JUNE 6
1191: As the Christians seek to retake Jerusalem King Richard the Lionhearted arrived at Tyre.
1242: Two dozen wagonloads of Talmudic volumes and 200 other rabbinic manuscripts were burned at Paris.
1247: Pope Innocent IV contacts the king of Navarre. In a dispatch he requested the king compel Christian debtors to pay off their debt to Jewish lenders.
1249: King Louis IX, the French King who made great effort to convert Jews, occupied Damietta Egypt during the 7th Crusade.
1391: Ferrand Martiniz of Seville incited a mob to attack the Jewish quarter. It soon spread to all of Spain except for Granada. Over 10,000 Jews were killed; many others chose conversion and became New Christians. Of these, many continued to practice Judaism in secret, while paying lip service to the Church. This eventually led to the Inquisitions. In Barcelona, the Jewish quarter, located for over 400 years near the castle, was totally destroyed.
1391: “In the aftermath of the great massacres of Jews” in Spain “which began” today, Paul of Burgos who “was original names as Solomon ha-Levi’ “converted to Christianity, and became an archbishop, lord chancellor, and exegete known as Pablo de Santa Maria.
1487: In Soncino, Italy, Joshua Solomon Soncino completed the printing of a Pentateuchwith a commentary by Rashi.
1490: After being interrogated by the Vicar-general of the Bishopric of Astorga, Benitor Garicia confessed to having secretly returned to practicing Judaism five years ago and that he had encouraged two other conversos – a man named Franco from Tembleque and Juan Juan de Ocaña, from La Guardia – to return to Judaism. Eventually all three would be put to death on charges of having participated in ritual murder of one who came to be known as the Holy Child of La Guardia.
1506: Birthdate of King John III of Portugal. Persecution of Marranos and Conversos intensified during his reign with the arrival of the Inquisition. On the other hand he met with David Reubeini in 1525 and the two negotiated over the possibility of the King supplying this adventurer with as many as eight ships to use in a fight against the Moslem leader, Selim I. Since much of the life of Reubeni is shrouded in myth and half-truths, we cannot be sure as to the reason the negotiations failed.
1536: The Inquisition was introduced into Mexico. Convsersos, Sephardic Jews who had been forcibly converted to Catholicism arrived in Mexico with Cortes and the Conquistadores. Among these first arrivals was Hernando Alonzo who built the boats used by Cortes during his conquest of Mexico. The most famous of these early arrivals was a Luis de Carvajal, the noble who established the New Kingdom of Leon in what today is part of northern Mexico. The arrival of the Inquisition had an inimical effect on the Conversos, many of whom secretly practiced Judaism. The descendants of these people may be found among the crypto-Jews of New Mexico who began trying to reconnect with their Jewish roots in the last decades of the 20th century
1629 (14th of Sivan): Rabbi Joseph ben Benjamin Samegah author of Mikrae Kodeshpassed away.
1716: The SS Restoration arrived in Massachusetts carrying several Jewish merchants who would help to form the core of the Jewish community in the Bay Colony.
1764(6thof Sivan, 5524): Shavuot observed as General Gage seeks to end the uprising known as “Pontiac’s Uprising”
1771: Isaac Lindo presented the synagogue in Barbados with a Sefer Torah
1775(28th of Iyar): Leib Epsitein, author of Or ha-Shanim passed away.
1782: Two days after he had passed away, “Moses Asher of Shulda” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.
1799: Lyon Samuel and Kitty Solomons were marred at the Great Synagogue in London today.
1802: Birthdate of Rabbi Aaron II of Klarlin the Chasid who was the grandson of Aaron ben Jacob.
1808: Birthdate of Jacob Raphael De Cordova, Texas land agent and colonizer. A native of Jamaica, he settled in Philadelphia in the 1820’s with his father before moving to Texas in 1839. Jacob and his brother Phineas De Cordova operated one of the largest land agencies in Texas. Jacob was one of three men who helped lay out Waco in 1848. He passed away in 1868.
1818: Birthdate of I.M Rabinowitz
1819: Joseph Myers married Rebecca Cohen today in the United Kingdom.
1821(6thof Sivan, 5581): Shavuot
1821: Birthdate of Moses Isaac Tedeschi, the native of Triest whose knowledge of the Bible and Italian enabled him to lecture “in the Talmud Torah in his native city.”
1821: Birthdate of Leone Levi, the native of Ancona, Italy who immigrated to London where he became a successful jurist, statistician and Presbyterian.
1821: Abraham Durlacher, the son of Lewis Durlacher and Susannah Levy was circumcised today in London.
1821: Influential 19th economist David Ricardo the son of Anglo-Sephardic Jews who became a Unitarian when he married Priscilla Anne Wilkinson voted in Parliament today “for an inquiry into the administration of justice in Tobago.”
1826: Birthdate of Léon Say “a former employee of the Rothschild's Northern Railway Company who became the Minister of Finance in 1872’ who supported Alphonse de Rothschild’s attempt to preserve France’s bimetallism system.
1827: Phineas Nathan and Rachel Barnett were married today at the Great Synagogue in London.
1829(5th of Sivan, 5589): Parashat Bamidbar; erev Shavuot observed on the birthdate of Allan Octavian Hume, the British civil servant who was so appalled by his country’s policies in India that he helped to found the Indian National Congress.
1832: English philosopher Jeremy Bentham “who spoke out many times on behalf of the Jews as an oppressed minority who were victims of popular prejudices” passed away For a detailed account of Bentham’s complex view of the Jewish people see “Jerry Bentham: Critical Assessments, Volume 4” starting on page 319.
1838(13thof Sivan, 5598): In Vienna, Judah Jeiteles, the son of Jonas Jeiteles, the author of “Mebo Lashon Aramitm” the first Hebrew language grammar of Biblical Aramaic passed away today.
1838: Samuel Magnus married Miriam Isaacs at Chatham today.
1839: The first train of the Nordbahn, or Kaiser Ferdinands-Nordbahn, Austria's first steam railway company which was financed by Salomon Mayer von Rothschild which had come from Vienna arrived at Břeclav
1841: In Silesia, Gustavus Mosler, a lithographer, cigar maker and tobacconist and his wife gave birth Henry Mosler, who was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio where he began his career as a wood engraver, sketch artist and illustrator.
1841: Raphael Picard and Sarah Levy were married at the New Synagogue in London.
1844: In London, George Williams founded the first YMCA which was the model for the YMHA and in America, the site of the creation of basketball which was for a time “the Jewish sport.”
1846: Birthdate of Colonel Nicolas Jean Robert Conrad Auguste Sandherr who while serving in the Statistical Section (Counterintelligence) gather a secret commission of inquiry to investigate the origin of documents that showed French military secrets were being sold to the Germans which concluded the Captain Dreyfus was the culprit.
1848(5thof Sivan, 5608):Erev Shavuot observed as The Party of Order sought to reverse the changes brought about by the Revolutions of 1848 in France.
1851(6thof Sivan, 5611): Shavuot
1855: Isaac Kaatz, Gottlieb Milhelm and Anton First were arrested today on charges of having been involved in the theft of eight cows from a farm belong to Colonel Lewis Morris. The three carcasses found in the possession of the accused all bore a mark indicating that they were Kosher.
1858: In Greater London, Nathaniel Mayer Montefiore, the Brighton born son of Henriette and Sir Abraham Montefiore and his wife Emma Montefiore gave birth to Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore.
1859: In Australia, Queensland is established as a separate colony from New South Wales. By 1865, there were enough Jews living in the Queensland city of Brisbane that a congregation was formed that held services in a local Masonic hall until 1886 when a sanctuary with a seating capacity of 400. In 1879, the Jews of Toowoomba, Queensland, built a synagogue which, as the community shrunk in size, was only used on the High Holidays.
1859: In Budapest, Dr. Lowinger Ignatius Salzer and his wife Berti gave birth to Donát Bánki “the Hungarian mechanical engineer” whose invention included “the carburetor for the stationary engine.”
1861: Fifty year old Count Cavour, a leader in the movement to create a unified Italy in which all people, including the Jews, would enjoy full civil liberties, passed away. While Cavour complained about Baron James Rothschild because of his banking practices, he used him to finance the cause and counted among his closest advisors Isaac Atrom who was dissuaded from resigning his position when Cavour passed away.
1865: Birthdate of Dr. Max Rosenthal, the son of Herman Rosenthal, the gynecologist who served as House surgeon at St. Mark’s Hospital and the Montefiore Home in New York City. His young brother George became the manager of the Edison General Electric Company at St. Louis.
1866: In the United Kingdom, Judah P. Benjamin, the former Confederate cabinet member and unrepentant rebel “was called to the bar” today.
1867(6thof Sivan, 5657): Shavuot
1867: In Cincinnati, Ohio, George Seeman, a cotton factor who was business with the Lehmann brothers and Caroline (Carrie) Goodhart gave birth to Julia Seeman who married Felix Drefyous at New Orleans’ Temple Sinai in 1891.
1870(7th of Sivan, 5630): Second Day of Shavuot
1870: A meeting is scheduled to be held a Temple Israel in Brooklyn “to consider the distressed condition” of the Jews in Romania.
1872: The New York Times reported that “the Greeks in the Levant have hit on a new mode of converting Jews.” After hearing the “stale old fable…that a Christian child had been killed…by the Jews so as to mix its blood with their bread at Passover” the Greeks have been “inflamed…with a fine spirit of proselytism” that began with the seizure of Polish Jew whose hair and beard they smeared with tar before setting it on fire. After enough Jews were tortured in a similar fashion, they sought shelter with the local Moslems.
1873: Today’s Minor Topics column described the progress that Jews of England have made during the 19th century. Thirty years ago a Jew could not sit in Parliament. And now Sir George Jessel, who was appointed Solicitor General last year, is about to named Master of the Rolls, a position so prestigious that is just below the post of Lord High Chancellor.
1874: In New York City, “Isaac and Delphine (Wertheimer) Steinthal gave birth to New York City high school graduate Albert E. Steinthal who went from working for Sweetser, Pembrook and Company to forming “L. Steinthal and Bro.) with his sister Lena while being an active member of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropic Societies, the Free Synagogue and Temple Eamn-El.
1874: Birthdate of Posen, Germany native, Simon Peiser who in 1892 came to the United States where he graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1896, was ordained as a Rabbi at the Hebrew Union College and married Amelia Buchman in 194, “two months after becoming Superintendent” of the Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum.
1875: Birthdate of Novelist Thomas Mann. Mann was not Jewish but in 1905 he married Katia Pringsheim, daughter of prominent family of Jewish intellectuals. They had six children. Mann left Nazi German in 1933, four years after having won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lived in the United States for many years. He died in Switzerland in 1955, never having lived in his native land again.
1876: Alois Schicklgruber changes his name to Hiedler which morphs into Hitler. In this case a name change may have helped to change history because as one comic said, can you imagine people saying Heil Schiclgruber with a straight face?
1877: Anglo-Jewish author Benjamin Leopold Farjeon married Margaret Jane “Maggie” Jefferson, the daughter of Joseph Jefferson, a member of a distinguished American acting family.
1877: In Philadelphia, Sarah Behrend and her husband gave birth to Jefferson Medical College trained physician Moses Behrend, the husband of Clara Rosenbaum
1878(5th of Sivan, 5638): Erev Shavuot
1878: In “The Pentecost Festival” published today, the New York Times reported that “The Festival of Pentecost, which will be celebrated this evening at sunset by all the Jewish congregations in the world, is the second of the three great feasts which mark the calendar of the Hebrew Church. These are the Passover Festival, or Feast of Unleavened Bread; the Pentecost Festival, or Feast of Weeks, and the Tabernacles.” The article traces the history of the holiday from its origins as an agricultural festival to a celebration of the giving of the Decalogue to its modern observance which includes the ceremony of Confirmation.
1879: It was reported that problems of the Jews in Romania are not a matter of religion but a matter of money. Supposedly until 1864 the Jews and the Romanians lived peacefully side by side. The Jews would lend money to the Romanians at exorbitant rates of interest which the Romanians gladly paid since they had no intention of paying off the loan. Furthermore, the loans were secured by mortgages; mortgages on which the Jews could never collect because they were not classified as citizens and only citizens could own real estate. That all changed when Napoleon III demanded that the Jews be made citizens. Reportedly, the Jews began foreclosing on the mortgages, expelling the Romanians from lands their families had held for centuries. This forced the Romanians to begin shooting and hanging the Jews or driving them from the country. The Jews were being persecuted but not for reasons of religion. At the same time, the Romanian government contended that it was not violating the edict of the Berlin Congress regarding the treatment of Romanian Jews because the Jews living in Romania were “foreigners” and not citizens of the country. [Editor’s note – people may run out of money but they never run out of rationalizations for cheating and killing Jews.]
1880: In “Man Before Adam” the reviewer of Preadmites: The Existence of Man Before Adam points that Dr. Alexander Winchell challenges several Biblical based conventions including that creation took place 4,000 before our era, that Adam was created on the 6th, that Eve was from Adam’s Rib, that Adam lived for 930 years, that 1,656 after creation there was a great a flood that destroy everybody except Noah, his family and the animals on the ark and that the origin of the human species took place in Western Central Asia. [Winchell was a Protestant minister. His book is an example of the challenges to the literal reading of the Bible taking place in the 19th century among many denominations. For Jews, this was a dominant motif of the Reform movement and many German-Jewish biblical critics.]
1880: It was reported today that The Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Harlem will be hosting a strawberry festival later this month to raise funds for the organization.
1880: It was reported today that the last religious census in France showed that there were almost 36 million Roman Catholics in the country but only 50,000 Jews.
1880: Rabbi Meisner of the Rivington Street Synagogue officiated at the wedding of Miss Essie Pakulski and Louis Mendelson, the son of the synagogue’s president The ceremony took place at Irving Hall and followed the Reform ritual.
1882: Samuel Obrieght, a young Jewish man who was a partner in his family’s liquor business, suddenly married a Christian woman. This fact became part of the public record during Obreight’s sanity hearing.
1882: A festival to raise funds for Russian Jewish immigrants is scheduled to be held this afternoon in the 23rd Ward Park in NYC. Speakers will include Algernon S. Sullivan and Steward L. Woodford. The Philharmonic Society under the direction of Max Maretzek will provide the musical entertainment.
1883: It was reported today that the cornerstone laying ceremony for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn will take place later this month.
1884: Birthdate of Isaac Alpern, the Perth Amboy, NJ businessmen who successfully worked in real estate, insurance and banking and was instrumental in the construction of new building for the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.
1885(23rdof Sivan, 5645)Bernard L. Jaworower, the agent of the United Hebrew Charities serving at Castle Garden fell overboard while leaving the steamer George Starr at the Castle Garden dock.
1885: In Wilkes-Barre, PA, a fist fight broke during Shabbat services between two Polish Jews – Abraham Rosenthal and Abraham Zubunsky – after “Rosenthal accused Zubunsky of being more of a Christian than a Jew.” Both men left the synagogue and went to Justices of the Peace and charged each other with assault and battery. Not much shalom in their Shabbat.
1887: Testimony resumed today in the trial of Adolph Reich, the Hungarian Jew who has been charged with murdering his wife.
1887: Birthdate of Yale Sokolsky
1888: Birthdate of Louis Freeman, the native of Glasgow who gained fame as artist Scottie Wilson.
1888: Albert Levy sent a letter from San Francisco to his wife Katie in New York saying the he had filed for a divorce and was going to Australia. [This correspondence came to light during an alienation of affection suit that was brought by the Roman Catholic Katie Levy against her Jewish mother-in-law, Pauline Levy.]
1889(7thof Sivan, 5649): Second Day of Shavuot
1889: A group of Jews met at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue to begin making plans for observing the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
1890: It was reported today that the managers of the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children has received $3, 688.50 in contributions which will be used to finance outings for underprivileged children and their mothers.
1892: It was reported today that Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs delivered an historical poem entitled “The Genius of Hebrew History” to those attending graduation of Congregational B’nai Jeshurun’s religious school. The poem recounted the history of the Jewish people which he subdivided into a series of epochs, each with its own set of verses.
1892: A group of prominent Jews met this afternoon at the Jewish Theological Seminary and formed The American Jewish Historical Society. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Cyrus Adler who “explained that the object was to collect, preserve and publish data having reference to the settlement and history of Jews in America.
1893: The funeral for Joshua Hendricks, the fourth generation head of Hendricks Brothers, is scheduled to be held at his home on Cliff Street followed by interment at Cypress Hill.
1894: Governor Davis H. Waite ordered the Colorado state militia to protect and support the miners engaged in the Cripple Creek miners' strike. Famed financier Bernard Baruch was one of those who got his start in the “strike it rich” world of Cripple Creek. Arriving from the east, Baruch bought shares of stock in the San Francisco mine. During the day he worked as a “mucker” and at night he played at the roulette wheel in a local gambling joint where he was so successful that he was barred by the owners. Baruch took his winnings and headed back to New York where he gained fame and fortune. Sam Butcher, a Hungarian Jew, was one of the few Jews who actually made money in industrial mining in Cripple Creek. Because many of his fellow miners were blatant anti-Semites, Butcher “took pains to conceal his identity” until he had gained financial success. Sam and Bertha Flax were one of the first, if not the first Jewish couple to marry in Cripple Creek. They tied the knot in 1909. Sam was not much of a miner but he would prove be a successful restaurant owner in Denver, Colorado.
1895(14th of Sivan, 5655): Fifty-six year old Henry Phillips the Philadelphia born archaeologist and numismatist passed away today.
1896: “Reverend Herman P. Faust of the Forsyth Street Hebrew-Christian Mission called on Mayor Strong to see if something could be done” to help two Jewish peddlers who had been driven from the streets by the police. The crackdown on street vendors is depriving many Jewish immigrants of their means of livelihood a matter into which Mayor Strong said he would look into.
1897(6th of Sivan, 5657): For the first time during the Presidency of William McKinley, observance of Shavuot.
1897: In Chicago, Jews and Christians prayed together as members of Emmanuel Congregation led by Rabbi Julius Newman joined members of the Belden Avenue Baptist Church led by Pastor Haynes at the latter’s house of worship for a service where both ministers preached to the congregation.
1897: Eleven youngsters participated in the Confirmation Service led by Rabbi Julius Newman of Emanuel Congregation.
1897: “In Williamsburg special services were held in Temple Beth Elohim on Keap Street near Broadway which is the wealthiest congregation in this section of the city” where 19 boys and girls participated in Confirmation services led by Rabbi Greenfield.
1898: “Hebrew Free Schools” published today described the Confirmation Services for the Hebrew Free School during which Esther Krosovitch recited a prayer followed by the singing of “The Heavens Declare” and “My God” by her fellow confirmants.
1898: It was announced today’s meeting of the Trustees Columbia University that Jacob H. Schiff has donated $15,000 “to establish a fellowship in political science.”
1899: “Increase In Death Rate” published today described the efforts of the Board of Health to contain the diphtheria outbreak which has included children from the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society who go to the public grammar school “at the corner of St. Nichols Avenue and 166th Street” forcing quarantines to be put in place at both institutions.
1899: The list officers of the newly reformed Educational Alliance published today include Benjamin Altman, Henry Morgenthau and Isidor Straus
1900: “Mayer Sakel and Judith Golde (Friedman) Sakel gave birth to Manfred Joshua Sakel ,a Polish born neurophysiologist and psychiatrist who introduced insulin-shock therapy for schizophrenics and other mental patients in 1927, while a young doctor in Vienna. Insulin-induced coma and convulsions, due to the low level of glucose attained in the blood (hypoglicemic crisis) improved the mental state of drug addicts and psychotics, sometimes dramatically. His findings indicated that up to 88% of his patients improved with insulin shock therapy. His method became widely applied for many years in mental institutions worldwide. He immigrated to the U.S. ahead of WW II. in 1936. "Sakel's Therapy" is still used in Europe, but in the U.S. it has been superseded by electroconvulsive therapy and other means of treatment.
1900: Birthdate of Hunter College alum and philanthropist Sophie Spector Udell, the wife of Jerome Udell with whom she had two daughters – Helen and Edith.
1901: Bella Weretnikow, who became the first Jewish woman lawyer in Washington State, was admitted to the Bar of Washington State.
1902: Pierre Marie René Waldeck-Rousseau, “the initiator of Alfred Dreyfus's 1899 pardon, as well as the law that, in 1900, offered amnesty for "all crimes and misdemeanors related to the Dreyfus Affair, or that have been included in a proceeding relative to one of these deeds” completed three years of service as Prime Minister.
1903: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, for twenty-four years rabbi of Temple Beth-EI, delivered his farewell sermon this morning before going to his new duties as the head of the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati. At the conclusion of the service the congregation individually bade farewell and Godspeed to the retiring rabbi.
1903: “Mr. L.S. Levine, the Assistant City Solicitor of Pittsburgh” represented the city’s mayor at the opening session of the Sixth Annual Convention of the Federation of American Zionist which was being “held at the Central Turners’ Hall.”
1904: “The Seventh Annual Convention of the Federation of American Zionists” which was attended by 188 authorized delegates continued to meet for a fourth day at Germania Hall in Cleveland, OH.
1905: Birthdate of Laszlo Halaz, the native of Hungary who “was appointed he first director of the New York City Opera” a position from which he mounted the first performance of “The Dybbuk,” an opera by David Tamkin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/31/arts/laszlo-halasz-first-director-of-city-opera-is-dead-at-96.html
1906: Three days after he had passed away, eighty-year old Leopold Schloss, the husband of Annie Horatia Montefiore, passed away today
1906: Birthdate of David Kessler, the man who would play the leading role in making the Jewish Chronicle one of the most respected Jewish weeklies in the world.
1907: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, a graduate school for biblical and rabbinical studies, was chartered in Philadelphia.
1907: “In Chicago’s West Side Lawndale neighborhood Harry and Rebecca Beatrice Korshak gave birth to Sidney R. Korshak, the labor lawyer with alleged connections to the Chicago mob and Hollywood insider whose career was the opposite of that of his younger brother Marshall Korshak and who raised three children – Stuart, Katherine and Harry – with his wife Bernice Steward..
1908(7thof Sivan, 5668): Second Day of Shavuot
1908: In Switzerland, Isidor and Alice Nordman gave birth to Jean Nordman, the “husband of Bluette Nordmann” and the “brother of Pierre Nordmann and Denise Levy who rose to the rank of Colonel in the Swiss Army.
1909: Birthdate of David Kessler, the man most responsible for making the Jewish Chronicle one of the most respected Jewish weeklies in the world.
1909: In Riga, “Mendel Berlin, a timber industrialist and direct descendant of Shneur Zalman (founder of Chabad Hasidism), and his wife Marie, née Volshonok” gave birth to Sir Isaiah Berlin who most popular essay may be “The Hedgehog and the Fox.”
1910: “Mystic Aid Religion” published today reported on a speech given by Claude G. Montefiore of London, the President of the Anglo-Jewish Association and he President of the Religious Union for the Advancement of Liberal Judaism” in which he said “No great religion can get on, or can it thoroughly healthy without mysticism or mystics” because “for a religion to be at its best some mysticism is imperatively required.”
1911: Bruno Walter “wrote to his sister that he was to conduct the premiere of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde”
1911(15thof Sivan, 5671): Seventy-two year old Alsace native Charles Weill, the husband of Emilie Kahn Weil with whom he had had ten children passed away today after which he was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in his native Alsace.
1911: Sixty-six year old American playwright and producer Edward “Ned” Harrigan the author and producer of “Mordecai Lyons” an 1882 drama which unlike some “Jew plays” is “serious and valuable” when it comes to portraying its Jewish characters passed away today.
1912: Julia Richman, superintendent of New York City Public Schools set sail for France where she hoped to rest and improve her French language skills.
1913: The First American Conference on Social Insurance to which Lee K. Frankel was a delegate opened today in Chicago.
1913: In Galveston, TX, Congregation B’nai Israel marked the twenty-fifth anniversary Henry Cohen’s service as the Congregation’s rabbi during which he had married Mollie Levy with whom he had two children.
1914(12thof Sivan, 5674): Parashat Nasso
1914(12thof Sivan, 5674): Seventy-seven year old Austrian born chemist Adolf Lieben “who death he held the chair of general and pharmacological chemistry at the University of Vienna” passed away today.
1914: It was reported today that due to “the hostile attitude of the immigration officers at Galveston,” “the movement to diver a part of the Jewish immigration from New York to Galveston, TX, started through the Jewish Immigrants’ Information in 1907 with funds set apart for that purpose by Jacob Schiff will be discontinued” starting in October.
1915: Dedication of the Hebrew Institute at McKeesport, PA.
1915: The reasons for the opposition to commuting the sentence of Leo Frank offered by Reverend A.C Hendley, the pastor an Atlanta Baptist Church published today included his belief that “outside influences were attempt to dictate to Georgians how they should administer justice” and that “Leo M. Frank was fairly tried and convicted and the United States Supreme Court…has affirmed the findings of the Georgia courts.
1915: At its annual meeting, the Federation of Oriental Jews of America “pledged its support to President
Wilson for upholding the rights and honor of the United States.”
1915: “Speaking at the graduation exercises of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America at Aeolian Hall this afternoon Dr. Solomon Schechter, President of the Seminary, attributed the catastrophe of the present world war to over-emphasis on unreligious secular nationalism and declared that the regeneration of humanity that would result out of the present struggle and chaos would take place not in the direct of the religion of valor but in a return to the religion of Israel with ideals no longer of strength, force and astuteness but of gentleness, humility and loving kindness.”
1915: In Atlantic City, NJ. “1,237 delegates representing 200,000 members cheered wildly as” “Louis Brandeis of Boston” “sound a call for a United Judaism” at the 29th annual convention of the United States Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of B’rith Abraham.
1915:“In the presence of 200 men, women and child…more than half of whom were blind, the roof garden on top of the new Bank of the United States Building at 77 Delancey Street was formally opened this afternoon as a recreation and social center for the Hebrew Association for the Blind.
1915: Based on letter that Hugh M. Dorsey has sent to Governor Slaton “it became practically certain today that when the case of Leo M. Frank…comes before the Governor for consideration of the prisoner’s appeal for commutation to life imprisonment, Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey will appear to oppose any change in the sentence.”
1916(5thof Sivan, 5676): Erev Shavuot
1916: “Among those receiving degrees at the 99th Convocation of the University of Chicago held” today were Leo Mordecai Goldsmith of Aurora, Isadore Michael Levin of Chicago and Harry Cohn of Collinsville
1916: It was reported today that “British censors have confiscated almost 10,000 checks amounting in all to 800,000 marks (about $200,000) sent by Americans through the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigration Aid Society of American to dependent relatives in Russian Poland.”
1916: Among the Planks of the Republican Platform that were agreed on today by Senators Lodge, Borah and Sutherland was one on “Americanism” that recognized “the need of a treaty of commerce with Russia that will give full equality to American citizens of Jewish birth traveling in Russia.”
1917: At today’s “annual meeting of the East London Fund for the Jewish, the Bishop of London expressed the hope that a Christian Power would control Palestine and characterized as folly” the belief “of some unthinking Christians that the coming of the Kingdom of god in the east would hastened by filling Palestine with unconverted Jews because that would result in the establishment of an outpost against the spread of Christianity.”
1917: The last regular meeting of the Sisters of Fidelity is scheduled to be held this afternoon at the Masonic Temple.
1917: Birthdate of Selma Goldstone, who as Selma Goldstone Hirsch would become a noted humanitarian and an author who would enjoy a long association with the American Jewish Committee.
1917: In Pittsburg, Max Senior of Citizen is scheduled to chair this morning’s session of the National Association of Jewish Social Workers where the topic of “Americanization and Citizenship” will be discussed.
1917: Birthdate of George Kidd, the native of Glasgow, who was the first Canadian Ambassador to Israel.
1918: Three hundred delegates from the United States and Canada attended the opening session of the Jewish Labor Congress at the Central Opera House in New York City.
1919: Kiev native Elias Elvove, the son of Joseph and Etta Elvove, and his wife Elka Elvov gave birth to Faiga Rose Elvove.
1920: Rabbi Herbert Levintahl is scheduled “to deliver the baccalaureate sermon” at the “commencement exercises of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Teacher’s Institute” this afternoon at Aeolian Hall.
1921: In Frankfurt-am-Main, R' Dr. Joseph Breuer, the son of “Rabbi Salomon Zalman Breuer and Sophie Tzipoorah Breuer” and his wife, Rika Breuer, gave birth to Samson Breuer.
1921: “It was stated tonight on high authority that President Harding” is planning on naming Jewish advertising mogul Albert D. Lakser, President of the Lord and Thomas Advertising Company of Chicago to be Chairman of the Shipping Board.
1922: American actress and singer Lillian Russell who had been married to the Anglo-Jewish composer Edward “Teddy” Solomon passed away.
1923(22ndof Sivan, 5683): Tzvo Yosef Goldberg whose daughter Fraida married Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber passed away.
1925: Birthdate of Philadelphia poet Maxine Winkour who gained as poet and novelist Maxine Kumin who published her first collection of poetry, Halfway in 1961. Influenced by the confessional style of poetry, it was followed in 1965 by The Privilege and in 1970 by The Nightmare Factory, both of which explore her Jewish identity and family. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1973.
1926(24thof Sivan 5686): Thirty-four year old Blanche Adler, the daughter of Morris and Julia Weslosky and the wife of Ben Adler with whom she had – Morris and Frances – passed away today in her native Albany, GA.
1926: Second baseman Andy Cohen makes his major league debut with the New York Giants.
1926(24th of Sivan, 5686): As he was crossing Second Avenue at 15th Street, Meyer London, one of only two members of the Socialist Party elected to Congress was caught in the middle of heavy automobile traffic passing in both directions. London became confused and when he halted in the middle of the road he was struck by a car, suffering internal injuries. The driver rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, where London’s daughter was an intern. When she saw her father London’s only concern was that the driver not be punished. "It’s not his fault", said London "and he is a poor man." London died at 10 o'clock that night at the age of 56, after physicians had labored for 11 hours to save him.
1927(6thof Sivan, 5687): Shavuot
1927: In New York City, “Eugene and Ruth (Clark) Sterne gave birth to Navy Veteran Richard Clarke Sterne, the holder of an A.B. from Columbia and Ph.D. from Harvard who pursued an academic career at several universities while writing literary criticism and Dark Mirror: The Sense of Injustice in Modern European and American Literature and raising three children – Lawrence, Samuel and Daniel – with his wife Ruth Cecile Winer.
1927: In Amsterdam, Jo Spier, “a newspaper illustrator and cartoonist, and the former Albertine van Raalte, a homemaker,” gave birth to “Peter Spier, an award-winning children’s-book author and illustrator who depicted Noah’s biblical journey…” (As received by Richard Sandomir)
1928: In Camden, NJ, the Sisterhood of Beth El Congregation is scheduled to hold its final luncheon which has been arranged by Mrs. Herman Odlen.
1930: “So This is London,” the movie version of the play with the same name with a screenplay written by Sonya Levien was released today in the United States.
1931: After 272 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Girl Crazy” a musical with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and music by George Gershwin.
1932(2nd of Sivan, 5692): Dr. A.S. Waldstein who helped to found Paole Zion in the United States in 1904 passed away in Tel Aviv at the age of 58.
1932(2ndof Sivan, 5692): Fifty-five year old Benjamin Schlesinger, who served two terms as President of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union who suffered from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma passed away.
1933: “Magistrate Jonah J. Goldstein, President George J. Ryan of the Board of Education; Deputy Superintendent Harold G. Campbell; Dr. Eugene Colligan, president of Hunter College; Miss Adele Bildersee, dean of women at Brooklyn College, and Dr. A. Broderick Cohen, dean of the evening session at Hunter College” were the speakers at this evening’s dinner at the Hotel St. George where the one thousand attendees were beginning “a campaign to enroll 25,000 new members in the Brooklyn Committee of the Jewish Education Association and to increase attendance at the Jewish religious schools” in Brooklyn. (JTA)
1933: The Council of the League of Nations conducted a second day of hearings on “the persecution of the Jews in Germany” in official response to the Bernheim Petition. “Many of the speakers severely censured Germany for the treatment of its Jews and demanded that they be accorded minimum human rights.” At the end of the hearing, the Council took the “bold step” of requesting Germany to provide “information on further developments.”
1933: In the Bronx, a Lithuanian Jewish “house painter” and an Jewish immigrant “dressmaker gave birth to Michigan State University alum Eli Broad, the businessman and philanthropist who at one time was ranked as “the 65th wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $7.4 billion.”
1934: In New York City, “Nina (née Peltzman) and Nathan Katz, who was a dress manufacturer gave birth to Gilbert Katz who gained fame as director and producer Gilbert “Gil” Cates. (As reported by Michael Cieply)
1934: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Act of 1933 into law, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) as part of the fabled New Deal. One of the purposes of the S.E.C. was to create a level playing field for all investors. The regulatory agency was created to end the kind of stock fraud and manipulation that had been rampant in the 1920’s and helped cause the Great Depression. Like many other New Deal agencies, the S.E.C. provided employment for the college educated offspring of Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States prior to World War I. In the case of the S.E.C., it gave several Jewish lawyers a chance to practice securities law, a branch of the law to which they had limited access because of the WASP dominated culture of the financial industry. Among those who worked for the SEC was Joseph B Levin an attorney who rose through the ranks to become Assistant General Counsel.
1935: In London, premiere of “39 Steps” a murder mystery produced by Michael Balcon, co-starring Lucie Mannheim and with music by Louis Levy.
1936: The American Jewish Committee issued a statement reiterating it opposition to the world Jewish Congress scheduled to be held in Geneva in August which Dr. Stephen S. Wise, head of the American Jewish Congress is a leading proponent.
1936: In Paris, “by the enormous majority of 384 to 219 the new Chamber of Deputies this evening voted confidence in Premier Leon Blum’s Cabinet to carry through the program of reforms for which the country voted when it returned the Popular Front to power a month ago.”
1936: The British military commander of the Southern District published an order prohibiting all Jewish motor traffic from entering or leaving Tel Aviv. This “blockade” of Tel Aviv, was in response to the murder of an Arab kerosene vender who was shot while riding on a highway between Tel Aviv and Petach Tikvah.
1937: The Palestine Post military correspondent reported that according to reliable sources, the number of British battalions present in the country depended entirely on the security situation and the attitudes of the various sections of the population. Britain had resolved not to take any more risks by reducing the defense force of the land to a mere police force, as the situation existed before the organized Arab troubles of 1936, which left such a bloody aftermath.
1937: “The Jewish Theological Seminary of America held its 50thanniversary convocation exercises” this afternoon during which “eight graduates of the Seminary Rabbinical College were ordained as rabbis Dr. Cyrus Adler, the president of the seminary.”
1937: Today “two hundred delegates from 27 organizations” throughout the United States” heard “former Justice Jeremiah T. Mahoey and other speakers” protest “against discrimination against Jews in Rumania and urge action on their behalf by American Jews at the 28th annual convention of the United Rumanian Jews of America at the Hotel Astor.”
1937: The Palestine Post reported that a mass meeting was held at the Tel Aviv's Mograbi building during which the participants vowed active support for the beleaguered Polish Jewry.
1938: Thanks to the intervention of influential friends Sigmund Freud, his wife Martha and his daughter Anna arrived in London from Vienna via Paris.
1939: Because he felt that his terms were not being met, President Bru ended negotiations concerning the landing of the passengers from the SS St. Louis which would force the ship to begin the return trip to Europe.
1939: It was reported today that the Valedictorian at Columbia College was Abraham Genecin, the Minneapolis born son of a Russian immigrant who went on to earn a Medical Degree from Johns Hopkins, and serve with the U.S. Army medical career after which he worked as “a cardiologist, internist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School
1939: Among the passengers aboard the SS St. Louis who were filled with dread today as the ship prepared to return to Germany were 15 year old Arno Motulsky, who would survive to “become a founder of medical genetics,” his mother “the former Rena Sass” and “his younger siblings,” – Leah and Lothar (As reported by Denise Grady)
1939: The Jewish city of Tel Aviv was virtually cut off from the outside world today when, by order of the British military commander of the Southern District, all Jewish motor traffic into or out of the city was prohibited until tomorrow night. Only medical and milk transportation is permitted.
1940: The New York Times reported that the Nazis had moved “through Amsterdam with ready-made lists of enemies and Jews, rounding them and having them shot en masse.
1941: It was reported today that another 47 “foreign Jews” have been arrested in or near Marseilles “under orders of Admiral Francois Darlan, the Minister of the Interior, for the French government at Vichy.
1941: “More than one-third of the 15,000,000 Jews in the world are now in countries under German domination, subject to discriminatory antiJewish regulations that make sound economic and social existence impossible, Joseph A. Schwartz, vice chairman of the European field of the Joint Distribution Committee, reported in an address before the national conference of Jewish Social Welfare here today. “
1942: Following a failed attempt in 1940, the Nazis succeed in ordering Belgian Jews to wear the Yellow Star.
1942: During his sermon today, Rabbi Israel Goldstein told the congregants of New York’s Temple B’Nai Jeshurun that Japan's air raid on Dutch Harbor, Alaska, was the "final shattering blow to the illusion of those who until recently coddled themselves with the thought that oceans can protect us from air attacks."
1942: In his sermon today, Rabbi Jacob Katz of the Montefiore Synagogue “advised parents to have their children trained in mechanical skills as well as in cultural subjects.”
1942: During his sermon today, Rabbi Hyman J. Schachtel urged the congregants of the West End Synagogue to do their part in the war effort by signing up with the civilian protective services.
1942: During his sermon at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Rabbi David de Sola Pool said, “The first great challenge to the fuehrer concept was thrown down by Moses…It is not without reason that the Fuehrer has singled out the people and the religion of Moses for his most venomed hostility.”
1942: In Cracow, Poland, thousands of Jews were rounded up for the second day in a row for deportation. Eichmann, worried about appearances asks that the words ‘deportation to the East’ not be used, but instead, that ‘people are emigrated elsewhere.'
1942: Adolf Eichmann insists via a telegram sent to Gestapo officials that residents of a mental institution must be included in a planned mass deportation of Jews from Coblenz, Germany, to Lublin, Poland.
1942: The Jewish ghetto at Kraków, Poland, is liquidated; 6000 Jews from the city are murdered at Belzec.
1942: The Nazis burned the village of Lidice Bohemia, as reprisal for killing Heydrich.
1943: Helga Deen saw 1,300 children leave Vught, a Dutch internment camp, for Sobibor and Auschwitz. In her diary she wrote, “Transport. It’s too much. I’m destroyed and tomorrow again.” Deen would later be shipped to Sobibor where she was murdered by the Nazis.
1943: Jacob Gens, the leader of the Jewish Council in Vilna, argued that Vilna's Jews will have an improved chance of survival if they demonstrate their usefulness as workers.
1943: “We Will Never Die” was performed at the Boston Garden, with guest stars Ralph Bellamy, Lionel Atwill, Howard Da Silva, Berry Kroger, and Jacob Ben-Ami in prominent roles. The Boston Jewish Advocate reported: “This spectacle must have impressed and stirred the imagination of the many who saw it to a degree impossible to achieve through the printed word.”
1943(3rd of Sivan, 5703): Germans execute all 1000 Jews still remaining in the Rohatyn (Poland) Ghetto after German authorities discover a plot of local Jewish policemen to purchase weapons.
1944: “Despite having no parachute training”, Mickey Marcus who had Ranger training “traded on being a West Point classmate of General Maxwell Taylor to parachute into Normandy with the first wave of the “Screaming Eagles
1944: Allied forces led by the United States land on the beaches of Normandy. While no exact figures exist for the number of Jews who took part in “The Longest Day” the graves marked by Stars of David attest to the fact that Jews were not only present but paid the last full measure. According to one source 550,000 Jews served in World War II in the U.S. military. Of those, 11,000 were killed, 40,000 were wounded, and 52,000 were decorated for gallantry. Jews made up some 3.5 percent of the U.S. military during the war.
1944: Among the units landing at Normandy today were a contingent of the Ritchie Boys. The Ritchie Boys was a special U.S. Army intelligence unit of approximately 10,000 German speaking soldiers most of whom were Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria. Trained at Fort Richie, Maryland, they were able to use their special language skills and intimate knowledge of the culture to infiltrate behind German lines, capture and interrogate prisoners and conduct disinformation campaigns. Among those making the land was Stefan Heym who would confound people by moving back to Europe after the war and taking up residence in the German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany)
1944: Maria Madi, a native of Budapest wrote in her diary today “B.B.C. announces at 9:30 am that allied invasion has begun on the Normandy peninsula, between Cherbourg and Le Havre. I almost gave up hope these days, am trembling all over from excitement. If only it would be a succe
“This afternoon, very few G[erman] soldiers can be seen on the streets, they are shut up in their quarters, I suppose, in order not to hear the news. Here the noon papers brought the news, without any trace of G[erman] measures taken against the invasion…”
1944: Lester Milton Bronstein, the father of Ambassador Michael Oren, was among those who took part in the D-Day Invasion.
1944: Robert Capa is part of the first wave of troops to land at Omaha Beach. He goes in with Company E armed with a Contax camera. After ninety minutes of shooting, he heads back to London with ten rolls of films that capture the first moments of the invasion. Due to mistakes made by the lab technician employed by Life Magazine, only 11 of the 106 pictures survive the development process.
1944: Lt. Bert Katz led a unit that hit Easy Red Sector of Omaha Beach at “H plus seven minutes” which means that his platoon hit the beach seven minutes after the start of the “Longest Day. In a testament to the withering fire faced his unit, “within the first ten minutes” he lost 23 men and while he himself was wounded he stayed with his men as they fought their way across Europe during the next 11 months until VE Day. This is the same Bert Katz who returned to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where he became a successful businessman, philanthropist and leader of Temple Judah and the Jewish community.
1944: Major Benjamin “Ben” Dunkelman, who had enlisted as private in The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada in 1939 landed at Juno, the beach assigned to the Canadians during the Normandy Invasion.
1944: Lieutenant Mortimer Caplin (the future Commissioner of the IRS) “was commander of a Naval Beach Master Group on Omaha Beach” who used his wits and imagination to force a reluctant Liberty ship skipper to run his ship aground so that its cargo of ammunition could distributed among the tankers and artillerymen heading inland and was award the French Legion of Honor for being part ‘of the initial landing force.”
1944: Private Max Fuchs, “a rifleman in the First Infantry Division” came ashore today at Normandy having no idea that in October he would be leading “an open-air service” at Aachen, “the first Germany city to fall to the Allies” complete with all of “the traditional Sabbath hymns.”
1944: Louis Rabinowitz who had been appointed Senior Jewish Chaplain of the British Army followed up his service with Allied forces in the Middle East by taking part in the Normandy invasion.
1944: Captain Charles Stein, “an Austrian Jewish refugee” landed on Omaha Beach today.
1944: Sarah Levnedeal, the wife of Max Levendal and the mother of Isaac Levndel was arrested today and sent to Drancy
1944: SS-Obergruppenführer and Nazi Party leader Carl Rudolf Werner Best was told today of the refusal of the Danish police to protect “57 enterprises the Germans deemed at risk of sabotage by the Danish resistance movement.”
1944: When German authorities become aware that news of the Allied invasion is circulating through the Jewish ghetto at Lódz, Poland, a search is mounted for illegal radios. Six Jews are arrested. On the same day the Germans rounded up all 1,795 Jews on the Greek Island of Corfu and deported them to Birkenau death camp where 1,500 were murdered by gas upon arrival. The Germans also captured 260 Jews this day on the Island of Crete.
1944(15th of Sivan, 5704): A German deportation ship with approximately 260 Canean Jews aboard is sunk off the coast of Crete. Latter-day accounts conflict as to the details: In one version, the ship carried the corpses of Jews murdered by Nazis, who set the ship afloat and sank it to destroy evidence of the crime. In another, the ship was bound for Auschwitz but was torpedoed and sunk by a British submarine. Besides Jewish people, the ship may have carried 300 Italian POWs and 400 Greek civilians.
1944(15th of Sivan, 5704): In Poland, 150 police, all of whom were Nazi sympathizers ambushed Jacob Allweiss and his two sons Zygie and Sol. Jacob is murdered. The two sons escape.
1944: Two more Auschwitz inmates, Arnost Rosin and Czeslaw Mordowicz, arrived in Zilina. They reported that trainloads of Hungarian Jews were being massacred.
1944: In Corfu, Greece, the Germans rounded up 1,795 Jews. One thousand, five hundred of them were then gassed at Birkenau.
1944: Birthdate of Rene Rivkin, Australian entrepreneur, investor, investment adviser, and stockbroker. He was a well-known stockbroker in Australia for many years until his conviction for insider trading.
1944: As Joel Brand sought to help save the Jews of Hungary Anthony Eden expressed his sympathy regarding the decision to block the negotiations with Eichmann, but said he had to act in unison with the United States and Soviet Union.
1945: The Lady and the Monster” based on a novel by Curt Siodmak with a script by Frederick Kohner co-starring Erich von Stroheim was released in Sweden today.
1945: Robert Capa met Ingrid Bergman for the first time. The meeting marked the beginning of passionate love affair between the Jewish was photographers and the Scandinavian cinema star. Their relationship will be part of the plot for the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “Rear Window.”
1945: The Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter also known as "Safe Haven," located in Oswego, New York the first and only refugee center established in the United States during World War II which housed almost 1000 European refugees, most of whom were Jewish was closed today.
1946: Birthdate of Tony Levin, bassist for King Crimson.
1947: “The World Jewish Congress announced here” tonight “that Austrian authorities had granted permission to 250 Rumanian Jewish refugees to enter the United States zone in Austria after their train had been stranded for several days on a railway bridge…”
1947: Four days after his burial at Willesden Cemetery, the obituary of Myer Jack Landa was published today.
1948: The IAF completed its move to a new base in Herzliya.
1948: In New York City, literary critic Alfred Kazin and his wife gave birth to Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin who earned his Ph.D at Stanford, became the co-editor of Dissent, “a left-wing intellectual magazine founded in 1954 whose previous editors have included Irving Howe, Mitchell and Cohen and Michael Walzer and “married physician Beth Horowitz” with whom he had two children.
1949: In Jerusalem “A group of religious zealots knows the guardian of the City has declared war against the ‘pagan’ Jews and by methods often as violent as those of terrorists organizations is attempting to impose upon them its religious practices especially the strict observance of the Sabbath
1950: Birthdate of director Chantal Anne Akerman, the native of Brussels whose mother Natalia (Nelly) had survived Auschwitz “where her own parents had died”
1950: “Odette,” a biopic about British agent who was not executed at Ravesnbruck filmed by cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum was released today in the United Kingdom.
1950: Mrs. Martha Sharp left New York tonight by plane to visit “her 20,000 children” in Israel. “These thousands of Israeli boys and girls are Mrs. Sharp’s charges by long-range adoption since she is a founder and national vice chairman of Children to Palestine, Inc., an American organization that is bringing them out of starved and fear-ridden backgrounds to a new life in a new land.” Mrs. Sharp is the wife of a Unitarian minister in Chicago. In the next month she will help some of them move into the only real homes they have ever known and watch others learn to play children's games for the first time.
1951(2ndof Sivan, 5711): Hilda Aaron passed away today after which she interred at the Adath Jeshurun Cemetery in Hampton Township, PA.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported on the ground- breaking ceremony for the projected $10 million Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School on the bare Judean hills, west of Ein Kerem. Speakers declared that this construction did not mean the abandonment of Hadassah facilities on Mount Scopus which were effectively under Arab control in violation of existing U.N. guarantees
1954: In Brooklyn Harriet (née Gilbert), a school librarian, and Irving Fierstein, a handkerchief manufacturer gave birth to actor Harvey Fierstein
1955: In Flint, Michigan Jeanette and Jerome Bernhard, a proctologist, gave birth to comedienne Sandra Bernhard whose humor can be heard on “I’m Still Here…Damn It,” her 1998 comedy album.
1955: Birthdate of Samuel Michael “Sam” Simon, the “co-creator of the ‘The Simpsons.’”
1955(16thof Sivan, 5715): Seventy two year old British author Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, the son of Benjamin Leopold Farjeon passed away.
1956: David Marshall, Singapore's first Chief Minister resigns. David Saul Marshall was born in Singapore in 1908 to a Jewish family that had originally come from Iraq. He became a lawyer and a leading leader of the left wing. In later years he would serve in several diplomatic postiions before retiring after a dispute with the Prime Minister of Singapore.
1957(7th of Sivan, 5717): Second Day of Shavuot
1957: “The Delicate Delinquent” produced, written and starring Jerry Lewis was released in the United States today.
1957: The Soviet government informed the Jewish community that it would permit the opening of a yeshiva in Moscow for the training of rabbis. The announcement was made on Shavuot, probably to "impress" world Jewry that the USSR was doing a wonderful thing for Jews and Judaism. It turns out that this was mostly "smoke". The laymen's council of the yeshiva was dissolved in 1961. The bulk of the students had come from Georgia. After Pesach of 1962, these students were denied permits by the local government to return to Moscow. Thus the yeshiva, reduced to a handful of students, could no longer hope to provide rabbis for Russian Jewry.
1959: In Palo Alto, CA, Dorothy Jean St. Germain (née Rich) and Phillip Gary Schultz gave birth to American Olympic wrestler, David Leslie "Dave" Schultz
1959: Ruth R. Wisse “arranged a rendezvous for the Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever, who was then on his maiden visit to North America.”
1960(13thof Sivan, 5750): Sevent-three year old Sigismund Lieberman, the Polish born son of Natalia and Adolph Lieberman, “the husband of Mary S. Lieberman and the father of George and Norma Lieberman” passed a way today in the Bronx, NYC
1960: “The Damaged Eye” co-starring Herschel Bernardi and filmed by cinematographers Helen Levitt and Haskell Wexler was released in the United States today.
1961: “Hadassah-Ein Kerem opens with a moving day. Supervised by HMO senior staff, the Israeli Army meticulously and efficiently transports every patient in each of Hadassah's five temporary hospitals to a preassigned bed at the new medical center.”
1961: Carl Jung, the man Freud called "his adopted eldest son, his crown prince and successor" but who later broke with his mentor, passed away today.
1962: In New York, Enid (Rodman) and Harold Flender, a writer and screenwriter gave birth to actor, writer, director and producer Rodman Flender.
1963: In Richmond, VA, realtor Eddie Cantor and Mary Lee (nee Hudes), a schoolteacher gave birth to Eric Cantor who represented Virginia’s Seventh District and served as House Majority Whip before being defeated in his bid for re-election.
1963: Birthdate of British actor Jason Isaacs.
1965(6th of Sivan, 5725): First Day Shavuot
1965(6thof Sivan, 5725): Sixty-eight year old New York native Dr. John Henry Garlock a member of the faculties at Columbia and Cornell passed away today.
1967: This marked the second day of Israel's Six Day War. Now that the Israelis had control of the skies, their armor and infantry could begin advancing against the numerically larger Arab armies. As accounts of the fighting will attest, this was no cakewalk. The fighting in Sinai involved some of the largest clashes between tanks since World War II. And the Jordanians fought tenaciously along the Green Line around east Jerusalem.
1967: At six o’clock in the morning the Supreme Command of the Arab armed forces began broadcasting on the great lies that is still believed to this day. Repeating a report that Nasser had made to King Hussein the night before, the Arab military leaders claimed that the Egyptian and Jordanian air forces had been demolished on the first day of the war by U.S. planes attached to the Sixth Fleet and by British warplanes flying from unspecified bases. This tale had not no basis in fact. It gave Nasser a chance to save face with the Arab masses and to provide his Soviet patrons with an excuse for intervening. The Cold War is already becoming a distant memory to those living in the 21st century. However, the conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was very real in 1967. The Soviets were actively looking for a way to gain control in the Middle East and the Communist Bloc was Nasser’s patron, a factor that was part of the military and political equation facing the Israelis.
1967: Defense Minister Moshe Dyan still refused to allow any military action to be taken along the Golan Heights. With fighting raging in the Sinai to the South, he did not need additional military worries. What did worry Dyan was that the U.N. might impose a cease fire before Israeli forces could seize Sharm el-Sheik, the choke-point held by the Egyptians that made it possible for them to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Dyan ordered Chief of Staff Rabin to move with all speed to seize Sharm. Rabin completed planes for a combined assault that was to be carried out the next evening.
1967: “The Egyptian armored forces collapse. Ariel Sharon's division later joins an armored brigade making its way to the Egyptian posts at Tamed and Nakhl. When they arrive there, Sharon quickly reads the battlefield and successfully ambushes an Egyptian armored brigade. The Egyptian tanks column goes straight into Sharon's trap and there they it is systematically destroyed. At the end of the day, what's left is a 20 mile long column of twisted and burned Egyptian tanks and vehicles, and hundreds of dead bodies beside them.”
1967: Egyptian troops are ordered to fall back to the Suez Canal. In the evening, unbeknownst to the Israelis, Egypt evacuated the strategically important position of Sharm el-Sheik.
1967: According to transcripts released in 2017, “what to do with the Old City was a hot topic conversation in” today’s meeting of “the security cabinet.”
1969: Two days after she had passed away, funeral services were held today for eighty-two year old Lillian Schifrin, the Cincinnati born daughter of “Adolph Aira Berman and Mary Agnes Jacobs and the “ex-wife of Isidor Schifrin.
1970: Peggy and Dr. Milton D. Glick, who would eventually become President of the University of Nevada, Reno, gave birth to their son David.
1970(2ndof Sivan, 5730): Twenty three year old Josh (Eli Joshua) Bay the son of Charles and Canadian born actress Frances Bay passed away today.
1971(13thof Sivan, 5731): Seventy-six year old Polish native, violinist and professor emeritus of bio-chemistry at the University of California Lila Berlin Hassid, the wife of Professor William Zen Hassid who was famous for her Yiddish language skills passed away today.
1972(24thof Sivan, 5732): Eleanor Joan Clara Nathan, the wife of Baron and Major Louis Nathan Nathan and mother of Captain Roger Carol Michael Nathan passed away today.
1974: “In anticipation of President Nixon’s visit, telephones of Moscow Jewish activists were cut off and many of them received conscription orders particularly those organizing scientific seminar
1974: The Syrians returned the body of Avraham “Avi” Lanir. The Syrians captured him during the Yom Kippur War and tortured him to death in an attempt to extract information from him about Israel’s nuclear program.
1975: “One hundred activists send an appeal to the United States and House of Representatives in defense of Anatolii Malkin.”
1975: The USSR Supreme Soviet adopted a decree imposing a new tax of 30% on money sent to Soviet citizens from abroad i.e. money sent to aid reufsniks.
1975(27thof Sivan, 5737): Forty-nine year Larry Blyden, a Jewish actor from Houston, TX passed away today.
1976: “The Omen” a horror film directed by Richard Donner, produced by Henry Bernhard, written by David Seltzer and with music by Jerry Goldsmith was released in the United Kingdom today.
1977: Birthdate of Jerusalem native and popular singer Alma Zohar whose debut album was Dabri which was released in July of 2008 and who is the half-sister of electronic musician Matan Zohar (a.k.a. Mat Zo).
1979(11thof Sivan, 5739): Seventy one year old Sidney Bernard Finn, the Freedom, PA born son of Abel and Rebecca (Gordon) Finn the Ohio St. Aluma and award winning Harvard trained dentistwho was the husband of Irma Harriet Rubens with whom he had two children – Catherine and Andrew – passed away today.
1979: Premiere of “Escape to Athena” a movie set in Nazi occupied Greek Island produced by Lew Grade and co-starring Elliot Gould
1979(11thof Sivan, 5739): Ninety-year old Rabbi Morris Samuel Lazaron Sr, the Savanah, GA born son of Samuel Louis Lazaron and Zipporah Alice DeCastro Lazron, and the husband of Pauline Lazaron with whom he had had three children – Morris, Harold and Clementine – passed away today after which he was buried in Maryland at the Baltimore Hebrew Cemetery.
1980: U.S. premiere of “Up the Academy” a comedy co-starring Ron Leibman and Barbara Bach whose father was Jewish but whose mother was not.
1981: Final plans were completed for “Operation Opera” the Israel attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor that Iran had tried and failed to destroy.
1982: 1982: Israeli troops enter Lebanon to drive out PLO. The PLO had established itself as a "state within a state." The government of Lebanon was incapable or unwilling to put an end to this source of terror so the Israelis acted accordingly. The triggering event was the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov the Israeli ambassador in London. The invasion would become a divisive and corrosive event for the Israelis that, to put it mildly, was not one of their shining moments.
1982: Members of the famous Golani Brigade attacked Beaufort Castle which was held by the PLO.
1983: In “Orthodox Jewish Women Push Role In Prayer” published today, Charles Austin described attempts to harmonize traditional roles with change social mores.
1984(6thof Shavuot, 5744): Shavuot
1985: The grave of "Wolfgang Gerhard" is exhumed in Embu, Brazil; the remains found are later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz'"Angel of Death". Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in February 1979.
1986(28thof Iyar, 5746) Yom Yerushalayim
1986: U.S. premiere of “Raw Deal” written by Norman Wexler and co-starring Steven Hill and Sam Wanamaker.
1987: “Poet, essayist and critic” Katha Pollitt “married Randy Cohen, author of the New York Times Magazine column ‘The Ethicist’” today.
1988(21stof Sivan, 5748): Twelve days before his 87th birthday Wellesley (Pinchas) Aron the London born graduate of Cambridge, founder of Habonim who as a Major in the British Army “assumed commanded of a Jewish Palestinian unit, later absorbed into the Jewish Infantry Brigade passed away today.
1988: Pitcher Steve Rosenberg makes his debut with the Chicago White Sox.
1990(13thof Sivan, 5750): Sixty-five year old Regina Elfenbein, the Chelm born daughter of Chaim and Chana Nankin and the wife of Cecil Donald Elfenbein passed away today in Dallas, TX. (Editor’s note – so the Chelmites were not just tales told to children)
1991: David John Pleat began serving as the manager for Luton Town football team.
1991(24thof Sivan, 5751): Stan Getz passed away. Born Stanley Gayetzky in 1927, Getz was the leading tenor sax player of his time. Even people who did not like jazz enjoyed listening to the smooth sound of Stan Getz.
1992(5thof Sivan, 5752): Eighty-four year old Marvel comic founder Martin Goodman passed away today.
1994(27thof Tammuz, 5754): Sixty-nine year old Yohai Ben-Nun, the sixth commander of the Israeli navy passed away today.
1997: “Crash” a thriller directed and produced by David Cronenberg who also wrote the script and with music by Howard Shore was released today in the United Kingdom.
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz, Damascus Gate by Robert Stone and Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl.
1999: Deb and Mitchell Levin marry at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He moved up in class and she got an adult child to try and housebreak. For those of you who have not figured it out, she is the one who makes this daily work possible. On top of being an Ayshish Chayel in the truest sense of the word, she is also is great at everything from creating blogs to making homemade Kosher pizza, to creating memorable siddurim to hosting the visiting chazzan who is a kosher vegetarian.
2000: “Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright arrived in Israel today for her first visit in six months, seeking to inject a sense of urgency into the long-running Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and to lay the foundation for a three-way retreat-style summit meeting.” (As reported by Deborah Sontag)
2001: An Arab suicide bomber massacred 21 young Jewish teenagers and injured a hundred more outside a Tel Aviv discotheque.
2001: Joe Lieberman began serving as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.
2002: Today, in retaliation for a suicide bombing carried out by an Islamic Jihad terrorist, “the IDF executed a new siege of the “Ramallah Muquata’a after having attacked the headquarters with tanks, bulldozers and armored vehicles” leaving Arafat's office building and other parts of his compound partly destroyed.
2003(6thof Sivan, 5763): Shavuot
2003: Today, “Yasir Arafat implicitly criticized Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas for having failed to win any concessions from Israel” during talks designed to stop attacks on that country.
2004: First day of a Birthright trip to Israel - Towards a Sustainable Future for Israel: An Environmental Leadership Seminar for Students and Young Professionals – focused on the environment sponsored as a joint project of COEJL, the Heschel Center for Environmental Leadership and Learning, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and Hillel.
2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of “Sloan-Kettering: Poems” the Israeli poet and famed partisan Abba Kovner’s poetic chronicle of his losing battle with cancer which he describes with ruthless honesty, even as he celebrates his tenacious grip on the world he is leaving.
2004: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government approved an amended plan for disengagement form Gaza.
2004: Avigdor Lieberman completed his term as Minister of Transport, National Infrastructure and Road Safety
2005: Majdi Halabi was officially listed as M.I.A. (missing in action).
2005 (28th of Iyar): Observance of Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day). Jerusalem Reunification Day celebrates the reunification of Jerusalem on June 7, 1967 which was the 28th day of the month of Iyar. The observance follows the Jewish calendar so it seems to “float” on the secular calendar. On the 28th of Iyar, soldiers of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) reunited the Old City of Jerusalem which had been illegally occupied by the Jordanian Army since 1948 with what was then referred to as the New City of Jerusalem. (Please note, there never was a city called “East Jerusalem.” The term east Jerusalem is strictly geographic as in the southeast side of Cedar Rapids.) This was the first time that all of Jerusalem was under Jewish sovereignty since the days of the Second Temple.
2006: The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that “the C.I.A. knew where Eichman was hiding” and made no attempts to inform the government of Israel, which was actively looking for him and other Nazi war criminals. This revelation came to light as large quantities of government documents describing U.S. relationships with ex-Nazis after World War II were declassified. While it had been known for some time that the U.S. and later the West German government employed former Nazis in their intelligence agencies, these documents show the depth and the folly of the involvement. Apparently many of these former Nazis turned out to be double agents who working for the Soviets and who did a great deal of harm to Western intelligence efforts during the Cold War.
2006: British author Naomi Alderman has won the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers with her debut novel Disobedience. The novel is set in the Orthodox Jewish community of Hendon, London where Alderman grew up.
2006(10thof Sivan, 5766): Eighty-eight year old Arnold Newman, a portrait photographer and so much more who is part of that seemingly unending line of Jews with a camera passed away today in Manhattan. (As reported by Andy Grundberg)
2007: Professor Norman Finkelstein is a guest on daily global affairs program produced by Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ (91.5) where he presents a “revisionist view of the Six Day War.”
2007: Jack Markell officially launched his candidacy for Governor of Delaware
2007: An exhibition styled “Image of His Soul" Max Liebermann – Works on Paper opens at the Hecht Museum in Haifa.
2007: The Sir Zelman Cowen Prize in medical research is awarded to Prof. Nir Friedman at the Hebrew University's Board of Governors' meeting by fund trustee Michael Dunkel, a member of the Board of Governors.
2008: At the JCC in Washington, D.C. cantor, composer, arranger, choral conductor, and director of the ensemble Vocolot, Linda Hirschhorn will co-lead a musical Erev Shabbat service with Rabbi Robert Saks of Congregation Bet Mishpachah, the event’s co-sponsor. Linda Hirschhorn will play the guitar during the service.
2008: Opening of “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” starring Adam Sandler playing an Israeli assassin turned hairdresser.
2008: Today, Frank Stella, the non-Jewish “artist who turned destroyed Polish shuls into great art co- published an Op-Ed for The Art Newspaper decrying a proposed U.S. Orphan Works law which "remove[s] the penalty for copyright infringement if the creator of a work, after a diligent search, cannot be located."
2009: Alysa Stanton the first African-American female rabbi is ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. Stanton, a convert and mother to an adopted 14-year-old daughter, is a trained psychotherapist who specializes in trauma and grief. In August, she will become the spiritual leader of Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville.
2009: At Temple Judah, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sophie Shiffman, daughter of Howard Shiffman of Toronto, Ontario and Peggy and Don Aungst of Independence, IA is called to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah.
2009: The Vatican says it has "taken action" to track down Jewish children who were hidden by the Church and Catholic families during the Holocaust and later disappeared. In a letter sent to Yad Le'Achim today, a haredi anti-missionary organization, Archbishop Antonio Franco, the apostolic nuncio in the Holy Land, wrote, "The matter of the fate of the Jewish families during World War II is a very delicate and very complex one.""I know that there has been action taken by the Holy See, but at this moment I cannot be accurate in my information. I assure you that I will try to provide more precise information and see if an appeal that the one you propose could be made." Yad L'Achim said the letter marked the first time the Church had publicly acknowledged the issue. Before Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Israel last month, Rabbi Shalom Dov Lipshitz, who heads Yad L'Achim, asked that the pope call on all members of the Catholic Church to reveal the identities of Jews saved by the Church from the Nazis. "We believe that hundreds, perhaps thousands of Jews and their offspring can be discovered if the pope makes an unequivocal announcement while in Israel that every Catholic has an obligation to reveal the Jewish roots of those saved from the Holocaust," Lipshitz said. He said Yad L'Achim had a list of about 2,000 names of children believed to have been handed over to Catholic families, orphanages and other Church institutions to hide them from the Nazis. A sample page from the list was sent to The Jerusalem Post. It includes the names, dates and places of birth and last known addresses of the individuals thought to be Jews. All of the people on the sample page were from the Netherlands, and all were born between 1920 and 1938. Lipshitz said Yad L'Achim's list, based on information collected after the war, also included Jews from France, Italy and Belgium. He added that his organization was working with the Conference of European Rabbis to obtain more lists and track down the names that he already had. Yad L'Achim and the conference plan to open an office in Europe to coordinate these efforts. "Time isn't working in our favor and we must act quickly," Lipshitz said. "There is no doubt that the martyrs [Nazi victims], the parents and grandparents of these orphans, most of whom don't even know they are Jewish, won't find heavenly rest until their descendants return to the religion of their fathers," he said.
2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Alone With You by Marissa Silver
2010: I wish the American Jews who feel misrepresented by the lobby would stand up by Philip Weiss
2010: Members of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington are scheduled to lead a special tour of Jewish sites in Old Town Alexandria that will include visits to the sites of two former synagogues and several Jewish businesses.
2010: The Washington Jewish Music Festival is scheduled to open with a screening of the Jazz Baroness and a performance by Danny Sanderson.
2010(24th of Sivan, 5770): Rabbi Jacob Milgrom passed away today in Jerusalem at the age of 87. He was “considered by many the worlds’ foremost authority on the biblical Book of Leviticus. Milgrom’s three-volume series on Leviticus, interpreting Jewish dietary and purification rituals and the Bible’s position on homosexuality, concluded that the ban on homosexuality applies only to Jewish men.”
2011: “Music and Healing” a program designed to acquaint attendees with “contemporary, folk and traditional songs that can help them through times of need and comfort is scheduled to take place at Tefereth Israel in Washington, DC.
2011: The Children of Israel Journeyed: Selections from the Chagall Bible Series, an exhibit at the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee, “showcasing twenty-one hand-painted etchings by Marc Chagall” and The Haggerty Museum’s massive Chagall Tapestry is schedule to come to a close. The Haggerty is part of Marquette University.
2011: Israeli military officials disputed today the casualty figures announced by Syria a day earlier, after Israeli forces fired on protesters who had tried to breach the Syrian frontier with the Israeli-held Golan Heights, the discrepancy in numbers underlining the messages being conveyed by both sides.
2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn pleaded not guilty today in a New York court appearance.
2011: New York Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted that his twitter account had not been hacked and that he had been sending pictures of himself to at least six female followers.
2011: Eighty-five year old Zev Birger, the concentration camp survivor who reinvigorated the Jerusalem International Book Fair passed away today. (As reported by Isabel Kershner)
2012: A Young Leadership Concert featuring Itamar Zora and the Salome Chamber Orchestra is scheduled to take place at Congregation Shearith Israel (The Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue)
2012: The Los Angeles dance company BODYTRAFFIC is scheduled to perform the world premiere of the latest work by Israeli choreographer Barak Marshall with guest artist Margalit Oved at the Joyce in New York City.
2012: In Chevy Chase, MD, Ohr Kodesh is scheduled to host a concert presented by Zemer Chai.
2012: The Wiener Library in the UK is scheduled to present ‘Target Heydrich: Laurent Binet on HHhH’ in which the author will talk about her historical novel about the two men who killed the man known as “Himmler’s Brain.”
2012: In an interview today Robert Levine “discusses moving to Saint Louis Park, Minnesota in the early 1950s and Jewish life there.”
2012: In an interview today Avis Held “discusses moving to Saint Louis Park, Minnesota in the early 1950s and Jewish life there.”
2012: It is lucky 13 for me as we celebrate our anniversary. And it is lucky for anybody who reads this because if it weren’t for Deb none of this would exist!
2012: Israel's Knesset voted down a bill that aimed at legalizing homes on the Ulpana Hill neighborhood in the West Bank settlement of Beit El, which were built on privately owned Palestinian land.
2012: Defense Minister Ehud Barak acknowledged Israel's offensive cyberspace operations for the first time. (As reported by Gili Cohen and Oded Yaron)
2012: Opening of National Hebrew Book Week
2012: “Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America,” an American food reality television series premiered today on the Travel Channel
2013(28thof Sivan, 5773): Ninety four year old Nobel laureate Jerome Karle passed away today. (As reported by Kenneth Chang)
2013: The Associates of AFIPO are scheduled to present “Vintage Thursday,” a winetasting and silent auction evening to benefit the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra,
2013: In London, the Weiner Library is scheduled to present “Film Talk” ‘Kosher Nostra’ – Screening the Memory of the Jewish-American Gangster in ‘The Godfather Part II’”
2013: Israel’s Gesher Theater is scheduled to perform “Enemies, A Love Story” by Isaac Bashevis Singer at New York’s Lincoln Center.
2013: Syrian opposition and government forces today were engaged in hours of fierce battles at and around the Quneitra border crossing, the only crossing between Israel and Syria.
2013(28thof Sivan, 5773): Ninety-two year old Berlin born physicist Eugen Merzbacher who fled Nazi Germany passed away today.
2013: “Spertus Institute screens Hava Nagila (The Movie), the definitive, glorious, musical story of how a traditional melody from Ukraine became a Jewish staple and worldwide hit.”
2013: US military aircraft and an Israeli passenger plane nearly collided over Eilat today.
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/US-Army-aircraft-passenger-plane-have-near-miss-over-Eilat-315771
2014: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “Edward Henkel's MovementTalks: The Power of Women Minding the Dance with Christine Dakin, Dawn Paap and Catherine Peila”
2014: Rabbi Shira, Rabbi Laurie Green of Bet Mishpachah, and members of GLOE are scheduled to lead an inclusive service celebrating the diversity of our community at the Historic 6th& I Synagogue.
2014: On the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion as special homage is paid to the dwindling number of veterans who hit the beach on D-Day, residents of Cedar Rapids in general and members of the Jewish community in particular an honor Bert Katz. As a young captain, Katz led his unit on to Easy Red sector of Omaha Beach seven minutes after the start of the invasion. Despite the fact he was wounded and lost 23 of his men to murderous enemy fire, Katz saw to it that his unit performed their vital mission on “The Longest Day” and the many days and months that would follow until the war’s end.
2014: Today, “Spain’s cabinet approved a bill allowing descendants of Jews forced into exile centuries ago the right to dual citizenship, but said applicants will have to take a Spanish culture test in addition to having their ancient ties to the nation vetted by experts.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/spain-approves-sephardic-jew-citizenship-plan/
2014: “Labor Party MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer’s bid for the presidency seemed to have gone up in smoke today after police questioned him for nearly five hours on suspicion that he illegally received millions of shekels from various sources, using some of the money to purchase a luxury apartment home in Jaffa. (As reported by Advi Sterman)
2015: “Is That You?” is scheduled to be shown at the Israel Film Center Festival at the JCC Manhattan.
2015: In Cedar Rapids, the traditional minyan observes D-Day Shabbat followed by “a special Kiddush celebrating the 81st birthday of Murray Wolf “complete with his favorite homemade delicacies” prepared by his wife Charlene.”
2015: “Gender, Memory and Genocide” an international conference marking the 100thanniversary of the Armenian Genocide co-sponsored the Pears Institute of the Study of Ant-Semitism is scheduled to come to an end today.
2015: “American Pharaoh” owned by Ahmed Zayat won the Belmont Stakes today which made him the winner of racing’s Triple Crown.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/american-pharoah-gives-zayat-the-biggest-prize-in-racing/
http://www.onlysimchas.com/news/10137/american-pharaoh-horse-owned-by-orthodox-jewish-father-and-son-wins-kentucky-derby
http://tabletmag.com/scroll/190770/owner-of-kentucky-derby-winner-american-pharaoh-is-an-orthodox-jew
2015: As we contemplate the miracles of Shabbat, on this Shabbat I cannot help but be overwhelmed by the miracle that Deb Levin married me 16 years ago today!
2016: Ori Ronen, whose newest single is “I Have a Friend” is scheduled to perform at the Cinema South Festival is Sderot.
2016: The 25th Annual Summer on Teaching the Holocaust is scheduled to begin at The Lillian and A.J. Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education.
2016: Yemen Blues is scheduled to present their new show “Insaniya” (Humanity) at Joe’s Pub.
2016: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today reiterated his rejection of the allegation that he received €1 million in campaign funding from Arnaud Mimran, but acknowledged for the first time that he had received a smaller sum from the accused French fraudster.”
2016: The 17th Annual Washington Jewish Music Festival is scheduled to host “Musical Soundscapes of Morocco: From Africa to America” and the New York Andalus Ensemble which “performs in Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish and Ladino.”
2016(29thof Iyar, 5776): Ninety year old Tony award winning playwright Peter Shaffer passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/arts/peter-shaffer-dies-at-90-playwright-won-tonys-for-equus-and-amadeus.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
2016(29thof Iyar, 5776): Ninety-eight year old children’s author Rhoda Blumberg passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/books/rhoda-blumberg-whose-childrens-books-bought-history-to-life-dies-at-98.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1
2016: “Fire Birds” and “Afterthought” are scheduled to be shown at the Israel Film Center Festival.
2016: Dan Margalit, the Tel Aviv native who in 1977, while working as a Washington correspondent revealed that Leah Rabin, wife of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, had a United States bank account, illegal in Israel at the time” which “led to Rabin's resignation and the nomination of Shimon Peres as the Alignment's candidate for prime minister” “informed the public via his Twitter account that he had been fired from Israel Hayom.”
2017: Today, Dan “Margalit informed the public via his Twitter account that he had been fired from Israel Hayom”
2017: “Haim Naggar, who was 20 at the time of the Six-Day War” and Dr. Joseph Shinar who “was wounded during the Six-Day War” are among those scheduled to address those attending “50 Years – Remembering The Six Day War” sponsored by Iowans Supporting Israel.
2017: “A special screening of ‘Denial’ is scheduled to take place at the Imperial War Museum in London” which includes a special “Holocaust exhibition.”
2017: A preview screening of “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer” which is Joseph Cedar’s first English speaking film” and co-stars Lior Ashekenazi.
2018: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host an After Party event following the opening of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” with David Serero in the title role.
2018: In Memphis, TN, Temple Israel is scheduled to demonstrate a commitment to scholarship with a learn over lunch on “Great Jewish Renegades” as well as a commitment to social justice with an evening of MIFA Mitzvah Opportunity preparing means for “low-income” senior citizens.
2018: In Jerusalem Mercaz Hatarbuyot is scheduled to host a “Unique Trio Concert” featuring concert pianist Eliahou Zabaly, violinist Gabriel Chouraki and cellist Azure Kline.
2018: The Aleph Society is scheduled to host a dinner celebrating “the worldwide release of the remarkable new Steinsaltz Humash” hosted by Senator Joe Lieberman where Francis Klagsburn and John Podhoretz will discuss “Jews and Power.”
2018: While most of the world are scheduled to celebrate the victories at Midway in 1942 and Normandy in 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Deb and Mitchell Levin celebrate another wedding anniversary, which never ceases to amaze Mitchell because he cannot believe Deb has put up with him for so long!
2019: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host a discussion of
This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto Hardcover with author Suketu Mehta and Nancy Foner.
2019: At Oxford, “Interfaith Dialogues” are scheduled to take place “In Jesus College’s Harold Wilson Room where attendees can enjoy the “usual kosher/halal lunch.”
2019: On the 75th anniversary of the D-D invasion Cedar Rapidians have a unique opportunity to offer thanks Bert Katz, a veteran of the Longest Day who is still with us. Katz hit the beach with minutes after H-hour and despite being wounded and losing almost two dozen of his minute, went to work fulfilling their responsibilities in what would be their first step on the march to free Europe from Hitler’s grip (As reported by Kim Ketelsen)
2019: As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion we remember many individuals (see entries above for 1944) who were there on that day including A.J. Liebling, the forty year old war correspondent for the New Yorker who went ashore at Omaha Beach in an LCI; Dr. Samuel Fieler, “a regimental dental officer” with the 82ndAirborne “who had escaped Berlin in 1938” and who had volunteered to jump with “assault echelon” in a night action that was predicted to have a 70 per cent casualty rate; 19 year old Private Harold Baumgarten of Company B, 116thRegiment, 29th Division, the first infantry unit on Omaha who had “drawn a Star of David on the back of his field jacket” and who survived being wounded five times which may have accounted for his decision to go to medical school and become a practicing physician after the war; and Corporal Peter Masters and Harry Nomberg two members of “3 Troop of No.10 Commandos” a unit made up of “European Jews who had escaped to England” and who needed no extra encouragement to carry out whatever plans their leader Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten had in store for them. (As reported by Stephen Ambrose)
2020: D-Day Anniversary: June 6 marks the 76th Anniversary of the landing at Normandy. Sadly, it is the first time we mark this anniversary without Temple Judah’s Bert Katz who stormed ashore that day and who passed away earlier this year after leading a full life as a husband, father, grandfather, businessman, philanthropist and pillar of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community
2020: The Maine Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “The Spy Behind Home Plate” online today.
2020: The Asiyah Jewish Community is scheduled to present on-line Tai Chi & Torah: “The Lord of the Rings” Edition”
2020: Dorshei Tzedek is scheduled to host its weekly Zoom Shabbat experience
2020(14thof Sivan, 5780): Parashat Naso; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/