July 21
285: Diocletian appoints Maximian as Caesar, co-ruler. This was part of an attempt to shore up the imperial authority. In another such step, Diocletian “ordered all the people …to accept his divinity and offer sacrifices to him. Fortunately for the Jewish people, they were excluded from this decree…” According to at least one source, “Diocletian’s regime was comparatively favorable to the Jewish people” which may not be saying all that much when you consider the behavior of most Roman rulers.
1263: The “Barcelona Disputation” – a debate between Pablo Christiani, “a converted Jew” and Moses ben Nachman ordered by King James of Aragon continued for a second day.
1391: In Burgos, Spain, Rabbi Solomon ha-Levi, the Talmudic scholar who was the son of Rabbi Isaac ha-Levin took the name of Paul of Burgos when he converted to Catholicism today which took place following “the great massacres of Jews which had begun in June.”
1414: In Celle Ligure, Italy, Leonardo della Rovere and Luchina Monleoni gave birth to Francesco della Rovere, the future Pope Sixtus IV who reluctantly authorized the Spanish Inquisition and allowed Jews and Marranos to settle in the Papal Domain in what some as an act of penance caving into Ferdinand and Isabella. He rejected the notion of “blood libels” and withstood the pressure to canonize Simon of Trent.
1439 (9th of Av): Rabbi Johanan ben Mattathias Treves, Chief Rabbi of France passed away ten years after the death of his brother Joseph
1535: The Spaniards sacked Tunis and destroyed the Jewish community in the process.
1588: The English “fleet engaged he Spanish Armada off Plymouth near the Eddystone Rocks” in the first day of combat on which would hang the outcome of the Inquisition coming to the Netherlands and the British Isles.
1718(27thof Tammuz, 5473): Shabbethai ben Joseph Bass who was born at Kalisz 1641 and who was the father of Jewish bibliography, and author of the Sifsei Chachamim supercommentary on Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch passed away.
1733: A “group of 42 Jews who had sailed from London aboard the William and Sarah” arrived in Savannah today, “months after the colony's founding by James Oglethorpe.” “Most of them were Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who had fled to England a decade earlier to escape the Spanish Inquisition. Many of them had been members of the Bevis Marks Synagogue and would be founders of Mickva Israel, Georgia’s oldest Jewish congregation.
1738(15thof Av, 5498): Five year old Aaron Franks, the New York born son of Jacob Franks passed away today.
1773: Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal, a native of Hebron sailed to Suriname today from the British colonies in North America where his visit had made him the first rabbi to spend time in what is now the United States.
1774: The Russo-Turkish War came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca marking the defeat of the Ottomans. The end of hostilities provided Sultan Abdul Hamid I with the opportunity to reassert his authority over parts of empire that were slipping away. He attacked Dhaher al-Omar who had taken control of an area that coincided with modern day northern Israel and had invited Jewish merchants to pursue their commercial ventures under his protection. He also besieged the port of Acre.
1779(9thof Av, 5539): Tish’a B’Av observed on the same day, that, during the Revolutionary War, General George Washington wrote to John Jay describing the circumstances around the American victory at Stoney Point, NY which was a rare moment of triumph the colonists .
1794: Birthdate of Philadelphia native Jonah Barnett, the son of Nathan Barnett.
1796: Nathan Lazarus married Elizabeth “Betsy” Levy at the Great Synagogue today.
1798: During his ill-fated campaign in the eastern Mediterranean, including Palestine, Napoleon scored a major victory in “The Battle of the Pyramids” which effectively put an end to the Mamluk control of Egypt which had lasted for almost seven hundred years.
1799(18thof Tammuz, 5559): Tzom Tammuz observed for the last time in the 18thcentury.
1816: Birthdate of Israel Beer Josaphat who converted in 1844 and changed his name to Paul Julius Retuer, the name under which he founded what would become Reuter’s news agency in 1849. He used carrier pigeons to carry financial news to those parts of Germany, France and Belgium not yet served by telegraph. He opened his own telegraph service in England where he lived the rest of his life and died in 1899. He converted for the same reason so many other German and Austrian Jews did – it was the only way to advance in the worlds of commerce and art.
1820: .A small wooden building which had been erected at the northeast corner of Liberty and Whitaker streets Savannah was consecrated by members of Mikveh Israel. This was the first Jewish house of worship to be built in the State of Georgia. Jacob De La Motta delivered the consecration address. A native of Savannah he graduated from the U of Pennsylvania Medical School and served as a surgeon in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812. He practiced in New York City for a while but returned to the city of his birth where he became a leader in the medical and Jewish communities.
1821: In Plymouth, England Samuel and Elizabeth “Betsey” Hyman gave birth to Lewis Hyman
1825: Birthdate of Matthew Práxedes Sagasta the Spanish political who served as President of the Council of Ministers and who asserted the fact that “article 1 of the Constitution of Spain is the most decisive revocation of the edict of banishment against the Jews in the year 1492.”
1830: In Rotterdam Salomon Isaac Brilgave and Mietje Maria Benedictus birth to Isaac Bril.
1831: As Belgium gains its independence from the Netherlands Leopold I of Belgium is inaugurated first king of the Belgians. Upon gaining its independence in 1831, the newly established Belgium parliamentary regime lost little time in recognizing Judaism as an official religious denomination (together with Catholicism, Protestantism, later Greek and Russian Orthodox Christianity and Islam).
1833: Birthdate of August, (Anshel) Bondi. “The Austrian native was the son of Jews who wanted him to have both a religious and a secular education. Caught up as a participant in the failed liberal revolution of 1848, the Bondi family fled to New Orleans and settled in St. Louis, Missouri. Young Bondi encountered, first hand, the horrors of slavery and was deeply disgusted. In 1855 a New York Tribune editorial urged freedom- loving Americans to "hurry out to Kansas to help save the state from the curse of slavery." Bondi responded immediately. He moved to Kansas and along with two other Jews, Theodore Weiner from Poland and Jacob Benjamin from Bohemia established a trading post in Ossa-watomie. Their abolitionist sentiments very soon brought pro-slavery terrorists upon them. Their cabin was burned, their livestock stolen. Their trading post was destroyed in the presence of Federal troops who did nothing. The three courageous Jews joined a rabid local abolitionist, to defend their rights as citizens and to help rid the horror of slavery from Kansas. The Jews joined the Kansas Regulars under the leadership of John Brown. In a famous battle between the Regulars and the pro-slavery forces at Black Jack Creek, with the bullets whistling viciously above their heads, 23 year old Bondi turned to his 57 year old friend Weiner and asked in Yiddish – "Nu, was meinen Sie jetzt?" (Well, what do you think of this now?) He answered, 'Was soll ich meinen? Sof odem moves' (What should I think? Man's life ends in death). Kansas joined the union as a Free State. Bondi married Henrietta Einstein of Louisville, Kentucky in 1860. Their home became a way station for the Underground Railroad smuggling slaves to the North and freedom. The Civil War began in 1861, Bondi enlisted in the Union army encouraged by the words of his mother. He later wrote in his autobiography "as a Jew I am obliged to protect institutions that guarantee freedom for all faiths." August Bondi died in 1907, a respected judge and member of his Kansas community.”
1837: Following a grant by the Imperial Majesty, the Magistrate of Pilsen announced that ban on Jews buying a house “or a piece of land in the city or the suburbs” had been rescinded in the case of David Leopold Levit which allowed him to “buy and own houses No. 23 in the city and No. 15 in the suburb of Pilsen for the production of leather for which he has a nationwide license” “on the condition that, should this production be stopped or reduced, he is obliged to bring one or both houses back into the ownership of suitable persons.(i.e. Christians)
1838: Rabbi Geiger was invited to preach at Breslau today – an invitation which Rabbi Solomon Tiktin was so opposed to that he went to the local police in an attempt to prevent Geiger from speaking.
1839(10thof Av, 5559): Tish’a B’Av observed on the birthdate of Cleveland native Oliver Hazard the millionaire whose fortune came from Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company whose many bequests included on the Jewish Orphan Asylum.
1841: In Holstein, German, Dr. Marcus Cohen and his wife gave birth to Minna Cohen who gained fame at the poetess Minna Cohen Kleeberg whose work included ‘Ein Lied vom Salz” (A lyric about salt), a plea for the removal of the tax on salt in Prussia.’
1842: Edward Salamon and Henrietta Levien gave birth to Harriett Ann, the eldest of their seven children.
1846(27thof Tammuz, 5606): Eighty-three year old Benedict (Baruch) Schott who served as tutor in the home of composer Giacomo Meyerbeer before pursuing a career at the long-serving director of the Jacobsonschule in Seesen passed away today.
1846: In Battenfeld, Germany, Samuel and Johanna Langsdorf gave birth to Sigmund Langsdorf, the “founder and owner of S. Langsdorft & Co, manufacturers of ivory goods and novelties and husband of the former Fannie Lederer whose motto for success was “If a man wants a business to take care of him, he must take care of his business.”
1847(8thof Av, 5607): Erev Tish’a B’Av
1847: In Hamburg, jurist Isaac Wolffson and his wife gave birth to Albert Wolffson who followed in his father’s footsteps while also developing a career in politics.
1848: Birthdate of French historian Gustave Bloch, the father of historian Marc Bloch the co-founder of École des Annales who was murdered by the Gestapo.
1851: David Salomons who had been elected to Parliament on June 28 and who had been denied the right to take his seat because, as Jew, he could not take the oath of office, returned to the House of Commons to take part in the debate on the matter. In the debate that followed, Salomons defended his presence on grounds of having been elected by a large majority, but was eventually removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and fined £500 for having voted illegally in three divisions of the House.
1853(15thof Tammuz, 5613): Less than three months before her 70th birthday, Rinah Cohen the daughter of Moses Cohen and Judith De Lyon passed away today in her hometown of Charleston, SC.
1853: Birthdate of Hungarian native and University of Budapest educated journalist and editor Hugo Klein who moved to Vienna in 1883 where he became editor of the "Schöne Blaue Donau."
1854: In London, Marian and Adam Spielman gave birth to Sir Isidore Spielman, a Warden of the New West End Synagogue, founder and Secretary of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition and President of the Jewish Historical Society of England who also served Secretary and Director of Fine Art Committees including those for the Paris exhibition in Paris and the Exhibition of Early Flemish Art in Bruges and was the husband of Emily Sebag-Montefiore.
1856: In Copenhagen, Charles Kann and Amalia gave birth to Ellen Kann
1857: During a debate tonight in the House of Lords on the question of "Jewish disabilities,” Lord Campbell said that a revolution would take place if the Commons acted independently of the Lords in the matter by omitting from their oath the objectionable sentence
1857: This evening, Lord John Russell renewed his motion to bring in a bill for the admission of Jews into Parliament. Following an animated debated the motion carried by a vote of 246 to 154.
1860: Abraham Lincoln responded to a letter from Abraham Jonas today denying that he had not never attended any meetings at the Known-Nothing lodges in Quincey Illinois.
1861: During the Civil War, the Confederates defeated the Union at the first Battle of Bull Run in the first major combat for the Cameron Dragoons, a regiment from Pennsylvania led by Colonel Max Friedman which contained a large number of Jews from Philadelphia. In response to an inquiry written 30 years after the battle Oliver O. Howard, a Major General in the United States Army reported that a Jewish Aid-de Camp who served with him during the battle was “one of the bravest and the best; he is now a distinguished officer of the army, a man of the highest scientific attainment.” He also wrote that he could not release the man’s name without his permission.
1861: Tonight following the Battle of Bull Run, Colonel Max Einstein, commander of the 27thPennsylvania Regiment, “returned to the field of battle and brought off six pieces of artillery” while his regiment “captured a rebel battery and eighteen horses.”
1864(17thof Tammuz, 5624): Tzom Tammuz observed as General John Bell Hood, in command of the Confederate forces gave orders for a flank attack that he mistakenly believed would defeat Sherman’s Union Army, which contained several Jewish soldiers, during the climactic battle for Atlanta, GA.
1866: In Cincinnati, OH, Emily May and Benjamin Wise gave birth University of Cincinnati and Harvard graduate Max B. May, a “member of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College” and the co-author of Fifty Years’ History of the Plum Street Temple.
1867(18thof Tammuz, 5627): Tzom Tammuz observed as the crisis over the nature of re-construction which pitted President Andrew Johnson against his fellow Republicans in Congress was about to come to a head.
1869: Albert Martin Wolffson was admitted to the bar in Hamburg today.
1871: Helen Levy and George Faudel-Phillips gave birth to Benjamin Samuel Faudel-Phillips.
1874: Today’s “Foreign Notes” column reported that “Sir Moses Montefiore” who will celebrate his 90th birthday this October 24, “has been presented with the freedom of the Fishmongers’ Company in recognition of his philanthropic efforts on behalf of the oppressed Jewish in various parts of the world. [Editor’s note – The Fishmongers’ Company dates back to the 12th century and was guild for those who sold fish in London. By the 19th century the company administered a various “charities and trusts” for the underprivileged classes of the UK. This would account for their bestowing an honor on Sir Moses.]
1873(23rd of Tammuz, 5633): Sir David Salomons, 1st Baronet, a leading figure in the 19th century struggle for Jewish emancipation in the United Kingdom passed away. . He was the first Jewish Sheriff of the City of London and Lord Mayor of London, and one of the first two Jewish people to serve in the British House of Commons.
1876(29thof Tammuz, 5636): Sixty-seven-year-old Levy I. Moses, Columbia, SC born son of Rebecca Phillips and Isaiah Moses, the husband of Adeline Moses whom he married at Charleston in 1832 with whom he had ten children.
1876(29thof Tammuz, 5636): Samuel B.H. Judah, the New York born son of Benjamin S. Judah an attorney and author whose works included the plays “The Mountain of Torrent “ and “A Tale of Lexington” and a novel, The Buccaneers, a Romance of Our Own County, passed away today.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/judah-samuel-benjamin-helbert
https://www.amazon.com/mountain-torrent-melo-drama-interspersed-choruses/dp/B00088F49Q
1877: In a letter to the New York Times, Edgar M. Johnson a prominent lawyer from Cincinnati took issue with claims that he had concealed the fact the fact that he was Jewish when he was offered accommodations at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs. He reiterated the fact that Mr. Wilkinson, who was employed by Judge Hilton was well aware of the fact as is everybody else. Whether he is what Hilton calls “a Seligman Jew” is of little consequence since Johnson has no desire to stay at place where Hilton is “the tavern keeper.” Johnson closed by saying that he and his family had enjoyed previous trips to Saratoga Springs where nobody was will “to reject Jew money” but that these would be his last words on any subject related to Hilton.
1877: In Vienna, 22 year old Ida (Kuhn) Cohen and Eduard Cohen gave birth to Emilie (Mimi) Borchardt
1878: It was reported today that there has been a serious outbreak of violence between the Jews and Roman Catholics living in Kalisch, a major city in Poland (which was part of the Russian Empire). The origins of the violence can be found in the government’s ban on the Jewish practice of enclosing their houses “with a wire fence to indicate that no one might pass out or in” during the Sabbath. The Jews blamed the Roman Catholics for the government’s decision. When the Roman Catholics blocked every street corner with altars during their procession on Corpus Christi Day, the Jews reportedly attacked one of the altars which was the excuse of a Catholic attack that destroyed the synagogue and forced the Jews to seek refuge in their own homes. So far twelve people were reported to have been killed during the violence. [Jews had been living in Kalisz (the Polish spelling) since the 12thcentury. The synagogue that was destroyed dated back to the 14th century. Jews played an active role in the economy of the community and by the start of WW II they accounted for about 30% of the population. Most the 20,000 Jews did not survive the war and the town, like so much of Poland, has memories of Jews but no Jewish people.)
1878: A. Benisch, ended his editorship of the Jewish Chronicle which “he bequeathed to the Anglo-Jewish Association which then sold the proprietary rights to Sydney M. Samuel, Israel Davis and Asher I. Myers” who “was the managing editor till his death in 1902.”
1879(1st of Av, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Av
1879: In Cincinnati Lewis Braham and Hellen Phillips gave birth to Sadie Braham, the wife of David Lefkowitz the Dallas rabbi who bravely stood up to the Ku Klux Klan and with whom she four children – Lewis, Harry, Helen and David, Jr. who followed his father into the rabbinate
1880: Birthdate of Raphael Abramovitch, the Menshevik leader who was forced to flee Russia because of Stalin and forced to flee to the United States in 1940 because of the rise of Hitler.
1880: Birthdate of theLatvian native Raphael R. Abramovtich, the leader of the Mensheviks and life-long opponent of Stalin, a co-founder of the Union for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, “the editor of the Yiddish encyclopedia Jewish People, Past and Present” and a feature writer for The Jewish Daily Forward who was the husband of “the former Rosa Segal” and the father of Dr. Lia Andler and Mark Abramovich, “an electrical engineer” who “disappeared without a trace” while fighting with the International Brigade against Franco after he had reportedly been kidnapped by Bolshevists who were the political enemies of his father.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Abramovich_Rafail
1880: The second free excursion sponsored by the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children will set sail on the East River this morning. If the society can find more funds, these trips will continue on a weekly basis for the rest of the summer.
1880: It was reported today that two Postmasters named Barr and Johnson and their Jewish accomplice named Pearlstine are being held by federal authorities in South Carolina on charges of improper use of stamps and making false returns of canceled stamps to increase their pay. [Why Pearlstein was identified as Jew and the religion of the others was not mentioned is a mystery.]
1881: It was reported today that King Alfonso has invited Russian Jews to settle in Spain, a move that would improve conditions “by bringing a money making class into a country in dire need of it”
1882: During the Freight Handler’s Strike, Italian and Russian Jewish immigrants returned to the docks looking for work after the strikers stopped providing them with food and expense money as they had promised earlier. To complicate matters, the ranks of the strikers also included Russian and Polish Jews who had come to the country earlier in the decade.
1882: In Prague, Marcus and Emile Friend gave birth to Hugo Morris Friend, the University of Chicago winner of the Big Ten Long Jump Championship and Illinois jurist who presided over the case surrounding the Black Sox Scandal and obscenity case surrounding the showing the film “The Miracle” and who was the husband of Sadie Cohen, the father of Marian Friend and the father-in-law of Jay Pritzker.
1883: Birthdate of New York native and Columbia trained attorney Harry Charles Adams, the husband of Cora Adams and father of Sylvia and Robert S. Adams who was a member of “Temple Emanu-El of Yonkers.”
1884: A review of T.K. Cheyne’s The Book of Psalms described the authors attempt to present this section of the Bible as literature as well as “holy writ.” For him, the Psalms should be viewed as literature that has survived “under a Jewish phase.”
1885(9thof Av, 5645): Tish’a B’Av
1885: Birthdate of New York native and Columbia trained pathologist Dr. Max Lederer, the “director of laboratories at Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn from 1918 until 1943 and the discoverer of “a blood disease known as Lederer’s Anemia” who was the husband of Martha Luntz Lederer with whom he had two children -- Theodore and Leona.
1885: In Charlottesville, VA, Louise Fuller Johnson and John Henry Wheeler gave birth to Francis Parkinson Wheeler, later known as Frances Parkinson Keyes, the novelist whose works included “occasional patches of the pre-World War II fashionable anti-Semitism in her Jewish characters.”
1886: The first free excursion of the ear for poor Jewish moths and their children sponsored by the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children will set sail this morning.
1886: The SS State of Georgia arrived at Castle Garden from Glasgow, Scotland, carrying 40 Russian Jewish refugees.
1886: “A week of General Kissing” published today described the Russian custom of kissing people as a greeting during Easter week. Last year when the Czar came out of his room the first person whom he saw was the guard at his door who remained silent when the Russian ruler greeted him “Christ is risen.” The Czar found out that the guard was Jewish which accounted for his lack of response. While the Czar respected his honesty, Jews no longer serve as guards at his palace.
1887: Louis Keptlovwitch, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, was scheduled to face the Grand Jury on charges of bigamy. [This is a real life example of letters that would appear in the Forwards about men who “forgot” about the family’s they left behind when they arrived in the New World.]
1887: “Appeals for Suffering Hebrews” published today described the effects of the catastrophic effects of the fire that swept through “the little Jewish town of Botuschania, Romania.” A committee of prominent American Jews led by Benjamin Peixotto, has been formed to collect funds to relieve the suffering. Contributions will forward to Romania by Jesse Seligman who has agreed to serve as the Treasurer of the Relief Fund.
1887: “Two Ladies At Odds” published today described a conflict between Mrs. Henrietta Loeser, President of the Henrietta Verein, a Jewish charitable organization, and Mrs. Betty Michaelis, the society’s Secretary. A shouting match devolved into a physical confrontation when the secretary threw the society’s seal and record books at the president. Loeser than tried to have Micahelis removed from the organization. Mrs. Micahelis has sought a writ of mandamus so that she can gain readmission to the society.
1888: Police had to be called out to quell a riot in Drohobycz today when petroleum miners attacked the town’s Jews and trashed the local synagogue.
1888: A company of 13 police officers was hard pressed to deal with the huge throng that gathered this afternoon at the Norfolk Street Synagogue to hear the inaugural sermon of Rabbi Jacob Joseph. The sanctuary, which was built to hold 1,000, was filled with more than 1,500 people. The rabbi spoke for an hour concluding with a prayer that the Lord would guide and help the Jews in America to spread his light and cause Israel to become a blessing to this great land of freedom and among the people of the United States.
1889: “Hebrews Not Wanted,” published today described the decision of “Messrs. Cable and Breen , the lessees of the Brighton Beach at Coney Island” to follow the practice adopted by Judge Hilton at his Saratoga Hotel and ban all members of the “Hebrew Race” as guests. Hebrews had been coming to the hotel in ever increasing numbers. While they freely spent their money, there were not enough rooms available for Gentile guests. Mr. Breen told the Times “that the public sentiment might be against such measures, but it was not so among Gentile patrons.” The hotel was taking on the appearance of a “Jewish settlement” despite the best efforts of management to make Gentiles feel welcome. Breen described it as a business decision. “It was self-preservation and the interests of our large number of other guests that caused us to take this step.”
1890: “Jews in Russia” published today, relied on information that first appeared in the London Daily News described the new regulations that are being applied to Jews living under the Czar. These include a requirement that when Jewish students complete their university studies, they must return “to their native towns.” The parents of students who fail to do so and evade the authorities will be punished in their place.
1890(4thof Av, 5650): Seventy-four year old Moritz Duschak, the native of Moravia who served as a rabbi Cracow passed away today in Vienna having “spent his last days in neglect and disappointment.”
1891: The cloakmakers, most of whom were Polish and Russian Jews, were joined by the cutters and pressers in their strike again Oppenheim & Collins.
1891 A tribute written today in honor of Nathan Marcus and Hermann Adler said that they “gave their name”, “to a regime, to an era… The system of Rabbinate which had long come to be known as ‘Adlerism’, the keynote of which was the close consolidation of religious government and the concentration of ecclesiastical control… If, therefore, ‘Adlerism’ had its faults and its drawbacks… it has formed a basis on which can now be safely laid a system more fitted to Anglo-Jewry as it is” (As reported by Rabbi Raymond Apple, senior rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney)
1891: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Solon and Elizabeth Johnson Rosentiel gave birth to Lewis Solon Rosentiel the founder of Schenley Industries, the New York based liquor company
1891: The weekly excursion sponsored by the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children is scheduled to take place today.
1891: Birthdate of Lasar Segall, the son of Vilnius Torah scribe who settled in Brazil in the 1920’s where he gained fame as a “painter, engraver and sculptor.”
http://artuk.org/discover/artists/segall-lasar-18911957
https://moma.org/collection_ge/artist.php?artist_id=5317
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Lasar_Segall
1891: General James R. O’Beirne, who was “in charge of the immigrants at Ellis Island” wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury recommending that the Jewish immigrants being held at the Barge Office be allowed to land’ since “they are desirable immigrants” who have skills “and are willing to work if they get a chance.”
1892: During the Homestead Steel Strike anarchist Alexander Berkman went to the office of Henry Clay Frick the chairman of Carnegie Steel Company with the intention of assassinating him; a an attempt that was thwarted because the secretary said Frick was too busy to see him.
1892: Abraham Oswald Swift the son of Harris and Sarah Swift, born Abraham Asher ben Joshua in Russia in 1869, was buried today at the Deane Road Cemetery in London
1893: The Marshall and three men working with him returned to the apartment of Sarah Goldstein, a widow living at 181 Orchard Street and executed the order of the court by putting the widow, her six sick children and her furniture on the sidewalk. Neighbors were afraid to help because the children were sick with measles.
1893: Birthdate of Breslau native Eugen Schüfftan the Academy Award winning cinematographer who invented “the Schüfftan process, a special effects technique that employed mirrors to insert actors into miniature sets.”
1893: Policemen are looking for other victims of gang of Russian Jewish thieves who lure other Russian Jews to their room at 81 Chrystie Street where they torture and rob the unsuspecting immigrants.
1894: “Old Boston Booksellers” published today described the Boston antiquarian book trade of the 1850’s which was dominated by two firms one of which was Burnham Brothers, a firm owned by Theodore, Frederick and Lafayette Burnham, who were either Jewish or “of Jewish origins.”
1895: The Rhine Gazette announced that the electors of Minden are preparing to hold a meeting demanding the resignation of the Baron von Hammerstein, the disgraced former editor of the Kreuz Zeitung. Ironically, the Baron who “was a strong anti-Semite and leader of the Jew baiters” was brought to financial ruin by “his enormous expenditures” with which he lavished his Jewish mistress with “every luxury that wealth could purchase.”
1895: Birthdate of Henry Lynn, Russian born American “film director, screenwriter and producer.”
1896: Three days after his abortive meeting with Rothschild, Herzl made the decision to organize a Zionist Congress.
1898: Bishop John H. Vincent, the founder of the Chautauqua movement is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled The Chautauqua Idea at today’s session of the Summer Assembly of the Jewish Chautauqua Society being held at Atlantic City, NJ.
1898(2nd of Av, 5658): Seventy year old Benjamin Marks “a wealthy retired merchant” passed away today at the Long Beach Hotel where he was spending the summer. A native of Berlin, he came to the United States at the age of 20 where he went to work for Brooks Brothers. Several years later he began opening a string of retail stores specializing in woolen goods. By the time he retired in 1871, he “was one of the largest, if the largest retail woolen merchants in America.”
1899: In “Jasi, Romania,” Wolf and Rosa (Kahan) Margulies” gave birth Nathan Ross Margold, the husband of Getrude Wiener who in 1901 came to the United States where he graduated CCNY and Harvard Law School, held a variety of governmental legal positions and who, as a protégé of Felix Frankfurter “wrote a 218-page report outlining a legal strategy for desegregating public schools in the South” which provided the road map for what became Brown v the Board of Education.
https://legallegacy.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/july-21-1899-birthdate-of-nathan-ross-margold/
1899: Sixty-five year old Robert Ingersoll who earned nickname “The Great Agnostic” for his views on religion passed away. While some Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El gave him credit for showing “to the world of the Church” they challenged his views on Judaism especially about Moses. But as Rabbi Silverman pointed out, Ingersoll “is not responsible for his mistakes…because he cannot read the Bible in its original language.”
1900: The uprising in Beijing known as The Boxer Rebellion began today. Among the Marines who saw action during the month long conflict was William Zion, a Jewish private from Indiana who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor.
1900: Birthdate of Washington native and advertising executive Norman Coleman Kal.
1901: In Galena, KS, Louis Denebiem who would become a successful merchant in Kansas City and his wife Jennie Denbiem gave birth to Nathanial Denebeim.
1901(5thof Av, 5661): Seventy-seven year old Bohemian textile manufacturer Isaac Mautner who had married Julia Rosenfeld in 1849 passed away today.
http://rabbimeirbaalhaneis.com/Rabbi%20Yaakov%20Shaul%20Eliashar.asp
1902: Birthdate of Norwich, CT, native David Cramer, the NYU undergraduate and Yale Law School graduate who serviced as a “city attorney and deputy municipal judge.
1902: In New York, Henry and Frances Kesslering gave birth to playwright Joseph Kesselring whose best known work, “Arsenic and Old Lace” a Hebrew version of which opened at the Habima Theatre on October 29, 2012.
1902(16thof Tammuz, 5662): Adolph Landau passed away today
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Landau_Adolph
1903: Birthdate of Roy Rothschild Neuberger the co-founder of the investment firm Neuberger Berman and recipient of the National Medal of Arts. He “was an American financier who contributed money to raise public awareness of modern art through his acquisition of pieces he deemed worthy.”
1904(9th of Av, 5664):Tish'a B'Av
1904: In Ostrovetz, Poland, a Jewish boy allegedly “threw a stone at a Polish beggar striking him on head” after which “the beggar’s brother, a factory hand fell upon a few Jews in order to avenge his brother’s injury” in what would be the first of two days communal rioting.
1904: Special memorial prayers were offered up for the third time this week to mark the passing of Theodore Herzl.
1905: In Kutne, Poland, “The Kutne Rebbe” and his wife gave birth to Isaiah Trunk the award winning author and “chief archivist of YIVO” who raised his son Gabriel with his wife Celia.
1905: In New York, Joseph Rubin, a manufacturer of straw braid and Helene Forbet Rubin, both of whom were “immigrant Polish Jews gave birth to Diana Rubin the wife of Lionel Trilling who gained fame as critic and author Diana Trilling. (As reported by Michael Norman)
1905: Eighteen year old “Razel Pechodburski, a Jewish orphan girl from Lodz” married 22 year old Lodz native Harry Miller, “a silk weaver from New York” “two hours after she was released from Ellis Island.”
1906(28th of Tammuz, 5666): Ninety-two year old Saul Jacob El-Yashar, Hahambashi of Jerusalem (Sephardi Chief Rabbi) passed away
1906: Moses Gaster, the Chief Rabbi of the English Sephardic Community and his mother gave birth to Theodor Herzl Gaster, the British born American biblical scholar who published the first English translation of the Dead Sea scrolls. His father named him after his recently deceased friend, Theodor Herzl. (As reported by Andy Wallace)
1907(10thof Av, 5667): Fast observed since the 9th of Av fell on Shabbat
1907: “Jews Barred From Juries” published reported that “a rabid outburst of anti-Semitism has just occurred in the Kingdom of Saxony, where certain district courts have excluded Jews from the juries and from the highly honorable positions of by-sitters, or Assistant Judges, who are chosen periodically from among the electorate.”
1908: Birthdate of Ft. Worth, TX native Phillip Jacob Handler who earned “the nickname ‘Motsy’” while playing guard at TCU after which he went on to play for six seasons with the NFL Chicago Cardinals.
https://www.profootballarchives.com/coach/hand00800coach.html
1909: “The New Dispersion of Jews” published today expressed approval of a speech by Jacob H. Schiff at a meeting of the Jewish Chautauqua Society in Buffalo where he expressed the hope that the Jews fleeing Russia and Rumania would not congregate in the congested cities of the east but seek to build their new lives “in the great tracts of land in the West and Southwest of the United States.”
1910: Birthdate of Himan “Hi” Brown the son of a tailor from Odessa who was a major producer during the Golden Age of Radio giving listeners such hits as “Bulldog Drummond,” “Inner Sanctum” and “Radio Mystery Theatre.”
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=himan-brown&pid=143346493
1911: Birthdate of Felicia Haberfeld, a native of Poland who eventually settled in Los Angles where she worked as a city librarian and, with her husband, founded the 1939 Club, named for the year Germany invaded Poland. She was also instrumental in establishing an endowed chair in Holocaust studies at UCLA.
1911(25th of Tammuz, 5671): Rabbi Yehouda Jarmon of Tunis, a friend of Semah ben Natan Halevi, passed away at the age of 104.
1911: “Julius Berend Cohen, a Professor of Organic Chemstiry at the University of Leeds was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society” in London today.
1911(25thof Tammuz, 5671): Simon Gruenwald passed away in Grosswardein, Hungary.
1911: During the Mendel Beilis Affair, a small expeditionary force of gendarmes forced its way into the home of Mendel Beilis and arrested him.
1912: Jennie and Moses Montefiore Kursheedt gave birth to Abigail Hoffman (Kursheedt)
1913: It was reported today that Rose Jacobs is engaged to Louis Weiss.
1913: Two days after she had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held for Sophia Frankenthaler.
1914: In Neu-Isenburg, a suburb of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Zysia Pressman and his wife Hinda Leah gave birth to Hermann Pressman, the author of the Pressman Diaries.
1914: David Lloyd George, who as Prime Minister supported the Balfour Declaration, was among the British leaders who attended the first day of the Buckingham Palace Conference which was King George’s attempt to deal with the “Irish Question.”
1915: In Milledgeville, GA, “Leo M. Frank’s physicians expressed the opinion that his recovery” from the wounds he suffered when prisoner J.W. Creen tried to kill him “was practically certain unless there should be some unexpected development.
1915: J.W. Creen told reporters today that “he was justified in attacking Leo Frank” and that he was not crazy as a newspaper story said he was.
1915: “As a result of the attack on Leo Frank” it was reported today that “seventy prisoners at the State Prison Farm are likely to be transferred to chain gangs throughout the state.”
1915: While it was reported today that “extra precautions have been taken to safeguard Leo Frank in the future, Trustees have informed the prison officials that there is a strong feeling against Frank among the prisoners.”
1915: It was reported today that Georgia Governor Harris wants “a complete investigation of affairs at the prisoner farm” and wants “to know how one prisoner was able to make an attack upon another.”
1916(20thof Tammuz, 5676): Harry Lewinstein who had been a Corporal in the Coldstream Guard serving in France in 1914 and was subsequently commissioned as a second lieutenant was killed today.
1916: It was reported today that the members of the Joint Distribution Committee of Jewish Relief Fund in America “is made up of representatives of the American Jewish Relief Committee (Justice Brandeis, E. W. Lewin-Epstein, Leon Sanders, Louis Marshall, and Cyrus L. Sulzberger), the Central Relief Committee and the People’s Relief Committee.”
1917(2ndof Av, 5677): Parashat Matot-Masei
1917(2ndof Av, 5677): Sixty-three year old Cleveland newspaper editor Maurice Weidenthal, the son of Emanuel Weidenthal and Julia (Julie) Weidenthal and the husband of Lida Weidenthal passed away today.
1917: In commenting on a speech by the German Imperial Chancellor Michaelis, in London, the Evening Standard proves the universality of Jewish Bible tales when it says that the Chancellor sometimes uses “the voice of the sly politic Jacob, but the hand is the rough paw of the Prussian Esau.”
1917: “In a statement appearing in the issue of the Bulletin of the Joint Distribution Committee issued” today, “the $10,000,000 Jewish War Relief Fund” was “compared to the Liberty Loan” and was called the “Life Bond of Jewry.”
1918: In Russia, the revolutionary government that had overthrown the Czar removed the ban on Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals.
1918(12thof Av, 5678): Henry Roth “one of the most influential Jews in Brooklyn” who had served as President of the Henry Roth Building Company for the past 25 years” and was President of Congregation Beth Elhoim passed away suddenly at his summer home on Long Island.
1918: “At promptly 3 o’clock this afternoon a procession led by the Depot Brigade followed by Major General Franklin Bell left he headquarter of the Jewish Welfare Board” and marched through the streets of Camp Upton to the new interdenominational chapel where ceremonies led by Rabbi Nathan Blechman were held to mark “the dedication of the Ark presented by State Supreme Court Justice Irving Lehman” which will house the Torah scroll donated by Samuel Gorrschall
1919: It was reported today “Morris D. Waldman has returned to his former post as executive director of the United Hebrew Charities” in New York City.
1919: Chief Rabbi J. H. wrote to Dr. Salis Daiches, the Rabbi who was a leader of the Scottish Jewish community.
1919: It was reported today that Rabbi Bernard Cantor has rejoined the Free Synagogue after serving a congregation in Akron, OH, and is serving “its newest branch in Flushing, Long Island.
1919: Birthdate of Seymour Pine, “the deputy police inspector who led the raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, on a hot summer night in 1969 — a moment that helped start the gay liberation movement A graduate of Brooklyn College and a veteran of WW II who served in North Africa and Europe, Pine later apologized the raid and his role in it. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1920: Sir Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner met with newsmen today and announced that he was abolishing the censorship which had been in effect since the Jerusalem riots that began in April.
1920: Birthdate of Isaac Stern. Born in Russia, the famous violinist came to America at the age of ten months. His family settled in San Francisco, and he debuted with the San Francisco Symphony. His career is too rich for this brief entry. Suffice it to say he is one of a long line of Jewish violinists and he has been a supporter of musical endeavors in Israel.
1921: Birthdate of Arthur Marx, who wrote screenplays for film and television and a best-selling book about his father, “Life With Groucho.”
1921: Birthdate of Stanley Tretick, the photojournalist whose career spanned an era from Truman through Bush I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Tretick#/media/File:Stanley_Tretick_photographing_JFK_1962.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Tretick#/media/File:Tretick_JFK_Jr_in_desk.jpg
1921(15th of Tammuz, 5681): Benjamin Raphael Haim Moshe, Chief Rabbi of Spain passed away at the age of 74 years
1922: Birthdate of Bernard Gilbert Hoberman, the native of Chisholm, MN, who helped to save AM by creating All-Talk Radio.
1923(8thof Av, 5683): Parashat Devarim; Tish’a B’Av
1923: “The general economic depression in 1922 did not adversely affect Palestinian trade to an appreciable extent, according to the report of the Palestine Administration.”
1924: “On the opening day of court” Clarence Darrow had the opportunity “to ask the Judge to appoint a special commission to determine if his “two Jewish clients, Leopold and Loeb” were insane.
1925: Conductor and composer Boris Morris who “declined an offer to become a director of the Hebrew Opera in Palestine” was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for the Erection of a Conservatory of Music as a memorial to the Jewish soldiers killed in the World War…”
1926: Birthdate of director Norman Jewison. Despite his name and the fact that he directed the film version of “Fiddler on the Roof,” Jewison is not Jewish.
1926: Birthdate of Karel Reisz a “Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema. “Reisz was a Jewish refugee, one of the 669 rescued by Sir Nicholas Winton.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/28/guardianobituaries.filmnews
1927: “Packed in 1,500 cases and weighing seventy-five tons, 430,000 Palestinian pounds worth of coin in silver, nickel and bronze” arrived in Jerusalem “under strong military escort.
1928(4th of Av, 5688): Parashat Devarim
1928: “The proposals of American and German non-Zionists for formulating a constructive program of Palestine upbuilding work on the basis of sound business principles, as embodied in the recommendations of the Commissioners of the Join Palestine Survey were the cause of a heated debate today among the members of the General Council of the Zionist World Organization” meeting in Berlin.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1928/07/22/94152753.html?pageNumber=44
1929: Fifty-four year old Indiana born author Leroy Scott, the husband of Vilna native “Miriam Finn Scott, a child diagnostician and specialist in parent education” drowned today leaving to raise their three children while pursuing her career.
1929: Italian born Jewish conductor Giorgio Polacco married Edith Mason a year before he retired as conductor of the Chicago Civic Opera.
1930: “The Community Reform Temple of Brooklyn has accepted the offer of the Kings Highway Congregation Church” which owes Rabbi Samuel Peiper a debt of gratitude for his cooperation “that made the” congregation’s church building a reality to hold its Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur services in the church building.” (As reported by JTA)
1931: Maxim Litvinov began serving as the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union.
1931: Dr. Louis I. Newman will officiate at the funeral service for former state Supreme Court Justice Joseph Newburger who passed away at the age of 78. Following burial in Union Field Cemetery Cantor Nathan Meltzof is scheduled to conduct a memorial service at the home of the deceased The honorary pallbearers include Court of Appeals Justices Benjamin N. Cardozo and Irving Lehman.
1931: CBS’s New York City stations began broadcasting the first regular seven days a week television schedule in the United States. George Gershwin was one of three people to appear on the first broadcast. That’s right – one third of the "cast" of this landmark television show was Jewish. Of course, CBS was owned by Bill Paley adding to the Jewish twist.
1932(17thof Tammuz, 5692): Tzom Tammuz
1932: On his 18th birthday Hermann Pressman’s mother gave him thirty marks which he used to buy a photo album and a diary which he would use to record his experiences during the Nazi rise to power.
1932(17thof Tammuz, 5692): Seventy-seven year old retired Justice of the New York Supreme Court Marx “Max” Platzek, a graduate of NYU law school, President of the YMHA and a benefactor of the American Jewish Historical Society passed away today.
1933: The port at Haifa was opened to traffic.
1933: Billy Cotton and his Bank recorded “Avalon” the 1920 Al Jolson hit.
1933: “The Sandwich Girl,” a comedy with a script co-authored by Walter Wassermann was released today in Germany.
1934(9thof Av, 5694): Parashat Devarim; Shabbat Chazon; Erev Tish’a B’Av
1934: Vladimir Jabotinsky, president of the World Union of the Zionist Revisionists, today issued a statement hailing the acquittal of Abraham Stavsky
1934: In London, Lithuanian Jewish refugees Emanuel Miller, a psychiatrist and “Betty Miller (née Spiro) was a novelist and biographer” gave birth to Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller, a “theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humorist, and medical doctor.”
1935: "The purpose of this new Nazi campaign of vituperation and calumny against Jews is clearly discernible -- all is not going well with the Nazi program for the revival of internal prosperity," asserts the joint foreign committee of the Jewish Board of Deputies in a report read to the meeting of the "Jewish Parliament" in London today.”
1935: Today Felix M. Warburg announced “the formation of a Refugee Economic Corporation with a capital of $10,000,000 to help refugees from German and other countries to settle in various parts of the world on an economically self-supporting basis.”
1936: Birthdate of Philadelphia native Rabbi Sidney Brichto, who moved to Great Britain in 1961 where he “became Associate Minister of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St. John’s Wood” and became the first “Executive Director of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues.
http://www.brichto.com/peoplesbible/bibleindex.htm
1936: James A. Farley, Democratic National Chairman was reported today to have said that there was not a word of truth in claims that Governor Alf Landon, the Republican nominee for President was an anti-Semite but he also said that claims Democrats were behind a “whispering campaign” promoting this were also false.
1937: In London, at today’s meeting of the World Conference on Church, Community and State, “Professor Walter H. Morton of Oberlin College” a liberal school in Ohio, “said that unless the Christian church showed opposition to anti-Semitism, not only word but in deed, by being more than lukewarm in the relief of Jewish and Hebrew-Christian suffers, it would not escape great reproach from Jews” whom he said “were give more than lukewarm support not only to their own sufferers but to Hebrew-Christian sufferers as well.”
1937: Birthdate of Chava Turniansky, the Mexican born Yiddish historian and winner of the Israel Prize in 2013.
https://jwa.org/thisweek/jul/21/1937/birth-of-yiddish-historian-chava-turniansky
1938)22ndof Tammuz, 5698): Before dawn “a band of Arabs estimated to number 100” attacked “an isolated settlement in the north, Kiriat Hahroesh, where stabbed to death a man, his wife and their 2 year old baby” all living in one hut “before entering another hut where they killed a settler and his 11 year old son.
1938)22ndof Tammuz, 5698): In the second attack of the day three Jewish workers were killed and several more seriously wounded when an “Arab gang” attacked their camp near the Dead Sea which they looted before leaving.
1938: While the rest of the world was embracing the Nazis or turning a blind eye to their depredations, “Pope Pius XI delivers an address to ecclesiastical assistants of Catholic Action in which he argues that Catholicism is opposed to racism, nationalism, and similarly exclusivist ideologies.” (The differences between Pius XI and his successor Pius XII were far greater than a single Roman numeral.)
1938(22ndof Tammuz, 5698): Morris Mitchtom, the Jewish immigrant, who along with his wife “invented the Teddy Bear”, passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Michtoms.html
1939: The Jewish Agency for Palestine issued today a statement rejecting Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald's appeal for cooperation with the British Government's new policy for Palestine. The Jewish leadership rejected the White Paper with its limits on immigration and land ownership as being “devoid of moral and legal basis and…calculated to destroy the las and holiest possession of the Jewish people – the national home.
1940: Hans and Margret Rey left Lisbon aboard the Angola which was headed for Rio.
1941: In Minsk, 45 Jew were ordered to dig a pit. They were then thrown in and Russian prisoners were ordered to bury them alive. The Russians refused. The Germans then shot the Russians and the Jews in the pit.
1941: Jews of Upina, Lithuania, were killed by the Nazis.
1941: A concentration camp opens at Majdanek, Poland.
1941: “The Riga occupation command decided to concentrate the Jewish workers in a ghetto after which all Jews were registered and a Jewish Council (Judenrat) was set up.
1942: The S.S. Nyassa, a Portuguese liner carrying “Five hundred and fifty-seven refugees from Nazism who had been stranded in Portugal and unoccupied France” which had left Portugal on July 10 bound for Baltimore stopped in Bermuda today. (JTA)
1942: Today, “on the day before the eve of Tisha B’Av” “a mass rally was held in Madison Square Garden during which “the atrocities” against the Jews in places from the Warsaw Ghetto to Paris “were denounced” and a support for an Allied Victory was called for since that was the only realistic hope.
1942: While speaking tonight at a rally in Madison Square Garden, Rabbi Wise said, “There have been a thousand and more Lidices in the life of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe in the last year.
1942: One thousand Jews deported from Paris, reached Auschwitz. Many of them were Polish Jews living in France. Six hundred and twenty-five were gassed while 375 selected for labor battalions. Only seventeen would survive the war.
1942: The Jews of Nieswiez organized a resistance movement and a planned an escape using kerosene and old guns as their weapons. A desperate battle ensued. Jews set fire to their own homes as a diversionary tactic. Some of those who made it to the woods found other Jews from Kleck and Niewswiez. They set up an underground unit.
1943: Birthdate of Sir Robert Andrews, the UK”s Ambassador to “Israel between 1992 and 1995” and “in June, 2010 was appointed the UK’s first Envoy for post-Holocaust issues.”
1943: Lydia Litvyak, the flight commander of the 3rd Aviation Squadron in the Soviet air force shot down two more Nazi aircraft today.
1943: Tonight’s performance of “We Will Never Die” at the Hollywood Bowl was broadcast to a nationwide audience thanks to NBC. “We Will Never Die was a dramatic pageant…staged to raise public awareness of the ongoing mass murder of Europe's Jews. It was organized and written by screenwriter and author Ben Hecht and produced by Billy Rose and Ernst Lubitsch.”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/pageant.html
1944: Jerzy Bielecki led Cyla Cybulska out of her barrack at Auschwitz and passed a sleepy guard to the woods and freedom. He was a Roman Catholic who had been imprisoned in 1940 as a member of the Polish Resistance. She was a young Jewess, who thanks to his courage was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. He was recognized by Yad Vasham as one of the Righteous Gentiles in 1985. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1944: On the day after the attempt to assassinate Hitler failed, Henning von Tresckow, one of the chief conspirators, staged a partisan attack on his headquarters near Bialystok in Poland, and blew himself up with a grenade. He was buried with military honors, but a month later, when the Gestapo discovered his involvement in the plot against Hitler, his body was exhumed and burned in a crematorium of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
1944: Birthdate of Paul Wellstone, United States from Minnesota who died in a plane crash in 2002.
1944: After almost six weeks, British forces finally captured Caen which meant the Allies could finally prepare for the big breakout, head east and defeat the Nazis.
1945(11thof Av, 5705): Parashat Vaetchanan; Shabbat Nachamu
1945: Today, the United States government “told Japan to surrender unconditionally of face ‘virtual destruction’” – a veiled reference to the Atomic Bomb which had been developed under Oppenheimer but never dropped in combat.
1946: As a measure of the dire financial straits facing the English, who were spread thin holding on the rebelling territories including Palestine and India, the House of Commons, for the first time in the history of U.K. approved the peacetime rationing of bread.
1947: After over 500 performances at the National Theatre, “Call Me Mister,” a revue with words and music by Harold Rome and a cast that included Jules Munshin but which would continue its Broadway run at the Majestic Theatre.
1947: Today “the Freeland League was officially notified by Dr. J.C.Brons, Governor of Surinam that the Staten and Netherlands Government agreed to the immigration of 30,000” homeless European Jews who would settle in the Dutch colony.
1947: The Exodus, a refugee ship with 4,500 refugees on board, was turned back by the British and returned to Germany. The ship had tried to run the British blockade unsuccessfully: The British forcefully boarded the ship killing 3 Jews and wounding over 100. The pictures of the refugees being forcibly unloaded in Germany was a critical blow to world public opinion and helped force the British out of Eretz Israel.
1948: Today’s “Mount Scopus Demilitarization Agreement” was “initialed by Franklyn M. Begley” of the UN “and the local Jordanian commander but not by the Israeli commander.”
1948: David Shaltiel, the district commander of the Haganah in Jerusalem held the last in a series of meetings mediated by the UN with Abdullah el Tell, “the commander of the Arab Legion in the city” where “they signed a formal cease-fire based on the existing positions of their forces.”
1949: After a brief visit to his home in Israel, Eliahu Elath, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and his wife arrived at the airport in New York where he said “we are grateful for the assistance of the United States in seeking a (peace) settlement”
1949: “Communist Arabs by the Egyptian Army said today that three Israeli Army offices secretly were directing a campaign to spread communism among the Arab refugees” in Gaza which led to “a spokesman for the Israeli delegation to the United Nations to label the report as ‘nonsense’” saying it wa as credible as the communiques from Cairo 14 months ago that “boasted of grandiose but non-existence victories over Israel.”
1950: “Broken Arrow,” a Western that was one of the first to offer a sympathetic view of Indians with an Oscar nominated script for which Michael Seymour Blankfort “served a front for the blacklisted Albert Maltz” and co-starring Jeff Chandler (Ira Grossel) as “Cochise” was released in the United States today.
1950: MP Ian Mikardo asked in Parliament that the British Government's policy on providing arms to Egypt be revised” point out that arms shipments to Egypt were premised on their use in collective defense and that Egypt had made it very clear that it would not join the collective effort on Korea. (Editor’s note – In other words, the Egyptians were getting arms from the British which they would not use against the Koreans but which they could and did use against Israel.)
1950: It was reported today that “Colonel Alfred G. Katzin of South Africa” was serving as the “personal representative of the UN Secretary General.
1951: In its story on the assassination of Jordan’s King Abdullah that occurred on July 21 The Jerusalem Post reported that King Abdullah was known for his efforts to reach an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. In his memoirs he wrote: "I have been astonished at what I saw of the Jewish settlements: They have colonized sand dunes, drawn water from them, and transformed them into paradise."
1952: The Democratic National Convention, which Herman Benjamin Baruch, the brother of Bernard Baruch, the doctor turned diplomat attended as delegate opened today in Chicago.
1953(9thof Av, 5713): Tish’a B’Av
1953: Birthdate of award winning economist and hedge fund manager Sanford “Sandy” Jay Grossman.
1955: Architect Denise Lakofski, the daughter of Simon and Phyllis (Hepker) Lakofski became Denise Scott Brown today when she married Robert Scott Brown.
1955: Martin and Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave birth to Jane C. Ginsburg “the Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at the Columbia Law School.” This could be a case of the fulfillment of genetic predisposition since her mother is a Supreme Court Justice and her father, of blessed memory, was a law professor and internationally renowned expert on tax law.
1955: “I Am a Camera” a comedy co-starring Shelly Winters (Shirley Schrift) and Laurence Harvey (Laruschka Mischa Skikne) was released today in the United Kingdom and Los Angeles.
1957: Birthdate of comedic actor Jon Lovitz whose big break came in 1982 when he joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live.”
1959(15thof Tammuz, 5719): Fifty-six year old New York born Teviah Sachs, “the president and treasurer of Pearls by Deltah, Inc. of Pawtuckett and the former president of Gruen Washing company of Canada and the Waltham Watch Company who was “a director of Brandeis University and the husband of Leah Sachs with whom he had one child, Colman, passed away today.
1960(26thTammuz, 5720): Sixty-four year old Norman Salit, the former President of the Synagogue Council of America who graduated from JTS and NYU Law School in 1920 and who was married to Ruth Salit with whom he had one daughter – Mrs. Naomi Birnbach – passed away today.
1962(19thof Tammuz, 5722): Parashat Tammuz
1962: It was reported today that the “unveiling of a monument in memory of Irving Maisel” of blessed memory is scheduled to take place tomorrow morning at the Ararat Cemetery in Farmingdale, NY.
1963(29thof Tammuz, 5723): Seventy-three year old Erfut, Germany native David Baumgardt the author and philosopher who in 1939 found refuge in the United States where he worked for Archibald MacLeish, the Librarian of Congress, wrote such books as Maimonides in 1955 and Great Western Mystics: Their Lasting Significance in 1961 passed away today.
1965: Today, fifty-three-year-old Aryeh Louis Pincus, a South African-born member of the Jewish Agency Executive was appointed acting chairman of the organization following the death of Moshe Sharett on July 7.
1967: Three days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held at Temple Emanu-El’s Beth-El Chapel for seventy-seven year old former New York Times staffer Harold Lebair, the “treasurer of the United States Lawn Tennis Association who raised three daughters with his wife “the former Lucile Mordecai.
1969: On the second day of Operation Boxer, “four 109 Squadron Skyhawks attack an Egyptian anti-aircraft battery near Qantarah.”
1970(17th of Tammuz, 5730): Tzom Tammuz
1970: Libya's Col. Qaddafi nationalizes all Jewish property
1970: After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River in Egypt is completed. In 1954, President Nasser sought aid from the U.S. government to build the Aswan Dam. He saw the building of the dam as being a vital to Egypt’s modernization program. For a variety of ideological and economic reasons, the Eisenhower Administration eventually rejected the request for aid. Nasser turned the Soviets who were only too glad to supply economic aid and masses of modern arms to Egypt. Bolstered by his new Soviet sponsors and angry at Eisenhower and Dulles for what he considered their betrayal of his dreams. Nasser began to promote an agenda of pro-Soviet Pan-Arabism with the destruction of Israel as its emotional focal point. Nasser also nationalized the Suez Canal because he needed the canal revenue to re-pay the Soviets. All of this led to the Suez Crisis of 1956 which resulted in a lightening military victory. Nasser’s vision may have died, but the dam was built. Such is the law of unintended consequences on This Day in Jewish History.
1971: In “Max Cohen: Boxer Bridges Suez Gulf” published today Al Harvin provided an update on the career of Nessim “Max” Cohen the 29 year old Jewish boxer born in Morocco who moved to Israel in 1962 and “was adopted by the Arabs after he won the welterweight title in the 1963 Pan-Arab Games at Casablanca.”
1973(21stof Tammuz, 5733): Parashat Pinchas
1973: In the Lillehammer affair in Norway, Israeli Mossad agents kill a waiter whom they mistakenly thought was involved in 1972’s Munich Olympics Massacre.
1974: “The White Dawn,” an adaption of the novel by the same name, directed by Philip Kaufman was released in New York City today by Paramount Pictures.
1976: “An all-black cast staged the first Broadway review” of “Guys and Dolls a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows” which officially opened today at the Broadway Theatre.
1977(6thof Av, 5737): Eighty-four year old Kiev native Dr. Abraham J. Feldman, a leading Reform Rabbi, past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and civil rights leader who was married “to the former Helen Bloch with whom he had three children – Daniel, Joan and Ella – passed away today.
http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0038/ms0038.html
1977: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for eghty-three-year old Nassau, NY native and Rensselaer Polytechnic trained engineer Charles H. Blitman the building developer responsible for such edifices as the Custom House at the World Trade Center and vice president of the Maimonides Hospital Center who had two children – Howard and Doris – with his wife Bernice.
1977: The Tenth Maccabiah comes to an end.
1977: Seventy-year old Lee Miller, one of the few female combat photographers in WW II, who teamed with David E. Scherman to provide the public with a graphic portrait of the horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau, passed away today.
1979(26th of Tammuz, 5739): Parashat Matot-Masei
1979(26thof Tammuz, 5739: Eighty-year old Oxford Ph.D Eugène Vinaver, the son of Maxim Vinaver, and “Professor of French Language and Literature at the University of Manchester” and the foremost authority on Sir Thomas Malory passed away today.
http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/yee-eugene-vinavers-magnificent-malory-exhibit-guide
https://academic.oup.com/fs/article-abstract/XXXIII/4/501/633870?redirectedFrom=fulltext
1980(8thof Av, 5740): Erev Tish’a B’Av observed for the last time during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter.
1981(19thTammuz, 5741): Ninety-five year old Berthold Herbert Bendheim, the husband of the late Edith Kahn Bendheim passed away today after which he was interred with her at the Forest Lawn in Glendale.
1982(1st of Av, 5742): Rosh Chodesh Av
1982: The first Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies which was attended by 100 people and where Dr. Geza Vermes was elected president came to an end today.
1985: Outfielder Mark Gilbert made his major league debut with the Chicago White Sox.
1985(3rdof Av, 5745): Eight-five year old art dealer Victor J. Hammer, the brother of Dr. Armand Hammer and the son of “Jewish immigrants Julius and Rose (Lipshitz) Hammer” passed away today in Florida.
http://articles.latimes.com/1985-07-24/local/me-4808_1_armand-hammer
1985(3rdof Av, 5745) Eight –three year old art professor and Monuments Man Charles Louis Kuhn passed away today.
https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/the-heroes/the-monuments-men/kuhn-lt.-cdr.-charles-l.
1985: In “The Biographers As Detective: What Walter Lippman Preferred to Forget,” Ronald Steele author of what some consider to be the definitive biography on Lippman provides insight and background of a Jewish intellectual and author who was witness to and participant in many of the major events of the 20thcentury.
1988: Pitcher Roger Samuels made his major league debut with the San Francisco Giants.
1990(28thof Tammuz, 5750): Sixty-five year old Oscar nominated screenwriter and producer Stanley Shapiro passed away.
1991(10thof Av, 5751): Tish’a B’Av observed since the 9th of Av fell on Shabbat
1991(10thof Av, 5751): Eighty-seven year old Joseph Dorfman who “received the Veblen-Commons Award in 1974 from the Association for Evolutionary Economics” passed away today. (As reported by Glenn Fowler)
1996(5thof Av, 5756): Seventy-one year old British actor Wolfe Morris the grandson of Jews who escaped the Kiev Pogroms and brother fellow thespians Aubrey and Shona Morris passed away today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-wolfe-morris-1362661.html
1996: Sixty-two year old Emmy nominated television actor Herbert “Herb” Edelman who was the poker playing police officer in “The Odd Couple” passed away today.
1997(16thof Tammuz, 5757): Two years before his wife Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo passed away, Turkish born Sephardic pianist Victoria Kamhi de Rodrigo, Marquise of the Jardines de Aranjuez passed away today and was subsequently buried in Spain.
2000(18thof Tammuz, 5760): Yosef Qafiḥ or Rabbi Kapach, a leader of the Yemenite Jewish in Yemen and then In Israel passed away today. He was the grandson of Yiḥyah Qafiḥ who had been born in 1853 and served as Chief Rabbi of Sana'a, Yemen until his death in 1932. There is no way that this simple blog can do justice to either of these leaders.
2001: Adam MacRae Gimbel, “a grandson of Louis Stanley Gimbel, who was a managing partner in Saks Fifth Avenue and a great-great-grandson of Adam Gimbel, who in 1842 founded the business that became Gimbel Brothers department stores” married Alexandra Sarah Wald today.
2002: The seventh Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies opened today in Amsterdam under the presidency of Professor Albert van der Heide.
2002: NEEMO 3 whose NASA Aquanaut Crew included Gregory Chamitoff came to an end today.
2002: The Sunday New York Times features a review of The Ascent of Eli Israel: Waiting for the Messiah a collection of short stories by Joe Papernick, a 31-year-old Canadian who moved to Brooklyn, after having spent several months in Israel following Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in November 1995, A Place to Live And Other Selected Essays by Italian Jewish author Natalia Ginzburg and Reflections and Shadowsby Saul Steinberg with Aldo Buzzi.
2002:The 88th annual national convention of Hadassah opens at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. The theme of the convention, “Build Tomorrow Today,” directly addresses Hadassah’s historic, present and future relationship with Israel, and is particularly relevant considering the difficulties Israel has experienced since Hadassah’s last convention, which was held in Jerusalem in August, 2001.
2003: A handful of the nearly one thousand Jewish refugees who were interred at the Army camp at Oswego met “today at the home of Judy Goldsmith, the daughter of a deceased camp survivor to reconnect and reminisce.” (As reported by Claudia Rowe)
2003(21st of Tammuz, 5763): Fifty-five-year old Kings College graduate and Rebbetzin at North West Surrey Synagogue, Linda Bayrield the wife of Rabbi Tony Bayfield and the mother of 3 children: Lucy, formerly a teacher at Clore Shalom School (one of the other two Progressive Jewish primary schools) and a Governor of Akiva School from 2006; Daniel, a former pupil at Akiva and a trustee of the Reform Foundation, and Rabbi Miriam Bayfield, also a former pupil at Akiva School “ passed away today.
2003: The Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers emerged from a tense two-hour meeting here today at loggerheads” with Prime Minister Sharon “rebuffing demands for immediate troop withdrawals and the release of prisoners” while Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian counterpart did not expressing a willing to first dismantle what some call “militant groups” which others describe as terrorists.
2004(3rd of Av, 5764): Composer Jerry Goldsmith passed away. Born in Pasadena, California, in 1929, Goldsmith was one of the most prolific composers of television and move themes in the 20th century. If you watched such television hits as Have Gun Will Travel, The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason or The Waltons, you heard Goldsmith. If you watched such films as Patton, Planet of the Apes or The Omen, you heard Goldsmith. And this only scratches the surface.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/jul/24/guardianobituaries1
2004(3rd of Av, 5764): Richard Adolf Bloch passed away at the age of 78. Born in 1926, he was an American entrepreneur, and philanthropist best known for starting the H&R Block tax preparation and personal finance company with his older brother Henry in 1955. His personal battle with cancer led him to invest in helping others fight and overcome the disease.
http://newsroom.hrblock.com/richard-bloch/
2004(3rd of Av, 5764): On the day before his 22ndbirthday, Lance Corporal Mark E. Engel (USMC) died in a Texas hospital from wounds he suffered while fighting in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.(As reported by Maia Efrem)
2005: 17th Macaabiah comes to a close.
2005: “Forbes.com readers and editors rank Meyer Amschel Rothschild as the seventh most influential businessman of all time.”
http://www.forbes.com/2005/07/21/rothschild-banking-international-cx_0721bizmanrothschild.html
2005: Violinist Anton Polezhayev filed a lawsuit in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan charging the New York Philharmonic with sex discrimination in denying him a job and following a pattern of promoting only female violinists. In part, he based his charge on the fact (according to him) that during his probationary period seven violinist won permanent jobs or marched past him in the violin section. All seven had one common characteristic – they were all women. The Leningrad native came to the U.S. with his parents, including his Jewish mother.
2006: The Jewish Week publishes a review of Auschwitz Report entitled “Portrait of an Emerging Author” by Liel Lebovitz. Lebiovitz writes that “Auschwitz Report is a previously unpublished manuscript by Primo Levi and Leonardo De Benedetti, a physician who was Levi’s close friend when the two were prisoners at the camp. Scheduled for publication next month, this slim manuscript, less than 100 pages long, came to be when the Soviet Red Army, having liberated Auschwitz, asked De Benedetti and Levi to compile a report about the conditions in the Nazi death camp….Also included here are two short essays by Levi, both of which are eulogies of De Benedetti. Through Levi’s loving eyes, we learn about the life of the doctor who had so inspired his younger, infinitely more famous colleague. This, too, is a nice addition to the biographical body of work concerning Levi. As Holocaust memoirs move further away from the source, written now through the mists of time and memory, a book as raw and unremitting as this one is potent enough to inspire a fresh look at a much-discussed topic. It is with good reason that Gordon chooses to end his introduction by quoting Elias Canetti; “If there were any point in wondering what form of literature is essential to a thinking, seeing human being today,” he wrote, “then it is this.’”
2006: In its fight to remove threat of Hezbollah,IDF troops uncovered several anti-tank missiles and several surface-to-surface missiles during an operation in the village of Marwaheen. They also found a machine gun, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, and ammunition.
2006(25thof Tammuz, 5766): Seventy-eight year old Moses “Moe” Laufer a pioneer of adolescent psychoanalysis passed away today. (As reported by Maxim de Sauma)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/nov/15/obituaries.guardianobituaries
2006: Haaretz reported on the opening of the first U.S. branch Aroma, the Israeli equivalent of Starbuck. The first franchise is located on Houston Street in Manhattan. Dressed in t-shirts saying “I Love Aroma New York” the staff prepared for the entry into the coffee and restaurant wars. There were many unique challenges in the opening including the renaming of one Aroma’s signature sandwiches. In Israel, the sandwich is called “the Iraqi Sandwich.” In the U.S. it is called The Oriental Sandwich.
2007: The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “His People,” a film about two sons of Jewish pushcart peddlers living on the Lower East Side.
2007: In Jerusalem at the Sisters of Zion convent, a classical music concert entitled"Music in All the Shades" presents "Popular Melodies in Russian Choral Music," featuring "Musica Eterna" under the direction of Elia Plotkin.
2007(6thof Av, 5767):Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder the Birmingham Temple in suburban Detroit in 1963 who also was the driving force behind the creation of the Society for Humanistic Judaism in 1969 died today in an auto accident at the age of 79
http://www.shj.org/Wine%20Words.htm
2007: (6 Av, 5767) Shabbat Chazon; start of the reading of Devarim or Deuteronomy.
2008: Gordon Brown is scheduled to address the Knesset making him the first British Prime Minister to speak to the Israeli parliament.
2008: A jury in San Francisco convicted Eric Hunt of false imprisonment with a hate crime allegation, batter and elder abuse for his February 1. 2007 attack on 79 year old Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize Winner, Elie Wiesel.
2009: A disciplinary hearing was held today following yesterday’s brawl involving coaches and players that followed “Russia's 2-1 defeat of Argentina in the under-18 semifinals at the Maccabiah Games. “It was decided that they would both be immediately removed from the Maccabiah. The gold medal now automatically goes to Israel, and the Silver to Mexico, the two competitors in the second semifinal.
2009:The Pet Shop Boys play a one-off performance in Tel Aviv becoming the latest British mega band to perform on Israeli soil after a Depeche Mode concert in May. The duo - Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe play at the Israel Trade Fairs and Convention Center
2009: At the 18th Maccabiah, Australia plays Israel in Women’s Netball
2009:Israel led the way in the men's half marathon today, taking the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in Netanya.
2009:The US baseball team capped off its undefeated season today with a 12-6 gold medal-clinching victory against Canada at Sportek in Tel Aviv.
2009:As the controversy continued to grow because of the planned showing of “Rachel” “a sympathetic portrait of the American pro-Palestinian activist who was killed in 2003 in Gaza while protesting a home demolition, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Executive Director Peter Stein apologized “for not fully considering how upsetting this program might be,” though he added that the festival stands by its decision to screen the film.
2010: Stephen Rubin, one of Britain’s richest businessman, chairman of the Pentland Group and leader of the Jewish community who was “appointed OBE in the 2003 New Year’s Honours List” today “was awarded an honory Doctorate of Art by Nottingham Trent University.
2010:An 8-week session program entitled Hebrew Language and Conversation is scheduled to begin at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue.
2010:Debra Rubin, Editor of the Washington Jewish Week is scheduled to serve as a moderator of a discussion addressing issues concerning Jewish residents of Montgomery County at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in, Rockville, MD
2010:An Israeli oil prospecting and production firm announced it has struck a commercial amount of the black substance in central Israel, Army Radio reported today.
2010:The Ritz Carlton hotel chain announced today that it will build its first kosher hotel in Herzliya.
2011:The "Angel of Death" Josef Rudolf Mengele's writings are scheduled to be auctioned off by Alexander Historic Auctions of Stamford Connecticut today. The entire collection of documents, which includes Mengele's autobiography, philosophical, eugenical, and political works, poems, stories, illustrations and diaries is over 3,300 pages long.
2011:Shalom,” American Jewish music legend Paul Simon spoke reporters in Tel Aviv this afternoon, on the eve of his first performance in Israel for almost three decades.
2011:A golden bell ornament that archaeologists believed belonged to a priest or important leader from the Second Temple Period was found in an ancient drainage channel in ruins next to the Western Wall today, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced.
2011:As part of the ongoing doctors' work dispute, medical residents at Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba opened up a hunger strike today
2011: Libya has become a new source of smuggled weaponry for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon said today.
2011: The production of the Cirque du Soleil Show Iris for which Danny Elfman composed the music began today.
2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a luncheon honoring the Collections Committee and Chair Janice Goldblum following the launch of its new on-line catalogue presented by Wendy Turman, JHSGW Archivist. http://www.jhsgw.org/collections/catalog.php
2011(19th of Tammuz, 5771): Ninety-one year old Bruce Sundlun, the second Jewish governor of Rhode Island passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)
2011(19th of Tammuz, 5771): Ninety five year old Hyman “Bookie” Bookbinder a Washington lobbyist known by his trademark bowtie whose friends were a cross section of Washington, DC including Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Republican Betty Ford, passed away today (As reported by T. Rees Shapiro)
2011(19th of Tammuz, 5771): Ninety-five year old Elliot Handler began Mattel Toy Company with his wife Ruth and helped to make Barbie, Chatty Cathy and Hot Wheels house-hold names passed away today. (As reported by Charles Duhigg)
2012: Agudas Achim is scheduled to hold its last Shabbat morning service in downtown Iowa City.
2012: Papercut artist David Fisher is scheduled to speak in Hebrew on "The Lost Synagogues", synagogues destroyed in the Holocaust at Kehillat Yedidya in Jerusalem. For more on Jerusalem events see www.janglo.net
2012: “Naomi,” a “tight edgy Israeli film noir” is scheduled to be shown at The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
2012: “Lee Zurik, WVUE Fox 8 investigative reporter, picked up three first place awards tonight at the 54th annual Excellence in Journalism Awards sponsored by the Press Club of New Orleans” (As reported by CCJN)
2012: Singer-songwriter, composer, sound designer and producer Keren Ann Zeidel became a new mom today with the birth of Nico.
2012: The Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed a claim by Qaedat al-Jihad that it was responsible for the terrorist attack in Burgas.Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Vesela Cherneva dismissed the previously unknown Islamist group’s assertion of responsibility for the attack in an email sent today to Elnashra, a Lebanese newspaper. (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)
2012: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conveyed his condolences to the American people via a letter to US President Barack Obama late tonight, a day after a gunman stormed a movie theater in Colorado, killing 12.(As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)
2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman by Jeremy Adelman
2013: “Chagall between War and Peace” an exhibition at Paris’ Musee de Luxembourg is scheduled to come to an end.
http://www.museeduluxembourg.fr/en/expositions/p_exposition-18/
2013: The High Court of Justice essentially recommended to the IDF to completely cease using white phosphorus to create smoke screens during military operations as opposed to eliminating its use in urban warfare and reducing its general use. The recommendation was nonbinding. (As reported by Yonah Jeremy Bob))
2013:”The cabinet approved a four percent budget reduction for government ministries and passed a planning and building reform plan that would ease bureaucracy on home improvements.” (As reported by Nev Elis)
2014: The 97th annual convention of Hadassah is scheduled to open at Las Vegas, Nevada.
2014: Willa Schneberg is scheduled to read from Rending the Garment “a series of link poems exploring the life and times of one Jewish family at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.
2014: “The Real Inglorious Bastards” and “The Return of the Violin” are scheduled to be shown at the Berkshire Jewish Film Festival.
2014: The funerals of 32 year old Captain Tzafir Bar-Or, 28 year old Major Zvi Kaplan, 21 year old Sergeant Oz Mendelovich and 21 year old Gilad Yaakobi, all of whom were killed yesterday are scheduled to take place today.
2015: Clarinetist Anat Cohen is scheduled to be one of guest performers at the Jazz concert hosted by the 92nd Y.
2015(5thof Av, 5775): Eighty-four year old Edgar Lawrence “E.L.” Doctorow the award winning novelist who was also extremely commercially successful passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/books/el-doctorow-author-of-historical-fiction-dies-at-84.html
2015(5thof Av, 5775): Eighty-eight year old Vera Stern the former wife of violinist Isaac Stern passed away today.
2015(5thof Av, 5775): Ninety-one year old Jewish cultural and entertainment giant Theodore Bikel passed away today.
2015: In Philadelphia, the National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host tour of “Richard Avedon: Family Affairs” led by Josh Perelman, the Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Collections.
2015: The OU Israel Center is scheduled to host Dr. Charles Selengut’s lecture on “The World of Islam and the Root Challenge that We Face Today.”
2016: The Republican Convention, which has adopted a platform with strong pro-Israel planks, is scheduled to come to an end in Cleveland.
2016: In the wake of last year’s murder of a sixteen year old girl and the wounding of seven others by Yishai Schlissel, police have stepped up security measures for the Gay Pride Parade scheduled to be held today in Jerusalem.
2016: The 29thKarmiel Dance Festiva under the guidance of artistic director Shlomo Maman,al is scheduled to come to a close this evening.
http://www.karmielfestival.co.il/en/
2016: Jenny Tonge “a House of Lords member of the Liberal Democratic” who in the past has “said Israel would eventually disappear” said today that “the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel is a major cause of the rise of extreme Islamism and Daesh.”
2016: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host an event opening “How it is, but how it should be: An Imagined Life Outside of Gurs” that will examine the unique creation of artist Trudl Besag.
2017: Or Olam – The East Fifty-Fifth Street Synagogue is scheduled to host its last Musical Shabbat of the season which will be “an upbeat salute to summer, featuring guest musicians Zvi Klein on piano, Zisl Slepovitch on clarinet and Ben Antelis on percussion.”
2017: “A kosher food stand” is scheduled “to open up at Wrigley Field today featuring Romanian hot dogs, Romanian Polish sausages, pretzels and drinks” making the 103 year old ball field the 13th major league stadium to go Kosher.
2017(21stof Tammuz, 5778): Three Israelis were killed and another was seriously wounded in a stabbing attack tonight when a terrorist broke into their home and began stabbing the family as they ate their Shabbat dinner.” (As reported by Jacob Maggid)
2017: In a letter written today “seven Orthodox leaders “harangued the Jewish Cultural Center” in London which had “held events celebrating LGBT Jews” “for not being religious enough, saying it ‘has never promoted the upkeep of Halacha, the observance of Mitzvot and religious commitment…” (As reported by Jewish News)
2017: “I Am Not a Witch” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
2018: Following its world premiere last night, final performance of “Footprints” which includes a presentation of work by “Dafi Altabeb, the recipient of the 2012, 2013, and 2016 Excellence Award for young choreographers from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and the 2014 Rozenblum Award for Excellence from the Municipality of Tel-Aviv…” is scheduled to take place this evening at the Reynolds Industries Theatre in Durham, NC.
2018: Following yesterday’s murder of an Israeli soldier on the border with Gaza and the firing of three more rockets by terrorists, Israelis begin Shabbat wondering if Hamas will heed the UN call for a cessation to violence.
2018(9thof Av, 5778): Parashat Devarim; Shabbat Chazon; The fast of Tish’a B’Av is not observed because it is Shabbat
2018(9thof Av, 5778): Fifty-seven year old Jonathan Gold, the Los Angeles born son of “Judith Gold a school librarian” and “Irwin Gold, a probation officer, who went on to become one of the leading food critics in Los Angeles passed away today.
2018(9thof Av, 5778): Eighty-nine year old Philip Rosen, the Philadelphia born son Robert and Helen Rosen and husband of Lillian Schachter Rosen who was “curator and educational director of what is now the Esther Raab Holocaust Museum and Goodwin Education Center in Cherry Hill passed away today.
2019(18thof Tammuz, 5779): Fast of 17th of Tammuz observed
2019: Eighty-seven year old Paul Krassner, the Brooklyn born son of Ida Krassner, a legal secretary and Michael Krassner, “a printing compositor,” who began writing for Mad magazine before founding, “an underground humor magazine” passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)
2019: The American Sephardi is scheduled to host the final performance of “The Marriage of Figaro,” David Serero’s adaptation of Mozart’s opera with Serero playing the title of Figaro.
2019: The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Before You Know It” and “How About Adolf?”
2019: “Avodah’s Jewels for Justice” is scheduled begin at noon today in Shaker Heights, OH.
2019: Today the Grant Monument Association is scheduled to commemorate the 134th anniversary of the death of President Grant” who actually died on July 23 with ceremonies that will begin with a wreath laying ceremony. For more see When General Grant Expelled the Jews by Jacob D. Sarna and
2020: In Des Moines, IA Tifereth Israel is schooled to host “Rabbi Barton for a Special Disusion on the film ‘13th’ and an interview with Oprah Winfrey and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
2020: The Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans is scheduled to host Session II of a seminar on cybersecurity.
2020: The United Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host the second and final day of “2020 Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conference for Educators” which is a “virtual event.”
2020: B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host a triple header of virtual events running the gambit of the Jewish experience – Torah Study (Devarim) in the morning with Susan Wyner, Talmud study with Rabbi Josh Foster in the later after and “The How and Why of Jewish Ritual with Cantor Aaron Shifman in the evening.
2020: The JCCSF Evening Book Group is scheduled to host a virtual discussion of Nathan Englander’s 2019 book Kaddish.com, about the secular son of an Orthodox family who hires a stranger online to say Kaddish for his father.
2020: Israelis will begin dealing with the reality that Hospitals and health clinics nationwide offer reduced services, with exceptions in urgent cases and responses to coronavirus following the start of nationwide strike by nurses who say that “staff shortages…have made it impossible to continue their work.” (TOI)
2021: East Bay Jewish film fest, Israeli consulate and A Wider Bridge are scheduled to present Elad Cohen, director and subject of the 2017 Israeli documentary “The Sign for Love,” about a deaf gay man raising a baby with his deaf friend.
2021: Robert Trestan, the ADL New England regional director is scheduled to moderate an online discussion “Understanding the Rise of Global Antisemitism and Extremism.”
2021: The National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to present “Songs of Our People, Songs of Our Neighbors” with Susan Gaeta.
https://www.nmajh.org/events/songs-of-our-people-songs-of-our-neighbors-susan-gaeta/
2021: Following yesterday’s rocket attacks from southern Lebanon, Israelis wait to see if this is a prelude to a more prolonger attack on its northern border.
2021: “Israeli scientists say they have identified three existing drugs that have good prospects as COVID-19 treatments, reporting that they illustrated high ability to fight the virus in lab tests.”
2021: “Jews for Entrepreneurship Startup and Tech Mixer,” an “in-person even for tech, startup and other business professionals t mingle and network” is scheduled to take place this evening in San Francisco.
2021: the Corte Madera Library is scheduled to present “Story of the Czech Torah Scrolls” during which Loise Roman of the Memorial Scrolls traces, virtually, heir history, from vibrant Jewish communities before WWII to their current day restoration/distribution to Jewish global communities.
2022: Opening night of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to include “a part at the Randall Museum.
2022: As part of the Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series, YIVI is scheduled to a lecture in English by Professor Justin Cammy on “Sutzkever’s Environmental Poetics.”
2022: Special Projects Director and writer Lisa Kenner Grissom is scheduled to speak with Tony-nominated director, acclaimed Broadway actor, accomplished singer and Yiddishist, Eleanor Reissa about her latest work The Letters Project - A Daughter's Journey.
2022: JWA is scheduled to host a book talk by Rachel Barenbaum, author of Atomic Anna, “an epic adventure as three generations of women work together and travel through time to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their past.”
2022: In San Francisco, Books Inc is scheduled to host A book-signing event featuring S.W. Leicher, whose new novel., Acts of Atonement“is the second in a series featuring the Serach Gottesman, the headstrong daughter of an ultra-Orthodox family, and her Latina lesbian lover in Brooklyn.”