August 29
1255: The body of little boy who had disappeared was found in a well at Lincoln. The boy would become known as Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (England) was the subject of an infamous ritual murder libel. It was alleged that Jews enticed the boy and while starving him, invited Jews of Lincoln to murder him ritually. (Jews did come to Lincoln at that time to attend a wedding.) His body was cast into a well and a month later, "miracles" followed the discovery of his corpse. On the basis of the alleged "confession" by Jopin (Jacob), the secular authorities (for the first time) and the Church sent 91 Jews to the Tower of London. Eighteen were executed before Richard and the friars stopped the killings. This incident provided Chaucer with the idea for his Prioress Tale and the hero of the popular ballad, "Little Sir Hugh."
1261: Urban IV, who reaffirmed Sicut Judaeis the papal bull first issued by Calixtus II which “was intended to protect the Jews” during the Crusade, began his papacy today.
1263: King Jaime of Spain gave the Jews three weeks to remove all blasphemy from their books (Talmud).
1288: Pope Nicholas IV “wrote to Emperor Rudolph “requesting the release of Meir b. Baruch of Rothenburg from prison.
1338: Pope Clement VI directed “that an investigation be made into the miracles connected “with a host in Pulka” the desecration of which was used as “as a pretext” for attacking and robbing the Jews.
1435: Paul of Burgos the Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity, and became an archbishop, Lord Chancellor, and exegete passed away today. He was also known as Pablo de Santa Maria or Paul de Santa Maria. His original name was Solomon ha-Levi. Like many converts of his time he took a leading role in the persecution of his former co-religionists.
1477: T'hilimwith Kimchi's commentary was published for the first time in Bologna, Italy by Hayyim Mordecai and Hezekiah de Ventura. T’hilim is the Book of Psalms. Kimchi is David Kimchi also known as RaDAK. He was the third in a line of grammarians, lexicographers and Biblical commentators. RaDAK’s more accurate renderings of the ancient texts helped to fuel the Protestant Reformation.
1484: Pope Innocent VIII, a staunch supporter of the Spanish Inquisition, was elected Pope. The significance to Jewish history of this event is self-evident.
1526: An Ottoman army defeated the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohács following which the Turks pillaged the city. The Christians nobles and the handful of wealthy Jews fled in fear of the Ottomans. While Jews had lived in Hungary since the third century C.E., many of them had fallen on hard times during the 15th and 16th centuries as they dealt with accusations’ of Blood Libels and decrees designed to avoid repayment of just debts. The Ottomans left but returned to stay in 1541 when much of central Hungary became part of the Ottoman Empire and a refuge for Sephardic Jews moving eastward to avoid the clutches of the Inquisition.
1541: The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom. On the anniversary of the battle of Mohács, Sultan Suleiman I again took Buda by a ruse. This event marks the beginning of Turkish rule in many parts of Hungary, which lasted down to the end of the 17th century. The Jews living in these parts were treated far better than those living under the Habsburgs. During this period, beginning with the second half of the sixteenth century, the community of Ofen (Buda) flourished more than at any time before or after. While the Turks held sway in Hungary, the Jews of Transylvania (at that time an independent principality) also fared well. At the instance of Abraham Sassa, a Jewish physician of Constantinople, Prince Gabriel Bethlen of Transylvania granted a letter of privileges (June 18, 1623) to the Spanish Jews from Turkey.
1596: Coronation of Christian IV, the King of Denmark and Norway who lifted the restrictions that had been placed on Sephardic Jews when he took control of the town of Altona.
1605: Herman L’Estrange, the author of Americans no Jews, or improbabilities that the Americans are of that Race which refuted the theory that the “Indians were the ten lost tribes” was baptized today.
1632: Birthdate of English philosopher John Locke. Locke influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States. In 1689 he wrote his “Letter Concerning Toleration” in which he stated “Neither Pagan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.” Locke was asked to right a constitution for the new colony of South Carolina. At the time, Christian merchants were complaining about the active involvement of Jews in the trade between South Carolina and the English Colony of Barbados. Locke saw the problem as bigotry, not “swarming Jewish merchants.” He inserted a line in the colonial charter that called for the protection of “Jews, heathens and other dissenters.”
1643: The oldest existing ketubbah written in the Western Hemisphere was executed in Surinam at the marriage of Yehudit to Hakaham Yizhak Meatob. The Jewish community in Surinam began with the arrival of a party Sephardic Jews in 1630. By the second half of the 17th century, there were at least Sephardic Jewish communities in the colony, numbering several hundred families. As you can see from the attached, this item has been challenged
1655: Warsaw falls without resistance to a small force under the command of Charles X Gustav of Sweden during The Deluge. The Deluge is a general expression for a series of misfortunes that befell the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth starting with the uprising of the Cossacks and including an invasion by the Swedes. When it was all over, Poland was a much diminished entity and much less tolerant of its Jewish population. This defeat was part of the long road that would lead to the partition of Poland in the late 18thcentury, which, among other things, would give Russia its large and unwanted Jewish population.
1703: Following the death of Samuel Oppenheimer Emperor Leopold I named Samson Wertheimer to serve as his successor as “court factor” while extending “for twenty years his privileges of free religious worship, denizenship, and immunity from taxation
1756: Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War. The Seven Years War was one of what seems to be a long list of interminable wars in Europe. Americans know the Seven Years War as the French-Indian War; a fight that led directly to the American Revolution and the creation of the United States, and all that that means for the Jews of the world. Frederick’s mistreatment of his Jewish subjects is too big a subject for this brief entry. After visiting Frederick’s Berlin, the French statesman Mirabeau described the Prussian monarch’s decrees concerning Jews as “worthy of a cannibal.” Frederick characterized Jews “usurious vermin;” “wretches who “multiply infamously.” Saxony was the site of Martin Luther’s famous fight with the Roman Catholic Church. He had the Jews expelled from Saxony in 1537. It would be centuries before they were readmitted, and they would not gain full rights of citizenship until the second half of the 19th century.
1766(24th of Elul, 5526): Mrs. Esther Abrahams, the wife of Isaac Abrahams passed away today in New York City.
1766: “An enlarged building, designed by George Dance the Elder” which served as the home of The Great Synagogue was consecrated today in London.
1770: At the age of 25, A.M. Rothschild married Guttle Schanpper, age 17.
1776(14thof Elul, 5536): Jose Pereira supplied a flotilla which General Washington used to move his army across the East River and escape destruction at the hand of the British. Unfortunately, the young Sephard lost his life as helped to provide covering fire for the army as it crossed to temporary safety.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112355/jewish/Dr-Pereira-of-Boston.htm
1799: Papacy of Pius VI, who issued the anti-Semitic “Editto sopra gli ebrei” came to an end today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Edict1775.html
1813: Samuel Abrahams married Rachel Joseph at the Great Synagogue today.
1814: Birthdate of London native Rebecca Micholls, the wife of David Quixano Henriques.
1822: In London Morocco native Solomon Ben Masud Ben Abraham Sebag (Solomon Sebag and his wife Sarah, “the eldest sister of Sir Moses Montefiore gave birth to Sir Joseph Sebag-Montefiore, the stockbroker who held several positions including Justice of the Peace of Kent and President of the Board of Deputies.
1825: Seventy-three year old Flora Aarons, the widow of Aaron Aarons, who passed away two days ago was buried today at the Brady Street in Jewish Cemetery in London.
1826: Birthdate of French portrait painter Emile Levy who passed away in 1890.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_L%C3%A9vy#mediaviewer/File:Barbey.jpg
1827: Jacob Lyons married Pessa Elizabeth at the New Synagogue today.
1829(30thof Av, 5589): Parashat Re’eh and Rosh Chodesh Elul
1832: Samuel Moses married Elizabeth Davis today.
1834: In Bavaria, Jacob and Jeanette Bettmann gave birth to Bernhard Bettman who would become a successful businessman and leader of the Cincinnati, Ohio, Jewish community.
1836: Samuel and Jane Stiebel, both of whom were natives of Germany gave birth to Flora Stiebel.
1841: Birthdate of German native Lina Kahn Baldauf, the wife of Morris Baldauf who settled in Louisville, KY where she had four children – Julius, Minnie, Leon and Cora.
1842: Jews began arriving in Hong Kong after it was ceded to Great Britain by China today. The first synagogue would not come into use until 1870 when a house on Hollywood Street was rented for that purpose.
1843(3rdof Elul, 5603): Sixty year old Ludwig Lewin Jacobson the Danish surgeon who developed several surgical instruments including “the lithoclast for the crushing of stones in the bladder.”
1843: Birthdate of David B. Hill, the Governor of New York who was supported by Samuel Gompers and opposed the American Protective Association (A.P.A.) the anti-immigrant organization that was hostile to Jews.
1848(30thof Av, 5608): Rosh Chodesh Elul
1848(30thof Av, 5608): Deborah Cohen, the daughter of Jacob Raphael Cohen who married Israel Moses in 1810, passed away today in St. Joseph, FL.
1848: Birthdate of Henry Schneeberger, the "first American-born, ordained rabbi who was the spiritual leader of Chizuk Amuno in Baltimore, MD.
1849(11th of Elul, 5609): Seventy-year-old Judah Lyons, the Philadelphia born son of Eleazar Lyons who married Mary Levy in 1804 passed away today in New York City.
1851: The U.S.S. Mississippi, under the command of Captain Uriah P. Levy, the highest ranking Jewish officer in the U.S. Navy, arrived today in Constantinople. The American warship had been sent to the Ottoman capital for the purpose of providing Louis Kossuth, the exiled Hungarian political leader, with safe passage to France.
1853: Two days after having fallen victim to cholera, Major Meno Berg, the fist Jewish Prussian staff officer was buried with full military honors in the Jewish cemetery in the Schönhauser Allee in a ceremony that police estimated was attended 60,000 people.
1853: Birthdate of Solomon Bibo. Born in Prussia, Bibo would come to the United States where, in the 1880’s he became the first non-Indian governor of the pueblo of Acamo in New Mexico Territory.
1854: Birthdate of Joseph Jacobs an Australian literary and Jewish historian, who was a writer for the Jewish Encyclopedia.
http://www.mainlesson.com/displayauthor.php?author=jacobs
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/jacobs.html
1855(15th of Elul, 5615):Isaac Samuel Reggio passed away at the age of 71. Born in 1784 at Goriza, he was an Austro-Italian scholar and rabbi born at Gorizia. Reggio studied Hebrew and Talmud with his father, Abraham Vita, the Rabbi at Gorizia. At the same time he attended the gymnasium where he acquired knowledge of secular science and languages. Reggio's father, one of the liberal rabbis who supported Hartwig Wessely, paid special attention to the religious instruction of his son, who displayed unusual aptitude in Hebrew, and at the age of fourteen wrote a metrical dirge on the death of Moses Ḥefeẓ, who has served as the Rabbi of Gorizia.
1855:The New York Timesreported that “a child of Mr. Louis Levinson of Providence, and of scriptural age, 'eight days old' was circumcised according to the ancient Jewish method at the house of his father...The ceremony was performed by Mr. Wolf of this city."
1858: Birthdate of French archaeologist Salomon Reinach whose “first published work was a translation of Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Essay on Free Will.”
1858:Dr. Joseph Bondi was installed as Rabbi of Anshi Chesed, the synagogue on Norfolk Street between Stanton and Houston Streets.
1859: The Tory (NY) Times reported that there was a quarrel taking place in the Jewish community over the ownership of a Bible. The Hebrew Bible which mysteriously disappeared, and was found only after a search warrant had been issued by a member of the local judiciary.
1862: During the reign of Napoleon III modifications were made today in the decree promulgated by Napoleon I in the method of choosing delegates to the Jewish Consistory.
1862: The Second Battle of Bull Run, during which Philadelphian Morris Lang of the 12thCavalry, was taken prisoner, continued for a second day.
1863:The five deserters in the Fifth corps, reprieved on Wednesday, will positively be shot to-day, at 3 o'clock, in presence of the corps. Two of them are Catholics, two Protestants, and one a Jew. Spiritual advisers have been with them to-day, a Jewish Rabbi having come expressly at the request of the one of that persuasion. The unfortunate men have finally made up their minds that they must die, though they have made several efforts to have their sentences commuted to hard labor for life. But the President, to his credit be it said, telegraphed yesterday that he could not interfere with the sentence, and the men will die. Their death is necessary to save hundreds of other lives, and to put a stop to the desertion of this class of men. Thirty more are on trial for the same offence in the first corps, and they will probably meet with a like fate.
1863: In New Haven, CT, “Morris and Mina (Fleischner) Ullman gave birth to Isaac Morris Ullman, the Quartermaster General of the Connecticut National Guard, “a member of the firm of Strouse, Adler and Company, and Treasurer of the American Jewish Committee who was the husband of Flora Veronica Adler.
1864: Democrats nominated Union General George B. McClellan to run against Abraham Lincoln who enjoyed a significant amount of support among the Jewish community in the upcoming Presidential campaign.
1865: Corporal Isaac Myers completed his service with Company G, 74thRegiment of the Union Army.
1865: Philadelphian Samuel Rothschild who rose from the rank of private to Commanding Sergeant of Company I of the 74th Regiment completed his term of service in the Union Army.
1865: In Pomerania, Hedwig and Isaak Lachmann gave birth to poet and translator Hedwig Lachmann. (As reported by Hanna Delf von Wolzogen)
1865:The New York Timesreported from Washington D.C. that the court-martial an Army Paymaster named Webb has come to an end. Webb was accused of playing a key role in swindling hundreds of soldiers out a total $400,000. According to the report “a Jew who was dismissed the service for defrauding the government at the beginning of the war” played a key role in the swindle. This unnamed Jew testified against Webb during the trial confessing his own role in the scheme. [Editor’ note – the religion of no other person involved in the scheme was mentioned in the article.]
1865(7th of Elul, 5625): Dr. Robert Remak, Polish born German physician, neurologist and embryologist passed away at the age of fifty. While in medical practice, he researched unpaid at university. As a Jew, he was barred from teaching. In 1847 he became the first Jew to officially teach a university and was later promoted to the position of assistant professor. He discovered the fibers of Remak, nonmedullated nerve fibers and named the three germ layers he discovered of the early embryo: the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm. In 1844 he discovered the nerve cells in the heart now called Remak's ganglia and provided the first illustration of the 6-layered cortex. He was a pioneer in the use of electrotherapy for the treatment of nervous diseases.
1867: One day after she had passed, 56 year old Brina (Joseph) Morris, “the wife of Henry Morris” with whom she had four children – “Cordelia, George, Deborah and Roas” – was buried today at the “Plymouth Hoe Burial Ground.”
1867: Birthdate of Cincinnati native Belle Levy Johnson, an officer of the National Council of Jewish women and the husband of Frederic A. Johnson.
1868: In Chicago, Benjamin and Theresa Eisenddrath gave birth to MIT trained architect Simeon B. Eisendrath, the husband of Arlita L. Leszynsky who “designed many Jewish pubic institutions in Chicago including the Home for Aged Jews” who moved to New York in 1901 where he designed several Jewish institutions including The Free Synagogue and Beth Elohim.
1870(2ndof Elu, 5630): Forty-one year old Lazarus Geiger, the brother of Rabbi Abraham Geiger and the nephew of Rabbi Abraham Geiger, who was “intrigued” by the psychology of color passed away today.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Geiger,_Abraham
1871: “Sketch of the Prison Rosenzweig, Alias Archer” published today described the activities of a German or Russian Jew named Rosenzweig who has been jailed for posing as medical doctor named Archer – a position for which he lacks both training and credentials.
1872: Among the 400 passengers arriving in New York on board the Packet-ship Charles H. Marshall was a German Jew named Meyer Velt
1873: This morning’s New York newspapers published a copy of a telegram from San Francisco that contains the confession of John T. Irving who claims to have murdered wealthy businessman Benjamin Nathan.
1873: “The Nathan Murder” published today described the confession of John T. Irving to the murder of Benjamin Nathan which included a claim that his son Washington Nathan was the mastermind of the crime.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/23461/a-death-in-the-family
1875: As the Shooting Season opens in France, Baron Hirsch entertains several of the “leading shots” on the land he leases in the forests around Saint-Germaine.
1878: After being attacked by a political opponent because of his religion, Raphael J. Moses, a prominent resident of Columbus, GA, responded in the local newspaper by asserting his Jewish pride in an article that was reprinted around the country: “I feel it an honor to be of a race whom persecution cannot crush, whom prejudice has in vain endeavored to subdue.” When he ran for congress, Moses explained, “I wanted to go to congress as a Jew and because I would have liked in a public position to confront and do my part towards breaking down the prejudice.”
1878(30th of Av, 5638): Rosh Chodesh Elul
1878: It was reported today that there are four Jews serving on the newly created 18 man Communal Council at Sarajevo.
1878: It was reported today that a Communal Council has been formed in Sarajevo. The Council, which represents a cross section of Sarajevo’s religious communities, includes four Jews, five Muslims, three Catholics and six Orthodox (Greek or Russian, not Jewish).
1880: Birthdate of Jassy native Stephen Cahana, who in 1903 came to the United States where he earned an MD at the University of Illinois, practiced medicine in Milwaukee and served on the faculty of Marquette University while also serving as President of the Wisconsin State Board of Health.
1882: Seventy two year old Friedrich Adolf Philippi the son a Jewish bank and family friend of the Mendelssohn who converted to Christianity in 1829 and became a Lutheran minister passed away today.
1882: Eliot Arthur De Pass married Beatrice “Trixie” De Mercado in Jamaica today.
1885: In Rochester, NY, Samuel and Anna F. Egelson gave birth CCNY and Columbia alum Louis Egelson who became a Rabbi after studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary and served as Chaplian of the 91st Division of the AEF during WW I after which he married Augusta Cronheim.
1886: A party of forty Russian Jews landed at Castle Garden today and was detained by authorities.
1886(28thof Av, 5646): Gretchen Kauffmann Born, the first wife of Gustav Jacob Born and the mother of Nobel Prize winner Max Born, passed away.
1887: Birthdate of Clarence Yale Palitz, the native of Lavia who came to the United States in 1900 where he became a lawyer, alderman and active member of the Jewish community holding leadership positions with the Jewish Ladies Day Nursery and the Jewish Social Service Association while raising three children – Lillian, Bernard and Clarence, Jr. – with his wife Ruth Krumnas Palitz.
1888: Today marks the tenth free excursion of this season sponsored by the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children. As of this date, the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children the ten excursions have provided relief from the summer heat for 6,127 babies, 3,812 children and 3,678 mothers.
1888: Birthdate of St. Louis businessman and Jewish community leader Ben Weisman.
1888: “Bloody Days In Morocco” published today described the violence in the North African country that has included Arab leaders calling for a Holy War. This has prompted at least one newspaper in Tangiers to call for the European powers to send ships to protect the Christians and the Jews.
1889(2ndof Elul, 5649): Eighty-one year old Gustav Weil who switched from studying to be a rabbi to become a leading Orientalist and whose Mohammed der Prophet served as resource for Washington Irving when he wrote the Life of Mohammed passed away today.
1891: “Russian Jewish Refugees” published today described the “considerable complaints” being made by people in Detroit because “the Canadian authorities send all the penniless Jews who get into that country” here to be taken care of.
1891: Recorder Albert Hessberg of Albany was among those who greeted Senator Jacob A. Cantor of the Tenth Senatorial District and his wife when they returned from Europe today aboard the Hamburg steamer Columbia today.
1891: Birthdate of Cincinnati native Raphael Isaacs the University of Cincinnati educated physician and Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan who served as the Assistant Director of the Simpson Memorial Institute and the “Editor of the section of ‘Pathology of the Blood’ in Biological Abstracts while also being “a member of the Editorial Board of the medical journal Harefuah Haivri.
1892: “No Way To Stop Immigration” published today discussed the challenges of protecting the United States from the European cholera outbreak including the comment that once the danger from cholera is out of the way, “it is plain that the United States would be better off if ignorant Russian Jews…were denied a refuge here.”
1892: Birthdate of Alexandre Koyré, the Russian born French philosopher who served with the French Foreign Legion in WW I and spent WW II teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
1892: In Chicago, Benjamin R. and Belle (Austrian) Cahn gave birth to Alvin Robert Cahn, the Cornell alum and holder of Ph.D. from Illinois where he served on the faculty and who was stationed at Dutch Harbor for three years during WW II.
1893: In “Solotwina, Austria,” “Jehuda Leib and Genendel (Schwager) Soltes, gave birth to Mordecai Soltes the holder of a Ph.D. from Columbia and husband of Ida Levy who was President of the Jewish Council of Greater New York, director of the Extension Education for the Bureau of Jewish Education of New York City and authored numerous “articles on Jewish Education and Jewish Education Centers.”
1896: Birthdate of New York native Dr. John Henry Garlock a member of the faculties at Columbia and Cornell
1897: The First Zionist Congress (Basle, Switzerland) was convened by Theodore Herzl. It was represented by one hundred and ninety-seven delegates. This was one of the most important yet unexpected convocation in modern Jewish History. Against all odds, Herzl had Jews from twenty-four different states as varied Palestine, the United States and an array from across Europe. The Congress adopted a document known as the Basile Program that declared, "The task of Zionism is to secure for the Jewish people in a Palestine in a publicly recognized legally secure homeland." The Congress also announced that it would dedicate itself to strengthening Jewish consciousness and national feeling." Writing in his diary on September 3 of the same year Herzl stated,” At Basle I founded the Jewish state. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, and certainly in fifty, everyone will know it." In 1947, just a few months beyond those fifty years, the UN approved the partition of Palestine that gave birth to the Jewish state.
1897: In Jersey City, NJ, Rabbi Jacob Boer led members of the Society of Teferith Israel in the ceremonies which converted a structure that had housed the German Evangelical Church into a synagogue. Rabbi Moses Wechsler, Rabbi Jacob Goodman and the Mayor of Jersey City were among the dignitaries who addressed the congregation.
1897: “The Snake in the Bible” published today described two appearances of the serpent in the Torah – the first in the Garden of Eden and the second when God calls on Moses to go before Pharaoh – each of which shows a different aspect of Biblical philosophy.
1898: The Zionist Conference chaired by Dr. Herzl continues for a second day in Basel, Switzerland.
1898: It was reported today that at age 22, Abram Herschberger is youngest Rabbi to lead a congregation in Chicago, Illinois and he may be the youngest clergy of any denomination serving in the Windy City.
1899: When the court martial of Captain Dreyfus resumed today Colonel Cordier, the Deputy Chief of the Intelligence Department was the first witness to take the stand and he testified based on his examination of the documents in question “he was now convinced Dreyfus was innocent.”
1899: Nouri Bey receives 10,000 Francs to arrange an audience for Herzl with the Sultan.
1900(4th of Elul, 5660): Seventy-nine year old Sir Saul Samuel, 1st Baronet, the Australian merchant, government official and leader of the Jewish community passed away today.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/samuel-sir-saul-4534
1903(6th of Elul, 5663): Parashat Shoftim
1903(6th of Elul, 5663): Forty-year-old Rabbi Hirsch Zvi Goiten, the Hungarian born son of of Eliyahu Menachem Goitein and Amalia Mahala Goitein passed away today in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1903: Die Welt publishes the declaration of the British Government on the allocation of a "Jewish territory" in East Africa. Die Welt was the name of publication started by Herzl in 1897 to further the Zionist cause. It should not be confused with the modern German publication of the same name.
1904: Joseph E. Nowrey, the Mayor of Camden, NJ, was reported today to have compared the conditions of Jews in the United States and in Russia when he said, “What a great sensation it would be if a Russian official, presiding over a city, should appear on a platform and speak words of encouragement at the dedication of a Jewish synagogue. But thing are different in the broad land of ours.”
1904: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Samuel Klaus, the Columbia trained attorney who held the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Army during WW II and served as a “special counsel to the State Department.”
1905: “The Jewish Name ‘Gordon’” which first appeared The London Chronicle published today looks at examples that “show that Gordon in Jewish nomenclature is by no means a case of latter-day usurpation” and challenges the notion that there is a connection between Jews named Gordon and the Russian town of Grodno.
1906: “The Union of Genuine Russians” issued a platform that called for Jews to be denied the right to serve in the military, to study at schools and universities, to be druggists, journalists, and to vote while also calling for them to pay a special tax for not serving in the army or navy.
1907: At the behest of “Oscar S. Straus, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor,” who sought putting an end to the payment of fees to lawyers by Chinese workers, the Commissioner General of Immigration sent out a circular addressed to all Chinese Inspectors that stated “by direction of the Secretary you instructed to encourage the practice among Chinese laborers who intend to leave this country and return after an absence, of calling upon Inspectors of the Immigration Service for assistance in filling out their applications for return certificates.”
1908(2nd of Elul, 5668): Parashat Shoftim
1908: “The editorial statement of President Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor…in which he again called upon union men to support the Democratic Party surprised labor men” in New York.
1909: It was reported today that “The Chocolate Soldier,” “the Viennese operetta by Oscar Straus” is scheduled to open at the Lyric Theatre on September 14th.
1910(24th of Av, 5670): Sixty-eight year old San Francisco attorney and Democratic politician Joseph Naphthaly, the Prussian born son of Samuel and Julia Naphthaly who married the former Sarah Schmitt, the daughter of Blaize L. and Pauline Schmitt with whom he had two children, Samuel and Leon, passed away today.
1911: In Great Britain the Tredegar District Council adopted a resolution protesting against “disgraceful rioting and looting” attacks against Jews in New South Wales. The riots, which had begun on August 19 following the end of strike, were the worst outbreak of anti-Semitic violence in the British Isles in modern times.
1912: Birthdate of Wolfgang Suschitzky, the “the photographer and cinematographer” who was the brother of Edith Tudor-Hart.
1912(16th of Elul,5672): Seventy-eight year old Nathan Keyfitz, the former “Crown Rabbi at Rogacheff, Russia” passed away today in Toronto.
1912(16th of Elul, 5672): Eighty year old Brno born philosopher and author Theodor Gomperz passed away today.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Gomperz,_Theodor
1913(26th of Av, 5673): David Shubert, the Lithuanian born husband of Gittel Helvich Shubert whose children – Lee, Fannie, Samuel, Sarah, Jacob and Dora – the male members of which were the famous producers and theatrical entrepreneurs passed away today in Manhattan.
1913: Birthdate of Sylvia Fine, the Brooklyn native who was an “American lyricist, composer, producer and the wife of the comedian Danny Kaye.”
1914: Solomon Standwood Menken, a Memphis born New York lawyer who had converted to Christianity “returned to the United States today” from Great Britain where “he helped form the National Security League, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to higher military budgets, universal conscription and tight regulation of the economy” after having seen how poorly prepared the United Kingdom had been prepared to go to war against the Central Powers.
1914: Much to the delight of the Jews serving with the Kaiser and to the disappointment of Jews serving under the Tricolor, the Germans thwarted an attack at Guise which would lead to further retreat by the French.
1915: In Atlantic City, NJ, 500 people attended a meeting at the Garden Pier sponsored by the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews suffering through the war where arrangements were completed “for raising a fund throughout the country for the relief of Jews in Poland and Palestine.”
1915: “The dedication of the home for the convalescents established by the Federation of Rumanian Jews of America did not take place this afternoon as planned due to inclement weather.”
1915: According to reports published today, Dr. Jacques Faitlovich is planning on starting “a school for the Abyssinian black Jews in the Italian colony of Eretria” with the help of two young men he had brought to Italy for an education, and which is supported “by Jewish organizations in America.”
1915: In Chicago, Jacob and Ester Pritikin, the University of Chicago dropout and millionaire inventor who created the “Pritkin Diet.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-02-23-mn-1021-story.html
1915: James Huneker provides an insight into the works of Russian author Mikhail Artsybashev including “The Doctor” which provides “a view of pogrom in a tiny Russian province town” that provides details “of the wretched Jews shot down ripped open, maltreated and driven into the wilderness” which makes the reader “shudder.
1915: In Richmond, VA, founding of Beth Israel Synagogue.
1915: In Baltimore founding of Ahavas Sholom.
1915: In Newark, NJ, founding of Aahavath Zion Synagogue.
1915: In Los Angeles dedication of the Home for the Aged.
1916: During World War I, Paul von Hindenburg became Chief of the German General Staff. Hindenburg’s supposed brilliance was really the work of his loyal lieutenant Erich Ludendorff. Among other things, Hindenburg helped provide ammunition for the myth that that German Army was stabbed in the back (by the Jews) and actually brought Hitler to power as Chancellor.
1916: Jacob de Hass, the Secretary of the Provisional Committee for General Zionists wrote a letter today in which he took exception to a report by three teachers from American colleges in Turkey who said “that on their visit to Palestine they learned that all the Jews had been deported from Jerusalem with the exception of a few who had accepted the Moslem faith.”
1916: “Austrian Threats to Jews” published today described two orders by the military commander of the Chelm District which The Day, a Jewish newspaper published in New York described as “an open provocation, the purpose of which is to make the Jews of invaded Poland the scapegoat for all Austrian misfortunes.”
1917: Today, in Moscow, at the closing session the third sitting of the national conference, “the representative of the Jews said that they loved their country, notwithstanding their unprecedented persecution under the old regime and had contributed greatly to the emancipation of the people and the defense against the enemy.”
1918: In Manhattan Thomas Rockwell Shepard Sr. and the former Marie Maze Dickinson gave birth to Thomas Rockwell Shepard Jr. the last publisher of Look magazine “which helped to launch the photography career of Stanley Kurbrick” and which published Thomas Morgan’s ““The Vanishing American Jew: Leaders fear threat to Jewish survival in today’s ‘crisis of freedom.'”
1918: Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, who arrived in Great Britain yesterday from the United States at the head of a labor delegation, visited his birthplace in Spitalfields.
1918: “Bennett Charges Forgery” published described complaints of voting irregularities that had been lodged by Ex-Senator William Bennett who was seeking the Republican nomination for Lt. Gov. of New York with Samuel S. Koenig, the chairman of the county Republican Committee – charges which the Jewish political leader dismissed as being groundless.
1919: Sendel and Riva Grynszpan gave birth to Mordechai Grynszpan, the brother of Herschel Grynszpan the man who assassinated Ernst vom Rath which was the excuse for Kristallnacht
1920: At Surprise Lake Camp, Cold Spring on the Hudson, Herman Lehman presided over the dedication of the Marx Building where the 75 attendees heard a speech by Judge Samuel Greenbaum and “a talk by Eddie Cantor who traced the beginning of his theatrical career to the summer, 18 years ago, when he was first sent to Surprise Lake Camp by the Education Alliance” and found himself providing entertainment for his 450 fellow campers.
1920: “The first issue of Di Tsayt,” a Yiddish daily newspaper that would survive for two year “was published today in New York.
1920: Jewish Theological Seminary trained Rabbi Herman Priced, the Lithuanian born son of Beer and Judith (Baron) Price, who would lead Beth El Congregation of East Flatbush and Beth El Congregation of Sunbury, PA married Ida Schneider today in Brooklyn.
1921: In Budapest, the United States and Hungary signed a peace treaty because the Senate had rejected the Versailles Treaty – a rejection that many believe was a step on the road to WW II and all that that came to mean.
1922: Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin was arrested today in Glasgow, “ostensibly for breaking immigration regulations” but more likely because the authorities in the UK knew about his role as a spy and agent for the Soviet government.
1923: Jewish gangsters Samuel "Sammy" Weiss, Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen and Samuel Gepson were arraigned at Essex Market Courthouse today on charges of having violated New York’s Sullivan Law.
1924: Birthdate of Warsaw born filmmaker and actor Jakub Goldberg whose most famous collaboration with Roman Polanski.
1924: Birthdate Victor Parsonnet, the WW II Navy veteran and NYU Med School graduate “who became a thoracic and cardiac surgeon in Newark, New Jersey and is affiliated with Newark Beth Israel Medical Center” and served as Chairman of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
1927: In Atlanta, GA, Florence Rubin and Samuel A. Massell gave birth to University of Georgia graduate and U.S. Air Force Samuel A. “Buddy” Massell, the realtor and first Jewish mayor of Atlanta who married Sandra Gordy after the death of his first wife Doris.
1927: In Worms, birthdate of furniture designer Vladimir Kagan who was brought to the United States in 1937 by his mother Hildegard to escape the Nazis.
1928: Birthdate of Perry K. Peskin, the Western Reserve University educated high school and U.S. Army veteran who was best known for his hobby as a “Bird Watcher”
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/cleveland-heights-oh/perry-peskin-7670471
1929: The day began with an Arab attempt to massacre the Jewish population of Safed, one of the sacred cities of Palestine and the center of study of the Kaballah. Initially nine Jews were killed and thirty wounded. As day turned into night the attack continued with the Arabs killing twenty-two Jews, wounding scores more and burning the whole town except the government buildings. Fighting proceeded for eight hours before British troops arrived from Tiberias. At least one American was found among the wounded. According to reports circulating in the ancient Jewish settlement 3,000 have been left homeless and some of the wounded were tortured by the Arab raiders.
1929: After six days of Arab attacks, 133 Jews had been killed throughout Palestine. The casualties would have been higher if had not been for the work of the Haganah. Established nine years earlier, members of the Haganah worked to defend settlements through Palestine. At Hulda, twenty-three Haganah members held off more than 1,000 Arab attackers. The success came at a cost - Ephraim Chizik, commander of the unit and one of the earliest members of the Jewish defense force was killed during the action.
1929: After a week of Arab riots that started on August 23, as of today, 113 Jews had been killed and 339 wounded. As a result of the riots, Sir Walter Shaw headed a commission which urged the banning of Jewish immigration and absolved the Arabs and the Mufti of guilt. Another commission led by Sir John Simpson declared that the entire Zionist operation was unsound and undesirable. Both of these commissions were under the auspices of Lord Passfield, the British Colonial Secretary.
1929: In a letter to The Times of London, British Zionist Harry Sacher refuted Arab claims that the Wailing Wall was part of the Mosque of Omar and that the Jews had no right to be there. The Mufti had claimed that the Arab Riots were provoked by Jews marching to the Wailing Wall and violating the law by hosting a Zionist flag. (Please note the similarity of this claim to the one that would be made at the end of the century to justify the violence known as the Second Intifada.)
1931: Robert Szold said in a statement issued on behalf of the administration of the Zionist Organization of America that the great majority of the American delegation to the recent World Zionist Congress at Basle applied itself to averting continued internal dissension in the organization and accomplished that goal.
1932(27thof Av, 5692): Sixty-eight year old Hyman M. Lasker, the rabbi of Beth Israel in Troy, NY and the grandfather of Harold I Saperstein, the Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Lynbrook, NY passed away today after which he was buried in “Beth Tephilah Cemetery” in Troy, NY.
1932: In Vienna, Nazis attacked the Palace of Justice, smashed furnishings and “menaced” the President of the Chamber who was Jewish.
1932: “A 250 year old Jewish cemetery in Oschersleben, Germany was desecrated by vandals.”
1933(7th of Elul, 5693): Ninety- year old Sir Philip Magnus, the rabbi who gave up the pulpit to pursue a career furthering technical education and the husband of Katie Magnus with whom he had two children biographer Philip Magnus and published Laurie Magnus passed away.
http://www.jta.org/1933/08/30/archive/sir-philip-magnus-dead-scientist-communal-leader
1933: In the Bronx, the former Rachel Gutman, a nutritionist and Judah Wattenberg, a real estate lawyer who gave birth to Joseph Ben Zion Wattenberg who gained famed as Democratic Party activist, author and social commentator Ben Wattenberg.
1933: “Dinner at Eight” the film version of the play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, directed by George Cukor, produced by David O. Selznick with a script by Herman Mankiewicz was released in the United States by MGM.
1933: “The New York Times runs a story about the existence of 65 concentration camps in Germany where at least 45,000 people are being held in inhuman conditions. Most of the prisoners in these camps are political: communists, socialists, and liberals of various sorts.”(As reported by Austin Cline)
1933: In Canada, A spokesman of the Immigration Department publicly announces that the Government does not intend to amend the present restrictive immigration policy, thus responding to the objections of anti-Jewish groups and a section of the press to the proposed admission of German-Jewish refugees.
1933: The conflict within the World Zionist Congress, caused by the presentation during the week-end of charges that the Palestine labor leader, Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, had been murdered by Zionist Revisionists, overshadowed today’s discussions when the congress met today.
1933: Dr. Chaim Weizmann definitely declines to accept the presidency of the World Zionist Organization, though he agrees to head the campaign for funds to settle German Jews in Palestine.
1935: The delegates to the World Zionist Congress were saddened by the death of Queen Astrid of the Belgians. This was reflected by the decision of the delegates to limit their activities today the holding a series of quiet sectional conferences.
1935: The Los Angeles Times reported that “a Los Angeles based anti-Nazi League” had been operating in that city at least since February of 1934.
1935: In Chicago, Louis Friedkin, “a semi-professional softball player, merchant seaman, and men's clothing salesman” and Rachael (née Green) Friedkin, “an operating room registered nurse gave birth to Oscar winning director whose works included the “French Connection” and “The Exorcist.”
1935: New York premiere of “Top Hat” a musical produced by Pandro S. Berman with a score by Irving Berlin and Max Steiner.
1936: Pravda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Union, “warns that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party are planning a massive war that will lead to slaughter across Europe.”
1936: It was announced today that “The American Committee Appeal for the Relief of Jews in Poland” which is seeking to raise one million dollars “has asked Jewish congregations throughout the United States to raise funds during the coming Jewish holidays for the relief of destitute co-religionists in Poland.”
1936: Two British soldiers were killed tonight and three more were wounded when Arabs attacked a patrol near Mount Tabors.
1936: Arabs attacked Jewish settlement in the Sharon Valley in southern Judea and in the Jordan Valley tonight.
1936: In light of the violence in Palestine and the pressure being brought on the British government to stop Jewish immigration, a special evening prayer is scheduled to be recited in all Dutch synagogues in response to an order from the Association of Chief Rabbis of Holland.
1936: “Unless unforeseen circumstances arise between tonight and tomorrow morning, an Arab High Committee meeting then will accept the intervention of General Nuri Pasha as-Said, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, for a settlement of the present deadlock between the Palestine Arabs and the Palestine (British Mandate) Government.
1937(22nd of Elul, 5697): In the ongoing violent uprising against the Jews and in an attempt to silence Arab opposition, Abraham Berkowsky, aged 45, a Tel Aviv tailor, was killed on an Egged bus by a terrorist firing from an ambush just above Motza.
1937: At Oxford, Prof. Dr. Herbert Danby, who translated the Mishna into English, severely criticized Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi scholar and the head of the German Foreign Affairs section, who had just published his book The Immorality of the Talmud. Danby said that the book, published by Friends of Europe, was full of malice and misquotations
1937: New York’s WNEW radio station broadcast a memorial show honoring cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper who had passed away on August 28.
1938: In New York City, Sylvia (née Seiderman) and Alexander Rubin gave birth to Robert Rubin, the United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton.
1938: In Brooklyn, the former Lucille Raver and Bernard Goldstein gave birth to Elliott Goldstein who gained fame as Elliot Gould one of the most prominent American film actors in the early '70s, best known for playing Trapper John in the satirical 1970 film M*A*S*H. Time magazine put him on its cover in 1970, when he was at the brief height of his long career, calling him a "star for an uptight age
1938: According to the London Daily Mail, a group of Arabs attacked Jerusalem tonight. The same report included a description of an attack on Mothea, a kibbutz known for its dairy, during which the barns were burned and “a number of the pedigreed cattle” were deliberately burned alive.
1939: On the eve of World War II, Chaim Weizmann informed the prime minister of England that the Jews of Eretz Israel would stand by Great Britain and fight on the side of the democracies.
1939: Birthdate of director William Friedkin. He is best known for his work with The Exorcist and the French Connection for which he won an Oscar.
1939: Birthdate of movie director Joel Schumacher the son of Marian (née Kantor) Schumacher, whose “mother was a Swedish Jew.”
1940: The National Encampment of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States continued to a second day in Boston.
1941: The remainder of 11,000 displaced Hungarian Jews (forced laborers), now living in Kamenets Podolsk and whom Hungary did not want to take back were taken out of town to a pit and machine gunned down.
1942(16th of Elul, 5702): Rabbi Simcha Oberbaum, Aleksanderer Chassid; a central figure in the Lodz Jewish community; born in Warsaw in 1852, died in the Lodz ghetto.
1942(16th of Elul, 5702): Parashat Ki Tavo
1942: As can be seen from the attached photograph, more Jews were deported today from Wiesbaden Germany to Auschwitz.
http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/august/08.asp
1942: It was reported today that Dominican President Rafael L. Trujillo’s offer to provide a haven for 3,500 Jewish refugee children living in Vichy was forwarded, Marshal Petain, the head of the French government. A few years earlier, Trujillo had provided land at Sousa for a Jewish refugee colony.
1942: Twelve Jewish American women were included among the first graduating class of WAAC officers at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. They were Ruth Ginns, Beatrice Berg, Carolyne Casper and Jean Korn from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Kathryne Goldfluss, Rose Ross and Joan Strongin from New York, New York; Bee Rosenberg and Ruth Spivak from Chicago, Illinois; Rita Fink and Isabel Bayley of Buffalo, New York; and Elizabeth Morgenstern of Seattle, Washington.a
1942: The Jewish community from Olesko, Ukraine, is deported to the Belzec death camp
1942: Occupation officials in the East inform Berlin that the "Jewish problem" has been "totally solved" in Serbia. Since German occupation, 14,500 of Serbia's 16,000 Jews have been murdered.
1943: The American Jewish Conference “opened at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. More than five hundred delegates were present representing sixty-five different national organizations.” Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver gave an “electrifying speech” in which he “convinced his audience to support the Biltmore Declaration.”
1943: After almost 8 years, the New Deal agency known as The Federal Art Project (FAP) whose artists included Leon Bibel, Adolph Gottlieb, Harry Gottlieb, Isaac Soyer, Moses Soyer. Raphael Soyer and Lee Krasner came to an end
1943: Six hundred prisoners were sent from Larissa to Athens so they could be held Haidari, a concentration camp that was really a stopping point for the ultimate trip to Auschwitz.
1943: In Denmark, the official chief rabbi, Dr. Max Friediger is detained as a "hostage" of along with some 100 prominent Danes, including a dozen Jews, in a camp near Copenhagen.
1944: More than 800 Jews earmarked for forced labor are transported from Auschwitz to the labor camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany, for assignment to nearby factories. Elsewhere in Germany, about 72 ill or pregnant Jews are taken from a labor camp near Leipzig and transported to gas chambers at Auschwitz.
1944: The last transport left the Lodz Ghetto after two months of final liquidation of the Jewish population. Only 600 Jews remained from 76,000 who were still alive there on June 15, 1944.
1944: Father Giuseppe Girotti was arrested today when he was “caught in the middle of transferring a wounded Jewish partisan” to a safe house –a deed that earned him a one-way ticket to Dachau where he was murdered on Easter Day. (As reported by JTA)
1945: Lt. Colonel Judah Nadich entered the Feldafing D.P. camp. Nadich was a rabbi serving as the senior Jewish chaplain in Europe. Nadich was repelled by the barbaric conditions under which the Jews were living; especially by the fact that they were confined behind barbed wire just as had been the case in the Concentration Camps while “The conquered Germans had complete freedom.”
1945: Lt. Col. Louis Geffen, who had served as a judge advocate in the US Army since January 1941, set sail from Oakland, CA for Japan.
1946: “Message from President Truman, Governor Dewey, Senator James M. Mead and Representative Sol Bloom were read today at the opening of the twenty-fourth national convention of the Agudath Israel Youth Council of America.”
1947: “Moshe Levy Nahum Mukhtar of the Yemenite Jewish quarter of Jaffa, who sometimes called ‘King of the Yemenite Jews’ had forty Arabs and Jews at peacemaking feast in his house today,” in attempt to counteract the Arab-Jewish rioting that has taken place on the border between Jaffa and Tel Aviv.
1948: Based on comments made by Julius Levine who has spent nine months as the director of the Joint Distribution Committee activities in Prague it was reported today that “the Czechoslovak administration is especially helpful to Jews who wish to go to Israel” and that emigration from Czechoslovakia to the United States, Israel and other lands has reached 500 a month.”
1949: “Unit of Religion Among Jews Urged,” published today described the start of “a movement to do away with sectarianism in Jewish religious life in favor of a ‘universal synagogue’” which has begun in Paterson, NJ with the established of Congregation Beth-El under the leadership of Rabbi Reuben Kaufman.
1951: In Chicago, Edward H. Levi the former President of the University of Chicago and Attorney General and his wife gave birth to David F. Levi who served a federal judge before becoming Dean of the Duke University School of Law.
1952: Birthdate of Baltimore native Karen S. Hesse winner of the Newbery Medal for Out of the Dust and the Koret Jewish Book Award in 2005 for The Cats in Krasinski Square.
1954: WNBC is scheduled to broadcast “first radio performance of Maria del Carmen (Granados) and Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra by Nathaniel Shilkret.”
1955: Birthdate of Jacob “Jack” Lew, whom President Obama chose to serve as the 25thWhite House Chief of Staff.
1957: Premiere of The Pajama Game featuring a score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, two more of the Jews who created and nurtured the “Broadway Musical,” one of America’s unique contributions to the world of entertainment.
1958: United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado. According to the latest figures available, there are approximately fifty Jewish cadets attending the Academy.
1959(25th of Av, 5719): Parashat Re’eh
1959(25th of Av, 5719): Sixty-two year old Denver born Zionist leader David Tannenbaum passed away today in Tel Aviv.
https://www.jta.org/1959/08/31/archive/david-tannenbaum-director-of-z-o-a-house-in-tel-aviv-dies
1960(6th of Elul, 5720): Fifty-two year old Hedwig “Vicki” Baum whose 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel would be made into the Academy Award winning “Grand Hotel” passed away today.
http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/192334/throwback-thursday-vicki-baum-wrote-a-novel-per-y/
1961: “Bear Meat,” a short story by Primo Levi, was published for the first time in Il Mondo.
1963(9th of Elul, 5723): Eighty-two-year-old Harry Fleishman Affelder, the Pittsburgh born son of Catherine and Jacob Isadore Affelder and the husband of Rhoda E. Affelder with whom he had two children – Lewis and Ruth – who was a member of the Cleveland Hospital Council passed away today in Cleveland.
1964(21st of Elul, 5724): Leil Sleichot
1964: After 964 performances, the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” the Stephen Sondheim Tony award winning musical comedy starring Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford (both of whom had been blacklisted) featuring Karen Black
1965(1st of Elul, 5725): Rosh Chodesh Elul
1968: In Chicago, the National Democratic Convention which has been held against a backdrop of demonstrations led in part by Lee Weiner, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, comes to an end.
1963: At the New York Shakespeare Festival, final performance of “Electra” featuring David Hurst in the role of “Paedagogus”
1969: A deranged Australian tourist who was a Christian fundamentalist set fire to the Al Aksa Mosque claiming that it was “Satan’s Temple.”
1969: Two Palestinians hijacked a TWA plane after it had left Los Angeles and forced it to land at Damascus where 6 Israeli passengers were detained.
1970: Plans for Israel's forthcoming appeal to the world's Jews for $1-billion next year for nondefense needs of the country were outlined at a meeting of the newly reorganized Jewish Agency
1972(19th of Elul, 5732):René Leibowitz, Polish born French composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher passed away.
1973: Birthdate of Argentine movie director Daniel Burman who “is of Polish-Jewish descent” and “one of the members of the so-called "New Argentina Cinema", which began circa 1998.”
1974: Just days before his 65th birthday, Biblical scholar and archeologist George Ernest Wright who directed the Drew-McCormick Archaeological Expedition to Shechem and the Hebrew Union College Biblical and Archaeological School Expedition at Tell Gezer passed away today.
1975: Colonels Lev Ovsischer and Yefim Davidovich and other Zionist activists protested the imminent screening in Minsk of new anti-Zionist documentary film, “The Secret and the Obvious”.
1976: John Darnton described the volatile conditions in sub-Saharan African including “the recent dispute between Kenya and Uganda stemming from President Idi Amin’s charge of Kenyan complicity in the Entebbe raid.”
1976: The first Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education began at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. http://jwa.org/thisweek/aug/29/1976/caje
1977(15th of Elul, 5737): Seventy-nine year old Aharon Menachem Shapira, the son of Avraham and Liba Rochel Shapira passed away today at Petah Tikva.
1977: Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu cruised peacefully on Lake Snagov, discussing peace prospects and bilateral relations. They reaffirmed Israeli-Rumanian friendship, but haggled over the wording of the final joint announcement.
1977: In Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek asked whether the ³equalized services² promised for the West Bank and Gaza by the new Likud government would be extended to east Jerusalem, as well as to the new Jewish neighborhoods, deprived so far of adequate religious, educational and communal facilities.
1979(6th of Elul, 5739): Eighty-four year old newspaper mogul Samuel I. Newhouse passed away today.
1979: Birthdate of Ehud “Udi” Tenenbaum the native of Ramat HaSharon who was arrested for hacking into a wide variety of computer systems including those at NASA, MIT and the Knesset.
1982: Dr. Sari Lynn Kramer, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Julian S. Kramer of South Orange, N.J., was married to Samuel L. Margulies, son of Mrs. Emmanuel Margulies of New York and the late Mr. Margulies. Rabbi Barry Greene of Livingston, N.J., performed the ceremony at the home of the bride's parents.
1982(10th of Elul, 5742): Eight-seven year old Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann, the founder of the World Jewish Congress passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/goldmann.html
1983: “Strange Brew” directed and written by Rick Moranis who also starred in the comedy was released in Canada today by MGM.
1984(1st of Elul, 5744): Rosh Chodesh Elul
1985: One person was injured during a stabbing attack by a terrorist in Jerusalem.
1986: “In an essay entitled "Encumbered Remembrance: The Controversy about the Incomparability of National-Socialist Mass Crimes" first published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung today, Joachim Clemens Fest claimed that Ernst Nolte's argument that Nazi crimes were not "singular" was correct.”
1986: Birthdate of Canadian actress, Lauren Collins.
1992(30th of Av, 5752): Parashat Re’eh; Rosh Chodesh Elul
1992: Eighty-seven year old Jean S. Greene, the wife of Philip M. Greene passed away today.
1993(11th of Elul, 5753): Parashat Ki Teitzei
1993(11th of Elul, 5753): Eighty-year old Arthur J. Katzman, the native of Belarus and Brooklyn Law School graduate who served on the City Council for almost three decades passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1993/09/01/694993.html?pageNumber=20
1994: Solomon “Sol” Wachtler, the Republican Chief Judge of the New York of Appeals who had been convicted and sentenced to prison for “acts stemming from threats he made against a former lover and her daughter” was scheduled to be released to a half-way house today.
1994(22nd of Elul, 5754): Ninety-five year old Walter Gilbert Peiser, the Brooklyn born son of William and Jennie Peiser and the husband of Frances Henrietta Peiser who was a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and the Hebrew Union College and who served as a rabbi in Cleveland, OH, Austin, TX and Baton Rouge, LA where he also served on the faculty of LSU passed away today.
http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0805/ms0805.html
1996: The Democratic National Convention comes to an end having nominated Bill Clinton for President comes to an end. His second administration will include Monica Lewinsky, a failed attempt to force a peace agreement at Camp David and the pardon of Marc Rich.
1996(14th of Elul, 5756): Eighty-three year old Irving Simon Katcher, the North Dakota born son of ois and Rebecca Katcher and the husband of Nettie Katcher passed away today after which he was buried in the Beth El Memorial Park Cemetery in Livonia, Michigan.
1997(26th of Av, 5757): Seventy-three year old Ilya Gazarkh, a resident of Pisgat Ze’ev who had survived the combat of WW II, died of the wounds he sustained during a terrorist bombing at the Mahane Yehuda Market in July.
1999: David Berger completed his service as Canada’s Ambassador to Israel.
1999: “The Chicago Jewish Historical Society – in cooperation with the Dawn Schuman Institute – is scheduled to lead a tour of southwest Michigan led by Leah Axelrod where participants will “learn about early Jewish farmers” and the development of the resorts at South Haven and Benton Harbor.
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayedby Gerald Gamm, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese Historyby Joanna Waley-Cohen daughter of Sir Bernard Nathaniel Waley-Cohen, the Jewish businessman who became Lord Mayor of London, Kosovo Crossing by David Fromkin and The Birth of Shylock and the Death of Zero Mostelby Arnold Wesker.
1999: The 7th World Championships in Athletics in which Aleksandr Valeryevich Averbukh placed third in the Pole Vault representing Israel came to a close today in Seville, Spain.
2000(28th of Av, 5760): Ninety-seven year old Gertrude H. Schaefler, the widow of the late Leon Schaefler passed away today.
2001(10th of Elul, 5761): Thirty-five year old Oleg Sotnikov was shot by terrorists today.
2002: “The Israeli Defense Ministry said today that an Israeli ship had been detained in the German port of Hamburg on suspicion that its cargo of rubber treads for armored personnel carriers was bound for Iran, “a spokeswoman said that the export license had indicated Thailand as the destination, and that Israel was joining Germany in an investigation.”
2003(1st of Elul, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Elul
2003(1st of Elul, 5763): The Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades “claimed responsibility for the murder of 25 year old Shalom Har-Melekh and the wounding of his “wife Limor who was seven months pregnant” and subsequently “gave birth to a baby girl by Caesarean section.” (Jewish Virtual Library)
2003: Eric Edelman began serving as United States Ambassador to Turkey.
2003: Pulitzer-Prize Winning Poet Louise Glück (pronounced “Glick”) was named poet laureate of the United States. http://jwa.org/thisweek/aug/29/2003/louise-gluck
2004: In the following article entitled “In New York Try and Find A Genuine New York Bagel,” Molly O’Neill decries the downward spiral of the genuine bagel while providing a list of places where the aficionado can find this unique hunk of boiled dough.
Beware the billowy bagel. It bears no resemblance to its small, gnarly forebears. The traditional bagel was as tough as New Yorkers imagine themselves to be. It was a workout: the carb count of a handmade bagel was net zero once the chewing was done. This bagel was one of the reasons that the typical New Yorker found it difficult to wake up elsewhere and one reason people came here. Today the typical New York City bagel is no different from the ones served in malls nationwide. The traditional bagel, born of Eastern European shtetls, was made of yeast, malt, flour, water and salt. It was rolled by hand, first boiled and then baked. Today's version is made from yeast and sugar, flour, water and salt, extruded through machines and baked. The result is a big, fat, soft pillow suitable only for naps. Had we not been focused on other issues in recent years, New Yorkers would have taken swift and certain action against the airy and flaccid interlopers that dare to call themselves bagels. Rather than a daily entitlement, the authentic bagel has become a special event. We generally find them behind well-steamed windows -- the secret is in the malt, the baker and the boiling -- in places like these:
BAGEL HOLE -- 400 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, (718) 646-2210
BAGEL OASIS -- 183-12 Horace Harding Expressway, Queens, (718) 359-9245
BAGELWORKS INC. -- 1229 First Avenue, (212) 744-6444.
ESS-A-BAGEL -- 359 First Avenue, (212) 260-2252; 831 Third Avenue, (212) 980-1010.
MURRAY'S BAGELS -- 242 Eighth Avenue at 23rd Street; (646) 638-1335
NEPTUNE BAGELS -- 371 Neptune Avenue, Brooklyn; (718) 462-2830
ROCCO'S PASTRY SHOP AND ESPRESSO CAFE -- 243 Bleecker Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue, (212) 242-6031
2004: The Sunday New York Times book section includes a review of Blackbird House by Jewish novelist Alice Hoffman.
2004: The New York Mets held their annual “Jewish Heritage Day” game by playing the Los Angeles Dodgers who roster includes Shawn Green, the 21st century version of Sandy Koufax.
2005(24th of Av, 5765): Seventy-eight year old Rabbi Balfour Brickner whose accomplishments included the founding to Temple Sinai in Washington, DC passed away today.
https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E1DB1731F932A3575AC0A9639C8B63
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/31/AR2005083102485.html
2005: Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans causing untold suffering among the Jewish community as well as the secular community. In the coming days, the world will be treated to Tzizth wearing rabbis rescuing Torah Scrolls from flooded buildings as the Crescent City suffers one of the worst disasters in American history.
2005: The issue of Sports Illustrated Magazine of this date contained an article entitled “Stars Of David” about the two Arab Israelis named Abbas Suan and Walid Badir. They are stars on Israel’s World Cup soccer team. They each scored a critical goal in two games that have left Israel undefeated in seven qualifying games and on the verge of reaching its first World Cup in 36 years.
2005: In Little Rock, AR, Rabbi Pinchas Ciment and his wife Estie Ciment announce the arrival of their new son.
2006: In San Francisco a SUV struck two people in front of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on California Street, a few blocks from where the hit and run rampage ended. Blood covered the sidewalk in front of the center’s gift store entrance, and 50 feet farther down the sidewalk lay a mangled bicycle. Security cameras in front of the center captured images of the incident, which happened at 1:12 p.m., according to Aaron Rosenthal, spokesman for the community center
2007: In Eilat, second night of the Red Sea Jazz Festival.
2007:In response to the Larry Craig scandal Al Goldstein declared in his blog that he was bisexual, and said he'll be "the first presidential candidate to admit to sucking cock and the first to turn fully gay mid-campaign."
2007: Boaz Mauda won Kochav Nolad 2007 with 50% of the votes.
2008: “Lifetimes To Go in Old Mexico” published today provides a of “My Mexican Shiva” based on "Morirse está en hebreo," a short story by Ilan Stavans “about Jewish life in Mexico at the time of the 2000 presidential election.”
http://www.nysun.com/arts/lifetimes-to-go-in-old-mexico-my-mexican-shivah/84860/
2008: The Red Sea Jazz Festival comes to an end.
2008: TheAvishai Cohen Trio performs at the Blue Note in New York City.“Acclaimed bassist Avishai Cohen, whose most recent recording, “Gently Disturbed,” continues to earn rave reviews, visits NYC for three days of performances where he is joined by the same trio – Shai Maestro on piano and Mark Guiliana on drums – who perform with him on Gently Disturbed, which Jazz Timesrecently lauded as “scintillating”, Downbeatpraised as “simultaneously delicate and fierce,” and which the Washington City Paper called “unpredictable” and “deeply compelling.”
2009: Ceremonies commemorating the 65th Anniversary of the Liquidation of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto by German authorities comes to an end.
2009:Palestinian militants fired a Qassam rocket into the western Negev early Saturday. The rocket fired by Palestinian militants hit an open area in the Sdot Negev regional council. The Qassam, fired at around 6 A.M., was one of several military incidents along Israel's boarder with Gaza, coming after months of relative calm.
2009:In the evening, The Cedar Rapids Jewish community gathers for the first Shiva minyan honoring Peggy McHugh beloved mother of Sabrina Thalblum and the mother-in-law of Rabbi Todd Thalblum.
2010:Annual dinner to support Magan David Adom in Israel is scheduled to take place at Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, Michigan
2010: The Stern Senior Art Show is scheduled to come to an end at Yeshiva University Museum.
2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Freedomby Jonathan Franzen
2010: With Mideast peace talks due to restart in Washington this week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak met with Jordan' King Abdallah today to offer assurances that Israel is committed to a lasting peace with the Palestinians. "Peace is a strategic objective for Israel," Barak told the king. "We expect the Palestinians to come to the peace talks with openness."
2010: It was reported from Jerusalem today that “recent discoveries of large natural gas reserves off Israel's coast have set in motion a battle between investors and the government over how to divide up the profits.
2011: “Ushpizin” is scheduled to be the movie shown at Movies Under the Stars at the Chabad Community Campus in Fairfax, VA.
2011:Seven people were injured in south Tel Aviv early this morning, when a terrorist from the West Bank carjacked a taxi and rammed it into a police road block protecting a Tel Aviv nightclub, before going on a stabbing spree.
2011:Top Israeli singer and TV personality Margalit "Margol" Tzan'ani and convicted criminal Michael Hazan were indicted this morning on charges of extortion, and conspiracy to commit a crime.
2012: “Advanced Kashrut Seminar for Women” is scheduled to take place at the OU Headquarters in New York City.
2012: In “Boys Own Adventures in Wartime and Sterling Public Service” published today John Farquharson described the exemplary life of Sir Richard Kingsland who had been born Julius Cohen, but changed his name “to avoid anti-Semitism.”
2012: A 25 person Israeli team is set to compete at the Paralympic Games which are scheduled to open today in London (As reported by Aaron Kalman)
2012: One hundred fifteenth anniversary of the opening of the First Zionist Congress in Basle.
2012:A New York City hardware store clerk who pleaded guilty to kidnapping, killing and dismembering a lost little boy was sentenced today to 40 years to life in prison
http://www.timesofisrael.com/leiby-kletzys-killer-sentenced-to-minimum-of-40-years/
2012:The office of Rabbi Yitshak Ehrenberg, who has been serving the Berlin Jewish community since 1997, confirmed today in an email that criminal charges had been filed against him. Ehrenberg has received a letter from the prosecutor’s office because of comments he made on a nationwide broadcast television show, an aide confirmed. At this point it is not known who filed the complaint and what exactly the letter states.
2012: In “Peeking through the high-rises: famed Jerusalem street's old architectural glories” published today Moshe Gilad provides cultural history of the Jewish state disguised as a tour of Jerusalem's Hanevi'im (Prophets) Street
2013: The Sydney Jewish Writers’ Festival presents “In Conversation with Laurent Binet” whose award winning first novel HHhh “recounts the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.”
2013: Denis Kozhutkin is scheduled to play Hindemith’s Piano Sonata no.3 in B flat major at The Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival.
2013: Nicholas and Jacobina, the children of Judith (Perlman) Martin “began sharing the credit for the Miss Manners columns today.
2013: Félix Lajkó and his band are scheduled to perform at the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest.
2013: "Praying for peace is not enough when God’s children are being gassed,” a leading British rabbi, Dr Jonathan Romain, said in an expression of support for military intervention in Syria, British media reported today.”
2013: “Thousands of Israelis lined up outside gas mask distribution centers today, despite efforts by authorities to calm fears of being on the receiving end of a threatened Syrian retaliation should the US take military action against the Assad regime.” (As reported by Rettig Gurg and Stuart Winer)
2014: Valerie Sassyfras is scheduled to perform “a vocal set of original songs” at the Banks Street Bar in New Orleans.
2014: The Tel Aviv International Synagogue is scheduled to host a Carelbach Kabbalat Shabbat Service followed by a Champagne Kiddush.
2014: At Friday night services in Cedar Rapids, IA, Temple Judah celebrates the 10thanniversary of Kathe Goldstein’s serving as Cantorial Soloist.
2014: Twenty-three year olf Aaron Sofer, a US yeishiva student from Lakewood, NH whose body had been found in Ein Kerem, “was laid to rest in Beit Shemesh.” (As reported by Marissa Newman and Advi Sterman)
2014( 3rd of Elul, 5774); Twenty-two year old Sgt. Natanel Maman died this morning at the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva as a result of shrapnel wounds suffered last week when a rocket exploded next to Gan Yavneh in the Ashdod region. (“In life he was loved and admired; he was swifter than eagles and stronger than lions.”)
2015: As the Israel Museum celebrates its 50thanniversary “6 Artists / 6 Projects” an exhibition featuring contemporary Israeli artists is scheduled to come to a close today.
2015: This year’s Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival which has featured the work of Israeli choreographers: Hofesh Shechter, Saar Harari, Roy Assaf,Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar is scheduled to have its finale tonight.
2016(25th of Av, 5776): Eighty-three year old comedic actor Gene Wilder passed away today. (As reported by Daniel Lewis)
2016: Only months after having signed him a one year contract, the Detroit Lions released thirty year old Offensive Guard Geoff Schwartz today.
2016: “The Kind Words,” a comedy about three Jewish Israeli siblings at The Hampton Synagogue Film Series which is now in its 14thyear.
2016: Classes are scheduled to begin at Missouri State University the academic home of Marc Cooper, a professor emeritus of history who was stabbed to death last week. (As reported by Ari Feldman)
2016: “A free public reception is scheduled to take place at 402 College Street, the home of Makom, a space dedicated to ‘creative downtown Judaism’ which is also the location for Mandel’s Dreamery, an art installation at the Fenster Gallery in Toronto.
2016: In Chicago, the Institute of Cervantes is schedule to host a screening of “Heaven in Auschwitz,” “a documentary film that tells the incredible story of 13 Jewish children during World War II, whose lives were changed forever by the legendary Fredy Hirsch, a German-Jew who worked to provide arts, culture and sports to improve the lives of children in the Terezin Ghetto.”
2017: In Israel, the Foreign Ministry is scheduled to host the third and final of its two-hour tours of its Jerusalem offices complete with short lectures designed to provide families with a sense of “what it is like to be a diplomat.”
2017: The Rothbard Trio featuring Wayne Escoffery is scheduled to appear at the Red Sea Jazz Festival today.
2017: “The Invisible Museum: History and Memory of Morocco” is scheduled to open today.
2017: “Sketching "Fiddler": Set Designs by Mentor Huebner” is scheduled to open today.
2017: “The Power of Attention: Magic & Meditation in Hebrew "shiviti" Manuscript Art” is scheduled to re-open today.
2018: “Operation Finale,” a cinema depiction of the capture of Adolf Eichmann is scheduled to open today in the United States.
2018: In Jerusalem, Hashaa Theatre is scheduled to host a performance of “The Dolphin,” “musical fantasy for children.”
2018: “Map Story – an experiential activity for children who like stories and for those willing to set out on adventures and discoveries between the words” is scheduled to come to an end today at the National Library of Israel.
2018: At part of the “Home: Lens on Israel” series, the Temple Emanuel Streicker Center is scheduled to open the photographic exhibition “The Storied Druze Village of Yanuh-Jat.”
2018: In Sandy Springs, GA, Israeli pianist Asrtith Baltsan is scheduled to perform at the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center.
2019: “Author and theologist Robert Schoen” is scheduled to discuss his book On God’s Radar at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, CA.
2019(28th of Av): Yarhrzeit for Larry Rosenstein, of blessed memory, husband of Judy Levin Rosenstein, of blessed memory. Gone too soon but always remembered!
2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final two screening of “Skin,” “Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv’s first English language feature” film.
2019: The Website Holocaust. CZ, which is an amazing resource is up and running again.
2020: Princess Lockerooo, a woman of Jewish and Dominican ancestry who grew up on Rogers and Hammerstein, “is a whirling force with a singular focus: spreading the gospel of waacking.”
2021: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “Fruits and Spiced Round Challah for Rosh Hashana with chef and scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer’s.
2021: Tickets are scheduled are on sale today for the Alliance for Jewish Theatre’s Virtual Conference which will take place in October.
2021: German Chancellor Angela Merkel will not be meeting with Prime Minister Bennett or participating in today’s cabinet meeting because she has postponed her trip to Israel because the situation in Afghanistan.
2021: The Breman Museum is scheduled to host guided tours of the exhibition “Absence of Humanity.”
2021: The Museum at Eldridge Street is scheduled to host a All-of-a-Kind Family Walking Tour which “follows in the footsteps of Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie, the beloved sisters depicted in Sydney Taylor’s children’s classic All-of-a-Kind Family”
2021: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Today A Woman Went Mad In the Supermarket, stories by Hilma Wolitzer