March 13
624: Islamic forces under the command of Muhammad were victorious at the Battle of Badr which cemented the power of the Moslem leader with all that we would mean for civilization in general and the Jews in particular.
1202: Seventy-six year old Mieszko III, the Duke of Greater Poland who “employed Jews in his mint as engravers and technical supervisors, and the coins minted during that period even bear Hebraic markings” passed away today.
1245: As the Mongols sweep across Asia and Christian Europe, Innocent IV issued “Cum non solum,” a letter addressed to the Mongols asking them to desist from attacking Christian nations. This is the same Innocent IV who had ordered the massive burning of Jewish books including many priceless copies of the Talmud.
1366: During the Castilian Civil War, Peter of Castile, whose depiction by his enemies as being friendly Jews was used against was deposed as King of Castile and Leon.
1421 (10th of Nisan): After nearly a year’s imprisonment, the Jews of Austria were ordered to be burned. “In Vienna alone, more than a hundred perished in one field near the Danube.”
1421(10th of Nisan): Rabbi Aaron of Neustadt, author Hilkhot Niddah died the martyr’s death in Vienna
1524: Suleiman II issued a firman that brought closure to Abraham de Castro who had exposed the traitorous plans of Amad-Pasha to take control of Egypt and protection for the Jews of Egypt, an event memorialized by “Cairo Purim)
1601(19th of Adar II, 5361): Mordecai Marcus Meisel passed away. Born in in 1528, the son of Samuel Meisel, he was one of the wealthiest people in Bohemia. A noted philanthropist, he was a leader of the Jewish community in Prague. During his youth, the Jews of Prague were the victims of the fanatical persecutions instituted by Ferdinand I. “In 1542 and 1561 his family, with the other Jewish inhabitants, was forced to leave the city, though only for a time. The source of the great wealth which subsequently enabled him to become the benefactor of his coreligionists and to aid the Austrian imperial house, especially during the Turkish wars, is unknown. He is mentioned in documents for the first time in 1569, as having business relations with the communal director Isaac Rofe (Lékarz), subsequently his father-in-law. His first wife, Eva, who died before 1580, built with him the Jewish Town Hall in Prague, which is still standing, as well as the neighboring Hohe synagogue, where the Jewish court sat. With his second wife, Frummet, he built (1590-92) the Maisel Synagogue, which was much admired by the Jews of the time, being, next to the Altneusynagoge, the metropolitan synagogue of the city.” After his death, despite the fact that “his widow had given presents of tens of thousands of florins to the king and city, soldiers would forcibly enter his house on the Sabbath and torture his nephews until they ‘confessed’ that there was still more money hidden away. All the money was declared property of the Bohemian Chamber with nothing left to the family.”
1615: Birthdate of Antonio Pignatelli who as Pope Innocent XII abolished Jewish loan-banks in Rome 1682. In the following year he extended the ban to Ferrara and other Jewish ghettos under his authority. He also prohibited the Jews under his control from serving as shopkeeper and banned them most trades and crafts, causing the Roman Jewish community to shrink.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/italytime.html
1639: Harvard College is named for clergyman John Harvard. Eighty-three years later, Harvard would hire its first Jewish instructor, sort-of. In 1722,”the officers of Harvard Corporation vote that Judah Monis be approved as an instructor of the Hebrew language at the College, under the condition that he convert to Christianity. One month before assuming his post at Harvard, Monis converts before a large assembly in College Hall.” It would take Harvard another 221 years to hire a Jewish professor without the requirement that he convert. Harry Levin became the first Jewish full professor in the Harvard English department in 1943.
1656: The Jews were denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam.
1682: Students in Cracow staged anti-Semitic riots
1741: Birthdate of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. On the positive side, Joseph did away with numerous humiliating conditions for his Jewish subjects including the special badges and taxes. He wanted to liberate the Jews from “humiliating and oppressive laws and to assure that all Austrian subjects could contribute to the public welfare without any distinction with regard to nationality and religion.” The thrust of his reforms were intended to make Germans out of his Jewish subjects. This liberalization worried the empire’s anti-Semites. But it also bothered Jewish leaders including Moses Mendelssohn. They feared that the price of being free was a diluted Judaism.
1745: Jews exiled from Prague
1805: In Bavaria, Fanny Reiling and Michael Lilienthal gave birth to Bernhard Lilienthal who married Wilhelmine Schmidt in 1869 after having been married to Julia Schwabacher, the mother of his son Ignatz Lilienthal
1808(14th of Adar, 5568): Purim
1808: Frederick VI, who had shown a great deal of interest in his Jewish subjects while regent and who would support full Jewish emancipation began his reign as King of Denmark.
1808: Levi Barent Cohen, who had three children with his first wife Fanny and seven children with his second wife Lydia, was buried today.
1809: Birthdate of Alexander Levi, a French born Sephardic Jew, who was one of the early settlers of Dubuque, Iowa. He would live there until he passed away in 1893. Levi was a successful merchant and civic leader who was one of the first Jews to hold public office in the Hawkeye state.
1811: Rachel and Nathan Hart gave birth to Mary Hart the wife of David Hart.
1813: In South Carolina, Rachel Mordecai and Charleston, SC native Isaac Harby gave birth to Samuel Harby who married Frances Levy, the mother of Octavia, Julia, Isabel and Jeannette Harby after having been married to New York native Sarah Philips Levy.
1815: In Pressburg, Sarel, the daughter of Rabbi Akiva Eger and Rabbi Moses Sofer gave birth to Shmuel Binyomin Sofer a leading 19th century Hungarian Rabbi and rosh yeshiva of the Pressburg Yeshiva.
1816: One day after he had passed away, Isaac Eliezer Davis was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”
1819; Birthdate of Wilmington native Solomon Solis, one of the first Jewish residents of Delaware of whom we have definitive records.
1821: Rachel Cashmore and London born Moses Joseph Cashman gave birth to Rebecca Cashmore.
1825: Birthdate of Immanuel Heinrich Ritter who succeeded Samuel Holdheim as the rabbi at the Berlin Reform Temple in 1860.
1825: Birthdate of Grigori Asaacovich Bogrov, the native of Minsk, the Russian author whose first work was Memoirs of a Jew in which he “portrays the vicissitudes of his life and surroundings” and who left an unpublished Hebrew transcript on astronomy at the time of his death in 1885.
1827(14th of Adar, 5587): Purim
1833: David Nathan married Mary Lazarus at Canterbury, Kent, UK.
1836: In Bavaria, Aron Emunuel Scharff and Magdelanna Roos gave birth to Nicholas Scharff
1839: Two days after he had passed away today, Isaac Cowen was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”
1840: In Rotterdam, Salomon Isaac Bril and the former Mietje Maria Benedictus gave birth to Betje Bril
1843: Birthdate of Solomon Abedndana Belmonte, the Hamburg born jurist who was elected deputy to the Hamburg Bürgerschaft, in 1887.
1844: In Paris, twenty-one year old Emma Silberstein, “the daughter of Salomon Silberstein and Amilie Kempner married Louis Loewe with whom she had four daughters and five sons, “one of whom was James Lowe, Raphael Loewe’s grandfather.
1845: Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is premièred in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist. Born in 1809 Felix Mendelssohn was the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn. His Jewish parents had him baptized as a Lutheran in 1816. The violinist Ferdinand David was Jewish.
1847: In Mitwitz, Bavaria Abraham H. Freund and Marie Hoenigsberger gave birth to Adolph Freund, the husband of Henrietta Newman and trustee of both the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives in Denver and the Montefiore Kesher Home for Aged and Infirm Israelites of Cleveland who was he Diretor and Financial Representative of Cleveland, Ohio’s Jewish Orphan Asylum.
1848(8th of Adar II, 5608): During the Revolution of 1848, “as Viennese students thronged toward the Lower Austrian Diet to submit their revolutionary demands, imperial troops fired into the crowd” killing Carl Heinrich Spitzer, “a 17-year old Moravian Jew” studying at the Vienna Polytechnic making him “the first martyr of the revolution.
1850: David Meyer Davidson married Henrietta Cohen at the Great Synagogue today.
1852: In Berlin, Louis and Pauline Blumenthal gave birth to Oskar (Oscar) Blumenthal who morphed from theatre critic to playwright and was the husband of Marie Blumenthal with whom he had one son – Ferdinand.
1852: "Austria" published today reported that "a Hungarian Jew has been arrested for trying to negotiate a number of Kossuth notes that he had brought with him from Hamburg."
1854(13th of Adar, 5614): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim
1861: Birthdate of Cincinnati native and Harvard trained lawyer Harry Wolf Mack who served as a “special assistant U.S. District Attorney.
1862(11th of Adar II, 5622): Fast of Esther.
1862: Birthdate of Baltimore native Henriette Hennie van Leer.
1864: Four days after she had passed away, Eliza Anne (Baron) Jones the wife of John Alexander Jones was buried today at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1864: Edward Henirques, a native of Jamaica, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1865(15th of Adar, 5625): Shushan Purim
1865: After rejoining his regiment in December, 1864, today Edward S. Salomon “received a brevet promotion to brigadier general.”
1865: Frederick Knefler, who was serving under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman, was promoted to the rank of brevet brigadier general just before the end of the Civil War. Born in Hungary in 1833, Knefler had the distinction of being one of the few people to rise from the rank of private to general during the course of a war. In 1861 he volunteered for the Union Army and became a captain within one year. He passed away in 1901.
1865:During the Civil War Major Alfred Mordecai, Jr was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Union Army. The newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel was the son of Alfred Mordecai, a southern born officer in the United States Army. Mordecai Sr. resigned from the Army rather than fight against the South, marking the end to an illustrious career. However, in a display of honor that was rare among other Southerners who left the U.S. Army, he refused to accept a commission in the Confederate Army or serve the South in any civilian capacity.
1865: Thirty-three year old Philadelphia native Myer Asch who had been serving with the Union Cavalry since 1861 and spent six months in Rebel prisons including the infamous Libby Prison, was breveted as a Colonel of United States Vounteers “for gallant and meritorious services during the war
1866(26th of Adar, 5626): Seventy-one year old Julius Rubo who despite his brilliance and ability found both a legal and academic career ultimately closed to him because of his religion from which he refused to convert, passed away today.
1870: At a meeting of the board of directors of the “B'nai Jeshurun Ladies' Hebrew Benevolent Society, the President, Mrs. Henry Leo, the founder of the Society, presented a report on the growing number of destitute Jews who were elderly and in poor health. She urged the ladies to develop a practical way of dealing with this growing problem
1870: A group of leaders of the Jewish community, including Thomas H. Keasing, E.S. Isaacs and T.J. Solomon, met today to make plans for establishing a society that would destitute Jewish immigrants when they came to United States. A committee of seven was selected to draw up plans for such an organization that would be submitted to this group at its next meeting. In the meantime, fifty dollars was donated to serve as “seed money” for the group’s work.
1871: One day after she had passed away, Kate Davis, the daughter of Pinchas Zelig Harris and the wife of Abraham Davis was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1871: The children of Aaron Adolphus, a wealthy New York Jew who passed away in January, contested the terms of their father’s will in Surrogate Court.
1873(14thof Adar, 5633): Purim
1873: Birthdate of Benzion ben Moses Eisenstadt, the native of Minsk whose literary output included poetry and biography of rabbis and scholars.
1873: In New York, the Sabbath School Fair Association of the 57th Street Congregation hosted a Purim reception and masked ball at the Terrace Garden.
1875: It was reported today that the police in Hartford, Connecticut, have arrested a swindler named W.F. Gerhardt. Gerhardt is really is really Hungarian born Jew named Moritz who worked his larceny in his native land before being forced to flee to the United States. His confederates include Michael Mandl, an Austrian Jew and Henry Hertz.
1876: It was reported that the Jews in Washington, DC celebrated Purim with “a brilliant masked ball.”
1876: A police officer found the body of Leopold King in front the building housing Ahavat Chesed in New York City. The police found an empty blue vial in his hand that smelled of prussic acid. The 54 year old King was a native of Prussia who had retired from his successful cap making business and gone into real estate. The family could offer no reason for a suicide and said they thought “that he died from a fit of apoplexy.”
1876: It was reported today that the managers of the Home for the Aged and Infirm Hebrews has leased the “Old Hildebrand Mansion “ at the corner of 87th Street and Avenue A in New York City. The number of people seeking admission has grown to such a large number that the current facility on Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street is no longer large enough.
1877: Birthdate of Galician native “Sigmund Thau, the founder and president of the Mutual Lamp Manufacturing Company and leader of the Jewish community as can be seen by his service as “treasurer of the JNF” and founder and director of the Jewish Settlement House of the East Side who married Rose Thau after the death of his first wife Devorah and who was the father of Sophie and Morris Thau.
1880(1st of Nisan, 5640): Parashat Vayikra; Rosh Chodesh Nisan’; Shabbat HaChodesh.
1880:Jorge Isaacs Ferrer, the son of “George Henry Isaacs, an English Jew originally from Jamaica” and whom Isaac Goldberg described as “a half-Jew” “who is “Spanish America’s most famous novelist” completed his service as the “President of the Sovereign State of Antioquia.”
1881: Alexander II of Russia is assassinated, which put an end to his half-hearted liberalism. He was succeeded by Alexander III who was devoted to medievalism and urged a return to “Russian civilization.” The most influential person during his reign was Pobestonostov, his financier and procurator of the Holy Synod, who earned the title "the Second Torquemada." The newspapers in Moscow, Kiev and Odessa began a campaign against the Jews which would only lead to greater outbreaks of anti-Semitism as the Czarist regime swirled forward on its downward dance with destruction that ended in 1917.
1882: In Rochester, NH, “George Hobbs Sanborn and Lillian Knight Hodgdon” gave birth to Harvard trained archaeologist Ashton Sanborn the husband of Agnes Goldman and the brother-in-law of Hetty Goldman of the Goldman-Sachs banking family who was “executive secretary of the American Red Cross Commission with headquarters in Jerusalem after WW I.
1882: In the United Kingdom, Sir Marcus Samuel and his wife “Fanny Elizabeth, the oldest daughter of Benjamin Benjamin gave birth to their first child “Walter Horace” who was “educated at Eton and New College, Oxford.”
1884: In Romania, Abraham and Hannah Feinstein Achtenberg gave birth to birth to University of Michigan trained attorney Benjamin Morris Achtenberg, the husband of Minnie R. Robinson Achtenberg and the father of Beatrice Achtenberg who practiced law in Kansas City, MO, while serving as the President of Congregation Keneseth Israel Beth Sholem starting in 1923.
1884(16th of Adar, 5644): Sixty-four year old Charlotte von Rothschild, the only daughter of Carl Mayer von Rothschild and the wife of Lionel de Rothschild with whom she had five children passed away today.
1887: In Clinton, IA, a group of Protestants founded the American Protective Association which was anit-Catholic and anti-immigrant at the same time that an untold number of Jews were trying to escape from repressive regimes Russia and Romania.
1888: Justice Samuel Greenbaum married Selina Ulman today. They had four children - Lawrence Samuel, Edward Samuel, Grace and Isabel – before she passed away at 25 years of age.
1890:It was reported today that the Passover Relief Association had raised nearly $250 at its annual Purim masquerade ball which would go toward the fund it raises yearly to provide the Hebrew poor of this city with the wherewithal to celebrate Passover.
1890: “Hebrew Charities” published today summarized the efforts of the United Hebrew Charities during the month of February which including providing 226 applicants with work and providing 216 pupils with free instruction in the industrial school. The charity provided over seven thousand dollars in direct aid.
1891: It was reported today that the funds Jesse Seligman has received from Baron Hirsh “will be kept in the vaults of various trust companies until the trustees of the fund decide” how it is to be invested.
1892(14th of Adar, 5652): Purim
1893: Felix Adler is among those scheduled to meet with President Cleveland today to urge him to veto the newly passed Treaty of Extradition with Russia.
1893: “Oriental Records Translated” published today provides a detailed review of Records of the Past edited by A.H. Sayce which includes the information that “in the soil of Palestine, for example, the spade has brought to light evidence of the existence of a Canaanitish library dating from a period earlier than the birth of Moses…” The material translated provided a comparison between Biblical texts and those of other, recently discovered civilizations in the East.
1894: “Want The School Reopened” published today describe a meeting held to protest the closure of grammar school on Hester Street which will impact 500 children, most of them who are Jewish. The leaders of the protest contend that the Jewish “resident of the district were anxious to have their children the English language” and were afraid that the closure would impede this. (Editor’s Note – Compare this view of the English language by Jewish immigrants with that which has evolved in the 21stcentury)
1894: The United Hebrew Charities is one of the organizations distributing the proceeds from a concert given by Musurgia to help aid those suffering during the current economic depression.
1895: Two days after he had passed away, 88 year old Abraham Marks ,the son of Jacob Marks and Hannah Alexander was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1895: Sir Arthur Wing Pinero’s “The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith” was produced for the first time at the Garrick Theatre.
1896: In Chicago, Benvendia Solis Firth, the daughter of Moses Maness Ritterband and Esther Amada Ritterband and Emil Firth gave birth to Mildred Rosenkranz, the wife Elias Victor Rosenkranz.
1897: San Diego State University founded. The first Jew connected with San Diego was a young adventurer named Louis Pollock who was temporarily imprisoned in San Diego along with other Americans by Mexican authorities. By 1851, there were enough Jews in San Diego for Lewis Franklin to organize the first High Holiday services held in southern California. Today SDSU has approximately 2,500 Jews among its 27,000 undergraduates and 500 Jews among more than 6,300 graduate students. The school offers 15 courses in Jewish studies and students can major or minor in Jewish Studies. The campus has an accredited Hillel with its own Hillel House.For more information about the SDSU Jewish community see http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~jewish/
1897: “Another Homer to be Identified” published today provides a critique of “The Unknown Homer of the Hebrews” by Amos Kidder Fiske the author of The Jewish Scriptures. According to Fiske, just as Homer is the father of Greek literature, so is there one author un-named author who created much of the Biblical literature. Based on “higher biblical criticism” Fiske contends that the author is the Prophet Elijah
1897: “The Austrian Election” published today described the outcome of the vote for Mayor in Vienna where “Dr. Lueger, the well-known Jew-baiter” has emerged victorious over Mayor Strohbach. The Emperor had nullified an earlier victory by Lueger but the belief is that the he will not intervene for a second time.
1898: “Money Lenders Attacked” published today summarized the testimony of Sir George Lewis “the well-known lawyer” and leader of the Jewish community before the House of Commons in which he complained of the behavior of money lenders, “the bulk of them” who “were Jews whom “the Jewish community loathed and despised.” The worst of the lot was one known as “Sam” who had played a key role in the scandal surrounding Lord Nevill-Spender Clay.
1898:Lemercier-Picard, author of the forged letter quoted by General de Pellieux a month earlier (the "faux Henry"), is found hanging from the window-catch of his hotel bedroom. Circumstances of death remain unclear.
1899: While testifying before the Court of Inquiry investigating “the beef counsel” Edward Tilden, the treasurer of Libby, McNeill & Libby Packing Company testified that “the forequarter of the carcass is the only part eaten by an Orthodox Jew” but that that the price of the beef does not depend on “the number of Jews in the community.”
1899: Rabbi H.P. Mendez, Dr. Stephen Wise, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil and his son were among the prominent Jews attended Professor Thomas Davidson’s lecture entitled “Zionism from a Non-Jewish Standpoint” at Shearith Israel Synagogue.
1899: This evening Cincinnati, Ohio, Rabbi David Philippson is scheduled to deliver the “address of welcome” at the preliminary meeting prior to the official opening of the annual Conference of American Rabbis which will start tomorrow. Dr. Joseph Silverman and Rabbi Isaac M. Wise are also scheduled to address the meeting to which the general public has been invited.
1900: Birthdate of Alfred Harding who was transported from Prague to Ujazdow to Majdanek in 1942 where he was murdered at the age of 42.
1900: Henri Didon Louis Remy, the Dominican Friar who wrote approvingly of the fifth and final volume of Renan’s History of the Jews passed away today.
1901: Sixty-seven year old Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States whose Secretary of State, James G. Blaine “instructed the American minister to Russia to exert his influence against” any new anti-Jewish measures being adopted by the Czar and whose administration received a memorial from William Blackstone and his supporters calling for “an international conference to consider the condition of the Israelites and their claims to Palestine as their ancient home” passed away today.
1902: The Sultan approves the Rouvier project (from the French government) for the consolidation of the public debt. This was part of a project that Herzl had worked on, the idea being that assisting the Ottomans with their financial needs would help smooth the way for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Eretz Israel which was part of the Sultan’s empire.
1902: In Cincinnati, OH, Abraham and Rachel (Friedman) Isaacs gave birth to Dr. Asher Isaacs ,the husband of Flora Meyers, the University of Cincinnati Undergrad who earned his MA and Ph.D from Harvard before pursuing an academic career in economics that led to his being name Chairman of the Department of Economics at Pittsburgh
1903(14th of Adar, 5663): Purim
1904(26th of Adar, 5664): Lieutenant Bendix, “a German Government engineer” and “an officer of the Bavarian Reserves” who “had been engaged on the construction of a railroad in German West Africa” was killed today “in the fight near Owikokorereo against the Herreros.”
1904:During the presidency of Isaac Wallach, the new buildings of the Mount Sinai Hospital in Madison Avenue (between 100th and 101st streets) for which $1,500,000 had been raised, were dedicated today.
1904:Ludovic Trarieux, the French political leader who served as Minister of Justice during the Dreyfus Affair where he should great courage in taking up the cause of the French military officer who was a victim of anti-Semitism and a conspiracy of right wing militarists passed away today.
1905: “Kid” Herman (Herman Landfield) knocked out former featherweight champion Dave Sullivan one month before he fought Harry Lewis.
1906: Eighty-six year old social reformer and suffragette Susan B. Anthony whose allies included Ernestine Rose, the Polish born American and English suffragette whose slogan of “Agitate, Agitate” she adopted, passed away today.
1906: It was reported today that the “anti-Jewish proclamation” issued in Russia included “a demand for the expulsion of the Jews from all the cities of European Russia and Siberia into the Pale,” “the levying” of a tax on the Jewish people “in lieu of military service,” forcing Jews to reassume their “Jewish names” if they have changed them, and the prohibition of Jews from certain professions and from higher education.
1906: Birthdate of Oscar Nemon, the Slavonian born English sculptor, best known for his series of more than a dozen public statues of Sir Winston Churchill as well as sculptures of Harry Truman and Margaret Thatcher. After World War II, he made sculptures of a spectacular list of high-profile figures including such war-time leaders as Dwight D. Eisenhower Earl Alexander of Tunis, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Lord Freyberg and Lord Beaverbrook. He passed away in 1985.
1907: Montreal resident Clarence Isaac de Sola, the son of Cantor Abraham and Esther de Sola and Belle Maud de Sola gave birth to Gabriel (Oliviera) de Sola
1908: Birthdate of Walter Annenberg. The famed philanthropist built a publishing empire around the Daily Racing Form, the Philadelphia Inquirer and that uniquely American cultural icon, TV Guide.
1908: A major fire in the Jewish quarter of Haskoy, Constantinople, Turkey destroys 500 houses. There were over 5,000 Jews left without shelter. A cablegram was sent from Constantinople to Oscar S. Straus, U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Labor asking for assistance.
1909(20th of Adar, 5669): Parashat Ki Tisa; Shabbat Parah
1909: Alexander Lyons served as the rabbi of Temple Beth Elohim in Brooklyn
1910 It was reported today that Alma Gluck will perform at matinee performance on March 17 at The New Theatre in New York.
1911: Just a month after her 69thbirthday, Isabel Goldsmid, the daughter of Frederick David Goldsmid and Caroline Samuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1912: Birthdate of Columbia Law School graduate Charles Miller Metzner, the counsel to the General Jewish Council and U.S. District Court Judge.
1912: Birthdate of Lillian Fruendlich , the wife of Irwin Freundlich who had been born in 1908 and with whom she teamed to perform recitals “featuring pieces for one piano and 4 hands.
1913: The Annual Conference on Child Labor to which Leon Schwarz of Mobile, Alabama had been appointed as a delegate opened today in Jacksonville, Florida.
1913(4th of Adar II, 5673): Sixty-four year old Morris Moses Pfaelzer, the German born son of Karoline and Marx Mordechai Pfaelzer and Philadelphia jeweler who married Sophie Pfaelzer with whom he had two children – Frank Pfaelzer and Henrietta Stern.
1913: Birthdate of Harold Hochstein who would gain fame as Harold Stone, a character who played numerous roles on Broadway, in Hollywood films and television. Stone usually played ‘heavies” or bad guys. He was the sort of actor who became the role. You might not recognize the name but as you see the original version of Spartacus or re-runs of the television series, The Untouchables, you will remember who he was.
1914: Premiere of Die geheimnisvolle Villa“a short silent German film directed by Joe May” born Joseph Otto Mandel.
1915: Today, after further conversations with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Herbert Samuel “circulated a revised text of “The Future of Palestine” – a “Zionist memorandum” originally submitted by Chaim Weizmann
1915: Sixty-five year old Count Sergei Witte a leading progressive Russian minster, whose marriage to Matilda Ivanovna (Isaakovna) Lisanevich, to a converted Jew caused a scandal and limited his political effectiveness and who tried to reform the Empire while keeping Russia from entering WW I which he feared would doom his country passed away today
1915: Among those listed as contributors to the American Jewish Relief Committee for Sufferers from the War were Beth Gimel, Ottumwa, IA; Beth Chayim Congregation, Cumberland, MD; Congregation Israel, Hot Springs, Arkansas and the Literary Society of Beaumont, TX.
1916: The delegation from Brooklyn chosen to attend the “proposed Jewish Congress” meeting Philadelphia later this month was reported to include Judge Strahl, Magistrate Geismar, Rabbi Gold, Dr. H.L. Melkin, Henry Eiser, Samuel Lippman, and Moe Wervelosky.
1916: It was reported today that the officers of Temple of the Sinai Congregation of the Bronx include William Daub, President; Emil Fleish, First Vice President; Samuel Grossman, Second Vice President and William Mitchell, Secreatary.
1916: “The Day, the Jewish daily newspaper edited by Herman Bernstein published…a cablegram from” its correspondent in Berne that read “I have learned from an absolutely reliable source that the Pope has prepared an important document of great interest to the Jewish people” which “will prove of the same importance and significance as he bull issued by Pope Innocent IV denouncing the ritual murder accusations against the Jews as false and based on a cruel legend.”
1917: In expressing their support for I. Edwin Goldwasser’s suggestion to do away with flowers at Jewish funeral and to use that money to support charities, Louis Marshall said, “I have long thought the practice wasteful, extravagant and in many instances vulgar” while Henry Morgenthau said that “as long as the living are destitute and in despair, it seems wise to direct those who wish to show regard for departed friends to do so by contributing, in memory of their names, to a fund to alleviate the misery of the poor.”
1918: The Joint Distribution Committee for Jewish War Sufferers expressed its displeasure that Dr. Israel Friedlander had resigned “from the commission which the American Red Cross is sending to take part in the reclamation of Palestine” because of unfounded rumors that he had been pro-German before the United States entered the World War.
1918: American Red Magen David, the Jewish Red Cross, was formed.
1918: During a gathering of Lithuanians tonight at Madison Square Garden, “Dr. Isaac Hourwich appealed for the cultural autonomy of the Jews of Lithuania” within a newly created Lithuanian Republic that will become a reality after the World War.
1919(11th of Adar II, 5679): Fast of Esther
1919: U.K. bantamweight Johnny Brown, who fought under the alias of Philip Hickman fought and lost his first professional fight.
1919: Today, Alexander H. Geismar told “a story of the suffering of Jews in war-stricken countries” to the workers in the $500,000 drive for war relief” at the Brooklyn Committee’s headquarters on Court Street.
1920(23rd of Adar, 5680): Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudi; Shabbat Parah
1920: “Colonel Harry Cutler of the Jewish Welfare Board announced” today “that the War and Navy Departments have issued furloughs for the first two days of Passover for Jews in the Service.”
1921: U.S. premiere of “Know Your Men” filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg and produced by William Fox.
1921: Birthdate of cartoonist and Mad Magazine illustrator Allan Jaffee.
1922: The campaign to raise five million dollars in New York to provide relief for the Jews in Europe “ends tonight with a rally at the Hotel Commodore.
1923: A dinner was held tonight at the Hotel Dinner honoring Dr. Chaim Weizmann and kicking off a drive to raise two million dollars for the Zionists during which Louis Marshall urged “unity in the work of reconstructing Palestine.
1924: Birthdate of “jazz pianist, arranger and producer” Dick Katz.
1925: Tonight while speak at the Washington Heights Congregation, Julius Miller, the Borough President of Manhattan “urged Jews never forget to conduct themselves” in such a way “as to command the respect of the majority of the people of “ the United States “who are not of the Jewish faith” and reminded his audience “that Jews were sometimes misjudged as a whole because of the objectionable characteristics of a few…”
1926: It was reported today that 10,392 Jews were admitted to the United States “for the last United States immigration year that ended on June 30, 1925 while 29,142 Jews settled in Palestine during the same period of time.
1926: “Native Art From Palestine” published today described the history of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts founded by Boris Schatz which is displaying some of its works at the Grand Central Palace in New York.
1926(27thof Adar, 5675): Eighty-five year old Shlomo Elyashiv passed away. The grandson of Yosef Sholom Eliashiv, and the son of Chayim Chaikl Eliashiv or Eliashoff , he is best known author of Leshem Shevo V’Achlama
1926: In Rochester, NY, Rose (nee Shaywitz) Weinstein and Harris Weinstein, an immigrant tailor gave birth to Donald Weinstein, “an influential historian of the Italian Renaissance.”
1927: “A Jewish Woman” published today provided a complete review of I Am A Woman – And A Jew by Leah Morton.
1927: “A Jewish project to establish immigrant aid station in South America for Russian and Polish Jews excluded by the American quota law, was officially welcomed today by the Consuls of Paraguay and Peru, and received the warm endorsement of Senator Royal S. Copeland.”
1928: Despite support from Lloyd George and Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, the British Cabinet rejects a loan designed to support the “Zionist enterprise” in Palestine in a manner consistent with the Balfour Declaration.
1929: Birthdate of wrestler Jack Laskin, the native of Hamilton, Ontario who fought under various aliases including Abe Levinsky who in the 1990’s “got a license to marry people and became a lay rabbi” when people in his California community had difficulty getting married by the local Orthodox rabbis.
1930(13thof Adar, 5690): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim
1930: “Because the Jewish deputies had to be present in parliament during “tonight’s “vote on the budget, “Purim was celebrated this evening in the club room of the Jewish members of Parliament” with a reading of the Book of Esther (As reported by JTA)
1930: Woolf Barnato, the youngest son of Barney Barnato, “set off from the bar at the Carlton Hotel” this evening in his 6½ Litre Bentley Speed Six as he tried to win a bet that he could reach London before the Blue Train reached Calais.
1931: Premiere of Sturm im Wasseglas (Storm in a Water Glass) a film based on a play by Bruno Frank with a script co-authored by Felix Salten, co-produced by Josef Somlo and starring Paul Otto who would hang himself when his Jewish origins were discovered during the Nazi period.
1932: On Sunday, Benjamin Cardozo was sworn in as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme. A liberal nominated by the conservative President Herbert Hoover, he would join Louis Brandies as the second Jew to serve on the High Court. Unlike Brandeis whose confirmation hearing had been contentious with more than a whiff of anti-Semitism, Cardozo’s nomination sailed through with near unanimous support.
1933: Jewish lawyers and judges were expelled from court in Breslau
1933: Birthdate of rock and roll composer Mike Stoller.
1934: Today,“Pro-Hitler pressmen printed and folded hate literature into an edition of the Los Angeles Times
1935: Birthdate of philosopher and political commentator Michael Walzer.
1936: It was reported today that in Prztyk, a town in central Poland where 80 per cent of the inhabitants are Jewish, the Jews endured a month’s long boycott where trade is so restricted that they cannot buy even such a basic necessity of milk for their children.
1936: In Poland, a mob raided the Jewish shops at Turka and order was restored only after the police finally intervened and “arrested twenty rioters.”
1936 In New York, “a good will Sabbath” was held at the Mount Neboh this evening (Friday night) “marking the opening of the congregation’s Silver Jubilee program” where members of the congregation and visitors, who include “representatives of the Jewish, Protestant and Catholic faiths” heard Rabb Abraham L. Feinberg “say that the class and labor struggles were no less destructive than the widespread anxiety caused by intense nationalism.”
1936(19th of Adar, 5696): Seventy-six year old “Henry Wollman, senior member of Wollman and Wollman, attorneys at law and a member of Tempe Emanu-El passed away today.
1936: Sir Francis Henry Dillon Bell, thefirst New Zealand-born Prime Minister of New Zealand, passed away. His Jewish mother had converted before he was born.
1937(1st of Nisan, 5697): Parashat Vayikra; Rosh Chodesh Nisan; Shabbat HaChodesh
1937(1st of Nisan, 5697): Eighty-four year old former Fire Commissioner Jacob Solis Carvalho, a native of Charleston, West Virginia and the son of Sarah Solis and Solomon Carvalho passed away today in New York
1938: On Sunday, just after his native Austria had been annexed into the Reich, “Adolf Hitler placed a wreath on his parent’s grave in his adopted hometown of Linz, Austria.”
1938: While walking home from school in Hungary, Tom Lantos sse a newspaper with the headline: "Hitler Marches into Austria.” Years later, Lantos said that he sensed that this historic moment would have a tremendous impact on the lives of Hungarian Jews, my family, and myself."
1939: Birthdate of musician Neil Sedaka, a product of Brooklyn’s Sephardic Community.
1939: Commissioner William B. Herlands is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Real Facts About Communists and Jews” at the West Side Institutional Synaogue.
1939: Churchill wrote to a leading Albanian diplomat stating that he had been authorized to negotiate ways to establish a refuge for Jews fleeing Germany in Albania. The plan came to naught when Mussolini invaded the little Balkan country a month later.
1939: Today, “a British Cabinet subcommittee started drafting British proposals for solution of the problem of the Holy Land.”
1940: The three month war between Finland and the U.S.S.R which had begun with the Soviet invasion of its neighbor and in which 204 Finnish Jews had fought (with 37 dead) ended today with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty.
1941(14th of Adar, 5701): Russian author Isaac E Babel was executed during one of Stalin’s periodic purges. The Soviets exonerated him in 1954.
1942: The first trainload of 1000 deportees arrived from Theresienstadt at the village of Izbica Lubelsak, just north of Belzec. Only six would survive the war.
1943(6th of Adar II, 5703): Parashat Pekudei
1943(6th of Adar II, 5703): Sixty-two Rachel Hellman the daughter of Rabbi Isaac Seckel Bamberger and Julie Judith Bamberger (Klein) and the wife of Moritz Hellman was murdered today at Sobibor.
1943(6th of Adar II, 5703):German forces liquidated the Jewish ghetto in Cracow. Two thousand Jews were rounded up for deportation at Cracow, Poland. Before the trains left hundreds of children were shot to death, hundreds of elderly were killed in the streets, and an untold number of patients were killed in the hospital wards.
1943: An attempt to assassinate Hitler masterminded by General Henning von Tresckow failed today when a bomb that had been smuggled aboard the Fuhrer’s plane failed to detonate.
1944: Twenty thousand people attended “The Show of Shows” which featured “stars of stage, screen and radio and raised $80,000 for the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe.”
1944: Today, in New Orleans, Senator James M. Mead “addressed an emergency war conference for Palestine” during which he praised “the contributions of the Palestine Jewish Community to the war effort of the United Nations and their achievements in reconstructing a home for more than half a million Jews…”
1945: Today, Mrs. Moses P. Epstein told a meeting at Carnegie Hall honoring Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah who passed away in February that a foundation was being formed “to perpetuate her memory thourgh service in keeping with principles of her life.”
1946(10th of Adar II, 5706): Seventy-one year old Russian native Mrs. Max Danzis the founder of the Volunteer League of Beth Israel Hospital where her husband was the “senior visiting surgeon” and chief of staff passed away today in East Orange, NJ.
1946:Birthdate of Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu who was a commander in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the Israel Defense Forces. His younger brothers are Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel, who previously held that office from 1996-99, and Iddo Netanyahu, an Israeli author and playwright. Yoni was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service (Hebrew: עיטור המופת) for his conduct in the Yom Kippur War. He was killed in action during Operation Entebbe at Entebbe airport, by Ugandan soldiers, when the Israeli military rescued hostages after an aircraft.
1946(10th of Adar II, 5706): Seventy-seven year old Swiss born and educated William Dreyfus, the “chief chemist of the West Disinfecting Company and chairman of the National Association of Insecticide and Disinfectant Manufacturers passed away today.
1946: During Aliyah Bet, British police kill one female member of the Palmach as they fired on “the schooner Wingate which was attempting to land 248 refugees – an attempt that was thwarted by the HMS Chevron which took the captured vessel to Haifa.
1947:The Lerner and Lowe musical ''Brigadoon'' opened on Broadway.
1947: Tonight the British government in Palestine announced that it had arrested 78 people including 15 members of the Stern gang and 12 members of the Irgun. The arrests of these “terrorists” had been made possible, in part, because of “assistance from the Jewish community.”
1947: “Some resistance was encountered by British troops today when 703 Jews who arrived in Palestine waters yesterday after running the naval blockade were taken aboard the steamer Empire Rival.” The Jews are reportedly being shipped to camps in Cyprus.
1948(2nd of Adar II, 5708): Parashat Pekudi
1948: “Paying tribute to Jan Masaryk as a friend who ‘rescued Jews in distress and championed Jewish cause,’ Rabbi Louis I. Newman in Temple Rodeph Sholom, 7 West Eighty-third Street, said today that ‘Masaryk has died a martyr to the madness which is sweeping the world.’”
1948: As a reminder that the crisis in Palestine was only one issue with which the United States was wrestling, a Republican Senate voted to provide the funding that Democratic President Truman had proposed which would make the Marshall Plan possible.
1948:While speaking at the ceremony marking the induction of Dr. Nelson Glueck as head of Hebrew Union College Samuel I. Rosenmean, who has served as a special assistant to both Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, assails appeasement. He called for a "policy of resistance" rather than appeasement and said that the Russian dictatorship had started rolling westward in true Hitler manner.
1949: “The mystery enveloping the Aqaba area on the Red Sea was dispelled today when it was learned that Arab Legion troops had been driven out from strategic positions they had held in Israeli territory of the Negeb and also had been forced to withdraw from outposts along the highly contested area to the north of Aqaba.”
1949: “Samuel H. Telsey, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, announced today at its sixty-fourth annual meeting that HIAS had set a budget of $5,005,000, the largest in its history, as "the minimum sum to carry on the imperatively urgent work among the displaced and suffering Jews of the world."
1950: In Manhattan “Orthodox Jewish immigrants Shulim Krauthammer, a lawyer who spoke nine languages and the former Thea Horowitz gave birth to Charles Krautheimer, the graduate of McGill University and Harvard Medical School who turned from medicine to become a Pulitzer Prize winner and television news personality who has shown a propensity for appearing on FOX.
1950: The body of Dr. Mordecai Eliash, Israel’s first ambassador to the United Kingdom, arrived at Lydda Airport today and was taken to Jerusalem where it will lie in state until tomorrow’s funeral.
1950: Dr. Walter Caly Lowdermilk, American expert on soil erosion, met today with Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and Finance Minister Elizar Kaplan before leaving for London.
1951: Israel demanded DM 6.2 billion compensation from Germany
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Eilat was bedecked and illuminated to mark the third anniversary of the town¹s liberation. A military parade was held and a message was read from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who said: "The military victory will be won only if pioneers make the land fertile."
1960(14th of Purim, 5720): Last Purim observance during the Presidency of Ike Eisenhower.
1961: Monash University, the Australian school named in honor of Sir John Monash accepted its first 347 students today at Clayton.
1964: Two days after Rabbi Morris Adler had passed away, per the declaration of Governor George Romney, today was observed “as a day of mourning for Rabbi Adler throughout Michigan.”
1965: In Los Angeles, CA, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, the Jewish stars of “Mission Impossible” gave birth to actress Juliet Rose Landau.
1966: Based on a declaration by Governor George Romney is a day of mourning for Morris Adler, the rabbi of Shaaray Zedek in Detroit who had been shot by mentally ill attacker during Shabbat services on February 12, throughout the state of Michigan.
1966: Two days after he had passed away funeral services were held at Temple Israel in St. Louis for 75 year old Riga born Harry Edison “one of five brothers who started with one shoe store in Atlanta in 1921 and built into the nationwide chain of Edison Brothers, Inc consisting of 535 stores and who raised two children, Edna and Sidney, with his wife “the former Mae Goodhart.”
1967: Margaret Arnsteinbecame dean of the Yale University School of Nursing. As dean, she brought Yale's nursing school into the forefront of nursing education. Arnstein's lifetime of work was well recognized in her later years. In 1966, she became the first woman to receive a Rockefeller Public Service Award. In 1971, she received the Sedgwick Memorial Medal, the American Public Health Association's highest honor.
1967: Broadway opening of “You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running” for which Martin Balsam won the Tony for best performance by a leading actor in a play.
1967: Larry Blyden began appearing as “George” “Chuck” and “Richard Pawling” in You Know I can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running.”
1969(23rd of Adar, 5729): Paul Burlin, famed abstract expressionist painter, passed away. Burlin joined such artists as Picasso, Manet, Monet, and Degas at the famous Armory Show in 1913 which was the turning point in public acceptance of expressionism in the United States.
1971: Jerry Wolman, the former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, has agreed to sell historic Shibe Park which he had purchased in 1964 for $757,500.
1973: The New York Times reviewed the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Nine of the 12 women who first formed the collective that created this groundbreaking women's health reference were Jewish
1973: “After thirteen previews, the revival of” “Irene” a musical with a book by Joseph Stein and co-starring George Irving “opened at the Minskoff Theatre.
1974: One of David Wolper’s crews filming a National Geographic history of Australopithecus at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area was killed when the Corvair 440 Sierra Pacific Airlines plane exploded on takeoff from Eastern Sierra Regional Airport in Bishop, California killing all 35 on board including 31 Wolper crew members.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported from Washington that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was surprised to find out that when the US State Department spoke about "minor adjustments" in the pre-1967 Israeli borders, it referred to border changes of only a few hundred meters, or "straightening out of the line" in such places as Latrun or Kalkilya. It was in order to correct such assumptions that Rabin repeated that under no circumstances would Israel go back to the 1967 lines. "We believe that we are entitled to decide, when it comes to our defense, where the boundaries will be which will defend Israel in the future," Rabin concluded.
1977(23rd of Adar, 5737): Sixty-eight year old Edward Leo Canter, the son of Joseph and Pauline Canter who was married to Adele Liebling and then to Jean Hyman Canter passed away today after he was buried at Beth El Cemetery in West Springfield, MA.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that In Washington Hanafi Moslem terrorist leaders freed their hostages in return for their release without bail, guaranteed by the authorities.
1978(4th of Adar II, 5738): Seventy-nine year old historian and biographer Matthew Josephson an acolyte of economic determinist Charles Beard who created and popularized the term “robber barons” to describe certain 19thcentury “captains of industry.” (Editor’s note – NYT shows March 13; his official papers show March 15)
http://drs.library.yale.edu/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=beinecke:joseph&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes
http://www.nytimes.com/1978/03/14/archives/matthew-josephson-biographer-and-muckraker-dies.html?_r=0
1979(14th of Adar, 5736): Purim
1979(14th of Adar, 5736): Sixty-three year old New York City native and attorney Gilbert Kanter, an active member of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies passed away today in his home town.
1981(7th of Adar II, 5741):Jacques Zucker, an artist whose paintings in post-Impressionist style were seen in many one-man shows in the United States and abroad, died today at Beth Israel Hospital after a long illness. Mr. Zucker, who lived in Manhattan, was 80 years old. His work, including landscapes, still lifes and portraits, is part of permanent collections in Paris, Tel Aviv and the collection of Joseph Hirschorn in Washington, D. C. He was born in Radom, Poland. As a youth studied art at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem. He continued his art studies in Paris and maintained a home there.
1985(20th of Adar, 5745): Sixty-five year old record producer Bob Shad (Abraham Shadrinsky) passed away today.
1985: In Topanga, California, Margaret Esther (née Davenport) and David M. Hirsch gave birth to actor Emile Davenport Hirsch
1986(2nd of Adar II, 5746): Ninety-three year old Leo Korbin “an owner of Kobrin Brothers” passed away today.
1986(2nd of Adar II, 5746): Seventy-four year old archeologist George M.A. Hanfmann who led the expeditions to Sardis, the capital of ancient Lydia, passed away today.
1987:A poll conducted by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper today indicated that two-thirds of Israelis believed their Government should help Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Pollard.
1987(12th of Adar, 5747): Eighty-three year old Trinidad, CO native David Lewis the movie producer responsible for the cinema classic “Dark Victory” passed away today.
1989: “Attorney and women’s rights activist” Harriet Pilpel who “was widowed in 1987…married New York Medical College administrator Irvin B. Schwartz” today.
1990(16th of Adar, 5750): Bruno Bettelheim, noted child psychologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor committed suicide six years after his wife had died from cancer.(As reported by Daniel Coleman)
1993(20th of Adar, 5753): Simha Levy, a woman who worked as driver taking Palestinians from Gaza to their jobs inside the pre-1967 borders was axed to death in her van at Khan Yunis.
1994: The “stained-glass ‘Sephardic Heritage Windows’ designed by Israeli artist Raphael Abecassis” that had been “commissioned by the Maurice Amado Foundation” and that used “Jewish symbols and Sephardic motifs” to “depict the history of Sephardic Jews, beginning with their expulsion from Spain in the 15th Century” are scheduled to be dedicated this morning at The Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Los Angeles.
1997(4th of Adar II, 5757): Seven school girls aged twelve and thirteen, all from the same school at Beit Shemesh, were shot dead and Hila Levy was injured by a Jordanian soldier who went berserk on the Jordan Border after which King Hussein paid surprise and much appreciated condolence call on the grieving families.
1997:Virologist and immunologist, Hilary Koprowski who invented the world's first effective live polio vaccine received the Legion d'Honneur from the French government.
1997: “The Devil’s Own,” a film that pits two Irish institutions – the IRA and the Boston Police Department -- against themselves directed by Alan J. Pakula premiered today in New York City.
1998: Former major league catcher and manager of the Detroit Tigers Brad “Ausmus and his wife Liz whom he married in 1995 gave birth to their first daughter, Sophie.
1999(25th of Adar, 5759): Director Garson Kanin passed away. From a Jewish point of view, Kanin’s claim to fame is that he direced the play Diary of Anne Frank. The play premiered in 1955 and ran for 717 performances. In 1964 he directed the Broadway hit Funny Girl, the story of Fannie Brice. The musical ran for over a thousand shows.
1999: “A Professor in Nanjing Takes Up Jewish Studies” published today examines the rise of a Center for Judaic Studies in the central Chinese city of Nanjing.
1999(25th of Adar, 5769): Ninety year old multi-talented artist Lucienne Bloch, the youngest child of Ernst Bloch, passed away today. (As reported by Thomas Roberts, Jr.)
2000: “''The Three Stages of Life'' (1898) a triptych by Count Leopold von Kalckreuth, “a painting that was left behind by a Jewish woman fleeing Vienna during World War II, taken by the Nazis and held for most of the intervening years in storage at a museum in Munich was returned today to the heirs of the original owner.”
2001: In “Year by Year, a Witness to the Nazis’ Affronts,” published today Bruce Weber reviews “I Will Bear Witness: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer” by Victor Klemperer; adapted by Karen Malpede and George Bartenieff; translated by Martin Chalmers a one-actor theatrical adaptation of the second volume of Klemperer’s diaries that had been published last year.
2003: “The highest-ranking diplomat at the Iranian Embassy” chargé d'affaires, Mohammad Ali Tabatabai, was recalled as a result of a growing dispute over responsibility for the bombing at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people.”
2003(9th of Adar II, 5673):”Israeli troops and a helicopter gunship, on high alert for a possible Palestinian attack, opened fire with automatic weapons today in the southern West Bank and mistakenly killed two Israeli security guards in civilian clothes, the army said.”
2004: Evelyn Franklin, the wife of photographer Richard Avedon, and mother of John Avedon, passed away today.
2005: In a case of Jew follows Jew, Disney announced that Bob Eiger would succeed Michael Eisner as CEO
2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback editions of An Almost Perfect Moment by Binnie Kirshenbaum a darkly comic novel, set in the 1970's that revolves around a Jewish teenager in Brooklyn who thinks she's the Virgin Mary and There Are Jews in My House by Lara Vapnyar
2006: Cole Meyer announced that it was selling Myer, an Australian department store chain founded by Sidney Meyer (born Simcha Myer Baevski) ”to a consortium controlled by US private equity group Newbridge Capital, part of the Texas Pacific group:
2006(13th Adar): The Fast of Esther has been designated International Agunah Day by Yad L'Isha. An agunah is a woman who is unable to obtain a get(Jewish divorce).
2007: Under the direction of its founder Eylon Nuphar, Mayumana opens its production of “Be” at the Union Theatre Square. “Mayumana is a corruption of the Hebrew word for skill, and the players display a variety of them, in a show that combines mime, dance, gymnastics, music and percussion in a joyous celebration of life.”
2008:In Washington, D.C. veteran scriptwriter and television producer Gary David Goldberg, creator of the series "Family Ties" and "Spin City," discusses his new memoir, Sit, Ubu, Sit: How I Went from Brooklyn to Hollywood with the Same Woman, the Same Dog, and a Lot Less Hair at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue formerly the site of Adas Israel which relocated to Connecticut Ave and Porter and is the only Conservative Synagogue still located in the District of Columbia.
2008: Israeli President Shimon Peres paid tribute to the French who saved Jews during the Holocaust in a somber ceremony at the Pantheon in the Latin Quarter, and visited a French Foreign Ministry exhibition about the origins of the state of Israel.
2009: “The Saul Steinberg: Illuminations” travelling exhibition opened in Hamburg, Germany
2009(17th of Adar, 5769): Eighty-four year old David Jacob Cohen the German born son of Jakob and Hanna Cohen and the husband of Dina Berger passed away today in Israel.
2009: Award winning Israeli author Etgar Keret comes to Albany University for a screening of his film “Wristcutters: A Love Story” sponsored by the Albany Center for Jewish Studies and the Writers Institute.
2010: Israeli diva Rita is scheduled to begin her U.S. Tour today.
2010: As part of the Scholar-In-Residence program, Professor David Kraemer is scheduled to speak on “Laity in the Lead” following Shabbat morning services.
2010:Late today Israel Defense Forces soldiers arrested a top Hamas official in Ramallah, suspected of leading military cells responsible for the murder of more than 70 Israelis over the course of the second Intifada. Mahar Udda, 47, has been wanted in Israel for over a decade for his alleged involvement in terror activity including the deadly double terror attack at Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem and at the bus stop near the Tzrifin military base in central Israel on September 9, 2003. He was one of the founding members of Hamas and built the Islamist movement's military cell in the West Bank in the early 1990s. The cell under his command allegedly gathered ammunition for Hamas terror activity against Israel and also kidnapped Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel. He was arrested by the Palestinian Authority in 1998, but released shortly after. Udda's arrest late Saturday was executed in a joint effort between the IDF, Israel Police and the Shin Bet security service
2010:Around 1,000 demonstrators marched this evening outside the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem to protest Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz's decision to allow the continuation of single-sex bus lines that serve the Haredi community.
2011(7th Adar II): Yahrzeit of Moshe Rabbeinu. According to tradition Moses passed on his 120thbirthday, Adar 7, 2488 (1273 BCE). This same tradition teaches that he was born in Egypt on the 7th of Adar of the year 2368 from creation (1393 BCE).
2011(7th of Adar II): Burial Society Day. “The Chevrah Kadisha (Jewish Burial Societies) hold their annual get-together and feast on Adar 7th. This is based on the tradition that God Himself buried Moses on this day.”
2011:The Palestinian leadership must be held accountable for continued incitement and failure to stop the glorification of murderers, a senior aide to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said today as the Fatah faction named a town square in El-Bireh after the leader of the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre.Today,s Israel was mourning the slaughter of the five members of the Fogel family in Itamar, members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction named a town square after Dalal al-Mughrabi, the leader of the 1978 bus hijacking in which 37 Israelis were killed and 71 were wounded.
2011:Chabad Lubavitch of Northern Virginia is scheduled to present The Rabbi Samuel and Zehava Friedman Annual Yeshiva Day.
2011:“Jubanos: The Jews of Cuba” and “The Fig Tree” (La Higuera) are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the 15th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.
2011: As part of its commemoration of the Triangle Waist Factory Fire and the changes that followed in its wake, the Jewish Women's Archive has organized a walking tour which is scheduled to take place today.
2011: The second wedding to take place at the Huvra Synagogue since its re-dedication is scheduled to take place today.
2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic co-authored by Eric A. Posner and the recently released paperback editions of Wrestling With Moses:How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City by Anthony Flint and Making a Toast:A Family Storyby Roger Rosenblatt.
2011:Former Knesset member Tawfik Toubi aged 89 a Haifa resident, who was the last remaining living member of the first Knesset was laid to rest in Haifa's Kfar Samir (Sde Yehoshua) cemetery. Toubi, a Christian Arab Israeli, was a member of the Communist Party.
2011: An orthodox Jewish prayer observance by three passengers aboard an Alaska Airlines flight today
alarmed flight attendants unfamiliar with the ritual, prompting them to lock down the cockpit and issue a security alert, officials said.
2011: Tens of thousands attended the funeral for five members of the Fogel family massacred at Itamar. The entrance to Jerusalem was blocked off by police and vehicles diverted to an alternative entrance after the huge attendance brought traffic to a standstill. Israel's major television channels provided live coverage of the eulogies for the victims.
2012: A Chabad rabbi who was serving the tiny ancient Jewish community in Cochin, India, and his wife were expelled today and sent back to Israel for allegedly engaging in illegal activities. Indian authorities accused Rabbi Zalman Bernstein of failing to declare on his visa application that he would be conducting religious activities and of trying to convert foreigners. A local daily accused him and his wife of spying for Israel.
2012:Gaza militants fired a Grad-type Katyusha rocket toward the western Negev today, despite a Egypt-mediated cease fire between Israel and militant groups that went into effect earlier in the day. The rocket struck a residential area if the town of Netivot, with one person lightly wounded. Eleven people were treated for shock.
2012:Israel's Counter Terrorism Bureau warned Israeli citizens today against travelling to Turkey, citing intelligence that terror groups were planning attacks against Israeli or Jewish institutions in the country.
2012: Israeli composer and organist, Roman Krasnovsky is scheduled to perform a solo recital at the Central Synagogue in New York City.
2012:Shmuel Ashkenasi is scheduled to perform with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a private tour lead by Dr. Peggy Pearlstein of Words Like Sapphires: 100 Years of Hebraica at the Library of Congress,
1912-2012
2013: Seton Hall basketball player Tom Maayan informed his uncle David Fuchs that he could not postpone his service in the IDF any longer and packed his bags for the flight to Tel Avv.
2013: The Yeshiva University Museum is schedule to sponsor a curator’s tour “Passages Through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War.”
2013(2nd of Nisan, 5773): Eighty-four year old actor Malachi Throne passed away today. (As reported by Daniel E. Slotnik
2013: In another case of “Jew on Jew” Larry page announced in a blog post that Andy Rubin “had moved from the Android division to take on new projects at Google.”
2013: “A new documentary, ‘Philip Roth: Unmasked’ opened at New York City’s Film Forum today.
2013: Bruce Ruben, director of the School of Sacred Music at HUC, is scheduled to a lecture entitled “Max Lillienthal and the Making of the American Rabbinate” at the Leo Baeck Institue.
2013:In Washington, DC, the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism is scheduled to host a community organizing training program for those participating in the Jewish Energy Network.
2013: Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentinian cardinal who was elected pope late today and will take the name Francis I, is said to have a good relationship with Argentinian Jews.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2013/03/13/3121966/new-pope-francis-i-is-argentinian-cardinal-jorge-maria-bergoglio
2014: The 17th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to open at the Center for Jewish History.
2014: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “The Immigrant Experience in Movies.”
2014(11thof Adar II, 5774): Fast of Easter observed on Thursday. For more see
2014: Terrorists continued their rocket attack firing missles at Ashdod and Ashkelon in the morning and at Sderot and surrounding communities this afternoon. (As reported by Maayana Miskin)
2014: “CBS announced the second season renewal of ‘Mom,’” the sit-com created by Chuck Lorre.
2014: There was no confirmation today by Israel of Islamic Jihad’s claim that an Egyptian brokered cease fire had gone into effect. (As reported by Spencer Ho)
2015: Team Crossroads is scheduled to participate in today’s Jerusalem Marathon.
2015: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host its last Friday Night of the academic term.
2015(22nd of Adar, 5775): Ninety-one year old MVP winning Cleveland Indians third baseman Al Rosen passed away today.
2015(22nd of Adar, 5775): Ninety-six cartoonist Irwin Hasen passed away today.
2015(22nd Adar, 5775): Lia van Leer, the cinema pioneer who founded “the Haifa Cinematheque, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, the Israel Film Archive and the Jerusalem Film Festival” passed away today.
2015: “Many Jewish bodies in Europe are being bankrupted by the growing need for security measures, the US State Department’s special envoy on anti-Semitism said today.”
2015: This morning, erev of Shabbat, over 25,000 people participated in the Jerusalem Marathon. (As reported by Itamar Sharon)
2015: “The Argentine government today declassified its files on an unsolved 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish center that is at the center of a new political firestorm.”
2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear at the Johnny Mercer Theatre in Savanah, GA.
2016: In North Carolina, “Serial (Bad) Weddings” and “A Tale of Love and Darkness” are scheduled to be shown on the last day of the Charlotte Jewish Film Festival
2016: The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra is scheduled to celebrate its 78th season by performing at the State Theatre where it performed in April of 1988 when the State Theatre “was officially reopened as a nonprofit performing arts center.
2016: In London, the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism is scheduled to host a screening of “The Last of the Unjust” followed by a panel discussion led by Director David Feldman and Professor Jacqueline Rose.
2016: In Atlanta, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host “Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ – the music of Harold Arlen.
2016: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host a reception marking the opening of “Ruth Gruber, Photojournalist” an exhibition that“celebrates the remarkable life, vision, and heroic tenacity of a twentieth-century pioneer and trailblazer” who is now in her 104th year.
2016: At London’s Tate Britain, an exhibition of 36 paintings by Frank Auerbach is scheduled to come to an end today.
2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Secret of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built by Jack Viertel, Is that Kafkfa?by Reiner Stach and Anna and The Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
2017: Tony Nominee Tovah Feldshuh is among the stars scheduled to appear the Streicker Center’s “Jewish Broadway.”
2017: In Atlanta, the Breman is scheduled to open “Atlanta Collects” to the public today.
2017(15th of Adar, 5777): Shushan Purim
2017(15th of Adar, 5777): Fifty-one year old author and filmmaker tragically succumbed to ovarian cancer today.(As reported by Sam Roberts)
2018: Claire Foy, the star of “The Crown” was paid less than her male co-star Matt Smith for the show’s first two seasons, producers of the Netflix period drama revealed at a panel during the INTV Conference in Jerusalem today.
2018: As Hamas and the Palestinian Authority continued their fight for control, “a roadside bomb blast damaged several vehicles in the convoy of PA PM Rami Hamdallah” today.
2018: In response to today’s allegations in the New York Times that he “had sexually or harassed” five women, Cornell University trained architect Richard Meier, the winner of the 1984 Pritzker Architecture Prize said he would take a six months leave of absence from his firm.
2018: “The Pirate Captain Toledano,” “Sara Levy Cohen,” “116 Cameras” and “Keep It Cool” are scheduled to be shown at the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.
2018: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamar Story” in London.
2018: “Dr. Stranglelove” is scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.
2019: The Illinois Holocaust and Education Center’s 2019 Humanitarian Awards 10th Anniversary Dinner is scheduled to take place this evening.
2019: JW3 is scheduled to host an evening with Bart van Es, the author of The Cut Out Girl that “tells the true story of the author’s grandparents and the young girl they fostered to hide her from the Nazis in occupied Holland.”
2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host a screening of “Who We Are: The Number on Great-Grandpa’s Arm”
2019: The Jewish Study Center is scheduled to host Michael Rugel as he presents “Echoing the Maccabees: How Jewish Soldiers Restored Synagogues after WWII.”
2020: As of 3:00 pm today the Center for Jewish History in New York will be closed until the end of March.
2020: Friday the 13th is a lucky day for those preparing to celebrate the natal days of Sasha Anderson and JoyAnn Ruscha.
2020: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host the “8th Week Friday Night Dinner, the last Friday night dinner of this school term.
2020: The display of the works of Tali Margolin at the Noyes Museum of Art is scheduled to continue today.
2020: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker is scheduled to host Abraham as he talks about “Battling Bigotry.”