February 6
337: Julius I began his papacy during which “he officially declared that the birth of Jesus would be celebrated on the 25th of December.”
1095: Henry IV of Germany who issued a charter to the Jews and a decree against forced baptism. He desired to protect the Jews even during the Crusades and granted favorable conditions wherever possible. He also permitted forcibly baptized Jews to return to Judaism. He did this partly because he viewed the Jews as valuable property. The Church criticized his actions.
1190: In England, the Jews of Norwich were massacred by a mob following a similar attack in Lynn.
1279: Dinis I who resisted pressure from the clergy to apply the anti-Semitic restrictions of the Fourth Council of the Lateran and “maintained a conciliatory position” regarding his Jewish subjects began his reign as King of Portugal today. During the reign of King Dinis, Alfonso’s father, the clergy invoked the restrictions of the Fourth Lateran Council in an attempt to get the monarch to restrict the role of Jews in Portuguese society. The clergy, however, invoking the restrictions of the Fourth Council of the Lateran, brought considerable pressure to bear against the Jews during the reign of King Dinis I of Portugal, but the monarch maintained a conciliatory position. Alfonso remained faithful to his father’s policies
1283: In England, a Justice of the Jews named Hamo Hauteyn, set up a commission to investigate charges against Jews accused of selling plate made of clippings or silvered tinplate to foreign merchants.
1298: King Jaime II had a Jewish man's property confiscated. Moses Avencurel of Elche was punished for taking part in an anti-royalist rebellion.
1413: The first sitting of a “disputation” in which the Jews must listen to the Treatise of Geronimo De Santa, a convert to Christianity, contend that the Talmud recognized Jesus as the Messiah. This disputation was ordered by Pope Benedict XIII and would last until November of 1414 with a total of 68 sittings.
1481: Several affluent men of the community in Seville, led by Diego de Susan, plotted to strike back at the Inquisitors. He stated to his co-religionists: "Are we not the principal men of this city in standing, and the best esteemed of the people? Let us assemble troops; and if they come to take us, let us start an uprising with the troops and the people; and so we will kill them and avenge ourselves on our enemies!"
1508: Maximilian I was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In the first decade of his reign, Maximilian would put an end to the attempts by some German nobles to banish the Jews from their realms. Maximilian did this, not so much because he loved Jews, but because he saw these attempts at banishment as an encroachment on his imperial authority. Wherever they lived in the empire, the Jews were the subjects of the emperor and not of any local lord. Therefore, only he could banish Jews. Maximilian feared that if he gave way on his control over the Jews, who knew what power the nobles might try and take from him next.
1521: Suleiman the Magnificent, whose reign was one of the highpoints for Jews living in the domains of the Ottomans, led his army west with the intention of conquering Hungary.
1640(13th of Shevat): Rabbi Israel Samuel Kalihari, author Yismah Yistrael passed away
1647(1st of Adar): Rabbi Azariah Figo (Picho) author of Giddulei ha-Terumah passed away
1649: King Charles II of England and Scotland was declared King of Great Britain by the Parliament of Scotland. While on the throne, Charles showed his support for the Jews. In 1660, when Thomas Violet introduced a petition to have the Jews expelled again from Great Britain, a “Royal message” was sent “Parliament them to take the protection of the Jews into consideration.” Violet’s petition was rejected.(The Great Trappaner of England': Thomas Violet, Jews and crypto-Jews during the English Revolution and at the Restorationby Ariel Hessayon)
1664: Birthdate of Sultan Mustafa II. During his reign Ottoman forces conquered Belgrade again in 1690 and Jews were allowed to return to the city.
1685: James II of England and VII of Scotland becomes King upon the death of his brother Charles II. For once, a change in monarchs turned out to be a “win-win” situation for the Jewish people. While still in the Netherlands, prior to regaining the throne, the Anglican “Charles had assured Amsterdam Jews that their coreligionists had no reason to fear his reemergence in England.” How much of this was promise was due to personal beliefs and how much was the product of the substantial financial support the soon to be crowned monarch received from Dutch Jews is immaterial. The fact is, he kept his word. A group of London merchants who wanted to limit their competition petitioned the king to keep the Jews out of the country to protect the religion and welfare of his subjects. “The targeted Jews” sought the King’s protection which he granted. In 1673, 13 years after Charles II’s coronation, “a grand jury…responded to anti-Semitic rabble rousing by indicting Jewish communal leaders for worshipping in public. When Jews threatened to leave England rather than endure loss of religious freedom, Charles had an order in council issued to halt the legal proceedings. And to make sure it did not happen again, King Charles gave orders “not to cause any more anxieties to Jews.” During the first year of his reign King James II put an end to the custom of requiring the Jews to pay “the mandatory tax imposed on those who failed to attend the established church.” The King declared that he did not want the Jews to be troubled about this ever again and only wanted them be able to “quietly enjoy the free exercise of their religion.” What makes this all the more remarkable is that it took place against a backdrop of religious wars fought between English Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants. While the Jews became victims of the religious wars on the Continent, in England they were able to survive and thrive. This may account for the affection which Jews came to hold England and its later iteration as Great Britain.
1685: With death of Charles II Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese born wife King Charles II of England who brought Portuguese native Fernando Mendes to serve as her personal physician which made it possible for him to begin living openly as a Jew, ended her “reign” as Queen-consort.
1693: Royal charter granted College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg VA. Currently the most famous alumnus of this storied academic institution is Jon Stewart, award winning host of “The Daly Show” and featured speaker at the William and Mary’s commencement ceremonies in 2004.
1756: Birthdate of Aaron Burr, Jr. one of America’s less distinguished “founding fathers.” Burr’s greatest claim to fame is his participation in a duel with Alexander Hamilton, whose mother was Jewish. Burr also played a role in the career of Sampson who was one of the founders “Jews Hospital” which became Mt. Sinai. Born at Danbury, CN, he studied under Burr who was a New York lawyer before he went to become one of New York City’s first Jewish lawyers.
1756: In response to King George II”s order that today be observed as a period fasting and penitence Isaac Nieto, the Cha-Cham of Sha'ar ha-Shamayim, the Spanish and Portuguese congregation also known as Bevis Marks Synagogue preached a “Sermon Moral” that was “published in Spanish and English in London, 1756.” The English monarch proclamation was probably issued in connection with the Seven Year’s War. The positive response of the kingdom’s Jewish community was an indication of how quickly it had become a part of the UK’s social and political environment.
1765(15thof Shevat, 5525): Tu B’Shevat observed as Parliament debates what will become the Stamp Act, one of the stones on the path to the American Revolution.
1767: In Berlin, Deiche Aaron and bank broker Anschell Jaffe gave birth to Saul ben Anschel Jaffe, “a prolific writer whose work can be divided into three different areas: author, translator, editor/publisher.”
1776: Solomon Isaac, a Jew living in Philadelphia, enlisted as private in the Sixth Pennsylvania Battalion, part of the Rebel forces fighting the British.
1778: In Paris the United States and France signed treaties of alliance that, among other thing, provided French aid for the fledgling republic. This helped to guarantee the success of the American Revolution which helped to create the site for the most prominent Jewish community in the diaspora. The aid would also helped bring financial ruin to France. This financial ruin was a catalyst for the French Revolution which had a major impact of Jews throughout Europe
1781(11thof Shevat, 5541): Two and half year old Rachel Sheftall, the Savanah, GA born daughter of Sarah De La Motta and Levi Sheftall, all part of the famous Sheftall clan, passed away today in Charleston, SC during the American Revoltuion.
1785: In London, Abraham Benjamin Cohen, the Dutch born son of Benjamin Jonas Cohen and Eva Jacob Cohen and his wife Elisabeth Gompertz gave birth to James Abraham Cohen-Stuart
1788: Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution. Solomon Franco a Sephardic Jew was reportedly the first Jew to come to Massachusetts. He settled in Boston in 1649. Judah Monis, a descendant of conversos is the next person of Jewish lineage connected with Bay State to appear on the scene. He filled the chair of Hebrew in Harvard College from 1722 until his death in 1764. When and why Monis became identified as a Christian is a bit cloudy. Could he be the first example of a Jew who swam through the baptismal font to secure a position in American academia? The first significant Jewish settlers made their homes in “Massachusetts when the Revolutionary War drove the Jews from Newport. In 1777 Aaron Lopez and Jacob Rivera, with fifty-nine others, went from Newport to Leicester, and established themselves there; but this settlement did not survive the close of the war. A number of Jews, including the Hays family, settled at Boston before 1800. Of these Moses Michael Hays was the most important. In 1830 a number of Algerian Jews went to Boston, but they soon disappeared. The history of the present community begins with the year 1840, when the first congregation was established.”
1788: Two days after he died erev Shabbat, Avrahom ben Baruch was buried in the Plymouth Hoe Burial Ground.
1797: In Mt. Pleasant, NY, Jochabed Isaaks and Michael Marks who were married in 1786 gave birth to Levy Marks.
1799(1st of Adar I, 5559): Rosh Chodesh Adar I
1801: Birthdate of Salomon Herxheimer, of Dotzheim in Wiesbaden who became the Chief Rabbi of Anhalf-Bernburg.
1804: Seventy-year-old Joseph Priestly the English theologian and chemist who in 1786 published his Letters to the Jews in which he urged them to convert which led David Levi to respond with his three-volume Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Old Testamentpassed away today.
1808: In Amsterdam, Sara Magnus (Nachman) Hannover-Jochem-Mozes and Mozes Koopman Jacob-Hamburger gave birth to their fifth child, Zise Mozes Hamburger.
1818: One of two birthdates for Germain Sée the French physician from Ribeauvillé
1820: In Greenwich, Kent, Elizabeth Davis and Myer Marks gave birth to Israel Marks the husband of Rebecca Myers with whom he had 13 children.
1822(15thof Shevat, 5582): Tu B’Shevat
1831: In Covent Garden, Eleanor Levy and Simon Marcus gave birth to John Marcus.
1835: In Germany, Babette True and Isaac Jacob Bamberger who were married in 1832 gave birth to Ansel Bamberger who settled in Baltimore, MD where he married Hannah Eilau with whom he had six children including Florence Eilau Bamberger, the holder of a Ph.D. from Columbia Teachers College “who served as director of Johns Hopkins College for Teachers.
1838: Birthdate of Sir Henry Irving, the English actor who gained fame for his portrayal of Mathias in “The Bells,” a version of Erckmann-Chatrian's Le Juif polonais by Leopold Lewis, a property which Irving had found for himself.
1838: Birthdate of Yisrael Meir Kagan also known as the Chofetz Chaim who passed away in September of 1933.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/chofetz.html
1839: Birthdate of Ferdinand Forzinetti, one of the first French officers to come to the conclusion that Captain Dreyfus was innocent.
1839:Moshe Yehoshua Yehuda Leib Jusha Diskin and Sara Sonia Diskin gave birth to Yitzhak Yeruham Diskin.
1839: In Charleston, SC, A.J. Moses of Cheraw, SC wed Octavia Harby, “the daughter of the late Isaac Harby.”
1839: In Charleston, SC, Lewis Hertz married Esther Peixotto, the “eldest daughter of the late Solomon C. Peixotto.”
1840: Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the document making New Zealand a British colony. By this time, there were at least 30 Jews living in the area. David Nathan is credited with founding the first Jewish community at Aukland, in the same year that New Zealand became a colony.
1840: In Hanover, German banker Adolph Meyer and his wife gave birth to banker Sigmund Meyer the grandson of banker Simon Meyer.
1841(15thof Shevat, 5601): Parashat Beshalach; Tu B’Shevat on the same day that readers find out that readers of Dicken’s The Old Curiosity Shop found out that “little Nell is dead.”
http://victoriancalendar.blogspot.com/2011/01/february-6-1841-death-of-little-nell.html
1845: In Ottenberg, Germany, Lazarus Strauss and his second wife Sara gave birth to Isidor Strauss, the first of their five children who would become co-owner of Macy’s and die when the Titanic sank.
1849: In Worms, Germany, wedding of Abraham and Clara Kuhn.
1849: In Worms, Wilhelmine "Mindel" Freudenberg and Nathan Blun gave birth to Rosalie Ida Blun who gained fame as Ida Straus, the wife of Isidor Straus, the co-owner of Macy’s.
1853: In Madison, Indiana, Aaron Marks and Sarah August gave birth to Martin A. Marks, the husband of Belle Hays who moved to Cleveland in 1887 and whose activities included be a “member of the firm of A. Marks and Son founded by his father in 1847” as well as a series of communal activities including serving as “treasurer of the Covenant Endowment Fund of District Grand Lodge, No. 2, Independent Order of B’nai B’rith and President of Tefereth Israel.”
1855:Lord Palmerston, who as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had defended David Pacifco as this “man of Jewish persuasion” and on whose behalf he “made a celebrated speech which concluded that all British subjects ought to be able to say, as did citizens of ancient Rome, "Civis Romanus sum" ("I am a citizen of Rome"), and thereby receive protection from the British government” began his first term as Prime Minister.
1855: It was reported today that "two German Jews" were arrested and charged with "stealing two pieces of black silk with a value of $131.00 from the Importing House of Henry E. Leyrain in New York City. According to the charge, one of the men would appear to be pricing an item while the other would be hiding an item in his coat. After appearing before a judge at the Tombs, the two were bound over for trial. [How the Times discovered their religion is one question. Why the two are identified by their religion is another question since such practice was not common with those belong to other religious groups.]
1856(30thof Shevat, 5616): Rosh Chodesh Adar I
1856(30thof Shevat, 5616): Sixty-four-year-old Elias Levy, the son of Lyon Levy and husband of Rachel Moise passed away today in Charleston, SC.
1857: Two days after he had passed away, 29-year-old Israel Bennett, the son of Solomon Bennett and Angel Elizabeth was buried today in the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”
1859: In Osyka Pike, MS, Mina and Louis Hart gave birth to Lena Catosk Hart who became Lena Catosk Pearlstone when she married Barney Pearlstone with whom she had six children.
1868: In Philadelphia, “Joseph S. Berg and Louisa M. Berg” gave birth William Joseph Berg the stockbroker who married Rita Berg in 1893 and was the half-brother of weapons manufacture Hart O. Berg.
1869: La Périchole, “an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach” was performed in Stockholm for the first time today
1870: Three days after she had passed away, 77-year-old Miriam “Polly” Isaacs nee Solomons the wife of Isaac Isaacs was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1870: In Mir, “in the Minsk Governate,” “Rabbi Baruch Peretz and Miriam Reisel Meltzer gave birth to Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, “known as the Even HaEzel” which is “the title of his commentary on the Rambam’s Mishne Torah.”
1870: In Brixton, a suburb of London, James Yalden and his wife gave birth to James Ernest Grant Yalden who became head “of a special new school to prepare Jewish immigrants for jobs” in American which was the brainchild, and supported by, the trustee of the Baron de Hirsch fund in America.”
1871(15thof Shevat, 5631): Tu B’Shevat
1871: Birthdate of Yonah ben Amitai the native of Minsk who came to the United States in 1888 where he gained fame as John Paley, the author and editor of a Yiddish daily paper.
1872:Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, the U.S. Counsel at Bucharest wrote to the Secretary of State that reports describing the attacks the Jews had suffered in several towns in Bessarabia and Romania as a result of which hundreds of Jews had fled across the Danube to seek refuge in Turkey.
1872: In New York, Morris and Rachel Victorius gave birth to Abraham Victor Victorious, the husband of Rose Victorius and the father of Jeannette and Paul Victorious.
1872: Birthdate of German-born author Theodor Lessing. After the Nazis came to power, Lessing fled to Czechoslovakia where he was murdered in broad day light by Nazi supporters.
1873: The Hebrew Charity Ball took place this evening at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, PA.
1874: In Paris, Henry Bachrach who worked in Washington, D.C., Wheeling, W.Va. and Chicago before opening Kaufman and Bachrach, a highly successful clothing store in Decatur, Illinois where he and his wife, the former Matilda Hamburger gave birth to Albert Bachrach
1874(19thof Shevat, 5634): Fifty-five-year-old Mayer Amschel de Rothschild the fourth and youngest son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild who was named for his grandfather, the patriarch of the Rothschild family and whose only daughter Hannah became the Countess of Rosebery, the wife of the Earl of Rosebery, the Prime Minister in the 1890’s and one of the wealthiest women in Europe, passed away today.
1875(1stof Adar I, 5635): Parashat Misphatim; Rosh Chodesh Adar I observed on the birthdate of Leonid Nikolaevich Gobyato, the Russian general credited with developing the first modern portable mortar.
1876: It was reported today that Rabbi Brown addressed the Indianapolis (Indiana) Young Men’s Christian Association on the subject of the “Harmony of all creeds on the Principle of Love.”
1876: It was reported today that the Purim Association will host a ball at Delmonico’s on March 7. The association expects a larger crowd than in the past due to its recent decision to increase its membership.
1876: According to reports published today, the Jews of New York are planning on issuing a call for a national meeting to discuss plans for creating a college designed to teach the Hebrew language and literature and to establish a system of Jewish education.
1876: In New York City, Michael and Amelia (Franklin) Spellman gave birth to NY Law School graduate Benjamin Franklin Spellman, the husband of Rae Grace Freedman and member of Temple Emanu El who was a member of the Democratic Party who was part of the opposition to the “Food and Fuel Contract Act” also known as the Lever Act because it was sponsored by Congressman Asbury Lever.
1877: In Baltimore, MD, Henrietta and Kaufman Katz gave birth to A. Ray Katz, the husband of Ethel Epstein with whom he had three children who was a member of Oheb Shalom Congregation, vice president of the American General Corporation “and the first president of the Associated Jewish Charities.”
1879: It was reported on Zebulon Baird Vance’s last day as Governor of North Carolina that he has pardoned the only Jewish person imprisoned in the state’s penitentiary. This unnamed Jew had been sentenced to serve 10 years for manslaughter. Of the pardon, Vance wrote that he took pleasure in issuing the pardon as recognitions of the good and law-abiding character of the state’s Jewish citizens. According to Vance, this episode was “the first serious case ever brought to my notice on the part of any of that people.”
1880: It was reported today that Isaac Adolphe Cremieux, the Jewish-French, political leader is seriously ill. He currently is serving as a “life Senator.”
1881: In Edinburg, Scotland, Professor Robertson Smith delivered a lecture on the “Spirit of Hebrew Poetry.” He believes that the “Canticles’ (another name for the Song of Songs” is simply a love poem and that the Book of Job was written after the Exile and should not be viewed as historical literature.
1882(17thof Shevat, 5642): Dorothy “Dora” Brobeck Kahn, the wife of Adam Kahn with whom she had had nine children passed away today.
1883(29thof Shevat, 5643): Seventy-four-year-old Raphael Jonathan Bischoffsheim passed away. Born at Mayence in 1808, he gained fame as a Belgian financier and philanthropist (As reported by Singer, Bloch and Weill)
1883: In Cape Town, Isaac and Esther Abrahams gave birth to Sir Adolphe Abrahams, the British doctor who “was the medical officer in charge of the British Olympic teams from 1912 until 1948.”
1886: Birthdate of Buffalo, NY native Michael Martin Cohn, the Columbia undergraduate and University of Buffalo trained attorney,
1887: Birthdate of Ernest Henry Gruening, the Senator from Alaska who joined in Wayne Morse in being the only two to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
1888 (24th of Shevat, 5648):Rebbetzin Menuchah Rachel Slonim, daughter of Rabbi DovBer of Lubavitch and granddaughter of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, passed away. She was born on Kislev 19, 5559 (1798 on the secular calendar) -- the very day on which her illustrious grandfather was freed from his imprisonment in the Peter-Paul Fortress in Petersburg; she was thus named "Menuchah", meaning "tranquility" (Rachel was the name of a daughter of Rabbi Schneur Zalman who died in her youth). The Rebbetzin's lifelong desire to live in the Holy Land was realized in 1845, when she and her husband, Rabbi Yaakov Culi Slonim, who passed away in 1857, led a contingent of Chassidim who settled in Hebron. Famed for her wisdom, piety and erudition, she served as the matriarch of the Chassidic community in Hebron until her passing in her 90th year in 1888.
1889: In Prudnik, Poland Max and Hedwig Pinkus gave birth to Alice Babette Cäcilie Herzfeld
1890: The Hofburgtheater produces Herzl's comedy "Die Dame in Schwarz" - "The Lady in Black". The play is condemned as hokum by the critics.
1890: In Chemulpo, Korea, Sarah Herzberg gave birth to Amalie Herzberg who passed away eight months and twenty-two days later.
1890: Twenty-four-year-old Rebecca Rosenberg, the daughter of “Abraham and Sara van Weenen” and wife of Charles Rosenberg was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery.
1891: In Vienna, Johanna and Herman Joseph Popper gave birth to William Popper, the husband of Annie Popper
http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0027/ms0027.html
1891: Herzl's best friend, Heinrich Kana, commits suicide in Berlin. After Herzl receives the message, he sets out for a three-week journey to Italy and South France.
1893: Following today’s scheduled performance of “Lady Windermere’s Fan” produced by Charles Frohman at Palmer’s Theatre, the cast of the production will sent on the road “under Frohman’s personal management.
1893: It was reported today that of 1,100 inmates at the workhouse on Blackwell’s Island, 5 of them are Jews. Of the 800 prisoners in the Kings County Penitentiary, 7 are Jews. In the whole state of New York, which has the largest Jewish population of any state in the United States, fewer than 350 of those in prison are Jews.
1893: It was reported today that “with a view to promoting the organization of a society to be called the Jewish Aid Association for the Relief of the Unfortunate, the Jewish Ministers’ Association has published a sketch of the work of its prison chaplain Rabbi Adolph M. Radin.”
1893: Samuel J. Cohn, who had been a successful lace merchant, was still being held today on charges that he had collected over $500 by posing as an agent of the United Hebrew Charities.
1893: It was reported today that the Central Labor Federation has “received a letter from the International Typographical Union asking why the Federation had protested against the issuance of a charter to the Hebrew Typographical Union.”
1893: “Central Labor Union” published today described allegations by that body that the United Hebrew Charities has used money from the Baron Hirsch Fund “to import thousands of poor and persecuted Hebrews, who in turn underbid American workmen in the labor.” (For those not acquainted with the immigration and labor battles of the 19th and 20th centuries, this is the double whammy – “The Jews” are using their money to take jobs from American workers and give them to foreigners.)
1894: Among those charities that benefited from today’s distribution of the theatrical and concert license moneys were: Montefiore Home, $500; Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews, $350; Beth Israel Hospital.
1894: Sixty-four-year-old Prussian born Austrian surgeon Theodor Billroth who in 1876 triggered a “storm at Austrian universities with his “criticism of what he considered the disproportionately large share of Jewish medical students from Hungary and Galicia” and his strongly stated belief that Jews could never be real Germans passed away today.
1897(4thof Adar, 5657): Fifty-eight-year-old Morris Goodhart, a prominent New York lawyer, passed away today. Born in Amsterdam in 1838, he came to the United States in 1846 and graduated from Yale Law School in 1867. In 1869, he married the daughter of Philip J. Joachimsen, a prominent jurists and leader of the New York Jewish community.
1897: Birthdate of Berlin native and Berlin Technical Institute graduate Willi Menachem Cohn who in 1931 came to the U.S. where he served on the faculty of University of California, Berkley,
1897: A significant number of Jewish men and women attended a meeting at the New York Presbyterian-Hebrew Church Mission on Forsyth Street where they expected to proposals about how to deal with the poor living on the East Side. Many of the Jewish attendees were unemployed tailors who were suffering due to the economic downturn.
1898: Two days after she had passed away, 37-year-old Rachel Levy and husband of Solomon Levy was buried today at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.
1898: Birthdate of Russian native Beryl David Cohon who in 1906 came to the United States where he was ordained as a Rabbi at Hebrew Union College and wrote several books on Judaism including Come Let Us Reason Together and Judaism In Theory and Practice.
https://www.amazon.com/Beryl-David-Cohon/e/B001KHWK2S%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
1899: The Hebrew Fair, which will feature a speech by author Israel Zangwill, is scheduled tonight at the Tuxedo in New York City.
1899: The U.S. Senate ratified the peace treaty ending the Spanish-American War. There were fifteen Jewish crewmen aboard the battleship Maine when she blew up in 1898 in Havana harbor. This was the “cause” of the war. Approximately 5,000 Jews served in the war. In 1898 there were reportedly four thousand requests for furloughs at the time of the High Holidays. The first trooper in the famed Rough Riders was Jewish.
1900(7thof Adar I, 5660): Elijah Benamozegh, who “served for half a century as rabbi of the important Jewish community of Livorno, where the Piazza Benamozegh now commemorates his name and distinction and whose major work is Israel and Humanity passed away today.
http://www.jcrelations.net/Benamozegh%2C+Elijah.+Israel+and+Humanity.2552.0.html?L=3
1901: Herzl travels to London and tries to win Rothschild for his plan. Despite the efforts of British Zionists, Rothschild refuses to receive him.
1902: In London, Bella Nizer and Joseph Nizer, who would start a dry-cleaning business in Brooklyn gave birth Columbia Law School graduate Louis Nizer one of the leading trial lawyers of the 20th century.
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/11/obituaries/louis-nizer-lawyer-to-the-famous-dies-at-92.html
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/387079/LOUIS-NIZER-ATTORNEY-DIES-AT-92.html
1902 Le Roy Eltinge, the author of Psychology of War which contained such anti-Semitic passages as “He doesn’t know what patriotism means”, “the soldiers lot is hard physical work” which “the Jew despises and “he does not have any of the qualities of a good soldier” – remarks which forced the War Department to order him to go over the book and remove all such objectionable portions – was promoted to the rank of Captain in the 15th United States Cavalry.
1902: Young Women's Hebrew Association was organized in New York City. According to the Jewish Women’s Archive, “Bella Epstein Unterberg held a meeting in her New York City home to discuss the founding of the first Young Women's Hebrew Association. At the meeting, at which she was unanimously elected president of the new association, a decision was made to establish a sister organization to the YMHA, a community center dedicated to the uplift—both social and spiritual—of young Jewish women.”
1903: “The first Semitic Museum to be established in America and indeed in the whole world” which was “the gift of the Jacob H. Schiff…who for ten years has served as a member of the Semitic Committee at Harvard” was dedicated this afternoon at Harvard.
1904(20thof Shevat, 5664): Parshat Yitro
1904: Members of Congregation Adath Israel mourned the death of philanthropist Adolph Erlebach the Bavarian born Boston businessman whose “name was on the roles of all the Jewish charities of Boston.”
1905: It was reported today that Morris Loeb is the President of the Hebrew Technical Institute one third of whose “older graduated are positions of independent reasonability and one-half follow the professions for which” the “school has fitted them” which may account for why the school has more applicants than it “can receive.”
1906: It was reported today from Kiev that following the receipt of death threats in the mail from the Pan Russian League in Defense of the Holy Cross, “a great panic prevails among the Jewish population who are expecting a renewal of the anti-Jewish excesses.”
1906: “The restrictions on the residence of Jews in Moscow are again being applied with the greatest severity” and “many of them have been expelled.”
1906: Cyrus L. Sulzberger who had overseen “collection of the American fund for the relief of the victims of the massacres in Russia” said tonight that did not give any credence to the report from St. Petersburg that the Russian police “have obtained the lion’s share “of the money sent to the country to aid the victims of the recent uprisings.
1907: It was reported today, that “Wolf Margolies, the chief rabbi of Grodno” “was met at the pier by a delegation of Jews from the Orthodox Synagogues and take to the Montgomery Street home of his brother Hirsch Margolies.
1908: It was reported today that William Jennings Bryan who is running against William Howard Taft for President of the United States, told “a gathering of Jewish men and women” meeting at the Y.M.H.A. Building in Manhattan that “Yours is the greatest of al races in its influence on history and the thought of the ages.”
1908: Birthdate of JTS trained rabbi, Dr. Robert Gordis a “pioneer in interfaith relations and author of several works including The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job who raised three sons – Enoch, Leon and David – with his wife Fannie. (As reported by Ari L. Godman)
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gordis-robert
1909: Birthdate of Russian-born American composer Israel Citkowitz who had an impact on the careers of Aaron Copeland and Elmer Bernstein.
1910: It was reported today that “a cottage community will be established by the Hebrew, Sheltering Guardian Society on its new home site at Pleasantville, Westchester County” thanks in part to the generosity of the “the Lewisohn family and other friends of the society” who have raised over $650,000 for the building fund.
1911: Three days after he had passed away, 65 year old Kaskil Casper, the husband of Sophie Newman Casper, the Nevada City “clothing merchant” who “was granted a franchise by the City Council in December, 1891 to light the city with a Heisler incandescent system” was buried today the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park.
1912: In New York City, the former Goldie Mereminsky and Rabbi Samuel Karp gave birth to Dorothy Karp, who gained fame as Dorothy Karp Kripke, the author of children’s books and wife of Rabbi Myer S. Kripe with whom she raised three children – Netta, Madeline and Saul Kripke.
1912: Twenty-two-year-old St. Louis University trained attorney Maximilian George Baron, the Ukraine born son of Julius and Rose (Shucart) Baron who would become a member of the faculty at his alma mater serve as the Vice President of Board of Education of Associated Hebrew Schools of St. Louis married Dorothy Catlin in Vandalia, Illinois today.
1913(29thof Shevat, 5673): Seventy-seven-year-old David Fuld, a manufacturer from Albany, NY, passed away today.
1913: James Weber Linn of the University of Chicago is scheduled to speak today at the 5thregular meeting of the Isaiah Women’s Club on the subject of Literature and Daily Wife while Mrs. Oscar Lessing is scheduled to provide the music for the attendees.
1914: Birthdate of Baron Bernd Freytag von Lorinhoven, the native of the island of Saaremaa who was one of the last to escape Hitler’s Berlin bunker in 1945.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/world/europe/01loringhoven.html
1914 (10th of Shevat, 5674):Rebbetzin Rivkah Schneerson passed away. She was born in Lubavitch in 1833; her maternal grandfather was Rabbi DovBer, the 2nd Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. In 1849 she married her first cousin, Rabbi Shmuel, who later became the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe. For many years Rebbetzin Rivkah, who survived her husband by 33 years, was the esteemed matriarch of Lubavitch, and Chassidim frequented her home to listen to her accounts of the early years of Lubavitch. She is the source of many of the stories recorded in the talks, letters and memoirs of her grandson, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe). The Beth Rivkah network of girls' schools, founded by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak in the 1940's, is named after her.
1915(22ndof Shevat, 5675): Parashat Yitro
1915: The American Jewish Relief Committee of which Felix M. Warburg is Treasurer issued a statement today saying, “that it would not sanction any for raising money through chain letters.”
1916: “More than $125,000 was subscribed for the Jewish war sufferers in an hour following the appeal of Rabbis J.L. Magnes and Nathan Krass to an audience of Jews and Gentiles in the Academy of Music in Brooklyn tonight.
1916: “Many letters reaching the American Jewish Relief Committee show how wide-spread among Jews and Gentiles alike is the desire to assist Jewish relief work” including the one from Plymouth, MA, that read: “Dear Mr. Warburg, Please find enclosed $2 for the Jewish relief. The Jesus of the Christian was a Jews. I wish I could give more but, will send the little I can spare.” Signed “A Christian Woman.”
1917: Twenty-eight year old George Washington University trained educator and writer Reuben Fink, the Russian born son of Morris and Malka (Finkelstein) Fink who was the Washington correspondent for The Day and the manager of Die Zeit (The Jewish Times) married Dr. Mary Goldfarb today.
1917: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) was founded today “by Jacob Landau as the Jewish Correspondence Bureau with the mandate of collecting and disseminating news among and affecting the Jewish communities of the Diaspora.”
1917(14thof Shevat, 5677): Seventy-seven-year-old German physiologist Julius Bernstein, the son of Aron Bernstein, a founder of the Reform Congregation in Berlin and the father of mathematician Felix Bernstein.
http://www.nncn.de/en/the-network/bernsteina
1917: Edouard A. Drumont, French anti-Semitic journalist, dies at 72. His book La France Juive (Jewish France) attacked the role of Jews in France and argued for their exclusion from society. His newspaper “La Libre Parole,” played a leading role in whipping up anti-Semitic passions during the Dreyfus Affair.
1918: Austrian painter Gustav Klimt passed away. Klimt was not Jewish but many of his patrons were. Born in 1862, by 1898, Klimt had “managed to become the portraitist of the Jewish haute bourgeoisie in Vienna who, since the Jews had reached legal equality in 1867, had become a thriving force in commerce, finance, industry and art. Klimt's patrons were financiers, industrials and other members of the liberal (in the European sense) haute bourgeoisie. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (see Klimt's portrait of his wife below) was dominating the Austrian-Czech sugar industry. Karl Wittgenstein, another of his patrons, was often referred to as the "Austrian Krupp" and the creator of the steel cartel. August Lederer was the leading figure in the alcohol business in Central Europe. In the 1920s, he was considered ‘the richest man in Austria after Rothschild’". Several of the works Klimt painted for his Jewish patrons were seized by the Nazis. The recovery of these art works became a part of lengthy, difficult litigation in the post-War years.
1919: Rabbi Hyman Gerson Enelow who served “as a member of the Overseas Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board, which went to France in July, 1918” wrote today that “I am feeling fine. I feel that Providence is taking care of me as I have come out all right of every experience I have had. At the different camps I have met many friends who have done so much to help the work while the commanding officers have been very obliging.”
1919: It was reported today that Julius Kahn, a Jewish Congressman from California, has expressed his “regret that President Wilson has seen fit to come out openly in favor of the Jewish State proposed by some of the English statesmen” and his belief “that if President Wilson had consulted the views of those members of the Jewish faith who have lived in the United States for many years he would have found that an overwhelming majority of them is opposed to Zionism.”
1920: Birthdate of Congressman James Scheuer who represented New York in the House of Representatives from 1965 to 1993.
1920: In Neutitschein, North Moravia, Margarethe (Markéta), née Gelb, Mannheimer and Jakob Leib Mannheimer gave birth to author, painter and survivor of the Holocaust Max Mannheimer.
1920: Birthdate of Tidor Rudas, the native of Budapest who survived Bergen-Belsen and who “was the impresario who brought Luciano Pavarotti out of the opera house and into the arena.”
1920: In Kottbus, the “synagogue was robbed of valuables.”
1920: In Marburg, Jewish students were expelled from classes following their protest against the anti-Jewish utterances of a professor at the university.”
1921: "The Kid", starring Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan was released. (Coogan was not Jewish.)
1921: In Washington Heights, Josephine (née Condon) and Bernard Gorcey, a Russian Jewish immigrant gave birth to David Gorcey, who appeared in the East Side Kids series and was one of the Bowery Boys.
1921: Temple B’nai Israel of Borough Park is scheduled to host a concert that will raise funds for Israel-Zion Hospital which is led by its new President, Newman Dube and Executive Director Boris Fingerhood.
1921: At the New Rochelle Hospital, Rabbi and Mrs. Richard M. Stern gave birth to a daughter this morning.
1921: In Brooklyn Harry and Ida Katz gave birth to Sidney (Sid) Lewis Katz, the WW II USAAF mechanic and husband of Harriet Foreman who would eventually become a pillar of the Temple Beth El Congregation in Augusta, Maine
1922: In Worcester, MA, “Louis Chase and Bessie (Lubin) Chase gave birth to Princeton educated Marine Corps Major General and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Harold William “Hal” Chase
http://seymourbrody.com/generals/gen-adm70.htm
1922: In Muscatine, IA, Orrie and Anne Beck gave birth to Northwestern University graduate and U.S. Navy WW II veteran Harold M. Backer, the Cedar Rapids banker and pillar of the Jewish community who married Dianne Becker after his first wife Arlene had passed away.
https://www.cedarmemorial.com/Obituary/2016/May/Harold-Becker/
1922: In Chicago, Lottie and Simon Wexler, “the found founder of Allie Radio, a mail-order and retail electronic firm” gave birth to Haskell Wexler, one of the ten most influential cinematographers of the 20th century.
1922: Birthdate of Denis Norden, the London native who gained fame as writer and a “television presenter” and who “accidentally” found himself at Bergen-Belsen at the end of World War II.
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/435134/Denis-Norden-A-cruel-disease-robbed-me-of-my-sight
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33230122
1923: Birthdate Frankfurt, Germany native Heinz Grunhaus who gained fame as Harold H. Greene, the WW II U.S. Army Veteran and George Washington University Law School graduate whose distinguished career on the federal bench included presiding United States versus AT&T, the case that broke up AT&T and helped pave the way for the modern communications industry.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-01/30/102r-013000-idx.html
1923: Birthdate of NYC native and Brooklyn Polytechnic alum Boris Sherbak who worked as economic advisor.
1925: Sid Terris lost an elimination bout for the World Lightweight Championship.
1926: In Manhattan, Harold Stone, “the heir to a fortune built from a five-and-dime store chain, and the former Elza Heifetz, the sister of violinist Jascha Heifetz gave birth to Barbara Stone who gained fame as “author and journalist” Barbara Gelb.
1926: In the Bronx, Isaac Fein, a history professor and the former Chaya Wertheim, a schoolteacher gave birth to Rashi Fein, the health economist referred to as “a father of Medicare” who was the brother of Leonard J. Fein, the editor of Moment magazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/us/rashi-fein-economist-who-urged-medicare-dies-at-88.html
1927: Birthdate of Bukovinian native and survivor Transnistira Zvi Laron who came to Israel for the first time in 1948 where he eventually became world famous endocrinologist best known for his work with a form of dwarfism known as the Laron syndrome.
1927: The Atlanta Journal reproduced the receipt of Major Rafael Jacob Moses (CSA) from 1865 for $40,000 of bullion which he was supposed to get to the remnants of the Confederate Army to pay for food and munitions.
1928: Today “King Victor Immanuel granted an audience” that lasted for an hour “to prominent leaders of the Italian Jewish community” during which he “expressed sympathy with the Zionist movement and asked for details about the colonization work in Palestine.”
1928: In Hungary, “the Jewish cemetery…near Husi was desecrated” tonight by unknown vandals” who “completely destroyed” the cemetery.
1929: It was made known to the United Jewish Campaign today, that “David A. Brown, the national chairman of the United Jewish Campaign has sent letters to 100,000 persons in the United States and Canada asking them if the relief work on behalf of Jews in Europe and Palestine” which has raised eighty million dollars in the past fifteen years “shall be continued or come to an end on December 31, 1929.
1930(8thof Shevat, 5690): Basheva “Sheva” Pearlman Lazarus, “the widow of Jacob Lazarus” passed away today In Valdosta, GA after which she was buried at the B’nai Israel Hebrew Cemetery in Thomasville, GA.
1931(19thof Shevat, 5691): Hyman Lazarus Bernstein passed a way today in Brooklyn after which he was buried at Montefiore Cemetery in Springfield Gardens, Queens.
1931: “It was said” today that “the condition of actor Louis Mann has shown considerable improvement since his admission to Mt. Sinai Hospital some weeks ago” when he was “suffering an intestinal complaint.”
1932(29thof Shevat, 5692): Parashat Mishpatim
1932: In Berlin, the “leaders of the Jewish community visited the Minister of the Interior today to protest against the National Socialist or Nazi agitation against Jews, which they said was causing considerable uneasiness.”
1933: The NBC Blue Network broadcast an episode of “Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel,” “a situation comedy radio show starring two of the Marx Brothers, Groucho and Chico, and written primarily by Nat Perrin and Arthur Sheekman.”
1933: Timemagazine published “Hitler Into Chancellor” an article that provides a contemporaneous account of the German leaders rise to power and plans for the immediate future.
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,745087,00.html
1934: In France, Jewish political leader Leon Blum, chairman of the Socialist Party, promised to stand with Premier-designate Daladier as right wing paramilitary gangs battered at the doors of the Chamber of Deputies. This attempt to impose a fascist regime on France came before Vichy but explains why so many Jews were so quickly shipped to Drancy, the doorway to Auschwitz.
1934: Following tonight’s right-wing anti-government riots historian Daniel Halévy “publicly declared that he “was now ‘a man of the extreme right’” which despite his Jewish origins would lead him to support the Vichy anti-Semitic pro-Nazi Vichy regime.
1935: Birthdate of New Jersey political leaders Loretta Weinberg has served as a member of the New Jersey Senate from the 37th Legislative District and was an unsuccessful candidate for Lt. Governor in 2009.
1935(3rdof Adar I, 5695): Seventy-six-year-old Santo Domingo native Francisco Hilario Henriquez y Carvajal, the descendant of “Sephardic Jews who had immigrated in the 19th century from Curaco,” and the husband of Salome Urena with whom he had four children – Pedro, Francisco, Max and Camila – “who served as president just prior to the US occupation of his country passed away today.
1935: As reported in today’s edition of Sydney Commercial News, Sefton Louis Cullen (born Louis Sefton Cohen) “became a shareholder of David Cohen and Co., Ltd.
1936: “The Woman Doctor” directed by Sidney Salkow and produced by Sol C. Siegel.
1936: In Washington, DC, Nehemiah Cohen and Samuel Lehrman opened the first Giant supermarket on Georgia Avenue and Park Road, NW. Giant would grow to become a major supermarket chain in the Washington metropolitan area. In the 1950’s, Giant would be the first grocery chain in Washington sell challah in its in-store bakery.
1936(21stof Shevat, 5694): Hyman Gerson Enelow, who had become Rabbi Emeritus Temple Emanu-El on February 1 had a fatal heart attack while sailing for the Mediterranean Sea.
https://snaccooperative.org/view/3810042
1936: An editorial on the front page of the Voelkischer Beobachter, “Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s own newspaper” demanded “the death penalty for David Frankfurter, the Jewish student who killed Wilhelm Gustloff, the German leader of the Nazis in Switzerland.
1936: While addressing a meeting of Jews in London, the Bishop of Durham asserted that the present rulers of Germany are those who are “ultimately responsible for the assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff.”
1937(25thof Shevat, 5697): Parashat Mishpatim; Shabbat Shekalim
1937: Rabbi Hyman Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a sermon “The Strength Judaism Gives” at the West End Synagogue.
1937: Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon “Will Democracy and Liberalism Destroy the Jew?” at Temple Rodeph Sholom.
1937: The National Conference for Palestine, whose attendees had had a chance to read “How Many Jews Can Palestine Hold?” by Joseph L. Cohen, opened today in Washington, D.C.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that Ezekiel Altman, 22, a Jewish supernumerary constable, was found guilty of firing at an Arab truck on December 27, 1937, and was sentenced to death by the Military Court in Jerusalem. The prisoner heard the sentence with equanimity.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that in Tel Aviv, High Commissioner Sir Arthur Wauchope inaugurated the first automatic telephone exchange. Romania started the expropriation of Jewish private land properties in Bukovina.
1938: Edward M.M. Warburg and Dr. Milton Steinberg are among the speakers at the second Annual Conference on Jewish Affairs being held this afternoon at the Jewish Theological Seminary where the attendees will discuss “The Future of Judaism in America.”
1938: “A Jewish Who’s Who” published today provided a brief review of Who’s Who In American Jewry: Volume III 1938-1939 edited by John Simon a reference containing “8,477 full biographies” and additional 1,900 names “for which further information was not available.”
1938: In “Terror Grips Jews In Rumanian Cities” published today G.E.R. Gedye continues his series on the frightening conditions facing the Jews that includes a description of Jassy as “the headquarters of the Anti-Semitic Cuzist terrorists.”
1938: Don Isaac Abravenel by Joseph Saracheck, “a biography of the 15thcentury Jewish scholar and statesman” was included on today’s list of “Latest Books Received.”
1938: Rabbi Louis I. Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Assignments in Utopia by Eugene Lyons: Russia, the Riddle; What Can Americans Believe About Communism” at Temple Rodoph Sholom.
1938: Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Conflicts Within” at the Jewish Science Society.
1938: Rabbi Clifton Harby Levy is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “What Jewish Science Does” at the Centre of Jewish Science.
1938: Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “What Are the Perquisites of Cooperation?” at Temple Emanu-El.
1938: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon “Prodigal Parents’ – Are Parents Always Wrong? Sinclair Lewis Answers” at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall.
1939: While speaking “the school of politics in the Women’s National Republican Club” in Manhattan, “Brackett Lewis, the secretary of the American Committee for Relief in Czechoslovakia demonstrated a burst of unwarranted optimism about the future of the country when he “pointed out that the nation’s new president was not the candidate suggested by Berlin and that Jews had not been persecuted as Berlin had suggested to Prague’s ‘sincerity.’”
1939: On the eve of the start of talks in London about the future of Palestine, Arabs, under the leadership of the followers of Mufti of Jerusalem went on strike today which forced the British to impose a twenty-four-hour curfew.
1940: In Berlin, “the Reich Association of Jews announced today that the Jews would be allowed to have a ration of twenty pfeddings worth of sewing materials each three months to repair clothes” but “as before, Jews will receive no rations cards for clothes, textile goods, shoes or shoe soles.”
1940: Word reached to New York today that German author Dr. Eduard Fuchs who had been “violently attacked by the Nazi regime” because among other things “his second wife, the former Grete Alsberg was Jewish.”
1940: This evening. Dr. George N. Shuster, acting president and academic dean of Hunter College is scheduled to speak at a public meeting of the North Hempstead Round Table of Christians and Jews where the topic is “The Meaning of Democracy.
1941: Birthdate of Richard Cohen, the New York native who became a leading columnist with the Washington Post.
1942: Birthdate of Dr. James W. Lowen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong in which he wrote that the prosecution of Robert Goldstein a Jewish German-American who produced “The Spirit of ‘76” “was consistent with Woodrow Wilson's targeting anyone suspecting of holding anti-British views, which the president claimed gave aid to Germany” which the movie did not.
1943: Upon arriving in “liberated” Algiers, Churchill discovered that the Vichy laws restricting the rights of the Jews of Algeria were still in force and insisted that they be repealed at once.
1943: Himmler received a report on the quantity of garments collected from Birkenau. The list included: 97,000 sets of men's clothing, 76,000 sets of women's clothing, 132,000 men's shirts, 155,000 women's coats and 3,000 kilograms of women's hair. The hair filled an entire railroad car. Children's items included 15,000 overcoats, 11,000 boys' jackets, 9,000 dresses and 22,000 pairs of shoes. The clothing filled 825 freight cars. Included in this inventory was also close to a half of million in American currency and $116,420 dollars in gold.
1943: Fifteen trains of deportees reached Birkenau from Holland, Drancy (Paris) and from Berlin. Five thousand on board were gassed.
1943: Rutka Laskier, a fourteen-year-old living in Bedzin, Poland writes in her diary: “Something has broken in Me. When I pass by a German, everything shrinks in me. I don't know whether it is out of fear or hatred. I would like to torture them, their women and children, who set their doggies on us, to beat and strangle them vigorously, more and more. When will this day arrive which Nica talked about ... that's one matter. And now another matter. I think my womanhood has awoken in me. That means, yesterday when I was taking a bath and the water stroked my body, I longed for someone's hands to stroke me ... I didn't know what it was, I have never had such sensations until now ...I met Micka today. I don't know with what these "dubious" lovers attract her, to the point that she refuses to get into a quarrel with them. They are so dazzled by her and think that every boy should be in love with her. Of course, I ascribe this to Janek, but Janek finds her disgusting (I don't know why). I think Janek likes me very much. But it doesn't matter to me, either way. Today, I recalled in detail the day of Aug. 12, 1942. I'll try to describe that day so that in a few years, of course if I'm not deported, I'll be able to remember it. We got up at 4 o'clock in the morning. We had a great breakfast (considering it was wartime): eggs, salad, real butter, coffee with milk. When we were ... ready, it was already half past 5, and then we left. There were thousands of people on the road. Every once in a while we had to stop, in order to let the crowd in front of us proceed. At half past 6, we were in place. We managed to get quite good seats on a bench. We were in a pretty good mood until 9 o'clock. Then I looked beyond the fence and I saw soldiers with machine guns aimed at the square in case someone tried to escape (how could you possibly escape from here?). People fainted, children cried. In short--Judgment Day. People were thirsty, and there was not a single drop of water around ... Then ... it started pouring. The rain didn't stop. At 3 o'clock Kuczynsky arrived and the selection started. "1" meant returning home, "1a" meant going to labor, which was even worse than deportation, "2" meant going for further inspection, and "3" meant deportation, in other words, death. Then I saw what disaster meant. We reported for selection at 4 o'clock. Mom, Dad and my little brother were sent to group 1, and I was sent to 1a. I walked as if I were stunned ... The weirdest thing was that we didn't cry at all, AT ALL ... Later on, I saw many more disasters. I can't put it in words. Little children were lying on the wet grass, the storm raging above our heads. The policemen beat them ferociously and also shot them. I sat there until 1 o'clock at night. Then I ran away. My heart pounded. I jumped out of a window from the first floor of a small building, and nothing happened to me. Only my lips were bitten so bad that they bled ... When I was already on the street, I ran into someone "in uniform," and I felt that I couldn't take it anymore. My head was spinning. I was pretty sure he was going to beat me ... but apparently he was drunk and didn't see the "yellow star," and he let me go.
Around me it was dark like in a closed cabin. From time-to-time flashes of lightning lightened the sky ... and it thundered. The journey that normally takes me half an hour I did in 10 minutes. Everybody was at home except Grandma, whom Dad released and brought home the next day ...
Oh, I forgot the most important thing. I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of its mother's hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby's brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy. I am writing this as if nothing has happened. As if I were in an army experienced in cruelty. But I'm young, I'm 14, and I haven't seen much in my life, and I'm already so indifferent. Now I am terrified when I see "uniforms." I'm turning into an animal waiting to die ...Now to everyday matters: Janek came by this afternoon. We had to sit in the kitchen ... I told him that I had given away all my photographs. He got very upset. We were joking around; we spoke about "Nica and the gang." While we were talking he suddenly blurted out he'd like it very much if he could kiss me. I said "maybe" and continued the conversation. He was a bit confused; he thought I was Tusia or Hala Zelinger. I would have allowed [myself] to be kissed only by the person I loved, and I feel indifferent towards him. Then Dad sent me to deal with something. I had to leave. Janek accompanied me. While going downstairs I asked him, is kissing such a pleasant thing? And then I told him that I had already kissed before, what a taste it has (that's completely true). He burst out laughing. (He has a nice laugh, I must admit.) He said he was curious too. Maybe, but I won't let him kiss me. I'm afraid it would destroy something beautiful, pure ... I'm also afraid that I'll be very disappointed.” For more about a young Jewess who has been compared to Anne Frank, another diary writer see:
http://judicial-inc.biz/6_5_rutka_laskier.htm
1944: Birthdate of actor Michael Tucker. Born in Baltimore, Maryland he is best known for his role as the nebbish tax attorney, Stuart Markowitz on the television series, “LA Law.”
1944(12thof Shevat 5704): Phillip Max Raskin, editor of The Anthology of Modern Jewish Poetry and author of New Songs of a Jew died
https://archive.org/details/songsofjew00raskiala
https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/the-eternal-riddle-by-p-m-raskin
1945: Today, “Supreme Court Justice Meier Steinbrink, the chairman of the Board of the eastern region of the ADL called upon the NYU, Columbia and the American Dental Association to repudiate a report submitted to them by Dr. Harlen H. Horner, secretary of the council on Dental Education of the A.D.A. which called for the adoption of a quota policy for students based on racial origins which “Justice Steinbrink charged was aimed solely at the exclusion of Jewish students from dental schools.”
1946: Two Jews who were plowing a field near Ramle were wounded by an unknown number of attacking Arabs.
1946: After one of their men had been killed tonight during an attack on the headquarters of an East African soldiers' camp just south of Jaffa-Tel Aviv, British soldiers stormed into the near-by Jewish community of Holon and began firing at “anything that moved.” Apparently the soldiers were not content to fire their weapons since of the fatalities was a 15 year old boy who had been stabbed to death.
1946 (5th of Adar I, 5706): Fifty-year old Ben Zion Shenkar, the director of a knitting mill and the vice chairman of the Community Council in Cholon was murdered by rampaging British troops who shot up the town after an attack on their headquarters. There are no records of anybody being held accountable for his death.
1947:In Los Angeles, Irving Yergin who worked at Warner Brothers and who was editor of The Hollywood Reporter and a former journalist in Chicago and “Naomi Yergin, a sculptor gave birth to Daniel Yergin, author, economist and co-founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
https://www.reuters.com/article/energy-medals-yergin-idUSL2N0RV2X720141001
1948: The Arab Higher Committee of Palestine sent a “a formal declaration of war” to Trygve Lie, Secretary General of the United Nations “against any attempt to partition” Palestine. (Editor’s note – seems like a rejection of the two-state solution to me)
1949(7thof Shevat, 5709): Sixty-year old MGM studio executive and producer of the Academy Award winning best picture Broadway Melody Harry Rapf, New York born son of Maurice and Eliza Brooks Rapf, the husband of Christian Rodin with whom he had two children producer Mathew Rapf and blacklisted screenwriter Maurice Rapf passed away today after suffering his second heart attack.
1951(30thof Shevat, 5711): Rosh Chodesh Adar I
1951(30thof Shevat, 5711): Seventy-three year old Russian born realtor Louis Kovner, the president of the Park West Hospital in New York and father of Sidney and Harold Kovner passed away today at his home in Miami Beach.
1952(10thof Shevat, 5712): Samuel Idelman, the Russian born son of Max Idelman, with whom he built a successful business career in Cheyenne, Wyoming while belonging to Congregation Mt. Sinai passed away today after which he was buried at Mt. Sinai Jewish Cemetery in Cheynne.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel told Britain and the US that Jordan was entirely responsible for the current border unrest. The Mixed Israeli-Jordanian Armistice Commission censured Jordan for mining Israeli railway line near Kalkilya.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel had contributed to "Watershood 1953," the Dutch Welfare Fund for the victims of the recent terrifying floods which claimed over 1,300 dead in Holland.
1954(3rdof Adar I, 5714): Parashat Terumah
1954(3rdof Adar I, 5714): Sixty-one year old poet and novelist Maxwell “Bogey” Bodehnheim, the Hermanville, Mississippi born son of Carrie and Solomon Bodenhierm who was raised in Chicago where he met and joined forces with Ben Hecht and whose life story is told in memoir My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village passed away today.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maxwell-Bodenheim
https://poets.org/poet/maxwell-bodenheim
1954: Birthdate of “Érik Izraelewicz[, a French journalist and author, specialized in economics and finance.”
1955: On Long Island, NY, “author and financial consultant Stephen Pollan and columnist Corky Pollan” gave birth Harvard and UC Berkley Professor Michael Pollan whose works include The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
1955: Birthdate of Avraham “Avram” Grant the Petah Tikva native who became a successful “football” manager. (In the U.S. this football is called soccer)
1956(24th of Shevat): Composer Joseph Rumshinsky passed away.
1958: In Los Angeles, Sidney Miller, an actor, director, and writer, and Iris Burton, an agent, gave birth to Barry L. Miller who won a Tony Award as Best Actor for his portrayal of “Arnold Epstein” in Neil Simon’s “Biloxi Blues.”
1958: After surviving the McCarthy Era which led to the death of her husband, Gertrude Berg appeared on “The Ford Show.”
1961: “President Izhak Ben-Zvi began today what apparently will be a long drawn-out and difficult process of obtaining a new Prime Minister and Cabinet to replace the Ben-Gurion coalition government which fell last week as a result of the Lavon affair.” (JTA)
1961: “The Quai d’Orsay revealed today” that “Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville has informed the Foreign Affairs and Security Commission of the Senate that the French Government is concerned over the anti-Jewish discriminations practiced by the Moroccan Government.”
1961: “Do-Re-Mi” a 1961 jazz album consisting of selections from the Broadway musical Do Re Mi, written by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolf Green was recorded today at the Capitol Tower in Los Angeles.
1965: After seven previews and one actual performance at the Broadhurst Theatre, the curtain came down on the original Broadway performance the Mark Charlap musical “Kelly”
1966: CBS broadcast the final episode “Mister Ed,” a sit com created by Martin Ransohoff’s Filmways production house
1967(26thof Shevat, 5727): Seventy-five year old Henry Morgenthau, Jr. who served as 52ndU.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1934 to 1945 passed away today.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007408
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Morgenthau.html
http://www.jta.org/1967/02/08/archive/henry-morgenthau-jr-ex-secretary-of-treasury-dead-at-age-of-75
1969: The Jerry Herman musical “Dear World” which featured lighting design by Jean Rosenthal opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.
1970(30thof Shevat, 5730); Rosh Chodesh Adar I
1970: “Egyptian frogmen sank an Israeli naval auxiliary vessel in Eilat harbor and damaged an Israeli landing craft” which caused Israel to launch aircraft that “sank a 700 ton Russian-built Egyptian mine-layer in the Gulf of Suez…”
1971(11thof Shevat, 5731): Parashat Beshalach
1971(11thof Shevat, 5731): Seventy-two-year-old Philadelphia, PA native and University of Pennsylvania radiologist, Dr, Jacob Gershon-Cohen who served “on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University medical schools” and who “was known as the developer of mammography” passed away today.
1971(11thof Shevat, 5731): Seventy-five-year-old author Marie Trommer, the Ukraine born daughter of Bernard and Betha Trembitsky, a member of the Creative Writers Group, Society of Independent Artists, Salons of America, and Art Alliance of America passed away today in New York City.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/trommer-marie
1972(21stof Shevat, 5732): Seventy-one-year-old Gavriel Mullokandov regarded by some “as the greatest Bukharin Jewish singer and musician” passed away
1972: A groundbreaking ceremony was held today in Reno for Temple Emanu-El's new building. The dedication ceremony would take place in March of 1973.
1973: King Hussein of Jordan who is scheduled to meet with President Nixon at the White House today has “declined to say whether any ‘new initiatives’ regarding a Middle East settlement will emerge during the discussions.”
1975: U.S. premiere of “The Strongest Man in the World” co-starring Phil Silvers and featuring Harold Gould a “Regent Dietz.”
1978: In Paris, two Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Tunisia gave birth Israeli singer/songwriter Yael Naim
1980: In a letter-to-the editor published today, Zachary Saletan, President of Moriches Duck Farm, takes issue with derogatory comments made by Patricia Wells in an article published on December 19 entitled “So You Want to Buy a Duck” about ducks sold by Empire Poultry. Saletan contends that it was unfair to compare kosher ducks (Empire) with non-kosher fowl since the kosher birds have to slaughtered and dressed in conformity with the laws of Kashrut. This requires a process which would account for the different appearance, texture, etc of the final product. Saletan is doubly upset because Moriches supplies Empire with its ducks.
1983(23rdof Shevat, 5743): Seventy-two-year-old Polish native John “Jack” Grossman, a three sport all-star athlete at Rutgers who played professionally in the NFL for the Brooklyn Dodgers before moving to Chile where he played professional baseball and soccer passed away today in Hollywood, FL today.
1983: The New York Times publishes “Hebrew Poetry In Its Israeli Phase,” Edward Hirsch’s review of The Static Element: Selected Poems of Natan Zach; translated by Peter Everwine and Shulamit Yasny-Starkman
1984(3rdof Adar I, 5744): Seventy-one-year-old Dr. Solomon Schonfeld, the rabbi who saved thousands from death during the Holocaust passed away today.
http://www.jta.org/1984/02/10/archive/solomon-schonfeld-dead-at-72
1985(15thof Shevat, 5745): Tu B’Shevat
1985: Four days after closing its premiere run in Los Angeles, Neil Simon’s “Biloxi Blues” opened at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.
1987: Prisoner of Zion, Roald Zelichenok was released today in Leningrad.
1988(18thof Shevat, 5748): Seventy-two-year-old Marghanita Laski, the author and critic who was part of distinguished family of Anglo-Jewish intellectuals passed away.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/09/obituaries/marghanita-laski-72-an-author-and-critic.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/feb/24/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries
1989(1st of Adar I, 5749): Seventy-seven-year-old Pulitzer Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman passed away (As reported by Eric Pace)
1990: The Egyptian authorities said today that the men they suspected of killing nine Israelis in a rifle and grenade attack on a tour bus near here on Sunday were Palestinians. That has come as no comfort to a dwindling minority of 40,000 Palestinians whose roots here, once firm, have weakened with time.
1990(11thof Shevat, 5750): Eighty-one-year-old attorney and Treasury Department Bernard Bernstein official passed away today.
1991: Today an Arab traveling on a bus got up and attacked a soldier with a knife.
1994(25th of Shevat, 5754): Seventy-six-year-old Jacob Kurtzberg, the son of Austrian immigrants who gained famed as Jack Kirby passed away. He was one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in American comic books, and the co-creator of such enduring characters and popular culture icons as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and hundreds of others stretching back to the earliest days of the medium. He was also a comic book writer and editor. His most common nickname is "The King."
1995: In “Can Peace Survive?” published today, Lisa Beyer examined the status of the peace talks in Israel.
http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,982457-2,00.html
1997(29thof Shevat, 5757): Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Ezer Weizman attended funerals and visited grieving families while thousands of Israelis went to pray at the Western Wall and assemblies were held at schools nationwide as Israel observed a national day of mourning for the 73 Israeli soldiers who died on February 4 when two Sikorsky helicopters collided.
1998: U. S. premiere of “Blues Brothers 2000” directed by John Landis with music by Paul Shaffer.
1999: In Manhattan, Rabbi Allan Schranz officiated this evening at the wedding of Robin Holly Lass, D.D.S. and Samuel David Levy, “a founding partner in Marcus and Levy, a Manhattan law firm.”
2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Trouble With Principleby Stanley Fish and a newly published paperback edition of Kaddishby Leon Wieseltier
2001: Elections for Prime Minister were held in Israel today following the resignation of the incumbent, Labour's Ehud Barak.
2001: Ariel Sharon was elected Israeli prime minister in a landslide over Ehud Barak.
2001 Richard N. Haass began serving as United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department.
2002(24th of Shevat, 5762): Max Perutz, the son Viennese Jewish converts to Catholicism, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962, passed away.
2003(4thof Adar I, 5763): Eighty-seven-year-old journalist Herb Brit passed away today.
http://www.davidbrin.com/herbbrin/obituary.html
2004: “Focus on the Soul: The Photographs of Lotte Jacobi” opened at the Jewish Museum.
http://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/focus-on-the-soul-the-photographs-of-lotte-jacobi
2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Unholy Alliance Radical Islam and the American Left” by David Horowitz
2005: The New York Times reported that two sisters who were separated in Budapest in 1944 were re-united. Unbeknownst to each other, they had made their separate ways to Israel in 1948 and had been living 45 miles from each other.
2005: Robert Kraft, the Jewish owner of the New England Patriots, received the Vince Lombardi Trophy, as his team won their third super bowl in four years.
2005 (27th of Shevat, 5765): Russian born pianist Lazar Berman passed away at age 75 in Florence, Italy.
2005 (27th of Shevat, 5765): Karl Haas, award winning host of the radio show “Adventures in Good Music” passed away.
2006: Ezekiel Isaac Malekar, the head of the Jewish community in New Delhi who “is the Honorary Secretary of the Judah Hyam Synagogue, “was a key participant in the 15th International Conference on Human Integration which took place at Kirpal Bagh.” He was “a recipient of the Mahavir mahatma Award for preserving Jewish heritage and culture in India.”
2006: In one of the largest restitutions ever of art seized by the Nazis, the Dutch government announced that it would return more than 200 old-master paintings to the heir of Jacques Goudstikker, a wealthy Dutch Jewish dealer and collector who fled Amsterdam ahead of advancing German troops in May 1940.
2006: British Jewry was stunned and outraged over a surprise decision by the Anglican Church's General Synod to divest from companies whose products are used by Israel in the territories. The synod backed a call by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem to divest from "companies profiting from the illegal occupation," such as Caterpillar, which makes bulldozers that Israel is using to build the separation fence. Several Protestant churches in the United States have adopted similar resolutions over the past two
2007: Jeff “Zucker became president and CEO of NBC Universal.
2007: Nine Star Hotel, winner of the 2006 Wologin Award for Israeli Cinema at the Jerusalem Film Festival will begin being screened in movie theatres in several Israeli cities
2007: In Cedar Rapids, Harold Becker, Chairman of Guaranty Bank and Trust Company and pillar of the Jewish Community, was surprised with a reception celebrating his 85th birthday and marking his 35 year tenure as Chairman. Mr. Becker is driving force behind the Jewish Welfare Board, the community umbrella organization for the Jews of Cedar Rapids and surrounding communities.
2007: A Holocaust denier who gave his name as “Eric Hunt” wrote on an anti-Semitic website explaining why he had attempted to kidnap Eli Wiesel from an elevator in San Francisco on February 1. Police would later issue an arrest warrant for what is described as a “New Jersey” man for on charges including kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime.
2007: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed Daniel Friedmann as the Minister of Justice today.
2008: Rosh Chodesh Adar I 5768
2008: The headsof one of the largest Palestinian clans in Hebron met with the Kiryat Arba local council chief and prominent leaders of the Jewish community in Hebron in what both sides described as a meeting of reconciliation. Sheikh Abu-Hader Ja'abri, the head of a prominent Palestinian clan and a relative of a former mayor of Hebron, and the head of the Abu Sneinah clan, Haj Akram Abu-Sneinah met with the head of the Kiryat Arba settlement council, Zvi K'tzubar, and the heads of Jewish settlers in Hebron.
2009: An exhibition entitled Woman with a Camera: Liselotte Grschebina: Germany, 1908 – Israel, 1994 appearing at the Ticho House Gallery of the Israel Museum comes to an end.
2009: After having premiered at Alp d’Huex, “The Pink Panther2,” the 11th of the films in the Pink Panther series, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber was released today in the United States.
2009: A day after a Hamas delegation left Egypt without an agreement on a long-term Gaza truce, terrorists in the Strip fired two rockets at southern Israel. One of the rockets landed near a kibbutz in the Sha'ar Hanegev region, while the other hit an open area south of Ashkelon
2009: Eddie Schawartz, “the king of overnight radio in Chicago from the late 1970’s to the mid-1990’s …was laid to rest after graveside services at Waldheim Jewish Cemetery in Forest Park.
2010: Sidney Ferris Rosenberg returned to WFAN to host a special Super Bowl preview show from Miami.
2010: In an article published in today’s LA Times, Megan Strack describes the ordeal of Alexei Vaitsen, one of the few Jews who escaped from Sobibor, and has lived to be able to bear witness against concentration camp guard, John Demjanjuk.
2010: At Temple Judah, in Cedar Rapids, IA, Super Bowl Shabbat combines Tefillah & Tailgating with the Reading of the Ten Commandments.
2010: Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan are scheduled to perform tonight at the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
2010: “A Matter of Size” is scheduled to shown this evening as part of the 14th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.
2010:Tony Copti, a supporting actor in the Oscar-nominated Israeli film Ajami and brother of Ajami co-director Scandar Copti, was arrested this evening along with another brother for allegedly assaulting police officers during a brawl in Jaffa and released several hours later.
2010:In a rare occurrence, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon shook the hand of Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al-Faisal during the annual security conference in Munich today.
2011:"Hitler and the Germans — Nation and Crime," an exhibition at the German Historical Museum that juxtaposes the Nazis' propaganda images and artifacts such as 1930s Hitler busts with footage and documentation on the regime's brutality and Germans' involvement in it is scheduled to come a close today.
2011: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present a program entitled “Tableau Vivant: The Berberisca Ceremony (A Living Picture)” which is part “of the year-long series, "2,000 Years of Jewish Life in Morocco: An Epic Journey", presented Under the High Patronage of His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco.”
2011: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Ugly Beauty: Helena Rubinstein, L’Oréal, and the Blemished History of Looking Good” by Ruth Brandon and “The Last Brother” by Nathacha Appanah, a novel “inspired by the largely unknown story of 1,500 Jews who fled Europe only to be imprisoned in Mauritius from 1940 to 1945 after their ship was refused entry into Palestine (then under British rule)” that “recounts the heartfelt friendship between two boys: David, a Czech orphan, and Raj, an Indian-Mauritian grieving for the two brothers he lost in a flash flood.”
2011:As the Green Bay Packers were defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas, there was at least one Jew rooting for the Steelers - Randy Grossman the tight end who earned four Super Bowl rings while playing for teams from “the Steel City.” On the other hand, according to Andrew Muchin, the Green Bay Packers might have not existed if it had not been for the unheralded efforts of Nate Abrams, a five foot, four inch “Jewish cattle dealer” who helped finance the Packers and who played for them in their first season.
2011:A colorful procession of dancers and musicians walked down the aisles and took the stage tonight at Tel Aviv’s Mann Auditorium, the venerable music venue where the sounds of Bach and Mozart are more often heard than the blares of huge Korzai trumpets and bangs of Doyra drums. In the stands some 2,800 Bukharan Jews and dignitaries – a handful of whom were dressed in the colorful traditional garb of the Central Asian community – clapped and cheered on the occasion of the Bukhara Jewish Congress’s 11th annual gathering.
2012: Israeli violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi, pianist Seymour Lipkin and the Jupiter musicians will perform Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, K. 493; the Beethoven String Quintet in C minor, Op. 104; and Clarinet Quartet No. 2 inC minor by Bernhard Crusell, Finland’s first great master of chamber music at the Good Shepherd Church in New York City.
2012: Actor Mandy Patinkin who has star of stage, film and television, is scheduled to appear “in conversation with Than Rosenbaum” at the 92nd Street Y.
2012:Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini today announced that the general strike in support of contract workers will begin in two days.
2013(28thof Shevat, 5773): Eighty-two-year-old bridge champion Ira Rubin passed away today. (As reported by Paul Vitello)
2013: Sylvie Simmon and Liel Leibovitz are scheduled to discuss the life of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen at the Museum of Jewish Heritage at 36 Battery Place.
2013: “The Other Son” is scheduled to be shown at the 13th Annual Broward County Jewish Film Festival.
2013(28thof Shevat, 5773): Eighty-nine year old Menachem Elon, the former Supreme Court passed away today and was buried in Jerusalem.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/menachem-elon-dies-at-age-89/
2013:Officials in charge of Bosnia’s national monuments said today they rejected an offer by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to exhibit one of Bosnia’s most prized relics, a 600-year-old Jewish manuscript that remains locked in a museum which closed because of a lack of money.
2013: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg today spoke up for academic freedom amid controversy over an event at a public college, despite stressing his distaste for the cause at hand.
2013:U.S President Barack Obama wants to host a summit between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his visit here this spring, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said today.
2014: Anniversary of the birth Isaac Zaretski, “a Yiddish linguist, lexicographer and educator…who was one of the major figures of the movement to reform and standardize the Yiddish language in the Soviet Union.” (As reported by Yiddishkayt)
2014: The San Diego Center for Jewish Culture’s 24th annual Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to begin today.
2014(6thof Adar I, 5774): Eighty-seven CBS newsman Marty Plissner passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)
2014(6thof Adar 1, 5774): Eighty-eight year old Pulitzer Prize winning poet Maxine Kumin passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to a panel discussion “Jews, Cities, Culture: Hamburg, New York, Kiev.’
2014: Amazon Video broadcast the first episode of “Transparent” a comedy-drama created by Jill Soloway and starring Jeffrey Tambor.
2014: Michael Steinlauf of Gratz College is scheduled to deliver a lecture in Yiddish on “Y.L Peretz in a Time of Revolution.
2014: The Third Annual Reelabilities: Greater DC Disabilities Film Festival is scheduled to begin today.
2014: The Haifa Symphony Orchestra of Israel is scheduled to make its first New York appearance at the Lehman Center for the Performing of Arts in Bronx
2014: Thousands of Haredi demonstrators demanded the government to reinstate payments to religious seminaries which were frozen earlier this week by Finance Minister Yair Lapid. (As reported by Adiv Sterman and Stuart Winer)
2015: According to todays “New York Law Journal” fifty-one-year-old Yisroel Schulman “has resigned as president and attorney-in-charge of NYLAG” “has stepped down amid a federal investigation into his alleged accounting irregularities” while serving as “head of a Jewish legal aid charity for low-income New Yorkers.”
2014: For the third time in the past 24 hours terrorists in the Gaza strip fired a rocket into the Ashkelon and Eshkol regions.
2015: The Roni Koresh Dance Company is scheduled to perform at Pace University’s Schimmel Center.
2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present Singers of the "Meitar" Opera Studio Of The Israel Opera “Bel Canto Gems”
2015: Funeral services were held today at Chabad of the Rivertowns for Ellen Brody.
2015: “Educating Rita” is scheduled to shown at the 92nd St Y as part of the Women on Top series.
2016: As part of its “Power of Pictures” exhibition the Jewish Museum is scheduled to show “The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty” and “Aelita: Queen of Mars.”
2016: In suburban Maryland, Kelly Terranova and Mike Aronin are scheduled to appear at Shaare Tefila’s 5th Annual Night of Sweet Laughter Comedy Night.
2016(27thof Shevat, 5776): Shabbat Mishpatim
2016(27thof Shevat, 5576): Ninety-year old construction mogul John L. Tishman passed away today.
2016: A terrorist stabbed a 65-year-old grandmother who was shopping with her family at a market in Rahat.
2017(10thof Shevat, 5777): On the Jewish calendar, yahrzeit Shalom Sharabi, the 18thcentury Yemen born rabbi, kabbalist and author Nehar Shalom.
2017: The Streicker Center at Temple Emanu-El is scheduled to host Canadian piano virtuoso-playwright-director-composer-producer-actor-recording artist Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin in a one-man bio-drama.
2017: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today called for new international sanctions against Iran during his first meeting with British counterpart Theresa May in London.” (As reported by Raphael Ahren)
2017: Less than a month after becoming Governor of Missouri, Republic Eric Greitens “signed a bill into las making Missouri the 28th right-to-work state.
2017: Isaac Zolotarevsky’s 1910 melodrama "Gelt, Libe, Un Shande" (Money, Love and Shame) is scheduled to be presented at YIVO in a new English translation by writer/director Allen Lewis Rickman in a ‘rehearsed reading’ format.
2017: The Brookes Pub Meetup where Jews at Oxford Brookes University have a chance to meet and mingle is scheduled to take place The Cowley Retreat.
2017: “Israeli aircraft targeted three Hamas sites in the northern Gaza Strip this afternoon, hours after tanks shelled one of the terrorist group’s positions in the coastal enclave in response to a rocket attack earlier that morning, the army said.” (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)
2018: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to offer the first session of Radical Jewish Politics in Postwar America and Israel focusing on Arthur Waskow, Meir Kahane, Yoel teitelbaum, and Zvi Yehuda Kook.
2018: Prize winning concert pianist Eliyahu Zabaly is scheduled to play “selected pieces” at Harmonia Hall in Jerusalem.
2018: Ryan “Kalish signed with the New Britain Bees of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.”
2018: Disney announced that D.B.Weiss and David “Benioff would write and produce a new series of Star Wars films after the last season of Game of Thrones ended in 2019.”
2018: Steve “Wynn stepped down as CEO of Wynn Resorts” today because of allegations by dozens of people that he was guilty of a variety of “sexual misconduct” “ranging from harassment to forcible assault to coercing a female employee into sex” which led to his name being removed from a plaza on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania and having his honorary degree from the school was rescinded.”
2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Holocaust Memorial Day event featuring Czech native John Fieldsen who came to England with his brother in 1939 on the Kindertransport.
2019(1st of Adar I, 5779): Rosh Chodesh Adar I
2019(1st of Adar I, 5779): Sixty-seven year old Rabbi Yechiel Zvi Eckstein,the Winthrop, MA son of Rabbi Simon L. and Bell (Hirschman) Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews passed away today. (As reported by Isabel Kershner)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/obituaries/rabbi-yechiel-eckstein-dead.html
2019(1st of Adar I, 5779) On the Jewish calendar yahrzeits Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra and Rabbi Shabsai HaKohen Ktaz.
http://www.aish.com/dijh/Adar_1.html
2019: “The Guiding Hand,” “an exhibition of Torah Pointers from Past and Present” is scheduled to open today at the Herbert and Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica.
2019: The Washington Next Generation Board is scheduled to host “Americans and the Holocaust: How Did US Citizens Respond?” a benefit event for “young professionals in the DC area” at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
2019: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “an evening with Danny Meyer, the Culinary Maestro of Manhattan.
2019: The JCC of Metro Detroit is scheduled to host a lecture U. Michigan Professor Ryan Szpiech, author of Conversion and Narrative on “He is Still Israel? Conversion and Jewish Identity in the Middle Ages.”
2019: “Final results came in this evening for the Likud party primary held the day before, with Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein taking the top spot on the list (behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was reelected as party leader in a 2016 vote), followed by Transportation Minister Israel Katz, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and former interior minister Gideon Sa’ar.”
2019: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “a dinner quiz” prepared by “icon and legend of Entz team fame Chloe Spinks.
2020: At Nocturno, Meni Berger is schooled to celebrate forty years of rock and roll “in a concert with his best all-time hits.’
2020: In Tiburon, CA, Congregation Kol Shofar is scheduled to host a “Lunch and Learn” in which “Rabbi Paul Steinberg leads the Great Modern Jewish Thinkers series starting with a talk on philosopher Martin Buber.”
2020: In Cincinnati, the Jewish and Israeli Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of several “short films.”
2020: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final two screenings of “Echo.”
2020: In Mt. Pleasant, NY, Jochabed Isaacks and Michael Marks gave birth to Levy Marks.
2021: Temple Beth Avodah is scheduled to present online a Havdalah program featuring a live concert by Nefesh Mountain.
2021: Temple Emunah is scheduled to present online “Abayudaya: The Music and Culture of the Jews of Uganda.”
2021: The family of Rochelle Jacobson Weiss Z”L, a former member of Temple Judah is scheduled to host a virtual shiva service this week.
2021: Temple Emanuel of the Merrimack Valley is scheduled to present online a “Pajama Havdalah” with Rabbi Sparr and Morah Rosen.
2021(24th of Shevat, 7801): Parashat Yitro
2022: Former Cleveland Indians – now known as Guardians – pitcher Len Barker is scheduled to speak to the Men of Fairmount Temple at an in-person forum.
2022: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including GOD: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou and The Postmistress of Paris, a novel by Meg Waite Clayton “inspired by the real-life Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold, a devoted Francophile who used her money, her social contacts and her American passport to aid Varian Fry, whose Centre Américain de Secours smuggled thousands of refugees to safety.”
2022: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present a lecture by Richard Sassoon on “The Jew Who Ruled Persia: The Story of Sa’ad ad-Dawla, a Persian Jew from the city of Abhar.
2022: Final performance of the award winning musical “The Band’s Visit” is scheduled to take place at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco.
2022: The National Library of Israel is scheduled to host a lecture by Professor Paula Fredriksen on Power, Politics, and God: Religion in the Roman Empire.