July 1
69: Tiberius Julius Alexander orders his Roman legions in Alexandria to swear allegiance to Vespasian as emperor. This consolidation of Vespasian’s imperial power helped to seal the fate of Jerusalem since the destruction of the Jewish capital was his way of proving that law and order would prevail in the empire.
70 C.E.: Titus set up battering rams to assault the walls of Jerusalem.
397: Emperors Arcadius and Honorius decree that Jewish clergy are allowed to keep their own laws and rituals and are exempt from service in municipal senates. This creates the superficial impression that Jewish clergy are on an equal footing with their Christian counter-parts. (As reported by Austin Cline)
985: In Barcelona, several Jewish residents were killed by the Moslem leader Al-Mansur. Many of them were land owners who left no heirs. According to the law, all their lands were given over to the Count of Barcelona. In Spain at this time it was not uncommon for Jews to own vineyards and other lands.
1187: As the showdown between Crusaders and Saracens gets closer, the forces of Saladin bypass Belvoir, whose defenders fail to come to do battle, and heads for Tiberias. The Jews are bystanders as these two interlopers fight to protect their “claim” to the Promised Land.
1244: Duke Frederick II granted a charter to all Jews under his control which “became the model by which the status of the Jews of Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Silesia, and Poland was regulated.”
1388: Jews of Lithuania received a Charter of Privilege.
1392: Pope Boniface IX “appointed the physician Solomone de Sabalduchio his "familiaris."
1462: In a document signed today, King Georg reconfirmed the requirement that Jews of Pilsen will pay “the Reeve (local ruler) for each household on St. Martin's Day one corn-fed goose, at Christmas a pound of pepper, and at Easter one guilder plus one pound of pepper” and “confirmed that the Jews are obliged to register their pledges” with the added proviso that failure to register will “loose the pledge or the income from the pledge.”
1490: Twenty year old Yucef Franco, a Jewish cobbler from Tembleque and his 80 year old father Ça Franco was arrested by the Inquisition.
1517: “Giles Antonini, referred to as Giles of Viterbo” was “elevated to the rank of Cardinal by Pope Leo X” which provided him with the position and power to offer sanctuary to the Jewish grammarian Elias Levita whose family lived with the Catholic prelate for ten years.
1534: King Christian III of Denmark and Norway and Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg gave birth to Frederick II of Denmark who moved to keep Jews out his realm by ordering ‘that all foreigners in Denmark had to affirm their commitment to 25 articles of faith central to Lutheranism on pain of deportation,
1569: The Union of Lublin joins The Kingdom of Poland and the Great Duchy of Lithuania into a united country called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Republic of Both Nations. This had to be an improvement in the situation for the Jews of Lithuania who were governed by statutes that read in part, "The Jews shall not wear costly clothing, nor gold chains, nor shall their wives wear gold or silver ornaments. The Jews shall not have silver mountings on their sabers and daggers; they shall be distinguished by characteristic clothes; they shall wear yellow caps, and their wives kerchiefs of yellow linen, in order that all may be enabled to distinguish Jews from Christians." During the 15th and 16th centuries the Jews of Poland enjoyed an increasing amount of political autonomy and economic wellbeing which would come to a crashing end with the Ukrainian uprisings in the 17th centuries.
1581: Gregory XIII issued “Antiqua judaeorum improbitas,” a Papal Bull that “authorized the Inquisition directly to handle cases involving Jews, especially those concerning blasphemies against Jesus or Mary, incitement to heresy or assistance to heretics, possession of forbidden books, or the employment of Christian wet nurses.” (Jewish Virtual Library shows the date as June 1, 1581)
1589: In Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, a Dutch publisher who printed “a good many Hebrew texts” passed away today. Plantin printed the “Biblia Poygotta” a Bible containing five languages one of which was Hebrew. “The first four volumes contain the Old Testament. The left page has two columns with the Hebrew original and the Latin translation, the right page has same text in Greek with its own Latin translation. Underneath these columns there is an Aramaic version on the left-hand page and a Latin translation of this on the right-hand side. For printing the Hebrew text Plantin used among others Daniel Bomberg's Hebrew type, which he had received from Bomberg's nephews.Volume 5 contains the New Testament in Greek and Syriac, each with a Latin translation, and a translation of the Syriac into Hebrew. Volume 6 has the complete Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, as well as an interlinear version that has the Latin translation printed between the lines.”
The last two volumes contain dictionaries (Hebrew-Latin, Greek-Latin, Syriac-Aramaic, grammar rules, list of names, etc.) that were of value to scholars
1651: Poland was victorious over the Cossacks. The Jews were allowed to return to their lands but the society that they had built was gone forever.
1736: Ahmed III, the Sultan who appointed Judah ben Samuel Rosanes to serve a “hakam bashi” (Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire passed away. Rabbi Judah was a noted scholar who was an ardent opponent of the Shabbethaians (the followers of the “False Messiah”)
1742: In Darmstadt, Pastor Johan Conrad Lichtenberg and his was wife gave birth to physicist and satirist Georg Chrsitoph Lichtenberg whose “invention of a ‘Compass of Motives;’”Sigmund Freud (in his “Why War?” letter to Albert Einstein) mentioned in a discussion on the combination of human compounded motives and quoted him as saying, “The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, ‘food-food-fame’ or ‘fame-fame-food’.”
1774: In Montreal, Marie Elizabeth Louise Dubois and Ezekiel Solomon gave birth to Joseph Solomon.
1776: “Cherokees attacked settlement along the” South Carolina frontier resulting in a “Paul Revere-like Ride” by Francis Salvador to sound the alarm for those living within a 30 mile radius.
1776: First Jew lost his life in the American Revolution.
1792: Baruch Hays, and his second wife Rachel (de Costa) Hays gave birth to Joseph Lopez Hays
1798: In Switzerland, special taxes on the Jews were finally abolished.
1798: After eluding the British fleet, the French Army under Napoleon landed at Alexandria in a military action where the Eliyahu Hanavi Syngouge which had been built in 1354 was bombed to such an extent that it would not be re-built until 1850.
1805(4th of Tammuz, 5565): Pinchas Horowitz, a rabbi and Talmudist who was born at Chortkiv in 1731 died today at Frankfort-on-the-Main
1810: The reign of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, as King of Holland, came to an end. Bonaparte sought to improve the condition of the Jews. Among other things he abolished the “Oath More Judaico” and opened military service to Jews by creating two battalions made up exclusively of Jewish soldiers and officers.
1815: Charlotte Drace, the daughter of Sara and John King, “moneylender and radical writer” who wrote “under the pseudonym ‘Rosa Mtailda’” married widower Nicholas Byrne today.
1818: Joseph Leigh married Sarah Abrahams at the New Synagogue.
1829: Jamaica native Joseph Gutteres Henriques, the son Saran and Jacob Beuno Henriques and Eliza Henriques gave birth to Alfred Gutteres Henriques
1835: The day after he had passed away, 70 year old Simon Medex was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetry.”
1845: David Levy Yulee began serving as the United States from Florida. This was in the days before the direct election of Senators. After Florida joined the Union, the state legislature chose Yulee to fill the position. This made him the first Jew to be elected to the United States. Yulee would desert the Union and join the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War. Yulee would ‘desert’ the faith of his fathers’ when he married a Christian and raised his children in her faith.
1845: In London, Moses Botibol and the former Jessie Myers gave birth to Isaac Botibol.
1850: In Philadelphia, George H. Earle, Sr. and Mrs. Frances ("Fanny") Van Leer Earle gave birth to American Poet Florence Earle Coates.
http://florenceearlecoates.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-dreyfus-affair.html
1851: Morris Lee married Laura Levy at the Great Synagogue.
1853: Coleman Defries married Cordelia Magnus today.
1853: George Washington Mordecai, the Warrenton, NC born son of Rebecca and Jacob Mordecais marrie Margaret Cameron today
1855: In Georgetown, SC, Joseph Sampson and Esther Cohen gave birth to Arthur Fischel Sampon, the graduate of U. Va. Medical School who practiced medicine in Galveston, TX before settling in San Francisco in 1901 where he invented the Sampson Urethal Speculum.
1857: According to the New York Times, there are 1,500,000 Jews living in Russia out of a population estimated at 63,000,000.
1858: The House of Lords took up the question of admitting Jews into Parliament. Lord Derby expressed a willingness to end his opposition to the measure as a way of avoiding a major collision with the House of Commons. [Editor’s note – The issue of Jewish emancipation was not strictly a “Jewish issue.” It may also be seen as part of a larger power struggle between the Establishment as represented by the Lords and the changing economic and social milieu as represented by the Commons. The issue of Jewish Emancipation was but one of many issues over which this battle was fought with the Commons ultimately emerging victorious.]
1859: “In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Mannes and Tillie, the first Jews to settle in Kalamazoo” gave birth to University of Michigan astronomer Edward Israel who perished on a Polar Expedition “under the leadership of Adolphus Greely.”
1860: In Memphis, Simon Tuska was unanimously elected to serve as the rabbi at Temple Israel and signed to a three-year contract at $800 per year”
1861(23rd of Tammuz, 5621): Bernhard Beer, a member of the prominent Bondi family, who as a journalist worked for the emancipation of his co-religionists in Saxony and who, although a layman, “was the first to introduce German language sermons at the congregation in Dresden, passed away today.
1862: Russian Jews were granted permission to print Jewish books
1862: In Philadelphia, Elias Wolf and Amelia Mayer gave birth to Benjamin Wolf, the husband of Fredora Kahn the Treasurer of the National Metal Edge Box Company and Vice President of Standard Machine Company who was also the Director of the Hebrew Education Society and Vice President of the Jewish Hospital.
1862: While serving with Company H of the 61st Regiment, Jacob Miller was wounded at the Battle of Malvern Hill.
1863: First day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Just as the war pitted brother against brother, so it pitted Jew against Jew. At Gettysburg, Prussian born Major Adolph Proskauer of Mobile led the 12th Alabama against the Army of the Potomac which included Lieutenant Abraham Cohn, a native of East Prussia, who fought with the 6th New Hampshire Volunteers. Cohn fought in 11 battles and won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Proskauer did not survive his service with the Rebel Army.
For more information about Jews in the Civil War see http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar/default.htm
1863: Lieutenant Colonel Israel Moses was among those who arrived with Sickle’s brigade as it tried to stem the Confederate tide on the first day of fighting at Gettysburg.
1863: Raphael Moses, “the chief commissary officer for General Longstreet” and a confidant of General Lee was among those who found themselves facing the Union Army at the sleepy Pennsylvania village of Gettysburg.
1863: Jacob Ezekiel Hyneman had sufficiently recovered from the wounds sustained at the Battle of Brandy Station to serve with United States Army Signal Corps at the Battle of Gettysburg.
1863: “The First National Bank of Chicago” which would be described in glowing terms on its 50th anniversary by The Reform Advocate “opened its doors for business today.
1865: Lieutenant Tobias Rosensteel who had been serving with the 64th Regiment, also designated as the Fourth Cavalry since 1861 completed his military service today.
1865: American surgeon and U.S. Naval officer Phineas Jonathan Horwitz was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery with a rank equivalent to that of Commodore.
1866(18th of Tammuz, 5626): Tzom Tammuz observed because the 17th fell on Shabbat.
1867: William Flegenheimer of Baden became a U.S. citizen today.
1867: With the passage of the British North America Act, Great Britain officially recognizes the Dominion of Canada as an independent country. Jews had been living in Canada since the British took it from France in the 17th century. There were enough Jews living in Montreal to allow for the creation of a synagogue called Shearith Israel. While most members of the small Jewish community lived in various towns in the eastern part of the country enough Jews arrived in British Columbia during the Gold Rush that a synagogue was constructed in Victoria in 1862. At the time that Britain recognized the independence of Canada there were about 1,000 Jews living in “our neighbor to the North.” This number would explode shortly thereafter with the beginning of the immigration of Russian Jews.
1868: In Pittsfield, MA, “Moses and Rosa Rosenthal England gave birth to Daniel England Sr. “vice president and treasurer of England Brothers Department store” founded by his father in 1857 and the husband of “the former Myra Bendell; with whom he raised two sons and one daughter.
1869: Today, Phineas Jonathan Horwitz completed his service as Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery and moved on to take charge of the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia.
1872: In what was “first case of its kind in Prussia,” it was reported today that the “Grandlodge Royal York” has decided to admit Jews as members making 1872 a year for “firsts” since Ludwig Traube became the first Jew to be appointed “to a regular professorship in Prussia” and Harry Bresslau became the first Jew to be appointed as teacher in the Berlin public schools.
1873: Prince Edward Island joins the Canadian Confederation. Apparently, Jews did not start settling in Prince Edward Island until the first decade of the 20th century with the arrival of Louis, Israel and Abie Block. The three brothers were from Riga and may have been the Jews who were described in 1908 newspaper article as having celebrated Passover in this part of Canada.
1873: The government closed the “rabbinical school of Jitomir” where Chaim Lerner, a native of Dubno had been service as the Hebrew teacher since 1851.
1873: In Detroit, Michigan, founding of Congregation B’nai Israel whose members included Louis Goldsmidt, Meyer Jacobson and Louis Thorner and which owned a cemetery on Williams Avenue.
1873: In Berlin, Emil Cohn and his wife Deborah Lenore Cohn, the daughter of Ulrike and Marcus Mosse gave birth to Antonie Hirsch
1874: “Ivanhoe or, Rebecca, the Jewess,” a “dramatization” of Sir Walter Scott’s famous novel opened tonight at Niblo’s Theatre in New York City. The play, which presents a sympathetic depiction of Isaac of York and his daughter was well received by the audience. [Editor’s Note – The positive response of the audience to Jewish characters stands at odds at with the outbreak of genteel anti-Semitism that is soon about to infect polite society in New York and elsewhere.]
1876: Sixty-two year old Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin one of the founders of Anarchism whose anti-Semitism would seem to show that hating Jews was part of the Russian mentality regardless of political philosophy passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0003_0_01912.html
1877: It was reported today that people in Bucharest were quite surprised to learn that Jewish citizens in the United States had presented a petition to Secretary of State William Evarts asking him to intervene on behalf of their co-religionists in Romania and Turkey. According to the reports, the Jews of the region were even more surprised than the gentiles to hear of this request for intervention by the government of President Rutherford B. Hays.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F0DE0DF133FE63BBC4953DFB166838C669FDE
1871: Philadelphia merchant Edward J. Ettings’ son, Theodore Minis Etting, a student at the U.S. Naval Academy who at the age of sixteen volunteered to serve on active duty during the Civil War and who had risen to the rank of Lieutenant in 1874 resigned his commission today and began studying law which would lead to a career in maritime law that combined both of his interests.
1871: Philadelphia merchant Edward J. Ettings’ son, Theodore Minis Etting, a student at the U.S. Naval Academy who at the age of sixteen volunteered to serve on active duty during the Civil War and who had risen to the rank of Lieutenant in 1874
1877: Wilhelm Bacher “was appointed by the Hungarian government to the professorship of the newly created Landesrabbinerschule of Budapest.”
1878: Karl Nobling “shot and wounded Kaiser Wilhelm I in a failed assassination attempt.” It was the second such attempt in less than a month and provided Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the leverage of implement the Anti-Socialist Law in October which was meant to curb the growth the Marxist Social Democratic Party,
1878: At the insistence of Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck the Congress of Berlin incorporated into the Treaty of Berlin an article intended to provide the Jews of Romania with the opportunity for full citizenship. Unfortunately, the Romanians evaded the article and only a hand full of Jews would gain citizenship.
1879: In New York City, ” Berlin-born Moses Arndstein who fought in the Franco-Prussian War” and “his wife Thekla Van Shaw” gave birth to Julius W. “Nicky” Arnstein a small time gambler and swindler whose greatest claim to fame was his marriage to Fanny Brice.
1880: “A Survey of Assyrian Art” published today provided a detailed review of Manual of Oriental Antiques, Ernest Babelon’s tome about the architecture, sculpture and industrial arts of ancient civilizations which includes one chapter devoted to the Jews. The representations of “Jewish art and architecture…supplied from the work of de Vogue and from ‘The Recovery of Jerusalem’ by Wilson and Warren.”
1880: “In Chernowitz, Austria-Hungary (now Chennivst, Ukraine) Abba and Chaya Fassler (Aaron and Gussie Fassler) gave birth to Samuel Fassler, the owner of a trucking company owner before founding Fassler Iron Works before WW I who was the City Commissioner of Buildings in New York, “a trustee of Yeshiva University and “founder and president of the Ninth Street Day Nursery and Orphans Home.
1880: (12th of Tammuz): Birthdate of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok who would become the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe would overcome a terrifying imprisonment at the hands of Stalin’s henchmen in the 1920’s. Later, he would escape the clutches of the Nazis and settle in Brooklyn where he revived the cause of Chabad-Lubavitch. The Rebbe would launch, what would become under his son-in-law who was the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, one of history’s most successful Jewish outreach programs.
1881: “Scenes in Parisian Life” published today reported that “Fashionable Paris kept its word loyally” by keeping its promise not to leave the city until after the concert which was to raise funds for the Jews of Russian had been held. The Gaulois sponsored a concert that included performances by Faure and Mme. Alder-Devries the proceeds of which were to go to the “evicted and demolished Israelite of Southern Russia.”
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F05EEDD103CEE3ABC4953DFB166838A699FDE
1881: “In Częstochowa, Poland, “Sigmund and Dora Pasternak” gave birth their eldest son director and producer Joseph Alexander Pasternack , the brother of Samuel and David Pasternack and the husband of Helen Feirman with whom he “had two daughters, Florence and Cecile.”
1882: The Memphis (TN) Avalanche reported that during the commencement address delivered by George Cable at the University of Mississippi, the distinguished author call for embracing the future included the challenge - “Let us search provincialism out the land as the Hebrew housewife purged her house of leaven on the eve of the Passover.” (Apparently this custom of the Jews was so well known that the New Orleans author felt that it would be easily understood by those attending an event in rural Oxford, MS.
1883: It was reported today that ten new rabbis will be ordained later this month at the first graduation ceremony of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1883: “A Middle Age Trial” published today described the Christian community of Hungary as being dense an dark in light of the trial being conducted Nyreghhaza where Jews are charged with having killed a Christian girl “in order to use her blood in ceremonies of the Passover;” a charge that “reads like a chapter from the history of the Middle Ages…What is taking place in Hungary is what was a common occurrence a few hundred years along. It only within the present century that the cruel and causeless prejudice against Jews has disappeared in civilized communities…Hungary is only about four hundred years behind the age.” [Note – The same article contained the oddly prophetic statement “In Germany the cry is raised that a few Jew have, by their talents and industry, made themselves the ruling class.”
1883: Joseph Blumenthal completed his term as President of the Board of Trustees of Shearith Israel in New York City.
1883: Albert Moritz, who would eventually be assigned to the USS Newark, was made an Assistant Engineer today.
1883: Since the Board of Directors were in a deadlock when they voted for a new president for Shearith Israel, Joseph Blumenthal “was made Chairman Pro Tem and authored to act as President until” the board elects a president.
1884: Isaac Jacobs, a middle aged Jew, is being held in Boston, MA on charges that he murdered Mrs. Etta Carlton of Watertown in 1883. Jacobs had been extradited from New York where he had been arrested on an outstanding larceny warrant.
1884: It was reported today that anti-Semitic riots have broken out in Algiers. Order was restored by troops who put an end to the pillaging of the Jewish the city’s Jewish quarter.
1884: It was reported today that in St. Petersburg, Russia The New Times has declared its opposition to granting Jews equal rights with Christians saying that this “would be a greater misfortune for Russia” than when it had been ruled by the Mongols. [Statements like this should help readers understand the depth of anti-Semitism in Russia which propelled the massive migration to the West, primarily to the United States.]
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C05EEDF143FE533A25752C0A9619C94659FD7CF
1885: In Brooklyn, Rabbi Leopold Wintner officiated at the wedding of New Yorker Arthur Hirsch and Helen Ottolengui, the “only daughter of Daniel Ottolengui” of Charleston, SC.
1886: The first edition of the Menorah, a monthly magazine published by the B’nai Brith is scheduled to appear for the first time today.
1886: Birthdate of Ithak Katzenelson, a native of Karleichy who became a teacher, poet and dramatist. Like so many of his generation, he was caught in the web of the Holocaust. He took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising before being murdered in May of 1944. He wrote Dos lid funem oysgehargetn yidishn folk( "Song of the Murdered Jewish People") which was retrieved from its hiding place after the war and taken to Israel.
1888: Rabbi Jacob Sharp who arrived this morning at Hoboken aboard the North German Lloyd steamer met with the welcoming committee but refused to leave the ship until sundown since it was Shabbat.
1888: A summer term instituted by the trustees of the Jewish Theological Seminary will begin today. Among the instructors will be Dr. Cyrus Adler who will lecture on “Assyriology.”
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B02E3D8143AE033A25752C0A9619C94699FD7CF\
1889: Manuel of Oriental Antiquities by Enest Babelon which was reviewed today devotes one chapter to the Jews. Information on Jewish art and architecture is based on The Recovery of Jerusalem by Wilson and Warren and the works of Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé
1889: The Will of Alexander Bach which left bequests of $1,000 each to Mount Sinai Hospital, Montefiore Home for Incurables, Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society, United Hebrew Charities, Temple Gates of Hope Hebrew Free School Association, Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and Temple Israel of Harlem was executed today.
1889: Birthdate of Russian born artists and printmaker who settled in Chicago where he became a leader in the art community and an activist among Yiddish speaking artists.
1890: In San Francisco, Samuel and Lillian Magnin gave birth to Edgar Fogel, the husband of Evelyn B. Rosenthal with whom he had two children – Henry and Mae—and grandson of Mary Ann and Isaac, the founder I. Magnin department stores who was the rabbi at Congregation B’nai B’rith and the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, referred to by some as the “Hollywood House of God” because so many of its members were associated with the film and television industries.
1891: The Hansa Line Steamship Pichuben left Antwerp today carrying a large number of Jews who have been expelled from Russia.
1891(25th of Sivan, 5651): Forty-four year old Alexander Weisse, a native of Budapest who had been in the United States for six years and was the advertising agent for a German language evening paper, took his own life after attempting to murder the young girl who had been in his companion for several months.
1891: According to today’s “Theatrical Gossip” the comedy company of Jewish producer Charles Frohman “has made a great hit in Chicago” with its performance of ‘Mr. Wilkinson’s Widows.’”
1892: “Jewish Pawnshops Must Go” published today described the government’s order that all Moscow pawnshops owned by Jews will be closed. The Jews will be given six months to close down their businesses.
1892: In Sheboygan, Wisconsin, “Max and Natalie (Fradkin) Eisenberg” gave birth to U.S. Army WW I veteran David Berton Eisenberg, the husband of Natalie Marcus and “President of Graphic Arts Publishing Company” who was also a member of the B’nai B’rith in Chicago.
1892: In San Francisco, 14 year old Evelyn Kate Aronson, the daughter of Liverpool, UK, native Philip N. and Carrie Aronson and future wife of Max Margolis entered Girls High School from which she would graduate in June of 1895 and then attend the University of California, Berkley, from which she would graduate in 1900.
1892: Today’s investigation of an explosion at a New York Tenement that was home to Russian and Polish Jews including butcher shop owner Myer Kohn and the family Moses Lefkowitz revealed the fact that the tenants have been complaining about the smell of gas ever since the Consolidated Gas Company began putting a new pipe into the building. Their complaints were ignored.
1893: Birthdate of Paul Swartz, the native of Roumania who arrived in Canada in 1913 and served at El Arish, Rafa, Ludd, Haifa, Kandara and Ismaliah as a member of the Jewish Legion from which he was demobilized in 1919 allowing him to return to Canada in 1919 where he married and had four children.
1894: It was reported today that the Hebrew Institute will be hosting free talks by leading physicians on the “Care and Feeding of Infants and Children During the Warm Weather.”
1894: It was reported today that the 265 students who have stayed at Cypress Hill, a facility for truants, in the past year, 18 of them have been Jewish.
1894: In a comment that would have a rabbi proud, Dr. Jesse W. Brooks told his Christian audience that “of all the ancient nations…the Hebrew was the only survivor because it obeyed God’s injunction to keep holy the Sabbath Day.”
1895: It was reported today that “the notorious Jew-baiter Hermann Ahlwardt” is among those who are about to be prosecuted by the Imperial Treasury “for their flagrant misuse of free passes to canal fetes.”
1895: A group of underprivileged children left today for a two day excursion at the Rockaway Beach Hebrew Sanitarium.
1895: Colonel Nicolas Jean Robert Conrad Auguste Sandherr left his job at the Statistical Section (the counter-espionage service of the French Army) to take command of the 20th Infantry Regiment at Montauban. In 1894, when the Statistical Section had intercepted a handwritten note that established that French military secrets had been handed over to the Germans, Sandherr convened the secret commission that “hastily” decided Alfred Dreyfus was the spy. Sandherr was replaced by Colonel Georges Picquart who was a key figure in proving Dreyfus’ innocence.
1896: Newark, NJ native Louis Schlesinger, the founder of the Union Building Company and his wife, the former Sophie Levy gave birth to Joel L. Schlesinger, the younger brother of Princeton graduate and U.S. Army Lieutenant Alexander L. Schlesinger.
1897: Birthdate of Cleveland native Albert “Bert” Schneider, the Montreal raised boxer who “won the gold med in the welterweight division” at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp as a member of the Canadian team.
1898: In the Spanish-American War Teddy Roosevelt & his Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba. The Rough Riders was a cavalry unit recruited by Roosevelt that drew on every strata of American life from Western cowboys to Yankee Bluebloods. Several Jews served with the unit including Jacob Wilbusky, the first Roughrider killed in action, Hyman Rafalowitz of Santa Fe, NM, who was a Private with Troop of the first 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, Adolph S. Wertheim of San Antonio, TX, who was a Private with Troop G of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, Frederick W. Wolff of San Antonio, Tx, who was a Private with Troop D and Hyman Litowski of Santa Fe, NM who was a private in Troop E of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. The Roughriders were forced to leave their horses back the United States so the famous charge was made on foot.
1898: Three days after she had passed away, Priscilla Boam, the daughter of Henry Lyons and Rachel Hart and the wife of Joseph Boam with whom she had had six children was buried today in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery.”
1898(11th of Tammuz, 5658): Sixteen year old Jacob Wilbusky of New York who had “enlisted in the Rough Riders under the name ‘Jacob Berlin’” was killed today “in the first skirmish.”
1898: Private Samuel Goldberg of Santa Fe, NM of Troop F, Rough Riders, 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry was wounded today in action today.
1898: Four days after she had passed away, 49 year old Johana Plunket was buried today in London at the “Plashet Jewish Cemtery.”
1898: Adolph Marix who had served on the USS Maine before it was sunk took part in the Second Battle of Manzanillo today as the commander of the USS Scorpion.
1899: The Conference of the English Zionist Federation comes to an end.
1899: After five years of imprisonment, Alfred Dreyfus who had returned to France yesterday was locked up today in the military prison in Rennes.
1900: Herzl turns to Prime Minister Koerber and asks him to use his influence with the Sultan to permit the Rumanian Jews to immigrate into Turkey and to receive him, in order to discuss the question of colonization and settlement.
1901: In New York City, “Moses and Runia Halpern gave birth to NYU trained attorney “Yitzhak Isidore Halpern.”
1901: The month in Morgan City, LA the building housing Shaarey Zedek burned down.
1901: In Chicago, two Jewish immigrants, William S. and Betty (Buxbaum) Phillips gave birth to their tenth child, Irna Phillips, who began creating soap operas in the 1930’s.
1902: In Alsace, Leopold Weiller and Melanie Auerbach gave birth to Wilhelm Weiller who gained fame as Oscar winning director Billy Wyler whose many classics including the World War II tear-jerker Mrs. Miniver. Ironically, his greatest hit was The Best Years of Our Lives, a film that described the return of four veterans to civilian life after World War II. Once again, the Jews played a major role in crafting the cultural myths of Middle American Culture.
1902: In Grodno, Barnett and Rebecca Feinstein Cohen gave birth to American comedian Myron Aaron Cohen.
1903: Jacob A. Voice, the Jassy, Rumania born son of Nathan and Sofia Voice who was a senior manager with the Consolidated Lithographing Company and the Pasbach-Voice Lithographing Company while serving as a trustee of the Temple Israel of Far Rockaway married Edith I. Littenberg today.
1903: It was reported in this month’s issue of the Maccabean that “Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago” told the members of the Council of Jewish Women, that she “thinks Jewish women are peculiarly well prepared to fill a place in the larger life” and “that among all the women in the foreign quarters of Chicago none showed the same aptitude as Jewish women for absorbing the civic and social spirit characteristic of modern life.”
1904: As of today, only one person has been reported to have been injured in fire that broke out at the old Mount Sinai Hospital, which is being torn down and was started by the explosion of leaking gas.
1905: Sixty-six year old former Secretary of State John Hay whom The Board of Delegates on Civil and Religious Rights of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations hailed for his support of the Jews in Romania and Kishinev, passed away today.
1906: As of today, the Central Conference of American Rabbis has a total membership of 191.
1906: On New York’s Lower East side, “Russian immigrants Harry and Clara Pressman gave birth to Lee Pressman Harvard Law School graduate turned Communist spy.
1906: The Jewish Herald reported today that “in Sydney, Australia, rabbis are not permitted to receive proselytes until the board of the congregation passes on them.”
1906: In Queens, NY, Rose Schotz Rosenthal, and Max Mentzer gave birth to Josephine Esther Mentzer who became famous as Estée Laude, a woman who took her place in the world of business in a manner that marked her as a trailblazer. She was the co-founder, along with her husband, Joseph Lauder, of Estée Lauder Companies and the mother of Jewish leader Ronald Lauder.
1906: Birthdate of Estee Lauder. Lauder was born Josephine Esther Mentzer, the daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. She married Joseph Lauter who changed the family named to Lauder in the late 1930’s. Mrs. Lauder was CEO of Estee Lauder’s Cosmetics. . She was one of several Jewish women who found fame and fortune in the cosmetics business. She was the only woman on Time magazine's 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the 20th century. She passed away in 2004 at the age of 97.
1906: “At 3 Kew-villas, Jersey, Alfred Krichefski and his wife, the former Sarah Blank, gave birth to a daughter.
1907: Birthdate of famed sportscaster Bill Stern.
1907: As of today, the Central Conference of American Rabbis has a total membership of 201
1907: Corresponding Secretary Tobias Schanfarber reported that during the fiscal year that ended today the Central Conference of American Rabbis have issued 89 vouchers amounting to $6,959.73.
1907: The SS Cassel entered the port of Galveston, Texas with 87 Russian Jews aboard, heralding the start of the Galveston Movement - an organized attempt to bring Jews to less populated parts of the US.
1908: The Hebrew Board of Relief contributed $50 to the National Conference of Jewish Charities.
1909: Birthdate of Antonina Pirozhkova, the common-law widow of Russian literary giant Isaac Babel who wrote a well-received memoir that provided a rare glimpse of the persecuted writer's final years in the 1930s.
1909: It was reported today that a helicopter built by Jewish inventor Emile Berliner and J. Newton Williams had lifted Williams “from the ground on three occasions at Berliner’s laboratory in the Brightwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
1910: Birthdate of Viennese native Harry Bachrach, who came to the United States after Anschluss where he became a manufacture of neckties, a student at Iona College and “elected Man of the Year by Men’s Neckware Foundation.
1910: “Samuel Steiner began serving as a member of “the Board of Visitors of the Virginia State School for Colored Deaf and Blind Children at Newport News.”
1911(5thof Tammuz, 5671): Parashat Korach
1911: “The Federation of American Zionists” did not meet today during their annual convention due to it being the Sabbath but many of the delegates from “a message from Dr. Max Nordeau declaring that American restriction of immigration would tend to close to the Jews their most important harbor of refuge” and “he urged the Zionists to oppose” any restrictive measures
1912: “Owing to the lack of space, the Trade School” of the Chicago Hebrew Institute was discontinued today.
1913(26thof Sivan, 5673): Forty-seven year old Emanuel Abrahams passed away today after which he was buried at the Jewish Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.
1913(26th of Sivan, 5673): Seventy-eight year old Nanette Flesch, the aunt of Walter, Eugene, W.P., Edwin and Rose K. Flesch passed away today at the Home for Aged Jews in Chicago.
1913(26th of Sivan, 5673): Emanuel (Manny) Abrahams, the 20th ward alderman who was born in Chicago in 1866 and went from begin a saloon owner to a career in politics that included serving as “bailiff in the Maxwell Street Court” passed away “after having spoken before the City Council Judiciary Committee” today.
1914: Worton Hall Studios, one of the two studios that will later become Isleworth Studios were officially opened today under the leadership of producer George Berthold Samuelson.
1914: “Journalist, satirist and writer Kurt Tucholsky, who would be baptized in 1918, “left the Jewish community today.”
1914: This morning at 9:30, Rabbi William of Friedman is scheduled to offer the opening prayer at today’s session of the “25th anniversary conference of the Central Conference of American Rabbis” being held “at Temple Beth El in Detroit, Michigan.”
1915: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. Joseph Louis Ransohoff II, a surgeon who himself was the son of a surgeon and his wife gave birth to pioneer neurosurgeon Dr. Joseph Louis Ransohoff II, who married psychotherapist Rita Meyer in 1940 and after divorcing her married Lori Cohen, DDS.
1915: John M. Slaton, the former Governor of Georgia “who commuted the sentence of Leo M. Frank to life imprisonment” talked with reporters today that he would return to Atlanta “after a trip to San Francisco and would continue his law practice there” which some might consider a rather bold statement considering the anger felt at the time of the commutation.
1915: The list of newly elected officers of Hadassah published today included Henrietta Szold, Chairman; Sophia Berger, Treasurer; Lotta Levensohn, Recording Secretary and Rose A. Herzog, Corresponding Secretary who enjoy the support of such prominent Jews as Mrs. Richard Gottheil, Mrs. B.A. Rosenblatt and Miss Alice L. Seligsberg.
1916: In New York City Rose and Samuel W. Halprin gave birth to landscape architect Lawrence Halprin
1916: “The advisability of resurrecting a petition addressed to President Harrison in 1891 asking that the United States help the Jews re-establish themselves in Palestine will be discussed at the convention of the Zionist Organization of America which opened” in Philadelphia today.
1916: In Wildwood, NJ, “the 27th convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis formally opened its business sessions tonight with the reading of the annual message of the President, Rabbi William Rosenau of Baltimore.”
1916: As the Battle of the Somme began, English composer Jane Marian Joseph who had left Gitron College, Cambridge, took up part-time welfare work in Islington as part of her attempt to assist in the war effort.
1917: Per the request of Colonel Milton J. Foreman, the conversion of the First Cavalry unit of the Illinois National Guard in the Second Field Artillery began today – a change that Foreman wanted because he felt that would lead to his unit going to fight in France sooner than later.
1917: This evening a banquet is scheduled to be held as part of the Ninth Annual Convention of Young Judaea being held in Asbury Park, NJ.
1917: Birthdate of Manhattan native and cartoon artist Jack Adler the winner of the Shazam Award for Best Colorist in 1971.
1918: “According to word received” today in New York by cable “842 American citizen are now in the hands of the Turks in Damascus and other cities of Galilee have been” forcibly “removed from Jerusalem when the Turk evacuated” that city as the British approached the city prior to its capture.
1919: In act of gemilut chasadim, Elias A. Cohen hosted the first of the many summer “camps” for “deserving boys and girls at “Tranquility Farm and Camp.
1920: Sir Herbert Samuel, a British statesman was appointed High Commissioner of Eretz-Israel. His first official act was to grant amnesty to political prisoners including Jabotinsky. He governed the British Mandate for five years. Sir Herbert governed as a British official, not as a Jew and there were clashes between him and some Zionist leaders.
1920: In an attempt to strengthen the American labor movement, Benjamin “Schlesinger addressed a letter to the Neckwear Workers' Union of New York, the International Journeymen Tailors' Union of America, the International Fur Workers' Union, the United Garment Workers of America, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and the United Cloth Hat, Cap Makers and Millinery Workers' Union of America, proposing an alliance of all garment workers unions.”
1920: Nashville, TN born Reform Rabbi Abram Simon, the longtime leader of Washington Hebrew Congregation was elected president of the Board of Education today.
1921: Dr. Thomas G. Allen, Secretary of the Oriental Institute announced today that the thanks to a $60,000 grant by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. the University of Chicago will excavate the site of Armageddon or Megiddo.
1922: After 96 performances at the Winter Garden Theatre the curtain came down on “Make It Snappy” a musical revue starring Eddie Cantor, who introduced the hit songs Yes! We Have No Bananas and The Sheik of Araby.
1922: In Syracuse, NY, prominent lawyer Warren Winkelstein and his wife gave birth to Warren Winkelstein, Jr. “a physician and researcher whose groundbreaking studies connected unprotected sex between men to AIDS, smoking to cervical cancer and air pollution to chronic lung disease” (As reported by Denise Grady)
1923: Fast of the 17th of Tammuz
1923: In Mannheim, Germany, Otto Michel, the owner of a cigar factory and the former Frieda Wolff gave birth to Ernst Wolfgang Michel the Holocaust survivor who lived to the ripe old age of 92.
1923:”The Heights Jewish Center,” which “initially met in the home of Jacob Makorr, was established “as the Heights Orthodox Congregation,” “the first Jewish Congregation in Cleveland’s eastern suburbs.
1924: Birthdate of economist Harvey Joshua Levin
1924: In London Kathleen Garman and Jacob Epstein gave birth Theodore Garman, the English painter known simply as “Theo.”
1926: The New York Joint Board called a general strike by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGUWU)
1926: Birthdate of Robert William Fogel, “Nobel-winning economist whose number-crunching empiricism upended established thinking, most provocatively about the economics of slavery” (As reported by Robert D. Hershey)
1927: (12th of Tammuz): Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok is liberated from his death sentence and imprisonment in the Soviet Union. With the outbreak of World War II, the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe would make his way to New York where he would establish the headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch in Crown Heights. From there, he would launch what would become a highly successful world-wide outreach program designed to educate Jews and heighten their awareness of their heritage.
1929: Opening of Earl Carroll’s Sketch book with the “book” by Eddie Cantor.
1929: Julian Mack “was reassigned as an additional judge to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.:
1929: In Queens, NY, Dr. Edward Edelman and Anna (née Freedman) Edelman gave birth to Gerald Maurice Edelman, “an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.”
1930: At the morning session of the International Wailing Wall Commission, Rabbi Ben Zion Meyer Uziel, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, described Jewish prayer rituals conducted at the Wall declaring that the High Commissioner’s recent ban on the use of the Torah Scroll, Lulav, tefillin and tallit was unacceptable. While questioning Rabbi Uziel, Arab leader Abdul Auni implied that the Zionists were using bogus claims of the right to worship at the Wall as a form of propaganda to recruit Jews to settle in Palestine. At this afternoon's meeting of the International Wailing Wall Commission, the three commissioners watched a movie filmed in 1911 showing Jewish men and women praying at the wall, Jewish worshippers sitting on benches and Jewish women kissing the stones of the Wall. The commissioners pronounced the film as authentic and thus it became further evidence of the long standing connection of the Jewish people to the Wall. The International Wailing Wall Commission was established by the League of Nations after Arab rioters violently denied Jews access to the Western Wall
1930: Birthdate of Carol Doris Schatz, the Philadelphia native who would marry Noam Chomsky in 1949 and gain fame in her own right as a linguist and educator. Mrs. Chomsky passed away at the age of 78 in December of 2008.
1930: Three hundred delegates are expected to attend the “eighth annual convention of Junior Hadassah” opening today in Cleveland, Ohio.
1930: Julian Mack “was reassigned to serve solely on the Second Circuit.
1930: In this month’s issue of The Atlantic Harvard Professor William Ernest Hocking describes his view of conflict between “Zionists” and Arabs in “Palestine: An Impasse?” in which claim that the “two enemies of peace…are fanaticism and fear.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1930/07/palestine-an-impasse/306750/
1932: Over the next 11 months (June 1, 1933), the ZOA will clear the cases of 1,622 people wishing to settle in Palestine.
1932: Release date for the German film Mensch ohne Namen (Man Without a Name) featuring performances by Julius Falekenstein a Jewish actor who died the same year the Nazis came to power and Fritz Grünbaum who would die at Dachau where he performed for the last time for his fellow prisoners on New Year’s Eve, two weeks before his death in January, 1941.
1932: Birthdate of Ze’ev Schiff, the French born Jew who gained fame as an Israeli journalist and military correspondent for Haaretz.
1933: With a message of "cordial greetings and best wishes" from President Roosevelt and a declaration that "the calamity that has overtaken the 600.000 Jews in Germany has cast a shadow over everything else in Jewish life," the Zionist Organization of America opened its convention today in Chicago. Five thousand delegates and observers attended this meeting which was described as being the largest in the history of the ZOA. At this evening’s opening session at the Palmer House, Moriss Rothenberg, President of the ZOA reported that 20,000 Jews had entered the National Home in the last 18 months and that during 1932 12 million dollars in new investments had been made in Palestine. While Rothenberg had words of praise for the British High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Grenfeel Wauchope, he was highly critical of the Mandatory Government (the British) for not increasing the allotment of immigration certificates in light of the events in Germany.
1933 The German government states that "Reich Chancellor Hitler still belongs to the Catholic Church and has no intention of leaving it."
1934: Birthdate of director Sydney Pollack whose hits have included Tootsie and Presumed Innocent.
1934: Erich Gans was murdered in Dachau. It was the last such murder for ten months. The Jewish population at Dachau was almost non-existent at the time since most had been killed or released by end of 1933.
1934: The New York Times reviews From Nebuchadnezzar to Hitler by Danish author Peter Hemmer Gudme. In this sympathetic study of the Zionist movement which the reviewer is sure will be translated in English, the non-Jewish Gudme traces the ancient connection of the Jewish people with their homeland before describing modern efforts beginning with Pinsker, Hess and Herzl to create a modern Jewish home in Palestine. Gudme will die at the hands of the Nazis in Copenhagen in 1945.
1934(18th of Tammuz, 5694): Tzom Tammuz observed
1934: Birthdate of Jewish author Leonard Fein.
1935(30th of Sivan, 5695): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1935(30th of Sivan, 5695): In London, Sir Francis Abraham Montefiore the head of the London Portuguese community and a great philanthropist passed away today after which he was buried in the Spanish and Portuguese Jews Cemetery on Mile End Road, London
1935: In the Nahalat Ahim quarter of Jerusalem, Rosa and Musa Kraus gave birth to Israeli entertainer Shmuel “Shmulik” Kraus.
1936: Alexander Berkman, the anarchist who attempted to assassinate Carnegie Steel Chairman Henry Clay Frick in 1892 was buried today in the Cochez Cemetery on the outskirts of Nice, France under the direction of his long time comrade Emma Goldman
1936: The Palestine Post reported from London that the House of Commons discussed the question of the composition of the proposed Royal Commission for Palestine. The Colonial Secretary, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, explained that the appointment of women members to the commission was undesirable, due to the sensitivities of the Moslems and Orthodox Jews.
1936: As Arab violence continued to intensify, The Palestine Post reported that the Christian communities of Beit Jala and Kafr Kana were warned by Arab terrorists that they must deliver 60 young men as volunteers for their ranks, or face the consequences. There were sporadic shootings, bombs thrown and trees uprooted throughout the country. Two British soldiers were hurt by flying debris during the demolition of houses in the old quarter of Jaffa.
1936: In New York City, Lewis and Augusta Feuchtwanger gave birth to Rebecca Feuchtwanger.
1937: The Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition of "unacceptable" artwork by Jews and others opens in Munich. A concurrent event of "approved" art held nearby attracts far fewer people than the Entartete Kunst
1937: Pastor Martin Niemöller's anti-Semitism does not prevent the Nazis from arresting him because of his opposition to Hitler.
1937: William George Arthur Ormsby Gore, the Secretary of State for Colonies announced today in the House of Common the British Government will attempt “to end the Jewish-Arab unrest in Palestine by a partition scheme as drastic as the separation of the North and South of Ireland fifteen years ago.”
1938: “Having Wonderful Time,” a film version of Arthur Kober’s 1937 play with a script by Morrie Ryskind was released in the United States today.
1938: Birthdate of Diane Silvers Ravitch, a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and former United States Assistant Secretary of Education who became a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
1938: As of today, “the Italian Government has taken measures against the Jewish intelligentsia by issuing decrees designed to prevent or limit circulation of books by Jewish authors among the Italian public” which puts the lie to the statement of February 16 by the Foreign Ministry that “it was completely erroneous to think the Italian Government was about to inaugurate an anti-Semitic policy since no specifically Italian Jewish problem existed.”
1938: Under a proposal called the Sosua Project, the Dominican Republic offers to accept 100,000 European Jewish refugees, to be settled in an area near Santo Domingo, in return for payment of millions of dollars from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). (Under the plan the Dominican Republic actually admitted on only about 500 Jews by 1940 when immigration was halted)
1939: Fourteen year old Rudolf Wessely arrives in London from Prague. Wessely was the son of Charles Wessely, a successful Czech businessman and civil servant. The British could find room for the son but not his 43 year old father or 38 year old mother
1939: In Park Ridge, Norman Ziegler and the former Elsie Reif gave birth to Karen Blanche Ziegler who gained fame as actress Karen Black who starred in two 1970’s cult films – “Easy Rider” and “Five Easy Pieces.”
1940: A war emergency program to aid in the defense of the 500,000 Jews in Palestine was adopted unanimously by the convention of the Zionist Organization of America meeting today in Pittsburgh, PA.
1940: The America First Committee is formed. It is the most significant American isolationist group, and it is also infiltrated by Nazis, who are working to prevent American intervention in Europe. Several prominent Americans speak in support of the committee. Many in Congress attack the Jews of Hollywood as attempting to involve America in opposition to Hitler.
1940: Bloody anti-Jewish riots erupt in cities throughout Romania
1940: In a letter to German Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Bishop Theophil Wurm, head of the provincial Lutheran Church at Württemberg, Germany, objects to "euthanasia" killings at the nearby Grafaneck crippled-children's institution; See September 5, 1940.
1940: In Holland, a collaborationist propaganda group, Nederlandse Unie (Netherlands Union), is established.
1940: A Jewish ghetto is established at Bedzin, Poland.
1940: U.S. premiere of “The Sea Hawk” a 16th century swashbuckler directed by Michael Crtiz, produced by Hal B. Wallis with music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): The first day of a three day killing spree in Drohobych, during which Ukrainians, assisted by Whermacht soldiers killed three hundred Jews.
1941: A Pogrom in Jassy, the cradle of Rumanian anti-Semitism claimed 5000 Jewish lives.
1941: In New Haven, CT, Alfred Gilman who co-authored Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics and his wife gave birth to Dr. Alfred G. Gilman recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1941: British code breakers monitoring radio traffic coming from German troops in the Soviet Union become aware of Nazi massacres of Soviet Jews.
1941: Two thousand members of Minsk, Belorussia's intelligentsia are executed by German troops in a nearby forest.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): More than 2500 Jews are slaughtered at Zhitomir, Ukraine.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): During an Einsatzkommando Aktion (murder operation) at Mielnica, Ukraine, a Jew named Abraham Weintraub hurls himself on a German officer and shatters the officer's teeth. Weintraub is immediately shot.
1941: In the Bialystok region of Poland, Nazis murder 300 members of the Jewish intelligentsia.
1941: German killing squads begin to murder Jews remaining in Kishinev, Romania.
1941: The Hungarian government undertakes a mass roundup of almost 18,000 Jewish refugees for deportation to Kamenets-Podolski, Ukraine.
1941: Twenty-two-year-old Jew Haya Dzienciolski finds a pistol, leaves Novogrudok, Ukraine, and helps to organize a group of young partisans in nearby forests.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): One hundred Jews are murdered at Lyakhovichi, Belorussia.
1941 (6th of Tammuz, 5701): Hundreds of Jews are killed at Plunge, Lithuania.
1941 In the Ukrainian town of Koritz, Nazi troops begin what would become a three day murder spree. The Jews are forced to prepare three burial pits, one each for men, women, and children. For sport, a man's corpse is propped atop one of the pits, in which some Jews have been buried alive.
1941: Members of the Einsatzgruppen, the Wehrmacht, and Esalon Special, a Romanian unit, begin murdering the Jews of Bessarabia in eastern Romania. By August 31st, they will have killed more than 150,000 Jews.
1942: Hundreds of German Jews are deported to the ghetto/camp at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. In Paderborn, Germany, all Jewish orphans are deported to Theresienstadt.
1942: In the Netherlands, the Westerbork “deportation” Camp became operational. The camp had originally been established by the Dutch government as a place to house German Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. The term deportation camp is a bit mis-leading since it was the last stop before arriving Auschwitz,, Bergen-Belsen or the other death camps.
1942: Seven trains of Jewish deportees leave Westerbork, Holland, for the Auschwitz death camp.
1942: Today, Abraham Icek Tuschinski a Dutch businessman of Jewish Polish descent who ordered the construction of the Tuschinski Theater, a famed cinema in Amsterdam, “was transported to the Westerbork concentration camp in the northeast of the Netherlands, and from there to Auschwitz, where he was murdered.:
1942: At Kleck, Belorussia, a few dozen Jews break out and join partisans.
1942 (16th of Tammuz, 5702): The Jewish community at Gorodenka, Ukraine, is wiped out.
1942: Extermination activities at the Sobibór death camp are temporarily halted for railway construction and enlargement of the camp's gas chambers.
1943: In an American radio broadcast, U.S. Congressman Emanuel Celler excoriates the U.S. government for its continuing silence on Nazi treatment of European Jews. This is the same Congressman Celler whom Senator Bilbo of Mississippi will refer to as a “kike” while giving a speech in the Upper Chamber; a reference that brings no response from those who hear it and who will guide the 1964 Civil Rights Act to a successful in the House of Representatives.
1943: The American Women's International League for Peace and Freedom estimates that millions of Jews have already been murdered by the Germans in Poland, and that the American government and people share in the guilt for these atrocities because they are complacent cowards covered "with a thick layer of prejudice."
1943: Forty-eight year old Willem Arondeus., a member the Resistance Council which worked to provide Jews with false documents that would keep them out of the clutches of the Nazis and declared after his capture that “"Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards." was executed by a firing squad today.
1944(10th of Tammuz, 5704): Parshat Chukat
1944(10th of Tammuz, 5704): Forty-nine year Austrian born screenwriter Carl Mayer who had fled to London to escape the Nazis lost his two year battle with cancer died today almost penniless and forgotten.
1944: During the month of July, Jewish-Soviet partisans from Poland and Lithuania are active behind the lines at Lublin, Poland, and Kovno, Vilna, and Siauliai, Lithuania, as Soviet troops approach from the east.
1944(10thof Tammuz, 5704): Fifty-eight year old Coshocton, OH native and Ohio State University trained attorney Edwin J Schanfarber, the vice president and director of the National Hospital for Consumptives at Denver and the president of the United Jewish Fund and the Jewish Welfare Federation.
1944: The Red Army liberates Lvov, Ukraine.
1944: The SS completes the evacuation of the death camp at Majdanek
1944: The SS evacuates the concentration camp at Kovno, Lithuania
1944: Neutral Switzerland ends long-standing, restrictive Jewish-immigration standards and admits all Jewish refugees who wish and are able to enter.
1944: Jewish-American Lieutenant Colonel Murray C. Bernays is assigned by the U.S. Army Civil Affairs Division to collect evidence of war crimes committed against American servicemen. Bernays begins to formulate his concept of Nazism as a criminal conspiracy, which will be central to the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-46.
1944: Eighteen year old Eva Fahidi arrived at Auschwitz.
1944: As the war put additional strains on the German labor force, 1,000 Jews were taken from Birkenau and put to work within Germany.
1944: “There were still 185 Jews living in Magdeburg, mainly partners of mixed marriages, who managed to survive the war.” The Magdeburg Jewish community was one of the oldest in Germany dating back to 965.
1944: In New York, Joseph Geffen and Therese Aub Geffen, the daughter of Jacob ad Bertha Mack, gave birth to Alice Geffen
1944: “I’ll Be Seeing You” “a popular song, with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Irving Kahal” reached number on the pop charts today.
1945: Establishment of “The Central Committee of the Liberated Jews”, whose primary offices were located in Munich, close to Leipheim. “The Central Committee represented 175,000 Jews living in the DP camps in the American and British zones in Germany and Austria.” The committee was dissolved in December of 1950. (As reported by Yad Vashem Archives)
1945: In New York, Yiddish-language actors, Pesach Burstein and Lillian Lux gave birth to Michael Burstein, who gained fame as actor Mike Burstyn.
1945: “The first regular passenger service at the Nahariya Railway Station began today during the British Mandate.
1945: Nathan D. Perlman was re-appointed as Justice of the Court of Special Sessions of the City New York today.
1946: The Haganah officially withdrew from its alliance with Irgun and Lehi. The Haganah did not renounce its role in defending the Yishuv against the British and Arab attacks.
1946: It was reported today that "Palestine Jews were considering a campaign of passive resistance" aimed at the British while the Irgun was threatening to kill three British hostages.
1946: As American businessmen, labor leaders, and consumers adjusted to the first day without the existence of the OPA, "Israel Sachs, president of Sachs Quality Stores, announced that" his stores "would raise prices." "At the same time he "appealed to Congress to enact immediately 'intelligent, workable price legislation.'" At the same time, "Victor A. Fishcell, vice president and general sales manager of Seagram-Distillers Corporaton announced that Seagram was continuing its shipments at regular OPA ceiling prices."
1946: During an interview given today at the New York office of the United Jewish Appeal, Rabbi Leopold Neuhaus that "Jews returning from concentration camps owned nothing but cast-off army clothing and were living under 'infinitely worse considitons' than the Germans. Rabbi Neuhuas, the "former Chief Rabbi of Hessen and liaison officer with the American Military Government in Germany" said that "the situation of the Jews in Europe is growing more critical, with displaced persons embittered by their 'no-man's land' status and the renewal of anti-Semitic outbursts in many countries."
1946: "Dr. Nahum Goldman, a member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, said at a press conference today that Great Britain's latest program was a provocation to war, not only to the Palestinian Jews but to those all over the world. Dr. Goldman described as a 'breach of faith'...the arrest of 2,000 Jews in Palestine. 'If Britain persists in her present aggressive policy against the Jewish population in Palestine and its officially recognized leaders and bodies, she will create a state of permanent hostility against Britain on the part of Jews everywhere.' Dr. Goldman denied statements that the" British "government had informed" the United States government of its plans to crack down on the Jews of Palestine, including a massive round-up of Jewish leaders.
1946: "Three hundred persons attended a funeral service today at the Free Synagogue, 40 West Sixty-Eighth Street, for Dr. Emanuel Libman, noted diagnostician, who died on Friday at the age of 73." During the service, Dr. Stephen S. Wise praised his friend of sixty years, Dr. Libman, for his efforts to train medical professionals and for his work on behalf of Mt. Sinai Hospital and the medical facilities at "the Jewish University of Jerusalem."
1946:
1946: In what would prove to be the first act in series of event that would lead to a pogrom in Kielce, Poland , eight-year-old Henryk Blaszcyk of Kielce, Poland, hitched a ride to his old hometown, visiting friends and picking cherries. Since his parents did not know about this they filed a missing person report with the local police.
1946: The Fair Employment Practices Commission issued a final report as it was forced to close down due to Congress' failure to enact legislation that it would have extended its existence. The report warned that "Wartime gains of Negro, Mexican-American and Jewish workers are being los through an 'unchecked revival' of discriminatory practices." The report also said that "a survey of job seeking by Jews since V-J Day conducted in fifteen cities, showed a marked rise of discrimination against all Jewish applicants and that 'Jews who had fought for their country fared no better than those who had not.'"
1946: In a displaced persons camp at Stuttgart, German Jacob and Fanny Silberman gave birth to Rosie Silberman who as Rosalie Abella became Canada’s first Jewish woman justice.
1946: The Mayor’s Committee on Unity headed by Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. recommended to that the Board of Regents conduct an investigation “into racial and religious discrimination in the admission of students to intuitions of higher learning…” The committee contended that “there could not long be any reasonable doubt that racial and religious discrimination was practiced by” colleges and universities “in New York and elsewhere” usually through the employment of some kind of quota system. According to the committee’s findings, this discrimination is directed at “Jewish, Negro, Catholic and Italian students.” While Medical Schools seem to be the prime practitioners of this discriminatory behavior, “it exists in other graduate and undergraduate schools as well.”
1947: Arthur S. Davis, the treasurer of the E. Greenbaum Meat Packing Company was honored with a testimonial dinner tonight “for his work on behalf of the HIAS” during which the featured speaker, former Senator James M. Mead “declared that in post-war Wurope the solution for the problems of the Jews as well as other displaced persons lies in ‘immigration now.’”
1947: “In a statement to the Associated Press, Haganah announced an early end to its temporary interruption of immigration which was halted for a time because of difficulties in ports of embarkation.”
1948: In Jerusalem Yehudith and Yaacov gave birth to Michael (Mickey) Gal (Hepner) who would be among the crewman lost when the Dakar sank in 1968
1948: On the night of July 1 - 2, the first shipment of arms to be used by the Jewish forces arrived from Czechoslovakia by air. The arms were landed in a single DC-4 trans-port. The twin engine plane delivered 200 rifles, 40 machine guns and 150,000 rounds of ammunition. In an act of daring, the plane landed at an abandoned British air field which was illuminated by intermittent flashes of light so that the British forces would find out what was happening. The Jewish state was still six weeks way from reality and at this point in time, the British were doing all they could to disarm the Jews even as the Arab attacks grew bolder and more deadly. The weapons would be used in Operation Nachshon, the desperate attempt on the part of the Yishuv to open the road from the coast to Jerusalem, thus ending the Arab siege of Jerusalem.
1948: Birthdate of Michael (Mickey) Gal (Hepner), son of Yehudith and Yaacovm the native of Jerusalem who perished aboard the INS Dotan at the age of 20.
1949(4thof Tammuz, 5709): Sixty-one year old attorney and Democratic Party member Benjamin Charles Ribman, “a leader in the civic and Jewish communities” passed away today in Brooklyn.
1949: At the Rockdale Avenue Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. Nelson Glueck, the President of Hebrew Union College and Rabbi Victor Reichert officiated at the funeral services for Dr. David Philipson who served as Rabbi of Rockdale Temple for 61 years and who was the last surviving member of the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College.
1950: Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, the 75 year old conduct emeritus conductor of the Boston Symphony is scheduled to conduct at the Tanglewood Music Festival in the Berkshire Hills.
1951: Six Arab terrorists were killed in two engagements with security forces in Emek Hefer, Israel. A number of other infiltrators fled into the Jordanian-occupied territory across the border.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that six Arab terrorists were killed in two engagements with security forces in Emek Hefer. A number of other infiltrators fled into the Jordanian-occupied territory across the border.
1951: In “A Fertile Error” published today H.R. Trevor-Roper reviewed The Jews and Modern Capitalism by Werner Sombart who had written in Deutscher Sozialismus his contention that “the antithesis of the German spirit is the Jewish spirit, which is not a matter of being born Jewish or believing in Judaism but is a capitalistic spirit” and the "chief task" of the German people and National Socialism is to destroy the Jewish spirit.”
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel presented to the US State Department a detailed aide-memoire urging the settlement of Israel's $1.5 billion restitution claim against Germany. The police had so far examined 150 war-crimes cases since the Knesset passed the War Crimes Law, directed at persons who cooperated with the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. The experience of the first few cases had raised some doubts as to the possibility of obtaining convincing evidence against the accused.
1952(8th of Tammuz, 5712): Seventy-five year old Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach the Philadelphian who, along with his brother found the Rosenbach Museum and Library passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/23/travel/a-library-where-rare-is-common.html?pagewanted=all
1953: Harry A. Shulman, the Belarus native who came to the United States as a child in 1912 and after graduating from Harvard Law School eventually became a Professor at Yale Univeristy “received an honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from Brown University,” his alma mater today.
1953: Paramount Pictures releases “Stalag 17” directed and produced by Billy Wilder, with a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Edwin Blum, with a score by Franz Waxman and featuring Otto Preminger as the Nazi prison camp commandant. (Editor’s note – this is a great, must-see film)
1954: Harry A. Schulman became the Dean of the Yale Law School today, less than a year before he would die from cancer.
1953: “The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T” “a musical fantasy film” produced by Stanley Kramer was released in the United States today.
1955: “Ain’t Misbehavin” a musical comedy starring Piper Laurie (Rosetta Jacobs) and produced by Samuel Marx.
1956:Funeral Services are scheduled to be held in Forest Hills for Albert Farkas, the husband Sari Farkas, and the father of “Robert and the late George” Farkas who was “President of the American Cloak and Suit Manufacturers Association” which he also served as an executive board member.
1958: Birthdate of Brooklynite Nancy Lieberman.
1958: Yosef Burg completed his term as Minister of Communications
1959: “Master of Persuasion” published today provided a sketch of the life and accomplishments of David Ben-Gurion.
1961: Coronet Magazine published “Rudolf Kasztner” Eichman’s Last Victim”
1964(21stof Tammuz, 5724): Eighty-two year old Russian born American architect Boris W. Dorfman, the husband of “the former Elizabeth Glassman” and father of Mrs. Rose Cohan passed away today.
1965: “The Great Race” a comedy starring Tony Curtis and featuring Peter Falk, Larry Storch and Marvin Kaplan was released today in the United States.
1967: An Israeli armored infantry company attacked an Egyptian force entrenched at Ras el 'Ish, located 10 miles south of Port Said. The Israeli company drove off the Egyptians but loses 1 dead and 13 wounded.
1967: An Egyptian commando force from Port Fuad moves south and takes up a position at Ras el 'Ish, located 10 miles south of Port Said on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, an area controlled by the Israelis since the ceasefire on June 9, 1967.
1969(15thof Tammuz, 5729): Just three days before his 85th birthday Grodno born American “calligrapher, designer and artist Joseph B. Abrahams, the husband of “the former Mrs. Lillian Manning” whose creations included “the bronze doors of Temple Emanu-El” in New York and “the interior décor for the Ziegfeld Follies” passed away today.
1970: The Mordecai House was placed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
1970: “The Boatniks” a comedy starring Phil Silvers and Norman Fell was released in the United States.
1971(8thof Tammuz, 5731): Bialystok born author Shmuel Zabludovski, who moved to Mexico City where he continued his career until he passed away today.
1971: In one of those ironies of “progress,” while bagel production and consumption soared to new heights, Local 338, the fabled bagel bakers local, ceased to exist and Local 3 acquired a Bagel Division.
1971: In the UK, premiere of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” a film whose primary protagonist is a Jewish doctor “Daniel Hirsch” directed by Joseph Schlesinger and produced by Joseph Janni.
1972: After 12 previews and 522 performances “Follies,” a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman completed its original run on Broadway.
1972: Screenwriter and novelist Don Mankiewicz, the German born so of “the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and brother of journalist Frank Mankiewicz” took his second trip down the aisle today when he married Carol Bell Gidi today with whom he had two children, John, “a screenwriter and producer” and Jane, “a fiction writer” whose work has appeared in the New Yorker.
1973(1st of Tammuz, 5733): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1973(1st of Tammuz, 5733): A few minutes before 1 A.M. Colonel Yosef (Joe ) Alon and his wife Dvora returned to their home in a quiet Washington, D.C., suburb. Alon, the air attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, had been at a farewell party for an Israeli diplomat. They parked the car. Dvora went into the house and then heard five gunshots. She rushed outside, saw her husband lying in a pool of blood, and glimpsed a white car driving away. She and her daughter Dalia, then 17, tried to help him. The other two girls, 14-year-old Yael and 6-year-old Rachel woke up. Joe tried to mumble something. An ambulance rushed him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. (The murder remains unsolved. As reported by Yossi Melman)
1972: The “economic agreement between Israel and the Common Market” is scheduled to take effect today. (JTA)
1974: An International scientific symposium at Professor Alexander Voronel’s apartment in Moscow was thwarted by KGB while 3 scientists were removed by police and Western correspondents were asked to leave
1975: Rabbi Bertram Wallace Korn who began his chaplaincy career as a U.S. Navy Lieutenant during WW II serving with U.S. Marines First and Sixth Divisions, “was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral in the Chaplain Corps, USNR” making him “the first Jewish chaplain to obtain flag rank in any of the United States armed forces.”
1976(3rd of Tammuz, 5736): Seventy-three year old Philip Hickman, the Anglo-Jewish boxer who fought under the name of “Johnny Brown” passed away today in London.
1976: As the hostage crisis at Entebe enters Day 5, in the morning, having been told that there is no viable military option to rescue the hostages, and with the deadline fast approaching, the Israeli government reluctantly agrees to begin negotiations knowing the terrorists will indeed keep their word about murdering those they hold.
1976: As the day wears on, Faiz Jaber, one of the hijackers takes special delight in torturing and beating Nahum Dahan whom at one point had a gun held to his head with the promise that he would be shot if he did not cooperate.
1976: In the evening Brigadier General Dan Shomron presented the plan for rescuing the hostages to the Chief of Staff Motta Gura and Defense Minister Shimon Peres who accepted it following which the operational officers began gathering the men and equipment who would carry out the mission.
1977: In Caribou, Maine, an “immigrant mother from Sweden and an Iraqi- Israeli physician gave birth to astronaut Jessica Meir, the holder of a Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who “is Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.”
1979(6thof Tammuz, 5739): Eighty-seven year old Columbia trained physician Ephraim Michael Bluestone, the New York City born son of “Joseph Isaac Bluestone and Sarah Bluestone” a Lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps during WW I, a director of the Hadassah Hospital in Palestine and director of Montefiore Hospital as well as the husband of “the former Bertha Rodetsky” passed away today.
1980(17th of Tammuz, 5740): Tzom Tammuz is observed for the last time during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter.
1981: U.S. premiere of “S.O.B.” a comedy featuring Stuart Margolin, Marissa Berenson, Shelly Winters and Larry Storch.
1983: “How Am I Supposed to Live Without” a song co-written by Michael Boton was released today.
1984(1st of Tammuz, 5744): Moshe Feldenkrais passed away. Born in the Ukraine in 1901, Feldenkrais moved to Palestine in 1918 where he continued his education. After living in France before World War II and serving with the British Navy in World War II he returned to Israel. He was a renowned physicist and judo expert, who developed a method of education and self-awareness training called The Feldenkrais method.
1985: Today Paul R. Verkuil, the husband of Judith Rodin the Jewish academic and philanthropist who was “the first permanent female president of an Ivy League University, began serving as the 24th President of the College of William and Mary” today.
1987: ''Portraits of an Era: Photographs by Irv Kline'' opens Bishopsgate Institute Foyer as part of this summer's Jewish East End Celebration.
1990: Final Broadway performance of “The Cemetery Club” produced by Philip Rose.
1991(19th of Tammuz, 5751): Michael Landon, born Eugene Horowitz, passed away at the age of 54. Landon gained fame for his portrayal of Little Joe on the television western, Bonanza. He gained additional fame for his work in front and behind the camera in another television hit, Little House on the Prairie. (As reported by Peter Flint)
1992: U.S. premiere of “A League of Their Own” a film based on women’s baseball teams in WW II with a screenplay by Lowell Ganz and music by Hans Zimmer.
1993: Today, Leonard B. Sands completed fifteen years of service as Judge of the United States District court for the Southern District of New York and began serving as “Senior Judge of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York?
1993: Anne Lapidus Lerner became Vice Chancellor of the Seminary, the first woman to hold that post. As Vice Chancellor, Lerner was one of the highest-ranking women in all of American Jewish institutional life. In that role, she devoted her energy to adult education, working to bring Jewish education to the lay community. After earning bachelor’s, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard, Anne Lapidus Lerner joined the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in 1969, becoming the first American-born woman to hold a full-time position there. JTS trains rabbis and cantors for the Conservative movement and offers a range of masters and doctoral degree programs. Today, Lerner is an assistant professor in the Department of Jewish Literature at JTS, where she teaches courses in Hebrew and American Jewish poetry, modern Jewish literature, and the portrayal of women in Jewish literature. In addition, she is the director of the JTS Jewish Women's Studies Program, which she also founded, and Director of the Jewish Feminist Research Group. In 2001-02, she was a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School. Lerner has published two books and is at work on a third. In Passing the Love of Women: A Study of Gide's "Saül" and Its Biblical Roots Lerner examines how the Biblical book of Samuel inspired a novel by French author André Gide. In Who Has Not Made Me a Man: The Movement for Equal Rights for Women in American Judaism Lerner discusses the interaction between Judaism and the modern American feminist movement. A new book on the image of Eve in Jewish literature is due to be completed soon. In addition, Lerner has published a range of articles, and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Women's League Outlook, Hadassah, Judaism, Nashim, and Lilith.
1993 (12th of Tammuz, 5753): Olga Khaikov a Jewish immigrant from Russia and the mother of an 11 year old daughter was killed when terrorists tried to seize a bus near French Hill in Jerusalem.
1993: Gil Stein’s term as President of the NHL came to an end. The duties of the president were given to the commissioner. Stein then served as advisor to the commissioner for over three months, retiring from the league in October.
1993: “Rudolph Giuliani, who would become the next mayor of New York, called the Crown Heights riot a "pogrom" today in a speech at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn: "You can use whatever word you want, but in fact for three days people were beaten up, people were sent to the hospital because they were Jewish.”
1994: PLO chairman Yasser Arafat drove from Egypt into Gaza, returning to Palestinian land after 27 years in exile.
1994: Judith Rodin began serving as President of the University of Pennsylvania.
1995: Sir James David Wolfensohn began serving as the 9th President of the World Bank.
1996: Robert Wilentz resigned as Chief Justice of the New Jersey State Supreme Court because of his cancer.
1997(26th of Sivan, 5757): Sir Joshua Abraham Hassan, GBE, KCMG, LVO, QC passed away. Born in 1915, he “was a Gibraltarian politician, and first Mayor and Chief Minister of Gibraltar, serving two terms as Chief Minister for a total of 17 years. He is seen as the key figure in the civil rights movement in Gibraltar, and played a key role in the creation of the territory's institutions of self-government.”
1998: First Lady Hillary Clinton, her daughter Chelsea and Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited the Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai, China, accompanied by Rabbi Schneier. In a speech on this date the First Lady commented, "So, for [the Ohel Rachel Synagogue] to be restored, I think, is a very good example of respect for religious differences and an appreciation for the importance of faith in one's life."
1998: U.S. premiere of science fiction disaster flic “Armageddon” directed by Michael Bay, Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, with a script co-authored by J.J. Abrams with music by Trevor Rabin.
1999(17th of Tammuz, 5759): Tzom Tammuz is observed for the last time in the 20th Century.
1999(17th of Tammuz, 5759: Shmuel Yaakov Weinberg, known as Yaakov Weinberg an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Talmudist, and rosh yeshiva (dean) of Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore, Maryland passed away today.
1999(17th of Tammuz, 5759): Eight-eight year old film star Sylvia Sidney (Sophia Kosow) passed away today.
1999: “After Janet Rosenberg Jagan returned from the European-Latin American summit in Rio de Janeiro, she was admitted to St. Joseph's Mercy Hospital in the capital, Georgetown, due to chest pains and exhaustion.”
2000(28th of Sivan, 5760): Actor Walter Mattheau passed away. Born Walter Matthow in 1920, Mattheau began work at the age of 11 selling candy and playing bit parts in a Yiddish theatre on the Lower East Side. Years later he claimed that his birth name was Matasschanskayasky. According to his son, his father did this as a prank. However, the myth has become accepted as fact by many sources. Mattheau had a long, successful career playing in films some of the best of which paired him with Jack Lemmon. These included, "The Fortune Cookie," a re-make of "Front Page," and that greatest of hits, "The Odd Couple."
2000: Publication of Haviva Ner-David's book, Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination,. (JWA)
2000: The judge in the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz announced the verdicts on the 13 Jews on trial for spying for Israel. The harsh verdicts against 10 of the defendants range from 4 to 13 years. The three defendants, who had been out on bail since February, were acquitted. The international community, Jewish groups around the world and human rights groups vocally condemned this verdict and expressed outrage at the lack of due process throughout the trial.
2001: Bruce Fleischer won the U.S. Senior Open.
2001: Caesarea-Pardes Hanna Railway Station was opened today “as a suburban station on the newly inaugurated Tel Aviv – Binyamina Suburban Service. The station was constructed to provide a railway link for the area's growing population as well as encourage rail commuting to the industrial zone in the vicinity.”
2001: Eric Garcetti began representing the 13th district on the Los Angeles City Council.
2002: An International Criminal Court for which American attorney and WW II war crimes investigator Benjamin B. Ferencz had expressed strong support in Defining International Aggression-The Search for World Peace was established today.
2002: U.S.A.F. Lt. Col Jack Weinstein was promoted to Colonel today.
2002: Michael Slive who had been the Commissioner of Conference USA since 1995 today became the seventh commissioner of the powerful South Eastern Conference of SEC.
2003(1st of Tammuz, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
2003(1st of Tammuz, 5763): Seventy three year old Jazz legend Herbie Mann, born Herbert Jay Solomon passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/arts/herbie-mann-73-musician-who-gave-flute-a-jazz-sound.html
2003: “Fifty-nine years to the day after she arrived” at Auschwitz-Birkenau Eva Fahidi returned to death camp.
2003: Elena Kagan begins serving as the 11th Dean of the Harvard Law School.
2004: Actor Marlon Brando passed away. No, Brando was not Jewish. But he did have this to say about Jews. “Marlon Brando…once told an interviewer that, per capita ‘Jews have contributed more to American…culture than any other single group.’ Without them, the actor claimed, ‘we wouldn’t have music,’ ‘we wouldn’t have much theater,’ and we wouldn’t have “all the songs that you love to sing.’”
2005: The New York Times reported that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had moved decisively to deal with killing of a African-American man by two white males in Howard Beach. The Times favorably compared Bloomberg’s swift action with the city’s reaction to a racially inspired killing in the same neighborhood in 1986.
2005: The New York Times reported that Time’s editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine made the decision to follow a court order and turn over a reporter’s documents to a grand jury investigating a leak of a CIA operative’s identity. Pearlstine wrestled with the compelling issues – freedom of the press versus the need to submit to the rule of law – and he came down on the side of the latter. The decision was not an easy one for a man who was a lawyer as well as the head of one of America’s flagship communication corporations.
2005: The New York Times reported that Bank of America had agreed to buy MBNA. MBNA was founded by Alfred Lerner who passed away in 2002. Learner supported numerous philanthropies including the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. The JFR seeks out to fulfill the age old injunction to seek out and recognize righteousness. In particular, the JFR works to help aged and indigent righteous gentiles who helped save Jews during the Shoah.
2005: Future United States Senator Michael Bennet began serving as the Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools oday.
2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Din In the Head: Essays by Cynthia Ozick
2006(5th of Tammuz, 5766): Eighty-three year old Philip Rieff the author of a number of books about Sigmund Freud passed away today.(As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
2006(5th of Tammuz, 5766): Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs, who founded the British branch of the Conservative Movement and was voted the greatest Jew in the history of Britain's Jewish community last year, passed away today. (As reported by Ari L. Goldman)
2006: David J. Skorton begins serving as President of Cornell University.
2007: Arnie Eisen assumed the office of Chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological Seminary
2007: The Opening Day game of the Israel Baseball League is broadcast on a delayed basis on PBS in major US markets.
2007: 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 American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville by Bernard-Henri Lévy and The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter.
2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of a collection of here-to-for unpublished stories by Primo Levi entitled A Tranquil Star. According to the review, those who think of Levi only in terms of being a “Holocaust writer” will be pleasantly surprised by the wide ranging topics and unique style displayed in this posthumously published tome.
2007: Avraham Hirschson resigned as Israel’s Minister of Finance following an investigation of an alleged embezzlement in which he was allegedly involved.
2007: Moseh Katzav resigned as President of Israel.
2007: Dalia Itzik, who had been serving as Speaker of the Knesset became action President of the state of Israel.
2007: Marvin Krislov became the 14th President of Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio
2008: Lauren Weisberger, author of the bestselling novel The Devil Wears Prada, reads from and signs her new book, Chasing Harry Winston, at a Borders Books in suburban Virginia.
2008: Arnie Eisen, who took office as Chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological Seminary on July 1, 2007 assumed the position full time
2009: In Cedar Rapids, IA, meeting of the Hadassah book club discusses Courtesan, a novel by Dora Levy Mossanen.
2009: After 29 years of serving as supporting character alongside Marvel greats like the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, Sabra, the alias of Ruth-Bat Seprah, mutant superhero and former agent, makes her first headlining print appearance in the Marvel anthology Astonishing Tales #6.
2009: Today President Shimon Peres invited Saudi King Abdullah to come to Jerusalem, or meet him in Riyadh, to initiate discussions that would enable the implementation of a comprehensive peace between Israel and all the Arab states.
2009: A Chabad-sponsored Women's Empowerment Rally is held at Tel Aviv's Nokia Stadium.
2009: Leonard “Cohen started his marathon European tour, his third in two years.
2009: Romanian Jewish leaders met in Bucharest today to address allegations that medical students have been using the remains of Holocaust victims for research.
2009: In “Ruth Madoff and the Husband She Never Knew” published today, Richard Cohen described the life of the wife of the financial predator who was his classmate.
2009: In a case of Jewish Woman follows Jewish Woman Professor Martha Louis Minow, the legal scholar who is the daughter former FCC Chairman Newton Minow became the 12th Dean of the Harvard Law School replacing Elena Kagan.
2010: Yeshiva University Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art are scheduled to present “As it is Written: Lectures on the Art of Hebrew Manuscripts and Books” in New York City.
2010: The Wall Street Journal reported today that Tehran has equipped Damascus with a sophisticated radar system to help thwart a surprise Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
2011: Cantor Joel Caplan, son of Richard and Ellen Caplan, and father Ilan Caplan is scheduled to lead a Shabbat evening program called “Shabbat Spirit” that includes guitar, keyboard and PowerPoint projections of all the songs that will be sung.
2011: Today, Susan Herbst took office as the 15th President of the University of Connecticut making her the first of her gender to hold the postion.
2011: As the case sexual assault case fell apart due to questions of credibility regard of the alleged victim, Dominque Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest today.
2011: At Shabbat Eve Services at Temple Judah a baby naming is to take place for Natanel, the son of Chavah and Stephen Rosenbaum of Jerusalem and the grandson of Kathe and Gary Goldstein of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
2011: With the departure of Rabbi Joseph R. Black, today Harry L. Rosenfeld becomes the rabbi of Congregation Albert in Albuquerque, NM which was established in 1897 making it “the oldest Jewish organization of continued existence in the state of New Mexico.”
2011: Abbie Silber, daughter of Laurie and Dr. Bob Silver (pillars of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community) and Rabbi Feivel Strauss are scheduled to receive a blessing at Shabbat Eve services as they prepare for their upcoming nuptials.
2011: This Day In…In Jewish History makes its first appearance on http://shtetl.ca/
a must read website for anybody interested in the comings and goings of the Canadian Jewish community.
2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest today as the sexual assault case against him moved one step closer to dismissal after prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that they had serious problems with the case.
2011: The Canadian Jewish Congress for which Bernie M Farber served as the chief executive officer was absorbed by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
2011: The Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection issued a statement today saying that the Minister, C. Papoutsis, decided to prohibit the departure of ships flying either Greek or foreign flags "to the maritime area" of Gaza.
2012: A revival of “On Second Avenue,” “a musical journey through Yiddish Theatre” is scheduled to have its final performance at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts. (As reported by Mike Cohen)
2012: The Labor Party is scheduled to hold its convention today in Tel Aviv.
2012(11th of Tammuz, 5772): Eighty-six year old “Evelyn Lear, an American soprano who became a star in Europe in the 1950s and later won acclaim in the United States for singing some of the most difficult roles in contemporary opera” passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
2012(11th of Tammuz, 5772): Ninety-two year old “Estelle Ellis Rubinstein, who as promotion director of the brand-new Seventeen magazine helped American businesses discover what she called “a whole new country” — the untapped market of millions of teenage girls —” passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish authors including the recently released paperback edition of Bloom of Darkness, Aharon Applefeld’s novel about “a Jewish child is hidden in a brothel in a Ukrainian village during the Holocaust.
2012: Mario Balotelli, a black Italian soccer start who was raised by a Jewish Italian foster mother from the age of three is scheduled to lead his team into the final of the Euro 2012 soccer championships. (As reported by the Times of Israel)
2012: Today the cabinet approved doubling the 2013 budget deficit target to 3 percent of gross domestic product, despite strong opposition from central bank and Treasury officials. It also agreed to set a new long-term target of gradually reducing the deficit back to 1.5% by 2019.
2013: The Aleph Kallah –Connecting the Divine Within and Around Us – is scheduled to begin today.
https://www.aleph.org/
2013: The North American Jewish Date is scheduled to move from the University of Connecticut to the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) in New York.
2013: Christopher Ludwig Eisgruber who was raised Catholic but now describes himself as nontheist Jew became the 20th President of Princeton University today. “While helping his son, then in the fourth grade, with a school project, he discovered that his Berlin-born mother, who had arrived in New York as an eight-year-old refugee, was Jewish. In 2009, a Holocaust claims tribunal awarded Eisgruber and his three sisters 162,500 Swiss francs, representing the value of the bank account of their maternal great-grandfather, Salomon Kalisch”
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/.premium-1.532963
2013: Peter Salovey, a descendant of the Soloveichik rabbinic family, became the 23 President of Yale University.
2013: Mark Dreyfus began serving as Minister for the Public Service and Integrity in Australiza.
2013: With Stanley Fischer's eight-year term as Bank of Israel Governor completed as of last night, his deputy Karnit Flug stepped into the role of acting governor today. (As reported by Niv Elis)
2013: Eric Garcetti began serving as the 42nd Mayor of Los Angeles.
2013: As part of the fallout from a reported cover-up of sexual abuse by Yishiva University rabbis, Rabbi Norman Lamm stepped down as the chancellor and Rosh yeshiva. (As reported by Uriel Heilman)
2014: Decent people everywhere continue to react with shock and horror to the news concerning the murder of the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers - Naftali Frankel, 16, Gilad Shaar, 16; and Eyal Yifrach, 19 - who were abducted on their way home from school on June 12 and whose bodies were found near Hebron.
2014: A community wide memorial service is held for Three Israeli Teens, z”l today at the Jewish Center on West 86th Street
2014: Scott S. Cowen is scheduled to step down as President of Tulane University.
2014: In Israel “1.5 million elementary students and over 71,000 teachers are scheduled to begin their summer break.”
2014(3rd of Tammuz, 5774): Ninety-two year old spy David Greenglass who betrayed his country and helped send his sister to the electric chair passed away today.
2014(3rd of Tammuz): 20th Yarhrzeit Menachem M. Schneerson of blessed memory simply known as “the Rebbe.”
2014: Opening of the Chabad-Lubavitch Library.
2014: “Terrorists from Gaza launched a salvo of mortar shells towards the Eshkol Regional Council today, during the very hours that hundreds of thousands attended a funeral in Modi'in for the three teens who were abducted and murdered by Hamas terrorists on June 12.”
2014: Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesperson released a statement just after the funeral of the three kidnapped Jewish boys in which he labeled the abduction as “an activity that failed.”
2014: Hugh Segal began serving as “5th Principal of Massey College” today.
2014: Following individual funerals. Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach were laid to rest side by side in Modi'in cemetery this evening, a day after the bodies of the three teens were found in the West Bank and 19 days after they vanished while hitchihiking near Hebron. (As reported by Shahar Chai, Itay Blumental and Ahiya Raved
Timeline of Events: http://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-hunts-for-two-suspects-in-teens-murder/
2015: Today, Frederick Lawrence is scheduled to step down as President of Brandeis University.
2015: Dr. David J. Skorton assumed the position of the 13th Secretary of the Smithsonian which means he “oversees 19 museums and galleries, 20 libraries, the National Zoo and numerous research centers, including the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.”
2015: “The first anniversary of the deaths of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach, the Israeli teenagers kidnapped and killed by Palestinian terrorists last summer, is being marked today with a Unity Day.”
2015: “Several hundred Israelis demonstrated in Jerusalem this evening, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to act against a recent surge in deadly attacks carried out by Palestinians.”
2015: “Auto | Biography,” an exhibition that explores the social phenomenon of Jews and their cars is scheduled to open at Oregon Jewish Museum and Center For Holocaust Education.
2015(14th of Tammuz, 5775): Terrorist murder Rabbi Miki Mark and wounded three of his family members in a drive-by shooting south of Hebron.
2015(14th of Tammuz, 5775): Ninety year old Israeli born multimillionaire jeweler Shlomo Moussaieff who spent the last 52 years of his life in the United Kingdom and was the found of Moussaieff Jewellers Ltd passed away today in Jerusalem.
2015: “Milk” is scheduled to shown during the “70’s Summer Cinema” program at the National Museum of Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA.
2015: Sir Nicholas George Winton, the man who arranged the “Kindertransport” from Czechoslovakia which saved 669 Jewish children from the Holocaust at a time when most people did nothing passed away today.
2015: In Coralville, Iowa, the mantle of Rabbi officially transfer from Rabbi Jeff Portman to Rabbi Barry Diamond.
2016: Two days after his confirmation on June 18,, David L. Goldfein began serving as the 21st Chef of Staff of the United States Air Force today.
2016: Ronald D. Liebowitz is scheduled to assume the presidency of Brandeis University.
2016: Mahin Khan, who would plead “guilty to plotting an attack on government buildings and the Tuscon Jewish Community Center” was arrested today at his parents’ home.
2016(25th of Sivan, 5776): As Jews prepare for Shabbat, all decent people pray for the recovery of the men stabbed by a terrorist in Netanya on June 30 and mourn the loss of 13 year old Hallel Yafa Ariel who was stabbed to death as she slept in her bed on June 30.
2017(7th of Tammuz, 5777): Yahrzeit of Saul Lowenstam who followed his father Aryeh Leib ben Saul as Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam and who died on the 7th of Tammuz, 5550 (1790)
2017(7th of Tammuz, 5777): Yahrzeit of Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister who passed away on the 7th of Tammuz, 5725 (1965).
2017(7th of Tammuz, 5777): Parashat Chukat;
2018: JW3 is scheduled to host the first screening of “Entebbe” today in London
2018: 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 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and Wrestling With His Angel by Sidney Blumenthal.
2018: 155th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Gettysburg where Union Lt. Abraham Cohn faces against Confederate Major Adolph Proskauer showing the House of Israel to be divided.
2018: 120th anniversary of the Teddy Roosevelt and his Roughriders, including Jacob Wilbusky, the first Roughrider killed in action charged up San Juan Hill and into the White House and the history books.
2019: “Sde Dov Airport, which is located in northern Tel Aviv, is set to close” today, leaving “Ben-Gurion Airport, located 20 kilometers southeast of the metropolis, as the only domestic origin for Eilat-bound flights, a change that many experts say will have a devastating impact on tourism to the southern city.”
2029: Susan Herbst’s stepped down today as President of the University of Connecticut after which she planned to remain on the faculty, teaching political science at the Stamford campus.
2019: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “Radical Traditions of Yiddish Poetry” a talk that “will survey the radical traditions of Yiddish poetry focusing on anarchist poetics and the press.”
2019: “After more than a century of service in Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa and Solano counties, the Jewish Federation of the East Bay” is scheduled to dissolve today, “with core programs and operations to be absorbed into the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund.”
2019: As Americans prepare to rush off for their Independence Day celebrations, hopefully they will take a moment to remember the thin Blue Line of Union troops who held off the Rebel waves on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.
2020: Live via Zoom, the American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host “The Must of North Africa: Modern and Contemporary Judeo-Arabic Song and Performance.”
2020: The government is “due to start disusing as of today,” a plan which will make “some 30% of the West Bank” including areas home to several Jewish settlements a part of the state Israel but which will not include certain archaeological sites that “Safeguarding Eternity” see as critical to maintaining “the connection of Jewish people to its land and heritage.” (As reported by Rinat Harash)
2020: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host Dov Boros as part of the “Coffee with a Survivor” program.
2020: The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to host online, “The Joys, Oys and Challenges of Being a Jewish Transracial Family.
2020: The National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host a livestream conversation and concert featuring Joey Weisenberg as part of the Songs of Our People, Songs of Our Neighbors series.
2020: Congregation Rodef Sholom’s Rabbi Stacy Friedman is scheduled to host Dr. Marc Dollinger as he lectures on “1619, 1654, 2020: Jews, Race, and American Jewish History.”
2020 Live on Zoom the Jewish Genealogical Social of New York and the Leo Baeck Institute are scheduled to host “Rescue and Resettlement: Researching Refugees from Nazi Europe.”