February 28
1255: Bishop Richard of Worms transferred to the chapter of the local cathedral, among other revenues from the city, the sum of 40 pounds heller which the Jewish community was obliged to pay annually on St. Martin's Day which falls on November 11.
1276(12th of Adar): Bishop Pierre III Rostaing guaranteed protection to the Jews of Carpentras, France in return for a tax of one-thirteenth of the total seat rents of the synagogue
1348: At the Cortes of Alcala de Hebares King Alfonso XI issued a "startling" decree which forbad Jews and Moors from lending money “at interet.”
1488: Joshua Solomon Soncino began printing copies of the Bible at Soncino, Italy.
1533: Birthdate of French writer and philosopher Michael de Montaigne. His mother, Antoinette de Louppes, came from a rich Spanish Jewish family, but was herself raised as a Protestant. Should Montaigne be considered Jewish? It depends upon whose list you look at, so I will leave it up to others to investigate more fully and decide.
1574: The first official Auto da Fe in the New World was held in Mexico after the establishment of the Inquisition 5 years earlier. The first unofficial Auto da Fe was actually held in 1528 when the conquistador Hernando Alonso was executed.
1575: Rabbi Elijah ben Moses de Vidas completed Reishit Hakhmah
1592: Clement VIII issued Cum saepe accidere, a Papal Bull that forbade the Jews of Avignon from selling new goods.
1593: Clement VIII issued Cum Haebraeorum militia, a Papal Bull decreeing that the Talmud should be burnt along with cabalistic works and commentaries, which gave the owners of such works 10 days to turn them over to the Universal Inquisition in Rome and subsequently two months to hand them over to local inquisitors.
1675: An agreement was ratified today that would allow 250 Jewish families to return Vienna and occupy 50 places of business. In return for this privilege, the Jews agreed to make a payment of 300,000 florins and the payment of an annual tax of 10,000 florins. The government agreed to the return of the Jews because the treasury was empty.
1677: In Newport, RI, Jewish community purchased land to be used as a cemetery
1720: Judah Monis, an Algerian born Jew who would become the first American author of a Hebrew grammar book arrived in New York.
1747: Benedict XIV issued Postremomens, a Papal Bull that deals with the baptism of Jews.
1787: The state legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted Hugh Henry Breckenridge a charter for a school that is now known as the University of Pittsburgh. Today, there are approximately 1,800 Jewish students among the total undergrad population of 16,000 and 500 Jewish students among the 7,000 graduate students. The university offers a major in Jewish studies. Jewish students can avail themselves of programs offered by Hillel and Chabad as well as find kosher meals at the “Kosher Korner” at the University Center.
1799: Napoleon, the first European leader to meet with Jewish leaders in Palestine, led his army out of Gaza and headed for Ramallah.
1805(29thof Adar I, 5565):Naphtali Hirz Wessely, the Jewish man of letters born at Hamburg in 1725 and educated at Copenhagen passed away today in his native city.
1812: Birthdate of German-Jewish author Berthold Auerbach. Born Moses (Moyses) Baruch, Auerbach published a novel entitled Spinoza: Ein Historischer Roman in 1837. He passed away in 1882 at the age of 70.
1823: Birthdate of Ernest Renan a French author who specialized in studies of the ancient languages and civilizations of the Middle East. Late in life, Renan wrote a three volume “History of Israel.” The first volume appeared in 1887 and the final volume appeared in 1897. Some claimed that he was an anti-Semite (anti-Jewish) because of comments about the limitations of the Semitic mind. But Renan contended that the Jewish people were not a race in the biological and he was an opponent of the nationalism that took hold in Germany in the latter of the 19th century because of its anti-Semitic component.
1827(1st of Adar): Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Shklov passed away
1829(25th of Adar): Wolf Breidenbach passed
1831: In Philadelphia, John A. Forepaugh and Susannah Heimer gave birth to Adam John Forepaugh, the circus owner who included Leopold S. Kahn, “the dwarf performer” known as Admiral Dot among his acts in the 1890’s
1838: Birthdate of French engineer Maurice Levy.
1842: B'ne Yeshurun, a congregation organized by the German Jews living in Cincinnati, Ohio was incorporated under the laws of the state of Ohio.
1842: In Cleveland, Ohio, Anshe Chesed (now Anshe Chesed - Fairmount Temple) which had been founded as a German Orthodox congregation in 1841 was chartered today. The congregation had 30 members and Asher Lehman served as the Rabbi.
1843: In Bishop-Purnitz, Austria, Mina and Benedict Greenhut gave birth to Joseph B. Greenhut, a decorated Civil War veteran and a successful Chicago, Illinois, businessman
1850: The General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret established the University Desert which was the forerunner of the University of Utah located at Salt Lake City, Utah. Today the university has approximately 350 Jewish students out of a student population of 15,000. The school has ten courses in Jewish studies and offers a major degree in Jewish Studies. Not bad for a school founded deep the heart of the land of Brigham Young.
1854: The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin. The party was formed in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska act and was designed to stop the Democrats’ pro-slavery agenda. Some of the Jews who were active in the early days of the party were Sabato Morais, rabbi of the Mikveh Israel Congregation, Moritz Pinner who edited a German language abolitionist paper in Kansas
1855: In a demonstration of the extent to which Jewish concepts have penetrated the general cultural milieu, while giving a speech in New York on the habits of North American Indians, General Sam Houston tells the audience that until “the spirit of revenge had been conquered by civilization” the law of the Cherokee Nation “was the same as that practiced under the old dispensation by the Jews of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and blood for blood.”
1860: Birthdate of Victor L. Berger who would become the first member of the Socialist Party to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representative.
1862: A column entitled “Affairs In Utah” published today described the drive of those living in that territory to become a state in the Union. “As things go, it does seem apparent that Jews and Gentiles here are, more or less, under the conviction that the particular time ‘in the course of human events’ is at hand when a change is inevitable in the fashion of Government among "this people." Some may be surprised to hear of Jews connected with Utah which is almost synonymous with the Mormon Religion. The first Jews who settled in Utah were probably “dropouts” from the wagon trains heading to California during the California Gold Rush. By 1853, two Jews had established a millenary store in Salt Lake City. The first non-Mormon governor of Utah would be a Jew named Simon Bamberger. As to the issue of statehood, it would be another 34 years before that goal was reached. The price of admission would be a formal rejection by the Mormons of the practice of polygamy. To date, this is the only time that the federal government has “interfered” with the doctrines of a religious organization.
1863: The will of the late Commodore Uriah P. Levy, U.S. Navy, which has been admitted to probate, is now before the Supreme Court, at Special Term. Proceedings have been “instituted to break it, in respect to its bequests to the people of the United States, or the State of Virginia, and then to certain Hebrew congregations in New-York, Philadelphia and Richmond, for the purpose of founding an agricultural school at Monticello, in the State of Virginia.”
1868(5th of Adar): Rabbi Israel Muschkat, author of Harei Besamim, passed away.
1877(15thof Adar, 5637): Shushan Purim
1882: It was reported today that the Russian government offered an explanation to the British government for the expulsion of Mr. Lewisohn from the Czar’s empire. While the British saw Lewisohn as an English citizen, the Russians saw him as being a Jew. And in Russia, Jews, regardless of the country in which they live, are considered to be Jews which make them a thing without legal standing.
1882: John W. Foster will deliver a lecture on “The Czar and His People” a tonight’s meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at Chickering Hall in New York City.
1887: Rumania excluded Jews from public service and the tobacco trade.
1887: Birthdate of William Zorach, “a Lithuanian-American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer” who won the Logan Medal of the arts.
1891: Birthdate of Yaakov Kamenetsky, the Lithuanian born Rosh Yeshiva and Talmudist, who moved to North America in 1937 where he served as a Rabbi in several U.S. and Canadian cities.
1894: Birthdate of playwright and novelist Ben Hecht. His most famous work was “The Front Page” which he co-authored with Charles MacArthur. Hecht also won two Oscars for two of his screen plays. This comic drama about the newspaper business was a Broadway hit as well as a successful movie in the original and remakes. Hecht was also an ardent Zionist.
1895: It was reported today that the officers of the Young Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s League of the Montefiore Home are: Lucien Bonheur, President; Miss Gertrude Hess, Vice President; James Loeb, Treasurer; Amelia Simon, Secretary.
1895: “Great Hebrew Charity” published today included Jacob Schiff’s acknowledgement of the receipt $10,063.19 for the Montefiore Home that was raised by the recent charity ball as well as an additional $2,000 that came from payment of dues.
1895: “German Hebrew Immigration” published today described the debate in the Reichstag on restricting the immigration of Jews from Russia and Austria which one deputy described as being “so great as to amount to a national plague.” Deputies from the Social Democrats and National Liberty Party voiced their opposition to any restrictive measures which led to an end to the debate.
1898: Birthdate of Yiddish actress Molly Picon.
1898: “The Get-Together Clubs” of New York and Brooklyn met this evening where the general discussion of “The Problem of the Unemployed” including a presentation by N.S. Rosenau, the Director of the United Hebrew Charities.
1900: During the Second Boer War the 118 day siege of Ladysmith came to an end. 1899: Major Karri Davies was one of the Jewish soldiers who fought in defense of the British position at Ladysmith. There were at least 2,800 Jews fighting for the British and an untold number fighting for the Boers.
1903: Max Nordau meets Leopold Greenberg in Paris and sends a wire to Herzl: "Greenberg had obtained everything that can possibly be conceded in an official agreement."
1905: In New York, the initial meeting of a “Choral Society for Ancient Hebrew Meolodies” was held at the rooms Young Men’s Hebrew Association under the direction of Mr. Rosenblatt.
1907(14thof Adar, 5667): Purim
1907(14thof Adar, 5667): Eighty year old Wilhelm Rapp passed away. Born in Germany in 1827, he moved to the United States in 1852 after having participated in the failed Revolutions of 1848. Rapp edited newspapers in several cities before the Civil War. An outspoken abolitionist and Unionist he was forced to flee from Baltimore to Washington, DC in 1861. Rapp turned down President Lincoln’s offer to make him postmaster general and moved to Chicago, Illinois where worked as a newspaper editor until his death.
1909: In Kensington (UK) Edward Harold Spender and Violet Hilda Schuster who was consider “half Jewish” because her father’s family had been German Jews before converting gave birth to Poet Laureate Sir Stephen Spender whose identification with the Jewish people was strengthened by the fact that his second wife was English Pianist and author Natasha Spender.
1915: Birthdate of actor Zero Mostel known for his roles in the original version of “The Producers” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
1916(24th of Adar I, 5676): Morris Lasker, aged 76, millionaire miller, pioneer, Indian fighter and philanthropist died in Galveston, Texas, this afternoon. Mr. Lasker won wide fame when he led the Jews of the South in a fight for the life and vindication of Leo Frank, who was convicted in Atlanta for the murder of Mary Phagan. Mr. Lasker came to America from Germany at the age of 16. He “was in the mercantile business in George for three years, and then came to Texas, settling at Weatherford, where he engaged in many expeditions against the Indians.” He settled in Galveston in 1867 and married Miss Nettie Davis of Albany, NY, the widow who survives him, along with six children including Albert Lasker of Chicago.
1916: Henry James, one of the literary giants of the 19th century, passed away. For more about how James viewed Jews including his review of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda see Milton Kerker’s Henry James on the Jewish scene/
1921: Fire destroys 120 homes and a large amount of shops in the Jewish quarter of Kouskoundjouk, Constantinople. Most of these belonged to poor Jews.
1921: Conference of rabbis in Jerusalem elects a court of Justice and chooses four Ashkenazi and four Sephardi rabbis with Rabbi Kook (Ashkenazi) & Jacob Meir (Sephardic).
1921: In Passaic, NJ, “Morris and Goldie Zaentz, Jewish refugees from a shtetl in eastern Poland” gave birth to Oscar award winning movie producer Saul Zaentz whose work included “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Next” and “Amadeus” (As reported by Robert McFadden
1926(14thof Adar, 5686): Purim
1928: The Soviets decided to set up a Jewish district in Biro-bijanin Eastern Siberia. Most of its 14,200 square miles were uninhabitable due to floods. It was to be used as a buffer zone against China.
1929: Birthdate of Canadian born architect Frank Gehry.
1935(25th of Adar I, 5695): Jeannette Miriam Goldberg, who organized Texas chapters of the National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish Chautauqua Society, passed away.
1938: As the latest wave of Arab violence continued, The Palestine Post reported that the "representatives" of armed bands were regularly visiting Arab towns and villages, demanding money for their "activities" and issuing "receipts." A bridge on the Jenin-Afula road was damaged by an explosion and there were numerous shooting incidents throughout the country. A curfew was imposed on a number of villages after armed Arab terrorists stormed isolated police posts and stole arms and ammunition, intimidating the local Arab constables.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that The Union of Romanian Journalists expelled all Jews who became members after December 1919.
1939: The curfew that had been imposed on all of the Arab quarters starting on February 26 following the murder of 3 Jews by Arabs was scheduled to come to an end today at 6 A.M.
1940: The British adopted the MacDonald White Paper that included restriction of sale of Arab land to Jews in Eretz Yisrael. This document nearly voided the Balfour Declaration
1942: In Tel Aviv, Aharon Werba, a civil servant who made Aliyah in 1933 and his wife Chava gave birth to Dorit Werba who as Dorit Beinish was the first woman to serve as president of the Supreme Court of Israel.
1943: George Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess" opened on Broadway with Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. The musical originally premiered in 1935 and survived for a mere 124 performances. The musical was revised after Gershwin's death and slowly gained popular and critical acclaim.
1943: In Kovono Ghetto, thousands of Jews attend the funeral of Rabbi Avraham Duber Shapiro, Chief Rabbi of Kovno despite an order from the Nazis forbidding them to do so.
1945(15thof Adar, 5705): Shushan Purim
1945(15thof Adar, 5705): Walter Süskind, the German born Dutch Jew who saved over six hundred Jewish children died either at Auschwitz or one of the death marches inflicted on Jews by their Nazi captors as the war came to a close.
1947: British naval forces seized 1,398 “illegal” Jewish immigrants today.
1947: Jacob and Niza Gabbai, a husband and wife couple who have just arrived in New York City from Palestine enrolled at Fordham University. The Gabbais are part of the Young Palestinian League which is working to develop a new cultural environment in their homeland. They chose Fordham “because it is a complete university and not just a drama or radio school, and also because it located in the world capital of the theatre.”
1948: The famed Golani Brigade was formed today during the Israeli War for Independence when the Levanoni Brigade in the Galilee split into the 1st Golani Brigade and the 2nd Carmeli Brigade
1950: Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett presented the cabinet with the draft of five year non-aggression pact between Israel and Jordan. The pact is the product of several months of secret negotiations. It includes most of the terms of the armistice agreement without setting final boundaries. Some additional points include the opening of the Israeli held road to Bethlehem to Arab traffic, the opening of the road to Mt. Scopus to Israelis and an Israeli promise to supply electricity to the Arab held sections of Jerusalem. Israeli opposition to the agreement will be limited to a handful of leftists who oppose King Abdullah because they think he is a puppet of the British imperialists and the rightwing nationalists who believe that all of the land west of the Jordan should be part of a Jewish state. Jordanian approval is much more problematic since it will face serious opposition from numerous sources including those who want a second war with the Jews so that they can destroy the Zionist entity. [Abdullah would be assassinated in the following year for conducting these negotiations and it would take another four decades before Israel and Jordan finally concluded a peace agreement.]
1953: Birthdate of Paul Krugman, leading U.S. economist, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize Winner.
1953(13th of Adar, 5713): Israeli archeologist and Hebrew University professor,Eleazar Lipa Sukenik passed away. His life reads like an early history of the Zionist movement. Born in Bialystok in 1889, Sukenik made Aliyah in 1911. He served in the British army in World War I in the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers which became known as the Jewish Legion. He played a central role in the establishment of the Department of Archaeology of the Hebrew University. He recognized the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Israel and worked for the Israeli state to buy them. In 1948, he published an article tentatively linking the scrolls and their content to a community of Essenes, which became the standard interpretation of the origin of the scrolls, a theory that is still probably the consensus among scholars, but has also been widely questioned. He was the father of soldier, politician and archeologist Yigael Yadin, the actor Yossi Yadin, and Mati Yadin, who was killed in action during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
1959: Birthdate of Jack Abramoff
1961: Recently elected President Kennedy named Henry Kissinger as special advisor. Before being the first Jew to be named Secretary of State, Kissinger followed a path that took him from Kennedy, to Rockefeller, to Nixon.
1972(13th of Adar, 5732): Fast of Esther
1974: The United States and Egypt renew diplomatic relations. This was one of the steps from the Yom Kippur War to the Camp David Peace Accords.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the majority of the plenum of the 29th Zionist Congress, held in Jerusalem, approved a resolution calling for a Jewish education program in the Diaspora, based on the principle of equality for all trends in Judaism, and specifically including the Conservative and Reform movements.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Liberal Faction of the Likud in the Knesset described the recent action taken by Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon in the settlement of the Yamit (Rafiah) area as injurious to the national interest, "idiotic" and "crazy."
1983(15th of Adar, 5743): Shushan Purim
1986: John Demjanjuk was deported to Israel today
1986: Laura Z. Hobson who wrote Gentlemen’s Agreement, the novel about anti-Semitism that was turned into a 1947 film classic starring Gregory Peck, passed away.
1987(29thof Shevat, 5747): Sixty-seven year ballerina Nora Kay, born Nora Koreff, passed away. (As reported by Jennifer Dunning)
1991: A twenty-five year old Jewish religious student, Elhanan Atali, was found in an abandoned storeroom in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. His throat had been slit and he had been stabbed in the back.
1993: At the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, “The Sisters Rosensweig…a play by Wendy Wasserstein” that “focuses on the lives of three Jewish-American sisters” closes after 149 performances.
1993: Actor Tony Curtis, born Bernard Schwartz, wed Lisa Deutsch. She was his fourth wife.
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Amateur: An Independent Life of Lettersby Wendy Lesser and Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economyby Edward Luttwak
2000(22nd of Adar I, 5760): Kariel Gardosh, the prominent Israeli political cartoonist known by the pen-name "Dosh," died in his home in Tel Aviv from a cardiac arrest. He was 79 years old. “Gardosh was best known for cartoons featuring his character Srulik. Srulik was a small boy in short, sandals and a traditional Tembel hat. Gardosh's character, always intended by the caricaturist to act a symbol for Israel, was a blank slate upon which to reflect the changing national mood and a perfect emblem for the emerging nation's view of itself in the 1960s and 1970s as a small nation surrounded by hostile aggressors. The small boy facing down representative from a hostile Arab world left an indelible impression upon several generations of Israelis allowing the character to remain popular through several changes in the political climate. The character is still a presence in various licensed formats such as posters and stickers.”
2003(26th of Adar I, 5763): “Alfred Bernstein, a New Deal lawyer who led the movement to unionize government workers and later helped desegregate the lunch counters, restaurants, public swimming pools and playgrounds of Jim Crow-era Washington, died today at his home in Washington. He was 92.Mr. Bernstein attended public schools in Manhattan and graduated from Columbia College and Columbia Law School. Inspired by the social ferment of the New Deal, he moved to the capital in 1937 to work as an investigator for the Senate Commerce Committee's inquiry into the monopolistic railroad industry. ''What all of us were interested in was the transformation of the political process -- drafting regulations, establishing Social Security, making regulatory agencies work,'' he once told an interviewer. ''There was a lot of idealism at the time.''After serving in the Army Air Transport Command in the South Pacific in World War II, Mr. Bernstein returned to Washington where he helped lead the successful effort against Jim Crow laws in the capital.”
2003: Ariel Sharon begins serving as Communications Minister.
2003: Eliezer Sandberg began serving as Science and Technology Minister
2003. Reuven Rivlin completed serving as Communications Minister.
2003: Benjamin Netanyahu completed his service as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2003: Silvan Shalom begins serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2003: Natan Sharansky completed his service as Minister of Housing and Construction.
2003: Eli Suissa completed his service Jerusalem Affairs Minister
2003: Tzachi Hanegbi succeeded Uzi Landau as Minister of Public Safety.
2003: Yosef Paritzky replaced Effi Eitam as National Infrastructure Minister
2003: Avraham Poraz replaced Eli Yishai as Minister of Internal Affairs.
2003: David Azulai competed his service as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
2004(6th of Adar, 5764): Daniel Boorstin passed away at the age of 89. He was one of America's most renowned historians and, between 1975 and 1987, the Librarian of Congress in the world's largest library in Washington. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Daniel Joseph Boorstin was born on October 1, 1914, in Atlanta. He was educated at Tulsa Central High School and Harvard, from where he graduated with honors in Law. Boorstin wrote more than 20 books, including a trilogy on the American experience and one on world intellectual history. The Americans: The Democratic Experience, the final book in the first trilogy, received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in history.
2006(30th of Elul, 5766): Rosh Chodesh Adar (first of a two day Rosh Chodesh).
2006: Johanna van Schagen, a woman who helped Jews escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust and later was honored by Israel died at the age of 91. Johanna van Schagen, who had suffered a series of strokes, died at Friendship Village in nearby Trotwood, where she lived. Van Schagen and her husband, Cornelius, moved to the United States from the Netherlands in 1956. She told the Dayton Daily News in 1994 that she and her husband sheltered Jews out of anger toward Germans who were taking over their native Netherlands. "We were afraid many times ... there were lots of raids and if they had found them in your home, you would be taken to concentration camps, too," she said. Israel honored the couple in 1987 and a tree along the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem is named for Johanna van Schagen, the newspaper said. Her funeral was scheduled for Friday at Polk Grove United Church of Christ in Dayton, which sponsored the van Schagens when they moved to the United States, said Jacob van Schagen, a son. She is survived by four sons and a daughter.
2007: The second International Eilat Chamber Music Festival opens.
2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Rabbi Lane Steinger, Regional Director of the Union for Reform Judaism,teaches an adult education class at Temple Judah on the Reform Movement's New Prayer book, Mishkan Tifillah.
2008: In New York City, the 92nd Street Y presents “Witness to Nuremberg” featuring Richard W. Sonnenfeldt the chief interpreter for the American prosecution at the Nuremberg trials who discusses startling new information about the Nazi war criminals and the origins and development of the Holocaust. At age 22, Richard W. Sonnenfeldt became chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials. He was later a principal developer of color television, computers and the technology for the first moon landing.
2008:“The Diary of Anne Frank: A Song To Life” opens in Madrid, Spain. This musical tells the story of Anne Frank's life in German-occupied Holland and her death in a concentration camp, using songs that sound like a combination of Fiddler On the Roof and Spanish tunes (complete with flamenco guitar).
2008(22 Adar 1, 5768): Israel Prize-winning author and translator Aharon Amir passed away at age 85. Amir, who was born in Lithuania, grew up in Tel Aviv and was a member of both the Irgun and the Lehi. He was one of the founders of the Canaanite movement, which saw geographical location rather than religious affiliation as the defining element of Hebrew or Israeli culture. He studied Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but translated works of literature mainly from English and French. Authors whose work he rendered into Hebrew include Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Lewis Carroll, Albert Camus, and Charles de Gaulle. Amir won the Tchernichovsky Prize for translation in 1951 and the Israel Prize for translation in 2003.
2008:‘Eyes Wide Open,” a documentary film that chronicles the preconceptions and revelations of American Jews as they visit Israel, is held at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.The film was directed by veteran filmmaker Paula Weiman-Kelman and written by award-winning journalist Stuart Schoffman
2008(22 Adar 1, 5768):Esra Shereshevsky, 92, noted Hebrew-language scholar and educator, died in Jerusalem. As founder and former chairman of the Department of Hebrew and Near Eastern Languages and Literature at Temple University, Shereshevsky was one of the first professors to establish Hebrew as a full course of study at an American university. His classes were exciting events. Whether discussing Bible, medieval manuscripts or 20th-century poets, his teaching was seasoned by his love of the Hebrew language.
2009:According to Reform Judaism magazine, Brandeis University, Harvard University and Radcliffe College, Tufts University, Boston University, and Northeastern University are among the "Top 60 Schools Jews Choose."
2009: In Barbados, Terry Schwarzfeld, who had just started her term as president of Canadian Hadassah WIZO and was executive director of Ottawa's largest synagogue, Agudath Israel, was mortally by an ex-con when he tried to rob her and her daughter-in-law, Lauana Cotsman.
2009: In Chicago, the Harris Theatre presents “Pinchas Zukerman in Recital” along “with his long time collaborator, pianist Mark Neikruug.”
2009:Rabbi Ellen Weomberg Dreyfus is installed in Jerusalem during the CCAR's 120th Annual Convention.
2009:From January 1 through today, there were 64 terrorist attacks that took place in the West Bank or were carried out by terrorists from the West Bank
2009: In an article entitled “His Story Told, Koch Makes His Peace and Dares to Look Ahead,” former New York May Ed Koch ruminates on his concerns as he reaches the twilight years and describes his plans for a funeral that will leave no question as to his profound attachment to his Jewish faith. He’s already installed and inscribed his tombstone. He’s recruited a rabbi to preside over his funeral. He’s been saying some goodbyes. He insists he no longer carries any grudges; well, maybe just a few. He’s issued an apology or two and even confesses to a few regrets as mayor. But the former mayor — still looming though stooped from stenosis, a spinal degeneration — is philosophically confronting his own mortality. His is a life that has played out mostly in the public eye, and now, perhaps appropriately, so are many of his preparations for the beyond.
“We all die,” he said over lunch in Midtown the other day, his words unequivocal but his voice raspy. “Whenever he or she wants me, I go.” Not surprisingly, though, Edward I. Koch, New York’s 105th mayor, proposed several conditions for whenever the time comes. Having survived a stroke in 1987 and a heart attack in 1999, he said he has no desire to linger: “I had a conversation with God: ‘Take me totally or don’t take me. No salami tactics.’ He’s been very good about it.” “I want to die at my desk,” Mr. Koch added. The former mayor is at his desk daily (he is a partner at the Manhattan offices of Bryan Cave, a law firm). He begrudgingly exercises at a gym several days a week and goes for rehabilitation for the spinal condition. He lunches every Saturday with a regular group of about 10 alumni of his administration. He doesn’t march in parades any more, except for St. Patrick’s Day, and says he is through writing books. “After eight autobiographies and two children’s books,” he said, “I don’t think I have anything left in me.”
Mr. Koch also insists that while the fight hasn’t gone out of him — he is particularly concerned about anti-Semitism and wants to bring Jews and Catholics closer together — he picks his fights more carefully. He says he is sorry for having started some and has unilaterally declared a cease-fire for others. “I’m not settling any scores,” he said. “I absolutely have no grudges. That’s over with. It’s not that I love those people. I don’t, but it takes too much energy if you think about who injured you.” Of all the grudges he has held, the one that people who know Mr. Koch figured he would carry to his grave was with Mario M. Cuomo, whom he defeated for mayor in 1977 and who was later elected governor. But there is evidence of rapprochement. Yes, it’s true, the former mayor said, he did pointedly refer to Mr. Cuomo by a very disparaging epithet several years ago in a recorded interview with The New York Times that is not to be made public until after Mr. Koch’s death. Reminded of the remark, he laughed heartily, and did not take it back. “I told the truth as I felt it then,” he said. “But it all worked out.” Mr. Koch’s anger was originally triggered by placards that sprouted in the 1977 mayoral campaign that said “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” The Koch camp blamed Cuomo operatives. Mr. Cuomo has always disclaimed any responsibility.
“If anything, I thought it was done by someone who wanted to see me lose,” Mr. Cuomo recalled last week. “I never did anything like that and it was a wrong thing to do, whoever did it; it was ugly and unfair. If he believed I did it and forgave me for it, that was kind of him. I always liked him and respected him however he felt about me.” In December, Mr. Cuomo invited himself to a birthday party for the mayor at Gracie Mansion and offered a gracious tribue. Mr. Koch was moved. He recalled: “Mario always told people, ‘I like Ed a lot more than he likes me.’ The first time he said that, I replied, ‘You’re right, Mario.’ But that’s over with. He said he was sorry.” (For the record, Mr. Koch, a lifelong bachelor, declines to say whether he is gay. “I do not want to add to the acceptability of asking every candidate, ‘Are you straight or gay or lesbian?’ and make it a legitimate question, so I don’t submit to that question. I don’t care if people think I’m gay because I don’t answer it. I’m flattered that at 84 people are interested in my sex life — and, it’s quite limited.”) Mr. Koch said he also no longer holds a grudge against Bernard Rome, a former campaign treasurer, whom he fired as head of the Off-Track Betting Corporation for publicly opposing casino gambling. “Bernie Rome called me years later and wanted to meet,” Mr. Koch recalled. “I said to my secretary, ‘Tell him I have no desire to.’ I don’t hold a grudge, but I don’t have to become his buddy.” Mr. Koch is certain of his legacy — restoring New Yorkers’ self-confidence after the city’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, balancing the budget, rebuilding the Bronx and instituting a merit selection for the appointment of judges. (He was feted last year by some of the 140 he appointed: “They wanted to say goodbye,” Mr. Koch said.) Mr. Koch does not typically second-guess himself, but feels guilty over one nagging regret: his decision to shutter Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, both to save money and because of complaints about the quality of health care there. “I fought,” he said. “We closed it. We did the right thing. But, in retrospect, it was the wrong thing to do. The total amount saved was $9 million, but there was such a psychological attachment to Sydenham because black doctors couldn’t get into other hospitals. It was the psychological attachment that I violated. That was uncaring of me. They helped elect me and then in my zeal to do the right thing I did something now that I regret.” Mr. Koch says he has few other major misgivings. “I’m sure there are things we could have done better, but in terms of waking up in the middle of the night and thinking of mistakes, no,” he said. “I’ve had a wonderful ride. I’ve done what I wanted to do.” “I’m not morbid,” he added. “How many 84-year-olds do you know who are as active as I am? Not many. And how many 84-year-olds do you see in obituaries? A lot. But I believe I have another five years.” Whenever the ride is over, his funeral service will be held at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. He has given his sister the names of several potential speakers, but has not made any other arrangements, including the music (“I love the Catholic hymns,” he said, “but they can’t be sung even in Temple Emanu-El”). He will be buried in the nondenominational Trinity Church Cemetery in Upper Manhattan under a tombstone that quotes the last words of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded in 2002 by Islamic terrorists (“My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish”) and includes the most familiar Jewish prayer, in English and Hebrew, (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”) and the epitaph the former mayor wrote after his stroke: “He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II” “That’s it,” Mr. Koch said. “It takes up the whole stone.” He recalled the funeral for a much-loved mayor of Madrid: “Eight hundred thousand people turned out. That won’t happen with me,” he predicted, “but I hope a lot of people do go to the cemetery — which, by the way, is conveniently located at 155th and Broadway on the subway.” New York has not lavished monuments on former mayors. The most famous memorial is La Guardia Airport. Mr. Koch, who was raised for 10 years in Newark, would not mind one of his own. “I have said — and it won’t happen — that I would like Newark Airport changed to E.I.K.,” he said. [It] “Kind of rhymes with J.F.K.”
2010(14th of Adar, 5770): Purim
2010(14th of Adar, 5770): Ninety-five year old Chicago born child-welfare advocate Natalie Goldstein Heineman passed away today.
http://www.examiner.com/article/natalie-goldstein-heineman-died-just-18-days-after-her-96th-birthday
2010: An exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in New York entitled “In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis” is scheduled to come to a close.
2010: Final performance of Rinne Groff’s “Compulsion” is scheduled to take place at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
2010: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Ask, a novel by Sam Lipsyte
2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapir.
2010(14th of Adar, 5710): Jose Mindlin, a Jewish bibliophile who owned the largest private library in Latin America has died today in Brazil. He was 95. Born to Ukrainian parents, Jose Mindlin owned over 38,000 books and was a member of the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 2006, he donated about half of his collection to the University of Sao Paulo, mostly on topics related to Brazilian studies. A building will be built in the university's campus specifically to maintain this massive library, and will be named after the Guita and Jose Mindlin Foundation. After retiring from the business world, Mindlin was able to dedicate his time to a passion he had since he was 13 years old: collecting and preserving rare books. The first rare edition in his collection was "Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle," by Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, published in 1740. Mindlin had occupied several public positions in the cultural field in Sao Paulo, including that of secretary of culture. "He was a giant of the Brazilian culture. His legacy is the library he left, the result of a life dedicated to the books. Today it's an asset of all Brazilians," said Sao Paulo Mayor Gilbero Kassab. Henry Sobel, emeritus rabbi of Latin America's largest Jewish congregation, the 2,000-family Congregacao Israelita Paulista, declared that Mindlin's life was book itself. "He was a righteous man who could see ethics in politics and culture. I felt so little when I was in his library. His greatest book was called Jose Mindlin," Sobel said.
2010:Israeli police entered the Temple Mount compound today after Palestinians began throwing stones during rioting in Jerusalem's Old City.
2010: Two Jewish athletes took home medals at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver which ended today. Steve Meisler won a gold medal for the United States in the four-man bobsled, pushing his team to a combined time of 3:24:46 in the four-heat race. Jewish ice dancer Charlie White claimed a silver medal in ice dancing along with partner Meryl Davis. White's victory edged a fellow ice dancer and American Jew, Ben Agosto, off the medal podium. Agosto and his partner, Tanith Belbin, finished fourth. The pair won a silver medal at the 2006 games.
2010:Ethan Bronner wrote the following obituary describing the life of Holocaust scholar David Bankier. “David Bankier, who helped expand the contours of Holocaust research by examining the participation of ordinary Europeans in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors, died over the weekend after a long illness, Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem Holocaust center, announced. He was 63. Mr. Bankier, who was head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, focused his scholarly work on anti-Semitism, especially its use by the Nazis to promote and sustain a broader ideology. He was the author of “Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism” as well as a collection of essays, “Hitler, the Holocaust and German Society: Cooperation and Awareness.” Born in Germany just before the state of Israel was created, Mr. Bankier grew up and was educated here, earning his doctorate in Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He held a professorship at Hebrew University and had served as a visiting professor in Britain, the United States, South Africa and South America. He spoke excellent English and Spanish, in addition to German and Hebrew. A rumpled, somber man who sought to understand the most bewildering aspects of genocide — how someone could play soccer with an acquaintance one day and assist in his murder the next — Mr. Bankier insisted both on the uniqueness of the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews and on its applicability to other cases of mass murder. For anti-Semites, ‘Jews represent mysterious, mythic and evil forces,” he said at a recent lecture, “an omnipotence playing a sinister role in world history.’ At another lecture he noted that for Hitler, “Nazism was a doctrine of world salvation to redeem humanity from the Jewish-Christian-Marxist doctrine. The acquisition and maintenance of total suppression of the German race, Hitler believed, must be through total war of Germans against the Jews.” At the same time, Mr. Bankier said last year in an interview with The New York Times that the work he was overseeing at Yad Vashem on the role of bystanders and neighbors in numerous smaller mass killings across the former Soviet Union in the early 1940s had important implications for contemporary genocide in Africa and other places. He argued that the world was a different place as a result of what the Nazis had done, that if genocide in far-off places shocked average people today it was partly because of their knowledge of the details of the Holocaust. In other words, Holocaust deniers aside, Holocaust awareness was central to contemporary sensibility. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, said that with Mr. Bankier’s death, the world had lost one of its most important scholars in the field. He noted that Mr. Bankier, who had fought his illness over a long period, kept a regular schedule until his last day.”
2011:“Korach: The Biblical Anarchist” is scheduled to have its final performance tonight at the Living Theater on New York’s Lower East Side.
2011: Theodore Bikel and Jim Brochu are scheduled to do a concert reading of The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon at a fundraiser for Theatre J in Washington, DC.
2011:“A host of charities and social action organizations from across the Jewish world” are scheduled to meet at the Nalaga’at Theater in Jaffa ttoday “to discuss the future of their field and hear from a wide range of professionals who will guide them on improving their services.
2011: The New York Times featured a review of “Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan” by Jewish author and political pundit Jeff Greenfield.
2011(24th of Adar I, 5771): Prolific writer, editor and popular radio broadcaster Netiva Ben Yehuda passed away in the early hours of this morning. She was 82. A feisty personality, for whom diplomacy was a word more than it was a trait, Ben Yehuda spent a great deal of her time correcting the mistaken impression that she was related to Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of the modern Hebrew language. They were not related at all. Her father was Baruch Ben Yehuda, a maths teacher who became the first director-general of Israel's fledgling Ministry of Education. The spirited and multi-talented Netiva joined the Palmach and was trained as a demolitions and bomb disposal expert. She also accompanied convoys, commanded a sapper unit and trained new recruits. She fought in the War of Independence and in 1949 left the army to study at Bezalel. In addition to her talent as an artist, she was also a promising athlete whose main forte was discus throwing. She had been considered a possible candidate for an Israeli Olympic team, but her career as an athlete was stopped by a bullet in the arm, that caused her permanent injury. After completing her studies at Bezalel, she spent a long period in London, and later studied philosophy at the Hebrew University. Of the many books that she wrote, one of the best known is the World Dictionary of Hebrew Slang, which she co-authored with the charismatic iconoclast Dahn Ben Amotz. More recently, she wrote her Autobiography in Poem and Song. She was particularly fond of old Israeli folk songs and collected them obsessively. On her late night radio program, listeners in her own age group and older, would frequently sing snatches of songs that have by and large faded from public memory, and she would often join in the chorus. No-one called her Geveret Ben Yehuda. She was Netiva to one and all. Her wee small-hours program, "Netiva talks and listens," which she broadcast for 14 years on Israel Radio, had an enormous following, despite her raspy voice which was at all radiophonic. It was amazing how many people were willing to do without sleep in order to listen in and to occasionally phone in. The program almost always included songs written before the establishment of the state. They were part of her regular appointment with history and nostalgia. Three years ago, when the Israel Broadcasting Authority sought to introduce severe cutbacks, her program was designated among those to be sacrificed. There was such a public outcry of protest, that the IBA had to rethink its priorities and she was transferred to Reshet Gimmel. Jerusalemites often saw her as some kind of eccentric tourist attraction, and would come from all over the city to her favorite coffee shop in the capital's Hapalmach Street – where else? – to be photographed with her and exchange a few words. She held court in the coffee shop on an almost daily basis and conducted her own parliament there.
2011:The prosecuting attorney in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, retired Supreme Court justice Gabriel Bach, said today that a psychiatric evaluation conducted on the Nazi leader following his capture in 1960 suggested that the man responsible for the deaths of millions during the Holocaust had ambivalent sexual tendencies.That and other information about the case was revealed in a special conference held today at the Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Tel Yitzhak, marking the 50-year anniversary of the Eichmann trial. (As reported by the Jerusalem Post).
2011(24th of Adar I, 5771): Ninety-two year old Louis Sachwald, the former resident of Pikesville, MD who survived the Bataan Death March and 42 months as a POW passed away today. He was a member of Baltimore’s Beth-El Congreation.
2011(24thof Adar I, 5771): Seventy-five year old Harvey Dorfman who worked with many Major League Baseball stars and wrote books on sports psychology, including “The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance,” passed away today. (As reported by the Eulogizer)
2011: Actress Natalie Portman condemned Christian Dior chief designer John Galliano for anti-Semitic comments made at a bar in Paris, France which appeared on an online. “I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano’s comments that surfaced today," Portman said in a statement. "In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way." The Oscar winning actress is currently under an endorsement contract with Dior for its "Dior Cherie" fragrance.
2011: The United States Senate confirmed the nomination of Amy Totenberg to serve as Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
2012: Ballet de Genève's stunning artists are scheduled to perform a work by Israeli born choreographer Emanuel Gat at the Joyce Theatre in New York City.
2012: Israeli trained clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein is scheduled to perform at Lincoln Center tonight. The program will include a work by American Jewish composer Aaron Copland.
2012: Megillat Ha-Manginot (The Scroll of Melodies) a musical celebrating Israel and its songs is scheduled to be performed at the Jerusalem Theatre on Rechov Marcus.
2012: Publication of “Faye Schulman – the Jewish Girl Who Fought the Nazis”
2012: Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch put down her gavel this morning, ending a 45-year legal career, and urged in her farewell remarks that it is crucial to maintain the independence of court.
2012: The IDF said today that soldiers patrolling the border overnight spotted a group of people who had breached the frontier. It says the soldiers called on the people to stop, but the infiltrators opened fire, drawing return fire from the troops. The IDF said one man was shot and died of his wounds, and the others fled back to Egyptian territory. According to Israel Radio, it was the third infiltration attempt along the Sinai-Israel border since last week
2013: Jack Lew, an observant Orthodox Jew, was sworn as Secretary of the Treasury.
2013: It was announced today that Idina Menzel would make her return to the Broadway stage, starring as Elizabeth in the new musical “If/Then.”
2013: Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot “performed with violinist Itzhak Perlman at a Jewish Music concert at the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn.”
2014: The exhibition, “Passages through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War,” comes to a close at the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
2014: In Bethesda, MD, Congregation Adat Shalom is scheduled to start a hosting a weekend devoted to exploring “The Enduring Legacy of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.”
2014: Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor are scheduled to perform at Abrons Arts Center Playhouse.
2014: In Denver, CO, “45 Israeli and North American Jewish Artists are scheduled to show and sell their creations: under the auspices “Jewishcolorado.”