after giving birth to a child.”

1871: The Omaha Bee was a pioneer newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska founded today, by Edward Rosewater, a Bohemian Jewish immigrant who supported abolition and fought in the Union Army.

1873: British philosopher John Stuart Mill whose views on the Jewish people were explored by Professor Edward Alexander in an article entitled “John Stuart Mill and the Jews” passed away. 

1874: Today’s Jewish Times quoted Judge Charles P. Daly as saying that “the history of his own race has taught him to practice charity in the widest sense, and if the country had been the first to extend the full privileges of freedom to the Jews, they, in their turn, have richly returned the precious gift by their efforts, their labors, their examples of frugality, thrift and industry, which have helped lift this country to the proud position which it occupies today.

1874: Special letter of administration were granted with the consent of the Earl of Beaconsfield who is the executor of the of the estate of Mary Anne Disraeli, Viscountess of Beaconsfield, that would allow stocks belonging her to be passed on to the Reverend William Lewis Price when she passed away.

1876(14th of Iyar, 5636): Peach Sheni

1876: Birthdate of Reinhold Quaatz, the German political leader who espoused anti-Semitic positions despite having a Jewish mother but avoided being shipped to a concentration camp.

1876: It was reported today that a part of the French Mediterranean fleet has received orders to set sail for Salonica, formerly known as Thessalonica.  The fleet is being sent to in response to fighting in the city between Christians and Moslems.  The city’s population includes approximately 20,000 Jews who have lived there for centuries.  Unfortunately, attacks based on the religious differences between Moslems and Christians have a way of spilling over to harm the Jewish population. (The ancient Jewish community of Salonica would be a casualty of the Shoah).

1877: “The Jews in Roumania” published today reported the Turkish Legation in Washington, DC has been told by its government that there are no Turkish troops or inhabitants on the west bank of the Danube River, where the Jews living in Giurgevo (have been attacked. According to the Turks, this area is controlled by the government at Bucharest. Furthermore, “Israelites” have “equal rights in Turkey with all other Ottoman subjects of whatever religion” and the government is determined to protect them.  As “new proof of the …impartiality of his Majesty the Sultan” and Israelite named “David-chon Effendi” has been nominated as a Senator of the Empire.  [Today all of this sounds like meaningless gibberish. The treatment of the Jews of Romania was a grave matter in the second half of the 19th century.  Sometimes it got caught up in the on-going Balkan crises and the slow demise of the Ottoman Empire.  On top of that newspaper reports of the time were not always accurate when it came to names leaving us to guess.  Giurgevo probably refers to Giurgiu which was an ancient fortress town on the Danube.  Effendi may refer to a prominent Turkish Jew of the time who was an admiral in the Sultan’s navy.]

1878(5thof Iyar, 5638):  Kowel native Meir Auberach, part of the Rabbinic Auerbach family, who “was president of the Jewish court at Koło”, and after immigrating to Palestine “was appointed the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and headed the Poland Kollel” passed away today.

https://www.rabbimeirbaalhaneis.com/Rabbi%20Meir%20Auerbach.asp

1879: Birthdate of Russian native, NYU trained attorney and New York City municipal judge Abraham Harawitz.

1879: “Revolutionary Papers In Russia” published today described discoveries made by government officials regarding “an anonymous revolutionary organ called “Semla i Schwaboda” (Land and Liberty.”  Three days after the police successfully found the printing presses that produced the paper, a Polish Jews was found murdered in a Moscow tavern “with a paper on his breast containing the words ‘Death to Traitors.’” The Polish Jew was reported to be the informer who guided the authorities to the presses. [Once again Jews are bad guys on both sides of the street.  They were portrayed as anti-Czarist revolutionaries and as betrayers of the revolutionaries.  Ah, anti-Semitism!]

1880: In Chicago. Rosa Flora Eisendrath, the German born daughter of Moses Samson Eisendrath and Bertha Braunchen Eisendrath and her husband  Emanuel Raphael Weil gave birth to Leon Eisendrath Weil

1881: Two days after she had passed, 35 year old Ida Schlosser wife Of Ernest Schlosser was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1882: Edward J. King’s Will which was dated today includes bequests to Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum, Congregation B’Nai Jeshrun, the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews of New York and the United Hebrew Charities.

1883: Birthdate of 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.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/03/26/93792659.pdf

1884: Birthdate of Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States.  If David Ben-Gurion is the "father of the state of Israel" then Truman might be considered the godfather-the one who held the baby at the moment of birth.  Standing up against pressure from the British and his own top advisors, Truman helped garner the votes that led to the U.N. resolution that created Israel in 1947. Standing up to even stronger pressure, Truman gave the new state the aura of legitimacy by being the first to recognize.  At 6:00 p.m., Washington D.C. time, the state of Israel came into existence.  At 6:11 p.m., the United States recognized the existence of the state of Israel.  Recognition might have come a few minutes sooner, but the representatives of the newly created government had not been sure of the name to use for their new country.  Jewish voters heavily supported Truman for this bold act as well as his progressive social views and his strong stance against the emerging Stalinist menace.

1885(23rd of Iyar, 5645): Six days before his 65thbirthday, Morris Rosenbach, the husband of Isabella H. Polock and the father of Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach, the creator of the Rosenbach Museum and Library passed away today.

1885: In Chicago, the Dearborn Station designed by Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz opened today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dearborn_Station#/media/File:Dearborn_Station_from_west.jpg

1885: Birthdate of Georg Abrahamsohn who was transported from Berlin to Terezin in 1942 and in 1944 from Terezin to Auschwitz where he was murdered.

1886:  Dr. John S. Pemberton sells the first Coca-Cola at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia.  Jacob’s Pharmacy was owned by Joseph Jacobs, the son of Gabriel and Ernestine Hyman Jacobs.  The Georgia native opened the Athens Pharmaceutical Company in Athens.  He later bought out his competition in the Five Points section of Atlanta.  The first Coke was served at the Five Points location.

1886: Twenty-eight year old Richmond (VA) High School graduate Laurence Eugene “Lon” Myers, the Jewish “sprinter and middle distance runner”  “beat W.G. George of England by six yards in a 1,160 yard match at Madison Square Garden today. (As reported by Bob Wechsler)

1888(27th of Iyar, 5648): Professor Leone Levi, “an economic writer” passed away today.

1888: Birthdate of Polish born, Maine-raised producer Phil Rosen the co-founder of the American Society of Cinematographers whose career spanned 35 years

1890(18th of Iyar, 5650): Lag B’Omer

1891: “The Karlsbrucke” published today described the history of Prague’s historic bridge including the fact that the oldest of the figures on its buttresses was “a large stone crucifix..which was built with money wrung from the Jews.”

1891: Rabbi Levy officiated at the wedding of Selig Behrman and Sarah Saundinsky at the Hasell Street Synagogue.

1892: Dr. G. Stockston Burroughs, the Samuel Green Professor of Biblical History and Interpretation will conduct classes in the Semitic and Hebrew languages at Amherst College.1892: “Johns Hopkins University” published today described activities at the Baltimore school including the decisions of Dr. Cyrus Adler to lead a group that “are organizing an America-Jewish historical association to collect and preserve records and memorials of the Jews of America.”

1892: Most of the 3,000 people attending tonight’s lecture at Cooper Union which had been called by various Socialist groups were young Jews from Russian and Poland.

1893: “Jews Might Be Kept Afloat: Expelled by Russian and Excluded by this Country” published today describes the plight of the millions of Russian and Polish Jews who are being expelled by the Czar’s government.  The new situation is even more catastrophic than the Passover Edicts of 1891 that resulted in the expulsion of 400,000 Jews.  The changes in American immigration laws and the attitude of various European governments limit the options of where these Jews might settle.  The article goes to describe the efforts – financial, political, and communal – to provide havens for their coreligionists. 

1893: The five-story double tenement house at 33 and 35 Suffolk Street which “is inhabited by more than twenty families” most of whom are Jews from Poland was the scene of fire that started in the apartment of Abraham Barnett.

1893: The Hartford (CT) Courant provided an account of “documentary evidence that the Russian government has begun a wholesale expulsion of the Jews from Poland” where 1,500,000 of them live.

1894: “Anti-Jew Riot In Poland” published today described how troops fired on a mob that was attacking Jews in Grajewo

1895: Two days after he has passed away, Henry Rothschild, the husband of Rebecca Rothschild with whom he had eight children was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1895: The third East Side Free Art Exhibition sponsored by the University Settlement Society and the Hebrew Educational Alliance will open today at the Hebrew Institute at East Broadway and Jefferson Street.

1898(16th of Iyar, 5658): Zvi Hermann Schapira, the mathematician born in Lithuania in 1840  who attended the First Zionist Congress and was the first to suggest the creation of what became the Jewish National Fund passed away today in Cologne.

1898: Private Roy Wiseman of Minneapolis and Private Charles Markowitz became U.S. soldiers today when the 14th Minnesota Voluntary Infantry was mustered into the United States Army.

1898: “The Triumph of Titus” published today provides a summary of information that first appeared in Open Court, a magazine specializing in philosophy, science and religion describing the celebration at Rome of the victory over Judea that included a display of “the sacred vessels of the temple,” the scourging and throttling “of Simon, the real leader” of the revolt and imprisonment for life of John.”

1899: George M. Appel began serving as Second Lieutenant in the Second U.S. Volunteer Engineers.

1899: “Jews True Patriots” published today described a speech given by Dr. Madison C. Peters which says that “history does not tell of braver men. After describing the leading role of European Jews in the military including Napoleon’s Marshal Massena and Albert Goldsmid, Sir Jacob Adolphus and Sir David Ximines of the British Army, he described the leading role of the Jews in the American military including Isaac Franks and Benjamin Moses in the Revolutionary War, Moses Albert Levy, Leon Dyer and Henry Seligson in the Mexican War, and a long list in the Civil War including Edward S. Soloon, Leopold Blumberg and Simon Levy and his three sons to name but a few. According to Dr. Peters, four thousand Jews served in the military during the just completed war with Spain including Sergeant Maurice Justh of the First California Jews, a regiment that included 100 Jews and seven Jewish Rough Riders whom Theodore Roosevelt praised for their “most astonishing courage.”

1899: According to a list published today the leadership of the Hebrew Infant Asylum includes President Ester Wallenstein, Solomon Japha, Maurice Untermyer, S.F. Bleyer, Robert J. Gerstler and A.N. Steinhart.

1900: Mandelbaum and Levine bought “three six-story flats on 8thAvenue between 57th and 58th Streets.

1901: In New York, “Israel Unterberg” and “Bella E. Epstein” gave birth Clarence Ephraim Unterberg the “textile engineer” and husband of Marjorie K. Unterberg.

1901: The Order of Ancient Maccabeans (also Maccabaeans), an Anglo-Jewish charity which was established in 1894 was registered today under the ‘Friendly Societies’ Act.”

1902: In Ainay-le-Château, Allier Marie (Siminovitch), an artist, and Solomon Lwoff, a psychiatrist gave birth to Andre Michael Lwoff, French microbiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  He passed away in 1994.

1903: New York Mayor Low is scheduled to attend tonight’s performance “The Destruction of Kishinieff” which is part of the effort to raise funds for the Jews of Kishineff who, along with their non-Jewish sympathizers have been under attack by mobs starting in late April.

1904: Five hundred forty-eight delegates, including “8 female delegates” attended “the Eighteenth Annual Convention of the Independent Order of Brith Abraham” which took place today in New York City.

1905(3rd of Iyar, 5665): After two days of rioting in Zhitomir (Russia) twenty Jews have been killed by the mob and an untold number have been injured while an additional ten Jews were killed in the village of Troyanov as they tried to come to the aid of their co-religionists.

1905(3rd of Iyar, 5665): Yaakov Shlomo Margalit, the son of Moshe Dov Ber Margalit and Taibe (Yona) Margalit passed away today in his native Petach Tikva.

1905: In a move that presaged the Righteous Gentiles of the Shoah, Nicholas Blinov, a Christian student, was killed when he came to the aid of the Jews of Zhitomir.

1906: “Trade School’s New Home” published described the opening of the new home of the Hebrew Technical School for Girls described as “The House Beautiful” which is a five story building  with “a gymnasium, auditorium for stage performances, a counting room and a dressmaking and millinery room.

1906: “The congregation of Temple Emanu-El unanimously extended a call tonight to the Rev. Dr. Judah Leon Magnes, rabbi of Temple Israel, to be associate rabbi of their temple with the Rev. Dr. Joseph Silverman.”

1907: “Immigration Commissioner R o b e r t Watchorn caused a stir at the eighty-second annual meeting of the American Tract Society by criticising the work of Dr. Shearers missionaries on Ellis Island, where they distributed tracts to Jew, Christian, and heathen immigrants alike immediately on their landing” saying that “a great many of our  immigrants are Hebrews who are on their way from persecution by one style of Christians and when they have Christian tracts – print in Hebrew – put in their hands, apparently with the approval of the United States government, they wonder what is going to happen to them here.”

1908: “An anti-Semitic demonstration” broke our during a debate in the Duma where Zamislovsky delivered “a rabid speech urging the immediate exclusion of Jews from the army”

1908: Today in the Duma, Delegate Roditcheff, the Constitutional Democratic leader defended the Jews saying that the congestion in the ghettos and inhuman of the Jews for centuries were the criminal causes for Jewish bodily defects” and that “the sole remedy was to lift the disabilities of the Jews.’

1909(17th of Iyar, 5669): Parashat Emor

1909: “New Light Cast Upon Old Egypt” published today provides a review of Professor Steindorff’s Baedericker guidebook that includes a chapter which “discusses the record which alone of all the multitudes in the hieroglyphic character contains the name of ‘Israel’”

1910: “The eighty-seventh annual meeting of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society was held today, and the report submitted by its President, Louis Stern, showed that the society is in better condition than at any time in its history.”

1911: Birthdate of Vienna native and refugee from Nazi Europe Rudolf Flesh, the holder of a PhD from Columbia and husband of Elizabeth Terpenning best known for his popular work Why Johnny Can’t Read.

https://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/19903-the-legacy-of-rudolf-flesch

1912:  In London, Baron Heyking, the Russian Consul-General published a letter in the Times “protesting against British denunciation” of ritual murder reportedly taking place in Russia.1912: Founding of The Paramount Company.  This giant of the motion picture industry began as a merger of 11 film rental bureaus. Among those involved were Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor.  Zukor would go on to become a dominant figure in the direction and production of movies.  He would eventually become the top executive of Paramount, another of the Jews "present at the birth" of the American film industry.  

1913: Birthdate of Solomon Joel Cohen, the Johannesburg native who went from being a hairdresser to an English actor and comedian known as Sid James.

1913: Today Iowa State Normal School (University of Northern Iowa) graduate Tom Taubman, the Cedar Falls, IA born son of William and Mary Taubman and the husband of Minnie Samuels began serving as the United States Marshal “for the district of South Dakota.”

1913: Dr. Moses Hyamson, Senior Dayan, or Chief Judge, of the Ecclesiastical Court of the United Synagogue of London, has been elected rabbi of the Congregation Orach Chaim, at Lexington Avenue and Ninety-Fifth Street. The new rabbi will receive a salary of $5,000. Hyamson succeeds Dr. Joseph Hertz who was chosen over Dr. Hyamson as the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.

1914: Eleanor, the daughter of Woodrow Wilson – the President who appointed the first Jew to serve as a Supreme Court Justice and was a supporter of Zionism- was married today in the White House

1915: At their convention in Memphis, Tennessee, the National Conference on Jewish Charities adopted a resolution creating a committee to conduct a survey of Oriental Jews in the United States.

1915: In Worcester, MA, Benjamin and Mary Meltzer gave birth to historian and author Milton Meltzer. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/books/25meltzer.html?mabReward=relbias:r&_r=0&action=click&adxnnl=1&region=searchResults&module=Search&url=http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&region=Masthead&pgtype=Homepage&module=SearchSubmit&contentCollection=Homepage&t=qry825#/milton

1915: “The Exchange Telegraph Company” today “received the following telegram from Copenhagen: ‘Berlin newspapers print the news of the sinking of the Lusitania in colossal type and hail the successful torpedoing of the ship as a new triumph for Germany’s naval policy.”

1916: It was reported today that Hugh Dorsay, one of the prosecutors in the Leo Frank case has announced his candidacy for Governor of Georgia.

1916: It was reported today that Henry Morgenthau, the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey was unable to speak at the dinner sponsored by the Jewish Charities of Brooklyn so Supreme Court Justice of Hugo Pan of Illinois filled in for him speaking on “Preparedness and the Jews.”

1916: During an investigation into allegations that Jews were being discriminated against when they tried to enlist in certain units of the New York National Guard Charles E. Klein testified today when “he had applied for membership in Battery D, Lieutenant Charles J. McCronan asked the nationality of his father and when Klein said he was Russian McCronan then asked if he was a Jew to which he replied “I am” and then asked what difference it made.

1917: It was reported today that during the forced deportation of Jews from Palestine “two Jews were hanged at the entrance to Tel Aviv, the object being, it was explained to indicate the fate in store for any Jews who might be so foolish as to resist the Turkish order for evacuation.”

1917: It was reported today the young men from the Jewish settlements who had organized to protect refugees from bands of robbers were arrested by Turkish authorities and imprisoned “after suffering considerable maltreatment.”

1918:Vilmos Vázsonyi, who championed the recognition of the Jewish religion by the state completed his second and final term in office as Minister of Justice for Hungary.

1918: It was reported today that “the peace treaty signed by Germany and her allies with Rumania consists of eight clauses” one of which provides for “equality of all religions in Rumania” and incudes a provision that Jews will have the same rights as all other Rumanian subjects.

1919: In Tel Aviv, David Remez (born David Drabkin), one of those who signed the Israeli Declaration of independence and his wife gave birth to Aharon Remez, who flew combat missions with the RAF in World War II before becoming the second commander of Israel’s fledgling Air Force serving from 1948 through 1950.  He went on to a successful career as a “civil servant, politician and diplomat. 

1919: Mrs. M.M. Straus, pianist Mrs. Sidney Pollak and violinist Elinor Rose Isaacs are scheduled to provide musical entertainment at the meeting of the Deborah and Deborah Juniors in the Sinai Social Center.

1920: Birthdate of Saul Bass the New York native who designed motion picture title sequences for films such “The Man with the Golden Arm” and “North by Northwest” and corporate logs for Bell Telephone System and United Airlines and was the husband of fellow artist Elaine Makatura Bass

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/27/movies/saul-bass-75-designer-dies-made-art-out-of-movie-titles.html

1921(30th of Nisan, 5681): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1921: High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel agrees to the appointment of Haj Amin al Husseini, a leading Arab nationalist, as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Muslim Council. Samuel rejects protests by the Jewish leadership.

1921: Birthdate of Allard Roen, the native of Cleveland, Duke University baseball player and WW II Navy veteran who was the husband of Evelyn Roen and “Managing Director of the Desert Inn and the Stardust Resort and Casino in Paradise, Nevada.”

http://lasvegassun.com/news/2008/sep/01/desert-inn-stardust-chief-helped-integrate-las-veg/

1922: Louis Stern, President of Stern Brothers, which became the largest retail store in the United States in 1910, underwent a major operation at Mt. Sinai Hospital just prior to leaving for Paris.

1922: In Blackpool, England, Cyril and Ann Constant Levy gave birth to Reginald Levy, the Sabena pilot who would play a key role in thwarting an Arab attempt to hijack his aircraft.

1924(4thof Iyar, 5684): Seventy-five year old Prague born photographer Leopold Adler passed away today.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58646687@N08/11952366745

1924: In Beilsko, Poland, business executive Julius Weissmann and his wife Helene (nee Mueckenbrunn) Weissmann gave birth to Gerda Weissmann who gained fame as Gerda Weissmann Klein, author of the autobiographical account of the Holocaust All but My Life which “was adapted for the 1995 short film, One Survivor Remembers, which received an Academy Award and an Emmy Award, and was selected for the National Film Registry.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/klein-gerda-weissmann

1925(14thof Iyar, 5685): Pesach Sheni

1926: In Queens, New York, insurance and clothes sales man Max Rickles and the former Etta Feldman gave birth to Donald Jay “Don Rickles.  After graduating from high school, Rickles served in the United States Navy.  After World War II he began working as a comic in a variety of venues.  Eventually, he turned to the "insult comedic" mode which has become his stock and trade.  His big break came in 1957 when Frank Sinatra caught his act and loved it.  Rickles also has numerous film and television appearances to his credit.  According to his semi-official biography, one of his proudest accomplishments was the construction of a gym named in his honor (he raised the money) at Temple Sinai in Los Angeles.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/arts/television/don-rickles-dead-comedian.html?_r=1

1927: In Philadelphia, Nacham Lerner and “the former Goldie Levine” gave birth to documentarian Murray Lerner. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/movies/murray-lerner-who-filmed-musics-biggest-stars-dies-at-90.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1928: Birthdate of Theodore “Ted” Sorensen, speech writer for John F. Kennedy who “helped” to write Profiles In Courage.  Sorensen’s mother was a Russian Jew.  His was father was Christian.

1929:Today “through an agreement signed with Albert Kahn by President of Amtorg Saul G. Bron, the Soviet government contracted the Albert Kahn firm to design the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, the first tractor plant in the USSR

1933: Lucienne Bolch took the pictures which “are the sole visual record of the great Diego Rivera's ill-fated Rockefeller Center fresco with its doomed depiction of Lenin” known as “Man at the Crossroads.”

(As reported by Robert McG. Thomas, Jr.)

1933: Birthdate of Alfred “Al” Lerner the New York born son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who became Chairman of the Board of MBNA and the owner of the Cleveland (football) Browns.

1934: Eleanor Neyens was born in Dubuque County, Iowa.  As Eleanor Schueller she became the mother of Deb Schueller who as Deb Levin is responsible for the technology and patience that makes these daily offerings possible.

1934(23rd of Iyar, 5694): Forty-eight year old Harry Louis Falk, the Cincinnati born son of Louis and Hattie Falk and husband of “Miriam Martha Danziger Falk” passed away today after which he was buried in the Metairie Cemetery in Orleans Parish, LA.

1934: Birthdate of Leonard Hubert “Lennie” Hoffman, the South African born British barrister who became a leading Jurist.

1935(5th of Iyar, 5695): Sixty-eight year old Vilna born American journalist I. Leon Dalidansky who in 1906 came to the United States where wrote for the Jewish Daily News while raising two children – Cecilia and Ezra – with his wife Mary passed away today.

1935: “The plight of thousands of young women refugees arriving in Palestine from Germany and other countries was outlined today at luncheon of the Women’s League for Palestine” held at the Hotel Astor.  The speakers appealed for additional funds to provide homes for these refugees.  Mrs. Albert Einstein and Mrs. Elisheeva Kaplan, Chairman of the Working Women’s Council of Palestine were guests of honor.

1936: Brooklyn District Attorney William F.X. Geoghan said that “nearly $2,000,000 in funds may have passed through the hands of” of Rabbi Zeida Schmellner’s 36 year old secretary Mary Berd who has been charged with grand larceny”

1936: Emperor Hailie Selassie of Ethiopia, who has been forced to flee his native land because Italy has conquered it, arrived in Haifa aboard the British cruiser Enterprise. The Emperor whose official title includes the appellation “Lion of Judah” and his royal household then took the train to Jerusalem where they were greeted by a cheering crowd. When he heard the crowds chanting “Long Live Ethiopia” and “Long Live Haile Selassie” the exiled monarch broke into tears.  [Editor’s Note:  Ethiopia and the Jewish people each shared the dubious honor of being early victims of the Axis and the world turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to both of them.  Also, the British officer Orde Wingate played a role in the lives of the Jews and the Ethiopians.  Wingate served a tour in Palestine where he helped the Zionists self-defense forces in their fight against the rioting Arabs.  During World War II, Wingate played a leading role in liberating Ethiopia from its Axis occupiers.]

1936: “Emergency measures were invoked to preserve order following the decision of 150 Arab leaders to launch a campaign of civil disobedience, including a rigid boycott of everything Jewish.

1936: As Arab violence continued “a Jewish-owned envelope factory at Atlith was set on fire” today “and Jewish officials who work in the city of Jaffa were instructed not to report to work.”

1936: Today in Geneva, “the first Jewish world was convoked officially for August 8th.”

1936: In Cairo, “authoritative sources said tonight that two companies of British infantry totally 300 men had been sent to Palestine as reinforcements for troops at Jerusalem and other cities” as Arab unrest and violence continued.

1936: Otto A. Rosalsky, a senior judge of the court of General Sessions and an active member of the Jewish community has an operation today for a minor ailment at Mt. Sinai Hospital – an operation that would not prevent his death a few days later.

1936: In Warsaw, “police said they had seized a quantity of powerful explosives” after arresting 100 “anti-Semitic extremists today for an alleged plot to bomb Jewish restaurants and night clubs.”

1937: Mrs. Edward Jacobs who had returned from a fact finding tour in Palestine last week said today that Jewish settlers felt that British should be doing a better job of protecting them from Arab attackers since they had entered the country under the terms of the Mandate which included the terms of the Balfour Declaration.  She said that the vast majority of the 400,000 Jewish settlers were neither discouraged nor willing to abandon their efforts. Finally, she said that it might be necessary to divide the country into Jewish and Arab “zones of influence to minimize friction.”

1937: Several Jews were beaten today during riots at Grabow.

1938(7th of Iyar, 5698): Sixty-six year old Birmingham born architect turned set designer Sidney Ullman passed away today in Los Angeles.

1938: The Jerusalem Postreported that one of the top Arab terrorist leaders in the Hebron area, Issa Battat, was shot and killed by police near Beit Govrin.

1938: In Port Chester, NY, Dorothy and James Stewart gave birth to Alice Stewart who gained fame as Alice Stewart Trillin, the wife of author Calvin Trillin

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/us/alice-trillin-63-educator-author-and-muse-is-dead.html

1939(19th of Iyar, 5699): Ten days before his 54thbirthday, former Reichstag member Kurt Löwenstein who had founded the German socialist organization the Falcons and the husband of chemist Mara Kerwel passed away today in Paris.

1939: In St. Louis, “Alma Weil Michaels (née Weil), a playwright and theatrical producer and Ephraim London, a civil rights attorney” gave birth to “feminist” Sheila Babs Michaels. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/us/sheila-michaels-ms-title-dies-at-78.html

1939: Admiral Sir Barry Edward Domville the famous British naval officer who was among those who expressed pro-German and anti-Semitic views during the 1930’s wrote an endorsement for The Case For Germany by Dr. Arthur Pillans which praises Hitler and National Socialist while attacking the Jewish people. (Editor’s Note – Seven decades after WW II, many are unaware of the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic views held among many in the upper-echelon of British society)

1940: Broadway producer Julian Goldman, the inventor of contract bridge and a confidant of FDR met with the President in the White House today.

1940: Birthdate of Canadian political leader Irwin Cotler who has proven to be a proponent of human rights and a staunch foe of “the new anti-Semitism.”

1941: In response to the pro-Nazi coup led by Rashid Ali which would include a Pogrom in June, British forces “began their assault on Rutbah Fort” today.

1942: The Battle of the Coral Sea, which was the first naval battle in which airpower was responsible for the outcome and which stopped the Japanese advance towards Australia came to an end today.

1942: Muriel Rukeyser was among the recipients of awards presented by The National Institute of Arts and Letters http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/08/1942/muriel-rukeyser

1942: “In This Our Life,” the movie adaptation of the novel with a screenplay by Howard Koch and music by Max Steiner was released today in the United States.

1942: “Sunday Punch” a comedy with a script co-authored by Fay Kanin and featuring Sam Levene as “Roscoe” and Leo Gorcey as “Biff” was released today in the United States.

1943 (3rd of Iyar, 5703): On Shabbat, The Leaders of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising meet death as the flame of resistance flickers out. The massive German forces that had been brought into the former Warsaw Ghetto to fight the Jewish rebels burned the ghetto street by street. Only by torching the buildings could the fighters be flushed out and forced to seek another place to hide and fight. Terror and inferno raged in the improvised underground bunkers as the Germans made the fighters come out in the only way possible-by hurling grenades into the bunkers or by pumping in tear gas. The ZOB command bunker, staffed by Mordechai Anielewicz and other leaders of the resistance, fell on May 8.   Mordecai Anielewiczhad been born in 1919.  He had accomplished the seemingly impossible twice.  First, he united the various factions in the ghetto and then conducted an armed resistance against what had been the world's greatest killing machine.  Anielewicz was an ardent Zionist and his memory lives on at a Kibbutz established by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. With the destruction of the Great Synagogue on Tlomackie Street, outside the confines of the ghetto the German commander General Juergen Stroop bragged that "there is no longer a Jewish quarter in Warsaw." On May 19, Warsaw was declared Judenrein. But this handful of rabble had actually engaged in armed combat with the Nazis for a longer period of time than some of the professional armies of Europe.

1944: An internal memo of this week from the United States Government War Refugee Board states that it would not be wise to transport Jewish refugees to Afghanistan, as it is a "fanatically Moslem country" with a "primitive economy and low standard of living." Though Jews live in Afghanistan, they are "not popular".

1944: Keel was laid down for the HMS Springer, a submarine which be sold to Israel in 1958 and be renamed “Tanin” which Hebrew for Crocodile

1945: Birthdate of Bruce Mark Cohen one of three children of Emil Cohen a New York State Supreme Court Justice. Cohen became a rabbi serving Mishkan Israel in New Haven, Connecticut. He worked to promote peace through better understanding of ordinary Jews and Arabs. Along with Farhat Agbaria he found Interns for Peace.

1945: As of today. an additional 53 of those who revolted at Sobibor “had died of other causes between October 14, 1943, the day of the revolt” and today.

1945: Hilde Nathan “was freed from” Theresienstadat “after it was liberated by the Soviet Army today.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/over-200-israelis-attend-funeral-of-holocaust-survivor-they-did-not-know/

1945: V.E. (Victory in Europe) Day; the surrender Germany signed on May 7, 1945, goes into effect.  Unfortunately, this did mean an immediate end to the fighting.  Units of the SS continued to resist and German U-Boats, once they got the order to surface, were often scuttled by their crews instead of making for the ports designated by the victorious allies.

1945: “Dutch teacher and child psychologist Bloeme Evers-Emden was liberated by the Soviets at Liebau”

1945: “In a pastoral letter”  Conrad Gröber, the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Freiburg “declared that no one should succumb to any extreme anti-Semitism. In his eyes the Holocaust was wrong because it forced the Jews into a defensive position from which they could cause the State greater harm than many a powerful enemy army.”

1945: The U.S. Army competed an investigation into allegations that soldiers under the Command of Colonel Felix L Sparks had killed Nazi guards at Dachau after they had surrendered came to an end.

1945: With the end of World War II, the question of what do with the refugees at Fort Ontario most of whom were Jewish – repatriation or settlement in the United States – became a pressing matter that had to be resolved.

1945: “Sixty million Americans tuned in to hear ‘On A Note of Triumph,’ narrated by Martin Gabel, Norman Corwin's radio masterpiece marking the end of World War II in Europe” which was “lauded by Carl Sandburg as "one of the all-time great American poems," it was the most listened-to radio drama in U.S. history.”

1946: The Dov Hoz, carrying 675 Ma’apilim and the Eliahu Golomb carrying 339 Ma’apillim left La Spezia bound for Palestine.”

1946: “The Dark Corner,” a film “based on a story in Good Housekeeping by Leo Rosten” with music by Emil Newman was released today in the United States.

1946: U.N. Assistant Secretary General Benjamin Cohen of Chile was among the speakers who participated at Hunter College’s World Friendship exercises which were designed to mark the first anniversary of the end of WW II in Europe.

1947(18th of Iyar, 5707): Lag B’Omer

1947:  Birthdate of H. Robert Horvitz, American biologist on the faculty of M.I.T. who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in in Physiology or Medicine.

1947: Leonard Bernstein has been invited to conduct the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra at the second International Music Festival which is scheduled to begin today in Prague.

1947:As the international community began its deliberations that Jews hoped would lead to the creation of their state, Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, a Reform Rabbi from Cleveland Ohio, “appeared before the United Nations as a spokesman for the Jewish Agency and formally voiced the demands of his people for national recognition and for the right to reestablish a national state in the ancestral home.”  Silver had worked “closely with David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Shertok in preparing the presentation of the Jewish Agency.” Silver, who was head of the American section of the Jewish agency “spoke first because the plane bringing Ben-Gurion from Palestine was delayed. According to David Geffen, Silver concluded his speech with these words. “The Jewish people places great hope upon the outcome of the deliberations of this great body. It has faith in its collective sense of justice and fairness; and in the high ideals which inspire it.“We are an ancient people, and though we have often, on the long, hard road which we have travelled, been disillusioned, we have never been disheartened... The Jewish people belongs in this society of nations. The representatives of the Jewish people of Palestine should sit in your midst – the representatives of the people and of the land which gave to mankind spiritual and ethical values, inspiring human personalities, and sacred texts which are your treasured possessions.”“Twenty-five years ago a similar international organization [League of Nations] recognized the historic claims of the Jewish people, sanctioned our program and set us firmly on the road of realization... The Jewish people was confirmed in its right to rebuild its national life in its historic home. It eagerly seized the long-hoped-for opportunity and proceeded to rebuild that ancient land of Israel in a manner which evoked the admiration of the whole world. It has made the wilderness blossom as a rose.”

1947(18th of Iyar, 5707): “A Jewish settler named Joel Drubin, 21 years old, was shot dead today” when he and two other settlers were attacked by 8 Arabs in an area between Kfar Uriah and Hulda “two Jewish settlements southeast of Tel Aviv.  The Arabs got away and the British were unable to find them.

1948 Nazi collaborator V-Mann Antonius van de Waals sentenced to death.

1949: “The Rev. Theodore Lewis of Dublin, Ireland, was formally installed today as Rabbi of the Congregation Jeshuat Israel at Newport, R.I.in the historic 186-year-old synagogue.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/05/09/84563448.html?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0&pageNumber=18

1950: An announcement was made today at Geneva that “Israel has accepted the proposal of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine to proceed with direct negotiations with the Arab states while the commission acts as mediator for the settlement of all outstanding issues.”  However, this announcement by Israel may not immediately lead to negotiations since the Arabs have pre-conditioned their participation on the demand that Jewish state must recognize the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel.

1951: Today, the concert at New York Town Hall was “devoted exclusively” to the music of Marion Bauer.

1952: Birthdate of New York born British academic Anna Brechta Sapir Abulafia, the Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that, the Histadrut Executive unanimously to accept Arab workers into its Trade Unions starting on May 15, 1953.

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that jobs for 40,000 workers were envisaged following the approval, by the Knesset Finance Committee, of a special IL70m “Development Budget.”

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that, approximately 800 persons were killed in traffic accidents during the past four years.

1953: The Jerusalem Postreported that, Syria had appealed to all Arab States to tighten the economic blockade of Israel as "the best way to kill Israel peacefully."

1954: In Amsterdam Hans Ever and Bloeme Evers-Emden gave birth to Rabbi Raphael Evers, exactly nine years to the day after Bloeme had been liberated from a concentration camp by the Soviets.

1955: “Make Me an Offer,” the movie version Wolf Nankowitz’s novel of the same name was released today in the United Kingdom.

1956: Aaron Albert “Al” Silvera played his last game as an outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds.

1957: “Saint Joan” the movie version of the play by the same name directed and produced by Otto Preminger with music by Mischa Spoliansky and title sequences and theatrical posters by Saul Bass was released today in the United States.

1958: In Westport, CT, Howard Newmark and Gilda Gourlay (née Rames) gave birth to Brooks Phillip Victor Newmark, the Conservative MP and Cabinet member and son-in-law of historian John Keegan who left Parliament under a cloud of personal scandal.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-29585203

1959(30th of Nisan, 5719): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1959(30th of Nisan, 5719): Fifty-eight year old Lithuanian born Yeshiva University professor Dr. Julius B. Maller the holder of doctorates from Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary and husband of Rose Ruth Aronowitz with whom he raised three children – Julie, Jeanne and Michael – passed away today while serving as the “director of research and statistics in the New York State Department of Audit and Control.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/05/09/89195990.pdf

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/maller-julius-bernard

1960: While exploring caves in the Judean desert an archaeological expedition led Yigael Yadin discovers fourteen letters written by Simon Bar-Kokhba, leader of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 132 - 135 CE. One letter is written on wood and the rest are written on papyrus. Bar Kokhba is called Shimon Ben Kossiba in the letters. Once again, archeology helps to establish another of what some had called the “myths of Jewish history.”

1960:Gideon Hausner is appointed attorney general in Israel.

1960: ABC broadcast “In a Memory of a Son” an episode of “The Rebel” directed by Irvin Kershner.

1960: Gertrude Berg, better known as “Molly Goldberg” appeared for the second time as the “mystery guess” on “What’s My Line?”

1960(11thof Iyar, 5720): Sixty-two year old Sir Hersch Lauterpacht passed away.

http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/ajil55&div=12&id=&page=

1962(4thof Iyar, 5722): Yom HaZikaron

1962: During his address to the nation today, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion will discuss the plans for “a special compulsory savings plan that will absorb some 60,000,000 Israeli providing for repayment over a five to seven year period.” (JTA)

1962: “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum,” a Stephen Sondheim musical with a “book” co-authored by Larry Gelbart starring Zero Mostel and featuring Jack Gilford and Ruth Kobart with lighting design by Jean Rosenthal opened today at the Alvin Theatre.

1964: Birthdate of Melissa Gilbert, child star on “Little House on the Prairie.”

1965: Gary Lewis’ “Count Me In” reached number two on Hot 100’s list today.

1966: CBS broadcast a television adaptation of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” produced by Daniel Melnick and David Susskind, co-starring Lee J. Cobb and George Segal and featuring Bernie Kopell and Gene Wilder.

1967(28thof Nisan, 5727): Yom HaShoah

1970: In Montreal, documentary film-maker Bonnie Sherr Klein, who is best known for her anti-pornography film Not a Love Story and Michael Klein, is a physician and a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility gave birth to Naomi Klein Canadian journalist, author and activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.

1972 Four Palestinian terrorists from Black September boarded Sabena Flight 571 from Vienna to Tel Aviv. Twenty minutes after taking off from a scheduled stop, the hijackers took control of the flight and instructed the captain to continue as planned to Israel’s Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport).  Less than 24 hours later, Israeli commandos, among them today’s most prominent Israeli leaders launched a daring operation to rescue the flight’s passengers and retake the plane.

1972: Fiftieth birthday of airline pilot Reginald Levy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/europe/05levy.html

1973(6th of Iyar, 5733):  Eighty-two-year-old retired State Supreme Court Justice Isadore Bookstein, the Albany trained attorney and husband of Edith Friedman passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/09/archives/isadore-bookstein-exstate-justice-82.html

1974: ITV broadcast the 26th and final episode of The World at War” a documentary about WW II “created by Jeremy Isaacs” and “directed by David Elstein.”

1974: “Kazablan” an “Israeli musical film directed by Menahem Golan and written by Menahem Golan and Haim Hefer starring Yehoram Gaon, Efrat Lavie, Arieh Elias, Etti Grotes and Yehuda Efroni was released today in the United States by MGM.

1976: After only seven performances, the curtain came down on “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” a musical created by Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.

1978(1st of Iyar, 5738): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1978: The Jerusalem Postreported that in New York, the Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, appealed to the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, to "renew the spirit of our talks in Jerusalem"

1978: The Jerusalem Postreported that the New York police estimated that a crowd of 750,000, gathered in and around the Central Park, at an event which marked Israel's 30th anniversary, and listened to a 20 minute address by the Prime Minister.

1978: ABC TV airs "The Stars Salute Israel at 30" in honor of Israel's thirtieth Independence Day.

1980: Friends and family, including Elsa Leibler and Max Stern are scheduled to mark the passing of Sue Freedman Mintz, the wife of Jack Mintz and the mother of Terry Scharf and Dr. David Mintz at a pre-funeral gathering this evening.

1980: Three months after being released in the United States, “Saturn 3” a sci-fi film directed and produced by Stanley Donen, starring Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel and with music by Elmer Bernstein was released in the United Kingdom

1981: “Second-Hand Hearts” a comedy filmed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler was released in the United States today.

1981: Sixty-one year old Hamburg, Germany native George Saloman who in 1937 came to the United States where he was a member of the American Jewish Committee and wrote “on Jewish subjects” passed away today in Great Neck, NY.

1981(4th of Iyar, 5741): Eighty-three year old Uri Zvi Greenberg, a Hebrew and Yiddish poet, fighter for the independence of Israel and a member of the Knesset passed away today. “A representative of the new wave of 20th-century Jewish poetry, Mr. Greenberg drew on the tradition of biblical prophecy to write poems combining personal experience with an impersonal Jewish messianic destiny. Born in 1898 in Galicia, he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I and later emigrated to Palestine. He published his first volume of poetry in Yiddish in 1912.  Mr. Greenberg served in the  Irgun Zvai Leumi, a and as a member of Israel’s parliament for one term.

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

1981: In “Efforts To Rehabilitate Crown Heights Apartment Houses,” Alan Oser described efforts to dealing with challenge of providing affordable housing in a neighborhood so closely connected with the Chabad movement.

1982: Shimon Peres meets with a dozen leaders of the Labor Party to report on a plan conceived by Defense Minister Arik Sharon for a massive military operation in Lebanon aimed eliminating the PLO presence and influence from that country.

1982: The original London production of They're Playing Our Song a musical with a book by Neil Simon, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, and music by Marvin Hamlischwhich which had opened in October, 1980 closed today

1982(15thof Iyar, 5742): Forty-nine Sue Pritzker, the widow of Donald Pritzker who had died ten years ago, passed away today.

1983: Mr. and Mrs. Harry M. Rosenfeld of Albany have announced the engagement of their daughter, Susan Margot Rosenfeld, to Dr. Stuart Wachter, son of Mr. and Mrs. Irving Wachter of Flushing, Queens

1984(6thof Iyar, 5744): Eighty-five year old CCNY basketball star Nathan “Nat” Krinsky  the “father of Paul L. Krinsky, former superintendent of the United States Merchant Marine Academy, and Edward M. Krinsky, former Director of Operations for the United States Basketball League” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/08/obituaries/nat-krinsky-all-american-at-city-college-and-a-coach.html

1985(23rdof Iyar, 5645): Seventy-seven year old Notre Dame, U of Wisconsin and Brooklyn Dodgers football player Robert Sherman Halperin, a decorated WW II Naval officer, Bronze Medal sailor and CEO of Commercial Light Company passed away today after which he was buried next to his wife at Arlington National Cemetery.

https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/ha/bob-halperin-1.html

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-05-09/news/8501290068_1_mr-halperin-palm-springs-landing

1985: “The Dewey House, also referred to as Building 29, North Chicago VA Medical Center, an historic building” designed by David Adler was added to the National Register of Historic Places today.

1986: NBC broadcast the final episode of season 4 of Family Ties, a sitcom created by Gary David Goldberg.

1986(29thof Nisan, 5746): Emanuel “Manny” Shinwell, the trade unionist who was elevated to the peerage as Lord Shinwell passed away today at the age of 101.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/08/obituaries/lord-shinwell-101-unionist-who-rose-to-british-cabinet.html

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-05-10/sports/sp-5046_1_lord-shinwell

http://spartacus-educational.com/TUshinwell.htm

1986(29thof Nisan, 5746): Eighty-five year Ukrainian born American sculptor and watercolorist Eugenie Gershoy passed away today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenie_Gershoy#/media/File:Archives_of_American_Art_-_Eugenie_Gershoy_-_3049.jpg

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-eugenie-gershoy-13135

1988: Today, on Mother’s Day the Feminist Taskforce (FTF) convened a conference in Philadelphia on Women and Poverty” during which a “panel discussion led by Adrienne Rich addressed the reality of high poverty rates among all women and discussed how stereotypes of Jewish wealth work to hide the poverty many Jewish women struggle with.”

1991(25th of Iyar, 5751):Rudolf Serkin, one of the world's great concert pianists passed away at the age of 88. The cause of death was cancer. A lanky man once described as looking "like a benign and slightly befuddled chemistry professor," Mr. Serkin performed for much of the 20th century. He made his concert debut in 1915, at age 12, and had his last major concert in 1988.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/10/obituaries/rudolf-serkin-88-concert-pianist-dies.html

1992: After having premiered last year in Portugal, “Wild Orchid II: Two Shades of Blue” directed by Zalman King who also wrote the script, was released today in the United States.

1993(17thof Iyar, 5753): Parashat Emor

1993(17thof Iyar, 5753: Eighty-six year old Brooklyn native Irving Philip Kartell the St. John’s University trained lawyer, “an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1947 to 1953” and the Justice of the State of Supreme Court in Brooklyn who “ruled in favor of women bus drivers in a landmark discrimination case while raising two children –James and Karren – with his wife, the former Leonore Sweedler” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/10/obituaries/irving-p-kartell-86-new-york-state-justice.html

1993(17th of Iyar, 5753): Avram Davidson passed away.  Born in 1923, Avram Davidson is considered by some to be "one of the most original, charming, neglected and undervalued writers of our time.” A self-taught, bearded Orthodox Jewish, Davidson's work started with science fiction and then moved into more extreme areas of fantasy.  Readers who like him compare his works to Rudyard Kipling, Isaac B Singer and S.J. Perelman.

1995: According to reports published today stamps portraying the comic strips “Lil’l Abner” and Rube Goldberg Inventions” were two of the twenty classic strips being issued by the U.S. Postal Service “in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the American comic strip.”

1996(19th of Iyar, 5756): Ninety-five year old Serge Chermayeff, the only Jew to chair the architecture departments at both Yale and Harvard passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/10/arts/serge-chermayeff-95-architect-taught-at-harvard-and-yale.html

1999: “Rabbi Admits Theft Charge” published today described a “massive fraud” in which Rabbi Jacob Lustig of Cincinnati’s Kneseth Israel Congregation reported that their bingo game had brought in half a million dollars between 1996 and 1997 when in fact the games had earned two million dollars.

2000: “The national labor federation staged a one-hour warning strike today to protest provisions in the proposed tax package, which will be submitted to the parliament next month” “but in a rare show of cohesion, Prime Minister Ehud Barak's coalition cabinet endorsed the long-awaited tax plan with a 17-0 vote with two ministers abstaining.”
2001:
The BBC broadcast “The British Wars” the 8th episode of “A History of Britain a documentary series written and presented by Simon Schama” which began its second season tonight.

2001: Chandra Levy’s aunt, Linda Zamsky calls D.C. police Detective Durant and tells him that her niece had been having an affair with Congressman Gary Condit.

2001: Thirteen year old Yaakov “Koby” Mandell and fourteen year old Yosef Ishran were kidnapped while hiking near their village and subsequently brutally murdered.

2002: In a column entitled “The Politics of Victimhood,” Todd Gitlin makes the argument that “victimhood has become a default position for Jews and Palestinians alike – with bloody consequences for both peoples.”

2002(26th of Iyar, 5762):A Palestinian terrorist detonated a suitcase packed with explosives in a crowded gambling and billiards club near Tel Aviv, killing at least 15 people and wounding 58. The attack apparently was timed to coincide with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to the United States, where he met with President George W. Bush and other administration officials to discuss a new proposal for ending the conflict.

2003: The 19th Israel Film Festival opens in Chicago with the premiere of A Trumpet in the Wadi

2003: “According to testimony gathered by journalist Philippe Broussard for today’s issue of Le Monde” Saddam Hussein’s “regime removed most the discriminatory anti-Jewish laws.”

2004(17th of Iyar, 5764): Parashat Emor

2004: At Congregation Beth Israel, in West Hartford, CT. Rabbi Stephen Fuchs officiated at the wedding 31 year old Syracuse graduate Marisa Blake Pearlman, the daughter of Nancy and Robert Pearlman and 39 year old Syracuse grad Scot Benjamin Lerner, a real estate leasing and marketing specialist at the Max Capital Management Corporation in New York.

2005: The New York Timesincluded reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950” by Mark Mazower and a 75th anniversary edition of “Civilization and its Discontents by Sigmund Freud.

2006: Pulitzer prize winning author David  Remnick gave an interview on The Daily Show to promote his book “Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker.”

2006: “The Communists Who Saved The Jewish State” published today describes a little known aspect (at least in the West) of the “miracle” that made it possible for the Jewish David to defeat the Arab Goliath.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/the-communists-who-saved-the-jewish-state-1.187221

2006: Germany's national Holocaust memorial has drawn an estimated 3.5 million visitors in the year since it was inaugurated according to figures made public today.

2007: Dr. Tamara Levitz presents "Kurt Weill's Kol Nidre and Jewish Memory" at New York’s Center for Jewish History. Tamara Levitz, associate professor at UCLA, and currently a visiting professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, explores Kurt Weill's use of the Kol Nidre melody in three Jewish works composed in American exile: The Eternal Road; We Will Never Die; and A Flag is Born.

2007: “Paula Abdul's second greatest-hits CD, Greatest Hits: Straight Up!, was released by Virgin Records” today.

2007: “The J.A.P. Show, Jewish American princesses of Comedy” is performed at Actors Temple Theatre in New York City.

2007: Belgian Prime Minster Guy Verhofstadt publicly apologized for Belgian authorities’ involvement in the deportation of Jews to Nazi extermination camps during World War II.  The apology came on the day that the government-backed report “Submissive Beligium was published.  It lays bare the responsibility of high-ranking officials and municipalities in collaborating with the the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

2007: The Associated Press reported today that researchers claim they’ve found Herod’s tomb, a find that could provide insights into one of the Bible's most reviled figures.

 

“Under a baking sun, pieces of limestone carved with borders of rosettes and geometrical designs lay in three excavated pits Tuesday — a desert site Israeli archaeologists say is the tomb of King Herod, who ruled the Holy Land when Christ was born.The find, which could provide insights into one of the Bible's most reviled yet influential figures, includes hundreds of pieces of an ornate sarcophagus, but no bones and no inscription that would seal the identification.Although the tomb was shattered and empty, leaders of the Israeli team that unearthed it said Tuesday they will dig on in the hope of finding jewelry, other artifacts or even the biblical monarch's remains. Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer said he has been leading the search for Herod's tomb at the king's winter palace in the Judean desert, in an Israeli-controlled part of the West Bank south of Jerusalem, for 35 years.Last month, his team started unearthing limestone fragments, from which emerged the picture of an ornately carved sarcophagus with decorative urns of a type never before found in the Holy Land."It's a sarcophagus we don't just see anywhere," Netzer told reporters at the university. "It is something very special."The complete sarcophagus would have been about nine feet long, the university said. Herod was the Jewish proxy ruler of the Holy Land under imperial Roman occupation from 37 B.C. His most famous construction project was expanding the Jewish Second Temple in Jerusalem. Remnants of his extensive building work in Jerusalem are still visible in Jerusalem's Old City, and he undertook major construction projects in Caesaria, Jericho, the hilltop fortress of Masada and elsewhere. At the excavation site, on the steep, rocky slopes of a cone-shaped hill 2,230 feet high, Netzer's assistant, Yaakov Kalmar, said that an account of Herod's funeral by the first-century historian Josephus Flavius left little doubt that it took place at Herodium. The newly discovered tomb was regal in its opulence. "We have here all the attributes of a royal funeral," Kalmar said. "We didn't find inscriptions so far... The work is not finished." The site sits halfway up the hill, atop a warren of tunnels and water cisterns built to serve the palace at the summit. Stephen Pfann, an American expert in the Second Temple period at the University of the Holy Land, called the find a "major discovery by all means," but said the lack of an inscription hindered full verification. "We're moving in the right direction. It will be clinched once we have an inscription that bears his name," said Pfann, who did not participate in Netzer's dig. Eric Myers of Duke University, who has excavated in the Holy Land, said initial descriptions of the tomb pointed to its authenticity as belonging to Herod. "We know he was buried at Herodium," he said by telephone. "It's a significant find after a long search. "Myers said that among key clues were that the sarcophagus was placed on a raised platform rather than in the underground tombs used for those of lesser rank, and that in accordance with Jewish religious law, it was not decorated with any human image. "It sounds as if Herod was respectful of his Jewish tradition right up to the end," he said. David Owen, a biblical historian and archaeologist at Cornell University who has done extensive field work in Israel, was not surprised by the find."That's where Josephus says he was buried," said Owen. "He built that entire palatial complex and there are few doubts that his tomb would be there." The Herod of the Bible and of Christian tradition was a bloodthirsty megalomaniac, who flew into a paranoid frenzy when he encountered the three wise men on their way to Bethlehem with gifts for the baby Jesus, and telling of the birth of a new king of Israel. "Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceedingly wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under..." (Matthew 2:16). The biblical massacre figures in paintings such as Peter Paul Rubens' 17th-century "Massacre of the Innocents." However the account, does not appear in other Gospels, and experts are not convinced of its accuracy, especially the implications of mass infanticide. Some believe the decree applied only to Bethlehem, a small town at the time, where there may have been as few as 15 toddlers. Historians do agree that toward the end of his reign Herod slaughtered many political rivals and perceived plotters against him, among them one of his 10 wives and three of his sons. Josephus says that as the elderly Herod lay riddled with disease, he ordered the cream of the local Jewish aristocracy to be executed on his demise, so that his passing would bring widespread and genuine mourning. After Herod's death, Herodium became a stronghold for Jewish rebels fighting Roman occupation, and the site suffered significant battle damage before it was conquered and finally destroyed by Roman forces in A.D. 71, a year after they destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Kalmar said the sarcophagus could have been destroyed during Roman attacks or smashed by the rebels, who reviled the memory of Herod as a Roman puppet. "We know that Herod had a lot of enemies," he said. Roi Porat, another of Netzer's assistants on the digs, said it was possible that the Jews removed Herod's remains after his tomb was reduced to rubble.

 

2007: Tight-end Michael Andrew "Mike" Seidman signed with Indianapolis Colts after having been cut by the Carolina Panthers.

2008: In an ongoing program designed to share Jewish culinary traditions Hillel offers another cooking class taught by Cordell Braverman of Cooking Cottage

2008:In Rockville, Maryland Joyce Antler, a professor of Jewish history and culture discusses You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of the Jewish Mother (recently published in paperback) at a luncheon event at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington

2008(3rd of Iyar, 5768): Yom Ha”Atzmaut – Israeli Independence Day

2008: On Israel's 60th Independence Day, eight organizations are awarded the Israel Prize for a lifetime contribution to the state and society. The recipients are the Perah work-study mentoring program at universities, the Jewish Agency, the Manufacturers Association of Israel, the Youth Movements Council incorporating 14 movements, Ezer Mizion - Israel's largest paramedic support organization, and the three major women’s organizations that have been active since pre-state days: WIZO, Na'amat, and Emunah.


2008: Italian President Giorgio Napolitano opened the prestigious Turin book fair in the northern Italian city, despite international Muslim anger over the choice of Israel as the event's guest of honor.

2009:Pope Benedict XVI began his eight day pilgrimage which will take him to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

2010: “The Portuguese gave us fried fish, the Belgians invented chips but 150 years ago an East End boy united them to create The World’s Greatest Double Act” published today described the role Joseph Malin, a 13 year old Jewish boy in created the delicacy known as “Fish & Chips.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1275320/The-Portugese-gave-fried-fish-Belgians-invented-chips-150-years-ago-East-End-boy-united-create-The-Worlds-Greatest-Double-Act.html

2010: The Yom HaAtzmaut Spring Marathon 2010, an evening of dancing, ushering in the delights of spring in celebration of Israel’s independence is scheduled to begin tonight at 8:45 this evening at the 92nd St Y.

2010: “Giants of Jazz on Film - Benny Goodman and the Kings of Swing” is scheduled to begin at 8 pm at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

2010: Hamas or another group fired a rocket, which landed in open ground near Ashkelon today. Approximately 50 rockets have landed in Israeli territory since the beginning of 2010.

2010:The fans of a Polish professional soccer team displayed an anti-Semitic banner during a match. Fans of Resovia Rzeszow at a May 8 match put up a large banner showing a caricatured hook-nosed Jew with a blue and white yarmulke -- the colors of the opposing team -- and the phrase “Death to the Crooked Noses.”

2010(24th of Iyar, 5770): Andor Lilienthal, the last of the original 27 chess grandmasters, who played 10 world champions and beat 6 of them, passed away today at his home in Budapest at the age of 99 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/crosswords/chess/12lilienthal.html

2011: Rabbi Kenneth Ehrlich, Dean, Cincinnati campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is scheduled to facilitate “The People of the Book” a lecture/discussion designed to review the rich and varied experience of the Jewish people in America in words and images created by American Jewish literary artists

2011: Roman Arkadyevich Baranovichi was ranked # 3 on the Sunday Times Rich List 2011 which was published today. Shlomo Moussaieff and his wife and business partner, Alisa, were ranked #315

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Delaware is scheduled to hold its Annual Meeting, featuring a presentation by the Delaware Art Museum’s Executive Director and noted art historian Dr. Danielle Rice. In her lecture, “The Jewish Contribution to Art in Delaware,” Dr. Rice will highlight the Delaware Art Museum’s holdings by Jewish artists and the worlds from which they come.

2011:In honor of Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Remembrance Day) and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) Yeshiva University Museum and Center for Jewish History with American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to present: “Remembering 1948 - In Color” featuring “I Was There In Color,” Avishai Kfir’s  documentary that uses recently discovered footage, shot by Fred Monosson, a Jewish-American businessman to show the birth of the Jewish state in living color.

2011: The Los Angeles Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag” by Sigrid Nunez

2012: Mr. David McKenzie, Interpretive Programs Manager of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington will discuss, the award winning exhibit “Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community” an “exhibit created by the Jewish Historical society of Greater Washington that tells stories about the Jewish community in Washington from 1795 to the present.”

2011(4thof Iyar, 5771): On Mother’s Day, 97 year-old Holocaust survivor Rose Linder passed away.  As a young woman she had clerked for Raphael Lemkin, the Polish born attorney credited with coning the term “genocide.”  After fleeing Poland, Mrs. Linder worked as a teacher and employment counselor in the Chicago metropolitan area.

2012(16thof Iyar, 5772): One-hundred one year old Polish born American violinist Roman Totenberg, the husband of Melanie (Shroder) Totenberg who was his business manager for 50 years and father of NPR Correspondent Nina Totenberg and Judge Amy Totenberg passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/arts/music/roman-totenberg-violinist-and-teacher-dies-at-101.html

2012(16thof Iyar, 5772): Eighty-nine year old “Louis H. Pollak, a federal judge and former dean of two prestigious law schools who played a significant role in major civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case” passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/us/louis-pollak-judge-and-civil-rights-advocate-dies-at-89.html?_r=2&hpw&

2012: The 18th annual World of Hope Charity Golf Classic for the benefit of The Rabbi Itzhaq M. Klirs Adult Education Fund & Caring Capital is scheduled to take place at the Twin Lakes Golf Course in Centerville, VA.

2012(16thof Iyar, 5772): Eighty-three year old “Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche” passed away today (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/books/maurice-sendak-childrens-author-dies-at-83.html?ref=books

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/books/understanding-children-yet-wanting-them-to-grow-up-a-bit.html?_r=1&hp

2012: Alon Yavnai Big Band with special guest Dave Liebman is scheduled to perform at Joe’s Pub in New York City.

2013(28thof Iyar, 5773): Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Reunification Day

2013: “Settling In,” an exhibition that “examines the experience and acculturation of immigrants to Oregon through the lens of Jewish experience” is scheduled to open at the Oregon Jewish Museum.

http://ojmexhibitmedia.weebly.com/

2013: University of Iowa Professor Dr. Robert Cargill, biblical studies scholar, classicist, archeologist, author and digital humanist is scheduled to a lecture entitled "The Five Defenders of Jerusalem: A Study of Cities (not people) that defended Jerusalem from attacks including Hazor, Meggido, Gezer, Lachish and Azekah."

2013(28thof Iyar, 5773): One hundred one year old violin virtuoso Roman Totenberg passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/arts/music/roman-totenberg-violinist-and-teacher-dies-at-101.html

2013: American Society for Jewish Music and American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “A Living Connection: The Musical Lives and Legacies of Morris Hollender, Sonia Victor, and Marty Levitt.”

2013: Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present “It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and the Jewish Community in New York and Beyond”

2013: Stephen Hawking, the noted British physicist, has reportedly opted to endorse the academic boycott of Israel and withdraw from the fifth annual Presidential Conference in Jerusalem in June, where he was slated to give a talk, the British daily Guardian reported today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/stephen-hawking-opts-out-of-israeli-conference/

2013: Today the Jordanian Parliament voted unanimously in favor of petitioning the government to expel Israel’s ambassador in Amman and recall Jordan’s ambassador in Tel Aviv in protest of alleged Israeli desecration of holy sites in Jerusalem

2013: Eighty-eight year old “Geza Vermes, a religious scholar who argued that Jesus as a historical figure could be understood only through the Jewish tradition from which he emerged, and who helped expand that understanding through his widely read English translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls” passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/world/europe/geza-vermes-dead-sea-scrolls-scholar-dies-at-88.html?hpw&_r=0

2013: President Shimon Peres delivered remarks at the state memorial ceremony for the Jews of Ethiopia who died on their journey to Israel

http://5tjt.com/president-shimon-peres-delivered-remarks-at-the-state-memorial-ceremony-for-the-jews-of-ethiopia-who-died-on-their-journey-to-israel/

2014: Observance of “Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust”  a memorial day championed by director Steven Spielberg.

2014: “Circus Palestina” is scheduled to be shown at the Israel Film Festival hosted by Agudas Achim under the leadership of Rabbi Jeff Portman.

2014: “A new Anne Frank play premieres in Amsterdam today, promising to bring the troubled teenage girl’s identity out from behind the shadow of the Holocaust’s most famous victim.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-anne-frank-play-attempts-to-wrest-girl-from-symbol/

 

 

2014: “Closer to the Moon” is scheduled to be shown at the National Center for Jewish Films 17th annual film festival.

2014: Tzvi Arieli told JTA today that “Ukrainian Jewish with combat skills have a rapid intervention force” which he leads “to stop anti-Semitic attacks.”

2014: “Schools near the Dead Sea were shut and several roads in the area were blocked by authorities this morning as a rare tropical storm dumped rain across the country causing flash floods and wreaking havoc in the south of the country.”

2014: As part of Jewish American Heritage Month, in Philadelphia, PA, the National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled  to host a presentation by the official Historian of the Major League Baseball, John Thorn on “Jackie Robinson: Outside Hero.”

2014(8thof Iyar, 5774): Ninety-six energy economist Morris A. Adelman passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/business/morris-a-adelman-dies-at-96-saw-oil-as-inexhaustible.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

2014: Richard A. Flak completed his service as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967

2014: Closing night of The Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival.

2015(19thof Iyar, 5775): Eighty-two year old “Israeli painter and sculptor Menashe Kadishman passed away today in Ramat Gan.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/15/menashe-kadishman-obituary

http://new.menashekadishman.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menashe_Kadishman#/media/File:Kadishman1.jpg

2015: “A judge declared a mistrial in the Etan Patz case today after jurors said for a third time that they could not reach a verdict despite three weeks of deliberation, leaving unresolved a missing-child case that vexed New York City for decades and led to a sea change in the way Americans view the security of their children.”

2015: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host its final Musical Shabbat for 5775

2015: Ruth David “a former Tel Aviv district attorney” who was arrested in a corruption scandal “fainted on the steps of the Jerusalem District Court” today “ahead of a hearing for the extension of her remand.”

2015: “Dancing Arabs” is scheduled to be shown at the 18th Annual Film Festival sponsored by the National Center for Jewish Film’s

2015: A day after the general election. Ed Miliband, the leader of the Britain’s Labour Party offered to resign today.

2015: The Cultural Services of the Israeli Embassy is scheduled to co-sponsor “A Literary Quest” at the Westbeth Center for the Arts that includes Assaf Gavron and Carlos Fraenkel

2015: Susan Veronica Kramer complete her service as the Minister of State for Transport in the United Kingdom.

2015: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to co-host a “Community Wide Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of Victory Day” “honoring the victory of Soviet and Allied forces in World War II and Holocaust Survivors.”

2015: The Washington Jewish Music Festival is scheduled to host Shabbat In Song.

http://www.wjmf.org/shabbatinsong

2015: Juliana Maio is scheduled to speak on “When Cairo Was Paris” at the 92ndStreet Y where she will described Egypt in the first half of the 20thcentury when “Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together harmoniously and Cairo and Alexandria were among the most cosmopolitan, glamorous and pluralistic cities in the world.

http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=94315597763486b9c71e83935&id=dfe5d7e1c6&e=f43f6f1665

2016(30thof Nisan, 5776): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2016: “The Women of the Wall organization proceeded with its plan to hold a priestly blessing at Jerusalem’s Western Wall today, despite a ruling from the attorney general barring the group from doing so.

2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story by Matti Friedman and the recently issued paperback editions of Frank:  A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage by Barney Frank and Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen

 

2016: The Illinois and Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a speech by Zev Rogalin who survived the Siauliai Ghetto and the Stutthof Concentration Camp.

2016: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a Spring Walking Tour where participants will “learn what Jewish life and worship was like in the historic Seventh Street, NW, neighborhood from 1850 to 1950.”

2016: In Philadelphia, the National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month by opening its doors without charge today, Mother’s Day.

2016: CBS television broadcast the last episode of “The Good Wife” starring Julianna Margulies today.

2016: The American Society for Jewish Music is scheduled to host “Music in Our Time”

2016: After seven very successful seasons, CBS broadcast the final episode of “The Good Wife” starring Julianna Margulies.

2016: The Center for Jewish History and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research are scheduled to host Dr. Samantha Hill on “Eichmann in Jerusalem: Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil.”

2017: “The Wonders” is scheduled to be shown today at the Vancouver Jewish Film Center.

2017: NEH Senior Scholar Naomi Seidman is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “My Unconscious Speaks Yiddish at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

2017: Genealogist Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage is scheduled to share techniques, resources and repositories in the US and in the world that helped him discover the US branch of his family in a lecture at the Library of Congress.

2017(12thof Iyar, 5777): Eighty-seven year old Harvard graduate Julian I. Edison, the St. Louis born son of Mark and Ida Edison and husband of Hope Rabb Edison with whom he raised two sons Mark and Aaron who was Chairman of Edison Brothers Stores, Inc. passed away today.

https://www.stljewishlight.com/life_cycle/obituaries/julian-i-edison-former-shoe-executive-philanthropist-dies-at/article_303a5d3c-3f10-11e7-b063-9bf78f8ab380.html

2017: “The "Immortal Regiment" march was held in the Israeli city of Ashdod today.

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201705091053400888-israeli-ashdod-immortal-regiment/

2017(12thof Iyar, 5777):  Seventy-seven year old author Judith Stein passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/books/judith-stein-dead-historian-author-on-marcus-garvey.html

2017: Today “President Donald Trump directed the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to make a case against FBI Director James Comey in writing.

2017: For the first time Senior Sephardi Rabbi Joseph Dweck reportedly said “the LGBT revolution had been a “fantastic” development for humanity” for which he would be condemned by Rabbi Shraga Feivel Zimmerman, the Rov of Gateshead.

2017: Susan Kramer completed her service as the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for the Treasury.

2018: The “Out with the Old” and “Tevye’s Daughters” are scheduled to be shown at the Washington Jewish Film Festival today.

2018: “Saving Auschwitz?” and “The Invisibles” are scheduled to be shown at the 26thToronto Jewish Film Festival.

2018: The Yeshiva University Museum, Commentary Magazine and The Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought are scheduled to present “Moses on Film – from Ten Commandments to the Prince of Egypt.”

2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Israel: A Conversation Across Generations with Professor Jonathan Sarna, Leah Sarna, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin and Naomi Telushkin.”

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host screenings of “Ben Gurion, Epilogue” and “The Red House” which tells the story of the Tel Aviv edifice built in 1924 that “was first used as a textile factory” before becoming in turns a synagogue and an art gallery.

2019: In South Bend, IN, the Michiana Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “From Cairo to the Cloud”

https://www.cairotothecloud.com/about-the-film

2019: The Jewish Museum in London is scheduled to host “Money and Daddy: Social Responsibility and Hollywood's 'Jewish American Princess'” this evening during which “Dr. Julia Wagner explores representations of Jewish women on screen, focusing on young protagonists from wealthy families who use their privileged positions for social good, including Private Benjamin, Dirty Dancing and Clueless.” 

2019(3rdof Iyar, 5779): Yom Hazikaron

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yom-hazikaron-israels-memorial-day/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yom-hazikaron-israeli-memorial-day

2019: In Pleasanton, CA, Congregation Beth Emek is scheduled host an Israel Independence Day Program where Lt. Col. Amos Guiroa (IDF, retired) will deliver the keynote address on “Post-Election Israel: Will the Peace Process Move Forward?”

2019: “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away” is scheduled to open today at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/arts/design/auschwitz-museum-of-jewish-heritage.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

2019: In New Orleans, “the Clergy Council and the Jewish Community Center” are scheduled to host “a  service marking Yom Hazikaron, Israel's Official Memorial Day for her fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism”  followed immediately by “the community dinner celebrating Israel's 71st birthday!!”

2020(14thof Iyar, 5780): Pesach Sheni

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/470865/jewish/Pesach-Sheni.htm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pesach-sheni

2020: The Contemporary Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a virtual presentation of “The Man Who Captured Time” during which “Contemporary Jewish Museum school program manager Cara Buchalter talks about Eadweard Muybridge, a Victorian photographer, murderer and inventor of the motion picture” who was also an inspiration for Phillip Glass’s opera, “The Photographer.”

2020: The Illinois Holocaust Museum, together with The Peter Polsky Freedom Fund and The Chicago Association of Veterans of WWII is scheduled to host a special virtual event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII.

2020: The Steicker Center is scheduled a virtual presentation on “The Jewish Tradition of Protest” with Dr. David Kraemer.

2020: The Breman Museum is scheduled to host the “third installment of its partnered virtual series with the Jewish Educational Alliance and Savannah Jewish Federation, featuring guest speaker Mark K. Bauman retired as professor of history at Atlanta Metropolitan College.

2020: OneTable is scheduled to host on line “Welcoming Sacred Time With Song” featuring “reflection, ritual and joyful song led by Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, executive director of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute.”

2020: In Pepper Pike, OH, via, Zoom B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host Cantor Aaron Shifrman as he talks about “The How and Why of Jewish Ritual.”

2020: As the world prepares to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day, “Jewish Care residents and volunteers recall celebratory scenes in Paris and Trafalgar Square – as well as memories of narrowly escaping bombing raids on London and enduring evacuations and rationing.”

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/ve-day-was-the-best-day-of-our-lives/

2021: Based on previously published reports, as of today Israel’s progress in fighting COVID19 can be seen in the decision of the EU to add the country to its “safe list” while the on-going threat against its physical survival can be seen in Iran’s Supreme Commander declaration on a Muslim holy day that Israel is “a terrorist base” and not a country.

2021: Congregation Beth Am is scheduled to present a screening of the 2019 documentary, “The Rabbi Goes West” about a Chabad rabbi who moves from N.Y. to Montana.

2021: In Columbus, OH, Congregation Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host “In-Person” Shabbat Morning Services that will include “7th Grade and Hebrew High School Graduation.”

2021: The Marsh is scheduled to present Josh Kornbluth, the actor-writer in a live, solo, streaming performance about the Trump presidency, becoming a fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute, his unrepentant Stalinist mother and his stepfather’s dementia.

2021: The Eden Tamir Music Center is Jerusalem is scheduled to host “The Glorious Sound of the Piano, a piano recital by Shir Semmel.

https://aicf.org/artist/shir-semmel/

2021(26thof Iyar, 5781): Final two portions of Viykra (Leviticus) - Behar and Bechukotai; Perkei Avot – Chapter 5; For more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

This Day, May 9, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 9

1457 BCE: In the 15thcentury BCE, Battle of Megiddo between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh. The victory of Thutmose extended the orbit of Egyptian influence into Canaan and Syria which might help explain some of the events described in the last chapters of Genesis and the opening portion of Exodus.  According to one source, the Exodus took place in 1456 which would not be consistent with the information surrounding the battle. Other sources indicate that Joshua and the Israelites crossed the Jordan around 1200 BCE.  Based on archeological evidence, Megiddo was a site of military importance during the time of King Solomon and he kept a chariot force stationed there.  The Judeans lost a battle with the Egyptians in 609 BCE and the British scored a significant victory over the Turks at the same site in 1918. Fighting at Megiddo would play a significant role during the War of Independence as both sides sought to control the Jezreel Valley. It is the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail.  According to Christian doctrine, there is supposed to be a battle between the forces of good and evil in th end of days.  The battle is known as Armageddon which is Greek form of the Hebrew Har-Megiddo (Mt of Megiddo).

1224: Innocent IV issued “Impia Judoerum Perfidia,” a papal bull that ordered the French King to brun the Talmud and forbade Jews from employing Christian nurses.

1317: In his will dated today, the infanteDon Pedro, ordered that Judah Abravanel be paid: (1) 15,000 maravedis for clothes delivered; (2) 30,000 maravedis as part of a personal debt, at the same time requesting Judah to release him from paying the rest. Judah had been in great favor with King Alfonso the Wise, with whom he once had a conversation regarding Judaism.

1408: Gabriele Condulmer, who as Pope Eugene IV “would decree and order that from now on, and for all time, Christians shall not eat or drink with the Jews, nor admit them to feasts, nor cohabit with them, nor bathe with them. […]  They cannot live among Christians, but in a certain street, separated and segregated from Christians, and outside which they cannot under any pretext have houses” was elevated to the position of Cardinal

1664: In Lemberg and Cracow, Poland, anti-Jewish riots by students and peasants resulted in damages and death in both communities. In Lemberg, the cantor was killed during when the synagogue was attacked.

1712: In Berlin, the cornerstone of the first public synagogue was laid in Heiderentergasse.

1775: Birthdate of Moses Philippson the Jewish writer, teacher, translator and publisher who was related to 16th century Rabbi Joshua ben Joseph Hoseschel and who taught at the Jewish School in Dessau.

1775: David Salisbury Franks was released after having been under arrest for six days on charges of having spoken “disrespectfully” about King George III. Franks, who was living in Montreal at the time, became such an ardent supporter of the American Revolution that he joined the Continental Army.

1778(12th of Iyar): Chasidic Rabbi Samuel Shmelke Horowitz, author of Divrei Shmuel, passed away today.

1788(2nd of Iyar): Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, autheo of “Peri Ha-Aretz,” passed away

1798: Napoleon Bonaparte arrived at Toulon as the French prepared for a military campaign that would take them Jaffa, Acre and a promise by the French leader to restore the Jews to a state in Palestine.

1800(14thof Iyar, 5560): Pesach Sheni

1800: Birthdate of Justus Olshuasen, the German philologist who published a textbook on the Hebrew Language in 1861 and Emendation of the Old Testament.

1800: Birthdate of abolitionist John Brown best known for his seizure of Harper’s Ferry.  However, he had played an active role in the fighting between slave owners and free soilers in Kansas during 1850’s.  When he led the raid on Pottawatomie, Kansas, he was joined by three Jews – August Bondi, Jacob Benjamin and Theodore Weiner. 

1804: In Amsterdam, Rachel Cornelia Bernard and Abraham Levy who were married in 1799 gave birth Jacob Abraham Levy, the future resident of Richmond, VA who married Martha Ezekiel in 1828 ater which they gave birth to 11 chldren.

1805(10thof Iyar, 5565): Sixty-six year old Boston businessman Moses Michael Hays, the New York born son of Dutch Jewish immigrants Judah Hays and Rebecca Michaels, husband of Rachel Myers and brother-in-law to New York silversmith Myer Myers and Rabbi Isaac de Abraham Touro who was a supporter of the American Revolution and founder of the Massachusetts Bank which survives today as the Bank of America passed away today at which he was “at The Colonial Burying Ground in Newport.”

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/moses-michael-hays

1809: Birthdate of Middlesex native Ralph Disraeli.

1812: Birthdate of Egyptian-born Indian civil servant, Henry Edward Goldsmid.

1817(23rdof Iyar, 5577): Three-year-old Frances Henrietta Hendricks, the New York born daughter of copper manufacturer Harmon Hendricks and Frances Isaacs who was the granddaughter of Joshua and Brandly Isaacs and Uriah Hendricks, “one of the 23 Jewish immigrants who founded Congregation Shearith Israel.

1822(18thof Iyar, 5582): Lag B’Omer

1822(18thof Iyar, 5582): Seventy-six year old Bavarian born Jacob Naphtali Hart, the husband of Lean Nathan passed away today in New York City.

1824: In Sejny, Poland, R' Moses Bacharach and Sheina Bacharach gave birth to Jacob ben Moses Bachrach, the “grammarian and rabbi” who was the husband of Reva Bachrach.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bachrach-jacob-ben-moses

1828: Birthdate of Somerville, OH and Jefferson Medical College trained physician Levi Cooper Lane

https://web.archive.org/web/20110907063027/http://www.cpmc.org/professionals/hslibrary/collections/archives/lane.html

1837: In Philadelphia, PA, Julia Levy and Joseph Lyons Moss gave birth to Frank Moss, the husband of Annie Bathurst Harrison.

1837: Elisa Morpurgo (Parente) and Giuseppe / Joseph Baron von Morpurgo gave birth to Emilio Isacco Baron de Morpurgo

1841(18thof Iyar, 5601): Lag B’Omer

1841: Leon Lewis Isaacs married Fanny Abrahams at the Great Synagogue today.

1841: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Pozhanski officiated at the wedding of Judah Bensadon and Leah Hyams.

1849: In London, Rabbi Moses Henry Myers, the London born son of Rabbi Henry Henoch Myers and his wife Sarah H. Myers gave birth to Victor Myers

1850: In Albany, NY, “Dr. Joseph Lewi and Bertha Schwarz” gave birth to “Isidor Lewi,” an “editorial writer for the New York Tribune” and publisher of the New Era Illustrated Magazine.

1852: As a sign of Christian determination to gain Jewish converts, Reverend William Ramsay is scheduled to deliver the annual sermon before the American Society for the Meliorating the Condition of the Jews in New York City.

1855: The new building for the Jews Hospital in New York, located on 28thStreet between 7th and 8th Avenues, has been completed.  The building which cost $35,000 is four stories high and has room for 150 patients.  Dedication ceremonies are scheduled for May 17.

1856: An “English gossiper” described a meeting with Sir Lionel Goldsmid, Lord Mayor Salomons and Sir Moses Montefiore in an article entitled “Three Great Jews” published today.

1859: One day after she had passed a way, Catherin Jacobs, the wife of Isaac Jacobs with whom she had had six children was buried toda at the “Halfway (Queensborough) Jewish Cemetery.”

1863(20thof Iyar, 5623: On Shabbat, during the Civil War, Lieutenant L.S. Lipman died while serving with the 5th Louisiana.

1864(3rd of Iyar, 5624): Lieutenant W.M. Wolf died while serving with Hagood’s S.C. Brigade.

1864: John Engel, a native of Maryland who had been working as a clerk in Mecklenburg County (NC) enlisted in the Confederate Army today.

1864: Walter Goodman arrived in Cuba where he worked as an artist and painting theatrical sets and journalist writing articles and letters to the New York Herald, using the nom de plume el Caballero Inglese.

1865: At Nashville, TN, Union Brigadier General Frederick Knefler led the 79thIndiana Infantry Brigade in final review of the army under the command of General George Thomas. Following the review, Knefler, one of the highest ranking Jewish officers to serve in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, took his troops back to Indianapolis where they were mustered out of service.

1868: The city of Reno, Nevada, is founded. Jews have been part of the Reno community since the founding of the city.  According to the history prepared by Temple Emanu-El “One of the first Jewish organizations was the "Reno Hebrew Benevolent Society" established in 1879. The Society's purpose was to secure a piece of land for a cemetery, assist sick members and, in case of death, provide for a decent internment. The initial membership fee was $2.50 with a monthly membership payment of fifty cents.’ For more about the history of the Jews in Reno see Jews in Nevada: A History by John Marschall.

 

1871: Lipman Emanuel “Lip” Pike played in his first major league baseball game as a member of the Troy Haymakers.

1872: The American Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews held its second anniversary meeting this evening at the Union Presbyterian Church in New York City.  While the report of Reverend Abraham C. Tris stated “that the progress of the work has been very encouraging” it never provided any number of Jews who had actually converted as a result of the society’s efforts.

 1873: Myer Stern, President of the Hebrew and Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society, a trustee of Temple Emanu-El and a prominent businessman and political figure was one of three people nominated by the Mayor to serve as Commissioners of charities and Correction in New York City.

1874: Birthdate of Posen, Germany native, Simon Peiser who in 1892 came to the United States where he graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1896, was ordained as a Rabbi at the Hebrew Union College and married Amelia Buchman in 194, “two months after becoming Superintendent” of the Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum.

1876(15thof Iyar, 5636): Pesach N. Rubenstein who had been convicted of murdering Sara Alexander starved himself to death before he could be hanged for his crime.

1878: Russia promulgated another set of regulations pertaining to the military service of the Jews today.

1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Shpola and Ananyev, Russia.  This was part of a wave of anti-Semitic violence that would sweep back and forth across Russia until the start of World War I.  It was consistent with the Czars 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 policy for the Jews.  Things would be so bad for the Jews that one third would convert, one third would leave the country and one third would die.  And Russia would be free of its Jewish Problem

1882: In “Biala, Russia,” “Raphael Shalom and Cheyah Sarah (Pilatsky) Rosenblatt gave birth to the “King of the Cantors, Josef “Yossele” Rosenblatt, the husband of “Taube Kaufman.”

http://thejewniverse.com/2010/a-hazzan-in-the-opera-house/?utm_source=Jewniverse+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5c383a1f2c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_03_13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b48fb1c44e-5c383a1f2c-27129561

1885: Rabbi Alexander Kohut of Grosswardein, Hungary delivered his first sermon at Temple Ahavath Chesed in New York City.

1886: Birthdate of NYU trained attorney Max Levy “a founder and first president of the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island” and “founder and first President of the Jewish Foundation School of State Island” who raised a son, Jack and a daughter, Ralene, with his wife “the former Josephine Mendelson.”

1886: In New York “500 people met at the Salem Fields Cemetery” today to dedicate a monument honor Jewish philanthropist Seligman Solomon.  Among other things, the 20 foot high granite shaft honored his work with the Hebrew Orphan Asylum calling him “A Father to the Orphan and Humanity’s Noblest Volunteer.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=950DE2D61638E533A25753C1A9639C94679FD7CF

1890: In the upper house of the Prussian Diet, right-wing politician Count Pfeil moved that the government take measures to limit the educational opportunities of Jewish students.

1892: “Bay State Republicans” published today described status of the Massachusetts Republican Party as it prepares for the upcoming national convention in Minneapolis.  This includes the role to played by party secretary Ratchesky, “a very clever, shrewd and cunning Jewish politician who has been useful in in the past in keeping his people in line for the Republican ticket. He is a member of the Boston Common Council, a keen debater and a man of unlimited political resource.” He is one of two men described as exercising “absolute control over the machinery” of the Republican Party. 

1892: Five days after she had passed away, Sarah Eliza Henriques, “the widow of Joseph Gutteres Henriques” and the mother of Alfred and Frederick Henrqiues was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1893: John B. Weber, the former Commissioner of Immigration expressed his views on reports that the government of Russia has issued edicts expelling the Jews from Poland. He is concerned that this latest wave of immigrants will not benefit the United States and that the Czar and the Europeans are dumping their unwanted Jews on the Americans.

1893: The decision of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions to actively work to convert Jews in the United States was made public today.

1893: As of today, Annie Weisberg, the daughter of Polish-Jewish immigrants was the only person reported to have been injured in the fire at the tenement house on Suffolk Street.

1893: Adolph Marix, a native of Germany who had enlisted in the Navy while living in Iowa and was the Secretary to the Board of Inquiry that investigated the sinking of the battleship Maine was promoted to the rank of Lt. Commander today.

1893: Based on information that first appeared in the Hartford Courant it was reported today the wholesale expulsion of Jews from Poland began in the middle of February and has continued unabated since then.

1894: In Prague, Eduard and Elisabeth Bondy gave bird to Pavel “Paul” Bonday who would be murdered at Riga during the Holocuast.

1894: Esther Ruskay spoke on "The Revival of Judaism" at the founding meeting of the New York section of the National Council of Jewish Women

1895: The members of the New York Branch of the Jewish Woman’s Council was held today at Temple Emanu-El

1895: “The East Side Art Exhibition” published today praised the selection of the paintings being shown at the East Side Free Art Exhibition taking place at the Hebrew Institute which will continue for the next thirty days.

1896: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will hold its 19th annual strawberry festival at Lenox Lyceum.

1896: The palatial mansion of Diamond mogul Barney Barnato located in the Mayfair section of London is reported to be nearing completion. Barnato’s new home is on Park Lane, near the home of another Jewish Diamond Mogul, Alfred Beit.

1897: In Little Rock, AR, B'nai Israel, a Reform Congregation, dedicated its new house of worship which was designed by architect Charles Thompson.  Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of Reform Judaism gave the keynote address at the ceremony.  The building was used until May, 1975 when the Temple B’nai Israel moved into it current home in western Little Rock.

1898: It was reported today that among fifty Jewish families who were at a mass meeting praying for the success of the American Army in the war with Spain were among  200 people left homeless by a fire that swept through Duluth, MN.

1898: Captain Bernard W. Salomonsky of Norfolk was among those who were mustered into service today as the mustering in process began today for the 4thVirginia Volunteer Infantry.

1898: Private Will H. Freudenstein of St. Louis was mustered in today at Jefferson Barracks, MO as members of Light Battery A Missouri Volunteers

1899: Birthdate of Zhitomir, Ukraine native Max Cutler, the 18 year old “Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Georgia” and John Hopkins University trained physician who founded the Chicago Tumor Institute while raising three daughters – Nina, Nancy and Susie – with “his wife, the former Bertie Berger.” (As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/14/obituaries/dr-max-cutler-85-is-dead-pioneer-in-cancer-treatmnet.html

1900: During the Konitz Affair, a blood libel in West Prussia,  “the Staatsbürgerzeitung, the leading anti-Semitic organ of Berlin, said: ‘No one can help forming the impression that the organs of the government received orders to pursue the investigation in a manner calculated to spare the Jews’” even though the opposite was quite true as could be seen by  the detectives and judges eagerly listened to “the most improbable statements implicating Jews, while Christian witnesses withheld important testimony.”

1901 Australia opens its first parliament in Melbourne. Elias Solomon, a native of London who became an auctioneer in Freemantle was among the members of the first parliament having won the Australian House Representative seat of Fremantle for the Free Trade Party.

1901: In Russia, chemical engineer Ospivoch Ephrussi, the son of Kishinev banker Joseph Ephrussi, and his wife gave birth to “Boris Ephrussi, the Professor of Genetics at the University of Paris.”

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ge.14.120180.002311?journalCode=genet

1901: Sir Isaac Isaacs began serving as a Member of the Australian Party representing the Division of Indi which is located in north-eastern Victoria. This is but one of many governmental positions that Isaacs held during a long career dedicated to public service. 

1901: Together with David Wolffsohn and Oskar Marmorek, Theodor Herzl traveled to Constantinople in his quest to gain support from the Sultan for a Jewish homeland in Eretz Israel. The trip will last until May 23.

1902(2ndof Iyar, 5662): Ashe I Myers, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle who doubled and then trebled the readership of this English journal passed away today.  (Other sources show his death date as May 11.  This date comes from an article written in 1913)

https://books.google.com/books?id=iBQcAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA769&lpg=PA769&dq=Take+Ionescu+and+the+jewish+people&source=bl&ots=wKpMTWqN4p&sig=wtZjR9a68JlGd_J0ODH8ztoUvEo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1nbim3dfUAhWI64MKHeojBFIQ6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=Take%20Ionescu%20and%20the%20jewish%20people&f=false

1903(12thof Iyar, 5663): Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim

1903: Half the proceeds of tonight’s performance “The Destruction of Kishineff” at the Windsor Theatre are to go to fund being raised to help the victims of the pogrom at “the capital city of Bessarabia.”

1904: In Galicia, Israel David Irom and Sabina "Shifra" (Sadie) Blau gave birth Abraham Simcha Irom who in 1915 came to the United States where he earned a BS from Columbia and ordained as a rabbi by Yeshiva College while raising two children – Joseph and Renee – with his wife Pauline Irom.

1904(24thof Iyar, 5664): Hungarian born actress Jenny Gross who made her debut in 1878 in Vienna passed away today in Berlin.

1904: Nissan Katzenelson visited Herzl in Franzensbad and reports the results of his trip to London. Jacob Schiff had declared himself ready to negotiate a loan for Russia if it proved to do something for the Jews.

1905: “The rumors of a massacre of Jews at Zhitomir” in southwestern Russia were confirmed from St. Petersburg based on “a dispatch to the Novosti” that “says the rioting began on” May 7 and continued for 48 hours during which “Orthodox Christians fell upon the Jews in the streets.”

1906(14thof Iyar, 5666): Pesach Sheni

1906: It was reported today that Congregation Temple Emanu-El has re-elected James Seligman as President of the Board of Trustees, Moses H. Moses as Vice President and James Seligman, Daniel Guggenheim and A.J. Dittenhoefer as Trustees for three years.

1907: “Tracts For Jews No Help” published today described a conflict between Dr. Shearer and his American Tract Society who missionaries have been passing out tracts to Jews and other immigrants “immediately on their landing” and Immigration Commissioner Robert Watchorn who is concerned that Jewish immigrants who received these Hebrew documents will scare them into  hinking  that converting them to Christianity is some sort of U.S. government policy.

1908(8thof Iyar, 5668): Parashat Emor

1908: It was reported today that during a debate the Duma about conscripting non-Russians into the Czar’s army, “M. Krupensky, a Marshal of the nobility” who was part of the anti-Semitic cohort of deputes “moved to strike Jewish recruits from the conscript list and to impose a head tax on them instead.

1909(18thof Iyar, 5669): Lag B’Omer

1909: “Before an audience which crowded the pews and aisles of the Free Synagogue, in West Eighty-First Street, to the doors Rabbi Leon Harrison of Temple Israel, St. Louis, made a passionate appeal today to his fellow-Jews against intermarriage with Christians.”

1910: In what some say is a strange twist, Reverend Frank W. Stanford said that sixty-six people from Portland, ME who had returned from “the Holy Land” had abandoned their plans to establishment a settlement in Palestine.

1910: It was reported today that the Hebrew Orphan Asylum “is celebrating the 50thanniversary of the opening of its first home at 1 Lamartine Place” and that during those fifty years, the society has “brought nearly 6,000 children with only 57 deaths.”

1911: The Vatican placed the works of Italian author Gabriele D'Annunzio in the Index of Forbidden Books. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum The List of Prohibited Books or The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of publications prohibited by the Catholic Church was begun in the 16th century under Pope Paul IV.  Pope Paul VI finally discontinued it in 1966.  The lengthy list of forbidden includes some names that are not surprising including Martin Luther, Voltaire and Rabelais. Among the few “Jewish” names are Maimonides, Spinoza and Heine.  Mein Kampf never made the List of Prohibited Books!

1912: A cablegram that had been from London was received by the Jewish Daily News in New York reporting “that ITO has decided to consider an offer by Portugal to establish a Jewish colony in Angola.”

1913: Today, Milton J. Rosenau of Brookline, Massachusetts was named an Assistant Surgeon in the Medical Reserve Corps in the same month in which he was “nominated by the Governor to be a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Health.

1914(13thof Iyar, 5674): Parashat Acrhrei-Mot Kedoshim

1914: President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation that officially establishes the first national Mother’s Day holiday to celebrate America’s mothers

1915: According to reports received by Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs in London, Henry Morgenthau, the United States Ambassador to Turkey, has been successful in his attempts to halt, at least temporarily, actions by the Turkish government which were proving to be inimical to the Zionist settlements and Jewish communities in Palestine.

1915: It was reported to that “Detectives Lehon, Tedder, Rogers and Whitfield who would have on the Leo Frank case for W.J. Burns” detective agency “are to be tried this week for alleged misdemeanors in connection with their investigation.

1915: It was reported that “the trial of the Rev. C.B. Ragsdale and R.L. Barber who accused W.J. Burns operatives Lehon, Tedder and Arthur Thurman of bribery in the make of alleged false affidavits for the Leo Frank Defense is set for this week.

1915: In “What Is To Be Done With Turkey?” published today French politician Gustave Hervé described his plan for carving up the Ottoman Empire after the war including giving Russia Constantinople – a proposal to which no one would object “if a Russian Government really resuscitated Poland by granting it full autonomy, gave the Jews equal civil and political rights,” and lived up to the promises made to the Dumas in 1906. (Editor’s note:  The issue of improving the treatment of the Jews of Eastern Europe was one that people spent a lot of time talking about but did little to make a reality.)

1915(25thof Iyar, 5675): London resident 2nd Lt. Herman Stern was killed today while serving with His Majesty’s Forces.

1916: The British and the French finalize the Sykes-Picot Agreement.  This was a secret treaty between the French and the British concerning the dismemberment of Turkey that would take place once World War I would come to a close.  France was to gain control over most of what is now Syria and Lebanon.  Britain would control what is now Jordan, Iraq and effectively Saudi Arabia.  The British were also to control a small enclave around Haifa.  The rest of what is now Israel and the West Bank was to be under some form of international control.  This secret agreement contradicted Allied promises that would be made to the Jews and the Arabs later during the war.  The treaty became public after the Russian Revolution when Lenin released the archives of the former Russian government to public view.  In part, the Middle East is still living with the end product of imperial duplicity as typified by the work of Sykes and Picot.

1916: Today, President Wilson appointed Louis A. Sussdorf as a secretary of the United States Embassy

1916: Today “President Leon Sanders of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society received a telegram from Secretary State Lansing” saying “that Isador Herschfield “ who has been in Europe for eleven months “investigating conditions among Jews in the war zones” has set sail from Rotterdam bound for New York.

1917: The University of Washington “Menorah Society presented ‘The Family’ by Louis L. Schwartz” today “at the Moore Theatre” in Seattle.

1917: Rabbi Nathan Krass, a member of the American Jewish War Relief Commission returned to New York today from a fund raising lecture tour in the western United States.

1917: “Replying to a question in the House of Commons today as to whether any pledges had been given to France or Italy which might interfere with the establishment of an independent, integral Jewish Palestine under American or British protection, Lord Robert Cecil, Minister of Blockade, said he was afraid he could not answer any question with regard to pledges which might or might not have been given to Great Britain’s allies in connection with the terms of peace.

1917: Birthdate of Fay Mitchell who as Fay Kanin the wife of Michael Kanin was “half of the husband-and-wife team that wrote the Clark Gable-Doris Day comedy “Teacher’s Pet” and the writer of television movies including Emmy-winning vehicles for Maureen Stapleton and Carol Burnett…´(As reported by Alean Harmetz)

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/31/fay-kanin

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/arts/fay-kanin-95-writer-for-movies-and-tv.html?_r=1

1918: In Brookline, MA, “Zina Wallik, who had come to the United States from a Russian shtetl before the turn of the 20th century” gave birth to Myron Leon Wallace who gained fame as American broadcast journalist Mike Wallace.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/business/media/mike-wallace-cbs-pioneer-of-60-minutes-dead-at-93.html

1919: Birthdate of prodigy Julius Heldman, who earned his Ph.D. from Stanford at the age of 23, played a key role in the Manhattan project and raised a daughter, Carrie, with his wife Gladys, the publisher of World Tennis magazine.

1920: Birthdate of Philip Klass, the London native who gained fame as American science fiction writer William Tenn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/14tenn.html

1921(1st of Iyar, 5681): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1921: Fiorello La Guardia, the son of Irene Coen “a Jewish woman from Triest” who chose to father in father’s Catholic footsteps mourned the loss of his daughter Fioretta Thea who passed away today.

1921: Birthdate of Sophie Scholl, a member of the White Rose resistance group whom the Nazis was executed by guillotine. Scholl was a Lutheran, a truly Righteous Gentile who did what she could to stop Hitler.

1923: In Alexandria, LA, Bernard F. and May Violet Kaffie Rosenthal gave birth to Tulane grad, attorney and Democratic Party leader Arnold Jack Rosenthal.

1926: “Louis W. Osterweis, a New York attorney, was elected President of the District No. 1, Independent Order B’nai B’rith, the largest American Jewish fraternity with a membership of over sixty thousand, at the seventy-fourth annual convention of the Order held today at the Astor Hotel. He succeeded Bertram M. Aufsesser. (As reported by JTA)

1926: U.S. premiere of “Shipwrecked,” a silent adventure film starring Joseph Schildkraut as “Larry O’Neil.”

1926(25thof Iyar, 5686): Seventy-five year old Oscar Solomon Strauss passed away. A successful businessman he served two tours as U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire and was Teddy Roosevelt’s choice to serve as Secretary of Commerce and Labor making him the first Jew to serve as a Cabinet Secretary.http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/straus-sarah-lavanburg

1928: “A preliminary meet was held at the home Aaron Hein to discuss the organization of Men’s Club at Congregation Beth El in Camden, NJ.

1929: Eighty-four-year-old Gustave Schlumberger, an award winning French historian and numismatist and an ultra-conservative, an active supporter of the anti-Dreyfusard movement who “stormed out of the salon of the hostess Genevieve Straus when her friend Joseph Reinach pointed out Dreyfus' innocence” passed away today.

1930: Birthdate of Mordechai “Motta” Gur who commanded the division that reunited Jerusalem in 1967 and served 10th Chief of Staff of the IDF.

1931(22nd of Iyar, 5691): Seventy-eight year old Nobel Prize Winner, Albert Abraham Michelson passed away.  Born in Prussia in 1852, Michelson came to the U.S. two years later.  He grew up in San Francisco graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1873, something highly unusual for a Jewish youth of his day.  After finishing his naval career, Michelson went to enjoy a distinguished career in the United States and Europe as a physicist with a specialty in optics.  He won the Nobel Prize in 1907.  He was 87 at the time of his death.

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1907/michelson-bio.html

1931: Birthdate of Tel Aviv native and Israeli politician Amnon Rubinstein.

1934: U. S. premiere of “Sadie McKee” a romantic drama based on "Pretty Sadie McKee” by Viña Delmar, produced by Lawrence Weingarten with lyrics by Arthur Freed.

1935: “The Informer” a film version of the novel by the same name with music by Max Steiner was released today in the United States.

1935: The American Jewish Olympic team arrived in New York today on the Italian liner Conte di Savoia. The United States athletes were returning from the second World Maccabiah staged at Tel-Aviv, Palestine.

1936: The world takes another step toward a general war when Italy formally annexed Ethiopia after taking the capital Addis Ababa.  The Western Powers did nothing to stop the Italian dictator and the League of Nations was totally helpless in stopping Mussolini. This lack of will and impotence gave Hitler further proof that he could swallow up much of Europe without firing a shot.  Orde Wingate, the British officer who would play a critical role in the liberation of Ethiopia was serving in Palestine and was one of the few British officers who sympathized with the Jewish settlers and helped train them in self-defense when they came under attack from armed Arab gangs bent on mayhem and murder.

1936: It was reported today that “among the questions to come before” the first Jewish World Congress which is scheduled to meet in August “will the defense of Jewish equality, re-establishment of the rights Jews in Germany, the struggle against anti-Semitism and the participation in Jewish reconstruction work in Palestine.”

1936: A detachment of British tanks is scheduled to be shipped from Alexandria, Egypt to Palestine in response to the Arab attacks and violence.

1936: At the 25th anniversary dinner of the Syracuse University chapter of Zeta Beta Tau “Dr. James Grover McDonald, former High Commissioner of the League of Nations for Refugees from Germany was extolled as one of the world’s outstanding contributors to the cause of international understanding” as he was named the recipient of the “Gottheil Medal which is given annually to the American who has, in the previous year, done the most for Jewry.”

1936: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee reported today that services agencies it supported help more than 1,500 “German Jews and German Jewish refugees to migrate from their homes” during the month of January.

1937: For the second day in a row, Jews in Grabow were beaten by a mob angered at reports that Pole had been stabbed in an altercation with a Jew.

1937: “Make Way For Tomorrow” produced by Adolph Zukor and featuring Maurice Moscovitch as “Max Rubens, the Jewish shopkeeper” was released in the United States today.

1938: The Arabs continued their boycott of the Partition Commission and refused to meet personally with the British officials.  But they did submit a memorandum to the commission today rejecting any “scheme” that would result in partition.  They demanded an entity in which the Jews “would remain a minority” with what are called “full guarantees.”

1938: La Acion, the Judeo-Spanish newspaper of Salonica wrote that the community of Salonica had never been richer with the public property have a value totaling 2,000,000 Drachmas.

 1938: The Palestine Post reported that the 101st Session of the League of Nations opened with a negative balance of unsolved problems like the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, the German occupation of Austria and the Japanese invasion of China. The German and Italian intervention in Spain, where they fought against the democratically-elected government and the steadily growing refuge problem also figured high on the League's distressing agenda.

1939: The Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital and Medical Center was opened on Mt. Scopus. Mt. Scopus would be cut off from the Jewish held section of Jerusalem at the end of the War for Independence.  When the city was re-united, Mt. Scopus again became part of Israel and Jewish institutions were re-built and revitalized.

1940: Rabbi Louis Finkelstein met with President Roosevelt in the White House today.

1940: As he continued his flight in the face of Nazi conquests Leo Bretholz entered a hospital in Antwerp for hernia surgery.

1940: The visas of the family of Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker expired today “just as the Nazis invaded the Netherlands”

1940: As he tried to escape from Germany, Hugo Gutman, “an officer in the very regiment in which Adolf Hitler was an enlisted man” received his immigration visa today so that he and his family could catch the train for France.

1941 “Billie Holiday recorded the classic jazz song ‘God Bless the Child’” which she had written with “Arthur Herzog, Jr in 1938.”

1942: Belgrade becomes the first Axis-conquered city to murder or eliminate its Jewish Population, largely with the help of Serbian collaborators.

1942: The first deportation train set out from Eisenach for the Belzyce Ghetto

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/06.asp

1942: The Jews of Markuszow, Poland, led by Shlomo Goldwasser, Mordechai Kirshenbaum, and the brothers Yaakov and Yerucham Gothelf, escaped to nearby forests.

1942: American poet Ezra Pound, who was working for the Fascist Italian government, broadcasted from Italy: "You would do better to inoculate your children with typhus and syphilis" than allow more Jews into the United States. America, Pound continues, is ruled by Jews and their allies, who are "the dirtiest dirt from the bottom of the Jew's ash can."

1943: On the eve of the 10th anniversary of a mass book burning in Nazi Germany, Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican nominee for President of the United States declared that the Nazis, “arrogant with power…burned books which contained the accumulated the truth of centuries.”  However, “those very flames lit horizons of the spirit everywhere and today liberty-loving men are united to wipe out the forces of barbarism and brutality – forces which cannot live where men read books.” (Willkie’s sentiment are a case of war driven revisionism since  Americans did not see the threat of the Nazis until after the attack on Pearl Harbor and even then for many it was a reluctant realization.)

1943(4th of Iyar, 5703): The Skalat, Ukraine, Jewish community is destroyed.

1943: Despite the death of most of the leadership at the Headquarters at Mila 18, the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto continues.

1943: Twenty-six year old Eddie Turchin played his first big league game as a member of the Cleveland Indians.

1944: Today, “The Soviet 4th Ukrainian Front captured Sevastopol” where approximately 4,000 Jews had been murdered by the Nazis during their two year occupation of the city.

https://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/index.asp?cid=623

1945: Friedrich Krüger, an SS-Obergruppenführerresponsible for mass exterminations of Polish Jews, committed suicide.

1945: By the time that Red Army liberated Prague today, two-thirds of city’s 92,000 Jews had “perished in the Holocaust.”

1945: On the day after World War II ended in Europe, Captain Bo Foster flew captured Nazi leader Hermann Goering to the U.S. 7th Army’s headquarters for interrogation.  Foster and a group of officers from the Army's 36th Infantry Division gathered on a tiny airstrip outside Kitzbuhel, Austria, to transport the highly-prized war prisoner back to Germany in an unarmed, two-man reconnaissance plane. Then he took one look at the one-time heir to Adolf Hitler and commander of the fearsome Luftwaffe — all 300-plus pounds (136-plus kilos) of him — and knew he needed a bigger plane. According to Foster, "They wanted to get him back where he could be debriefed. There was a strong rumor that in a mountainside in the Alps right down there in Bavaria there was a concentration of (German) military," Foster said. "He just acted as though it was a nice, friendly trip." Goering, 52, had surrendered to the US Army's 36th Infantry Division the day before. He had fallen out of favor with Hitler and hadn't played an active role at the end of the war, though he remained Reichsmarschall of Nazi Germany. Before his capture, Goering wrote a letter to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, offering to work with Eisenhower on the conditions of the German army's surrender, according to an account of Goering's capture by Brigadier Gen. Robert Stack kept by the 36th Infantry Division Association. After receiving the letter, Stack and a group of soldiers drove from the division's base near Kitzbuhel across the border into Germany and intercepted a convoy that included Goering, his wife, daughter, sister-in-law, household servants and military aides, according to the account. Goering agreed to surrender unconditionally but asked that his family be cared for, and the Nazi leader was delivered to Foster for transport the next day. The 33 year-old Foster didn't fear getting shot down carrying such precious cargo alone in an unescorted, unarmed plane. He didn't worry about Goering taking advantage of the lack of a guard to wrest control of the aircraft. The main problem was getting the two of them off the ground — the nimble, lightweight Piper L4 that Foster piloted in his artillery spotting missions wouldn't support both him and Goering. But the division only had the small airstrip that was fine for Foster's aircraft, but was problematic for taking off and landing larger planes. They'd have to upgrade to the one L5 in the division's inventory, a slightly larger aircraft Foster hadn't flown in years. Goering stood on the tiny airstrip in a plain, gray uniform that was unadorned but for a pistol at his hip and a medal around his neck. Still wearing the pistol, he stepped toward the plane. A Goering aide emerged from the group that had gathered and relieved Goering of the weapon. The Nazi leader settled into the back seat and tried to fasten his seat belt. It wouldn't stretch across his belly. He held the strap in his hand, looked at Foster and said, "Das goot!"— that's good. The two men spent the 55-minute flight from Kitzbuhel to Augsburg, Germany, conversing in a mix of German and English. Goering asked Foster to avoid any talk of Hitler or the war but appeared to relish pointing out the sites below them. In a letter to his wife, Virginia Lou Foster, written soon after the mission, Foster told her that the Nazi leader was "effeminate" and "gave me the creeps." [Foster returned to Montanan where he became a General in the National Guard and was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his World War II service.  (As reported in the Jerusalem Post)

1945: Due to quirk of time zones, in the Soviet the ninth and not the eighth of May is the official end of WW II.

1946: Based on the rulings of courts in Poland, today is the date used for people whose death date was not documented but in all likelihood occurred during World War II including the Polish children’s author Janusz Korczak who used the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit and died at Treblinka with the children from his Warsaw orphanage.

1947: “Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who may resume the role of world Zionism's chief spokesman when the United Nations debates the future of Palestine in the autumn, entertained the British High Commissioner, Lieut. Gen. Sir Alan Cunningham, at lunch today.”

1948: Pinchas Ben Porat “was one of ten pilots who left Israel to enroll in Avia S-199 training in Czechoslovakia.”

1949: In the Bronx, German born classical pianist Howard (Helmuth) Joel, the son Meta and Karl Amson Joel, and the former Rosalind Joel, the daughter of Philip and Rebecca Nyman, gave birth to William Martin Joel who gained fame as singer and piano player, Billy Joel the brother of Judith Joel and half-brother classical conductor Alexander Joe.

1952(14thof Iyar, 5712): Pesach Sheni

1952: “The Sniper” a film about what would someday be labeled as a serial killer, produced by Stanley Kramer was released in the United States today.

1953: Birthdate of Roslyn, NY, doctor Judith Steinberg who became Judith Steinberg Dean when she married fellow medical student Howard Dean, the future governor of Vermont.

1954: Gertrude Berg made her first appearance as the “mystery guest” on What’s My Line, signing in as Molly Goldberg, the iconic character she had created.

1955: Ten years and one day after VE Day, West Germany joined N.A.T.O. which raised concerns about how quickly the home of the Nazis and the Holocaust was being normalized in the cause of the “fight against Communism.”

1956: In Brooklyn, “award winning Yiddish and English poet Menke Katz” and his wife gave birth to “Yiddish author, educator and cultural historian” Dovid Katz, the editor of the website DefendingHistory.com

1956: Outfielder Cal Abrams played his last major league baseball game with the Chicago White Sox.

1957: The Libyan government issued a decree ordering all Libyan Jews with relatives in Israel to register with the Libyan boycott Office, the main pressure group opposed trade with Israel.  Since more than ninety per cent of Libyan Jews had left the country between 1949 and 1952, this decree applies to almost every Jewish family in Libya." (In Ishmael's House by Martin Gilbert)

1958: U.S. premiere of the psychological thriller “Vertigo” with music by Bernard Herrmann

1958: Otto Brinkman, who “had been convicted in the Einsatzgruppen Trial” was released from Landsberg Prison today at the conclusion of the U.S. War Crimes program.

1959(1stof Iyar, 5719): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1959: Hank Greenberg resigned from the Chicago White Sox. Following his successful career as a baseball player, Greenberg became an equally successful executive.  He was the general manager of the 1954 Cleveland Indians that broke the Yankee's pennant winning streak.  He then became a part-owner and executive of the Chicago White Sox who beat the Yanks for the pennant in 1959.  Greenberg left baseball to become a successful investment banker.

1961: “Fiorello!” a musical about New York’s most famous mayor who spoke Yiddish when he campaigned for Congress moved from the Broadhurst Theatre to the Broadway Theatre where it continued its first run on Broadway.

1962(5thof Iyar, 5722): Yom HaAtsma’ut

1962: In the New York City Council Chamber, Mayor Robert F. Wagner is scheduled to “officially proclaim today as Israel Independence Day.”

1964: The day after her birth Paul Gilbert and Barbara Crane adopted actress Melissa Gilbert best known for her portrayal of Laura Ingalls in “Little House on the Prairie” where the television father was the Jewish actor Michael Landon.

1965: CBS broadcast the last episode of “For the People” a legal drama created by Stuart Rosenberg and starring William Shatner (before he was Kirk) and Howard Da Silva

1956: Senator Jacob K. Javits, the New York liberal said today that “he would rather see the Republican nomination for Mayor go to any one of the three Republicans mentioned now most prominently mentioned for it than I.D. the builder who is seeking “the Republican and Democratic nominations for Mayor.”

1965: Birthdate of journalist Mark Leibovich who “is the chief national correspondent for the New York Times Magazine.”

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/times-dc-bureau-raids-washington-post-leibovich-leaves-two-others-staying/

1968(11thof Iyar, 5728): Seventy-three year old producer, director and author Albert Lewin, the holder of an MA from Harvard who, with the support of Irving Thalberg, “produced his first picture, ‘The Kiss,” which was Greta Garbo’s last silent film” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/05/10/77087938.pdf

1972: A day after Sabena Flight 571 was hijacked by four terrorists from Black September demanding the release of 315 convicted Palestinian terrorists in exchange for the passengers, a rescue mission was mounted.  A group of commandos led by Ehud Barak that included Benjamin Netanyahu took back control of the plane, free the passengers with the loss of only one life, not counting the two dead terrorists.

1973(7th of Iyar, 5733: Comedian Jack E Leonard passed away.  Born Leonard Lebitsky in Chicago, Illinois, Leonard was a heavy-set, cigar-smoking practitioner of an aggressive form of humor.  His movie credits included the “Disorderly Orderly,” “The Fat Spy,” and “Target: Harry.”

1975(28thof Iyar, 5735): Yom Yerushalayim

1976: Anne Bernays received the Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award for her novel, "Growing Up Rich,"

1978 -The Jerusalem Postreported that a clear consensus developed in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of a compromise, proposed by the former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, which paved the way for the sale of 60 F-15 fighters to Saudi Arabia. The Senate agreed to support this sale, provided that the Administration agreed to increase the number of planes slated for Israel.

1979(12th of Iyar, 5739): Seventy-three year old Lan Adomain the Russian born son of a cantor who served with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War passed away today.

1979(12th of Iyar, 5739): Habib Elghanian “ a prominent Iranian Jewish businessman and philanthropist who served as the president of the Tehran Jewish Society and acted as the symbolic head of the Iranian Jewish community in the 1970s” was executed by a firing squad after having been convicted by an Islamist Court.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/community/article/recalling_elghanians_execution_30_years_later_20090506

1980 Funeral services are scheduled to held for Sue Freedman Mintz, the wife of Jack Mintz and the mother of Terry Scharf and Dr. David Mintz at a pre-funeral gathering this evening.

1981(5th of Iyar, 5741): On Shabbat, seventy-two year old author Nelson Algren winner of the National Book Award for Man With a Golden Arm, which later became a successful film, passed away today.

http://www.biblio.com/algren-nelson/author/1580http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/10/obituaries/nelson-algren-72-novelist-who-wrote-of-slums-dies.html

1981: After 40 performances at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, the curtain came down on “Fools” a comedy written by Neil Simon, directed by Mike Nichols with a cast that included John Rubinstein and Harold Gould.

1981: Rabbi David Posner of Temple Emanu-El officiated at the marriage ceremony of Celine Leah Perle and Jeffery Martin Sinaw which was held in his study.

1982: In “Oppenheimer – Examining the Scientist’s Relationship With Society,” Michael Billington reviews ‘Oppenheimer,’ an upcoming television mini-series that provides a portrait of the complex Jewish-American who was known as the father of the atomic bomb and who lost his security clearance during the Red Scare.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/09/arts/oppenheimer-examining-the-scientist-s-relationship-with-society.html

1984(7thof Iyar, 5744): Eighty-three year old Israeli writer and poet Miriam Yalan-Shteklis passed away today.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/yalan-stekelis-miriam

1984(7th of Iyar, 5744): Eighty-one year old Nudie Cohn, the Kievan born tailor famous for
“decorative rhinestone-covered suits” passed away today,

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/automobiles/a-rhinestone-cowboy-who-grabbed-cars-by-the-horns.html

1985: NBC broadcast the final episode of the first season “The Cosby Show” co-created by Ed Weinberger

1986(30th of Nisan, 5746): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1986(30th of Nisan, 5746): Herschel Bernardi passed away at the age of 62. Born in New York in 1923, Bernardi came from a long line of Yiddish performers.  According to one legend, it was his mother's portrayal of a character called Yente that moved that term from a proper name to a descriptive term.  As an actor, Bernardi had trouble finding work outside of ethnic productions and because of his political views which led to him being blacklisted in the 1950's.  His career finally took off when played Lt. Jacoby, on the hit detective series "Peter Gunn" a role for which he won an Emmy.  Bernardi's unique voice made him the voice for Charlie the Tuna and the Jolly Green Giant.  He was the second actor to play Tevye in the Broadway hit "Fiddler on the Roof." 

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-05-10/local/me-4847_1_herschel-bernardi

1987(10thof Iyar, 57467): American financier and national president of the Boy Scouts of America, John Mortimer Schiff passed away. (As reported by William G. Blair)

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/10/obituaries/john-schiff-a-philanthropist-and-investment-banker-dies.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

1989(4thof Iyar, 5749): Yom HaZikaron

1991: Michael Landon appeared on The Tonight Show where he discussed the pancreatic cancer that would claim his life.

1992: NBC broadcast the final episode of “The Golden Girls”  a long-running sitcom created by Susan Harris and co-starring Beatrice Arthur and Estelle Getty.

1993(18thof Iyar): Lag B’Omer

1993: “2 Views of a Horror” published today described differing views of the Holocaust held by Israelis and Americans.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-05-09/news/9305090113_1_israeli-jews-holocaust-lesson-warsaw-ghetto-uprising

1994(28th of Iyar, 5754): Yom Yerushalayim

1996:Pursuant to Article VII of the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, dated September 28, 1995, the Israelis and the Palestinians agree to the establishment of a Temporary International Presence in the city of Hebron ("TIPH"). This agreement will remain in force until such time as Israeli forces redeploy from Hebron, whereupon it will be superseded by a new agreement to be negotiated by the two sides and the TIPH established by this Agreement will be replaced by a new TIPH to be established under the new agreement ("the new TIPH").

1997: In a story entitled “Saga of Yanov Torah recounted at Yom Hashoah Rites,” the San Diego Jewish Press Heritage recounts Rabbi Erwin Herman’s moving story of the Yanov Torah and how it how survived the Holocaust and found a home in this southern California metropolis

1997: “Father’s Day” a comedy directed by Ivan Reitman who served as producer along with Joel Silver, with a script co-authored by Lowell Ganz and co-starring Billy Crystal was released in the United States today.

1998: NBC broadcast the final episode of season one “Veronica’s Closet,” created by Marta Kauffman.

1998: Ninety-three year old comedy writer Nat Perrin who was also a prolific producer of scripts for movies and television passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/1998/may/14/local/me-49635

1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers includingBetty Friedan. And the Making of 'The Feminine Mystique': The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism by Daniel Horowitz and Betty Friedan: Her Life by Judith Nennessee. 

1999: Michael Ovitz Is on the Line

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/09/magazine/michael-ovitz-is-on-the-line.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

1999: In “Family Politics,” published today, Aaron L. Friedberg examined the Madeline Albright’s reaction to revelation about the Jews in her family tree.

http://partners.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/reviews/990509.09friedbt.html

2000(4thof Iyar, 5760): Yom HaZikaron

2000: Prime Minister Ehud “Barak and his advisors dropped hints today” that the date for Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon “could be advanced…as a way to put pressure on Lebanon to help curb the violence or to negotiate a withdrawal arrangement.”

2001: The bodies of two Israeli teenagers – Yaakov “Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran  - who had been kidnapped yesterday were found in a cave in the Judean Desert near their home which was covered with the boy’s blood “reportedly smeared by their killers” who had bound them, stabbed them and beaten them to death with rocks.

2001(16thof Iyar, 5761): Ninety-three year old producer and director Saul Elkins, the brother of Leon and Michael Elkins, passed away today Nevada.

2002: “Roger Dodger” a comedy co-starring Jesse Eisenberg premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

 

2002: The 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem came to an end when the Palestinians inside agreed to have 13 suspected terrorists among them deported to several different countries. The terrorists had taken over the Christian shrine as they were pursued by Israeli security forces.  Interestingly there was no complaint by Christian leaders over this desecration of one of their holy places.

2002: Yom Yerushalayim begins this evening.

2003 (7th of Iyar, 5763): Seventy-one year old playwright Jack Gelber, the Chicago born son of “Molly (Singer) and Harold Gelber” passed away today. (As reported by Mel Gussow)

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/theater/jack-gelber-71-connection-playwright.html

2003: “Leaders Honor Ghetto Fighters” published today described a joint tribute that the Presidents of Israel and Poland paid to those who fought in the 1943 uprising.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-05-09/news/0305090267_1_ghetto-death-camps-holocaust-survivors

2004(18th of Iyar, 5764): Lag B’Omer

2004: The curtain came down on a revival of Baby for which David Shire wrote the music at The Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, New Jersey

2004(18th of Iyar, 5764): Comedian Alan King passed away.  “It’s not how long you lived, but how well you lived.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/arts/alan-king-comic-with-chutzpah-dies-at-76.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘Our Mothers' War': The Just-as-Great Generation by Laura Shapiro.

2005: In Berlin, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder led a delegation “of the senior member of Germany’s government” at the ceremonies dedicating “The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” designed by Peter Eisenman.

2006: At New York’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin delivers a lecture on his new book A Code of Jewish Ethics followed by a book party and book signing.

2006(11th of Iyar, 5766): Ruth Gay, a writer known for her nonfiction books documenting Jewish life in the Old World and the New, died in the Bronx. She was 83 and lived in Manhattan. She had been suffering from leukemia, and died at Calvary Hospital, her family said. Ms. Gay's books include "Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II" (Yale University, 2002), which dealt with a little-studied subject: the more than 250,000 Jews who returned to Allied-occupied Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II. She also wrote "The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait" (Yale University, 1992), which chronicled Jewish life in Germany from the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to the rise of Hitler in 1933. (As Reported by Margalit Fox)

2006:Israeli archaeologists working for Israel's Antiquities Authority announced today that they have uncovered a large concentration of stone utensils on the southeastern rim of the city which were used by prehistoric man hundreds of thousands of years ago. 

2007: As part of Jewish Heritage Month, the National Archives presented The Rape of Europa, a feature documentary that tells of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction, and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Second World War. The film skillfully interweaves the history of Nazi art looting with contemporary stories of restitution. Tonight, following a screening of the 117-minute film, a distinguished panel will participate in a discussion and a question-and-answer session with the audience. Panelists include Lynn Nicholas, author of “The Rape of Europa,” the award-winning book on which the film is based; Robert M. Edsel, author of “Rescuing Da Vinciand a co-producer of the film; and Michael J. Kurtz, Assistant Archivist for Records Services at the National Archives.

2007: Students from Beit Hannah participate in the main ceremony on Karl Marx Boulevard in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, commemorating the victory over the Nazis in 1945.

2007: “Under Pressure, New Rep Cancels Play” describes the cancellation of “To Pay the Price” about the Raid on Entebbe because it was going to be paired with “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.”  The pressure came from the family of Yoni Netanyahu, the only person killed when Israeli commandos rescued Jewish hostages being held by Arab terrorists.

2007: In “A Life Made Out of Wood, Metal and Determination,” published today Andreak K. Scott reviews an exhibition styled “The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend,” a compact survey of 66 works organized by Brooke Kamin Rapaport for the Jewish Museum which is her first New York museum show in 27 years and examines the career of this late-blooming artist. “Life isn’t one straight line. Most of us have to be transplanted, like a tree, before we blossom.”

2008: The Holocaust memorial in Berlin hosts a classical concert on the third anniversary of its opening. 2008(4th of Iyar, 5768): In Tel Aviv, Shmuel Katz, who was a close adviser to Menachem Begin, Israel’s prime minister in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but who later became a vociferous opponent of Begin’s peace efforts with Egypt and the Palestinians, passed away at the age of 93.

2009(15th of Iyar, 5769): Noted editor and author David Marcus, the County Cork native whose work included To Next Year in Jerusalem, Who Ever Heard of an Irish Jew? and Other Short Stories and Oughtobioraphy – Leaves From the Diary of a Hyphenated Jew passed away today.

http://www.irishwriters-online.com/marcus-david/

2009: Canadian born tennis pro Sharon Fichman who also holds Israeli citizenship was the “runner-u[“ in the Portugal Open, clay court tournament played in Estroril, Portugal.

2009: The Jacob’s Ladder Spring Festival comes to a close. http://jlfestival.com/index.asp

2009: As part of the Shabbat Lecture Series, the 92nd Street Y presents “Jewish Giants of the

American Songbook: Rodgers and Hammerstein” which examines the collaboration that produced a series of musicals that began with adaption of “Green Grow the Lilacs” into “Oklahoma” and continued with Carousel,The King and I, South Pacific and The Sound of Music.

2009: “The Man That Got Away: After Ira, George” opens at the 92ndStreet Y in New York.

2010: Fradle Freidenreich is scheduled to lead a panel discussion entitled “More Than a Book Launch...Passionate Pioneers: The Story of Yiddish Secular Education in North America, 1910-1960” at the Center for Jewish History.”

2010: In honor of Yom Yerushalayim, Young Israel of Southfield (Michigan) is scheduled to show “Alone on the Ramparts,” a film that tells the story of the battle for Jerusalem during the War of Independence.

2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Trials of the Diaspora:A History of Anti-Semitism in England by Anthony Julius, Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 by Emmanuel Faye, Stranger From Abroad:Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness by Daniel Maier-Katkin, The Life of Irene Nemirovsky: 1903-1942 by Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt, Dimanche And Other Stories by Irène Némirovsky and The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy by Richard A. Posner.

2010:The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial institution is scheduled to hold a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany beginning at 5:00 p.m. this evening at the Yad Vashem's Memorial to the Jewish Soldiers and Partisans.

2010:The Obama administration announced today that indirect, American-brokered talks had resumed between Israel and the Palestinians, capping a year of efforts by Washington to revive the peace process.

2011:The Center for Jewish History, American Society for Jewish Music and Center for Traditional Music and Dance are scheduled to present: The Weimar Klezmer Republic: Creating a Center for Yiddish Culture in Germany

2011(5th of Iyar, 5771): Seventy-two year old television news director Dennis Gralnick passed away. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/business/14gralnick.html?_r=1

2011(5th of Iyar, 5771): Yom Hazikaron – Israel Remembrance Day

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/yomhazikaron.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Hazikaron

2011: At 11 AM today a two-minute siren sounded throughout the country to mark Memorial Day, followed by ceremonies at Israel's 44 military cemeteries.

2011:The 2011 Independence Day ceremony is scheduled to take place 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 Ethiopian 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. This annual ceremony in Jerusalem that marks the transition from the solemn Yom Hazicharon (Memorial Day) to the joyous Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day.)

2011:Moshe Cohen, director of Heichal Hatora – an Orthodox Jewish Day School in Buenos Aires - was hit in the head with an iron bar as his assailant shouted "Jew, Jew." Cohen was hospitalized with a serious head injury. The attacker was arrested. Buenos Aires was the scene of one of the most murderous attacks on Jewish civilians outside of Israel.

2012(16th of Iyar, 5572): Eight-four year old Vidal Sassoon passed away today (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/fashion/vidal-sassoon-hairdresser-and-trendsetter-dies-at-84.html?pagewanted=print

2012: Kadima council chairman Haim Ramon marred the celebrations in the party over its chairman Shaul Mofaz’s joining the cabinet today, when he sent Mofaz a fiercely worded letter announcing that he was quitting his post and leaving the party altogether. (As reported by Gil Hoffman)

2012(16th of Iyar, 5572): Eighty-four year old CPA Milton Adler, the son of Leo and Bella Adler and the husband of Marion Adler passed away today in Cherry Hill, NJ.

2012:A special benefit concert for Woman to Woman - The Jerusalem Shelter for Battered Women is scheduled to take place at the City Winery in New York City.

2012: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present “Autobiography and Biography: Herzl, Freud, and Stefan Zweig, during which Professor Mark Gelber is scheduled to discuss Stefan Zweig’s brilliant but problematic depictions of Herzl (and Zionism) and Freud (psychoanalysis, anti-Semitism, and Jewish survival) in his late autobiographical work written predominantly during the period of his American exile, The World of Yesterday

2012: Dr. Erica Brown is scheduled to address the annual meeting of The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.

2012: “Barbara Bain Remains ‘Love Struck’ When It Comes To Theatre” published today describes the career of the Emmy award winning actress who will be forever remember for her role in “Mission Impossible.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/09/entertainment/la-et-barbara-bain-20120509

2012:The Jewish Historical Society of New Jersey is scheduled to sponsor a public forum titled "Jews and Jazz" in Whippany, NJ.

2012: The 2nd Annual Cleveland’s Funniest Rabbi Contest and Lag B’omer Celebration is scheduled to take place tonight at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.

2012: The United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, which was sponsored by House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), passed today by a vote of 411-2

2013:The National Archives will show the Academy Award-winning HBO documentary of Gerda Weissman’s life, “One Survivor Remembers” and then the celebrated author, 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and Holocaust survivor will discuss the film after the screening.

2013: Shiva minyan for Miles Lane, the brother of Harriet Gasway and the brother-in-law of Bill Gasway was held this evening in Cedar Rapids.

2013: The Skirball Center for Adult Center for Jewish Learning is scheduled to present a lecture by /Dr. Avivah Gottlieb  Zornberg entitled “To  Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters” based on Torah narrative about the five daughters of Zelofchad.

2013: Researchers from Tel Aviv University are tentatively positing that they may have discovered the origin of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Despite immense amounts of research into dementia and other cognitive diseases that affect vast numbers of people around the world, and significant progress in addressing the illnesses, there are no known cures. The Israeli research points at a protein in the brain called tomosyn as a possible key to the diseases, Israel Radio reported today.

2013:Criticism of Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s proposed budget cuts and tax hikes mounted today, with social protest groups announcing two planned demonstrations against perceived violations of Lapid’s pre-election campaign promises.

2013(29thof Iyar, 5773): Eighty-seven year old Alan Abelson the former editor of Barron’s and iconoclastic business columnist passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/business/media/alan-abelson-barrons-columnist-and-editor-dies-at-87.html?hpw&_r=1&

 

2013(29thof Iyar, 5773): Ninety-three year old Baruch Spiegel, “one of the last surviving” Warsaw Ghetto fighters passed away today in Montreal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/world/europe/boruch-spiegel-who-battled-nazis-in-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-dies-at-93.html

2014: “The Wonders” and “Joe Papp in Five Acts” are scheduled to be shown at the National Center for Jewish Film’s 17th annual Film Festival.

2014: Noah Thalblum and Curtis Litow are scheduled to “share their respective about their experiences in Israel last summer” as Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids celebrates another year of Israesli independence.

2015: The Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center is scheduled to present “25 Questions for a Jewish Mother” with Judy Gold.

2015: “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” is scheduled to be shown at the 18thannual Jewish Film Festival.

2015: Israeli composer and sound artist Maya Dunietz is scheduled to present the U.S. premiere of her solo work at the Abrons Art Center.

2015: Israeli cellist Michael Katz and pianist Reanna Gutman are scheduled to perform as part of “Echoes of Hope, “ a celebration of the work and lives of brilliant composers who were directly affect by WW II and the Holocaust.”

2016(1stof Iyar, 5776): Rosh Chodesh Iyar;

2016: “A nascent Jewish community was officially born in Madagascar starting today when 121 men, women and children began the Orthodox conversion process on the remote Indian Ocean island nation” be coming before a beit din “comprised three rabbis with Orthodox ordinations: Rabbi Oizer Neumann of Brooklyn, Rabbi Achiya Delouya of Montreal and Rabbi Pinchas Klein of Philadelphia” at the Le Pave Hotel..

2016: In St. Augustine, FL, the City Commission of America’s Oldest European City is scheduled to proclaim May as “St. Augustine Jewish Heritage Month” at the Commission’s regularly scheduled meeting at 5:00pm this evening.

2016: “Artis, in partnership with the School of Visual Arts (SVA), and the International Center for Photography (ICP) is scheduled to present a lecture with acclaimed photographer Miki Kratsman an Argentinean-born photographer who has lived in Israel since 1971.

http://www.artiscontemporary.org/programs/lecture-with-miki-kratsman/

2017: Lynn Downey is scheduled to speak about her book Levi Strauss: The Man Who Blue Jeans to the World at the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society this evening.

2017: Dr. David Kraemer is scheduled to lecture on “The Books Jewish Tradition Forgot – But Shouldn’t Have” this evening at the Streicker Center in New York City.

2017: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “The Zookeeper’s Wife.”

2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host an evening with Mel Brooks during which he will talk about “his favorite film clips,” “growing up Jewish in Brooklyn: and “his career an actor, producer and director.”

2018: “How Michael Cohen, Denied Job in White House, Was Seen as Its Gatekeeper” published today described the fate of the man who said “he would take a bullet for Mr. Trump.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/us/politics/michael-cohen-shell-company.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

2018: Today, “CNN reported that investigators from the Special Counsel investigation have questioned “Ukrainian born Viktor Vekselberg, “the owner and president of Renova Group “about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments his company’s US affiliate had made to Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer” and self-avowed “fixer,

2018: “Simon and Theodore” and “Another Planet” are scheduled to be shown at the 26thToronto Jewish Film Festival this evening.

2018: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host “Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of the Middle Eastern Jewish Civilization Vanished” in which “Lyn Julius, a British journalist (Guardian, Standpoint) and daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, explores the mass exodus of Middle Eastern Jewish minority communities, the clamor for recognition, redress, and memorialization, and how their cause can further peace and reconciliation between Israel and the Muslim world.”  (Editor’s Note: This is the “Middle East Refugee Problem” that nobody talks about.)

2018: “Back to Berlin” and “The Dead Nation” are scheduled to be shown at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2018: In New Orleans, Temple Sinai is scheduled to co-host “Do Justice: Meaning and Action Across Our Traditions, a free social justice-themed course.”

2018: The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a presentation by Holocaust survivor Susan Warsinger.

2019: “Firefighters who were called to put out a fire in the Mea Shearim neighborhood. were attacked by dozens of residents who tried to take down the Israeli flag from the fire truck,”

2019: After being introduced by Speaker of the House Nancy Peolosi, Omar Suleiman, “an imam who has wished for the end of Zionism, called for a third Intifada and likened Israel to Nazi-era Germany delivered the opening prayer for a session of the US House of Representatives” today which coincides with the celebration of Israel Independence Day. (As reported by Ron Kampeas)

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Outdoors,” the winner of “Best Screenplay” award at the Haifa International Film Festival.

2019: The Jewish Book Council and Tablet Magazine are scheduled to host Dani Shaprio, author of Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Fraternity and Love and Stephanie Butnick as they discuss “how we become who we are, how Judaism shapes how we think about our identity, and society's expectations on female artists and Jewish women.”

2019: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host Chicago Tribune columnist Howard Reich, the author of The Art of Inventing and child of Holocaust survivors as he “looks back on his greatest opportunity as a writer and journalist: numerous conversations with the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel.  Howard will appear in conversation with another child of Survivors, Regine Schlesinger, veteran WBBM News Radio 78 broadcast personality.”

2019: Alarmed by Rev. Michael Pfleger’s invitation for Louis Farrakhan to speak at his church, Illinois Holocaust Museum officials spoke out this afternoon against Pfleger for “giving hatred a platform

2019(4thof Iyar): Yom Ha’atsama’ut – Israel Independence Day --- Seventy-one years and counting.

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yom-haatzmaut-israel-independence-day/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/yom-ha-atzmaut-israeli-independence-day

2020(15thof Iyar, 5780): Parasha Emor and Chapter Four Pirke Avot;

2020: Netta Yersushalmy is scheduled to present the livestream premier of part six of Paramodernities, “A Response to Balanchine with special guest Perter N. Miller.”

2020: B'nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host via Zoom “Starbucks, Bread & Torah Online.”

2020: As of today, thanks to a ruling by Israel’s High Court and an amendment to the Basic Law passed by the Knesset there appear to be no obstacles to the formation of a unity government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and supported by the Blue & White party under Benny Gantz.

2020: Based on published reports, Israel’s total virus-related deaths has reached at least 245 victims.

2021: The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival program is scheduled to include a talk by late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s son, Yair, and one of the filmmakers of the 2019 documentary “Shamir, His Way.”

2021: The Jewish Studio Project in Berkeley is scheduled to “present a gathering for people who feel grief on Mother’s Day.”

2021: In celebration of Mother’s Day, in Atlanta, GA, The Breman Museum is scheduled to provide “all Moms with complimentary admission and a gift”

2021: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors/and or of special interest to Jewish readers including Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick, The Hard Crowd Essays 2000-2020 by Rachel Kushner, whose father was Jewish and Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli which highlights the work of two Jewish women, Susan Stamberg and Nina Totenberg and one, Cokie Roberts, who is married to a Jew.

2021: The Israel Office of Cultural Affairs is scheduled to co-sponsor a Mother’s Day celebration “with music from the Jerusalem Orchestra East and West” which is a “blended music program that will include selections of musical styles from around the world.

2021: The Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania is scheduled to co-host a visit to “A Virtual Coffeehouse in Twentieth Century Cairo with Dr. Alon Tam” who will “recreate the atmosphere” of what was “an urban hub for Jewish working and middle class men and women.”

2021: As Israelis arise this morning, they are left to wonder if yesterday’s rocket attacks and riots in Jerusalem and Gaza, couple with violence earlier last week, are “isolated incidents” or the prelude to another round of violence and terrorism.

 


This Day, May 10, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 10

 70: During the Siege of Jerusalem, Titus, the commander of the Roman legions and the son of Emperor Vespasian, opens a full-scale assault on Jerusalem and attacks the city's Third Wall to the northwest.

1013: After three long years of fighting which destroyed the cities of Jaen, Algecrias, Malaga and Valencia, the Muslim Berber tribesmen from North Africa took over the city of Cordoba, replacing the Umayyad Arabs. This shift in power did not have a negative impact on the Jewish population of Moorish Spain as they continued to play a similar role in the more decentralized world of the Berbers.

1267: A Church synod, meeting in Vienna, ordered Jews to wear distinctive garb.

1293: King Dinis I of Portugal who resisted pressure from the clergy to apply the anti-Semitic restrictions of the Fourth Council of the Lateran and “maintained a conciliatory position” regarding his Jewish subjects “advanced the interests of the Portuguese merchants, and set up by mutual agreement a fund called the Bolsa de Comércio, the first documented form of marine insurance in Europe,” which was approved today.

1427: All Jews were ordered expelled from Berne, Switzerland. Expulsions of Jewish communities continued unabated throughout the 15th century: Treves, 1419; duchy of Austria, 1421; Cologne, 1424; Zurich, 1436; archbishopric of Hildesheim, 1457; Schaffhausen, 1472; Mayence, 1473; Warsaw, 1483; Geneva, 1490; Thurgau, 1491; Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, Lithuania, 1492; Mecklenburg and Arles, 1493; Portugal, 1497; Nuremberg 1499; Provence, 1500. 

1484(15th of Iyar): First auto-da-fe was held in Saragosa, Spain.

1484: The Inquisitor at Saragossa, General Gaspar Juglar was found dead, possibly the victim of a poisoning. This happened shortly after the first auto-de-fe took place in the city.

1529: Suleiman the Magnificent launched his campaign to secure control of Hungary.  The campaign would lead to the unsuccessful siege of Vienna in the fall which would mark the high-water mark of Turkish attempts to take control of Europe with all that that would mean for Christians, Moslems and especially Jews.

1634: William Prynne, an opponent Jews settling in England was pilloried for a second time as part of his punishment for opposing the production of plays.

1655: The British capture Jamaica from Spanish opening the door for Jews to settle in the island colony.

1682(2ndof Iyar, 5442): The largest auto da fe was held in Lisbon: One hundred and seventeen persons were judged within three days, including a ninety-one year old woman.

1682(2ndof Iyar, 5442): Abraham Lopez Pereira and Isaac da Fonseca were burned at the stake.

1754(18thod Iyar, 5514): Lag B’Omer

1722: Birthdate of Mathias Bush, the native of Prague who came to “New York in the 1740’s” before moving on to Philadelphia where he became a naturalized citizen in 1749, married into the Gratz family, became a leading merchant, a supporter of the American Revolution and the patriarch of the Bush clan that included Solomon Bush who rose to the rank of Lt. Col. In the Continental Army.

1774: Abraham Solomon married Elizabeth Low at Marblehead, Massachusetts.  Solomon was Jewish, a fact reinforced by the fact that he signed his name in Hebrew on the muster roll so that he could receive his pay while serving in the Continental Army. 

1774:  Louis XVI begins his reign as King of France.  Basically, Louis followed the policy of his predecessors when it came to the Jews of France.  “The established, finance ally comfortable Sephardim of Bordeaux, Bayonne and Marseilles” enjoyed the privileges granted by Louis XV.  “These privileges had been purchased with a ll0, 000-livres payment in honor of his coronation.”

The Ashkenazi community of Alsace suffered the abuse and taxation that had been their lot since the days of Louis XIV.  Of course, part of this difference in treatment may have been caused by the fact that Alsace was Germanic province that France had taken as a spoil of war.  The French were always suspicious of those living in this border province, Jew and non-Jew alike.

1785: Joseph Abrahams arrived in Savannah, GA today after which in January of 1791 her married the widow of Moses Cohen, nee Judith de Lyon.

1789: Birthdate of Jared Sparks, the American historian, Unitarian Minister and President of Harvard who “became interested in Haym Solomon’s career and validated the importance of the Jewish businessman to the American revolution when he wrote “that Salomon’s associations with Robert Morris ‘were very close and intimate and that a great part of the success that Mr. Morris attained in his financial schemes was to the skill and ability of Haym Solomon.’”

1792(18thof Iyar, 5552): Lag B’omer

1792: Asher Jacobs married Esther Israel at the Great Synagogue today.

1797(14thof Iyar, 5557): Pesach Sheni observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1799: French troops under Napoleon make one last assault in their futile attempt to conquer Acre.  If the assault had succeeded would history have been changed?  Would Bonaparte have honored the grandiose statements about making Palestine a home for the Jews?  Given his “inconsistency” in other areas, it would probably have depended on his needs at the time.  

1801: Birthdate of Paul Tulane the businessman whose endowment paved the way for the renaming of the university which was originally known as the Medical College of Louisiana to Tulane University whose many Jewish graduates include Professor Stephen Whitfield.  As of 2009, Tulane’s Jewish population ranked number 9 in a list of 30 private universities. Tulane is home to a Jewish Studies program that has been led by the distinguished author and educator Professor Brian Horowitz.

http://tulane.edu/liberal-arts/jewish-studies/

1801: American involvement in the Middle East would begin when the Barbary Pirates of Tripoli (North Africa, not Lebanon) declares war against the United States in what became known as the First Barbary War.  American Jews first became involved in the area when Colonel David Franks negotiated a treaty with Morocco back in 1786.  Jewish involvement would continue when President Madison sent Mordecai Manuel Noah to negotiate with Tunisia based Barbary Pirates for the release of imprisoned American sailors in 1813.  The appointment of Noah “helped establish a tradition of appointing American Jews to Middle Eastern diplomatic posts.  (For more about this fascinating intersection of American and Jewish history see Power, Faith and Fantasy by Michael B. Oren.)

1807: Netherlands native David Cromelien and his wife Adeline Cromelien gave birth to Leon Cromelien.

1808: The Westphalian chief of police, a French official named Savagner, entered “The Green Shield.”  The Green Shield was both the home and the business center for Rothschild in Frankfurt.  Savagner and the troopers, who accompanied him, searched the premises looking for proof that Rothschild was plotting with Whilhelm.

1810(6th of Iyar): Rabbi Joshua Ha-Kohen Perahyah, author of Vayikra Yehoshua passed away today

1813: Birthdate of Gustav Christian Schwabe a German-born British “merchant and financier who funded companies such as John Bibby & Sons, Harland and Wolff and the White Star Line.”  At the age of six, Schwabe and his family “were forced to convert to Lutheranism.”

1815: Gabriel Oppenheim married Elizabeth Davis at the Great Synagogue today.

1815: Samuel Solomons married Sophia Davis at the Hambro Synagogue today.

1816: Birthdate of Joseph Mayer Montefiore, the native of London who was a nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore

1829: Two days after he had passed away, “watch maker, optician and jeweler” David Davis, the husband of Elizabeth Lazarus and father of Aaron Davis was buried today “at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1837: As the Panic of 1837 (a 19th century version of the 20thcentury Great Depression) worsens banks in New York fail and unemployment reaches record levels. Some Jews prospered during this period while others struggled. Isaiah Moses, a South Carolina merchant and planter was forced to borrow money from Beth Elohim’s charity fund, Karen Kayemet to help maintain his lifestyle. On the other hand August Belmont, representing the Rothschilds, arrived in New York during the Panic. He used his newly created August Belmont & Company to reform and improve the business interests of the House of Rothschild over the next five years.

1838: Sixty-one year old Heinrich Marx, the father of Karl Marx, who unlike his was Prussian patriot and monarchist and who became a Lutheran because the law forbade Jews to hold positions in the legal system passed away today.

1839: Ernestine Jaffé and Schiee Jaffé gave birth to Alwine Waldenburg

1842: In Rhenish Palatinate, Jacob Sulzbacher and Regine Schwartz gave birth to Louis Sulzbacher, the husband of Pauline Flersheim and the United States for the Western District of Indian Territory and “first continental American appointed as Associate Justice of the newly created Supreme Court of Puerto Rico in 1900.”

1843: Birthdate of Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, leader of the Reform Movement in the United States.  Born and educated in Germany, Kohler came to the United States in 1869 to serve as Rabbi at Congregation Beth El in Detroit.  The following year he married the daughter of Dr. David Einhorn, the Rabbi at Congregation Beth El in New York and the leading Reform rabbi of his day.  Kohler followed his father-in-law in that position and supported his views when he helped write the 1885 Reform Platform.  He was elected President of Hebrew Union College and died in 1926.

1849(18th of Iyar, 5609): Lag B'Omer

1849: Bernard Sondheim served with the Tenth Regiment of New York State Militia when it quelled the Astor Place Riot, also known as the Forrest-Maready Riots, a unique outbreak of public violence caused by competing fans of two different thespians.

1852: In Krumbach, Deutschland, Elias Landauer, the German born son of Raphael Löb Landauer and Lucia Pessel Landauer and his wife Karoline Kehle Landauer gave birth to Isidor Landauer

1855: A group of Jews who have converted to Christianity are scheduled to meet tonight at the

Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church in Manhattan under the auspices of the American Hebrew Christian Association.

1860(18thof Iyar, 5620): Lag B’Omer

1860: Lewis Collins married Martha Cohen today on the first day during the counting of the Omer on which Jews can marry.

1861: Secretary of War Cameron and President Lincoln officially accepted Major Mordecai's resignation thus ending a 38 year military career of what was at that time, the highest ranking Jewish officer in the U.S. Army.

1863: Birthdate of Rotterdam native and University of Leyden trained Amsterdam physician Herman Pinkhof  who “in 1895 found the society for the Promotion of the Interests of Judaism in Holland” of which he became president in 1898.

1864: Alfred A. Rinehard, a Captain serving with Company of the 148thRegiment was wounded at Po River, Virginia.

1865(14thof Iyar, 5625): Pesach Sheni

1865: As the Confederacy crumbled at the end of the Civil War, Judah P. Benjamin completed his terms as the third and last Secretary of State of the CSA.

1865: In New York, “John F. and Bertha May Manges” gave birth Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons trained doctor and husband of Julia Hirschhorn who was the consulting physician at Mt. Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum as well as a “contributor to several medical journals on the subject of clinical medicine.

1866:Ion Ghica who “was a valuable ally for Yiddish theater in Bucharest” and “on several occasions expressed his favorable view of the quality of acting, and even more of the technical aspects of the Yiddish theater” completed his service as Prime Minister of Romania today.

1866: In Vilna, Boruch M. Friederman and his wife gave birth to Solomon Jacob Friederman who was ordained by Rabbi Isaac Eichanan Spector in Kovno before serving as the rabbi of Congregation Shaarei Jerusalem and Congregation Kol Israel in New York City.

1866: Birthdate of Belarus native Lev Rosnberg who gained fame as Leon Bakst a Russian painter and scene- and costume- designer who revolutionized the arts he worked in” and who in 1893 produced a self-portrait that hung in the Sate Russian Museum in, St. Petersburg.

He passed away in 1924.

1868(18th of Iyar, 5628):  Lag B’Omer

1868: “Mr. Disraeli and Judaism” published today summarized the view expressed by The Jewish Chronicle that Benjamin Disraeli has been a Christian since he was either five or six years old at which time a friend of Disraeli’s father took young Benjamin to a church in Hackney where he was baptized.

1868: Abraham Nathan married Katherine Lyons today at the Great Synagogue.

1868: In Medina, NY, Levi Adler and Theresa Wile gave birth to Harvard trained lawyer, Isaac Adler, the “53rd Mayor of Rochester, NY” and the husband of Cora Barnet with whom he had four daughters.

1869: The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah (not Promontory Point, Utah) with the golden spike. When the Union Pacific, one of the two companies building the railroad, entered Utah the Auberach brothers (Fred, Sam and Theodore) opened tent stores in Bryan, Wyoming and Promontory, Utah to meet the needs of the burgeoning population. The Auberachs were so successful that they opened a permanent store in Ogden, Utah in 1869 and Salt Lake City in 1873.

1872:  Birthdate of Marcel Mauss, “a French sociologist best known for his role in elaborating on and securing the legacy of his uncle, Émile Durkheim and the Annee Sociologique and the author of The Gift. He passed away in 1950.

http://www.aaanet.org/committees/commissions/centennial/history/092mauss.pdf

 

 

1873: Myer Stern the President of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society and a trustee of Temple Emanu-El was among the mayor’s nominees for Commissioners of Charities and Correction in New York City. Born in 1824, Stern came to the United States at the age of 16 and has lived in New York since 1847.  “A large, robust vigorous-looking man with a rather pleasant expression,” Stern is a Reform Democrat who had the support of the Republicans when he ran for the State Senate.

1873: Amelia Strauss, the Charleston, SC born daughter of Fannie and Bendix Abraham Weinberg and her husband Alfred Abraham Strauss gave birth to Isaac Calhoun Strauss

1873: Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a patent for their unique manner of manufacturing jeans.

1874: Birthdate of Moses Schorr, a Polish Rabbi, Polish historian, politician, Bible scholar, Assyriologist and orientalist who died in Soviet prison camp in 1941.

1877:  Romania declares itself independent from Turkey.  Under the Treaty of Berlin signed in 1878, the Jews of Romania were to receive full citizenship. 

1877: The will of Henry Grass, a New York clothier who died in April, was filed in Surrogate’s Court today.  The estate was valued at $75,000. The will opened with an invocation “In the name of the God of Israel, Amen.”  Grass left $300 to his niece Jetha and a thousand dollars to the daughters of his brother Abraham “on condition that they ‘marry according to the Jewish law.’”  He left $100 bequests  to the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum , Mout Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew congregation on 57th street between 1st and 2nd avenues.  He left one third of the residue of the estate to his wife Rebbeca and the remainder was to be divided equally among his six children.

1879: Today’s “Foreign News” column reported that there had been a 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 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(17thof Iyar, 5639): Seventy-five year old Russian Hebrew scholar Benzion Berkowitz known for his study of the Targum Onkelos passed away today at Wilna.

1879: Based on information provided by a correspondent for the Neue Zilricher Zeitgung it was reported today that in the first week of April the Jews of Satschcheri had been massacred after the body of a Christian child had been found in the woods. Seven Jews were accused by the Christian villagers of having killed the child and hidden the body to be used in a holiday sacrifice. The district judge dismissed the charges because the medical witness said the child had died of natural causes and the wounds on the body had been inflicted by wild enemies. Ax-wielding Christian villagers attacked the Jews who were celebrating their deliverance, killing at least six and wounding several more.  The correspondent claimed that the local Greek Orthodox priest had incited the attack.
1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Wasilkow and Konotop, Russia.

1881: In Pittsburgh, of Jacob Isadore Affelder and Catherine "Kate" Affelder gave birth to Case School of Applied Science graduate Harry /Fleishman Affelder, the Cleveland “envelope manufacturer and husband of Rhoda E. Affelder who was the father of Lewis Jacob Affelder and Ruth Jane Hexter Goodfriend

1882: Alliance, a Jewish agricultural settlement, was founded in New Jersey. Alliance was financed by Alliance Israelite Universelle headquartered in Paris. It was part of a movement to have Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe settle away from major metropolitan areas in the United States and Great Britain. 

1883: Birthdate of Eugen Leviné, the Russian born, German educated communist revolutionary.

1883: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Craiova, Rumania.

1883: Josephine and 27 year old Henry Morgenthau, Sr. were wed today in New York City

1885(25thof Iyar, 5645): Seventy-three year old composer and conductor Ferdinand Hiller whose star pupil was Max Bruch the non-Jew who composed the cello elegy for Kol Nidrei passed away today.

1885(25thof Iyar, 5645): Sixty year old Russian author Grigori Isaacovich Bogrov whose first work, Memoirs of a Jew, “portrayed the vicissitudes of his life and surroundings’”

 

1885: “Welcoming a New Rabbi” published today described the first service conducted by Rabbi Alexander Kohut at Temple Ahavath Chesed.  The Hungarian native had replaced another Hungarian native, Adolph Huebsch who passed away last October. In his opening sermon, Kohut paid tribute to his new home, promised to be an apostle of peace and spoke so movingly of his predecessors that some of the congregants were moved to tears.

1887: Birthdate of Indianapolis, IN, born attorney Leo Kaminsky who was active in B’nai B’rith and the Reform movement.

1888(29th of Iyar, 5648): Sixty-five year old Michael Heilprin passed away.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7500-heilprin-michael

http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar/heilprin.html

1888: In Vienna, Gábor Steiner, “a Viennese impresario, carnival exposition manager, and inventor, responsible for building the Wiener Riesenrad” and his wife gave birth to Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner who gained fame as Max Steiner was born in Vienna and supposedly studied under Mahler.  He came to the United States in the 1930's, a composer for films who  produced musical themes for such films as “Casablanca,” “The Caine Mutiny,” “The Summer Place” and most famous of all “Tara’s Theme,” the award winning score  “Gone With the Wind.”

http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/moguls/max-steiner.html

1890: It was reported today “the upper house of the Prussian Diet has adopted a resolution calling upon the government to remedy the evils arising from the large number of Jews in the public schools”  by excluding “the juvenile Jews while still taxing the adult Jews for the cost of public education.

1890: “Complaining of the Jews” published today described the reaction of Her von Gosler, the Minister of Public Instruction in Prussia to proposals that Jewish children be excluded from public schools.  He said that “such an attempt would force the nation in a position leading to disruption instead of union.”  To him, this is a matter of educational policy and not subject to “political demand.”

1891: Simon Dalsheimer and Bertha Hofmann gave birth to Hugo Dalsheimer, the husband Helen Miller with whom he has two sons, Roger and George, who was President of the Jewish Historical Society of Maryland from 1960 to 1967.

1891: In Poltava, Russia, Louis Benjamin and Cyril Dora (Bulkin) Zlatkovski gave birth to University of Minnesota trained attorney and WW I U.S. Army veteran Harry William Davis the husband of Ida Miriam Blehert who practiced law in Duluth, MN where he President of the Duluth Zionist District, Director of the Duluth Hebrew Brotherhood and trustee of Temple Emanuel in Duluth.

1891: “Tories Not So Happy Now” published today described the rising fortunes of the Liberal Party which is due in part to a return of the Jews to this political party.  “Under the glamour of Disraeli’s example it became quite the fashion for” Jews to join the Conservative Party. Now, as Jews are confronted with “outside persecution” they recall the debt they owe to the Liberal Party.  Among those leading the change are Baron de Stern and H.S. Leon, the son of clockmaker who has reportedly amassed a fortune of 15 million dollars and has sought to be a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community.

1891: The increase of this week’s issue of The Hebrew Standard from 16 to 24 pages is reported to be permanent.  The Hebrew Standard “is now the largest Jewish paper published in the United State. “It is intended to be a Jewish family paper” without any congregational affiliation.

1891: Nearly three hundred Jewish children were vaccinated today the Bureau of Contagious Diseases.

1892: “Strikes Turn Into Riots” published today described the violent attacks on the Jews of Lodz by workers who have been on strike since May Day. After attacking the mills where they had worked the strikers turned their wrath on the Jewish community which actively defended itself.  Local authorities could not quell the disturbance, but the military units called in showed their sympathy with the rioters and did not defend the Jews.

1893: Three people escaped being asphyxiated today at a tenement on Eldridge Street which is occupied by Jewish immigrants from Russia.

1893: In can only be described as a “starting” development, it was reported today that the Russian government to hold a meeting of Rabbis in the Autumn to discuss “the Jewish question.” This comes in the wake of the governments announced plan for expelling a million and half Jews living in the Polish part of the Russian Empire. 

1894: Today, “in the shtetl of Byaroza-Kartuskaya, a teacher in a cheder and his wife, who “ran a dry goods store and a factor for making rye kvass, gave birth to poet and Yiddishist Kadia Molodowsky who settled in the United States in 1935 where she lived with her husband Simcha Lev and wrote with such skill that in 1971 she was “a recipient of the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish letters.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/molodowsky-kadya

1895: In “Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, “Aaron Brode, drapery traveller, and his wife Jane, née Magid, immigrants from Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania “ gave birth to their second son, Sir Israel Brodie, the Jews’ College and Oxford educated rabbi who served “as a British Army Chaplain in France from 1917 to 1919, worked as a congregational rabbi in Australia in the inter-war years and “as an army chaplain in France, was one of the last evacuees from Dunkirk.”

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/brodie-sir-israel-9586

1895: “Meeting of Jewish Woman’s Council” published today described the groups plans for holding a fundraising fair in December and a request from London to assist in establishing schools for Russian Jews who have moved to Jerusalem.

1895: Birthdate of Oskar Klein who was murdered at Jajdanek in 1942

1895: Birthdate of Laura Maria Buntenbach-Kugler, the wife of Victor Kugller who was one of those who helped to hide Anne Frank and her family.

1896(27th of Iyar, 5656): Lea "Lisette" Koppel Waldstein, the wife of Ephraim Walstein and the mother of Sophie and Zadok Waldsein, passed away today in Munich.

1897: In New Orleans, Prague native Reform Rabbi Maximilian Heller, the son of Simon Heller and Mathilde Kassanowitz and Ida Annie Heller gave birth to Ruth Heller who was the wife of George Lion Cohen and Albert Steiner.

1897: Two days after he had passed away, 43 year old John Solomons was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1898(18thof Iyar, 5658): Lag B’Omer

1898: First Sergeant Frank Wolf of Lincoln, Sergeant Henry Jacob of Bellwood and Privates William Assenheimer, William J. Koopman, Eugene Meyer and Guy D. Solomon, of Omaha, were among those who joined the United States military when the 1st Nebraska Volunteer Infantry was mustered into the Army.

1898: Twenty-two-year-old NYU trained attorney Benjamin Franklin Spellman, the New York born son of Michael and Amelia (Franklin) Spellman married Rae Grace Freedman today in New  York City.

1898: In London Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett and his wife Violet Goetze gave birth “to their only son Henry Ludwig Mond, 2nd Baron Melchett” who “having been brought up in the Church of England” “reverted in the 1930s to his family’s original Judaism and became a champion of Zionism.”

1898: Privates James W. Rosenberger and Tylor H. Rosenberger both of Winchester were among those who joined the U.S. Military when federal government began the process of mustering the 2nd Virginia Volunteer Infantry in the service of the United States.

1898: Birthdate of 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 to become a world class economist.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/04/10/89131020.pdf

1898: In what was the part of the Russian Empire,Ethel Appel Kaufman and Joseph Kaufman gave birth of Chaya Kaufman who gained famed as Ariel Durant the wife of Will Durant with whom she “was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968 for Rousseau and Revolution, the tenth volume of The Story of Civilization and “presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Gerald Ford”

1899: Memorial services honoring the late Baroness Hirsch are scheduled to be held at the Hebrew Institute and Temple Emanu-El

1899: In Richmond, VA, Rachel and Jacob Levy Ezekiel gave birth to “agrarian economist” Mordecai Ezekiel, the holder of a BA from U. of MD, an MA from the University of MN and a Ph.D from Brookings Institute who was instrumental in creating the New Deal’s Agriculture Adjustment Administration.

1899: Birthdate of composer Dimitri Tiomkin.  Born in Russia, Tiomkin worked in lived in Western Europe before coming to the United States in the 1930's where enjoyed an almost unparalleled career writing scores for film productions. His credits include everything from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, to Giant, to The High and The Mighty and the Guns of Navaronne.  One of his classic was the theme for the 1952 classic western, High Noon.  He won an Oscar for that one and Tex Ritter gained musical immortality for singing it.  His biggest contribution to television was theme for Rawhide.  He passed away in 1979, yet another Jew who helped create popular American culture.

1900: Birthdate of 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 Jews1900: Austrian Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber delivered his “Language Bill” Speech which was entirely different than the one he had asked Herzl to write for him.  Herzl responded to this apparent slight by asking if the Prime Minister only valued his “secretarial services" or that he thought that Herzl wants “a decoration or something like that?” In fact, Herzl only wrote the speech as way of getting the Prime Minister to help him arrange a meeting with the Sultan of Turkey so that he could make a presentation on the benefits of creating a Jewish home in Palestine

1901: The Jewish Comment reported today that Massachusetts State Legislature had rejected Samuel Hyman Borfosky bill exempting “persons observing the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath from any penalty for keeping shops open or for performing secular business and labor on the first day of the week” which in the days of Sunday Closing Laws would have meant that Jews could close on their Shabbat and not lose a day’s business since they would be open on Sunday.

1902: Birthdate of Joachim Prinz, the Prussian born Rabbi who came to the United States in 1937 where he became a leader of the Zionist and Civil Rights movements.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/01/obituaries/joachim-prinz-leader-in-protests-for-civil-rights-causes-dies-at-86.html

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/59863/the-plot-for-america?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=c2e48cf2e6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-c2e48cf2e6-206644398

 1902: In Pittsburgh, of silent film director Lewis J. Selznick and his wife gave birth to producer David O. Selznick, the son-in-law of MGM's Louis B. Mayer who worked for MGM for years before setting up his own production company which produced  Academy Award winner, Gone With the Wind.  Selznick died in 1965.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0510.html

1902: Birthdate of Antaole Litvak director of the film Anastasia

1903: Birthdate of philosopher Hans Jonas. Born and educated in Germany, Jonas would move to Eretz Israel 1933, join the British Army, serving as a combat soldier for five years, return to Israel to fight at the age of 45 as soldier in the War for Independence before moving to Canada and the United States where he wrote and taught until his death in 1993.

1903: Zionists are scheduled to conduct a house-to-house campaign today in New York to raise funds for those victims of the anti-Semitic riots that began in “Kishineff” in April.

1904: In Amsterdam, Aron Belinfante and Georgine Antoinette Hesse gave birth to Frieda Belinfante the Dutch-American cellist and conductor who was a member of the Dutch resistance during WW II.

1905: “A dispatch…from Odessa says it is reported there that thirteen Jews have been killed in riots at Melitopol, in the Government of Taurida, South Russia.

1905: “The Associate Press is informed” that 15 of the 18 people killed at Kieff from May 6 through May 7 were Jews.

1906: Birthdate of New York mobster Abe "Kid Twist" Reles

1907: Birthdate of James Joseph Packman, the native of Biala, Poland who came to the United States in 1910 and served as the managing editor of The Milwaukee Sentinel, the Newark Star Ledger and the San Francisco Call-Bulletin.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/packman-james-joseph

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/02/13/77439631.pdf

1908: “The movement among the Jews of” New York City “to urge a general observance of the Jewish Sabbath by shopkeepers and merchants took definite form” tonight when members of the Sabbath Observance Association and took steps that would lead to a “boycott all Jewish bakers within a certain section of the east side who do not agree to close shop on Saturday.

1909: It was reported today that there is still a possibility that the million dollar bequest by the late Louis A. Heinsheimer may be given to six New York City Charities on condition that they form a federation.  Alfred M. Heinsheimer, the residuary legatee under the will, is trying to find a way to accomplish the descendant’s desires desipted the fact that Louis Stern, President of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum has expressed his continued opposition to the creation of such a federation.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F0DE6DF1E31E733A25753C1A9639C946897D6CF

1910: In Sheffield, England, Julius Isaacs, the Lithuanian born son of Isaac and Sarah Postawelsky and his wife Matilda (Tillie) Isaacs gave birth to “Albert Edward (Teddy) Isaacs”

1911: In Brooklyn Rabbi Hyman Goodekowitz and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Alexander David Goode the Washington, DC raised graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College and holder of a Ph. D from Johns Hopkins who was the husband Al Jolson’s niece Teresa Flax who gained fame as on the Four Chaplains aboard the Troopship Dorchester.

1911: In Berlin, medical student Michael Kaufman and his wife Lala Rabinowitz Kaufman, a daughter of Sholem Aleichem gave birth to New York school teacher Bel Kaufman best known for writing Up the Down Staircase.(As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/26/arts/bel-kaufman-up-the-down-staircase-writer-dies-at-103.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

1912: Today “revolution in Paraguay was defeated after government troops overcame the rebels” at a time when a large number of Sephardi families from the Ottoman Empire were joining the small group of Ashkenazim who had settled there at the end of the 19th century.

1913(3rdof Iyar, 5673): On Shabbat, Samuel Straus who had served as an “Indian agent” passed away in Chattanooga, TN.

1913: In Cincinnati, OH, The Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College is scheduled to host an “exercise” in honor of Dr. Koffman Kohler’s 70th birthday in chapel of the Hebrew Union College Building.

1913: Seventieth birthday of Dr. Kaufmann Kohler who for twenty-four years was Rabbi of Temple Beth-El, at Fifth Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street and is now Honorary Rabbi of that congregation.

1914(14thof Iyar, 5674): Pesach Sheni

1914: Following yesterday’s proclamation, the U.S. observed the first official Mother’s Day which falls on the second Sunday of May.

1914(14thof Iyar, 5674): Sixty-three year old Israel Dov Frumkin who move to Palestine at the age of 9 and was an earlier developer of modern Jewish culture including the revival of Hebrew as a modern language as can be seen by his work the newspaper Havatzelet passed away today in Jerusalem.

1914: Benjamin “Benny” Snyder murdered Philip “Pinchy” Paul “at the behest of ‘Joe the Greaser,’ and east side rival of ‘Dopey Benny’ Fein.  (All of these colorfully named characters are Jewish gangsters)

1915: “Dramatically asserting his innocence of the murder of Mary Phagan and with impassioned declaration that ‘he was to die for the crime of another,’ Leo M. Frank was today sentenced by Judge Ben H. Hill in the General Court to hang on June 22.”

1915: After weeping silently, the wife of Leo Frank “screamed, collapsed and sank limp in her chair” after her husband was resentenced to death in an Atlanta courtroom “for a crime of which a great majority of his countrymen believe him to be innocent and for which he was never fairly tried.”

1915: It was reported today that “Warsaw has 60,000 refugees, a third of them Jews.”

1915: The International Congress of Women at which “Rosika Schwimmer’s proposal for a Neutral Conference for Continuous Mediate between the belligerents was adopted” came to a close today in The Hague.

1915: It was reported today that “a Warsaw rabbi” has “assured” Robert Crozier Long, “an author and special correspondent for the Associated Press” who has toured “the war-devastated districts of Poland” “that 100,000 Jews from the towns of Lodz, Piotrkow and Lowicz were without homes” with “many thousands huddled in the tottering fragments of cottages while 10,000 are shivering in the abandoned trenches and terraced Russian dugouts at Skaryszom.”

1915: According to reports “just received by Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs” in New York City, “an international loan” to which American Jews were major contributors has “saved the large orange-raising industry of the Jewish colonies in Palestine” which “represents an investment of $3,000,000” and twenty years of hard work.”

1915: Birthdate of Ostrow, Poland native Israel I. Blumenfeld, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto who in 1952 arrived in the United where he served as the executive director of the western region of Histadrut.

1915: A summary of the manifesto recently issued by distinguished Russians protesting again persecution of the Jews of Russia during the war” the full text of which had been published in the Jewish Chronicle of London was published in the United States today ending with a declaration by “members of the Duma, members of the Imperial Council, Princes and distinguished professors and letterateurs” that “we are sure that the disappearance of all kinds of persecution of the Jews and their complete emancipation so as to be our equal in all rights of citizenship will form one of the conditions of a really constructive imperial policy.”

1916: Elchanan Harkavy, the Polish born son of “Josef Chaim Harkavy and Chaya-Leach Gabovitch Harkavy and his wife Zlara Zerstin Harvkay gave birth to Tilly (Taibe) Amcis (Harkavy)

1916: It was reported today that Isador Herschfield who is returning from Europe where he has been investigating “the distribution of Jewish relief funds” raised in the United States will be “able to give valuable advice as to the best use to be made of money raised in the future” and well as provide comfort to many living in New York since he has several thousands of letters from those living in the war zones addressed to friends and family in the United States.

1916: According Max J. Klein, when he applied for membership in the Second Field Artillery tonight, “he was told that there no vacancies in the regiment and he and the other 12 Jewish applicants were not sent for medical examinations while several other applicants all of whom were Jewish were sent for the medical examinations which were the next step in joining the unit.

1917: Rabbi Nathan Krass, a member of the American Jewish War Relief Commission “announced that he had raise $100,000 for Jewish war relief work” during his recent lecture tour.

1917: “Ex-President Taft applauded vigorously” tonight” at a dinner sponsored by the American Jewish Friends of Free Russia “when Jacob H. Schiff…praised Theodore Roosevelt for his efforts, while President, to bring the Russian autocracy to a realization of the wrong committed against their Jewish subjects.”

1917: The Jews of Amsterdam held a meeting today where “a resolution was passed hailing the American Jewish Congress and similar movements in Russia and other countries as the beginning of an organization comprising the entire Jewish people for the formation of legitimate representation at the peace conference.

1917: On the last day of the British War Mission’s visit to Washington A.J. Balfour, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affiars, spoke with Justice Brandeis this afternoon, possibly about the establishment of “a Zionist Republic in Palestine” – a subject “that the British do not desire to discuss too fully in the present disturbed situation.” (That “disturbed situation is also called World War I)

1917: “Jacob Biliikopf, Executive Director of the $10,000,000 campaign of the American Jewish Relief committee in Behalf of the Jewish War Sufferers in Europe announced” tonight that $1,000,000 has already been pledged.

1917(18thof Iyar, 5677): Lag B’Omer

1917(18thof Iyar, 5677): In Philadelphia, PA, “communal worker” L.G. Pape passed away today.

1918: It was reported today that “the Kehillah has just published the Jewish Communal Register” which “provides some interesting facts regarding the Jews in New York.”

1919: Birthdate of Daniel Bolotsky, who gained fame as  “Daniel Bell, the writer, editor, sociologist and teacher who over seven decades came to epitomize the engaged intellectual as he struggled to reveal the past, comprehend the present and anticipate the future.” (As reported by Michael T. Kaufman)

1920(22ndof Iyar, 5680): Sixty-one year old Clarence Isaac de Sola, the “son of Cantor Abraham de Sola and Esther de Sola and husband of Belle Maud de Sola with whom he had four children passed away today passed away today in Boston after which he was buried in his native Montreal.

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/de_sola_clarence_isaac_14E.html

http://imjm.ca/location/1092

1920: Four days after she had passed away Leah Hopter, the wife of Alexander Hopter who died on the same day she had, was buried today at the “East Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1920: Luigi Luzzatti, the second Jew to serve as Prime Minister of Italy completed his service as the treasury minister “in the second incarnation of the Nitti cabinet” today.

1921: Eugen Schiffer began serving at the Minster of Justice for the second time.

1922: Birthdate of David Joshua Azrieli, CM, CQ the “Canadian builder, designer, architect, developer and philanthropist.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/07/09/canadian-israeli-real-estate-tycoon-david-azrieli-dies-at-92/

http://www.haaretz.com/business/1.603922

1923: In Vienna, at tonight’s session of the World Conference of Jewish Women, Dr. Kahn, the German delegate “stated in her report on emigration that as a result of pogrom and various persecutions “3,300,000 Jews migrated from Eastern Europe from 1881 till 1922 of whom 2,630,000 went to America” and that “the situation of the Eastern European Jews has become desperate, owing to the restriction of American immigration.”

 

 

1924: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, President Emeritus of Hebrew Union College at Cincinnati, Honorary President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and known as one of the greatest Jewish scholars of America, celebrated his eighty-first birthday at his home at 2 West Eighty-Eighth Street among a gathering of relatives, friends and scholarly disciples.

1926: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to receive Zeta Beta Tau’s  Gottheil Medal “for distinguished service to the cause of Judaism” this evening at the Hotel McAlpin.

1926: “Jew and Gentile” published in today in Timemagazine provided the following portrait of the American Jewish Community in the middle of the Roaring 20’s which had come to include a genteel form of anti-Semitism at America’s leading universities

 

On the upper end of Manhattan Island there are arising some gorgeous, massive buildings in an Americanized Byzantine manner— rigid facades; a squatty dome; ornate yet severe decoration. They represent the first independent stand on education ever taken by Jewry in the 2,000 years of its exile. Out of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary has grown the Yitzchok Elchanan Yeshivah, in which there will be the first Jewish college ever established in the U. S., equipped to grant "the same academic degrees as other American colleges in a background thoroughly Jewish and thoroughly American in spirit." Such an institution has become more and more inevitable, for a reason implicit in remarks made last week by Gustavus A. Rogers, Manhattan lawyer, who addressed 60 prominent Jews at the Bankers' Club: "We will cater ... to the Jews who have been barred from Christian schools for non-scholastic reasons."  There was simple fact in Mr. Rogers' assertion that U. S. universities— he named Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown and Princeton — discriminate against Jews in accepting matriculants. Polite evasion by those institutions notwithstanding—except in Columbia's case — Jewish undergraduates form an element in the undergraduate bodies which, if it has not occasioned official discrimination, is a subject for much restless discussion and action among Gentile undergraduates, and this constitutes, for the Jews, discrimination of a most definite sort—exclusion from clubs, preference in athletics, elections, etc. It has seemed to many Gentiles high time that the Jews, with their plentiful resources, relieve themselves of embarrassment by building their own colleges, just as they have their own churches, dwelling colonies (e. g., Long Beach, L. I.), and even hotels (e.g., the Hotel Libby, at Delancey and Chrystie Streets, Manhattan, which opened formally last week for Jews only). Another speaker at the Bankers' Club gathering—met to discuss a music festival to be held this month in Madison Square Garden to raise a fifth of the five millions needed to build the Yeshivah— was Adolph Lewisohn, one of the most intelligent and effective workers on human relationships in the U. S. He referred to the Yeshivah as "the salvation of Judaism," where Jews could acquire a college education in Jewish surroundings and without breaking the Sabbath and other holy days. He said that his own grandsons had been excluded "by one of the East's largest universities." There was a tinge of irony in Mr. Lewisohn's position, whether the grandsons had been excluded for social or for academic reasons. He came to this country from Germany as a lad of 16, in 1865. His brother Leonard was already here and the two built up a big mercantile business, Lewisohn Bros. In 1868 they began specializing in metals, particularly copper, and soon led in world markets. Leonard died in 1902. Adolph, now 77, is one of the world's greatest mining and industrial potentates. He sent his son, Sam Adolph, to Princeton ('04) and to Columbia Law School ('07), then took him into the firm, now Adolph Lewisohn & Sons. As wealth accumulated he entered philanthropy in the educational and artistic fields. He housed the Columbia School of Mines with a gift of $300,000. He assisted the College of the City of New York to form a German library, to build an athletic stadium. He collected paintings—Blakelock, Bellows and other moderns as well as Rembrandt, Titian, Dürer—and put them where they could be enjoyed by the people as well as himself. Now his grandsons, because of the pressure of an affluent Jewish population, are uncomfortable in surroundings to whose peace and prosperity he has contributed much. He hears of requests from the colleges to the heads of preparatory schools to "leave the Jews out" when they fill their quotas of certificate scholars. But Adolph Lewisohn understands the nature of social irony, and instead of berating the Gentiles, he has simply noted their frame of mind and thrown his weight behind a movement to supply the people of his race and creed with an institution which, without in turn discriminating against other creeds, will put the children of Israel on an equal educational footing with their Gentile countrymen.

1925(16thof Iyar, 5685): Seventy-year old Sir Isidore Newman passed away today in England

https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib2_1221577973

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41335896?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

1925: “Judaism’s Future in America” published today provides a review of American Judaism:The Religion and Religious Institutions of the Jewish People in the United States: A Historical Surveyby Joseph Leiser,

1926: Following the success of the original in 1925, the second incarnation of Rodgers and Hart’s Garrick Gaieties under the direction of Philip Loeb opened today.

1926: Large contributions towards the campaign to save the Franc by voluntary subscriptions are being made by French Jews. Louis Dreyfus contributed the amount of 500,000 Francs today. The Union of Presidents of Jewish Societies in Paris has announced its first contribution of 6,335 Francs.

1926: New light upon the life, achievements and opinions of Walter Rathenau, late German Jewish statesman who was killed by anti-Semites, is contained in two volumes of the writings of Rathenau and documents pertaining to his life, released here today. The volumes contain about eight hundred letters of Rathenau and cover a period of forty years. The volumes contain material hitherto unknown in which Rathenau emphasized his loyalty to Germany and Judaism.

1927: In Berlin, Sali and Alex Friedlander gave birth to Rabbi Friedlander.

1927: “The Bordellos of Algiers” with music by Artur Guttmann was released in Germany today.

1928: Birthdate of Alfred Gilbert Aronowitz, an American rock journalist best known for introducing Bob Dylan and The Beatles in 1964.

1929(30thof Nisan, 5689) Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1929: A joint memorandum to the Mandatory Government by the chief rabbis, the National Council and Agudat Israel demands a halt of all construction work carried out by Muslims near the Western Wall.

1930: Birthdate of Chicago native and Washington University Ph.D. Samuel Halperin  who taught political science at Wayne State University who went to be an influential “legislative specialist” with HEW while raising two children – Elan and Deena – with his wife Marlene Epstein Halperin.

1931: Today, after having received “menacing letters warning Jewish traders to leave Mexico with 24 hours,” a Jewish delegation left a petition with President Rubio “drawing attention to the desperate position of the Jews of Mexico” and requesting he issues an order to end the “anti-Jewish boycott.” (JTA

1933(14thof Iyar, 5693): Pesach Sheni

1933(14thof Iyar, 5693): Fifty-eight year old operatic soprano Selma Kurz lost her battle with cancer and passed away today in Vienna.

http://www.operavivra.com/artists/sopranos/selma-kurz/

1933: Ezriel Carlebach “attended as an observer the central book-burning on Opernplatz in Berlin, where his books were thrown into the fires

1933: Books deemed of "un-German spirit," most of them Jewish, are burned on Unter den Linden, opposite the University of Berlin, and throughout Germany. More than 20,000 volumes are destroyed, including works by John Dos Passos, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Émile Zola, H. G. Wells, André Gide, Sigmund Freud, Maxim Gorky, Helen Keller, Friedrich Forster, Marcel Proust, Jack London, and Erich Maria Remarque. Among those who witnessed the burnings were Sinclair Lewis, Eve Curie and Bella Fromm.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/02.asp

1933: Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife had already moved to Southern France when his works were burned during today’s book burnings in Germany. The famous novelist had been forced to flee because he was Jewish, because he was an out-spoken critic of the Nazis and because he was friend with such decadents as Bertol Brecht.

1933(14thof Iyar, 5693): Seventy-three year old Samuel “Frenchie” Marx the French born tailor who was the husband of Minnie Marx and the father of The Marx Brothers passed away today in Los Angeles, CA.

http://www.marx-brothers.org/biography/parents.htm

1935: After premiering in Los Angeles last month “Bride of Frankenstein” produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr with music by Franz Waxman opened in New York City.

1935: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services were held today for sixty-eight year old Vilna born American journalist I. Leon Dalidansky who in 1906 came to the United States where wrote for the Jewish Daily News while raising two children – Cecilia and Ezra – with his wife Mary followed by burial “at Mount Judah Cemetery in Brooklyn.”

1936(18thof Iyar, 5696): Lag B’Omer

1936(18thof Iyar, 5696): Seventy-two year old Emilie Eisler, the daughter of Catherine and Samuel D. Klauber and the wife of Juris Doctor Alois Eisler passed away today in Moravia.

1936: Today is Mother’s Day which is being observed “by thousands of Jews in the United States by purchasing trees to be planted in Palestine in honor of Jewish mothers” – a plan that was promoted by Hadassah.

1936: The 80th anniversary of the founding of Congregation Beth Israel Anshei Emes in Brooklyn “was celebrated at dinner” tonight “at the Hotel St. George attended by more than 100 members and guests” including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Justice Edward Lazansky of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court and Harold L. Turk, president of the Congregation.

1937: In Manhattan Maxine Dubin and advertising salesman Henry Koenig gave birth to Arthur Lee Koenig who gained fame as “avant-garde playwright, Arthur Kopit.” (As reported by Anita Gates)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/theater/arthur-kopit-dead.html

1937: HMT Dunera, the ship which was the nautical vehicle of “an infamous care of wartime…injustice” when it was used by the British to deport 2,542 detainees classified as ‘enemy aliens’” the largest contingent of which “2, 036 anti-Nazis most of whom were Jewish refugees” to Australia under the most barbaric conditions imaginable, was launched today.

1938(9thof Iyar, 5698): Sixty-eight year old “Taub (Yona) Margalit, the Bialystok born daughter of Elijah and Sarah Golda Bloch” and the wife of Moshe Dov Bear Margalit passed away today it “Petah Tikvah, Israel.

1938(9th of Iyar, 5698): Author and Zionist leader Alter Druyanow passed away today.

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

1939: In Glasgow, thirty-three French featherweight Maurice Holtzer ended his fifteen year pugilist career with a loss on points today.

1940: During World War II, British forces occupied Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, as part of Operation Fork.  The British took the action to forestall seizure of the neutral island-nation by the Nazis.  The Anglo-Jewish sailors and marines who were part of the occupation force found that city contained a small Jewish population but no synagogue.  By Yom Kippur the disparate groups of Jews had coalesced into a semblance of a community. About twenty five Jewish soldiers from England, Scotland and Canada gathered with eight Jewish refugees and Hendrik Ottósson to observe the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar.

1940: Birthdate of Parisan Dora Frydenzon (née Skurnik) the daughter of Polish Jews who had fled to France in 1936 and who would survive the war thanks to the efforts of Alfred Le Guellec.

1940: The Germans invaded the Low Countries and France putting an end to the so called Phony War.  The Blitzkrieg would bring the Holocaust to the existing Jewish populations of these nations as well as to the untold thousands of Jews who had sought refuge in the West since the rise of Hitler during the 1930's.

1940: Today’s Nazi bombing of Antwerp meant that Leo Bretholtz’s hernia operation was canceled leading to his discharge from the hospital and arrest and imprisonment at St Cyprien.

1940: This morning President Roosevelt met with six of his closest advisors including Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

1940: Author and illustrator Hans Rey was at his desk in Avranches touching up a page of “Fifi” as the Nazis were invading France and the Benelux countries.  Unbeknownst to Rey, this major military catastrophe would trigger events that would send him and his wife on race against death that would lead them through southern France and ultimately to the United States.

1941: In London, “the Great Synagogue” was destroyed today.

1941: As Axis forces drive into Egypt, Churchill receives secret word of a new threat to the Jews of Palestine.  Hitler is pressuring Turkey to allow German troops to cross their borders threatening Palestine from the North.  Churchill reminds his new Colonial Secretary, Viscount Cranborne of his previous support of arming the Jews for self-defense and urges him to get done all that he can.  Realizing the danger of a pincer attack, the British now encourage the Jews to build fortifications on the crest of Mount Carmel so that they can respond to attacks from the north and the south.

1941 (12th of Iyar, 5701) In Suresnes, France, Aaron Beckermann was the first Jew in France to be shot for resistance.

1941: Raymond Raoul Lambert wrote in his diary: "In view of the persecutions being initiated by the new order in France, against foreigners in general and foreign Jews in particular, in light of what has happened elsewhere, in view of the racist laws and the 'Commission on Jewish Affairs' being run in Vichy from Berlin, I wonder whether this collaboration won't bring about a yet more rigorous Statut [the anti-Jewish laws of October 7, 1940]... There are days when I don't dare listen to official bulletins on the radio; they wound me, because I still feel French and call myself a Frenchman. If I didn't have my wife and my three sons, I should be sorry not to have died honorably in action... or sorry to have survived my mother..." As a staunch supporter of pan-Europeanism, Paul Lambet had repeatedly censured nationalistic writers and opposed the more militant French attitudes toward Germany. He believed that "Germany and France, after having been combatants, have to collaborate or decline," a prophetic thought, but expressed too early. Lambert's strong identification with France and its interests did not prevent him from taking a deep interest in Jewish affairs. A prolific writer for various French and Jewish publications, he had even published a collection of poems on Jewish themes and had assisted in the founding of the French Jewish Literary Review. He strove to bring French Jewish youth to a better understanding of the need to build "a new notion of a universal order." He was pleased to see the Zionist achievements in Palestine, but his very deep sentiment for liberal France prevented him from showing any special interest in the Zionist movement. Lambert's diary offers us a very interesting description of his service in the defeated French army in World War II, the creation of Vichy and the unprecedented rise of French anti-Semitism.

1941: Tonight during the Blitz, the Luftwaffe destroyed the boardroom of the Bayswater Synagogue and completely destroyed London’s “Great Synagogue” and the “1870 Central Synagogue.”

1941: Following tonight’s Blitz that destroyed the Great Synagogue of London, “Sandys Row Synagogue” which had been founded in the 1850’s “by workingmen of Dutch Ashkenazi background, employed as cigar makers, diamond cutters and fruit traders” became the oldest surviving Ashkenazi synagogue in London

1942(23rdof Iyar, 5702): Seventy-four year old Joseph M. (Joe) Weber, the Weber in the burlesque team of Weber and Fields, the husband of the former Lily Friedman, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Friedman passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/05/11/85536919.pdf

1943: “A Bundist member of the Polish government in exile, Szmul Zygielbojm, committed suicide in London to protest the lack of reaction from the Allied governments. In his farewell note, he wrote:

 

"I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave. By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people."

1943: Famous actor Ralph Bellamy read from “They Burned the Books” by Stephen Vincent Benet to a thousand people who gathered in front of the New York Public Library “as part of the nation’s observance of the tenth anniversary of the burning of books in Germany.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F30815FC3E581B7B93C3A8178ED85F478485F9

1943: This afternoon, in cooperation with the Council on Books in Wartime, New York radio station WQXR will broadcast “Books Never Die” to mark the 10thanniversary of the first mass Nazi book burning. The broadcast will include a message from Republican Presidential candidate Wendell Willkie and addresses by Sinclair Lewis, Eve Curie and Bella Fromm who were in Germany at that time.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F7071FFF3E581B7B93C2A8178ED85F478485F9

1943: Two Jews were successfully smuggled out of Dobele, Latvia, and hidden in a haystack

1944: In Shorewood, WI, “Louise M. (née Ogens), an educational researcher, and Norman S. Abrahams, a lawyer” gave birth to director, producer and screenwriter James S. Abraham, the colleague of the brothers Jerry and David Zucker and the husband of Nancy Cocuzzo.

1945: At Theresienstad, Herman Rosenblat “was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 A.M.  But at 8: A.M. he “heard shouts, and saw people running in every which way” because the Russians had liberated the camp.  Rosenblat went to find his brothers who had also survived the last Nazi attempt at genocide. (Herman Rosenblat wrote the “fictitious memoir” Angel at the Fence.)

1945: Theresienstadt was liberated by the Soviet Army.  Located in the Czech town of Terezin (Theresienstadt was its German name), the ghetto gained some measure of fame as a show place where the Nazis brought representatives of the International Red Cross to show how well the Jews were being treated in the Third Reich.  Eventually most of the Jews of Theresienstadt met the same fate as others in the various Death Camps.  Sadly, after the liberation there was an outbreak of typhus which raged until August, claiming even more victims.  There is a collection of children's art and from this strange ghetto entitled I Thought I Never Saw Another Butterfly.

1946: “A Night in Casablanca” starring Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx, with music by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby and a script co-authored by Joseph Fields was released today in the United States.

1946: “In Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, Maurice Julius Lipman, a tailor and Zelma Pearlman gave birth to award winning British actress, writer and supporter of Israel, Maureen Diane Lippman the wife of dramatist Jack Rosenthal an the mother of  Amy and Adam Rosenthal.

1947(20thof Iyar, 5707): Parashat Emor

1947(20thof Iyar, 5707): Sixty-nine year-old Dr. Louis Kaufman Anspacher, New York writer and lecturer, died of a heart attack in a hotel room in Nashville, TN today while returning from Los Angeles on a vacation motor trip.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/05/11/87751432.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1947: Today “Twelve German generals, including Wilhelm List and Maximilian von Weichs, were indicted at Nuremberg on charges of war crimes.”

1948: “In an attempt to see if war with Transjordan could be averted, the Jewish Agency sent one of its most formidable negotiators, Golda Meir, on a second secret mission to King Abdullah of Transjordan.  In a mission that would credit to James Bond, Mrs. Meir traveled at night disguised in the robes of an Arab woman.  Mrs. Meir offered a plan along the lines of the U.N. approved partition plan.  Abdullah wanted the Jews to drop their demand for free immigration and give up their aspirations for a state.  Instead, the Jews could have autonomy under Jordanian rule with Jewish representation in a Jordanian parliament. Considering the lack of democracy in Jordan, this offer was a rather a hollow one in terms of power sharing.  As to the substitution of autonomy instead of sovereignty; this would be consistent with the traditional Moslem view of Arab-Jewish relationships.  The Jews would be accepted as long as they would always accept a second class position.   

1948: Tzfat (Safed) was secured by the Haganah. Located in the northern Galilee, Tzfat is one of the four holiest cities for Jews in Israel.  It has been the home to Jewish mystics for centuries; a center for the study of Kabbalah and the place where Lecha Dodi was created.  Tzfat was the scene of fighting in April and May 1948 as the Arabs sought to destroy the Jewish community before the end of the Mandate.  Tzfat had a small Jewish population and matters were not helped by the departing British commander who turned the keys of the police station (with its arms) which was the local citadel to the Arab insurgents.  The Palmach and the Hagana prevailed despite being outnumbered and outgunned.  Most of the Arab population fled when Jewish victory seemed imminent.  According to the Churchill's biographer Martin Gilbert, "With the invasion of Palestine by regular Arab armies believed to be imminent...many Arabs felt prudence dictated their departure until the Jews had been defeated and they could return to their homes."  And thus began the "Palestinian Refugee Problem" that is with us to this day.

1948: Since she could not reach Ramot Naphtali, Lorna Wingate, the widow of Order Wingate flew over the settlement in a Piper Cub and dropped a Bible into the compound.  The note attached to it read, "This bible accompanied Wingate on all his campaigns and inspired him.  Let represent a covenant between us - in victory or defeat, now and forever

1948: Units of the Moslem Brotherhood were driven back after they had attacked Kefar Darom

1949: It was announced today, that, thanks to the efforts of the Joint Distribution Committee, the International Refugee Organization and the Canadian Jewish Congress, “some 300 Jewish refugees trapped in Shanghai will be flown to Canada by Alaska Airlines, Inc.”

1950: The Mediterranean coastal district of Israel is reported to be fighting an outbreak of polio.

1951(4thof Iyar, 5711): Despite being surrounded by enemies on all sides, dealing with the challenge of absorbing tens of thousands refugees and host of other problems, Israel celebrates Yom HaAtzmaut

1951: Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, escorted by high ranking Israeli officials, journeyed to West Point this morning and placed a wreath on the grave of Col. David (Mickey) Marcus, who was killed in 1948 while serving with the Israeli forces during the war in the Holy Land.

1952: Temple Israel in Akron, Ohio lays the cornerstone for its new addition.

1953: Birthdate of John Diamond, the native of Hackney, London, who became a bio-chemist and fashion designer who was the husband of television personality and author Nigella Lawson.

http://web.archive.org/web/20091216113301/http://www.lastingtribute.co.uk/tribute/diamond/2603916

1953(10thof Iyar, 5713): Seventy year old Belfast born, American composer and orchestra leader Harry Rosenthal passed away today in Beverly Hills.

1955(18thof Iyar, 5715): Lag B’Omer

1955: Birthdate of Greenwich, CT native Christopher James "Chris" Berman, “also known by the nickname Boomer, the American sportscaster who anchors SportsCenter, Monday Night Countdown, Sunday NFL Countdown, Baseball Tonight, U.S. Open golf, the Stanley Cup Finals and other programming on ESPN and ABC Sports.”

1959: Betty and Dr. Jacob Levin gave birth to attorney Lawrence “Larry” Levin, the husband of Sandee Levin and the creator of the Iowa Kosher for Passover Care Package.

1959(2ndof Iyar, 5719): Seventy four year old Petrikov, Russia native Max Zaritsky, the son of a rabbi and husband of Sophie Zaritsky who in 1906 came to the United States where he rose the Presidency of the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union passed away today.

https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w6h995qg

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/05/11/80575988.pdf

https://www.jta.org/1959/05/12/archive/max-zaritsky-leading-american-jewish-labor-leader-dead-was-74

1960: Following the closure of the Broadway production of Flower Drum Song the eighth musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II “a U.S. national tour began today in Detorit.

1960(13thof Iyar, 5720): Seventy-year old Maurice Schwartz, the Russian born American actor who founded the Yiddish Art Theatre passed away today.

http://www.jta.org/1960/05/11/archive/maurice-schwartz-leading-actor-of-jewish-stage-dies-in-israel-was-72

1961(24thof Iyar, 5721): Fifty-six year old Cleveland born Lloyd H. Feder, the husband of Lillian Feder and father of Suzie Bloom of Louisville, KY passed away today in his home town.

1964: “Treblinka was declared a national monument of martyrology today during an official ceremony attended by 30,000 people.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciszek_Duszeńko#/media/File:Treblinka_memorial.jpg

1965: It was reported today the Senator Jacob Javits has said that the upcoming Republican Primary should choose a Republican candidate for Mayor and not get involved with selecting a “fusion candidate.”

1966: In an example of how the Arab-Israel conflict was entwined in the Cold War, Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin arrives in Cairo where he will convince Nasser “that a mutual defense pact between Cairo and Damascus (guaranteed by Moscow) would be in the best interest of all concerned. Israel enjoyed no such reciprocal relationship with the United States or her western allies which reinforced the Israeli notion that in any crisis, Israel would be facing millions of armed Arabs backed by the military might of the Soviet Union.

1968(12thof Iyar, 5728): Eighty-one year old George Frankenthaler, a former State Supreme Court Justice and New York County Surrogate passed away today.  An accomplished lawyer, Frankenthaler was so highly respected that both President Franklin Roosevelt and Governor Thomas Dewey urged to seek election to the State Supreme Court.   In 1948, Frankenthaler who was a Republican became the first non-Democrat to be elected to the Surrogate’s Court in over half a century. Active in several Jewish charities, he had served as President of the 92nd Street Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F50D13FB39541B7B93C0A8178ED85F4C8685F9

1968(12thof Iyar, 5728): Ninety-four year old Samuel Bloomingdale, the son of Lyman Bloomingdale and Hattie Collenberger passed away today.

1970(4thof Iyar, 5730): Yom HaZikaron

1972(26thof Iyar, 5732): Edward Henry Pinto, the London born son of a cigar merchant and WW I veteran who was the Joint Managing Director of Compaction Ltd and author of Treen and Other Wooden Objects passed away today.

1973: At Ramat Gan, writer and poet Yehonatan Geffen and Nurit Makover gave birth to rock start Aviv Geffen.

1975: “The Other Side of the Mountain” a biopic directed by Larry Peerce, son of Cantor Jan Peerce, produced by Edward S. Feldman and with a screenplay by David Seltzer was released today in the United States.

1977: Final broadcast of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” Norman Lear’s hugely popular spoof of that uniquely American mainstay of daytime broadcasting – the Soap Opera.

1978(3rd of Iyar, 5738): Yom HaZikaron

1981: In “From Genesis to Jesus Christ Superstar, published today, Paul Kresh described the veritable explosion of recent recordings of Biblical literature that have been recorded for the mass market including, Abba Eban reading Psalms and Ecclesiastes, Theodore Bikel reading ''Poetry and Prophecy of the Old Testament''   Claire Bloom’s reading “Ruth,” Claude Rains and Claire Bloom reading “The Song of Songs,”  supply Howard Sackler's clever condensation and direction of the Book of Job, with Herbert Marshall suffering beautifully as the severely tested servant of God, surrounded by a large cast including Martin Balsam as Elihu, Clarence Derwent as Eliphaz (one of Job's non-comforting comforters), and Joseph Holland awesomely cosmic as the Voice Out of the Whirlwind. (Editor’s note –You have to be of a certain age to appreciate the star quality of the performers.  Also in an age of downloading, i-pods, etc., it is difficult to appreciate the technological and social significance of these works.)

1981: Final broadcast of Season 6 of “One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin

1981: In “The Final Solution in Argentina,” Anthony Lewis reviews Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without a Number by Jacobo Timerman

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/10/books/the-final-solution-in-argentina.html?pagewanted=all

1983: Eighty-five year old Herbert Benjamin, Communist Party leader turned small businessman, passed away today in Rockville, MD.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/14/obituaries/herbert-benjamin-85-leader-of-us-communists-in-30-s.html

1983:  Birthdate of Tiberias native Moshe Peretz, the popular singer and composer married to Yarden Gozland and father of Michaela, Noam and Guy who fell afoul of Israeli tax laws.

1984: NBC broadcast the final episode of season two of “Family Ties,” a sit com created by Gary David Goldberg.

1983: ABC broadcast the final episode of “Laverne and Shirley,” a sitcom whose creators included Lowell Ganz and which co-starred David Lander as “Squiggy.”

1986(1st of Iyar, 5746): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1988: NBC broadcast the last episode of “Crime Story” co-starring Joseph Wiseman and Ted Levine, a self-described “Hill-Billy Jew.”

1989(5thof Iyar, 5749): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1991: U.S. premiere of “The Switch” based on a George Axelrod play, starring Ellen Barkin under the management of Executive Producer Arnon Milchan.

1992(7th of Iyar, 5752): At New York City's Algonquin Hotel, Sylvia Syms finished singing her last song, raised her right arm to acknowledge the audience's standing ovation, and collapsed of a heart attack.  (As reported by Stephen Holden)

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/11/arts/sylvia-syms-singer-dead-at-74-cabaret-artist-with-saloon-style.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/10/1992/sylvia-blagman-syms

1992: In “Israel Commemorates Start of the Holocaust,” published today Jed Stevenson describes the surprising choice for the commemorative medal that the Israelis have made this year. 

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/10/style/coins-israel-commemorates-start-of-the-holocaust.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1995: “A Little Princess,” a World War I drama co-produced by Dalisa Cohen and Amy Ephron, filmed by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki at Barry Levinson’s Baltimore Studios and co-starring Eleanor Bron was released today.

1995(10th of Iyar, 5755): Eighty-six year old Steffie Spira, the German actress and Communist whose Jewish father Fritz Spira died today in Berlin.

1996(21st of Iyar, 5756): Seventy-seven year old architect Zelma Wilson who moved to Paris after her husband screenwriter Michael Wilson was blacklisted passed away today.

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

1996: “Original Gangstas” directed by Larry Cohen was released today in the United States.

1996: “Twister,” a combination a romantic comedy disguised as a disaster film co-starring Jami Gertz and featuring Joey Slotnick was released today in the United States.

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Time of Our Time” by Norman Mailer and the recently released paperback edition of “The Memory of All That: The Life of George Gershwin” by Joan Peyser.

1999(24th of Iyar, 5759): Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein passed away. Born in Chicago in 1930, Shel Silverstein gained fame as a poet, songwriter and author.  He wrote the lyrics to the Johnny Cash hit, “A Boy Named Sue.” The Grammy Winning song was written in response to a bet that Silverstein couldn’t write a country and western hit during a bus ride back to Los Angeles, or so goes the legend.   He authored several books including “The Missing Piece,”A Light in the Attic,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends” “Falling Up” and“The Giving Tree.”  These works are often referred to as children’s literature, but anybody who has read them knows that they transcend that genre and speak to readers of all ages.

2000(5thof Iyar, 5760): Yom HaAtzmaut

2000: Four days after he had passed away, funeral service are scheduled to be held today for 87 year old WW II Army veteran Joseph Sheftall, the Russian born son of Benjamin and Hoda Sheftall, the husband of Willma Shetall and the father of Fred and Steven Shefall who “began his career as a business agent for local 325 in Brooklyn, New York” before he emerged as an important force in the labor movement.

2001: Having obtained a search warrant, D.C. police search Chandra Levy’s Washington apartment looking for clues as to her whereabouts.

2001: Publication of a review of William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?” a must read tome.

http://www.dts.edu/reviews/william-g-dever-what-did-the-biblical-writers-know-and-when-did/

2002(28th of Iyar, 5762): Yom Yerushalayim

2002(28thof Iyar, 5762): Ninety-two year old sociologist and author The Lonely Crowd David Riesman passed away today

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/11/books/david-riesman-sociologist-whose-lonely-crowd-became-a-best-seller-dies-at-92.html

http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/footnotes/mayjun02/indextwo.html

2002: Operation Defensive Shield which had been launched following the “Passover Massacre” came to an end.2003(8th of Iyar, 5763): Dr. Leonard Michaels, author and professor of English at the University of California at Berkley, passed away.2004: Two days after she had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held at “The Riverside” for 92 year old Silvia Paulson, the of wife of the late Martin Friedlander and Philip Paulson who was a “scholar, teacher and lover of life.

2004: “The Palestinian Authority said today that it would begin holding its first municipal elections late this summer, in a bid to stem public anger over corruption and mismanagement” while Prime Minister Sharon is pursuing his own plan to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from territory heavily populated by Palestinians” despite opposition from his own Likud Party. (As reported by James Bennet)

2005(1stof Iyar, 5765): Rosh Chodesh Iyar

2005: Meg Wolitzer, the Brooklyn born “daughter of novelist Hilma Wolitzer (née Liebman) and psychologist Morton Wolitzer” “was a guest on NPR's program Fresh Air” where she discussed her novel The Position

2005: Today, speaking on Army Radio, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that “withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will not be called off under any circumstances rebuffing suggestions by Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom that the pullout should be canceled if Hamas wins parliament elections this summer.”

2006(12th of Iyar, 5766):  Eighty-four year old Abraham Michael "A.M." Rosenthal passed away.  The Canadian native began his career with the New York Times in 1943.  He won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in 1960 and served as executive editor from 1977 until age requirements forced him to leave the post in 1988.  (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/11/nyregion/11rosenthal.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

2006: Results show that Elliot Yamin, was among three people who named as the top three finalists for American Idol

2007: “Less than two months before his death, Joel Siegel spoke before the C.E.O. Roundtable on Cancer, an association of corporate executives that was formed when former President George H. W. Bush asked corporate America to do something "bold and venturesome" about cancer

2007: An exhibit of works by local artists Paula Christie and A.D. Lane at the Etz Chaim Synagogue. Crete’s only Synagogue, comes to an end. Etz Chaim was rededicated in 1999.

2007: The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s retrospective entitled “The Magic of Paul Mazursky” comes to an end.  He is probably best remembered for directing the 1969 sexual spoof, “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.”

2008: Early this morning the IDF confirmed air strikes on Hamas police stations in the Gaza Strip, killing five Hamas operatives hours after a fatal barrage of mortar shells fired by Palestinian gunmen killed one man in a Kibbutz in the western Negev

2008: At the Jerusalem Cinematheque, a screening of “Faithful City” \ קריה נאמנה.

2008: As part of its Israel at 60 Celebration, the 92nd Street Y hosts a Yom Ha'Atzmaut Spring Dance Marathon.

2008: Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said during a parliamentary conference that he "would burn Israeli books myself if found in Egyptian libraries."

2009: Mark Strauss, a Holocaust survivor, signs copies of his new novel, Four Plus Five” at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Bookstore.

2009:  As part of the LABA Festival The 14th Street Y, a Jewish Community Center in the East Village, presents a screening of “Water Marks,” a documentary film by Yaron Zilberman, produced by Yonatan Israel.

2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Third Reich at War” by Richard J. Evans and “Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy by Leslie H. Gelb

2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace” by Ayelet Waldman “Conversations with Frank Gehry” by Barbara Isenberg and three books by Amy Krouse Rosenthal – “Little Oink,” “Spoon” and “Yes Day.”

2010:An exhibition entitled “The Works of Mordechai Rosenstein” is scheduled to open at the Fine Family Art Gallery and the Katz Family Mainstreet Gallery of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA).

2010: “Forward 50,” a panel discussion featuring recent Forward 50 Honorees is scheduled to take place at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2010:President Barack Obama announced at the White House that he is nominating U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. If Kagan is confirmed, it would be the first time that the nine-member Supreme Court would have three Jews and three women on the bench.

2010: “The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) invited Israel to become a member of the organization.”

2010:Israel Air Force planes bombed two targets in the southern Gaza in the early hours today warning in retaliation for a rocket attack on Saturday night, the army said.

2011:Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story is scheduled to be shown at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

2011: Professor Brian Horowitz is scheduled to give a talk at a conference entitled, In the Mirror’s Reflection: The Encounter between Jewish and Slavic Cultures in Modernity at U.C.L A.

2011: Rabbi Eliezer Diamond is scheduled to present a lecture “Do We Mean What We Pray, Do We Pray What We Mean?” at Congregation Beth El in Bethesda, MD.

2011: In “An Insider Views China, Past and Future,” Michiko Kakutani reviewed On China by Henry Kissinger, the first Jew to serve as U.S. Secretary of State.

2011(6th of Iyar, 5711): Ninety-one year old broadcast executive Burt Reinhardt, who served as President of CNN in those early years when it was changing the face of television news, passed away today in Marietta, GA. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/business/media/12reinhardt.html?_r=1

2011(6th of Iyar, 5711): Yom Ha’atzmaut, ,יום העצמאות, Israel Independence Day, is observed.  Yom Ha’atzmaut is normally celebrated on the 5th of Iyar, the anniversary of the day on which Israel declared its independence.  Since 2004, if the 5thof Iyar falls on a Monday, which it did in 2011, the festival is postponed until Tuesday.

2011: On Independence Day, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel had a population of 7,746,000, 75% of which is Jewish.  In the past year 178,000 babies were born and 24,500 immigrants made aliyah

2012: The Jewish American Heritage Parade is scheduled to take place this morning in Albany, NY.

2012: “The Jewish Woman In America: 1654-2012,” a course that will study the vital contributions that Jewish women have made to American Jewish life, from the time of the first Sephardic arrivals to New Amsterdam in 1654, down to the present sponsored by the Board of Jewish Education of Atlantic and Cape May Counties is scheduled to begin tonight in Margate, NJ.

2012: Chabad of Iowa City is scheduled to sponsor a Lag Ba'Omer BBQ in West Branch, Iowa, which is the home of the Herbert Hoover Memorial Library. Jews will remember Hoover as the President who appointed Justice Benjamin Cardozo to the Supreme Court giving the U.S. two Jewish Supreme Court Justices at a time of rising anti-Semitism.

 

2012: At the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center Howard Reich, jazz critic for the Chicago Tribune and son of Holocaust survivors, is scheduled to moderate a panel discussion where American and foreign born Jewish GIs reflect on their wartime experiences, and the impact their religious affiliation had on their time in the service

2012: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present the Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series Spring Concert including the great masterpiece of Jewish music, “Shlomo”, a Hebrew rhapsody for cello by Ernest Bloch

2012: Jazzrael - a Festival of Israeli Jazz and World Music featuring the Avi Avital Trio is scheduled to take place at Joe’s Pub in New York City.

2012: At the Wiener Library in London, Professor Carrier Tarr is scheduled to present a lecture on Secularism, difference and the family as portrayed in Roschdy  Zem’s film “ Mauuvaise foi” which “is a comedy that revolves around the consequences of the secular Jewish heroine’s discovery that she is pregnant, and the increasingly problematic decision she and her equally secular Arab-Muslim boyfriend take to keep the baby and tell their not-so-secular families.”

2012: New York's kosher law, which regulates the labeling and marketing of kosher food, does not violate the Constitution's First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled. The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled today in a constitutional challenge to the New York State Kosher Law Protection Act of 2004. Previously, kosher was defined legally as “according to orthodox Hebrew religious requirements.” Several butchers challenged the law in a 1996 suit. (As reported by JTA)

2013: The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide and the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism are scheduled to present “Sanctioned Laughter: Humour, War and Dictatorship in Twentieth Century Europe.

2012: David Rakoff was featured on This American Life's live broadcast, "Invisible Made Visible" from the Skirball Theater, NYU.

2013: “No Place On Earth” is scheduled to open at the Catamount Film and Arts Center in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

2013(1stof Sivan, 5733): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

2013(1stof Sivan, 5733): Eighty-eight year old author Morris Renek passed away today. (As reported by Daniel Slotnik)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/books/morris-renek-novelist-of-hard-boiled-stories-dies-at-88.html?hpw

2013(1stof Sivan, 5773): Sixty-one year social activist Barbara Brenner passed away today. (As reported by Denise Grady)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/us/barbara-brenner-breast-cancer-iconoclast-dies-at-61.html?_r=0

2013: At more than 100 Jewish day schools in 38 cities around the world, parents and children are gathering across six continents to study Torah together as part of a joint initiative of global Jewish unity, called Generation Sinai.Tens of thousands of parents and children will be studying the same section of the Torah on the same day in their individual schools as part of one integrated international campaign which began in South Africa.

2013: Clashes erupted at Jerusalem’s Western Wall plaza early this morning, as thousands of ultra-Orthodox teenagers attempted to prevent the Women of the Wall from holding their monthly egalitarian prayer session at the site.

2014: Sarah Cohen is scheduled to be called the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah at Agudas Achim in Coralville, Iowa.

2014: “Zeitgeist” is scheduled to be shown at the 22ndannual Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

2014: “Kidon” is scheduled to be shown at the National Center for Jewish Film’s 17th annual Film Festival.

2014: In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, the New World Symphony is scheduled to present an evening of music by celebrated Jewish American composers at Miami Beach, FL.

2014: Thousands marched in Afula tonight in commemoration of 19 year old Shelly Dadon whose body was found earlier this month “in what is believed to be a nationalistically motivated killing.”

2014: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his wife and two sons left for a week-long state visit to Japan tonight 

2015: “Mr. Kaplan,” “The Kindergarten Teacher” and “His Wife’s Lover” are scheduled to be shown on Mother’s Day at the 18thAnnual Film Festival sponsored by the National Center for Jewish Film’s.

 

2015: ZUSHA, a “folk/world-soul band of ‘neo-Hasidic hipsters’” is scheduled to make its DC-area debut today.

2015: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to conduct an “in-depthtour of sites related to Jewish history and military heroes, including the Confederate Memorial by Sir Moses Ezekiel (seen here) and the Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle Memorials.”

2015: As part of the Krum Concert Series, young artists are scheduled to perform works by Mieczyslav Weinberg, a Jewish composer whom Shostakovich considered exceptional but who was ignored by the Soviet musical establishment.

2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Timur Vermes’ Look Who’s Back, a novel about Hitler in which “the first mention of the Jews doesn’t arrive until after Page 50” and Freedom of Speech: Mightier Than the Sword by David K. Shipler who won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 1987 for Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land.

2016: The Consulate General of Israel and the 92nd Street Y is scheduled to a host a Yom Hazikaron or Memorial Day Serving “honoring the soldiers who have their lives in defense of the State of Israel and the victims of terrorist attacks.”

2016: In Philadelphia, PA, The National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host an evening with “filmmaker Artemis Joukowsky who will share excerpts from his upcoming documentary, Two Who Defied the Nazis, about Martha and Waitstill Sharp, an American social worker and Unitarian minister who provided aid to refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.”

2016: In New York, the Upper West Side’s annual five day celebration of Israel is scheduled to begin with “Sharim Vezochrim: Songs and Remembrance for Yom Hazikaron with Moshe Bonen” at JCC Manhattan.

2016: Effective today, the archives of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington are scheduled to be closed until September, 2016 while historic synagogue museum moves locations.

2017: New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman and historian Jenna Weissman Joselit, the author of Set in Stone: America's Embrace of the Ten Commandments are scheduled “to explore the impact of the ancient biblical code on American culture.”

2017: Donniel Hartman is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Jewish Identity, Belonging and Community” sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and B’nai Jeshurun.

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “hotdog and movie night” that will also include veggie burgers.

2017: “Ben-Gurion, Epilogue” is scheduled to have its premiere showing at the 2017 East Bay International Jewish Film Festival.

2017: “Between Myth and Reality,” an exhibition of the works of Anglo-Israeli sculptor and artist Chaim Stephenson is scheduled to come to an end today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/sculptors-work-on-refugees-takes-on-increased-resonance-in-new-london-exhibit/

2018: “An Act of God” is scheduled to open at Le Petit Theatre in New Orleans

2018: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a presentation by Holocaust survivor Albert Garih.

2018: “Saving Neta” and “Assumed Identity” are scheduled to be shown at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Falling Backward” and “The Invisibles” are scheduled to be shown at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

2018: After having been “selected by the Arizona Cardinals in the first round in the 2018 NFL Draft” Quarterback Josh Rosen “signed four year deal worth $17.84 million with an $11 million signing bonus.”

2018: Approximately 20 Iranian rockets were fired at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights today which brought about a response from IAF jets.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/09/iran-fires-20-rockets-syria-golan-heights-israel

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/world/middleeast/israel-iran-syria-military.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

2018: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present ‘20thCentury American Jewish Stardom: Between Eddie Cantor and Sophie Tucker”

2019: In New Orleans, Gates of Prayer is scheduled to host its annual meeting and installation of congregation officers.

2019: Today the Frida, the mother Israeli r Itay Steinberg Z”L the gifted photographer who was killed at the age of 21 while rescuing one of his comrades during the 2006 war in Leanon “took part in an international exhibition in Venice Italy, to display the art that she said was created together with her son’s energy and legacy.” (As reported by Yaakov Lappin)

2019: In Lafayette, CA, Temple Isaiah is scheduled to host “Yom HaAtzmaut Shabbat featuring Isaiah’s Adult Choir.”

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host Jerusalem of Gold an evening marking Israel’s 71st birthday that includes a performance and remarks by “Shuli Natan, followed by an extended Oneg with a DJ and Israeli food.”

2019: This afternoon, The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled present a performance of Nabucco, an opera by Verdi which “was made famous with the Hebrew Chorus ‘Va Pensiero” and starring David Serero starring as Nabucco.

2019: Erev of Shabbat is a double portion of joy for the friends and family of Larry Levin who is celebrating a Milestone Natal Day.

2020: “On the Sunny Side of the Street: The Songs of Dorothy Fields” scheduled for today as part of the Molly Blank Concert Series has been postponed by the Breman Museum.

2020: Via Zoom the Jewish Community Library is scheduled to host a “Virtual Drop-In Book Club” featuring a discussion of On Division by Goldie Goldbloom.’

2020: UK Jewish Film is scheduled to host the final on-line screening of “Redemption.

2020The retrospective exhibition Eli Content: So Much I Gazed on Beauty that features highlights from his idiosyncratic oeuvre from the past forty years is scheduled to come to a close today at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.

2020: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host through Zoom a “Virtual Class: Soapbox Yoga.”

2020: Based on figures published last night, in Israel as of this morning the national virus death toll has reached at least 247

2020: While the Commandment to Honor thy father and mother preceded Wilson’s first proclamation of Mother’s Day in 1914, it serves as a reminder the “All Women are Mothers in the House of Israel.

2020: For at least Betty Levin today’s Mother Day celebration should be enhanced by the celebration of the natal day of her youngest offspring, Larry Levin

2020: The exhibition “Zoya Cherkassky: Lost Time” is scheduled to come to a close today.

http://www.fortgansevoort.com/?utm_source=Master+Opening+List&utm_campaign=eed858d40f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_09_05_08_30_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0e03183dcc-eed858d40f-251921239

2021: Today, as part of Jewish American Heritage Month, members of the Congressional Caucus on Black-Jewish Relations—U.S. Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL 23) and Brenda Lawrence (D-MI 14)—are scheduled to discuss the importance of America’s Black and Jewish communities coming together to combat stereotypes, prejudice, and hate in all forms.

2021: The London School of Jewish Studies S&P Sephardi Senior Rabbi Joseph Dweck and Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum are scheduled to continue their discussion into the Ten Commandments during which they will be looking at the seventh commandment, 'Do not commit adultery' and will ask, is this the same for men and women?

2021: Hebrew College is scheduled to present an art exhibit, “Faith in Isolation Expressed.”

2021: The JCC Literary Consortium and JCCs across the national are scheduled to present Judy Batalion as she talks about her new book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos.

2021:The Israel Medical Association called for a 24-hour strike along with several protests starting today at 7 a.m., over fears that 600 doctors employed during the pandemic will lose their jobs in just under two months because funding won’t be renewed. (As reported Nathan Jeffay)

2021:After two years at the Center for Jewish History, the Scholars Working Group “Hear Their Cry:” Understanding the Jewish Orphan Experience is scheduled to present a talk with two group members about their new books.

https://programs.cjh.org/event/contextualizing-2021-05-10

 

 

 

This Day, May 11, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 11

330: Roman Emperor Constantine I changed the name of the ancient city of Byzantium to Nova Roma (New Rome) as it becomes the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.  The city will be known as Constantinople (the city of Constantine). The move is indicative of the growing power of Constantine, the emperor who redefined relations between Jews and Christains that exists into modern times.  The name New Rome also helped to the schism between the Western (Catholic) Christians and their Eastern (Orthodox) co-religionists since the Christian leader of New Rome thought his powers should be equal to the Christian leader (the Pope) at old Rome. 

1175: Thirteen assassins were foiled in their attempt to murder Saladin. Thirteen years later Saladin would drive the Crusaders from Jerusalem and allow the Jews to return. Maimonides provided medial services to the great Muslim leader.

1189: Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor set off on the Third Crusade.  He would drown before he reached the Holy Land.  On balance, Barbarossa’s reign was a positive one for the Jews since he viewed the Jews as his special subjects, which means he afforded them protection because they were a source of financial benefit to the monarch.

1304: Mahmud Ghazan who had converted to Islam in 1295 marking the start of a downgrading of the conditions of the Jews in Persia because they were forced back into the role of “dhimmis” – official second class citizens—passed away today.

1415:  Edict of Benedict XIII: Benedict XIII was enraged by the lack of voluntary conversions after the Christian "victory" at the Tortosa disputation. As a result, he banned the study of the Talmud in any form, instituted forced Christian sermons, and tried to restrict Jewish life completely.

1415: Today, “in the hope of mass-conversions, Benedict issued a bull consisting of twelve articles, which, in the main, corresponded with the decree ("Pragmática") issued by Catalina, and which had been placed on the statutes of Aragon by Fernando. By this bull Jews and neophytes were forbidden to study the Talmud, to read anti-Catholic writings, in particular the work "Macellum" ("Mar Jesu"), to pronounce the names of Jesus, Maria, or the saints, to manufacture communion-cups or other church vessels or accept such as pledges, or to build new synagogues or ornament old ones. Each community might have only one synagogue. Jews were denied all rights of selfjurisdiction, nor might they proceed against "malsines" (accusers). They might hold no public offices, nor might they follow any handicrafts, or act as brokers, matrimonial agents, physicians, apothecaries, or druggists. They were forbidden to bake or sell matzot, or to give them away; neither might they dispose of meat which they were prohibited from eating. They might have no intercourse (sex) with Catholics, nor might they disinherit their baptized children. They should wear the badge at all times, and thrice a year all Jews over twelve, of both sexes, were required to listen to a Catholic sermon.”

1421:  At Styria, Austria, a large number of Jews were burned. Those who were not killed were expelled from the country.

1572(18th of Iyar, 5332): Moses Isserles, “the Rema” passed away today in Cracow, Poland. Moses Isserles, also spelled Moshe Isserlis, who had been born at Cracow in 1520, “was an eminent Ashkenazic rabbi, Talmudist, and posek, renowned for his fundamental work of Halachah (entitled ha-Mapah (lit., "the tablecloth"), an inline commentary on the Shulkhan Aruch ( "the set table"). His work opened up this Sephardic work to the Ashkenazim. “He is also well known for his Darkhei Moshe commentary on the Tur. Isserles is also referred to as the Rema, (or Remo, Rama) (רמ״א), the Hebrew acronym for Rabbi Moses Isserle.”  [This brief entry cannot do justice to the life and work of this sage.]

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111847/jewish/Rabbi-Moshe-Isserles-The-Remo.htm

1610: Fifty-seven year old Father Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary living in China whose manuscripts described the existence of ten or twelve Jewish families in Kaifeng that may have been living there for five or six hundred years, passed away today.

1647: Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland, the Dutch colonial settlement in present-day New York City. Seven years later, Stuyvesant will be the governor of New Amsterdam when the first Jews arrive in 1654. He will do everything in his power to keep the Jews from settling there and enjoying the full rights of citizenship.

1660: English preacher and political leader Hugh Peters who supported the ideas of Roger Williams which included “writing on behalf of the toleration of Jews” was arrested today as the restoration of the House of Stuart was taking place following the end of the Cromwell era.

1685: Isaac Benjamin Wolf Liebmann began serving as rabbi for the Jews of Berlin although he reportedly lived at Landsberg-on-the-Warthe.

1764: A letter written today from Empress Catherine II opened the way for limited settlement of Jews in Riga.

1766: In Enfield, Middlesex, England Benjamin D’Israeli, “a Jewish merchant who had emigrated from Cento in 1784 and his second wife,Sarah Syprut de Gabay Villa Real” gave birth to author and “man of letters” Isaac D’Israeli, the father of the future Prime Minister Benjamin D’Israeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield.

1772: Birthdate of New York City native, Rachel Judah, the daughter of Samuel Judah,

1773(18thof Iyar, 5533): Lag B’Omer is observed just three days after Parliament passed the Tea Act which, unbeknownst to anyone, was one of the steps on the road to the Revolution and the creation of the United States of America.

1778(14thof Iyar, 5538): Pesach Sheni was observed seven days after Congress ratified the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce which guaranteed French financial and military support for the Americans which was critical to defeating the British and securing the independence of the 13 colonies.

1784: Birthdate of G.B. Depping, the German born French historian author of Les Juifs dans le moyen âge, essai historique sur leur état civil, commercial et littéraire  a history of the Jews he wrote in response to a competition sponsored by the Royal Academy in 1821 to write a history describing the life of the Jews living in France during the Middle Ages.

1795(22nd of Iyar, 5555) Seventy-two year old Austrian banker Joachim Edler von Popper who was “Court Jew” to the Habsburgs and who was the second Jew to be “ennobled” by the Emperor passed away today.

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

1800(16thof Iyar, 5560): Asher Anshel Weiner, the “son of Shimon Wiener and Mrs. Simon Winer and the husband of Slava Viener with whom he had four children passed away today after which he was buried in “Miskolc, Hungary.

1806: According to the date on his tombstone, in Germany Simon and Johanetta Levy native Meyer Levy, “who changed his name to Jakob Mayer” then to John Mayer, the name on his tombstone in Natchez, Mississippi, who was the husband of Janette Ries Mayer.

1808(14thof Iyar, 5568): Pesach Sheni observed for the last time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson.

1814: Birthdate of Wolf Pascheles, the native of Prague who went from selling Jewish books to printing them in a publishing house that he began, and which produced everything from prayer books for women to popular annotated calendars.

1820(27thof Iyar, 5580): Jessica Moss, the Philadelphia, PA born daughter of Rebecca Lyons and John Moss who were married in 1797, passed away today in her hometown.

1820: “In Halberstadt, Province of Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia, the son of Rabbi Löb Glee Hildesheimer, a native of Hildesheim, Electorate of Hanover and his wife gave birth to Azriel Hildesheimer one the leading rabbis of the 19thcentury who is considered to be one of the founders of “Modern Orthodox Judaism,

1830(18thof Iyar, 5590): Lag B’Omer observed four days after the United States signed a treaty of commerce and navigation with the Ottoman Empire” which at that time may have still have had the largest Jewish population of any single political entity.

1836: Alexander Levi advertised in today’s issue of the Dubuque Visitor, one of Iowa’s first newspapers. Levi may have been the first Jew to settle Iowa.  He settled in Dubuque, shortly after its founding, and played an active role in its commercial, civic and Jewish life until his death in 1893.

1838: In London English portrait painter Julia Salaman and London linen draper and town councilor, Louis Goodman gave birth to British painter, illustrator and author Walter Goodman

1846: “In Shossmaken, Courland, Russia, Jekuthiel Gerson Deinard and Leah Cohn” gave birth to Ephraim Deinard , a bookseller and bibliographer, the husband of Margolia Jaffe and the driving force to established a failed “Jewish agricultural colony in Nevada in 1897.”

1847:  Adolphus Simeon Solomons received a certificate of discharge from Third Regiment of the Washington Grays, which was part of the New York State Militia. Born in 1826, he had joined the Grays when he was 14 and was promoted to the rank of Sergeant five years later. After leaving the military, he would pursue a successful career in business and politics including playing an active role in the inaugurations of all the Presidents from Lincoln to McKinley. He would also serve in a number of important roles in Jewish communal affairs including serving as acting President of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association.

1852: In the House of Lords, the first reading of a bill designed to remove the disabilities imposed upon persons refusing to take the “oaths of abjuration.” Lord Lyndhurst cited the recent case of David Salomons, the Jew who had refused to take the standard oath and sought to be seated in the House of Commons, nonetheless.

1853(Iyar 3): Rabbi Isaac Farhi, author of Marpe la-Ezem, passed away today.

1853: A theatre critic for the New York Times pained the performance of “The Merchant of Venice” at Wallack’s Theatre saying that “there is no delineation of internal passion; no metaphysical reading of the Jew’s revengeful soul…”

1854(13thof Iyar, 5614): Fifty-four-year-old Saarland, Germany native Salomon Oppeheimer passed away today after which he was buried in New Orleans, LA.

1855: Birthdate of Carbondale, PA, native and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Williams College, Emanuel Cohen the Philadelphia and Minneapolis lawyer who was the husband of Nina Morais.

1857: In the Catherine Palace, Czar Alexander II and his wife Maria Alexandrovna gave birth to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia the influential, reactionary advisor to his brother Alexander III and his nephew Nicholas II and Governor of Moscow who zealously oversaw the violent expulsion of that city’s Jewish population starting in 1891.

1858:  Minnesota is amitted to the Union as the 32ndstate in the United States.  The establishment of the Mount Sinai Hebrew Association of St. Paul, in 1857 means that the first synagogue was established before Minnesota achieved statehood. The founding of Har Tzion (Mt. Zion) marked the start of the Jewish community in Minnesota.

1859: Seventy-seven year old Archduke John of Austria who helped Moses Sachs submit his “program for the settling of Jews as farmers in the land of Israel under Austrian protection” to the Austrian government which in turn submitted it the Ottomans who rejected it passed away today.

1859: Wolf Alois Meisel who had been serving as the rabbi at Stettin since 1848 moved to Budapest where he took up a similar position today.

1859: At Wien, Professor Dr. Simon Spitzer and Marie Spitzer gave birth to Dr. of Jurisprudence Leopold Spitzer

1860: Sir George Jessel, and Amelia Moses gave birth to British barrister and businessman Sir Charles James Jessel, 1st Baronet, Ladham House.

1863: Two days after she had passed away, Elizabeth (Lazarus) Davis, the wife of David Davis and the mother of Helen, Louise and Sarah Davis was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1863: Otto von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia, initiated written correspondence with socialist and reform leader Ferdinand Lassalle. (Lassalle was Jewish; Bismarck was not)

1863: Two days after he had passed away, 44 year old Angelo Bennett, the son of Solomon and Elizabeth Bennett and the husband of Gertrude Sarah Emanuel with whom he had had seven children was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1864: In San Francisco, Leopold Seligmann and Julia Levi gave birth to David Emil Seligman

1865: General Jeremiah Cutler Sullivan resigned from the Union Army.  In 1862, Sullivan was serving under General Grant in Tennessee.  He “refused to execute Grant’s Order 11 on the grounds that he thought he was an officer of the army and not of a church.” Sarna 20

1867: The independence of Luxembourg which was originally granted in 1839 is finally recognized by all of the European great powers including Prussia and France. The Grand Duchy’s first rabbi had served from 1843 until 1866 when Luxembourg had just one synagogue.  By 1880, there were approximately 140 Jewish families throughout the Grand Duchy and there were three synagogues in Luxembourg by the end of the 19th century.

1869(1st of Sivan, 5629): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1869: In Charleston, SC, J.D. Harby of Galveston, TX, married Leah Cohen, “the fourth daughter of Marx E. Cohen.

1869: In New York City, Shaaray Tefila (Gates of Prayer) dedicated its new sanctuary located on 44th Street, between Broadway and 6thAvenue.  During the ceremony Leopold Cohn, chairman of the Building Committee gave the keys for the building to Barnet Solomon, the President of the Congregation.  Rabbi Samuel Isaacs officiated at the impressive ceremony. The building, which cost $125,000 is smaller than Temple Emanu-El but compares favorably to it in terms of richness and architectural quality.

1869: Birthdate of Henrich Lowe, a German born Zionist who was known as a journalist, linguist and student of folklore.

1871: In Natchez, Mississippi, Samuel Ullman, the author of the poem “Youth” and his wife gave birth to Sidney Ullman who worked as an architect in Birmingham, Alabama from 1899 until 1916 after which he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to practice as an architect from 1917 until 1922 when he began working as a set designer.

1872: Today, in Allegheny City, PA, Daniel and Amelia Stein gave birth to “American art collector and critic Leo Stein, the brother of Gertrude Stein” t

1873(14thof Iyar, 5633): Pesach Sheni

1873: Birthdate of Russia native Morris Bank, the husband of Ida Bank and a member of “Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation” in Baltimore, MD.

1873(14thof Iyar, 5633): Seventy-four old Marx Oppenheimer, the son of Zacharias Oppenheimer and Fratel Oppenheimer passed away today.

1875: Birthdate of novelist and screenplay writer Leroy Scott who married Russian Jewish writer Miriam Finn in 1904.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/scott-miriam-finn

1876: In New York, Joseph M. Lichtenauer and Rebecca Deutsch gave birth 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.”

1877: In Kozlov, Czech Republic, Adolf Neubauer, the son of Karl and Theresia Neubauer, and his wife Klara Neubauer gave birth to Emilie Hoffer

1878: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association met for the first time in their new facility at 110 West 42nd Street in New York City.  Most of the members were in attendance at this all male affair. Mayor Ely was the guest of honor.  I.S. Isaacs, the association’s president, opening remarks included a brief history of the association.  The association, which was formed in 1874, has almost a thousand members and boasts a healthy back account.  Rabbis Gottheil, Henry Jacobs and H.B. Mendez all addressed the group briefly.

1879: “The Old Pessimists” published today notes that while there was a strongly pessimistic tone in a few books of the Bible – Job and Ecclesiastes - the “national religion of the Hebrews was optimistic in a high degree.” This stands in stark contrast to the deeply pessimistic religious utterances and literature of the ancient of the Greeks and the Romans While the Jews said “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord” they were declaring that “the land and the sea are full of evils”

1879: “Assyrian and Biblical History” published today described unresolved conflicts in the dating used by these two ancient civilizations. While both seem to agree as to the date of the eclipse that took place in the 8th century BCE, there is disagreement for the dates of subsequent events.  For example, the Assyrians say that the invasion of Judea took place in 701 BCE while the Jewish version would have set the date at 713 BCE. Some researches indicate that the discrepancies are the result of a propensity among Assyrian monarchs who had a propensity for not reporting defeats and unsuccessful campaigns.  This was left to their successors.

1879: Eighty year old Samuel Gobat, who had been serving as the Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem since 1846, passed away.  Unlike his predecessor, Gobat refrained from trying to convert Jews and Moslems and worked among Christians.  He and his wife who had also died while living in Jerusalem are buried in Mount Zion Cemetery.

1879(18th of Iyar, 5639): Lag B'Omer

1879(18thof Iyar, 5639): Seventy-five year old Benzion Judah Ben Eliahu Berkowitz who devoted much of his literary efforts to works related to Targum Onkelos passed away today in Wilna.

1879(18th of Iyar, 5639): Bernhard Wolff the editor of the Vossische Zeitung, founder of the National Zeitung and founder of Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau one of the first press agencies in Europe and one of the three great European telegraph monopolies until the World War II-era, the other two being the English Reuters and the French Havas, passed away today in his native Berlin. (Editor’s note -  All three of these famous wire-services had a Jewish connection.)

1879: Eighty-year old Samuel Gobat, the Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem who ended his predecessor’s policy of trying to convert Jews, passed away today and following his funeral was buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery in Jerusalem.

1881: In Budapest, “Helen Kohn, who was from a leading Bohemian family, and Mór Kármán who was a leading professor of philosophy and education” gave birth to Theodore von Kármán the Hungarian-American engineer and physicist who was a descendant of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel and who responsible for many key advances in aerodynamics, notably his work on supersonic and hypersonic airflow characterization.

https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/aerospace-defense/theodore-von-karman

http://www.nmspacemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.php?id=31

http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/von-karman-theodore.pdf

1881: Herzl fights his only duel in the fraternity Albia.

1881: As a wave of pogroms race across Russia Czar Alexander III receives a delegation of Jews led by Baron Horace de Gunzburg.  He assures them that the government is opposed to the violence which he blames on socialists and elements following the anti-Christ.

1882: In Luka, Hermann Ullmann and Bertha Ullmann gave birth Berthold Ullman who was murdered at Auschwitz.

1884: In Bucharest, Zara and Leon Feinsohn gave birth to Reba Fesinsohn who gained fame as the American soprano and recording artist, Alma Gluck.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gluck-alma

https://www.nytimes.com/1938/10/28/archives/alma-gluck-dead-operatic-soprano-former-star-of-metropolitan-was.html

1884: In Russian, Benjamin and Bessie (Reichberg) Rosenblatt, gave birth to Columbia Ph.D. and sociologist Frank F. Rosenblatt, the husband of Katherine Golding who published works included “The Chartist Movement, in Is Social and Economic Aspects” and who was a member of the Jewish Social Association and the Workmen’s Circle Club.

1884: Birthdate of Samuel B. Peiper, the native of Philadelphia who was ordained at JTS and served as a rabbi in Brooklyn.

1885(26thof Iyar, 5645): Seventy-three year old “composer, conductor and writer” Ferdinand von Hiller who students included Max Bruch the non-Jewish “composer of the cello elegy Kol Nidrei, based on the synagogue hymn sung at Yom Kippur” passed away today.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Hiller,_Ferdinand

1886(6 Iyar, 5646): Sixty-nine year old Isidor Kalish the German educated Reform Rabbi who came to the United States where he led several Reform congregations starting with Tifereth Israel in Cleveland and was a driving force behind creating the Reform Movement in his adopted country passed away http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=KI1

1886(6 Iyar, 5646): Rabbi James Koppel Gutheim passed away today in New Orleans.  Born in Westphalia, Germany, he came to the United States in 1843 and became active in the Cincinnati (Ohio) Jewish community, the home of Reform Judaism in the United States.  Guttheim moved to New Orleans where he served as Rabbi at Shangarai Chesed.  He left the Crescent City after a dispute about a memorial to the late Judah Touro and his refusal to take the Oath of Allegiance to the Union during the Civil War.  After serving as rabbi to congregations in Montgomery, Alabama and Columbus, GA, he returned to New Orleans where he served as rabbi at Temple Sinai until his death.

1887: Birthdate of Paul Wittgenstein.  The Austrian-born pianist lost his right arm fighting for Austria during World War I.  After the war he gained fame for arranging and playing numerous pieces with his left hand.  After fleeing the Nazis during the 1930’s he came to the United States where he became a citizen and continued his career.

1888: In the Russian Empire Lena Lipkin Beilin and Cantor Moses Beilin gave birth Isadore Beilin who gained fame as composer Irving Berlin whose works included “White Christmas” which is reportedly “the all-time leader in the holiday music category.”

 http://www.irvingberlin.com/biography

http://www.irvingberlin.com/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/irving-berlin

1889: Zadoc Kahn the Chief Rabbi of France who helped to found  Société des Études Juives  in 1879 delivered an address to entitled "La Révolution Française et le Judaïsme" to help mark the centenary of the French Revolution.

1889: In San Francisco, grocery store chain owner Abraham Haas and Fanny Koshland gave birth to Walter A. Haas, Sr. the chairman of the board of Levi Strauss and Company.

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/12/08/archives/walter-haas-sr-90-exchairman-joined-levi-strauss-in-1919.html

1890: It was reported today that former President Grover Cleveland and his wife have accepted an invitation to attend the upcoming Strawberry Festival, a fund-raiser sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1890: Charles Bernheim was re-elected as President during the annual meeting of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews which began at 10 o’clock this morning.

1890: “Barons Alphonse and Nathaniel Rothschild have warned Emperor Franz Joseph and …the Minister of the Interior, that if oppression of the Jews is continued at Vienna, they will be forced to transfer their business” to Budapest.  They claim that the leadings banks will follow them in moving their business.

1891: A fire, which was allegedly set by a Jewish immigrant from Poland name Solomon Crizar, broke out at 222 Johnson Avenue in Brooklyn.

1891: In New York City Henry Morgenthau, Sr., a real estate mogul and diplomat, and Josephine Sykes gave birth to Henry Morgenthau Jr. a neighbor of FDR.  It was this friendship rather than his financial wizardry that led to his appointment as US Secretary of the Treasury in 1934.   He held that post until 1945, when Harry Truman took office.  Morgenthau was the author of the so-called Morgenthau Plan which, according to critics, sought to turn Germany into one large farm after World War II.  After two world wars in less than fifty years, Morgenthau was not alone in thinking that the only way to avoid another German Reich was to demilitarize and de-industrialize the country.  The realities of the looming Cold War, among other concerns, derailed any such notions.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007408

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

1892(14thof Iyar, 5652): Pesach Sheini

1892(14thof Iyar, 5652): Yosef Dov Soloveitchik the great-grandson of Rabbi Chaim Volozhin and author of Beis Halevi passed away today.

1892: Leaders of several congregations met tonight to discuss the possibility of establishing a school that would train men and women to serve as teachers at Jewish Sunday Schools.

1892: “Vaccination Day” published today described the annual springtime program designed to provide vaccination for hundreds of Jewish, Polish and Italian children that takes place at the Health Office on Mulberry Street.

1892: In “Turov, Polyesy, Ayzik-Ber Goldin, author of the religious work, Otiyot maḥkimot (Enlightening letters)” and his wife gave birth to Osher-Arye Goldin who worked as an author and translator before moving to the United States in 1913 where he gained fame a Yiddishist Leon Goldin.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2015/05/osher-arye-goldin-leon-goldin.html

1893: There were a dozen Polish Jews aboard the Majestic when it arrived today in England.

1893: Acting at the behest of Josef Deckert, an anti-Semitic Austrian priest, Paulus Meyer, a baptized Jew, declared in the Vaterland “that a number of Russian rabbis from Lentschna had performed a ritual murder in his presence.”

1895: Sir Matthew Nathan began serving as secretary to the Colonial Defense Committee today.

1895: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association hosted a strawberry festival to mark the end of this season’s programs of study and entertainment.

1895: Several Polish Jews were arrested in Kingston, NY on charges of being counterfeiters.

1897: Birthdate of Kurt Gerson the native of Berlin whose medical studies ended with his service in WW I and who gained fame as actor and director Kurt Gerron – none of which kept him from being killed at Auschwitz.

http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/western-europe/westerbork/gerronkurt/

1898: Two days after she had passed away, 76 year old Annie Myers, the “widow of Eliezer Myers” was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1898: Rabbi Leucht of Newark, NJ, officiated at the wedding of Moses Schloss and Miss Minnie Krieger of Philadelphia.  Schloss is the manager of S. Scheurer & Co of Plainfield, NJ.

1898: On day after she had passed away, 28 year old Sarah Perse was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1899: “De Hirsch Memorial Service” published today described the services held at Temple Emanu-El in honor of the late Baroness Clara de-Hirsch-Gereuth, the widow of the late Baron Hirsch. Among those who address the packed sanctuary were Myer S Isaacs, President of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and William Rhinelander Stewart, President of the State Board of Charities. The service began with Mendelssohn’s Funeral March and ended with a recitation of the Kaddish led by Rabbi William Sparger and a benediction by Rabbi De Sola Menes

1900: It was reported today that family of 55 year old Benjamin F. Houseman, a “prominent Jew” living in Philadelphia claims that his death “was due to the accidental discharge of pistol” and not a suicide as reported by the police

1901: Birthdate of Rosalie Beatrice Scherzer who gained fame as the poet Rose Auslander.

1902(4thof Iyar, 5662): Asher Isaac Myer, the managing editor of the Jewish Chronicle passed away today. (This is the date supplied by the Jewish Encylopedia)

1902: Birthdate of Louis K. Diamond, the native of Kishinev who graduated from Harvard Medical School and is known as “the father of pediatric hematology.’

1903: Birthdate of Victor Candell, the native of the Budapest “the award-winning painter” “who works included a mural on the outside of the Iraqi pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/20/archives/victor-candell-73-painter-muralist-at-iraq-pavilion.html

1903: The El-Arish project fails. Herzl writes in his diary: "I thought the Sinai plan was such a sure thing that I no longer wanted to buy a family vault in the Döbling cemetery, where my father is provisionally laid to rest. Now I consider the affair so wrecked that I have already been to the district court and am acquiring vault No. 28."

1904: Prime Minister Balfour responded to charges that the Aliens Bill was a sign that ant-Semitism had come to England by writing today that “Aliens bill was designed to protect the country not against the Jew but against the undesirable alien quite irrespective of nationality or creed” and that he “should regard the or the grown of any anti-Semitic feeling in this country as a most serious national misfortune.”

1905: The Jewish Chronicle is quoted as saying that in Russia, “a measure is more than just under consideration which will give unhoped-for relief to the Jews” and that “absolute freedom of movement and residence will granted” to the Jews “in all cities and towns but not in villages” out of fear for of more violence such as that which took place in Kishineff.

1906: Boston archeologist William Copely Winslow announced that “Professor Flinders Petrie, the well-known Egyptologist” has discovered the remains of the Temple Onias at Tel-el-Yahudich (the Mound of the Jews) 18 miles north of Cairo” and “that in all probability the professor has identified the treasure city of Ramses built by the Israelites” the construction of which “is referred to in the first chapter of the Book of Exodus

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1906/05/12/101778081.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1907(27thof Iyar, 5667): Parashat Behar Bechokotai

1907: “Salome Divides Paris” published today described a campaign led by “The Libre Parole which is notoriously anti-Semitic” against the performance of Richard Strauss’s opera saying that it is decadent  and “places a large share of the responsibility for the production on the Jews “two of whom organized the production of the work of a third.”

1908: The U.S. Consular Agency at Aleppo which contained one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world and was the home of the famous Aleppo Codex, was upgraded to a Consulate.

1909: A dinner is scheduled to be given today in honor of Alexander Harkavy, who, much to the consternation of Jews living on the East Side, has resigned as “head of the Hebrew Aid Society of Ellis Island.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/04/28/101878507.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1909: Hungarian born con-artist Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch-Lincoln who “secured British Naturalization today” under the name of I.T.T. Lincoln which led to his being elected to Parliament in 1910.

1909: The results of the election held on May 1 became public in Finland and showed that the Socialist Democrats and Constitutional Democrats had tripled the number of seats they held in the Landtag which means “the recently drafted laws against the Jews will be considerably amended, if not rejected” and Jews may gain the right to vote since both parties had this as a plank in their platforms.

1910: It was reported today that in Virginia “practically the entire Jewish population of Richmond is indignant over the ejection of two prominent Jewish young men from the dormitories of the Young Men's Christian Association by order of the Board of Directors.”

1910: “A special meeting of the Board of Trustees of Temple Emanu-El was held tonight to consider action by the board as a result of a widespread discussion aroused throughout the congregation by a recent Passover sermon of the Rev. Dr. J.L. Magnes, associate rabbi with the Rev. Dr. Joseph Silverman, advocating a change in the reformed ritual and service now in vogue.”

1911: In Brooklyn, Saul and Sarah (née Handler) Silver gave birth to their “eighth and youngest child” Philip Silversmith who gained fame as comedian Phil Silvers, best known to many for his role as Sgt. Ernie Bilko.

https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/02/arts/phil-silvers-tv-s-sergeant-bilko-dead-at-73.html

1911: Conservative Young Turks blame Zionists for desecration of the Mosque of Omar.

1912: In London, engineer Mortiz Kahn and his wife gave birth to journalist and photographer Albert Eugene Kahn.

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/19/archives/albert-e-kahn-a-writer-critical-of-government-in-mccarthy-era-an.html

http://brandeisspecialcollections.blogspot.com/2012/11/albert-eugene-kahn-papers.html

1912(24th of Iyar, 5672): Parashat Behar-Buchukotai

1912: “The original production” of “Princess Caprice, a musical theatre work described as a "comedy with music", in three acts, with music by Leo Fall,” the son of Mortiz Fall opened today “at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London.”

1912: Samuel and Edith Bass gave birth to Dr. Bernard Brass, the husband of Pearl L Hochman Brass.

1912(24thof Iyar, 5672): Seventy-eight year old Rabbi Samuel Baeck, the father of Rabbi Leo Baeck, the son of Rabbi Nathan Baeck, the grandson of Rabbi Abraham Baeck who was the husband of Eva Placzek, the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Placzek passed away today in Lissa.

1913: It has been reported that “after having promised” for several years “the telephone system has at last been installed at Jerusalem.”

1913: It has been reported that “he Nationalist have introduced a bill into the Duma which contains a clause to the effect that Jews should only be allowed to edit newspapers in the Pale” the purposed of which “is to banish Jewish influence from the most influential organs in St. Petersburg and Moscow.”

1913: Mrs. Ella Flagg Young is scheduled to address the Chicago Hebrew Institute at its “Annual Meeting and Supper” this evening

1913: In Chicago, at the Isaiah, Rabbi Joseph Stolz is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Mother In Israel” at the congregation’s “concluding Sunday service of this season.”

1914: University of Vienna trained dermatologist Maurice Oppenheim, married Lilly Oppenheim today after which they had two children – Emmy and Maria.

1914(15thof Iyar, 5674): Sixty-one year old Daniel De Leon, the native of Curacao who became a champion of the rights of the working man and leader of the Socialist Labor Party of America passed away today.

http://www.slp.org/De_Leon.htm

1915: In “Jews With Wilson, Says the Warheit” published today the American Yiddish language newspaper took issue with a statement in the Frankfurter Zeitung saying “that the United States cannot declare war” on Germany “because of the millions of German, Irish and Jews being in the way” saying that “the Jews should very much like the” German newspaper “and other to refrain from mentioning them in their discussions of a war between the United States and Germany. If mentioned they must be, then let it be said in their name: ‘The Jews of the United States will all, to the last man, stand behind President Wilson and the United States Government.” (Editor’s note: While many Jews were Socialists and wanted to stay out of the war because of their pacifism, and others did not want to fight on the side of the Russians whom they saw as oppressor of Jews, there was a handful of Jews from Germany who did not want to take up arms against what they saw as their enlightened fatherland.  In the end, the Germans overplayed their hand and misread American Jewry as badly as they did other others and American Jews flocked to support their new found home in what they saw as an American fight for freedom)

1915: “Dr. Perry M. Lichtenstein, a physician at the Tombs prison,’ is scheduled to “speak tonight before the Harlem Jewish League at the Belvedere on the “Dope Fiend.”  (Yes, 100 years ago there was “the war on drugs” debate)

1915:  “In his sermon at the Tabernacle tonight, the Reverend Billy Sunday expressed himself strongly in favor “of freeing Leo M. Frank.

1915: “With the death date for Leo M. Frank fixed for June 22” “fifteen thousand petitions for clemency for Frank were brought to the Capitol “at Atlanta “today which are to be delivered to Governor Staton.”

1916: Isador Herschfield, an agent of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society is currently on board the steamship New Amsterdam which left Rotterdam and is making its way to New York.

1917: Birthdate of Irving Jay Cohen “who was known as King Cupid of the Catskills for his canny ability to seat just the right nice Jewish boy next to just the right nice Jewish girl during his half-century as the maître d’ of the Concord Hotel…” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1917: Two days after she had passed away, 74 year old Dinah Saunders, “the widow of the late Harris Saunders” and mother of Isaac, Simon and Moses Saunders was buried today in London’s “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”

1917: It was reported today from Amsterdam that “an appeal” has been “made to Jews to participate in the struggle aiming at national autonomy and the securing of Palestine for the Jews.”

1917(19th of Iyar, 5677): Seventy year old L.G Pape, a native of Philadelphia who most recently has been working with the Memphis Agency of the Equitable Life Assurance Society in Memphis and who has been President of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and the driving force behind the construction of the new Temple at Popular Avenue and Montgomery Street passed away today at Memphis leaving behind a wife the former Miss Florie Bloom of Memphis.

1917: It was reported today that Julius Rosenwald of Chicago has promised to contribute ten percent of the total contributions made by those in Illinois to the Jewish Relief Committee in Behalf of the Jewish War Sufferers in Europe which is trying to raise a total of four million dollars.

1918: It was reported today that the Jewish Welfare Board, “is cooperating with British and French organizations in Paris and back of the western front to care for the” Jewish soldiers and sailors serving abroad.

1919: The first Estonian Congress of Jewish congregations held its opening session today.  The organization was going to have deal with the new realities of living in an independent Estonia that was no longer part of the old Czarist Russian Empire or its Bolshevik successor.

1919: Birthdate of Polish native Rubin Partel, the Holocaust survivor who began a new life in the United States in 1947.

https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9503E7D7173AF937A35751C0A96E9C8B63.html

1921: One day after he had passed away Melville Samson Toplitz was buried today

1921:  Tel Aviv became the first all-Jewish municipality under the Mandatory Government.

1922: Birthdate of Tawfik Toubi a Christian Arab politician and who was elected to the Knesset in 1949 when Israel held its first parliamentary elections.  Toubi would serve until he retired in 1991.  His death in 2011 marked the end of an era since he was the last surviving member of Israel’s First Knesset.

1924: The first conference of the General Zionist movement begins in Jerusalem. It decides to establish a General Zionist Federation to amalgamate all centrist factions in Palestine.

1924: Birthdate of Leonard Garment who served as White House Counsel during the Watergate Scandal.

1924: Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz merge their companies to form Mercedes-Benz.  The “Mercedes” in Mercedes Benz comes from the daughter of Jewish businessman Emil Jellinek who was known as Mercedes.

1925(17thof Iyar, 5685): Sixty-nine year old “Isak Isaac Itzig Speier, the German born son of “Leiser and Tels Delza Speyer, the “husband of Flora Speier” and “father of Leo Speyer” passed away today.

1925: In Cleveland, Ohio, Betty and Ben Glasser gave birth to William Glasser, the psychiatrist who was also a successful author on books about mental health.

1926: According to figures released today, 1,650 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine during the month of April

1926: The list of the newly elected members of the Executive Committee District No. 1, Independent Order B’nai Brith published today included “Maurice Bloch of New York, first vice-president; David Ruslander of Buffalo, second vice-president; Joshua Kantrowitz of New York, president of the Home; Joseph Rosenzweig of New York, treasurer; Max Levy of New York, Secretary; Louis Lorence of New York, chairman of the Committee on Finance; Judge Albert Cohen of New York, chairman of the Committee on Law; Isidore H. Fox of Boston, Chairman of the Committee on Religious Activities; Wilfred B. Feiga of Worcester, chairman of the Committee on Intellectual Advancement; Ely Rosenberg of New York, chairman of the Committee on Endowment Reserve Fund; Herbert T. Rosenfeld of New York, chairman of the Committee on Social Service; Max L. Pinansky of Portland, Maine, Chief Justice of District Court; Morris B. Moskowitz of New York, chairman on Committee on Membership; Nestor Dreyfus of New London, Conn., chairman of Committee on General Fund and Charitable Objects, Abraham K. Cohen of Boston, chairman on Committee on Anti-Defamation; Henry Lasker of Springfield, Mass., chairman of Committee on Women’s Auxiliaries; Leo J. Lyons of Boston, chairman of the Committee on Exemplification of Degree; Nathan H. Friedman of Taunton, Mass., chairman of Committee on Publicity; Nathan E. Goldstein of Springfield, Mass., Chairman of Committee on District Deputies; and Louis M. Singer of Toronto, Can., chairman of Committee on Canadian Activities.” (As reported by JTA)

1927:  Birthdate of Mort Sahl.  Born in Montréal Canada, Sahl was one of a new breed of comedians that appeared in the late 1950's.  Many of them were more cerebral than slapstick; more likely to have started in coffee houses like the Hungry Eye in San Francisco than burlesque theatres. Sahl would come on stage in his trade mark orange sweater, newspaper under his arm and sitting on a stool, begin to take potshots at the political and social leaders of the day. 

1927: A cross section of thirty six leaders in the infant movie industry founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy is responsible for honoring the accomplishments of the film industry through the annual Oscar ceremonies.  Many of the original 36 were Jewish including Cecil B. DeMille, Louis Mayer, Joseph Schenk, Jake Lasky, Irving Thalberg, George Cohen, Edwin Loeb, Jack Warner and Harry Warner Yes, do the math.  The Jewish representation is definitely statistically disproportional.

1928: Morris “Moshe” Baran and his family arrived in the United States.  Amongst the three children in the family was Paul Baran, who as an engineer working at RAND Corporation “outlined the basic idea for what has become the Internet.

1928: Birthdate of Joe Schlesinger the Austrian born refugee from Nazi Europe who gained fame as a Canadian television journalist and author.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Schlesinger

1928:  Birthdate Yaacov Agam. Israeli-born Yaacov Agam was educated at the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem and the Atelier d'Art Abstrait in Paris. Agam has had exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Museum, the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His work is in the collections of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Joseph Hirshhorn Collection in Washington, D.C. (editorial comment - I am no art critic or student of art so I will not even pretend to fake it on this subject.  But I happened to have seen some of his work and there is something really interesting about.  There are several websites where you can see his work.)

1929(1stof Iyar, 5689): Parashat Kedoshim; Rosh Chodesh Iyar

1929: Birthdate of Samuel Charles Cohn.  This native of Altoona, PA, would gain fame as Sam Cohn “the powerful talent broker” who founded International Creative Management (ICM) and represented a panoply of top talent including Woody Allen, Robin Williams, Arthur Miller, E.L. Doctorow and Whoopi Goldberg to name but a few.  He died in May of 2009 at the age of 79. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1929: “Eternal Love” a silent romantic film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and produced by Joseph Schenck was released in the United States today.

1930: A Zionist youth group gathered in Berehovo, Carpatho-Russia, Czechoslovakia today.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/01.asp

1931: The Creditanstalt which was founded in 1855 by Salomon Mayer von Rothschild's son Anselm declared bankruptcy today after having been forced by the Austrian government to assume the debts of another institution in 1929 “making it one of the first major bank failures that initiated the Great Depression.”

1932: During today’s session of the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the assembly’s President, Rabbi Israel Levinthal of Brooklyn, delivered his annual address in which he said many members were suffering financially and serious thought needed to be given to establishing a permanent relief fund.  As further proof of the impact of the Great Depression on Jews and Jewish organization, the seminary is expanding its placement service to help its graduates find work.

1932: Professor Louis Finkelstein, President of JTS, Sol M. Stroock, Chairman of the JTS Board of Directors, Professor Louis Ginzberg, and Rabbi Israel Goldstein of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, were among those who spoke at tonight’s dinner at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F10D14F83E5A13738DDDAB0994DD405B828FF1D3

1933: “Zeppo Marz and his wife left” Los Angeles “by train tonight to his father’s body back to New York for burial” where their arrival is awaited by Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx.

1934(26th of Iyar, 5694): Seventy-five year old Lazăr Şăineanu “a Romanian-born philologist, linguist, folklorist and cultural historian: who was “a specialist in Oriental and Romance studies, as well as a Hebraist and a Germanist, known for his contribution to Yiddish and Romanian philology” passed away today in Paris.

1934: Birthdate of Guinter Kahn, the native of Trier who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and development a “remedy for baldness.”

http://www.omaha.com/obits/kahn-m-d-guinter/article_3968bda0-21f4-5fa6-bc45-f98c4fe8aacb.html

1935(8th of Iyar, 5695): Parashat Emor1935: “In response to an appeal from Lord Marley, chairman of the World Committee to Aid the Victims of German Fascism” today is the first of two Tag Days designated by the Washington Heights Child Aid Committee as part of its drive to raise funds to build a home for children to replace the one destroyed by the Nazis when they took over the Saar.”

1936(19th of Iyar, 5696): Sixty-two year old Judge Otto Rosalsky, “the dean of the General Sessions bench passed away this morning at Mount Sinai Hospital where his family including his wife Mamie Rosalsky, his brothers Justice Joseph S. Rosalsky, Dr. Harry W. Rosalsky and Alexander Rosalsky and his sisters Mrs. Joseph Morrison and Mrs. Bella Shapira were at his bedside.

1937(1st of Sivan, 5697): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1938: “I Married An Angel,” a Rodgers and Hart musical comedy opened at the Shubert Theatre today.

1938:  The Palestine Post reported that Hanita beat off another heavy terrorist attack. Arab terrorist gangs continued to enter Arab villages demanding ransom money and valuables. Those villagers who refused such demands were usually kidnapped and their bodies were later found in the neighboring fields. A forest neighboring the Tiberias Hot Springs was set on fire. The Dutch border was closed to refugees after about 2,000 Austrian and 15,000 German Jews succeeded to get in. Holland claimed that despite the fact that it suffered from a heavy unemployment, it had offered residence to over 26,000 refugees.  During the 1930’s the Jews were caught in two pronged anti-Semitic orgy.  In Europe they were condemned because they were permanent outsiders even though they desperately tried to fit into the social fabric of the various nations in which they lived.  In Palestine, the Jews were under attack because they were trying to establish a national home where Jews could live as Jews.  The point of this is that anti-Semitism is irrational and those who hate Jews will grab any excuse and those looking for a scapegoat will grab any Jew.

1939: Jews are prohibited from working in travel agencies by Nazi Germany

1939: Premiere of crime drama “Blind Alley” directed by Charles Vidor.

1940(3rd of Iyar, 5700): Parashat Emor

1940: “Contraband, “a spy film with a screenplay by Emeric Pressburger was released in the United Kingdom today/

1940: One day after Germany invaded the Low Countries and France, President Roosevelt issued a proclamation reasserting “the neutrality of the United States in the war between Germany, Belgium Luxembourg and the Netherlands.”  (In six weeks the all of these countries would fall to the Nazis sealing the fate of the Jews trapped in the Final Solution.)

1941(14th of Iyar, 5701): Pesach Sheni

1941:  In the Warsaw ghetto, children are seen playing with a corpse in a courtyard. In each of the prior two months, 500 - 600 more Jews died of starvation.

1941: During the Blitz, The Great Synagogue on Dukes Place in London is destroyed in an air raid.

1942:  Alter Dworetsky, a member of the Jewish Council at Diatlovo, Belorussia, escapes to a nearby forest, only to be shot to death by Soviet partisans after refusing to hand over his pistol.

1942: One day after he had passed away funeral services were held today for seventy-four year old Joseph M. (Joe) Weber, the Weber in the burlesque team of Weber and Fields, the husband of the former Lily Friedman, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Friedman after which, per his request, he was cremated.

1942: “Native Land” a documentary about the trade union movement directed and produced by Leo Hurwitz who also co-authored the script and with music by Marc Blitzstein was released in the United States today.

1942: Damon Runyon published “Sam Dreben’s Spirit Marches On” a column that uses the career of this Jewish career soldier who won the Distinguished Service Cross to dispel notions of Jewish cowardliness and lack of patriotism.  The column was written “on the occasion of the posthumous conferring of the DSC on Lt. Henry D. Mark of Los Angeles. (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

1942: The Biltmore Program is adopted in an emergency meeting (at the Biltmore Hotel in New York) of the Conference of American Zionists. The program proposed by Ben Gurion and Abba Hillel Silver totally rejected the British White paper and called for the establishment of a Jewish state. There was opposition to the proposal by the "non- Zionists" and those who believed in a bi-national state (HaShomer HaZair).

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-biltmore-conference-1942

http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Biltmore_Conference.htm

1942: “Go Down Moses,” the collection of short stories by William Faulkner is published today.  The title is based on the spiritual that compares the slavery experience of African-Americans in the United States with the enslavement of the Jews by Pharao1943: Birthdate of Thomas Buergenthal, the native of Ľubochňa, Czechoslovakia, who survived Aushwitz and Sachsenhausen to become an American attorney and a Judge serving on the International Court of Justice.

1943: During WW II, the Battle of Attu began when American forces that included Dr. Abraham Koransky confronted Japanese forces in the only WW II battle fought on the American mainland.

1944: HMCS Beauharnois, a Canadian corvette, was launched today.  She would be acquired by the Israelis and was renamed Josiah Wedgwood, in honor of Colonel Josiah Wedgwood, the British M.P. who wanted to remove the obstacles to Jewish immigration to Palestine and opposed the British appeasement of Hitler during the 1930’s.

1944: Anne Frank writes in her diary, "I'd like to publish a book called 'The Secret Annex.' It remains to be seen whether I'll succeed, but my diary can serve as the basis

1944: Dr. Salomon Gluck, a French Army veteran who had been honored with the Croix de Guerre for bravery in facing the Nazis on the Maginot Line and a member of the Resistance was deported from Drancy aboard convoy 73.  He was number 21530 and the convoy was unusual in that all of the almost 900 prisoners were men. The men did not know that they would meet an ignominious end.

1944: Allied forces begin their final assault on the German lines at Monte Casino, the seizure of which will open the Road to Rome with the concomitant saving of the lives of Italian Jews hiding in and around the eternal city.

1945: “Asserting that Palestine will offer one of the best markets for American exports after the war, Julius Simon, president of the Palestine Economic Corporation disclosed today that he had been authorized to arrange for the purchase of $60,000,000 worth of industrial and agricultural machinery for various enterprises in that country.”

1946: Fifty-eight of the 61 defendants in “The Mauthausen Camp Trials” were found sentenced to death today.

1947:”Speaking at a dinner sponsored by the United Zionist-Revisionists of America at the Hotel Biltmore” Senator Claude Pepper of Florida “declared that the United States should take a firm stand against any proposal by Great Britain and the Arab states to end the Palestine mandate” and “characterized the policy of Great Britain in Palestine as ‘a long, sad story of inaction, vacillation and violation of the mandate” while asserting “that the only solution to the Palestine problem was ‘an immediate transfer to Palestine under the auspices of a Jewish national authority.’”

1948: “In an interview” given today “in his apartment at the Ansonia Hotel Al Shean of the famous comedy team of Gallagher and Shean “said he had nothing special planned to mark” his eightieth birthday which falls on May 12.

1948:  Haganah took control of the port of Haifa. Haifa is Israel's northern port.  In 1948, it had enough of a Jewish majority to have elected the town's mayor.  But the city also had a considerable Arab population.  The fighting during April to control the city was fierce.  However, the three major Arab leaders left the city when they realized they were not going to any more help from the King of Jordan.  This demoralized the local Arab population.  Despite being urged by the Jews to stay and remain calm, the majority left by sea for Lebanon and by land for Nazareth.  Matters were not helped by the Arab Higher Committee which urged the Arabs to leave, in part, because the committee was sure that Haifa would be bombed by Arab air forces thus ending the Jewish presence in Haifa.

1949:  Today Israel is admitted as the 59th member of the U.N., on the anniversary of Turkey's declaration, in 1917, of its intention to free Eretz Israel of the entire Jewish population.

1949:  Today, Zero Mostel appeared on “Toast of the Town” hosted by Ed Sullivan.

1950: In a speech given tonight at Madison Square Garden, Governor Dewey declared that Israel must be armed to defend its frontiers against aggression because a strong Israel "is the surest guarantee to peace in the Near East."

1953:  The Jerusalem Post reported that restitution negotiations were expected to begin shortly between the Austrian government and various Jewish Community representatives. The Israeli Cabinet decided to impose a "special unemployment relief tax" after the number of jobless reached 16,000. The Jerusalem Labor Exchange which had been closed for a week, following an attack by a mob of unemployed, reopened and offered forestation jobs to 30 workers. Over 550 workers were already employed in forestation projects carried out by Keren Kayemet, the Jewish National Fun.  In the first decade of the 21stcentury people see Israel as a place of lush vegetation with a vibrant western style economy.  It is quickly forgotten that in the early days of Israel’s existence the economy was quite shaky with high unemployment, large numbers of immigrants with limited skills and a land that had been denuded and neglected for centuries.

1954(8th of Iyar, 5714): Fifty-seven year old Newark native and WW I Navy veteran Jacob Kay Lasser, the NYU and Penn St. University educated tax expert who became famous with the publication of the 1939 handbook “Your Income Tax Guide” and who raised two children – Barbara and Donald – with his wife Terese Reuben Lasser passed away today after which his eyes were donated “to the Eye-bank for Sight Restoration, Inc. per his wish.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1954/05/12/84120828.html?pageNumber=31

1955:  Israel attacked Gaza.  In 1955, Gaza was under control of Egypt.  It was a base for fedayeen (from Israel's point of view, terrorists) who would cross into Israel planting roadside bombs and shooting up passing vehicles.  Israel's move into Gaza was temporary, lasting only long enough to destroy the bases from which these people operated.  David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, was always adamant that Israel should never want to hold on to Gaza.

1959: Tonight “fifty ambassadors from foreign countries, many of the delegates to the United Nations and numerous distinguished Americans attended a farewell dinner in honor of Israel Ambassador Abba Eban
 who has been Israel’s permanent UN representative for the last 11 years.

1959(3rdof Iyar, 5719): Seventy-four year old Jacob Loeb Langsdorf, the son of Blanche and Isadore Langsdorft, husband Louise Silberman Langsdorf with whom he raised two children Blanche and Benjamin passed away today.

1959: The original production of “Once Upon a Mattress” “a musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Marshall Barer” “opened at the off-Broadway Phoenix Theatre” today.

1960:  Adolf Eichmann, charged with the implementation of the "final solution", was captured in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Eichmann was in charge of all transportation required for the shipment of Jews to the extermination camps. The height of his career was reached in Hungary in 1944, when he managed to transport 400,000 Jews to the gas chambers in less than five weeks.  Eichmann was found guilty and is the only person who ever executed by the Israeli the government.

1961: President John F. Kennedy appointed Walworth Barbour as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

1963: Lesley Gore’s recording of “It’s My Party” “entered the Billboard Hot 100” today.

1963(17th of Iyar, 5723): Seventy-four year old Dr. Herbert S. Gasser, winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize for Medicine passed away tonight in New York City.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FA0E1EFC3858137A93C1A8178ED85F478685F9

1965(9thof Iyar, 5725): Seventy-eight-year-old  Conservative Party leader and MP, Major Sir Benn Jack Brunel Cohen, whose family owned Lewis’s department store and who was he husband of Vera Eveln Samuel as well as the son-in-law of Sir Stuart Samuel passed away today in London.

1966(21stof Iyar, 5726): Sixty year old “Monument Man” James Joseph Rorimer, a Jew from Cleveland who was a director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he helped create the Cloisters passed away today after suffering a heart attack.  (For more see Survival: The Salvage and Protection of Art in War by James Joseph Rorimer

 http://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/the-heroes/the-monuments-men/rorimer-lt.-cdr.-james-j.http://chronicle.augusta.com/life/2014-02-08/look-real-man-portrayed-monuments-men

http://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/the-heroes/the-monuments-men/rorimer-lt.-cdr.-james-j.

http://chronicle.augusta.com/life/2014-02-08/look-real-man-portrayed-monuments-men

1966: In New York City, “Ronnie I. (née Posner) and Lawrence David Ackman, the chairman of a New York real estate financing firm, Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group” gave birth to “William Albert "Bill" Ackman an American investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist who was the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, a hedge fund management company.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/business/william-ackman-pershing-valeant.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

1967: Abba Eban and his wife tour Israel’s northern border area with General David Elazar, commander of the region.

1968: Rolling Stone magazine featured a photograph of Eric Clapton taken by Linda McCartney today making it the first time that a photograph by a woman “was featured on a front cover.”

1968: It was reported today that Max Perlman who has been “absent from the Second Avenue scene for two seasons” is scheduled to return to New York from Tel Aviv “to star in the perennial fall production at of Jacob Jacobs at the Anderson Yiddish Theatre.”

1969: In “Jean Rosenthal 1912-1969” published today Leo Lerman provided a portrait of the lighting genius who “lit up” the Broadway productions of “Hello Dolly,” “Plaza Suite,” “Cabaret” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9C06E2DC1F30EE3BBC4952DFB3668382679EDE

1969: Sir Harry Charles Luke who served as assistant Governor of Jerusalem in 1921 and was a member of the Haycraft Commission that investigated the May riots in Jaffa and who served as acting High Commissioner to the Government of Palestine for six months during 1928 passed away today

1969: “Singapore officially recognized the State of Israel and diplomatic relations were established between the two countries.” (As reported by JewishVirtualLibrary)

1970(5thof Iyar, 5730): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1970: “Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon” a comedy directed and produced by Otto Preminger and filmed by cinematographer Boris Kaufman was released in the United States today.

1970: “Leo the Last,” a British drama produced by Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler and starring George Tabori whose “father Cornelius died at Auschwtiz in 1944, was released today in the United Kingdom.

1971: “The Second Leningrad trial, with “Hillel Butman, Mikhail Korenblit, Lassal Kaminsky, Lev Yagman, Vladimir Mogilever, Solomon Dreisner, Lev Korenblit, Viktor Boguslavsky, Victor Shtilbans” as defemdmts begam tpdau/

1973:  Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg has his charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times dismissed.  Contrary to a popular misconception, Ellsberg was not Jewish.  His parents had been Jewish but they raised their son as a Christian Scientist.  However, the following list of people involved with the Pentagon Papers reads like a who’s-who of Jews during the 1970’s.  How many of these names ring a bell? “To name just a few, we have Leslie Gelb, the chief author of the Pentagon Papers; Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security advisor and Ellsberg's former Harvard colleague; Leonard Weinglass and William Kunstler, two of Ellsberg's attorneys; Max Frankel and Arthur O. Sulzberger of The New York Times which first published the secret papers; Sidney Zion, the maverick reporter who named Ellsberg as the leaker; Seymour Hirsh, the investigative journalist and one of Ellsberg's few close friends; Barbra Streisand, who sang to raise money for Ellsberg's legal defense fund; Louis Marx, the toy tycoon and Ellsberg's father-in- law; Bernard Barker, the Watergate burglar; Noam Chomsky, the hard-Left Ellsberg defender; and Ellsberg's countless Jewish colleagues and acquaintances at Harvard, at the RANDCorporation, in the government and in the anti-Vietnam War movement.”

1975: Israel signed an agreement with European Economic Market.  This helped the Israelis to increase their involvement in what was then a new and burgeoning market for its products including fresh flowers and fresh produce.  At a time when Israel was being isolated in the U.N., this agreement served as a tonic for the besieged state.

1975: Saboteurs derailed a freight train near Jerusalem.

1976: Three people were injured when terrorist set off a bomb in a Tel Aviv movie theatre.

1978(4th of Iyar, 5738): Yom HaAtzma'ut

1981: ABC broadcast “Best Little Girl In the World” starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as “Casey Powell” for the first time.

1982(18th of Iyar, 5742): Lag B’Omer

1982: Birthdate of Evan Goldberg, the native of Vancouver, who has collaborated with his fellow Canadian Jewish boyhood friend Seth Rogen to produce several films “including Superbad.”

1982: The High Court of Australia decided Koowarta v Bjelke-Petersen in which barrister Aaron Ronald "Ron" Castan “played a leading role.”

1982: The initial one-hour installment of ‘‘Oppenheimer,'' a seven-part dramatized biography of the American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer; it stars Sam Waterston as ''the father of the atomic bomb'' will be broadcast tonight as part of the ''American Playhouse'' series. (As reported by Michael Billington)

1983(28th of Iyar, 5743: Yom Yerushalayim

1983: In Miami, Arthur and Shirley Sotfloff gave birth to Steven Joel Sotloff the journalist beheaded by ISIS.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/ISIS-beheads-US-journalist-Steven-Sotloff/articleshow/41551162.cms?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2741355/Friends-relatives-pay-tribute-murdered-Steven-Sotloff.html

1984: “The Natural,” the feel-good cinematic treatment of Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel of the same name directed by Berry Levinson with music by Randy Newman was released today in the United States.

1985: Amy Eilberg was ordained today by the Jewish Theological Seminary making her the first female rabbi in the Conservative Movement.

1986: Anatoly B. Sharansky was the featured “speaker at the annual Solidarity Sunday for Soviet Jewry, a rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Manhattan.”  Sharansky, who has taken the Hebrew name of Natan was released from a Soviet prison in February thanks to a massive, long-term campaign led by his wife Avital.  ''My K.G.B. interrogators, my prison guards, they tried to convince me that I was alone, powerless in their hands,'' Mr. Sharansky told the crowd, some of whom had marched to the plaza near the United Nations along a parade route that began at Fifth Avenue and 64th Street. The police estimated the audience at 300,000. 'All of You Were With Me'  ''But I knew I was never alone,'' he added. ''I knew my wife, my people and all of you were with me. They tried their best to find a place where I was isolated. But all the resources of a superpower cannot isolate a man who hears the voice of freedom, a voice I heard from the very chamber of my soul.'' (As reported by Jane Gross)

1987:  Klaus Barbie goes on trial in Lyon for war crimes committed during World War II.  In 1941, Barbie was posted to the Bureau of Jewish Affairs and sent to Amsterdam and later, in May 1942, to Lyon - there, he earned the sobriquet "Butcher of Lyon" as head of the local Gestapo. He was accused of a number of crimes, including the capture and deportation of forty-four Jewish children hidden in the village of Izieu and the torturing to death of Jean Moulin, the highest ranking member of the French Resistance ever captured. All told, the deportation of 7,500 people, 4,342 murders, and the arrest and torture of 14,311 resistance fighters were in some way attributed to his actions or commands.  For several years after the war, Barbie was protected by British and American intelligence agencies because they thought he could provide information to help fight the Cold War.  In the end, Barbie would be found guilty and die in prison from cancer of the pancreas.

1987: Time magazine published “Essay: Was He Normal? Human? Poor Humanity” by Elie Wiesel.

http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,964332,00.html

1989: NBC broadcast the final episode of season five of the “Cosby Show,” a sitcom co-developed by Ed Weinberger.

1989: “Going Overboard,” a comedy written by Adam Sandler who made his “film debut” in this film was released today in the United States.

1991: “Amen,” a sitcom created by Ed Weinberger and included a two years of Elsa Raven playing “Inga” was broadcast on NBC for the last time.

1993: Yitzhak Rabin replaced Aryeh Deri as Minister of Internal Affairs.

1994(1stof Sivan, 5754): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1994(1stof Sivan, 5754): Violinist Leonard Friedman passed away. Friedman was born in London's East End, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants.  He was the father of another generation of performers, Sonia, Maria and Richard Friedman.  Richard Friedman is the second generation of violinists in the family. 

1995: NBC broadcast the final episode of season 6 of “Seinfeld” which was the number 1 rated show according to Nielsen.

1997(4thof Iyar, 5757): Yom HaZikaron

1997: IBM's Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player. Kasparov claims to be half Armenian and half Jewish.  Regardless of his chess playing skills, Kasparov literally embodies the victims of the two most famous cases of genocide in the 20thcentury.

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interst to Jewish readers including “The American Century” by Norman F. Cantor.

1998: In his column for the Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer wrote:

"Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store."

2000: The lawyer for said Shlomo Helbrans, “a Hasidic rabbi on parole in Rockland County after serving a prison term for kidnapping a teenager under his tutelage was deported to Israel today, even as his conviction was being appealed…”

2001(18thof Iyar, 5761): Lag B’Omer

2001: The Austin Chronicle reviews “Silent Heritage: The Sephardim and the Colonization of the Spanish North American Frontier, 1492-1600” by Richard Santos

2002: “The city of Rochester” declared today “Hyam Plutzik Day in recognition of his contributions to the community.”

2002: Robert Kraft’s New England Patriots opened their brand new stadium, Gillette Stadium.

2003:The New York Times featured books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The God of Old: Recovering Theological Imaginings” by James Kugel

2003: Three days after she had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held at in Wilmington, DE for 64 year old Barbara Tavel-Lipnick the daughter of Rabbi Henry Tavel and Charlotte Tavel

2004: Today, “friends and family of Nicholas Berg, who was killed by his captors in Iraq as generous, remembered him as outgoing and funny.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2004/05/12/friends-kin-mourn-berg/

2004: The Village Voice publishes “The Jesus Landing Pad” in which author Rick Pearlstein describes the here-to-for undocumented role of certain Christian groups in forming the Bush Administration’s Middle East Policy. According to Pearlstein, the American people “we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.”

2005: It was reported today that an official from the village of Malakhova and Berl Lazar, “Russia’s chief rabbi believe that “a fire that gutted historic synagogue in the village just outside of Moscow may have been arson.”

2005: Four days after he had passed away, a memorial service was held for CCNY graduate Harry Minkoff the veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and founder and president of Gift-Pax who raised three children – Jane, Larry and George – with his wife Ruth.

2005: Observance of יום הזכרון לחללי מערכות ישראל - ד'באייר Yom Hazikaron - Israel Remembrance Day or Israel Fallen Soldiers Remembrance Day.  This is a day to remember all those who have fallen in the defense of the Jewish homeland including those who have died at the hand of terrorist.  This national day of remembrance always comes one day before Israel Independence Day, which is the fifth of Iyar.  However, according to Israeli law, when the fifth of Iyar falls on a Friday or Saturday, as is the case in 2005, the observance of Independence Day is always moved to Thursday.  This means that Yom Hazikaron is moved to Wednesday.

2006: At The 92nd Street Y Joseph Telushkin delivers a lecture on his book "A Code of Jewish Ethics", followed by a book signing.

2006: According to “Hevesi's Advice Stirs Questions On the Coast” published in the New York Sun, New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi “faced a conflict of interest allegation in relation to a private capital fund named ‘Markstone’".

2006(13th of Iyar, 5766): Writer, actor and singer Yossi Banai, one of Israel's most beloved and admired artists passed away at the age of 74 after a serious illness. He is survived by his wife and three children, one of whom is Mashina soloist Yuval Banai. The winner of the 1998 Israel Prize, Banai was celebrated as an extraordinarily talented actor, singer and writer. In addition to performing on stage and screen, Banai wrote and staged numerous performances, including skits for five productions of the Hagashash Hahiver entertainment group, of which his brother, Gavri Banai, was a member. Banai started out his career as an actor at Habima, where he continued to perform for over 50 years. Over time, he performed in every major Israeli theater as well as in numerous other venues. He was also well known for his renditions of French songs by Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, and other French singers, adapted into Hebrew by Naomi Shemer.  Banai was born in the Mahaneh Yehuda neighborhood of Jerusalem, and grew up in an observant home. Last year, he issued a CD on which he read verses from Psalms, accompanied by music composed by Yonatan Bar-Giora. "At an older age, as an actor and also offstage, I began to realize how much poetry this enchanted text contained," he said in an interview following the release of the CD. "The Hebrew language, as it appears in Psalms, is simply sublime - so that even nonbelievers who do not treat the verses as a love song to divinity can read them as pure poetry."

 

2007: Jennifer Bleyer is the featured speaker at the Shabbat dinner sponsored by the JCC of Manhattan. “Jennifer is a journalist who founded Heeb Magazine and became its first editor and publisher. She is currently writing for the City section of The New York Times and has written about her own personal Jewish journey in Yentl's Revengeand The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt.

2007: In Postville, Iowa, 200 workers walked off the job at Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughtering operation in the United States.

2007(23rdof Iyar, 5767): The attempt to bury Joseph Chuckrow who had passed away today touched off a legal dispute between the Chuckrow family and Temple Beth El in Troy, NY.

https://www.vosizneias.com/30556/2009/04/23/new-york-non-member-of-synagogue-wins-court-case-to-place-headstone-in-their-cemetery/

2007(23rd of Iyar, 5767): Robert Gordon, the blacklisted writer who was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia passed away.  One of his best known quality screen efforts was 55 Days at Peking. During his “blacklist” period, Gordon served as one of the writers on “Hellcats of the Navy” starring Ronald Reagan and his future wife, Nancy Davis

2008: Leonard Cohen began his first tour in 15 years at Fredericton, New Brunswick.

2008: As part of Israel Independence Celebrations, The First International Writers Festival opens in Mishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem. The festival, which is the first of its type here, provides a common meeting ground for Israeli writers and prominent international colleagues. The festival is the site of roundtable discussions and encounters with readers, in a variety of languages, as well as a number of events for children. Among the guests at the first festival are Jewish-American writers Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss and Nathan Englander.

2008: “One of a Kind,” a play that Yossi Vassa co-wrote with Shai Ben Attar about his family’s flight from Ethiopia in the mid-1980s ends its weeklong run at The New Victory Theater in New York City. 

2008: The Sunday New York Times section features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of Jewish interest including How I Learned Geography, a children’s book written and illustrated by Uri Shulevitz, Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene by Masha Gessen, Nixonland by Rick Perlstein, The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer, The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journalby Lily Koppeland Peace by Richard Bausch of which the reviewer writes, “ One senses some inherited autobiography here. Robert Marson, the novel’s central character is the grandson of German immigrants; his comrade, Asch, is the grandson of a German Jew who fought for the Kaiser in World War I. Bausch has dedicated the book to a father who “served bravely in Africa, Sicily and Italy.”

2008: The Washington Post book section features reviews of Reflections of a Wine Merchant by Neal I. Rosenthal and Audition: A Memoir by Barbara Walters.

2009: Rabbi Denise Eger assumes the leadership of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.  She is the first woman and the firs lesbian to head this organization.

2009: The Pope arrives in Israel for a four-day stay, which will include visits to the Palestinian Authority and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as well as meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, who will be his official host.

2009: Sports Illustrated reports on the recent death of Salamo Arouch, the Greek born Jewish boxer who survived Auschwitz by winning fights staged by the camp guards.  After the war, he moved to Palestine where he fought in the War of Independence.  He was 86 when he died.

2009: Final performance of “The Man That Got Away: After Ira George” at the 92nd Street Y in New York.2010: Andy Christie's The Liar Show featuring Ophira Eisenberg, Mark Katz, Michaela Murphy and Andy Christie is scheduled to appear at the DCJCC>

2010:Yom Yerushalayim, “For the sake of Jerusalem I will not be silent,” a night of activism on behalf of Israel is scheduled to take place at the Mt. Kisco Hebrew Congregation.

2010:A Prague court has recognized an artist's right to the image he designed of the Golem. Today the Prague Municipal court recognized the right of the daughter of the late sculptor Jaroslav Horejc, who created an image of a burly clay giant for the Czech film "The Emperor's Baker/The Baker's Emperor," to the image of the character, according to Radio Prague. According to legend, the Prague Golem was created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the chief rabbi of Prague in the late 16th century, to defend the Prague ghetto from pogroms. Horejc's image was the first time that the Golem was shown as a giant, inhuman figure and not a human figure, according to the report.

2010: David Miliband completed his term of office as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs under Prime Minster Gordon Brown.

2010: Peter Mandelson completed his service as First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Council in Great Britain.

2011:Rachel Gordan is scheduled to lead a conversation, entitled “Post-World War II American Judaism: How Judaism Became an American Religion,” at the Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture in Boston, MA.

2011:The Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, is scheduled to  hold an informal 10-minute conversation on “Jozef Israëls, The Sewing School at Katwijk which provide more information about this masterpiece painted by the Jewish artist dubbed the 19th-century Rembrandt.

2011: Katherine Scharhon is scheduled to lead the first part of a two part series “A Taste of Sephardic Foods” in which participants willlearn to make (and eat) borekas, those divine filled pies and biscochos, the lovely simple cookies that can be sweet or savory and shaped for a variety of occasions in Seattle, Washington, home to the third largest Sephardic community in the United States.

2011:Hundreds of Jewish World War II veterans marched in the streets of Jerusalem today on the 66th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

2011: Following the attack on Moshe Cohen, director of Heichal Hatora, in Buenos Aires, Dr. Angel Schindel, vice president of the DAIA Jewish political umbrella organization, plans to file a lawsuit today in the federal justice department based on a violation of Argentina’s anti-discrimination law, which penalizes with jail time attacks motivated by racial or religious hatred. (As reported by JTA)

2011(7thof Iyar, 5771): Ninety-four year old Leo Kahn, the founder of Staples, passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/business/13kahn.html

2011: In “At 100, Still a Teacher and Quite a Character,” Joseph Berger describes the remarkable life of Bel Kaufman, the granddaughter of Shalom Aleichem who gained fame as an author in her own right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/nyregion/bel-kaufman-at-100-still-a-teacher-and-a-jokester.html?ref=books

2011(7thof Iyar, 5771): Centenarian Maurice Goldhaber, the physicist who as Director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory oversaw experiments that led to 3 Nobel Prizes passed away today. (As reported by Kenneth Chang) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/science/18goldhaber.html?_r=1

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/25/local/la-me-maurice-goldhaber-20110525

2012: Amos Kollek’s “Chronicles of a Chrisis” a documentary that includes an examination between the writer/director and his father who was Jerusalem’s most famous mayor finishes its opening week debut at the Quad Cinema in New York City.

2012: In “Holocaust documents reveal story behind Obama’s tailor” published today Ned Martel tells the story of Washington tailor and Shoah survivor Martin Greenfield.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/holocaust-documents-reveal-story-behind-obamas-tailor/2012/11/05/0cc40e68-2523-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html

2012:In the Western Galilee the Matte Asher and Maale Yosef regional councils are scheduled to host a jeep trip from Lake Monfort to the Tzuriel Crater, Alkosh Forest and Goren Park

 2012: Israeli President Shimon underwent surgery for a hernia at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.

2013: Israeli born pianist Shai Wosner is scheduled to perform at the Kenned Center Terrace Theatre as the Washington Jewish Music Festival comes to an end. 

2013: Several thousand people marched around central Tel Aviv tonight to protest the budget plan presented earlier this week by Finance Minister Yair Lapid. (As reported by Ben Hartman)

2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced heavy criticism today after it was revealed he spent $127,000 (over 450,000 shekels) of taxpayers’ money having an El Al plane fitted out with a double-bed in an enclosed bedroom for his five-hour flight to London last month to attend the funeral of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

2014: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Exodus: A Memoir by Deborah Feldman and Daughter of the King by Sandra Lansky (daughter of Myer Lansky) and William Stadiem.

2014:  The 22nd annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2014: The National Center for Jewish Film’s 17th annual film festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2014: “Twenty IDF reservist commanders sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, in which they stressed that over 100 soldiers under their command hadn't undergone any training exercises for three-and-a-half years, and therefore were unprepared for any military conflict the country may face.”

2014: “A settlers’ group filed a police complaint against iconic Israeli author Amos Oz today, even as the writer doubled down on widely publicized weekend statements in which he called the perpetrators of the recent wave of so-called “price tag” hate crimes throughout the country neo-Nazis, and accused the country’s leadership of being cowed by “settler rabbis.”

2015: The Jewish Historical Society of England is scheduled to host Yanky Franchler delivering a lecture on “1000 Years of Jewish Blood Libels.”

2015: Michael Walzer, author of The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions and Paul Berman are scheduled to explore India and its Hindu militants, the ultra-Orthodox and messianic Zionists of Israel, and Algerian Islamic radicals” at the Center for Jewish History.

2015: “Felix & Meira” and “A la Vie” are scheduled to be shown at the 18thannual Jewish Film Festival.

2015: The Jewish Historical Society of England is scheduled to host Saul Sapir delivering a lecture on “The Heritage of the Jews of Mumbai (Bombay).”

2015: In Tel Aviv, at The Israel Museum birthday which is scheduled to take place today, “There will be no charge to enter the museum and anyone turning 50 on the same day will received a free lifetime membership to the museum.”

2016(3rdof Iyar, 5776): Yom Hazikaron – The Day of Remembrance

(Yom Hazikaron l'Chalalei Ma'arachot Yisrael ul'Nifge'ei Pe'ulot. "The Day of Remembrance for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism" is on the 4th of Iyar, but is observed this year on the 3rdto avoid a conflict with Shabbat)

2016: “Teens and adults from Hashomer Hatzair Youth Group and Stephen Wise Free Synagogue Religious School are scheduled to participate in “Mizikaron Le'atzmaut: From Remembrance to Independence” – a commemoration of the memory of Israeli soldiers followed by “a concert Israeli songs by the a\ Afro-Hebrew band Milk and Honeys.”

2016: California born outfielder Ryan Michael Kalish who began his career in 2010 with the Boston Red Sox played his last game major league game today with the Chicago Cubs.

2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education and the Portland Symphonic Choir are scheduled to present “A Child of Our Time” – Michael Tippett’s work written in response to Kristallnacht and performed for the first time in 1944.

2017: Three days after he had passed away funeral services were held at Temple Israel for eighty-seven year old Harvard graduate Julian I. Edison, the St. Louis born son of Mark and Ida Edison and husband of Hope Rabb Edison with whom he raised two sons Mark and Aaron who was Chairman of Edison Brothers Stores, Inc.

https://www.stljewishlight.com/life_cycle/obituaries/julian-i-edison-former-shoe-executive-philanthropist-dies-at/article_303a5d3c-3f10-11e7-b063-9bf78f8ab380.html

2017: Dr. Scott Gottlieb began serving as the 23rd Commissioner of Food and Drugs today.

2017: Alesssio Assontis and Gabriele Mancuso are scheduled to lecture on “Like the Medici: Jewish Dynasties in Renaissance Florence” at the Streicker Center.

2017: Authors Matti Friedman and Nicole Strauss are scheduled to present “Writing Between Two Jewish Worlds” at the Central Synagogue.

2017: In “Songs of the Nation” Maskilic Readings of the Psalms After Moses Mendelssohn” Dr. Yael Sela-Teichler is scheduled to discuss “the 1791 edition of Moses Mendelssohn’s German translation of Psalms, The Book of the Songs of Israel, exploring maskilic renderings of the music of the Hebrews that reclaim biblical poetry as Jewish musical heritage and challenge traditional notions of exile.”

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host and interfaith Friday night with its “Baha’I friends.”

2018(26thof Iyar, 5778): Eighty-two year old publisher Peter Mayer whose most popular claim to fame was the publication The Satanic Verses, whose author Salman Rushdie was fair game for anybody who wanted to murder him. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/obituaries/peter-mayer-publisher-of-the-incendiary-satanic-verses-dies-at-82.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018: Today, “a jury found” former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon “Silver guilty of corruption charges convicting him on counts of extortion and honest services fraud…”

2018: “The Live Feed Creative residency program” at the New York Live Art Studios is scheduled to present Netta Yerushalmy’s “Paradmodernites.”

2018: The UK Jewish Film is scheduled to sponsor two screenings today in London of “Entebbe.”

2018 (26th of Iyar, 5778): Ninety year old “Oscar-nominated screenwriter” Josh Greenfield passed away today. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/obituaries/josh-greenfeld-who-chronicled-his-sons-autism-dies-at-90.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2019: The D.C. Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Cairo to the Cloud: The World of the Cairo Geniza” followed by a Q and A with Filmmaker Michelle Paymar.

2019: In New Orleans, this evening Gates of Prayer is scheduled to host its “Gala Fundraiser.”

2019(6thof Iyar, 5779): Parashat Kedoshim; Pirke Avot Chapter Two

2020: As part of the Modern Jewish Literature series at LSJS, Dr. Aviva is scheduled to present a virtual exploration of Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host, on-line, “Artists’ Beit Midrash – Jewish Artists in Post-War Art” with Tobi Kahn and Rabba Wendy Amsellem

2020: Jay and Shira Ruderman are scheduled to host Isaac (Bougie) Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, to discuss Israel’s role and responsibilities when Jewish communities face crisis.

2020: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present, live on Zoom Professor Zvi Zohar as he discusses “Value and Consequences in the Halakhic Process: A Sephardi Perspective.”

2020: The Virtual Sonoma County JCC Israeli Film Festival is scheduled to host a “live streaming” of “Love in Suspenders,” a Hebrew language film with English subtitles.

2021: Pew Research Center, The Jewish Federations of North America and The Neubauer Family Foundation are scheduled to host a virtual presentation and conversation about findings from the Center’s new 2020 survey of Jewish Americans which is scheduled to be released today.

2021: ADL New England, the Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Israel of Boston and the Jewish Community Relations Council are scheduled to host “an important discussion on the intersection of white supremacy and antisemitism and what we can do to combat extremism and hate.”

2021: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host a discussion of How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kend

2021: In New Orleans, The Tulane Hillel Chapter, home of the Green Wave Jews is scheduled to hold its board meeting this evening.

2021: School kids in Rishon Lezion, Rehovot, Ness Ziona, Holon, and Bat Yam are scheduled not to go to school over fears that they could be the target of Gazan rockets.



 

 

This Day, May 12, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 12

940: Sixty-two you are old Eutychius of Alexandria, the Greek who wrote Nazm al-Jauhar, a history, of what some may consider of dubious accuracy that began with Creation and ran through the 10th century which included a description of the Great Revolt in 70 passed away today.

http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2015/01/10/the-annals-of-eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-chapter-9-contd/

1191: Richard I of England married Berengaria of Navarre. This was an arranged marriage to the extreme.  Richard was already leading the Third Crusade in the Holy Land when it came to marry Berengaria.  Richard had to break off his fight and come to Cyprus to marry his queen.  Richard spent most of his reign outside of the British Isles which was unfortunate for the Jews because he was not given to the ant-Semitic behavior of his English counterparts.

1258: In Valladolid, Alfonso X and Yolanda, the daughter of James I Aragon gave birth to 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.

1267: A large group of church leaders, including a most of the German churchmen, met in Vienna under the leadership of the papal legate Gudeo.  They confirmed every canonical law that Innocent III and his successors had pass for the branding of the Jews.  Jews were not allowed to have any Christian servants, were not admissible to any office of trust, and were not to associate with Christians in ale-houses or bars.  Christians were not permitted to accept any invitation from Jews or to enter into discussion with them. 

1267: A special session of the city council of Vienna decided to force all Jews to wear a cone-shaped headdress in addition to the badge. It was called the Pileum cornutum and was to become distinctive attire which is prevalent in many medieval woodcuts illustrating Jews.

1393: The Jews of Sicily were forbidden to display any funeral decorations in public.

1540: Paul III issued “Licet Judaei,” a papal bull “clearing the Jews Of the charge that they practiced blood rituals.”

1670: Birthdate of Augustus II the Strong for whom Issacher Berend Lehman served as “the Court Jew.”

1700(23rd of Iyar, 5460): Joseph Athias, the native of Cordoba who served as a rabbi in Amsterdam where he published two editions of the Hebrew Bible passed away today.

1728(4th of Sivan, 5488): The brothers Hayyim and Joshua Reizes of Lemberg, famous for their piety and scholarship, were tortured and executed on charges of influencing the apostate Jan Filipowicz to return to Judaism.

1780: During the Carolina campaign, as of today Abraham Alexander was serving  in the Revolutionary War as a Lieutenant in Burns Troop, Wade Hampton’s Regiment of Light Dragoons, Sumter’s brigade.

1786(14th of Iyar, 5546): Pesach Sheni was observed on the same day the Thomas Jefferson, the American Ambassador to France and future President of the United States wrote John Jay, the U.S Secretary for Foreign and future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court about Denmark’s desire to negotiate a treaty of commerce with the United States, another sign of European recognition of the reality of the success of the American Revolution.

1797(16th of Iyar, 5557): Seventy-eight year old Rachel Franks Levy, the London born wife of Isaac Mendes Seixas passed away to in New York City.

1800(Iyar 17): Rabbi Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sadilkov, author of “Degel Mahaneh Ephraim” passed away

1804: Lyon Israel Samuel married Fleurette Baruch Weil today at “Remiremont, Vosage, France.”

1805: Birthdate of German-Jewish orientalist Julius Furst who works included Cultural and Literary History of Jews in Asia.

1807: Rothschild’s “official” balance sheet shows that his assets on this day totaled 1,973,192 gulden. His assets had quadrupled since 1797.

1811: Hayim ben Moses married Leah bat Phineas Zelig at the Western Synagogue today.

1811: An article published in The Star described the dedication of a new synagogue. "On Friday last a new Synagogue was consecrated at Sheerness, which was very numerously attended, and the service performed by Messers Leos and Phillips, who went from London for that purpose. The music was composed by one of the Mes. Leos, and was perhaps as grand as has been witnessed, as Mr. Leo led the band in a most excellent manner. Several persons of distinction were admitted to see the ceremony performed."

1815: Jacob Baruch and G.G. Uffenheim wrote a petition today addressed to Prince Hardenberg on behalf of the Jews of Frankfort.

1816(14th of Iyar, 5576): Pesach Sheni is observed on a day in the Year without Sun” when “waves of frost capture Quebec City, “waves of cold air cross the St. Lawrence from Canada and fall on New England” and “snow and sleet fall on towns and fields closed to London.”

1820: Birthdate of Florence Nightingale who gained fame for her nursing work with British forces during the Crimean War which had its roots in Christian competition for control over the “Holy Places” in Palestine and whose ranks included Henry Jessel, the decorated corporal who live until he was 98.

1824(14th of Iyar, 5584): Pesach Sheni is observed for the last time during the Presidency of James Monroe of “Monroe Doctrine” fame.

1835: Robert le diable (Robert the Devil) an opera in five acts composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer was performed for the first time in the United States “at the Théâtre d'Orléans in New Orleans.”

1838: In London, Dinah Levy and Jacob Farjeon gave birth to British writer Benjamin Leopold Farjeon.

1840: In England, the Brighton Railway Station designed by David Mocatta “opened for trains to Shoreham” today.

1842: Birthdate of Amos Kidder Fiske the author of The Great Epic of Israel: The Web of Myth, Legend, History, Law, Oracle, Wisdom and Poetry of the Ancient Hebrews and The Jewish Scriptures: The Books of the Old Testament in Light of their Origin and History

1844(23rd of Iyar, 5604): Daniel Levy who had become “a member of the bar in Philadelphia” in 1791 passed away today.

1850: Birthdate of Henry Cabot Lodge, United States Senator from Massachusetts. Lodge led the fight to defeat the Versailles Treaty and to keep the United States out of the League of Nations. The failure of the United States to join the League of Nations was one of the root causes of World War II, a war that destroyed European Jewry.  Lodge was more interested in wounding President Wilson than he was creating a new way for nations to solve their disputes peacefully. Lodge was the co-sponsor “of the 1922 joint Congressional resolution (known as the Lodge-Fish resolution) that endorsed the creation a Jewish national home.  The bill commended the ‘building up of new and beneficent life in Palestine’ as an act of ‘historic justice’ and ‘an undertaking which will do honor to Christendom and give to the House of Israel its long-denied opportunity to reestablish a fruitful Jewish life and culture in it ancient land.’”  Elihu D. Stone, the leading Zionist in Boston “persuaded Lodge to present the resolution to Congress on the eve of” Passover in 1922, since in Stone’s word “this too was to an act of freedom for the Jewish people…”  Lest anybody thing the Lodge had become an ardent had become an ardent Zionist at least one historian makes the strong case that the resolution, which was non-binding, was an attempt to mollify Jews who were upset with the Republican supported anti-immigration that had been passed the year before. (As described in The Jews of Boston edited by Jonathan D. Sarna, et al)

1851: Moses and Esther Lazarus, gave birth to Eleazar Frank Lazarus, one of the brothers of poet Emma Lazarus.

1851: Birthdate of Joseph Kemp Toole who while Governor of Montana laid the cornerstone for Temple Emanu-El

1854(14th of Iyar, 5614): Pesach Sheni

1857(18th of Iyar, 5617): Lag B’Omer

1857: David John Davis married Sophia Hart at the Great Synagogue today, the first day, according to traditionalists that Jews can marry since the start of the counting of the Omer.

1858: Sixty-nine year old Protestant Hebraist J.G.B. Winer passed away today.

1859: In Vienna, Eleanor and Josef pick gave birth to Maximillian Pick

1859: In the United Kingdom due to nationwide scare over the possibility of war with France, today the War Office gave sanction for the formatting of volunteer corps out of concern for home defense to which Lazarus Simon Magnus responded. This would lead to the formation of the Kent Voluntary Artillery, a 19th century version of the Home Guard that would be formed to face Hitler in 1940.

1860: The Rhode Island Republican described the early development of Newport which benefited from the introduction of the first chandlery factory in America by Jewish immigrants from Portugal. 

1861: Three weeks after Rabbi David Einhorn, a leading abolitionist had escaped to Philadelphia, a delegation from Har Sinai asked him to return to Baltimore.  While they were sympathetic with his views, they said the request was conditional on his promise not to speak out on slavery, secession or the war.

1862: Second Lieutenant Charles Leo of Company H and the Regimental Adjutant resigned today after six months of service.

1864: In Munich, Germany, “Simon and Regina (Levinger) Steinhardt” gave birth Frank Maximilian Steinhardt, the husband of Alice Florence Ledden who joined the U.S Army in 1882, served as Chief Clerk under Generals Schofield, Crook, Terry Miles and Ruger and, starting in 1898 as chief clerk of the First Army Corps before transferring to Cuba “as chief clerk of the military government and final serving as the agent of the War Department “with residence in Cuba.”

1865: In Kovno, Rabbi Abraham and Beth-Sheba (Libshitz) Levinthal gave birth to Rabbi Bernard Louis Levinthal the husband of Minna Kleinberg, who 1891 came to the United States where he succeeded his father as the leader “of the United Orthodox Hebrew Congregation of Philadelphia” and helped to found several Philadelphia institutions including the Hebrew Free Schools, the Free Burial Society and the Kosher Meat Association.

1866: In Elgin, Illinois, Leopold and Rose Adler gave birth to Manasseh Max Adler, the concert violinist who became an executive with Sears Roebuck and Co after marrying Sophie Rosenwald, the sister of Julius Rosenwald which gave him the where-with-all to pursue a life of philanthropy including the building of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium.

1868: In Dornum, Germany, Fanny and Levi or Louis Schoenberg gave birth to Abraham Elieser Adolph Schönberg who gained fame Al Shean, one half of the famous vaudeville team of Gallagher and Shean who was an uncle of the famous Marx Brothers.

https://www.marx-brothers.org/marxology/shean.htm

1869: In Dornum, Germany, Fanny and Levi Schoenberg gave birth to Abraham Elieser Adolph Schönberg who gained fame as Al Shean half of the vaudeville team Gallagher and Shean, and as the uncle of the Marx Brothers

1869: Nathan Woolf Jacobson married Rebecca Levy at the Great Synagogue today.

1870: The Manitoba Act was given the Royal Assent, paving the way for Manitoba to become a province of Canada on July 15, 1870. According to a census taken the following year there were only 1,115 Jews living in Canada, most of whom were found in the major metropolitan areas in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Jewish settlement in western Canada began in earnest under the aegis of the Baron de Hirsch Foundation and the Jewish Colonial Association in 1890. The Association financed a series of agricultural settlements including those at New Hirsch and Narcisse in Manitoba.

1871: The American Christian Society for Promoting Christianity in the city of New York and elsewhere held their first anniversary meeting at Cooper Institute. The society has one branch – in Somerset, Iowa. According to the society there are 65,000 Jews living in New York and 250,000 in the whole United States.

1872: Birthdate of Eleanor Florence Rathbone an independent British Member of Parliament and long-term campaigner for women's rights. She was a member of the noted Rathbone family of Liverpool. In the House of Commons, the courageous Eleanor Rathbone attacked the British government for the defeatist attitudes expressed at the Bermuda Conference and noted that the Allies are responsible for the deaths of any Jews if they refuse to help.

1872: Benjamin Novra, the son of George Novra and Rebecca Abrahams, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1873(15thof Iyar, 5633): Forty-three year old Emanuel Oscar Menahem Deutsch, the Orientalist trained by his uncle David Deutsch who promoted Semitic studies while working at the British Museum passed away today at Alexandria, Egypt.

1875: In Philadelphia, The Young Men's Hebrew Association was organized today with Mayer Sulzberger as president. This new organization replaced a predecessor, The Hebrew Association. The object of the association is "to promote a higher culture among young men".  The organization would grow to over 1,000 members, under the presidency of Adolph Eichholz.

1876(18thIyar, 5636): Lag B’Omer is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant, the first American president to make a cash contribution of a synagogue.

1877: According to a column published today titled "Russian Interior" a revolt has broken out in the Crimea and the "Jews of Jassy have been warned that if they continue prayers in their synagogues for the success of the Turks they will be severely punished."

1878: An article published today entitled “Works of the Rabbis: The Talmud and other Jewish Books; A Supposed Dangerous Work and What Was Done to Suppress It – The Great Change it Wrought by Time - How The Talmud Originated and of What It Consists – The Ten Targums or Interpretations of Scripture – The Principal Commentaries on the Bible – The Masora and Cabala” provides a comparative lengthy and detailed history of Jewish writings and the various attempts to suppress or destroy them.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C0CE4D9113AE63BBC4A52DFB3668383669FDE

1880: Birthdate of Baltimore native and Syracuse undergrad Aaron Morton Sakolski, the holder of a Ph.D. from John Hopkins and Professor of Economics at NYU and CCNY who was a prolific author and a member of the Jewish Historical and the Civic and Judeans clubs.’

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1955/12/31/issue.html

1884: France expanded its colonial empire in North Africa by forcing Tunisia to become a French protectorate.  The Jewish community of Tunisia dated back to Biblical times and by the middle of the 18th century, they made up about one sixth of the population and had access to 27 synagogues. (Jewish Virtual Library)

1884(17th of Iyar, 5644): Czechoslovakian composer Bedrich Friedrich Smetana passed away.  The melody for Hatikvah was written by Samuel Cohen who based his composition on a musical theme found in Smetana's "Moldau."  During the Mandate, when the British forbade the playing of Hatikvah, many Jews would play records of the piece by Smetana.  The words for Hatikvah which means Hope were written by Naphatali Herz Imber an English poet born in Bohemia

1885: Birthdate of Paltiel Daykan, a Russian born Israeli Jurist who was awarded the Israel Prize in 1957.

1885: “Samuel and Ida (Soloway) Sweddler, gave birth to Brooklyn Law School trained attorney Nathan Sweedler, the husband Ada L. Meyer, the director of the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities and founder of the Brooklyn Jewish Chronicle.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/38399552/obituary-for-nathan-sweedler-aged-75/

1886: Birthdate of Max Adler.  A native of Elgin, Illinois, this son of German-Jewish immigrants gave up a career as a concert violinist to become a vice president of Sears Roebuck & Co after he married Sophie Rosenwald, the sister of Julius Rosenwald.  Adler retired in 1928 to pursue a life of philanthropy that included the creations of the Adler Planetarium, the first planetarium built in the Western Hemisphere.  He passed away in 1952.

1888: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Max and Sarah Hexter gave birth to Maurice Beck Hexter

1899: Sixty-one year old Bessarabia native Joseph Rabinowitz who had been baptized in Berlin in 1885 and was the founder of a sect called Novy Israel which was thinly veiled disguise for getting Jews to convert passed away today.

1889:  Birthdate of Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank.

1889: Today, “when the Bayswater Synagogue had been in existence for twenty-six years, illuminated addresses were presented to the three Ministers, who had been in office since the establishment.”

1890: “The Shatchen” by Henry Doblin and Charles Dickson featuring the character “Meyer Petowsky” as the marriage broker premiered at the Start Theatre in New York City tonight.

1890: The list of the newly elected officers of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrew published today included Charles L. Bernheim, President; Mrs. Henry Gitterman, Vice President; Charles Sternbach, Treasurer.

1891: “Russia and the Jews” published today stated that the object of the Czar’s government “apparently is the banishment of a million Jewish families, or, at a low estimate 5,000,000 Jews, men women and children” with the effect of creating suffering that “is literally appalling.”

1892: It was reported today that behavior of Polish strikers show “a blind hatred for all Jews and a brutal delight in murdering Jews…”  Anti-Semitism is so endemic to the general population that “if Russia were…under a constitutional Government, there is no reason to believe that the Jews would be any more decently treated than they are under the Government of the Czar.”  (Events in the 20th century would prove these words to be prophetic.)

1892: “Polish Rioters Punished” published today described the ongoing labor violence at Lodz “and the attendant Jew baiting.”

1892: Birthdate Fritz Nathan Kohn, the native of Vienna, who gained fame as Fritz Kortner, Austrian stage and film actor gained performing in Germany. He played Alfred Dreyfus in the 1930 film “Dreyfus” based on a novel by Bruno Weil. He fled Germany in 1933 for the United States but returned to Germany in 1949 where he gained additional fame for his directorial skills in the “legitimate theatre.”  He passed away in 1970.

1892: “Better Teachers Wanted” published today described the efforts to improve the quality of the Jewish Sunday Schools in New York.  According to Miss Julia Richmond of the Hebrew Free School Association and a leading public school educator, most of the teachers are “willing and intelligent” but lack the proper training.  Her solution is to create a two year program that would include course in Hebrew, Bible and ancient history mixed with actual classroom experience.  A committee composed of Rabbis Kohler, Kohut, Isaacs, Silverman, Harris and De Sola Mendes and Miss Richmond has been formed to pursue the matter.

1893: One thousand immigrants, most of whom were Russian Jews arrived at Ellis Island today aboard the steamship Dania.

1893: A number of Polish Jews were aboard the SS Lahn which arrived in England today.

1894: During a court hearing in Glogua, Count Walter Puckler-Muskau, the “German anti-Semitic agitator declared that the use of such terms “beat the Jews,” “ crack their skulls,”  “kick them out” and “thrash them” were figurative and meant no harm to the Jews”

1895: It was reported today during the last year, the expenses for operating Mt. Sinai Hospital exceeded all sources of income by $6,000 despite several sources of revenue including generous bequests by the late Sarah Burr, the last of which totaled $35,000.  The board headed by President Hyman Blum and Vice President Isaac is working to remedy the situation.

1895: “Through With Their Studies” published today described the season ending activities of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association which “will open it twenty-second season next fall with a membership of over 500.”  In addition to its other activities, the Association will continue to operate a school that offers courses in Jewish history and stenography.

1895: In Springfield, OH, “Rabbi Mendel and Tillie Kagen Finkelstein” gave birth to the fifth child and only son Rabbi Joseph Lionel Fink and the husband of Janice Gutfruend.

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/27/archives/dr-joseph-fm-rabbi-69-is-dead-spokesman-for-reform-jews-led-buffalo.html

1895: Zene Barkuskie and Vincent Oustra form Jersey City and Mr. and Mrs. Tony Stelitzka of Kingston, NY, all of whom are Polish Jews are waiting on Commissioner Shields to take action following their arrest yesteray on charges of counterfeiting.

1895: Selma Kurz “made her début in the title role of Ambroise Thomas's opera Mignon at the Hamburg Stadttheater” today.

1895: “Golden Wedding Tablets in a Temple” published today described the two tablets that Amalie and William S. Rayner donated to Congregation Har Sinai in Baltimore in honor of their golden wedding anniversary.  The two marble tablets which are six feet by 3 feet by 3 feet were created by William A. Gualt.  They are inscribed with two Hebrew statements and their English translations which are “Hear Israel! The Eternal is God; The Eternal is One” and “Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor as Thysef.”

1896(29th of Iyar, 5656): Seventy-eight year old French physician Germain Sée who “specialized in the study of lung and cardiovascular diseases” passed away today.

1897: Birthdate of Dvinsk native Max A. Oboler, the Armour Institute trained electrical engineer who lived in Chicago.

1897: Herzl decides to create a Zionist paper. ("Mit allem war ich gleich im reinen, nur mit dem Titel nicht" - "I saw everything clearly right away - except for the name.")

1898: Hammerstein’s Lyric Theatre is scheduled to host this afternoon’s benefit performance featuring members of the Professional Woman’s League.

1898: New Yorker Samuel Feldman, an enlisted man serving aboard the S.S. New York was injured today “in an attack on the fortifications of San Juan, P.R.” during the Spanish-American War

1899(3rd of Sivan, 5659): Sixty-six year old Nathan Jacobs, the father of Micah and Judith Jacobs passed away today at Bath

1899: Roswell P. Flower, the Governor of New York who appointed Edward Jacobs, a member of the Buffalo, NY, Jewish community to serve as Loan Commissioner, passed away today.

 

1899: The court at Glogau accepted the plea of Count Puckler-Muskau, the “anti-Semitic agitator” that “his appeals to violence were figurative and meant no harm to the Jews.”

1900:  Birthdate of German born actress Helene Weigel, wife of Bertholt Brecht. Her father was Jewish; her mother was not.  She died in East Berlin in 1971.

1900: In a letter to the New York Times, Jacob Schiff expresses his opposition to the “project of the Baron and Baroness de Hirsch Monument Association.  A long-time friend of the Baron, Schiff believes that he and his wife would not want a monument built in their honor preferring instead that their good works serve as their memorial.  Schiff did not question the good intentions of those wishing to build the monument but did challenge the project as being totally inappropriate.

1900(13th of Iyar, 5660): Italian author and member of Parliament Attilio Luzzato a member of family from Udine province that traces its origins back to the 17th century when two Luzzato brothers came there from Venice passed away today.

1901: In Chicago, “Isidor Sam and Ethel (Sher) Bernstein” gave birth to Armour Institute of Technology graduate Jack Bernstein, who rose from being a draftsman to working in building design and civil engineering while being a member of the Young Men’s Jewish Charities in Chicago

1901: In Great Britain, “Solomon Greenbaum, a tailor of Polish origins gave to Hyam Greenbaum an accomplished violinist, film score arranger and conductor for several BBCorchestras.  https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095906257

1902: “The boycott on beef by the Jewish residents of the east side, in sympathy with the butchers of that race who are fighting the wholesalers, in keeping their shops closed until the price of the kosher meat is reduced, assumed larger proportions today when it was announced that the boycott had spread to all the boroughs.”

1903: In Dallas, TX, “at a public mass meeting at Temple Shaareth Israel a resolution was adopted condemning the outrageous acts on the Jewish communities at Kishineff” and a “committee was elected to raise funds for the relief of the sufferers.”

1904: The liners Lorraine and Deutschland will sail from New York today carrying a record nine million dollars in gold, $1million of which is from Lazard Freres and $1.5million is from Goldman, Sachs and Co.

1905: Theatre owner Sam Shubert was injured in train wreck at Harrisburg, PA in which he sustained injuries that would end his life.

1906(17th of Iyar, 5666): Parashat Emor

1906: While defending the expulsion for Russians today in the Prussian Landtag today, Minister of the Interior Bethmann Hollwegg said “that most of the Russians who settled in Prussia were Jews” and while “he did not desire to emphasize the religious aspect of the matter, no one could his eyes to the part the Jews had taken in in the Russian revolution” or deny that “the expulsion of these impecunious aliens was necessary in view of the depressed condition of the labor market.”  (Editor’s note – Pure anti-Semitism years before the defeat in WW I which was the rationale offered by some for the Rise of Hitler)

1907:  The Hawthorne School of the Jewish Protectory and Aid Society, which “will be used as a reformatory for the Jewish boys who have been sentenced in the Children's Court,” was formally opened today in the assembly hall of the school at Hawthorne, Westchester County.

1908: Dr. Francis Brown, “one of the most distinguished Hebrew Scholars in America” who is now in Jerusalem serving as “the Director of the American School for Oriental Study and Research in Palestine” was elected was elected President of the Union Theological Seminary in New York this afternoon.

1909: “Finn Elections Help Jews” published today described how the change in the makeup of the Landtag will help the Jews because the majority will work to get the Jews the vote and amend or rescind the anti-Jewish legislation adopted the party referred to as “the Old Finns.”

1910: It was reported today that “the Carl Schurz prize essay on technical education had been readby Abraham Weinstein at the recent graduation ceremonies of the Hebrew Technical Insitute.”

1911: “The provincial governor of Yekaterinoslov, Russia, gave orders for the expulsion of all Jews who did not possess permits of residence from the villages of the province” and threatened to severely any policeman who failed “to discover those subject to expulsion.”

1912:  In Leeds, UK, the Shehitah Board met and rendered a decision “that Jewish butchers may no long slaughter for non-Jewish trade by any other than Jewish methods.”

1913: Eighty-four year old Joseph Unger, the “Austrian jurist and statesman” who had converted to Christianity, passed away today in Vienna.

1913(5th of Iyar, 5673): In London, Rabbi Abraham Rosenberg passed away today.

1914: “Wants Primary Advanced” published today described several amendments introduced by Assemblyman Sulzer designed to ensure ‘an honest primary election next Fall” included a resolution calling “for the shifting of the primary election this year from September 29, the dated provided for in the law, to September 22 on the ground that the Jewish Feast of Atonement” falls on September 29 “and thus thousands of Jews would be barred from voting in the primaries.”

1915: More than 5,000 letters arrived at the headquarters of the Leo M. Frank Committee in Chicago chaired by Lester L. Dauer joining 80,000 others that have coming to the office “asking for the commutation of the death sentence of Leo M. Frank to life imprisonment.”

1915: “The commencement exercises of the Hebrew Technical Institute on Stuyvesant Street which currently has 295 pupils are scheduled to held this evening at Cooper Union” under the leadership of President Joseph L. Buttenweiser, Vice Presidents Irving Lehman and Eugene Speigelberg and Treasuer Mortimer L. Schiff.

1915: It was reported that Govern Edward F. Dunne has been asked to speak at Leo Frank Day on May 16 – a day devoted to gathering tens of thousands of signatures for a petition demanding clemency for Frank from the Governor of Georgia.

1915: Following a tempestuous (for Victorians) competition of suitors Venetia Stanley wrote to Prime Minister Asquith that she had finally accepted Edwin Samuel Montagu’s proposal of marriage – a relationship that would be consummated in July after her conversion to Judaism.

1915 It was reported today that the 15,000 petitions asking for clemency for Leo Frank that were collected “by Miss Eleanor Post, a writer on a Cincinnati paper” weighing seventy-five pounds joined another 25,000 letters asking for clemency that were sitting in the reception room of the Governor of Georgia.

1915: It was reported today that Evangelist Billy Sunday has said that “If I were Governor of Georgia, (Leo) Frank would go free tomorrow.”

1916: Date of death shown on the tombstone of Shalom Aleichem. Actually, it said “12a). He died on May 13. But he suffered from triskaidekaphobia, which is a showboating way to say that he had a fear of the number 13. He used 12a in numbering the pages of his manuscripts. (As reported by Clyde Haberman)

1916(9th of Iyar, 5676): Sixty-nine year old Morris Shaprio who had passed away today, was buried at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.

1916: On behalf of the Secretary of State, Alvey A. Adee, the Second Assistant Secretary, wrote to Simon Wolf saying that he “is in receipt of a telegram dated May 11th from the American Ambassador at Petrograd stating that the Russian Easter has passed without incident.”  i.e. attack s on the Jews

1917: It was reported today that the Isaac L. Rice Memorial Fountain was formally dedicated last week in Brooklyn, NY.

1917: Birthdate of Amsterdam native and historian Mozes Himan Gans

1917: It was reported today that “the late Julius Robertson, a trustee of the Montefiore Home left an estate worth over a million and a quarter dollar of which he bequeathed $33,500 to various local charities.

1917: It was reported today that “the East-West Players” are scheduled “to end their season of Yiddish plays in English this week.”

1917: A mass meeting is scheduled to be held this evening in the Bronx to raise funds to equip “a Jewish

medical unit for Palestine

1917: The late “Samuel Hirsh, of the Hebrew Technical Institute left $100,000 to the United Hebrew Charities, $10,000 to the Hebrew Technical Institute, $50,000 to the Council of Jewish Women and an additional $15,000 to other local charities.

1918: The Jewish drive for the relief fund came to an end tonight with the people of Baltimore having raised $500,000 which exceeded the goal of the drive by $150,000.

1918: The Provisional Zionist Committee distributed a letter from David Lubin, the American delegated to the International Institute of Agriculture in which he expressed a change in his view about Zionism because now that it would have the protection and guidance of England as opposed to being un Turkish control he was in full support of their goal.

1918: Birthdate of Julius Rosenberg.  Rosenberg and his wife would become the center piece in a spy ring that gave Atomic secrets to the Soviets.  The Rosenbergs were executed for treason in 1953.

1919: Thirty-eighth anniversary of the laying of a corner stone at the synagogue in Oran, Algeria. At its peak, the Jewish population was about 2,000.  After Algeria gained its independence in 1962, the Jewish community left for France and Israel.

1920: David Kessler, “one of the leading Yiddish actors in the United States” who also managed Kessler’s Second Avenue was taken to the hospital tonight “after being stricken with a severe intestinal ailment during a performance at the Lyric Theatre” where he was appearing in “Jacob Gordin’s dramatization of Tolstoy’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’”

1920: Charles Edward Sebag-Monteifiore and Muriel Alice Ruth de Pass gave birth to Hugh William Montefiore

1920: Birthdate of Vilém Flusser the Czech born Jewish philosopher and author who was a long time resident of Brazil before finally settling in France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil%C3%A9m_Flusser

1922: In the Bronx, cabdriver Irving Gerhenzwit and his wife Ellen gave birth to Morris Gershenwit who would gain fame running “a used record store in Los Angeles” that was really “an international archive of more than 300,000 records.”

1922: In New York, playwright and author David Freedman and his wife Beatrice (née Rebecca Goodman) gave birth to Noel Freedman who gained fame as David Noel Freedman the Presbyterian convert and minster and biblical scholar who “was one of the first Americans to work on the “Dead Sea Scrolls.”

1922: Birthdate of Paul Milstein, the prominent businessman and philanthropist  who used profits from the family flooring business to build a real estate empire in New York City, distinguished by major projects begun in uncertain neighborhoods and totaling 50,000 apartments, 8,000 hotel rooms and 20 million square feet of office space.”

1923: In Poland, Jewish physicians issued a protest against the memorandum published by the Medical Faculty of the Krakau University justifying the demand for a percentage norm against the Jewish medical students on the ground that the Jewish physicians have "low moral standards". The Jewish doctors demanded a retrataction. (As reported by JTA)

1923: The Joint Distribution Committee announced that it has decided to continue its support for Hebrew Schools operated by the Tarbut Organization. “Tarbut was a Zionist network of Hebrew-language educational institutions founded in 1922, when the first Tarbut conference was held in Warsaw.

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

 1923: "Kaufman Kohler Sabbath" was observed by Reform Synagogues throughout the United States today in celebration of the eightieth birthday last Thursday of Dr. Kaufman Kohler. The 80 year old Rabbi expressed his concern that “idealism has given way to materialism and opportunism.”  He believes that “the world is passing from a disturbed phase of thought to a higher plane” and that he sees women as playing a vital role in the spread of religious values.

1924: “In Chicago, Richard Cooper, a General Electric distributor and his wife Gladys gave birth to actress Maxine Cooper Gomberg, the wife of screenwriter and producer Sy Gomberg.

https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-maxine-cooper15-2009apr15-story.html

1924: Otto Frank, the future father of Anne Frank turned 35 today.

1925(18th of Iyar, 5685): Lag B’Omer

1925: Edith Hoolander married Otto Frank today at a synagogue in Aachen. (Editor’s note – was their choice of a wedding date driven by the custom of Lag B’Omer, the thirty-third day of the counting of the Omer, being the first time people could celebrate joyous occasions such as wedding during the season of counting the Omer?)

1926: JTA reported that in Great Britain many public functions of Jewish bodies and societies will have to be postponed if the general strike does not come to an end this week including the scheduled monthly meeting of the Board Jewish Deputies.

1926: It was reported today that Lord Allenby's unveiling of the Jewish World Memorial at the synagogue in Stepney, has been postponed as result of the General Strike that is gripping the United Kingdom.

1926: The role of Sir Herbert Samuel, former High Commissioner of Palestine and chairman of the British Royal Coal Commission, in the settlement of the general strike, the first event of that nature in Western Europe, was disclosed today in the official statement issued by the Trades Union Congress. It appears that Sir Herbert played the main part as the mediator between the strikers and the government. Immediately upon his return to London from a vacation, Sir Herbert made efforts toward mediation, as chairman of the Royal Commission, with a view toward settlement. He obtained the memorandum of the Trade Unions which was accepted by the government. (As reported by JTA)

1926: "No attempt toward the economic reconstruction of European Jewries will succeed unless we stem the anti-Semitic wave," declared Dr. William Filderman, president of the Union of Rumanian Jews, on the eve of his departure for Europe on the Berengaria today. "There is no use educating Jewish artisans if anti-Semitic prejudice deprives them of any market for their products," he explained.

1928: In Kansas City, MO, Irma M. (née Freeman) and Mark Bertram "Bert" Bacharach, a well-known syndicated newspaper columnist” gave birth to Grammy and Oscar winning son writer Burt Bacharach.

http://bacharachonline.com/

https://www.songhall.org/profile/Burt_Bacharach

1929: In St. Louis, MO, Mark and Ida Edison gave birth to Harvard graduate Julian I. Edison, the Chairman of Edison Brothers Stores and the husband of Hope Rabb Edison with whom he raised two sons Mark and Aaron.

https://www.stljewishlight.com/life_cycle/obituaries/julian-i-edison-former-shoe-executive-philanthropist-dies-at/article_303a5d3c-3f10-11e7-b063-9bf78f8ab380.html

1930: During this evening’s annual meeting of the American Jewish Physicians' Committee, Dr. Nathan Ratnoff, president of the organization announced, that “$100,000 would be raised this year for an administration building for the proposed medical college at the Hebrew University of Palestine.  The medical school will be erected on land bought by the committee in 1922 located on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem.

1932(6th of Iyar, 5692): Eighty-five year old Moravian native Rosa Sonneschein, the wife of Rabbi Solomon Sonneschein , leader of the St. Louis Jewish community and the “editor of the American Jewess, the first English-language periodical targeted to American Jewish women” passed away today in St. Louis

http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1980_32_02_00_porter.pdf

http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9823733/

1933: Zeppo Marx and his wife who left Los Angeles yesterday are traveling today by train to take the body of Sam Marx to New York where his sons Groucho, Harpo are waiting to bury their father.

1935: Today “Four cities in various part of the United States led by the Jewish community which has a quota of $200,000 will launch their fundraising efforts on behalf of the UJA, which represents the Joint Distribution Committee and the American Palestine Campaign in a national effort to raise $3,250,000 for the relief of the Jews of Germany and other lands for the settlement of Jews in Palestine.” (JTA)

1935: Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski dies. From here on Jews will experience more anti-Semitism in Poland. The government and most Polish political parties will call for discrimination, economic boycott, expulsion, and physical violence against Jews. The Polish Catholic Church, most priests, the Catholic press, and schools will sanction discrimination and/or violence against the Jews.

1936: It was reported today that New York Governor Lehman responded to the death Judge Otto A. Rosalsky with a telegram to his wife that began “I have just learned with very great sorrow of the passing of your distinguished husband” while Felix Warburg telegraphed, with Judge Rosalsky’s “passed a splendid patriot, a Jew of wonderful qualities and I feel that I have lost a valuable friend” and Irving Lehman wrote, “the community has lost a great leader and I have lost a dear friend.”

1937(2nd of Sivan, 5697): Fifty-four year old petroleum geologist Leon J. Pepperberg passed away today.

http://archives.datapages.com/data/bull_memorials/021/021007/pdfs/970.htm

1938: The Palestine Post reported the Jewish Labor declaration that the Arab terror will merely strengthen the determination of the Jewish people in their development of uninhabited areas and other up building tasks.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that an armed Arab gang robbed and burned the tents of the Ghazzabiya Bedouin tribe near Beit Shean after its demands failed to be met. Bodies of Arabs kidnapped from the neighboring villages by Arab terrorist gangs were found near Safed.

1939: Filming of Babes in Arms the film version of the 1937 Rogers and Hart musical began today with Arthur Freed as the producer.

1939(23rd of Iyar, 5699): Sixty-nine year old Cäcilie Epstein the older sister of mathematician Paul Epstein passed away today, three months before he passed away.

1940: On this day the German blitzkrieg (lightning war) breached the French defenses. At the time Sousa Mendes was the General Consul of Portugal to Bordeaux, France. Thanks to Mendes' actions it is believed that around 30.000 refugees were saved, among them 10.000 Jews avoided death in the Reich’s death camps. It was said Mendes was descendant from Jewish family.

1941(15th of Iyar, 5701): Two days after having been “injured at Crutch Friars,” 33 year old Abraham Lewis, “a Fireman in the A.F.S” and the husband of Rita Lewis died today after which he was buried in Raiham Jewish Cemetery.

1941: Two days after Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland on what he claimed was a “peace mission,” the Nazi issued a statement blaming his behavior on “mental illness” and Hitler ordered the arrest of any one who had helped him

1941: Following the nighttime bombing Buckingham Palace and the Commons Chambers, the House of Commons met today in the House of Lords in a sign of defiance during the Blitz.

1942(25th of Iyar, 5702): Four days after the Ghetto at Radun was sealed off, 3,400 Jews were marched to the outskirts of town and shot, row-by-row, into ditches dug by other Jews.

1942: Fifty-six-year-old Ludmila Pickova was transported today from Prague to Terezin.

1942(25th of Iyar, 5702): One thousand, five hundred Jews from Sosnowiec are gassed in Auschwitz. Another 2,750 Jews from Turobin, joining several other thousands of Jews were crammed into railway box cars and deported to Sobibor to meet their extermination

1943: The remains of the Warsaw Ghetto go up in flames.

1943: In New York thousands of Jews attended the funeral of Dr. Chaim Zhitlowsky, the Russian born intellectual who had passed away in Calgary (As reported by JTA)

1943 (7th of Iyar, 5703): Seventeen-year-old Frania Beatus, active in the Warsaw Ghetto underground, commits suicide rather than surrender to the Nazis.

1943 (7th of Iyar, 5703): Another round up of Jews who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto during the uprising were caught and executed.

1943 (7th of Iyar, 5703): In London, Shmuel Zygielbogm committed suicide. He was one of two Jewish representatives of the Polish-Government-In-Exile in London. His final letter was a cry of agony and despair.  He was crushed that the world would do nothing to save the Jews.  His wife and son perished in the Ghetto.  He felt his life had been a failure and hoped that his death might shock the world into action.  At one point he wrote that he could not live ‘when the remnant of the Jewish people in Poland . . . is being steadily annihilated.'

1943: The first Aliyah to the Negev began with the establishment of Kibbutz Gevulot. The first three settlements, Gevulot, Revivim, and Bet Eshel, were experimentally established in 1943 to determine the feasibility of permanent settlements in the Negev. As a result of the information gathered in the experimental stage, eleven new settlements were established in the Negev in 1946, and an additional seven in 1947. These settlements served also as strong-points to defend the Yishuv from attack by an enemy advancing from the south. The Egyptian army suffered its first defeat at Nirim, one of the settlements established in 1946, on the anniversary of the first Aliyah to the Negev.

1944: In London, “Dorothy Mary (née Creagh), a dress designer, and Morris Kestelman, an artist” from a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia gave birth to actress Sara Kestelman

http://www.filmreference.com/film/46/Sara-Kestelman.html

1944: “Cobra Woman” a South Seas melodrama directed by Robert Siodmak was released today in the United States.

1945: During battle for Okinawa, the USS Bunker Hill was successfully attacked by two Kamikazes in a thirty second interval.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-52.jpg

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-67.jpg

1945: Sam Gilbert took a photo of “Some of the bodies being removed by German civilians for decent burial at Gusen Concentration Camp, Muhlhausen, near Linz, Austria.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-180.jpg

1945: As mopping up operations continued today, German units of Army Group Centre surrendered to the Russians.

1945: Birthdate of Dermot Keogh author of Jews In Twentieth Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust which was awarded the 1999 James S. Donnelly Sr. Prize by the American Conference for Irish Studies in the history/social science category.

1946: In Łódź, Poland, Shoah survivors Dora and Nachman Libeskind gave birth to Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind who “won the competition to be the master plan architect for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.”

1947: Today, at Lake Success, NY, “Dr. Fadhel Jamah of Iraq” told “the Political and Security Committee of the General Assembly” that “any support of Jewish national aspirations in the Holy Land” is “very clearly a declaration of war, and nothing less.”

1947: Today, at Lake Success, NY, Moshe Shertok, “the head of the Jewish Agency’s political department” reminded “the Political and Security Committee of the General Assembly” Arab Higher Committee of Palestine is led by “Haj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who spent the war years in Berlin” and who “was directly involved…in the Nazi policy of the extermination of European Jews.”

1948: Bet-Shean was captured by the Haganah; specifically the 13th Battalion of the Golani Brigade.  Bet-Shean is one of the oldest cities in the world having been first built in the fifth century B.C.E.  The bodies of King Saul and Jonathan were hung from its walls after their defeat at Mt. Gilboa.  Bet-Shean is in the eastern portion of Israel, in the Jezreel Valley.  After the war thousands of Moroccan Jews settled there.  It has been the site of a great deal of archeological discovery. One of the battalions was commanded by Avraham Yoffe

1948: U.S. Secretary George Marshall “appealed to Ben-Gurion to hold off a decision for independence.  Courteously, but firmly the appeal was refused.” Marshall told Moshe Sharett head of the Jewish agency’s U.N. delegation to ignore the the assurance of Jewish military leaders that they can win out against the Arabs.  He advised him to put off the declaration of independence and accept a UN trusteeship.  This marked the high point in the clash between Marshall and Truman over the recognition of the Jewish state.  Marshall had even threatened to resign over the matter.  Marshall’s opposition was based on what he considered the realities of the geo-political situation in the Middle East.  Fortunately for all concerned, Marshall remained at his post and the team of Truman and Marshall continued to work together as America dealt with challenges of Soviet Imperialism.

1948: Yigael Yadin, the Haganah's chief of operations, put the odds of the nascent Jewish state surviving the onslaught by the Arab armies at 50-50

1948: David Ben-Gurion convened an emergency meeting of the Provisional Council, the governing body of the unborn Jewish state. The issue at hand was a proposal that there should be a delay in declaring statehood.  According to one report as much as half of the council wanted to postpone the declaration and accept some sort of cease-fire with the Arab forces already fighting the Jews.  The news the council was not good.  Mrs. Meir reported on the failure of the talks with the Jordanians.  She later reported that she was relieved to see that her report did not dissuade Ben-Gurion from deciding that the Jewish state would be born when the British mandate ended in forty-eight hours.  The Council also heard from Yigal Yadin, the military leader who brought the negative reports about the pending destruction of the Etzion Bloc of settlements.  Ben-Gurion closed the debate by outlining all of the risks.  In the end, the Council voted by six to four to reject the offer of a cease fire and push forward with the declaration of statehood. 

1948(3rd of Iyar, 5708): Pianist and composer Isidor Achron passed away. Born in Warsaw in 1892, Achron came from a musical family.  His older brother Joseph was a famed violinist.  Achron's early musical career was interrupted by a three year stint in the Czar's Army during World War I.  After the war, he came to the United States where he served as the principal accompanist for Heifitz for ten years.  During the 1930's and 1940's he created his own compositions while pursuing a career as a soloist at such venues as Carnegie Hall. He passed away suddenly at the age of 55.

1948: Having withstood the onslaught of the Arab Legion during the fight for Mishmar Ha-Emek, Lehi launched a successful operation on five villages directly to the west the Kibbutz.

1948: U.S. premiere of “The Iron Curtain” produced by Sol C. Siegel with music by Alfred Newman.

1949: “Home of the Brave” the movie version of the play by Arthur Laurents who co-authored the script with Carl Foreman, directed by Mark Robson, produced by Stanley Kramer and with music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released in the United States today.

1950: As of today, doctors in Israel are “exhausting supplies of the drug Aureomycin in an attempt to curb the worst polio epidemic in” the history of the Jewish state.

1950: The Government of Israel said today that farmers in the Hebron area had "extended the cultivation of lands" within Israel but denied that this had been done under the guns of heavily armed troops.

 1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel agreed to review the acute border infiltration problem in high level talks with Jordan.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Special Commission which studied the problems of the Jerusalem Municipality severely criticized the staff, and recommended that the Mayor should be deprived of all executive and fiscal powers, which should be rendered to an appointed City Manager.

1954: In Washington Heights, “novelists Jose Yglesias and Helen Yglesias”gave birth novelist and screenwriter Rafael Ygelsias, the husband of Margaret Joskow and the father of “journalist Matthew Ygelsias and novelist Nicholas Yglesisas.

1957(11th of Iyar, 5717): Erich von Stroheim passed away.  As a director, von Stroheim ranks up there with D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille.  As an actor he was noted for playing Germanic characters.  His most famous role was that of the loyal servant Max von Mayerling, in Billie Wilder’s cinema noir classic Sunset Boulevard.

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/186040%7C48342/Erich-von-Stroheim/

1958: Birthdate of Yitzhak Vaknin a member of Shas who has been an MK since 1996.

1959: For its time, a celebrity bombshell was dropped as two Jewish entertainers, Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher were married -she for the fourth time and he for the second time after ending his all-American marriage to Debbie Reynolds.

1959 4th of Iyar, 5719): Yom HaZikaron

1960:The Yossele Shumacher affair makes headlines when the child's ultra-Orthodox grandfather, Nahman Shtarks, is arrested on suspicion of abducting him from his parents.

1960: Today in Liberty, NY, at the 60thannual convention of the Rabbinical Seminary, “Dr. Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of JTS urged the members “to work for a summit meeting at which there would be ‘hope for a permanent peace, rather than merely a cessation of the cold war.’”

1961(24th of Iyar, 5721): Fifty-six year old Cleveland born Lloyd H. Feder, the husband of Lillian Feder and father of Suzie Bloom of Louisville, KY passed away today in his home town.

1963(18th of Iyar, 5723): Lag B'Omer

1963: Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, walked off the Ed Sullivan (television variety) Show.

1963: Final broadcast of the “Dinah Shore Chevy Shore,” starring Dinah Shore (AKA Frances Rose Shore)

1964(1st of Sivan, 5724): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1964: Barbra Streisand won the Grammy for Best Female Vocalist for “The Barbra Streisand Album.”

1964: U.S premiere of “What A Way To Go” a comedy with a screenplay by Adolph Green and Betty Comden starring Paul Newman as “Larry Flint” and featuring Holocaust survivor Marcel Hillaire as “a French Lawyer.”

1965(10th of Iyar, 5725): Sixty-seven year old Franz Josef Kallman ,the German born “son of Marie (née Mordze / Modrey) and Bruno Kallmann, who was a surgeon and general practitioner”  who fled to the United States in 1936 and “was one of the pioneers in the study of the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders” passed away today in New York

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/05/13/97200829.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1965:  Israel and West Germany exchange letters beginning diplomatic relations.  For Jews in general, and Holocaust survivors in Israel, this was and is a sensitive topic.  The issue of whether or not to trade with Germany, to enter into arms agreements and/or accept reparation payments for the Holocaust touched off major political debates in Israel. 

1966: In Seattle, Washington, Temple Beth Am published Statement of Principles that declared “...let our congregation be religious, democratic, creative, relevant and learned...”

1966: Birthdate of Louis Phillip Spector and Garry Phillip Spector, twin brothers adopted by Phil Spector.

1967: Oded Kotler wins the Best Actor Award in the Cannes Film Festival for his leading role in the Israeli film: "Three Days and a Child

1967: In Moscow, an Egyptian parliamentary delegation including Anwar Sadat was told to expect “an Israeli invasion of Syria immediately after Independence Day, with the aim of overthrowing the Damascus regime.”

1968(14th of Iyar, 5728): Pesach Sheni

1968: Three days after he had passed away, funeral service as scheduled to be held in New York for seventy-three year old producer, director and author Albert Lewin, the holder of an MA from Harvard who, with the support of Irving Thalberg, “produced his first picture, ‘The Kiss,” which was Greta Garbo’s last silent film”

1968: Israel defeated Hong Kong in a 1968 AFC Asian Cup match at Amjadieh Stadium in Tehran, Iran.

1970: Birthdate of Israeli-American musician Ifar "Eef" Barzelayhttps://myspace.com/eefbarzelay

1972(28th of Iyar, 5732): Yom Yerushalayim

1972: Birthdate of Matthew Hiltzik the graduate of Cornell and Fordham Law School, founder of Hiltzik Strategies who has worked on the campaigns of Chuck Shumer, Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton while contributing to Jewish culture with several activities including producing the marvelous documentary “Paper Clips.”

1973(10th of Iyar, 5733): Sixty-four year old Austrian born British photographer and Soviet spy Edith Tudo-Hart passed away today

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9897504/Edith-Tudor-Hart-the-Soviet-spy-with-a-conscience.html

1974: At the Center 55th Street Theatre, the curtain came down on the final performance of “Music! Music,” “a cavalcade of American music with footnotes by Alan Jay Lerner.”

1975: In Boulder, Colorado, Stephen Schutz and Susan Poli Schutz gave birth to Democratic Congressman Jared Schutz Polis.

1976: The Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements – “The Helsinki Monitoring Group in the USSR” is formed in Moscow, led by dissident Yuri Orlov,

1977: The second of the five part “Nixon Interviews” which were a product of Swifty Lazar’s “hustle” and produced by Marvin Intoff were broadcast tonight.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that on the occasion of Israel's 30th anniversary, the Chief of Staff, Rafael Eytan, declared that Zahal will be unable to defend Israel without the West Bank, and urged both his soldiers and civilians to "stop being naive about the subject." He was thus countering the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's declaration made at the same time in New York, which demanded that Israel returns the Gaza Strip to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan.

1980: Birthdate of award winning Israeli actress Maya Maron.

1980: Sixty-nine year old Lilian Roth, the movie start who had converted to Catholicism in 1948 passed away today.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/roth-lillian

1985: In “Garden Where Biblical Plants Come To Life,” Matthew Nesvisky describes Israel's Neot Kedumim Biblical Landscape Reserve.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/12/travel/garden-where-biblical-plants-come-to-life.html?pagewanted=all

1985: Thirty year old Amy Eilberg was ordained in New York as the first female Conservative Rabbi which must have been a source of pride to her husband Louis E. Newman “the John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies, and Associate Dean of the College and Director of Advising at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.”

http://www.jewishannarbor.org/page.aspx?id=210056

http://louisnewman.net/

1987: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Gimme A Break” a sitcom created by Mort Lachman and Sy Rosen and co-starring Jonathan Silverman.

1987: James Angleton, a senior officer with the CIA from its earliest days in 1947 passed away today at the age of 69.  Angleton was best known for his counter-intelligence work but Angleton also “handled one of the agency's most sensitive relationships with an allied intelligence service, its ties to the Israelis. Mr. Angleton handled ''the Israeli account'' as it was termed in C.I.A. argot, for more than a decade. Indeed, Mr. Colby, the agency director who forced his resignation, earlier insisted that Mr. Angleton relinquish his control over Israeli matters.” (As reported by Stephen Engelberg)

1989: “Night Visitor” a horror film starring Elliot Gould and Allen Garfield was released today in the United States.

1991(28th of Iyar, 5751): Yom Yerushalayim

1993: ABC broadcast the final episode of “The Wonder Years” starring Fred Savage and narrated by Daniel Stern.

1994(2nd of Sivan, 5754): Ninety-one year old Erik Homberger Erikson, the German-American psychoanalyst passed away today. (As reported by Morton Schatzman)

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-professor-erik-erikson-1436255.html

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/03/erik-erikson/

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0615.html

1994(2nd of Sivan, 5754): Eighty-three year old Helen Marion Levin Eichenbaum, the wife of architect Howard Samuel Eichenbaum, the mother of Lee Eichenbaum and a member of Congregation B’nai Israel passed away today after which she was buried in the Oakland and Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park in Little Rock, AR.

1994: Peter Mandelson “chose to back (Tony) Blair for the leadership” of the Labor Party “in his contest with Gordon Brown.

1995: “Crimson Tide” a movie that confronts the issue of accidental nuclear warfare and command responsibility produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and with music by Hans Zimmer was released in the United States today.

1995: While visiting the Ukraine, President and Mrs. Clinton go to Babi Yar.  Escorted by a Chasidic Rabbi, they pay homage to the 30,000 Jews of Kiev who were massacred by the Nazis with the help of the local populace in 1941.

1995(12th of Iyar, 5755): Movie director Arthur Lubin passed away.  Lubin was an actor during the 1920's, moving behind the camera in the 1930's when he started working with Abbot and Costello.  His re-make of Phantom of the Opera with Claude Raines is considered a classic.  Lubin is credited for two of the most famous talking animals.  He directed the Francis the Talking Mule films and then moved over to television with Mr. Ed.  Lubin passed away at the age of 95.

1996(23rd of Iyar, 5756): Eighty-six year old German jazz pianist who escaped the Nazis by going to the Netherlands but eventually ended up at Theresiendstadt where he and his “Jazz Swingers” were forced to play in a propaganda film before being ship to Auschwitz passed away today.

1997(5th Iyar, 5757): Yom HaAtzma’ut

1997:” The Ice Storm” the film version of the novel of the same name with a screenplay by James Schamus, the Detroit bornson of Clarita (Gershowitz) Karlin and Julian John Schamus” and husband of Nancy Kricorian

1999(26th of Iyar, 5759): Saul Steinberg Romanian born cartoonist and illustrator whose work graced numerous issues of The New Yorker passed away at the age of 85. After coming to the United States in 1942, he did 85 covers and 642 illustrations for what was, in its day, the nation’s most sophisticated weekly.

https://saulsteinbergfoundation.org/

2000: After premiering in Los Angeles on May Day, “Gladiator” the Roman epic with music by Hans Zimmer was released today in the United Kingdom.

2000(7th of Iyar, 5760): Fifty-nine-year-old Charles Katz, the grandfather of Jeremy, Sarah and Jennifer, passed away today.

2001: “Sing America” which was co-written by Dr. Sherwin Kaufman the son of Sholom Aleichem was played at the Ellis Island Medals of Honor Awards Gala,. As an invited guest at this black-tie event, he “heard the song played at the beginning of festivities and then as a musical background during a video of the ceremony.”

2002: The New York Times featured books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “'Hester Among the Ruins” by Binnie Kirshenbaum and “Somebody's Gotta Tell It'' by Jack Newfeld

2002(1st of Sivan, 5762): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

2002(1st of Sivan, 5762): Forty-three year old Nisan Dolinager of Pe’at Sadeh was shot and killed today by a Palestinian laborer.

2002: “The Golem” “…a new English version of the Yiddish classic” based on the legend surrounding a 17th century Rabbi living in Prague was performed for the last time today.

2003: The body of the second terrorists who had helped to blow up Mike’s Place “washed ashore” on the beach at Tel Aviv.

2004: After his father’s leg had been amputated because of complications from diabetes David D’Or returned to Istanbul to perform today at the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest.

2004: Two days after she had passed away, funeral services were held today for Ruth Gruber, the widow of Frank Gruber and a member of Temple Israel in Great Neck, NY

2004: It was reported today that Salama Hamad of Hamas said that they were holding “parts, bodies and brains” of Israeli soldiers killed in an ambush: and Islamic Jihad were holding “what they called the head of an Israeli soldier” which the Arabs plan on exchanging for Palestine prisoners held by the Israelis.”

2005: A revival production of Jerry Bock’s musical “The Apple Tree” staged by the Encores opened today.

2005: Observance of Yom Ha'atzma'ut (יום העצמאות yom -‘aṣmā’ūṯ), Israeli Independence Day, which commemorates the declaration of independence of Israel in 1948. Yom Ha'atzma'ut falls on the 5th day of Iyar ( ה'באייר) on the Hebrew calendar. When the 5th of Iyar falls on a Friday or Saturday, as in 2005, the official celebration may be moved to the preceding Thursday. The Gregorian date for the day in which Israel independence was proclaimed is May 14th 1948 when David ben Gurion publicly read the Proclamation of the establishment of the State of Israel.  However, when the fifth of Iyar falls on Friday or Saturday as it does in 2005, Israeli Independence Day is celebrated on the preceding Thursday to avoid any possible violation of the Sabbath.

2006(14th of Iyar, 5766): Pesach Sheni

2006: In Israel, events begin marking the start of the 15th annual Historic Site Preservation Week, an initiative of the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites (SPIHS)

2006: Harvey Sheldon launched for the first time in the world, WORLD JEWISH NETWORK on the internet. The format will be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week of nothing but popular Jewish and Israeli music, that you can listen to and dance.

2007: In Detroit, Michigan, Ayal Mendelsohn, son of Mr. and Mrs. David Mendelsohn, is called to the Torah as a Bar Mitzvah.

2007: In “Women add to Torah Dialogue,” published today the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported on a Torah commentary written by female rabbis and female Jewish scholars that will be published in the autumn of 2007.

2007: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported on labor troubles at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa.  Agriprocessors is controlled by the Rubashkin family and is the largest kosher slaughtering operation in the United States.

2008: The Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies presents “A Short History of Anti-Semitism,” the second of four lunchtime session taught by historian Dr. Dean Bell that covers anti-Judaism in the classical world, the Crusades and expulsions in the Middle Ages, tolerance and restrictions in the early modern period, and racial anti-Semitism in both the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

2008: In “Wage the Warrior: David Mamet tackles mixed martial arts,”  published today Sports Illustrated reviews “Redbelt,” Mamet’s latest cinematic effort.  “Redbelt” is set in the world of mixed martial art which seems a far cry from the world of the man who wrote The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred and the Jews. On the other hand, the sixty year old man of letters and motion pictures is “a serious jiu-jitsu practitioner.”

2008: The prestigious Turin Book Fair comes to an end. The Turin Fair is honoring Israel on the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state's creation. Prominent Israeli authors Abraham B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, Amos Oz, Aaron Appelfeld and Meir Shalev were among those featured at the fair. Turin's chief rabbi, Alberto Moshe Somekh, said that the city had shown "great courage" in deciding to honor Israel despite protests from various pro-Arab and anti-Israel activists. At a special service in the city's main synagogue, he said the tribute marked also marked "4,000 years of our presence on the world stage as 'People of the Book.'"

2008: More than 300 people here have already been arrested at Postville, Iowa, in what is being called the largest operation of its kind in Iowa, federal officials said this afternoon.

 2008: In a front page article entitled “Time To Go” appearing in The Cedar Rapids Gazette Kathy Goldstein, the Musical Voice of Temple Judah and a Clinton supporter expresses her views on Hillary Clinton’s exit strategy. “The race is over, and I think she should go out in grace and style,” said Katherine Goldstein of Cedar Rapids. “If she does it now, she looks like a queen. If she keeps fighting, she’ll look like a fool.” Once she makes that decision, it may take a while for Clinton’s backers to accept her decision, said Goldstein, a retired teacher. “But once they do, they’ll understand this is the only thing she can do.” Goldstein expects Clinton to put the party first and support Obama, and “we’ll all take our cue from her.” Clinton’s partisans are divided as to whether Obama will — or should — offer her the vice presidency. “It would look very nice, even though she represents the old and he represents the new,” Goldstein said. “The fact she is a woman would trump their differences.”

2008(7th of Iyar, 5768):An elderly woman was killed by a Kassam rocket that scored a direct hit on a western Negev community, hours after Israeli leaders said they were leaning toward accepting an Egyptian cease-fire deal with Hamas. Shlomit Katz, 75 of Kibbutz Gvar'am, was killed while visiting Moshav Yesha in the Eshkol Regional Council. The deadly attack came four days after a mortar shell barrage killed Jimmy Kedoshim, 48, a father of four, as he stood in the yard of his house in Kibbutz Kfar Aza in the Negev.

2008:Irena Sendler - a Polish social worker who helped save some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and giving them false identities - has died today at the age of  98. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/europe/13sendler.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

2009 (18 Iyar): Lag B’Omer – 33rd Day of the Omer

2009: As part of its Centennial Celebration, Tel Aviv hosts a special conference on education attended by prominent educators, academics and researchers who will address the key educational and pedagogic issues facing the city's future generations, as well as educational policy and curriculum unique to Tel Aviv-Yafo.

 

2009: Today U.S. President Barack Obama declared May Jewish American Heritage Month, saying that the "United States would not be the country we know without the achievements of Jewish Americans."

2009: Today the Freie Universitat in Berlin launched a project that will give high school students across Germany access to more than 50,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. "The goal of our efforts is to sustainably integrate working with the biographical accounts into classroom teachings about National Socialism," said Dr. Ursula Lehmkuhl, Vice President of Freie Universitat. "Nothing may document an era or a historic event more strikingly than personal narrations of the lived history."

2010(28th of Iyar, 5770) Yom Yerushalayim

2010: The story of Russ & Daughters is scheduled to be featured in the premiere episode of New York Originals, a documentary series profiling “classic one-of-a-kind shops and mom-and-pop businesses that have stood the test of time.”

2011: An Israeli delegation of religious leaders is going to present Syrian opposition members to Chief Rabbi of Holon Avraham Yosef, the son of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and a member of the rabbinate’s council, will be one of the more high-profile religious leaders in the group that took off from Israel yesterday – one week after the original delegation was postponed.day with a list of sites in Syria holy to Judaism, to be safeguarded if Bashar Assad’s regime collapses.

2011: Former concentration camp guard John “Demjanjuk was convicted as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews and sentenced to five years in prison.”

2011: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present The 2011 Spring Concert as part of the Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series. “The Spring Concert will highlight the works of two great Jewish composers: Lazar Weiner, the prominent American composer of Jewish art songs, and Joseph Achron, the outstanding Russian-born violinist and composer, student of Arnold Schoenberg and one of the co-founders of Jewish Folk Music.”

2011: The National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to present a screening of “Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray” “a …documentary that reveals the little-known struggles that faced Jewish-Americans both in battle and on the home front during the Civil War” including the 7,000 who fought for the Union, the 3000 who fought with the Rebels and the “five Union Jewish soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

2011(8th of Iyar, 5771): Seventy-nine year old Jay D. Fischer, the attorney “who negotiated a monetary settlement with the Palestine Liberation Organization on behalf of the family of Leon Klinghoffer after his murder during a 1985 hijacking” passed away today.

2011(8th of Iyar, 5771): Seventy-six year old Jack Keil Wolf, an engineer and computer theorist whose mathematical reasoning about how best to transmit and store information helped shape the digital innards of computers and other devices that power modern society passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

2012: Jan Kasoff is scheduled to deliver a talk based on his 36 years as an NBC cameraman entitled Behind the Scenes at SNL and NBC!! at the JCC of Northern Virginia

2012: Those living in the Washington Metropolitan area have a chance to party to a unique mix of Israeli hip-hop, bhangra, baile funk, radio remixes, 80s freestyle and a live performance by Israeli-American emcee and rapper Kosha Dillz as part of the Washington Jewish Music Festival.

2012: Jazzrael - A Festival of Israeli Jazz & World Music: Israeli Jazz/World Music Concert is scheduled to take place at Temple Israel in NYC.

2012: Mendy Cahan, founder of Yung Yiddish in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is scheduled to lead an interactive workshop about the craft of presenting Yiddish song for contemporary audiences at the Workman’s Circle in New York City. 

2012: Thousands rallied in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square this evening, and in cities around the country, in the largest “social justice” protest held since last summer’s wave of cost-of-living demonstrations. (As reported by Ben Hartman and Melanie Lidman)

2013: The Maccabeats are scheduled to perform at the Jewish Federation of Princeton in Princeton, NJ.

2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Business of Baby by Jennifer Margulis, Tirza by Arnon Grunberg and the recently released paperback edition of Thinking, Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

2013: A 1500 year old Byzantine era mosaic floor was discovered under the fields of Kibbutz Beit Kama in the Negev, the Antiquities Authority announced today. The mosaic was discovered by the authority prior to the imminent paving of the southern extension of Highway 6, the Trans-Israel Highway.

2013: A Foreign Ministry economic plan for 2013-2014, to be submitted for cabinet approval this week, revealed that Israel has established a diplomatic mission in an unnamed state in the Persian Gulf, one of 11 new diplomatic missions set up in various states around the world since 2010. The new diplomatic missions include embassies in New Zealand, Ghana, Albania, Turkmenistan and a general embassy in the Caribbean; consulates in Guangzhou (China), Munich (Germany) and São Paulo (Brazil); a diplomatic mission in the Pacific islands; and the diplomatic office in the Gulf, whose host state was not revealed, Haaretz reported today

2014: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host an evening with Susan Abrams who will lead a discussion on the future of the center and the development of “a truly global human rights culture.

2014:The Fountainheads, an energetic group of young Israeli singers, musicians and dancers, is scheduled to headline the upcoming Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) celebration at the Uptown Jewish Community this evening. (As reported by the Crescent City Jewish News, the source for all things Yiddishkeit in Cajun Country)

2014: Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch is scheduled to visit several site in Yokne’am which were recently subject to ‘price tag’ attacks and to meet with the mayor to discuss the surge in hate crimes in the city. (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion

2014: In honor of American Jewish Heritage Month the Cedar Village Retirement Community in Mason, OH, is schooled to host “Broadway Musicals: The Jewish Legacy…Jews revere the site as the tomb of King David, which is on the ground floor of the same building.”

2014: “Israeli President Shimon Peres was met by political anger and protests over his country’s policies in the West Bank during a visit to Norway today.”

2014: Today, at the the Jaffa Salon of Art in Warehouse 2 at the Jaffa Port Israelis will be able to view pictures of “the face of war” as captured by Jean Mohr ata new exhibition, “War from the Victim’s Perspective,” being launched to mark the 150th anniversary of the First Geneva Convention.

2014: Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered today near the reputed scene of Jesus’s last supper in Jerusalem demanding that Israel keep sovereignty over the site where Pope Francis will celebrate mass.

2015(23rd of Iyar, 5775): Seventy-six year old Belda Lindenbahm, a co-founder of Midreshet Lindenbaum who served “as president of the board of the Drisha Institute for Women and president of the American Friends of Bar Ilan University” passed away today.

2015: Gary Shteyngart is scheduled to join Professor Sasha Senderovich for a conversation and reading from Little Failure: A Memoir, a candid account of Shteyngart’s experiences as a Jewish-Russian immigrant in New York, his haphazard college pursuits, and his initial forays into a literary career at the National Museum of American Jewish History.

2015: The Jewish Historical Society of England is scheduled to host a lecture on “Jewish Settlements in Palestine in the Century before 1948as seen by an Ephemerist & Postal Historian” by Dennis van der Velde.

2015: “Welcome to Kutsher’s” is scheduled to be shown at the Borscht Belt Film Festival this morning.

2016(4th of Iyar, 5776): Yom Ha’atsma’ut – Israel Independence observed because the fifth of Iyar falls erev Shabbat.

2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to a “Community Discussion” on “The Ethics of Photography.”

2016: As of today, Goldie Michelson “became the oldest living person in the United States – a title she would hold for less than two months due to her demise in July.

https://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/3378751/sc/fb/jewish/Goldie-Michelson-the-Oldest-American-Passes-Away-at-Nearly-114.htm

2016: The Iowa City Jewish Federation is scheduled to sponsor the Yom Ha’atzmaut Dinner at Agudas Achim this evening.

2016: “Metal-Man – The Story of Sculptor Victor Ries” a film “that takes us through his early life in Germany, fleeing Nazis for Palestine in 1933, emigration to America during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and beginning his American career as a founding member of the legendary Pond Farm art school/cooperative in Guerneville, California” is schedule to be shown in Woodland Hills, CA as part of Jewish American Heritage Month.

2016: In a talk entitled "Women of the Bible: Paintings of The House of Abraham and The House of David," artist Richard McBee is scheduled to discuss his paintings that explore the narratives of Sarah, Hagar, Tamar, and Lot’s Daughters at the Biederman Library in the Bronx.

2017: LIMMUDFSU NY is scheduled to begin today

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host the Vice Chancellor at its Shabbat dinner.

2017: In “A Moving Holocaust Memoir for Younger Readers, and Older Ones Too” published today Ruth Sepetys reviewed Survivors Club: The True Story of a Very Prisoner of Auschwitz by Michael Bornstein.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/books/review/survivors-club-auschwitz-michael-bornstein-debbie-bornstein-holinstat.html

2017: As American Jews prepare to welcome the Sabbath Queen they may be contemplating a week’s worth of stories that began with Nicole Meyer courting Chinese investors and ended with Rod Jay Rosenstein, “the nation’s longest serving U.S. attorney” and newly appointed United States Deputy Attorney General, the number 2 man at the DOJ.

2018: As part of its Mother’s Day weekend celebration, the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to admit all Moms free of admission today.

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a full day of Shabbat activities including morning services, lunch, mincha and Seduah Shlisit.

2018: “The Hero” and “The Cakemaker” are scheduled to be shown at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

2018: “Today I Am A Fountain Pen” and “The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick” are scheduled to be shown at the 26thToronto Jewish Film Festival.

2018: Final two portions of Viykra (Leviticus) -- Behar and Bechukotai;

2018: Princeton graduate and billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Feinberg, a Donald Trump loyalist assumed office today the Chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

2018: In Silver Springs, MD, the AFI Silver Theatre is scheduled to host a screening of “From Cairo to the Cloud.”

2019: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is schedule to host Marguerite Mishkin as part of its Survivor Speaker series.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “The Keeper.”

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy by Michael J. Mazarr and The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks.

2019: Today’s celebration of Mother’s Day takes on a whole new meaning as friends and family of Sandee Levin, mother of Phillip and Laura Levin, wife of Larry Levin gather to celebrate her milestone natal day.

2020(33rd day of the Omer): Lag B’Omer

2020: Today is a double Simcha as the friends and family of Sandee Levin prepare to celebrate her natal day on Lag B’Omer

2020: In honor of Lag B’Omer at 7:30 a.m. CST, The London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to host a “Virtual Tour of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.”

https://www.lsjs.ac.uk/lag-baomer-virtual-tour-of-the-national-gallery-in-trafalgar-square-1122.php

2020: “Teaching poets and contributors to the 92nd Street Y's #ANewColossus poetry festival, are scheduled to host a virtual poetry workshop that will delve into the construction and techniques used in writing “The New Colossus,” and place Lazarus' poem side by side with work by contemporary poets that is “descended” from, or inspired by, the original poem.”

2020: ASF IJE Travels in Jewish History is scheduled to present “Virtual Lag Ba’Omer” as Diarna Geo-Museum Tours digitally transports pilgrims to shrines in multiple countries, including Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, and Morocco.

2020: The Riverway Project is scheduled to celebrate Lag B’Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, with a roaring (virtual) fire, campfire songs” combined with “viewers own homemade s’mores.”

2020: Via Zoom, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host Traffy Brodesser-Akner as she discusses her best-selling novel Fleishman is in Trouble.

2020: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present live on Zoom “Jewish Thought and Messianism in the Colonial Puritan Imagination: The Case of Judah Monis”

2020: In San Rafael, CA, Congregation Rodef Sholom is scheduled to host a virtual “Borschtfest” where Rabbi Elana Rosen-Brown leads a session on cooking a borscht that includes lots of garlic.”

2020: In Iowa, Jewry makes the news as Governor Reynolds goes into “modified quarantine” because of her exposure to those who came to Iowa including Vice President who had been exposed to V.P. Press Secretary Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller and reports are published that the Republican Jewish Coalition will support a primary challenger to Representative Steve King which seems sort of problematic since King is a political ally of Governor Reynolds and many of his ideas are representative of the views of the state’s Republicans.

2020: Burt Bacharach turns 92.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/margiegoldsmith/2020/02/20/burt-bacharach-strong-at-92-still-writing-hit-songs/#364b683e463e

2021: Temple Emanu El Brotherhood is scheduled to host “Broadway Comes to TEE Brotherhood" during which “Mary Illes, accomplished Broadway actress, will discuss her Broadway career and highlight her original role of Golde in Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish.”

2021: Iranian American poet-author is scheduled to talk about “Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran” in a Stanford series on Jews of the Modern Middle East/North Africa, co-sponsored by Taube Center for Jewish Studies.

2021: The Asiyah Jewish Community is scheduled to present online Rabbi David Curiel as he discusses “Pirkei Avot: Living Ancestral Wisdom.”

2021: The Jewish Family and Children’s Service is scheduled to present online, a “Leadership Giving Society Reception.”

2021(1st of Sivan, 5781): Rosh Chodesh Sivan; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2021: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Diversity Program is scheduled to host  a virtual Jewish American History Month celebration spotlighting Dr. Misha Galperin, CEO, National Museum of American Jewish History.

2021: The Jewish Federation of the Corridor (Eastern Iowa) and the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines are scheduled to sponsor “Jewish Identities: Iowa Jewish Scholars Discuss Jewish Identity in the Diaspora,”  a conversation with Katya Gibel Mevorach (Grinnell College), Inbal Mazar (Drake University), Leah Kalmanson (Drake University), and Laura Cesarco Eglin (Simpson College).

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present Julianna Margulies as she discusses her “candid new memoir, Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life.

2021 The Home Front Commander has announced that schools will be closed throughout Isreal today , due to the escalating attacks from Gaza, and the education system is preparing for several days of remote learning.

 

 

 

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

$
0
0

May 13

1333:  Birthdate of Reginald III of Guelders, a duchy in the Kingdom of Prussia.  In 1349 the Duke of Guelders, was authorized by the Emperor Louis IV of the Holy Roman Empire of Germany to allow Jews to live in his duchy.  This may have been considered somewhat unusual because Jews were being expelled from other parts of the realm in response to the Black Death.

1497: Pope Alexander VI excommunicates Girolamo Savonarola. Alexander VI was one of the Renaissance popes whose religious qualities might best be summed up by stating that he was the father of Cesare and Lucretzia Borgia.  His lack of concern with Church matters benefited the Jews especially the Jews and Marranos fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.  He admitted so many refugees to Rome, that Ferdinand and Isabella registered major protests to his policy.  Savonarola was a Dominican monk who opposed Alexander on grounds of morality of ethics which is what led to his excommunication.   Savonarola’s enmity for the Pope had led him to “expel the Pope” from the Florentine region under his control.  At the same time, Savonarola banned Jews from this area as well.  So, from a Jewish point of view Alexander trumps Savonarola regardless of the moral stance of the two men.

1534: The first Hebrew printing press in Poland located in Cracow published its first book Sha’arei Duro a code of dietary laws by Rabbi Isaac ben Reuben

1610: Coronation of Marie de Medicis, as Queen consort of France and Navarre. Despite the ban on Jews living in the realm, she employed Elijah Montalto as her personal physician.  He was a Marrano, who had been raised as a Christian in Portugal before settling in Venice after publicly returning to “the faith of his fathers. Born in 1567, he passed away in 1616 and was buried at Amsterdam in Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Netherlands.

1635: Today, in Hungary, the Diet set the explicit deadline of Christmas Day 1635 for the Sabbatarians” a sect that rejected the divinity of Jesus, read the old Testament, celebrated the holidays described and the Torah, followed the dietary and observed the Seventh and not the First day of the week as the Sabbath, “to convert to one of the four accepted Christian religions of the Principality.” (While not Jews, their following Jewish practices to the exclusion of traditional Christianity brought them to the same fate as the Jews.)

1636(8th of Iyar): Rabbi Menahem Monish Chajes of Vilna passed away today

1665: A statute was enacted in Rhode Island, offering “freemanship” with no specifically Christian requirements, thus effectively enfranchising Jews

1728: Hayyim and Joshua Reizes of Lvov (heads of the Rabbinical court and the yeshiva respectively) were arrested when a Jesuit priest, Zoltowskiki, discovered that Jan Filipowicz (soon tortured and killed), a convert, had reconverted to Judaism. They were accused of complicity. Condemned to death, Joshua committed suicide by cutting his own throat. For three days his brother Hayyim refused to convert to Christianity. His tongue was then torn out, his body quartered and he was finally burnt. Their property was then confiscated.

1767(14thof Iyar, 5527): Pesach Sheni

1778: Amsterdam native Solomon da silva Solis and London born Benvenida de Henriques Valentine, the parents of Elias and Samuel Solis, were married today.

1779: Birthdate of Jakob Salomon, the Berlin born Jew who converted, took the name Jakob Salomon Bartholdy as he furthered his diplomatic career.

1781: Joseph II, the son and successor of Maria Theresa let Chancellor Count Franz Esterhazy know that he intended to improve the condition of his Hungarian Jewish subjects.

1782: Friedrich Albrecht August, the Jewish born Catholic convert passed away today.

http://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/tje/view.cgi?n=2135

1787: Captain Arthur Phillip of the Royal Navy and his eleven convict laden ships set sail for Botany Bay Australia.  There are reportedly 17 Jews among the 1500 convicts.

1792:  Birthdate of Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti who would become Pope Pius IX. “Pius IX's relations to the Jews remain ambiguous. He repealed laws that forbade Jews to practice certain professions, and that required them to listen to sermons four times per year aimed at their conversion. Judaism and Catholicism were the only religions allowed by law (Protestant worship was allowed to visiting foreigners, but strictly forbidden to Italians). But the testimony of a Jew against a Christian remained inadmissible in courts of law, a tax levied only on Jews supported schools for converts from Judaism to Catholicism, and Jews continued in various other respects to be discriminated against by law. At the beginning of his pontificate, Pius IX opened the Jewish ghetto in Rome, but after his return from exile in 1850 re-instituted it again. In 1858, in a highly publicized case, a six-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, was taken from his parents by the police of the Papal States. It had been reported that he had been baptized by a Christian servant girl of the family while he was ill because she feared he would die and go to Hell, otherwise. At this time, the law did not permit Christians to be raised by Jews, even their own parents. Pius IX steadfastly refused calls from numerous heads of state including Emperor Franz Josef (1848–1916) of Austria-Hungary and Emperor Napoleon III of France (1852–70) to return the child to his parents.

1797: In London, Daniel Cohen D’Azevedo, the of Haham Moses Cohen d'Azevedo and Sara de Haham Moses Cohen D'Azevedo and his wife Ester Rodriques Cohen D'Azevedo gave birth to David Daniel Cohen De Azevedo

1798: In Switzerland, the town council of Schwyz which in 2011 hosted “a special exhibition ‘Did you see my Alps? A Jewish Love story’” surrendered to French Troops.

1799(8th of Iyar, 5559):Isaiah Berlin an 18thcentury German Talmudist passed away. Born at Eisenstadt, Hungary in 1725, “Berlin studied under Ẓevi Hirsch Bialeh (Ḥarif), the rabbi of Halberstadt, at the latter's yeshivah. In 1755 Berlin moved to Breslau where he engaged in business. In 1793, when already advanced in years, he was elected to a rabbinical post, being appointed to succeed Isaac Joseph Te'omim as rabbi of Breslau. His election was marked by a dispute between the members of the community and the local maskilim, who had begun to organize themselves as a body and opposed Berlin, who, despite his love of peace, openly attacked their ideas. Berlin was elected by an overwhelming majority. Berlin was greatly admired, even by persons who differed with him in religious views. According to Hasidic sources, Berlin was sympathetically disposed toward that movement and extended a friendly welcome to one of its emissaries, Jacob Samson of Spitsevka. Further, Joel Brill, Aaron Wolfsohn, Judah Bensew, and many other Maskilim of Breslau often visited him to seek advice on scientific questions. As the Maskilim always carefully avoided wounding Berlin's religious feelings, he on his part met them half-way in many things. On the occasion of the Peace of Basel, for instance, he held a solemn service in the synagogue and exceptionally permitted the use of instrumental music, he himself delivering a discourse which was highly praised by the press ("Schlesische Zeitung", 1795, No. 59). Thus Berlin, conciliated the hostile elements of his congregation, and his death was mourned equally by all. Berlin's had the habit of annotating almost every book he read; mentioning the sources, or noting parallel passages and variant readings. Such glosses by Berlin have been published on the following books: the Bible (Pentateuch, Dyhernfurth, 1775; the other books, ib., 1807); the prayer-book, ed. Tiḳḳun Shelomoh (ib., 1806); Maimonides' Yad ha-Ḥazaḳah (ib., 1809); Alfasi (Presburg, 1836); the "Ḥinnuk", by Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona (Vienna, 1827); Malachi b. Jacob's methodology, "Yad Malachi" (Berlin, 1825); Elijah b. Moses de Vidas' book of morals, "Reshit Ḥokmah" (Dyhernfurth, 1811). Although the terse yet clear notes contained in these volumes reveal the immense learning and critical insight of their author, yet Berlin's lasting place of honor among the pioneers of Talmudic criticism rests on the following works, which treat principally of the Talmud:  "'Omer ha-Shikḥah" (Forgotten Sheaf), Königsberg, 1860, containing a large number of Halakot on the Talmud not noted by the codifiers;  "Oẓar Balum" (Full Treasure), in the edition of Jacob ibn Ḥabib's "'En Ya'aḳob", published at Wilna in 1899, tracing all the Talmudic passages quoted without sources in the different commentaries on the haggadic elements of the Talmud;  "Haggahot ha-Shas" (Notes to the Talmud), textual corrections and notes on the origin of parallel passages (Dyhernfurth, 1800, and in nearly all the editions of the Talmud);  "Hafla'ah Sheba-'Arakin" (Detached Orders) (part i., Breslau, 1830; part ii., Vienna, 1859), containing, as the title indicates, explanations and glosses on the 'Aruk;  "Ḥiddushe ha-Shas", novellæ on the Talmud (Königsberg, 1860, and in several editions of the Talmud);  "Minè Targuma" (Dessert Dishes), Breslau, 1831, remarks on the Targum Onkelos (the word "Targuma" signifying both "Targum" and "dessert", equivalent to the Greek τράγημα) and on the Palestinian Targum;  "Kashiyot Meyushab" (Difficulties Answered), Königsberg, 1860, treating of the Talmudic passages which end with, and written by Berlin in fourteen days; (8) "Rishon leẒion" (The First for Zion; Dyhernfurth, 1793; Vienna, 1793, and several times reprinted, the title being a play on, "Zion", and, "index"), a collection of indexes and parallel passages in the Midrash; (9) "She'elat Shalom" (Greeting of Peace), Dyhernfurth, 1786, a commentary on Aḥa of Shubḥa's "She'iltot." Berlin's responsa collection and his commentary on the Tosefta deserve especial mention, though nothing is known of their fate.Berlin, was the first—at least among the Germans—who showed an interest in the history of post-Talmudic literature; and it was he, who opened the Kalir question (compare his letter to his brother-in-law, Joseph b. Menaḥem Steinhart, in the latter's "Zikron Yosef", No. 15.

1800(18th of Iyar, 5560): Lag B’Omer is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency John Adams and for the first time in the 19thcentury.

1804: Birthdate Daniele Fonseca, who gained fame as Daniele Manin, the Italian patriot.  Manin was born a Jew but converted as a child at which time he changed his name out of respect for his patron.

1805(14th of Iyar, 5565): Pesach Sheni is observed as Napoleon prepares to face an array of united enemies in what became known as “The War of the Third Colaition

1812: Rabbi Samuel Marx, the uncle of non-Jew Karl Marx and Michle Brisac gave birth to their second child and first son Marcus or Marc today.

1819: Ezekiel Jacobs married Sarah Levy today at the Great Synagogue.

1823: Aaron De Symons married Matilda Israel today at the Great Synagogue.

1825: Eighty-five year old “ Yettelah bat Israel the wife of Mordecai” was buried today at the “Chatham Jewish Cemetery.”

1832: The government confirmed the election of Menahem Nahum Trebitsch as "Landesrabbiner" of Moravia, in succession to Mordecai Benet, and granted him a salary of 600 florins; he was the last Moravian "Landesrabbiner" of the old school.

1837: The Jews of Leipzig were given permission to organize as a religious community and establish a synagogue

1838: Jacob Falcke married Isabella Woolf today at the Western Synagogue.

1838: Three days after she had passed away, Patty (Martha) Emdon, the wife of Abraham Emdon was buried today at the “Plymouth Hoe Burial Ground.”

1838: Lesser Friedlander married Elizabeth Assur today at the Great Synagogue.

1839(24th of Iyar, 5699): Rabbi Israel Ashkenazi of Shklov, leader of the Aliya of the followers of the Gaon of Vilna to Eretz Yisrael passed away. The dynamic force of early Hasidism clashed head-on with the dynamic force of Ashkenazic traditionalism generated by the GR"A. The momentum of both movements created the two major aliyot of the pre-Zionist times. Rabbi Israel of Shklov arrived in Eretz Yisrael in 1808. In 1815 he moved to Jerusalem, where he founded the modern Ashkenazic community. The location of his grave was unknown for a long time. It was discovered in 1964, 125 years after his death, in Tiberias.

1842: In Kingston, Jamaica, Sarah Lindo Lyon and Abraham Septimus Lyon gave birth toe Alexander Joseph Lindo Lyon, the husband of Miriam Lyon who was a “Companion of St. Mary, a member of the House Assembly and a member of the Privy Council.”

1842: Löbl Strakosch and Julia Schwarz gave birth to their youngest child Chaile Caroline

1843: Birthdate of Norfolk, VA native Michael Umstadter the inventor of “a new, and valuable Improvement in Jacquard Attachments for Embroidering-Machines” and husband of Esther Umstadter, who was the mother of their son Jacob. (Some sources show date as 1844 but the tombstone says 1843)

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/37/ac/90/b0bcf797532c63/USRE9470.pdf

1843(13th of Iyar, 5603): Dr. Daniel Levy Maduro Peixotto the eldest of son of Moses Levi Maduro Peixotto, a native of Curaco who had brought his family to New York from Amsterdam passed away today. The elder Peixotto was a successful businessman who served as Chazan at Shearith Israel. Daniel who was born in Amsterdam in 1800 graduated from Columbia at the age of sixteen and earned his medical degree in 1819 at the age of 19. After a few years of travel he returned to New York in 1823, where he pursued his profession with success, and gained a place among the foremost practitioners of his day. He was one of the physicians of the city dispensary in 1827, and president of the New York county medical society in 1830-'1832, and took an active part in public charitable work as well as in Jewish educational movements. One of his eight children, Benjamin Franklin, went on to become a prominent newspaper man and politician who served in several diplomatic posts during the post-Civil War period. Dr. Daniel was quite proud of his Jewish heritage as can be seen from a speech he delivered while he was vice president of the Medical Society of the City and County of New York. “The writings of the Hebrews are generally acknowledged to be unequaled for the simplicity and dignity - the strength, conciseness and boldness of their style; the perfect truth to nature of their imagery; their animated eloquence and sublime figures. The conceits and puerile vanities which disgrace much of classical literature are altogether banished from their pages. It may, however, be suggested that these writings were inspired. This assertion is more imposing by its speciousness than forcible by its application. The great truths and sublime doctrines which were inculcated by Moses and the Prophet were undoubtedly

derived from immediate communication with the Almighty.” [From “Moses and Daniel Peixotto” by Dr. Yitzchok Levine]

 

1846: The United States declares war on Mexico officially marking the start of the Mexican-American War.  As has been true in all other wars, Jews were active participants in this fight with Mexico.  Like their gentile neighbors, Jews from Texas were active combatants. These included Adolphus Stern, David Kaufman and Leon Dyer each of whom would be prominent office holders in the early days of the Lone Star State.  Baltimore Jews formed a company of volunteers whose three commanding officers were Jewish.  David Camden de Leon of South Carolina was the most famous and colorful Jew to serve in the fight with Mexico.  A surgeon by trade, de Leon literally swapped his scalpel for a sword at the Battle of Chapultepec where he led a successfully led a cavalry charge after the other officers had been killed or wounded and could not lead the troops.  Fifteen years later, de Leon would be named Surgeon General of the Confederate Army.

1853: “In Adelaide, South Australia, Judah Moss Solomon, a member of the South Australian Legislative Council and Lord Mayor of Adelaide from 1869 to 1870” and his wife gave birth to Vabien Louis Solomon who “was the 21st Premier of South Australia, a member of the first Australian Commonwealth parliament and the nephew of Vaiben Solomon

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/solomon-vaiben-louis-8577

1853: “The Jewish Disabilities Bill” published today described efforts in the British Parliament to make it possible for Jews to sit in the House of Commons.  “The British House of Commons has again decided in favor of striking out the words ‘on the true faith of a Christian’ from the oath administered to Members of Parliament.” According to the author, the House of Lords will surely reject the attempt to change the in the oath as part of the continued to keep Jews from sitting in Parliament.  While “notorious non-believers” take the oath “without a scruple” the only way a Jew could take the oath would be to convert from the faith of his fathers.

1859: Sixty-year old “philanthropist and merchant Philipp Schey Freiherr, the Baron von Koromla “the first Jew in Hungary to be made an Austrian noble” was granted his patent of nobility today by King Francis Joseph I who cited “his services to the imperial dynasty during the revolution in 1848 and 1849” and “the great benevolence exercised by him "toward suffering humanity, regardless of creed."

1860: Birthdate of Henry Samuel Morais the son of Rabbi Sabato Morais, a well-known national Jewish leader, Rabbi of Congregation Mikveh Israel of Philadelphia, and founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

1863:  Philadelphian Michael Baer completed his service in Company F of the 123rd Regiment where he had been promoted from the rank of 1st Lieutenant to Captain.

1864: The jury was unable to reach a decision in the case of Solomon Ullman vs. The Congregation B'Nai Israel.  The unusual case revolved a claim by Ullman, a former congregant, that the synagogue had illegally removed his father’s tombstone from their cemetery.

1865: Following the defeat of the Confederacy, as Judah P. Benjamin was fleeing from Union troops he “reached Monticello, Florida” and then continued alone on horseback seeking to reach the Gulf Coast where he could find a ship to take him to Great Britains.

1866: The Pennsylvania Legislature passed an act today that allowed the children who were attending a school operated under the auspices of the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia to attend the Boys' and Girls' High School, Philadelphia.

1871: “American Christian Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews” published today described the work of the organization which has an auxiliary branch in Somerset, Iowa in trying to change the religious persuasion of the “65,000 Israelites in New York” and the quarter of million living in the United States.

1872(5thof Iyar, 5632): Fifty year old author and German parliamentarian Mortiz Harmann passed away today outside of Vienna.

1872: Secretary of State Hamilton Fish wrote to Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, the U.S. Counsel in Bucharest, that while it is usually the policy of the government not to interfere in the internal affairs of other country’s an exception is to be made in this case since all else has failed.  The State Department will support whatever measure Peixotto may take in joining with other diplomats “to avert or mitigate further harshness” shown toward the Jews living in Romania. (Peixotto was Jewish and he was purposely chosen by President Grant in an attempt to ameliorate the suffering of the Jews in Romania.  This is yet another proof that Grant was not an anti-Semite)

 

1877: “Jute” published today describes the origins and modern uses of this plant. The author claims that jute has been used since ancient times citing the story of Samson and Delilah as one of his proofs.  “The seen green withes that had never been dried” which the Philistines had given to Delilah so that she might bind the Israelite prophet were “jute withes.  “The basis for this supposition is the fact that the word translated ‘withes’ is in the Hebrew reading jeter – that means cordage or roping stuff of any kind.” In the 17th century the Jewish connection was so strong that a form of jute called or Tossa jute (Corchorus olitorius), was popularly referred to as ‘Jews mallow.’ [Editor’s note – Apparently the term Jews mallow is one known to many cooks as can be seen from the recipe for a dish called Jews Mallow Soup

 1878: A review of Religion of China by Dr. Richard Edkins published today noted that during Edkins visit to China he found that "the Jewish colony had dwindled to a few hundred members none of whom can read Hebrew."  In what must be a reference to Simchat Torah, Edkins reported that until their synagogue was destroyed by fire the Jews "had an autumn festival when they walked in procession around the hall taking the scrolls of the law with them."  Until recently, they had twelve copies of the Pentateuch, some of which are now in England.  According to some, the first Jews arrived during the Han Dynasty - 200 BCE to 200 CE while others came later from Persia

1881: Birthdate of Anna Meingast, who worked as Stefan Zweig’s secretary in Salzburg from November 1919 to March 1938.

1884(18th of Iyar, 5644): Lag B'Omer

1886: Birthdate of violinist and composer Joseph Achron. Born in Warsaw, Achron was a child prodigy from a musical family.  He moved to St. Petersburg in 1899 and joined the Society for Jewish Folk Music in 1911.  His first Jewish work called "Hebrew Melody" became famous thanks to the interpretation by Jascha Heifetz.  Achron lived in Berlin and Palestine before settling in the United States in the 1920's where he continued performing and composing.  One of his most compositions was "Golem."  When he passed away in 1943, one obituary called him "one of the most underrated modern composers.

1886: In “Zhagroy, Russia,” “Bernhard and Yetta  (Shochet) Blumberg gave birth to German trained mathematician Dr. Henry Blumberg who taught at the University of Nebraska and the University of Illinois before becoming a full Professor at Ohio State University in 1924.

1888: Birthdate of Zelig Harry Lefkowitz who gained fame as "Big" Jack Zelig a New York City thug who was one of the last leaders of the Monk Eastman Gang.

1888: Thirty-one year old Max Pinkus married Hedwig Oberländer the daughter of Moritz J. Oberländer and Marie Oberländer

1888(3rdof Sivan, 5648): Ohio Medical College graduate Joseph Aub the Bavarian and Viennese trained oculist who settled in Cincinnati where he “was one of the first to use the electromagnet for removing foreign bodies from the eye” passed away today.

1890: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and Harvard trained physician Dr. Joseph C. Aub, the WW I veteran professor of medical research at Harvard who was the father of three daughters – Elizabeth, Frances and Nancy – and the husband of “the former Elizabeth Cope.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/31/archives/prof-joseph-c-aub-dies-at-83-cancer-researcher-at-harvard.html?searchResultPosition=1

1890: The Amusements column published today provided a detailed review of “The Shatchen” a play written by Henry Doblin and Charles Doblin starring M.B. Curtis in the title role of this comedy about a Jewish marriage broker.

1891: Two Jews were killed today and several more were injured when new violence broke out today in Corfu.

1891: In Riga, Shneur Zalman Seligson and Keilia Leybovna Berlin gave birth to Abraham-Aba (Albert) Zeliksohn

1892: “Jews Ordered From Russia” published today reported that “ten thousand foreign Jews in Odessa have been order to leave” the Czar’s kingdom immediately.

1892: Rector Alhwardt, the notorious anti-Semite went on trial today on charges that he libeled the firm of Loewe & Company when he charged that the company had furnished defective rifles to the army.

1893: “Germany’s Political Crisis” published today described the surprise that has resulted from “the fact that the anti-Semitic electors of Arnswalde have again nominated Rector Ahlwardt, the notorious Jewish Baiter” despite the fact that he is serving a term in prions for having libeled the Jewish firm of Lowe & Company

1893: One Polish Jew arrived in the United States aboard the SS New York

 

1893: Three hundred twenty-seven Polish Jews arrived  aboard the SS Dania, 245 of whom were bound for New York, seven of whom were bound for Boston, two of whom were bound for New Haven, CT, one of whom was bound for Iowa, five of whom were bound for Amsterdam, 13 of whom were bound for Amsterdam, NY 13 of whom were bound for Philadelphia, 13 of whom were bound for Pittsburg, 6 of whom were bound for Buffalo, 29 of whom were bound for Chicago, 5 of whom were bound for Saratoga, NY and one of whom was bound for Milwaukee,

1893: “A press association dispatch sent from Berlin” today “asserts, in contradiction of the recent dispatches from” the New York Times correspondent in London “that there is no movement for the expulsion of Jews from Poland.”

1893: Relying on information that first appeared in the Jewish Messenger, “The Expulsion of the Jews from Poland” published today decried the fact that Russia is allowed to treat her Jewish inhabitants in a manner that is both brutal and laced with bigotry while the Great Powers remain passive in the face of this menace to civilization that smacks of medieval barbarism.

1893: The examination of another 200 of the 1,000 Russian Jews who arrived yesterday at Ellis Island aboard the steamship Dania will resume today.  Immigration officials said that many of those already examined “were absolutely destitute” and that a number of them will be returned to the ship.

1894: It was reported today that “there appears to have been a series of savage popular” attacks on the Jews in a number of towns in Southern Russia at Easter time.  The bloodiest took place at Ekaterinoslav.

1894: It was reported today that in response to new outbreaks of violence a renewed exodus of Jews has begun from Odessa.  In the last week 2,200 have left the port, 800 bound for Argentina; the rest bound for England and the United States.

1894: It was reported today that the official returns from the by-election in Schlochan (Germany) will require a run-off between the Conservative candidate and the first runner-up because the anti-Semitic candidate made “deep inroads in the traditional Conservative majority.

1894(7thof Iyar, 5654): Twenty year old Edwin Bach, the son of Sigmund J. and Rosalie Bach passed away today.

1895: A dramatized version of “Oliver Twist” opened at the Star Theatre with H.G. Carleton playing the part of Fagan, “the awful Jew.”

1896: Solomon Schechter discovered a fragment of the original Hebrew text of “Ecclesiasticus” that had come from the Cairo Genizah.

1897:  Theodor Herzl wrote, "Über Nacht fiel mir der Titel des Blattes ein: Die Welt. Mit dem Mog'n Dovid, in der der Globus hineinzuzeichnen wäre, mit Palästina als Mittelpunkt." -"Overnight the name for the paper occurred to me: Die Welt. [The masthead comes] with a Mogen Dovid [Star of David], inside which a globe should be drawn, with Palestine as the central point."

1897: Two days after she had passed away, 56 year old Minnie Levy, the wife of Aaron Levy was buried in London today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemtery.”

1898: In Harlem, Temple Israel began celebrating its 25th anniversary and the 10th anniversary of the dedication of its current facility today.

1898: During the Spanish American War George Jessel Jones, Morris Conheim and Carl Meyer were mustered in as members of the 1st Missouri Volunteer Infantry.

1898: During the Spanish American War the 3rd Virginia Volunteer Infantry whose members included Lewis M. Moses of Charlottesville and Abraham Cohen began the processing of being “mustered in U.S. Service.

1898: “Hebrew Charities Building” published today described the plans of Solomon Loeb of Kuhn, Loeb & Co to build a new four-story structure at 21stStreet and Second Avenue which will be called The Hebrew Charities Building.  De Lemos & Cordes have been retained for the project that will cost $150,000 on top of the $60,000 that has been paid for the land.

1899: Memorial services for Baroness de Hirsch were held this afternoon in the auditorium of the Educational Alliance at East Broadway and Jefferson Street.

1899: Ohio native and West Point Graduate,Major George W. Moses was honorably discharged today

1899: It was reported today that Doubleday & McClure will soon be issuing an abridged version of The Future of War by Jean de Bloch the Polish Jew who began as a peddler in Warsaw and rose to become a financier with a wide variety of interests in railways, banking and science.

1899: “The first anti-Jewish measure was promulgated” by the Russian government “under which the stay of all – even foreign – Jews is prohibited in St. Petersburg; a prohibition that even applies to French Jews.

 

1899: “Yiddish: Literature in the Mixed Tongue Produced in This Century” published today provided a review The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century by Leo Weiner. (Weiner was a Polish born Jew who lectured on Slavic Languages at Harvard and became the first American Professor of Slavic Literature, at a time before leaders at Harvard decided there were too many Jews at their college.)

1899: “Asks Aid of United Hebrew Charities” published today described the decision to reject a request for $125 to pay for a family’s transportation back to German “because the demands upon the treasury…have been so great, the society cannot afforded to expends so large a sum on an individual case.”

1900(14thof Iyar, 5660): Pesach Sheni

1900: Three days after he had passed away, 65 year old Israel Simons was buried today in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”

1900 (14th of Iyar, 5660): Sixty-year old Hermann Levin, the Jewish maestro who conducted the first performance of Wagner’s “Parsifal” at Bayreuth passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Wagner.html

1900: Herzl made a Zionist speech at the "Israelitische Allianz".

1900: In responding to Jacob Schiff’s criticism of the work of the Baron and Baroness de Hirsch Monument Association, Isador Straus agreed that these two great philanthropists required no monument since their good works spoke for themselves.  Building the monument was an act of gratitude and hopefully, those who would view it would be moved to emulate the generosity of the Baron and Baroness.

1901(24thof Iyar, 5661): Seventy-five year old Austrian born and retired butcher Hyman Epstein, the husband of Rosalie (Glazier) Epstein and the father of Emmanuel, Sarah, Robert, Isaac “Ike” Epstein passed away today after which he was buried at New Mount Sinai Cemetery and Mausoleum in Affton, MO.

1901: “A performance of the Jewish ‘King Lear’ by Jacob Adler and his company” is scheduled to “be given at the People’s Theatre” this evening “for the benefit of the Seward Park playground.

1902: It was reported today that during a dispute Reverend E.O. McFarland, the pastor of the Bethany Church in Newark, NJ and Joseph M. Hauber, the church’s treasurer, the pastor responded to one of the treasurer’s comments by saying, from the pulpit, “That’s what you would expect from a Jew”  and then continuing “I called this brother a name,” “I married this brother and got the record of his father and mother” and his “name is that of a Jew.” (Editor’s note – an insult is an insult; genteel anti-Semitism is still anti-Semitism)

1902: As “the boycott on beef by Jewish residents” of New York’s east side which is in sympathy with Jewish butcher who are fighting to get the wholesalers to reduce the price of Kosher beef continues, it is expect that today all the east side Kosher butcher shops “will be closed and the inhabitants, estimated at a quarter of a million people will take to a diet of milk, eggs and vegetables in order to bring the wholesalers to terms

1903: Mordecai Raisman of Philadelphia received a letter from his son Aaron Raisman written containing an eyewitness account of the “massacre at Kishineff” where the riot in which “people were slaughter, killed and torn to pieces” began “on the first day of Easter at 5 p.m. and continued for a second day after which “the place was ruined and pillaged” with “more than three fourths of the city reduced to absolute ruin” leaving “three hundred wounded of whom two hundred are at the point of death.”

1904: Herzl writes to Wenzel von Plehve asking for an audience for Katzenelson.

1905: Birthdate of Israeli graphic designer Franz Kraus.  Born in St. Pölten, Austria he passed away in 1998 in Tel Aviv.

1905: Twenty six year old American producer Sam Shubert, one of the three Shubert theatre owning Shubert brothers passed away today as the result of injuries suffered in a train accident in Pennsylvania while traveling on business. (According to some sources, Shubert actually died on May 12 and not on May 13.  So far, I have not been able to resolve this discrepancy. The official marker shows the May 13 date.)

1906: The Bezalel Art School opened in Jerusalem

1906: In Chicago, “The building known as the Marks Nathan Jewish Orphan Home was formally dedicated” today where 19 orphans resided under the care of Mr. Saul Drucker as superintendent and Mrs. Saul Drucker as matron.

1907: It was reported today that the Directors of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews have expressed their gratitude to Mrs. J.Z. Coblens and Mr. Frederick Nathan for their 25 years of service in furthering the interests of the institution by presenting Mrs. Coblens with “a silver dish” and Mr. Nathan with “a loving cup.’

1908: “The gold taken from assay office today for shipment to Europe amounted to $5,750,000” of which $1,000,000 was from Goldman, Sachs and Co.

1909: Today, “Abraham Sakolik, a pushcart man” received a notification from Acting Commissioner Joseph Murray of Ellis Island that further delay could be granted and that Immigration Department had ordered the deportation” of his two year old son Gerschon back to Odessa because he has ringworm” which means his wife Esther will also not be entering the country because “the immigration authorities are merciful enough to see to it that if the baby is sent way its mother must go to.”

1910: The order by Premier Stolypin suspending the “expulsion of Jews residing illegally in Kiev” as approved by the Duma, is ended today as can be seen by the fact that the expulsion of the Jews is scheduled to resume tomorrow.

1911(15thof Iyar, 5671): Parashat Emo

1911: In the wake of “ugly rumors of a threatened massacre of Jews tomorrow” at Kieff, “the governor issued a proclamation today saying the he would suppress with a firm hand any attempt at disorders on Sunday” which the Jews put so little trust in that “it is reported that they have divvied he city into districts for organized self-defense.”

1911: In Yekaterinosflaff, “the provincial has issued a circular forbidding Town Councils to give Jews certificates of artisanship on testimonials from working establishments and hand craftsmen.”

1912: Birthdate of Rabbi Judah Nadich.  As a Lt. Colonel and Army chaplain, Nadich would play a key role in the treatment for the Jews of Europe after W.W. II.  As President of the Rabbinical Assembly, he would play a key role in gaining equality for women in Conservative Judaism.

1912: The office of Chief Rabbi of England was formally declared to be vacant today and it was announced that applications for the position were now being accepted.

1913: It was learned today “that the Dr. Jacques Loeb of the Rockefeller Institute, one of the leading investigators in biological research in the country” has been denied membership in the Century Association, which is described as a private club for those showing “distinction in literature or the arts” and that Dr. J. McKeen Cattell, who proposed Loeb for membership claims the decision was made because Loeb is Jewish.

1914: Today in Amsterdam, Levie Van Praag married Sabiena Cohen both of whom were murdered in Sobibor.

1915: Leslie L. Dauer, the temporary Chairman of the Leo M. Frank Committee in Chicago reported that “many organizations such as the Iowa State Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and the Board of Trade of Missouri have joined the movement” to seek clemency for Frank and “the campaign in Frank’s behalf is being carried on over the whole country and is meeting with enthusiastic response everywhere.:

1916 (10th of Iyar, 5676): Sholem Aleichem passed away.  Born Shalom Rabinowitz in the Ukraine, he grew up in the town of Vornokov which served as the model for the fictitious town of Kasrilevke that appears in his writings.  Shalom Aleichem began writing in Hebrew.  In 1883, he began writing in Yiddish which is when he adopted the pen name of Shalom Aleichem.  He used a pen name because he did not want to offend friends and family (including his father) who thought Jews should be writing in Hebrew.  Following the pogroms of 1905, he now famous author moved to the United States.  He died while living in the Bronx at the age of 59.  Shalom Aleichem employed humor and pathos to create a picture of the Shtetl.  He was called the Jewish Mark Twain.  His most famous character was Tevye who became a worldwide favorite in the hit show and movie, “Fiddler on the Roof.”  [Ed. Note: There is no way this brief guide can do justice to this man or his work.  The best way to “say Kaddish” for him is to read one of his stories]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18nyc.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

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

1917: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s Free Synagogue sponsored a performance of “Little Lord Fauntleroy” for school age children this afternoon.

1917: Mr. Jack Silverman is scheduled to perform a violin solo and Miss Bluma Bernstein is scheduled to provide a dramatic reading at today’s meeting of the Big Sister Movement of Chicago at the Auditorium Hotel.

1917: Oscar Straus is scheduled to preside over the third of three public meeting where he will lead a “general discussion with respect to the organization of the Free Synagogue of Washington Heights.

1917: Pope Benedict XV “personally consecrated Nunci Eugenio, the future Pope Pius XII” whose behavior during the Holocaust has been criticized by many, as an Archbisop.

1917: Dr. Henry Moskowitz criticized the Zionist “movement as romantic and impracticable” while Dr. David De Sola Pool “made a strong appeal for the settling of Palestine as the only to restore Hebrew ideals” “at a symposium on the Jewish question” held tonight at Temple Emanu-El.

1918: Birthdate of Edwin S. Shneidman, “a psychologist who gave new direction to the study of suicide and was a founder of the nation’s first comprehensive suicide prevention center.” (As reported by William Dicke)

1918: Approximately 500 carts crowded in the three blocks of Orchard Street between Delancey and Houston Streets where “the bearded Jews in long overcoats” had discarded their usual wares to sell supplies of Thrift and War Saving Stamps as a way of helping to repay the debt they owe to the country that has provided them with a refuge and a home.

1919: During the Russian Civil War the Jews of Boguslav, a city in the Kiev district of the Ukraine were attacked by gangs of marauding peasants that killed 20 Jews,

1919(6thof Iyar, 5673): Fifty-one year old Esther Lefkowitz passed away today after which she was buried with other family members at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, NY

1920: In Union City, TN, Rebecca and Morris Kaufman gave birth to Ruth Kaufman, the Miami Beach High School and Pratt Institute trained interior designer and cartoon colorist who became Ruth Kaufman Hecklering when she married Philip E. Heckerling with whom she had two children Stephanie and Dale.

1921: The Palestinians have expressed their dissatisfaction with the reply made by Winston Churchill to the petition of the Moslem-Christian Association, which consisted of thirty-two typewritten pages and contained all their grievances “against the colonization of their country by the Zionist immigrants, who are arriving at the rate of 1,000 a month.”

1922: In New York City, Philip Frankel and his wife the former Rebecca Pressner gave birth to Bernice Frankel, who as the actress Bea Arthur played Yentel the Matchmaker in the premiere of “Fiddler on the Roof” and gained lasting fame in the role of Maude Findlay, a character first created for the hit series All In the Family, and then spun off for Maude, a hit show in which she was the lead.  She gained further success as Dorthoy Zbornak, one of the lead characters in the television hit, “The Golden Girls.”

1922: In New York, “New York Court of Appeals Judge George Medalie” and his wife gave birth to Gladys Medalie, who married Julius Heldman and as Gladys Heldman gained fame as a tennis player and the founder, editor and publisher of World Tennis.

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/GladysHeldman.htm

1923: President Judge Jacob Caplan of New Haven, First Vice President, Louis Fabrican of New York; Second Vice-President, Bertram M. Aufsesser or Albany; Treasurer, Herman Asher of New York, Secretary, Max Levy were elected as officers of District #1 of the B’nai Brith Lodge today.

1923: During a meeting held at the Hotel Astor, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organization addressed members of four congregations located on New York’s West Side. Mr. H. Leonard Simmons announced that the $100,000 quota for the West Side would be forthcoming shortly. Captain Gloster Armstrong, British Consul General in New York assured the attendees that Great Britain intends to fulfill its commitments in Palestine under the terms of League of Nations’ mandate. (As reported by JTA)

1923: Mayor David E. Fitzgerald addressed a meeting of the B’nai B’rith lodges in the Eastern United States. 

1924: Birthdate of Harry Heinz Schwartz, a South African lawyer, opponent of apartheid and South African ambassador to the United States. He served as defense lawyer for James Kantor, who was the defense attorney for Nelson Mandela during the infamous Rivonia Trial.

1925: “A bequest of some common stock” in the Nature’s Rival Company which is headed by Clarence Mayer of Chicago, was made to Mrs. Amalie Bourne the sister of Julius M. Mayer, the former Judge of the United States circuit Court of Appeals for the Southern District of New York subject to a contract dated today.

1926(29th of Iyar, 5686): Sixty-nine year old Sir Stuart Montagu Samuel, the elder brother of Herbert Samuel, 1sr Viscount Samuel passed away today.  He was elected to the House of Commons in 1900 replacing his uncle Samuel Montagu, 1stBaron Swaything.  He served until 1916.

1926:It was reported today that David M. Bressler, announced that contributions to the United Jewish Campaign in New York reached the sum of $4,835,867. (JTA)

 

1926: The New York Times reported that during his recent visit to Palestine, Yasha Heifetz performed a concert in the Valley of Jezreel near the site of the “legendary battle of Armageddon.” During the five day tour, Heifetz took part in seven concerts including one attended by 10,000 workers in Tel Aviv.

1927: Solomon Furth won three events today as the New York University freshman track team finished an undefeated season.

1927: In Brooklyn, Harry Hellerman, “a Jewish immigrant from Riga” and the former Clara Robinson gave birth to Fred Hellerman, a member of the Weavers, the group that brought folk music to whole generation of youngsters who knew that there was more to music than “crooners” and “rock stars.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/arts/music/fred-hellerman-last-of-the-weavers-folk-group-dies-at-89.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1927: In Brooklyn, Martha (Grundfast) and Louis Chester Ross gave birth to “actor, choreographer, director and producer.” Herbert David Ross.

1927: Forty members of the National Socialist Party, responsible for the recent anti-Semitic riots on Kurfuerstendamm, were arrested by the police today. In a statement issued by the chief of police, he declared that the police will combat terrorism in the streets of Germany's capital. (As reported by JTA)

1928: Six months after premiering in Germany “Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis” with a script by Karl Freund and Carl Mayer was released in the United States.

1928: “The proposal that officers of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union be elected by membership through a national referendum was defeated tonight by a vote of 13 to 56 after an all-day debate in which the elements in the International opposing Morris Sigman sought to secure passage of the resolution.” (As reported by JTA)

1928: Officials of the Hebrew National Orphans Home, led by its President, State Supreme Court Justice Aaron J. Levy, launched a drive today for an additional 10,000 members.

1929: In Palestine, The Mandatory Government announces an immigration quota of 2.400 permits for a half-year period, beginning in April.

1929(3rdof Iyar, 5689): After she passed away today, Russian born Jenny Rebeca Herbert, the wife of Aaron Herbert and the mother of Leo, Sophia and Eley Herbert was buried today in the Belfast Jewish Cemetery in Northern Ireland.

1929: Marcia Glick, the daughter of Bernard Glick and Alma Gluck and the stepdaughter of Efrem Zimabliest became Marci Davenport today when she married Russell Davenport, the editor of Fortune magazine.

1930: Talks between the heads of the Colonial Office and the Palestinian Arab delegation are concluded. Demands to end the growth of the Yishuv, immigration and land settlement remain unfulfilled.

1934: Birthdate of archaeologist Ehud Netzer who led the excavations at Heriodum for 30 years and who discovered “the Wadi Qielt Synagogue, the oldest synagogue ever found.”

1935: Sixty-five year old former United States Senator from Georgia, John S. Cohen who was raised in the Episcopalian faith of his mother Ellen Gobert Wright and not in the faith of his Jewish father, Philip Lawrence Cohen passed away today.

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000597

1935: Birthdate of composer Professor Yizhak Sadai the native of Bulgaria who moved to Israel in 1949 and became “one of the most regarded and influential music teachers in Israel.”

1935: Pepsodent Toothpaste began sponsoring Albert Pearce’s radio broadcast on the Blue Network and NBC today.

1936: Birthdate of Romanian native Ruth Wisse whose literary works include The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Literature and Culture, The Best of Sholem Aleichem, If I Am Not for Myself…: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, and Jews in Power and whose brother is “David Roskies, a professor of Yiddish and Jewish Literature at JTS.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/wisse-ruth-r

1936(21st of Iyar, 5696):Two Jews, Ruben Klapholtz and Alter Cohen were shot to death by Arabs inthe Old City of Jerusalem today, one as he left his home and the other as he passed an Arab Cafte.

1936: Tonight, “thirty Arabs attacked a Jewish stone-crushing plant outside of Jerusalem” killing “one ofthree Arabs working there, wounding another” before setting fire to the plant.

1936: “One Rainy Afternoon” a comedy produced by Jesse Lasky with a screen story by Emeric Pressburger and René Pujol, starring Francis Lederer and featuring Mischa Auer was released today in the United States.

1936: Following a funeral procession that police said was watched by 10,000 people, Rabbi Leo Jung delivered the eulogy at the funeral service for Judge Otto A. Rsalsky in the Jewish Center following whichCantor Pincus Jassinowsky chanted “El Mole Rachamin the Hebrew prayer for the dead.”https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1936/05/12/85392893.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1937: In New York City, “Russian Jewish immigrants Rachil Eriss, a draper and hatmaker, and Morris Lampert, an architect and ironworker” gave birth to University of Chicago and actress Zora Lampert, thewife of “broadcaster and novelist Jonathan Schwartz.”

1938: The Palestine Postreported that an Arab police constable who was expected to offer his testimony in the District Court was shot and killed by an Arab terrorist in a Haifa's market cafe. An Arab woman who came into the line of fire was also severely injured and later died from her wounds.

1938: The Palestine Postreported that at the League of Nations Britain requested "for the sake of peace" that all nations recognize the Italian conquest of Ethiopia.

1938: The Palestine Postreported that Poles became suddenly aware of the rapid Nazification of the local German community.

1938: Birthdate of Manhattan born, Queens raised Francine Pascal who gained fame as Francine Pascal the wife of John Pascal and the creator of “the Sweet Valley series of young adult novels.”

1939: SS St Louis departs Hamburg for Cuba with 937 Jews on board.  This tragic episode was portrayed in the book and the film, Voyage of the Damned.  Having been denied entrance to Cuba, the ship was turned away from the United States.  Steaming off the shore of Florida, the refugees could see the lights of Miami.  Coast Guard vessels tracked the ship to make sure nobody escaped and to keep the captain from running his ship aground in American waters.  In the end, the ship returned to Europe.  About half of the passengers survived the war.

1939: Nineteen year old George Jellinek and the family of Peter Gay were among the passengers aboard the SS Iberia when it docked today in Havana, Cuba.1939: “Miriam (née Klein) and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland, respectively” gave birth to actor Harvey Keitel.

1940: Tonight, in Miami, with the help of the Young Judea group, Junior Hadassah “honored their mothers in a special program” during which the girls gave their mothers “certificates stating that a tree had been planted in Palestine in their honor.

1940: As the British brace for an invasion by the Nazis who have already death lists for UK’s Jews, Winston Churchill delivered his speech to the House of Commons where the Prime Minister famously told his people, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat” which passed into popular folklore as I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat and tears.

1940: “As the German forces approached Amsterdam” today, the family of Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker whose visas had expired four days ago fled without this vital documentation and found “passage on the SS Bodegraven, in part because a soldier on guard recognized Dési who had given a concert for the troops.”

1940: Hans Rey, who is best known for creating Curious George, wrote in his diary today, “Songs English very slowly because of the events.”  “Songs English” refers to a book of French and English rhymes on which he was working.  “The events” refers to the German blitz driving across France.

1941: In Vienna, musician Josef Berger and teacher Therese Jany gave birth to Senta Berger, the actress who co-starred as an Israeli soldier, Karen, with Kirk Douglas in “Cast A Giant Shadow” and who co-founded Sentana Film with her husband Michael Verhoeven.

1941: The Nazis interned 3,600 naturalized Jews of Russian origin.

1942: U.S. premiere of “This Gun For Hire” which provided Albert Maltz with his “first screenwriting credit.”

1942: In Brooklyn Teddy and Esta Makowsky gave birth to their eldest daughter Renee Rivka who gained fame as “Rivka Haut, a prominent champion of Orthodox Jewish women fighting for divorce in rabbinical courts and seeking to pray together as a group.” (As reported by Jennifer Medina)http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/us/rivka-haut-dies-at-71-championed-rights-of-jewish-women.html?_r=1

1942(26th of Iyar, 5702): On day after his 41st birthday Hyam Greenbaum, British violinist, composer and conductor passed away today https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095906257

\http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Name/Hyam-Greenbaum/Conductor/98534-3

1943: Hans Frank sent Hitler a list of the "Jewish concealed and stolen goods," that were recovered including 94,000 men's watches, 33,000 women's watches, 25,000 pens and 14,000 scissors. Many of the watches were melted down for their gold or platinum content.

1944: Dr. Samuel Levy, chairman of the board of directors announced that Dr. Samuel Belkin, Talmudist and scholar, will be inducted as second president of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, which includes Yeshiva College on May 23.  The 33 year old Belkin is assuming a position left vacant by the death of Dr. Bernard Revel, the founder and first President of Yeshiva College.

1944(20thof Iyar, 5704): Eighty year old Florence Guggenheim passed away today.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/guggenheim-florence-shloss

1944: Throughout the Nazi camp system, inmate tattoo numbers gain a new series, prefaced with the letter "A." The intention is to conceal the number of prisoners at Auschwitz.

1945: Commissioning of HMS Sanguine, a Royal Navy submarine that would be sold to Israel in 1958 and renamed the Rahav

1945: The Soviet Union “halted all offensive operations” in Europe today.

1945: “The CBS, NBC, Blue and Mutual networks broadcast a second live production of the epic dramatic poem “On a Note of Triumph,” a commemoration of the fall of the Nazi regime in Germany and the end of World War II in Europe narrated by Martin Gabel.

1945: The photo of the “Raising a flag over the Reichstag” taken by Jewish photographer Yevgeny Khaldei was published today in Ogonyok magazine meaning that the two iconic flag raising photos of 1945 (the other being Iwo Jima) were taken by Jews.  (Add these to Robert Capa’s D-Day Invasion photos and the Life cover with the sailor kissing a girl at Times Square and you get a sense of connection between Jews and photo-journalism)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_a_flag_over_the_Reichstag#/media/File:Soviet_flag_on_the_Reichstag_roof_Khaldei.jpg

1945: During Winston Churchill's famous broadcast speech "Five years of War", Britain’s wartime Prime Minister remembers the valor of Lance-Corporal John Patrick Kenneally who won the Victoria Cross for his exploits in Tunisia in 1943.

1946: In Brooklyn Abe Wolfman, a policer officer and his wife Fay gave birth to Marv Wolfman former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics

1946: A year and a day before he married Arlene Francis, the mother of his son Tikun editor Peter Gabel, “CBS, NBC, Blue and Mutual Networks broadcast a second live production of “On a Note of Triumph, a commemoration of the fall of the Nazi regime in Germany and the end of World War II in Europe” narrated by Martin Gabel, the Philadelphia born son of Ruth and Israel Gabriel.

1946: “The Max Nordau, carrying 1,754 immigrants, was captured by the destroyers HMS Jervis and HMS Chequers

1946: As result of a hunger strike and threats to blow up the ship, the 675 passengers aboard the Dov Hos and 735 passengers aboard the Eliahu Golomber landed legally in Palestine.

1947(23rdof Iyar, 5707): Seventy-three year old Philadelphia born Harry Bachrach, the Republican Mayor of Atlantic City and Postmaster serving under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt and founder of the “Jewish Community Center in Atlantic City who was the husband of Hattie Bacharach and the brother of Benjamin Bacharach, the President of Beth Israel Synagogue and Congressman Isaac Bacharach who “represented the Second District

http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0447/ms0447.html

1947: The U.N. General Assembly established the United Nations Special committee on Palestine, also known as UNSCOP.

1948: The “Dov Hoz” with 675 ma’apilim on board and the “Eliahu Golomb” with 339 ma’apilim on board arrive at Haifa today.

1948: As the British began their withdrawal from the Old City, the Haganah awaited the attack by 20,000 Arab soldiers who were determined to capture Jerusalem.

1948: Chaim Weizmann calls Abba Eban out of a meeting at the United Nations seeking reassurance that the proposal to create a trusteeship for all of Palestine (a proposal that would kill the creation of the Jewish state) would not succeed.  Eban assures Weizmann that U.N. Secretary General has said that trusteeship is a non-issue.

1948: The Arab Emergency committee and the Haganah High Command signed the terms for the Arab surrender of the town of Jaffa.  Despite Jews pleas to stay, 67,000 of the city’s 70,000 inhabitants of the city left, many by boat for Lebanon.

1948: In a daring nighttime firefight, Jewish forces seized the fort at the ancient town of Gezer at the southern end of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem road.  This is the same Gezer that the Pharaoh gave to King Solomon as a wedding gift.

 

1948: On the day before Israel declares her independence, Arab irregulars perpetrate The Kfar Etzion massacre. Armored cars of the Arab Legion broke through the final defense line of Kfar Etzion.  In the last message sent by the defenders to Jerusalem, the defenders described “a Masada –like battle.”  The handful of Jewish defenders came out under a white flag and surrendered.  Fifteen of the defenders stacked their weapons, and then, lined up to be photographed.  Instead of the click of the camera, the Jews were treated to a burst of machinegun fire that killed all of them.  Was this planned or a freak accident?  To this day, the question has never been answered.  The victorious Arab Legion did kill an Arab family that had remained in Kfar Etzion with their Jewish friends.

1948: A motorbike courier delivers an envelope the Tel Aviv apartment of 32 year old Arieh Handler. The envelope contained an invitation to the ceremonies marking the Israeli Declaration of Independence. The envelope also contained a request that the arrangements be kept secret because of a fear that the British might stop the ceremony, or the Arabs might use the ceremony as pretext to attack. 

1948: Maury Atkin was offered a job as executive officer and agriculture attaché of the first Israeli embassy. The embassy actually would not exist for another 24 hours.

1949: Today Samuel A. Snieg, chief rabbi of the U.S. Zone, presented the first copy of the” Survivors  Talmud (“also known as the U.S. Army Talmud) “to General Lucius Clay, Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone in Germany, with the words, ‘I bless your hand in presenting to you this volume embodying the highest spiritual wisdom of our people.’”

1950: Eliahu Elath, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, was named Ambassador to Great Britain today.  Abba Eban is expected to succeed Elath.

1950: After premiering in New York in April, “I Was a Shoplifter,” produced by Leonard Goldstein and filmed by cinematographer Irving Glassberg was released in the rest of the United States today.

1951: “That’s My Boy” a comedy co-starring Jerry Lewis and featuring Polly Bergen was released in the United States today.

1952(18thof Iyar, 5712): Lag B’Omer

1952: The first degrees of Doctor of Medicine were awarded to 62 graduates of the Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical School.

1953: Hans “Eisler's opera project was discussed in three of the bi-weekly meetings "Mittwochsgesellschaft" [Wednesday club] of a circle of intellectuals under the auspices of the Berlin Academy of Arts beginning” today.

1953: Tennis player, promoter, and women's advocate Gladys Heldman released the first issue of World Tennis Magazine

 https://jwa.org/thisweek/may/13/1953/gladys-heldman

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that a Bill had been introduced in the Knesset by the Minister of Education and Culture, Prof. Benzion Dinur, for the establishment of "Yad Vashem" (an everlasting name), for the memory of the six and a half million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and were granted Israeli honorary citizenship. The Yad Va'Shem archives and museum were to be set up in Jerusalem, "The Heart of the Jewish People

1953: Hans “Eisler’s opera project was discussed in three of the bi-weekly meetings "Mittwochsgesellschaft" [Wednesday club] of a circle of intellectuals under the auspices of the Berlin Academy of Arts starting today.”

1954: “Lasser’s Eyes To Blind” published today described the decision Mrs. Jacob K. Klasser, the widow of the recently deceased tax and accounting expert to consent to his wishes and donate his eyes “the Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration, Inc.” which will use them for corneal grafting operations in Baltimore and Houston

1954: The original Broadway production of Pajama Game featuring features a score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross opened today and ran for 1,063 performances.

1954: The original Broadway production Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’ “The Pajama Game” opened today.

1957(12thof Iyar, 5717): Seventy year old Michael Fekete, the Hungarian born Israeli mathematician who won the Israel Prize of Exact Sciences in 1955 passed away today.

1959(5th of Iyar, 5719): Yom HaAtzma'ut

1959: Birthdate of British comedian and author Benjamin Charles “Ben” Elton, the grandson of German Jewish historian Victor Ehrenberg and the son Lewis Elton, a refugee from Hitler’s Europe and Mary Foster, a product of the Church of England.

 

1959: Birthdate of Israeli author Zeruya Shalev. A native of Kibbutz Kinneret and an editor at Keshet Publishing house, she survived a suicide bombing in January of 2004.

1960: “Papyri Found In Judean Cave Identified As Letters From Bar Kochba” published today described the discovery of “eleven letters, written by Simon Bar Kochba” “in a cave near the Dead Sea.”

1960(16th of Iyar, 5720): Seventy-one-year-old Chicago native and University of Chicago graduate Phillip Lewin, the Rush Medical College trained orthopedic surgeon who was a veteran of both world wars and the winner in 1938 of the Gold Medal from the American Congress of Physical Therapy, passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/05/14/99495346.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1961: Actor Jeff Chandler (Ira Gorssel) entered a Culver City hospital and had surgery for a spinal disc herniation, the complications from which would ultimately lead to his death.

1962(9th of Iyar, 5722): Franz Kline abstract expressionist painter passed away at the age of 51.

1965: Labour Political leader Lewis Cohen became Baron Cohen of Brighton when he “was raised to the Peerage” today.

1965: Germany established diplomatic relations with Israel. (This comes 20 years after its unconditional surrender, at the end of World War II, and 17 years after the establishment of the State of Israel.)

1965: Today, Lester Avnet announced the names of two new vice presidents who will be working at Avnet, Inc

1965: Several Arab nations broke ties with West Germany after it established diplomatic relations with Israel.  This came during the height of the Cold War when Communist East Germany was trying to establish itself as the real German government.  The West Germans knew what it would cost them in them in the international arena if they recognized Israel, but they went ahead and did it anyway.

1967: Birthdate of American singer, songwriter, guitarist and musical genre innovator, Charles Michael "Chuck" Schuldiner.

1967: Egyptian troops move into the Sinai, which is a demilitarized zone. Egypt radio sets the tone of propaganda ("Egypt, with all its resources, is ready to plunge into a total war that will be the end of Israel.")

1968: A funeral service for New York jurist George Frankenthaler is scheduled to be held at Temple

Emanu-El starting at 2 pm.

1968(15thof Iyar, 5728): Seventy-nine year old Budapest born Dr. George Vajna who served as government official and publisher in his native Hungary and came to the United States in 1939 where he eventually founded Transatlantic Arts, Inc. passed away today in Hollywood, FL.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/05/23/76947985.pdf

1969: Boris Kochubievsky goes on trial in Kiev charged with “slander against the Soviet regime.”

1970: “Getting Straight” a marvelous little comedy starring Elliott Gould was released in the United States today.

1971(18thof Iyar, 5731): Lag B’Omer

1971: “Four Nights of a Dreamer” in which Alabama born film critic appeared as an extra shortly after

having arrived in Paris was released in France today.

1972(29thof Iyar, 5732): Parashat Bamidbar

1972(29thof Iyar, 5732): Sixty year old Norfolk born physicist Dr. Julius Halpern who helped to develop radar during WW II passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/16/archives/julius-halpern-physigist-was60-professor-at-pennsylvaniawho-worked.html

1973: Sixty-three year old Dutch war criminal Dries Riphagen who conned Jews out of their valuables by promising them protection and safety and then turning them over to the Nazis passed away today, having never had to face justice for his evil deeds

1973: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College ordained its first graduate

1975:"Rodgers & Hart" opens at Helen Hayes Theater in New York City for 108 performances.

1978: After a month, in Miami, the curtain came down for the last time on National Touring Company’s

presentation of “Annie” with lyrics by Martin Charnin and music by Charles Strouse.

1980: ABC broadcast the last episode of season two of “Taxi” starring Judd Hirsch and created by James L. Brooks and Ed Weinberger.

1980: A Stradivarius built in 1734 was stolen today after Roman “had played an all-Mozart recital” at the Longy School of Music In Cambridge.

1981: Birthdate of Luciana Clare Berger the Laborite MP known as Luciana Berger who was the great-niece of trade union official and Labour MP Manny Shinwell.

1982: ABC broadcast the final episode of the short-lived sit-com “No Soap, No Radio starring Steve Guttenberg.

1983(1st of Sivan, 5743): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1983: Philip H. Dougherty reported that the “Israel Ministry of Tourism is more than tripling its advertising budget in the United States from last year, to $2.5 million, and may even add another $3 million to lure more American travelers and make up for the European falloff that followed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The advertising, created by Needham, Harper & Steers/Issues and Images, will promote a friendliness and warmth of the Israeli people toward travelers with the new theme line: ''Come to Israel,come stay with friends.''

1984: Newark, NJ born violinist and composer Max Pollikoff, the creator of the 92ndSt Y’s “Music in Our Time” series passed away today.

http://archives.nypl.org/mus/20059

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/14/obituaries/max-pollikoff-violinist-dies-created-music-of-our-time.html

1984(11thof Iyar, 5744): Seventy-nine year old Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, the Polish born American physicist who played a key role in the development of the hydrogen bomb passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/15/obituaries/stanislaw-ulam-theorist-on-hydrogen-bomb.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1984/05/16/mathematician-stanislaw-ulam-leader-in-bomb-research-dies/08ce9d61-b174-4814-ab3c-7b7f9e6412a5/?utm_term=.0a4946709aab

1985(22ndof Iyar, 5745): Sixty-four year old Canadian born American comedic actress Selma Diamond best known for role as a bailiff on “Night Court” passed away today in Los Angeles.

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-05-14/local/me-19057_1_night-court-actress-selma-diamond

1985(22nd of Iyar, 5745): Sixty-nine year old former Albright College lineman Leo “Moose” Disend who as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers NFL team played in the first ever televised professional football game in 1939 before going to play tackle for the Green Bay Packers passed away today.

1985: “Kiss of the Spider Woman” for which Héctor Eduardo “Babenco was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director” making him the first Latin American to be nominated in this category, premieredat the Cannes Film Festival.

1986(4th of Iyar, 5746): Yom HaZikaron

1986: In New York painter Carroll Dunham and photographer Laurie Simmons gave birth to Emmy Award

nominated actress, author, screenwriter, producer and director Lena Dunham.

1986: Natan Shcharansky is scheduled to meet with President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz in Washington, where he is to receive the Congressional Gold Medal at a reception in the Capitol Rotunda. (As reported by Jane Gross)

1987: Leonard Bernstein will serve as guest conduct of the Israel Philharmonic as the IPO marks its 50th

anniversary.

1988: Jack Lang began serving as Culture Minster of France for the second time.

1988: “The Wrong Guys,” a comedy directed by Danny Bilson who co-authored the script and co-starring

Richard Lewis and Richard Belzer was released in the United States today.

1988: “Maniac Cop” produced and written by Larry Cohen was released today in the United States.

1988: Vincent Canby reviews “The Lighthoresman,” an Australian made film that depicts the heroism of 800 Australian mounted soldiers who triumphed over thousands of Turks and Germans at Beersheba, in southern Palestine, on Oct. 31, 1917. The battle was a key to the eventual Allied victory over the Turks during World War I which was a critical step in the creation of the modern state of Israel.  As mechanized vehicles and machine guns came to dominate the modern battlefield, the Australians climatic cavalry charge against the Turks proved to be the last great, successful endeavor of this kind.

1993: CBS broadcast the final episode of “Knots Landing” one of the longest running prime time soap operas which was created by Baltimore native David Jacobs.

1994: It was reported today that “the common story that psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s mother and father had separated before his birth” was not true and the “closely guarded fact was that he was his mother’s

child from an extramarital union” who “never saw his birth rather of his mother’s first husband.”

1996(24th of Iyar, 5756): Eighty year old Professor Chaim Menachem Rabin, the native of Germany who became one of Israel’s premiere expert on Hebrew, especially as found in such ancient documents as the

Dead Sea Scrolls.

https://memim.com/chaim-menachem-rabin.html

1998(24thof Iyar, 5756): Eighty-nine year old Harry Wagreich, a Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at CCNY and the brothers Drs. Samuel and Paul Wagreich passed away today.

1998:A souvenir sheet of three illustrations by Kariel Gardosh (Dosh) showing postal activities and featuring the character of "Srulik": a service counter at a post office, philately, and post boxes is issued by the Israeli Postal Authority.

1999(27th of Iyar, 5759): Mary Ellen “Meg Greenfield” famed political columnist and editor of the Washington Post Editorial Page, passed away.

1999: On his 32nd birthday, famed musician Chuck Schuldiner was diagnosed with pontine glioma, a type of brain cancer that invades the brain stem, and immediately underwent radiation therapy.

2000(8th of Iyar, 5760): Parashat Emor

2000: It was reported today that “the parents of an Israeli-American teenager killed in a 1996 terrorist attack in Jerusalem filed a $600-million lawsuit in Chicago yesterday against several Islamic charities, nonprofit groups and individuals, contending that they raised money in the United States for Hamas, the militant Palestinian group.”

2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Holocaust on Trial” by D.D. Guttenplan, “Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial” by Richard J. Evans and the recently released paperback edition of “Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart” by Steven Bach “a careful, clear-eyed account of the life of the playwright, director and actor  who collaborated with Broadway's best and pleased many people many times without making large claims for his own significance.”

2001: Premiere of “Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.” directed and written by Claude Lanzman and starring Yehuda Lerner.

2003: Susan Page reviewed An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert A. Dallek, the Brooklyn born son of Rubin and Esther Dallek, the Bancroft Prize winning historian who specializes in
“big biographies” about American presidents.

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2003-05-12-kennedy_x.htm

2003: A memorial service is scheduled to be held this morning at the Chicago Yacht Club for Arnold Horween Jr. a successful Chicago business owner who once dined with former President George Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush.”

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-05-04/news/0305040211_1_harvard-friends-arnold

2004: In “What the Nazis Stole, Museums Tend to Keep” published today, Alan Riding described how “despite all the headlines, relatively little of” the art Nazis looted from Jewish homes “has been resituted.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/international/europe/what-the-nazis-stole-museums-tend-to-keep.html?searchResultPosition=42

2004: As the fighting in Gaza continued for a third day, Israeli troops continued their “search for the remains of five soldiers killed yesterday and “polls show that a solid majority of Israelis favor Prime Minister Sharon’s proposal to pull out of Gaza even though his Likud Party had rejected it.

2005: In “Reform Jews, Adrift in a Sea of Black Hats” published today Andy Newman described what it is like for members of “Progressive Temple Beth Ahavath Shalom” to live and pray in the Orthodox enclave of Borough Park.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/nyregion/reform-jews-adrift-in-a-sea-of-black-hats.html?searchResultPosition=25

2005: Eighty five year old Hugh William Montefiore, The Bishop of Birmingham and the great-great-nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore, who converted to Christianity while attending Rugby School – a famous English day and boarding school- passed away today.

2006: Eighty-nine year old Russian History Professor and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Peter Viereck whose views stood in stark contrast to those of Nazi-sympathizing father, George Viereck, passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/arts/19viereck.html?_r=1

2006: Approximately 3,000 people came a to a Toronto bookstore to see Leonard Cohen who was making his first public appearance in 13 years. 

2007: The Wolf Prizes are presented at ceremony in the Knesset.  Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute and George Feher of U.C. San Diego won the Chemistry Prize.  The Art Prize went to Italian Michelangelo Pistoletto.

2007: After 90 days The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition, including some original scroll fragments never before displayed in the United States comes to a close at the Union Station in Kansas City. The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition is a joint production of Union Station Kansas City and the Israel Antiquities Authority.

2007: The Sunday New York Times featuredreviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers includingThe Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon and Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek which presents a detailed examination of the relationship between America’s first Jewish Secretary of State and his Presidential patron whose dark sided included a predilection for making anti-Semitic remarks.

2007: The Sunday Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers includingThe Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer and The Diary of Petr Ginz, 1941-1942 edited by Chava Pressburger. Petr Ginz was a budding writer and artists who died at Auschwitz in 1944.

2007: The New York Times Magazine publishes “Writings in the Dark” by David Grossman in which “an Israeli novelist reflects on what literature can accomplish in a time of permanent political emergency and personal loss.”

2007(25th of Iyar, 5767): Harvey Weinstein, a formalwear manufacturer and former chairman of Lord West formal Wear, passed away at the age of 82

2008: Houston Astros catch Brad Ausmus got his 1,500th career hit making him one of eight catchers in major league history to get 1,500 hits and steal at least 100 bases.

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “Andy Borowitz, Jonathan Alter, Susie Essman, Calvin Trillin & More: Countdown to the Election” during which award-winning satirist Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker hosts an irreverent look at the upcoming presidential election, featuring Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, comedian Susie Essman and humorist and writer, Calvin Trillin.

2008: Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Lakeview's Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel Congregation leads a discussion of Rashi's Daughters Book 1: Joheved by Maggie Anton as part of the Spertus Book Review series. “

2008: U.S. President George W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and media mogul Rupert Murdoch are among the 13 heads of state and 3,500 guests expected to attend President Shimon Peres' Presidential Conference in Jerusalem, which begins today and is being held in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary.

2008: Best-selling author and Harvard psychology professor Tal Ben-Shahar was the guest speaker at today’s gala for the International Sephardic Education held at the Plaza Hotel, Daniel Roubeni received a Young Leaders Award. ISEF president Nina Weiner received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

2008: Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan assumed his new post as the 16th commander of the Israel Air Force.  

2008: “A New Editor at the Forward” published today described he ascension to this position by Jane Eisner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/business/media/13forward.html?fta=y

2008: At today’s gala for the International Sephardic Education Foundation, held at The Plaza, Iran-born real estate maven Daniel Roubeni, a Young Leaders Award recipient, got teary-eyed as he described leaving Germany (where he had grown up) “to find a Jewish wife in the U.S.”

2009(19th of Iyar, 5769): One-hundred eight year old Wlademar Levy Cardoso, who fought with the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in WW II and was the last living Field Marshall in the Brazilian Army passed away today.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2250826/posts

2009: At the National Archives in Washington, D.C.,Michael Lasser, host of National Public Radio's "Fascinatin' Rhythm," presents a lecture on the music of the Great Depression, "Let's Go Slumming, Nose-Thumbing, at Park Avenue." Lasser is co-author of “America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley” so the lecture is followed y a book signing.

2010: Professor David Ruderman is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “The People And The Book: The Invention of Printing And The Transformation of Jewish Culture.”

2010: The Wolf Prize Awarding Ceremony is scheduled to take place at 6:30 pm the Knesset Building in Jerusalem. The awards are scheduled to be presented to the recipients by the President of the State of Israel, in the presence of the Chairman of the Knesset, the Minister of Education, the Chairman of the Wolf Foundation Board of Trustees, and members of the Foundation´s Council.

 

2010: A cross section of rabbis and Jewish leaders met in the White House today with administration leaders in the second of two meetings that are part of a “charm offensive” designed to reassure the American Jewish community of the Obama administration’s positive view of Israel.

2010: Oz Goffman of the Ministry of Agriculture said today that parliament must still approve the proposal to ban fishing on the Sea of Galilee for the next two years before it takes effect.

2011: On the secular calendar “Friday the 13th”. Friday the 13th has not always been a lucky day for the Jews.  In Strasbourg, the Jews were arrested by a newly installed town council on Friday 13, 1349 on charges that they were responsible for the Black Plague. The Jews were burned the next day, St. Valentine’s Day. Sholom Aleichem, who died on the 13thof May suffered from triskaidekaphobia – the fear of the number 13. Arnold Schoenberg experienced triskaidekaphobia “which possibly began in 1908 with the composition of the thirteenth song of the song cycle Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten Op. 15 (Stuckenschmidt 1977, 96).”  His fear of the number 13 is especially odd since he was born the 13thof September and died on the 13th of July. In her novel “Paternity” Susan Baruch created a character who was born on the 13th and suffers from triskaidekaphobia. For the most part, the Jewish view of the number “13” runs contrary to the Western concept that associates it with bad luck.  Bar and Bat Mitzvah are associated with the number 13.  The TaNaCh lists 13 attributes of God.  There are six hundred and 13 commandments. Maimonides Creed contains 13 principles of Judaism.  There are 13 months in the year. I know, this is not really history, but every so often you have to have a little fun.

2011:The International Young Israel Movement and the Maimonides Heritage Center are scheduled to present: Shabbaton in the Holy City of Teverya

2011(9th of Iyar): Ninety-five year old cellist Bernard Greenhouse, a founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, passed away today, (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/arts/music/bernard-greenhouse-cellist-dies-at-95.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss.

2011(9th of Iyar): Centenarian Vivian Myerson a political activist in Los Angeles and later a member of the city’s Human Relations Commission passed away today. (As reported by the Eulgizor)

2011: After protracted contract negotiations, Michael Rosenbaum returned to play “Lex Luthor” in the season finale of “Smallville” which was broadcast today.

2012: As part of Yom Hashoah events, artist Wendy Weisel is scheduled to speak during the presentation of her painting "Es Brent"– "It is Burning" at Tifereth Israel in Washington, DC.

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer.

2012: The Los Angeles Times features a review of The Crisis of Zionismby Peter Beinar

2012: “Mazel Tov! A Jewish Celebration of Jewish Weddings” an exhibit that explores the mores, symbolic artifacts, and celebration unique to the Jewish wedding is scheduled to open at the JewishMuseum of Milwaukee.

2012: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu congratulated Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz on his joining the government coalition during his opening remarks at the weekly cabinet meeting today

2012: Presentation of the Wolf Prizes.

2012: Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan today called on the government to cut off the supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip in order to avoid electricity shortages it is feared could affect Israel this summer. (As reported by the Jerusalem Post

2013: Fred Lorber, a Holocaust survivor who lives in Des Moines was among the speakers at today’s groundbreaking ceremony for a Holocaust memorial that is being built “alongside the walkways leading up the west terrace of the Iowa Capitol grounds, near the intersection of East Seventh Street and Grand Avenue.”

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2013/05/14/iowans-remember-holocaust-at-memorial-groundbreaking/article

2013: Philadelphia born professional tennis player Julia Cohen today “peaked at world number 121 in the doubles ranking.

2013: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “Baseball: Kosher Style” featuring Larry Ruttman, Jeffery Lyons, Bob Tufts and Alan Dershowitz

2013: The Center for Jewish History with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance’s An-sky Institute for Jewish Culture are scheduled to present: “Tsimbl un Fidl – Uncovering the Lost Jewish String Music of Eastern Europe

2013: In Little Rock, AR, the Chabad Center for Jewish Life under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host an open house that will feature an appearance by an authentically trained and certified Sofer.  This rare event is part of the preparations for Shavuot

2013: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present: Berlin Book Evening – “Jews in Berlin” and Essays by Kurt Tucholsky

2013(4th of Sivan, 5773): Eight –five year old Dr. Joyce Brothers passed away today (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/arts/television/dr-joyce-brothers-psychologist-dies-at-85.html?hpw&pagewanted=print

2013:The operating budget for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s official and private residences jumped some 80 percent from 2009 to 2012, according to figures made public today following a request by the Movement for Freedom of Information.

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Budget-for-PM-living-expense-jumped-80-percent-in-4-years-313075

2013: Until now, new immigrant nurses have had to prove they can converse with patients in basic Hebrew, but physicians -- who have less direct contacts with the sick were exempted. Now the Knesset Labor, Social Affairs and Health Committee today approved regulations that would require doctors and two other types of professionals in healthcare to show their Hebrew proficiency as well.

2014: The Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism is scheduled to host a panel discussion on “Nationalities and Parliaments Now. What Can We Learn From the Past?”

2014: In the aftermath of the Holyland corruption case “Ehud Olmert was sentenced to six years in prison, a two-year suspended term, and a fine of NIS 1 million ($289,000) in the Tel Aviv District Court.”

2014: The Anti-Defamation League released the results of its global survey on anti-Semitism today.

2015: “Rosenwald,” a documentary about Julius Rosenwald, “the part owner of Sears and Roebuck” who funded the building of 5,400 schools across the segregated American South, providing 660,000 black children with access to education” is scheduled to be shown at the 18th Annual Film Festival sponsored by the National Center for Jewish Films.

2015: Annette Libeskind Berkovits is scheduled to discuss In the Unlikeliest of Places: How Nachman Libeskind Survived the Nazis, Gulags, and Soviet Communism her new biography about her father at the Center for Jewish History.

2016: In Olney, MD Rabbi David Golinkin, “who was named by the Jerusalem Post as one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world:  is scheduled is scheduled to speak on “Earthly or Heavenly? Will the real Jerusalem Please Stand Up?” at Shaare Tefilah.

2016: Congregation Rodeph Sholom is scheduled to host “a Shabbat Evening Celebration of Israel.”

2016: The Biennial Convention of the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America is scheduled to open in Baltimore, MD.

2016: International Hummus Day

http://thejewniverse.com/2016/just-in-time-for-international-hummus-day-survey-finds-israelis-are-really-really-into-hummus/

2016(5th of Iyar, 5776): On the fifth of Iyar 5708 (May 14, 1948) the state of Israel was born.

2017(17th of Iyar, 5777): Parashat Emor;

2017: International Humus Day celebrating a food that “93% of Israelis eat more than once a week.:

2017: Centerfielder Kevin Pillar today “became the American League leader in hits with 47, after a 3-for-4 performance against the Seattle Mariners.”

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Seudah Shlishit and havdalah following by a Lag B’Omer celebration completed with a bonfire, smores, singing and drinking.

2017: “A Story of the Land of Israel through the Lens: A History of Photography in Palestine-Israel” and “Israel’s Nationalism: The Original Conflict within Zionism and its Transformation in the Course of Its Implementation” are two of the presentations scheduled to be offered at today’s session of LIMMUDFSU NY.

2017: A monument honorig Captain Witold Pilecki, “non-Jewish Polish Army officer who reported on atrocities at Auschwitz after allowing himself to be captured and later fought in the resistance was unveiled in Warsaw” today. (JTA)

2017: The PIcon Union Project and the Jewish Music Commission of LA are scheduled to host “Niki Jacobs & Nikitov in Concert with special guest Mostly Kosher.”

 2017: Cedar Rapidians are marking the 101stanniversary of the death of Shalom Aleichem by attending a production of Fiddler on the Roof performed by the students at Jefferson High School.  These talented youngsters have not only mastered song, dance and drama while doing all of the behind scenes work like building their own sets, thanks to the efforts of their teacher and director, Lynn Jensen they have learned about culture and customs in a time and  place that was unknown to them.  Thanks to Mrs. Jensen, there is a Cedar Rapids Shtetl that makes the community proud.

2018: The 26th annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to end today.

2018: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Memento Park by Mark Sarvas, Healing From Hate: How Young Men Get Into – and Out of – Violent Extremism by Michael Kimmel and  Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu by Anshel Pfeffer

2018: In Atlanta, The Breman Museum is scheduled to host the opening of the “Chasing Dreams: Baseball and Becoming American,” a “traveling exhibition that highlights the story of Jewish immigration and diverse communities and how they are integral to baseball’s role in teaching American Culture.”

2018: Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to present a concert of music inspired by the City of Gold, featuring cellist Elad Kabilio and an ensemble of musicians from MusicTalks for a selection of music ranging from Ladino and Klezmer to Opera and Israeli song.

2018: The Washington Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.2018(28th of Iyar): Yom Yerushalayim

2018(28th of Iyar): Eighty-three year old Lean Rose Napolin the Alfred University graduate who gained fame as the playwright who created the Broadway hit “Yentl” passed away today. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/obituaries/leah-napolin-whose-yentl-adaptation-made-broadway-dies-at-83.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018: In Columbus, Ohio, Rachel Levin is among those taking part in Closing Day Religious School activities at Congregation Tifereth Israel.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “The Samuel Project” starring Hal Linden.

2019: In New Orleans, AIPAC is scheduled to host its “Annual Community Event with Bret Stephens” this evening.

2019: “In conjunction with the exhibit “Lest We Forget,” the S.F. Civic Center, with ADL and the Israeli consulate, is  hosting a panel talk today on the recent rise of global anti-Semitism.”

2019: Eighty-nine year old Holocaust survivor Sophie Tajch Klisman “welcomed US Army veteran” Doug Harvey “to her suburban Detroit home today and thanked him for taking part in the 1945 liberation of the German concentration camp where she was being held.” (As reported by Mike Householder)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/holocaust-survivor-has-emotional-meeting-with-us-veteran-who-liberated-her-camp/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2019-05-14&utm_medium=email

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host the “Orchestra of St. Luke’s Vivaldi Concerto” this evening.

2019: “The Goethe Institute, the Consulate General of Israel and the ADL in conjunction with ‘Lest We Forget,’ a Holocaust remembrance project” are scheduled o present “Anti-Semitism, Yesterday and Today,” a “panel discussion on the global resurgence of anti-Semitism and its relationship to white nationalism and other forms of hatred and bigotry.”

2019: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to co-host curator Ilona Moradof’s tour of “Kindertransport – Rescuing Children on the Brink of War, illuminating the organized rescue efforts that brought thousands of children from Nazi Europe to Great Britain in the late 1930s”at the Center for Jewish History z:

2019: Millions of lovers of Sabra, “the official dip sponsor of the National Football League” can celebrate National Hummus day by chowing on this marvelous culinary creation

2020: As part of its Educator Workshop program, the National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host “The Power of Objects: Enhance Your Virtual Teaching Through Objects.”

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present “The Syrian-Jewish Community of NY: Similarities & Differences to other Jewish Communities.”

2020: As part of its on-line Pop-Up Israeli Restaurant series, the Streicker Center is present “Lior Lev Sercarz, the country’s most sought-after spice expert – author of Mastering Spice and owner of La Boîte – as he conjures up entirely new tastes with unique blends.

2020: As Jews deal with the effects of the endemic they also can digest the ADL’s report that “last year saw the most anti-Semitic incidents in the United States since at least 1979” since “the 2,107 incidents recorded in 2019 reflect a 12% increase from 2018 and are more than double the 942 incidents recorded just four years earlier, in 2015.”

2020: JDC is scheduled to host a Webinar, “as JDC Archives Fellow Emily Bengels discusses Interagency Efforts for Child Rescue and Immigration to the U.S. from 1939 to 1942.”

2020: In California, Rodef Sholom is scheduled to host via Zoom “Lunch and Learn for Lag BaOmer: Stories around the Campfire with Rabbi Elana Rosen-Brown.”

2020: On-line the London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to host Dr. Lindsay Simmonds as she explores Talmudic lessons offered by Dr. Ruth Calderon.

2021: The NCJW Women’s Issues Virtual Webinar Program in partnership with Hadassah and Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana is scheduled to discuss Work/Life “Imbalance" in the time of Covid today via Zoom

2021: Rabbi Ruth Adar is scheduled to talk about the transmission of the Torah and Shavuot in HaMaqom | The Place’s yearlong “Jewish Holidays & Traditions 101” series.

2021: As part of the JCC Book Fest in Your Living Room series, Paula Shoyer the “Kosher Baker” is scheduled to talk about her latest cookbook and show how to cook cheesecake in an Instant Pot and traditional blintzes.

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present Jennifer Weiner as she discusses her latest novel That Summer.

2021: JDC Archives Fellow Alexandra Kramen is scheduled to host a webinar on “The Struggle for Holocaust Justice in the Jewish Displaced Persons Community of Föhrenwald, 1945-1957.”

2021: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present”The Remarkable Religious Creativity of Egyptian Rabbis in Modern Times.”

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3316178650420/WN_NbYx1Ra_Q--CE-YSQ6oMXA

2021: After Prime Minister Netanyahu informed the members of the security cabinet last night “that Israel has officially rejected a Hamas proposal for a ceasefire, Israel is prepared to implement to “intensify military attacks on Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets.

 

 

 

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

$
0
0

May 14

 1141: As he journeyed towards Jerusalem, Yehuda Halevi set sail for Palestine today from Alexandria, Egypt. According to legend, Halevi was killed by an Arab horseman when as he reached his ultimate destination.

1288: Thirteen Jews in Troyes, France were burned at the stake by the inquisition

1316: Birthdate of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor. Charles viewed his Jewish subjects as “servi camerae” and issued numerous letters ordering that they not be harmed.  The title of Holy Roman Emperor sounded grand but had very limited power so these letters went unheeded for the most part.  However, when the Jewish community of Breslau was attacked, Charles ordered the killers to be arrested and punished for their crimes.

1482: As the Christians continued their push to take control all of the Iberian Peninsula King Ferdinand took command at Alhama during the Granada War.

1483: Coronation of Charles VIII of France ("Charles l'Affable"). In the second year of his reign, following accusations of usury, the inhabitants of Marseilles, the port city of the recently acquired territory of Provence, attacked the Jewish neighborhoods pillaging them and killing numbers of Jews in 1484 and again in the early months of 1485, leading to an exodus of Jews from the city, especially to Sardinia which became home to about 200 Jewish families of Marseilles. However, King Charles VIII was not inclined to conform to the popular demand of expelling the Jews from Provence. He decreed that all Jews wishing to leave should be allowed to leave Marseilles unharmed on condition they had fulfilled all their engagements with the Christians. The city authorities, on the other hand, were not prepared to let the Jews leave Marseilles with their property and took various measures in order to reduce their emigration, among others they organized an inventory of the Jewish property in Marseilles in 1486. The resulting protests of the Jews assured the royal intervention and a few additional years of protection. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 brought new Jewish inhabitants to Marseilles. In 1492 the Jewish community of Marseilles ransomed 118 Jews of Aragon captured by the pirate Bartholemei Janfredi, having paid the sum of 1,500 écus, which it borrowed from a Christian. Renewed anti-Jewish attacks in 1493 eventually led to the general expulsion of the Jews from Marseilles three years after Charles passed away in 1498.

1507: Hernando de Talavera, the archbishop of Granada and Confessor of Queen Isabela who came from a family of “Conversos” passed away today. (Editor’s note – he is but one example of how those with “Jewish Blood” held positions of power and responsibility much to the consternation of Old Christians in Spain.)

1572: Gregory XIII begins his papacy. “Gregory's policy toward the Jews cannot be distinctly characterized, since it swayed between relative favor and severity. Soon after his election, he protected the Jews in the ghetto of Rome who were in danger of being attacked by the soldiers. Further, an order issued by his notary threatened with hanging any non-Jew found in the ghetto or its vicinity without a valid reason. Gregory authorized once more moneylending with a maximum interest rate of 24%. He guaranteed the safe-conduct of Jews coming into Italy or passing through the country. Although Marranos were also able to benefit from this concession, Gregory nevertheless allowed the Marrano Joseph Saralbo, who had returned to Judaism in Ferrara, to be condemned to the stake in 1583. Gregory was also responsible for organizing regular compulsory missionary sermons, often with the collaboration of apostate preachers The Jewish community was compelled to defray the costs of this institution, as well as the expenses of the House of *Catechumens. The new prohibitions against Jewish physicians treating Christian patients contributed to the decline of medical science among Italian Jews. However, shortly before his death, Gregory intervened with the Knights of Malta to obtain the release of Jewish prisoners in their hands, even though the ransom he offered was lower than the sum demanded.” (As reported by Jewish Virtual Library)

1590: On this date the Sumptuary Laws were enacted aimed at the Jews of Casale (Italy). These were laws regulating what Jews may wear, how they may marry, what they may serve at a wedding, and all manner of what might be called social intercourse. These laws were commonplace in Europe and designed to humiliate and punish the Jews in the name of Christ

1610: Nine year old Louis XIII began his reign as king of France with his mother Marie de Medici, whose Italian family at this time “invited Jewish merchants to settle in Livorno” and granted them unlimited access to trade, serving as regent

 

1637: The Jews of Venice were denied the right to practice law

1643: Louis XIII, who in 1615 had “signed letters patent renewing the expulsion order against not only Jews but also those who profess and practice Judaism” and in 1632, while visiting Metz “granted the Jews letters of patent which declared their presence in the a necessity” passed away today

1643:  Four-year-old Louis XIV becomes King of France upon the death of his father, Louis XIII. Louis reigned until his death in 1715.  His record of dealing with the Jews was uneven, based primarily on financial needs and attempts by Catholic French merchants to use religion to oust their Jewish competitors.  Five years before his death, he issued a final ban against Jews living in France, a ban that was not fully enforced.

1726(13thof Iyar, 5486):  Rabbi Moshe Darshan, author of Torat Ahsam, passes away.

1756(14thof Iyar, 5516): Pesach Sheni was observed on the same day that the British Ambassador to Prussia was reassuring Frederick that France was not gaining influence with Russia which seems ludicrous when you consider that the Seven Years War, in which Russia and France would join ranks to fight the Prussians was only days away from beginning.

1761: Birthdate of the infant daughter of New York resident Moses B. Franks who died in fancy at the age nine months.

1775(14thof Iyar, 5535): Pesach Sheini was observed four days after the Second Continental Congress, which would become the political voice of the American Revolution began meeting in Philadelphia and four days after the rebels seized Fort Ticonderoga, whose guns would eventually be used to drive the British from Boston, was seized by rebel militia.

1794(14thof Iyar, 5554): Pesach Sheni was observed as the Polish and Lithuanian forces at Vilnius the home of a large and long-standing Jewish community led by the Vilna Gaon, prepared for a return of a Russian Army that was determined to put down the rebellion in this most recently acquired part of the Russian Empire.

1797(18thof Iyar, 5557): Lag B’Omer is observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1803: Birthdate of Salomon Munk, the German-born French Orientalist. In his formative years he was a trained in Torah and Talmud before moving on to Berlin where he became well versed in the classical languages and cultures.  He moved to France, because as a Jew, he could not be hired to work in his chosen profession.  In France, he developed an expertise in the works of Aristotle and Maimonides.

1807: The newly created grand duchy of Baden recognizes “Judaism as an officially tolerated religion” mean they are “emancipated.”  At the same time Jews are still exclude from being employed in the civil service.

1808: Birthdate of Leon Hyneman, a native of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania  who settled in Philadelphia where he was a leading Mason and the father of eight children including Leona Moss who gained fame as an actress using the stage name of Leona Moss and Alice  Hyneman, a noted author.

1811: In Georgetown, SC, Abraham Myers, a veteran of the American Revolution and his wife gave birth to 1833 West Point Graduate and veteran of the Seminole and Mexican wars Abraham Charles Myers, the husband of Marion Twiggs and Quartermaster General of the CSA who was the a descendant of Rabbi Moses Cohen, the father of Lt. General John Twiggs and the namesake for the city of Ft. Myers, FL.

1813(14thof Iyar, 5573): Pesach Sheni is observed as American troops regroup and refit in New York after having defeated the Canadians at York during the War of 1812.

1817: Birthdate of Moses Polock “a well-known and somewhat eccentric antiquarian bookseller” who was the maternal uncle of Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach.

1819: In Bavaria, Moses and Sprinz Schmitt Anker gave birth to Mary Anker who became Mary Anker Bendel when she married Henry Bendel with whom she had nine children.

1820: Birthdate of Morris Rosenbach, the husband of Isabella H. Polock and father of Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach, his eighth and youngest child who became one of America’s leading collector of rare books and manuscripts.

1824: The Justices of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, meeting in Lancaster, a city that for one day in September, 1777 was capital of the nascent United States of America, "carefully perused and examined" the Constitution of the Jewish congregation known as Kaal Kadosh Mickve Israel (The Holy Congregation Hope of Israel) in Philadelphia which decrees that services in the Philadelphia synagogue shall always be according to the custom of the Portuguese Jews. The finding of Justices Tilghman, Gibson and Duncan was that this, and everything else in their proposed constitution, was lawful. It was a beautiful example of the novus ordo seclorum "the new order of the times" promised on the Great Seal of the United States. Let us strive to remember this in our day when this new order is under constant attack, both at home and abroad.

1828: Lewis Raphael married Rachel Mocatta today.

1832: Birthdate of Rudolf Lipschitz, the German mathematician who gave “his name to the Lipschitz continuity condition.”

1832: The premiere of “L'elisir d'amor” which would later be produced by Max Maretzek took place at the Teatro della Canobbiana, Milan

1843(14thof Iyar, 5603): Pesach Sheni

1843(14thof Iyar, 5603) Forty-two year old Amsterdam born and Columbia College educated physician Daniel Levy Maduro Peixotto, the “son of Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto who served as “president of the Willoughby Medical College in Cleveland before returning to New York where he practiced medicine until his death today.

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/daniel-levy-maduro-peixotto

1846: Birthdate of Ernst Herter, the German sculptor who created the Lorelie Fountain, a memorial to Heinrich Heine that was unveiled in the Bronx because the city of his birth, Dusseldorf, rejected it due the prevailing anti-Semitic views in the “Fatherland.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorelei_Fountain#/media/File:Heine_Bronx_1.jpg

1846(18th of Iyar, 5606): Lag B’Omer

1846(18th of Iyar, 5606): Benjamin Jonas, the husband of Annie Ezekiel and afther of Baruch Jonas which made him the father-in-law of Teresa Barbarin, passed away today in Exeter, England.

1847: Composer Fanny Mendelssohn passed away.  She was the granddaughter of Moses Mendelssohn.  Her grandfather was one of the founders of what would become Reform Judaism.  Unfortunately, Fanny was not Jewish.

1853: Word reached the United States today, as reported in the New York Times,that Holy Week had seen outbreaks of violence in Jerusalem. Greeks and Armenians fought with each in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher while 24 “missionaries of the London Protestant Association” had “a scuffle with the Jews in the streets of Jerusalem.”

1853:  According to reports published today, J. Lewis Levy Esq., who is Jewish, has been returned as guardian of the Cathedral City of Rochester (U.K.)

1853: The New York Times reported that the Earl of Aberdeen has told the House of Lords that he had changed his mind about the Jewish Disabilities Bill.  Two years ago he had voted against the bill.  Now he was prepared to vote for it because “he regarded the exclusion of the Jews from civil privileges as a remnant of the spirit of persecution which prevailed in former times throughout Christendom.”

1854: The American Society for Meliorating the Conditions of the Jews celebrated its sixth anniversary with a meeting tonight at the Reformed Dutch Church in New York City.  The organization is dedicated to converting Jews to Christianity.  The Society is convinced that the Jews of the United States are ripe for conversion.  However according to its own figures there are more than 40,000 Jews living in the United States and the society has successfully converted 79 of them.

1855(26th of Iyar, 5615): Eighty-eight year old French banker Beer Léon Fould the son of Jacob Bernard Fould and the father of Achille Fould, the French Finance Minister for Napoleon III passed away today in Paris.

1858: In Andover, CT, Susan and Joel Foote Bingham gave birth to Theodore Alfred Bingham who while serving as “Police Commissioner of New York published an article in North American Review on "Foreign Criminals" in which he asserted that half the criminals in the city were Jews” – an assertion he retracted after creating this controversy.

1859: Isaias W. Hellman and his brother Herman W. Hellman arrived in Los Angles from Bavaria and went subsequently went to work in a dry goods store owed by their cousins.

1859: Mr. R. J. de Cordova, a well-known humorist is scheduled to give a lecture this morning at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.  Mr. de Cordova is scheduled to give a lecture every third Saturday for the rest of the year.

1861(5thof Sivan, 5621): Erev Shavout

1861: Birthdate of Alfred J. Cohen, the native of Birmingham, England who moved to the United States in 1887 and as Alan Dale became a leading and often “despised” theatre critic.

1861: A copy of the War Department order announcing Major Mordecai's resignation reached the arsenal at Watervliet, NY which forced Mordecai to relinquish command to his subordinate before his unnamed replacement had arrived.

1864(8th of Iyar, 5624):Baron Salomon de Rothschild died in Paris today at the age of 29, only two years after his marriage and less than a year after the birth of his daughter, Helene. He was buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in the family vault. Of his death, the Goncourt brothers wrote "Cabarrus, the Rothschild's doctor, told Saint-Victor that the young Rothschild who died the other day really died of the excitement of gambling on the stock exchange."

1864: Emma Mordecai had a dispute with her sister-in-law Rosina over reports of a victory by the Confederates under General Lee.  Rosina, who was not Jewish, doubted the report.  Emma, who was Jewish and was an ardent Southern patriot, insisted that the report must be true.  Mordecai's outburst was intemperate since she was a refugee staying at her sister-in-law's Virginia farm

1865(18thof Iyar, 5625): Lag B’Omer

1865: In Galicia, Marcus Langbank and Rachel Langbank gave birth to Dr. Lucian Mayer Langbank.

1867: Birthdate of Kurt Eisner, author and critic turned politician.  Eisner opposed the Kaiser during World War I and became the first democratically elected leader of Bavaria after the war.  He was assassinated in 1919.

1869(4thof Sivan, 5629): Sixty-five year old “Talmudist and bibliographer” Gabriel Jacob Polak, whose works include “Dibre Kodesh, a Dutch-Hebrew dictionary passed away in Amsterdam today.

1872: In response to a U.S. Senate resolution of March 28, today, President Grant sent to the Senate copies of all correspondence regarding “the persecution and oppression of the Israelites of Romania.” The correspondence consisted of a series of letters from Benjamin F. Peixotto, the American Consul at Bucharest and Hamilton Fish, the U.S. Secretary of State.  In the correspondence, Peixotto described the attacks on the Jews and the failure of the government to punish the attackers.  He also described the efforts made by the representatives of several European governments, except for the Russians, who attempted to intercede with the government of Prince Michael on behalf of the Jews.  For his part, Secretary Fish wrote to Peixotto expressing his support for any action that might “avert or mitigate further harshness toward” toward the Jews living in Romania. [Editor Note – The Grant Administration’s support of the Jews of Romania is but one of several actions that would tend to show that Grant was not an anti-Semite and that the order of expulsion he issued during the Civil War was an aberration and a mistake he regretted rather than a sign of deep character flaw.]

1873(17thof Iyar, 5633): Seventy-six year old Gideon Brach the Austrian physician and surgeon who was the nephew of Moritz Steinschneider passed away today.

1873: The New York Times reviewed Sketches of Jewish Life and Historyby Henry Gersoni which was published by the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Printing Establishment.

1875(9thof Iyar, 5635): Seventy-five year old linguist and literary historian Gottfried Bernhardy passed away today.

1876: Birthdate of Etta Karesh Levin, the wife of Julius Levin and the mother of Sidney Levin who after her death in 1952 was buried in KKBI Cemetery in Charleston

1877: One day after he had passed away, Solomon George Collins the son of “Isaac Van Kollem and Maria Mozes,” the husband of Catherine Isaacs and the father of Adelaide and William Collins was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1879: An article subtitled “Frenchmen of Foreign Origin: Distinguished Instances of Aliens Attaining Position in France” published today provides background information on several non-native Frenchmen who rose to prominence in France and who played key role in the life of the country.  Of the Jews who fit into this category, the article mentions “the ancestor of the bankers Pereire [who] was a Portuguese Jew who introduced into France the teaching of the deaf and dumb; Bisschoffsheim, another banker is a self-made Jew…Bauer a Hungarian convert from Judaism [who] was court preacher to Napoleon III…Salomon Munk, another orientalist was a German Jew. So too was Jules Oppert, whose religion obliged him to seek a professorship in France.” [Editor’s Note – The references to Munk and Oppert are self-explanatory, although the column makes one mistake.  It was Munk, not Oppert, who came to France because his religion precluded him from being hired in his native Germany.  Bauer probably refers to Abbe Bauer who reportedly trained as a Rabbi before converting to Roman Catholicism.  Bisschoffsheim is probably Raphael Louis Bischoffsheim, the banker whose philanthropy included the founding of the Nice Observatory. Pierre probably refers to Emile and Isaac Pierre the 19thcentury bankers of Sephardic origin, who were the sons of Jacob Rodrigues Pereira, who was “one of the inventors of a manual language for the deaf.”

1879: Mary Nolhes swore out a complaint in the Essex Market Police Court today “charging her husband, Joseph, a Polish Jew with abandonment.”  The complaint was dismissed after the court determined that Joseph was “a henpecked husband” who had been abandoned by his wife.  Gustav Diner, a “young and muscular man” who was the complainant’s brother, left the court with the couple.  Once outside of the building, Diner, who apparently thought he could not be seen by anybody from the court “began to pound his brother-in-law unmercifully.” A police officer named Ryan “collared Ryan” and took him back to Court where he was jailed on charges of assault and battery.

1882: In Bloomington, Illinois several members of the Jewish community met at the B’nai B’rith hall to discuss the organization of congregation which would be founded later in the year as Moses Montefiore Congregation with Aaron Livingston as President.

1884(19thof Iyar, 5644): Seventy-two-year-old Montague M. Hendricks, the son of Frances Isaacs, the Lancaster, PA born daughter of Joshua Isaacs and Harmon Hendricks the “prominent manufacturer of copper and grandson of Uriah Hendricks one of the founders of Congregation Shearith Israel, passed away today.

1884(19th of Iyar, 5644): Forty year old Karel Abraham Wertheim, the son of Johannes Jonas Wertheim and Marie Rosenick and the husband of Henriette van Heukelom passed away today in the Netherlands.

1884: Max Shloss and Rosa Shnerman were married today in Des Moines Iowa.

1885: Birthdate of conductor and composer Otto Klemperer.  Born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) Klemperer was a child prodigy taking his first music lessons at the age of four.  Like so many of his generation, Klemperer had two lives.  The first was in Germany, the second in the United States.  His musical contributions to his native land were recognized by President Hindenburg who gave him the Goethe Medal "for his contributions to the advancement of German Culture."  A few years later, in 1933, the Nazis confiscated his property and issued a warrant for his arrest.  Klemperer came to the Klemperer came to the United States in 1934 with the reputation as a world-famous conductor.  Over the years he led orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh and was director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra for six years.  He also continued his distinguished career as a composer.  He died in 1973 at the age of 88.

1886: Birthdate of Polish born Dutch businessman Abraham Icek Tuschinski who built several movie theatres in the Netherlands and was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.

1887: In Warsaw, Abraham A. and Roaslia (Cherniakow) Ostrolenk gave birth Boston University and University of Pennsylvania Bernhard Ostrolenk, the director of the National Farm School in Pennsylvania and the husband of Esther A. Weinstein.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ostrolenk-bernhard

1888: In Rumania, Samuel and Rachel Barasch gave birth to Nathan Emanuel Barasch to University of Cincinnati graduate and HUC ordained, Nathan Emanuel Barash, the holder of a law degree who served as a chaplain during WW I.

1888: Two days after he had passed away, Jamaica native Charles Emanuel Morrice, the “fifth son of Phoebe and Samuel Morrice” was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemtery.”

1889(13thof Iyar, 5649): Thirty-five year old Sophie Walter, the wife of Mortiz Walter and the daughter of Joseph and Babette Seligman passed away today.

1889(13th of Iyar, 5649): Samuel Hirsch, a major Reform religious philosopher and rabbi, passed away in Chicago, Illinois. Born in 1815 at “Thalfang, (Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany (formerly part of Prussia), he received his training at Metz. He attended the University of Bonn, the University of Berlin, and the University of Leipzig. He first became rabbi at Dessau in 1838 but was forced to resign in 1841 because he promoted a radically liberal form of Judaism, later to become known as classic German Reform Judaism. In 1843 he published his "Die Messias-Lehre der Juden in Kanzelvorträgen" and "Religionsphilosophie der Juden." In 1843 he was appointed chief rabbi of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg by King William II of the Netherlands. During this period he published his "Die Humanität als Religion." He took an active part in the annual rabbinical conferences held at Brunswick (1844), Frankfurt am Main (1845), and Breslau (1846). In 1844 he published his "Reform im Judenthum." Having received a call from the Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1866, he resigned his post in Europe and moved to the United States. There he succeeded Dr. David Einhorn. From his arrival onward he became closely identified with, and an open advocate of, radical Reform. In 1869 he was elected president of the rabbinical conference held in Philadelphia, at which the principles of Reform Judaism were formulated. In that year he engaged also in numerous ritual and doctrinal controversies. Hirsch remained officiating rabbi of the Philadelphia congregation for twenty-two years, resigning in 1888, after having spent fifty years of his life in the ministry. Moving to Chicago, he took up his abode there with his son, Emil G. Hirsch. During his rabbinate in Philadelphia Hirsch organized the Orphans' Guardian Society, and was the founder of the first branch in the United States of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Hirsch is best known as the author of the "Religionsphilosophie," a work written from the Hegelian point of view, but for the purpose of vindicating the claim of Judaism to the rank denied it by Hegel, the rank of an "absolute religion." In this book he proved himself to be an original thinker (see "Allg. Zeit. des Jud." 1895, pp. 126 et seq.). His "Katechismus der Israelitischen Religion" was also constructed on original lines; he considered the Biblical legends to be psychological and typical allegories, and the ceremonies of Judaism to be symbols of underlying ideas. From this attitude his Reform principles are derived. He denied that Judaism is a law; it is Lehre ("teaching" or "lore") but is expressed in symbolic ceremonies that may be changed in accordance with historic development. He was the first to propose holding Jewish services on Sunday instead of the traditional Jewish Sabbath Shabbat. He contributed to the early volumes of The Jewish Times (1869-1878). His principal works were first issued in Germany, among them What is Judaism?(1838), sermons (1841), and Religious Philosophy of the Jews (1843).”

1890: Birthdate of London born American munitions maker, Republican political leader and Special Assistant Secretary of Labor Murray Garsson who married Rose Levy Garsson after the death of Rose Garsson and who after becoming a munitions maker was convicted of war profiteering.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/03/28/84909966.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1891: Claims have were filed by many of the unsecured creditors of Levy Brothers & Co with the Sheriff today

1891: In Iassy, Rumania, Morris and Marie Kauffman gave birth to University of Berlin trained economist and health educator Savel Simand who in 1913 came to the United States where he wrote for the New York Times, lectured at Yale, Harvard and Columbia while serving as the “administrative director of the Bellevue-Yorkville Health Demonstration and director of public education for the New York City Health Deaprtment.

1891: Solomon Crizar, a Polish Jew was still in custody today facing charges for setting fired to a tenement on Johnson Avenue in Brooklyn, NY

1891: A detachment of troops has been sent from Athens to Corfu to restore order after an outbreak of violence that has resulted in the death of 2 Jews and all businesses owned by the Jews closed. At the same time the Prefect of Corfu has been summoned to Athens to explain the outbreak of violence

1892: In Germany, the liberal newspapers express the hope that the libel action brought by Loewe & Co against Rector Ahlwardt, the well-known Jew-baiter will put an end to his false claim that this Jewish firm supplied defective rifles to the army.

1892: Mrs. Schloss purchased a picture embroidered by a little girl from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum on the last night Actors’ Fund Fair.

1892(17thof Iyar, 5652): Fifty-two year Asher Simchah  Weissmann, who in 1889 founded  a German periodical, "Monatsschrift für die Litteratur und Wissenschaft des Judenthum," which was issued with a Hebrew supplement passed away today in Vienna.

1892: “Columbia Likely to Get More Books” published today described the successful efforts of Professor Richard Gottheil and E.R.A. Seligman to secure the books in the library of Temple Emnau-El for Columbia College.  The school already has a Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages.

1893: Harold Frederic sent a cable from London “announcing that the exodus of Jews from Poland had actually begun and that the refugees were already arriving in America.”

1893: It was learned today that many of the Jews arriving at Ellis Island from Hamburg were not German Jews, but Polish Jews who had spent the winter the German port.

1893: “New Jersey Religious Bodies” published today provides a picture of denominational membership in the Garden State. There are 19 Orthodox congregations with 2,521 members and 5 Reform congregations with 1,755 members scattered through the state.  The total number of Jews in the state is thought to be closer to 15,000 than the published 4,276. The discrepancy is created by the fact that most congregations tend to just count the head of the family instead of all family members.

1893: It was reported today that in Germany “the ultimate result of the elections will be a Reichstag considerably more reactionary than the last which will vote for the army bill in return for legislation” advancing the cause of anti-Semitism.

1893: It was reported today form London that “it turns out that the expulsion of Jews from Poland has been going on longer and on a far large than scale that “previously suspected and that while “Sir Julian Goldsmith and one other official of the Jewish Board of Guardians” knew about it “nothing has been published” in the local press about the matter.

1894: In Denver, CO, Council No. 6 of the National Council of Jewish Women was organized today with a membership of 98 led by Mrs. C.S. Benjamin as President

1894: Two days after she had passed away, 60 year old Hannah Levy, “the daughter of Hart and Julia Levy” was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

art

1894: Birthdate of Jacob Meyer Levy, the native of the Ukraine who immigrated to Palestine at the age of 19, the Israeli educator and author whose works included five volumes of history textbooks “and the translation of four of French-Jewish philosopher Henri Bergson's books into Hebrew.”

1894: The London correspondent of the New York Times reported today that the Jewish immigrants being forced to leave Russia face an additional challenge – an outbreak of Cholera which has spread from southwestern Russia to areas near Hamburg and Riga which are the ports of embarkation used by these emigrants

1894:  A summary of the statistics that first appeared in the “new journal, the Rundschau” published by “the Jew-baiter” Herman Ahlwardt that the Jewish population in Berlin has gone from 6,500 in 1840, to 30,000 in 1870 to 75,000 in 1890 and that “46 per cent of all the houses in Berlin belong to Jews.” (This compares to a total population of 322,626 in 1840, 826,341 in 1871 and 1,578, 794 in 1890).

1895: Based on a review published today, “Oliver Twist” is no longer popular with New York theatre goers. Among other things, “the audience refused to take Fagin seriously” even though H. G. Carleton played the part with great skill.  Apparently, a play featuring an evil Jew no longer has the allure it did when Dickens wrote the novel on which the play is based.

1895: In Paris, Gaston Michel Calmann-Lévy married Hélène Calmann-Lévy

1895: Two days after he had passed away, 47 year old Nathan Isaacs, the husband of Louisa Lyons with whom he had had five children was buried today in the United Kingdom/

1895: Birthdate of Lew Lehr, the native of Philadelphia, PA comedian and writer in the pioneering days of film and radio whose works included Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19500307&id=M5EpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=oOUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6834,3478241&hl=en

1896: Birthdate of Martin Riesenburger, the Berlin born dentist who survived the Shoah to help rebuild the Jewish community in post-war Germany.

1897(12th of Iyar, 5657): Seventy-five year old opera impresario Max Maretzek passed away at Pleasant Plains, New York

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10401-maretzek-max

1898: “Stories of the Ghetto” published today provides a review of The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of the New York Ghetto by Abraham Cahan.

1898: The Rabbi of Temple Israel in Harlem Dr. M. H. Harris presided over today’s events marking “the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of Temple Israel of Harlem and the 10th anniversary of the dedication of the present edifice” which included an address by Dr. Emil G. Hirsh, the Chairman of the Semitic Literature Department at the University of Chicago on “Eternal Judaism.”

1898: At Jefferson Barracks, MO, during the Spanish-American War, among those who were mustered into the 3rd Missouri Volunteer Infantry Privates Morris Franklin, Samuel P. Bachar, Hugh L. Herzberg, Mark Bidez, Robert Samuels, Max Cohen, Joseph D. Meyers, William Levin, Harry Heller and Corporal David A. Goodman, all from Kansas City, MO was as Privates Clarence Leftwich and Edgar W. Marks of Independence, MO.

1898: During the Spanish-American War, the United States acquired the USS Celtic, “a stores ship” on which Lt. Jr. Grade Stanford Moses served during the Philippine-American War.

1899: Three days after she had passed away, Esther Blashka, the wife of Isaac Blashka was buried to in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”

1899: Reverend Madison C. Peters of the Bloomingdale Reformed Church gave the second lecture in his series “Justice to the Jew” in which he is trying to correct many of the inaccurate conceptions about this “race that has been maligned.”

1899: In Krefeld, chemist Friedrich Auerbach, the son of Leopold Auerbach and his wife gave birth to zoologist and geneticist Charlotte “Lottie” Auerbach.

1899: “Russian Plans Against Jews” published today described various anti-Semitic policies being pursued by the Czar’s government, the first of which was the prohibition of Jews being in St. Petersburg, the nation’s capital.  The ban applies to foreign Jews including those from France, Russia’s primary military ally.

1899: “Opposed to Zionism” published today provided a summary of the views on Rabbi Samuel Schulman that first appeared in the Menorah in which the Reform  cleric “the movement as an outgrowth of Jewish despair” which is an “interruption of the work of education and Americanization of the Russian Jews” in the New York City.

1900: The 16th annual report of the Hebrew Technical Institute showed “that the past year was an unusually successful for the institute and James H. Hoffman, the schools president was reported to have said that one of those most gratifying facts was that “not one of the graduates of the institute is unemployed” and that “the wages received by the graduates average from $5.25 per week for beginners to $25 and upward for the more experienced ones.”

1901: As a financial crisis threatens a “serious smash” in the London Stock Exchange Jacob Schiff was among the Directors of the National City Bank who met to discuss the matter which centers around the Northern Pacific Railway.

1902: Italian General Giuesppe Ottolenghi, a native of Lombardy was appointed Minister of War today.

1903: As “funds for the aid of the sufferers in Kishineff, Russia, continue to come to the committees having the matter in hand, and increase not only in number, but in amount,” Arnold Kohn, Chairman of the Central Relief Committee, said today that $2,000 had been contributed from the east side alone during the day, and that the checks coming from places outside New York City indicated that the sum total would be far beyond expectation.

1904: In Bern, Switzerland Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić gave birth to their second child and first son Hans Albert Einstein.

1904: Herzl writes to the Austrian Foreign Ministry. He reports on this audience with Agenor Goluchowsky, the Austrian Foreign Minister.

1905: “Some soldiers belonging to the Fifty-third Battalion of the infantry reserved pillaged several Jewish houses on Nichols Street” in Kishineff.

1905: It was reported today that the Kaiser, on learning that “Goldschmidt Rothschild, a grandson of the late Baron Rothschild of Frankfort, after having served for a year in a guard regiment was turned down for a commission (presumably because he was Jewish) appointed Rothschild a Court Chamberlain which to the officer’s staff of the regiment taking the hint and offering him a commission.

1906: Based on the recently issued annual report of the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children whose goal is “to give free trips on land and water to poor destitute and sick children of the Jewish faith and to supply them with medical and advice” 2,023 were admitted in 1905 as compared to 1,513 being admitted in 1904.

1907: Julia Richman, the District Superintendedt of Public Schools wrote to the New York Times “that our schools must provide *as a substitute for the adademic branches, valuable to those children who continue their schooling to or through high school and college but valuable to such children only) a course in elementary industrial trailing for those children who are forced to become wage-earners before thye enter the seventh year of school.”

1908(13th of Iyar, 5668): Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach, a New York gangster was gunned down.

1909: Samuel Elfenbein, the son of “Moses and Rosa Elfenbein and his wife Celia Elfenbein gave birth to Phillip P Elfenbein, the husband of Sarah Elain Elfenbein.

1910: A pogrom was perpetrated by a nationalist organization against the cultural institutions of the Russian Jews in Buenos Aires.

1911: Eighteen year old Morris Kolsky who gained fame as cinematographer Richard Freyer arrived in New York “on board the steamship Majestic.”

1911: One day after he had passed away, 40 year old Nery Leuria, the husband of Bertha Leuria with whom he had had six children was buried today at the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery” in Northern Ireland.

1912: The Tomb of Samuel Manasseh Ben Israel was restored at the Middleburg Portuguese Cemetery in Holland.

1912: In London, an exhibition of the work of pupils from the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts and Jerusalem’s Evelina de Rothschild School came to a close today

1913: New York Governor William Sulzer approves the charter for the Rockefeller Foundation, which begins operations with a $100 million donation from John D. Rockefeller. Governor Sulzer enjoyed support among the Jewish community of New York City and signed The 1913 New York State Civil Rights Act into law.

1913: Mrs. B.M. Engelhard is scheduled to be installed as President of the Baron Hirsch Woman’s Club this afternoon in the Banquet Hall of the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago.

1913: Birthdate of Chelsea, Massachusetts native Ben “Red” Kramer, the standout guard and forward for Long Island University in the 1930 who went on to play professional ball from 1938 to 1945.

1914(18thof Iyar, 5674): Lag B’Omer

1914: In an example of how Jewish culture was an integral part of Western civilization “Josephslegende (The Legend of Joseph) a ballet based on the Biblical story of “Potiphar’s Wife” premiered today at the Paris Opera.

1915: During WWI, the Alliance Israelite Universelle announced that it would continue all activities in its institutions in the Ottoman Empire.

1915: In expressing his support for President Wilson, “A.L. Shiplikoff, Secretary of the United Hebrew Trades said…’The 300,000 Jews represented by the United Hebrew Trades in this city are in favor of he abolition of war and the permanent establishment of international peace.”

1915: Plans were announced today for a public mass meeting in Minneapolis “to ask the Governor of Georgia to commute Leo M. Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment.

1915: “The Zionist Association and its affiliated organizations in America and England” are appeals “to obtain the State Department…to obtain the release from the detention camp at Ruhbleben near Berlin of Israel Cohen, Secretary of the International of Zionist Organization” who is the author ofJewish Life in Modern Times and was interned at the beginning of the war” because he was a British subject.

1916: As of today, the American Jewish Relief Committee of which Felix M. Warburg is the treasurer had received additional contributions including $24 from the Menorah Society of Penn State University, $25 from the Cairo Thread Works and $100 from Zeta Beta Tau.

1916: “After Henry Morgenthau” who had just resigned as the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey “told of the pitiable plight of the outlawed Armenians at a mass meeting in Carnegie Hall this afternoon” those in the audience “started a $5,000,000 relief fund, with contributions of more than $30,000.”

1916: “At a meeting of the members of the American Jewish Committee held today at the Hotel Astor…a resolution was adopted to authorize the committee to unite with other Jewish societies for the calling of a congress of Jewish societies in June for he purposed of obtaining full rights for the Jews of all lands and the abrogation of all laws discriminating against them.”

1916: In Philadelphia, PA, the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War held a national conference where it was reported that the organization had raised $1, 074, 386.

1917: The Columbia Menorah Society sponsored a concert of Jewish music this evening at the Horace Mann Auditorium at Columbia University with the proceeds going to Jewish War Relief.

1917: The Cantor’s Association of American which had been founded in 1908 held its 8thannual meeting under the leadership of President Solomon Baum.

1917: Dr. J.L. Magnus is scheduled to attend today’s meeting of the Chicago Rabbinical Association at the Stratford Hotel.

1918: “To Pray for Victory” published today described the call sent out by the Union the Orthodox Rabbis signed by Rabbis Moses S. Margolies, Solomon E. Jaffe and Israel Rosenberg among announcing that in accord with President Wilson request for a day of prayer and fasting on May 30 all synagogues would remain open for worship on that day and the fast would be treated in the same manner as official fast days on the Jewish Calendar.

1919: Today, “The University College of Wales established the world’s first Chair in International Politics with Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, a Christian who became an avid Zionist  as its first professor  

1920(26th of Iyar, 5680): Sixty year old “David Kessler, one of the leading Yiddish actors in the United States and the manager of Kessler’s Second Avenue Theatre” passed away this afternoon at Beth Israel Hospital.

1923: A check for $10,000 was handed by Mr. Felix Warburg to Dr. Chaim Weizmann just before the former sailed for Europe.

1923: “Until its reorganization today, the Oberat” the supreme council that directed the affairs of the Jewish community “was under state control

1923: It was reported today that The Committee on Higher Degrees of Columbia University has accepted the dissertation of Dr. Mordecai Saltes entitled “The Yiddish Press As A Force in America.” (JTA)

1923: A radical change in money raising methods for National Jewish philanthropies was proposed at the National Conference of the Jewish Social Service which began its sessions this afternoon here at the Hotel Washington. The proposal, made by Mr. Samuel A. Goldsmith of the Bureau of Jewish Social Research, New York, on behalf of the Committee of Nine appointed last year was that instead of these institutions obtaining their maintenance and other funds by direct, personal solicitation, a national budget be established based on the requirements of these institutions. (As reported by JTA)

1924: In Berlin, Alfred Schuman, a German Christian who converted to Judaism and his wife Hedwig née Rothholz Schuman gave birth to jazz musician Hein Jakob “Coco” Schumann who at 19 was shipped to Theresienstadt “where he became a member of the Ghetto Swingers” before being shipped to Auschwitz where he beat death a lived until liberation despite having contracted the deadly spotted fever.

1924: The first conference of the General Zionist movement concluded its meeting in Jerusalem. It decided to establish a General Zionist Federation to amalgamate all centrist factions in Palestine.

1924: Establishment of the city of Bnei Brak.  Bnei Brak is mentioned in the Bible as one of the cities of the tribe Dan.  Later it was famous as the site of Rabbi Akiva’s academy.  The city is mentioned in the Haggadah as the place where the all-night Seder of the Rabbinic sages took place.  The modern city was founded by charedi Jews from Poland and is famous for its yeshivot and Chassidic communities. Bnei Brak is northwest of Tel Aviv.

1925(10thof Iyar, 5685): Sixty-seven year old investment banker Abraham G. Becker, the Warsaw born son of Nathan and Henrietta Schaffner Backer, the husband of Katherine Friedman Becker and father of Margaret, Helen, Louise and James Becker who in 1865 came to Chicago where he rose from being “an errand for the German National” to heading A.G. Becker while serving as “a trustee of the Hebrew Union College and Sinai Temple and director of the Jewish Charities of Chicago passed away today.

1925: In Chicago, Etta and Samuel Handmaker gave birth to Herman Handmaker1925: Birthdate of Hungarian born historian Tibor Szamuely who served with the Red Army during World War II, served 18 months in a labor camp on espionage charges and produced a “major study of Soviet history, The Russian Tradition.

1925: In New York City, Max Lowenthal and Eleanor Mack, the niece of Judge Julian Mack gave birth Columbia Law School trained attorney John Lowenthal, the WW II Navy veteran who was the defense attorney for Alger Hiss.

1925:  Birthdate of Yuval Ne’eman founder of Israel’s space program and a key figure in Israel’s nuclear program. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/may/15/obituaries.guardianobituaries

1926: Birthdate of Allen Mandelbaum, whose fluid, sensitive English version of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” stamped his reputation as one of the world’s premier translators of Italian and classical poetry (As reported by William Grimes)

1927: In Brussels, Max Stuckgold, an engineer, and his wife Marsha who “were Jewish immigrants from Poland” gave birth to Julien Joseph Stuckgold who became a major New York real estate developer.http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/realestate/commercial/julien-studley-real-estate-broker-who-began-career-in-a-bedroom-dies-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1927: Birthdate of Detroit native Seymour Austen Lipkin, the grandson of a professional violinist and the son of a doctor who played with the Doctors’ Symphony Orchestra who became a leading conductor and pianist.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/12008392/Seymour-Lipkin-pianist-obituary.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/arts/music/seymour-lipkin-pianist-and-conductor-dies-at-88.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1928(24th of Iyar): Novelist Mordecai David Brandstaetter passed away today

1929: In Winnipeg, Canada, Rebecca and John Weidman gave birth to Barbara Weideman, who as Barbara Branden, the wife of Larry Branden “helped popularize Ayn Rand’s philosophy” but then upset her acolytes with an unauthorized biography of the “queen of self-interest.”

1929: Birthdate of William Jay Adler, Brooklyn born author and editor whose works included What to Name Your Jewish Baby. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/business/bill-adler-writer-editor-and-compiler-of-books-dies-at-84.html?hpw&rref=obituaries

1930: In Norwalk, CT, Henry Abrahams and “the former Minnie Koffman” gave birth to Elizabeth Abrahams who gained fame as “ceramic artist Elizabeth Woodman” and the husband of artist George Woodman.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/obituaries/betty-woodman-dies-spun-pottery-into-multimedia-art.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1930: In New York, Ruth and Sol Peterman gave birth to famed opera singer Roberta Peters http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/peters-roberta

1930: Dr. Leon Pazi, who has just returned from Palestine, cheered delegates to the Argentine Zionist Congress which opened here today, with an optimistic report of the work of the Jewish colonies in Palestine. Zionists from all parts of Argentine are in attendance. Assurance of the support and sympathy of the people of Argentine for Zionism was given the congress by Senator Molinari while reports on the work of the Buenos Aires Zionist Federation during the riots in Palestine last Summer and on the aid being given Zionism by Zionists in Argentine were read to the delegates by the president of the Buenos Aires Zionist Federation. (As reported by JTA)

1931: In New York City,Eugene Picker, “a film pioneer and movie theatre executive of Loew’s Theaters” and his wife gave birth to David Picker, the Dartmouth graduate who “served as President and Chief Executive Officer for United Artists, Paramount, Lorimar and Columbia Pictures.”

1931(27th of Iyar, 5691): Playwright and stage producer David Belasco passed away.

http://www.broadway.tv/broadway-features-reviews/haunting-broadway-the-ghost-of-david-belasco

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

1933(18th of Iyar, 5693): Lag B’Omer

1933: Indignation against the Hitler regime in Germany is not confined to British Jewry but is shared by the British public of all classes and opinions, Leonard Montefiore, president of the Anglo-Jewish Association, told members of the Board of Jewish Deputies today

"We also enjoy the sympathy of the British Government, but the Government has other problems like disarmament and the World Economic Conference," he pointed out. "Nevertheless, Dr. Alfred Rosenberg realized the universal condemnation of British opinion."

The Archbishop of Canterbury has promised to speak at a public meeting in London if it is arranged as really representative of the country, Mr. Montefiore announced.

He declared the statement that Jewish soldiers in the war and Jews whose sons were killed in battle were exempt from dismissal from their positions in Germany was "pure camouflage. I met men possessing the Iron Cross debarred from the courts by administrative chicanery," he said.

The Joint Foreign Committee, which was organized by the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association to conduct foreign affairs, was urged by Simon Marks, who has been prominent in Zionist fund-raising activities, to ask the aid of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, former president of the World Zionist Organization, "in conducting the wider political work ahead." In reply, Nathan Laski declared that the Joint Foreign Committee had consulted Dr. Weizmann several times but that the organization cannot hand him the leadership, which, he said, would be abdication. He said the committee has also been in contact with Lord Reading and Sir Herbert Samuel (As reported by JTA)

1933: Boxer (and future mob boss) Mickey Cohen fought his last bout today in Tijuana.

1934: A natural disaster occurs in Tiberius when cloudbursts cause flooding and rockfalls. Homes are swept into Lake Kinneret.

1935: A court in Bern, Switzerland, pronounced the German edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a forgery.

1936:  Viscount Edmund Allenby passed away.  As General Allenby, he led the Allied forces that liberated Eretz Israel, including Jerusalem, from the Ottoman Turks.  Allenby’s victory gave practical meaning to the Balfour Declaration by creating facts on the ground.  Furthermore, a Jewish Legion fought under Allenby’s command and played a central role in some of the fighting with the Turks.

1936: A large Jewish delegation met with the British High Commissioner and discussed the worsening conditions in the country brought on by continued Arab attacks and violence. The Mayor of Tel Aviv questioned the ability of the British to deal with the situations and leaders from Hederah said they could mobilize 150,000 men to protect the Jews and their interests.  The High Commissioner praised the “exemplary Jewish behavior and self-control…He requested the Jews to fortify themselves with more patience.”

1937: Today’s March of Time included an “episode” describing pressure being brought by the Worker’s Alliance led by David Lesser on U.S. legislators to combat unemployment.”

1937: The Government today rushed police reinforcements into the Polesia province as anti-Semitic rioting in the town of Brzesc (formerly known as Brest-Litovsk), which caused injuries to 50 Jews and an estimated $400,000 damage, gave signs of spreading to neighboring villages.

Windows were broken, shops looted, and Jews attacked in the streets in the rioting which occurred after a policeman had been fatally wounded, according to an official statement, by a Jewish butcher who resisted arrest for operating an unlicensed slaughterhouse. The butcher was wounded in the foot by a bullet.

The excesses raged all day and into the evening before the police, aided by reinforcements from Warsaw, got control. Three Jews were seriously injured. Most of the Jewish shops in the town were demolished and others closed their doors.

Many peasants attending market day in Brzesc participated in the rioting, dragging Jews from hansoms and beating them in the streets. Main trading streets suffered most from vandalism and looting. Market, May, Dluga and Dombrowska streets were thickly carpeted with glass from broken windows and destroyed merchandise.

Gazeta Polska and other Government newspapers said the anti-Semitic mob did not pillage the Jewish shops but only "threw Jewish goods out into the street where they were destroyed, while meat and bread taken from Jews were distributed gratis to poor Christians."

Polish newspapers said the pillaging began after a Jewish mob attacked police who arrived to confiscate illegally-slaughtered kosher meat (outside the strict Government quota for kosher meat) of the Jewish butcher Isaac Szczerbowski.

The policeman, Stefan Kedziora, was stabbed and later died in the hospital. The Union of Christian Tradesmen of Brzesc announced that shops of its members would be closed during his funeral.

Panic was still great today among the 25,000 Jews of the city. Deputy Emil Sommerstein left for Brzesc this morning while Senator Moses Schorr obtained assurances from the Interior Ministry that a special police force had been sent to prevent further outbreaks. The city known to Jews as Brisk, has a population of over 50,000.

Stringent restrictions on kosher slaughtering which went into effect Jan. 1 under a law enacted by Parliament, empowering the authorities to set monthly quotas of cattle to be slaughtered for Jewish consumption, have, in some cases, resulted in "bootleg" slaughterhouses being established.

Meanwhile, peasants in Zaista, near Malkin, attacked a group of anti-Semitic National Radicals who had rioted against Jews. The terrorists, known as Naras, called on the peasants to join in breaking windows of Jewish shops, but the peasants drove the rioters from the village.

The peasants later rebuked the Jews for closing their shops during the disturbances, declaring "the action is likely to incite further attacks." The peasants asked the Jews to reopen their shops, promising them protection. (As reported by JTA)

1937: Jews were forbidden today to give performances of Beethoven, Mozart and Goethe on the ostensible grounds that they must be allowed "to develop their own spiritual and creative genius."

Explanation of the ban was offered by Hans Hinkel, Nazi Commissar for Jewish Cultural Affairs, who said:

"Jews must be allowed to develop their own spiritual and creative genius. If they are unable to or show themselves so poor in spiritual endowments that they cannot develop their own culture, it is all the more necessary to show the world that we cannot allow them to become the masters of our cultural life." (As reported by JTA)

1938: Jean Martin Freud, Sigmund Freud’s son who was known as “Martin” left Austria for London today.

1938: Classic swashbuckler adventure film “The Adventures of Robin Hood” co-directed by Michael Crutiz (Manó Kaminer), co-produced by Hal B. Wallis and with music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold was released today in the United States.

1939(25thof Iyar, 5669): Fifty-nine year old “Solomon/Samuel Max Handelman, the husband of Mollie Handelman and father of Seymour and Fred Handelman passed in the Bronx after which he was buried in Queens.

1940(4th of Iyar, 5700): Anarchist and feminist, Emma Goldman passed away.  Born in Russia in 1869, she fled Russia in 1885 during a period of intense anti-Semitism.  Over the years she became active in anarchist causes.  Her anti-war political activities cost her U.S. citizenship and deportation back to Russia to experience the Communist takeover in that country.  Goldman was anti-Communist and ended up escaping to Britain.  For the rest of her life she devoted herself to trying to save the world through anarchy and feminism.  She died in Toronto but the American government allowed her body to be buried in Chicago, the city that had so influenced her life.

1940: Three hours after the German’s delivered an ultimate “ordering the Dutch commander of Rotterdam” to begin a cease fire, German bombers killed over 30,000 of the city’s inhabitants when they fire bombed Rotterdam.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-184.jpg

1940: As the Blitzkreig replaced the “Phony War” the Nazis crossed the Meuse at Sedan and began chasing a French Army that “was running for its life” – a run that would end in Nazi victory, Vichy collaboration and the slaughter of French Jews.

1940: “Shortly before Brussels was occupied,” Hugo Gutman who served in the same regiment as Hitler during World War I and his family “escaped only with small suitcases taking the last train to France.”

1940: As of today, the Kindertransport which had started in December, 1938, had brought 7,500 Jewish children to Britain.

1940: At 12:30 pm, New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman met with President Roosevelt in the White House.

1940: One very last transport left on the freighter Bodegraven from Ymuiden on May 14, 1940 – the day Rotterdam was bombed, one day before Holland surrendered – raked by gunfire from German warplanes. The eighty children on deck had been brought by earlier transports to imagined safety in Holland. Altogether, though exact figures are unknown, the Kindertransports saved around 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. None were accompanied by their parents; a few were babies carried by children.

1940: Abraham Icek Tuschinski lost all of his movie houses in Rotterdam today “when the city was bombed by the Germans.”

1941: The Nazis arrested more than 3,600 Parisian Jews and sent to them concentration camps. This marked the start of the roundup of Jews in the Occupied Zone of France (the area directly controlled by the Nazis as opposed to Vichy France.  The roundup began with Polish Jews who had become naturalized French citizens but it did not stop here.

or

1941: Approximately 4000 Jews are deported from Paris, most to a camp at Pithiviers, France. “Pithiviers, near Orleans, was one of the infamous concentration camps where children were separated from their parents and imprisoned, while the adults were processed and departed to camps further away, usually Auschwitz.”  This camp, like the one at Drancy, was operated by the Vichy French and their collaborators.  Contrary to the image that the French have concocted about their behavior during World War II, French fascists, led by Petain and Laval, were active participants in the Nazi New World Order.  As to the Jews, the French were already handing them over even before the Germans asked for them.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/07.asp

1941: The decision was made in Tel Aviv to establish the Palmach (Plugot Mahatz or ‘striking companies’ of the Haganah.  “The Palmach had two primary aims: the defense of the Yishuv against the Arab bands which would inevitably harass the Jewish towns and settlements and engage in local rioting as soon as the British retreated from Palestine; and the defense of the country against the Axis invaders.”  Yitshaq Sadeh, a Jew born in Russia in 1890, was the found and first commander of the Palmach.  He passed away in 1952.

1941: The Nazis interned 3,600 naturalized Jews of Russian origin.

1941: Today, Jan Peerce “made his stage debut as the Duke in ''Rigoletto'' in Philadelphia.”

1941: “East River Bank Sells Vacant City Realty” published today described the purchase of 24 lots by Elias A. Cohen’s Omnibus Reality Corporation” which also provides a mini-history course on the development of the East Side.

1942(27th of Iyar, 5702): Noted Jewish Viennese pianist Leopold Birkenfeld is murdered at the Chelmno death camp.

1943(9thof Iyar, 5703): Seventy-four year old Dutch citizen Johanna v. Engel-Gruenewald was murdered today at Sobibor.

1944: In Hungary, all hospital patients “newly-born babies, blind and deaf, all mental cases and prison inmates of Jewish origin were transferred to the ghettos.”

1944: In Long Branch, NJ, Howard Martin Lawn, “the president of Parkmobile Inc., and the Equity and Capital Company and Pearl H. Bergman a chemist and homemaker both of whom were staunch Democrats” gave birth to journalist Constance Ellen “Connie” Lawn who “at the time of her death was the longest-serving White House correspondent.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/obituaries/connie-lawn-independent-white-house-reporter-dies-at-73.html

1945: The HMS Springer a British submarine that would be sold to the Israeli in 1958 and be renamed the “Tanin” was launched today

1945: Representatives Andrew W. Somers and August W. Bennet presented a joint resolution in the House of Representative “asking for United States recognition of ‘the Hebrew Nation’ as an intergovernmental agency to repatriate Jews surviving in Europe to Palestine and for an administration to facilitate the establishment of a free state there guaranteeing civil, political and religious rights of all its inhabitan

1946: Martin Gabel, the Philadelphia born son of Ruth and Israel Gabriel married Arlene Francis in what would prove to be that rarity, a successful celebrity marriage, which produce scintillating repartee and a son, Peter Gabel, the Harvard trained attorney and association editor of Tikun.

1946: The SS Max Nordau, a Haganah ship containing 1,750 men women and children (300 of whom were orphans) was intercepted by the British off the coast of Palestine.  The refugees were shipped off for detention at Atlit while the crew was arrested and the ship confiscated by the British.  The vessel joined other such ships, including the Enzo Sereni, the Tel Hai and the Orde Wingate at a dock in Haifa.  The Palmach responded by simultaneously, blowing up eleven bridges that connected Palestine with surrounding countries.  This spectacular event came at the cost of 14 Palmach lives.

1947: “A funeral service was held today in Town Hall for “Dr. Louis K. Anspacher, lecturer dramatist

 and poet who was the husband of “the former Florence Sutro Esberg” and the brother of Harry Anspacher.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/05/15/88781023.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

http://archives.nypl.org/mss/110

1947: Birthdate of Brandies graduate and music critic Jon Landau.

1947: Much to everyone’s surprise Andrei Gromyko, the permanent representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations gave a speech before the General Assembly in which he said that “the Soviet Union would still prefer a ‘single Arab-Jewish state with equal rights for the Jews and the Arabs,’ but if the UN commission found the this ‘impossible to implement’ there was a ‘justifiable alternative: the partition of Palestine into two independent single states, one Jewish and one Arab.’” (Editor’s note – ironically, while the world including the United States dithered on the issues, the Soviet Union, for whatever reasons shifted the balance by declaring support for a Jewish state in Palestine now.)

1948(5th of Iyar, 5708): In one of the most stirring moments in Jewish history David Ben-Gurion led the ceremony establishing the State of Israel.  The British Mandate actually ended on May 15, 1948.  But that was a Saturday, and the Jewish State would not be declared on Shabbat, so it was done the afternoon before. Herzl's prediction was off by one year.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Declaration+of+Establishment+of+State+of+Israel.htm

1948: Today, the Hatikvah was played at the conclusion of the Israeli Declaration of Independence ceremony.

1948: Rebecca Affachiner “the Betsy Ross Of Israel” unfurled her homemade flag which she had made from a cut-up bed sheet on which she had sewn a six-pointed blue star and two stripes colored with a blue crayon.” (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive)

https://cahjp.huji.ac.il/webfm_send/660

1948: Three resolutions were defeated at the United Nations by the Arabs and their allies to ensure that Jerusalem would be an international city governed by the U.N.  The Arabs insisted that Jerusalem must be an “Arab city” even though it had a Jewish majority.  This lack of will on the part of the U.N. and Arab intransigence are the animating force by the refusal of Israeli governments to ever give up the city.

1948: Egyptian planes bomb Tel Aviv, the first time the city had been bombed since the Italians flew over in 1940

1948: The first broadcasts by Kol Yisrael, Israel's radio station.  Kol Yisrael is Hebrew for the Voice of Israel.

1948: ‘River Lady” a western film photographed by cinematographer Irving Glassberg was released today in the United States.

1948: Jordan’s Arab Legion captured the Jewish settlement of Atarot

 

1948: In violation of the U.N. resolutions, Jordan's Arab Legion captured Atarot, north of Jerusalem.  This was part of the Arab plan to cut off Jerusalem from the rest of the state of Israel.

1948: The United States became the first country to recognize the state of Israel.

1948:  "The Egyptian Prime Minister, al-Nukrashi Pasha, decided to proclaim a state of emergency and arrest all Communists declaring that all Jews were potential Zionists and that all Zionists were in fact Communists." (In Ishmael's House by Martin Gilbert)

1948: Sir Alan Cunningham drove out of Jerusalem, bordered a plane and flew to Haifa.

1948: When the Israeli flag was unfurled outside the Jewish Agency building in New York City, “throngs of Jewish youngster danced the hora outside and traffic on East 68th Street came to a halt.”

1948: The bitter battle to keep the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem took a positive turn for Jewish forces as they occupied Beit Dagan the British police fortress.  At the same time, the Arabs were poised to seize the vital airport at Lydda.

1948: Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit, was appointed Minister of Police, a position he held until a month before his death in January 1967. He served in fourteen governments and making him the country's longest continually serving minister.

1948: David Ben-Gurion begins serving as Israel’s first Minister of Defense.

1948: As the battle for Kfar Darom that pitted the Palmach against the Egyptian Army and the units of the Muslim brotherhood went into its second night Jewish units began an attack on the “Bedouin locality of Khirbat Ma’in.

1948: David Remez was appointed Minister of Transportation in David Ben-Gurion's provisional government.

1948: Yehuda Leib Maimon was appointed at Israel’s first Minister of Religious Services.

1948: Maury Atkin, who had been employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, opened the first Israeli embassy in the United States at 2210 Massachusetts, Avenue.  Atkin served as executive officer and agricultural consultant to the new Israeli Embassy until April 1950

1948: Following yesterday’s massacre of the Jews at Kfar Etzion, the rest of villages at Gush Etzion surrendered following which the Jews were taken prisoner and their homes “plunder and burned.”

1948: As of today, Milt Rubenfeld, Modi Alon, Ezer Weizman, Lou Lenart, and Eddie Cohen and four S-199's “constituted the entire Israeli Air Force.

1949: After 252 performances the curtain came down on the last Broadway performance of “Love Life,” “a musical written by Kurt Weill (music) and Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics).”

1951: The Broadway production of “Flahooley” with lyrics and book by E.Y. Harburg and a score by Sammy Fain opened today at the Broadhurst Theatre,

1951: Today, in Israel the Shabak arrested Mordechai Eliyahu and other members of the Brit Hakanim “a radical religious Jewish underground organization which operated against the widespread tread of secularization” by torching cars of people who on drove on Shabbat and butcher shops where non-kosher meet was sold.”

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported on the first visit to Israel of the U.S. Secretary of State, Mr. John Foster Dulles, who arrived, accompanied by a large entourage "for a frank exchange of views." Israeli leaders asked U.S. for a loan to meet their foreign currency debts which reached $70m., while another $40m. were due shortly. Dulles "was happy to be in Israel" and was certain that the talks will be "mutually beneficial."

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel received from West Germany $75m. on account of reparations.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that 102 new immigrants arrived from Iran.

1953: “The first railway line built by the State of Israel – 28 and a half miles of track running parallel to the coast between Hadera and Tel Aviv – was dedicated by Mrs. David Remez, widow of Israel’s first Minister of Communications who conceived the line in 1948.”  The opening of the rail connection will shorten the time it takes to travel between Haifa, Israel’s major port and Tel Aviv.

1955: On the seventh anniversary of Israel’s independence, a public memorial service is held at Carnegie Hall in honor of the late Albert Einstein.

1957(13thof Iyar, 5715): Seventy-six-year Eva Mazer, the widow of Abraham Mazer who was leader of Hadassah “and a founder of “a founder of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University” passed away today.

 

1957(13thof Iyar, 5717): Seventy-two year old Sir Sidney Solomon Abrahams (Sidney “Solly” Abrahams) the older brother of Harold Abrahams of “Chariots of Fire fame” who competed in the Olympics in the long-jump before pursuing a career that including “serving as Chief Justice of Ceylon and President of the London Athletic Club” passed away today.

1958(24thof Iyar, 5718): Sixty-seven year old New York native Barnett Robert Brickner who served as the rabbi at Anshe Chesed for 33 years passed away today.

https://case.edu/ech/articles/b/brickner-barnett-robert/

1958: “I Married A Woman” directed by Hal Kanter and written by Goodman Ace premiered in Los Angeles.

1961(28thof Iyar, 5721): Sixty-five year old Max Perlman, the City Deputy Commissioner of Markets who was a member of the Masons, B’Nai Brith and the Ancient Order of Hiberians and the husband of Rose Perlman and father of Joel and Gail Perlman passed away at his home in Brooklyn

1962(10th of Iyar, 5722): Prize winning architect Dov Karmi, the son of Hannah and Sholom Weingarten who designed the Culture Palace and Max—Liebling House in Tel Aviv passed away today.

1963: The sequel to “It’s My Party”, “Judy’s Turn to Cry” was recorded today by Lelsely Gore.

1964(3rdof Sivan, 5724): Seventy-four year old Heinz Werner, the Viennese born son of Leopold Emile Klauber Werner, the engineering student, turned composer, turned psychologist who, after being forced to leave his position at the University of Hamburg by the Nazis, came to the United states where he taught at Brooklyn College and Clark University,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27849450

1964: “What a Way to Go,” a comedy produced by Arthur P. Jacobs with a screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and filmed by cinematographer Leon Shamroy was released today in the United States.

1966(24thof Iyar, 5726): Parashat Behar-Bechukotai

1966(24thof Iyar, 5726): Fifty-nine year old C. Irving “Irv” Constantine the Syracuse running back played one season in the NFL in 1931.

http://www.profootballarchives.com/playerc/cons00200.html

1967(4thof Iyar, 5727): Yom HaZikaron

1967: Alfred Kazan and Nissim Ezekiel of the Bombay University were among the speakers at the six-day celebration of Henry David Thoreau sponsored by the Nassau Community College that came to an end today.

1967: According to statements made by Nasser in justifying the blockade of the Straits of Tiran, this is the day on which he discussed the Soviet report of the Israel’s planned invasion of Syria with the government in Damascus and formulated their military response.

1967: Israeli newspapers carried interviews with General Rabin, IDF chief of staff warning “Damascus” of the consequences that would arise from continued terrorist attacks.

1968: Birthdate of Lyon, France native Eric Vuillard, the author of the award winning Order of the Day which traces the rise of Hitler “from a meeting in February 1933 of the captains of German industry gathered to fiancé Hitler’s rise to absolute power, through March 12, 1938, the date of Anschluss, a prelude to the Final Solution that drove hundreds, perhaps thousands of Viennese Jews to suicide, all the way to the Nuremberg Trials and the vileness of German industry’s complicity in Hitler’s death camps.

https://www.amazon.com/Order-Day-Eric-Vuillard/dp/1590519698

1968(16thof Iyar, 5728): Seventy year old Dr. Theodore Werner, the Viennese born English Zionist was the godson of Theodor Herzl passed away today. (As reported by JTA)?

1969: Today marked the end of Abe Fortas’ tenure as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1970: Birthdate of mathematician and founder of Akamai Technologies Daniel “Danny” Mark Levin the native of Denver and raised in Israel who was stabbed to death on American Airline Flight 11 reportedly making him the first person to die on “9/11.”

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/tech/innovation/danny-lewin-9-11-akamai/

1970:  After 13 preview performances, a revival of George S. Kaufman’s “Beggar on Horseback” opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

1970: The Court of Appeals of the State of New York decided the “Matter of Palitz” today.

http://leagle.com/decision/197056727NY2d540_1475.xml/MATTER%20OF%20PALITZ

1973: Frontiero v. Richardson, in which Ruth Bader Ginsburg represented Frontiero was decided by the Supreme Court today.

 

1974(22nd of Iyar, 5734): First Lieutenant Rami Zusman and Sergeant Reuven Brinenberg were killed just two weeks before Henry Kissinger negotiated a separation of forces agreement between the Syrians and Israelis.

1977: The first official images of the Merkava were released to the American periodical Armed Forces Journal

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported on the changed mood in the Cairo media which claimed that the deadlock in the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations moved the whole Middle East to the situation which preceded the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The Egyptian press warned that President Sadat's pledge of "no more war" would not be fulfilled, unless Israel dropped its refusal to relinquish all the territories it captured in the 1967 war.

1979(17th of Iyar, 5739): Eighty four year old August “Augie” Ratner, the middleweight boxer who knocked out Jack Delaney “in the first round of prize fight in New York City in 1922” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/18/archives/obituary-1-no-title.html

1979: “The Rebels” a television mini-series featuring Tom Bosley as “Ben Franklin” was broadcast for the first time tonight.

1980(28thof Iyar, 5740): Yom Yerushalayim

1980: The full orchestral version of “Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards”  an orchestral piece composed in 1979 by Steve Reich was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony at the War Memorial Auditorium in San Francisco

1981(10th of Iyar, 5741): Fifty-four year old journalist,ant-fascist and founder of Searchlight  Maurice Julian Ludmer, whose mother was a Hebrew teacher and whose life was transformed when while serving in the British Army during WW II he visited Belsen Concentration camp

1982: U.S. premiere of “Wrong is Right” a “thriller” directed and produced by Richard Brooks who also wrote the script.

1982: The Moscow refusenik and Hebrew teacher Pavel Abramovich was summoned to the KGB for the first of what would be four times in the next thirty days.

1982: Richard F. Shepard reviewed Max and Helen by Simon Wiesenthal

1983: It was reported today that Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger delivered a speech to the American Jewish Committee in which he said the Soviet government was “making a profound and dangerous mistake if it thought it could force the United States to abandon its commitment to Israel’s security.”

1983: A new advertising campaign created by Needham, Harper & Steers/Issues and Images, which will promote a friendliness and warmth of the Israeli people toward travelers with the new theme line: ''Come to Israel, come stay with friends'' premieres today with two new 30-second television and radio commercials.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/13/business/advertising-israel-promoting-tourism.html

1984: Birthdate of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame.

1986(5th of Iyar, 5746): Yom HaAtzma'ut

1986: The Institute for War documents published Anne Frank’s complete diary.

1987: As the IPO celebrates its 50th anniversary, Leonard Bernstein conducts the symphony for a second night.

1989: NBC broadcast the final episode of “War and Remembrance, an American miniseries based on the novel of the same name written by Herman Wouk” co-starring Jane Seymour, Polly Bergen, Sami Frey, Steven Berkoff and Topol.

1989: “Chu Chem,” billed as “the 1st Chinese-Jewish Musical” with Molly Picon comes to a close today after 68 performances on Broadway.

1989: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Family Ties” the sitcom created by Gary David Goldberg.

1990: In Los Angeles, director Steven Spielberg and actress Kate Capshaw gave birth to American actress Sasha Rebecca Spielberg.

1993: In the U.K. premiere of Cup final an Israeli film written by Eyal Halfon and directed by Eran Riklis.

1993: CBS broadcast the final episode of “The Golden Palace” a sitcom co-starrubg Estelle Getty featuring theme music by Andrew Gold.

1996(25thof Iyar, 5756): Seventeen year old Yeshiva student David Bum was murdered by a terrorist who fired on students “as a hitchhiking post at Beit El.”

1998: The Sixth Annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival came to an end today.

1998: Performance of the last episode of Seinfeld on NBC with commercials selling at $2 million for a 30 second slot.

2000: “Yiddishkayt Los Angeles,” the largest festival in the United States honoring Yiddish opened today.

2000(9th of Iyar, 5760): Eighty-six-year-old Pulitzer Prize winning poet Karl Shapiro, the Baltimore born son of the former Sarah Omansky and Joseph Shapiro, who drew his greatest inspiration from his experiences in WW II passed away today. (As reported by Richard Severo.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/17/books/karl-shapiro-prize-winning-poet-dies-at-86.html?searchResultPosition=3

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Working Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II”
by Joshua B. Freeman and the recently released paperback edition of “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” by Thomas L. Friedman The New York Times columnist deploys a torrent of anecdotes and vignettes to probe the causes and effects of globalization and the transforming power of technology.

2000: “Requiem for a Dream,” an American psychological drama film directed by Darren Aronofsky premiered at Cannes today.

2000: Karl Jay Shapiro, a native of Baltimore who was appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946 passed away in New York.

http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/stadler_center/shapiro/

2001: The 54th Cannes Film Festival where Dover Kosashvili’s “Late Marriage was screened in the Un Certain Regard Section” opened today

2002: “The vote by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's political party against the establishment of any independent Palestinian state may limit his room for maneuver but will not tie his hands, Israeli politicians and political analysts said today.”

2003: Allan Kornblum was appointed as a federal magistrate for the northern district of Florida.

2003: Dorrit Moussaieff an Israeli-born British jewelry designer, editor and businesswoman married the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson,

2004: Peace Now led the 'Mate ha-Rov' ("majority camp") demonstration today in Tel Aviv, in order to pressure the Israeli government to adopt the Disengagement Plan

2004: Mayyim Hayyim, a community mikveh [ritual bath] and education center in Newton, Massachusetts, opened its doors.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/14/2004/mayyim-hayyim

2005(5thof Iyar, 5765): Parashat Emor

2005(5thof Iyar, 5765): “Vice president of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's international directors council, and director of the Byrd Hoffman Foundation Elaine Terner Cooper, the first wife of art dealer and banker Robert E. Mnuchin and the mother of Goldman Sachs bankers Alan and Steven Mnuchin the latter of whom became Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury.

2005: U.S. premiere of “The Fallen Ones” featuring Tom Bosley

2006(16th of Iyar, 5766): One hundred year old  American poet and two time Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz passed away.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/stanley-kunitz

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a "Desk Murderer" by David Cesarani and the recently released paperback edition of “Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop” by Joseph Lelyveld which is a memoir of his “often painful Midwestern childhood” featuring his “warring parents: a literary mother and a political father, who was a Reform rabbi and a committed civil-rights activist.”

2006: On NPR's Weekend Edition, Daniel Schorr mentioned a meeting at the White House that took place with colleague A. M. Rosenthal and President Gerald Ford. Ford mentioned that the Rockefeller Commission had access to various CIA documents, including those referring to political assassinations. Although scolded at first for his television report by former CIA director Richard Helms, Schorr was vindicated by the text of the Pike Committee, which he obtained from an undisclosed source and leaked to The Village Voice. [Editor’s Note – Schorr and Rosenthal were Jewish.  Ford and Helms were not.]

2006: The following tours were scheduled as part of the 15th annual Historic Site Preservation Week, an initiative of the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites (SPIHS: "Bauhaus on Bialik Street" - a tour of this street will mark the designation of "the White City" as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); Free guided tours of the old city of Be'er Sheva and other historic sites in the capital of the Negev; a free guided tour of The National Museum of Science, Technology and Space in Haifa which was formerly the site of the historic Technion Israel Institute of Technology Building.

2007: The JCCin Manhattan presents a film screening “Be Fruitful and Multiply: What’s A Mother to Do?” followed by a panel discussion.

2008: “The World Stamp Championship Israel 2008” opens under F.I.P patronage in Tel Aviv. “WSCIsrael 2008” is organized by the Israel Philatelic Federation in cooperation with the Israel Post Ltd. and its Philatelic Service. Over 70 countries will be present with a variety of 2,500 exhibition frames of the world's finest philatelic collections at the weeklong event.

2008: As US President George W. Bush lands in Israel for a three-day visit the IDF starts reducing its operations throughout the West Bank. The orders were delivered earlier this week to the IDF's Central Command by the political echelon.

2008: A shopping mall in Ashkelon was hit this afternoon by a long-range rocket fired from the Gaza Strip injuring around 90 people, four of them seriously. Two militant groups, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, claimed responsibility. Among those seriously hurt are a 24-year-old mother and her infant daughter, both of whom were flown to Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, for treatment. They suffered head injuries. Two others sustaining serious injuries were rushed to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon for emergency surgery. Most other injuries were light.

2008(9thof Iyar, 5768): Eighty-six year old cartoonist and satirist Will Elder passed away today (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/arts/design/18elder.html

2009:The Foundation for Jewish Studies presents a free lecture with Dr. Robert Alter speaking on “The Challenge of Translating the Bible” at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center.

2009: The 92nd Street Y presents a lecture by Susanne Vromen entitled “Sanctuary from Hell: Belgian Nuns Who Saved Holocaust Children” in which this Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Bard College author of “Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis” shares the “riveting stories” of the Belgian Jewish children who were hidden in Roman Catholic convicts and orphanages starting in 1942. 

2009(20thof Iyar, 5769): Beatrice Israel Muhlendorf, passed away today at the age 93 in Sheffield, Alabama. Mrs. Muhlendorf was a native of Worcester, Mass., and a member of Temple B'Nai Israel. She attended Florence State Teachers College and graduated from the University of Alabama in 1936.She was the co-founder of the Rho chapter of Sigma Delta Tau sorority at the University of Alabama and served as president in 1935. a lifelong sustaining member of the Muscle Shoals District Service League, past board member of the YMCA of the Shoals and Northwest Alabama Easter Seals Rehabilitation Center, Turtle Point Yacht and Country Club and was past president of the Temple B'Nai Israel Sisterhood. She worked for the Navy department during World War II, where she met her husband, Jack, and married in 1942. She, along with her father and husband, co-founded Paper and Chemical Supply Co. in 1949, where she served as a chairman of the board until her passing. She was preceded in death by her husband, Jack Muhlendorf

2009: Sholom Rubashkin, the man who ran Agriprocessors, has been named in a new 142 count indictment that adds 70 new charges that include criminal acts related to bank fraud, money laundering and document fraud.

2010(1 Sivan, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

2010: “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” a sequel to “Wall Street” in which Eli Wallach played the part of “Julius Steinhardt” in what was the last film in his long and storied career premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

2010: Garrett Reisman was a member of the STS-132 mission that traveled to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis” starting today.

2010: Forty-six year old Jennifer Gorvotiz was named CEO of the San Francisco based Jewish Community Federation today making her “the first woman to head on the North American’s 20 largest Jewish Federations.” (As reported by Jweekly.com)

2010: Rabbi Shira Stutman and musician Sheldon Low are scheduled to lead a musical and interactive Shabbat at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

2011: Liliana Schulder is scheduled to be called to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah at The Temple, Atlanta’s oldest synagogue which was founded in 1867.

2011: The Cincinnati Art Museum is scheduled to present “A Jewish View of Cincinnati” will “explore art from ancient times that relates to Jewish history; paintings of biblical stories and themes, and works by Jewish artists.

2011: Pianist Menahem Pressler is scheduled to appear with the Jupiter Quartet as part of the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts in New York City.

2011: “Footnote” a film about the mistaken award of the Israel Prize premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for best screenplay.

2011: The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was taken off an Air France plane at Kennedy International Airport minutes before it was to depart for Paris on today, in connection with the sexual attack of a maid at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, the authorities said. Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was widely expected to become the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, was apprehended by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first-class section of the jetliner, and immediately turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, officials said.

2011(10thof Iyar, 5771): Ninety-year old Joseph Wershaba, the colleague of Edward R. Murrow who helped to expose Senator McCarthy, passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/business/media/18wershba.html?_r=0

http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=seeitnow

2011(10thof Iyar, 5771): Eighty-nine year old Murray Handwerker, the man who turned Brooklyn based Nathan’s hot dog stand into a nationally known institution passed away today. (As reported by Reed Abelsson)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/nyregion/murray-handwerker-who-made-nathans-more-famous-dies-at-89.html

2012: At the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC, Dr. Pamela S. Nadell, Chair of the Department of History and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University is scheduled to survey 350 years of the American Jewish experience through the prism of National Museum of American Jewish located on Philadelphia's Independence Mall.

2012: The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music is scheduled to present an evening of performances celebrating its Israeli alumni, students, and international collaborators

2012: Todd Hasak-Lowy author of Here and Now: History, Nationalism, and Realism in Modern Hebrew Fiction is scheduled to participate in A Dalkey Archive Translators Night as the McNally Jackson Bookstore in New York City.

2012: Roberto Rodriguez and the Cuban Jewish All Stars are scheduled to perform at the Washington DCJCC.

2012: Center for Jewish History and Center for Traditional Music and Dance are scheduled to present “Bay mayn mames shtibele: The Women's Art of Yiddish Folksong.”

2012: In London, The Wiener Library is scheduled to hold a workshop for new recruits and experienced veterans of the Wiener Library’s Volunteer Translation Program.  The program began with one translator in 2009.

2012: Offensive lineman Mitchell Schwartz, a second-round draft pick of the Cleveland Browns, signed a four-year, $5.17 million contract with the team. Schwartz, a tackle from the University of California, Berkeley, was selected 37th overall in April’s draft. The Jewish player was among eight draft picks signed by the team today. His older brother Geoff is in his fourth season as an NFL player ( As reported by Mary Oster)

2012(22ndof Iyar, 5772): Nine-four year old “David M. Helpern, the business side of the husband-and-wife apparel design team known as Joan & David, who popularized elegant, comfortable — and non-high-heeled — shoes for working women in the 1960s before expanding their line internationally to include clothing,” passed away today.  (As reported by Paul Vitello)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/business/david-m-helpern-chief-of-joan-david-apparel-brand-dies-at-94.html?hpw

2012: Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times did not address the graduating class at Barnard College because she was pre-empted by President Obama.

2013: The refurbished Jerusalem Train Station is scheduled to host its first major event today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-trains-in-the-station/

 

2013: The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox, the doyenne of New York Times obituary writers goes on sale today.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-222883-3

2013: “Fire In My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh” is scheduled to open at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

2013(5th of Sivan, 5773): Erev Shavuot

2013: The DVD of “The Round Up” a French movie “based on the true story of a young Jewish boy that depicts the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv) -- the mass arrest of Jews by French police who were Nazi accomplices in Paris in July 1942—“was released on the American iTunes Store” today.

2013: As part of the observance of Shavuot, Bentlee Birchansky and Noah Thalblum will celebrate their Confirmation at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Editor’s Note – I had the pleasure of teaching both of these youngsters.  They are two of the brightest, nicest, most diligent students I ever worked with in the last fifty years. They have much to be proud of and even more to look forward to.)

2013: On the secular calendar, 65th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel!

2013: The Jerusalem Post ranks Yair Lapid, the founder of Yesh Atid at the top of its list of most influential Jews followed by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew in second place.

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Lapid-tops-Jerusalem-Posts-50-most-influential-Jews-list-313123

2014(14thof Iyar, 5774): Pesach Sheini

2014: Nick Kotz, whose recent book, The Harness Maker's Dream, tells the story of his Jewish Ukrainian grandfather's journey to the United States and ensuing life in Texas is scheduled to moderate a panel discussion “A Nation of Immigrants: How They Have Shaped America.”

2014: In Danville, CA, the Reutlinger Community for Jewish Living is scheduled to host a special screening “American Jerusalem,” a “documentary that tells the story of San Francisco Jews became Jews.”

2014: The New York Times fires Jill Abramson as Executive Editor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/business/media/jill-abramson-being-replaced-as-top-editor-at-times.html?hp&_r=1

2014: A senior FSA official said that the Free Syrian Army (FAS) “could tactically collaborate with Israel in toppling the Assad regieme as long as such cooperation is carried out in utter secrecy.”

2014: US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro and Amos Gilad of the Defense Ministry met U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the airport this evening as he prepared to begin a two day visit to Israel.

2015: Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg is scheduled to lecture on “Letter from an Unknown Woman: Joseph’s Dream” at the Skirball Center

2015: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition was formally sworn in tonight after a raucous Knesset session that saw constant heckling, along with accusations by opposition leader Isaac Herzog that the freshly inaugurated government was “a circus.”

2015: Violinist and composer Ittai Shapira is scheduled to premiere his newest composition, “Ethics” at a the Concert Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Theresienstadt Concentration Camp

2015: “Raise the Roof” is scheduled to be shown at the 18th Annual Film Festival sponsored by the National Center for Jewish Films.

2015: Steve Richards is scheduled to his book Sitting on Top of the World at Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

2016(6thof Iyar, 5776): Shabbat Kedoshim

2016: In Baltimore, the JCCs of North America continue their Biennial Convention for a second day.

2016: Rabbi David Golinkin, the President of the Schechter Institutes, Inc. and a Professor of Jewish Law is scheduled to lecture on “What can do about the state of Judaism in the Jewish State?” as part of Shaary Tefillah’s Scholar in Residence program.

2016: “As an extension of Yom Hashoah 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the New Orleans Opera, in a special collaboration with The National WWII Museum and assisted by Temple Sinai are the Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana, are scheduled  present the celebrated children's opera, Brundibar”

2017(18thof Iyar, 5777): Lag B’Omer

2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Dorre Shafrir’s debut novel Startup,  A Man and His Presidents: the Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley, Jr. by Alvin S. Felzenberg, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy co-authored by Sheryl Sandberg and Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Familyby Syma Solovitch and Bruce D. Haynes who is currently “contracted with New York University Press for a book entitled Hear O' Israel:  Voices of African American Jews about Black Jews in America and Easternization: Asia’s Rise and America’s Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond by Gideon Rachman

2017: The exhibition “500 Years of Treasures from Oxford” that “will showcase in America for the first time an extraordinary array of ancient manuscripts, books, and silver, including what has been called “the most important collection of Anglo-Jewish manuscripts in the world” is scheduled to open at Yeshiva University Museum today.

2017: LIMMUDFSU NY is scheduled to come to an end today

2017: Oxford students are scheduled to check “out JSoc's and Chaplaincy's stalls at the Lag B'Omer fair on Broad Street this afternoon!

2017: Today, Tunisia’s culture minister said that this North African country “plans to seek UNESCO World Heritage status for the island of Djerba, site of Africa’s oldest synagogue and an annual Jewish pilgrimage”

https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2017/05/000_OE164-1.jpg

2017: Today “US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said President Trump was deliberating whether relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would help or harm peace prospects, prompting Prime Minister Netanyahu to release a statement saying it will boost efforts, in that it will “shatter Palestinian fantasies” of Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.”

2017: Mother’s Day - all women are considered to be mothers in the House of Israel, and we honor them all for their contributions without which we would not have survived for the last four thousand years – from the Matriarchs to Deborah to Golda Meir and all of the women of valor in between.

2017: Continuing a tradition begun in the 1990’s when lamplighter Rabbi Ciment first settled in Little Rock, Chabad is scheduled to host an elaborate Lag B’Omer Celebration that has, like so much of his efforts gone from strength to strength.

2017(18th of Iyar, 5777): In Los Angeles, ordination ceremonies are scheduled to take place at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion,

2018: More than 100,000 people from Gaza are scheduled to take part in the “March of Return” an attempt to breach the anti-terrorist fence on the border with the Israel which in reality is an attempt by those committed to destroying Israel to invade the country.

2018: President Trump’s daughter Ivanka, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are among the dignitaries expected to attend events marking today’s move of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

2018: Gov. Eric Greitens of Missouri is scheduled to go on trial in St. Louis on a charge of invasion-of-privacy stemming from an affair he had “with his former hairdresser.”

2018: In New Orleans, “Sabena Hijacking: My Version” is scheduled to shown at the JCC as part of the Cathy and Morris Bart Jewish Cultural Arts Series.

2019: “The Palestinian Islamic Jihad has said it will disrupt the Eurovision Song Contest due to begin today in Tel Aviv.

2019: Today, Esther Hayut, “the chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court made a speech in Nuremberg, Germany that expressed implied criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned judicial reforms and invoked that Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930’s.” (As reported by Michael Bachner)

2019: In New Orleans, author Judith Viorst whose works include Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible No Good, Very Bad is scheduled to talk about latest book Nearing Ninetyat the Jewish Community Center.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “The Keeper.”

2020: On line, JIMENA and Harif are scheduled to host “author Lyn Julius as she talks about her book, Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight which “examines the post-1948 displacement of 850,000 Jewish refugees from the Middle East.”

2020: The ADL is scheduled to host it latest “Fighting Hate from Home webinar” which “is an important dive into the results of ADL’s latest Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, and its far-ranging implications.

2020: Einat Admony, author of Shuk and owner of Balaboosta, Taim and Kish-Kash, who adds the Yemenite and Persian influences of her childhood to create an innovative take on Israeli cuisine is scheduled to be the last present in the on-line series, The Pop-Up Israeli Restaurant

2020: Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Boston is scheduled to celebrate 100 years of community service by honoring Karen and Steven Sisselman and raising the glasses with ‘Virtual Toasts.”

2020: Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies is scheduled to present on-line Penn State professor Lior Sternfeld talking “about how Jews in Iran went from politically and economically marginalized in the early 20th century to wealthy and politically central by the 1979 revolution.”

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host on line Dr. Diane M. Sharon as she presents “Canaanite 101 – The Gods of Ugarit.”

2020: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host, virtually, Lawrence Douglas as he discusses The Right Wrong Man which “presents the incredible story of the last major Holocaust trial to galvanize world attention.”

2020:  The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “Jami for an interactive online webinar on students managing uncertainty and prioritizing self-care to enhance our wellbeing during COVID-19.”

2020: On Facebook, “The Civil War, JAHM Scholar series” is scheduled to present the Museum's lead historical advisor, Jonathan D. Sarna, Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University.

2020: It was reported today that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed President Reuven Rivlin and outgoing Knesset Speaker Benny Gantz yesterday evening that he has managed to form a government within the two weeks allocated to him.” (As reported by Moran Azulay)

2021: In a session examining UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection, curators Francesco Spagnolo and Shir Kochavi are scheduled to talk about an exhibit of very old coins, ritual objects and artworks that reflected Jewish revolts against Hellenism and Roman occupation

2021: As part of the Rekindle Shabbat Dinners program, the Lappin Foundation is scheduled to supply participants with everything they need to celebrate Shabbat at their home: a kosher catered meal and fully stocked Shabbat kit, including a box of Shabbat candles, kiddush cup, candlesticks, challah cover, tzedakah box and more!

2021: Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Rabbi Elaine Zecher, senior rabbi at Temple Israel of Boston, Ambassador Meron Reuben, consul general of Israel to New England,

Nahma Nadich, deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston and

Lital Carmel, regional director of the Israeli American Council are among those scheduled to speak at “Boston Stands With Israel” sponsored by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

2021: Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled to broadcast the Young Artists in Concerts wit Itamar Carmeli, Jonathan Leibovitz, Marta Sikora, Noam Yaffe, Simon Lambersky and May Endy.

2021: In one of those calendar coincidences, as Israelis prepare to face another day of rockets fired by terrorist in Gaza and Lebanon, they take note of the fact that it was on another Friday, May 14, which was in 1948 that David Ben Gurion oversaw the ceremonies marking the birth of the modern state of Israel.

 

 

This Day, May 15, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 15

392: Theodosius I, who had been emperor of the eastern half of the Roman Empire became the last ruler of the entire Roman Empire (east and west) “A general of Spanish origin, and the son of another general, was chosen to replace Valens who had been killed fighting the Visigoths. He refused to condemn Judaism believing that it was a legitimate religion. Theodosius prohibited the destruction of synagogues by zealot Christians.

756 CE: Abd Al-Rahman won the battle against his co-religionist outside the city walls of Cordoba. He entered the city as victor.   After he set up his Umayyad administration, Abd Al-Rahman mandated all Jews and Christians pay a jizya, a discriminatory mandated tax in accordance with the Koran for their "protected" status as dhimmis.

1004: In Pavia, Henry II, who as Holy Roman Emperor would expel Jews from various German cities, was crowned King of Italy today.

1248: Odo of Chateaubroux "investigated" the Talmud and then condemned it. This was the second condemnation of the Talmud after an appeal was made by the Jewish community of France.

1252:  Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull Ad Exstirpanda, which authorizes the torture of heretics as part of the Inquisition. Torture quickly gains widespread usage across Catholic Europe.  There would be several Inquisitions during the Middle Ages and on into the Renaissance. The primary aim was to destroy Christians who did not accept the doctrine as commanded by the Popes at Rome.  Of course if you were going to rack or dunk or flay Christians, certainly there were those who would think that it would be alright to do the same to Jews.  Interestingly, there were some Popes who disagreed saying that it was alright to treat the Jews badly, but not to actually do them physical harm.

1648: The Treaty of Westphalia was signed as part of series of treaties that brought an end to the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War between Spain and the Netherlands.  The treaty officially recognized the independence of the Dutch from the Spanish Empire.  This guaranteed the independence of a European nation that had give Jews a place to grow and prosper.  Ironically, many of these were Sephardic descendants of those who had been expelled by the Spanish in 1492 or were Morrano refugees who had grown weary of the ever present Inquisition. The end of the Thirty Years provided a respite to Jews living in Central Europe including the communities of Frankfort, Worms and Jena each of which was the scene of at least one pogroms.

1742: In Westphalia, Judah Zuntz and his wife gave birth to Alexander Zuntz, the husband of Rachel Zuntz with whom he had seven children, the Loyalist who worked with the Prussians during the Revolution and remained in his adopted homeland where he helped found the New York Stock Exchange.

1745: In Prague, after many appeals and petitions, Empress Maria Theresa revoked her decree banishing all Jews in Moravia and Bohemia, allowing Jews to live there for an unlimited time. Only the Jews in Prague itself who were actually banished 3 years earlier were still under the order, but they were soon permitted to return on a restricted basis.

1755: Villa de San Agustin de Laredo which is now known as Laredo, Texas, was founded by Don Tomás Sánchez while the area was part of the Nuevo Santander region in the Spanish colony of New Spain. According to the Society for Crypto Judaic Studies, Sanchez came from a family with Jewish origins. For about this and other facets of Jewish life in this Texas border town see “Tomas Sanchez, founder of Laredo” by Carlos M. Larralde, PhD and “History of Laredo's Jewish Community” by Stan Green.

1756:  The Seven Years War begins when England declares war on France.  In America, the war is known as the French-Indian War. Officially there were no Jews living in Canada at the start of the war since Canada was a French colony and Jews were forbidden by law to live there. This changed as a result of the war.  The first Jews entered Canada with the forces of Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the English military leader who conquered Montreal.  There were several serving in his regiments including four officers.  One of them, Aron Hart, remained, settled at Three Rivers where he became a large landowner and the father of four sons who helped to form the nucleus of the Jewish community in Montreal.  On the other side of the line, some sources contend that a Converso was in the Commissary General for the French forces.

1759: Manuel Josephson, one of the original members of Congregation Mikveh Israel at the time of the construction of the first synagogue building in 1782 married Rachel (Ritzel) Judah, daughter of Baruch and Sarah Helbert Judah in New York City.

https://mikvehisraelhistory.com/2013/01/25/manuel-josephson-1729-1796/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/josephson-manuel

1767: In Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Dorthea Judah and Canadian businessman Aron gave birth

 entrepreneur and politician, Ezekiel Hart Jewish who “served as a colonel in the militia during the American War of Indeipendence,” established the M and E Company, a brewery with his brothers Moses and Benjamin and who fought to maintain his Jewish identity when he took his seat in the Canadian legislature. 

1773: Birthdate of Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich, known to history simply as Meternich.

http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_r/rothschilds.htm

1774(5thof Sivan, 5534): Erev Shavuot is observed five days into the reign of King Louis XVI who had assumed the throne five days earlier when  King Louis XV passed away and at the same time that British troops are sailing to Massachusetts to close the port of Boston. (All three of these events would have their effect on the American Revlution)

1778(18thof Iyar, 5538): Lag B’Omer is observed 11 days after the U.S. Congress ratified the two treaties with France that ensured the Americans would have the financial, military and diplomatic support that would lead to victory over the British.

1792: At Frankfur-am-Main, Mayer Amschel Rothschild and Guttle Schnapper gave birth to their fifth and youngest son James Rothschild who established the French banking house for the family/

1799: Birthdate of Adolf B. Marx, composer and educator.  Marx was supposed to be a lawyer, but changed his mind after graduation and moved to Berlin to begin his musical studies.  While composing, he also served a lecturer on Music at the famed University of Berlin and started the Stern Music Conservatory which became one of the leading musical schools of its time.  Marx died in 1866, two days after his 67th birthday.

 1800: An English Jew named D.M. Dyte saved the life of King George III when he thwarted an assassin’s attempt to shoot the monarch. “George III. attended the Drury Lane Theater to witness a comedy by Colley Cibber; and while the monarch was acknowledging the loyal greetings of the audience, a lunatic named Hadfield fired a horsepistol pointblank at his Majesty. Two slugs passed over the king's head, and lodged in the wainscot of the royal box. The king escaped unhurt; but it was only subsequently realized that Hadfield had missed his aim because some man near him had struck his arm while in the act of pulling the trigger. This individual was Dyte, father of Henry Dyte, at one time honorary secretary to the Blind Society. It is said that Dyte asked as his sole reward the "patent" of selling opera-tickets, then a monopoly at the royal disposal. (As reported by James Picciotto in Sketches of Anglo Jewish History)

1800: A community of Jewish slaves, captured over a period of two centuries and held for ransom by the Knights of St. John on the island of Malta, was officially dissolved.

1808(18thof Iyar, 5568) Lag B’Omer

1808: Birthdate of Irish composer and conductor Michael Balfe who took the unusual step of hiring a Jew, Max Maretzk as his assistant at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London which was a critical step on his road to success as an impresario and musician in Europe and the United States.

1817: In Bavaria, Nanette Wexler, and Leser Lazarus Oschsenhorn, who were married in 1803 gave birth to Jechiel Ochsenhorn

1817: Jean Lafitte, moved from Matagorda Bay to Galveston today, after having purchased supplies from João da Porta.  João da Porta (also José da Porta or Joseph de la Porta was a Portuguese Jewish merchant, who along with his older brother, Morin, “played an important in the early settlement of the Texan coast. João was born in Portugal but attended school in Paris, France, before moving to Brazil, the British West Indies, and finally New Orleans, Louisiana. Along with his brother, João provided the financing for the privateer Louis Michel Aury, who established his base at the site of the future Galveston, Texas, in 1816. The same year, Mexican revolutionary general Francisco Javier Mina visited and successfully encouraged Aury to join him in an invasion, which failed. Morim left Galveston and soon died, and João sold Aury's camp and supplies to Jean Lafitte, In 1818, João was appointed supercargo for trade with the Karankawa Indians. João later returned to New Orleans after Lafitte had left Galveston.

1818: Birthdate of Bogumil Dawison, the native of Warsaw who became a leading actor on the German stage noted for his portrayals of Mark Antony, Richard III and King Lear, amongst others.

1822: Birthdate of Bohemian-Jewish author Leopold Kompert.

1827(18thof Iyar, 5587): Lag B’Omer

1827: Joseph Harris married Elizabeth Levy today at the Great Synagogue.

1827: Alexander Levi married Esther Asher today at the Great Synagogue.

1829: Daniel O’Connell whose fight for Catholic Emancipation paralleled the fight of the Jews for the same rights tried to take his seat in the House of Commons “without taking the oath of Supremacy.”

1831: Birthdate of Scarborough native Sir Edward J. Harland who in 1861 joined with Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, the nephew of German Jewish financier and merchant Gustav Christian Schwabe, to form the ship building company Harland and Wolff whose most famous vessel was the ill-fated RMS Titantic.

1832: Seventy-three year old German music teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter whose pupils included Giacomo Mayerbeer, Fanny Mendelssohn and Felix Mendelssohn, who was such a favorite of his that he “wrote to Goethe boasting of the 12 year old’s abilities.”

1833(26thof Iyar, 5593): Anna Virginia Nones, the two week old daughter of Anna and Henry Benjamin Nones passed away today at East River, VA.

1833: Forty-five year old English actor Edmund Kean whose portrayal of Shylock which first took place in 1824 was described as the personification of a character in “a chapter out of the Book of Genesis” passed away today.

1834: Birthdate of German native Herman Felsenthal who in 1852 came to the United States, where he was a banker and school board member in Chicago and the father of nine children that he raise with his wife Gertrude Hyman Felsenthal.

1842(6thof Sivan, 5602) Shavuot

1845: In Ivanovka which is now part of Ukraine, “lya Ivanovich Mechnikov, a Russian officer of the Imperial Guard” and “Emilia Lvovna (Nevakhovich), the daughter of the Jewish writer Leo Nevakhovich gave birth to Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov who gained fame as Nobel Prize winning immunologist  Élie Metchnikoff

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1908/mechnikov-bio.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/elie-metchnikoff

1847: Seventy-one year old Daniel O’Connell whose “Catholic Emancipation campaign served as the precedent and model for the emancipation of British Jews, the subsequent Jews Relief Act 1858 allowing Jewish MPs to omit the words in the Oath of Allegiance "and I make this Declaration upon the true Faith of a Christian" passed away today.

1853: One day she had passed away, 87 year old Hannah Ralph, the husband of Judah Ralph and the mother of Samuel, Frederick, Amelia and Abraham Ralph was buried today at the “Plymouth Hoe Burial Ground.”

1855: In Baltimore, MD, Theresa (née Hutzler) and Elkan Bamberge gave birth to Newark, NJ merchant and philanthropist Louis Bamberger who when he sold L. Bamberger and Company split one million dollars among his employees and who was the brother of Caroline Bamberger and brother-in-law of fellow businessman Felix Fuld.

https://www.brandeis.edu/press/books/brandeis-series-american-history/louis-bamberger.html

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1944/03/12/96574141.html?pageNumber=38

1858(2ndof Sivan, 5618): Marcus Durloch, a member of the Independent Order of Free Sons of Israel passed away today.  His widow was the person to received benefits from the organizations Widows and Orders Fund that had been incorporated earlier in the year.

1859: Levi Goldsmith, the German born son of Seligmann Falcke Goldschmidt and Schönchen Hinka Alexander and his wife Henrietta Goldsmith gave birth to Estelle Goldsmith who became Estelle Rothschild when she married Solomon Rothschild with whom she had four children

1861(6thof Sivan, 5621): Shavuot is observed for the first time during the Civil War.

1861: During the Civil War, Philadelphian Sergeant Oscar H. Benjamin began serving in Company B of the 41st Regiment

1862: In Vienna, Hungarian laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter gave birth to playwright and novelist Arthur Schnitzler who was a central figure in the Viennese literary community that spanned the last decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the twentieth century.  Schnitzler was a contemporary of Herzl and used him as a character in one of his novels.  Schnitzler passed away in 1931.   His works were later banned by German and Austrian Nazis.

1864: Moses Jacob Ezekiel fought at the Battle of New Market at as a member of the VMA Cadet Battalion.

1864: Emma Mordecai apologized to her sister-in-law for their quarrel over whether or not reports of General Lee's victory were accurate.  Mordecai's apology pointed up the precarious position of this unmarried Jewess who had sought refuge from the war at her relative's farm in rural Virginia.

1865: Captain Alfred A. Rinehard who had been wounded at Po River, Virginia while serving with Company D of the 148thRegiment completed his service in the Union Army today.

1867: In a letter written to his wife today, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison described his shipboard encounter "with three Jewish former slaveholders.  "Sitting opposite me at the table, are three German Jews, Louisiana planters, who have lost all their slaves, now that they are free, will be unable to take care of themselves!  Of these Israelites it cannot be said that they are without guile; ("Jews of the Civil War: A Reader")

1868: Birthdate of Vilna native Leon Zolotkoff, the “editor of the Jewish Daily News of New York, one time assistant district of Cook County and founder of the Chicago Jewish Courier” who was an early and ardent Zionist and the husband of Fannie Zolotkoff with whom he had four children, “Julia, Sydney, Hyman and Albert.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/08/01/98172085.pdf

1869(5th of Sivan, 5629) Parashat Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot

1872: “Jews in Romania” published today described the decision of the Grant Administration, as conveyed Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, to have its representative in Bucharest work with the other powers to alleviate the suffering being inflicted on the Jews living in Romania.

1873: Birthdate of Paris native, Victor David Hecht, the modernist watercolorist who studied at the  Académie Julian-Student, Art Students League of New York and passed away in New York in 1931;

https://www.auerbachmaffia.com/items/691826/Victor-David-Hecht-Early-Modernist-Watercolor/enlargement1

1873: Birthdate of Romania native and resident of Albany, NY who was the husband of Ida Greenberg Zuckerman and the father of Max H. Zuckerman.

1876: Professor Felix Adler delivered the opening address at the first meeting of the Ethical Culture Society.

1877: In the Swiss Canton Aargau, the Grand Council granted citizens' rights to the members of the Jewish communities of Endigen and Lengnau, giving them charters under the names of New Endingen and New Lengnau

1878: In Kletzk, Russia, “Solomon and Goldie (Helfand) Adler gave to Rabbi turned businessman Joseph Adler, the husband of Jennie Resnick who in 1909 came to the United States where he returned to the rabbinate leading several congregations including the New People’s Synagogue in New York City while serving as director of the Downtown Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Sabbath Alliance.

1879: Seventy-five year old German architect Gottfried Semper who designed a synagogue built in Dresden between 1838 and 1840 that “is noted for its Moorish Revival interior style” known as the Semper Synagogue passed away today

1879: Lewis Myer Myers and his cousin Ephraim Laman Zox dissolved their partnership in a warehouse business after which Zox “set up his own” business “as a financial agent and arbitrator” on Collins Street West in Melbourne, Australia.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/zox-ephraim-laman-4912

1880: In Charleston, Rabbi Levy officiated at the marriage of Adolf Lederberger and Albertine Levy.

1881: Anti-Jewish riots break out in Odessa, Russia.

1882(NS): The May Laws, a series of anti-Semitic regulations proposed by Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Ignatyev were signed into law today by Czar Alexander III.

1882: In Bialystok, “Jacob and Guth (Segal) Rosenbuam, gave birth to the Hebrew Union College trained rabbi and hold of a Ph. D from the University of Chicago, David Rosenbaum, the husband of Ida Adelman who led Reform congregations in Waco, TX, Amsterdam, NY and Austin, TX before settling in at Temple Judea in Chicago and also served as an “instructors in Semitics at the University of Texas.”

1882: Alexander III issued the May Laws which were designed to "cause one-third of the Jews to emigrate, one-third to accept baptism and one-third to starve." Jews were banished from all rural areas and towns of less than ten thousand people, even within the Pale of Settlement. These laws remained in quasi-effect until 1914 and provided the impetus for migration to America as well as expanded interest in the settlement of Eretz-Israel.

1883: Birthdate of Russian-American painter, illustrator and WW I veteran Alfred Feinberg

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/07/archives/alfred-feinberg-87-anatomical-artist.html

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/21799562_2-alfred-feinberg-watercolors-ny-1883-1970#&gid=1&pid=1

1885: In Budapest, “Herman and Bertha (Atlas) Ungerleider gave birth to “Samuel Ungerleider, the husband of Selma Dallet” who was the owner of Wheeling Liquor Company in Wheeling, W. Va., the Aeon Liquor Company in Bridgeport, OH and founder of an investment firm in Cleveland while serving as the “U.S. Asst. Fuel Administrator” in Ohio during WW I.

1885: In New Zealand, Samuel Shrimski was appointed to the Legislative Council today

1887(21stof Iyar, 5647): Seventy-eight year old German philanthropist, Wilhelm Königswarter a native of Furth passed away at Meran.

1888(5thof Sivan, 5648): Erev Shavuot

1889: Birthdate Bessie Abramowitz, known as Bessie Hillman who was active in the labor movement designed to alleviate the sweatshop conditions in the garment industry. She was active in the 1910 strike against Hart-Shaftner and Marx.  The strike paid two dividends - the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the first meeting with her future husband, labor leader Sidney Hillman.  An early role model for feminists, Hillman continued her labor work even after giving birth to her two daughters.

1889: Rabbi Mendelsohn of Wilmington, NC officiated at the wedding of William Fatman and

Fannie Mantoue, the “daughter of Benjamin Mantoue of Charleston, SC.

1889: President Benjamin Harrison named Solomon Hirsch to serve as Minister to Turkey, making him “the third Jew to hold that diplomatic rank” – the other two being Benjamin Franklin Piexotto appointed by President Grant and Isidor Straus appointed by President Cleveland.

1890: Birthdate of Menasah Skulnik, the seventh of nine children who began his theatre career “by carrying drinks to actors” in a Warsaw theatre specializing in Shakespeare” and became a star in the Yiddish Theatre and on Broadway. (The NYT shows his birthdate as 1892.  I have not been able to resolve this discrepancy.)

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C00EFDA103EE034BC4D53DFB066838B669EDE

1890: Birthdate of author Katherine Anne Porter whose novel Ship of Foolsportrays the rise of Nazism who described herself as “in direct, legitimate line” of the English language accused Jewish writers of “trying to destroy it and all other living things they touch.”

1891: The will of Nathan Littauer, a benefactor of many Jewish charities, was filed in the Surrogate’s office today.

1891: Birthdate of David Vogel, the native of the Pale of Settlement who used Hebrew in his poetry Lifney Hasha'ar Ha'afel("Before the Dark Gate"), novels and diaries and who died at Auschwitz in 1944 after having been interred at Drancy.

1892(18thof Iyar, 5652): Lag B’Omer

1892: Birthdate of Nashville native and WW I veteran Julius Arky Haiman, the graduate of Peabody College and Vanderbilt University Medical School and WW I veteran who pursued a career as an Otolaryngologist serving as an “adjunct professor for ear, nose and throat at Polyclinic Hospital and an associate attending physician at the Hospital for Joint Diseases during the 1920's and 1930's.”

1892: “The Israelite Alliance has sent the Sultan of Turkey an address in commemoration of the admission of the exiled Spanish Jews to the Turkish Empire in 1492.”

1893: “Mission Work Among Jews” published today described a potential conflict between the New York Presbytery and the Presbyterian Home Board.  The New York wants to begin a program to aggressively convert Jews. Up until now the national organization has not endorsed such an effort aimed directly at the Jews.

1893: Birthdate of Harry Rosenthal, the Belfast (Ireland) native who gained fame in London and the United States as an actor, composer and pianist.

1893: It was reported today the Jews have been coming to the United States from Poland every month this year “in gradually increasing numbers.”  Twenty –one came in January, seventeen in February and 316 in March, 306 of whom had less than $30 when they arrived.

1893: “Jews of Poland” published today refutes claims from correspondents in Berlin “that there is no movement for the expulsion of Jews from Poland based on eyewitness accounts of the arrival in London of scores of Jews who have been expelled from Poland.  They carry copies of orders of expulsion some of which show that the movement against the Jews began in January. “Russian officers will say that they are expelling no one but merely moving subjects about inside of the empire.” However, “the ‘moved’ subject stripped of his possessions and deprived of this home, must starve or get out of the country.”

1894: A policeman discovered that crockery store owned by the Rosenblatts on 10thAvenue was on fire.  The officer entered the building which was also home to the Rosneblatts and dragged them to safety.

1894: A picture of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was found in the studio of Henry Alexander who took his life today.  The picture was one “that he prized dearly.”

1894: Francis Bedford passed away.  Born in 1816, he was a noted artist and photographer who helped to f0und the Royal Photographic Society in 1853.  He accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour of the Middle East.  His photographs of Palestine were some of the earliest and best of those taken in the 19th century. They were published in 1865 providing many with their first real look at the Holy Land as it actually was.

1894: Birthdate of Abraham Samuel Samuels, the native of Woltzin Polan who came to the United States in 1922 where he served as Rabbi in Elmira, NY and was active in a number of Jewish organizations including the United Charities for Palestine.

1895: Birthdate of Polish native and Brooklyn Law School trained attorney Edward Manuel Kahn who in 1905 came to the United States where he settled in Atlanta, GA serving as the executive director of the Atlanta Federation for Jewish Social Services and the executive secretary of the South Regional Conference of Jewish Welfare Agencies.

1895: Birthdate of Fanny Goldstein, a librarian and the founder of Jewish Book Week

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

1898: In Harlem, Temple Israel completed its three day celebration of the 25thanniversary of the congregation and the 10th anniversary of occupying its current facility.

1899(6thof Sivan, 5659): Final observance of Shavuot in the 19th century.

1899: The Sanitarium for Hebrew Children of the City of New York which helps “sick and destitute” Jews as well as providing free summer excursions has released its annual report.  It showed that last summer the sanitarium provide nine boat excursions and 24 trains excursions while aiding a total of 15,445 people.

1899: According to an article by Leopold Sanders, Jews are “the most anciently cultured people” since in the Book of Genesis they were the first to give the world various prehistoric legends of Babylonian origin.

1900: At the Speedway, today Malacca driven by Nathan Straus defeated Waco in hotly contested race.

1901: At the Speedway, today “the famous trotting gelding Cobwebs driven by Nathan Straus defeated Chance “by half a length” after which Struas “took the reins over the spotted trotter Malacca.

1902: Rosa Strauss, the husband of Joseph Strauss and the mother of Otto, Augusta, Edward and Charles Strauss was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1902: Jewish housewives on the Lower East Side poured into the streets, breaking windows and throwing meat. The women were protesting a jump in the price of kosher meat from 12 to 18 cents a pound http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/15/1902/kosher-beef-boycott-of-1902

1903: “Twenty-five thousand rubles were sent to Kishineff, Russia, by cable today for the relief of the sufferers in the antiSemitic riots which raged throughout that city on April 19, 20, and 21, in which Jewish men, women, and children were butchered by the Russian mob, and the entire Jewish quarter looted.”

1904(29th of Iyar, 5664): Hayyim Selig Slonimski passed away in Warsaw. Born in Poland in 1810 when it was part of the Russian empire, his accomplishments included the invention of a calculating machine for which the Russian Academy of Sciences awarded him the Demidov Prize in 1844 and the establishment of Ha-Tsefirah, a weekly paper published in Hebrew.

1904: In Brooklyn pharmacist Isidore Michael and Grace Elizabeth Fadiman, Russian-Jewish immigrants gave birth to super-intellectual who gained fame during the golden age of radio.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/21/arts/clifton-fadiman-a-wordsmith-known-for-his-encyclopedic-knowledge-is-dead-at-95.html

1905: Birthdate of businessman Abraham Zapruder, whose famed home movie documented the assassination of JFK

1905: Founding of Las Vegas, Nevada. According to an article in Hadassah Magazine there is little documented proof concerning the first Jewish families living in Las Vegas.  Names like Bergman and Berman appear in the 1910 census In the 1920’s a family named Goldring served kosher food and proudly announced that they had produced the first Jewish baby born in the town.  Other sources provide a replica of cattle brand found on bovines belonging to a Las Vegas Jew named Charles Field.  The brand consisted of a diagonal “I” with the letter “C” superimposed over it.  Of course the first two Jewish names that come to mind when mentioning Las Vegas are Meyer Lansky and his protégé Ben “Bugsy” Siegel.  Today Las Vegas has one of the fastest growing Jewish communities in the United States.

1906: Kuhn, Loeb and Company as brokers for the sale of the $50,000,000 in notes that would provide the Pennsylvania Railroad with the fund for “the company to meet expenses in connection with the extensive improvement work with the company has under way” including the New York tunnel and “additions to the terminal yards.

1907: Twenty-three-year-old George I. Dobsevage, the Russian born son of Sarah and Abraham Dosevage who worked on the Jewish Encyclopedia and the “abridge editions of the Standard Dictionary” married Elizabeth Breslow today in New York City.

1907: In Berlin, “Economist and Demographer Robert René Kuczynski and his wife Berta Gradenwitz/Kuczynski, who was a painter” gave birth to their second child Ursula Maria Kuczynski who gained fame as author and WW II Soviet spy Ruth Werner.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/jul/11/guardianobituaries.richardnortontaylor

1907: Birthdate of Philip “Phil” Piratin the son of a small Jewish businessman who became active in the Communist Party and was one of the leaders in the “Battle of Cable Street” --

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-phil-piratin-1526400.html

1907: In San Francisco, political boss Abraham “Abe” Reuf pled guilty to charges of bribery, the day before he appeared a grand jury looking into corruption in the city.

1908: Birthdate of Frank Glassman who “played college ball at Wilmington and Bliss College and then played guard and tackle in the NFL with the Buffalo Bisons in 1929.”

1909: The cornerstone for a new building to be used by the Hebrew Infant Asylum is scheduled to be laid today.

1910: “Dr. Felix Adler, head of the Ethical Culture Society, occupied the pulpit of the Free Synagogue in Eighty-first Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, this morning, the occasion being the centenary of Abraham Geiger, the pathfinder of the Reform Judaism of Germany; or, as Dr. Adler put it, "the geologist of Judaism.”

1910: “Mayor Gaynor opened the twenty-fourth annual convention of the Independent Order Brith Abraham, the largest Jewish fraternal organization in the world, this morning at 10 o'clock, at Cooper Union, with a speech that called forth great applause from the audience

1910: “Declaring that the American Reformed Judaism as exemplified in the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati was really only "deformed Judaism," some 200 members of that faith pledged financial support tonight to an institution whose purpose should be to counteract the influence of the Cincinnati school.”

1911: In Poland, Yiddish theatre personalities Yakov and Ruzha Fuchs gave birth to actor Leo Fuchs who came to the United States and began his career in the Yiddish Theatre. Fuchs appeared in "Broadway Plays" in New York and in London.  He was seen on the television hit Mr. Ed.  His film credits include The Frisco Kid and Avalon.  He passed away in 1994.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaries-leo-fuchs-1568528.html

1912 Morris Lasker and Nettie Heidenheimer Davis Lasker gave birth to film producer Edward Lasker.

1912(28thof Iyar, 5672): Eighty-two year old merchant Aaron Ullman, the son of Sophia Schatz Ullman, the husband of Mina Rothschild Ullman and Clarence Aaron Ullman passed away today after which he was buried in the “Mt. Zion” plot of the Springdale Cemetery in Peoria, IL.

1912: In Lower Saxony, Frantz Seligmann and Erna Seligmann gave birth to Werner Julius Seligmann, the husband of Irma Seligmann.

1912: Birthdate of composer Arthur Victor Berger, the Bronx native and graduate of NYU and Harvard who was well known in his native America as a composer, teacher and music critic, but was better known in Britain as a writer on music, particularly on the academic, musicological side.  He passed away in 2003 at the age of 91.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/arts/arthur-berger-composer-and-music-critic-is-dead-at-91.html?scp=1&sq=Arthur+Berger&st=nyt

1913: It was reported today that  East Side Evening High School for Men which has a seventy percent Jewish student body was closed for the recent Jewish holidays which fell on April 22 and April 28.

1914: In Lower Saxony Frantz and Erna Seligman gave birth to Werner Julius Seligman, the husband of Irma Seligman

1914: Premiere in Germany of The Miracle a British color silent film based on the play by Max Reinhardt.

1914: Konrad von Preysing, who would become a leading anti-Nazi prelate was made Honorary Chamberlain of His Holiness today.

1914: Architect Louis Isadore Kahn, who had been born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky in Estonia in 1901, became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

1914(19thof Iyar, 5674): Sixty-six year old Yitzhak Isaac Halevy Rabinowitz, a rabbi, Jewish historian, and founder of the Agudath Israel organization whose works included Dorot Harishonim or Dorot Harischonim passed away today.

 1915:  Birthdate of American economist Paul Samuelson who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970.   Jews account for 40% of all winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics.  Fifty-four percent of the Americans who have won the award are Jewish.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1970/samuelson/biographical/

1915: As the United States wrestles with a decision to go to war with Germany following the sinking of the RMS Lusitania it was reported that A. I. Shiplikoff, Secretary of the United Hebrew Trades has said his members “are in favor of the abolition of war and the permanent establishment of international peace..”

1915: It was reported today that Dr. S. N. Deinard is scheduled to preside over the upcoming meeting in Minneapolis designed to pressure the Governor of Georgia to grant clemency in the case of Leo M. Frank.

1916: In Solano County, CA Otto Oscar Dannenberg and Iceophine Elsie Dannenberg gave birth to Iceophine Roberta Goepfert

1916: Five days after Charles E. Klein who was Jewish was told that there were no openings in Battery D of the New York National Guard, Frank J. Conaton, who was not Jewish, was given an application blank by Captain Sullivan and told to go home and have his mother sign it since he was underage and could only be accepted with her consent.

1916: “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise drew a parallel between the Armenians and the Jews in Russia” saying that “My fellow Jews in Russia could gain relief by forsaking of their fathers” and “the Armenians could obtain surcease from sorrow by becoming Moslems.”

1916: It was reported today that Congressman Goldfogle, Rabbi Leventhal, Harry Fischel and Leon Kamisky were among those who had spoken at a meeting of The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War in Philadelphia.

1916: Shalom Aleicheim was buried today at Old Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, NY.

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

1917: Today, in London, “official sources” confirmed the rumors “that whole Jewish population of Jaffa” had been expelled from Jaffa during Passover and forced to leave in a northerly direction.

1918: Birthdate of Saul Laskin, the native of Fort William who was the first mayor of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

1918: Two Jewish journalists – Landau and Goldsky – were among those who had worked for the Bonnet Rouge newspaper who were sentenced to prison today after being convicted of treason in Paris.

1918: In Montreal, Louis and Pearl Rubin (née Ruchwarger) gave birth to Joseph Wiseman, the American trained actor who played “Dr. No.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-joseph-wiseman21-2009oct21-story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/arts/20wiseman.html

1919: “The Jewish sports club Maccabi București was founded in Bucharest.”

1919: In the Winnipeg General Strike “virtually the entire working population of Winnipeg had walked off the job. 30,000 to 35,000 people were on strike in a city of 200,000. Even essential public employees such as fire fighters went on strike, but returned midway through the strike with the approval of the Strike Committee. The Winnipeg Police were technically on strike but remained on patrol in practice.” Opponents of the strike, especially those in the press including The New York Timesdemonized the strikers as Bolsheviks and Jews.  Cartoons were produced depicting the strikers as hooked nosed Jews.  In 2005, this historic event would become part of the popular entertainment world through a musical called “Strike” by Danny Schur.  The hit play (in Canada) focused on the treatment of the Jewish and Ukrainian workers and carried a message of universal brotherhood. 

1919: Birthdate of Samuel Abraham Goldblith a food scientist who studied malnutrition while after having been taken prisoner by the Japanese at Corregidor and who developed the techniques for preserving food that were critical to the U.S. manned space program.

1919(15thof Iyar, 5679): Aaron Aaronsohn…”one of the most extraordinary figures of the 20th century — a world-renowned scientist, a diplomat and a spy whose daring exploits enabled British General Edmund Allenby to capture Jerusalem, a turning point in WWI vanished without a trace

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/aaron-aaronsohn

https://jewoughtaknow.com/aaron-aaronsohn

http://www.patriciagoldstone.com/?page_id=12

1920: It was reported that the funeral for Yiddish actor David Kessler who passed away yesterday will take place tomorrow since today is the Sabbath – a day of rest when Jews do not bury their dead.

1922: The German-Polish Convention signed today guaranteed all minorities in Upper Silesia, including the Jews, equal civil and political rights.

1923:  In New York City, Jacob Israel Avedon, was a Russian-born immigrant who advanced from menial work to starting his own successful retail dress business on Fifth Avenue, called Avedon’s Fifth Avenue and his wife Anna gave birth to “fashion and portrait photographer” Richard Avedon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/arts/01CND-AVED.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/arts/design/richard-avedon-portraits-go-to-israel-museum.html

1926: Leopold Damrosch Mannes was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow today for creative work in musical composition and a study of musical literature.

1926: In Liverpool, Reka (née Fredman) and Jack Shaffer, an estate agent gave birth to twins Sir Peter Levin Shaffer and Anthony Shaffter both of whom became playwrights.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/arts/peter-shaffer-dies-at-90-playwright-won-tonys-for-equus-and-amadeus.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1927: Judge Julian W. Mack is scheduled to be the principle speaker at the banquet this evening that will mark the start of Philadelphia’s United Palestine Appeal drive.

1927: Birthdate of Bezalel Rakow “an orthodox rabbi who headed Gateshead’s Jewish community and was the chair of the Council of Torah Sages of Agudas Yisroel of Great Britain.”

1928: Julius Rosenwald admitted today that he has given away so much money that he does not the dollar value of his philanthropies.

1928(25thof Iyar, 5688): Sixty-six year old Herione May, social worker and founder of the Jewish Women’s Federation passed away.

1928: Samuel Goldwyn hosted a testimonial dinner at Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel in honor of Al Lichtman, General Manager of Distribution in the United States and Canada for United Artists Corporation.

1928: Birthdate of a French–born American “novelist and academic, known also for poetry, essays, translations, and criticism who taught at the University at Buffalo, wrote in “the experimental style, that sought to deconstruct traditional prose” and whose books included “Double or Nothing.” 

1929: David Wuntch of Tyler, TX, was elected president of the Texas Zionist Association which concluded its silver anniversary convention today.

1930: It was announced today that “a request for an audience with the Roumanian Regency in connection with continuing attacks on Jews in various parts of the country will be made by the Union of Roumanian Jews” Dr. William Filderman is President of the Union.

1930: “Eliel Loefgren, former foreign minister of Sweden; Charles Barde, a Swiss jurist, and A. Van Kempen, a former Dutch colonial official, were today announced as members of the international Wailing Wall Commission to investigate the Moslem and Jewish claims to the Wailing Wall. The names were submitted to the Council of the League of Nations by Arthur Henderson, British foreign secretary.”

1930: The High Commissioner’s office has announced that, effective today, all immigration into Palestine is suspended pending the completion of a report being compiled by Sir John Simpson dealing with immigration and land settlement problems.

1931: Birthdate Norma Diane Fox who gained fame as award winning author Norma Fox Mazer.

1931: Italian born Giorgio Polacco, the conductor at the Met from 1915 to 1917, the Chicago Civic Opera from 1921 to 1930 “remarried Edith Mason” today.

1932: Hitler’s "Voelkischer Beobachter" advised the Jews of Germany to leave the country because “we National Socialists will certainly clear all Jews out of every position they occupy in Germany.

1933: The Secretariat of the League of Nations rejected petitions protesting the treatment of the Jews of Silesia because the treaty guaranteeing them their political and civil rights requires that the citizens of Silesia file the grievance and representatives of member nations.  The League chose to ignore the reality of the claims.

1933: In Germany, “a plan to expel Jewish barbers and tobacconists from their positions was initiated here today.”

1933 (19th of Iyar, 5693): Dr. Alfred Strauss, a Jewish lawyer, was killed in Dachau.

1934(1st of Sivan, 5694): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1934: Jewish candidates are running in both the Democratic and Republican primaries being held in New Jersey today.  Among the candidates are Samuel Raff, a Republican seeking a seat in the General Assembly and four candidates for the Justice of Peace Passaic County -  David Ehrlich, Democrat, and Benjamin Rosenfelt, Toby Schneider, and Morris Rosenberg, Republicans.

1935: “The Italian Crown Prince Umberto and the Crown Princess Maria, who are now on an official visit to Tripolitana, today visited the Jewish quarter in the town of Tripoli”.

1935: Representatives of several Jewish communities in Poland were considering taking part in a project to plant a forest in Palestine in honor of Marshal Josef Pilsudski

1935: Birthdate of Ingram Berg Shavitz, the Manhattan native who gained fame as Burt Shavitz, the creator of a line of personal care products.

http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/311468/burt-shavitz-jewish-burts-bees-founder-dies-at-80/

1935: The Gazeta Warszawska, organ of the anti-Semitic National Democratic Party, was expelled today from the Press Association of the Polish Republic for its "tactless attitude" while the nation was mourning the death of Marshal Pilsudski. The Press Association comprises all newspapers in Poland. The expulsion was decided on at a special session called for this purpose (JTA)

1936: The Italian consul denied today in a statement to the press that Italian agents are responsible for disorders in Palestine. London newspapers had charged Italian agents with fomenting the outbreak in an attempt to embarrass Great Britain in the Italo-Ethiopian situation. (JTA)

1936: As Arabs gather in their mosques for prayers today, “the curfew in the Old City…was extended to a large outside the Old City Walls” due to the threat of increased violence.

1936: On the first day of the official Arab campaign of civil disobedience aimed at ending Jewish immigration violence breaks out forcing the British to cordon off Tel Aviv from Jaffa.

1937(5thof Sivan, 5697): Parashat Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot

1937: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Richard Jacob Mack, the son of Jacob William Mack and Bertha Mack and Elizabeth Mack gave birth to Alan Richard Mack

1937:  Birthdate of Madeleine Korbel Albright. A native of Czechoslovakia, Albright was raised as a Roman Catholic.  In 1996, Albright discovered that her grandparents had been murdered at Auschwitz and Terezin. Her parents had converted to Roman Catholicism to escape the Holocaust.  Albright has stated that she did not know she had Jewish ancestors until she was an adult. In 1997, she was the first woman to be named Secretary of State.

1938: The Palestine Post reported that while the armed Arab gangs continued to carry out robberies, commit arson, blow up culverts, dig holes in the roads and set up mines throughout the country, at least one such gang suffered heavy casualties when engaged by British forces near Acre. Many arrests were carried out in Tamra and the neighboring villages. Two British officers were wounded in this operation. An Arab mukhtar, village elder, was murdered near Nablus after he refused to pay ransom

1939: Giorgio Polacco, the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and Chicago Civic Opera re-married Edith Mason today.

1939: Wilfrid Israel “an Anglo-German businessman whose father was the founder of Israel’s Department Store which was “one of the largest and oldest stores in pre-World War II Germany” and who was active in the rescue of Jews from Nazi Germany “left Berlin for London” today where he would live until 1943 when his flight was shot down by a Luftwaffe fighter while he was returning from Lisbon, where had been on a mission for the Jewish Agency for Palestine arranging entry certificates for refugees.

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/wilfred-israel-the-mystery-philanthropist-who-helped-save-thousands/

1939 The SS St. Louis leaves Hamburg. Most of the thousand or so passengers are Jewish escapees from Nazi Germany. They have landing passes for Cuba as well as quota numbers that could allow them entry into the United States three years hence.

1939 A women's concentration camp opens at Ravensbrück, 50 miles north of Berlin.

1940: Thousands of refugee Jews from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia are trapped behind German lines as Nazi forces push through Holland. The Dutch Army surrenders

1941(18th of Iyar, 5701): On Lag B’Omer, 12 Polish Jews who have traveled by sealed train from the Biala Podlaska Jewish POW camp to Konskowola are murdered after the train's Nazi overseers discover that four of the POWs have escaped.

1941: Nazi occupiers in Netherlands forbid the playing Jewish music

1942: As of today, an additional 11,000 more Jews had been to Chelmno bringing the total shipped to the death camp from Lodz to approximately 55,000.

1943: In Rohatyn, Jewish ghetto police secretly plan to buy weapons and form escape parties to the nearby woods. Three weeks later the plan is foiled, and all 1,000 Jews of the ghetto are killed.

1943: The Warsaw ghetto was reduced to ashes and the uprising came to an end after an active resistance of four weeks.

1943(10th of Iyar, 5703): After days of being crammed in a box car, Salamo Arouch, a Greek-born Jewish boxer, his parents, three younger sisters and his brother arrived at Auschwitz at 6 p.m. His mother and sisters were immediately taken to the gas chambers.

1943: The first issue of Liberal Judaism, a new illustrated monthly journal of opinion and letters appeared today.

1943: The Adelaide Advertiser published excerpts from the pamphlet “Let My People Go” published in 1942 in which Victor Gollancz wrote “that between one and two million Jews had already been murdered in Nazi controlled Europe and "unless something effective is done, within a very few months these six million Jews will all be dead.”

1944: In a letter, dated today, addressed to the Zionist leadership in Palestine (under British rule) Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl called on the Zionist leadership to take stronger action on behalf of European Jewry which was systematically being destroyed by the Nazi lead genocide:

And you - our brothers in Palestine, in all the countries of freedom, and you, ministers of all the kingdom — how do you keep silent in the face of this great murder ? Silent while thousand on thousands, reaching now to six million Jews, were murdered. And silent now while tens of thousands are still being murdered and waiting to be murdered? Their destroyed hearts cry to you for help as they bewail your cruelty. Brutal you are and murderers too you are, because of the cold-bloodedness of the silence in which you watch

1944: Nazi deportation of Jews from greater Hungary began with the deportation of 14,000 Jews from Munkacs to Auschwitz. The roundup is directed by Eichman with “the full cooperation of the Hungarian police.”

1944: “Joseph Pulvermacher, president of the Sterling National Bank and leader in Jewish communal and philanthropic work” is scheduled to take office this at the annual meeting of the congregation as president of Temple Rodeph Sholom” and “Jacob S. Manheimer, an attorney” is scheduled to be installed as vice president.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1944/05/14/85155198.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1944: As part of the Nazi proposal to swap Jews for supplies including ten thousand trucks, Joel Brand is flown from Budapest to Istanbul to meet with two representatives of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.  The two will listen to Brand and take the offer back to Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv.

1944: On the eve of the Allied invasion of Europe, 878 Jews are deported from Drancy, France, to the Reval, Estonia, slave-labor camp. At the very time when Rommel, the Nazi General who is in charge of preparing to face the Allied onslaught, is bemoaning the lack of men and equipment, the Germans are busy shipping Jews to their death.  This provides further proof that the creation of a Jew-Free Europe was an integral part of the German effort and not some tangential activity.

1944: Dr. Salomon Gluck, the brother of Rose Warfman, was deported on convoy 73 which left Drancy today.  He would reportedly die five days later.

1945: Reb David Werdyger  was liberated today at the Linz Labor Camp

1945: The Soviet NKWD arrested Otto Armster, a German intelligence officer who took part in the July 20 to kill Hitler and subsequently took him back to the U.S.S.R.

1945: Birthdate of Gail J. Koff, who would be considered the silent partner in the national law firm Jacoby & Meyers after she opened their New York offices six years after the firm, began operations in Los Angeles, California.

1945: In Yugoslavia, fighting between 30,000 Nazi soldiers and a group of Yugoslav partisans known as the Battle of Poljana came to end when the Axis surrendered in what may have been the last formal combat operation in the European Theatre during WW II.

1946:” The Austrian Parliament disclosed today that it had discovered a close relationship between Austria's future treatment of Jewish restitution claims and the treatment that Austria herself could expect to receive.”

1946: “Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld, director of the Community on Unit for Palestine of the ZOA criticized the American Council of Judaism” tonight “in an address at the East Midwood Jewish Center for it announced support of the Anglo American inquiry in the Near East” which “would delay the transfer of 100,000 European Jews to Palestine…”

1947: The government in Palestine is scheduled to publish “the new immigration quota for the month ending June 14” which will allow “for the admission of 1,500 Jews, 200 Arabs and others.”

1947: It was reported today that the United States has refused to grant a visa “Razim Khalidi” because of his activities in Germany during the war “that have been regarded as pro-Nazi.

1947: Today “the UN General Assembly formally established an 11-nation committee of inquiry into the Palestine questions” while urging the “Palestinians” (Jews and Arabs) to refrain from violence pending a decision” this autumn.

1948(6thof Iyar, 5708): Parashat Kedoshim

1948: Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invade the state of Israel on its second day of existence.  As soon as the Mandate ended, the Arab armies attacked with the aim of driving the Jews into the sea.

1948: As the first day dawned on the new Jewish state, the Israeli military force had grown from 4.500 to 36,600 in the six months since the partition vote. This seemingly impressive total includes everybody not just combat troops.  And it pales in comparison to the size (not to mention the equipment) of the invading Arab armies. At least 1,200 Jews had fallen in fighting during the same period and this does not count civilian casualties. 

1948: On Cyprus, the British open the gates of the detention camps.  Thousands of Jews who had been imprisoned in their attempt to reach Eretz Israel, would now be free to leave for the new national Jewish home.  Within days, many of those released would be fighting in the front lines against the invading Arab armies. 

1948: Mordechai Ruttenberg took part in one of those small actions, described below, which helped to change history.

In Jerusalem, a young teenager and a member of Gadna (Gedudei Noar--Israeli youth corps offering pre-military training of teenagers) helping to defend Jerusalem “found a crate of Molotov cocktails in the Notre Dame Monastery, got really scared, and hid it. The Jordanians tried every possible way to break into the city, and on that day armored vehicles arrived via Damascus Gate and took up positions below the windows of the monastery. Someone shouted from the street, 'Hey, kid, where are the cocktails?' I didn't know what to do, so he explained to me how to throw them. From the window I threw one of the bottles onto the first armored vehicle, which immediately started to burn, and the Jordanians beat a hasty retreat. Afterward people wrote that the Molotov cocktails saved Jerusalem, because otherwise the Jordanians would have entered the city. I pretty much forgot the whole thing, but one day I heard a tour guide telling about the boy with the bottle, and I came out of the closet and said, 'I am that boy.'"  That boy was the future Professor Mordechai Rotenberg who Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who taught at Hebrew University in the social work school, the criminology institute and the department of psychology.

1948: The American office of Magen David Adom (the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross) opened a blood bank for Israel in New York City that was soon packed with donors.

1948: Voice of Israel (Kol Israel) was born simultaneously with the birth of the State of Israel. Operations for Kol Israel were in the old Palestine Broadcasting Service facilities left behind when the British left Palestine. The first Kol Israel broadcast was made from Tel Aviv as David Ben-Gurion read the Declaration of Independence for the Jewish State.

1948: In a radio Broadcast Menachem Began said today "It is Hebrew arms which decide the boundaries of the Hebrew State; so it now in this battle; so it will be in the future."

1948: On the day after Israel declared its independence Jews in Baghdad "walked liked shadows, terrified about their own destiny and that of their brothers in the Land of Israel."

1948: The Battles of the Kinarot Valley began tonight when Israeli observers reported that “many vehicles with full lights” were “moving along the Golan ridge east of the Sea of Galilee.” The observers were describing the movement of a Syrian infantry brigade accompanied by at least one tank battalion and one artillery battalion that was on its way to attack Kibbutz Ein Gev.  Among the Jewish forces facing the Syrians were elements of the Golani Brigade.  Thanks to an arms embargo, the Israelis had no artillery, tanks or combat aircraft to face this onslaught. 

1948: Moshe Sharett became Israel’s first Foreign Minister.

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

1948: Etan Liivni who had been freed from Acre Prison in 1947 during the great prison break, returned to Israel today from his hiding place in Europe so he could fight in the War for Independence. 

1948: An Iraqi brigade invaded at Naharayim on May 15, 1948, in an unsuccessful attempt to take the kibbutz and fort but the Arabs were able to occupy and loot the power plant which was the creation of Pinhas Rutenberg.

1948: On the first day of the invasion of Israel by five Arab Armies, the Egyptian 6thBattalion, “backed by armored vehicles, mortars, cannons and aircraft, attacked Kibbutz Nirm which was defended by a force of forty Jewish fighters who after seven hours drove the attackers who retread “leaving behind somewhere between 30 and 35 dead.”

1948(6thof Iyar, 5708): Holocaust survivor Rivka Salzman died today during the crucial Battle of Nirim – the only woman to die in the successful thwarting of Egypt’s initial attempt to destroy the state of Israel.

http://www.izkor.gov.il/HalalKorot.aspx?id=23546

1949: In Philadelphia, PA, opening of “3rd Sculpture International” which includes the works of Chaim Gross, Jacob Epstein, Jacques Lipschitz and William Zorach.

1949(16thof Iyar): Rabbi Chaim Tchernowita, author of “Toledot haHalakah” passed away

1949: Sixty-seven year old Mary Antin, a champion of immigrant rights and author whose work included The Promised Land, the 1912 autobiographical tome about her “Americanization “ passed away today.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F00C13F93B5F177B93CAA8178ED85F4D8485F9

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/antin-mary

1950: The remains of Oscar Grusenberg, the Russian Jewish lawyer who defended Mendel Beilis against blood-ritual charges were interred in Israel

1951:  Birthdate of Frank Wilczek winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction.

1951: Pitcher Saul Rogovin is traded from the Tigers to the White Sox and still compiled a league leading 2.78 Earned Run Average.

1952: Abba Khoushy, Mayor of Haifa, attended the United States Conference of Mayors at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

1952(20thof Iyar, 5712): Fifty-three year old Brooklyn born Maurice D. “Red” Kann, the “original editor of Motion Picture Daily and the husband of Frances Kann passed away today in Los Angeles.

1952: Founding of Sde Boker (Cattle Rancher's Field) in the central Negev hills.  Sde Boker began as a horse-breeding community.  Later sheep were added to the breeding activity.  As the desert was reclaimed orchards were planted by the settlers.  Sde Boker's most famous settler was David Ben-Gurion who first moved there in 1952 when he resigned as Prime Minister in 1952.  Ben Gurion saw Sde Boker as a key to reclaiming the Negev.  In turn Ben Gurion saw reclamation of the Negev - making the desert bloom - as a key to the ultimate success of the new Jewish state.

1952: “A resolution proposing the establishment of a small body in the United States with full authority to bring about co-ordination between the United Jewish Appeal and the Israel Bond Drive was presented to the Zionist Actions Committee by Nahum Goldmann on behalf of the Jewish Agency executive.” (JTA)1953(1st of Sivan, 5713): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that a new railway line linked Hadera with Tel Aviv. The entire new track was constructed out of the French-manufactured material acquired with the aid of French railways. The funds came from the Development Budget.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Bavarian Cabinet had decided to ban the return to Bavaria of Jewish Displaced Persons who left Germany for Israel after World War II and now decided to return to Germany.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Kfar Saba celebrated its 50th anniversary.

1956(5thof Sivan, 5716): Erev Shavuot

1956: Those living in the Jewish quarter of Constantine, Algeria are spending their first full day living behind an Army cordon put up yesterday on orders from Maj. Gen. Jean Noiret, commandant of French troops in eastern Algeria in an attempt to “prevent any repetition of the violence that occurred on May 12 and May 14.

1957: “Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said today Israel’s right of free passage through the Suez Canal ‘must be assured’” and “he pledged that Britain will do everything possible to see that this happens.” (JTA)

1958: Premiere of the film version of the Lerner and Loewe musical “Gigi’ produced by Arthur Freed and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.

1959: The movie version of the Broadway comedy “the Tunnel of Love” produced by Martin Meclcher and Joseph Fields who also wrote the script was released today in Germany.

1959(7th of Iyar, 5719): Charlotte Lipsky passed away today at the age eighty.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lipsky-charlotte

1960(18thof Iyar, 5720): Lag B’Omer is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower.

1960: “The Swiss post office” is scheduled to “issue a special Herzl Day stamp” which “will have seven start within a Star of David and a Lion of Judah” today “to commemorate the 100th birth of the founder of political Zionism.”

1960: Dr. Nahum Goldman the president of the World Zionist Organization and Pinchas Rosen, the Israel Minister of Justice are scheduled to address “a central memorial meeting organized by the Jewish Agency and the Israel Government in Basel’s historic Casino Hall.” (JTA)

1962: NBC broadcast the final episode of “Cain’s Hundred,” a crime series with scripts by Eliot Asinof, Fred Freiberg, directed by Irvin Kershner, Sydney Pollack and Boris Sagal, and featuring appearances by Edward Asner, Martin Balsam, Sammy Davis, Jr., Jack Klugman, Leonard Nimoy, Norman Fell and Don Rickles.

1964(21stof Iyar, 5723): Fifty-nine year old Brooklyn Law School trained attorney Moses A. Feuer a partner in a firm whose other named partners were his wife Gertrude Caesar Feuer and his son-in-law Milton Fischel passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/16/archives/moses-a-feuer-lawyer-headed-queens-bar-unit.html

1967: Israel holds the Independence Day parade in Jerusalem without the usual numbers of heavy artillery and tanks. The full parade is not held because of an agreed limitation of tanks in the city, as laid down in the armistice agreement with Jordan. Egypt accuses Israel of having sent the "missing tanks and other weaponry to the north." Egypt names May 17 as the day on which Israel will invade Syria. A new song is born: "Yerushalayim shel Zahav" - "Jerusalem of Gold" by Naomi Shemer is performed for the first time on Independence Day. It soon becomes a kind of second national anthem.

1967: During a parade in Jerusalem marking the 19th anniversary of Israeli independence, a messenger brings word to Prime Minister Eshkol that “large Egyptian forces were moving into Sinai and advancing westward.” The message continued that in Cairo rumored reports had Nasser ordering the removal of the UN Emergency Forces from the Sinai and the Straits of Tiran.

1967: “While on a photo assignment in London, Linda Eastman met Beatle Paul McCartney at the Bag O’Nails.

1968: U.S. premiere of “The Swimmer” for which Sydney Pollack provided uncredited directorial work and for which producer Sam Spiegel hired Marvin Hamlisch to write the music.

1969: Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigned over a controversy concerning past legal fees.

1969: “Thirty five Arabs were injured by terrorist grenade attacks in Gaza, Jabaliya, Kahn Yunis, Rafa, and Deir el Balah,”

1970: “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” a Billboard topper by Burt Bacharach and Hal David was released today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(They_Long_to_Be)_Close_to_You

1973(13thof Iyar, 5733): Seventy-three year old Ralph Kahn, the son Baruch Kahn and Constance Kenendel Lang and the husband of Edith Sommer passed away today in Montpellier, France.

1973: President Richard Nixon awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Air Force Sergeant John L. Levitow, the only enlisted airman to be so honored during the Viet Nam War.  The citation reads as follows: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his own life above and beyond the call of duty. Sergeant John L. Levitow (then Airman First Class), U.S. Air Force, distinguished himself by exceptional heroism on 24 February, 1969, while assigned as a loadmaster aboard an AC-47 aircraft flying a night mission. On that date, Sgt. Levitow's aircraft was struck by a hostile mortar round. The resulting explosion ripped a hole through the wing and fragments mad over 3,500 holes in the fuselage. All occupants of the cargo compartment were helplessly slammed against the floor and fuselage. The explosion tore an activated flare from the grasp of a crewmember, who had been launching flares to provide illumination for Army ground troops engaged in combat. Sgt. Levitow, though stunned by the concussion of the blast and suffering from over forty fragment wounds in the back and legs, staggered to his feet and turned to assist the man nearest to him, who had been knocked down and was bleeding heavily. As he was moving his wounded comrade forward and away from the open cargo compartment door, he saw the smoking flare ahead of him in the aisle. Realizing the danger involved and completely disregarding his own wounds, Sgt. Levitow started toward the burning flare. Sgt. Levitow struggled forward despite the loss of blood. Unable to grasp the flare with his hands, he threw himself bodily upon the burning flare. Hugging the deadly devise to his body, he dragged himself back to the rear of the aircraft and hurled the flare through the open cargo door. At that instant, the flare separated and ignited in the air, but clear of the aircraft. Sgt. Levitow, by selfless and heroic actions, saved the aircraft and its entire crew from certain death and destruction. Sgt. Levitow's conspicuous gallantry, his profound concern for his fellowmen and his intrepidity at the risk of his own life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Air Force and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country.”  Born in in 1945, Levitow passed away at the age of 55 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

1974(23rd of Iyar, 5734): A cell from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine infiltrated into Israel from Lebanon. They entered an apartment in Ma’a lot, killing the Cohen family including their four year old son. The terrorist then stormed Netiv Meir School.  “They took 105 students and 10 of their teachers hostage.  They were from a religious high school in Safed and who were staying the school during a class trip.”  The terrorists killed 22 students and three of the teachers before the IDF could mount an effective rescue mission.

1975(5thof Sivan, 5735): Erev Shavuot

1978: In Queens, “Michael Krumholtz, a postal worker and his wife Judy, a dental assistant gave birth to actor David Krumholtz whose portrayal of math wizard “Charlie Epps” in the crime-comedy series “Numbers” might be seen as a bit of ethnic stereotyping.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Embassy in Washington reiterated that "the supply of advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia and Egypt creates a serious threat to the security of Israel." President Sadat of Egypt, in a major policy speech, threatened domestic critics of his policy of negotiating with Israel, and took great pains in explaining why he had deposited one million pounds, received from Katar, in his personal account.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Cabinet, by a vote of 14 to three, backed the Chief of Staff, Raphael Eitan's declaration that Israel cannot defend itself without Judea, Samaria, and the Golan.

1979: ABC broadcast the last episode of the first season of “Taxi” the sit com created by James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels and Ed Weinberger and starring Judd Hirsch.

1981: President Anwar el-Sadat called on Syria and Israel today to adopt a policy of ''hands off Lebanon'' and urged the Palestinians to form a provisional government because ''the day will come when Israel will sit with you.'' Mr. Sadat's remarks came in a two-and-a-half-hour address to Parliament, which was devoted in large measure to a scathing denunciation of Egypt's small opposition Socialist Labor Party. The President dealt only briefly with the Lebanese crisis and did not address himself to a question that has been arising with some frequency here - What would Egypt do if Syria and Israel went to war?

1982(22ndof Iyar, 5742): Parashat Behar-Bechukotai

1982(22ndof Iyar, 5742): Eight-eight year old Yale Law School graduate and worker’s comp specialist who was survived by his wife Jessie passed away today in New Haven, CT.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/17/obituaries/louis-sachs.html

1983: Rabbi Charles Kroloff of Temple Emanu-El in Westfield officiated at the wedding of Lisa Ehrich and Robert Bernstein.  He was assisted by cantorial student Jill Spasser.

1983: In “Psychological and Moral Dilemmas” published today, Robert Alter reviews Eight Great Hebrew Novels edited by Alan Lelchuck and Gershon Shaked.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/15/books/psychological-and-moral-dilemmas.html?pagewanted=all

1983: In “New Life For A Prescient Novel About Nazism” published today Frederick S. Roffman described the film being made based on The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/15/books/new-life-for-a-prescient-novel-about-nazism.html

1986: NBC broadcast the final episode of season 2 of the “Cosby Show” co-created by Ed Weinberger which was the number sitcom for the 1985-1986 season

1986(6th of Iyar, 5746):  Seventy one year old author and journalist Theodore White passed away.  White first gained fame covering China during World War II for the Time/Life media empire.  His honest reporting got him in trouble with Right Wing Americans and he ended up coming back to the States after the war.  White had been so effective as a reporter because he spoke Chinese, a language he learned quite by accident while studying at Harvard.  A whole new generation of Americans came to know him for his prize winning popular political science treatise, The Making in President which told the story of the Nixon-Kennedy campaign in 1960.  It provided many Americans with their first insight as to how the American electoral system really worked.  Although he was to write several “making of a President” books, none would come close to the original effort which spawned a whole new genre of political reporting.

http://articles.latimes.com/1986-05-16/news/mn-5696_1_white-house

1988(28thof Iyar, 5748): Yom Yerushalayim

1989: French premiere of “Brenda Starr” a film based on the comic strip reporter with a script by “Jenny Wolkind,” better known as Delia Ephron.

1990: The Cemetery Club produced by Philip Rose opened on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

1994(5thof Sivan, 5754): Erev Shavuot

1994(5thof Sivan, 5754): Seventy-eight year old Russian born British economist Alexander Nove whom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher described as “one of the most significant scholars of 'Soviet' studies in its widest sense and beyond” passed away today.

http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH0168&type=P

1995: The Chicago Sun Times reports that Eddie Schwartz has left WLUP after having failed to obtain the same success he had enjoyed with WGN.

1995(15thof Iyar, 5755): Eighty-one year old “American real estate investor” Seymour B. Durst, “a philanthropist and the inventor of the National Debt Clock” passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/20/obituaries/seymour-b-durst-real-estate-developer-who-led-growth-on-west-side-dies-at-81.html

1995: “My so-called Life” a teen drama created by Winnie Hotlzman and produced by Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz was officially canceled today.

1997: NBC broadcast the final episode of season seven of “Seinfeld.”

1998: “The Horse Whisperer” a movie version of the novel of the same name with a script by Eric Roth and featuring Jessalyn Gilsig.

1998: “Quest for Camelot” an animated musical fantasy with a script by David Seidler and starring Jessalyn Gilsig and Don Rickles was released in the United States today.

1998: “Clockwatchers” a comedy co-starring Lisa Kudrow was released in the United States today.

1999: In the West End at the Lyric Theatre final performance of a revival of “Animal Crackers” a musical with lyrics and music by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby and the book by George S. Kaurfman and Morrie Ryskind.

2000: Israel and Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) reestablished diplomatic relations.

2000: By decree of the French Republic President, Israeli diplomat, Dr Meir Rosenne, has been made Commander in the National Order of the Legion of Honour.

2001(22ndof Iyar, 5761): Twenty year old Idit Mizrahi of Rimonim was murdered today when terrorists fired bullets at car carrying her, her father and her brother who were traveling to attend a family wedding.

2001: One Israel, a party formed by Ehud Barak in 1999 ceased to exist today.

2001:The BBC broadcast “Revolutions” the 9th episode of “A History of Britain a documentary series written and presented by Simon Schama” which began its second season earlier this month.

2001: In “Let the Circle Be Unbroken,” published today Mimi Sheraton laments the latest assault on “The Bagel” – Pillsbury’s Toaster Filled Bagels.

 Bagel purists have had a lot to swallow as their favorite nosh has come in for its share of creative rethinking. The basic flour-water-salt-yeast-malt dough that should be shaped and then boiled before being baked is now often steamed or not moistened at all, so that it lacks the inimitable yeasty, chewy inner texture. Pizza or pumpernickel doughs are often used now, and the traditional crust that should be plain, with a golden, shiny finish, may be pockmarked with poppy or sesame seeds, garlic or onions, while the correctly neutral, cool interior is adulterated with cinnamon and raisins, nuts and berries. Economic considerations, like high labor costs, have fostered mammoth bagels that fetch mammoth prices even though they resemble inner tubes more than they do the compact, true bagel that ideally measures about 3.5 inches in diameter. It's a wonder we permit these versions to be called bagels at all. But the single characteristic of the bagel that has always been honored, no matter what other attributes go by the board, is its shape. A bagel is ring-shaped -- round with a hole in the center. At least until now;The Pillsbury Company’s''filled bagels'' -- described in the advertising copy as ''highly evolved'' -- are more like Pop-Tarts than bagels. Each 3- by 4-inch rectangle of ''tasty bagel crust'' is filled with cream cheese and, of all things, strawberry jelly. Although sweetness is antithetical to true bagel connoisseurship, the jelly and the cheese suggest the red-and-white color combination (visible through three slashes on the top crust) of cream cheese and smoked salmon. Real fish, of course, would not work, being too perishable for both freezer and toaster. The greatest attribute of these ''filled bagels,'' promises the ad copy, is: ''No gloppy mess. Next breakfast, it's freezer, toaster, done.'' Following Pillsbury's instructions, this highly evolved taster found the crust (neither baked nor steamed, I bet) to have the flavor and texture one might expect from a dampened, heated manila folder enclosing a crowd-pleasing, sweet and creamy filling. But please, Pillsbury Doughboy, go back to your creative copywriters and marketing talents and come up with another name. The new product you so proudly hail may not be totally terrible, but it is totally not a bagel. Where is the circle? Where is the hole?

2002: President Bush welcomes forty-five leaders from the United Jewish Communities to the White House.

2003: Today, a Paris court rejected a lawsuit brought by Kurt Werner Schaechter, 82, an Austrian-born French Jew, charging France's national railroad company with the equivalent of complicity in crimes against humanity for deporting Jews to Nazi death camps during Germany's wartime occupation of France.”

2004: After being called up from Triple-A Pawtucket today Kevin Edmund Youkilis “went 2 for 4 in his major league debut” with the Boston Red Sox.

2005(6th of Iyar, 5765):  Alan B. Gold, Chief Justice of the Quebec Superior Court passed away at the age of 87.

2005: “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” co-starring Natalie Portman and Frank Oz premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

2005: The New York Timesincluded reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of “After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust,” Eva Hoffman’s essay that “thoughtfully conveys the conflicted inner lives of a generation of children of Holocaust survivors” and “The Sea House”  Esther Freud’s “intricate English novel, inspired by the letters of Esther Freud's grandfather (Sigmund's son), which is set along the Suffolk coast and tells two stories separated by half a century.”

2006: Over 150,000 people attended the celebrations at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Mount Meron in the Galilee, where a large feast is traditionally held.

2006: Daniel Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan,

2006: Daniel Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation

2007: In Washington, D.C. Theater J presents the last of performances of Arnold Wesker's “Shylock,” a landmark re-imagining of the three stories which inspired Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Featuring beloved international performer Theodore Bikel in the title role and Edward Gero as Antonio, this staged concert readingis presented in conjunction with the Shakespeare in Washington Festival.

2007: In London, the ZF presents “A Special Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the Reunification of Jerusalem” featuring a speech by Moshe Arens, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States who also served as the Israeli Defense Minister and Foreign Minister.

2007: Four people were wounded by a barrage of at last 19 Qassam Rockets fired by Hamas terrorists at the western Negev town of Sderot.  Palestinian leaders said that Hamas was trying to divert attention from internecine fighting in the Gaza Strip by renewing hostilities between Israel and the Palestine Authority.

2007(27th of Iyar, 5767):  Ninety-five year old Italian-Jewish architect Giorgio Cavaglieri, passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/arts/design/18cavaglieri.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

2008: In Mishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem, The First International Writers Festival comes to a close.

2008: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington marks the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel with a series of book talks by Laura Cohen Apelbaum on “Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community” (the companion to the award-winning exhibit of the same name) beginning at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. It is co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel and the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum

2008: President George Bush is schedule to address the Knesset on the second day of his visit to Israel; a visit designed to honor Israel on its sixtieth anniversary as well as to try and advance peace talks with the Palestinians.

2008: A conference is held at the Beit Chail Haavir in Herzlia by the National Road Safety Authority, Or Yarok, and the Institute of Technological Studies in order to promote new technological advances to improve road safety in Israel.

2008: Lindsay Gottlieb was named head coach of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

2008: Google co-founder Sergey Brin lauded Israeli innovations in technology and environmental efforts, saying Israel "takes our climate challenges very seriously." Brin, visiting as a delegate to President Shimon Peres' Presidential Conference, told Haaretzthat these challenges have "great geopolitcal ramifications on this country, in addition to environmental ones."

2008: Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch told a panel in Jerusalem that promoting technology throughout the Middle East could help advance peace.

2008: "Waltz With Bashir” a daring new animated documentary which follows Israeli director Ari Folman as he tries to piece together memories of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila camps is screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

2009: Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” discusses his most recent book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md., in an event sponsored by Politics and Prose Bookstore.

2009:Rabbi Shefa Gold, a leader in Aleph, The Alliance for Jewish Renewal leads Friday night services for Congregation Bet Mishpachah at the Jewish Community Center in Washington, D.C.

2009(21stof Iyar): Ninety-one year old Edwin S. Shneidman, a psychologist who gave new direction to the study of suicide and was a founder of the nation’s first comprehensive suicide prevention center, passed away today at his home in Los Angeles. (As reported by William Dicke)

2010: Before Shabbat morning services start at Temple Emanuel in Denver, Rabbi Steven Foster is scheduled to discuss "Reform Responsa: Applying Jewish Text to Modern Day Questions."

2010(2ndof Sivan, 5770): Moshe Greenberg, one of the most influential Jewish biblical scholars of the 20th century, died today at his home in Jerusalem at the age of 81. As reported by Dennis Hevesi

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/arts/20greenberg.html?pagewanted=print

2011: Joel and Ethan Coen, the Oscar award-winning producer-director team that created films like The Big Lebowski and A Serious Man are expected to attend the ceremony in Israel today at which they will be formally awarded The Dan David Prize “for their contribution in film making.” 

2011: A Brazilian production of the musical “Baby” with music by David Shire opened today.

2011: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present a symposium entitled: “2,000 Years of Jewish Life in Morocco: An Epic Journey.”

2011: In what would prove to be a case of “rush to judgment” the New York Police Department arrested Dominique Strauss-Kahn at 2:15 a.m. today “on charges of criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and an unlawful imprisonment in connection with a sexual assault on a 32-year-old chambermaid in the luxury suite of a Midtown Manhattan hotel yesterday” about 1 p.m., Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said.  (As reported by Al Baker and Steven Erlanger)

2011: Young Jewish Professionals are scheduled to take part in The Lox, Stock & Bagel Scavenger Hunter where they will “explore the heart of the Lower East Side that is changing right before your eyes. Highlights include Russ & Daughters, Katz's Deli, the birthplace of B'nai B'rith, Economy Candy, and much more.”

2011: Avraham Granted was fired today as Manager of West Ham United “after the club was relegated to the Football League Championship

2011: In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, the Mizel Museum will open its doors free of charge” today “for visitors to tour its new permanent exhibit 4,000 Year Road Trip: Gathering Sparks,” which offers “a dynamic journey through art, artifacts and digital media that narrates and celebrates Jewish culture and history.”

2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Wizards of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust” by Diana B. Henriques and the recently released paperback edition of “The Sabbath World:Glimpses of a Different Order of Time” by Judith Shulevitz

2011: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including 'Say Her Name' by Francisco Goldman.

2011:Four people were reportedly shot dead by Israel Defense Forces troops today as they opened fire on large numbers of infiltrators trying to breach Syria's southern border with Israel. Another four people were said to have been killed on the Lebanese side of its shared frontier with Israel, as Palestinian protests for the annual Nakba Day, which mourns the creation of the State of Israel, took hold across the region.

 

2011: Cedar Rapids native, John Lipsky, brother of Temple Judah congregant Ann Lipsky is named as acting managing director of the IMF.

2011(11th of Iyar, 5771): Eighty year old Rebbetzin Hesa Halberstam, the widow of Grand Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Halberstam passed away today.

2011:Dozens of Im Tirtzu activists gathered outside the offices of UNRWA in Jerusalem holding signs and chanting, "They expelled, they attacked, they lost.” Im Tirtzu takes its name from the saying of Theodor Herzl "If you will it, it is no dream."

2012: The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Book by Matti Friedman went on sale today.

http://www.workman.com/products/9781616200404/

2012: Basya Schecter is scheduled to perform “Songs of Wonder” which sets the Yiddish poetry of the civil rights activist and Jewish philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to music at the Washington DCJCC.

2012: Cellist Yoed NIr is scheduled to join Regina Spektor in tonight’s performance at the United Palace Theatre.

2012:Ellen Cassedy is scheduled to read from and sign her new book, We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History

2012: Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times will receive an honorary degree to at Farleigh Dickinson University’s 69thcommencement exercises.

2012:Arab terrorists attacked southern Israel with a Kassam rocket early today and attacked Jews in the Hevron area with two firebombs overnight as “Nakba Day” began

2012: Twenty-four year old Majid Jamali Fashi was hung today by Iran after having been “convicted for Israel and assassinating an Iranian nuclear scientist.”

2012: “Sisters Joined by Tumult, Grown Apart in Time” published today provides a details review of I Am Forbidden, a noble by Anouk Markovits.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/books/i-am-forbidden-a-novel-by-anouk-markovits.html?ref=books

2012(23rdof Iyar, 5772): Eighty-eight year old Holocaust survivor and scholar Arno Lustiger passed away today.

http://www.northjersey.com/obituaries/Holocaust_survivor_and_scholar_Arno_Lustiger_dies_at_88.html

2013(6thof Sivan, 5773): First Day of Shavuot

2013: Scheduled opening of the Ein Gev Shavuot Festival

2013: For the first time since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising, two mortar shells exploded in the Mount Hermon area this morning. There were no reported injuries or casualties. The area in the Hermon, the mountain range that straddles the Lebanese-Syrian border and the Golan Heights, was promptly closed to hikers for several hours on the Shavuot holiday.

2013: Israel will continue to take military action to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry to Syria, The New York Times quoted a senior Israeli official as saying today, a day after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi to discuss the troubled situation.

2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host Peter Zisa in program celebrating the music of two Jewish composers – Alexandre Tansman and Mario Castlenuovo-Tedesco.

2014: The Israel Action Center at the JCRC is scheduled to present “Israel at 66: Spies and Defenders” with CBS News correspondent Dan Raviv and Israeli journalist Yossi Melman.

2014: Today, “in the wake of outcry from the public, gay rights organizations and politicians, Yaakov Ariel, the rabbi of Ramat Gan who “advised a landlord not to rent…an apartment to a lesbian couple” was “summoned by Ramat Gan Mayro Israel Singer to explain his remarks.”(As reported by Gavriel Fiske)

2014: “A Jewish woman was attacked at a bus stop in Paris’ Montmartre district by a man who shook her baby carriage and said, “Dirty Jewess, enough with your children already, you Jews have too many children, screw you.” (Tablet)

2014: “Two IDF soldiers from the 50th Battalion of the Nahal Brigade have been dismissed from their unit for campaigning on Facebook against orders to evict Jewish settlers on the West Bank, the army said today”

2014: Tatiana Maslany was cast in a principal role as the younger version of Helen Mirren's character, “Maria Altmann” in the upcoming film “Woman in Gold.”

2014: The Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism is scheduled to host a lecture by Professor Maud Mandel of Brown University entitled “Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict.”

2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Paramount Theatre in Charlottesville, VA.

2015: “The Kindergarten Teacher” is scheduled to be shown on the final day of the 18thAnnual Film Festival sponsored by the National Center for Jewish Film’s.

2015: Centenarian Elisabeth Bing, whose parents fled Nazi Germany because they had been Jewish before converting to Christianity and was leader in the natural childbirth movement, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/health/elisabeth-bing-mother-of-lamaze-dies-at-100.html

2015: Today “at an art storage facility in southern Germany. “more than 70 years after its disappearance and after a year and a half of hard-nosed negotiations,” "Femme Assise," was handed over to Christopher A. Marinello, an attorney representing the descendants of Paul Rosenberg, “one of the world’s leading dealers in Modern art…whose collection was looted by the Nazis.”

2015: In “Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s New Justice Minister, Shrugs Off Critics in Her Path” Jodi Rudoren provided a profile of a rising political star.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/middleeast/ayelet-shaked-israels-new-justice-minister-shrugs-off-critics-in-her-path.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

2015: Rabbi Barry Fruendal is scheduled to be sentenced to after “pleading guilty to 52 counts of misdemeanor voyeurism for installing secret cameras in the shower room of the mikvah adjacent to Kesher Israel, the prominent Washington Orthodox synagogue he led for some 25 years”

2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Little Labors by Rivka Galchen, The Secret War: Spies, Cyphers and Guerrillas 1939-1945 by Max Hastings, A Self-Made Man” The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849 by Sidney Blumenthal and We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement by Andi Zeisler

2016: Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host the first annual city-wide 5K Race for Humanity.

2016: The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines is scheduled to sponsor an Israel Independence Day Celebration Lunch featuring Israeli falafel followed by a screening of the Mickey Marcus biopic “Cast a Giant Shadow” starring Kirk Douglas.

2016: In New York, B’nai Jeshurun is scheduled to host “an interactive performance of Lea Goldberg’s Israeli children’s book “Dira Lehaskir -Apartment to Let”! narrated by actress Shira Averbuch”

2016: Ari Shavit, author of A Promised Land , Georgetown Hillel Rabbi Rachel Gartner, and emerging leader Harry Reis are scheduled to participate in “Israel Forum: Zionism and Liberalism

for a New Generation” at JCC Manhattan.

2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “Gala 2016.”

2016: At the Jewish Women’s Circle in Malta, NY, the Chabads of Saratoga County is scheduled to “Finding Your Small Miracles” featuring, Yitta Halberstam Co-author of the Small Miracles Series: Heartwarming stories of Extraordinary Coincidences from everyday Life 

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to co-sponsor a weekly interfaith discussion, this week's topic TBC, from the perspectives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, looked at in a variety of texts and scriptures “at the Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College.”

2017: (19th of Iyar, 5777): In Los Angeles, graduation ceremonies are scheduled to take place at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion

2017: As part of the lecture series “Israel: The Land and its People” Henry Abramson is scheduled to lecture on “Theodore Herzl: Father of Zionism” at the Avenue J campus of Touro College

2017: MJE is scheduled to host “Conversations Remix” with Rabbi Mark Wildes.

2017: Joan Nathan is scheduled to talk about her new book King Solomon’s Tablewhich “explores Jewish cooking from around the world.”

2017: The Association for Jewish Studies and Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a lecture by Yael Landman on “Is There a Biblical "Law"? Law in the World of the Bible.”

2017: The exhibit “Menorah: Worship, History, Legend” is scheduled to open simultaneously at both the Jewish Museum and the Braccio de Carlo Magno Museum in the Vatican.

2017: Obituary writer Margalit Fox is among those scheduled to speak at a symposium describing how the Times Obituary Team “captures a life in 500 words.”  (Editor’s note- this is one time I wish I lived in New York.  The Times obits are not only literary gems, they are an invaluable tool for historical research.  In addition to which, the writers are very patent people who take their time to respond to inquiries even when they come from an “am ha’aretz in eastern Iowa.)

2017: “MGM Television and Daniel Silva announced today that MGM had acquired the adaption rights for the Allon series, a series of spy novel whose “main focus is Gabriel Allon, an Israeli art restorer, spy and assassin” whose executive producers would be Silva and his Jewish wife Jamie Gangel, the television journalist.

2017: At the start of the weekly Yisrael Beytenu meeting today, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman rebuked “his fellow ministers for publicly going head-to-head with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the upcoming Trump visit, in an apparent reference to Education Minister Naftali Bennett.”

2017: “Eliran Saada, the owner of Express Target Marketing, which has operated the binary options companies InsideOption and SecuredOptions, was arrested in Tel Aviv on suspicion of fraud, false accounting, forgery, extortion and blackmail.”

2018: Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to host Gettysburg College professor Kerry Wallach discussing her latest work Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany in which she “challenges the notion that Jews in Weimar-era Germany sought to be invisible or indistinguishable from other Germans by “passing” as non-Jews.”

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host another session of “Shtisel Watch and Learn” where the chaplains lead a discussion after viewing an episode of “the award winning Israeli Television series” about a “haredi family” living “in Jerusalem’s religious neighborhood of Geula.”

2018(1st of Sivan, 5778): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

2019: “The Orthodox Jewish of Commerce Committee and JBNF are scheduled to host the 2nd OJC Jerusalem Annual Anglo Israeli American -Expo and Conference today at the Jerusalem Gardens Hotel.

2019: In South Bend, IN, at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at the University of Notre Dame, the Michiana Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “From Cairo to the Cloud” this evening.

2019: In London, the Phoenix is scheduled to host “a special preview screening of ‘Rory's Way,’ a new film from Israeli directors Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun.”

2019: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a presentation by “architectural historian and author Anthony W. Robins” on “Urban Genealogy – Researching New York City’s Buildings.”

2019: The East Bronx History is scheduled to host “a presentation by Joan Adler about Nathan Straus, Jr. and his role in the creation of Hillside Homes, one of the first subsidized housing projects in the United States.”

2019: In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its “first monthly Bereavement Support Group” and its first gathering of the “Anti-Semitism Discussion Group.”

2020: In keeping with the sentiments expressed by Rabbi David Kaufman when Vice President Pence was in Iowa peddling plans for “re-opening” in Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host virtual Friday night services.

2020: Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to present on-line “Qabbalat Shabbat.”

2020: The Batsheva Dancers are scheduled to host the opening of their Online Festival.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present, on-line Dr. Mark Weisstuch as he lectures on “The Trial of Jesus – A Jewish Perspective.”

2020: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to a host a piano recital with Malachi Rozenbaum.

2020: As part of its “Online Speaker Series,” the Breman Museum is scheduled to present “Jews of the American South” during which Jeremy Katz, Director of the Cuba Family Archives, delves into Southern Jewish History” and describes how families, culture, and life succeeded and persevered in The American South”

2021: Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto is scheduled to present an in-person, small-group Shavuot event to rekindle community connections.

2021: As the CDC issues new guidelines, in Columbus, OH, Congregation Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host in person and ZOOM Shabbat Services.

2021:JCC Contra Costa is scheduled to host an in-person hike at a local park in Danville, followed by ice cream and refreshments.

2021: As Gaza terrorists continue raining rockets on Israeli civilians, over half of the homes in the country don't have a residential secure space in which to take cover in case of an attack” including Jerusalem with some 180,000 apartments without shelter, followed by Tel Aviv with 160,000, Haifa with over 98,000, Petah Tikva with close to 50,000 and Rishon Lezion with some 46,000 apartments that do not have a bomb shelter

2021: Jessica Herren, who is the real embodiment of what is the best in Judaism, is scheduled to have her virtual graduation from the University of Iowa.

2021: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a “Mostly Mozart” concert.

2021(4th of Sivan, 5781): Parashat Bamidbar; Perkei Avot- Chapter 6; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

This Day, May 16, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 16

 0942(21stof Iyar, 4702): Saadia Gaon passed away. Born in 882, Saadia Gaon was the head of the Talmudic Academy of Sura (Babylonia). He was a recognized authority on the Talmud, and a profound student of philosophy and philology. Saadia was forced to deal with the challenge of assimilation of the upper-class Jews of Babylonia who were attractedto the Greek philosophers whose works had been translated intoArabic. Saadia wrote a philosophic work, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, in magnificent flowing Arabic. In it, he defended the rational underpinnings of Judaism and showed logically that every rational Jew could believe in the Torah as well as Aristotle and Plato. He wrote the first Hebrew grammar book which explained how the holy language worked. He provided a Hebrew dictionary plus a compendium of rhyming words for Hebrew poets. He was the first to write an Arabic translation of the Bible. He included commentaries, explanations, and grammatical notes as well. His translation continues to be the authoritative Bible for Jews in Arab lands. He also led a successful fight against the Kararites, a sect which rejected Rabbinic commentary as law.

1165: Maimonidesand his familyarrived at Acre, Palestine.Having been forced to leave Spain because he would not convert to Islam, Maimonides and his family settled in Fez, Morocco. His work with Jews who had been forced to convert to Islam attracted attention of the local authorities and the family moved on to Palestine. Do to the poverty of the land and the uncertain conditions there, Maimonides finally settled in Egypt where he served both as a physician and leader of the Jewish Community.

1474:Minister Pacheco of Spain used an attack he organized against "new Christians" as a diversion in order to enable him to capture the citadel of Segovia (and maybe the King). Although the plot was discovered in time, the Marranos were attacked by the organized mob, and men, women and children were murdered.

1477: Abraham dei Tintori produced the first printed edition of the book of Job with a commentary by Levi ben Gerson was published today in Ferrara, Italy

1487: Joseph Solomon Sonciino produced the first printed edition of Seder Tahanunim at Soncino, Italy

1507: Ginevra Sforza, whose father Alessandro Sforza ,the patron of “Jewish Italian dancer and dancing master Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro” who converted to Roman Catholicism, passed away today.

1527: Florentines drove out the Medici for a second time and re-established a republic The recreation of the Republic led to the expulsion of the Jews. This event took place in the Jewish year 5300 (a year with Jewish mystical connotations), fueling messianic hopes helping to layer the ground for the rise of Solomon Molcho.

1573: Today Polish nobles elected Henry, as the first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, the Lithuanian nobles boycotted this election, and it was the Lithuanian ducal council who confirmed his election. Poland elected Henry, rather than Habsburg candidates, partly in order to be more agreeable to the Ottoman Empire (a traditional ally of France through the Franco-Ottoman alliance), with which a Polish-Ottoman alliance was also in effect.. He owed his election to Solomon Ashkenazi, a “Rabbi” who was an advisor to the Sultan.  He was in effect the Sultan’s foreign minister.  In an unusually blunt statement, Ashkenazi wrote Henry “I have rendered you majesty most important service in securing your election; I have effected all that was done here.” The last statement refers to his behind the scenes work at the Sultans Palace.  See Volume 4  p 605 0f Graetz

1611: Birthdate of Pope Innocent XI. During his papacy, “Innocent showed a degree of sensitivity in his dealings with the Jews within the Italian States. He compelled the city of Venice to release the Jewish prisoners taken by Francesco Morisini in 1685. He also discouraged compulsory baptisms which accordingly became less frequent under his pontificate; but he could not abolish the old practice altogether. More controversially in 1682 he issued an edict by which all the money-lending activities carried out by the Roman Jews were to cease. However ultimately convinced that such a measure would cause much misery in destroying livelihoods, the enforcement of the edict was twice delayed.”

1617(11th of Iyar, 5377): Judah Löb Sarava, the Rabbi at Venice who is quoted in the ritual work "Mashbit Milḥamot," in connection with a question in regard to the ritual bath” and “translated into Hebrew Saadia's commentary on Canticles” passed away today.

1648: During the great Cossack uprising which brought death and destruction to hundreds of thousands of Jews, Bohdan Khmelnytsky's forces overwhelmed and defeated Commonwealth forces under the command of Stefan Potocki at the Battle of Zhovti Vody.

1667: Sixty-eight year old Samuel Bochart, “a French Protestant biblical scholar” whose “two-volume Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan exerted a profound influence on seventeenth-century Biblical exegesis” passed away today.

1669: Birthdate of “Dutch Christian Hebraist Campegius Vitringa author of a Commentary on Isaiah and De Synagoga Vetere Libri Tres.

1746(26th of Iyar, 5506): Moshe Chaim Luzzatto passed away. Born in 1707, this Italian rabbi known by the Hebrew acronym RaMChal was noted philosopher and student of kabbalah.

1754: Fire ravaged the Ghetto in Prague.

1756(16th of Iyar, 5516): Fifty-nine-year-old Abigail Franks, the daughter of Moses Levy, and the wife of Jacob Franks with whom she had two children, passed away today.

1761: In Trevellas, Cornwall, England “Edward Opie, a master carpenter and his wife Mary (née Tonkin) gave birth John Opie the youngest of their five children who painted “The Old Jew,” a “portrait of a Jewish man” that he completed “in the months before” he moved to London in 1780.

1764(14th of Iyar, 5524): Pesach Sheni observed as the smallpox epidemic continues in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1774(6th of Sivan, 5534): Shavuot is observed for the last time in Thirteen Colonies loyal to King George since by the following year the American Revolution would have begun and with armed militia beginning their siege of Boston.

1775(16th of Iyar, 5535): Veitel-Heine Ephraim who served as “Jeweller to the Prussian Court and Mint Mast under the Prussian Kings Frederick William I and Frederick the Great for whom he played a critical role in financing the Seven Years War passed away today.

1785(7th of Sivan): Rabbi Chaim Abraham ben Moses Israel of Ancona, author of “Bet Avraham” passed away.

1786(18th of Iyar, 5546): Lag B’Omer is observed on the same day that John Adams, the American ambassador to Great Britain and future President of the United States wrote to Thomas Jefferson, the American ambassador to France and future President of the United States asking him to provide a letter of introduction to an American citizen traveling from London to Paris as well as providing him information about domestic politics in the very disunited United States of America.

1789: Birthdate of Michael Creizenach, the native of Mainz who edited the Hebrew periodical “Zion” with I.M. Jost and who was the father of Theodor Creizenach who followed in his literary footsteps

1790: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Warsaw.

1791: One day after he had passed away, Barnet Levy, the husband of Esther Elias and the father of Betsy and Levi Levy was bured today at the Falmouth Jewish Cemetery.

1799: Birthdate of Alexander McCaul the Dublin born Christian missionary who spent a decade in Poland trying to convert the Jews but who was no anti-Semite since he opposed the accusations of the “blood libel.”  He returned to England where “he became professor of Hebrew and rabbinical literature at King’s College.”

1801: Birthdate of William H. Seward who served as Secretary of State under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson (1861-1869).  Shortly after he assumed office, Seward met with Henry I. Hart, President of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites and assured him that he would continue the push to end the discrimination practiced by the Swiss against American Jews. In 1863, Seward instructed American diplomats to do all that they could to stop the attacks on the Jews of Morocco.

1807(8th of Iyar): Joseph Abraham Stelicki, Ger Zedek of Nikolai passed the son a butcher who had been raised Catholic but who converted to Judaism in 1785 passed away today.

1809: Birthdate of Polish native Löbel Schottländer, the husband of Henriette Gorssman Schottlanderand the father of Julius and Bruno Schottla der

1812(5th of Sivan, 5572): Parashat Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot

1815: “The Jewish community of the Aachen, Germany offered an homage in its synagogue to the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm the third.”

1816: Seventeen year old Rachel N. Cardozo, the Pennsylvania born daughter of Sarah Hart and Isaac Nunez Cardozo married her first husband, Simon Cauffman

1816: Birthdate of Adam Gimbel, the native of Bavaria who came to the United States in 1834 and parlayed a trading post he opened in Vincennes in to the chain of Gimbel’s Department Stores which would become the fabled rival of Macy’s.

1820(3rd of Sivan, 5580): Nathan Salomon the Rabbi at Hombourg who was one of those attending The Grand Sanhedrin of Napoleon that took place at the Town Hall of Paris in February, 1807 and whose parents were Reitz and Marx Salomon passed away today.

1821: Economist and MP David Ricardo, the son of Sephardic Jews Abigail Delvalle and Abraham Israel Ricardo “who converted to the Unitarian faith when he eloped” voted today in favor of an inquiry into the Peterloo Masscare

1823: Birthdate of Heymann Steinthal the brother-in-law of Mortiz Lazarus who taught at The Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, or Higher Institute for Jewish Studies.

1824(18th of Iyar, 5584): Lag B’Omer is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of James Monroe.

1826: Birthdate of Danish banker and Member of Parliament David Baruch Adler.

1828: In Frankfurt, Baron Carl Mayer von Rothschild of Naples and Adelheid Hertz gave birth to Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild, who would become head of the Frankfurt branch of the Rothschild banking empire.

1828: Birthdate of Marcus Kalisch, the native of Pomerania who was “one of the pioneers of the critical study of the Old Testament in England, a secretary to the Chief Rabbi  and a tutor in the Rothschild family” which gave him “the leisure to produce his commentaries and other works.”

1829: Abraham Alexander Wolff “assumed office as chief rabbi of Denmark” today.

1835: Birthdate of Hesse-Nassau native and University of Paris trained German professor Sigmund Mannheimer who in 1865 came to the United States where he “became a professor and librarian at Hebrew Union College while raising two sons who became rabbis and one daughter, Jennie Mannheimer also known as Jennie Manners, the college professor and dramatist who was one of the first two women to earn a degree from Hebrew Union College, with his wife Louise Herschman Mannheimer, the Prague born author, teacher and social reformer.

1838: In Bavaria, Jacob Rice and Augusta Mannstein gave birth to Ignatius Rice, the husband of Cornelia Diana Stern, President of the Home for Aged Infirm, Trustee of the National Hospital for Consumptives at Denver, Colorado who resided at 122 East 79th Street in New York,

1838: Augusta and Lewis Feuchtwanger gave birth to Rebecca Feuchtwanger

1839: George Moss married Lucy Lippshutz at the Great Synagogue today.

1845: Birthdate of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, also known as Eli Metchnikoff. Born in the Ukraine, he was a Russian microbiologist best remembered for his pioneering research into the immune system. Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1908, for his work on phagocytosis. He passed away in Paris in 1916.

1846: One day after she had passed away, Sarah (Moses) Hart, the wife of Michael Hart was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.

1853: The New York Times provided more information about outbreaks of violence that had occurred in Jerusalem during Holy Week (Palm Sunday thru Easter). A group of English missionaries were forced to leave the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because “they behaved in an unseemly manner when the Procession of the Host passed on Good Friday.”  One of the missionaries delivered a sermon outside of a synagogue while the Jews were attending services in which he used “invectives” in talking about the Talmud.  One of the Jews reportedly threw a dead cat at the missionary and a fight broke between the rest of the missionaries and the Jews who sought to defend their religious beliefs.   

1853: The New York Times reported that the recent defeat of the Jewish Disabilities bill in the House of Lords had bitterly disappointed supporters of the measure since they had anticipated that the Lords would follow their usual path and approve legislation that had been approved by the House of Commons. The action of the Lords, according to the Times, shows the great gulf between the aristocracy and the rest of the citizenry.  Despite the prominence of such families as the Rothschilds, “the Jew in England is no better off than he was in the days of King John.”

1853: The New York Times reported that thousands of Prussians including Alexander Von Humboldt have petitioned the Second Chamber (one of the two houses of their bi-cameral legislature) demanding that Jews be allowed to hold government jobs and allowing for full freedom of religious opinion.  The petitions were in response to vote by the First Chamber to exclude Jews from public employment.

1854(18th of Iyyar, 5614): Lag B’Omer

1854: According to an article published today the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews reported that there are 17 synagogues in New York City that show a membership totaling 25,000. The last census shows that there are 46,000 Jews in the entire United States.  The society believes that the census figure is a case of underreporting because it only records people as being Jewish if they self-report. “It is a well-known fact that one-half or more of the Jews in this country call themselves Frenchman, German, Poles, Hungarians and Englishman and never make themselves known as Jews in governmental connections.”

1856: In Slutsk, Belorussia, Chaim Masliansky and his wife gave birth to Zvi Hirsch Masliansky “the popular Yiddish orator who was the most eloquent and influential Maggid on the American scene at his time.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2017/07/tsvi-hirsh-maslyanski-zvi-hirsch.html

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/masliansky-zvi-hirsch

1857: In Marshall, TX, Meyer and Rosalie Doppelmayer gave birth to James Doppelmayer the husband of Bella Davis Doppelmayer and the father of Marguerite, Walter and Rose Marie Doppelmayer who worked in the family dry goods store with his brother Moses passed away today in Marshall where his father Meyer and his Uncle Daniel and his Uncle Isaac Woolf had arrived in the 1850’s which later led to his cousin Joe Weisman settling there,

1859: In London, “the first meeting of the Board of Guardians for the Relief of the Jewish Poor was held at the Great Synagogue Chambers

1861(7th of Sivan, 5621): Second Day of Shavuot celebrated on the same day that Kentucky, the home state of Dembitz and Brandies families enacted a resolution of neutrality which would be rendered meaningless when Union forces thwarted attempt by the Confederates to occupy the home state of both Lincoln and Davis in September.

1863(27th of Iyar, 5623): Jonas Ennery passed away. Born in 1801 at Nancy he became head of the Jewish school at Strasbourg. He served as a Deputy in the French Parliament and compiled a Dictionnaire Général de Géographie Universelle, He was the brother of Marchand Ennery, the chief rabbi of Paris.

1864: In Vienna, Menachem Mendel Birnbaum, a merchant, from Ropshitz, Galicia, and  Miriam Birnbaum (née Seelenfreund), who was born in northern Hungary (in a region sometimes called the Carpathian Rus), of a family with illustrious rabbinic lineage gave birth to Nathan Birnbaum the Austrian journalist, Jewish philosopher and founder of a Jewish nationalist organization "Kadimah."  Kadimah was formed ten years before Theodor Herzl became the leading spokesman of the Zionist movement. Birnbaum is credited for coining the term "Zionism". He died in 1937.

1864: In New York, the "Open Board of Stock-Brokers" adopted its constitution.  Among the signatories was Mendez Nathan, the son of Seixas Nathan.

1864: Birthdate of Julia H. Kohlman who was buried next to her husband Sigmund Kohlman in Mobile, Alabama when she passed.

1866: In Philadelphia, PA, Werner David Amram and Esther Hammerschlag gave birth to University of Pennsylvania graduate David Werner Amram, the husband of Beulah Brylawski and law school professor who wrote The Jewish Law of Divorce According to Bible and Talmud and Leading Cases in the Bible and was active in numerous Jewish organization the “Hebrew Education Society, Jewish Maternity Association and Congregation Mickve Israel.”

1867(14th of Iyar, 5657): Pesach Sheni

1868: President Andrew Johnson was acquitted in his impeachment trial in the United States Senate. According to one source, Johnson made several virulent anti-Semitic statements during his political career prior to becoming President. Considering the fact that the “Tarheel Tailor” was illiterate until adulthood, his anti-Semitic statements may be more a case of ignorance than anything else.

1869(6th of Sivan, 5629): Shavuot is celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant.

1875: The Board of Trustees of B’nai Jeshurun met today in New York City and approved a proposal to allow members of the opposite sex to sit together in the same pews during services.  This put an end to the separate seating that had been the rule at the synagogue since its founding.  The decision would be contested by Israel J. Solomon a member of the congregation who brought a suit in the Court of Common Pleas to over-turn the decision. His suit would fail.

1876: Ida Kuhn married Eduard Cohen and became Ida Cohen

1877: As the constitutional crisis in France came to a head, 363 parliamentary deputies passed a vote of no confidence in the new government championed by Royalist President Patrice MacMahon. The leaders of the opposition would be defended by Raphael Basch a liberal French Jewish political leader and journalist.  Basch was the father of Victor-Guillaume Basch who would be murdered by the Vichy French in 1944.

1879: In Pittsburgh, PA Jacob and Kate Affelder gave birth to William L Affelder, the brother of Louis, Oscar, Harry and Minnie Affelder,  the Penn State University trained mining engineer who was Vice President of the Hillman Coal and Coke Company in Pittsburgh.

1880(6th of Sivan, 5640): Shavuot

1880: Birthdate of Julius Tannen the New York born comedian and monologist whose career included vaudeville, Broadway and Hollywood where he his most famous performance was in “Singing In the Rain.”

1881: Birthdate of Amy Loveman, a founding editor of the Saturday Review.

1881: “A comic melodrama entitled “Sam’l of Posen, or The Commercial Drummer” premiered at Haverly’s Fourteenth Street Theatre in New York.

1885: Birthdate of David de Sola Pool, the native of London whose family roots go back to the Sephardim of Medieval Spain who came to New York City in 1907 to begin as 63 year career as the leader of Congregation Sheaerith Israel, also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue

1888(6th of Sivan, 5648): Shavuot celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Grover Clevealdn

1890: It was reported today that former President Grover Cleveland, Oscar Straus and Joseph Blumenthal will be among those who have purchased boxes for the upcoming Strawberry Festival, a fund raiser sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1890: Birthdate of Polish native and former Swiss textile businessman Alexander S. Haberman who in 1941 came to the United States where he became a successful “a realestate investor, developer and builder of apartment houses and single family houses” and president of the Beth Israel center and the Blezer Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem while raising two sons “Simon V. and Rabbi Jacob Haberman with his wife Esther Lebowitz Haberman.

1891: It was reported today that among the bequests made by the late Nathan Littauer were$1,500 to Mt. Sinai Hospital for the permanent endowment of a bed in memory of his daughter Louise; $1,000 each to the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society and the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews; $500 to the Board of Relief of the United Hebrew Charities.

1892: Justice George C. Barrett officiated at the wedding of Albert Kohn and Sophie Kupfer. The nuptials which were one of the most fashionable events in the Jewish community, took place at the home of Henry Kupfer on east 78th Street.

1892: In Kovno, “Chaim Nathan and Base (Gibberman) Burak gave birth to Lithuanian trained rabbi Aaron D. Burack who in 1914 came to the United States where he married Esther Inselbuch and led congregations “Etz Chaim Velozin” and “Ohel Moshe Cohevrah Thilim” before becoming an “instructor in Talmud at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.”

1893(1st of Sivan, 5653): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1893: In Great Britain, the Board of Guardians is scheduled to meet today where Sir Julian Goldsmith will talk about the expulsions of the Jews from Poland – a matter that heretofore has been denied or kept secret.

1893: George Kennan, the explorer and newspaper man who has become a critic of the Czar and advocate for Russian democracy stated his belief that Polish and Russian Jews will be coming to the United States as a result of the edicts of expulsion issued by the Russian government.

1893: “Myer S. Isaacs, Chairman of the Trustees of the Baron Hirsh Fund for the aid of Russian Jews” in the United States said today that he and his associates “had not considered the question of an influx of Polish Jews” because they did not except any abnormal increase in immigration from that region. (Editor’s note – Based on contemporary reports there was a great deal of disagreement about Russian edicts of expulsion and the potential major influx of Jews from Poland and Russia)

1894: Birthdate of 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,

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/03/archives/charles-marks-exjustice-dies-presided-in-state-trial-of-malcolm-x.html

1894: It was reported today that while Herman Rosenblatt stood in the smoldering ruins of his crockery store, a local ruffian pointed at the Jew and shouted “There is the man who set the fire” causing a mob yelling “Lynch him” to chase after Rosenblatt.  Rosenblatt outran the mob and found sanctuary in the 47th Street Police Station.

1896: In a cable from London, Harold Frederic provided a scoop for the New York Times when he broke the news about Baron Hirsch’s grandchild, who is the daughter of the Baron’s son Lucienne and a French governess. As confirmed by a copy of the Baron’s will, the child will inherit a large portion of the Hirsch millions.

1896: In Birmingham, England Laura (née Greenberg) and Louis Balcon gave birth to English movie producer Sir Michael Elias Balcon.

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/447085/index.html

1897: Three days after he had passed away, 60 year old  Aron Salomon, the husband of Jeanette Salomon, was buried in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemtery.”

1898: The Daughters of Jacob are hosting a Strawberry Festival at Terrace Garden for the benefit of a Home for Aged Hebrews of the down-town east side. They have already sold 3,000 tickets at fifty cents each, and have received presents of large quantities of goods that will be sold at the festival.

1898: Joseph J. Corn, the Vice President Temple Culture Society spoke yesterday about the purpose of the society. He said “that in these days of cheap philosophy and what has come to be known as ethical culture there is a need for Jewish culture.  In an effort to combat the notion that religious education ended with confirmation, the society is holding weekly meetings devoted to the study of Jewish history and Jewish philosophy.  Among other things, the programs should help Jews answer the question “Why are you Jews in this Christian world and yet not of it?”

1898: During the Spanish American War the 4th Missouri Volunteer Infantry whose members included Captain Max Mannheim (St. Joseph), Sergeants Lewis F. Stein (Carrollton) and Herman Weil (St. Joseph) and Privates Fred E. Wise, Lloyd F. Houseman and Abraham J. Friedman and Artificer Arthur Newsbaum was mustered into federal service today.

1899: Second Lieutenant George M. Appel of the 2nd U.S. Volunteer Engineers was mustered out of service today.

1899(7th of Sivan): Eighty-six year Jacob Ezekiel, the husband of Catherine Myers Castro, author of The Jews of Richmond and Persecutions of the Jews in 1840 and the secretary of the board of governors of the Hebrew Union College from 1876 to 1896 passed away today

1901: Today’s shipment of $2,200,000 in gold to Europe included a shipment of one million dollars in gold to Paris by Goldman, Sachs and Co.

1901(27thof Iyar, 5661): Eighty-eight-year-old Jacob Levy Seixas, the New York born son of Judith and Moses Benjamin Seixas and the husband of Hortensia Seixas passed away today.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43057460.pdf

1902: Sixteen year old Louis Lefkowitz, the founder of “Louis Lefkowitz and Brothers, manufacturers of leather belts” and other similar items and the husband of Sadie Leah Weiss came to the United States today from his native Hungary.

1903: At a meeting held under the auspices of the English Zionist Federal a resolution was adopted “declaring that the establishment of a home in Palestine was the only practical solution of the Jewish question.”  Israel Zangwill had given an impassioned speech in support of the motion during which he invoked the bloody images of the atrocities committed against the Jews of Romania and Kishineff.

1904: Herzl's diary breaks off with a report to Jacob Schiff. Schiff was a successful banker and financer. He was one of the leaders of the Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th century. He actively intervened on behalf of the Jews suffering in Tsarist Russia. Although he had reservations about Zionism, he was increasingly drawn to Herzl’s concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a practical way of lessening the suffering of Russia’s Jews.

1905: “The Yiddish Shylock of Jacob P Adler” published today provided a review of the Jewish actor in that role in the drama that opened last night at the American Theatre.\1905: In Russia, the Committee of Ministers is reported to indorse the “Jewish reforms” proposed Sergei Witte which cover “military conscription, participation in local government and removal of residential disabilities.”

1906: “Pennsylvania Plans Its $50,000,000 Loan” published today described the role of Kuhn Loeb & Co. in the quick placement of this issue notes which was vital to the growth of one of America’s leading railroads.

1907: A day after pleading guilty to charges of bribery Abe Ruef “testified before a grand jury incriminating the Mayor of San Francisco which led to his conviction and removal from office.

1908(15th of Iyar, 5668): Parashat Behar

1908(15th of Iyar, 5668): Abraham Hart Cardoza, the son of Sarah N. Peixotto and the brother of Rahel and Algernon Cardozo passed away today after which he was buried in the Mount Neboh Cemetery in Glendale, NY.

1908: It was reported today that the publishing house Messrs. L.C. Page & Co is preparing to issue Race or Mongrel, American or Pan-European which warns “against unrestricted immigration” and cites “the Jews as an example of a race preserved in strength by abstention from foreign marriage.”

1909: Birthdate of Yehiel Feiner whom the world would come to know as Yehiel De-Nur or Dinur, a survivor of Auschwitz who used his experience as the basis for several books including “The House of Dolls.”

1910: It was reported today that the commission that was appointed to examine the “question of the expulsion of Jews residing illegally in Kiev and elsewhere outside of the Pale has finished its works and the 170 families of the 1,500 examined will be allowed to remain and not forced to move elsewhere in Russia.

1911(18th of Iyar, 5671): Lag B’Omer

1911: Masliach Effendi of the Turkish government ridiculed the idea that Jews could become a menace to Turkey. He suggests appointment of committee to examine the whole question of Zionism.
1912: Birthdate of Rita Kanarek. In her senior year at N.Y.U. she married Alex Hillman founder and President of Hillman Periodicals. Mrs. Hillman became president of the Alex Hillman Family Foundation where she pursued her passions as an art collector and philanthropist. Among the beneficiaries of her largesse was the Phillips Beth Israel School of Nursing in Manhattan. She passed away at the age of 95 in November of  2007.

1912: Birthdate of author, historian and broadcaster, Studs Terkel. “My family was Jewish but not religious. My mother went through the rituals; my father didn't. He was a freethinker.” He passed away at the age of 93.

1913(9th of Iyar 5673): Ninety-one year old banker William Scholle passed away today in New York.

1913: Rabbi Tobias Schaafarber is scheduled to deliver the Friday night sermon at the Chicago Hebrew Institute.

1913: Three years after the death of his first wife, Max Rabinoff married Helene Gaubert today

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/rbml/Rabinoff/

1914 20th of Iyar): Isaac Halevy (Rabinowitz) author of “Dorot ha-Rishonim” passed away.

1914: “The preliminary paper of Dr. Harry Plotz of Mount Sinai Hospital in which he tells for the time of his isolation of the germ of typhus fever and Brill’s disease, appeared in the of The Journal of the American Medical Association published” today.

1915: In Chicago, on Leo M. Frank Day, famous attorney Clarence Darrow will address “a big mass meeting” scheduled to be held today “at which it is expected 100,000 signatures will be obtained on petitions appealing to Governor J.M. Slation and the Prison Board of Georgia to commute Frank’s death sentence.

1915: “Prominent speakers will tell of the trial of Leo Frank and the many injustices to which it is alleged he was subjected because of the high racial feeling in the South” at a mass meeting scheduled to be held in Minneapolis, MN in an attempt “to ask the Governor of Georgia to commute Leo M. Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment.”

1915: Today “the Kosher Butchers’ Union opened co-operative butcher shops at 149 Orchard Street, 214 East 102ndStreet and 501 Wilkins Avenue in the Bronx” the proceeds from which will be used to finance the plan strike by the Union.

1915: Felix Warburg was presented a silver trowel today when the cornerstone was laid for the new building of the Yorkville Jewish Institute and Talmud Torah at 123 East 85th Street where the attendees heard speeches by several notable including Professor Mordecai M. Kaplan of JTS and Borough President Marcus M. Marks

1915: Professor Max L. Margolis and Horace Stern are scheduled to speak at the annual meeting of the Jewish Publication Society of America, which is being held at Dropsie College in Philadelphia, PA.

1916: Birthdate of Ephraim Katzir, former President of Israel. Born Katchalski in Kiev, Katzir came to Palestine in 1925. A biophysicist, Katzir taught at Hebrew University and served as department hair at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. One result of his research was the creation of a synthetic fiber for internal surgery that can be dissolved by body enzymes. He served as Israel's fourth President(a largely ceremonial position) from 1973 to 1978

1916: As the French and British negotiated the post-war disposition of Ottoman Empire, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey sent a letter to Paul Cambon, the French Ambassador to the Court of St. James ratifying Cambon’s version of the partition plan that would eventually be known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-sykes-picot-agreement-1916

1916: The will of Shalom Aleichem was published in the New York Times and read into the Congressional Record of the United States.

1917: The Chess Club is scheduled to play an exhibition game at the Sinai Social Center before which Edward Lasker, the leading Chess champion will deliver an introductory speck on “Chess, an Aid in the Struggle of Life.

1917: The Annual meeting of the Jewish Training School of Chicago is scheduled to be held this evening at the Standard Club.

1917: Today, President Wilson told Judge Aaron J. Levy of New York that “at present” the government is “unable to do anything further to relieve the situation of the Jews in Palestine” which has been pictured “as very serious.”

1917: Dr. A. B. Yudelson and Nathan D. Kaplan are scheduled to speak about the issues facing the American Jewish Congress at this evening’s meeting The South Side Jewish Men’s Club at the Jewish Educational Center.

1918: Two Jewish French journalists – Landau and Goldsky—expressed their desire to address the court today after having been sentenced to prison on charges of treason yesterday.

1918: Rabbi H.S. Margolies, Rabbi Philip Klein, Rabbi S.E. Jaffe and Rabbi M.L. Preil were among those who signed a letter issued today by the Rabbinical Association “urging the Jews of America to subscribe generously to the Red Cross fund.”

1919: Sir Harry Lawson Webster Levy-Lawson “was created 1st Viscount Burnham of Hall Barn in the County of Buckingham.”

1919: The first Estonian Congress of Jewish congregations which had been convened on May 11 to discuss the new circumstances Jewish life was confronting came to a close today. This is where the ideas of cultural autonomy and a Jewish Gymnasium (secondary school) in Tallinn were born. Jewish societies and associations began to grow in numbers. The largest of these new societies was the H. N. Bjalik Literature and Drama Society in Tallinn founded in 1918. Societies and clubs were established in Viljandi, Narva, and elsewhere. In 1920, the Maccabi Sports Society was founded and became well-known for its endeavors to encourage sports among Jews. Jews also took an active part in sporting events in Estonia and abroad. Sara Teitelbaum was a 17-time champion in Estonian athletics and established no less than 28 records. In the 1930s there were about 100 Jews studying at the University of Tartu. In 1934, a chair was established in the School of Philosophy for the study of Judaica. There were five Jewish student societies in Tartu Academic Society, the Women’s Student Society Hazfiro, the Corporation Limuvia, the Society Hasmonea and the Endowment for Jewish Students. All of these had their own libraries and played important roles in Jewish culture and social life. Political organizations such as Hasomer Hazair and Beitar were also established. Many Jewish youth traveled to Palestine to establish the Jewish State. The renowned kibbutzim of Kfar Blum and Ein Gev were set up in part by Jews from Estonia.

1920: The funeral for sixty year old Yiddish actor and theatre manager David Kessler was scheduled to be held this morning “under the auspices of the Jewish Actors’ Club.”

1923: Birthdate of economist Merton Miller, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Economics.

1923: Birthdate of Manuel D. Plotkin, the native of Chita, Russia who was appointed Director of the Census Bureau by President Carter in 1977.

1923 In New Canaan, CT, Jewish immigrants Morris Yudain and Berta Jaffe gave birth to their seventh child, Sidney Lawrence Yudain the journalist who created “Roll Call.”

1923: The first aerial display in Palestine took place at Ramleh today, a squadron of 14 aeroplanes of the British Royal Air Force participating. The exhibition program included flying, air races, a baloon hunt, mimic air fighting and a bombing demonstration. The aerial derby was over the circuit of Ramleh, Raselain, Jaffa, Ramle... Lieut. Martyn, flying a Vickers Vimy biplane, won the air race covering a distance of twenty-seven miles.

 

1924: “Having been convicted of conspiracy to carry stolen securities into the District of Columbia, Nicky Arnstein” the husband of Fanny Brice “entered Leavenworth prison, where he remained for three years.”

 

1924: In Manhattan, Herman and Sara Aaronson Mankiewicz gave birth to Frank Fabian Mankiewicz “a writer and Democratic political strategist who was Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s press secretary, directed Senator George S. McGovern’s losing 1972 presidential campaign and for six years was the president of National Public Radio.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/us/politics/frank-mankiewicz-press-secretary-to-robert-f-kennedy-dies-at-90.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

 

1924: Birthdate of Joseph Zalman Margolis, the native of Newark, NJ, who “has held the Laura H. Carnell Chair of Philosophy at Temple University” since 1991.

1926: In Brooklyn, businessman Harold A LIfton and Ciel (Roth) Lifton gave birth to Dr. Robert Jay LIfton the psychiatrist whose works include Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism; Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima; and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

1926: Dr. James Simon is scheduled to preside over today’s celebration marking the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, a “German Jewish organization founded in 1901 to improve social and political conditions of Jews in Eastern Europe and Orient.”

1927(14th of Iyar, 5687): Pesach Sheni

1927(14th of Iyar, 5687): Sixty-four year old American actor and vaudevillian Sam Bernard, the Birmingham, England, born son of Benjamin and Charlotta Bernard and the husband of Florence Deutsch who began his career at the age of 13 in “the Grand Duke’s Theatre” passed away today while on board the liner Columbus which was the first leg on a trip to Carlsbad, Germany where he planned on getting relief from his rheumatism.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=J28tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-4sFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5728%2C2804723

1927: It was reported today that four thousand six hundred and twenty-eight persons are now living in 41 settlements in Palestine created by the Keren Hayesod, according to the latest figures given out by the Department of Agricultural Colonization of the Palestine Zionist Executive. Sixty-five per cent of this population are workers, and the remainder children. (JTA)

1928: Three Jews, who are reported to be Communists, were scheduled to be deported from Palestine.  One of the deportees “was found guilty in Jerusalem of belonging to an illegal organization” while the other two were being deported after having served short jail terms for participating in “May Day riots in Tel Aviv.”


1929: In Baltimore, MD, Arnold Rice Rich and Helen Gravely Jones Rich gave birth to Adrienne Rich, a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work — distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity — brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse and kept it there for nearly a half-century. Her father was Jewish.  Her mother was not. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-and-author-dies-at-82.html?_r=2&hp

1929: The 1st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honoring the best films of 1927 and 1928 and took place today at a private dinner held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, in Los Angeles, California. The awards, popularly known as Oscars, were created by Jewish movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, founder of Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation.

1931(29th of Iyar, 5691): Parashat Bamidbar

1931: Birthdate of Manhattan native Alfred William Alberts, a pioneering researcher in the field cholesterol as it related to cardio-vascular problems. (As reported by Gina Kolata)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/obituaries/alfred-alberts-unsung-father-of-a-cholesterol-drug-dies-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1932: The Nazis are demanding the removal of Bernhard Weiss from his post as the Vice-President of the Berlin Police Force.  Their objections are two-fold: Weiss is Jewish and he ordered the arrest of four Nazis for their role in attacking a former Nazi named Schotz who had left the party.

1932(10th of Iyar, 5692): Eighty year old Edward Lawrence Levy the London born winner of the first World Weightlifting Competition in 1891 and “member of the International Weightlifting Jury at the first modern Olympics at Athens in 1896 passed away today while working as an agent of the Midland District of the National Trade Defence Association.

1934: Three days after she had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held today for sixty year old Henrietta Jaskow, “a member of the board of directors of the Foster Mothers Association of America” and supporter of Mt. Sinai Hospital.

1934: “Benes Calms Fears of Jews On Nationalism” published today described a meeting that Czech Foreign Minister Eduard Benes had with a delegation of Jews from the City of Uzhorod in which he assured them that the government “would not attempt to force Czechoslovakian nationalism on the Jews” living in that area.

1934: In Brooklyn, NY, Rubin Dallek (a business-machine dealer) and Esther (Fisher) Dallek. Gave birth to Robert A. Dallek, the Columbia University Ph.D. historian who won the Bancroft Prize for his 1979 book Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945

1935: “A convention of delegates from national Jewish youth organizations will meet tonight in room 327 of the Chanin Building, 122 East Forty-Second Street, to consider the syllabi which will be presented to the seminars to be held on June 9 at the Metropolitan Conference of Jewish Youth Organizations. The meeting, under the auspices of the youth division of the American Jewish Congress, will consider such problems as anti-Semitism, boycott of the 1936 Olympics, Zionism, Jewish youth and economic discrimination and Jewish education.” (JTA)

1936: Tonight “the Icor, the association for Jewish colonization in Soviet Russia, celebrated the second jubilee of the Jewish autonomy in Biro-Bidjan, U.S.S.R. where a Jewish Soviet Republic is being built, with a concert at Town Hall.”

1936(24th of Iyar, 5696): A bomb thrown by Arabs kills three Jews at the Edison cinema in Jerusalem. The Haganah demands permission to retaliate, but Ben Gurion refuses. The Edison Cinema was not just a movie theatre. It was a “citadel of secular European culture in Jerusalem. It opened in 1932 with a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” sung in Hebrew. The Edison was the third largest cinema in the city and popular sport for British soldiers and officials.

1936: “Steel helmeted police maintained comparative quiet in the Holy Land today following” demonstrations that had broken out yesterday when the Arab campaign of civil disobedience officially began.

1936: At Shabbat morning services Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon at Rodeph Sholom on “Do Christians Understand Jews? – A comment on the Christian Century Articles”

1936: At Shabbat morning services Rabbi Nathan A. Perilman is scheduled to deliver a sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El on “The Pitfalls of Self-righteousness

1937(6th of Sivan, 5697): Shavuot

1937: Birthdate of Dr. Anthony Saidy, the physician and Internal Master of Chess who was a mentor to Bobby Fisher.

1937: The Polish government launched two investigations into the attacks on Jews that took place last week in Brzesc, which was known as Brest-Litovsk, the site of the peace negotiations between the Germans and the Russians that resulted with the latter surrendering to the former.

1937: Dr. Bernhard Kahn and David J. Schweitzer, European director and vice-president, respectively, of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee issued a report today that described“the role of the cooperative credit system established by the American Jewish Joint Reconstruction Foundation in aiding some 500,000 Jews in eleven European countries by facilitating issuance of $28,000,000 in credits in nine months

1937: In Romania, “The first motion to exclude Jews from professional associations came today when the Confederation of the Associations of Professional Intellectuals (Confederația Asociațiilor de Profesioniști Intelectuali din România) voted to exclude all Jewish members from its affiliated bodies, calling for the state to withdraw their licenses and reassess their citizenship.”

1938: The Palestine Post reported on the continued fighting between the police and British army units in the Acre District. At least 23 terrorists were killed there and numerous arrests were made. Jewish settlements repulsed numerous terrorist attacks but complained that they were supplied with insufficient arms and too small a number of supernumerary constables for a successful defense. The Iraq Petroleum Co. pipeline was again set on fire.

1938: Today “the British government set out the objectives of the Women's Voluntary Service for Civil Defence” which had been founded by Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading, Baroness Swanborough who served as chairman of the WVS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Isaacs,_Marchioness_of_Reading#/media/File:Housewives!_Wvs_Needs_Your_Help!_Art.IWMPST19869.jpg

1938: After two and half weeks of touring the country, Britain’s Palestine Partition Commission began its first official session.  Because of the continued Arab violence, the meeting was held “in camera under heavy guard.’  While Arab leaders continued to boycott the commission, Jewish leaders Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, Moshe Shertok and Dr. Bernard Joseph met with the British to discuss possible implementation of partition proposals.

1939: “British troops patrolled strategic points throughout the Holy Land tonight as part of extensive precautions to avert threatened disorders over the British Government's Palestine plan, to be published tomorrow”

1940: This afternoon Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. met with President Roosevelt at the White House today.

1940: It was reported today that the 27th annual Palestine Flower Day is scheduled to be held on May 19, 1940.

1940(8th of Iyar, 5700): Forty-two year old Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker died tonight while fleeing from the Nazis in a freak accident when he feel through an open hatch aboard the SS Bodegraven in the English Channel and broke his neck.

http://www.stairgalleries.com/about/news-events/the-incredible-story-of-dutch-art-dealer-jacques-goudstikker/

1940: In New Canaan, CT, “Asher Margolies, a Macy’s executive, and the former Ethel Polacheck, a painter” gave birth to John Samuel Margolies, Americas “foremost photographer of vernacular architecture.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/03/arts/john-margolies-photographer-of-whimsical-architecture-dies-at-76.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1941: “Nearly 5,000 foreign Jews of Paris, many of them crying hysterically, arrived at a concentration camp at Orleans today as the government extended its new social measures by withdrawing licenses of hundreds of foreign doctors and druggists.”

1942(29th of Iyar, 5702): Parashat Bamidbar

1942(29th of Iyar, 5702: Sixty-seven year old theatre producer Morris Gest, the husband of Reina Gest and the son-in-law of David Belasco passed away today.

1942: “Sobibór became fully operational and began mass gassing operations.

1943: The famous Tolmatsky Synagogue of Warsaw was dynamited by order of General Jurgen Stroop. It marked the last German "major operation" in the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

1943:SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop reports the final liquidation of the Jewish ghetto at Warsaw, although some Jews remain in hiding. The Germans reportedly lost 300 troops.Amazingly the Jewish resistance had proved fierce, by comparison than that of the French Army in 1940. The number of Jewish dead does not matter, since they would have perished in the showers and ovens any way. Death was not the question; the manner of death was the matter of choice. There were a few survivors of the Ghetto, one of them being the mother ofMarshaFensin, the former Cantor of Temple Judah.

1943(11th of Iyar 11): Yiddish author Chaim Zhitlowsky passed away

1943: Today, in what is now neighborhood of Tel Aviv, “the Sarona assembly hall was bombed by the Irgun injuring six people.”

1944(23rd of Iyar, 5704): Four year old Eldad Davidovics who had been transported from Brno to Terezin today was transported from Terezin to Auschwitz where he was murdered.

1944: The first ofmore than 180,000 Hungarian Jews reached Auschwitz.

1944: Seventy year old Berlin native Olga Lehmann who had been deported to Terezin in 1942 was shipped to Auschwitz today.

1945: Today, the Palestine police accused a “group of lawless Jewish political extremists “which has been inactive since last Fall” and which believes their activities “can hasten the emigration to Palestine of surviving European Jews “was responsible for the “sabotage of telephone communications in the last few days.”

1946: It was reported today that Crown Publishers will Old Country by Sholem Aleichem on June 17.

1946: On the same day that it was reported that the “Arabs are in no mood to compromise on the pont of 100,000 Jews being permitted to enter Palestine, “twenty armed Jews, including several young girls, reportedly participated in several robberies today” in Palestine.

1947: Three days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held for NYU trained lawyer Louis Fabricant, the “attorney-in-chief of the legal aid society and leader in B’nai B’rith who raised three children –Herbert, Helen and Sarel – with his wife.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1947/05/15/88781033.pdf

1947: Birthdate of New York City native and Boston University graduate Andrew Lack who went from acting in commercials and “off-Broadway productions” to a behind the camera career that culminated with his being named “chairman of the NBCUniversal Worldwide News Group.”

https://pagesix.com/2019/06/13/nbc-news-chief-andy-lack-and-wife-betsy-kenny-have-split-up/?_ga=2.132191754.503085456.1560520869-1684604245.1537203133

1948: In New York City, the American Zionist Emergency Council sponsored a celebration of the creation of the Jewish state at Madison Square Garden that was so well attended 75,000 people had to be turned away.

1948: Based on a telegram from David Ben Gurion and Moshe Sharett, Abba Eban and not Mordechai Elisah, is to be Israel’s chief spokesman at the the United Nations.

1948: Israel issued itsfirst postage stamps.

1948: At the Landsberg DP Camp, survivors of the Holocaust held a celebratory parade in honor the creation of the state of Israel

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/16.asp

1948: Tonight, “after driving away the enemy” “company of the third battalion of the Yiftach Brigade occupied the Tegart fort called Metzudat Koach by the Israelis which overlooked the Hula Valley.

1948: Chaim Weizmann was chosen Chairman of the Provisional State Council of Israel which effectively made him the first president of the State of Israel.

1948: The Egyptian army suffered its first defeat at Nirim, in the Negev.

1948: The Egyptians entered Gaza. They would not “leave’ until 1967.

1948: At approximately one o’clock in the morning Syrian artillery began shelling Kibbutz Ein Gev.  At dawn, Syrian aircraft attacked the Kinarot valley villages.  Later in the day “Syrian aircraft made bombing runs on Masada, Sha'ar HaGolan, Degania Bet and Afikim.” This was the opening round in the Syrian attempt to sweep the Jews from the Galilee. To any one observing events of that day, it would appear that the victory would go to the Syrians with their tanks, artillery and combat aircraft. Metzudat Koach, a Tegart fort built by Solel Boneh during the British Mandate” that “was a key observation point on the Naftali heights, overlooking the Hula Valley” which had been seized by the Arabs thus threatening the existence of kibbutzim in the Upper Galilee.1948: Christopher Mayhew, the future Lord Mayhew, an anti-Zionist ally of British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, writes in his diary, “I must make a note about Ernest’s anti-Semitism, which has come out increasingly sharply these past few weeks with the appalling crisis in Palestine. There is no doubt to my mind that that Ernest detests Jews. He makes the odd wise-crack about the ‘chosen people’ and declares that the Old Testament is the most immoral book ever written…” This view of Bevin is fascinating when his role in enforcing the White Paper and his opposition to a Jewish homeland is being considered.

1948: “JEWS IN GRAVE DANGER IN ALL MOSLEM LANDS; Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia Face Wrath of Their Foes” published today described the precarious position of the 900,000 Jews living “Arab and Moslem countries stretching from Morocco to India.”  “There is a tendency” in some Moslem states “such as Syria and Lebanon” “to regard all Jews as Zionist agents and fifth columnists.  There are indications that that the stage is being set for a tragedy of incalculable proportions” which the United Nations has done nothing to prevent.  These fears are based in part on Arab League announcements that at some unspecified date, “all Jews except citizens of non-Arab states, would be considered ‘members of the Jewish minority state of Palestine.’ Their bank accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to ‘Zionist ambitions in Palestine.’  Jews believed to active Zionists would be interned and their assets confiscated.”  In Syria, “virtually all” Jewish civil servants have already been fired and in Iraq Jews are not allowed to leave the country without posting a $20,000 bond to guarantee their return.  However bad conditions are now, it is predicted that in the event of an all-out war in Palestine, “the repercussions will be grave for Jews all the way from Casablanca to Karachi.”

1949:  Milton Berle appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.

1950:Out of a large collection of 120 styles of knit fashions brought to this country from Israel, for merchandising, forty were shown this afternoon at the Plaza Hotel to buyers. The presentation, under the auspices of Service for Palestine, Inc., 2 Park Avenue, was its first show to promote Israel-made products in the American market.

1950: “The Jackie Robinson” a biopic about the integration of baseball for which Ross Hunter served as the dialogue coach was released in the United States today.

1952: “New Faces of 1952” a revue that included music by Sheldon Harnick and Arthur Siegel as well as “Of Fathers and Sons” a parody of Clifford Odets “Golden Boy” written by Mel Brooks opened on Broadway today at the Royale Theatre.

1952: It was reported today that “Senator Herbert H. Lehman will be awarded the 1952 Gold Medal of Merit of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States” for his “distinguished service to the nation, to Jewry and to his fellow veterans.”

1953(2nd of Sivan, 5713): Parashat Bamidbar

1953(2nd of Sivan, 5713): Ninety-year old Bavarian born, Iowa raised “philanthropist, Zionist” WW I anti-War activist, Mary Fels, the wife of Joseph Fels passed away today

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/fels-mary

https://www.jta.org/1953/05/18/archive/mrs-mary-fels-philanthropist-dies-took-intererest-in-palestine

https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/8173

1954: In Elizabeth, NJ, Joseph Kushner, “a construction worker, builder and real estate investor” and Rae Kushner, both of whom were Holocaust survivors, gave birth to “real estate developer Charles Kushner”, the founder of Kushner Companies, brother of  Murray Kushner and Esther Schulder and father of Jared Kushner.

1955: Birthdate of actress Debra Winger, the star of Officer and a Gentleman.”

1955: Birthdate of Edgar Bronfman Jr., CEO of Seagram and Warner Music

1956(6th of Sivan, 5716): Shavuot

1956: U.S. premiere of “While the City Sleeps” a film based on The Bloody Spur, a novel by Charles Einstein and directed by Fritz Lang.

1957: It was reported today that Colonel Robert Henriques, the author of 100 Hours to Suez which described and analyzed Israel’s victory in the recent Sinai Campaign is scheduled to the principal speaker at the Israel bond dinner on May 19. (JTA)

1959(8th of Iyar, 5719): Seventy year old Hall of Fame Bowler Mort Lindsey passed away today.

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/MortimerLindsey.htm

1960: Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

1960: “An abridged version of the Mel Brooks musical “Shinbone Alley” “was broadcast under the original title archy & mehitabel[ as part of the syndicated TV anthology series Play of the Week presented by David Susskind.”

1961: Birthdate of Jean Hanff Korelitz the author of Admission which “was adapted for the 2013 film of the same name”

https://www.jeanhanffkorelitz.com/

1964(5th of Sivan, 5724): Parashat Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot

1964: After having been performed successfully in the UK, “The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd” directed by Anthony Newley and produced by David Merrick opened today at the Shubert Theatre in New York City.

1965(16th of Iyar, 5725): Pesach Sheni

1965: Eightieth birthday of Rabbi de Sola Pool who had retired from the active leadership of Congregation Shearith Israel – the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in 1957 after serving as Rabbi for fifty years.

1965: In Canada, Dr. Victor Goldbloom was the first guest to appear on “Cross Country Check-up,” a Sunday afternoon radio show whose hosts have included Moses Znaimer.

1966: Two people were killed today during a “landmine attack between Sea of Galilee and Almagor.”

1967: General Fawzi, the Egyptian chief of staff, sent a message to the commander of the UN Emergency Force, General Rikhye of the Indian Army requesting the withdrawal of the UNEF from Egypt. The Egyptian Foreign Minister sent a cable to U Thant, UN Secretary General tell him that the Egyptian government had decided to immediately terminate the presence of UNEF in Egypt and the Gaza strip.

1968(18th of Iyar, 5728); Lag B'Omer

1968(18th of Iyar, 5728): Seventy-five year old Ben Dalgin, the New York City born son of Mr. and Mrs. Max Dalgin who worked his way from being a teenage “printer’s apprentice” to serving as “director of art, photography and reproduction for the New York Times” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/05/17/77088555.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=47

 

1969(28th of Iyar, 5729): Yom Yerushalayim

1969: Barbra Streisand appeared at a Friars Club Tribute

1969: In the Soviet Union, Boris Kochubievesky, a “refusnik” is scheduled to “3 yards hard labor” at the end of sham trial where he was accused of slandering the Soviet regime.

1971(21st of Iyar, 5731): Seventy-seven year old “Austrian actor, cabaret performer, refugee from the Nazis and the husband of Anny Han passed away today in his native Vienna.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/706103-Karl-Farkas

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/karl-farkas-7044

1973: Birthdate of actress Tori Spelling.

1973(14th of Iyar, 5733): Famed Cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz passed away. His body was flown to Jerusalem for burial.

1974: Birthdate of Adam Richman who earned an undergrad degree from Emory and a Master’s from Yale before pursuing a career as an actor and television personality.

1974: Despite a terrorist attack the previous day on a school at Ma’alot, Prime Minister Golda Meir tells Secretary of State Kissinger that talks with the Syrians will continue. After a one day hiatus, she says, “We had all better back to peacemaking.

1974: “Dybbuk,” a ballet based on the Ansky’s play created by Jerome Robbins using the music of Leonard Bernstein debuted at the New York State Theatre, Lincoln Center.

1975(6th of Sivan, 5735): Shavuot

1975:  In “Before the Founders and Sons” published today Richard F. Shepard provided a review of Amos Elon’s latest work Herzl, a biography of “the man acknowledged as the founder of the Jewish state.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/16/archives/books-of-the-times-before-the-founders-and-sons.html

1975: “Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York” the movie version of the novel by Gail Parent starring Jeannie Berlin and featuring Sam Melton as “Mannie” was released in the United States today.

1976(16thof Iyar, 5736): Seventy-seven year old Shlomo H. Bardin, the son of Hairm and Miryam Bardinstein and the husband of Roth Bardin, with whom he had two sons – David and Hillel – and “who studied at the University of Berlin, University College and Columbia University after which “he founded the Haifa Technical High School and Haifa Nautical School passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/17/archives/dr-shlomo-bardin-77-dies-founded-brandeis-institute.html

1976(16thof Iyar, 5736): Eighty-four-year-old Philadelphia born University of Pennsylvania trained attorney Judge Louis Edward Levinthal “a special adviser for Jewish affairs to General Lucius D. Clay after World War II passed away today in Jerusalem.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/19/archives/louis-levinthal-84-led-zionists-in-40s.html?searchResultPosition=1

1977: "Boulevard Montmartre, in the Afternoon Rain," by Camille Pissarro the son of Frederick Pissarro, a Sephardic Jew, was sold today, at Christie's in New York for $275,000

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that in his 28th Annual State Comptroller's Report Dr. Yitzhak Nebenzahl called for a "Ministry of Administration." He said that while there are many links that tie people to its government, in Israel the administration is the weakest link in this chain. "A government," he explained, "is like an automobile. No matter how fine the car is, it will not ride well unless all four wheels are intact." The Report claimed a massive maladministration, and was specifically highly critical of the Treasury.

1982: Final broadcast of the 7thseason of “One Day At A Time,” starring Bonnie Franklin.

1984(14th of Iyar, 5744): Comedian Andy Kaufman passed away. Born in 1949, Kaufman is best remembered for his many appearances on ‘Saturday Night Live’ andfor his portrayal of Latka on thetelevision hit “Taxi.” He was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer and was 35 at the time of his death.

http://andykaufman.jvlnet.com/core.htm

1984(14th of Iyar, 5744): Irwin Shaw passed away at the age of 71. Born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in 1913 in the Bronx, his Jewish immigrants from Russia changed the family to Shaw and moved to Brooklyn. After graduating from Brooklyn College in 1934, Shaw wrote scripts for radio shows including Dick Tracey. After serving in the Army during World War II, Shaw produced his "great American war novel"The Young Lions, which became the basis for a successful film of the same name.Among other works by this highly prolific writer was Rich Man, Poor Man which became a hit t.v. mini-series.

http://www.irwinshaw.org/

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/17/obituaries/irwin-shaw-extolled-for-short-stories-dies.html?pagewanted=all

1985: American painter, editor, and book artist, Susan Bee and poet Charles Bernstein gave birth to their first child Emma Bee Bernstein.

1986: David Pleat left Luton Town Football Club to become manager of Tottenham Hotspur “one of the biggest football clubs in England” (Editor’s Note – Football in England is what Americans call soccer)

1986(7th of Iyar, 5746): Sixty-five year old Yehuda Hellman passed away today. http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/18/obituaries/yehuda-hellman-dies-headed-jewish-groups.html?pagewanted=print

1987: For the third and final night Leonard Bernstein conducted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the IPO’s 50thanniversary celebration

1987: Birthdate of Can Bonomo, the Turkish born Jewish singer who “represented Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 at Baku.

1988: CBS broadcast the final episode of “Cagney and Lacey” produced by Barney Rosenzwieg and Joseph Stern and co-starring Al Waxman as the title characters supervisor “Lt. Bert Samuels.

1990(21st of Iyar, 5750):  Multi-talented entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. passed away at the age of 64. Born in Harlem in 1925, began his show business career at the age of four. Davis was the son of a popular vaudeville entertainer. He learned how to dance from the legendary BoJangles. He begandancing with the Will Mastin Trio and moved on to asinging career that included opening for Frank Sinatra. Davis was part of theRat Pack and starred with them in the cult classic “Ocean’s Eleven.” During the 1950's Davis was in an automobile accident in which he lost his eye. It was during this period of his life than he converted to Judaism.He will be remembered not just for his talent but for his support of the Civil Rights Movement as well. (As reported by Peter Flin)

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1208.html

1991: The Los Angeles Times featured a review of Wartime Lies,” the first novel written by Louis Begley. "Wartime Lies is the story of a ‘lucky’ little boy. Lucky goes in quotation marks; the child went through terror and degradation. On the other hand, no one in his small family of well-to-do Polish Jews went to a concentration camp. Only two--his grandfather and grandmother--were killed; he, his father and his aunt survived and were able to prosper after the war, even before emigrating.”

1993: A third revival of “3 Men on a Horse” featuring Jewish thespians Tony Randall, Jack Klugman, Jerry Stiller and Ellen Green closed today in New York City

1994(6th of Sivan, 5754) First Day of Shavuot

1994(6th of Sivan, 5754): Shaul Ben-Tzvi, the second commander of the Israeli Navy passed away today.  Born Paul Hamah Schulman in Connecticut in 1922 he graduated from the U.S. Navy Academy and served with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during WW II.  Following his discharge he worked to bring Jews to Palestine during the mandate and then helped to establish a naval arm for the infant Jewish State.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/18/obituaries/paul-shulman-72-headed-israeli-navy.html?pagewanted=1

1995: “Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs,” Michael Nymans 25th Album was released to by Argo Records.

1996: NBC broadcasts the final episode of season 7 of ‘Seinfeld.”

1996(27th of Iyar, 5756): Fifty-six year old Admiral Jeremy M. Boorda, the Chief of Naval Operations passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/18/us/admiral-in-suicide-note-apologized-to-my-sailors.html

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/people/chiefs-of-naval-operations/admiral-jeremy-m--boorda.html

1999: Angela Warnick Buchdahl was invested as the first Asian American cantor. Two years later, she became the first Asian American rabbi.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/16/1999/angela-warnick-buchdahl

1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Return of Depression Economics byPaul Krugman and recently released paperback editions Aharon Appelfeld’s “The Iron Tacks,” the “Israseli novelabout a concentration camp survivor who wanders through Austria buying sacred books and other remnants of the Jewish culture that once flourshed there while searing for the Nazi officer who murdered his parents” and “Bronstein’s Children by Jurek Becker, “a novel about the psychic aftershocks of the Holocaust in which an 18yearold German Jew stumbles on his father and two other camp survivors as they torture a former Nazi Guard.”

2000:''Yiddishkayt Los Angeles” is scheduled to continue for a third day.

2000: “For the first time in almost four years, Israelis and Palestinian forces exchanged gunfire in the West Bank today as a wave of violent protest swept through the Palestinian territories. Despite the fighting, Prime Minister Ehud Barak won his Parliament's approval to cede three villages near Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority in an effort to advance the peace talks.” (As reported by Deborah Sontag)

2001: Today “behind the closed doors of a Tel Aviv courtroom, Israeli prosecutors began their trial of Itzhak Yaakov, a 75-year-old retired general accused of divulging classified information related to Israel's nuclear weapons program.” (As reported by William Orme)

2001: A Palestinian bus driver, 35 year old Khalil Abu Elba, who plowed his bus into a crowd and killed eight Israelis, including seven soldiers, in February was convicted of murder.” (As reported by Deborah Sontag)

2002(5th of Sivan, 5762): Erev Shavuot

2002: U.S premiere of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones with Natalie Portman as “Senator Padme Amidala” and Frank Oz doing the voice of “Yoda.”

2002: The “severed head and decomposed body” of Danny Pearl “were found cut into ten pieces, and buried—along with the jacket of a tracksuit Pearl was wearing when photographed by his kidnappers—in a shallow grave at Gadap, about 30 miles (48 km) north of Karachi.”

2003(14th of Iyar, 5763): Pesach Sheni

2003: “In a sign of the turmoil inside the governing Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians' chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has submitted his resignation after being cut out of high-level talks between the adversaries that are planned for tomorrow night.”

2003: Dave Kehr provided a review of Oscar award winning documentary filmmaker Aviva Slesin’s newest film “Secret Lives” Hidden children and Their Rescuers During World War II.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/movies/film-in-review-secret-lives-hidden-children-their-rescuers-during-world-war-ii.html?searchResultPosition=3

2004(25th of Iyar, 5764): Eight-six year old singer and lyricist June Carroll passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/nyregion/23hurewitz.html?_r=0

2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of Part of Our Time: Some Ruin and Monuments of the Thirties” in which Murray Kempton re-evaluate “the radical movements and personalities of the 1930’s focusing on such ‘ruins and monuments’ as Paul Robeson, Whittaker Chambers, Algers Hiss and Walter Reuther.”

2005: A revival production of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s “The Apple Tree” by the Encores came to an end today.

2005: “A History of Violence” a movie version of the novel by the same name directed by David Cronenberg premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

2005: Funeral services for Elaine Terner Cooper, the mother of future Secretary of the Treasury Steven Munchin are scheduled to take place at Park East Synagogue followed by interment at “Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, NY.”

2006(18th of Iyar, 5766): Lag B’Omer

2006: Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard received the prestigious B'nai B'rith international Presidential Gold Medal for his "outstanding" support of Israel and the Jewish people at a ceremony in Washington.

2006: A French politician and his sister sued France's state-run SNCF railway for transporting their father and three relatives to a wartime transit camp that sent Jews off to Nazi concentration camps. Alain Lipietz, a Greens European Parliament deputy, and his sister Helene accused the SNCF of organizing the transport of French Jews to the Drancy transit camp near Paris and billing the wartime government for its services.

2007: Thomas Cole, Rose Dobrof, Marc Kaminsky, Penninah Schram, Mark Weiss, and Steve Zeitlin present “Stories as Equipment for Living: Last Talks and Talesof Barbara Myerhoff” at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.

2007: (28 Iyar, 5767) Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Reunification Day; Celebrating forty years of the return of Jerusalem to its rightful place as, one, undivided city serving as the capital of the Jewish state. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.”(Psalms 137:5-6)

2007(28th of Iyar, 5767): Rabbi Mordecai Simon, chief administrator of the Chicago Board of Rabbis for thirty two years and host of the Sunday morning television show “What’s Nu?” passed away in Highland Park, Il, at the age of 81.

2007: Richard J. Pratt was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Medal for Corporate Citizenship. This is given to is executives who, “...by their examples and their business practices, have shown a deep concern for the common good beyond the bottom line. They are at the forefront of the idea that private firms should be good citizens in their own neighborhoods and in the world at large”

2008: At the Channel Inn in Washington, D.C., as part of the monthly meeting/luncheon of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington marks the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel with a series of book talks by Laura Cohen Apelbaum on Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community (the companion to the award-winning exhibit of the same name) co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel and the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum.

2008(11th of Iyar, 5768): Ninety-three year Middle East scholar J. C. Hurewitz, passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/nyregion/23hurewitz.html?_r=0

 

2008: "Furo" is being performed for the first time in Israel, in a special temporary pavilion designed by Giora Porter on the Tel Aviv Port boardwalk.

2009: The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division  struck down a lawsuit that sought to prevent the state of New York from using eminent domain to seize the property where Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project is being built.

2009: Ronald Radosh and his wife, Allis Radosh, discuss and sign their new book, “A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel” at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.

2009:At the Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum in Bethesda, Md. Rabbi Shefa Gold, a leader in Aleph: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal and a composer of six albums of Jewish liturgical music, reads from and discusses her new book, “In the Fever of Love: An Illumination of the Song of Songs” (with illustrations by Phillip Ratner) followed by a Havdalah Service.

2009(22nd of Iyar, 5769): Mordechai Limon, the first commander of the Israel Navy, passed away today at the age of 85. “During World War II, he volunteered for the British Merchant Marine, where he learned the art of naval commanding, and after the war he commanded ships that brought clandestine immigrants to the Land of Israel in defiance of the British mandatory authorities. Limon is best remembered for his role in the Cherbourg Affair, directing the operation that brought five warships from France to Israel that French President Charles de Gaulle sought to prevent Israel from receiving, even though they had been paid for. Limon was subsequently expelled from France and retired from the Navy, becoming a private businessman.”

2009: Shai Resjef. an Israeli entrepreneur who has started what is believed to be the world's first tuition-free on-line university said today “he hopes the effort will expand education to less fortunate people around the world.

2009: “A heart in Jerusalem, a head in Crumlin” published today described he life and times of Leopold Bloom.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-heart-in-jerusalem-a-head-in-crumlin-1.765048

2009:Editor and writer who dedicated his life to promoting Irish literature” published today describes the life Irish author David Marcus.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/editor-and-writer-who-dedicated-his-life-to-promoting-irish-literature-1.765118

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

2010:Linda Levi, Director of Global Archives for The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is scheduled deliver a talk entitled “The JDC Archives: Resources for Genealogists” in New York City.

2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Finding Chandra:A True Washington Murder Mystery by Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz and Innocent by Scott Turow.

2011: “2,000 Years of Jewish Life in Morocco: An Epic Journey,” a two day symposium focusing on the Jews of Morocco, sponsored by The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to come to an end.

2011:Rabbi Matthew Kraus, Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Cincinnati is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “The Nature of Jewish Life in America” in which he explores “the impact of the move to the suburbs on Jewish spiritual life--how Jews pray, how Jews practice, and how Jews relate to the Almighty”

2011: Rabbi Matthew Kraus, Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Cincinnati is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “History of the JQC (Jewish Queen City)” which traces the history of Cincinnati’s Jewish community “from its humble origins to the glory days of Plum Street Temple and the Manischewitz Baking Company to the start of the Big Brothers organization at the turn of the century and so much more!”

2011: Tonight, the Great White Way of Broadway will light up as stars, including Dudu Fisher and Tovah Feldshuh, perform in “Broadway Sensation,” a benefit celebrating Israel’s future. The event, which will raise proceeds for the Jewish National Fund, the OR Movement and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, will be broadcast live in Times Square, and feature over 100 performers from popular shows including Wicked, The Scottsboro Boys and Next to Normal.

2011: Rahm Emanuel took the oath of office today to become Chicago’s 46th mayor and the first mayor of The Windy City.

2011: “Vidal Sassoon Interview” published today.

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG8480525/Vidal-Sassoon-interview.html

2012: A screening of “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, Ohio.

2012: Professor Steven Bowman is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled Italian Hebrew Renaissance of the 10th-11th Centuries at Cedar Village in Mason, Ohio

2012: Movie critic Carrie Rickey is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled Untold Stories:The Films of Aviva Kempner Yoo-Hoo Mrs. Goldberg at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA.

2012: Chilean singer-songwriter Yael Meyer is scheduled to perform at the Washington DCJCC.

2012: During an interview today, Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress said that his organization is urging European governments to quickly adopt measures to tackle anti-Semitism and the threat of right-wing extremist.

2012: David Levin beams with joy as Elizabeth Levin graduates from Columbia Medical School after which this accomplished young woman will begin a vascular surgery residency at UCLA.

2012: Pierre Moscovici began serving as Minister of Finance in France.

2013: The Weiner Library is scheduled to host Ray Farr’s film “A Different World” which “concentrates on the vibrant lives of Polish Jews before their arrival at the Third Reich’s killing centers.”

2013: As part of the Books That Shaped America Series, Professor Pamela Nadell, the recipient of the American Jewish Historical Society’s Lee Max Friedman Award will lead a discussion of Jacob Riis’ How the Other Lives which among other thing presented an accurate picture of the Lower East Side, home to tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

2013: The Poetry Festival at Metulla, Israel’s most northern town is scheduled to come to an end today.

2013: The annual Indigo Festival, a huge dance fest on the shores of the Sea of Galilee is scheduled to begin today.

2013(7thof Sivan, 5730): Second Day of Shavuot/ Yizkor

2013: A demonstration staged by the radical Eda Haredit organization turned violent tonight, with haredi protestors throwing rocks, glass bottles and other objects at police, injuring at least eight officers, two of whom were taken to hospital in moderate condition.

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Thousands-of-haredim-protest-IDF-enlistment-legislation-313416

2013: Michelangelo had it right. Most synagogues around the world have it wrong. The two tablets of stone, divinely inscribed with the 10 Commandments and bestowed upon Moses at Mount Sinai, did not have the rounded tops familiar from their depictions in most houses of worship and popular art since the Middle Ages. And the Chabad (Lubavitch) Hassidic movement is encouraging synagogues to correct the misrepresentation. Rabbi Menachem Brod, Chabad’s spokesman in Israel, noted today that the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, accurately depicted the two tablets as perfect squares as early as the 1940s, in writings for Chabad youth, and said many Chabad synagogues now feature the accurate artistic representations of the tablets. He said the image of the tablets had been skewed over the centuries in Christian tradition, and it was time for the Jews to reclaim the true representation of the two stones. (TOI)

2014: A Shabbat Weekend Retreat in memory of Rabbi Betzalel Jacobson OMB 1stYarhrzeit is scheduled to begin in West Des Moines, Iowa.

2014: In London, the Wiener Library is scheduled a talk by John Izbicki, author of Life Between the Lines: A Memoir during which he will talk about the horrors of Kristallnacht that he experienced at age 8 and his family’s escape to the U.K. in 1939.

2014: “Israel’s UN mission Friday launched a campaign to get official UN recognition for Yom Kippur, the most sacred Jewish holiday, alleging “discrimination.” The United Nations has decreed 10 official holidays, including Christmas and the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, but there is no corresponding Jewish holiday recognized on the body’s official calendar, said Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor in a letter to his colleagues

2014: “Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv won a place tonight in the Euroleague Final after a thrilling victory over CSKA Moscow.”

2014: Today, local officials are scheduled to gather at the 113 year old B’Nai Yisroel Synagogue in South Bend, Indiana and “dedicate a plaque denoting that the building” which “has been renovated and incorporated in the city’s Found Winds Field minor league baseball complex” as a historic landmark.  (As reported by JTA)

2014: “How Four Israeli Fighter Pilots Stopped A Massive Arab Invasion In 1948” published today

http://www.businessinsider.com/four-israeli-aircraft-stopped-a-huge-arab-army-in-1948-2014-5

2015 Rocking throwing Palestinians attacked firefighters trying to reach two burning synagogues in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev today which was Shabbat.

2015: Kentucky Derby winner “American Pharaoh” owned by Ahmed Zayat is scheduled to run in the Preakness today in an attempt to win the second jewel of the Triple Crown.

2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host “The best of Chamber Music Cello and Piano” featuring Kirill Mihanovsky on cello and Arnon Erez on piano

2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Bergen P.A.C. in Englewood, NJ.

2015: The 17th Docaviv International Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today at Tel Aviv.

http://www.docaviv.co.il/org-en/

http://www.docaviv.co.il/2015-en/

2016: “Today’s Generational Sea Change” is scheduled to be the opening session at the JCCs of North America Biennial at Baltimore.

2016: In Philadelphia, PA, PlayPenn is scheduled to present a reading of “Schlueterstrasse 27” a play that “follows a woman's search to better understand her family from the initial discovery of her grandfather's diary at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum all the way to Berlin, Germany.”

2016: “Taste of Israel: A Discussion About Israel through Food” an interactive discussion and cooking demonstration focusing on Israel with a Middle Eastern Food Historian from Tel Aviv is scheduled to be held at the Durgin Pavilion on Lake Todd as part of fund raiser for Camp Courageous.

2016: “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” a film adaptation of “an autobiographical novel by Amos Oz” that marked the directorial debut of Natalie Portman had its “gala festival screening” at Cannes today.

2016: “In Celebration of Jewish-American Heritage Month, the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and The Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, The Library of Congress are scheduled present a lecture by Dr. Janette Silverman on “The Blumenthals of the upper-Lower Peninsula of Michigan”

2016: The Center for Jewish History and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to host “A Forgotten Genocide: The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-1919, and their Impact on Memory and Politics.”

2017: “The American official who sniped at his Israeli counterparts that the Western Wall, the holiest place for Jews to pray, is not part of Israel and not Israel’s responsibility was named today in a TV report as David Berns, the political counselor at the US Consulate in Jerusalem.” (As reportedby Raphael Ahren and Eric Cortellessa)

2017: “The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said today that the US embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, upholding a campaign promise of US President Donald Trump, and that the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem is part of Israeli territory.”

2017: The Eden Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host an evening of “Pre-War Warsaw Tangos in Yiddish and Polish” featuring the singing of Olga Avigail.

2017: Oxford University is scheduled to host an “Interfaith Formal” followed by “a talk led by the chaplains of the Abrahamic faiths.”

2017: A fourteen year old boy was arrested “at his home near the Beth Hamedrah Hagadol synagogue in connection with a fire that seriously damaged the historic synagogue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and “injured two firefighters.”

2017: BOOKlynites is scheduled to host Jewish Mindfulness leader and author Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg who will discuss her recently released book God Loves the Stranger.

2017: Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion is scheduled to host its fourth annual benefit “Honoring Women’s Leadership of the West.”

2017: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host “New Frontiers:

Technology and the Preservation and Presentation of Memory” moderated by Michael Haley Goldman, Director, Future Projects, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2017: In Des Moines, IA, at a meeting of educators and clergy, Dr. Stephen Gaies, the Director of the UNI Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to speak on "Is there a benefit to teaching about the Holocaust and genocide concurrently? If so, why and how?" 

2018: The Center for Jewish History and American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present Professor Jonathan Sarna and Forward editor Jane Eisner discussing “Rupture and Renewal in American Jewish History as part of The History Matters series.

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a pub trip as a replacement for the scheduled Whiskey and Wine tasting event.

2018: Today, “it was announced that Aly Raisman and the other survivors of the USA Gymnastics sexual abuse scandal would be awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.”

2019: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host Marc Leepson’s lecture on “Saving Monticello: The Little—Known Story of the Levy Family’s Stewardship of Thomas Jefferson’s ‘Essay on Architecture’” including the role played by “U.S. Navy Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy and Representative Jefferson Monroe Levy, the Sephardic saviors of Jefferson’s iconic house at Charlottesville, Virginia,.”

2019: In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host a Russian guitar concert, “Vikings in Odessa.”

2019: In Boston, Simona Di Nepi,, the Curator of Judaica at the  Museum of Fine Arts is scheduled to introduce a screening of “From Cairo to the Cloud.”

2019: In New Orleans, the Jewish Family Service is scheduled to host its “annual fundraiser” at The Cannery.

2019: “Contemporary art purchased today by Robert Mnuchin,” the son of Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, “broke the record price for a work by a living artist.”

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final screenings of “The Keeper” and “The Samuel Project.”

2019: “Jews Schmooze Podcast” featuring writer/director David Schneider, journalist Rachel Shabi, barrister Adam Wagner and director of Yachad Hannah Weisfeld discussing “Jews and Money” is scheduled to broadcast from London this evening.

2019: In Tel Aviv, Erez Tal, Bar Refaeli, Assi Azar and Lucy Ayoub are scheduled to host the second “semi-final” of the Eurovision Song Contest.

2020: This afternoon, in Cedar Rapids, IA, the “Temple Judah family” is scheduled to take part in a drive-by graduation celebration for Gabriella “Gavi” Thalbum who has earned her BS in micro, cellular, and developmental biology. (Editor’s note; Not totally objective about this item.  She was one of my pre-Confirmation students years ago and she sure did liven up those Sunday mornings. When you picture of her peers flocking to the beaches and other venues, you have to give her high marks for maturity and judgment)

2020: Via Zoom, The Village for Families with Young Children at Temple Israel of Boston is scheduled to host “TGIS at Home,” a special live service with Wayne Potash and a member of the Temple Israel clergy for those between the ages of 6 days and 6 years who love to dance, sing, play and pray.

2020: In San Rafael, CA, Congregation Rodef Sholom is scheduled to host via zoom “Daf Yomi Talmud Study with Rabbi Elana Rosen-Brown

2020: “Via Zoom, “the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Havdalah at 9:45.

2020: MusicTalks is scheduled to host a virtual afternoon of cello music with Elad Kabilio as he “shares the stories behind Bach's Cello Music and its connections to American music by Corigliano, Crumb and Philip Glass.”

http://www.eladkabilio.com/

2020: “Bosnia’s most senior Catholic clergyman” is scheduled to host a memorial service today for Croatian civilians and soldiers of the Nazi-allied Ustasha forces despite protests from the Israeli government and Jews in Bosnia whose views were expressed by “The Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a nonprofit representing local Jews, who called the planned Mass a “memorial service for criminals responsible for the suffering of Sarajevans.” (As reported by Cnaan Lipshiz)

2020: Thanks to a ruling this week by The Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards issued earlier this week Conservative congregations can livestream services on Shabbat during the coronavirus pandemic

2020(22ndof Iyar, 5780): Parsahat Behar and Bechukotai and Chapter 5 Pirke Avot;

2021: Reboot, Jewish Emergent Network and LABA are scheduled to present “an all-night Shavuot culture and arts festival, featuring 12 hours of musicians, comedians and others, with film, dance, food and teaching across multiple channels in a choose-your-own experiential format.”

2021: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Plot by Hanff Korelitz

2021: In honor of Shavuot, The Breman Museum in Atlanta is scheduled to be closed today.

2021: In honor of Shavuot the “JCC East Bay in partnership with numerous Bay Area synagogues, organizations, and teachers is scheduled to offer dozens of classes on myriad topics over six hours.

2021(5thof Sivan 5781): Erev Shavuot; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2021: KlezCalifornia is scheduled to “present a workshop about “dobridens” (slow, stately klezmer melodies that used to be played at weddings) and how to play them, led by musician Mike Perlmutter.”

2021: Based on previously published today during the second week of May approximately 2,000 rockets have been fired into Israel from terrorists in Gaza, including Hamas, and Lebanon.


This Day, May 17, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 17

 142 BCE: “Simon the Hasmonean captured the citadel of Jerusalem and expelled its Syrian garrison ad the Hellenized Jews” who had fought with them. Simon was the last surviving Hasmonean brother.  His victories completed the fight begun by the more famous Judah who had taken possession of Jerusalem in 165 BCE but had not been able to take control of the citadel.

1012: Benedict VIII began his papacy. During his reign, “a number of Roman Jews were executed on Cecil Roth has called the ‘improbable charge of mocking a crucifix.’  The accuracy of this is open to debate since a contemporary chronicler, Ademar of Chabannes, “this occurred after an earthquake accompanied by a severe storm erupted on Good Friday, prompting a Roman Jews to inform the papal palace that some of his coreligionist had mocked a crucifix in their synagogue. After those found guilty were beheaded the earthquake ceased.

1220: Second coronation of King Henry III in Westminster Abbey which was ordered by Pope Honorius III who did not consider that the first had been carried out in accordance with church rites. In 1253, King Henry established The Domus Conversorum (House of Conversion) which was a building and institution in London for Jews who had converted to Christianity. It provided a communal home and low wages.

1315: Today, during the reign of Louis X, “an ordinance was issued” concerning the rights and treatment of the Jews when and if they were allowed to return to France.

1338: The Bishop of Strasbourg formed an alliance for the pursuit of the Armleder assassins who were responsible for the massacring of Jews in Alsace.

1594: Today “The Jew of Malta” was entered in the Stationer's Register, a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London which a held monopoly over the printing industry in England.

1500: In Mantua, “Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua and Isabella d'Este” gave birth to “Federico II of Gonzaga, the ruler of the Italian city of Mantua at the time of the birth of Leone de' Sommi, the first “unapologetically Jewish playwright and poet” and a ruler who enjoyed Jewish comedians enough to hire “Solly and Jacob,” two “ebrei istrioni” (ham actors) for a wedding celebration in 1520.” (As reported by Simon Schama)

1607: Today for the third time the Inquisition took action against “Jorge de Almedia, a Portuguese residing in Mexico, the prosecuting attorney renewed the motion that he be adjudged in contumaciam (in contempt) “but the Inquisitors upon consideration of the antecedents of the case and wising to give the said Jorge de Almeida a further proof of kindness and benignity, decided to grant him sixty days more, during which he may come and appear in obedience to the summons.”

1617(12thof Iyar, 5377): Rabbi Judah Löb Saraval passed away He translated Saadia’s commentary on “Canitcles” into Hebrew. [Canticles is another name for the Song of Songs.] “He is quoted in the ritual work "Mashbit Milḥamot," in connection with a question in regard to the ritual bath. Although he was reported to have died in Venice, Filosseno Luzzato found his tombstone in Padua.

1660: As the aftermath of Civil War raged across England the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury was taken from English preacher and political leader Hugh Peters who supported the ideas of Roger Williams which included “writing on behalf of the toleration of Jews.”

1714: Michael Hasid who had “succeeded to the rabbinate of Frankfort after the death of Aaron Benjamin Wolf” was appointed chief rabbi of Berlin.

1727: Catherine I of Russia passed away. The Catherine was the second wife of Peter the Great. She ruled for two years after Peter’s death. In that time she issued an edict expelling the Jews from the Ukraine and the rest of Russia and denying them the right to ever return.

1756: On the day before Lag B’Omer Britain declared war on France marking the start of the Seven Years War from which you can draw a line to the American Revolution, The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars all of which had major impacts on Jews in Europe, the New World and the lands of the Ottoman Empire.

1767(18thof Iyar, 5527): Lag B’Omer observed on day after Ahmed al-Ghazzal, the emissary from Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah of Morocco to the Spanish Empire, had made a triumphant return to Marrakesh with almost 300 Muslims who had been held captive in Spain, as well as sacred Islamic manuscripts that had been seized by the Spanish in 1612.

1772(14thof Iyar, 5532): Pesach Sheni observed for the last time before Austria, Prussia and Russia begin carving up Poland-Lithuania in a series of three partitions with all that that would mean for the Jews living in what had become one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe.

1774(7thof Sivan, 5534): Second Day of Shavuot observed on the same day that “the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations issued the first call for an "Intercolonial Congress" that eventually met as the First Continental Congress

1779(2ndof Sivan, 5539): Raphael Levi Hannover the native of Franconia who was so skilled in mathematics and astronomy that he served as the secretary for Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and whose works included "Luḥot ha-'Ibbur,” passed away today. 

1784: The Jewish public school was opened in Hungary

1786(19thof Iyar, 5546): Moses Zarah Eilitz, who taught Talmud without accepting compensation even though he was impoverished himself, passed away today.

1795: Rabbi Isaiah Berlin led a special service in the synagogue at Breslau in honor of the recently signed Peace of Basel that ended the War of the First Coalition.  From a Jewish point of view, the service was unusual because Berlin permitted the use of instrumental music.

1776: During the American revolution the U.S. Congress called on Americans to raise their voices in prayer, and among the verses read by the "anxious" Jews of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of New York was, "…And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares."

1786(19thof Iyar): Moses Eidlitz, author of “Melehet Mah-shevet” passed away.

1792: The New York Stock Exchange is founded when the Buttonwood Agreement was signed by 24 stockbrokers outside of 68 Wall Street in New York under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street. Benjamin Seixas, brother of Gershom Seixas, was one of the five Jews included in the list of the twenty-four founders of the New York Stock Exchange

1795: Rabbi Isaiah Berlin officiated at service celebrating the Peace of Basel where he allowed instrumental music to be played in the synagogue.

1799(12thof Iyar, 5559): Seventy-six year old Daniel Itzig, the husband of Miriam Wulff, the grandfather of Lea Solomon, the mother of Felix Mendelson and Fanny Hensel, the father-in-law of David Friedlander who was “court Jew” Frederick II, the Great and Frederick William II of Prussia and one of the very few Jews in Prussia to receive full citizenship privileges, as a "Useful Jew" passed away today.

1805(18th of Iyar, 5565): Lag B'Omer observed as Lewis and Clark were traveling through modern day Montana as they made their way west towards the Pacific.

1812(6thof Sivan, 5572): First Day of Shavuot observed for the last time before the outbreak of hositilites between the United States and the United Kingdom known as The War of 1812.

1814: The Constitution of Norway is signed and the Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik is elected King of Norway by the Constitutional assembly. The first Jews arrived in what is now Norway in the last decade of the 15th century. They were Sephardim escaping the Inquisition and were referred to as “the Portuguese Jews.” This constitution included in its second paragraph a general ban against Jews and Jesuits entering the country. In principle, Portuguese Jews were exempt from this ban, but it appears that few applied for a letter of free passage. When Norway entered into the personal union of Sweden-Norway, the ban against Jews was upheld, though Sweden at that point had several Jewish communities. In 1844, the Norwegian Ministry of Justice declared: "... it is assumed that the so-called Portuguese Jews are, regardless of the Constitution’s §2, entitled to dwell in this country, which is also, to [our] knowledge, what has hitherto been assumed. “After tireless efforts by the poet Henrik Wergeland, the Norwegian parliament lifted the ban against Jews in 1851 and they were awarded religious rights on par with Christian "dissenters." In 1852, the first Jew landed in Norway to settle, but it wasn't until 1892 that there were enough Jews to form a synagogue in Oslo.

1817: In Wilmington, Delaware, Charity Hays and Jacob da silva Solis who were married in 1811 gave birth to Judith Simha da silva Solis, the husband of Myer David Cohen with whom she had eight children/

1826: In Nice, Rabbi Abraham Belais and Naomi Belais gave birth to Solomon Belais.

1829(14thof Iyar, 5589): Pesach Sheni observed on the same day that John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States passed away.

1830: The second reading of bill designed to free the Jews from their “civil disabilities” “was rejected” in the House Commons by a vote of 265 to 228 despite the presentation of “a sizable petition it its favour from 14,000 citizens of London.”

1830: In Kosiv, Rabbi Chaim Hager of Kosiv and his wife, the daughter of Rabbi Israel Friedman of Ruzhyn gave birth to Menachem Mendel Hager who was named as Rebbe at the age of 24.

1835: Lewis Isaacs married Phoebe Davis today at the Great Synagogue.

1835: Samuel Magnus married Rose Cohen today at the Hambro Synagogue.

1836: Birthdate Prague native Wilhelm Steinitz the first official World Champion of Chess holding the title from 1886 to 1894. He suffered from a variety of mental problems after losing his championship. At one point he claimed to have played a game of Chess with God. He passed away in 1900 while living in Brooklyn.

1836: In Karlsruhe, German, Caroline and David Aron Rothschild gave birth to Wilhelm Benjamin Rothschild, the husband of Stella Rothschild

1844: Warder Cresson became the first person commissioned to serve as Consul at Jerusalem by the United States State Department. Cresson would convert to Judaism while serving in Jerusalem and take the name Michael Boaz Israel ben Abraham

http://www.jewish-history.com/cresson/warderc.html
1844: Birthdate of Julius Wellhausen, the German biblical scholar who, in his 1878 "History of Israel," first advanced the JEDP Hypothesis, claiming that the Torah was a compilation of four earlier, literary sources.
1848(14th of Iyar, 5608): Pesach Sheni is observed as the Revolutions of 1848 swirl across Europe with the revolutionaries gaining grants in Austria and parts of modern day German and Italy.

1849: In St, Louis, The Great Fire occurred when at 10 p.m. a fire broke out on the steamboat "White Cloud". Within 30 minutes, 23 steamboats were engulfed in flames. The fire swept up the levee, destroying tons of freight and 15 blocks of residences, warehouses, and stores. Businesses destroyed that were owned in whole or in part by Jews include: Isaac Jacobs, Abraham Jacobs, Lewis M. Levy, Simon Lewis, Raborg & Shaffner, Helfenstein & Co., Charles Roderman, Weil & Bros., L. Newman, Helfenstein, Gore & Co., Levy & Bros., H. Cohen, and Simon Abeles.

1850(6thof Sivan, 5610): Shavuot

1850: Rabbi Jacobs delivered a sermon at the Shavuot service using the text – Deuteronomy XVI 9.

1852: The New York Times reported that the first reading of a bill designed to remove the disabilities imposed upon persons refusing to take the “oaths of abjuration” (known as the Jews Bill) had taken place in the House of Lords. During the debate, Lord Lyndhurst cited the recent case of David Salomons, the Jew who had refused to take the standard oath and sought to be seated in the House of Commons nonetheless. In what was seen as a turn for the better, Lord Derby had not offered any opposition to the measure.

1852: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and 1870 Ohio University graduate Dr. Philip Zenner who “received his license to practice medicine in 1896” and who “was a charter the Jewish Hospital medical staff” and a Professor Neurology at the University of Cincinnati.

1855: In New York ceremonies were held today marking the official opening first hospital building in the United States devoted solely to alleviate the suffering of poor Jews.  The ceremonies featured uniquely Jewish liturgical motifs including a display of Torah Scrolls. In addition to all of the modern conveniences one would expect to find in a new hospital, there is a synagogue on the 2nd floor.  John Hart is president of the board of directors and Benjamin Hart is the vice president.

1855: Over five hundred ladies and gentlemen attended a banquet at Niblo’s Saloon that was intended to raise funds for the newly opened Jew’s Hospital.  The Grace before and after dinner were chanted in Hebrew by Rabbi J.J. Lyons and Anthony Leo. 

1857: In Vienna, Josef and Eleanor Pick gave birth to Julia Pick who became Julia Heller when she married Jakob Heller.
1860: Alliance Israelite Universelle was launched by a group of French Jews under the direction of Adolphe Cremieux. It was designed to defend Jewish rights and to establish world-wide Jewish educational facilities. Charles Netter was one of the six founders of the organization which had been formed in response to anti-Semitic incidents such as the abduction of Edgardo Mortara and the Damascus affair. The Franco-Prussian War diminished its universality and separate organizations were formed in Germany and England.

1865: Sergeant Levi Arnold who had begun his service in the Union Army in 1862 and transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps in 1863 completed his military service today.
1866(3rd of Sivan, 5626):  Composer Adolf Bernhard Marx passed away at the age of 70.

1869(7thof Sivan, 5629): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor

1872: Moss Ansell who had been born at London in 1823 to Hyam and Fanny Answell was buried today at West Ham Jewish Cemetery, eight days after he had passed away.

1872: In Hungary, Rabbi Joel Margareten and Julia Yetta Margareten gave birth to Frederick Fred Margareten, the husband of Regina Margareten and father of Julia Ellenbogen; Samuel Margaretten; Selma Margaretten; May Weiss and Lilian Rose Sokolow

1872: "The Jews in Romania” published today reported that the Italian government has sent a communication to to the government of Prince Charles of Romania protesting against the persecution and oppression of the Jews in that country.

1873: Birthdate of “French novelist, French Communist Party member” and “lifelong friend of Albert Einstein” who suffered the indignity of having his books burned and blacklisted by the Nazis even though ye was not Jewish.
1874: In Lemberg, Galicia, “Solomon Klakah, a poor brush manufacturer and amateur violinist” and “Babette Halber Kalakh, a seamstress who often made costumes for local theaters” gave birth to Beylke Kalakh who gained famed as Bertha Kalich the wife of Leopold Spachner and the star of American Yiddish theatre
http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/17/1874/bertha-kalich

1876(23rdof Iyar): Aaron Zevi Friedman, the author of “Tuv Ta’am” passed away

1877: Haemet was published for the first time in Vienna under the leadership of publisher Aaron Samuel Liebermann.

1877: In Lithuania, “Abraham and Sarah Malz” gave birth to Bernard M. Maltz who in 1890 came to the United States where he married Lena Sherry and worked as a salesman for “National Biscuit Company and Standard Oil” before going into real estate development and the construction in Brooklyn while also serving as a director with numerous organizations including the Federation of Jewish Charities in Brooklyn, the Pride of Judea and Yeshiva College.

1877: An American Jewish couple living in England were parties to litigation surrounding their marriage.  Benjamin Levy sued his wife Deborah Isaacs Levy and her alleged lover on grounds that the two were partners in an adulterous relationship. After a few minutes of deliberation, the jury found that they had been guilty of adultery but also found that Levy “had contributed to his wife’s misconduct.  Therefore, they declined to assess any damages against either the respondent or the co-respondent.

1878(14thof Iyar, 5638): Pesach Sheni

1879: The third annual meeting of Felix Adler’s Society for Ethical Culture had its final meeting in New York City.

1880(7thof Sivan, 5640): Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor

1880(7thof Sivan, 5640): Seventy-four year old Amsterdam born French “numismatist and bibliographer” Henry Cohen passed away today in Paris.

http://www.virtualcohen.com/henry-cohen-s-work

1881: Today, Lazard Kahn, the brother and business partner of Felix, Saul and Samuel Kahn, all of whom played an active role in the Estate Stove Company of Hamilton, OH, “married Coralie Alice Lemann of Donaldsonville, LA with whom he raised five children – Marie, Milton, Bertram, Lucian and Jerome.

1882: Birthdate of New York native and NYU trained real estate lawyer Alexander Pfeiffer  who “was a founder and board chairman of the United Home for Aged Hebrews in New Rochelle and the husband of the “former Lilie Lowenfield” with whom he had three children – Fred, Paul and Roslyn.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/04/28/356684532.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1885: In New York City, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim gave birth to Meyer Robert Guggenheim, a member of the famous Guggenheim family who served as U.S. Ambassador to Portugal at the beginning of the Eisenhower Administration

1885: Birthdate of Frederic Zelnik, a native of Czernowitz which was part of the Austro-Hungarian at the time who was a leading German movie producer and director until Hitler came to power and he moved to the United Kingdom.

1885: A week after she had passed away, Miriam bat Avraham was buried today at the Brompton Jewish Cemetery.

1888(7thof Sivan, 5648): Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor

1890: C.J. Schwab is scheduled to conduct a 24-piece orchestra today at the 13thannual Strawberry Festival sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at the Lenox Lyceum a fundraising event for which E.B. Levy is in charge.

1890: In Helena, Montana, founding of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Society of Temple Emanu-El.

1891: It was reported today that contrary to official government announcement “Greek troops” in the Ionian Islands, are not “suppressing disturbances and punishing ringleaders” but instead are “openly exhibiting sympathy with the Jew-baiters” and that the condition of the Jews “will be worse before they are better.”

1891: It was reported today that “all the latest news” from Russia regarding the Jews “is of the extension of edicts of expulsion to numerous districts hitherto unmentioned and fresh cruelties and hardships” used “everywhere in the merciless enforcement of these dark-age decrees.”

1893: A delegation from New York led by Oscar S Straus met with Secretary of State Gresham in Washington, D.C. to discuss the situation of the Jews in Russia.  They asked him to intervene on their behalf with Czar with the hope that he would take action mitigating the “severe edicts and penalties” that have been imposed upon them in the last few years.

1893: According to Dr. Joseph Senner, the Superintendent of Immigration at Ellis Island the SS Didam which arrived today “had brought the worst set of men, women and children he had ever seen” and that “many of them were Russian or Polish Jews.

1893: Explorer, journalist and advocate for democratic reform in Russia, George Kennan and his wife are sailing for England today.  Before leaving he expressed his firm belief that an influx of Russian Jews will be coming to the United States; forced to do so because of the Czar’s edicts.  In response to a question about aid for these immigrants he said that the Baron de Hirsch Fund has a definite, major role to play in assisting Russian Jewish immigrants.

1893: It was reported today that Myer S. Isaacs, Chairman of the Trustee of the Baron Hirsh Fund expects that the only Jews who will immigrate to the United States from Russia will come of their own volition , will have money to take them to where they desire to settle “or will have friends who can help them.” “They will not be a burden to anybody and…they will make very good citizens. He said that the fund is still experimenting with its trade schools and industrial farm which all the help they can offer for the foreseeable future. (This is neither the first, nor the last time that Jews in America would underestimate the desperation of their European co-religionist)

1893: “A rich Jewish banker, who desired” to remain anonymous “for the present” was reported to have said that if there should be an unusual increase in Jewish immigration from Poland and Russia, he would be interested in meeting with fellow Jews “to devise ways and means of caring for all refugees that might come.

1893(2nd of Sivan, 5653): Jacob Reinowitz, affectionately known as Reb Yankele, the native of Wilkowisk, Poland who served his home town as rabbi for 30 years before moving to England in 1876 where he became the “Preacher” for a Talmud Torah “established by Eastern European immigrants at Whitechapel and a member of the London Beth Din under the leadership of Chief Rabbi N. M. Adler, passed away today.

1895: “Rubinstein’s Religion” published today discussed the religious beliefs of the late Anton Rubinstein, the Russian pianist, composer and conductor. Although born a Jew, he “was baptized when a mere infant…and was forced…to follow the prescribed” religious “forms once a year.”  “It is worthy of notice and stands greatly to his credit, that in Russia, where it is better to be born a dog than a Jew, Rubinstein, despite his baptism, never sought to deny his Jewish origin.  In a certain way he was proud of it, and always boldly acknowledged it.”

1895(23rdof Iyar, 5655): Sixty-eight year old Wilhelm von Gutman who founded the largest coal company in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and served as President of the Jewish Community of Vienna passed away today.

1895: “W.W. Wilson Becomes a Convert to Judaism” published today described the decision of Brooklyn lawyer Wayne W. Wilson to join the Jewish faith.  The ceremony took place at Temple Israel in Brooklyn. Wilson said that he “joined Temple Israel because the doctrine of the Reformed Jew my views exactly.”

1895: Birthdate of Saul Adler, the Russian born Israeli who helped find a cure for malaria.

1897: Birthdate of Oswald Rothaug, the Nazi Jurist who eagerly “presided over the trial of Leo Katzenberger in March 1942, ordering his execution for "racial defilement" in May 1943.”

1898: In New York City, “a Yiddish-speaking animal skinner who had fled Russia in 1889 to escape the pogroms” and his wife gave birth to Abraham Isaac “Abe” Lasfogel who began with the William Morris Agency in 1912 and worked his to the presidency of the world’s leading talent agency. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/27/obituaries/abe-lastfogel-agent-dead-a-william-morris-executive.html

1898: During the Spanish American War Jacob Schrob and Bernard Schwarzenberg were mustered into federal service along with the other members of Battery B of the 1st Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Artillery.

1899: Sixty-one year old “Jewish Christian” Joseph Rabinowitz passed away today.

1899: Following his conversion to Christianity earlier in the year German architect Alfred Messel “received the Order of the Red Eagle, 4th Class.”

1899: Private Nathan Levy began serving with Company F, 18th Infantry today following which he would fight in the Philippines for 3 months.

1900(18thof Iyar, 5660): Lag B’Omer

1900: Birthdate of Herberts Cukurs, the Latvian aviator who was never punished for his crimes during the Holocaust.

1901: Temple Beth Elohim, “the oldest synagogue in Brooklyn” began today began the celebration of “its golden jubilee.

1901: Birthdate of Hugh Joseph Schonfied a London born Bible expert and one of the first people to work on the Dead Scrolls who was “a liberal Hebrew Christian” and who “was expelled from the Executive Committee of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance.”

1901: Herzl met with the Sultan of Turkey to discuss the establishment of a Jewish state and the obtaining of a charter. He failed in both attempts. However, The Sultan bestows on Herzl the Grand Cordon of the Mejidiye and authorized Hertzl to declare that the ruling Khalif was a friend and protector of the Jewish people. Herzl believed that a Jewish homeland could be created by getting approval of the venture from the political leaders of the day. That is why he sought out the support of the Kaiser. The state of Israel would eventually be a product of changed realities on the ground – the settling of the land by the Zionists – and political support from various political leaders such as Harry Truman in 1948.

 

1902: “During Shabbat Torah services women interrupted prayers with a call to support the boycott” of kosher butcher shops on the Lower East Side. “Women left their seats in the balcony to persuade men to back their cause and gain communal support.” (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)

1903: Birthdate of Arthur “Artie” Auerbach, the newspaper photographer “who became famous as ‘Mr. Kitzel’ on the Al Pearce and Jacky Benny radio shows.”

http://tralfaz.blogspot.com/2014/11/he-didnt-like-mr-kitzel.html

1904: “Dinner To Leroy-Beaulie” published today described the dinner given at Delmonico’s in honor of M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulie which was held under the direction of Oscar S. Straus, the Chairman of the Dinner Committee who delivered the address welcoming the distinguished French leader

 was the guest of honor at a dinner held last night at Delmonico's, where a silver loving cup was presented to him on behalf of his friends in New York. Oscar S. Straus, as Chairman of the Dinner Committee, delivered the address of welcome and Nathan Bijur delivered prior to the presentation of a silver loving cup to “one of the foremost champions in all of Europe of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity.’”

1905: Wolf Perelberg, who gained famed as movie producer William Perlberg, the son of Israel Jakob Perelberg, came to the United States today “with his mother and three siblings.”

1905: The Pall Mall Gazette published “A Street in the East End” today by M.J. Landa

1907: Rabbi Maurice Harris officiated at tonight’s services dedicating the new sanctuary at Temple Israel of Harlem which began with the officers and trustees of the congregation placing the Torah scrolls in the ark followed by the kindling of the Eternal Light “by one of the young women of the congregation

1908: The Jewish American Historical Society held its 16th annual meeting today at the Hotel Astor.  During the morning session, Leon Huelmer presented a paper on “Jewish Privaterring in the Eighteenth Century.”  During the afternoon session Dr. Herbert Friedenwald presented a paper on “Why This Is Not a Christian Country.” At the evening session, the attendees approved a measure championed by Cyrus Adler, the society’s President to amend the constitution allowing the society to study “Jewish history in general instead of limiting it to” the study of American Jewish history.

1908: Charles Towne and Daniel P. Hays were the principle speakers at tonight’s memorial service sponsored by the Hebrew Union Veteran Association and the Hebrew Veterans of the War with Spain to honor the soldiers and sailors who had died in the service of their country.  The service was held at New York’s Rodeph Shalom and guest included Rear Admiral Joseph B. Coghlan and Grand Marshal Isidore Isaacs of the Grand Army of the Republic and his staff.  The Grand Army of the Republic was large national Civil War veterans association that was a forerunner to the American Legion formed after WW I.

1908(16thof Iyar, 5668): Percival Menken the eldest son of Jules and Cornelia Menken and husband of Getrude Davies Menkien, who was born at Philadelphia, PA in 1865, passed away today in New York City where he was a member of the bar, President of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and a director of the Jewish Theological Seminary. He was laid to rest at Beth Olom Cemetery in Queens, NY.

1908: “Charles Louis-Dreyfus a merchant and ship-owner, and Sarah Germaine Hément” gave birth French Resistance fighter and businessman Pierre Louis-Dreyfus the grandson of Leopold Dreyfus, the founder of the Louis Dreyfus Group.

1909: The Jewish Communal Council “of which Supreme Court Justice Samuel Greenbaum is Chairman is responsible for the settling “the differences between Mrs. William Einstein who recently formed the Widow Mothers’ Fund and the United Hebrew Charities which she served as Vice President until her recent resignation.

1910: Sir Charles Walston, the Anglo-American archaeologist married Florcence Walston

1910: The Sixth Biennial Session of the National Conference of Jewish Charities in the United States opened today in St. Louis, MO.

1912: “Merchants in southern Russia” protested to the “Premier and Minister of Commerce against the expulsion” of the Jews and the confiscation of their property.

1912: The Governor of Kiev, declared that he “will expel and confiscate the property of every Jewish merchant “who is unable to produce a certificate of uninterrupted payment of the First Guild fee for fifteen years.”

1913(10thof Iyar, 5673): Parashat Behar

1913: The Annual Meeting of the Associated Jewish Charities of Chicago is scheduled to take place this evening at the Auditorium Hotel where attendees will among other things, vote on those who will serve as directors for the next three years.

1914: " We should remember that the Mexicans are not worth fighting when we consider all this war talk of upholding the honor of our flag," Nathan Straus said tonight in an impromptu address at the joint memorial services of the Hebrew Union Veteran Association and the Hebrew Veterans of the War with Spain at the Temple Rodeph Sholomo, Sixty-third Street and Lexington Avenue.”

1915: In response to a request from Leo Frank’s attorneys “members of the State Prison Commission” is scheduled to “hold a conference” this “morning to decide on the date for hearing arguments on the petition of Leo M. Frank for a commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment.”

1915: In Pittsburgh, PA, “Oscar William Oppenheimer and Claude Siesel” gave birth to James Siesel Oppenheimer the father of Thomas James Oppenheimer.

1915: A tribute in praise of Woodrow Wilson’s “peaceful policies” offered by the Jews attending the cornerstone laying ceremony for the Yorkville Jewish Institute and Talmud Torah were published today.

1915: The last British government formed by the Liberal Party fell from power. The party of reform, the Liberal Party produced the first openly Jewish Member of Parliament. Lionel Nathan de Rothschild was first elected in 1847. However, Rothschild would not take his seat until 1858 since it took 11 years to pass the Jewish Disabilities Bill that made it possible for Jews to swear an oath that was not Christian. After World War I, the Labour Party would supplant the Liberal Party as the chief opposition to the Conservatives.

1915: Birthdate of Joseph Liegbott who was a Tech Sergeant with the 101stAirborne during WW II.  Although he was the Catholic son of Austrian immigrants many of his comrades assumed he was Jewish because of his name, his appearance and his hatred of Germans.  (What’s worse than being Jewish – not being Jewish but having people think you are.)

1915: Today, following yesterday’s Leo M. Frank Day, petitions will be circulated among the citizens of Chicago calling for the commutation of Frank’s sentence.

1915: “Today’s early mail brought…more than 3,000 letters seeking clemency for Leo Frank” to the office of Georgia Governor Slaton, including ones from Philander C. Knox, ex-Senator and Secretary of State, Myron T. Herrick the former Governor of Ohio and Ambassador to France, Frank Walsh, Chairman of the United States Industrial Relations Commission; Fred A. Delano of the Federal Reserve Board and Senators Borah, Thomas, Reed and Newlands.

1915: It was reported today 5,000 men would go on strike because “at present there is no limit on the hours” which kosher butchers must work and that “many of them had to work ninety-six hours a week

1915: David Ben Gurian and Yitahak Ben Tzvi: arrived in New York today from Egypt and were allowed to enter the U.S. as immigrants even though they lacked the proper papers.

1916(14thof Iyar, 5676): Pesach Sheni

1916: Birthdate of Frances Kroll Ring, the last secretary of F. Scott Fitzgerald who told her tale in Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald which was turned into a really slick little film, “Last Call.”  (Editor’s note - double bias since I am intrigued by Fitzgerald and I like the movie)

1917: The 1916-1917 academic year for The Teacher’s Institute of the Hebrew Union College is scheduled to come to an end today.

1917: In Wilson, NC, Morris and Nessie Barker Popkin gave birth to future New Jersey resident Abraham Popkin, the husband of Ann Matlin Popkin.

1917: Based on information dispatch sent from Amsterdam, it was reported today that Reichstag Deputy Cohn, an Independent Socialist, said that at the end of March Djemal Pasha, commander of the Turkish forces in in Syria had ordered all Jews removed from Jaffa saying that this was required by “military conditions” even though “his German Chief of Staff said” such a move “was unnecessary.”

1917: Twenty-two year old featherweight box Danny Frush (born David Frush, Jr) made his boxing debut at the Clermont Avenue Rink in Brooklyn, NY.

1918(6thof Sivan, 5678): Last Shavuot of World War I

1918: According to reports published today, the American Jewish Relief Committee for Suffers from the War has raised $2,786,400 for its 1918 fund but that the committee will have to raise an additional fifteen million dollars in the coming year to deal with the increased suffering among the Jews of Poland and Russia.

1918: “While speaking at an official dinner for the Governor of Jerusalem, Dr. Chaim Weizmann said Jewry was returning to Palestine to build up a great moral and intellectual center which would not be a determent to any of the communities already established in Palestine and that Arab fears that they would be ousted from their present position were unfounded.

1919: It was reported today that Dr. Joseph Merzbach, the heart and throat specialist at the Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn has passed away – ironically a victim of heart disease.

1919: It was reported today that Dr. Haim I. Davis of Chicago “who is the first American to return to New York with a personal account of conditions” in Poland said Jews “in Warsaw, Pinsk, Brest-Litovsk and other parts of the new Poland” are “dying like flies” having in many cases “neither seen or eaten bread for months.”

1921: Fannie Hurst was among the first to join the Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names which had its initial meeting today at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City.

1921: In Atlantic City, NJ, Sadie Abrahams and James Arthur Levan gave birth to Henry Robert Merrill Levan who gained fame as songwriter Bob Merrill

https://www.songhall.org/profile/Bob_Merrill

1921: Birthdate of New York native and NYU and University of Florida trained attorney Philip Ephraim Heckerling, who raised two children – Dale and Ruth – with his wife Ruth.

1921: Birthdate of Judith Coplon, the native of Brooklyn and former Justice Department employee who became a sensation in 1949 when she was accused of being a Soviet spy.

1922: The USS Celtic, a navy supply ship on which Lt. Jr. Grade Stanford Moses had served during the Spanish American War was “taken out of service today.”

1922(19th of Iyar, 5682): Forty-year old motor car pioneer Dorothy Levitt passed away today.

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Dorothy_Levitt

1923: The Wiener Morgenzeitung (The Vienna Morning Newspaper) was highly critical of The London house of Rothschild and the Paris representatives of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. ‘for what the paper regards as excessive cordiality shown towards the representatives of the Horthy regime, who are negotiating a loan in European capitals. Heinrich Margulies edited the paper before he moved to Palestine in 1925 where he became a Director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank.

1923: Sir Wyndham Deedes, who has just resigned as the Civil Secretary of the Palestine Administration, addressed a meeting at the Grand Central Hotel called by the English Zionist Federation. Declaring that he favored Zionism because by enabling Jews to return to Palestine the world was righting a wrong committed by Christians 2,000 years ago, Sir Wyndham said only lack of money was hampering Zionist progress in all directions. (JTA)

1925: “Garrick Gaieties, a revue with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart” who were creating their first Broadway hit, opened at the Garrick Theatre toda.

1926(4thof Sivan, 5685) Sixty-four year old Isaac Aaron passed away today after which he was buried at the Scholemoor Jewish Cemetery Bradford.

1926: David M Bressler announced that nearly $6,000,000 was raised in New York toward the $25,000,000 United Jewish Campaign at a rally of 1,500 workers.

1926: Leading Jews of the East Side were guests at dinner tonight of Max Bernstein, proprietor of Libby's Hotel, the first modern Jewish hotel on the East Side, which was opened to the public yesterday. The hotel is at Delancey and Chrystie Streets. The hotel will serve kosher food. It was elected at a cost of $3,000,000. (JTA)

1927(15thIyar, 5687): “Sam Rernard, for fifty years a favorite comedian, who worked his way from a Coney Island music hall to the stages of foremost New York and London theaters, died of apoplexy tonight on board the North German Lloyd steamship Columbus, which had left New york for Plymouth. Cherbourg and Bremen the preceding night. He was on his way to Carlsbad to take the baths for rheumatism. (JTA)

1928(27thof Iyar, 5688): Belarus native Jacob “Yankel” Butler, the husband of Menuchah Butler with whom he had four children – Hode, Isaac, Anna and Rose – passed away today after which he was buried in the Chevra Kadusha of Chelsea Cemetery in Wobum, MA.

1928: “Seventy-five men and women assembled at” the New York home of Aaron Kheel this “evening to bid farewell to Dr. Chaim Weizmann who is returning to Europe next week.

1929: In Manhattan, attorney Frederick Weinberg and the firmer Lillian Hyman gave birth to George Henry Weinberg, the psychotherapist who invented the word “homophobia.” (As reported by William Grimes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/us/george-weinberg-dead-coined-homophobia.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1930: Today Hadassah announced that a new hospital will be opened in Tiberias on May 25.  The hospital will be named in honor of Peter J. Schweitzer and his widow will be going to Palestine to attend the dedication ceremonies

1930)19th of Iyar, 5690): On Shabbat, 73 year old Florence Liveright the daughter Abraham and Rebeccah Kahn and the wife of Simon Liveright passed away today in Philadelphia.

1931(1st of Sivan, 5691): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1931: “Dr. P.A. Levene Wins Honor” published today described plans to present Dr. Phoebus A. Leven of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research with the Willard Gibbs Medical at the Steuben Club on May 22.

1931(1st of Sivan, 5691: Seventy year old Frances Corinne “Fannie” Peixotto Bloom, the Cleveland, OH born daughter of Benjamin and Hannah Straus Peixotto and the wife of Isadore Nathan Bloom passed away today after which she was buried in The Temple Cemetery in Louisville, KY.

1933: In Norway, Vidkun Quisling establishes the Norwegian Fascist Party as well as the Hirdmen (King's Men), a collaborationist organization that's modeled on the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA). When the Nazis invade Norway during World War II Quisling will become the head of the Norwegian government. Quisling was such a notorious traitor that his name has now become a word in the English language that means “traitor.”

1933(21stof Iyar, 5693): Communal worker George W. Patke passed away today in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1933:  A petition is submitted to the League of Nations by representatives of the Comite des Delegations Juives protesting Germany’s anti-Jewish legislation, called the Bernheim Petition, named for imprisoned Silesian Jew Franz Bernheim.

1934: Today Mrs. Edgar Lowell was elected chairman of the Women’s Auxiliary Council of the Jewish Braille Institute of America at the inaugural meeting of an organization that “will solicit support for the Jewish Braille Review, the only Anglo-Jewish magazine in Braille which is distributed without charge to English reading Jewish blind persons throughout the world.”

1934:  At New York's Madison Square Garden, thousands attend a pro-Nazi rally sponsored by the German-American Bund. Critics of Roosevelt’s policy towards Jewish refugees often overlook the reality of anti-Semitism in the United States. The Bund rally was merely the most public venue for this reality of the pre-war American landscape.

1935: Birthdate of Avraham Heffner, the native of Haifa who went to be an award winning director and screenwriter

http://tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/185197/avraham-hefner-israeli-cinema

1936(25thof Iyar): Seventy-seven year old Zionist leader Nachum Sokolow passed away

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

1936: A curfew order, forbidding residents of Jerusalem to leave their homes at night, was issued today by Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, the High Commissioner of Palestine, following the killing of three Jews last night at a motion-picture theatre.

1936: This morning in Jerusalem, more than 30,000 Jews marched in the funeral procession for three Jews murdered the night before at a local move theatre.  Isaac Ben Zvi, President of the National Jewish Council, told the mourners that he held the British government responsible for this because it was the duty of the government to protect its citizens.  An editorial published in today’s Palestine Post said that “ if this is a war of extermination declared y the Arabs on Jews, the Arabs had better know that the shooting down of 400,000 Jews will not alter the course of history and will not shake the Jews’ determination to resettle the land of their fathers…This movement of the Arab Supreme Council seeks tnot only to terrorize the Jews.  It aims to throw the land back to the Dark Ages.”

1936: This morning, at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon “President Roosevelt’s Leadership of American: Is It Good or Bad?”

1936(25th of Iyar, 5695): Twenty-seven year old Isaac Jalowski who was married six weeks ago, Dr. Svi Spachowski a recent arrival from Poland whose wife is an expectant mother and Alexander Polonski, “a student at the School of Oriental  Studies at Hebrew University” were all killed by Arabs today in Jerusalem.

1936: Oswald Garrison Villar, associate editor of The Nation delivered a speech tonight at a dinner of the American Committee Appeal for the Relief of Jews of Poland at the Hotel Commodore in which he asked the United States “to protest to the Polish Government about the persecution of the Jews in Poland.

1936: This evening, Temple Adath Israel, on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx is scheduled to celebrate its fortieth anniversary with a concert of liturgical music presented by the Cantors’ Association of America.

1936: Two thousand people filled the pews at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue for the 41st annual memorial services of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States.

1937(7th of Sivan, 5697) Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor

1937: Hundreds of Jews were injured during riots at Brest-Litovsk which is now located in Poland

1938: A. H. Skinner, organizer and manager of the “newly organized American Palestine Securities Company which was registered with the SEC last week” and is designed “to deal in securities originating in the Holy Land” descried “the rapid growth of large-scale undertakings in Palestine in the last five years.  In reporting on the economic conditions in Palestine, Skinner said that there were twelve companies with capital of more than $500,000 and that poplation had grown from 40,000 in 1920 to 400,000 in 1938.

1938:Arthur Sweetser, a director of the secretariat of the League of Nationswrote in his diary, “The President’s proposal took a large place in the League’s refugee deliberations this past week.” By the “President’s proposal” Sweetser was referencing Roosevelt’s plan to “get all the democracies to unite” in an effort to settle all of the Jewish refugees from Europe in their respective territories.”

1938(16th of Iyar, 5698): Sixty-year old Jakob Ehrlich, the Viennese Zionist leader who was deported after the Anschluss passed away today at Dachau.

1939: The British government issues a White Paper (commonly called the MacDonald White Paper) that limits Jewish immigration to 10,000 a year for five years. The White Paper allows 75,000 Jewish immigrants (up to 10,000 per year, plus an additional 25,000 if certain conditions are met) to enter Palestine. The White Paper also restricts Jewish land purchases in Palestine. British government policy will succeed in keeping the actual numbers of Jewish immigrants far below the quotas for settlement in England and Palestine. The White Paper was issued after two years of orchestrated Arab violence. Recognizing the White Paper as a death sentence for a Jewish homeland, the leaders of the Yishuv prepare to bring “illegal immigrants” into Palestine. The White Paper also sealed the fate for Europe’s Jews as it closed the last place of refuge. When World War II broke out Jewish leaders were caught on the horns of a dilemma. In true Jewish fashion when confronted with two choices, the Zionists came up with a third solution. “We will fight the war as if there is no White Paper and we will fight the White Paper as if there is no war.” The Arabs had no such problems as the fact that the Grand Mufti spent the war in Berlin proves.

1939: There were only 679 Jews still living in Magdeburg. Eleven years earlier, there were more than three thousand Jews living in this ancient German city in which Jews had been living since the 10th century.

1939: Fighting broke out in Jerusalem as police sought to disperse 5,000 demonstrators who had gathered to protest the White Paper.

1940 “My Favorite Wife” with a script by Samuel and Bella Spewack and filmed by cinematographer Rudolph Mate was released today in the United States.

1940: Today, Portugal's Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar issued an order that "Under no circumstances" was any visa to be granted, unless previously authorized by Lisbon on a case-by-case basis which meant he was currying favor with the Axis powers but leaving the Jews trapped north of the Pyrenees with one less hope of escape

1940: In New York, “Composer Eric Zeisl and his wife Dr. Gertrud S Zeisl (Jellinek) gave birth to Barbara Zeisl Schoenberg, the wife of Ronald R. Schoenberg and the mother of E. Randol Schoenberg who “received her PhD in German Language and Literature from University of California, Los Angeles and taught at Pomona College.”

http://zeisl.home.mindspring.com/pomona1.html

1940: Birthdate of Tama Gottlob, the younger sister of Salomon Gottlob. At age 2 she joined her 7 year old brother on Convoy 25 that left Drancy with 285 children all of whom were going to Auschwitz.

1940: “Waterloo Bridge,” based on 1930 play of the same name directed by Mervin Leory, with a script by S.N. Behrman and George Froseschel and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg was released in the United States today.

1941(20thof Iyar, 5701): In cooperation with British Army intelligence, David Raziel, the commander of the I.Z.L. (Irgun Zva-i Leumi) led a group to sabotage the oil depots on the outskirts of Baghdad. Raziels car was bombed and both he and the liaison British officer were killed. Yes, this is Menachem Begin’s Irgun, the same Irgun that will attack the British in Palestine after the war is over; the same Irgun that blew up the British headquarters in the King David Hotel in 1947

1942(1stof Sivan, 5702): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1942: “Whispering Ghosts” a mystery produced by Sol Wurtzel, starring Mitlton Berle and with music by Emil Newman was released today in the United States.
1942: Two thousand Jews were deported from Theresienstadt to Sobibor, 500 miles away. Also, 2,000 Jews from Pabianice reached the Lodz Ghetto. All children under 10 were torn away from their parents and sent "elsewhere."

1942: Liane Berkowitz, and Otto Gollnow, two members of the anti-Nazi Resistance were given the task of putting up about 100 posters in the Kurfürstendamm-Uhlandstraße section of west-central Berlin which protested against the Nazi "Soviet Paradise" propaganda exhibition being held in the city. Six months later, Berkowitz would be arrested for the act. Despite attempts to gain clemency for her because she was pregnant, Berkowitz would ultimately be executed.

1943: The United States Army contracted with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC. Herman Heine Goldstine who passed away in 2004 at the age of 90 was one of the orginial developers of ENIAC. Adele Goldstine, his wife, wrote the technical description for ENICA.
1943: The Nazis deport 395 Jews from Berlin to the extermination camp at Auschwitz.
1944: Joel Brand was flown in a German courier plane from Budapest to Istanbul where he met with two representatives from the Jewish “agency for Palestine, Wnja Pomeranz and Menahem Bader. Brand was a Hungarian Jew active in Va’adah (Vadat Ezra Vehatzala), the Jewish Rescue Agency in Hungary who was carrying the terms of Eichmann’s offer to trade a million European Jews for 10,000 trucks, 1,000 tons of coffee or tea and 1,000 tons of soap. Eichmann assured Brand that the trucks would only be used on the Eastern Front. At the same time, he told Brand that the Jews could go anywhere except Palestine because Hitler "had promised his friend the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini” that he would not permit that. Pomeranz and Bader took the proposal back to Ben Gurion who then informed the British of the proposal. British Foreign Minster Eden and Secretary of State Hull would not pursue the offer because they feared that if the Russians got wind of the negotiations, they would become even more suspicious of the western Allies (remember this was before the Second Front had opened) and might still make their own peace with Hitler. To ensure that nobody else heard about the negotiations, the British sent Brand to Syria for “temporary internment.” Of course, the Soviets might have already known about the negotiations since Brand had been a Communist agent working in Berlin during the 1930’s.

1945: U.S. Army Corporal Edward Belfer photographed “a German girl who is overcome as she walks past the exhumed bodies of some of the 800 slave workers murdered by SS guards near Namering, Germany, and laid here so that townspeople may view the work of their Nazi leaders."

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/ww2/photos/images/ww2-183.jpg

1946(16thof Iyar, 5706):Eighty-six year old Lewiston, Maine “clothing merchant” and former state legislator Isaac B. Isaacson, the father of Harriet M. Joseph and the brother of Anna Klein passed  away today

1947: “Hatikvah” which in a former life had been the Coast Guard cutter Tradewinds used as an icebreaker on the St. Lawrence River, was intercepted by the British today and taken to Haifa after which its cargo of 1,414 Jewish refugees whom the English labeled as “illegals” were interned in Cyprus.

1947: At the Adelphi Theatre, after 148 performances the curtain cam on “Street Scene” an American by Kurt Weill with choreography by Anna Sokolow.

1948(8thof Iyar 5708): Twenty-year old Private Meir Ben Bassat was killed today as the third battalion of the Yiftach Brigade finished taking Metzudat Koach, a Tegart fort built by Solel Boneh during the British Mandate” that “was a key observation point on the Naftali heights, overlooking the Hula Valley” which had been seized by the Arabs thus threatening the existence of kibbutzim in the Upper Galilee.

1948: Egyptian warplanes were strafing and dive-bombing Tel Aviv for the third straight day.  Arab sources were claiming unverified as yet, the surrender of the Jews of Old Jerusalem, with claims and counterclaims flying on both sides on the progress of the invading armies of Egypt, Syria and Transjordan.

1948: During the Battles of the Kanarot Valley, as the Syrians attempted to wipe out Ein Giv, a company attacked the Israeli-held water station with heavy weapons killing all but one of the workers.
1948: At dawn, the Syrians renewed their attack on Tzemah as they attempted to take control of the Jordon River Valley.  In an attempt to limit damage to their tanks, the Syrian infantry without armor to lead them, attacked the village's northern positions. Despite a shortage of ammunition and suffering heavy casualties, the Israelis halted the Syrian advance.

1948: In Tel Aviv, as Battles of the Kinarot Valley rage into their third day.  David Ben Gurion orders Moshe Dayan, the Haganah commander in the area, to ‘Hold the Jordan Valley’ no matter the cost.

1948: Russia recognized Israel. Much to Stalin’s dismay, he lost the recognition race to the United States. Stalin had not fallen in love with the Jews. He saw Israel as a wedge that would lead to the breakup of one his nemesis, the British Empire. With its large population of refugees from Russia, the state of Israel was never in danger of being seduced by Stalin or the Communists.
1948: During the War for Independence, Israeli forces liberated Acre, Nebi Yusha, and Tel el-Kadi, Yes; this is the same Acre where Maimonides and his family landed when they first arrived in Eretz Israel.

1948: A convoy consisting of 12 trucks filled with military supplies arrived in Jerusalem. It would be the last convoy to reach the city. "The siege of Jerusalem was now complete."

1949: In Beirut, authorities today allowed five Lebanese Jews who were suspected of being pro-Israel to emigrate to the Jewish state so they could avoid prosecution for their political sympathies.

1949: For "saving the dignity and the structure of the United Nations" by his success in restoring peace to Palestine, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche received the thanks of Mayor O'Dwyer yesterday at City Hall.

1950: The special committee reinvestigating the assassination of Count Bernadotte in 1948 submits its report to the Israeli cabinet today. 

1950: “Annie Get Your Gun,” the film version of the Broadway musical directed by George Sidney, “with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin and a screenplay by Sidney Shelton” was released today in the United States.

1950: Israeli fighter planes forced down a four-engine Royal Air Force Sunderland that was flying outside ‘the prescribed air corridor.”

1950: In Baltimore, MD, “Shirley Thelma (née Glass) and Raymond Albert Ashman, an ice cream cone manufacturer” gave birth to playwright and lyricist Howard Ashman.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/15/obituaries/howard-ashman-is-dead-at-40-writer-of-little-shop-of-horrors.html?scp=1&sq=%22Howard+Ashman%22&st=nyt

1951: The Tales of Hoffmann “a British Technicolor film adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann,” co-directed by Emeric Pressburger was released today in the United Kingdom.

1952(22ndof Iyar, 5712): Parashat Behard-Bechukotai

1954(14thof Iyar, 5714): Pesach Sheni

1954: Birthdate of American lyricist David Zippel.

1954(14thof Iyar, 5714): Sixty-three year old Latvian native, WW I Army Chaplain and attorney Maurice Hirsh Gelfand, the son of of Isaac and Ida Gelfand and the husband of Rachel Shapiro Gelfand passed away today in Cleveland.
1956: In Philadelphia, PA supermarket executive Benjamin Saget and his wife Rosalyn “Dolly” Saget gave birth comedian Robert Lane “Bob” Saget.

1956(7thof Sivan, 5716): Second Day of Shavuot

1956(7thof Sivan, 5716): Poet and author Jacob Fichman passed away.

1956: Sixty-seven year old Dickinson College and JTS graduate Louis Jacob Haas who served as a rabbi for congregations in “Harrisburg and Reading, PA, Stamford, CT and Woodside, Queens” as well a chaplain at Bellevue Hospital and as “vice president of the National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs” passed away today in Gloucester, MA.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/05/20/90501336.pdf

 

1956(7thof Sivan, 5716): Dr. Judah David Eisenstein, the self-educated Hebrew scholar, writer, editor and publisher passed away today at the age of 101.  In 1891, he published the first Hebrew and Yiddish translations of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.  Born in Poland, he came to the U.S. in 1872 where he became a successful businessman by day and a self-taught scholar by night.  “He was the editor and publisher of ‘Otzar Yisrael,’ a ten volume Hebrew Encyclopedia that was last revised in 1951.

1959: The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School was opened in the western section Jerusalem. The original facility had been on Mt. Scopus. When the Jordanian Army illegally captured the eastern section of Jerusalem, the facility on Mt. Scopus became untenable. The Israelis would return in June, 1967.

1960: Today at the request of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and the Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yithak Nissim, Chaim Yosef David Azulai known as “the hida was laid to rest at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.”

1961: “Professor Mamlock” a film about a Jewish surgeon living in the last days of the Weimar Republic directed by Konrad Wolf who co-authored the script along with Friedrich Wolf was released today in East (Communist) Germany.

1962(13thof Iyar, 5722): Fifty-nine year old Marcus Rayner Caro, the Polish born son of Albert and Ernestine (Rayner) Caro who in 1912 came to the U.S where he earned a B.S. in 1925 and a M.D. in 1927 and pursued a career in dermatology while being married to Adeline B. Cohen with whom he raised two children – Ethel and William – passed away today.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/article-abstract/527630

1964(6thof Sivan, 5724): Shavuot is celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

1965: In New York City, “Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the co-founder of Ms. magazine, and Bert Pogrebin, a management-side labor lawyer” gave birth to Abigail Pogrebin, “the author of the 2005 book Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish.”

1965: In New York City, “Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the co-founder of Ms. magazine, and Bert Pogrebin, a management-side labor lawyer” gave birth to Robin Pogrebin, the ABC producer and New York Times reporter who is the twin sister of Abigail Pogrebin.

1966: “And Now Miguel,” the movie version of novel by Joseph Krumgold was released today in the United States.

1961: “The Harry Weinberg interests were charged today “with using their suit against Fifth Avenue Coach Lines, Inc., as a propaganda weapon in a simultaneous proxy fight to curb or oust management. Fifth Avenue Coach made this accusation in State Supreme Court.”
1967: In what would be a prelude to the Six Day War, President Abdul Nasser of Egypt demands dismantling of the peace-keeping UN Emergency Force in Egypt. The UN force had been established as part of the peace agreement following the Suez War of 1956. Much to Nasser’s surprise, U Thant, the UN Secretary General immediately gave into Nasser’s demand an removed the peace keeping force. Israelis viewed the UN as the umbrella that closes when it starts to rain. The departure of the UN force gave the Arabs carte blanche to move large forces into the Sinai threatening the survival of Israel.

1968: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this morning “in Musicants Jewish Memorial Chapel in Hackensack, NJ” for seventy-five year old Ben Dalgin, the New York City born son of Mr. and Mrs. Max Dalgin who worked his way up from being a teenage “printer’s apprentice” to serving as “director of art, photography and reproduction for the New York Times.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/05/17/77088555.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=47

1970)11th of Iyar, 5730): Seventy-eight year old Nobel Prize winning poet Nelly Sachs passed away today.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1966/sachs-bio.html

1971:” Godspell” with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre in NYC.

1971(22ndof Iyar, 5731): Sixty-one year old “Alfred A. Tananbaum, one of three brothers who built Yonkers Raceway into a leading harness track” passed away today after which he was buried at Westchester Hills Cemetery at Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/05/18/81941365.pdf

1973(15thof Iyar, 5733): Sixty-four year old ‘an Austrian-British photographer, communist-sympathizer and spy for the Soviet Union’ passed away today.

http://spartacus-educational.com/Edith_Tudor_Hart.htm

1974: “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry” a car chase movie co-starring Vic Morrow was released in the United States today.

1975(7thof Sivan, 5735): Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor

1975: The anti-Zionist trial of Lev Roitburd began in Odessa today.

1975: Terrorist bombings taking place in Ramallah and El Bira.

1975: “The Man in the Glass Booth” directed by Arthur Hiller and produced by Ely Abraham Landau was released in the United States today.

1975: Twenty people were injured when a bomb hidden in a picnic box went off at Ein Fashkha,

1976: Birthdate of Jeremiah Luber, the grandson of Harvey and Elaine Luber, pillars of the Little Rock Jewish community

1980: In Washington, DC, first release of “The Empire Strikes Back” directed by Irvin Kershner, with a script co-authored by Lawrence Kasdan, filmed by cinematographer Peter Suschitzky featuring Frank Oz as the voice of “Yoda.”

1980: “Union City” a crime film with music by Chris Stein was released today in the United States.

1981: Birthdate of Shiri Maimon, the Sephardic Jewess born at Haifa and raised a Kiryat Haim, who is a popular Israeli singer, actress and television personality.

1981: In “Fiddler Plays at Darien Dinner Theatre,” Haskel Frankel expresses his love for this musical based on the life of Tevye but is less than enthusiastic about the version now on view at the Darien Dinner Theatre in Connecticut.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/17/nyregion/theater-fiddler-plays-at-darien-dinner-theater.html

1983: Representatives of the United States, Lebanon and Israel signed an agreement that was supposed to bring peace to the two warring Middle East nations.  The government of Lebanon was not able to honor the terms of the agreement so the peace was “still born.”

1984: Lia van Leer inaugurated the first Jerusalem Film Festival.
1985(26th of Iyar, 5745): Abe Burrows, (Abram Solman Borowitz) songwriter, composer, and writer passed away. Known in his own right for such hits “How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” Burrows was the father of James Burrow the director of the hit sitcom “Cheers.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/19/nyregion/abe-burrows-broadway-writer-director-is-dead.html

1985: “Goodbye, New York,” an “Israeli-American comedy-drama produced, directed and written by Amos Kollek, who also co-stars in his directorial debut” was released today in the United States.

1991: Premier of “What About Bob?” a comedy directed by Frank Oz, produced by Laura Ziskin and co-starring Richard Dreyfus

1992(14thof Iyar, 5752): Pesach Sheni

1992(14thof Iyar, 5752): Ninety-one year old Canadian Olympic athlete and journalist Sydney David Pierce who when appointed as Canada’s ambassador to Mexico became the first Canadian Jew to such a diplomatic position passed away today.

1992: NBC broadcast the first episode of Cruel Doubt, a two-part mini-series co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow.

1993(26thof Iyar, 5753): Eighty-five year old native of Brest-Litovsk, seventy year resident of the Nation’s Capital,WW II Navy Veteran and sports reporter for the Washington Daily News Louis Abraham Litman, the son of Jacob Litman who converted “the family’s grocery store on Wisconsin Avenue” into Luros Carryout Shop & Restaurant passed away today having been pre-deceased by his wife Rose Litman with whom he had four children

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1993/05/19/earl-chudoff-representative-from-pa-dies/fc2d1781-67b7-421d-962c-90bd32ef2dd2/?utm_term=.379295f00100

1994(7th of Sivan, 5754): Second day of Shavuot

1994(7th of Sivan, 5754: Rafael Yairi (Klumfenbert), age 36, of Kiryat Arba and Margalit Ruth Shohat, age 48, of Ma'ale Levona were killed when their car was fired upon by by terrorists in a passing car near Beit Haggai, south of Hebron.

1996(28thof Iyar, 5756): Yom Yerushalyim

1996: NBC broadcast the final episode of season four of “Homicide: Life on the Street” based on David Simon's book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streetsco-starring Richard Belzer and Yaphet Kotto

1998(21stof Iyar, 5758): Seventy-six year old Rabbi Moshe, the long-time president of Agudath Israel of America passed away this afternoon. (As reported by Gustav Niebuhr)

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/19/nyregion/rabbi-moshe-sherer-76-who-contributed-to-rise-of-orthodoxy-s-right-wing-in-us.html

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Jews: The Essence and Character of a People” by Arthur Hertzberg and Aron Hirt-Manheirmer and “Richard Rodgers” by William G. Hyland

1998: Funeral services for Harry Wagreich, the Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at CCNY are scheduled to be held this afternoon in New York City.

1999: Avigdor Kahalani completed his services as an MK.

1999: Labor Party leader Ehud Barak unseated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israeli elections

1999: CBS broadcast the final episode of season 1 of “The King of Queens” co-starring Jerry Stiller

2000: “Stardom” featuring Benjamin David “Jamie” Elman was released today in Canada and France.

2001: “Late Marriage,” a film directed by Dover Kosashvili” was released today in Israel and France.

2002(6thof Sivan, 5762): First Day of Shavuot

2002: Maria Grullich and Alberto Kusnier participated at a Shavuot celebration today in Buenos Aires' Belgrano neighborhood organized by the local Tzedaka social service organization and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Grullich, 63, lost her drugstore last year after it was robbed and she had no money to restock it.Optician Kusnier, 54, was fired a few months ago from another drugstore and hasn't been able to find a new job. This Shavuot event was meant to bring together an Argentine Jewish community that has been devastated by the country's economic crisis. The organizations sponsored packed Shavuot celebrations in 26 Jewish institutions in Buenos Aires and another 14 elsewhere in the country. But the Argentine crisis was a special guest that no one could avoid. Grullich and Kusnier both were invited to attend the Shavuot celebration in Belgrano, where six institutions -- including synagogues, schools and clubs -- were celebrating together.

2002: Alan Joseph Shatter completed his service as a member of Teachta Dala today after almost eleven years.

2002(6thof Sivan, 5762) Dave Berg passed away. Born in 1920, the cartoonist may be best known for his work in Mad Magazine

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/may/24/local/me-berg24

2003(15thIyar, 5736): “A pregnant Israeli woman and her husband were killed when a suicide bomber detonated himself next to them in a public square in Hebron. Hamas claimed responsibility.”

2003: Eighty-one-year-old Irene Gut Opdyke a Polish nurse who gained international recognition for aiding Polish Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II for which she was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for risking her life to save twelve Jews from certain death passed away today.

http://polish-jewish-heritage.org/eng/june_03_Irene_Opdyke_Washington_Post.htm

2004(25thof Iyar, 5764) Tony Randall passed away. Born Leonard Rosenbeg in 1920, this native of Tulsa, Oklahoma enjoyed a successful career in film, theatre and television. Most people know him as Felix Unger in the television version of “The Odd Couple.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/theater/tony-randall-84-dies-fussbudget-felix-in-odd-couple-he-loved-the-stage.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

2005: As the Leo Baeck Institute at the Center for Jewish History marked the 50th anniversary, an exhibition entitled “Starting Over: The Experience of German Jews in America, 1830-1945” opened today.  The exhibit includes photos, letters, documents, sketches, paintings, maps, medals and other rare artifacts of German-Jews who settled across the United States, many of which are being viewed by the public for the first time.

2006: Opening of the first Sydney Jewish Writers’ Festival

2006(19thof Iyar, 5766): Ninety-five year old Broadway producer Cy Feuer passed away today. (As reported by Richard Severo and Jesse McKinley)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/arts/18feuer.html?pagewanted=all

2006: David Blaine was submerged in an 8 feet (2.4 m) diameter, water-filled sphere (isotonic saline, 0.9% salt) in front of the Lincoln Center in New York City for a planned seven days and seven nights, using tubes for air and nutrition.

2006: Eliot Yamin was eliminated from American Idol” today, after the tightest race; each of the three top contestants received an almost exactly equal percentage of the viewer votes necessary for advancement to the remaining two spots

2006: In Congress, Representative Daniel Lipinski rose “today to honor Joel M. Carp of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago for his outstanding contributions to the Federation, as well as to the community at large” who 28 years of outstanding service is retiring.

2007: Bernard Kouchner began serving as French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs.

2007: As part of Jewish Heritage Month, the National Archives presents a lecture entitled “Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the South.” Peter M. Ascoli, grandson of Julius Rosenwald, tells the remarkable story of Rosenwald’s lifelong devotion to hard work and success and of his giving back to the nation in which he prospered. The son of German Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald—president and CEO of Sears, Roebuck & Co.—was an exemplary businessman, pioneering philanthropist, and true humanitarian who played an important part in the history of America at the start of the 20th century. Yet few know the story of this immensely talented figure. His commitment to social justice and equality led him to involvement in a wide range of philanthropic projects—among them the building of more than 5,300 schools for African Americans in the rural South and the issuing of an unprecedented $1 million challenge grant to aid Jewish victims of World War I.

2007: Rabbi Simon Jacobson presents “Mysteries of Sinai: Find Revelations in the Everyday “at The Sixth Street Community Synagogue in New York City.

2007: An exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art by photographer Barry Frydlender, the first Israeli to have a solo show at the museum

2008: The Jerusalem Cinematheque presents “A Sacred Duty \ חובהמקודשת” a major documentary on current environmental threats and how Jewish teachings can be applied in responding to these threats.

2008 (12th of Iyar): Anniversary of the Jews of Rome being granted additional privileges by the head of the Catholic Church. On the 12th of Iyar, 1402, the Jews of Rome were granted "privileges" by Pope Boniface IX. They were given legal right to observe their Shabbat, protection from local oppressive officials, their taxes were reduced, and orders were given to treat Jews as full-fledged Roman citizens.

2008: At the JCC in Manhattan the international premiere of new episodes from the Israeli comedy series “Arab Labor (Avoda Aravit)” followed by a conversation with writer and creator Sayed Kashua. “Arab Labor” is a satirical look at the Arab status In Israeli society, the controversy surrounding issues of identity and the sensitivities of both populations. Through humor, the series explores the daily conflicts that Arabs face between the desire to integrate and their own values and traditions.

2009: An exhibition at Williams College Museum of Art entitled “The ABCD’s of Sol LeWitt” that features artist’s drawing and sculptures as well as items from his private art collection comes to an end.

2009: Hadassah meets in the Twin Cities where its members celebrate Jewish Women in the Arts and recognize the Charter Member of the Region Chai Society

2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Third Reich At War” by Richard J. Evans, “A Failure of Capitalism” by Richard A. Posner and the recently released paperback editions of “Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century” by Tony Judt and “The Dream: A Memoir” by Harry Bernstein.2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Paul Newman: A Life” by Shawn Levy and “Valkyrie” by Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager   

2009:At least five people were arrested today after a clash between anti-Semitic demonstrators and Jews in Argentina.”

2009(23rd of Iyar), 5769:  Daniel Carasso passed away today at the age of 105. The member of a famed Sephardic family, this native of Salonica who was the son of Isaac Carasso created the company that many of us know for one of its most famous products, Dannon Yogurt. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/business/21carasso.html?_r=1

2010:Professors Raanan Rein and Jeffrey Lesser are scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled Jewish-Latin American Historiography: The Challenges Ahead Lecture at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

2010: “The Associated Press reported today that the synagogue in Worms had been firebombed.

2010: Elena Kagan completed her service as the 45thUnited States Solicitor General.

2010: In “Reading to Recall the Father of Tevye”, Clyde Haberman explores the life Bel Kaufman and her grandfather Shalom Aleichem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18nyc.html

2010:A Facebook group called “Comedy Central – I.S.R.A.E.L. Attack game is offensive. Remove it” had more than 1,500 members as of today. The game, “Drawn Together,” which is currently available on Comedy Central’s websiteis based on the network’s politically incorrect animated series of the same name, depicts “Jew Producer,” a character that has a speaker for a head and is taken to task for failing to kill certain animated characters. A robot called “the Intelligent Smart Robot Animation Eraser Lady” (I.S.R.A.E.L.) is then sent in to do the job, unleashing destruction and murdering children

2011: Jenna Weissman Joselit, Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at The George Washington University is scheduled to deliver a lecture at Beth Sholom in Potomac, MD, entitled “Romancing the Stone: America's Embrace of the Ten Commandments” during which she will explain “The cultural and historical processes by which a covenant with the ancient Israelites became a covenant with America.”

2011: Sam Brylawski and Karen Lund are scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry” under the auspices of The Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern during which they will discuss the role of Emile Berliner “an unsung hero of recorded sound …Emile who invented the gramophone.”

2011: The building housing the world’s first green-certified synagogue Congregation Beth David in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is scheduled to be up for auction today to satisfy an unpaid loan of 3.3 million dollars.

2011: A course entitled “Oasis in Time: The Gift of Shabbat in a 24/7 World” is scheduled to be held at the Center for Jewish Life, the Chabad center in Little Rock, AR under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment. 

2012: DeLeon, a Sephardic Indie Rock Band is scheduled to appear at the Washington Jewish Music Festival.

2012: Premiere of Yossi an Israeli film directed by Eytan Fox starring Ohad Knoller, Oz Zehavi and Lior Ashkenazi.

2012: A production of Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys” opened in the West End today.

2012: Elio Toaff, the former Chief Rabbi of Rome was awarded the Prize Culturae within the Italian National Festival of Cultures in Pisa today.

2012: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, The American Jewish Committee and The American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists are scheduled to sponsor a lecture by  Irvin B. Nathan entitled “The Challenges of a D.C. Attorney General

2012(25th of Iyar, 5772): Seventy-four year old Israeli politician Gideon Ezra passed away today.

2012(25th of Iyar, 5772): Eighty seven year old publicist and theatrical manager Herbert Breslin passed away today. (As reported by Daniel Wakin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/arts/music/herbert-breslin-pavarottis-publicist-and-manager-dies-at-87.html?hpw&_r=0

2013; “No Place On Earth” is scheduled to premiere at theatres in Atlanta, GA and Key West, FL.

2013: The 3rd annual Celebrating India in Israel Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to do whatever it takes to protect Israelis in the unstable Middle East, following a meeting with the German foreign minister in Jerusalem today (As reported by Yoel Goldman)

2013:Multiple clashes broke out across the West Bank today that involved, Palestinians, the IDF, Border Police and settlers.

2013: Today“Frances Ha,” a “comedy –drama” directed, produced and written by Noah Baumbach which had “premiered at the Telluride Film Festival” had a limited release in the United States

2013: Today, “the Washington Post reported that the United States Department of Justice had monitored the activities” of “journalist and television correspondent” James Samuel Rosen “by tracking his visits to the State Department through phone traces, timing of calls and his personal emails.”

2013(8th of Sivan, 5773): Ninety-four year old Albert Seedman who served as the New York Police Department’s chief of detectives during a time when the Black Liberation Army killed four police officers and the gangland shooting of Joseph A. Colombo, Sr. and Joey Gallo rocked the Big Apple and who was an anomaly – “the Jewish cop…in an Irish universe” passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/nyregion/albert-seedman-former-chief-of-detectives-in-new-york-dies-at-94.html

 2014: Chabad is scheduled to host the second of a three-day retreat in West Des Moines, Iowa.

2014(17th of Iyar, 5774): Eighty-four year old biologist Gerald Edelman 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/science/gerald-m-edelman-nobel-laureate-and-neural-darwinist-dies-at-84.html?_r=0

2014: According to police estimates, “hundreds of thousands of people were headed to Mount Meron in the Gallilee to celebrate the holiday of Lag B’Omer in a gathering which marks the passing away of Kabbalist sage Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai who is buried at the site.

2014: “A newly revealed NSA document highlights and corroborates allegations carried by Newsweek that Israel aggressively spies on the US, the magazine reported today.”

2014: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to host “Adat on the Rocks.”

2015: In Portland, Oregon, the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host a gala celebrating their one year anniversary as a combined organization.

2015: The 2015 Washington Jewish Music Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2015: Dr. Robert Cargill is scheduled to lecture on “From Shalem to Jerusalem: The Etymology and the Historiography of the Name Jerusalem” at Agudas Achim in Coralville, Iowa.

2015: “When Comedy Went to School,” a 2013 documentary about the Borscht Belt’s role as the birthplace of modern stand-up comedy, featuring interviews with top comics who once performed on its stages, including Robert Klein, Jerry Stiller, Sid Caesar, Jackie Mason, and Dick Gregory – is scheduled to be shown this afternoon at the Borscht Belt Film Festival.

2015: In Dimona, a city-wide strike to show “solidarity with the striking workers of Israel Chemicals and about 60 employees of Meteor, a local producer of agricultural netting that is in danger of shutting down” is scheduled to take place today.

2015: London barrister, Jonathan Arkush was elected today to serve as Presdient of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

2015: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks, Goebbels: A Biographyby Peter Longerich and Voices in the Night: Stories by Steven Millhauser

2015: The funeral session for Rabbi Moshe Levinger is scheduled to begin this morning at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and will end “at the city’s ancient cemetery.”

2015(28thof Iyar, 5775): Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day

2016: The National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host “God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors.”

2016: In New York, the Jewish Book Council and Drisha are schedule to host a lecture and discussion with National Jewish Book Award finalist Dr. Benjamin D. Sommer about his book Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition.

2016: In Seattle, the Washington State Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host an event featuring Cynthia Flash Hemphill author of A Hug from Afar in the new WSJHS exhibit gallery.

2017: As a sign of the vitality of small Jewish communities, in Coralville, Iowa, the Agudas Achim book group is scheduled to discuss Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer.

2017: Holocaust survivor Nat Shaffir is scheduled to speak in Washington as part of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museums “First Person Series.”

2017: “Shabtai Shavit, who led the Mossad in the 1990’s” today “fired off harsh criticism aimed at Donald Trump aying his actions put international information-sharing efforts at risk, in light of reports that the US president divulged classified intelligence to Russia last week.” (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)

2017: The “Made in Jerusalem Festival” is scheduled to open at Beit Avi Chair.

2017: David G. Dalin is scheduled to “introduce his new book Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: From Brandeis to Kagan” at lecture in the Kovno Room of the Center for Jewish History.

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “The Annual Shavuot Cheesecake Bake-Off this evening.

2018: The Center for Jewish History, Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to host “Searching for Joseph Heritage with Joseph Berger” in which the “former New York Times reporter and author of Displaced Persons: Growing Up American after the Holocaust shares stories and photos from his trip to his parents’ hometown in Poland.

2018(3rdof Sivan, 5778): Ninety-four year old Richard Pipes, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Poland who specialized in the history of Russia, especially the period starting with the Revolution in 1917 and the Communist take-over passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/obituaries/richard-pipes-historian-of-russia-and-reagan-aide-dies-at-94.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

https://spongobongo.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/professor-richard-pipes/

2018: In Memphis, TN, Rabbi Feivel Straus is scheduled to “lead a discussion on Shavuot: The Holiday about Owning Your Judaism” at Temple Israel.

2018: As part of Jewish American Heritage Month, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a lecture on “Before the Freedom Fighters: The Fight to Integrate Glen Echo Amusement Park.”

2018: Holocaust Survivor Sam Ponczak is scheduled to lecturer at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2019: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host a performance of “Nabucco,” “an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by and starring David Serero as Nabucco” which builds on the Biblical accounts of the Babylonian Exile found in Jeremiah and Daniel” and which “combines political and love intrigues with some of the greatest songs ever written (including “Va, pensiero, The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”).”

2019(12th of Iyar, 5779): Just ten days before his 104th birthday, Pulitzer prize winning playwright and author Herman Wouk, the Bronx born son Abraham and Esther Wouk and husband of Betty Wouk Z”L best known for The Caine Mutiny (novel, Broadway play and movie) who loved his Judaism and the United States passed away today. (Editor’s note – There is no way that this blog can do justice to him as an author or as person.  Besides which, I am a big fan so anything more would not be “objective” history.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/obituaries/herman-wouk-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/05/26/herman-wouk-and-the-jew-in-the-public-square/?utm_content=blog1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source=interna/2019: In Norway, members of the Jewish community are scheduled to follow their annual procedure of “laying roses on the grave of Henrick Wergeland, the author of the poem “Christmas Eve” which helped to end “Norway’s constitutional ban on Jews.”

2020:  Via Zoom, Congregation Beth Am is scheduled to present “a discussion led by Rabbi Janet Marder, of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, on “The New Order” by Karen Bender and New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 by Shelly Oria.

2020: “David Wolff’s final cantorial concert at Hebrew College is scheduled to be live-streamed on FaceBook from Framingham’s Temple Beth Am, where David will be installed as cantor in July.”

2020:Congregation Shearith Israel’s Sexton Zachary Edinger is scheduled to lead a virtual tour of the Chatham Street Cemetery.

2020: Due to the Pandemic, in, the Breman’s “Historic Jewish Atlanta Tour: The Beltline” has been canceled.

2020: The National Public Library of Israel is scheduled to reopen today.

2020: As part of its “Virtual Family Program Series,” The American Jewish Historical Society” is scheduled to host “Meet Emma Lazarus,” a “live interactive program, children have the opportunity to engage with the famous poetess about her life and the issues of her time.”

2020: In Amsterdam, an exhibition at the Jewish Historical Museum featuring the works of photographer and artist Sarah Mei Herman is scheduled to come to an end today.

https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Sarah-Mei-Herman--Germano/2BD1C696A746BA41

2021(6thof Sivan 5781): First Day of Shavuot; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2021: Chabad of Palo Alto is scheduled to present “an outdoor, socially distanced Shavuot observation with a reading of the Ten Commandments and dairy desserts.”

2021: YJP is scheduled to present “Shavuot Under the Stars,” “an evening dairy buffet” for “Boston’s young professionals.”

2021: Despite having a wall smashed in by a rocket fired from Gaza, Yad Michael Synagogue in Ashkelon is scheduled to be open for the celebration of Shavuot.

2021: Chabad of Contra Costa is scheduled to present “an in-person outdoor reading of the Ten Commandments, followed by an ice cream party.”

 

This Day, May 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 18

323BCE: Alexander dies at the age of 32.  Despite the legend, there is no proof that Alexander ever came to Jerusalem.  He did pass through Judea on his way to conquer Egypt and on his way from the victory.  He left the Jews in peace to practice their religion and to live in a semi-independent status.  This was his standard treatment for all those who did not oppose him.  He and his subordinates encouraged Jews to settle in Egypt and throughout Asia Minor.  The Jews were allowed to live in their own communities where they were governed by their own councils and courts.  Alexander was viewed as an enlightened monarch in much the way that Cyrus the Great had been.

363: The first of a series of earthquakes that would last for two days rocked the Galilee.

576: Over 500 Jews were forcibly baptized in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

1096(4856): Jews of Worms (Germany) were massacred by Crusaders. The survivors hid in the Bishop's palace for one week, after which they were either murdered or forcibly baptized.

1152: Henry II, King of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. This marriage produced two future Kings of England – Richard I (known as the Lionhearted) and King John, the monarch who signed the Magna Charta.  For the Jews, Henry’s reign was an improvement over that of his predecessor, King Stephen.  While Richard was semi-protective of his Jewish subjects, they suffered at the hands of those who wielded power while he was off crusading or fighting to protect his lands in France.  In the first part of his reign, John maintained a positive relationship with his Jewish subjects, but as time went on he turned on them and made unrealistic financial demands on the community.

1268: Following the Battle of Antioch the Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, falls to Baibars I the Mamluk Sultan. During the Mamluk Sultanate, there was an upswing in anti- dhimmī feeling although much of this was really aimed at the Christians who held positions in the government and the Jews were just “tangential beneficiaries” of this attitude. 

1291: A year after the Jews were expelled from England, after a two month siege, the fortress at Acre (Israel) falls to the Fatimid Egyptians, thus bringing about the end of the Crusades. Subsequently, the various crusading armies never succeeded in uniting as a cohesive force. The infighting and separate treaties defeated them as well as the Fatimid armies. “The founder of the Fatimid dynasty was Ubeidullah, known as the Mahdi. He was accused of Jewish ancestry by his adversaries the Abbasids, who declared him the grandson of Abdullah ibn Maymun, by a Jewess.”

1418: Representatives from the Jewish communities of central and northern Italy met to discuss raising funds for self-defense as well as instituting sumptuary regulations so as "not to show off in the presence of Gentiles." It is plausible that the issuing of these sumptuary regulations, influenced Pope Martin V to issue a protective Bull the following year

1530: The Edict of Innsbruck issued today confirmed a charter of protection for the Jews of Germany that Josel of Rosheim had obtained from Charles V shortly after he had “ascended the throne at Accehn in 1520.”

 1721: In Madrid, 96 year old Maria Barbara Carillo was burned alive making her the oldest known victim of the Inquisition.

1729(19thof Iyar, 5489): Mordeccai Mokiach, the father of Judah Lob Mokiach and the grandfather of David Berline Mokiach and Isaiah Berlin Mokiach who preached that Sabbatai Zevi, the “False Messiah” would return in three years to finish his work, passed away today in Pressburg.

1753(14thof Iyar): Pesach Sheni is obserbed four days before the House of Commons passed The Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753

1756(18thof Iyar, 5516): Lag B’Omer

1756: Abigail Franks, the wife of Jacob Franks who had married her in 1712 was buried today.

1762: At East Hampton, Long Island, Aaron Isaacs and his wife gave birth to Esther Isaacs.

1775((18thof Iyar, 5535): Lag B’Omer is celebrated on the same day that Second Continental Congress learns that British forces are on their way from England to North America which means King George and Parliament are not going to talk but are going to put down the Resolution by force of arms.

1792(26thof Iyar): Canadian Jewish leader Levy Solomons passed away.

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/solomons_lucius_levy_4E.html

1792: Start of the Polish-Russian War which lead to further partition of Poland and Lithuania with all of the negative consequences that would have for the Jews of that region.

1793: Aaron Lazarus and Sophia Lehman were married at the Great Synagogue in London.

1794(18thof Iyar, 5554): Lag B’Omer

1794: Betty Hart, the first American female convert to Judaism, married Moses Nathans

1810(14thof Iyar, 5570): Pesach Sheni observed on the first day of the May Revolution in Beunos Aires, which marked the start of the first successful South American revolt against Spain.

1812(7th of Sivan, 5572): Second Day of Shavuot

1813(18thof Iyar, 5573: Lag B’Omer observed as can be seen by the following two items.

1813: Nathan Benjamin and Catherine Moses were married today at the Great Synagogue in London.

1813: Myer Marks married Elizabeth Davis today at the Great Synagogue.

1817: Henry Naphtali Solomon and Fanny Phillips were married at the Great Synagogue in London.

1820(5thof Sivan, 5580): Erev Shavuot

1825(1st of Sivan, 5585): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1825: Joseph Levy and the former Bluma Jacobs gave birth to Nery Levy

1832: Eliakim Carmoly, a French-born Talmudist and author, was named to serve as a rabbi in Brussels.

1830: In Keszthely, Hungary Chazan Ruben Goldmark and his wife gave birth to violinist and composer Karl Godmark.

1837: In Saxony, the Jews “were empowered to organize themselves into communities with chapels of their own, and were granted citizenship, with the exception of municipal and political rights.

1839: In the Netherlands Jacob Hirschel Kann and Amalie de Jonge gave birth to Henrik Jacob Kann

1842: Chilo Myers and Caroline Medex were married today at the Great Synagogue in London.

1843(18thof Iyar, 5603): Lag B’Omer

1843: After having observed Rosh Hashanah in September of 1842, today a minyan gathered at the home of Peter Spitz in Roxbury, MA for the B’rit of Spitz’s first-born son after which they “decided to form a congregation which they named Ohabei Shalom (Lovers of Peace), “and hired a man from Albany to serve as their cantor, teacher, ritual slaughterer, and circumciser.”

1847(3rdof Sivan, 5607): Moses Calmus Lissa passed away

1847: Mark George Simmons married Caroline Lazarus at 32 Finsbury Square in London. (As reported by Cemetery Scribes)

1850: In Krotoschin, Germany, Simon Gienenstock, the Berlin born son of Robert Bienenstock and his wife Helena gave birth to Emma Lowewen, the wife of David Loewen.

1852: In Amsterdam, Jacob and Rebecca Mozes Gans gave birth to Isaac Jacob Gans, “the husband of Vogeltje Dooseman” and the “father of Rebecca Gans; Jacob Gans; Betje 'Isaac' Gans and Anna Frank.”

1854: District Rabbi Jonas Wiesner and his wife Estra gave birth to Rosa Wiesner Lowi.

1854: Fifty-two year old French journalist Samuel Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy “the son of Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy” “was elected to the Académie française” today.

1859: In Great Britain, the General Elections which saw David Salomons re-elected as the MP for Greenwich came to an end.

1860: In Chicago, Illinois, the Republican Party nominates Abraham Lincoln for President of the United States. Lewis Naphtali Dembitz, a 28 year old lawyer from Louisville, Kentucky, was one of the three delegates who put Lincoln’s name in nomination. Dembitz was the uncle of Louis Dembitz Brandeis, who would emulate his uncle’s legal career and then excel it as the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice.

1862(18thof Iyar, 5622): Lag B’Omeer

1862(18thof Iyar, 5622): Sixty-six-year-old Samuel Etting, the Maryland born son of Rachel Gratz and Solomon Etting who were married in 1791 and the husband of Ellen Hays whom he married in 1828 and with whom he had two children, Josephine and Solomon, passed away today.

1863: Birthdate of Danville, VA native J. Hamilton “Ham” Lewis who as a Congressman from Illinois 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”

1863: “The Battle of Vicksburg” in which Marcus M. Speigel, the son of Rabbi Moses Speigel and the brother of Joseph Spiegel, the founder of Speigel Catalog led the 120th Ohio Volunteer Infantry began today.

1865(22nd of Iyar): David ben Moses Frankel, editor of Sulamith, passed away.

1865: In San Francisco, Joseph M. Brandenstein and his wife Jane gave birth to Manfred Bransten

1868: As the United States entered into a Presidential election year, The New York Times published excerpts an article from the Jewish Messenger describing the role of “Hebrews” in the political life of Europe and the United States.  In the United States, Jews are not “a compact body for political purposes…In the coming campaign, Hebrews will work, and talk, and vote precisely according to their convictions as citizens and in no respect will their political action be dependent upon their religious character as a body.  There is no national Hebrew vote.”

1869: Birthdate of Henriette Moses, who was shipped from Berlin to Terezin in 1942 and from Terezin to Auschwitz, where she died in May of 1944.

1870: Birthdate of Polish native and insurance executive Jay Arthur Feffer who was the “president of the Federation of Charities in St. Joseph, MO.

1870: “Mount Sinai Hospital” published today reported that the New York Times was wrong when it said that Mount Sinai Hospital was maintained by Jews for use by Jews.  “The institution is supported by Jewish contribution and its directors” are Jewish “but it has always opened its doors to patients without the slightest regard to creed.”  [In fact the hospital had been started before the Civil War to serve the needs of immigrants and indigent Jews.  During the Civil War that role definitely changed as it became a treatment cite for thousands of Union wounded beginning with McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign in 1862.] 

1872:  Birthdate of Lord Bertrand Russell, British mathematician and philosopher.  Lord Russell was pro-Palestinian describing them as innocent refugees and describing Israel as occupying land‘given’ by a foreign power to the Jewish people for the creation of a new state.

1873: Two days after he had passed away, 49 year old Henry Levy, the son of Joseph Levy and Hannah Isaacs was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1873: An informal reception was held today the recently opened home for aged and infirmed Hebrews at 63rd street and Lexington Avenue. The building, which can accommodate 50 individuals, is currently home to 26 women and 2 men. They range in age from 70 to 95.  Mrs. P.J. Joachimsen is President of the Board of Directors.

1876: Wyatt Earp starts work as a lawman in Dodge City, Kansas. When he died, Earp’s ashes were buried in a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California.  No, the famous marshal was not Jewish but his wife Josie was and her family had enough power and influence to wriggle around the laws forbidding such burials.

1876: In Ogdensburg, NY, Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Brill and Lottie (Tumim) Brill gave birth to Abram Brill, a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College and husband of Edna Goldstein who led congregations in Helena, AR, Greenville, MI, Wheeling, W.Va, and Meridian, MI before beginning his tenure as rabbi at B’nai Zion Temple in Shreveport, home of Centenary College which honored him with an “Honorary Degree of Doctor Of Laws.”

1876: The New York Times featured a review of “Stray Studies From England and Italy” a collection of essays by John Richard Green.  “Mr. Green shows how mistaken the modern conception” is when it comes to understanding the treatment of English Jews during the Middle Ages.  “That conception is accurately represented by Scott’s picture of Isaac of York in “Ivanhoe,” timid, silent crouching under oppression.  The Jew was really…the favorite ‘chattel’ of the king was protected by the crown not only against the people but against the law. Each Hebrew settlement in England was secured from the common taxation, the common justice, the common obligations of Englishman.  The Jewry was a town within a town, with its own language, its peculiar dress, commerce, law and religion.  No bailiff could penetrate it; the Church itself was even powerless against the synagogue which it contained.  In England, at least, the attitude of the Jew was to the end, one of haughty defiance.  His extortion was sheltered from the common law.  His bonds were kept under the royal seal.  Heavy penalties were enforced against outbreaks of popular violence upon the Jews.  Mentioning the story of the Red King’s forbidding the conversion of a Jew, because a valuable property would be lost to him.” [Editor’s note – The Red King may refer to the third son of William the Conqueror, William II who was known as William Rufus.  Green was an English clergyman who turned to writing histories when his health forced him to leave the pulpit.  His description stands in stark contrast to the exploitation that English Jews suffered and makes no mention of their expulsion.

1879: An article published today "The Family Sentiment in Americans" claims that people in the United States are changing their views about family history and genealogy saying that "next to the Jews, we are becoming the genealogical nation on the face of the earth."

1879: A prominent New York banker who is a member of Temple Emanu-El said today that Lewis May, one of the most outspoken advocates for replacing Saturday morning services with Sunday morning serves has just been re-elected as the congregation’s President.  In his acceptance address, Mr. May expressed a personal distaste for the change  but said he recognized it as a necessity since many of the younger men belonging to the Temple could not attend services on Saturday for commercial reasons.

1879: Three days after she had passed away, Clairette Bensadoun, the “daughter of Roubin and Marion Bensadoun” was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1879: Some Old Graveyards” published todaay describes early burial sites in New York City including one on the east side of the New Bowery below Chatham square known as the Olivers Street Burying Ground which was the original cemetery belonging to Shearith Israel, also known as the Nineteenth Street Congregation.  The plot was conveyed to the congregation by Noyes Willey of London who received thirty English Pounds for the land. The Jews had been using the land for burials since the 17th century since there are tombstones there bearing the dates of 1669 and 1684. The congregation formally stopped using this cemetery in 1820 when a city ordinance banned burials in that part of the city. 

1880: Rosa Sonneschein read “The Pioneers: An Historical Esssay” at a meeting of the Society of Pioneers.

1880: In Szczecin, Heinemann Vogelstein and his wife gave birth to their third son banker and industrialist Theodor Vogelstein.

1881: Birthdate of Sarah Miller Fishbein the wife of Louis Fishbein with whom she had eight children.

1885: In Bleckede, Germany, clothing shop owner Bernhard Lowenstein and the former Jeanette Blumenthal gave birth rabbi turned Socialist political leader Kurt Lowenstein, the husband of chemist Mara Kerwel.

1890: Today’s “Amusements” column includes a review of “The Shatchen” which opened at the Star Theatre last week.  M.B. Curtis dominates the comedy with his “droll caricature” of the German Jewish businessman.

1890(28th of Iyar, 5650): Fifty-eight-year-old Kate Frances Cohen the daughter of Kitty Etting and Benjamin Cohen who were married in 1819 passed away today.

1890: “For An Educational Fund” published today described the successful Strawberry Festival sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association during which three thousand attendees raising $3,500 that will go to the association’s educational department.

1891: “Oriental Records” published today contains a detailed review of Records of the Past, an English translation of the Ancient Monuments of Egypt and Western Asia, edited by A. H. Sayce

1891(10th of Iyar): Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein, leader of Hungarian Jewry, passed away

1893: “Hardships of Russian Jews” published today described the benefits of efforts by the United States to lessen the suffering Jews living under the Czar.  Doing so would cut down on the number of immigrants coming to the United States and at the same time would lessen the burden on those Americans trying to find jobs and homes for immigrants from Poland and Russia.

1893(3rd of Sivan, 5653): In Pennsylvania, Isaac Rosenwig and Harris Blank “the only people of the Jewish faith ever executed for murder in this country” were hug after being found guilty of murdering eighteen year old Jacob Marks, a peddler whom they had robbed of his goods.

1894: Members of the Board of Trustees of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society were those who attended the funeral of Sigmund J. Bach as requested by Myer Stern and the Board of Trustees.

1895: Justice Ingram gave the managers of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews of New York City to mortgage its property at 106thStreet and Columbus Avenue to the Bowery Savings Bank for $75, 000.

1896: The United States Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” is constitutional.  This decision marked the legal nadir in the field of civil rights in general and race relations in particular.  It was from this pit that several organizations, many of them funded by Jews and/or with a statistically disproportionate Jewish involvement, had to climb until the High Court would declare in 1954 that separate but equal was inherently unequal.

1896: Based on information supplied by The London Times, the New York Timesreported today that the work of the Jewish Colonization Association will continue despite the recent death of its founder and benefactor, Baron Hirsch.  Dr. S.H. Goldschmidt of Paris will now service as President of the Association with assistance from Herbert G. Lousade of the Anglo-Jewish Association of London.  Currently, 1,222 families occupy the 225,000 acres in Argentina under the association’s control.

1896: Birthdate of Tampa, FL native David Archer Falk, the Washington and Lee trained lawyer who had earned his bachelor’s degree from the same institution.

1897: Today, William W. Morrow, who championed the cause of Adolph Kutner, a Jew who was afraid to return to his native land because of the Czar’s policies “was nominated by President William McKinley to a joint seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Circuit Courts for the Ninth Circuit.”

1897: Anti-Semitic violence broke out in Algeria when “the main synagogue of Nestaganem, Algeria was sacked by anti-Jewish rioters.”

1898: During the Spanish American War, 2nd Lt. Charles Wolf, Sergeant Charles Olschefskie and Privates Simon J. Bush, Simon Freund and Samuel Shapiro were among those in Company A of the 1st Connecticut Volunteer Infantry who were mustered into the United States Army.

1898: One day after he had passed away, 32 year old Leon Ziff was buried in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”

1898: During the Spanish American War, Corporal John Fehliman of Kansas City and Privates Samuel Marolis, Philip Steinman, Wlater Gans, Levi Cubine, Adolph Rubel and Charles B. Solomon (the last two from Mexico, MO) were among those who part of the 5th Missouri Volunteer Infantry which was mustered into federal service at Jefferson Barracks, MO.

1899: Randolph Guggenheimer, President of the Municipal Council will the deliver the address at this afternoon’s ceremonies dedicated the new Hebrew Charities Building at 21st Street and Second Avenue.

1899(9thof Sivan, 5659): Fifty year old Julius Hirsch , native of Mannheim, Germany who came to New York In 1870 where he became “a prominent member of the Produce Exchange” passed away today.

1900: In an article entitled “Topical Study” published today in Die Welt Isaac Rulf warned Jews of the danger presented by an increase in anti-Semitism in Germany, including the possibility of murder by the millions. Ruif died a year later but his children did not escape the Holocaust. One son died at Auschwitz and the other committed suicide before he could be shipped to the camps.

1900 In Pilsen, “journalist and theatre director Julius Hirsch and his wife Camilla gave birth to David Hirsch the actor and director known as Wolfgang Heinz.

1901: Herzl is called to the palace again. He is presented a tie-pin with yellow stones. Herzl hands out the sum of 40.000 francs to Nouri Bey and Crespi for having brought the audience about.

1901(29thof Iyar, 5661): Parashat Bamidbar

1901: The celebration marking the golden jubilee of Temple Beth Elohim, “the oldest synagogue in Brooklyn” continued for a second day.

1902: Herzl receives a letter from Constantinople that his letter concerning a request for the creation of an Israelite University in Jerusalem was submitted to the Sultan.

1902” “East Side Boycotters Meet and Organize” published in the New York Times described the formation of The Ladies’ Anti-Beef Trust Association which plans to establish co-operative stores if the price of beef being sold on the Lower East Side is not lowered

1903: The Times of London published a letter from Vyacheslav von Plehve, the Russian Minister of the Interior to the district’s governor, dated 12 days before the riots known as the Kishinev Pogroms, advising the governor not to act against rioters. “The Russian government asserted that it was a forgery and provided a bogus claim that the pogroms had started when a Jewish carousel owner hit a Christian woman. Christians defended themselves and then the Jews attacked them, killing one gentile.”

1903: Arthur Paul Nicholas Cassini, the Russian Ambassador to the United States justified the Pogrom at Kishinev during an interview given today.

 

There is in Russia, as in Germany and Austria, a feeling against certain of the Jews. The reason for this unfriendly attitude is found in the fact that the Jews will not work in the field or engage in agriculture. They prefer to be money lenders. ... The situation in Russia, so far as the Jews are concerned is just this: It is the peasant against the money lender, and not the Russians against the Jews. There is no feeling against the Jew in Russia because of religion. It is as I have said—the Jew ruins the peasants, with the result that conflicts occur when the latter have lost all their worldly possessions and have nothing to live upon. There are many good Jews in Russia, and they are respected. Jewish genius is appreciated in Russia, and the Jewish artist honored. Jews also appear in the financial world in Russia. The Russian Government affords the same protection to the Jews that it does to any other of its citizens, and when a riot occurs and Jews are attacked the officials immediately take steps to apprehend those who began the riot, and visit severe punishement upon them."

1904: Birthdate of Senator Jacob K Javits.  Born in New York, Javits graduated from NYU Law School.  He served in the Army during World II.  Following the war he became active in Republican politics in New York.  Before coming to the Senate, Javits served in the House of Representatives and as Attorney-General for the state of New York.  Javits was a leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party and staunch supporter of the Civil Rights movement.  Javits served until January, 1981.  Having been defeated he resumed his law practice and lectured at Columbia.  He passed away in 1986.

1905: In Vienna, Kamilla (Feitler) and Siegmund Zeisl gave birth to composer Erich Zeisl.

http://www.zeisl.com/

1905: Frederick Kerry arrived in the United States.  Now a Roman Catholic, at birth Kerry was a Jew named Fritz Kohn.  He and his Jewish wife Ida were baptized in 1901 to avoid the stigma associated with being Jewish in Austria.  Frederick Kerry is the grandfather of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.  At least two of his relatives perished in the Holocaust.

1906: Birthdate of New York City native and JTS ordained Rabbi Joseph Zeitlin, the holder of degrees from CCNY, Dropsie College and Columbia who became the leader of Ansche Chesed in Manhattan.

1907(5thof Sivan, 5667): Parashat Bamidbar, erev of Shavuot

1907: Shabbat morning services are held for the first time in the office new home of Temple Israel in Harlem

1909: It was reported today that at meeting of a committee appointed by the Jewish Communal Council whose members included State Supreme Court Justice Samuel Greenbaum, Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Edward Lauterbach, Leopold Stern, Marcus Marks, Jonas Weil, Charles Dittman, Nathaniel Myers and Mortimer L. Schiff the Institution for the Improvement and Instruction of Deaf Mutes will be re-organized under Jewish control and “that $30,000 has been raised” for this project.

1910: Turkish Minister of Education advocates adoption of Hebrew as national language of Turkish Jews.

1910: The Sixth Biennial Session of the National Conference of Jewish Charities in the United States continued to meet for a second day in St. Louis, MO.
1910: Franz Kafka and a few of his friends gathered to observe Halley’s Comet.

1911: Bruno Walter was at the deathbed of Gustav Mahler who died today at the age of 50.  Born Jewish, Mahler converted to Catholicism, so he could become head of the court opera in Austria.  His conversion did not spare him the contempt of his enemies.

1912: Hans Kelsen, “the son of middle class German speaking Jews, who had converted to Catholicism while working on his dissertation married Margaret Bondi today, just days after converted Lutheranism.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kelsen-hans

1912: In Philadelphia, PA, Russian Jewish immigrants gave birth to Richard Saxs who as Richard

Brooks gained fame as film writer, director and producer. Brooks was received Oscar nominations for the screenplays for Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, In Cold Blood and The Professionals.  He won an Academy Award in 1960 for Elmer Gantry.  

1913: In Hawthorne, NY, dedication of the “Brooklyn Cottage of Jewish Protectory.”

1913: In Peabody, MA, founding of Anshe Sfard synagogue.

1914: It was reported today that five hundred people had attended the “memorial services of the Hebrew Union Veterans Association and the Hebrew Veterans of the War with Spain” at Temple Rodeph Sholomo where the speakers included Congressman Abraham Blum and Colonel Samuel H. Mildenberg.

1915(5thof Sivan, 5675): Erev Shavuot

1915: A day after Sir Edgar Speyer wrote to Prime Minister Asquith him to revoke his baronetcy and Privy Council Membership in response to chauvinistic assaults on his patriotism, the Globe published an editorial demanding “that Anglo-German publish ‘loyalty letters.’”

1915: “A number of the most prominent businessmen of Paterson, NJ, who have interested themselves in the nation-wide campaign to secure clemency for Leo M. Frank of Atlanta, GA met today and passed resolutions to add their pleadings to those of the great multitude who are endeavoring to influence Governor Slaton.

1915: Twenty year old Boston native Henry Landers Bostick the University of Denver student and right-handed infielder made his major league debut with the Philadelphia Athletics (now the Oakland A’s)

1915: In Worcester, MA, Benjamin and Mary Meltzer gave birth to “Milton Meltzer, a historian and prolific author of nonfiction books for young people who helped start a movement away from the arid textbook style of the past.”  (As reported by Dennis Heveis)

1915: It was reported today that the Governor of Georgia has received “more than 75,000 letters and telegrams all parts of the United States urging that Leo Frank be saved from death” while “fewer than twenty letters” have been received suggesting “that the death sentence be executed.”

1917(26thof Iyar, 5677): Seven year old Stanley Bernstein, the son of Ike and Jean Bernstein passed away at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.

1917: According to “official advices received in Washington” today, “Turkish military authorities in Palestine are in engaged in driving the Jews into the hinterland and away from the Mediterranean Coast”

1918(7thof Sivan, 5678): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor

1918: “The Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs announced” today “that the Italian Government through its Ambassador at the Court of St. James has officially signified its approval of the English and French declarations in favor of the Zionist movement and of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.”

1918: Birthdate of Lillian Napsky Ableman, the wife of Max Ableman

1918: “The Neighborhood House and Talmud Torah” recently consecrated by the Sisterhood of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue which started as the Ladies’ Sewing Circle in 1847, announced that will offer special activities designed to meet the needs of “Oriental Jews” many of whom are poor but “decline to accept charity” which being eager to gain employment “and the education that will prepare them for citizenship.”

1918: Georg Nicolai writes to Albert Einstein telling him that he should not reproach himself for not taking an even more active role in protests against the war.

1919(18thof Iyar, 5679): Lag B’Omer

1919: Hortense Adamsky and Lester B. Yates are among those scheduled to be confirmed this morning at Sinai Congregation, on the south side of Chicago.

1920: Birthdate of Manhattan native Isabelle Charlotte Weinstein who gained fames as Isabelle Goldenson, “the wife of American Broadcasting Company founder and chairman Leonard Goldenson, and a co-founder of the charity United Cerebral Palsy (UCP).”

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/05/us/isabelle-goldenson-a-voice-for-people-with-cerebral-palsy-dies-at-84.html

agricultural settlement is founded in the Sharon region.

1921: The Nation included an essay by Lily Winner entitled "American Emigrés."http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/18/1921/lily-winner

1922: In Revere, MA, Mollie (née Friedopfer) and Michael Garber, a manufacturer gave birth to Wolf Martin Garber who gained fame as actor Bill Macy best known for his role of Walter Findlay in the sitcom “Maude.”

1924(14thof Iyar, 5684): Pesach Sheni

1924(14thof Iyar, 5684): Seventy-eight year old Esther Anna Phillips, a native of Liverpool passed away today after which she was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Natchitoches, LA “adjacent to Harold Phillips.”

1924: After two years of “being sickly,” Albert H. Loeb, the Vice President of Sears, Roebuck and Company displayed symptoms of heart trouble.

1925: In New York City, “Samuel David and Anna Robins (Block) Kasindorf” gave birth to Hunter College and NYU educated public school teacher Blanche Robins Kasindort who rose through the administrative ranks become a public school principal in Brooklyn starting in 1965.

1926: In the Bronx, “Leon and Ida (Granowski) Bregman” gave birth to producer Martin Leon Bregman whose body of work included “Serpico” and “Scarface.” (As reported by Anita Gates)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/obituaries/martin-bregman-dead-serpico-scarface-producer.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1926: In Chicago, Professor James H. Breasted announced that Julius and William Rosenwald have donated $30,000 to be used in building a library near Luxor, Egypt that will be used by the veritable army of visiting scholars and scientist who come to the area each year.  The Rosenwald’s general philanthropy was evident in a variety of secular and Jewish charitable activities.

1926: At the Brooklyn Hebrew Maternity Hospital, “a sultry dancer named Mollie Charleston who went by the name of Mollie Charleston” gave birth to Albert Schneider who claimed to be Alan Gershwin “the long-lost son of George Gershwin.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/obituaries/alan-gershwin-who-claimed-a-famous-father-is-dead-at-91.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1927: Mayor Walker and more than 1,000 women welcomed Nathan Straus and Mrs. Straus on their return from a pilgrimage to Palestine at a tea given today at the Hotel Commodore by the Brooklyn Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization. During his address to the group, Mr. Straus officially presented Hadassah with the $250,000 health centre which is being built in Jerusalem.

1928: Today a project for a municipal milk supply in Warsaw was defeated in the City Council by the combined vote of the Polish Nationalist and the Jewish middle-class Alderman. The municipal plan was backed by Pilsudski Party and Jewish Socialists.

1929(8thof Iyar, 5689): Parashat Emor

1929(8thof Iyar, 5689): Albany, NY, native Edward Henry Bendel, the son of Henry and Mary Bendel and the husband of Caroline Goldman Bendel passed away today in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1930: Birthdate of Senator Warren B Rudman.  Born in Massachusetts, Rudman grew up in New Hampshire. A Korean War Era Veteran, Rudman practiced law in New Hampshire before being elected to the Senate as a Republican in 1980. He served until January 1993, having chosen not to run for re-election.  He is best known for the Graham-Rudman-Hollings Act, also referred to as the Balanced Budget and Deficit Control Act.

1930: Birthdate of Barbara Goldsmith, author of Little Gloria:Happy At Last.”

1930: “Sunny Skies,” a musical directed by Norman Taurog and starring Benny Rubin was released today in the United States.

1931: In New York City, Leon and Ida Bregman gave birth to Martin Bergman who went from entertainment agent to movie producer.

1932(12th of Iyar, 5692): Seventy-three year old Pauline Heilbronner Hirschfeld, the wife of Leopold Hirschfeld with she had two children – Laura and Bella – passed away today after which she was buried at the Laupheim Jewish Cemetery in Stuttgart, Germany.

1933:  As part of the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt signs the law creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).  David Lilienthal, the son Jewish immigrants from Czechoslovakia, was the Director of TVA responsible for its early success and its ability to participate in the Manhattan Project during World War II.

1934: The Academy Award is called Oscar in print for the first time by Sidney Skolsky.  Skolsky was a close friend of Al Jolson and was responsible for the movie biography of the man who made the first “talkie

1934: It was reported today that "Leaping Lena" Levy has been Chicago sportswriter “that King Levinsky, the Windy City Walloper, otherwise known as the Chicago Assassin, the Personality Kid, and as plain Harry Krakow, is reported to be suffering from a nervous breakdown.” Levinsky was one of a veritable army of Jewish pugilists who fought during the 1920’s and 1930’s when the fight game was a Jewish game.

1935: In Chicago, civil engineer Solomon Kupperman and the former Sara Fischer gave birth to Joel Jay Kupperman, the holder of a Ph.D. in philosophy from Cambridge and the long time Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut who was best known as one of the original Quiz Kids. (As reported by Penelope Green)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/arts/television/joel-kupperman-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1936: It was announced in the House of Commons that a Royal Commission of Inquiry would be set up to investigate the cause of unrest in Palestine.  The Commission became known as the Peel Commission because its chairman was Lord Peel.

1936: “All Jewish national institutions in Palestine closed at noon today in mourning for Dr. Nahum Sokolow who died yesterday in London” and memorial services were held in the Jewish Agency Building with Menahem M. Ussishkin, president of the Jewish National Fund…and David Ben Gurion chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive as the principal speakers.”

1936: “Occupants of a speeding automobile fired shots into a Jewish barber shop in the Rehavia quarter of Jerusalem.”

1936: It was reported today that “A curfew order, forbidding residents of Jerusalem to leave their homes at night, was issued by Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, the High Commissioner of Palestine following the killing of three Jews at a motion-picture theatre."

1936: The British government responded to a request by the Jewish Public Works asking for police protection for its workers by advising “the department to give its employees their annual vacations.

1936: In London, “the Colonial Secretary informed the House of Commons today that the Cabinet had made its decision” “to appoint a royal commission to investigate Arab and Jewish grievances on the spot” “without having consulted Arab or Jewish leaders.”

1936: According to reports published today, the United Palestine Appeal is seeking to raise $3, 500,000 in the United States “to finance Jewish colonization and land purchase in” Palestine after the Palestine Foundation Fund, the Jewish National Fund and the German Settlement Bureau of the Jewish Agency for Palestine had spent $2,061,720 “from October 1, 1935 to April 1, 1936 to aid the settlement in Palestine of Jews from German, Poland and other lands.”

1937: Archbishop George Mundelein speaks out against the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany1937: In Brooklyn, NY, Dewey and Adeline Weissfeld Albert gave birth to Jerome Lewis Albert “who with his father…created and operated Astroland, the space age-themed amusement park that breathed new life into the Coney Island Boardwalk in the 1960s, a time when it was losing its lure.” As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1938(16thof Iyar, 5698): Seventy-two-year-old Polish born, and Boston College of Physicians and Surgeons trained physician Dr. Jacob Oshlag who “specialized in general diagnosis and psychiatry and who raised two sons, Harold Oshlag and Dr. Julius A. Oshlag, M.D. with his wife Dr. Ida Oshlag, M.D. passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/05/19/98137875.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1938: As Arab violence continued to escalate,The Palestine Post reported that Arab terrorists killed an Arab constable in Hebron. Arab farmers were robbed by Arab terrorists in villages around Jenin. The Public Works Department property was set on fire in Nablus and Jewish settlers near Hadera found their tractors and other machinery severely damaged.

1939: A gathering of members of the Hashomer Ha’tzair movement took place at Wieliczka, Poland.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/05.asp

1939: As Jews throughout Palestine protested against the White Paper with its limit of 75,000 Jews allowed to enter the country each year and the creation of a state that condemn the Jews to permanent minority status in violation of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, a resolution for Palestine Jewry was read aloud at the three hour long demonstration in Tel Aviv that stated in part: “Palestine Jewry declares the betrayal policy will never materialize…Palestine Jewry does not recognize the arbitrary restriction of immigration.  No power in the world can deter the natural right of our people to come home  Palestine Jewry will not consent to leave the land of the country desolate, but undauntedly will continue reviving it.”

1940(10thof Iyar, 5700): Parashat Behard

1940: Today, in Florida, Fred Bergman is scheduled to be Bar Mitzvahed at Beth David Synagogue.

1940: Bernard Baruch ate lunch today with President Roosevelt at the White House.

1941: Jewish veterans honor their dead

1941: Seventy-three year old German Werner Sombart author of Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (The Jews and Modern Capitalism) in which he documented “Jewish involvement in historic capitalist development” in which “he argued that Jewish traders and manufacturers, excluded from the guilds developed a distinctive antipathy to the fundamental of medieval commerce” and Deutscher Sozialismus  in which he contended that “the antithesis of the German spirit is the Jewish spirit, which is not a matter of being born Jewish or believing in Judaism but is a capitalistic spirit” and the "chief task" of the German people and National Socialism is to destroy the Jewish spirit.”

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-jews-and-modern-capitalism-by-werner-sombart/

1942: The New York Times carried a report by a United Press International correspondent who had been trapped in Berlin at the outbreak of the war in December of 1941 and who reached Lisbon after being traded as part of a swap for Axis nationals in Allied hands.  According to the story 100,000 Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazis in the Baltic States, almost that many in Poland and twice as many in western Russia. 

1941: Lee Shubert and Harry Hershfield are scheduled to be among the honorary pallbearers at today’s funeral for 61 year old “theatrical producer Morris Gest” “in the Central Synagogue” at which Rabbi Jonah B. Wise will lead the service.

1942: During a public protest of Nazi anti-Semitism staged in Berlin by Herbert Baum and his followers, portions of "The Soviet Paradise," a government-sponsored anti-Bolshevik exhibition, are set afire. Most members of Baum's group, as well as approximately 500 other Berlin Jews, are arrested.

1942: Another 1,420 Jews arrived in the Lodz ghetto from Brzeziny. Like the Jews who arrived the day before, their children were taken away from them. They were sent to Chelmno to be gassed.

1943: Nearly every resident of the Polish farming village of Szarajowka is shot or burned alive by the SS, Wehrmacht troops, and Gestapo agents. After the massacre, the village is razed. What was the crime for which the villagers were being punished? Sheltering Jews

1944 (25th of Iyar, 5704): Jewish partisan leader Aleksander Skotnicki was killed as his unit battled the armored SS Viking Division near the Parczew Forest in Poland.

1944: Deportations from Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, to Auschwitz end with the transport of 2500 Jews.

1944: Paul Alfred Cullen, who would reach the rank of Major General in the Australian Army began serving with “Headquarters 16th Brigade.”

1944: In Hungary deportations of Jews to Auschwitz would begin today with a total of 437,000 being shipped to the death camp through July 7, 1944. 

1944: The Battle of Monte Cassino which Michał Waszyński filmed “as a member of the army film unit” attached to the 2nd Corps of the Polish Army came to an end today. 

1945(6thof Sivan, 5705): First observance of Shavuot after VE Day

1945: “In the East New York section of Brooklyn cabdriver Morris Finkelstein and “former Zella Ordanski” gave birth to Arthur Jay Finkelstein” a conservative political operative who has supported such candidates as “President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/us/politics/arthur-finkelstein-innovative-influential-conservative-strategist-dies-at-72.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1945: In Minneapolis, MN, Jewish mobster Davie Berman and Betty Ewald gave birth to journalist Susan Jane Berman who would be brutally murdered by Robert Durst.

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-the-literary-life-and-death-of-susan-berman-robert-durst-victim-20150316-story.html

1946: "Laughing on the Outside (Crying on the Inside)" by Dinah Shore,” the Tennessee born daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants “hit #1 on the Billboard Honor Roll of Hits”

1947: The unveiling “of a monument in memory of William Eisenberg is scheduled to take place this afternoon Mount Judah Cemetery.

1947: Wrigley Field in Chicago recorded the largest regular season paid attendance in its history when 46,572 people came out to see Jackie Robinson make his first appearance at the ballpark for the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team with a disproportionately large number of Jewish fans including the author of this blog.

1948: Moshe Dayan, who had been born in Degania, was given command of all forces in the area, including the settlements in the Kinarot Valley, after having been charged without creating a commando battalion in the 8th Brigade just a day before. A company of reinforcements from the Gadna program was allocated, along with 3 PIATs (a bazooka-like weapon). Other reinforcements came in the form of a company from the Yiftach Brigade and another company of paramilitaries from villages in the Lower Galilee and the Jezreel Valley. The Palmach counterattack on the police station on the night of May 18 gave the Israeli forces an additional day to prepare defense and attack plans

1948: Syrian aircraft bombed the Israeli village Kinneret and the regional school Beit Yerah, on the southwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

1948: After two days of fierce fighting a Syrian brigade including tanks overran Zemach, killing all forty-two of the Jewish defenders. 

1948: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Uruguay, and Nicaragua recognized Israel.

1948:  The Arab Legion captured the police fort on Mt. Scopus.  The illegal occupation of Mt. Scopus would end with the June War in 1967. 

1948: Between today and May 20, a unit of the Etzioni Brigade made repeated attempts to fight their way into the Old City at the Jaffa Gate.  Despite taking heavy casualties, the Jewish fighters failed in their effort. The brigade was fighting the Arab Legion, the name given to the Jordanian Army which was trained and led by British officers.

1948: Fighting under Egyptian command Saudi Arabia joined the other Arab armies in their invasion of Israel.

1948: "At midnight, Egyptian police" ransacked the home of Levan Zamir in Helwan.

1948: While at school today in Egypt, Levana Zamir's teacher told her that her uncle had been taken to prison allegedly because he was a Zionist.  The uncle was freed two years later and placed on a ship bound for France. 

1948: “According to Israeli historian Benny Morris” Kibbutz Bror Hayil was founded today. (The founders themselves claim the date should be May 5)

1948: “Another Part of the Forest” based on the play by Lillian Hellman directed by Michael Gordon was released in the United States today.

1949: “Miss Mary Antin Wrote Noted Book” published today described the career of the late Jewish author.

http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=352

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F00C13F93B5F177B93CAA8178ED85F4D8485F9

1949: Birthdate of Appleton, Wisconsin native Terry Zwigoff, the son of Jewish dairy farmers who was raised in Chicago before pursuing his musical and film-making passions.

1950: As a result of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, 120,000 Jews fleeing Iraq were brought to Israel over the course of a year's time.

1950: Israel has released the eight crewmen of an RAF flying-boat that had been forced down yesterday by Israeli fighter planes.  According to the pilot, the plan was flying from Bahrain to the Suez Canal when it wandered off course due to a navigational error.

1950: Colonel Harry D. Henshel and Charles L. Orenstein announced that the United States will be represented in the third World Maccabiah Games opening in Tel Aviv on September 27.  Henshel and Orenstein are co-chairman of the national committee for United States participation and Orenstein will chair the committee that will select the athletes.

1952: After discussing the oil situation in Israel today “in light of Britain’s refusal to grant the Jewish State credits for the purchase of crude oil stocks” the Israeli Cabinet set up “a special Ministerial committee…to prepare regulations for a fuel economy program.

1952: Funeral services are schedule to be held today for Professor Theodore Goodman, CCNY graduate class of 1915 and the husband of Lillia Goodman.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Abu Eliahu, 40, and Eliahu Ephraim, 45, two watchmen in the Jerusalem "corridor" were murdered by infiltrators.

1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Government approved the special unemployment relief tax scale and hoped to collect IL15m compulsory advance payment on account of future taxes.

1953: In Haifa, Oskar and Tikva Deutsch gave birth to David Deutsch the British physicist whose doctoral advisor was Dennis Sciama and was awarded the Dirac Prize in 1998.

1954(15thof Iyar, 5714): Rose Fischel Wald, the New York born wife of Albert Wald, the mother of Judith Wald and leader of the “women’s division of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations passed away today in NYC.

1954(15thof Iyar, 5714): Sixty-six-year-old Selig Brodetsky, the Ukraine born son of Adel and Akiva Brodetsky, the beadle of the local Synagogue, and a “British Professor of Mathematics, a member of the World Zionist Executive, who served as the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and was the second president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem” passed away today.

1956: “In the prosperous suburbs of south Manchester,” “barrister Benet Hytner and his wife, Joyce” gave birth to their eldest child, theatre and film director Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner.

1958(28thof Iyar, 5718): Seventy-six year old Jacob “Yakov” Fichman who “received the Bialik Prize for his book of poetry Peat Sadeh ("A Corner of a Field")” passed away today.

1958: The 11th Cannes Film Festival where one of the entrants was “The Brothers Karamazov” directed by Richard Brooks, produced by Pandro S. Berman, with a script by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Richard Brooks and featuring William Shatner in his film debut came to an end today.

1958(28thof Iyar, 5718): In Cleveland, seventy-eight year Samuel Phillipson, the father of Mrs. Louis Becker of Elyria, OH passed away today at the Highland View Hospital.

1961: “The original London production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘The Sound of Music’” opened today.

1961: It was reported today that Harry Weinberg, Roy M. Cohn and Lawrence I. Weisman “urchased portions of their Fifth Avenue Coach stock on margin” and that “their total indebtedness is about $72,300.

1962(14thof Iyar, 5722): Pesach Sheni

1962(14thof Iyar, 5722): Seventy-two year old Hebrew Union College graduate and St. John’s University trained attorney, Sidney Saul Tedesche, the son of Alexander Tedeshe and Jeanette Greenfield and 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 passed away today

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/19/140578272.pdf

1962: Two off-duty police detectives, Luke J. Fallon and John P. Finnegan, were killed today in a botched robbery of the Boro Park Tobacco Company.  Jerry Rosenberg, whose jailhouse nickname was Jerry the Jew and Anthony Portelli would be found guilty of the first double homicide of New York City police officers since 1927 and sentenced to death. Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller would later commute their sentences to life in prison.  At the time of his death in 2009, Rosenberg would be the longest serving convict in the New York State prison system.

1962(14thof Iyar, 5722): Fifty-seven year old P. Wolf Winer, the Harvard trained attorney and “instructor of law at the School of Business at City College who “was the first president of the Great Neck Chapter of the American Jewish Congress, the husband of Penina Winer and the father of Jaqueline, Lucy and Thomas Winer suffered a fatal heart attack today in New York’s Pennsylvania Station today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/19/140578362.pdf

1964(7thof Sivan, 5724): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor

1965 (16th of Iyar, 5725): Israeli spy Eli Cohen was publicly executed by the Syrians. This execution was aired on national Syrian television. After his execution, a sign with Anti-Zionist messages was placed on his hanging body. His body was left to hang for six hours.Eli was born in Alexandria, Egypt on December 26, 1928. The son of two Syrian Jews, Eli was raised in a strong Jewish and Zionist educational environment. True to their Zionist ideals, the Cohen family moved to Israel in 1949. However, Eli stayed behind to organize Zionist and Jewish activities in Egypt. Eventually, Eli moved to Israel and began training with the Israeli intelligence organization. His preparation was extensive and exhaustive. From weapons to Arab customs to espionage technology, he was trained to know everything about the craft of being a spy. In 1961, the Chief of Military Intelligence, Chaim Herzog, authorized Eli Cohen to be used as a spy for the State of Israel. Soon after, he was escorted to the airport with a ticket for Argentina where he would begin to establish his portfolio under his new assumed identity, Kamal Amin Ta'abet. While in Argentina, he established his cover as a Syrian émigré and began to make inroads within the Syrian community of Buenos Aries. In time, he established himself as a successful businessman and began to establish relationships among the Syrian diplomatic corps in Argentina. It was during this time that Eli met Col. Amin al-Hafez. Through his extravagant hosting of his diplomatic contacts, he was eventually invited to visit Syria to set up business operations. Late in 1961, Eli returned to Israel for a short visit with his wife. It was during this visit that he finalized requirements for his mission in Syria. There was no question that Eli was already making impressive progress within the Syrian political and social circuits. Staring in 1961, the Syrian Ba'ath Party was beginning its rise to power within the Syrian government. It was important to Eli that he travel to Syria as the party began to gain power and influence. Eli arrived in Damascus in 1962, acting as an Argentinean entrepreneur returning home to Syria. It was during this time in Syria that Eli was very careful to develop his relationships with members of the Ba'ath party. True to his style in Argentina, Eli hosted parties and hob-nobbed in the highest social and political circles. As Eli gained the trust of these high officials, they openly discussed matters of military and political importance with him. Between 1962 and 1965, Eli made three secret trips home to be with his wife and children. When the Ba'ath party seized power in 1963, Eli Cohen was well established and entrenched within the social elites of Syria. He became a “trusted friend” of the highest-ranking members of the Ba'ath party, all the while transmitting vital information home to Israel via a transmitter that was hidden in his home. His ability to pierce the highest ranks of the government continued the longer he stayed in Syria. He was invited to discussions regarding Syria's intentions to divert water from the headwaters of the Jordan River. In 1963, Eli transmitted the details regarding the diversion of the waters back to the Israelis. As a result, the IDF Air Force was able to effectively destroy Syrian plans for this project. Cohen exhibited another example of his daring espionage when he visited the Syrian-held Golan Heights, bordering Israel. The Golan was a “strategic asset” for Syria, which allowed them the ability to facilitate acts of aggression against the northern Israeli towns. The Golan was considered a top secret area open only to the top members of the Syrian military. Cohen, skilled in his craft, was able to not only get a tour of the area, but able to get a comprehensive military briefing of the Golan and all its positions. It was during this trip that the “famous” eucalyptus trees were planted. As Eli was being briefed as to the Syrian fortifications of the Golan, he suggested that they plant eucalyptus trees to give the Israelis the impression that the locations were not fortified, and also to offer shade for the Syrian soldiers. As the story goes, his ideas were implemented, and as a result, the Israelis knew where every single fortification was located as a result of the eucalyptus trees. His old contact from Argentina, Col. Amin al-Hafez had risen in the Ba'ath party and eventually became Prime Minster of Syria. After Col. Hafez came to power, he even considered appointing Cohen the Deputy Minister of Defense for Syria. In November, 1964, Eli made another visit back to Israel. During this trip he expressed his desire to end this assignment since changes were taking place in Syria that were not favorable to his cover. After much debate, Eli agreed to return for one more tour of Syria. The intelligence that Eli had provided was too valuable. During his final stay in Syria, Eli was less careful of his espionage transmissions. Alarmed that information was leaking out of the country, the Syrians, with the help of their Soviet advisors, conducted a comprehensive probe to find the intelligence leak. During January 1961, transmissions were pinpointed to Eli's home. Syrian intelligence caught Eli in the act, transmitting information back to Israel. He was apprehended and tortured, but didn't release any information of real value to the Syrians. Syria staged a public show and Eli Cohen was found guilty of espionage. Attempts were made to save Eli Cohen. World leaders and prominent businessmen, along with the Israeli government and the Pope attempted to arbitrate a solution for Eli, but with no success. Clearly, Eli's espionage contributions toward the security of the State of Israel were unmatched most. He was so skilled at his craft that he was easily able to assimilate into the day-to-day life within Damascus. He was able to achieve the unthinkable and befriended the highest echelons of the Syrian government and military. Not only was he able to gain access where others could not, he was in the position to provide input that allowed him to influence government and military decisions. There is no question that the intelligence that he compiled was highly instrumental in allowing Israel to quickly and effectively defeat the Syrians and gain the Golan Heights during the Six Day War. For his heroism and skill, Eli Cohen is known as Israel's greatest spy. But in all actuality, he might be a contender for the greatest secret agent of the 20th century

1970: In “Centenarian Recalls Suffragette Days” published today Mrs. Sigmund Pollitzer, the widow dermatologist Sigmund Pollitzer, a mother of two daughters and at this time the “only living member of the first graduating class at Barnard College” provided insights into the fight for the vote and equal right for women.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/05/18/80024973.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1969: In Detroit, Michigan, Rhoda Yura and Dan Glickman, the former Kansas Congressman, Secretary of Agriculture, and president of the MPAA gave birth to producer and MGM President Jonathan Glickman

1972(5thof Sivan, 5732): Erev Shavuot

1973: Having been denied the right to read from the Torah on a Saturday morning, 13 year old Elena Kagan read from the Book of Ruth tonight, on Friday night.

1973(16th of Iyar, 5733): Israeli poet and Editor Avraham Shlonsky passed away. A native of Russia, he was a driving force in the creation of Modern Hebrew literature. Among other accomplishments he won both the Bialk and Israel prizes. 

http://www.haaretz.com/life/books/biography-the-founding-father-1.361063

http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/2011/02/abraham-shlonsky-toil-from-hebrew.html\

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avraham_Shlonsky

1975(7thof Iyar, 5735): Eight-seven year old University of Michigan chemistry professor Dr. Kasimir Fajans the holder of a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University who raised two sons – Stefan and Edgar – with his wife Salome passed away today in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

https://lsa.umich.edu/chem/about/department-history/kasimir-j--fajans---1887-1975-.html

1976(18thof Iyar, 5736): Lag B’Omer

1976: “Missouri Breaks” a western movie produced by Elliot Kastner and featuring Steve Franken as “Lonesome Kid” was released today in the United States.

1977: Menachem Begin became Israel's Prime Minister.  Begin's election marked a major shift in Israeli politics.  Begin was a disciple of Jabotinsky, leader of the Irgun, and the polar opposite of the Labor Zionists who had dominated Israeli politics even before the state had been created.  Begin proved to be more of a pragmatist than had been expected.  He met with Sadat and signed the Camp David Accords which led to the swapping of the Sinai for a peace treaty with Egypt.  Despite international furor, Begin bombed an Iraqi reactor, an action that people came to appreciate after the first Gulf War.  Begin resigned after the death of his wife and went into a state of semi-seclusion. He passed away in 1992.

1977(1st of Sivan, 5737): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1977: Samuel Lewis, the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel, arrived today to take up his ambassadorial post.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported the UNIFIL's admission that it had allowed the terrorists to move, together with their arms, into South Lebanon.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Government and the Jewish Agency were considering steps how to stop HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrants Aid Society), from helping Russian Jewish emigrants to go to destinations other than Israel. Only 72 out of the 1,086 Jews who left Russia in April, 1978, made their way to Israel.

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Mifal Hapayis designated IL7m. for education and health in the West Bank and Gaza.

1980: In Israel, a stone marker was unveiled in a memorial forest of 3,500 trees which had been created to honor Major Noel S. Jacobs who had commanded the Jewish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps.

1981(14thof Iyar, 5741) Pesach Sheni observed for the first time during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

1983(6thof Sivan, 5743): Shavuot

1984: “Under the Volcano” with music by Alex North premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

1986: Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir “demanded to prosecute Avraham Shalom, head of the GSS” (General Security Service) as part of his investigation into allegations that two terrorists had been murdered by the GSS.

1986: Richard Edelman, President and CEO of Edelman married Rosalind Ann Walrath at the Harvard Club of New York.

1987: Final broadcast of “Fame” a television series based on the movie of the same name co-starring Valerie Landsburg

1988: Braving a steady rain, 750 supporters of Shimon Peres attended a rally for the Israeli foreign minister at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan today.

1990: “Bird On A Wire” a comedy produced by Rob Cohn, with a script by David Seltzer, co-starring Gold Hawn and with music by Hans Zimmer was released today in the United States.

1991(5thof Sivan, 5751): Parashat Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot

1991: “Barton Fink” directed, produced and written by  Joel and Ethan Coen and starring Michael Lerner premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

1991: The Associated Press reported that the B. Manischewitz Company was given a $1 million fine by United States District Judge Harold Ackerman for conspiring to fix the price of Passover matzoth. Manischewitz had pleaded no contest to a criminal indictment last month, saying it could not defend charges it conspired to fix prices from 1981 to at least April 1986. The indictment said Manischewitz, based in Jersey City, had conspired to raise the price of $25 million worth of Passover matzoth in cooperation with Horowitz Brothers & Margareten and with Aron Streit Inc., both of New York. Horowitz has since been taken over by Manischewitz. The Government has not said why Horowitz and Aron Striet were not indicted. The merchant banking firm of Kohlberg & Company acquired Manischewitz in January and had nothing to do with the scheme.

1993:  “Cup Final” an Israeli movie directed by Eran Riklis was released in the United Kingdom today

1994: Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in what was supposed to have been one step along the road to peace with the Palestinians.

1995: Simone Veil “born Simone Annie Liline Jacob, the daughter of a Jewish architect” completed her second term as French Minister of Health.

  1996(29th of Iyar, 5756): English businessman and racehorse owner Simon Weinstock passes away at the age of 44

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Jacob Two-Two’s First Spy Case by Mordecai Richler.

1997: Today, the Chicago Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to “present a film about the first hundred years of Jewish history in Chicago.”

1998: This evening Angela Landsburg is scheduled “to host the 92nd Street Y Tribute to Maurice Levine” the “founder of the 92nd Street YMHA’s Lyrics and Lyricist Series.”

2000: Israeli troops began evacuating southern Lebanon “preparation for an overall pullout from the area which is to be completed by the end of July.

2000: Despite denials by Greek and Israeli officials “a Palestinian legislator said eggs were thrown at President Costas Stephanopoulos of Greece as he toured the walled Old City, to protest his position on Jerusalem.”

2001(25thof Iyar, 5761): Tirza Polonsky, 66, of Moshav Kfar Haim; Miriam Waxman, 51, of Hadera; David Yarkoni, 53, of Netanya; Yulia Tratiakova, 21, of Netanya; and Vladislav Sorokin, 34, of Netanya were killed in a suicide bombing at Hasharon Mall in the seaside city of Netanya, in which over 100 were wounded. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack (Jewish Virtual Library)

2001(25thof Iyar, 5761): Lt. Yair Nebenzahl, 22, of Neve Tzuf (Halamish), was killed and his mother seriously wounded, in a Palestinian roadside ambush north of Jerusalem.

2002(7thof Sivan, 5762): Second Day of Shavuot

2002(7thof Sivan, 5762): Zypora Spaisman, Polish born American actress and longtime supporter of the Yiddish theatre, passed away at the age of 86.

2003: The New York Times featured books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Heart, You Bully, You Bully, You Punk” by Leah Hager Cohen.

2003(16thof Iyar, 5763): “Seven people were killed and 20 wounded in a suicide bombing on Egged bus #6 near French Hill in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Half an hour later, a second suicide bomber was killed when he was intercepted by police at a road block in northern Jerusalem. The victims: Olga Brenner, 52, of Jerusalem; Yitzhak Moyal, 64, of Jerusalem; Nelly Perov, 55, of Jerusalem; Ghalab Tawil, 42, of Shuafat; Marina Tsahivershvili, 44, of Jerusalem; Shimon Ustinsky, 68, of Jerusalem; and Roni Yisraeli, 34, of Jerusalem.”

2003: Steve Averbach “was on a bus heading to work when a Palestinian terrorist dressed as a fervently Orthodox Jew got on board. Averbach realized immediately that he was a suicide bomber. As he reached for his handgun, the terrorist blew himself up, killing seven people and seriously injuring 20, including Averbach. Israel’s internal security ministry later wrote Averbach a letter saying, “An investigation of the incident revealed that you were courageous, brave, and selfless in attempting to prevent a mortal attack.” It said the bomber had planned to blow himself up in the crowded center of town or in the bus station, where the death toll would have been far higher.”

2004: American Jewish Heritage Torah Day as proclaimed by Albany, NY Mayor Kathy Sheehan

2004:The IDF launched Operation Rainbow in response to the deaths of 13 soldiers, the majority of whom were killed after their armored personnel carriers were blown up in the southern Gazan town of Rafah. The goal of the eight-day operation was to uncover weapons-smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor, and to prevent the smuggling of Strella shoulder-to-air anti-aircraft missiles from the Sinai into Gaza.

2005: In Belgium, premiere of “Or” (My Treasure) an Israeli-French production that had won five awards at the Cannes Film Festival.

2006: Ex-Movie Exec Isn’t Silent About Films published today provides Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Oscar Winner Roger Mayer’s view of the industry to which he devoted 53 years of his life.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/lifecycles/article/exmovie_exec_isnt_silent_about_films_20060519/sound_advice

2006: The daughter of the late Ruth Laredo, the classical pianist who had passed away in 2005, organized a concert to honor the memory of Ruth Laredo at “the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.”

2008: After eight years, FOX broadcast the final episode of “That '70s Show,” a sitcom co-starring Mila Kunis.

2006:A Sarajevo publisher announced that The Sarajevo Haggadah, a centuries-old Jewish holy book that survived the Spanish inquisition, the Nazi Holocaust and Bosnia's 1992-1995 war has been reprinted in limited editions. The Sarajevo Haggadahwas made into 613 copies on hand-made paper that recreates the appearance of the 14th century original by 95 percent, the head of the Rabic publishing house, Goran Mikulic, told Agence France Presse. The number of copies was chosen to symbolize the number of commandments, or mitzvoth, that Jews are obliged to observe. "The edition was printed in Italy and almost everything was done by hand," Mikulic said. The original handwritten manuscript on bleached calfskin illuminated in copper and gold is the world's oldest Sephardic Haggadah, containing the text recited by Jews on the Passover holiday.

2006: “The White House announced that Donald Kohn had been nominated by President George W. Bush to serve a four year term as the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve System.

2006: Rabbi Ada Zavidov is declared the new chairwoman of the Reform Movement's Rabbinic Council at the opening of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism's 18th Biennial Convention.  About 1,000 rabbis and movement members, including Rabbi Elliott Kleinman, vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism in America attend the conference, which focuses on the Jewish family. Zavidov, granddaughter of Aba Achimeir - one of the founding fathers of the Revisionist Party in pre-state Israel - is the first female Israeli native to chair the rabbinic council.

2007: Rosh Chodesh Sivan, 5767

2007: The fifth season of Kokhav Nolad, the popular Israeli television show, began today.

2007: The five candidates for the leadership of the Labor Party face off in a Labor central committee meeting in Tel Aviv that will decide whether Labor should leave Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government.

2007: The University of Teramo closed one of its campuses to prevent a planned lecture by Robert Faurisson, a retired French professor who denies gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps.

2008: Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon declared today, "Jewish News of Greater Phoenix Day" in honor of the newspaper's "exemplary service to the community and the Jewish people".

2008: Veteran journalist Jane Eisner was appointed to be the first female editor of the Forward.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/may/18/2008/jane-eisner

2008: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington marks the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel with a series of book talks by Laura Cohen Apelbaum on Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community (the companion to the award-winning exhibit of the same name) the third of which is held at Barnes & Noble in Rockville, Md.

2008: The New York Times book section featured a review of Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planetby Jeffrey D. Sachs.

2008: The Washington Post book section featured a review of Ellen Feldman’s novel entitled Scottsboro which “painstakingly recreates the infamous Scottsboro case, complete with all the twists and turns and society-exposing foibles.”  Two Jewish lawyers, Samuel Leibowitz and Joseph Brodsky, saved the lives of the defendants in this infamous case.

2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah hosts it’s Temple Wide Picnic marking the close of the Religious School year; farewell until Fall.

2008: The appointment of Jane R. Eisner, former editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer as editor of The Forward is officially approved at today’s meeting of The Forward Association

2008:  The Quad City Jewish Federation hosts Israeli Yom Ha’Azma’ut Rally in Bettendorf, Iowa featuring Sasha Grishkov, finalist from the Israeli television series A Star is Born (Israeli version of American Idol) who will perform with her Israeli band.

2008: “Pamela's First Musical,” written with Cy Coleman and David Zippel, based on Wendy Wasserstein's children's book, received its world premiere in a concert staging at Town Hall in New York City today.

2008(13thof Iyar, 5768): Ninety-six year old actor and director Joseph Pevney “the son of a Jewish watchmaker” passed away today. (As reported by Ronald Bergan)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/31/television

2009; New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman addresses the Class of 2009 at Grinnell

College’s commencement exercises where he receivesan honorary degree along with

Jodie Levin-Epstein, deputy director of the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, D.C.

2009: The Arizona Chapter of the American Jewish Committee presented the Greater Phoenix Jewish News with the RosaLee Shluker Community Service Award in honor of its 60th anniversary.

2009: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Barak Obama in Washington, D.C.

2009: In an article about The Tribeca/ESPN Sports film festival, Sports Illustrated singles out “A Matter of Size,” an Israeli film about Herzl Musiker, a middle aged fat Israel waiter, who discovers his salvation in the world of Sumo Wrestling.

2009: In a Lecture on Nazi Propaganda at the Library of Congress,Dr. Gabriel Weimann, a Professor of Communication at Haifa University, Israel and at the American University, Washington, D.C., examines the social and psychological mechanisms activated by the sophisticated and powerful Nazi propaganda. The multi-media presentation includes posters, movies, speeches, public events, books, cartoons and other media used by the Nazis.

2009: In the best tradition of genteel British anti-Semitism, movie director Ken Loach called for people to boycott the Edinburgh Film Festival if festival’s sponsors accept a 300 pound grant from the Israeli embassy that will enable “Tel Aviv University graduate Tali Shalom Ezer to travel to Scotland for a screening of her film, ‘Surrogate.’”

2009: Michael Sandel gave the 2009 Reith Lectures on "A New Citizenship" in London

2009, American money manager and Bernard Madoff association Jacob Ezra Merkin's control of Ascot, Gabriel and Ariel hedge funds are to be placed into receivership for liquidation by Guidepost Partners

2010(5th of Sivan, 5770): Erev Shavuot

2010: Founding editor of DoubleX Hanna Rosin and Slate editor David Plotz are scheduled to let loose on the Bible while Alyssa Shelasky of Apron Anxiety is scheduled to whip up a dairy dish and Shavuotini for all to taste as part of “The Ten: An Alternative Shavuot Experience” in Washington, D.C.

2011: Convicted white-collar crook, Andrew Fastow was released to a Houston halfway house for the remainder of his sentence.

2011: The YIVO Institute is scheduled to present a special evening with acclaimed novelist Philip Roth during which Roth will read excerpts from his new novel, “Nemesis” which tells the story of a terrifying polio epidemic raging in Newark, New Jersey in the summer of 1944 and its devastating effect on the closely knit, family-oriented community and its children.

2011: Charlotte Dubin, award-winning writer and editor for many publications, including Michigan Jewish History and the Detroit Jewish News is scheduled to receive the Leonard N. Simons History Award at  the

Jewish Historical Society of Michigan’s Annual Meeting

2011: Shelomo Alfassá, a writer, author, editor, curator and historian, whose focus has been on Iberian and Ottoman Jewish history, culture and Jewish law, is scheduled to deliver an illustrated lecture that “will give an overview of the history of Sephardic Jews – from Spain and Portugal to New York City” sponsored by the Derfner Judaica Museum at The Hebrew Home at Riverdale, New York City.

2011: David McKenzie is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln's City” sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington

2011: The "Arbeit Macht Frei” sign stolen from Auschwitz and cut into three pieces has been repaired.

The iron sign was unveiled today in the laboratory of the camp museum. Repairs to the sign, which measures 16 feet across and means "Work makes you free," took several months. It was stolen from the former Nazi concentration camp on Dec. 18, 2009 and recovered elsewhere in the country 72 hours later. It was found cut into three pieces.A copy of the sign has been placed above the entrance gate. The repaired sign will likely become part of a new exhibition, the BBC reported. Five Polish men were convicted of carrying out the theft on behalf of a Swedish citizen, Anders Hogstrom, who acted as a middleman for a neo-Nazi buyer. Hogstrom founded the far-right National Socialist Front party in Sweden in 1994.

2011: Philip Roth, the much-lauded author of "Portnoy's Complaint", won the biennial Man Booker International Prize today, adding to a collection of prizes that includes two National Book Awards.

Roth, whose work includes his noted 1959 debut "Goodbye, Columbus", has also won the Pulitzer Prize for "American Pastoral", featuring favored narrator Nathan Zuckerman.

2012: Facebook, the creation of Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to have it initial public offering (IPO)

2012: Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital, Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning, Temple Micah, Temple Sinai Nursery School and Washington Hebrew Congregation are scheduled to sponsor ShirLaLa Family Shabbat Service and Dinner featuring Shira Klein.

2013: The 721 general assembly commissioners representing the Church of Scotland are scheduled to vote on “The Inheritance of Abraham,” a report which says scripture” provides no basis for Jewish claims to Israel” (As reported by JTA)

2013: The IPO String Trio is scheduled to perform two musicales in the San Francisco Bay area.

2013: In Israel the Indigo Festival on the Sea of Galilee and the Abu Gosh Festival are scheduled to come to an end.

2013: “Bezalel on Tour” will be on view for the first time at G91 Loft in New York City.

2013: Cantor Joel Caplan of Agudath Israel in Caldwell, NJ, will lead Shabbat morning service at Agudas Achim, as the Iowa City congregation dedicates its new facility in suburban Coralville.  Cantor Caplan is the son of Dick and Ellen Caplan, pillars of the Iowa City Jewish community. Cantor Caplan began his Jewish odyssey at Augdas Achim under the guidance of Rabbi Jeff Portman and began his musical odyssey at West High in Iowa City.

2013: The advanced S-300 Russian air defense system, which Moscow has pledged to deliver to Syria, could be transferred to Hezbollah and beyond, a senior defense official warned today. Amos Gilad, head of the security-diplomatic branch of the Defense Ministry, told Channel 2, "These weapons are dangerous. If Hezbollah and Iran support Syria, why shouldn't they [the Syrians] transfer these weapons to Hezbollah? It's a threat to us, a threat to the Americans, and a threat to the Persian Gulf."

2013: There is no chance that Israel could reach a peace agreement with Hamas, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said this evening in an interview with Army Radio.

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including American Innovations by Rivka Galchen and To Rise at a Decent Hour by University of Iowa graduate Joshua Ferris

2014(18thof Iyar, 5774): Lag B’Omer

2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Rockland County JCC.

2014: In Rockville, MD, as part of the B’nai Israel Distinguished Scholar Series, Mark Smith and Elizabeth Bloch-Smith are scheduled to speak on “Roots of Israelite Monotheism: Evidence from Archaeology & Texts.”

2014: “Jewish reggae star Matisyahu” is scheduled to perform with cantor Jessica Hutchings at Temple Menorah in Redondo Beach, CA.(As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)

2014: “The “Holocaust Cellar” is scheduled to open today, as part of the Holocaust museum located in Wiesel’s pre-World War II home, which sits in the old Jewish Ghetto of Sighet in Maramures County.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/elie-wiesels-childhood-home-to-become-education-center/

2014: The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is scheduled to host “Israel@66” celebrating Israel’s 66th birthday

2014: “Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv won the Euroleague basketball final 96-86 tonight against Real Madrid in Milan in an overtime victory.”

2014: “Israel’s tourism ministry said today it expects the papal visit later this month to give a sharp boost to tourism by Christians, who already account for a majority of tourism to the Holy Land.”

2014: New Jersey Governor and Republican presidential hopeful “gives the keynote address today at the Champions of Jewish Values International awards gala in New York.”

2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a screening of Wing and a Prayer followed by a panel discussion of the documentary that describes the role of a handful of mostly foreign pilots in the creation of the State of Israel.

http://cjh.org/event/2654

2015: “In a historic decision” Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the head of the IDF General Staff today “decided to disband the IDF’s homogeneous Druze battalion, a storied unit that no longer drew the top recruits from within the community and seemed to symbolize a segregation whose time had long since passed.”

2015: “Reform and Conservative rabbis blasted the Orthodox rabbinical group Tzohar today for its decision to veto their participation in an upcoming Shavuot all-night learning program in Tel Aviv.”

2015: Alicia Jo Rabins is scheduled to “examine the Book of Ruth through midrash and art” as part of JWA’s first-ever on-line lunch and learn.

2015: A special screening of “A Wing and a Prayer” was held in New York.

2015: In partnership with the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and the Library's Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division Historian and storyteller Tammy Hepps is scheduled to present "In Search of a Usable Past: Reconstructing the Jewish History of Homestead, Pennsylvania."

2015(29thof Iyar, 5775): Eighty-year of “quiz kid” Ruth Duskin Feldman passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/arts/ruth-feldman-a-quiz-kid-who-later-distilled-the-experience-in-a-book-dies-at-80.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2015: Charles Philip “Chuck” Rosenberg began serving as the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

2015(29thof Iyar, 5775): Recitation of Tefillat HaShlah - the Shelah's Prayer since Rabbi Isaac Horowitz wrote that the eve of the first day of the Hebrew month of Sivan is the most auspicious time to pray for the physical and spiritual welfare of one's children and grandchildren, since Sivan was the month that the Torah was given to the Jewish people.

http://www.shemayisrael.co.il/orgs/key/shlokey.htm#english

2016(10thof Iyar, 5776): Seventy-five year old political scientist and author Susan J. Tolchin passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/books/susan-tolchin-political-scientist-who-foresaw-tide-of-voter-anger-dies-at-75.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2016: The Shekel, The Journal of Israel and Jewish History and Numismatics, published since 1968, is scheduled to publish its first special issue--dedicated to Jewish American Heritage Month today.

2016: In Baltimore, MD, the JCCs of North America Biennial Convention is scheduled to come to an end.

2016: In Philadelphia, Rabbi Lance J. Sussman is scheduled to present “Suburban Frontiers: Jewish Life in Philadelphia Since 1960.”

2016: In Cedar Rapids, IA, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to discuss Helga’s Diary by Helga Weiss.

2016: The Jewish Book Council is scheduled to presentRabbi David Wolpe in conversation with the 2016 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Authors;Winner Lisa Moses Leff, Choice Award Recipient Yehudah Mirsky and Fellows Dan Ephron, Aviya Kushner, and Adam D. Mendelsohn.

2017: Today, “one of Ehud Olmert’s attorney was caught by prison officers with classified material belonging to the former prime minister after a visit to his jail” triggering “a search of the cell” during which “security officers found additional classified documents.”

2017: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Six Days and Fifty Years: Military Miracle and Political Dilemma” featuring Ambassador Dennis Ross and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi.

2017: After six days, JW3 is scheduled to host the final screening of “The Zookeeper’s Wife.”

2017: Holocaust survivor Julius Menn is scheduled to speak at the USHMM in Washington, DC.

2018: “Choreographer Andrea Miller and Gallim (Hebrew for “waves”) are scheduled to perform at the Met Breuer with new works designed to engage with the Museum’s galleries and great spaces” this evening.

2018: In response to suit for breach of contract filed by conductor James Levine who has been fired “by the Metropolitan Opera for sexual misconduct” the Met has sued him “arguing in court papers filed today “that Mr. Levine harmed the company and detailing previously unreported accusations of sexual harassment and abuse against him.” (As reported by Michael Cooper)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/arts/music/james-levine-metropolitan-opera.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

2018: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host its third “Unplugged Shabbat” featuring Dan Nichols.

2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to hold elections for President and Vice President after the Friday Night Dinner.

2019(13thof Iyar, 5779): Parashat Emor; Pirke Avot Chapter 3; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2019: As Jews observe Shabbat, they are coping with yesterday’s news of the death of author Herman Wouk and the report that over a twenty year period Dr. Richard Strauss, a physician at Ohio State University had abused “at least 177 students” most of whom were athletes and that the University which prides itself on its athletic program did not report the abuse to authorities as required by law and let me him “retire voluntarily with emeritus status.

https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/local_news/osu-investigation-doctor-strauss-abused-at-least-students-university-personnel/article_f7831704-0521-5c2b-9d92-66f98feccfa3.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/obituaries/herman-wouk-dead.html?ref=headline&nl_art=&te=1&nl=book-review&emc=edit_bk_20190517

2019: Adam Burstain, the son of Todd and Jen Burstain, a smart and caring young man, is scheduled to become an alum today as he graduates from Tulane University today.

2019: In Tel Aviv, the final session of “the Eurovision Song Contest 2019” is scheduled to begin today “at 22:00 IDT.”

2019: In Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts is scheduled to host a screening of “Cairo to the Cloud: The World of the Cairo Geniza.”

2020: Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies is scheduled to host a virtual presentation by “Emory professor Miriam Urdel talking about the ideology behind Yiddish books for children and how they cultivated resilience”

2020: The Virtual Sonoma County JCC Israeli Film is scheduled to host a screening of “The Dove Flyer,” “a 2014 historical drama about a 16-year old Zionist activist in 1950’s Baghdad.

2020: The Jewish Community of the North Shore is scheduled to present Ariela HaLevi “for an online evening of hope and healing.

2020: The Steicker Center is scheduled to host “Takin on the NRA” during which a panel led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg will answer the question “Will Federal gun legislation ever pass?”

2020: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present “Values and Consequences in the Halakhic Process: A Sephardi Perspective” with Bar-Ilan University Professor Zvi Zohar

2020: LSJS is scheduled to host Rabbi Joseph Dweck and Rabbi Dr Zarum in another 'Epic' shiur, during which they look at the book of Vayikra, “discuss the 'guts' of the Torah and put the book in a whole new light.”

2021: This evening the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Monies are scheduled to present information about high-quality virtual resources for Holocaust education that encourage students to stand up against injustice in their community.

2021: Based on previously published reports, Israelis can expect more rocket attacks from Gaza as well as Lebanon today, but they can also take “comfort” in the reports that “President Joe Biden's administration approved the potential sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel.”

2021(18thof Sivan 5781): Second Day of Shavuot;Yizkor; for more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Day, May 19, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

 May 19

 363: For a second day in a row, a series of earthquakes that took place along a fault-line stretching from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba shook the region around the Galilee. According to some, this seismic event was part of the reason the Temple in Jerusalem was not rebuilt despite Emperor Julian’s support for the project.

614: According to some date of the Christian led revolt in Jerusalem against the Sassanids began today during which an untold number of Jews were killed

1103 (10 Iyar 4063): Isaac Alfasi passed away. Born in Fez in 1013, he is also known as the "RIF". He compiled the first codification of Jewish law, called Sefer Halachot. It still appears today in every volume of the Talmud. Joseph Caro later used it as a basis for his work. Sefer Halachot was the most important codex until Maimonides'Mishna Torah. Alfasi was 25 years old when Hai Gaon died. He was called Gaon by many authorities and his death marked the very end of that (Gaonic) period. His students included Judah Halevi and Josef ibn Migash.

1555: Today, “in a document…Nahum Psakohovich, as representative of all the Jews in the grand duchy of Lithuania, lodged a complain wit the king against the magistrate and burghers of Kiev because, contrary to the old, established custom, they had prohibited the Jews from coming to Kiev for trading in the city stores and compelled them to stop at, and to their wares, in the city market recently erected by the burghers.”

1581: “The proclamation controlling usury was issued today” making the subject of “Three Ladies of London,” an Elizabethan comedy about usury by Robert Wilson which is unusual and noteworthy as a philo-Semitic response to the prevailing anti-Semitism of Elizabethan drama and the larger contemporaneous English society” quite topical since it was first performed in 1581.

1588: The Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon.  The Armada was the most massive fleet of its day including 130 ships and 30,000 soldiers and sailors.  The Armada was designed to take control of the English Channel and facilitate the invasion of England from the Netherlands.  The English were at a great a disadvantage in terms of ships and manpower.  The all-important question was when would the Armada begin its trip north?  Until the English knew this they would not when or where to make their first move.  Dr. Hector Nunes, a secret Jew living in England provided the information about the Spanish departure.  The Jews may have played a small part in one of the great turning points in history, but it was a small part that made a big difference.

1604: The city of Montreal was founded today. Jews would not start arriving in Montreal until the 18th century following the British defeat of the French.  Today Montreal boasts a vibrant Jewish community number approximately 90,000 which some describe as the “most Orthodox” in North America.  However it has lost its position as the leading Jewish community in Canada to Toronto because of the rise of the French separatists and their political party, Parti Quebecois.

1707(17thof Iyar, 5647): Chief Rabbi Saul ben Joshua Heschel passed away today in Breslau while on his to Amsterdam.

1762: Birthdate of German philosopher and anti-Semite Johann Gottlieb Fichte who “in his defense of the ideals of the French Revolution in 1793, singled out Jews and Judaism as constituting a ‘state-within-a-state’ that was ‘predicated on the hatred of the entire human race’ and ‘spreading through almost all lands of Europe and terribly oppressing its citizens.’”

1769: Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, who as councilor to the Holy Office had issued a memorandum declaring that the Jews were innocent of the “Blood Libel”, was elected Pope Clement XIV today.

1771: Birthdate of Rahel Levin, the prominent 19th century literary figure who converted when she married and gained fame as Rahel Varnhagen who was the subject of a biography by Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess.

1792: The Russian army entered Poland.  Ultimately Poland would be partitioned among its three imperial neighbors.  Much to the dismay of the Russians, the partition brought them a large mass of Jews, something they found quite upsetting to say the least.

1794(19thof Iyar, 5554): Fifty-four year old Hyam Simon passed away today in the UK.

1798: As the French Army set sail from Toulon in campaign designed to weaken British access to India by taking control of territory from Egypt to Syria that included Palestine, Napoleon delivered one of those visionary speeches intended to inspire the forces to perform beyond their capability.

1799(14thof Iyar, 5559): Pesach Sheni observed for the last time in the 18thcentury

1802: The Légion d'Honneur is founded by Napoleon Bonaparte. Among the Jewish recipients are Rabbi

Langer of New York’s Congregation Orach Chaim, Rabbi David Feuerwerker,a veteran of the French Army who served with the Marquis during World War II, David Saul Marshall, political leader in Singapore and Victor Attias and Henry Smadja who were members of the Jewish Resistance in Tunisia during World War II.

1813: In Strasbourg, Babette Marx married Alexandre Blum and “moved with him to Algiers.”

1818: Eliza Frances (née Campbell) and Mr. Lionel Prager Goldsmid, an officer in the 19th Dragoons, and a scion of the well-known London family of that name whose maternal grandmother's father was Revolutionary War aide-de-camp David Franks gave birth to Sir John Goldsmid who would rise to the rank of Major General in the British Army

1820(6thof Sivan, 5599): Jews in the United States celebrate Shavuot in tranquility since the nation has just avoided a potential breakup over the issue of slavery with the adoption of the Missouri Compromise.

1832: Birthdate of German native Abraham Hart who rose to the rank of Captain in the 73rd Pennsylvania Infantry during the Civil War and raised 6 children with his wife Bertha Swope Hart.

1837(14thof Iyar, 5597): Pesach Sheni

1839(6thof Sivan, 5599): As American Jews celebrate Shavuot they are forced to contend with an economic panic that will continue to cause ripples into the next decade.

1858(6thof Sivan, 5618): Less than a month before Abraham Lincoln delivered his “House Divided Speech” American Jews celebrate Shavuot

1860: The New York Times reviewed The Throne of David by Rev. J.H. Ingraham, which “illustrates the grandeur of the Hebrews at the height of their power and splendor.”

1861: In San Francisco, CA, J. P. Davis, the President of the Hebra Bikur Holim, (Society for Visiting the Sick) presented a new Torah Scroll to Congregation of Sherith Israel.

1863(1st of Sivan, 5623): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1863(1st of Sivan, 5623): Jonas Ennery passed away. Born at Nancy, France, in 1801, he worked at the Jewish School of Strasbourg for 26 years.  In 1843 he published “Le Sentier d’Israel” and he helped to edit "Prières d'un Cœur Israélite," (Prayers of a Jewish Heart) which was published in 1848. Despite anti-Jewish rioting in Alsace, Ennery was elected representative to the French National Assembly as a representative for the department of the Lower Rhine. After the coup d'état that brought Louis Napoleon to power Ennery was exiled forced into exile.  He moved to Brussels, where he lived as a teacher until his death. Ennery's brother, Marchand Ennery, was the chief rabbi of Paris.

1886(5thof Sivan, 5625): Parsashat Bamidbar; erev Shavuot

1866(5th of Sivan, 5626): Seventy-six year old Solomon Ludwig Steinheim the German philosopher passed away.  The Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute was named in his honor.

1867(14thof Iyar, 5627): Pesach Sheni

1867: Vernon and Herman Ehrenthal gave birth to Karolina Lina Hubsch

1867: According to reports published today, The Hebrew Educational Society of Baltimore has adopted the Christian plan of Sabbath school instruction.

1869: Miss Rebecca Fenster of Charleston, SC was married this evening.

1870: In Kings County, NY, Solomon and Betty Loeb gave birth to Nina Jenny Loeb who became Nina Warburg when she married Paul Mortiz Warburg.

1871(28thof Iyar): Meir Halevi Letteris passed away.

1873: Sixty-two year old German psychiatrist Friedrich Karl Steel whose parents had become Lutherans passed away today.

1873: In Cortland, NY, Louis and Rachel (née Ganz) Silverman gave birth to their third child Simon J. “Sime” Silverman, the journalist and publisher “best known as the founder of the weekly Varietyin New York in 1905 and the Hollywood-based Daily Variety in 1933

https://archive.org/stream/variety111-1933-09#page/n208/mode/1up

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FetPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=31QDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2362%2C1534076

1873: “The New Home for Aged and Infirmed Hebrews” published today described the opening of this facility in New York City which was first envisioned by Mrs. Henry Leo in 1870.  She enlisted the support of the Bnai Jeshurun Benevolent Society to help her make the home a reality.  Unfortunately, Mrs. Leon did not live to see her dream come to fruition.

1876: Edward Elias Samuel was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1877: Birthdate of London native Montague N. Cohen the graduate of Jews College who while serving as a rabbi in Tacoma, WA, in 1928 supported “the creation of a united Jewish Agency for the rebuilding of Palestine.”

1878: According to todays “Home and Foreign Events” column “at the suggestion of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, the Alliance Israelita Universelle will issue invitations for a conference of representatives of the Jew Jewish organizations of Europe and America.  The conference will be held in Paris and it will be open to the discussion of all subjects affecting the interests of Judaism.”

1873: Sixty two year old German psychiatrist Carl Friedrich Stahl, whose parents had become Lutherans while he a small child, passed away today.

1874: Theodore Pincus and Sarah Hart were married today at the Great Portland Street Synagogue in London.

1879: “The Rothschild Family: The Greatest Financiers of the Age,” published today purports to provide “an authentic history of the Rothschilds in Frankfort, London, Paris and Vienna” including how the founder of the family acquired his wealth and anecdotes about “family peculiarities.

1878(16thof Iyar, 5638): Seventy-four-year-old Rabbi Samuel Myer Isaacs the Dutch born son of Rebecca and Myer Isaacs who was the rabbi at B’nai Jeshurun and the husband of Jane Symmons passed away today in Manhattan.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8233-isaacs-samuel-myer

https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/resources/6427

1879: Joseph H. De Meza “a young Cuban Jew” was arrested today for stealing clothing from Mrs. Charles A. Lillie in New York City. De Meza came to Mrs. Lillie’s home and asked for “an outfit of her husband’s clothing” claiming that the husband had fallen into the East River at the Fulton Ferry and that he had sent De Meza to get a dry outfit.

1879: “Sunday Services for Hebrews” published today  described reaction among various Jewish leaders to the recently announced plans by Temple Emanuel to start holding “Sabbath” services on Sunday.

1880: Birthdate of Leopold Einstein who at the age of 62 was deported from Nuremberg to Terezin where he was murdered at the age of 63.  (Editor’s note – the next time somebody refers to people who carry Nazi flags or utter Nazi chants as “good” people think of this 62 year old man being loaded into a box car.)

1880: Eighteen year old Matthew Nathan, the son of Jonah Nathan joined the Royal Engineers

1880: It was reported today that Joseph Seligman’s will names his widow, Babet, as executrix of his estate, and his brothers James and Jesse and his son David as executors. The will provides that they may use $25,000 for contributions to the charities of their choice and sets up the terms for the disbursement of his estate so that it will provide for his wife and his children.

1881: In Paris, Adelaide and Baron Edmond de Rothschild gave birth to their second child Maurice de Rothschild, the husband of Noémie de Rothschild and father of Edmond de Rothschild who was noted for his vineyards and who was able to escape the Holocaust thanks to Aristides de Sousa, the Portuguese diplomat who defied his government and risked his career by issuing visas to an untold number of Jews fleeing the Nazis.

1881: In Alsace, France, Charles and Emilie Kahn Weill gave birth to Felix Weill who was buried at “Hebrew Rest Cemetery” in the rural town of Opelousas, LA when he passed away at the age of 18.

1882(1stof Sivan, 5642): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1882: The Leadville, CO Jewish community suffered a financial loss when a building owned by New Yorkers Caesar J. Kaskel and Jacob Michaels burned.  The building was the home to a clothing store managed by Julius W. Kaskel.

1882: As part of a blood libel investigation an entourage of mounted policemen arrived in Tisza-Eszlar, a small Hungarian village. The investigation revolved around the disappearance of a fourteen year old Catholic housemaid named Esther Solymossy. 

1882: In Tisza-EszlarJoszef Sharf, custodian of the local synagogue and his wife were arrested in connection with the disappearance of Esther Solymosi, a Christian peasant girl fourteen years old whom the locals claim was the victim of a Jewish blood lust.

1883: Yiddish actor Sigmund Mogulesko and his wife actress Amalia “Molly” Finkelstein gave birth Dr. Julius Lawrence “Mortimer” Mogulesko the graduate of Columbia Medical School who specialized in Bacteriology.

1886: The future Sir Mathew Nathan was promoted to the rank of Captain in the Royal Engineers

1887: Birthdate of Lemberg native and University of Vienna trained physician Dorian Feigenbam, the psychoanalyst and pupil of Freud, who in 1924 came to the United States where he became an “instructor in neurology” at Columbia and co-founded the Psychoanalytic Quarterly while raising two children – Daniel and Lou Esther – with his wife Yaffa Feigenbaum.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/01/03/506511422.pdf

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21674086.1937.11925305

1887: Fifty-five year old Otto Stobbe, the gentile German historian who is best known for “a scholarly work on Jews in Germany during the Middle Ages called Die Juden in Deutschland während des Mittelalters

1889(18th of Iyar, 5649): Lag B'Omer

1889: In Mogileff, Russia, Louis and Rose Rabinoff gave birth Sophie Rabinoff the American “pediatrician and professor of medicine.”

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rabinoff-sophia

1890: Samuel Hutch, a Jewish peddler was seen alive for the last time near Wurtsborough, NY.

1890: “New Publications” published today includes a review of A Visit of Japheth to Shem and Ham

1891: Barney Greenman, a fourteen year old Jewish boy came to the Barge Office in New York and asked the immigration officials to send him back to Rotterdam.

1891: Three days after she had passed away, 76 year old Julia Myers, the daughter of Hyman Collins and Mary Davis and the wife of Lionel Alman Myers was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1891: The Czar has issued a new proclamation or “ukase” ordering the expulsion of the Jews from the Asiatic provinces of the Russian Empire.

1894: Birthdate of Lothar Mendes, the German born British director whose works included “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” and “International Squadron” which chronicled the role of Americans serving as pilots in the RAF.

https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Lothar%20Mendes&item_type=topic&sr=50

1894: “Literary Notes” published today described the upcoming publication of Christopher Columbus and the Participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries by Dr. Meyer Kayserling, the German born rabbi and historian.

1895: “Hebrew Home to be Mortgaged” published today described plans by the managers of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews of New York City to build a new facility with funds gained from taking out a mortgage on the property at 106thStreet and Columbus Avenue.

1895: Most of the 4,000 “uptown people” who had been invited to a tea at the Hebrew Institute attended this event which gave them a chance to observe the various activities of the educational organization.

1895: “In A Wide Labor Field” published today provided a detailed description of the work of the Educational Alliance which was formed in 1892 under the direction of the Hebrew Free School Association, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and the Aguillar Free Library Society

1895: In Cincinnati, OH, Carrie and Samuel Auer gave birth to University of Cincinnati graduate James Samuel Auer, a member of the Board of National Federation of Temples and the husband of Goldie E. Auer.

1896: Twenty-three-year-old architect David J. Varon, the Serbian born son of Isaac and Rachel Varon married Henriette Behar in Jerusalem today.

1899: Today, David J. Varon, the Siberian born son of Isaac and Rachel (Mevorach Varon,”, the employee of the Edmond de Rothschild colonies in Palestine who came to the United States in 1905 where he was a “Professor of Architectural Design at Syracuse University” and later lived in New York City where he wrote Indication in Architectural Design, lectured on architecture at Cooper Institute and became a member of the Association of Staten Island Architects married Henriette Behar.

1896: The village of Metula was founded with funds supplied by Baron Rothschild.  Metula was the northern most town in Palestine and would become the northern most town in Israel.  Metula is close to the border with Lebanon. 

1896: In Birmingham, England, Jewish immigrants Laura (nee Greenberg) and Louis Balcon gave birth to movie producer Sir Michael Elias Balcan

1896: Herzl is received by Agliardi, the Papal Nuncio in Vienna.

1897:  Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol.  In “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Wilde created a Jewish theatre manager named Isaacs whom he describes as “A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt…He was such a monster.” This does not mean he was an anti-Semite.  After all, Ada Leverson, the English Jewess, invited Wilde to her Salon after he had been arrested.

1897: “Shearith Israel congregation consecrated its new edifice at Central Park West and 70th street” today.

1897: Birthdate of Israel Schultz Becker who had held a series of more responsible positions at CBS culminating as the “vice president in charge of business affairs while raising his son Arnold with his wife Celia passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/06/05/89533497.pdf

1898: Birthdate of Langley, SC native Benet Polikoff, the graduate of the University of South Carolina and WW I veteran who was “a partner in the New York law firm of Polikoff and Clareman” and Chairman of the United Palestine Appeal.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/18/archives/benet-polikoff-sr-counsel-to-actors.html

1898: During the Spanish American War, Privates Samuel Cowen, Michael G. Greenberg and Arthur S. Loeb were part of Battery A, 1st Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Artillery which was mustered into federal service today.

1898: “Gladstone’s Career” published today contained a summary of the late English political leaders life including his rivalry with Disraeli which began with a battle over the budget when Gladstone was made Chancellor of the Exchequer and continued even after Disraeli took his seats in the House of Lords.

1899: The new Hebrew Charities Building that was dedicated yesterday “will provide accommodation for the relief work of the United Hebrew Charities, afford convenient offices and meeting rooms for…various Jewish charitable and philanthropic enterprises” and to provide a meeting place large enough to accommodate gatherings of those supporting various Jewish agencies and institutions.

1899: “At Grenoble, a hostile crowd” followed “notorious Jew baiter Max Regis” as he made his way to the railway station following his acquittal “on the charge of inciting murder and incendiarism.”

1899: At Grenoble “a mob marched to the Officers’ Club cheering for Dreyfus” which touched off a riot.

1899: In Algiers, fifty anti-Semitic rioters were arrested when a mob marched on the Jewish quarter.

1900(20thof Iyar, 5660): Parshat Behar

1900: Lawrence Nadler, a recent arrival from Hungary was swindled for a second time in as many days which will probably hasten his return to his native land since he cannot locate the aunt with whom he was supposed to stay.

1901(1stof Sivan, 5661): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1901: Herzl sends a letter to the Sultan and asks for a final audience before his departure.

1901: Today, Bernard M. Maltz, the Lithuanian born son of “Abraham and Sarah Malz” gave birth to Bernard M. Maltz who in 1890 came to the United States where he worked as a salesman for “National Biscuit Company and Standard Oil” before going into real estate development and the construction in Brooklyn while also serving as a director with numerous organizations including the Federation of Jewish Charities in Brooklyn, the Pride of Judea and Yeshiva College married Lena Sherry.

1902: As violent attacks were taking place, Mrs. Caroline Schitzberg presided over a meeting of the Ladies’ Ant-Beef Trust Association which was attended by approximately six hundred men and women at the little Grand Street Hall.

1902: It was reported that 250 delegates from all across the United States had attended “the Qin-Quintal Convention of the Free Sons of Israel” in Atlantic City.

1903: Menachem Ussishkin arrives in Vienna to prepare for his visit to Palestine to make land purchases for the Geulah Committee and to organize the Yishuv.

1904(5thof Sivan, 5664): Erev Shavuot

1905 Birthdate of Vienna native Paul Phillip Gelles, who “came to the United States in 1920,” graduated from NYU after which he pursued a career in business that led him to serve as Chairman of the Board at “B.V.D.” a company best known for manufacturing men’s underwear and who was the husband “of the former Jeanne Peterzell with whom he had two children – Harry and Leda.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/09/25/89647267.pdf

1906: Birthdate of Gerd Bucerius, the German journalist and lawyer whose Jewish wife took refuge in the United Kingdom when the Nazis came to power.  He remained behind and defended numerous Jewish clients facing charges from the German authorities.

1906: In Providence, R.I., “Adolph and Sophie (Himowitz) Bask” gave birth to Harvard trained physician and WW II veteran Henry Jacob Bakst, the husband of Ruth Elene Miller and father of David Allan Bakst who rose from serving as an instructor of medicine at Boston University to dean of the School of Medicine at Boston Univeristy.

1907(6thof Sivan, 5667): Shavuot

1907: It was reported today that following allegations that the Jews of Odessa have formed a self-defense league and that other Jewish communities were following their example Count Konofonia wants to ask the Czar “authorize the Societies of True Russian Men to disarm these enemies of the autocracy.”

1908(18th of Iyar, 5668): Lag B'Omer

1908: Three days after had passed away, 57 year old Hyam Hart, the Australian born son of Ashe Hart and Rachel Joseph was buried today at the “Willesden Jewish Cemetery.”

1908: Birthdate of Sylvan N. Friedman, the native of Natchez, LA, the father of Sam Friedman and the nephew of Leon and J. Isaac Friedman who served in both the Louisiana State House of Representatives and the Louisiana State Senate

1909:  Birthdate of composer Shlomo Yoffe or Schlomo Joffe. Born in Warsaw he studied piano theory in Samara, Russia from 1918 until 1921 and, in 1924 in Warsaw joined the Zionist movement Hashomer Hatza'ir, playing the mandolin, tuba, baritone and clarinet in its folk orchestras. He graduated from the Teachers' Seminarium in Poznan (Poland) in 1928, and in 1930, following agricultural studies in Brno (Czechoslovakia), moved to Palestine, helping to establish a kibbutz in 1932. Only after 1940 did he begin to be involved with music again, at first teaching and arranging music at the kibbutz Beit Alpha. After a period of concentrated study (1947-53), with Prof. J. Tal and Prof. O. Partos at the New Jerusalem Academy of Music, and privately with A.A. Boskovich, he devoted himself to composition and teaching at the district conservatory for kibbutzim at Beth-She'an Valley, where he was director until 1973. In the 1950s, under Boskovitch's influence, he used elements of Near Eastern Jewish song, maqam, heterophony and a form of chromatic modality, often in the expression of biblical and Israeli dramas, for example in the cantata "Tales of Mount Gilboa" (953), but also in his Prokofiev-like neo-classical symphonic works. These features remained evident in later works, despite the influence of Schoenbrg in the compositions of the 1960s and the influences that followed a visit to Darmstadt in 1962 and meetings with Lutoslawski and Penderecki. His cantata "Rising Night after Night" (1978), for example, exhibits many contemporary aspects, including extended vocal techniques, clusters and a deformed folk melody, but despite these developments, Joffe always remained, through his teaching, association and biblical roots, a 'kibbutz composer'.

1909: Birthdate of Sir Nicholas George Winton, MBE a Briton who organized the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport. Winton found homes for them and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. The UK press has dubbed him the "British Schindler".

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007780

1910: The Sixth Biennial Session of the National Conference of Jewish Charities in the United States came to a close today in St. Louis, MO.

1911: The Turkish government instructs its Minister at Teheran to protest the Persian government attacks against lives and property of Ottoman Jews at Kermanshah.
1911: The King of Italy confers Knighthood of Order of Crown on Rabbi Abraham Elbgen, Chief Rabbi of Crete.

 1911: Jews of Constantinople take a prominent part in the celebrations of the anniversary of the Sultan's accession to the throne.
1911: Plans are made in Cairo to form a Federation of Synagogues.

1912: Alterations in the ritual used at the New West End Synagogue was “agreed to at a meeting of seatholders” today in London.

1913(12thof Iyar, 5673): Fifty-four year old Rabbi and Editor Isaac Suwalsky passed away today in London.

1913: Three days after she had passed away, 78 year old Phoebe (nee Neuberger) Duis, the husband of Levy Duis, was buried today in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”

1914 “Harry Rapf, an executive and film producer at MGM” and his wife gave birth to Dartmouth alum and second generation movie maker Maurice Rapf, “a founder of the Writers Guild of America”

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/arts/maurice-rapf-88-screenwriter-and-film-professor.html

1914:  Birthdate of Max Perutz, Austrian-born British molecular biologist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962.

1915(6thof Sivan, 5675): Shavuot observed for the first time during WW I.

1915: Birthdate of Irving Gertz, the native of Providence RI and graduate of the Providence College of Music who gained fame for creating the scores for dozens of horror and sci-fi films.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/movies/21gertz.html

1915: Twenty year old Boston native Henry Landers Bostick the University of Denver student and right-handed infielder played his last major league baseball game with the Philadelphia Athletics (now the Oakland A’s)

1915: “Petitions bearing 50,000 signatures have been obtained” in Buffalo, NY “in the effort to save Leo M. Frank from execution.”

1915: “Mas Meeting to Aid Frank” published today described for a meeting to be held by the League of Foreign Born Citizens that will “appeal for justice for Leo M. Frank” who has been “sentenced to die next month for the murder of Mary Phagan.”

1915: The text of a telegram to J.H. Slaton, the Governor of Georgia signed by several prominent leaders from Paterson, NJ, including Samuel Goldstein, Morris A. Goldstein, Arnold Levy, Nathan Levine, Herman Orbach, David Gordon, Harry Dunn, Benjamin Lowenthal, Solomon D. Stern and Isadore F. Rosenthal begging “to intercede with your Excellency to bestow clemency upon Leo Frank” was published today.

1915: While the State Prison Commission has not set a date for “the hearing of Leo M. Frank’s petition for a commutation of his sentence” today is the first possible date on which the Commission might take such action.

1916: Birthdate of Victor Lucas, the son of a London drapery shop owner who “was appointed inaugural President of the British Property Federation” in 1974 and “was one of the first Jews of Eastern European parentage” to play a major role in “the Anglo-Jewish communal leadership” was can be seen by election to the vice presidency of the Board of Deputies and the presidency of Anglo-Jewish Association.”

1917: The Central Committee of the Jewish Committee for the Care of the Fugitives for the Galilee was elected today.

1917: It was reported today that the Turks have driven the Jews away from the coast forcing them to leave behind their property which is unprotected from looters and to “suffer great destitution” as they tried to make their way to Jerusalem where conditions are not much better.

1917: “Further confirmation that the Turkish military authorities in Palestine” and the civilian Turkish population “are committing terrible atrocities against Jews in Palestine reached Washington today in official reports”

1917(27thof Iyar, 5677): Fifty year old Adolph J. Meyers, the brother of Mrs. Abe Adler and Mrs. H.M. Marks passed away today at North Chicago Hospital.

1917: “The Petrograd correspondent of the Jewish Daily Forward cabled” today that in Russia and Romania, “efforts were being made to provide equal rights for Jews.”

1918: Birthdate of Louis Sachwald, who was among the brave American soldiers who battled the Japanese during the dark days of WW II at Corregidor and survived a brutal imprisonment to become a successful business man in Maryland

1918: Benjamin Bernstein, the President of the Hebrew Association for the Blind and Leo Woolfson were among the speakers at “a patriotic meeting” sponsored by the association where attendees were urged to contribute to the $25,000 fund be raised to help care for blind Jewish soldiers returning from France who want to be employed even though they have lost their sight in service of their country.

1918: Birthdate of Abraham (Bram) Pais a Dutch-born American physicist and science historian.

1918: Bainbridge Colby, the United States Shipping Commissioner spoke tonight “at the joint memorial service of the Hebrew Union Veteran Association and the Hebrew Veterans of the Spanish War…at Temple Beth El” where he assured attendees that the navy is on the verge of mastering the threat of the German submarines and that at least “fifty ships of major size” would be commissioned in June.

1919: In Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk moves to Samsun from Istanbul with a few followers, to oppose the Ottoman government, which eventually leads to the Turkish War of Independence and the creation of the modern Turkish state. As part of his reform programs Ataturk made religious faith a matter of individual conscience. He created a truly secular system in Turkey, where the vast Moslem majority and the small Christian and Jewish minorities are free to practice their faith. As a result of Atatürk's reforms, Turkey -unlike scores of other countries- has fully secular institutions.

1919: The Sinai Choral Club is scheduled to provide the closing program this evening at the meeting of the Sinai Open Forum in Chicago.

1919: The twenty-sixth biennial council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations begins in Boston.

1919: Today, Russian born and Columbia and NYU trained biochemist William Marias Malisoff, married Sally Juster with she raised three children – Marias, Eda and Vera Malifsoff.

1920: Following Britain’s refusal to allow an American prospector to look for oil in Palestine, U.S. Ambassador Davis “pointed out that the American as not asking for any concession and suggested that the British authorities might well make a distinction between concession-hunters and individuals who were merely conducting investigations.”

1920: It was reported today that “seventy-five delegates and alternates to the All-Russian Zionist Congress, which met here late in April, have been arrested.”

1921: The Emergency Quota Act passes the U.S. Congress establishing national quotas on immigration. Because of the convoluted quota system established by this law, immigration from southern and eastern Europe effectively came to an end.  This had the effect of closing the American Door for the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia.  The strict enforcement of this law would also mean that European Jews would have no place to go when Hitler came to power.

1926(6th of Sivan, 5686): Shavuot

1926: “As part of the observance of the Shavuot holiday, appeals will be made today in Jewish temples and synagogues throughout the city on behalf of the United Jewish Campaign for $15,000,000 to aid the needy Jews of Eastern Europe.”

1928: In the Bronx, Romanian Jewish immigrants “Tina (née Michel), a homemaker, and Carl Schayes, a truck driver for Consolidated Laundries” gave birth to NBA great Adolph "Dolph" Schayes.

1929: “The Valiant” starring Paul Muni is his film debut and produced by William Fox was released today in the United States.

1930: The world executive of the Mizrachi (Orthodox Zionists) sent a telegram to Dr. Chaim Weizmann today calling for an immediate meeting of Zionist congress that would address the announcement by the British High Commissioner to suspend immigration to Palestine.  The appeal stated that “the new immigration ban reveals a new British government tendency to disregard the principles of the mandate.”  This “tendency endangers the Zionist work.”  Protests against the new British policy are already taking place in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the Emek Valley. The Jewish Agency and the Vaad Leumi are meeting in a joint session to deal with this issue.

1931(3rdof Sivan, 5691): Sixty-eight year old Russian born American newspaperwoman and socialist Mrs. Adella Kean Zametkin, the author of A Woman’s Handbook and the wife of Michael Zametkin, the first editor of The Jewish Daily Forward passed away today in NYC.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1931/05/20/96200629.pdf

1931: Birthdate of Jerome Kurtz, the native of Philadelphia who became a successful tax lawyer and Commissioner of the IRS.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jerome-kurtz-irs-commissioner-under-carter-dies-at-83/2015/03/05/4adf10fe-c282-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html?tid=hpModule_9d3add6c-8a79-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e&hpid=z11

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/business/jerome-kurtz-83-dies-headed-irs-in-carter-administration.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

1934: In Brooklyn Rabbi Isaac Landman is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “Two Sets of Commandments” at Congregation Beth Elohim.

1934: Rabbi I. Mortimer Bloom is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “The Reign of Law” at Temple Oheb Shalom.

1934: Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled, "Goebbels' Speech and the Madison Square Garden Meeting-What Do They Conceal?" at Congregation Rodeph Sholom

1934: Dr. Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “Who is Who-With Respect to Life's Values" at New York’s Temple Emanu-El.

1934(5th of Sivan, 5694): Erev Shavuot

1934: Rabbi Milton Steinberg is scheduled to lead Shavuot Services at Park Avenue Synagogue at 6 p.m. this evening.

1935: T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, died from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident. Lawrence is connected in the popular mind with his role in providing British support for the Arab Revolt during World War I.  But Lawrence was not one of those British Arabists who were, at best, disdainful of the Jewish people. As can be seen from the following, Lawrence welcomed the settlement of the Jewish community in Palestine. “In 1919 Lawrence drafted a letter for Emir Feisal for a meeting with Felix Frankfurter, a leader of American Zionists. In his letter Feisal wished “the Jews a hearty welcome home” and asserted “our two movements complete one another.” “There is room in Syria for both of us” he concluded. The letter was published in the New York Times on March 5, 1919. In “The Changing East,” Lawrence wrote of “the Jewish experiment” as a conscious effort, on the part of the least European people in Europe, to make head against the drift of the aces, and return once more to the Orient from which they came. The colonists will take back with them to the land which they occupied for some centuries before the Christian era samples of all the knowledge and technique of Europe. They propose to settle down amongst the existing Arab-speaking population of the country, a people of kindred origin, but far different social condition. They hope to adjust their mode of life to the climate of Palestine, and by the exercise of their skill and capital to make it as highly organised as a European state. The success of their scheme will involve inevitably the raising of the present Arab population to their own material level, only a little after themselves in point of time, and the consequences might be of the highest importance for the future of the Arab world. It might well prove a source of technical supply rendering them independent of industrial Europe, and in that case the new confederation might become a formidable element of world power. However, such a contingency will not be for the first or even for the second generation, but it must be borne in mind in any laying out of foundations of empire in Western Asia 1936(27th of Iyar, 5696): “A 43 year old Jew named, Feivil Schnitzer, was shot and killed early this morning by an Arab in the Armenian quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was the twenty- sixth murder of a Jew by Arabs since the present disturbances began, and in every case the assassins are still at large.”

1936: “Love in Exile” produced by Max Schach, with a script co-authored by Herman J. Mankiewicz and music by Benjamin Frankel was released today in the United Kingdom.

1936: Carl J. Austrian, chairman of the Greater New York campaign of the Joint Distribution Committee is scheduled to act as the toastmaster for the this evening’s testimonial dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria honoring merchant Edwin Goodman, the President of Bergdorf-Goodman who is also chairman of the dress industry division of the Joint’s fundraising campaign.

1936: It was reported today that the “publication of the periodical Judenkenner (Observe of Jews) the organ of the Anti-Jewish World Alliance has been discontinued until after the Olympic Games” but that it is understood that publication will resume “after the Olympic Games are over and competitors and visitors have gone home.”

1936: “Tel Aviv celebrated the inauguration of its new port today.  Tens of thousands gathered around a provisional jetty to watch the arrival and unloading of two steamers with cargoes of cement.” Tel Aviv’s aged and ailing Mayor, Meir Dizengoff, left his sick bed to watch the Jewish porters unloading bags of cement. “Now that my eyes have sevenths, I am ready to die.”

1936: Today “The Stuermer, Julius Steicher’s anti-Semitic weekly published a list of thirty two Jews who had been arrested or punished on charge of ‘race defilement’ under the Nuremberg racial laws” including one who had committed suicide after arrest” and nineteen who had been “sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to two years.”

1937: Premiere of “Room Service” a play featuring Sam Levene as “Gordon Miller” which was “the basis of the Marx Brothers film of the same title.”

1937(9th of Sivan, 5697): Eighty-three year old Emilie Badt, the daughter of Fanny and Rabbi Wolf Landau passed away today in her home town of Dresden, Germany

1937(9th of Sivan, 5697): Eighty two year old Samuel Sale who had served as the Rabbi for Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis from 1887 to 1919 passed away today.

1938: Simon W. Gerson, an aide to Manhattan Borough President Stanley M. Isaacs spent three hours testifying before the Joint Legislative Committee on Law Administration and Enforcement chaired by state senator John J. McNaboe.  The committee spent very little time questioning Gerson about the alteration of his name on Municipal Court records in the a rent case which was supposed to be the focus of the hearing and a lot of time questioning Gerson about his political views.  Gerson, who was Jewish, was a self-described Communist who, along with his wife, has been very critical of the American political and economic system. His boss, Borough President Isaacs was also Jewish but he was a leading member of the Republican Party. 

1939(1st of Sivan, 5699): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1939(1st of Sivan 5699): Fifty-three year old Karl Radek, the Lemberg born Communist who “was sentenced to years of penal labor” after being convicted in a show trial during Stalin’s great purge reportedly was killed today by a fellow inmate/

http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSradek.htm

1939: Services marking the installation of Norman Gerstenfeld as the Rabbi of Washington Hebrew Congregation were held today in the District of Columbia.

1939: In defiance of the White Paper, 309 “illegal Jewish immigrants” landed on the “shores of Southern Palestine.”  Before they were discovered by British troops, the group, including 74 women and 14 children were attacked by an armed mob of Arab villagers.

1940: Today is the last day on which Hans Rey would paint his illustrations on French soil.

1941: In New York, “noted playwrights and screenwriters Henry and Phoebe (née Wolkind) Ephrom” gave birth award winning novelist, screenwriter and director Nora Ephron whose second marriage to award winning journalist Carl Bernstein provided the fodder for the novel and movie Heartburn.

https://www.biography.com/writer/nora-ephron

1941: The Palmach ("peluggot mahaz" - "assault companies") commando units were established by Yitzhak Sade as a defense from any Axis (Germany and Italy) attack on Eretz Israel. Later they assisted in planning and executing the dropping of Parachutists in occupied Europe. At its peak (November 1947) it had approximately 5000 members which were mainly responsible for capturing Safed and Tiberias as well helping to open the road to Jerusalem.

1942: In the Bronx, “homemaker Dorothy (Serating) Shopsin” and “Kenneth Henry Shopsin, the owner of a paper manufacturing company” gave birth to Kenneth Henry Shopsin, who with is wife created the restaurant Shopsin’s General Store.  (AS reported by Neil Genzlinger)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/obituaries/kenny-shopsin-dead.html

1943: Liberal Judaism, a new illustrated monthly journal of opinion and letters, has been issued by The Union of Hebrew Congregations, it was announced today. The cover of the first, or May, issue, published last Saturday, is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, founder of Reform Judaism in the United States.

1943: Berlin was declared "Judenrein", Jew Free.

1943: In the House of Commons, the courageous Eleanor Rathbone attacked the British government for the defeatist attitudes expressed at the Bermuda Conference and noted that the Allies are responsible for the deaths of any Jews if they refuse to help.

1943: Ben Hecht’s “We Will Never Die” was performed at the Chicago Stadium, with guest stars John Garfield and Burgess Meredith in the lead roles. An estimated 20,000 people attended as the stadium, “scene of many a hectic convention and gaudy circus, was turned into a house of worship,” as the Chicago Daily Newsput it.[Jewish Virtual Library]

1944(26th of Iyar, 5704): Jews deported from Paris to Kovno, Lithuania, are machine-gunned by guards in a fenced enclosure after some of the prisoners attack SS troops.

1944: George Henry Lane, a Hungarian born English Jew serving with the British commandos was captured on a pre-D-Day raid on the French coast but was able to avoid being executed under Hitler’s Commando Order by hiding his Jewish origins and fooling no less an authority than Field Marshall Rommel that he was Welsh which led to his being imprisoned instead of executed.

1944: The Germans transported Hungarian Jew Joel Brand to Turkey so he could deliver a proposal from Adolf Eichmann that would have required the Western Allies to exchange 10,000 trucks for one million Eastern European Jews. Eichmann called it "blood for trucks." Arrested by the British, Brand was sent to Lord Moyne (resident minister of state in the Middle East), who comments: "What shall I do with those million Jews?"

1944:Mel Mermelstein the man who would defeat the Institute for Historical Review in an American court and had the occurrence of gassings in Auschwitz during the Holocaust declared a legally incontestable fact was deported to Auschwitz along with the rest of the Jewish community of Munkacs, which was part of Czechoslovakia at that time.

1945(7thof Sivan, 5705): For the first time since VE Day, Yizkor is recited on the 2ndday of Shavuot.

1945: It was reported today that French government has forbidden Jews in Algeria to hold “a meeting to discuss the future of Palestine” which was to be addressed by David Ben Gurion because such a meeting “might lead to a clash with the Algerian Arabs”

1946: Seventy-six year old Pulitzer Prize winning author Boot Tarkington, whom some would say engaged socially acceptable genteel anti-Semitism, passed away today.

http://dramatic-insights.org/tarkington/index.php/2012/tarkington-antisemite/

1947: Italy which had been on both sides during the war and at one time emulated the race laws of their German ally, applied for membership in the United Nations today.

1948: Israeli forces abandoned Bet ha-Aravah and the potash works on the northern end of the Dead Sea.

1948: The provisional government of Israel declared a state of emergency.

1948: As the undermanned and outgunned Israeli units sought to keep the Syrians and Iraqis from taking the Jordan Valley, a second raid, by a Yiftach company, crossed the Jordan and struck the Syrian camp at the Customs House, near the main Bnot Yaakov Bridge After a short battle, the Syrian defenders (one or two companies) fled. The Palmachniks destroyed the camp and several vehicles, including two armored cars, without losses.”

1948: In Jerusalem, “the Arabs recaptured the Sheikh Jarrah area”

1948: The Iraqis, who were about to drive west through Nablus toward Tulkarm, “asked the Syrians to make a diversion in the Degania area to protect their right flank. The Syrians complied, their main objective being to seize the bridge across the river north of Degania Alef, thus blocking any Israeli attack from Tiberias against the Iraqi line of communications.”

1948: During the War for Independence two civilian leaders from Kibbutz Deganya arrived at Ben Gurion’s offices begging for help in fighting off the attacking Syrian armored column.  Ben Gurion responded candidly “We don’t have enough artillery, enough airplanes. Every front needs reinforcements.  The situation is extremely grave in the Negev, in the Jerusalem area and in the Upper Galilee.”  And if anything, Ben Gurion was understating the desperate situation.  So far the only help he had to send to Deganya was Moshe Dayan who had little more than his eye-patch with which to face the Syrians, Iraqis and Jordanians.  Ben Gurion sent the two leaders to Yigal Yadin, his Chief of Staff.  Yadin listens to the report and then advises them to let the Syrian tanks breach the kibbutz so that the defenders can disable them with Molotov cocktails.  Their angry response shocks Yadin into action.  If Daganya is lost the North is lost.  With the Egyptians advancing from the Negev and the Arab Legion besieging Jerusalem, Yadin’s position seems more like Custer than King David.  Yadin meets with Ben Gurion. In a table-pounding dispute, Yadin attempts to convince the Old Man to send four 65 millimeter artillery pieces that had been intended for Jerusalem north to Deganya.  This is the sum total of the Israeli artillery reserve and the weapons lack sights (you know, the things you aim the gun with).  Ben Gurion agrees to send two of the canon North with Dayan under the condition that they be returned promptly to help with the fighting around Jerusalem. 

1948: The provisional government council of Israel proclaimed a state of emergency.

1948: The Scotsman quoted a report by Thomas Wasson Consul General for the United States in Jerusalem “saying the British Consul had a “narrow escape” when the Consulate came under gunfire.”

1948: "A tiny force of the Palmach took Mount Zion and broke through to the Jewish Quarter." The unit was forced to withdraw several hours later when reinforcements could not come to their aid.

1949: “Dr. Maurice N. Eisendrath, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, called on American Jews tonight for greater support of the organization's religious and cultural institutions.”

1950(3rdof Sivan, 5710): Eighty year old “German-born rabbi, Jewish theologian, and philosopher of religion” Julius Guttman, the son of Rabbi Jakob Guttman who was serving Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Hebrew University passed away today.

1950(3rd of Sivan, 5710):  The Aliyah of Iraqi Jews began. The first deportation of Eretz Yisrael Jews to Babylonia took place in 597 B.C.E. The bulk of Eretz Yisrael Jewry followed them to Babylonia 11 years later, in 568 B.C.E. The first return of some Babylonian Jews to Eretz Yisrael took place in 539 B.C.E. The majority, however, remained in Babylonia, where they were destined eventually to make a major contribution to Judaism through the creation of the “Babylonian Talmud” and the “Geonic Responsa.” It was not until 1951, 2,548 years after the arrival of the first Jewish deportees in Babylonia, that this ancient Jewish community began its own liquidation through an Aliyah to Israel.

1951(13th of Iyar, 5711): David Remez passed away.  Born David Drabkin in Russia in May of 1886, he made Aliyah in 191.  Trained as a lawyer and teacher, he worked as field hand on several agricultural settlements. A founding member of Mapai and a leader of Histadrut, he was a true founding father as one of the signatories to Israel’s Declaration of Independence.  He was the first Minister of Transportation and was serving as Minister of Education at the time of his death.

http://archive.jta.org/article/1951/05/21/3028270/israel-mourns-death-of-david-remez-tens-of-thousands-participate-in-funeral

1951: Menachem Cohen became an MK replacing the deceased David Remez.

1952: Moshe Keren, Israel’s Charge d’affairs in London is scheduled to be one of the Israeli and Jewish observers attending “the conference on Germany’s pre-war external debts which opens today in London

1952: In South Africa, “the Minister of Justice, served two notices on Emil Solomon Sachs in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950. The first was an order to resign as an official of the GWU within 30 days. It also prohibited him from participating in the activities of various organizations. The second restricted his movements to the Transvaal and prohibited him from attending any meetings other than religious, recreational and social gatherings.”

1953(5th of Sivan, 5713): Erev Shavuot

1953:A call went to 3,750 Jewish communities throughout the country, to assure the successful financing this summer of the most important agricultural development program to be launched in Israel since the establishment of the state, was issued here today by the United Jewish Appeal on the eve of Shavuos, the Festival of Pentecost, which in the ancient days celebrated the appearance of the first fruits of summer. The appeal was made by Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, a national chairman of the UJA.

1954: Nicholas Winton, a Briton who organized the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War relinquished his commission of “flying officer” in the RAF while retaining the rank of “flight lieutenant.”

1956: “The Killing,” a crime film directed by Stanley Kubrick who also wrote the screenplay and featuring Jay Adler, the son of Jacob and Sarah Adler, was released today in the United States.

1957(18th of Iyar, 5717): Lag B’Omer

1957: Colonel Robert Henriques, the author of 100 Hours to Suez which described and analyzed Israel’s victory in the recent Sinai Campaign is scheduled to the principal speaker at the Israel bond dinner today.

1959: As reported in today’s New York Times, Richard Tucker was among those who appeared at the “Puccini Night” open air concert at Lewisohn Stadium in New York City. The stadium was named in honor of Adolph Lewisohn, the German-Jewish banker who donated the money to pay for its construction.

1962: Birthdate of French journalist and musician Ariel Wizman the Sephardic Jew from Casablanca, Morocco.

1962: In Minneapolis, MN, Jack and Bette Kozlen gave birth to Amy Kozlen who became Amy Barnum when she married her college sweetheart Joel Barnum with whom she settled in Cedar Rapids, where they raised three wonderful children – Emma, Sasha and Gail – and she became a pillar of the Jewish community which she infused with her own unique brand of kindness, warmth and joy.

1964: In Manhattan, “Beverly and Peter Panken” gave birth to Aaron David Panken, a graduate “from Johns Hopkins University electrical engineering program” who became “Rabbi Aaron D. Panken, the president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/obituaries/rabbi-aaron-panken.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

1966: It was reported today that 75 year old Lazarus Joseph who served as New York City Comptroller from 1946 to 1953 had fallen ill.

1966: The emblem for the Israeli town of Arad, a square with a hill and a flame, was adopted today.

1969: Palestinian terrorists from Jordan bombard the Musa Alami School near Jericho.

1970: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for seventy-five-year-old psychoanalyst and author, Dr. Hein Hartmann, the Vienna born historian and diplomat Ludo M Hartman and husband psychoanalyst Dr. Dora Karplus with whom he raised to sown, Dr. Ernst Hartmann and Dr. Lawrence Hartmann both of whom work in the field of psychiatry.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/05/18/80024671.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1972(6thof Sivan, 5732): Shavuot

1972: The Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York scheduled final exams today.  It was the only college in the system to do so.  (The exams would be moved to May 30 after a major protest led by Hillel, the ADL and other major Jewish organizations.)

1974(27th of Iyar, 5734): Sandy Sasso was ordained as the first female Reconstructionist rabbi by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia

https://jwa.org/thisweek/may/19/1974/sandy-sasso

1975: The New Yorker published “The New York Review of Gossip” by Marshall Brickman.

1976(19thof Iyar, 5736): Eighty-eight year old Jeanette Wolf, “one of the best-known German Jewish women in post-war Germany” passed away today.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/wolff-jeanette

1977: Bella Abzug received 5 out of 231 votes for Mayor at the convention of the Liberal Party held today.

1977: A bi-national foundation, designed to promote joint industrial research and development between the United States and Israel was established in Washington today at a formal ceremony between Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs C. Fred Bergsten and Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz. (JTA)

1978: Leonard B. Sand began serving as Judge of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York

1987: “Thank God It’s Friday,” a musical comedy co-produced by Rob Cohen, co-starring Jeff Goldblum and Debra Winger and featuring Valerie Landsburg was released in the United States today.

1980: Today Time magazine reported  that “Died: Arthur Levitt, 79, New York State comptroller from 1955 to 1978, whose nonpartisan dedication, thrift with public funds and relentless criticism of fiscal chicanery endeared him to voters, who returned him to office five times with huge majorities; in New York City. A Brooklyn lawyer and nominal Democrat, Levitt served under four Governors, tightening the state's auditing procedures, including "performance audits" of state agencies, and eventually giving his office prestige and power virtually beyond politics.”

1981: Former Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz joins Moshe Dayan's Telem party.

1983(7thof Sivan, 5743): Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor

1983: “President Reagan said today that he would notify Congress ''in a day or two'' that he wants to go ahead with the sale to Israel of 75 F-16 fighter jets that he held up after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon last June.”

1985(28thof Iyar, 5745): Yom Yerushalayim

1985: Two famous Jewish men of letters are joined together in Harold Bloom’s review of Zuckerman Bound by Philip Roth

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/19/books/his-long-ordeal-by-laughter.html?pagewanted=all

1987: The Royal Shakespeare Company staged a production of “Kiss Me, Kate” with a book by Samuel and Bella Spewack at London's Old Vic Theatre, which opened today.

1988: Shimon Peres is scheduled to address commencement ceremonies at the Jewish Theological Seminary this afternoon.

1989(14thof Iyar, 5749): Pesach Sheni

1989(14th of Iyar, 5749): Dr. Abel J Herzberg passed away.  Dr. Abel J. Herzberg was a lawyer in Amsterdam when he was arrested in 1943, along with his wife, and taken to the Dutch transit camp at Westerbork. He was sent to Bergen-Belsen in January 1944 and, as a Zionist, he was put on the list of 1300 Jews who were available to be sent to Palestine in exchange for German citizens held as prisoners by the Allies. He was on the list of 272 Jews who were selected in April 1944 to go to Palestine, but at the last minute 50 names were crossed off the list and Dr. Herzberg had to go back into the Star Camp with the other Dutch Jews. Dr. Herzberg survived and after the war, he went back to being a lawyer in Amsterdam. He published the diary that he kept in Bergen-Belsen.  It appeared in English under the title, “Between Two Streams: A Diary From Bergen-Belsen.”

1989: Morton Isaac Abramowitz completed his term as Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research which left him free to accept appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey.

1989: After having first been seen at the Toronto Film Festival, “The Miracle Mile” featuring Alan Rosenburg was released today in the United States.

1991(6thof Sivan, 5751): First Day of Shavuot

1992: Broadcast of the second and final installment the miniseries “Cruel Doubt” co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow

1993: “Fiorile” an Italian drama co-starring Michael Vartan that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival was released in several European countries today

1993(28thof Iyar, 5763): Yom Yerushalayim

1994: NBC broadcast the final episode of season five of “Seinfeld.”

1996(1st of Sivan, 5756): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1996: Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda, “the first American sailor to have risen through the enlisted ranks to become the Chief of Naval Operations, the highest-ranking billet in the U.S. Navy” “was interred at Arlington National Cemetery” today “with a tombstone marked with the Star of David.”

1997: David Blaine's first television special, David Blaine: Street Magic aired on NBC

1999: Conductor Yakov Kreizberg made his debut appearance with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

1999: Members of the of the Chicago Jewish Historical Society are scheduled to attend a “Special Tribute commemorating the 10th anniversary of the passing of Dina Haplern and honoring Danny Newman for his contribution to Yiddish culture today at the Harold Washington Library Centrer.

1999: U.S. premiere of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace starring Natalie Portman as Queen Padmé Amidala and Frank Oz as the voices of “Yoda.”

2000: “One Day in September,” a documentary that examined the murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics was released today in the UK

2000: “Shanghai Noon” the first in series of buddy films produced by Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Jonathan Glickman and with music by Randy Edelman was released today in Malaysia.

2001(26thof Iyar 5761): Parashat Behar-Bechukotai

2001(26thof Iyar, 5761): It was reported that “a Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 5 Israelis and wounded more than 100” and Israeli army officer was killed on a West Bank Road, which led to Israeli retaliating by sending aircraft to attack “the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the first time since the 1967 war.

2002: In The Observer Michael Sfard the lawyer representing Israeli conscripts who refuse to serve beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines explains why a growing number of soldiers are disobeying orders, in order to protect the basic values on which Israel was founded.

2002(8thof Sivan, 5762): Yosef Haviv, 70, Victor Tatrinov, 63, and Arkady Vieselman, 40, all of Netanya, were killed and 59 people were injured - 10 seriously - when a suicide bomber, disguised as a soldier, blew himself up in the market in Netanya. Both Hamas and the PFLP took responsibility for the attack. “Viselman, a chef at the Park Hotel had survived the Passover bombing” that had taken place in March.

2003: Forensic experts said today that the second terrorist who had participated in the bombing of Mike’s Place had met death by drowning. Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades who had claimed joint responsibility for the murderous attack identified the terrorist and his compatriot as being Muslims from Great Britain.

2003(17th of Iyar, 5763): Avi Zerihan, 36, of Beit Shean, Hassan Ismail Tawatha, 41, of Jisr a-Zarqa[2]

Kiryl Shremko, 22, of Afula were murdered today and seventy others were injured by a Palestinian suicide bomber at a mall in Afula – an act of terror for which at least two Arab organizations took credit.

2003: A Palestinian suicide bomber riding a bike failed to blow up a jeep near Kfar Darom when he detonated his explosives.

2003: Broadcast of the final episode of season five of The King of Queens” co-starring Jerry Stillar

2004(28th of Iyar, 5764): Yom Yerushalyim

2004: In response to a request from the online science magazine “Seed,” psychologist Steven Pinker “engaged in a four dialogue with novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.”

 2004(28th of Iyar, 5764): Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Day - is the anniversary of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem under Jewish sovereignty that occurred during the Six Day War. Yom Yerushalayim is celebrated on the 28th of the month of Iyar (one week before Shavuot). In 2004 Iyar 28 corresponds to May 19 on the secular calendar.

2004: Broadcast of the final episode of season 6 of The King of Queens co-starring Jerry Stillar.

2005(10th of Iyar, 5765): Steven Budeysky, a member of the U.S. Army’s 105th Military Intelligence Battalion was killed today while serving in Iraq.  “Budeysky was born in Moldova in the former Soviet Union and went on to learn English as part of a singing group that toured Europe. When Budeysky was 12 years old, he and his family immigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago, where he attended Ida Crown Jewish Academy. He was also known as Baruch or Boris to his friends. A 2001 graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in economics and history, Budeysky was pursuing a graduate degree in political science from Troy University when he enlisted in the Army in 2002.”

2005: “Free Zone,” a film about relations between Arabs and Jews directed by Amos Gitai and co-starring Natalie Portman “made its debut today at the 200t Cannes Film Festival.”

2005: North American premiere of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith starring Natalie Portman as Padmé Amidala and Frank Oz as the voice of Yoda.

2006: The Jewish Chronicle revealed that the Claims Conference highest-paid official, executive vice-president Gideon Taylor was awarded $437,811 (£240,000) in salary and pension (2004 numbers).  An advisor to British survivors in compensation claims in the 1990s, Dr Pinto-Duschinsky, commented: "It is wrong for the executive vice-president to earn annually the same as the compensation for several hundred former slave laborers. The moral authority of the leading Jewish organizations is gravely weakened by excessively high salaries for top officials."

2006: In “Long, long ago, when basketball was kosher” published today Haaretz reported on a gathering of about 125 Yeshiva University (YU) alumni and friends at the school's Jerusalem campus  for a nostalgic evening with "The YU Dream Team of the 1950s" - six former basketball players from New York City who later immigrated to Israel.

2006: Two days after being shown at Cannes, The Davinci Code with a script by Akiva Goldsman was released today in the United States.

2006(21st of Iyar, 5766): Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, the last founding giant of Israel’s left wing, died two months short of his 100th birthday. A controversial figure on the Israeli political scene, he was one of the first to call for the return of all territories occupied by Israel in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and reached the peak of his career as secretary-general of the Histadrut, Israel’s trade union federation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PikiWiki_Israel_6052_Members_of_the_kibutz_as_British_Soldiers_.JPG

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/world/middleeast/19aharon.html?_r=0

2007: After a two-month tryout at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, a London revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” opened today at the Savoy Theatre starring Henry Goodman as Tevye, Beverley Klein as Golde, Alexandra Silber as Hodel, Damian Humbley as Perchik and Victor McGuire as Lazar Wolf. The production was directed by Lindsay Posner. Robbins' choreography was recreated by Sammy Dallas Bayes (who did the same for the 1990 Broadway revival), with additional choreography by Kate Flatt.

2007: After 13 performances at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Felicja Blumental International Music Festival came to a close.

2008: At the Israel Museum opening of an exhibition entitled “Swords into Plowshares the Isaiah Scroll and Its Message of Peace.” On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, the Israel Museum presents the longest, best preserved, and most complete Dead Sea Scroll document ever found, in a special installation in the Shrine of the Book. Never before shown in an extended public display, this 2.60 meter-long section of the Isaiah Scroll comprises the first twenty-eight chapters of the Book of Isaiah, including Isaiah’s celebrated message of peace: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares…" (Is. 2:4).

2008: At the Stephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephan Wise Free SynagogueStephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, an evening of Israeli music entitled “The Sharett Sisters in Concert.”

2008 (5768): Pesach Sheini

2008: Today “it was reported that Haim Saban had "offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization's two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for president.”

2008: Laura Weisberger’s 3rd novel, Chasing Harry Winston, was released today in the United Kingdom.

2009: Time magazine reports on the recent passing of “Jewish boxer Salamo Arouch” at the age of 86.  Arouch survived the Holocaust by winning boxing matches staged by the guards at Auschwitz.  “He was the subject of the film ‘Triumph of the Spirit’ starring Willem Dafoe.”

2009: At Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., children's author Amy Krouse Rosenthal reads from and discusses her new picture book, “Duck! Rabbit!”

2009:Rivka Galchen discusses her debut novel, “Atmospheric Disturbances,” in conversation with Ron Charles, Book World's deputy editor, as part of the Nextbook series at the D.C. Jewish Community Center.

2009:Today the Edinburgh International Film Festival returned a 300-pound grant from the Israeli embassy, after bowing to pressure from director Ken Loach. The grant was intended to enable Tel Aviv University graduate Tali Shalom Ezer to travel to Scotland for a screening of her film, Surrogate. Ezer's film is a romance set in a sex-therapy clinic and makes no reference to war or politics. It recently won the award for best film at an international women's film festival in Israel

2009:This evening, Israel Air Force (IAF) jets attacked targets throughout Gaza after a woman was lightly injured from a rocket explosion in Sderot. During the attack, the IAF succeeded in hitting two weapons factories and four smuggling tunnels, used by Hamas terrorists to restock their supply of armaments.

2009(15th of Iyar, 5769): Shlomo Shamir whose life reads like something out a James Bond novel, passed away. Born Shlomo Rabinowitch in Russia in 1915, he made aliyah ten years later.  He was an active member of the Haganah from 1929 until 1940 when he joined the RAF and rose to the rank of major before his discharge in 1946. During the War of Independence, he played a key role in the fighting around Latrun and the creation of the Burma Road. After the war, he served as the 3rd commander of the Israeli Navy and the 3rd commander of the Israeli Air Force. After leaving the military he graduated from Tel Aviv University and Harvard.  He was an entrepreneur who developed several successful businesses.

2009(15th of Iyar, 5769): Ninety-two year old Noble Prize winning bio-chemist Robert Francis Furchgott passed away today.

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1998/furchgott-bio.html

2009: Ninety year old Sheikh Jabr Muadi, a Druze Israeli politician who served in the Knesset from 1951 to 1981 passed away today.

2010(6th of Sivan, 5770): First day of Shavuot

2010: Tulane alum Martin Leach-Cross Feldman assumed the position of Judige of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

2010(6th of Sivan, 5770):At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA, Melanie Abzug, Miriam Maikon and Sam Sarasin are scheduled to Confirmed during Evening Shavuot Services.

2010(6th of Sivan, 5770): Martin Cohan, 77, who co-created the ABC sitcom "Who's the Boss?" and was a prolific TV writer and producer, died today at his home in Pacific Palisades after a two-year battle with large-cell lymphoma, his family announced. Cohan and his business partner, Blake Hunter, created the sitcom starring Tony Danza and Judith Light, which ran from 1984 to 1992. The two men also served as creative consultants for a British version of the TV show called "The Upper Hand," which debuted in 1990 and ran for seven seasons. Besides his work as executive producer and writer for "Boss," Cohan wrote hundreds of scripts for such popular TV series as "The Bob Newhart Show,""Diff'rent Strokes,"" Mary Tyler Moore" and "Silver Spoons." Born July 4, 1932, in San Francisco, Cohan graduated from Stanford University in 1955 after studying theater arts. He found work as a stage manager and assistant director at ABC Television, his family said. He got his break on "Mary Tyler Moore" as an assistant director in 1971 and won a Writers Guild of America award in 1972 for best comedy episode. He went on to write, direct and produce for "The Bob Newhart Show."

2010: The Washington Postreviewed Jules Feiffer's account of his multifaceted career which will delight that generation of readers for whom his whimsical, sardonic and often politically barbed Village Voice cartoons were a cultural touchstone. Those whose understanding of Feiffer's achievements is not enhanced by the warm glow of nostalgia, however, may have less patience with this shambling, highly episodic book. “Backing Into Forward” starts with the author's account of growing up urban and Jewish, complete with a domineering mother and raging adolescent hormones. This back story has the ill fortune of sounding remarkably similar to that of Feiffer's friend Philip Roth: not a face-off that Feiffer -- or anyone else -- is likely to win. Feiffer is an energetic storyteller, but structurally the book is so haphazard that it's often hard to keep track of where we are in the arc of the artist's career. Feiffer wins points, though, for the acuity of his insights on the craft of cartooning. He's also remarkably modest. He repeatedly speaks of encounters with Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, George Plimpton and many others with a fan's sense of awe and good fortune

2010: “The Frozen Rabbi” by Steve Stern is among the books briefly reviewed in today’s “Newly Released” Column.

2011: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington is scheduled to honor Dennis Berman, The Kramer Family and Esther B. Newman at tonight’s annual fundraising dinner in Potomac, MD.

2011: Ed Goldberg and the Odessa Klezmer Band are scheduled to perform at the Marlboro branch of the Monmouth County (NJ) Library.

2011: The Second Annual Atlanta Jewish Music Festival is scheduled to take place at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, GA.

2011: “A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, 1910-65” a “colorful new exhibition that celebrates the many Jewish composers of the American Songbook and their great contribution to American popular culture including Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein is scheduled to open  today at The Bainbridge Library in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

2011: The Center for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute are scheduled to present “Follow the Fugue” a concert featuring the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble.

2011: Prosecutors announced today that a grand jury had indicted Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges related to the alleged sexual assault of a hotel housekeeper at the Sofitel New York.

2011: A judge granted Dominique Strauss-Kahn bail today, allowing the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund to be freed from Rikers Island to stay in a Manhattan apartment while his sexual assault case is pending.

2011: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today Israel would object to any withdrawal to "indefensible" borders, adding he expected Washington to allow it to keep major settlement blocs in any peace deal.

2011: Lars von Trier was expelled from the Cannes Film Festival today, a day after joking at a news conference that he was a Nazi and expressing sympathy for Hitler. The Danish director’s film “Melancholia” is in competition at the festival and seen as a contender for the top prize.  (As reported by Melena Ryzik)

2011: Swiss producer Arthur Cohn, a six-time Oscar winner, was honored for his body of work by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Cohn’s grandfather the chief rabbi of Basel. He invited Theodor Herzl to hold the first Zionist Congress there after rabbis elsewhere objected.

2012: Mendy Cahan is scheduled to at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City.

2012: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Ada Reyim is scheduled to present “A Night of Magic and More.”

2012: As part of the Ahavat Yisrael Weekend, Moshav is scheduled to perform at Adas Israel in Washington, DC.

2012: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the family and many friends of Amy Barnum have a chance to celebrate her birthday.  An ayshish chayil she has raised three marvelous daughters, provided leadership for Temple Judah and Hadassah and is the glue for the annual traditional High Holiday services. “Her children (and everybody else) call her blessed.”

2012: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status to "married" today.

2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker and the recently released paperback edition of The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz

2013: The Alexandria Kleztet is scheduled to perform for the Jewish Community Association at Riderwood Village in Silver Spring, MD.

2013: David Senesh, the nephew Hannah Senesh is scheduled to Dr. Louis D. Levine in a talk about the brave young Jewish poet and paratrooper and whose life and work are being honored at the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie with an exhibition “Fire In My Heart.”

http://www.mjhnyc.org/hannah/poetry.html

2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a walking tour of Downtown Jewish Washington which will give participants a chance to experience the neighborhood along Seventh Street, NW as it was from 1850 to 1950.

2013: In Little Rock, AR, the friends and family of Rabbi PInchus and Estie Ciment are scheduled to gather to celebrate the Bat Mitzvah of their daughter Zissie.  The Ciments are the quintessential “lamplighters” who have brought the light of Chabad Lubavtich to the Arkansas Jewish Community.

2013: Israel will go ahead with its candidacy for an unprecedented seat on the UN Security Council in 2019 despite Germany’s determination to run against it, diplomatic officials told The Jerusalem Post today

2013: Iran’s state radio says authorities have executed two men convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad and the American CIA spy agency. Today’s report says Mohammad Heidari, who was accused of providing Mossad with classified information in return of money, and Kourosh Ahmadi, who allegedly gave the CIA intelligence on Iran, were hanged.

2013: “With Wheelchair and Lively Baton, Levine Commands Carnegie Hall” published today described the return of the famous conductor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/arts/music/james-levine-returns-to-the-podium-at-carnegie-hall.html?hp

2013: Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, “The Effie Wise Ochs Professor of Biblical Literature and History at the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles” “was ordained as a rabbi by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion” toda.

2013: Damascus has put a number of advanced weapons on standby to strike Israel, should Jerusalem hit targets inside Syria again, the UK’s Sunday Times reported. According to the report, satellite images show Syria has readied its stock of Tishreen missiles for use against Tel Aviv

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to “host a special preview screening of Watchers of the Sky, the Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary that uncovers the forgotten life of Raphael Lemkin who coined the term “genocide” and campaigned for international laws that would prevent and punish this crime against humanity.”

2014: On the second day of the Jerusalem International Writers Festival Ayelet Waldman and Lihi Lapid are scheduled to participant in discussion entitled “Bad Mother-Good Mother.” (As reported by David B. Green)

2014: On Nicholas Winton's 105th birthday, it was announced he was to receive the Czech Republic’s highest honour, for giving Czech children "the greatest possible gift: the chance to live and to be free

2014: “In Honor of Jewish American History Month,” Marvin Kalb is scheduled to moderate a panel discussion with Martin Goldsmith and Dr. Diane Afoumado “Voyage of the St. Louis” marking the 75th anniversary of “of the sailing of the SS St. Louis, ‘the saddest ship afloat.’”

2014: A survey released today by the Paris based Siona organization of Sephardic French Jews showed that 75% of the participants are considering making Aliyah. (As reported by JTA and Times of Israel.)

2014: “Warning that the army was operating under unprecedented financial constraints, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said today that he had cancelled reserve training for the rest of the year because of cuts to the defense budget.” (As reported by Times of Israel)

2014: At the Library of Congress, Sanford Sternlicht, Emeritus English Professor at Syracuse University, is scheduled to discuss his book, The Tenement Saga: The Lower East Side and Early Jewish-American Writers.

2014: A poll of 3,833 French Jews reveals 74 percent have considered emigrating. (Tablet)

2015: Dr. Richard Elliott Friedman, Davis Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Georgia, and Rabbi David S. Sperling, Professor of Bible, Hebrew Union College are schedule to discuss “Exodus: What Really Happened” at the Skirball Center.

2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Sara Levy’s World” Music, Gender and Judaism in Enlightenment Berlin.”

http://cjh.org/event/2619

2015: At Beth Shalom in Columbia, MD, Rabbi Susan Grossman is scheduled to discuss Heroines and Harlots: Women in the Book with Rabbi Susan Grossman

2015: Philadelphia’s PBS station, WHYY, is scheduled to host a free screening of “A Wing and A Prayer” open to the public at 6:30 p.m.

https://www.aptonline.org/catalog.nsf/vLinkTitle/WING+AND+A+PRAYER+A

http://aboveandbeyondthemovie.com/

2015(1stof Sivan, 5775): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

2015(1stof Sivan, 5775): Seventy year old Robert S. Wistrich, the Hebrew University Professor whose expertise in the field of anti-Semitism can be seen the 29 volumes he wrote on the topic passed away today. (A reported by Sam Roberts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/europe/robert-s-wistrich-scholar-of-anti-semitism-dies-at-70.html?login=email&_r=1

2016(11thof Iyar, 5776): Eighty-four year old Morley Safer, the Toronto born son of Austrian Jewish immigrants Anna (nee Cohn) and Max Safer, the award winning CBS journalist passed away today in Manhattan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/business/media/morley-safer-dies.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-morley-safer-dies-at-84/

2016: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a session of the First Person 2016 Series featuring a “conversation with Holocaust survivor Irene Weiss.”

2017: For the second day in a row, “farmers, vintners and cheesemakers from the Modiin region are scheduled to bring their crops, goods and crafts to the Tel Aviv port at Hangar 2.”

2017: “Open House Tel Aviv, or Batim Mibifnim, an urban festival of architecture and design…showcasing the city’s chic style” is scheduled to continue for a second day.

2017:  “A food and literature festival at The Banquet as Jerusalem’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim” where visitors can “hear chef Eyal Shani and musician Asaf Roth debate the poetics of food and recipes, or listen to author Meir Shalev and chef Haim Cohen discuss food motifs in Shalev’s books” is scheduled to come to a close today.

2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Shabbat dinner during “Interfaith Week.”

2017(23rdof Iyar, 5777): Seventy-seven year old poet and Hebrew translator Chana Bloch passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/books/chana-bloch-died-poet-and-translator.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article

2017: In announcing that “Jesse Eisenberg will play Marcel Marceau in ‘Resistance,’ a film…that focuses on the legendary mime’s involvement in the French resistance during World War II,”  writer and director Jonathan Jakubowicz  today “told the Associated Press” that “the story of Marceau and the resistance is one of the most striking secrets of World War II.”

2018: Stacy Hart offered a cheesecake recipe fit for today’s Royal Wedding and this evening erev Shavuot celebrations.

http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/bake-off-star-stacey-harts-cheesecake-fit-for-the-royal-wedding/

2018: Forty-ninth Day of the Omer

2018(5thof Sivan, 5778): Bernard Lewis, the historian and prolific author who specialized in the world of Islam, long before there was any real interest in the subject passed away today at the age of 101. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/obituaries/bernard-lewis-islam-scholar-dies.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/06/bernard-lewis-obituary

https://www.amazon.com/Bernard-Lewis/e/B000AP9JRK

2018(5thof Sivan, 5778): Parasahat Bamidbar – begin the Book of Numbers;

2018(5thof Sivan, 5778: Seventy-nine year old music publicist turned newspaper publisher Michael Goldstein, the husband of Nancy (Arnold) Goldstein and father of Jocelyn, Marissa and Gillian Goldstein passed away today.  (As reported by Vincent M. Mallozzi)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/obituaries/michael-goldstein-publicist-who-started-soho-weekly-news-dies-at-79.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to host a “Shavuot Celebration and Havdalah Concert with Dan Nichols.

2019(14thof Iyar, 5779): Pesach Sheni

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pesach-sheni

2019: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Rabbits For Food by Binnie Kirshenbaum and the recently released paperback edition of Robin by Dave Kitzkoff.

2019: The Loft at City Winery is scheduled to host a performance by award winning Jerusalem born singer and musician Tamar Eisenman.

2019: Starting this morning, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Legacies of Violence: The Pogroms of the Russian Civil War at 100.”

https://programs.cjh.org/event/legacies-of-violence-2019-05-19

2019: The Jewish Genealogical Society and American Sephardi Federation are scheduled to host “What's in a Name? A Case Study of (Re)Discovering Jewish Identity on (and off) an Unlikely African Archipelag”

2019: The Jewish Review of Books is scheduled to host a presentation by Professor Jack Wertheimer, author of The New American Judaism at its 4thannual conference

https://mailchi.mp/tabletmag/dara-horn-robert-alter-and-more-at-the-jewish-review-of-books-conference?e=7682f0c5c9

2019: The Guy Mintus Trio, led by Israeli pianist and composer Guy Mintus is scheduled to perform tonight at a “New York release party.”

2019: Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum is scheduled to host the “fifth annual Greek Jewish Festival.”

https://www.kkjfestival.com/

2020: The Breman museum is scheduled to host “a live virtual show from local musician and Executive Director of the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival, Joe Alterman.”

2020: Via Zoom, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Judith Viorst, author of the New York Times bestseller Necessary Losses, who “will talk about her new book, Nearing 90, which tackles the complicated joys and everyday tribulations of becoming a nonagenarian with signature savvy and humor.”

2020: The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is scheduled to host “Livestream: The Global Resurgence of Anti-Semitism.”

2020: In San Rafael, CA, Congregation Rodef Shlom is scheduled to host, via Facebook, “Chasidic Tales and Melodies with Rabbi Elana Rosen-Brown,:

2020: Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host a “discussion via Zoom with Dr. Jordan Kassalow, founder of VisionSpring.”

2020: Via Zoom The London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to host Debbie Meyer as she lectures on “The Trials of King David: Hands of Blood.”

2020: “The inaugural Great Big Jewish Food Fest featuring Jewish culinary talents like Michael Solomonov, Joan Nathan and Michael Twitty” is scheduled to begin today. (As reported by Joe Bauer)

2021: Hebrew College is scheduled to present online “Faith – Here and Now: An Interreligious Exploration.

2021: As part of GTU’s Madrassa-Midrasha program, U. of Toronto professor Naomi Seidman, formerly of GTU, is scheduled to talk about Jewish languages in Freud’s dreams and UC Davis professor Omnia El Shakry's is scheduled to explore psychoanalysis’ intersections with Islamic mysticism.

2021: Congregation Beth Elohim is scheduled to present online “Modern-Day Refugees with Emma Tobin” talking about the impact of the Refugee Act of 1980 that created the Federal Refugee Program.

2021: S.F.-based JIMENA and U.K.-based Hari are scheduled to present Diplomat Efrat Sopher as she talks “about her late grandfather, Meir Ezri, who, as Israel’s ambassador to Iran (1958-1973) assisted fleeing Jews and marshaling aid for earthquake survivors.”

2021: The Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to open tonight “with two documentaries: “Aulcie” (with English subtitles), plus taped Q&A with former Israel basketball star Aulcie Perry and director Dani Menkin; and “Ruth: Justice Ginsberg in Her Own Words,” plus Q&A with daughter Jane Ginsberg and judge Abe Sofaer.”

2021: Live on Zoom, the YIVO Institute is scheduled to present “Embodying Liberty: American Jewish Attorneys and the Case for Humanizing Public Charge.”

2021: Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York, in partnership with the National Arts Club in New York is scheduled to host a performance of the Vertigo Dance Company.

2021: Based on reports published yesterday, while Hamas has allegedly agreed to cease fire for tomorrow, as of today Israel may be facing a multi-pronged conflict that includes assaults from Jordan, Lebanon and the various terrorist groups operating in Gaza.

 

This Day, May 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 20

68(3rd of Sivan, 3828): During the Great Revolt, Vespasian captured Jericho and slaughtered the Jewish inhabitants.

325:  The First Council of Nicaea, convoked by Emperor Constantine, opens.  Among other things, the Council dealt with the issue of setting the date for Easter.  Going forward, Easter would never again be celebrated on the same day as the first day of Pesach.

526: An earthquake, with an epicenter in Syria that reportedly killed 300,000 people, is felt throughout much of the Near East including at least two towns now located in the modern state of Israel – Acre and Beit Jann.

1092: During the reign of St. Ladislaus the Synod of Szabolcs decreed that Jews in Hungary should not be permitted to have Christian wives or to keep Christian slaves. This decree had been promulgated in the Christian countries of Europe since the fifth century, and St. Ladislaus merely introduced it into Hungary.

1217: At the age of 70 (or close to it) William Marshal the English lead who had regarded King John’s policy towards the Jews …as harmful to the state” led the forces loyal to King Henry III to victory over the French at the Battle of Linocln  which led to their expulsion from country

1285: Henry II, the second surviving son of Hugh III succeeded his brother John I who may have been poisoned, as “the last ruling and first titular King of Jerusalem” a meaningless title from the point of Jews.

1293: King Sancho IV of Castile creates the Study of General Schools of Alcalá which would become one Spain’s oldest and finest universities.  During the 1930’s the school would prove to be haven for Jewish intellectuals fleeing anti-Semitism in other parts of Europe.  The school would cease to be a haven when Franco led his coup in 1936 that became the Spanish Civil War and brought facism to the Iberian Peninsula.

1530: Ninety year old Avraham HaLevi Mintz the husband of Livo Minz and Chief Rabbi of Padua,passed away today at Padua, Italy.

1549: In a decision rendered by Queen Bona (sforza), bearing today’s date, the following regulations, modifying and defining the rights of the Jewish community of Grodno, are introduced:  (1) Jews are to pay 17 percent of the taxes the government assessed against the city;  (2) they are freed from some special taxes paid in kind;  (3) houses and lands formerly bought by Jews from citizens are freed from citizens’ taxes; those bought by citizens from Jews are freed from Jewish taxes.  But thenceforth no Jew may buy a house from a citizen without royal permission

1631: The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years' War. For once, there were probably no Jews among the dead.  The Jews had been explled from the town in 1493 and would not be readmitted until 1671 during the reign of the great elector, Frederick William.

1648: King Wladislaus IV of Poland passed away. Wladislaus was the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth when the Chmielnicki, Uprising began in January of 1648.  According to some, the King and his advisors underestimated the size and the strength of the uprising.  They suffered to major defeats as the Cossacks moved westward.  His death left the Poles leaderless at a crucial time in their history and may have been a contributing factor to the success of the uprising which brought death and destructions to hundreds of thousands of Jews living throughout the area.

1671: Frederick William of Prussia permitted 50 Jewish families who had been expelled from Vienna to settle in his dominion.

1764(18th of Iyar, 5524): Lag B’Omer was observed Indian raids continued the Virginia frontier in the wake of what was known as “Pontiac’s War.”

1769(13th of Iyar): Rabbi Nethanel Weil of Prague, author of “Korban Nethanel” passed away.

1794: A day after he passed away, Hyam Simon was buried today at the Alderney Road Jewish Cemetery.

1799: Birthdate of Baltimore native and American naval officer Henry Etting who reached the rank of captain in 1861.

1806: Birthdate of British philosopher John Stuart Mill

http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs12115-000-1008-z.pdf#page-1

 

http://www.joshyuter.com/2006/08/10/judaism/jewish-thought-theology-machshava/john-stuart-mill-on-orthodox-judaism/

1806(3rd of Sivan, 5566): Talmudist and author Samuel ben Nathan Ha-Levi Loew, who had been born in Bohemia in 1720 and who “presided over a yeshiva at Boskovice, Moravia for almost 60 years” passed away today.

1813: Isaac Samuel Wormser, the German born son of Samuel Isaac Wormser and Elkele Simon Wormser and his Scheinle Ephraim gave birth to their second “stillborn” Child.

1818(14th of Iyar, 5578); Pesach Sheini

1819(25th of Iyar, 5579): Rosey Aaron, the wife of Sander bar Aharon passed away today in England.

1819: Rica Meldola, the eldest daughter of Raphael Meldola married David Aaron de Sola, the senior rabbi at Bevis Marks Synagogue in London.

1820(7th of Sivan, 5580): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor

1820: In Warsaw, Gabriel Berekson, the son of Berek and Temerl Bergson and his wife gave birth to composer and pianist Michal Bergson.

1820: Rabbi Löb Glee Hildesheimer, a native of Hildesheim and his wife gave birth to Esriel or Azriel Hildesheimer, a German rabbi who was a leader in the formation of Modern Orthodox Judaism.

1822: Birthdate of author Emile Erckmann who along with Alexandre Chatrian co-authored the 1869 play “Le Jeuf Polonais” (The Polish Jew) which was the basis for “The Bells.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50915FA3E541B728DDDAC0994DB405B8985F0D3

1835: Michael Rose, the Great Synagogue’s first Rabbi, arrived in Sydney, Australia.

1839(7th of Sivan, 5599): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor

1842: Arch abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison wrote an article in his newspaper the Liberator, referring to Mordecai Noah, one of the most prominent Jews of the period as "a Jewish unbeliever, the enemy of Christ and Liberty."  Garrison felt that Noah had expressed sentiments that were hostile to the abolitionists when, as a Judge, he was delivering a charge to a Grand Jury.  Garrison would continue his attacks on Noah describing him as "the miscreant Jew", that lineal descendant of the monsters who nailed Jesus to the Cross” and as a "Shylock" who "will have his pound of flesh at any cost." 

1842: One day after he had passed away, Jacob Abraham Wood, the husband of Hannah Simmons was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”

1845: in Luna, a shtetl in the province of Grodno, Russia, Eliezer Dov Liebermann, a maskilic author and scholar and his wife gave birth to Aaron Samuel Liebermann, “a pioneer of Jewish socialism and the Jewish labor movement, who was described by Rudolf Rocker and Ber Borochov as the "father of Jewish socialism" (Some sources show his birth year as 1843 or 1840)

https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Lieberman_Aharon_Shemuel

1847(5th of Sivan, 5607): Erev Shavuot

1847: Consecration of the New Netherdutch Synagogue took place in New York. The congregation was organized so they could, "have a Synagogue where they can worship according to the Amsterdam Minchag. They number about sixty members. The service was performed by the S. E. C. Noot, the Chazan of the congregation, assisted by several young men."

 1851: Birthdate of inventor Emile Berliner. Born in Germany, Berliner came to the United States in 1870.  His most famous invention was the flat phonograph record which replaced the cylinder that had been invented by Thomas Edison.  Berliner made many other contributions through his work at the Bell Labs.  He also was an early developer of the helicopter.  At the end of his life, he supported the rebuilding of Palestine and was very active on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He died in 1929. 

1852: Birthdate of Dr. Immanuel Munk, the native of Posen and brother of Hermann Munk who became a leading physiologist.

1855: Birthdate of Saul Frank.  A Dutch Jew, whose parents were Sephardic, he was a successful businessman who settled in California and married Sarah Vasen the Iowa educated physician who became the first Jewish woman doctor in Los Angeles.

1856: A meeting was organized with the Ottoman Grand Vizier Aali Pasha upon his visit to London today where an agreement on the principles to establish a railway between Jaffa and Jerusalem was signed today

1857: In Philadelphia, PA, “Mayer and Fanny Rice” gave birth to Columbia trained physician Joseph Mayer, the husband of Deborah Levinson, who after practicing medicine in New York, studied psychology at the Universities of Jena and Leipzig, served as the editor The Forum and founded the Society of Education Research.

1858(7th of Nisan, 5618): Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor

1864(14th of Iyar, 5624): Pesach Sheni observed on the same day that Confederates were defeating Union Forces under the incompetent political General Benjamin Butler at the Battle of Ware Bottom Church which thwarted part of Grant’s plan to squeeze Lee’s army today.

1866(6th of Nisan, 5626): Shavuot

1866(6th of Nisan, 5626): Philip Jacob Cohen, who married Eleanor Moses in 1799 passed away today in Charleston, SC.

1867(18th of Iyar, 5657): Lag B’Omer

1867: A fair was held today at the Concordia Opera House in Baltimore, MD.  Proceeds from the event are to be used for the building of the Hebrew Hospital which, when completed, will offer services to all indigent citizens without regard to religious affiliation.

1868: Birthdate of Bavaria native Louis A. Behr who in 1890 settled in Pittsburgh where he became president of the Rosenbaum Company, Chairman of the Board of the National Department Stores and a leader of the Jewish community as can be seen by his service as “a director of the Jewish Federation of Philanthropies, the Jewish Home for the Aged and the Hebrew Instate while being married to the former Elsie Rosenbaum, the daughter of Max Rosenbaum.

1873: Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno, received patent 139,121 which protected their invention of blue jeans with copper rivets in areas of stress including the pocket corners and the button fly.
1874: Levi Strauss marketed blue jeans with copper rivets charging $13.50 per dozen.  Strauss arrived in San Francisco with canvas that he thought he could use for making tents to sell to the miners.  But what the miners needed were stout pants, which Strauss gave them using the canvas.  He later changed to heavy blue denim called genes in French which became jeans in to the people of California.  The copper rivets were used because the miners put nuggets in their pants pockets and regular stitching would not hold them.

1876: In Cologne, Germany, “Simon Van den Berg and Catherine Van Stratum” gave birth Brahm van den Berg, the child prodigy pianist who gained fame in Europe “as an operatic conductor and served on the faculty of the Cincinnati Conservatory.

1877: Thirty year old Dr. Ignatz Kornfeld married 24 year old Harriet Singer today.

1879: Joseph H. De Meza a young Cuban Jew pleaded guilty to charges that he had tried to steal clothing from Mrs. Charles A. Lillie by swindling her.  He was held over because he could not raise $3,000 in bail.  During the proceedings, De Meza told the court of various swindles he had taken part since his family left Cuba six years ago.  According to De Meza, his family had been forced to flee from their home in Matanzas because they were part of the insurgency aimed at overthrowing the Spanish rulers of Cuba.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30916FA385A137B93C3AB178ED85F4D8784F9

1880: Birthdate of University of Georgia undergrad and Columbia trained attorney Leonard Hass, the defense attorney for Leo Frank and “the first representative of the ACLU in Georgia” who was the father of John and Leonard Haas, Jr.

1881: In “Posvol, Lithuania, Wolf and Chaija Esther (Shalowitz) Bernstein gave birth to Johns Hopkins undergrad and U. of California Ph.D. Benjamin Abram Bernstein, the husband of Rose Davidson, brother-in-law of sculptor Jo Davidson and longtime Professor of Mathematics at the Cal, Berkley.

https://dpg.lib.berkeley.edu/webdb/hstc/search?author=&item=77

1882: After a night-long interrogation, five year old Samuel Scharf “confessed to police” describing the role that his father and several other Jews has played in the ritual murder of Andreas Huri at Tisza-Eszlar.

1884: Birthdate of Philadelphia, PA native Leon Schlesinger, motion picture producer “behind Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1930’s and 1940’s” who “oversaw the creation of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd” and who was the husband of Bernice Schlesinger.

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/leon-schlesingers-obituary-6088.html

1885(6th of Sivan, 5645): Shavuot

1885: NYU trained physician, Zionist and “American patriot” Joseph Isaac Bluestone, the Lithuanian born son of Chaim (Hyman) Bluestone and Golde Chaya Bluestone and his wife Sarah Rachel Bluestone gave birth to Rose Celia Bluestone

1886: Birthdate of Jake Guzik, the native of Cracow who became the “Treasurer” responsible for the financial well-being for Al Capone which did not preclude him from taking part in a myriad of other criminal activities.

1887: In Poland, Solomon and Rose Goldstock Kolko gave birth to Nathan Kolo, the husband of Sara Alpert Kolko with whom he had six children.

1888(10th of Sivan, 5648): Sixty-five-year-old Cerinna [Selena} Hendricks, the daughter of Frances Isaacs, the Lancaster, PA born daughter of Joshua Isaacs and Harmon Hendricks the “prominent manufacturer of copper and granddaughter of Uriah Hendricks one of the founders of Congregation Shearith Israel, passed away today.

1888: At Cologne, Rudolf Mosse, the son of Dr. Marcus Mosse and Ulrike Mosse and his wife Emilie gave birth to Felicia Lachmann-Moses

1888: Birthdate of Rabbi Moses Aaron Poleyeff, the native of Minsk who came to the United States in 1920 where he served on the faculty of Yeshiva College.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Rebbi.html?id=MvpGGwAACAAJ

1889(19th of Iyar): Italian Jewish leader Samuel Altari passed away

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alatri

1890(1st of Sivan, 5650): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

1890: Kentucky native Frank Lyon, who during the Spanish American War served on board the USS Oregon as an Assistant Engineer “with the rank of Ensign” joined the U.S. Navy today.

1891: “He Wants to go Home” published today described the plight of Barney Greenman who came to United States with his parents a year ago.  The teenager who has received help from the United Hebrew Charities, wants to go back to Rotterdam where he can rejoin his parents who went back because they “did not succeed in make a fortune…”

1891: In London, as the number of destitute Russian Jews seeking refuge in Great Britain, The Evening News “warns authorities that if the Hebrew ‘invasion’ is not checked…an anti-Hebrew movement…will grow up in England.”

1891: Louis Raphael shot his fiancée, Rachel Weinberg this evening and then turned the gun on himself.

1890: It is alleged that two or more unidentified individuals threw the body of Samuel Hutch, a Jewish peddler, down an abandoned mine shaft near Wurtsborough, NY.

1891: Dr. Henry M. Leipziger was unanimously elected Assistant Superintendent of Schools in New York City.

1893: As the condition of Jews in Russia worsened it was reported today those living in the Asiatic part of the empire are to be expelled in the same manner as their co-religionist in the Polish part of the empire.

1893: Birth of Herzl's daughter Margarethe Gertrude (always known as "Trude").

1894(14th of Iyar, 5654): Pesach Sheini

1894: Birthdate of “middleweight boxer August “Augie” Ratner, the Minneapolis “gangster and owner of Augie’s Theatre Lounge.

https://www.amazon.com/Augies-Secrets-Minneapolis-Hennepin-Strip-ebook/dp/B01N9OWCZ7

http://www.hazelandwren.com/2013/what-were-reading-augies-secrets/

1895: In Brooklyn, a judgment in the amount of twelve dollars was awarded to the landlord who owned the building at 116 Seigel Street to be paid by Congregation Havercham which had failed to pay rent for the month of May.

1896: In New York, the laying of the cornerstone took place for the new Synagogue of Congregation Shearith Israel at 70th Street and Central Park West. At the entrance to the synagogue, there are two millstones that were from Mill Street, the location of the town miller during the early colonial period.

 1896: Max Bodenheimer, leader of the Cologne Zionists, invites Herzl to speak. Bodenheimer was a lawyer in Cologne and one of the main figures in German Zionism. Close to Theodor Herzl, he was the first president of the Zionist Federation of Germany and one of the founders of the Jewish National Fund. After his flight in 1933 from Nazi Germany, and a short sojourn in Holland, he settled in Palestine in 1935.  He passed away in 1940.

1897(18th of Iyar, 5657): Lag B'Omer

1897: According to a compilation of the May Laws published today, the right of Jews “to become shareholders in stock companies, or directors, managers, or superintendents of real property belonging to corporations and situated outside of towns or townlets in the Pale” was severely limited.

1898: District of Columbia native Franklin Hart the future paymaster of the “Celtic” joined the U.S. Navy today.

1898: The Jewish Messenger reported that Congregation Orach Chaim had resolved to purchase its first building at 221 East 51st Street. The edifice was formerly used as a church. Prior to this, the congregants had been worshipping in rented space, reportedly above a beer saloon. During the meeting at which the decision to make the purchase was reached, long-term president Meyer Dannenberg "...arose and surprised members by giving toward the new edifice $5,000 in behalf of his son, Hon. Isaac Dannenberg."

1898: One day after she had passed away, 38 year old Elizabeth “Bloomah” Van Gelder, the daughter of Louis Van Gelder and Lydia Park, was today buried in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”

1898(28 of Iyar, 5658: Sixty-two year old Rabbi Herman Phillips, a teacher at the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society for the last six years passed away at his home on 3rd Avenue. A native of Germany, he served as cantor at the synagogue on west 44th Street in Manhattan before serving as a rabbi at congregations in Boston and Toronto

1899: “French Cheers for Dreyfus” published today described the reaction in Paris to the acquittal of the notorious Jew baiter, Max Regis on charges of inciting to murder.  An angry mob followed him to the train station and the marched to the Officers’ Club where they cheered for Dreyfus and Picquart.  When the French officers turned a water hose on the crowd, they were pelted with stones some of which injured the anti-Dreyfus military men.

1899: It was reported today that police arrested fifty rioters who attacked the Jewish quarter in Algiers where they wrecked several houses.

1900: The 48th Convention of District No.2 of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith opened today in St. Louis.

1901: The celebration marking the golden jubilee of Temple Beth Elohim, “the oldest synagogue in Brooklyn” came to an end today.

1902: Today Frank Maximilian Steinhardt, the Munich born son of Simon and Regina Steinhardt, the husband of Alice Florence Ledden, who joined the U.S Army in 1882, completed his service in Cuba as chief clerk of the military government under General Leonard Wood.

1903: Miss Anita Sutherland discovered the unconscious body of Washington Seligman, the son of James Seligman, at the Hotel Rossmore, where he had used a safety razor blade to cut the left side of his throat in a failed attempt at suicide and rushed him to Roosevelt Hospital where his life was saved.

1904(6th of Sivan, 5664): Shavuot

1904: Birthdate of Kiev native Frank Philip Cohen who in 1911 came to the United States where he went on to practice law after graduating from Boston University.

1904: Birthdate of Meir Tobianski

http://israelsdocuments.blogspot.com/2013/01/killing-meir-tobianski.html

1905: Birthdate of Washington, DC and George Washington University graduate Joseph Henry Abel, the architect who designed such buildings The Broadmoor and The Shoreham Hotel

https://planning.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/op/publication/attachments/Architects%20Bios%20A%20and%20B.pdf

1906: Birthdate of Helen Fixler, the Sighet native who was the husband of Al Irom and the mother of Barbara Irom.

1906(25th of Iyar, 5666): Raphael Louis Bischoffsheim, a Dutch-born French banker, politician, philanthropist and founder of the Nice Observatory passed away today.

1907: Incorporation of Dropsie College in Philadelphia, PA

1907(7th of Sivan, 5667): Second day of Shavuot, Yizkor.

1908: The newly formed Hebrew Theatrical Musical Club which has declared that it has arranged with the theatre management” at Yiddish theatres “that none but Hebrews shall be employed as musicians” delivered an ultimatum today “to the non-Hebrew musicians that they must abandon their places.”

1909: The famine prices in the east side kosher bread market were broken today by the arrival of bread in large quantities from kosher bakeries in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Brownsville, which are not affected by the strike and lockout.

1910: Today, the American Jewish Committee received a cablegram that said “Forcible expulsions from Kieff are now taking place in a most brutal manner and many new expulsions of those hitherto exempted are occurring” while “expulsions from Moscow are also on the increase” creating “addition hardships.

1911: In Chicago, birthdate of Jerome Morton Comar “the chairman of the executive of the Maremont Corporation and leader of the Jewish community as can be seen by his service as “director of the Chicago Young Men’s Jewish council and president of the Jewish Federation and Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, (JTA)

1912: In New York, Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen gave birth to Moses Isaac Finkelstein, who gained fame as Sir Moses I. Finley

1912: The Independent Order of True Sisters which had been organized in 1846 and now has 20 lodges and 4,815 members including Biana B. Robitscher heled 122nd Semi-Annal or 63rd Annual session of the Grand Lodge today in New York City.

1913: In Bryan, TX, founding of Frieda Temple

1913: Mrs. M.L. Rothschild is among those scheduled to be considered for a three year directorship at the annual meeting of the Chicago-Winfeld Tuberculosis Sanatorium tonight.

1914: In Jerusalem, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Shapira gave birth to Avraham Elkanah Shapira who served as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1983 to 1993.

1914: “Henry Siegel, the indicted dry goods merchant and banker is scheduled to set sail from London on the White Star liner Olympic” for his return to New York after claiming that he had not intended to escape the long arm of the law by going to England.

1915(7th of Sivan, 5675): Second Day of Shavuot, Yizkor

 1915: In the famous kibbutz Deganya, Shmuel and Devorah Dayan, Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from Zhashkiv gave birth to Moshe Dayan who as a teenager joined the Haganah, lost an eye in an attack on Lebanon with an Australian Division and who during the War for Independence, Dayan played a key role in the relief of Deganya. He rose in the ranks of the Israeli army becoming Chief of Staff and Minister of Defense and then resigning after the Yom Kippur War because he was criticized for Israel's lack of preparedness. In 1977 he joined the Begin government.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/moshe-dayan

https://www.idf.il/en/minisites/past-chiefs-of-staff/lt-gen-moshe-dayan-1953-1958/

1915: The Ottoman government allowed Hebrew to be used once again as a written language for letters, although it will be censored by the military.

1915: The Philadelphia Inquirer described the function of the Hebrew Free School in Camden as being “to teach the Hebrew language and to translate it into to English.”

1915: As of today, “thousands of Atlanta businessmen, including practically every banker in the city, a Basil Stockbridge, a former assistant to Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey, have signed their names to petitions pleading for a commutation of Leo M. Frank’s death sentence.”

1916(17th of Iyar, 5676): Parashat Bechukotai

1916: As of today subscriptions to the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War should be addressed to Harry Fischel, the organization’s treasurer.

1917: The Ottomans allowed the Jews to return to Jaffa and Tel Aviv reversing the order expelling them from their homes.

1917: The Sisters of Fidelity are scheduled to hold an informal dancing party this evening at the new ballroom of the Auditorium Hotel.

1917: Joseph Fienberg will represent Congregation Ohavo Emuno Beth Hamedrosh Hachocesh, the oldest Jewish Orthodox congregation in Chicago founded in 1859 as a delegate to the American Jewish Congress meeting today at Chicago and S. M. Jess will represent the congregation as an alternate.

1917: The Hebrew Union Veteran Association and the Hebrew Veterans of the War with Spain are scheduled to hold their annual joint memorial services today at Temple Ansche Chesed in Harlem.

1917: In Chicago, a mass meeting tonight raised over $500,000 for the Jewish Relief Committee for War Sufferers with largest contribution coming from Mr. and Mrs. Julius Rosenwald who contributed $150,000.

1917: The Jews of Chicago are scheduled to celebrate the emancipation of Russian Jews with a series of mass meetings to be held throughout the city this afternoon concluding with a banquet at the Hotel La Salle.

1918: Today, Vizefeldwebel Fritz Beckhardt a German Jewish fighter ace in World War I, completed three months of service with Jagdstaffel which he had joined after upgrading “to fighter pilot status.

1918: It was reported today that Benjamin Berinstein, Leo Wolfson and Herbert S. Goldstein are leaders of the movement to raise funds for blind soldiers returning from France that is being spearheaded by the Hebrew Association for the Blind.

1919 Today, the board of directors of Weinstock, Lubin and Company, a Sacramento, CA department store founded in 1874, “decided to recognize more fully the right of the employees to take their part, definitely and consciously, in the management of the affairs of the store” and took the first step by placing “the actual carrying on the busiess into the hands of the Board of Managers, composed entirely of employees of the store.”

1920: Henry Ford’s newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, with a circulation of seven hundred thousand, "discussed" the Jewish problem.  Ford was an anti-Semite and his paper followed his lead.

1921: It was reported today that “Captain Elkan Voorsanger, the former senior chaplain of the 77th Division” who spent two years after the World War working to aid Jews in the famine wracked parts of Europe has begun working to raise funds for 150 bed hospital on Dyckman service which will serve as a memorial “the boy in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps who died in the World War.”

1922: “The first Jewish municipal bond issue in history, amount of 80,000 pounds has been authorized by the Palestine Government for the township of Tel-Aviv…The obligations are secured by taxation, the bonds being used at 6 per cent, repayable in twenty years.

1922: Birthdate of Lithuania native Sarah Doron who made Aliyah in 1933 and eventually pursued a political career that including serving as a member of the Knesset and Minister without Portfolio.

1923(5th of Sivan, 5683): Erev Shavuot

1923: Birthdate of Brooklynite, Columbia graduate and USAAF second Lieutenant Stephen Falk Krantz, the writer and producer whose greatest accomplishment may have been encouraging his wife Judith to became a successful writer

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/obituaries/12krantz.html

1923: Birthdate of Israel Gutman the native of Warsaw “who took part in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, survived three Nazi concentration camps and became a prominent historian of the Holocaust.” (As reported by Isabel Kershner)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/world/israel-gutman-who-survived-and-documented-holocaust-dies-at-90.html?hpw&_r=0

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/ringelbum/ringelblum_gutman.asp

1925: In Chicago, Morton David Cahn, the son of Joseph and Miriam Cahn and his wife Julia Elizabeth Cahn gave birth to Morton David Cahn, Jr.

1925: Founding of Davar, the Hebrew language newspaper of the labor movement in Palestine.

1926(7th of Sivan, 5686): Second Day of Shavuot

1926: Actress Helen Menken, the daughter of Frederick and Katherine Menken married Humphrey Bogart (who was not Jewish) today.

1926: In Brooklyn, businessman and community activist Harry Plissner and his wife Charlotte gave birth to Marty Plissner, the “longtime political director for CBS News who helped expand the role of television in covering elections.” (As reported by William Yardley)

1927: According to published reports, today John D. Rockefeller sent the United Jewish campaign a check for $100,000 “with a letter expressing the opinion that the drive should receive the support of people of all creeds and all races.”

1928: In Camden, NJ, “The Junior League is” scheduled to give “a Concert and Dance at the Beth El Synagogue.

1928: In Manhattan, hematologist Carl Reich and school administrator Eleanor (Lesinsky) Reich gave birth to Yale University trained attorney Charles Alan Reich the author of The Greening of America. (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/books/charles-reich-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1928: Birthdate of Alfred Gilbert Aronowitz “an American rock journalist best known for introducing Bob Dylan and The Beatles in 1964.”

1930: Sir John Hope-Simpson arrives in Palestine.  “Upon the recommendation of the Shaw Commission the British authorities conducted an investigation into the possibilities for future immigration to and settlement of Palestine. The investigation was headed by Sir John Hope-Simpson, who spent a relatively short amount of time in Palestine reviewing the situation. Hope-Simpson's main concern was that there was not sufficient land to support continued immigration. According to his report, Arab farmers were suffering from severe economic difficulties. Many were tenant farmers who owed large amounts of money and lacked the means to ensure successful agricultural endeavors. Others were simply unemployed. The report indicated that the Jewish policy of hiring only Jews was responsible for the deplorable conditions in which the Arabs found themselves. Due to these conditions, Hope-Simpson recommended the cessation of Jewish immigration. Only after new agricultural methods would be introduced in Palestine, would room be made for an additional number of immigrants. In response, Jewish leaders in the Yishuv argued that Hope-Simpson had ignored the capacity for growth in the industrial sector. Stimulating economic growth through increased demand would most likely benefit the Arab economy as well. Hope-Simpson disagreed, seeing the future of Palestine in agriculture, not in industry. Jews also claimed that since they had made a principle of using Jewish labor only, the cessation of immigration would in fact have no effect on Arab unemployment. The Hope-Simpson Report was published in October, 1930. At the same time, the Passfield White Paper was issued, clarifying British intentions in Palestine.”

1930: “The Chief Rabbinate of the Jewish Community of Palestine has joined in the call for a general strike of protest against the suspension of immigration.”

1931: Birthdate of Israeli political leader Yisrael Kessar.  Born in Yemen, he made aliyah at the age of two.  His service in the military was followed by course work in economics and sociology at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University.  Following an active career with Histadruit, he was elected to the Knesset and served Minister of Transportation from 1992 to 1996.

1931: “Up Pops the Devil,” the movie version of the play by the same name with a script co-authored by Arthur Kober was released today in the United States.

1932: Birthdate of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, a groundbreaking and wide-ranging scholar of Jewish history whose meditation on the tension between collective memory of a people and the more prosaic factual record of the past would influence a generation of thinkers.  (As reported by Joseph Berger)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/nyregion/11yerushalmi.html

1934:Jack Benny is among those who will be featured at the “Friars Frolic” which is scheduled to take place tonight at New York’s Forty-fourth Street Theatre.

1934(6th of Sivan, 5694): First Day of Shavuot

1934: Rabbi William F. Rosenblum is scheduled to lead Confirmation Services at Temple Israel.

1934:Rabbi Samuel J. Levinson is scheduled to lead Confirmation Services at Temple Beth Emeth of Flatbush (Brooklyn).

1934: Rabbi Israel Goldstein is scheduled to lead Confirmation Services at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun on 257 West Eighty-Eighth Street.

1934:Rabbi Samuel Buchler is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “The Ten Commandments in Our Generation;" at New People's Synagogue on Clinton Street.

1934:Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled "Young Israel and the Undying Jew;" at the Free Synagogue meeting at Carnegie Hall.

1934: The 1934 edition of the "Friars Frolic" will be presented at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre this evening. It will be staged under the direction of Lou Holtz, Jack Benny and Nat Burns. The show, which will offer a series of original and intimate sketches and playlets, which have been presented at private "Frolics," will also enlist the services of more than one hundred stars of the stage, screen and radio. With his plain vanilla looks, bland speech pattern and neutral name, Benny was the most “un-Jewish” of Jewish comedians. 

1934: Birthdate of Moshe Shahal the Baghdad native who made Aliyah in 1950 and pursued a political career that included serving Deputy Speaker of the Knesset.

1935: Birthdate of Michael Rose, the native of Bedford-Stuyvesant who gained fame as screen writer Mickey Rose

1936: Miguel Mariano Gómez began his service as President of Cuba during which he negotiated with Congressman William I Sirovich about the possibility of “Cuba opening her doors to at least 100,000 persecuted German Jews”

1936: J. H. Hertz, chief rabbi of the British Empire is scheduled to deliver an oration at the Willesden cemetery during the funeral services for Dr. Nahum Sokolow, one of the founders of political Zionism.” (As reported by JTA)

1936: A memorial service is scheduled to be held this evening at the Great Synagogue in London in honor of Dr. Nahum Sokolow of blessed memory.

1936: It was reported today that “the Solingen Tageblatt revealed a case in which the Nuremberg racial laws had been used in an attempt to blackmail a wealthy Jew” – a case which resulted in the man being imprisoned for three months and “the woman was sent to prison for two months.”

1936: “Today all Palestine railways were placed under rigid curfew regulations” and Christians have “joined Jews in evacuating the Old City of Jerusalem” where “only 200 Jewish remains out of a former total Jewish population of 5,000.”

1936: “You Can’t Fool Antoinette” a comedy filmed by cinematographer Boris Kaufman and with music by Casmir Oberfeld who will die at Auschwtiz, was released today in France.

1936:As Arab violence continued, all railways in Palestine were placed under rigid curfew regulations.  “Christians joined Jews in evacuating the Old ‘City of Jerusalem.”  As of today, only “200 Jewish families out of a former total of 5,000 remained in the Old City.”

1938: The Palestine Post reported that Arab terrorists set on fire a special experimental agricultural farm, set up by the government, for the benefit of Palestinian Arab farmers.

1939: Despite the recent outbreaks of violence in response to the White Paper, as the Sabbath came to an end, Jews peacefully “paraded in their customary fashion on the main streets of Jerusalem.”  In an attempt to bridge the gap between Jews and Arabs, the Sephardic community issued a statement that expressed solidarity with the rest of the Jews of Palestine in the struggle to annul the betrayal of the White Paper appealed to the Arabs saying “Brethren in race, our hand is outstretched today as ever for a true peace, for collaboration in an honorable and lasting peace.  The mandatory proposals will lead to the ruin of the country and the impoverishment of both Jews and Arabs instead of construction and revival.

1939: “Sons of Liberty, a short drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, which tells the story of Haym Solomon” and winner of “an Academy Award for Best Short Subject” was released today in the United States.

1940: A concentration camp begins functioning at Auschwitz in Poland. Because most of Europe's Jews live in Poland and Eastern Europe, the six concentration camps called death camps will be established there: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibór, and Majdanek.

1940: This morning FDR met with labor leader David Lasser in the White House and this afternoon he ate lunch Treasure Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

1941(23rd of Iyar, 5701): Thirty year old David Raziel, a founder of Irgun, was killed today.  Raziel was serving with the British in Iraq in their fight against the pro-Axis government when a bomb from a German aircraft killed him and the British officer with whom he was serving.

1941(23rd of Iyar, 5701): Dutch physicist Leonard Salomon Ornstein passed away. Born in 1880, he studied theoretical physics with Hendrik Antoon Lorentz at University of Leiden. He subsequently carried out Ph.D. research under the supervision of Lorentz, concerning an application of the statistical mechanics of Gibbs to molecular problems. In 1914 he was appointed professor of physics, as successor of Peter Debye, at University of Utrecht. In 1922 he became director of Physical Laboratory (Fysisch Laboratorium) and extended his research interests to experimental subjects. His measurements concerning intensities of spectral lines brought Physical Laboratory in the international limelight. He is also remembered for the Ornstein-Zernike theory (named after Ornstein and Frederik Zernike) concerning correlation functions. Together with Gilles Holst, director of Philips Research Laboratories (Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium), he was the driving force behind establishing the Dutch Physical Society (Nederlands Natuurkundig Vereniging, NNV) in 1921. From 1939 until November 1940, he was Chairman of this Society. From 1918 until 1922 Ornstein was Chairman of the Dutch Zionist Society (Nederlandse Zionistische Vereniging). Immediately after the involvement of the Netherlands in the World War II (see Battle of the Netherlands), a friend from the United States of America, the astronomer Peter van de Kamp, offered to bring Ornstein and his family to America. However, Ornstein did not accept this offer, since, as he put it, he would not leave his laboratory in Utrecht. Owing to his Jewish heritage, Ornstein was summarily dismissed from University in September 1940; he was even barred from entering his own laboratory. In November 1940, he was officially dismissed from University. On his own initiative, in 1940, Ornstein withdrew his membership of the Dutch Physical Society. During this period he increasingly distanced himself from public life, to the degree that he no longer wished to receive guests at home. Ornstein died six months after being barred from University. One of the five buildings of Department of Physics of University of Utrecht, Ornstein Laboratorium, is named in his honor.

1941: In France, more laws were put into place restricting Jewish movements in all aspects of life. Jews are prohibited from engaging in wholesale and retail trade.  They cannot own banks, hotels, or restaurants

1941: Goering commanded that no Jew would be allowed to emigrate from any occupied territory..."in view of the imminent final solution". This was the first official reference of THE FINAL SOLUTION.

1942:  Three hundred train cars of clothing taken from those who had been killed Chelmo arrived in Lodz for sorting by Jewish workers. Ironically this meant that the death of Jews gave the Lodz Jews work which meant they got to live. 

1943: As the Allies begin to win the Battle of the Atlantic which was critical to winning WW II and ending the Shoah, an RAF B-24 sunk the U-258.

1944 “Russian Rhapsody” an animated short subject featuring the voice of Mel Blanc “was released to theatres” today.

1944(27th of Iyar, 5704): Reportedly the day on which Salomon Gluck, a French doctor and leader of the French Resistance was assassinated in Kaunaus.  He had been shipped from Drancy on convoy 73 along with 878 other men all of whom were murdered.

1944(27th of Iyar, 5704): Sixty-nine year old Dr. Hans Leo Przibram, the son of Gustav and Charlotte Przibram and Austrian zoologist who was barred from the institution he had founded after the Anschluss because he was Jewish died today at Theresienstadt.

1944: In Jerusalem, Zev and Esther Vilnay gave birth to Matan Vilnai.  Zev had been born in Kishinev and moved with his parents to Haifa at age 6.  He worked as a topographer for the Haganah and the IDF.  He pursued a career as leading geographer, author and lecturer. Mata joined the IDF where he served with the paratroopers, the Sayeret Matkal and deputy commander of the assault force for the Entebbe Raid. He rose to the rank of Major General and served as Deputy Chief of Staff before retiring to civilian life where he served in the Knesset and as Minister for Home Front Defense. 

1945: Between today and May 27, four Polish Jews who return to their hometown of Dzialoszyce are murdered by Poles.

1946: In what would appear to be an ideological self-contradiction, Britain’s Labour government which was trying to hold on to the Empire, including Palestine successfully passed a bill nationalized the UK’s coal industry, part of the plan to bring socialism to the British Isles.

1947: The Palmach “blew up a coffee house in Fajja, specifically in retaliation for the murder of two Jews in nearby Petah Tikva.”

1948: Twenty-six year old George Frederick “Buzz Beurling, “Canada’s most famous WW II fighter pilot” who had been recruited to fly for the IAF, “fatally crashed his Noorduyn Norseman transport aircraft while landing at Aeroporto dell'Urbe in Rome” while on his way to Israel.

1948: First appearance of the Israeli Air Force.  Real combat aircraft bearing the Star of David would not appear until later in the week.

1948: Heavy Syrian shelling of Degania Alef started at about 04:00 this morning from the Tzemah police station, by means of 75 mm cannons, and 60 and 81 mm mortars. The barrage lasted about half an hour. At 04:30 the Syrian army began its advance on the Deganias and the bridge over the Jordan River north of Degania Alef. Unlike the attack on Tzemah, this action saw the participation of nearly all of the Syrian forces stationed at Tel al-Qasr, including infantry, armor and artillery. The Israeli defenders numbered about 70 persons (67 according to Aharon Israeli's head count), most of them not regular fighters, with some Haganah and Palmach members. Their orders were to fight to the death. They had support from three 20 mm guns at Beit Yerah, deployed along the road from Samakh to Degania Alef. They also had a Davidka mortar, which exploded during the battle, and a PIAT with fifteen projectiles. At night, a Syrian expeditionary force attempted to infiltrate Degania Bet, but was caught and warded off, which caused the main Syrian force to attack Degania Alef first. At 06:00, the Syrians started a frontal armored attack, consisting of 5 tanks, a number of armored vehicles and an infantry company.[5] The Syrians pierced the Israeli defense, but their infantry was at some distance behind the tanks. The Israelis knocked out four Syrian tanks and four armored cars with 20 mm cannons, PIATs and Molotov cocktails.[33] Meanwhile, other defenders kept small arms fire on the Syrian infantry, who stopped in citrus groves a few hundred meters from the settlements. The surviving Syrian tanks withdrew back to the Golan.At 07:45, the Syrians halted their assault and dug in, still holding most of the territory between Degania Alef's fence and Samakh's police fort. They left behind a number of lightly damaged or otherwise inoperable tanks that the Israelis managed to repair.

 1948:  Jewish fighters scored their first victory over the Syrians at Deganya.  At 4:30 in the morning, Syrian troops crossed the Jordan and attacked the Kibbutz with tanks and flamethrowers.  By noon the tanks were inside the perimeter of Deganya when two 65 mm. howitzers and additional fighters under the command of Moshe Dyan arrived. When they went into action, the Syrians were so startled that they retreated.  One of the Syrian tanks that had penetrated the kibbutz and was destroyed remains to this day at Deganya as a memorial to the bravery of the defenders.  What seemed like a miracle was the result of a bold gamble by Yigal Yadin, the man who sent the guns in the first place.

 1948: The siege of Gesher ended when the two field pieces that had saved Deganya from the Syrians were rushed southwards.  The guns opened fire on the Iraqi forces besieging the Jewish fighters.  Faced with modern weapons, the Iraqis fled rather than fight.

1948: Foreign Minister Moshe Sharet informed Secretary-General Trygve Lie that Abba Eban was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.

1948: Mordechai "Modi" Alon and the rest of the Jewish pilots who have been training in Czechoslovakia board a DC-54 transport plane and begin their flight back to Israel.  Although they have not completed their training, the pilots are anxious to get home since they have heard that the Egyptian Air Force has been attacking the newly created Jewish state.

1948: Operation Balak officially begins with its first flight from a Czech airfield code named ‘Etzion.’ Operation Balak was the name given to secret program for purchasing and shipping arms to the infant Jewish state.

1948: The United Nations named Count Folke Bernadotte to serve as mediator between the Jewish and Arab states.

1948: “The River Lady,” a western filmed by cinematographer Irving Glassberg premiered in New York City today.

1949: Today the leader of Umm al-Fahm “signed on oath of allegiance to the State of Israel, which was in the “Little Triangle,” which had been awarded to Israel by the Lausanne Conference of 1949.

1949: “The Lady Gambles” in which Tony Curtis, appearing in only his third motion picture, plays the “bellboy” who has four lines and 10 seconds of screen time, was released in the United States today.

1950: Hedda Sterne signed a letter to President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 20 to protest aesthetically conservative group-exhibition juries. Born into a Jewish home in Bucharest, she was the “only woman in a group of Abstract Expressionists known as "The Irascibles.”

1950: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Alan Zweibel who has worked on several television shows starting with writing skits for “Saturday Night Live” and won the 2006 Thurber Prize for American Human for his novel The Other Shulman.

http://www.alanzweibel.com/

1951(14th of Iyar, 5771): Pesach Sheni

1951: In Manhattan, Bill Schwartz, a professor of social work at Columbia University, and social worker Ruth (Efron) Schwartz gave birth to Brandeis grad Gil David Schwartz, the CBS executive who wrote under the name of “Stanley Bing.” (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/business/media/gil-schwartz-dead-wrote-as-stanley-bing.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1951(14th of Iyar, 5771): Fifty five year old Solomon Landman, the Cincinnati born “son of Louis H. and Ada Gedalish Landman, the husband of “the former Rita Boehm,” father of Doris, Joan, Louis and Nathan Landman and graduate of the University Cincinnati and Hebrew College who began his rabbinic career B’rith Sholom Temple in Springfield, Il, founded the Hillel Chapter at the University of Wisconsin and was leading Temple Isaiah in Kew Gardens, Queens when he passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/05/21/87260846.pdf

1951: One day after he had passed away, funeral services were held “this afternoon in the village of Zichron Yaakov, near Haifa, for 64 year old David Remez, the Israeli Education who had begun his life in he village working as a laborer thirty-seven years ago and whose body had lain in state all night in Jerusalem where mourners including President Chaim Weizmann paid their respects.

1953(6th of Sivan, 5713) First Day of Shavuot

1953(6th of Sivan, 5713): Seventy eight year old University of Pennsylvania trained oral surgeon and Spanish American War veteran Dr. Morris I. Schamberg, the founder of “the division of oral surgery at the Vanderbilt Clinic” and the “head of orgal surgery at the New York Post Graduate Hospital who was the husband of Jean M. Chamber and the father of John Schamberg passed away today in Great Neck, NY.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/05/21/96623770.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1953(6th of Sivan, 5713): Sixty-seven year old Austrian native Nettie Kinsbruner, the daughter of Shmuel and Rachel Stettner and the wife of David Kinsbruner passed away today in Miami Beach.

1954(7th of Iyar, 5714): Selig Brodetsky, “a British Professor of Mathematics, a member of the World Zionist Executive, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the second president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem” passed away today.

1954: Release date for “Three Coins in A Fountain,” produced by Sol C. Siegel with music by Victor Young

1955(28th of Iyar, 5715): Seventy year old Russian born American artist Charles Polowetski passed away today.

http://www.askart.com/artist/Charles_Ezekiel_Polowetski/117580/Charles_Ezekiel_Polowetski.aspx#

1957(19th of Iyar, 5717): One worker was killed when a terrorist “opened fire in the Arava region.”

1957: Birthdate of Steven Leiber, a San Francisco art dealer and collector who became an expert in artists’ ephemera and built an archive that became an important resource for scholars and curators. (As reported by Roberta Smith)

1958: In Savannah, GA, a fire broke out at Adler’s Department Store which had been founded by Leopold Adler and subsequently run by his son Sam G. Adler, the husband of Elinor Grunsfeld Adler and his grandson Lee Adler, the husband of Emma Morel Adler.

1960: In Atlanta, GA, “the remodeled and expand facilities” of the Temple which had been bombed by segregationists following an appearance by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1958 are scheduled to be dedicate today.

1960: Birthdate of actor Tony Goldwyn

1961(5th of Sivan, 5721): Parashat Bamidbar; Erev Shavuot

1961(5th of Sivan, 5721): Seventy-five year old Myer Solomon Cohn, the Russian born son of Leo Cohn and the husband of Sadie Cohn passed away today in Hyattsville, MD.

1962(16th of Iyar, 5722): Fifty-six year old German born journalist turned American Social Worker Dr. Kurt Pine who came to the United States in 1940 where he eventually became “executive director of the Shorefront Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association” in Brooklyn and raised two children – Alfred and Annie – with his wife, “the former Bessie Halder” passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/21/94102891.pdf

1962: Two days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held in Brooklyn’s Union Temple for Hebrew Union College graduate and St. John’s University trained attorney, Sidney Saul Tedesche the Elmwood, Ohio born son of Alexander Tedesche and Jeanette Greenfield and 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

1962: An Orchestra Hall Concert of the Halevi Choral Society with Hyman Reznick conducting and featuring Cantor Jacob Barkin as guest soloist was recorded live today.

http://faujsa.fau.edu/music-data/301854/301854.pdf

1965(18th of Iyar, 5725): Lag B’Omer

1966: Birthdate of actress Mindy Cohn, who played Natalie on the sitcom “Facts of Life.”

1968(22nd of Iyar, 5728): Fifty-six year old concert pianist Ray Lev, the Rostov-on-Don born daughter of Cantor Moses whose last performance was on April 28 “when she played the Schuman concerto” passed away today.

https://broadcast41.com/biography/lev-ray

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/05/21/77089120.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1970: U.S. premiere of “Too Late the Hero,” a WW II film with a script by Lukas Heller.

1971: The Second Leningrad anti-Zionist trials in which Hillel Butman and Lev Yagman were two of the defendants came to an end today.

1972(7th of Sivan, 5732): Second Day of Shavuot

1972(7th of Sivan, 5732): Forty-three year old Irvin Milton “Bootsy” Lazarus, the son of Sam and Annie Lazarus passed away today.

1973(18th of Iyar, 5733): Lag B’Omer

1973: “Letter bombs were sent to Jewish and Israeli addresses in Britain and Holland” after which two Arabs were arrested by police and expelled from Great Britain.

1973(18th of Iyar, 5733): Sixty-three year old Charles Brasch, “a New Zealand poet, literary editor and arts patron who was the founding editor of the literary journal Landfall passed away today.

http://jewishonlinemuseum.org/charles-brasch

http://www.otago.ac.nz/press/landfall/index.html

1974(28th of Iyar, 5734): Leontine Sagan, Austrian born actress and founder of the National Theatre of Johannesburg passed away at the age of 85.

1974(28th of Iyar, 5734): Yom Yerushalayim

1977: JTA reported that “The Senate has confirmed President Carter's appointment of Manuel Plotkin, 53, a marketing research expert and executive of Sears Roebuck and Co., to be director of the Census Bureau. He will be the first Jew to hold that office of which Thomas Jefferson was the original incumbent in 1790. Senate approval of the appointment was without dissent. Plotkin, who was born in Irkutsk, Siberia, was taken by his parents to Mexico City at the age of three. The family moved to Chicago in 1929 where they have lived ever since. Plotkin and his wife, the former Dianne Weiss, are members of Temple Sholom in that city. As head of the Census Bureau, which is part of the Department of Commerce, Plotkin will oversee about 8000 employees, more than half in Washington and the rest in various points around the U.S. They comprise the field force for monthly population surveys including employment figures for the Department of Labor. Plotkin had been for two years the price economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics at its Chicago regional office and a year as survey coordinator in the Bureou's Washington office.”

1978: Three members of the PFLP (Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine) a terrorist organization, killed a policeman near El Al airlines at Orly Airport outside of Paris, France.

1979: After 857 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, the curtain came down today on the original Broadway production of “I Love My Wife,” the Cy Coleman and Michael Stewart musical.

1981:The Israeli Cabinet reportedly will meet today to discuss proposals made by Philip C. Habib, President Reagan's envoy who has been meeting with the President of Syria over the threat posed by his missiles located in Lebanon.

1983: “Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone” a sci-fi film starring Peter Strauss and with a score by Elmer Bernstein was released today in the United States.

1983: Journalism professor and author Nicholas Lemann was married today in a union that produced his two sons Alexander and Theodore.

1983: Due to being in a coma that followed an attack of pneumonia, Jan Peerce was not able to perform at was to have been his “comeback” concert scheduled for today.

1984(18th of Iyar, 5744): Lag B’Omer

1985: Israel exchanges 1150 Palestinian prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers

1988: Leonard Cohen performed a show in San Sebastian, which “Spanish TV station RTE televised” in its entirety.

1988: “Willow” a fantasy film featuring Kevin Pollak, was released in the United States today.

1989(15th of Iyar, 5749): Forty-two year old Comedienne Gilda Radner famed for her roles on “Saturday Night” Live died of ovarian cancer today.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/20/1989/gilda-radner

1991(7th of Sivan, 5751): Second Day of Shavuot; Yizkor

1992: Poet and college professor Charles Bernstein and artist Susan Bee gave birth to their second child, Felix Bernstein

http://felixbernstein.com/bio.html

1993: NBC broadcast the final episode of season four of “Seinfeld” tonight.

1993: The Jerusalem Post reported that in her 43rd State Comptroller's Annual Report, the State Comptroller, Dr. Miriam Porat, warned that pension funds may soon begin defaulting on payments, if urgent steps are not taken to reduce their huge actuarial deficits. The problem, she disclosed, was compounded by the abuses of the Histadrut, whose funds represented 93 per cent of all fund members. The Histadrut, she pointed out, often forces workers to sign up for its funds via collective wage agreements, and then assigns them to these with large actuarial deficits.

1994(10th of Sivan, 5754): Staff Sgt. Moshe Bukra, age 30 and Cpl. Erez Ben-Baruch, age 24 were shot dead by HAMAS terrorists at a roadblock one kilometer south of the Erez checkpoint in the Gaza Strip

1994(10th of Sivan, 5754): Eighty-nine year old Meer Parodenck “the founder and president of the Parodneck Foundation for Self-Help Housing and Community Development, and president of the board of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board” passed away today.  (As reported by Richard D. Lyons)

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/22/obituaries/meyer-parodneck-89-advocate-for-the-poor-of-new-york-dies.html

1997: “Roseanne,” a sitcom created by, and starring Roseanne Barr ended its final season.

1998(24th of Iyar, 5758): Ninety-three-year-old Hungarian native and “Jewish historian and educator Jacob Katz who began teaching in Palestine in 1936 and became a full professor at Hebrew University in 1962 passed away today.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/katz-jacob

1998(24th of Iyar, 5758): Seventy-three year old author Cyril Wolf Mankowitz passed away today in County Cork.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-wolf-mankowitz-1158253.html

2000(15th of Iyar, 5760): Parashat Behar

2000: “A week that began in violence ended violently here, with bloody clashes in the West Bank and Gaza and intensified fighting in southern Lebanon.”

2001:The New York Timesfeatured books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Tell Me A Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television” by Don Hewitt the son of German Jewish and Russian Jewish immigrant who transformed television journalism.

2002(9th of Sivan, 5762):Sixty-year old Stephen Jay Gould an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science who was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation” passed away today. (As reported by Carol Kaesuk Yoon)

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/us/stephen-jay-gould-60-is-dead-enlivened-evolutionary-theory.html?mcubz=0

2002, today, two years after being released in the United States “Escape: Human Cargo,” co-starring Sasson Gabai was broadcast for the first time in Finland.

2002: Yitzhak Vaknin left the position of Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Welfare.

2002: Hamas claimed credit for the highway bombing at Afula.

2003(18th of Iyar, 5763): Lag B’Omer

2003: Today on C-Span, author and historian Robert Caro, the son of Yiddish speaking Jewish refugee from Warsaw, talked about Master of the Senate, the third in his planned five volume biography of Lyndon Johnson.

2004: “An Israeli court today convicted Marwan Barghouti, a top aide to the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and an emblem of resistance, on murder charges relating to attacks that killed five Israelis, brushing aside his protests that Israel had no right to try him.

2005: “Tamar Schwartz and her daughter, Hadas, 4, were sleeping when the mortar, grenade and rifle attack came early this morning” at Kfar Darom.

2006: “'It's Your Birthday, Clifford Odets! A Centennial Exhibition' at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery” published today provides a window into the artistic side of man whom most of us think of as a playwright.

2007: The New York Times published an op-ed piece by novelist and commentator Mark Helprin arguing “that intellectual property rights should be assigned to an author or artist as far as Congress could practically extend them.”

2007: In New York City, rededication of Kehila Kedosha Janina. Eighty years ago, Kehila Kedosha Janina opened its doors to serve the small Romaniote Jewish community on the Lower East Side joining hundreds of other Jewish houses of worship in the neighborhood. By the 1940’s there would be other Romaniote synagogues in the New York area. Today this is the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere and one of only five original Jewish houses of worship on the Lower East Side that still functions as an active synagogue.

2007: The Upper Mid-West Region of Hadassah presents “Zay Gesunt – You Should Live and Be Well” in Bloomington, Minnesota.

2007: The New York Times features reviews of books written by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson and Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffep; translated by Shelley Frisch.

2007: The Los Angeles Times and The Sunday Washington Posteach feature a review of Shakespeare’s Kitchen by Lore Segal. “The protagonist of Shakespeare's Kitchen is Ilka Weisz, a scrappy, opinionated Jewish refugee who has appeared in slightly different guises in Segal's earlier novels, Her First American and Other People's Houses.

2007: Herzalyia Mayor Yael German presented Eliahu Hacohen with the Herzl Award, “the high priest of research into Israeli songs, who has dedicated his life to strengthening the link with our cultural heritage.”

2007(3rd of Sivan, 5767): Ben Wiesman a classically trained pianist, who helped write nearly 60 songs for Elvis Presley, passed away at the age of 85.

2007(3rd of Sivan, 5767): Barcuh Kimmerling, Professor of Sociology at Hebrew University and author of The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society and the Military, passed away.

2007: In Cleveland, Ohio, Case Western Reserve University confers an honorary Doctor of Humanities on Morton Mandel who served as a Case Western Reserve University trustee from 1977 through 1992, and is now an honorary trustee. In addition, he is a recipient of the university's Newton D. Baker Distinguished Alumni Award. Mandel has been involved in numerous national and international activities, the Council of Jewish Federations, the Mandel Leadership Institute, and the World Conference of Jewish Community Centers.

2008: Mashina is an Israeli pop rock band considered by many to be Israel's most important and influential rock band. Their musical style took inspiration from ska and hard rock, among others. Mashina is an Israeli pop rock band considered by many to be Israel's most important and influential rock band. Their musical style took inspiration from ska and hard rock, among others.Mashina, one of Israel’s most influential pop rock bands plays at Webster Hall in New York.

2008: At Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, Michael Levin successfully defends his dissertation.  “A Doctor Is Born.”

2009: Kevin Youkilis, “the first baseman and cleanup hitter for the Red Sox returned from the 15-day disabled list today night and promptly went 3-for-5 to raise his average to .404.”

2009:John Simon Bercow officially announced that he was seeking the Speakership of the House of Commons.  Victory would make him the first Jew to serve in this position

2009:  Final day for The Tel Aviv Centennial Multimedia Exhibit at Vanderbilt Hall, Grand Central Station, NY

2009: In New York, City Winery celebrates Israel’s 61st Year of Independence with a tasting featuring wines from over 15 Israeli Wineries paired with Israeli singing sensation David Broza for the post-tasting entertainment.  The event would appear to show tjat Jews have gained their independence from the syrupy taste of the Concord grape concoction that was the staple of Jewish homes for decades.

2009: For the last time Lt. Col. Shawn M. Pine mailed a box of scarves to his sister Michelle Lefkowitz. He purchased the scarves on a weekly basis from a little girl in Afghanistan who sold them to support her family.

2009(26th of Iyar, 5769): Fifty-one year old Army Lt. Colonel Shawn M. Pine was killed today when a vehicle in which he was riding in was struck by an explosive device near Kabul, Afghanistan.  A second generation soldier, Pine served six years in the IDF before graduating from Georgetown University and pursuing a career in the U.S. Army.  He is buried next to his father at Arlington National Cemetery. (As reported by Maia Efrem)

2009(26th of Iyar, 5769): Twenty-one year old USAF First Lieutenant Roslyn L. Schulte  was killed today when a vehicle in which she was riding in was struck by an explosive device near Kabul, Afghanistan. An intelligence officer, she was the first female USAF Academy graduate to have died in combat.  She was killed in the same attack that took the life of Lt. Col. Pine. (As reported by Maia Efrem)

2009:Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced today that Iran has successfully test-fired a new advanced missile with a range of about 1,200 miles, far enough to strike Israel and southeastern Europe as well as U.S. bases in the Gulf.

2009:As described in the articled archaeologists from Israel’s Antiquities Authority (IAA) have revealed two important artifacts recently discovered in Jerusalem, both dating from the First Temple Period.

 

The first, a bone seal engraved with the name “Shaul” was found in an excavation being conducted under the auspices of the IAA, in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park, located in the City of David. The dig, which is underwritten by the “Ir David Foundation” (City of David) is being carried out under the direction of Professor Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the IAA.The seal, which is made of bone, was found broken and is missing a piece from its upper right side. Two parallel lines divide the surface of the seal into two registers in which Hebrew letters are engraved. A period followed by a floral image or a tiny fruit appear at the end of the bottom name. The name of the seal’s owner was completely preserved and it is written in the shortened form of the name, Shaul, which is known from both the Bible (Genesis 36:37; 1 Samuel 9:2; 1 Chronicles 4:24 and 6:9) and from other Hebrew seals. Another Hebrew seal and three Hebrew bullae (pieces of clay stamped with seal impressions) were previously discovered nearby. The second artifact, an ancient jar handle bearing the Hebrew name “Menachem” was uncovered in the neighborhood of Ras el ‘Amud during an excavation prior to construction of a girls’ school by the Jerusalem municipality. The jar handle, inscribed with the name "Menachem" carved in Hebrew, was found among settlement remains dating to different phases of the Middle Canaanite period (2200 – 1900 BCE), and the last years of the First Temple period (8-7 BCE) that were recently uncovered during the excavation. The name Menachem Ben Gadi is noted in the Bible as that of a king of Israel who reigned for 10 years in Samaria, as one of the last kings of the Kingdom of Israel. According to Kings II, Menachem Ben Gadi ascended the throne in the 39th year of Uzziah, King of Judah (Judea). The names Menachem and Yinachem both are expressions of condolence, noted excavation director Dr. Ron Be’eri, who speculated they might be related to the death of family members. The archaeologist added that such names already appeared earlier in the Canaanite period, on Egyptian pottery sherds and a document about an Egyptian governor on the Lebanese coast. This is the first time that a handle with the name “Menachem” has been found in Jerusalem.

2009:Four men arrested were arrested tonight, shortly after planting a 16.78-kilogram mock explosive device in the trunk of a car outside the Riverdale Temple and two mock bombs in the backseat of a car outside the Riverdale Jewish Center, another synagogue a few blocks away, authorities said

2010(7th of Sivan, 5770): Second Day of Shavuot

2010(7th of Sivan, 5770): Eighty-two year old Leonard Wolfson (Baron Wolfson) passed away today.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/leonard-wolfson-businessman-and-philanthropist-1990944.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/17/lord-wolfson-obituary

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/finance-obituaries/7750834/Lord-Wolfson.html

2010: The First Festival of Israeli Jazz NY is scheduled to open at The Stone in the East Village.

2010:The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum reopened parts of its grounds to visitors on today after floodwaters from the nearby Vistula and Sola rivers seemed to peak and begin to recede.

2010: Hedy Lamarr was chosen from 150 IT people to be featured in a short film launched by the British Computer Society

2011:Cedar Village in Mason, Ohio is schedule to host an event entitled “Memory and Jewish Identity” during which Dr. Adrian Parr, associate professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and affiliate faculty, Department of Philosophy and Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati will use the narrative of her grandmother’s survival of the Holocaust and her own subsequent discovery of her Jewish identity to explore the importance of Jewish cultural memory for keeping Jewish identity alive amidst adversity.

2011:Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with President Obama the White House today.

2011:Violin virtuoso Gil Shaham is scheduled to play “Walton’s sublime and rarely performed Violin Concerto, a masterpiece of the violin literature commissioned and debuted by Jascha Heifetz in 1936, with one of the world's greatest ensembles, The Philadelphia Orchestra.”

2011: In “Perched in Berlin With Hitler Rising,” Janet Maslin reviewed In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson.  Just when you thought you knew all you needed to know about the Hitler era, along comes Larson who provides a fascinating, informative snapshot of the pre-war world focusing on the life of William E. Dodd, FDR’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Berlin and his exotic daughter.

2011: Despite political unrest, pilgrims are scheduled to celebrate Lag B’Omer at the El Ghriba synagogue.  The normally vibrant celebrations will take a more muted form because of the unstable conditions in Tunisia.

2011(16th of Iyar, 57771): Just a week before his 96th birthday, Arieh Handler, on the founders of the Religious Zionist movement and the last living person to have present at when Israel declared her independence passed away today.

http://www.thejc.com/news/israel-news/49280/arieh-handler-dies-israel

2012: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the family and friends of Dr. Todd Burstain, a hameshah mensch who has raised four fantastic sons, are looking forward to celebrating his birthday today.

2012: Eirc Greitens was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Tufts University when he gave the commencement speech at the school's 156th commencement

2012: In Flushing, NY, the Free Synagogue is scheduled to host the Second Annual Sacred Sites Open House organized by The New York Landmarks Conservancy

2012: Dr. Hal Lewis, President and CEO of Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago, is scheduled to deliver the keynote address as part of Let My People Know, an afternoon of Jewish education at the Mayerson JCC in Cincinnati, Ohio.

2012: A Jerusalem Day family celebration featuring a concert by Peter Himmelman is scheduled to take place at Ohev Shalom in Washington, D.C.

2012: Schmekel, “Brooklyn's only 100% transgender, 100% Jewish, schtick-rock sensation” is scheduled to appear at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room in Washington, DC

2012:JSSA (Jewish Social Service Agency) is scheduled to hold its largest annual fundraiser, Gala 2012, in Washington, DC.  JSSA Gala 2012 – An Evening of Passion and Purpose – will feature performance artist, David Garibaldi.

2012: The NMAJMH and the JSC are scheduled to devote a special afternoon to “Family Stories: Daughters, Mothers and Bubbes.”

2012: In Cleveland Ohio, the Hadassah chapter will host a celebratory Centennial Birthday brunch to honor the accomplishments of the largest Jewish volunteer organization in America and present the Centennial Award to life member, Moreland Hills resident Roz Abraham.

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Causeco-authored by Eric Alterman and Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen

2012: Security forces intercepted a Palestinian squad that attempted to kidnap Israeli citizens in the West Bank, the Shin Bet indicated today, adding that the squad's purpose was to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jail.

2012(28th of Iyar, 5772): Celebration of Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Reunification Day – 45years of Jerusalem being undivided and under control of the rightful owners.

2012(28th of Iyar, 5772): Seventy-eight year old London born human rights activist David Gerald Littman passed away today.

http://www.dhimmitude.org/littman-biography.html

2013: Dr/ Ted Merwin, associate professor and director, Religion and Judaic Studies at Dickinson College will speak on the topic "American Jews in Entertainment" at JFK Airport as part of the US Customs and Border Protection service’s celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month.

2013: Friends and family of Dr. Todd Burstain gather in Cedar Rapids to celebrate the birthday of this father of four of the finest young men imaginable – a real credit to the Jewish community

2013: Ira Forman, who led President Obama’s reelection campaign in the Jewish community, was appointed as the State Department’s envoy to combat anti-Semitism today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-jewish-dems-chief-tapped-for-anti-semitism-post/

2013: Grafitti reading 'Torah tag' and 'Women of the Wall are wicked' that had been painted on a wall leading up to the apartment of Peggy Cidor, a longstanding member of the board of Women of the Wall was discovered this morning.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/vandals-spray-paint-inciting-graffiti-outside-jerusalem-home-of-women-of-the-wall-activist.premium-1.524905

 

2014: Today’s session of the 4th International Writers Festival begins “with a poetry encounter for high school students with the works of Yehuda Amichai, and ends with singing the songs of Amichai.” (As reported by Jessica Steinberg)

2014: “The US called on Israel today to open an investigation into the deaths of two Palestinian teenagers shot during clashes with the IDF in the West Bank last week, after video emerged showing them unarmed during the incident” even though the Israeli government has already said that the video was heavily “doctored” and did not show the level of threat facing the Israelis.

2014: “Bulgaria is making progress in hunting down the terrorists responsible for a July 2012 bombing in the resort city of Burgas that killed five Israelis, the country’s leader said today in Jerusalem.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/bulgaria-we-will-bring-burgas-bombers-to-justice-soon/

2014: “An IDF raid on the Jenin refugee neighborhood in Samaria today exposed weapons and improvised explosive devices, as well as knives and various kinds of ammunition. In the course of the raid, local terrorists fired live rounds at the soldiers but no members of the IDF were hit.”

 

2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC in Manhattan

 

2014(20th of Iyar, 5774): Ninety-year old Arthur Gelb, one of those “Times Men” who shaped the national culture and helped set the national agenda passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/business/media/new-york-times-editor-arthur-gelb-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/business/media/new-york-times-editor-arthur-gelb-dies.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=1

2015: Ten Jewish Baltimoreans are scheduled to be inducted into the Baltimore Jewish Hall of Fame at the JCC “for their contributions to the arts, business, education, philanthropy and community building.”

http://jewishtimes.com/36994/hall-of-fame/

 

2015: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host a screening of “Iraq N’ Roll.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-movements-strife-over-shavuot-night-event/

2015: Jean Naggar is scheduled to discuss her memoir Sipping from the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt at the Center for Jewish History.

2015(2nd of Sivan, 5775): Ninety-two year old “Julia Hartman, one of the last surviving fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during WWII passed away” this morning.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4659808,00.html

2015: “Two Border Police officers – a man and a woman – were wounded” this morning “in a vehicular terror attack in Jerusalem on the ascent to the Mount of Olives.”

2015: In Philadelphia, PA, the National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host “Portraits & Politics: The Resonance of ‘Family Affairs.’”

http://www.nmajh.org/CalendarEvent.aspx?eventid=316

2015: “Ten Jewish Baltimoreans” including Lois Blum Feiblatt and television executive Barry Levinson were “inducted into the Baltimore Jewish Hall of Fame at the JCC.

2016: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host the Chamber Music Ensembles - Competition Winners - of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

2016: The Israeli Consulate is scheduled to host the 2016 “Beyond Conference.”

2016: In the United Kingdom, the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “Bring A Friend Shabbat Dinner” this evening.

2016:”Israel’s defense minister,” Moshe Alone,” abruptly announced his resignation today, saying he had lost faith in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was “fearful for Israel’s future” after his job had apparently been offered to a rival in a far-right party.”

2016: In Coralville, Iowa, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host is annual “Mediterranean-style Family Shabbat Dinner.”

2017(24th of Iyar, 5777):  Finish Vayikra with the reading of Behar and Bechukotai

2017(24th of Iyar, 5777): In Cincinnati, ordination ceremonies are scheduled to take place at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion.

2017: “Open House Tel Aviv, or Batim Mibifnim, an urban festival of architecture and design — now in it’s 11th year — showcasing the city’s chic urban style” is scheduled to come to an end today.

2017: Holocaust survivor Sonia Kaplan, the author of My Endless War is scheduled to appear at the USHMM as part of the “meet the author” program.

2018: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including White Houses by Amy Bloom, Fascism: A Warning by Madeline Albright with Bill Woodward, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? by Robert Kuttner and Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World by Samuel Moyn

2018(6th of Sivan, 5778): Shavuot

2018(6th of Sivan, 5778):Ninety-seven year old Bill Gold, the Brooklyn born son of “Paul and Rose (Sachs) Gold, whose name you might not know but whose posters for such movies as “Casablanca” are classics passed away today in Greenwich, CT. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/obituaries/bill-gold-dead-movie-posters.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2018: In Little Rock, AR, the Chabad Jewish Center under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment, the quintessential “Lamplighter” is scheduled to host “a special reading of the Ten Commandments followed by a dairy Kiddush featuring cheesecake and ice cream”

2018 In Iowa City, a scheduled double header includes a Shavuot Service at the Chabad House followed by “a Kiddush in honor of Yasha Leba” the daughter of Chaya and Rabbi Avrohom Blesofsky.

2019: As charges of corruption swirled around Prime Minister Netanyahu tonight “Israel’s parliament announced that an “immunity bill,” filed by a Netanyahu loyalist, was among 200 measures slated for votes in the current session.”

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “The Testament,” a Holocaust film with a strange twist.

2019: The Center for Jewish History, the American Jewish Historical Society, Yeshiva University and the Museum of the Jewish People are scheduled to host Alfred H. Moses, “President Clinton’s first ambassador to Romania” and the author of Bucharest Diary: Romania’s Journey from Darkness to Light and former Senator Joe Lieberman “as they discuss Moses’s historic work and key diplomatic role in Romania’s transition from its Communist past to democracy - and from “darkness to light.”

2019: The Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan is scheduled to host “Israel Story Live, an evening of magical live radio with the creators of Israel Story—the award winning radio show and podcast that public radio icon Ira Glass calls ‘the Israeli This American Life’.”

2019: At Tifereth Israel Synagogue in Des Moines, IA, the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines is scheduled to “Ethiopian-born diplomat Ariella Rada” as she speaks about “The People of Israel: A Study in Diversity.”

2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host Dan Abrams as his talks with Chris Cuomo about Abrams’ latest book, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense.

2019: “Lest We Forget” which has been on display outside of the City Hall in San Francisco since April 15 is scheduled to come to a close today. 2020

https://www.jccmanhattan.org/arts-ideas/conversations/israel-story-live/

2020: Via Zoom, the Streicker Center is scheduled to present “Becoming Ruth” with Dr. Avivah Zornberg

2020: The Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to host on “Behind ‘Unorthodox’: Debunking Myths of Ultra-Orthodoxy.”

2020: Chabad in Iowa City, is scheduled to celebrate the birthday of Chaya Blesoksky, the wife of Rabbi Abrohom Blesofsky in honor of which 42 women will be lighting Shabbat candles in her honor on May 22.

2020: Via Zoom, the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to a shiur on Abraham and Jonah” where will “be looking at the implications of poor communications in the Tanakh, and how we relate this to our everyday lives.”

2020: Via Zoom, from San Francisco Sherit Israel is scheduled to host “The victims of COVID-19: A discussion on how the virus affects its oldest and youngest patients with Dr. Bennett Zier & Dr. Valerie Flaherman will be interviewed by Dr. Jonathan Graf.

https://www.sherithisrael.org/event/covid-19-a-conversation-from-the-front-line3.html

2021: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present Dr. Michael Marmur and Rabbi David Ellenson, editors of American Jewish Thought Since 1934: Writings on Identity, Engagement, & Belief, published one year ago, who will delve into the shifting soundscape around questions of loyalty and belonging, religious practice, secular discontents and the creative American recasting of Jewish peoplehood.

2021: The Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “They Ain’t Ready For Me” and “Thou Shalt Not Hate.”

2021: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present via Zoom, “Sephardi Thought and Modernity: Rabbi Yosef Knafo’s Struggle for Democratization of Knowledge in Fin de Siècle Essaouira.”

https://programs.cjh.org/event/sephardi-thought-2021-05-20

2021: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host lunchtime “conversation with Muzzy Rosenblatt, CEO and President of the Bowery Residents’ Committee.”

https://programs.cjh.org/event/at-lunch-2021-05-20

2021: In Palm Beach, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to present a virtual “Tour of Morocco with an emphasis the history of Jewish Morocco led by Professor Roy Mittleman – Directory of Jewish Studies at CCNY, BA from Univ. of Pennsylvania, Masters in Religion from Temple University, graduate of Reconstructionist Rabbinic College in Philadelphia. 

2021: Case Western Reserve University's Siegal Lifelong Learning Program is scheduled to host a remote lecture on “Budgets, Boycotts, And Babies: Jewish Women in the Great Depression.”

2021: In Columbus, OH, Congregation Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host “Who Knows One?” Jewish Geography Zoom Racing.”

2021: Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County is scheduled to present via Zoom, Chair Yoga with Sheri Glick.

2021: Based on previously published reports, as of today Israelis will be dealing with mixed messages including President Biden prodding Prime Minister Netanyahu to “de-escalate” tensions at a time when more rockets are being fired from Lebanon and Israeli military intelligence is predicting the possibility of some sort of cross-border incursion by terrorists coming from Gaza.

 

 

This Day, May 21, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. and Deb Levin Z"L

$
0
0

May 21

383: As the emperor struggles to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire he promulgates a law that denies anybody who converts from Christianity to another religion the right to make a will.  This law may have had some impact on the Jews, but the real target were the Romans who sought to become pagans or Manichaens, followers of the Persian prophet Mani.  (Sometimes Jews are just “collateral damage” in other people’s struggles for power)

878: Syracuse is captured by the Muslim sultan of Sicily. This change from Christian to Muslim rulers seems to have had little effect on the Jews of Syracuse. Israelite traders who visited the ancient colony when it was ruled by the Greeks were probably the first Jews to settle in Syracuse.

The Jewish population grew after the destruction of the Second Temple when the Romans brought Jewish slaves to Sicily.  Life for the Jews of Syracuse would take a negative turn in 1492 when Sicily came under Spanish domination.

996: Otto III begins his reign as Holy Roman Emperor which included modern day Germany.  Records exist that show Jews had been living in Cologne during the reign of Otto’s predecessor, Otto II and the community grew enough so that a synagogue was constructed in the first decade of the 11th century.

1529: Thirty Jews were burned in Bosnia, Hungary

1577: Portuguese Marranos were granted permission to settle in Brazil

1671: Frederick William the Hohenzollern the Margrave of Brandenburg readmitted the Jews to his domain including the capital at Berlin. Although they were permitted to live and trade where they wished they had to pay a protection tax of 8 Thalers, and a gold florin for every wedding and funeral. In addition, Jews were not allowed to sell their houses to other Jews and were only permitted to have prayer rooms but no Synagogues

1674: John Sobieski was elected by the nobility to be the King of Poland. The Jews of the Polish town of Przemysl had suffered economic reverses and had been forced to borrow from nobles prior to John Sobieski’s coming to the throne.  In 1678, there was a major fire in the Jewish section of Premysl and the King John granted them special dispensation from their debt re-payment so that they could rebuild their portion of the town. King John would make further extensions for his Jewish subjects because he was concerned that they would leave the kingdom and take their mercantile and managerial skills with them.

1759: Thirteen year old Sampson Gideon, the son of Sampson Eardley, 1stBaron Eardley, “a Jewish banker” and advisor to the British government, was “created a baronet today.

1760(6th of Sivan, 5520): As England and France clash during the Seven Years War, British Jews observe the First Day of Shavuot.  The Jews had been expelled from France so there was nobody in Paris to observe the festival.

1769(14thof Iyar, 5529): Pesach Sheni is observed a week after Charles III of Spain had sent out Spanish missionaries, who found missions in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Monterey which meant the Inquisition could come to what is now the state of California.

1772(18thof Iyar, 5532): Lag B’Omer

1772: In Boston, MA, Single Copley and the former Susanna Clarke gave birth to John Singleton Copley, the 1st Baron Lyndhurst who in 1852, as a member of the House of Lords favored a bill design to remove the disabilities imposed upon persons refusing to take the “oaths of abjuration” which kept Jews from serving in the House of Commons.

1779(6thof Sivan, 5539): Shavuot is observed as Benedict Arnold is beginning his betrayal of the forces arrayed against the British in the American fight for independence.

1796: In London, New York native Joseph Hart Myers and the former Leah Jacobs gave birth to Naphtali Hart Myers.

1798(6thof Sivan, 5558): Two days before the Society of United Irishman, a group including Protestants and Catholics start a rebellion against British rule, Jews observe the First Day of Shavuot

1799: French troops under Napoleon retreated from Acre thus ending a two month siege of the Ottoman held city.  The retreat marked the end of Napoleon’s dream of an eastern empire which included a promise to the local Jews that Palestine would become their home.

1802: Benjamin Moses Van Praagh married Elizabeth Joseph Speyer today in the United Kingdom.

1809(6thof Sivan): As the Napoleon faces the Austrians on the first day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling, Jews observe the first day of Shavuot

1813: Birthdate of English “engineer and politician” Jacob d’Aguilar Samuda, the “younger son of Abraham Samuda” and brother of Jacob Samuda with whom he formed Samuda Brothers and who was both an MP and the husband Louisa Samuda with whom he had one daughter, Ada.

1814(2nd of Sivan): Rabbi Aryeh Leib Berlin passed away

1817(6thof Sivan, 5577): For the first time during the Presidency of the newly inaugurated James Monroe, Jews in the United States observe Shavuot.

1819: Sander bar Aharon’s wife Rosey Aaron who passed away yesterday was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.

1820 (NS): Birthdate of Nikolaus von Giers, who served as Foreign Minister while Alexander III promulgated the infamous May Laws. 

1823: In Naples, Carl Mayer von Rothschild and Adelheid von Rothschild gave birth to Adolph Carl (Karl) Rothschild

1826(14thof Iyar, 5586): Pesach Sheni observed as the Turks appear to be successful in putting down the Greek revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

1827: Birthdate of Hermann Byk, the son of Alexander Mendel Byk.

1829(18thof Iyar, 5589): Lag B’Omer

1829: Jacob Ansell married Rachel Isaacs at the Great Synagogue today.

1829: In Frankfurt-on-Main Solomon Michael Geiger, the eldest brother of Abraham Geiger and his wife gave birth to philosopher and philologist Lazarus Geiger

1832: In Charleston, SC, Abraham Moise and Caroline Moses gave birth to Edwin Warren Moise. A Sephardic Jew whose family had made its way from Alsace to the French Caribbean before settling in South Carolina’s major seaport, pursued a career as a lawyer, soldier in the CSA and adjutant general in the post-Civil War Palmetto State. (As reported by Robert N. Rosen)

1844: Nathan Elias married Sarah Moses at the Great Synagogue in London.

1845(14thof Iyar, 5606): Pesach Sheni observed members of a convention gather in Texas to vote on joining the Union.

1847(6thof Sivan, 5607): Shavuot

1848(18thof Iyar, 5608): Lag B’Omer

1848: Lazarus Jacobs married Ann Isaacs at the Great Synagogue in London on the first day when allowed by Jewish tradition. (See above)

1850: Birthdate of Hermann Frenkel, the Danzig born banker who also a noted art collector.

1852: The New York Times reported that in Germany “the citizens of ‘Luboc’ have referred to a committee a decree of the Senate” that would place Jews on an equal footing with other citizens.”

1853:The New York Times reported that the Trieste Gazette had published a letter from Jerusalem dated March 27 in which it described the outbreak of violence between English missionaries and a group of Jews on March 24.  The missionaries had gathered in front of the Great Synagogue and while the Jews were praying inside, they began giving “speeches against the Jews and the Talmud.  A Jew threw a cat at one of the missionaries which sparked a fight between the two groups.  Eventually, the English retreated and the Chief Rabbi went to the European consular officials to protest the offensive behavior.

1854: The Washington Sentinel printed an editorial entitled “The Jews as Citizens” which said that the “the absence of applications for relief was…not an index of Jewish affluence” but a result of the Jewish community providing for the financial needs of their co-religionist. After noting that Jews were absent from the jails and poorhouses, the editorialist concluded that Jews “are among the best, most orderly well disposed of our citizens.”

1863: Fifty-eighty year old Culling Eardley whose support of the Jaffa to Jerusalem railway was based on his belief that “the railway would serve Christen missionary activity” caused Moses Montefiore to back away from the project, passed away today.

1864(15thof Iyar, 5624): Parashat Behar was read on the same day that the two week segment of Grant’s Overland Campaign, known as the Battle of Spotsylvania, came to end with Lee’s Army still uncaptured but being forced ever further back on Richmond.

1864: Birthdate of George Moses Price, the native of Poltava who came to the NYC in 1882 where he earned a medical degree from New York University and became a leader in the field of sanitation.

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05244.html

1866(7thof Sivan, 5626): Second Day of Shavuot

1866: In Baltimore, MD, Max White and Annie Lewin gave birth to Henry “Harry” White a labor leader in the garment industry who has served as general secretary of the United Garment Workers of America (AFL) which he help to found since 1896 and is the Editor of The Garment Worker and The Weekly Bulletin of the Clothing Trade.

1866: The New York Times features a review of “Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church Part II” by Arthur P. Stanley in which the author traces the history of the Jews from Samuel to the Captivity.

1868: Birthdate of Heinrich Brody (German) or Bródy Henrik (Hungarian) “a Hungarian (after 1918 Czechoslovakian) rabbi. He was born in Ungvár, a town historically part of Hungary, now of the Ukraine. He was a descendant of Abraham Broda. Educated in the public schools of his native town and at the rabbinical colleges of Tolcsva and Pressburg, Hungary, Brody also studied at the Hildesheimer Theological Seminary and at the University of Berlin, being an enthusiastic scholar of the Hebrew language and literature. He was for some time secretary of the literary society Mekiẓe Nirdamim, and in 1896 founded the "Zeitschrift für Hebräische Bibliographie", of which he was coeditor with A. Freiman. Brody was the rabbi of the congregation of Náchod, Bohemia and chief rabbi of Prague (both cities then part of Austria-Hungary), before moving to Palestine. In Czechoslovakia, he was the leader of the Mizrachi movement. He passed away in 1942.

1870: Birthdate of Sarah Vasen, the first Jewish woman doctor in Los Angeles and first superintendent and resident physician of Kaspare Cohn Hospital (later Cedars-Sinai Hospital) (As reported by Julie Beardsley)

http://home.earthlink.net/~nholdeneditor/Sarah%20Vasen.htm

1871: Reverend Howard Crosby delivered an address to group interested in the exploration of the Holy Land.  During his speech he described plans for an upcoming expedition that hoped to find “the actual tombs of the Kings, the ark of the covenant and the tables of stone written on by the fingers of God…”

1872: It was reported today that the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a motion by Mr. Cox, requesting the President to join with the Italian government in its protest against the intolerance and cruelty practiced towards the Jews of Romania.

1872: One day after he had passed away, 73 year old Abraham Edmon, the son of Eliaser Abraham and Kitty Emdon, the husband of Lydia David and father of Eleanor Emdon was buried today at the “Plymouth Hoe Burial Ground.

1872: Mr. Benjamin J. Hart presided over tonight’s annual meeting of the Convention of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites which was held at the Forty-fourth-street Synagogue in New York City. The deteriorating condition of the Jews of Romania dominated most of the evening’s discussion.  A letter that Secretary of State Hamilton Fish had sent to the United States Consul at Bucharest instructing him to intercede with Romanian government was read to the convention.  The delegates outlined a plan of action to help bring pressure on the Romanians and created a Committee on Immigration to help those who had been forced to flee to the United States due to the persecution in Eastern Europe.  The delegates voted to hold the next annual convention in Washington, D.C.

1872: The Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin reported that General Henry C. Wayne who had served the Confederacy as the Adjutant-General of Georgia during the Civil War, was supporting Grant over Horace Greely in the upcoming Presidential election. In explaining Southern support for the General who defeated them he wrote, “We cannot stand being carried in the pockets of a foreign Jew banker though Tammany finds it a profitable investment.”  [The “foreign Jew banker may have been a reference to August Belmont, who was Chairman of the Democratic Party after the Civil War.  He resigned the post following the Presidential election of 1872.]

1872: Charles Netter wrote a letter today describing how pupils from Mikveh Israel who had spent Passover with their parents in Jerusalem “were subject to persecutions and publicly vilified.”  According to Netter, the parents were urged to withdraw their children by Rabbis who did not object to Jewish children being sent to schools run by Protestant missionaries. The rabbinic objection to attendance at Mikveh Israel, was based on a fear that they would get less in the way of Halukkah funds. Halukkah refers to funds collected in the galut to support Jews living in Palestine; a collection that dated back to the Middle Ages.  Founded in 1870, Mikveh Israel was the first agricultural school operated by the Alliance Israelite Universelle.

1876: “The Temple At Jerusalem,” published today reported that more has been written about The Temple in Jerusalem than any other building in history and that most of it has been totally inaccurate.  The article included references to modern efforts to map the Temple Mount including Frederick Catherwood’s survey in 1833 and the even more accurate work done by Captain Charles Wilson in 1864 and 1865.

1876: Judge P.J. Joachimsen of New York presided over today’s annual convention of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites in Philadelphia, PA.  The report of the executive committee dealt primarily with the conditions of the Jews of Palestine and Roumania. During the afternoon, the delegates visited a Jewish hospital and in the evening elected officers to serve during the coming year. 

1876: In Detroit, Michigan, David W. Simons and his wife gave birth to University of Michigan trained attorney Charles C. Simons and husband of Lillian Bernstein who was appointed by President Harding to serve as a U.S. District Judge in February, 1923.

1878(18th of Iyar, 5638): Lag B'Omer

1878: Birthdate of 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.

1879: Birthdate of Ada Rosenthal Salus the wife of University of Pennsylvania trained lawyer and Republican political leader Samuel Salus and the mother of Arthur S. Salus.

1881: The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton.Washington businessman Adolphus Simeon Solomons, a member of a prominent Sephardic family, played a key role in the founding of the humanitarian organization.  In fact, Clara Barton called him her "good vice president and kind counselor."

1885(7thof Sivan, 5645): 2nd day of Shavuot, Yizkor

1885: In Lithuania, Morris J. and Sarah I. (Berkson) Paulive gave birth to Samuel E. Paulive, the husband of Miriam Cauman,who came to the United States in 1897, settled in Massachusetts and became a real estate and insurance broker as well as a member of the Jewish Welfare Board and the YMHA.

1886: Construction was begun today for a new Sephardic synagogue to be used by the Moses Montefiore Congregation.

1886: Birthdate of Birmingham, AL native and University of Alabama trained attorney Chester Gabriel Bandman who was member of Temple Emanu El in Birmingham.

1886(16th of Iyar): David Gordon passed who was born in Vilna in 1831 and was both a supporter of Hibbat Zion and an editor for HaMaggid, the first Hebrew newspaper passed away today. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/gordon.html

1889: Rabbi David Levy officiated at the wedding of Walter Irving Harby of Sumter, SC and Jacqueline Ellen Levy the daughter of Charles F. Levy at the Hasell Street Synagogue.

1889: The Moses Montefiore Congregation was dedicated in Bloomington, Illinois at a ceremony which began at four o’clock this this afternoon, erev Shabbat.

1890: The Board of Estimate and Apportionment authorized the transfer of $30,000 from last year’s balances to be used for the furnishing of the new school to be opened in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Building on 77th Street near 3rdAvenue.

1890: Today, Marcus M. Marks, president of several clothing industry trade associations and future Manhattan Borough President married “suffragist Esther Friedman” the mother of his son Johnny Marks, who ironically wrote “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”

1891: The manager of a “‘Shelter,’ an institution established for the reception” of Russian Jews arriving in England disputed claims that a large number of destitute refugees are arriving in his country.  According to him, on average, only 20 destitute Jews arrive each week and nine-tenths of them move on to the United States “or the English colonies.” The Shelter provides them with enough funds so that they can show they are capable of earning a living once they arrive at their final destinations.

1892: Among the bills that the Governor Flowers of New York allowed to die today was one introduced by Assemblyman Stein that would have provided a tax exemption for the Hebrew Children’s Sanitarium at Rockaway Beach.

1892: In New Orleans, LA, Helena and A.H. Gernsbacher gave birth to Myrtle Viola Gernsbacher who became Viola Gernsbacher Brav when she married JTS and Hebrew Union College educated Rabbi Louis Brav, who was the Rabbi at Temple Sinai in Lake Charles, LA and a Professor of Romance Languages at Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin.

1892: Max Cohen has just released by the annual report of the Maimonides Library.

1893(6thof Sivan, 5653): Shavuot

1893: Birthdate of New York native and New York College of Dentistry graduate Dr. Herman L. Reiss, the WW I veteran and “consulting oral surgeon at Sydenham Hospital.”

1893: There were a number of Polish and Russian Jews among the three hundred steerage passengers aboard the SS Amalfi which had sailed from Hamburg and arrived at Ellis Island today.

1895: It was reported today that a congregation that has been worshipping at 116 Siegel Street in Brooklyn for several years has been ordered to pay its back rent to the landlord.

1897(19thof Iyar, 5657): Eighty-two year old Solomon Solomon Nunes Carvalho, the native of Charleston, SC and husband of Sarah Miriam Carvalho passed away today in Pleasantville, NY

1898(29thof Iyar, 5658): Parashat Bamidbar

1898: In Chicago, Fred and Hattie University gave birth to Cornell University graduate and President of the Chicago Board of Trade Richard Frederick Uhlmann, the husband of Rosamond Goldman with whom he had three children – Audrey, Janis and Frederick

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/14/obituaries/richard-f-uhlmann-grain-dealer-91.html

1898: William O. Cohn began his service with the U.S. Navy

1898: Richmond residents Nathan Bernstein, Harry Bernstein, Isidore Cohen and Jack Flegenhiemer were among those who joined the U.S. Military when federal government began the process of mustering the 2nd Virginia Volunteer Infantry in the service of the United States.

1898: The will of Aaron Hershfield, which contained bequests to numerous Jewish charities was executed today naming his son-in-law Daniel P. Hays and his sons Levi N. and Mitchell Hershfield as executors.

1898: In New York City, Julius and Rose (Lipshitz) Hammer gave birth to businessman Armand Hammer the owner of Occidental Petroleum who was also an art collector and philanthropist.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/12/obituaries/armand-hammer-dies-at-92-industrialist-and-philanthropist-forged-soviet-links.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/11/obituaries/armand-hammer-dies-at-92-executive-forged-soviet-ties.html

1899(12thof Sivan, 5659): Forty-nine year old Leopold S. Levy, a salesman who lived with his wife on West 26th Street passed away today in the New York Hospital after having had his skull fractured “at his home by a crowd of boisterous young men who struck him with a lobster and a tin can.”

1899: Mrs. Leopold S. Levy, the wife of the late Leopold S. Levy is in critical condition at New York Hospital after having been brought there by a janitress at her tenement who thwarted her attempt to commit suicide by taking laudanum.

1899: Dr. Felix Adler is scheduled to officiate at the funeral of Julius Hirsch, a native of Germany who was a partner in the tobacco firm of Hirsch, Victorious & Co.

1899: The Hebrew Technical Institute was among the many organizations that endorsed the Women’s Memorial presented to the just completed Peace Conference held in New York City.

1899: The Hebrew Free School Associated hosted the confirmation exercises today for the 118 boys and girls who had completed the six year course of study.

1900(22ndof Iyar, 5660): After having irreparably damaged his health a year ago while helping to put out a fire at Virginia Tech, 19 year old David Jacobs passed away today at his parent’s home in Richmond.

1900: Herzl turns to Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber to intervene for the Rumanian Jews who have no permission to cross the border to Austria.

1900: Anti-Semitic riots broke out in Stolp and Bütow

1901: Herzl dictates the résumé "for the special benefit of the weak understanding of His Imperial Majesty of the Khalifate."

1901: In Harlem, Russian immigrant Hannah and Max Jaffe gave birth to the fourth and youngest child, producer and agent Sam Jaffe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/19/arts/sam-jaffe-98-hollywood-agent-represented-the-icons-of-his-day.html

1902(14thof Iyar, 5662): Pesach Sheni

1902: Birthdate of Mikhail Anatol Litvak, the native of Kiev and refugee from Nazi German who gained as American filmmaker Anatole Litvak who directed several films with future Oscar winner but whose finest cinematic moments may have been the making of a series of film warning of the Nazi menace and the  “Why We Fight” series.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anatole-Litvak

1903: During a conversation on this date, Dr. Cyrus Adler of the Smithsonian Institution, Secretary of the International Jewish Association, and editor of the Jewish Year Book, discussed the massacre of Jews in Russia, including the official utterances on the subject by Count Cassinf, the Russian Ambassador.

1904(7thof Sivan, 5664): Second day of Shavuot, Yizkor

1904: Herzl returns to Vienna after an unsuccessful therapy in Franzensbad.

1905: Birthdate of grocery store owner Arnold Kohn, the native of Dobrovac (now part of Croatia) and Auschwitz survivor whose community work earned him the “Medal of the Socialist Alliance of Working People”

1906: It was reported today that the Y.M.H.A. whose employment bureau has filled 593 jobs will be led by Directors Dr. Louis Fischer, Simon Gottschall, Kaufman Mandel, Julius Mayers, Rabbi F. De Sola Mendes, William Brager and Henry F. Toch for the next three years.

1907: The proprietors of the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel in Atlantic City apologized to Bertha Rayner Frank for her experience with anti-Jewish discrimination at their hotel.

1907: In Amsterdam, Alexander Polak, violin builder and concertmaster of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Janet Kiek, who founded the first Home Economics Budget Bureau gave birth to Fred Polak “one of the founding fathers of future studies…best known for theorizing the central role of imagined alternative futures in his classic work The Image of the Future.”

1908: It was reported today the William Hammerstein, the son of Oscar Hammerstein “has engaged the Kremo Family, the famous European acrobats to open at the Roof Garden on July 6” in what will be their first appearance in the United States.

1909: Birthdate of Guy Édouard Alphonse Paul de Rothschild the Parisian who was the son of Baron Édouard de Rothschild, who had headed the bank before Baron Guy, and the great-grandson of James, who founded the French branch of the Rothschild empire in 1812 (As reported by Paul Lewis)

1910: It was reported today that the American Jewish Committee has issued a stating that the victims of the expulsions from Kiev and Moscow which have been ordered by the Russian government “will be driven into the already crowded cities of the Pale or forced to emigrate, the United States may expect a large” increase in the “immigration of Russian Jews within the next few months as the measures of repression concern not only Moscow and Kiev but practically all other cities outside he Pale in which Jews have been living, many of them for generations.”

1910: Birthdate of Luisa Kramer who became Luisa Abrahams when she married Sir Charles Myer Abrahams.

1911(23rdof Iyar, 5671): Eighty-five year old Solomon Belais, the son of Rabbi Abraham Belais and Naomi Belais and the husband of Jael Belais passed away in New York.

1912(5thof Sivan, 5672): Erev Shavuot

1912: David Defilipov, a chemist who was born in the Ukraine, immigrated to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century and Sonia née Gerdstein, gave birth to “singer, director, producer and impresario Edis De Philippe, who founded the Israel National Opera Company in 1947 and ran it with an iron hand until her death.” (Jewish Women’s Archives)

1913(14thof Iyar, 5673): Pesach Sheni

1913(14thof Iyar, 5673): Sixty-five year old merchant Herman Shwarz passed away today in Napa, CA.

1913: “While the Fulton County Grand Jury was considering evidence of the murder of 14 year old Mary Phagan today, disclosures showed that the case had become entangled in a local political fight involving the war that has been waged against Chief of Police Beavers.”

1913(14thof Iyar, 5673): Fifty-nine year old wholesale grocer Isaac Horner passed a way today in Chicago.

1914: In Vilna, Mina Owczyńska,a Litvak actress from Švenčionys and Arieh-Leib Kacew a businessman from Trakai gave birth to Roman Kacew who gained fame a novelist Romain Gary.

1914: “The charge of ‘ritual murder’ in connection with the killing last December 9 of Yoshel Pashkoff at Fastoff, 40 miles from Kiev, was abandoned today by the Public Prosecutior” since “after investigation authorities decided that the murder was an ordinary crime.”

1915: Rabbi Leventhal is scheduled to deliver a talk at the semi-annual examinations of the Hebrew Free School in Camden, NJ. 

1915: “Judge Arthur G. Powell, a former member of the State Court of Appeals” wrote to Govern Slaton and the Prison Commission declaring his conviction that Leo M. Frank did not murder Mary Phagan” and “as an intimate friend of the late Judge Roan who presided at Frank’s Trial” asserted “that Judge Roan did not believe Frank was guilty.”

1915: Samuel Sonnenschein who has been locked up in Ludlow Street Jail “because he could not pay a judgment for $169” was still a prisoner tonight despite “efforts” being “made by the United Hebrew Charities to get a surety bond for him.”

1915: As of today, “there are said to be several hundred petitions in circulation in Atlanta” and hundreds of others” in the rest of the state asking Governor Slaton to commute Leo Frank’s death sentence

1916(18thof Iyar, 5676): Lag B’Omer

1916: Birthdate of Joseph Janni, the native of Milan who immigrated to England in 1939 and after a brief internment on the Isle of Man began decades-long career as a British movie producer.

1916: U. of Michigan trained attorney Arthur Marowitz, the Omaha born son of Harry and Anna Marowitz who served as the Director of the Assoc. Jewish Charities, the Secretary of the Jewish War Victims Relief committee and the organizer and president of the El Dorado Lodge of B’nai B’rith married Esther Epstein, the mother of his son “Milton Harley.”

1916: “Histadrut Ibrith,” an organization dedicated to the “revival of the Hebrew Language and Culture” was organized today with offices in New York City

1916: Birthdate of novelist Harold Robbins author of a series of bestsellers including Moneychangers, Carpetbaggers and Betsy.

1916: The Hebrew Sheltering Home was dedicated in Chicago, Illinois.

1916: The Jewish Home for the Aged was dedicated in New Haven, CT.

1916: The Central Jewish Institute was dedicated in New York City.

1917: Mr. Louis Marshal had come to Chicago to “address the War Sufferers’ mass meeting” spoke at luncheon at the Hotel La Salle sponsored by the Chicago Branch of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America which was attended by Mrs. Benjamin Davis, Max Schulman, Nathan D. Kaplan, S.P. Platt, Nathan Shure and A.S. Roe among others.

1917: In London, Solomon Kirsten, the husband of Sarah Kirsten with whom he had had eight children was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”

1917: The Great Atlanta Fire destroyed over 300 acres and 2,000 homes in Georgia and the South’s leading metropolis. The fire was confined primarily to the city’s Fourth Ward, which had a significant Jewish population on its north side. Following the fire Rich’s, the Jewish owned department store “assisted bereaved customers financially, even providing burial clothes for many of the victims” without regard to whom they were.1918: According to the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, the German People’s Party is pressuring the government to close “the old frontiers of Germany” to any Jewish settlers coming from Poland, Courland and Lithuania, all of which have been occupied by the German Army during the course of the World War.

1919(21stof Iyar, 5679): In Pittsburgh, Jacob Affelder, the husband of Kate Affelder and the father of Minnie, Morris, Louis, Oscar, William and Harry Affelder passed away today.

1920: “Mourning Turned to Thanksgiving in Jerusalem” published today reported that “the shofar was sounded in Jerusalem when the news of the restoration of the Jewish National Homeland through Great Britain’s mandate over Palestine reached the Jewish quarter of the Holy City, the first time in 2,000 years of Jewish history that the trumpet of hope was ever heard outside of the ceremonies of the two most sacred Jewish holidays, the Day of Atonement and the New Year.”

1921(11thof Iyar): Author Akiva Fleischman passed away.

1921: “Hundreds of Ku Klux Klansmen marched through downtown Dallas, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” as they passed the Majestic Theatre” during a decade when the Jewish community feared for its physical well-being as this hood band of rightwing bigots and racist exercised political power based on the same kind of coercion and nativism that would wash across the streets of Germany in the 1930’s.

1921: Birthdate of New York art dealer and historian Louis Pollack.

1921: Birthdate of Harold Lane David, the son of Jewish immigrant who owned a Brooklyn delicatessen owner, later known as Hal David the award winning lyricist who created such musical questions as What’s it all about?,” “What’s new, pussycat?,” “Do you know the way to San Jose?” and “What do you get when you fall in love?,” (As reported by Rob Hoerburger)

1922: Birthdate of Eugene Harold 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. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/books/15ehrlich.html

1923(6thof Sivan, 5683): Shavuot

1923: “Aren’t We All?” a comedy featuring Leslie Howard premiered on Broadway today.

1923: For the first time (but not the last) Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain following the resignation of Arthur Bonar Law.  Baldwin will serve in this capacity, off and one throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s.  He is viewed as one of those politicians who turned a blind eye to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and thus helped to bring on World War II with all that that would mean for the Jewish people.  On the other hand, in 1938, a year after he left office, Baldwin “led a major appeal to provide financial assistance for Jewish refugees from Nazi brutality.”

1923: Seventy-five year old Ferdinand Esterhazy, the French officer who was the traitor selling secrets to the Prussians – a crime for which Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted – died today.

1924: University of Chicago students Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a "thrill killing."  The two killers and their victim were all members of wealthy Jewish families.

1925: Lord Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer is named High Commissioner in Palestine. Born in 1857, Plumer had a long, distinguished career in the British Army.  He actually was one of the few competent commanding officers on the Western Front during World War I and was promoted to the rank of Field Marshall after the Armistice.  The appointment to Palestine came when he was 68 and lasted until 1928.  He proved to be a capable administrator who resisted Arab attempts to undermine the terms of the Mandate.  The economic down turn that occurred during his tenure was not of his making. He returned to England where he served in the House of Lords until his death in 1932

1927: National Jewish Book is scheduled to begin today.

1927: On the day that Charles Lindbergh completed his trans-Atlantic flight, Jewish businessman and airplane enthusiast Charles Levin announced that his airplane would fly farther on a $15,000 transatlantic flight challenge from America to Germany and carry a passenger.”  Levine’s plane had been sitting the hanger, grounded because of a court battle, when Lindbergh had taken off for Paris.  Levine would accomplish his goal the following when he flew aboard the Columbia, as a passenger while Clarence Chamberlin was at the control

1928: In Newark, NJ, Dr. Ralph Shapiro and “the former Sylvia Smith, a reporter for the Newark News” gave birth to Dorthea Shapiro who gained fame as “art historian and critic” Dore Ashton. (As reported by William Grimes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/arts/design/dore-ashton-art-critic-who-embraced-and-inhabited-modernism-dies-at-88.html

1928(2ndof Sivan, 5688): Sixty-seven year old British born American drama critic Alan Dale, the husband of Carrie L Frost and father of Margaret Dale, who had changed his name from Alfred J. Cohen passed away today while traveling on a train headed for his native Birmingham, England

https://librivox.org/author/1735?primary_key=1735&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results

1928: “The first Pacific Coast Jewish Social Service Conference” under the chairmanship of Mrs. M.C. Sloss” opened this evening at Yosemite Valley, CA marking “the first time that representatives of all Jewish social service agencies” serving the entire Pacific coast from the border of Mexico to the border of Canada have gathered together.

1928: A dinner honoring Dr. H. Peretra Mendes was to have been held this evening.  The dinner was postponed until October.

1928: The House of Representatives is schedule to consider the Jenkins Bill which is designed to grant enlarged preference within the quota to the wives and children of aliens

1929: Today the ballet Le Fils Prodigue premiered in Paris at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt named “after the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt, who produced there from 1899 for nearly two decades.”

1930:Racecar driver Woolf Barnato, the son of Fanny Bees and Barney Barnato took delivery on “a streamlined fastback” known as the “Sportsman Coup” which “became known as the Blue Train Bentley.

1931(5th of Sivan, 5691): Erev Of Shavuot

1932: U.S. premiere of “Attorney for the Defense” produced by Harry Cohn with a script co-authored by Jo Swerling.

1932: “The Rich Are Always with Us” a romantic comedy produced by Samuel Bischoff was released in the United States today.

1934(7thof Sivan, 5694): Second Day of Shavuot

1934: The New York Council of Mizrachi Youth of America is scheduled to hold a Shavuot celebration tonight at 224 Henry Street with proceeds going toward the Hachshara farm, a Mizrachi training camp for Palestinian pioneers.

1934: U.S. premiere of “Murder at the Vanities” co-starring Kitty Carlisle.

1934: Dr. I. Mortimer Bloom is scheduled to deliver a sermon today entitled "Pilgrims of Eternity" at Temple Oheb Sholom on West 93rdStreet.

1934: Rabbi Milton Steinberg is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled "Time and Religion" at the Park Avenue Synagogue.

1934: Dr. Samuel Benjamin is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled "Jews Without Memory;" at Congregation Hope of Israel in the Bronx.

1934: Rabbi Solomon Reichman is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled "Sinai-a Symbol of Israel" at the Bronx Y. M. and Y. W. H. A.

1934: Rabbi Robert Gordis is scheduled to officiate at Yizkor services today at Temple Beth-El, Rockaway Park.

1934: Rabbi Henry Fisher is schedule to deliver a sermon entitled “Belief and Practice” at Congregation Derech Emunoh.

1934: “Murder at the Vanities” a musical starring Kitty Carlisle was released in the United States today.

1936: A crowd of Arabs fired from the hilltops on a Jewish-operated bus coming from Tel Aviv seriously wounding a Jewish man and girl.  According to officials at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, dum-dum bullets had been used by the Arab attackers.

1936: Two British soldiers were wounded by Arabs when the Cameron Highlanders were attacked 12 miles outside of Jerusalem as they attempted to restore order along the highway.

1936: It was reported today, that in the wake of Arab attacks, “only 200 Jewish families out of a former total Jewish population of 5,000 remained in the Old City.”

1938:  In Poland, the ruling party adopted "13 articles pertaining to Jewish affairs," stating that the Jews are 'an element which hinders the normal development of the forces of the Polish nation and state."

1939: In a column published in Davar the pro-labor Hebrew language newspaper, David Ben Gurion said of the White Paper, “This document is not the final word of the British people.  This document meanwhile is only a proposal of their government.  The conscience of Britain and the whole world still can be awakened.” [Ed. Note: This time B-G got it wrong]

1939:The British arrest the Irgun leadership, including Commander David Raziel. In February, 1938 the Revisionists under Jabotinsky had held a Zionist Congress in Prague.  They rejected the notion that Jews could not settle on either side of the Jordan.  More importantly, after two years of Arab violence they decided that the Jewish Agency’s policy of restraint was not working.  The Irgun was to respond to each act of Arab violence with force and alacrity.   The increased tempo of attacks against the British and Arabs must be viewed against the backdrop of the times: the worsening situation of the Jews in Europe, the issuance of the White Paper that would close Palestine to the Jews and guarantee a permanent Arab majority and the unabated violence of the Arabs.  The Irgun and the Revisionists did not reflect the majority view of the Jewish population.  Finally, in 1948, Ben Gurion took military action to bring the Irgun under control.  Ironically, Menachem Begin, the leader of Irgun, would be the right wing politician who broke the hold of the Labor Zionists on the Israeli government.

1940: Chairman Willem Vogt fired all Jewish employees at AVRO, the Dutch broadcasting company

1941: Dutch Singer and Nazi collaborator Johan Heesters visited Dachau concentration camp.

1941: A collaborationist group, Nederlandse Arbeids Dienst (Dutch Labor Service), is established in Holland.

1942(5th of Sivan, 5702): Erev Shavuot

1942(5th of Sivan, 5702): In Koritz, on the eve of Shavuot, 2,200 Jews were taken to the edge of town and shot into pre-dug pits. The dead included the wife and 13 year old daughter of Moshe Gildenman who was soon to become famous as the partisan “Uncle (Dyadya) Misha”. Gildenman succeeded in escaping with his son, Simcha, and a few others with one pistol and five rounds of ammunition. His groups slowly grew in strength and were eventually absorbed into Saburov’s brigade group. They were always known as Uncle Misha’s Jewish groups. During the war, Gildenman received the Order of the Red Star and finished the war with his son in Berlin. After the war, his son returned to Koretz and upon meeting the Ukrainian who killed his mother and sister - shot him.

1942: Release date for “Tortilla Flat co-starring Hedy Lammar and John Garfield, featuring Sheldon Leonard, with a script co-authored by Benjamin Glazer and music by Frank Loesser and Franz Waxman.

1943: Birthdate of CUNY philosophy professor Michael Levin, the husband of Professor Margarita Levin.

1943: Denise Madeline Bloch, the French Jewess who would be murdered at Ravensbruck because she an SOE agent, arrived in London after a twenty-two day trip across occupied France.

1943(16th of Iyar, 5703):  Three thousand Jews driven from Brody, Ukraine, to a waiting transport train revolt, killing four Ukrainians and a few Germans. Many of the Jews break free after being put on the train, only to be machine-gunned. The remainder is killed upon arrival at the Majdanek death camp.

1943(16th of Iyar, 5703):  Members of the Jewish community at Drogobych, Ukraine, are exterminated in the Bronica Forest

1944: The SS President Warfield, a packet steamer built in the 1920’s to carry passengers and cargo between Norfolk and Baltimore (sheltered waters), was returned by the British so she could serve in the U.S. Navy.  The Warfield would become famous as the SS Exodus.

1944(28thof Iyar, 5704): Forty-five year old WW I Marne veteran Errold Baum Lapowski, the Gainesville, TX born son of Nathan and Eva Lapowski, the husband of Eleanor Lapowski and the father of Jean and Emily Lapowski passed away today after which he was buried at the Temple Mt. Sinai Cemetery in El Paso, TX.

1944(28thof Iyar, 5704): A day after her husband famed Austrian biologist Hans Leo Przibram died at Theresienstadt, his wife Elizabeth committed suicide.

1944: The Gestapo imprisons all 260 Jews of Canea, Crete, at Rethymnon, Crete

1945: Members of the Jewish Brigade posed for a photo with trucks from the Beriha Movement.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/may/15.asp

1945: Today, many liberated survivors continue to live at the Dachau concentration camp two weeks after the end of the war.1945: German war criminal Heinrich Himmler was captured

1945: Lauren Bacall (born Betty Pinsker) and Humphrey Bogart were married. (She was Jewish; Bogy was not.)

1945: “Flight from Folly” a British musical filmed by cinematographer Otto Heller and with music by Benjamin Frankel was released in the United Kingdom today.

1946: One of several post-war Hungarian pogroms took place today at Kunadaras where peasants murdered two Jews and wounded eighteen others.

1947: “William Gallacher, Communist member of the House of Commons, was ignored today during a discussion of Palestine when he asked this question: "In view of the fact that the mandate laid it down that Palestine was to be provided as a home for the Jews how then could there be such a thing as an 'illegal immigrant' ?"

1947: “Haganah, which has long been sitting on the sidelines merely watching developments, sent a punitive expedition tonight against Arab brigands operating against Jewish settlers in the Petah Tiqva area near Tel Aviv.(Editor’s note – Brigands, what nice word for terrorists.)

1948: For the second time in two days, the 53rd and 54thbattalions attacked the Egyptian-held fort of Iraq Suwayden which the British had handed over to Muslim Brotherhood as they departed Palestine.  The irony is that the British had built the fort in the 1930’s to help quell the infamous Arab Revolt.

1948: Today, “at dawn the Golani staff reported that the enemy was repelled but that they were expecting another attack. The full report read:

‘Our forces repelled yesterday a heavy attack of tanks, armored vehicles and infantry that lasted about 8 hours. The attack was repelled by the brave stand of our men, who used Molotov cocktails and their hands against the tanks. 3" mortars and heavy machinery took their toll on the enemy. Field cannons caused a panicked retreat of the enemy, who yesterday left Tzemah. This morning our forces entered Tzemah and took a large amount of booty of French ammunition and light artillery ammunition. We have captured 2 tanks and an armored vehicle of the enemy. The enemy is amassing large reinforcements. We are expecting a renewal of the attack.’”

1948: Haganah troops returned to Tzemah today “and set up fortifications, the damaged tanks and armored cars were gathered and taken to the rear. The settlers returned that night to identify the bodies of their comrades in the fields and buried them in a common grave in Degania”

1948: Abba Eban names Arthur Louie, Jacob Robinson, Moshe Tov, Michael Comay and Gideon Rafael as his alternates and advisers at the United Nations and names I.L. Kene as the delegation’s spokesman.

1948: The former American icebreaker USCGC Northland became “the first warship of the Israeli Sea Corps” when it was commissioned as the INS Eilat.  The ship would be renamed INS Matspen in 1957 when it began serving as a barracks.

1948: “Egyptian dive-bombers struck at Tel Aviv four times today without, however, causing serious damage” while other “Egyptian planes, flying high on their regular visits throughout the day, dropped clusters of small bombs on the city’s fringe.”

1948: “In the South, Beit Eshel was shelled by the Egyptians and Yad Mordechai was a target for heavy infantry assaults” all of which were repulsed.

1949(22ndof Iyar, 5709): Parashat Behar Bechukotai

1949(22ndof Iyar, 5709): Forty-two year old Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas and Katia Mann (who was Jewish) passed away today.

1949: The National Geographic Society issued new maps of Europe and the Near East  which show “Palestine partitioned into Israel and the Arab states.”

1950(5thof Sivan, 5710): Erev Shavuot

1950: “Cairo Road,” a crime film co-starring Laurence Harvey and featuring Abraham Sofaer was released in the United Kingdom today.

1950: As a sign that Israel was taking its place among the family of nations, the government announced that Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett will meet with South African Prime Minister Daniel F. Malan during his upcoming trip to the African state.

1951: Birthdate of comedian turned U.S. Senator, Al Franken

1952(26th of Iyar, 5712):  Actor and film star John Garfield passed away at the age of 39. Born Jacob Julius Garfinkle in New York City, he was sent to a school for problem children after the early death of his mother. It was there that he was introduced to boxing and acting. He won a scholarship to an acting school hosted by Maria Ouspenskaya and made his Broadway debut in 1932. The play Golden Boy that featured a young prize fighter was written for him, but he was passed over for the role. He decided to leave Broadway and try his success in Hollywood. He earned an Academy Award nomination for his role in the 1938 film Four Daughters. He gained further fame as the handyman drifter in the Postman Rings Twice. He appeared in several war movies during WW II, usually playing the part of the wisecracking enlisted man (once as the gunner on a B-17 and once as a seaman aboard a sub) who sees the light and comes to understand why America was in the war.  Garfield’s liberal politics brought him to the attention the McCarthyites during the Red Scare of the late 1940’s and 1950’s.  He was forced to appear before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee; an appearance which proved detrimental to his career

1952: During a meeting of HUAC a letter from Lillian Hellman was read that stated "I cannot and will not cute my conscience to fit this year's fashions..."

1953:The Jerusalem Post reported that upon his return to the U.S., Mr. John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Secretary of State, expressed satisfaction from his first, recent visit to Israel, and recommended to his government a sizeable aid for the country's quick development.

1953:The Jerusalem Post reported that two marauders who shot at an Israeli patrol in Jerusalem's "Corridor" were killed in an exchange of fire.

1953: “The President’s Lady” a biopic about President Andrew Jackson directed by Henry Levin, produced by Sol C. Siegel and with music by Alfred Newman was released in the United States today.

1953(7th of Sivan, 5713: Second Day of Shavuot

1954(18th of Iyar, 5714): Lag B'Omer

1956(11thof Sivan, 5716): Eighty-one year old Johns Hopkins graduate and Columbia Law School trained attorney Bernard M. Cone, the Baltimore born son of Herman Moses Cone and Helen Guggenheimer Cone and the husband of Elain Wolf Cone who owned several mills in North Carolina which in 1945 were “re-organized un Proximity Manufacauring” and the in 1948 merged with Revlution cotton to form Cone Mills, Corp., “the largest producer of flannel in the world” passed away todayin Greensboro, NC after which he was buried in Cone Cemetery.”

1957: Birthdate of New York City native Seth Andrew Klarman the Cornell and Harvard Business School trained fund manager and billionaire and husband of Beth Schultz Klarman who was one of a handful of Republican major donors who urged their “comrades” to contribute to the Democrats because Donald Trump was unfit to be President.

1958: The Savanah Morning News published pictures of the nine hour long fire at Adler’s Department Store which had been founded by Leopold Adler and subsequently run by his son Sam G. Adler, the husband of Elinor Grunsfeld Adler and his grandson Lee Adler, the husband of Emma Morel Adler and was the worst such conflagration to strike the city since 1899 1959: Gypsy a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents opened at the Broadway Theatre for the first of 702 performances.

1961(6thof Sivan, 5721): Shavuot

1961(6thof Sivan, 5721): Yiddish comedian Israel Shumacher who worked with Shimon Dzigan passed away today.

1963: Birthdate of Richard Appel who tried to follow in the footsteps of his parents, Nina Appel the Dean of Loyola Law School and Alfred Appel who was a professor of literature at Northwestern.  Appel graduated from law school before turning to a life of writing and producing comedy.

1966: In Boston, MA, Dr. Alvin Edelstein and his wife Bonnie gave birth to actress and playwright Lisa Edelstein.

1968: Lt. Governor Samuel Harvey Shapiro began serving as the 34thGovernor of Illinois when the incumbent “resigned to accept an appointment” as a federal judge which made him the second Jew, after Henry Horner, to hold the post

1969: Israeli planes shot down three Egyptian Mig 21s in the Suez Canal zone during what would become known as the War of Attrition.

1969: A group of about 10 saboteurs was intercepted today near Nahal Argaman in the Jordan Valley. One saboteur was killed in a clash with an Israeli unit. Another was wounded and a third escaped and joined other members of the gang hiding in caves. After the area was surrounded, the saboteurs were ordered to surrender. Six gave themselves up and two who resisted were killed

1969: Robert Kennedy's murderer Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death.  At the time, the Jordanian youth said Kennedy had to die because of his support of Israel.

1973(19thof Iyar, 5733): Eighty-nine year old of New York City native and attorney Edwin Chester Vogel, a partner in the firm of Elkus, Vogel, Gleason and Proskauer, a prominent art collector and a trustee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and Mount Sinai Hospital passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/22/archives/edwingvogel-89-collector-of-art-philanthropist-exofficer-of-cit.html

1973: “Panel of Jewish Scholars Translating the Bible” published today described a two-decades long project led by Dr. Harry M. Orlinsky to produce a new English translation of the Bible sponsored by the Jewish Publication Society within the next two years.

1974: Elizabeth Holtzman, the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, castigated the government for laxness in allowing Nazi war criminals into the U.S.

1974(29thof Iyar, 5734): Eighty-three year old Hungarian figure skater Lily Kronberger passed away today.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kronberger-lily

1975(11thof Sivan, 5735): Eight-four year old movie producer Samuel Bischoff whose career spanned more than four decades from “Mixed Nuts” in 1922 to “The Strangler” in 1964 passed away today.

1975: While casting parts for “Network” Paddy Chayefsky wrote a “letter to Paul Newman offering him ‘any part in this picture you want’”  -- an offer Newman turned down.

1977: "Fiddler on the Roof" closed at the Winter Garden Theatre in NYC after 167 performances

1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli security men and French policemen killed three gunmen who attacked the El Al desk at the Paris Orly airport. One French policeman was killed in this Arab terror attack and three French passengers were wounded. Most El Al passengers were employees of a French insurance company, who later left to tour Israel.

1979: Iran: A National Still in Torment published today described the execution of Habib Elghanian, a plastics manufacturer and the first Jew to be condemned who was convicted of spying for Israel, was said to have made huge investments in Israel and to have solicited funds for the Israeli army, which the prosecution claimed made him an accomplice "in murderous air raids against innocent Palestinians."“The conviction of Elghanian caused concern among some Jewish businessmen in Iran, who feared that they too could be charged with contributing money to Israel.

1980(6thof Sivan, 5740: Shavuot

1980: Four days after premiering in Washington, D.C., “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” directed by Irvin Kershner was released in the United States.

1981: ABC broadcast the final episode for season three of “Taxi” a series created by James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels and Ed. Weinberger.

1982: In “Housing Surge Alters Borough Park,” Alan Oser described the five year growth in the Brooklyn neighborhood which he attributed to a steady expansion of Borough Park's population of Orthodox Jews, about half of them Hasidim. They require large apartments for large families, and accommodations near synagogues and denominational schools.”  The article provides an interesting snapshot of the needs of this unique community.

1982: Delia Ephron married Jerome Kass.

1982: A week after having been summoned to “meet” with the KGB, Moscow refusenik and Hebrew teacher Pavel Abramovich was summoned to the KGB for a second time.

1982(28thof Iyar, 5742): Yom Yerushalayim

1983: David Mark Rubenstein the co-found of The Carlyle Group married “Alice Rubenstein (née Alice Nicole Rogoff), founder of the Alaska House New York and the Alaska Native Arts Foundation and owner of Alaska Dispatch News.”

1987: James Levine is scheduled to conduct the IPO as part of the orchestra’s 50thanniversary celebrations.

1988(5th of Sivan, 5748) Erev Shavuot

1988: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is scheduled to address a dinner tonight hosted by a group calling itself "Concerned Citizens for New York," an alliance of black businesspeople. The dinner is being held at Terrace in the Park, a kosher catering facility owned by Allen Sherel and Stanley Lewin.  The owners agreed to rent the facility before they found out that Farrakhan was the speaker.  The two Jewish owners promised to donate every penny they make from the dinner to Jewish charities.

1990(26thof Iyar, 5750): Sixty-two year old Morris “Mo” Levy, “owner of Roulette Records and the Birdland jazz club passed away today before he could begin serving a prison sentence after having been convicted of “conspiring to extort” in connection with an investigation into mob involvement in the record industry.

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/23/obituaries/morris-levy-is-dead-power-in-recording-and-club-owner-62.html

1993: An exhibition, at the International Monetary Fund Art Forum featuring the works of Fritz Ascher, came to a close today in Washington, DC.

1993: Birthdate of Arizona native and Barry University Laura Elizabeth the right wing writer activist who was banned from the March 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

1994: Israeli commandos captured Shiite guerrilla leader Mustafa Dirani

1996: CNN broadcast today’s public memorial service for Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda, the 25th Chief of Naval Operations live from the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

1997: CBS broadcast the final episode of “Wings” a sitcom co-starring Rebecca Schull.

1998: Jack Lew began serving his as Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton.

1999(6thof Sivan, 5759): Shavuot

1999: NBC broadcast the final episode of seven season of “Homicide: Life on the Street:” which was based on David Simon's book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

1999: U.S. premiere of “The Love Letter” featuring Sasha Spielberg as the “Girl with Sparkler.”

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea That Rules the World” by David Berlinski.

2000(16thof Iyar, 5760): Ninety-six year old George Marshall, civil rights advocate and conservationist and son of Lewis Marshall passed away today. (Wiki erroneously reported this as having happened on May 15)

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/18/nyregion/george-marshall-96-pioneer-in-the-civil-rights-movement.html

2001(28thof Iyar, 5761): Yom Yerushalayim

2001: Radio broadcast of the annual Alfred Deakin Lecture; this year entitled "My Country – A Personal Journey"in which Robert Mamre describes what it is like for the son of Jewish immigrants to grow up in an Australia that is considered Anglo-Celtic. Author and historian Robert Manne is the Associate Professor of Politics at La Trobe University, a columnist for The Age, The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, and a regular commentator on ABC Radio and Television

2001: The Houston Post reports that American Jewish Congress v. Bost would be heard in federal district court. American Jewish Congress v. Bost was an establishment clause lawsuit concerning the separation of church and state based on events that took place in Brenham, Texas. The case was the first constitutional challenge to a charitable choice contract. In the community of Brenham, Texas, the American Jewish Congress and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a lawsuit against a social services program that they believed used a tax-funded jobs program to support religious practices that violated the separation of church and state. Other accusations include use of funds to proselytize, purchase bibles, and coerce participants to "accept Jesus."  The lawsuit went back and forth between state and federal courts and was twice appealed. In January of 2003, the lawsuit that is believed to be the first constitutional challenge to a "charitable choice" contract, came to a conclusion. The case was finally dismissed "on the ground that there was no live controversy."

2002: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fired ministers from the rigorously Orthodox Shas Party from his cabinet tonight after they voted against an emergency economic package in Parliament.”

2003: “New York University is using a gift of more than $3 million from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation to form a research center for the study of modern Israel. It will be called the Taub Center for Israel Studies and will be part of the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.”

2003: “Israeli Who Loves Israel Listens, Sees and Weeps” published today provides a review David Grossman’s Death As A Way of Life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/21/books/books-of-the-times-israeli-who-loves-israel-listens-sees-and-weeps.html?searchResultPosition=1

2004(1stof Rosh Choesh Sivan 5764): Rosh Chodesh Sivan

2004: “The catchy show opening today at the Jewish Museum is the first big New York retrospective of Amedeo Modigliani since 1951…” (As reported by Michael Kimmelman)

2004: “Arab leaders gathering today for a summit meeting on Saturday and Sunday in this North African capital are expected to issue a collective criticism of the United States for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and what they view as the anemic American effort toward ending the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

2005: In an article entitled “BioHazards,” New York Books reviews “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss.  Krauss willingly talks about her second novel but refuses to talk about her husband, the Jewish writer Jonathan Safran Foer.

2005(12 of Iyar, 5765): Eighty-six year old actor Stephen Elliot passed away.

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/may/24/local/me-elliott24

2005(12thof Iyar, 5767): Ninety-one year old New York native Moe Frankel, the son of Minnie and Sender Alexander Frankel passed away today in Hackensack, NJ.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of “Any Place I Hang My Hat” by Susan Isaacs, “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss and “Indecision” by Benjamin Kunkel.

2006: Haaretz reported that author A.B. Yehoshua predicted that Diaspora Jews would move to China if it were to become a world power.  Dr. Avrum Ehrlich, a professor at the Center for Judaic and Inter-Religious Studies at the University of Shandong (China) says that this process is actually already under way. ‘The Jewish community in Hong Kong is thriving,’ he explains, ‘and there are at least 300 Jews now living permanently in Beijing alone.’”

2006: The first Sydney Jewish Writers’ Festival comes to an end.

2006: After 109 performances, the curtain came down on a revival of Neil Simon’s Theatre at the Cort Theatre.

2006: The United Jewish Community/Jewish Federation of Las Vegas hosts its biggest and best Yom Ha’Azma’ut festival at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the Jewish Agency arranged a variety of day-long activities to celebrate Israel Independence Day in downtown Budapest. 

2007: The JCC in Manhattan presents a program entitled “Bernstein & Robbins: Dybbuk in Music & Dance.” Jean-Pierre Frohlich, ballet master and former soloist with the New York City, discusses his work with Robbins in staging the ballets and presents several dancers performing excerpts from Dybbuk. Ellen Sorrin, director of The George Balanchine Trust and advisory council member of The Jerome Robbins Trust, serves as moderator.

2007(4 Sivan 5767): Shir-El Friedman is killed when a Hamas rocket struck vehicle near a bakery next to shopping mall in Sderot. The35 year old woman was struck by shrapnel and succumbed to her injuries as she was being rushed to the hospital.

2007: Mark Helprin “was said to be shocked” by the negative response reported in today’s New York Times to his op-ed piece “in which he argued that intellectual property rights should be assigned to an author or artist as far as Congress could practically extend them.”

2008:AJHS hosts the 2008 Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty Award Dinner, commemorating the Jewish Chaplains who led survivors of the Holocaust from DP camps to Israel and the US. Sid Lapidus will be honored for his deep commitment to the American Jewish Historical Society.

2008: The finals of the European Champions League, soccer’s most prized club competition, will have a decidedly Jewish flavor. Not on the field of the Loujniki stadium in Moscow, where none of the 22 players of English teams Manchester United and Chelsea will be Jewish — but on the sidelines. To wit, in the VIP lounge, Chelsea’s owner, Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich, will square off against American billionaire Malcolm Glazer, who bought Manchester United three years ago. In addition, Chelsea’s coach is an unheralded 52-year-old Israeli by the name of Avram Grant. A discreet man with no reputation in the soccer world, he has incurred a constant flow of criticism for his lack of knowledge and for the defensive style of his team. But the mood has changed drastically. Grant managed to bring his club to the finals for the first time since Abramovich began spending millions in 2003 to build a contender, igniting a buying spree of top soccer clubs in England by such likeminded moguls as Glazer, who also owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team. Grant wears his Judaism on his sleeve — literally. In the semifinals game, he wore a yellow armband bearing the Star of David to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. After the victory, he took a day off to travel to Auschwitz with his two teenage children to honor the memory of his father’s family. His father, Meir, now 80, lost his parents and five of his six siblings while they were hiding in a Russian forest to escape the Nazis. Now Grant is going back to Russia to become the first Israeli coach to win on the big European stage.

2008:  In Jaffa, System Ali plays on the roof of Mishkenot Ruth Daniel. Over the past year, System Ali has been performing in different venues throughout Jaffa, Tel Aviv and beyond, drawing impressive crowds whose diversity reflects that of the individuals on stage.”

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “The Psychology of the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis.”Moises Salinas explores the way psychological factors impede the peace process. 

2008; Jewish Braille International dinner was held at the Harmonie Club. “Founded in 1931 as the Jewish Braille Institute by Leopold Dubov, the blind son of a rabbi, and Rabbi Michael Aaronson, who had been blinded in World War I, today the JBI library serves 35,000 individuals in 30 countries in eight languages — all at no charge.”

2009: Michael Sandel delivered the 2009 Reith Lectures on “A New Citizenship” today at Oxford, UK.

2009:The Center for Jewish History and the Leo Baeck Institute presentedHappy Birthday, Felix: Music of Felix Mendelssohn and His Contemporaries” withPhoenix Chamber Ensemble performing rare arrangements of Felix Mendelssohn's Hebriden, op.26 and Ruy Blas, Op.95 Overtures and Symphony No.1 in C minor for 1 piano-4 hands, violin and cello and Robert Schumann's 12 Four-Hand Piano Pieces for Small and Big Children, Op.85

2009: Writer and essayist Phillip Lopate discusses “Notes On Sontag,” his reflections on the late Susan Sontag and her role as essayist, novelist and playwright, at Politics and Prose Bookstore, in Washington, D.C.

2009: Fred Hochberg, the first son of Lillian Vernon and Samuel Hochberg “was sworn in” today as Chairman and President of the Export-Import Bank

2009: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a speech at Ammunition Hill in memory of soldiers who fell in the Six-Day War in 1967 in which he said, “Jerusalem was always ours, will always be ours, and will never again be divided.”

2009: The four men arrested last night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. were petty criminals who appeared to be acting alone, not in concert with any terrorist organization,

2010: The 92nd St Y schedules two events to celebrate Shabbat: in the morning a Shabbat Bakery where participants can bake their own Challah and a Shabbat Rooftop Dinner, an intergenerational family Shabbat dinner experience in a meaningful and welcoming environment.

2010: Muriel Siebert, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, “was honored at Wagner College during the 123rd Graduation Ceremony today with an Honorary Doctorate.”

http://www.jwi.org/Page.aspx?pid=781#sthash.rHwxUyZt.jmCWHQmG.dpbs

2010: As part of her Bat Mitzvah weekend at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA, Shannon Williams and her family will be participating in Friday night services.

2011: “The Source” directed by Radu Mihăileanu premiered in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival

2011: The AJMF Festival is scheduled to host its Closing Night Party at Center Stage.

2011: Korin Alal and Eran Zur are scheduled present a joint concert at the JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly, NJ.

2011: Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today that the differences between Israel and the United States on the peace process are smaller than they seem.

2011: In “Harold Bloom: An Uncommon Reader,” Sam Tanenhaus reviewed The Anatomy as a Way of Life, the latest literary effort by 80 year Jewish man of letters Harold Bloom.

2012: In recognition of Jewish American Heritage Month, the DC Public Library to present a lecture entitled “Jewish Civil Life at a Time of Civil War: American Jewry in the Mid-19th Century” during which Dr. Lauren Strauss, assistant professor of History and Judaic Studies at the George Washington University, will discuss the Jewish-American experience before 1870, with a focus on the status of the Jewish community in the decades surrounding the Civil War.http://www.dclibrary.org/node/30617

2012: In a great example of “acts of loving kindness”, The Derfner Judaica Museum located at The Hebrew Home at Riverdale, Bronx, NY is scheduled to offer private group tours for individuals with dementia and their family members or care partners that will focus on select highlights of this fascinating institution. 

2012: Tefillat HaShlah - the Shlah's Prayer should be recited today before sunset.  The prayer was composed Isaiah Horowoitz, a noted 17th century rabbi who moved to Palestine in the 1620’s, living there until his death ten years later.

2012: The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Zeev Dorman is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall

2012: Aaron Swartz delivered the keynote address at the F2C: Freedom to Connect 2012 event in Washington, D.C. following the defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

2012: Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman is among those scheduled to perform at the Good Shepherd Church in New York.

2012: The Yellow Ticket with Alicia Svigals is scheduled to be the final performance at the 13th Annual Washington Jewish Music Festival.

2013: The 7th independent conference for the Hannah Arendt Circle sponsored by The Institute of Jewish Studies and the Centre for Philosophy of Culture at the University of Antwerp in Belgium is scheduled to come to an end.

2013: The IPO annual Young Leadership concert is scheduled to take place in Manhattan

2013: Dudu Fisher is scheduled to perform at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ.

2013(12thof Sivan, 5773): Eighty-year old Leonard Marsh the founder of the Snapple Beverage Corporation passed away today.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/business/leonard-marsh-80-dies-a-founder-of-snapple.html?hpw&_r=0

http://blog.aarp.org/2013/05/28/fun-facts-about-leonard-marsh-snapple-co-founder-ice-tea-drinks/

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324659404578499524275374196

2013: Eric Garcetti was elected Mayor of Los Angeles making him the first Jewish person to hold this position.

2013: Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and the IDF said today that Israel has destroyed an unspecified Syrian target after fire from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights border damaged an IDF vehicle

2013: As the debate over the operating hours of the capital’s largest and newest (yet-toopen) movie complex Cinema City continues, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat – who launched his reelection campaign last week – said today he supports its forced Shabbat closure.

2014: Today, at the 4th International Writers’ Festival, S.Y. Agnon is scheduled to be honored with “a series of events, including a visit to his home and library in the neighborhood of Talpiot. The day’s events also include a writing jam with Eshkol Nevo and Orit Gidali, and one of the Writing Here, Writing There conversations, this time between A. B. Yehoshua and Nicole Krauss.” (As reported by Jessica Steinberg)

2014: The opening reception for “The Hidden Passengers” organized by Avi Lubin is scheduled to begin this evening.

2014: “Pope Francis will adhere to a policy of “total balance” regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his close friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka said today in Jerusalem, though he noted that Francis’s scheduled laying of a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl would be “a meaningful act.”  (As reported by Raphael Ahren)

2014: “Australian energy giant Woodside Petroleum pulled out of the massive Leviathan gas joint venture off the coast of Israel — one of the largest deposits found in the world.”

2014: Today, “the commander of the Israeli Air Force described a top-to-bottom change that has led to a 400 percent increase in the IAF’s firepower over the past two years, drastically shortening the time it would take Israel to win a future war.” (As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)

2014: A court hearing is scheduled today for Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago whose failure to disclose her conviction for killing two people with a bomb in Jerusalem in 1969 should lead to her deportation under U.S. Immigration law.

2015: The Jewish Historical Society of England is scheduled to host a lecture on Do Jews Believe in Saints? A Medieval Rabbi and his Posthumous Travels by Lucia Raspe.

2015: Professor David Rechter is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Trauma on the Eastern Front: European Jews and the First World War: at the University of London

2015: The Anti-Defamation League announced today that Lady Gaga had accepted its Making a Difference award for “work championing positive social change” through her Born This Way Foundation.

2015: In “One of earliest known copies of Ten Commandments sees the light of day” published today William Booth described the importance of  “4Q41” and its rare public appearance the Israel Museum.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/one-of-earliest-known-copies-of-ten-commandments-sees-the-light-of-day/2015/05/21/fdd001bb-7d43-4777-aa46-931a18a51798_story.html?utm_term=.7738dc106f44

2016: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present “Sounds of the Flute in Ein Kerem – The French Connection featuring Noam Buchman on the flute and pianist Pazit Gal.

2016(13th of Iyar, 5776): Shabbat Emor;

2017: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro and an interview with actor Michael Tambor.

2017(25th of Iyar, 5777): In Cincinnati, graduation ceremonies are scheduled to take place a the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion

2017(25th of Iyar, 5777): “Shulamit “Shula” Cohen-Kishik, a spy for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency who worked undercover in Lebanon for 14 years” passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-spy-shulamit-cohen-kishik-dies-at-100/

2017: Gilia Almagor is scheduled to perform her one-woman show “The Summer of Aviya” at the Streicker Center.

2017: Andres Roemer, “the Mexican diplomat who was from his ambassador position for walking out an anti-Israel vote by a United Nations agency” is scheduled to “be awarded the International Sephardic Leadership Awards at a ceremony at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

2017:Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and Dayan Menachem Gelley, Rosh of the London Beth Din, walked the grounds of a new United Synagogue cemetery in Bushy and buried a Torah scroll as part of the consecration of the £8 million site. (As reported by Jewish News)

2017: The Jewish Federation of Houston is scheduled to present “The Big Gig” with Seth Meyers.

2017: “Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the nation’s largest aerospace and defense company, said today it has received an additional $630 million contract to supply long-range surface-to-air missile (LRSAM) defense systems for four ships of the Indian navy.” (As reported by Shoshanna Solomon)

2017: Cantor Aaron Shifman, along with Joshua Nelson and Pey Dalid are scheduled to host “Joyful Sounds” the annual concert spring at B’nai Jeshurun Congregation in Pepper Pike, Ohio.

2017: The Cleveland History Center is scheduled to celebrate the completion of “the Soviet Jewish Oral History Collection, an archive at the Cleveland History Center of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland.”

2018(7thof Sivan, 5778): Second Day of Shavuot;

2018(7thof Sivan, 5778): Eighty-seven year old Elaine Markson, the Brooklyn born daughter of Catskill hotel owners Leon and Lilyan Kretchmar and the wife of “experimental novelist David Markson” who was one of “the first women to own a literary agency” which she used “to further the careers of fledgling feminist authors” passed away today (As reported by Sam Roberts)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/obituaries/elaine-markson-literary-agent-for-feminist-authors-dies-at-87.html?action=click&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&contentCollection=Obituaries

2018: Susan “Herbst announced that she would step down from her role as president of the University of Connecticut when her contract expired on July 1, 2019, but would remain on the faculty, teaching political science at the Stamford campus.

2018: In Little Rock, the Arkansas Jewish Center under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to offer a full day of holiday observance including Shacharis, Yizkor, Mussfa and a Kiddush followed by Mincha.

2019: JB and Yeshiva University Museum are scheduled to host “Child Separation and Refugee Crises From the Kindertransport to Today,” during  which “Mark Hetfield, CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and Alex Aleinikoff, Director of the New School’s Zolberg Institute on Migration & Mobility and the former UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, discuss the history of popular opposition to refugees and especially how it has impacted children, from the Kindertransport to the Trump Administration’s child separation policy.”

2019: In London, “the friends of the Rambam Medical Centre” are scheduled to present “the world pre-premier of ‘Rocketman’.”

2019:The Queen” The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by Josh Levin iss scheduled to go on sale to the general public today.

2019: Rabbi Raphael Zarum, the holder of a PhD in theoretical physics and the Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies is scheduled to lecture this afternoon on “Neo-Assyrian Empire and Northern Kingdom of Israel.”

2020: Despite the fact that the Global Nação conference has been postponed The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is scheduled to present “a glimpse into the world of Western Sephardim through an academic perspective”

2020: United with Israel is scheduled to host a “special webinar program today in honor of Jerusalem Day.”

2020: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host via zoom the only Varsity match that actually matters, as Oxford and Cambridge JSocs battle it out to be crowned the winner of Jewniversity Challenge!

2020: The AJHS is scheduled to host “Photographs of the Depression: a Jewish Angle” a Virtual Program Exploring The AJHS Photograph Collections.

2020: The Pozez JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host and Les Bergen is scheduled to host on line “Jewish Washington: A Scrapbook of an American Community” which provides a chronicle of the people, places, and events that shaped the history of the Washington area's Jewish community from 1795 to the present,

2020: Millions of lovers of Sabra, “the official dip sponsor of the National Football League” can celebrate Hummus Day which is not to be confused with “National Hummus Day” by chowing on this marvelous culinary creation

https://www.checkiday.com/354460d6cb20abb1746ace8ccb006319/hummus-day

2020: Yom Yershualayim Day is scheduled to begin at sundown.

2020: In a unique response to the Pandemic, Congregation Or Atid is scheduled to host via Zoom Rabbi Louis Polisson for bedtime songs and stories to help youngsters have a Lilah tov.

2020: Stanford Text Technologies, Stanford University Libraries is scheduled to host “The Cairo Genizah in the Digital Age: A Webinar with Marina Rustow.” 

https://events.stanford.edu/events/878/87869/

2021: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host Shabbat B’Yachad and Friday night services with Rabbi Feivel Strauss and Cantorial Soloist Abbie Strauss.

2021: In Columbus, OH, Tifereth Israel is scheduled to host an “Outdoor In-Person Shabbat Services and BYOP (Bring your own picnic) Dinner.”

2021: The Jewish Baby Network is scheduled to host a workshop about pregnancy rituals, labor and delivery, choosing a Hebrew/Jewish name, ceremonies and more.

2021: Temple Emanu El is scheduled to host via Zoom a wine and cheese reception before Friday night services.

2021: Pianist Orli Shaham is scheduled to return “to the Motor City for a live-streamed performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.”

2021: Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma is scheduled to livestream “Becoming Dr. Ruth, “a play about the origins of famous sex therapist Dr. Ruth, including her escape from the Nazis, losing family in the Holocaust and her journey to Palestine.

2021: A cease fire between Israel and Hamas is scheduled to go into effect early this morning.

 

Viewing all 3229 articles
Browse latest View live


<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>