January 23
393: Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaims his nine year old son Honorius co-emperor. “Under the rule of Theodosius and his sons… the Christian church consolidated its position as the sole power in the empire,” became less tolerant and the Jews “suffered in inverse proportion to the strength of the emperor’s personality.”
1002: Otto III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire passed away. No, Otto was not Jewish. But his passing offers an instructive note when studying history, especially Jewish history. A thousand years ago, Otto was the “George Bush” of his day, a major political and military leader. Otto lived in the same century as Rashi, a guy who sold wine in a small town in France. We remember Rashi. Rashi still speaks to us today infusing our lives in ways in which we are not aware. Who remembers Otto?
1199: Birthdate of Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf who ordered the Jews of the Maghreb to wear dark blue garments with long sleeves and saddle-like caps. His grandson Abdallah al-Adil made a concession after appeals from the Jews, relaxing the required clothing to yellow garments and turbans.
1295: Boniface VIII consecrated as Pope. During his Papacy he will issue “Unam Sanctam” a Bull that “declares there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church” which means that all Jews are denied a portion in “the world to come.”
1235: False accusations of Ritual Murder at Baden, Germany resulted in a massacre of the Jewish population.
1295: Consecration of Boniface VIII the pope who “objected to the erection of a new synagogue in Trier, Germany,” who in 1297 “praised the queen of Sicily for having expropriated the property of Jewish usurers,” who “in 1300 ordered the expulsion of Jewish and Christian usurers from Avignon” and who made it a matter of Canon Law that “Jews, even minors, once baptized must Christians.”
1350: Birthdate of Vincent Ferrer, the native of Valencia, who was responsible for the conversion of an untold number of Jews by methods that were other than just an appeal to faith and who helped to flame the fires of anti-Semitism in Iberia.
1490: At Naples, the first printed edition of the Ramban’s “Sha’ar ha-Gemul,” The Gate of Reward, was published by Joseph ben Jacob Gunzenhauser. Gunzenhauser and his son Azriel had moved from southern Germany to Italy where “they produced various books, including a Hagiographa with rabbinical commentaries, Avicenna's medical Canon, and Abraham ibn Ezra's commentary on the Pentateuch.” Jacob passed away in 1490, the same that they published the Ramban’s seminal work.
1492: At Brescia. Italy, Gershon Soncino produced the first printed Chumash with Megilot.
1519: Today, Pope Leo X granted the “privilege of awarding eight benefices in five Polish cathedrals to Queen Bona who thirty years later, in 1549 introduced regulations “modifying and defining the rights of the Jewish community in Grodno dealing with taxation and land ownership.
1571: The Royal Exchange opens in London. The first Jewish broker was admitted to the Royal Exchange in 1657; the same year a piece of land was purchased for a Jewish cemetery in London.
1579: The Union of Utrecht a treaty that forms a Protestant republic in the Netherlands and that created the union which guaranteed religious peace under article 13 meaning that the persecuted Jews of Spain and Portugal could turn toward Holland as a place of refuge was signed today.
1634: Trial of the men implicated in the 'Complicidad Grande' (Great Complicity). Seventeen arrests were made by the Inquisition after a man turned another man in for being "unwilling to make a sale on Saturday," and for not wanting to eat bacon. The man’s possessions were confiscated, more people were implicated, and eventually a total of 81 persons would be locked up and their possessions sequestered. These men were prominent businessmen of the Lima (Peru) community, and their arrests and led to a "widespread commercial crisis" and failure of the community bank.
1639 In Lima, Peru, at an Auto Da Fe, more than eighty New Christians were burned, including Francisco Maldonna de Silva (Elia Nazareno), after the Inquisition discovered that they were holding regular Jewish services. De Silva spent 12 years in prison, during which time he managed to write two books using a chicken bone and charcoal. Each book was about 100 pages. He succeeded in putting together a rope out of corn husks but instead of escaping he used it to visit other prisoners urging them to believe in Judaism.
1656: French Philosopher Blaise Pascal published the first of his Lettres provinciales. Pascal did not radiate the anti-Semitism typical of so many European intellectuals. Over 300 years ago, when King Louis XIV of France asked, the great French philosopher, to give him proof of the supernatural. Pascal answered: "Why, the Jews, your Majesty -- the Jews." The best proof of the supernatural that Pascal could think of was: "The Jews."
1719: Creation of the Principality of Liechtenstein which reportedly provided a refuge for 240 Jews fleeing the Nazis during the Holocaust.
1719(8thof Shevat, 5479): Sarah Ashkenazi, the wife of Zebi Hirsch Ben Jacob Ashkenazi and “the daughter of Meshullam Zalman Mirels Neumark, chief rabbi of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck” passed away today.
1765: Birthdate of Anton Von Schmid who served as an apprentice to the court printer Joseph Edler von Kurzbeck who provided him with the initial training that enabled him to become a leading printer of Hebrew books.
1769(15thof Shevat, 5529): Tu B’Shevat
1770: Joseph Abrahams, the son of Abraham Abrahams “was admitted as an attorney of the King’s Bench” today.
1776: In Aldingen, Elkele Kahn and Samuel Isaac Wormser gave birth to Isaac Wormser the husband of Sheinle Ephraim and the father of Lewis, Pauline, Ephraim, Simon, Ester and Marianne Wormser.
1777(15thof Shevat, 5537): Tu B’Shevat
1777: Today, as the Jews celebrated the New Year of Trees, “200 New Jersey Continentals” under the command of General William Maxwell defeated two British regiments near Woodbridge in part of campaign to deny the King’s forces food and forage while they were in winter quarters.
1782: Bilhah Polock and Joseph Jacobs gave birth Raphael Jacobs who passed away in New Orleans.
1786(24thof Shevat, 5546): Abraham Landauer, the Austrian born husband of Judith Landauer and father of Judith, Aron and Elias Landauer passed away today.
1789: In Washington, D.C., Georgetown becomes the first Catholic college in the United States. Today approximately 650 of Georgetown’s 6,000 are Jewish and a thousand of its 6,000 graduate students are Jewish. The school offers 35 Jewish studies courses and students can major in Jewish Studies. The university also has an active Hillel Chapter.
1793: Prussia and Russia sign a treaty that is known as the Second Partition of Poland. Each of these partitions resulted in Russia acquiring large chunks of Poland, which she wanted, and large numbers of Jews which she did not want.
1805: Walter Nathan married Sophia Friedberg at the Great Synagogue today.
1815: In England, Miriam Aaron and Abraham Franklin gave birth to Esther Franklin, the wife of Jacob Liepman Prins with whom she had 13 children.
1822: Avigdor ben Benjamin married Frumat bat Abraham today at the Western Synagogue.
1828: Judah Casper married Rachel Michael at the Great Synagogue today
1831: Birthdate of London native Elisa Berger, the wife of Austrian native Leo Berger and the mother of Eleanor, Philip, Frank, Nanette and Charles Berger all of whom were born in London..
1833: Leman Levi married Elizabeth Meyers at the Great Synagogue today.
1838: David Judah Alberga married Henrietta Delgado today.
1840: Birthdate of Warsaw native William Rudolph Landstein who apparently lived in China since he was buried at the Happy Valley Jewish Cemetery in Hong Kong.
1846: “Samuel and Jeanette Bloch” gave birth to Leopold Bloch who married Klara Bloch after the end of his marriage to Babette Bloch.
1849: In Albany, NY, Joseph Ehrich and Rebecca Sporborg gave birth to Yale educated art dealer and “hard money advocate” Louis R. Ehrich, the husband of Henriette Minzesheimer and founder of the Ehrich Galleries on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
1851: In Leer, Lower Saxony, Germany, Moses and Betty Gans gave birth to Isaac Gans, the husband of Diertjen Jette Fischer and father of Betty Gans; Sophie Gans and Moses Gans
1854: In London, Louis and Rachel Greenbaum gave birth to Samuel Greenbaum who would serve three years as an Associate Justice of the Appellate Division in New York.
1855: In New York City, a complaint was entered today in "The Mayor's Little Black Book" stating that on Chatham Street "a Jewish drummer is stationed in front of his store insulting passengers as they pass along. The latter nuisance is glaring and intolerable...and calls for intervention of the proper authorities." Chatham Street was the heart of the second-hand clothing “industry” and was equated with Jews in a most uncomplimentary way.
1855: Middlesex natives Grace Josephs and Jones Syper gave birth to Solomon Spyer.
1856: In Philadelphia, Morris Rosenthal and Jeanette Wallerstein Ahrndt gave birth to Henrietta Radzinski, the wife of A. Isaac Radzinski and Chicago social activist who served as a member of the national board of the Council of Jewish Women, President of the Baron Hirsch Ladies’ Aid Society and the director of the Chicago Home for Jewish Orphans.
1864(15th of Shevat, 5624): As the United States entered into its first Presidential election campaign during wartime, Jews observe Tu B’Shevat
1871(1st of Shevat, 5631): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1871(1stof Shevat, 5631): Fifty two year old Samuel (Isaac) Henry Gluckstein, the husband of Hannah Coenraad Gluckstein and the brother of Henry Gluckstein with whom he began a cigar making business in England which he later turned into a cigar manufacturing jointly run with his son Isidore and Montague passed away today.
1872: Two days after she had passed away, 30 year old Caroline Abrahams, the daughter of Myer Myers and the wife of Barnet Henry Abrahams with whom she had had two sons – Joseph and Henry [[ was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1873: A large crowd braved a snowstorm to hear a lecture at the Beeckman Street Church by Jewish humorist Raphael De Cordova entitled “The New Clergyman.”
1878: Marcus J. Waldheimer, a partner in the firm of Townsend & Waldheimer, denied reports that his father-in-law, Leopold Bamberger, had disappeared. Waldheimer said that Bamberger who has been holding funds in trust that are related to a messy bankruptcy case, has “merely left…temporarily for recreation.”
1879: Birthdate of CCNY and NYU Law School graduate Dr. Gabriel Davidson, the managing director of the Jewish Agricultural Society, author of Our Jewish Farmers and an active member of the Jewish community as can be seen by his membership in the American Jewish Historical Society and the American Friends of the Hebrew University”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1958/11/09/92655404.pdf
1879: It was reported today that a revised edition of “Hebrew Men and Times from the Patriarchs to the Messiah” by Joseph Henry Allen will be reissued by Roberts Brothers
1882: In St. Paul, MN, the Daily Globe reviewed “Hearts of Oak,” an American melodrama co-authored by David Belasco.
1883: Fifty-one year old French artist Gustave Doré who illustrated “The Wandering Jew” passed away today.
http://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-dore/the-wandering-jew
http://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/news/2014/03/21/the-legend-of-the-wandering-jew-illustrated-by-gustave-dore/
http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Wandering-Jew-Joseph-Gaer/dp/B0000CKZDK
1884: The first four page edition of the Financial and Mining News founded by Harry Marks which became the Financial News appeared today
1888(10thof Shevat, 5648): Max Hoffheimer, a member of the board of Hebrew Union College passed away today.
1888: In Breslau, Jewish businessman Max Bernstein and his wife Franziska Altmann gave birth to Arnold Bernstein, the German-American shipower who was stripped of his assets and imprisoned by the Nazis before making his way to the United States in 1939.
1889: French painter Alexandre Cabanel, who taught and was the greatest influence on the work of, Jewish painter Solomon Joseph Solomon, passed away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solomon_Ajax_and_Cassandra.jpg
1891: Birthdate of Jonas Bernanke. Born in Boryslav, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he eventually made his way to Dillon, South Carolina where he owned a drug store and raised a son named Ben who would become Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
1891: In New York Harry Sachs and his wife gave birth to Joseph Howard Sachs, Harvard Grad class of 1911, an investment banker with Goldman, Sachs and the husband of Eleanor Burtis Sachs.
1891: The funeral of Lazarus Rosenfeld who had served as Vice President of Temple Emanu El and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum are scheduled to be held at his home at 139 Madison Avenue starting at 9:30 a.m,
1892: It was reported today that the Russian government is taking a variety of measures to avert the repetition another famine including postponing “the enactment of the laws” aimed at the Jews.
1892: Birthdate of Moritz Neumann one of the last Jewish inhabitants of Kleinsteinach whom the Nazis shipped to either Izbica or Theresienstadt.
1893: The New York Times featured a review of A Visit to Wazan: The Sacred City of Morocco by Robert Spence Watson. Watson used a letter of introduction from Sir Moses Montefiore to the Chief Rabbi of Morocco “as a passport to meeting Jews” wherever he went. Watson reported that Montefiore’s efforts on behalf of the Moroccan Jews had improved their condition including the comment that “the children of the better class of Jews of Tangiers are taught in English” and use English textbooks.
1893: “Heine in his Family Life” published today provides a detailed review of The Family Life of Heinrich Heine written by his nephew, Baron Ludwig von Embden.
1893: It was reported today that while Richard Mansfield’s depiction of Shylock vividly portray “his hatred, his vindictiveness” and “his implacable cruelty in the pursuit of revenge” “he is much more successful than any other actor…in this day, in denoting the affection of the Jew for his kind and the intense mental agony he suffers over Jessica. His portrayal is deemed as “less theatrical and more human than others.” (Over the centuries, the portrayal of Shylock has reflected the skill of the actors and, more to the point, the view of Jews in current society.)
1893: It was reported that Emma Goldman spoke at a meeting of anarchists who call themselves the Pioneers of Liberty
1894: It was reported today that the “stores and fuel yards” that have been provided by Nathan Straus during the current Depression have been “besieged” by the poor and needy.
1895: In Brooklyn, at the Academy of Music Mr. and Mrs. Moses May led the grand march at the charity ball attended by 2,000 people that raise over $10,000 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
1895: In New York, the Young Ladies' and Gentlemen's League of the Montefiore Home sponsored a grand ball to raise funds for the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids. The successful fund raiser was attended by members of “the best circles of Jewish society.” The dances for the Montefiore Home have replaced the Purim Balls which up until two years ago were the great fund raising and major winter social events of these prosperous Jewish citizens
1895: It was reported today that “Congregation Shearith Israel has abandoned the idea of selling the synagogue property on 19th Street between 5thand 6th Avenues.
1896: It was reported today that the officers of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society are: Moses May, President; Abraham Abraham, Vice President; Herman Newman, Treasurer.
1896: Notorious German anti-Semitic agitator Hermann Ahlwardt addressed a meeting at Proesser’s in Jersey City, NJ.
1897: It was reported today that Scribner’s is ready to publish Professor Charles F. Kent’s second volume of the History of the Hebrew People.
1898: An anti-Dreyfus/anti-Zola demonstration was scheduled to take place on the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
1898: Ant-Semitic riots continued today in Algiers when “the mob invaded the Jews quarter and pillaged the shops in the Rue Babaoum, driving the Jewish merchants into the streets.”
1898: It was reported today that Selah Miller, a Congregationalist Minister from Massachusetts has been reappointed to by the President as U.S. Consul at Jerusalem. He had served in that capacity from 1882 to 1886.
1898: The annual meeting of the Mount Sinai Hospital Society was held today in the Dispensary building on east 67th Street.
1898: “A Man Fasts For Twenty Years” published today describes the regiment followed by Morris Fox, a forty year old Jew from Russia who has been living in London for the last twenty years. During that time he has lived exclusively on a diet of six pints of milk, three pints of beer and half pound of Demerara sugar. Physicians in Konigsberg provided this “fast” which has proven to be the only way to cope with effects of an illness that “entirely destroyed his digestive organs.”
1898: One day after he had passed away, 35 year old Mendel Hoffman was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1898: It was reported today that the ant-Dreyfus riots at “Nantes, Bordeaux, Marseilles” and other cities outside of Paris “are frankly anti-Semitic…The mobs have a single purpose which is to outrage, plunder and kill in the Jewish quarters.” Their cries against Zola are based on their belief that he is a “hired champion” of the Jews. (More for 2014)
1898: It was reported today that American correspondent does not think that Sarah Bernhardt will enjoy a successful season this winter when she performs in Paris.
1898: It was reported today that Justice J.J. Cohen, Isaac N. Seligman and Jacob Schiff were among those who attended Legal Aid Society’s 22nd annual dinner at Delmonico’s. (More 2014)
1898 (29th of Tevet, 5658): Yehoshua Yehudah Leib Diskin passed away. Born in 1818, this important rabbi, Talmudist and Biblical commentator was also known as the Maharil Diskin,. He served as a rabbi in Łomża, Mezritch, Kovno, Shklov, Brisk and finally Jerusalem after moving there in 1878, where he became the spiritual leader of a part of the Yishuv haYashan. He was part of a family of rabbis. His father, Binyamin Diskin, served as rabbi in Grodno, Volkovisk and later Łomża. His son was Rabbi Yitzchok Yeruchem Diskin.
1899: Henry Herzberg delivered a lecture at Temple Beth-El tonight in New York entitled “The Soul of Judaism.
1899: Three days after he had passed away, 45 year old Walter Bertram Phillips the sone of Barnet Samuel Phillips and Philippa Samuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1899: The Baron de Hirsch Trade Schools are scheduled to move into a new facility on East Sixty Fourth Street. The school had outgrown its old facility on East 9thStreet that it had occupied for the last five years
1899(12thof Shevat, 5659): Five months before his 50th birthday Bohemian born, University of Vienna trained lawyer Emil Schiff who worked as a journalist while piling up knowledge that he never used for practical purpose including the study of “higher mathematics at Berlin University and graduating from Medical School passed away after which a memorial address was delivered at the Berlin Medical Society.
1899: It was reported today that newly created Central Federate Union which has replaced the old Central Labor Union refused to admit delegates from the Federated Hebrew Trades Unions because “they represented a central body and not individual unions.”
1899: In Albany, New York state Senator Elsbeg introduced a bill that would the Hebrew Infant Asylum of New York to the list of institutions that are entitled to receive public money.
1900(23rdof Shevat, 5660): English born “communal worker” Alfred H. Beddington, a warden of the Central Synagogue and a member of committees devoted to “the Jews’ Free School, the Jews’ College, the Jewish Middle-Class School for Girls and the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge.”
1900: The Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society who members include Alfred Jaretzki, Percy S. Straus, Eugene Meyer, Jr. and Solomon G. Rosnebaum was organized today.
1902(15thof Shevat, 5662): Tu B’Shevat
1902: In Grass Valley, CA, Polish-Jewish immigrants Fannie (Meyer) and Zalkin H. Rubinstein gave birth to Cecilia Rubinstein who as Cecelia Ager, the wife of songwriter Milton Agar, “was the first female reporter for Variety, a movie critic for PMand contributor to the New York Times” while raising their two daughters -- Laurel Bentley and Shana Alexander.
1903: In making comments today about the plans of Charles Frohman, the Ohio born Jewish theatre manager and producer to host “a testimonial for A.M. Palmer,” theatre people said that this “testimonial must be a graceful way of indicating that all past differences between the two managers was at an end.”
1904(6thof Shevat, 5664): Sixty-two year old Flaminio Ephraim Servi who had been serving as chief rabbi at Casale-Monferrato (Italy) since 1872, passed away today.
1904: Herzl was received by the Italian King, Vittorio Emanuele III. The king showed a serious interest in Zionism. But under the Italian political system, the king reigns but does not rule so it will be to Foreign Minister Tittoni to gain political support in Constantinople. Tittoni asked for a memorandum and promised to write to the Italian ambassador in Constantinople.
1905: In Albany, Melvil Dewey, Director of the State Library of the state Library tonight made public the reply which he had sent to the Library Committee’s Board of Regents, in response to a request from the committee for an answer to the charge made against him…that while using his official position to advertise the Lake Place Club he was a party to a rule of the club that Jews should not be received as guests at the club’s hotel in which he stated that the Jews had not been admitted to his Lake Placid Club since its founding in 1895 but while the allegations were true they were not, in his words “serious.” (Editor’s note – this is the Dewey of Dewey Decimal fame whose anti-Semitism is not something they teach us about in school)
1906: It was reported today that a mass meeting held in New York to celebrate the first anniversary of “Red Sunday” when thousands of workingmen were shot down in St. Petersburg when they tried to deliver a petition to the Czar there were cries of “Down with anti-Semitism” followed later by a denunciation of “the massacre of the Jews.”
1908: “Attacks Immigrant Jews” published today described how a speech delivered by William H. Corbin in which he described Jews as “ignorant an dirty…crowding the schools and high schools” and “crowding their way into the professions to practice them for getting money…while working with low ideals and sordid practices” was received with applause by the 150 members of the Chenango County Society meeting at the Hotel Astor.
1909: Birthdate of Simon W. Gerson, a leader of CPUSA and editor for The Daily Worker.
1909: In the UK, Blanche Esther Barnett and Lionel D. Barnett, M.A., Ph.D., CB gave birth Richard David Barnett, the British academic, “an authority on archaeology of the ancient world”, President of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Chairman of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society and the husband of Barbara Barnett.
1910: The Board of Directors of Mount Sinai Hospital held their annual board meeting today at the hospital on 100th Street and Fifth Avenue. During the reading of the annual report Isaac Stern, the President, announced that the plan to establish a federation of the larger Jewish charitable institutions of the city, a plan for some time in contemplation, had failed. Mr. Stern said that there were certain disadvantages to the creation of such a federation without the guarantee of “any permanent advantages.” Therefore, the directors considered it “in the best interest of the community not give their consent” to such a plan. Mr. Stern announced that the children of the late Mayer Lehman had donated $78,528 which was to be used to add two stories to the Dispensary Building as a memorial to their late father. In the past year, almost 89% of the nearly 9,000 patients admitted to the hospital were treated without paying a fee. The hospital’s expenditure of $399,170 exceeded income by almost $15,000. Jacob Schiff, who apparently favored the creation of the federation, gave a speech in which he thanked the board and the medical staff for their efforts in the last year. The board’s decision about joining a federation of charitable institutions doomed the idea at a cost of one million dollars. That was the amount that the late Louis A. Heinsheimer had set aside in his will for such an organization, if and when, it should be created.
1911: It was reported today that “the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities” showed receipts for 1910 of $90,180 “compared with $81,877 in 1909 for an increase of $8,303.
1912: Hugo Doblin and Herwatch Walden served as best men at the wedding Erna Reiss, a medical student and daughter of a wealthy factory owner to Bruno Alfred Döblin whose works including Berlin Alexanderplatz published in 1929
1913(15thof Shevat, 5673): Tu B’Shevat
1913: The annual meeting of the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC which S.S. Brill of St. Louis attended as a delegate came to an end.
1913: The 3 day ceremonies marking the dedication of new buildings at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, came to an end today.
1913: At today’s session of the 23rd Biennial Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations Simon Wolf of Washington, DC, Chairman of the Board of Civil and Religious Rights delivered a report on his group’s activities which have “dealt with the problems of immigration” and providing clarification for the general public of matters” regarding the unfair discrimination to American citizenship by the Russian authorities in the recent passport legislation.”
1914: Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson will appear for the last time on the New York stage when he plays the starring role in “The Merchant of Venice” at the Manhattan Opera House.
1915: Among those listed today as contributors to the Red Cross fund of which Jacob H. Schiff is Treasurer is Congregation B’Nai Israel of Natchez, Mississippi.
1915: “The American Jewish War Relief Committee of which Louis Marshall is President and Felix M. Warburg is a Treasurer issued a statement today showing that since December 13 the committee has sent $200,000 to Europe and Palestine” and that to date “the committee’s relief fund” now totals “more than $378,000.
1916: In New York City, Jewish immigrants Samuel and Bella Price, who would move to San Diego in the 1920’s gave birth to Sol Price, the founder of Price Club which later merged with warehouse giant Cosco.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/business/16price.html
1916: Birthdate of Irwin Witty who played Center for the 1938 NYU basketball team which he led to their first appearance in a “final four tournament” – The NIT.
1916: It was reported today that the American Jewish Relief Committee has received to date $1,236,846 including a contribution of $328.32 from the Provisional Executive Committee “for the relief of Jews in Palestine” and $250 form “Minneapolis Jews.”
1916: At Carnegie Hall, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, rabbi of the Free Synagogue delivered a sermon today in which he defended Zionism from charges that it was un-patriotic and un-American.
1916: “United States Senator Martin of New Jersey, Mayor Mitchell, Commissioner of Immigration Frederick C. Howe, New York Congressman Walter M. Chandler and Isaac Siegel, Louis D. Brandeis, Adolph Lewisohn, Samuel Untermyer and Judge Leon Sanders” are all reported to be among the speakers who will address tomorrow evening’s meeting at Carnegie Hall hosted by the Jewish Congress Organization Committee.
1917: It was reported today that Dr. H.G. Enelow, the rabbi at Temple Emanu-El told an audience that included Jews and non-Jews that “Jewish interest in Jesus should be aroused…by the fact that Jesus was a Jew” and that while such writers as Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and George Moore were “brilliant” their views on this topic were “inaccurate” because “they did not know enough about Jesus’ relation to the Jews to fit them for the instruction of others.”
1918: In New York Bertha Cohen and Robert Elion, DDS, gave birth to Gertrude Belle Elion. Elion graduated from Hunter College and then earned a Master in Science from N.Y.U. in 1941. In a classic case of sex discrimination, she was unable to obtain a graduate research job which meant she could not earn a Ph.D. Thus the 1988 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ended up working as a lab assistant and high school teacher.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1988/elion/biographical/
1918: The list of the newest members of the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Relief Committee published today including William Fox of New York, Moses A. Gunst of San Francisco, Samuel Lamport of New York City, Joseph Michaels of Rochester, NY, H.B. Rosen from the Harrison National Bank of New York City, Abe Rothstein of New York City, Reuben Sadowsky of New York City, Ben Salling of Portland, OR, Jacob Sperber of New York City and Judge Edward L. Lazansky of Brooklyn.
1918: The Chief Rabbi of Algeria plans a community building which will contain a yeshiva, an assembly hall, a library, shelter for strangers, a mikvah and a bakery for matzah.
1919: Birthdate of Patterson NJ native and West Virginia football player Millard Lampell the blacklisted television and movie screenwriter whose first brush with social protest appears to have come from songwriting with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthries.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/11/arts/millard-lampell-78-writer-and-supporter-of-causes-dies.html
1919: In Mannville, Alberta, Max Goffman, and his wife, Ann (née Averbach) gave birth to Frances Goffman who gained fame as character actress Frances Bey who played Fonzi’s grandmother on “Happy Days.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/17/local/la-me-frances-bay-20110917
1919: General Lyautey, the resident General of Morocco visits the Mellah (Jewish Quarter) and urges the Jews to contribute towards its sanitation and enlargement.
1920: In New York, Joseph Frederick “Joe” Saphir, the son of Louis and Bessie Saphir and his wife Elsa Saphir gave birth to Lois Saphir Lee.
1921: Birthdate of Gdansk native Justus Rosenberg, a member of Vivian’s Fry’s Emergency Rescue Committee which helped to spirit “intellectuals and artists” out of Vichy France and went on to a career as a Professor at Bard College.
1921: “The Ohel Rachel Synagogue (Tent of Rachel), a Sephardi synagogue in Shanghai, China, built by Sir Jacob Elias Sassoon in memory of his wife Rachel, which was completed in 1920, was consecrated today under the leadership of Rabbi Hirsch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohel_Rachel_Synagogue#/media/File:Ohel_Rachel_Synagogue_old.jpg
1921: The members of the directorate are scheduled to talk about the year’s accomplishment today at the annual meeting of the Bronx Hospital at Temple Adath Israel.
1921: In Shanghai, Rabbi W. Hirsch consecrated The Ohel Rachel Synagogue for worship. This marked the culminating achievement of Shanghai's First Wave of Jewish immigrants and it was built to accommodate the community of Baghdadi Jews which at its peak numbered 700.
1921: Approximately three students are scheduled to receive their diplomas when “twelve of the largest Talmud Torahs and Hebrew Schools in Manhattan hold joint graduation exercises” today “at Stuyvesant High School after which Israel Unterberg, Samuel C. Lamport, Joseph Levy and Harry H. Liebowitz will host a dinner at the Jewish Center.
1923: Birthdate of Dina Gottliebova, the native of Brno who gained fame as Dina Babbit who survived Auschwitz by drawing portraits of Dr. Josef Menegle
1923: “The Stone Rider” a silent film starring Lucie Mannheim was released today in Germany.
1923 (6th of Shevat, 5683): Max Nordau passed away at the age of 73. http://www.herzl.org/english/Article.aspx?Item=531
http://www.zionism-israel.com/bio/Nordau_Biography.htm
1924: Laborite Emmanuel “Manny” Shinwell began his first term as Secretary of Mines under Prime Minister MacDonald.
1924: In Paterson, NJ, Sam and Mollie Lautenberg gave birth to Frank Lautenberg who rose to be a United States, a support of the down-trodden and a leader in the Jewish community
http://www.jta.org/2013/06/03/news-opinion/politics/new-jersey-sen-frank-lautenberg-dies-at-89
1925: In Rokiskis, Lithuania, Avraham and Devora Harmatz, gave birth to Joseph Harmatz, a Holocaust survivor and comrade of Abba Kovner who plotted to kill German soldiers at WW II passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/world/europe/joseph-harmatz-dead.html?_r=0
1926(8thof Shevat, 5686): Parashat Bo
1927: Author Annie Eichberg Lane, the only daughter of composer and musical director Julius Eichberg passed away today.
1927: It was reported today that “the newly-elected officers of the Federal of Jewish women’s Organizations of Greater New York will be installed at the seventh annual convention of the organization” which will take place this at the Hotel Astor.
1928: “The tenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration…was celebrated” tonight “at the Grand Street Boys’ Association Clubhouse under the auspices of the West End group of Hadassah” during which Dr. Stephen S. Wise “urged Jews to cooperate with England in building Palestine.”
1929: Birthdate of Myron Sidney Kopelman, who, as Myron Cope, would become an American sports journalist, radio personality, and sportscaster best known for being "the voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers."
1930: “A verdict of not guilty was pronounced this afternoon on all twelve Arabs charged with the murder of five members of the Macleff family and their two guests at the Jewish colony of Motzah, five miles outside of Jerusalem, on Saturday, Aug. 24.”
1931: “The Man Who Murdered” a crime film directed by Curtis Bernhardt with a script by Henry Koster and Carl Mayer was released today in Germany.
1931: Sir Isaac Isaacs was sworn in as the first Australian born Governor General.
1931: Ninety-one year old Catholic theologian and author of anti-Semitic polemics August Rohling whose work included Der Talmudjude published in 1871 “which bean a standard work for anti-Semitic authors and journalist” passed away today in Salzburg.
1932(15thof Shevat, 5692): Parashat Beshalach; Tu B’Shevat
1932(15thof Shevat, 5692): Fifty year old Australian born, Laborite MP Marion Phillips passed away today.
https://spartacus-educational.com/Amarion_phillips.htm
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Phillips-Marion
1932: Chief Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo of the Court of Appeals was formally endorsed for associate justice of the United States Supreme Court to fill the seat recently vacated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes at tonight’s closing session of the annual meeting of the New York State Bar Association at the Hotel Astor
1932: In Manhattan, Sidne Silverman, the son of Sime Silverman the publisher who founded Variety in New York and Daily Variety in Hollywood and former actress Marie Saxon gave birth to their only son Syd who continued the family publishing business.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/business/media/syd-silverman-90-who-kept-variety-boffo-for-30-years-is-dead.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
1933: Birthdate of composer Joel Spiegelman.
1933: At 7:30 p.m., the NBC Blue Network broadcast the 9th episode of “Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel, a situation comedy radio show starring two of the Marx Brothers, Groucho and Chico, and written primarily by Nat Perrin and Arthur Sheekman.”
1934: “No More Ladies” a comedy produced by Lee Shubert and co-starring Melvyn Douglas opened on Broadway at the Booth Theatre.
1936: Sir Isaac Isaacs, a native born Australian who was the son of Polish Jews, completes his term as the 9th Governor-General of Australia.
1936: Senator William H. King of Utah told that the U.S. Senate today “that 600,000 Jews were” being subjected to “ruthless persecution under decrees of the present German regime” and that “Congress must soon face” the need to liberalize the immigration laws of the United States “to permit the admission of Jewish refugees from Germany.”
1937: Today, the United Palestine Appeal released an economic survey on “How Many Jews Can Palestine Hold?” by Joseph L. Cohen, “a British member of the advisor of the committee on social insurance of the International Labor Organization” which show among other things that the “Jewish population” in Palestine had “increased from 17 to 30 per cent of the total population during the last few years” and that today, “there are forty-seven Jews to every 100 Arabs.”
1937: In Moscow, 17 leading Communists went on trial. They were accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders. Stalin combined Trotsky’s Jewish parentage with traditional Russian anti-Semitism to demonize Trotsky and destroy those opposing his authoritarian rule. Having branded the “Jew, Trostky” as an enemy of the revolution, or the Communist Party and/or the Soviet Union, Stalin would feel to move against the Jews of the U.S.S.R when it fit his needs or his demonic spirit.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that two Arabs, implicated in the murder of J.L. Starkey, a noted archaeologist who was excavating in Palestine, were hanged at Acre. The Motza brick and burnt-tile factory was completely gutted by fire. Arson by Arab terrorists was suspected. Ephraim Brin, 19, and Aziz Jacob, 17, both of Jerusalem, were the first Jews to be sentenced, under the newly created Military Courts, to five years' imprisonment for carrying a pistol and a few rounds of ammunition.
1939: “The body of a woman taken from the River Thames was identified today as that of Countess Mari Kageneck, a wealthy Austrian Jew” and wife of a husband who “holds a position in Vienna under the Nazi regime” who had disappeared in December at a time when she had been separated from her two children and Vienna and was feeling great despair “over the persecution of the Jews in Germany.”
1940: In Perth Amboy, NJ, Philip Kaplan Cheuse who defected from the Russian Air Force and the former Matilda Diamond gave birth to author and critic Alan Stuart Cheuse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/books/alan-cheuse-author-and-npr-book-critic-dies-at-75.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&rref=obituaries&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Obituaries&pgtype=article
1941: Charles Lindbergh testified before the U.S. Congress and recommended that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler. For those who are perplexed by Roosevelt’s response to the plight of European Jewry, this entry should give you a clue as to the kind of the environment in which he was operating. “The Lone Eagle” was a national monument and, as the leader of the America First Movement, he saw WW II was a European measure. He would only grudgingly give ground on his opposition to war once the bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor. Opposition of this magnitude fashioned all of FDR’s decisions about the war, including how to deal with the Shoah. It is only with the warmth of the myth of America’s Greatest Generation that the United States seems like an ant-fascist monolith in WWII.
1941: “Lady in the Dark” a product of “3 Jewish Musketeers” - music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book and direction by Moss Hart – opened at the Alvin Theatre in New York
1942(5th of Shevat, 5702): In Novi Sad, Hungary, 550 Jews and 292 Serbs were driven onto the ice and then shelled. All drowned. [Ed. Note: Who says Kaddish for these people?]
http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/january/07.asp
1942(5th of Shevat, 5702): Paul Levinstein was killed in Hadjerat M'Guil a Nazi concentration camp built in remote part of the Sahara Desert in 1941. Upon hearing of their son's death his parents committed suicide in Britain.
1942: Hungarian military units began “cleaning up” the region of captured Yugoslavia which included the massacre of the local Jews.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/january/07.asp
1943: Italian authorities refuse to cooperate with Germans in deportations of French Jews living in zones of France under Italian control
1943: The “father, mother and daughter” of Moshe Hans Jahoda who had escaped to Palestine five months before the start of WWII, “were transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp, where all three were murdered.
1943: The last airfield held by the Nazis fell to the Russian cutting any further supply to the 6th Army which brought victory at Stalingrad ever so much closer
1943: Marcia Davenport, the daughter of Bernard Glick and Alma Gluck was a panelist today on a radio panel show “The People’s Platform: when one of the other panelist had a heart attack and passed away.
1944: "Ode to Napoleon" by the Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg premieres in New York City
1945(9thof Shevat, 5705): Seventy-one year old Annie Edith Landau, the London born daughter of Marcus Israel and Chaja Kohn who settled in Palestine where she played a key role in the development of education and culture for which she was twice honored by King George V passed away today after which she buried “on the Mount of Olives.”
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/landau-annie-edith
1945: Birthdate of Bruce Ratner. Appointed by Ed Koch to the position of Commissioner of Consumer Affairs for New York City in 1978, he became a real estate developer in 1982. He is now the owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, his net worth now several hundred million dollars. Ratner is the developer charged with building the New York Times Tower. He is a member of the board of the Jewish Heritage Museum.
1946: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, a joint British and American committee composed of six Americans and six Englishmen that was charged with examining the “political, economic and social conditions in Mandatory Palestine as they bear upon the problem of Jewish immigration and settlement therein and the well-being of the peoples now living therein” which had been meeting in Washington, D.C. began its meetings today in London.
1947: Diana Dill and Kirk Douglas gave birth to their second son movie producer Joel Douglas.
1947: U.S. premiere of “Johnny O’Clock” directed by Robert Rossen, featuring Lee J. Cob and providing Jeff Chandler (Ira Gorssel) with his appearance in a major motion picture.
1948: It was announced today that “the name of Moshe A Pearlman, a Brooklyn student killed in Palestine” by Arabs on January 16 “will be inscribed on a student’s chair at the projected Hebrew University –Hadassah Medical School” thanks to a one thousand dollar contribution made by an anonymous donor.
1949: At the Hollywood Athletic Club the first Emmy Awards are presented. A year later, two Jewish stars would dominate the Emmy Awards. The Texaco Star Theatre starring Milton Berle and The Ed Wynn Show starring Ed Wynn would walk off with top honors while Berle and Wynn would each earn awards in their own right.
1950: The 3rd edition of Famous 1st Facts by Jewish trivia expert Joseph Kane is published
1950: Israeli Knesset resolved that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
1951: “Declaring that a strong and prosperous Israel is the best guarantee of peace in the Middle East, Senator Irving M. Ives today requested that the United States Government give ‘some form of grant-in-aid’ to Israel immediately.” (As reported by JTA)
1951: Seventy-five year old Rabbi Judah L. Maimon, Israel’s Minister of Religion arrived in New York today which marks the start of a four week long speaking tour in the United States sponsored by “the Mizrachi Organization of America.
1951: It was announced that 42 year old Dr. Aron Kaminsky has named chairman of the Department of Dermatology at the Jewish Hospital of Buenos Aires.
1952: Birthdate of Jeanette Ingberman, the Brooklyn born daughter of Holocaust survivors who became a founder of the New York cultural center Exit Art, a hotbed of avant-garde work by artists from around the world. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/23/1952/this-week-in-history-january-23-1952-jeanette-ingberman-founder-of-exit-art-is
1953(7thof Shevat, 5713): Zlynka native Solomon Bregman the editor-in-chief of The Book About Jews-Heroes of the War against Fascism who was arrested “with other members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in 1948” passed away today in jail “after surviving several severe beatings.”
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported from New York that the Soviet Union was about to break diplomatic relations with Israel. The first five tons of the copper ore, excavated from Timna mine in the Negev, were sent for industrial tests to Europe.
1954: “Killers from Space” a sci-fi film directed and produced by W. Lee Wilder was released today in the United States.
1955(29thof Tevet, 5715): Fifty-two year old New Yorker Fanny Levy, a friend of Dr. William Fernhoff and his wife, the former Tola Schwarz died from injuries from an automobile accident in which all three had been victims two days ago.
1959(14thof Shevat, 5719): Terrorists killed a shepherd from Kibbutz Lehavot HaBashan.
1960: Birthdate of Sheri Miriam Goldhirsch the Brooklyn native who became the “artistic director of Young Playwrights, Inc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/theater/sheri-m-goldhirsch-who-nurtured-young-playwrights-dies-at-55.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
1960: Israeli General Yitzhak Rabin sends an aerial reconnaissance across the Suez Canal to ascertain the position of Nasser’s advancing troops. When the troops cannot be found, Rabin correctly assumes they have crossed the Canal. It turned out that the bulk of Egyptian army was almost at the border with Israel where they would only be opposed by force of twenty or thirty tanks.
1963: The latest installment of the memoirs of Ilya Ehrenberg which describe the Soviet response to the invasion of June, 1941, appeared today. Ehrenbeg depicted a hesitant Stalin whose ever-present picture disappeared from view for months and who did not speak to the nation until November of 1941. This installment also describes how Stalin mobilized Soviet Jews including Ehrenberg, Sergei Eisenstein and Solomon Mikhoels to make broadcasts abroad to gain support for the Soviets in their fight against the Nazis. [After the war, Stalin, like Pharaoh, would know not the Jewish contribution and murdered many of them included Mikhoels.]
1963: Recording session began today at Columbia’s Studio A in New York that would lead to “The Barbra Streisand Album.”
1963: Lew Pollack’s “Charmaine” was released today Decca Records.
1964: Arthur Miller's "After the Fall" premiered in New York City.
1968: Mapai, Ahdut HaAvoda and Rafi merged into the Israeli Labor Party and ceased to exist as individual entities.
1969: “Hour of the Wolf” the second album of the rock group Hassles whose members included Billy Joel who wrote some of the songs for the LP was released today.
1970(16thof Shevat, 5730): Seventy-four year old Annie Stein Lazarus, the wife of Sam Lazarus and mother of Jacob, Leon, Freances, Ralph and Irwin Lazarus passed away today after which she was buried in the Jewish section of the Sunset Hill Cemetery in Valdosta, GA.
1972: In Caen, France Dr. Jacques Drucker and his wife Martine gave birth to French actress Léa Drucker
1973(20thof Shevat, 5773): A Palestinian terrorist murdered Baruch Cohen in Madrid.
1974: “Professor David Azbel announced his intention to hold a hunger strike in support of Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn.”
1974: “Izak Tsudikovich Hochberg of Kishinev, the well-known mathematics professor and Corresponding Member of Moldavian Academy of Sciences, was dismissed from his post as head of Department in the Institute of Mathematics after applying to emigrate to Israel.”
1975: "Barney Miller" starring Hal Linden premiered on ABC TV.
1976: It was reported today that even if the Soviet Union is overhauling its emigration procedures, “emigrants to Israel will continue to pay 500 additional rubles ($665) to renounce their Soviet Citizenship…” (As reported by JTA)
1976: It was reported today that the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) “has learned of a new Soviet Jewish “Prisoner of Conscience,” Lydia Abatorovna Nisanova the 32 year old native of Derbent who applied to emigrate in July 1975 and who was sentenced recently to a year-and-a-half for speculation.” (As reported today by JTA)
1977(4th of Shevat, 5737): Bernard "Toots" Shor passed away. “Toots Shor, a bulky Jewish street kid from Philadelphia, who made and gambled away several fortunes in the big town, was in a sense the original insult comic—crass, coarse, jesting jibes being the prime ingredient of pal ship among all those heavy hitters.” Shor was the premier Saloonkeeper and his New York restaurant was a thing of legend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/movies/17shor.html
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the cabinet decided to postpone the military talks held with Egypt in Cairo, after the Egyptian delegation broke off political negotiations with Israel, held in Jerusalem. It was expected that this step might influence Egypt to moderate its demands, in tone as well as in contents. The US expressed its disappointment with Israel's sharp reaction to President Anwar Sadat's demands for a total withdrawal to the 1967 borders and the recognition of the rights of the Palestinians. Four hundred and twenty-five Israelis flew to the US under the 'Friendly Force' program designed to promote peace through personal contacts.
1978 (15th of Shevat, 5738): A hundred thousand trees were planted on Tu Bishvat by the Jewish National Fund.
1981: Birthdate of Long Branch, NJ, native and UCLA gymnast Alyssa Erin Beckerman who earned a Gold Medal for her performance on the Balance Beam at the U.S. National Championship in 2000.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110725154600/http://www.uclabruins.com/sports/w-gym/mtt/beckerman_alyssa00.html
1983(9thof Shevat, 5743): Seventy-eight year old Uman, Russia native and University of Pennsylvania trained neurologist Dr. Morris Bender who raised five children – Barbara, Leila, Adam, Barnaby and Victor – with his wife Sarah passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/27/obituaries/dr-morris-bender-78-expert-on-brain-tumors.html?searchResultPosition=1
1984(19thof Shevat, 5744): Ninety-two year old Pulitzer Prize winning composer and violinist Samuel Gardner, the husband of Henrietta Holtzman Gardner with whom he had two children – Sally and Herbert – passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/24/obituaries/samuel-gardner-92-is-dead-violinist-and-juilliard-teacher.html
1986: "Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood" opens at Ritz Theater New York City.
1987: Meir Heth, was appointed today as the new chairman of Bank Leumi L'Yisrael, Israel's biggest commercial bank. The former head of the Tel Aviv stock exchange, Heith was criticized over a 1983 collapse of bank shares. A commission of inquiry last year criticized Mr. Heth for failing to prevent the country's four major banks from manipulating their shares.
1988: As the Arab uprising called the Intifada brings an increase in violence the representative of the Arab League and three other Arab diplomats met with a senior State Department official today to complain about what they considered inadequate United States pressure on Israel to halt the violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
1990(26thof Tevet, 5750): Eighty-five year old Nathan N. Rosen, a graduate of Yeshiva University and Columbia College who served as an Army Chaplain during World War II before beginning a 25 year career as a chaplain at Brown University where he founded the Hillel chapter, passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/24/obituaries/nathan-n-rosen-rabbi-85.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm
1991. At a briefing this morning, Israeli officials appeared to play down the deaths that occurred when an Iraqi Scud missile evaded two American Patriot air-defense missiles and slammed into a Tel Aviv suburb on Tuesday night, leaving 3 people dead and 96 wounded emphasizing that the three victims had suffered heart attacks.
1991: The first episode of the second season of "Seinfeld" debuts on NBC-TV
1994: Coach Marv Levy led the Buffalo Bills to victory over the Kansas City Chiefs which marked his fourth straight victory in the American Football Conference Championship.
1997(15thof Shevat, 5757): Tu B’Shevat
1998: “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” co-starring Side Caesar and Howard Morris is scheduled to be released today in the United States.
1998: “Phantoms” the movie version of the novel by the same name produced by Bob and Harvey Weinstein and starring Live Schreiber was released in the United States today.
1997: Madeleine Albright became the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State. During her term as Secretary of State, Albright found out for the first time that her family was Jewish.
1999: Today, Gene Siskeil reviewed “The Theory of Flight” which marked his last on-air appearance with co-host Roger Ebert.
2000: The New York Times includes a review of The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849-1999 by Niall Ferguson.
2001: This afternoon, two Tel Aviv restaurateurs and an Israeli Arab friend sat down for a late lunch in Tulkarm, a battle-scarred town rarely visited by Israeli Jews since the West Bank erupted in riotous protests nearly four months ago. The three were seized by armed men who later let the Israeli Arab go, but shot the two Israeli Jews at point-blank range, Israeli officials said. Hamas, the militant Gaza-based Islamic movement, took responsibility for what it called an ''execution'' and said the shooting had been videotaped.
2001: The killing of two Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants earlier today interrupted a new round of peace negotiations here, with Prime Minister Ehud Barak condemning the slayings as ''horrendous'' and ordering the three cabinet ministers in the talks to return to Jerusalem.
2001: Today, in a talk with high school students on the campaign trail, Ehud Barak appeared to disavow proposals for relinquishing control of the ancient city core of Jerusalem. ''Under any settlement, the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter, and the Mount of Olives, and what is called the holy basin, will remain under Israeli sovereignty,'' Mr. Barak said.
2002(10th of Shevat, 5762): Bernard Rothman passed away. Cause of death was a stroke. He was better known as Benny Rothman, “a UK political activist, most famous for his leading role in the Mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932. He was born in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, in 1911. He is family was so poor that he had to start work at the earliest opportunity rather than take full advantage of a scholarship that he had won. Working as an errand boy in the motor trade, he studied geography and economics in his spare time while his Aunt Ettie introduced him to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and the works of Upton Sinclair. Increasingly committed to the causes of socialism and communism, Rothman lost his job after getting into some trouble with the law while selling copies of the Daily Worker. During a period of unemployment, with the help of a bicycle salvaged from spare parts, he discovered the nearby wilderness regions of the Peak District and North Wales. The combination of his political activism and interest in the outdoors led to his participation in the mass trespass of 1932, an enterprise that resulted in a spell in prison and further employment difficulties. In 1934, Rothman went to work at Avro in Newton Heath and instantly became an officer of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). At Avro's, he met and married fellow communist Lily Crabtree but his political views became increasingly visible to his employer and he was dismissed. Rothman was active in working with Jewish groups in Manchester to oppose the campaigns of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. In 1936, he started work at Metropolitan Vickers at Trafford Park and was again soon an AEU official.”
2002: Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and subsequently murdered in Karachi, Pakistan. Based on the tape of his murder, Pearl was killed because he was a Jew.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/daniel-pearls-death-10-years-later-an-interview-with-his-father-judea-pearl/2012/02/21/gIQAKChtRR_blog.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1014311357552611480.html
2003 (20th of Shevat, 5763): Actress Nell Carter passed away. She had converted from Catholicism to Judaism in 1982.
2003: The 12th annual Jewish Film Festival comes to an end in New York.
2003: As of 10 pm, Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, the holy man of unknown but tremendous age, who was scheduled to visit the Hall of Moses synagogue and then a candlelit graveyard in this Tel Aviv suburb tonight for a rally that mixed mystic ritual with all the grit of Chicago ward politics had failed to make an appearance and the police were forced to disperse the disappointed crowd
2004(29thof Tevet, 5764): German born photographer Helmut Newton passed away. (As reported by Suzy Menkes)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/news/26iht-obits_ed3__23.html
http://www.helmutnewton.com/
2004: U.S. premiere of “The Butterfly Effect” featuring Logan Lerman which was distributed in Israel by Forum Film.
2005: The Squid and the Whale, an American comedy-drama film written and directed by Noah Baumbach featuring Jesse Eisenberg as “Walt Berkman” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
2005: Stanley Fischer, a widely respected American economist and banker, has agreed to leave the United States and a job as a vice chairman of Citigroup to become governor of the Bank of Israel.
2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including recently published paperback editions of Horse People: Scenes from the Riding Life by Michael Korda and Unsettled: An Anthropolgy of Jews, Melvin Konner’s sweeping study that follows a roughly historical outline, from the earliest pre-biblical days to the establishment of the state of Israel, and tracks down far-flung Jewish communities in China, India and Afghanistan.
2006: The Andrew Carnegie Medal for best children's video was given to the producers of Mordicai Gerstein's "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers," winner of the Caldecott in 2004. Mordicai Gerstein was born in Los Angeles in 1935. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, Susan Yard Harris, who is also an illustrator, and their daughter, Risa. The award winning illustrator, painter and graphics artist has collaborated on numerous books for children including many with a Jewish motif including Queen Esther the Morning Star, Noah and the Great Flood and Jonah and the Two Great Fish
2006: In “Attorney's Perseverance Yields a Legal Masterpiece” published today Anne-Marie O’Connor described Randol Schoenberg’s struggle to re-gain art looted by the Nazis.
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jan/23/local/me-schoenberg23
2006(7th of Tevet, 5766): Andrea Bronfman, the wife of Jewish Canadian billionaire Charles Bronfman, was killed in a traffic accident in New York Monday.
2007: “Attorney-General Mazuz announced that he would consider charging Katsav with rape, sexual harassment, breach of trust, obstruction of justice, harassment of a witness and fraud.”
2007(4th of Shevat, 5767): Aharon Uzan passed away at the age of 82. Born in Tunisia in 1924, he made Aliyah in 1949 where he became active in a variety of left-wing political parties. He served in the Knesset and held a variety of cabinet posts included Minister of communications and Minister of Agriculture.
2007: "Two Hands” a short documentary on Leon Fleisher by Nathaniel Kahn was nominated for an Academy Award for best short subject today
2007: Israel’s “Sweet Mud” and Holland’s “Black Book,” a movie about a Jewish woman serving in the Resistance against the Nazis are among 61 foreign language films that may be nominated for an Oscar.
2007: Rabbi Andrew Bossov successfully received a kidney from Methodist minister, Reverend Karen Onesti.
2008: “Lasting Legacy: Al Malnik” published to described Malnik’s rise from St. Louis teenage gangster to millionaire and south Florida trend setter.
http://hauteliving.com/2008/01/lasting-legacy/2109/
2008: It was announced today that Randy Lerner had donated £5 million to the National Gallery, the largest single donation that it has ever received, which may accounted for the fact that the ground floor galleries will named “The Lerner Galleries.”
2008: The third and final episode of “The Jewish Americans” airs on PBS. The three episode series traces the history of the Jews in America starts with the arrival of the first 23 Sephardic Jews in New Amsterdam in 1654 and “ends with Maisyahu, the Chasidic hip-hop star, one of about six million Jews in America today.” For more information see http://www.jewishtvnetwork.com/jewishamericans/
2008: The New York Jewish Film Festival presents “Labyrinths of Memory, a documentary that draws parallels between two very different women united by a search for identity: Maite Guiteras, Mexican born, adopted at birth, and raised in Cuba; and the film’s director, born in Costa Rica to East European Jewish parents and raised in Mexico. Each defies ethnic and geographic boundaries to travel to her ancestral home to claim a place in the world”; “The Unkosher Truth a short documentary in which the filmmaker must muster the courage to tell her father, an Orthodox rabbi and U.S. Army general, that her boyfriend is German and gentile”; “Film Fanatic, in which Ultra-Orthodox Jew Yehuda Grovais rebels against his religious community, and battles the secular cultural establishment in Israel to make Hollywood-style blockbusters on a budget.”
2008: In a night time attack, two armed Palestinians affiliated with Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades infiltrated a yeshiva at Kfar Etzion wounding three civilians. The two had just been released from an Israeli prison.
2008 (16th of Shevat, 5768): Rami Zuari, a 20 year old Border Police officer was killed during a terrorist attack at an East Jerusalem checkpoint. Border Police officer Shoshana Samendayev sustained moderate to serious injuries in the same attack.
2008: The New York Times featured a review of The Forger: An Extraordinary Story of Survival in Wartime Berlin, the autobiography of Cioma Schonhaus.
2009: “Lansky,” a one-man play about Meyer Lansky starring Mike Burstyn opens in an off-Broadway production. “Acclaimed American/Israeli actor Mike Burstyn stars as Meyer Lansky in the New York premiere of a new play by Richard Krevolin and Joseph Bologna about the life of the “little man,” known as the “brains behind the mob,” and his efforts to become an Israeli citizen.
2009: Final showing of “Zion and His Brother,” a family drama set in Tel Aviv, at the Sundance Film Festival.
2009: Shiva ended for Sherwin “Shy” Raiken the Villanova and New York Knicks basketball player who had passed away at the age of eighty.
2009: Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids hosts another creative Musical Shabbat Service.
2009: In “The End of a Chicago Tradition: Is absolutely nothing sacred?”, published todaySusan Berger reports on the demise of the Best Kosher Sausage Company while documenting the history of a small slice of Chicago-based Jewish Americana.
http://www.bukisa.com/articles/72013_bests-kosher-franks-a-chicago-institution-closed-after-123-years
2010: The 19th annual New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present the New York premiere of “Eyes Wide Open,” a film whose protagonist is an ultra-orthodox butcher living in Jerusalem.
2010: The 10th annual Atlanta Jewish Festival is scheduled to present a screening of “Protektor,” “a smart, stylish psycho-thriller about a Prague journalist and his part-Jewish wife whose lives are ravaged by the outbreak of WWII.”
2010: Israel is looking into adopting Haitians orphaned by January 12's earthquake, Minister of Welfare and Social Services Isaac Herzog told The Jerusalem Post today. "We see this as part of Israel's humanitarian outreach," Herzog said, referring to the IDF medical operation and the Israeli rescue efforts in the Caribbean nation. "Haiti was one of the countries that supported us on November 29, 1947, [in the UN vote on the establishment of the state], and now it's our turn to support them," he said.
2011: Adam “Richman appeared on Food Network's Iron Chef America as a judge for a battle with Gruyère cheese as the theme ingredient”
2011: “Another Day” directed by Sam Levinson who also wrote the script and starring Ellen Barkin who also co-produced the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival today.
2011: Israeli cellist Amit Peled and pianist Eli Kalman are scheduled to perform this afternoon at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.
2011: The 2011 Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival is scheduled to present “Laughter Yoga Workshop with Molly Dworsky” and “An Adult Evening with Shel Silverstein.”
2011: The Los Angeles Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including J.D. Salinger: A Life by Kenneth Slawenski
2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein and the recently published paperback editions of A Strange Death by Hillel Halkin and Where The God of Loves Hangs Out by Amy Bloom.
2011(18th of Shevat, 5771): Rabbi Nachum Zev Dessler, a leader at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland for more than 60 years and a nationally known leader in Orthodox education passed away today at the age of 89. Dessler, the school's first principal in 1944, pressed the Jewish Federation of Cleveland to back the school, and it became the first federation in the country to subsidize a full-day Jewish school in 1948. At the end of 2010, the school had nearly 800 students on three campuses in Cleveland and its suburbs, and nearly 6,000 alumni. Over the years, the school has accepted children from families with all degrees of observance, children of former Soviet Jews who had moved to Cleveland, as well as those with special needs. “His vision was focused on providing every Jewish child, regardless of religious orientation or ability to pay, a quality Jewish and secular education,” said Ivan Soclof, a past president of the school. "Each child was truly an individual and was treated like he or she was the most important person in the world," wrote Louis Malcmacher, the Hebrew Academy's current president. "As a child of Holocaust survivors, my parents came to this country with literally nothing. And as part of Rabbi Dessler's greatness, the doors to The Hebrew Academy were opened to every Jewish child, no matter what their background was or their ability to pay." Dessler was born in Lithuania, raised in London, and traveled through Siberia and Japan to reach the United States during World War II, a route similar to that traveled by another recently deceased Orthodox rabbi and educator, Menachem Zeev “Wolf” Greenglass. Dessler arrived in Cleveland in 1941 with students and rabbis to re-establish the Telshe Yeshiva of Lithuania. Dessler came from a line of rabbis; His father was Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler. Nachum Zev Dessler also was instrumental in building Torah Umesorah, an organization of nearly 700 Orthodox schools. (As reported by The Eulogizer)
2011(18THof Shevat, 5771): Ninety-year old Stanley Frazen “a longtime film and television editor who was a member of the Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit during World War II,” passed away today at his home in Studio City
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/film-television-editor-stanley-frazen-75597
2012: “Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story” is scheduled to shown this evening at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
2012: At Wolfson College, Oxford, Penguin Books celebrated the golden jubilee of The Dead Scrolls in English by Géza Vermes
2012: Israeli pianist Alon Goldstein and the Jupiter musicians are scheduled to perform Schubert's celebrated Piano Trio in B-flat Major and the Beethoven "Gassenhauer" Trio at Good Shepherd Church in NYC.
2012: On the secular calendar, 10th anniversary of the kidnapping of Danny Pearl.
2013(12thof Shevat, 5775): Eighty-eight year old investment banker Edward M. Kresky passed away today. (As reported by Paul Vitello)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/nyregion/edward-m-kresky-88-calmed-fiscal-panic.html?hpw
2013: L'ayla Women's Initiative is scheduled to present a lecture by “The Shmuz” also known as Rabbi Bentzion Shafier.
2013: The final performance “The Winter’s Tale” sponsored by the Association of Americans and Canadians In Israel is scheduled to take place this evening in Jerusalem.
2013: The Republican Jewish Coalition is scheduled to sponsor an evening with Lela Gilbert and Jennifer Rubin – “The Real Israel: An American Christian’s Perspective” – at the Park East Synagogue.
2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set out his principles for forming a new government Wednesday, issuing a brief statement in which he listed the needs for a more equitable distribution of the national burden, affordable housing and changing the system of government as his would-be coalition’s three top priorities.
2013: Following the Knesset elections, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro told Israel Radio today the US government remains committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He also said that Washington looks forward to continued cooperation with the next Israeli government.
2014: Artist Dasha Shishkin is scheduled to provide commentary to “Chagall: Love, War and Exile” at the Jewish Museum.
http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/chagall-love-war-exile
2014: As part of the JPS/Skirball Series, Salo Aizenberg is scheduled to introduce his new book, Hatemail: Anti-Semitism on Picture Postcards.
2014: The United Nations Department of Public Information is scheduled to present “The 70th Anniversary of the Deportation of the Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust” during which “the participants will learn how the German Security Police worked with Hungarian authorities to systematically deport Jews from Hungary in May of 1944.”
2014: In an appearance that was not listed on the Mayor’s public schedule, Mayor Bill de Blasio gave an unannounced speech at a Manhattan gala of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, assuring its members that “part of my job description is to be a defender of Israel.”
2014: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today laid out the dilemma facing his administration when it comes to the Palestinian conflict — the imperative to avoid a binational state encompassing Israel and the Palestinians, but also to prevent a future Palestinian state from becoming an Iranian proxy. “Half of Palestinian society is dominated by Iran’s proxy,” he said in an apparent reference to the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. (As reported by Lazar Berman and Adiv Sterman)
2014: The New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2014: Four days after his death, a memorial service is scheduled to be at Kehillat Israel Sanctuary in California for ninety year old Princeton Graduate and WW II Army Veteran Jay Douglas Levinsohn, the husband of the former Joyce Salton.
2014(22ndof Shevat, 5774): Sixty-three year old Tatyana (Tanya) Edelstein, the wife of Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, to whom she had had been married for 33 years, passed away tonight.
2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present the next in the “Excellence-The Future Generation Series” featuring performances by Hanan Becher, Piano, Netta Karni, Piano, Liel Kaplyushnik, Piano, Daniel Fenings, Violin, Salmon Markman, Violin,Yael Koldobsky, Piano, Yael Koldobsky, Piano, Lior Greenwald, Violin, Tom Zalmanov, Piano and Alon Mamo, Piano
2015: “Judy Berlin” is scheduled to be shown at the 92nd St Y as part of the Women on Top series.
2015: In “For Auschwitz Museum, a Time of Great Change” published today, Rick Lyman described plans for the gathering to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/europe/for-auschwitz-museum-and-survivors-a-moment-of-passage.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/europe/for-auschwitz-museum-and-survivors-a-moment-of-passage.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
2015: In Cedar Rapids, the first Musical Shabbat of 2015 is scheduled to begin this evening.
2016: Shabbat Shira
2016: “Rabin in His Own Words” is scheduled to be shown at the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival.
2016: “Benya Kirk” and “Hot Sugar’s Cold World” are scheduled to be shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
2016: “Restoring Tomorrow” which tells the story of the restoration of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, “one of Los Angeles’s architectural treasures and home to the city’s oldest Jewish congregation” is scheduled to premiere at the Skirball Cultural Center.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/filmmaker-chronicles-synagogue-restoration-ends-up-rebuilding-own-jewish-identity/
2017(25thof Tevet, 5777): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of Moses Levi Ehrenreich the chief rabbi of Rome “who was instrumental in translating part of the TaNaCh into Italian and through whose efforts the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano was reopened in 1887.”
2017: A celebratory Western Wall women’s prayer and Torah reading held by the Original Women of the Wall group this morning tested a recent interim order by the High Court (As reported by Amanda Borschel-Dan)
2017: “Dimona” is scheduled to be shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
2017: The annual Jewish Leaders Conference met in Brussels today at which the attendees “called on Israel to help them tackle the rising threat of terrorism and anti-Semitism” by providing “vital security assistance against potential attacks.” (As reported by Raoul Wootliff)
http://www.timesofisrael.com/jolted-by-populist-surge-european-jews-raise-new-fears-of-an-old-threat/
2017: In “German Party Won’t Expel Rightist Who Assailed Holocaust Apology” published today Alison Smale described the decision to discipline Björn Höcke for making a speech that challenged the German atonement for the Holocaust and other Nazi Crimes but to remove him from the Alternative for Germany Party. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/world/europe/bjorn-hocke-alternative-for-germany.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
2018: The Washington Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host “An Evening Bernard-Henri Levy” during which the “French philosopher, activist, writer (The Genius of Judaism), and filmmaker Bernard-Henri Lévy offers a special presentation of his two most recent documentaries, Peshmerga and The Battle of Mosul.”
2018(7thof Shevat, 5778): Ninety-two year old University of Texas undergraduate Arnold Gold, “a pediatric neurologist” and the husband of Sandra Gold with whom he founded the Arnold P. Gold Foundation passed away today. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/obituaries/dr-arnold-gold-92-dies-made-compassionate-care-a-cause.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
2018: “A Kid Like Jake” co-starring Amy Landecker premiered today at Sundance.
2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg of the New North London Masorti Synagogue who “will be speaking on ‘The launch of the Eco-Synagogue.’”
2018: The final session of “The Jewish Workers’ Bund” taught by Jack Jacobs is scheduled to take place at the YIVO Institute.
2018: The Center for Jewish History and Oxford University Press are scheduled to present Professor David N. Myers speaking on “All Jewish History in Less Than An Hour.”
2019: In Potomac, MD, Beth Sholom Congregation is scheduled to host a presentation of the Silk Road, with an emphasis on its “ancient Jewish Highlights.”
2019: The Oxford University Jewish Student Society is scheduled to host a “Dine and Discuss Event” led by the Chaplains.
2019: The Joyce Theatre is scheduled to host a performance of Jerusalem choreographer Sharon Eyal’s “Love Chapter 2.”
2019: At the Bender JCC of Greater Washington, Cinema J is scheduled to host a screening of “1945.”
https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/386434/the-last-jewish-writer-in-hungary-returns-to-1945/
2019: In “The Story of Jewish Immigrants to Canada, and How They Prospered” published today Jonathan Kay described a movement that was not a straight line of upward mobility but more of “U” with ups, downs and ups again.
https://www.cjnews.com/living-jewish/the-story-of-jewish-immigrants-to-canada-and-how-they-prospered
2020: The Illinois Holocaust Museum ad Education al Center is scheduled to host author Jack Fairweather as he talks about his newest work, The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitzwhich tells “the story of Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance fighter who worked undercover in Auschwitz to sabotage the camp from within.”
2020: Mohammed al-Issa, the secretary-general of the Mecca-based Muslim World League (MWL) and a former Saudi justice minister, “is slated to visit the Auschwitz death camp in Poland today ahead of the 75th anniversary of its liberation by the Soviet Red Army” “alongside Muslim religious leaders from more than 24 countries and a delegation of American Jewish Committee (AJC) officials.” (As reported by Adam Rasgon)
2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host a screening of Israeli director Guy Nattiv’s Academy Award winning short “Skin.”
2020: Following last night’s state dinner at President Reuven Rivlin’s official residence, today Netanyahu, Rivlin, Macron, Putin, Pence, Prince Charles and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier are scheduled to address memorial ceremonies at Yad Vashem which will be attended by dignitaries from forty countries.
2020: “Those Who Remained” and “They Ain’t Ready for Me” are scheduled to be shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
2020: Presidents Rivlin and Putin and Prime Minister Netanyahu are scheduled to attend a dedication ceremony for the “Monument in Memory of the Heroism and the Soldiers and Residents who were Killed During the Siege of Leningrad in WWII,” in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park.