January 20
250: Emperor Decius begins a widespread persecution of Christians in Rome. Decius reign came during a fifty-year period (235-285) that was marked by “crisis, confusion and deterioration throughout the Roman Empire. In what appears to have been an attempt to assert imperial authority, Decius “ordered the entire population of the empire to report to authorities and prove its loyalty by sacrifice, a libation or some similar sign of participation in the cult of the emperor.” Apparently, the early Christians would not participate as a matter of religious scruple and suffered accordingly. For reasons that are unclear, Jews were exempt from the decree. This could have been because the Jews were not seen as posing any threat since they had been defeated in three uprisings by Roman forces, the last of which had taken place more than a century ago in what had become a backwater of the imperial domain.
1191: Even though his army was only 12 miles from Jerusalem, Richard the Lionheart decided not to lay siege to the city due to bad weather and fear that his army might be trapped by another force of Muslims coming to relieve the siege. This timidity cost Richard his best shot at capturing the Holy City and sealed the fate of the Third Crusade as another Christian defeat.
1205: Joseph ibn Shoshan who had succeeded his father as Nasi of the Jewish Community in Toledo passed away today.
1265: In Westminster, the first English parliament conducts its first meeting held by Simon de Montfort in the Palace of Westminster. He is also remembered as the anti-Semite who expelled the Jews from Leister.
1320: Duke Wladyslaw Lokietek becomes king of Poland. During his reign the Jews continued to be governed under the terms of The General Charter of Jewish Liberties known as the Statute of Kalisz issued by the Duke of Greater Poland Boleslaus the Pious in 1264. “The statute granted exclusive jurisdiction over Jewish matters to Jewish courts and established a separate tribunal for matters involving Christians and Jews. Additionally, it guaranteed safety and personal liberties for Jews such as freedom of religion, trade, and travel.” The statute was ratified by several Polish kings whose reigns lasted until the middle of the 16thcentury. While many people who only know about “modern Polish history” see Poland as a land of anti-Semitism, at one time it was a home governed by those with a benign attitude toward the Jewish people.
1466 (3rd of Shevat): Leon ben Joshua completed the manuscript of Sefer ha-Tadir, a work that included Aramaic and Hebrew texts of the Scroll of Antiochus.
1488: In Ingelheim, near Mainz, Andreas Münster and his wife gave birth to German mapmaker and “Christian Hebraist” Sebastian Münster, “a disciple of Elias Levita “who edited the Hebrew Bible accompanied by a Latin translated” and who “in 1537 published a Hebrew Gospel of Matthew which he had obtained from Spanish Jews he had converted.”
1569: Myles Coverdale, who produced the first completed printed translation of the Bible into English passed away. The accuracy of the translation might be called into question since he did not know Hebrew or Greek which meant he relied on translations of translations to produce what for Englishmen was a work of major importance.
1569: Miles Cloverdale, a translator of the Bible into English who relied on Luther’s Bible and the Vulgate but who did have some knowledge of Hebrew as can be seen by the fact that “the name of the Diety appears in Hebrew on the Title Page” and that Hebrew characters are used to mark the divisions of the Book of Lamentations” passed away today.
1663: Founding of Dyhernfurth, a town in Prussian Silesia, whose first Jewish resident was the printer Shabbethal ben Joseph Bass who established a Jewish cemetery in 1689.
1667: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth cedes Kiev, Smolensk, and “the left bank” of the Ukraine to Imperial Russia in the treaty of Andrusovo. This marked an end to fighting that had begun in 1654 and included the Chmielnicki Uprisingwhich was so devastating to the Jews of Poland. This treaty marks the decline of Poland that will ultimately end at the end of the 18thcentury with the final partition of Poland. The quality of life for the Jewish people would also slide downward until it ended in the morass of the Pale of Settlement.
1702: Thirty-eight-year-old “court Jew” Jehuda Jost "Judah Berlin" Liebmann, the son of Eliezer Liebman and Merle Lippman Ashker and the husband of Malké Hameln and Esther Samuel Liebmann passed away today in Berlin.
1707: Seventy-five-year-old Cardinal Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch who advised the King to repopulate Hungary with Catholic Jews from Germany and who “held that the Jews could not be exterminated at once but must be weeded out by degrees as bad coin is gradually withdrawn from circulation passed away today. To that end he called for the enforcement of the decree by the Diet of Pressburg, “imposing double taxation on the Jews” and deny them right to “engage in agriculture” or “to own any real estate.”
1780: Birthdate of Bohemia native Abraham Block the son of Jacob Block and husband of Frances Isaiah Isaacs whom he married in New York and with whom he had 13 children all of whom were born south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
1780(13thof Shevat, 5540): Samson Mears Isaacs, the New York City born son of Jacob Isaacs passed away today less than a month after he had been born.
1782: Birthdate of Archduke John of Austria who helped Moses Sachs submit his “program for the settling of Jews as farmers in the land of Israel under Austrian protection” to the Austrian government which in turn submitted it the Ottomans who rejected it.
1790(5thof Shevat, 5550): At Reggio, Italy, Israel Benjamin Bassani, the local Rabbi whose poetic talents found expression in both Hebrew and Italian and who was the son of Isaiah Bassani passed away today.
1790: French born Barbe Levi, the wife of Jacques Goudchaux with whom she had nine children.
1791(15thof Shevat, 5551): Tu B’Shevat
1795: Benjamin Hirsh, the father of Catherine, Ann, Joel, Michael and Woolfe Benjamin, was buried today in the UK.
1797: In Bucks County, PA, Mary Vastine and Josiah Lunn gave birth to Alice Lunn.
1803: In Germany, Johanna Jacob and Louis B. Neumond gave birth to Jacob Neumond, the husband of Clara Kahn with whom he had six children and Sophie Hirsch with whom he had once child.
1805 Catherine Williams and Hugh Morse gave birth to Esther Morse.
1810(15thof Shevat, 5570): Parashat Beshalach; Shabbat Shirah; Tu B’Shevat
1812: In Charleston, SC, Deborah Cohen and Israel Moses gave birth to Raphael J. Moses, a “fifth generation South Carolinian.
1812: In France, Fleurette Baruch Weil and Lyon Israel Samuel gave birth to Lambert Samuel, the husband Leopoldine Friedberger and father of Helene, Victor, Maximilian, Solomon, Matilda and Adelaide Samuel.
1813: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi E.N. Carvahlo officiated at the wedding of Hannah Hart and Joseph Depass.
1819: In Oglethorpe County, GA, Jacob and Matilda Steward Phinzy gave birth to cotton merchant and University of Georgia trustee Ferdinand Phinzy, who married Anne Barrett Phinzy after the death of Harriet Phinzy and who was a convert to Methodism.
1820: Birthdate of Schwegenheim, Germany native and future Louisiana resident Marx Baer, the husband of Mariane Dreyfus Baer with whom he had two children – Stella and Anna.
1824: In Liverpool, England, Sarah and Lyon Samson gave birth to Sampson Samson.
1826: In London, Jestina Montefiore and Benjamin Cohen gave birth to Lionel Benjamin Cohen the husband of Henrietta Rachel Solomon and Bertha Salomon, with whom he had one child, Florence Justina Cohen.
1828(4thof Shevat, 5588): Fanny Etting, the York, PA born daughter of Elijah Etting and the wife of Robert Taylor whom she married in 1793 passed away today.
1834: Birthdate of Adolph Frank, the native of Klotze who in 1862 “received his doctorate in chemistry from the university in Göttingen” whose many scientific contributions led to him being award “The John Scott Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1893.”
1842: In the Mile End district of East London, Elizabeth Solomon and Naphtali Hart gave birth to Jane Hart.
1845: Lazarus Fels, the German born son of Simon Joseph Fels and his wife Susannah Fels gave birth to Bertha Fels who became Bertha Rosenthal when she married Gustav Rosenthal with whom she had four daughters – Bella, Carrie, Bertha and Susan – and who was the sister of Joseph Fels, the famous soap manufacturer.
1848(15thof Shevat, 5608): Tu B’Shevat observed for the last time during the reign of King Frederick VIII of Denmark who passed away today.
1850: Nathaniel Magnus married Dinah Levy in the United Kingdom today.
1853(11thof Shevat, 5613): Forty-eight-year-old pharmacologist Jonathan Pereira, author of Elements of Materia Medica, passed away today in London.
1857: Birthdate of Andre Crémieu-Foa, the Paris born French cavalry officer who fought a series of duels in 1892 after the Libre Parole published a series of articles “on the preponderance of the Jewish element in the French Army.” Among those whom he fought (and wounded) was Edoard Drumont, the notorious anti-Semite and editor of the paper.
1857: Birthdate of “journalist and Anglo-Jewish historian” Lucien Wolf.
1859(15thof Shevat, 5619) Tu B’Shevat
1859: Birthdate of Lucius Nathan Lattauer, the native of Gloversville, NY who after graduating from Harvard became the Crimson’s first head football coach and then went to become a successful businessman and member of Congress.
http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/resources/mvgw/bios/littauer_lucius.html
1860: In Arnhem, Liepman Phillip Prins and his first wife Henrietta Prins-Jacobson gave birth to their third child, artist Benjamin Liepman Prins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Prins#/media/File:Prins_benjamin-after_labour.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Prins#/media/File:Prins1.JPG
1861:Esther Lewis, the daughter of Elizabeth and Jacob Philipson and her husband Alexander Lewis gave birth to Laura Lewis who died in infancy.
1862: In Lemberg, Austria,Rabbi Chaim ha-Kohen Rapport and his wife gave birth to Solomon Rapporot who studied musical studies in Prague and in Baltimore at the Peabody Institute and served as the cantor at Oheb Sholom Congregation in Newark, NJ before assuming the same position at Congregation Shaaray Tefilla in New York City.
1863: Two and half years after Jews in Sweden were given the right to buy “real estate in rural areas”, an ordinance was adopted that allowed “intermarriage between Jews and Christians.
1865: According to a report written today German and English Jews have a monopoly on the cotton trade in New Orleans because they are men without "any country or local attachment" or conscience.
1865: As Sherman’s Army marched north to join forces with General Grant, the 27thOhio Infantry Division including Private Jacob C. Cohen took part in a reconnaissance that led to the Salkehatchie River, S.C.,
1866(4th of Shevat): Rabbi Asher of Tiktin, author of Birkat Rosh, passed away today.
1868: Birthdate of Louis-Lucien Koltz the native of Paris who was a nephew of wealthy silk dealer Victor Kloz and who was the “French Minister of France during World War I.”
1869(8thof Shevat, 5629): Sixty-one-year-old Leopold Schott, the German born son of Rachell and Aaron Schott and the husband of Sara Schott with whom he had three children – Anna, Stella and Moses.
1872: One day after he had passed away, 72-year-old “master jeweler” and “general clothes dealer” Isaac Isaacs, the husband of Fanny Isaacs with whom he had had five children was buried today at the “Plymouth Hoe Burial Ground.”
1876: It was reported today that when Mme. Rothschild’s physician told her that despite all of his skill, he could not make her young again, she replied, “No doctor, I don’t ask to me made young again; I only ask to continue to grow old.”
1877: Captain Levy of the Third Brooklyn Precinct arrested James L. Manker tonight after he tried to spend a two-dollar bill that had been altered to make it appear that it was a ten dollar bill. According to police Mr. Manker has done this to other merchants prior to tonight. Mr. Manker professes to be a devout Methodist who writes sermons for M.L. Rossvally “a converted Jew who publishes a weekly paper called The Hebrew Evangelist and Converted Jew.”
1878: In Cairo, Egypt, Moise Cattaui and Ida Rossi gave birth to Edgar Cattaui
1878: In a case of Jew versus Jew, Mark Arnsteat was arraigned at the Essex Market Police Court on charges of keeping a disorderly house. The charge was based on a complaint filed by his neighbor David Rosenbaum.
1879: According to an article published today “the project proposed some time” ago “in Great Britain by leading Jews of the country to by Palestine is said to have been completed. The Rothschilds, Motefiores and other prominent and wealthy financiers have entire confidence, it is reported, in the success of the undertaking, are moving energetically towards its early achievement.” The article continues with a description of the country of which it says “Those familiar with Palestine will not regard it as specially desirable, for its main features are not very attractive.” The article concludes with “So much has been said for generation of the Jews regaining possession of Jerusalem, that it is agreeable to think that they are like to do so at last. They certainly deserve Jerusalem.” [Editor’s note – I cannot find any other reference to this project. If anybody with an expertise in Anglo-Jewish history has information to share, please do so.]
1879: The Executive Board of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations began meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, today. Fifteen congregations have joined the union of Reform Congregations in the last 6 months. A resolution was adopted instructing the Board of Delegates on Civil and Religious Rights the feasibility of working with Jewish organizations in Europe that are encouraging their co-religionists to take up agrarian pursuits which they follow if they settle in the American West and South. [This was part of a plan to encourage Jews to settle in places other than the large cities of the Northeast.]
1880: Samuel and Hannah Heller Sanger gave birth to Eli Sanger, the brother of Carrie, Alex, Asher and Charles L. Sanger.
1883: In Plattsmouth, Nebraska, Julius and Alice Pepperberg gave birth to University of Nebraska graduate and geologist Leon J. Pepperberg, the husband of Rachel F. Carns and the father of Leon E. Pepperberg.
http://archives.datapages.com/data/meta/bull_memorials/021/021007/pdfs/970_firstpage.pdf
1883: Sixty-eight-year-old John William Colenso, the native of Cornwall who while serving as Bishop of Natal translated three books of the TaNaCh into Zulu and was convicted of heresy for publicly denying “the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch” and declaring “that Jeremiah was the author of the Book of Deuteronomy.”
1884: In Mobile, AL, founder of the Fidelia Club whose members included E.E. Bernheimer, E.E. Richard, H.W. Leinkauf and Jonas S. Markenstein.
https://www.cardcow.com/659010/fidelia-club-government-street-mobile-alabama/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/421227371386754019/
1886: The Prince of Wales formally opened the Mersey Tunnel which had been built under the direction of Samuel Isaac.
1887: Four days after he had passed away, 69 year old Zaleg Walsh the husband of Friederika Walsh was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1891: Birthdate Ukrainian native Moishe Elman who gained fame as violinist Mischa Elman.
http://www.thirteen.org/publicarts/violin/elman.html
1891: A meeting of clergymen that included Rabbis Gottheil, de Sola Mendez, Perira Mendez and Jacobs, Rabbi A. M. Radin was pointed Visiting Chaplain making him the first Rabbi chosen to minister to the needs of Jews incarcerated in the reformatories of New York City.
1891(28thof Tevet, 5650): Seventy-three-year-old Lazarus Rosenfeld, a long-time leader of Temple Emanu-El and the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphans Asylum passed away today in New York.
1892: It was reported today that a mob at Kasehan, Hungary, attacked a Jewish school “and completely wrecked it.”
1892: One day after he had passed away, 89-year-old Lazarus Phillips the son of Phillip Phillips and the husband of Ester Rodrigues and Leah Rodrigues was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”
1892: It was reported today that representatives of the Jewish Colonization Society, headed by Baron Hirsch are being sent to Mexico and Brazil for “the purpose of selecting land” that would be suitable “for establishing large colonies of Russian Jews.” These two countries have shown themselves to be receptive to such a venture which is fortuitous since Argentina, which had been the site for such settlements, has development an “anti-Semitic sentiment.”
1892: At the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, the first official basketball game is played. Basketball proved to be extremely popular with Jews living in large urban eastern areas. There was such an abundance of Jewish participants that it was referred to as the “Jewish sport.” On commentator observed that “no other sport so required ‘the characteristics inherent in the Jew…mental agility, perception…imagination and subtlety…If he Jew had set out deliberately to invent a game which incorporates those traits indigenous in him…he could not have had a happier inspiration than basketball.’ Describing the Jewish domination, this commentator concluded ‘ever since Dr. James A. Naismith came up with a soccer ball, two peach baskets and a bfright idea…basketball players have been chasing Jewish athletes and never quite catching up with them.’”
1893: It was reported today that the body of the late Mrs. Charles Harris is being prepared for shipment to Cleveland. The twenty-four-year-old Jewess was a part of a prominent Jewish Cleveland family, named Fieldheim.
1893: As of today, Henry W. Curtis of Hoenninghaus & Curtis, wholesale milliners said that Moses and Julia Levy who owned a millinery store on Broadway owed his firm $6,783.52
1895: The Sultan is credited with having issued an order to the Governors of Jerusalem and Beirut ordering them to remove all of the restrictions that had been placed on Jews trading in Syria. The Sultan also has declared that the Jews “shall enjoy the same rights, religious and otherwise, as any of the people in the empire.”
1895: It was reported today that the Minuet a la Coeur will be danced for the first time in New York City at the upcoming ball sponsored by the Young Ladies and Gentlemen’s League of the Montefiore Home.
1895: It was reported today that Deputy Boeckel, “the blatant Jew baiter” addressed a meeting of Social Democrats in Berlin which is seen as a sign that the anti-Semites and the Social Democrats are joining forces.
1896: Birthdate of George Burns. Born Nathan Birnbaum, Burns was part of the first wave of American Jews who found success in making us laugh. The sound of laughter has been with us since the outset of Jewish history. Remember, Sarah laughed when she heard that she was going to give birth to a son.
1896: It was reported that Dr. Joseph Silverman believes that the Jew is a victim of “Social Ostracism.” While “the hand of fellowship is extended to the Mohammedan, the Buddhist and others…there seems to be a universal bar against the Jew.”
1897: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum hosted its 14th annual charity ball at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn.
1897: One day after she had passed away, eighty-five year old Perla Sheftall Solomons, the Georgia born daughter of Moses and Elkali Bush Seftall and the wife of Lizar Solomons and the mother of Cecilia Solomons Abrahams was buried today at Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah, GA.
1897: At 304 Meeting Street in Charleston, SC, Rabbi B.A. Elzas officiated at the wedding of Dora Rice and Theodore Solomons.
1898: In Stepney, Sara and David Solomons gave birth to Pvt. John Solomons of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment who was killed at the age of 19 during the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchedndaele.
1898: It was reported today that a thousand students gathered at the Panetheon shouting anti-Zola and anti-Jewish slogans. The police broke up the demonstrations, but they re-grouped in various parts of the Latin Quarter.
1898: It was reported today that Emile Zola has already begun preparing his defense which will include calling a handwriting expert among his 250 witnesses.
1898: It was reported today that students tried to burn an effigy of Emile Zola in Algiers. The police arrested five students whose friends then attacked the police in an effort to free them.
1898: It was reported today that there have been anti-Jewish demonstrations in Toulouse, Marseilles, Nantes and Rouen.
1898: Birthdate of NYC native and WW I veteran Milton Dewey Cohn, the vaudevillian turned social worker.
1898: It was reported today that the 15th annual ball of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society was a financial success that will provide funds for a technical school to be built at the asylum’s facility.
1898: During today’s Cabinet meeting in Paris, the Minister of the Interior described the measures that have been taken to prevent further street demonstrations by anti-Dreyfus and anti-Zola forces.
1898: It was reported today that Isaac Greenblatt who owns a shoemaker’s shop is the President of an orthodox synagogue on East Broadway which also serves as a burial and mutual aid society and has assets of thousands of dollars
1898: “Penuchle And Orthodoxy” published today described a dispute between Isaac Rabinowitz and his co-religionists over his failure to attend religious services and his penchant for playing a card game when gambling was strictly forbidden.
1899: It was reported today that Simon Wolfe, the former U.S. Minister to Turkey believes that the future of the Jews in America is a bright one. “Never in the history of Judaism in ancient or modern times has the outlook for the Jewish people been more flattering than in these United States.”
1900(20thof Shevat, 5660) Parashat Yitro
1900: As the Jews observed Shabbat, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tripitz received the contingency plans he had requested or a naval blockade and an armed invasion of the United States” that included occupying parts of New England, which when added to what we know from the Zimmerman telegram (see Barbara Tuchman), it would appear that the Kaiser aimed to dismember the United States in a future conflict.
1901: In Cincinnati, Ohio, Max Zilzer, “a Hungarian-born German stage and film actor who died in 1943 while being interrogated by the Gestapo and his wife gave birth actor Wolfgang Zilzer “who often appeared under the stage name Paul Andro.”
1901: It was reported today that Rabbi F.L. Cohen “mentioned that more than 800 Jews had taken part in the campaign in South Africa” in the sermon he delivered at “the special services held at the Great Synagogue in Aldgate for Jews serving in the regular and auxiliary forces..”
1901: “Scheme For and Against Jewish Colonization In Palestine” published today reported that allegedly because of the “recent exodus of Jews from Russia and Romania,” “the Sultan of Turkey has just re- promulgated…a decree” that prohibits Jews from acquiring land in Palestine and that forbid Jews, including pilgrims and merchants from remaining “in Palestine for longer than three months.”
1901: Five days after his 25th birthday, Morris Weinberg, the Russian born son of Gabriel and Rivka (Sapir) Weinberg who “organized The Day in New York City and served as its first President, married Dora Rubin today in Newark, NJ.
1902: Herzl writes to Israel Zangwill and Joseph Cowen and describes the financial plans regarding Turkey.
1902: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi J. J. Simenhoff officiated at the marriage of Morris Kramer and Etta Bernstein.
1903: Tonight, at the Irving Place Theatre Ferdinand Bonn, the German actor who had made his debut in “Nathan the Wise,” a play about Jewish merchant played both Napoleon and Isidor Kalmus, “the loyal Jewish horse trader, Isidor Kalmus, who is the hero in “Edles Blut” or “Noble Blood.”
1904: The Jewish Museum was established when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection.
1905: Birthdate of Isaac “Ike” Danning, the native of Los Angeles who played catcher for the 1928 St. Louis Browns and was the younger brother of Harry Danning who played catcher for the New York Giants.
1906: It was reported today that the delegates to the Algeciras Conference have agreed to exclude matters related to “religious subjects” – an agreement that will not exclude the “Jewish Question” since it “can come up not as a religious issue” but as one pertaining to the “protection of the subjects of the Sultan.”
1906: It was reported today that Rabbi Isaac Kaplin of Congregation B’nai David of Rochester who had received a package filled with dynamite and gunpowder yesterday had “received an anonymous letter a month ago” saying he must curb his expressions of “sympathy for the persecuted Jews in Russia.”
1906: The Women Workers for the Self Protection of the Jews in Russia are scheduled to give a bazar and ball in the Grand Central Palace tonight with proceeds going “to the fund for the assistance of the Jews of Russia.”
1906: “Home Life in the Ghetto” published today provided a review of the Contrite Heartsby Herman Bernstein a tale by an author “whose short stories of Jewish life have already attracted attention” which provides a certain credibility to this longer effort that “deals with the tragedy of a simple Jewish family led by Reb Israel an “honest and God-fearing man of highs standing in the synagogue.”
1907: Birthdate of Polish native Herman Meyer Pekarsky, who came to the United States in 1921, earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan eventually settling in Newark in 1945 where he served as the Executive Director of the Jewish Community Council in Essex County.
1908: Elie Nessim was married today in Cairo.
1908: Rabbi Chaim Fishel Epstein and his wife gave birth to Ephraim Epstein, the husband of Louise Gorodinsky who was the Rabbi of Congregation Shaare Zedek in St. Louis for thirty-five years.
1909: Founding of the Jewish Farmers of America
http://jewishfarmersofamerica.wikispaces.com/
1909: “Much excitement was aroused by a discussion of sectarian teaching in the public schools at this afternoon's session of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in Mercantile Hall.”
1910: Friends of Vladimir Burtsev, the Russian revolutionary and author, learned from him today the information he plans to reveal during his visiting to United States including the fact that Czar Nicholas “is not shielded from knowledge or conditions as some suppose” and that “all the massacres of the Jews were with his connivance and by his actual orders.”
1910: The Russian Symphony gave their second performance of the year at Carnegie Hall where Maude Allan was introduced to New Yorkers.
1911: Michael Newman, “a produce dealer” and his wife Luba whose “father had been a cantor in Russia” gave birth to Oscar nominated conductor and director Emil Newman, the brother of composers Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman, the father of composers Maria, David and Thomas Newman and the uncle of songwriter Randy Newman.
1911: I.L. Blout , Jacob Eisemann, Rabbi Abram Simon and Simon Wolf of Washington were listed as delegates to the 22nd council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations that came to a close yesterday.
1912: Writing in The Outlook, a periodical that reflected his efforts toward social reform, Dr. Lyman Abbott, a celebrated liberal theologian who supported the progressive policies of Theodore Roosevelt, advises an inquirer that he is under no moral obligation to admit Jewish pupils to his school.
1913: Austrian steel tycoon Karl Wittgenstein passed away. He was the grandson of Moses Meyer-Wittgenstein, a successful Jewish businessman and the son of Herman Wittgenstein who converted before Karl’s birth. This was an all-too-common tale in 19th century Europe.
1913: Among those expected to attend the 23rd Biennial Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in Cincinnati are J. Walter Freiberg, Jacob H. Schiff, Julius Rosenwald, I.W. Bernheim, Adolph S. Ochs and Harry Cutler.
1913: The next regular meeting of the Junior Auxiliary of the Mother’s Aid of the Chicago Lying-In Hospital and Dispensary is scheduled to be held in the vestry rooms of the Isaiah Temple/
1914(22ndof Tevet, 5674): Sixty-two-year-old German born composer and pianist Emil Liebling who settled in Chicago in the 1870’s and who spent the rest of his career performing and composing the United States passed away today.
1914: “The Yellow Ticket” a play that tells the story of Russian Jewess who is trying to get see her dying father when Jews are restricted to their homes” opened at the Empire Theatre.
1915: In Chicago, a resolution is scheduled to be introduced at a joint session of the American Hebrew Congregations and the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods praising “President Wilson’s neutral attitude toward the war.”
1915: Johanna Kohler, the wife of Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, daughter of Rabb David Einhorn, the sister of Mathilde Hirsch and the sister-in-law of Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch is scheduled to speak today the at the national meeting of the American Hebrew Congregations in Chicago.
1915: Birthdate English journalist and publisher Harold M. Harris, the husband of Josephine Byford and WW II officer in the intelligence service whose literary clients included the famous novelist Frederick Forsyth.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-harold-harris-1460659.html
1915: Martin Grove Brumbaugh who in 1916 “issued a proclamation to the people of Pennsylvania call up them to set aside January 27 as a day on which to make donations for the relief of the Jewish people in the various countries at war” began serving as the 26th Governor of Pennsylvania
1916(15thof Shevat, 5676): Tu B’Shevat
1916(15thof Shevat, 5676): Yossel (Joseph) Ben YItzchock Halevi, Levitsky, the husband of Sara Weechha bat Abram Tzvi Levitsky, who had settled in the United Kingdom at the turn of the century and who had made Aliyah before the start of WWI passed away today during the siege of Jerusalem after which he was buried on the Mount of Olives.
1916: At Clinton Hall, the Committee for the Relief of Jewish War Suffers hosted a meeting “to celebrate” Mayor Mitchell’s “recovery from his recent illness and return to public duties” at the end of which the may expressed his appreciation saying of the Jewish population, “Of all the races that come from Europe, the Jews stand out for their response to civic duty and responsibility.”
1917(26thof Tevet, 5677): Parashat Vaera
1917(26th of Tevet, 5677): Avshalom Feinberg passed away. He was one of the leaders of Nili, a Jewish spy network in Ottoman Palestine helping the British fight the Ottoman Empire during World War I passed away today. Born in 1889 at Gedera, Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire Feinberg studied in France. He returned to work with Aaron Aaronsohn at the agronomy research station in Atlit. Soon after the beginning of war, Aaronson founded the Nili underground along with his sister Sarah Aaronsohn, Feinberg and Yosef Lishansky. In 1915 Feinberg travelled to Egypt and made contact with British Naval Intelligence. In 1917, Feinberg again journeyed to Egypt, on foot. He was apparently killed by a Bedouin near the British front in Sinai, close to Rafah. His fate was unknown until after the 1967 Six-Day War when his remains were found under a palm tree that had grown from date seeds in his pocket to mark the spot where he lay. In 1979 a new Israeli settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, Avshalom was named after him. Although it was abandoned following the Camp David Accords, a new village by the same name was founded in Israel in 1990.
1917: At Temple Israel in Harlem, Rabbi M.H. Harris is scheduled to deliver a Shabbat morning sermon on “Miracles.”
1917: Rabbi Samuel Schulman will deliver the sermon at Temple Beth-El on Fifth Avenue at Sabbath Services which are scheduled to begin at 10:30.
1917: Rabbi Silverman is scheduled to deliver a sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El on “Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep It Holy.”
1918: This afternoon at the first session of the United Synagogue Conference meeting at the Jewish Theological Seminary Dr. Jacob Kohn, Dr. Cyrus Adler, Rabbi Elias Solomon and Rabbi Samuel Kohn were among the speakers who discussed “The Jews in the Small Community,” “What Jewish Womandhood Can Do to Strengthen Traditional Judaism” and “The Synagogical Problems of New York.”
1918: Among the contributions listed today by The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War were $121 from Green Bay, Wisconsin, $200 from Sedalia, MO, and $143 from Freemont, Nebraska. (Editor’s note: These contributions from distant and small communities show the connection that Jews felt for their suffering brethren all across the country)
1919: “Opposed a Jewish Republic” published today described adoption of a resolution by the First Jewish Labor Congress “favoring a free republic in Palestine where he Jews will have no more rights than any other people until, by immigration or otherwise, they become the majority.”
1920: Parisian born Jewish journalist and politician Louis-Lucien Klotz completed his service as Minister of Finance in the government of George Clemenceau during which “he was responsible for negotiating reparations from Germany.”
1920: In New York, Esther (Solomon) Landau and Max Landau gave birth to film producer and production executive Ely A. Landau who won a Peabody Award for “Play of the Week.” (As reported by Eric Pace)
1920(29thof Tevet, 5680): General Alfred Mordecai, Jr. passed away.
http://www.collectnobel.com/Civil_War_Gillmore_Medal_to_Jew.html
1920 (29th of Tevet, 5680): Italian sculptor and painter Amedeo Modigliani passed away.
http://www.modigliani-foundation.org/
1920: The American Civil Liberties Union was founded today. The ACLU's stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." The ACLU is not a Jewish organization but Jews have been associated with it since its founding. For example, Louis Brandies was a mentor to co-founder Roger Baldwin and Felix Frankfurter was among its founding members. As a defender of the rights of minorities, the ACLU has continued to attract Jewish support.
1921: Louis and Hannah Kahn sold “the seven-story San Salvador apartment house at 2 West 98th Street on plot located on the southwest corner of Central Park West.
1922: In Berlin, the former Sarah Aaronson and Herman Mankiewicz gave birth to screenwriter Dan Mankiewicz whose works included the scripts for the popular television series “Ironsides” “Star Trek” and “Marcus Welby,”
1923: Birthdate of David M. Lee, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1996.
1924: In Brooklyn, Joseph and Ethel Price Pockriss gave birth to Lee Julian Pockriss who wrote the music for midcentury pop hits like “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” “Catch a Falling Star” and “Johnny Angel.” (As reported by Anita Gates)
1924: Bernard Semel, Reuben Branin, Philip Wattenberg, Sigmund Thau and William Edlin headed a committee that is hosting a public reception in honor of Dr. Osias Thon, the chief Rabbi of Cracow, who is visiting New York City.
1924: In Sydney, Australia, “the Jewish sporting community” is scheduled to host “a combined sports picnic at Lane Cove” today which is the first of its kind in the country’s history.
1925: “The biennial convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and its affiliated groups of temple sisterhoods and brotherhoods opened today at the Hotel Statler” in St. Louis, “with more than 1,500 delegates from 273 congregations” in attendance.
1926: “Ford Loses New Move In Suit For Libel” published today reported that “a motion by counsel for Henry Ford to strike out of the complaint of Herman Bernstein, who is suing Mr. Ford for $200,000 for libel, several quotations from the Dearborn Independent which were alleged to libel the Jews was denied by the Federal Judge” who rejected the argument that “a member of a class cannot sue for libelous attack upon the class if he is not personally referred to, or special damage claimed.”
1927: Featherweight Harry Blitman fought and won his twelfth bout leaving him with a record of 12 – 0 to date.
1928: As of today, a special committee of the Board of Trustees of Congregation Emanu-El whose members include Ben Altheimer, Philip J. Goodhart, Judge Irving Lehman and Henry M. Toch is soliciting members of the congregation for contributions that will support the work of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Hebrew Union College.
1928: Birthdate of Brooklyn native and actor Martin Landau who first gained fame in the television hit Mission Impossible before carving out a career on the Big Screen as a character actor.
1929: This afternoon at the Free Synagogue, Dr. Stephen S. Wise officiated at the funeral services for “late Sophie Irene Loeb, noted author and leader in child welfare work” after which she was interred at the congregation’s Westchester Hills Cemetery. (As reported by JTA)
1929: In Benton Harbor, Michigan, attorney Abraham Lincoln Johnson and Edythe Mackenzie (Goldberg) Johnson gave birth to Arthur Stanton Eric Johnson, all whose “four grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants” and who gained fame Emmy winning comic actor Arte Johnson who was a mainstage on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.” (As reported by Daniel E. Slotnik)
1929: In Brooklyn, Schapiro, an investment broker, and the former Julia Neshick gave birth to Hebert Elliot Schapiro “a writer and teacher whose idea to create a stage play from the collected essays of poor city kids resulted in a hit musical, “The Me Nobody Knows.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)
1930: Mrs. Ida B. Wise Smith, national vice president of the W.C.T.U. announced today in Cedar Rapids, IA “that she was going to carry the fight” against alcohol “into the Holy Land, Syria and Egypt” and that she has “accepted an invitation to address a gather of prohibitionists in Jerusalem” next month. (Editor’s note – this item qualifies because this blog is written in Cedar Rapids, IA and because all of the stories from this era about the conflict between Arabs and Jews, who would have thought that the “wets” and the “drys” were duking it out in Palestine.)
1931: “1914” a film “that focuses on the leadership of the Great Powers in the days leading up to” WW I directed and produced by Richard Oswald and filmed by cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum premiered in Berlin “at the Tauentzien-Palast” today.
1932: In a Letter-To-The- Editor published in the New York Times, Frank P. Chisholm wrote that “Negroes lost a friend” with the passing of Julius Rosenwald. “No group of people feels more keenly the death of Julius Rosenwald than the Negro. Since 1910, when Booker T. Washington became his friend, some of Mr. Rosenwald's most notable gifts were made to raise the status of the American Negro.”
1932: Mayor Jimmy Walker (who wasn’t Jewish) appointed Maurice Deisches (who was Jewish) to the Board of Higher Education.
1932: “You Don’t Forget Such a Girl” a romantic comedy directed by Fritz Kortner and written by Hans Wilhelm was released today in Austria and Germany.
1933: Birthdate of U.S. diplomat Morton Isaac Abramowitz.
1933: “Ecstasy” a drama starring Hedy Kiesler, who would later be known as Hedy Lammar” was released in Czechoslovakia today.
1934: “Cy Kaselman scored 17 points to lead the Philadelphia Sphas to victory over the Newark Bears in the American Basketball League.” (As reported by Bob Wechsler)
1935: Today was designated as Palestine Day by the Zionist Organization of America. Over 400 cities and towns throughout the United States planned on observing the event with a series of meetings and dinners.
1935: “The Catskill Mountain Region of the United Synagogues of America will be organized” today “ “when fifty representatives of twelve communities in that section gather here at Congregation Ahavoth Israel.”
1935(16thof Shevat, 5695): Seventy-year-old Zemach Shabad, the native of Vilnius who combined a medical career with political and communal activities that including helping to found YIVO, the Institue for Jewish Research.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Szabad_Tsemah
1935: Governor James Allred proclaimed today as Palestine Day in Texas in recognition of the progress “that has been recorded in the modern reconstruction of the holy land.”
1936: It was reported today that the educators, division of ORT under the leadership of B. Charney Valdeck has made plans to raise $500,000 “to finance the work of rehabilitating and training Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.”
1936: Seventy-year-old King George V, who as Prince George had celebrated Passover while visiting Palestine in 1882, who was entertained by Sophie Tucker when she toured England in 1926, who had been honored with the planting of a Jubilee Forest in 1935 and whose passing was mourned by British Jewry in the Great Synagogue in Aldgate, passed away today.
1936: It was reported today that police in Munich “have proceeded systematically to invalidate the passports of Jews living in the city” by going from house to house and seizing the documents and the stamping them “invalid for foreign countries.”
1937: Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States. He is the first the first president to be inaugurated on January 20. During his second term FDR would continue with many of his New Deal policies which were popular with a majority of Jewish voters. Also during his second term, he would nominate Felix Frankfurter to serve on the Supreme Court to replace Justice Cardozo. FDR’s second term would also see the continuing rise of the Nazis and the outbreak of WW II in Europe. While he opposed the Nazis, he had to move cautiously given the strong isolationist sentiment in the United States. He has been strongly criticized for his failure not to allow more Jews to enter the United States. During the St. Louis Affair, Roosevelt’s government gave strict orders that the ship should not be allowed to dock in the United States.
1938: In New York City. Mildred Rickman and Leroy Solomon gave birth to Michael Jay Solomon, “the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the Truli Media Group, Inc., which he founded in 2010.”
1938: The Palestine Post reported that David Bialo, a Jewish employee of the Public Works Department, displayed great presence of mind and averted serious injury to himself and his four colleagues when he seized a bomb thrown into their car and hurled it into the roadway. The assailant was later recognized and arrested. Two Arabs were sentenced to death for carrying arms and ammunition and firing at police. The Post's leading article reminded the authorities of the many shooting outrages in Jerusalem's Rehavia, Talpiot and other quarters and asked for greater vigilance.
1938(18thof Shevat, 5698): Zvi Hirschkahn, the author who wrote under the name of Zevi Hirsh Cohen, who in 1926 came to the United States where he earned a Ph.D from Dropsie and wrote for The Day passed away today in New York City.
1939: Hitler proclaimed to the German parliament his commitment to exterminate all European Jews
1940: In Philadelphia, PA, the former Beatrice Rubin and Benson Schambelan gave birth theatre director to Isaac Hillel “Ike” Shmabelan (As reported by Bruce Weber)
1941: Third inauguration of FDR as president of the United States
1941 (21st of Tevet, 5701): Three Jews, Icek Brona, Ita Kinster and Abram Szmulewicz, died from hunger and cold in the Lodz Ghetto.
1941: Two thousand more Jews died of hunger in the Warsaw Ghetto.
1942(2nd of Shevat, 5702): Sixty-five year old University of Cincinnati gradate and Hebrew Union College ordained Rabbi, Solomon Lowenstein, the Philadelphia born son of Diana Newmayer and Levi Lowenstein and the husband of Linda Berger who was the Secretary of the National Conference of Jewish Charities in the United States and a member of the Editorial Board of Jewish Charity suffered a fatal heart attack today.
1942: In Berlin, a meeting took place at the Wannsee Villa to discuss the implementation of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” – the annihilation of European Jewry which became known as the Wannsee Conference.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/january/05.asp
http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206487.pdf
1943: The father of Henri Krascuki “was arrested on charges of sabotage” today and interned at Drancy internment camp” which would be his last stop in France before being shipped to Birkenau where he was gassed
1943: Fifty-eight year Leopold Pick old was deported today from Terezin to Auschwitz where he was murdered
1943: A train from Theresienstadt arrived at Auschwitz. Of the passengers, 160 women and 80 men were sent to the barracks. The remaining 1,760 Jews were sent to the gas chambers. Of those from the barracks, only 2 would survive beyond the next six weeks of labor. These were all Jews who were already deported to Theresienstadt in 1941 from their homes throughout Austria and Czechoslovakia.
1943: In a letter to the reich minister of transport, SS chief Heinrich Himmler requests additional trains so that the "removal of Jews" from across Europe can be speeded up.“If I am to wind things up quickly, I must have more trains.”
1944: The 80,000 Jews still living within the Lodz ghetto were faced with the catastrophe of inevitable starvation.
1944: The Nazis deported 1,155 Jews from the transit camp at Drancy, France, to Auschwitz.
1944: Today Otto Blumenthal was sent, at his own request, to the "old people's ghetto" Theresienstadt since he had heard that his sister had been sent there in July 1942. When he arrived at Theresienstadt he found that, although his sister had been there, she had died six months earlier. Blumenthal himself died at Theresienstadt after suffering from pneumonia, dysentery and tuberculosis.
1944: Hélène Falk and Albert Samuel the parents of resistance leader “Raymond Aubrac's whom he had tried unsuccessfully to convince to leave for Switzerland, were arrested in France, deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp by convoy No. 66 today and died there.
1944: The former Erzsebet Salomon, the wife of Hungarian photographer André Kertész became a naturalized American citizen weeks before her husband reach the same status.
1945 (6th of Shevat, 5705): The Germans shot 4200 Jews at Auschwitz.
1946: In Tel Aviv, Abraham and Zipora Hirschfeld gave birth to Yeshiva University graduate and animal rights advocate Rachel Hirschfeld.
1947: Professor Johan J. Smertenko, the vice chairman of the American League for a Free Palestine, who had been denied entrance into England last week because of his pro-Zionist views, charged today “that the British Government has attempted to stifle free discussion of its policy in Palestine.”
1947: Today, “on the eve of the British government’s conference in London on the…Palestine situation” Congressman Jacob Javits of New York expressed support for “sending a special Congressional mission to Palestine to foster the establishment of a democratic commonwealth there.”
1948(9th of Shevat, 5708): Sixty-eight-year-old archaeologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld whose work included excavation and analysis of what is believed to “Esther’s Tomb” and was forced to leave Germany because of his “Jewish ancestry” passed away today
http://www.asia.si.edu/archives/finding_aids/herzfeld.html
1948:A memorandum written today from State Department’s policy staff led by George F. Kennan forecast that “Ultimately the U.S. might have to support the Jewish authorities by use of naval units and military forces...It is improbable that the Jewish state could survive over any considerable period time in the face of the combined assistance which be forthcoming for the Arabs in Palestine from the Arab States and in lesser measure from their Moslem neighbors."
1949: Harry S. Truman, the man who was so proud of his role in the creation of the state of Israel was inaugurated as President of the United States.
1949: In the midst of the Jewish state’s fight for birth and survival, we find the struggle between the secular and religious members of the government coming to a head over the question of the importation of non-kosher meat. The cabinet voted to place the importation of meat under the joint control of the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Religion. This effectively meant that only kosher meat would be brought into Israel. More importantly, this “compromise” showed the disproportionate strength of the religious parties in Israel’s fractured political structure.
1949: U.S. premiere “A Letter to Three Wives” directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, produced by Sol C. Siegel, written by Vera Caspery, with music by Alfred Newman and co-starring Kirk Douglas.
1950(2nd of Shevat): Philologist Judah Gur passed away today.
1950: In Toronto, “a fire broke out at the Phillips Garment Company today which was owned by Phillip Chikofsky that claimed the lives of nine workers several of whom had survived the Holocaust and was reminiscent of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
1950: Birthdate of Edward Hrisch, the Chicago native who nine books of poems including The Living Fire:
New and Selected Poems published in 2010.
1951: Birthdate of Shelley Berkley, member of the House of Representatives from the first district of Nevada. BornRochelle Levine, Berkley is the first Jewish woman and the second Jew elected to the House of Representatives from Nevada.
1951: Birthdate of Hungarian born conductor Ivan Fischer.
1952: Birthdate of Paul Stanley lead singer “Kiss.”
1953: Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated for his first term as President of the United. Eisenhower would be confronted with one of the greatest challenges of his presidency during the Suez Crisis of 1956.
1953(4th of Shevat, 5713):Aaron Goldberg, the paternal grandfather of famed historian Sir Martin Gilbert passed away at the age of 93. Born in Poland when it was part of the Russian Empire, he came to Great Britain in the last decade of the 19th century. He was preceded in death by his wife, Annie (of blessed in memory) who passed away in 1950 at the age of 78.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset condemned Soviet anti-Semitism by a vote of 89 to six. The government warned Israeli Communists and their press against backing the current Soviet anti-Jewish campaign. Over 300 Jews were reported to be fleeing East Germany to Western Berlin. The arrest of Dr. Lajos Stoeckler, leader of the Hungarian Jewish community, spread fears among the local Jews. The newly organized Hadassah cardio-surgical department carried out the first two completely successful delicate heart operations.
1953: In Brooklyn, the Pauline Stolofsky and Seymour Epstein, a New York City groundskeeper gave birth to financier and convicted sex trafficker and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
https://beyondthedash.com/obituary/jeffrey-epstein-1076483132
1955: In France, the first government headed by Pierre Mendès France “fell.”
1955: In the revolving door politics of the French Fourth Republic Pierre Mendès France formed a second government.
1955: An exhibit at the Boston Public Library includes ceremonial objects, photographs and mementos of early Boston Jews.
1956: Birthdate of Bill Maher, American actor, comedian, and political analyst whose mother was Jewish and whose father was Catholic.
1957: Jewish composerMorton Gould's "Declaration" premieres in Washington DC
1961(3rdof Shevat, 5721): Sixty-four-year-old Kovno native Oscar Straus Caplan, a “Judge in Chicago’s Municipal Courts for more than a quarter of century and after retirement “a part-time instructor at the University of Miami Law School who was the husband of Sarah Caplan and the father of Mitchell Caplan passed away today.
1961: John F. Kennedy was inaugurated President of the United States. The first Roman Catholic U.S. President, Kennedy had received overwhelming support from Jewish voters. He appointed Abraham Ribicoff as Secretary of H.E.W. and Arthur Goldberg as Secretary of Labor. His administration provided support for the still fledgling state of Israel.
1961: As the “official photographer for Kennedy’s presidential inaugural gala” Philip Stern, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, raced “around Washington to five white-tie balls” snapping “memorable images, including Sinatra’s lighting the triumphant president’s cigarette.”
http://www.philsternarchives.com/archive/jfk/inaugural-gala-book/
http://www.faheykleingallery.com/photographers/stern/personal/stern_pp_frames.htm
1962(15thof Shevat, 5722): Tu B’Shevat
1962(15thof Shevat, 5722): Ninety-nine year old Stella Heinsheimer Freiberg who was equally devoted to the cause of Reform Judaism and to raising the level of culture in Cincinnati, Ohio passed away today.
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/freiberg-stella-heinsheimer
1963:83-Year-old Rosina Lhevinne performed with the New York Philharmonic
http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/20/1963/rosina-lhevinne
1963: Birthdate of Yishay Levi, the native of Rosh HaAyin and brother of Nati Levi, whose first album “Hafla with Ben Mohes” helped to make him “a superstar in clubs all over Israel”
1965; Francisco Franco met with Jewish representatives to discuss the legal status of the Jewish community in Spain. It was the first such meeting since 1492.
1965: Rabbi Judah Schachtel of Houston's Congregation Beth Israel delivered the inaugural prayer for President Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington, D.C.
1966: “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” a comedy with a script by Everett Greenbaum was released in the United States today.
1969: Twenty days after his seventy-third birthday, “English pianist, composer and music publisher” Maurice Jacobson, the husband of Constance Suzannah Wasserzug, “appeared as a castaway on the BBC Radio program Desert Islands Discs” two years before he was appointed an Officer of the British Empire.
1969(1stof Shevat, 5729): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1969(1stof Shevat, 5729): Sixty-eight-year-old Frances Goldman Ross, the winner in 1964 of the JTS annual leadership award and the wife of Hyman J. Ross, a senior partner of Astor and Ross and the mother of Patricia G. Weis passed away today in the Bronx.
1969(1stof Shevat, 5729): Eighty-seven-year-old New York born CCNY lacrosse player Henry J. Silverman the husband of the former Sophia Schreiber with whom he had four children -Nathan, Dorothy, Estellle and Rosa – who was the retired assistant principal, chairman of heal education and dean of men at Jamaica High School passed away today in Miami Beach.
1969: David Dubinsky received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1969: Sheldon Cohen completed his term as Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.
1972(4thof Shevat, 5732): Forty-year old Rabbi Michael Goulston who was ordained in 1963 after which he filled the pulpits at the Southport New Synagogue and the Middlesex New Synagogue now known as the Mosaic Reform Synagogue before serving as the assistant minister of the West London Synagogue.
1972: “To Find a Man” a comedy produced by Mort Abrahams, Irving Pincus and Peter L. Skolnik, written by Arnold Schulman and with music by David Shire was released in the United States today.
1973: An “attack on a transit camp in Austria for Jewish immigrants from Russia” was thwarted today and three Arab terrorists were arrested in Vienna.
1974(26thof Tevet, 5734): Eighty-two year old author and founding editor of Broom Harold Albert Loeb, the son of Albert Loeb and Rose Loeb/Goldsmith passed away today in Marrakesh after which he was buried in New York City.
1975: At Westminster Hospital in London Sir James Goldsmith and “his third wife Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest Steward gave birth to their middle child Frank Zacharias Robin “Zac” Goldsmith, the Conservative MP who lost in his bid to be elected Mayor of London.
1975: Michael Ovitz started Creative Artist Agency.
1975: Birthdate of Shortstop David Eckstein. Eckstein is not Jewish but for some reason he was selected to the Jewish All-American team.
1975: In “One of a Golden Dozen,” published today, Time remembers the career of the late Richard Tucker who passed away last week at the age of 60 on the eve of the 30th anniversary of his debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,912704,00.html
1976: PBS broadcast the first episode of “The Adams Chronicles” written by Millard Lampell today.
1977(1st of Shevat, 5737): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1977: “Soviet television premieres an hour long anti-Zionist documentary Traders of Souls, which specifies the names and addresses of Vladimir Slepak, Yosef Begun, Anatoly Sharansky and Yuli Kosharovsky.”
1977: Inauguration of Jimmy Carter, the President who would broker the Camp David Peace Accords.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that after Egypt broke off the political negotiations held in Jerusalem, US President Jimmy Carter warned that the Middle East might have lost 'a precious opportunity for the historic settlement of the long-standing conflict an opportunity which may not come again in our lifetime.' He asked both Israel and Egypt to maintain the momentum for peace. In Jerusalem Premier Menachem Begin said that the future of negotiations depended on the expected meeting of the US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
1979(21stof Tevet, 5739): Parashat Shemot
1979: Birthdate of Rob Bourdon drummer with Linkin Park.
1980: Tight end Randy Grossman earns his final championship ring as the Steelers win Super Bowl XIV.
1981(15thof Shevat, 5741): Tu B’Shevat
1981: At his inauguration Ronald Reagan chose to use his mother’s worn Bible when taking the oath of office. He placed his hand on one of her favorite verses, II Chronicles 7:14: “If my people which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” Reagan had received 39% of the Jewish vote which was unusually high for a Republican candidate.
1981: Stuart Eizenstat completed his service as White House Domestic Affairs Advisor.
1983: In New York, Michael Bloomberg and Susan Brown gave birth to Georgina Leigh Bloomberg
1984: “Scandalous” a comedy based on play by Larry Cohen who wrote the script along with Rob Cohen who was also the director was released today in the United States and the United Kingdom.
1988(1stof Shevat, 5748): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1988(1stof Shevat, 5748): Eighty-five-year-old Baron Philippe de Rothschild whose exciting life that included being a Grand-Prix race-car driver, movie producer, war hero and wine grower reads more like fiction passed away today with only one flaw – his money and power almost did save him and his daughter from the Shoah and proved unable to save his first wife from being murdered at Ravensbruck concentration camp.
1988: The Minister of Police said today that he had no immediate plans to use emergency powers to impose curfews in Arab East Jerusalem or order striking shops there to open.
1989: Inauguration of George H.W. Bush as President of the United States. During the Gulf War, Bush convinced the Israelis not to take military action against Iraq. For the first time in its history, the Israelis entrusted their security to forces other than the IDF when they allowed Patriot Batteries to respond to attacks by Scud Missiles. At the end of his Presidency, Bush granted pardons to all of those involved in the Iran-Contra Affair including Elliot Abrams.
1991:Like Israelis, today Palestinians used the first quiet moment after Iraqi missile attacks on Friday and Saturday to stockpile for further siege. But unlike the Jews, the Palestinians say they welcome the missiles, because they believe Israel deserves to be attacked, and because, one way or another, they think war will help create a Palestinian state.
1991(5thof Shevat, 5751): Eighty-three-year-old German born, British physiotherapist who created a method of rehabilitation and therapy known as the Bobath concept in 1948 and her husband and colleague ninety year old Karel Bobath passed away today.
http://www.bobath.org.uk/about-us/the-founders-and-history/
1991: Mike Burstyn, who portrays Mayer Rothschild in the Off Broadway revival of "The Rothschilds," left today so that he could be in Israel as the war with Iraq continues to take its toll on the Jewish state.
1992(15thof Shevat, 5752): Tu B’Shevat
1992(15thof Shevat, 5752): Ninety-three year old Arthur Maurice Fishberg, the New York born son of Maurice and Bertha Cantor Fishberg and husband of Irene Levin who served as the clinical professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medical and clinical professor at NYU while conducting “extensive” research into “cardiovascular and renal diseases” passed away today.
1992: “On the fiftieth anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, the site was finally opened as a Holocaust memorial and museum.”
1993: Sandy Berger began serving as United States Deputy National Security Advisor.
1993: In an unusual break with international practice, the mostly Muslim republic of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia has decided to establish an embassy in Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said today. The announcement came during a three-day visit here by Askar Akayev, President of the former Soviet republic, and was praised by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. "I believe this is what has to be done by all countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel," Mr. Rabin said after meeting Mr. Akayev. Most nations, including the United States, do not recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital on the grounds that its status should be determined in an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. Only El Salvador and Costa Rica maintain embassies in Jerusalem, with other nations preferring Tel Aviv.
1995: Today, “the Legislative Council passed an ordinance that established the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden Corporation which had been founded as the Kadoorie Agriculture Aide Association by Lord Lawrence Kadoorie and Sir Horace Kadoorie.
1995: A memorial service is scheduled to be held at the Aspen Chapel in Aspen, CO to honor the late Oklahoma City real estate developer and civic leader Monte H. Goldman.
1996(28thof Tevet, 5756): Parashat Vaera
1996(28thof Tevet, 5756): Eighty-eight-year-old Sidney R. Korshak, the labor lawyer with alleged connections to the Chicago mob and Hollywood insider whose career was the opposite of that of his brother Marshall passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/22/us/sidney-korshak-88-dies-fabled-fixer-for-the-chicago-mob.html
1997: William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States. Clinton’s second term would be dominated by his affair with a young Jewess named Monica Lewinsky. Towards the end of his term, he would attempt to broker a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis by holding a series of meetings with Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat. The efforts failed because Arafat would accept the deal because he said he would be signing his death warrant. At the end of the term, Clinton would cause another minor scandal with his pardon of Marc Rich.
1998 (22nd of Tevet, 5758): Zevulun Hammer, Deputy Prime Minister of Israel passed away. A Sabra, Hammer was born in Haifa in 1936. He studied at Bar Ilan University. He began his parliamentary career in 1969. He chaired several different Knesset committees and was head of the National Religious party.
1998 (22nd of Tevet, 5758: Seventy-four-year-old statistician and psychologist Jacob Cohen passed away today.
http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/04/04708608/0470860804-2.pdf
1999: Shaul Amo was made Minister without Portfolio today.
2000: Today, “Israel’s attorney general ordered a criminal investigation into possible tax evasion by President Ezer Weizman” which “was the first criminal investigation of an Israeli president.”
2000: “Germany asked the Greek Supreme Court to dismiss a lower court ruling that it owes $30 million to survivors of 218 people who were killed by Nazis in the village of Distomo on June 10, 1944” because it says the issue of reparations was closed with a 1960 compensation treaty with Greece.
2001: Stuart Eizenstat completed his service as U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
2001: In a move that “stunned law enforcement officials,” President Clinton granted a last-minute pardon to Marc Rich, the commodities trader who had evaded prosecution for 18 years and his former partner, Pincus Green, who have lived in Europe since they fled the United States during an investigation into their oil-trading activities that led to a 1983 indictment on 51 counts of tax evasion, racketeering and violating sanctions against trading with Iran. An amazing number of Jews sent letters urging this action or attesting to Rich’s great qualities including a former head of Mossad.
2001: Sandy Berger completed his service as the 19th United States National Security Advisor.
2001: Richard J. Danzig completed his service as United States Secretary of the Navy.
2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Kafka Americana by Jonathan Lethem and Carter Scholz and Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora by Larry Tye
2002: Today, a senior Israeli military official said Palestinian officials considered to be close to Chairman Yassar Arafat had begun to talk among themselves about replacing him. But he said it was unlikely that they would act as long as Mr. Arafat had some international support and continued receiving financial backing from the European Union and Arab states. ''They won't move until they know they are going to be successful,'' he said. ''It's like Julius Caesar and Brutus.'' Top Palestinian officials insist that loyalty to Mr. Arafat has not wavered.
2002: “Returning Mickey Stern,” co-starring Tom Bosley was released in the United States today.
2002: During a visit to Israel, today, former President Bill Clinton called on the Palestinians and Israelis to keep working for peace. When talking about attempts by his administration bring peace to the two parties, Clinton but placed “the blame for his peace initiative's failure squarely on Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leader.’ ''’Chairman Arafat missed a golden opportunity,’'' Mr. Clinton said in a speech here tonight, ruing Mr. Arafat's rejection of a peace proposal made at Camp David in 2000.”
2003: The seven crewmembers of the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia woke up to the song, Hatishma Koli (Will you hear my voice?)
http://www.jewishjournal.com/jewgyver/item/the_re-launch_of_ilan_ramon_20110926/
2003 (17th of Shevat, 5763): Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld passed away in New York at age 99.
2004(26th of Tevet, 5764): Eighty-nine year old political activist Roberta Garfield Cohn, the widow of John Garfield, passed away today.
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jan/26/local/me-cohn26
2005 (10th of Shevat, 5765): Israeli civilian Gabriel Dwait, a 27 year old immigrant from Ethiopia drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Hezbollah would use his corpse as a bargaining chip in an exchange with Israeli authorities in 2007.
2005 (10 Shevat 5765): The Hon. Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild, British zoologist, entomologist and author passed away at the age of 96.(As reported by Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/science/25rothschild.html?_r=0
2005: George Bush is sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. Bush saw himself as an unabashed foe of anti-Semitism and a supporter of Israel’s security needs.
2006(20thof Tevet, 5766): Eighty-two-year-old Alan Budin, the husband of Helen Budin with whom he had three children – Jerry, Shellie and Gail—passed away today,
2006: Larry Franklin, the Pentagon analyst who admitted conveying classified information to staffers of the pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC) and to Israeli officials, was sentenced to 12 years of prison and a $10,000 fine at the US District Court in Alexandria Virginia. Larry Franklin, a mid-level civilian employee in the Iran desk at the Pentagon, passed on classified
2007(1st of Shevat, 5767): Parashat Vaera; Rosh Chodesh Shevat
2007: On the same day that it was reported that “Israel had transferred $100 million in Palestinian tax revenues to the office of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as part of a plan to bolster him and keep money out of the hands of the Hamas government” former President Carter defended his recent book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid which others says is so “unfairly critical of Israel” that “14 members of an advisory board to his Carter Center have resigned in protest.”
2008: The Sunday New York Times book section featured reviews of Mark Scroggins’ The Poem of a Life a biography of poet Louis Zukofsky who as “a child of immigrant Jewish parents on the Lower East Side recited Yehoash’s Yiddish translation of Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” on street corners to gangs of Italian boys.”; Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book, a novel based on “the centuries-old Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah”; Fred Wander’s The Seventh Well“a novel about the camps by a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald”; Into The Tunnel: The Brief Life of Marion Samuel, 1931-1943 by Götz Aly; The Jew of Home Depot And Other Storiesby Max Apple; Revolution in the Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysisby George Makari; as well as an essay entitled “The Story of The Night” that answers the question “How did a Holocaust memoir rejected by 15 publishers and largely ignored by readers go on to sell 10 million copies?” and a retrospective look at The Best and the Brightest by the late Jewish author David Halberstam whichthirty-five years ago this week, in January of 1973, was the No. 1 nonfiction title on the best sellers list.
2008: The cover story of TheNew York Times Magazine features Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke of whom the author writes “grew up in the small town of Dillon, S.C., at the tail end of the segregation era (in high school he wrote a schoolboy’s novel about whites and blacks coming together on the basketball team). His father and his uncle ran a local drug store. Folks trustingly called them Dr. Phil and Dr. Mort. Ben, who skipped first grade, was obviously smart from the get-go. He played the saxophone, just as Greenspan did, and waited tables two summers and worked construction another. The Bernankes were observant Jews, and Ben’s folks fretted when he got into Harvard that if he strayed from home he might wander from his religious teachings. It was never a risk. Judaism is important to Bernanke, though, as with other personal subjects, he does not discuss it.” Bernanke succeeded Arthur Greenspan who was also Jewish as head of the Federal Reserve. In addition to which “Bernanke’s first exposure to monetary policy was reading the works of Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate,” who was also Jewish.
2008: In “Abandoned Torah, Adopted, Is Revived,” published today Julius Charkes describes the amazing story of how a Torah that had survived the Holocaust, was rescued by a group of American students who saw it in the window of Polish pawn shop and brought to the United States to be restored by a Jerusalem-based sofer.
2009: Jack Markell completed ten years of service the Treasurer of Delaware.
2009: Jack Markell was sworn in as the 73rd Governor of Delaware.
2009: Tony Blinken began serving as the National Security Advisor to the Vice President, Joe Biden.
2009: Eric Edelman completed his term as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
2009:The Yeshiva University Museum presents “From Black Death to AIDS: Epidemics and Their Impact on Culture,” an Exhibition Tour and Panel Discussion that examines the impact of disease in shaping culture featuring Doctors Ruth Oratz and Liis-anne Pirofski medical practitioners with backgrounds in the history of science and art history who will facilitate this enlightening discussion blending arts, literature, science and history.
2009: Barak Obama is sworn in as President of the United States with several Jewish leaders in attendance including his political confidant and senior adviser, David Axelrod and newly appointed White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.
2009: IAF planes struck a Kassam rocket launcher in the Gaza Strip this evening; hours after two incidents of gunfire and mortar shell fire were reported against IDF troops in the area.
2009:“Topol in 'Fiddler on the Roof': The Farewell Tour” with Chaim Topol playing Tevye opened today in Wilmington, Delaware.
2010: The 19thannual New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present “Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness’ that centers around the work of the late Melville J. Herskovits,a Jewish anthropologist, who traced Black cultural roots directly back to Africa. His work instilled pride in many African Americans and helped to fuel the Black Power movement.
2010: The 10th annual Atlanta Jewish Festival is scheduled to present a screening of “The Seven Days.”A follow-up to the acclaimed 2004 drama To Take a Wife, “The Seven Days” takes place as missiles threaten to rain down on Israel during the Gulf War and “revisits a large Moroccan Jewish family rubbed raw by the unexpected death of the eldest brother.”
2010: Bar-Ilan University hosts "Unforgettable Hebrew Women,” a conference that features a presentation of Ruti Glick’s research into the life of Hannah Szenes.
2010(5thof Shevat, 5770): Avrom Sutzkever, died today at the age of 96. He was not only a great Yiddish poet but is acknowledged as being one of the great poets of the 20th century.
http://www.forward.com/articles/123891/
http://yiddishkayt.org/2012/01/sutzkever/
2011: The New York Premiere of “Vera Klement: Blunt Edge” is scheduled to take place today at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
2011: Alison Vodnoy is scheduled to appear in a woman show “In Rehearsal” at the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.
2011: The European Division of the Library of Congress is scheduled to present a book talk by author Anna Porter entitled “The Ghosts of Europe: Journey through Central Europe’s Troubled Past and Uncertain Future
2011(15thof Shevat, 5771): Tu B’Shevat
2011: The 14th Street Y invites everybody to wear something green “as we all go green together.” The 14th Street Y is using Tu B’Shevat to focus on issues of greening and sustainability. Several other Jewish organizations have turned what is The New Year of the Trees into a holiday focusing on what in the 70’s was called ecology and now is called the green movement.
2011: The New York Times featured reviews of The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman and A Stranger On The Planet by Adam Schwartz
2011(15thof Shevat, 5771): Sonia Peres, or Sonia Gal as she preferred to be called in recent years, passed away in her sleep on today at age 87.
2011: The findings of a three-year investigation were published today in an expansive report, titled "The Truth Left Behind: Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl." Using "vein matching" technique the investigators were able to verify that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was, in fact, the man who beheaded Pearl.
2011: A new monument was unveiled today in eastern Canada marking the country's decision to turn away a steamship carrying Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939.
2011: A film about a Briton, Sir Nicholas Winton, who organized mass evacuations of children to save them from being sent to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps had its world premiere today in Prague, the Czech capital.
2011: The Talmud will be translated for the first time into Italian thanks to an official collaboration between the Italian government and the Italian Jewish community. A protocol launching "Project Talmud" was signed today in Rome by cabinet ministers, the president of Italy's National Research Council, the president of the umbrella Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) and Rome's chief rabbi.
2012: In New Orleans, LA, Congregation Gates of Prayer is scheduled to celebrate Brotherhood/Sisterhood Shabbat.
2012: “Minyan in Kaifeng: A Modern Journey to an Ancient Chinese Jewish Community” is scheduled to be shown at Temple Beth Ami in Rockville, MA.
2012: “Making Trouble,” a documentary that tells the story of six of the greatest female comic performers of the last century—Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner, and Wendy Wasserstein – is scheduled to be shown this morning as part of the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival.
2012: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to present “Topography of Terror: A New Documentation Center on a Historic Site” featuring Dr. Andreas Nachama, director of the “Topography of Terror” documentation center.
2012: The Premier Screening of “Wilfrid Israel – The Savior From Berlin” film took place at the auditorium of Kibbutz Hazorea, Israel
http://www.wilfridisraelfilm.org/
2012: The chief of the U.S. military held closed talks with the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the Israeli army’s chief of staff today in an effort to coordinate responses to Iran’s nuclear program. (As reported by The Washington Post)
2012: “Beasts of the Southern Wild” an American fantasy drama film directed by Benh Zeitlin who co-authored the script and helped write the music was shown for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival.
2013: Ariel mayor and former MK Ron Nachman who passed away at the age of 70 is scheduled to be buried today.
2013(9thof Shevat, 5773): Seventy-year-old Larry Selman passed away today.
2013: An exhibition entitled “Sh’ma/Listen: The Art of David Gelernter” is scheduled to come to an at the Yeshiva University Museum
2013: At the Tricycle, UKJF Members are scheduled to see an exclusive, one-off opportunity preview of the award-winning new Israeli feature drama, Policeman
2013: The Minneapolis Jewish Humor Fest is scheduled to present “Laughter Yoga Workshop” with Esther Ouray and “The History of Ha!” with David Misch
2013: Erica Strauss is scheduled to perform the role of Mimi in the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre production “La Boheme.”
2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including POEMS 1962-2012 by Louise Glück, Black Dahlia and White Rose by Joyce Carol Oates and Goldberg Variations by Susan Isaacs as well as an interview with author Jared Diamond.
2013: President Barak Obama is scheduled to be officially sworn in as President of the United States. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, President Obama has shown his support for the state of Israel by continuing to fully fund all defense commitments most important of which the money that goes to the Iron Dome.
2013: Tony Blinken completed his service as National Security Advisor to the Vice President and began serving as Deputy National Security Advisor.
2013: Graveside services are scheduled to held be held at Mt. Sinai Cemetery for Ethel Dimot the author of The Hidden Injury and the widow of Max Dimot for whom she edited the second edition of his Jews God and History
2013: The Baltimore Ravens defeated the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship. The Patriots are owned by Robert Kraft, the owner who once got the NFL to change a game time so that it would not conflict with Yom Kippur. The Ravens wore a patch honoring the memory of the late Art Modell. Modell was the first owner of the Ravens as well as being a Jewish philanthropist.
2013: Naftali Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi faced new charges of extremism today after a religious Zionist website revealed that one of the party’s candidates called for returning Gush Katif evacuees to the Gaza Strip and rebuilding dismantled West Bank settlements.
2013: Shin Bet security agency operatives and Negev police arrested two brothers from a Bedouin village on suspicion of planning to carry out terror attacks on Israeli cities, the agency reported today. Two Jewish Israelis, one of them an IDF soldier, were also arrested on suspicion of providing the brothers with stolen IDF weapons in exchange for drugs.
2014: Israel’s Energy and Water Resources Minister Silvan Shalom is scheduled to begin a visit to the United Arab Emirates s head the Israeli delegation to the World Future Energy Summit that in Abu Dhabi.
2014: The 12th annual Gigantic Used Book Sale at Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria, VA is scheduled to come to an end.
2014: “The Jewish Cardinal” and “Ana Arabia” are scheduled to be shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
2014: "People, Book, Land — The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel,” will not open today in Paris as scheduled because UNESCO cravenly gave into objections voiced by the Arab League. (As reported by David Lev)
2014: Canada supports Israel for strategic reasons but also because it is the correct thing to do, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said today, delivering an overwhelmingly pro-Israel speech to the Knesset. (As reported by Lazar Berman)
2015: “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” and “The King of Nerac” are scheduled to shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
2015: Lassana Bathily, a native of Mali and practicing Moslem who has lived in France since 2006, was made a citizen of France today as a reward for being the “hero” who “helped hostages at a Jewish supermarket hide during last week’s Paris attacks.”
2015: In “Say It Like It Is” published today, Thomas L. Friedman takes the Obama administration to task for characterizing the current of attacks as being “Violent Extremism” and refusing to connect to Radical Islam.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/opinion/thomas-friedman-say-it-like-it-is.html?_r=1
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-of-course-it-is-islam-114277
2015: Diana Cohen Altman, Executive Director of the Karabakh Foundation; and Rauf Mammadov, MBA, head of US operations for the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) are scheduled to present “ALI-Azerbaijan: From 5th Century Jewish Migration to a Strong Modern Day Partnership with Israel” is scheduled to be presented at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia in Fairfax, VA.
2016(10thof Shevat, 5776): Ninety-five-year-old “Dr. Herbert L. Abrams, a radiologist at Stanford and Harvard universities and a founder of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its work in publicizing the health consequences of atomic warfare” passed away today.
2016: The Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center is scheduled to host a question and answer center featuring Karl Rove and David Axelrod moderated by Jeff Zucker.
2016(10thof Shevat, 5776): Seventy-three-year-old sports lawyer Michael H. Goldberg passed away today.
2016(10thof Shevat, 5776): Ninety-year-old “British publishing giant Lord George Weidenfeld” passed away today.
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/-Lord-George-Weidenfelds-Legacy.html?s=mm
2016: “Ben Zaken” and “Tomorrow We Move” are scheduled to be shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival and Bennry Safdie premiered today at the Sundance
2017: Hours after President Trump took his oath today, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying that his appointment of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser would be lawful despite a federal anti-nepotism law.”
2017: Jason Dov Greenblatt the son of Hungarian Jewish refugees and NYU trained attorney who “was
the executive vice president and chief legal officer to Donald Trump and The Trump Organization” begam serving as Special Representative for International Negotiations.
2017: Gary Cohen began serving as the 11th Director of the National Economic Council today
2017: “Person to Person” starring Tavi Gevinson and Abbi Jacobson and featuring Ben Rosenfield and Benny Safdie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival today.
2017: Rabbi David Saperstein completed his services as United States Ambassador-at –Large for International Religious Freedom – a post which he was the first Jew to occupy.
2017(22ndof Tevet): On the Jewish Calendar, the day was designated as holiday following the miracle of 5558 (1798) an unexpected rain that put out fire when a mob tried to burn down the Roman Ghetto.
2017: Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, is scheduled to offer a prayer at President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration today.
2017 Anthony Blinken completed his service as the 18th United States Deputy Secretary of State.
2017: Eighty-nine-year-old Washingtonian Charles Brotman, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants is scheduled to participate in NBC’s coverage of the inauguration after having received an e-mail “from the Trump team that after having” served as the announcer for 11 presidents staring with Dwight Eisenhower, he was being replaced.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/fired-inauguration-announcer-gets-new-job-for-day/
2018(4thof Shevat, 5778): Parsahat Bo
2018: “A small group of demonstrators protested against Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit this evening as he was attending prayers at his local synagogue to say Kaddish, the Jewish mourning prayer, drawing strong condemnation.”
2018: LaunchHouse and the Cleveland Jewish News are scheduled to present the 7th Annual LaunchHouse Bootstrap Bash.
2018: “Thousands of residents of the southern city of Ashdod protested today against the closure of businesses in the city on Shabbat.”
2018: In Jerusalem, Kehillat Ramot Zion is scheduled to host“In the footsteps of the piyyutim of Rav Avraham Ibn Ezrav.”
2018: “Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said today he had banned Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi and two other rabbis from participating in military events, after they spoke out against the integration of female soldiers.”
2018: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the final screening of “The Women’s Balcony,” an Israeli comedy.
2019: In OT, Robert Kraft’s New England Patriots defeated Kansas City to win the AFC championship and a trip to the Super Bowl.
2019: Based on tapes made by the Jupiter, FL, police department, before today’s Super Bowl Game, Robert Kraft engaged in a sexual act with a woman at the Orchids Asia Day Spa for which he paid one hundred dollars.
2019: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to host Marna Chester’s “Paper-Art Workshop for Tu B’Shevat.
2019: YIVO is scheduled to host a conference on “Yiddish Anarchism: New Scholarship on a Forgotten Tradition.”
2019: In Amherst, MA, the Yiddish Book Center is scheduled to host a screening of “Itzhak.”
2019: Limmud Seattle is scheduled to come to an end today.
2019: In Atlanta, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host “Zine Making – Creative Workshop for Teens.”
2019: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshanna Zuboff and the recently released paperback edition of The Power, a novel by Naomi Alderman and Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat by Jonathan Kauffman.
2020: The LSJS, March of the Living and the Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Center are scheduled to host an evening chaired by Rabbi Raphael Zarum during which Professor Shirli Gilbert is scheduled to lecture on “Displaced Jews: Renewal In The Shadow of the Holocaust.”
2020: On MLK Day, Kippah wearing members of Agudas Achim carrying their own banner, are scheduled to take part in today’s third annual Martin Luther JR. Rally and Peace March in Iowa City.
2020: As part of the MLK Day National Day of Service, in Palo Alto, CA, the Oshman Family is scheduled to sponsor “more than 25 hands-on service projects addressing issues such as poverty, hunger, homelessness, aging, the environment and more.”
2020: “The Day After I’m Gone” and “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” are scheduled to be shown at the New York Jewish Film Festival.
2021: Thirty-four year old Georgetown and LSE graduate Thomas Jonathan Ossoff, the Georgia born son of Australian immigrant Heather Fenton and publisher Richard Ossoff and the husband of Dr. Alisah Sara Kramer with whom he had one child, Eva Beth, began serving as the U.S. Senator from Georgia.
2021: Jewish Family Services of Columbus, OH is scheduled to host “Urban Zen” led by Deborah Forsblom.
2021: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host “Coffee with a Survivor” during which Second Generation Speaker Gail Rapoport Levin tells the story about how her mother played mandolin in the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz.
2021: B’nai Jeshurun Congregation is scheduled to host via Zoom the Sisterhood Book Group discussing The Book of V.” by Anna Solomon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/books/review/the-book-of-v-anna-solomon.html
2021: The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening online of “May Me However.”
2021: In Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah is scheduled to host the first session of “Together and Apart: The Future of Jewish Peoplehood.”
2021: President-elect Joe Biden who has selected Janet Yellin to serve as Secretary of the Treasury and Anthony Blinken to serve as Secretary of State and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris whose husband, attorney Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish are scheduled to take their oaths of office today.
2021: A year after the first confirmed case of Covid-19 was reported, more than 400,000 Americans have passed away and most Jewish institutions have altered their functions to meet the needs of their communities while conforming to practices health officials have called for to limit the further spread of the “Angel of Death.”
2022: The Jewish Heritage Center is scheduled to present online Charles Gallagher discussing his gripping new book, Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front, “which provides a crucial missing chapter in the history of the American far right and tells a grim tale of faith perverted to violent ends, and a warning for those who hope to curb the spread of far-right ideologies today.”
2022: Under One Tent and the Jewish Book Council are scheduled to present online comedian and USC professor Wayne Federman discusses his book, The History of Stand-up: From Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle which chronicles the evolution of comedy from its earliest, pre-vaudeville practitioners to the Borscht Belt to present-day comedians of HBO and Netflix.
2022: The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to host a discussion with the cast of “Terezin: Children of the Holocaust,” a “film that follows a day and night in the lives of six children imprisoned at Terezin during the Holocaust.”
2022 The Miami Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host screenings of “Plan A” and “The Princess Bride.”
2022: Lockdown University is scheduled to present a webinar with Trudy Gold lecturing on “Freud and the Complexities of Jewish Identity.”
2022: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host Carl Bernstein as he discusses his new memoir, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom,
2022: The Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Center is scheduled to host “Destination: Death,” a presentation that marks the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference that will feature “Lady Esther Gilbert, widow of Sir Martin, reading excerpts from his books that place the Wannsee Conference in context.”
2023: “The Americans and the Holocaust traveling exhibition” is scheduled to open today at the Chattanooga Public Library in Chattanooga, TN.
2023: A screening of “The Spy Behind Home Plate” is scheduled to take place at the Carroll Arts Center in Westminster, MD.
2023: Kan Kol Hamusika is scheduled to broadcast a Young Artists Concert featuring “Tom Zalmanov - Winner of the 2022 spring competitions of the America Israel Cultural Foundation.”
2023: Based on previously published information there is still turmoil in Israel over the proposed changes to the judiciary and the attempt to find a position for Shas leader Aryeh Deri in the Netanyahu government.