March 10
0037: Roman Emperor Tiberius passed away at age 78. He followed Augustus to the throne and reigned from 14 through 37. His record in dealing with the Jews was a mixed one. On the one hand he over-ruled anti-Jewish edicts of Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea. At the same, he temporarily expelled all of the Jews from Rome when a Jew was falsely accused of defrauding a Roman matron.
1452: Birthdate of Ferdinand II the Catholic, King of Aragon/Sicily who expelled the Jews from his realm.
1616: Vincent Fettmilch was hanged. Fettmilch lived at Frankfort on the Main (Germany). During a period of economic downturn (1612-1616), the ruling class blamed the problems on the Jews. They allowed anti-Semitic demagogues to attack the Jews. Fettmilch was the ring leader of the action that resulted in the destruction of the Jewish property in the ghetto. Jews fled for their lives. Without the Jews to blame, the powers that be feared the mobs would turn on them. So they hanged Fettmilch as a way of re-establishing law and order.
1823: Birthdate of Leopold Eidlitz, a prominent New York architect best known for his work on the New York State Capitol
1857(14thof Adar, 5617): Purim
1860: Mortiz Pinner, the German-Jewish immigrant abolitionist who was a publishing a newspaper in Kansas City served as a delegate at the Republican State Convention in Missouri. Pinner would be chosen as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago where Abraham Lincoln was nominated as President of the United States.
1866 (23rd of Adar, 5626): Yitzchak Meir Alter passed away. Born in 1798, he is the first Rebbe of the Ger Chasidic dynasty. Some of his followers referred to him as Reb Itche Meir as the Chidushei HaRim.
1870(8th of Sh'vat, 5630): Czech born composer Isaak-Ignaz Moschelescomposer passed away at the age of 75.
1872(30thof Adar I, 5632): Rosh Chodesh Adar II
1873: Birthdate of Jakob Wassermann author of My Life As a German and a Jew. Wasserman was a novelist who dealt with challenges of being both a German and a Jew. His writings urged Jews to assimilate and "and thus destroy themselves as a group. By the end of his life, he recognized that Jewish survival was inevitable and desirable."
1875:Die Königin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba), an opera in four acts by Karl Goldmark was first performed todayat the Hofoper (now the State Opera) in Vienna,
1876(14thof Adar, 5638) Purim
1876: The Anshe Bikur Cholim Society held a reception this evening at Irving Hall. It was very well attended because it was the Purim celebration of its kind in New York held today.
1890: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will host its fifth “informal entertainment of the season this evening at Vienna Hall.
1892: Friedman Silverstein, a Jewish immigrant from Russia who has been living in the United States for 2 years was diagnosed as having typhus fever today.
1893: Lillian Wald opened the Lower East Side settlement house that would become the Henry Street Settlement on her 26th birthday. The Nurses' Settlement opened on Jefferson Street. Two years later, in 1895, she moved her enterprise to Henry Street. In both locations, the settlement was dedicated to public health nursing, a term Wald coined to describe an organic relationship between health care and broader community needs. In the first year, the settlement cared for 4,500 patients. Recognizing the interconnectedness of illness and poverty, Wald expanded the activities of the settlement over time. The renamed Henry Street Settlement House offered boys' and girls' clubs; classes in arts, crafts, homemaking and English; and vocational training. Health care remained important, with over 26,000 patients cared for by 100 Henry Street nurses in 1915.
1893: “To Study Our Immigration” published today described the debate in the House of Lords led by Lord Lyon Playfair over the impact of Russian and Polish (Jewish) immigration in the United Kingdom and the treatment of these immigrants in the United States
1895(14th of Adar, 5655): Purim
1896:Dr. Reuben Bierer, chief rabbi of Sofia, announces that he considers Herzl to be the Messiah. The newspaper "Ha-am" in Kolomea places itself at Herzl's disposal.
1896: In Pittsburgh, PA, Anselm and Sophie Irene Loeb, the noted child welfare worker, were married today.
1915: The Frankfurter Zeitung published a letter that had first appeared in the Hambruger Israelitische Familienblatt written by a Jewish soldier, who with his brother had joined the German Army even though they had been denied German citizenship. According to the letter, one brother had been killed in battle and the surviving brother wanted his family to know that it was not a piece of paper that made them Germans. It was their “sentiments that made them Germans.” Feeling this way, they could not let others fight while they remained spectators. “The hero’s death is better than shame.”
1918: Birthdate of Isaac Rosenfeld, the Chicago born author who wrote Passage from Home in 1946.
1929: The New York Times reports on the upcoming opening of “the Warner Brothers' ambitious Vitaphone production which will open at the Winter Garden, featuring Dolores Costello and George O'Brien” which is a cinematic treatment of the Biblical story.
1932: It was reported today that when Benjamin Cardozo is sworn in next week as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, there will finally be enough Justices to constitute a quorum so that the Court can hear the government’s appeal of a consent decree by the lower court in an anti-trust case involving the nation’s meatpackers. The death of Justice Holmes and the recusal of Justices Hughes, Stone and Sutherland had meant that there were not enough Justices to hear the case.
1933: Michael Siegel, a Jewish lawyer who complained about the police “is forced to walk through Munich barefoot while carrying a sign reading ‘I will never complain to the police again
1933: Victor Klemperer writes in his diary “Hitler elected as Chancellor. What I had called terror was only a mild prelude. . . . It is amazing how everything collapses . . . prohibitions and acts of violence. And with it, on streets and radio, unrestrained propaganda. On Saturday I heard a piece of Hitler's speech in Konsigsberg. I understood only a few words. But the tone! The unctuous roaring bark, the bark, really, of a clergyman. . . . How long will I be able to retain my professorship?”
1937: “Chicken Heart” written by Arch Oboler was broadcast for the first time on the radio suspense show,
1938: Birthdate of Ron Mix. Mix was an oddity - a Jewish professional football player. He was all-star offensive tackle with the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1979. Just to be on the safe side, Mix went to law school at night.
1944: Adolf Eichmann and his staff met at Mauthausen concentration camp to work out the deportation of over 750,000 Jews from Hungary.
1948: Birthdate of retired government agent and private investigator Robert Levinson who has been held by the Iranians since 2007.
1949: At 15:00 the Negev Brigade reached the abandoned policed station at Umm Rashrash (the future site of Eilat) followed two hours later by the Golani Brigade.
1949: Haim-Moshe Shapira replaced Yitzhak Gruenbaum as Internal Affairs Minister.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported the cabinet’s decision that wages earned by Arabs in the employ of the state, municipalities and other public institutions, and the prices paid for Arab produce would be equal to those paid to the Jews. Mr. Palmon, the prime minister’s adviser on Arab affairs, stated that among Israeli Arabs the collection of income tax was practically nonexistent. They paid only a negligible property tax. The cabinet had also approved the Pensions and Rehabilitation of the Victims of the War of Independence bill.
1959: Birthdate of Aital Selinger, the native of Haifa volleyball player who twice represented the Netherlands in the Summer Olympics.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that US President Jimmy Carter suggested that the final Israeli borders should include only "some minor adjustments in the 1967 borders." He added, however, that it was important to recognize the difference between the "legal borders" and "defense lines" which would enable Israel to defend itself.
1980: Jean Harris murdered Doctor Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale diet doctor.
1987:Five authors of books with Jewish themes, published in 1986, were honored today at the Eighth Annual Present Tense/Joel H. Cavior Book Awards luncheon, sponsored by Present Tense magazine and the American Jewish Committee, and held at the committee's headquarters. The winners were: Biography/Autobiography: Victor Perera, ''Rites: A Guatemalan Boyhood'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). Fiction: Art Spiegelman, ''Maus: A Survivor's Tale'' (Pantheon Books). History: Bernard Lewis, ''Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice'' (W. W. Norton & Company). Jewish Religious Thought: David Weiss Halivni, ''Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law'' (Harvard University Press). General Nonfiction: Lesley Hazleton, ''Jerusalem, Jerusalem'' (Atlantic Monthly Press). Elie Wiesel was honored with a special lifetime achievement citation for his ''extraordinary efforts to rescue the Holocaust from historical and literary oblivion and to dramatize the plight of Soviet Jews and other oppressed people.
1992:In an article entitled “Menachem Begin, Guerrilla Leader Who Became Peacemaker,” published the day after he passed away James Feron described Menachem Begin as “the Israeli Prime Minister who made peace with Egypt” after living much of his life in the opposition. A Jewish underground leader before Israel gained independence in 1948; he openly fought the established Zionist leadership of the struggle against British rule. Then for nearly three decades, he headed Israel's major opposition party. Ultimately and to many Israelis, surprisingly, his minority bloc ousted the Labor Party, which had governed continuously in the three decades since statehood, and Mr. Begin, as party leader, became Prime Minister. He was to govern an ever more divided and troubled nation. Mr. Begin, who led Israel from May 1977 until he resigned as Prime Minister in 1983, stretched the national mood from great pride to deep dismay. He guided the nation to a peace treaty with Egypt, the first such pact with an Arab country. But he also presided over a bitterly divisive war against Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon.” The treaty with Egypt, which brought Mr. Begin a shared 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with President Anwar el-Sadat, represented a high point in his political leadership while the war in Lebanon in 1982 and the stalemate that followed, with its steady toll of dead and wounded, were its low point.
1996: New York City Mayor Giuliani visited Israel.
1998: The new building of the Jewish Museum of Greece was inaugurated today.
2003: Yaakov Edri begins serving as Deputy Minister of Public Security.
2008: An exhibition styled “Lucien Freud: The Painter’s Etchings” at the Museum of Modern of Art comes to an end.
2008: A screening of a film based on Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History takes place at The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
2009: Sherwin B. Nuland, a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University and the author of The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine and the forthcoming The Soul of Medicine: Tales from the Bedside, presents the inaugural Stephen E. Straus Distinguished Lecture in the Science of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, "Chinese Medicine, Western Science and Acupuncture," at the National Institutes of Health.
2010:The CJH, YUM, Program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies at Cardozo Law School is scheduled to present “Genocide and Responsibility to Protect" during which a panel of scholars and practitioners will discuss The Responsibility to Protect ("RtoP" or "R2P"), a new international security and human rights norm designed to address the international community's failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
2010: The 121stannual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis came to a close today.
2011:The Israeli Opera is scheduled to host the premiere “of the tumultuous Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Katerina Izmaylova), by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, directed by Yulia Pevzner, based on a version staged by Irina Molostova, a Ukrainian stage director who first directed it in a joint production of the Israeli Opera and the Kirov Opera House in 1997.”
2011: Ruth Ellen Gruber is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “From Persona Non Grata to the Present: An American Jewish Journalist's View of Poland's Transformation” in Washington, DC.
2011: Opening of the 15th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival
2012: “Camera Obscura” is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Beth-El Jewish Film Festival in Fort Worth, TX.
2012: Alison Westermann is scheduled to make her Washington, DC debut with a performance at Tifereth Israel
2013: As part of Temple Judah’s 90th anniversary observance, Barb Feller will lead a trolley tour of historic Jewish cites in Cedar Rapids with Mark Hunter serving as “subject matter expert.”
2014: Jennifer George, Al Jaffee, Adam Gopnik and Brian Walker are scheduled to discuss “The Genius of Rube Goldberg” at the 92nd Street Y.
0037: Roman Emperor Tiberius passed away at age 78. He followed Augustus to the throne and reigned from 14 through 37. His record in dealing with the Jews was a mixed one. On the one hand he over-ruled anti-Jewish edicts of Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea. At the same, he temporarily expelled all of the Jews from Rome when a Jew was falsely accused of defrauding a Roman matron.
0298:The Roman Emperor Maximian concluded his campaign in North Africa against the Berbers, and made a triumphal entry into Carthage.The city of Carthage appears repeatedly throughout Roman history. According to some historians, when Carthage fell to the Romans after the Punic Wars, “many Carthaginians and Phoenicians converted to Judaism, because Jerusalem was the only remaining centre of West Semitic civilization.” They attribute the original Jewish settlements in Spain to the fact that Spain had been a Carthaginian colony and that these settlers were part of a group of these converts. The Berbers would also figure in Jewish history. In the 7th century, they would convert to Islam. In the 8th century, the Berbers were a major part of the Muslim force that drove the Christians out of Spain and created a comparatively hospitable for the Jewish people.
0418: Jews were excluded from holding public office in the Roman Empire
0418: Jews were excluded from holding public office in the Roman Empire
1126: Following the death of his mother Alfonso VII, the monarch who started a school in Toledo which begins to spread Hebrew and Arabic learning as well as ancient Greek knowledge through Western Europe was crowned King of Leon and Castille.
1452: Birthdate of Ferdinand II the Catholic, King of Aragon/Sicily who expelled the Jews from his realm.
1791(4th of Adar II): Rabbi Aryeh Leib Sarah, a disciple of Rabbi Dov Baer passed aw
1822(17thof Adar, 5582): The mother of Moses Sofer, Reizel the daughter of Elchanan passed away.
1823: Birthdate of Leopold Eidlitz, a prominent New York architect best known for his work on the New York State Capitol
1831: The French Foreign Legion was established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria. A large number of Jews who fled Eastern Europe during the 1930’s found “a home” in the French Foreign Legion. For more about the Legion and the Jewish people see Jews and the French Foreign Legion by Zosa Szajkowski
1845: Birthdate of Czar Alexander III. Alexander III was the second to the last of the Romanov Czars. In a line of rulers who made life hell on earth for the Jewish people, Alexander stands out as one of the worst, if not the worst of the lot. His policies were intended to give meaning to the one third, one third, one third rule. One third of the Jews would leave Russia, one third would convert. One third would perish.
1845: The Jewish Reform movement in Germany was publicly announced
1856: The News of the World reported that in Constantinople a Turkish woman who could not locate her child for several hours started to scream after local Greeks told her Jews had dragged her child by force into the house to drain its blood for use on Passover. A crowd gathered and started to smash the windows of the home, and was only held back by the French soldiers. The child later was found by the mother.
1857(14thof Adar, 5617): Purim
1859: In Budapest, Jeanette and Jacob Herzl gave birth to Pauline Herzl, the sister of Theodor Herzl
1861: Birthdate of Meier Dizengoff. A native of Bessarabia, he would make Aliyah in 1905, help found Tel Aviv in 1909 and then became its first mayor.
1864: During the American Civil War, beginning of the Red River Campaign which would claim the life of Colonel Newbold of the Fourteenth Iowa.
1864: During the American Civil War, beginning of the Red River Campaign which would claim the life of Colonel Newbold of the Fourteenth Iowa.
1866 (23rd of Adar, 5626): Yitzchak Meir Alter passed away. Born in 1798, he is the first Rebbe of the Ger Chasidic dynasty. Some of his followers referred to him as Reb Itche Meir as the Chidushei HaRim.
1867: Birthdate of Lillian Wald. Born into a successful merchant family in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in Rochester, New York, Lillian Wald is remembered today as the founder of public health nursing and an influential pioneer in the settlement house movement of the early twentieth century.
1868: An article entitled “The Purim Ball” published today reported that last night’s Purim Ball was so lavish that it was a fitting way to end New York’s gala winter social season. “The truly brilliant affair” reinforced the reputation of the Purim Society for providing a ball that “was unique in character” and “meriting the praise” that it has continued to receive. The ball not only is the epitome of refinement, it raises money for the disadvantaged – Jew and non-Jew alike.
1870(8th of Sh'vat, 5630): Czech born composer Isaak-Ignaz Moschelescomposer passed away at the age of 75.
1872(30thof Adar I, 5632): Rosh Chodesh Adar II
1875: It was reported today that E.B. Hart, Joseph Seligman and Joseph Koch are among the prominent Jews heading the committee of the Purim Association that will be responsible for the upcoming Hebrew Charity Ball.
1873: Birthdate of Jakob Wassermann author of My Life As a German and a Jew. Wasserman was a novelist who dealt with challenges of being both a German and a Jew. His writings urged Jews to assimilate and "and thus destroy themselves as a group. By the end of his life, he recognized that Jewish survival was inevitable and desirable."
1877: In what was then Galicia, Esther Verner and dairy farmer Jacob Taffel gave birth to Frank Taffel who founded the Fulton Auto Exchange in Atlanta, GA in 1924
1879(15thof Adar, 5639): Shushan Purim
1884(13thof Adar, 5644): Fast of Esther
1887(14thof Adar, 5647): Purim
1887: In Galicia, Esther Verner and dairy farmer Jacob Taffel gave birth to Shrage Fyvel Taffe who as Frank Taffel became a pillar of the Georgia (USA) Jewish community
1888(27th of Adar): Ferdinand Eberstadt, the first Jewish Mayor of Worms, passed away
1888(27th of Adar): Scholar and philanthropist Issachar Dov Ber Bampi passed away
1890: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will host its fifth “informal entertainment of the season this evening at Vienna Hall.
1890: The body of an unidentified Jews was found in a cellar at a house on Eldridge Street in New York City.
1890: The Downtown Religious and Sewing Schools and the Young Men’s Society will hold their Purim celebration tonight at Pythagoras Hall.
1891: Birthdate of Sam Jaffe who starred in movies and television. He gained early fame playing an Indian water boy in the film “Gunga Din.” Television viewers of the 1950's and 1960's saw him as wise old Dr. Zorba in the popular medical series called “Ben Casey.”
1892: Ruben Lodge No. 3 of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Israel will host a masquerade ball this evening at the Lexington Opera House.
1893: Lillian Wald opened the Lower East Side settlement house that would become the Henry Street Settlement on her 26th birthday. The Nurses' Settlement opened on Jefferson Street. Two years later, in 1895, she moved her enterprise to Henry Street. In both locations, the settlement was dedicated to public health nursing, a term Wald coined to describe an organic relationship between health care and broader community needs. In the first year, the settlement cared for 4,500 patients. Recognizing the interconnectedness of illness and poverty, Wald expanded the activities of the settlement over time. The renamed Henry Street Settlement House offered boys' and girls' clubs; classes in arts, crafts, homemaking and English; and vocational training. Health care remained important, with over 26,000 patients cared for by 100 Henry Street nurses in 1915.
1893: In Philadelphia, Rabbi Dr. Henry Berkowitz delivers a speech to his congregation, Rodelph Shalom in which he suggests that a society be formed in the United States for "the dissemination of knowledge of the Jewish religion by fostering the study of its history and literature, giving popular courses of instruction, issuing publications, establishing reading-circles, holding general assemblies, and by such other means as may from time to time be found necessary and proper." In response to his suggestion, the Jewish literary societies of Philadelphia appointed a "committee on organization," which formulated plans. An agreement was entered into with the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for the use of the general methods of the popular education process known as the "Chautauqua System." A Jewish society, national in its scope, was then organized, with Dr. Berkowitz as chancellor. In the winter of 1893 the society began the publication of a series of "course books" or syllabi for general readers and members of reading-circles or study classes. These guide-books give syllabi of courses in Biblical and post-Biblical history and literature, in the Hebrew language (correspondence method), and on Jewish characters in fiction.
1893: “To Study Our Immigration” published today described the debate in the House of Lords led by Lord Lyon Playfair over the impact of Russian and Polish (Jewish) immigration in the United Kingdom and the treatment of these immigrants in the United States
1895(14th of Adar, 5655): Purim
1895: It was reported today that it will cost $80,000 to build a new facility for Beth Israel Hospital which now using a building on East Broadway owned by the Hebrew Free School
1895: In an article entitled “Emanu-El’s Fifty Years,” the New York Times describes plans for the celebration of Temple Emanu-El’s fiftieth anniversary which will be held on April 12, 13 and 14th. The article also provides a brief history of the Reform Movement and the milestones in the history of New York’s leading Reform congregation.
1896:Dr. Reuben Bierer, chief rabbi of Sofia, announces that he considers Herzl to be the Messiah. The newspaper "Ha-am" in Kolomea places itself at Herzl's disposal.
1896: Theodore Herzl described his first meeting with Reverend William Hechler in today’s diary entry. Herzl described Hechler as an enthusiastic Zionist who wants introduce him to the various German leaders who are friends of the Anglican minister.
1896: In Pittsburgh, PA, Anselm and Sophie Irene Loeb, the noted child welfare worker, were married today.
1897: The will of the late Simon Goldenberg, who left an estate valued at $200,000 in real property and $1,000,000 in personal property was filed for probate today.
1897: The Charity Ball for the benefit of the Montefiore Home which is being sponsored by the Young Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s League will take place this evening at Carnegie Hall, under the leadership of Leon Hirsch, who is the group’s President.
1898: Funeral services for Moses Bruckheimer will be held today at Beth Elohim in Brooklyn
1898: Fifteen thousand people are expected to attend tonight’s annual Fête and Champêtre
1898: Fifteen thousand people are expected to attend tonight’s annual Fête and Champêtre
at Carnegie Hall sponsored by the Young Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s League of the Montefiore Home for Consumptives
1905: Ernst Gräfenberg earned his doctorate after studying medicine in Göttingen and Munich. Another intellectual casualty of the Nazis, this doctor who had served in the German Army in World War and who developed the IUD, would flee to the United States in the 1930’s.
1906: Sixty-seven year old Eugene Richter, a German political leader who defended the Jews during the growing waves of German anti-Semitism that marked the last decades of the 19th century passed away.
1910: Karl Lueger, the sixty-five year old anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna passed away.
1913: Birthdate of Canadian composer John Jacob Weinzweig. The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he received his first formal study of music in mandolin at the Workmen's Circle Peretz School.
1915: The Frankfurter Zeitung published a letter that had first appeared in the Hambruger Israelitische Familienblatt written by a Jewish soldier, who with his brother had joined the German Army even though they had been denied German citizenship. According to the letter, one brother had been killed in battle and the surviving brother wanted his family to know that it was not a piece of paper that made them Germans. It was their “sentiments that made them Germans.” Feeling this way, they could not let others fight while they remained spectators. “The hero’s death is better than shame.”
1918: Warner Brothers released its first major film “My Four Years in Germany." The corporate name honors the four founding Warner brothers, Jewish brothers who emigrated from Poland to London, Ontario, Canada, Harry Warner (1881–1958), Albert Warner (1883–1967), Sam Warner (1887–1927) and Jack L. Warner (1892–1978).
1920: In the wake of Arab attacks on Jewish citizens, Major-General Louis Bols, the Officer Administering the Government of Palestine, issued an order prohibiting further demonstrations in Jerusalem.
1925(14thof Adar, 5685): Purim
1929(28thof Adar I, 5689): Seventy-seven year old German Jurist Victor Gabriel Ehrenberg passed away.
1929: In New York, Lewis Steiger, the proprietor of men’s clothing business and his wife Rebecca gave birth to Samuel Steiger “a New Yorker who transformed himself into a Western rancher, served five terms in the House as a Republican from Arizona…” (As reported by William Yardley)
1929: The New York Times reports on the upcoming opening of “the Warner Brothers' ambitious Vitaphone production which will open at the Winter Garden, featuring Dolores Costello and George O'Brien” which is a cinematic treatment of the Biblical story.
1929: Birthdate of “Stephen Myron Schwebel is an American jurist and expert on international law.”
1932: It was reported today that when Benjamin Cardozo is sworn in next week as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, there will finally be enough Justices to constitute a quorum so that the Court can hear the government’s appeal of a consent decree by the lower court in an anti-trust case involving the nation’s meatpackers. The death of Justice Holmes and the recusal of Justices Hughes, Stone and Sutherland had meant that there were not enough Justices to hear the case.
1933: Michael Siegel, a Jewish lawyer who complained about the police “is forced to walk through Munich barefoot while carrying a sign reading ‘I will never complain to the police again
1933: Victor Klemperer writes in his diary “Hitler elected as Chancellor. What I had called terror was only a mild prelude. . . . It is amazing how everything collapses . . . prohibitions and acts of violence. And with it, on streets and radio, unrestrained propaganda. On Saturday I heard a piece of Hitler's speech in Konsigsberg. I understood only a few words. But the tone! The unctuous roaring bark, the bark, really, of a clergyman. . . . How long will I be able to retain my professorship?”
1937: “Chicken Heart” written by Arch Oboler was broadcast for the first time on the radio suspense show,
1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that Viscount Cranborne, MP, the Foreign Under-Secretary told Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, MP, that the population of Transjordan was about 300,000 and that the Palestine Mandate still applied there, except for the provisions which included the establishment of the Jewish National Home. The policy in regard to the prospects of the Jewish settlement in Transjordan "remained unchanged". Thomas Williams, MP, asked the Colonial Secretary why the recent British military expenditures were charged to the Palestine government, while they might have been caused by the necessities of the international situation.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that Jerusalem Arabs welcomed Moslem pilgrims returning by train from the pilgrimage to Mecca.
1938: The day after the Germans marched into Austira, Fritz Grünbaum and Karl Farkas acted for the last time in Simplicissimus before trying to flee to Czechozlovakia.
1938: Birthdate of Ron Mix. Mix was an oddity - a Jewish professional football player. He was all-star offensive tackle with the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1979. Just to be on the safe side, Mix went to law school at night.
1943: Emanuel Zisman, his mother and his sister, along with the rest of the Jews living in Plovdiv, Bulgaria were rounded up for a planned deportation to the death camps.
1943: Bulgaria refused to release 48,000 of its Jews to the Germans. This became known to the Bulgarians as a "miracle of the Jewish people."
1943: Last of two performances of “We Will Never Die” took place at Madison Square Garden in New York City
1944: Adolf Eichmann and his staff met at Mauthausen concentration camp to work out the deportation of over 750,000 Jews from Hungary.
1947: In what seems to be a public change in policy by Jewish leaders, 5 mayors in the martial law zone, including the Mayor of Tel Aviv issued a strongly worded statement warning against any new outbreak of terrorism. “Acts of desperation do nothing but harm to the community and are calculated to bring about the disruption of our organized life. We urgently warn the perpetrators and those who bear responsibility for them to cease all acts of terrorism, murder and violence against Jews and Britons. Do not destroy the last possibility of maintain the wholeness of our organization.”
1947: “Twenty-one American citizens, including a woman named Hanna Herschkowitz, as well as two Norwegians with American…papers and two French nationals, all of whom arrived aboard the unauthorized immigrant ship Abril, were remanded by a magistrate in Haifa today. They will be held for a fortnight pending investigations into charges arising from the ship’s arrival in Palestine waters.” Two American newspapermen – Wallace Litwin and Albert L. Hrschkoff are among those being detained. Joseph Kaserman, an attorney from Haifa has been retained to defend the crew and protect the rights of the ship’s registered owner, the Tyre Shipping Company of New York City. The Abril is also known as the SS Ben Hecht, a ship under Irgun control that had been carrying 599 Jewish refugees trying to land in Palestine.
1947: Daniel Frisch a leading member of the ZOA and the Zionist General Council said tonight, “I am persuaded by consultations and assurances obtained back by overwhelming Jewish as well as non-Jewish sentiment, that the United States Government will never give its consent to a solution of the Palestine problem which would tend to rob the Jewish people of its only path leading to rehabilitation and life.”
1948: Birthdate of retired government agent and private investigator Robert Levinson who has been held by the Iranians since 2007.
1948: A “company of the 1st Battalion commanded by Assaf Simchoni acted against an Arab gang which had settled in Kafr Kanna, on the Tiberias-Nazareth road. Information had been received that the village had become a center for gangs headed by a certain ‘Ibrahim’ that had carried out many attacks in the Lower Galilee and the Zevulun Valley. Among these was a gang that had previously been active in Shefaram, but had moved to Kafr Kanna. Born in 1922, Simchoni would rose to the rank of Major-General in the IDF. In 1956, he “commanded the Sinai Campaign and was killed in an airplane accident at the end of the war.”
1949: During Operation Uvda “an aerial photographer discovered that the police station guarding Ras al-Naqb was abandoned and the Negev Brigade set out towards Umm Rashrash through Ras al-Naqb
1949: The conquest of the southern Negev and Um Rashrash (Eilat) in March 1949 ended the War of Independence.
1949: In Israel, the Provisional Government gave way to the first Cabinet of the new State.
1949: Moshe Sharett completed his term as Foreign Minister for the Provisional Government which had been in power since the creation of the state in May of 1948
1949: Moshe Sharett begins serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs in Israel’s first elected government.
1949: Haim-Moshe Shapira replaced Yitzhak Gruenbaum as Internal Affairs Minister.
1949: Aharon Zisling completed his service as Israel’s first Minister of Agriculture.
1951: An estimated 200 million dollars worth of Jewish property was then taken over by the state. "At a secret session of the Iraqi Parliament passed Law No. 5 of 1951 under which "the assets of all Jews who were leaving and had denounced Iraqi citizenship - 103,866 by that time - were frozen and put under Iraqi Government control." This law actually was applied to the more than 123,000 Jews who had been forced to flee during the years 1948-1951. The Jews still trapped in Iran were not only stateless, they were now totally impoverished.
1952(13th of Adar, 5712): Fast of Esther
1952: Fulgencio Batista leads a successful coup in Cuba and appoints himself as the "provisional president". This was Batista’s second time to serve as president. It was during this second presidency that Meyer Lanksy negotiated the deal with Batista that gave “the mob” monopoly control over the island’s gambling operations in return for a down payment of 3 million dollars and a fifty percent cut of the profits. (In those days, a million dollars was really worth a million dollars.)
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported the cabinet’s decision that wages earned by Arabs in the employ of the state, municipalities and other public institutions, and the prices paid for Arab produce would be equal to those paid to the Jews. Mr. Palmon, the prime minister’s adviser on Arab affairs, stated that among Israeli Arabs the collection of income tax was practically nonexistent. They paid only a negligible property tax. The cabinet had also approved the Pensions and Rehabilitation of the Victims of the War of Independence bill.
1957(7thof Adar II, 5717): Sixty-six year old screenwriter and author Samuel Ornitz who was blacklisted as a member of the “Hollywood Ten” passed away today.
1959: Birthdate of Aital Selinger, the native of Haifa volleyball player who twice represented the Netherlands in the Summer Olympics.
1963: Birthdate of Frederick Jay Rubin, known as Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is one of the two guys behind legendary hip-hop label Def Jam.
1965: Neil Simon's play ''The Odd Couple'' opened on Broadway.
1966: Birthdate of actor Stephen Mailer, son of author Norman Mailer.
1970: Barbra Streisand recorded "The Singer"& "I Can Do It"
1970: Barbra Streisand recorded "The Singer"& "I Can Do It"
1970: The Knesset passed the "Who is a Jew?" bill which defined a Jew as one born to a Jewish mother or a convert to the Jewish religion.
1974: Golda Meir formed a new government that included Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres. The government was formed in response to a new threat from Syria and would prove to be the shortest lived government in the history of Israel.
1974: Abba Eban completed his term as Minister of Foreign Affairs in Israel’s 15thgovernment and began serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Israel’s 16thgovernment.
1974: Aharon Uzan replaced Shimon Peres as Communications Ministers
1974: Yitzhak Rafael replaced Zerach Warhaftig as the head of the Ministry of Religious Services
1974: Yehoshua Rabinovitz replaced Ze’ev Sherf as Minster of Housing and Construction
1974: Birthdate Keren Ann Zeidel the famous singer-song writer born at Caearea.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that US President Jimmy Carter suggested that the final Israeli borders should include only "some minor adjustments in the 1967 borders." He added, however, that it was important to recognize the difference between the "legal borders" and "defense lines" which would enable Israel to defend itself.
1980: Yitzhak Shamir began serving as Foreign Minister.
1980: Jean Harris murdered Doctor Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale diet doctor.
1986(29th of Adar I, 5746): Ninety-five year old Rosh Yeshiva Yaako Kamenetsky, author of Emes leYaakov al HaShas ("Truth to Jacob") passed away.
1987: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of Memoirs of a Fortunate Jew: An Italian Story by Dan Vittorio Serge and The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, Survival by Susan Zucotti.
1987:Five authors of books with Jewish themes, published in 1986, were honored today at the Eighth Annual Present Tense/Joel H. Cavior Book Awards luncheon, sponsored by Present Tense magazine and the American Jewish Committee, and held at the committee's headquarters. The winners were: Biography/Autobiography: Victor Perera, ''Rites: A Guatemalan Boyhood'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). Fiction: Art Spiegelman, ''Maus: A Survivor's Tale'' (Pantheon Books). History: Bernard Lewis, ''Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice'' (W. W. Norton & Company). Jewish Religious Thought: David Weiss Halivni, ''Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law'' (Harvard University Press). General Nonfiction: Lesley Hazleton, ''Jerusalem, Jerusalem'' (Atlantic Monthly Press). Elie Wiesel was honored with a special lifetime achievement citation for his ''extraordinary efforts to rescue the Holocaust from historical and literary oblivion and to dramatize the plight of Soviet Jews and other oppressed people.
1991: Susanne J. Schwartz and Colin M. Davidson were married this evening. The bride’s father is Richard A. Jacobs, the president of the Joseph Jacobs Organization, an advertising agency that was founded by his father the late Joseph Jacobs.
1992:In an article entitled “Menachem Begin, Guerrilla Leader Who Became Peacemaker,” published the day after he passed away James Feron described Menachem Begin as “the Israeli Prime Minister who made peace with Egypt” after living much of his life in the opposition. A Jewish underground leader before Israel gained independence in 1948; he openly fought the established Zionist leadership of the struggle against British rule. Then for nearly three decades, he headed Israel's major opposition party. Ultimately and to many Israelis, surprisingly, his minority bloc ousted the Labor Party, which had governed continuously in the three decades since statehood, and Mr. Begin, as party leader, became Prime Minister. He was to govern an ever more divided and troubled nation. Mr. Begin, who led Israel from May 1977 until he resigned as Prime Minister in 1983, stretched the national mood from great pride to deep dismay. He guided the nation to a peace treaty with Egypt, the first such pact with an Arab country. But he also presided over a bitterly divisive war against Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon.” The treaty with Egypt, which brought Mr. Begin a shared 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with President Anwar el-Sadat, represented a high point in his political leadership while the war in Lebanon in 1982 and the stalemate that followed, with its steady toll of dead and wounded, were its low point.
1996: Helène Aylon's “The Liberation of G-d” was shown for the first time in the New York Jewish Museum's exhibit “Too Jewish?: Challenging Traditional Identities.” The work, which took six years to create, was made by covering every page of the five books of the Torah with transparent parchment, on which Aylon marked problematic passages with a pink pen. The marked passages were mostly those considered degrading to women, but also included negative references to homosexuality. This work was accompanied by commentary on the marked passages from a spectrum of Jewish scholars and rabbis. “Liberation” was typical of Aylon's work in combining Jewish and social justice themes.
1997: The New York Times reported that the ownership of The Chattanooga Times is being transferred from the four grandchildren of Adolph S. Ochs, who bought the paper in 1878 and remained its publisher until 1935, to his 13 great-grandchildren. The family said it did not anticipate any shift in the Tennessee newspaper's management or direction as a result of the change in ownership. ''It is part of an orderly transfer of responsibility to our children, and we make it with the utmost faith that they will sustain and enrich'' the family's commitment to the paper, said Ruth S. Holmberg, who remains the chairman of The Chattanooga Times and is one of the four current owners. In addition to Mrs. Holmberg, the other three owners are Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Marian S. Heiskell and Dr. Judith P. Sulzberger. All are in their 70's, while their children range in age from 32 to 53. The four grandchildren of Mr. Ochs are also the trustees of four trusts that own a controlling stake in The New York Times Company. Mr. Sulzberger is also the chairman of the Times Company. Although Mr. Ochs bought The New York Times in 1896, The Chattanooga Times remained separate from the Times Company.
1998(12thof Adar, 5758): Seventy-four year Hayim David HaLevi, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi for Tel Aviv and Jaffa passed way today. A native of Jerusalem, he served in the IDF during the War for Independence before following a rabbinical career to which this blog cannot do justice.
1998: The new building of the Jewish Museum of Greece was inaugurated today.
2002: Israeli helicopters destroyed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office in Gaza City, hours after 11 Israelis were killed in a suicide bombing in a cafe across the street from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's residence in Jerusalem.
2003: Yaakov Edri begins serving as Deputy Minister of Public Security.
2006: The Conservative movement decided to postpone until December 2006 making a final decision on recognizing gay marriage and allowing homosexuals to be ordained as rabbis, a move that is threatening to split the movement. The movement's Halakhic (Jewish law) committee discussed the initiative today but it was decided to delay making a final decision. One of the Conservative movement's leading rabbis in New York, who requested to remain anonymous, told Haaretz on Monday that the initiative's approval would cause broad resistance among the movement's rabbis and congregation members, and that many would leave the movement.
2007: Shabbat Parah
2007: The Tel Aviv Museum hosts a gala concert in honor of American composer Steve Reich
2008: An exhibition styled “Lucien Freud: The Painter’s Etchings” at the Museum of Modern of Art comes to an end.
2009: “Irena’s Vow,” starring Tovah Feldshuh opens at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York City.
2009 (14 Adar, 5769): Purim
2009:Charles Zentai, an 87-year-old man accused of killing a Jewish teenager in Hungary during World War II asked an Australian court today to prevent his extradition to Hungary, and claimed the results of a lie detector test prove he had nothing to do with the death.
Zentai, an Australian citizen, is listed by the U.S.-based Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center among its 10 most wanted Nazis as having participated in manhunts, persecution, and murder of Jews in Budapest in 1944.
Zentai, an Australian citizen, is listed by the U.S.-based Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center among its 10 most wanted Nazis as having participated in manhunts, persecution, and murder of Jews in Budapest in 1944.
2010:The CJH, YUM, Program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies at Cardozo Law School is scheduled to present “Genocide and Responsibility to Protect" during which a panel of scholars and practitioners will discuss The Responsibility to Protect ("RtoP" or "R2P"), a new international security and human rights norm designed to address the international community's failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
2010(24thof Adar): Actor Corey Haim passed away.
2010: The 121stannual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis came to a close today.
2011:The NJDC is scheduled to host a reception honoring Kenneth R. Feinberg an American attorney specializing in mediation who is currently overseeing the U.S. government’s response to claims arising from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
2011:The Israeli Opera is scheduled to host the premiere “of the tumultuous Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Katerina Izmaylova), by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, directed by Yulia Pevzner, based on a version staged by Irina Molostova, a Ukrainian stage director who first directed it in a joint production of the Israeli Opera and the Kirov Opera House in 1997.”
2011: Opening night of the 15th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festiva
2011:The faces of four of Israel’s most celebrated poets and playwrights have been selected to appear on a new series of banknotes slated for release in the next three years, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer announced today. Natan Alterman, Leah Goldberg, Shaul Tchernichovsky and Rachel Sela – better known as Rachel the Poetess – were selected for the list, which was finalized following more than a year of heated debate and which will now be submitted to the government for approval. The faces will appear on new NIS 20, 50, 100 and 200 banknotes. The Bank of Israel said in a press release that the poets were chosen in the hope that “featuring these personalities on the banknotes will help to instill in the younger generation of Israelis an appreciation of their contribution to Israeli society and to the state.” Fischer made the announcement a day after meeting with the Committee for the Planning of Banknotes, Coins and Commemorative Coins, chaired by retired Judge Yaacov Turkel, to confirm the four selections. The committee was tasked in December 2009 with finding a new set of personalities for the banknotes after the central bank shelved its original list – which included Rachel the Poetess, writer Shai Agnon and former prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin - following strong opposition from, amongst others, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and MK Benny Begin, son of Menachem. The New Israeli Shekel was introduced in place of the old shekel in 1985, with banknotes featuring the same personalities that can still be found today: former prime minister Moshe Sharett on the NIS 20 note, Shay Agnon on the NIS 50 note, and former presidents Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and Zalman Shazar on the NIS 100 and 200 notes. According to the Bank of Israel, the new series will incorporate state-of the-art security and identification features to aid anti-counterfeiting measures.
2011: In an agreement signed today, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate sold most of its leasing rights to large swaths of Jerusalem to a group of Jewish investors last week. The
2011: “Today, Skopje, the capital of Macedonia — home to more than a quarter of the country’s population of 2 million — gained a new cultural artifact: the Holocaust Memorial Center of the Jews from Macedonia. A landmark in the middle of the city, the center remembers Jews lost in the Holocaust from Macedonia and from neighboring Southeast European nations.” (As reported by Katherine Clarke)
2011: Opening of the 15th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival
2012: “Camera Obscura” is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Beth-El Jewish Film Festival in Fort Worth, TX.
2012: Alison Westermann is scheduled to make her Washington, DC debut with a performance at Tifereth Israel
2012(16thof Adar, 5772): On the Hebrew calendar, anniversary of the commencement of the rebuilding of the Walls of Jerusalem by Agrippa I in 41 of the CE.
2012: United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the barrage of rockets fired towards Israel from the Gaza Strip. Clinton said in a meeting with Opposition leader Tzipi Livni in New York that Israel has the right to defend itself. Livni in turn urged the international community to speak out against terrorism directed at Israel's southern communities.
2012: Due to the escalation in violence, the IDF Home Front command along with the heads of a number of local authorities in Israel’s south decided tonight to cancel school in all towns and cities located between 7km to 40km from the Gaza Strip.
2013:Bel Kaufman, author of Up the Down Staircase;Rachel Cohen Gerrol, co-founder of the Nexus Global Youth Summit; and Rachel Sklar, founder of Change the Ratio are scheduled to be honored at JWA's Third Annual Making Trouble/Making History awards luncheon
2013: The Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital is scheduled to host a Purim Ball and Auction honoring Marsha Gentner and Joe Berman, Jacqueline Eyl and Leonard Chanin Mindy and Jeffrey Sosland featuring comedian Joel Chasnoff
2013: As part of Temple Judah’s 90th anniversary observance, Barb Feller will lead a trolley tour of historic Jewish cites in Cedar Rapids with Mark Hunter serving as “subject matter expert.”
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Exploring Esther: The Origins, Values and Power of Purim.”
2014: Jennifer George, Al Jaffee, Adam Gopnik and Brian Walker are scheduled to discuss “The Genius of Rube Goldberg” at the 92nd Street Y.
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Lost Souls: Retrieving Jewish War Orphans after the Holocaust.”