May 7
833 BCE (2 Iyar 2928): Traditional date on which King Solomon began building the Temple in Jerusalem.
351: Gallus, who had been appointed “Caesar” of the East by his cousin, the Emperor Constantius II arrived in Antioch. Antioch was the capital of his domain which included Palestine. At the time of his arrival a revolt broke out among the Jews of Sepphoris, a town in Palestine and spread to the Galilee and Lydda. According to different sources, the revolt was led by Isaac who came from Sepphoris and a little known figure named Patricus. The revolt was not anti-Christian even though Constantius II had given the Church free reign in a campaign of persecution aimed at the Jews and other non-Christians. The revolt may have been aimed at the corrupt rule by Gallus. Or it may have been a last gasp effort by the Jews in Palestine to gain freedom from Rome. This was a period of great instability in the Empire and the Jewish leaders may have been encouraged by reports of Imperial defeats in the western part of the Empire. They also may have thought that the Persians, who were enemies of the Roman Empire, would come to their aid. The revolt lasted only a year and was put down by Uriscinnus, one of Gallus’ more seasoned commanders who probably defeated the Jewish forces at a battle near Acco. The Romans moved south laying waste to Tiberia, Sepphoris and Lydda, each of which was rebuilt after the fighting stopped. [Editor’s Note: Considering the fact that this revolt took place 280 years after the Great Revolt and 215 years after the Bar Kochba Revolt, it would seem to indicate that there was a sizeable Jewish population still living in Palestine, that the population was made up of a handful of scholars, that the Nasi did not control all aspects of Jewish life, that Jews make lousy subjects and that Jews do not seem to learn from their “mistakes.”]
973: Emperor Otto I passed away. Under Otto Jews “were regarded as possessions of the Emperor.” In 965, Otto “gave the Bishop of Magdeburg jurisdiction over all merchants and Jews for taxation purposes. In general, the Jews were not expelled or forcibly converted and were considered the personal property of the King. In the individual towns the Jews were offered privileges, usually through a contract whereby they would be protected by the crown in return for financial fealty.” (As reported by The History of the Jewish People)
1205: Coronation of King Andrew II of Hungary.At first during his reign of King Andrew II appointed Jews to serve as Chamberlains and mint-, salt-, and tax-officials. The nobles of the country, however, induced the king, in his Golden Bull (1222), to deprive the Jews of these high offices. When Andrew needed money in 1226, he farmed the royal revenues to Jews. This led to an outcry from his Christian subjects. Pope Honorius III excommunicated him In 1233, he took an oath promising the papal ambassadors that he would enforce the decrees of the Golden Bull directed against the Jews and the Saracens. In addition to which he would enforce the new popes decrees that forced Jews to wear badges of identification and forbid them from buying or keeping Christian slaves.
1342: Clement VI, who is reign took place during the Black Death began his papacy today. When pogroms erupted in Europe in response to the belief that the Jews were responsible for the plague, Clement issued two bulls condemning the belief and the violence and urged the Catholic clergy to take steps to protect the Jews. (Editor’s note – I can find no reason for this unusual Papal behavior but it does stand out against the anti-Semitism that was so dominant in much of the Continent.)
1348: Charles University in Prague (Universitas Carolina/Univerzita Karlova) is established as the first university in Central Europe. Starting sometime during the last two decades of the 18th century Jews, as well as Protestants, were allowed to attend the University. In 1911, Einstein was appointed to a full professorship at the school; a position he held until 1914. Today the CIEE Center at Charles University offers courses in Jewish Though and Jewish History including one styled “The History of the Jews in Bohemia and Central Europe” and another styled “Torah, Modern Jewish Religious Thought, and Czech Literature.”
1355: Twelve hundred Jews of Toledo Spain were killed by Count Henry of Trastamara. The Jews were caught between the opposing forces in a fight between King Peter and Count Henry, his half-brother who sought the throne for himself. The events surrounding this dynastic quarrel marked the beginning of the decline of the Jewish community in Spain.
1634: William Prynne, an opponent Jews settling in England was pilloried for the first time as part of his punishment for opposing the production of plays.
1680: An attempt to keep the Jews of Corfu from practicing law made in 1679 ended today when the Jews were granted that right today.
1718: The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.In 1724, the French adopted The Code Noir which dealt primarily with the issue of slaves but also mandate the expulsion of the Jews from the city. The arrival of Isaac Rodrigues Monsanto in 1757 provides the first recorded evidence of Jewish settlement in the Crescent City. The real birth of the Jewish community dates from the time of the Louisiana Purchase when the Americans took over and did away with the Black Code.
1727: Two years after the death of Peter Great, Jews were expelled from Ukraine by his widow, Empress Catherine I of Russia. Catherine was merely following the wishes of her late husband who had stated that he did not want any Jews living in Russia. Daniil Pavlovich Apostol, the Hetman of the Cossacks, “was the first one to apply to the senate to modify the harsh law.” Eighty years ago, the Cossacks had driven the Jews from their lands. Since then, they had found out “that they could not get along very well without Jewish merchants” because they were indispensable when it came to facilitating commerce between the Ukraine and the Polish and Lithuanian provinces..
1769(30thof Nisan, 5529): Nathaniel Weil passed away at Rastatt. Born in 1687, this son of Naphtali Zvi Hirsch Weil was a noted Talmudist who served as a rabbi in Karlsruhe and was the author Korban Netan’el
1789: The Judenordnung provided for the abolition of discriminatory laws enacted against the Jews of Galicia
1807: Lieutenant-General George FitzRoy, 2nd Baron Southampton and Frances Isabella gave birth to Henry Fitzroy the British politician. In 1839, he married Hannah, the daughter of Nathan Mayer Rothschild by whom he had two children Arthur Frederic FitzRoy and Blanche FitzRoy.
1811: Seventy-nine year old Richard Cumberland, the British dramatist who wrote “The Jew” passed away today. “The Jew” which was premiered in May of 1794 is the first play written for the English theatre that portrayed a Jewish moneylender as a heroic figure.
1812: In London, Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning gave birth to Robert Browning the author of “Rabbi ben Ezra” that begins with the immortal lines, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be…” He was a friend of Emma Lazarus and “both his verse and private correspondence show that he kept an interest in the” persecution of the Russian Jews. There are those who contend that Browning was of Jewish descent. His father was a clerk in the employ of the Rothschilds at a time when their bank “employed scarcely any but Jews.” The name “Bruning” (a Germanic form of Browning) was very common among Jewish families in North Germany.”
1815: Birthdate of Marco Mortara, the Italian rabbi from Viadana who a was disciple of Samuel David Luzzatto.
1847: Birthdate of Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, 1st Earl of Midlothian who in 1878 married Hannah, the only child of Baron Mayer de Rothschild. She was one of the wealthiest women of her time since she was the primary heir of her father who had passed away in 1874.
1865: The Vicar-General of Velletri issued an order permitting Jews to remain in the town for ten days if they are conducting “lawful and honest business.” While in town they must return to their lodgings by one o’clock in the morning. They are forbidden to approach all monasteries, academies and other “pious places under Episcopal jurisdiction. When having any contact or conversation with Christians, the Jews “are to refrain from familiarity. The violation of any of these regulations will be punished by imprisonment and a fine of five crowns.
1870: Birthdate of theatre owner and film company executive, Marcus Loew. Born on the Lower East Side of immigrant parents, Loew became involved with films at the turn of the century when he opened his first "penny arcades." Later he converted a penny arcade in Cincinnati into a movie theatre that drew an unheard of 5,000 customers on its first day. Loew began converting other penny arcades into movie theaters which became a national chain bearing the owner's name. In the 1920's, he and Louis B. Mayer joined forces to create the MGM Movie Studio. Loew needed the studio to fill the public's demand for movies at his theatres. Loew died of a hear attack at the age of 57, one of the many Jews who revolutionized the American (and the world's) entertainment industry.
1874: Rabbi Sounescheim was one of the speakers at tonight's session of the Unitarian Conference which is being held in St. Louis, MO.
1876: Frank Keenan, the future father-in-law of Ed Wynn “made his debut” today “as a spear carrier at the Tremont Street Opera House.
1876: The French government has ordered part of its Navy to sail to Salonica, a Mediterranean seaport which is part of the Ottoman Empire and which has been the site of recent outbreaks of violence between Christians and Moslems. This is in keeping with the French government’s view of itself as the protector of Christians throughout the Middle East i.e. those living under Ottoman rule. Salonica is home to 20,000 Jews and their well being is threatened any time there is an outbreak of violence among different groups of non-Jews. In this case, the Christians are primarily Greeks and the Greeks have attacked the Jewish community in Salonica in the past. The presence of the French will serve to pacify the situation, thus helping to protect the Jewish population.
1882(18th of Iyar, 5642): Lag B'Omer
1884(12th of Iyar, 5644): Judah P Benjamin passed away. "Born in the West Indies in 1811 to observant Jewish parents, Benjamin was raised in Charleston, South Carolina. A brilliant child, at age 14 he attended Yale Law School and, on graduation, practiced law in New Orleans. A founder of the Illinois Central Railroad, a state legislator, a planter, Benjamin was elected to the U.S. Senate from Louisiana during the 1850's. When the South seceded, Benjamin joined the Confederate government serving as Attorney-General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State. He was called "old brains" by his admirers and an "Israelite in Egyptian clothing" by his detractors. After the war, Benjamin sought refuge in England where he began life again as a barrister and writer. His only offspring was a daughter who had him buried in a Parisian cemetery.
1884(12thof Iyar, 5642):Dov Ber Goldberg, the native of Poland who gained fame as the French scholar who “devoted himself to the publication of editions of Jewish manuscripts in European libraries´passed away today in Paris.
1888: Leone Levi passed away. Born in Italy, as soon as he arrived in Liverpool, he applied for British citizenship and gave up Judaism for membership in the Presbyterian Church. He may have seen this as the only path to a successful legal career.
1889: In Charleston, SC, William Cecil Cohen married Agnes McKee.
1891: “Jewish Persecution Suspended” published today described the sudden decision of the Russian government to suspend the expulsion of the Jews from Moscow.
1893: “Tales The Rabbis Told” published today provides detailed review of Stories From The Rabbis by Abram S. Isaacs, the Professor of Hebrew at the University of the City of New York
1893: Based on cablegram from Harold Frederic, its London correspondent, the New York Times reported that in February the Russian government had issued an edict of expulsion that will affect each of the 1,500,000 Jews living in Poland. For two months, the Russians kept the edict of expulsion a secret. Word only leaked out as the Jews began to approach the borders of various European countries. Today’s story in The Times was the first report of the expulsion to be published in an American newspaper. The report has fallen like a “thunderclap among the Jews of New York.”
1893: “Polish Jews Thrust Out” published today verified that that “a wholesale expulsion of Jews has begun in the Kingdom of Poland.” There are approximately a million and half Jews in Poland, “about four times the number affected by the Passover edicts of 1891 in Russia.”
1894(1stof Iyar, 5654): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1894(1stof Iyar, 5654): “A Jew-baiting” mob attacked the Jewish section of Grajewo, Poland “looting the shops and houses, beating the men and insulting the women” before setting fire to several stores.
1895: Seth Low and Isidor Straus opened the East Side Free Art Exhibition at the Hebrew Institute on East Broadway and Jefferson.
1895: William Jack of Scotland received $600 as part of the Hebrew Fellowship awarded during the Commencement exercises of the Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ
1896: Dr. Walter T. Scheele “who is a fierce and aggressive Jew hater” attacked the Jews at Kruger’s Saloon” and was then “forced to leave the place” and “run for his life.”
1899: Punch and Judy visited the Hebrew Infant Asylum this afternoon and “entertained the youngsters with their antics.”
1899: Dr. Felix Adler is scheduled to “deliver an address on ‘More Light’” this morning in the Music Hall.
1899: “The last Sunday service for this season” is scheduled to be held this morning at Temple Beth-El “when Rabbi Samuel Schulman will preach on the subject of ‘Youth.’”
1899: “The East Side Physician” published today described the desperate conditions of druggists and physicians (some of whom get paid only five cents for patient visit) who are working on the lower East Side where the population is predominately Jewish.
1899: According to a summary of their April report published today, the United Hebrew Charities received 2,510 applications for aid that impacted 8,637 individuals.
1899:Tonight, the Rev. Dr. Madison C. Peters of the Bloomingdale Reformed Church began a series of lectures on "What Christendom Owes to the Jew." Dr. Peters took for his subject "The Jew as a Patriot." He said: "One of the gravest charges ever brought against the Jew is that he is not and cannot be a patriot.
1901(18thof Iyar, 5661): Lag B’Omer
1901: Herzl finally receives an audience with the Sultan.
1906(12thof Iyar, 5666): Fifty four year old Max Judd passed away. Born in Galicia, he came to the United States in 1862 where he became a successful cloak manufacturer who found the St. Louis Chess Club. President Cleveland refused to bow to Austrian anti-Semitism and insisted on appointing Judd as U.S. Counsel to that kingdom.
1908: French author and playwright Ludovic Halévy passed away. His pedigree is not that unusual a tale for European Jewry in the period between Waterloo and Sarajevo. His father was Jewish. He converted so that he could marry a Christian woman.
1909: Birthdate of Leo Henryk Sternbach, the Polish chemist who escaped Hitler’s Europe in 1941 and continued his career in the United States where he discovered benzodiazepines.
1909: Birthdate of Edwin H Land. Born in Bridgeport, Conn., this Harvard dropout contributed to scientific advances in the fields of photography and human optics. His most famous invention was in the field of instant photography. In 1947, he unveiled an instant imaging camera. Within two years, the Polaroid was producing the camera and it became a commercial success. Land passed away in March of 1991.
1912: Columbia University approved plans for awarding the Pulitzer Prize in several categories. The award was established by Joseph Pulitzer. When he died in 1911, Pulitzer left $2 million for the establishment of a school of journalism at Columbia University and a fund that established annual prizes for literature, drama, music and journalism. Since 1922 Pulitzer Prizes have also been awarded to cartoonists. Yes, the highest award in "American Letters" was started by a German-Jewish immigrant.
1917: “Rabbi Stephen S. Wise came to Simsbury and delivered an address on “The World War for the Liberation of Humanity” to a standing room only crowd. So many people turned out to hear him that his lecture was delayed as chairs were sent for to accommodate the standing crowd at the rear of the hall. ‘It was the most successful mass meeting held in Simsbury’, wrote Julia E. Pattison, League Secretary. There is a story attributed to Rabbi Wise that upon meeting a rather aloof New England gentleman with ancestors that he wore on his sleeve the man announced that his antecedent had signed the Declaration of Independence. Rabbi Wise paused and replied that his ancestors had signed the Ten Commandments.
1917: In London, the Jewish Chronicle provides further details based on eyewitness accounts of the plight of Jews living in Palestine, which is under the control of the Ottoman Empire. According to these accounts, the evacuation of the civil population of Jaffa that had been ordered by the Turks as a military measure was aimed against the Jews since all Jews including those of Turkey’s allies – Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire – were forced to leave while Mohammedans and Christians, regardless of nationality, were allowed to stay. In all, 8,000 Jews were forced from their homes in Jaffa. The homes of the Jews of Jaffa and neighboring Tel Aviv were looted by mobs as the authorities looked on without taking any action. Two Jews were hanged at the entrance to Tel Aviv as a warning to those who might resist and an ad hoc unit of Jewish guards was arrested and imprisoned. The deportations stretched to the ancient Jewish community in Jerusalem where three hundred Jews were deported “amid circumstances of the utmost cruelty.”
1918: During their convention in Philadelphia, The Mizrachi Zionist Organization adopted the single tax plan of land control “as the best system under which the Jews can return to take possession of Palestine under the protection of the Allies.” The plan is based on the concept that “the land be assessed and valued at the figures at which it stood before the war in 1914, making allowances for improvements.”
1919: Birthdate of Boris Slutsky, a Russian poet, whose work incorporated Jewish themes, including Jewish tradition, anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic phenomena in the Soviet society and the Holocaust.He translated the works of Kvitko, Verghelis, Galkin, Shvartzman, Y.Sternberg. and others from Yiddish into Russian.
1919: During the peace negotiations at Versailles, “when faced with conditions dictated by the victors, including the “War Guilt Clause” Foreign Minister Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau the head of the German delegation told the Allied Leaders – Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson - "We know the full brunt of hate that confronts us here. You demand from us to confess we were the only guilty party of war; such a confession in my mouth would be a lie.” This treatment of the Germans at Versailles, contributed to the lack of support for the treaty and would serve to strengthen the hand of the Hitlerites in their quest to destroy the Weimar Republic
1923: Just days before her death, Mrs. Gussis Goldberg was taken to the Rockaway Beach Hospital with an injured hip. The 106 year old widow and mother of Joseph Goldberg, was “believed to the oldest resident of Far Rockaway.” (As reported by JTA)
1924: In Upper Sielsia, David Lustiger and his wife gave birth to Arno Lustiger Holocaust survivor, businessman and amateur historian who document “the history of Jewish resistance under Nazi rule.”
1927: In Cologne, Germany Marcus and Eleanora gave birth to Ruth Prawer who gained fame as Ruth Prawer Jhabvala award winning novelist and Academy Award winning screenwriter. She won Oscars for “Room with a View” and “Howards End.”
1930: Birthdate of Totie Fields. Born Sophie Feldman, in Hartford Connecticut, Ms. Fields switched from mildly unsuccessful singer to highly successful comedienne. Her pudgy physique was her comedic “shtick” as made fun of her weight, appearance and the diet industry. She died from health problems. “I went on a diet for two weeks and all I lost was fourteen days.”
1933: In Savannah, GA, a large crowd of Jews and Christians attend a ceremony at Congregation Mickve Israel to mark the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in what was then the colony of Georgia.
1934: The district of Birobidzhan in Russia was established as a Jewish Autonomous Region which was to cover an area of 36,000 sq. km. Its official language would be Yiddish. Within two years Stalin had a change of heart and its Jewish socialist leaders were liquidated. Although a library and theater were established, it never reached a population of more than 18,000, less than one-fourth of the total population of the region, partly due to its primitiveness and remoteness.
1936:Despite the High Commissioner's warning Arab leaders at a general conference held in Jerusalem representing all Arab towns unanimously called for a campaign of civil disobedience by all Arabs in Palestine including the refusal to pay taxes and “a boycott of everything Jewish.” Jerusalem Mayor Khalidi has become so active in the Arab cause that he did not attend the meeting of the Jerusalem City Council; an absence which was condemned by the six Jewish councilors.
1937: During the Spanish Civil War, The German Condor Legion, arrived in Spain to provide air cover for the fascist forces of Francisco Franco. The Germans used the Spanish Civil War as a training ground for its forces which accounted for some of their early successes starting in 1939. The failure of the western liberal regimes to counter the German efforts was one more step on the road to the war that would lead to the Holocaust. Hitler thought that the Spanish should have become active members of the Axis alliance as payment for his help.
1938(6th of Iyar, 5698): “Moses Phillip Ginzburg, founder and publisher of the Daily Jewish Courier and a leader of Chicago’s Jewish community for more than half a century passed away today at the age of 75.” Born in Poland, Ginzburg came to Chicago in 1883. Five years later he founded the Jewish daily which would play a major role in his and his wife, Feige Rachel Levin’s, lives. A month before his death, the couple was honored at a dinner attended by 1,500 guests who celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.
1939: Birthdate of Sidney Altman. The Canadian born Altman is the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University. Altman shared in the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1989.
1941: As Arabs continued their violent attacks on the Jews of Iraq, "a number of Arab youths burst into a circumcision ceremony, knives in hand, murdering a young boy and wounding his brother." (In Ishmael's House by Martin Gilbert)
1942: Nazi decree orders all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed
1943: During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Pawel Burskin led a group of Jewish fighters through the sewers to the "Aryan ‘sector. They were ambushed by German troops, captured and shot.
1943: Sephardic-Jewish homes in Tunisia are ransacked and looted by departing German troops.
1945: Hitler makes the cover of Time Magazine again but this time with a giant X across the cover.
1945: Under the headline “Foreign News: Dachau” published today, Time magazine gave its readers the following description of the German concentration camp.
When all other German prison camps are forgotten the name of Dachau will still be infamous. It was the first concentration camp set up for Hitler, and its mere name was a whispered word of terror through all Germany from the earliest days of Nazi control. It was one of the largest of the camps to which opponents of Naziism were sent. And here, too, was concentrated the flower of Nazi sadists whose business was torture and death. Last week the U.S. Seventh Army entered Dachau and liberated 32,000 of its still living inmates. With them went TIME Correspondent Sidney Olson. His report: Beside the highway into Dachau there runs a spur line off the Munich railroad. Here a soldier stopped us and said: "I think you better take a look at these box-cars." The cars were filled with dead men. Most of them were naked. On their bony, emaciated backs and rumps were whip marks. Most of the cars were open-top cars like American coal cars. I walked along these cars and counted 39 of them which were filled with these dead. The smell was very heavy. I cannot estimate with any reasonable accuracy the number of dead we saw here, but I counted bodies in two cars and there were 53 in one and 64 in another. The main entry road runs past several largish buildings. These had been cleared; and now we began to meet the liberated. Several hundred Russians, French, Yugoslavs, Italians and Poles were here, frantically, hysterically happy. They began to kiss us, and there is nothing you can do when a lot of hysterical, unshaven, lice-bitten, half-drunk, typhus-infected men want to kiss you. Nothing at all. You cannot hit them, and besides, they all kiss you at the same time. It is no good trying to explain that you are only a correspondent. A half-dozen of them were especially happy and it turned out they were very proud: they had killed two German soldiers themselves. Skeleton Stacks. We went on, and the great size of the establishment of Dachau began to open before us. Buildings and barracks spread on and on. Outside one building, half covered by a brown tarpaulin, was a stack about five feet high and about 20 feet wide of naked dead bodies, all of them emaciated. We went on around this building and came to the central crematory. The rooms here, in order, were: 1) the office where the living and the dead were passed through and where all their clothing was stripped from them; 2) the Brausebad (shower) room, where the victims were gassed; and 3) the crematory. In the crematory were two large furnaces. Before the two furnaces were hooks and pulleys on rafters above them. Here, according to a number of Frenchmen, the SS men often hanged prisoners by the necks or by the thumbs or whatever their fancy dictated. From here the victims could watch while being whipped and tortured as their comrades were slid into the furnace. Each of these pitiful, happy, starved, hysterical men wanted to tell us his home country, his home city, and ask us news and beg for cigarets. The eyes of these men defy my powers of description. They are the eyes of men who have lived in a super-hell of horrors for many years, and are now driven half-crazy by the liberation they have prayed so hopelessly for. Again & again, in all languages, they called on God to witness their joy. Heart of Darkness. But though we were tired from the long journey, we were lured on and on and on, from building to building. What lured us was a sound which at first we had thought was the wind in the pines of Dachau. Then after a while we knew it was cheering — the sound of thousands of men cheering and cheering again. At last we came to a high wooden wall and went through the gates'. Before us stretched the great prison compound of Dachau. This must be at least one square mile in extent. In & out of this vast stretch of open compound studded with low barracks were swarming the liberated men of Dachau. I cannot pre tend to estimate the number with any exactness. But there were many thousand. These men, cheering as hard as their feeble strength would permit, tore them selves getting through the barbed wire to touch us, to talk to us. Some of them were nearly mad with joy. Here were the men of all nations whom Hitler's agents had picked out as prime opponents of Naziism; here were the very earliest Hitler haters. Here were German social democrats, Spanish survivors of the Spanish Civil War, a correspondent for the Paris Soir, who cried so hard I could not get his name. Joy in the Inferno. We went into one barracks after another. So many men were sick and possibly dying of starvation and beatings that they merely lay or leaned or sat shoulder to shoulder, too weak to do more than grin glassily. It was here that we even found some Hindus. All this time the cheering went on, and we were being forcibly mobbed by hundreds of men strong as only the half-insane can be, kissed and kissed again by men who stank like the inferno, obviously sick toward death of all kinds of illnesses. One giant Russian held me for at least 30 seconds while he kissed all over the U.S. insignia on my coat. They shouted in all languages but sometimes in American phrases; one little Pole ran beside us until he dropped flat, shouting desperately: "Hello, boys!"
1945: At 02:41 in the morning at SHAEF headquarters in Reims, France, the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies. The surrender would go into effect on the following day, May 8, 1945 which would mean the end of the Holocaust.
1945(24th of Iyar, 5705): Hungarian novelist Andor Endre Gelleri, age 38, dies at the Mauthausen, Austria, slave-labor camp two days after liberation.
1946: Birthdate of English author Michael Rosen.
1950: This week the Israeli government will be sending its formal reply to the United Nations concerning “the Palestine Conciliations Commission’s proposal for peace negotiations.” Israel is willing to send delegates to a meeting that is held without pre-conditions while the Arab states have announced that they will only come if the “return of Palestine refugees is the first item on the agenda.”
1952: A cheering crowd of 5,000 greeted Haifa’s Mayor Abba Khoushy and New York’s Mayor Impellitteri at official ceremonies at City Hall. Speakers at City Hall and a luncheon that followed at the Waldorf-Astoria “emphasized Israel’s devotion to democratic concepts and the need to consolidate the nation’s economic position as a bulwark of democracy in the Middle East.”
1958: TodayIsraeli Prime Minister DavidBenGurion rejected a request by B’nai Brith that Ze’ev Jabotinsky be reinterred in Israel explaining in a letter written B’nai Brith Vice President, Joseph Lamm, that"Israel does not need dead Jews, but living Jews, and I see no blessing in multiplying graves in Israel." Could Ben Gurion’s refusal to grant what was a wish contained in Jabotinsky’s last will and testament been nothing more than a measure of revenge exacted against the Revisionist leader whose followers would become the Irgun. With the approval of Levi Eshkol, Jabotinsky and his wife were finally laid to rest in Jerusalem at Herzl Cemetery in 1964.
1960: Los Angeles Dodger Catcher Norm Sherry hits an 11th inning homerun to give his brother, Pitcher Larry Sherry, a 3 to 2 victory over the Phillies. At the time, the Sherry brothers were the first and only Jewish battery (pitcher and catcher) in major league baseball. From 1959 to 1962 the Dodgers had three Jewish players on their roster (the other was Sandy Koufax) which some felt made them the "Jewish" baseball team.
1960(10th of Iyar, 5720): Seventy-six year old Charles Edward Sebag-Montefiore passed away.
1963(13th of Iyar, 5723):Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-American engineer and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics passed away.
1964:Birthdate of Elliot Perlmanan Australianauthorand barrister.
1968: Sixty-seven year old English actress Olga Lindo, the daughter of Jewish actor Frank Lindo and his non-Jewish wife passed away today.
1968: Premiere of “Where It’s At,” a comedy directed by Garson Kanin co-starring Don Rickles.
1973(5thof Iyar, 5733): Yom HaAtzma’ut
1973: Liora Reich became the first woman to win the International Bible Quiz
1973: Carl Bernstein shares in the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Watergate Scandal.
1973: Maxine Kumin won the Pulitzer Prize for her volume of poetry entitledUp Country: Poems of New England.
1978(30th of Nisan, 5738): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1978: “Stamps” by Samuel Tower published today described Israel’s philatelic offers in honor of her 30thanniversary including the issuance of five stamps honoring “five heroes of the Israeli Underground Movement including Abraham Stern, Yitzhak Sadeh, David Raziel, Dr. Moshe Sneh and Eliyahu Golomb
1981: Jewish Heritage Week comes to an end.
1981(3rd of Iyar, 5741): Yom HaAtzma’ut
1984(5th of Iyar, 5744): Yom HaAtzma’ut
1984(5th of Iyar, 5744): Painter and art director Marvin Israel passed away today.
1985:”Memory of the Camps,” a documentary dealing with “Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps” was broadcast during season three of “Frontline.”
1986: John Corry reviewed “The Precious Legacy of Czech Jews” a film directed by Dan Wiessman and co-produced by Weissman and Nelson E. Breen.
1986: Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s “La Cage aux Folles” had its West End premiere at the London Palladium today with the same creative team as the Broadway production.
1992: The Chicago Sun Times reports that Eddie Schwartz is leaving WGN for WLUP.
1994(27th of Iyar, 5754): Seventy-three year old Aharon "Aharale" Rabinovich Yariv passed away. The Moscow native made Aliyah at the age of 15 and then pursued a career in the military and politics that included service in the Knesset.
1994(27th of Iyar, 5754):Clement Greenberg, the most famous American art critic since Bernard Berenson who was born in 1909 to a Yiddish-speaking socialist family and was brought up in Brooklyn and the Bronx passed away today. (As reported by Raymond Hernandez)
1994(27th of Iyar, 5754): Haim Bar Lev, the IDF's Chief of General Staff from 1968 to 1971, passed away. Bar Lev played a key role in the Yom Kippur., He came out of retirement and served as the Chief of the Southern Command at the request of Prime Minister Meir. He provided the steadying influence and keen perception that was necessary to halt the Egyptian advance and snatch victory from the apparent jaws of defeat.(As reported by Joseph Finkleston)
2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including“The Human Stain” by Philip Roth and the recently published paperback edition of “A Journey to the End of the Millennium: A Novel of the Middle Ages” A. B. Yehoshua’s novel about a North African Jewish merchant “who travels to Europe with his two wives and his Muslim partner in the year 999 explores the gaps between Jews and Christians, Jews and Muslims and men and women.”
2000: Bruce Fleisher won The Home Depot Invitational.
2001: Dalia Rabin-Pelossof joined “One Israel” which later became Labor Meimad.”
2001: IDF naval commandos captured the Santorini, a fishing boat used for smuggling weapons into Gaza that included Katyusha rocket launchers, surface-to-air (SAM-7) anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
2002: Israeli Prime Minister met with President George Bush at the White House.
2002: Psychologist Carol Gilligan published "The Birth of Pleasure"
2002(25thof Iyar, 5762): Hamas claimed responsibility for today’s bombing at Rishon LeZion where 15 people were killed and another 55 were wounded.
2003(5thof Iyar, 5763): Yom HaAtzma’ut
2003: In Tel Aviv, Mike’s Place re-opened after suffering a suicide bombing attack on April 30.
2006: Jacobo Kaufman delivered a major address at the "Colloquium in Memory of Antonio José da Silva (the Jew)", on the occasion of this great Portuguese playwright´s 300th anniversary celebration at Bar Ilan University. The event was supported by both Portugal and Brazil whose ambassadors attended the event.
2006: Israel disappeared…from the news and opinion sections of the New York Times. In one of those rare Sundays, the Jewish state was not a subject of any news stories in the Times.
2006: TheNew York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Everyman” by Phillip Roth and “The Accidental Empire:Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977” byGershom Gorenberg.
2006: The World Zionist Organization announce the 2006 winners of the third annual Herzl Award, initiated by the Department for Zionist Activities to commemorate the Centenary of Herzl's passing. The winners are Owen Kevin Futeran, South Africa, Andrea Uzan, Denmark, Ted Ekeroth, Sweden, Adrian Gluck, Argentina, Moises Mitrani, Mexico, Stanislav Skibinski, Germany, Nathan Feldman, Mexico, Phil Koningham, New Zealand and StephenRosenthal, United Kingdom
2006: In Los Angeles, a community-wide celebration of Israel’s 58th Independence ‘day is kicked off by the LA County Sheriff Department Golden Stars Skydiving team floating into Woodley Park while the Tampa Jewish Community Center brings Israel to downtown Tampa for the first time with independence day activities featuring Israeli vendors, an Israeli rock band and Israeli cuisine.
2007: Time Magazine featured an article entitled “The End of a Zionist Idyll.” The article reported on the Israeli reaction Degania’s announcement that it was giving up its socialist ideals and going private. In the future, members could own homes and earn salaries based on how hard they worked. Degania was the first Kibbutz to be founded during the Second Aliyah. It was the paradigm for the new Jew and the new Jewish way of life. This announcement represents the closing of a chapter in Jewish and Israeli history.
2007: Newsweek Magazine featured a review of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.
2007(19th of Iyyar, 5767): Donald Ginsberg a physicist who became a leading expert on the production and functioning of superconductors passed away at the age of 73 in Urbana, Illinois.
2008(2nd of Iyar, 5768): Yom Hazikaron – Israel Remembrance Day. A two-minute memorial siren sounds at 11 a.m. Wednesday, followed by official ceremonies at 43 military cemeteries. The Defense Ministry said that since 1860, when the first Jewish settlers began establishing Jewish neighborhoods outside the Jerusalem city walls, 22,437 men and women have been killed in defense of the Land of Israel. Sixteen Israeli civilians were killed in terrorist attacks in the first four months of the year, bringing the total of civilian terror-related deaths to 1,634 since the creation of the state 60 years ago. Remembrance Day draws to a close Wednesday night at 8 p.m. with the traditional torch-lighting ceremony at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl marking the sudden transition from sadness to joy with the start of Israel's 60th Independence Day.
2008:As Israel celebrates its 60thanniversary, the population nears 7.3 million with 76% of the population being JewishOn the eve of its independence day, Israel's population numbers 7,282,000, 75.5 percent of which is Jewish, and 20.1 percent Arab, Central Bureau of Statistics show. The remaining 4.4 percent is made up largely of immigrants and their children who are not registered as Jews in the Interior Ministry's population rolls. By 2030, the projected population will be some 10,000,000.Over the past year, 156,400 babies were born in Israel. At present, some 69 percent of the Jewish population is made up of native-born Israelis, as opposed to only 35 percent in 1948. About 18,000 people immigrated to Israel over the past year. The figure for total population does not include foreign nationals in Israel, whose number, in 1996, was found to be 186,000.
2008: Elie Wiesel is the guest speaker at a fund raising dinner designed to benefit the new Padres Katz Special Education campus of Aleh, an organization dedicated to helping disabled children in Israel.
2008: Release date for “Waves of Freedom,” a film that “is a reminder of the American Jewish sailors who braved British soldiers and the high seas to transport Holocaust survivors and refugees from Europe to the shores of prestate Palestine.”
2009:Ruth Reichl, a former restaurant critic and now the editor-in-chief of Gourmetmagazine, discusses and signs “Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way” at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.
2009: The Jacob’s ladder Spring Festival opens.
2009: After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive by Lisa Cohen was published by Grand Central Publishing. A native of Manitoba, Cohen is a graduate of the University Pennsylvania who has made a career in electronic journalism with stints at ABC and CBS news.
2010: In Tel Aviv, the three-day Good Life Festival is scheduled to come to an end.
2010(23rdof Iyar, 5770):Bernard Schoenbaum, who in hundreds of cartoons in The New Yorker needled the relatively affluent, the media-conscious, the irony-besotted and the socially competitive — in other words, the readers of The New Yorker passed away today at the age of 89. (As reported by Bruce Weber)
2010: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is schedule to host a Potluck Dinner before Friday Night Services where Samuel Horowitz of the Jewish Federation is scheduled to be the guest speaker.
2011: In Potomac, MD, Congregation B’Nai Tzedek is scheduled to hosts its Spring Gala which will feature The “Second City” from Chicago.
2011:Bruce Raynor is scheduled to resign as president of Workers United and as executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union.
2011: “The Matchmaker” is scheduled to be shown at the Israel Film Festival.
2011: The Traditional Egalitarian Minyan at Temple Judah is scheduled to host its annual “Mother’s Day Shabbat” complete with flowers for the women and a Kiddush prepared and served by the "men of the minyan."
2012:Israeli pianist Roman Rabinovich, Israeli violinist Itamar Zorman and the Jupiter musicians will perform are scheduled to perform at the Good Shepherd Church in New York City.
2012: James Carroll, author of Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews is scheduled to deliver an address entitled “The Church and the Jews: A Personal Journey and Assessment” as part of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation Spring Speaker Series.
2012: Jews and the Left, a two day conference sponsored by theYIVO Institute for Jewish Research with American Jewish Historical Society, is scheduled to come to an end.
2012: Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is scheduled to be among the community leaders attending this evening’s Jewish American Heritage Month Celebration at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.
2013:Pamela Weisberger (President and Research Coordinator, Gesher Galicia) is scheduled to speak on “Unique & Unusual Resources in Galician Genealogy” at the Weiner Library in London.
2013: “Street Labs” an outdoor exhibition featuring Israel’s top Sci-Tech students presenting their award winning inventions is scheduled to play at Union Square Park.
2013: San Jose City Hall is scheduled to celebrate the history of Jewish contributions to American culture and the Jewish American heritage that has helped shape the San Jose community with the raising of the Israeli flag at City Hall followed by a kosher lunch.
2013: According to Image Books, On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family and the Church in the 21st Century, will be available today in the United States and Canada. “The book is the transcript of wide-ranging conversations between then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina and Rabbi Abraham Skorka, the rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary. Topics include God, atheism, abortion, the Holocaust, same-sex marriage, fundamentalism and globalization. Francis previously has published 11 books, all in Spanish. Francis, who was elected pope last week, has referred to Skorka as his “brother and friend.” As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he attended services at Skorka’s synagogue and also arranged for Skorka to receive an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Argentina. The two also shared billing on an Argentinian TV talk show on religious issues.” (As reported by JTA)
2013:Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ordered a freeze in tenders for West Bank settlement construction amid a US push to renew the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Army Radio reported today.
2013: Seventy years ago the Jewish people could not protect itself and had to plead for others to “save them.” Today that is no longer the case, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said today, just days after allegations that Israeli war planes attacked weapons depots near Damascus.
2013: Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky presented his proposal on the Women of the Wall to the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women today
2014: The Center for Jewish History and American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present “Native Genius,” “a night of entertainment celebrating the history of the Jewish contributions to American Theatre from 1800-1860.
2014: President Obama “will be honored by Stephen Spielberg as Ambassador for Humanity at the USC Shoah Foundation’s 20th anniversary gala event” which is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles today.
2014: “Over the Ocean,” a film about a Canadian family contemplating Aliyah is scheduled to shown at the Israel Film Festival sponsored by Agudas Achim in Coralville, Iowa.
2014: In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month “A Call to Serve: Florida Jews and the U.S. Military is scheduled to be shown in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
2014: “Rock the Casbah” is scheduled to be shown at The National Center for Jewish Film’s 17th Annual Film Festival.
2014: The 16th annual Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
2014: Mark Lewis is scheduled to discuss his prizewinning book, The Birth of the New Justice, a history of international criminal courts and new international criminal laws from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Cold War at The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London.