February 28
628: Persian Shah Khosrau II who “conquered Jerusalem after a brief siege in 614 during the Byzantine – Sasanian War” came passed away today.
1255: Bishop Richard of Worms transferred to the chapter of the local cathedral, among other revenues from the city, the sum of 40 pounds heller which the Jewish community was obliged to pay annually on St. Martin's Day which falls on November 11.
1261: Henry III, the Duke of Brabant and Margrave who provided the first evidence Jews living in Antwerp when he “expressed his wish that the Jews of Brabant should be expelled and destroyed because they were all considered ‘usurers’’ passed away today.
1276(12th of Adar): Bishop Pierre III Rostaing guaranteed protection to the Jews of Carpentras, France in return for a tax of one-thirteenth of the total seat rents of the synagogue
1348: At the Cortes of Alcala de Hebares King Alfonso XI issued a "startling" decree which forbad Jews and Moors from lending money “at interet.”
1488: Joshua Solomon Soncino began printing copies of the Bible at Soncino, Italy.
1533: Birthdate of French writer and philosopher Michael de Montaigne. His mother, Antoinette de Louppes, came from a rich Spanish Jewish family, but was herself raised as a Protestant. Should Montaigne be considered Jewish? It depends upon whose list you look at, so I will leave it up to others to investigate more fully and decide.
1574: The first official Auto da Fe in the New World was held in Mexico after the establishment of the Inquisition 5 years earlier. The first unofficial Auto da Fe was actually held in 1528 when the conquistador Hernando Alonso was executed.
1575(18th of Adar II): Rabbi Elijah ben Moses de Vidas completed Reishit Hakhmah
1592: Clement VIII issued Cum saepe accidere, a Papal Bull that forbade the Jews of Avignon from selling new goods.
1593: Clement VIII issued Cum Haebraeorum militia, a Papal Bull decreeing that the Talmud should be burnt along with cabalistic works and commentaries, which gave the owners of such works 10 days to turn them over to the Universal Inquisition in Rome and subsequently two months to hand them over to local inquisitors.
1648: Frederick III, who said of the Jews, they “have stolen into Denmark contrary to long-standing custom, [since the days of the Reformation, the Lutheran creed had, according to the laws of Denmark, been compulsory throughout the kingdom], and have dared to traffic with jewels and the like” which led him “to order that no Jew should enter Denmark without a special passport ("Geleitsbrief"), and that those who were already in the country should be heavily fined if they did not leave within fourteen days” began his reign today. [Editors’ note: A few years later, however, the tables were turned. Frederick III., being in need of funds for his wars, borrowed money from the Jew Abraham (or Diego) Teixeira de Mattos of Hamburg (known through his relations with the Swedish queen Christina), and gave as security crownlands in Jutland. Teixeira thereupon made such good use of his influence with the Danish king that, as early as Jan. 19, 1657, "the Portuguese professing the Hebrew religion" were permitted to travel everywhere within the kingdom, and to trade and traffic within the limit of the law. Teixeira himself gained little by his transaction with the Danish monarch. As his loan was not returned, he took instead the estates he held as security, selling them later at a great loss. The king acted similarly in his dealings with the De Lima family, who were in possession of the Hald estate from 1660 to 1703.”]
1659: Birthdate of Father Jean Morin, a French biblical scholar who was the first to edit the “Samaritan Pentateuch and Targum.
1660(16thof Adar I, 5420): Jacob Katzenellenbogen the son and successor of Abraham (Joseph Jacob) Katzenellenbogen of Lemberg who served as President of the bet din and head of the yeshibah of Lemberg passed away today.
1675: An agreement was ratified today that would allow 250 Jewish families to return Vienna and occupy 50 places of business. In return for this privilege, the Jews agreed to make a payment of 300,000 florins and the payment of an annual tax of 10,000 florins. The government agreed to the return of the Jews because the treasury was empty.
1677: In Newport, RI, Jewish community purchased land to be used as a cemetery
1715: Judah Monis “was admitted a freeman by the Mayor and Common Council of New York City today.
1720: Judah Monis, an Algerian born Jew who would become the first American author of a Hebrew grammar book arrived in New York.
1747: Benedict XIV issued Postremomens, a Papal Bull that deals with the baptism of Jews.
1762: Dutch born Hyam Mers and Rachel Louzada who were married in New York in 1751, gave birth to Belle Myers, the wife of Samuel Asher Levy.
1767(29thof Adar I, 5527): Parashat Pekudei; Shabbat Shekalim
1781: Birthdate of German native Isaac Jacob Bamberger, the husband of Babette Treu, Bella Jacobs and Gela Weil and father of Bertha, Henry, Ansel, Rosa and Clara Bamberger.
1784: Moses Cohen de Larah arrived in Savannah after which he lived in Charleston and Philadelphai.
1784: Ralph de Pass, a “vendue master” (auctioneer) arrived in Savannah today from Jamaica before moving on to Charleston, SC where he passed away in 1812.
1784: Jacob de Pass, the son of Ralph de Pass arrived in Savannah today from Jamaica the place to which he would return in 1788.
1784: Esther de Pass, the future wife of Samuel da Costa, arrived in Savannah today.
1784: One day after he had passed away, Nathan ben Hayyim, was buried today, erev Shabbat, at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”
1787: The state legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania granted Hugh Henry Breckenridge a charter for a school that is now known as the University of Pittsburgh. Today, there are approximately 1,800 Jewish students among the total undergrad population of 16,000 and 500 Jewish students among the 7,000 graduate students. The university offers a major in Jewish studies. Jewish students can avail themselves of programs offered by Hillel and Chabad as well as find kosher meals at the “Kosher Korner” at the University Center.
1799: Birthdate of Father Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger author of “The Jews In Europe.”
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_21/June_1882/The_Jews_in_Europe_I
1799: Napoleon, the first European leader to meet with Jewish leaders in Palestine, led his army out of Gaza and headed for Ramallah.
1799: In Georgetown, SC, Belle Moses and Solomon Cohen who were married her hometown of Charleston in 1786 gave birth to Sarah Henrietta Cohen, the wife of Mordecai Myers and then Robert Phillips.
1805(29thof Adar I, 5565): Naphtali Hirz Wessely, the Jewish man of letters born at Hamburg in 1725 and educated at Copenhagen passed away today in his native city.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_20854.html
1811(4th of Adar, 5571): Eighty-six year old Jakob Faibel, the husband of Ewa Duschenes passed away in Prague.
1812: Birthdate of German-Jewish author Berthold Auerbach. Born Moses (Moyses) Baruch, Auerbach published a novel entitled Spinoza: Ein Historischer Romanin 1837. He passed away in 1882 at the age of 70.
1814: Two days after she had passed away, Bilhah Gompertz, the son of Barnet Gompertz and Rachel Benjamin Isaac was buried today at the “Hoxton Old Burial Ground.”
1819(3rdof Adar, 5579): Jochebed Levy, the daughter of Simeon Levy passed away. (She is not to be confused with other contemporaries with the same name.)
1823: Birthdate of Ernest Renan a French author who specialized in studies of the ancient languages and civilizations of the Middle East. Late in life, Renan wrote a three volume “History of Israel.” The first volume appeared in 1887 and the final volume appeared in 1897. Some claimed that he was an anti-Semite (anti-Jewish) because of comments about the limitations of the Semitic mind. But Renan contended that the Jewish people were not a race in the biological and he was an opponent of the nationalism that took hold in Germany in the latter of the 19th century because of its anti-Semitic component.
1824(29thof Adar I, 5584): Parashat Vayakhel; Shabbat Shekalim observed on the same day that Robert E. Lee wrote to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun describing his qualification for entering the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
1826: Birthdate of Prague native and Czech trained physician William Tausig who immigrated to New York in 1847 and moved on to St. Louis a year later where he was elected Mayor in 1852 in which would mark the start of decades of public service that included serving as St. Louis County Judge, the raising of two regiments during the Civil War to turn back Rebel raiders and the construction of the first road and railroad bridge across the Mississippi River
1827(1st of Adar): Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Shklov passed away
1828(13thof Adar, 5588): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim as General Andrew Jackson campaigns against John Q. Adams, the only President who was elected by House of Representatives after a deadlock in the Electoral College.
1829(25th of Adar, 5589): Wolf Breidenbach passed away
1831: In Philadelphia, John A. Forepaugh and Susannah Heimer gave birth to Adam John Forepaugh, the circus owner who included Leopold S. Kahn, “the dwarf performer” known as Admiral Dot among his acts in the 1890’s
1832: Birthdate of Moritz Wahrmann, the native of Budapest and the grandson of Israel Wahrman and brother of Alexander Wahrmann who was a leader of the Jewish community, a member of the Hungarian Parliament and President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Budapest.
1837: In Bavaria, Jakob Neumond and his wife gave birth to Isidore Newman the husband of Rebecca Kiefer and “head of the banking firm of Isidore Newman and Sons, the “owner of street railway systems” in several cities and the President of the New Orleans Stock Exchange whose philanthropies included chairing the Board of Trustees of the Endowment Fund for the Jewish Widows’ and Orphans’ Home, chairing the Endowment Fund of the Touro Infirmary Board, Commissioner of Audubon Park and the founding of the Isidore Newman Manuel Training School.
1838: Birthdate of French engineer Maurice Levy.
1838: In New York City, Myer David Cohen and Judith Simha Solis gave birth to Jacob Da Silva Solis Cohen, the husband of Miriam Binswanger with whom he had eleven children who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College and who served with both the U.S. Army and Navy during the Civil War before pursuing a career as a leading laryngologist in Philadelphia.
https://archives.cjh.org//repositories/3/resources/356
1842: B'ne Yeshurun, a congregation organized by the German Jews living in Cincinnati, Ohio was incorporated under the laws of the state of Ohio.
1842: In Cleveland, Ohio, Anshe Chesed (now Anshe Chesed - Fairmount Temple) which had been founded as a German Orthodox congregation in 1841 was chartered today. The congregation had 30 members and Asher Lehman served as the Rabbi.
1843: In Bishop-Purnitz, Austria, Mina and Benedict Greenhut gave birth to Joseph B. Greenhut, a decorated Civil War veteran and a successful Chicago, Illinois, businessman.
1845: Sarah Moses and Alexander Jones gave birth to Lewis Jones.
1847: In Canterbury, Kent, Hannah Baranard and Nathan Jones gave birth to their daughter Ellah Jacobs.
1849: London born Amelia Joel and Solomon Marks gave birth to Mary Marks.
1850: The General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret established the University Desert which was the forerunner of the University of Utah located at Salt Lake City, Utah. Today the university has approximately 350 Jewish students out of a student population of 15,000. The school has ten courses in Jewish studies and offers a major degree in Jewish Studies. Not bad for a school founded deep the heart of the land of Brigham Young.
1851(26thof Adar I, 5611): Eighty-one year old Annie Ezekiel, the England born daughter of Sarah and Abraham Ezekiel, the husband of Exeter, England, Benjamin Jonas with whom she had nine children passed away today in Cincinnati, OH.
1853: One day after he had passed away, Jacob Aaron, a London hosier and haberdasher, the son of “Leib Milkman Aaaron”, husaband of the former Catherine Benjamin with whom he had had six children was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.
1854: The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin. The party was formed in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska act and was designed to stop the Democrats’ pro-slavery agenda. Some of the Jews who were active in the early days of the party were Sabato Morais, rabbi of the Mikveh Israel Congregation, Moritz Pinner who edited a German language abolitionist paper in Kansas, Kentuckian Lewis Naphtali Dembitz, uncle of the Louis Brandeis and New Yorker Sigsmund Kaufman who was an a member of the electoral college that chose Abraham Lincoln to serve as President in 1860.
1855: In a demonstration of the extent to which Jewish concepts have penetrated the general cultural milieu, while giving a speech in New York on the habits of North American Indians, General Sam Houston tells the audience that until “the spirit of revenge had been conquered by civilization” the law of the Cherokee Nation “was the same as that practiced under the old dispensation by the Jews of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and blood for blood.”
1858(14thof Adar, 5618): Purim
1858(14thof Adar, 5618): Joseph Reuben Romm, the third generation of printers of Hebrew books, who moved the family business from Grodno to Vilna, passed away today.
1858: At Frankfurt Am Main, Selig Meier Goldschmidt and Clementine Goldschmidt gave birth Helene Goldschmidt, the future wife of Leon Yehudah Tedesco making her Helen Tedesco.
1860: “In Nieder-Rehbach, Austria-Hungary (today in Romania,” Julia and Ignatz Bker gave birth to Milwaukee, WI socialist journalist Victor L. Berger, the husband of fellow socialist Meta Schlichting and the first member of the Socialist Party to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representative.
https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/9304
1861: Birthdate of Kuppenheim, Germany native and San Francisco trained lawyer Julius Kahn, the U.S Congressman who was a strong advocate for national defense before, during and after WW I and the author of legislation designed to exclude Chinese immigrants while enjoying the unique distinction of having his wife Florence Prag Kahn succeed him in the House after he passed away.
https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/K/KAHN,-Julius-(K000003)/
1862: “Affairs In Utah” published today described the drive of those living in that territory to become a state in the Union. “As things go, it does seem apparent that Jews and Gentiles here are, more or less, under the conviction that the particular time ‘in the course of human events’ is at hand when a change is inevitable in the fashion of Government among "this people." Some may be surprised to hear of Jews connected with Utah which is almost synonymous with the Mormon Religion. The first Jews who settled in Utah were probably “dropouts” from the wagon trains heading to California during the California Gold Rush. By 1853, two Jews had established a millenary store in Salt Lake City. The first non-Mormon governor of Utah would be a Jew named Simon Bamberger. As to the issue of statehood, it would be another 34 years before that goal was reached. The price of admission would be a formal rejection by the Mormons of the practice of polygamy. To date, this is the only time that the federal government has “interfered” with the doctrines of a religious organization.
1862(28thof Adar I, 5622): Meyer Schoenfeld, who is buried in the New Mount Sinai Cemetery & Mausoleum in St. Louis County, passed away today.
1863: The will of the late Commodore Uriah P. Levy, U.S. Navy, which has been admitted to probate, is now before the Supreme Court, at Special Term. Proceedings have been “instituted to break it, in respect to its bequests to the people of the United States, or the State of Virginia, and then to certain Hebrew congregations in New-York, Philadelphia and Richmond, for the purpose of founding an agricultural school at Monticello, in the State of Virginia.”
1865: In Geneva, Kate, née Levison and Michel Bergson gave birth to Mina Begson, the sister of Henri Bergson who gained fame as “artist and occultist” Moina Mathers.
1866(13thof Adar, 5626): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim on the last day of “a month that concludes with having a full moon.”
1868(5th of Adar, 5626): Rabbi Israel Muschkat, author of Harei Besamim, passed away.
1869: In New York City, Louis and Sarah (Greenbaum) Sloss gave birth to Harvard trained attorney Marcus C. Sloss, the husband of Hattie Hecht whom he married in 1899 and who practiced law in California where he served as an associate California State Supreme Court Justice and was a member of the American Jewish Committee.
1869: In Austria-Hungary, Philip and Marie (Goldfinger) Greenbaum gave birth to Philadelphia Dental College graduate, Max Greenbaum, D.D.S, the husband of Blanche Goldsmith and author of “The Practice of Dentistry” who was a member of Keneseth Israel.
1875: Birthdate of Kiev native Morris Garfunkel, the resident of New York and President of the Garfunkel Conditioning Corporation.
1875: Birthdate of Riga native Adolph Abbey, the student of Rabbi Isaac Eichanan Spector and University of Oregon trained attorney who led congregations in Washington, D.C. and Spokane, WA before becoming the rabbi at the Hall Street Synagogue in Portland, OR.
1877(15thof Adar, 5637): Shushan Purim observed for the last time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant who had attended dedicatory services at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C.
1878: Birthdate of Warsaw native Zdzisław Birnbaum, the Polish violinist and conductor who served two terms as Music Director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.
1879: One day after he had passed away, Isaac Horwitz, the son of “Abraham Horwitz” and “Lena Altman” was buried today in the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”
1880: In New York City, Samuel Steinbrink, who operated a small candy store on the east side and Fredricka (Stein) Steinbrink gave birth to NYU trained attorney and Republican party member Meier Steinbrink, the husband of Sadie Bloch and father of Stuart Steinbrink and Miriam Abelow who became a New Your State Supreme Court Justice and President of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn as well as a “director and incorporator of the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charites.”
1880: In Lithuania, Lazarus and Miriam (Burros) Abramowitz gave birth to Herman Rabinowitz, who in 1890 came to the United States where he graduated from CCNY, Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary before moving to Canada in 1903 where he served as Rabbi of Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim Congregation and the Senior Jewish Chaplain in the Canadian Army during WW I while also founding the Canadian Jewish Congress and raising two children with “his wife, the former Theresa Bockar.
https://www.cjhn.ca/en/permalink/cjhn31777
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/abramowitz-herman
1882 In Hungary, Judah and Marjem Grunwald gave birth William Vilmus Grunwald, the borther of Samuel, Hani, Emanuel and Ida Ethel Grunwald.
1882(9thof Adar, 5642): Eighty-four-year-old Almeria Levy, the daughter of Jacob and Hannah de Leon and wife of Hayman Levy passed away today in Philadelphia.
1882: It was reported today that the Russian government offered an explanation to the British government for the expulsion of Mr. Lewisohn from the Czar’s empire. While the British saw Lewisohn as an English citizen, the Russians saw him as being a Jew. And in Russia, Jews, regardless of the country in which they live, are considered to be Jews which make them a thing without legal standing.
1882: John w. Foster will deliver a lecture on “The Czar and His People” a tonight’s meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at Chickering Hall in New York City.
1883: Twenty-four year old Yale alum and Columbia trained attorney Adolph S. Ochs, the future owner and President of The New York Times married Effie M. Wise today in Cincinnati, OH.
1883: In New York City, Louis and Ethel (Baltan) Finkelstein gave birth to Columbia trained physician Rae B. Blum who was the “consulting orthopedic surgeon at Jewish Memorial Hospital and a member of the original founding staff of the Hospital for Joint Diseases, where he was a chief of orthopedic surgery;
1883: In the U.K. British Zionist and barrister Herbert Bentwich and Susannah Bentwich gave birth to Norman De Mattos Bentwich who “was the British-appointed attorney-general of Mandatory Palestine.
1886(23rdof Adar I, 5646): Pawnbroker Aaron Simon, a native of Prussia, passed away today after which he was buried at the Wolverhampton Old Jewish Burial Ground.
1887: Rumania excluded Jews from public service and the tobacco trade.
1887: Birthdate of William Zorach, “a Lithuanian-American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer” who won the Logan Medal of the arts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Zorach#mediaviewer/File:William_Zorach,_Moses,_1952.JPG
1888: In Baltimore, MD, Charles and Rebecca Erlanger gave birth to Johns Hopkins lacrosse player and textile executive Milton S. Erlanger, the husband of Alene Stern Erlanger “who was responsible for the formation of the Canine Corps during WW II and with whom he had a son and two daughters.
1889(27th of Adar I, 5649): In Edinburgh, Marcus Levy, a picture frame maker and Minna Levy, a draper, gave birth to Hyman Levy.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Levy_Hyman.html
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Obits/Levy_Hyman.html
1890: Lena Catosk Pearlstone, the Mississippi born daughter of Mina and Louis Hart and her husband Barney Pearlstone gave birth to Morris Pearlstone
1891: Birthdate of Yaakov Kamenetsky, the Lithuanian born Rosh Yeshiva and Talmudist, who moved to North America in 1937 where he served as a Rabbi in several U.S. and Canadian cities.
1892: In Buffalo, NY Nathan and Esther (Freedman) Aaron gave birth to University of Buffalo trained attorney A.Howard Aaron, a member of Temple Beth Zion and supporter of the Jewish Federation for Social Service who was the husband of Arline Schwartz.
1893: Decrees ordering the expulsion of the Jews from Poland today which were even more far-reaching than those that had been issued expelling Jews from their homes in Russia.
1894: In New York City, Joseph Seligman and Babette Seligman gave birth to Walter Joseph Seligman
1894: In New York City, Joseph and Sarah Swernofsky Hecht gave birth to Racine, Wisconsin resident and American playwright Ben Hecht, the two-time Oscar winner whose most famous work was “The Front Page” which he co-authored with Charles MacArthur but whose real claim to fame for some was his ardent support for the Zionist cause.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ben-Hecht
https://www.amazon.com/Ben-Hecht-Fighting-Moving-Pictures/dp/030018042X
1895: It was reported today that the officers of the Young Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s League of the Montefiore Home are: Lucien Bonheur, President; Miss Gertrude Hess, Vice President; James Loeb, Treasurer; Amelia Simon, Secretary.
1895: “Great Hebrew Charity” published today included Jacob Schiff’s acknowledgement of the receipt $10,063.19 for the Montefiore Home that was raised by the recent charity ball as well as an additional $2,000 that came from payment of dues.
1895: “German Hebrew Immigration” published today described the debate in the Reichstag on restricting the immigration of Jews from Russia and Austria which one deputy described as being “so great as to amount to a national plague.” Deputies from the Social Democrats and National Liberty Party voiced their opposition to any restrictive measures which led to an end to the debate.
1895: Birthdate of New York City native and Johns Hopkins trained obstetrician and gynecologist Jacob Pearl Greenhill, the author Office Gynecology.
1896(14thof Adar, 5656): Purim
1896: Two days after she had passed away, Sarah (Levy) Moses, the wife of Moses Moses, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1897: One day after she had passed away, 71 year old Henrietta Cohen, the wife of Marcus Cohen, was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1897(26thof Adar I, 5657): Fifty-eight-year-old the Cracow born Austrian physician Blumenstock von Halban who was raised to nobility in 1891 in recognition of his service as chairman of the forensic medicine department passed away today.
1898: In New York City, Polish Jewish immigrants “Clara (née Ostrow), a wardrobe mistress, and Louis Opiekun, a shirtmaker” gave birth Malka Opiekun who gained fame as actress Molly Picon.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/molly-picon
http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Mi-So/Picon-Molly.html
1898: Two days after he had passed away 63-year-old Nathaniel Nathan was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1898: In Lisrobin, Kiskeam, County Cork James and Margaret O’Flaherty gave birth to Hugh O’Flaherty, the priest and Roman Curia official who risked his life to save Allied P.O.W.’s and Italian Jews
http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-unbelievable-heroic-story-of-irelands-overlooked-oscar-schindler/
1898(6thof Adar, 5658): Eighty-two-year-old Joseph Baron von Morpurgo passed away today at Trieste.
1898: “The Get-Together Clubs” of New York and Brooklyn met this evening where the general discussion of “The Problem of the Unemployed” including a presentation by N.S. Rosenau, the Director of the United Hebrew Charities.
1898:Birthdate of Brooklyn native and WW I veteran Jacob Ark, the George Washington University graduate and Georgetown trained attorney who began serving as New York State Supreme Court Judge in 1961.
1899: It was reported today that Oscar S. Straus was member of the Executive Committee of the Civil Service Reform Association of the City New York which will become the official agency of New York designed to promote a system based on the notion that “a public office is public trust.”
1900: During the Second Boer War the 118-day siege of Ladysmith came to an end. Major Karri Davies was one of the Jewish soldiers who fought in defense of the British position at Ladysmith. There were at least 2,800 Jews fighting for the British and an untold number fighting for the Boers.
1901: Birthdate of Vilem Bribram, a member of the Czech Army who was buried in the East Ham Jewish Cemetery in 1944.
1902(21stof Adar I, 5662): Fifty-two-year-old Gratz Mordecai, the Washington, D.C. born son Sarah Ann Hays and West Point graduate Alfred Mordecai, the youngest brother of Civil War hero Alfred Mordecai and the husband of Frances Kingsland Gifford whom he married in 1900 and who was the author of A Report on the Terminal Facilities for Handling Freight of the Railroads Entering the Port of New York passed away today in Swarthmore, PA.
1902: Two days after she had passed away, Elizabeth Michaels was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1903: Max Nordau meets Leopold Greenberg in Paris and sends a wire to Herzl: "Greenberg had obtained everything that can possibly be conceded in an official agreement."
1904: The first entry was made on the marriage register of the Artillery Lane Synagogue.
1905: In New York, the initial meeting of a “Choral Society for Ancient Hebrew Melodies” was held at the rooms Young Men’s Hebrew Association under the direction of Mr. Rosenblatt.
1906: Twenty-two year old Sarah Manilla, Paris France born daughter of Benjamin and Miriam Manilla became Sarah Lewis today when she married Max J. Lewis in Cleveland, OH where she served as the President of the Cleveland Chapter of Hadasah
1906: In the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn Jennie (Riechenthal) and Max Siegel gave birth to Benjamin Siegel who gained fame as mobster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel considered by some to be “the father of Las Vegas.”
https://www.biography.com/people/bugsy-siegel-9542063
1907(14thof Adar, 5667): Purim
1907(14thof Adar, 5667): Ninety two Canadian “businessman and financier” Jacob Henry Joseph passed away today in Montreal.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biology-physics-cooper-westinghouse/
1907: In Hillsboro, OH, John and Elizabeth Caniff gave birth to cartoonist Milton Arthur Paul Caniff the creator of “Steve Canyon” and “Terry and the Pirates.”
1907(14thof Adar, 5667): Eighty year old Wilhelm Rapp passed away. Born in Germany in 1827, he moved to the United States in 1852 after having participated in the failed Revolutions of 1848. Rapp edited newspapers in several cities before the Civil War. An outspoken abolitionist and Unionist he was forced to flee from Baltimore to Washington, DC in 1861. Rapp turned down President Lincoln’s offer to make him postmaster general and moved to Chicago, Illinois where worked as a newspaper editor until his death.
1908: In Milwaukee, WI, Henry and Anna Gattman gave birth to Marie Louise Gattman the “ex-wife of Hyman Hirsh.”
1909: In Kensington (UK) Edward Harold Spender and Violet Hilda Schuster who was consider “half Jewish” because her father’s family had been German Jews before converting gave birth to Poet Laureate Sir Stephen Spender whose identification with the Jewish people was strengthened by the fact that his second wife was English Pianist and author Natasha Spender.
1910: “Leon Kamarky and Jacob Faphirstein of New York told President Taft today that for a number of years the Jews of” the United States “had been endeavoring to secure action that would give American citizens freedom from political arrest in Russia” and “President Taft said he was deeply interested in the matter and had instructed Mr. Rockhill,” the American Ambassador to St. Petersburg “to make strong representations to the Russian Government looking to the inviolability of America of American passports” in Russia.”
1911: Akron, Ohio businessman Bert A. Polsky and the former Hazel Steiner gave birth to their daughter Peggy who was the wife of H.C. Dodge.
1911: Birthdate of Judah Leon Bernstein who gained fame as photographer Lou Bernstein.
https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/lou-bernstein?all/all/all/all/0
1912(10thof Adar, 5672): On the Jewish calendar, yahrzeit of Rabbi Joseph Chajes of Lamberg who passed away in 5445 on the Jewish calendar.
1913(21stof Adar I, 5673): Fifty-seven-year-old Phil Phillips passed away in Cardiff, Wales.
1914(2ndof Adar, 5674): Parashat Terumah
1914: “Mr. and Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff sailed today on the United Fruit steamer Calamares for a three week cruise to the West Indies including a visit to the Panama Canal.”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1914/03/01/100083417.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1915(14thof Adar, 5675): Purim
1915: “One thousand members of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association attended” services at Temple Beth-El in New York this “morning to celebrate the festival of Purim.”
1915: Tonight “The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Congregation, the oldest in the United States” presented “a series of tableaux representing the influence of Jews on the early history of America.”
1915: The Church Peace Union founded by Andrew Carnegie whose trustees are 29 prominent clergymen including those from Jewish organizations made public an address cautioning the clergy “against partisanship in discussing the European War and protesting against the agitation for increased armaments.”
1915: In Brooklyn, NY, Israel Mostel and Cina "Celia" Druchs gave birth Samuel Joel "Zero" Mostel an actor known for his roles in the original version of “The Producers” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
https://spartacus-educational.com/USAmostel.htm
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/179731%7C179732/Zero-Mostel-Profile.html
1915: “Aid For Polish Jews” published today described efforts that have been organized in the United States and Petrograd to provide aide for the approximately 500,000 Jews of Galicia who have been “ruined” by the war.
1915: It was reported today that “the large number of Jewish refugees arriving in Moscow from various parts of” war torn Poland are given “a sympathetic reception” while “the situation is quite different for Jewish refugees…who arrive in Petrograd” who now “are all being sent back to the pale of settlement.”
1916(24th of Adar I, 5676): Morris Lasker, aged 76, millionaire miller, pioneer, Indian fighter and philanthropist died in Galveston, Texas, this afternoon. Mr. Lasker won wide fame when he led the Jews of the South in a fight for the life and vindication of Leo Frank, who was convicted in Atlanta for the murder of Mary Phagan. Mr. Lasker came to America from Germany at the age of 16. He “was in the mercantile business in George for three years, and then came to Texas, settling at Weatherford, where he engaged in many expeditions against the Indians.” He settled in Galveston in 1867 and married Miss Nettie Davis of Albany, NY, the widow who survives him, along with six children including Albert Lasker of Chicago.
1916: The Board of Trustees of Congregation Orachim held a special meeting today where they adopted resolutions expressing their sorrow at the death of Henry Glass, the President of Henry Glass and Company.
1916: On the same day that it was reported that the Czar has granted freedom of travel to Jews from the United States, Judge Leon Sanders said that as a result of the work of New York lawyer Isidore Hershfield “sums of money are now being sent to Russia by Jewish immigrants in” in the United States “which will far surpass the amounts thus far collected for relief purposes.
1916: Henry James, one of the literary giants of the 19th century, passed away. For more about how James viewed Jews including his review of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda see Milton Kerker’s Henry James on the Jewish scene/
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-112354673.html
1917: “The 5,000 members of the Federation of Hebrew Grocers’ Association have been advised by their executive committee” “which met last night” “to close the 8,000 retail grocery stores which they operate unless the housewives, now boy boycotting certain foodstuffs, are force to change their tactics.”
1917: Two days after she had passed away today, 58 year old Kate Samuel, the “wife of Ralph Samuel” was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1917: Today, fearing a violent revolution, “the High Command of the Russian tried to convince Czar Nicholas II to abdicate in favor Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, his younger brother.
1917: Two days after he had passed, 46 year old Morris Hymovitch was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in London.
1918: “The 150 recruits for the Jewish units in the British Army who have enlisted” in the United States “were mustered into the service at the British and Canadian Recruiting Mission” in New York City “and led by mounted policemen, a band and British and Canadian officers down Fifth Avenue to the Fall River line pier from which point they embarked on their way
1919: Birthdate of Leo Cantor who “played halfback at the University of California-Los Angeles from 1938-1941. He then played defensive back, halfback, and fullback in the NFL with the New York Giants in 1942 and for the Chicago Cardinals in 1945.”
http://scjewishsportshof.com/cantor.html
http://www.nfl.com/player/leocantor/2511023/profile
1919: Following the decision to combine two Yiddish newspapers whose readers were “the younger and more progressive Orthodox Jews, the Day-Warheitappeared for the first time today
1919: In Paris, Dr. Sikolow, the head of the Zionist delegation to the Peace Conference who summed up the aspirations of the Jews as comprising the recognition of the historic title of the Jews people to Palestine and the right to re-establish national home” “said today that the Supreme Council gave an attentive hearing to the Zionist case.”
1920(9thof Adar, 5680): Parashat Tetzaveh; Shabbat Zachor
1920: Oscar S. Straus, the former Ambassador to Turkey said today that the people of the United States “should demand immediate ratification of the Paris Peace Treaty” and that “the responsibility for delaying the reconstruction of the world rests upon the United States of America” and those who wish to make ratification the issue in the upcoming Presidential campaign.
1921: Fire destroys 120 homes and a large amount of shops in the Jewish quarter of Kouskoundjouk, Constantinople. Most of these belonged to poor Jews.
1921: Conference of rabbis in Jerusalem elects a court of Justice and chooses four Ashkenazi and four Sephardi rabbis with Rabbi Kook (Ashkenazi) & Jacob Meir (Sephardic).
1921: In Passaic, NJ, “Morris and Goldie Zaentz, Jewish refugees from a shtetl in eastern Poland” gave birth to Oscar award winning movie producer Saul Zaentz whose work included “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Next” and “Amadeus” (As reported by Robert McFadden
1925: In Hamilton, Ontario, an immigrant Hebrew teacher from the Ukraine and his wife gave to McGill University graduate and NYU Ph.D. Louis Nirenberg, “a mathematician who explored the complexities of equations commonly used by physicists and engineers, and who shared the 2015 Abel Prize, a top math award modeled after the Nobles.” (As reported by Kenneth Chang)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/science/louis-nirenberg-dead.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00449-y
1926(14thof Adar, 5686): Purim
1926 Programs celebrating Purim are scheduled to take place at all of the 91 institutions affiliated with the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies.
1926: “Young Judaea Clubs throughout” the United States presented plays as part of their Purim celebrations.
1926: In New York, the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews held an open house on Purim.
1927: “An exclusively Jewish program was offered this evening from the pulpit of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, Park Avenue and Sixty-fourth Street” which included the singing of three Hebrew melodies that preceded the introduction of the speaker, James Waterman Wise, son of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who spoke on the Jews' contribution to Western civilization.
1928: In Malden, Massachusetts, “Katherine (Hellerman) Greenfield” and Nathan Greenfield, who “was in the wool and waste business” gave birth to Joshua Joseph Greenfield “the Oscar nominated screenwriter” who chronicled the life of his autistic son. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)
1929:”The Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of Canada issued an official statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent” in Montreal “denying the previous report that the Society had received 2,500 permits for the admission of Jewish immigrants to Canada and that there is a 5,000 quota for Jewish immigrants under present regulations.
1928: The Soviets decided to set up a Jewish district in Biro-bijanin Eastern Siberia. Most of its 14,200 square miles were uninhabitable due to floods. It was to be used as a buffer zone against China.
1929: In Toronto, Thelma (née Kaplanski/Caplan) and Irving Goldberg gave birth to architect Frank Gehry.
1930: Birthdate of Bronx native and Columbia trained Nobel Prize laureate Leon N. Cooper, the husband of Kay Allard.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060316094457/http://physics.nobel.brainparad.com/leon_neil_cooper.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biology-physics-cooper-westinghouse/
1931(11thof Adar, 5691): Parashat Tetzaveh; Shabbat Zachor
1931: “A letter from Professor Albert Einstein commending the work of American Jewry in its efforts to rehabilitate the Jews of Eastern and Central Europe was made public” today “by Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, chairman of the 1931 fund of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee which is seeking $2,500,000 to continue reconstruction work among destitute European Jews.”
1932: It was reported today that Eugene Meyer, Jr., chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation would be one of the witnesses to be called by the Senate Banking and Currency Committee which is holding hearings on the behavior the stock markets flowing the passage of “the Glass-Steagall credit stimulus.”
1933(2ndof Adar, 5693): Eighty-four-year-old Lautenburg, Germany native David Davidson, the Breslau educated Rabbi who came to the United States in 1880 where he served on the “faculty of Hebrew Union College” and led several congregations including Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines from 1881 to 1885 passed away today.
1934(13thof Adar, 5694): Ta’anit Esther; Erev Purim
1934(13thof Adar, 5694): In the depths of the Great Depression, for some Jews, the fast of Esther was just one more day without food.
1935(25th of Adar I, 5695): Jeannette Miriam Goldberg, who organized Texas chapters of the National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish Chautauqua Society, passed away.
1936: The celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding the Young Men’s Hebrew Association took place today in Atlantic City, NJ.
1936: Otto David Tolischus, the Prussian born Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent today wrote a description of the Nazi regime that began with the withering words: “Like every successful revolution that wants to be more than successful in ousting the ins by the outs the National Socialist revolution is eagerly seeking to creates its own style of living which shall visibly demonstrate its totalitarian character and wean the populace from any longing to return to ‘the good old day,’ thereby helping to assure the permanence of the new regime.
1937: It was reported today that Rabbi Sidney E. Goldstein of the Free Synagogue will chair “a community program on ‘Marriage and the Home’”
1937: “More than 100 Jews of German origin attended a service held in memory of the Jews who have died as a result of Nazi persecution sponsored by the German Jewish Congregation and led by Rabbi Max Malina.
1937: In “Jewish Literature” published today John Cournos provided a review of Volume III of A History of Jewish Literature from the Close of the Bible to Our Own Days by Meyer Waxman.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1937/02/28/118958393.pdf
1938: During the Arab revolt, “an armed Arab mob” attacked Tirat Tzvi, “a kibbutz in the Beit She’an Valley.
1938: As the latest wave of Arab violence continued, The Palestine Post reported that the "representatives" of armed bands were regularly visiting Arab towns and villages, demanding money for their "activities" and issuing "receipts." A bridge on the Jenin-Afula road was damaged by an explosion and there were numerous shooting incidents throughout the country. A curfew was imposed on a number of villages after armed Arab terrorists stormed isolated police posts and stole arms and ammunition, intimidating the local Arab constables.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that The Union of Romanian Journalists expelled all Jews who became members after December 1919.
1939: The curfew that had been imposed on all of the Arab quarters starting on February 26 following the murder of 3 Jews by Arabs was scheduled to come to an end today at 6 A.M.
1940: The British adopted the MacDonald White Paper that included restriction of sale of Arab land to Jews in Eretz Yisrael. This document nearly voided the Balfour Declaration
1940: Ben “Auberbach and his NYU squad played against in Georgetown University in a doubleheader at Madison Square Garden in one of the first two college basketball games to ever appear on television.”
1941(1stof Adar, 5701): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1941: “A gold medal for the most creative idea submitted in a poster contest for Brotherhood Weed, conducted by the National Conference of Christians and Jew was presented” today “to Joseph Hess, a senior in the School of Industrial Art.”
1941: It was reported today that ‘the immigration quotas of the United States” and other countries “remain unfilled because Jews” in Vienna who are in a position to meet immigration requirements have not the money to pay for transportation which means they will be “transferred” Poland.
1942: In Tel Aviv, Aharon Werba, a civil servant who made Aliyah in 1933 and his wife Chava gave birth to Dorit Werba who as Dorit Beinish was the first woman to serve as president of the Supreme Court of Israel.
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/Madam-Chief-Justice
1943: George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway with Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. The musical originally premiered in 1935 and survived for a mere 124 performances. The musical was revised after Gershwin's death and slowly gained popular and critical acclaim.
1943: Brotherhood Week came to an end today.
1943: In Kovono Ghetto, thousands of Jews attend the funeral of Rabbi Avraham Duber Shapiro, Chief Rabbi of Kovno despite an order from the Nazis forbidding them to do so.
1944(4thof Adar, 5704): Sixty-three-year-old Kishinev native Semion Portugeiz who camed to the United States in 1941 after the Nazis conquered France and “who for many years wrote in the Jewish Daily Forward under the name of S. Ivanovitch” passed away today, (JTA)
1945(15thof Adar, 5705): Shushan Purim
1945(15thof Adar, 5705): Siegried Adler, one of the last Jews surviving in Berlin, died today.
1945: Author Heinrich Eduard Jacob “gained American citizenship” today.
1945(15thof Adar, 5705): Walter Süskind, the German born Dutch Jew who saved over six hundred Jewish children died either at Auschwitz or one of the death marches inflicted on Jews by their Nazi captors as the war came to a close.
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/suskind.html
http://www.morsephotography.com/suskindfilm/home_welcome.htm
http://www.castelfilm.ro/node/202
1946: Fifty-four year old “Bela Imredy, the father of the anti-Jewish bill intended to exclude Jews and those Christians with Jewish parentage from the Hungarian civil service and liberal professional while radically curtailing their position in trade and industry who resigned as Premier in 1939 because “he was compelled to admit…that he was of Jewish descent” since “his mother’s grandfather was born a Jew” passed away today.
1947: The group of 600 Jewish passengers who were going to sail on the Abril, a ship intending to run the British Blockade arrived at Port de Bouc from Grenoble.
1947: Jacob and Niza Gabbai, a husband and wife couple who have just arrived in New York City from Palestine enrolled at Fordham University. The Gabbais are part of the Young Palestinian League which is working to develop a new cultural environment in their homeland. They chose Fordham “because it is a complete university and not just a drama or radio school, and also because it located in the world capital of the theatre.”
1948: The famed Golani Brigade was formed today during the Israeli War for Independence when the Levanoni Brigade in the Galilee split into the 1st Golani Brigade and the 2nd Carmeli Brigade
1949: “Problems of racial and religious discrimination cannot be solved by statutes or speeches but require a militant personal living of brotherhood, former Governor Herbert H. Lehman said today at the eighth annual luncheon of the rayon division of the National Conference of Christians and Jews at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.”
1949: A delegation from Trans-Jordan which is scheduled to negotiate an armistice with Israel was greeted by Dr. Ralph S. Bunche today at Rodes.
1949: Following evacuation by an Egyptian brigade, today Israel too control “of the Faluja pocket.”
1949: “1950: Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett presented the cabinet with the draft of five year non-aggression pact between Israel and Jordan. The pact is the product of several months of secret negotiations. It includes most of the terms of the armistice agreement without setting final boundaries. Some additional points include the opening of the Israeli held road to Bethlehem to Arab traffic, the opening of the road to Mt. Scopus to Israelis and an Israeli promise to supply electricity to the Arab held sections of Jerusalem. Israeli opposition to the agreement will be limited to a handful of leftists who oppose King Abdullah because they think he is a puppet of the British imperialists and the rightwing nationalists who believe that all of the land west of the Jordan should be part of a Jewish state. Jordanian approval is much more problematic since it will face serious opposition from numerous sources including those who want a second war with the Jews so that they can destroy the Zionist entity. [Abdullah would be assassinated in the following year for conducting these negotiations and it would take another four decades before Israel and Jordan finally concluded a peace agreement.]
1952: Birthdate of William Alan Finn the Boston born musician whose “musical Falsettos received the 1992 Tony Awards for Best Music and Lyrics and for Best Book.”
1953(13thof Adar, 5713): Parashat Tetzaveh; Shabbat Zachor; Erev Purim
1953: Birthdate of Paul Krugman, leading U.S. economist, New York Timescolumnist and Nobel Prize Winner.
1953(13th of Adar, 5713): Israeli archeologist and Hebrew University professor,Eleazar Lipa Sukenik passed away. His life reads like an early history of the Zionist movement. Born in Bialystok in 1889, Sukenik made Aliyah in 1911. He served in the British army in World War I in the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers which became known as the Jewish Legion. He played a central role in the establishment of the Department of Archaeology of the Hebrew University. He recognized the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Israel and worked for the Israeli state to buy them. In 1948, he published an article tentatively linking the scrolls and their content to a community of Essenes, which became the standard interpretation of the origin of the scrolls, a theory that is still probably the consensus among scholars, but has also been widely questioned. He was the father of soldier, politician and archeologist Yigael Yadin, the actor Yossi Yadin, and Mati Yadin, who was killed in action during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
1954: “Riot in Cell Block 11,” a crime film directed by Don Siegel was released today in the United States.
1954: Birthdate of Tulane graduate and Renaissance man Alan Smason whose interests have led to serve as everything from a theatre reviewer to the founder of the Crescent City Jewish News, the source for everything Jewish along the bayou.
http://www.crescentcityjewishnews.com
http://koshercomputing.blogspot.com/
1955: Three days after Arab terrorists had murdered an Israeli civilian at Rehovot, paratroopers from a brigade under the command of Ariel Sharon implemented Operation Black Arrow that included an attack on an Egyptian base in Gaza and the ambushing of the relief column – an action in which the Israelis lost eight men while he enemy lost 37 men with “many more wounded.”
1959: In Atlantic City, NJ, “Jane (née Divac) and Franklin Abramoff, who was president of the Franchises unit of Diners Club Credit Card Company” gave birth to crooked lobbyist Jack Allan Ambramoff.
1960: The Second Annual Concert of Jewish Music was held this evening at Congregation Beth-El in Camden, NJ, for the benefit of the Cantors Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
1961: Recently elected President Kennedy named Henry Kissinger as special advisor. Before being the first Jew to be named Secretary of State, Kissinger followed a path that took him from Kennedy, to Rockefeller, to Nixon.
1961: Twelve days after premiering in London, “Jungle Fighters” produced by Michael Balcon, with a screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz, music by Stanley Black and starring Laurence Harvey was released today in the UK.
1963: “Hot Spot,” a musical with “lyrics by Martin Charnin, music by Mary Rodgers, and additional lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim” opened at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia, PA.
1964(15thof Adar, 5724): Shushan Purim
1964(15thof Adar, 5724): Sixty-two year old mining engineer Samuel Grossman Laskey, the Denver, CO, born son of Ida Grossman Lasky and Juda Eisen Lasky who graduated from the Colorado School of Mines and earned an MS from Yale while marrying Leon Lasky in 1927 and the former Melba Beale in 1944 passed away today in Luxembourg after which he was buried at Home of Peace Cemetery and Emanu-El Mausoleum in Colma, California.
1966: The New York City debut of The Guarneri Quartet whose members included 1stViolinist Arnold Steinhardt, Violist Michael Tree and Violoncellist David Soyer took place today at the New School for Social Research.
1967(18thof Adar I, 5727): Ninety-year-old Eleanor Kuh, the daughter of Samuel and Rosalie Peck, the wife of Millar F. Kuh and “mother of Howard Michael Kuh” passed away today.
1969: “The State’s Chief Watchdog” published today provided a detailed profile of Vilna native and Harvard trained attorney Goodman Alexander Sarachan, the acting chairman of the State Investigation Commission. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/02/28/77446153.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
1970: “Georgy” “a musical with a book by Tom Mankiewicz, lyrics by Carole Bayer” closed today at the Winter Garden Theatre.
1972(13th of Adar, 5732): Fast of Esther
1972: “Israeli forces withdrew today from southern Lebanon after a four day reprisal operation against Palestinian commandos based there, an Israeli Army spokesman reported.”
1974: Nigel Lawson began serving as a Member of Parliament for Blaby
1974: The United States and Egypt renew diplomatic relations. This was one of the steps from the Yom Kippur War to the Camp David Peace Accords.
1974: Greville Ewan Janner began serving as an MP for Leicester on the same day he completed his services MP for Leicester North West.
1976(27thof Adar I, 5736): Parashat Vayakhel; Shabbat Shekalim
1976: “American and Canadian Jewish leaders were asked today to provide a major share of Israel's economic development budget of $1 billion through an intensive sale of Israel bonds here and in other democratic nations.”
1977: The family and friends of Joseph M. Hyman, the producer and co-producer with the late Bernard Hart of nearly a score of Broadway plays who passed away last week are scheduled to gather this morning at Frank E. Campbell’s in Manhattan.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the majority of the plenum of the 29th Zionist Congress, held in Jerusalem, approved a resolution calling for a Jewish education program in the Diaspora, based on the principle of equality for all trends in Judaism, and specifically including the Conservative and Reform movements.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Liberal Faction of the Likud in the Knesset described the recent action taken by Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon in the settlement of the Yamit (Rafiah) area as injurious to the national interest, "idiotic" and "crazy."
1978: David Mamet’s “The Water Engine” “transferred to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway as a double-bill with a short Mamet play entitled Mr. Happiness, and ran for 24 performances”
1979: Six people were injured in a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem.
1983(15th of Adar, 5743): Shushan Purim
1983: Ninety-year old Dutch born, Englisn“writer and translator” Joseph Leftwich one of “The Whitechapel Boys” whose career included stints with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Palestine Post, passed away today.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/leftwich-joseph
http://www.jta.org/1983/03/07/archive/joseph-leftwich-dead-at-90
1986: John Demjanjuk was deported to Israel today
1986: The first issue of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles “appeared today.”
1986: Laura Z. Hobson who wrote Gentlemen’s Agreement, the novel about anti-Semitism that was turned into a 1947 film classic starring Gregory Peck, passed away.
1987(29thof Shevat, 5747): Sixty-seven year ballerina Nora Kay, born Nora Koreff, passed away. (As reported by Jennifer Dunning)
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/01/obituaries/nora-kay-is-dead-leading-ballerina.html
1991(14thof Adar, 5751): Purim
1991: A twenty-five-year-old Jewish religious student, Elhanan Atali, was found in an abandoned storeroom in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. His throat had been slit and he had been stabbed in the back.
1993: At the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, “The Sisters Rosensweig…a play by Wendy Wasserstein” that “focuses on the lives of three Jewish-American sisters” closes after 149 performances.
1993: Actor Tony Curtis, born Bernard Schwartz, wed Lisa Deutsch.
1994: Jeffrey Dinowitz began serving as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 81stDistrict.
1994(17thof Adar, 5754): Seventy-eight year old geographer Jean Gottman passed away today. (As reported by Richard D. Lyons)
1997: “The Portrait of a Lady,” the cinematic version of the novel of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Barbara Hershey and Shelley Winters which had premiered at the Venice Film Festival was released in the United Kingdom today.
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters by Wendy Lesser and Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economyby Edward Luttwak
2000(22nd of Adar I, 5760): Kariel Gardosh, the prominent Israeli political cartoonist known by the pen-name "Dosh," died in his home in Tel Aviv from a cardiac arrest. He was 79 years old. “Gardosh was best known for cartoons featuring his character Srulik. Srulik was a small boy in short, sandals and a traditional Tembel hat. Gardosh's character, always intended by the caricaturist to act a symbol for Israel, was a blank slate upon which to reflect the changing national mood and a perfect emblem for the emerging nation's view of itself in the 1960s and 1970s as a small nation surrounded by hostile aggressors. The small boy facing down representative from a hostile Arab world left an indelible impression upon several generations of Israelis allowing the character to remain popular through several changes in the political climate. The character is still a presence in various licensed formats such as posters and stickers.”
2001: “Bolstered by the Labor Party's agreement to join him in a unity government, Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon shifted his attention today to satisfying the demands of potential partners from religious and right-wing political factions.”
2002: Hungarian premiere of “An American Rhapsody” starring Brandeis graduate Tony Goldwyn, the grandson of Samuel Goldwyn and featuring Emmy Rossum as “Eva.”
2003(26th of Adar I, 5763): “Alfred Bernstein, a New Deal lawyer who led the movement to unionize government workers and later helped desegregate the lunch counters, restaurants, public swimming pools and playgrounds of Jim Crow-era Washington, died today at his home in Washington. He was 92.Mr. Bernstein attended public schools in Manhattan and graduated from Columbia College and Columbia Law School. Inspired by the social ferment of the New Deal, he moved to the capital in 1937 to work as an investigator for the Senate Commerce Committee's inquiry into the monopolistic railroad industry. ''What all of us were interested in was the transformation of the political process -- drafting regulations, establishing Social Security, making regulatory agencies work,'' he once told an interviewer. ''There was a lot of idealism at the time.'' After serving in the Army Air Transport Command in the South Pacific in World War II, Mr. Bernstein returned to Washington where he helped lead the successful effort against Jim Crow laws in the capital.”
2003: Ariel Sharon begins serving as Communications Minister.
2003: Eliezer Sandberg began serving as Science and Technology Minister
2003. Reuven Rivlin completed serving as Communications Minister.
2003: Benjamin Netanyahu completed his service as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2003: Silvan Shalom begins serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
2003: Natan Sharansky completed his service as Minister of Housing and Construction.
2003: Eli Suissa completed his service Jerusalem Affairs Minister
2003: Tzachi Hanegbi succeeded Uzi Landau as Minister of Public Safety.
2003: Yosef Paritzky replaced Effi Eitam as National Infrastructure Minister
2003: Avraham Poraz replaced Eli Yishai as Minister of Internal Affairs.
2003: David Azulai competed his service as Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
2004(6th of Adar, 5764): Daniel Boorstin passed away at the age of 89. He was one of America's most renowned historians and, between 1975 and 1987, the Librarian of Congress in the world's largest library in Washington. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Daniel Joseph Boorstin was born on October 1, 1914, in Atlanta. He was educated at Tulsa Central High School and Harvard, from where he graduated with honors in Law. Boorstin wrote more than 20 books, including a trilogy on the American experience and one on world intellectual history. The Americans: The Democratic Experience, the final book in the first trilogy, received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize in history.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/mar/01/guardianobituaries.obituaries
2004(6thof Adar, 5763): Forty-seven year old “poet and published of avant-garde magazines” Elzabeth Perl Nasaw, he sister of historian and author David Nasaw passed away today
2005: In Hackensack, NJ, funeral services were held for Ella Nagle, the widow of Isidore Nagle and mother of “Harvey Nagler and Claire Harmon.”
2006(30thof Elul, 5766): Rosh Chodesh Adar (first of a two day Rosh Chodesh).
2006: Johanna van Schagen, a woman who helped Jews escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust and later was honored by Israel died at the age of 91. Johanna van Schagen, who had suffered a series of strokes, died at Friendship Village in nearby Trotwood, where she lived. Van Schagen and her husband, Cornelius, moved to the United States from the Netherlands in 1956. She told the Dayton Daily Newsin 1994 that she and her husband sheltered Jews out of anger toward Germans who were taking over their native Netherlands. "We were afraid many times ... there were lots of raids and if they had found them in your home, you would be taken to concentration camps, too," she said. Israel honored the couple in 1987 and a tree along the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem is named for Johanna van Schagen, the newspaper said. Her funeral was scheduled for Friday at Polk Grove United Church of Christ in Dayton, which sponsored the van Schagens when they moved to the United States, said Jacob van Schagen, a son. She is survived by four sons and a daughter.
2007: The second International Eilat Chamber Music Festival opens.
2007: One day after the anniversary of the birth of his father and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. the son of Prussian Jew, 89 year old historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. whose Unitarianism is an oft told tale of the assimilation of American Jewry passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1954/04/16/83750756.pdf
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1965/10/31/98543706.pdf
2008: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Rabbi Lane Steinger, Regional Director of the Union for Reform Judaism,teaches an adult education class at Temple Judah on the Reform Movement's New Prayer book, Mishkan Tifillah.
2008: In New York City, the 92nd Street Y presents “Witness to Nuremberg” featuring Richard W. Sonnenfeldt the chief interpreter for the American prosecution at the Nuremberg trials who discusses startling new information about the Nazi war criminals and the origins and development of the Holocaust.
2008:“The Diary of Anne Frank: A Song To Life” a musical that tells the story of Anne Frank's life in German-occupied Holland and her death in a concentration camp, using songs that sound like a combination of Fiddler On the Roof and Spanish tunes (complete with flamenco guitar) opens in Spain.
2008(22 Adar 1, 5768): Israel Prize-winning author and translator Aharon Amir passed away at age 85. Amir, who was born in Lithuania, grew up in Tel Aviv and was a member of both the Irgun and the Lehi. He was one of the founders of the Canaanite movement, which saw geographical location rather than religious affiliation as the defining element of Hebrew or Israeli culture. He studied Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but translated works of literature mainly from English and French. Authors whose work he rendered into Hebrew include Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Lewis Carroll, Albert Camus, and Charles de Gaulle. Amir won the Tchernichovsky Prize for translation in 1951 and the Israel Prize for translation in 2003.
2008:‘Eyes Wide Open,” a documentary film that chronicles the preconceptions and revelations of American Jews as they visit Israel, is held at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.The film was directed by veteran filmmaker Paula Weiman-Kelman and written by award-winning journalist Stuart Schoffman
2008(22 Adar 1, 5768):Esra Shereshevsky, 92, noted Hebrew-language scholar and educator, died in Jerusalem. As founder and former chairman of the Department of Hebrew and Near Eastern Languages and Literature at Temple University, Shereshevsky was one of the first professors to establish Hebrew as a full course of study at an American university. His classes were exciting events. Whether discussing Bible, medieval manuscripts or 20th-century poets, his teaching was seasoned by his love of the Hebrew language.
2009:According to Reform Judaism magazine, Brandeis University, Harvard University and RadcliffeCollege, Tufts University, Boston University, and Northeastern University are among the "Top 60Schools Jews Choose."
2009: In Barbados, Terry Schwarzfeld, who had just started her term as president of Canadian Hadassah WIZO and was executive director of Ottawa's largest synagogue, Agudath Israel, was mortally by an ex-con when he tried to rob her and her daughter-in-law, Lauana Cotsman.
2009: In Chicago, the Harris Theatre presents “Pinchas Zukerman in Recital” along “with his long time collaborator, pianist Mark Neikruug.”
2009:Rabbi Ellen Weomberg Dreyfus is installed in Jerusalem during the CCAR's 120th Annual Convention. She is the second female Rabbi to be elected to this position and the first female leader of a major rabbinic organization to begin her tenure in Israel. She succeeds Rabbi Peter S. Knobel, 66, Rabbi of Beth Emet in Evanston, IL, who will complete his two-year term as CCAR President.
2009:From January 1 through today, there were 64 terrorist attacks that took place in the West Bank or were carried out by terrorists from the West Bank
2009: In “His Story Told, Koch Makes His Peace and Dares to Look Ahead,” published today former New York May Ed Koch ruminates on his concerns as he reaches the twilight years and describes his plans for a funeral that will leave no question as to his profound attachment to his Jewish faith. He’s already installed and inscribed his tombstone. He’s recruited a rabbi to preside over his funeral. He’s been saying some goodbyes. He insists he no longer carries any grudges; well, maybe just a few. He’s issued an apology or two and even confesses to a few regrets as mayor. But the former mayor — still looming though stooped from stenosis, a spinal degeneration — is philosophically confronting his own mortality. His is a life that has played out mostly in the public eye, and now, perhaps appropriately, so are many of his preparations for the beyond.
“We all die,” he said over lunch in Midtown the other day, his words unequivocal but his voice raspy. “Whenever he or she wants me, I go.” Not surprisingly, though, Edward I. Koch, New York’s 105th mayor, proposed several conditions for whenever the time comes. Having survived a stroke in 1987 and a heart attack in 1999, he said he has no desire to linger: “I had a conversation with God: ‘Take me totally or don’t take me. No salami tactics.’ He’s been very good about it.” “I want to die at my desk,” Mr. Koch added. The former mayor is at his desk daily (he is a partner at the Manhattan offices of Bryan Cave, a law firm). He begrudgingly exercises at a gym several days a week and goes for rehabilitation for the spinal condition. He lunches every Saturday with a regular group of about 10 alumni of his administration. He doesn’t march in parades any more, except for St. Patrick’s Day, and says he is through writing books. “After eight autobiographies and two children’s books,” he said, “I don’t think I have anything left in me.”
Mr. Koch also insists that while the fight hasn’t gone out of him — he is particularly concerned about anti-Semitism and wants to bring Jews and Catholics closer together — he picks his fights more carefully. He says he is sorry for having started some and has unilaterally declared a cease-fire for others. “I’m not settling any scores,” he said. “I absolutely have no grudges. That’s over with. It’s not that I love those people. I don’t, but it takes too much energy if you think about who injured you.” Of all the grudges he has held, the one that people who know Mr. Koch figured he would carry to his grave was with Mario M. Cuomo, whom he defeated for mayor in 1977 and who was later elected governor. But there is evidence of rapprochement. Yes, it’s true, the former mayor said, he did pointedly refer to Mr. Cuomo by a very disparaging epithet several years ago in a recorded interview with The New York Times that is not to be made public until after Mr. Koch’s death. Reminded of the remark, he laughed heartily, and did not take it back. “I told the truth as I felt it then,” he said. “But it all worked out.” Mr. Koch’s anger was originally triggered by placards that sprouted in the 1977 mayoral campaign that said “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” The Koch camp blamed Cuomo operatives. Mr. Cuomo has always disclaimed any responsibility.
“If anything, I thought it was done by someone who wanted to see me lose,” Mr. Cuomo recalled last week. “I never did anything like that and it was a wrong thing to do, whoever did it; it was ugly and unfair. If he believed I did it and forgave me for it, that was kind of him. I always liked him and respected him however he felt about me.” In December, Mr. Cuomo invited himself to a birthday party for the mayor at Gracie Mansion and offered a gracious tribue. Mr. Koch was moved. He recalled: “Mario always told people, ‘I like Ed a lot more than he likes me.’ The first time he said that, I replied, ‘You’re right, Mario.’ But that’s over with. He said he was sorry.” (For the record, Mr. Koch, a lifelong bachelor, declines to say whether he is gay. “I do not want to add to the acceptability of asking every candidate, ‘Are you straight or gay or lesbian?’ and make it a legitimate question, so I don’t submit to that question. I don’t care if people think I’m gay because I don’t answer it. I’m flattered that at 84 people are interested in my sex life — and, it’s quite limited.”) Mr. Koch said he also no longer holds a grudge against Bernard Rome, a former campaign treasurer, whom he fired as head of the Off-Track Betting Corporation for publicly opposing casino gambling. “Bernie Rome called me years later and wanted to meet,” Mr. Koch recalled. “I said to my secretary, ‘Tell him I have no desire to.’ I don’t hold a grudge, but I don’t have to become his buddy.” Mr. Koch is certain of his legacy — restoring New Yorkers’ self-confidence after the city’s fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, balancing the budget, rebuilding the Bronx and instituting a merit selection for the appointment of judges. (He was feted last year by some of the 140 he appointed: “They wanted to say goodbye,” Mr. Koch said.) Mr. Koch does not typically second-guess himself, but feels guilty over one nagging regret: his decision to shutter Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, both to save money and because of complaints about the quality of health care there. “I fought,” he said. “We closed it. We did the right thing. But, in retrospect, it was the wrong thing to do. The total amount saved was $9 million, but there was such a psychological attachment to Sydenham because black doctors couldn’t get into other hospitals. It was the psychological attachment that I violated. That was uncaring of me. They helped elect me and then in my zeal to do the right thing I did something now that I regret.” Mr. Koch says he has few other major misgivings. “I’m sure there are things we could have done better, but in terms of waking up in the middle of the night and thinking of mistakes, no,” he said. “I’ve had a wonderful ride. I’ve done what I wanted to do.” “I’m not morbid,” he added. “How many 84-year-olds do you know who are as active as I am? Not many. And how many 84-year-olds do you see in obituaries? A lot. But I believe I have another five years.” Whenever the ride is over, his funeral service will be held at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. He has given his sister the names of several potential speakers, but has not made any other arrangements, including the music (“I love the Catholic hymns,” he said, “but they can’t be sung even in Temple Emanu-El”). He will be buried in the nondenominational Trinity Church Cemetery in Upper Manhattan under a tombstone that quotes the last words of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded in 2002 by Islamic terrorists (“My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish”) and includes the most familiar Jewish prayer, in English and Hebrew, (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”) and the epitaph the former mayor wrote after his stroke: “He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II” “That’s it,” Mr. Koch said. “It takes up the whole stone.” He recalled the funeral for a much-loved mayor of Madrid: “Eight hundred thousand people turned out. That won’t happen with me,” he predicted, “but I hope a lot of people do go to the cemetery — which, by the way, is conveniently located at 155th and Broadway on the subway.” New York has not lavished monuments on former mayors. The most famous memorial is La Guardia Airport. Mr. Koch, who was raised for 10 years in Newark, would not mind one of his own. “I have said — and it won’t happen — that I would like Newark Airport changed to E.I.K.,” he said. [It] “Kind of rhymes with J.F.K.”
2010(14thof Adar, 5770): Purim
2010(14thof Adar, 5770): Ninety-five year old Chicago born child-welfare advocate Natalie Goldstein Heineman passed away today.
http://www.examiner.com/article/natalie-goldstein-heineman-died-just-18-days-after-her-96th-birthday
http://jwa.org/weremember/heineman-natalie
2010: An exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in New York entitled “In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis” is scheduled to come to a close.
2010: Final performance of Rinne Groff’s “Compulsion” is scheduled to take place at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
2010: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Ask, a novel by Sam Lipsyte
2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapir.
2010(14thof Adar, 5710): Jose Mindlin, a Jewish bibliophile who owned the largest private library in Latin America has died today in Brazil. He was 95. Born to Ukrainian parents, Jose Mindlin owned over 38,000 books and was a member of the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 2006, he donated about half of his collection to the University of Sao Paulo, mostly on topics related to Brazilian studies. A building will be built in the university's campus specifically to maintain this massive library, and will be named after the Guita and Jose Mindlin Foundation. After retiring from the business world, Mindlin was able to dedicate his time to a passion he had since he was 13 years old: collecting and preserving rare books. The first rare edition in his collection was "Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle," by Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, published in 1740. Mindlin had occupied several public positions in the cultural field in Sao Paulo, including that of secretary of culture.
"He was a giant of the Brazilian culture. His legacy is the library he left, the result of a life dedicated to the books. Today it's an asset of all Brazilians," said Sao Paulo Mayor Gilbero Kassab. Henry Sobel, emeritus rabbi of Latin America's largest Jewish congregation, the 2,000-family Congregacao Israelita Paulista, declared that Mindlin's life was book itself. "He was a righteous man who could see ethics in politics and culture. I felt so little when I was in his library. His greatest book was called Jose Mindlin," Sobel said.
2010:Israeli police entered the Temple Mount compound today after Palestinians began throwing stones during rioting in Jerusalem's Old City
2010: Two Jewish athletes took home medals at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver which ended today. Steve Meisler won a gold medal for the United States in the four-man bobsled, pushing his team to a combined time of 3:24:46 in the four-heat race. Jewish ice dancer Charlie White claimed a silver medal in ice dancing along with partner Meryl Davis. White's victory edged a fellow ice dancer and American Jew, Ben Agosto, off the medal podium. Agosto and his partner, Tanith Belbin, finished fourth. The pair won a silver medal at the 2006 games. Other Jewish competitors in ice dancing, the Israeli brother-sister duo Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky, finished 10th. Their routines included music from "Schindler's List" and "Hava Nagila," and in one performance, Roman wore a yarmulke. Israel's third Olympic athlete, skier Mikail Renzhin, finished 35th in the slalom and 55th in the giant slalom. Laura Spector, a Jewish biathlete from Massachusetts, finished 65th and 77th in the two races in which she competed.
2010: Ethan Bronner wrote the following obituary describing the life of Holocaust scholar David Bankier. “David Bankier, who helped expand the contours of Holocaust research by examining the participation of ordinary Europeans in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors, died over the weekend after a long illness, Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem Holocaust center, announced. He was 63. Mr. Bankier, who was head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, focused his scholarly work on anti-Semitism, especially its use by the Nazis to promote and sustain a broader ideology. He was the author of “Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism” as well as a collection of essays, “Hitler, the Holocaust and German Society: Cooperation and Awareness.” Born in Germany just before the state of Israel was created, Mr. Bankier grew up and was educated here, earning his doctorate in Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He held a professorship at Hebrew University and had served as a visiting professor in Britain, the United States, South Africa and South America. He spoke excellent English and Spanish, in addition to German and Hebrew. A rumpled, somber man who sought to understand the most bewildering aspects of genocide — how someone could play soccer with an acquaintance one day and assist in his murder the next — Mr. Bankier insisted both on the uniqueness of the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews and on its applicability to other cases of mass murder. For anti-Semites, ‘Jews represent mysterious, mythic and evil forces,” he said at a recent lecture, “an omnipotence playing a sinister role in world history.’ At another lecture he noted that for Hitler, “Nazism was a doctrine of world salvation to redeem humanity from the Jewish-Christian-Marxist doctrine. The acquisition and maintenance of total suppression of the German race, Hitler believed, must be through total war of Germans against the Jews.” At the same time, Mr. Bankier said last year in an interview with The New York Times that the work he was overseeing at Yad Vashem on the role of bystanders and neighbors in numerous smaller mass killings across the former Soviet Union in the early 1940s had important implications for contemporary genocide in Africa and other places. He argued that the world was a different place as a result of what the Nazis had done, that if genocide in far-off places shocked average people today it was partly because of their knowledge of the details of the Holocaust. In other words, Holocaust deniers aside, Holocaust awareness was central to contemporary sensibility. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, said that with Mr. Bankier’s death, the world had lost one of its most important scholars in the field. He noted that Mr. Bankier, who had fought his illness over a long period, kept a regular schedule until his last day.”
2011:“Korach: The Biblical Anarchist” is scheduled to have its final performance tonight at the Living Theater on New York’s Lower East Side.
2011: Theodore Bikel and Jim Brochu are scheduled to do a concert reading of The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon at a fundraiser for Theatre J in Washington, DC.
2011:“A host of charities and social action organizations from across the Jewish world” are scheduled to meet at the Nalaga’at Theater in Jaffa ttoday “to discuss the future of their field and hear from a wide range of professionals who will guide them on improving their services
2011: The New York Times featured a review of “Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan” by Jewish author and political pundit Jeff Greenfield.
2011(24th of Adar I, 5771): Eighty two year old “prolific writer, editor and popular radio broadcaster Netiva Ben Yehuda passed away in the early hours of this morning.
2011:The prosecuting attorney in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, retired Supreme Court justice Gabriel Bach, said today that a psychiatric evaluation conducted on the Nazi leader following his capture in 1960 suggested that the man responsible for the deaths of millions during the Holocaust had ambivalent sexual tendencies. (As reported by the Jerusalem Post).
2011(24thof Adar I, 5771): Ninety-two year old Louis Sachwald, the former resident of Pikesville, MD who survived the Bataan Death March and 42 months as a POW passed away today. He was a member of Baltimore’s Beth-El Congregation.
http://philippine-defenders.lib.wv.us/html/sachwald_louis_bio.html
2011(24th of Adar I, 5771): Seventy-five year old Harvey Dorfman who worked with many Major League Baseball stars and wrote books on sports psychology, including “The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance,” passed away today. (As reported by the Eulogizer)
2011: Actress Natalie Portman condemned Christian Dior chief designer John Galliano for anti-Semitic comments made at a bar in Paris, France which appeared on an online. “I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano’s comments that surfaced today," Portman said in a statement. "In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way." The Oscar winning actress is currently under an endorsement contract with Dior for its "Dior Cherie" fragrance.
2011: The United States Senate confirmed the nomination of Amy Totenberg to serve as Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
2012: Ballet de Genève's stunning artists are scheduled to perform a work by Israeli born choreographer Emanuel Gat at the Joyce Theatre in New York City.
2012: Israeli trained clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein is scheduled to perform at Lincoln Center tonight. The program will include a work by American Jewish composer Aaron Copland.
2012: Megillat Ha-Manginot (The Scroll of Melodies) a musical celebrating Israel and its songs is scheduled to be performed at the Jerusalem Theatre on Rechov Marcus.
2012: Publication of “Faye Schulman – the Jewish Girl Who Fought the Nazis”
http://www.blogwrath.com/jewish-issues/faye-schulman-the-jewish-girl-who-fought-the-nazis/2585/
2012: Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch put down her gavel this morning, ending a 45-year legal career, and urged in her farewell remarks that it is crucial to maintain the independence of court.
2012: The IDF said today that soldiers patrolling the border overnight spotted a group of people who had breached the frontier.
2013: Jack Lew, an observant Orthodox Jew, was sworn as Secretary of the Treasury.
2013: It was announced today that Idina Menzel would make her return to the Broadway stage, starring as Elizabeth in the new musical “If/Then.”
2013: Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot “performed with violinist Itzhak Perlman at a Jewish Music concert at the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn.”
2014: The exhibition, “Passages through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War,” comes to a close at the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
2014: In Bethesda, MD, Congregation Adat Shalom is scheduled to start a hosting a weekend devoted to exploring “The Enduring Legacy of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.”
2014: Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor are scheduled to perform at Abrons Arts Center Playhouse.
2014: In Denver, CO, “45 Israeli and North American Jewish Artists are scheduled to show and sell their creations: under the auspices “Jewishcolorado.”
2014: The IDF has reportedly issued a stern warning to the Lebanese government, clarifying that the government will be held response and be a target for response should Hezbollah carry out its threats to attack Israel. (As reported by Ari Yashar)
2014: The Israeli Air Force attacked an underground rocket launcher in the northern Gaza Strip tonight in an effort to eliminate “an imminent threat” of rocket fire towards Israel. (As reported by Yoav Zitun)
2014: The Islamist Basij militia force in Tehran ran a special military exercise yesterday and today preparing for an Iranian takeover of Jerusalem. (As reported by Dalit Halevy and Tov Dvorin)
2015: In Rockville, MD, Magen David Sephardic Congregation is scheduled to host “Bling Bling Like A Persian King…..A 21+Purim Extravaganza.”
2015: In a bit of homecoming, Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C.
2015: This evening in Iowa City, Hillel is scheduled to host its Annual Fundraising Concert.
2015: “Stitching History” “a remarkable exhibit about the late Hedy Strnad, a Jewish-Czech dressmaker who with her husband, Paul, attempted to immigrate to the United States on the eve of the Holocaust” is scheduled to come to a close at the Jewish Museum in Milwaukee.
http://www.jta.org/2014/10/05/arts-entertainment/the-jewish-dressmaker-fdr-turned-away
2015: The Igael Shemtov Exhibition which has been on display for the last three weeks at Baxter St at CCNY is scheduled to come to an end
http://www.baxterst.org/exhibitions-3/igaelshemtov/
2016: The Andalusian Orchestra is scheduled perform with Berry Sakharov and Raymonde Abecassis on tonight at 10 p.m. at Zappa Herzliya.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/a-little-bit-oud-country-a-little-bit-rock-n-roll/
2016: “The first major documentary about legendary director about Claude Lanzman who has never won an Oscar entitled ‘Claude Lanzmann: Specters of the Shoah’ is among the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards” which are scheduled to be announced at tonight ceremony in Los Angeles.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/will-lanzmann-finally-win-an-academy-award/
2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial by Lawrence Douglas
2016(19thof Adar I, 5776): Ninety-three year old Chicago born real estate developer and “banker to the stars” Bram Goldsmith whose philanthropies included Jewish Federal Council of Greater Los Angeles and the National Conference of Christians and Jews passed away today.
2017: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “No Shushing Allowed” an event designed to introduce the general public to the institutions librarians and archivists in an informal atmosphere.
2017(2ndof Adar, 5777): Ninety-two year old Marion Javits, the widow of Senator Jacob K. Javits passed away today.
https://nypost.com/2017/03/01/marion-javits-found-dead-in-her-apartment/
2017: “Israel’s state comptroller took military and political leaders to task for their failure to prepare adequately for the threat of attack tunnels ahead of the 2014 war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in a pair of long-awaited, highly critical reports published” today. (As reported by Judah Ari Gross)
2017: The headstone of Staff Sgt. Jack Weinger, a navigator for the 345thBombardment Group killed during an air raid over Japan in 1945 was replaced today “with one bearing a Star of David” “at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.” (JTA/TOI)
2017: Dr. Robert Silber, a pillar of the Jewish community and chair of the Thaler Holocaust Committee is scheduled to begin his career as a professor at the University of Iowa Medical School.
2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host Rabbi Norman Cohen’s lecture “Cain and Abel.”
2017: “Israel’s state comptroller took military and political leaders to task for their failure to prepare adequately for the threat of attack tunnels ahead of the 2014 war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in a pair of long-awaited, highly critical reports published” today.
2017: Today Marc “Trestman was named the head coach of the Toronto Argonauts,”
2017: J Street’s annual convention is scheduled to come to an end today.
2017: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to host a screening of the iconic film “Casablanca” followed by a discussion of We’ll Always Have Casabalanca by Noah Isenberg.
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Well-Always-Have-Casablanca/
2018(13th of Adar, 5778): Fast of Esther; Megillah reading in the evening;
2018: Today, “Olympic gymnast Aly Raisan” filed papers in California Superior Court suing “the United States Olympic Committee and U.S.A. Gymnastics…saying that they should have prevented the former team doctor, Lawrence G. Nassar, from sexually abusing her and other athletes.
2018: Hillel of Iowa and Augdas Achim are scheduled to join forces to observe Purim complete with Megillah reading, face painting, hamentaschen baking and carnival games.
2018: Following a community breaking of the fast and the reading of the Megillah, the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Purim Party.
2019: The Oxford University LBBTQ Society is scheduled to host a panel on “Gender, Diversity and Religion.”
2019: “Professor Ora Paltiel, a haematologist and epidemiologist at Hadassah-Hebrew University, and Professor A Mark Clarfield, a geriatrician at Ben-Gurion University,” are scheduled to speak at UCL today in the United Kingdom.
2019(23rd of Adar I, 5779): Eighty-nine year old award musician Andre Previn passed away today. (As reported by James Barron)
2019: The Town and Village Synagogue Social Hall is scheduled to host Ken Maltz, Lauren Brody and Aaron Alexander as part of the New York Klezmer Series.
2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the last two screenings of “On the Basis of Sex,” a biopic about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
2019: In the Negev, the Darom Adom (Red South Festival) is scheduled to come an end.
https://www.touristisrael.com/darom-adom-festival/9365/
2019: Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, Dr. Deborah Lipstadt is scheduled to discuss her latest book Antisemitism: Here and Now this evening at the Streicker Center.
2019: The 24th annual East Bay International Jewish Film Festival is schedule to open “with ‘Riphagen,’ a drama about a Nazi collaborator” “who help the Nazis round up Jews, stealing their treasures for himself” while destroying “Resistance groups.”
2019: Friends and family are scheduled to celebrate a milestone-birthday for Tulane grad and CCJN published Alan Smason, a mensch and Renaissance man
2019: After testifying publicly yesterday before the House Oversight Committee, Michael Cohen is scheduled to testify today in a closed session before House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
2020: Erev Shabbat, The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to “go dark” for the evening.
2020: In Los Gatos, CA, Congregation Shir Hadash is scheduled to host a Shabbat service followed by historian Benny Morris lecturing on “A New Look at the 1948 Arab Israeli War”
2020: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host both “an orthodox minyan and a student-led egalitarian minyan” followed by an interfaith Friday night dinner.
2020: “Friends of Bezalel are schedule to present “Growing a Garden for an Unknown Lover by Boaz Aharonovitch” a photo-diary “documenting a gardening project that took place in his studio.”
2020: Erev of Shabbat is especially joyful for the friends and family of Alan Smason, the multi-talented bon vivant who publishes the Crescent City Jewish News, as he celebrates another natal day.
2021: The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of Howie Mandel: But, Enough About Me.”
2021: Addison-Penzak JCC in Los Gatos is scheduled to host a Purim CARnival, “a drive-in event in its parking lot.”
2021: “The Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans and the Birmingham Jewish Federation, in partnership with the Jewish Agency for Israel's Partnership2Gether program” is scheduled to host Mitchell Barak and Robert Mann “for an informative and engaging discussion on how civics and governance structures work in Israel and in the United States - and what we can do when those mechanisms become stuck.”
2021: As part of Jewish Book, the Jewish Book Council is scheduled to sponsor Delphine Horvilleur, only France’s third female rabbi, as she” discusses antisemitism and more with Philippe Sands.”
2021: In Ohio, Temple Emanu El and five other area synagogues are schedule to sponsor “a concert by Nefesh Mountain,” this afternoon.
2021: In New Orleans, the Jewish Community is scheduled to host a Purim Celebration.
2021: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “live on Zoom, “Sephardic Culinary History with Chef Hélène Jawhara-Piñer.”
2021: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host a Purim Party “for all kids 0-13.”
2021: The Jewish Community Library is scheduled to present Historian David Nasaw talking “about the difficult times and lives in limbo for the last 1 million Eastern Europeans in Germany after WWII, including 250,000 Jews, stuck in displaced persons camps for three to five years.”
2021: KlezCalifornia is scheduled to present Instructor Bruce Bierman teaching “a class on how to inject shtick and special, old-time styles of exaggerated acting to the characters in the Purim story.”
2021: In London, at Highgate Synagogue Rabbi Liss is scheduled to lead a “Sunday Morning Discussion” on the topic of “Is It Ever Ok to Lie?”
2021: Based on published reports Israel has “posted 4,574 new virus cases with 31 deaths over the weekend.”
2021: Private graveside services are scheduled to be held at noon today for Eishes Chayil Diane Levin, age 60, beloved wife of Stephen Levin, happily married for 35 years; loving mother of Amy Levin and Allison Levin (Max Affrunti); much loved sister of Sharon Finegood.
2022: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present the first lecture on “Poland, The Holocaust and Cinema” by Dr. Eric Goldman.
2022: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present a lecture by Dr. Sarah Benor, a Professor of Contemporary Jewish studies at HUC on “Jewish Languages Today: Endangered, Surviving and Thriving.”
2022: The Streicker Center is scheduled to present the first lecture on the “Agony of the Latter Prophets” by Diane M. Sharon.
2022: As President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to lead Ukraine in fighting off the unprecedented attack from Russia whose leader claims he is fighting neo-Nazis in a country whose President is Jewish, the United Nations General Assembly is scheduled to meet today in emergency session.
2022: Floating Walls, curated by Aya Goshen, which presents a multidisciplinary survey of works made by seven NY-based Israeli artists: Dana Levy, Gal Cohen, Lee Tal, Michal Geva, Naomi Safran-Hon, Noa Charuvi, and Zac Hacmon. Image: Michal Geva, is scheduled to have its last showing at the Laurie M. Tisch Gallery.