This Day, August 19, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

August 19

43 BCE: Octavian later known as Augustus compels the senate to elect him Consul. As the first Emperor of Rome (in fact, if not in name) Augustus would follow the policies of “moderation and accommodation” towards Judea begun by his uncle, Julius Caesar

14CE: Augustus, Roman Emperor passed away. For the Jews, Augustus was a comparatively benign ruler. He left Judea under a Jewish king (even if it was Herod) and only converted the homeland of the Jews to a province during the turmoil that followed Herod's death.  Under Augustus Roman governors were ordered to follow policies that would not antagonize the Jews including.  They were not to permit pagan altars to be built in Jerusalem and their troops were not to parade through the city carrying standards with the picture of the Emperor. He followed a similarly benign policy towards the Jews in the Diaspora including allowing them to contributions to support the Temple and exempting Jews from appearing in court on the Sabbath, starting with Friday night.

1099: The armies of the First Crusade defeated the Saracens at the Battle of Ascalon (an historic Palestinian city on the Mediterranean), one month after they had captured Jerusalem. Neither the Jews nor the Moslems fared well at the hands of the Crusaders.  They slaughtered the Jews of Europe as they marched away and slaughtered the Jews of Jerusalem when they took the city.  The Crusaders did win the Battle of Ascalon, but they actually did not capture the city of Ascalon due to a quarrel between two of the Crusader leaders.  The city remained in the hands of the Moslems and would become a base from which Jerusalem would be attacked in subsequent campaigns.  This would not be the last time that initial victories by Western armies fighting in the Middle East did not result in long term conquests.

1203: “A fire started by Flemish crusaders burned down the Jewish quarter of Constantinople including the synagogue.”

1263: King James I of Aragon takes the lead in one of the earliest recorded instances of Christian censorship of Jewish writings.

1270: Today, three months after having “agreed to reconfirm Magna Carta and to impose restrictions on Jewish moneylending” to gain Parliaments permission to levy additional taxes, King Edward I, the king who would later expel the Jews from his realm, sailed from Dover for France on the first leg of what was to become the Ninth Crusade.

1274: Coronation of King Edward I of England. Under Edward’s reign things went from bad to worse.  For example, in “1279 and edict imposed the death penalty on Jews accused of uttering blasphemy about Christianity.  In 1280, “Edward ordered Jews to listen to Cominicans preaching conversion.”  In one of his “last acts of extortion…he arrested the heads of Jewish families and demanded their communities…raise a 12,000 pound ransom payment.”  Finally, in 1290, the King ordered the expulsion of all Jews from his realm.  He would be the last ruler of England to officially deal with the Jewish people until the days of Oliver Cromwell.

1338: Host desecration riots destroyed the Jewish community of Wolfsberg, Austria. The Jews were accused of having stolen the Eucharist, making it bleed, and trying to burn it. Over 70 Jews were burned at the stake and the community destroyed. The community was never revived.

1439: Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor passed away today.  “To his last hour” he “protected those outlawed by all the world,” a reference to the Jewish people.  “He had a Jewish physician” and made Jacob ben Yehicel Loans a knight.  On his deathbed, “Frederick is said to have strongly recommended the Jews to his son, enjoining on him to protect them, and not to listen calumnious accusations, whose falsity he had fathomed. (As reported by Graetz)

 1509: The Battle of the Books took place in Frankfurt (Germany): Johann Pfefferkorn, an apostate Jew, convinced Maximilien I to destroy all Jewish books, especially the Talmud. The books were defended by a gentile, Johann von Reuchlin, a noted humanist, scholar and student of the Zohar. The battle was decided in his favor, and the decree was rescinded. Such challenging of the Church by Christian scholars - on its own ground - helped bring about the Reformation and the revolt against the Church. 

1555: First printing of Orech Chaim a section of the Shulchan Aruch in Eretz Yisrael. The Shulchan Aruch (The Set Table in English) is a major compilation of Jewish Law created by Rabbi Joseph Caro.  He began writing the work while living in western Turkey in 1522.  He finished it while living in Safed, the gathering place for scholars and mystics in Eretz Israel.  The Shulchan Aruch is divided into four sections the first of which is Orech Chaim.  Orech Chaim deals with laws concerning prayer, Synagogue, Shabbat and holiday observances. It would take approximately five years for all subsections to be printed.

1662: French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal passed away.  Unlike some other French philosophers Pascal thought highly of the Jewish people as the following quote proves, "It is certain that in certain parts of the world we can see a peculiar people, separated from the other peoples of the world and this is called the Jewish people…. This people is not only of remarkable antiquity but has also lasted for a singularly long time… For whereas the people of Greece and Italy, of Sparta, Athens and Rome and others who came so much later have perished so long ago, these still exist, despite the efforts of so many powerful kings who have tried a hundred times to wipe them out, as their historians testify, and as can easily be judged by the natural order of things over such a long spell of years. They have always been preserved, however, and their preservation was foretold… My encounter with this people amazes me…

1629: Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller was dismissed from office today and imprisoned at the order of the imperial court of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II for “insulting Christianity” – a charge which led to a fine of being levied on the rabbi, one fifth of which was paid for by Jacob Bassevi von Treuenberg, the financier and “Court Jew” who served three different emperors including Ferdinand II.

1654: Gershon Shaul Yom Tov Lipman Heller, "Tosfot Yom Tov" passed away today. “He served as chief Rabbi of Prague and of Vienna.  His most famous work was a commentary on the Mishnah entitled Tosafot Yom Tov.  The word Tosafot is translated as “additions.”  There are those who contend that the Tosafot are not actually “additions” or commentaries on the Talmud but commentaries on Rashi’s commentary.  Regardless Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller was a great scholar, sage and communal leader.”

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Heller_Yom_Tov_Lipmann

1751: Birthdate of David de Leon the son of Abraham de Leon

1760: Birthdate of Sarah Isaacs, the Easthampton born daughter of Aaron Isaacs who converted and was the wife of William Payne and the mother of William Howard Payne, the creator of “Home Sweet Home.”

1764(21st of Av, 5524): “Merchant and shipowner” Judah Hays who was an “officer at Shearith Israel” passed away today in NYC.

1770: Israel Lyons a silversmith living in Cambridge where he taught Hebrew to students at the university, wrote Observation and Enquiries Relating to Various Parts of Scripture History and raise two children - Israel, an “astronomer, botanist and mathematician, and Judith – passed away today.

1772: Grace Mears and Moses Raphael Halevi gave birth to Samson Levy, the husband of Martha Lamplugh with whom he had eight children.

 1781: George Washington and his French allies under the command of Rochambeau began their secret forced march that would end at Yorktown and lead to the eventual American victory and independence for a nation that provided a home and haven to millions of Jews.

1794: In the Netherlands, Abraham Salomon and his wife Marretje gave birth to Grietje Abraham Cohen Verveer

1796(15^th of Av, 5556): Tu B’Av observed for the last time during the presidency of George Washington.

1800: Birthdate of “German poet” Michael Beer “brother of Giacomo Meyerbeer, the composer, and of Wilhelm Beer, the astronomer.”

1803: Six days after he had passed away, Simeon Hart Myers, the son of Naphtali Hart Myers and the former Hester Moses, was buried today at the “Holly Road burial ground.”

1807(15^th of Av, 5567): Tu B’Av

1807: Jacob Aaron married Catherine Benjamin today at the Great Synagogue.

1807: Lewis Isaacs married Caroline Pyke today at the Great Synagogue.

1809: In Alsace, Isaac Dreyfus, the son of Jacob Dreyfus and his wife Gertrude “Julie” Dreyfus gave birth to Rosine Dreyfus who became Rosine Picard after she married Louis Picard with whom she had three children – Achille, Caroline and Lucien.

1809: Birthdate of Daniel Joseph Jaffe, the father of Martin, John, Alfred and Otto Jaffe.

1810: Moses Alexander and his wife gave birth to Dinah Alexander, the wife of Jacob David Davis whom she married in London’s “Great Synagogues.”

1818: Joseph Michaels married Rebecca Harris today at the Hambro Synagogue.

1827: One day after he had passed away, 69 year old Nathan Nathan was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery” today.

1835: A Jew Bill (legislation intended to complete the political and civil emancipation of English Jews) passed its first reading in the House of Lords.

1840: Today, Israel B. Kursheedt who had “played a key role in the establishment of Hebra Terumath Hakkodesh, which aided the poor of Israel, chaired a gathering of New York’s Jewish community to protest” the arrest of several Jews living in Damascus on charges of having killed a Franciscan friar so that they could use his blood for Passover in what is called the Damascus Affair.’

1843: In Strasbourg, Alsace, France, Louis and Babette Block gave birth to Adolphe Bloch, the husband of Noémie Bloch whose children included Marcel Dassualt, a leader in the French aviation industry

1845: In the Paris suburb of Boulogne-sur-Seine, Haut-de-Seine, James Mayer Rothschild and Betty von Rothschild gave birth to their youngest child Baron Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild

1848:  The California Gold Rush really gets under way as news of the strike appears in the New York Herald alerting Americans living in the East that “there is gold in them thar hills.”  Jews joined the thousands of others who streamed west looking for fortune.  According to Pioneer Jews by Harriet and Fred Rochlin, local newspapers provided documentary proof of the Jewish presence: “The Cohen claim at Vallecito made another whopping clean-up.”  “Nathan Rhine has one of the best ledges…He expended about $8,000 to develop it.”  “A Jew named Heyman and several others have worked for some weeks some claims on the new ledge.  These claims were jumped by a man named Moore.”  Jews and gentiles discovered that there were more ways to make their fortunes than digging and panning.  Of course the most famous Jew to strike it rich was Levi Strauss whose pants not only won the West but our now a household brand around the world.

1851: Birthdate of Ferdinand-Camille Dreyfus the French journalist and office holder who was not related to Captain Alfred Dreyfus but who ended up fighting a duel with the notorious anti-Semite, the Marquis de Mores at the same time that the embattled French captain was being railroaded.

1852: In Wilkes-Barre, PA, Abraham Strauss and Emilie Bodenheimer gave birth to Joseph Seligman Strauss, the husband of Miriam Weiss, who took time from his legal practice to serve as a member of the Wilkes-Barre School Board and a member of the Executive Committee of B’nai B’rith.

1853: In Frankfurt, Germany, “Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild and Mathilde Hannah von Rothschild of the Naples branch of the Rothschild family” gave birth to Adelheid von Rothschild, the wife of her cousin Baron Edmond James de Rothschild and the mother of James, Maurice and Miriam de Rothschild who “became involved in her husband’s life work in Palestine.”

1856: Birthdate of Harold Frederick, the native of Utica, NY, who wrote The New Exodus: A Study of Israel in Russia which displayed a sympathy for the subject – the way in which the Czar’s government treated its Jewish subjects.

1861: Derogatory stereotypes were part of the American linguistic landscape as can be seen in this report published in the Charleston Courier describing an episode among Union prisoners being held at Richmond. A newsboy who had been in the habit of selling his papers at three, suddenly ran his price up to five cents, and on making his accustomed sale in the morning to one of the prisoners, the latter first refused to "come down." The young vender was equally inexorable, and finally carried his point, and received the amount of his demand. This rise in stocks was reported to the Yankee conclave, whereupon the question was raised whether it was right for the man to jew the boy, or the boy to jew the man. The discussion thus commenced in the social circle was carried into the debating society, and after the usual pros and cons, it was finally decided that the boy, being the sole and undisputed owner of the property, and the said property not being contraband of war, and no concatenation of circumstances having arisen to obstruct the right thereby vested in the original possessor of the aforesaid vehicle of information, the right was undoubtedly inherent in the adolescent merchant to determine for himself the incipient value of his goods, and to charge for the same accordingly, ad valorem duties to the contrary notwithstanding.

1861(13th of Elul, 5621): Joseph Oterman, the Dutch born Texas financier married to Rosanna Dyer, the brother-in-law of Major Leon Dyer and the uncle of Dr. Joseph Osterman Dyer was accidently shot today and suffered wounds that would lead to his death a few days later.

1862: Philadelphian Joseph A. Davidson, who will be killed during the Battle of Fredericksburg, began serving with Company I of the 134^th Regiment.

1862: Birthdate of Auguste-Maurice Barrès, the French author and politician who could not be convinced by Leon Blum that was Dreyfus was innocence because, as he wrote in one of his anti-Semitic pamphlets, "That Dreyfus is guilty, I deduce not from the facts themselves, but from his race."

1863: In Los Angeles Hannah Pessah Cohn and Abram Wolf Edelman, “the first rabbi to serve Congregation B’nai B’rith in Los Angeles” gave birth to architect Abram M. Edelman who designed several buildings that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places including the El Mio House.

1867: Birthdate of Rumanian born New York “wholesale shoe merchant” Bernard Lebovitz, “one of the founders and a former president of B’nai Jacob Synagogue in South Brooklyn” and “the executive director of the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital” who was the husband of Hedvig Lebovitz.”

1870: Birthdate of Bernard Baruch financier and unofficial adviser to several U.S. Presidents.  He passed away in 1965. Born in South Carolina, Baruch's family moved to New York City.  He graduated from City College of New York.  He began working as an office boy at three dollars a week. However, by the age of 30 he amassed a fortune thanks to successful speculation in the Stock Market.  He was an adviser to President Wilson during World War I and accompanied him to the Paris Peace Conference after the war.  Thanks to shrewd financial skills, including knowing when to get out of the stock market, Baruch's wealth survived the Crash of 1929.  Baruch was a supporter of the New Deal.  He served Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.  He authored the Baruch Plan, which was an attempt to avoid nuclear war by having an international agency control Atomic Energy.  Baruch is credited by some with first using the term "Cold War" to describe the conditions that existed between the Soviets and the United States after World War II. Baruch was one of those truly colorful characters in American whose life is better described by a novelist than a historian. more like it was created by novelist than a historian.

1870: “A Hebrew Church Schism” published today described a case that is being heard  by Judge Pinkney in the Circuit Court which centers around a dispute among the members of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation on the corner of Lloyd and Watson streets over the introduction of changes in ritual that the plaintiffs claim were not adopted in accord with the charter of the congregation.

1872: In Jerusalem, dedication of Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue which would serve as the Chasidic house of worship until the Arabs demolished it in 1948 that is also known the Nissan Beck Shul in honor of Nisan Beck, the leader of the Chassidic community in Palestine until his death in 1889 who was responsible for the construction of the building under extremely adverse conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Beck#/media/File:Synagogue_Tiferet_Israel.jpg

1872: Three days after she had passed away, 61 year old Hannah (Marks) Somers, the widow of Isaac Somers, and mother of Miriam H. Somers, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery” today.

1872(15th of Av, 5632): Seventy-three year old Karl Feust, the son of the Chief Rabbi of Bamberg who decided to be a lawyer, despite all of the obstacles facing a Jew in that profession,  and who also served as the secretary of the Jewish community passed away today.

1872:“The Bells,” a “one act play that tells the story of a man named Mathias who secretly murdered a Jew 15 years ago and the consequences of his act” opened tonight at Booths Theatre in New York City.

1873: Birthdate of Elizavetgrad native and neurologist  George Boris Hassin, who in 1902 came to the United States where he served in WWI and was on the faculty of the University of the Illinois.                        

1874(6th of Elul, 5634): Seventy-four-year-old Aaron Lopez, the Charleston born son of David Lopez who was the husband of Eleanor Cohen and “prominent in the affairs of Georgetown, SC” passed away today in Memphis, TN.

1874: The Grand Lodge of the ancient Jewish Order Kesher Shel Barzel met at Albany, NY, today.  Of the 5,404 members, 4,934 are men and 530 are women. During the past year, Lodge has paid $23,000 to “the heirs or legal representatives of twenty-three deceased brethren.”  The Lodge has $7,000 on hand “to pay the endowment of he next seven deaths.”

1875: Birthdate of Joseph Whyl, the husband of Yorkshire have Rosa Phillips.

1876: Thirty-six year old George Smith, the translator of the Epic of Gilgamesh whose study of ancient Assyrian texts “threw light” on material contained in the Bible passed away at Aleppo, Syria after having suffered from a bout of severe dysentery.

1877:“The Polish Jews and Where They Worship described the dissatisfaction which “some of the prominent Jews of this City, of the class which is represented by the Jewish Messenger, have” expressed because of “the freedom with which certain rabbis and other Hebrews of importance with their people among the Polish Jews, and the other poorer classes of Israelites “ on the lower east side “marry and divorce members of their congregations without regard to the laws of the State of New York.”

1877: It was reported today that many Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland do not trust the civil courts and look to their rabbis for decisions in legal matters.

1877: It was reported that the Jews in the United States have access to 15 newspapers and magazines devote to Judaism.  One of them is printed in German while others have German departments.

1877: It was reported that there are 15 Jewish newspapers and/or magazines published in the United States.  One of them is printed in German and “others have German departments.”

1878: As New Orleans was in the grip of a Yellow Fever Epidemic, New York City Alderman Lewis received the following telegram from some of the prominent Jewish resident of New Orleans, LA:The following telegram from prominent Hebrew residents of New-Orleans was received today by Alderman Lewis: “Sickness, disease and suffering among the poor increasing daily.  Our funds are nearly exhausted in this sad calamity.  We deem it our melancholy duty to appeal to the sympathies of our brethren throughout the United States for speedy aid.”

1879(30th of Av, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Elul

1879: The Commissioner of Emigration took the three Neumann brothers – Joseph,10; Ignatz,8; Max, 7 – to Justice Flammer to the Police Court in the Tombs.  He “committed them to a Hebrew charitable institution to be educated and cared for.”  Peter Groden of Castle Garden had found the three boys huddled together three weeks ago in Battery Park where they were trying to sleep.  They said their mother had died and they had no food and not place to go.  Groden took them to the Emigration Commissioners who found out that that the boys’ father “had abandoned them and gone to the West.” Since there were no other friends or relatives, the court system was the only other alternative.

1879: “Mysteries of the Royal Arch” published today described he connection between the Masons and the ancient Hebrews including the fact that their initiation room “is a representation of the tabernacle erect on the old site of the Temple” built in the time of Haggai, Joshua and Zerubbabel.

1880(12^th of Elul, 5640): Fifty-nine year old Herman Bodek, businessman and Hebraist who wrote These Are the Words of Covenant, “a catechism of the ritual signs, allegories, and objects of Freemasonry” passed away today in Leipzig.

1881: It was reported today that based on figures collected in Germany, there are 6,139,662 Jews living in the world.  Of these, over 5 million live in Europe and slightly more than 300,000 live in America.  In Europe Russia, with 2,552,594 has the most Jews and Norway with 34 has the fewest.

1882: Two Russian Jewish girls named Mary and Hannah Rabeteck arrived in New York from Hamburg aboard the SS Cimbria.  The two girls who are aged 6 and 8 respectively, claim they have an uncle with the same last name living in the city, but do not know his first name so they will have to stay at Castle Garden for the time being.

1882: Burglars stole $250 worth of materials from the workshop of Meyer Norden on Broome Street in New York.  Norden is Jewish and his shop is closed on Saturday which appears to be why the thieves chose today to steal the silk and velvet cloth.

1882: “Obreight To Be Released” published today described the travails of Samuel Obreight whose family has had him confined to an asylum because he was “a lunatic” – a contention they based, in part, on “the indignation of his Jewish relatives at his marriage to a Christian woman.”

1883: “Murderer Disappointed” published today described the failed attempt by Theodore Hoffman to escape from prison.  Hoffman is sentenced to die for murdering Zife Marks, a Jewish peddler, who worked the area around Port Chester, NY.

1883: In Constantinople, Annetta and Pinchas Moses Papier gave birth to Emily Papier.

1884(28th of Av, 5644): Seventy-five year old Jacob Strauss passed away.  Born in Frankort, he has lived in New Orleans for the last 50 years where he engaged in money-lending.  At the time of his death, he lived on Carondolet Street.

1885: In Austria, Shmuel Meyer Stettner and Rachel Stettner gave birth to Nettie Stettner who became Nettie Kinsbruner when she married David (Aubie) Kinsbruner.

1887: Gus Katz and Emanuel Sturm of Clinton, Illinois, each contributed $1.00 to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

1887: A hearse sent by the United Hebrew Charities took the body of Julius Weisbaden from the morgue to the Marble Cemetery in New York where it was interred without flowers or services.

1888(12th of Elul, 5648: Eighty-year old historian Meyer Isler who earned a doctorate and then began teaching at the school founded by his father Israel Abraham Meyer passed away today in Hamburg.

1889: The funeral of Lewis Arnheim, a member of the Georgia State Legislature took place in Atlanta today. He is survived by his wife, the former Ida Mayer, daughter of David Mayer and two children.

1886: Birthdate of Khiva, Russia native and Boston University trained attorney Elihu Alex Hershenson who in 1895 came to the United States where member of the city council in Peabody, MA and director of the YMHA.

1890: Justice Duffy has ordered Samuel Cohen to be held for trial on charges of falsely representing himself at he received five dollars from Morris Beckwitz who thought he was making a contribution to the Hebrew Aid Society.

1891(15^th of Av, 5651): Tu B’AV

1891: In Brussels, the International Socialist Workmen’s Congress adopted a resolution “condemning both anti-Semitism and Jewish financial tyranny.”

1891: “Goldwin Smith and the Tribal God of the Jews” published today included J.S. Moore’s expression of dissatisfaction with Goldwin Smith’s contention that the Jews only worship a tribal God and “that there is no hope for the Jews as to their social position as long as they adhere to this tribal God.’ (Smith was a British born anti-Semitic Canadian history professor)

1892: A hearing will be held today in response to a complaint filed by Meyer Reinherz an agent of the United Hebrew Charities against Edward Pollock who allegedly attacked him.

1892: In, Minneapolis, “Joel Levi and Jennie (Groll) Erman gave birth to Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery trained physician Jacob Martin Erman,  a U.S. Army surgeon assigned to Base Hospital 64 in France during WW I and husband of  Emma Ruth Dobrtin who settled in Omaha where he was a member of B’nai B’rith and the “Omaha Hebrew Elks.”

1892: Leonard Stiebel, the son of Ada and Daniel C. Stiebel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1892: In Des Moines, IA, “Isaac and Bertha (Meyer) Riegelman gave birth to Cornell alum and Columbia trained attorney who rose to the rank of Major while fighting at “St. Mihiel and The Argonne” after which he married Gladys B. Bleiman and practiced law in NYC.

1893: Throughout the Lower East Side, an area occupied by Russian and Polish Jewish thousands of circulars printed in Hebrew calling on “Workingmen!!  Organized and Not Organized!  All Suffering and Wretched Ones!” to bring their wives and children to attend a mass meeting at Union Square to be held this evening.

1893: Charles Wilfred, a self-described “anarchist-communist” who had worked with Jewish tailors during their strike in London addressed a meeting at Thalia Hall which was held to celebrate the release of Emma Goldman from Blackwell’s Island.

1893: In Bialystok, Harris and Amelia (Malinsky) Bloom gave birth to Julius Harry Bloom who in 1905 came to the United States where he became a merchant in Greenville, SC, served as President of Congregation Beth Israel and served in combat with the A.E.F. during WW I after which he married Leonora Shatenstein.

1894: One day after he had passed away, 21 year old Edward Jacobs, the son of Solomon Jacobs and Sarah Cohen was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemtery.

1894: In Newburgh, NY, founding of the Newburgh Progress Club which met every Sunday and for which Sigismund Samuels served as President.

1895: Birthdate of “Forestville, CT” native labor organizer Vera Buch Weisbord, whose autobiography A Radical Life was published in 1977, the same year when her radical husband Albert passed away.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/aug/19/1895/this-week-in-history-birth-of-vera-weisbord-radical

1895: Eleven year old Sarah Russell, who had appeared in the Court of Sessions on three charges of pickpocketing, was sent to the Hebrew Juvenile Asylum because she “was not properly cared for at home” and could “receive proper training”

1896: It was reported today that the bands of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum will perform at The Summernight’s Festival

1897: Julies Harburger and Raphael Rosenberg of the Independent Order Free Sons of Israel have expressed their support for New York Mayor William Strong to become the first mayor “Greater New York” (what we call New York City).

1897: Birthdate of Roman Vishniac, the Russian born American photographer his many accomplishments included creating a pictorial record of the Shtetl life.

http://vishniac.icp.org/roman-vishniac

1897: One day after she had passed away 42 year old Sarah Bieberkraut, the wife of Abraham Bieberkraut, was buried today at the Plashet Cemetery in London.

1897: “Charity Funds Squandered” published today described a letter that “J.S. Koenigsberg, the Secretary of the Jewish Society of Denver” received from Edwin W. Wallace the American Consul at Jerusalem  claiming that funds sent for indigent American Jews who have moved to Palestine “to spend their last days”  are being “squandered by the native Jews who live in luxury.”

1897: Two days after she passed away, 34 year old Annie Landau was buried at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

1899: “Picquart Gives His Evidence” published today described the five hours of the Colonel’s testimony in which he proved details of the plots against Dreyfus and confronts Generals Roget and Mercier.

1899: Joseph Weiler conducted an action today that raised over $200 to aid the Hebrew Sanitarium of Rockaway, New York.

1899: In Rennes, three witnesses, all “enemies of Dreyfus – Major Cuignet, Gener de Bolsdeffre and General Gonse –“testified from 6:30 until 11 A.M.  Their testimony was mainly a reiteration of the evidence they had given before.”

1900:Abe, The Little Hebrew" Attell’s fought his first fight today. He knocked out Kid Lennett in two rounds. His mother, who strongly opposed Attell's idea of being a boxer, later became one of Attell's staunchest supporters, even betting on her son to win. He gained the nickname "The Little Hebrew" in these early fights.

1901(4^th of Elul, 5661): On the Jewish calendar yahrzeit of German Reform rabbi who passed away in 1860

1902: Twenty-nine-year-old Rutgers University trained entomologist Jacob Kotinsky, the Ukraine born son Joseph and M. Bessie (Sitkin) Kotinsky married Sara Levin today in Philadelphia.

1902(16^th of Av, 5662): Sixty-one year old Abraham Mendes Chumaceiro, the native of Amsterdam who “moved to Curaçao in 1856, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1872” passed away today.

1903: Today Jacob de Haas and his fellow Zionists were traveling on train from Paris that would take them straight to Basle.

1904(8^th of Elul, 5664): on the Jewish calendar yahrzeit of “Talmudic scholar and scientist” David Gans who passed away in 1613.

1905(18^th of Av, 5665): Parsashat Eikev

1905(18^th of Av, 5665): Eighty year old German born French Orientalist and Astrologist Jules Oppert whose accomplishments included making the first definitive identification of the “site of ancient Babylon” while on expedition to Mesopotamia in 1851.

http://www.aibl.fr/membres/academiciens-depuis-1663/article/jules-

1906: “The National Anti-Semitic Assembly of Bulgaria met a Philippopolis” today.

1906: The newly formed Hebrew Congregation of Cuba changed its name to the United Hebrew Congregation (UHC) of Cuba, and Robert Diamond was elected treasurer. The pressing need for a Jewish cemetery was unfortunately highlighted a month later when Diamond passed away suddenly. Joseph Steinberg was appointed the new treasurer.

1907: Slain at Bialystok published today described the assassination of Colonel Schroetter, the Commander of the Bialystok Military Station who “was accused of organizing and helping to carry out the recent attacks on the Jews” in this region.

1908: The strike by students at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary Association continued because they “have received the $3.50 a week which they are supposed to be paid while learning to be rabbis.

1909: It was reported today that ex-Police Commissioner Bingham recanted his statement his statement that “about 50 per cent of the Jews” were crooks.

1910: Two days after she passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held for sixty-five-year-old Anna Madeline Graff Kahn, the German born wife of Sol Kahn which she will interred at the Hebrew Rest Cemetery.

1910: In Asia Minor, Ritual murder charges were raised against Jews in Aiden.

1911(25^th of Av, 5671): Parashat Re’eh

1911:Anti-Jewish riots began in Tredegar, New South Wales, Great Britain.  This was the worst outbreak of anti-Semitic violence to take place in the British Isles in modern times.  The riots came at the end of miners’ strike and were so intense that the Home Secretary invoked the Riot Act and called for the military to control the attackers.

1911: It was reported today that Justice Leon Sanders is the head of “a union of Jewish immigrant aid societies in the United States and Canada which has been formed” in New York City.

1912: Rabbi J. L. Magnes, the President of the Kehilla “aroused enthusiasm at a meeting of that organization tonight when he declared that the agencies investigating the Rosenthal case would bear watching.

1913(16^th of Av, 5673): Forty-five year old Simon Stein, the Pennsylvania born son of Daniel and Amelia Stein, the brother of Gertrude Stein of literary fame, passed away today.

1914: At the beginning of WW I Albert Einstein, the recently appointed director of the Institute of Physics writes from Berlin, “Europe, in her insanity, has started something almost unbelievable.  In such times one realizes to what a sad species of animal one belongs. I quietly pursue my peaceful studies and contemplations and feel only pit and disgust.

1914: Birthdate of Rose Heilbron who became the first woman judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London.

1915: Practically everybody attending the meeting at Cooper Union tonight voted “in favor of the resolution for” “holding a Jewish Congress” that would unite Jews in an effort to abolish Jewish disabilities in Russia and to establish “a Zionist State in Palestine at the close of the war.”

1915: The Imperial German Chancellor delivered a speech before the Reichstag today in which he described the Russian scorched earth policy in which for once Christians and Jews suffer the same fate as all Russians “are transported to uninhabited regions to the East” or left to “perish in the morasses of Russian roads.”(Editor’s Note – The Germans liked to portray themselves as protectors of Western civilization in the face of the Slavic masses, but as far as the Jews were concerned, in Poland, a year later they were faced with a level of starvation that forced them to seek aid for soup kitchens from Jews in Switzerland and the United States)

1915: Three days after he had passed away, Isaac Levy was buried at the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.

1915: It was reported today that when the leader of the lynch mob asked Leo Frank, “We want to know whether you are guilty or innocent of killing little Mary Phagan,” Frank replied, “I think more of my wife and my mother than I do of my own life.”  These were the last words he spoke.

1915: It was reported today that after the mob agreed not to mutilate the body of Leo Frank, they cut him down and then vied to get pieces of the rope for souvenirs.

1916: “The Joint Distribution Committee of the Funds for Jewish War Sufferers which is made up of representatives from the American, the Central and the People’s Relief Committees, the three largest organizations for distributing America’s contribution to Jewish relief announced today that between January 20 and August 15, it had sent $3,891,613” overseas which did not include the $342,359.71in remittances that the committee’s Transmission Bureau had sent to friends and relatives living in the War Zone or Palestine.

1916: “Motion Picture Publicity Men Organize” published today described the founding of the Association of Motion Pictures whose original members included Frohman Amusement Company, Paramount Pictures,  Adolph Zukor’s  Famous Players Film Company and Ben Schulberg.

1917(1st of Elul, 5677): Rosh Chodesh Elul

1917: In London, “the Zion Association” adopted a resolution expressing disapproval of the formation of a Jewish Legion because of the “harmful effects” such a move could have on the interest of the Jews in Turkey and Palestine.

1917: Seventy-five year old Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick, who after meeting with a delegation led by Saul Goldberg, denounced the anti-Semitic pogrom in that Irish city – a denunciation which had little effect since  Fr John Creagh CSSR, spiritual director of the Arch Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, the leader of the anti-Semitic riots was beyond his ecclesiastical control passed away today.

1917: The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War acknowledged receiving gifts of $100 or more including $380 from Congregation B.I.A.S. in Brooklyn, $1,153 from the Young Peoples Hebrew Association in Windsor, Ontario and $115 from Ohave Emnuna in Cleveland, Ohio.

1918: Birthdate of Sy Gomberg, an Oscar-nominated film screenwriter and producer who taught screenwriting to University of Southern California students for over ten years.

1918: “Famous Advocate Slain in Russia” published today described the recent assassination Henry Sliosberg, the jurist and leader of the Jewish community who was an opponent of the Bolsheviks. (Editor’s note – Only problem was that this report was erroneous and Slisoberg would not pass away until 1937.)

1918: Approximately 150 service men are in training to take part in “Yip, Yip, Haphank,” a musical revue written by Sergeant Irving Berlin that is scheduled to begin a week long run in New York City today the proceeds of which will be used “for the erection of a community house at Camp Uptown.

1919: According to summary of the bequests of the late Ludwig Dreyfus the United Hebrew Charities will receive $627,000 and the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies will receive $210,000.

1919: Today,Julius Harry Bloom,the Bialystok born son of, Harris and Amelia (Malinsky) Bloom who in 1905 came to the United States where he became a merchant in Greenville, SC, served as President of Congregation Beth Israel and served in combat with the A.E.F. during WWI married Leonora Shatenstein.

1919: Afghanistan gains full independence from the United Kingdom. Jews have lived in what is now known as Afghanistan for more than two thousand years before the last family fled while the Taliban held sway in Kabul.

1920: In Manhattan Louis and Martha Peskin Wershba gave birth to “Joseph Wershba, who as a CBS television reporter working with Edward R. Murrow revealed the story of Lt. Milo Radulovich, whose dismissal from the Air Force because of his relatives’ leftist leanings became a symbol of the anti-Communist witch hunts of the 1950’s.”  (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1921(15^th of Av, 5681): Tu B’Av

1921: Birthdate of Gene Rodenberry, the creator of sci-fi cult his “Star Trek” staring those two Jewish spacemen – William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock.

1922(25^th of Av, 5682): Parashat Re’eh

1922: Purdue University trained Chemical Engineer Raymond V. Rosenbaum, the Robinson, Il son of Lydia Myers and Edward Rosenbaum married Margaret M. Ten Eyck in Springfield, MO today.

1923: Assistant Professor of Hebrew Literature and holder of a Ph.D. from Yale Pinkhos Chugrin, the son of Debosha Hochstein and Rabbi Jonah Churgin married Rosetta Seligson today in New York.

1923: Twenty-three-year-old Harry Schultz, the Sebastopol born son of Lipman and Elizabeth Schultz who attended Columbia for a year and whose artwork was shown in Sweden, Russia and America married Sonia Tcherniack today in Petrograd.

1924: Today, Moe “Berg was loaned to the Toledo Mud Hens, a poor team ravaged by injuries after which he was immediately inserted into the lineup at shortstop which led Major league scout Mike González sending a telegram to the Dodgers evaluating Berg with the curt, but now famous, line, "Good field, no hit."

1925: In Cracow, Hirsch and Mita (Rosenbaum) Karmel to Ilona Karmel, the Holocaust survivor who wrote Stephania and An Estate of Memory

1926:  Birthdate of businessman Arthur Rock, the man who supposedly coined the term “venture capitalism.”

1926(1^st of Elul, 5686): Rosh Chodesh Elul

1926(1^st of Elul, 5686): Harris Abelow, the son of Sholom and Rachel Bayle Davidson Abelow, who married Sophie Abelow a year after his first wife Hannah had died passed away today in Brooklyn.

1927: “The Conference of Jewish Rights after a prolonged debate today accepted proposals of the Organization Committee for the creation of a new body to supersede the committee of Jewish delegations, dating from Paris peace conference days.”

1928: The conference of the Mizrachi World Organization is scheduled to open in Danzig (As reported by JTA)

1929: Following attacks by Arabs on Jews praying at the Western Wall Erev Shabbat and other attacks on Jews in Jerusalem, a meeting was held last night at the home of Professor Joseph Klausner, the chairman of the Pro-Wailing Wall Committee.  The committee decided to issue an appeal to the Christian world describing the attacks and asking for intervention on behalf of the Jews.  “We ask to be given back what has always been ours, that which saturated with the blood and tears of hundred and thousands of the children of Israel.  Christians throughout the world, you know and realize the meaning of religious sanctity, you who know how to respect century-old traditions and painful longing for sacred religious shrines, please intervene and help us recover the Western Wall, so sacred and holy to us.”

1930: It was reported today that the Palestine Emergency Fund collected $2,083,818 in the United States and Alaska last August.

1931: “Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a leader of the Palestine movement and only living grandson of Mayer Amschel Rothschild” celebrated his 86^th birthday today quietly at his home” in Paris.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1931/08/20/96380590.html?pageNumber=7

1932: The anti-Communist movement in Argentina  has developed into an antl-Semitic campaign, which was described in the Chamber of Deputies this afternoon as alarming and threatening to public order.

1933: In Toronto, Mayor Stewart forbids display of swastika in the city.

1933: In Santiago, Zionist-Socialist party is organized in connection with the campaign for Labor Palestine that has raised 15,000 pesos.

1933: The Jiidische Rundschau, official organ of the German Zionist Federation, is suspended for six months because it replied editorially to an attack on the Zionist Congress by Alfred Rosenberg, Nazi leader.

 1934: A plebiscite in Germany approved the vesting of sole executive power in Adolf Hitler as Fuhrer.

1934: Congressman Henry Thomas Rainey who in 1906 attended a mass meeting held to protest the “atrocities in Russia” and told the audience that the Romanoffs “are inflaming the populace against the helpless Jews – and already the blood of 100,000 Jews cries out for vengeance” passed away today while serving as the 40^th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. (Editor’s note – we should always remember those who had the courage to stand with the underground for that is the real “Profile in Courage.;)

1935: More than 2,400 delegates from forty-three countries had registered here tonight for the opening of the nineteenth biennial Zionist Congress being held in Lucerne, Switzerland.

1936(1^stof Elul, 5695): Rosh Chodesh Elul

1936(1^stof Elul, 5695): Three days after the end of the Olympics, forty year old Captain Wolfgang Fürstner who was identified as “one of the last non-Aryan officers to retain his rank in the new German Army” committed suicide today after he “had learned that according to the Nuremberg Laws he was classified as a Jew and was to be dismissed from the Wehrmacht.

1937: Birthdate of Ann Valerie, Lady Solti (née Pitts) a supporter of the Jewish Music Institute and wife George Solit, who though not Jewish was violently against any anti- Semitism and spoke loudly and clearly on behalf of the Jewish community and many other Jewish institutions”

1937: “Confession” directed by Joe May with a script by Julius J. Epstein was released in the United States today by Warner Brothers.

1937(12^thof Elul, 5697): Author Abraham M. Dorfman passed away today in Philadelphia.

1937: The British government recommended to the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations that if the Royal (Peel) partition plan is accepted, a provisional cantonization of Palestine should be imposed during the transitional period, immediately after the termination of the Mandate. If such an arrangement would not be possible, an alternative was suggested, namely that two separate Mandates should be held, one for the Jewish, and one for the Arab state.

1938: Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, announced today that Great Britain has issued 825 certificates for the immediate transfer to Palestine of Jewish children from Germany and Poland.

1938: “In Strasbourg, France, fifty-one year old Polish born shoe manufacturer” and 27 year old Friederike "Fritzi" Passweg gave birth to Joseph Langerman who gained fame as “off the wall radio personality” Joe Frank.  (As reported by Richard Sandomir)

1938: In Scarsdale, NY Rabbi Lawrence W. Schwartz of the Jewish Community Center of White Plains officiated at the wedding Ruth Aileen Aronson and Peter Meyer.

1938: Switzerland closes its borders to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Austria.

1938: The Swiss Federal Council ordered the closing of their border to refugees from the Third Reich, constituting a death sentence for many Jews. (Editor’s Note - But not all Swiss officials obeyed the ruling. Swiss Police Commander Paul Grüninger—known by many as the “Oscar Schindler of the Swiss-German border region”—used bureaucratic loopholes to allow more than 3,000 Austrian Jews to enter the country. This drama, based on the true story, unfolds like a suspense thriller as we witness the war of wits between the commander and his superiors in the police force of officially neutral Switzerland. It’s almost impossible to watch The Grüninger File and not think about the difficult moral questions around today’s refugee asylum seekers.)

1939: As Stalin seeks to improve relations with Hitler, “the 1939 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement” was signed today – an agreement that would move  the two one step closer to the non-aggression pact that would provide the Nazis with their green light for WW II and give the Communist dictator half of Poland.

1939:In an impassioned speech frequently interrupted by hecklers, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland, Ohio, appealed today to the delegates attending the twenty-first session of the World Zionist Congress here to do nothing that might bring the Jews in Palestine into conflict with the British Government.

1940(15^th of Av, 5700): Tu B’Av

1940(15^th of Av, 5700): Thirty-one year old Henry H. Fleisher, Jr. passed away today after which he was interred at Mt. Sinai Cemetery in Philadelphia.

1940: Malvina Parnes, age 11, saw the Statue of Liberty from the deck of the Quanza, a Portuguese cargo ship.  Parnes and her family were fleeing from Hitler’s Europe and were allowed entry into the United States thanks to the personal intervention of Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the President of the United States.

1941: Einsatzkommando8 as well as local collaborators in Mogilev, Belorussia, kill more than 3000 Jews.

1942 Twenty-nine year old New York native Aaron Bank enlisted in the Army and despite what some considered an “advanced agent” became a field operative for the Office of Strategic Services.

1942: An allied force crosses the English Channel in what came to be known as the Dieppe Raid. One thousand troops, mostly Canadian perished in this ill-begotten venture.  It proved to the English and the Americans that a cross-channel invasion of Europe was going to be a very difficult task that would take massive amounts of man and supplies.  More importantly for the Jews of Europe whose only hope of survival lay in liberation, such a landing would be at least a year if not more in the making.  In fact almost two years would pass between the disaster at Dieppe and the success at Normandy.  Unfortunately for most of the Jews of Europe this necessary two year hiatus meant death on an unheard of scale.

1942: Nazis murder the children of the Rembertów (Poland) Ghetto. The town's adult Jews, more than 1000, are assembled for deportation to the Treblinka death camp. About 300 of the people are ordered eastward along the road to Wesola. Before they walk a mile, the 300 are murdered. The 700 who remain are ordered to march south, and as the group passes the town of Anin, one woman melts into a crowd of non-Jewish Polish onlookers and escapes. Forty-five others are machine-gunned at Anin, ostensibly because they attempted escape. Hours later the marchers reach the ghetto at Falenica, where Jews already have been forcibly assembled; those who are discovered in hiding are shot. Inside the ghetto, two Jews resist, using an axe to kill the first German who steps through the doors of their apartment.

1942 At the Belzec extermination camp, 700 to 800 Jews herded into a gas chamber wait in torment for nearly three hours until a balky diesel engine can be started and the chamber filled with deadly exhaust. SS gas/disinfectant expert but anti-Nazi Kurt Gerstein is on hand to observe

1942: For four days 17,000 Jews from Lutsk, Ukraine, are taken to Polanka Hill and executed.

1942: Esther "Etty" Hillesum went to visit her parents at Deventer for the last time.

1942: “The first large-scale aktion in the Łuck Ghetto took place today” when “about 17,000 Jews were rounded up by Nazi Orpo police and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during a four-day period, assembled at the square by the pharmacy, and taken in lorries along with women and children, to the Górka Połonka forest on the outskirts of Łuck” where] “they were shot into the prepared trenches.”

1942: In Bar, Ukraine, 3,000 Jews were herded together and held without food or water while in a nearby cemetery the Nazis murdered 1,742 Jews. (Jewish Virtual Library)

1942: Fourteen year old Shmuel Shilo, the future Israeli actor, survived today’s action that liquidated the Łuck, Ghetto by hiding “in a cellar with mother and siblings.”

1942: Today, “the remaining 43 Jews” living in Laupheim were transported to Theresienstadt, marking the end of 200 years of Jewish habitation in this German town.

1943: The Treblinka death camp receives its final trainload of Jewish deportees. They come from Bialystok, Poland.

1943: Nir Am “was established today by immigrants from Bessarabia who were members of the Gordonia youth movement.

1944: The Liberation of Paris begins as the Resistance in Paris rises against German occupation with the help of Allied troops. The long nightmare for the Jews of France is about to end.  Jews played an active part in the Resistance.  Contrary to the popular myth, a significant portion of the French population collaborated with the Nazis and the Vichy French worked tirelessly to ship French Jews to the death camps.

1944: Birthdate of Mordechai "Motaleh" Spiegler, the native of Scohi, in the former Soviet Union who became a leading “Israeli footballer and manager.”

1945: “Special services have been arranged for this morning for Jewish congregations in response to President Truman's proclamation setting today aside as a day of prayer…”

1946: Ninety-eight known Nazis were rounded up in Tirschenreuth by the military government officers and after having been given picks and shovels, “they unearthed 36 bodies of Jews” who had died on a forced march from Buchenwald to Flossenburg.

1947: Today “His Eminence Haim Nahum Effendi Grand Rabbi of Egypt & Sudan reminded his Alexandria audience that Jews had lived in Egypt for over 2,000 years and that the oldest known synagogue (Ben Ezra) exists in Old Cairo.”

1948: Three-hundred-seventeen Jews who are “believed to the Last batch of immigrants permitted to leave Cyprus during the Palestine truce,” tonight “sailed from Famagusta for Palestine aboard the Jewish immigrant ship Hatikvah.”

1949: James McDonald, the United States Ambassador to Israel and his wife arrived in New York aboard the Il de France and which Mr. McDonald will continue on his trip to Washington where he will discuss events that have transpired during the last 13 months of his posting and talk about future problems including housing in Israel.

1950(6^thof Elul, 5710): Parashat Shoftim

1951: A four year agricultural development plan costing $610,000,000 and designed to feed an Israeli population of 2,000,000 was introduced to the World Zionist Congress today by Levi Eshkol, treasurer of Jewish Agency Executive, Israel...

1951:Arthur Cremin, president of the Music Lovers League announced today that the league was setting up an annual $500 scholarship in memory of Leopold Prince, the deceased vice president the league.

1952: The Knesset voted by 70 to 11 for an increase in the period of compulsory military service to 30 months.

1952: The S.S. Negba brought 112 immigrants from Hungary and 222 from North Africa to Israel. According to the new arrivals there were some 100,000 Jews left in Hungary, 80 percent of them in Budapest.

1952: Officials in Washington agreed with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion that the solution of Arab-Jewish difficulties would be of great economic benefit to both sides and certainly help toward strengthening peace in the world. The US State Department had made it clear in numerous background announcements that it did not believe the Arabs could be returned to their former homes in Israel. It felt, however, that some compensation ­ although not complete ­ for the dispossessed might considerably ease the tension.

1953: The Knesset passed a law establishing the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority known as Yad Vashem (a monument and a memorial) which takes it name from a verse from Isaiah

1953: Israel's parliament conferred Israeli citizenship posthumously on all Jews killed by the Nazis during the years of the Holocaust (1933-45) in Europe.

1953: An Arab terrorist from Gaza killed a restaurant owner in Ashkelon severely injured his 25 year old daughter.

1954(20^th of Av, 5714): Fifty-one year old Hamburg born American art collector who left Nazi Germany in 1934 and established what became the Curt Valentin Gallery passed away today.

https://www.moma.org/research-and-learning/archives/finding-aids/Valentinf

1954: Today, a press release announced that WNBC would be broadcasting the first radio performance of Maria del Carmen (Granados) and Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra by Nathaniel Shilkret,

1955:  Birthdate of actor Peter Gallagher.”

1955:  “Female on the Beach” a crime film directed by Joseph Pevney and starring Jeff Chandler was released in the United States today.

1956:  In Brooklyn, “actor, director and writer Alan Arkin and his first wife Jeremy Yaffe gave birth to Adam Arkin who has been honored with Tony nominations and Emmy awards for his work as any actor and director.

1956: In Phildaelphia, Rabbi Abraham L. Poupko officiated at the wedding of his daughter Shulamith Poupko and Emanuel Witty whose father, Cantor Noah assisted in the performing the ceremony.

1957(22nd of Av, 5717):  English born artist David Bomberg passed away.

1959(15^th of Av, 5719): Tu B’Av

1959(15th of Av, 5719): Seventy-eight year old Jacob Epstein an American-born sculptor who worked chiefly in England, where he pioneered modern sculpture, often producing controversial works that challenged taboos concerning what public artworks appropriately depict passed away today.

http://www.artnet.com/artists/sir-jacob-epstein/

1960: As the U.S. Presidential elections get underway an announcement is made that Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee for President will address the upcoming sixty-third annual convention of The Zionist Organization of America.

1960(26th of Av, 5720):Seventy two year old Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier an English historian passed away. http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/historians/namier_lewis.html

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Lewis-Bernstein-Namier

1962: Birthdate of Julius Genachowski “an American lawyer and businessman” who became Federal Communications Commission Chairman during the first year of Obama’s presidency.

1963: “Syrian forces murdered two civilians in Almagor,” a moshav north of the Lake Kinneret.

1964: In Boston, MA, “Leo Kahn, co-founder of Staples” and Dorothy Davidson gave birth to Harvard graduate Joseph Kahn, “the managing editor of The New York Times.”

1965(21^st of Av, 5725): Seventy-seven year old Austrian born “Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, the spiritual director of the United Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society who came to the United States and was the husband of “the former Helen Greenberg with whom he had three children – Mrs. Lotti Glover, Rabbi Sol Landau and Brooklyn Philharmonia music director Siegfried Landau – passed away today.

1965: Rolf Friedemann Pauls began serving as the first German (W. Germany) Ambassador to Israel.

1967(13^th of Av, 5727): Shabbat Nachamu

1967(13^th of Av, 5727) Eighty-three year old Luxembourg City native Hugo Gernsbach the son “Berta (Durlacher), a housewife and Mortiz Gernsbacher, a wine maker”  “an inventor, author, editor and publisher who has been called the father of modern science fiction passed away

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Gernsback#/media/File:Science_and_Mechanics_Nov_1931_cover.jpg

1967(13^th of Av, 5727): Sixty year old Isaac Deutscher the Galician born Marxist historian who spent most of his life pursuing his career in Great Britain and not in any Communist country and who referred to himself as a “non-Jewish Jew” passed away today.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/sedgwick/1967/xx/deutscher.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/bio-bibl_deutscher_i.pdf

1968: “Official circles today strongly denied that any deal was in the making between Israel and Algeria for the release of the hijacked El Al jet airliner and its 12 Israeli passengers and crewman.” (JTA)

1968: “The Israel-Jordan border echoed with gun fire today as forces of both sides fought an hour long duel with artillery, mortars and machineguns south of the Sea of Galilee…” (JTA)

1969: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held today for fifty-eight year old composer “Morris Goldenberg, the head of the percussion department at the Juilliard School of Music” who was the husband of “the former Isabella Leon” and the father of Lucille and William Goldenberg.

1969: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held “in Sinai Temple” in Mt. Vernon, NY for sixty-two year old “Rabbi Henry Enoch Kagan” the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and HUC who was “the first full-time rabbi to be licensed by New York State as a consulting psychologist” and who was a tireless worker for better relations between Christians and Jews which did not deter him from raising two sons – Jonathan and Jeremy – with his wife “the former Esther Miller.”

1969: The hippie happening called Woodstock that was held on the farm owned by Jewish dairyman Max B. Yasgur, came to an end.  [Among the youthful attendees were a Jewish doctor now living in Texas and a Jewish dentist in Arkansas whose name will not divulged as mark of respect for their positions in their respective communities.]

1970: Two days after he had passed away funeral services were scheduled to be held for sixty-nine year old to Dr. Frederick Lascoff, the recipient of a pharmacy degree from Columbia where he taught for 20 years and a Doctorate in Pharmacy from the Connecticut College of Pharmacy who operated the “Yorkville pharmacy started by his father” and who was the husband of Emmy Lascoff with whom he had one son.

1971(28^th of Av, 5731): Ninety-one year old “medical economist Michael Davis,” the husband of “the former Alice Taylor” and father of Paul and Michael, Jr. passed away today.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Davis%2C%20Michael%20Marks%2C%201879%2D1971

1971: Three days after he had passed away, funeral services are scheduled to be held today for ): seventy-six year old Edward Anthony, the former director of public relations during Herbert Hoover’s successful presidential campaign and magazine editor.

1975:Hadassah announces that it will increase its youth centers in Israel to integrate Jewish children of Middle Eastern and African backgrounds who pose serious social and educational problems in the Jewish state

1975: Jacob Austin began serving as a Senator from British Columbia.

1976: “Israel said today that it would ignore the demand by President Idi Amin of Uganda for compensation for the Israeli raid on Entebbe airport last month.”

1977(5th of Elul, 5737):  Eighty-six year old comedian Groucho Marx passed away.  When told that he had been rejected for member ship in a club because he was Jewish, Marx replied, “I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.”

http://www.biography.com/people/groucho-marx-594094#career-breakthrough

1978: Seventy-eight year old archeologist Max Mallowan who worked several sites in Mesopotamia including Ur, reputed to be the Biblical home of Abraham passed away today.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Max-Mallowan

1979: Andrew Young, who resigned last week as chief United States delegate to the United Nations, “characterized as ‘kind of foolish’ the United States policy of shunning contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization…”  While being interviewed on Face the Nation, “Young called the Government of Israel ‘stubborn and intransigent’ for their policy concerning negotiations with the PLO.

1979(26^thof Av, 5739): Ninety-two year old “Joel Teitelbaum, the founder and first Grande Rebbe of the Satmar dynasty passed away today at Mt. Sinai Hospital after which he was interred at the Kiryas Joel Cemetery.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rabbi-joel-teitelbaum

1989: Funeral services are scheduled to take place in Rockville Centre, NY for David Kohut, the husband Bessie Kohut who was a member of Temple Israel in Long Beach.

1980(7th of Elul, 5740): Otto Heinrich Frank passed away.  Born in 1889, he gained fame as the father of Anne Frank.

1981(19^thof Av, 5741): Seventy-six year old Ukrainian born “Elias Picheny, a former social worker and official of the National Jewish Welfare Board and husband of “the former Dora Werthman” with whom he raised a son, Joel, passed away today in Berkley, CA.

https://www.jta.org/1981/09/01/archive/elias-picheny-dead-at-76

1988(6^thof Elul, 5748): Sixty-one year old Sir John Boris Roderick Hazan, the “son of an engineer from Russia” and mother from Poland whose legal career began in 1948 when he was called to the Bar by Lincoln’s Inn and reached its pinnacle when he was appointed to the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division passed away today.

1990:  Leonard Bernstein conducted his final concert, the Koussevitzky Memorial concert at Tanglewood. The performance included Britten's Three Sea Interludes, LB's Arias & Barcarolles (Carl St. Clair, conductor) and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.

1990: In “a message broadcast over Baghdad television” President Sadamm said “if President Bush gave an unequivocal, written pledge to pull military forces out of the gulf” and lifted the economic blockade imposed after the takeover of Kuwait” he would release the ten thousand foreigners, including 3,000 Americans trapped in Kuwait and Iraq.”

1991: Around 8:00 p.m. this evening, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the international leader and Rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch movement was returning to his home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn after a visit to the Old Montefiore Cemetery in adjacent Queens when there was a fatal accident that resulted in the death of seven-year-old Gavin Cato, the son of Guyanese immigrants. Charles Price and other demagogues harangued the angry crowd touching off several days of what can only be described as a race riot.

1991(9th of Elul, 5751): Three hours after seven year old Gavin Cato was killed in automobile accident involving vehicles driven by Lubavitch Chasidim, Yankel Rosenbaum--a 29-year-old Jewish student from Australia--was killed by a group consisting mostly of neighborhood youth, in what would be interpreted as a retaliatory slaying wrapped in the robes of anti-Semitism.

1991: During the “August Coup,” Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Crimea. The coup failed and hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a wave of immigration to Israel.  It also made possible the re-vitalization of Jewish Communities throughout most of the republics that had made up the Communist Empire.

1993(2^ndof Elul, 5753): Sixty-one year old architect Norman Jaffe passed away today.

https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/6987979

1995(23^rdof Av, 5755): Seventy year old Danny Arnold, born Arnold Rothman, the actor turned creator of sitcoms passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/obituaries/danny-arnold-70-creator-of-barney-miller.html

2000(18^thof Av, 5760): Parashat Eikev

2000: “The State Department's special peace envoy, Dennis Ross, opened new talks in Jerusalem today with Prime Minister Ehud Barak in an effort to break an impasse in the negotiations for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.” (As reported by John F. Burns)

2000(18^thof Av, 5760): Eighty-seven year old Lee Tabor Shalom, the native of Paris, Illinois, who directed more than 1300 shows “including both features and TV episodes” during a 40 year career passed away today in Los Angeles.

2001(30th of Av, 5761): Rosh Chodesh Elul

2001: Israeli premiere of “The Switch” co-starring Jeff Goldblum with a script by Allan Loeb.

2001: The New York Times book section featured reviews of The Darkness and the Light by Jewish poet Anthony Hecht and How Charles Shavers Died And Other Poems by Jewish poet Harvey Shapiro

2001: In “City Lore; The Little Red Summer Camp,” published today, Ivy Meeropol reminisces about her summers at Kinderland a camp that  was founded in 1923 by secular Jews active in the New York City trade union movement, most of whom were Communists or socialists.  

2001: “U.S. Senator Lieberman's office was advised that the Hiram Bingham IV stamp was (again) "on the agenda" of the Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee.”

2002(11^th of Elul, 5762): Eighty-five year old philosopher and author Irving Marmer passed away today

http://archives.starbulletin.com/2002/09/01/news/story11.html

http://forward.com/culture/217470/alice-in-anti-semitic-land/

2003(21st of Av, 5763): A Hamas planned suicide attack on Jerusalem bus #2 kills 23 Israelis, 7 of them children

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmuel_HaNavi_bus_bombing

Twenty-three people, including two small children and two infants, were murdered and 134 wounded when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself on a #2 Egged bus in Jerusalem’s Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The victims: Avraham Bar-Or, 12, of Jerusalem; Binyamin Bergman, 15, of Jerusalem; Yaakov Binder, 50, of Jerusalem; Feiga Dushinski, 50, of Jerusalem; Miriam Eisenstein, 20, of Bnei Brak; Lilach Kardi, 22, of Jerusalem; Menachem Leibel, 24, of Jerusalem; Elisheva Meshulami, 16, of Bnei Brak; Tehilla Nathanson, 3, of Zichron Ya’acov; Chava Nechama Rechnitzer, 19, of Bnei Brak; Mordechai Reinitz, 49, and Issachar Reinitz, 9, of Netanya; Maria Antonia Reslas, 39, of the Philippines; Liba Schwartz, 54, of Jerusalem; Hanoch Segal, 65, of Bnei Brak; Goldie Taubenfeld, 43, and Shmuel Taubenfeld, 3 months, of New Square, New York; Rabbi Eliezer Weisfish, 42, of Jerusalem; Shmuel Wilner, 50, of Jerusalem; Shmuel Zargari, 11 months, of Jerusalem. Fruma Rahel Weitz, 73, of Jerusalem died of her wounds on August 23; Mordechai Laufer, 27, died of his on September 5; and Tova Lev, 37, died on September 12.(As reported by TIP – The Israeli Project)

2004: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said today that he would press ahead with his plan to pull soldiers and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, even though his party repudiated it once again in nonbinding votes late last night.”

2005(14th of Av, 5765): Eighty-seven year old Dutch comedian Abraham ('Appie') Bueno de Mesquita passed away.  Born in 1918, he escaped Auschwitz when he was chosen to play the cello by the Nazi camp commander in Mechelen, Belgium.  This episode provided the title for his autobiography; Cello met één snaar (Cello with one string).

2005(14th of Av, 5765): David Sky, owner of the Rabbi L. Sky Bookstore passed away.  The store was started by his father in Newark in 1904 and was one of the "pioneering Judaica stores in the US where" Jewish New Year’s cards were sold for the first time.  The store moved to Maplewood in 1970.  His widow sold the store in 2008.

2005: Pope Benedict XVI, who was drafted into the German Army during World War II, visited a synagogue in Cologne on Friday that had been destroyed by the Nazis and warned of a growing anti-Semitism that he called a "reason for concern and vigilance."[What follows is a detailed description of this historic event]

"Today, sadly, we are witnessing the rise of new signs of anti-Semitism and various forms of a general hostility toward foreigners," the pope said in a reverent hour-long visit to the Cologne synagogue on his first trip abroad. "The Catholic Church is committed - and I affirm this again today - to tolerance, respect, friendship and peace between all peoples, cultures and religions."

The visit - punctuated by the ancient call of the Shofar, the ram's horn - was freighted with history, with a German who had taken part unwillingly in the Hitler Youth as a boy becoming only the second pope to visit a synagogue. Unlike his predecessor, John Paul II, who often spoke of his own life in Poland during World War II, Benedict did not mention his own experiences during the war, sticking mostly to his prepared text with a notable exception: He inserted the word "love" in a sentence whose text on paper said Jews and Catholics "need to show respect for each other."

But he was greeted with great warmth by 500 people in the synagogue, which was destroyed during the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, after which 11,000 Jews who lived here were killed. It was rebuilt in 1959, and Jews in Cologne now number 5,000. "If someone told me 45 years ago, 'You are going to be in Cologne, and the pope will visit you in a synagogue,' I wouldn't have believed it," Paul Spiegel, the leader of Germany's Jews, told reporters later. "We have come a long way in mutual support and in mutual understanding and, as the pope said, in mutual love."

Mr. Spiegel called the visit "truly historic," words echoed by the pope's spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, who said Benedict himself had asked for the meeting. He said it was "an event of historic significance: a German pope, who was on his first official trip, himself took the initiative for the visit." The visit was an interreligious detour on Benedict's four-day visit here as part of the 20th World Youth Day, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of young Catholics from around the world. Benedict, 78, who has pledged to make understanding between religions a centerpiece of his papacy, is also scheduled to visit Muslim leaders in Cologne on Sunday.

Germany is the home to 3.5 million Muslims, most of them Turkish, and since the Sept. 11, 2001attacks, and again after the bombings in London last month, many European Muslims say they are being eyed with increasing suspicion. Although Benedict spoke of "hostility" toward foreigners, he did not elaborate. In his speech at the synagogue, he noted the long history of Jews in Cologne, who have lived here since Roman times. The synagogue is the oldest north of the Alps. He said that while Jews and Christians had at times lived together peacefully, he noted the expulsion of Jews from Cologne in 1424. "And in the 20th century, in the darkest period of German and European history, an insane racist ideology, born of neo-paganism, gave rise to the attempt, planned and systematically carried out by the regime, to exterminate European Jewry," he said. He then spoke of the efforts of John Paul to rebuild relations between Catholics and Jews, many of whom have accused the church of inaction during World War II. Among other steps, John Paul became the first pope to visit a synagogue, in Rome in 1986. Partly quoting John Paul, Benedict said, "The terrible events of that time must 'never cease to rouse consciences, to resolve conflicts, to inspire the building of peace.'"And while he said relations had improved much in recent years, he added: "Much still remains to be done. We must come to know one another much more and much better." He called for a "sincere and trustful" dialogue between Catholics and Jews. One issue of contention between Jews and Catholics rose during the visit: Abraham Lehrer, president of the Cologne congregation, said it would be "a good thing" for the Vatican to open up all its archives from World War II. The Vatican has opened the archives until the year 1939, but many Jewish groups would like to explore the records relating to Pope Pius XII, accused of remaining silent during the Holocaust. There was no mention on either side of a bitter diplomatic spat between Israel and the Vatican: last month, after the London bombings, Israel accused Benedict of deliberately omitting a mention of a suicide bombing against Israelis in a list of terror attacks that the pope had recounted in a sermon. The Vatican fired back, calling some of Israel's retaliatory attacks against Palestinians contrary to international law. Mr. Spiegel said he felt that the problem was a diplomatic one, not important to talk about during the visit.

"This is an issue that has to be settled between the state of Israel and the Vatican," he told reporters at a news conference. Mr. Navarro-Valls, the pope's spokesman, added at the same news conference that the "issue has been settled, more or less."

2005: Former Russian billionaire and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky announced that he was on a hunger strike in protest at his friend and associate Platon Lebedev's placement in the punishment cell of the jail. According to Khodorkovsky, Lebedev had Diabetes mellitus and heart conditions, and keeping him in the punishment cell would be equivalent to murder

2005: During the evacuation of Israelis from Gaza, the Manchester Guardian reported today “that some settlers had their children leave their homes with their hands up, or wearing a Star of David badge, to associate the actions of Israel with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.”

2005: “A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin” “a documentary short subject about writer Norman Corwin” was released in the United States today.

2005: “Honoring a ‘Righteous Gentile’: Hiram Bingham IV Commemorative Stamp Planned for Next Year” published today described next year’s honoring of the late Hiram Bingham IV with the issuance of commemorative stamp by the U.S. Postal Service as a celebration of the humanitarian efforts of a so-called righteous gentile who was personally responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Jews during World War II as well as the celebration of an American diplomat who defied U.S. State Department policy in order to do so. (As reported by David Brensilver)

2005: In “Vikings’ Owner Makes a Name for Himself” published today Pat Borzi provides a sketch of NFL owner Zygmunt Wilf, whose parents survived the Holocaust.

2005: “Wordplay,” an exhibition assembled by curator Tamar Cohen came to a close at the Julie Saul Gallery today.

2006(25^thof Av, 5766): Twenty-one year old Staff Sgt. Ro’I Farjoun was killed when terrorists from the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades attacked a checkpoint he was manning for the IDF.

2006(25th of Av, 5766): Lt. Col. Emanuel A. Moreno of Moshav Tlamim was killed in a daring commando raid designed to stop the shipment of weapons from Syria into Lebanon for use by Hezbollah.  Moreno is survived by his wife Maya, their three children, his parents and three brothers. 

2007: A retrospective of the works of Frida Kahlo which had been mounted to celebrate the centenary of her birth comes to a close at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section reviewed Amy Bloom’s new novel Away, featuring Lillian Leyb a desperate young Jewish woman, fresh off the boat who has fled the pogroms of Russia, trying to make her way in New York during the mid-1920s and Jews and Power by Ruth R. Wisse the eighth title in a lively and distinguished series, "Jewish Encounters," that has taken a fresh look at such diverse figures in Jewish history as King David, the 12th-century rabbi and physician Maimonides, the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza and the U.S. boxer and World War II hero Barney Ross.

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section reviewed The Prince of Darkness by Robert D. Novak, the Washington columnist who was raised Jewish but converted to Catholicism in 1998, Off the Record by Norman Pearlstine and UM by Michael Erard author of “The Geek Guide to Kosher Machines.”

2008: In Little Rock, AR at the Chabad House, third and final session of From Ruins to Glory, a course of study based on a virtual tour of the Holy Temple.

2008: President Obama appointed Dan Shaprio as Senior Policy Advisor and Jewish Outreach Coordinator.

2008(19^th of Av, 5768): Ninety-one year old Leo Abse, the longtime serving Welsh MP who was the son “Rudolf Abse, a Jewish solicitor and cinema owner” from Cardiff passed away today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2590828/Leo-Abse.html

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/aug/20/labour1

2008(19^th of Av, 5768): Binyamin Gibli, a sabra born a Petah Tikva in 1919 who served as head of Israeli Military Intelligence passed away.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3584976,00.html

2008:US Airways announced today plans to operate nonstop service between its Philadelphia hub and Tel Aviv, Israel, as the carrier moves to expand its international service.

2008: The series “Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel” explores The Rabbi’s Cat by Joan Sfaar “After eating a parrot, an aged Algerian rabbi's cat develops the ability to speak and quickly declares his desire not only to be Jewish, but to have a bar mitzvah. The rabbi engages his pet in a spiraling debate, touching on topics such as spelling, parental love, and the very nature of Jewish identity.” This series explores Jewish literature and culture through scholar-led discussions of contemporary and classic books on the theme of "Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel." The program is the result of a grant to the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities Libraries, which is partnering with The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library. Local support is provided by the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota. Let's Talk About It: Jewish Literature, a reading and discussion series has been made possible through a grant from Nextbook and the American Library Association.

2009: Amy Schapiro reads from and discusses Millicent Fenwick: Her Way, her biography of the late New Jersey congresswoman, as part of the United States Capitol Historical Society's "August Brown Bag Lecture Series" at the VFW Building.

2009: Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin is scheduled to convene a special session of the Knesset House Committee to address the recent wave of violence in Israel. Police, government officials and other law enforcement officials are scheduled to attend.

2009(29th of Av, 5769): Eighty-six year old Don Hewitt, the creator of “60 Minutes” passed away today. (As reported by Jacques Steinberg)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/business/media/20hewitt.html?pagewanted=print

2009: In another sign of the strong defense ties between Israel and India, the government-owned Rafael defense company has secured a $1 billion deal to sell advanced surface-to-air missiles to the Indian Armed Forces

2010: Tel Aviv native, Paula Valstein, is scheduled to perform at the Highline Ballroom in New York City.

2010: The International Mathematical Union awarded the prestigious Field's Medal to mathematician and Hebrew University professor Elon Lindenstrauss  at its quadrennial International Congress of Mathematics in Hyderabad, India.

2010: Funeral services are to held today for Harold Shpeena longtime dentist and former president of the Jewish Federation of South Jersey, died

2010: “The Switch” a romantic comedy co-starring Jeff Goldblum with a script by Allan Loeb was released in Israel and Russia today.

2011: JCC Maccabi Games are scheduled to come to an end in Philadelphia, PA and Springfield, MA.2011: As her bat mitzvah weekend begins, Gabriella “Gavi” Thalblum is scheduled to help lead Friday night services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2011: The 31^stInternational conference on Jewish Genealogy is scheduled to come to an end.

2011:World-renowned solo performer Yael Rasooly is scheduled to present the U.S. Premiere of her award winning show Paper Cut tonight as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.

2011:Friends and family of those killed in yesterday's terror attacks near Eilat gathered to pay their respects today as funerals took place across the country

2011:The IAF launched an airstrike late tonight against a terrorist cell in the central Gaza Strip after the cell fired a rocket into Israeli territory, the IDF Spokesman's Office said in a statement.

2012: Susan Katzir is scheduled to facilitate a “Make Your Own Tallit workshop” at Temple Shalom in Auburn, Maine

2012: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to host a special screening of “Elusive Justice,” a PBS documentary that recounts the decades long struggle to apprehend Nazi war criminals and place them on trial for crimes against humanity.

2012: “Soul Doctor,” a musical about Shlomo Carlebach, is scheduled to have its final performance today at the New York Theater Workshop.

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of two books of special interest to Jewish readers – The General, Jonathan Fenby’s biography of de Gaulle, the French leader who stood against the Nazis and redefined the Franco-Israeli relationship after the Six Day War and The Twilight War, David Crist’s history of the conflict with Iran over the last 30 years.

2012(1^st of Elul, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Elul – Sound the shofar for the first time

2012: A musical version “The Nutty Professor” with a score by Marvin Hamlish that was produced and directed by Jerry Lewis was performed for the final time at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville.

2012:Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon today described two violent attacks against Arabs ​​over the weekend in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem as "hate crimes" and "terrorist acts." He called the attacks "totally unacceptable and outrageous" and ascribed their incidence to a moral and educational failure that goes against Jewish ethics and values.

2012:Police detained four members of the Women of the Wall organization this morning for wearing tallitot (prayer shawls) at the Western Wall plaza. According to a 2001 law, it is illegal for women to perform religious practices traditionally done by men in Orthodox Jewish practice at the Western Wall, such as reading from a Torah scroll, wearing tefillin or a tallit, or blowing a shofar.

2013(13^th of Elul, 5773): Wedding anniversary of JewishPress.com Senior Internet Editor Yori Yanover

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/photos/mazal-tov-2/2013/08/04/

2013: The Center for Jewish and the American Sephardi Federation are scheduled to co-sponsor a presentation by Lori Sternfeld, “The Jewish Community In Iran from 1914 until the Revolution”

2013: Michael Fruend of Shavei is scheduled to speak about reconnection lost and hidden Jews to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel this evening at Beit Knesset Ma'alot David in Ma'ale Adumim.

2013: The Oxnard Film Society is scheduled to show “Fill the Void” at Oxnard, CA.

2013: Israeli and Jewish targets all over the world are likely to be sought out by terrorist organizations in the coming weeks, the Israeli government’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau warned in strikingly strident tones today, listing dozens of countries where it said it had “concrete” indications of a terrorist threat.  The threat is connected, in part, to the upcoming Jewish holiday season. (As reported by Gavriel Fiske)

2013: “Leading up to an end-of-the- week court-set deadline to clamp down on businesses operating on Shabbat, the Tel Aviv Municipality’s legal counsel said today it is still working on formulating the city’s official response. (As reported by Ben Hartman and Yonah Jeremy Bob)

2013: “Justice Minister Tzipi Livni announced late tonight that she had appointed renowned Prof. Ruth Gavison to draft a constitutional provision defining the exact dimensions of what it means for Israel to be a “Jewish and democratic state.” (As reported by Yonah Jeremy Bob)

2013: Fifteen days after journalist Steven Joel Sotloff, his fixer and the fixer’s brother and cousins were kidnapped by ISIS terrorist in Aleppo, everybody was released except for the Jewish journalist who would eventually be beheaded.

2013: “The Nazi Hunter: Remarkable story of the Jewish refugee responsible for tracking down the Auschwitz commandant who slaughtered 3million people” published today described the role Hanns Alexander played “in the hunt for Auschwitz commander Rudolph Hoss.”

2014: The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide is scheduled to host an Online Resource User-Testing Focus Group as part of its efforts to respond to the digitization of more and more historical archives.

2014: Hamas broke this truce this afternoon with a volley of rockets that “intensified through the nights.” (As reported by Yifa Yaakov and Adiv Sterman)

2014: New Jersey Rabbi David Wax who “pleaded guilty to kidnapping charges as part of a scheme to force an Israeli man to give his wife a get” is scheduled to be sentenced today. (As reported by JTA and The Jewish Daily Forward)

2014:  “The United States views Hamas as responsible for the violation of a renewed temporary truce in the Gaza Strip, and is “very concerned” about the resumption of rocket attacks, a State Department spokeswoman said this afternoon.”

2014: “Israeli police issued a request today for assistance in locating IDF soldier David Menahem Gordon, 21, who was last seen at an army base’s medical facility at the beginning of the week.”

2014(23^rdof Av, 5774): Twenty-year old Corporal David Gordon who was reported missing two days ago was found dead not far from the Tzrifin base, east of Rishon Lezion, where he was last seen wearing his uniform and his purple Givati Brigade beret.

2015: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host a noontime showing of “Easy Rider.”

2015: A 22 month old Jewish baby and her father “were rushed to Shaare Tzedek Medical Center in Jerusalem” after she was wound tonight by an Arab terrorist “who hurled rocks at the car driven by her father on Highway 443.” (As reported by Hana Levi Julian)

2015: “Why I Killed My Mother” by Dor Zweigenbom is scheduled to open in New York.

2015: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to meet this evening to discuss The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris.

2016(15^thof Av, 5776): Tu B’Av – Depending on your point of view, “a Jewish Valentine’s Day” or a “Jewish Sadie Hawkins Day.”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/tubav.html

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/53680/jewish/15th-of-Av.htm

http://www.israeldailypicture.com/

2016: In Memphis, TN is scheduled to host the L’dor Vador Shabbat Service and Dinner.

2016: “According to filing with the Securities and Exchange” today, “Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, sold company shares valued at nearly $95 million to fund their charitable efforts.”

2016(15^thof Av): According to Bav Batra, on the Jewish calendar, anniversary of the death of the last member of the exodus generation that was barred from entering Eretz Israel. (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)

2016(15^thof Av, 5776): Sixty-two year old Louis Jay “Lou” Pearlman, the record producer turned imprisoned felon passed away today

2016: Oran Etkin is scheduled to perform at the Philadelphia Art Museum.

2017(27^thof Av, 5777): Parashat Re-ay

2017: One hundred year old Big Band Singer Beatrice Ruth Wain who turned “radio hostess” when she joined forces with husband Andre Baruch passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/arts/music/bea-wain-star-singer-of-the-big-band-era-dies-at-100.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

2017: “Our Great Tchaikovsky” Hershey Felder’s one man show about the great Russian composer is scheduled to open today in Hartford, CT.

2017: After a complimentary dairy meal, members of the Queens Jewish Community are scheduled to come together for a beautiful and easy-to-follow Havdalah service followed by ice cream and drinks.

2017: The Modern Dance Theater Istanbul of Istanbul State Opera and Ballet is scheduled to perform for a second final time as part of Tel Aviv Dance 2017.

2017: American singer-songwriter Regina Spektor Regina is scheduled to perform at Ra’anana Amphitheater, at the outskirt of Tel Aviv.”

2017: The Jerusalem Arts and Crafts Fair is scheduled to come to an end.

2017: The Candles Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, IN is scheduled to sponsor its fall workshop today at Indiana State University where middle and high school teachers will learn about “stories of individuals and groups who “chose to participate” in a variety of ways during the Civil Rights movement, specifically the desegregation of Central High School in 1957 and the Freedom Rides in 1961.”

2018: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of Moving Kings by Joshua Cohen and Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman.

2018: The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is scheduled to host Grand Slam Sunday – an end of summer celebration featuring a baseball game between the home town Nationals and the visiting Miami Marlins.

2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a screening of “13 Minutes” which tells the story of Georg Elser’s failed attempt “to kill Hitler on November 9, 1939.”

2019: In New Orleans, Touro Synagogue, one of the Crescent City’s three Reform Congregations, hosts it’s a meeting of its board.

2019: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Sarah” a film version of the book by the same name.

2019: As we mark, 219^th anniversary of the birth of Bernard Barcuh, the native of South Carolina the park bench philosopher whose name became synonymous with the term “Wall Street financier” and who was the unofficial advisor to Presidents from Wilson through Truman, it provides a whole raft of people with a variety interests a year’s worth of warning so they can prepare to celebrate his 2020^th anniversary.  (Americans seem to love celebrating anniversaries that end in zero of five.)

2019: The McGill/Klezkanada Academic Seminar is schedule to begin this evening with an “orientation meeting for all McGill students.

2019: Klezkanada 2019 is scheduled to open with a concert this evening.

2020: “The Trump administration accelerated a push to sell the F-35 stealth fighter and advanced armed drones to the United Arab Emirates, at a time when the Gulf nation is working with the Trump administration on a historic plan to formalize diplomatic ties with Israel, according to American officials familiar with the discussions.”

2020: It was reported today that Borough Park,home to many Hasidic Jews, is “a particularly hard-hit demographic” when it comes to the Coronavirus.  Large households are common, and the tight-knit, communal way of life was likely also a factor. Many Hasidic Jews fell sick in early March, right after Purim — a holiday of joyous celebration, full of parties and mingling.

2021: Leslie K. Barry is scheduled to discuss virtually her romance thriller Newark Minutemen and soon-to-be motion picture based on the heroism of her uncle and a group of New Jersey boxers who were recruited by the Mafia and U.S. government to fight American Nazis in the 1930s.

2021: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston is scheduled to present online “Moving Forward in Israel’s Mixed City.”

2021: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host Dr. David G. Marwell discussing his new book Mengele: Unmasking the "Angel of Death."

2021: In Cedar Rapids, IA Temple Judah is scheduled to hold the first choir rehearsal in preparation for the High Holidays with mask required during rehearsal.

2022: The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a final screening of “Exodus 1947,” a “one-hour, 1997 PBS documentary about its voyage, its U.S. backing and its role in getting Jewish refugees to what would be Israel.”

2022: “A significant court hearing is scheduled to be heard in the case which would result in the closure of the Jewish agency in Russia is scheduled to take place today.

2022: In Washington, D.C., the historic Sixth and I Synagogue is scheduled to host an “inclusive service led by Rabbi Nora and musicians Aaron Shneyer, Sarah Fredrick, and Jeff Geld blends contemporary and traditional elements for an experience that feels both familiar and fresh.