OCTOBER 23
521 BCE (17thof Tishrei):The first Babylonian record of Nebuchadnezzar III the usurper who challenged the rule of Darius, the Persian ruler under whose reign the building of the Second Temple began. ‘
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1086: At the Battle of az-Zallaqah, the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats the forces of Castilian King Alfonso VI. Yusuf ibn Tashfin was the leader of group of puritanical Muslims known as Berber Almoravids. Many Jewish and Muslims scholars and intellectuals left areas controlled by these Berbers and took refuge in Toledo which had been conquered by the Christians in 1085. Periods of Berber control were not a Golden Age for the Jews of Iberia and thousands of Jews joined the army of Alfonso. Although Alfonso lost the battle, the Berbers were too battered to take advantage of their victory and Yusuf had to return to North Africa marking the end of this phase of the long, drawn-out conflict between Christians and Muslims. During the centuries’ long contest, Jewish loyalties varied depending on the nature of the combatants. All of this would come to an end with the Expulsion of 1492.
1340: Nicolas de Lyra, the Franciscan rumored “to be of Jewish descent” and author of an anti-Jewish work entitled "De Messia Ejusque Adventu Præterito” who was known for his commentaries on the Old and New Testaments that drew on “original texts” and who drew heavily on the works of Rashi passed away today.
1392: Pope Boniface IX who in 1376 exempted his physician Angelo di Manuele and his son Angelo from all taxes “appointed the physician Solomone de Sabalduchio his "familiaris,"
1396: “The charter granted to the Jews of Carinthia and Styria today which states that the privileges granted them in 1377 shall be confirmed, is merely a confirmation of the pre-existing "Handfeste"
1456: Seventy Year old John of Capistrano a Franciscan friar who would be canonized by the Catholic Church but who was also known as the “Scourge of the Jews” for his “fiery sermons” that “persuaded southern German regions to expel their Jewish populations,” passed away today.
1548: French Protestant theologian Theodore Beza, the successor to John Calvin at Geneva and like Luther was a believer “that Christian churches were largely responsible for the current unbelief among the Jews and “that there would a large-scale conversion of the Jews” while still acknowledging “the Justice of divine anger the Jewish people” arrived in Geneva, today.
1625: “Pope Urban VIII forbids Jews from having gravestones within the city limits of Rome.”
1703: Letters of privileged granted today by King Leopold I “left it in the hands of the municipal councils” in Hungary to either admit or exclude Jews from their territory.
1704:: Following today report by the British Commissary of Supplies that the besieged garrison at Gibraltar had enough supplies to last another ten weeks, “the newly appointed Proveedor for Charles III’s forces, Joseph Coritzos, a Dutch Jew of Marrano origin who still had relatives in Spain, including his uncles, the Viscount de Valdefuentes, was sent to Morocco to purchase grain and horses.” (As reported by Mesod Benady)
1715: Birthdate of Peter II of Russia. During his reign, Peter modified some of the anti-Jewish rulings of his predecessor, Catherine I. At the request of some of the Cossack leaders, he allowed them to return to the fairs in Little Russia since their presence was essential for the commercial wellbeing of the area.
1726:António José da Silva a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew"“went through the great auto-da-fé held” today “in the presence of King John V and his court, abjured his errors, and was set at liberty.” His mother would not be released until October of 1729.
1767: In Savannah, GA, Caty Hays and Abraham Sarzedas gave birth to Moses Zarzedas, the husband of Belle Myers.
1776: The brigantine Andrea Doria left the United States headed for the Dutch held island of St. Eustatius with a copy of the Declaration of Independence. The Andrea Doria returned from the island which had a significant Jewish population which was supportive of the Americans with the first of several loads of arms and munitions that were critical to American success.
1781: In Frankfurt Am Main, “Bunle Oettingen Schuster” and Salomon Loeb Schott gave birth to Samuel Salomon Schott, the husband of “Louize Polak,” with whom he had six children.
1790: In Jebenhausen, Germany, Jentle Loeb and Moses Fasit Rosenheim gave birth to Ruchele Rosenheim, the wife of Moses Loeb Sontheimer with whom she had six children.
1791: In Savannah, GA, a proud moment for two leading colonial families when Sarah Sheftall and Abraham de Lyon gave birth to Levi Sheftall de Lyon the husband of Leonora de la Motta and the father of Leonorean de Lyon and the husband of Rebecca de la Motta with whom he had four more children.
1793: Aaron Aarons married Hannah Levy at the Great Synagogue today.
1803: Birthdate of Angelo Vivante, the husband of Regina Kohen, who, when he passed away was buried in the Trieste Jewish Cemetery in Italy.
1812: Uriah P. Levy, “a grandson of Revolutionary War patriot Jonas Phillips” and the first Jew to rise to the rank of Commodore in the United States Navy began his military career as a “sailing master.
1818(23rdof Tishrei, 5579): Simchat Torah
1834(20thof Tishrei, 5595): Sixth Day of Sukkoth
1834: Mohammad Shah Qajar, whose son Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar brought Dr. Jacob Euard Polak to Persia to teach medicine and surgery to a whole generation of Persian physicians as part of an attempt to modernize the kingdom, began his reign today as King of Iran.
1842: Fifty-six year old Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius the German Biblical critic and Hebrew language expert who authored a Hebrew grammar and a commentary on Isaiah passed away today.
1847: In Germany, Lazarus Morgenthau, the son of Moses and Brunhilda Morgenthau and Seline Babette Morgenthau gave birth to Maximilian Morgenthau, the uncle of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and confidant of FDR, Hans Morgenthau, Jr.
1853(21stof Tishrei, 5614): Hoshanah Rabah
1853: “Compulsory Christianity in Italy,” published today summarized the events of the last five years that are known as the Mortara Affair or The Kidnapping of Edgar Mortara which it says is recent stretch of Papal power in Italy ,making a noise in Europe, which will not be hushed up. It also pointed out that the Papacy and this policy are propped up on the bayonets of Napoleon III’s troops and that if these troops were withdrawn the populace would rise up to defend the rights of the Jewish child’s father. “If rascally servants may clandestinely baptize the children of Hebrews, there is no reason why they not extend the same blessing to those of Protestants and if the Church can lawfully found a claim to the possession of their persons and their minds upon such a ceremony in the former case, they may in the latter.”
1854: It was reported today that in the matter of Abraham Oettinger v Uriah P. Levy, the judge decided in favor of the Plantiff and gave a judgement in the amount of $313.69. This was a landlord/tenant dispute over who should pay for plumbing repairs. [Yes, this is the same Uriah P. Levy who was highest ranking Jewish officer in the United States Navy and a member of one New York’s most prominent Sephardic families.
1855: Birthdate of Emily Levy, the Hamburg born linguist and lexicographer.
1859: Birthdate of Simon Marx, the native of Alsace who is better known as Sam Marx, the husband of Minnie Marx and the father of the Groucho Marx and the rest of the Marx brothers.
1860: “The Present Condition of the Jews” published today stated that, The second of Mr. De Cordova’s course of lectures, to be delivered this evening at Clinton Hall, is upon this highly interesting topic. To discuss it, it is needless to say, the lecturer lays aside the vein of light humor and pleasantry, which usually characterize his productions, and gives us sober facts and apposite illustrations instead.”
1860: A very large audience listened to Mr. De Cordova’s lecture on ‘the Past and Present condition of the Jews,’ delivered in Clinton Hall this evening. Commencing with the Biblical renown of the Israelites, the lecturer traced the distinction of that nation in the field of letters of arms, of medicine, and, in fact, of all the arts and sciences, demonstrating that they are well worth a place in history. He cited the popular idea of a Jew as that of a man with a very protuberant proboscis, engaged in buying old clothes, renovating them by same mysterious and secret process, and selling them for eight times their value to unsuspecting countrymen. He accounted for the degraded condition of the lower class of Israelites from the fact of the relentless persecutions to which the race has been subjected in Austria, Spain, Germany and other countries, where they have been obliged to withstand the most terrible pains and penalties in their adherence to the religion of their fathers. He read official correspondence from Holland to show the good effect of emancipation the Jewish nation in that country, and from the increasing liberality manifested in all countries -- taking example by America -- he foretold a glorious future for Israel. As to the politics of this country he knew many Jews who would vote for Lincoln… Some who would vote for Douglas….Some who would go for Breckenridge and two or three who were Know-Nothings…In conclusion, Mr. De Cordova paid a glowing tribute of admiration to our free institutions, which alike honor and protect the Jew and the Gentile” [Editor’s Note – De Cordova was a Sephardic Jew who was quite popular as a humorist, author and public speaker.]
1861: Samuel Du Pont the U.S Navy officer in charge of the expedition aimed at taking Port Royal, SC from the Rebels “was furious” when he saw the article published in today’s New York Times providing details of his activities. “Jacob da Silva Solis Cohen, as Sephardic Jew…was an assistant surgeon with Dupont’s expedition to Port Royal” who also served with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron which was a key, if unsung, element in the Union’s victory.
1862: Philadelphian Benjamin B. Goodman who had risen to the rank of 2ndLieutenant in the 27th Regiment completed his enlistment today but apparently his sense of duty was not since fulfilled since he would re-enlist just eight days later.
1864 :( 23rd of Tishrei, 5625): Simchat Torah
1864: Major Mordecai was named Chief of Ordinance, Department and Army of the Ohio, which was one of the major military units of the Union forces during the American Civil War. Ordinance dealt with Artillery, the one element of the Northern Army that consistently out-performed its Confederate counterparts.
1866: Today in Pilsen, the City Council decided to declare” the secondary” school to be Czech which caused great indignation among the Germans, especially the Jews” “who spoke Czech but considered German to be their mother tongue.”
1866: In London, Miriam and Solomon Abrahams gave birth to their “eldest son,” Barnet Albert Abrahahms.
1866: Birthdate of Paul Ferdinand Strassman, a leading German gynecologist who would be forced to flee when the Nazis came to power.
1867: Seventy-two Senators were summoned by Royal Proclamation to serve as the first members of the Canadian Senate, the upper house of the Canadian Parliament. Jews played an active role in Canadian politics as can be seen by the fact that Ezekiel Hart was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada in 1807 and Henry Nathan was elected as to serve as an MP in the House of Commons in 1874. But a Jew did serve in the Canadian Senate until 1955 when David Kroll was appointed to serve in the upper chamber.
1868: Birthdate of Sir Alfred Moritz, the younger son of Ludwig Mond, who gained fame as an industrialist, financier, politician and Zionist and was the husband of Dame Violet Florence Mabel Mond.
1868: The Jews of Barbados were denied the right to engage in retail trade.
1870: In Baton Rouge, LA, “Jacob and Caroline (Kahn) Bernstein, gave birth to Chicago College of Pharmacy and husband of Fannie Hirsch railroad executive Ernest Ralph Bernstein who moved to Shreveport, LA in 1876 where he engaged in numerous successful business ventures while serving on the executive committees of the Leo N. Levi Hospital in Hot Spring, AR and the “Old Folks Jewish Home in Memphis, TN” and belonging to Temple B’nai Zion
1872(21stof Tishrei, 5633): Hoshanah Rabah
1872: “Minor Topics” published today described the theory of “J.B. Bartnett, a Hebrew scholar” that “Ireland was…settled” by people “from Judea when the Prophet Jeremiah emigrated” there “with the remnant of the tribe of Judah. According to Bartnett, prophet brought with him the stone known as ‘Jacob’s Stone’ which was kept in the sanctuary of the first temple at Jerusalem” and has become “the Stone of Destiny” that was used to crown Irish kings and was later taken to Westminster Abbey by Edward III who used it for the same purpose.
1874(12th of Cheshvan, 5635):Abraham Geiger a German rabbi and scholar who led the founding of Reform Judaism passed away. (There is no way this brief entry can do him justice. See below for gateway article into his fascinating life.)
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/AbrahamGeiger.html
1875: Birthdate of Alsatian native Armand Spira, the husband of Suzanne Metzger and father of Henry and Andre Spira and the father-in-law of Marcelle (Kehrli) Spira.
1877: Louis Lazarus, the Jewish owner of a second-hand clothing store on the corner of Baxter and Leonard in Manhattan, was held at the tombs Police Court on the charge of receiving stolen goods. Bail was set at $1,500.
1878: It was reported today that Moritz Ellinger has been chosen to run for the position of Coroner by the opponents of the Tammany political machine.
1879: It was reported today that Joseph De Longpres, a fourteen year old who had arrived yesterday in New York from New Orleans is missing. He was last seen entering a hack hired by a Jew whom he had met on the boat coming up from New Orleans. The boy, who had money and luggage when he left the ship is described as “timid and effeminate.” There is no other description of the other party except that he was a Jew. How this was deduced is not mentioned.
1879: Three days after he had passed away, 70 year old German native Lesser Friedlander, the husband of the former Elizabeth Assur, was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery on Buckingham Road.
1879: The Vicksburg (Miss.) Herald reported that a meeting held in Bolivar County adopted resolutions denouncing Edward Storm as “a dishonest Jew, the servile tool of the slave-owner before the war and the convenient and abandoned ally of the carpetbagger.” The citizens of Bolivar County are urged to vote against Storm who has been nominated by the Republicans for the position of County Supervisor.” [A Google Search cannot find any reference to a Jew named Edward Storm. Poor man, he was hit with the big three of the post war South – Republican, Carpetbagger and Jew.]
1879: Simon Curriak, a Jewish tailor working on Division Street in NYC, has come forward to claim his children who being held at Castle Garden. In the meantime, an unidentified Jewish newspaper editor has asked the authorities to hold the children until he can present their case to “the local Jewish societies” who will provide for their needs.
1881: Eighteen year old Recha Goldschmidt married Alfred Schwarzschild, the son of Isaac Jacob Schwarzschild and Rosalie Kulp.
1880: Birthdate of New York native Pratt Institute trained sculptor Albert Dreyfus who “worked on sculpture for the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition in 1901” and the “St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Expostition in 1904.”
1881: It was reported today that the Jewish synagogues of East Prussia, which total 34, “recently held their first convention.
1881: It was reported today that “the Russian Government proposes to give special privileges to those Jews who will engage in agricultural pursuits.” The Jews will be allowed to purchase land outside of the Pale of Settlement, “but they will be under strict surveillance.”
1881: It was reported today that for Jews, the disappearance of “religious hate” has so completely disappeared” from Serbia that a Jew has been elected to the Serbian Parliament. This stands in stark contrast to “the neighboring kingdom of Romania” where “persecution of Jews still goes on.”
1882: It was reported today that the six largest Jewish congregations in New York are Temple Emanu-El Temple Beth El, Ahavath Chesed, B’nai Yeshurun, Shearay Tefilla and Rodoph Sholom. The membership of these congregations total approximately 1,500.
1883(22ndof Tishrei, 5622): Shmini Atzeret
1883(22ndof Tishrei, 5622): Seventy-nine year old German physicist Peter Riess the first Jewish member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences passed away today.
1883: In New York, Christopher Oscanyan, an Armenian-American, delivered a lecture at Steinway Hall entitled “The Women of Turkey and the Jews of the East.”
1884: New York Mayor Franklin Edson and Jesse Seligman were among the dignitaries who attended the dedication of the new building housing the Hebrew Orphan Asylum
1884: It was reported today that in New York City, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association is planning on holding “a Montefiore centenary celebration.”
1884: Rabbi Mendes of Shearith Israel wrote to President Chester A. Arthur inviting him to participate in the upcoming events celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore. Arthur’s private secretary replied with a note expressing his high esteem for the great philanthropist and his regrets that he would not be able to attend due to other official demands on his time
1885: “The Mystery At Wilmington” published today described events surrounding the death of lodger at the Clayton House in Wilmington, Delaware. “The man’s features are clear German, and there are evidences that he was of the Hebrew faith.” (The latter statement may have been a polite reference to the decedent having been circumcised.)
1886: Birthdate of Paul Ferdinand Strassmann, “a pioneer in surgical gynecology.”
1886: It was reported today that the Honorable S.S. Cox will address the upcoming opening exercise of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.
1886: In Natchez, LA, Samuel and Caroline Friedman gave birth to Louisiana state legislator Leon Friedman
1887(5thof Cheshvan, 5648): Eighty-three year old West Point graduate and Major Alfred Mordecai, the Warrenton, NC born son of Rebecca and Jacob Mordecai, the husband of Sarah Ann Hays with whom he had eight children including Alfred Mordecai, Jr. who like his father was a West Point graduate but unlike his father served in the Union Army during the Civil War.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/alfred-mordecai
1887: “From Anjou to Touraine” which was published today described the history of the region during Medieval times including the fact that “in 1329, when the Jews were accused of having formed a plot to poison all the wells and springs in France, 160 unfortunate people of that race were burned at the stake in Chinon.”
1887: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at New York City’s Temple Beth-El gave the second of his Sunday lectures today which was entitled “What is Judaism?”
1888: In New York, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment met today and provisionally approved expenditures for several agencies of the city government and charitable institutions including an expenditure of $60,000.00 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
1888(18thof Cheshvan, 5649): Seventy-six year old Samuel Bernheimer, the native of Hohenems, Austria and the wife of Henrietta Cahn whom he had married in New Orleans, passed away today in Mississippi.
1889: In Karlsruhe, Germany, Adolf and Klara Reichman gave birth Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, the medical school graduate, the wife of Erich Fromm with whom she opened “a therapeutic facility in Heidelberg who was forced to leave Germany and settle in the United States in 1935 where she pursued her career until her death in 1957.
https://spartacus-educational.com/Frieda_Fromm-Reichmann.htm
1889: In Rockford, Illinois, Professor E.L. Curtis delivered a sermon in which he declared that the Book of Job is only a poem written by some pious Jew during the period of the exile.
1889: A group of Russian Jewish immigrants escaping pogroms and persecution who had arrived in Argentina aboard the SS Weser founded Moisés Ville a small town in Santa Fe province which was part of the Jewish agricultural settlements to be financed by Baron Maurice Hirsch.
1889:Birthdate of Avshalom Feinberg one of the leaders of Nili, a Jewish spy network in Ottoman Palestine helping the British fight the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Feinberg was born in Gedera, Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and studied in France. He returned to work with Aaron Aaronsohn at the agronomy research station in Atlit. Soon after the beginning of war, Aaronson founded the Nili underground along with his sister Sarah Aaronsohn, Feinberg and Yosef Lishansky. In 1915 Feinberg travelled to Egypt and made contact with British Naval Intelligence. In 1917, Feinberg again journeyed to Egypt, on foot. He was apparently killed by a Bedouin near the British front in Sinai, close to Rafah. His fate was unknown until after the 1967 Six-Day War when his remains were found under a palm tree that had grown from date seeds in his pocket to mark the spot where he lay. In 1979 a new Israeli settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, Avshalom was named after him. Although it was abandoned following the Camp David Accords, a new village by the same name was founded in Israel in 1990.
1892: Birthdate of Gummo Marx, the actor and comedian who was one of the famous Marx Brothers. 1892: Professor Adolph Cohn of Columbia delivered the address of welcome at this evening’s dinner honoring French Admiral Abel de Libran and his staff which was attended by many prominent New York dignitaries including President Rosenthal of the French Hebrew Society.
1892: Fifty-two year old Mehmed Emin Pasha passed away today, reportedly murdered by two Arab slave traders in the Congo Free State while working for the German East Africa Company. One of the minor romantic figures of the 19thcentury, he was born Isaak Eduard Schnitzer, to a German-Jewish family. He converted to Christianity and then to Islam, as he played multiple roles in different parts of the Ottoman Empire.
1892: In his formal speech which the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City delivered at the Hebrew Institute Hall last night, Edward Einstein called on his mostly Jewish audience to go to the polls and “rebuke the present City Government.
1893: Richard Mansfield’s unique portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venicewas seen for the first time at Hermann’s in New York City.
1893: “Cholera Panic” published today described the reaction to outbreak of the disease including the decision by the Chief Rabbi of Leghorn to close “the grand marble synagogue which is the wealthiest synagogue in the world” with the exception of the one in Amsterdam and the “panic and flight” of the Jews living in Baghdad.
1893: In Altoona, PA, “Abraham and Ida Einstein Abelson” gave birth to Myer Abelson who rose to the rank of Sergeant while serving with the “50th Infantry in WW I.”
1894(23rdof Tishrei, 5655): Simchat Torah
1894: Birthdate of New Jersey native Alexander Rudolph, the son of a Kosher butcher, who gained fame as World Middleweight Champion Al McCoy.
1895: Birthdate of Austrian native Wolfgang Ackerman, the physician decorated for his service in the Austrian Army during WW I and author of “And Are We Civilized” who moved to the United States in 1924.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dr-wolfgang-ackerman/and-we-are-civilized/
1896: Hattie Heller of St. Louis, the Vice President of the National Council of Jewish Women in Missouri submitted her annual report to “Miss Sadie America, Secretary of the National Council of Jewish Woman that St. Joseph “is the only town of any size, with a Jewish population large to warrant forming a section” that has not formed a section of the organization.
1896(16thof Cheshvan, 5657): Sixty-eight year old Adolph H. Maas who “began his business career in Savannah, GA before moving to New York in 1852 where he developed a successful chemical manufacturing company passed away today at his home on Lexington Avenue.
1897(27thof Tishrei, 5658): Parashat Bereshit
1897(27thof Tishrei, 5658): In Liverpool, two and half year old John Raphael Davis, the son of Helen and D.E. Davis passed away today.
1897: H.R. H., The Prince of Wales is scheduled to be a guest of Lord Rothschild at Tring Park starting today.
1898: Dr. Joseph Krauskopf, who served as the rabbi to several American Congregations was the founder of The National Farm School said today "Tolerance of another's rational faith is the truest stamp of the genuineness and high standard of one's own faith."
1898: The Judeans hosted a dinner at the Tuxedo honoring Israel Zangwill. Dr. Danzinger, President of the Association and Judge Sulzberger from Philadelphia flanked Zangwill on the dais. Zangwill spoke to the group of literary, civic and academic leaders about the evolution of the Jew over the centuries including the development of Jewish culture in the United States. Other attendees at the kosher dinner were Isidore Strauss and Adolph Ochs of New York.
1899(19th of Cheshvan, 5660): One day after his 62nd birthday Australian businessman and political leader Ephraim L. Zox who held several leadership positions in the Australian Jewish community including serving as President of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation passed away today.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/zox-ephraim-laman-4912
1900(30thTishrei, 5661): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan
1901: “Enid Miriam Gotthelf married Percy Lewis Hallenstein, the London born son of Recbecca and Micahelis Hallenstein, who later changed his name to Halsted “at the Great Synagogue in Sydney, Australia.”
1901: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Simenhoff officiated at the marriage of Marcus Barshay to Lena Banov.
1902(22ndTishrei, 5663): Shmini Atzeret
1902: Max Brod met Franz Kafka for the first time when he gave a lecture on Arthur Schopenhauer at Charles University.
1903: The New Amsterdam Theatre which was built by Jewish “impresarios A.L. Erlanger and Marcus Klaw’ and which over the years would be a theatrical home for entertainers like Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice and Sophie Tucker opened this evening in New York City.
1904: Birthdate of “German screenwriter and art director” Hans Jacoby who was forced to leave Germany in 1933 but was lucky enough to resume his career in Hollywood.
1904: Birthdate of American artist Edward Biberman
http://www.lacma.org/art/installation/edward-biberman
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/
1905: In Zurich, Switzerland “Gustav Bloch and Agnes Bloch (née Mayer)” gave birth to Felix Bloch who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1952.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1952/bloch/biographical/
1905(24thof Tishrei, 5666): Nineteen year old Theodore Bachman, the son of Johanna Bachman and the nephew of Isador Bader, “the agent for the United Hebrew Charities at the Immigrants’ Home on Montgomery Street” was murdered today during the pogrom at Ekaterinoslav making him one of the 2,000 Jews who have been killed there since October 21st
1906: The White House officially announced today that President Roosevelt is naming Oscar S. Straus to serve as Secretary of Commerce and Labor making him “first Jew ever appointed to a cabinet position by a President of the United States.
1907:W.R. Wheeler, who was a member of the commission appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to visit foreign countries for the purpose of studying matters bearing on the American immigration problem, sailed for America on the Adriatic. Before he left England he met with Israel Zangwill, the novelist, who is the President of the Jewish Territorial Organization. Among other things, Zangwill expressed his concern that Jews immigrating to the United States quickly assimilated into the general American culture and lost their Jewish identity. Zangwill felt that America was a much better place for Jews to be than other hostile countries such as Russia, but he looked forward to a time when Jews would be united within their own national territory.
1907: In St. Petersburg, Russia Prince Peter Dolgorouky and Countess Sophy Bobrinsky gave birth to their only child Sofka Skipworth who was honored for her valiant work in saving Jews during the Holocaust.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/skipwith.asp
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sofka-skipwith-1427738.html
1908: Birthdate of Iya Frank, the Russian born physicists who won the Nobel Prize in 1958. Establishing the Jewish lineage of those who lived in the Soviet Union can present quite a challenging. Frank’s father definitely was Jewish.
1909(8thof Cheshvan, 5670): Parashat Lech-Lecha
1909: The University of Michigan led by halfback Joseph “Joe” Magidsohn, “the first Jewish athlete to win a varsity ‘M’” who was the “first athlete known to have refused to compete on the Jewish High Holy Days” defeated Marquette today.
1909: The Tennessee Vols, coached by George Levene were shut out today as the lost to the University of Georgia by a score of 3 to 0.
1909: Birthdate of Avraham Bergman, the Petah Tikva native who as Avraham Biran was the archaeologist who led the dig at Tel Dan and “headed the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.”
http://huc.edu/faculty/faculty/biran.shtml
http://huc.edu/chronicle/60/biran.shtml
1910: In Berlin, art gallery Hugo Perls and his wife gave birth art dealer and “art sleuth” Frank Perls.
1910: The National Farm School, led by President Joseph Krauskop of Germantown held its 13th annual meeting in Bucks County, PA today.
1911(1stof Cheshvan, 5672): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan
1911(1stof Cheshvan, 5672): Fifty-six year old Kovno native David Apotheker, the Yiddish author and anarchist who came to the United States in 1888 where he worked “as a printer in Philadelphia” and joined the anarchists in New York passed away today.
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2014/08/dovid-david-apotheker.html
http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yt/lex/A/apotheker-david.htm
1911(1stof Cheshvan, 5672): Sixty-two year old Yale educated art dealer and “hard money advocate” Louis R. Ehrich, the Albany, NY, born son of Joseph Ehrich and Rebecca Spoborg and the husband of Henriette Minzesheimer known as the founder of the Ehrich Galleries on New York’s Fifth Avenue passed away today.
1911: “Senator Penrose assured a delegation of Jews from Philadelphia headed by Judge Mayer Sulzberger that he will take up the Passport Question with President Taft and Secretary Knox as soon as soon as Congress convenes” and that his of the opinion that final notice should be served on Russia that the United States will no longer tolerate discrimination against class of citizens.”
1912: When Oscar Straus, Progressive candidate for Governor of New York State, mounted the speakers' platform in Music Hall to-night he was received with a tempest of applause” as he “set about to win his audience with his humorous references to his own candidacy for the governorship.”
1913(22ndof Tishrei, 5674): Shmini Atzeret
1913: “When the trial of Mendel Beiliss, accused of the murder of the boy Yushinsky in March, 1911, reopened this morning, the prisoner's counsel called the attention of the Presiding Judge to the fact that, although the court sat yesterday from early in the morning until midnight, the prisoner's name had not been mentioned even once.”
1914: “Mass Meeting for Palestine Cause” published today described plans for an upcoming meeting sponsored by Hadassah to deal with the crisis faced by the Jewish community due to World War.
1914: “Wars Horrors In Russia” published today described a Jewish soldier in the hospital at Petrograd “who was raving mad” after having taken part in a bayonet charge against the Austrians where “he drove his bayonet through the chest of his opponent he heard him “gasp the Hebrews death prayer which begins ‘Hear, O Israel.”
1914: “Nathan Straus for Glynn” published today described the Jewish leader’s support for Martin H. Glynn, the first Catholic chief executive of the state of New York.
1915: Untold thousands, including many Jewish women, marched down New York’s Fifth Avenue in support of giving women the right to vote.
1916: “Honest John O’Brien” opened tonight on Broadway at a theatre co-owned by Sam H. Harris.
1916: Oppose a Census of Jews” published today described the view of several newspapers including the Vorwarts and the Tageblatt that the motion passed by the General Committee of the Reichstag calling for a census of men serving in the various associations charged with providing the necessities of life for the nation is anti-Semitic because it counts the Jews doing this as if they are “shirkers” and does not count the number of Jews serving in the army.
1916: In St. Louis, “the House of Deputies of the Episcopal General Convention adopted without opposition a resolution” urging that converts from Judaism be allowed “to observe the national rites and ceremonies of Israel when they accept Christ…”
1917: The Industrial Removal Office, whose officers included Chairman Reuben Arkush, Vice Chairman, Alfred Jaretzki and Secretary Nathan Bijur held it 16thannual meeting today in New York City.
1917: Two hundred “aged residents” of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob held a prayer meeting today during which they prayed “for the success of the American army and the coming of an honorable peace before turning over $100 of their savings to “Superintendent Albert Kruger with the instructions to buy a Liberty bon in the name of the institution.”
1917: Birthdate of Dub Karel who in 1942 was transported from Prague to Majdenak where he was murdered.
1918: Birthdate of “Harold P. Manson, director of the office of Academic Affairs of the American Friends of the Hebrew University and the husband of “Mrs. Natanya Neumann Manson, a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.”
1918: Birthdate of Meri Vilner, the native of Vilnius who as Ber Kovner became a leader of the Communist Party of Israel. He was a cousin of Abba Kovner, the famous resistance fighter and Israeli poet.
1918: Constantin C. Arion, the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs who had said that his “Government would grant rights to the Jews in accordance with the peace treat” and that the Government “would completely abolish Article 7 of the Rumanian Constitution” which states that “Jews in Rumania are aliens and that naturalization is only possible for them individually” completed his service in that government position today. (Editor’s Note – Going back to the Congress of Berlin, Rumanian government were always promising to emancipate the Jews living in the country and always failing to do so.)
1919(25thof Tishrei, 5680): Manhattan native Benjamin Duberstein, who changed his name to Dubois when he enlisted in the Army and who rose from the rank of private to major while serving with the Third Division in France where he contracted pleurisy lost his battle with tuberculosis and passed away at Fort Houston, TX.
1919: Birthdate of Estonian native Isadore Epstein, the Princeton trained astronomer and Columbia professor who “was a leader in the first modern surveys to find sites for observatories in the Southern Hemisphere.”
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol22/vol22_iss6/record2206.25.html
1919: “Mr. and Mrs. N. Blumenthal” gave birth to their daughter Goldina Bluemthal was buried at in Happy Valley Jewish Cemetery in Hong Kong when she passed away at the age of ten.
1920(11thof Cheshvan, 5681): Parashat Lech-Lecha
1920: Rabbi Israel Mattuck ,Senior Minister of London’s Liberal Jewish Synagogue (LJS) delivered a sermon today “On the Strike.” https://lnk.li/data/getSermon.php?k=S4 (Editor’s note – the opening paragraphs are worth reading today because it includes an attempt to deal with the issue of when and how it is appropriate to address social issues from the pulpit)
1920: The Tri-City Conference of Social Workers with attendees coming from Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York is scheduled to open this evening at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association on West 110th Street.
1923: In Los Angeles, Abraham Pregerson, “a WW I veteran and postal worker” and “the former Bessie Boobalsky” gave birth to WW II Marine veteran and Cal-Berkley trained attorney and jurist Harry Pregerson who “told the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary that ‘My conscience is a product of the Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights, the Boy Scout Oath, and the Marine Corps Hymn.’” (As reported by Sam Roberts) Editor’s note – some sources show October 13 but the NYT uses October 23)
1923: In Lawrence, MA, Samuel Bernstein, the Ukrainian born son of Judah and Dina Bernstein and his wife Jennie Charna Bernstein gave birth to Shirley Anne Bernstein, a sister of the renowned Leonard Bernstein.
1924: In Pennsylvania, William and Edith Lieberman gave birth to S. Bernard Lieberman
1926: Middleweight Seymour “Cy” Schindel won his 9th bout giving him a record of 8 victories and one loss today.
1927: In Israel, a moshav that would be late known as Netanya is founded by Nathan Strauss.
1927(27th of Tishrei, 5688): Forty-nine year old Joel Blau, the former rabbi of Peni-El Temple and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, New York who is the current rabbi at the West End London Synagogue passed away today.
1927(27th of Tishrei, 5688): Seventy-four year old Alois Eisler, the husband of Emilie Eisler and the father of “Otto Eisler; Dr. Rudolf Eisler and Paul Eisler” passed away today in the Czech Republic.
1927: “Sunset” a play “written by Isaac Babel in 1926, based on his short story collection The Odessa Tales” “premiered at the Baku Worker's Theatre” today.
1929: Birthdate of Leonard Freed, the son of Jewish immigrants who became a leading documentary photojournalist who photographed everything from the Amsterdam Jewish Community to the Civil Rights movement with a special emphasis on Martin Luther King, Jr to the Yom Kippur War passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/arts/design/04freed.html?_r=0
1929: In Los Angeles, Nathan and Pearl Adelson (née Swartz), “children of Russian immigrants who had settled in Nebraska” gave birth to real estate developer and television producer Merv Adelson.
1929: The city of Netanya named in honor of philanthropist Nathan Strauss. Originally, a coastal Moshav, within a decade it was thriving Mediterranean seaside resort.
1931: The part of recently deceased playwright Dr. Arthur Schnitzler’s will, dealing with the disposition of his property is scheduled to be read today.
1932: In Philadelphia, Charles Zimmerman, the “garment industry union-leader and co-chairman of the Socialist Party-Democratic Socialist Federation” and “dressmaker Rose (Prepstein) Zimmerman gave birth to Paul Lionel Zimmerman, one of the “dean’s” of pro-football journalism often referred to as Dr. Z. (As reported by Richard Sandomir)
1933: Rabbi B.A. Tintiner is scheduled to officiate at the funeral service for “Lorne Haskell, secretary of the Jewish Theatrical Guild of America” with a eulogy delivered by George Jessel after which burial will take place at Bethel Cemetery.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/10/21/105809314.pdf
1934(14thof Cheshvan, 5695): Seventy-nine year old Samuel Samuel the British businessman who founded Samuel Samuel & Co in Yokohama in partnership with his brother Marcus and who served as a Conservative MP from 1919 until he passed away today.
1934: Nathan L. Goldstein, President of the United States Maccabiah Association announced today that “the United States will be represented by a team of twenty five athletes at the second Maccabiah” scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv in April of 1935.
1934: In the Bronx, “Samuel and Fannie Kaplan of the Sefardi Recanati family from Salonika, Greece, gave birth to Leonard Martin Kaplan who gained fame Orthodox rabbi and author Aryeh Moshe Eliyahu Kaplan.
http://bible.ort.org/books/help.asp?action=displaytext&type=1&id=2
1935: Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard "Lulu" Rosenkrantz are fatally shot in a bar in Newark in what will become known as The Chophouse Massacre. Were there Jewish gangsters? Yes! But contrary to a recent revisionist books on the topic, these thugs were not role models or heroes.
1936(7thof Cheshvan, 5697): Hyman Goldman, the center for the Lehigh University football team from 1918 to 1920 who went on to serve as an assistant coach for his alma mater and a successful career as a chemical engineer passed away today.
1936: In Amsterdam, violinist Bronislaw Huberman who was the founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra performed as a soloist this evening with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under the direction of Bruno Walter.
1936: In Chicago, Elizabeth (Brandau), a housewife, and Nathan Kaufman, a produce businessman gave birth to director and screenwriter Philip Kaufman who became involved with the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, for which he receives story credit. While the character of Indiana Jones was created by George Lucas, it was Kaufman who came up with the story and the pursuit of the Ark of the Covenant.
1936: It was reported today that the sponsors of Reconstruction, a book “recording what the Jews of America have done for the relief and rehabilitation of their less fortunate coreligionists throughout the world” include President Roosevelt, former Governor Alfred E. Smith, Governor Lehman, Mayor La Guardia, New Jersey Governor Harold G. Hoffman, Illinois Governor Henry Horner, Tennessee Governor Hill McAlister and Wyoming Governor Leslie A. Miller.
1936: “The purge of German Kultur of Jewish influences advanced another step today when the biblical text of the world-famous oratorio ‘Judas Maccabeus’ by George Friedrich Handel, the Anglo-German composer who lied buried in West Minster Abbey, was changed a new ‘German’ text was substituted.”
1936: “Under threat of boycott and picketing by the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League and the American Jewish Congress, the management of the Fifty-Fifth Street Playhouse announced today that it had inefinitely postponed the showing of the film ‘Amphitryon’ which “was financed by the French branch of UFA which is virtually owned by the Nazi government.”
1936: As the Mosely inspired fascist attacks continued in the United Kingdom, “Sophie Tucker complained today that ruffians in London’s East End had thrown rocks at her.”
1938: Thirty-six old Alsatian-born American movie mogul William Wyler married Margaret “Talli” Tallichet with whom he had five children -- “Catherine, Judith, William Jr., Melanie and David Wyler.”
1939: Warner Brothers released The Roaring Twenties, a “crime thriller” produced by Hal Wallis and Samuel Bischoff with a script co-authored by Mark Hellinger, Jerry Wald and Robert Rossen based on The World Moves on by Mark Hellinger.
1940: 21stof Tishrei, 5701): Hoshanah Rabah
1940: The Jewish Hospital in Warsaw was forced to close and move into the Warsaw Ghetto.
1940: In Brooklyn, William Greenwich and “Russian Jewish department manager Rose (Baron) Greenwich gave birth to Eleanor Louise Greenwich who gained fame as singer “Ellie” Greenwich.
1940: Hitler and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco met in Hendaye today where the Nazi leader demanded that his fascist client join his war effort; a demand that the Spaniard turned down.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/20/franco-gave-list-spanish-jews-nazis
1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): Odessa "action" continued as 19,000 more Jews were gathered into the city square, sprayed with gasoline and burned alive.
1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): Thousands of Jews are murdered at Kragujevac, Yugoslavia.
1941: Father Bernhard Lichtenberg was arrested for protesting against German deportation of the Jews. He died on his way to Dachau
1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): The Nazis executed 10,000 Jews of the Vilna ghetto
1941: Isidore Newman, who was training as a Wireless with SOE was described today as “good at PT; knows a lot and so this makes him a little unpopular with others in the group.”
1942: The Battle of El Alamein began with a major attack by British forces on Rommel’s Afrika Corps and their Italian Allies. When the fighting started the Axis were on the verge of sweeping the British out of Egypt, seizing the Suez Canal, cutting the Imperial lifeline to India and destroying the Jewish community in Eretz Israel. The well-supplied Allied forces overcame the usual timidity of their generals and broke the Axis lines, starting the Germans on a long retreat that would end with surrender in Tunisia in 1943. 1942: Algerian-Jewish resistance leader José Aboulker met with American General Mark Clark in Morocco. Aboulker is given 800 Sten guns, 800 grenades, 400 handguns, and 50 portable radios. This is in preparation for Operation Torch, the November, 1942 landing of American and British forces in North Africa. One of the big unknowns was how the French forces would react. Would they resist since the French Vichy government was allied with Germany, or would they greet the Allies as liberating comrades in arms. The Americans hoped for the latter, but as this action showed, they were preparing for the former.
1942(12th of Cheshvan, 5703): Forty-one year old Ralph Rainger who was born Ralph Reichenthal was among ,the 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner who are killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. The award-winning composer was responsible for such hits Love in Bloom, Blue Hawaii and Bob Hope’s signature song, Thanks for the Memory.
1943(24thof Tishrei, 5704): Fifty-two year old violinist and bandleader Ben Bernie (Bernard Anzelevitz) whose orchestra “was heard via remote broadcast from the Hotel Roosevelt in New York on the first such broadcast by NBC” passed away. (Editor’s note – some sources show the death date as October 20)
1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704): Five days after their deportation train left Rome, its 1,060 Jewish passengers were gassed at Auschwitz and Birkenau.
1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704: Eighteen hundred Polish Jews formerly held at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, arrive at Auschwitz, where the women revolt outside the gas chambers, killing one SS guard and wounding two. SS reinforcements use gas grenades and machine-gun fire to subdue and kill the resisters.
1943: In Lithuania, a Jewish partisan unit destroys telegraph and telephone lines along the Vilna-to-Lida railway
1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704: One thousand, seven hundred-fifty Polish Jews, believing they were awaiting transport to South America, were sent to Birkenau instead. The women took part in a minor revolt in response to SS Sergeant Josef Schillinger's request for them to strip. He was shot and other SS men were injured. Rudolf Hoess ordered the removal of each of the women into the camp grounds, and had each one shot. According to Jerzy Tabau, who later escaped, "the extermination of the Jews continued relentlessly. . ."
1944: In Budapest, Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg and Swiss consul Carl Lutz continue to issue protective documents to Jews, partly in response to a decree that Jews in Hungary who are of foreign nationalities or those holding foreign passports will be exempt from forced labor.
1944: Hungarian authorities agreed to send another 25,000 Jews to Germany for purposes of forced labor. Charles Lutz, the Swiss Consul managed to save thousands of others by issuing collective passports and protective documents.
1944: As of today, the National Citizens Political Action Committee “had received contributions totaling $271, 531 and spent $165, 018.
1945: “The Palestine Story: Past and Future” published today provides a lengthy review of “Promise and Fulfillment by Arthur Kosetler.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1949/10/23/84281692.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1945: Birthdate of Kenneth Feinberg, an American attorney, specializing in mediation and alternative dispute resolution who first came to fame as the Special Masster of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. He has remained in the public eye as the TARP “pay czar” and the man who was supposed to sort out the mess related to compensating the victims of the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
1946: The original Kibbutz Ein Tzurim was founded today in Gush Etzion. The Jordanian Army destroyed the Kibbutz during Israel’s War for Independence.
1947: In Kiriyate Bialik, Hadasa and Moshe gave birth to Yosef (Yosi) Barena who at the age of twenty would perish aboard the INS Dakar.
1948(20th of Tishrei, 5709): Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkoth
1948: The 4th Battalion of the Givati Brigade captured the village of Ajjur.
1948: Beit Jibrin was captured by the 52 Battalion of Givati and the 8th Brigade today
1949: An Israeli government spokesman reported that hundreds of Jews in Iraq had been brutally arrested, and all their property had beeb confiscated.
1950(12th of Cheshvan, 5711): Al Jolson passed away. Born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania in 1886, Jolson’s father was a Cantor for a synagogue in downtown Washington D.C. at the turn of the century. Jolson chose to use his singing talents in a different manner. As one of America’s first “superstars, he starred on Broadway, radio and film. He is most famous for starring in the first talkie – the first full length film with sound. It was called the Jazz Singer.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/1950/oct/25/derekmalcolmscenturyoffilm
1951(23rd of Tishrei, 5712): Simchat Torah is celebrated by congregants of Adas Israel in its new home at Connecticut Avenue and Porter.
1951: In Manhattan “radio station manager R. Peter Straus” and “Ellen Sulzberger Straus, a cousin of New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger” gave birth to magazine published Diane Straus, the Yale University graduate and “stepsister of Monica Lewinsky.”
1951(23rd of Tishrei, 5712): Sixty-seven year old Ukrainian born playwright and screen writer Leo Birinski passed away today “at Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx” after which he was tragically buried at Potter’s Filed.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported at length on the research conducted in the Negev wadis by Dr. Nelson Glueck, the president of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Dr. Glueck discovered and described many wadis, situated deep in the Negev wastes, whose sides had been terraced from bottom to top. There were numerous cisterns to catch the run-off rainwater, as well as many dams and irrigation channels, a testimony to the former intense cultivation and human presence in that currently uninhabited territory. Glueck would eventually record all of his findings in a popular tome entitled Rivers In The Desert.
1953(14thof Cheshvan, 5714): Eighty year old Florence Walston, the daughter of Caroline and David Lewis Einstein the widow of Theodore David Seligman and archeologist Sir Charles Walston passed away today.
1955: In New York, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, held a cornerstone ceremony which was designed to serve as fund raiser for erecting a new community center. The inscription on the stone read: "Dedicated to Sephardic Unity and Community Service."
1955: It was reported today that Dr. Benjamin Mazar, the President of Hebrew University is visiting the United States as part of an effort to highlight the observance of the school’s thirtieth anniversary. The university currently has 4,000 students and a faculty of 560.
1956: The Hungarian Revolution began as Hungarians sought to remove Soviet forces from their country. The revolt would turn violent as Soviet tanks returned to the streets of Budapest. The Hungarian Revolt came at the same time as the Suez Crisis when the Israelis rolled across the Sinai and an Anglo-French force intervened. In an interesting role reversal the Eisenhower Administration did nothing meaningful to stop the Soviets. At the same, the Eisenhower Administration joined forces with the Soviets to support the Egyptian dictator Gamal Nasser against the English, French and the Israelis.
1958: Russian novelist Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The author of Dr. Zhivago was born to Jewish parents in Moscow. His father was a professor of painting and his mother was a concert pianist.
1959: In Royal Oak, Michigan, “Celia (née Abrams), a lingerie store proprietor, and Leonard Raimi, a furniture store proprietor” gave birth to Michigan State University drop-out and successful movie maker Samuel M. “Sam” Raimi the brother of actor Ted Raimi, screenwriter of Ivan Raimia, Andrea Raimi Ruben and the late Saner Raimi
1960: U.S. premiere of “The Magnificent Seven” the classic western with a most memorable score created by Elmer Bernstein and a script co-authored by Walter Bernstein
1961(13th of Cheshvan, 5722):Harold K. Guinzburg, founder of Viking Press, and the father of publisher Thomas Guinzburg, passed away.
1962: “The Longest Day” an epic about June 6 with a script co-authored by Romain Gary and co-starring Red Buttons was released today in Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
1963: Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre.
1963: Ivry Gitlis performed in Vilna making him the first Israeli violinist to play in the Soviet Union under the cultural exchange between the two countries.
1963: In New York City “Martin and Rhoda Brecker” gave birth to Allison Ivy Brecker, part of a quadruplet birth, who married “film composer Edward Shearmur” and gained fame as movie executive “Allison’Alli’ Ivy Shearmur.”
1970(23rdof Tishrei, 5731): Simchat Torah
1970:“The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail” co-authored by Jerome Lawrence was performed professionally for the first time at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC.
1972: A terrorist plot was thwarted today when an Algerian “diplomatic courier” who was a Palestinian was “arrested at the airport in Amsterdam for carrying arms” for unknown reasons.
1972: “Pippin” the “Tony Award-winning musical with lyrics and music by Stephen Schwartz” premiered on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre” with John Rubinstein, the son of concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein, playing the title role.
1973: Rabbi Sally J. Priesand offered the opening prayer in the United States House of Representatives, at the invitation of Congresswoman Bella Abzug. According to Abzug, Priesand was not only the first Jewish woman, but the first woman to be accorded this honor. October 23, 1973 also turned out to be the day on which the first resolution to impeach President Richard Nixon was offered. Priesand became the first woman to be ordained by a rabbinical seminary in June 1972. While Priesand was the first American woman rabbi, she was not the first woman to study toward that goal. She was preceded at Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion by other women including Martha Neumark, Helen Levinthal Lyons, Toby Fink, and Norma Kirschner.
1973: The UN Cease Fire Resolution was proving a difficult document to enforce on the ground. There was opposition in Israel to accepting a cease fire. In particular, Menachem Begin, speaking for the coalition of right wing parties, opposed accepting the cease fire as long as Arab forces occupied our territory i.e. any part of the Sinai east of the Suez Canal. Ironically, this would be part of the very land that Begin would trade with Sadat to gain a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
1974(11thof Cheshvan, 5735): Ninety-four year old Hungarian playwright and screen writer Melichor Lengye; passed away in Budapest.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_12120.html
1975: John Gunther Dean, the American diplomat who escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 at the age of 12 was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Denmark.
1976: “Information was received that Victor Elistratov, Mikhail Kremen and Arkady Polishchuk were detained for 15 days, and Boris Chernobilsky was placed in Butyrskaya prison.”
1977(11th of Cheshvan, 5738): Ninety-four year old Brooklyn native and Harvard graduate Clarence Grove Bachrach the Brooklyn Law School trained attorney and partner in the firm of Bachrach and Bisgyer passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1977/10/24/archives/clarence-grover-bachrach.html
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association, reacting to the recent passenger aircraft hijacking incidents and the murder of a Lufthansa pilot, had postponed its threatened 48-hour global air-transport strike, after the UN agreed to hold a full meeting of the General Assembly on the subject of air piracy.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Lev Ovsiher, a highly decorated Jewish Red Army veteran, gave his 17 medals back to the Soviet government, to protest the refusal to let him immigrate with his family to Israel. Yes, it was only a quarter of a century ago that the Refusniks were fighting to leave the Soviet Union. Change does happen and sometimes it is for the better.
1980: Today “In a provocative essay in the New England journal Dr. Arnold Relman, the editor in chief, issued the clarion call that would resound through his career, assailing the American health care system as caring more about making money than curing the sick.”
1981: In the Soviet Union, “massive pressure was exerted on Hebrew teachers” as “KGB departments in various cities summoned teachers and demanded that they stop teaching” the forbidden language.
1983: A suicide terrorist truck bomb killed 243 US personnel in Beirut. President Reagan responded by withdrawing the Marine peacekeeping force from Lebanon. There are those who feel that this response was viewed as a victory by the terrorists who moved forward with attacks on airports in Europe and the downing of an airliner over Scotland.
1983: Episcopal priest William Bumiller and Rabbi Harold White officiated at the wedding of “Elisabeth Bumiiler of the Washington Post” and New York Times White House correspondent Steven R. Weisman the of Joseph Weisman, the President of the Jewish Homes for the Aged of Greater Los Angeles and “Etta Weisman, the President of Helping hand of Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
1983: While a chaplain for the United States Sixth Fleet, Arnold Resnicoff was present in Beirut, Lebanon, during the suicide truck bomb attack that took the lives of 241 American military personnel, and wounded scores more.
1983(16th of Cheshvan, 5744): Thirty-six year old newscaster Jessica Savitch and 34 year old Martin Fischbein, the vice president and assistant general manager of the New York Post were killed in an automobile accident today. (As reported by Peter Kerr)
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/25/obituaries/jessica-savitch-of-nbc-tv-killed-in-car-accident.html
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20086321,00.html
1983: Following a lengthy and intense debate within the Conservative movement, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) faculty senate, voted 34-8 to admit women to the JTS Rabbinical School. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)
1986(20th of Tishrei, 5747): Sukkoth Chol Hamoed
1986(20th of Tishrei, 5747): Eighty-six year old Helen Rovine, the Norma, NJ, native who married Benjamin Grossman with whom she had three children, passed away today in Philadelphia.
1987: “Suspect” a courtroom drama written by Eric Roth was released today.
1987: Sixty-three year old David Gorcey, son of Russian Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother, who was known as one of “The Bowery Boys” passed away today.
1991: Nicholas Davies and Robert Maxwell, filled a libel suit against Faber & Faber Ltd the publisher of The Samson Option by Seymour M. Hirsch
1992: “Zebrahead” starring Michael Rapaport was released today in the United States today.
1994: “Ex-Judge Wachtler’s Early Release From Halfway House Denied” published today described the decision not to release Sol Wachtler “because he sneaked out to attend a political fund raiser.”
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-10-23/news/mn-53884_1_halfway-house
1996(10th of Cheshvan, 5757): Ninety-one year old social critic Diana Trilling the widow of Lionel Trilling passed away today.
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/trilling-diana
1996: In Providence, RI, pediatrician Scott Berns and pediatric intern Leslie Grove gave birth to Sampson Gordon Berns “a Massachusetts high school junior whose life with the illness progeria was the subject of a documentary film recently shortlisted for an Academy Award.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)
1998: “The Last Day” an Oscar winning documentary that ‘tell the story of five Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust” premiered in Los Angeles.
1998: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the Wye River Memorandum, thus bringing about the end of his first government. He did this with his own mouth: After being perceived as undermining the Oslo Accords, and after declared that any withdrawal from more than nine percent of the West Bank would harm Israel’s security, he ratified the accords and sought a 13-percent withdrawal. His term was rife with conflicts with the United States president, and he made both the right and left heartily sick of him. A decade later, Netanyahu is at a similar juncture.
1998 (3rd of Cheshvan, 5759): Dr. Barnett Slepian, a doctor who performed abortions, was murdered at his home in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., when a sniper fired a shot through his kitchen window. Slepian was murdered on a Friday night after his family had returned home from Shabbat eve services.
1998: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat signed a land-for-peace agreement at the White House, following nine days of talks at Wye River, Md.
1999: The Howard Nemerov House was dedicated today at Washington University in St. Louis.
2000: “Trying to heal a rift with Israel's Arab citizens, Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced an inquiry today into the deaths of 13 Israeli Arabs in the current unrest and unveiled a four-year development plan for Arab communities.”
2001(6th of Cheshvan, 5762): Eighty-four year Daniel Wildenstein, who enjoyed prominent positions in the world of thoroughbred horse-racing and art passed away today. (As reported by Alan Riding)
2002(17th of Cheshvan, 5763): Sixty-nine year old Al Lerner, the billionaire owner of the Cleveland Browns passed away today.
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/oct/26/local/me-lerner26
http://www.cbssports.com/print/nfl/story/5827319
2003: Israel honored Hans von Dohnányi by recognizing him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for saving the Arnold and Fliess families, at risk to his own life.
2003(27th of Tishrei, 5764): Ninety-one year old “Judah Benzion ‘Ben’ Segal”, the “Professor of Semitic Languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies,” the father of Professor Moshe Zvi Segal and the brother of Dr. Samuel Segal” passed away today.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-j-b-segal-37421.html
2004(8th of Cheshvan, 5765): Parashat Lech Lecha
2004(8th of Cheshvan, 5765): Eighty-seven year old opera mainstay Robert Merrill (Moishe Miller) passed away today.
2005: The New York Times reviewed The Life of David by Robert Pinksy. This biography is one of the first books in the “Jewish Encounters” series, which will match prominent Jewish writers with a variety of subjects.
2005: “Curacao’s place in the Diaspora,” publishedtoday the Boston Globe reports on the history of this Jewish community including the founding of Mikve Israel-Emanuel which was built in 1732, nearly 100 years after the first Jews arrived. Most of them were Sephardics fleeing persecution in Europe.
2006(1st of Cheshvan, 5767): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan
2006: The Jerusalem Postreported that Indonesia will purchase four Israeli unmanned planes, or drones, through a Filipino distributor. The deal was a surprise to some because Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has long supported Palestinian independence efforts and does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
2006: Max Kellerman began hosting the 10 AM to noon program on WEPN, replacing ESPN's nationally broadcast Colin Cowherd program.
2007: The Upper Midwest Region of Hadassah hosts its annual Big Gifts Dinner honoring Barbara Melamed with Hadassah’s Myrtle Wreath Award. Babara Sofer,The Israel Director of Public Affairs and Communications for Hadassah and popular columnist for the Jerusalem Post is the featured speaker for the event. Held in Minneapolis, this is one more example of the vitality of the Jewish community of Minnesota, a state where Jewish Republicans and Jewish Democrats run against each for major state offices.
2007: Today, Luke Ford the son Desmond Ford, a noted Seventh Day Adventist theologian who converted to Judaism “announced he had sold lukeisback.com and its contents for an undisclosed sum to an undisclosed party,”
2007: “Emmanuelle Grey Rossum’s album ‘Inside Out’ was released” today “and peaked at 199 in the U.S. Billboard Charts.
2007: “Avenue Q,” Moshe Kepten’s Israeli version of the Broadway hit musical debuts at Beit Lessin, in Tel Aviv.
2008: “Mother Economy,” the 19-minute film on view at New York’s Jewish Museum since July 1, comes to an end This exhibition, continuously screening in the 300-square-foot Goodkind Media Center marks the American debut of Israeli artist Maya Zack and is a powerfully imaginative meditation on Holocaust remembrance and on the myth of the Jewish mother. The elaborate set and intricately choreographed narrative, in which a mysterious protagonist methodically documents personal artifacts of absent family members before baking a noodle kugel, is saturated with ambiguous details, inviting layers of interpretation.
2008: Today, during a congressional hearing, Alan “Greenspan admitted that his free-market ideology shunning certain regulations was flawed.”
2008:As part of the Israel@ 60 Celebration, the Resnick Institute for the Study of Modern Jewish presents a screening and discussion of the award-winning Israeli documentary, "No. Seventeen was Anonymous." The event is facilitated by Professor Tova Weitzman of Vassar College.
2008(24th of Tishrei 5769):Friends and family of Avraham Ozeri voiced sorrow and anger at the killing of the 86-year-old they described as "salt of the earth" in today's stabbing attack in Jerusalem.
2008:Vandals rampaged through a sprawling Jewish cemetery in Romania's capital, toppling tombstones and smashing markers for as many as 200 graves.
2008:Today, the German government handed Israel's national Holocaust memorial personal details of the 600,000 Jewish residents of Nazi Germany, the most comprehensive record to date of German-Jewish life during the Nazi era.
2009(5th of Cheshvan, 5770): Ninety-fiver year old Canadian-born character actor Lou Jacobi passed away in New York City.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/nyregion/25jacobi.html?_r=1
2009: As part of his World Tour, Leonard Cohen performs at Madison Square Garden.
2009: The New York Times featured a review of The Humbling, Philip Roth’s latest novella
2009: “Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis” opens at the Cinema Village in New York City. This is a cinematic presentation of material covered in the recently publish, Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust by Anna Porter.http://www.killingkasztner.com/
2010(15th of Cheshvan): Yahrzeit of Shlomo Carlebach
2010: Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple is scheduled to open tonight as Theatre J kicks off its 2010-2011 season in Washington, DC.
2010: New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman said that many Americans are becoming "fed up" with Israel.
2010: The vote on a bill that would reinstate stipends for men who study Torah full-time will not take place tomorrow as was previously scheduled, the Prime Minister's Office announced toda
2011: Seventy-one year old Ophir Award winning cinematographer “Amnon Salomon” a “disciple of cinematographer David Gurfinkel” lost his battle with cancer today and passed away.
https://www.haaretz.com/1.5202870
2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor “A Walking tour of Old Town Alexandria” that will include visits “to the sites of two former synagogues and several Jewish businesses along King Street-including some that show traces of past Jewish owners.”
2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a Walking Tour of Jewish Sites in Arlington National Cemetery that will include visits to “memorials by or for Jews, and headstones of prominent Jewish leaders buried at Arlington.”
2011: Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C.
2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Alice Hoffman’s latest book, a novel entitled “The Dovekeepers,” which attempts to retell the story of the Jewish resistance during the Roman siege of Masada in the first century and “The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-45” by Ian Kershaw.
2011: Israel has offered to aid the Turkish government in any way it can after a massive earthquake shook the Turkish southeast, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today.
2011: Police have arrested a third suspect in the torching of a mosque in the Beduin village of Tuba Zanghariya in the Galilee in early October, police announced today.
2011: National Infrastructures Ministry announced today that Egypt has resumed natural gas deliveries to Israel.
2012: Israeli cellist Elad Kabilio is scheduled to appear at the Joyce Theatre in New York
2012: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “An Evening with Romanian Jewish Author Norman Manea” during which he will from his latest novel, The Liar
2012: An IDF officer was critically wounded while carrying out a routine patrol near the Gaza border fence today. A blast was heard in the vicinity of the incident which the IDF believes was caused by a roadside bomb
2012: The Emir of Qatar embraced the Hamas leadership of Gaza today with an official visit that broke the isolation of the Palestinian Islamist movement, to the dismay of Israel and rival, Western-backed Palestinian leaders.
2013: The Jacqueline and Myron Blank Fund along with The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines are scheduled to host a program in dedicating the Iowa Holocaust Memorial at the State Historical Building
2013: Emmy Award winning theatre critic Pat Launer is scheduled to discuss “Broken Glass” one of the last plays by Arthur Miller that combines themes of Kristallnacht with anxieties of a American Jewish couple living in New York.
2013: John “Kander's first musical without Fred Ebb in many years, The Landing, with book and lyrics by Greg Pierce, premiered Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre today.”
2013: The Lawrence Family JCC is scheduled to host a screening of “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus” which “chronicles the efforts of Gilbert Kraus and his wife, Eleanor, two Americans who undertook the successful rescue of 50 Jewish children from Vienna in the late spring of 1939.”
2013: Israeli warplanes hit a convoy of advanced missiles heading out of Syria and into Lebanon where they were to be delivered to Hezbollah, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported today (Reported Stuart Winer)
2013: When the Red Sox take the field against the Cards tonight in the opening game of the World Series, Craig Breslow will be in the Boston bull-pen.
2013: According to unofficial figures released today 35.9% of the eligible voters went to the polls in Jerusalem and 31.5% of the eligible voters went to the polls in Tel Aviv during the just completed mayoral elections.
2013: Israel's unusual period of seismic activity continued today as yet another small earthquake was felt - this time in the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat. (As reported by Ari Soffer)
2013(19thof Cheshvan, 5574): Ninety-year old sandal maker and musician Allan Block passed away today, (As reported by Bruce Weber)
2013(19thof Cheshvan, 5574): Ninety-two year old Bill Mazer“who was a voice and face of sports coverage in New York for decades, pioneering sports-talk radio and becoming a television fixture while earning the nickname the Amazin’ for his encyclopedic recall of sports facts and figures” passed away today. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)
2014(29thof Tishrei, 5775): Ninety year old Frank Mankiewicz, the son of Herman J. Mankiewicz and nephew of Joseph L. Mankiewicz whose writing career took detours to serve in the Presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kenney and George S. McGovern passed away today.
2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host a screening of “American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco.”
2014: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to host a lecture by Dr. Philip Balma on “Hiding in Plain Sight: Italian Jews and the Film Industry.”
2014: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to “I Have No Right to Be Silent” -- a panel discussion on the social activism and human rights work of Rabbi Marshal Meyer.
2014: The Chicago International Film Festival which has included a screening of “Gett” is scheduled to come to an end today.
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Two Jewish Loves: Food and Literature.”
2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival.
2014: Rita Jahan-Foruz is scheduled to introduce her biographical film this evening at the Skirball Center.
2014: Three-month old Chaya Zissel Braun who was killed when a terrorist “drove his car into a crowd waiting at the Ammuniition Hill light rail station” was laid to rest early this morning. (As reported by Lazar Berman)
2014: “Robin Banerjee, Amy Winehouse’s bassist for a portion of her career will be performing at Barby Tel Aviv tonight.
2014: “French Jewish leader Roger Cukierman is indicted for referring to Dieudonné as a “professional anti-Semite” during a television appearance.”
2014: The 28th Israel Film Festival opens this evening.
2015: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Temple Judah is scheduled to host “Shabbat Alive!” with Rick Recht.
2015: The Jewish National Fund’s 15th Annual National Conference is scheduled to open in Chicago.
2015: “Rock the Kasbah” a comedy “directed by Barry Levinson and written by Mitch Glazer is scheduled to be released in the United States today by Open Road Films
2015: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host an evening of Brahms featuring “the Jerusalem Quartet” which is “joined by two friends and frequent collaborators, Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan and clarinetist Sharon Kam (sister to the Jerusalem’s' violist Ori Kam).”
2015(10thof Cheshvan, 5776): Sixty-six year old Thomas G. Stemberg, the founder of Staples whose Roman Catholic mother Erika Ratzer was disinherited for marrying Jewish Viennese hotel manager Oscar Stemberg passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)
2016(2st of Tishrei, 5777): Hosha’na Rabbah (Editor’s note – excuse those who may seem a little tired since they may have been up all night studying
http://ish-tam.com/rav_drizin/Tikkun_Leil_Hoshana_Rabbah.pdf
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2286/a-tale-of-two-night-vigils/
2016: The 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition, named in honor of Lublin born violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski is scheduled to end today
2016: At the Jewish Museum “Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Beatriz Milhazes” organized by Kelly Taxter, Associate Curator and Jens Hoffmann, Director of Special Exhibitions and Public Programs is scheduled to come to an end today.
2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Rules For Others To Live By: Comments and Self-Contradictionsby Richard Greenberg, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion by Gareth Stedman Jones and The Chosen Ones by Steve Sem-Sandberg
2017: Today, “The Knesset unanimously passed a law to ban Israel’s binary options industry, a vast, multibillion dollar scam that has defrauded millions of victims worldwide for a decade.” (As reported by Simon Weinglass)
2017: In New Orleans, the Uptown JCC is scheduled to host a screening of “The Women’s Balcony.”
https://www.menemshafilms.com/womens-balcony
2017: The Landmark Centre in Beachwood, Ohio is scheduled to host Jonathan Schneer, a professor of history George Tech speaking on “The Making of the Balfour Declaration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/books/review/Segev-t.html
2017:The American Sephardi Federation and New York Jewish Travel Guide are scheduled to present “Jewish Heritage of Malta” -- an evening exploring a beautiful island's connection to Jewish history and culture
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdd7SW3jIME3vw2B3elD-_OF9j3m_8CPRj4-KdNdIaDQIyrPA/viewform
2018: The Cleveland Jewish News is scheduled to co-host “Women Leadership” moderated by Lauren Rich Fine.
2018: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Female Human Animal”
2018: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Get Creative” a workshop where youngsters will make “spooky arts and crafts inspired” by the museum’s “Frankenstein Exhibition.”
2018: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host an evening with John Grisham on the same day that his latest novel goes on sale.
2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to “Can We Talk?” an evening where Melissa Rivers “channels her mother,” the late Joan Rivers.
2018: The National Jewish Book Award Luncheon is scheduled to take place at the Lander College for Women today.
2018: The American Jewish Historical Society to host “The Man who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox,” a “book talk with author Vanda Kreff, MOMA curator Dave Kehr and Brooklyn College Professor Frederick Wasser.”
2018: Howard Kaplan’s latest novel, To Destroy Jerusalem, is scheduled to be released to the general public.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HKWLN3W/
2018: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host “Exhibiting Difficult Histories: The ‘Anti-Zionist’ Campaign in Poland, 1967-1968, And Its Echoes Today” a discussion led by Dariusz Stola, the director of POLIN.
2019: In Sonoma County, the Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host two screenings of “Bye Bye German.”
2019: In San Francisco, the JCCSF is scheduled to host New York Times science columnist discussing the subject of heredity.
2019: In Cedar Rapids, IA, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to discuss The German Girl, a novel by Armando Lucas Correa.
2019: The 43rd Annual Robert S. Hartman Institute Conference is scheduled to begin at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
2019: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Ambassador Samantha Power’s Journey from Activist to Insider.
2019: The Boca Raton Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “From Cairo to the Cloud” which tells the story of the world of the Cairo Geniza.
2020: The Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish FilmFest is scheduled to make “My Name Is Sara” available for the next 48 hours.
2020: In another session examining UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection, curators Francesco Spagnolo and Shir Kochavi are scheduled to talk about Julien Fils Aine’s 1855 porcelain set.
2020: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to live-stream Shabbat Services.
2020: The Jewish Arts Collaborative is scheduled to present online Chef Michael Leviton discussing the impacts of COVID-19 on the restaurant industry.
2020: “Israel is expected to receive Moderna's coronavirus vaccine by mid-2021, according to the company's Israeli chief medical officer.”